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I am super, duper happy about this.

3DS demos are live. Well, demo. RE: Revelations! Couple notes - The demos apparently are going to have limited activations. (30, to be precise. That's an awful lot for a demo, i don't think it's really an issue.) Another tiny little detail is that the demos don't seem to be added to your download history. (Though they're added to your purchase history.) ^ I really appreciate this, i wouldn't want demos i have no intent of ever playing again polluting my download history on the 3DS. (It's been a big problem with X-box Live for me, god help me if i ever need to find something in that download history because it's been "delisted" or was a bonus that i need to redownload) Anyways, RE: Revelations is really cool. The enemies are kinda dumb, i think they're trying to emulate the ultra-creepy regenerators from RE4, but they're not really nailing it. They seem kinda goofy. It obviously will play better with the add-on stick, but the default scheme is very similar to how RE4 played, and it seems fine. The scan-for-items thing is kinda dumb. The game also, i think, shows that the 3DS has some real potential to be visual powerhouse. Where most of the 3DS games i've seen so far are about on par with the PSP, Revelations is showing some stuff that seems more akin to what Sony is showing off on the Vita. Really incredible stuff, really incredible. This will probably be a very excellent game.

My main takeaway from what i've seen of Gunstringer is that the packed-in FMV mini-game looks incredible. Not to be utterly dismissive of the game itself, it looks like a surprisingly rad rail shooter. It is a thing i will probably play when i eventually feel compelled to get a Kinect. (Probably for Steel Battalion 2, because i think giant robots are pretty cool.)

There is a lot of overlap, but there's plenty of books in earlier games that haven't returned in later games, or have actually been revised or straight-up censored. (Because... Man, Daggerfall. Holy shit.) http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Books_by_Subject This should be just about every book in the series.

Welcome, new person! Wizard, horse bag, and such.

The merit of Elder Scrolls fiction as compared to Harry potter is a real, real weird direction for this thread to go in.

I think that's a big part of the appeal for these games. It's fun to step outside of a city and set out in a random direction, not knowing what you'll find. There are some really great stealth-focused quests in Oblivion, both the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood chains are pretty great, but Skyrim features some more fully realized stealth mechanics. (Some basic last-known-position search routines for the AI, for example. Instead of going instantly aggro on the player like in Morrowind and Oblivion.) The same is true of Skyrim and Morrowind, the vast majority of the quests you are faced with are "This dungeon has this thing, go get me that thing." If you're not cool with the dungeon diving, it'll get old. (Though Oblivion, i would say, probably also has the most blatant cut and paste dungeons out of the modern TES games.) That said, the daedric quests and some of the primary quest chains are usually the standouts for interesting stuff. In Oblivion, the Dark Brotherhood quest chain might be the best single quest chain in any TES game. Eh... It's very obviously an evolution of Oblivion, it is that game, but... you know... better. A lot of the individual pieces of Skyrim are actually fairly dramatically different, but on the whole, it's still definitely and recognizably a TES game. The melee combat is one thing that does not really change at all between Oblivion and Skyrim. (A few things are different. Block/shield bashing is very useful, you can duel-wield weapons in Skyrim, and basic attacks don't drain stamina anymore.) It's still a numbers RPG, it's about the supplies and equipment you've given yourself and how you use those, less so any techniques for combat. So no, it hasn't changed, it's probably the thing about Skyrim that has changed the least. As for the quests, as a judgement about Oblivon, i think it kind of comes down to what parts of Oblivion you end up seeing. As noted before, it actually has what are probably some of the best quests in the entire series, but also some really awful ones. (The main quest in Oblivon was terrible.) I think Skyrim also does a better job of surfacing its best content to the player, it has a lot of really clever systems and quests in place to keep pointing people towards the more interesting stuff. I can't imagine so, even the biggest fans of TES can have fairly middling opinions on Oblivion, if not outright vitriol and hate. I think the individual pieces of Skyrim show a lot of the lessons they've learned over the years. Skyrim is also still a huge and ambitious game, so it's filled with quirks and bugs. So, you know, managed expectations. Personally, i always felt the biggest failing of Oblivion was that Cyrodiil as presented in Oblivion is just kind of a boring place, it's kind of the blandest place a TES game has been set in. I don't think the same is true with Skyrim, but that's a pretty personal and subjective judgement. Edit: Also, it is probably worth checking out Morrowind for curiosity's sake, even if not for a long haul, because it's a fairly important piece of context for where the TES series sits at now. Daggerfall was built on a lot of ideas that remain recognizable in later games, but Morrowind was kind of where that series really coalesced. You will probably also come to appreciate what Oblivion and Skyrim do with their combat, because it is so much worse in Morrowind. Heh.

