Infamous 2: My Belated Experience with one of the Year’s Most Polished Games
It took a lot of restraint for me to contain my excitement and cancel that flight to Bellevue, WA this past June. I had sixty bucks in hand, ready to shove in the pocket of the first Sucker Punch employee I saw. But then I felt that familiar rumble in my gut, and remembered rent was almost due. So I waited. The original Infamous was among a handful of titles that finally convinced me to buy a PS3 last summer. It was the third game I played―after Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Yakuza 3―, and the game I most enjoyed. I’m a...
read moreMy (soon to be) Bionic 3DS
In the past week, rumors that Nintendo is developing a second slide pad that can be attached to the 3DS turned from parlor game speculation into fact. Internet denizens and video game journalists alike have turned scant details and vague confirmations into a tsunami of poorly informed comments and articles. This is one of them. I’ve seen the Famitsu photos and read the press releases and statements coming out of Capcom. I’ve also held my 3DS in my hands and wondered what it would feel like swaddled in that second slide pad...
read moreGaming on the Cheap: My First Two Weeks as a GameFly Subscriber
I’m 26 years old and finally finishing grad school. Though I still have one semester remaining, I identify less as student and more as unemployed. Student Andrew looked at the stack of games under his television set, which grew another 14.3mm every couple weeks, and thought, Nice. Good going, guy. That’s a responsible use of student loans. Unemployed Andrew looks at it and breaks out into a cold, clammy sweat, envisioning the lifetime of debt he’s accrued and the fear that, without the full faith and credit of the U.S....
read moreThere’s Life in Yakuza 4
Since beginning Yakuza 4 a few weeks back—I took a hiatus from it during a 10-day family vacation—, I’ve started but never followed through with a number of posts about it. One was tentatively titled Yakuzzzzza 4, and was about how I keep falling asleep during the unreasonably long cut scenes. (I’m not being hyperbolic. I really have fallen asleep to a number of them. The story is awful, long-winded, and can’t be skipped.) I started another post about the overly literal—denotative, my translation professor would have called...
read moreWhat It Says about the 3DS that I’m Enjoying Samurai Warriors: Chronicles
Samurai Warriors: Chronicles gets off to a rocky start. The enemies are weak. The mechanics are simplistic to a fault. The environments are bland. The only thing the early part of the game has going for it are the excellent cut-scenes, which, by the way, really showcase the visual prowess of the 3DS. But fast forward a few stages and, you know what, I’m having fun. I’m legitimately enjoying my time with SW: Chronicles, try as I might to be objective. Sure, the enemies are stronger. Sure, there’s now a greater variety of...
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