All purpose ILG thread for "What are you playing", Wii posts, and other misc. chatter

I'm also playing Three Card Monty w/ my credit cards, but that don't count.

WOOT
WOOT

I hope you were using the stylus. I only had trouble with that when using the d-pad.

I did just download the TADS system again, I had a lot of fun with that last time.

:(

(I'd look for one this Spring)

but somehow clubhouse games DS is seeing me thru this difficult time

If baby Mario yells "Hey! Hey!" one more time...well. You know. I'm on World 5 now. I've never beaten it, and haven't played it since I rented it back when it came out.

(IE dude, Boris is hardly a local phenomemon)

dude, i know, i'm just curious is anybody has to put up w/ him being their MP.

from the nfo

"Parallel Worlds is a fully hacked version of Zelda 3 (aka A Link to the Past).
A majority of the game has been changed. There may be a few rooms which can be said to be similar to some from the original game.

General changes involve:

* Brand new Overworlds, I promise you won't find an area which is unchanged!
* Brand new Dungeons, all dungeons are completely different from the original!
* New house indoors and caves, some of these you may find similar to the original game.
* New Graphics, a lot of the graphics have been changed.
* New Screen layout, similar to Ocarina of Time yet not exactly the same.
* Some new music, the original game had great music, these are not to be changed :)
* New Story, while some maybe similar to the original game, but it's intentional.
* A lot of other changes, and surprises!"

http://static.gamecrazy.com/images/ads/general/hpa_ad_preorder.jpg

...Hyakujuu-Ou Golion, as the lion-based Voltron series is known in Japan, is just one of the series planned for inclusion in the game. Joining it will be shows like Nadesico, Majinkaizer, and lots and lots of Gundam. A total of 18 series will make the cut this time around.

[...]

The "W" in the game's title is in reference both to the DS's two screens (the Japanese associate "W" with "Double") and to the fact that the game's scenario is split into two parts. Banpresto played similar tricks with the scenarios for the Alpha Gaiden and R entries in the series, only this time, the second scenario will follow the first after only a slight time gap.

Super Robot Taisen W is set for Japanese release on March 1st. Does the Voltron connection guarantee a US release? Hells no! But, thankfully, DS software is region free, so interested parties will be able to import.

I still love this game.

For a slightly different vantage point, here's a bit here about a gamer's life in Baghdad, from the vantage point of a 23-year-old Iraqi guy who plays the games off of his own generator. I can't read the actual article, which is slathered in so much Mtv.com flash abortion that my work computer won't load it.

If someone would be so giving as to c&p this shit onto here, i'd be grateful.

Baghdad gamer shares stories; others being told on new blog.
By Stephen Totilo

When a 23-year-old Iraqi in Baghdad named Wisam used to play the Gulf War computer game "Desert Combat," he didn't play as his countrymen. He fought with the American-led coalition forces. Most Iraqi gamers he knows choose that side.

It's not because they have a great affinity for the Americans, who Wisam refers to as "the invaders." There's a more practical motivation, he revealed last week during a late-night interview with MTV News from his home in Baghdad, where he was up at 1 a.m. and home because of a government-imposed curfew. "Let me just tell you, we are impressed by your guns."

Last month Wisam appeared in a five-minute video interview on the blog Alive in Baghdad. With "Final Fantasy XII" running idle on the TV behind him, he talked about his life as a gamer in the capital of war-torn Iraq. The broadcast of his tale was made possible by other young men, including Wisam's interviewer, Omar Abdullah, 22 — a Palestinian correspondent for the blog who has lived most of his life in Baghdad — and Brian Conley, a 26-year-old American who has run Alive in Baghdad as a counterpoint to mainstream-TV coverage of the war in Iraq since late 2004. All agreed to talk to MTV News about the blog, about gaming and why it was so important to tell Wisam's story.

Conley cited a comment he heard from an Iraqi refugee and blogger in Canada who had been asked why she bothered to share her story. " 'If we can tell interesting and compelling stories, it makes it harder for them to shoot us or to kill us,' " he recalled. "The most important thing for us to be doing now is to be saying, 'These are the people in Iraq and this is what they have to say.' "

Conley can't explain why he became fascinated with the country. He remembers watching Operation Desert Storm on CNN. He took Arabic in college and was taught by an Iraqi professor. Curiosities grew. In 2005, he was finally able to visit the country, and with a zeal for reporting, he befriended Iraqis and launched Alive in Baghdad to channel their stories. His team is now spread from the U.S. to the Middle East, and the site has aired dozens of now-weekly five-minute video interviews with Iraqis. Alive in Baghdad has featured conversations with Iraqi police, artists and one of its own correspondents, who spoke of being kidnapped and beaten by the Shiite Mehdi Army, led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Conley knew that subject matter was engaging a certain audience but wanted to expand its range even further.

