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Rev. Melchisedech Howler posted:I like the email in Doom 3 (it's a good game) of the guy demanding to know who ordered all the chainsaws to Mars. iirc there's a whole chain of them of people being annoyed about it and going 'there's no loving trees on mars!!!' and eventually you run across the multiple loving crates of the things
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Jun 20, 2023 17:13
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The Hazard Course did include firearms training, remember.
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Jun 20, 2023 17:23
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So, how's the ROTT demo? I can't try it for a while.
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Jun 20, 2023 17:40
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ToxicFrog posted:There's a screen on the wall right above the button showing a feed from one of Citadel's ancillary satellites that shows you the laser firing and exploding when you push the button. It's in greenscale, though. Yeah that's what I thought, but it didn't play when I pushed the button. EDIT: I had a save from before I pushed the button so I reloaded it and this time the video played, so not sure what was up. Angry_Ed fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 18:01
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shoeberto posted:I just wanna live on Citadel Station. And that's without the SSR audio log that implies parts of the station were intentionally designed as a long-term psychological experiment to engender stress and anxiety. Rev. Melchisedech Howler posted:Very curious about the layout of the research deck on Citadel. Even before everything got gnarly, people were having to gently caress through vents and past an industrial laser to get to their offices? Also, if it's the office I'm thinking of, there's an alternate route that doesn't involve the laser. haveblue posted:The bit in HL2 ep1 where it's exposited that Gordon loved crawling around in air vents for its own sake even before the resonance cascade Al Cu Ad Solte posted:As for how Gordon just immediately knows how to operate a laser guided rocket launcher in Half-Life 1..... They keep adjusting the schedule each year in the hopes that he won't be able to make it to that one and then five minutes before the start he pops out of a vent somewhere in the hazard course.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:01
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Sorta related, but holy cats did the Black Mesa team knock Xen out of the park. I haven't finished it yet, but there are some cool concepts like zombies in HEV suits.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:21
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manero posted:Sorta related, but holy cats did the Black Mesa team knock Xen out of the park. I haven't finished it yet, but there are some cool concepts like zombies in HEV suits.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlsCoPloLFY
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Jun 20, 2023 18:43
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:So, how's the ROTT demo? I can't try it for a while. Seemed pretty neat, but it's only 4 levels so who knows how good the rest of it is also versions of the midi tracks recorded on an sc-55 were put up if you want more authenticity https://sc55.duke4.net/games.php#rott site fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 18:44
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All the hazard suit qualified employees were trained in weapons and general athletics because they were being sent off to Xen. Breen is under playing how much any HEV wearer is going to be a nightmare for the marine teams that encounter them.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:47
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The biggest complaint about Trepang2 that I've been seeing is that it's pretty short, only a six-level campaign.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:32
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:So, how's the ROTT demo? I can't try it for a while. If you didn't like ROTT '94 before, this won't change your mind. But if you did, this is gonna be the best version available.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:32
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“Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his PhD…” Sure, civilization as we know it has collapsed, but Breen still gotta be petty about this irrelevant poo poo 
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Jun 20, 2023 20:34
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:Not sure when the last time you played MW5 was, but it's improved a metric fuckton since it's launch in Dec 2019. Ha, I picked it up again last december. Combined it with some mods (more capable ballistic weapons, extra biomes and objectives, no arbitrary tonnage restrictions for deployments, etc.) and had an absolute blast. But man, I would love to see mech games make a true comeback some day. They're a weird subgenre of early fps and sims, and there's something about slowly slugging it out with an opponent while methodologically disassembling each other that is incredibly satisfying.
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Jun 20, 2023 23:48
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The Kins posted:It's Rise of the Triad 1994, but with an actual good source port, slightly more variety in enemy sprites and some very minor gameplay tweaks. The demo has one level from every official mapset, meaning there's three old levels plus a classic secret easter egg and one new one. The new one (by Kaiser) is pretty good, with some pretty logical gameplay flow, though I did find missile weapons relatively scarce which made the Enforcers a hassle. Excellent news, thank you.
