Penfold

I'm 24, and lately it's been the only home console I've been playing. Have a 360 and a PS2 hooked up as well, but haven't played the PS2 since beating MGS3 for the first time in April. I don't even remember the last time I played the 360. I haven't played those two systems not because of lack of good stuff in the queue for either, but because I've just been more interested in playing the stuff on Wii lately. There have certainly been games like Smash Bros, Mario Kart Wii, and Okami that have taken up quite a bit of my time on the system, but more so have been playing WiiWare and Virtual Console games. I'd say on average, lately I put in between 4 to 10 hours a week gaming (depending on weather/training schedule, the film festival, social stuff, etc) and the vast majority of that is on Wii (the rest of DS). I'll also say that there's absolutely an eb and flow to my video game habits, both in terms of average time I spend and what console(s) I spend it on. After getting the 360, I had a good month or two where I didn't so much as turn on my Wii, I went through a time where I just played backlogged Gamecube games, and went through a couple months of solely playing the PS2. For that reason, I think showing statistcs of what people prefer to play in a small timeframe like a month is useless, especially because it's quickly skewed by one major release. In the end, for me over all I probably spend the most time on the Wii especially because of WiiWare and VC games, but that doesn't mean I enjoy the 360 or PS2 any less.

A friend who usually just likes to go through RPGs for the story and gets bored of the grind pretty quickly has actually been playing The World Ends With You more to battle than anything. Pretty impressive, considering the game doesn't force you to grind right? They have a Dragon Sword demo that seems to come and go on the Nintendo Channel, which would be a good way to check it out if it's on there currently. Otherwise, just try going to like a Game Crazy and if they have a used copy they usually let you try it out before buying it. I played through the demo a little while back, and it was pretty enjoyable for what it was I thought. Just from the demo, I agree with BardicKnowledge that it seems to be just fighting, which I'd imagine could get boring after too long.

? Then what the hell did I watch after starting my file for the first time?

And with 8 reviews so far, has a meta score of 95. I'm really excited for this game, but while I have it reserved, I don't think I'll actually pick up a PS3 until after the Seattle to Portland (and I already have too many games to fill what little spare time I have at the moment). Damn priorities .

I had quickly checked the PSN website as well as the wikipedia articles regarding PSN, and didn't see pricing. The 60gb has the PS2 hardware built in, so 100% of PS2 games would work on it. That's the way I'm kinda leaning, though it seems a lot easier to get ahold of a new 80gb model so I'm just trying to figure out how good/bad the software emulation to see if I should even consider it.

Quick question regarding PSN...how much do downloadable games generally cost? I hear PixelJunk Monsters is awesome, and Echochrome is interesting despite some flawed level design. Also, for those who have a PS3 that does the whole PS2 software emulation thing, have you experienced much trouble with backwards compatibility?

Here are the confirmed games I'm looking forward to, personally: WiiWare: LostWinds 2, World of Goo VC: Earthbound, Vectorman, Earthworm Jim, Sonic and Knucles, (thought Mario RPG had been confirmed, but I guess not). Wii [retail]: Wario Land Shake, Tales of Symphonia 2, de Blob, Sam and Max season 1, the inevitable (and hopefully soon-announced) Pikmin 3, Animal Crossing Wii (first time I'll be playing a game from this series), FFCC: The Crystal Bearers, King Story. Anyway, in some respects I can kinda understand how some people feel let down by the Wii, but all in all I don't regret it. I think part of it is the feeling that Wii games tend to be lackluster - in concept, visuals, and controls. I know I've been disappointed quite a few times by titles that look and sound interesting but the execution isn't there. I still have a fair backlog of fun Wii games that I have yet to beat (Zack and Wiki, Trauma Center: New Blood, etc) and, despite there being so many quick cash-ins, there are a lot of titles that I look forward to getting my hands on - both current and future releases. I think another big component of it is that the Wii can't deliver the blockbuster titles we'll see on the 360 and PS3, like MGS4 and RE5. There's no way around it - the Wii won't have these games, but I guess the trade-off is the promise of new experiences, such as Super Mario Galaxy and LostWinds. Personally, instead of looking at what the Wii won't have, I tend to be more excited about what it WILL have - MadWorld, LostWinds 2, etc. I also own a 360 and soon a PS3, so that might explain my outlook . The virtual console is one of the things I like most about the Wii, and it really adds a lot of value for me. Part of it is definitely nostalgia, but the bigger part is getting to play all the great games I missed the first time around. I also have high hopes that more great/original/not quick cash-in games come to WiiWare, though offhand the only unreleased titles I could think of off hand that I'm especially excited for are listed above. Overall, despite having an inordinate number of half-assed attempts at games and not offering the same experiences as PS3 or 360, there's certainly plenty available on the system to make me happy, and hopefully things keep improving. ... As a side note, I was pretty suprised how small a download Dr. Mario Online Rx was - it was like 69 blocks (which spurred me on to get it ). As much as I want to get My Life As a King, I'm having trouble convincing myself to delete LostWinds so I have enough room...come on, hard drive! EDIT: actually about 93 blocks...whatever, still under half the file size of LostWinds .

