Game Releases for the week of 10/02/05: Pretty weak week.

[schild]

I paid $50 for Black & White. When I found out it was a spanking, sleeping and sacrifice simulator I got very angry. I'm about to pay $50 for Black & White 2, because I'm Pavlov's Gamer. What? Simulation? Of any sort? He might have gotten it right this time? God Tomagotchi?

* schild lays money on counter.

[Shockeye]

Speaking of simulations...

I was over at schild's yesterday and I was playing Nintendogs. I was getting some kid of perverse pleasure out of rubbing his virtual dog's crotch.

I think I have a problem.

[Sky]

Well, that's where the Molyneux hate comes from. B&W was almost an incredible game...just like all his stuff. I had a benevolent creature, took care of the village and I spent a lot of time in the sandbox level just transplanting trees and sandboxing. I once tried the second level and it was so shitty I started a new game and never left the first level. Great concept, shitty game. And I despise RTS, so that didn't help, and also means I probably won't dig the sequel.

I was getting some kid of perverse pleasure out of rubbing his virtual dog's crotch.

As my librarian mate is fond of saying: "Statistically improbable phrase!" I got her started on that when I caught her saying "Why would they put the head louse on the pubic hair? Of course it's not going to be able to navigate quickly!"

Ahh...lice racing. More fun than B&W.

[Jobu]

B&W1 would have been a great game, if it came with just the first level and only cost ten bucks.  I enjoyed teaching my little AI tiger to set fires and shit on people as much as the next guy, but the actual game played like the shallowest RTS in history.  While I was dicking around figuring out how to get my people to build houses and charge up my Prayer-O-Meter without starving to death, the enemy was casting Own Ass on my village.  No real "units" per se, except maybe the aforementioned pyromaniacal fecophile feline, just a "kill enemy" button for you to save up the mana to push.  That's gameplay there.

Right here is where we diverge. I *never* thought of the B&W as an RTS or tactical game of any sort. I just thought of it was a silly god game with a whacky creature that I could play with, and peasants whose needs I could flippantly ignore and exploit. That half of the game was superb.

By the way, did anyone EVER teach their creature to be productive and useful?  Or did the entire universe just laugh and say "Aha, look what he just crapped on!  Good boy!"

I had a monkey once who became amazingly benevelant. I leashed him to the town hall, and he would cast food spells, water the crops, play with the kids, and help the lonely villagers have sex. Then one day I forgot he was leashed to me while I was razing the enemy, and he came back to town all fire and brimstone, and started kicking buildings. It was awesome.

[Signe]

I found a copy of B&W for under $5 at a shop along with a bunch of others.  Maybe some day they'll be worth money as they will never be opened.  I can hardly wait!

[Soln]

Black & White 2 (PC):
Might be good. Might be fun for 10 minutes. There's really no way of ever knowing with this Molyneux stuff. I can't even think of anything interesting to say.

I for one am quite looking forward to this. The first one, for all it's somewhat bugginess and incompleteness, was still a lot of fun. I loved nothing more than playing with my creature, and watching him poop on villagers while I taught him how to throw fireballs. I'm a sucker for sandbox gameplay, and especially ones that support quirky behavior and choices by players.

I really tried hard to like that game, but every time I tried B&W1 from the start I was forced to go through that fucking tutorial which takes >30mins to do.  Fuck that.  If you want to reroll with a new creature, or you fuck up some part and want to restart, why shove people through another mind numbing experience of basically cutscenes and really annoying voiceovers (good & bad help bots)?  Plus the UI was confusing -- the reverse of most people's mouse controls with the inverted hand you used to grab things with... gah.  Disappointing.  This will have to unwrap itself and jump in my PC for me to want to play.  And I loved the Populous franchise, good fun, great stuff.

Edit: forgot Sam's post -- I got buggered with that savegame defect a few times, thus forcing rerolls, thus forcing the testicle crunch described above.  B&W is an excellent concept and was pretty well executed, but it needed (dare I say) more sandbox to give players a better sense of sim/strat.  Otherwise, they needed to trim iit down a lot to get you into whatever game narratives there were.  I never got that far into any after the newbie isle.  Couldn't fight or protect my new villages worth shit.  Bad experiences, won't buy.  Want to buy, won't buy.

