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

[Spark Of Spirit]

It's next to impossible in Ristar to use anything less than a good d-pad because you need to constantly hit angles to wall climb with the grab move or to grab faster enemies at an angle while swimming or to chain grabs together at different angles in quick succession. It's probably doable, but it probably takes from the fun without having smooth movement- I know it did for me on the PSP.

Anyway, the game is excellent still. Easily Sonic Team's best non-Sonic game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, now I'm pissed. I ended up having Ninja Gaiden Black freeze on me during the opening cinematic sequence (I actually got an error message saying that my disc was unreadable despite the fact that I downloaded this game onto my hard drive and was using no disc to play it), which I tried a couple of times and consistently had the game freeze on me at the same point. So, I deleted the game and then re-installed into onto my hard drive. It ran smoothly from that point on, but now I got the same exact error message again in the cinematic sequence that plays during after completing the 2nd level. Man, I'm really getting pissed with this sort of thing happening for any of the big games that I download (which take up a few GB of space). Even after deleting and re-installing Resident Evil 4 multiple times over (3 to be exact), I still have the game freeze on me at one point or another. As for NGB, I can delete it and re-install it one again, but I don't want to be frustrated yet a 3rd time having it constantly freeze on me at some other point throughout the game. Its really frustrating because I've been dying to replay this game for a long time now, and it looks like I just wasted $10 on a download port for the XBOX360 that has no intention of properly working for me (it also had significantly slower load times than the original XBOX version of the game).

It's next to impossible in Ristar to use anything less than a good d-pad because you need to constantly hit angles to wall climb with the grab move or to grab faster enemies at an angle while swimming or to chain grabs together at different angles in quick succession. It's probably doable, but it probably takes from the fun without having smooth movement- I know it did for me on the PSP.

Well, I don't know about Ristar since I haven't played that game, but I CAN consistently hit angles without any hitches (or minimal problems at that) on an analogue stick. Of course I still prefer using a d-pad if its a well designed one like on the Genesis controller, or any of the Nintendo controller or on a fightpad, but I've honestly never had a problem with the stick for hitting aiming in angles in any of the 2D games that I have played that allow me to use a stick (I pretty much had to back when I was stuck with my XBOX360 controller sine I couldn't rely on its d-pad for angles).

[Foggle]

The 360's backwards emulation seems pretty fickle to me. Certain patches completely break Xbox games that used to work fine for no reason whatsoever. It'll probably be fixed sometime in the future, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The 360's backwards emulation seems pretty fickle to me. Certain patches completely break Xbox games that used to work fine for no reason whatsoever. It'll probably be fixed sometime in the future, though.

The problem here is that Ninja Gaiden Black was released as an XBOX Original, rather than an XBOX Live Arcade game. While Microsoft doesn't release games as XBOX Originals anymore, they still have the ones that they did release available for download. The problem with these, though, is that unlike XBLA games, these games have no online functionality (even if they did have it on the original XBOX). This means that when you play any of these games, you are automatically disconnected from XBOX Live, which of course means that you can't have any patches installed to the game via XBL. So, nothing will happen to fix this BC port, period. Also, this game was put up on XBL quite a few years ago in the first place (back when the XBOX360 was still relatively new), so if nothing has been done to fix it by this point, nothing will be done to fix it in the future.

Its baffling, though, because I know that at least a few people on the Ninja Gaiden community board that I used to frequently visit downloaded this game and said that aside from a few sound glitches, it worked fine for them and ran smoothly (minus the longer load times). None of them mentioned the game freezing on them.

Maybe if I had a newer model XBOX360 (the slim version), having backwards compatibility issues would make more sense, but I have the old-design XBOX so that theory is out. Really, I have no idea why I'm encountering this problem with the game, but its really annoying and it ticks me off at the idea that if I want to be able to replay this game, I'll have to delete it and re-install it every single time it freezes on me, only for it to freeze on me at another portion of the game.

[Foggle]

Well, I have an original run 360, and the download version of NGB worked fine for me last time I tried playing it. I know that my copy of Silent Hill 2 for Xbox completely broke after a system patch though, so I figured it could be related to that.

[Grave]

Started playing Bayonetta today. Made it to chapter 3. I'm not really feeling it. The character don't really do much for me, and then the gameplay, it's not bad. I probably gotta get used to the controls a little more, and then it's probably because I haven't unlocked much, but I can't put my finger on it (bland is not the word, nor simplistic), but the combat don't really do much for me (Deep down, maybe I am into the more simplistic stuff).

