Video Game Thread

[MNOWAX]

i did two runs today. 3:12 and a way better 2:23. I'm having the hardest time getting my rhythm down once i get into world 6 and 7, most of my speed runs cut all of those off, so i don't have nearly as much experience with them. ( I hate world six FWIW)
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[dethwing]

World 6 is actually not too bad if you know where to use what item. You need two hammers [One going in, one in the level]. This allows you to skip 1, 2, 3, and then 7.

Then do 5, using a p-wing to avoid all those dumb things that throw those spikey things.

[Make sure you get the hammer suit! Makes killing bowser so much faster!]

Then at the end, do 6-9 and p-wing again over the level.

[MNOWAX]

[dethwing]

Castle glitch? Are you talking about the trick with the box at the end of the zig-zag path, or is there another glitch I'm not aware of?

[MNOWAX]

[dethwing]

That seems effective, but really really slow. The hammer suit just destroys him in 4 hits.

[dethwing]

Like this

[dethwing]

When doing the warp route, there is no hammer suit available in W1 or W8, so the fastest kill is fireballs. It takes like 20 of them.

Like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXcAzH3ALMQ

Pretty slow kill by the runner here, but still faster than the smash route.

[Death Mage]

See, I remember doing the glitch back on the NES. It was awesome. But even I didn't know about the hammer suit's power.

No, I will not be dusting off and playing SMB3 to join you guys in this challenge. It's nostalgic, but my speed running days are behind me. Still a damned fun game though. A testament to it's power is that it is still being played today.
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[Death Mage]

I bought two games at work today. I'd been looking at them for a while, and decided to finally take the plunge.

DJ Hero ($4), Turntable bundle (+$6 for this version), and DJ Hero 2 ($6), for Wii. That's two rhythm/music games, 170+ songs, and the appropriate "instrument"/special controller, for $16. Since these are the only games that use the turntable, and only use the turntable, I didn't have to make sure to match consoles with my other games. And at this price, even if 90% of the songs suck, it's still cheaper than iTunes.
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[MNOWAX]

i am sure there is at least ONE tiesto song, so its all worth it lol
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Death Mage]

Well, I cracked it open to try it out.

And I am very impressed.

On the Wii version, the turntable is an attachment to the wiimote. No need to do anything special beyond hooking it directly to the controller and then tucking the controller away. This is a great use of the hardware. As for the controller itself, it fees pretty good. It's easy to swap it to left-handed mode, the turntable portion is easy to use (though trying to get precise scratches with the inner, blue, button is a little difficult), and seems a bit more natural even vs the guitars. Heck, when trying to figure out how to activate the game's "star power", euphoria, I glanced down and noticed the big button was glowing. Nice touch.

As for the music, each song is actually two songs mixed together. The base songs come from a variety of genres, and the match ups that I've heard so far are actually pretty good. And I think they change based on your difficulty, becuase what you're doing with the turntable is altering the song, so the harder difficulties will be changing the song differently, using different techniques, than the easier modes.

The problem with the game was it came out on the eclipse of rhythm games. The market was getting flooded with multiple versions of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and other companies had jumped on the bandwagon. Plus, while playing a guitar or being in a band is a fairly universal desire, being a DJ with a turn table is a far more limited audience. One that I, in fact, really didn't consider myself to be part of. But the game works, and the music's good. I've got too many other things to play to really go nuts with this game, but it's one I need to not forget about.

All in all, I have spend $10 on far, far worse. Gonna have to open the second game before too long.
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[lexprod]

DJ Hero 2 is a million times better than DJ Hero 1 so you are in for a treat.

I played the 360 versions, and from the UI to song selection to gameplay modes, DJH2 is incredible. In addition to having more freestyle sections, they also give you song-appropriate samples for the freestyle sections instead of the 5 packs of crap SFX you choose from in DJH1.
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I'll have a P please...

[dethwing]

My quest to improve at SMB3 continues. 1:06:20.

Died 3 times in W5, and again in W7 [But somehow got the 7-1 zip first try. Weird]. And of course, no hammer suit again. I dunno why I keep forgetting it.

[MNOWAX]

it doesn't seem all that useful TBH i know it kills bowser easily, but if you're playing the game normally it seems totally useless.

The last few times i tried i couldn't crack the 2:30 mark.
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The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[raekuul]

Project progress reporting time

LoZ: Oracle of Seasons - Doing the one Sequence Break that is possible in the Oracle series by doing Unicorn's Cave before Dancing Dragon Dungeon.

Touhou - Still working on getting my first 1cc of Perfect Cherry Blossom (stupid Prismriver Sisters)

Baldur's Gate Trilogy - Evil Cleric and Big Dumb Fighter are both getting ready to invade the Peldvale/Larswood and the Bandit Camp, while I'm still planning my Bard's path through the first leg of the journey.

Pokemon Blue - Gotta get the Soul Badge. The first time I ever played Pokemon, I didn't know how to get into Saffron City, so I've made it a habit to do Cinnabar Island before rescuing Silph Co. and dealing with Sabrina.

Immortal Defense - The first 'boss' battle, the one where you and Pal Wut Aa are defending the double gate into Dukis.

[dethwing]

Yeah, it's not useful anywhere but Bowser. But it saves around 1-2 minutes in waiting for him to bounce.

