(soon to be) IN DECK: merry (early) x-mas to me (on tuseday)

i know, i know. i've been a little down on the PS3 as of late. it's mostly the universal hatred of Home by the gaming media and in turn, everyone that hates the PS3. but i still like the black box. and with x-mas coming up, i decided to (finally) buy myself bioshock, a game i ranted and raved about months ago and forgot to get. i really want to play it and now i am.

on top of that, (and Chrono Trigger on DS AND a 320 gig hard drive for my PS3) i also decided to support the PSN by buying some games that i've been wanting to pick up.


Super Street Fighter 2 HD remix

i recently talked to a friend of mine that i grew up with. he lives in India at the moment and has a PS3. we talked about the old days and street fighter 2 came up. we reminisced about playing all night and i mentioned that street fighter HD remix was (at the time) coming out soon. he suggested that we pick up where we left off years ago: him kicking my ass with cheap ass hits with chung li. fuck chung li. it's all about Guile, baby.

Super Street Fighter 2 Hyper Global Meganet HD Remix is out now for $15.

Soldner-X

finally, an old school, side scrolling, hard as fuck shooter. this game looks awesome. i loved life force and i've been waiting for something like this. not alot more i can say about it. seems like more side scrolling shooters would be coming out for the the download services. coupled with online play and it seems like a great fit for the "get in quick/play for 30 minutes" video game market. i saw screens for this game and i knew that it was looking great and that it was going to be a good one to pick up. i'll talk about it more later next week. until then, check out the screen and link.

Soldner-X is out now for $10.


Lumines Supernova

oh yeah! this is it. my favorite PSP game is finally coming to PS3. lumines is my go to game on the PSP. anytime i have some free time, at work or school, pulling off a quick game is always a good idea. so, take all that and put it on the PS3 with new skins and new modes, i'm in. the only downside is that there isn't a online mode. i would have really liked to play people over PSN. but, in this world of DLC, i'm sure we'll see it sooner then later. also, there will be a holiday skin pack for free. that way, it can be x-mas all year long! right...but free stuff is a good way to get people to buy. i'm on it.

Lumines Supernova is out dec 23rd for $15.


Pain: Movie Studios

i really like pain. it's something that i've said before. it's the highest selling PSN game this year. but, some people seem to really not like pain. sure, it's juvenile and obnoxious, but damn if it isn't fun flinging sid, the punk rocker, into the side of a moving car. so after almost a year of no content from idol minds, new levels seem to be flying out of the studio at a crazy pace. this time, it's the movie studio and the addition of the hoff. call me nuts, but throwing david hasselhoff into a some kind of explosive box or barrel sounds like a lot of fun.

Pain: movie studio is out now for $6.

it's been a good year for PS3, even with the numbers coming out at last month. with lumines coming tomorrow, it's enough to get me through the hard times. cheer up, only two months until........



merry x-mas or whatever your deal is.

J.

In Deck/On Deck/Poop Deck

Well, its been a while since my last post (other than the one right before this one). The last few weeks since school has been out I have managed to catch up on some much needed gaming. It all started on Turkey Day...

Left 4 Dead
Dearly departed, your rotting flesh and bile filled innards give me many happiness to blow holes through! My, how the zombie killing genre has gotten a boost due to your extremely satisfying game play and visceral carnage! Epic 13+ hour gaming sessions have ensued and any lack of sleep has gone unnoticed! 28 Days Later style zombies combined with some interesting new infected corpses have risen from the grave to wreak havoc on your poor fresh meat.

There's no explanation as to where they came from, why they are here or which scientist had screwed which rage infected lab monkeys and then had unprotected sex with a random hooker to cause such a widespread case of literal crotch rot upon the the inhabitants of the city you are escaping from. All that you know (and need to know) is that these things want to tear you limb from limb and you need to get from point A to point B while kersploding as many zombies a you can and not becoming a pile of zombie-jerky in the process. This is the raw meat and potatoes of the game and you never really stop for a minute to think about why this is because the "Director" of the game has it out for you and you will not get more than a moments rest. That's fine since that is part of what makes this game so engaging. There are plenty of shit your pants moments and if you have some friends online or sitting next to you on the couch they'll probably shit theirs too!

