What are you playing today?

[Arcade]

Back to Super Mario Galaxy...

[Ritz]

Not only are you banned, but henceforth the mention of your name or allusion to your existence by anyone will be punishable by death.

I'm okay with this. Couldn't care less about the games, but I still somehow know most all of the characters by name. That anyone can't find someone to like in the series is inconceivable.

It's Twinkle Star Sprites season (tourney on Supercade in 4 days) and I'm rubbing my ass against every tree in sight.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So my puzzle rash has flared up again. Right now I'm playing Fire 'N Ice. Most of the solutions have faded from memory, and the festive theme is welcome touch this time of year. Kickle Cubicle and the Lolo Series are next.

[Farmer]

Angry Birds, which I find less of a game and more like throwing darts at a wall and seeing if they stick.

[gr4yJ4Y]

I've never been much of a Street Fighter fan (hence why I never picked [SFIV] up) so a lot of the stuff I don't care much for (character designs, art style, etc.) have kept me from immediately jumping in. It's a solid game though. And I'm starting to learn the different play styles of each character. Maybe I'll move up to Super if I end up getting really into this one.

Not only are you banned, but henceforth the mention of your name or allusion to your existence by anyone will be punishable by death.

I'm okay with this. Couldn't care less about the games, but I still somehow know most all of the characters by name. That anyone can't find someone to like in the series is inconceivable.

I know all the characters by name, but I simply don't care for the cast as a whole (it's not that I don't like certain individual characters). I'm not emotionally attached to the characters like it seems most people who play are. Although I played fighters some as a kid, I didn't really get into them until Dreamcast so Street Fighter doesn't have that same nostalgia for me.

Also I don't mean to shatter anyone's perception of reality, but I don't care for the story.

[Radrappy]

there's a story?

[Dr. BUGMAN]

So is M. Bison some kind of repressed transgender? First, his back-up body is female (Cammy), and latter some of his essence manifests as a woman (Rose). I don't think I've seen this touched upon. Is this something quietly acknowledged by the fanbase?

[Delphine]

It's probably some anima/animus thing. Japanese games love Jungian philosophy.

[Protodude]

Got the first Uncharted a while back for cheap. Haven't played it much but it's more or less the same game as the second one, although grenades aren't mapped to R2 so that threw me off a bit. Looks about as good as the second one too, although I think the character models during cut scenes aren't quite as good.

Also the first episode of the Back to the Future game came out, which I'm a bit of the way into. I've never really played too many adventure games before so a lot of this is new to me, but it's not that hard so far. The writing isn't quite as good as the movies but it still has it's funny moments, and the setup for the plot and where Marty ends up going is pretty cool. Speaking of the guy who does his voice is almost a dead ringer for Michael J. Fox, and he does a good job, but some of Christopher Lloyd's lines sound a bit phoned in. Not to spoil too much but there's a part at the beginning that's taken straight out of the first film, and it's obvious he rerecorded those lines because they sound kind of drab in comparison to his original delivery in the film. Also there's the occasional plot point that's questionable, like why the Delorean is back despite being destroyed in the third film, but on the whole if you're a big fan of the movies it's a fun game.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

It's probably some anima/animus thing. Japanese games love Jungian philosophy.

That what I'd chalk it up to if it been on or the other, especially with Rose, but not both. Cammy had to been on some level deliberate.

"I'm tough. Why can't I bleed for four days straight? Childbirth? Pah!"

Dude has vaj-envy.

[Farmer]

Sonic Colours.
EFFORT.
HONEST-TO-GOD EFFORT.

[Kogen]

I played Sly. He is a raccoon. It is a collection for the PS3. It is not in HD despite what the box says but it looks nice.

[Crisis]

Sonic Colours here too. I'm having a hard time getting excited over it, as ever. Except for the music. That's the only thing I find myself looking forward to between acts.

[Senbei]

Peace Walker. I really disliked Portable Ops and was prepared to hate this too, but I'm surprised how much I've been enjoying it. The difficulty is way toned down to allow for shitty PSP interface, but the control setting I'm playing with is MUCH better than PO's. The extraneous stuff involving recruits and weapons and items collection is better, too. I remain of the opinion, however, that this game has no right being on the PSP and should have been developed for the PS3.

[Green Gibbon!]

I actually finally started Peace Walker myself a few days ago.

The PSP is just woefully insufficient for a proper Metal Gear game. It's missing about 4 necessary buttons I think. There are 3 different control schemes to choose from, but none of them are intuitive. It feels like my fingers are playing a game of Twister. I've literally dropped the PSP completely from my hands (usually in the thick of the action) no less than five times.

