Late Night Consoling

"Though the next installment of EA's Need for Speed franchise, entitled Carbon, has been mentioned at various events including Sony's pre-E3 conference this year, it hadn't been officially announced by EA until today. Need for Speed Carbon focuses on street racing, starting in urban environments and ending up in the mountainous tracks of Carbon Canyon. "We pride ourselves on our ability to reinvent the franchise and continually uncover new and exciting trends in car culture," said executive producer Larry LaPierre. "Canyon Racing is a real test of a driver's skill and we think it provides a fantastic game play opportunity to lean into.""


you wanna re-invent it, do SOMETHING FUCKING DIFFERENT.
E$A$ $G$A$M$E$S

man no wonder people hate these guys, can they do ANYTHING different but shovel crap out year after year?

I feel for all the good developers swallowed up by them :( so many good games back then, now it's cookie cutter shit.

Sony is doomed.

Chris, this is what i did for that part of the game:

1) Set the controller down on some surface
2) Put right thumb away, locate right index finger
3) Use right index finger to poke at 'x' button until feat of strength accomplished
4) Once accomplished, resume normal controller grip

Hope this helps

Need For Speed : Carbon Copy Of The Last 5 Games We Made

NFS: Carbon sounds a bit like, I don't know.... Initial D? I know they're trying hard to "reinvent" the wheel with every new NFS game. But this seems to throw back to the whole Underground crap that I hated when they first started getting into the whole tuner car culture. Granted I was able to stomach it in Most Wanted with the brown and grey world and the intense police chases (I always get a smile on my face when a police chopper was hunting me down!) not sure I'll be able to take anymore of this EA.

Why do you tempt me with Tales of Destiny 2 screenshots? Why?!

Ok, I was thinking about it, y'know what game is difficult when it comes to Button Mashing? Burnout Revenge. I seriously don't have it in me to press one button an insane amount of times to set off a Force 10 Crashbreaker. It's PHYSICALLY impossible for me.

But what gets on my nerves even more is having to rotate an analog repeatedly to do something (i.e. God of War when it came to ripping off a Medua's head) Onimusha 2 also had an example of this, where you had to open up some steel door by rotating both analogs in opposite directions, making sure that the door was level the whole way through. Otherwise you'd have to rotate the analogs BACK until it's straightened out and you can go forward.

Mind you, you're also timed in that segment.

I know exactly what you mean Chris, and I agree completely. Everyone who is misunderstanding this must be retarded.

*shakes fist at my glossy beautiful Nintendo DS Lite*

There used to be a day when I could skip LNC, knowing that I'd missed nothing, for I owned not a single console. Now, I read the whole thing.

And you know what's worse??
I like it :( :( :(

so excited about Panzer Tactics DS :)

When did that button-mashing gameplay thing really take off for those little mini-game type encounters? I know it's nothing new, but there was a point where it became more common as a cinematic device or whatever. I seem to remember it being used in Metal Gear Solid for the torture scenes, although Shenmue comes to mind for proliferating the reaction-time Resident Evil 4-type moments.

How hard could it be to get inside X06?, I live in Barcelona and that would be cool.

I like the action of pressing a certain combination of buttons in a certain amount of time. It makes cutscenese all the more interesting and bearable. And players of Xenosaga know how bad cutscenes can be.

Shenmue II did this well I think. I haven't played RE4 or Indigo Prophecy. God of War seemed to use this a bit differently by incorporating it in combat.

What I hate is the rapid pressing of a single button. That's pretty annoying.

I completely understand your POV on button mashing, single or otherwise. For example, I used to play a lot of fighting games in arcades, specifically MK (1-4, didn't really matter) and SF2 (any of the 3000 variations). I took the time to learn precise moves, combos, etc., only to have some meathead jump on the controls and pound his way to a cheap victory.

Now I hate to use combos in that example, because as you've stated many times you don't necessarily have an issue with some button "mashing" in combos. I used that example to point out an instance where I too hate button mashing.

