I beat the two DS Trauma Center games and enjoyed their challenge and bizarre story. Trauma Team seems like the right step for the series though. I like the idea of using the nunchuck to select the current tool, I was trying to imagine hastily selecting the right tool for the job with the Wiimote pointer and that thought scared me.
Also, two shower scenes? Sounds like an ingredient to me.
It does look interesting - the graphics are simply breathtaking, but I can't help but think it would have been more enjoyable if they had just allowed us control while we were IN the game. It's just not really as interactive as I would have wanted it. In my opinion it's a great game but it could have been better to do the graphics justice.
It's kinda shady and hurts the consumer, thus naturally I don't like it. But if you're a small company that needs the money/security, you might not be able to turn it down, and they take advantage of that.
They do this with XBLA too, which I think I've mentioned before. Almost any game that wants to be on XBLA has to release there first or at the same time. For example, Super Meat Boy came out recently and on XBLA first due to "contractual obligations." Now it's never being released on PSN because Sony wasn't originally interested in it, so that was written into the contract. A similar thing happened with Trine, as I mentioned in that article. It was originally on PC/PSN and thus wasn't accepted for XBLA.
Microsoft has also announced and then canceled numerous games for PC so they'd be 360 exclusive. This is by no means the first one. But now someone there has apparently seen a market for PC (perhaps because of Steam) and they've revamped their Games for Windows Live service, including having $1 daily deals right now. So we'll see what happens with all that.
I don't think anything can compete with that particular Kingdom Hearts title, but yeah, this is pretty bad. And from what I can tell, the title in Japanese is something like: "Escape the utmost limit: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors." Yeah, it's actually worse in Japanese.
Does this game rival Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the worst title in recent history? Just wow. Either something is seriously lost in the translation or they're just hoping that people are confused enough to give it a try...
I didn't get to play Doom multiplayer more than once, and that was because I was like 4-5 and my brother had recently downloaded pornography onto my father's computer, which meant that I could not use the computer until I was around 8.
But the one time I played it, it was fantastic. While the BFG 9000 was awesome, the plasma rifle was where it was at, I'll never forget that sound.
Quake: I remember playing this game when I was...7? I distinctly my dad being as giddy as a school girl when we got 56k from 28.8k. Thanks to quake, and the episode 2fort4, we have what is now called "Team Fortress." as the modders for quake went to Half-life.
Unreal Tournament: This game was my dad's favorite for the longest, and I often played with him. It's the original game that would spout the words "HEADSHOT!"
Counterstrike: Source: I can't help it, but this game holds such a special place in my heart since...2004? I believe it was 2004. Anyway, I played Counterstrike: Source competitively in the TWL ladder with my father with the guys from Exemplar Sect who were primarily a team fortress clan at the time, and they decided to play CS: Source. We did relatively well, although I didn't play as much when I started college. I will say that I upgraded my graphics card from my Geforce 4 Ti to a Geforce 6200 after a random meltdown rendered the Geforce 4 obsolete. I then quickly upgraded to the more appropriate Geforce 6600 GT to give me a better midrange pc. I still remember the final specs on that PC:
I went from:
AMD Athlon XP 2200 (Socket A)
512 MB Kingston DDR Memory
Geforce 4 Ti (AGP)
A demo can clue people in on the good parts of the game, but a first hour review will let them know whether or not they'll be tempted to put the controller down before those good parts actually happen.
Great write up, all of these games look like they're worthy of at least playing the demo.
Something I think about sometimes is the concept of a first hour review versus playing a game's demo. Demos can often be disingenuous: locking out certain, possibly obnoxious, features; cutting out long cutscenes; stringing together a few exciting action set pieces in a row that would otherwise be separated by hours of routine gameplay; etc. But the same could be said about just playing the first hour of the game for some titles.
Are first hour reviews unnecessary in the age of the demo?
