Just ordered a couple imports:



Won't see 'em until the end of the month, but still, pretty excited about both.

Oh, I finally went back to SMG and finished the 120 stars.

Andy, how is Uncharted?

I'm about two hours from completion; technically, it's a very solid game -- entertaining, action-packed, and undoubtedly stunning (aside from screen tearing issues). But I've not been compelled to play for more than 30 minutes at a time, because the action is very routine; the pop and shoot gameplay gets fairly tiring. That said, some people are really loving it (average review score seems to be 89), so if you have a PlayStation 3, it's probably worth giving it a shot. It won't make my top ten this year, but it's pretty good.

Alright. I'm picking it up. I love adventure gaming in the tradition of the great Indian Jones PC games and the early Tomb Raiders.

Word was Uncharted was an Assassin's Creed in the jungle. Not so happy with AC, so thought I'd ask a PS3 owner.

Thanks bro.

This is crazy.



http://www.amazon.com/Shin-Megami-Tensei-P...3/dp/B000FPM4WC

This came out in August. I can buy a used copy of this game right now for $79. Yesterday, the cheapest I could get a used copy for this game for was $67. Earlier in the week it was around $40. I don't know what the hell happened, but there were still some people selling this game brand new for $50 on half.com, so I snagged a copy. I just hope the seller on half.com doesn't realize what's happening with the value of this game right now and cancel the transaction. There's a rumor that its expansion pack (Persona 3.5, I guess) is heading our way, but if that never happens I can't imagine how much the game will cost me then. If it does, then oh well. I'll just sell my copy right away.

The Persona games are hella underrated. Kinda disappointed in the execution of the Daywatch/Nightwatch games that emulated the Persona series style. Don't even get me started on Escape From Paradise City. What a piece of shit.

Nah, the equation that defines the game is most definitely: Tomb Raider + Gears of War x PRETTY = Uncharted

I beat Seiken Densetsu 3 last night, I felt my party sort of lacked because I didn't have a healer and thus made a few bosses give me a rough time because one can only hold so many honey drinks. In the end I haven't played Mana in awhile, but I remember it being a bit better, the story is so lacking and i didn't like my party, though i suppose that was my own fault.

Duran, Kevin, and Angela pretty much rocked any casual encounter within a couple seconds though, near the end i'd just hold down frame skip and mash the A button and somehow everything would die.

I've always wanted to play a Persona game, but it's one of those things I've just never managed to get around to, maybe someday.

Persona 3 Rocked my face. I put in about 103 hours on it and I haven't even thought about logging that kind of game time in a good long while. Excellent story and art (abstract anime sits well with me. Finally they're being inventive) and challenging game play. Plus, the persona creation system is enjoyable and it makes you feel like king shit when you can exploit it to create some unnatural abomination with freakish stats and attacks (One of my final guys was a Lucifer with all his stats in the 90's. That was just one of my final heavy hitters though.) Also, it has a New Game + system which anyone who played Chrono Trigger can tell you is great.

I'm gonna loan you Mass Effect over break and I'll let you take on Persona 3 too if I decide not to do a new game + run right away.

i started a game in shin megami tyson or whatever for snes and it was like doom and i named my main character NIGGER and stopped playing

i was bored this afternoon and played through it, I like this one a lot, but disagree with people who say it's his finest hour, the level design is a bit too disorganized for me, and as great of quality as the music is, Sonic 2 still has it beat. Better than the first one by a long shot though.

I had a dream I was playing pokemon red, this means I should dig it out. I never did catch 'em all. Anyone got a link cable and a copy of blue? sausage, I'm looking at you.

Got some early xmas credits from the ma dukes, so I picked up Mass Effect. Now I can watch some alien lesbians, and indimidate peons. Thanks Ma.

Some of these alien races are craaay. So far so so good.

Finally finished Uncharted tonight. Man, I yelled a lot in the last few chapters.

Back to the Orange Box! Gotta finish Half-Life 2, then move onto the Episodes.

Is it sad that Everyday Shooter is probably my favorite PlayStation 3 game of the year? Or awesome?

Hey Jasper, how do you know Rengdar X on Xbox Live?

Ha, I work with the guy. Do you know him?

Holy shit, haha. He was my manager at GameStop in college. Twice! Great dude.

