AndrewTS

http://www.scee.presscentre.com/Content/De...mp;NewsAreaID=2 So much for their massive worldwide launch that nobody ever believed they'd be able to pull off. lol

But what about the 4D gameplay?

Yay, spend less money for less quality. Hey, why buy a Lexus when you can buy a Kia instead and save thousands?! Flamebait aside, I am amazed at the amount of online support Wii is getting, not just here but also at huge sites like GameFAQs. I'm very interested in seeing whether that's going to translate into anything with the mass market. I don't really expect it to mean that Wii will actually be competitive with PS3 in terms of total sales, since Nintendo always is more popular on the internet than they are overall. Still, even compared to other Nintendo systems, the Wii online support is pretty extraordinary. Interesting. You're surprised that there's a lot of Nintendo fanboys at GameFAQs? Have you paid attention to the recent character battles? Also, depending on the sites you go to there's still plenty of people dogging on Nintendo. "The Wii is an overclocked gamecube," "More of the same old crap," "The only thing on it that interests me is a Gamecube port that should have been out last year," etc. I'm shocked too at the Wii support, because while it appeals to me a lot, it doesn't seem to be mainstream enough to be a major player in western markets. Joe Madden wants his favorite game in HD with the same controller he's used for 10 years and with top of the line graphics. He doesn't want to play it in a new way with slightly-better-than-current-gen graphics, IMO. Johnny GTA never wanted a Gamecube because the games all "looked gay." There weren't enough games with "mad grafx where you can gun mother****ers down." Of course, the whole point of Wii is to get people to play games who don't have those preconceptions--but it seems far less likely to happen outside of Japan. I think Wii will be a hit early on, but will it have staying power? Or will it fizzle out like Gamecube and Dreamcast? I wouldn't been on Wii being a huge winner in Japan just yet, though. Microsoft never even tried to capture the market (how about Blue Dragon, huh? And that other RPG...?). Yet, Nintendo was still a DISTANT number 2 in Japan with the Gamecube, behind PS2. You'd think with no real MS threat they'd do better, but it was pretty much total PS2 domination. However, things have changed with the DS, which basically is ruling Japan and a huge success in other markets, but that's a portable, not a console. I'll say Nintendo will finish with at least a good 38% of the Japan gaming market this gen. Sony probably 58%. I'll be optimistic for the 360 and leave that remaining 4%. That's still a lot of creepy otaku who love Kasumi, transplanted Americans, and bruised bananas. Outside of Japan it's really up in the air, but Nintendo has to do better this time than with GC. Sony is going to have to make some monumental screwups to not stay #1. You don't go from #1 to dead last that quickly otherwise. Atari suffered from the industry crash. Sega suffered from 2 bad stopgaps, and the arguably the worst *major* system launch in history. Nintendo had an unpopular format (cartridges), bad timing, and yet they still were very successful, albeit way behind PS1.

"North America" is getting it Nov 17 still, though. Although I gotta wonder... -What is going to be the failure rate on those 500,000? -How will they be allocated in NA? -Will Nintendo/Sega be able to capitalize big time? http://angrysonyfanboy.ytmnd.com/

Europeans share their opinions on the news: http://www.thisiswaiting.com/

If you buy a PS3 off ebay and it breaks, will Sony honor the warrant? I doubt it.

Well lots of bad news, but how about that PS1 emulation on PSP to be available at PS3 launch?

It's the same as with the DS, basically. Either use a wireless router or a wi-fi dongle that is compatible with PSP. DS one won't work, obviously, but there are 3P ones that are designed to support both.

Square was never even involved in the original--Enix published that. The only reason Square's name is involved with it now is because of the merger, and the new Enix-heavy leadership.

If you honestly think WWE's influence had nothing to do with that, you must be kidding yourself. The AKI games, especially the early ones, felt so disconnected from the American wrestling scene, you could tell they were all about gameplay-first, WWE/WCW accuracy later. It's like they were mailed some tapes and faxed some general information about the "superstars", but those were afterthoughts. Every AKI game, from WCW vs. the World to No Mercy felt like Japanese wrestling games loosely molded into American aesthetics. Almost all of the Yukes games feel from the ground-up to be strictly, 100% WWE games, for better or worse. So you have the entrance vids, updated outfits, recapping of familiar angles, and all the other crap you couldn't give a crap about if you want a good *wrestling* game. It's a WWE game, with all the inherent problems that brings along. WM2000 and No Mercy had a decent balance going, but even so the angles that showed up there would usually be dated.

