What are you currently playing? 4.0

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I could not disagree more. I thought Dante had too many moves and even with that, he still has too few sword attacks when compared to Nero.

Too many moves? Its a fucking hack n' slash game, you're supposed to have tons of combos at your disposal. Especially for a game like DMC which has its combat built off of chaining combo after combo. Nero barely has much more combos. He has like, what?....3 Red Queen sword combos and 2 air combos. If you count Shuffle and Calibur that adds 2 more, to make a total of like, 6 different combos that you can chain together. That's REAL exciting.[/sarcasm]

At least with Dante you can chain together moves with different weapons. Nero basically just has his sword and his Devil Bringer which gets really old and tiring to use really quickly.

This is why Bayonetta is pretty much a very much improved version of DMC. Kamiya thankfully realized that people don't just want to spam an overpowered ability over and over again to substitute for a lack of moves and abilities to utilize.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just beat DMC4 on Devil Hunter mode. That final "boss" fight with the giant statue was so disappointing. Seriously, it was just a matter of blocking each of his fists with the devil bringer and then you won. I also HATED mission 19. I've heard of padding before, and some games that I really love are guilty of using it, but mission 19 just took it too far, especially with that stupid-ass dice game that you had to keep playing on each level only to be rewarded for passing it each time with a boss fight....that you already fought twice. Now that's just the epitome of lazy-ass design to try and make a game just a tad bit longer. I honestly feel that the game would have been better off without that hindrance of a mission there, or at the very least I would have been willing to consecutively re-face all of the bosses without the use of that stupid dice game, or Capcom could have pulled a Mega Man X like stage and actually had some areas and enemies for you to go through until you came to a room in which you re-fought an old boss. That would have been perfectly acceptable to me over that fucking dice game.

Overall the game was decent though.

I'll try it on the Son of Sparda difficulty setting to see if it actually gets somewhat challenging, but other than that I'm not so sure I'll be replaying this game too much. Its definitely not as much fun as what I played of DMC1 or 3, and personally I don't find it to be anywhere close to as good as Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden II as far as the current-gen hack n' slash games go. I still like it more than God of War, though, personally.

[gunswordfist]

I've been playing Little Big Planet with my baby brother over the last few days. I did not think I'd have this much fun with the game. Going to download some community levels for him later.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Put in Viewtiful Joe for the first time in ages today and rocked it. I must have been out of practice years ago because I was way better at it this time than I remember being. Only three things have annoyed me thus far:

1: That fucking shark boss. I beat every other boss on my first try (even the ones after him), but that dude has a few cheap moves. And health recovery on a boss? Come on Kamiya, you know that's below the belt.

2: That fire section of episode 5. I simply don't have enough meter to do this section reliably enough. It should take less time for the water droplets to hit the water and allow me more ways to time my jumps, as it sometimes feels like blind luck. I also don't know how to open the door without wasting Voomerangs (There's no indication on how you're supposed to open this door), which brings me to my next point-

3:Repurchasing Voomerangs and bombs. Kamiya, they're called ITEM PICK UPS. You used them for health, meter, and coins. It stands to reason that these would make easy pick ups as it is, save the purchasing to holding more capacity for them instead.

Otherwise, its fucking masterpiece of action platforming. There's a lot of voice talent in this game, too. I'm quite surprised at its overall quality and how well it has aged. I found the sequel ages ago for like $6 but haven't played it yet. How does it stack up to this one?

[Spark Of Spirit]

Found Mega Man Zero Collection cheap today. Easily the best Mega Man release on the DS by far.

Also considering starting Viewtiful Joe over again, just for the hell of it.

Action platformers rule.

[Avaitor]

Finally playing Mario Galaxy 2.

Only four galaxies in so far, I can see why it's considered to be a lot better than the first. I haven't had this much fun playing a platformer since... DKC.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Finally playing Mario Galaxy 2.

Only four galaxies in so far, I can see why it's considered to be a lot better than the first. I haven't had this much fun playing a platformer since... DKC.

It's the best 3D platformer I've ever played, honestly. Glad to see you like it, too.

I mean, the first Galaxy is great, but I didn't really care for a lot of the non-stage gameplay. Here you just go level to level and kick ass if you want.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm on mission 17 of DMC4 in Son of Sparda mode. You know, I really hate it when games like this try to use gimmicks. That one level in which creatures come up from the ground and try to swallow up Dante is more tedious than challenging (since all it does is force you to go through a fight underground, and then redo the fight that you were on above ground without getting caught again), though to be fair once you get good enough you can consistently avoid them. The level in which the room fills up with poison gas is just pretty dumb, though. It literally adds nothing to the gameplay except for forcing you to try and rush a little bit more, but even then the game gives you plenty of health orbs in that level to compensate for the poison gas, anyways, so it almost feels like theirs no point to it to begin with except to be annoying.

Anyways, I'm still enjoying playing as Dante quite a lot. I'm only further re-establishing my opinion that he's more fun to play as than Nero. I really value speed in games like this, and while you can speed up Nero with Max-Act, Dante is just naturally a faster character and I enjoy chaining sword combos with him more than I do with Nero. With Dante I have continually been discovering new moves and combos, whereas with Nero I feel like I have already tried out most of what he has to offer, and all that's really left is just getting better with his specific combos and abilities to get high combo scores with him. He's certainly not a bad character, but to be honest I feel like I would have enjoyed the game more if he was the side character who you played as for a little while in the game whereas Dante had the main role. But, I guess to be fair they made Nero the main character because if Dante took up most of the game then it would just be the same thing as DMC3 except in HD.