There are times, however, when I think it can come in handy and enhance my gaming experience.

You mentioned Resident Evil 4, so I'll use that. I really enjoyed the interactive cutscenes and the way button mashing was integrated into them. Take the instance near the beginning where you're walking down a hill and some of the villagers push a boulder down at you. That's a very tense scene, and it made sense that I should get my pulse pounding via button mashing to simulate sprinting for my life. And then, when you have to dive out of the way, a sudden change in the required button to press is definitely in order. Yes, simple button mashing at its core, but to me it played out this way:

sprint-sprint-sprint-sprint-sprint-sprint-sprint-DIVE!!

I just think the frantic nature of the cutscenes came through loud and clear. What's more, RE4 made sure to switch up the interactive cutscenes by weaving other types of button pressing "mini-games." Take the infamous knife fight for example. You have to quickly press a combination of buttons to dive out of the way of the attacker, whereas the test of strength requires you to jam on a button or two in order to move the knife away from you. It's not repetitive, and in my opinion, (at least in RE4) the button mashing wasn't so frequent as to cause pain in my wrists. It was just enough to get my heart racing.

Just my take.

So Chris, what's your take on these long-running mash fests on a single button vs. the sort of in-sequence minigame in God of War (hydra in the boat or some of the more challenging combos, for example), the minigames in Daxter, the 'cinematics' in Tomb Raider Legend, or finishing moves in Unreal Championship 2 (to list some recent examples).

I'd say I kind of agree on the "mash this button really fast" thing (when Indigo Prophecy wouldn't even properly register me following instructions in the tutorial and told me to keep retrying, I all but burned it and threw it out the window), but for some reason it didn't bother me a bit in Kong (I think the feedback sold it better), and I actually enjoy the combo setups quite a bit.

I'm actually sort of a fan of the 'wiggle the sticks' mechanic as a break free mechanism - that's one aspect where what you do on the controller actually seems to line up quite well with what you're doing.

The last button masher I can remember enjoying had to be Caveman Games. That game is overdue for a modern 3D upgrade, hopefully with some new events also.

I remember playing God of War on my brothers PS2 for first time, was before I owned a 360 and I hadn't played many console games. I loved the button mashing stuff, made me feel like a 5 year old and made me feel like I was really playing a console game (you'd never get that sort of thing on a PC game).

But yeah playing it the next day the novelty had worn off and it was pretty annoying. It'd be even more annoying if it was overused in other games as well.

So am I the only one underwhelmed by both NHL games? I mean I saw NBA 06 from EA sports on Xbox360 and I realize that neither NHL devo. team has the same resources, but come on!! The resolutions and player models look a little bit better but this is not screaming next gen to me. The 2K screenshots make Joe Thornton look like he has downs syndrome also. This is a minor nitpick about screenshots but the one with Ovechkin holding the stick that is clipping through his hand, nice. I mean sure its just a screenshot and in action it won't be noticable, but well...I'm just depressed.

God of War was awesome but I spose those high speed mash bits did suck a little - not that much tho.

I found the quick press of random buttons a bit trickier :( but I guess they need to add those kind of challenges as a gameplay style here and there to mix it up.

Y'know it's sad. Mega Man X6 scares me to this day because of how hard it was.

EA can really pump out those NFS games...not that I'm complaining. I've enjoyed pretty much all of them.

"There's no question that having the Grand Theft Auto franchise helped us a lot and helped us sell some units," he responded, "but I don't think the battle would be any different with or without Grand Theft Auto."

It was about the only reason I rushed out to buy another PS2 after my original took a crap. Wasn't done with GTA SA yet!

Awwwww. Not nighttime again EA :[ I really liked daytime racing in NSF:MW, even if it was unrealistic. Fucking nighttime. I guess we can only hope for a day/night cycle

I knew exactly what you meant. I hate it in Burnout Revenge, too.

The link for Panzer Tactics DS screenshots links to the Super Monkey Ball Adventure screenshots...