I think I'd prefer it on Wii, assuming the controls aren't half-assed, but if it doesn't end up on it I'd be fine with it on the 360. Wonder if we'll be getting much more info before E3...

Me too, haha...if it is official that BG&E2 is coming out, I'll be picking up the original one again sooner than later. The only reason I stopped playing was because of new games that came out when I was going through it last year, but I really enjoyed what I've played so far.

So, the friend I intro'd to Crossfit last week has now done 4 CF workouts. Been brutal, but he's been very good about maintaining workout intensity despite fatigue (and despite not working out for months, apparently). So far had him do a workout scaled to 21-15-9 135-lb deadlift and pushups, next squat/pushup/situp tabatas (8 rounds each) with a couple minute break and 25 box jumps, then 5 rounds of 15 wallballs and 15 burpees, and finally 5 rounds of 500 meter sprints with exactly 2 minute break inbetween rounds. Each of these workouts were spaced every other day, and chose these specific workouts because the movements weren't too complex (not going to start someone right off with snatches ). Got another buddy who does the usual gym junkie stuff to join in on the wallballs/burpees workout, and while unsuprisingly it kicked his ass, I was able to help keep him motivated to finish it. Anyway, I've been following the WOD posting as per usual, and Monday and Tuesday were ridiculous. Monday (as always, after usual warmups) was 75 pushups, 50 95-lb sumo deadlift high pulls, 50 ring dips, 30 45-lb weighted pullups, and 25 handstand pushups. Never done that many SDLHPs with that weight before, so while I still got through them in short order it really tired out my biceps and shoulders. I also fatigued on ring dips faster that usual, only belting out 20 in a row before I dropped down, and then only sets of 10 with about 5 breaths in between to finish. Anyway, coming up to the weighted pullups, I only did 30 lbs and even then I had to partition way more than I was happy with. Started with them on rings, but after 10 total I decided to just do them on the bar. I had only done handstand pushups one time before, and did them against a wall. Was only able to do 3-5 at a time before having to drop down and start over, but was still happy I did them. Took me just over 30 minutes to do, most of that time being on weighted PUs and handstand pushups. Tuesday was 3 rounds: 1k row and 25 burpees; 750m row and 50 burpees, and; 500m row and 75 burpees. Because I didn't feel doing burpees in a crowd of cardio machines, I followed the official substition of 1 sumo deadlift high pull per 10m row (doing 100, 75, and 50 SDLHPs respectively). I've gotta say, that was more strenuous than rowing, and found it pretty enjoyable. I had done 90 burpees the night before (when I was training the two friends, as written above...I can't just sit there and coach and not join in! ), so just getting through the first 25 was tough, but didn't break up the set. The other two, though, I broke up after 10 or 15 reps. Anyway, it was great...totally flat on my back after, which took me approx. 25 minutes. Today was one of the only two max effort WODs I particularly enjoy - 5 rounds of 3-rep max deadlift (touch and go on floor) and handstand pushups. I may not have pushed myself enough with the DLs, doing 235, 245, 245, 265, and 265. Handstand pushups were better today, and ended up doing 8, 8, 8, 7, and 6 (all against a wall). Tried to get forehead to ground on each rep, though I know several times I didn't go down quite that far. I'm looking forward to getting stronger and whatnot so I can do them without needing the wall. Anyway, finished off with 20 ring pushups (first time with those, and I liked them). Since I haven't gotten a decent training ride in for a week, I'll be taking tomorrow off and going for a good 5-hour ride. Weather permitting, I'll also be taking another 5-hour ride on Sunday afternoon.

