10/17/07 - E4, Speedball 2, and Lumines Content
Alright folks. Here's our first week's topic. Here's my quick say on the subject.
Game: Lumines Content
Thumbs: Undecided (Leaning to up.)
I like the Heavenly Star skin more than the Breeze skin but how can you go wrong with Free? The Holiday pack...I'm still torn about. I've bought all the add-ons so far so I'll probably take the plunge eventually. It's really just a question of whether I'll have time to enjoy it (and thus, is it worth it).
Game: Every Extend Extra Extreme (Full Game)
Thumbs: WAAAY Up
I instantly loved this game when I started playing it so it was an *easy* 800MSP purchase. This is a perfect zone out game. You still have to focus to get a high score but you can just ride the wave of beats for hours (literally...my first real game was 2 hours long...42 trillion+ points). And with the Wiz Ur Musik mode, the replay value is near infinite. I'm a sucker for Q? and The Miz and music games in general though so take with salt as necessary.
Lumines Content:
Breeze is ok. It's by no means bad, but I feel like it's a totally different energy from Heavenly Star. Freebie, so it's all good.
When I went through the first 4 or so songs on the Holiday pack, I was starting to dread my purchase. (I REALLY don't get the first track at all.) I wasn't exactly a huge fan of the SOS pack, and I was thinking this would be a repetition of my previous feelings. But then it got better. Way better, in fact. Some of these songs, in my opinion, actually have outdone some of the previous ones. The eleventh skin or so (the one with people skiing in the background) has become one of my new all-time favorites.
Thumbs: Up. $5 altogether is nice. Totally worth it, if you're a big Lumines Live! nut.
Every Extend Extra Extreme (demo):
I really don't know what I'm doing. My rhythm is terrible, so I have absolutely no idea when the best time to explode is. My biggest chain so far has been like...211, or something? With like a high score of 8 mil.
However, I seem to be at least...well, not completely sucky at Revenge mode. It's a nice twist on the 2D shooters that we see plenty of on the Arcade.
Thumbs: Undecided. It'll be up once I figure out how to get this game right. This is exactly how I felt when I first played Lumines Live! one year ago (I never actually bought it until the following February)
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (demo):
Haha, no.
Thumbs: Down.
EDIT: After my second playtime with the E4 demo, I seem to have gotten a better hang of it, as I managed to get a 300+ Billion score, and a highest combo (so that I've noticed) of around 1200+.
I still have no idea what I'm doing.
Game: Lumines Content
Thumbs: Up
Breeze is okay, but it's worth the 0msp easily. The Holiday Pack is cool, I think I like it better than the booster pack. And this is the cheapest set of 20 skins yet, isn't it? Good deal.
Game: Every Extend Extra Extreme (Full Game)
Thumbs: Up
My only complaint is that Unlimited mode is literally unlimited. The top of the leaderboards will just measure patience, rather than skill or strategy or anything, which is annoying. Other than that, the game is great. Music and visual style is awesome, and the whole package is such a complete sensory experience that it took me a few games to even realize that that the controller was pulsing to the music. Multiplayer is fun, and R4 is a lot cooler than I expected.
Game: Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (demo):
Thumbs: Down
Kinda reminds me of Bill Lambeer's Combat Basketball, which was sorta fun 15 years ago, but I'm really over 2D sports games where you can only see 20% of the field at a time.
I know what you mean about patience and time being the determining factors in E4 The Game Unlimited Mode.
I just played my 2nd full game and got 346 trillion...and then just decided to quit. I'm 12th on the leaderboard (it's for stage 4) because of that. The game took about 2 hours. But compare that to my first game which was also 2 hours long and I only scored 42 trillion. I've finally gotten the hang of creating beat multipliers so my score started climbing VERY fast once I steadily worked to 100.000X and got 5X beat multipliers one after another (I got that achievement for doing them while having 100X).
I really enjoyed those 2 hours though, so no complaints at all.
Hint: If you're having trouble with the beat multipliers, LOOK at the top pulsing bar at the bottom of the screen. You have to hit the A button when it pulses all the way to the right. Miss by a fraction and you lose the multiplier. Sucks...but eventually you sorta find the groove. I also think stage 4 has a much easier groove to feel than stage 1 (haven't played 2 or 3 enough to compare).
Oh, and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Thumbs: Down
Sorry folks...just not feeling any nostalgia for this one. Too many other games that I really enjoy playing (or games I'm anxious to get) to pick this one up.
Game: Every Extend Extra Extreme (Trial)
Thumbs: Down
Found it really, really dull. I quite like the trippy music, but as a game, there doesn't seem to be anything to it. Detonate, watch some slow expolsions, respawn, grab time extends, repeat. As long as you detonate before the shield goes down, you don't even have to dodge anything. As it stands, it's practically impossible to lose. I didn't even get to the trial's score limit before I let myself die out of boredom at a couple hundred billion. It's not even very pretty to look at. Wouldn't even be interested at half the price.
Game: Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (Full):
Thumbs: Up
It's fast, simple, and still remarkably playable. One-off games may get old, but add in the league mode, with upgrading players and watching the transfer market for good players between games, and it becomes quite compulsive. They shouldn't have bothered with the "enhanced" graphics and kept the game to 400 points, though.
Joined: 2007-04-26