Abdullah, who had filmed many of the interviews in Iraq, was game. "We've been trying to make a show about what people do at nighttime," he said. The government curfew in Baghdad starts at 11 p.m. on most nights, though Abdullah said people strive to be home hours earlier, before it gets dark. "People just want to get home so they can stay safe."

It was hard, and continues to be, to find interview subjects. "A lot of people are very, very scared to talk on camera in Baghdad," Abdullah said. "You don't know who's your enemy. You don't know who's your friend. Shia killing Sunnis. Sunnis killing Shia. Sunnis fighting the U.S. military. They'll go on in one circle."

Abdullah came up with one workable idea that was close to his heart. A gaming aficionado who reads GameSpot, regularly raves about "Metal Gear Solid" and will voluntarily stop talking about sectarian violence to rant about the graphics in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," he suggested talking to people about games. Wisam was willing.

It turns out that Wisam is often willing to talk about games. He sat for Omar's camera and agreed to talk about that aspect of his life in his war-torn country to MTV News. But in both cases, despite the seemingly innocuous subject matter, he asked that his last name not be used out of concerns for his safety.

What's the gaming life been like in Baghdad? It has followed a path familiar to many European gamers, where the Amiga computer was the premiere gaming system at a time when the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated in America and Japan. Then the Sega Genesis was big. ("Mortal Kombat" on that machine was a Wisam favorite.) Then came PlayStation. Nintendo was never big. The dominant games were always the soccer titles, Wisam said. He couldn't find many folks like himself who, in his words, is a " 'Final Fantasy' freaker."

Wisam says he learned much of his English from "Metal Gear" and "Final Fantasy." (He had trouble with "Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King" because the English in that game is spoken with British accents.) Most of the games he buys are bootlegs, sold for about a dollar in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. "Before the invasion, we could buy a lot of games," Wisam said. "The games are available if you go outside. But maybe I'll get killed by a car bomb or [improvised explosive device]."

The American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime changed Wisam's taste in games. He and his gamer friends used to enjoy first-person shooters like "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty." Then a real war started around him. "We hate the attacking, the gunfire in games," Wisam said. "We started to hate it." In fact, there's only one game with guns he can still tolerate. " 'Grand Theft Auto' is the exception. Because 'Grand Theft Auto' is like us."

Abdullah concurs, saying San Andreas looks like his city. "It was very, very similar to Baghdad. We were like, 'Oh my God. These are the same actions that happen in Baghdad.' There are some places that are divided. For each place, there is a gang ruling that place. You can go down the street and drive any car. If you want to jump on a motorcycle, you can do it."

Electricity is sporadic in Wisam's neighborhood. The local generator is on from 4 p.m. to midnight. To power his console, Wisam got a gas-powered generator. To get the needed gas, he waits in lines at a gas station, four hours at a time. He spends about $200 a month on electricity, money he says he collects from rent on some businesses. Otherwise, he doesn't work, which frustrates him. "I recently graduated from the Baghdad University English Department. I'm useless."

All this involvement with Western culture might surprise some Americans, but Abdullah said it has always had a foothold in Iraq. "Some folks in the United States, when they think about Iraq, they think they are just some people in a village riding a camel or whatever," he said.

Not so. Abdullah says he's a metalhead, for example — and that he's not the only one. Until a few years ago, a Western music station played several hours of metal in Iraq a day, he said. "I can assure you that there are more than 50 to 100 thousand Iraqis in Baghdad listening to Metallica right now," he said. He recalls walking through Baghdad wearing a Metallica T-shirt before the war. Neighbors would cheerfully flash a familiar heavy-metal hand sign. "A lot of people wave the devil horns in Baghdad, and if the situation is a bit calmer and the security is a bit better, you can come and try it yourself." The current situation in Iraq, however, compelled Abdullah to leave the country. He's in Syria these days.

