What Are You Currently Playing? 5.05: You Are (Not) A Gamer

[Foggle]

The game provides no explanation for why Dante goes where he goes. Maybe Lucia's story does a better job connecting the levels together, but like hell am I gonna' play that game a second time.

Weird about the tanks, I never had that happen to me. Still, the fact that they can only hurt you in that situation by glitching just makes it funnier.

Oh yeah, there's this one boss fight coming up about halfway through the game... I don't want to spoil anything, but as long as you're shooting it, I'm pretty sure it's actually incapable of hurting you.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

How many missions long is this game? I kind of want to be done with it ASAP....

[Foggle]

18. But lemme' tell ya, even though this game is shorter than DMC 1, it feels a lot longer.

Oh, and since you aren't a fan of games reusing boss battles, I can't wait to see your reaction to Mission 14...

[gunswordfist]

Too bad it wasn't a game that was being designed as a very good one from the get-go. the XBOX Ninja Gaiden game originally wasn't meant to be an NG game, itself (I think you could tell from how little resemblance in bares to the classic 2D NG games), but the difference there is that the decision was made earlier on in the game's development by Tecmo to make it into a Ninja Gaiden game for marketing purposes, but even then the game still spend years in development as Itagaki wouldn't release it until he made it as good of an action game as he could. And thus we got a great 3D NG game, but on top of that he made it even better anyways with the re-release, Ninja Gaiden Black.

Whether DMC2 was originally another IP or not, its clear that the developers were not putting a lot of effort into this game. Maybe it was rushed out the door, the gameplay here feels bland and boring, not unpolished. It feels like the devs for this game were just making it for their paycheck, and didn't really care whether it was actually any fun to play or not. Thank god the series redeemed itself (and even improved itself from the original, many would say), with DMC3, as it would be a shame to let such a potentially awesome IP go to waste after just DMC1 followed by one shitty sequel.

Yeah, I gave up on the DMC series after 2. May friend talked about DMC3 before it came out talking about how it'll have styles and whatnot and I paid him no attention....and then my faith in the series was restored just from watching DMC3's trailer. Seriously, the best video game trailer ever. The same friend said he didn't feel like watching it so I tricked him into watching it by popping in a tape with the G4 show it was on (Cinema...something?) and he fell in love with it too.

[Avaitor]

Another day, another sick deal at a used/pawn shop. Got Sin & Punishment 2 for $10.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Another day, another sick deal at a used/pawn shop. Got Sin & Punishment 2 for $10.

That's the game that makes everyone want a Treasure developed Star Fox.

I tend to agree with them.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was playing mission 14 on DMC2. You have to hit 4 switches to progress to the next section of the game. I gave up because I could only find 2 switches and couldn't locate the last 2 thanks to this game's horrible fixed camera.

[Avaitor]

Another day, another sick deal at a used/pawn shop. Got Sin & Punishment 2 for $10.

That's the game that makes everyone want a Treasure developed Star Fox.

I tend to agree with them.

Yeah, I played the first level at Best Buy when it came out, and was really impressed. Treasure would do well with Star Fox if they wanted to.

[Foggle]

I was playing mission 14 on DMC2. You have to hit 4 switches to progress to the next section of the game. I gave up because I could only find 2 switches and couldn't locate the last 2 thanks to this game's horrible fixed camera....

Fuck that horrible level. It took my friend and I almost an hour to find all the switches, as quite a few of them are hidden off-screen due to the garbage camera. You're almost done, though!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You also just have to LOVE how the map in this game doesn't even have the courtesy to indicate where you are on it, so that you could at least tell which areas you've already looked in. It doesn't even give you directions to indicate which way you might be facing. Its just a plain blue series of squiggles representing the general shape of the area you're in. When I first realized that their was a map option, I thought it'd point out the locations of the 4 switches, like any normal action game giving you the same task would, but I guess I was expecting WAY too much from these developers if I thought that they'd actually have the common sense to include something like that in this sort of mission. I'm done with the game for tonight, but tomorrow I'll just looked up a video on Youtube to figure out where those other 2 switches are.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I did it! The nightmare is finally over! I made it all of the way through DMC2. Now I'll never have to play this piece of shit again. I laughed out loud when it said that the next challenge was playing through the game as Lucia. Fuck no. Like hell I'm ever going to play through this game again. I don't care what character they put in there.

I laughed out loud when they threw Phantom at me again. Its like by putting the iconic first boss from DMC1 in this game, the developers were trying to remind you that you were playing a sequel to DMC, because god knows nothing else in this game resembles a DMC game in the slightest. I could just picture the devs going: "Yup, there you go, a giant spider boss. That's what its all about." They probably thought that it would get an awesome reaction from the fans as well. The only problem being that they DMC2'ed this boss by making his easy as shit. So they failed on the grandest of proportions in that regard. I also laughed at how that 2nd to last boss had all of the previous bosses stuck inside it, and you attacked their heads one at a time. The funny thing is that most of them couldn't do shit to you if you stood at a certain angle. And I also noticed that they stuck Griffon in there, even though he wasn't present at any point earlier in the game. You just gotta love these devs trying to get us to love their game by ripping off small bits from the first game and doing them worse.