Maybe all the fun I'm having is because I don't have to play with random dousche-bags online (although that is an option). Just about everyone on my friend list (that has l4d) is playing this non-stop which makes for plenty of fun gaming sessions. Whether it's campaign or survivor vs. infected, you just can't go wrong with this kill-fest.

Gears of War 2

Overhyped? Maybe. Fun? Yeah. Ridiculous plot twists? Definitely! (Warning! Plot spoilers abound ahead!) What do you think of when you are battling hordes of insane ground dwelling mutants that want to destroy your entire race 'cuz they got nothing better to do? Do you ever think that you might want to destroy the only refuge your civilization has left to kill the underground bed-wetting ninnys you hate so much? Maybe you were thinking that it would be a great idea to get swallowed by a giant city eating worm and then get chased Temple of Doom style by a giant chunk of city block through it's digestive track and then give it quadrupple artery bypass surgery on all 3 of it's hearts? Perhaps flying a giant squid on rails while shooting at predator-wanna-be on an even bigger flying squid with pointy teeth in near complete darkness while bobbing back and forth and up and down at a ridiculous rate so you that you can't really aim at the thing? What if I told you that you could do all of this followed by blowing up an epically huge, tentacled, mutant demon boss with a pen laser and magic beam of light that takes all of a minute to accomplish? Well, that's exactly what you are going to get when you pop this disc in and glide through the campaign portion of the game. Seriously. I couldn't make this shit up if i tried. WTF was going through Cliffy B's mind when he thought this shit up? Sure, it was fun to play through, but I don't think I could deal with the plot again! (End of Spoiler alert)

Once again, the multiplayer has to save your sanity by allowing up to 5 people to take on endless waves of baddies in the new Horde mode. Definitely a great way to make your brain work again after all the non-sense you just endured. No matter where you go on the map, tons of Locusts will be swarming you from every which direction until you eventually get mauled to pieces! The other multiplayer modes are pretty interesting as well, including the new MeatFlag mode. It's basically capture the flag only the flag doesn't want you to capture it cuz it's alive! You just have to run up, slap him like the bitch he is, and then drag him back to your base. Oh, and unlike just about any game since Perfect Dark and Time Splitters, you can play a friendly game with a bunch of connivingly evil bots that are even better than those 12 year olds that kill me in Halo all the time! I can at least deal with the constant murder of me if it's a cpu as opposed to a stinky little spoiled brat that eats his own farts!

So there you have it, Campaign = Queers of War, Multiplayer and everything else = Gears of Thank-God-It's-Not-the-Campaign-Mode-Again!

Super Street Fighter II Ultra Mega High-Def It Hasn't Been Re-Released Enough Edition

Why did I even download the demo for this? I should have know it was just going to kick my ass from here to Thailand on Uber-Wuss difficulty again just like the last version I downloaded. At this version has Cammy in it and looks like it crammed 20lbs of high def in a 5lb bag. If you can actually fight the computer or know people who suck at fighters more than you do that are willing to just let you beat the shit out of them for 42 rounds straight, pick it up. If not, Capcom will still get your money somewhere else around May 5 of next year.

Dr. Steel

Sure, Dr. Steel isn't a game, but he's made quite a few of them in his time! More importantly, he makes some pretty kick ass Mr. Bungle-esque, Industrial Rock/Hip-Hop/Whatever kind of music mad scientists make styled music. If you're in the mood for some music to help you make evil toys and robots that will one day help you rule the world with an iron fist, check it out. He makes his own action figures as well!

Netflix

Thanks to the evil persuasions of Ed the Head, I managed to sign myself for a Netflix trial account last week. It's pretty awesome to have an almost unlimited supply of (mostly B-grade) titles to stream directly to your 360, especially if you don't have cable or even an antenna attached to your tv. It'll be almost worth the $8 it'll cost to have it every month.

Castle Crashers

It's still around and getting play-time and maybe one day they'll release a patch so I can play an entire game with some people online! It's good people other than that, so buy it already!

DoomStein