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Dead or Alive series wrote:Dave sucks.

noiseredux wrote:

Dead or Alive series wrote:Dave sucks.

if it makes you feel any better, Dead or Alive series > Soul Calibur series

I think DOA is pretty cool, but thought that 3 was shit. Maybe give some time to DOA2 on the ps2 at some point, I had much more fun with that one, and enjoyed 4 quite a bit too.

Gratned, I don't think it would bring you to total fandom of the games, but 2 and 4 are at least more enjoyable.

dsheinem wrote:

noiseredux wrote:

Dead or Alive series wrote:Dave sucks.

if it makes you feel any better, Dead or Alive series > Soul Calibur series

True!

dunpeal2064 wrote:I think DOA is pretty cool, but thought that 3 was shit. Maybe give some time to DOA2 on the ps2 at some point, I had much more fun with that one, and enjoyed 4 quite a bit too.

Gratned, I don't think it would bring you to total fandom of the games, but 2 and 4 are at least more enjoyable.

Yeah DOA2 is def my favorite of the series. That's the one I always go back to. 4 is really, really pretty though. But yeah, I'd still play 2 more.

I didn't pick up 5 yet. But of the first 4, I play 3 the least.

dsheinem wrote:

noiseredux wrote:

Dead or Alive series wrote:Dave sucks.

if it makes you feel any better, Dead or Alive series > Soul Calibur series

I have such a hard time taking the Soul Calibur series seriously anymore as I just find it funny that it has people slashing and stabbing eachother with sharp, pointy melee weapons and yet you never see blood or limbs go flying around. I know it's just a game but I've reached a point in my life as a gamer where I can't just accept stuff like that anymore

It's not something that is an issue with games like Tekken, DOA, or Virtua Fighter. I wonder sometimes why the Soul Calibur games even HAVE weapons when they just play like any regular fighter where people just throw punches and kicks at eachother

dsheinem wrote:I don't like the Dead or Alive series much from what I've played, and my time with DOA3 today did not prove enough to change my opinion, even after playing through it a few times. A pretty but vapid series, in my opinion.

Maybe you should try the Beach Volleyball spinoff?

Haven't liked SC since 2 and I've always hated DOA, always seems to emphasis counters above everything else. Tekken 3 and the first Tag Tournament were the big dogs for me, those were fighters I was obsessed with. A bit more combo focused than DOA I'd say, more my style I guess.

Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise Wii
Grim Fandango PC
Tekken Advance GBA
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron N64
Resident Evil 4 GC
Panzer Dragoon Orta XBox
Duck Tales NES
Mega Bomberman Mega Drive
Monster World IV VC
Final Fantasy V PS1 Classics
Maniac Mansion PC
Day of the Tentacle PC
Mega Man: Powered Up PSP
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition PC
Dissidia 012[Duodecim] Final Fantasy PSP
Pac-Pix DS
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 DS
Pokémon Puzzle Challenge GBC
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge PC
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance GC
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask 3DS
Kirby's Block Ball Game Boy
Disaster: Day of Crisis Wii
Sam and Max Hit the Road PC
Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge Game Boy
F-Zero GP Legend GBA
Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City Wii *NEW*
Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure 3DS *NEW*
Total: 78


Two more to add before the year's out. I'd post a summary here like I did in the Games Acquired thread, but I reckon there's a small chance I could add another game to this list before 2013 rolls around.

Animal Crossing on the Wii is frankly more of the same. It's very similar to the DS one, although it thankfully brings one or two little things back from the Gamecube version (most importantly familiar holidays like Halloween and Christmas). It's still missing a few of the 'cube features, including the number of villagers, the NES games and the island, and so the cube game is still the best in my eyes. The City addition was fairly pointless, and I visited it maybe once a week - things dont move very fast in the city ironically. Anyhow, to 'beat' the game I paid off my entire mortgage for the fully upgraded house. It's a fine game, and would be a worthy choice for first Animal Crossing, but anyone with the Gamecube or DS game should leave it alone - it's basically identical. At the very least, wait for the 3DS game which looks to add a bit more than usual.

