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SHMUPs are a rare genre over in US so it is interesting.  Last couple of SHMUPs by Cave were not region free.  It looks a lot like DoDonPachi Resurrection.  THe original DonPachi was for Saturn and Playstation.  The DonPachi saturn version could be imported and played in US saturns with an Action Reply 8 Mbit cart.  I already have $60 for this release. 

SHMUPs are the most hardcore videogame genre.  You're not that hardcore without some shmups.  SHMUPs define the word hardcore. You can start cheap with maybe Ikaruga for Gamecube or Gradius V or PS2 and work yourself up to Radiant Silvergun, MUSHA, Elminiate Down prices.

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Okay, people bitching about Dragon's Crown; happy now?

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The game is currently less than a cup of overpriced coffee (3.39) and worth every penny! We'll make a server and dig down to the depths to see if we can enter hard mode!

The deal is only going until 4:00 PM PST today. 

To sweeten the deal if we can get 50 people to sign up and participate in this two part game night I will make us an emblem.

MadElk will be assisting with the server, I will be posting details about how to join later this evening. Unless of course he decides to grace us with his presence and inform us in the comments. 

We'll be using a chatzy room for communication up until the event happens, then we'll be moving to a group steam chat. 

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Yeh, so I decided on these 2 games instead of 1 new, over-priced title. Honestly, I was leaning towards getting Gears of War: Judgment but I saw that it was still fully-priced, which I don't think is worth it. As much as I REALLY want the game, and my sister saying that it's totally ok if I get it, I will feel bad about it. I'll just wait for either a price drop or for a used copy.

Binary Domain and Lords of Shadow were some 2 for xx-price deal, and it was still way cheaper than Judgment. I actually brought used copies to the counter, but the dude working there swapped it out with brand new copies and I was like, wahey thanks! Even better is that these are games I've been wanting to play so I'm really happy with what I got.

It's gonna be 1am soon but I'll be checking out Lords of Shadow after I'm done with this post. I wasn't aware that the 360 version requires 2 discs though. Apparently if you install the first disc into your HDD, you can then just stick in Disc 2 for the whole duration... or something to that effect. Ugh well I'm one of those rare people still using a 20GB hard drive and struggling with space, so I'll be having fun with disc swaps.

Oh and before I forget, I've beaten Warhammer 40k Space Marine, which eventually grew into a huge dull-fest. The only good thing about the game is that it got me interested in knowing more about the lore of the 40k universe, so I ordered a few books on it. Looking forward to getting them in the mail soon.

Then I installed Duke Nukem Forever, and it honestly isn't a bad game at all. I'll get more into it in the next blog post maybe. For now, I'm off to play Lords of Shadow.

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Not too many updates really.Far Cry and Crysis 3 are both yet to fall beneath me(not something I'm very proud of).School work's been a real mother lately, haven't even had a chance to peep Iron Man 3 (the reviews it's getting aren't helping much either) 

So that's me back..maybe some reviews if I get round to it.

IMPORTANT!:Keep mashing those buttons!

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Since that is the promotional game on the Wii U VC for $0.30 for the month of May.

So I downloaded Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

It is because I have Super Metroid on the VC and I also have a Wii U.

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[ Watch Video ]

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Yes, I have obtained my 400th video game. Years upon years of collecting, came from last generation during my college years when I had less expenses and more free time. I think I bought about 200 games during that time. Now that I'm no longer playing Final Fantasy XI (An highly addictive MMORPG), I am trying my best to keep up with the mounds of video games slowly starting clutter up my room. Although I bought more video games last generation, and had more free time I didn't get a chance to play a lot of other video games besides Final Fantasy XI. I've noticed I've become more patient when it comes to price drops (3DS games take forever to go down in price, though!). And it is well worth the wait. I've saved hundreds thanks to amazon.com and Steam.

When I first got into video games I was only two years of age. My parents would only buy me one to three video games a year. One for my birthday, one for Christmas, and one for doing good in school. They'd buy the latest console as long as I was doing good in school. Sure, it kept me focused on my grades, and probably made me into a better person not being spoiled by my parents buying me lots of video games a year. I remember back in my grammar school days I use to go over my friend's house, and he'd have draws full of games. What this did to me was make me very jealous. He was more into playing basketball than playing video games, and he wouldn't allow me to borrow one single game. What this also did to me was repress my desires of having a collection comparable or better than his.

So, to this day, do I think I'm trying to make up for not having the childhood I desired? Maybe. But, people desire many things growing up. And that's how we set goals, and go for them. Maybe having hundreds of video games was one of mine. I didn't realize it until I was getting close to that 400th video game. I'm wondering how "attached" I've become to these video games that I don't have as much time for anymore. If I were to get rid of them I'd probably pass it down to a relative, or sell them. As of right now, though, especially with the next generation of consoles about to hit the market soon, I doubt I'll be departing from gaming collection anytime soon.

