toxicitizen

Gahahaha, I just looked on Amazon and EBGames and it's actually 230$ over here. That's just the system, no bundle or anything. Add in the extra cost of the charger, and then at least one game because what the fuck am I gonna do with a 3DS and no games, and it all adds up to a grand total of NO THANKS! I fucking love how easy Nintendo are making it for me to pass on this. I was really tempted for a second there but fuck all this bullshit, I'm gonna start saving up for that GTX 970 instead. And it's gonna be so good!

Yeah, so I heard. That's just fucking bizarre. They're making it easier to pass on this (for now, at least). I shouldn't have to spend more on an extra accessory for the "privilege" of charging my fucking device. As for the MM system not including the game, I don't really get the outrage. It's the same price as the regular system, so you can get the themed system if you want it and you're not stuck with a digital copy of the game. Win-win, imho.

Uh, so apparently this doesn't include an AC adapter? Wut?

Lol. NA isn't getting the regular-sized n3DS, only the XL. NeoGAF are losing their shit over it. I guess a lot of them wanted faceplates?

Damnit, I wasn't expecting the n3DS here so soon. I could probably afford one if it really does comes out next month, but I kinda feel like I should focus on my PC right now. :/ I still need a new case and a proper CPU cooler, and I was starting to think about maybe saving up for a GTX 970. Blergh, being a broke student sucks. I should do a potato salad kickstarter or something.

I'm really tempted to pre-order it since it's currently a VIP deal on GMG for like 13 bucks. But all my instincts are telling me to wait for reviews.

Wolfenstein: The New Order. Pretty awesome game. The gameplay is your typical FPS fare with no mechanical twist or gimmick whatsoever but I thought the story was very well executed. I was interested to see what would happen next the entire way through and I actually cared about the characters and what happened to them. The world-building and visual style was also really nice. Just overall a really well put together game. Except for the enemy AI. I mean, man, those are some stupid fucking Nazis. And kinda blind, too. Or maybe the stealth mechanic is just broken. Sometimes they would walk right by me, literally looking right at me but I was crouching so they didn't see me, I guess? Either that or when their heads turn to the side their field of vision isn't actually scanning that area.

I'm heading out for class in a few mins so I don't have time to read more attentively right now but this specific bit seems kinda weird. Selfish? Yeah, I think that was kind of the entire point. Joel has had enough taken away from him and he's not putting up with it anymore. Like Cowboy said, if it makes you uncomfortable because you disagree with his actions, then that means that the ending was very effective and succeeded at what it was trying to accomplish. It's not supposed to be a happy one.

Pre-orders are up for the HD Remaster. There's a 22% off voucher on GMG if anyone else is interested. I am so fucking pumped for this one! I never owned a GCN so I never actually got the chance to play it. I remember borrowing my friend's system for RE4 but I was never able to do the same for this one, for some reason. I did play the original PS1 version eventually but I keep hearing about how much better the remake is, so I'm really excited to finally play it.

My card is a Radeon HD 6970, so it's only a single "gen" too old. In recent years I've learned not to take specs at face value, so I'll still torrent the game to give it a test run. If it's reasonably playable I'll probably just say fuck it and buy it anyway.

My recent upgrades fall somewhere in the middle but my GPU doesn't even meet the minimum lol. Not too surprising, I knew it wasn't likely to last me very long. AC Unity is similar, it runs but I'm a GPU upgrade short of it being decently playable. It's the next major upgrade I need to make, I'm just not sure when I'll be able to afford it. Honestly, as long as I can run The Phantom Pain I'll be fine for now. Ideally, Arkham Knight too. But at least TPP is cross-gen and Ground Zeroes was crazy optimized so I should be good. Hopefully.

What? Yeah, horror is still horror, regardless or whether or not it succeeds at what it's trying to achieve. I wasn't trying to suggest that failing at being scary somehow disqualified it from the genre. Reading my post again, the only part I can see that might imply that is "Well, the horror part is arguable". Maybe I phrased it poorly but I simply meant that it wasn't effective horror.