[Reg]

They did eventually make a patch so that you could skip the obnoxious tutorial. They never did get rid of all the save game bugs though. I think one of the devs was a newbie to Windows programming and got overly enthusiastic about using the registry. I've never seen such a ridiculously over-complicated save game method in all my years of programming.  It absolutely cried out for unrecoverable bugginess. Hopefully, the new game doesn't have these problems.

[Rasix]

Virtua Tennis (PSP):
Rasix is reviewing the game I believe, but in very, very short: I likey.

Looks like it's not coming in until Thursday.  Which means bumblefuck Best Buy won't get it in until sometime next week. I may have to save that gift card for something else.

PoPoLoCrois (PSP):
About time the PSP in America got a classic style RPG. I'll be getting this and not just for the very happy colorful cover art.

EBgames is now listing this as coming out on November 8th.  Somewhat disappointing as I have been hearing some good things about this title. Looks to have a rather endearing artistic style to it also.

[schild]

Hmmm. I just got a preorder call from Gamestop saying mine would be in tomorrow by 4pm.

Might want to try...there.

[Rasix]

Hmmm. I just got a preorder call from Gamestop saying mine would be in tomorrow by 4pm.

Might want to try...there.

For which game? I'm going to assume Virtua Tennis. Anyhow, yah, Ebgames is like 2 minutes from my house.  Gamespot, not that much farther.  I'll have it. 

[schild]

Hmmm. I just got a preorder call from Gamestop saying mine would be in tomorrow by 4pm.
Might want to try...there.

For which game?

Popolocrois.

Also, Virtua Tennis will probably be in at Best Buy by tomorrow afternoon. If not, very sternly ask one of the dumbass motherfucker goons that works there to go in the back and get it. If he can't, get a supervisor to PROVE that Virtua Tennis hasn't come in.

[Rasix]

Very nice.  Wife may raise an eyebrow over getting two games right after I had my oil/transmission(do they make this shit out of gold or something, yeesh)  fluid changed in my car.  But it's not like I wanted that. 

[WayAbvPar]

Popolocrois.

That sounds like something that Preparation H would heal.

[stray]

Very nice.  Wife may raise an eyebrow over getting two games right after I had my oil/transmission(do they make this shit out of gold or something, yeesh)  fluid changed in my car.  But it's not like I wanted that. 

The solution to that problem is DIY. Then the games are no big deal  .

[Yegolev]

Talked to a friend who is excited about B+W2.  I told him about my undisciplined cow and his diagnosis was that I had bad parenting skills.  "You need to beat the fucking shit out of him more.  Positive reinforcement won't work; you'll have to positively reinforce every good thing he does.  A little negative reinforcement goes a long way."  The real gem: "If you are good, you can sweep his legs out from under him and then punch him on the way down."  Looks like I was totally mis-playing the game.

[Pococurante]

Makes sense - also try forcing your cow to sacrifice his first born and at the last minute jump out of a bush chortling "j/K n00B!" and serve them both cabrito. Entire cultures will come flocking to you with that little trick.

[Reg]

In related news, The Movies went gold yesterday. That's the one I've really been waiting for. I may give B&W2 a miss until it hits the bargain bin. So far, the reviews I've seen aren't terribly positive.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61124
http://www.totalvideogames.com/articles/Black_&_White_2_Review_8601_2558_0_0_10_0.htm

They already have a patch out and applying it destroys your save game. Bad news for the people that have the unbridled optimism and naivete to play the game fresh out of the box thinking that it's actually finished.

[Sky]

Somebody needs to issue a cease and desist to Molyneux.

[Merusk]

After reading that review in Eurogamer he scored the game way too high.  Either he was told he couldn't give it the 3 it deserved, or he's alloting too much for the visuals.   That or, the much more horrible choice, it IS a 6/10 when compared to the other shitty games we get these days.  Go bell curve!

[HaemishM]

In related news, The Movies went gold yesterday. That's the one I've really been waiting for.

Oh fuck yes, I've been waiting for the Movies for months now.

[Sky]

This'll be fun.

Hammy's review, that is, not the game itself. Just a hunch.

[Bunk]

In related news, The Movies went gold yesterday. That's the one I've really been waiting for.

Oh fuck yes, I've been waiting for the Movies for months now.

Well shit, another game I won't have enough time for. I've been waiting on this one long enough that its pretty much guaranteed to disappoint, but I'll try it anyways.

So Schild, where's the B&W2 review? We all want to hear about the new fangled, hi-res monkey spanking and poo flinging goodness.

