Gaming Purchases - December 2015

December 8th:

First some bad news, my old original Xbox died last night after many many years of loyal service. I had to open it up to manually get my game out of the disc tray. It doesn't even light up the red or orange warning ring of light so it seems to be pretty bad. The now empty space under my TV is a depressing sight to behold to say the very least.

I still have some games planned to order that I never got around to ordering last month but already I've got some new gaming realted purchases done. I was out doing some gift shopping for the upcoming holiday and made a quick visit to the local GameStop. Didn't look around too much but I did find something I wanted, a couple of Xbox 360 memory cards. These little things were rare enough to find back in the day when they were still manufactured and nowadays even rarer as they pretty much only exist on the second hand market so I was more than happy to add them to my collection.


UPDATE 1 - December 22nd:

Ordered the games I planned back in November (and some additional stuff) on the 17th, all orders arrived on the 22nd.

Game Boy:
Game Boy Camera (blue)

Game Boy Advance:
Asterix & Obelix XXL (cartridge only)
LEGO Drome Racers (cartridge only)

Mega Drive:
Ballz 3D The Battle Of The Balls
Eternal Champions

Saturn:
Cyber Troopers - Virtual On

PlayStation:
Warzone 2100

Xbox:
Crimson Skies - The High Road To Revenge

Xbox 360:
Race PRO (new, sealed)

PC:
Virtua Fighter 2 (new, sealed)

Collectibles:
Maximo mini figures collection - Queen Sophia (new, sealed)

Music CD:
2 Unlimited II 1998 (new, sealed)
Tuning Hitz 7 2009 (new, sealed)

Music DVD:
Liquid Grooves - Tasty and Fresh Club Music 1 (new, sealed)
Skyclub - Finest Lounge and Club Sounds 1 (new, sealed)

Anime DVD:
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 3 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 5 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 7 (new, sealed)
Argai - The Prophecy Vol. 8 (new, sealed)
Bakugan - Gundalian Invaders Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Balatack Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Beautiful Dreamer (new, sealed)
Blood - The Last Vampire (new, sealed)
Darkside Blues (new, sealed)
Dead Leaves (new, sealed)
Dobutsu Takarajima (Animal Treasure Island) (new, sealed)
Final Fantasy Unlimited Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Final Fantasy Unlimited Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Full Metal Panic! Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Full Metal Panic! Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Full Metal Panic! Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Genshi Shonen Ryu (Ryu The Primitive Boy) Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Genshi Shonen Ryu (Ryu The Primitive Boy) Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Helen Keller (new, sealed)
Kai Doh Maru (new, sealed)
Ken - The Great Bearfist (new, sealed)
Kimagure - Orange Road Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Kimagure - Orange Road Vol. 3 (new, sealed)
Kimagure - Orange Road Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Leda - The Fantastic Adventures of Yoko (new, sealed)
My Neighbors The Yamadas (new, sealed)
Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water (new, sealed)
Nagagutsu Sanjushi (The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots - Return of Pero) (new, sealed)
Neon Genesis Evangelion Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Neon Genesis Evangelion Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Requiem From The Darkness Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Requiem From The Darkness Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Requiem From The Darkness Vol. 3 (new, sealed)
Requiem From The Darkness Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 3 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 5 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Samurai Champloo Vol. 7 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 3 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 4 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 5 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 6 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 7 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 8 (new, sealed)
Sandybell Vol. 9 (new, sealed)
Silverfang - The Complete Series (new, sealed)
Space Adventure Cobra - The Complete Series (new, sealed)
Submarine 707 Revolution (new, sealed)
Orguss 02 - Super Dimension Century Orguss Two (new, sealed)
Tenchi Muyo! Vol. 1 (new, sealed)
Tenchi Muyo! Vol. 2 (new, sealed)
Gisaku - The Demon Hunter (new, sealed)
Yatterman (Yattaman) (2009 live action movie adaptation) (new, sealed)

Now Playing - December 2015

Been focusing mostly on the new games I got at the end of last month so far.

Gift (PlayStation 2)
An obscure classic that was hyped for the impressive lighting and shadows back in the day. I was looking forward to it but sadly never got hold of it, at best I got to play the demo of the PC version. But that's all changed and now I finally get to experience this forgotten piece of videogame history! I have to say, because of how impressive it was back then it maganes to still look good today. It's your standard 3D platformer for the most part but with a strong focus on light and shadow puzzles, many enemies are light and shadow based and your weapons and attacks are as well. The humor is a bit of a swing and a miss sometimes but mostly I like the cheesy story and cutscenes, it's like a reminder from a simpler time when all games didn't have to be Oscar winning movies. One problem so far is that it refuses to recognize my memory card having plenty of free space, probably because it's a third party memory card, so if I wanna save I'm gonna have to dig out an older 8mb Sony original memory card. And I don't think I have one with any free space left. Very annoying as I want to play more but can't as I'm forced to restart from the beginning every time.

