toxicitizen

Right. I guess I just kind of assumed that the system implied booting the PS3 off of the main TV. Depending on the quantity of PS3 games available, there might be no point in keeping it on the same TV as the PS4. But, yeah, VitaTV would be a nice and cheap way to add an extra screen if you're in a big house with many people fighting over the TVs. Seems like they announced and released VitaTV a bit too early, imho. This is way too good of a fit for it for that to not have been the plan all along. edit: Well, they still have consoles to sell. It sucks but having this on PC wouldn't be shooting themselves in the foot, they'd be shooting the foot clean off the leg.

Yeah but between his PS4, PS3 and Vita, does he really need an extra one? Gotta have one hooked up to that small bathroom TV as well, I guess?

Why would you need vita TV for this? I mean, don't get me wrong, I hope it comes over as well. But I'm not seeing how it's particularly relevant here, especially for someone that already owns a PS3/4.

Depending on price, this could be amazing for the Vita. Hopefully PS+ factors into it somehow, like a discount if it's a separate sub. Also, might wanna provide some sources when you start a thread, Cowboy.

Assuming you mean the gravity boots and not just the double jump, I had them but only figured out how to use them kinda late into the game. It probably would've made navigation a bit faster, yeah. That one's my fault. But I still feel some of the areas don't quite work as well after being flipped. Well, yeah. Had you never played them before? They're pretty slow games. Why do you think Conviction was hated so much? Also, and this is probably gonna sound crazy but I swear it's true, but for the older games, kb/m > gamepad. It's weird at first to use the mouse wheel to control walking speed but it actually works much better than an analog stick.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Well, this game was amazing. Despite years of having the internet constantly hail it as this legendary game, it still managed to not disappoint. I made it a point to first get the fake ending then went back and redid the boss with the item that opens the inverted castle. Also made sure to complete the map, get all the relics, etc.. and got the max completion score, 200.6%. I guess there's one area where the game fell a bit short and it's the castle's level design. On the first run, it's pretty good. Standard metroidvania stuff with a great art style and gorgeous sprites (at least, they looked great on the Vita's OLED screen). But people make such a big deal about how it still works upside down that you'd think the level design had this subtle genius quality to it. Well, not quite... It certainly works and it's pretty damn clever, no argument there. The idea is pretty cool in and of itself and it allowed them to almost double the length of the game without having to create twice the amount of environments. Problem is, most of the rooms become impossible to properly navigate as a result of the flip and you're forced to constantly rely on bat form, especially in the early areas (which are the final areas of the first castle). It gets old pretty fast. I suppose it might've been more impressive if I hadn't known about it beforehand or if I had played the game back in the days. But still, I absolutely loved the game. I kinda regret having put it off for so long. If I had played it as a kid, it probably would be one of my all-time favorite games, right alongside Deus Ex, Thief and Metal Gear Solid.

Oh yeah, definitely. It serves the gameplay well enough. But I dunno, I guess the best way to put it would be that it lacks subtlety. If you were to replay the original or Chaos Theory right now, I'm sure you'd see exactly what I mean. The series started back when being under the Tom Clancy license still meant something. It doesn't really feel like a political thriller anymore. Although, that's not just Blacklist. Conviction was even worse in that regard. Been too long since I played Double Agent, though, so I'm not sure about that one.

Glad you liked it. The game gets more shit than it deserves. I'm curious what you thought of the story, though. I loved the game to bits but man, the story was terrible. I mean, the premise was alright but I was really disappointed by how it basically devolved into a ripoff of 24 near the end. Especially that one mission with the bombs, Philadelphia, I think?. It's not that it was bad, but it kinda felt like I was playing a completely different game out of nowhere.

Wait, what? I don't remember that. It does seem weird. Were they completely unaware of your presence or were you on the run from them? As for me, with only a few days of vacation left, last night I was at a complete loss as to what I should play. I'm feeling a bit burned out on Persona 4 and I just reached a natural break point in the story so I didn't really feel like jumping back into it. I tried Gravity Rush and liked it but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Then I ended up watching a video about Metroid and decided it was about time I finally played... Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. As much as I love metroidvania games, I've only ever played the first half of the genre's eponymous titles, Super Metroid. I've owned a digital copy of SotN on PSN for years and have been meaning to play it for the longest time but I never got around to it. I got a bit frustrated with it early on but now that I've leveled up some and got some decent gear, it's actually pretty damn awesome. Also, the sprites look gorgeous on the Vita's OLED screen. That voice acting and scrip, though. So hilarious terrible.

I've been on the fence about this one for a couple weeks now but I finally went for it. I'm pretty wary of pre-orders these days but I feel this one has enough going for it that I'm willing to take the plunge. It's described as a cross between Phoenix Wright and 999/VLR's style of storytelling with a little dash of Persona. They had me at Phoenix Wright but with the other two, holy shit am I all over that! It's also an HD remake of a PSP game that was never localized, so there's plenty of info, reviews and impressions already out there, there's even been a fan translation, and most of it is quite positive. NISA also seem pretty confident that they have a quality product on their hands. It's still a month off but they've apparently sent out review builds super early with no embargo whatsoever. GamesRadar already have their review up (4/5) and other outlets have been confirmed to also have received copies. So, yeah, I'm not too worried about this one. But most of all, I just want to show some support for this kind of release. I really wish more of these weird Japanese games got localized.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. As expected of Platinum Games, it was excellent. I'm actually surprised by how much the story felt like Metal Gear. I knew to expect crazy over the top action but, based on what I had read, I figured the story would be in the same spirit. It's obviously a bit sillier and less long-winded but it has the same kind of ideas behind it. I'm kinda tempted to retroactively add it to my 2013 GOTY list. It's not without issues, though. The camera loves to randomly start doing 180s in the middle of combat and combined with the enemies' annoying habit of backing you into corners and just ganging up on you, it made for some pretty damn frustrating deaths. In a weird way, it kinda feels like an unofficial sequel or spiritual successor to Vanquish. The mechanics are different but the essence of the gameplay is very similar. Fast-paced, highly lethal and easy to learn but difficult to master combat. I know it's all the rage to compare hard games to Dark Souls these days but I think this is more akin to the old-school "Nintendo hard" kinda games, only well-designed instead of just artificially difficult to hide lack of content. Really glad I finally picked it up. Here's hoping for a sequel. Or really, any kind of similar game from Platinum. I just want them to stop making Wii U exclusives. I kinda want to stick with it a bit more, do harder difficulties and VRs and such. But I don't think I have the necessary skills or sanity to go through that. Much like Vanquish, I think there's no way in hell I could ever platinum this one.

