Necrotic

Yeah, stick with it! You might have to grin and bear it during some parts, but despite my complaints I still find the game majorly fun.

This, plus I keep wanting to shoot myself in the head every time one of those vocal pop tracks plays in the background. You can sleep well tonight knowing that the game only gets better from there voice acting and dialogue wise, but the quality of the voice work is insulting after FF12 practically rewrote the book on how to properly voice act a JRPG. At least the character development is dece. I normally would've threw my hands up and just stopped after a few hours of playing through a game with a story and dialogue like this, but I can't because Sazh and Dajh are awesome characters and this battle system and these game mechanics are the bees knees. You don't hear Vanille making random, unwarranted "ohh", "ahh", "ee", "ooh" noises every 2 seconds? She does something as pedestrian as breathing and her vag is practically a slippery-slide.

If I can play a game with someone who's 12 and for the majority of the game not realize what their age is until they say what age they are, that is a success for the 12-year-old. Game on, little buddy, game on. I've even had a small handful of young guys who used a microphone and were tolerable. They were tactful enough to say "Hey, I know guys my age give themselves a bad rep but give me a chance to use the mic here I think I have a lot to offer." That's cool too, but I've only seen a few young guys like this. A majority of the time I'll walk into a game and know someone is 12 within the first 10 seconds however. For all the wrong reasons. That's a failure on a 12-year-olds part and I don't think they belong in games.

Yeah, that's something I would've been down with. I'd like to see a second take on FF8's battle system with a little more variety instead of "Aura on Squall, Renzoukuken like crazy, Melee/Heal with other characters."

The game expects you to know that you're supposed to use Card Mod and Item Refinement to make it easier to get 100 of a majority of the spells in the game, but that's for the players to discover for themselves. Which is definitely a flaw, people shouldn't be punished by drawing magic from enemies for an hour or two if they don't realize they can take 5 seconds and refine it instead. Overall though? When you learn FF8's systems inside and out, it's a really fucking fun game and one of my top FF games. Its biggest flaw is the story which gets kinda bad half way through then mind-numbingly stupid in the last 3/4. EDIT: Dang, hijacked by Malaki.

For more in-depth impressions of the differences on cutscenes, Jeremy Parish from 1up.com has a pretty good blog entry about it. Doesn't seem to affect the game overall really and the two games are still largely the same.

For that price, yeah, I'm very willing to see how wrong I am.

So I figured all you folks at OCR would be interested on these Capcom PSN deals that just started. Capcom's slashing the price on a bunch of their games. Each week will be something different. Today they slashed the price on Marvel Versus Capcom 2, causing it to go from $14.99 to $7.49. So basically there's no excuse not to own MvC2 or SSF2T HD Remix within the next two weeks. If you don't already own them, you'd have to be mentally ill not to pick these games up for that price. Week 1 (Feb 18): Marvel vs Capcom 2 - $7.49 Week 2 (Feb 25): Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix - $7.49 The rest are noticably not as cool. But regardless, if you're interested: Week 3 (March 4): Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD - $4.99 Week 4 (March 11): Age of Booty - $4.99 Week 5 (March 18): 1942: Joint Strike - $4.99 Source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178019

Not to worry. Another 15 games and they'll get the balance just right.

It's not that he's saying you can't play the game on an SDTV, it's that he's saying you would never want to settle for less than an HDTV given the option because said games look so sexy.

The trailer after the demo suggests a few things, here's what I gathered from it: Ethan is probably the Origami Killer. He's probably doing it because his other son's been kidnapped. After the loss of his first son he couldn't stand to lose another one of his kids, so he's either being forced to kill or he's being driven to madness by the circumstances. In the trailer there's the part about him having to cut off one of his fingers in front of a camera and it kind of makes you wonder at what point that happens in the game, before or after he becomes the killer. I also suspect that that's hardly scratching the surface as to what actually goes on throughout the whole game. I'm freaking excited. Not much longer before I get my hands on it now.

THANK YOU for acknowledging this game. It's has writing far and above almost any other adventure game I've played. Grim Fandango needs to be given credit for its writing too. Brilliant stuff. And yeah, I can agree with the whole indie film feeling. Indie films can really be categorized into good indie and bad indie though. Strangely enough, as an (obviously unintentional) symptom of the occasional uncanny valley-ness of it, it sort of reminds of David Lunch-style good indie. David Lynch doesn't often focus on good acting, and instead he focuses on feelings, symbols, acting quirks, speech quirks, abstractness, or interesting cinematography. And yet many people consider his films masterpieces. Regardless, I feel much of the stuff going on is quite convincing a majority of the time. I played on an SDTV at first and noticed that on my roommate's HDTV, a lot of the problems I had with voice acting and other nuances that seemed to be less noticable in HD, strangely. You'd think the opposite would be true.

Loved the demo. The approach to how the game handles context-sensitive actions feels more intuitive than any other game I remember playing. It doesn't seem groundbreaking, and it really isn't something we're unused to, but it uses them in such an intelligent way it makes the concept of timed button pressing kind of feel new again. I've never had more fun doing what is essentially quick time events. The fight scene was a lot of fun, I look forward to more moments like that. I liked the sort of contorted feel of pressing the buttons in a certain order when climbing the muddy hill as the agent, too, or how it feels to try and keep him from losing his footing as he climbs back down. It simply feels natural. Walking does feel sort of strange though. Holding the trigger down to walk... got used to it, I can see why they did it for practicality reasons given the camera angles and controls. But it never quite feels fully comfortable. Also, the words that whir around your head when choosing what to say isn't always clear about what's intended. Some minor gripes. The atmosphere, the voice acting, the dialogue? Quite absorbing. Better than anything I've seen in an interactive adventure game for a long time. After reading 1up.com's review and playing the demo, I can't wait for the full game.

