PixlBit

I'm sorry to hear that this game is going offline.  I read about it the other day and I was wondering if you knew about it.  Even though I took quite a bit of abuse in the first game online, I still have fond memories of the experience and the people I met.  It's just a shame that D3 no longer has any interest in keeping this unique game running (meanwhile, the Japanese version will continue on indefinitely).  Well, you might as well look for my town (you might even find my brother's) and pay it a visit before it's gone forever!

I've been keeping up with his 1up posts (this and Castlevania) thanks to the reminders on his personal site, Telebunny.net.  But, yeah, the lack of a score on this review was nice.  That's one way to keep the fanboys and trolls quiet.

From what I read over at Siliconera, Devil Summoner 1 & 2 for the PS2 (minus the plushie for 2) are being reprinted.  I think they are going to cost $30 each whenever Atlus gets around to distributing them.  So, keep an eye open for them if you want to own them again.

That said, I also remember selling games for a pittance that later jumped in price.  Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire II, Diablo for the PS1; I actually kept a record of the games I sold over the years just as a reminder of how stupid I was and how to not do it again in the future.  Some of those games I was lucky to reacquire for little money (Metroid Prime 2), but some continue to evade my grasp at the moment.

When I saw that little bit of news at Siliconera, including the bit about the cartoon's background designers contributing to the game, I was more than happy.  Capcom and WayForward seem to be putting a great deal of effort into this remake (which makes sense considering the legacy of the show and the game), even going as far as to get some of the original voice talent back (like Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck).  Perhaps they also got the original singer of the DuckTales theme to work with Kaufman.

I can kick myself over some of the games I left behind over the years (all those PS1 games ).  But, I never set out to buy games that I personally didn't want in order to sell them later on.  That said, I'm still careful about the games that I buy just in case I ever need to sell them.  It's quite frightening to think about what some of our games are worth (even complete used games in great condition are worth a ton) and how demand for them keeps rising.  Within my own collection, I think it's my GBA collection that's worth the most.  I have over 80 games all in their boxes, including ones I can set my own price for like Car Battler Joe.

That said, I wish my local FYE hadn't done away with their PS2 clearance section (where they sent those games, I have no idea).  I found so many treasures lurking in there (they had so many KOEI and .hack games that are expensive now) and I'll never see anything like it again.

I definitely bought this game after our discussion (as well as a few other strategy games, namely Front Mission DS and Front Mission 3).  It had been a very long time since I last played a hex-based strategy game (probably Military Madness), and this looked like the perfect one to grab, considering the pedigree behind the entire series.  I haven't found the time to really play it yet, though.  I'm waiting until I get back to my PS2 backlog before I sink some significant time into it.

Also, you know what other game you wrote about that I just picked up?  Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI.  I was out shopping the other day and I remembered how my local TRU had a stack of copies a few months back.  I also remembered the difficulty you had in finding the game for a decent price (Amazon sellers want $90 for it in new condition), so I decided to pop in a see if they still had it.  Sure enough, there was one $10 copy left waiting for me and I picked it up.  I might not play it anytime soon, but that's one less massive strategy game I don't have to buy later on.

I can not believe Capcom is remaking this game with the help of WayForward.  It's just a tremendously welcome surprise.  The timing is crazy, too, considering I started watching the DuckTales cartoons again about two weeks ago and I just purchased DuckTales 1 & 2 for the Game Boy last week.  Anyway, it's nice to know that I'll have some more DuckTales to enjoy in the future.

Also, I'm happy to see Jake Kaufman is providing the soundtrack for this game.  After the work he did on Double Dragon Neon, I can't wait to here his takes on DuckTales' classic tunes.

I agree: Darksiders' Apocalyptic mode was poorly designed.  When I sat down to play this game, I knew from the start that I wanted to acquire all the achievements.  So, I started on Apocalyptic from the beginning and was treated to some of the poorest balancing I've seen in a very long time.  Without the Abyssal armor to back me up (until late in the game), I was consistently being abused by the game's middling combat and lock-on system.  Between the amount of enemies that were sent at me and the absurd damage they were dealing (getting through the early portions with a single lifebar was exhausting), death was frequent.  Of course, the developers must have known how sloppy it was because of the density of check-points and how many enemies wouldn't respawn with you.

I just don't understand why they even included a difficulty system.  Apocalyptic offers nothing over the other modes and actually brings greater focus to the game's faults (being surrounded constantly by those four-legged wretches who could take off a single health bar per hit was unnecessary).

I wonder what kind of feature set these games will have?  Also, it better not make use of Capcom's awful DRM (I'm not even sure if they do it anymore).  Other than that, it would be nice to play these games again, especially if they include an online mode. 

This is a crutch the industry needs to do away with.  While I realize the complexity of a game's code has grown exponentially since the industry's start, developers still need to make sure that a game runs with a minimum of stability issues and that the main campaign can be finished before it's launched.  Everytime I see a game released that cannot be finished out of the box (like Diablo II or Star Trek Armada) or requires elaborate workarounds to avoid glitches (Ar tonelico II, War in the North), I want to know if they were even play tested.

I used to play quite a few PC games in the past, many of which were rock-solid developments (Star Trek: Bridge Commander, Age of Empires) that worked straight out of the box.  But, over time the patch mentality took over (thanks to the expansion of the Internet) and allowed many companies to call a mulligan over their botched releases.  Despite how easy it is to fix these games, I never got used to it.  It's a deep-rooted and fundamental problem in the development process and the companies that suffer from it (Bethesda, Blizzard, Travellers' Tales) need to alter their practices.  I've seen too many interesting games come and go only because I lost faith in developers to release working products.  Of course, this practice is only going to get worse going forward.  Many players already assume that a game isn't going to work right from the start, and it allows companies to make money on half-baked products.  That's just a terrible way to treat consumers and do business.