Impulse bought the new slim 250 gig slim 360 at Dell. It was $320 for it and the new Madden, which I wasn't sure I entirely wanted. Haven't played Madden really since '02 and since I'm a Buffalo fan and they are finding new levels of suck to explore these days it makes the game a little less appealing. However, there was also the bing 20% cash back deal. So jumped and effectively picked up the new 360 and Madden '11 for $240 before tax. Well within my tolerance for picking up the new box and now I can waste all sorts of money on XBLA downloads.

Also recently started exploring Soma Bringer for the DS which is quite snazzy, shame it never got picked up, and utterly wasted my weekend on Jump Ultimate Stars.

Recently picked up Super Mario Galaxy 2. Really enjoying it. I hope I actually FINISH it this time. I have a horrible habit of playing and stopping games, usually at the water temple =p

Also had to buy a new Xbox 360 due to the 2 that we had RRoD'ing within days of one another. It came with Banjo-Kazooie and Viva Pinata. I like Banjo-Kazooie because it reminds me of the gummy ships in Kingdom Hearts. I spent hours just building a decent/fun ship and as I get more parts in Banjo, plan on doing the same.

Viva Pinata, on the other hand, is way too freaky for me. Everything was going fine until the bird pinata ate the worm pinata that I had named and made my own. So I doubt I'll be playing that anytime soon =P

After a whole day of calls and driving around, I finally got a hold of a copy of Bladestorm: The Hunderd Years War for PS3. I decided to look for it after downloading the demo and being riveted to my controller for the whole morning yesterday. I didn't expect it to be that hard to find.

Yeah, Bladestorm is one of the harder to find PS3 games, which is why even used copies are still pretty expensive (I don't think I've personally ever seen one for less than $30). It's a pretty fun (and slightly underrated) game that's worth it if you're into that type of game though, so it's definitely worth the price. I haven't played much of it myself, but it's probably my sister's favorite PS3 game to date.

Just bought a couple of XBox360 games through Best Buy.com, each on sale for $19.99. First off, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing which I've been wanting to go down to $20 for quite some time. The other one I had no intention of getting originally, but the deal was just too good to pass up: Bayonetta.

I came super close to biting on the Bayonetta deal, just couldn't quite do it. I just got Blue Dragon ($10) and have Ninja Gaiden II ($13), Dark Sector ($7), Fight Night Round 4 ($10), Super SF IV ($33), Soul Calibur IV ($18), and Virtua Fighter V ($12) on the way, plus enough MS points left over after SF2THDR to pick up at least 2 more XBLA games, probably going to be Shadow Complex and Harmony of Despair, but kind of torn with Limbo and Deathspank out there among so many others. Plus Madden '11 came with the 360 so I can try and make Buffalo the respectable team they aren't in real life.

Figure Bayonetta will probably hit $20 again if not soon on amazon by the time Black Friday rolls around.

Incidentally if anyone wants to help knock the rust off my SF skills, gamer tag is Tormut Rose... HDR is taking some adjusting...

Recent for me:

Upgraded Castlevania: Lords of Shadow to Collector's edition

Bought Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for PS2 and picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum GotY edition.

I picked up Alan Wake recently and am really enjoying it. I'm four episodes in. Game succeeded in breaking me out of my gaming funk I'd been in for a couple of months.

Of course, Metroid: Other M comes out in a few days and that will become my main priority so I'm trying to finish Alan Wake before then.

I don't remember whether I mentioned this or not but I bought Zoids Assault from Game Stop for ten dollars. The game is used of course. I also am borrowing Last Remnant from my friend back home. He'll be getting that back in two weeks so I should actually start playing that.

Play this on the PC instead. Less headaches this way.

As for me, just that Castlevania HD, until I get both Shank and Scott Pilgrim for XBLive later this day.

The PC version of Last Remnant is a lot more user-friendly and less glitchy but it's also far easier by all accounts which I reckon would take away a lot of the fun of the game.

I thought it only seemed easier because they removed the cap on how many leaders you can have in battle. By the end of the console version, it's stupidly annoying how ineffective your generic units are (when compared to your beastly unit leaders).

If your computer can run it, it's better to get the Last Remnant on PC.

Do...do you guys even own it on PC?

Yeah, the leader cap removal is a boon. The ability to disable commands to influence attack orders is great. Stat cap removal is huge.

But they ramped up the game's difficulty to compensate, the stats and attacks of almost all enemies have been buffed. They also changed the leveling mechanics (chaining is now more beneficial, high comparative BR fights are no longer AS beneficial, etc).

It's actually HARDER overall, especially to people new to the thing. If you come off the 360 version and understand the changes to the PC one you might be able to abuse the new mechanics but even then the early to mid game will be far rougher on you than the circlebox edition. If you just go through it without reading up on it the PC version will be significantly more difficult.

Picked up Metroid: Other M. Now I'm probably not as hard pressed to find fault with the game as some of you (Probably due to the Metroid-fan filter), but I must admit it could have been a lot better. I'm still enjoying the game, mostly. I can see where the core of the complaints DO come from, and I think Team Ninja really dropped the ball here (I blame the lack of Itagaki to reign them in). Ultimately though, I hope the next metroid game is more like Super, or Shadow Complex. Now this is just me: Other M isn't a bad game by itself, but it could have been a lot more.

