toxicitizen

Last week-end's X4 xp event made me get back into RDR and I played quite a bit of it. Only a few trophies short of the platinum now. Though I've taken a break from the old west for now and am mostly playing Burnout Paradise, and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. Clash of Heroes is pretty addictive. I have a hard time putting it down whenever I start playing. It's kind of like Puzzle Quest, only the combat isn't a complete ripoff of another game. It's also a bit more strategic.

I gave in and ended up getting most of the Burnout Paradise DLC. They were all either 2$ or 3$, down from 5$ and 7$ respectively, so it was quite a steal. The only one I didn't get was the Party pack, which adds local offline multiplayer. Didn't seem necessary seeing as I rarely have people over to game.

Got a bit of cash and figured I'd get a couple of PSN games instead of getting a single bargain bin retail one. I'd heard good things about the DS version but for some reason it always stayed off my radar. Then I tried the HD version demo about two weeks ago and absolutely loved it! Been aching to play the full game ever since, so it was a no-brainer. Next, I could only afford a second game and was torn between Outland and Beyond Good & Evil HD. I seriously did not know which one to pick. Then the PSN store updated and Sony made my choice infinitely easier. 7,99$ and includes some DLC. Been wanting it ever since getting WipEout last month but thought it was a bit too pricey at 20$. Though of the two DLC packs included, one is pretty damn worthless. All it does is unlocking all the cars in the game. Where's the fun in that?! I was afraid I'd be forced to get it, but thankfully all the items were separate downloads so I didn't download that one. Oh and I bought the Legendary Cars DLC for 2 bucks. Ecto-1 + BTTF's DeLorean = hell yes!

Oh man, I'm tempted but hesitant to watch that new footage. Normally I'd be all over this, but Chewie kinda struck a chord with me the other day with his "not keeping up with games" thread. I very much want this game to surprise me. Also, the impending release makes it all the more tempting to go back and try to finally get those last few trophies I'm missing for Arkham Asylum's platinum. :/ And it's really only one trophy that I'm stuck on As soon as I get the one for the earning gold medals on all the expert combat challenges (I only have like 2-3 left to beat), the 100% Completion one should kick in right after, and then the platinum...

Being broke during a Steam sale is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I don't add stupid amounts of new games to my already insane Steam backlog. But reading this thread right now makes me feel like a drug addict in need of a fix This sale is pretty easy to ignore otherwise, though, because I tend to game in "platform phases". For months at a time I'll game exclusively on one platform and ignore the other. I almost never switch back and forth between my PC and my PS3. It's always one or the other, rarely both. And right now, I've been spending a lot of time on the PS3 these past few weeks. I don't even log on to Steam when I'm on the PC.

Beat Bayonetta yesterday. Overall I really liked it. Made me nostalgic as hell for Devil May Cry 1 and 3 and now I'm fucking ACHING for that series HD Collection. Sure, I could always just pop in my PS2 copies... but I'd much rather wait a few months, get them in proper HD 16:9 and get trophies for them. Anyway, back to Bayonetta, it's a great game but it really sucks how the PS3 port was half-assed. It played fine for the most part, but in the last few levels there was some noticeable slowdown. Nothing to make it unplayable, but just enough to affect the visuals. Actually, scratch that. I just had a look at some 360 footage on youtube and holy shit! The area in chapter 15, at the top of the tower, when you walk vertically on the disappearing panels... I wasn't 100% sure if it was a framerate drop or just intentional, to have a kind of reduced-gravity slowness feel to the movements (it would've fit with the environment, tbh). But no, it was just slow as fuck. It's smooth and fast on 360. Oh and um, yeah, I guess I beat Critter Crunch as well. Finished the Adventure, Puzzle and Challenge modes. Really fun little puzzler. Hadn't touched it in a while, but I'm glad I never uninstalled it. Too bad the online is dead. I have one trophy left to get and it's a multiplayer one If anyone here has it and wants to play a few games, hit me up on PSN!

Sucked your own dick?

Never did play the Wii version of RE4, so yeah, I really hope they include Move support. I'm still kinda pissed that my copy of RE5 doesn't support Move. I platinum'd it ages ago, but I'd probably go for another run if I it supported it. I don't really feel like selling it and getting the gold edition just for Move support and the DLC :/ Oh, that's possible. The only SC I ever played on PS2 were Chaos Theory and Double Agent.