Headhunter (PlayStation 2)
Has some problems loading the main menu, most likely due to some minor scratches on the disc, but once in-game it works fine. It really doesn't hold a candle to the original version on Dreamcast, gone are the crisp textures and detailed shadows, replaced with muddy low-res textures and simple blurry shadow blobs that seem taken directly from an early N64 game. It still plays the same, which isn't that great either as that means it doesn't use the second analog stick very well, instead of adding camera control (missing in the Dreamcast original as Dreamcast only has one analog stick) they just use it to cycle through items and weapons, in other words a total waste as that could've been done better in many other ways. As it stands Headhunter on PS2 is a disappointing port that leaves a lot to be desired. No wonder some people thought the Dreamcast had so much more to offer than PS2 back in the day when poor ports like this was part of their comparison.

Wreckless The Yakuza Mission (PlayStation 2 and GameCube)
I love Wreckless on Xbox, it's an arcade style mission based driving game with visuals that were jawbreaking at the time and still impress to this very day. Shortly after the Xbox exclusive version came out we got the two altered ports I've finally added to my collection after so many years. The ports seem to have been first ported to PS2 and then ported over to GameCube using the PS2 port as basis. I say this because the PS2 port is superior in just about every way and the GameCube port is more or less a poor copy & paste job. They share the exact same content but with more glitches and much uglier visuals on the GameCube. Neither versions compare to the Xbox original visually but at least the PS2 version still has quite a lot to offer, much thanks to the added content but also because it still looks and plays great in it's own right. Sadly some things are missing from the Xbox original, the missions with tanks are all gone, including the mission where you get to drive a tank yourself blowing stuff up, instead all cars now fire rockets and have a slow motion feature, this adds some variety to the gameplay but it's got very limited ammo so it's only something you can use sparingly unless you activate the cheats, so the gameplay still remains very much the same as it always did. The Xbox original didn't have cheats, just unlockable stuff, these ported version unlocks both cheats and other stuff, but again some Xbox stuff is missing, you can no longer mix the scenarios with vehicles from the other scenario or use different screen filters, instead they've added all the normal traffic vehicles and a whole list of brand new missions to be unlocked. There are also unlimited this and infinite that cheats for time, weapons etc. and even a get out and walk around and hijack other cars cheat, ultimately making the ports more like an open world vehicle combat game if you so please. Overall I like how the PS2 port is and I'm disappointed at the GameCube version. On GameCube it loads a little faster than it does on PS2 and it has better anti-aliasing, but with much uglier textures, visual glitches galore and special effects that are so poorly done you can't even see them properly it's easily the worst of the three. Additionally, in PAL regions the GameCube can be enabled 60hz playback with some games like Metroid Prime 2 Echoes and The Legend of Zelda Collection, which can then be used to prompt a question in other normally 50hz limited games if you wish to play them in 60hz as well. Well, turns out some select few games automatically override the question and force 50hz no matter what and Wreckless on GameCube just happens to be one of those games, as if it wasn't plagued with enough shortcomings already.

XGIII Extreme G - Extreme-G 3 (GameCube)
Speaking of select few games that force 50hz no matter what, here's another that does just that! Because of this it's basically identical to the PS2 version only with 4 player split-screen multiplayer instead of just 2. It even plays in NTSC50 with black borders on top and bottom, so not even PAL50 like other 50hz GameCube games do. So yeah, I already have the PS2 version since many years back so this version will probably never get played again. I guess if you don't have a PS2 this would've been fine but considering PS2 and Extreme G 3 on PS2 are both more common and cheaper to find and get hold of there really is no reason to ever bother with this version. Unless you're really desperate for that 4 player split-screen multiplayer there is no reason to ever buy this on GameCube and a waste of your time and money.

Shadow The Hedgehog (GameCube and Xbox (Xbox version played on Xbox 360))

Starsky & Hutch (Game Boy Advance)

V-Rally 3 (Game Boy Advance)

Tomb Raider The Prophecy (Game Boy Advance)

LEGO Drome Racers (Game Boy Advance)

Star X (Game Boy Advance)

B-Movie (PlayStation)

Star Ixiom (PlayStation)

Twisted Metal (PlayStation)
Decided to play this old classic a bit. Played as Roadkill and defeated Minion, it was a good playthrough. I still love this game the most of the entire series. Been thinking about maybe trying to get hold of the PS3 game but I'm on the fence about if it's worth the asking price, it doesn't seem that great to be honest and the extremely censored PAL version of Twisted Metal Black fiasco has never truly been forgiven despite the excellent Twisted Metal Head-On on PSP, the trust that was lost has simply not been regained.

Frogger (PlayStation)
I really like this game despite how unforgiving it is, it's a nostalgic classic I felt like playing again.

Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation and PlayStation version running on PSP)
Picked back up on my two newly started games. On PSX I'm just out of the Mythril Mine, having recently calmly walked across the soggy marshes and defeated the Midgar Solom with ease thatnks to some time being spent leveling up and getting some more practical Limit Breaks, before either visiting Fort Condor for the side mission or going directly to Junon (I'm heading for Fort Condor first, of course) and on PSP I'm outside Midgar, aquired Matra Magic and a whole bunch of Atomic Scissors that will later sell at a high price, just about to enter Kalm to do the first lengthy flashback.