I haven't yet played it personally, but looking at the wiki page "Pay to Play" in this case is just it's the downloadable content, which you buy as desired - so no monthly service charge or anything. EDIT: After watching a not offscreen version of the Mad World trailer, I'm even more hoping for more gameplay vids and details (come on, E3!). It's so over-the-top, it is pretty funny (like the guy walking around with the sign sticking out of his face).

Nice, I'm very interested in giving My Life as a King a shot, though I really should finish Okami before starting it (and I probably have to delete LostWinds to make room for it ). I'd be interested in hearing how many hours you clock in before beating the game. Incidentally, I was wrong, they are compiling reviews for WiiWare titles on Metacritic after all, but none have 4 yet so their meta scores are still null. In other news, new title revealed from Platinum Studios (formerly Seeds, formerly the fallout of Clover Studios). Reading their first paragraph about Mad World started to turn me off to the game despite the art style, but I started to get more interested when they talked about the violence being intentionally over-the-top to be comical. Looking forward to more info about this. Then, potential Castlevania game for the Wii. It's reaching to say that's confirmation of a forthcoming Wii entry, but I'm hopeful. At least another DS title in on the way...

Double-post. Beat LostWinds last night, and I've got to say I highly recommend it. For any who enjoy games such as Zelda or Metroid which have an emphasis on adventuring, this would be a perfect fit. I have two small gripes that, while not detracting from the experience, do show a couple areas for improvement. First, I'm not at all taken back by this game from a value standpoint - while only 3 or so hours long, the experience is worth the $10 pricetag in my opinion. The flipside is, though, that the once game really feels like it's starting to take off it's already over. In other words, it left me wanting more. The other gripe is that it's actually very easy to get lost towards the end. There's no map system, and no signs that the player can read to help navigate, so the only way to get your bearings is by talking to the townsfolk and just wing it. This may be a function of the length/size of the game (the experience would be just that much faster if you had a map to show the objectives' locations), and it's really not a bad thing as it was still fun. It's a beautifully-rendered world, but so many of the environments look alike that it would have been too much of a chore to navigate if the world was much larger. A larger rendition wouldn't need a map necessarily, but readable signs or more varying environments would also do the trick (the reason games like Metroid worked so well without a map was there thanks to a very decent variation in environments, I think). All in all, the mechanics work great, the world is beautiful, the boss battle is very satisfying, and while the story may be a little trite it's not bad. I think this is a game that shows what WiiWare can and should be: quality gaming that shows the strengths of the Wii system. Like I said before, a LostWinds 2 has already been announced, and thankfully so! Here's hoping for a sequel of perhaps larger scope, and if so hopefully some way of dealing with potential navigation issues. Great game, and I would encourage everyone to support such a fantastic effort.

Same as I got (again thanks to Geoffrey Taucer for the link). Aren't they awesome? A friend has been wanted an intro to Crossfit for a while, so to accommodate I didn't do a noon workout, but will go right after work. WOD today is single rep max effort deadlift, but given that a 3-rep max deadlift came up within the last week or so(max 275 x3 reps without failure) and that a max effort day is a shitty introduction to what is most often a metcon system, I'll be recycling a WOD from last week - 21, 15, 9 reps 225lb deadlift and ring dips for time. While of course I'll be doing the workout as prescribed, I don't know how this guy does in deadlifts, so I'll be having him take it a little easy (most likely somewhere closer to 135-165). We'll see how the ring dips go, so those may need to be fudged a little as well. If I had more time, I'd also wanna play with some ring pushups, but I gotta get downtown right after the workout's finished for a volunteer training thing for the Seattle International Film Festival (first time voluneering!). Katsurugi - Just to clarify, when you're counting the bench press weight, is that with or without counting 45-lb bar? Glad to hear everybody has been doing well so far! Keep it up, guys!

I'm pretty interested in the Bionic Commando remake, should be a lot of fun. I hear the original is coming to XBLA as well, which if true should be great to experience that again (never beat it, but got really far before my brother and I lost interest back in the day). On a side note, am I the only one who is disappointed with Assassin's Creed? It's certainly a pretty game, and while there are some interesting mechanics, the experience on a whole was suprisingly bland and unengaging. It may be because I haven't played enough of it yet (made it to the 2nd city), but honestly I'm going to have to be running low on my backlog before I give that another shot.

