Semjaza

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Elite [/i] [B][b][color=003399][size=1]In fact, you're not great now[/b][/color][/size] [/B][/QUOTE] There we go. Now lets repeat this 600 times and maybe he'll get the point. The banner isn't that bad I think. It does look a little odd with Kurt's face going off the edge. I'm assuming it's like that just so you could keep "Nirvana" in the center, but you might want to look into other ways of doing it.

Like I was saying to you, I don't find the random dungeons that bad. None have been horribly large so far, and they have all been set up pretty well. I don't mind running through them, as each floor introduces something new, such as a monster or whatever else. Plus, after almost every floor you get a bit more story (a lot of floors don't even have dungeons at all). It isn't so bad. And like I said... Breaking weapons isn't a huge deal really. It doesn't happen that much, and as you raise your weapons stats it becomes even more uncommon. In terms of magic and guns... Well just pretend that they need MP or ammo. It works in the same way, you just repair it when it's empty. There are a few minigames and such in here too. There is a nice little fishing game, set up very much like in OoT. The big difference is that there are many kinds of fish, and apparently later one you can get an aquarium and raise them. There is also a golf minigame according to the book, but I've not tried that yet. Georama has been introduced (it's fairly early on, I've been taking my time leveling up). It's pretty well done.

Things like that are enabled because it prevents flooding. It's generally used just for posting, but it would be possible for some idiot to come here and flood a bunch of PM boxes really fast if it wasn't on. There is no way for anyone but an admin to change that, and if it was changed it would affect everyone. I guess you'll just have to be patient :D

It is more powerful that the GBA spec-wise, but has plenty of its own problems. Apparently, very few of the games are actually good and the better looking ones on it are very prone to slowdown. The system also makes use of Smart Media cards, which hold a lot... But the downside is that games have loading times on this thing. Smart Media is very easy to get, and combining that with the ability to attach this thing to a PC, very few big developers would ever bother because of the ease of piracy (Capcom announced support, but they weren't making any of the games, they gave out licenses, much like on Game.com way back). It's never going to make it out of Korea for many of those reasons. That and Nintendo has crushed any viable handheld there has been so far from actually reputable companies (Tiger, Sega, SNK, Bandai, etc). The thing has been out well over a year now.

I registered on my first name in like July or August of 2001.

I feel both have their ups and downs... I find PSP to be far more useful when I don't want everything to be smoothed out and antialised. Photoshop likes to do that automatically to anything you attempt to resize, and sometimes that's a very bad thing. That and PSP is a hell of a lot cheaper if you are a "good" person ;)

This is what I suggested when he PMed me. I can't think of much else to do outside of these, as when I had this problem with IGN the second option fixed it for me. [QUOTE]I'm not really on the Tech Staff heh, that's just Rikku... But let's see. There are few things that come to mind... I'll assume you are using Internet Explorer, as that usually is the same reason other ones don't work. Here are some options... 1.) The first thing would be, yeah, your cookies. I'd try clearing at least the OB ones out and see what happens. I used to have a similiar problem at IGN. 2.) The second thing to do would be to go in the Internet Options under Tools. Pick settings under the Temporary Internet Files box. Make sure "never" or "Everytime I start IE" aren't checked. Most likely they aren't. If "automatically" is checked, try out "Every visit to the page." On my IE, it's set to automatically, and that works fine. But changing that is worth a shot. Change it back if it doesn't help. 3.) The last thing I would do is make sure your clock is on the right date. I know it sounds really stupid, but I've had this happen before accidently. --- I'd try the second option especially, as I had a similiar problem and that fixed it. If you're on AOL, this is most likely the problem. AOL likes to keep cookies and not refresh the page correctly, even if you tell it to.[/QUOTE] So yeah, apparently none of these have worked for him.

Rangarok Online has some nice art heh. Too bad it's pay for now, for a damn beta :( Anyway, pretty good, although I like your Contradiction one more personally. The cable looking things and the K came out rather well.

