Wow that minigame just looks dumb. People need to stop making stupid minigames for common actions too, maybe someone should write an article about that :P
Didn't Mass Effect use stat-based aiming too? I don't think it was that bad though, but starting with assault rifles seemed pretty poor.
And for the record, I oppose the use of the sega scream in any modern sega games, especially ones like this that have no relevance to the sega experience >_>
Was gonna message you but didn't. I've been playing it a bit too. I think your assessment is spot on. And the mini games!!! Holy cow, I think I failed it about 6 times before I got it right. Uggh. Terrible. This one will most likely be going back to gamefly pretty soon.
In a way. I've enjoyed a music game or two, but in general it's not something I spend time on. I don't have much affection for LEGO games, so there's really not much here to entice me.
I've finished a bit over 250 puzzles now. From the ten second easy puzzles to the ten minute hard ones, I'd say the average has taken me...six minutes? So yeah, that's 25 hours spent playing a $20 game. Definitely worth having unless you can't stand puzzle games.
And I too play the guessing game in the seconds prior to the revelation. I'm usually right, but sometimes way off the mark.
It seems like you either have one or the other for games, rarely both. Right now I don't have a lot of either, heh. Hopefully when I get some full-time work soon, I'll at least be able to buy all the games I want, even if I never get to really play them.
But yeah, there's nothing wrong with an adult playing video games. What's wrong is that there are too many good games out there, I can't possibly keep up with even half of the ones I'd like to play!
Seriously great game for its time, still stands up today. It was such an iconic game with everything circling around it like the source being leaked, Steam being released, such a long-time coming sequel, etc. Maybe the last most singular moment PC gaming had? WoW was rolled out so slow I don't think you could compare them (actually World of Warcraft was only released a week after HL2... never mind). Maybe StarCraft 2 will triumph it, maybe the Orange Box already did?
You would be a fool if you never got round to playing Redemption, it's one game you will continue to play. Also, story wise R* has most definitely come of age.
Lego Rock Band DS forces you to switch lanes because you have to keep the band players "happy." This is basically a simple gameplay mechanic to keep you moving from instrument to instrument. You can't really linger at all on an instrument after you've completed a portion, you really have to keep moving to the band member that is in danger of not being happy, lol.
Wouldn't call the DS version a music peripheral game.
Also I just looked up a video of it and I see what what's you're talking about in a comparison but it still seems really different from both Frequency and Amplitude :-\ Frequency even almost felt completely outdated by Amplitude (except that it had a really strong/different type of soundtrack). And this kinda feels like two steps back from Freq even. But I suppose they could only do so much on a portable with limited screen space. Also in the video I didn't see any logical instrument switching. Do sections eventually black out like in the originals if you complete so many bars in a row? It didn't really seem like it from the video.
There were a few other music games before those came out also, like Parappa/Umjammer and Space Channel 5. But certainly fairly rare until DDR started getting so massively popular.
And are you saying that we aren't the best gamers in the world? :P Nah, I really liked the difficulty of Frequency and you had to be really precise, unlike some music games (Amplitude seemed a bit more forgiving timing-wise and certainly switching lanes was easier too).
I've never been able to get into the music peripheral games, and this might be one of the few LEGO games I'm just not interested in. Glad to hear it's working its magic on you though.
Well, I'm about two thirds through Persona 4 right now, and let me tell you, I absolutely love it. I haven't played P3, or any other Shin Megami Tensei game aside from the spectacular Strange Story (though I intend to.) The consensus on the internet seems to be that it's Persona 3 with every single flaw in the game fixed.
The dungeon design is much better, for one, and some of the most creative concepts I've seen in a game. So far I've fought my way through a mad scientist dungeon, a gay bathhouse dungeon, a strip club dungeon, and an 8-bit dungeon, each complete with an anime style super-villain boss, a roses encrusted muscle man equipped with male signs (o->) as swords boss, a technicolored pole-dancer boss, and the hero from Dragon Quest, respectively. The social links are much better to, and there isn't a single character that makes me want to wring their necks (see the entire cast of FFXIII). The characters and social links are all genuinely likable, and the whole system is streamlined and improved. Boss battles are much better balanced as well, with much, much less monotonous grinding. Another thing is that the plot picks up right away, rather than P3 that waits half the game to get up and running. It still takes a few hours to get rolling, but once it does, you're in for a ride.
