Welcome to the Next Level, a.k.a. The Video Game Thread Options

[bump909]

Eden is now out on the PSN. Also GT5P TV tomorrow! (for US at least)

[zeden]

I am?


I'm suffering Soul Calibur 4 envy. Damned lack of cash.

[Jubei]

Suffer away fool, it rocks.

The bug news is obviously the Star Wars characters. I've got the Yoda version. The Yoda story is total pants. Basically while he's hiding on Dagobah, but before Luke meets him, he feels a 'disturbance' but dismisses it, then it gets stronger and he realises Vader is going after it, so he goes too. Pretty weak. Also, while Yoda's moves look cool as, they are pretty slow, oddly, which makes him hard to play with as a lot of his moves have quite low range. He does do a little leap forward to grab though, which is cool cause you can leap onto peaple's faces.

I haven't got Starkiller yet, you have to complete arcade mode with Yoda but I haven't gotten round to it.

Otherwise, very much as I remember it. It still has the slightly cobbled together feel of the original Soul Calibur, the characters i remember are all present and correct, as well as other characters from later games that I haven't played before, and a bunch of bonus characters that I haven't really tried out yet. I still love it. Mostly played online, whoch works really well. You get the occasional slow down, but it affects both players and I presume is the fairest way to deal with any lag. I certainly never felt like I was being unfairly bitched by the host.

[Nonus Aequilibri...]

Decided to get Geo Wars 2 anyway. Bloody addictive game. Only had a quick go last night but managed to get my Evolved score up to thirty something million.

[sweetbutinsane]

I wonder, is there any ship on Oblivion that isn't haunted? I currently have two quests to complete that both involve ghost infested ships. Damn ghosts!

[zeden]

Suffer away fool, it rocks.

I suffer no more.
Trade ins are a god send. Bye bye Pokemon Pearl and Green, hello Soul Calibur.

Got to agree on the Yoda plot front, it was pretty poor. I was getting the hang of fighting as him earlier but I've come across a big problem whilst playing as him. Moving forward makes him jump. A well timed, or lucky, sidestep at the edge of the ring leaves Yoda jumping off the stage to his death. Pretty crappy.

Thankful to say that Asteroth still fights almost as he did, bar a couple of move changes of course.

Not sure what I think of the create a character, aka make a new costume for an existing character. Each piece of equipment changes your stats so it's not so much a case of making a character you like the look of as opposed to making a strong character.

Not been online yet but I've got a 2 day gold trial thingy so I'll probably come on tomorrow to try and get the achievements over the weekend.

[Jubei]

get the achievements over the weekend.

I was quite appalled to see you get a 5gp achievement just for putting the disc in your Xbox. Weak.

[monkeyman]

I was quite appalled to see you get a 5gp achievement just for putting the disc in your Xbox.  Weak.

That is terrible

I suffer no more. 
Trade ins are a god send. Bye bye Pokemon Pearl and Green, hello Soul Calibur.

Got to agree on the Yoda plot front, it was pretty poor. I was getting the hang of fighting as him earlier but I've come across a big problem whilst playing as him. Moving forward makes him jump. A well timed, or lucky, sidestep at the edge of the ring leaves Yoda jumping off the stage to his death. Pretty crappy.

Thankful to say that Asteroth still fights almost as he did, bar a couple of move changes of course.

Not sure what I think of the create a character, aka make a new costume for an existing character. Each piece of equipment changes your stats so it's not so much a case of making a character you like the look of as opposed to making a strong character.

Not been online yet but I've got a 2 day gold trial thingy so I'll probably come on tomorrow to try and get the achievements over the weekend.

I was sorely dissapointed by the opening movie as well, it was fucking lame. Compared to the other openings I know (the original game and more recently SC2 and SC3) which all had great openings, this one was shite.

The story mode seems very very shallow as well, even more shallow than SC3. I believe I had 6 fights and it was over, and the end cutscene is about 20 seconds long and ends with some text....I played the story as Vader and it was pretty easy. I don't really like his moves though. I'm going to see if i can learn to play as Hilde, I like her armour and weapons.

I have played online, I believe I have 6 wins and 4 losses.
I mostly beasted the first 6 wins, but the last 3 people I fought soundly kicked my ass. I had mocked someone earlier for not blocking and realised it's something I wasn't doing either. I think I need more time to remember moves and whatnot in the tower mode, as I keep using a limited set of moves.

The lobby system for the online portion is terrible, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, I find it a lot easier just to go to quick match and fight anyone of any level.
The online is pretty damn solid though, there is a "ping" meter that is shown before you accept the fight with whoever it is you will fight, if it's below 4 I wouldn't bother, i did fights like that and my button inputs were taking a second or two to actually appear on screen, 4/5 in the the little bars is just like playing someone sitting next to you (though I did notice a bit of stutter when trying to 8-way run at times).

