miffy495

Hmm... Tomorrow is my date night. May need to sit this one out, but I'll definitely try to be in on future games. Much like Thunderpeel said about himself though,I'm sure that I'd mostly be a hinderance given how little I play this game...

Well, there's the Metal Gear Encyclopedia that's available from the PSN, but if you don't have a PS3 that wouldn't do you much good...

I'd be in, but I'm out of province from the 15th to the 26th. If the match doesn't fall in there, count me in.

Got Wax On the first time I tried. Actually, the same game I got 89% of Wax Off. Highest I got was 97%. Second time that I got that far and died, I got pissed and played Braid instead. Gotta say it was a good call releasing these two games within a week of each other. The feelings that each gives the player compliment each other perfectly.

Made me think of the horrible opening cinematic in Sonic CD...

I love the "x? More like y!" tag. I'll make sure to look out for it.

Nah, the freedom erosion is just for kicks...

This game is baffling. And awesome. Bafflawesome. I just got to World 4 and decided to give my brain a break. When I realized that going right made time go forward and left made it go back in this level, it made the whole thing even more bafflawesome. So no, haven't beaten it yet. Going to try and get all of the puzzle pieces as I go. Only missing the top left piece of the World 3 puzzle, and got all for World 2. Some of them are really tricky. It definitely does require putting to use the same part of your brain you used in Portal.

I gotta say, I'm impressed.

Nobody's mentioned yet? I guess it's my duty then...

Haven't found that yet, but then only played for a little bit the day it came out. This weekend happened to be my anniversary, so I got no game time in. Soon as I'm back on the games, I intend to catch up to your scores...

Samba of the Stranded? Except that the box art I'm picturing has Amigo lost on an island somewhere...

Let's not be too hasty, we haven't found out what the owner did to the team for losing money yet...

Great into all around. Can't help but notice your join date is 8 months ago, though. Speak up, man! Don't become one of those guys who posts once in the "Introduce yourself" thread and then is never heard from again. You don't want to be that guy, do you? Nobody wants to be that guy. Don't be that guy. We'll only respond badly if you try to sell us sneakers or WoW Gold.

And don't be afraid to add me either, if you haven't. I'd like to know that I can at least get higher scores than somebody as I have to see Tommy's high score in the upper right corner of every damn game I play...

Well, as they're here, I figured I may as well try and earn some of them. Of all the games that support Trophies, I have exactly one, so I booted up Super Stardust HD and gave it a shot, if only to show up my sister's boyfriend who'd been spending the past week and a bit trying to get the trophies. Well, success. I now have 48% of the game's trophies to his 16%. I got all this in one run through the game. One miraculous run, honestly. I suck at twin-stick shooters. Tonight though, I was an idiot savant, not taking a single hit until the final boss, not even knowing what button uses boost or bombs (Thus getting the bomb hoarder and don't use boost trophies) and racking up an insane multiplier and high score. I don't really know how that happened, but it did. All in all, I'd call it a successful night. Except of course, for one niggling detail: PS3 games can have trophies that require you to spend more money. What's that? Yup. Almost 1/3 of the trophies for Super Stardust HD require that you have bought at least one of the two $5 add-ons that the game has available. Now I'm aware that the 360 has extra achievements that you can get only through DLC, (Crackdown definitely has this. I'm not sure about other games...) but MS also requires that every game has its full 1000 achievement points available to you right out of the box, no extra money required (except possibly for internet access). The extra achievements are added on top of that 1000. I believe Crackdown has a possible 1250, 1000 from the game, 250 from DLC. I don't have, nor do I intend to get, the DLC packs for SSHD. This means that the most I can ever get for this game's trophies is 70%. 12/17. I don't think I've ever gotten all of the achievements for a game on 360, eight-hundred something on Crackdown was the highest I've gotten. Maybe GHII was close too. But I could. In the grand scheme of things, this is minor. Quibbling over a small .gif that means nothing except that I can shoot some pixels pretty well. But something just feels insidious about having these extra pats on the head for doing well at a game, but then withholding them until you spend another $5. Boo, Sony. Hopefully Stardust, as its DLC was available before the trophies were added, is an exception to the standard.

Hey now, I had you beaten on Deadline and Waves last I checked. And we're both beating the hell out of Aussie Ben... ...and checking again I see that you have indeed bested me in all modes. Motherfucker. Back into the game I go. I find it interesting as hell how quickly the addition of Geoms changed the way I play. The various modes of play are all really different and quite fun too. I didn't get the King achievement, but I did get the one for surviving 8 waves without firing a shot. Bloody hard. Bizzare obviously realized the glut of twin-stick shooters on the market right now and really went out of their way to make this one worth the money. Good fun, this. EDIT: Goddamn you Tommy, I haven't been this frustrated trying to do something in a game since spending an entire afternoon failing to get the "Pacifism" achievement in the first Geometry Wars (I eventually got it about a week later when I gave it a shot just for the sheer hell of it). 30 TIMES I died with 28 of those fucking hoops done. Then it hit me that I was quite literally going through hoops for a developer's amusement and I gave up. I'll still probably go back and try for that achievement again later, but still. Damn you.