I'm having the best time on the PS2 I've ever had, apart from maybe Silent Hill 2, and once I finish, I fully intend to go out and pick up Digital Devil Saga, or maybe Nocturne. I might even get Persona 3 Portable, since its essentially Persona 3 with all the improvements from Persona 4. Bottom line, you owe it to yourself to see the peak of the Persona line. Its legions ahead of anything else on the PS2, RPG wise, and I've played Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga. Check it out.
...is my favorite of the DS games. Incidentally, Aria of Sorrow is my favorite of the GBA games.
Also, the 3D PS2 Castlevanias borrow elements from the 'Metroidvania' games. The second one was a lot better than the first, though. (can't remember the names even though I played them both twice)
Dawn of Sorrow was my first Metroidvania, and I've played all of them since then. They're all great. I also never realized just how quickly they get going, you've already done a lot of stuff. The games could really use is a save point radar or something, though, because save points are really easy to skip sometimes.
I really disagree with your opinion on mother 3 being better than Earthbound. I know it's a sequel, but it often felt like they were trying to do something different or original. They failed at this task tremendously. A lot of their music was completely ripped off of Earthbound, and then they made poor versions of those songs and sounds. I say poor as in, my opinion is that they aren't nearly as good as the original versions. In addition, the story line was -horrible-. Absolutely horrible, boxes with farts in them, the return of Porky and the idea that they were in a tiny pseudo civilization are a small number of examples of really poorly done things in mother 3. Something that really irritated me also was the aim to try to and do a quentin tarantino style story flow. Pulp fiction, this game is not.
Earthbound was something of an amazing masterpiece whos music is even something that you can listen to and cherish. Mother 3 was little more than a deformed clone who needed another 6 months in the pot and a new set of cloners. I could go on about things that bothered me about mother 3, but I won't. The game is really lacking in so many ways, but of all the ways it failed, the storyline was the greatest failure.
I love this game, but you really hit the nail on the head with this review. I find myself reluctant to replay it just because I don't want to go through the slow start. I don't think the game really gets going until after you gain full control of your shapeshifting. Still, I think it has the best final boss battle out of any of the Zelda games and, for my money, it ranks just behind LTTP as the second best game in the franchise.
I guess I'll not be using your reviews to decide my purchases in the future. ;)
Actually, even within those bounds, I've found that as long as the reviewer recognizes the same things in the game as I do, I can decide if I'll like the game or not based on the review, regardless of whether their assessment is positive or negative. To be honest, I can read your review and tell that I might like the game even though you didn't, which is, to me, indicative of a solid review. In similar cases, I have read reviews of games that the reviewer loved, and because they did a really good job of describing the aspects of the game, I knew that I would not like it despite how much they did.
Reminds me of a movie reviewer in my old home town newspaper. It was a smaller town and only had 1 movie reviewer in the paper (this was before online review sites). This guy and I were polar opposites. I knew...........KNEW......that if he disliked a movie, I would like it and vice versa. I hated the guy, but loved his reviews because they were so helpful, in their own bizarre way. Now that I think about it, this "relationship" was probably somewhat foundational in my taste for video games. Ugg, I hate pop psychology, especially when it's right. Anyway, keep up the good work!
Wow that minigame just looks dumb. People need to stop making stupid minigames for common actions too, maybe someone should write an article about that :P
Didn't Mass Effect use stat-based aiming too? I don't think it was that bad though, but starting with assault rifles seemed pretty poor.
And for the record, I oppose the use of the sega scream in any modern sega games, especially ones like this that have no relevance to the sega experience >_>
Here's a video of the hacking mini-game so readers can get an idea of what we're talking about.
