[Drem]

I can't win a single match in King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match on level 1 difficulty. I don't think I've ever really grasped KOF's game flow, but I didn't think I was this bad.

[Drem]

[Drem]

No one can stop me from playing No One Can Stop Mr. Domino.

[Drem]

Fuck Omega Rugal.


I don't think I'll ever beat Challenge 30 in King of Fighters '98 UM.

[Drem]

I never realized until today, after seeing the frame data and joystick input display options in Virtua Fighter 5's exhibition mode, that they are all actually recorded matches. Are these taken from the arcade? That's pretty awesome.


JoJo's Bizaare Adventure on the PSX has a great story mode. I am currently watching my friends play Gradius with Stands.

[Drem]

[Drem]

It's just 'R.' Virtua Fighter 5R. The 'R' can stand for anything you want, such as Revolution, Resurrection, Roppongi, or Rolls-Royce.

Supposedly someone at Sega recently said they'd consider a home port if fans wanted it enough, so people have started large e-mail campaigns to Sega requesting a console port of VF5R.



I finally managed to make it to Zen in WipeOut HD's zone mode. I feel like a martial artist. I keep trying and trying in the latest matches and I feel like I've hit a wall because I'm just not able to win at all; but then I'll go back and play previous challenges again and they're a cinch. I am making progress.

[Drem]

[Drem]

Linger in Shadows when me and three of my friends are half asleep at 1:30 in the morning and the lights are off whooooooooaaaaaaa


It was a really creepy experience. We had no idea what was going.

[Drem]

Resistance 2 is growing on me, but I'm still going to get Valkyria Chronicles first.


After playing the Valkyria Chronicles demo, my friend showed me Ring of Red for the PS2. I know of it, but I've never had a chance to see the actual game. It has some interesting ideas, though the execution is a little rough. It makes me want to play Front Mission.

Dead Space is really nice too.

[Drem]

If Mainichi Issho for the PS3 is as amusing as I pretend it is, it could probably be a fantastic marketing tool. A comedic cat duo who sit around and talk about new games and smack each other around could be amusing if their writing is good. At the same time, they advertise the products to you. Even though I can't understand any of it, it was still entertaining to watch their animations and see the pictures. The Siren New Translation/Blood Curse behind the scenes was pretty cool. I wish we could have an english version/equivalent.

[Drem]

[Drem]

I went to Blockbuster to rent something tonight, but nothing I wanted was there. I got Heavenly Sword because I heard it was a decent enough game, but I didn't expect much. I'm really damn impressed. Gameplay is fun, if impersonal, and really stylish. Graphics are phenomenal, even compared to what we've been getting recently (I think this came out a year ago?) Voice acting is pretty good, and King Bohan is a hilarious irreverent villain. Within his first 3 minutes of appearing, he made my friends and I burst out into laughter for a good 10 minutes, and has spawned a new in-joke for us.

The first boss is one of the gay guys from God Hand. I really enjoyed this first hour, and I'm looking forward to the rest.

[Drem]

Heavenly Sword was an incredibly polished and impressive game on all fronts. It's also really short, but that works to its benefit as truthfully there wasn't too much variety in the types of regular enemies throughout the game. And that sort of ties in with how it doesn't feel like it has too much replayability; at least not right away. I wish it was better recieved so we could have seen more. As it is, apparently the planned sequel will never be made.

[Drem]

I guess playing in a group makes every game better!

I'm curious what the big flaws you guys see were, though. I can understand how people can find the combat un-interesting; I'd think this is mostly because the enemies don't really require you to vary your moves or to change up your strategy. Also, I don't think I ever found a decent strategy for most of the bosses, so they could take me a lot longer than one battle should. The the actual fighting system itself seemed okay; it was fluid and allowed for them to keep their focus on being cinematic. It also allows for lots of useless flailing around if you don't really try to do actual combos; maybe most people like a more controlled experience? This is where I found the game's brevity really helped it; had it gone on longer, it probably would have started wearing on me.

The story is take it or leave it; it's just about Nariko trying to rescue her father and then stop the army. It's nothing too fantastical (though it does get touches of that towards the end that show the direction they probably wanted to take in the sequels). The characters are the type of thing you'd find in a fantasy movie (mainly the enemy Generals here), but I found them pretty good, if perhaps mostly for their voice acting. I thought the voice acting in the game was really good. Especially King Bohan, voiced and motion-captured by Andy Serkis (Gollum from the Lord of the Rings (I think he was also the Dramatic Director for the game). He came off as a touch above the rest, probably because just how animated his face was. Kai and Flying Fox were good too.