UPDATE 1 - December 22nd

Asterix & Obelix XXL (Game Boy Advance)
As far as I know this is the only 3D platformer on the system. I've played a few other platformers with 3D visuals but they've been 2.5D type games, like that one atrocity based on Osmisis Jones... the less said about that game the better. This is instead something so rare as a not just competent but genuinely good 3D platformer on the Game Boy Advance. It uses the same impressive game engine that powers V-Rally 3, Stuntman and Driv3r on GBA so if you've played either of those you'll know the level of technical quality I'm talking about. As a game it's like most platformers, you play as either Asterix or Obelix, selecting between the two by pressing Select during gameplay, as you run around bashing romans, viking, greeks etc. doing some platforming, door unlocking and stuff on the side to advance through the levels, the usual repertoire. You get to buy upgrades like more health and new attack combos for the helmets you collect after defeating enemies and collecting throughout the levels. There are also some on-rail levels thrown into the mix to break the monotony. It's impressive to see a 3D platformer executed so well on the GBA and I've had a blast playing it so far. I'm currently about half way through the game and I'll definitely keep playing.

Warzone 2100 (PlayStation)
A 3D real-time strategy game where you get to design your own troops and control them each manually if you so wish. Sound too good to be true? Well, it's true, and what's even more impressive is that it's all done on good old PSX. I loved playing the demo of this back in the day and finally I have a copy of the full game to call my very own, and I gotta say it's every bit as great as I remembered it to be, maybe even better.

Crimson Skies - High Road To Revenge (Xbox (played on Xbox 360))
A flight sim arcade hybrid action game set in an alternate timeline where WWII wen't down a different path and old school propeller planes and zeppelin airships became the norm and the polar ice caps melted and covered earth with water or some Waterworld wannabe plot like that, I forgot to pay attention to the story as I took to the skies and started blasting everything in sight. It's a good game, looks great for an Xbox title and could easily pass as next gen in most regards. I like the way it plays, it reminds me a lot of other great games like WarHawk - The Red Mercury Missions on PlayStation, AquaNox and AquaNox 2 Revelation on PC and Yager, also on Xbox.

Race PRO (Xbox 360)
An Xbox 360 exclusive from 2009 that in my opinion does what the Forza series has failed to do all these years, it makes racing fun. Sure it lacks the size of a Forza game in sheer content and stuff to do like advanced car customization and a decal editor but it nails the driving and has some really welcome sound options where you can tweak what you want to hear and not better than any other game I know. I personally love the roar of the engine and can live without the sound of the clutch and gear changes, this game allows me to have the engine louder than anything else and the gears etc. turned off completely if I so wish, I don't take it to that extreme but it's nice to be able to tweak the sound experience in such detail for once, especially in a racing game. It didn't take long to get used to the driving physics in this game, they're very consistent and once I got the hang of one car the rest followed despite being wildly different in performance, it's all about how they handle within the game engine that does it for me, again something that games like Forza and Gran Turismo's never done right for me. It looks good too, the only real issue I have is the screen tearing, it's not so bad it ruins the game but it's one of the worse cases I've seen in an Xbox 360 game, nowhere near as bad as Alien Isolation or anything remotely close to that degree but for a racing game it's still notable. It's still a fun game, I like that you can really crash, with flips in the air and everything, unlike virtually all other sim racers that heavily restrict car damage and crashes or sometimes even remove it altogether this is most welcome. For once I'm even enjoying the carreer mode, something I rarely enjoy forcing myself though in racing games otherwise. This game had a lot of content available at the start too which was great as I love jumping into new racing games with Time Trials or other free racing modes just to get used to how the game handles as no two games handle quite the same, this game allowed me to do so without obstacles, only a select few high performance cars were locked away. There's even a split-screen mutliplayer mode with co-op and stuff in this game, I haven't seen luxury like that since the generation before it!

Sly Cooper - Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)

Now Playing - November 2015

Because of the death in the family I haven't played much games recently but I have started playing a bit now that things have settled a bit, mostly old PSX games.

Grandia (PlayStation)
On the Rule 34 chat we were talking about games and Grandia came up, I felt like replaying it a bit, still a great game, I do wish they would've taken a bit more care of the port from Saturn though as there are manu minor flaws to be found, nothing that braks the game or changes the gameplay but lots of visual stuff, like textures facing in the wrong direction, abcent shadows, abcent sky textures and some abcent 3D geometry here and there, also some other stuff like the water effect the Saturn version had but that's at least understandable seeing as there's a genuine difference in the hardware between the two machines. Thanfully the PSX port did get some enhancements to make up for the shortcomings, like better shadows for the characters, better looking screen effect when going into battles, some more advanced smoke and steam effects and of course being in English and released worldwide unlike the unfortunately Japanese exclusive Saturn version, so I think the PSX version still holds up nicely with those pros over the admittedly minor cons. A great game regardless and every PSX gamer with even the slightest interest in RPGs should give this game a try.

