S.

Shooters of any kind aren't exactly something Nintendo has ever been known for.  Had it not been for Rare in the mid to late 1990s, the company would have been completely blindsided by changing game culture rather than revered as an industry leader at the time.  The Killer Instinct series was Rare's answer to the fighting game craze.  Goldeneye was a genre-defining masterpiece when the age of the console shooter dawned.  Even Banjo Kazooie was a more advanced and detailed entry into the 3D platformer genre, something that Nintendo had already addressed with Super Mario 64.  When the company was sold off in the early 00s, questions arose about who would carry on developing such a variety of original (and badly needed) content for Nintendo systems.  The answer, of course, was nobody.  Retro Studios, cutting edge as it is, has never developed something outside of established franchises such as Donkey Kong Country and, of course, Metroid.  If we're truly honest with ourselves, the only major properties to be birthed since the retirement of the Nintendo 64 are Animal Crossing and Pikmin.  The rest of the time, the company seemed content with making the same Zelda game since 1998 ad nauseam.  Time marches on and a new series was badly needed for the Wii U to even suggest that the venerable company still knew how to mix things up and challenge itself as well as its loyal player base.

Overview

Splatoon differs from other shooting games largely due to a completely different design philosophy.  Whereas the skill of the individual will usually win the day in a standard FPS team deathmatch environment, Splatoon doesn't focus on combat.  There is some debate about whether or not this is an effort to make the game as family friendly as possible.  Regardless, while staying in one piece is still integral to any plan that involves winning, mowing down opponents is only a means to an end.   KOs are only useful for self preservation while achieving goals, which are determined by the game type, all of which are 4 vs 4.

Game Types

Turf War - Have more terrain painted your color than the enemy's when the clock runs out.

Splat Zones - A king of the hill game type.  One or two capture zones must be painted your team's color to be activated.  Once captured, a timer will start counting down.  Running it down to zero or having made more progress than the enemy in the time alotted results in victory.

Tower Control - A center flag, 'push' style of mode.  Rather than each team racing one another to the opposing team's base with the objective, the mode operates like a reverse tug of war.  Each team tries to push the single moving capture point into the enemy's base to win.

Pros

Splatoon features original gameplay elements not found in other shooters.  It has a variety of weaponry that, once unlocked, will drastically change strategy in combat, offering a variety of ways to build a character.  The gyro controls of the Wii U gamepad offer the closest alternative that any console has yet offered to the accuracy and elegance of the mouse and keyboard combination.  Gameplay is heavily team oriented and encourages cooperation.  Game modes and maps continue adding to the replay value of the game and make first impressions from launch somewhat outmoded.  The game demands another look from both critics and owners alike.

Cons

-deep breath-

This is where Splatoon gets bent over and spanked hard.  Once you join a lobby to play a game, there is no reasonable escape from it.  You either wait for all eight players to queue up or shut off your console and restart it.  You cannot simply back out once you've ever started looking for a game.  You also can't quit the game while it's underway, so you'd better hope that you get a good team of all four players.  Players either fail to show up or drop out at a high enough frequency to be irritating.  This will almost certainly result in a loss.  I have yet to ever win a 3 on 4 after losing a player.  As games only last three minutes in most game types (tower control being the exception with five), really great games and the teams in them are short lived.  This is especially frustrating after a long string of losses due to the incompetence of previous team members.

The approach to the game is also amateurish.  Every time you boot the game up, rather than going to join a lobby to get a game in, you must first watch two animated characters squawk back and forth about the maps currently in rotation like some sort of Anime TMZ.  This isn't skippable.  Whereas most companies make an effort to make the interface or accessability of a game's key features as friendly as possible, Nintendo opted to cram their brand of cuteness down your throat at the expense of convenience.  That map rotation thing that I mentioned above?  Only four maps are available at any given time, two for normal games and two for ranked, and they're always selected at random.  I've never encountered a multiplayer game that makes access to my favorite map completely impossible before.  It simply doesn't make sense.  Worse yet, entire modes are made unavailable for long stretches of time.  Splat Zones and Tower Control modes are mutually exclusive.  You won't always be able to play the one you want.  As a matter of fact, you have no choice in the matter at any given time.

