PixlBit

I always loved flight sims as a kid. This one looks like a lot of fun. The visuals are amazing, especially the water and landscape. The buildings look dull like they always have in these kind of games lol. The buildings are just basically simple geometry and provide obstacles to fly through. They have little detail to them, and there's like no life to the city it would seem (cars, people, movement of any kind). The flight gameplay is what it's all about though and I bet this would be pretty awesome to play. When I was in elementary school my best friend and I would go to Dave & Busters because they have a huge arcade there. While most kids were playing the shooting or racing games my friend and I always spent forever on the flight sim trying to land planes lol.

Just imagine 2 dorky ten year olds discussing the dimensions of a 747, admiring how realistic the LA skyline looked, and what speed and angle we needed to attain to achieve the smoothest landing and you'll be able to get a picture of what we were like lol. We took our flight sims seriously, as well as our Sim City, SWAT games, Rainbow Six, and even this submarine sim I had called Tom Clancy's SSN. I loved that game so much. I read Clancy novels back in those days and I was always in SSN steering my sub around, messing with ballast, skimming the bottom of the ocean, and stalking enemy surface ships. Wish I had that game still.

How cool, I didn't even know they had a digital version of the game on XBL, and I've had the service forever already. I love playing UNO, it's definitely fun and easy to pick up. My cousins and I like to play drinking UNO. I can't remember what the stipulations are (can't imagine why) and what led to a person taking shots, but we'd all be drunk after an hour of UNO and it was a mess lol. Really fun game, easy to pick up, easy enough to keep track of when your drunk, and it's incredibly addicting when you have a nice group to play with. I don't like most card games, I don't like poker, and I don't take card games seriously, so a simple game like UNO is the perfect card game to get into.

Great review Travis, I was happy to see this game get some attention. Crysis 2 is mechanically my favorite FPS I've ever played, up to this point in FPS history. I love my shooters, Halo, Half Life, CoD, Fear, Far Cry, and many others, but Crysis 2 was different. It just felt so fresh and polished. The mechanics it uses aren't anything that haven't been thought up or used before, but the way they work in the game are what's great.

I love being able to see the player's body on screen at all times. I love the movement mechanics. The energy gauge is balanced well and upgrading it is extremely useful. The gauge can be depleted by sprinting, super-jumping, using stealth, or armor, and each action seems to use up the gauge fairly and in good balance. If I'm stuck in a sticky situation and need to escape, even when the gauge is weakest, I can use a skill to save my life and give me a chance to regroup. The skills like stealth and armor don't break they game, they make it exponentially more enjoyable and frantic. I loved super-jumping onto buildings and climbing everything. The level designs have a lot of verticality in mind and I felt like a real super-soldier when I was running around, climbing obstacles, scrambling into and out of cover, or even when I would sprint and do a slide underneath the trailer of a semi truck.

Using stealth is so satisfying and it comes in handy all the time. I spent over 40% of the game sneaking around, assassinating enemies from behind, or using a silenced magnum to drop enemies with one shot to the face. I was able to basically play this game like Splinter Cell and that blew my mind. And I didn't have to either! I could've played it balls to the wall like Halo if I wanted, that's how dynamic it ended up being. I can play like a Halo Spartan, activate the Nanosuit's Armor Mode, scramble out into the thick of battle with no cover and just start shooting and beating people to death, or I could stay in the shadows using Cloak and taking it at my own slow pace. Or I could play like CoD and hide behind cover while I pick enemies off like whack-a-mole. I've never played a shooter with that much diversity and have all that diversity not only make sense, but work in the game, and be so much fun. You can play this game in different ways, and they're all great.

I love the level design because the encounter spaces are all open and you can plan how you want to deal with enemies. When Crytek brought up that bullet point in their marketing I thought it would just be bullshit because everybody says that their game will be dynamic and give you choices, and it's hardly ever true, or at least hardly ever implemented the way I would want. When you come into an encounter space it's very organic because the enemies don't know you're around (unless you get their attention). In many games you walk into an area and the AI all instantly know you exist and they are hellbent on killing you and funneling towards you. In Crysis 2 I was able to just wander around and observe like a predator figuring out how and when I wanted to strike.

So the mechanics are incredible, the level designs are superb, but what of the guns? I thought the guns were terribly fun to shoot (that's critical in an FPS). The assualt rifles had plenty of punch, the sub-machine guns had great tradeoffs between power, rate of fire, and maneuverability. The sniper was a beast. Not only were the guns fun to shoot, crisp, and served their purposes well, but what I thought was the best thing about the combat was being able to customize your weapons on the fly with the Back button. If you want to put a silencer on your gun, slap on a grenade launcher, or change the iron sights to a holosight all you have to do is take a moment to hide behind cover, press Back, see a hologram appear on screen and quickly choose the augments on the fly. The games continues to play out, there's no pause menu, no break in the immersion and you can even move around as you change things it's awesome.

