What? No I ain’t got time for Minecraft.

Did just finish Rayman Origins though. We all own that game after the sales now right? RIGHT?!

@mjpilon I think that has more to do with how those particular games are designed. You’re never really set back too far in Rayman Origins and the game feels so playable that you don’t mind jumping back in. Same with Meat Boy.

For some reason though, I CAN NOT take high levels of frustration when playing 2D Mario games. I”m terrible at them and I ragequit very quickly. It’s why I haven’t finished a single one of them.

Nothing in the Steam sale has really peaked my interest so far out of a combination of a huge backlog, my game access account and my desire to lay off the leisure expenses a bit. Only thing I’ve been truly tempted by is the Walking Dead but I’ve never made it through a single Telltale series yet so I’m a bit apprehensive.

Just completed my go-through of Rayman Origins. I stopped at 200/246 and got all the teeth, so I finished with the “secret” level. I don’t understand what it is about 2D platformers but clearly I can accept a lot of frustration and insanity before I am prepared to quit. Never threw a controller but like Super Meat Boy, it came pretty close especially in the last world and the secret level. Random aside: I know Giant Bomb has already made this joke but dear god the credits are long!! Quite possibly the longest I have ever seen… and I was forced to see them twice!

Not sure what is next, we’ll see what comes in the mail next but I may play some Saints Row 3 in the meanwhile.

Dwarf Fortress…….. ummm… I watched the video Giant Bomb posted last week and I’m sorry but I can’t do it. I literally sat there faced with the insanity that was on the screen and tuned out. It’s interesting and I respect those who enjoy it but I don’t have the time to sink into a game like that.

With the vacation/ work/ holidays craziness, I haven’t had the chance to comment on my recent gaming time, so here we go *cue brain dump*:

Gears of War 3: Finally got to this a few months ago. I respect Epic for getting out of the brown grays and working in some color to the Gears world. The gameplay is still classic Gears which still drives me insane at times (I seem to have a tendency to get stuck on cover for some reason) but it was quite enjoyable. Happy I finally got to it but I harbor no real desire to return to that world again.

Child of Eden: Arrived from Game Access after Gears and “finished” it in about a week. I don’t own a Kinect but wanted to play it anyway. I don’t think lacking the hand waving capability really impacted my experience anyway. I loved the variety of visual styles and the accompanying music for each level although for the life of me I couldn’t really tell what the heck is going on in the overall “narrative” but I don’t think that is really the point anyway. Gameplay is “meh” but worth getting through for the audio-visual ride. Biggest negative however is the game’s artificial way to lengthen playtime by essentially requiring you to replay levels to advance to the final levels. NOT COOL GUYS. I understand that 5 levels makes for a short game but in that case, make more levels instead of forcing multiple replays. All in all, a worthwhile rental. Nothing more.

Diablo 3: I enjoyed my time with it so far but I didn’t get past Act 1 and haven’t had the desire to go back in a few weeks. Now part of that may just be my natural aversion to gaming on my Mac/PC but maybe not….

Assassin’s Creed Revelations: Enzo’s story should have ended at Brotherhood. While I still enjoy the core elements of the game, it feels so tired and stale after the previous two ACs. Ubisoft’s response to complaints about the mechanics from AC2 and Brotherhood seems to have been “let’s just add more mechanics and gameplay elements so that people ignore the fact that we didn’t change anything”. The tower defense stuff is pointless and not very fun. The Desmond’s journey is interesting from a background info perspective but just feels bolted on at the last minute. The “notoriety” meter is a cheap trick to slow down your progress. The fact that I still need to go to the Bank to collect my money and that I still need to go back and forth from the map screen to the game screen to navigate after this many iterations is a joke. At least there was some global storyline closure/ progression in the end but really….Assassin’s Creed 3 can’t come soon enough to breath some new life into this series.

Saints Row 3: Only played about 15 minutes of this but quite possibly the most ridiculous, over the top, insane first 15 minutes I’ve ever played in a game. You know you’re in for a ride when the game starts with a parody Star Wars-like scrolling text. This should be the kind of crazy fun that I hoping it is…. will get back to it once I complete the next game which just came from Game Access…

Rayman Origins: First the positives. I LOVE the art design and the music. I could sit there and stare at the screen for hours. Love the originality of the first 3 worlds so far and just how much detail Ubisoft put into each level. However, I have been quite frustrated at times with the controls. Maybe it’s just the Mario jumping “feel” that is built into me but I have blown many jumps just because I haven’t fully picked up on the momentum on the characters as they move. Very much enjoy the game and will get through it but no chance in hell that I try to fully medal each level. Would probably drive me to insanity.