[WayAbvPar]

In related news, The Movies went gold yesterday. That's the one I've really been waiting for.

Oh fuck yes, I've been waiting for the Movies for months now.

I had forgotten all about this. I am officially excited again!


Perhaps we should engineer some sort of contest for the best flick.

[schild]

So Schild, where's the B&W2 review? We all want to hear about the new fangled, hi-res monkey spanking and poo flinging goodness.

I forgot it was an EA game and refused to buy it. There are ways they could have enticed me to purchase it - unfortunately releasing a patch on launch day that breaks more shit and having it in the same shitty shitty thick dvd case that Battlefield 2 came in are not good ways to get me to lay my money down.

[Murgos]

Makes sense - also try forcing your cow to sacrifice his first born and at the last minute jump out of a bush chortling "j/K n00B!" and serve them both cabrito. Entire cultures will come flocking to you with that little trick.

Heh.

[Ironwood]

Talked to a friend who is excited about B+W2.  I told him about my undisciplined cow and his diagnosis was that I had bad parenting skills.  "You need to beat the fucking shit out of him more.  Positive reinforcement won't work; you'll have to positively reinforce every good thing he does.  A little negative reinforcement goes a long way."  The real gem: "If you are good, you can sweep his legs out from under him and then punch him on the way down."  Looks like I was totally mis-playing the game.

Um.  Your Friend has Issues.

[Pococurante]

Um.  Your Friend has Issues.

/chuckle

"If the game lets me it's an interesting use of game mechanics."  I'll never forget that quote from the UO dev.  :-D

[Yegolev]

If I used "has issues" as a discriminatory factor in choosing friends, I'd be really lonely.  Normal people are boring.

[Ironwood]

Just don't ever buy him a real pet.  That's all I'm saying.


And now for a friendly game of tethercat.

[Surlyboi]

Digital Devil Saga and Trauma Center: Under the Knife have been pushed to the 11th of October.

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (PSP):
Total shit.

What do you want from a game advertised by some random dork in tighty-whities?

[Jain Zar]

You had to remind us of one of the dumbest videogame ads to ever air didn't you?

At least the game and the commercial and the liscense should probably cost EA money instead of make them some.
Provided enough word of mouth gets around at how awful the game is anyhow.

[voodoolily]

Necro! Schild locked my DS topics. Oh, well.

Got a $100 gift card to Best Buy from the future father-in-law, so I picked up some games for the DS. Trauma Center is pretty cool, kinda like an anime General Hospital. My only problem with it so far is TOO MUCH DIALOG!! Also, it goes from "yeah, I totally got the hang of this" to "OMFG these aneurysms keep asploding!" I've tried that episode like five times and have finally had to put it to bed for a bit.

Oh, also, I forgot to mention that I have blinged out my DS with pink and silver rhinestones. It looks AWESOME. Bedazzler ftw!

[voodoolily]

I also got Castlevania. It starts out pretty fun, but I'm in the Cursed Clocktower or whatever and I'm PISSED. I'm not a retard or anything, but it literally took me an hour of attempts double-jump and devil-float all the way up six levels to the top of the tower just so I could get to the key to the clocktower, and now I'm faced with the four most annoying aspects of every game I've had problems with: 1) more strategic jumping, 2) onto moving targets no less (wtf why do I hafta jump onto pendulums and spinning gears?) that dump you onto 3) spikes if you miss; and 4) the room is RIFE with floating medusa heads that turn you to stone while you're trying to jump and make you fall onto the spikes that kill you because you're frozen and can't jump off.

And again, the store has ass except for healing stuff. It does sell weapons and amor and stuff, but I got the best weapon by soul synthesis fairly early, so I haven't gotten much help from the store. Fortunately, I have the ghoul soul so I can eat rotting meat, poisonous mushrooms and mystery rusty tins without taking damage. I haven't gotten enough souls to upgrade my weapons any further than they are.

[schild]

There's a room I think in the lost village with 2 waiter skeletons right next to eachother. If you have the mandragora soul you can chuck it in there and kill them both. 1 out of 3 or 4 times they'll drop a plate of curry. That's a full heal.

[voodoolily]

Mmm...curry. I do have the mandragora soul, so I will try that. Thanks for the tippy-poo. I actually am feeling a little ADD with my DS games because I have like, 5. And Sauced is playing a shitload of games on the PS2 that are fun to watch.