1. Ikari Warriors. This one was great, we started playing it in the arcades back in the day and eventually transitioned onto the NES. 2 Player coop was amazing. You could create lines of fire that would control the battle field, in glorious 2D
2. Doom. I remember "hacking" our college network so we could play Doom in the computer lab. Back in those days, not everyone had a computer so playing in the lab was a must.
3. GoldenEYE of course. You've covered this one well.
4. In that same Era for me, I never played Smash. I didn't "get" it. But I did play me a heckuva lot of Mortal Kombat and SSF2. Before I was a good game fanboy, I too was a Nintendo fanboy. I remember in college, playing SSF2 on the SNES and thinking, "Mortal Kombat sucks!". Of course I had never played it. :) Then, when I finally did, I was blown away at how good it was. We spent hundreds of hours honing our skills with Scorpion, Sub Zero, Baraka, Johnny Cage and Kabal. I'm pretty confident that I could pull off Liu Kangs 7 hit combo right this minute if someone were to hand me an N64 controller.
5. Quake 3 Arena. I made the transition to PC gaming pretty completely in the late 90s. Quake 3 Arena was the game that sold me on PC gaming and shooters with a KB/M. In order to get me to take console shooters seriously again, it took a bet with a co-worker that I couldn't beat Halo on Heroic in a single weekend, having never played the game before. Amazing Game.
6. Wii Sports re-invigorated me to the local multiplayer game, which I had taken a long hiatus from. It did this both by getting my wife to hold a controller without going into convulsions and by being the source of some of the most fun parties I've ever had the priveledge to attend or throw.
7. Mario Strikers Charged. If ever there was a local multiplayer game that will literally make you HATE your best friend. This is it.
This game's been on my to-buy list since it came out. I'll have time for it eventually. Maybe. Probably not. Damn it. Anyway, glad to hear I'm missing out on something cool and unique.
I too was interested in seeing W-L records, injuries, trades, and other season stats like that, but I couldn't find an easy way to view these reports at the end of the season. The only way to figure them out, as far as I know, is to keep track of them in the News window as you advance the season, day-by-day. I'll have another look at my completed season to see if I can find these things, but I don't expect to find anything I haven't before...
Where can I find the regular season W-L records for individual NHL team's vs other team's?
For example I want to know what Boston's win-loss regular season record is against Toronto, maybe over the past 25 games, 10 games, etc., etc.
Can you tell me where I can locate this information or table?
It's funny you mention that transition from high school to college: our middle school days were packed with Smash Bros, but the big thing in high school was Halo 2 LAN.
Our biggest multiplayer obsessions were probably Mario Kart DS and Brawl. The one time we got 8 people together for Mario Kart DS was amazing. The usual 5 or 6 was great as well. And Brawl...well, we played multiplayer Brawl for 8 hours after picking it up at midnight. And another three or four hours later that day.
2) Super Circuit, in my opinion IS the greatest portable racer ever. I'd argue it's even the greatest Mario Kart yet.
3) I had a highschool routine as well, and with the same game, no less. Every Friday me and two other friends would get together at a fourth's house and play Melee until 1am (with maybe an hour break to watch weekly anime in between). It was also my favorite social gaming period, and something I looked to recapture with Brawl, but alas, those days are gone...
WoW was a fantastic time-waster but yeah, maybe not worth it if your time is so limited.
Also I think mine ended up around 75 hours but with almost everything completed. If you were just going through the main story it would be much more reasonable. But really though, for whatever various reasons, the game is very hooking and quite fantastic. You should try it if you're interested, lol.
The monthly fees for mmos are pretty much negligible considering how much value you can get out of them and they're generally pretty streamlined at this point so you shouldn't have to wait for hours to do anything (unless you choose square-enix mmos >_>).
First, Single player WoW? Sign me up! I've actually never played WoW, but for only 2 reasons. 1. I refuse to pay monthly fees for a game. 2. I hate the idea of burning hours waiting for groups to get coordinated enough to do cool stuff.