Ha! Yeah, he's a very cool guy. I started my job at the same time as him earlier this year, and during training I thought he looked familiar. He told me he used to work at GameStop. It took me a while but then I realized that way back in 1999 I watched him show off his imported Dreamcast to crowds of people at the store, and I was there front row acting like a huge dork. Small world.

Awesome -- it's no shock to me that he'd be passing out his gamertag at work, haha. I think the Dreamcast was his first cause (though he did/does have a 3DO), but by the time I was working for him, he was a hardcore Xbox fanatic, pimping it out in any way possible with hand-made propaganda. We were one of the top five stores in the company for Halo 2 reserves, which is how we got a life-sized Master Chief statue (which should be at Jeff's house now).

His import Dreamcast must've busted down a few years back because he gave away all his import game. He had a ton -- I must've walked away with about a dozen of 'em, and that's after the best games were cherry-picked. I don't recall who I passed 'em onto, but I don't have 'em anymore.

Yeah, I've been telling him that he needs to bring that in and put it next to his desk.

He said he was going to install a water hose within and have the water spray out of the gun. Would be pretty awesome.

Finally got a fat freelance check yesterday, so couldn't help picking up some... uh... essentials:



Already had BioShock earlier this fall, but sold it once I was done (needed the money and didn't think I'd play it again soon). But I've been wanting to give it another go, and Target had it for $49 last week, so I grabbed it again. And Tactics is $30 at Best Buy this week, and it might give me a reason to finally use the new PSP I bought three months ago.

I want to save judgement for GotY, but so far Mass Effect isn't topping Bioshock. I haven't played that much yet though. I keep fucking dying which is killing the flow, but I need more time with the combat. And I hate driving that stupid Mako. I do enjoy getting lost in conversation though. Still need to play Galaxy too. Zack and Wiki is on sale for 30 at Best Buy or Circuit City. Might pick that up based on all the positive juju that game has been getting. I haven't turned on my Wii in awhile.

This motherfucker.



Yeah. Fuck him.

But I didn't download it from Live. Why pay $15 when you can get it used online for $2? But seeing its listing on Live made me look into it, and it seems like it might at least worth be a few bucks. And if not, maybe I'll just give it away.

I take it you read SA's Let's play of animal crossing?

Alright, I'm gonna put up my GOY list. This was a relatively huge year of gaming for me, as I jumped into this current-gen of consoles in a big way by landing both a 360 Elite and a Wii on the same day. I limited my list to my favorite 5 games that were released this year. I wish I would have gotten into Mass Effect, but I just haven't had time and won't before the year is out. So I'm just gonna go with what I know.

GOY List for me, in reverse order:

5) The Orange Box - Half Life 2 is a great game. No debate. But I'd played it before. HL2 - Chapter 1 is good. Not spectacular, but fine. However, the HL series takes off big time with HL2- Chapter 2. Awesome. Simply awesome. Portal is an ingenious diversion, but its only about 3 hours long and isn't the focus of the set. The black eye of this set comes with Team Fortress 2. I know that TF2's aficionados swear by its nuances, but it never worked for me. Never got into games where I was amazed. The maps got repetitive. Nobody I knew was playing it because everyone was into Halo 3. I dunno, it never worked for me.

4) Resident Evil 4 - Wii Edition - I know, I know, this is just another port of an older game. But fuck you its one of the best games ever. And the Wii control scheme is perfect for it. A million times better on Wii than on GC. I played a lot of other games this year, but few held my interest or were as fun even though I just played this last year for the first time.

3) Halo 3 - The campaign was ho-hum. Fun in parts, but never astounding. However, what makes Halo 3 justify the hype is the multiplayer component. 4 player co-op (with scoring options) takes a mediocre campaign and improves it greatly. Online matchmaking is great. Saved films and screenshots can be fun ways to taunt your buddies. Not an amazing game like my top-2 choices, but very good nontheless. I don't screw around with Forge very much, but its a cool idea and deserves some props.

