SanaEquiesterer

I'm reviving this thread because I finally got a PSP last month. The first demo I downloaded was VCII, but I'm a little hesitant to purchase the game because of the impression I'm getting from the new cast. It looks like the new characters might really play into the stereotypical high school roles. I stopped watching a lot of anime for this reason and I'm wary of the VCII experience being a grating one if I'm seeing characters I've already seen a million times. Can anyone who's played it confirm or deny my suspicions?

I'm playing Uncharted for the first time now, even though I've owned my PS3 for three years now. I had barely played for a half hour when the fan suddenly went into hyper mode. I actually grew concerned because my PS3 had never been that loud before and the back felt alarmingly warm, almost hot. Needless to say, I stopped playing right away. I know some of the earlier PS3s have an issue of thermal paste drying out (mine is a fat 40GB), but I'm very hesitant about opening the system to see for myself.

If I understand Spotify correctly, it's a program that allows you to listen to streaming music on various platforms from a huge database and share/discover/buy music? If I'm happy finding and tracking my music with Last.fm then there isn't much point in getting it, is there? How is their database of independent artists?

I'm about half-way through the Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. A friend lent it to me a couple years ago after I had mentioned to him that I once tried mushrooms for existential reasons. It's interesting to read about the author's experiences and that each plant is used for a specific purpose.

Metroid Prime. This game really wowed me when I played it at a friend's almost ten years ago, but some things bother me now that wouldn't have then. Backtracking got tiresome toward the end, platforming in first person doesn't work well sometimes when the same analog stick can look and move, and the controls are making me wonder if I have carpal tunnel (too much shoulder-button holding). I loved that Retro really gave you the view inside Samus's helmet. Next for my chronological play through the series, I have to buy the cramp-inducing Metroid Prime: Hunters.

I'd go with the Dualshock, specifically 2. The marshmallowy triggers on the Dualshock 3 don't bother me too much, but I can see it's flaws. My fingers can slide a little if things get intense and if your fingers are too high on the triggers they won't leverage quite as well. At least they don't click, which I hated about the Gamecube controller. Some games registered the use of the shoulder button with just the freeplay, but others needed the click, which could cause some rage-inducing moments in a few games. The SNES controller is a close second. The only reason the Dualshock 2 surpasses it is the extra shoulder buttons and the analog sticks. Though I haven't used it much, the 360 could be one of the most comfortable controllers I've used. I'm not a fan of the asymmetrical design though, and the D-pad is just horrid.

I beat Metroid today. I thought I could just grab all the upgrades in one go and call it complete, but no, there are five endings based on your time playing and one for whether you grabbed the Varia Suit. I'm playing the series in chronological order, so next up is Metroid Prime, which I have been itching to play since I purchased it last week.

Facetious post incoming. Modding Oblivion is turning into a tedious game for me. I never played it past maybe six hours and didn't want to do a vanilla run, so I looked up a number of mods to try out and turned up with a lot. I've spent days downloading them and learning about load order, overriding, mod utilities, and dirty/wild mods and how to clean them. In the end I was left with such a mess that I've uninstalled the game and am starting from the beginning. It feels like a very annoying strategy game.

I beat Duke Nukem Forever yesterday. I knew it was short (10-12 hours) but I beat it sooner than I expected. After that alien hive level with all the women that people got in a hubbub over the game really simmers down as far as lewd content goes. It felt like a new episode to Duke 3D with modern technology. No outer space levels, which disappointed me. After you beat the game you unlock extras, one of which shows a development timeline. I thought it was a little sad that what could have been great fell so far. What they had in both 1998 and 2003 looked great for the time.

I brought home the Balls of Steel edition of Duke Nukem Forever yesterday and I payed $101.69 Canadian for all this extra shit: mini playing cards, poker chips, a pair of dice, postcards, a sticker, papercraft, a 5" bust, a lame comic, and a hardbound artbook. I pre-ordered this in full back in April and picked it up without checking the receipt. After reading the two books I will probably never touch or use these things again. But I'm not disappointed. This purchase was a turning point where I've finally decided to make more intelligent purchases for games, special editions or no. I'm even going to sell some of the games I don't play or see myself playing again, which I never thought I would do. I was hoarding games and their extras under some false idea that they were special in some way, and not just because the box said so. One of the included postcards features Duke with piles of cash. I am going to put that picture in my wallet to remind myself not to make stupid purchases ever again.