Anyways, now I can put this piece of garbage behind me and finally move onto DMC3, the game that I've been awaiting the most.

[Rynnec]

You also gotta love how Dante didn't react at all to Phantom's return. Hell, "Phantom" didn't even speak, you'd think he'd say how he'll get revenge on Dante for his previous defeat or something. Nope, that would be asking way too much out of DMC2.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I swear, the only part of the game where Dante acted like Dante was at the very end where Arius whines after being defeated by Dante about how he was going to be king of the world, and then Dante retorts, "Yeah, here's your crown," and then proceeds to shoot him in the face. That, and the scene where Arius realizes that Dante gave him a fake coin with DMC logo outline on it were the only 2 parts in the game that felt like it was Dante acting like himself. Throughout the rest of the game he was nothing more than a generic action game hero. Hell, he was even more bland and had less personality than Ryu Hayabusa from the Ninja Gaiden games, and that's saying A LOT!

BTW, I started up DMC3 on Normal (its the only difficulty available when you start), and on Yellow mode (the 1st game had it, and the levels in this game are mostly short, so I can deal with it), and I don't have turbo on since I feel the need to experience the game as its original speed first. Hell fucking yes is this game a breath of fresh air. DMC games never had the best enemy AI, but these enemies are once again competent enough to actually try and hit Dante every once in a while, and I'm so glad to actually be using my sword more than my guns for a change. The combo system is now finally back to that combo-heavy goodness that the first game started and this game has already evolved it from the get-go, and is more familiar to what I got used to with DMC4 since that's still the DMC game that I've currently played the most.

I got through the first 2 missions without a hitch. Then I got to mission 3 and got up to the 1st boss with ease, and then I took down half his health and he got harder and kicked my ass. It was actually REALLY refreshing to realize that I had met my match and had to actually work at getting good at this boss by recognizing his attack patterns and attacking him at the appropriate time. I died once and then had to restart the level, but it wasn't a big deal since it only took me a few minutes to work my way back up to him, at which point I purchased a single yellow orb so that I could have a retry on him, which I ended up using and then finally defeated him on my 3rd time through (though admittedly I had to pop in a small vital star to keep myself alive during the last third or so of the fight). It was a fun boss fight and really gave me a feeling of accomplishment for having beaten it. I realized that Sword Master is a good style to fight Cerberus with as he has a problem attacking you if you are hitting him in mid-air, which you can only do with the Sword Master style.

Anyways, I took a break for now since finishing up DMC2 kind of wore me out on gaming for a while, even if DMC3's awesomeness replenished my interest. I'll likely get back to the game a little later on today, though.

[Foggle]

Fuck this fucking relic race mission in Jak 3. It's the entire reason why I stopped playing the game last time. I recently picked it up again, and THOUGHT I had finally beaten the level, but no. The map disappeared, so I had no idea I had to return to the level entrance within the remaining time limit after collecting all the items, then my car flipped over and I died. Now I have to do the whole godforsaken thing again. Fuck you, Naughty Dog.

[gunswordfist]

This morning, I FINALLY beat Icon of Sin in Doom II. It's only been like 8 days but it has seemed like an eternity. Maybe the longest it has ever taken me to beat a Doom level (certainly the longest in Doom II). I fired the rocket for the last time and the shit started blowing up and I was like. I was in full zombie mode so I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't even sure I was doing the right thing. In my head I was like, "OK, let me follow the game design clues. I'm sure the devs put this and that there so the player can do this and that." I played it so many times that I started routinely speeding through parts and planning things out. I did it so well that I was only 40 seconds behind PAR's time (PAR's 3 minutes. Mine, 3:40) Kind of makes me want to try again because I know I could do better.

Then I finally proceeded to Episode 2. I took the things I learned from playing Doom I and episode I of Doom II to find every single secret. I played the level before on the demo. Either way, it still took me an embarrassingly long time to get to where the Yellow Keycard was. I spent a ton of time over thinking how they would lay out the secrets...and all I had to do was open up a wall. But to be far, this game's maps fucking suck. At least imo they do. Also, I took so long that for my times, I had to press A because it was taking too long for the game to come up to it...and they  had it listed as SUCKS  Oh and it was good to get the Super Shotgun in level 1. I thought I heard that you can keep all the weapons that you got from Episode 1 though. And I stopped after getting up to level 4 today. I also tried out a level I was on in Doom I on Ultra-Violence today and I believe I got my ass kicked.

Before all this Doom stuff today, my baby brother and me tried again to beat Gunstar Heroes today. We were stuck on that long ass level that's right after the first 4 stages again. So damn long.