PS2, PS3 XBOX, X360 NES, N64, GameCube, Wii GB Pocket, GB Color, GBA, DS Genesis w/ Master System addon Had a PSP until my brother lost it, via it getting stolen from his room.

I've known about this for a while, and I'm a big fan of Lufia 2. I didn't realize that had such an extensive trailer for the game already, but it's definitely got me pumped. Solid graphics and I was worried about the action-based battle system but it looks solid enough. I just hope it'll be a little more complex than jamming one button the whole time.

A new 's had some relatively clean live footage recorded. It`s very chill, and very Cynic. Figure a lot of you guys would appreciate it. Jake Bowen! Cool seeing you around these parts. I'm quite a fan of your band's djenty goodness, as few others can do it like you guys. I hope things are going well with the album and stuff dude. I hope Sumerian works out well for you guys. Mike Keene seems like a cool dude, and I appreciate that his label is bringing some great up and comers off the ground. Also great to hear that you guys are fans of video game music.

Debatable, the PS3 really doesn't have a lot of RPG's. In fact, I found Lost Odyssey more enjoyable than anything offered on the PS3 right now (Valkyria Chronicles a possible exception, but it's not my kind of game), and that was a 360 exclusive. As for whether the titles are more innovating for single player titles, also debatable. One things for sure though, a lot of the catalogue the 360 had in terms of exclusivity (like Bioshock or Fallout's DLC) is now multi-platform, and in the case of Mass Effect and many other titles still considered "exclusive", you can find find them on PC (with a varying quality.) 1up.com's Jeremy Parish sang a different tune. Until the full game comes out though, we'll never really have any way of knowing (it's not on 360 in Japan.)

There's drivers you can get online to hook up your PS3 controller via USB. There's also ways to hook it up via Bluetooth. It's pretty cool for anyone that's interested. As an owner of both a 360 and PS3, my vote goes to PS3. Blu-ray, the fact that it's cheaper now, and has more exclusives not available on PC. I also feel it's worth noting that while the PSN is lagging far behind Live in terms of functionality, I rarely have to deal with 12-year-olds who have their hands on a headset and ruin the experience so that's a plus. 360 is FAR superior with online functionality though. It's almost silly how far behind the PS3 can be in terms of voice chat options outside of games, or how Modern Warfare 2 and a bunch of other games I've tried utilize this silly "message box invite" system that's made really tedious to use because of the way the XMB works and stuff.

Fighting: Fast comboers or rhythmic characters. Sakura in SFA, Asuka/Jun in Tekken, DeeJay in HDR. FPS: Methodical. Which is why I mainly play tactical shooters like Counter-Strike. I like to put a little more thought into my shooting than just running and gunning. Flushing people out with well placed grenades and flashbangs and stuff. I have a tendency to use well-balanced rifles that have an even mix of accuracy and power (accuracy preferred) because I like a rifle accurate enough that sniping or getting headshots at medium-long distances are consistently doable with a steady enough hand but with enough stopping power at close range that a dude with a shotgun won't have the edge. Bullet hoses like SMG's or shotguns aren't as much my thing because they lack versatility so I rarely touch them. Some people are fine sticking to confined spaces or going longer routes with more concealment to get the most out of those kinds of weapons but I like having options. I love to snipe too. Nothing is more rewarding on the giving end and frustrating on the receiving end than a skilled sniper. NHL: Tight defensive checks. Keep the defense low on the blue line for as long as it needs to be safe, because I hate letting breakaways slip through even if it means I might struggle more offensively. Cycle the puck and overload with bombs from the point and one-timers or crash the net.

I've heard Fat Princess is a blast.

Yeah. My friend bought the Orange Box for PS3 and all I heard was that it was the worst piece of trash port ever to exist ever. But it wasn't. I tried it out, I watched him play it. It was fine, I own and have played the PC version of HL2/Orange Box a million times and I noticed very few differences. The main thing I noticed is that there's a slight millisecond of lag when you go underwater. Other than that no crashes, no major graphical glitches, nothing game-breaking I'd been hearing tirelessly about. I'm sure Bayonetta is in a similar situation. I'm sure it's inferior to the 360 version, but I'm sure it's not broken.

In Valve games (and most shooters I've played in the last 6 or 7 years), your characters have inertia and you can simply tap the left or right key at a certain interval while going forward for example if you feel the need to walk that odd angle. Depending on how fast you tap and how long you hold it, the character will walk at different angles. I was never bothered by this solution. Regardless, the precision of going exactly 2° or 3° north of North-East isn't exactly super beneficial most of the time.

I know I tend to lean towards the more technical/brutal/heavy stuff and a lot of people don't dig it the same way I do, but I really feel like The Faceless (progressive technical death, it's got energy but it's also got concept) and Neuraxis are really worth bringing up. had arguably the best black metal album of '08 so I highly recommend them as well.I know they've already been brought up but everyone needs to listen to times infinity and then some.

Can't forget Gojira. Mario Duplantier is a hell of a drummer. He makes complex poly-rhythms look and sound so simple. Also I can't believe these guys are tuned to D-fucking-standard (and Drop C occassionally) on 6-strings and are still heavier than life itself.