- - - The Clear Top-2 - - -

2) Super Mario Galaxy - Best platformer ever? If I remove the nostalgia from my Super Mario 64 love, I would most likely say yes. Super Mario 64 was more revolutionary with the free-roaming 3D environments and the analog control, but this game is so damn polished its astounding. The level design in this game is absurd. Absolutely genius. The score is great. My only gripe is its a teensy bit too heavy on collect-athon gaming towards the end (100 Purple Coin challenges get a bit tedious), but all in all this is a sublime experience. Just edged out of the top spot by a whisker.

1) Bioshock - Incredible design. Astounding use of sound and score. Its a bit similar to Half-Life 2 at times (telekenesis plasmid = gravity gun) but the freedom that the game offers to fight battles and solve puzzles is amazing. Want to play as a run and gun? Check. Stealth game? Check. Hack bots and sic them on the baddies? Check. And it has Big Daddies, the coolest enemies(?) to be brought into gaming in a long while. This is 2007's gold standard, as far as I'm concerned.

Ok, for real. It's time to stop nominating RE4 for EOY lists.

I like the game too. But come on now.


Yeah.

I thought about that, but I figured if the vast majority of The Orange Box is made up of re-releases, RE4 Wii Edition is fair game too.

There are only two re-releases on the Orange Box. 2 of which are now only properly realized for consoles. PC players don't even get/need those two. It's an anthology. You are incorrect in nominating the whole thing as a game. Each game is separate. You're voting for the packaging, dude.

well those are definitely the four big games to come out this year(and RE4 lol)

come on sam, you can put together a hipper list than that

I'm with Damo on being against RE4 voting in 2007. C'mon, it was the 2005 GOTY.

As for The Orange Box, I'm undecided on how I'm classify it on my list (which will come as late as humanly possible), since three-fifths of the games are new. I'll make a decision after I get to Episode II.

I agree that only 2 of the 5 games in The Orange Box are re-releases, but those two games probably account for 60%-70% of the total game-play time of the set, depending on how much TF2 a person plays. RE4 is a re-release, that is indefensible, but the changes to the control scheme, and the collection of the various PC, PS2 and GC bonus material all for the first time, led me to justify its placement. But if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

However, I think The Orange Box has to be nominated and considered as a singular game; at least the console release. I can't just go out and buy Portal and Half-Life 2 - Episode 2 as a 360 owner. If I have to buy the whole thing as one game, then I'm going to base my impressions on the entire set as a whole. And a quick peek at metacritic as well as other sites indicates that most, if not all, review sites treat the compilation in the same way.

But yes, I concede that for PC gamers like Damo, The Orange Box experience is much different animal. But I'm console only, and I can only speak to what I know.



Problem is, while I played a fair amount of other games it was the big ones that stood out. Mario Strikers, while pretty good, can't knock one of those off - at least as far as pure fun. The computer cheated too much in campaign, and online severely missed voice chat. Wario Ware definately can't. Nor can Paper Mario (though I only played a little bit). Wii Play? lolz that was only good for the controller. Blacksite's demo was lame so I skipped it entirely. As were a few others that I tried out.

And I disagree that my non-RE4 choices are the big games. Mass Effect, COD4, Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Metroid Prime and Assassin's Creed all had huge hype. Problem is that I'm just too damn busy to play them all; especially with the jam-packed 3Q/4Q release schedule. Plus, I'm a damn completist so I rarely buy a new game until I flesh-out the current game of choice. That makes it tough to consume tons and tons of game, due to the limited window of time that I have for playing.

Huh? You said the vast majority of the Orange Box is re-released games.

Metacritic likewise are rating the packaging and value of the product. Which is fair as that is how the average person will assess Orange Box. But a more thorough investigation leads to one finding the new games as released rated individually.

When people talk about the year's best games on podcasts, reviews, blogs, articles and so forth; they are speaking about TF2, Portal or HL2:E2. They were designed as separate games. I'd have like to vote for Final Fantasy Anthology in 2007 as well. But no.

I don't have issue with you voting for Orange Box. Just that it's an anthology and a vote for packaging rather than excellence in design. That's fine too though. As TF2, HL2:E2 and Portal are 3 of the best designed games in years. Nigh perfect really.

Incorrect to call a compilation, no matter the quality of it's contents, "[one of] the best game of the year". Which is singular.

I liked the reasoning/content of what you had to say on each title. Don't think I'm being too negative here. Nitpicks is all.

