What about them?

Well there's a good sign that if Dragon's Dogma 2 comes out I won't buy it.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... ller-teams

Capcom's business strategy is "more sequels made by fewer people"

Good job. Way to not make Resident Evil 6 a day 1 purchase for me cause I'm thinking this will suck now.

Huh? The Arkham games are nothing like God of War/Devil May Cry/etc...

I wasn't saying they are, I was giving "the Arkhams" as a counterargument to her general assertion of button mashers being boring (see the boldened part in my original post).

So, Morrigan, do you consider AA/AC boring as well in that regard? An exception? Not a button masher?

I have not played them, nor will I.

Oooh, I have. Arkham Asylum is really good, but Arkham City is probably one of the funnest, greatest games I've ever played, full stop. I absolutely recommend them!

And by the way, they are hardly "button mashers". Do that in the game and get your ass kicked.

Yeah those games aren't button mashers at all. They have a sense of rhythm that you must use.

Yeah it's due to the counters you have to use, and the various different tactics required to defeat particular enemy types (such as the armored guys, the ones with shields, knife fighters, etc.) so you can't do the usual button mashing bullshit. Arkham City is so glorious though, I wish they would do a full-blown GTA sized sequel where you get to be in Gotham and shit. Go around saving actual citizens and doing regular city-type stuff in an even bigger location. *drool*

I thought Batman Arkham Asylum was much more like a metroid game than anything else. You have that same progression (see an area you can't get to, find new awesome item = Profit!)

I like it more than the second game, although that is tits as well. The combat in the second game is improved, the challenge rooms are great craic. You are missing out, Morrigan.

I agree that AC has the most fun combat system known to a gaming man hands down, but that doesn't make it less of a button masher. I mean, armored guys are fine and all, but once you press the sequence to stun them you pretty much X X X them to death (well, unconsciousness, because you're Batman and everything) like you would everyone else. And countering doesn't make it less of it either, since every button masher that's considered even remotely good usually has some basic tactical elements to it (defense/evasion/countering, target prioritizing etc).

That is, unless the definition of a "button masher" implies just that, a game where you press only one button to win without any use of tactics. In that case my definition of the term is wrong and I stand corrected.

I think it's much more nuanced than what you're saying. Whenever you stun an armored guy there's usually a few other guys trying to hit you, so usually you can't focus on the stunned guy and you have to avoid or counter the others. The enemies never really give you a chance to mash X over and over again. That is some great combat design, the combo system had this amazing feel to it. It's what made the challenge rooms so addictive for me. I was genuinely annoyed when I didn't react fast enough or see an enemy getting ready for attack, losing a combo I had going. Some of the score requirements were merciless!

http://ca.ign.com/videos/2012/09/05/the ... ended-demo
This game will rock my world.

Does look impressive, but also looks like something I'll never play. Oh wait, PS3, of course I'll never play it.

Very cool. He went through that hotel in a completely different way than in the public E3 demo too, so I'm relieved to see that there actually seems to be very little scripting in there. In addition, Naughty Dog seem to have finally realized that you can be cinematic without taking the control away from the player every 5 minutes, which also bodes quite well.

AA was a love letter to TAS 90's Batman. How can you not like Batman?

Indeed, HellBlazer. Though that aspect (taking the controls away sometimes) didn't bother me too much in the Uncharted games. This game looks truly brutal and innovative. Even in the calm between confrontation, it doesn't look any less captivating. I'm interested to see more of how the girl helps you in combat, and some different environments.

Video isn't loading... my initial impressions of early videos of that game are pretty mixed. It just looked too much like Uncharted and other modern games out there where the game-plays-itself most of the time. I seriously can't play games like that for longer than 30 minutes before I get bored (took me weeks to beat Uncharted 2, when it's damn short). So I dunno, but I'll be curious to see this footage sometime if I can.

I'd like another Crash, is that too much to ask?

Yeah, you've got it pretty much completely wrong mate. That's what happens when you make a judgement based on nothing.
So far, none of the footage shown has been a cinematic in any way, you're in control of what happens 100% of the time.

I was passing judgement on what I had seen previously. It just looked like a more violent Uncharted with some FUCKS thrown in, but I'd like to watch the video if it worked.

Button smasher, GTA-like open-world, and superheroes. Why yes, that sounds exactly like my kind of game! You know me too well.


-_-

I'm not crazy about superheroes either but Arkham Asylum is the best console game I've played in the last decade. And yes I've played Dark Souls, which I thought was rubbish.

I agree, 100%!

I love how he takes the ladder away without it crossing their minds that she could have climbed down on it.

Psh, who uses ladders when you can just jump down?

Thanks for your opinion, now that I know it's completely worthless I will be sure to never touch those Batman games with a ten foot pole.

Agreed. Button mashers imply no need for timing and you can spam button presses. If you button mash Batman you'll do a punch on one thug and then whiff cause you had Batman try to punch the guy you just knocked out. You have to punch one bad guy, move in the direction of the next bad guy and punch, and so on and get in this rhythm and understand the environment to know who you can punch next. And during this whole time you need to know when to counter cause someone is trying to attack you, use gadgets for crowd control or to take care of guns, and attack certain people from behind.

And wow at that Last of Us demo. I can see why Uncharted 3 sucked. Cause they were probably working on this.

Edit: Oh yeah beat Dragon's Dogma finally. The ending was perhaps the best part of the game in terms of story. How you truly beat the game was pretty clever. In a way you're saying "OK I'm officially done playing" when you end the game. In fact, if the story was a bit better lead to the ending a bit better, it would've been pretty cool.

