What are you currently playing? 4.0

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I know, but it still puts you on a whole new level of awesome to just gift them away to us. Not to say that you weren't already awesome before for putting this site together (and keeping it together, at that).

Speaking of Max Payne, I think I'm going to attempt playing the first game again on New York Minute, as a sort of pre-challenge for myself as I gear up for the release of MP3, which I'll admittedly have to hold off on until I can find a job, but even so, its never too early to prepare for it.

I remember that NYM gets REALLY hard in the later levels when its typically better to play more strategically and not go out there guns blazing, but with a short timer continually ticking down you have no choice but to step into the carnage at some points. Playing on that mode is such a rush, though I suck at it and only ever got to the end of the first part of the game in that mode. My older brother used to be great at the game, though, and I watched him beat the whole damn thing on that mode. Shit got pretty intense near the end for him.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'll take Max Payne 2 since its been years since I played that game, unless there is someone else you want to give it who really wants it. I have a steam account too, though I have never actually had a chance to use it before....

Alright, cool! Once I get the giftable copies, I'll send MP 1 to Spark and 2 to you.

Oh man, thanks!

Maybe I'll gift you a game via the Wii VC someday! It's the only service I have that has gifting.

[Foggle]

The very beginning of the first AESIR Tower level always makes me angry. That part with the grenade launcher snipers is damn near impossible to do without save scumming. I literally cannot figure out a feasible way to beat them without dying a million times beforehand, since the blast radius and damage of their explosives is so insane.

Maybe I'll gift you a game via the Wii VC someday! It's the only service I have that has gifting.

Well, you'll have to get Steam for the Max Payne gift to work, so then you'll have two. But yeah, a VC game would be sweet. Thanks!

I think I can gift you guys the extra copies. Some games in the past wouldn't give you giftable games if you pre-ordered and already owned the freebies, but I'm pretty sure this one will work from what I've read on the Steam forum.

[Spark Of Spirit]

The very beginning of the first AESIR Tower level always makes me angry. That part with the grenade launcher snipers is damn near impossible to do without save scumming. I literally cannot figure out a feasible way to beat them without dying a million times beforehand, since the blast radius and damage of their explosives is so insane.

Maybe I'll gift you a game via the Wii VC someday! It's the only service I have that has gifting.

Well, you'll have to get Steam for the Max Payne gift to work, so then you'll have two. But yeah, a VC game would be sweet. Thanks!

I think I can gift you guys the extra copies. Some games in the past wouldn't give you giftable games if you pre-ordered and already owned the freebies, but I'm pretty sure this one will work from what I've read on the Steam forum.

Oh, I have a Steam account. It has Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 for whenever I actually am able to play them thanks to another friend who gifted them to me. I'll have backlog, for sure.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The very beginning of the first AESIR Tower level always makes me angry. That part with the grenade launcher snipers is damn near impossible to do without save scumming. I literally cannot figure out a feasible way to beat them without dying a million times beforehand, since the blast radius and damage of their explosives is so insane.

I think its almost a law of all old-school greats from the last couple of gens that they'll have at least one part of the game that's notorious for being utterly cheap and/or just frustratingly difficult to get by. Its not too much of a problem for me, anymore, since I make sure that I'm stocked up on pain-killers and have plenty of sniper rifle ammo to go around at that section of the game, but I just can't find any way to get through it without taking a significant amount of damage from the blast radius of the grenades. I'm pretty quick at taking the grenade launcher henchmen out, though, so its still pretty manageable for me whenever I replay that section.

[Foggle]

Oh, I have a Steam account. It has Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 for whenever I actually am able to play them thanks to another friend who gifted them to me. I'll have backlog, for sure.

Do you know what your PC specs are? Max Payne 1 has really low system requirements, so you'll probably be able to play it as soon as I send it to you.

OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
    Processor: 450MHz AMD / Intel Processor
    Memory: 96 MB RAM (128 MB RAM or greater recommended)
    Graphics: 16MB Direct3D Compatible Graphics Card
    DirectX Version: DirectX 8.0
    Hard Drive: 830 MB Hard Drive Space for full install, 530 MB for minimum install
    Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card

And MP 2's for E-K:

Minimum:
        OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
        Processor: 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
        Memory: 256MB RAM
        Graphics: 32MB AGP graphics card with hardware transform & lighting support
        DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
        Hard Drive: 1.5 GB hard drive space
        Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card
        Input: Keyboard and mouse

    Recommended:
        OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
        Processor: 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
        Memory: 512MB RAM
        Graphics: 64MB DirectX 9 compatible AGP graphics card with hardware T&L support
        DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
        Hard Drive: 1.5 GB hard drive space
        Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card
        Input: Keyboard and mouse

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My computer meets all of those minimum requirement specs (well to be more accurate its at least slightly above them in most cases), but I do have Windows 7 so I'm not sure if it'll be a problem to try and get MP2 running on an OS that it wasn't designed to run on.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Oh, I have a Steam account. It has Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 for whenever I actually am able to play them thanks to another friend who gifted them to me. I'll have backlog, for sure.

