Twilo

I'm Anonymous and so's my wife. (not really)

Japanese games aren't difficult in the sense that a hardcore "western" game would be; you generally need Gamefaqs because of some poor design decision rather than any inherent systemic difficulty involved in the game (plenty of examples exist for a lack of guidance in terms of where to go next etc. in otherwise simple games). It's worth noting that with Japanese RPGs in general (a genre in which a lot of the "hardcore" games lie), if the game is getting too hard, you can go away and grind your characters up to a higher level and try later. And investment of time will give you the same rewards as an investment in study and consideration. But with all of these games, you can play them casually, without being extremely good or anything, and still have a good time. Japanese games tend to cater to everyone by being generally pretty casual and easy to get into, but rewarding more "hardcore", focused play (e.g. studying stats, counters, combos etc). You can play one of the Final Fantasy games, get to the end as fast as you can and see the end cinematic, or you can try and get everyone's Limit Breaks, Final Weapons, Master Materia, Espers, whatever. There is some overlap in "hardcoriness" between Japanese and Western games; the level of knowledge and the application thereof required to be really good at the following games is pretty similar: World of Warcraft (endgame raiding), Street Fighter III and allies, Disgaea & other Nippon Ichi tactical games, Planetarion, Eve Online etc. Warcraft and Street Fighter particularly are popular among the casual crowd too, as they're satisfying to play on a "shallow" level as well as getting "hardcore" about it. Hot.

The funny thing about the Anarchist's Cookbook is that it's full of such horrible information that you are liable to lose a limb in a nasty explosion involving magnesium or something. Or you might end up spending all your money on bananas.

Gears has an OK co-op mode if you haven't tried it. Diving over a wall to save your buddy in the middle of a firefight is pretty damn cool. It's basically singleplayer mode with two players instead of one though, no special content.

My Pokemans. Let me show you them: 4510-7796-7262 This is a brand new copy, and I haven't copied over my 3rd gen guys yet, so don't expect savage Dusclops beats just now. You can have a go at my tiny Budew though; he's shaping up to be a top little annoyer.

There seems to be a really small player pool for the Player Matches (unranked) as i seem to be playing with the same people every other game. Quite good actually. My only real wish is that there would be more to the multiplayer than variations on team deathmatch. I guess they don't want it to be too Unreal-like, in anticipation of UT2007 (and, more obviously, it's less work and they could meet the PS3 launch). One of my roommates was going to buy Gears for his little 10-12-year old brothers; I decided to give him a look of the game while I was playing online (in HD! VGA cable rules) and I guess seeing a man be ripped apart straight down the chest by a chainsaw probably made him rethink his Christmas shopping plans. Not to mention the curb-stomping.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, Sonic & Knuckles. Streets of Rage 1, 2, 3 Ecco the Dolphin 1, 2 Ristar Gunstar Heroes Shining Force 1, 2 Dynamite Headdy Rolo to the Rescue

I don't think the rather poor Gears ad has anything much to do with some feigned maturity; it's more a case of: 1) - You can't shows what Gears is really like on television at 5 in the afternoon. It's the bloodiest and most visceral (in the sense of internal organs viscera) violent game I've played in a long time. The curb stomp from American History X is a special move, for crissakes. 2) - Cashing in on "Mad World" as a Christmas hit can't hurt. Tears for Fears isn't very Gears-y; the song over the end credits was famously described as a hip-hop fart in the face. It's also worth considering that the best place for Microsoft to place the 360 right now is as a console full of cinematic experiences (opposed to the gameplay-centric Wii; there's no PS3 here this Christmas) and the ad does an alright job of that; even if the song is so awful. If, like me, you have some vague plans of owning ALL the consoles, there's a proper time to purchase each of them. The 360's buy-now-ness is peaking around now (Bioshock, Alan Wake and Halo 3 are due in the next couple of months. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey some time after); the DS is long past buy-now and right into hit-yourself-if-you-don't-own-one. The PS3 won't hit properly until at least MGS and some Final Fantasy's are there; possibly White Knight Story (or whatever they're calling it now) too so... Christmas 2007. I'm not going to venture a guess on the Wii but it's probably going to be a similar timeframe to what the DS had, so maybe 6-8 months. Ouendan Revolution would be the clincher there. 押忍！

http://www.siliconera.com/index.php/2006/11/02/watch-new-songs-and-videos-in-elite-beat-agents/#more-2179 Looking good. I especially approve of the Earth Wind & Fire song (weatherwoman video). I'm not too jazzed about the beat effects though (the "Whooo!" sounds rules, however. Ouendan 2 needs this sound).

"I'll write you this Christmas" Honestly, what the crap is that about?

From the PW2 thread

Bizarrely, I never encountered this problem in the Japanese version, and my Japanese isn't all that hot. This might be because I stuck to the buttons. Children of Mana works entirely fine withough the touch screen or the second display. It's got nothing DS-y going on at all.