Rhythm Thief is a pretty fun rhythm game for 3DS. It rather surprisingly reminds me of Professor Layton, as most of the game is spent walking around tapping stuff to find hidden objects and talking to people to progress the plot. The main difference is that instead of puzzles, this game uses rhythm mini games to break up the plot. The plot is decent enough, and the animation is great, although very brief. The music is high quality and very catchy, and the rhythm games themselves are mostly very enjoyable, although there is the occassional duff one, mostly those involving the gyroscope in the 3DS which can be a little iffy in detecting your movements. There are 50 mini games in total, although most of them are just harder difficulty versions of earlier ones with different songs. There are probably about 15-20 unique games all in. The game ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting they hope to make it into a series, but I don't think it sold well, so it probably won't happen. It deserved to though, it's very enjoyable and I'd recommend it. Sega fans will appreciate a couple of mini games that function like Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo too, with tracks from those very games. The second Samba de Amigo mini game uses the main theme from The Rub Rabbits too, oddly enough. Definitely a solid game, and if a sequel ever did happen, I'd definitely pick it up.

I'm currently working through Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Final Fantasy Tactics, although I doubt either will be finished by the new year. I'm also dabbling in some Mario Tennis Open too, which is a more likely candidate for beating this year.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (1/12) PC
Mirror's Edge (1/18) PC
Medal of Honor [2010] (1/23) PC
Puzzle Agent 2 (2/2) PC
Dinner Date (2/15) PC
NyxQuest (2/19) PC
Dear Esther (2/20) PC
The Stanley Parable (2/21) PC
To The Moon (2/26) PC
Escape Goat (6/16) PC
Rayman Origins (6/17) PC
Robot Pinball Escape (6/18) PC
Offspring Fling (7/16) PC
The Darkness II (7/30) PC
Thomas Was Alone (8/22) PC
Thirteen Flights of Loving (8/23) PC
Corril Slayer (8/27) PC
Sleeping Dogs (10/02) PC
Alice: Madness Returns (10/16) PC
Duke Nukem Forever (10/19) PC
Hotline Miami (10/24) PC
Hard Reset: Extended Edition (11/20) PC
Quantum Conundrum (11/28) PC
Space Channel 5: Part 2 (12/11) PC
Spec Ops: The Line (12/28) PC

I'm hoping to beat one or two more games before the year is out, but even if I don't, this makes a nice 25 games down for 2012. Looking through my list, this has been a great year of gaming. I finished lots of top notch games, including several long players.

Spec Ops: The Line is a nice shot at making the videogaming equivalent of Apocalypse Now. The game is not perfect by any stretch. In fact, there is one level where you have to use a turret to protect your teammates that was so bad that it almost ruined the game for me. Unlike many other military shooters, the strength of Spec Ops: The Line is in its storytelling.

You are sent to rescue Colonel John Konrad (a tip-of-the-hat to Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, the basis for Apocalypse Now). With that simple mission guiding the plot, you decend deeper and deeper into a clearly messed up city of Dubai. The choice of a sandstorm-destroyed Dubai as a setting is quite spectacular. It's like a modern-day version of Bioshock's Rapture, only it's buried in sand instead of water. It's clearly the home of a once opulently wealthy resort city. This is not your typical rah-rah-America war shooter. This game never lets you feel very good about any lives you take, and you will take many before the game is over. You have to turn on rogue Americans, you have to kill Dubai civilians, you have to shoot at people that don't know what is going on but don't want to be killed first. Since it's a corridor shooter, you also don't have a lot of options. It's kill or be killed for you too. I think the linearity of the game actually works here because you don't have choice where you would like to have it, which forces you to contend with the many unethical things you have to do in the name of survival.

In one particularly poignant scene, for example, you have a huge group of people blocking your way. They don't know you are there, but they are armed and blocking the only way out. You get on a laptop to launch white phosphorous bombs on them to clear the way, not knowing who these people actually are. Like Call of Duty 4, you are conducting your strike from the air via a black and white laptop monitor, but as you finish the last of the bombings, you see your own reflection for awhile in the monitor and then the game makes you walk through the piles of burned bodies that you just killed. It's horrifying, but that's the point.

This game doesn't celebrate war; it sees the madness in it. For that, I can forgive its average gameplay and appreciate that Spec Ops: The Line tried to do something different. It's not perfect, even in its storytelling, but it's unique and ambitious with a finely crafted and richly detailed art style. I think it's worth playing.