After Wisam sat for his interview with Abdullah, Conley tapped him for translation work. Conley has tried to make his Alive in Baghdad effort reciprocal, providing tips and equipment, extra work and friendship to the Iraqis who help him make their stories public. He's got the whole arrangement tethered with shoestrings, burning through $2,000 a month while drawing about 10,000 viewers to each video interview. "We think we have about enough money for one or two more months, and then we're done," Conley said.

Visitors from around the world visit Alive in Baghdad. Each video has a comments section, providing a window not just to the wide-ranging support Conley's project gets but the criticisms of those who see it as propaganda. He resists what he calls "this really bullsh-- simplification of the conflict in Iraq that, 'Oh, they hate each other, and we need to get out of there because it's not our civil war.' " Conley clearly has a position, but he hopes people come to the site with an open mind. "We're trying to get people to think a second thought."

Conley, Abduallah and Wisam are all in their 20s and closely connected through new technology. But because of where they live or what they feel they've been called to do, they're also close to danger. All are on the move.

Wisam hopes to be out of Baghdad soon. "Next month I'll leave, Insha'Allah [God willing]," he said. He says he'd like to play the next "Grand Theft Auto," as would Abdullah. The games come out in the fall. In a sense that's close. But it's also far, far away.

Neighbors would cheerfully flash a familiar heavy-metal hand sign. "A lot of people wave the devil horns in Baghdad, and if the situation is a bit calmer and the security is a bit better, you can come and try it yourself."

This is awesome(and sad). Coalition troops need to hold Guitar Hero playoffs w/ the locals. It's like when you'd see vid of iraqis kicking around a football w/ off-duty British soldiers.

Abdullah came up with one workable idea that was close to his heart. A gaming aficionado who reads GameSpot, regularly raves about "Metal Gear Solid" and will voluntarily stop talking about sectarian violence to rant about the graphics in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"...

gamerz R da same da whole world round

Hey Tom, how's Rocket Slime? Is it worth it? Can it actually keep your attention long enough to beat it?

the IGN review contains this sentence

above all else the game is just fun to play, moving and feeling very similar to a more mainstream version of Zelda

the last phrase of which does not compute.

Cave Story! xp

Castlevania Rondo of Blood (the original Dracula X, the game that came before SOTN) is on VC, too.

I've had Red Steel 2 for a few days and it's surprisingly good. It looks fantastic. The MotionPlus-aided swordplay isn't perfect but it's not as imprecise as I expected. It can be rough on the arms, though; I can only play in hour-long bursts before having to take a break.

I'm wondering if there will be an HD remake for ps3 since move = motion+?

Sid Meier's Pirates coming to Wii:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/sid-meiers-pirates-coming-to-the-wii

day one buy for me

Thanks to all the Cave Story mentioners above! I'd never heard of it but just finished it and it was a really great experience. All the right things from Super Metroid without failing to bring its own attractions to the table too.

jamescobo what have you been playing lately?

anyone have a nintendo club PIN they could spare? i'm 20 points (less than 1 game) away from platinum status. they're included with the manuals in nintendo-published wii and ds games.

nevermind, i got some post-play surveys and got platinum.

Monster Hunter Tri: tiny fucking fonts that I can barely read until I get new glasses, but made up for by beautiful immersive scenery and nerd lols aplenty.

ok so i was hyped up for Light Trax cos i love the game that its based on, but holy shit did Skip deliver - the minimal bleep music & art style, the new freeway mode, the improved more tactical gameplay - its a shame i don't smoke weed anymore cos this seems to be designed for that

http://tinycartridge.com/post/755325106/we-built-this-retro-city-vblank-on-rcrs-eight-year

hope i get a chance to play this at some point, really like how it's looking. virt music = always a plus

ok Wii Party looks like it'll probably be pretty fun, esp. when drunk (fun starts to 1:20)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Law3W7oqElQ

playing that game with those guys looks like needles in eyes
fun concept tho

Those guys should die.

new Metroid gameplay trailer, looking good. apparently the cutscenes are unskippable though :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olYjeeZkjP4

so I'm thinking about getting a Wii this week. Two questions:

1) is this a silly time to get one? Some of you have your ears close to the Nintendo rumor mill: is there a "nu-Wii" coming soon? If so, is it just going to be Wii HD?

2) have we ever put together a list of "essential" Wii games the way we did with the DS? I basically want Wii Sports + SMB + Super Mario Galaxy 1/2. What else do you think is a must?

