I really liked FF XIII, but a lot of people had some legitimate complaints about it. What do you think about the progression of the series, especially taking into account what FF XIII brought to the table? I haven't played XIII-2 but I've heard it fixed a few of the complaints while adding a few more.

It's linear, there are no towns, you only get to do any kind of free roam more than halfway through the game, so on. Those are the gist of the complaints people had.

why on earth is Square rereleasing, HDing, or updating pretty much every Final Fantasy game except the one everyone is asking for?

AMEN! That PS3 tech demo had everyone drooling and practically begging for it.

Yes.

I think it's that simple.

I haven't watched the video yet, but I think I can answer already.

The internet is amazing but people use it to complain quite a bit and it's a sea of negativity. That's to be expected and people should complain when there are problems that need complaining about, but overall it isn't as constructive as it should be. Anonymity adds a buffer that people can hide behind to criticize and be jerks without it being attached to themselves. I've been making an effort recently to distance myself from "panickedthumb" and use my real name where possible/feasible/safe so that I don't say anything on the internet that I wouldn't want attached to my real name for that very reason, actually.

Ah, Mellon Collie. Such a damn good album. I wouldn't call it the best of all time, but it's by far my favorite SP album. That's mostly because I don't care for their other work much, but I could listen to Mellon Collie on repeat for days. If Billy Corgan's voice were different, I would probably agree that it's the best album ever, honestly. I've just never cared for it.

Mmm yeah, overall this feels like a downgrade without some extra stuff to fill the gaps. The bee gun damage is definitely welcome, but the nerfs to chlorophyte hurt quite a bit. It was already rare as hell on a multiplayer server (granted, it would probably be a little abundant for single-player worlds), and golden shower is a lot less effective. I mean that was a go-to spell for me, and many others. I guess that's why it got nerfed though, you don't want a go-to spell that everyone uses. I would have preferred to see some buffs to bring the other spells up to the utility of golden shower though. Life crystals no longer spawning in the dungeon is a little disappointing, though I was generally at max life by then. The mana potion debuff that decreases magic damage is a big hit. That one hurts hard.

But yeah, I'm glad the mech bosses are tougher. And some of the non-balance changes are fan-damn-tastic...

• The infinite wiring would have come in quite handy on our last world.


• Little things like stackable buckets are a life-saver too for filling up massive pools.


• Ore stacking to 999 is a GODSEND. OMG this is amazing.


• Saplings on all grass types is handy. That makes farming jungle trees far easier


• Replaced Tree 9's graphics? Good, that tree was a slacker. I have no idea what I'm talking about.


• The upside-down slopes are awesome. That was one thing I wanted with the slopes added in the last update. Not a huge thing, but it will help for some of the creative builds people do.


• More common pyramids are great, since I only ever saw one of those in the few worlds I made last update. I wish living trees were more common as well.

And a few other little things are welcome. But the nerfs are a little harsh. I'm sure I'll still love it! :)

You heard it here first, Greg loves golden showers.

I'm glad you've made this a thing, Cap'n.

I love this game. Really I only have one complaint-- The goals are sometimes insane. It's awesomely fun, but the progression is often halted when you get to a goal that you just can't seem to do, and you have to pay gems to unlock them if you want to bypass them. This is obviously an attempt to get you to buy gem packs, but that's only a mild annoyance in the grand scheme of things. You will be able to progress eventually, it might just be a ton of work.

If you have an iPhone or Android, definitely check it out. Lots of fun here.

Valve's games don't age. That's one thing you have to give them. Half Life 1 still holds up to the gameplay test even if the graphics are a little dated. I still have a much fun with it now as I ever did. I'm thrilled with the Black Mesa remake, because the improved graphics may make it more approachable.

More on your topic though, Portal 2 could have been longer but it was so much fun. I played it once in about two days and immediately started another game.

After the first one I was a little worries the second wouldn't live up to the first, but it couldn't have been a better sequel.

Now I want to play it again. :)

I'd hesitate to say "exploit" because of the connotations that word brings along with it, but yes. It most definitely does, and I'm glad.