What is supposed to be Splatoon's greatest strength instead serves as its greatest weakness, and the inspiration for my most scathing criticism.  Since, unlike other shooters, killing and fighting skills of the individual are not the focus of the gameplay in favor of more team-oriented, objective-based gameplay, satisfaction with the game will be elusive.  Whereas other games will give the player rewards for kills in combat (experience toward levels or unlockables), giving meaning to a round even if it ends in defeat, Splatoon will often give no rewards of any kind to a player after defeat.  You either succeed as a team, or fail as a team.  If you're missing a player, if the rest of the team is made up of cowards, or if it simply puts forth no effort to attack objectives, you will waste three minutes of your life trying desperately to win on your own, which is impossible.  Rather than reward you for your efforts, you get punished according to the lack of skill of your brothers in arms.  So many times, I've had a good start on a round, with our team winning pretty handily thanks to my fighting, only to finally get taken out by the enemy and watch the rest of my teammates collapse and throw away whatever I'd given them simply because I wasn't there to carry their dead weight anymore.  After rounds where I'll literally have more kills than the rest of them combined, I still get nothing.  Ayn Rand would hate this game with a passion.

While the family friendly tone of the game seems like an attractive choice idea first, it's yet another problem disguised as an innovation.  I'll put it bluntly - kids suck at games.  The game seems to be filled with nine year olds who only play the game to keep you from winning.  You can spot them because they neither have the skill to win fights, nor have the sense to know how to contribute to an objective.  Imagine a sniper class from any other squad based shooter.  Now imagine a sniper player who never hits anyone or approaches an objective.  Say hello to a sizeable part fo the Splatoon community.

Speaking of classes, that reminds me of one of the worst flaws of this game - inability to switch weapons during a round.  I like the long range, rilfe-like weapons.  They're good at suppressive fire and can paint pretty effectively.  They're not intended for charging the enemy, though.  If my team consists of quivering pansies hiding under the bed for fear that they might get shot at, it'll be up to me to push the point with the most inefficient tools possible - the proverbial knife brought to a gunfight.  You cannot switch to something more suitable for aggressive play.  You simply have to accept that the next three minutes are an enraging waste of time.  Just a reminder - you also can't even ragequit, there is no option for it.  Online play is a three minute nightmare of idiocy at a time. 

Not since Left 4 Dead 2 have I found a community that sucks the joy out of a game this badly.  The last ditch option to rally your team/vent your rage - angry comments via typing or voice chat - also is unavailble for this game.  There's no way to communcate whatsoever.  All you can do is hope that you have a team that isn't stupid and have players that understand their roles to play.  Good freaking luck with that.  One final thing that ruins the online experience more and more is exploitation of poor gameplay design.  Bunny Hopping is now ubiquitous in Splatoon.  A tactic easily abused and therefore addressed with disincentives for use in all but the worst of shooters, bunny hopping has been left completely ignored by developers and it makes the game a living hell.  Some weapons don't even fire properly mid-air, but there are many more that suffer no drawbacks at all.  This leaves combat woefully unbalanced for the unfortunate souls who happen to like weapons that got the shaft with regards to these kind of exploits.  After several updates, the fact that garbage like this is still left unchanged in the game is a testament to what amateurs Nintendo's development team is when it comes to shooters.  The rest of us have seen things like this dealt with since the late 90s.  Nintendo has a reputation for being very insular.  Splatoon is the proof that they don't do nearly enough research before they attempt a genre that dozens of other companies have been contributing to for nearly two decades.

