toxicitizen

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.

Yeah, I know. That's what I was saying. I've been playing the HD campaign first and Eliminator is from Fury, so that's why I hadn't played it yet.

Yeah, that was pretty awesome, even though I was absolutely terrible at eliminator I have a perfectly valid excuse for my poor performance, though! It was my first time playing it! I've been playing the events in order and haven't reached Fury yet. Gonna have to rethink that approach, though, because I don't want to fail so miserably next time we play!

Damnit, my cousin was here minutes ago and talked to me for like 20 mins, so now I don't have time to finish my current mission in Valkyria Chronicles Oh well, I wasn't doing that well, so I'll just start over, I guess. Anyway, I'm still down for Wipeout. And I do have Fury.

Ha, I can relate. Fellow trophy whore here and I've pretty much given up on the Arkham Asylum platinum. The advanced combat challenges are damn impossible to gold medal, and that's preventing me from getting the trophy for beating them, the 100% completion trophy and the platinum As for the plats I do have http://us.playstation.com/publictrophy/index.htm?onlinename=Toxicitizen

Ha, thanks. L.A. Noire should be my 13th plat. I'll add you next time I get on the PS3. And I'm in Quebec.

I'm not European, I'm Canadian.

Sounds good to me.

You know, I don't remember to check this thread/section of the forum often enough to catch people when they go "I could play now/in a bit". Would be cool if we could plan ahead a specific day/time to have a session.

Thanks, that did it. Still, I distinctly remember the games saying 'demo' on the XMB, so it was odd it was removed after redeeming the free game promotion. That's because Wipeout is one of those games that upon buying it you only download the demo and an unlock key. When I redeemed it, 3 things were added to my download list: Wipeout HD demo, Wipeout HD unlock key and Wipeout HD Fury Add-On. I remember a while back I had tried a demo of a game (not 100% sure, but I think it was Castle Crashers) and liked it, so I went to buy it. But I first deleted the demo, worried that it might interfere or something (I can't really explain the reasoning either...). Then when I bought the full game, I had to redownload the damn demo

Yeah, that bird demo looked merely normal. Not impressive by any stretch of the word.

So the new controller would be basically kind of an "accesory" and the Wii-mote remains the regular controller? Sounds more and more like a simple Wii HD. Especially if it's limited to a single screen controller. I never got around to buying a Wii but I might be tempted to get this after a price drop of two.