Random Gaming Thoughts

[mas]

All I have to say is 4 Xbox controllers a crt screen and playing Xmen arcade from coin ops 7 is freaking awesome

[noiseredux]

holy crap, did anyone know that there's a River City Sports Challenge game on Steam from December 2015?

[MrPopo]

More PAX demo reports!

First I did ReCore. I'm really torn on whether or not I want to get it on the PC or the Xbone. On the one hand, I have all of one Xbone game, so having a second is a good thing. However, it seems to be fairly combat heavy at range. It does have a lock on feature like Metroid Prime, but it felt a bit like you still had to be fairly precise to get the lock in the first place. But the demo station had the right analog stick with both axes reversed from how I play with them. So I'm not sure.

Gameplay-wise, you're fairly mobile (double jump plus some sort of dash) and you can switch between pets on the fly with a touch of a button, then command them to attack stuff. There's also a mechanic where you can change the color of your shots with the d-pad, and you want to match the color of the enemies. There's no difference in how each color behaves, so I'm not sure what it adds (but maybe later it would become apparent).

Then I played Dawn of War III. This is 100% a return to the gameplay style of the original. You get a base, you capture resource nodes and build a thing on top of them to gather resources, and most of your units are generic. The hero units are a bit more front and center compared to the original, but not as much as Dawn of War II. They've unified the population caps like most other RTS's, so no separate caps for vehicles and infantry. They've simplified squad management a bit; if you purchase a weapon upgrade everyone in the squad gets it (and the squads are a bit smaller anyway). The other thing I noticed was if a squad loses members then you can't buy them back unless you're at a "resupply" point, which is definitely the production building but might be available at other places. It definitely isn't the resource nodes.

Finally, one of the hero units on the demo map is an Imperial Knight. Giant stompy mech that utterly tears things apart. The two abilities are a frontal cone that basically trashes anything in that cone and launching a salvo of up to six missiles at targeted pieces of ground. It was intensely satisfying to use.

Last game I got a chance to play before doing panels was Strafe. Now, I've played some previous demo versions from various backer updates, but this was the most complete version yet. I made it through all the levels of the first area and three of the second before getting stuck; I'd reached the end door but it wasn't opening, and given I had already played for 45 minutes and explored the whole level I decided to kill myself and see my stats (they weren't shooing people away and I didn't die). In the demo they showed at PAX they've implemented the random weapon upgrades, random weapons, scrap stations (for armor and ammo), and some shops. The levels on the second area included a mechanic where you would need to find power cores and use them to blow open rock walls; I'm not sure if there is a provision for handling you using all of them (since they explode if held for too long). The game is the Quakiest thing since Quake 1.

[noiseredux]

Oh baby, there's a new Lumines game on Android!

nevermind. It sucks.

[PartridgeSenpai]

holy crap, did anyone know that there's a River City Sports Challenge game on Steam from December 2015?

It's not Crash N The Boys, but it seems like a more technically superior version of that. Did you buy it? You'll definitely have to fill us in on if it's any good. So many good local co-op games on Steam lately. Local co-op games are my favorite thing by far, so there's certainly no complaining about that from me

[laurenhiya21]

So I'm going to Japan in a few days and I'm most likely going to get some PS1 and PS2 games. Of course since the PS2 is region locked, I'm going to need a way find to play them. I have a few ideas on options, but I really can't decide which

I could:
1. Buy a PS2 in Japan
+ I could easily see the condition and potentially get it for cheaper than ebay (not sure).
+ I don't have to wait very long to play my games
- I would have to be careful when taking it home
- I have limited amount of yen I can spend that could be used for something that would be hard or more expensive to get at home
- Actually I don't even know how much I could get a PS2 for in Japan

2. Buy a Japanese PS2 on Ebay (or some other place) when I get back
+ I have a monthly budget so I can always just wait a bit if I don't have enough money
- I'm not good with Ebay
- Condition isn't always guaranteed (with shipping, bad Ebay sellers, etc)

3. Get my PS2 some sort of region mod
I really have no clue about price, reliability, or how long it takes. Or really where I would get it done or if it's even possible on a slim PS2.

I've been thinking about it for a while, but it's really difficult deciding which to do (or if there is a better solution) Can anybody help me on this?

[isiolia]

I've been thinking about it for a while, but it's really difficult deciding which to do (or if there is a better solution) Can anybody help me on this?

If your computer is up to it, you could run them in an emulator as well, at least to start with.

[laurenhiya21]

I've been thinking about it for a while, but it's really difficult deciding which to do (or if there is a better solution) Can anybody help me on this?

If your computer is up to it, you could run them in an emulator as well, at least to start with.

I've tried emulating PS2 game before, but it didn't really work out so well. The games I tried ended up being glitchy or completely messed up during a cutscene.

PS1 games seem to run fine at least.

[casterofdreams]

Oh baby, there's a new Lumines game on Android!

nevermind. It sucks.

I tried to buy it off of Google Play but it kept giving me an error and the app just crashed not giving me the opportunity to purchase it. Maybe that's a sign?

[SNESdrunk]

If I had to pick a GOTY right now, it's either a game where you blow up demons in hell... or a game about farming.