My appreciation of the PS3 continues

Lately I have been addicted, yet again, to some good old Diablo 2. Even though I am weaning myself off of the blast-from-the-past I still do my fair share of random countess/chaos/baal/andy/pit runs. I have been trading off attention to my handhelds, I imagine it would be similar to entertaining two children with equal attention (heh I wouldn't know). On the PSP has been a lovely classic JRPG experience with Crimson Gem Saga, lots of fun with this one so far. On the DS I have had a great time with SMT: Devil Survivor which is enjoyable but some magic from the console SMT titles is missing I feel. That shouldn't be a mark against SMT: Devil Survivor though since it is still a great game that has a complex and gratifying combat system (strat rpg/standard turn based rpg hybrid). That being said I have been giving my consoles a bit of the cold shoulder. Getting back into the groove this past weekend I started the PS3 up.

Yesterday I picked up Fat Princess which is loaded with fun. I felt a bit detached from the gameplay since I am lacking a headset to coordinate but that was minor. I enjoyed most of my time playing the game as a worker or archer class. Charging up arrows and letting loose was great while dancing about avoiding getting hit. Gathering resources and reinforcing the defenses was also rather entertaining. One problem I noticed was the great amount of time spent on trying to find/connect to games. At first I was curious if it was my problem but I have just recently been upgraded to a FiOS connection so that was unlikely. Destructoid says that Sony will be working on it. I look forward to that being a little more smooth.

I have also played a good amount of Savage Moon which is a terrific TD game that I got while it was on sale for $5 on PSN. It is very challenging, I am not used to my cattle fighting back while herding them in a TD.

Finally I have played a large amount of Wipeout HD this weekend. I grabbed the new Fury DLC which practically doubled the amount of content in the game. While I had dabbled in the title a little when I had gotten it during the previously mentioned PSN sale for a great price of $14.99 (the DLC was $9.99 which is great considering what you get) I finally sunk my teeth into it this weekend. All I can say is WOW, this is one of the best downloadable titles I have played on a console yet. That statement is taking into consideration Castle Crashers, Braid, Ikaruga port, Rez HD, Geometry Wars 2, Pixel Junk Eden, and what have you. I think it's the fact that I already enjoyed Wipeout Pulse as my entertainment for most of the flight to and from Japan, now that I can have the same experience at 1080p with 60fps and blasting music/sfx it floors me. As an additional icing on the cake they have a photo mode. I never figured I would enjoy this since it didn't seem like much on the PSP iteration, my god it is different on the PS3. The options you have and the kinds of pictures you can get out of the game just leave my jaw on the floor. I'll just let the pictures do the talking. Lighting... textures... I am just amazed.

There's no crying in guerilla warfare- Red Faction Guerilla

Man, oh, man! I just spent the last two and a half days in a dreamworld playing this game practically non-stop. I could have spent more, but I'm trying to get a job.

So, anyway! Let's talk about it.

The new Red Faction game is fun as hell. Why? Well, it's not horribly original. There are story missions and then side missions. Completing the side missions helps you complete the main missions, so there is some incentive. It also takes place on a massive map that you drive around to complete objectives. Sound familiar? Saint's Row, Just Cause, gta, Bad Company, etc, etc. What's original? Being able to blow up just about anything. In fact it's a main gameplay aspect. I love you, geomod!

What else? Chaos. You enter an enemy compound (probably alone, there's few options for teamwork with NPCs) and you get swarmed, so you gotta run around with your four weapons (others are available by collecting salvage or by stealing off dead enemies) and blow up every building before MORE enemies come and start fucking your shit up and causing more problems. Also, destroying buildings takes a lot of thought as to where the weak points and best ways to take it down are, and since enemies are usually swarming you, you gotta do it fast and faster than fast. It's really really challenging in an interesting way.

I've played this same game several times in different forms, but it doesn't really matter because it's fun. The story is kinda so-so, but they do take settling on Mars in an interesting direction. The environments are beautiful. The cars are really cool and so are the buildings. It's a very pretty game. The AI will kill you easily, and they have no regard for their own personal safety.

What else can I say?

I still wanna play this game even though I gave it back to Blockbuster and I got shit to do. I would ignore my children (if I had any) to play this game.

yea

-Lyndon Big Johnson

Enjoy the Silence

Many moons have passed since last I posted, and lots of stuff happened. Some of that time was spent wrapping up school and graduation, I visited Japan during this time as well and had some good times there. Also in this time I was fortunate enough to receive a fair share of gifts from my graduation. Using some of this I recently procured a Playstation 3, I am now fortunate enough to have all three of the current consoles. Yeah, basically it is pretty sweet.