*brain dump completed*

I will try to avoid waiting so long between updates next time :p

And I’m 30 minutes early but whatever….Happy 4th to the American contingent of the Squad. May it be as awesome as the 1st was for us Canadians 🙂

@angryjedi The little I had played of Blacklight Retribution (no server situations for Asia/Oceania as of yet, post-beta) makes me think folks like @impynickers and @cgrajko would enjoy it for being somewhat of a NeoTokyo successor…mixed with FEAR and a hint of GitS for flavour. Plus, it has mechs.

But the crown jewel of F2P for me as of last week? Tribes: Ascend. I’ve played a fair whack of the F2P shooter market over the years, and until now (and Blacklight Retribution, actually), they’ve all quickly fallen into the same old Korean MMOFPS grind where weapon cost/limitations scream for real cash. Hell, I recall OPERATION7, which was mechanically one of the finest shooters in the F2P market, but the weapon maintenance costs were geared so that if real cash wasn’t plonked down, you were going to have gun jams every second squeeze of the trigger. That’s a bit heinous for anyone bar snipers.

Tribes is not gimped, Tribes is not shackled to the old freemium concepts.

Tribes is magic. Everything feels good. It feels like a sixty dollar title. Dedicated servers, acceptable unlock system, perks that don’t wreck everything…I haven’t been this intoxicated by a multiplayer shooter since Brink (and I’m fairly alone in that regard).

@impynickers Rayman…what a joy to behold.

I’ve actually been burning the midnight oil of late with a particular PSP game as a balance to Rayman Origins, but let me collect my thoughts and write it out when the witching hour isn’t bearing down on me.

@beige Just as long as you roll back into busting out electoons and snagging lums at some stage down the line.

Should be a hoot, that Ni no Kuni.

Tangentially…I mentioned this to @feenwager, but good heavens, Rayman Origins OST is by far the finest game soundtrack I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing/listening to in years. Not only that, but it continues to be utter soul food.

@bowlisimo Magnificent work on the co-op. And yeah, quite strange with the reinforcements aspect, I never really was sure what the caper was in the grab-bag of who gets what. But it’s glorious, regardless.

@feenwager *hands you a boutique ale*

—

In regards to my own Feenwager Challenge list, I’ve hit a bit of a tech issue on my laptop…namely an ageing machine and wearying guts that now, for some reason, heats up and could conceivably cook steaks to perfection. I can still play things, provided I don’t stress the GPU, but the PC has now taken a backseat and I don’t really turn it on with the same relish, burdened by the knowledge that graphically-pressing titles are now potential machine destroyers. I cannot justify a new laptop for gaming, so for the time being, I’m enjoying the odd spot of FUEL, a touch of GalCiv2, Reign: Conflict of Nations and some curiosities like A.I.M. 2 (a Russian sandbox trader/combat game set in a robot-infested future world)…

…but, all is not lost. Really loving the little Vita, primarily at this point for Rayman Origins. Now, a few folks – including @feenwager – have enjoyed this one prior, and I just want to laud artistic and aural accolades upon Origins. I’ve been a big Rayman fan since the old days, and always wondered why Mario copped all the praise when there’s so much creativity and visual delight (and it’s so subtly dark and morbid just below the surface in some areas) in these French gems. (Rayman 2 over Mario64 any day of the week! Très controversée!!!)

Anyway, I can’t say much more than hasn’t already been said. It’s a good challenge, has brilliant production values, character and level design from a scribbler’s perspective is second to none (I still cannot get over the attention to detail in the simple things like foliage crops…take a moment to gaze at the arrangement of ferns on the various planes in the first couple of levels). A very inspired piece of work.

Coming up next month: Resistance: Burning Skies, then the month after, Gravity Rush/Daze. So very keen.

All those old sidescrollers were as tough as balls, so I consider that accurate to the genre.

@rocgaude man up, son. If I can finish the game, you certainly can.

@feenwager‘s right about Rayman: Origins. The difficulty makes me wish I could just buy the “art of” book and DVD instead of playing it, though.

Rayman Origins is the only game I’ve played this year where I can be stuck on one level for 35 minutes and still be enjoying myself. Definitely not as brutal as Meat Boy. More in an SMB3 sense.

Rayman Origins, first world, real goddamn game design.

The last level of Rayman is Meat Circus levels of fuckingdifficult.

However, it can be beaten. I’m living proof.

I feel it’s only fair to warn you, the final few levels of Rayman venture past fun and challenging into downright retarded.

Two more Rayman thoughts, cuz I know you love ’em…

I happened to read two Rayman reviews today, and they were both appropriately glowing. The annoying thing was that they both referenced how obnoxious it is that you have to collect a certain amount of Electoons (think stars) in order to access the later levels in the game. First of all, hasn’t that been going on since Super Mario World on the SNES? Secondly, it just serves to remind me that most game reviewers are rushing through these games, and their experience is going to almost always be completely foreign to me.

Also, those later levels are FUCKING DIFFICULT. Like, “Beige will be getting ready to throw his controller” difficult. At least, I hope that’s the case, and I’m not just a big ball of suck.