Man this turned out longer than I expected, I added sections, so skim what you want. I think these are kind of well done though, so reading them all is worth it. I've never played the original, as so many people told me bad things... But there was such a good buzz behind this one that I picked it up. I can't compare this to Dark Cloud, so I don't really know what is better by comparion and what is not. So I'll just talk about what I think about it in general heh. That said, there might be a lot of stuff in here that people might not even need to read, even if they wanted to. =============================================== Dark Cloud 2 basically is the story of a character named Max, and his adventures as he travels the world. The story begins with him going to the Folsam Circue Troupe show in his city, but he winds up finding that the leader is actually a bad guy bent on finding a certain stone that is in the city. Max winds up leaving the city with a few friends (the odd thing is that no one has been outside of the city for at least 15 years, the game explains why and I won't ruin all that), trying to find out what exactly is going on, why the stone is important... and also to find Max's long missing mother. Now that that's out of the way... This game more or less plays like Kingdom Hearts, only it's actually fun (don't hurt me, but I hated that game heh). There are town areas you can run about, talking to characters and buying things and so on. When you get to certain points, you enter a dungeon. The first dungeon in the game is the Underground Water Channel that leads out of the town, and is made up of 6 areas or so (the next dungeon-ish place is huge and has at least three times that). [b][u]Gameplay - Dungeons[/b][/u] So this is how the first one is laid out: The first area is the entrance, which you basically just go through to have some story told to you. The next few parts are the actual "dungeon" itself, where you run around opening chests and killing monsters. The dungeons are randomly generated (which many people hate), but I've found that they actually wind up being pretty well done. After that is a miniboss, another dungeon area, a main boss and then the exit. Between most rooms a bit more of the story is revealed, which is surprisingly decent. I feel the random dungeons make the game a bit less boring, especially if you want to collect medals. The medals are totally optional, but basically, in each section if you fulfill certain goals (they are listed before you start) you get a medal. You get something special for collecting so many, but I have no idea what that is. It's like an extra challenge of sorts, as medals generally require you to defeat all enemies in a certain time span or use only items to fight and not weapons, etc. [b][u]Gameplay - Combat and Weapons[/b][/u] The whole combat engine is very similiar to OoT or KH (again, no idea how the first was). You can lock onto enemies using Circle, and pressing it again lets you target another nearby enemy. X attacks, and depending on what direction you are pressing the attack will change (much like Zelda, forward+attack does a jump slash, sideways+attack does a side slash and so on). You have a weapon in each hand... in the case of Max (there are more characters, I'll get into that in a sec), he has a large wrench in his right and a gun in his left. Holding down L1 and pressing X allows him to use the gun. After attacking so much with any weapon, it starts to lose its WPN power. When that reaches zero, the weapon breaks and must be repaired (in the case of guns and magic, each shot lowers it a point it seems). There is a little meter displayed that shows how much you have left, and it warns you when you are close to breaking. This doesn't happen that often once you strengthen your weapons and I've found it isn't a big deal. You can use repair powder to fix anything, and it's not that hard to come across. To use items, you either go to the menu or you press Square to use the active item. You can equip up to three different items at a time (if you have like 10 bread loaves, that's counted as one equiped item). You can just use the d-pad to cycle between them. While pressing R1 you can press X to pick things up as well. Boxes and such litter the dungeons, and you can throw them at enemies. They sometimes contain nice items (repair powder in particular), so they're worth breaking. Hitting an enemy with one makes them dizzy and vulnerable to attack. I don't know that the game is hard, but I die somewhat often because I don't pay attention to how much life I have a lot heh. I use a lot of healing items otherwise, and block rather often. You can't expect to get very far if you just run and hit everything til it dies. There is a bit of thought in it. [b][u]Gameplay - Item Spectrumizing and Weapon Synthesis[/b][/u] The other thing involving weapons is synthesis. On your travels, you'll find a ton of different items. Each item has a property (flame, durability, attack, etc) that it can be changed into. All you need to do is go to the item screen, pick an item and choose spectrumize. You then choose how many of that item you want to convert, and it does that and creates a new item from it. If you convert for example 10 of one item of the flame property, it will create one 10 point flame spectrumizer item. This will cost you 10 synthesis points to use on your weapon. However, if you only had like 3 available you're screwed and have to wait til you get more synthesis points. So if you're smart, you'd only do three at that time. That new item can then be applied to a weapon to raise its stats (there are about 12 stats total). Like I said before, it requires synthesis points, which apparently you get from fighting. It takes a while to raise these, but it's obviously worth it to make your weapons stronger and less prone to breaking. There is a point where a weapon cannot take anymore synthesis anymore (it can, but its stats won't be raised) and the game will tell you this. You basically shouldn't waste anymore time on that item and should either build it up, buy a new one or spectrumize it and apply it to another item (which is what you should be doing, as this is the point of all this). Each weapon can be built up like I just mentioned. If you go to the item screen, you can select the item and choose that from the menu. The game will show you your various options to change into, and what the stat requirements are. If you meet them, you can change your weapon and its appearance, as well as upgrade it's general power. [b][u]Characters and such[/b][/u] Like I said before, you can play as other characters in this game. Max is the main one, but you will meet a few others that you can play as instead. The main one is Monica, who appears on the box art. Once you get her, you can switch at any time by pressing L3. Monica is a bit quicker and uses magic instead of a gun (which can also be