The original PS1 game that was basically an arcade wrestler? Seriously? It isn't quite that bad, but it's been...well..."altered" into a more "sim" style game. That is, "sim" in the WWE sense, where the main eventers are overpowered and have ridiculously unrealistic stats while everyone else is mediocre or worse. The games now resemble Fire Pro or the AKI games--about as much as a 7 foot basketball player who is 3/4 of the way through a sex change resembles a woman. You can squint and kind of see the similarity, but you'd have to be extremely drunk not to easily tell the difference.

Reasons the SVR games blow: -AI is one, natch -horrid online play -terrible rosters -emphasis of presentation over gameplay -broken attribute system -CAW mode getting crappier each game. -SVR's 1 bright spot, the story mode, was ruined in 2006. -Controls are sloppy and detection is poor; attempts at running/diving moves leave you flopping all over the place when they're crisper and more accurate in Rumble Roses PS2 -They never, ever, ever fix the clipping. -Meters, meters meters for everything. The submission system sucks (and there's a tweaked version every game!) -Toe Kick is just about the only striking attack that matters, and most matches hinge on who hits their Toe Kick first. Toe Kick at the right time = match end. -The AKI games are a million times better. And honestly Rumble Roses on PS2 has a much tighter engine (although the graphics come at the expense of characters on screen). If 2007 basically used the same engine with more moves, we'd have a better product IMO. Then again, Yukes screwed up the sequel, so maybe they just got lucky.

They should have released a super-uncut version with more scenes and more gore added in, just to cash in. With a super-secret ending where Dana is doing crack.

The Wicker Man was a really weird remake. Huge portions of the script are recycled, but the major premise behind the islands' pagan inhabitants are really screwed up and quickly become painfully obvious. The hallucinations were an awful attempt to get more "horror" jumps and scares out of what was originally a slow-building film. I liked Nic's performance, but the way the character was written--actually one way then the next scene going all insane and kicking ass was strange. The tacked-on "wrap up" scene was terrible. Of course, it was going to come out a loser anyway. The original movie had Christopher Lee and hotter women (with nudity).

It wasn't so much the violence, but also the slightly risque nature (OMG women in nighties!) too. Night Trap was a major sham in every way (especially as a game), so I don't see why that's so shocking. Night Trap was picked up as "that other game" to alarm parents and senators, because they didn't want to let the truth be known it was MK and MK alone they were going after. Thus they pretended that much more people knew and cared about Night Trap than actually did.

What an exhaustive analysis. Valkyrie Profile is excellent. The art and character designs are fantastic (although some of them draw on some obvious influences), the music is grand, and the gameplay is sweetness. The writing is very well done, and I actually enjoy all the cutscenes. Gameplay works like this: dungeons are essentially 2D sidescrolling, but with multiple background layers, doorways that travel into and away from the screen to go to different rooms, and higher and lower levels that you can jump to like a platformer, and you even can slide under low areas. Enemies in the field are visable instead of you having to fight random battles. Enemies can also be zapped in the field to stun/detain them. You can attack enemies first to gain an advantage, as well. If this sounds a little familiar, it should. In the field the game bears a lot of similarity to the Paper Mario games, except with wicked-good art and more mature storylines/characters. When you enter a battle, your partner characters appear, and they can essentially attack in real time--no turn-taking necessary. You can hit a pair of buttons at a time (or more) to gang up on an enemy and do wicked combos, or attack one enemy at a time. You can also activate special attacks where you'll dish out tons more damage. I don't know if I'd say it's worth 150 bucks+ (I haven't finished the game), but it's one of the best RPGs on the original PS1, and if you like RPGs at all it's an excellent reason to nab a PSP (or get a 2ndhand one, as I expect the prices on those to drop bigtime when the redesigns come in). The fact that X___g____ got a re-release on PS1 and it took this long to get a Valkyrie Profile re-release is a sin and a shame.