Eh, I'm the same but with the Metal Gear Solid series. The HD collection will mark my third purchase of both MGS 2 and 3. I intend to keep my PS2 copies of Substance and Subsistence, though. Those are my preciou...ses? Though now that I think about it, I did buy a similar Resident Evil box as well. Holds the first Outbreak, Code Veronica X and RE4. Never played any of them, though, because I kinda hate how ugly PS2 games look on my PS3/HD display :/ Was more of a "collecting" purchase. So yeah, the HD release will be the first time I replay RE4 since the original gamecube release. Can't wait!

I agree on the Move support for RE4. It'll feel like such a wasted opportunity to not have it. I'm also strongly considering not getting RE4 HD when it comes out and waiting in hopes of a bluray release. Depends on the price, though. Those collections are usually 40$ at retail, so if the PSN version is less than 20$, then I just might get it anyway.

Yeah, John Noble is pretty damn great as Walter. It was a bit weird to see him in L.A. Noire. Hell, I even rewatched the LOTR trilogy a few months ago, and I was shocked when I realized he was Denethor. It almost ruined the character for me

I finished the first Valkyria Chronicles last night. Excellent game that every PS3 owner should give a shot to. And I finally played the last case in L.A. Noire today. Such a great game, even if it's extremely repetitive. Team Bondi really deserve high praise for doing something different and succeeding at it. But holy shit what a sloppy story that was. People gave shit to David Cage because of Heavy Rain's plot holes and how misleading he was with his twist. But at least it was written semi-competently. The man has a basic understanding of plot structure. Brendan McNamara didn't really seem to have any sort of direction to his story with L.A. Noire. You get that there's a bigger idea this is all leading to, but it's like all the pieces just barely fit together for the sake of fitting together without any deeper meaning to any of them. The best part of the plot, imho, was the homicide desk, which is pretty much the middle part of the game and not really related to the "main" story :/ Oh, and what an unsatisfying ending. But still, like I said, great game. I'll be playing any case they release as DLC (which, imho, is being handled the right way with the Rockstar Pass). Give me 2-3 years and I'll be ready to play a sequel.

Really? It was my understanding that Brotherhood was a more accurate adaptation of the manga. Is that not the case? And yeah, I agree that it lost some steam in the last stretch. For example, the "final conflict" that lasted like 15 episodes episodes felt like a bit much at times. But considering that I'd been waiting almost a decade to see a proper ending to that series (I'm counting from the start of the first anime), then I found it to be suitably epic in scope. Again, really? For some reason, I was under the impression that it would be very... similar. That's kind of why I had downloaded it over a year ago but never watched it because I hadn't finished the game yet and didn't want to "spoil" it. Ironically, I finished the game last night and now I don't exactly feel the need to re-experience the story right away... so I think I'll just burn the series on a couple of DVD-Rs and forget about it for now

Man, I didn't even know this thread existed. I used to watch tons of anime when I was younger, but really slowed down/lost interest about half a decade ago. I still go through the occasional "anime phase", though. Last summer I watched (and REALLY enjoyed) the excellent FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. And, more recently, playing Valkyria Chronicles on PS3 made me want to watch some, so I grabbed the anime based on it. But I didn't want to start watching it until I'd finished the game, so I grabbed Bleach as well. I think the series was around episode 60-something back when I'd stopped watching. I don't know how long I'll keep watching, but so far I watched about 20 episodes in two days and I'm loving the hell out of it! I never thought I'd enjoy rewatching Bleach so damn much. I also grabbed another series I'd been meaning to watch for a long time after someone recommended it to me: Soul Eater. I actually tried watching it last summer, but at the time it was very difficult to find good quality encodes/subs. Lucky for me, I managed to find a decent looking pack this time

Just finished Chapter 17. Man, that was a rough one! That first look at the map is pretty overwhelming. For at least half of it I was convinced I was going to fail but around turn 12 I managed to get a strong enough foothold and start really hurting them. The mission ended on turn 18, so it was a close one. I wasn't planning on finishing the game tonight, but when the page turned and it was all cutscenes I figured there wasn't going to be another mission, so I started watching the episodes. Then the page turned again and now there's a mission. Guess I might as well try and get it over with.

