I played NS again after a two month break. It's awesome. Even though I tried out some new things on CO-Black Mesa, selected grenades by accident, then ended up last in the rankings until I clawed back some points. One guy was taking the piss out of me for being so bad, until I wiped out three Onos within 30 seconds. This game fucking rocks.
CO-Black Mesa is one of the few maps I've found that can unbalance NS, hard as that is. Mostly due to those long, straight, brightly lit corridors near the enemy base which make pushing back against marines once they entrench a pain in the balls.
CO-Black Mesa is one of the few maps I've found that can unbalance NS, hard as that is. Mostly due to those long, straight, brightly lit corridors near the enemy base which make pushing back against marines once they entrench a pain in the balls.
Aliens are the defenders. The strategy in that map is to let the marines straggle into the hive in skirmisher lines at the start (as they tend to do). Once they're in, attack from behind and kill them all. Unless they're organized enough to come in one solid, unitied rush repeatedly, you'll win the XP attrition and then the game. Never assault the marines early. Let them come to you.
More clever, let them come to you, and then harry them just outside the hive. Wound and bother, but do not kill (or be killed) except occasionally or as necessary. Keep them busy. Once you've got about half of the marines there, thinking they've got a foothold (with more on the way to push through and "win), send three or so skulks around the other way. Kill any stragglers, then hit the comm chair hard. The marines at the front will panick. As they retreat, kill them. The skulk strike team should clear out just as marines start spawning again in earnest. Retreat back to the hive.
You've now farmed about 1.5x the marines' total number's worth of XP. If they attack again in the same manner, rinse and repeat until they turtle or you win. If they get scared and turtle, you win.
CO-Black Mesa is one of the few maps I've found that can unbalance NS, hard as that is. Mostly due to those long, straight, brightly lit corridors near the enemy base which make pushing back against marines once they entrench a pain in the balls.
I think this map is pretty balanced. Maybe the marines have a slight edge, but the wins go 50/50 as far as I can tell. Only idiot aliens rush out into those corridors. Everyone else uses the vents or comes in through the computer room. Also some versions have buttons to press to raise barriers in the corridors.
Problem being that if they entrench the corridor section on the other side of the computer room from the alien base, there are those three choke points (Air vent, door and coming up the barrier corridor.) that are easy to control and the long straights make fades easy to deal with.
Putting the barriers up and then stalling them at the end of the barrier corridor is a good way to buy time and slow the advance.
Just had one of the most intense matches of T2 to date. It was Circle_Of_Stones and I was doing my usual trick of putting an ELF Jericho out in front of the flag then running round like a maniac trying to keep things repaired, fighting off the waves of heavies and stopping people trying to blow the base's generator up. Well, things started to hot up as neither team was keeping the lead long, with lots of recaptures and the odd fumble. When they got two caps in a row it was 7-5 to them and things were looking bad, we were taking a hammering, our defense was a mess generator was rarely staying online for a minute but we miraculously managed to pull it back to 8-8 then shit got crazy, both sides just started hurling themselves at each other, the flags went back and forwards more times than I could count (I was busy not dying, I'm getting pretty good.), the timer got extended for the second time and when it got to 9-9, I had no idea what was going on, just shooting, healing and keeping mobile as much as I could.
Then our flag carrier makes it back but misses our flag and hits a hill, which immediately erupts in fiery green death from the enemy team. I had somehow survived, I dash for the flag, somehow escape the same green fate, and make a dash for the flag stand.
Match over, Storm wins, and the chat channel went wild.
WET. It's a shameless ripoff of bayonetta and Devil may cry, but I like it more than either of those. Also, the soundtrack is an absolute ball-tearer, it's right up my alley.
Has anyone here had any luck with the Homeworld series? With a lot of people learning to play Starcraft recently, it occurred to me that it might be possible to learn Homeworld, which seemed like an interesting game back in the day.
Has anyone here had any luck with the Homeworld series? With a lot of people learning to play Starcraft recently, it occurred to me that it might be possible to learn Homeworld, which seemed like an interesting game back in the day.
I played it and enjoyed it for a while. Some of the levels are really, really hard, but it may be because I am not good at full 3d tactical maneuvering. I've certainly never played another game quite like it.
Has anyone here had any luck with the Homeworld series? With a lot of people learning to play Starcraft recently, it occurred to me that it might be possible to learn Homeworld, which seemed like an interesting game back in the day.I played it and enjoyed it for a while. Some of the levels are really, really hard, but it may be because I am not good at full 3d tactical maneuvering. I've certainly never played another game quite like it. I think the best setup for that game is a joystick with a potentiometers, so you look around with the joystick and then accelerate with the potentiometer. It also helps if you have all your weapon buttons up on the top of the stick, so you can keep your left hand on the p-meter. I would recommend the Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X Joystick (that sounds so erotic) to play 3d flyers best! And I thought you where talking about Descent...
I played a pirate version of Homeworld 2 a year or two back, mostly playing the multiplayer against a friend. The game was interesting, and I liked the 3D map mechanic, but the game broke down into an arms race far too easily. I found that while a large group of ships could fight their betters and do damage, without building shit-tons of anti-big ships essentially the first person to get the biggest ships tended to win. The 3d mechanic was nice but the maps still tend to be 2D oriented and doing any amount of tactical 3D maneuvering generally took more time than it was worth, and you could more easily do things on the primary plane than to go elsewhere. Also I hate flow based resourse systems. Some of these issues (balance) I think are fixed in its relatively active modding community, but I can't remember exactly. All in all it was a nice game but it ran it's course pretty quickly for me, I may have been playing it "wrong", so you may well get more out of it.
