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A secret global conspiracy of game developers that control society?
August 11th 2001, 13:38 CEST by Tommy I am not sure if this deserves its own topic (<i>it does - mr0n the phantom ed</i>) but as a common lurker I didn't feel I could just drop it carte blanche into whatever topic thread was currently underway. A friend told me about this site: <a href="http://www.gameilluminati.com">http://www.gameilluminati.com</a> That is apparently a members only bulletin board. You cannot access it without a password. Apparently it is 'invitation only' for industry people. Beyond the password members enter a holy grail of mature discussions and non- flaming objective discussions about the merits of games, as debated by an elite few. Interestingly enough, this board is registered to a one George Broussard, he of 3D Realms fame. Unfortunately, I myself work for a Publisher and am hence patently evil, so will no doubt never get to feast on the intellectual riches within (it's for developers who have shipped titles only). I would be interested to know if loyal PlanetCrappers from the development side have been exposed to the joys of www.gameilluminati.com and if so, if perhaps they could 'illuminate' us on the merits of this site? Is this a joyous site, protecting true captains of the industry and allowing them a safe haven for discourse? Or is this a dangerous and subversive, insidious form of elitism that harms us all? Could www.gameilluminati.com spell the end of our honorable PlanetCrap (<i>No! Never! - mr0n the phantom ed</i>)? Will we see gamesbiz professionals flee in search of greener, safer pastures yonder? Please Comment and discuss. Me, I'm just fascinated and nosey. |
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Topic: A secret global conspiracy of game developers that control society?
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Maybe he'd enjoy blowing Bobby Kotick. Who can fathom the ways of Bob. |
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Well, I'm sure I'd be well compensated for my time. BUYBUYBUY
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I got Kid Icarus in last night and I've played the first four levels of that. Kirby Air Ride reward grid! It's so good to have it back. It's also got a trophy collection type thing like Smash Brothers, but it looks like you're limited to viewing the trophies individually. I always liked looking at the whole collection at once. You get a lot of loot in the game. A lot of it is instant use stuff like health pickups or single use powerups or temporary power boosts, but you also find powers and weapons. You get a bunch of powers really quickly, but some of them don't seem to do anything. One of them shoots off some fireworks. Which is cool and all, but you can only take a limited subset of your powers into levels, and the others do things like restoring some health or paralyzing enemies. Weapons have random stats, which is great. You can also fuse two weapons into a new weapon, or sell weapons for hearts, which is the game's currency. Hearts let you buy weapons in the shop, but you also pay hearts to change the difficulty. The default difficulty is 2.0 out of 10, but you can change the difficulty in 0.1 increments. You have to pay hearts to do so. Lowering it below 2.0 (which is really easy so far, but 3.7 nearly kicked my ass) costs hearts just because, but raising it is a form of gambling. It costs more to enter a stage on a higher difficulty because you get more hearts as a reward for completing the stage. It's also got online multiplayer which you can play against random people rather than fucking with friend codes. I hopped into a deathmatch last night and didn't get a single kill, but I still got some loot for my trouble. And some achievements in the reward grid. Which they call the treasure hunt, but it will always be the reward grid to me. So with all that out of the way: the actual game. The controls are not good. If Nintendo releases a 3DS revision with a second circle pad, and then rereleases this game with dual analog controls and no other changes whatsoever, I would buy it again. It would make the game 10x more enjoyable. You use the stylus on the touch screen to aim and control the camera, the circle pad to move, and the left trigger to shoot. It would basically be impossible to play this game while holding your system, so a cheap plastic stand for your 3DS is included with all copies of the game. The problem with the controls is one that will probably plague a lot of 3DS games: the bottom screen is smaller than the top and the bottom screen is not 3D. On the DS games could get away with putting the action on the bottom screen so you could touch things directly, but the 3DS can't do that. The action has to be on the top screen. So you're using the stylus on the bottom screen to move an aiming reticle around the top screen, only the bottom screen is smaller and you can't have 1:1 control. Instead it's a mouse pad sort of deal, where you move left to right, pick up the stylus, then put it down on the left side of the screen and move left to right again. The camera controls in the on foot portions have some momentum, so you perform a flick and the camera will spin a bit, and this makes it more tolerable. But these controls are not good. I have four new games arriving today: Warriors Orochi 3, Rayman Origins, Mario 3D Land, and Pokemon Rumble Blast (3DS). BUYBUYBUY
