Cynical

Is this one of your "play on HMP, UV isn't fun" wads?

Also Arx Fatalis, which is Ultima Underworld 3 in all but name.

So, is there any chance of having a gameplay mod month of this someday? I'd love to watch everyone fail miserably at Term's new "completely unplayable" mod.

Nope, it really is the brain! There was an experiment done where they gave a bunch of people glasses that flipped their vision upside-down and made them wear them for a week; after the first few days, their brain compensated and everything looked normal and right-side up to them again. Then, when they stopped wearing the glasses, everything looked upside-down again, and it took them another few days to get it all straightened out.

Eh? I'm not a DM player, but I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to use an old-school vanilla self-referential crystal sector there to keep it smooth.

In 1993, there was no such thing as "serious" videogames, at least in the modern sense. The overall vibe was more like an '80s Schwarzenegger or Stallone action film; played reasonably straight on the surface, but clearly gleefully violent for the sake of being violent.

http://www.videogamedc.com/Fan_Flicks/Super_Mario_Rampage/super_mario_rampage.html

I'm not going to officially vote since I'm just a spectator, but all of you who are participants should vote for Plutonium Winds, it's one of the most fun episodes ever and never gets the attention it deserves.

Love me some CentOS. If it weren't for Windows' domination of the gaming sphere and Linux's utter failure when it comes to audio recording/production, I'd probably use it at home as well as at work.

People threatening to skip your maps doesn't mean shit. I've skipped several of the Joshymaps I've encountered in CPs, his reputation doesn't seem to be suffering. Likewise, being niche in a CP is no problem; it'll expand your work to a wider audience of people who haven't played it (they may or may not like it, but they have idclev, so what does it matter?), and your niche can download a CP and jump straight to your maps (I did exactly this with cchest4, and fully plan on just skipping to the Skillsaw maps if BtSX E3 ever comes out).

Frustration is an important part of fun with in videogaming, though. What do you remember more fondly; the boss that you kinda gradually breezed through, or the one that made you rage out hard before you finally conquered it?

I've only ever gotten to witness full reactions on a stream once, but to answer the question, ohhhhhh yesssssssss.

I don't have screenshots handy, but Map 02 of Bloody Steel has a lot of cool vehicles.

I'm one of those rare weirdos who really loves Dracula X (although the Japanese version, where Richter and Death actually bleed is much better than the version where they just leak a suspicious white substance!), and I even prefer it over Rondo, but let's be real here, there's too much jank like the Key's item crash or Dullahan being ruined with a room that's too large for him or the potentially immortal red skeletons in stage 5' thanks to the invincibility potion glitch for the game to match up to Bloodlines, which, aside from a sort of dull third stage and underwhelming final stage, is an absolute masterpiece. (Neither are as good as Akumajo Dracula X68000, but that didn't make it to the US until the 32 bit generation.)

Bloodlines was the best 16 bit Castlevania that was released in the west, you're not that poor ;-)

This actually isn't true! While it is true that the Japanese version of that game wasn't a part of the Mario franchise, it was originally designed to be the second Mario game; it turned into Doki Doki Panic fairly late in development, when the Japanese version of SMB 2 got far enough along that it became clear that it would be SMB 2. It's one of those rare cases where the American and Japanese versions of a game differ greatly, but the American version is the one that was actually intended (other cases include much of the Resident Evil series, Devil May Cry 3, and The Evil Within).

And here I was, thinking Aussies were supposed to be a tough and rugged people, not froo-froo little sissies.

I Cynical, am a COWARD that futilely attacks our ETERNAL EMPEROR with empty words, and have therefore been EXCISED for my impotent wrath.

Huh. I thought I had remembered that being a thing when Drown Stone was first released, that it only worked in cl9 because Lupinx used Cacos and Lost Souls on conveyors, and the Secret Santa thread seems to back me up, but I guess I was wrong?

Source port dependent. Pr+ Complevel 9, they do; ZDoom based ports require you to use the wind currents effects.

Agreed, but the philosophical difference runs even deeper than you're giving it credit for. It's a basic design philosophy from Platinum Games that shows up in all of their games except Vanquish -- in a presentation at GDC 2016, Inaba mentioned that he considers action games to be games that force the player to always be reacting to unexpected/surprising things that are happening in-game, while non-action games have the player causing things to happen. Through that lens, you can see a common thread in all of their games that aren't Vanquish; the dodge-offsetters (Bayo, the licensed games, TW101, etc.) all have you run through your chain just to have something to do while you wait for the tell and hit "dodge", MGR frequently has you just standing around waiting for that parry opportunity so you can parry->zandetsu, etc. Contrast this with DMC; if you're comboing someone and you're in a place where you're likely to have to react, you're probably making a mistake. The goal behind the launch -> air combo logic, beyond just styling, is that it takes the enemy you're attacking out of commission and puts yourself in a position where you're largely safe from other enemies. There's plenty of other games that work on similar logic; a lot of shmups have you moving one way to bait shots to a part of the screen where they won't be in your way later or speedkilling enemies before they can fire dangerous patterns, Doom tends to play more off of strategic movement patterns that defuse threats before they even appear than it does on reacting to individual shots, etc. To me, at least, the latter style of game tends to come off much fresher and more exciting than a static "sit around and wait for event X" kind of glorified Dragon's Lair game, and it's why if every Platinum game disappeared tomorrow, the only one I'd miss a bit is Vanquish (where once you learn how to move around correctly and air-detonate nades by shooting them, it lets you be the aggressor, zooming around enemy lines and causing havoc instead of trying to react to individual shots).

I need to play more than the first couple of stages in God Hand (especially because Mikami is probably my favorite Japanese game director ever), and I haven't played NGB, but I'd say DMC 4 smokes DMC 3 or Bayo, easily. Bayo suffers from the same "I want the player to play exactly how I want them to" issues that Kamiya games always do (having to run down the pre-programmed list of combos with dodge offsets to keep them going because Wicked Weaves are everything isn't as cool as being able to go freeform in DMC 3 or 4), and it has trash pacing, cheap hits out of enemy-intro cutscenes, and bad boss fights. TBH, I actually think Bayo pretty much sucks whenever you're not fighting Jeanne, Grace + Glory, or Fearless + Fairness, but I've never played a Kamiya game that I've liked. DMC 3 is better than Bayo, but it also has terrible boss fights outside of A+R, Lady, and Vergil, and I'm one of those casuals who also really enjoys Nero's Devil Bringer. Stuff like doing a ground combo (or aerial rave -> roulette spin -> repeat if he's flying) on an Angelo, seeing him block, jumping or enemy-stepping and then devil-bringering over him to immediately get behind him and punish him with a buster... that just never gets old.

It's really nothing like Painkiller at all, though. It's more like some sort of cross between RTCW + Bulletstorm + Undying + some classic FPS that doesn't have bunny hopping or straferunning.

Necrovision (basically the good version of Bulletstorm) Undying (the coolest FPS in the Half-Life school of heavily scripted design ever)

Finally getting around to The Evil Within 2. Finished chapter 3 last night; current assessment is that it's a decent game, but miles from the masterpiece the original was. I miss Mikami's eye for great setpieces. (Also, you guys who think DmC is better than DMC 4 are going full baka. DMC 4 is the best 3D brawler ever made, DmC is awful.)