Oh, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 is my 400th video game, but I haven't even taken it out of the plastic yet!

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Your business life and your personal life, two parts of the same conundrum or do they deserve to be accepted separately? Recently I have had these two worlds collide when people who know me personally have taken it upon themselves to reveal personal information in regards to myself and my family. They have revealed names, adresses, locations and even confidential information relating directly to them. This is something that I will honestly not tolerate as not only is it ilegal (by English law) but it infringes on my rights as a human being.

I understand that there will be some socially inept sub intellectuals who will take it upon themselves to exhaust all of their anger and frustration at the world unto me. Using your free time to tell someone in no less than 43 comments why you hate them is a rather bizarre pass time indeed. Let me just say that I can't stand football (or soccer as our American cousins call it) however you will never see me posting repeatedly hateful comments on Fifa videos or classic matches.

24 hours seems like a long time but in fact it's not, considering most of us get up around 7:00-7:30 arrangements not withstanding of course. Now take into consideration that most will be in bed around 11:00 and theres not many hours your left to play with. In conclusion only a complete and utter deluded idiot with no social struture would waste time hating on a video or person just for fun. Then again these are the type of people that believe the word syntax is an insult, yes this actually happened to me.

And so the worlds collide and keeping them separate seems harder by the day, internet acquaintances become friends and friends become close friends. In the end it seems nothing separates my real life friends from my internet friends and vise versa. As my popularity on youtube and twitter increases I can expect this sort of insident to become more frequent.

Until ultimately there is no business life or personal life, there is simply my life...

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I remember many ups and downs leading up to the localization announcement of each game, particularly Xenoblade since it was the title out of the original three games that I wanted the most. After various false starts and announcements from Nintendo that there was no interest in this game, as well as the other two games in North America, Xenoblade and soon after that, The Last Story were announced for release in the NTSC region. I was estatic and bought my copies of Xenoblade and The Last Story the day they came out. However, there was one very important piece missing; of course, I am referring to Pandora's Tower.

Similar to my anticipation, doubts of it ever being localized, and severe desire to play Xenoblade and The Last Story, I wanted nothing more than to have Panora's Tower sitting next to the other two games that Operation Rainfall brought to North America through their commitment and efforts. Myself and everyone else who felt this way, finally got their wish last Tuesday with the official North American release of Pandora's Tower on the Wii. Unlike Xenoblade and The Last Story, I was unable to pick up Pandora's Tower on day one, but tonight my dreams became a reality when I finally bought the last of the original three games that Project Rainfall worked so hard to have localized. I purchased Pandora's Tower from a local video game store tonight (along with some Sega Genesis shmups) and could not wait to bring it home. As soon as I did, I grabbed my copy of Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story and placed them right next to Pandora's Tower, together in North American region for the first time. Staring at them together brought me great joy and it made me think how long waited for this moment, thinking about how awesome it would be. Well, the reality is better than the dream and now the only thing left to do is to pop Pandora's Tower in the ol'Wii and play this phenominal vidoe game

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I'll also take a little time to talk about the game I'm currently playing.

 

I'm playing the PS3 version of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and I'm having a lot of fun with it so far. I've been exploring around a lot with some high level pawns but I think I'll downgrade to seem weaker ones as I get more into the main story as they are quite overpowered at the moment. So far the only foes that have given me trouble with them are spirits(called phantasms I think). They probably have a weakness I can exploit but even my pawns weren't doing much damage lol. If the Elder Scrolls games had combat more like this I could really get into them. Playing this now definitely has me looking forward to Deep Down for next gen. 

Dragon's Dogma doesn't exactly have a moving story and there is a lot of stuff to do so I might play another game or two along with it. After I'd down with DD (lol, boobs) I might finally crack into Demon's Souls or Dark Souls to focus on them and see if I get what all the hubbub is about.

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I was actually having more fun playing Tomb Raider, but that's because I was playing Bioshock on the infinitely stupid 1999 mode: "Yo dawg, we know you like old school design, so we gonna put old school in your new school, so you can new school while you old school". I know that's not how the meme goes, but it certainly feels like that. I can still remember System Shock 2's design like it was yesterday, and it was everything about it that made it intense and difficult. You can't just slap on bigger/smaller damage models, expensive deaths, different mobs and call it 'old school design'. Twats. I might even do an editorial about it since it infuriated me so much.

Oh right, Tomb Raider. I was having fun. A lot more fun that I thought I would. It's Uncharted with boobs, and it thinks taking the Uncharted relic collect-a-thon and slapping on 'find hidden info by viewing relic at X angle' is evolution. There is actually quite a bit of non-shooting things to do, but the rhythm of the game revolves around killing bad guys. Obviously Adobe's RPG of the year, then.