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Rayman Origins looks good. I'm rather surprised you bought a 3DS. I guess you heart Nintendo just as much as I do (or more since I waited till the DS Lite and still don't have a 3DS). |
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Also I say that having never played a previous Rayman game (or even understood the appeal) and being someone who kind of hates platformers. |
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I used to like Nintendo a lot. Most of that goodwill is gone, but the shadow remains. I buy pretty much every system (never going to get a Vita though, what a joke that is) and always figured I'd get a 3DS, but the high price and shitty battery life and overpriced games and still-shitty online had me convinced it would stumble out of the gate and I could pick one up later. Then it did like record sales at launch and I figured it wouldn't drop in price for a while, so I went ahead and got one. Whoops. But it's a neat system. The play coins thing, where in sleep mode the system acts as a pedometer and awards you play coins for your steps, which you can spend in games to unlock stuff, is the kind of weird but cool thing that only Nintendo would do. Pokemon Rumble Blast seems neat. It's an isometric real time ARPG sort of thing, except without the RPG. Unlike normal Pokemon games, the Pokemon don't level up. But every Pokemon you defeat has a chance of joining you, and so you're constantly getting new, better Pokemon. BUYBUYBUY
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I've been having a blast playing Rayman Origins with my kids. Never played a Rayman game before, are they all this fun? |
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Pokemon Rumble Blast really is surprisingly good. It's just a button mashy beat 'em up, but the Pokemon license gives them over 600 playable characters to work with. The Pokemon themselves don't seem to matter so much, since you can mix and match moves, but there is a large variety of moves. Even among the direct damage moves you get a wide spectrum: some are slow, some require a charge up, some leave you vulnerable afterwards, some fire off a long-range projectile, some are beam weapons, some are offset AOE attacks that you need to aim, some have multiple hits in a row, some move your character. Then there are the status effects and the crazier moves. I just got a guy whose primary attack siphoned HP from enemies, and whose secondary attack spent HP to create a decoy. That guy was fun. It's kinda making me want to play an actual Pokemon game. Warriors Orochi 3 is fun in spite of itself. The lack of English voiceover is a serious issue, as expected. I just can't pay attention to the screen text most of the time, so I often have to pause and check the log to see what my objective is. The game also has literally the worst pop-in I've ever seen. I have WO2 on the PSP and this is worse. Knocking back an officer with an attack often leads to him vanishing, because he went outside the bubble around your character and there are too many other guys onscreen. I have to track down enemies using the minimap even when they're right next to me. It's really amazingly bad, and Gundam 3 didn't suffer from this issue, so this has to be some old hybrid PS2 engine or something. And for some reason they've implemented the harshest save system in series history, reverting to your last save when you fail a mission. That last one is manageable with diligent saving after pre-battle prep and mid-mission saves at critical events, but it's a baffling change. This really should have been the ultimate Musou game, but these issues hold it back. Despite all that, it's good. The characters' moves are crazier than ever before. One guy plants his spear in the ground and does a pole dance spin around it to kill everyone. One guy has a clockwork shield with swords sticking out of it, and he can wind it up and then use it as a helicopter to hover around. One guy does that Prototype move of surfing along the ground on someone's corpse. One guy throws a single enemy way up in the air and then breaks the enemy's back over his shoulders. BUYBUYBUY
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There was a news story about Just Cause this morning, which got me in the mood for more Just Cause 2. So I ignored all the games I just bought and spent all day clearing settlements in Just Cause 2. And I cleared all of them! In true Just Cause 2 style, the final tally as reported by the game is 369/368 locations completed. The extra one is a bonus, I guess. I'm still only at 94 percent and change completion, but I've upgraded all my weapons and vehicles to max level. I passed 80 hours of playtime on this save today. BUYBUYBUY
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Looks like I'll be playing diablo 3 this weekend. Can't wait! |
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Let me get you in the mood! *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* *CLICK**CLICK**CLICK**CLICK* Zep-- w0rd up!
