miffy495

Extra credit for the aside where it says "I'm a receipt wizard!"

I may, but my biggest contribution to this thread prior to this was "My life was going great, so some guy punched me in the face for wearing green socks outside of a bar." Given that I still (!!) have a loose tooth from that situation, I think a nice heartwarming thing is good to have.

Oh yeah, the boss fight. THAT's why I'm not going to be replaying this game anytime soon. That fight almost spoiled the rest of the game for me. Fuck that guy.

Well, Darkside has yet to arrive, but I loved Umbrella Chronicles. I'll try to get some words about the sequel up when it gets here, but in the mean time UC isn't a bad choice by any means.

I had to go out of town for a wedding last week, leaving on Boxing Day and getting back on the 30th. The wedding wasn't too boring, so that was good. On returning home I thought that instead of sending the girl a text or some such to let her know I was back, I'd just show up at her door with a bottle of wine and her Christmas presents. Massive "good boyfriend" points for me. Just got home for the first more-than-an-hour stretch of time since Christmas earlier tonight. Not a bad week at all though. She even gave me a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, thus showing that even though she may hate hockey, she has accepted and somewhat endorses my loving it. Yay!

Just reviving this thread yet again to announce that earlier this week I picked up Dead Space Extraction at a Boxing Week sale. I haven't popped it in the Wii yet (also got Rabbids Go Home, which I put into the Wii first and has been too damn fun to take out) but I fully intend to by the end of the week. Expect whatever I think about it to appear in the thread then. We've had so many new people lately, let's hear some rail shooter love from them? PS: Also mail-ordered Darkside Chronicles. I guess two rail shooters in a year is pretty decent for the genre. Time to shoot up some dudes!

You have to supply your own, unfortunately. On the other hand, it's usually best to avoid the "loaner" models anyway. I don't mind cooking myself, and usually do most of it when we're together. On the other hand, I'm a bit of a slouch when it comes to tidiness, whereas she doesn't like cooking and cleans all the time. Hopefully our strengths will play off each other.

I'd be in for a group game with party chat running. Is that even possible? I have yet to try the game...

Jon: Yeah, buy 'em. I'm on Reality 2.0 now, having been sidetracked by going out of town and working a bunch. They're still fantastic, though they do show their age a bit. Totally worth it for the whole bunch though, especially if that's both seasons. Don't think about it any more, buy the damn things.

I'm with you on this one, James. New home, new job. Home, hopefully with girlfriend. Job, not because I don't like my current one (I fucking love it) but because my current one is a student/great while in school job and I'll be graduating this year. Gotta get me a grown-up job sometime soon, at least for a year or so while I figure out where/if to do a master's. And 'blix, if you give up swearing, I honestly don't know if I'll recognize your posts. Please don't deprive us of gems like this!

Happy birthday, Tanukitsune! May your backlog be greatly reduced in the coming year.

Possibly better. Get it.

As I mentioned Bloodlines (PSP) before, I figured I'd follow up on it. I just got home from that trip, and over the three-ish days I was gone, completed the game. It was way better than the reviews had lead me to believe, but fell victim to the same endgame shenanigans that AC1 did. Namely, assuming that because I muttered "shit" under my breath every time I got into a combat situation, it meant that I would love it if the last chapter of the game were nothing but a long combat sequence. Bullshit. Oh, and the last boss himself kept on spamming a ridiculously powerful combo and forced me to resort to an exploit rather than beat him fairly, so that kind of sucked. Up to that point though, incredibly good as far as a PSP adaptation could be expected to be. The animations and environments were really pretty, the NPC character models were really not. The streets were sort of deserted most of the time. The camera got in the way much more than it should have. BUT, the story was engaging, the gameplay made me feel like a total badass just frequently enough, and everything felt really right control-wise aside from the camera. Now that I've beaten this and have returned home, I look forward to spending a bunch of time with AC2 over the next couple of weeks. And as an added consequence, I'm now really psyched to see what else they may do with the PSP in the future.

