These are the games I've been playing this month.
Tomb Raider The Prophecy (Game Boy Advance)
I'm stuck on a larger level with lots of insta-death traps without any checkpoints. It's a good game but I'd love to have save points in the levels.
Need for Speed Underground (Game Boy Advance)
This is one of those games that are kind of impressive but doesn't quite do anything good enough as a game to be good regardless of what they managed to pull of on a technical level. The Underground series simply needs more processing power to pull off what it needs to do what it does. The game is mostly intact on a technical level, you have many cars and tons of customization options but the style and feeling of the bigger titles is all missing.
Need for Speed Underground (PC)
This PC really sucks, even my old PC from 2001 could handle this game rather well when the graphics were toned down, now I can't get it to work on a playable level even with every option on the lowest setting. Fuck computers, I'm gonna try to get hold of the PS2 version instead. I'd play it on XBox but since my Xbox is broken and Microsoft never kept their promise to keep porting original Xbox titles to Xbox 360 I am left with no way to play that version. So the only playable version of NFSU I have is the GBA version.. yeah, I need to get hold of the PS2 version, simple as that.
SuperCar Challenge (PlayStation 3)
New game, it's pretty good. Kinda of like the PS3 equivalent of Race PRO on Xbox 360.
BioShock Infinite (PlayStation 3)
Glitchy, has frozen on me, enemies have broken AI and Elizabeth gets stuck because her AI is also broken. Beside those problems it's an okay game, a bit repetitive already but maybe it gets better? I haven't decided if I keep playing to find out or not yet. It's failed to capture any interest so far with it's convoluted story and piss poor story telling so I've only really kept playing to see if it ever gets interesting, so far it has not.
Buzz! Music Quiz (PlayStation 2)
I finally got hold of Buzz! controllers so I could try out some Buzz! games I got a couple years back. They work. Not much else to say really, the Buzz! games were very basic and feel like if they combined all of them it would be almost the content of one low budget game, but separately they are way too single tracked and the questions get repetitive and boring in just a couple of minutes. The different play modes do little to change anything as the questions are still the same, you just play for the points on a few different ways and it simply isn't enough to keep your interest up.
Buzz! Sports Quiz (PlayStation 2)
A downgrade from the Music Quiz game, it barely even tries to stay on the same already generic level. Some of the unique animations and cutscenes found in Music Quiz have no equivalent here, it's just gone, and the fact that these are sports questions rather than something much more generally enjoyed by all like music is means even less interest can be kept up with these questions. Though it should be noted they did add more sports than just two categories unlike the music game which only had old and new music as the two options you could pick from, but they mix all the sports questions so you can't actually pick categories at all this time around so it still ends up being worse overall.
Buzz! Junior Jungle Party (PlayStation 2)
Overly simplistic minigames that unlike most other minigame collection games don't even try to make the minigames any good. very lazy, simple and boring, and there aren't even many minigames, if you play through the basic set of them once you're literally experienced everything this game has to offer, it's got less content that the simplest of mobile phone app games. Even the three Buzz! games I have combined doesn't add up to anything I'd consider worth paying for, they're just not very good in any respects. They're also not generally interesting to a casual crowd as they have this kind of designed style to them where you'd pretty much have to be a gamer to enjoy their unique look and feel, they're not like normal TV shows with a human host but instead all caricature and weird with their own over the top cheesy humor. I liked some of it, but most of it fell flat and the Junior Jungle party game was even worse and felt like it was just like a show for very young children, think Teletubbies and something, and even then the games had such a mixed balance of difficulty it felt like some a stillborn baby could win while others you'd have to become a world champion to even come close to getting the full score, not because they had brilliantly designed challenges but because they were random and luck based and only a world champion in patients with shitty games could ever stick with it long enough to get a good, let alone full, score. I'd say avoid these games unless you're very interested in odd games and can find them very very cheap. I found them relatively cheap but honestly I wish I would've paid less as I didn't feel I got my money's worth.