I loved the original BG games too, but I actually liked Ice Wind Dale better because you got to build your entire party without having to kiss ass to NPCs to keep them around. This game sounds right up my alley except for that 75 hour comment. Yikes. I don't have that kind of game time anymore. I can say with certainty I'd never finish it. In the past year, I've hardly finished a 10 hour game let alone one 7 times longer.
Makes me wish I had time to kill again. Great review BTW, thanks for making me sad that I can't play it. ;)
Nice review. And I definitely agree about how fun and addicting it was without needing to be groundbreaking. I hadn't finished an rpg in years before Dragon Age, but everything was good enough to keep me playing to the end. I passed on Awakening (at least for now), but I'll probably check out Dragon Age 2 once it comes out, which seemingly has an entirely different real-time battle system, which could be interesting.
Mistborn: The Alloy of Law was recently announced by Brandon Sanderson. He also said that it will feature the final two metals we've never seen burned before.
For the record, 3e and 3.5 DnD encounters were scaled to four people. A creature with a CR (challenge rating) of 6 was intended as a level-equivalent fight for four sixth level characters; a creature with a CR of 1/4 was intended as an equivalent fight for one first level character.
It wasn't until 4e that encounters became scaled for five players. Just thought I'd let you know, as this is pertinent information depending on what edition you are playing/want to play.
Yeah, they just won a game against the Devils, so that makes them 2 in a row for victories again. They're like...4th or 3rd in the conference. Halak is doing better. We were using Conklin in and out to give him some game time which was a grave mistake. We had a 5 game losing streak that started when we lost 8-1 against the Blue Jackets, lol.
I beat the two DS Trauma Center games and enjoyed their challenge and bizarre story. Trauma Team seems like the right step for the series though. I like the idea of using the nunchuck to select the current tool, I was trying to imagine hastily selecting the right tool for the job with the Wiimote pointer and that thought scared me.
Also, two shower scenes? Sounds like an ingredient to me.
It does look interesting - the graphics are simply breathtaking, but I can't help but think it would have been more enjoyable if they had just allowed us control while we were IN the game. It's just not really as interactive as I would have wanted it. In my opinion it's a great game but it could have been better to do the graphics justice.
It's kinda shady and hurts the consumer, thus naturally I don't like it. But if you're a small company that needs the money/security, you might not be able to turn it down, and they take advantage of that.
They do this with XBLA too, which I think I've mentioned before. Almost any game that wants to be on XBLA has to release there first or at the same time. For example, Super Meat Boy came out recently and on XBLA first due to "contractual obligations." Now it's never being released on PSN because Sony wasn't originally interested in it, so that was written into the contract. A similar thing happened with Trine, as I mentioned in that article. It was originally on PC/PSN and thus wasn't accepted for XBLA.
Microsoft has also announced and then canceled numerous games for PC so they'd be 360 exclusive. This is by no means the first one. But now someone there has apparently seen a market for PC (perhaps because of Steam) and they've revamped their Games for Windows Live service, including having $1 daily deals right now. So we'll see what happens with all that.
Any opinion on Microsoft buying out exclusives like this for just their console? As you are a PC gamer primarily, I can see how this might bug you.
I don't think anything can compete with that particular Kingdom Hearts title, but yeah, this is pretty bad. And from what I can tell, the title in Japanese is something like: "Escape the utmost limit: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors." Yeah, it's actually worse in Japanese.
Does this game rival Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the worst title in recent history? Just wow. Either something is seriously lost in the translation or they're just hoping that people are confused enough to give it a try...
I didn't get to play Doom multiplayer more than once, and that was because I was like 4-5 and my brother had recently downloaded pornography onto my father's computer, which meant that I could not use the computer until I was around 8.
But the one time I played it, it was fantastic. While the BFG 9000 was awesome, the plasma rifle was where it was at, I'll never forget that sound.
Quake: I remember playing this game when I was...7? I distinctly my dad being as giddy as a school girl when we got 56k from 28.8k. Thanks to quake, and the episode 2fort4, we have what is now called "Team Fortress." as the modders for quake went to Half-life.
