miffy495

I'll be leaving in about an hour myself. Whether or not I get any playtime in tonight (provided I secure a copy) will be all down to my luck with getting home. Transit in this city is very hit and miss. If I have to walk, no game time for me. If I can catch a bus, I'll probably get an hour or so to play.

Getting it ASAP. As mentioned in the "help me decide" thread, I'm going to have to use Future Shop gift certificates though, which means I'll be going to FS tomorrow morning and hoping they have a copy or two left for me to escape with. Otherwise I'll be waiting for their next shipment and/or my first paycheque from a new job which I can use wherever the hell I want. EDIT: Actually, after checking, it turns out the store I'd be going to tomorrow morning is having a midnight launch. I may have to make it down there tonight to ensure I'm playing tomorrow night.

Well, who gets money sooner anyway. As some of you may recall, I lost my job about a month ago and what with the flood of schoolwork coming in the weeks after I haven't had time to start looking for a new one. My last exam is tomorrow morning, and I will go out and commence the job hunt right after it, but even if I'm hired on the spot I likely won't have a paycheque until at least 2 and a half weeks from now. I still have a couple hundred in the bank, but I'll be damned if I'm spending that on games without knowing it'll be replenished. This leads me to this dilemma. I have $60 in Future Shop gift certificates left over from Christmas. This is enough for one game. Both GTAIV and Mario Kart Wii come out next week. I am a rabid fan of both series, and under any other circumstances would have already preordered both and be trying to contain my anticipatory drool. I can get one of these two, but have no idea which to pick. As Mario Kart has been out for a week-ish in Europe, I figured some of you may be able to chime in with advice. Or anyone who may want to give a recommendation and their reasons for it. I'm not particularly worried which one will give me more playtime (the obvious choice would be GTA if I were to go that route) or a more complete experience or any of that bollocks, I just want the one that will be more fun. So how 'bout it, thumbs? If it were you and you had to choose, who would get your money next week?

It's good, and certainly the best experience of the type you'll find on a handheld, but a bit hit and miss on the missions side of things. There were a few times when I just hit a wall and had to spend upwards of a week just trying to pass one damn mission. Aside from those occasional frustrations, an awesome little game. If it's been dropped in price, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a go.

Well, it seems to be working well enough now, although I can't get the right stick to do anything, so I can't use it to aim for shit or rotate the camera. Not a big deal with the planes, so I can now pilot the way I want to, but I can't use it for anything else. Oh well.

Ok, it's now definitely GTA. Not because IGN just reviewed it at 10/10 (I mean, c'mon. Does this surprise anyone? None of the major sites are really going to go against the grain on this) or the extensive previewing going on. The reason I'm going to pick up GTAIV is San Andreas. After reading said IGN review (all 7 bloody pages. A bit much, boys?) I got in the mood for a little GTA myself, so I booted up Steam and went into playing SA. I loaded a save from the airstrip, grabbed a stunt plane, messed with the radio for a bit, and started flying around. Weather conditions were unfavorable. There was a big dust storm kicked up over Bone County and I couldn't see a damn thing so I headed out over the water to get clearer skies. Ended up catching the sunrise over San Fierro as I emerged from the dust storm into a beautiful morning. Unfortunately, in the process I accidentally flew over the SF military airfield. This is restricted airspace and gave me a 5 star wanted level immediately. They launched fighter jets to bring my poor little unarmed prop plane to the ground in a flaming wreck, but I pulled enough loops and rolls to dodge their missiles until I was out over open water again, at which point I jumped out of the plane and parachuted (I always have CJ ready with a parachute, just in case) into the water as my plane became a massive fireball about 2 seconds after I bailed. I crashed in, and stayed under long enough to lower my level to 4 stars. At least there were no SWAT squads to deal with when I finally made it to land. While under, a dolphin brushed by me. A freaking dolphin. I'd never seen one of those in the game before. It was amazingly well detailed, far prettier than something from a 3 and a half year old game should look, at any rate. Despite a metric crap-ton of cops bearing down on me and the water around me being peppered with helicopter gunfire, I felt one of those perfect gaming moments. You know the ones. The world outside my computer monitor melted away and I was just underwater with a dolphin, feeling remarkably serene given the circumstances. Long(er) story short, I eventually lost my remaining 4 stars in a chase across the entire map of San Andreas, getting into an idle coast guard boat and making tracks for the closest safe shore before getting into a police truck and finally a cruddy little pickup with which I ran through 2 bribes and a pay and spray to escape with a quarter of my health bar remaining. The fact that I escaped didn't matter. Years after picking up my preorder of San Andreas, I was still experiencing brand new things in the game and having moments that no other game could deliver. The second I saw that dolphin I realized that there was really no contest. If IV can give me anything near that level of immersion (and from the sounds of things, it will), then I'm picking it up day one. I went back to my airstrip and took off one more time, just to circle around Mount Chiliad on the Southwest corner of the map. It had been drizzling during my chase, I wanted to see the rainbow from the top of a mountain. Man, after previewing that post so I could have a look at it, I really want to go back and have another go. Maybe Vice City this time. I haven't had a good helicopter tour in a while.

Again, I was 10. It was "ok" when I was 10, and didn't know any better. As I alluded to, that probably means that by any reasonable standards it was utter shit. I'm still not going to dig out the N64 and my copy to verify this. It'd be like watching the Ninja Turtles cartoons again. I'm not dumb enough to tarnish my childhood like that.

AHAHAHAHA!! That's almost as good as "Glacier of Doom!" God, this made my night. Thanks for the laugh, man.

I was wondering when he'd turn up on this one. GTA's launch was starting to feel lonely without him.