"This thing is amazing and the definitive thing you like is awful" is literally the worst way to recommend anything ever.

Dark Souls is so full of rape and I love it. Had to restart a couple of times to try out some other classes, and after Warrior and Knight I finally picked up Wanderer and haven't looked back since. I think I'll stick with light armor and fast weapons for the rest of the game. The only thing that really pisses me off is his "kick" move which ends with a backflip- I was on my way to retrieve lost souls (around 4000) and humanity (5), got under the bridge with the dragon, and instead of just hitting a rat, I accidentally backflipped off the edge

Shame about the framerate lock, though. I don't mind 30fps, it's as smooth as it needs to be, but random drops to 15fps kinda get in the way. And I hear Blighttown is like that all the time...

Not all the time....but if you try to fight a bunch of stuff while panning the camera around the swamp...it chugs quite a bit.

Just played through ca. 5/6 of Limbo in two hours and now I'm stuck with a puzzle. It's a pretty cool little game actually. Very dark, literally, but at some points I had to laugh because I've got a twisted humor or something, dunno.

Last of Us does look pretty good. I like how the AI seems frightened by your presence. I still would personally love something like that, but without the girl and no dialogue even more though. You become the avatar instead of playing the guy. But it does look cool.


Yep, Blighttown in unbearable. The framerate issue was extra annoying to me because Demon's Souls never had any drops at all.

Last of Us looks like a less boring Uncharted. It's not really an achievement but it looks interesting enough.

Not true, Valley of Defilement had massive drops in the depraved village area, even moreso in multiplayer.

If this was aimed at me, I wasn't recommending anything. But you're wrong anyway - it's a good way because if you like repetitive grind-work and instant death, you won't like games which lack this. No need to recommend games to people who will hate it.

Tried PS3 demo of Resident Evil 6 yesterday (Dragon's Dogma code thing..) and i have pretty mixed feelings with it yet some hope. Leon's campaign seems to be the best, dark corridors and couple cheap jump scares and zombies, et cetera...it feels something Resident Evil should be in 2012! Yet Chris' campaign was basically a shooter, more than anything in RE4 and RE5. This got me worried.
Last campaign with Jake and Sherry was basically just one boss fight, it was hard mostly because controls and camera felt kinda stiff through the whole demo. I heard its just because the demo, controls has been fixed in actual game which is great. Hand-to-hand combat was fun, to beat the shit out of those filthy arabian mutants.

Yes, theres less than month for the release, lets hope for the best.

El Gigante of RE6:

Just jumping in to say Rocksteady deserve awards for realising that your videogame can have a fighting system that

- has some complexities (minor as they may be, while I was starting out it took me a while to remember all of the combinations for quickfire gadgets and the new special moves)
- is extremely simple to use (this button punches, this counters, this stuns, this dodges), can be challenging (multiple people attacking at once, guys with armour, shields, knives, guns, stun batons AND guys throwing stuff? Bring it on)
- looks spectacular
- is really, really fucking fun

Jump over that guy, throw a freeze bomb at that guy, take that guy's baseball bat off of him and snap it, punch a load of guys, jump into the air and throw batarangs at everyone, pin someone down on floor and snap his arm, electric shock to guy with sledgehammer so he hits his friends, use someone as a springboard to fly through the air and crush someone, etc. Fun fun fun.

Seriously.

It's hard for me to get excited about most upcoming games. I'm more into the shit that came out around 2004 - 2009 that I wished I could be playing. To that end, I've finally started getting into the rhythm of Oblivion. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but the pacing seems a bit off compared to Morrowind. I have to say I found the latter much more compelling. I also have GTA IV coming in the mail, based mostly on how I played the fuck out of GTA 3 and Vice City in the first years of the 21st century. Been playing Dante's Inferno, Bayonetta, Lost Odyssey, Dark Souls (I got out of the asylum and need to work up the endurance to attempt fighting those skeletons again. I chose pyromancer just because I thought it sounded cool, I didn't think it would make the game any easier or hader.), Ninja Gaiden 2 (I think I will restart this on "normal" mode. Playing through it on hard without having beaten one of the easier modes is more frustrating than fun). I have returned or will return Fable 2 and Dungeon Siege 3. Fable 2 was just such a spectacular failure, I don't even want to talk about it. All I'll say is I dropped all expectations I had from the Project Ego days, and I was still disappointed by a stupid, stupid game. That god damn yellow trail is just there to hide the extremely flawed level design. Fuck that game. Dungeon Siege 3 just happens to be remarkably boring and mundane. It feels like I'm playing a graphically enhanced Diablo 2 that was simultaneously stripped of all its charm. It's not a terrible game, but it's not worth $20 something when there are so many other games I could spend that money on.

One game I am looking forward to is Aliens: Colonial Marines.

I played a demo for one of the batman games, I think it was the new one (Arkham City?). I thought it was fun but it didn't make it want to go out and buy it. But subsequent reviews, and actually playing games like Dante's Inferno and Bayonetta, reminded me that I'd probably get a kick out of AC as well. The critical acclaim also has me considering it. I can probably find it for under $30, maybe under $20 used if I'm lucky.

Anyone remember Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Arcade)? Best soundtrack ever, awesome concept. Just everything that made 90s arcade gaming rule. I miss it...

You're doing it wrong. But good luck.


I don't. Thankfully Dark Souls isn't like that unless you really, really suck.

I think we established awhile back Expedience is pretty terrible at games?

Dark Souls is everything modern Castlevania should be.