Midway Arcade Origins (PlayStation 3)
Sadly a rather poor collection of old arcade games. It doesn't have many games to play and there's nothing further to unlock. The few games they included are very basic conversions with little to nothing to enhance them and several of them even have glitches. The control options are abysmal and settings for each games are as basic as they ever were. Some of the games included are alright but honestly most of them have far superior home console ports and this is not a list of arcade games I consider to be better in their original arcade versions at all, and that goes double for the titles that use a multi-screen display as that doesn't translate well at all to being crammed into one screen with no further customization options. They did add a couple of basic filters though, one that smoothens the pixels with basic linear filtering a-la-Nintendo-64 and another that smoothes everything so it kind of looks cartoony but as a result also filters out all minor pixel details making everything look even simpler and uglier than before.
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (PlayStation 3)
Originally I played this a year ago on the Xbox 360 and was left with some mixed feelings. On the PS3 it's pretty much the same but I had a bit more fun this time around as I knew where to go, what to do and how to do it, at least as far as the first main mission and a couple of the additional side missions go, that's about as far as I got on the Xbox 360 as I only borrowed it and I only ever played a couple of more missions after the first main one and had to return it shortly thereafter.
This time however it's my own copy so I can tackle as much of it as I please, if I decide to do so that is, I kind of want to but I don't know how long it'll take before I get bored of only having one small area to play in. For those who aren't up to speed with this game yet it's kind of free roaming in this small enemy base, it has a few different areas like a prison camp and an admin building, but that's about it, you can use vehicles like jeeps, trucks and tanks and you can call in helicopters to pick up prisoners and stuff so there's some variety to the gameplay over Metal Gear Solid 4 for example where all you ever did was shoot and stealth.
The visuals are only slightly better than MGS4, the biggest upgrade being the textures which were sub-PS2 quality in MGS4 are now some of the most detailed of the generation, the lighting is also improved, so is the polygonal detail.
So overall it looks better, no doubt about it, but there are a lot of things missing, like the cool camouflage nanotech suit Snake had in MGS4 and the sci-fi stuff like the many different types of robotic enemies, now you're just fighting regular soldiers, sometimes they drive the vehicles mentioned but they're easily taken out and it offers only little variety.
The controls are different than in earlier games as well and the menu systems have all gotten a complete overhaul. Then there's the regenerative health and limited amount of weapons and items you can carry unlike the previous games where you had to find rations to heal yourself with and unlimited slots of every weapon and item you could find. I think these changes are okay, not wildly better or wildly worse, just different and in the long run more practical if a bit lazy and limiting.
The urgency of having to manage health when you're hurt is completely gone so it gets a bit lazy when you just cover behind something and stay out of enemy fire for a moment, healing back to normal as if nothing happened, and the limited amount of stuff you can carry makes the gameplay options very limited, especially compared to all the older titles where every situation could be tackled in every way the game allowed all the time leaving how the game played up to you. The way this plays out as a result is a lot more controlled with limitations than open and free with options.
Then we have the change of Snake's voice, they have a new voice actor that sounds really uninterested and disconnected and it's a shame as Snake's voice fit the character well in the previous games, this new voice just sucks, not just for Snake's voice but in general, it's sadly just not a job well done at all by the new voice actor. For what little story there is and how few lines Snake has because of it it's endurable though, but if this would've been like other MGS titles with tons of story and Snake having long conversations with other characters it would've been a deal breaker.
Brink (PlayStation 3)
A shallow FPS with heavily limited character customization. You can make a generic guy with minor alterations to his looks and take on basic typical FPS missions in a tacked on singleplayer campaign. Ugly visuals that update slowly from low to high detail gives the game a perpetual N64 look unless you stand still and wait for it to load how things actually look, not that the designs or technical visuals are much better even when eventually rendered at highest quality. I paid the lowest price possible for it but even with that in mind I only barely feel it was worth it.
