Re: Video Games

[Sgt. Beadsmaster]

Check it out! I found this thing on an add on the Dr. McNinja website. The web site is called... "Topataco.com" The picture is on a t-shirt that they sell.
Freaking awesome!!!!

[silent wulf]

That. Is. EPIC!

[Achenar]

That IS epic!

[Sam Fissure]

Somebody get my fireproof suit because that is SPARTA!

[Achenar]

Somebody get my fireproof suit because that is SPARTA!

THAT, on the other hand, was pretty lame.

[Strong Vader]

Hey, in Elbonia we have an expression: "Between a rock and a hard place, don't varnish your clams."

Yeah, I have no idea what it means either. Glub.

[Sam Fissure]

Somebody get my fireproof suit because that is SPARTA!

You realize what that means, right?
"Tonight we dine in heck!"

[Sam Fissure]

Also, Just got FF XIV! Review on its way!




Mass Effect 2: Rated M for good reason.
Graphics: 2
And I thought MW2 was good. This may give the New Final Fantasy a run for its money. Simply amazing.
Gameplay: 1.5
The power wheel is interesting. Some of the controls are a little iffy, but all in all it plays just as well as GoW.
Plot: 2
The whole plot centers around gathering a team for a suicide mission. The choices you make can affect that mission and its outcome. It has a new and 'never before done' storyline.
Characters: 2
Uniqueness: 2

Rating: 9.5
All sections rated on a 2 point scale.

[The Wheelchair]

I just saw the trailer for Sam and Max The Devil's Playhouse. And thanks to it, tonight I'm buying Sam and Max Season 1 and preordering Devil's Playhouse. That was epic.

[Sam Fissure]

Traitor.

[The Wheelchair]

Traitor.

I'm not a traitor! I still like SBCG4AP! I just like Sam and Max too!

[Sgt. Beadsmaster]

A little while ago I played a campaign of Left 4 Dead. It was pretty awesome. It was "Dead Center", the first campaign, on normal. I tried playing through all of it, only using Mele Weapons... couldn't succeed.... When a witch got me, I instantly went to pistol and accidentally fired a shot or 2, and then gave up.
At this one part, I got to the safe house and a Boomer was waiting there. We got through it fine though.
Also, at one point I tried killing Rochel, so then I could revive her with the defibrillator, but I wasn't able to get her in time, before another team mate revived her. It took a while to kill her. hahahaha....

[Achenar]

So, I was playin' Sims 3 yesterday, and I found a weird thing. A mysterious white box that was called "SHOULD NOT APPEAR IN GAME". It was a bit weird, and i've seen mysterious white boxes in other games before. I'm not sure what they do. Although, in Sims 3 (with Buydebug mode on) they do act as spawners for certain objects, but i'm pretty sure that box wasnt a spawner. Actually, boxes, I found two of them. And the first one actually could change width and height. I have now built a place of protection for them, not sure why though.

[The Wheelchair]

Episode 1 of Sam and Max is down! Y'know, I really don't get why everyone seemed to hate Brady Culture as a villain. He wasn't that annoying...

[These are my saturdays]

Well, I played Doom 3 intensively for the first time today, the last time was me playing a demo for thirty seconds before realizing Half-Life 2 was also on the demo disk.
In short: the game was fun, but not Doom. Besides some names for things that you WOULDN'T KNOW unless you read the manual, it bears little resemblance to it's predecessors.
It is by no means a bad game. In fact, I'm most definitely going to go back and play it some more. I played about a third of the game and I'm just giving first impressions here.
It relies on cheap shock horror to create dread atmosphere, which is never a true scary experience. If a raccoon jumps in your window, it startles you, but that doesn't make it the marsupial answer to Stanley Kubrick. In some places it does move to atmosphere horror, like when the halls are covered in pentagrams or the voices of the damned start whispering to you about their least favorite things. But when this happens, it is quickly followed by shock horror, making the whole horror scene last about 10 seconds.
It isn't really trying to be Doom, it's trying to be something new, and I like that. But it really did not have to be Doom therefore. It could have been Zombie Attack On Mars 3 and been a fun game, they didn't have to slap Doom on the front to make it a good game.
However, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Half-Life, which is strange because Half-Life was inspired by the original Doom. With all the interaction with computers and the talking to people to have them help you, it seems as though it was made to deliberately make you get the same vibes as you did from Half-Life.
It also exaggerated it's difficulty. I remember a particular part in which they introduce the Pinky Demon. Despite it not being a big deal enemy in the old game, this new one gave you a whole cutscene depicting it break through some railing, and crash below. Then you wait as it breaks the door between you, which it fails to do, so it crashes through the window. All the time you're thinking, "Oh crap, this is going to be hard." but then NOPE. It breaks in, you pump two shotgun shells into it and it goes down. It was a let down, they made this look like a boss fight and it was easier than fighting a common enemy like a zombie or an imp.
Speaking of enemies, they seem to be padding out the roster with new enemies. Some are niche enemies, like the upside down heads with spider legs sprouting out, because they fit in air vents, so the action doesn't stop when you start crawling through tunnels for three minutes. But some, like the two headed imps that don't have a ranged attack, seem like they were put in just because they thought it looked cool.
All in all, it's a good game, but it isn't really living up to the Doom name.