Jim Sterling is doing his usual here and blowing this out of proportion. Allow me to clear something up since I've played through this level. The alien hive level does feature women being held hostage by aliens, some against a phallus-like fleshy pillar. It also features these women dying as little critters pop out of their stomach. They make moans of agony, cry for their daddy, retch (audibly, not visibly), and I heard two "I thought it was safe to swallow" comments. But at no point are you seeing women being inseminated by giant penises or raped. While the women are nude on the upper half, they are covered by a bikini-like garment on the bottom. Nothing appears there that would imply something is inserted into them. If there were women being raped in this game it would have been rated AO, would it not? Up until where I've played, the game feels like a Duke Nukem game. But anything that he says or does that might have been funny twelve years ago is not. I feel like it is just over the top now. The only time I've found things mildly funny were when Halo was referenced and when he made a combined Dead Space/Duke3D joke. But if the developers wanted to show just what the aliens are doing to the women they abduct and how bad it is, then they shouldn't have had Duke making jokes at their expense, much less slapping alien tits and probing sphincters in the same level. As far as gameplay goes, DNF seems like it was originally an old-fashioned health bar style FPS where you grabbed medkits to restore health. Instead, Duke has a rechargeable shield (his Ego) that works like rechargeable health in any other shooter these days. The problem is that it feels like they decided to change from one to the other half-way through development. You don't quite get the cover to allow recharging sometimes, and if you're ever face to face with more than one melee pig cop, you're done. The HUD is just backwards. Ego is upper-left, remaining ammo is upper-right, and your items are lower left. The game gives the appearance that it is another half-assed PC port. Horrible texture pop-in, to the point where sometimes only reloading a level will load it back; sloppy menus that show they only cut and paste image files for keystrokes instead of console buttons; and no save function (checkpoints only). Fortunately, there is a fair bit of tweaking you can do with the controls and the video settings, so it handles okay. If this came out when it was supposed to with all of the features it has, it would have been great. Now it is sort of okay. I'm sure you've all read at least one review, so if you want to play it, just borrow, rent, or wait until it drops to $5 during a Steam sale.

Alright, before I say what I'm going to say, know that I don't fully understand the context of this alien rape going on and I won't watch the videos because I'm picking up the game tomorrow. In Duke3D there were women scattered throughout the game that had been captured by the aliens and detained. If you pressed the use button in font of them, most (maybe all, can't remember), would say, "Kiiiiiillll meeee." The game has its sense of humour, but here, I believe, is an effort to show what the aliens are really doing, and it is painful, inhumane, and these women are suffering. Is there any context in DNF that would imply that they aren't just trying to do the same thing with alien rape? Sure, Duke is making some quips about their situation and he is a dick for it, but is there anything to imply that the act of the alien rape itself is a joke?

What is it about Voyager that you dislike? While I do enjoy it to a lesser degree than the other series, my only beef with it is that they throw around a lot of fluffy starship words (especially the engineering crew) to the point where it feels like they're trying to remind you you're watching a sci-fi series. Also, as much as I like the look of Seven in that catsuit, there were times it aggravated me that it was such an obvious sexual pull. I'm really hung up on what to define Star Wars as now. I came to see Star Trek as adhering to a more strict definition of science fiction and Star Wars as a space opera. Science fiction is speculative innovations in technology and science, whereas I always thought of space opera akin to what I would describe as fantasy in space. Up until George Lucas decided to redefine some things in the new trilogy, Star Wars featured an unseen, unexplainable force manipulated by people using laser swords in an era of blasters and rifles. The focus was less on the possibilities that lay beyond our reach, and more on action and drama. While Star Trek could also be defined as a space opera because it revolves around action and drama, I never thought of it as such because it is closer to the definition of science fiction. The tv series also deals with common science fiction subjects, like space exploration, first contact, and interspecies diplomacy. Maybe it is easier to think of it as such because it deals with an Earth timeline? I never read too much of the Star Wars EU, but is there anything about the origin of humans in it?

It was when the news about Final Fantasy XIII really started to flow that I decided to stay in the dark about titles I anticipate. Still, if I have some doubts about a game, I will look into it. Example: I loved Valkyria Chronicles, but when the character designs in the sequels started looking like they were pulled from a Tales of... title, I started having second thoughts.