General gaming news

[Mysterio]

Yup
2 player Co-op for the entire campaign mode.

And a 4th multiplayer mode will be made available tonight via an auto-update.

Yeah my achievement addict friend brought his 360 over and we were playing gears co-op campaign, but it was split-screen not online. I forgot to ask him if it supported it.

[Po]

Yea it's the only way I play Gears Campaign. It is boring/annoying single player. Your teammates' AI leaves much to be desired.

[Deejay]

Xbox Live is getting a huge update next month:

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/...405227-000.jpg

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/...246775-000.jpg

Yep, Xbox Live is getting its own Instant Messenger addon. The keypad will be an attachment to the controller.

Also, there will be 1,600 changes made to Xbox Live as a whole, one of which being the achievement popups.

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/...035866-000.jpg



Big Changes are are two I just noted, plus theyre adding a whole new "Marketplace" blade to the Live Dashboard. This blade will have all the downloadable content from Marketplace.

One more big addition is the ability to have your xbox shutoff after a download completes. And if your downloading a movie or trailer you can view the parts that you already have while its still downloading.

Pretty cool stuff.

Article is here:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/778/778961p1.html

[Po]

It is a small thing, but I like the feature of the screen telling you which game is in the tray.
Like currently it says "Play Game" and now it will say "Play Gears of War".
Small but cool. I am most excited about that and the achievement update. Small things, but cool

May 7 is the day.

[Xavier]

They're adding a new gameplay mode to Gears of War today though...god...I'm really excited to finally have something beyond straight team-elimination to occupy me.

I know :D I will be on there tonight with friends Xav. Cool if I toss you an invite?

Can't play until tomorrow, but I'd love to then. Let me know how the mode plays.

[Po]

They're adding a new gameplay mode to Gears of War today though...god...I'm really excited to finally have something beyond straight team-elimination to occupy me.

I know :D I will be on there tonight with friends Xav. Cool if I toss you an invite?

Can't play until tomorrow, but I'd love to then. Let me know how the mode plays.

Holy shit Xav. You gotta play it. So unbelievably fun. The territories you have to control are at the different weapons. I just played 4 rounds at Gridlock. So like there were spawns at the 5 different spots where weapons spawn.
You get 1 point for every second in the area. And you play to however many points, we were playing to 300. And it is just so strategic and fun.
At Gridlock the hardest to hold was the Boomshot, and the hardest to take over was Sniper.
See ya on there tomorrow!

[Alina]

Well it's out, which is nice, but you can't get any of the kill achievements from playing this mode...

[Kaylia]

I'm not talking about monster difficulty, I'm talking about character prep and strategy required. That's what truly makes a game hard. Generally American RPG's don't require much in that area, DiabloII for example.

Some fight have "gimmick", but frankly, can you even call that strategy? The real definition of strategy is when you have to anticipate enemy movement a few turn before, something that never happen in rpg. Even the so called "tactical rpg" require very few tactics to win a fight. At best, the only planning you have to do is to take out enemy one by one.

I can name hundreds of occurences in RPG's where I "anticipate" the next fight/monster before I even enter the fight by both prepping the character(s) I'm playing as and at least forming some sort of strategy. Hell it's the backbone of any JRPG in my opinion... Sure you can just run into any fight and maybe come out with a win, or you can zombie it or whatever, but if you want to do it the right way it always requires some thought.

Please do so. Name me hundred of occurences in jrpg where the AI I defined above wouldnt work.

I like jp rpg, I like leveling my character and generally like the story. I'm not gonna pretend they make my brain works in battle tho. You can beat everything or almost everything taking decision based on your current situation alone, and the only thing you have to know about your ennemy is the maximum damage it can deal in one round.

In the end, one simple comparison. Baal from D2 and Ruby weapon from lol7. How do you kill Baal? You run up to him and do what you would do to any enemy in the game, which depends on which class you chose. You *might* die a few times, but you just keep running in and slowly beating him down. A few minutes later, game ends. With Ruby you reconfigure your whole parties materia, you put on your best weapons/armor, you spend 10 minutes trying to get cloud to 7777hp, and you run into the battle with a clear strategy - because if you don't you're not going to go anywhere.