Poo. I went back to play some more today and got my 5th Seed or whatever the objective things are called. Went to go for #6 and it tells me to please buy the full game. Full game has not yet been released, so I went to try a different level, thinking maybe it was just that level that was locked. Nope, everything is shut out now. What I have is a very pretty title screen that I can make a character jump around. I will be buying the game the day it's out, no question, but I wish the game wouldn't tease me like this... EDIT: Just learned that it's out tomorrow! W00t!

Mine is (and has been for quite some time) lying flat on it's side in between my vertically placed PS3 and Wii. I have to agree with how much prettier the PS3 is, but with the Wii and 360 being the same colour, the PS3 is the one that looks out of place. The brick is placed with plenty of ventilation behind my computer screen, and each system has at least 3 inches of clearance on each side for heat to escape. I used to have the 360 vertical until I noticed that what appears to be the largest vent on the system is located on the side that is facing down when it's standing vertically. Figured I'd get better ventilation this way. The others are vertical simply out of space restraint, and because the PS3, while beautiful standing vertically, looks like a waffle iron when it's lying flat. This whole setup is about a foot to the left of my computer, as both HD systems are also run through the monitor, with the Wii running into an old SD TV I got on the cheap a few years back that sits another foot to the left of the consoles. My desk is set into a corner, so the monitor is on the East wall, consoles on a 45 degree angle to that, and then the TV is on the South wall. If I turn 90 degrees to my left, I'm facing the TV. Given the space constraints of my tiny room, I think I've managed a pretty elegant setup. Whenever the roomates want to play something (ie: Rock Band or a Blu Ray movie) it all gets moved out to the main room, but other than that I'm the only one in the place who really plays games so it stays in here to keep noise and TV hogging down.

I've only experienced that once. Apparently the lens is too close to where the disc spins, and it mostly happens if you move the console while playing. Again, the only game I've had that got scratched was Guitar Hero II, and that was when an overzealous friend knocked the system over in the middle of a song, so I don't fault my 360 for that one. I'm downloading Soul Calibur and the Too Human demo as I type this, so it seems to be working ok for now. I did go ahead and get my system all registered up with MS and all I'll need to do if things go pear-shaped on me again is call them and say "hey, it's broken for reals this time." My phone experience with the guy who helped me do this was very pleasant, hopefully the real experience will be similar. He also tells me I have a full year left in my warranty, which is nice to know.

Hooray! As I mentioned, Tap Tap Revenge is a must-get. Monkey Ball is great (Beaten 40% of it now, really getting a feel for the controls, even moreso than when I played it on Wii), and Trism is addictive as hell. Enjoy your shiny new toy!

For me, achievements are not something I really give a crap about. If I'm playing a game and have looked through the list, I may take a bit more time because it usually highlights something the developer is proud of, but really I don't bother myself with them. That said, there are some games that have used achievements very well. Usually the open-world ones, actually. I keep mentioning Crackdown in this thread, but that's mostly because that was the only game I've really gone for the achievements in. After 2 years, my gamerscore is at 9207 (just checked) and I'm not really bothered to get it much higher. It increases organically as I play through games, but never through a grind. Crackdown did it so well though. The main game having not much to do other than kill a bunch of people with no real story, the game actually arose out of the achievements for me. And it became so fun. The only ones I didn't really try for were the "Get all 500 agility orbs" and "get all 300 hidden orbs" ones, and even then I came close to getting them while going for all the others (497 agility. GRAH!) It has a screen with all of the achievements with little progress bars indicating how close you are to getting them, and nearly every achievement was focused on a different and very rewarding aspect of the gameplay that wouldn't have been revealed to the player if they were just playing through the main "kill these guys" campaign. If every game did their achievements like Crackdown, I would be a complete achievement whore. Then we have games like Earth Defense Force 2017. Fantastic game, but the achievements are these. "Beat game on easy," "Beat game on medium," "Beat game on hard," "Beat game on intense (hardcore, expert, whatever it's called)," "Collect all weapons." Not exactly inspired. As for PS3 trophies, only a few games currently have them available. I already had one of them, and mostly wanted to irritate my sister's boyfriend by getting more trophies than him in one sitting. Mission accomplished.

Yeah. All the cables were fine (It did that to me when I set it up for the first time, making me think I'd bought a dead one) but after it booted up again I put it through its paces with a couple of Rock Band songs and a full run through of Rez. Seems ok. Barring further incident, I'll chock this one up to it being 40 degrees centigrade out today and the system just getting overheated the good honest way. Barring further incident...

Honestly, since I just had my first chance to check out that footage, I expected something far worse from what you were saying. The AI doesn't really look amazing, no, but we saw what? Something like 5 enemies? And while the VATS system seems a bit over-simplifying, the amount of footage there is not anywhere near enough to give me a solid impression, good or bad, of the game. It was just a pretty little sequence of a guy walking around for 5 minutes and showing off a couple of weapons. I don't get the fuss here. Still looks like it could be pretty good to me. I'm a little disappointed at how harshly the game is being judged based on barely any demo...

I'd say the most apt description is that of Loco Roco combined with swinging around on a grappling hook in Worms. It's awesome. Monsters I got last night as well because of how much I liked Eden. It's a basic but difficult tower defense game. Pretty good, actually.