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Jun 20, 2023 23:51
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Jack B Nimble posted:1) I basically skipped the boss fight because infinite enemies and a gimmick (throw the balls in) that isn't the core gameplay loop is always a huge turn off for me. I did use the alt-fire for the baton the Spider-Skulls, but you have to bump a few times with it before they die. The SMG I just found to be faster, and you don't have to get in close. From a search, it sounds like something in the options menu where you can toggle on an enemy counter, and I guess you can use the radar to help you track hidden enemies. I just didn't think to look for it. - Since it deemed okay to post about Halo here, I just finished up Halo 2, and it was...okay, I guess? I think I said early on that the weapons felt better than the ones in Halo 1. Being able to dual-wield is cool, though you have to drop the left-hand gun if you melee or throw a grenade. Following someone's advice, I made more use of the Plasma Rifle, and dual-wielding that was pretty effective, though the Plasma Rifles are such where they take up half of the screen space, making it hard to see what you're shooting at. I mainly used the Covenant Carbine and tried for headshots, and you do get feedback on the HUD that you've got a headshot lined up. However, enemies still seem to absorb a lot of headshots. Level design wise, it still pretty weak. I don't think there's any major backtracking/repeated levels like in the first game, but there's still a lot of level design that feels very copy-&-paste. In one of the levels as Arbiter (either Sacred Icon or Quarantine Zone), I was going through the crashed remains of a ship, and after fighting with some enemies, I thought I got turned around because of how similar everything looked, only to realize that I was going back the way I came. Story-wise, it's a bit more dynamic, with the perspective switching between Master Chief and Arbiter. However, I've noticed with both this game and Halo 1, there's something about the narrative that seems disjointed and sort of bare-bones. In Halo 1, I'd say the basic outline of it is that the Pillar of Autumn is fleeing the Covenant to keep the coordinates of Earth safe, and they crash land on Halo. You go and save Keyes from the Covenant prison, you go through Silent Cartographer and get the location of the Control Room. You go there, then Cortana teleports you to the swamps where you meet the Flood and Spark. Spark teleports you to the Library, you run through that and get the Index, then teleport back to the control room, where Cortana tells you Halo's a super-weapon. You destroy some pulse generators to delay Spark, get the codes from Flood-Keyes, then go the the Pillar of Autumn so you can detonate the core and destroy Halo. To boil that down further, you land on Halo, you find a control room, you encounter the Flood, and get the Index to stop them, but then you realize Halo will destroy all life in the galaxy, so you destroy Halo. Not that many big plot beats, but they're spaced out between the start and end of each level. In Halo 2, it starts with MC and Arbiter getting accommodated and branded, respectively. A group of Covenant attack Earth (how they found it isn't made clear), so Master Chief stops them, and Miranda Keyes chases after the fleeing Covenant. Meanwhile, Arbiter actually becomes Arbiter, and gets sent after a heretic and finds Spark, who gets apprehended by Tartarus (the lead gorilla alien). Miranda finds another Halo, and Master Chief goes in and fights the Prophet of Regret. MC jumps into the water to avoid getting hit by the energy beam, and gets snared by a tentacle. You switch back to Arbiter who's on Halo Delta, and he fights his way to the Index, where Tartarus, Miranda, and Johnson are. Tartarus takes the key, captures Miranda and Johnson, and tosses Arbiter down a pit. Arbiter also gets grabbed by a tentacle, and both he and Master Chief get commanded by a big Flood (?) creature thing and another floating Forerunner Orb to stop Halo from activating. You chase the other two Prophets, while the Brutes turn on the Elites. One of the Prophets gets his face eaten by a Flood parasite, and Tartarus and the last Prophet (Truth) leave. Master Chief gets on a ship and launches off after them. Meanwhile, Arbiter meets up with Johnson, they get into the control room, and stop Tartarus and Mirana stops Halo from firing. Spark tells them there's the Ark, which controls all the Halos, MC arrives back at Earth. I probably messed up a lot of details with that summary. It's weird where there's a lot more going on in Halo 2, but a lot of it doesn't seem like it gets expanded on. Like, it's interesting to play as Arbiter and see things from the POV of a Covenant solider, but it seems like you only get broad strokes of how the Covenant operate. It doesn't feel like there's a great explanation for why the Prophets want to activate Halo, or why they wanted the Brutes to replace the Elites. The tentacle creature (Gravemind) seems to come out of nowhere, like he was conceived to rescue the MC and Arb because they had been written into a corner. A lot of the plot threads seem to just be cliffhanger setups for Halo 3. I know I spent 2/3rds of this post talking about the narrative, which is probably dumb of me to care about, but the presentation of it just seems very slipshod.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:03
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Halo 2 is cool because Keith David is in it.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:07
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Am I hallucinating/misremembering this, or does one of the brutes, in one of the Halo games, taunt you to try to get you to reveal yourself by saying "Hey human... I have a banana..."?
