I am glad to see the Online Pass gone. Although I'm still not a fan of EA's portfolio and am not inclined to buy from them, given the company's size and influence, I hope this discourages companies whose products I do like from going with online passes. Still, the cynic in me wonders if the online pass is being replaced with the terrible always-online that SimCity was saddled with.
Three solutions:
1. Make the hand-holding optional - give the player the option to turn it on or off at the beginning, and give them the opportunity to turn it on and off throughout the game in the options menu.
2. Keep the tutorial level as a separate level selectable from the main menu instead of inserting it into the main game. Tutorials bore the shit out of me, and I don't really want to be forced to wade through the tutorial at the beginning of every game. I want to be in the thick of things at the get-go.
3. Start printing manuals again. The shitty pamphlets are useless, and I'd rather read a manual than look at some in-game database, which breaks immersion and stops the action.
Our legal system does this all the time. Defense attorneys have no compunction about using a complaintant's sex life to discredit their testimony even if the defendant is guilty as fuck, while prosecutors use it to make the accused seem even worse than they are in hopes of getting them a longer sentence. It seems to be a tactic that's especially effective in deeply religious societies like the US and the Muslim countries.
El-Shaddai is a great game. I got the PS3 version of it.
I own a couple of fight sticks - a Hori stick for Xbox 360, and a Capcom fighting stick that was originally for PS2, but I bought a USB adapter which enables me to use it for my PS3 fighting games.
I'm an odd duck. I like Street Fighter all right but it is not my favorite series. I prefer 3-D fighting games over 2-D fighting games, and my favorite series by far is Sega's Virtua Fighter series, although I also enjoy Namco and Tecmo fighting games. Among 2-D fighting games, my favorites are Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, and BlazBlue.
I had to take a break from gaming due to moving. Back to Ni no Kuni for me!
The only snowboarding game I played to any great degree was FFVII's snowboarding, but I did try 1080 Snowboarding on the N64 and enjoyed that.
It's too bad iPods are so expensive years later, otherwise I'd say screw it and get a new one.
Ni no Kuni is awesome. My favorite game of the generation other than Valkyria Chronicles.
Were it me, I'd probably be looking for an early-gen PS3. I love my 60-gigger, since it plays 15 years worth of games on one machine and I don't have to hook as much stuff up to a TV. Failing that, I'd probably get a PS2.
I love Vintage Stock! I find so many rare goodies, particularly at the Oklahoma City, Midwest City, and Norman stores! My most recent find there was Suikoden II, complete, for $99. I can't find that game for any less than $120 for the disc only on eBay or Amazon.
Not really, with rare exceptions like Balloon Fight. Most of the really good NES and SNES games were strictly single-player games (Balloon Fight was a rare example of a good multiplayer NES game), and I find online leaderboards to be meaningless. The top players hacked their way to the top (99,999,999 points? 999,999 wins in two days? Seriously), and being buried in a sea of a hundred thousand other nonsensical gamertags. doesn't really stir my competitive juices.
I didn't get the Bioshock Infinite strategy guide, although I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite. I generally only get them for RPGs. Might go ahead and pick this one up although I've already beaten the main game once. I might try the 1999 mode. I loved the Ni no Kuni strategy guide.