Final Verdict

The game that Splatoon reminds me of most is Aliens: Colonial Marines because of the great amount of potential that was dulled by incompetence, ignorance, and short-sightedness.  If Nintendo can foolishly make a shooter that completely omits many of the most important features of a typical shooter by any other A-list company, then it speaks volumes about its inability to catch up with the rest of the industry.  I've defended them since the Wii U launched, but they're trying their hardest to throw the fight and I'm sick of it.  Nintendo needs to pull its head out of its rectum before the next Mario game is on the Playstation 5.  Splatoon is a C+ game that is incredibly fun when you're winning, but only then. 

Needless to say, they are actually good players and have been playing for a while, but I'm used to a community where certain rules are laid out so that there is no conflict of interest.  GC definitely seems to run under those rules, so I had an epiphany! 

How about a GC-based Clash of Clans group??

How many of you play?  How would we set up leadership in the clan?  If this is a possibility, can we set up a CoC forum?

Anyways, before I leave this clan, I'd just like to get everyone's thoughts on this if you play and if we have enough to start a clan?  The bigger the clan, the better!

Assassin's Creed III

Fallout 3 New Vegas (I have completed the original)

Bioshock games

Elder Scrolls Oblivion

Elder Scrolls Skyrim

Witcher 2

Far Cry (at least first 2 games maybe the third too)

That is all I can remember off the top of my head without being at my computer at home.  

I guess when a game series hits its tenth title, the magic tends to wane a la Final Fantasy.  With a variety of options for gameplay gimmicks to influence multiplayer mayhem, the Wii U seemed like the perfect opportunity to revive the series rather than simply continue it.  Sadly, this is not the case.  I'll be clear - I've not played the series since MP4 on the Gamecube, so I may not be the best judge of the series' progression.  All the same, I quit caring because the same old formula had gotten stale and nothing of value seemed to replace what had once been so euphoric.  If you've adored the series up to this point, feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt, but Mario Party is showing its age.

One of the cardinal complaints of the series from the very beginning (aside from friction-based appendage mangling injuries) is that victory is based so obscenely upon luck.  The board game aspect of the earlier titles left you at the mercy of the dice.  What kept fans coming back was that intense competitive factor, that minigame performance could rescue you.  Mario Party had always featured a board game structure to the gameplay, but the minigames were the entire point.  In the same way that old Nickelodeon game shows were all about the mess rather than the quiz questions, Mario Party was all about the mayhem of turning the game to your advantage through deceit and underhandedness.  Those days are gone.  Mario Party 10 treats minigames like an afterthought.  The best parts of the series have been jettisoned to make room for everything players always hated.  The sadistic thrills of triple-teaming someone in Grab Bag or the humor of listening to a profane rant against how stupid or unfair Slot Car Derby is are both gone.  What started off as a really great way to cherish friendship (or end it)  has turned into an interactive Candyland.  The argument that Nintendo makes games for all ages fails miserably here.  The core gameplay of Mario Party 10 is shallow and unsatisfying. 

Luckily, there's an aspect to this title that is still worthwhile and that is 'Bowser Party'.  If you've seen any commercials, then you've already heard that the player with the huge gamepad can play as Bowser against the other four players.  This lives up to the hype in pretty much every way.  Bowser Party is basically a game mode made entirely out of screwing over your friends in the name of victory.  The goal of the typical four player group is simply to reach the end of a minefield of a game board of horrible traps and pitfalls while being pursued by a fifth player hellbent on their destruction.  The four of them all add their dice rolls together to put distance between themselves and their pursuer, who gets four dice.  Whenever that fifth player catches up with the group, everyone plays a Bowser event, which heavily favors their enemy.  Victory requires not only skill at survival, but minipulation of game mechanics and psychological warfare.  It's obvious that this was the spark of genius at the center of this game's development.