TF2 notwithstanding, because its impossible to quantify how much time each Orange Box owner spends playing that game, I would estimate that HL.2 and HL2.C1 account for approximately 25-27 hours of game play for console owners (18-20 hours, and 5-7 hours, respectively). On the other hand, HL2.C2 and Portal account for approximately for 8-11 hours of game play (5-7 hours, and 3-4 hours, respectively). Hence my contention that the vast majority of the Orange Box is made up of re-releases.

I probably didn't spell that out clear enough, but that's what I'm sticking with. And no worries about nitpicking, the is the SOMB for chrissakes. Sure, EOY Video Game lists won't be obsessed over like album lists, but one needs to understand his audience hahahaa.

I'd include the Orange Box in a list. Too bad I never really played much of any of it. I played a decent amount of games this year, but it was made up of mostly older stuff. I bought just three new games this year, so I don't understand what all the fuss was about this being one of the best gaming years ever. Really? I guess if you have every single console maybe, but I don't and I'm not a multiplayer gamer. That really makes it pretty middle-of-the-road for the rest of us. But I guess time will tell when I start catching up with more of this year's releases... in 2009. But Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Persona 3 were the only new games I bought this year. I haven't played Persona 3 yet, but Bioshock was better than Mass Effect.

I hate this game.

I can't remember a year like this (espescially in this console generation) that had as many big-time titles coming out. Espescially in the second half of the year. First half of the year was slow in comparison, but its been a busy 6 months. Off the top of my head:

Mario Strikers Charged (not fantastic, but filled a huge drought in the Wii's game library and in my mind opened the floodgates for the second 1/2 of the year)
Metriod Prime
Super Mario Galaxy
Bioshock
Halo 3
COD 4
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Skate
Mass Effect
Assassin's Creed
Orange Box
Madden '08
Guitar Hero 3
Rock Band
Heavenly Sword (never played it but my impression was that it was PS3's version of Mario Strikers. People were bitching about lack of quality titles, and in response they pushed this harder than it deserved)
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (First PS3 Exclusive that I actually felt I was missing out on. A little bit.)

That is an insane amount of very good to great titles, with very diverse game play styles. And my list completely ignores PC gaming and handhelds. I'd say '07 was pretty damn fantastic, but for the issue that so many games dropped in such a short window, few people had the $$ or time to play them all. I know I didn't. But compared to last year which had Sony and Nintendo on hiatus awaiting the release of their consoles for the holidays, that isn't a bad problem to have.

Well, yes. If you own only one platform and don't play any MP games; it's not a big year for you. But that only discounts what you have to say on the games released this year. Doesn't discount this year being huge in both number of titles and quality.

IGN's 10 Most Influential Video Games

With a narrower focus, they get this list right.

Space Invaders
Ultima
Karate Champ
Tetris
Super Mario Brothers
Wolfenstein 3D
Dune II
Super Mario 64
Half-Life
Grand Theft Auto III

Hard to mess with this list. Each game at a minimum established an entirely new genre of gaming (maybe not the first game but the key one).

This has been the greatest year in video games for several years.

Hardly

Crysis sucked
Call of Duty 4 was a rehash of COD2

The only other games I can think of is:
Super Mario Galaxy
Portal

why the fuck would i care or even be referring to either of those games

Crysis and COD4 sucked? What a ridiculous statement. Ignoring the graphical accomplishments, both games were perfected examples of their genre.

whatever you guys a fucking mario game came out this year

Yes and Mario Galaxy was fantastic. The best game I played all year, in fact.

It just seems foolish to call this a bad year when so many high quality titles were released. And to base that on "oh, I don't play MP games" or "I just own a 360"- is shortsighted and not at all valid.

i pretty much played old games all year except for god of war 2 and mario galaxy and a couple others but any year where i see fucking

mass effect
a new halo
fucking games like BIOSHOCK that look beautiful
ds games like contra 4
new mario
cool little niche games like odin sphere
portal a 3-4 hour game that points at the possibility of releasing short 3-4 hour games as bonuses that would be so awesome oh god

it was an amazing year thats all

Not to mention that games like Bioshock and Portal are pushing game design in particularly exciting directions.

my only real regrets about this year were that GTAIV and street fighter II HD got delayed to next year, and that all my friends lost interest in rock band so our band world tour has completely stagnated.