miffy495

Maybe they could do the same thing to a DS Lite, steal the GBA components, and make the ultimate DSi? Anyway, I've decided WarioWare Snapped is probably worth it, (it being "free tech demo" as far as I'm concerned) after realizing that I was previously just sitting way too close to the thing. It's pretty damn fun and I'm satisfied with it. Really short though, so there isn't much else to say Oddly, the camera is already being used as (get this!) A CAMERA! I was walking out of class today and saw a car that was done up like a giant bunny. Thought it was pretty cool and the girlfriend would get a kick out of it, so I went for my cellphone. Then I realized that my cellphone has no way to transfer pictures it takes to a PC and pulled out the DSi instead. I don't have an SD card reader hooked up to my PC at the moment, but I can transfer the photos to my PS3 or Wii for viewing, which is exactly what I did. Never thought I'd actually use the damn thing, but second day of ownership and here we are. Kinda cool, in a "Goddammit Nintendo, how do you know me so well?" kind of way.

So here's the deal: Despite adding my name to the list over on the PSN ID lists, I don't actually own any multiplayer games yet. I have Ratchet and Uncharted, both games of the strictly single-play variety. So I'm wondering, those thumbs who play PS3 games online, what are you playing? What's good? I saw the PS3 version of The Darkness for $14 this afternoon. Good buy?

Well, it IS topdown. Honestly, I only put a few hours into GTA 1 and 2. I just couldn't get the hang of those damned character-relative controls. Drove me crazy, and I'd just get frustrated and quit. From what I played, there are a bunch of similarities. Things like weapons pickups are nearly identical, for example. It's amazing how much this feels like the best of old and new for GTA. All of the good elements of the topdown earlier games (from my limited experience) have been retained or at least evoked, while the writing and structure of the later 3D iterations has been added. I'll admit I laughed out loud at a couple of lines in the cutscenes. Another thing I didn't get to mention earlier is the new way that the wanted system is handled. GTAIV had a good start at trying something new, but it ended up being just too damned easy to get away if, for example, you hightailed it into the subway and waited til your stars went away. In Chinatown Wars, there's no radius system to worry about, and if you just run away your wanted level will remain as long as you're hiding (if you're at more than 1 star, anyway). For each star you get, if you disable (not destroy) that many police cars, they will have less resources to pursue you with and your level will drop a star. For example, if I get 4 stars, I need to ram 4 police cars off the road without killing the officers in them. Doing this will drop my rating to 3 (and 1 greyed-out) stars. Disable another 3 cars, rating will drop to 2. Etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure why the stars are greyed-out rather than simply disappear. There may be some mechanism that will restore stars if you take too long or something. Not sure. I straight-up love this system for police evasion. It works, without the need for arbitrary bribes or that ridiculous circle system. It takes the ideas that they seemed to start to have for GTAIV and makes them into something much, much better. You're constantly running and panicked while simultaneously having to pick your moments and ram the police away to try to lose them. Chinatown Wars has already given me some of the most intense police chases that I've had in any GTA, and I've had some damned epic chases. I can think of a few from San Andreas that may top it, but for a topdown portable GTA, this is a stunning achievement.

I'll take one game, hold the forced entry. See you this afternoon.

So I just finished a mission that had me hijacking an ambulance that was under police escort and having to defibrilate the patient in the back every time things got too exciting and decided that I love this game. Man, that was tense, used the touchscreen beautifully, and was really creative design too. It's bizzare to be driving around the full GTAIV Liberty City on my DS. Well, more or less full. The whole city proper is there, but Alderney has been excluded. This means Algonquin, Dukes, Broker, and Bohan are all accounted for, and in full as well. The map is massive, but still familiar. My knowledge of the airport from frequent rounds of Grand Thumb Auto proved instrumental to my success in one mission, as I expertly used the geography to evade capture. Perfect. Touchscreen is largely well implemented. Things like hotwiring, bomb defusal, and PDA interface are perfect and creative. Filling up bottles for molotov coctails at a gas station is clever too. As said though, actually throwing the damn things is a different matter. I'm getting better, but it's still needlessly frustrating. So yeah, check it out. I'm gonna go play some more.