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I got Fez. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Ditto. It's pretty great. BUYBUYBUY
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The D3 beta is more like a demo/extended tutorial. It's more of the same diablo-y goodness with extra flash. The monk class is a lot of fun to play: melee fighter that teleports and zooms around punching and kicking everything. Looking at playing a demon hunter next. I'd say it's a day one purchase, but I'm actually getting it for free so hooray for that! I guess I'll have to check out this fez thing people are on about. I haven't really heard too much about it at all befor elite three days ago. |
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Is this open to normal folks yet? <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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#43426 by CheesyPoof Is this open to normal folks yet? Dunno. They just did a mass invite of 275,000 people into the beta. Assuming you have a battle.net account and registered for an opt-in you may have had a chnace. I went and sold my soul to the devil by signing a contract to play WoW for a year to get D3 for free, and everyone in my guild that did the same also got into this wave of beta invites. |
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Last I saw you needed to have at least one Blizzard product activated on battle.net to get in on that, but I don't have shit. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I finished Fez. It's pretty great. You can get the 32 required cubes to see the ending by regular platforming and basic puzzle solving, but there are at least 64 cubes total and the optional ones are hidden behind some really cool, tricky, and/or obtuse puzzles. Many of these latter kind of puzzles are especially susceptible to being spoiled, so I suggest anyone interested in the game get it and plow through it before everyone knows everything. BUYBUYBUY
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The leader board tells me that I am 21% complete. It's pretty good so far, though there was one section that felt like traditional platforming tropes that I did not care for. That said I don't like platformers but I like this one. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I started Fallout: New Vegas today and am about to pick it back up again and kill some more escaped convicts. I find it a little silly that a whole town full of people is cowering inside a hotel and the NCR soldiers refuse to get involved because the convicts are sooooooo scary, and I walk in at level 3 and kill everyone. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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I got 100% last night in Fez. I really, really enjoyed this game. I am not a fan of platformers and I generally hate the genre, so when I downloaded the trial I expected to quit it within 5 minutes and delete it forever. I was quite taken in by its charm and how non-traditional it was. The 'death penalty' was so not a factor in the demo that I took a risk and bought it, and thank God for that. I love the art, the style, the gameplay, the puzzles, everything. What I loved the most was how relaxed and easy going it was. I never felt a single second of tension, which is great. I never had to worry about repeating vast sections of jumping if my next jump failed. In fact, the lack of death penalty was probably the single biggest thing that made me love this game so much. The second is that there are more than enough cubes to finish the game without feeling lost or stuck. Some of the puzzles strike me as very obtuse and if they were required for 100% it would probably annoy me and drive me to gamefaqs. Thankfully that is not the case. I can only implore people to give the trial a whirl and see if it strikes your fancy. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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What a coincidence. I passed 200% last night in Fez. There's only one puzzle left in the game, and it's the impossible puzzle that only like five people have solved, and they're all developers who presumably got the answer straight from Fish, and someone said the answer isn't actually available in the game anywhere or some bullshit. I did give up and look up a couple of puzzle solutions at the end, so I'm not above doing it one more time for full completion, but I already got my 200/200 achievement points so whatevs. Cheesy, you at least started New Game+ right? Even if you don't play it, the modified intro made me LOL. BUYBUYBUY
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Bob, it is my intention to start New Game+ but I am saving that for tonight. I technically started it last night, but all I did was walk out of the room and quit. I didn't see anything LOL worthy. I'm going to try to get as many cubes as I can. Not sure if I'll breakdown to get 200% with a FAQ or not as some puzzles seem obtuse (like the bell on I looked up). <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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You looked up the bell? Don't do that! I looked up the bell too. Not the bell specifically, but the SPOILER REDACTED. It turns out I had all the info I needed and was just looking at it in the wrong way. That's one of the very last puzzles I did and I gave it an honest shot. You shouldn't be looking up any anticube solutions on your first run. They're supposed to be difficult! Go find the easy regular cubes. If you do go for more anticubes, come to me when you're stuck. I can give you non-spoilery guidance. Or spoilery guidance. I know everything now. BUYBUYBUY
