miffy495

I finally beat it about 5 minutes ago. I'd gotten stumped at the last part of Chariots of the Dogs and didn't go back until about a week ago. Just finished Beelzebub, and it was incredibly good. I lol'd repeatedly, which was awkward, as I was wearing headphones and playing while the girlfriend is trying to sleep in the same room. Really clever, and only fell victim to adventure game-y "why the hell would I ever have done THAT if Max hadn't given me a hint?" a couple of times. All in all, it's been a good week or two for finishing games. I've been doing a Sony exclusive run. Resistance 1, which I'd previously only gotten halfway through, is now done. As is it's sequel, which I picked up for half price knowing I'd want to play it eventually. Did it in two sittings, and enjoyed it greatly. Finally, I bought inFamous, beat it as a good guy, then earlier today, beat it as evil. I'm tempted to count that as two games, but I may be accused of doctoring my score, so I'm just going to call it one. That makes 4 games finished over the past 10-ish days. 5 if you count the two Sam and Max episodes as two games instead of one season. Yay!

Can I use my WoW GOLD in Left 4 Dead?

I don't hate to admit it. I thought AC1 was awesome. Repetitive, I'll admit, but I loved the freedom of movement and I'd spend hours just running around looking for cool things to see. Pretty psyched for the sequel, actually. The DaVinci stuff is kinda dumb, granted, but if it's fun I'll forgive it.

All valid criticisms. The ending was pretty dumb, I'll readily admit. You can definitely see about exactly where the original script, which had everyone dying and Skynet winning, gets flipped on its head. As for predictability, I agree. I don't find that so much of a fault in a "blow shit up" movie though. As a film to watch when you're sick and don't want to use your brain at all, I liked it. For what I expect to be a much better movie, I'm going to see Up with the girl tomorrow night. Ridiculously excited. Every time a Pixar movie comes out I turn right back into that little 7 year old version of me who went into the theater to see Toy Story and came out a much bigger geek with a huge fucking smile on his face.

Damn, that's what I get for posting after being awake for 30 hours...

Jesus, it took me a couple seconds to remember that this is number 30 and you weren't just trying to weird people out... Also, I'll be there.

Hahahaha. Awesome. Where did you dig that up?

I saw it for free a week ago. Left the theater suitably happy that the movie was not shit. Not a superb experience by any means, but decidedly not shit. I enjoyed watching robots blow up for a couple of hours, and if you have time to kill you could do far worse.

You really want your computer to sue/arrest you?

Well, as it's being developed by SCEJ (Sony Computer Entertainment Japan) I would say likely not.

Don't worry, we have quite a bit of overlap. I just don't speak up much in this thread. Honestly, I'm getting a bit tired of Santogold, but the stuff that they did with NASA on their (NASA's) album is amazing. That whole album is pretty much aces, and features the hip hop debuts of both David Byrne and Tom Waits, but as I've already mentioned it I'll shut up. Been on a hip hop kick lately myself. I've also recently picked up an album from earlier this year by Aceyalone & the Lonely Ones. If motown hip hop sounds interesting to you, you owe yourself a listen. It really is a fantastic CD. Went to a Peaches show earlier this month too, which was an awesome experience. A few times during the set I thought to myself "I think this is about what it would have felt like to see Blondie..." If all you know is her singles, this would sound like nonsense, but her latest album is a lot more rock-inclined, and it was those songs that made me think that. A week prior to that was a show by King Khan and the Shrines, with BBQ opening for them. If you've ever found yourself wanting a modern re-interpreting of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, King Khan is probably your best bet. Sometimes his albums sound like Screamin' Jay, other times it's like James Brown singing for the Stooges instead of Iggy. At all times, it's awesome. If you look for a CD, he has some under King Khan & The Shrines and some under King Khan & BBQ, so the fact that both backing groups were at the one show was incredible. I recommend the self titled King Khan & BBQ and The Supreme Genius of King Khan and His Shrines if you're looking for a place to start. He even covers the Circle Jerks on King Khan & BBQ, as you said you were a fan of hardcore.