I don't think I would expect a new wii anytime soon. This cow still has more milk to give.

1. no. but try to buy a pack that includes Wii Sports Resort.
2. Resident Evil 4 on Wii is essential.

Next Wii coming, but not for at least a year, probably early 2012.
Wii has plenty of those "quirky" games that PS2 had, so everyone's going to have a different idea of what the good games are, just depends what you're tastes are really. don't ignore the Wiiware & Virtual Console either, although Nintendo completely fucked up by tieing your purchases to the console and not a user account ie. no way to redownload the games if your console breaks or to the WiiHD when it comes. so dumb.
anyway this is a pretty good thread about whats available http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=396775

I feel less and less sure a next Wii is coming anytime soon. It seemed to make sense for them to do it ASAP, to fight piracy and the HD advantage, but it doesn't make sense for them to do it considering how well the Wii console and Nintendo first part Wii software sells. In any case, it's definitely at least over a year away. As time passes I also feel less sure that Nintendo is going to release a simple Wii2/WiiHD upgrade (especially now that both MS and Sony are releasing their own motion control schemes). It seems much more likely to me now, that when Nintendo releases their next console they will again try to do something new and fresh to make it stand out - something more that just Mario games in HD.

a handful of Wii games not mentioned I've played a lot of are the Tiger Woods games (sublime with motion plus), Mario Kart Wii, a Boy and his Blob, Grand Slam Tennis, Geometry Wars Galaxies, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Castle of Shikigami III, virtual console classics and Cubello.

so..... what's up with the wii? does it still exist? they're still making games for it? anything great? i know two people who bought one when it came out years ago but i don't live near either of them anymore so i'm very out of the loop wii-wise. the last things i got to play (in v. limited quantities) were mario galaxy, which looked great, and the paper mario game, which looked pretty lazily designed but possibly still fun. is it a better system/better library of games than the gamecube (which was awful imo, very few decent games)? how is this thing doing in japan? is it still in every living room being played by everyone from ages 8-80 like they said it would be? v. curious to what the consensus is on this system now. is it worth getting one as an only game system? are there any games that make exceptionally good or unique use of the controller thing? sorry for the bombardment of questions but i feel like i haven't heard anyone talk about this thing pretty much since it came out, and it seemed to have a lot of promise at the time.

i guess what i'm looking for is not really an answer to every one of those q's per se, but maybe just an evaluation of the system at this point in its existence

seems like nintendo is basically grinding out nostalgia fodder and driving in neutral as far as the american audience is concerned. i think the gamecube library is stronger.

i have a wii and i hate it. it functions as a netflix streaming device for my bedroom and thats pretty much it.

I just got a Wii & I love it. But I hate shooting games, & really love Wii Sports / Sports Resort: I mean fuck, just for tennis alone I think it's worth it (you don't have to worry about the heat, or chasing down stray balls (lol)).

there's actually a fuckton of Wii games coming out in the next few months which I want v. much:

- Sid Meier's Pirates! (tbh what I REALLY want is an iPhone version but since I sold my PSP I'll take whatever version I can get of this amazing, amazing game)
- NBA Jam
- Kirby's Epic Yarn
- Epic Mickey
- Epic Donkey Kong Country (not really called that but had to keep the theme going)

games i have enjoyed this year : Galaxy 2, Trauma Team, Metroid Other M, Light Trax.
looking forward to : Kirby, Trackmania, uhhhhhh maybe Epic Mickey. and Cave Story if it ever gets an EU release.
basically though the party is nearly over, 3rd party support has pretty much died out & Nintendo are concentrating on the 3DS.

i think my big problem is how quickly the whole waggle control nonsense became a total deal breaker for me. which given our future overlords kinect and move is kinda loltastic tbh.

like, i could give a fuck about it not being HD or whatever, i just dont want to shake a controller around because it isnt actually fun.

the best games tho have nothing to do with waggle, & more to do with pointer skillz

yeah i agree w/that actually - epic mickey might be promising in that respect. still say that the best wii game to date might be house of the dead:overkill but i realize that i am in a tiny corner of opinion on that one.

no, thats one of my favourites as well! the ridiculous fashion for mapping a button press to a waggle was one of the worst gameplay design ideas this gen (i'm looking at you, De Blob jump mechanic grrrr)

i like a lot of the wii games but feel like on the whole the console really underdelivered. in some ways it makes sense as the perfect 'casual' console - nintendo puts out a half dozen highly playable, vaguely familiar titles a year & no1 ever gets overwhelmed or disappointed. but both the virtual console & the breadth of titles released have been incredibly shallow & i dont think theyve done much to really ~use~ the technology.

grand slam tennis feels like it got massively underrated tho fwiw

Lamp - over 350 titles on virtual console in North America... not sure I could agree that's incredibly shallow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_(North_America)

Good, simple use of the remote in a game that came out in N.A. a couple of weeks ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQbpA2Ecrs

are all the virtual console/downloadable games ports of games for other systems?

i.e. are there a lot of cheap original games for download?