altered using synthesis). I don't know what others you can fight of as instead... But if one member dies, you are allowed to play as the other. If both die, it's Game Over time. There are other various supporting characters that you can have join your group (apparently the main use of this is so that they are with you when you reach the town building part - Georama). You can also bring one with you into the dungeons though. You can't fight as them, but they give you various benefits if you have them. Max also gets a large riding robot named Steve really early on. Steve is incredibly strong (at least 4 times what you are at the start), but has his downsides. The main one is that he uses fuel. Walking around as him uses fuel (he is very slow compared to the other characters as well). That's not a big deal, but what is is that his fuel is also his HP. If he gets hit, he loses some. You have to worry about all this in addition to worrying about his weapon breaking. Luckily there are items to fix both of these (and a character will also fill him up free of charge). [b][u]Inventions and More Steve[/b][/u] Steve is introduced to you thanks to Cedric, your old inventor friend. However, Steve has some kinks to work out, so you have to invent something to keep him going... This thing turns out to be an Energy Pack. Of course, how do you invent this if you have no idea what it is? Cedric hands you a camera and tells you take a picture of three different "components" of the invention (in this example, they are milk cans, a belt and some pipes). You have to run around the town and take pictures of each of these for an example. When you have the pictures, you go see Cedric who explains the new Make option in your menus. Basically, anything you take a picture of (you can hold 30 in the camera) could be important and possibly could be used in an invention. If it can be, it will have a light bulb icon in the image you took. If not, well the pic is probably useless. You can then transfer those light bulb idea pics into your invention notebook and delete the photos (you won't ever need them again). So after this, you go to your menu and pick "New Invention." You then pick the three ideas that make up the Energy Pack. It's now added to your invention list. Of course, it turns out you need parts to make the thing... So he gives you some money and you buy them at the store. You then can go in your Make menu and pick Energy Pack from the Inventions list and viola, it's done. Upon talking to Cedric you are told how Steve works. In addition to what I mentioned already, he has his own experience points system. There is a little counter that adds up for each point you get, and you can cash those in for new abilities for Steve. Basicly you can totally customize the guys powers, and from the sounds of it add new additons to him later on (perhaps using inventions too, Cedric wasn't clear on that). [b][u]More Camera Goodness[/b][/u] This is actually an incredibly cool feature I think. You can take pictures of nearly anything, and most of them will turn out to be usable for ideas (trashcans, the river, bushes, barrels). You'll find notes around the town that will give you ideas on what materials will actually make an invention (of course, you can just get lucky guessing too). There are about 20 ideas in the first town alone. You can also take pictures of enemies or friends. Any important character will strike a pose if you take a picture of them... Kind of funny, but apparently not useful. You can also take pictures of "scoops," however I don't know what that entails as I've yet to find one. Taking good pictures that give you ideas or scoops raises your photography level, which apparently will help you later in the game according to the book. [b][u]Graphics[/b][/u] If anyone doesn't know by now, the game makes use of a sort of cel shading. It isn't quite like most styles of it, and is completely different from Zelda's approach. The characters are still very detailed, but they also have a dark light brown line all the way around them that makes them look hand drawn. There are times when you can mistake them for 2D sprites because of this heh. The worlds themselves are not celshaded, and are all rather detailed and well done (even the random dungeons surprisingly, but they do wind up looking very simliar after awhile). The framerate so far is fine, although I'm told there are some drops later on. I've only notice two things that bother me. You may or not notice them, but I'm running the game on an HDTV and it makes any problem 10 times more obvious. The first thing is distance blur. It makes anything far off blurry, and clear as it approaches. Unfortunately the transition between the two is very sudden. Things pop from blurry to clear in an instant. The effect itself really just isn't that well done either (SMS did it better even). Thankfully, this option can be turned off, and is by default. I wouldn't even bother turning it on. The second problem mostly seems to occur in town. If you run forward everything looks great, but if you run left or right the graphics seem to shake uncontollably in the background It's hard to explain, but is rather annoying. Otherwise, the game looks wonderful. Animation and such are great. [b][u]Sound[/b][/u] The sound is also great. Sound effects are at times a bit overused, but they are all well done. The music all sounds orchestrated so far and is also very good. The songs in each area change based on different things (for example, there is different music when monsters are near or you're fighting, if all monsters are killed in that dungeon, etc). The surprising standout is the voice acting. I didn't even expect any, let alone how much there is in this game. And the best part... It's almost all really damn good. None of the main characters are poorly done in my opinion, and basically are as well done as any popular cartoon voices I can think of. I particularly like Folsam the clown, because he sounds really demented. Whoever did that guy fit the part perfectly and I was rather impressed. [b][u]Conclusion[/b][/u] So should you get this? So far, I'd say yes. I don't know what the problems are with the original Dark Cloud that make people hate it, but this game must be very differeny considering how good it has been for me so far. Everything about the game is very well done. If you absolutely despise random dungeons I guess you should rent first. The game is more or less a dungeon crawler when it comes down to it. None of the levels are horribly maze like (and each has a map and an item that shows monster and item locations). I have found the layouts to be decent, and they remind me a lot of old NES RPGs that expected you to want to dungeon crawl all the time heh). ---- I'll add a bit more information on how other things work, such as georama, when I get to them. Perhaps they have changed that as well, but I'm not sure. Edit - Pics are down.