It feels like a fairly esoteric problem, complaining about how the scaling starts to break down at 100+ hours. I mean, at least consider that Skyrim is already scaling way, way further down the level progression than Morrowind or Oblivion did. (Both of which top out at around 20-30.) Skyrim already is Bethesda's response to how much time people are willing to invest into these games. (Evidently, it still wasn't enough for some.)

Sonic CD also recently got a very nice port to just about everything. It's a very cool game, i had never played it before. Some of the design in that game is just booming with cleverness and ingenuity. Very strange history behind it too, developed in America and had kind of been denounced by Sonic Team.

Some of you guys had been saying you were interested in Dark Souls, but didn't want to play it on a console. Well this happened. Of course, a Namco community manager talking up a storm on a forum doesn't equate to From devoting the resources to making it happen, but hey, it's nice to hope for things, right? Personally, I don't know how well the online component of this game would transfer to a more open environment though. The weird metagame is so important, but it feels like hacking would probably end up being a problem on the PC, and in the context of this game it would be unavoidable. (You cannot simply choose who you play with as you would in other notable co-op RPG's that have had problems with hacking, such as Borderlands and Dead Island.)

I didn't have this one in my list, i should have had it in there somewhere. Ghost Trick was incredible, i love it to death. Missile is the best pomeranian ever.

I can't come at it from the angle of being somebody who has played a lot of the Silent Hill games, but i really like Shattered Memories, it does a lot of really bold stuff that i admire it for. (I think the story is quite good too.) It kind of fails at being a horror game though, simply because it ends up being so easy to parse the parts of the game where you are in danger from the parts of the game where you aren't. It's super atmospheric throughout, but just not scary at all. For the best experience, i'd say go into it expecting a cool adventure game rather than a survival horror experience. Silent Hill is a series i've always kind of wanted to try and get into, but i've never been too sure how to approach it, it seems like the fans hate every game in the series except the second one. I'm thinking i might get the HD collection that is due out in a couple months or so, see how that goes.

So there's some really bad Lakitu revival glitches in Mario Kart 7, where Lakitu can restore you to the wrong portion of the track after a crash. In most of the bugs, it requires you have the right item and make a difficult jump, and even then it will then only gain you a few seconds of an advantage. So it's dumb, people are exploiting it, but doesn't currently seem particularly gamebreaking. Though there's an incredibly simple one on Maka Wuhu that lets you skip more than half of the track. So don't pick Maka Wuhu if you play online, i guess. You know, and because Nintendo doesn't believe in patches, it will never be fixed.

Did you guys play Shattered Memories?

There's probably a few final unlocks for three-starring all of the cups on each class, but the requirements for that extra gradient of completion seem to be different than normal. In the past, didn't you just have to finish each individual race in 1st? I've done that, but sometimes still ended up with only two stars.

It sounds like a lot of the unlocks are back-loaded on the 150cc courses and a lot of other later-game conditions. Anyways, i've spent a few hours with it, and the online in this is really, really quite good. I've been so used to seeing Nintendo's online games top out at four players, seeing eight players with no latency seems crazy. The recent players list is handled well, the communities feature is really awesome, it is a surprisingly progressive outing to see from Nintendo proper. (Still no voice chat, unless it's only in friend matches or something.) The Mario Kart channel thing is weird, i don't really understand what it's doing.

