JonCole

God, +1 on the Metal Gear Acid series. To be honest, all of my taste for that franchise in recent years have come almost exclusively from the nostalgia of playing those games. And it's really interesting to see the love for Banjo in here... I know the Giant Bomb guys have been in love with it for a long time (that and Viva Pinata, which I suppose probably also falls into this category) but I wouldn't have guessed that love would be here too. I just feel that I never got over that hump from the more tutorial, linear sections to where I could appreciate the creative and more open aspects of the game. I should give it a second chance.

The PS3/Vita versions of Spelunky just got daily challenge mode, yay! Add me on PSN if you want to compete, my PSN id is jonac13. I'll be doing both the PC and PSN versions of the daily challenge every day because I learned yesterday that the daily boards are actually different and I have a couple of PC-less friends on PSN who are playing. So don't worry about spoiling one platforms dailies with another.

I liked recording with a mic, after I got over the nervousness hump. Reminded me of when I used to do podcasting.

The XBONE could have potentially improved on it simply by having more powerful hardware. As it is, the XBONE is just another layer that literally just puts its interface on top of your preexisting cable box. Naturally, that's not a great solution. Ideally, you could have it directly access a tuner that gets signals either over the air or via a cablecard just like a TiVo. This is kind of a pipedream, but I did use my Xbox 360 as a front-end for my PC, which got TV signals over the air and piped them onto my network. That's not possible on the One, despite the fact that TV is a greater focus than before. I don't really know why your TiVo is laggy; there should be a half-second or so that you wait to switch channels, but other than that I think any lag is introduced by underpowered hardware or poorly designed software.

Seems like many of the biggest retailers are getting last minute extra allocation this time around for both the PS4 and XBONE, maybe supply won't be as big a problem as in the past.

I figured it was called a retrospective megathread for a reason. Overlooked games of the generation seems like a relevant topic.

I think people don't like ODST because 1) you're not playing as Master Chief and 2) it's only notable multiplayer feature, Firefight, was vastly improved by way of implementing matchmaking in Reach. My perception is that people want that big, bombastic "I'm gonna hijack this Covenant ship and crash it into this other Covenant ship then spacejump onto Earth and kill a Gold Elite with my BARE HANDS" and ODST didn't really deliver on that. All of that being said, I agree with you and that's why I like ODST. Had just slightly more nuance than the rest of the games, and benefited greatly as a result. I had all the other games you listed on my backlog, except this one. Sounds really cool, I'll probably give it a gander.

Retrospective megathread new topic proposition: favorite not very popular/well-known games I absolutely loved Resistance 3. Really good pacing, a great break from the earlier Resistance games, some sections really invoked some of my favorite moments from Half-Life 2, and Insomniac was at the top of their game as far as interesting weapons on the more believable side of things (as opposed to R&C, that is). Halo ODST was my favorite Halo of the generation. Yeah, this was the "not very popular" game I had in mind, at least in comparison to the other Halo games on 360. Alpha Protocol was an awesome RPG that almost delivered on Obsidian's incredible potential. Almost happened to be close enough for me and I fell in love with this game. Blur was a super solid arcade racer that got swept under the rug as Activision dismantled Bizarre Creations and SplitSecond split the gaming community's attention in this relatively niche space. It was kinda the Call of Duty of arcade racers, which I loved but the multiplayer community was just never really there.

So... I found my mic. It's only appropriate that I have my dumbest run in a long time today.

Haha, amazing. You have to fire and then get clear... don't stay in the same area they are, you should have backed up toward the entrance and strafed up and down so they couldn't hit you with their fire.

FYI - I was just able to add Resogun and Contrast to my cart and "purchase" them for $0.00 on the web-based SEN Store, despite not having a PS4. They now appear on my download list.

Every cable box I've used has crazy input lag to begin with, so an IR blaster would likely only make it marginally worse. Plus, if it could access a network tuner (when I say that, I mean something like this) for access to Live TV it would essentially be the cable box itself and the TV integration would feel super solid, I imagine.

There was also a gnarly piranha pool + tiki trap + jumping thing in the jungle that would have tripped me up if not the jetpack.

Dumb thing: Xbox One appeals to me more than ever on a technical basis based on its TV integration, yet I cancelled cable last month, don't plan on re-subscribing, and thus it isn't actually a selling point. I mean, I'm sure some degree of that functionality can be felt using online streaming apps like Netflix or Amazon, but using the Xbox as a more sophisticated cable guide/unified UI seems like the real killer app. I wish that they would just integrate support for network tuners or Windows Media Center extender functionality, but I imagine they're trying to back away from that especially considering the removal of WMC from Windows 8 (it's relegated to a paid add on "pack"). I realize it's a niche desire, but it's just ironic to me that as soon as Xbox gets good TV integration, it takes out the vision of the 360 being supplement to a cable-card/OTA tuner equipped PC.

They don't edit the review, they write up a new section detailing the mentality behind an updated score. Sometimes that updated section is quite substantial, sometimes it's just a paragraph. So you don't lose the original review at all. Nonetheless, it's still kinda dumb.

The thing that's potentially most disappointing to me about these lavish console reviews is that the editors of Polygon have said they'll update the console scores as they develop over time, yet the Wii U's review hasn't been updated since launch despite it's growth and actually fulfilling the potential it had (like the XBONE and PS4 are getting evaluated for).

While motion controls may have been crap this/last generation, it looks like the legacy of motion controls is improved UI design which I can't complain too much about: - Polygon

Tearaway GAF review thread - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=719375 TLDR: shitload of 9.5s and 10s, average somewhere in the low 9's probably. Wild.

I had slightly better luck than you did, but the black market proved too tempting (read: my wallet too empty) and I was too out of practice to handle the resultant shopkeeper cabal -

Tested.com did a comparison test between the default HGST (brand owned by Western Digital) 500GB drive, a Seagate 1TB Hybrid Drive, and a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD in the PS4. The results were pretty interesting, the TLDW is that the SSD and hybrid drive trade blows fairly evenly and both leaving the default HDD in the dust: Having watched this, I'll probably buy a 1TB hybrid drive when I get my PS4 and swap it right at the start. I just wish there were 2TB or 4TB options, though I don't seem to be able to find anything of that nature out there right now.

For what it's worth, that could easily be achieved by leaving on a 24-hour livestream during the entirety of the stream, watching it or not. If they wanted to make it particularly scumbaggy, they could make the achievement require you have Kinect plugged in and it has to see you sitting on your couch eating Doritos watching the stream at each interval.

I've never actually beat Olmec standard, I should get around to doing that. I've been to hell a few times already, so I imagine it shouldn't be too hard (especially if I don't worry about reaching the City of Gold or anything).

I have some extra Humble Bundle codes, if anyone wants them: FEAR 3 Batman: Arkham City GOTY FEAR Batman: Arkham Origins DLC

Man, I have so many games in my Wii backlog it's kind of ridiculous. Maybe I should just play all that junk instead of pining for a Wii U.

Microsoft didn't convince anyone, everyone was just waiting for a de facto standard and the XInput happened to be that. I'm not particularly sad about it, considering the 360 controller is actually okay and I'd hate for some API developed by MadCatz to be the PC industry standard.