Do you know what your PC specs are? Max Payne 1 has really low system requirements, so you'll probably be able to play it as soon as I send it to you.

OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
    Processor: 450MHz AMD / Intel Processor
    Memory: 96 MB RAM (128 MB RAM or greater recommended)
    Graphics: 16MB Direct3D Compatible Graphics Card
    DirectX Version: DirectX 8.0
    Hard Drive: 830 MB Hard Drive Space for full install, 530 MB for minimum install
    Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card

And MP 2's for E-K:

Minimum:
        OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
        Processor: 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
        Memory: 256MB RAM
        Graphics: 32MB AGP graphics card with hardware transform & lighting support
        DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
        Hard Drive: 1.5 GB hard drive space
        Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card
        Input: Keyboard and mouse

    Recommended:
        OS: Microsoft? Windows? 2000/XP
        Processor: 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
        Memory: 512MB RAM
        Graphics: 64MB DirectX 9 compatible AGP graphics card with hardware T&L support
        DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
        Hard Drive: 1.5 GB hard drive space
        Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card
        Input: Keyboard and mouse

It's basically an old computer I had at my job, it's missing a lot of basic programs and I don't even thing it has a proper 3D graphics card. It doesn't even run PS1 games.

[Foggle]

MP 1 & 2 work just fine on 7 and Vista, though you have to implement some bug fixes to make the sound play properly. Doesn't take more than five minutes, though, and I have some pretty easy to follow guides. iirc, fixing MP 2 is just a matter of copy/pasting a few files, and fixing MP 1 just requires downloading an external program and letting it do some computer magic for a few minutes.

It's basically an old computer I had at my job, it's missing a lot of basic programs and I don't even thing it has a proper 3D graphics card. It doesn't even run PS1 games.

Oh my.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

For the record, I downloaded Portal off of Steam during the temporary period that it was available for free, last year, and tested it on my computer. It could just BARELY run it at lowest settings, and there was a noticeable amount of lag/frame-rate skips, but it did definitively still run on my computer, for whatever that info's worth. If that's enough to run MP2, then I think I should be fine, as long as I can get it to be compatible with Windows 7.

[Foggle]

You may have to play it on min-low settings, but it should work just fine. Might look worse than the Xbox version, but it'll still play great.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Hey, if it at least runs smoothly, I honestly couldn't care less about the graphics, especially if its free.

[Foggle]

Beat DMC 3 with Turbo turned on. What a trip. Hard as hell, but extremely fun. I dread attempting the higher difficulties using Turbo, though...

The only things I don't like about this game are the Mission 19 boss (not fun at all; Mundus-level anticlimactic) and the goddamn boss gauntlet. So unnecessary. But at least Capcom were nice enough to give you a checkpoint after each fight.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Speaking of boss gauntlets, I really disliked how DMC4 shamelessly padded out the end of the game with Mission 19, in which you had to fight most of the bosses that you had already fought a 3rd TIME! And on top of that, the 2 best bosses in the game, Credo and Dante, are the only 2 bosses that you only ever happen to fight just once throughout the whole story mode. What the hell's up with that? I wouldn't mind it so much if they at least put some effort into that part, but its such shameless recycling that they don't even bother to change the arena you fight the bosses in from where you originally fought them in the story (even NG2 at least had its repeat boss fights take place in different locations).

To be fair, with the exception of Berial who I really don't like fighting because of his cheap blast radius attack that he can trigger at any time without warning, most of DMC4's bosses are at least decent and can be fun to fight if you know how to exploit Devil Trigger to its fullest and really rake out the damage when you're power is maxed out. However, I still find the padding of Mission 19 to be completely unnecessary. It lengthens the game by about 20 minutes or so (well, the first time I played it I was stuck there for over and hour because I couldn't figure out how to win the stupid dice game without getting lucky), which of course isn't much, and honestly aside from padding there really isn't any reason for that level to exist. If I wanted to fight all of the game's bosses again, I'd just opt out for a boss survival mode instead....actually, speaking of that, I have to wonder why neither DMC nor Ninja Gaiden have ever done that. It seems like a perfect side-mode for those games. Its actually quite perplexing as to why options like that weren't included in either of them, especially since it'd probably take no effort for the developers to put to together since it would just be recycling material from the story-mode of each game.

[Foggle]

Yeah, DMC 3 and especially 4 are really bad about recycling content. The base gameplay is so good, but Capcom really doesn't like putting too much effort into their products. No wonder Ninja Theory's making the reboot.