My sister got Samba de Amigo for the wii, with maracas. I tried it out, really cool game. I love the song list, Gloria, Gypsy Kings, Santana, etc.

Still obsessed with Sonic Unleashed.  Will play Boom Blox today I think.

SteelAttack said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

I has DVD player!

But my tv just broke

Oh man, that's so fucked up.

No, not really. We saw some very cheap TVs, my sister almost brought one. But we did not need one, because we already have 2 TVs. Well we do need one now, so going to buy one tomorrow. Must check out how my DVDs look on a HDTV, because I brought one with no upscaling. I did not need one, because the TV in my room is a SDTV. We may need to buy a DVD with upscaling.

Luckily my WiiTV is not broken. So I can still play games. 

bugsonglass said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

I has DVD player!

But my tv just broke

that just means you will have good luck for the new year.

 Luck is for the weak.

Dvader said:

My sister got Samba de Amigo for the wii, with maracas. I tried it out, really cool game. I love the song list, Gloria, Gypsy Kings, Santana, etc.

Still obsessed with Sonic Unleashed.  Will play Boom Blox today I think.

You know what's funny about Samba De Amigo? I never played it before, but I hd a copy that I got off ebay in a lot with other games. So my mother found out awhile ago that she LOVES Banjo & Kazooie, I mean loves the game. And this is someone who never played games at all, ever. She's not supposed to like games like this, right? She played the hell out of it and was looking for something else to play, so I showed her Samba De Amigo thinking 'hey, this is probably a good game for a casual gaming person' and she looks at me after about 2 minutes and says "Haha, this is stupid. I'm not retarded you know"

And yes, Banjo & Kazooie is awesome in download form. The game basically looks the same as always, but they seem to have cleaned it up a bit in HD with full widescreen. Game was amazing looking back in 1998 and still looks great today, anyone who says N64 didn't have better graphics than PS1 is kidding themselves. They really should have done this with Perfect Dark too. I wish I could get my entire N64 collection like this; Widescreen, HD shine, and no annoying N64 controller. Its too bad Nintendo's N64 downloads are barebones ports with no enhancements and WITHOUT vibration. Makes it not even worth the money.

Anyway, I'm still trying to beat Persona 3. Game is great, but honestly I think it goes on too long. The first half of the game feels very needlessly stretched out; I'm 50 hours in and finally its starting to pick up again. The characters and story are great, but there's way too much of a focus on leveling and dungeon crawling IMO. Without so much of that stuff, the game would have been done by now and probably more satisfying. I also have Persona 4 and Nocturne to play. Needless to say, I won't be playing those for awhile.

Other than that, I finally discovered the SSX series and am in the middle of Tricky right now. These games are fun as hell. I think of them more as racing games than anything else, and in that sense, these are the funnest racing games I've played in years. I'm having a blast with them. Screw Shaun White; I want a next-gen SSX!

I've kind of put Banjo & Kazooie 3 on hold for now while I try to finish Persona 3, but I can't wait to get back to it.

This is my list of games that I already have, waiting to be played or finished in early 2009:

• Persona 3
• Persona 4
• SMT: Nocturne
• Sword of the Berserk: Guts Rage (DMC ripped this game off hardcore)
• Banjo & Kazooie 3
• Gears of War 2
• SSX Tricky
• SSX 3
• SSX ON TOUR
• Little Big Planet
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Ninja Gaiden 2
• Yakuza 2
• Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (never played the whole thing. Gonna replay whole series)
• Onimusha 4
• Indigo Prophecy
• The Longest Journey
• Fatal Frame
• Fatal Frame 2
• Hunter: The Reckoning
• Max Payne
• Max Payne 2
• Jet Grind Radio
• Prince Of Persia de to Celda
• Braid
• Bionic Commando Rearmed

As you can see, I really don't NEED any new games at all for a long time. Look how many of those games are last-gen too. Sometimes I think Nintendo, M$, and Sony are damn lucky that next-gen consoles are doing as well as they are, because if most people were smart enough, they could easily find plenty to enjoy on last-gen machines for dirt cheap.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to.