Binary Domain (PlayStation 3)
I've played the demo on Xbox 360 and didn't care much for it, but the full version is a whole other story, literally, the story and characters when you've been with them from the beginning and know the context is a world of difference. It's a fun game with entertaining action, cool enemy and especially boss designs, I like the story and characters as unoriginal as they are because a lot of the stuff this game borrows from is great, like I can draw many strong parallels to Final Fantasy VII, and that's never a bad thing, hell this game is a fuckton closer to a proper remake/prequel/sequel/spinoff of FF7 than any of the atrocious garbage SquareEnix's been diarrheaing out onto the market for years desperately trying to milk the good name without the slightest idea how to do it right and completely lacking all the necessary skill and much needed respect for the source material to even randomly by dumb luck happen pull it off.
This game isn't perfect though ,far from it, the framerate is bad, the slowdown is extreme at times and there's screen tearing as well, the infamous triple combo, and the aiming is either too fast or too slow because the enemies later in the game are too fast to keep up with while aiming with the speed that works when you need precision aim, the speed is just balanced way wrong, and finally the controls have some buttons that are context sensitive but also function as fundamental actions like sprinting, making it impossible to control certain situations as the game automatically determined what context is top priority meaning you can try to run for cover only to hug a wall and slowly sneak along it while being shot to death, I can't tell how often that exact thing happened and it was more frustrating every time.
The game looks great though, with super high detail all over the place and I like the humor sometimes and the dialog system where you can answer questions and give orders etc. is a nice addition that adds some depth to the gameplay, it's just too bad it doesn't work as well as it should as for example sarcasm is unthinkable unless the game decides it is, I had several occasions where the character would answer the opposite of what I wanted because the question was asked in such a way that the answers I had to pick from weren't clearly defined enough what the actual answer dialog would be, you'd have options like Yes and No and then the answer was a full sentence that may be deliver with sarcasm making the answer inverted and pissing off the comrade making them dislike me instead of having increased trust in me. Speaking of which, there's a trust system in the game where your teammates will either trust you or not depending on your dialog answers and how you perform in battle, and the less they trust you the more disobedient they'll be in battle, not listening to your orders or helping you when you need to be revived and such. Good concept but the less than optimal execution made it less than it should've been.
I want the Xbox 360 version because on Xbox 360 I have a microphone headset I can use for the voice commands the game has, it's basically an alternate way to answer the questions in game. I doubt it works very well but I still want to try it out some day and because I have no bluetooth headset for PS3 I can't do it in this version.
Friday, September 16, 2016
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Gaming Purchases - September 2016
September 6th:
A trip to the local GameStop the day after my birthday resulted in some nice finds.
Xbox 360:
Fuse
I've had this on PS3 for ages but haven't even taken off the plastic wrapping of it's case yet. I'll probably end up playing this version first now as the PS3 game is tucked away somewhere in a box full of other PS3 games I got but never played as PS3 just isn't a very good console despite having all the potential in the world to outclass and outperform Xbox 360 in every conceivable way, if only Sony didn't work so hard to ruin it it could've been the only console you needed, instead they gave away the entire market to Microsoft and kept doing so until Microsoft screwed up so badly with their brand that PS4 was the only thing left to buy unless you want to go back a generation or two and pay for overpriced Nintendo garbage, and I think the sales for Wii and Wii U in later years have shown just how willing the market is to do just that.
Shadows of the Damned
I've been meaning to pick this up for a long time but it just never happened until now. Better late than never.
The Bureau XCOM Declassified
I'm not a fan of the XCOM series, I've played an older MS-DOS game in the series called UFO and it was alright if a bit boring and visually uninteresting and every newer game in the series I've tried has just been the same thing with better visuals and presentation, still too boring though. This seems to be a spinoff that set out to fix most if not all the issues I have with the series so if done right I may like it as I'm a fan of the setting in the games just not the execution.