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Jun 21, 2023 00:17
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When I first played Halo 2, it was co-op with my gaming buddy. After beating a certain boss fight, I turned to him and said as a joke "and now the game ends!" And then it loving did exactly that. I get that they knew there was 100% going to be a Halo 3, but they really left things hanging. The series is best enjoyed co-op on the higher difficulties. Solo, it feels a bit sparse. While a buddy makes the fights much more interesting, especially when using vehicles.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:24
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The cliffhanger wasn’t exactly deliberate. The whole plot of Halo 2 was trying to deliver twice as much story with the two main chars. They wanted to wrap up the whole plot too, they weren’t trying to make a trilogy when they started Halo 2. But added to that, the development was also a giant overwrought mess and they were trying to produce two other games for part of it. They ended up killing those two to make everyone crunch Halo 2 out the door, and they still had to cut the ending to do it. 2/3 more levels and a bunch of cutscene that would wrap up the saga. Hence the big cliffhanger. It ended up working out I guess, since the reaction to that non-ending was a huge meme and drove the hype train for Halo 3 from launch day. Otoh, look at everything that has since happened to Bungie. Halo 2 sometimes successfully manages to evoke a Star Warsy sense of a rich wider universe that doesn’t require everything to be explained, which is what they were probably hoping for. It’s just all over the place as to whether it works, because they just weren’t able to make the game they wanted. Halo 3 is much less ambitious in terms of storytelling, probably to its benefit, but it definitely doesn’t make Halo 2 make sense exactly and takes the plot and backstory in a different direction. The “original” ending’s storyboards are out there on the internet and you can kind of see what they would have gone for, but it’s clear the writing of the game was a shitstorm and there’s a lot of stuff that never made it in. And yeah Sacred Icon/Quarantine Zone is loving dire, I hope you like plug locks skasion fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 00:40
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Max Wilco posted:... A group of Covenant attack Earth (how they found it isn't made clear) ... So a couple of useful details, the story tries to explain this but they were obviously limited by time so it does come off as too subtle: The Prophet of Regret only by accident found Earth. He actually found the location of something else (this is covered in Halo 3) and stumbled upon Earth by complete accident, complete unprepared in a rush to be the first to find it. Remember this is noted twice, Lord Hood comments that the fleet that came for Reach was 50 times the size, Cortana later comments in gameplay that the Covenant were confused about humanity being on Earth, "Odd, I know, but it does help explain why the came with such a small fleet". A communication between Regret and Truth later in the mission Regret (or the second part of Delta Halo if you look at it that way) also covers both the misunderstanding and his "premature arrival". The Prophets want to activate Halo because they believe it to be a gateway to "the divine beyond", they are either incapable or unwilling to understand that Halo only kills. How they came to this conclusion is something that's actually buried in Halo 3's terminals. This belief however is only initiated by the Prophets; The Brutes blindly follow these orders because of their pack mentality, and the Elites were persuaded after an initial war with them. However this also leads into why the Prophets wanted the Elites removed from their position of power, they were constantly in a position of discovering and questioning the information the Prophets tried to control, the civil war was an unintended side effect of trying this (presumably by doing it too late, and miscalculating the Arbiters survival). The Flood Gravemind was something alluded to in Halo1, but was a thing they couldn't present properly due to technology limiting reach. The Flood is a sentient hivemind, put enough of them together and you get the Gravemind. He was always intended to show up in Halo2, but his sudden introduction and then teleporting you was due to Bungie having to cut a level and also why that cutscene was so long. As for the Halo3 cliffhanger, well that was also due to massive cuts. Because they had to rewrite a chunk of their engine they never quite had enough time to finish the campaign which is why it ends abruptly. To put simply, Halo 3's story is less a sequel and more the literal last third of Halo2's campaign, with some additional edits because they had time to expand on things. Rocket Pan fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 00:59