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I learned from Gabe that the treasure maps contain legitimate information. I couldn't make heads or tails out of anyone so ignored them. Then I noticed that some secret doors would open (you know, the ones with the two cubes on them that light up when you use it) and some didn't and I assumed the treasure maps controlled that. I haven't used either artifact that I have, nor any treasure map at this point. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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And I looked up the bell because I thought that I could figure it out right there and couldn't and spent so much time that I had to get it, so I looked it up. I did get 7 anti-cube legitimately, though. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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If you explored more, you would know that the treasure maps contain legitimate information! Some of those silhouettes are pretty recognizable. Anyway, treasure maps are all anticubes and artifacts and even more secret stuff. Artifacts aren't used for anything, they're just collectibles. The glowy infinity doors are secret warp points. When you've been to the areas on each end of a pair of doors, they're open from them on. I don't use them much because I can never remember where they go. BUYBUYBUY
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Based on the description of the two artifacts that I have, I figured they had a use in puzzle solving (based on the solution to the bell and one of the artifacts that I got later on) What's worse is that some of those doors seem to be one way. I was getting my last cubes and went to an area I passed before when one of those doors opened. I took it and was dumped off a bunch of worlds away. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Remind me to go back to this spot and read these posts later. I've just downloaded Fez and don't dare to read them. |
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I think I wasn't much in the mood for it, I'll try again later. Seems promising. It's charming I just got real sick of backtracking for now. |
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I went and pre-ordered Guild Wars 2. The game looks promising, and I'm very interest to see what the team managed to come up with. |
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I didn't feel like I did any real back tracking until I was near the end, for what that is worth. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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And the impossible puzzle has been made possible, and I cheated it. The solution was brute-forced though, and still no one knows why it works or how you're supposed to figure it out. After which absolutely nothing happens of note. BUYBUYBUY
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Fuck boss fights in DX:HR. My character is just totally not equipped to take on a guy in armor with a minigun in his arm. So: debug menu mod and away we go. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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BobJustBob: I know everything now. Oh shit. |
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I've been playing Fallout New Vegas all this week and I'm having a blast shooting people and animals in the head, collecting loot and generally making the world a better place. I find the main plot to be kind of weak, almost to the point of being just another side quest, compared to previous Fallouts where the main quest was to some extent determining the fate of mankind. There's that sort of thing looming over all the proceedings, but the main quest thus far has just been me chasing down some d-bag who tried to have me killed in the opening cutscene. I finally made it to New Vegas proper last night, so today I was going back to previously visited spots and taking photos of landmarks. Which is always a great mechanic beyond just reminding me of Beyond Good and Evil, and it's a shame more games don't use it. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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I guess I just 100%'ed Fez. It's novel gameplay and fun and well made. Drags on a bit much, but nothing too terribly. I only refer to the surface layer platform part of the game, I've yet to dive into the sublayers of the game that has all the Internet ablaze. Might be time to start looking up solutions, I have no goddamn idea about the puzzles. |
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Bob, I also laughed at new game plus. Too bad it looks kinda bad huh? Maybe there's a point to it though *shrug* |
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Oh I looked up a room and that's the trick?? Fuck no I'm glad I looked up that info. |
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And now the game crashes to home screen every time I start it, bummer. Guess that's the end of it. It's a neat enough game but despite its pretty unique gameplay I'm not super enamored with it. I mean Braid left me breathless, this is just a neat platformer. The 'grave yard' levels in particular were drab and boring. Of course the crashing is preventing me from digging deeper, what am I missing out on? Is more story or context given? Are there big revelations to be had? Or is it all just based on that decoding shit and that's all it takes to hit 200+% completion? |
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There's a stress test beta of diablo 3 happening right now for anyone that's interested. It was fairly sudden, no per-announcement or anything, just bam! Open beta. Of course, there's a beta weekend for Guild Wars 3 (for people who've ore-ordered) next weekend. Hrm… |
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Guild Was 2*. I'd imagine Guild Wars 3 is still always off from an alpha state. |