As Zeden said (and Hayleigh pointed it out to me as well) the character creation has shot itself in the foot a bit, as it seems that it's much better to dress your character for the stats the clothes give rather than how it looks (but I think if you fight online in standard mode the clothing stat effects and that don't actually come into play, so it's not an issue there).
It seems they've downgraded the creation a bit compared to 3 though, you can only choose faces, I think in SC3 (though my memory is fuzzy) you could choose faces, eyes, noses, lips and beards etc, which was a bit better.

The tower mode is kind of cool, but really, the offline portion of the game is really lacking. Story mode is weak, arcade is just fights; tower mode is the only thing that would keep me interested. If I didn't have people to play with or online connectivity I would be pretty dissapointed.


Still, I am online so it's not really an issue. They seem to have kept Mitsirugu mostly the same, though now some of his moves can only be done in Mist stance, but they've also improved how he goes into the stance (when pressing a directional but in and the stance change buton he'll duck low, which is useful in some cases). He has some new moves, or moves that do similar to what they used to do, and I havent noticed anything thats been removed. I really need some practice in tower mode or whatever to remember everything.

[Atara]

I think it is cool. I chose some items on character creation t imprve my stsa but when I finished it put everything back to zero. I gots to earn it.

Story mode is lame, but it isn't really the focus I guess. Shame for me that playing Chris is pointless because I never played this game and know nothing.

He did get his ass handed to him by some people on higher levels which I kind of enjoyed though.

[Nonus Aequilibri...]

I was quite appalled to see you get a 5gp achievement just for putting the disc in your Xbox.  Weak.

I'd still not rate that anywhere near as bad as Call of Duty 2's 50G achievement for completing the tutorial...

[frostitute]

The Simpsons had an achievement just for pressing start at the title screen

[GundamGuy_UK]

I know there isn't normally an orange Chaos Emerald (except in Sonic R, but the less said about that game the better), but I saw this in a shop and couldn't not buy it:



I'll just have to hope I someday come across another gift shop selling them in different colours...


In other news more related to gaming, I've been playing Pokémon Diamond for 75 hours and I still only have 7 badges. I've got a team of 6 and those are the only Pokémon I've ever caught (other than Dialga, but I don't use Legendary ones), and I've just been intensively levelling all the time.

It used to annoy me that you can finish the quest with a team of Lv50 or so, and then you have a huge amount of fighting the Elite Four over and over to train them. So I decided right from the off to just have a team and focus on them, and be Lv10 before the 1st Gym, Lv20 before the 2nd etc. So currently my team are between Lv75 and 80, waiting for the last Gym.


This also means that when I do finish it (after about 90 hours, I guess), I've got all the Pokédex to fill and the game will last me for ages.

[monkeyman]

Im tempted to restart my game of Pearl as well, the story of all pokemon are basically the same, but i still enjoy playing them.Might give it a shot after I finish FF tactics

[GundamGuy_UK]

Diamond and Pearl do try and put a bit more into the story, but it's not changed a huge amount since Red and Blue.

Still damn fun, though.

[zeden]

I was sorely dissapointed by the opening movie as well, it was fucking lame. Compared to the other openings I know (the original game and more recently SC2 and SC3) which all had great openings, this one was shite.

Couldn't agree more. Not only did it lack action but the music was utterly generic.
Agreed about the ending too. How did they manage to cock it up again after SC3s return to form with multiple endings per character? A minute of garbled half formed conclusion and a sentence that almost always seems to involve not knowing what happened tot he character isn't enough.

Finally figured out the critical finishes last night so I sat with my buddy Dave and worked through the lot of them in practice mode. Bar a few really cool ones, Seigfried and Algol in particular, they're not flashy enough for my tastes. The biggest disappointment on that front was Rock and Astaroth having the same finish when other clone characters like Amy or Cassandra get their own.

Finished getting to the top of the Tower of Souls, though I've got almost all of the hidden treasures to get. Finished at least half of the story mode as well. Really missing Chronicles of the Sword this time around, I can see myself putting the single player down once I've gotten a few more achievements.

Got a brief play on the online too and have to agree with you Chris, below 4 on the connection rating and it's a waste of time. Shame I'd been schooled three or four times before really paying attention to the time delay. For some reason the xbox can't configure the dns now so I'm without a connection to keep going on that front and get the fight on all arenas and win ten fights achievements, it's a bugger.

One thing I've spotted but I'm not sure what it does, in the options menu there's a downloadable music option. Presumably there will be some more tracks on the way, but it's an odd choice for DLC I think. Surely new stages and characters would make more sense? I can only think that the older Soul Blade/Calibur tracks might come up on the marketplace.

Edit: Just looked at the marketplace after sorting my connection out and lo and behold there's already a bunch of stuff for SC4. There's a bunch of music from SC1 at a stupid price as well as an armor pack. The music I can cope with, heck I'd just download the tracks online for free and put them on the console if I cared, but the armor is a slap in the face. Why should I pay for what ought to have been in the game. DLC seems to be an excuse for games makers to squeeze more cash out of punters for features that ought to have been in the game from day one.

This post has been edited by zeden: Aug 3 2008, 03:48 PM