I'm on board with the first part of your post, some types of horror fiction aren't about being straight up scary. Psychological horror, for example, is usually more about unsettling you, creating a feeling of unease. I haven't gotten around to seeing it yet but Black Swan looks like a good example of this. But if we're talking the usual blood, monsters, gore and creepy settings, then the goal usually is to be scary. The Evil Within was certainly trying to be. It just didn't quite manage to pull it off. Shit, I'd settle for creepy and even then I'd say TEW wasn't quite there either. Then again, that might vary from person to person, I suppose.

The Evil Within. Man, this is a tough one for me to evaluate. On the one hand, it's really, really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it on its own merits and I don't want to judge it unfairly, i.e. for what it's not. But on the other hand, it's pretty much a direct spiritual successor to one of my favorite games of all time, Resident Evil 4. And that's where I thought it fell a little bit short. I suppose it's still a fairly strong compliment to say that the most disappointing thing about The Evil Within is that it did not exceed my expectations. It met them for sure, and in some ways I actually didn't expect, but it didn't win a one-way ticket to join its older brother RE4 on the list of my all-time favorites. In other words, it's not an instant classic. I had some reservations about it so I went in with reasonable expectations, which the game had no difficulty living up to. But deep down, I was really hoping it would be another home run for Mikami and it's not quite on that level. But enough about the negative, what's good about it? This is true fucking survival horror, that's what's good. Well, the horror part is arguable but I'll get to that in a little bit. First and foremost, this is the first true AAA survival-horror game I've played in years. This isn't Dead Space or even modern Resident Evil, resource management is a real thing here. I never felt overpowered nor equipped to face the threats I was facing. Whenever the game gave me a bunch of ammo, I just knew bad shit was about to go down because 90% of the time I was constantly on the brink of running out. At one point I was worried I'd have to restart the current chapter, that's how fucked I was. I usually hate running from enemies in games, perhaps because it feels like the game is getting the better of me or that I did something wrong. But about halfway through The Evil Within my attitude shifted. "Fuck this! I ain't dealing with your shit, game!" became my new mentality. Being able to flee from enemies and conserve precious ammo started feeling like a fucking victory. The focus on stealth also helped drive home how powerless you are and how precious your ammo is. Whether it's by running away, sneaking by enemies or even going for a stealth takedown, you're gonna want to take every opportunity you can to avoid shooting. This is where The Evil Within truly shined for me. The game rarely devolved into the dumb action that the RE series is now known for and on the few occasions that it does, you're likely to burn through your entire ammo reserves. Then you're essentially fucked and it creates a whole lot of tension in subsequent sections. So in that regard, the game strikes a fantastic balance. One area where the game arguably fails is the horror side of things. Like I said, it clearly takes inspiration from Silent Hill but it doesn't quite pull it off. It manages to create a confusing and, at times, very tense atmosphere. But I don't think I was legitimately scared a single time. For the most part, it's very style over substance. Great style, mind you. But I dunno, it just didn't really work for me. The only parts that were legitimately nerve-racking were the encounters with the Keeper. Seriously, fuck that guy. I mean, just look at that fucking asshole. Anyway, all this to say that The Evil Within is very, very good and, unlike most recent entries in the genre, it can actually claim to be true survival-horror. Just don't go in expecting a modern days Resident Evil 4. That's exactly what it is in some ways but in others it also really isn't. I have no idea how well the game sold (though seeing it on sale for 20 bucks a mere two months after launch isn't exactly encouraging) but I really hope Bethesda keeps the IP going. I would definitely love more of this. Until then, I suppose the upcoming DLC will have to do. Oh and thanks again, CrowKnow! You couldn't have possibly picked a better game to gift me!