While visiting Japan I picked up some rather cool tidbits that were game related. I was tempted to pick up a game for my PSP or DS while there but figured the difficulty I would have for translating it outweighed my desire for any of the titles I saw. I picked up a full set plus extras of some SMT One Coin figures (a picture, the seventh character being a wolf) as well as a lovely Gwendolyn figure from Odin Sphere. I missed out on a gorgeous Valkyria Chronicles figure due to limited luggage space, I also just missed the last Etrian Odyssey gunner figure that was in a store. Finding well done figures from games that I've played is rather exciting...

Ok that's enough random talk about figures, now about games. Having gone on a long trip with plenty of time on an airplane as well as a new console to boot I dug into plenty of games since the last time I posted. The end of my semester was spent playing metric ass-tons of Rock Band and Resident Evil 5. My roommate and I SS ranked all of the mercenary levels save for maybe one? It's been a while but damn co-op mercenaries is hella fun. On my trip to Japan I played a huge amount of Wipeout Pulse for PSP as well as the Star Ocean Second Evolution port (stuck in the same part of the bonus dungeon as I was back in 2000/2001). I had gotten to the last disc of Lost Odyssey while at school, when I eventually get around to finishing it I need to do a summarizing post since the pacing really slowed and it has become slightly tedious to play. Finally, in my time since getting back from Japan I have been putting my PS3 to the test in terms of time in use. I started playing Folklore which I picked up from Bestbuy for $30 and LOVE the art direction/atmosphere but the actual gameplay is a little lacking. I have played some Little Big Planet, it is very unique but I am unsure if I will be able to personally use the customization elements to its full effect. Noby Noby Boy is something that, well it just needs to be experienced because you can't really describe it. I played lots of PS3 demos, in particular the demo for R&C: Tools of Destruction and it reminded me of all the reasons why I loved the first 3 Spyro games on Playstation (yay Insomniac) so lotsa fun there. To end it all before I ramble too much longer I played and beat MGS4 (stayed up this past night cause I couldn't put it down once I had gotten back to Shadow Moses MMMMM so good). That was a very satisfying and great first experience with the PS3 and I hope to make a more detailed post of my very late impressions of the PS3, particularly in comparison now with my other current consoles.

Cat Shit One Movie Trailer - The Animated Series

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

From Hotdogday

"Studio Anima has announced its development of a 12 episode full CG anime adaptation of Motofumi Kobayashis 1998 manga series Cat Shit One. The anime series updates the setting of the original manga from the Vietnam War to modern military conflicts and updates the protagonist rabbits from US soldiers to employees of a private military company. The series is designed as a serious and realistic modern war drama that happens to star cute and fluffy animals."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gaming memories

Well, this could be like a segment.

In Bloodrayne 2, your health and shit upgraded when you did the most nastiest of things to the baddies. I didn't know this until I had Rayne sliding down a pole, saying, "Oh, I could go all night."

It gave me a wide grin.

Ya hear me talkin to ya?

Plugging our own uploaded videos. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.

I'M BACK... but for how long??? (AND A NEW SEGMENT)

Yes, I DO still exist and I AM still a part of this blog. Every time I make a post, it seems like there is a promise that I will contribute much much more... and it never happens.

RANDOM SIDE NOTE: onlinebootycall.com is an absurd concept... makes sense I guess?

Anyways, I won't make any promises that there will be more posts by yours truly. Especially because I just can't take lying to you, the good people who read this, anymore. But I REALLY do want to post more. Maybe a little encouragement would help?... maybe?

As always, I digress. This post serves one purpose: the introduction of a new "segment" to the MS(g)B Centerstage Universe. I have a roommate who seems to have split personalities. Normally, he is a model citizen with an outstanding permanent record. But every so often, he becomes something else... something OFL (pronounced: awful). No one quite knows what causes the change, but what we can be sure of is OFL's honesty is brutal and his insight to the world of gaming is frighteningly accurate.

So without further adieu (I love colloquial language) let me present to you OFL's REVIEW OF... Flower:

"This is like way better than Wii right here."

I promise that I'll do my best to keep this thing running as long as possible. Potential next review from OFL? Little Big Planet of course. Stay tuned.

-JFuK wishes he was JCVD

Bullshit! - Not the Penn and Teller kind

-Tired of RE5 racism debate. The tribal costume for Sheva is iffy. Chris saying, "There's no humanity here" in that trailer is also iffy. Africa is a sensitive place. Everybody's interested in it these days. The 24 season is also in Africa. Is RE5 racist? Well then, don't play it.

-Scored grim fandango. It's sweet. The dude was doing some sweet stuff when he made that game. When I play it, I keep thinking "That's the second-biggest monkey head I've ever seen" from Monkey Island. I go cackle cackle cackle. Thx JFu.

