PixlBit

The benefit here is the online play, Japanese rom, and the survival mode. If you play the game aiming to do very well, it could potentially have quite a bit of lasting power. If you choose to play it for a single experience or two, unless you have friends over or play with a handful of people, it really won't be very lasting. Hence why most should probably wait for a sale. It's a very fun game while it lasts, but it won't last long in most cases.

With Skyrim, what do you typically find when you explore? For example, what if you venture through a snowy, mountainous region only to come face to face with a dragon? Boom. Enter combat scenario, you can fight or you can run. In whatever case, chances are, it's going to be a very bland experience. When you defeat the dragon and stumble upon some sort of rune, you gain....

...An ability that increases your fighting proficiency a little bit. Great! I'm not saying there isn't a sense of exploration in the game, but from what I've seen, quite a bit of it ties into fighting proficiency and such.

Then, I start to wonder things like this: If you don't play the game for some experience with the combat, why not just play Animal Crossing? No, it doesn't have a wide-open, massive world, but at the same time, you won't have to worry about some giant attacking you and flinging you two hundred feet in the air, nor will you have to worry about how long it takes to travel from place to place. If the combat really gives the feeling of recreating the roll of the die in Dungeons and Dragons, it certainly lacks the options for creativity, personality, and sense of comraderie playing a table top game offers.

With older isometric dungeon crawlers, in my limited experience, the combat was simplified. What mattered was what you equipped and how you approached a situation. How you clicked once in a fight seemed a little less relevant, aside from things like timing of spells. With Skyrim, seeing the game played, it looks more like a dull first-person shooter/brawler. Sure, you can equip things, but so many spells are so similar, so many approaches to each fight are the same: Attack and then dodge the enemy's straight-forward attack. Yeah, dragons are slightly different, yeah, giants are slightly different, but from what I've seen, not so much.

Anyway, the point was more about the way many critics and individuals are reacting to Kingdoms of Amalur: When it's boiled down, they're essentially saying the game is like Skyrim if Skyrim were fun to play. That puzzles me. A few months ago, to many people, Skyrim was one of the best titles of this generation. Here we are, a few months passed, and suddenly Skyrim is a great game by their standards, but not one that people enjoy playing. Do you see the contrast here? Are people that short-sighted?

Crocodiles and alligators rock. Why go to a museum when you can see living dinosaurs, man? Cruis'n USA is fun to play. That's all there is to it. To me, Forza and Gran Turismo are not fun to play. I would gladly take a copy of any Cruis'n game (including the Wii's "Cruis'n,) than receive any sort of copy of any of those realistic racers.

And seriously, there's a few decent games for the Neo Geo, but any title that was worth anything typically received an upgraded port to a more manageable home console. Look at King of the Monster 2. Neo Geo version was terrible, SNES version had some quality gameplay for the time, at least.

Word on the street is that the piece of art for the FF 25th anniversary shown above in the article is a throwback to some artwork created for Final Fantasy VI. A lot of people are reading it as a teaser for an FFVI remake. I wouldn't be opposed to such a thing.

I could see there being "synchronized missions," where progress in one part of the world with one team of two would be affected by another team of two in another part of the world. It would be more effective if they figured out ways that one team could communicate to the other about certain enemy weaknesses without things being over-used.

For example, part of team A's story brings them across a boss-type of zombie they fight, only to discover a weakness in said enemy. The intel gets transmitted to team B and C, and when that enemy pops up, taking advantage of the enemy, B & C have a much easier time defeating it.

At the same time, once team B defeats the enemy, they find a computer console connected to the facility team A is in, and they use the console to turn on lights in team A's area, increasing team A's progress. Team C would get to control a conveyor belt of some sort for someone somewhere at sometime, to sum up my examples.

I don't know if it would work all that well, but it could be interesting if Capcom invested in that type of idea. After all, if you were to strike against a terrorist organization that has three separate headquarters, the best way to attack would be a surprise assault on all three locations at the same time, wouldn't it? And if that were the case, of course a little bit here and there would be connected. Another example: Team A infiltrates with stealth, while Team C goes in by force. As a result, Team A's base goes on guard, and every enemy carries his weapon. Had Team C gone in with stealth, Team A would have been able to pick up the enemy's weapons and use them against unprepared guards.

See the point I'm trying to make?

Also worth noting is that most games with lower runs, albeit not all of them, can be found on Amazon for quite some time. Worth noting, Chrono Trigger DS is available for 18.50 new, right now.

Mostly, when I talked about game prices dropping, I was referring to major titles. With smaller games, like Nick mentions, you've got to be a lot more careful, perhaps to the extent it isn't worth fretting over depending on how vigilant you care to be and how much you're looking for the game. Nick's tip about the game not being at Target, Walmart, and Best Buy is a great indicator, for one. If you are willing to buy used, GS's sales are also pretty useful.

That said, I would personally imagine Tales of the Abyss will be easy enough to find at a discounted price, just by looking at 3DS game sales trends. No, it won't be published in massive quantities, but I don't imagine it will sell out immediately. Checking for various other Tales games on Amazon showed that a few of the most popular ones, including a few on the PS2, are still available new even now.

Hedgehogs have spines, which are similar, but not exactly the same as a porcupine's quills. They're not the same as fur, though.

I also still see the 3G version of the Vita as something not worth it. The whole "Using AT&T's unreliable 3G to play a game online?" I don't exactly think that'll work great all the time. The alternative slightly good news is that AT&T hinted that either the 3G version can be upgraded to LTE or that there's an LTE version on the way. On the flipside, good luck finding an AT&T LTE-enabled city...

You know what? I completely missed that. I didn't pay enough attention to the box-art, went looking at the specs at Amazon, saw where it talked about wireless communications, and saw the WiFi stats, but no 3G info there, and made the wrong assumption. That one's completely my mistake.

It's a download code for Twisted Metal Black, so you won't be able to get the code used, I wouldn't imagine. Maybe from someone on eBay perhaps. Maybe.