[Drem]

Are there any typing games better than Typing of the Dead? I think not. I also had my first encounter with swearing in the game, as I encountered the phrase "Hate that bitch." It surprised me quite a bit.




*The only typing games I have played are Typing of the Dead and Mavis Beacon back in elementary school.

[Drem]

Octomania is really retarded.

I've owned Valkyrie Profile PSP for a long time, but have never gotten more than 2 hours into it. I'm always too afraid to play it, because it seems like a lonely game. I'm thrown into the world and told to meet people who just lost their lives. I can't get attached to anyone because I need to send them up to the afterlife eventually. My boss comes off as completely untrustworthy but I can't do anything about it. It has the same sound effects as Star Ocean 2. The game crushes me, and I can't play it even though people say it's somehow fantastic.

[Drem]

[Drem]

I snagged Condemned 2 and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage for the 360 with a Blockbuster gift card during their buy 1 get 1 free deal on used games. I haven't played Condemned 2 myself, but I saw my little brother play a little bit of it. It looks like it has a great atmosphere and aesthetic. It looked really good! Lots of psychological based horror.

Flatout is pretty much Burnout. Yeah, that's it. The only difference is that it has the regular race courses like in other racing games, while Burnout moved to an open city format in Burnout: Paradise. Also, no slowdown crash cam when you crash or make someone else crash. There are some minigames I haven't tried that revolve around throwing your driver out the windshield, so I guess that's different. The game's alright.

Then I got Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and it is awesome. I played it for hours as the new year rolled in. I made a topic about it because I think it needs more exposure.

[Drem]

The solution is to stop caring so much about the overall victory and instead revel in the small kills you get and whoa you totally jumped through that window and got someone that's awesome and oh man did you see how far i pulled that guy back with my tongue that was sweet I'm sweet and boy those guys are idiots don't they know you don't shoot boomers point blank?

My friends and I enjoy each individual cool thing we do, because we know how our odds of winning vary greatly when we quickmatch into a game. If we actually win the game, awesome. If we don't, oh well. Our team sucked/ the humans were really good.

[Drem]

Crash Commando is Soldat for the PS3. I never played enough Soldat, so I can't compare them and tell what Crash Commando does different, aside from levels having a foreground and a background. You can switch between them through doors and passageways. There are also turrets that lets you shoot at people in the background. Also, vehicles and prettier graphics.

It's fun, but I can't say whether it's different enough from Soldat that makes it worth buying instead of just downloading Soldat for free. But it is fun.

[Drem]

For $3, Piyotama is a pretty nice puzzle game. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, but the best part of the game is the music. It's so happy and relaxing. The game has a pretty nice atmosphere to it. I wish there was an online multiplayer mode where you get to play with some other dude(s), but you're not actually playing versus each other; you're just playing endless solo games and you can watch each others' games while you chill and hang and listen to the happy and relaxing music. The downloadable skins are a nice touch too.

I seem to be missing a skin, though. Skin 0 is the default, and 2, 3 and 4 were downloadable. What happened to skin 1?

[Drem]

Dark Sector doesn't feel bad for $8 as a used game. It's a bit vapid and repetitive, and I have no idea what's going on, but cutting people into pieces while acting like I'm palying Xena is pretty cool. I don't think I would've been satisfied if I played more, though.

PAIN, that whacky physics game on the PS3 where you shoot people and watch them get hurt, is more fun than I expected. Getting high scores is pretty difficult. It's fun to pull it out with friends and laugh at all of the amusing things that tend to happen often. Like the time I somehow turned David Hasselhoff into a propeller. Gut-wrenchingly funny? At the time. Now? Just amusing. But it's nice that you can edit replays and save them as videos, and even upload them straight to YouTube if you're so inclined.

[Drem]

Yeah, my friend got iDOLM@ASTER SP: Perfect Sun and I played it for a while. It's one of the worst games I've ever played.

I've been playing more Phantast Star Portable (PSP) on my PSP recently. I never played Phantasy Star Universe, but PSP seems to have taken PSU's game systems and changed the game flow to something more like the original Phantasy Star Online. So it pretty much feels like PSO with new weapons and stuff. The thing I most miss is a general progression of levels, though. In PSO, you could start at the beginning of the game and play to the end in one sitting with your friends. In PSP, it's just choosing random missions that happen to take place on certain maps. I enjoyed the feeling of beating the game; in PSP, it's seems to be just about grinding and leveling, like in MMOs.

