Pojodin

Yeah, that one took forever. Between lighting the torches and then doing the other torches in the right order, it was ridiculous.

Samurai Mister Jack! I just beat Persona Q last night. It took roughly 70 hours for me to do an everything run. I just need to gain a few more levels so I can fuse the remaining personas and complete the compendium. Content wise, the story is pretty good. You select either the Persona 3 or Persona 4 path. I’ve only done the P3 path, but it seems the big differences are the beginning and the ending. A few conversations and decisions playing out slightly differently and there is a shift in character interaction emphasis, but it doesn’t sound like there is too much of a difference between the two paths other than a bit of story. Otherwise, it pulls in aspects from the previous games but tells its own story. The characters fit together well, though it’s something that can only be fully appreciated if you’ve played the previous Persona games. The combat and map traversal is Etrian Odyssey: traversing mazes with puzzles, gadgets, and switches as you make your way up or down toward a floor with a boss. You can draw and make notes on the map to denote traps, power spots (locations that have materials that can be sold to make items and equipment but have a chance to trigger a random encounter), events, FOE’s (mini-boss-esque monsters that a physically manifested on the map and not just a random encounter after a number of steps), doors, shortcuts, etc. The music will be familiar to players who have played the previous games, with a few returning songs and the other music fitting in stylistically with the previous Persona OST’s. Combat specifics play out slightly differently from previous Persona games. Characters are assigned to either the front or back row for combat with the usual implications for benefits/limits of ranged vs melee. All characters have their primary persona and can equip a secondary one for added abilities, etc. Exploiting an enemy’s weakness won’t necessarily knock the opponent over, but it will boost your character. And all-out attacks tend to be based on the number of people who have exploited an enemy’s weakness adding to said likelihood. You still have physical attacks and persona abilities that use either HP or SP to execute. If you are boosted, the HP or SP cost to use a persona ability in the next round is eliminated. The rest is pretty much like Persona, including item usage, etc. You can pick either Rise or Fuuka to be your navigator. You can assign an additional persona to them as well which can give them additional navigation abilities. There are specific navigation abilities marked as [NAVI] that can either be used during battle or are passive (like pointing out things on the map, restoring health at the end of battle, increasing the safety of checking power spots or upping their likelihood to have better items, etc. The combat abilities are based on a meter on the side that fills with every action you take and can be used by the party leader during their turn in battle. Outside of the dungeons, there is the hospital room where you can heal up and accept/turn in requests. There is the velvet room where you can fuse personas and access the persona compendium as well as access the DLC stuff. There’s the shop where you can buy items and equipment. Then there’s a stroll option that allows you to see some events and interactions between the characters. All-in-all it’s a pretty solid game. It is extremely Etrian Odyssey based, so if you like Etrian Odyssey I’d suggest checking it out. If you haven’t played Etrian Odyssey, I would only recommend it if you’ve played at least one of the two games (Persona 3 or 4) if not both. While the story does get good as you get further in, the big pull for this is that it is a game that involves the P3 and P4 cast interacting. It can feel a bit grindy and long at times, and there are some battles that are quite difficult or annoying (instant kill moves that wipe out your whole party, etc.) but the difficulty adjustment really helps to make things bearable. Safety difficulty essentially makes it so you can’t lose, so you don’t have to worry about difficulty and game overs being an issue.

That pillowcase is ridiculous. o_O

Very eloquently put TheFlyingGerbil!

Yep, Nintendo is Nintendo. Good, bad, and ready otherwise.

I really hope they do. It's easy money for them.

@Mister Jack: I do live in the US, but the $20 Wii U adapters have been sold out for ages and are being scapled for $50+ online. The Pro controller can be ordered online, but as a matter of principle I found it crazy that not a single store I've gone to has had one. Wal Mart, Target, Gamestop, Best Buy, they were all out. @Saturnine: A bit of both, but it's starting to seem like more of a case of the latter.

While it's not just Nintendo, they have certainly been the main culprit as of late. I'm still trying to find a Gamecube controller adapter I can order online. Or a Wii U pro controller I can pick up in store. I have yet to be able to do either, and this is just for a controller.

I really need to get back to playing this soon. I might do that after I finish Super Mario 3D World.

I prefer flying in a plane, but I'll settle for a hella copter.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Bravely Default Dark Souls II Paper Mario: Sticker Star Super Smash Bros. 3DS (watched a friend play through The Last of Us) (watched a friend play through Infamous Second Son) Not a big year of gaming for me, but I had a lot of other stuff going on and there weren't a ton of games that interested me. Other games I'm working on will probably be finished in 2015.

I don't think your link worked Dean. D: Uptown Funk!

Something to start off the new year. Hoping 2015 is good. The last couple have been rough.

I got to take a picture with him several years ago at one of the Packer Hall of Fame banquets. It was awesome! And I was at that game last Sunday. It totally felt like a playoff game, and definitely took away the sting of that first game against the Lions. I wasn't sure we could handle a team that had that good of a defense, so it was a nice confidence boost going into the playoffs.

Christmas present to myself with the cards from the Playstation Experience. I also got a vacuum cleaner, a football autographed by Bart Starr, a Packer hand warmer pack, a Packer throw blanket, and a pair of running shoes.

I really didn't play much this year because there was a huge stretch with nothing that interested me. I know it was only a teaser, but P.T. is up there for me. It's probably a toss up between that, Mario Kart 8, and Smash Bros.

I literally just started it, so I can't really say.

I just started Persona Q, and that's the first Persona game I've played since P4 on PS2. Definitely looking forward to hearing some details about 5.

Some details from the link above: -You can hold down a button to do combos, but cooperative moves with party members will involve timing your button presses. -Parries will require you to time enemy attacks, an element added for advanced players. -Magic doesn’t use up MP, but it’s also completely different from Final Fantasy VIII’s "Draw" system. -Special actions such as dodging and warping is what uses MP. -You can equip several weapons at once, with one being the main weapon. The main weapon is what will have its corresponding ability, but you’ll also get to change the main weapon in the midst of combat. -Combos are determined by which weapons you have equipped. -Abilities aren’t part of their own weapon categories, but rather part of individual weapons. -Dungeons and suspicious areas that have rare weapons might have some hack-and-slash elements to them. The Phantom Swords that float in the air is also a specially acquired weapon.

I guess there are suppsoed to be details about Persona 5 being released shortly after the new year.

Details are starting to happen!

I think that's because people are having the completely wrong expectations for this one. Agreed. It's not going to be an overly complex game that focuses on details. I'm kind of thinking along the lines of Shadow of the Colossus in the sense that the colossi are the objectives and there were the trials at the end /the secret garden at the top of the tower. Other than that, there were a lot of landscapes and environments to explore with lizards and fruits to find. I'm imaging this will be structurally similar, just in terms of space travel on a far larger scale with the objectives being resource gathering and/or ship modifications.

I tried out the shorter version of the demo at the PS Experience. It's not revolutionary, but it is solid. The controls felt comfortable and the melee combat was pretty versatile. It looked really nice and ran well. The setting and the airship was pretty cool. It's not going to blow you away, but it should be a very refined and polished game. Unfortunately I wasn't able to ascertain more about the game than that. It seems like it could have an interesting story, but I would need more details to know about that.