[Uzi-Bazooka]

TO CASTLE DISKETTE:
The two-headed imps who don't have a ranged attack are called Maggots, by the way. And the spiders are Trites.
First of all, I agree with your assessment that it is very unlike the original Doom. But I like it. For example: after playing Age of Empires 3, I could no longer enjoy the other games. "Where's the good graphics, the Home Cities, the good graphics, the explorers, the good graphics, the trading posts, the good graphics?!" However, after playing Doom 3, I can still enjoy the original Doom games.
I disagree with the idea that it's all shock horror, though. Yes, I admit that a lot of it is. But, honestly, who's scarier: the brown pixelly pretzel stick imps of Doom 2? Or the tall, terrifying, black monstrous creations of Doom 3? The "Pink Butt Guys" as my Dad calls them from Doom 2? Or the robotic cyborg Pinkies of Doom 3? And talk about the zombies!
I also enjoy the fact that Doom 3 has more interesting tactics and things than Doom 2. The game manual for Doom 2 describes it as simple, saying "all you need is a killer instinct." Tactics? The only tactics of Doom 2 are "Find a bigger gun" or "Don't lose ammo/health too badly." Doom 3, you have to get PDAs and open cabinets; you have to find key cards, operate computers, deal with toxic waste, and even (shock of horror shock) NOT KILL some people!
Now don't get me wrong. I still love the original Doom games. But I also love Doom 3.
I think that we can both, however, agree to hate the Resurrection of Evil Expansion Pack.

AND TO THE WHEELCHAIR:
I don't think you're a traitor for wanting Sam & Max. when I ran my extensive campaign against them for the Mac Revolution, I noticed that they were giving away one episode free. I wanted to learn more about the games so that I could mock them more effectively.
And I loved them! And I found out that my Dad had played and loved the original old Sam & Max games! So I'm really hoping to buy Seasons 1 and 2. I'm going to wait on Season 3, however. I mean, I bought SBCG4AP one episode at a time, so the whole season cost me almost $50. And then they had a sale for a while where you could get the whole Season for $8. So I'm going to wait until Season 3 goes on ridiculously low sale as well.
GO SAM & MAX!

[The Wheelchair]

AND TO THE WHEELCHAIR:
I don't think you're a traitor for wanting Sam & Max. when I ran my extensive campaign against them for the Mac Revolution, I noticed that they were giving away one episode free. I wanted to learn more about the games so that I could mock them more effectively.
And I loved them! And I found out that my Dad had played and loved the original old Sam & Max games! So I'm really hoping to buy Seasons 1 and 2. I'm going to wait on Season 3, however. I mean, I bought SBCG4AP one episode at a time, so the whole season cost me almost $50. And then they had a sale for a while where you could get the whole Season for $8. So I'm going to wait until Season 3 goes on ridiculously low sale as well.
GO SAM & MAX!

I'm loving the Sam and Max games! I'm already on Bright Side of the Moon. Don't forget though, that if you preorder The Devil's Playhouse, you get a free episode of any other Telltale Game, plus access to a special developer Q&A forum. For me, that was enough to get a preorder.

[These are my saturdays]

TO CASTLE DISKETTE:
I also enjoy the fact that Doom 3 has more interesting tactics and things than Doom 2. The game manual for Doom 2 describes it as simple, saying "all you need is a killer instinct." Tactics? The only tactics of Doom 2 are "Find a bigger gun" or "Don't lose ammo/health too badly." Doom 3, you have to get PDAs and open cabinets; you have to find key cards, operate computers, deal with toxic waste, and even (shock of horror shock) NOT KILL some people!
Now don't get me wrong. I still love the original Doom games. But I also love Doom 3.
I think that we can both, however, agree to hate the Resurrection of Evil Expansion Pack.