Cool, thanks for clarifying that. I think I know which one you mean. I had a crazy hard time keeping my guys alive and fighting off the enemies because you start pretty much cornered in your base camp and have to wait until Welkin gets there before you can really do anything. But once I managed to break through and capture their secondary camp, I spent a few turns healing/re-supplying and calling back some of my fallen troops. Only to break through the huge gate and be greeted by.... a single fucking guy in the enemy camp >_< I swear, I wasted at least 5 turns only to face that one guy Oh and that Marina video pretty much sums up my experience with the character When I started playing again about a week ago, I was on Chapter 7 and I lost two lancers during that mission but ultimately finished it. That made me reluctant to restart, so I just cut my losses and moved on. But there are some characters that I will simply not allow to die. Marina, obviously, but also my back-up sniper Cezary, Edy and Homer, the only engineer I use. One time I lost a good hour of progress on a mission because a stupid move I did killed Marina. That sucked.

I think I know what you're talking about. I remember reading an article on Oblivion back in the days about some tech that allowed to grow trees "naturally" in the game world. I might be remembering wrong, but I think it was a tool for the development team rather than something that would happen in-game. Like, instead of modelling and skinning the trees themselves, they would just "plant" them and the tech would grow the trees in a realistic-looking way. Ah, google found something! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedTree Seems it was originally meant for a golf simulation, but that fell apart and Oblivion ended up being one of the first games to use it. The tech was used in quite a few recent games, according to that list. Here's what it looks like in action.

I know what you mean. When I found out that the Disgaea (and also VC) sequels weren't about the same characters, I was really disappointed. (Though from what I understand, VC3 is supposed to feature a bunch of the characters from the first one. I got a wallpaper of it for my laptop and the Edelweiss is on it.) Also, I have to say the characters in Disgaea 3 really grew on my over the course of the game. Well, except for Beryl. She can die in a fire, for all I care. Anyway, fan service doesn't bother me too much as long as the game remains good, I guess. I'll have to see if there's a demo for it on PSN.

So, this somehow doesn't have a thread yet! Feel free to discuss anything: the original, the PSP sequels or the anime series. If you're into SRPGs, this is one of the best PS3 exclusives, imho. The cell-shaded graphics look pretty great through the game's painting-style filter and the mix of turn-based and third-person make for some very addictive gameplay. I'm on the chapter 16 of the original right now, so I'm almost done with it. I plan on eventually picking up VCII, but I was wondering about something. If anyone has played VCII, did they address some of the balance issues of the original? Right now, I can beat pretty much any map in a turn or two by buffing up Alicia (or any Scout, really) with defense and evasion boosts and then just rushing the objective. It's very game-breaking, but once you're strong enough to do it, it feels kinda silly to even engage the enemy. What's worst is the ranking system is kinda broken and only takes into accounts how many turns it took you to win, so you're actually getting LESS XP by wasting turns fighting than you would if you just Scout rushed. :/ It's an amazing game, but that right there is a serious design flaw. Did they fix it in the sequel?

Personally, I've little to no interest in shows that have no overarching plot. It's kinda why I eventually lost interest in House and why I don't watch crime procedurals. I need something to keep me coming back week after week. Self-contained stories just don't feel like they're worth investing my time into. Of course, a truly great show will be good no matter the format. There are always exceptions. For example, Nathan Filion makes Castle extremely enjoyable to watch. Anyway, as for Fringe, back when I watched season 1, I kept waiting for "something to happen", which from what I heard is a sentiment many shared. I think it just gets better as the show progresses. Can't wait to see where season 4 will go. And while the show mostly maintains its "case of the week" format, it does get a bit more serialized in season 2 and 3. Also, for some reason, I find that Fringe works best in marathon sessions. I have difficulties keeping interest on a weekly basis. I watched the pilot back when it started and liked it, but only watched the whole season after it ended. Then season 2 started and I watched it for all of two weeks before I stopped. I only caught up with it about halfway through season 3, watching all of season 2 in a matter of days, and then watching the fifteen or so episodes of season 3 that were out at the time. Then I once again stopped. The wait between episodes just takes me out of the story. That usually doesn't happen with other shows.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I know for a fact that J.J. Abrams used to shoot movies on Super 8 as a kid, so I'm pretty sure he knew that. They probably ignored that fact for creative reasons. It's not that surprising, really. Anyway, just watched The Man Who Wasn't There. Like every other Coen Bros. movies I've seen, it was strange but very good. The more of their movies I see, the more I like them as filmmakers. I really need to watch True Grit soon. Also got Barton Fink that's been sitting on my HDD for a few months.

I think what I like most about this title is how butthurt PS3 fanboys are over it being multiplat Seriously, the tweets insomniac keep getting are just batshit insane. They range from "this is going to suck because it's multiplat" to "you backstabbing assholes!" But like everyone said, I love the style and humor of it and I can't wait to see some proper footage. I especially love the NOLF vibe I got from the trailer.