Anyways, I really hope that Dante Must Die is actually challenging when I unlock it. To be honest, Son of Sparda is pretty easy for what's supposed to be the game's "hard" mode (I assume Devil Hunter is normal and Human is easy). I've died less times on it than I died on NG2's Path of the Warrior mode (and I don't find that difficulty to be that hard, either, especially since its a joke compared to Mentor and Master Ninja).

I'm sure that Hell and Hell mode would be extremely challenging, but I'm not really a fan of the "you die in one hit" kind of gameplay (though from what I hear the game at least gives you a few gold orbs as extra lives in that mode).

[gunswordfist]

I compleely forgot about the poison gas room and the enemies coming from out of the ground.

[Foggle]

Portal 2 has the greatest ending of any game I've ever played. I'm not exaggerating, either; you've got to see this shit.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'd love to see this shit, but unfortunately I don't have money to see it.

Seriously, though, I really want to get Portal 2. On top of being a brilliant Puzzle game, Portal was perhaps one of the only games that I have played that have legitimately made me laugh with its humor (thanks to brilliant writing, dialogue, voice acting, and overall delivery), whereas most other games that try to be funny on purpose simply just make me cringe. Oh yeah, and once again there's also that fact that Portal is an amazing puzzle game, but who really cares about that aspect of the game....

[Neomysterion X. Prime]

Pokemon Black and White, my main file is on the White Version. though. I'm using Black to get the other starters myself.
I never really gartered too much time to play video games these days.

[Daxdiv]

I am addicted to the Gears of War 3 public beta. Oh Bulletstorm, thank you giving me one week access and not having to deal with GameStop to get a code for this. I'm having a blast with the game. As for new weapons, I've only tried the Saw-off Barrel Shot Gun, the Retro Lancer, and the Digger Launcher. Saw-Off is the same as the Gnasher, but with more firepower, a little less range, and you get one shot before having to reload. Retro Lancer is a more powerful Lancer, it's only drawback is the recoil. But ramming into people using the bayonet is the best part, especially the animation they use. Digger Launcher, it's pretty fun, but I suck at it.

I already unlocked Cole Train for both the beta and for use on the retail version of Gears 3. Now I'm working on getting the Gold Plated Lancer.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just beat DMC4 on SoS mode. The final 2 missions took me an hour a piece to beat, and NOT for very good reasons. I HATE mission 19. Its purely just an excuse to try and make the game feel a little bit longer, and its so obvious that its padding when they won't even go so far as to change the environments that you previous fought the bosses in, since the developers are not even trying to hide the fact that the entire mission is basically recycled from a collection of older parts of the game. You know, Ninja Gaiden 2 may have had some of its balance issues and it certainly wasn't as polished as this game, but at least it didn't ever feel so lazy as to pad out its levels in the manner that DMC4 does.

But, I'll be a bit more lenient. I don't necessarily remind going through old boss fights again, or having stuff recycled to make the game feel longer. What really killed any fun factor in that mission for me was that retarded fucking dice game that I had to do, and I had to do it 5 FUCKING TIMES! Honestly, there was one point in which I literally spent 20 minutes of my hour trying to get through the mission always getting unlucky numbers and spawning up new enemy sets. I ended up fighting 3 Blitz's among other enemies that spawned on different terms before finally making my way to the boss fight.

As for mission 20, I just simply hate fighting Sanctus. At least the bosses in mission 19 were all pretty straightforward, but Sanctus is more annoying that challenging in a fun way. Its not his attacks or anything like that which I view as a problem, as they can all be skillfully avoided. Its attacking him that annoys the shit out of me, since its really hard to knock the bastard out of the air after you take his shield down since he just teleports away from you whenever he feels like it, even in cases where I was in the middle of guard-locking him and when I was just about to break his guard. Its annoying enough when I miss the chance to knock him out of the air and then he has time to regenerate his shield, but its even more annoying when he comes down to attack you in which case I successfully dodge him and then counter him with a quick attack of my own, but in that case it doesn't stagger him or even get him to guard, and just takes away a small amount of his health while barely phasing him. To put it shortly, the fight took me so long only because the asshole just kept spamming his teleport attack and I kept missing opportunities to attack him even when I was playing perfectly fine, and then I kind of gave into frustrating and tried to spam-attack him which obviously got me killed a few times until I got lucky enough to stagger him consistently in one round of fighting him without him spamming his teleport on me that much, maybe because the game finally took pity on me or something. Overall, its more of a tedious and annoying boss than a hard one, but at least he wasn't cheap in the sense of having unfair attacks that couldn't be avoided, so that's a good thing since this fight would have been infinitely more annoying if he were.

Now I have finally unlocked Dante Must Die mode, and will try it out tomorrow. Overall, I can safely say that my favorite mission in the game is mission 17, because it plays to this game's strengths by focusing on what it does best. There is a wide variety of enemy types and you get to play as Dante who has a much faster combo-speed and just has more combos than Nero in general. Also, the level has absolutely 0 gimmicks to it, so you can streamline from start to finish at your own pace. In this regard, I find it to be the equivalent of NG2's Chapter 7, which is by far the best chapter in that game for playing to its particular strengths, IMO.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I'm now on mission 5 of DMC4 on Dante Must Die mode. I think now I've had just enough experience with this game to give my in-depth thoughts on how it compares to NG2, which is something that I've wanted to do for a while since these games release quite close to each other (they released in the same year and were only a few months apart), and for a while it was the hot topic of discussion between fanboys of both series as to which game was better since this also marked the first time that either series made the jump to the current generation of consoles.

You can expect something like that from me sometime soon, and to be perfectly honest it won't be completely one-sided (even though its obvious which game I personally prefer), since everyone knows I have my own number of issues with NG2.

Oh yeah, my brother just let me borrow Dead Space. I never got to sit down and play the game properly from start to finish, so I'm going to start it tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to finish it before something comes up that eats out of my free-time for gaming.