PixlBit

I love MadWord. I remember having to stretch the wiimote and nunchuck as if I was strangling someome for a move in the game. Ha! 

Brutal Legend has a great metal soundtrack. I got introduced to Iced Earth, now one of my favorite metal bands. I didn't get past the RTS part of the game though. I should try it again. 

Borderlands I hated at first and didn't get into it until a few years later. It still infuriates me from time to time, but I am a huge fan now. 

Arkham Asylum is great. Need to finish it. Stopped half way through on a stealth segment. Stealth!!! You are my nemesis!

Yeah, I had to move them really fast to quickly beat up a boss. Yakuza 0 would get tiring with those controls, but I wouldn't mind those being implemented now and then in that game. 

I think I knew Iced Earth outside of Brutal Legend, but definitely not Brocas Helm. 

Yeah, you did nothing but post about Borderlands 2 there for a spell. I'm the same way with Yakuza 0 lately. 

I like the stealth in Arkham games much more than other games, cause you can recover from being seen pretty quickly and you can take enemies out pretty swiftly. Most stealth games I just lose patience having to wait all the time. 

I totally want the complete soundtrack to Brutal Legend. Not sure if they did one though. 

Borderlands. Yeah, recently I've been having yearnings to revisit the series. I guess this will be one of the games I play once a year. 

Of this batch of games, I played Spirit Tracks, SFIV, and Bayonetta. By 2009, I had switched from the 360 to the PS3, with some Wii gaming going on.

Like you, I wasn't a fan of the touch screen controls of the DS Zeldas. I liked Spirit Tracks better than Phantom Hourglass.

SFIV was pretty fun, and I played it quite a bit online, especially since the online community for VF5 had dried up a couple years ago. I think I played Super rather than the vanilla version though, so that may not count for 2009. But Capcom gonna Capcom, you know?

Bayonetta, now that was awesome. It blew DMC out of the water for me and the Bayonetta games are still my favorite games in that genre. I'll probably get Bayonetta on Switch along with Bayonetta 2. I actually had the PS3 version, which was supposedly worse than the 360 version although I think they'd patched it a few times by the time I got it.

Other games I liked in 2009 were Demon's Souls and Dragon Quest V on DS.

I didn't realize the Souls series started this year.

I really want to play Bayonetta some time.

Eh, as acurrate as these Wikipedia lists I'm using are, for all I know Super SFIV came out in 2009, so I would count it. Did you say you jumped back into IV online because V dried up? People must really not like V.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall Hourglass forcing you to use motion controls while Spirit Tracks you only had to use it to control the rolling armor and it was otherwise optional.

No, I jumped into Super SFIV because Virtua Fighter 5, which was my go-to fighter until them, dried up online. It lasted longer than I thought it would, LOL. I haven't played SFV at all. The reviews have kind of deterred me on that, plus I have no shortage of other fighting games to play, like Mortal Kombat X, KoF XIV, and Guilty Gear.

Spirit Tracks had the same control scheme as Phantom Hourglass when you were on the ground. The trains were obviously different from the boat in PH.

I don't know how I keep misreading your comments. Lol

I remember MadWorld.  I wish it was called NiceWorld and you did nice things for people instead, though.

OK this shouldn't be too hard, but let's see if you can guess my favorite Street Fighter character.

Bayonetta is a great action game, but I didn't like that you fought angels, so I stopped playing it after one really gross part.

I always called Spirit Tracks "Chugga Chugga Zelda."  I liked it better than Phantom Hourglass.  The last boss in Spirit Tracks is pretty tough, too.

Fair enough. I consider most video game violence so cartoony that it barely even registers, not because I love bloodshed, because it's a slightly more realistic Wile E. Coyote feature at that point. That game is so over-the-top. lol

Cammy. That one I think I've actually seen you talk about. 

I've always been curious about the way the Japanese see demons vs. the way western Judeo-Christian culture sees them. They don't seem to be presented the same way in Japanese pop culture. 

I'd love to get to the last boss in Spirit Tracks, but every time I open up the game and I'm back in the 300-floor castle, I forget what I was supposed to do. 

I imagine that Japanese see Judeo-Christian symbols the way we see Greco-Roman or Norse mythology, and to a degree, Japanese mythology. So many Japanese games have Judeo-Christian symbolism in them. Final Fantasy, Xenogears, Bayonetta, some Tales games (Symphonia had a lot of not-too-subtle and not-too-flattering references to Catholicism in it), some Pokemon, and even Zelda. Originally, according to Miyamoto, Christianity was the main religion of Hyrule, with Link having a Latin cross on his shield in the NES games. It wasn't until A Link to the Past that Zelda started really developing its own mythology and pantheon. Since Japan isn't Christian (and in fact, their rejection of Christianity is said to have kept Japan from falling under European colonial rule the way China, Africa, and the Americas did), it doesn't mean much to them. They do celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday with their own spin on it (for single adults, Christmas involves dinner at KFC followed by a night at a love hotel), and they are aware to a degree of how religious the United States is. They almost didn't release Xenogears or Final Fantasy Tactics in the US due to concerns about backlash from religious groups.

I knew the country wasn't majority-Christian, but I guess I didn't know the extent of it. 

What I've always wondered about is their "demons" always seem like they can be good or bad, not necessarily the shorthand for "evil" they are in the states. Like, I'm not entirely sure Devil Jin is really a bad guy in Tekken, or just someone who has a bad trip every now and then. 

I think that the hard "good/evil" dichotomy is a product of the three Abrahamic religions.

why doesn't my christmas involve KFC and love motels??? Why?????

I dunno if I'd want a love motel after KFC. I would much prefer those be in reverse order, or for there to at least be a shower and a nap after the KFC. 

KFC is actually considered to be fine dining in Japan and China. In Africa, eating at KFC is considered to be a status symbol.

That I actually did know, but my comment still stands.

I really like the idea of Spirit Tracks, but I couldn't get into the actual game. I have a kind of fondness for it, but just couldn't play it. Sometimes that happens to me. 

Was it the controls?

i don't like using the stylus, no, and I also didn't like controlling the train. 

Heck yeah, there's a ton of good stuff here. I only played a little bit of Mad World a couple of years ago when I found a Wii at a thrift store. SFIV was fun but I had my cousin go in and beat the story mode so I could get the trophies. He's a bigger fight fan than I am. You know with Brutal Legend I thought I would be annoyed with Jack Black but I liked him in this game. For the most part the game was fun but I thought the end battle was crap. Uncharted 2 was the game. I was anti Uncharted because I thought it was overhyped for boy Tomb Raider but after my cousin lent me his game I was hooked. Such a kick ass franchise. 

I think the first Uncharted is a bit overrated and can never understand people who say it's their favorite. But 2's train stage alone is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a video game, and I played it way after its initial release.