If, like me, you're one of the five people who still don't own Borderlands 2, it's on sale for 10 bucks over at MacGameStore. It's a SteamPlay title, so you get it for Windows/Mac/Linux. This deal is noteworthy because it's as close to a real Complete Edition as the game is likely to ever get. It's not just the GOTY Edition, this is the GOTY + all the worthwhile DLC Gearbox greedily didn't include in it. As far as I can tell, the only stuff you don't get is pointless cosmetic crap. I'm really hesitant to give money to Gearbox these days but shit, even I couldn't say no to that price.

I don't own a 3DS, if I did then there would definitely be 3DS games on my list. I was planning on getting one a few months ago but I ended up not going through with it. At this point I figure I might as well just wait until the New 3DS comes out in NA.

If we're thinking of the same thing, I think that was debunked. It didn't seem too likely to begin with since, if it was coming that early, they would've announced the date by now. This is Konami's cash cow after all, you can bet they wanna ride that hype train all the way to the bank. Plus, I think a Konami rep straight up denied it on NeoGAF. I think the earliest we can expect it is early summer, like MGS4. I'd love to be wrong, though.

Damnit, what am I supposed to do now?! Announce that release date already, Kojima! Soon would be good!

Holy crap, my list comes at whopping 59 games beat! Though, unlike Ethan, I do count games I'm replaying. Even if I'm replaying them multiple times during the year, but with the arbitrary condition that I played something else in-between (i.e. if I beat a game on normal and then go on to play it again on hard right after, it still only counts as one). I think the only two games that show up twice are Revengeance and Ground Zeroes, both of which I first played on PS3 and then again on PC a few months later. I also enjoy keeping a list of everything I beat but I don't keep track of as insane an amount of information as Ethan. I do intend to try and note completion time next year, though. I don't keep a strict backlog, either. Mostly, I just went through my Steam library and noted everything I actually intended to play. Then I narrowed it down to "stuff I want to play in the near future" and hardly ever scratched anything off of it. 2015 should be better in that regard, though. My CPU upgrade means I can finally play all the games I already own that I've been putting off because they didn't quite run as well as I'd like. Really looking forward to finally playing Far Cry 3 and Saints Row The Third, in particular. Anyway, here's the list. An asterisk marks a game that I've played before.

Dailies ended today so it was time to grab everything I was holding off for. And this one was a few days ago, I just completely forgot about it. That should pretty much be it for me. I probably spent a little bit more than I should have. The only other purchase I'm eyeing is Shadow of Mordor, because it showing up in pretty much every single GOTY list made me really want to play it. But there's no way in hell I can justify paying 30 bucks for it right now, so I'm farming card drops to see how much I can make to put towards it. Already up to almost 15 bucks!

Well, last game I beat in 2014 is Escape Goat 2. At first I only intended to play it until I got all my card drops so I could sell them, and keep the rest of the game for later. But I ignored most of the optional sections and pretty much ended up clearing the game just as I got my last card drop. I still intend to go back and do all the rooms but yeah, I guess I accidentally beat it.

A Bird Story. I kinda don't want to shit on it but, uh.... meh. The first 20 mins or so felt incredibly boring and pointless. I guess the middle part was slightly more engaging because by the time the credits rolled I didn't entirely regret the hour I spent on it. The one positive thing I can say about it is that it does some pretty neat surrealist stuff with the map design. That alone was almost interesting enough to make it worthwhile. Almost. I generally don't agree with the idiotic "it's not a game!" criticism often leveled against titles like Gone Home and Dear Esther. So keep that in mind when I say that A Bird Story is even less of a game than those. It somehow has less interactivity than To the Moon. And when it does have interaction, it just hits you over the head with keyboard prompts. "You may move now!" "See the arrow? Yes, go there." and so on. What's kinda mind-boggling is that most of the time the game actually does the walking for you. It's like, this map is not only linear as fuck but also pretty damn small. I'm pretty sure I can find my way to the next bit! If you're interested in A Bird Story because you liked To the Moon, it's nothing like it. It's basically just a short story in video game form. And the worst part is that the entire time the guy was making this, he probably wasn't working on the follow-up to To the Moon, which is teased at the end as "Coming One Day". Sigh...

Oh my God. This is amazing.