I just about live on Xbox live these days.  Lately my obsession is Skate 2, but now an old COD4 buddy is harassing me to play COD:World at War.  I don't really like WWII games, but It's not too bad.  I like shooting tanks with rockets.  'S fun.

Saint's Row 2 is fun, but I haven't played it online much.  Fallout 3 was liquid awesome in a bottle, and I can't wait to download all the DLC that's com/coming out in the next few months.

I bought a used copy of Bioshock to replay it while waiting for Bioshock 2 to come out.  The XBL trailer is sex in HD.

Everyone's telling me to play FEAR 2 but I'm too spookedy to play that at home by myself.  I couldn't even play the demo for the original FEAR.

I tried the demo for Resident Evil 5, but it looks like shit.  Forced co-op never works.  I don't want to have to babysit some idiot AI partner while trying to use the crappy combat controls while 100 zombies swarm me.

CoD:World at War was one of the worst games I've bought in a long time.  I immediately wished I could have taken it back after playing it for 2-3 days and haven't gone back to it since.  It was such a huge disappointment.  Everything about the control of it was very jerky and non-intuitive.  The levels are all jumbled clusterfucks.  Both teams can randomly drop bombs on the battlefield and unleash dogs to attack each other.

I used to play Battlefield: Vietnam on a team on a competitive ladder so I'm not exactly a FPS novice.  But when I can't even cover my ass because there ISN'T any cover anywhere and you have to cover yourself 360 degrees from the entire team who all have instant kill rifles and on top of that bombs and dogs, it's enough to make me want to rip the hair out of my goddamn skull. 

Yeah, that's what I don't like about it.  You have to have a good team covering multiple areas to defend anything, and unless you know a bunch of experienced players, that's not going to happen.  And it's buggy as hell, too. 

Yeah, the thing is I can never bring myself to actually buy first person shooters for game consoles. Joysticks are just on of the worst ways to play these games. They are really only good on a computer with mouse-look and wasd-control. Otherwise it's like trying to play guitar hero using an NES controller. Yeah maybe it can be done, but that's no excuse to actually learn how to do it.

Mario Kart Wi-Fi.  Fucking awesome.  I love it.

Yeah, the thing is I can never bring myself to actually buy first person shooters for game consoles. Joysticks are just on of the worst ways to play these games. They are really only good on a computer with mouse-look and wasd-control. Otherwise it's like trying to play guitar hero using an NES controller. Yeah maybe it can be done, but that's no excuse to actually learn how to do it.

Yeah, I thought the same thing too at first, but Oblivion got me used to an FPS-style interface on the 360, and after that it wasn't such a big deal.  It's just a slightly different skillset from playing on the PC, and far less cheaters/no script users, etc.  The only way to really cheat on XBL is to use map glitches, and once you figure out someone's doing that you can usually toss a grenade or something near where they are and take care of them.

I still suck at FPS games either way, but I have more fun on XBL.

I'm probably tainted by my experiences with Doom64 - the only FPS I've ever played in which the player can only strafe in one direction - right. It's like in Zoolander how Derek can only turn right. I guess the real issue with D64 was the fact that the N64 controller is the worst-designed instrument ever. I have had better experiences with the dual joysticks, but still nothing compares to the mouse on a PC. I wonder if the Mario Paint mouse could be rigged up to work with modern consoles as a means of input.

the N64 controller is the worst-designed instrument ever

It was also seemingly indestructible.

*cue someone posting something about having had one fall apart in their hands, after doing nothing more destructive than putting the damn thing through a wall*

Oh god the N64 controller.  I remember a friedn of mine back in the day handing me one to play some game on his N64, and the first time I tried to hold it I said "how the FUCK do you use thins thing?" and he spent ten minutes showing me the different holding styles for different games.  "This one's one-handed for fighting games, it's called the CROSSBOW stlye isn't that awesome?"

I tought I would hate the 360's controller, but I love it now.  It looks weird, but it's designed surprisingly well regarding button-trigger accessibility and stick control.  I love it using the flickit system on skate and skate 2.  It's very intuitive.

*cue someone posting something about having had one fall apart in their hands, after doing nothing more destructive than putting the damn thing through a wall*

The joystick springs were apparently only tested in or only designed for Antigua weather then, because after a couple of years of hard joystick use every single one I've owned has died on me. The D-pad still works of course, but who uses the D-pad on N64?

I still play games on my trusty and capable Commodore Plus 4. Commodore know what a joystick should be. Easy to hold, single button, 8 way directional movement.

I'd need to evolve into Shiva to play games on current consoles, and honestly, the games just aint as good.

Yeah for the most part. There are surprising successes though.
The biggest change I find between my days growing up with the NES and now are that games are pathetically easier now. I mean lock-on targeting, save states, games that come bundled with their own walk-throughs? It's silly. I remember I was pretty irritated by all the negative press Odama got for apparently being "too hard." Finally some rogue reviewers started to emerge and their point was "look, even as it stands now it's an easier game than Mike Tyson's Punchout."

I gotta get me Gears of War II.

You will be sorely disappointed.  The Singleplayer story game is pretty bland except for a couple parts, and the multiplayer is broken, buggy, and generally bad.  I traded it to a guy for Fable 2 and am much happier.

I myself haven't played Gears of War (or Gears 2), but I heard in the game there's no jumping.  Is that true?  It seems like a real minor thing, but it would perturb me beyond all reason.

