My Brother is Certifiably Insane....

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2006-01-09 12:40pm

What the fuck is that?

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-01-09 12:41pm

Steel Battalion X-Box Controller. You know, the controller that costs about $150 or $200; and can only be used with two games; Steel Battalion 1 and 2.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2006-01-09 12:42pm

oh yeah, definitely. He's got such a nice controller setup, but yet he's playing on that crappy desk? He needs to build himself a mock-up cockpit.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2006-01-09 01:46pm

MKSheppard wrote:Steel Battalion X-Box Controller. You know, the controller that costs about $150 or $200; and can only be used with two games; Steel Battalion 1 and 2.

I hope that he got it at a sale.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-01-09 04:41pm

Isn't this the same brother who repeatedly fucked up your computer?

Losonti Tokash · Post by **Losonti Tokash** » 2006-01-09 04:47pm

Excellent. Tell him to get Line of Contact so I can blow the crap out of him.

That said, I wish I had a desk. All I've got is a card table and a chair.

Oh, and it's not really $200 if you're smart about it. When I first started looking there was a bundle that came with both games for about 60 or 70 bucks and I "only" spent $110 on mine.

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2006-01-09 04:57pm

I and my brother got one together of eBay but we found it really boring so we sold it (for a profit I may add).

frogcurry · Post by **frogcurry** » 2006-01-09 06:24pm

Is that the thing where you can press a specific button to operate the wipers on your vehicle?

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2006-01-09 06:31pm

yep.
and if you don't press Eject before the explosion of your mecha, you're dead and back to the beginning of the game

frogcurry · Post by **frogcurry** » 2006-01-09 06:43pm

WTF? That's seriously harsh.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-01-09 06:45pm

The game was all about the presentation of realism.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2006-01-09 06:50pm

having seen the crazy things that some people manage to do for Falcon 4.0 or Flightsim, the Tekki controler seems okay.

frogcurry · Post by **frogcurry** » 2006-01-09 06:59pm

I must be misunderstanding here. You can save your game occasionally and you will go back to the start of the level or chapter if you die yes?

Surely not all the way back to the start if you die 3 seconds from finishing the game?

edit: sorry I seem to be going a bit off-topic here...

Losonti Tokash · Post by **Losonti Tokash** » 2006-01-09 07:03pm

If your pilot is killed, that campaign ends. It keeps a record of your pilot as KIA but that's all you can do with it. The way to not die is either be a damn good pilot or just hit the eject button when the cockpit is on fire and the button flashes. Of course, then you lose the VT and have to buy a new one. Running out of money is the other way for a campaign to end (other than finishing it, of course).

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-01-09 07:33pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The game was all about the presentation of realism.

Did I just hear the word "realism" in relation to a game involving mecha?

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2006-01-09 07:47pm

"immersion" would fit better

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-01-09 07:49pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The game was all about the presentation of realism.
Did I just hear the word "realism" in relation to a game involving mecha?

Bah, whatever.

Instant Sunrise · Post by **Instant Sunrise** » 2006-01-09 07:50pm

Well, with the exeption of the draw distance, and cutscenes. the game's graphics are close to photorealiastic.

Even if the whole concept of mecha is fairly implausible.

Losonti Tokash · Post by **Losonti Tokash** » 2006-01-09 07:53pm

If it makes you feel any better, it's very easy to knock the VTs over.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-01-09 07:58pm

UPDATE: he returned it as it didn't come with a manual or tutorial and it was complicated; he got store credit for it (about $100 worth ; it was 100 for the stick, and 50 for the game); and we got a bunch of games cheep instead.

Losonti Tokash · Post by **Losonti Tokash** » 2006-01-09 08:02pm

Your brother's a wuss. I figured that game out by trial and error.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-01-09 08:40pm

A wuss with no attention span, it seems...

Tekki has a somewhat steep learning curve, anyway, doesn't it?

sketerpot · Post by **sketerpot** » 2006-01-09 08:47pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The game was all about the presentation of realism.
Did I just hear the word "realism" in relation to a game involving mecha?

The feeling of realism is not mutually exclusive with mecha. If someone is willing to suspend disbelief for a few fundamental premises of a fictional universe, it can still feel real if everything else is self-consistent.

People are willing to accept Death Stars and Jedi powers and lecherous wormlike gangster aliens as long as all the pieces fit together nicely and we get to see some seedy bars and people still act in accordance with human nature. Even those utterly unrealistic Justice League cartoons can feel real... until someone suddenly develops unbalanced godlike superpowers that mysteriously vanish in the next episode. Then the whole feeling of believability is shattered, because the story is inconsistent.

Similarly, I can accept the ideas of cyborgs and brain-computer connections and gratuitous-female-nudity-powered adaptive camoflage in the Ghost in the Shell movies---but when random people start quoting from Paradise Lost and everyone seems preoccupied with philosophical angst, the realism goes away. The GitS universe is based on our own world's hypothetical future, and nothing in the story explains humanity's descent into legions of pretentious Philosophy Major freshmen. It makes no sense in the context of the story, so it breaks realism.

So yes, realism is a very important concern in games involving mecha, and anything else with a few ridiculous premises. Or it should be.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2006-01-09 09:14pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:The game was all about the presentation of realism.
Did I just hear the word "realism" in relation to a game involving mecha?

It's another way of saying instead of sleek, fast and mobile and whatever insanity most mecha games have; these things perform like tanks drowning in mud.