Transformers Dark of the Moon
I recently got hold of the Wii version of this game, it didn't have robots, just vehicles, it was motion control only and the visuals were really weak, so this will probably be a lot better having robots, nice visuals and proper controls.
The Wii version came with a toy car though, this version does not, still I think this version has the Wii version beat in every other way and because I already have the Wii version and the toy car that came with it I really have nothing to complain about! Except of course how shitty these new Transformers movies are and how the series is dead to me because of them and all that, but hey, at least the games based on these new shitty movies are endlessly better than that Devastation garbage Platinum games regurgitated onto the market not long ago, fucking worthless PS2 budget bargain bin level crap.
PlayStation 3:
Binary Domain
I've played the demo on Xbox 360 and thought it was okay, I don't know how i'll be able to use the voice features in this game on a PS3 as I don't have a PS3 compatible headset with mic but I guess I can always buy the XBox 360 version to try that out some other day. For now the PS3 version was so much cheaper than the Xbox 360 version it even made up for all the shortcomings PS3 games have by default. Make no mistake though I'm buying this for Xbox 360 as soon as I find a cheap enough copy out there.
BioShock Infinite
I've heard a lot about this game so I was very reluctant at buying it, but because I got it for free this time I felt it was acceptable to at least give it a try. It froze after only a few minutes of gameplay and the overly convoluted story at the start of the game made it an extremely bad first impression, but I rebooted, installed an update for the game and replayed to the point I was and kept going, it hasn't frozen again yet and the story has become a bit more focused and less all over the place, it's still glitchy as fuck with enemies losing track of you when you're right infront of them and Elizabeth getting stuck because her AI is retarded and broken but at least it's playable and I like the variety of things you can do even if I would've strongly preferred being able to carry more than two weapons at a time. Seriously, this is a massively retarded limitation and needs to fucking stop being allowed to exist in videogames.
Brink Special Edition
I got this as cheap as is physically possible without getting it for free, so even if it sucks that's kind of okay. Actually I've looked it up and know it pretty much sucks as there aren't even female characters to play as in a game that prides itself on having customization options for the playable character.
[sarcasm]Yeah, really impressive having a whole one single character type to pick from, excuse me while I sit down as the sheer amount of options is making me lightheaded.[/sarcasm]
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes
I've played this on Xbox 360 and though it was so so, only one small area but at least you get a lot to do in that small area so it's okay, I guess, for the right price. The PS3 version was the cheaper of the two, otherwise I would've gotten the Xbox 360 version where I have my save file, obviously. I'll pick up the Xbox 360 version as soon as I can get it as cheap as I got this one.
Midway Arcade Origins
I don't know much about this. It was cheap and contains a small collection of really old arcade games.
Not exactly making use of the Blu-ray format as I imagine the disc space used for these old games can't possibly even reach double digit megabytes let alone the double digit gigabytes the disc they're on has to offer.
Saint Seiya Soldiers' Soul
I was really looking forward to this game but turns out I can't play it unless I take my PS3 online and downgrade to a newer official firmware, I'd rather just take a screwdriver and force it straight through the console than do a thing like that as the last time I did I permanently lost PS2 emulation, my Linux installed OtherOS and all my respect and trust to Sony as a company.
SuperCar Challenge
This is the first game on PS3 that when I've tried to play custom music in it it actually allowed me to do so, making this the first game on PS3 that actually takes that fundamental step in the right direction of being almost as good as all Xbox 360 games are by default as even the very worst games on Xbox 360 still all allowed me to play custom music without any objections, unlike all PS3 games I've tried doing so with until this one broke that trend, now if only there was a way to make PS3 not limit all games to PAL50 on an SDTV and to allow me to install games to the harddrive, then I wouldn't even need an Xbox 360 except for all the awesome exclusives PS3 never got and all the countless multiplats that run like ass on PS3 but run silky smooth and with a lot better anti-aliasing on Xbox 360.