@redswir1 Hey, I said please.

Also, if anyone is curious whether there is enough gameplay to warrant it being a full-priced, disc-based game, the answer is a resounding yes.

I just played a level that was influenced by King mode in Geometry Wars 2. So cool.

@beige @therestofy’all

Ok, this is as close to begging as I’m gonna get:

Please go play Rayman.

Everything that all of you like in games is in this game. You’ve got your masochistic Cannabalt/Meat Boy levels. You’ve got some side scrolling shoot-em-up levels, platforming, collecting, discovering, there are a few Donkey Kong-esque (the original) levels, hell…there are even WATER LEVELS YOU’LL ENJOY.

It also has a soundtrack that I’ll bet a few of you music lovin’ vidjagame fans will want to own.

Please?

@bowlisimo Art is, of course, subjective…but as someone that persevered through all 9 zillion levels of Super Meat Boy, I think you’d be missing out if you don’t give it a shot.

@feenwager Rayman looks very French, and by that I mean beautiful, creative and stylistically off-beat. Something about its Ren & Stimpy weirdness isn’t working for me, at least from videos, but I’ve never been a Rayman fan anyway, so who cares what I think.

I’m with you though, 2D games like that are still great fun, and all the more appealing now that we’ve more or less dicked around with 3D ever since we had the technology.

@beige I don’t really have any expectations other than blonde, katana, and eventually I’m assuming the Gray Fox robo-ninja treatment. I doubt I’ll hate him. Like I said when I started this, I’m giving Kojima a lot of slack. He’s not even close to running out yet. It’s not so hard with all of this hindsight. Maybe I would have been mad in 2001 if I were invested in the series.

@redswir1 Understandable.

You know why I love Rayman: Origins so much? Because I’ve been waiting for this game for about 15 years or so. When the Playstation was released, I was all about the latest round of platformers that had just come out for the SNES: Yoshi’s Island, Pitfall, and other games where it really seemed like some artistry and advancement was really coming to the genre.

Let’s admit something: that genre ain’t broke. It’s challenge, discovery, and collecting. Nothing wrong with that formula.

I was sure that the new wave of systems was going to usher in beautiful extensions to that formula, as well as introduce new ideas that only the newer hardware could support. Instead we got Toshinden. And Jumping Flash. Look, I know we got the original PS1 Rayman games, but there was always something just…off about them.

Needless to say, I’ve been very pleased with the renaissance in 2D gaming over the past few years, but I really feel like Rayman is the first game that fulfills he next-gen Mario World promise.

Yep, it’s that good.

@feen: Yeah, it was great when I played it at Gamescom. Is there online co-op or is it strictly couchbound?

Who’s around for some DunDef tonight?

@feenwager I already did. Just haven’t had the time to boot the damn thing up yet. Might have to shimmy it in alongside Skyrim. That ain’t gonna be pretty.

Squad – Rayman: Origins is awesome. Go pay full price for it, please.

Yeah, Rayman Origins is good times. I made a point of having a go on it at Gamescom. Great animation and proper old-school platforming gameplay. Awesome. Not sure if the co-op really adds anything useful to the mix, but it’s certainly fun.

@unmanneddrone Well then lemme go ahead and break that.

A while ago I tried hopelessly to champion Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker to the Squad despite being probably the only one here besides @shingro who owns a PSP. That barrier is now gone with the HD Collection which I seriously recommend.

I especially recommend this to people who loved Metal Gear Solid 3 (like Beige) but maybe passed up PW. Not only does MGS3 look clean as fuck on this disc, but PW also is able to become the game it was supposed to be.

First of all, the controls actually make gddamned sense. Like MGS4, an entire layer of mechanical confusion is gone and you can play the game like you think it would. Secondly, Peace Walker is easily the most content-rich Metal Gear game. By itself it’s probably worth the $50 price tag of the collection. Even after 45 hours with the game (transferred my PSP save file) I still have a ways to go to unlock all the content. To describe the gameplay briefly, it’s basically the sequel to MGS3, with the management mechanics of Final Fantasy Tactics and a heavy co-op focus. The only thing that looks “old” about PW on this collection are the PSP graphics, and even the menus and 2D art assets have been completely redone in HD.

Oh, and like 10 minutes of the Rayman Origins demo convinced me that Michael Ancel should be in charge of the next Sonic game. This motherfucker is a 16-bit platformer with today’s graphics. It’s just fun in all the ways those games were. It’s fun to run around and collect shit. It’s fun to find hidden shit. It’s fun to do death-defying leaps to get extra shit, and there’s enough of this in the full game to make it worth a $50 disc?! At least keep an eye out for this one on Black Friday.

@A.J. Best analogy ever! “Original Rayman with a touch of Rocko’s Modern Life” Thanks for making my day. Great broadcast, too!