The NEW Game Journal

[Dice]

Anyone been playing Pokemon Conquest?

Need opinions, cause I wanna play it.

I want it too.  The peeps on the Tales forum are loving it, but they're poke-tarded over there more than I've ever been.

[Yoda]

The "game over" screens in Arkham Asylum are very slick.

http://youtu.be/1SGTzHp78rg

[Yggdrasil]

Suffering trying to get the remaining dumb trophies in Uncharted 2 multiplayer.

[GrimReality]

ME3 - I'm now in areas that I didn't get to the first time around. Played through the whole Thressia scenario last night. Damn. That was fricking amazing. I really don't like Kai Ling as a character. He comes across too jrpgish to me. Heck, Cereberus as a whole could be excised from this game and I would be happy. Still, that was a very "powerful" segment. Especially with Liara and how she handles it all. Great stuff.

[Pmayo]

Just finished Final Fantasy 6. I am happy that it has held up as well as it does. Besides a few small issues I loved it just as much as I did all those years ago.

The Positives
1. The music- Remains, by a large margin, my favorite video game soundtrack ever. It is flawless from front to back, The big hitters are still great such as dancing mad and the opera song, also found some hidden gems I forgot about such as Relms theme. It also includes my favorite video game song of all time in The Decisive Battle.

2. The Graphics- Wonderful sprite work, and the world design goes from gritty and dark, to dream like and haunting. The enemy sprites can get downright bizarre and frightening, but I love them.

3. Atmosphere- The World of Ruin in particular is a work of art, It begs to be explored, and the downtrodden spooky aura that surrounds it, always makes you wonder what you will run into next.

4. Story and Characters- I thought the overall premise was relatively sound and did not go off the deep end to much, like most JRPGs we see today. I thought in general the characters will very like-able to, though often very simple. Being an Snes rpg there is room left to read between the lines, and its nice that not every single character trait and plot point is thrown right in your face, often leaving little tidbits to the side for players who want to find them. It also does not hurt that the game includes one of the greatest villains in video games.

5. Unique Characters- I will always prefer Characters with individual abilities in RPGs then ones where everyone is equally customizable. And even though FF6 allows most characters to learn the same spells and perform similar actions, it still retains individuality through unique character abilities and vastly different states between everyone.


The Bad.

1. The Translation- Now granted I played the Snes version so I don't know how much improved it was on Game Boy Advance, but it definitely had its issues here. I actually wonder how much the characters would be improved with a better translation. It did have that bad translation charm though.

2. To many random battles-  I am someone who has no problem with random battles, I think used correctly it can work really well, but there are simply to many here. It makes exploring this wonderful world a chore, and often I would not search around places as much as I wanted because I was just so sick of battles. I know this is an issue with most RPGs of the time, but its still something I thought hurt the game.

And now I can finally start Xenoblade!

[Aeolus]

Just finished Final Fantasy 6. I am happy that it has held up as well as it does. Besides a few small issues I loved it just as much as I did all those years ago.

The Positives
1. The music- Remains, by a large margin, my favorite video game soundtrack ever. It is flawless from front to back, The big hitters are still great such as dancing mad and the opera song, also found some hidden gems I forgot about such as Relms theme. It also includes my favorite video game song of all time in The Decisive Battle.

2. The Graphics- Wonderful sprite work, and the world design goes from gritty and dark, to dream like and haunting. The enemy sprites can get downright bizarre and frightening, but I love them.

3. Atmosphere- The World of Ruin in particular is a work of art, It begs to be explored, and the downtrodden spooky aura that surrounds it, always makes you wonder what you will run into next.

4. Story and Characters- I thought the overall premise was relatively sound and did not go off the deep end to much, like most JRPGs we see today. I thought in general the characters will very like-able to, though often very simple. Being an Snes rpg there is room left to read between the lines, and its nice that not every single character trait and plot point is thrown right in your face, often leaving little tidbits to the side for players who want to find them. It also does not hurt that the game includes one of the greatest villains in video games.

5. Unique Characters- I will always prefer Characters with individual abilities in RPGs then ones where everyone is equally customizable. And even though FF6 allows most characters to learn the same spells and perform similar actions, it still retains individuality through unique character abilities and vastly different states between everyone.


The Bad.

1. The Translation- Now granted I played the Snes version so I don't know how much improved it was on Game Boy Advance, but it definitely had its issues here. I actually wonder how much the characters would be improved with a better translation. It did have that bad translation charm though.

2. To many random battles-  I am someone who has no problem with random battles, I think used correctly it can work really well, but there are simply to many here. It makes exploring this wonderful world a chore, and often I would not search around places as much as I wanted because I was just so sick of battles. I know this is an issue with most RPGs of the time, but its still something I thought hurt the game.

And now I can finally start Xenoblade!

The problem with the GBA version is that you have to trade both audio and graphical quality for the translation.

Incidentally the game eventually provides you with a pair of accessories that mitigate the encounter rate (even though both have guide dang it requirements).