You still haven't said what the game is...lol

It's called "grunge" heh. And Kurt had some problems, but if you do read enough you'll find that most of them were getting sorted out before his death. He was found with his little case of drugs neatly put away, and of course with a shotgun. Like I said before, he had something like 70 times the lethal dose in his blood. He'd be dead near instantly. He wouldn't have time to clean off his seringe, put it all away neatly, point the gun and pull the trigger. It just isn't possible. But honestly, what does it matter anymore? He is dead, there is nothing any of us could have done. I really don't like having to tarnish the memory of him, Nirvana and the music with a million conspiracy theories and guesses on what really happened. No one knows. All I know is that Nirvana kicked *** and they still sound great today (regardless of how long it's been, which really isn't that long heh).

FF7 practically started that angsty trend, and I think we're still very much stuck in it (although it is definately 100 times better now). There were basically no other RPGs outside of FF6 at the time that I felt had a character like that, which is probably why it appealed to so many people (teens especially). Why don't I think it's a good scene... Hmm. It's a hard thing to say. You (Ginny) basically came up with all the reasons I don't think it was that special. The fact that there was very little interaction between Cloud and Aeris that made me care about their relationship (regardless of what goes on in Gold Saucer because you can totally ignore Aeris there if you want to... and even that was nothing special). Cloud was more or less a full of himself brat other than a few scenes up to that point, and him suddenly caring just didn't work for me - especially considering he stays that way afterwards anyway. And like you said, the animation really messed it all up. I don't care about the lack of blood at all... And I don't really mind Aeris blank expression, because I really think she [i]knew[/i] she was and had to die. It's just the whole scene was kind of eh. Cloud's complete lack of any genuine emotion other than confusion up to that point basically made anything he did seem just as thoughtless. So really... if I don't care about the characters, why would I care if they die? I simply didn't. My best friend is one of these "OMG why did Aeris have to die!?!?!" people and I've just never seen why it's a big deal. FF7 was far from my first RPG, and there were so many death scenes that were more memorable than that (there are many in FF6, FF4 and other random RPGs I think were far more heartfelt and important). I'll never understand the big deal over all of it.

