May 5th:
Went to a Retro Game Convention in Gothenburg with some friends and bought some neat stuff. I bought one cartridge of Space Battle for Intellivision, but then later found a cheaper one with the overlays and manual laying in a big box of random stuff, so I bought that copy too! There were no refunds, so yeah, simple as that. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
IntelliVision:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (cartridge only)
Tron Deadly Discs (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge, two controller overlays and manual)
Star Strike (cartridge only)
Mega Drive:
Abrams Battle Tank (cartridge only)
MIG-29 Fighter Pilot (cartridge only)
32X:
Cosmic Carnage (cartridge only)
DS:
Asphalt Urban GT (no instruction manual)
Collectibles:
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version with keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version without keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Vitzh 1st-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Quasar 3rd-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Other:
Virtua Racing (Mega Drive) rental case
Tomb Raider (Saturn) instruction manual
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May 12th:
One of my friends who was with me to the Retro Game Convention a week ago had bought a game he didn't like, so he gave it to me.
Mega Drive:
688 Attack Sub (cartridge only)
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May 14th:
A trip to the local GameStop resulted in some nice finds today. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
Hardware:
AtGames SEGA Mega Drive Plug N Play with 81 built-in games, cartridge slot, power adapter, stereo composite AV-cables and two 6-button controllers (new and complete in box)
PlayStation 3:
Battleship
BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend
Dead Rising 2
EyeCreate
Far Cry 3
God of War Ascension
Valkyria Chronicles
PlayStation Vita:
Dynasty Warriors Next (no instruction manual)
Xbox 360:
BlazBlue Continuum Shift - Limited Edition (no instruction manual)
Dead Island Riptide - Special Edition
F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin
Grand Theft Auto V Five (no instruction manual)
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Prey
Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008
Star Wars The Clone Wars Republic Heroes
Collectibles:
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Cars 2 - Holley Shiftwell (figure only)
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Star Wars - Ahsoka Tano (figure only)
Skylanders Imaginators - Golden Queen (figure only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Hot Streak (vehicle only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Jet Stream (vehicle only)
Skylanders Swap Force - Ninja Stealth Elf (figure only)
Totaku WipEout Feisar FX350 (new and sealed)
Totaku WipEout AG-SYS (new and sealed)
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May 17th:
Took a long walk today and bought some stuff along the way.
Collectibles:
3x Marvel Avengers Black Widow Hasbro action figure (2016, new and sealed)
DVD:
Dumb and Dumber Unrated (1994, new and sealed)
Bluray:
Monster High Clawesome Double Feature (2014, Monster High Fright On! (2011), Monster High Escape from Skull Shores (2012), new and sealed)
Penguins of Madagascar (2014, new and sealed)
Robocop (2013, new and sealed)
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May 22nd:
Ordered some games online during a 20th anniversary sale that Discshop.se was having. Got every game for only 20kr each, all new and sealed.
UPDATE: the order arrived and I went and picked it up the next day, May 23rd
PlayStation 3:
Battlefield 4
Borderlands 2 - The Premiere Club Edition
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
Rage - Anarchy Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Xbox 360:
Battlefield 4
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Showing posts with label playstation 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playstation 3. Show all posts
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Friday, February 1, 2019
Now Playing - Februari 2019
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game, it's a good game even if it's a bit small. The problems are frustrating at times but the fun you can have make up for them enough.
played some demos that were already on the PS3 Slim I bought, the two I tried out were Eufloria and Urban Trial Freestyle, both were good
Killzone HD (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game. Still my favorite in the series, though Mercenary on Vita is really fantastic too and I will play that again soon as well.
Shadow Fall on PS4 is another great one but I don't have a PS4 to play it on right now.
Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3)
trying it out, it's a LOT glitchier than I remember, but the extreme amount of invisible walls all over the place keeping you from exploring even a tiny amount are just as plentiful and claustrophobic as I remember, also I had forgotten you could carry less weapons than in the original Killzone, you can hold literally just one single weapon of choice, beise that you have a permagun with infinite ammo and grenades, if you want ANY other weapon than the one you already picked up you're gonna have to swap that one for the new one no matter how much you don't wanna drag that infinite pea shooting pistol around, no exceptions, ever, it sucks! This was a very big drop down from the quality of the original game on PS2, the only real upgrades are minor visual things like the polygonal detail, some special effects like bump maps and lens flares etc., higher screen resolution, bigger color depth and better framerates, but textures are actually much lower res than were in the original on PS2, so it's not all better (it fucking should be!).
Also the ability to play as different characters by choice (after they were unlocked) is gone as well, this really sucks as I loved being able to replay levels as the different characters to see what different paths they took and what they got to do when I was doing my thing elsewhere last time.
EyeCreate (PlayStation 3)
recorded some silly things
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
started a new game
Superstars Racing V8 (PlayStation 3)
SuperCar Challenge (PlayStation 3)
BAJA Edge of Control (PlayStation 3)
Columns (Master System)
Columns (Game Gear)
Columns (Mega Drive)
Total Carnage (Midway Arcade Origins, PlayStation 3)
played through it, got bad ending, not a great game to be honest, unbalanced and focused far too much to steal your money by artificially making it frustrating and unfairly hard, doesn't flow well at all, extremely repetitive, stiff and slow controls, it has some good visuals but that's about it
Loaded (PlayStation)
Tomb Raider Legend (Tomb Raider Trilogy, PlayStation 3)
Finally got to playing this and so far it's not very good, some visual problems with the new lighting and shadows engine are very apparent and don't look good at all and there have been some odd control glitches where stuff happens without me pressing anything, grandes have been tossed and weapon changes have happened mid combat when all I was doing was moving in a single direction and shooting with default guns normally, no other buttons being pressed, very annoying. It also seems to have missed some of the treasures I know for a fact I picked up, I had to replay Lara's Mansion 5 times already to pick up the same damn treasure it kept ignoring when I picked it up.
I'll see it through to the end though as I know this game very well having played through most versions of it over the years. Not a good start though, not good at all, so far it's the worst port of this version of the game I've played, not counting the GBA or DS versions as they are not ports of this version but entirely different games made from the ground up for both those systems respectively.
Started a new game, it's a good game even if it's a bit small. The problems are frustrating at times but the fun you can have make up for them enough.
played some demos that were already on the PS3 Slim I bought, the two I tried out were Eufloria and Urban Trial Freestyle, both were good
Killzone HD (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game. Still my favorite in the series, though Mercenary on Vita is really fantastic too and I will play that again soon as well.
Shadow Fall on PS4 is another great one but I don't have a PS4 to play it on right now.
Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3)
trying it out, it's a LOT glitchier than I remember, but the extreme amount of invisible walls all over the place keeping you from exploring even a tiny amount are just as plentiful and claustrophobic as I remember, also I had forgotten you could carry less weapons than in the original Killzone, you can hold literally just one single weapon of choice, beise that you have a permagun with infinite ammo and grenades, if you want ANY other weapon than the one you already picked up you're gonna have to swap that one for the new one no matter how much you don't wanna drag that infinite pea shooting pistol around, no exceptions, ever, it sucks! This was a very big drop down from the quality of the original game on PS2, the only real upgrades are minor visual things like the polygonal detail, some special effects like bump maps and lens flares etc., higher screen resolution, bigger color depth and better framerates, but textures are actually much lower res than were in the original on PS2, so it's not all better (it fucking should be!).
Also the ability to play as different characters by choice (after they were unlocked) is gone as well, this really sucks as I loved being able to replay levels as the different characters to see what different paths they took and what they got to do when I was doing my thing elsewhere last time.
