Evil Genius

You can download the Bayonetta demo if you have a Japanese PSN account (which is free to create).

And you guys totally should.

It's amazing.

Can't wait for that game.

The Bayonetta demo should come our way some time before the game is released, I'll wait till then. Right now, I'm torn between Borderlands and Demon's Souls. I can't decide which one to get.

By the way, FIFA 10 is the same shit as always. Online is fun cause people do whatever and the matches become entertaining, but there's actually a surefire way of scoring a goal every time no matter what as long as you got the goal in a straight line in front of you, and that little exploit kinda ruins online matches, not too much though, they're still fun. The new additions are cool, but they're still putting more stuff on the same old system, so really nothing substantial has changed. AI is still a fucking joke, the passing/shooting mechanics are as restrictive as ever and the controls are still too complicated. For example, while running by pressing R2, press L2 and tap the right stick twice forward to perform a lobbed pass to yourself and clear a sliding tackle with the ball; if you don't think this is a lot, try doing it in a split second while the opposing team is putting pressure on you. It's one thing to have enough time to think about what to do, it's another to have enough time to figure out how to do it (which has always been the problem with FIFA), that's what I mean when I say the controls are too complicated. I borrowed this game, and even though I like soccer games, I'm still not gonna buy any FIFA game any time soon.

Double post!!!

I just got a couple of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 beta codes, anyone interested in them? I was thinking of doing a small contest for them but I don't know if people here care that much about that game.

Is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune supposed to be really hard or did I accidentally start the game on hard mode?

Dito. Died a few times especially in the later game, but not too much. Hard was really a huge step up from that though, and crushing was just insane with pretty much every bullet killing you.

Yeah, I started on hard mode ... whoops. Just to check it out I played normal mode and I just sped through the first couple chapters.

Has anyone playes Assasin's Creed 2 yet? It looks so cool!

Just get a bigger HDD and use that one only, having to swap seems like a hassle.

Assassins Creed 2 is completely awesome. They really made everything that sucked, or even everything that wasn't top notch, in the first really better. There's a hint of GTA San Andreas with you having your own little town with your noble hideout which you can upgrade (both the hideout and the town). You can buy various armors, weapons, dye your clothes (and all armor and weapons are stored on armor mannequins in your villa). And the best part: The story is really awesome, and told in a lot of cutscenes, and the missions, especially the assassination ones, do have a sense of urgency and revenge. You don't just kill those people because someone tells you to. You kill them because you are out for their blood yourself.

Another good thing, you only get to play Desmond in our world for the first half our. After that (and I played for 8 hours now I think, and only did 2 main story assassinations) it's all inside the animus without those annoying real world sequences in between. And as I said, the story is the main selling point for me. The first one was pretty much 9 scenes after another without so much as a story in between (yeah there was the whole templer assassins war in our time, but still the story of Altair felt really lackluster). Now Ezio and his family and friends are really likeable and deep characters you can relate to.

Also the missions are MUCH more varied than in the first, and theres a plethora of things to do besides the main story line, hidden secrets, assassins tombs, codex pages for Leonardo da Vinci to decipher and upgrade your equipment with, story unrelated assassination missions, etc.

IMHO, this and Uncharted 2 are the 2 games of this year.

P.S. I rented Modern Warfare 2 last week; finished the campaign in a measly 4 hours, wtf. Multiplayer sucked to, 9v9 is just not enough for warfare to my liking. The campaign was really awesome though, just like in CoD4, but that just makes it worth a rent.

Oh, and Starnum: Switching between 2 HDDs on the same console should be possible, as the HDD has a code that only makes it work with the specific PS3 that is was formatted on. But after system upgrades you'll have to upgrade the other HDD too when you want to use it again. And depending on the game, copying savegames is really a hassle. Some stop giving you trophies because they think you imported a savegame from another use, and the worst of them like Resident Evil 5 don't even let you copy safe games

I feel that many of the MW2 multiplaye aspects were improved upon nicely. It's cool to have all sorts of bonuses and the deathstreaks help to keep the playing field even. The camping that happens, though, is ridiculous.

The campaign, however pissed me off. All the stuff that made the campaign in MW1 exciting became way overused.
[spoiler]Roach seems to be very accident prone. Every time there's a possibility of him slipping and falling or losing consciousness, he does. It stops being a point of tension or excitement, and it starts to make me wonder about how competent Roach really is.

Then there's Roach and Ghost getting killed off. It was a big twist, but it pissed me off, though not as much as the end. They just left it completely open! At least in the first one they made the story have some semblance of an ending. Well this doesn't matter too much since multiplayer is the big sell anyways[/spoiler]

dialdfordesi wrote:The campaign, however pissed me off. All the stuff that made the campaign in MW1 exciting became way overused.
[spoiler]Roach seems to be very accident prone. Every time there's a possibility of him slipping and falling or losing consciousness, he does. It stops being a point of tension or excitement, and it starts to make me wonder about how competent Roach really is.