-Little Big Planet is sweet for being a game that anybody can pick up and enjoy and a game that people who play games a lot can enjoy too. Sweet soundtrack. Sweet level design. Sweet thinking that went into that shit (THE BOSS FIgHTS ARE SO COOL!). Sweet multiplayer. Sweet user-generated content.

-Old Street fighter is very ugly. HD Remix did more than I realized. New Street Fighter very not ugly, but I still find it clumsy.

-RE5 is very very good from what JFu and I played so far. Funny that 24's in Africa too and the offline co-op looks like 24 when they show different characters doing shit at the same time.

-I feel like I should go beat Dead Space on Impossible difficulty to prove how easy that game is. Also, I'm a dick.

-We like the Wire. I started watching Underbelly, which is supposed to be Australia's The Wire. In terms of camera-work, it's very UK. What does that mean? Watch a UK show. You'll see. Characters are deep, but they have a tendency to only focus on one character per episode. This means the pacing is kind of odd. There were a lot of quick cuts of the same person but at later times of the day. That always throws me off. I'm of the opinion that if you're only following one character, keep following that character. Don't cut to a radically different setting because I keep thinking you're going to show another character with another storyline. Still, it's an interesting story. There's a narrator and at one point she says, "And that's what started the gangland wars that were to last over 9 years and cause over 30 murders." I wanted to laugh because there's at least 30 murders in season 1 of the Wire alone. Season 4 has over 200. The difference is Underbelly is more closely tied to real events (as far as I know...). The other difference is that criminal characters in Underbelly tend to have wives and children and live in nice suburban homes. These areas are much more transparent than the streets of Baltimore, and the Australian government probably has much more adequate funds to deal with the nuisance.

-MS(g)B Productions released a short. I haven't told JFu about this yet, but I did want to do a FAQ on it, but wanted his help to write it. Please ignore the continuity error of penis size. You may notice the first time I showed my cheesy-Nectar-drenched penis I was a little shy and it appeared smaller than actual. The second time I bare my penis is...more accurate. Two people gave us 5 stars! THX, YO!

-Something else I wanted to say

Lyndon Blah-blah-blah-blah-blase Johnson

Yah- Here is your weekly post - Yah

Weekly Post! Weekly Post!

LyBoJo has yet to finish Z.o.E. 2, but he got money so he wasted it on the first and second Ratchet & Clank games, and boy, are they fun! Well, the first one is. LBJ hasn't hit the second one quite yet because he's too busy playing Samurai Warriors 2, which he also bought. Isn't it great how cheap PS2 games are these days?

Samurai Warriors 2 is the best goddamn game in the series, and I've played just about every game (minus the expansion packs) in the series. It's the most intuitive. The character development is challenging, but not too hard. The stages in the game still require you to be in fifty places at once, but horses are a lot easier to get, which makes things much easier.

And the stories are sweet. The writing is weird at times (sometimes characters respond to each other by talking about a completely different topic), but the stories themselves are Hollywood-worthy. Each one could be a movie, but even better, you as the player get to play each story from every perspective. In one story, you kill your lord. By playing with a different character, you stop the guy who would kill the lord. Then you can play the lord and suffer the betrayal. Over time, I've started to feel really touched by what's going on even though I'm button-mashing while doing it. I was killing peasants out of duty to my lord, but thinking, "I really don't want to do this, but to unite Japan, I must!" Samurai Warriors 2 shows an era of warring states that was full of tragedy and pointless conflict and people with deep inner and outer conflicts. It's also fun to be a fucking badass.

I really really like the game.

I had a revelation where I may have finally admitted that I don't like fighting games or that my expectations for a fighting game are too high. I keep thinking of a fluid, almost choreographed scene of fighting and either that doesn't exist at my skill level or it doesn't exist. They're also repetitive as hell.

-LyBoJo

Rent Only

This guy who recently bought a PS3 is asking me, "What are the good games to buy," so of course, I respond with...

Well...I said, "I think there are a lot of games worth renting, but not worth buying."

That comment deserves a few qualifications

1. I have enough shit in my house
A gamecase takes up space in a house that isn't mine. Oh, yeah, I guess I should mention where blogging has got me, a bedroom in my mom's basement.

2. I beat games fairly quickly
I marathon to the end and then tend not to feel any particular attachment to it. Dead Space is the exception, but I bought that game when I didn't have the money to buy that game and that always makes a thing more important that it should be.

3. I don't do multiplayer
I don't really have the friends or roommmates around to play split-screen, and I'm a shy online gamer, so I don't have a lot of PS Network friends. Also, there haven't been a lot of multiplayer modes or whatever in games I've played recently that were all that appealing. I like Warhawk. The SF4 multiplayer thing is cool, but the game itself is frustrating, so what's the point there?

So, there. Why own when you can rent? I feel this way about homes too. I make these statements in hope of consensus or controversy.

-LBJ paying the landlord in da white house