Quick, wish for Chrono Trigger!!!! Haha. Anyway, I'd definitely be interested to hear how that Crystal Chronicles WiiWare title is. It's the only one that IGN hasn't reviewed yet, and it doesn't seem like Metacritic will be compiling WiiWare reviews at this point (which is lame). LostWinds is great. 45 min in so far, and I'm really looking forward to what further powers you obtain, and seeing other pretty novel ways you move around and interact with your environment to continue. On that note, they've announced there will be a sequel to LostWinds!! Considering LostWinds is supposed to be around 3 hours, it seems like they'll have lots of room to do a very fresh-feeling sequel. Wishful thinking, but with Nintendo in the near future bringing out a new storage option, maybe that will lead to an increase in the WiiWare size cap, and they could make an even lenghier sequel. Sephire - I haven't had any trouble connecting to the Wii Shop channel on my end. If it was just trouble connecting yesterday, maybe it was because of a lot of traffic from people downloading WiiWare games?

Good stuff. Sounds a lot like me usually, though lately I've been more strict in eating very few complex carbs and balancing proteins with carbs (except for this last Saturday...went out for dim sum for a friend's b-day, so it couldn't be helped). I thought I'd just throw that out there in that post, just because it was something that's been coming up for me lately, with people asking why I'm on a diet if I'm not fat . Vivi22 - I saw something about ring pushups last week online, and they sound rather interesting. Next workout I have that calls for pushups, I'm thinking to do ring pushups instead.

Breaking them up into sets of 10 or 20, I last did 120 regular pullups and 120 regular dips after my 3-round warm-up in somewhere between 10 and 12 minutes (I don't really take more than a few breathes before each set, though I do rotating sets and the two stations are almost on the opposite sides of the room, which allows me a little more recovery time). After about 80, I have to kip to keep it up without breaking up the pullup sets further, and usually around this point I have to begin breaking up the dip sets a little more too (as it becomes difficult to press to full extension, dip form is also affected...thanks to the kip, I don't experience these problems with the pullups, though it's almost like cheating ). A lot of CF can be nuts, but in maintaining intensity and sticking through it it's really been beneficial. Anyway, again I want to say I really appreciate the advice! I've been trying to incorporate the greater range of motion at the top of the pullups and bottom the dips (suprisingly, I feel like I'm doing better at this with dips than pullups...a difference of starting point and finishing point, I guess), and I've definitely been thinking of playing with weighted PUs/dips more (I'm definitely going to be playing with Bulgarian dips later this week). The reason it's 120 of each today is just because it's the recommended Crossfit substitution for those who can't do the 30 muscle-up workout (today's posted WOD). After digesting your advice a little, what I think I may do is split the difference, so I can first keep training toward the muscle-up but also fulfill the WOD's requirements. So, I'm thinking to start out by splitting into sets of 5 and add extra ROM for as many sets as possible (and moving at a speed to accommodate), after which point I'll try to continue doing the sets of 5 (all on rings still) with regular ROM . As a contingent, it's entirely possible that the stabilizer muscles will give out before reaching my goal of 120 each, at which point I'm just going to switch to bar dips and kipping pullups. I'm not sure how it'll end up going, but it'll certainly be interesting... EDIT: Done.Took a little over 30 min, and while part of that was ring height adjustment I don't know how much faster it really would have gone if I didn't have to do that. Started out with false grip pullups, and after the 3rd set, it felt like the skin was going to tear so I switched down to regular grip and went from dead hang (still not doing something right with that). For the most part I did sets of 5, but for reps 20-30, 50-60, 80-90, and 110-120 I attempted sets of 10...failed at 57, 86, and 116 on the pullups and 58, 88, and 113 on dips, so had to drop and start again. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed with my pullups but fairly satisfied with the dips - I kept a good range of motion on dips until that last set (above mentioned failures aside), but I wasn't able to much beyond chin-high even at the beginning. It was somewhat humbling, but a good learning experience. Definitely going to keep trying to get more range of motion, and start doing more weighted pullups/dips. Btw, Geoffrey Taucer, when you do weighted pullups/dips, do you just generally help the weight with your feet, or you do wear a belt/vest? Never done weight dips, and I've only done two workouts involving weighted pullups, so I'm just trying to find the best way to go about this. I also neglected to mention earlier that I agree with you, when saying that usually 50 reps of one excercise is enough, and a lot of the metabolic conditioning workouts call for 45-55 reps per excercise in CF. This is one of the rare instances that doesn't follow that general trend, the "usual suspects" being tabatas or max rounds in 20 min-style workouts.