Grudge Warriors (PlayStation)
A tank buggy vehicle combat mission based game not too unlike Red Dog Superior Firepower on Dreamcast. Great fun driving around blasting stuff and has a good multiplayer mode as well, again much like Red Dog. The singleplayer game is hard and unforgiving as you can only refill your armor, not your health, with very limited refill stations scattered around the levels, thankfully you can save between levels but it's still easy to get stuck as the game not only has tough enemies and bosses but also incorporates exploration to find everything, kind of like a Metroid game, many a player have been stuck in their tracks not being able to find their way in this game even if they've been able to take care of the enemy forces.

Medal of Honor & Medal of Honor Underground (PlayStation)
They both hold up rather well, they're not perfect games but arguably two of the better FPSs of the 32-bit generation.

The Adventures of Mighty Max (Mega Drive)
A platformer based on the toyline with little playsets in the shape of monsters and stuff, a favorite toyline from my childhood to say the least, sadly I never got to play the game or watch the animated series as a kid but after having spent some time with the game and seen some clips of the show on youtube it appears I didn't miss anything important, the toys were easily the strong part of the franchise as the game is rather mediocre and not particularly well designed with questionable levels and controls and the cartoon looks rather cheap as well. Not an awful game but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the most old school fans of the toys like myself, I enjoy it to a bit but it got old really fast with repetitive gameplay and levels with so little variation at first I thought I had done something wrong and started the same level over again, but nope, it's the next level alright, they just didn't change a whole lot is all.

Cat Planet (PC)
A free downloadable 2D platformer type of game where you must manuever a girl with angel wings around a planet called Cat Planet inhabited by little cat planet cats that you need to find, 67 of them in tital. It's kind of a speedrunning game where you replay it often to get a better time with as few deaths as possible, you have unlimited lives. I've been able to average a time of about 5 minutes with 2-3 deaths which is an okay score I think, not world record material but I play it more for fun than serious business and my computer isn't strong so the game has a lot of slowdown despite being a rather simplistic 2D game with very barebone visuals, it's all about the programming I guess.

Cat Poke (PC)
In similar fasion to Cat Planet this is a little free downloadable game where you play as a little girl who can't go out and play because it's raining outside, so she decised to poke all the cats the in the house to pass the time. Poking all the cats requires you to not only find them but also lure them out of their hiding places so it's more of a puzzle game than a platformer. It's also similar to Cat Planet in that it times you to see how fast you can complete it if you're interested in that sort of thing, I just like playing it for fun though so I haven't kept much track of my times, I think it probably averages in around 5 minutes when I play unless I forget some item and need to backtrack and go get it, but a smooth run from start to finish can easily be done in under 5 minutes.

Façade (PC)
More of a social interaction simulator where your goal is to see what can happen than an actual game but a fun time waster nonetheless. It's a free download just like Cat Planet and Cat Poke but it's noticably larger as it's a 3D game with a lot of voice acting. Basically you get invited to visit some old friends and talk to them about their relationship in real time using your keyboard. I find it's hard to type fast enough and a lot of the time I end up missing to respond and the situation changes and moves on in perhaps not the direction I had in mind. I've gotten a few different endings so far but only one was anything interesting, the rest were just abrupt because I apperently said the wrong thing and got kicked out of their apartment.

Starsky & Hutch (Game Boy Advance)
A 3D open world driving game on GBA? Yup, and a damn good one at that! Regardless of what some less serious self-proclaimed game critics would like you to believe it's an excellent little game for the GBA, you have your story mode, free roam and other additional mission modes, lots of cars to drive and a nice big city to drive around in. It's rather slim to begin with but you unlock more as you play through the story. I like the visuals, they remind me a lot of GTA Chinatown Wars on DS. You can also shoot your gun out the window of the car so there's some action in there as well alongside the driving.

V-Rally 3 (Game Boy Advance)
Another 3D driving game on GBA, of the rally racing type this time. I was never a big fan of the V-Rally series back on PSX but this one really steps it up, it's closer to the Colin McRae and WRC games and much better for it. The controls are nice, the visuals go by smoothly and look very nice for GBA, I'd even go as far as to say they rival some PSX games, at least somewhat, the car itself is a 2D sprite with some rotation frames but the rest of the environment is all 3D and very varied and detailed, they did a good job not making the backgrounds repetitive which can often be the case. They have some basic damage info in the main career mode but beside that it's very much an arcade game, somewhat similar to Sega Rally. I find it interesting that they included a driver view from inside the car, it actually looks and handles very well from that angle, better than a lot of other games do.

Tomb Raider Legend (PlayStation Portable)
I'm not a huge fan of the Crystal Dynamics developed Tomb Raider games, I much prefer the Core Design developed games, but every now and then I play some Legend and/or Underworld. This time I felt like picking up where I left off in my current playthrough of the PSP port of Legend. It's not the best version of the game but it is the only portable version and it does offer some unique bonus content, so I still think it's a worthy addition to any PSP collection. It's still fully playable and enjoyable, they managed to fit just about everything in there with only minor visual drawbacks and some tweaked controls, it might take a minute or two to get used to at first but soon enough you'll feel right at home.

ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Classics HD (PlayStation 3)
Not much to say, it's ICO and SotC, what can be said about these games has already been said enough. ICO is virtually the same as it was on PS2 only adapted for HDTVs, SotC on the other hand has gotten a slight upgrade with better framerate overall than it had on PS2.