Yeah, for me Uncharted has always been about the story, characters, set pieces and production values. The shooting is serviceable I guess, but more often than not it kinda feels like padding. Most of the time, I'll try to stealth as much as possible. I remember when I was doing my crushing run on U2, I had played the game so much by that point that I knew some areas like the back of my hand and was able to pretty much stealth them entirely.

Yeah, he's pretty much the biggest sociopath in all of gaming. All those "supernatural" elements? That's just him having psychotic episodes.

That annoyed me as well at first. I was playing on realistic, too, and combined with my obsession to perfectly ghost, I restarted the first few a LOT. But after a while you start getting a feel for them and they mostly take place on really small maps, so I didn't think it was that big of a deal, ultimately.

Pfft! I totally made the 2012 one! Actually, I was as confused as Tenshi when this one popped up as I was under the impression that I had made it this year, for some reason.

Entire year's worth of games. Asterisks indicate games I had already beaten before, which turned out to be a much smaller amount than I expected, even including stuff like GOTY editions when I had played the original release. I don't have fancy charts because I'm not a nerd. Also, and more importantly, because I didn't bother keeping track of anything other than completion date.

Shit, can't believe I forgot about Blood Dragon. Yeah, that's definitely one of the best soundtracks of the year.

Albertan? Not even close.

When Dean says "no one", he really means "no one that actually matters", Cowboy! So yeah, that excludes you!

Yeah, I don't really want to get into this whole debate again but Proteus deserves to be there more than Welcome Park. When I say Welcome Park isn't much of a game it's literally because it's a glorified touch control tutorial. Proteus at least is going for something more than "this is how your new system works".

Well, I'd call Wii Sports more of a game than that. WP is really more of a tutorial for the Vita's touch controls. Didn't stop me from getting all the trophies, though... edit: oh and btw, Virtue's Last Reward is on your list twice. I guess the full name is Zero Escape Vol. 2: Virtue's Last Reward, which was already on your list.

Lol. For a second there, I was wondering what the hell I had done. edit: oh Welcome Park is in there? I guess I beat that as well. Didn't post it cause it didn't seem like much of a game.

Virtue's Last Reward. Holy. Shit. Man, I fucking love this series. I'm not sure how many of you guys have actually played them other than Chronixal but I feel like talking about it anyway so I guess this will be kind of a mini-review. I've seen people saying they thought the ending was kinda meh compared to 999 but I couldn't disagree more. I thought the game was superior in almost every way. In fact, the only thing I feel 999 had going for it that VLR lacks is that it has a bit more of a horror vibe to it early on. But even then, that kinda goes away once you really start getting to the meat of the story and it becomes more of a straight up mystery. Unlike 999, I went in without any knowledge or any kind of spoilery "hint". Yet, I still managed to figure out some of the big reveals about halfway through. Once you start getting all the different endings, it gets kind of easy to start putting things together. The ultimate explanation behind the whole thing was kind of impossible to guess but I still managed to figure out a few significant points along the way. The structure is also much better than in 999. There's a few arbitrary requirements in 999 that makes the true ending kind of missable. It could be the only ending left and you could still manage to miss it if you didn't make exactly the right choices, and the game never really gives you any indication of what those are. Going through one wrong door could ruin your entire run. And unlike VLR, in 999 you have to start over from the beginning. Here, and this is a strange word to use considering you actually have an in-game plot flowchart, but it feels more "linear". Or, I guess streamlined would be a better word. And that's a good thing. It took me almost 40 hours to finish it, more than twice the time 999 took. But in 999, by the end of my last run I was just kind of glad for it to be over. I was sick of redoing the same puzzles and skipping through the same damn text over and over. VLR is a much better game as a result of eliminating that tedium. You can't miss anything but you also have to go everywhere. There's 24 "endings" but the entire thing feels more like one comprehensive playthrough rather than a series of separate runs. And you never have to redo rooms you've already solved. There are character-specific endings and bad endings and story locks but what I loved the most were the branches where you would get to a point and realize "well, uh, shit. I can't progress." There would be no artificial ending with a "to be continued..." screen. You just lacked information required to solve a specific problem. It was a matter of going in other branches and finding the information you needed to progress and then coming back to that part. That alone gave a bigger sense of freedom than 999 ever did. So, yeah, if it had come out this year I would definitely be adding it to my GOTY list. I can't wait for Vol. 3, so hopefully it isn't too far off.

Yeah, judging from the demo alone, it seems to make really good and creative use of all the Vita's unique features. I love the Vita and, considering my personal tastes, I don't think I'll run out of games to play on it anytime soon. So I'm not complaining about its games library, but one thing it unarguably needs is more games like Tearaway. I really want to get it but it's not exactly my kind of game so I'm waiting until I can get a physical copy for 20 bucks or so..