 Breaking Bad

Admittedly too good. Not since The Wire have I hung out to see what happens in the very next episode, season, whatever. It screwed up my blog's agenda. I suppose it's karma for totally sh!tting on Game of Thrones previously.

 Iron Man 3

Haven't seen it. Even with Shane Black directing, couldn't be arsed to see it. I think I'm getting superhero fatigue.

Instead, I'll be hype for Fast & Furious 6. Might also be a time to find a girl chill enough to kick it with watching such a movie. Most of the time, at least in NZ, they're so strung up, they like watching their entertainingly neurotic films like Iron Man 3 and sh!t, but it doesn't really translate well for me outside the theatre. It's either that, or they watch those really dumb chick flicks - and only chick flicks - and so I end up having zero in common with them.

So yeah, Fast & Furious 6, don't let me down.

Here's a video of Vin Diesel singing a Rihanna song for good luck.

Oh, and she use to be sooooo bad:

Now she's just terribad.

P.S Not to let down the pooheads that measure their e-peens against mine, in the last month I've watched Mid-August Lunch, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, and I'm about to go on a Catherine Corsini viewing spree. Yeah, you had to google her name. *Puts on pretentious fedora and walks away*

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Anything else is wrong.

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For me, it has and will always be to simply have fun. I assumed this to be true about every other gamer out there but each day I'm finding this to be further and further from the truth. I can't tell you how many times that I've seen posts in gaming forums or gaming social media sites where I see (most often) really young gamers complain how bored they are with a game that they are trying platinum. Or the amount of reviews that I read where the reviewer CLEARLY states that they had fun playing a game but gives it a very low score because of its imperfections.

I feel that this whole achievement/trophy system that has been implemented during this generation of gaming is both a blessing and curse. Its a blessing to gamers and developers alike by keeping people playing certain games that would otherwise have no rewarding value to them in doing so but also a curse that has people only playing cetain games because they are easy "100%s or Platinums". When I see other gamers complain about a game sucking and being anxious to hurry and get the plat...I've casually asked "why are they playing a game that isn't fun to them?". Literally, in EVERY instance of this I've gotten a response back retracting their original assertion about their displeasure with the game and merely being frustarted with the difficulty of achievement hunting. Now, I'm not coming down on achievement hunting because I love it too but why can't people just give a honest answer? Is it really because in reality they lack self confidence and this makes them feel good about themselves? Is it because now they've exchanged one hobby for another (from gaming itself to merely achievement hunting)? Seriously, these questions aren't rhetorical...I would honestly like to know and understand why this is.

To be perfectly honest, I just don't have the time and patience to Platinum every single game that I play. The 2 that I actually have were stressful enough to get and I simply couldn't imagine going through all the extra effort (especially when I don't want to) to do this with EVERY or even the majority of my games. For me to even attempt this, I have to at least like the game to begin with, it be easy & not too time consuming, and give me a reason to do so. Even though one trophy stands between me and Platinum in the game, Mass Effect 1 is a great example of this. In addition to the game being very fun to play, the multiple playthroughs it takes to get the Platinum makes it well worth it since the game plays different each time due to different decisions you can make on the game, and the fact that said decisions & trophies transfer over into the next entry of the series to enhance the experience!

As far as how I personally view games and score them in my mind...at the end of the day, it all boils down to how much fun did I have playing it. If I can say that a game was generally fun, it gets a minimum of a 7.0 (good). To give it anything less is imo, implies that there is something so wrong with the game where it begins to ruin the fun. So, when I see reviews and hear reviewers say "I had fun" or for that matter, don't even mention if they enjoyed playing the game (and to what degree) but see a score lower than 7.0, I lash out. Do the visuals/frame rate really matter that much? Does the voice acting in a game where you have hundreds of different ways of blowing everything to bits really matter? Does the presence of voice chat/party chatting really matter in an other wise well polished experience? I mean, I see and hear complaints like this all the time and ask myself "but what does that have to do with the fun factor of the game?". Games like Retro City Rampage, Jetpack Joyride Super Meatboy, etc prove that games can have dated visuals (intentionally or not) and still provide a very fun and entertaining experience.

Some times I think what its REALLY all about is that folks start becoming nit picky when having to spend $60 a pop on games regularly. I can't say I disagree with this...however, why don't more people just stop buying games at launch? Personally, I believe that there is rarely any game (AAA or not) worth paying $60 for. Why not wait for the inevitable price drop or one day/week sales on these games? I just think that these days that people hold games to such high standards and expectations that they forget that whole purpose of them was to entertain and not just to look pretty with a bunch of bells & whistles.

Feedback is welcomed and appreciated (minus any douchbagory)

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