...and for ridiculously cheap too. Like, less than $7 US for both games. Why are you still reading this???

Ken Levine's last pre-Bioshock series, Freedom Force is an awesome tongue-in-cheek superhero squad-based strategy RPG. As the Minute Man and his Freedom Force (including an awesome Sean Connery-esque fish-man thing, Manowar) you will fight against mythological creatures, time-travelers, and Russians in the 1960s. In it's sequel, you are hurled back in time to fight the Nazis, and their appropriately themed axis supervillains. It's insanely good, and had a hell of a lot of value for the $50 it originally was in 2001 and 2004 (for the first and the sequel, respectively). For $7 for the two-pack, it's ridiculous to not buy it.

And finished. The first playthrough anyway. There are still a few good trophies I need to get, (2 to be exact) and I'm definitely going to be taking a spin through the game as evil Cole as well, so who knows, maybe this will be the first game I get every trophy for. The plot twist at the end was kind of cool, and I'm certainly looking forward to what Sucker Punch is going to do with the sequel, as this story get resolved nicely but also sets up likely several more games in the series. One of those "Congratulations! You've completely kicked ass and the world is safe, but there is another looming and very vague threat that this was part of your preparations to face..." deals. In this context though, it works. The villain also becomes quite interesting as you go, and the whole thing is kinda cliche, but not in a way that hurts it. About as smart as a really good action movie could hope to be. A friend was supposed to swing by this afternoon. Still no word though, so if she doesn't, I may start my evil playthrough tonight. EDIT: My friend never showed, so evil Cole is now halfway through the Warren (second of 3 districts). The main story missions are pretty much identical except for a few minor branches where you can accomplish the same thing by being nice or a bastard. What's making the replay worth it is the side missions. For those who don't know, each of the three islands has a bunch of side missions to unlock neighbourhoods. In all, there are 82 of these in the game. Actually though, there are 97, as each island has 10 alignment missions. 5 good and 5 evil. If you clear a good one, the corresponding evil one is locked out. My first playthrough being good, I played only the good ones. They're pretty standard "escort the prisoners through the streets" or "capture this guy" or "escort these dudes" missions. Kinda boring, honestly. The evil ones on the other hand, are much more creative. So far, I've gone on a rampage explicitly to draw out and kill a bunch of police officers, single-handedly executed a massive jailbreak, and recruited a bunch of drugged-up psychos to go hunting homeless guys with me. There's also a really cool thread going through all of the ones I've done in the Warren so far. I'm hoping that this will pay off in interesting ways in the long run, because right at the end of the good story mode hints were made as to the possibilities I had given up. This would be a pretty great possibility. I'm glad I played in the order I did. Good was a great experience, and now that I'm playing Evil, I get an even better one.

Well shit. I think this game has fully grabbed me now. I'm a few missions into the third and final act now. The boss fight for act 2 was suitably epic. And by that I mean "Holy fucking shit." And after all this time, a couple of things have happened in the last few missions that actually made me care. Really rare for a game, honestly. In GTAIV for example, when I didn't really give a shit. Conversely, even though your friends in inFamous get less screen time than they would in GTA, when shit happens to them, I care. I'm dying a ton now. Game got hard, and the AI is actually acting like a real person would, which doesn't make it easy. Still possible to game the system at times though. For example, if you're under a rooftop that an enemy is shooting from, they will always shoot at you from the same place, meaning if they back up and you can't see them anymore, you can just leave your reticule where it is and they'll be back in no time. The enemies are getting crazy as well. I thought the Conduits (leader-enemies. Not bosses, but quite powerful and always a fierce fight) that the Dustmen had were crazy, but the ones I've started to encounter since entering the third act are a step or three above. It's gotten a bit frustrating here and there, but by this point I've completed the majority of the game on hard, and I'll be damned if I'm going to back down now. Just to see the contrast, I may step it down for a while on my next playthrough as evil Cole, but until I'm done my good Cole play, hard it is. I've always managed to muddle through eventually, even though I'll spend 15 minutes or so dying and swearing before that. Some missions just feel impossible, like one in particular where , but on beating it I get such a rush I can't imagine playing it easier.