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September 13th:
Today's second hand finds include but are not limited to..
PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3:
Buzz! USB Buzzers
Wii:
GoldenEye 007
CD:
Dr. Bombay - Rice & Curry
DVD:
Dennis The Menace Volume 4
Happy Tree Friends Volume 1 First Blood
Ice Age 4 Continental Drift
Figures:
2x Princess Peach (from Super Mario) with.. wait for it.. an umbrella! ACTION FEATURE IN YO FACE SUCKA BOOM SHAKALAKA RAMA LLAMA DING DONG BLAM!!!!
Yoshi (from Super Mario) with egg laying action feature (it's weirder than it sounds as after the eggs have been hatched from this big cum colored lump Yoshi's sitting on you twist a wheel and THEY GO BACK IN!)
Other:
Vinyl Records
POGs
a giant oversized novelty pencil
more figures (examples: Smurfette, Minions, Snoopy characters and Bloom from WinX Club)
other random stuff (examples: an old McDonald's Angelica Pickles in racing kart toy from 1998 and My Little Pony face masks of Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Rainbow Dash)
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September 27th:
Today's second hand finds include but are not limited to..
DVD:
The 3 Wise Men
WinX Club 3 Vol. 3
WinX Club 3 Vol. 5
A trip to the local GameStop the day after my birthday resulted in some nice finds.
Xbox 360:
Fuse
I've had this on PS3 for ages but haven't even taken off the plastic wrapping of it's case yet. I'll probably end up playing this version first now as the PS3 game is tucked away somewhere in a box full of other PS3 games I got but never played as PS3 just isn't a very good console despite having all the potential in the world to outclass and outperform Xbox 360 in every conceivable way, if only Sony didn't work so hard to ruin it it could've been the only console you needed, instead they gave away the entire market to Microsoft and kept doing so until Microsoft screwed up so badly with their brand that PS4 was the only thing left to buy unless you want to go back a generation or two and pay for overpriced Nintendo garbage, and I think the sales for Wii and Wii U in later years have shown just how willing the market is to do just that.
Shadows of the Damned
I've been meaning to pick this up for a long time but it just never happened until now. Better late than never.
The Bureau XCOM Declassified
I'm not a fan of the XCOM series, I've played an older MS-DOS game in the series called UFO and it was alright if a bit boring and visually uninteresting and every newer game in the series I've tried has just been the same thing with better visuals and presentation, still too boring though. This seems to be a spinoff that set out to fix most if not all the issues I have with the series so if done right I may like it as I'm a fan of the setting in the games just not the execution.
Transformers Dark of the Moon
I recently got hold of the Wii version of this game, it didn't have robots, just vehicles, it was motion control only and the visuals were really weak, so this will probably be a lot better having robots, nice visuals and proper controls.
The Wii version came with a toy car though, this version does not, still I think this version has the Wii version beat in every other way and because I already have the Wii version and the toy car that came with it I really have nothing to complain about! Except of course how shitty these new Transformers movies are and how the series is dead to me because of them and all that, but hey, at least the games based on these new shitty movies are endlessly better than that Devastation garbage Platinum games regurgitated onto the market not long ago, fucking worthless PS2 budget bargain bin level crap.
PlayStation 3:
Binary Domain
I've played the demo on Xbox 360 and thought it was okay, I don't know how i'll be able to use the voice features in this game on a PS3 as I don't have a PS3 compatible headset with mic but I guess I can always buy the XBox 360 version to try that out some other day. For now the PS3 version was so much cheaper than the Xbox 360 version it even made up for all the shortcomings PS3 games have by default. Make no mistake though I'm buying this for Xbox 360 as soon as I find a cheap enough copy out there.