Other than that, it's pretty good. Scaled back from the console line, obviously - in terms of AI and Snake's abilities, it's actually somewhere between Solids 1 and 2 (he can't even crawl in this one and dead bodies disappear into the ether). The main missions are short and simple (as they should be on a handheld) and fun. The boss fights, though, are overly difficult and not much fun at all. The "extra ops" are also pretty dull, basically just having you repeat shit you've already done in the story mode with a time limit (I despise time limits, especially in a game where the core mechanics revolve around taking your time).


It's much better than Portable Ops, but I still doubt I'll finish it.

[FlashTHD]

Sonic Colours.
EFFORT.
HONEST-TO-GOD EFFORT.

You mean the kind that throws nonsensical invisible walls up behind you when you set foot in certain places, or the level designers' effort that ran out at act 3 so they filled in the remaining (mandatory) 3 acts with insipid, pointless mini-levels (and tried to be clever with the camera angles to disguise recycled chunks of level architechure)?

Yeah, the early portion of Colors has been less than fun. But at least I also now have Brawl to install homebrew/illegal emulatorz onos retreat to when I get tired of that.

[Senbei]

Now that I've gotten a bit farther, I see what you mean about the boss fights, Gibbon. It wouldn't be so bad if the vehicles didn't have so much damn health! I spend the majority of each fight trying to deploy the supply marker just so I have enough ammo to take out the mech, while constantly having to keep the enemy infantry unconscious so they're not a threat.

I assume there's some easier way of defeating each boss by using some clever application of an otherwise useless item, in typical MGS fashion, but I haven't found it yet.

I also think motion comics are silly and cheap-looking.

[gr4yJ4Y]

Last night I booted up Super Scribblenauts and had a great time with the title screen. Coming up with different nouns to appear on screen makes me feel like a 5-year-old playing with a very large number of action figures and accessories that appear on command. Things got awesomely silly for me at 2 in the morning when I created a rainbow of gorillas, jumped on top of said rainbow of gorillas, and killed some kind of dinosaur with only a couple of hits. I'm still giggling over how ridiculous it was. Maybe I should get some fresh air.

[Green Gibbon!]

I loaded up my save today and my Mother Base has reset. Everything else is there. I've got all my people and items and the story mode is where I left off, but the Mother Base has reverted to the default 3 platforms.

Has this happened to anyone else?

[cjmcray]

Played Arkham Asylum today. Game is freaking awesome. This version of the Joker is far darker than Ledger's interpetation of the character. Kevin Conroy, as always is the ultimate Batman.

Scarecrow is awesome in this game. Everything he should have been in Batman Begins. (Nolan should've had Scarecrow be the main villain of that film instead of the boring & generic Ras Al Ghul..)

Anyway, Just beat Harley Quinn. Now i'm in the Aviary.

[Green Gibbon!]

I ended up getting Castlevania on a whim, a whim which I would now like to punch in the mouth. I think it wants to be a full-blown adventure game - the design work certainly supports it - but maybe somewhere down the line the budget got cut. As it is, it's a straightforward hack & slash hobbled together with borrowed ideas that all worked better elsewhere. And a noticable lack of candles to whup.

I quickly put that aside to begin Ni no Kuni. You play as a boy named Oliver whose mother dies after saving him from drowning. He travels to "Ni no Kuni", a parallel world, to save the great sage Alicia who supposedly shares one soul with his mother - and hence hopefully revive her. There's a nice warm touch to the characters, world, and storytelling, as you would expect from Level 5 and Ghibli. Beyond that, it's basically a (really good) 15-year-old 16-bit RPG. That's right up my alley, of course, and indeed I am relishing every herb, dungeon, and turn-based slash, but it's not the sort of thing I'd recommend to everyone.

The game includes a Working Designs-esque 350-page, fully illustrated hardcover magician's manual identical to one Oliver uses in the actual game. You actually need to refer to the physical book to see the "runes" needed to unlock new spells in the game proper, which essentially makes the game unplayable without the accompanying book. In addition to the runes, it also includes extensive items, weapons, and monster dossiers - basically all the stuff you'd find in a strategy guide, which makes me wonder what they're going to do for the official guide book. There's a lot of extra touches too, such as a collection of fairytales that take place in the game's world. Someone cared about this shit, yo.

[Malchik]

Well, I just completed Super Mario World, on to 3.

[Crowbar]

I finally received my Christmas gift of Megaman Zero collection for DS. I probably won't dig into it today but I will be powering through it at some point in the very near future.

[Sniffnoy]

I've started playing I Wanna Be The Guy again (on medium). Last time I got stuck on Mother Brain, but so far this is seeming much easier than on my last attempt.

[Arcade]

Waku Waku 7, it is good for being such and old game...