SanaEquiesterer

I grew up with Loom and Monkey Island, so I've lost count of how many times I've beat them. Even though my favourite genre is RPGs, I've only ever beat Chrono Trigger two, maybe three times, and FFVII twice.

Yeah, I'm just going to say a 2D Mario as well.

I prefer the PC above all, and if it received console exclusive titles, I wouldn't own any consoles past the SNES. Since that isn't the case, I prefer the PS3.

To answer the thread title literally, my first record was a clear blue, 7" limited release by Chris Vrenna/Tweaker for American McGee's Alice. It has a remix of a song from the game by Tweaker and a track from Enter the Matrix. My first album, however, was a CD and I think it was Marilyn Manson. Either Mechanical Animals or Antichrist Superstar. I can better remember the albums I received as gifts.

I thought that might be the case. I expected the consequences to be a little more than "do (not do) this and x enemy will be easier." But I'm just at the point of exploring planets and haven't gone for the IFF yet, so I'm still ready to be surprised. Day 10: I'm also going to go with Shadow of the Colossus.

I was going to say the death of Aeris, but I was 13 or so when I saw it the first time. More recently, I would have to say in FFXIII when And I was taken aback in Mass Effect when I thought my decision lead to the death of I truly felt regret for not zapping that gunship mechanic and it made me consider the weight of my later decisions. Seeing him permanently scarred instead of dead didn't make me feel a whole lot better. But I get the feeling that that situation is one of the ones in which the outcome is the same and Bioware is just giving you the illusion of choice and influence.

My personal favourite soundtrack either goes to Chrono Trigger or Katamari Damacy. Between the Final Fantasy titles, either VIII or XII. Also, though it isn't the strongest feature of the game, I appreciated that Mass Effect featured more electronic than symphonic pieces.

I think I'm going to have to agree with you on that for my most annoying character as well, and add HOLD THE LINE! I found Oyu from Onimusha 2 to be so poorly voiced and cliche that I get annoyed just thinking about her. Though not a couple in the traditional sense, my favourite would have to be Abe and Munch. In the traditional sense, Fran and Balthier come to mind immediately.

Alright, catch up time. Day One: If my first gaming experience came from my desktop PC then it would have been either Chip's Challenge or Jet Force (I think it was called that). If it was at my neighbours, then it was either N.A.R.C. for the NES or Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Day Two: Favourite characters in terms of personality are too hard to pick. Naked/Solid Snake, Aigis from P3: FES, and Tali from Mass Effect are up there, along with some other characters from various RPGs. Day Three: I think Loom is underrated. For a point-and-click adventure title, the interface was really creative at the time of release. You hear about old Sierra and Lucasarts adventure titles in articles and conversations, like Space/King's Quest, Monkey Island, and Full Throttle, but I've never heard much mention of Loom. Day Four: Among friends, I don't have any guilty pleasures for gaming. I intend to get Pokemon Black/White at some point, and the only people I'd probably keep that hush-hush from is my brother and sister-in-law. They don't "get" a lot of things seen in Japanese games (character stereotypes, the animation) and when they see me playing them I'm often asked enough questions that I feel like I'm under interrogation. Day Five: Anyone can share certain traits with game characters, but I can't think of any that I could relate to as a whole. If I could be any character I guess I would choose Shepard from Mass Effect. On top of saving everything from destruction and getting the girl in the end, which would make being just about any RPG character interesting, Mass Effect has space exploration and landing on uncharted planets.

I found the unexpected cover mounting issue at its worst when using cover that involved corners. Shepard can't shift around to the other side of cover, so you have to leave cover, move just a tad over to the next bit of cover, and then enter cover again. Including a crouch option could have alleviated this a little, but in any case, once I got the timing right the issue ceased to occur. EDIT: Nevermind, I've played since posting and experimented to be sure. Shepard can shift to the next surface while taking cover in a corner. I was after Dr. Okeer when I thought it didn't work like that, so I guess I was a little panicky over having rockets launched at me. On an unrelated note, when speaking to Mordin about Captain Kirrahe during the Virmire mission from the first game, I found it hilarious that Bioware was anatomically correct enough to have Mordin refer to the captain as a cloaca.