EyeCreate (PlayStation 3)
recorded some silly things
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
started a new game
Superstars Racing V8 (PlayStation 3)
SuperCar Challenge (PlayStation 3)
BAJA Edge of Control (PlayStation 3)
Columns (Master System)
Columns (Game Gear)
Columns (Mega Drive)
Total Carnage (Midway Arcade Origins, PlayStation 3)
played through it, got bad ending, not a great game to be honest, unbalanced and focused far too much to steal your money by artificially making it frustrating and unfairly hard, doesn't flow well at all, extremely repetitive, stiff and slow controls, it has some good visuals but that's about it
Loaded (PlayStation)
Tomb Raider Legend (Tomb Raider Trilogy, PlayStation 3)
Finally got to playing this and so far it's not very good, some visual problems with the new lighting and shadows engine are very apparent and don't look good at all and there have been some odd control glitches where stuff happens without me pressing anything, grandes have been tossed and weapon changes have happened mid combat when all I was doing was moving in a single direction and shooting with default guns normally, no other buttons being pressed, very annoying. It also seems to have missed some of the treasures I know for a fact I picked up, I had to replay Lara's Mansion 5 times already to pick up the same damn treasure it kept ignoring when I picked it up.
I'll see it through to the end though as I know this game very well having played through most versions of it over the years. Not a good start though, not good at all, so far it's the worst port of this version of the game I've played, not counting the GBA or DS versions as they are not ports of this version but entirely different games made from the ground up for both those systems respectively.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Gaming Purchases - Juni 2017
Juni 27th:
I went and got myself a 3DS at the local GameStop today, complete in original box with charger and a 4GB SD card, also got some games.
DS:
Star Wars Lethal Alliance
3DS:
3DS Aqua Blue
3DS Charger
4GB SD Card
PlayStation 3:
Beijing 2008
Xbox 360:
Gears of War
Gears of War Judgement
Halo Reach
Zone of the Enders HD Collection
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Juni 29th:
I placed an order for a whole bunch of stuff but I'll add it to next month's post as none of it will arrive until early next month anyway.
I went and got myself a 3DS at the local GameStop today, complete in original box with charger and a 4GB SD card, also got some games.
DS:
Star Wars Lethal Alliance
3DS:
3DS Aqua Blue
3DS Charger
4GB SD Card
PlayStation 3:
Beijing 2008
Xbox 360:
Gears of War
Gears of War Judgement
Halo Reach
Zone of the Enders HD Collection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juni 29th:
I placed an order for a whole bunch of stuff but I'll add it to next month's post as none of it will arrive until early next month anyway.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Gaming Purchases - April 2017
April 8th:
Went to the local GameStop and got a couple of more Vita games alongside some other gems and a bunch of cheap PS3 games I'm going to use the cases to replace broken ones I have, also a DS game to use the case for one of my GBA cartridges that lacks the original box, haven't decided which one yet.
DS:
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (no manual)
PlayStation Vita:
One Piece: Unlimited World Red (new, factory sealed)
The Muppets Movie Adventure (new, factory sealed)
PlayStation 3:
Alone in the Dark: Inferno
FIFA 12
FIFA 12
FIFA 12
NFL 11 (no manual)
NFL 11 (no manual)
Xbox 360:
NeverDead
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena + Escape from Butcher Bay Remastered
Also got some Orbeez from BR Toys.
April 27th:
I ordered some games online but they won't be arriving until May so I'll write about them when they arrive.
Went to the local GameStop and got a couple of more Vita games alongside some other gems and a bunch of cheap PS3 games I'm going to use the cases to replace broken ones I have, also a DS game to use the case for one of my GBA cartridges that lacks the original box, haven't decided which one yet.
DS:
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (no manual)
PlayStation Vita:
One Piece: Unlimited World Red (new, factory sealed)
The Muppets Movie Adventure (new, factory sealed)
PlayStation 3:
Alone in the Dark: Inferno
FIFA 12
FIFA 12
FIFA 12
NFL 11 (no manual)
NFL 11 (no manual)
Xbox 360:
NeverDead
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena + Escape from Butcher Bay Remastered
Also got some Orbeez from BR Toys.