UPDATE #1:

Tomb Raider - The Prophecy (Game Boy Advance)
An original old school entry in the Tomb Raider series and a good one at that. It's a bit repetitive in the gameplay but at least it's approachable and the 4-letter password system makes it easy to get where you were last without having to worry about managing saved games and losing them due to the internal cartridge battery dying some day in the future.

Star X (Game Boy Advance)
Think Super Nintendo StarWing (StarFox in US) on Game Boy Advance and this is as close as it gets. Nintendo never made a StarWing for GBA so this third party developed game stepped up and filled the void. I have to say they did an excellend job as this game not only lives up to the task but even outperforms the original StarWing on Super Nintendo completely without any additional enhancement chips, it runs on just raw GBA power! It's not a direct copy of StarWing but the gameplay is nearly identical on-rail shooting with a flat shaded polygonal spaceship.

LEGO Drome Racers (Game Boy Advance)
Anyone like me who loves flat shaded polygons and racing games like Virtua Racing owe it to themselves to play this game at least once. It's a flat shaded polygonal 3D racer with offensive/defensive weapon pickups and speed boosts. While the tracks are fully 3D the cars are 2D sprites, but the game runs smoothly and at high speeds with lots of action so it's all good. There's also a version available for PS2, GameCube and Xbox but I sadly haven't gotten hold of it or even played it. Maybe, hopefully, one day I will.

B-Movie (PSX)
A fun little game where you pilot different customizable aircraft and take on an invading alien armada attack Earth while helping your fellow humans survive. It draws clear inspiration from games like Defender and old sci-fi movies.

Star Ixiom (PSX)
Kind of like a space RPG adventure. The main part of the game is similar to games like Colony Wars Red Sun but you also get to dock at space stations and walk around, talk to other characters to advance the story and change or customize your ship.

Sonic Adventure 2 - Battle (GameCube)
It's sadly not as good as the Dreamcast original but it does unlock some multiplayer bonus characters by default. It's visually muddier, both in screen clearness and texture definition, and certain effects such as character shadows have been drastically reworked and simplified. It also doesn't feel as controllable with lots of hit detection problems and different behaviour I'm not used to in the Dreamcast original, and sadly none of this is for the better. Regardless of the shortcomings it's nice to play the Rouge and Knuckles levels again, I love Sonic Adventure 2's huge treasure hunting levels, they were on a level of their own back in the day and even these days only a small handful games have been able to do something similar successfully.

Shadow The Hedgehog (GameCube and Xbox)
A game I've played a lot on PS2 over the years. It's nice to finally get to enjoy the superior versions with better framerates, faster loading times and more colors on screen. Beside those upgrades it's still the same game I know and love, with big multi-choice levels and paths to take throughout the game and good multiplayer options made even better with the addition of native 4-player split screen, not sure if the PS2 version could do that even with a multi-tap, by default it could only do 2-player split-screen. Still, the PS2 version is good enough and being cheaper and easier to find and get hold of in general still makes it a worthy purchase for anyone interested.

Gaming purchases for November 2015

Due to a death in the family my gaming (along with pretty much everything else) has been on hold recently, but I did get to order some stuff online and shop for some stuff locally and ended up going on a minor shopping spree as far as videogames go, also some other non-gaming items but I'll just cover the gaming stuff here.

In total so far during the first half of November I've bought over 30 games and some additional gaming related stuff, most for Xbox 360 and PS3 but also some for Wii and even a couple for PC and one for PS2, well kinda, the one for PS2 was an old demo disc I didn't have with some games from 2001 to 2003. It was interesting to see demo versions of some of those games that I've had the full version of for so many years.

Here's what I got so far, November's not over yet so I may update this again if I end up with anything else before the month is over.

PS2:

*a demo disc

Wii:

Cursed Mountain

Dead Space Extraction

Disney Princess Enchanted Journey

Monster High 13 Wishes

Monster High Skultimate Roller Maze

Xbox 360:

Armored Core V Verdict Day

Killer is Dead Limited Edition

Section 8

Syndicate

The Darkness

The Darkness 2 Limited Edition

Winter Sports 2011 Go for Gold

PS3:

Battlefield 3

Deception IV Blood Ties

FIFA 08

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Classics HD

inFamous

Killer is Dead Limited Edition

Mindjack

MotorStorm Pacific Rift

MotorStorm Apocalypse

**PlayStation Move Starter Disc

Sly Cooper Thieves in Time

Split/Second Velocity

The House of the Dead Overkill Extended Cut

The Shoot

The Sly Trilogy

PC:

Need for Speed Porsche 2000

Riverworld

Other:

Disney Infinity 3.0 Inside Out Disgust figure

Skylanders Drobot figure

Skylanders Stealth Elf figure

*Among much else the PS2 demo disc contained demos of for example Ratchet & Clank, a This if Football game, a WRC game and Stuntman and also video trailers of for example Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness and an Ape Escape game.

**The PS Move Starter Disc is a demo disc of PS Move games that usually follows the purchase of the PS Move Starter Pack.