Awesome idea, pick 2 completly random mobs and compare them. Might as well compare Bowser battle in mario1 to Kefka now.

Diablo require you to level your character according to a "good" skill tree to be useful, FF7 require you to pick a good materia combination. But in the end, comparing both is retarded, diablo is a grinding game with action element, FF7 is a turn based rpg.

And how the fuck is activating lucky seven a strategy. It's one single attack, you simply selected your overpowered move and raped the hell out of the monster. If you want to compare it badly to diablo, it would be like saying you have to "plan" your battle strategy before fighting a "Lightning enchant" mobs.

Finding loop hole in FF7, or most RPG is a joke. There is no strategy, you just find the ultimate combo developer didn't nerf and abuse it. I do like to think that I'm clever for mixing gengi glove with my offering, or stacking mimic with KoTR...but frankly, anyone can do that without much thinking.

One last thing, JRPG arent filled with "super boss" or gimmick fight. There is 2-3 per games at most, rest consist of mashing X and heal between fight (or when you are dying if it's a boss).

Anyways can you even name some American RPG's that require the same sort of strategy? I can't, and I've played both Diablo's and some of the Elder Scroll's series. The only big ARPG I haven't played is Neverwinter Nights, because I was bored out of my mind after the first 20 minutes. Generally single players ones as well, when you bring in the multiplayer ones it's always a bit skewed.

Baldur gate/Neverwinter series require as much thinking when you fight than any jrpg (not a lot, but you have to pause the game and select the right skill and advance carefuly). Fallout require tactic. Game like Kotor require some planning when you fight.

Anyway, my point isn't that those game require "strategy", it's that jrpg doesn't require "strategy".

[Po]

Well it's out, which is nice, but you can't get any of the kill achievements from playing this mode...

Yes I know
That does suck, maybe they will fix it.

It seems you can die easier, and I would think that is why.

I killed a lot of people with 1 shotgun shot. Which I know sometimes happens, but this was more than usual I think.

[Semitry]

Annex gets boring pretty fast.

Lancer's stronger so probably not much shotgun battles left.

No more glitching.

[Po]

I did notice it's stronger which is nice, and it def does not get boring fast. It is the most fun mode you can play with friends w/o worrying about stats.

And there were still plenty of shotgun battles in my game. Though I did try using the Lancer more.

[Semitry]

I played it more tonight with people I know and I take back my boring statement. It's pretty intense but it can burn out pretty fast. There's no chill time and the matches are long.

[GraveRobberX]

I know CES came and went, and this doesnt need its own thread, thought this would be a cool place to put it

JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST!... you thought the PS3 cost alot .... wtf about this @_@;;;


http://media.digitaltrends.com/digitalt ... ro_pc.html

Cool intergration techniques Sony maybe can carry over maybe to the PSP lite/2/whatever

[Po]

I was listening to a 1up Podcast this morning, and heard some cool things and PSP/PS3 Connectivity.

So after you get your PSP and PS3 to meet each other (through the USB thing), there is a number of things you can do. From any Wifi spot in the world you can access any video, music, or anything like that, that is on your PS3 hard drive. So for example, you can rip all your CDs to the hard drive and then play them on your PSP on the go, if you are in a Wifi area. And it has the PS3 illuminations when playing the music.

They were saying this was a pretty cool feature, that has not gotten much press since there is so much negativity surrounding the subject of both systems.

Now if only there were more games.

[Exoduso]

But you would need the ps3 to be up and running and connected to the internet wouldn't you?

I never tried it before, but it sounds kind of neat.

[Po]

Yea they said that, forgot to mention it. They said it does need to be on. But it can be running on the absolute lowest power setting or whatever, it just needs to be turned on.

[Kenai]

Picked up Super Paper Mario today, and I'm having a blast with it. Definitly worth a look/buy. Excellent fun.

Anyway, going back to it now, gonna take up my next few nights methinks. 8)

[PyramidHead]

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3.../comicwii1.png

[Mysterio]

Yea they said that, forgot to mention it. They said it does need to be on. But it can be running on the absolute lowest power setting or whatever, it just needs to be turned on.

It has a dormant "Sleep" mode, pretty sure thats what they are referring to. It wakes up when you turn on the system with the wireless controller.

[Exoduso]

Can you do it while the ps3 is folding?