BioShock Infinite
I've heard a lot about this game so I was very reluctant at buying it, but because I got it for free this time I felt it was acceptable to at least give it a try. It froze after only a few minutes of gameplay and the overly convoluted story at the start of the game made it an extremely bad first impression, but I rebooted, installed an update for the game and replayed to the point I was and kept going, it hasn't frozen again yet and the story has become a bit more focused and less all over the place, it's still glitchy as fuck with enemies losing track of you when you're right infront of them and Elizabeth getting stuck because her AI is retarded and broken but at least it's playable and I like the variety of things you can do even if I would've strongly preferred being able to carry more than two weapons at a time. Seriously, this is a massively retarded limitation and needs to fucking stop being allowed to exist in videogames.
Brink Special Edition
I got this as cheap as is physically possible without getting it for free, so even if it sucks that's kind of okay. Actually I've looked it up and know it pretty much sucks as there aren't even female characters to play as in a game that prides itself on having customization options for the playable character.
[sarcasm]Yeah, really impressive having a whole one single character type to pick from, excuse me while I sit down as the sheer amount of options is making me lightheaded.[/sarcasm]
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes
I've played this on Xbox 360 and though it was so so, only one small area but at least you get a lot to do in that small area so it's okay, I guess, for the right price. The PS3 version was the cheaper of the two, otherwise I would've gotten the Xbox 360 version where I have my save file, obviously. I'll pick up the Xbox 360 version as soon as I can get it as cheap as I got this one.
Midway Arcade Origins
I don't know much about this. It was cheap and contains a small collection of really old arcade games.
Not exactly making use of the Blu-ray format as I imagine the disc space used for these old games can't possibly even reach double digit megabytes let alone the double digit gigabytes the disc they're on has to offer.
Saint Seiya Soldiers' Soul
I was really looking forward to this game but turns out I can't play it unless I take my PS3 online and downgrade to a newer official firmware, I'd rather just take a screwdriver and force it straight through the console than do a thing like that as the last time I did I permanently lost PS2 emulation, my Linux installed OtherOS and all my respect and trust to Sony as a company.
SuperCar Challenge
This is the first game on PS3 that when I've tried to play custom music in it it actually allowed me to do so, making this the first game on PS3 that actually takes that fundamental step in the right direction of being almost as good as all Xbox 360 games are by default as even the very worst games on Xbox 360 still all allowed me to play custom music without any objections, unlike all PS3 games I've tried doing so with until this one broke that trend, now if only there was a way to make PS3 not limit all games to PAL50 on an SDTV and to allow me to install games to the harddrive, then I wouldn't even need an Xbox 360 except for all the awesome exclusives PS3 never got and all the countless multiplats that run like ass on PS3 but run silky smooth and with a lot better anti-aliasing on Xbox 360.
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September 13th:
Today's second hand finds include but are not limited to..
PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3:
Buzz! USB Buzzers
Wii:
GoldenEye 007
CD:
Dr. Bombay - Rice & Curry
DVD:
Dennis The Menace Volume 4
Happy Tree Friends Volume 1 First Blood
Ice Age 4 Continental Drift
Figures:
2x Princess Peach (from Super Mario) with.. wait for it.. an umbrella! ACTION FEATURE IN YO FACE SUCKA BOOM SHAKALAKA RAMA LLAMA DING DONG BLAM!!!!
Yoshi (from Super Mario) with egg laying action feature (it's weirder than it sounds as after the eggs have been hatched from this big cum colored lump Yoshi's sitting on you twist a wheel and THEY GO BACK IN!)
Other:
Vinyl Records
POGs
a giant oversized novelty pencil
more figures (examples: Smurfette, Minions, Snoopy characters and Bloom from WinX Club)
other random stuff (examples: an old McDonald's Angelica Pickles in racing kart toy from 1998 and My Little Pony face masks of Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Rainbow Dash)
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September 27th:
Today's second hand finds include but are not limited to..
DVD:
The 3 Wise Men
WinX Club 3 Vol. 3
WinX Club 3 Vol. 5
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