Ok, here's my spoiler-free, slightly dry take on PW2 (Japanese import). Case 1 and the first half of Case 2 are frustratingly difficult. My belief (and you might notice this yourself when you play it) is that the translation for this part of the game was not handled by the same person (or group) that handled PW1 Case 1-4. It has a lot in common with Case 5 of PW1, though, such as "where/were" errors and slightly odd jokes, illogical Objections etc. Once you get over this hump, it's back to the good old characters you know and love, great jokes and plenty of good hints. I particularly enjoyed the third case. Psyche-locks are actually really really good: they are part of the Investigation section of a case. A person might refuse to talk about a certain topic, and it's up to you to present evidence that forces them to talk (e.g. Guy says "I don't know anything about Topic X" and you present some evidence that shows that they MUST know about Topic X; this unlocks one of the psychelocks). Another minor but nice addition is the ability to present a character profile as evidence; this allows for some fairly nice puzzles (Like: "If Person X didn't do it, then who did?" etc.) The energy bar takes a little getting used to, but it opens up some possibility for mega-tension-action-drama. Where before a miss-step might lose you a "!", now it might lose you 20% health, 10% or even 50% for some super-mega-accusatory-bluffmatictroniums. It's a good game until Case 2, it's a GREAT game after that.

Hate to say I told you so. Who am I kidding, I love to!

Unfortunately this was ruined by having the most random puzzles possible. Use the worm with the string and then use the combined worm-and-string with the mouse hole to get the imp. What?

The arm-waving thing is one of my favourite additions; the scope for visual gags is excellent (Such as in the taxi-driver stage, when the guy has a cop chasing him, and in the waving scene the cop pops up next to him; another example of a genuine problem not related to fame or money etc.). The rhythm of the waving also helps you get into the song, sort of like the visual component of a metronome.

I don't see how you could possibly think that this: is not the most endearing thing ever. Honestly, I don't think any of the criticisms on your Functional Autonomy thing are valid; Ouendan has plenty of examples of people looking for fame or money. Scuba diver looking for treasure, meet pottery man looking for fame (and a fur coat). I think Cleopatra slavedriving so she can lose weight for Mark Anthony is pretty damn superficial. I agree with your suspicion that you like it less because you understand it more. I thought it was funnier in Cops vs Robots in Ouendan when it seemed like they were using waterguns for NO GOOD REASON. Further inspection of the text on the robots reveals that they tell you not to get water on them. I prefer it when things seemed to happen without any real explanation or cause; it makes for comedy gold. Why can salaryman enlarge his size? Because this sort of thing is common in japanese superhero shows (Ultraman etc.). The culture gap ADDS to Ouendan: who knows, maybe EBA will sell well in Japan.

There's also Kabu Trader Shun on the way for the DS next year. It's like Phoenix Wright but with the trial bits replaced with stock trading. As long as it's fun, I don't care. Best console ever.

I think what you really mean is that the Xbox 360 needs something special that Japan will like (seeing that Gears and Halo 3 occupy the same sort of position in the US and Europe that MGS etc do for the other companies). Word on the "street" is that Blue Dragon is picking things up a little, with Lost Odyssey to come after Christmas. I'm not saying Microsoft are blowing the Japanese market open or anything, but they might at least be able to compete on some level there. Given how few PS3s Japan will get in the first couple of months, and the time it'll take for the "killer apps" to come out, there's still some time to build up the userbase. It's worth noting that in the past, typically no one console holds a big lead in all the markets at the same time. I think the PS1 is probably the big exception to that, PS2 to a much lesser extent but those were competing with the Saturn and Dreamcast respectively at their launches; Microsoft has an order of magnitude more muscle than Sega ever had. At any rate, you can certainly be a big success (even the BIGGEST success) in a generation just by holding two out of three markets and having a nearish second-best in the third. Sales numbers aren't really very useful for at least another couple of years because production is still so low; even though Nintendo are going to sell millions upon millions of Wiis in the first year, that doesn't mean they'll have sold the most consoles come the end of this generation. This is Sony's strategy, which is reasonable if somewhat risky.

I'd say it's worth buying if you don't own a PSP or have any plans to get one in the near future. Stay away from the addons though.

I don't mind the pricing too much, seeing as I only really want to play Challenge and multiplayer anyway. You're getting a bit more game than you do with the super-cheap super-excellent Geometry Wars, so the cost is alright. The pricing works sort of like that bizarre Gran Turismo proposal Sony kited a while ago: you get the base version of Lumines for about 12 bucks, then you need to buy addons for stuff like Advance mode, Puzzle mode etc. Only Advance mode is available right now, as far as I can tell. Looks great in HD.

It's like you've got this cake, right, and you're eating it!

Well I don't think it'd really be valid for anyone to say they don't like Spore, considering it's not out yet. It's alright to say you wouldn't want to play it, though, especially if you're taking Wright's older games into consideration. As for blogs.. Yes, they should be treated differently. There isn't a question of a "free pass" (which you might consider to be licence to act in an unjournalistic manner) because these people aren't journalists (at least not in their capacity as "bloggers"). If you consider something like the "News" bit on Penny-Arcade, which is usually loaded with criticism of games, people, ways of life, directions on a compass, salad dressings etc. Nobody approaches the section expecting unbiased journalistic integrity or fair appraisals of the latest games. You should not expect the same from Kotaku which, professionally run and written or not, is a blog. If Gawker was in the news site game, then kotaku would just be some version of Google News for video games. Or IGN. All the same, Kotaku still has a responsibility to perform fact-checks and research into anything that is posted. Kotaku can be legitimately criticised for failing in this responsibility rather too often. I wouldn't tell them to "Go to Hell" though...

This is similar to criticisms of Enchanted Arms (which I haven't played yet). "It's great game but it's too linear and has random battles. Also, the protagonist has spiky hair". Context!