Recent content by DrNick

No question at all: The Flop House Podcast. I'm not going to try to explain why, because I can't possibly do it justice. But maybe this will convince you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySJ0wM2UaBA

I was thinking recently about a great idea that was integrated into the Super Nintendo controller, that I haven't seen since. This was the first controller (that I know of) to have the four action buttons in a diamond pattern, a solid innovation that stuck around. But the SNES buttons were...

Switching between normal vision and Detective Mode vision in Arkham Asylum created a distinct and powerfully bright flash of light on the screen during the moment of transition. Maybe it's just me, but after a while, I found I had to close my eyes whenever I switched, because the contrast...

Thou shalt not create a PC game in which the movement functions are mapped on the right side of the keyboard, and the action functions are mapped to the left side, unless there is a simple and reliable way to change them. Seriously, we've been trained since 1985 that you move with the left...

It's not the keyboard and mouse - the flight controls really are just that horrific. I had it for the PS2, and it must have taken me five hours over three days to finish the flight school missions. The jetpack was a lot easier to manage. And a lot more fun.

Dragon Quest 8 on the PS2. Not a bad game, exactly, but good lord, it just goes on forever.

I agree with everyone's excellent advice to play on a low skill level to learn the ins and outs. Especially on the lower skill levels, you have the luxury of choosing well in advance what kind of victory you want. A good way to learn the game is to pick the kind of victory you'd like to try...

It at least partly depends on what definition of "prequel" you're using. The least restrictive definition would include things like KOTOR, which has nothing in common with Star Wars except a shared universe, largely because of the massive distance in time between the two stories. In the most...

Sid Meier's Civilization. Any version, though the memory-glutton Civ 5 is the worst offender. A similar complaint can probably be leveled against most 4X / turn-based strategy games: When going, for example, for a science victory, if you've played well, you'll reach a point in which all of...

I've sank more hours into Morrowind than any other game, except maybe the various versions of Civilization. I totally agree.

I never played Terror from the Deep, but that music was fantastic. I like the start-stop quality - it seems to reinforce the edge-of-your-seat feeling.

Some games draw you in not necessarily through narrative or gameplay, but through spellbinding atmosphere. Atmosphere is a hard metric to measure, but these are the kinds of games that can keep you playing just to explore and imagine yourself in another world. Personally, I feel like...

When I was in high school, in the Long-Ago-Time, chalkboards still dominated. I had a friend who kept his fingernails long. Whenever he would write on the board, he held out his pinky, and as he wrote, the nail would occasionally scrape on the board. I used to sit there, tense as a cornered...

I was a big Godzilla fan as a kid, big enough that I bought "Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!" for the NES. The very first enemy monster you encounter is Gezora, but I never knew Gezora's origin. Thank you, MovieBob, for solving a 23-year old mystery.

GTA IV and the GTA III/VC/SA pack on Steam, after I already had them on 360/PS2. The much-improved processor speed made a HUGE difference in gameplay. On the 360 version of GTA IV, when driving at dangerous speeds, I would occasionally crash into obstacles that were invisible because they...