There's certainly still a measure of skill in the hold-to-charge blue sparks implementation. I mean, the sharper your turn is, the faster it charges. So you can still kind of wiggle the stick back and forth to charge up faster on shallower turns, it just ends up being largely impractical to actually try and snake through the straightaways when you could just be getting boosts off the jumps. It really seems to work well, i like it. The other system just didn't work. I don't know if you played MKDS online at all, but it was totally unplayable after a while. There were so many people snaking through those courses, they'd be into their third lap when you've barely finished your first. If you were trying to play that game against anybody who was willing to exploit drift boosting in that way, the whole game just totally fell apart. You can argue "Well if you're playing with friends it's fine" and you'd be right, it is. I don't think that excuses such a huge balance issue though, especially with the growing emphasis on online stuff in this series, so i'm glad they tried to fix it. Anyways, we should swap friend codes or maybe setup an MK7 community or something.

I just got this, it's quite good. I think MKDS is still my favorite overall selection of courses, but this is quite nice. I'm glad they're sticking with the hold-to-charge power-sliding scheme, fuck snaking. The other way, the way it was in MKDS and some of the others, it was more kinetic, but what it allows just ruins those games. It really, really does. Don't defend it, you can't, fuck snaking. (ARRRGH, SNAKING.) I guess there isn't a Thumbs community or anything?

I think it's in good hands at 343, Microsoft did some head hunting for a lot of very talented people from a lot of very respected studios to build that team, there's even a handful of hold-overs from Bungie. I'm not completely without worry, but i think it's probably fine.

Alright, yeah, that's pretty ugly. The details offered about the mechanics are really vague though, so i choose not to freak out about that.

I would say it's almost a sure thing we'll see the next x-box at E3 this year, and then in stores by the end of 2013, i cannot imagine a world where this generation drags on beyond that. Shit, though, sales keep going up for Microsoft, it's crazy.

I think you deserve a gold star, those are excellent points you've made. Certainly a lot to mull over, a few things i hadn't really ever considered.

The way it snaps you to targets is so unpredictable! You've got two guys standing to your right, you hold right, and maybe it snaps to the guy further away instead of the guy closer to you. So then your punch whiffs, and dammit, you dropped your combo. The game dropped your combo. Your stupid, artificial combo for the stupid, artificial combo system. So some of my qualms are down to taste, i think its combo system is dumb, but i think it also does have some real, actual problems. I never ever felt like i had a clear sense of how Batman is going to act in either of those games. The combat camera also kinda sucks, and i think city has some real clunky controller mappings. THERE. I SAID IT. I've had that bottled up. Those games are slightly not as good as people say they are, but still mostly excellent.

Well that's the thing, games would have to support it, which is why only something officially backed by Apple would ever get any mileage. There are already controller options for iOS, but the support for them is next to zero.

I can't help but feel like Nintendo has sort of been digging their own grave, the way they put all this work into kind of pioneering the touchscreen as a valuable games interface. So now the handhelds are kind of pushed back into the past where it's old-fashioned game controls that keep them relevant. (The real innovation of the current handhelds? Now they have proper analog sticks, dual analog present on the Vita and incoming for the 3DS.) Apple could probably obliterate the handhelds if they really, really took gaming seriously, push some kind of standardized controller dock for the iPhone/iPod Touch or something. Apple has never taken gaming seriously though, they've ended up in their position with the iPod/iPhone/iPad purely by accident. For now, i'm content with their obliviousness, i still want to play games on Nintendo handhelds. Is the emphasis on 3D going to mean the death of sprite art though? The modern handhelds were always kind of one of the last bastions for really detailed, old-school sprite art in games.