[General Discussion] Recent Game Purchases, or what I bought instead of fourteen new dildos this weekend

W00t! Hear this: My local game store had 2 brand new copies of Gitaroo Man, so I snagged one and beat that deceptively hard game. Moving around the analog stick to sync with the trace line is actually a lot harder than it seems, since most people tend to be thrown off by the autolock feature, if they are slightly off angle initially. I think I spoiled it for myself by listening to the OST so much before ever playing the game.

I also just bought Lumines which reminds me intensely of Meteos. Less cute, more music action, less motivation, larger playfield. Considering I traded in Meteos a while ago, I love the music and sound effects in Lumines a lot.

Finally, I'm like the last person ever to get Xenogears. At first I was literally frozen when I saw the incredibly dated and ugly graphics. I could tolerate FF VII but you'd figure that someone wouldn't be a fanboy over Xenogears and make a comment about that, all I saw were rave reviews...The battle system is lots of fun, and anime cutscenes are all right. I don't regret getting it.

Most amazing jew boots

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PSP (2.6 firmware...connect the dots)
and
Vandal Hearts 2 for the PS!

Hopefully VH2 turns out to be insane fun like the first one, and hopefully I actually continue to begin liking GTA for the arbitrary "car-runs-over-everything" part.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

A bunch of older Windows 95 games that are still lots of fun to try. The majority came in twin set since they're produced by Interplay:

Bust A Move 4 + Earthworm Jim 3D: I paid $15 CDN entirely for the Bust A Move 4 and don't regret it. Unless someone can tell me of another Bust A Move game that features the chain reaction system and the nauseatingly cute character designs, I'm satisified with my purchase. Earthworm Jim 3D's just all right, but it almost tries a bit too hard to make no rational sense: eg. grab the penguin's briefs while running through a farmhouse with rolling grenades, etc.

Sacrifice + Messiah: For such an old game, Sacrifice is very fun. Normally I hate those kinds of games where you have bases and send troops out, but since this involves spells and gods and such; I was instantly attracted. I recently just finished the tutorials, but I'm garbage at real in-game play. Messiah, on the other hand, malfunctions after the opening logos. I read lots of bad reviews, but I still wanted to give it a chance. $5 CDN for the both of them is a pretty awesome bargain though.

Gearheads: I'm going to take it out of the box after I finish typing this. You have to just send the most toys over to your opponent's side, but each toy does something erratically different. Combine that with the tradeoff of wind-up time and speed, we have a rather strategic battle of decisions. I'm looking for to this. $5 for this one.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX
Lots of fun to use Ingrid outside of CFE, as well as dramatic battle mode. It's not very fun when the controls are definitely more imprecise due to the PSP Dpad structure, costing you in very close matches. If only I could get my hands on that dpad mod somewhere.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
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I had Deception but traded it in a while back. I got this one because I figured that there were different characters despite coming out before deception and missing the extra minigames. I also wanted to see the fatalities, and am glad to find both games play similarly.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by surasshu

I bought Unison JP!

I bought Unison US a while ago and traded it in very soon afterwards, even if I only got for $2. I was totally turned off by the song choice and harshness of gameplay.


Now I got these a while ago around their respective release dates, but I did purchase "the big 3" and another game:

Disgaea 2: Neglected on the backburner, the new compressed interface made me doubt just a little, but all the fun new little compromising details intrigued me.
eg. guns shoot straight lines only now, but go really far.
eg2. you have to repeatedly transmigrate to unlock successive character classes, but it's so much easier to level up this time around
Just as overkill and fun as ever.

Okami: Totally beautiful action game. I'm liking Clover's platformers so far. Only 2 games have ever gotten me really into platformers: Psychonauts and this masterpiece. It transcends mere words, you just have to play it. The central theme appears to be restoration and beauty.

Valkyrie Profile 2: A graphic "level up!" with several elements carried over from the last one. Battles are even more fun since you are actually entering multiple battles whenever you attack a monster. The frequent cutscenes are a joy to watch and listen to as well. It's not exactly VP1 but it does quite a job providing a different and equally awesome experience.

The King of Fighters 2006: Obviously the odd one out. It's basically "Maximum Impact 2" and it appeals to unlockable fanboys like me. Each of the 38 characters has 16 different costumes! To top it off, a good amount of the costumes are cosplays of other fighting game characters as well. You also have to work hard and beat arduous missions to unlock new stages. Definitely a lot to keep you busy.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Quite a few games changed hands within the last short period, and I don't have a couple of them anymore but:

Magical Starsign - I was fooled by all the pretty advertising on gamefaqs and the whole astrology and magic concept. The graphics really are subpar and disappointing, but the main catcher was that when it comes down to it, you really only have two unique options in battle: cast magic and attack physically. The less than 5/10 review on Gamefaqs captures it all. It was just a very average rpg, and casting Lassi's wind spell repeatedly for the first hour or two gets boring quickly. Traded it in.

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story - Traded it in. By no means was this a bad game, and I actually liked it more than Starsign! I just didn't have the time to play this neat rpg when there were other sexier portable options such as:

Power Stone Collection - Having only played the 1 and 2 very briefly, finally being able to play both of these again was worth the wait. I don't know how the experience is for those who've thoroughly went through the DC versions, if you haven't played much of either of them, this is a very welcome port. All the wacky item action and stage interactivity are the best points of both games.

Yoshi's Island DS - This had me up until 3 a.m. for the last week roughly. It's even cuter with the addition of the 4 other babies, although I highly doubted if I was playing a port at some points, since some of the levels feel like the originals with minor tweaks. I might trade it in after reading that there are only 5 worlds (on the last part of world 4 now), and getting all the character coins/perfect scores does not unlock anything proportional to the effort (eg. hard modes for minigames). The level sare very long this time around.

Final Fantasy III - I bought Power Stone Collection after this, but I've only read the manual still. I plan to play it right now, or sometime later tonight. Hopefully it'll deliver.

FELIPE NO

I had Portrait of Ruin as well.
Horrendously fun, but the downside is that for an addicting game, it's rather short. I played for hours straight in such a short time, but I'd almost gotten 1000% within 2 days (or maybe I play too much)! If they made a 3rd DS Castlevania in this style with double/triple the length then it would be a perfect one.

Just got:
Kirby Squeak Squad - It's cute, kiddy, fun and all, and I sadly have the feeling that I'll be able to beat this today after playing to mid 2nd world within a couple of minutes yesterday. More of an impulse buy, but I had to see what kinds of new Kirby powers there were for myself.

As a gift:
Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception - Didn't have a chance to play it yet, but will soon.

I'll probably score FFXIICE/Elite Beat Agents/Gunpey DS with my trade in credit soon.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Until about three days from now when a bunch of good stuff for DS comes out, the only game purchase I have finally made is Lumines II. I'm glad they didn't mess around with the original formula and decided to just offer more trippy psychadelic skins and more objectives to clear than you could bat an eyelash at. I actually don't even mind the mainstream videos and songs too much, most of them worked in very well somehow. It is also very refreshing to be able to obtain Water, Flowers, and Lights with ease this time around.

How ya doing, buddy?

Soul Calibur IV picked up from pre-order at Gamestop yesterday.
There's something about it that strikes me as unpolished. Perhaps it's the removal of the silly loading screen character shouts, or the fact that you have to unlock the other 1/2-2/3 of the character select screen by purchasing characters (Amy I can understand, but Talim!?), or maybe even thhe fact that it's harder to overkill an opponent since extra hits after KO don't register as easily. Nonetheless, it's still another installment that I had to have.

There's nowhere I can't reach.