Roderick

The first week at my new job has passed (which is the reason I haven't been online - no internet in my new crib yet) and everything is splendid. What a wonderful company and the job is exactly what I studied for. Crazyyyy!

I've formulated myself poorly: Revelations is by no means better than RE4, that's a laughable statement. But there are PARTS in there: that do measure up. RE's never been scarier. But the rest, no, poo, I hate it. That's what is conflicting me so. I want to love it, but it's so shit in some areas.

I think everyone. The trouble with Partners in Time is that it lacked the spark of ingenuity that made Superstar Saga so delicious. PiT was tediously linear, it had a bunch of annoying (baby!) characters, it became an entirely unlikeable slog very quickly. There's nothing objectively 'bad' about it, in fact, everything is pretty OK! More than OK! The thing that I disliked most about it was how absolutely and completely 'polished' everything was. There was nothing exciting or dangerous or edgy about it - it was neutered to perfection. This was the game that made me realize I'd rather take an experience full of blemishes, that reaches for something new and exciting, than a game that is consistently good but plays it safe, and is therefor kinda boring.

Reversal! I'm picking up a game I quit a few months ago: Minish Cap! I'm still not really satisfied with it and especially after Nintendo's DS Zeldas this one is just poor all around, but I'm powering through it because I want to have it finished. Secretly, I've even taken a liking to the kinstone system of fusing with every person in the world. It's a relatively smart way to increase the interactivity with the usually bland and useless NPCs.

Pretty much spot on. NSMB2 is a serviceable Mario game, but nothing inspired. Go for 3D Land instead. You know, RE: Revelations has left me traumatized. That game has some of the best RE moments ever. Seriously, there is a quantum of shining, perfect horror in there that will raise your hairs if you play it with headphones on. But I couldn't finish the game because of its insistence on crappy sub-level gameplay shit. Underwater levels, stupid action scenes in between. And when my CPP's batteries died after seven hours of play, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I wish the game were playable with normal controls, or that Nintendo just released a 3DS with second circle pad. Right now I'm so 'out of the game', I'll probably have to replay the whole thing to get into it again, and I don't know if I could take that - replaying both the good (and scary as fuck) bits, and the bad ones. But yes, it certainly is an experience: gorgeous and at times the pinnacle of RE survival horror, easily as good as RE4.

Oh, nice write up on that site. I agree that K&L are anti-heroes in a truer sense of the word than most of the characters that usually get described as such. Usually that title gets tacked onto anything that isn't outright a space marine. But is someone like Guybrush Threepwood really such an anti-hero? He's really likeable, pretty successful with most of what he does and has a great sense of humor. What's not to like, not to find inspiring as a hero? Compare that to K&L, who are despicable in every way. Horrible people - you don't want to be them in any way, you can scarcely relate to them. Now those are anti-heroes. Funny thing is, the plane ending is actually sticking with me more than most video game endings. I kinda dig it, the more I think about it.

Oh man, everyone has the same story. It's mine as well. Should play BIS at some point.

I recently inquired into the SD card for upgrades here on the forums, and the result was that it's super easy to upgrade to a bigger card. Just buy a bigger one, move the files on a PC and pop it back in. Congrats with your purchase!

I am reading movie-moron.com's James Bond roundtables, and I'm digging through Diamonds Are Forever when the two gay henchmen show up in this screenshot. And they're basically Kane & Lynch. !

There isn't a future I see where Nintendo doesn't make those classic games available for money purposes. Be patient and enjoy the fantastic library of games available at the moment. Did I mention game of the year Pullblox?

I can give you some definitive answers to that. The multiplayer system, I don't know exactly. The 3DS has one single friend code, but I haven't done any online multiplayer yet. As for streetpass functions: they're AWESOME. It is insanely great to go to a convention or even just a train station, and pick up other mii's on your machine, and then trade puzzle pieces or play a cute little roleplaying game that's inherent to the system. It's super fun. The 3DS also keeps statistics on which games you've played, how long, how many steps you've walked with the device on you, it's great and actually the thing that really bound me to it after initial disappointment about lacklustre software. Though I still hope Nintendo will eventually release a 3DS version with the second circle pad on it (because the add-on is a horrible, clunky piece of shit that diminishes the feeling that you're on a handheld machine), I doubt they'll release it in the coming year. Maybe next year. If at all. As it stands, the XL is definitely the version to go for. I don't have it and frugality prevents me from upgrading, but I hear from everyone it's superior. Bigger screens, better buttons, simpler design. It surprises me Nintendo are still producing new versions of the original 3DS - they should just push for the XL as the main machine and phase out the old one.