Battlefield: Bad Company - An okay single player campaign with a solid multi-player game. AI can be a bit bullshitty at times, stupid teammates can ruin everything, but otherwise a very average shooty game. The plot is sort of flimsy, but the single-player is more of like a really long training for multi-player. It will entertain me for a time, and will probably end up being sold back in the end.
Army of Two - A fun third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter with characters that are very much caricatures. Some of the enemies are a bit stereotyped, and one of the main characters is sort of a dick and not in a funny way. Also, for some reason their air-guitar and fist-bumping seems sort of out of place as their friends are being assassinated and scores of people die around them. The two-player mechanic is fun, as is the 'aggro-meter', and the smooth maneuvering around cover. The only problem is the AI team-mate can be a bit retarded at times, and sometimes when my character is 'ignored' because of the aggro, enemies still miraculously see me, shoot me, and/or throw me. That can be frustrating, so I'm eager to start playing with actual people. I may end up selling this one back and picking up the sequel when I'm done.
Mass Effect - Kate started playing this before me. Some of the controls are not to my liking, but I can definitely see why it was so popular and won so many awards. I've only played for an hour and I know I'll be picking up the sequel.
Mass Effect -Kate started playing this before me. Some of the controls are not to my liking, but I can definitely see why it was so popular and won so many awards. I've only played for an hour and I know I'll be picking up the sequel.
Yea the sequel pretty much fixes most of the annoying stuff in Mass Effect one though I played it on the PC (which fixed most of the problems people had with the original on X-box)
Apparently the plain sight registration server is not working. I guess it got hammered. DRM fail preventing paying customers from playing because they can't keep the server up. FIX YOUR SHIT.
This is exactly the sort of kick in the pants this game needed to get rolling, and they blew it. If the game still doesn't manage to find a playerbase after this, I'm giving up on it forever.
Since everyone on XBLA will be getting Scott Pilgrim in the morning, I kind of feel like I should actually finish it. Still only finished five of the seven levels. I guess I just don't dig on this style of game anymore. My arcade days are long behind me.
Since everyone on XBLA will be getting Scott Pilgrim in the morning, I kind of feel like I should actually finish it. Still only finished five of the seven levels. I guess I just don't dig on this style of game anymore. My arcade days are long behind me.
Fuck that. I live in a world with more worthwhile entertainment options than I could ever possibly even begin to consume. I have tens of thousands of movies and TV show episodes available to watch at any moment with practically zero effort. Even just counting the good games I already own I have not yet played, a mere second of boredom is laughable in the face of my entertainment options. Piles of good books, manga I already know are legendary, board games, crafts, even GeekNights...
With effectively infinite options, suffering any inconvenience for something that is not itself better than most of those options is not worth consideration.
Comments
More clever, let them come to you, and then harry them just outside the hive. Wound and bother, but do not kill (or be killed) except occasionally or as necessary. Keep them busy. Once you've got about half of the marines there, thinking they've got a foothold (with more on the way to push through and "win), send three or so skulks around the other way. Kill any stragglers, then hit the comm chair hard. The marines at the front will panick. As they retreat, kill them. The skulk strike team should clear out just as marines start spawning again in earnest. Retreat back to the hive.
You've now farmed about 1.5x the marines' total number's worth of XP. If they attack again in the same manner, rinse and repeat until they turtle or you win. If they get scared and turtle, you win.
Putting the barriers up and then stalling them at the end of the barrier corridor is a good way to buy time and slow the advance.
Well, things started to hot up as neither team was keeping the lead long, with lots of recaptures and the odd fumble. When they got two caps in a row it was 7-5 to them and things were looking bad, we were taking a hammering, our defense was a mess generator was rarely staying online for a minute but we miraculously managed to pull it back to 8-8 then shit got crazy, both sides just started hurling themselves at each other, the flags went back and forwards more times than I could count (I was busy not dying, I'm getting pretty good.), the timer got extended for the second time and when it got to 9-9, I had no idea what was going on, just shooting, healing and keeping mobile as much as I could.
Then our flag carrier makes it back but misses our flag and hits a hill, which immediately erupts in fiery green death from the enemy team. I had somehow survived, I dash for the flag, somehow escape the same green fate, and make a dash for the flag stand.
Match over, Storm wins, and the chat channel went wild.
Army of Two - A fun third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter with characters that are very much caricatures. Some of the enemies are a bit stereotyped, and one of the main characters is sort of a dick and not in a funny way. Also, for some reason their air-guitar and fist-bumping seems sort of out of place as their friends are being assassinated and scores of people die around them. The two-player mechanic is fun, as is the 'aggro-meter', and the smooth maneuvering around cover. The only problem is the AI team-mate can be a bit retarded at times, and sometimes when my character is 'ignored' because of the aggro, enemies still miraculously see me, shoot me, and/or throw me. That can be frustrating, so I'm eager to start playing with actual people. I may end up selling this one back and picking up the sequel when I'm done.
Mass Effect - Kate started playing this before me. Some of the controls are not to my liking, but I can definitely see why it was so popular and won so many awards. I've only played for an hour and I know I'll be picking up the sequel.
Also, I finally got with the program and bought a used 360 and Super Street Fighter IV, since it doesn't look like it's ever coming to PC.
With effectively infinite options, suffering any inconvenience for something that is not itself better than most of those options is not worth consideration.