Mechanically Crysis 2 is my favorite shooter yet. On the visual side I agree with you, the game is the best I've seen the 360 put out. The lighting affects are second to none, and the water effects are unique. Do you remember the effects when your swimming through water Travis? The way light diffuses through the water, the level of murkiness, texture, and character movement through the water. I haven't played anything like it before. It's hard to convery through words, you just have to play it and see what I mean. It just feels right and looks right. The few weeks spent I spent playing Crysis 2 I was also working a lot on my Forge World Diaries feature building things in Halo Reach and even though Reach is beautiful, Crysis 2 has it 1UP'd in just about every way. The way water is handled with CryEngine3 makes Reach's engine look dull. When you go underwater in Reach it's just a single shade of blue, nothing interesting, and when you interact with water (shoot it, move through it) the react is always the same small ripple. In Crysis 2 the ripples are far bigger, more animated, and the way the water moves makes it look a little less like geometry and more like an honest fluid. It's far from perfect, it's still just "video game water", but it's by far the best video game water I've seen so far. The particle effects, lighting, fire, water, and physics are just so much fun to see in action in this game.

So anyways lol, I adore the gameplay and presentation and those things by themselves are enough to make it one of my favorite shooters ever. The downsides for me are all on the story and character side. I thought the story was awful, the script was boring, I could never attach to the characters. You were saying you really liked the voice acting, now that I think about it I guess the voice acting itself wasn't bad, but the script was bad. The story sucked, but the spectacle was great. Remember towards the end when Central Park gets raised out of the ground and suspended in the sky? Awesome. Another thing I thought was nice about the setting was the way people were gathered around decontamination tents and the situations they are all faced with. The Manhattan virus was brutal and it was interesting to wander around and see the plight of the humans in this situation. It was similar to wandering around in Half Life 2 and seeing the plight of people under the oppression of the Combine. I definitely think Crysis 2 takes a lot of inspiration from franchises like Half Life and Halo. The way the NPCs are presented to you is very Half Life-esk, and the levels of interactivity you can have with objects (like picking up random items like a radio, trash bag, container) is very Half Life.

The AI was okay during my playthroughs, I never had any soldiers or Ceph spinning in circles. The enemies were bland I guess you could say. Their AI wasn't anything special, their hit-reacts weren't anything special, their animation and behavior was very easy to grasp and comfortable to deal with. To show contrast and give an example of enemy AI and animation that isn't easy to grasp or be comfortable to deal with, look at RAGE. I played the RAGE demo last night and mutant enemies were scrambling everywhere like I've never seen before. Rolling, dodging my shots, climbing over rails quickly, and even doing parkour across encounter spaces. I had a mutant run straight at me down a hallway, jump off a wall, and do a 360 before he attacked me. WTF?! The RAGE AI throws me for a curve everytime and I can tell you I died quite a bit, it's weird to get use to enemies that are so eccentric and acrobatic. In Crysis 2 the enemies will just scurry around, take cover, come out of cover, shoot, and be shot. Very familiar and easy to grasp, nothing unique.

I'll start with the worst aspects and work my way to the best. I didn't like the story or characters, the AI is "meh", but the setting was great and the way the plight of survivors is conveyed to you is interesting. The presentation and feel are outstanding. Level designs are open and encounters offer plenty of FPS variety. The mechanics are incredible and putting them together with the great level design makes the gameplay second to none. I think this game is amazing, and I can't recommend it enough. Even if you just play it for the gameplay and ignore the story it's well worth the price of admission, that's how much fun it is.

Cool gaming nook Esteban. Looks like a pretty sweet tv, I take it that's the one you game on? What kind of tv is it? I still have a standard def set that's around 20", so when I go hang out at people's houses and play on legit HD flatscreens my jaw still drops everytime lol (even though HD has been the standard for a few years now). I think the PoP concept art you framed looks really awesome.

This will be a pleasure guys. It'll be long though and I'm wondering if I should put it into a blog instead. In last weeks Pixltalk I think it was Angelo that made his comment into a blog, put a link to it on the thread, and it worked out okay. If you think I should put longer posts into a blog just tell me cause I could do that and just leave a link here if any of you think it would be better. I wouldn't be offended, and I will easily be able to "come to consensus" with you lol (I'll save my thoughts on Legion till the end). By now everybody knows I have plenty to say, but I honestly don't want to be obnoxious about it.