The mouse sensitivity thing was annoying but all the other keyboard changes were very much needed. All the fussiness of ME1 has gone in favour of a much slicker system. I can see how it would be nice to have fewer controls and just change the function of each button depending on whether or not you're in combat. But when you take separate controls for moving forward and entering cover and combine them to function as leaping over cover, I don't know if I would call that slick. More than once I have died because Shepard is suddenly mounting cover in the middle of a firefight. Eventually, the latter point came down to timing, but I question making such a choice in controls to begin with.

I'm also going to go with Dragon Age: Origins. I played it for about eight hours and got to the bit where you meet the witch after some tower burns. I felt like I was playing Star Wars: KOTOR in a fantasy setting with some minor story changes. I was aware of it before, but DA:O really opened up my eyes to how much Bioware is recycling a lot of content in their releases. Another thing that didn't work for me was the generic fantasy setting. I've since found out that was a design choice, to try and make a stand-out generic fantasy; but it still felt generic to me.

I finally got around to playing ME2 for the first time earlier this week. I never bothered to find out what role Demiurge played in the first game, but it didn't take too long to find out. Spacebar = Storm/Cover/Use and mouse sensitivity settings are Low, Normal, and High in ME2. I thought Bioware were one of the more considerate developers when it came to porting games to PC, especially when they acknowledged that they got where they are thanks to PC RPGs. Maybe EA had something to do with it, but ME2 is just another lazy PC port. Fortunately, that doesn't take away from the enjoyment much. At first I was really disappointed with the way combat was changed, but its grown on me. I don't agree with how they switched up how biotic powers behave, though. One of my favourite tactics in the first game was to use singularity on a fixed point near enemies behind cover, which pulled them out. Now I either have to hit them or they have to walk into it. And since most biotic powers behave like projectiles, some additional frustrations have popped up, like watching them sail right into the crate you're taking cover behind, or watching your squad mate run right into its path and cancel the power as it hits them. While I understand why Bioware decided to introduce auto-heal, I'm less bothered by it since they came up with such a convincing explanation as to why it happens. I only have Miranda, Jacob, Garrus, Mordin, Jack, Grunt (still in pod), and Tali, but all the new characters have given me the impression that Bioware wanted to try for diversity but only came up with people to be suspicious of. Maybe the uncertainty of anyone's alliance to Shepard is what they were going for. Lastly, I haven't heard Thane's voice yet, but I feel like he should be voiced by Christopher Walken.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/291633/news/ea-mirrors-edge-2-must-grow-franchise-audience/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-General-RSS While I'm glad to see they're trying to surpass the original in terms of quality, their desire to make the sequel a big seller makes me a little nervous they could stray from their roots.

This is why I love Atlus. I don't care if the game is any good, but I feel like Atlus listened to what people wanted and decided to deliver. There could have been plans to bring it to North America for weeks now, but the near unanimous unrest across the internet for keeping things mum until now feel like a contributing factor.

When I was a kid, my dad bought a Lucasarts adventure game set that came with Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Zak McKraken, and Loom. Loom stuck with me the most for the originality in both the setting and the interface. I think its the game that got me hooked on fantasy and games, and led me down the path of geeky interests I still hold. Also, Tchaikovsky. On the other hand my one friend never really played the Lucasarts adventure titles but loved the Sierra classics, like Space Quest and King's Quest. I remember playing the first one on a computer back in grade 3, but my dad never purchased them or I missed out on the PC Gamer CDs that had their demos. I still have between 20-30 PC Gamer demo discs and even more of the magazines, most of which are 10+ years old. They're nice to look back on and remind oneself of titles long forgotten, or to read articles questioning whether 3D cards are really the future of PC gaming.