[Neo]

Remember that starship bridge simulator?

http://youtu.be/aKJxHWW_FSU
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_{Ad Astra}

[Scurra]

Excellent! I particularly liked the torpedo hit moment early on - and the cliff-hanger ending.
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[raekuul]

*ba-bump*

My first time getting a 1cc (1 continue clear, basically not running out of lives) of a Touhou game, was Imperishable Night just a half hour ago. I am now trying to stop seeing bullet patterns and time items whenever I blink.

I would ask for applause, but it was on Easy.

[dethwing]

Friday night, decide to dust off the 'ol Super Mario Galaxy and see what time I can get.

4 hours, 29 minutes, and 53 seconds later I have completed my first single-segment attempt.


...and probably my last.

[Lepton*]

Likewise, I pulled up a pc game I used to play as a kid, and beat it, for the first time: "One Must Fall 2097". Likewise, I don't think I'll ever play it again.

[dethwing]

Haha, I don't mean I'll never play it again, I mean I probably won't try to single-segment it again.

[Jedo the Jedi]

I don't know how accurate this is, but I thought some people here might enjoy the challenge. I can at least say I've beaten two of them (I Wanna Be The Guy and Oregon Trail).
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Thok]

Contra's difficulty is a bit overrated and I don't know anything about the Heist, but the other games are legit.

[raekuul]

Jedo, I didn't know you were one of us The Guys. Have you tried Gaiden yet?

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm somewhere between a cursory and hard-core player. I definitely know and appreciate most of the classics, but I don't necessarily get into some of the more nerdtastic things (a timed run of SMB3, for instance).

As another example, I have not played Gaiden.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[MNOWAX]

[dethwing]

I was on pace for about 1:04 last night. Even had hammer suit going into the castle. Sadly, I choked hard core and ended up dieing twice to bowser.

[dethwing]

Re: QWOP. I've ran about 50-70 meters before, but I always lose my rhythm eventually.

[MNOWAX]

[Scurra]

Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes

As I've said before, the Traveller's Tales Lego franchise is one of the few game series I will buy sight unseen - albeit mostly because I know what the game is going to be like. Batman 2 is no exception to this - it's the same mix of smashing scenery and elementary puzzle solving that has stood TT in good stead for close to a decade now. I love the games, mostly because they are pitched at approximately my skill level so I get to complete them, but also because the quality of the scripting is so high; someone suggested to me that you are buying the games more for the cutscenes than the actual gameplay.

And that holds true here as well. It's the first TT Lego game to have proper spoken dialogue (previous ones made do with silent movie comedy) and they have managed to maintain the quality of the writing combined with some decent voice acting. It's the attention to detail that is what makes these games, and that's gone into the script as well - whilst a level is loading, there is a faux-news report setting the scenario up, with the newscaster trying to remain deadpan, and a scrolling text bar (with a whole bunch of other jokes) along the bottom. (Too many good ones to list, but I rather liked the early "This is the fifth Man of the Year ceremony to be held in Gotham City, but only the second to be interrupted by a supervillain.") And the sequence with Batman, Superman and Lex Luthor's receptionist has to be seen to be believed.

The game itself is nothing new, and they handle the issue of Superman being effectively indestructible pretty well. The expansive Gotham City is a joy to fly (and run and drive) around, with secrets hidden all over the place. I have stalled out at 98% as there are a couple of minikits in two levels that I don't seem to be able to get (this has been a problem on many of the PC games - odd glitches in the engine) but it doesn't bother me too much; I've got full value from the game, and that's all you can really ask. For me, it's not quite up there with the first Harry Potter game, but that's more of a personal preference than anything wrong with the game itself.

Plus there's a trailer for Lego Lord of the Rings... I'm saving my pennies up already.
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_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Suspence]

GRRR...I too love the Lego games and agree with everything you said about them above. Would have been playing this right now if my PS3 wasn't still dead. I gotta get that thing fixed.
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I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Death Mage]

I need to get my PS3 fixed also. But I'm a game behind. I've got Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 to finish.

I did beat Diablo 3... on normal. Which, considering that game restarted harder... THREE TIMES, really isn't "beating" it at all. :\
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[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm super-pumped about Lego LotR.

Death Mage, did you think Diablo 3 lived up to the hype and the franchise? I was going to buy at release date, but other things got in the way. I'm still looking forward to buying it in a couple months.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[MNOWAX]

[Death Mage]

Diablo 3 isn't much of an improvement over 2. A lot of the same scenery, the characters play similarly, the story is, well, predictably about the same. The changes they have made though are very nice. Stash and gold is shared between chars, drops in multiplayer are YOURS (each player sees their own drops), I like the way the skills are done now (you unlock new skills and runes to modify them as you level, and then choose which ones you want active, rather than picking your skill tree).

Overall, it's not the leap between Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, but the changes ARE good. However, the game has some stiff competition now with games like Torchlight 2 coming soon.

But, it's Diablo. If you like them, you'll like it.
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[dethwing]

1:05:26. New best, in an 8 man race, no less. I now have the 5th best any% warpless time on SRL.

Death to roy, and failed hammer kill on bowser. Should be possible to break 1:03 under my current strats.

[Death Mage]

Theatrythm. Why aren't you playing this RIGHT NOW?
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[Jedo the Jedi]

I just bought Fallout 3: GOYE because of the Steam sale. (I'm a Bethesda junkie.) Currently playing Assassin's Creed, and I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.