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A couple other things I remembered: I expected to fight Marines when playing as Arbiter, but you don't, save for one level, and then maybe only really briefly. Instead, you're just fighting other Covenant and Flood. The final boss, at least on Normal, isn't really much a of a boss. I thought to bring a pair of Plasma Rifles, so it was just a matter of unloading them, then waiting for them to cool down before firing another volley. I think you've also got AI friendlies backing you up. I guess it makes sense, because it's not like Tartarus is in some super-charged mech or anything, but I found it odd. Also, the music is really good. Some of the tracks have a progressive rock/New Age/experimental style to them; not specifically the Odyssey tracks by Incubus (which I don't recall hearing in the game), but tracks like 'Peril' and 'Heretic Hero', which feel atypical to the orchestral or rock tracks you expect. Crowetron posted:Halo 2 is cool because Keith David is in it.  Rupert Buttermilk posted:Am I hallucinating/misremembering this, or does one of the brutes, in one of the Halo games, taunt you to try to get you to reveal yourself by saying "Hey human... I have a banana..."? From what I read, there's a bunch of joke lines that NPCs will rarely say, and there's a skull that changes it so they become more common. skasion posted:The cliffhanger wasn’t exactly deliberate. The whole plot of Halo 2 was trying to deliver twice as much story with the two main chars. They wanted to wrap up the whole plot too, they weren’t trying to make a trilogy when they started Halo 2. But added to that, the development was also a giant overwrought mess and they were trying to produce two other games for part of it. They ended up killing those two to make everyone crunch Halo 2 out the door, and they still had to cut the ending to do it. 2/3 more levels and a bunch of cutscene that would wrap up the saga. Hence the big cliffhanger. I knew about the 'finishing the fight, cut to credits' bit beforehand, but playing through everything up to that point, it did cross my mind that maybe Halo 2 was meant to be a lot longer, and had to be cut in half, though I wasn't sure if it was because of development troubles, or if Microsoft came in and told them to split it because they could make more money that way. Knowing it was the former, I guess it makes sense why it feels so uneven. In terms of trying to establish a wider universe, I wondered if maybe I needed to read one of the novels to get more of an insight on the background details (I have Fall of Reach, which I've heard is pretty good, and I meant to read it after finishing Halo 1). I remember seeing a video about the storyboards, but I think I'll wait until I finish Halo 3 before I check them out. Rocket Pan posted:
I forgot about that line regarding the fleet size and Regret's communication with Truth. I'm guessing that the arrival of Regret is because the Ark is on Earth. I sort of gleaned the 'gateway to the divine beyond' thing, but the fact they had captured Spark made me wonder if the Prophets knew it was a weapon, and had some sort of ulterior motive. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 01:03
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about Halo 2 story.
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Incubus plays during the Arbiter banshee segment. They might have taken that out in MCC? All three bosses are kind of nothing fights on normal. On legendary they are infamously insane, as is the whole game
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Jun 21, 2023 01:09
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skasion posted:Incubus plays during the Arbiter banshee segment. They might have taken that out in MCC? The Incubus and Breaking Benjamin tracks are still in MCC, but only play with the classic graphics/audio. Max Wilco posted:In terms of trying to establish a wider universe, I wondered if maybe I needed to read one of the novels to get more of an insight on the background details (I have Fall of Reach, which I've heard is pretty good, and I meant to read it after finishing Halo 1). I remember seeing a video about the storyboards, but I think I'll wait until I finish Halo 3 before I check them out. Max Wilco posted:I sort of gleaned the 'gateway to the divine beyond' thing, but the fact they had captured Spark made me wonder if the Prophets knew it was a weapon, and had some sort of ulterior motive. Funny detail on this one, though maybe play Halo3 first: It is often debated as to whether or not Truth actually knows this to be true and is just plain suicidal. Even in Halo3 he seems to be suggesting he knows far more than should be reasonably possible for his motives, and Halo2 vaguely hints at it but only in hindsight. Rocket Pan fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 01:15
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I was playing with classic graphics. Looking at my Steam achievements, I'd play the game for five or so chapters, then drop it for like a week or two. According to the Steam achivements, I did the Banshee segment on The Arbiter mission back at the end of May, so I probably heard it and just forgot, or was focused on trying to keep the Banshee from taking too much damage.