The virtual console stuff isn't ports, it's all just being emulated. All the WiiWare stuff was made for the Wii, though some of them are ports (from PC, like Cave Story or And Yet it Moves or other systems). Definitely some excellent WiiWare exclusives though too, like the bit.trip and art style games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T80Hr9m209g

Over 350 virtual console games and 250 WiiWare games (though most of the WiiWare stuff seems to be crap, TBH)

http://www.nintendo.com/games/guide#qplay=wiiware&panel=qplay

best Wiiware games are the Artstyle ones. they are cheap too.

i just dont want to shake a controller around because it isnt actually fun.

― Gerard Depardeauxnt (jjjusten), Wednesday, September 15, 2010 3:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I will disagree with this. I don't think shaking a controller is somehow less "fun" than pressing a button. Is pressing a button especially fun? I guess one could argue pressing a button is a more accurate input method, but a simple waggle can work quite well - for instance when taking in shot on goal in PES, or when playing a Wario Ware game. What you gain with motion control, in particular with Motion+ can be a lot. Like playing WiiSports Resort Ping Pong or Grand Slam Tennis - two games that are vastly improved and more immersive than traditional button press games, by allowing you to control and play more naturally, as if you were swinging a paddle or racquet & both are a ton of fun.

no i see that, i just think that its the constant implementation drive that gets me down, combined with the fact that its kind of a anti-ergonomic controller for anything other than waggle and rail shooter function. if its something that works for motion thats fine, but when it replaces something thats simply better as a button press, it irritates me, and that seems more and more common. i cant come up with a better example than de blob that zappi mentioned upthread, which comes pretty close to ruining an otherwise kinda awesome game because of the control scheme.

i mean yeah button pressing isnt per se fun, but if yer playing an FPS and they decide to make the fire button a face button instead of a trigger, thats just stupid design. i guess my main problem is that implementing the waggle by all means necessary has kind of crippled the system imo.

added bonus: replacing shitty quick time button press segments with quick time waggle segments (looking at you RE4) somehow makes them EVEN MORE ANNOYING

i guess my main problem is that implementing the waggle by all means necessary has kind of crippled the system imo.

well, to me that just reads like trademarked jjj hyperbole and isn't reflected in the reality of most of the (non-shovelware) Wii library. So many Wii games don't use any waggle at all, or support multiple control options. I never played da blob so can't really comment on that, but sounds like it's the game's problem not the system. I do agree that quick time events suck with both button presses and waggle. I think RE was the only Wii game I played that had them, and overall, I think that controlled a lot better on Wii than on any other system, so, I don't know. It's a shame the Wii is such dated tech that it couldn't do proper versions of the newer games.

Really, my main problem with the Wii is its ten year old technology that hasn't allowed it to compete graphically with current gen systems. I guess that it was a lot cheaper makes up for that somewhat. But still, games like PES look like dogshit compared to the console versions (and even worse than that compared to PC), so much so that it makes them hard to play. And a lot of the games I played the most this gen, from Street Fighter IV to CoD 4-6 and Battlefield BC, couldn't be done on the Wii (or only in extremely reduced versions). That makes it feel like a missed opportunity. It's hard to get excited about a remake like Goldeneye when it still looks like a ps2 launch game from a decade ago.

De Blob has a short jerky waggle movement to jump and doesn't have a jump button - I think it's a fair criticism of the game but I got used to it pretty quick and it's still great fun.

i love my trademarked hyperbole like the son i never had :)

Kirby game = very good; Donkey Kong = not quite as good but still fun

yeah, I just started the DK game last night. fun but I don't like the way that the controller-shaking mechanics break up the gameplay flow.

I'm enjoying it more than new super mario bros wii so far, though. ultimately, that one didn't do much for me.

really wanna play the kirby game