Total bullshit. I've never been GLAD to live in Alberta before. It's a weird feeling...

I thought this one had been posted already? Regardless, I love Don Hertzfeldt. Have everything he's done on DVD by now. The Bitter Films collection, all 3 Animation Show releases, etc. Great stuff.

I had some trouble getting Snapped! to work, so I'll need to try it again with some better lighting. If you have 500 points left over though, I need to recommend Art Style: Aquia. Such a bloody addictive little puzzler. Elements of Bejeweled and Meteos combined with it's own original twists. Get it.

Dunno. I played GHWT with Rock Band instruments...

So glad my plans for this afternoon fell through. God that was fun. My first time playing versus, and I loved every second. Going from terrified one minute (Blix, Tanu, and ysbreker did a damn fine job scaring the crap out of me) to the mad rush of power as Wrestle, Dan, and I kicked ass as infected was great. As the three of us had mics, we definitely had the upper hand in terms of tactics and traps, as Dan said, but man. Two hours incredibly well spent. Looking forward to the next round I'm able to participate in.

Oh, it is. I played it for a half hour and turned it off in disgust.

It's in my hands. Unfortunately, I have to run out the door in about 15 minutes. Hopefully I'll be able to say something real about it tomorrow night. The blue sure is pretty though...

Crap. Looks like I can no longer make it. Oh well. Enjoy your game, folks.

There are rumours, but nothing confirmed for a portable VC. They give you 1000 DSi points with the system, so I'll be spending some of those on the camera-enabled Warioware tomorrow. Probably will save the rest to see what they have to offer.

I don't know from DOSbox, but I bought both Fallout 1 and 2 off of GOG and they work perfectly on my Vista PC...

May make a guest appearance this week. Probably will, actually. Still haven't been able to make my damn mic work properly, so any tips on getting that going before the match would be appreciated.

Good to hear. I'm excited to grab mine Sunday afternoon. Coincidentally, Ouendan was how I christened my Lite a couple years ago when I got it. EDIT: Just sent it off with a fitting tribute as well. On Sunday I started a replay of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, which I completed about 3 minutes ago. Good job, little imported Lite. You've served me well, but scribbling on your banged up screen during the boss battle made me realize just how damaged you've become. A salute, and farewell to a well-loved little piece of tech. You now go on the shelf next to the virtual boy, a place of honour.

Is that right? Mine's never lost the date and time, and I'm unplugging it all the time...