I am surrounded by irresponsible pet owners. Both across the street and next door are families with three daughters. One of each of those daughters got a dog when they lived on their own for a bit, were forced to live at home again when things didn't work out, then dumped the dog on their parents when they moved out again or weren't at home. Now the mother in either house has to look after a dog that won't listen to them and wanders off the property when people walk by. They're lucky we're in a rural-residential area, otherwise those dogs would probably be dead. Then the same girl across the street owned a pet rat for a while. But when she was away from home for a few weeks and she never bothered to arrange anyone else to care for it, it died. For how much she cared for it, her mom could have gave me the rat and told her daughter it died anyway! With a name like Splinter, I'd have loved to own that rat. And on the opposite side of my block lives a woman who is just as bad as her dog. She walks it without a leash and will walk with it all over people's property. She doesn't pick up the dog's crap, and she does all this while walking around in her PJs, a housecoat, a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My neighbour from where I used to live picked up a cat from an industrial park one time, and we ended up owning him eventually. That was in 1994, and I had that cat until last month. I guess there is some comfort in knowing that some animals will move on to better places, away from bad pet owners.

I haven't heard many details on the experience outside of combat. I'm hoping that your decisions see different results turn out a little more dramatically than they did with the first one. Conspiracy theories should be prominent, since they made the story so much more intriguing in the original. The abilities that have been shown so far also have me hoping for Ghost in the Shell style combat.

I used the Plasma Cutter at first, but once the kids started showing up I pulled out the Contact Beam. I had upgraded it so it would stasis with the alt fire. The kids would crowd a little, I'd move toward Nicole, then I'd hit the alt fire. While everyone was slowly floating away I could get my shots in on Nicole and finally the marker. I was surprised how simple it was, really, but that was on normal difficulty.

I finally finished it last night. Ultimately it just felt like DS1 but with some improvements here and there, but that was pretty apparent early on and I don't think it was trying to do more than that. Trading up multi-surface zero-g for free-floating zero-g kept me just as confused, and I mean that in a good way. Emphasizing the use of stasis was nice, too, since I felt it was underused in the first game. I still like the first more, and I'm eager to see what changes and improvements will come to the third title, if and when it happens. Two things that should happen: really really fix the refresh rate issues with the PC release, and for the love of God, they better not bring back that damned regenerating necromorph. The last two chapters were just a mess of nothing but annoyance.

I splurged and got the limited edition Gunmetal Grey MGS4 PS3. It has lasted me thus far, but it makes me nervous sometimes. The odd time I'll be playing and it makes a muted click-like noise and then beeps immediately after, and I have no idea why. I don't think its hot (I touched it), but for some reason I want to add that I remember hearing the fans flare up after that. Not sure if I'm remembering that correctly, though. Because of the nature of the release of the console, they were only covered by a one year warranty that they had you send to a different address to get serviced. I can picture myself opening the system to fix it myself one day.

Did anyone else notice that the chorus in the Skyrim trailer was the same as the menu music to Morrowind? I'm a little hyped. I got hyped over Morrowind and it blew me away, but then I got hyped about Oblivion and found it to be disappointing. I hope that Bethesda has really learned from their faults as much as they seem to be admitting to in some parts of Skyrim coverage.

Another reason why I love John Carmack. I worry that Rage will be overshadowed by Borderlands. I can already hear reviewers comparing them to one another and fans decrying Rage as a Borderlands clone. I know that Rage is going to have some RPG-like elements, too, so I hope it can do something to further distinguish itself from Borderlands in that respect.

io9 I feel for the most. They compiled an excellent assortment of geeky content together across multiple forms of media that few other websites do. With Kotaku gone its no big deal; you just go to another big gaming site. But io9? Now I feel like I have to visit a dozen websites to read most of what they covered.

I just finished chapter 11 and I came across an issue with the PC version. no matter how fast I mashed the E key, it would not register. I look up the issue, and it has happened to other players, though it isn't that common. It happens because the FPS are faster than the refresh rate of the screen, so if I want E to register I would have to be pressing it at an inhuman speed. To fix it I had to force v-sync and triple buffering with Catalyst Control Center and disable v-sync in game. Really, Visceral? Really? Didn't you learn from this mistake with the first Dead Space? The exact same fix had to be used in DS1 to get the mouse lag to become less than noticeable. Not having a very modern-gaming friendly PC for a decade has really kept me in the dark about how shafted PC gamers are getting in some cases.