Comments on: Digital Punishment

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:55:14 +0000

@partwelsh Quack shot took longer to finish than 2 hours. it must of. we played the hell out of that game every weekend for years!!! i only remember finishing it once. i think you hat to fight pete at the end in a mine or something

By: The Preacher

The Preacher — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:20:40 +0000

Yes, gentlemen, I boobed. I concede defeat on this occasion. Considering I realised myself just 10 seconds after submitting the comment, I could hardly get defensive over this one. Ironically, the two people who mentioned enjoying pedant hunting are both eternal pedants themselves, heh…

Good luck with that safari Mark. I’m not saying a single potentially self-defeating fucking word until at least next week. Not getting me a second time. Or third. I’m not sure if I was the first or not… And why would I source my own images if I can have you do it? You’re much better at it than I am, I can admit that. If you showed me the pictures in advance though, I could easily do my own captions. I real good at the word things and the writing of the word things, me is.

Buh… good thing I can laugh at myself. Of all the silly ways to embarrass yourself online.

By: Lorna

Lorna — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:28:58 +0000

I hear the pain, Victor. Some of the Mirror’s Edge speedruns, were less than 7 minutes or so, but the time I poured into practicing and failing was staggering and the Time Trials were worse. The time limit for three stars was terrifyingly short on all the trials and I spent months working on them all until I had reached the heady heights of 90 accumulated stars and then all 9 speedruns. Still the hardest that I have ever worked at a game but easily the most satisfying and proud achievements that I have.

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:24:24 +0000

When a certain game grabs me, I will go through it, as difficult and time-consuming as it may be. Take Batman: Arkham Asylum, for example. The Freeflow Perfection achievement stands out as the achievement I found hardest to achieve, out of all the ones I got in 2009. A simple, complete an uninterrupted combo with every single move that Batman has. That is it. Unfortunately, there is no on-screen prompt to remind you which moves you have employed or not. A perfect combo takes about 180 seconds, give or take. But the failed attempts take the time I spent on getting it well past the 20 hour mark.

Let me repeat for emphasis. It took me 20 hours of practice, spread over a weekend, to complete an action that took about 3 minutes to complete. If all games were like this, I would take my obsession and apply it to train-spotting.

By: Lorna

Lorna — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:16:54 +0000

I’ve often bemoaned the fact that modern games are nowhere near as hard as the ‘retro age’ but then, as others have pointed out, woud we all still be playing them if they were. With the original gaming generations now all grown up with jobs, families, and responsibilities, you can’t have games with no save points anymore. We don’t have those endless uninterrrupted summers where we can throw ourselves full tilt at a game for endless hours, through lives and continues. For some, this may constitute the game being easier, but it is just reality and practicality coming to stay.

There are still a few devilishly hard games out there and because of the trend to dumb down slightly, they come as a smack in the face when you find them. XBLA games like Flock and TrialsHD have had me screeching in anger. Mirror’s Edge was tough as fuck. Perhaps that is why so many moaned about it because the skillset of moves that had to be learned in order to progress and reach certain areas was tricky…mapping them into muscle memory in order to fully appreciate the flow of the game and actually get anywhere easily wasn’t simple but if you stuck with it, it was incredibly rewarding. You couldn’t just stumble through in many areas, you had to get good, otherwise you’d be stuck at the bottom of the stormdrains in perpetuity.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:54:22 +0000

Pedant Catching is fun

@Preach
I used ’2nd Generation’ (with an ‘emphasis’) as a bit of tongue in cheek. For many, PlayStation was the market birth and it’s successor, the Playstation 2 was the heralding of a 2nd Generation. Its why Xbox didn’t name its successor Xbox2 as it would have made it appear that it was a whole generation behind the Playstation 3, the 360 gave them that muscle to use in the market.

@Vic
It’s scary to ponder what developers would be doing now if Games had to get harder with each release. I fear we’d all be playing stood atop dance mats with nunchuks around our necks and the controllers behind our ears just so that they wouldn’t have to address the issue. I really can’t play a game unless I know its on the hardest setting, but mainly thats just because I don’t fancy having to make a 2nd playthrough for another achievement. Still, I find that if you do take this approach, you struggle for the first 45 minutes of the game and then the rest just seems to get easier.

@Kat
:p

By: Kat

Kat — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:43:20 +0000

He sources his own images? Gah! And I wanted to be teachers pet >.<

Feel the giraffe.

By: MarkuzR

MarkuzR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:14:44 +0000

Actually Preacher, Adam takes the time to source his own images and write his own captions… I just select which of the four for each image makes me smile the most, hence the Jurassic Park quote. I do love catching pedants in their own nets though, it makes me chuckle endlessly :p That’s two in as many days now, I wonder if I can manage to sustain my pedant safari for the rest of the week?

Feed the giraffe.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:07:18 +0000

I fear the Giraffe….. I hear it sounds like David Schwimmer!

By: Kat

Kat — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:24:39 +0000

I lolled in numerous places!

I want easy settings, I want saves all over the damn shop and I want pats on the back I never used to see the end of games as I’d get stuck and annoyed halfway in. Now I get to complete them so that makes me a happy gamer.

Fear the giraffe.