Oh man, I would love an HD collection. My cousins and I used to waste so many hours playing Timesplitters split-screen.

cloud was an awesome character he basically had schizophrenia or some shit

Yeah, for some reason everyone seems to confuse "angsty beyond reason" with "fucking batshit bonkers." Cloud's freakout scenes and his connection to Jenova were some of the creepiest shit when I was a kid.

Sperg post incoming, also spoilers.

Cloud is awesome because he's basically a weakling pretending to be something far greater than himself, trying really hard to come across as some aloof cocky badass to everyone else, and basically living out a power fantasy. Not unlike oh say for example YOU, you with your skinny ass sitting on that couch stuffing cheetos into your face and going "huh-huh, look at me, I'm totally this spikey-haired badass anime guy, I'm so fuckin' cool." The game likes to play with the connection between player and player character, and assumes that you'll take it for granted that Cloud's your perfect manly avatar; they use this to start fucking with you early on, which aside from incredibly classy humor is the point of the whole cross-dressing segment.

Then ages later the Zack bomb gets dropped and you're like "holy shit I really am like this guy, I'm so fucking lame." Or, you would do if this was MGS2, but unlike Raiden Cloud is still a suitably heroic figure, and not a fucking moron, so it's not really that big of a middle finger; rather than pissing me off and calling me garbage like Kojima did, FF7 uses the same kind of weird meta devices to make the protagonist that much more endearing. Cloud's a dude any escapist-fantasy types can identify with; he even says something about being "master of my own illusionary world." That sounds like a video game to me. Another thing that helps is that they don't shove all this in your face with shit like "YOUR NAME IS ON RAIDEN'S DOGTAGS HOOOOOOOLY FUUUUUCK" when you probably just entered in "Boners McGee" anyway; FF7 treats its player-grilling more like a series of brief meta shoulder-nudges; it's subtle, subdued, something that isn't spelled out for you and that you can sit reflecting on after you turn the game off, if you're so inclined.

That there is another reason the game is great: it knows how to be subtle, which is something we'll pretty much never see in a video game ever again. You can joke all you want about Cloud and Sephiroth compensating for something and how their anime hair is overblown and ridiculous, but apart from that (Nomura's fault, natch) the game's full of world-building visual cues and optional lines of dialogue that you can finish the whole game without ever seeing, but if you take the time to seek them out they make it a much more robust experience. Rather than shoving all the info about this universe into the player's face while they're strapped in and forced to watch Clockwork Orange style, they just sorta let you loose and expect your curiosity to motivate you. A lot of information about the state of the world is merely implied; ex. there are cars in this world, but no roads outside Midgar. Why? If you look at the state of most towns you visit, the answer is because pretty much everyone outside is just too dirt fucking poor to afford one, and it'd be a waste of money to lay highways that nobody will ever use all over the place. Shit like that. I think that's what pretentious people mean when they talk about "interactive storytelling," along with using interactivity to get a point across. One moment that comes to mind is during the Nibelheim flashback, after Sephiroth's lost his shit and is lecturing Cloud about the ancients and how he was produced; at the end of this scene, which has a soundtrack consisting of a looping bell and bass-drum styled after a heartbeat, Sephiroth goes "I'm going to see my mother." As soon as he starts walking away and the player gains control again, the music blasts full-on into Sephiroth's theme and shocks the shit out of you; you instinctively know something really, really bad is about to happen and desperately sprint out of the room after him. It's a very frantic and terrifying moment even though Cloud has guaranteed plot armor to the end of the flashback, but it wouldn't be if the game just cut to the next scene with no input from you. Mind, it's still a very cutscene-heavy game to be sure, and it's far from the best example of an interactive story, but it makes up for that by having a really great, fast-moving, character-driven plot that just kicks ass.

[/sperg]

FF7 is a fucking awesome game no matter what anyone says about it. Unironically my favorite game ever.

Did you also know Final Fantasy 8 is infinitely more enjoyable if you assume Squall is killed at the end of Disc 1? Everything else is a three-disc-long dying dream where tons of retarded silly nonsensical Alice-in-Wonderland bullshit happens, Squall becomes the most important person on the planet and effortlessly steals the love interest of his rival despite the fact that she thought he was a prick before, and all the while everyone's all like "Oh man Squall you're so fucking cool, swoon" because his subconscious is trying to give him the satisfaction and catharsis he never found in his lifetime. And since Squall's a raging egotistical jackass the whole thing turns into his magical adventures through mary-sue land where everything is perfect for him and he is super-awesome. I bet that's why the combat in that game is so broken; it's too easy on purpose because why would Squall want to dream about getting his ass kicked at any point?

I want to hope that's what the FF8 creative team intended, because otherwise they're a bunch of fucking idiots who write with their asses.

What about that Vincent guy?

I´m absolutely sure they didn´t intend this. I mean come on, you know Anime, writing there is BAD, really bad most of the time. Same goes for the fact that there are no roads outside Midgar. They just wanted to make a Tech-City, that´s all there is to it, there was no deeper thought there.

Still, very interesting things to think about.

Pretty much.

