Jer

I didn't plan to take a second RPG this early, but since I doubt it'll last much longer and I love it... Suikoden 2 (PS1, 1999) The crown jewel of the Suikoden series. Great plot with lots of Suikoden trademark moral grayness, great characters and two of the all-time greatest videogame villains in Jowy and Luca Blight. Lots of ways to kill time, between getting all 108 characters and the loads of minigames, including Iron Chef, the greatest thing ever.

I just finished the game today, and I'm totally satisfied at how it wrapped up, and really with the whole game. Some of the late game boss fights were great: As far as the ending and late game plot, I didn't really have a problem with most of it. I actually thought it did a really good job tying everything together and explaining some of the MGS2 stupidity. Anyway, definitely need to play through it again to see how it ties together now that I know the end...

Aw, I was hoping SMW would last awhile longer. It's my favorite Mario game too. Yoshi alone makes it better than SMB3, heh. That and being able to save, lets you take your time and chill with it. SMB3 was too frustrating to try to get through in one sitting since you couldn't save. I'm a scrub, I like my games easy.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997) Just the perfect action game. It never gets old, no matter how many times I play through it. The ambiance of the castle is wonderful. And with pretty much an unlimited amount of hidden stuff, including the upside down castle, which is like the best secret ever, it'll keep you busy for a long time. It's also got another just fantastic soundtrack.

Aaw I was hoping Mega Man 2 would last a few more rounds.

I just finished act 2 and I'm absolutely loving it so far. I like that the environments seem to be bigger and there's more guys in them. Definitely feels like there's more action. And the weapons are amazing, both the customization and just how ridiculously many different kinds there are. It's like Vagrant Story with guns, heh.

With my first pick, I select: Final Fantasy 6 (SNES, 1994) My favorite RPG of all time. When it came out in 1994, it was just worlds beyond anything else out there. I was never as awestruck by a game as I was the first time I played through it. The World of Ruin was particularly brilliant - totally free-form, giving the player a level of freedom they'd never had before to go through it however they wanted. Even now, it's a great example of how you don't need fancy FMV and long cut scenes to build interesting characters, create an engaging world and tell a great story. And the soundtrack is my favorite of all time, primitive MIDIs and all.

Sounds fun. I'm in.

Pretty much. But that's not a bad thing. It's good to have an "entry level" fighter, because getting into Tekken from nothing is really hard. SC2 did a great job with that. SC3 unfortunately was just kind of trash.

Meh, you actually have to be really solid to play defensively and win. Otherwise you just lose slower. It takes a whole lot more knowledge of the game to win with defense than to just rush down. But anyway, the critical edges sound limited enough and hard enough to hit that they probably won't mess anything up too much. It looks like the Jedis have a separate force meter to do moves that use the force. When they run out of that meter it starts taking from their health. Uh, how cute?

Even with crappy PS1 quality FMV, the Soul Blade intro is still totally badass. So it looks like the official release date is July 29th. It looks like they added some system where if someone turtles for too long, part of their armor gets broken and then you can do a finisher on them. How silly.

Pit and Meta-Knight are quite enjoyable. Almost makes me wish I had a Wii.

Make sure to pick up the good stuff from the online store. Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection, Warhawk, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Everyday Shooter are all top tier.

I know rite lolz those tourney players are such geeks! We should all just play for fun!! And randomness is so much fun!! (I don't play tourney Smash, but I can only assume the anti-tourney argument is just as bad as with other fighters...)

I agree for the time being, but as the price of the discs themselves comes down, I think that'll probably change. Right now I still tend to buy most of my movies on regular DVD (usually everything but movies with lots of special effects that I know will look great), but when the price comes down to $20 or even $25 as the standard, I'll probably buy the Blu-ray. I don't think the discs cost much more to produce than regular DVDs (I read $0.15 difference somewhere, not sure), so there's no reason the price won't drop. Huge growth in the HDTV installed base is going to help Blu-ray, too. HDTV was pretty niche just a couple years ago, and now it's pretty much completely mainstream. A lot of those people that just spent $1,000+ on an HDTV are going to be willing to pay $400 to get the best video out of it, I bet.

Nah, Centaurs aren't broken. They're barely even better than Lizardmen. Now Magma Armor in a green/red deck or Storm Armor in a blue/yellow deck, that's broken. Someone online played a Storm Armor late in the game for +180/+130. Come on, that's not even fair.

So, anyone else get Culdcept Saga? I bought a 360 just for that game and it is so totally worth it. I'm PSUJer if anyone wants to play on XBL.

So with Blu-ray officially winning the format war with HD-DVD, and Blu-ray's huge installed base advantage because of the PS3 being a big part of the reason why, is the decision to go with Blu-ray despite the cost looking like less of a disaster? Might we look back five years from now and think that Sony actually knew what they were doing?

Heihachi felt the least out of place of the SC2 bonus characters - his look was right for the series, whereas Spawn and Link were cartoony and goofy. Spawn was actually the most balanced, though. Heihachi was too strong with shit like his Tekken speed mid EWGF, and Link was way too weak with basically nothing useful. Vader's definitely going to work better than Yoda. I hope they do a good job balancing him and making him fun. Yoda's hopeless, though, he'll be every bit as much "fun" to play as Gon. Unless they make him full size. That'd be badass!

Yay Namco! Console exclusives are the best!!! I was all nostalgic about the good old days, when scrubs would whine that they'd have won if only they'd had Link. Soon, those days will be back! Today is truly a great day.

The article mentions extra Star Wars characters as downloadable content. While that would be awesome, as we all love microtransactions, what would be even more awesome would be if they released like five different versions that are the same except with two different Star Wars characters. Come on Namco!

Hahahaha. Namco is so shameless. That looks fun, I guess. Better than stupid Link. And it gets the SC series back on the map, which is great, because it's the only game I'm good at. I can't even imagine how bad online public rooms will be, haha. Fifteen year old kids who talk trash because they've "mastered" Yoda. I can't wait!!

I'm probably way late on this, but I just discovered Everyday Shooter, and it's excellent. Great level design, neat retro graphics and music that really fits well with the levels. Definitely my favorite Geometry Wars style game. It's only $10, too, so everyone should get it.

No, it's a 2D fighter, heh. Glad to hear it's 2D, and that's a nice screenshot. Hopefully it's released in arcades first so they can work out any major balance issues before the home release. I'm fairly excited. It's been ages since the last major Capcom fighter. What was it, CvS2 back in 2001? Wow.