Just noticed this thread - didn't realize the new one was in the compo thread. Anyway... I'm on a relatively strict diet, but it's not because I need to lose weight (already very low body fat %). I do it because I found just how important nutrition is when it comes to training, and given that the STP is exactly 2 months away I really need to step things up to reach my goal (13 hours from Seattle to Portland on bike, including breaks, on day 1). It's funny, because people naturally assume diets are just for losing weight. Monitoring what I eat especially before my CF workout of the day, I find it can become easier to maintain workout intensity (or, at the very least, it won't hinder). Speaking of WOD, since I'm still working on false grip and trying to figure out the muscle-up, I'm subbing 120 pullups and 120 dips for the prescribed 30 muscle-ups for time. To make it more challenging and to help get stronger for the muscle-up, I'll be doing these all on rings today, and will do as many false-grip PUs as my wrists can take. I'll probably just do a single round of warm-ups today, too, just to get into the workout faster. Lord.Roderick.i - To answer your question, I don't think it'd be particularly unsafe, so long as you're keeping proper lumbar curve (which you probably are, from what it sounds like). So long as you don't feel like it's unsafe, too, you're probably ok. As an aside, the motion you're doing would probably be closest to a sumo deadlift plus a press, or maybe some sort of akward clean and press (since it's most likely not a snatch motion, which takes it straight off the ground and overhead without a separate press or jerk).

So, I checked the shop channel before heading to work this morning, and saw WiiWare is up now! Downloaded LostWinds and played a few minutes of it, and so far it seems to have a lot of charm. Moving through the world using the wind is pretty fun and there's something appealing about bushes, tree leaves, etc moving around as the cursor brushes past. I look forward to getting to sink more time into it. I was kinda disappointed to see games like World of Goo and Dr. Mario Online RX, which were supposed to be available at WiiWare launch, aren't available till next week. Also gonna decide whether to get My Life as a King based off reviews as they come in.

Not totally a mystery, but it's by no means transparent. Here a list of the known WiiWare titles, with relative info (including price point for some). In terms of pricing model, it's not static, so there's no telling necessarily how much a game might be unless Nintendo has already told us. As I understand it, the devs give a suggested price point to Nintendo when uploading the game for future distribution, at which point Nintendo can make final judgement on price. I wonder if that means we could see "sale prices" for WiiWare titles from time to time...I guess it's all up to what Nintendo wants to do.

Yeah, I heard World of Goo is supposed to be pretty awesome. I'll definitely be getting that with LostWinds on Monday. As a side note, it'll be interesting to see if WiiWare titles' reviews will be collected together on Metacritic - they don't with VC games, but do with XBLA games (even the oldschool releases).

I don't tend to have problems with the celestial brush techniques, though I agree with the comment about camera control being a little clunky (especially in places like Sei-an City, where you have a lot more objects). To help diagnose the sensor bar going haywire as you mentioned, does the cursor also jump around a bit when you're just on the Wii menu? If so and you've already upped the sensor bar sensitivity (or whatever they call it in the Wii system options), you might sitting too bar away from the sensor bar for it to work perfectly so you might wanna get a 3rd party sensor bar (since they tend to be stronger...IGN has good reviews on them). Alternatively, if you have another strong source of light (like the sun through a window) it can confuse the wiimote a bit. Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in, since I had that problem before getting thicker curtains (windows right behind my tv) and a 3rd party sensor bar (got the Nyko wireless one since it was the strongest at the time, then modified it to be wired so I didn't have to worry about batteries). Also, Wiiware on Monday! Very excited for LostWinds especially.

I agree with you. At the very least I was expecting this, like, last January, just given that this is one of the many features of the Wii they highlighted during those pre-launch press-conferences. Oh well, at least it's here now .

Maybe I'm the only person who kinda enjoyed Doom 3, but maybe that's because I never played Doom or Doom 2 .