My last serious girlfriend loved games (especially Final Fantasy X and MGS2), but hated World of Warcraft. A shame, then, that I was slap bang in the middle of a WoW "addiction" when we were dating. With hindsight, I know I got what I deserved out of that one...
Congrats on getting your wife to play games, even if it was only for a few minutes. I always feel pretty good when I convince a non-gamer to game. Getting my mum hooked on Monkey Island is the biggest triumph I've had so far.
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Funnily enough, a friend told me about Papa Sangre last night. I was gonna buy it and write something like this, but looks like I was beaten to the punch. Plus you seem to have a deeper insight into the topic than I; some of those games you've mentioned I've never heard of! Still, it looks like something I should play.
Good read!
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@Errol: It does look a little porn-ish, but from what I gather there won't be any explicit scenes in it. I guess that changes the definition from "porn" to "sexy". :P
@Alex: I know a little bit of Japanese. Certainly enough to pick up what's going on; the game's cinematics do a good job of showing you what's happening rather than having the characters tell you it, and that coupled with me picking up a few words here and there helped me get a grasp of the situation.
I couldn't for the life of me work out what Vincent and his friends were saying at the bar, though. Something about the "dead young man rumour" I wrote about, but that plot point was already established in pre-release hype, as was Katherine's pregnancy.
I'm sure someone on GAF will give the demo a full translation soon, so I may go through it again and update/correct this preview if I've got anything wrong.
Either way, I can't wait for Catherine. It plays really well and is rather interesting. I know the puzzle gameplay won't be to everyone's taste, but I think Atlus have done a fine job with what I've played. I'll definitely be importing this on PS3 once it reaches America. I'm certainly not waiting for the European release; we haven't even got Persona 3 Portable yet!
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I wish we had a store like this in Cardiff. All we have are chain stores owned by the same company (GAME), who pretty much stock the same stuff and rip gamers off. Besides that, we also have CEX who are a general entertainment/electronics pawn shop, and they too like to rip us off too.
I'd be more inclined to support retail instead of Amazon if I knew there was an indie in the city.
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This is a great read. Glad you posted it!
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I really liked this. As you probably know, the Oak & Red's mom bit is one of the most obviously hinted/misread things throughout the anime. Good stuff!
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The biggest offender of this was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. If you were following that game like I was, you'll know that Raiden wasn't shown in the pre-release trailers. None of them.
They didn't even show the Big Shell until the launch trailer, two weeks before release. Of course, that was the plan, but a lot of players felt that KCEJ mis-sold them the game. They thought they were playing Solid Snake on a gritty tanker for the whole hog. Instead, they got a blonde-haired, whiney "woman-a-like" doing cartwheels around a clean offshore platform.
Personally I loved the surprise, but I know that a lot of gamers hated it.
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2011 has a lot of dudebro shooters and generic "next-gen" games, more than last year's saturated amount, but it also has a lot of interesting and imaginative games such as the ones you've listed above.
I'd also like to mention El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron as a game that looks pretty neat. On the DS front, Ghost Trick was released this month and it's a damn good game.
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Yeah, I'm aware of that. I beat Metal Gear 2 in 2003 or 2004, so I'm very familiar with how MGS is basically just a 3D version of it.
That'll be part 4 though (unless I can fit it into part 3). I think it's important that I cover Snake's Revenge first, since it's directly responsible for Metal Gear 2 even existing. That and I really feel like destroying a game.
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I had the shock of my life when I saw part 2 of my retrospective in the Mobfeed, from a different Chris Winters. I thought I had an impersonator!
I honestly can't remember registering that account; I must've done it while I was still in University.
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Note to editor:
When you split my original 4,000 word story in two, you posted the second half on an old inactive account of mine which I forgot I had! I've gone ahead and moved it back to this account, and put a little tag on my old account's name saying it's the old one.
Sorry about that! :)
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The thing is, if I want to take a break from a game, the last thing I want to play is a game in the same genre, with a similar art style, and with similar gameplay.
If I were a Black Ops player, the last game I'd want to play when taking a break is Breach. I'd probably play something to my tastes that's a little different, like Halo: Reach, or play something even more different that's cheap and will serve its purpose as a short distraction, like Monday Night Combat.
Of course, that's just how I'd act, and I don't play online games much, so hold my opinion with as much (or as little) validity as you want. Even so, the kinds of people who buy these cheap games, as Jeff described, probably won't pass up Super Meat Boy or Raskulls (two really good XBLA games) to play Breach.
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