Games beaten so far:
1. Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again - DSiWare (Gold Star save file)
2. Sonic Generations - PS3
3. Super Mario 3D Land - 3DS (with a five glittering star save file)
4. Starship Defense (All no SOS perfects) - DSiWare
5. Soul of Darkness - DSiWare
6. Mutant Mudds (All crystals and water sprouts) - 3DS Eshop
7. The Simpsons Arcade (US Version) - PS3
8. DodoGo! - DSiWare - (Golden egg on every stage)
9. Mass Effect 2 - 360 (Insanity mode difficulty with Sentinel class)
10. Mass Effect 3 - 360 (Insanity mode with Adept)
11. Final Fantasy XIII-2 - PS3 (Platinum trophy)
12. Xenoblade Chronicles - Wii
13. The Darkness II - Xbox 360
14. Lollipop Chainsaw - PS3 (Platinum trophy) and 360 version (all achievements)
15. Dust: An Elysian Tale - Xbox Live Arcade
16. Cthulu Saves the World - Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Indie Games)
17. Double Dragon Neon - Xbox 360
18. Mark of the Ninja - Xbox 360
19. Journey - PS3
20. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit - PS3 version
21. Fez - Xbox 360
22. Code of Princess - 3DS
23. Sleeping Dogs - 360
24. The Darkness II - Vendetta mode
25. Ratchet and Clank (HD Collection)
26. Ratchet and Clank Going Commando (HD Collection)
27. Gravity Bone - PC
28. Sam & Max Save the World Episode 1 "Culture Shock"
29. Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Sreaming Narwhal

Trine - PC
Hotline Miami - PC

Trine has some good things going for it. It has really nice visuals, good voice acting, a decent leveling system, a 3 character system for solving puzzles like the Lost Vikings game, a good physics system to add realism to the puzzles, lot of collectibles and secrets to discover in order to upgrade your characters, and a convenient level select to help you do so. The game is set up to feel sort of like you're playing through a fairy tale and that's pretty cool. Unfortunately, there are things that keep it from being a great game

The game has a lot of combat, and all of it sucks. Enemies come at you in cheap ways, like approaching from both sides when your characters aren't that great at handling attacks from multiple directions. So basically, you will get hit...a LOT. Also, the game respawns enemies incessantly and it's very annoying. It makes sections of the game really tedious and redundant. There's not much variety to the enemies you'll face either

After the first couple of levels, the puzzles start getting rather easy and the game start to feel like just a standard issue platform game. What's worse is that the game starts to just repeat the same ideas over and over again, coupled with the fact that you fight the same small number of enemy types over and over again as well, and Trine is a game that starts to wear out its welcome before you make it to the end of the game

Still, it has a certain charm to it for all of the reasons I mentioned in the first paragraph. It's not a bad game, just not a great one. I'd probably rate it a 6 out of 10

Hotline Miami is pretty awesome. Much has been said about its cool soundtrack, trippy story, brutal violence, and retro graphics. What I love most about the game is that it accomplishes that rare feat in video games of feeling like a realistic action game. Weapons are actually deadly in Hotline Miami. You shank somebody or fire a shotgun blast at him, he's dead. There's no stupid health bars in Hotline Miami, and the game has a fair and equal playing field, as your enemies can take you down just as easily. This realistic approach is what creates so much intensity in this game.

Rarely do action sequences in games play out as perfectly as a well choreographed movie action sequence, but that exactly how things work in Hotline Miami, because if you mess up you die. So the same way you'd see Chow Yong Fat go through a firefight in Hard Boiled without ever taking a bullet is how an action sequence plays out in Hotline Miami.

I also love that Hotline Miami forgoes the annoying wait time of most other games when you die. The game puts you back in action instantly, you never have to see a stupid game over sequence.

In essence, this is a stealth game. Like any stealth game, you observe your enemies then plan out your attacks accordingly, trying to catch them all off guard so they have little to no chance to retaliate and pick them off one by one. But Hotline Miami takes that stealth framework and puts some action game elements on to it. You have very small windows of time to attack your enemies, you have to be able to think quickly and react quickly when enemies don't do what you expected and catch you off guard, and you will use guns and lots of other violent weapons you wouldn't normally see in a stealth game. It's that careful balance between carrying out a plan methodically and relying on wits and reflexes when some part of the plan falls apart. Awesome game. Hotline Miami is an unconventional game that doesn't play by the rules and I love that.