I remember owning Earthworm Jim 3D on the N64. As I recall, it wasn't all that bad. Then again, I was 10 so my expectations were quite low. It'd probably be one of those games I'd abhor if I tried it today. As is though, I have fond memories. Except for having to control that damned hover-pig in the boss battles anyway. It was like the game was a decent 3D platformer until you met a boss, then it turned into Mario Kart's battle mode against AI that's set to about 500cc. Freaking bastard Psy-Crow.

Yeah, that four-armed dog was awesome. I may go back and try again based on my memories of how much potential it had. I can only just hope that if they do end up trotting out MDK3 (or a remake of 2 on XBLA...?) it will have proper dual-analog goodness.

I tried playing MDK2 on PS2 (done by Bioware, yeah? That alone weirded me out) but the weirdness of the controls kept me from playing past the first hour or so. I just wasn't getting used to them quickly enough to be any good at the game and got too frustrated. That said, there was definitely a lot of potential in the other aspects of the game and I wish the controls hadn't been such a roadblock to me. The first one I found in a bargain bin for about $5 a year or so ago for the PS1, but have yet to actually play. I should really pop it into the PS3 sometime. What the hell, I may just do that right now.

Miffy495 ...what? It's not that bad, I only own two games for it. Right? Hello?

You're both ignoring the most important thing here. Clayfighter on VC! I may just be having my memories tinted by the novelty of all of the levels being connected in a giant overworld (and actually being able to smack an opponent from the first level to the last in one fight!) but I loved this game back on the N64. I hear this is the Genesis version the N64 one was a sequel to, but still. Holy crap yes!

Fair enough. I was unaware. Also, as Erkki's post went up while I was writing mine, I just saw it. I'll say that I've also beaten SA twice. And VC. And III. The PSP ones I've only beaten once each, but I think the fact that I bought a fucking PSP for them shows my dedication to the series.

One dilemma I'm having is that I'm also trying to take into consideration things that the girl will play with me, and Mario Kart is a front-runner here. Given that our most played game is the co-op on Streets of Rage 2 on VC though, I don't know if Mario Kart will even go over that well. I don't think she's played it since 64 (which yes, I have on VC as well). I am leaning towards GTAIV, honestly, but I love Mario Kart enough that I consider it more of a necessary purchase than Smash Bros. So yeah, probably going to get GTAIV now, especially with the recommendation. Anyone who actually has Mario Kart want to chip in?

Sounds good. Child-friendly games have some weird appeal that can be hard to explain and I denied between the ages of 13 and 17, but now I'm definitely with you in support of them. Welcome aboard.

Not on drums you won't. You'd shatter your brittle old-person arms.

WASD for the basic movement, with the numpad 8426 for leaning. The only time I used a gamepad at any point during the trilogy was when I got the gold medals on the airstrip in SA. I keep on reading about how various journalists haven't actually finished a GTA's storyline in previews for 4, and I'm finding that really shocking. Each time one of the big three came out I played it for as long as it took, pretty much non-stop, to finish. The gamepad was very nice for flying, but I always found it a little odd when I tried to use it for driving. The one exception to this was also in SA when I'd occasionally grab a Freeway and tool around the back roads in the North-Eastern deserts of the map for an hour or so with K-DST blasting. Very relaxing and enjoyable. A problem I've had is getting a 360 controller to work on my computer. It just doesn't seem to do a damn thing. It's even worse when I launch a game through Steam for whatever reason. It's a bit irritating, because the entire reason I bought a wired 360 controller for a backup was for the PC compatibility. Anyone have some tips to get my controller up and running? I'd like to recapture the aforementioned biking fun with the version I bought through Steam, but can't get it going. Also, airplane missions are about 50 times harder without it. I'm still beating them, but goddamn.

Yeah, I saw that too. Both are well done. More content! More, I say!

Alternatively, you can buy points for whatever account you registered yourself as. Unfortunately, it's not very user friendly. The credit card you use has to be from the same country as your account. The way I got around this when buying points for my US shell account was to find an eBay auction which would sell the points for the same as they cost in the store. I bought the points, they emailed me the code, I entered it in, I bought my Black Sabbath, Bowie, Metallica, etc. I'm not sure how common autions are for UK points, but you should be able to find something. ...god MS made way too many weird restrictions for this. It's only been since I've found myself trying to explain them that I've realized how ridiculous it is I've been simply accepting it.

With regard to the DLC ties, it's like I mentioned earlier. Anyone on the original Xbox and HDD can use the DLC, whether the profile that bought it is signed in or not. If you're trying to play the DLC on an Xbox that is not your own (carting your HDD to a friend's 360 for example, as I often end up doing with Rock Band so we can play more than the first 10 songs) the profile that bought the stuff will need to be signed in. This has actually screwed me a little bit. Before Rock Band DLC was available in Canada (but I had the game, as I imported) I created a US shell account with a Silver (free) membership so that I could download "Fortunate Son" and the Metallica pack. While these still work fine on my system, if I'm playing at a friend's house I have to log out of my own account (which has about 40 more songs) and sign into this US shell to play them. Swapping profiles like that is a bit of a pain in the ass. So yeah, the other account will have no problem with DLC as long as you're on your own system and HDD. Just don't expect to be able to play it on anyone else's without signing into the first.

...just saying is all. Anyway, it's not like we're talking about this in "gaming." It's playoff season, we're Canadian. It's not only encouraged that we talk about hockey, it may actually be required by our constitution. Of course, I haven't checked, but given the atmosphere around the country this time of year, I'm pretty confident.

Very nice.

seconded.