UPDATE from 19th November

I went ahead and ordered some more games online.

PSX:
*B-Movie
Star Ixiom

PS2:
Dragon Rage
Gift
Headhunter
Wreckless - The Yakuza Missions

PSP:
Invizimals Shadow Zone (incl. Go!Cam)

GBA:
Madagascar
Star X
Tomb Raider - The Prophecy
**V-Rally 3 & Stuntman

GameCube:
XGIII Extreme G Racing (Extreme-G 3)
Shadow The Hedgehog
Sonic Adventure 2 - Battle (Player's Choice)
Wreckless - The Yakuza Missions

Xbox:
Rally Fusion - Race of Champions
Shadow The Hedgehog


*known as Invasion from Beyond in USA

**V-Rally 3 & Stuntman was a double pack with both games on one cartridge


I'm planning on making one more online order soon, maybe before November ends, otherwise it'll be part of the December purchases.

Alien Queen Vs. Samus - FIGHT!

I ordered some stuff a couple days ago, went and got the package testerday.

An Aliens Alien Queen deluxe action figure, basically a huge xeno milf, I absolutely love it

a Samus Aran amiibo and a poseable World of Nintendo Samus Aran action figure, the amiibo looks good but is static and can't be posed and the WoN figure looks cheap but has some basic articulation, neither hold a candle to the Other M figure I bought a couple years ago but for the noticeably lower price they're not too bad, also the WoN figure came with a morph ball, not very shockingly it's like a much cheaper version of the Other M morphball

a Seagate 2TB external HDD

and finally some games, three to be exact, all for Xbox 360, Fist of the North Star Ken's Rage 2, Lost Planet 3 and Remember Me.

Mega Drive Homebrew Super Mario Bros. Longplay

A quick little longplay testing a homebrew port of Super Mario Bros. running on the Mega Drive.

It's a really solid port for the most part, the momentum and hit detection isn't 100% true to the original, I'd say it fluctuates between 98-99% accurate which is still exemplary good.
I did however notice that it was significantly more unresponsive than the original on Entertainment System, this caused a LOT of deaths, especially later in the game where precision and timing becomes even more important.
There was a lot of swearing coming from me on the final stages when I was pressing the jump button and nothing happened, it did ultimately lead to a very suspenseful ending though so that's alright.

I used a warp because I never liked the majority of levels I skipped, they're just lazy copy&paste of earlier levels with some more stuff to avoid anyway, and the few that are new are just annoying mazes and I don't like their repetitive nature. As far as I'm concerned, I did us all a favor by skipping them.

This was recorded using only the Kega Fusion emulator and played using a classic PSX controller via USB converter.

Now Playing

World of Outlaws Sprint Cars (Xbox 360)
Got it a couple days ago.
A simulation racing game where you drive around muddy Nascar-like oval tracks with small buggy cars with huge sideways spoilers on top.
It's alright, way too hard for my taste, not the kind of challenge I enjoy.
It's a bit choppy too with an unstable framerate and questionable physics, you can randomly flip and bounce around even though there was nothing visually on screen to collide with, the controls are also a bit wonky, you always have to double correct because the game does this weird extra move whenever you turn, I have not gotten used to that yet.
It was cheap so it's not that bad, I do like some of it, I hope it gets better as I get more used to it.

CastleVania Lords of Shadow 2 (Xbox 360)
Got it a couple days ago.
I've only played the demo from Xbox Live so far and it seemed pretty good.
I liked the first game quite a lot, it had problems that made me lose interest and never complete it but I still got enough fun out of it that I felt I could try this one instead as the demo suggested this is a more polished game than the first. I know from videos on youtube that you get to transform into and play as a rat later in the game, I must at least give that a try before putting this game to the side.
The demo did have some really awful parts though, I hope there aren't too many in the game overall, I'm talking about climbing and QTEs combined, very annoying, didn't even finish the demo because it annoyed me so much. I'll give it a more proper try in the actual full game though as it didn't feel worth retrying it over and over just to play through a demo when I was getting the full game soon anyway.

Damnation (Xbox 360)
Got it recently.
Really enjoying this game so far, love the intuitive way to move around. The jumping, shooting and climbing is all fun to do and the levels are huge and vertical, just as the game promised on the back of the cover calling itself a "vertical shooter". I like the steampunk western design. The vehicles are specially awesome, I absolutely love the jet engine motorcycles that can be driven so fast they cling to walls, finally a game that lets me perform the cool looking wall driving Lara did with her bike in the cutscene in the original Tomb Raider.
I like the characters and story as well, I will absolutely play through this to the end.