April 27th:
I ordered some games online but they won't be arriving until May so I'll write about them when they arrive.
Now Playing - April 2017
Continuing with Sly Cooper Thieves in Time on Vita and PS3 while also testing some other new games.
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation Vita)
Nearing the end now, on the final episode.
UPDATE: 10th April around 23:00 I completed the Vita version.
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
Catching up, only slightly behind where I am on Vita.
UPDATE: 12 April I completed the PS3 version.
NeverDead (Xbox 360)
I've heard bad things about this game but I'm having fun with it so far. It can get a bit choppy when there are lots of enemies spawning and a lot of environmental destruction is going on and the physics and controls with the main character's body dismemberment can be a bit unresponsive and bouncy, but the action is great. The rest is good too, I don't have any big complains yet. At least as far as the beginning of the game goes it seems to be a bit of an underrated hidden gem.
Earth Defense Forces 2 Portable (PlayStation Portable)
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this on a daily basis doing the daily challenge and some additional free play of the minigames. It's a mixed bag in just about every way. Some minigames are challenging, others are not, some are forgiving, others are not, some control as they should, others do not, some are well designed, others aren't, some of the rules are fair and make sense, others don't, some use the Vita's different features well, others don't, some are unplayable augmented reality games because they require AR cards that don't come with the game, other AG games work fine without them, and so on.. I enjoy it for the good parts but the bad parts constantly make it a lesser experience than it should be.
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Just reminding myself of all the reason why this game sucks.
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation Vita)
Nearing the end now, on the final episode.
UPDATE: 10th April around 23:00 I completed the Vita version.
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
Catching up, only slightly behind where I am on Vita.
UPDATE: 12 April I completed the PS3 version.
NeverDead (Xbox 360)
I've heard bad things about this game but I'm having fun with it so far. It can get a bit choppy when there are lots of enemies spawning and a lot of environmental destruction is going on and the physics and controls with the main character's body dismemberment can be a bit unresponsive and bouncy, but the action is great. The rest is good too, I don't have any big complains yet. At least as far as the beginning of the game goes it seems to be a bit of an underrated hidden gem.
Earth Defense Forces 2 Portable (PlayStation Portable)
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this on a daily basis doing the daily challenge and some additional free play of the minigames. It's a mixed bag in just about every way. Some minigames are challenging, others are not, some are forgiving, others are not, some control as they should, others do not, some are well designed, others aren't, some of the rules are fair and make sense, others don't, some use the Vita's different features well, others don't, some are unplayable augmented reality games because they require AR cards that don't come with the game, other AG games work fine without them, and so on.. I enjoy it for the good parts but the bad parts constantly make it a lesser experience than it should be.
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Just reminding myself of all the reason why this game sucks.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Gaming Purchases - Mars 2017
Mars 14th:
Finally found what I've been looking for, kind of, it's the wrong firmware to be useful for anything but playing physical games but I'll take what I can get at this point.
PlayStation 3:
EyeCreate
PlayStation Vita:
original OLED Sony PlayStation Vita PCH-1104 3G OFW 3.63
official Sony PlayStation Vita 32GB memorycard
Lego:
Nexo Knights Ultimate Lavara
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Mars 15th:
I went back to the local GameStop where I got the Vita yesterday to buy some games for it today, I picked up all I could find that were of reasonable price and seemed interesting enough, I have to say they were all great.
PlayStation Vita:
Deception IV Blood Ties
Killzone Mercenary
Reality Fighters
Smart As...
Spy Hunter
Tearaway
I love how the Vita has a screenshot feature!
Finally found what I've been looking for, kind of, it's the wrong firmware to be useful for anything but playing physical games but I'll take what I can get at this point.