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Jun 21, 2023 01:27
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Breaking Benjamin is the most 2004 song/band choice they could have made.
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Jun 21, 2023 02:21
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Sobatchja Morda posted:Ha, I picked it up again last december. Combined it with some mods (more capable ballistic weapons, extra biomes and objectives, no arbitrary tonnage restrictions for deployments, etc.) and had an absolute blast. I imagine the new Armored Core game is going to do a lot for the genre's popularity Wonder who currently owns the rights to Shogo... Max Wilco posted:I did use the alt-fire for the baton the Spider-Skulls, but you have to bump a few times with it before they die. The SMG I just found to be faster, and you don't have to get in close. Gravemind is still probably one of the coolest ideas Bungie had in Halo and in retrospect it's kind of obvious a lot of their ideas in Destiny are them trying to recapture the magic that came from the cutscene where you first meet it
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Jun 21, 2023 02:28
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It sounds like everything Bungie does is a huge mismanaged disaster behind the scenes, but they still somehow end up releasing really good games anyway. At least for the Halo and Destiny series. Maybe Marathon will break that trend? Ion Fury chat: the secondary fire for the revolver is a lock on. I remember that being really useful for the spider heads.
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Jun 21, 2023 03:32
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ponzicar posted:Ion Fury chat: the secondary fire for the revolver is a lock on. I remember that being really useful for the spider heads.
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Jun 21, 2023 13:44
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ponzicar posted:It sounds like everything Bungie does is a huge mismanaged disaster behind the scenes, but they still somehow end up releasing really good games anyway. At least for the Halo and Destiny series. Maybe Marathon will break that trend? They'll run out of the "magic" eventually, just like Bioware and Arkane Austin did.
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Jun 21, 2023 16:46
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Trepang2 is now available for thirty of your Earth Dollars. I hope it turned out good.
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Jun 21, 2023 17:16
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The Kins posted:Trepang2 is now available for thirty of your Earth Dollars. I hope it turned out good. Oh poo poo it's only $30? That's less than System Shock.
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Jun 21, 2023 17:30
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drrockso20 posted:I imagine the new Armored Core game is going to do a lot for the genre's popularity I would slam-buy a Shogo remaster so hard, weird difficulty and all.
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Jun 21, 2023 18:16
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ponzicar posted:It sounds like everything Bungie does is a huge mismanaged disaster behind the scenes, but they still somehow end up releasing really good games anyway. At least for the Halo and Destiny series. Maybe Marathon will break that trend? iirc production on at least Halo 3 and potentially Reach as well went quite smoothly.
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Jun 21, 2023 18:42
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If you're at all curious about game development and management Jason Schrier's two books are must reads. Its a miracle that a game is released, let alone playable.
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Jun 21, 2023 23:00
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Got through the first level of trepang and did a "combat sim" wave mode level and this game is sick E: it has some strange control settings issues for an unreal game tho site fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 23:20
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Humbly submitting that if somebody makes a dedicated Trepang2 thread it should be called "The only thing we to have fear is F.E.A.R. itself."
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Jun 21, 2023 23:41
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Are there spooky specters in Trepang2?? Because if so, it should be "I ain't aFEARed of no GHOSTS!"
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Jun 21, 2023 23:43
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"FEAR is the path to Trepang2. Trepang2 leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate...leads to suffering." Quick somebody get a character count on this and see if it will work
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Jun 21, 2023 23:49
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Are there spooky specters in Trepang2?? The wave mode sorta spoiled future enemies and there does appear to be something
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Jun 22, 2023 00:05
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