Was gonna message you but didn't. I've been playing it a bit too. I think your assessment is spot on. And the mini games!!! Holy cow, I think I failed it about 6 times before I got it right. Uggh. Terrible. This one will most likely be going back to gamefly pretty soon.
Right now I have a stack of games I don't have time to play. I find myself wishing that games didn't take 20+ hours to finish.
You'll have to try out Episodes 1 & 2. The final battle in episode 2 is one of my favorite levels from any FPS.
In a way. I've enjoyed a music game or two, but in general it's not something I spend time on. I don't have much affection for LEGO games, so there's really not much here to entice me.
I've finished a bit over 250 puzzles now. From the ten second easy puzzles to the ten minute hard ones, I'd say the average has taken me...six minutes? So yeah, that's 25 hours spent playing a $20 game. Definitely worth having unless you can't stand puzzle games.
And I too play the guessing game in the seconds prior to the revelation. I'm usually right, but sometimes way off the mark.
It seems like you either have one or the other for games, rarely both. Right now I don't have a lot of either, heh. Hopefully when I get some full-time work soon, I'll at least be able to buy all the games I want, even if I never get to really play them.
But yeah, there's nothing wrong with an adult playing video games. What's wrong is that there are too many good games out there, I can't possibly keep up with even half of the ones I'd like to play!
Seriously great game for its time, still stands up today. It was such an iconic game with everything circling around it like the source being leaked, Steam being released, such a long-time coming sequel, etc. Maybe the last most singular moment PC gaming had? WoW was rolled out so slow I don't think you could compare them (actually World of Warcraft was only released a week after HL2... never mind). Maybe StarCraft 2 will triumph it, maybe the Orange Box already did?
You would be a fool if you never got round to playing Redemption, it's one game you will continue to play. Also, story wise R* has most definitely come of age.
Lego Rock Band DS forces you to switch lanes because you have to keep the band players "happy." This is basically a simple gameplay mechanic to keep you moving from instrument to instrument. You can't really linger at all on an instrument after you've completed a portion, you really have to keep moving to the band member that is in danger of not being happy, lol.
Wouldn't call the DS version a music peripheral game.
Also I just looked up a video of it and I see what what's you're talking about in a comparison but it still seems really different from both Frequency and Amplitude :-\ Frequency even almost felt completely outdated by Amplitude (except that it had a really strong/different type of soundtrack). And this kinda feels like two steps back from Freq even. But I suppose they could only do so much on a portable with limited screen space. Also in the video I didn't see any logical instrument switching. Do sections eventually black out like in the originals if you complete so many bars in a row? It didn't really seem like it from the video.
There were a few other music games before those came out also, like Parappa/Umjammer and Space Channel 5. But certainly fairly rare until DDR started getting so massively popular.
And are you saying that we aren't the best gamers in the world? :P Nah, I really liked the difficulty of Frequency and you had to be really precise, unlike some music games (Amplitude seemed a bit more forgiving timing-wise and certainly switching lanes was easier too).
I've never been able to get into the music peripheral games, and this might be one of the few LEGO games I'm just not interested in. Glad to hear it's working its magic on you though.
Well, I'm about two thirds through Persona 4 right now, and let me tell you, I absolutely love it. I haven't played P3, or any other Shin Megami Tensei game aside from the spectacular Strange Story (though I intend to.) The consensus on the internet seems to be that it's Persona 3 with every single flaw in the game fixed.
The dungeon design is much better, for one, and some of the most creative concepts I've seen in a game. So far I've fought my way through a mad scientist dungeon, a gay bathhouse dungeon, a strip club dungeon, and an 8-bit dungeon, each complete with an anime style super-villain boss, a roses encrusted muscle man equipped with male signs (o->) as swords boss, a technicolored pole-dancer boss, and the hero from Dragon Quest, respectively. The social links are much better to, and there isn't a single character that makes me want to wring their necks (see the entire cast of FFXIII). The characters and social links are all genuinely likable, and the whole system is streamlined and improved. Boss battles are much better balanced as well, with much, much less monotonous grinding. Another thing is that the plot picks up right away, rather than P3 that waits half the game to get up and running. It still takes a few hours to get rolling, but once it does, you're in for a ride.