Okay so I'm about to start Act 2 on MGS4. My impressions so far:

While it may not be as good as I thought it was the first time I played this Act (this is about as far as I got last time) the game is still great. Earlier this year Kojima stated that "next-gen starts with Metal Gear Solid 4" after playing Bioshock, The Witcher, Devil May Cry 4, Crysis, and the likes to this I fully agree with that statement. Unlike all other current gen tech games which just offer bells and whistels this game is the only one that takes a leap over previous generation games and offers an experience that could not have been possible the generation before. The level design is lead through intense real world obstacles and obstruction which just could not have been rendered on a last generation system. This completely reinvents level progression as you truly have to carefully observe your surrondings in order to figure out where to go next. It isn't "find that one path you did take" anymore. The A.I. is stunning. Enemies will actually truly get out of the way, look for cover, and at times scheme to take you down. The graphics are amazing. While technically they are weaker to a game like say Crysis they are extremely well crafted. Facial details, hair, clothing, reflections, the amount of textures, the detail in tehe nviornment THIS is what next generation is about. I'm playing thegame via component cables through my 52" 480i (or is it p?) TV and it look sfar more "next generation" then pretty much any other game I've played including a fair share of Crysis's segments. Finally the atmosphere is amazing. It really does corrleate with the gameplay as well as feeling like a real-life battlefield. I can't really tell the difference between this and Black Hawk Down, I mean this IS THE game that has acheived TRUE cinematic presentation and gameplay. It all isn't peachy I mean yes while the A.I. is great being that way the game is no longer Metal Gear Solid but more so like Splinter Cell meets Call of Duty. I'll give more impressions later.

My impressions on the PS3 so far:

What was SONY thinking? First of all the console is the most fugliest thing I've seen the Gamecube. Wait no I take that back at least the Gamecube had some type of design to make it stand out and unique this system is just so plain and eww. Not to mention the thing is fucking bulky as shit. I mean this thing is like a tank compared to everythign else not to metion it's havey as shit. And the menu oh God the menu. I have NO idea why people complain about the Wii's menu. At least with the Wii's I can FIND things easily and it looks SORTA neat and organized with all those boxes as well as easy to select things. The PS3 makes me feel like I'm trying to find a song on a Mp3 player. You have like 7 catergories with a dozen options to choose from. My friend wanted to do a system update and couldn't even find it, I found it by accident. With such a run of the mill design and poor presentation and interface it really is a no brainer why people consider this to be the "other console" this generation. If I brought a PS3 instead of a Wii this thing really would have been collecting dust.

Re5 Producer worried about Japanese development being scrapped by the West totally - Good fucking God. Japan never was the trademark of powerhouse ever in the West. Just look at PC gaming. Western players admired Japanese games because they played significantly different from the Western games. With  Japaense games I can count that they'd offer me much variety as some games would be extremely traditional and developed as well as some being innovative but an actual full realized game instead of your standard pick up and play shit. Just look at the past while most Western developers were at eithr working on fully 3D games or just isometric the Japanese had shit as traditional as Dragon Quest VII to as revolutionary as Shenmue as well as all having different artistic visions and different styles of gameplay. People enjoyed Japanese games because of these things not because they had impressive technology. If Japanese developers want to get back to signifacne then start putting your A innovative videiogames to AAA innovative ones and immediately go to the Wii and DS which are as of this second are starved of serious third party games in the West.

Dvader said:

Best opening to a game, MGS1, it was like a movie, I had never seen anything like it.

RE4 is fantastic, but so was the original as it was the first time you ever encountered a zombie.

SOTN, just cause it has the greatest dialog ever put in a game.

Galaxy is up there as well, easily the best Mario one.

Oooh. I forgot about MGS on PS1. That was so exciting, even with the blocky pixels. The audio was fantastic at the time, still is.

Oh and the crappy acting in RE1 with the real actors. L.O.L

Dvader said:

My sister got Samba de Amigo for the wii, with maracas. I tried it out, really cool game. I love the song list, Gloria, Gypsy Kings, Santana, etc.

Still obsessed with Sonic Unleashed.  Will play Boom Blox today I think.

I got an old Gypsy Kings album. You like Santana? My father has every album. Drives me mad. Says that Black Magic Woman is a song about my mother. I like Havana Moon.

edgecrusher said:

BTW....Most memorable gaming moments; that should be a thread. Could be some great stuff there.

With videos. I remember we had a thread years ago on G-Spot. N64 games through Wii shop channel do have an enhancement, they got rid of the blur effect that the N64 anti-aliasing made. So if you actually compare the same game on N64 vs the same game on Wii you will see it's a lot crisper. You probably noticed that on the GC Zelda disc. I think some games may have that save state thing too. I still wouldn't buy a game I already owned, maybe I would for PD64. Nothing else though.

DARTH

Sorry man, still no headset.

