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Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 21:16:46 GMT -5
I prefer Cybernator, but I still think Ranger-X is pretty great ;p It's just a bit too easy and a little short.
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Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 18:05:01 GMT -5
of alex mack
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We Dare
Mar 10, 2011 11:24:03 GMT -5
Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 11:24:03 GMT -5
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Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 11:14:30 GMT -5
I loved Alan Wake's writing and atmosphere (although it did get a bit samey as the game dragged on), but it was soooooooo repetitive  |
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Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 7:13:03 GMT -5
My biggest problem with Doom 64, and the biggest reason I haven't finished it, is that the stick strafes and the c-buttons look around.
:S OMGGGG it's so hard to deal with. It really, really is. Weasel I heard there was a Doom 64 fan-made PC port with mouse support, you should -probably- give that a whirl instead of the actual thing.
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Post by kitten on Mar 10, 2011 7:11:04 GMT -5
Excellent score for 3 bucks. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 16:36:43 GMT -5
I can think of a couple of instances off the top of my head where I'm pretty sure that this is impossible. There's the assault on Ghirlandaio, which had one or two tanks directly along the main axis of advance, well supported by minefields and snipers(who get no op fire, but lancers are slow). Then there's the mission toward the end which ends with you destroying the super-tank of one of the Emperor's lieutenants. There's a tank at the beginning of that mission which is supported by shocktroopers behind sand bags. Ghirlandaio - Run a scout carefully up the right side (I suppose you could do the left, as well, but I always went right) and capture a base behind the tank, spawn the lancer from the base and then have them take out the tank. Jaeger's Tank - Move the Edelweiss up to the closest base and capture it, then end your turn. On the next turn, you'll have enough command points to blow its armor off in a single turn by repeatedly spamming it with a lancer, then you can either run another up behind it or just kill it from the front. Neither of those strategies are complicated or difficult to devise, and they're commonly considered two of the game's most difficult missions. The strategy for taking out the Ghost Tank in VC2 - something you probably didn't do, as it required a lot of grinding to get to - requires a lot more tactics. The first time you played VC1, the tactics to succeed weren't as obvious. Given your knowledge from VC1, VC2's campaign would definitely feel easier. If you were to explore outside the campaign, you'd find a wealth of content considerably more difficult and requiring much more strategy. Unfortunately, there's a lot of fluff to sift through to get to the more difficult parts and an emphasis placed on caring about what rank you get. If you ignore rank, optional missions and optimizing your army, you're missing out on where VC2 really shines. It's completely reasonable to dislike - or even hate - VC2 because of its emphasis extra crap making it more directed to players willing to sift through hours of filler content. I'll agree that from the perspective of someone just wanting to beat the game, that it's very disappointing. However, to accuse it of being devoid of strategy is something I find it incredibly wrong to accuse it of. A-Ranking all of VC1 is a breeze compared to A-Ranking all of VC2, or even beating every mission on VC2. It doesn't matter how big a map is when your objective is so streamlined. When you're under assault from multiple directions and forced to hold down multiple objectives (ala VC2), it's a lot more difficult than to just run to a particular area and capture it (which is most of what you did in VC1). Huge maps often hurt the mechanics of VC1, making it so that expediently finishing a mission required taking the unit with the most movement (the scout) and having them zip from point A to point B. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 15:36:29 GMT -5
To be fair, I think you're taking this personally when it's entirely a subjective issue. You're really missing what we're arguing about if you believe this. It's not a matter of me trying to convince him that it's a good game, merely that its mechanics require more strategy to perform well at the game than VC1 did. I suppose if you only go through the campaign without caring about your rank, you could argue it requires a roughly similar amount, but, overall, VC2 is more complex and difficult. There are a lot of reasons to think VC2 is a bad game that I wouldn't find contestable, and I went over quite a few of them in my review. Claiming that it's devoid of strategy when considering the first one not to be is just incorrect, though. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 15:30:14 GMT -5
Yeah, vertical action on a horizontal scroller generally doesn't do well. Haven't people had similar complaints about the arcade Super Contra? And that only had one screen, rather than 2 you could switch between. I think by "people" you mean "me."  I have complained about Super Contra being a horizontally scrolling game on a vertical screen (using these same words) on at least 4 separate occasions on the site. The problem with arcade Super Contra (and to a lesser degree, arcade Contra) is that it's basically half as "wide" as it should be, as opposed to Contra 4, which is more "twice as tall." Contra 4's space from the left to right side of the screens was fair, but enemies constantly spawning on the left and right sides of the screen in Super Contra made the pacing way too twitchy. To put it a bit more simply, Contra 4 felt like they stacked two TV's on top of each other. Super Contra felt like they pinched the TV until a quarter of the screen was knocked off both sides. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 15:18:19 GMT -5