I'm having the best time on the PS2 I've ever had, apart from maybe Silent Hill 2, and once I finish, I fully intend to go out and pick up Digital Devil Saga, or maybe Nocturne. I might even get Persona 3 Portable, since its essentially Persona 3 with all the improvements from Persona 4. Bottom line, you owe it to yourself to see the peak of the Persona line. Its legions ahead of anything else on the PS2, RPG wise, and I've played Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga. Check it out.
...is my favorite of the DS games. Incidentally, Aria of Sorrow is my favorite of the GBA games.
Also, the 3D PS2 Castlevanias borrow elements from the 'Metroidvania' games. The second one was a lot better than the first, though. (can't remember the names even though I played them both twice)
I think I might actually have Harmony of Dissonance too. Probably played Circle and didn't get to Harmony.
Dawn of Sorrow was my first Metroidvania, and I've played all of them since then. They're all great. I also never realized just how quickly they get going, you've already done a lot of stuff. The games could really use is a save point radar or something, though, because save points are really easy to skip sometimes.
Circle of the Moon
Harmony of Dissonance
Aria of Sorrow
Dawn of Sorrow
Portrait of Ruin
Order of Ecclesia
I think Greg should adopt it for the entire site.
They've made six since Circle of the Moon? Wow. That's one of the few GBA games I have. And yeah that art style is definitely generic :(
I also support Count Chocola grading.
I really disagree with your opinion on mother 3 being better than Earthbound. I know it's a sequel, but it often felt like they were trying to do something different or original. They failed at this task tremendously. A lot of their music was completely ripped off of Earthbound, and then they made poor versions of those songs and sounds. I say poor as in, my opinion is that they aren't nearly as good as the original versions. In addition, the story line was -horrible-. Absolutely horrible, boxes with farts in them, the return of Porky and the idea that they were in a tiny pseudo civilization are a small number of examples of really poorly done things in mother 3. Something that really irritated me also was the aim to try to and do a quentin tarantino style story flow. Pulp fiction, this game is not.
Earthbound was something of an amazing masterpiece whos music is even something that you can listen to and cherish. Mother 3 was little more than a deformed clone who needed another 6 months in the pot and a new set of cloners. I could go on about things that bothered me about mother 3, but I won't. The game is really lacking in so many ways, but of all the ways it failed, the storyline was the greatest failure.
I love this game, but you really hit the nail on the head with this review. I find myself reluctant to replay it just because I don't want to go through the slow start. I don't think the game really gets going until after you gain full control of your shapeshifting. Still, I think it has the best final boss battle out of any of the Zelda games and, for my money, it ranks just behind LTTP as the second best game in the franchise.
I shelved the game for a few weeks after playing the first couple of hours. One of the slowest starts to a high-profile game ever.
For laughs, rename Link "you dick." I usually go with "Dude" but "you dick" resulted in quite a few humorous moments.
funny page. FUNNY GAME!
Very true.
I guess I'll not be using your reviews to decide my purchases in the future. ;)
Actually, even within those bounds, I've found that as long as the reviewer recognizes the same things in the game as I do, I can decide if I'll like the game or not based on the review, regardless of whether their assessment is positive or negative. To be honest, I can read your review and tell that I might like the game even though you didn't, which is, to me, indicative of a solid review. In similar cases, I have read reviews of games that the reviewer loved, and because they did a really good job of describing the aspects of the game, I knew that I would not like it despite how much they did.
Reminds me of a movie reviewer in my old home town newspaper. It was a smaller town and only had 1 movie reviewer in the paper (this was before online review sites). This guy and I were polar opposites. I knew...........KNEW......that if he disliked a movie, I would like it and vice versa. I hated the guy, but loved his reviews because they were so helpful, in their own bizarre way. Now that I think about it, this "relationship" was probably somewhat foundational in my taste for video games. Ugg, I hate pop psychology, especially when it's right. Anyway, keep up the good work!