Unreal Tournament: This game was my dad's favorite for the longest, and I often played with him. It's the original game that would spout the words "HEADSHOT!"
Counterstrike: Source: I can't help it, but this game holds such a special place in my heart since...2004? I believe it was 2004. Anyway, I played Counterstrike: Source competitively in the TWL ladder with my father with the guys from Exemplar Sect who were primarily a team fortress clan at the time, and they decided to play CS: Source. We did relatively well, although I didn't play as much when I started college. I will say that I upgraded my graphics card from my Geforce 4 Ti to a Geforce 6200 after a random meltdown rendered the Geforce 4 obsolete. I then quickly upgraded to the more appropriate Geforce 6600 GT to give me a better midrange pc. I still remember the final specs on that PC:
I went from:
AMD Athlon XP 2200 (Socket A)
512 MB Kingston DDR Memory
Geforce 4 Ti (AGP)
and did an overhaul to:
AMD 64 X2 4000+ (Socket 939)
2 GB Kingston DDR Memory
Geforce 6600 GT (PCI Express)
120 GB HDD
I love building PCs. :D
What am I playing now in multiplayer?
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and I'm rocking it at full specs at 1920x1080! If anyone ever wants to join me, my name is Recon556.
Not when there's no demo available, anyway!
A demo can clue people in on the good parts of the game, but a first hour review will let them know whether or not they'll be tempted to put the controller down before those good parts actually happen.
Great write up, all of these games look like they're worthy of at least playing the demo.
Something I think about sometimes is the concept of a first hour review versus playing a game's demo. Demos can often be disingenuous: locking out certain, possibly obnoxious, features; cutting out long cutscenes; stringing together a few exciting action set pieces in a row that would otherwise be separated by hours of routine gameplay; etc. But the same could be said about just playing the first hour of the game for some titles.
Are first hour reviews unnecessary in the age of the demo?
I'll go back a bit further...
1. Ikari Warriors. This one was great, we started playing it in the arcades back in the day and eventually transitioned onto the NES. 2 Player coop was amazing. You could create lines of fire that would control the battle field, in glorious 2D
2. Doom. I remember "hacking" our college network so we could play Doom in the computer lab. Back in those days, not everyone had a computer so playing in the lab was a must.
3. GoldenEYE of course. You've covered this one well.
4. In that same Era for me, I never played Smash. I didn't "get" it. But I did play me a heckuva lot of Mortal Kombat and SSF2. Before I was a good game fanboy, I too was a Nintendo fanboy. I remember in college, playing SSF2 on the SNES and thinking, "Mortal Kombat sucks!". Of course I had never played it. :) Then, when I finally did, I was blown away at how good it was. We spent hundreds of hours honing our skills with Scorpion, Sub Zero, Baraka, Johnny Cage and Kabal. I'm pretty confident that I could pull off Liu Kangs 7 hit combo right this minute if someone were to hand me an N64 controller.
5. Quake 3 Arena. I made the transition to PC gaming pretty completely in the late 90s. Quake 3 Arena was the game that sold me on PC gaming and shooters with a KB/M. In order to get me to take console shooters seriously again, it took a bet with a co-worker that I couldn't beat Halo on Heroic in a single weekend, having never played the game before. Amazing Game.
6. Wii Sports re-invigorated me to the local multiplayer game, which I had taken a long hiatus from. It did this both by getting my wife to hold a controller without going into convulsions and by being the source of some of the most fun parties I've ever had the priveledge to attend or throw.
7. Mario Strikers Charged. If ever there was a local multiplayer game that will literally make you HATE your best friend. This is it.
The PC version was the best. The 360 version was plagued with a lot of graphical issues and the PS3 version lied between the two.
This game's been on my to-buy list since it came out. I'll have time for it eventually. Maybe. Probably not. Damn it. Anyway, glad to hear I'm missing out on something cool and unique.
