AndrewTS

Gru's randomly on one of those comic covers in a shot inspired directly from NFA. I'm sure Anya could dig it up. So I do believe he's in After The Fall, but I haven't bothered checking it out. Too much about it sounded really lame.

This better be good. What they have to offer right now is free and it's still a ripoff.

Virtual Boy killed Gunpei Yokoi.

At the moment, there are 360 shortages, though, so there's no reason to do a price cut, just like with Wii. I can't honestly think of a reason to recommend the "Arcade" or "Core" 360, unless you only have dial up internet. Even then, 360's (limited) BC with Xbox games can still be used.

http://kotaku.com/358821/gears-of-war-2-co...-in-two-flavors http://kotaku.com/358805/gears-of-war-2-teaser

I had thought Shane Kim confirmed "a new Gears of War" project some weeks ago, but seems that was just a rumor someone else dropped. Least surprising news since Resistance 2.

Well said. This gen fails for wrestling games, as neither has a quality AKI-style 3D game, nor a Fire Pro game (yet). You have your choice of system for that Smackdown trash, though. Wii's Guitar Hero 3 versions are largely mono-only, BTW. It seems like it's going to be a pain in the BUTT to get the fixed up version. The 360 has the best overall selection of games for their ****ty HW. However, the bulk of the good ones are first persony shoot things.

Despite complete lack of faith at first, I'd heard a lot of positive things about it and picked it up when it finally was available in store today. Apparently it's been released in limited quantities. Very, very limited. The reviews have been good: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/nomoreheroes After 6 1/2 hours of actually playing it--it's damn good. It has technical issues out the wazoo (the free roam mode? Loaded with pop-in, slowdown, and framerate issues, despite having few people or interactive aspects of the environment). Its art style works for the game but isn't terribly impressive. There are also some strange design decisions that betray the developers' lack of experience with this sort of title. Despite that, the meat of the game, the combat and boss encounters, is a blast. Standard beam attacks are A, wrestling moves/grabs are B, and finishing strikes are either a quick swipe with the wii remote (for beam finishers) or a combination of wiimote/nunchuck motions for the wrestling moves. Depending on the position you hold the wii remote, you'll either attack with High strikes or Low strikes, which extend to your combos and your charged beam attack. For example, in a typical encounter you might back up 3 guys against the wall, slashing at them until you've stunned them all. Your finishing strike window pops up, you slash from left to right, decapitating two of them (resulting in geysers of blood of Kill-Bill-style proportions), leaving one behind. You might get in close, hold B for a hold, and thrust the wiimote and nunchuck upward together, suplexing the remaining baddie. When you stand up, a tap of the B button will finish the job with a downward stabbing attack. The action scene level designs, which vary from level to level, may repeat themselves a bit during that level, however. Enemy variety is good, although it seems like the weapons make basically all the difference (unsurprisingly, the biggest threats are projective-equipped baddies). Your typical action level is basically going to be combat-heavy, although there are some nice twists like a home-run derby set of encounters (where you can go to bat with the wiimote, and knock down a row of thugs in "Warrior" baseball uniforms--say, that's a confusing reference...), and a scene where you have to haul ass past some sprinklers that are shocking you due to your beam katana. The AI is pretty stupid; enemies with stand off in the distance down the hallway, waiting until you get close enough before they'll act. Using the scenery to exploit these weaknesses is fun though. The humor and boss encounters bring to mind both Grasshopper Manufacture's Killer 7 as well as God Hand. You're got your idiotic pervert main character, bitchy tease of a female lead, bombastic and windbag bosses who seem to all gotta have a gimmick, and naturally, comedic levels of over-the-top ultraviolence. The most spectacular is the Dark Side modes (all named after...Travis' favorite desserts), like one where Travis fires energy from his sword, that cause enemies to be blasted in half, or another where the screen goes black and white, and you can single-strike kill on screen enemies in a flash. The free roam city hub world, while it does the job, is probably the weakest part of the game. You can get from mission to mission fairly quickly thanks to your bike, but you ofter have to trek back to a job office to trigger a new one, and there does not appear to be any warp stations. You can collect cash and items to upgrade your abilities (training at a gym, learning new moves by buying wrestling tapes, etc), but strangely the "free fight" missions reset if you fail one, seemingly reappearing at random. For the most part, you can bypass buying extra stuff and quickly earn the money you need to challenge the next boss. However, you can take your time and try to collect a lot of the other bonuses (which seems to be a joke in and of itself). Overall, a strange, strange, somewhat wonderful game that I'd fully recommend to Killer 7 fans and God Hand fans, and cautiously recommend to anyone else. The game could have done with a little less quirk and a lot more polish, but the end result is a still a great trip. Well, if you can find it.

They need an actual sku number to take a preorder.... Soul Calibur 3 Xbox did exist on their site shortly, then it was pulled.

The short answer is "be a complete dick to everyone," but specifically (from the gamefaqs walkthrough): I missed it my first game so I can't tell you for sure if that's all, though.

Tons of info on the game, story, screenshots, download links, etc. The game is a turn-based RPG with Barkley as your extremely emo protagonist, many genre conventions are mocked, and much fun is had by all (except those who are dead). I'm up to the point where you Worth every penny, I assure you.