Well, I know that I won't be playing it for quite some time, if at all. Left 4 Dead has been great fun the few times I've taken it for a spin, but I still don't feel like I've had my $50 worth from it. Once I've got that, maybe I'll think about the sequel. Maybe. ps: James, thanks for the invite this afternoon. Unfortunately for gaming, it was a beautiful day and I happened to be out. One of these days I'll join in, I swear.

Damn, that shield you get on the second island is rad. Definitely loving the hell out of this game, enough to forgive it its glitches. Twice in missions I've now gone into blue hell and died, and at one point a guy I was following all stealthy-like fell through the world and I "lost the trail," but even with that in mind it manages to be crazy fun. Yay for fun times with electricity!

Yeah, mine arrived yesterday morning. Aside from this afternoon's GTA match and watching tonight's hockey game (YAY! 4-2 PENGUINS WIN!) it's pretty much all I've been doing. I will admit I'm starting to get a little burned out on the side missions, but hell, they're side missions. Not like they're mandatory. I've been dying a bunch, but strangely that doesn't bother me. After doing well on the first couple of levels, the game decided hard mode was for me, so I've been dealing with a difficulty level I usually just don't bother with. (Why would I want a game to be frustrating?) Still, it's managing to stay challenging but never impossible, so I guess it was right. Also, finally getting the static thrusters was bliss. God, having to spend a third of the game without them was brutal. Especially after using them a whole tonne during the demo.

Yeah, I agree. I thought it looked like it could be fun for a bit, but probably wasn't my style. As someone who tried building a LBP level but got turned away by the complexity of it all though, the level creation looked absolutely fun for me. Probably still won't play it, as I've never been much for any non-Mario kart racing game, but it didn't look bad by any means.

Holy fuck. Personally, I think Sony won it as well. Conference-wise, at least. That was incredible. I don't even know where to begin. And the admittedly goofy-looking motion controller? How is that shit compared to Natal? It looks amazing, particularly the precision involved in the archery demonstration. Even moreso considering this is all in the prototype phase. So glad I have a PSP and PS3 right now...

Nintendo didn't fail, they just didn't impress as much as everyone was hoping. People wanted a complete blowout to make up for last year's debacle, and when they only got a reasonably solid presser instead, peppered with stuff for non-gamers as well, they were disappointed. Really though, Nintendo's new market is not going away so how is it an unwelcome surprise that they're making things for them? They announced 3 new, hardcore-aimed first party titles, and Golden Sun DS. The fact that they did it over an hour and fifteen minutes with a bunch of padding is just to be expected.

Yeah, Team Ninja making Metroid is huge, and probably the only big thing to come out at the Ninty presser. Wii pulse monitoring? Really? And Super Mario Galaxy 2 will no doubt be very good, but looks pretty much exactly like the first, so while I'm looking forward to it, I don't see much to get excited about. Still, seeing Samus doing her thing, and the Adam Malcovich appearance (the "Any objections, lady?" guy. Many references to him in Metroid Fusion, but this is the first time he's been any more than backstory) definitely won me over.

Whoooooooo! Crackdown 2! My personal GOTY 2007 is getting a sequel! Announced the same day I get inFAMOUS as well, which is pretty much Sony's answer to Crackdown! (Don't take that as a negative, it's rad.) So pumped right now!

How are they going to make the "Nice use of the TM..." joke????

Holy shit. Wonderful. Ordered. I'm gonna grab me a free Wallace and Gromit episode too to see how it plays. Already have all the Sam & Max and Strong Bads, so I might as well.