Even worse is Quake and Heretic which allows tiny jumps. That's crazy confusing. Doom didn't allow jumps and I was fine with that. I think Duke was the first FPS that really had normal-feeling jumping. It's a critical issue in games.  I read a big ludological tract at one point that had a huge section on a study they'd done for platformers. The idea was to test different jump dynamics to see what felt the most natural. Apparently by far the most natural feeling jump in any platformer (according to the study) was Mario. In retrospect it makes sense to me.

Also, the Fable games are interesting. I'm getting more and more interested in these morality games where you can chose to be evil. I think the first game I played like that was "Dragon Lore," a 1994 British game. Anybody know any earlier ones like that? I'm interested in their origins.

Also, the Fable games are interesting. I'm getting more and more interested in these morality games where you can chose to be evil. I think the first game I played like that was "Dragon Lore," a 1994 British game. Anybody know any earlier ones like that? I'm interested in their origins.

The best game like that I ever played was the first knights of the old republic (I never played the 2nd one), but that was easily the best moral choice game I've ever played and the best Star Wars game I've ever played.  I played the whole way through completely morally flexible.  I went pretty good/benevolent through the first half (with the occasional random murder) then towards the end went completely off the deep end evil with no remorse or kind offering to anyone.  It was really funny because you sort of build friends/party with characters based on your choices, so I'm essentially leading my original friends from my goody goody days into the portal of hell with me to eliminate an entire race of people or something.  All the while they just keep commenting like "This is wrong Libertine, I don't like you anymore."  Whatever you dumb blue bitch, just do the driving, I'll do the decision making.

Yeah, other than hitting A to jump over obstacles when you're beside one, there's no jumping in either GOW game.  It's meant to be a tactical "take cover and return fire from behind it" game, but the multiplayer is anything but that.  The shotgun was overpowered in the first game, so their answer to it in this sequel for some unknown reason was to make it even more powerful, meaning that what determines the winner of a game is who's best at the "two piece" manuever - hitting someone with the butt of the shotgun to stun them and then blind-firing a shot into them to finish them off.

Also the game is really laggy and buggy in multiplayer, which means the host pretty much wins, hands down.  You fire at the host with a shotgun or rifle for five full seconds while he's running toward you then he chainsaws you to death.  People were constantly quitting matches and reconnecting to try and find a match with a decent connection, and the developers' answer to this?

In the last patch they changed it so you can't leave a match in progress.  I shit you not.  That was their answer.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

best game ever

Nah man, this game is great:

Rockstar is unlike any other game on the PC. Your goal is, strangely enough, to become a Rockstar. Through the course of your game you will have to produce singles and records, balance a hectic recording schedule with your drug intake while touring Europe and the rest of the World. Success does not come easy. An uneasy market, balanced with your own health problems leads to a very involving game.

As your success rises, so does the demand for concerts and public performances. You a forced to decide when its time for a break and when its time to go out and make some cash.

The game has a text interface, and thats all it really needs, as graphics would just complicate the issue. If you are after a graphics version, you may wish to check out Rockstar Ate My Hamster on the Amiga.

Anybody play ZZT or Kingdom of Loathing?

I'm still trying to beat King's Quest 

all the wonderboy games are really cool. I still load up III on my emulator

I went one further and bought original Commodore equipment...

Nothing beats Jack Attack on the Commodore Plus 4...

I'm still trying to beat King's Quest 

That's easy!  Just avoid most of the fights, and collect gold wherever you can.  You'll eventually find the map which takes you to the next island.  There, you'll find a ton of elves.  Take those back to the first island, and clean up.  Etc etc, and then you're done.

Gay... that was never on a Commodore plus 4

Honestly, parser-based graphic adventures are the best form of gameplay ever. Don't get me wrong - text adventures are certainly the shit, but they're almost too expansive in detail if they are written well and if the corresponding pool of available actions isn't big enough. So they get frustrating. Games like the Unnkul series (probably my favorite text adventure series) try to fix that by making tons of actions available but the result is a worryingly unbounded feeling. Give me Hugo's House of Horrors or early Kings Quest any day.

I made it about half way through Fallout 3 and my old PC started crashing all the time. It won't run on my laptop.
I recently finished "Condemned Criminal Origins" and "Left 4 Dead", L4D was zombie killing fun but extremely hectic combat.
I'm currently in process at playing a couple of older ones, in The Call of Cthulhu, I'm on the Coast Guard Cutter but have already gotten through the major battles and only the boss is left in this chapter and also Penumbra: Black Plague.

A friend recently sent me a link to some "new" aka fake 2600 games including Call of Duty 4 for the Atari 2600
http://kotaku.com/5162344/



We talked about how it would be fun to actually stick an embedded windows board in one of the old 2600 consoles and a flash drive in the cartridge with a new game such as COD4 loaded on it. Just dedicate some of the original slot pins for the USB interface, it would still look all original.

I think there should be a cottage industry still producing carts for the old systems. I mean all these systems are still around. There's a small market. The pricing would have to be adjusted accordingly and there would have to be a blank cart cottage industry to match, but I think hobbyists could make money doing it.

Shit, my xbox 360 just shat itself.  I was hoping I'd be lucky enough to avoid that shit, since I take care of my electronics.  At least it's not the full RROD, just one flashing light and an E74 error code.  I'm pretty sure the GPU's borked, since right before it happened I was playing GTA4 and everything went green lines.

I called Xbox support and they want a hundred bucks to fix it.  A friend told me all I need to do is tighten/reseat the heat sink on the GPU, but I'm not sure I really want to crack the case open.

Shit.