Now that the mediocre is out of the way, onto the good: I got Crackdown 2 today, finally. Its like the first game, but better. I'm really enjoying blowing shit up so far. Only complaint is that picking out a regular civillian from the freaks and Cell can be hard in the midst of battle. Convinced my bro in Japan to pick it up, so gonna get on that multiplayer later. If anyone else wants to get it on some action, let me know!

Not intending to double post but got a couple more games: Halo: Reach, and Civilization V. I played a bit of Civ V today and its already great. Reach is fine too, although I never have been quite as addicted to the multiplayer aspects as some others on here. Doesn't mean I won't check out what it has to offer though. I mainly got Reach to play with my brother in Asia, and got CiV for myself :)

Okay now someone else post before I make a third post when I pick up Etrian Odyssey III -_-

Acquired EO3!

Recently bought Alien vs Predator for PS3 and Bioshock 2 for PS3 as well. Got both kinda cheap as AvP was $17 free shipping from newegg and Bioshock 2 was $5 on clearance from some furniture store in Nebraska's website.

Finished paying off on Cataclysm and Castlevania as well.

Revive!

Newest gaming purchases.

Civilization 5 - Steam deal. Enjoy it. My first "Civilization game", jesus fuck matches seem to last forever. Even on the fastest speed. Previously the longest match game I had played was "Sins of the Solar Empire".

Radiant Historia - Definitely loving this game so far. Very pretty visuals, great music, story is actually interesting to play and characters aren't either completely useless or stupid. Definitely recommend people pick this up.

Year old necro~~

Just bought Might and Magic 1-6 through GOG.com. All 6 for $4.99. Not per game, all together! It's worth it just for 2 and 6 (in my eyes anyway). Might and Magic® 6-pack: Limited Edition - GOG.com


Other recent purchases:

Silent Hill Downpour. (The game was pretty good. I got one of the 6 endings. Time to play through again at some point)

Silent Hill HD Collection.

Probably will finish paying off Lollipop Chainsaw soon too and pre-ordered Assassin's Creed 3 and the new Tomb Raider. Sad panda that Ni No Kuni delayed until 2013, but gives me more than enough time to pay that off!

Everyone's been saying that SH HD Collection has got a plethora of problems with it. What are your thoughts on it?

I snagged Vanquish. It's pretty good so far but I think I made a mistake starting it on Hard difficulty. Aside from that though it's just been Mass Effect 3 MP lately.

I've also heard bad problems - namely the removal of fog - in SH HD.

Haven't played much of it, honestly. From what little I did, I noticed that *sometimes* the frame rate will drop and make it feel like the PS2 version. (oh no, so game breaking!) It feels the same to me. I'm not playing it with the new voices, maybe one of the subsequent playthroughs I will.

I like it, and $39.99 isn't too shabby for both of the games. I dunno what other kinds of problems people are saying about it other than framerate or it looks "old and ugly".

I'll try to get some more time with it today. There's a trophy to complete the game in 3 hours and one to complete it only saving twice. Shouldn't be an issue once I remember where everything's at.

A little side note (of humor to me anyway) for the Might and Magic VI download. They have an MP3 version of the soundtrack for download when you purchase the pack. Now unless it's an AMAZING coincidence that these are indeed the correct titles for the tracks, they're using the audio from when I ripped the music on the disc back in 2005 and shared it to someone's FTP here back in the day (I want to say it was TAPPY or someone else's FTP that was insanely popular in 2005). I can tell from the names of the track titles (and no, there was not a track listing that I was aware of way back when), I actually named these as I felt they were called from when they were played in the game. If it isn't the exact same audio encoding (I ripped in 192 VBR, and it looks like this is variable bit rate) then they're using the exact same tracklist. I just found that kind of cool as hell.

The problem people have with the Silent Hill collection is, aside from bizarre framerate issues, they've messed with the aesthetics and sound for some reason.

Silent Hill HD Collection Video Game, Review HD | Video Clip | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

What was once red and rusty in Silent Hill 3 is now just grey and brown or just washed out and flat.

They removed a lot of the fog in both games, so Silent Hill 2 has scenes of ropes or other background objects floating in the air before they no longer "disappear" into the fog.

http://tbreak.com/megamers/files/silent_hill.jpg

The new voice acting (for both games, with only SH2 allowing to also choose the original) has also split opinions.

Ahhh, ok I see. Like I said, I'll try to play through some of it when I can. I haven't seen much of anything game breaking as far as gameplay, I figured that's what people were bitching about. My bad.

Well, in a series where even the tiny details matter, changing them is a big deal and doing shoddy work of it is as close to game breaking as any number of glitches. The problem is that now these are not the "definitive" editions of the games these HD upscales are supposed to be, and that's what people have issues with, telling others not to give money to such lazy work.

I recently got Batman Arkham City for 30% discount, the shop was having a closing sale and I've only been to that mall on that day and was walking around when I saw the shop.

And I also got FFXIII Ultimate Hits from another shop. I think Ultimate Hits is Squeenix' budget line so it's cheaper than the "regular" titles, and luckily I got the last copy!