THQ: buuut...but.. sales of SD series >>>>>> DOR series. Plus it saves on costs I'm sure. I'm not terribly saddened because I thought DOR 2 just slightly above mediocre, although that put it far above SvR2006, which was lame. The N64 titles still beat anything released Stateside.

I was surprised to find out that Jurassic Park on Genesis has still held up really well. Played it over friend's yesterday, and ended up playing through most of the game. The raptor's game is more fun than Grant's, though. The raptor has an insane vertical leap--like, almost two full screens, *and* he can grab onto ledges, do a regular jump on enemies to kill them, eat little dinos, and rip you apart with a short range pounce and claw melee attack. Also played Castlevania Bloodlines--an incredibly underrated entry in the series. Like Super Castlevania, it's much easier than the NES games (and has adjustable difficulty; on the easy setting most of the game is a breeze). I was pressing Anya to try it easy--and she was worried about the difficulty. On easy, it's like SotN easy almost, with my first death coming on stage 3 thanks to a damn merman's cheap shot. Lecarde rocks, too, with the spear having great range and allowing him to vault to higher ledges. We played cooperative Golden Ax. Beat the game, too. Regular attack sucks, jumping attack owns nearly all. Liked the fire-breathing lizards, but the game isn't nearly as good as Final Fight, and isn't even close to SoR2. X-Men is hard but surprisingly very good. Jean rescues you from those annoying instant-death pits, there's levels where you actually travel into the background for hidden items, and the graphics and control are really good. My friend did have a bit of a problem, though, because when he dug out his old Genesis so we could play the games, his regular controller didn't work. I was fine because I had brought over my faithful 6 button...but he had to resort to...the Turbo Touch 360. What a piece of crap that thing was. Well, despite bad/inaccurate dpad controls and a spongy C button, we made due. Oh, Treasure sucks now. Making Gunstar Super Heroes 1-player ruined it. The original kills it in like a million different ways. Naturally, we did 2P coop on that. I'd began a new game of Castlevania Aria of Sorrow. I was trying to speed through the game, leveling up as little as possible--and I was doing really well until I hit the brick wall that was Death. Thankfully, a Giant Ghost Soul, plenty of positions and mind ups later, I finally beat the SOB, and at Level 26 too. Then knocked off Legion at level 28. However, it takes more *patience* than anything else. Oh crap tho--I have to fight Balore soon... Contra Speed Run- not tool assisted either, unless you count spread gun : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPO6Kj10e4

Yeah, no DOR3 right now. It was said since SvR07 is going "multi-platform" there's not going to be any more platform-specific titles (at least for right now). So unless they announce SvR07 for GC, that's it. No DOR3. Also there's been no announced WWii titles either. There's a *rumor* that there's a Wii version of SvR07 on the way: http://gonintendo.com/?p=4989

Yes. The focus group is Vince and a 12-year-old gamefaqs poster with Cheetos powder permanently stuck his fingers. I can't muster much to care about this game. The gameplay keeps getting worse, the online play gets exponentially worse (one would hope XBL will make all the difference in that version, though), and while production values tend to get top billing over improving the gameplay, there's still rampant laziness in the finished product. I guarantee you the final game will have clipping issues.

Time to completion in hours:minutes?

So Disgaea 2 is so easy you don't have to do hardly any fighting to finish the game?

... I was wondering this too. But the answer is obvious. Flik is a witch.

That's just the way console RPGs were; probably the extensive cost of localization, plus trying to make the most money out of the games when at the time it was an extremely niche market for RPGs. After all, Final Fantasy "2", "3", Chrono Trigger, and even Super Mario RPG were all hella-expensive when they were released. And don't pretend the silliness of FFX-2 was limited to the first 10 minutes.

True, it's not bad, and I got it too. But then I had to go put Star Fox back into my SNES, and now I'm thinking "Why the hell can't we have another one of these today?" It's shockingly still playable despite the dinosaurian frame rate and flat-shaded polys. Plus, since you're on a track, you don't suffer from the disorientation that other early 3D games with weak framerates suffer from.