Halo 4 (Xbox 360)
Got it very recently.
Suprisingly awesome. I hate the Halo series, Bungie had no idea what makes a good first person shooter so I'm glad to see another developer give it a go and actually get it right. It feels like a complete overhaul but when you look at the old games and Halo 4 side by side the changes are suprisingly minor a lot of the time, depending on what you look at that is, the visuals are much improved and so are the sound effects but the gameplay is almost completely the same, except it's totally different, tweaked everywhere it needed to be, it feels more responsive, you now have basic abilities that the other games lacked, like sprinting, as standard while you also still have just about all the things you had before like additional armor abilities, vehicles and the weapon loadout, except a lot of new weapons have been introduced thanks to a whole new type of enemies with some really cool high tech stuff on offer, and the storytelling is vastly improved as well, I actually kind of cared about things this time, I mean Master Chief is still the most unoriginal Doom Marine ripoff of all time but at least in this game they gave him a personality, and his A.I. companion Cortana (the most unoriginal Sally from Aquanox ripoff of all time) was also given a personality that actually was interesting and relevant to the story. They're no Doomguy or Sally but at least I didn't hate them this time, that's a HUGE improvement over the previous games in the series.
The problems I had with this game as I played through it were the parts that were still based on the older games, like only being able to carry two weapons at a time, the vehicle controls and the story/characters/universe of the game. I would've loved this game even more had they given you the ability to carry all the weapons you find like in many better series, had better vehicle controls where you more directly control the vehicles and made it an original game with new cast of characters, set in a whole new universe with a whole different story.
In short, I liked all the additions and changes they made but had this not been a Halo game at all it would've been even better.

Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360 and PS3)
Got it relatively recently on PS3 but I've had it on 360 for quite a long time.
The PS3 version is the weaker version so I'm mainly playing this on 360 from now on.
I like this game, I don't really get the hate for it as it's easily the best in the series to date.
The visuals are varied from basic and somewhat dated (it's a game that's been in the works for a while so no suprise there, some things were bound to look dated) to some of the most impressive I've seen this generation.
I like the humor and have gotten many laughs out of it already, the characters and story are entertaining as well.
It controls well for the most part but the aiming can feel a bit off at times lacking the precision needed. I like the vehicle sections a lot, the vehicles so far have controlled very well.
I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches yet, at worst only some ugly dated and low quality visuals like extremely low quality dynamic shadows that update like a slideshow while the game still plays at 50/60fps (50hz on PS3 as PS3 doesn't support PAL60 on SDTVs like 360 does).

Unreal Tournament III (Xbox 360 and PS3)
Got it relatively recently.
Not as good as UT2003 and Unreal Championship 1 and 2 were but still a great game. I really miss the adrenaline abilities from the previous games, the new armor system with individual parts is not a valid replacement, not even close, and vehicles are not very good either, just like they weren't in UT2004.
Not much else to say, I usually just play short bursts of a few rounds of CTF and normal Deathmatch and that's about it. I might give the singleplayer story mode another try some day but I don't really care that much to be honest, it wasn't bad but UT isn't a series where I want to play through a story even if it's there, I just wanna play some good classic CTF and Deathmatch with awesome weapons in well designed levels.

Aliens Colonial Marines (Xbox 360)
Got it a pretty long time ago but haven't played it until now.
I was very pleasantly suprised by this game, I thought it was going to be terrible or at the very least bad but turns out it's one of the best games I've ever played.
The atmosphere is perfect, like Alien Trilogy in HD, the motion tracker makes a return and makes me panic like never before, every noise from it fills my head with thoughts of all types of aliens crawling around where I can't see them until it's too late and they've swarmed me and I have to blast my way through barely making it out alive.
I love how you get to revisit places from the classic Aliens movie and see familiar places and find stuff like the unique weapons they had in the movie and stuff like that, as a fan of the franchise and the movie things like that are very much appreciated.
Just before playing this I gave Aliens Isolation a try, also on 360, and it was absolutely fucking atrocious with beyond broken and dysfunctional A.I., glitchy visuals with tons of screen tearing, framerate drops and slowdown, clunky and unintuitive controls, overuse of QTEs, archaic gameplay design that would've felt horribly outdated in the late 80s, very boring, sterile and non interactive environments, tons of humans and evil low tech andirods, literally no isolation and the aliens were a chapter of fail all on their own with a whole new type of bad A.I., predictable scripted events, visual and technical glitches etc. etc., it was just one of the very worst games I've ever played in my life and a HUGE disappointment after having heard things like "it makes up for how bad Colonial Marines was", "the game Alien fans have been waiting for" and "one of the best horror games ever made"... BULL FUCKING SHIT. It was a travesty, at best..
Haven't even mentioned how it had a mandatory install disc of 5gigs and then a mandatory patch download that was almost a gig as well, and because it's a horror game you'll naturally want to install the game disc that takes another 5gigs to install so you don't have the 360s loud humming from spinning the disc during gameplay as the sound in horror games is important, ending with a whooping 11gig installation for a glitchy broken mess of a game!
You'd think all that install bullshit would've fixed at least something, but no, apparently it only made the game "playable" in the first place, if you can count something that broken as playable at all, fuck knows what that 1gig patch did, I can't imagine the game being even more broken than it was as the only steps left to take down the ladder is an error message and not running at all, which in hindsight would've been preferable as the game was honestly that bad.
Also it was clearly meant to only be played on a full 1080p HDTV as on an SDTV the text was so tiny it was almost completely unreadable. I've seen this in quite a few games over the last few years but Alien Isolation was by far the worst, the subtitles for the piss poor voice acting was rendered completely useless because of this.
Anyway, Colonial Marines was better in all ways and it's a really great game so far. I'll be sure to play through it to the end as this is a game I really want to play more of.
This ended up being more about the shitty Isolation game but that's how it is sometime, can't be helped.