PUNK

Nice impressions, keep em coming.

P.S Everyone showing up tommorrow for Smash Sundays?

edgecrusher said:

And yes, Banjo & Kazooie is awesome in download form. The game basically looks the same as always, but they seem to have cleaned it up a bit in HD with full widescreen. Game was amazing looking back in 1998 and still looks great today, anyone who says N64 didn't have better graphics than PS1 is kidding themselves. They really should have done this with Perfect Dark too. I wish I could get my entire N64 collection like this; Widescreen, HD shine, and no annoying N64 controller. Its too bad Nintendo's N64 downloads are barebones ports with no enhancements and WITHOUT vibration. Makes it not even worth the money.

This is simply not true. Many N64 games are upscaled to standard resolution (Sin & Punishment and Star Fox 64 come to mind) as well as some (from what I'e heard) fix glitches and other mishaps. Also if they had to put in as much work as they did with the XBLA classic downloads then games would take forever to come out as well as many not even hitting the service to begin with. Not to mention that they localize games for Western release.

Now I just finished Act 2 on Metal Gear Solid 4. So far this game is mostly highly enjoyable but has been met with surpassed expectations and some significant dissapointments. First off as I've said before the detail in the game is amazing. No boulder, table, or grass patch looks the same. This game has perfectly emulated real world environments during some parts. And the graphics and animations are so top notch that during the cutscenes it literally is a CG movie. If they'd fix up a few the textures so that they'd withstand the close ups then this game could have been broughten as a DVD from me and if I poped it in and watched it I honestly wouldn't have complained about the graphics. THEY ARE THAT GOOD. It just isn't on a graphical department it's the animation, how well the events are scripted, all the stuff going on in the surroundings, etc. To me real-time cutscenes have finally caught up to CG level, not great CG level just CG level in general. Fighting the first of the "special ops" (you know how they had Vulcan Raven and Sniper Wolf in MGS1?) and wow what an awesome fight. This was the biggest mindfuck since Raiden's naked escape and "Fission Mailed" in Metal Gear Solid 2. I loved this fight.

Saying these things I did state that I have my dissapointments with this game. The majority are in line with the gameplay. The game is no longer Metal Gear Solid and this is soley due to the games design. Because the maps are designed like a real world it is no longer possible to do things that you could do in the previous Metal Gears. And because the enemy A.I. is smarter as well as adopted to these map designs much of the fun of the series has been taken away. Metal Gear has always been awesome because I could use my surroundings to fuck around with my enemy and kill them in the most efficent manner. This game I just can't do that. It's all there (literally all the actions and then some are able to be performed) but due to how the game is designed it just isn't possible. The game is no longer "stealth action" but now "sneaking action". The entire game involves me seeing an enemy in my desired path. Killing them then keep running forward and repeating this concept. Yes I know that Metal Gear Solid's of yesteryears worked this way too it's just that there was fun, desire, and skill when taking down the enemies and that the maps were designed for it. Most of the time I often stayed in one spot just to take down the enemies and even find secret areas (one in MGS3 particular stands out for me) and just take all the enemies down. I wasn't even concentrating on progressing most of the time. Here progressing is all I do. There are bases to screw around with but they just aren't fun and don't click at all. Also I really don't dig this whole (go to a new location every act) bullshit. A big thing about Metal Gear is that you are placed at the outskirts of your destination and have to wiggle your way to it by yourself, it's very comparible to Metroid in that sense the area you are in DEFINES the game. Here I'm not getting that "defining" feeling at all and there is no doubt that multiple locations as a regular is the reason for that.

This game has further confirmed with me that more power within tech is a huge double edge sword. The presentation is through the roof but the actual gameplay has fallen through the floor. It's amazing to see 3D characters truly come to life as 2D characters did with the CPS3 or Naomi boards and the environments and atmosphere are second to none. However because of these environments and atmosphere the core gameplay has taken a significant beating. To put it in short the presentation has gone further then the gameplay could allow it too and the actual "game" is suffering from it. It's still a good game but just not as good as 3S and 2 are...so far at least.

Before this generation was shown this game looked amazing. Kojima promised that this game would be the first true next generation expereince. As someone who has played all of the "next gen pushing games" (save the Gears of War series) I can confirm that this game has lived up to its hype for me. It truly does show what can and cannot be done on this generation hardware. However the actual game of Metal Gear hasn't lived up to me. I think Kojima as well as other developers need to find a balcne between the gameplay and this next step in presentation.