Titles of import: - Kingdom Hearts 3D (if that's your thing) - Super Mario Land 3D - Virtue's Last Reward - I hear great things about Fire Emblem: Awakening After that it's totally up to your taste. Layton? Resident Evil? Ocarina remake? At this point there are more than enough games to justify a purchase, the times of scarcity of quality (the first year) are way over. There aren't any SNES games on there yet, which is kinda strange. Maybe they'll get around to it.

The Year of Luigi. That tells me exactly one thing: The Year of Waluigi can't be far off now.

It'll be very interesting to see what Sony comes up with. If the PS4 tanks (for instance by being beaten to the punch again by Xbox, pricing itself out of the market, alienating a huge chunk of audience with weird statements), that will spell some doom for Sony's gaming division. I have a feeling the Xbox will be alright no matter what, and even with the slow start of the Wii U, Nintendo has the 3DS to fall back on - a great machine that is growing rapidly in popularity and will charge ahead in the coming years. Nintendo will simply not be beat in the handheld space. But Sony... With the PSVita dead in the water, they can't afford another slow burn like the PS3. They need a big boom, or it'll be the Game Over, Man achievement for them.

I had a ton of fun with AC: Wild World on the DS, but this game will have to really work to show me it's doing stuff that exceed that game. DKCR being ported is very interesting news, especially if it opens up other Wii/Gamecube games for conversion. And why not?

That raises some serious cyberquestions.

No, look, it's so simple - Sanitarium.

That is disappointing coming from them. They've set themselves up to be way better than that and I assume it's a one-time, drunken fluke Kuchera is already regretting.

Hey neato. Cuusoo is a jungle though, small chance of this seeing production. I'd love to have the cool Zoltan minifig though, why didn't Lego think of translucent dudes before? They forgot the crystal rock guy in the lineup HNNNNGGGGG

Makes me wanna boot up the game and replay it. Whatever its flaws, it has a wonderful, beautiful, highly explorable world!

GOG.com seems very attractive now. Sanitarium and System Shock 2? Hey now...

Yes. If you liked Fable II, you'll find III takes away a lot of the wonder and well-designed areas, but still offers a lot of fun stuff, new ideas and funny characters. It's an uneven game, but worth 10 Union Coin.

Gosh, now I feel the need to clarify that I don't dislike Aliens. It has lots of interesting things, Paul Reiser for one. And Bishop, and the cat scare (beautifully recreated in spirit by Star Trek: First Contact), and the queen face-off. But when I watched it back-to-back with Alien, it became apparent how badly it holds up. The themes, though a very cool departure from the first film (I am ALL FOR sequels not retreading ground but proceeding to new territory, see also The Chronicles of Riddick), just weren't as classically interesting as before, in part because marine stuff got really popular and the likes of Starship Troopers explored that satirical aspect with more gusto (though less subtlety). A concrete criticism: it takes a LONG time before the action breaks loose. Not so much of a problem for Alien, but for what Aliens tries to do, it's a very slow build-up. Well, not just slow, but also a bit tedious. They're stepping into every cliche, which wasn't a cliche back then, but it is now, which is exactly what is hurting the experience. Hey, you can still watch the film from a historical perspective and again, it's not a bad movie. I think the backlash [in this place] comes from the fact that a lot of us sort of realized that maybe Aliens wasn't a classic, just a good film, where earlier the consensus seemed to be that it was the shining jewel of the series. Time is proving that sentiment wrong.

I played this game with the keyboard for a while and totally dug it. Also like the menus and the avatar and stuff. I can still produce the practice mode sounds.

Hey guys let's talk about the films instead! Upon rewatching the whole series last year (two years ago now as I still live in 2012), I felt that Alien is still a mindblowing film, a true classic. Aliens, on the other hand, has aged pretty badly. It feels like something that was very thrilling and new and exciting back then because it upended a lot of then-cliches and took the genre into a new direction - but now feels a little gimmicky?