"I think ghosts are like dogs, and just do things arbitrarily." I think Sir Charles is the spry-est, most well-preserved 78 year old man I could ever imagine. There's a ReadMe that describes how to/where to report problems. I'd try that and downloading from a different mirror.

Yeah, the "worth every penny" was a joke. It's well worth the free download, IOW. -It's turn-based but you use different commands to actually fight. -There's no level-grinding necessary, you get tons of money too for items. -There's a secret bonus dungeon that you can only get by being as big of a dick as possible. -It has some of those god awful QTE, which is like a necessity for games now. -Before you can save there's a different rant at each save point you can view that seems plucked from a random message board. Like how Mitsuda is the greatest composer ever (and naturally, better than any Western composer ever, and not just video game music!), or how Americans are stupid for liking Halo and Madden. Part of the joke is that this is supposed to be made in Japan. I cleared Liberty Island most recently. Guest-starring a prominent figure in many a crappy hack/homebrew game! The Blue Dragon boss theme, Eternity, is in it. If you check the Music folder, it's credited to "jesus christ the guy from deep purple sang this".

I don't know about Wal-Mart, but I know when I bought my 360 at Circuit City they scanned the S/N tag inside it.

Mine's 7 years old...

Did you save over your file after you did it? If you didn't, reload the save and head back to the crapper to go for the real ending. If you saved to a new slot, on the next boot of the game it will auto-load the new game, but all you need to do is pause with + when you're back in Santa Destroy, and chose to load your old save. If you did save over your game...well... http://www.wiisave.com/faq/index.php http://www.wiisave.com/index.php?cid=178 I haven't done it myself, but I've heard folks from other boards try it and it worked out okay for other games.

Would get it, but I can't afford to now. Oh well, I have backlog and another God Hand playthrough to keep me busy.

You'll get the "fake" ending by clearing the number 1 mission. To get the real ending, you buy the last sword available for purchase in the game,, then...you'll see. There's an item you'll get near the end of the game during a mission and you'll be directed to bring it to Naomi. She'll have the final sword ready by the time you're about to face #1. It's expensive, but well worth it. Also I recommend getting the upgrades before the #1 mission, but that'll be a lot of money-grinding, I'm afraid. The energy saver upgrade for the final sword is great. It seems like you'll never have to recharge it again. Yes, you can even dish out charged attacks all you want.

Yup.

So, I completed the game and got the real ending now too, and after either ending it gives you the chance to save (either to a new slot or overwrite your old slot). I chose to save to a new slot. After the credits and such, it automatically boots up a new game from the last save... With all your acquired clothes, beam katanas, remaining money, holds, upgrades, and abilities! New Game +!!!

For those of you who played the #1 rank mission and completed it, here's what you missed in that little exposition scene the game skipped over:

Wii can't handle the huge worlds of draw distance something like Crackdown or Prototype would require, let alone a consistent high framerate while simultaneously controlling complicated AI on a horde of humans (some enemy, some civilian, etc). I'm a sucker for a sandbox game that lets me go crazy and cause utter mayhem. I'm really glad I got the Wii, because it does indeed complement a lot of the weaknesses in the 360's lineup, even if they're mostly Nintendo titles. People generally hate G4, BTW, because it murdered, buried, and pissed on the grave of TechTV. There's still Xplay love because it's one of the few recognizable things left. I have no opinion since my cable provider dropped the station shortly after TechTV became G4TT, and I haven't seen much of the show since except for occasional video reviews. However, the Xplay review really, really came off as overscripted and overrehearsed; even more than any of the amateur video game reviews for old games that fill the youtubes. Of course, I'm still trying to overcome the shock of this game getting such good reviews.

I "beat" the game (i.e. becoming number 1) last night, but I'm getting the last few upgrades to take on the optional boss after that (you need the Tsubaki MK3 for that. I'm not sure if you need to buy it before #1 or not, but I did). Anyway, its flaws are many and varied: technical shortcomings, a fairly empty "sandbox" environment (where taking/completing missions should have been much more streamlined), enemies/bosses who have very simplistic pattern-based A.I. Yet, those same shortcomings didn't stop Crackdown from being my favorite game of 2007. I'm not sure if NMH is going to be that game for 2008 (especially with Prototype due out), but it's an out-of-left-field, crazy-fun surprise that I felt was worth every penny, and has helped restore some of my faith in Nintendo's "lower development costs = attractive 3rd party support!" claptrap, although I feel it's taking way longer than DS did. It's way more appealing as a package than killer7, but the "not for everybody" label would still apply here.

if you don't like me, bite me!

I have the Tsubaki Mk3...and I honestly prefer 2. A cool detail is that your moves change, but I'm not digging 3's moves. However, your results may vary. I'll keep it up, because I have to earn more cash for the final mission anyway, but I'm skeptical. As for the 90 degree turn--I can do it consistently. Nitro isn't necessary. Just gas it, and when you want to quick turn, press b (break+reverse), and jerk the wiimote to the direction opposite of what you want to turn.