[Klyde Chroma]

Just finished Final Fantasy 6. I am happy that it has held up as well as it does. Besides a few small issues I loved it just as much as I did all those years ago.

The Positives
1. The music- Remains, by a large margin, my favorite video game soundtrack ever. It is flawless from front to back, The big hitters are still great such as dancing mad and the opera song, also found some hidden gems I forgot about such as Relms theme. It also includes my favorite video game song of all time in The Decisive Battle.

2. The Graphics- Wonderful sprite work, and the world design goes from gritty and dark, to dream like and haunting. The enemy sprites can get downright bizarre and frightening, but I love them.

3. Atmosphere- The World of Ruin in particular is a work of art, It begs to be explored, and the downtrodden spooky aura that surrounds it, always makes you wonder what you will run into next.

4. Story and Characters- I thought the overall premise was relatively sound and did not go off the deep end to much, like most JRPGs we see today. I thought in general the characters will very like-able to, though often very simple. Being an Snes rpg there is room left to read between the lines, and its nice that not every single character trait and plot point is thrown right in your face, often leaving little tidbits to the side for players who want to find them. It also does not hurt that the game includes one of the greatest villains in video games.

5. Unique Characters- I will always prefer Characters with individual abilities in RPGs then ones where everyone is equally customizable. And even though FF6 allows most characters to learn the same spells and perform similar actions, it still retains individuality through unique character abilities and vastly different states between everyone.


The Bad.

1. The Translation- Now granted I played the Snes version so I don't know how much improved it was on Game Boy Advance, but it definitely had its issues here. I actually wonder how much the characters would be improved with a better translation. It did have that bad translation charm though.

2. To many random battles-  I am someone who has no problem with random battles, I think used correctly it can work really well, but there are simply to many here. It makes exploring this wonderful world a chore, and often I would not search around places as much as I wanted because I was just so sick of battles. I know this is an issue with most RPGs of the time, but its still something I thought hurt the game.

And now I can finally start Xenoblade!

The problem with the GBA version is that you have to trade both audio and graphical quality for the translation.

Incidentally the game eventually provides you with a pair of accessories that mitigate the encounter rate (even though both have guide dang it requirements).

I've played through 6 enough times to know that bad translation like the lyrics to a top twenties 90's tune that never made it off the radio once it fell off the charts... Is the the GBA translation improved enough to give it a whirl? It is the only incarnation of the game I haven't played through...

[Bytor]

Just finished Dragon Age II, and I gotta say I freaking seriously loved it, a great romp...now...what's next....

[MeshGearFox]

FFVI didn't have a bad translations. BoF2 had a bad translation. Unfaithful? You could argue that (although you could argue that's not necessarily a bad thing. From what I can tell, all the characterization that exists in the US version of CT wasn't present at all in the JP version). But bad? No, FFVI's translation is about as grammatically correct as you can get, the punctuation is used correctly, it's not Engrishy...

Thing that annoyed me with FFVI is that while all of the characters have unique skills, most of those skills are either useless outright or BECOME useless. The ones that are useful tend to be really unbalanced too (Edgar's autocrossbow and chainsaw are overpowered. Everything else he has is fairly useless. Same for Gau's Rages and Sabins punchenomics).

- Participated poorly in some siege against the Khergites in M&B:W. IDK if I'm going to permanently ally with the, uh.. desert guys, but whatever, they gave me a mercenary contract. Gonna start raiding Khergite caravans for expensive stuff.

- BOF4. Finished, uh, Mt. golm. Off to hunt fairies. This thing seems like it'd be insufferable without some sort of speedup button. Dat sliding rock thing in the volcano.

[Monsoon]

I'm in mid-January in Persona 3 FES and bought On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 right when I got home from work.  My plan was the beat the former and start the latter tonight. 

But then my best bud came over and we played NBA Jam for three hours. 

Worth it.

[Yoda]

Games beaten this year:
rage
ico
alan wake
resident evil 5
journey
dragon age 2

amlur
me3
uncharted 2
batsy: arkham asylum



Arkham Asylum was a TON of fun, and boy does that game know how to do an endgame. Go find everything you missed!

[Kevadu]

Games I've beaten this year:
Journey

...er...that's it.

Journey was like 2 hours long ;)

[GrimReality]

ME3 - I've never been much of a fan of Tali. I really don't like her accent. Still, a DRUNK Tali is awesome. I loved that scene.
I HATE skipping over sidequests, but I'm terrified of losing my game again, so I'm basically playing straight through all the priority missions. Perhaps If I make it all the way through, I'll go back and play some of the missions I missed.
Just did the Sanctuary.

Code:

I saw the end of Miranda coming a mile away. It would have been more dramatic if they had shown her fighting with Kai while I made my way through. I can't wait to kill that guy.

[Yoda]

make a damn copy of your save!

[GrimReality]

make a damn copy of your save!

I don't know how! What do I do? How do I get a save from the 360 onto something else? Advise me, oh wise, Yoda!

Wait...Does the 360 actually have a usb port? I never noticed before. If it does, I'm an idiot!