dpp

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a MUST BUY at $2.50... hell, I paid 10 or 15 for the XBLA version and it was still totally worth it. Yesterday I got Shatter, I heard very good things about game play and soundtrack... I'll try to play some of it later today.

The last segment made me laugh out loud a couple of times... but the most interesting part imho was the interview with Henk Rogers. It made me think about my decision of leaving cancer research to make money in business consulting (it hasn't happened yet, but I hope it does next year).

Hello, my name is dpp and I'm addicted to Picross 3D. I finally finished all the normal puzzles, now into the hard ones... I think I've done about 260 puzzles, at 10 minutes on average each, that translates to 40+ hours.

I can actually picture them shouting BANZAI!!! as they're raising their arms. I'm actually puzzled why Mizuguchi was wearing gloves during the presentation. Was it to make it easier for Kinect or the audience to follow his moves?

I've gotta say that the highlight of the Sony press conference was Kevin Butler. Best ad campaign so far and excellent speech, funny and touching at the same time. ggem-G5GZjU

No Last Guardian was a huge let down for me... I guess they're saving up for TGS. I liked their games reel and the GT5 trailer, during which I might have soiled my underwear...

It's up on the PSN for $15. I first saw it on PAX East and I knew right there it would be a day one purchase. I played a few levels and it has a lot more depth than one would expect, something like Trials but more FUN. On top of it, they also have a level creator, so expect some crazy stuff coming out in the near future. Highly recommended!

So they adopted the Valve scale of time?

I bought the 3 seasons of Sam and Max... God only knows when I'll have the time to play it though.

I haven't played season 1 yet, but is it worth paying $30 for the other 2 seasons? (pretend Jake doesn't read this forum)

Yeah, I got the same email. I was asking myself: "when the hell did I buy S&M?". Then I checked Gmail for from:telltale and surely enough, I bought season 1 in January and I didn't even remember having done that... great, another game in the pile of shame.

No Lost finale discussion?

I wish there was a spectator mode in the game. At least a replay mode, I don't think it'd be too difficult to generate a .png with images from each day and a log at the end.

Well, if I didn't live in the US I'd definitely take that offer, but I don't want to onerate you beyond your extra game purchase.

Well, they could make the PS3 run Chrome and Google TV... that would be sweeeeeeeeeet.

I used to rent games as a kid in the SNES days. I started using Gamefly this year, I played a couple of short games and so far it's been worth doing it (although Bayonetta has been stuck in my desk for a couple of months now). IMHO, renting is crucial for the gamer who plays a lot and doesn't have cash, especially kids and teenagers. Even for someone who buys a lot of new games like me, it's a nice complement for games that you know are short and have little replay value, like Heavy Rain. If there weren't renting services, gamers on the cheap would be severely affected, but the market overall wouldn't be impacted that much. As for the used game market, it's a good option because games are a digital medium that doesn't lose value unless you break the disc in half or the game comes with codes for additional content. The movement from EA and other publishers to attach DLC to the new purchase will only reduce the resale value in the end, but I believe that someone who buys an used copy of Madden isn't hardcore enough to be playing online anyway. If the used game market went away, we'd see this trend disappearing and new game cost decreasing by about a 1/3, instead of being $60 at launch and then going down as used copies inundate Gamestop.

Assassin's Creed 2 + $10 game credit for $25 at Amazon Damn you Amazon, damn you. I'm stringing these $10 credit for 5 or 6 games now and I'll probably never finish all of them this year.

I don't know if Jennoa would have attacked me if I hadn't given him the green light to take my stars... I even withdrew some ships to make it easier for him. I think I did a good job overall when Murdoc invaded. It definitely wasn't a winning tactic, I knew I was doomed because of superior technology and because half of my stuff was up there to stop JamesM. I was certainly proud of how I managed to invade his territory, initially telling JamesM that I wanted to punish Sombre and I took a couple of easy stars from him, then I moved in to Murdoc's and JamesM's stars so that they wouldn't attack the other one and have a huge fleet waiting to stop mine. I was working for a couple of hours and when I came back it was gone, so probably either of them caught up with my slower fleet.

Congrats Murdoc, I said in the in-game chat to make 30 carriers and just get as many stars as you can, apparently it worked. I'm disappointed that JamesM didn't put more of a fight, he had superior numbers and could definitely go for the win as well. All in all, it was fun while it lasted. You definitely have to take into account that it was the first game for many (including me). However, I was totally burnt out by the end, so maybe in a month or so we can have another go. ----- Opinions on the game: I can't complain for not spawning in the middle, but one annoying factor was that my stars were very much apart from each other. In the beginning, I sent a carrier to a star that was just conquered by Jennoa and we started our skirmish that took a couple of weeks. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't the best decision to take on someone early on. As the game progressed, a few players emerged as fast evolving tech-wise, namely Joflar and JamesM. I can't still fathom how Murdoc convinced JamesM to give him tech while he had like 1/3 of the scientific output. I tried to rally the remaining players to even the odds, but only 2 responded, Joflar and Jennoa. Sombre was nicely curbed into a corner for the entire game, Toblix and Boris Stoke were playing Sim City in their corner as well. I decided to take on them when I saw Toblix finally making a move. I could NOT understand how they could have stars with 10+ industry and 2 science with a poor economy, instead of lowering the cost by spreading it out. At least that gave me a nice push, which was perceived by Murdoc as a threat. He then proceeded to crush me, but at least I took a nice chunk of his army in response. IMHO, that would be the perfect moment for JamesM to strike, he would definitely win the game right then and there. So there it is, in the end superior diplomacy wins the game; Murdoc managed to get a ton of tech and not be attacked by the strongest player all game long. I saw a lot of passive players, which led to easily defensible fronts for some players. Fun game overall.

Well JamesM, you can always rectify that...

Someone called Blue actually got the color blue?

There's still quite a few PS3 games you should try... Heavy Rain, God of War 3, RCF: A Crack in Time, Demon's Souls (to name a few)

At the same time, it gives far more breathing room to the poor souls in the middle, so it isn't that bad. Ideally this game should be on a torus surface... that would be AWESOME.

The map for the second game seems to be larger than the first one... if it is, I can see it lasting for a couple of months. Good luck with that!

Beyond Good and Evil is soooo good... that and Psychonauts. The only recent game that reminds me of them is Ratchet and Clank, just finished the last one, it was a fine game as well. In the end, I really like when a game gives you a sense of progression and you have an idea of how far to the end you are. When that doesn't happen, I'm always fumbling around to know how long most people take to finish the game, otherwise I'll just lose focus and go back to comfort games like TF2.