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Jamie, if you're still reading this, you totally have to go to Valve. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Finished Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. No interest in trying to get all the Riddler trophies. No idea what's next. Maybe I'll finish my first playthrough of Fez. |
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I started NG+ in Fez but didn't spend a lot of time on it as the Diablo 3 beta was this weekend. So that's what I played. I got to the 'end' with 3 classes and took the barbarian about 1/2 way. The only class I did not play was the monk. My feelings on it are mixed. It felt like the gaming equivalent of junk food and while I was playing it I felt dirty at the same time (like it was a bare skinner box). I enjoyed playing with crappers more (and felt less dirty about that) but when it got up to 3 and 4 players there are points that my computer crawled. While my GPU exceeds suggested spec, my CPU is the bare minimum. I also wish that there was a dedicated SP mode. I wanted to play a class all the way from beginning to end SP but that did not happen as I was joined or I joined others and my SP progress was otherwise wasted. If I were to get Diablo 3 I think that it mostly would be to play with crappers. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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So prototype 2 was released a few days ago, and the short of it is that is still very very good at letting you feel like a mutant badass with greatly improved combat. Unfortunately nearly every other area has taken giant steps backwards or are just plan stupid. Power use has been greatly simplified with things like musclemass/armor simply existing all the time, or getting their own button mapping, while attacks are simply tap for three hit combo or hold for a power attack. The trade off for this lack of depth is that you're now allowed to map two powers for use at a time something that helps a great deal with mixed group combat. Sadly there's little in the way of multipower combos avalible this looks to be done via triggerable QTEs instead. For example tendrils can root enemies in place and trigger a QTE useing your other power but it appears you can't just perform the move with out being prompted. What helps to really improve things is a wider variety of enemy types and tactics. Included in the mix of cannon fodder peons, hunters and BS super soldiers are large slow infected juggernauts that'll block attacks while giving you something meaty to wail on, revamped super soldiers that allow for a block/counter system, and speedy evolved that pull out some of your own claw like attacks. The stealth gameplay is a bit improved but still largely pointless outside of missions. The new sonor ability lets you see who is watching who as well as which targets are free to be stealth consumed/biobombed but when you can drop kick a helicopter why slowly move around picking people off when you don't have to? The viral detectors are still around but fill the detection meter so slowly and they have such a laughable tiny radius that there's simply NEVER a fear of setting the things off. The upgrade system has been changed away from simply buying abilites and upgrades with evolution points to a mix of leveling rewards, collection/mission rewarded mutations, and consume based ability upgrades. Locking basicly every thing behind progressing the story with the only real thing you can upgrade out of order being done by hunting around waiting for the game to feel like tagging something as having an ability upgrade. The semi dynamic-world is gone now in favor for three locked zones you progress between. This leaves jack-fucking-all to actively do with the open world gameplay. A problem that's made all the worse by any non-mission event being locked up behind the stupid radnet system. Prerelease Radnet was billed as being something 'extra' for the fans of the game that'll buy a new first run edition of the game. What it turns out to be is basicly a modified version of EA's project 10 dollar. In order to prevent a quick turn around trade-in the Radnet content is being slowly dished out over the course of 7 weeks so as of right now there's a total of 4 nonmission events avalible in the game. What's even better is that none this stuff feels like extra content at all because it directly maps challenge events that where avalible in the first game. A preception that's not much helped by the fact finishing the story unlocks platinum levels for the events (just like the first game) and they still act as player training exercises for world navigation (judgeing by the names of the latter ones efective power/equipment uses as well). Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish shaped solid waste.
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I guess that seals my decision not to play that. Pity. |
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Anyone here playing Ascension? My GC handle is The Phantom Blot. |
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Man, this place is dead. Playing Trials Evolution. On the face of it, it should be a game I hate, but I love it. Gotten the the point where I feel I have no chance of getting gold medals on tracks, but haven't hit anything I can't at least finish. Yet. blog | Twitter | The Psychology of Gaming
"It was a little hard to tell how bad I was bleeding on account of the salsa" -- Jibble |
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I painted the interior of my new garage white. It's pretty awesome. "One part disembowels me while another slowly eats its way through the gas line. As I bleed out on the floor, it reminds me that I need to buy milk." - Jibble
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