You're thinking of T. Hawk from Street Fighter.

If it helps, I was sitting around watching my mother get married while you guys were blissfully blowing each other up. I should be back in soon.

Mostly you find crazy blueprints for him and since your family were patrons of his, he'll build what the blueprints describe for you. Handled much better than the trailers made it look.

I tried to replay SoT recently, and my 360 pad does not work with it. My first playthrough was on console, so that really irritated me. PC controls for that game are utter crap. It really needs a pad.

I got to go out of town on boxing day for a wedding, which means that just as I was getting to the end of Sequence 5, I'm away from my 360 for a week. After my time with AC2, I think my first impression is that I can see how it is a better game than it's predecessor, but I think I actually like AC1 more anyway, if only for the impact it had on me at the time. This game is excellent, but compared to Altair, Ezio seems clumsy. At least, I don't remember Altair being quite as suicidal as Ezio has proven to be. Story-wise, I'm very invested and absolutely loving everything. It's still a fantastic game by any means. UbiSoft is freaking devious as well. All those diaries of Altair's that give you equipment upgrades really made me want to go and see more of his story. At that point, my mind made exactly the leap that they wanted it to and I thought "Hey, isn't the continuing story of Altair on PSP?" The fact that I would be out of town for a week when in full AC addiction made me decide to download AC:Bloodlines off of PSN and I've now played about a third of that as well. It's surprisingly well done. It got a fairly middling reception, which I don't think is deserved. I actually like it quite a bit. It retains pretty much everything about AC1 but is much more linear, given that the "open" world segments much be must smaller to fit the system's constraints. We're talking one objective always highlighted on your HUD, one viewpoint in each section of map, and maybe 2 completely optional side missions that take about 1:30 to finish. The downgrade in scope does mean that the game feels a lot more urgent though, and the story (which is what I'm here for in the first place) is remarkably substantial. It of course doesn't hold a candle to AC2, but if you have a PSP and are invested in the universe of the game, definitely have a look. So far Limassol and what I've explored of Kypria are pretty rad places to play.

Yay Gretsch!

The music yeah, but I thought the "all right" and other such things were just randomly after any kill, not specifically at the end of a sequence. I kind of want to replay this game already. There's so much else to play! Stop me...

Just ordered the game off Amazon. Hopefully Idle Engines becomes a thing. Warning: I suck at racing games. Possibly even more than at Left 4 Dead.

$2. I got it. I'm honestly a bit choked that the game has GFWL achievements if you buy it from one place but not from another. Seems weird to have the same game on the same system give different perks. Not really a big achievement guy, but it seems a bit off regardless.

Yeah, I can't play a game like this with a completionist mentality. I'd go damned insane. I probably did have half of the items uncollected at the end of the game. Still loved it though.

Yeah, once I got a job and started buying things, my favorite gifts quickly went from the newest rad games to a really thoughtfully chosen sweater or something similar. That said, this year was: - a few nice sweaters and hoodies - Assassin's Creed 2 (360) - Modern Warfare 2 (PC) - a very nice little camera - Inglorious Basterds BRD Very nice, games-wise, and I love the cozy stuff I got. My mum's boyfriend continued his tradition, as every Christmas for the last three years I have received a Call of Duty (4, 5, MW2) game and the latest release from Ubisoft Montreal (AC1: 2007, PoP2008: 2008, AC2: 2009) from him. He didn't realize he'd done this, but it's kinda funny when I think about it. Jon, that's quite a crazy haul. Not only a PS3, but a couple of excellent games and BRDs to go with. I don't really play it online, but give me an add if you want, same name as here and on XBL.

Got it under the tree this morning. My mom's boyfriend/fiancee is actually a gamer, so he buys real (read: good) games rather than the standard "Oh, Billy likes vidjagames" shopper. Have played for an hour and a half and still don't have a weapon. Contrary to how that sounds, it is entirely rad. I absolutely loved AC1, unlike a lot of people, so this is astounding for me. So good. Yay!