Anyway, gonna move onto the next game, which will probably be either more Darksiders 2 or finally start Uncharted 2.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That's alright, it wasn't my cup of tea, either. If you can get into it and the crazy combat it is undoubtedly excellent, but I'm not the biggest action gamer in the world so I don't tend to get into third person action games nearly as much.

Have you ever played Viewtiful Joe? That might be more up your alley as it was mine since there are less moves to keep track of but more styles of enemies to deal with and obstacles to scale.

[Foggle]

Maybe try it again sometime in the future. I didn't like the demo much when I first played it, but the full game really sucked me in. Might be an acquired taste.

Also, if you were playing it on the PS3 - don't.

[Rynnec]

As someone who's played through all of Bayonetta on the PS3, I can say it isn't as terrible as some people say it is so long as you install it.

[Foggle]

As someone who's played through all of Bayonetta on the PS3, I can say it isn't as terrible as some people say it is so long as you install it.

And patch it.

360 version's still better, though. (I've played both.)

[Grave]

Have you ever played Viewtiful Joe? That might be more up your alley as it was mine since there are less moves to keep track of but more styles of enemies to deal with and obstacles to scale.

Nah, never was interested in the game. I don't mind the long moves (considering I play Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs Capcom 3 a lot).

Maybe try it again sometime in the future. I didn't like the demo much when I first played it, but the full game really sucked me in. Might be an acquired taste.

Definitely think it's more of an acquired taste. I'm playing it on the 360. It might be the controller itself. I hate playing these type of games using the 360 controller because it feels uncomfortable, especially when it comes to the shoulder buttons. The only game that I feel comfortable playing with a xbox controller is Ninja Gaiden.

[Foggle]

Maybe you should try it on the PS3, then. As long as you have an internet connection and the hard drive space, the PS3 version is fine. At that point, it's only slightly inferior when it comes to frame rate, graphics, and sound effects. And I mean slightly.

I agree that the PS3 controller is far more comfortable than the 360 controller. But I seem to be in the minority on that.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm not a fan of the d-pad or triggers, but otherwise it's alright.

The controller's great for 3D platformers, though.

[Foggle]

PS3 D-pad is okay, not great though. Better than the 360's and Wiimote's, IMO. But the Wii Classic Controller and Wii-U definitely have the only great D-pads since, like, the 90's.

I just like the way the sticks and buttons feel more on DualShock controllers, personally. L2 and R2 on DS3 are horrible, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Actually, most people prefer the PS3 controller for action games like Devil May Cry and such. In that regard, I'm in the minority as I'm so used to playing those types of games on the XBOX360 controller that its really my controller of choice for most 3D games, including FPS games (a mouse and keyboard is far more precise, but I personally play "better" with an XBOX360 controller since I'm more used to it, if that makes any sense). As far as I can tell, I'm in the minority on that opinion, but I honestly think that the XBOX360 controller is great. Both of the analogue sticks feel comfortable to control and the face buttons are really accessible being at the right edge of the controller. I also actually PREFER having trigger buttons for the bottom 2 shoulder buttons, not only for FPS games but just in general because I like how they feel distinct from the top shoulder buttons and they have a little bit of sensitivity to them which you can use to your advantage for certain games (which is to say that they can give you partial responses in appropriate situations if you only push them half-way down).

Now, I can understand that being that most people who are gamers had a PS2, they got used to Sony's controller style and therefore prefer that kind of controller, which I completely understand. For me, I played a lot more XBOX, believe it or not, so that's kind of the controller style that I've been playing with for over a decade, so it feels completely natural to me. When I try to play with a PS2 or 3 controller, obviously it feels pretty awkward for me at first since I'm just not used to it. That of course doesn't mean that its bad, but just that its something I haven't played with enough. One thing I really hate about most gamers is that when they try a bit of control style that they aren't used to, they just claim so assuredly that the control option is uncomfortable and technically inferior to what they prefer, and I can say that in most cases in general (fighting games aside), that's a load of pure Grade A bull-shit. For example, I once had some jerk-wad tell me that it was not possible to play F.E.A.R. on Extreme difficulty as there was no way that you could handle the fast reaction times and complex inputs that the game required if you were using an XBOX360 controller. I then linked him to a whole series of video walkthroughs of the game on Extreme difficulty with the XBOX360 version of the game, with the player clearly stating that he was using an XBOX360 controller, thus proving that you could handle F.E.A.R. on its highest difficulty with that control style, but also that you could play it consistently well if you were used to it.

A lot of people are just full of shit sometimes. I don't mind that most people don't like the XBOX360 controller for any games other than FPS games (and if you're a PC gamer you probably don't like it for even that as well, which is perfectly understandable), but I hate when people spew flat-out ignorant lies just because they aren't used to a certain type of controller.