FUEL (PS3)
Got it recently.
A huge open world racing game, like Test Drive Unlimited on steroids.
I haven't been able to play it as much as I wanted because it freezes a lot.
I want to play more but the freezing seems to be a common issue with this game according to internet forums, I've seen quite a lot of threads talking about this and it puts me off playing the game to be honest.

Burnout 3 Takedown (Xbox)
Got it recently.
I've never been a fan of the stop and go gameplay this series has but I've decided to give this game a try anyway, I've played the main mode a bit and unlocked a few new cars and stuff and so far it's not that bad, I turned off the crash cam so it only does it when I crash, that helped keep the flow of the game up a lot.
There's a lot of random luck elements to the gameplay that I don't like and feel really holds the game back, it gets really boring really fast when the challenge is super high and needs pin point exact and flawless driving to complete something when there's random traffic coming out of nowhere in less that a split tenth of a second that forces you to restart a race over and over dussins of times in a row.
It controls nicely and runs smoothly an looks great otherwise so it's a shame the bad parts hold it back as much as they do.
Easily one of the most overrated games of all time as I've encountered numerous claims of this being not only the best in the series but also the best arcade racing game on PS2 and [one of] the best arcade racing games of all time.
It's mediocre among other games of the genre and I have to say it's the worst in the series as it's the first after they rebooted it with new developers and the sequels were all better and I personally like the two original games more with the second game being my favorite in the entire series.

DOOM (32X)
Link to my failed playthrough on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmEvY0MeyjPaMKLkwByxAw1KPOsbi6edI
Pretty much my favorite version of the classic Doom. I also love the PSX version and the version on Xbox that comes as a bonus together with Doom 2 and the Master Levels for Doom 2 in Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil is also great.
I love the music in this version, the Mega Drive sound chip has a unique sound I really love and it makes the classic Doom songs justice and then some.
The sound effects are taken directly from the PC version and sound as good as ever, the 32X handles them with respect and deliver perfectly where for example the Super Nintendo version fails miserably.
It lacks a save feature so instead you have free pickings of any level in the game sans the bonus and final level directly from the main menu, making it instantly accessible at all times.
It lacks several levels from the full set the PC original has but that also makes it a lot more approachable as you can play through it much faster, that makes for example a great evening of Doom without having to go on long into the night, past morning and well into next day before reaching the end.
The enemies lack sprites for turning so they end up always facing you, this gives the feeling that they're always focused on you, I like this change a lot, also adding to the feeling of being the center of enemy attention is the lack of the A.I. script that made enemies attack eachother in many other versions, this also adds to the challenge as you have to be the one to take out the enemies, they won't do the job for you in this version.
With the 6 button controller you have some of the best controls of the time, with the map being especially functional in this version, you can also pick between the weapons in your aquired arsenal freely by holding Mode and pressing other buttons for respective weapons, pressing Mode+Start twice being the most important as it's the only way to switch back to your fists after having aquired the chainsaw.
It lacks the BFG as well but that's okay as I never used it except for the biggest bosses anyway and because they're also not in this version it's not a loss that matters very much.
It's on a cartridge so the load times are as short as on a fast PC, unlike many later versions that were on CD and thus had noticeably longer loading times.
It runs relatively smooth and is relatively high res as well, it's not as good as the PSX version but it's still a lot better than many versions of Doom including the Saturn, Super Nintendo and 3DO versions, it's even slightly better performing than the commonly praised Jaguar 64 version.
This is the version of Doom I return to the most and it's a great additional version regardless of what other versions of Doom you might already own.
It might seem as if it's a bad version seeing as it lacks so much but in my opinion the changes created a unique and in many ways better take on the Doom formula, and combine that with how well it plays and you have nothing left but a winner.

Tempo (32X)
One of my favorite platform games of all time. I love the design, the music, the levels, the controls and long list of moves you can pull off, the gameplay, the characters and enemies, the minigames, the upgrades, simply put I love just about everything about this game and I never get tired of playing it, a true classic.

Bomberman Act Zero (Xbox 360)
Got it recently.
I never liked the older Bomberman games, I hate the design and the gameplay lacked certain elements needed to be good. This game fixes everything that was wrong with only one drawback, the multiplayer. The one thing Bomberman games did right was multiplayer, I mean it's one of the oldest games I know that had support for four players.
Sadly this game is singleplayer only, at most it has an online mode but because most Bomberman fans didn't like it for reasons I will never understand the online mode is dead, so it's singleplayer only.
A shame because this is the first Bomberman game I've ever liked and I would've loved to have friends over and play this in multiplayer, just my luck the one game in the series I want to play with friends won't let me.
Regardless it's a great game and I'm having a good time with it even if I have to play it on my own.
I love the new design, it reminds me of a game I have on PC but I forget the name, and the new camera angle, life bar and powerups you pick up are all great too.
A criminally underrated and underappreciated game to say the least and a prime example of a game where haters ruined a good thing.