Considering all the good comments you'd think people would go check out Animatrix, but I guess not heh. At first I thought you just stuffed the video in, had it convert itself and then recolor it... But it appears you did quite a bit more work than that, even on the first one. Nice job.

Office Space, one of my favorite movies... Excellent comedy that I think anyone should see, especially anyone that actually has worked in an office before heh. [b]Michael:[/b] We get caught laundering money, we're not going to white collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to Federal 'Pound me in the ***' prison! [b]Michael:[/b] PC Load Letter? What the **** does that mean? [b]Drew:[/b] I'm thinking I might take that new chick from logistics. Things go well, I might be showin' her my O-face. Oh! Oh! Oh! You know what I'm talkin' about ... Oh! [b]Michael:[/b] I told those fudge packers that I liked Michael Bolton's music. [b]Peter:[/b] Oh that is not right, Michael. [b]Peter:[/b] I think that the guy might actually be able to help. I mean, he did help Anne lose weight. [b]Samir:[/b] Peter, she's anorexic. [b]Peter:[/b] Yeah, I know. They guy's really good. [b]Michael:[/b] Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton. [b]Samir:[/b] You know, there's nothing wrong with that name. [b]Michael:[/b] There WAS nothing wrong with it. Until I was about 12 years old, and that no-talent *** clown became famous and started winning Grammys. [b]Samir:[/b] Well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?. [b]Michael:[/b] No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks! [b]Bob Slidell:[/b] What.. what would you say... you do here? [b]Tom:[/b] Look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE! [b]Peter:[/b] When you come in on Monday and you're not feeling real well, does anyone say to you, "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays? [b]Lawrence:[/b] ****, no man. I believe you'd get your *** kicked saying something like that, man. [b]Peter Gibbons:[/b] What would you do if you had a million dollars? [b]Lawrence:[/b] I'll tell you what I'd do man ... two chicks at the same time, man.

Don't discriminate against overweight people... You're just jealous of Andrew Antone's ability and talent. And I think Ken (and all of you really) know what I'm referring to lol. I don't think it's a big deal whatsoever personally, but he had to take a banner down for that reason before (like I said, if he even uses it). Oh well.

Well someone could have yelled that because of everyone getting sick and stuff from the pepper spray. Makes sense, I guess... However, the spray and the guy acting out against the bouncer are what started it all... That and if you've seen the stairwell to that place, it's narrow and incredibly steep. The place had tons of building code violations and such for what it was doing. As for Great White, what people think of their music doesn't really matter for all this I'd say heh.... But really, tt's also the fault of the club owners I'd say. They should know what the hell the band is bringing in, and if you pay attention to this stuff... This isn't the first time a band has done this sort of thing, it's not common, but it's definately not rare. The club owners often just look the other way. This time they just got screwed; it was bound to happen sooner or later unfortunately. I've not seen anything about the band itself blaming the club, all I've seen is everyone blaming the band (including the club owners) and mourning trying to find about out their kids that are missing.

This is the second club incident to happen... The first was here in Chicago, where I guess a customer got out of control and was pepper sprayed. Patrons started getting sick and coughing and everyone went nuts, and tried to get out the one tiny stairway there was to the exit. A lot of people were trampled to death, I think something like 20. More details for those who didn't know about it - This one happened in Rhode Island at a Great White concert (a crappy metal band, somewhat famous years back). They apparently do this at many shows, and always get in trouble for it. They played at a small joint and basically let out large scale fireworks inside which caused the fire (they didn't bother telling anyone that owned the place). So it burned to the ground. Originally the death count was 21, but now it's almost 100 people. Pretty sad how stupid some people can be. While it's sad these people died, I don't consider it a tragedy, in a sense that it's a horrible tragic accident and no one is to blame, as I place it all squarely on the band. They knew what they were going to do the entire time.