The final game mode is Amiibo Party.  Amiibo party is a tacked-on gamemode that sucks which exists only to sell Amiibos.  It no doubt took precious development time away from the better features of this game resulting in such a lackluster overall title and the management staff who so cynically banked on its ability to sell Skylanders ripoffs need to be beaten with rusty rods of rebar until they repent for their crimes. 

In all seriousness, though, a real selling point of the game was horribly mishandled here.  Imagine having a basic Mario Party-styled game mode where everything was just as it was when all was fresh and new in 1998, but with HD graphics and 17 years of great ideas supporting it - Mario Party as you always remembered it.  Now imagine shoehorning in Amiibos into every aspect of this game mode to justify their existence.  You'll need to touch your figure to the gamepad constantly to activate the most mundane of commands, from starting turns to rolling the dice.  If you need to take a leak when its not your turn, you'll be left wondering if you need your Amiibo for that.  Ergonomics and functionality are important in the world of consumer electronics - someone please tell Nintendo that.

In closing, Mario Party is actually less worthwhile than Nintendoland for multiplayer fun and isn't worth consideration until it reaches the same $20 price tag, even with the bonus features added on.  I certainly don't recommend buying Amiibos for this thing.  The one saving grace is that the Amiibos of any characters here who also make appearances in Super Smash Bros will be interchangeable between the two games.  If someone really wants to justify their purchase of a new Gold Mario Amiibo, they could always just train it to beat the living hell out of them in what is a far superior game in regards to both content and quality. 

Mario Party 10 is a tragic waste of potential and a Grade C game at best.

Game, annouced. That scan doe lol

S.

Even if you have never played guitar, I can see this as being quite good. If you want to learn guitar, while playing games and learning songs, this is the only way.

Oh, and it works on my laptop!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJgMl3BahWY

Shaftiel

if you are plat lets play a couple of draft, and see our strengths and if we can make plays on our mindset.

if so, i will try.

if you are diamond the only question is if you are a troll. otherwise ill give it a shot.

Let's get him up to speed.

MAME basically emulates the underlying electronic boards and other misc. things to allow one to use dumped game roms from the actual arcade games and play them on your computer of choice. Dumping roms means someone who owns or has access to an arcade game of some sort removes the electronic boards and copies over the actual assembly code written on the memory chips scattered across the board.

This is all done for the noble goal of preserving these classic games - many still are missing and a few may never be played again as the machines are long destroyed and any/all relic code is long since forgotten. Also if you collect the actual machines having copies of the roms will allow you to fix broken boards since you can just burn a new rom chip and set it back in the board in place of the bad one.

Naturally once this thing started rolling people quickly realized you could throw some joysticks together on some plywood and so on and so on and then BAM! you got you your own all-the-games arcade machine.

That's the rough out. You want to know how to get rolling.

8 or more years ago you could simply download MAME32, a version of MAME compiled for win machines, grab some game roms from...somewhere..., stick them in the MAME rom directory, fire it up, configure your controls and have at it.

Now you need to download and install the core MAME which is still command line driven and then to make your life stupid easy install IV/Play to serve as a game launcher.

Download MAME and install.

http://www.mamedev.org/release.html

Download IV/Play and install. Will need .NET something something... It's listed on the page.

http://www.mameui.info/

Get you some roms. Google MAME roms; have fun.

Copy those roms over to the roms directory beneath the MAME directory wherever you installed.

Start up IV/Play, configure and roll out!

On the IV/Play page you'll see some links to something called snapshots. They are just screenshots for all the games so when you fire up IV/Play you can get a look at what the game looks like. Optional if you just want to play the games, needed for a better experience. Same deal as game roms, dl and unzip them into the snapshots dir underneath the main MAME dir.

Things to note:

1) If you update to a newer version of MAME the game rooms you currently have may or MAY NOT work with the newness. This happens when the game roms are re-dumped from the actual machines or errors are stomped out or ???. It happens. You'll just need to get a version that works again. Might be easy, might not. Mostly not a big deal and just an annoyance.