I preordered a Wii U through Best Buy because I hate Game Stop but ohgodnintendoyourteettastessogood

Turns out Best Buy shipped my Wii U this morning, even though I paid for same day shipping...but they forgot to ship my games with it.

WELP LOOKS LIKE I'M PLAYING NINTENDO LAND FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS. WHOOPIEEEEE

my brother is going to korea next year so he won't pay for the wii u like he did for the original wii :/

I'm on the fence about the Wii U. I likes me some Nintendo but I don't really see anything good out on it at the moment. I guess I'll end up waiting for a bit.

Babies complaining that something went from shitty to a different kind of shitty. Also news: new music sucks compared to what I used to listen to.

Things were better before, when your standards were lower.

swtor f2p is gay btw dimnos

you hve to pay for quickbars

And you have to pay to unlock running, apparently.

Really? I can still run.

Vare was saying there's some sprint ability that doesn't unlock until level 15, unless you pay to unlock it.

Its a skill everyone picks up at 15 that makes running faster. The game is unplayable without it

Wait, wasn´t the old Sprint like...move fast for 10 Seconds and it had like a 30-40 sec cooldown i.e. it was worthless?

I wouldn't know, but I'm level 22 so fuck everyone else.

Some jedi have a skill like this on top of the generic sprint skill.

i dont even remember having that skill when i played

i dont get why they try to charge me for quickbars when ive already paid them 60+ bucks. suck dicks

i pretty much logged on, complained about quickbars and got trolled by all the subscribers, then quit and havent gone back

So, it's been a few days, and I'm honestly kinda impressed with some of the WiiU's functions. Like...it has a twitter/message board type system where people can just draw and write shit for total strangers to read and reply to. And you can "follow" and "like" stuff just like on the real internet :eek It's all heavily moderated, but I managed to draw a picture of Link's face as he's orgasming to the LttP music in NintendoLand and it hasn't been taken down yet. Now I have a bunch of 13 year olds following me so they can see more stupid drawings :lol

Also, NintendoLand is legitimately good, because unlike WiiSports they decided to actually build games and not say "just flail your arms and pretend you're boxing". Some of them are kinda meh (Ninja Stars) but the Metroid game is fucking sweet, and the Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion games are really fun when everyone's drunk (and when everyone's sober). A lot of the games are real hard too. Only complaint is that it's probably only worth half of what Nintendo's selling it for, but most people are getting it for free with the Deluxe bundle. Also, it needs leaderboards.

New Mario U is also surprisingly good. Kinda bland looking but the levels get really hard. This one looks like it's more designed for single player though because it's not as open and empty like the Wii one.

I think this is the least amount of times Nintendo hardware has made me smack my head since the Super Nintendo, to be perfectly honest. It just needs more original software and not just ports.

I just finished Metro 2033 after powering through it over two nights.

I have to say that I'm incredibly impressed with it. It's pretty much a linear STALKER, gussied up a bit. There were a few plotholes, major ones at that, but I loved a lot of it and felt better sneaking around in this game than I did in Dishonored. Maybe it's because I'm not a superhero in 2033 and am not invulnerable with crazy teleportation abilities. I dunno. But I can say that it's good enough to get me excited for the sequel, if it's ever released.

At the end, I was left wondering more about Khan and the Dark Ones and the Anomalies and why they all seemed connected. Or perhaps there was no connection and Khan was just a philosophy buff.

Also, I got the impression from a lot of people that it was difficult, but at the end I had around 600 military grade rounds and nothing to spend them on, as I'd already picked up the biggest, bestest weapons already.

There were some tense times when I was low on ammo, though. My favorite part was when I had to sneak through a Communist checkpoint into the Nazi section of the Metro and I had limited ammo. Not that I could use it, anyway, as the enemies were everywhere and my weapons weren't silenced. Everything except for my throwing knives, which I launched from the dark at unsuspecting spinal columns. The thunk noise as it hits a soldier the back will never get old.

That does suck indeed. I kinda liked TOR but it really didn´t offer much new stuff. The Space-Missions were nice but yeah, the rest was pretty much standart stuff as far as I´ve seen. I miss my Droid-crafting Rodian with his little hut somewhere in the swamps of Naboo...everybody liked my Mouse-Droids :D



Been playing Black Ops 2 (very nice) and Hitman Absolution for the past few days. The Contracts-Mode of Absolution is a little bit genius.

You have to play the Hit to create the Hit which is a gorgeous way of ensuring that you can´t create impossible contracts because you have to play your contract yourself first. How does it work? Super simple: You just pick one of the 15+ Maps, walk around and mark someone you want to be the target (up to 3 possible). Then you kill the target and the game registers what disguise you used and what kill-method. Now you can choose to mark two more people or use one of the exits of the map to finish your contract. Depending on how you killed people (hid the bodies, used disguises, detected or nor), your mission is created and the bounty is set up.

Really really simple and cool method of keeping the game alive. The nice thing is, you see this dude that doesn´t move from his fucking post and you check your briefing, saying you have to kill him with an axe but how the fuck are you gonna that? It HAS to be possible, because someone had to do it to create the contract :)