PlayStation 3:
EyeCreate
PlayStation Vita:
original OLED Sony PlayStation Vita PCH-1104 3G OFW 3.63
official Sony PlayStation Vita 32GB memorycard
Lego:
Nexo Knights Ultimate Lavara
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Mars 15th:
I went back to the local GameStop where I got the Vita yesterday to buy some games for it today, I picked up all I could find that were of reasonable price and seemed interesting enough, I have to say they were all great.
PlayStation Vita:
Deception IV Blood Ties
Killzone Mercenary
Reality Fighters
Smart As...
Spy Hunter
Tearaway
I love how the Vita has a screenshot feature!
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Gaming Purchases - Oktober 2016
Oktober 4th:
Today's second-hand finds.
CD:
Tintin - Prisoners of the Sun
DVD:
Monster High - Ghouls Rule (UPDATE: I enjoyed this movie, even watched it twice, once in original english and then also the dubbed version, I'd say both were fairly equal in quality, some voices were better in original english while others were improved in the dub)
Other:
LEGO, one smaller non-LEGO plastic container containing a smaller Star Wars set with a laser cannon, a couple of droids and the instruction manual (the two clone troopers and some other minor parts were missing) and the other being a larger LEGO bucket containing more basic bricks and other various random mixture of pieces
A fairly large figure of a fat pig woman wearing a bikini while cooking and cleaning
I also ordered some games online that should arrive in a couple of days (UPDATE: They arrived on the 6th as predicted).
PlayStation Portable:
Need for Speed Underground Rivals (UPDATE: not the original release as the store suggested but the ugly PSP Essentials version, sadly)
PlayStation 3:
Armored Core V (already own this on Xbox 360 but I always try to get as many different versions of games as possible when found cheap enough)
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Star Wars Starter Pack (UPDATE: can't play it because it requires a firmware update that I am not willing to ruin my PS3 with any further, it's bad enough as it is already thanks to Sony, it doesn't need to be a lot worse)
Xbox 360:
MorphX (already own this, decided to get this second copy as a backup because it was cheap enough)
SoulCalibur IV (UPDATE: not the original release as the site suggested but the ugly Classics version, sadly, also this game sucked for more reasons than I feel like listing right now, but an almost complete lack of story more and locked away fundamental content you have to pay extra for that for example the vastly superior SoulCalibur III on PS2 had in it are a couple of top reasons why this was so awful, also the controls are a lot more sluggish and unresponsive and the animations more jerky and don't transition anywhere near as well as they did in previous instalments, and it's technically ugly too, every SoulCalibur before this looked more visually impressive, I'd say even Soul Blade on PlayStation was better looking, at least from a design point of view and how well it managed to push the hardware it was on because it still holds up well today and it a lot more fun than this game is, also Yoda fucking sucks and the whole Star Wars thing in this game is a fucking joke that should never have been told, this is worse than SoulCalibur II's stupid bonus characters bullshit with the more shallow than a cardboard cutout lack-of-character Link from The Legend of Zelda for the GameCube version, the painfully unfitting and forced inclusion of one of Tekken's worst characters Heihachi Mishima for the PS2 version and a very lacking rendition of a less than optimal version of the otherwise badass comic book character Spawn for the Xbox version, no really, there's a medieval Spawn they could've used that would've fit the game perfectly and been a fucking blast to play as, such a waste, still it was a better game in all respects than this disappointing turd)
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Oktober 16th:
Today I bought a whole bunch of HotWheels and a DVD.
DVD:
The Swan Princess Christmas
HotWheels:
Batman - The Dark Knight - Batmobile
Batman - Batman Arkham Knight - Batmobile
Batman - The Bat
HW City Works - Time Attaxi
HW Daredevils - Cruise Bruiser
HW Exotics - Lotus Esprit S1
HW Screen Time - Back to the Future - Time Machine - Hover Mode
HW Speed Graphics - Ford GT
Muscle Mania - Camaro Z28
Sky Show - Cloud Cutter
Sky Show - Jet Threat 4.0
Street Beasts - Bad Ratitude
Street Beasts - Vampyra
Super Chromes - Two Timer
Then and Now - '90 Acura NSX
Today's second-hand finds.