I too was interested in seeing W-L records, injuries, trades, and other season stats like that, but I couldn't find an easy way to view these reports at the end of the season. The only way to figure them out, as far as I know, is to keep track of them in the News window as you advance the season, day-by-day. I'll have another look at my completed season to see if I can find these things, but I don't expect to find anything I haven't before...
Where can I find the regular season W-L records for individual NHL team's vs other team's?
For example I want to know what Boston's win-loss regular season record is against Toronto, maybe over the past 25 games, 10 games, etc., etc.
Can you tell me where I can locate this information or table?
Thank You
It's funny you mention that transition from high school to college: our middle school days were packed with Smash Bros, but the big thing in high school was Halo 2 LAN.
Our biggest multiplayer obsessions were probably Mario Kart DS and Brawl. The one time we got 8 people together for Mario Kart DS was amazing. The usual 5 or 6 was great as well. And Brawl...well, we played multiplayer Brawl for 8 hours after picking it up at midnight. And another three or four hours later that day.
I'm digging that Chip n Dales cover, lol.
Three things:
1) FFVI was the shit.
2) Super Circuit, in my opinion IS the greatest portable racer ever. I'd argue it's even the greatest Mario Kart yet.
3) I had a highschool routine as well, and with the same game, no less. Every Friday me and two other friends would get together at a fourth's house and play Melee until 1am (with maybe an hour break to watch weekly anime in between). It was also my favorite social gaming period, and something I looked to recapture with Brawl, but alas, those days are gone...
WoW was a fantastic time-waster but yeah, maybe not worth it if your time is so limited.
Also I think mine ended up around 75 hours but with almost everything completed. If you were just going through the main story it would be much more reasonable. But really though, for whatever various reasons, the game is very hooking and quite fantastic. You should try it if you're interested, lol.
The monthly fees for mmos are pretty much negligible considering how much value you can get out of them and they're generally pretty streamlined at this point so you shouldn't have to wait for hours to do anything (unless you choose square-enix mmos >_>).
First, Single player WoW? Sign me up! I've actually never played WoW, but for only 2 reasons. 1. I refuse to pay monthly fees for a game. 2. I hate the idea of burning hours waiting for groups to get coordinated enough to do cool stuff.
I loved the original BG games too, but I actually liked Ice Wind Dale better because you got to build your entire party without having to kiss ass to NPCs to keep them around. This game sounds right up my alley except for that 75 hour comment. Yikes. I don't have that kind of game time anymore. I can say with certainty I'd never finish it. In the past year, I've hardly finished a 10 hour game let alone one 7 times longer.
Makes me wish I had time to kill again. Great review BTW, thanks for making me sad that I can't play it. ;)
Nice review. And I definitely agree about how fun and addicting it was without needing to be groundbreaking. I hadn't finished an rpg in years before Dragon Age, but everything was good enough to keep me playing to the end. I passed on Awakening (at least for now), but I'll probably check out Dragon Age 2 once it comes out, which seemingly has an entirely different real-time battle system, which could be interesting.
Has anyone played Awakening by the way?
Thanks for updating!
Mistborn: The Alloy of Law was recently announced by Brandon Sanderson. He also said that it will feature the final two metals we've never seen burned before.
For the record, 3e and 3.5 DnD encounters were scaled to four people. A creature with a CR (challenge rating) of 6 was intended as a level-equivalent fight for four sixth level characters; a creature with a CR of 1/4 was intended as an equivalent fight for one first level character.
It wasn't until 4e that encounters became scaled for five players. Just thought I'd let you know, as this is pertinent information depending on what edition you are playing/want to play.
Yeah, they just won a game against the Devils, so that makes them 2 in a row for victories again. They're like...4th or 3rd in the conference. Halak is doing better. We were using Conklin in and out to give him some game time which was a grave mistake. We had a 5 game losing streak that started when we lost 8-1 against the Blue Jackets, lol.