Yeah, Nintendo has referred vaguely to it. IGNCube claimed that Nintendo was ready to announce it months ago, but for some reason that never panned out. From what the rumors say, Retro is basically already at work on a sequel and basically all their resources are dedicated to it. Should be pretty damn impressive considering Prime was their first game. Changing... I think there are many things that could make it better. Perhaps adding some extra areas and bosses that weren't totally required to finish the game (you wind up having to go almost everywhere in Prime). I'd really like some detailed texturing too, which would help a lot (the textures get blurred pretty bad up close, but they seem great otherwise). It'd take a hit in the framerate, but I don't know that I'd mind. I'd also like Samus to turn a bit faster. That's about it. It's a real good game and I have no real complaints with it at all.

I really do think that anyone here looking forward to Dragon Quarter better get ready for one of the hardest RPGs of their lives. I'm not even remotely exaggerating that. You are expected to die in this game -- and often, over and over and over. It's practically part of the gameplay given the way the D-counter is set up. I'm not going to speak for everyone, but based on what I can tell from people's average RPG preferences here I really, really do not think many will want to just buy this game no questions asked. It has very little in common with the rest of the series, other than dragons and the basic characters (Nina and Ryu again). That's it. On the other hand, this is the sort of stuff I love... so it's of course your own call. I bought Dark Cloud 2 already. I will be playing it tonight and most likely will have some impressions up in its own thread soon.

Hmm. It doesn't seem to be going over very well with reviewers at all in the bigger magazines... Although Gamerankings.com had it at like a 80% average last I checked, the fact that it averaged a 4.5 in EGM is not a good sign I'd say.

The thing has been said to cost between $600 and $700 in an interview with the company recently. It doesn't even matter anymore, no one will pay that for what is basically amounting to a crappy computer in a console shell.

Heh. I think a certain someone will get on you about a certain little word in that banner if you ever decide to use it :p

I am very happy today. I went to the comic store to see if the Ghost in the Shell 2 manga was out finally (it was delayed last I looked). Of course it was out, so I picked up the first two issues. Yay! However, on my way out I noticed something... A Robotech mini-series comic. It's done by American artists, but based on the show. The characters are redesigned, but still faithful to the originals. Apparently they started coming out a bit ago as they are up to issue 3 already (I grabbed #0 and #1 - #1 has two covers). There is also a sourcebook comic that is nothing but information on things with some kickass art. So yes, good day :D

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by cloricus [/i] [B]Semjaza Azazel use your eyes. This one was created a while ago and was the original and I believe TN has pointed that out in that other thread. As for Liam... Yeah I agree in most cases yeah I think it's sad. Then again it?s freedom of expression and all that. So really apart from what I said in my earlier post, I don't care! [/B][/QUOTE] Use my eyes? There was a thread just created on the subject on the main page that was active (hell, it was the [i]first[/i] thing on the page and if you didn't notice TN knew about it), and instead he posts in the one that no one has in weeks that's on the second page? Give me a break. I don't know when you came in, but what I said was valid. Hardly my problem, and I'm rather tired of your attitude towards my posts in general.

I hate to even get into all this stuff, but based on all the books and articles and videos I've seen on this subject, I really don't think that's the case. He has so much drugs pumped into him (he had something like 70 times the lethal dose) he would have been dead before he even pulled that trigger (or even picked up the gun). Either way, it was his life and I don't think the want of the fans should even be included in what [i]he[/i] should or should not do. But all that is not important now at all... all that is is the mark that Nirvana and Cobain left on the industry and many people. Finally kicking it the industy its *** and showing people that there was still some great stuff possible and bringing things back down to earth (I think on a whole, music was stagnating at that time - in terms of what was [i]popular[/i] at least). I'm starting to think that's all happening over again honestly.