Yes, but the limited tactics of Doom I and II are what sell them. Sometimes pre rendered cut scenes that forge an emotional bond between you and your character are too much and you just need to grab a shotgun and kill a dude. When you're listening to a glorified cell phone tell you about some guy's day with a minimal overshadowing of foreshadowing you don't need because you deduced this when your friends became zombies and demons started crawling out of the walls, waiting patiently for it to mention a little code to get a gun from a locker, you aren't playing a game. When you're basically listening to tiny one man audio books for gameplay, you're going in the wrong direction for a FPS. Which is why I was particularly angry when I decided to forget about the existence of the PDA and found out later that I had missed a necessary clue about finding the chaingun, which would have made dealing with the utterly ridiculous spider with a woman glued on top a bit easier. I would have microwaved the disk if I had not found the Plasma Rifle before dealing with cacodemons, besides the fact that the Plasma Gun is like a pop gun compared to the shotgun. Hell, every weapon I've found is less useful overall than the shotgun, I find myself using it for every encounter, and barely using the Machine gun and plasma gun. Also, why do the zombies pistols hurt like a nuclear bomb and your pistol work like the equivalent to tickling them? I tested it, even on the easiest difficulty, the zombie's pistol is three times more powerful, while their shotgun is three times less powerful. It's like they programmed the damage counters with their favorite numbers instead of what made sense.
If the cyberdemon turns out to be a giant cyclops that spits imps and causes volcanic eruptions, and requires a certain type of weapon you'd normally never use to kill him, I will eat the computer mouse and type "DANGIT CARMACK" nine hundred times on the keyboard.
In regards to horror, Doom 3 stopped being actually scare inducing after the third time an imp flew up from beneath some stairs and bit my ear off. And the enemy designs don't scare me. Upside down heads with legs? Cyborg worms with body builder arms? Pure hilarity from my point of view. And the zombies are just excuses for fighting other humans. The original models didn't scare me either, but it was supposed to be "KILLING DEMONS AND JUST DOING THAT" not "BEING SCARED BY DEMONS AND KILLING THEM TOO."

[Uzi-Bazooka]

Well, I don't think you'll be disappointed by the Cyberdemon. Here's a picture of him from two angles: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20051207215131/doom/images/thumb/d/d4/Cyberdemon2.jpg/343px-Cyberdemon2.jpg
Except that you do have to use an obscure artifact from Hell to kill him.
As for your complaints about the PDA, you do know that you can start an audio tape playing, lower the PDA, and then listen to it while you fight monsters and stuff?
Anyway, I think we're never going to agree on this. I still love Doom 3 and you don't. Oh, well.

[These are my saturdays]

Dude, I do like Doom 3. It's awesome. I'm just picking the annoying nits that are crawling around on it.

[Uzi-Bazooka]

Oh, by the way, for the Trites (the spiders with the upside-down heads), I find that the pistol works really well. Since they usually only come one at a time, it's a great way not to use your precious shotgun/machine gun ammo.

[These are my saturdays]

Oh, by the way, for the Trites (the spiders with the upside-down heads), I find that the pistol works really well. Since they usually only come one at a time, it's a great way not to use your precious shotgun/machine gun ammo.

Precious shotgun ammo? Bro I am swimming in shotgun ammo. I don't know why, but it seems like it has unlimited ammo. I once had run out of machine gun, plasma, and pistol ammo, and HAD to use my shotgun, and the ammo reserve didn't even considerably drop after the battle. It's like, survival horror with a magic gun that works awesome, is fun to fire, (Sometimes I waste ammo on walls because the shotgun is so fun to shoot, something about the sound, or maybe it's because it feels powerful, unlike the plasma gun, that sounds like someone tapping a pencil to a desk,) and never runs out of ammo.

[The Wheelchair]

I beat Bright Side of the Moon today, which means I can now officially form my list of...

Top Quotes from Sam and Max Season 1!
NOTE: Some quotes might not be exact wording. But you'll get the picture.

Spoiler:

[These are my saturdays]

I own three or four Sam & Max comics. They're generally awesome.

[The Wheelchair]

Now THAT is a kick-awesome holiday! And you definitely won't regret Sam and Max.

Oh, and I forgot a few quotes for my
Top Quotes from Sam and Max Season 1!

Spoiler:

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