2) Some games require BIOS roms to work. Not the best metaphor but if you think of it along the lines of having a windows game you'd need to have windows to run it. For some arcades the manufacturers created them as systems that developers could code against rather than having to create custom boards all the time. NEO-GEO is a decent example. The actual arcades had cartridge slots. So now and then you'll need to get the right bios files. Again, not a big deal but can be slightly more annoying than the stuff noted in number one above.

3) You know you can build your own controls and stuff right? That's kinda the fun part...

PS: http://gamrs.co/forums/index.php?/topic/41047-flitterkills-old-mame-machine/

4) CHD games and Laserdisc games. CHD games are mainly from the late 90's onward that actually were distributed on hard drives. CHD stands for compressed hard drive. These are considered separate than the regular MAME roms due to their size and honestly because they aren't roms in the classic sense. Arcade games got so big that they were basically bespoke windows/dos/whatever machines with games on hard drives just like we do today. These files are many megs/gigs in size. Might want to skip them unless you really really want to play them. Laserdisc games such as Dragon's Lair are also emulated in MAME but the same kind of problem remains. The actual game rom is next to nothing in size as the actual bulk of the game is/was a laserdisc you just skipped around on. Available but keep in mind the size and so on.

5) Some games are emulated poorly. Buggy. Etc. More of note is that MAME is concerned first and foremost with successful emulation which is not the same thing as a flawless performance. Many arcade games had custom video and cpu chips. Emulation attempts to copy these things in software. Great dual core machines couldn't really play most/all CHD games from the late 90's-early 2000's. No where near enough horsepower. Might be better these days. If its a game from the mid-90's on back you'll be fine minus any actual emulation problems.

6) We live in a world of LCDs. Arcades come from a world of CRTs. It won't look exactly like what you expect or remember. There are settings you can adjust in MAME to emulate CRT scanlines and raster dots and so on to make it more reals. Or plug in a 19" CRT you have laying around from the early 2000's.

EXTRAS:

Once this got rolling people didn't stop with just the roms. There are machine photos, promotional flyers, screenshot packs, etc. All these can be downloaded and incorporated into your MAME experience. Not required of course. You can explore this on your own.

I want to buy a game for my 3 and 4 year old with dacing, but I was wondering what would be the best game for them in terms of ease of use. I dont want them holding controllers ets, so I think the WIi U wont work. So do I buy and XBOX kinect? Or a PS3 with move?

Thanks

Pretty sure to mark La-Mulana 2 Kickstarter, today Lu-Mulana is also on sale for 90%, on previous sales (Winter, Autumn) it was only 45%~75%. I would highly suggest getting it. It is a Action Puzzle Adventure Platformer. Steam may not mark it as such, but you DO have to solve a ton of cryptic stuff, if its too hard for a baby such are yourself you can use the Wiki. Im not gonna judge a baby if they have to use a wiki though....you big baby.

Really, its a great series (Now that La-Mulana 2 is in development and it seems pretty far.), and I would hope anyone that loves a sense of adventure should get it. People say its a Metroidvania game, I call it the only true Indiana Jones game, cause thats what it feels like, minus all the Nazi's thoughs. Every thing is givin to you the player to figure out, you just have to decipher the meanings.

La-Mulana on Steam 90% Off

I need subs and views, and i will be moving to other games as i am done with this.

Anyways, come watch and let me know what you guys think !

What do you think of them?

Anyone else play this?

http://power-grid.roccat.org/en/Home/

[utube]fGdFWL-M8GE[/utube]

Features:

Fully customize the layout

View system resources (while in game)

Full volume control of different programs (while in game)

Message friends via multiple messengers (skype, facebook)

Quick launch your favorite programs

You can build "grids" for your favorite games so you have access to the info you need

Pretty sweet program overall and its free. I'm going to keep messing with it for a bit to see how it goes, so far it has been smooth sailing.