That said, it's not *just* nostalgia. My nephew wasn't alive for any console generation before the Wii, and he loves Zelda games. He's gone back and played the older ones through VC as well. I'm aware that using my nephew is entirely anecdotal, but there's obviously something there that makes it a good game, not just a nostalgia trip.

My high score was 3. I don't understand why people like it. It isn't that it's hard, it's that it's bad. Even beyond the stylistic rip-off.

But just to add-- you have less than a day to download it. There's been a ton of outrage over it and the developer has announced that he's taking it offline tomorrow. https://twitter.com/dongatory/status/432227971173068800

From what I read it seems like there are accusations that he used bots to inflate his count, votes, etc. to get more people to download it and rake in more ad money. And every question that he's responded to about it has been half-answers to non-answers. That's what the outrage is all about, at least I think. I mean yeah, people have complained about the assets looking like Super Mario World for a while but when the botting allegations came up is when he decided to pull it.

You're certainly right that other games are way worse, though. But "sort of riffs Mario somewhat" downplays it I think. It's that bird-fish-thing from Mario dodging the pipes from Mario. I think it's different enough to guard him from legal issues from Nintendo, but it's still quite obvious.

Sure, I never said it was proof, but he's taking his game and leaving because journalists are asking him questions, which is something they absolutely should be doing. It was just idle talk until he started dodging questions about it, and then it blew up, of course.

If he is innocent, then yeah I feel bad for him (and he needs a coach to tell him how to answer questions) but if he actually did it then it's just cowardly, and the only sad thing is that he's raking in 50k a day from the ad money. Pulling the game just makes him look more guilty though-- that's not a good move.

I don't think this is just homage, but I don't think it's stealing either. 3D Dot Game Heroes was an homage to the top-down Zelda games. This isn't stealing, there are no assets taken from the old games, but it's blatant. There's no original design with the exception of the buildings in the background, it's similar enough that he just took the visual style and barely tweaked it.

And Adym, yeah, that's my problem with it. My progression was about the same as yours. It was on my phone for 15 minuets before I removed it and 1-starred it.

TO HIS CREDIT though, so I'm not just a negative Nellie... The game came out 9 months ago and nobody cared. Nobody cared probably because it's not that great. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he made it as almost like a practice game to move on to bigger and better things. Using derivative artwork and mechanics from a 10-year-old flash game, that's a logical hypothesis.

But PewDiePie made a video about it and it became a thing. I haven't watched the video, but when someone with that kind of viewership talks about something, people are going to download it, and then it's going to blow up.

So the guy wasn't expecting this kind of publicity or pressure. Perhaps he saw a taste of fame and decided to fudge his counts and reviews to get more downloads. Perhaps he didn't. Regardless, this isn't what he signed on for and it's not like he has experience dealing with things. Maybe his question dodging was just because he was nervous and didn't want to say anything that could come back and bite him later.

Still, he isn't handling it well. I don't know how I would handle getting death threats but I mean, for $50k a day in ad money I think I'd stick it out. If he wants to work again in the game industry he should be talking to people. But maybe at this point he doesn't want to. He's getting what Phil Fish got and he isn't as used to it as Phil was. Phil had some communications issues himself.

Anyway, I HOPE he didn't do what he's accused of. I hope it doesn't sour him on developing more stuff. There's no harm in people trying, regardless of what they release, until someone makes a bad game a phenomenon.

What I'm more worried about, really, is games like Candy Crush Saga making it acceptable to spam your friends constantly or pay microtransactions just to be able to play more than a few times a day. At least Flappy Bird is free-to-play and doesn't encourage spamming, even if the ads are a little intrusive.

So kinda back to the original topic, my friend just sent me this: http://i.imgur.com/2C6hDgC.jpg

I would say the 9,999 people are hacking it. It seems it takes less than a day for mobile leaderboards to fill up with maxed out scores.

Ha, awesome. The pipes always won when I played Flappy Bird. It's nice to be on the winning team.

So Andrew (my friend that sent me his high score of 73, posted earlier) just got to 97. I don't even understand how that's possible.