Then there's Roach and Ghost getting killed off. It was a big twist, but it pissed me off, though not as much as the end. They just left it completely open! At least in the first one they made the story have some semblance of an ending. Well this doesn't matter too much since multiplayer is the big sell anyways[/spoiler]

I concur. While the few hours it lasted, it was a really, really intense experience, it was nowhere near as good as the first one. It just seemed like they had that awesome twist with the nuke in the first one that they just decided to one up everything and take the story to rediculous levels with it. The story in the first one was very realistic - and while the nuke probably wasn't, it wasn't to far-fetched either. The story now it completely fiction though and nowhere in hell could it happen in the real world.

[spoiler]Because a) russia would have nowhere near the power to invade the US with a sky full of planes and choppers and without the US noticing until they are literally upon them, and b) even if russia would and could invade the US for such a (in the scope of global politics, and seeing how mass murder like in the airport level still happens today in 3rd world countries all the time) little incident, that would pretty much start World War III and wouldn't be done with killing some general responsible for it.[/spoiler]

P.S: Battlefield Bad Company 2 looks awesome though, especially the multiplayer seems to be what I wanted MW2 to be.

Imagine that it's 1986 and that you're playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time. You reach the first castle and you're dodging flames and holy shit, you reach Bowser and you somehow manage to kill him. You go to rescue your princess and find Toad instead. He says "Thank you, Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!"

And then the game ends.

That's what PixelJunk Shooter felt like.

Pretty good game otherwise.

Thanks, I was actually wonderin about that. I enjoyed the visuals and music of Eden, but it wasn't really a fun as a game, and I was wondering if shooter was the same way.

Eden was too frustrating at times.

Shooter is a short fucking game and ends in a cliffhanger.

It's good but I feel like they chopped down the game to sell later episodes as DLC so I couldn't rightfully recommend it.

Monsters is still the best in the PixelJunk series.

Starnum wrote:I agree with Aether, Assassin's Creed 2 is a truly amazing game. Everything has been improved on, it's a better game than the first in nearly every way possible. The ending blew my mind too. Definitely one of, if not the best game of the year.

Is it anything like Hitman or Splinter Cell? I really can't stand those games.

On a negative note, the EU online store sucks ass. Made a US account instead - more stuff.

Here's hoping they release Chrono Cross for a few dollars to download. Yay.

I dismissed Assassin's Creed 1 as a Hitman clone, is AC2 that much better?

AC2 is a big step up. It's actually got a story for both Ezio and Desmond and the missions never feel repetitive because they all have a story element attached to them. Combat feels nice, albeit easy at times, but that's only if you have the rhythm down. I don't know what else to say besides that it feels really good to play the game.

Thanks, I might just take a look into AC2.

Speaking of another game, here are some excerpts of a Final Fantasy XIII review:

XIII isn’t a big, open, explorable world. It’s a series of discrete maps that you run through and forget about entirely, once you’re the hell out of there.[...] When I referred to previous Final Fantasy games as being “linear,” I was at least speaking metaphorically. Final Fantasy XIII is a straight line. Every level is one long Hallway of Death, and you run down its interminable length, never moving left or right, always running forward. There is always only one thing to do next, and it is always either fight a short battle or watch a long movie.

You can have up to three characters in your party, but only when the game says so. And here’s the real kicker: You only control one of them during battle, and you don’t even get to pick who that is. At least for the first 17 hours, you only control whoever the game tells you to, and the computer picks up the slack on the rest.

Whether or not you love Final Fantasy’s story will depend largely on whether you like the sort of passionate Japanese melodrama where what you say doesn’t matter nearly as much as how loud you yell it.

Last one's just funny.

Anyway, read the whole damn review and lose all respect there was left for Square-Enix:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/12/f ... preview-2/

Was anyone else worried that when they gathered all of "The Truth" segments in Assassin's Creed 2 it represented a Scientology sort of message?

[spoiler]Even though I hate how the game just ends off with you wanting so much more, no real sense of satisfaction (even though you thoroughly enjoyed the game) I love Desmond's reaction to Minerva's speech. "What the fuck?" best reaction ever. But man, getting through those truth segments was hard, and not just the puzzles. I couldn't stop crying when I saw the video of the elephant right before Edison electrocuted it.[/spoiler]

To me the game really felt like if you mixed Prince of Persia with Metal Gear Solid, the latter not just because of the sneaking but also because of the historical segments. But at least Assassin's Creed goes a lot further back. Despite feeling like those other two games, it really does feel like it's own game, and that's what makes it so good.

But still man, wtf is with the endings?

I got ACII, I have yet to play it though, I got a lot of games to fill my time, but I'll get to it. I've watched my brother play it several times though, it looks pretty good.

Anyway, Heavy Rain and Bioshock 2 are coming out in February and God of War III in March. So good times are coming pretty soon.