]My style of play is really neither here nor there- I played the second game in the same way that I played the first, and the battles failed to generate the narrative moments that the first game had in spades. No more straining every nerve to take out an enemy tank- in VC2, you could usually base warp in, pop it in the ass, and kill it instantly. No more instances of an overmatched scout holding off wave after wave of enemy attacks, because in VC2 you either didn't need the scout to begin with, or used him/her briefly, then base-warped them off the map in lieu of another squad member, because VC2 only lets you have 6 people on the field at once. You're heavily, heavily over-romanticizing the first game, and using some incredibly poor examples while doing so. Yeah, you can base warp behind a tank in VC2. In VC1, the way I killed every single tank was to instead just walk directly behind it and then shoot it (I could generally do this without even having to use the caution command, which was removed in VC2 for a reason (along with other commands, which if not removed, often went up in CP cost). Tanks in VC2 typically have more powerful interception fire and a greater variety of defensive and offensive protection, which would usually prevent you from just waltzing up behind the tank and blowing it apart, which was very easy to do in VC1 in nearly every instance. And no more instances of an overwhelmed scout fighting off hordes of guys? This rarely happened in the first game, and you're given many more opportunities for an entrenched character in the second game to hold off enemies (especially given that you need to control positions far more often in the second game, whereas the first game would have missions that generally ended after running a scout into a specific area). By leaps and bounds, the best experience I've had with the Valkyria Chronicles franchise is playing the first game for the very first time and learning the ropes. Upon replaying the game just once, strategies to break the game became painfully more obvious and removed a significant layer of what made the game such a great first-time experience. What I think has happened in your situation is that you didn't bother replaying the first game - and, when you went to play the second game, you were expecting it to offer a similar experience as the first time you played the first. However, familiarity with the mechanics of the first game led you to blaze through the campaign under the assumption it was easier and less complicated. The first game is much less complicated in strategy required to ace it, and I think you very unfairly expected the second game to somehow be just as unique an experience its first time through as its predecessor was. If you had played the second game first, I'm pretty confident that you would consider the first game to instead be the disappointingly simpler and easier of the two. There are a lot of reasons to consider the second game inferior to the first (and there are many reasons I still consider the first a better game), but discounting the added strategy in the second game and slandering it as "devoid of challenge and strategic thinking" is just low. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 13:46:46 GMT -5
I am failing to see how claiming that there are ways to play VC2 which render it even more devoid of challenge and strategic thinking is an argument in its favor... VC2 was, on average, more difficult than its predecessor, and included a huge amount of bonus content that only made the difficulty even higher. I've seen you sing the praises of VC1, but to go and call the sequel "devoid of [...] strategic thinking" when the first game had considerably less required to ace it is just ridiculous and makes you sound foolish. I loved the first game, but the strategy rarely became more complicated than "use caution on a scout, beeline it toward the objective" (aside from DLC, I've done everything in the game, including getting all medals and A-Ranking every level, including the hard skirmishes). Did you try A-Ranking each level or playing any of the post-game/optional content in VC2? While you can easily clear each the campaign by employing a lot of fencers and ferrying them around, it's impossible to A-Rank a large number of missions using that strategy due to their incredibly low and sluggish mobility. Each class has its uses and I found myself using variations of each of the 5 base classes regularly in the more difficult missions, especially when going for an A-Rank (aside from the DLC, which I've not played yet, and the final bonus mission, which I haven't grinded out the ducats for, I got A-Ranks on every mission in the game within the week or two the game was out). It's really peculiar to me that you're criticizing VC2 what was more wrong with VC1. Do you not consider ranking an important part of the game? I suppose that if you're aiming for low ranks, the game could be considered easier than the first (especially if you've already played the first game and are familiar with what is effective), but to a more highly-skilled player, getting high ranks and finding ways to efficiently go through an area require much more skill than anything in VC1. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 11:04:16 GMT -5
Armored tech rush? lol
You were clearly playing the game wrong. They're good, but there are far, far more efficient ways to play. They too slowly to even be considered a "rush" in most cases.
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 8:51:19 GMT -5
Well, he's working on it, but I'm not sure to what extent. Probably a lot of animation for several of the characters. It's what's been keeping him from updating Boxer Hockey regularly, as of late. |
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Post by kitten on Mar 9, 2011 5:41:19 GMT -5
You might want to pre-order Okamiden from Capcom's website, it comes with a free mini-plush.
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Post by kitten on Mar 8, 2011 18:12:30 GMT -5
Is the balancing any better? Considerably. There's seriously a surprising amount given the game has so many classes, even though shocktroopers tend to be the best for most situations (scouts lose their potency quite a bit thanks to the game having multiple objectives and screens, but are still quite useful). Scout rush is no longer the solution to literally almost every problem, which is great. I actually wrote a review for gamefaqs if you want to read it - www.gamefaqs.com/psp/961429-valkyria-chronicles-ii/reviews/review-143100 |
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I have complained about Super Contra being a horizontally scrolling game on a vertical screen (using these same words) on at least 4 separate occasions on the site. The problem with arcade Super Contra (and to a lesser degree, arcade Contra) is that it's basically half as "wide" as it should be, as opposed to Contra 4, which is more "twice as tall." Contra 4's space from the left to right side of the screens was fair, but enemies constantly spawning on the left and right sides of the screen in Super Contra made the pacing way too twitchy. 