Had to make a run to the drug store this afternoon and as I was leaving, the EB across the hall beckoned. I went in, remembering that MadWorld had been released on Tuesday, and decided to check the price. Luckily for me, the game is so new that they didn't offer to sell me a used one, and I got in and out with a minimum of hassle. Just finished the first boss fight. Thoughts to follow. Pros: - Graphics not as disorienting as they appeared in the trailers. Don't get me wrong, I've loved the style that this game oozes since I saw my first press shot. In the back of my mind though, there's always been this lingering concern that great as the stills look, things always seemed to get sort of muddled in the trailers. When you're only using 3 colours, it's rather easy for important things to blend in with the background. How can you make the essential elements stand out? Even the opening cutscene had a bit of this effect for me. As soon as I was in control though, everything made sense. Some things still blend a bit more than I'd like, but it all comes together quite nicely and the game is a breeze to control. I just don't know if it'd be any fun to watch a mate play it, as you may get the same feeling I did during the noninteractive bits. Not the best game to show to someone unless you're directly giving them the controller right from the start, but for the player it all works perfectly. - Funny. Actually funny. I was expecting style and a bit of tongue in cheek over-the-topness. What I was not expecting was the adaptive and context sensitive running commentary over everything you do by Greg Proops and John DiMaggio. Taking a break from Marcus Fenix, DiMaggio puts on a great sportscaster vibe and the banter between the two of them is very well done. I could see the game getting boring quite quickly if there were no commentary, as you'd just be ploughing through the same sorts of guys in the same way over and over until you've done enough grinding for a boss to appear. Instead though, I found myself wanting to experiment more with the tools at my disposal in part just to hear what they'd say about it. Rather than chainsawing through every enemy, I began to see how many guys I could knock down by throwing a dude in a barrel at them. I discovered I could throw a guy into a dude sitting on the toilet and the sitting guy would get stuck in the bowl helpless until I put him out of his misery. The whole time I was chuckling sadistically because of the things the announcers were saying. Brilliant addition to keep the game fresh. - Creativity. Utterly depraved creativity. See above. In the first mission alone, I threw 6 guys into one another so they would all fall into the path of a moving train, chopped many people in half with a dumpster lid, drowned a man in a toilet, held a guy against a speeding subway until the back half of his body had been worn off, got a ten kill combo for dudes sucked into a jet engine, and dropped a spiked ball that must've weighed half a ton onto a guy's head. Horrible as it was, I loved every second. This game has so many atrocities you can commit. I feel like a horrible person describing them, but it's really just a prettied up Smash! TV, so I don't quite know why. I've killed so many people in games before and some of those deaths have felt really meaningful. This game gives you a high score for jamming a signpost through a guys neck before ramming his body down on a giant spike popping out of the ground. Am I a horrible person for loving it? - Aesthetic. Do I really need to say anything? You should know what this game looks like by now. What was unexpected was a completely original and surprisingly fitting hip hop score. Well played. Here's a vid of the game in action though, for those that don't know the score: eK9hbStTO1U&NR=1 Cons: - Camera Only the first level, and the camera is already becoming an issue. There's a lock on function, but it sucks. Better just to run around and center it behind you with the c button. Still playable just fine, but sometimes I really wish the Wii had a way of doing free camera control... - Repetition As mentioned, the game is basically a grind of regular guys who'll barely do any damage until you rack up a high enough score to fight a boss. The more creative your kills of these guys, the faster your score goes up. This does help to alleviate it, and personally it's not that big an issue for me as I'm enjoying the core mechanics, but if it bothered you in No More Heroes, it'll bother you here as well. - Waggle intensive Though your basic attack is done with the A button, your chainsaw is far more effective. This is used by holding B and swiping the controller. Every piece of the environment you interact with will require some form of waggle, and there are a few QTEs as well. If your wrists get tired quickly, take this into consideration. Summary: This game is pretty damn rad. Glad my anticipation seems justified this time around. Same time last year Mario Kart came out, and I felt completely let down and disappointed. No such issues today when popping in the disc. I'd recommend renting it first, as the fact that I overcame the blending the art style may lend itself to doesn't guarantee you will, and you should probably figure out your tolerance for grinding to the bosses. Really though, I'm so damn happy these last couple of months that I own a Wii. 2009 is looking to be a very good year if things keep delivering on their promise as much as this. It really makes me want to go back and finish No More Heroes, now that I think about it. Only got about halfway through that one. I'm gonna hop back into MadWorld as soon as I've posted this, so consider it a very positive impression.

After my last post in this thread, I was unfortunately kicked in the face by school and haven't gotten any further. Thanks for reminding me to not let this fall into the pile of shame.

Agreed. I really miss weapon races. I must point out though, that this will be GTA XX, not XV. We're approaching 20 weeks of GTA. I think that's the longest sustained period of time I've played a game for now...

I'd have liked to have joined in, but I wasn't prepared to drop the requisite funds this week. I get paid on Thursday though, so perhaps next round.

Yeah, I was very proud of 1dg4f and myself for going from 4th and 6th (out of 6) when we were on separate teams to kicking ass and taking the whole thing the next round when we teamed up. The fact that I (by myself) beat the combined score of Team Purple is a point of pride for the week. I'm going to have to friend 1dg4f one of these days. Good guy. And yeah, that Ripley race was hilarious. The first minute or so when we had 6 trucks, each one bigger than a lane of the freeway, literally climbing over each other for position was fantastic.

I doesn't start for 8 hours for me, but I never really do anything anyway.

Man, I keep forgetting about M&L3. Hells yes.