General Gaming Thread

[Sage]

I think Midway's problem is that they've only ever had one franchise, and they're...

Well, they're stuck in 1991.

Gore isn't enough of a controversy and spectacle to sell games anymore. I'm not even saying the new stuff sucks but whatever new release comes out is so insubstantially different from the previous release now.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. I hope they do alright. I've always loved the mythos behind Mortal Kombat and how each title segues logically into the next.

[Kaden]

I'm not even saying the new stuff sucks

Well you should be.

You're absolutely right about them being stuck a decade and a half back. I don't know who at Midway thought it would be a good idea to continue using an engine that plays as though it were written by someone in grad school, but... it's not.

I have to wonder if anyone over there even plays fighting games, let alone their own. How can someone even watch something like Soul Caliber or Street Fighter or King of Fighters or Guilty Gear (you get the idea) and not see that Mortal Kombat is the longest running piece of shit to ever exit the bowels of the video game industry?

How's that for imagery?

[Tyr]

I started to think Soul Calibur was grabbing for straws when they introduced Star Wars characters really, lol.

[Jonathan Meer]

I started to think Soul Calibur was grabbing for straws when they introduced Star Wars characters really, lol.

Nah, it's nothing new. They've been doing kick-assedly awesome character inclusions since SC2 with Link, Spawn, and that Tekken guy (and perhaps SC1; I'm not familiar with it).

[Jonathan Meer]

Oh, and for all you Midway haters:



This, they did right.

[Kaden]

I started to think Soul Calibur was grabbing for straws when they introduced Star Wars characters really, lol.

I was talking about the mechanics of the fighting game, not the gimmicks. Now that you mention it, though, I'm not sure anyone can even come close to Mortal Kombat when it comes to retarded gimmicks.

As SAGE mentioned, though, I will give MK points for having a consistent plot right. For whatever that's worth in a fighting game.

Yes, Hydro Thunder was a lot of fun.

On a less "graaaaah!" note, Class of Heroes is a fun game for someone looking to kill time with their PSP. Old-school dungeon crawling, tons of race/class/party combos and so on.

[Tyr]

Speaking of PSP and fighting games, I envy anyone who has a PSP when Dissidia - Final Fantasy comes out. If anyone do get it, I'd love to hear how it is.

[Sol]

Speaking of PSP and fighting games, I envy anyone who has a PSP when Dissidia - Final Fantasy comes out. If anyone do get it, I'd love to hear how it is.

Played Japanese version for a bit, had NO IDEA what was going on, but the fighting was AWESOME! The game looked cool so I had high expectations going in and they were far and away surpassed.

[Kaden]

Dissidia is one of those games that I will definitely be reading a few reviews for first. I really like the idea, but I don't want to spend $40 on something that ends up being incredibly mediocre. If I had paid full price for, say, Dirge of Cerberus I would not have been happy.

[Kami]

I might actually weep if another MK vs DC is made.

I would actually weep if that happened.

[Kaden]

Playing through Star Ocean at the moment. Who ever said that Lymle (the little girl) was annoying was dead-on. Adding "kay?" to the end of all her sentences just because they did something like that in Japanese is still incredibly stupid. This character, however, suffers from much more serious issues.

This habit of just phoning in voice acting for video games is getting really old. Did the VA even look at this character before they started reading lines? Was their script printed one word per page? The character is a stereotypically "cute" little girl, but the voice acting is more mechanical than just about anything I've ever heard. What sucks is that she has some pretty badass magic, but, given the choice, I will never use her.

Aside from that (and I made it sound worse than it actually is), I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. The story is fine, nothing spectacular but it works, and the combat is a lot of fun. I feel pretty cool about pulling off a Blindside and seeing my character just barely escape an enemy's attack. In slow motion.

[Saz]

Yeah I'm quite enjoying it at the moment. The story got a little bit iffy at the end of disc 1, but so far disc 2 has been really good. I got into a little bit of trouble for the first time earlier, I noticed a save point on the map so I knew there was a boss battle coming up, but I thought I'd have to move into another area to activate it, so unknowingly I ended up getting into a boss battle totally unprepared after having played for about an hour and not saving.... within about a minute 3 of my party were dead, I thought I was done for. Fortunately I managed to revive members, switch them around with the stronger characters, and got back on track. Took me about 30 minutes to defeat that boss, it was pretty tough, I wasn't doing a lot of damage for a large part of the battle for some reason so yeah, it was a bit of a grind.

And as far as annoying characters go, Angel is pretty irritating too, doesn't hold a candle to Lymle though. Arumat is pretty cool, he's fun to play as too, his chain combo's are really effective.

[Kaden]

I've been hesitant to give Edge all the cool skills. He works great, but I don't know how much I'll actually be playing him once I get more characters.

In combat, Reimi seems like she'll be very replaceable, too, which makes me hesitate to really spend money/SP on her.

[Saz]

I never really think like that when I'm playing a RPG, I usually just keep everyone around the same level, with the same upgraded weaponary, and skill levels.

I think Edge will always be pretty useful though, there are only 3 close quarter attacking characters in the game as far as I'm aware. Meracle has a powerful attack, but she's differcult to use I find, as some of her attacks don't hit the target. Arumat has a lot of good combo's and has a high attack, his HP seems a little low right now, but I've only just recruited him.

You're probably right about Reimi though.

[Jonathan Meer]

Why Fallout sucks: Because, like all other Bethesda games, combat just blows. The gunplay is atrocious.

An RPG that married the amazing FPS nature of CoD with the depth of Bethesda would be ejaculatory.

[Orion]

Why Fallout sucks: Because, like all other Bethesda games, combat just blows. The gunplay is atrocious.

Thank you. Someone else who agrees with me. I stopped playing after I blew up Megaton due to the sheer difficulty of killing creatures.

[Jonathan Meer]

Morrowind is kickass in so many ways until you fight something.

Then it's kinda like, '...Oh.'

Oblivion wasn't half-bad. Combat still felt really outdated, but at least enemies staggered when you hit them. Sometimes.

I really think more games need to include staggering. If you get hit by a sword, it's going to hurt, and it will probably affect your stance, your balance, your counter-attack.

[Kaden]

I really think more games need to include staggering. If you get hit by a sword, it's going to hurt, and it will probably affect your stance, your balance, your counter-attack.

You mean they need to include being able to stagger. There are way too many games where all the cool shit your character is supposed to be able to do doesn't mean shit because the enemies instantly hit you out of it.

[Jonathan Meer]

Well, staggering on both sides.

And yeah, that does get lame. I think there should be a nice balance.

I'd also like to see a shooter where wounds actually meant something; like, if you get shot in the foot, you run slower, if you got shot in the shoulder, your aim becomes shit, etc.

I know Fallout tried to do that sort of thing, but it felt more gimmicky in 3 than anything. I've heard it's a more interesting system in the other ones.

[Sage]

Much more interesting in the first two.

As far as combat sucking or being difficult, I'd disagree. Definitely not as good a shooter as CoD 4 or something, but if you're not using VATS you're doing it wrong anyway.

Not to mention on my second playthrough, most of the time I didn't even bother with VATS and I was playing on Very Hard. It's... not a difficult game. Until you get Reavers and Albino Radscorpions. Then it's hair-pullingly frustrating, since they can take nuclear bombs to the face without so much as slowing down.