Also, the loot doesn't seem as varied or bountiful. I've chosen the Ranger class, and I've been using the same shotgun since level 8 (the "Final Impact" to be exact). I'm currently level 45. I only recently got rifle that was worth switching to. Maybe doing a melee class would have been better.

Still, it's Phantasy Star Online. Again.


P.S. Mad World is fantastic.

[Drem]

Yeah, I've been playing inFamous a lot this past week, and it's been surprisingly fun. The combat feels really good and climbing around is really fun. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of straight up platforming in the story missions, but I guess I should have expected it from the people who made Sly Cooper. The story is also more servicable than I thought it would be, though that isn't really saying a lot. On the flipside, the city itself doesn't have a lot of character, and the game doesn't even try to hide how repetitive the side missions are. The main story missions are a lot better.

I like how they implemented their morality system. Rather than making each side get their own powers, instead each side nuances the powers in different ways. The Good side's shock grenades can cause enemies to float through the air for skeet shooting, while the Bad side can make the grenade split into several more grenades, covering a wider area. The Good side powers are about precision, and the the Bad Side powers are about wanton destruction.

It needs some polishing, but it's just fun to play.

[Drem]

[Drem]

[Drem]

Does Nocturne ever get a real story going on? I played for a while, but I only remember running around from place to place fighting enemies a whole lot. Then I got sidetracked trying to make cool fusions, and finally got busy with real life and never finished it.

[Drem]

Earlier today I had the sudden urge to play a Diablo-like game and almost bought Sacred 2 because someone here said it was pretty good. But then I read on the internet that a lot of people don't like it, so I held off until I can learn more about the game.

In Steambot Chronicles, does the answers you choose to the opening questions affect your name or am I always doomed to have the unfortunate name of "Vanilla"?

[Drem]

Thanks for the offer, but my computer wouldn't be able to handle it. I'd have to pick it up for one of the consoles.

[Drem]

[Drem]

I played the first level of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and it made me want to play Otogi. I ran around the level trying to destroy every bit of the environment I could, which is something you get rewarded for in Otogi. A lot of it was impressively destructible, which was really nice. I also spent 10 minutes force pushing wookies off bridges, which managed to net me 8 achievements. My little brother told me the first two levels are the best levels in the game, which made me pretty sad. I'm not sure if I feel like playing more of it, but it doesn't seem like a bad game.

[Drem]

[Drem]

I play it on and off. I've gotten a lot of games this summer that I've been busy with (I've been bargain hunting), but if I ever feel like playing an FPS I usually drop in KZ2. Truthfully, I think I enjoy the game most when combat is being held at a distance. I love the feel of the guns, and aiming down across the game's great looking battlefields is a joy. Close quarter stuff is a mess because, and maybe it's just because I'm not that good, there's a lot of flailing around. But I enjoy it overall.

I just wish people would squad up more. Most people don't start squads and most people seem to ignore squad invites.

[Drem]

R&C doesn't have poop jokes, though.

[Drem]

[Drem]

Supposedly the Live ports of Garou and KOF were outsourced to some Chinese company, so I'm not sure how much SNK-P cared in the first place (or maybe they were just too busy with KOFXII (though judging by all of its problems they weren't busy enough ho ho ho)).

[Drem]

What makes exploding different from jumping? I watch the trailer when it was announced, and it looked interesting until I realized exploding seemed to be another word for jumping. He was just jumping a lot. 'splosion Man makes me want to play Explodemon, but I recently heard its trailer was all CG. That's a real bummer.


I saw Motorstorm: Pacific Rift on clearance for $30 at Target the other day. My copy was stolen not long after I bought it, so I finally decided to buy it again. I really love this game. Its visceral chaos is really amazing and the track designs are great. The handling on the vehicles take a while to get used to, as the vehicles slide a lot (I guess that's how driving on mud is), but once you get the hang of it it's really fun. I think I'd say I enjoy it more than Wipeout HD and Burnout Paradise, though they're all admittedly very different games. Any game where I can plow a big rig through motorcycles and atv's while jumping over a volcano is okay in my book.

[Drem]

[Drem]

I've never been good with abstract concepts like whether a game has soul or not, but I'm pretty sure Stranglehold doesn't have one. I picked it up because it was on clearance at Sears for $5 and it's an amazingly sterile experience.

[Drem]