toxicitizen

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..

I've also been keeping track of my games this year and, unlike last year, managed to not lose the file this time. There's a good chance I'll be adding something today, though, so not posting quite yet. Also, I wanted to do a thing where my last game of the year was going to be The Walking Dead on Vita, then I'd quote my first post from this thread and it would also be TWD. I was planning on playing an episode a day or so between christmas and today but ended up only playing the first one, so I'm not going to spend the entire day doing that when I'm already juggling a couple other games. Besides, the Vita version runs kinda shit. I went in thinking I might switch to Vita for season 2 if it was good and I was not impressed with what I saw.

I can't believe a game that bombed so hard still hasn't gotten a proper price drop. Total mystery why Capcom are having financial troubles... Anyway, 12,50$ is still a tad above what I was willing to pay. But once I started selling my snow globe cards, I went fuck it and sold almost everything I'd been holding on to (including a few booster packs) and ended up making over 6 bucks. So it was more like 87.5% off as far as I'm concerned. It could've been even cheaper but I wasn't paying attention when I bought CrowKnow's secret santa gift and accidentally spent the first three bucks I made. Oh well, doesn't really matter where it went I guess, in the end I saved the same amount overall.

Been hearing for a while about how great it supposedly is. I was only reminded of it when it popped up on a few GOTY lists. I think I vaguely remember something about it being metroidvania, which I am really into, but otherwise I'm going in pretty much completely blind, so that's always fun.

Yeah, the difficulty (or lack thereof) was my one complaint overall, the game is otherwise fucking great. If you're not already doing so, I strongly recommend playing on Nephilim difficulty. Still piss easy most of the time but at least there's the occasional challenging fight or boss.

Ha, yeah, those looked way smaller in the episode. Thought they were like... probe-sized. Also came across this.

The Last of Us for being actual survival-horror (and that applies to both the zombies and the human enemies). The gameplay was so satisfying for me, especially resource management during combat. The story was also one of the best all year. Guacamelee. There's just no way around it. After getting the platinum on Vita last week-end, I realized it was the third time I 100%'d the game since first getting my hands on it, and that was less than 6 months ago. It's not a very long game but nothing else has made me feel compelled to return to it so frequently in a very long time. It also helps that I can't say no to a solid Metroidvania, and this is a very good one. Infinite was good but I don't feel particularly passionate about it so I'm giving it a pass. I do want to mention Splinter Cell Blacklist and DmC: Devil May Cry, though. Both were particularly great games that got a ton of undeserved shit because gamers are huge whiny cunts. Shitty main character changes aside, they're both among the most fun games I've played this year. DmC fixed a completely archaic control scheme/camera and had a pretty good story (a first for the series) while Blacklist brought the series' gameplay some of its former glory back.

Oh, right. Yeah, I guess I can see how that might confuse the count. I heard about the Time Lords being able to hand out more regens but only like, yesterday. So I didn't know that was a possibility before watching the special. If I had, I'd have probably seen it coming a mile away. Especially after the 50th.

I probably shouldn't have since I still don't know how much I'll need to spend on books in a couple weeks. But EBGames.ca's boxing day sale brought them down to 20$ each and I've been good this year as far as the Steam sale goes. Only money I spent was for the secret santa exchange. Anyway, 20$ is the sweet spot I was waiting for Rising to hit and I just couldn't be bothered to wait and see if the PC version runs well on my rig. Lately, it's been my experience that newer games rarely do (even last-gen ones) and with the new consoles it's only going to get worse, so I've kinda given up on it for big AAA titles. Besides, my Vita has reawakened the PlayStation fanboy within and Metal Gear will always feel more at home on a PlayStation system as far as I'm concerned. As for Tales of Xillia, I've been meaning to get into the Tales series for the longest time. I really wanted to get it during black friday but money was a bit tight after getting a Vita, so I decided not to.

So, I got frustrated with Persona 4 after repeatedly dying on the same floor of a dungeon yesterday. I rage quit and started Virtue's Last Reward. I already got one bad ending and one story lock. So far, it's pretty great! Initially, the new cast of characters and the new version of the Nonary Game seemed less interesting than the ones in 999, but once things really started to get going I actually started enjoying it a lot more than 999. Of course, by the time I got to 999's true ending, pretty much all the mystery was gone and I was just in it for the story resolution. So it's possible what I'm enjoying is simply the return to that early game mystery. But man, the first bad ending I got, when I hit that "ally" button I was so goddamned nervous about it. And now I don't think I can ever fully trust that one character that screwed me over for the remainder of the game. It was amazing.

Yeah, that was also my understanding. New regeneration cycle and not just the one time. Also, google tells me Meta-crisis Doctor is the Tennant clone that went in the alternate universe with Rose? What kind of debate was there about him? Was the line that mentions one of them regenerating but keeping the same face about him? Come to think of it, I don't even remember how he came to be...

Just finished watching. It was pretty good, although a bit slow in the middle. But man, I'm gonna miss Smith.

It's not as bad as that time you suggested X-Talk as a forum name!

Yeah, I get what you mean. But I find the combat to be 100% skill-based in that game, which is something I'm really into. It can be infuriating at first, but once an encounter clicks it becomes fairly easy to deal with, and that's just so very satisfying for me. When I played hard on PC, the Jaguar Javier fight was the most infuriating part of the entire experience. It took me two days before I managed to beat him and it almost made me give up entirely. But this time I almost got him on my very first try and then it only took me about 20mins or so to finally get him.

Replayed Guacamelee on Vita. I already loved the game but man does it play great on the system. Well, except for the occasional room where everything is so small I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on. Anyway, I initially started it just to see how the Vita version was, without really intending to play it all the way through. But it sucked me right back in pretty much instantly and it actually managed to make me ignore Persona 4 for the past couple days. It hasn't been that long since I played it on PC so I played on hard thinking it would be an easy platinum. I'm not sure what I was thinking because there were a few parts that made me rage so hard last time. I wasn't too rusty, though, so it was actually quite a bit easier this time. Took me about 7 hours to get the platinum, which is probably the fastest one I've ever done. I'm almost tempted to get the DLC now, so I can get it to 100% but man, I'm not sure I want to go through those challenge rooms again. Besides, I'm kind of amazed I managed to not smash my Vita during some of the most annoying parts so I should probably quit while I still have an undamaged system...

Oh, yeah definitely. I'm okay with this particular case given the details and context but that's not to say I have no problem with resolution locks in general. If it was locked at 720p that'd be another story entirely.

Don't get me wrong, any resolution lock is inherently bad. I just think that as far as resolution locks go, this one does not seem that bad to me. It's locked at the resolution the vast majority of people would be playing at anyway. This will definitely cause the game to age horribly fast, which sucks. But in the current gaming landscape I feel that if you have to lock the resolution, then 1080p is a perfectly reasonable one to lock it to. Also, I don't think we need random theories at all. Or rather, if we must come up with one, I'd be more inclined to go with something a little less "paranoid", for lack of a better word. The game was built for consoles and I wouldn't be surprised if they never anticipated porting it to PC at the time. Going higher than 1080p could've caused all kinds of issues and fixing those would've added development time and costs they couldn't afford. Seems a tad more plausible to me. edit: Would such a thing even be feasible? I'm sure it could work for some games but I kinda feel like most games would just break if you decided to input some random numbers they're not prepared to render at.