CD:
Tintin - Prisoners of the Sun
DVD:
Monster High - Ghouls Rule (UPDATE: I enjoyed this movie, even watched it twice, once in original english and then also the dubbed version, I'd say both were fairly equal in quality, some voices were better in original english while others were improved in the dub)
Other:
LEGO, one smaller non-LEGO plastic container containing a smaller Star Wars set with a laser cannon, a couple of droids and the instruction manual (the two clone troopers and some other minor parts were missing) and the other being a larger LEGO bucket containing more basic bricks and other various random mixture of pieces
A fairly large figure of a fat pig woman wearing a bikini while cooking and cleaning
I also ordered some games online that should arrive in a couple of days (UPDATE: They arrived on the 6th as predicted).
PlayStation Portable:
Need for Speed Underground Rivals (UPDATE: not the original release as the store suggested but the ugly PSP Essentials version, sadly)
PlayStation 3:
Armored Core V (already own this on Xbox 360 but I always try to get as many different versions of games as possible when found cheap enough)
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Star Wars Starter Pack (UPDATE: can't play it because it requires a firmware update that I am not willing to ruin my PS3 with any further, it's bad enough as it is already thanks to Sony, it doesn't need to be a lot worse)
Xbox 360:
MorphX (already own this, decided to get this second copy as a backup because it was cheap enough)
SoulCalibur IV (UPDATE: not the original release as the site suggested but the ugly Classics version, sadly, also this game sucked for more reasons than I feel like listing right now, but an almost complete lack of story more and locked away fundamental content you have to pay extra for that for example the vastly superior SoulCalibur III on PS2 had in it are a couple of top reasons why this was so awful, also the controls are a lot more sluggish and unresponsive and the animations more jerky and don't transition anywhere near as well as they did in previous instalments, and it's technically ugly too, every SoulCalibur before this looked more visually impressive, I'd say even Soul Blade on PlayStation was better looking, at least from a design point of view and how well it managed to push the hardware it was on because it still holds up well today and it a lot more fun than this game is, also Yoda fucking sucks and the whole Star Wars thing in this game is a fucking joke that should never have been told, this is worse than SoulCalibur II's stupid bonus characters bullshit with the more shallow than a cardboard cutout lack-of-character Link from The Legend of Zelda for the GameCube version, the painfully unfitting and forced inclusion of one of Tekken's worst characters Heihachi Mishima for the PS2 version and a very lacking rendition of a less than optimal version of the otherwise badass comic book character Spawn for the Xbox version, no really, there's a medieval Spawn they could've used that would've fit the game perfectly and been a fucking blast to play as, such a waste, still it was a better game in all respects than this disappointing turd)
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Oktober 16th:
Today I bought a whole bunch of HotWheels and a DVD.
DVD:
The Swan Princess Christmas
HotWheels:
Batman - The Dark Knight - Batmobile
Batman - Batman Arkham Knight - Batmobile
Batman - The Bat
HW City Works - Time Attaxi
HW Daredevils - Cruise Bruiser
HW Exotics - Lotus Esprit S1
HW Screen Time - Back to the Future - Time Machine - Hover Mode
HW Speed Graphics - Ford GT
Muscle Mania - Camaro Z28
Sky Show - Cloud Cutter
Sky Show - Jet Threat 4.0
Street Beasts - Bad Ratitude
Street Beasts - Vampyra
Super Chromes - Two Timer
Then and Now - '90 Acura NSX
Friday, September 16, 2016
Now Playing - September 2016
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.
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.
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
Sunday, November 15, 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
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.
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.
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