Mass Effect universe and gameplay: I definitely feel that the Mass Effect series and lore is like my generation's Star Trek. My dad is a huge Star Trek fan and as child I grew up watching episodes from different series (original run, Next Gen, DS9) with him just because that's what he was always watching. Because of that I've always known plenty about Star Trek, but as a child when I was left on my own I spent my time watching more Star Wars. When the 2009 Star Trek movie came out and rebooted the franchise it instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time because it immediatly struck the Mass Effect nerve. I watched the reboot and it completely captivated me with great characters and incredible spectacle just like Mass Effect did for me. Mass Effect is like my interactive video game eqivalent to the experiences I get watching Star Trek media. Mass Effect combines my favorite aspects of Star Trek, Star Wars, and other great science fiction universes and space operas.

Not long ago Julian and I talked about the gameplay aspects of the series and what we think of them. I don't really love the gameplay in the series and weirdly I play this series of games without a focus on the combat mechanics. During the episode I heard Rob say he's a story guy, and I know everybody else on the cast loves their stories. This is a little off topic but I wanted to let you all know it's enlightening to hear you guys talk story, and one of the reasons why is because you guys have the background, skill, and a love of literature and writing that allows your disection and analysis of stories to be so much deeper than mine would be by itself. Back when you did Storytellers 2 and discussed the kind of literary stories or themes you'd like to see adapted to video game form, that was amazing. I had no clue that The Lion King was basically a modern animated film spin on Hamlet. I learned something, as I tend to when these discussions get rolling.

Getting back to Mass Effect, it's unique that I don't play it for the combat mechanics, especially since it's an unavoidable core part of the game. To me the gameplay of any game is the most important part of any game, a good story is just a bonus. When I played Mass Effect all I could focus on were 3 things: getting to know the characters/universe, dialogue choices, and cinematics. I play the game, kill things, and go through the motions to win encounters, but it's always because I want to get to the next plot point and see the next amazing thing. Gameplay-wise ME1 for me was a sub-par Gears of War and never had it's own unique identity. I didn't use the power wheel much, I didn't mircomanage battles and squadmates as much, and when I was done with ME1 I just thought, "They're trying to lift some things from Gears of War, which is fine, but they're not doing it well at all." Even with that said, it didn't detract from the game for me at all and I'll explain the weird reason as to why. In contrast I play Gears of War for the combat and I know that the story is near irrelevant to me. I play Mass Effect for the characters, universe, dialogue, cinematics, and I know that the combat is near irrelevant to me. The reason the combat is near irrelevant to me isn't because it's mediocre, it's because I don't really want to be a badass space marine in these games, at least not in the way some people do, if that makes any sense. I promise I'll come back to that and explain why in full when I talk about my Shepard, I just want to get the universe and gameplay out of the way first.

I love and adore Mass Effect the same way I adore Bioshock. Bioshock is a mediocre FPS just like ME is a mediocre 3rd person shooter. The gameplay isn't anything fresh, but it does work well enough. I care as little about dual wielding plasmids and guns in Bioshock as I do about pulling up the power wheel and letting loose a singularity in Mass Effect. The unique environment and interesting characters keep me going in Bioshock. In ME learning about the universe in the codex, exploring the world and seeing events, seeing characters develop, etc is what keeps me going and blows my mind. If you ask me what my favorite things to do in ME are, I would tell you that I love sitting back and listening to the codex. I like jumping to new systems and finding out about planets, having conversations with crewmembers to learn about them, seeing intense dialogues between Shepard and the Council play out, and witnessing beautiful cinematics like the Normandy docking with the Citadel for the first time in ME1.

Rob can obviously nerd out quite a bit on the detials of the universe. Rob do you remember sometime around the Reaper IFF mission in ME2, when you're in the Century System of the Hawking Eta cluster, you come across a planet called Klendagon? The Derelict Reaper is in the same system I think but it's across the system and orbits around a different planet. Klendagon is an arid lifeless planet that has a gargantuan tear across the surface called the Great Rift Valley, assumed at first to be a natural formation. Evidence shows that the Great Rift is actually a 37 million year old gash in the planet caused by a glancing blow from a mass accelerator of unprecedented power. Well, I remember in the Reaper IFF mission you find out that the Direlect Reaper was taken out by a weapon of unimaginable power, and so when you connect the dots it stands to reason that during one of the previous extinction cycles some ancient race made their last stand, built the most powerful weapon they could, and basically succeeded in blasting the nearby Reaper into bits. The mass fired from the accelerator had so much momentum it went clean through the Reaper and continued through the system till it tore across the crust of Klendagon and left the Great Rift we see today. No remains of the civilization, no life or noise, just a quiet system with the remains of one of the most epic events you could ever imagine. That whole narrative and backstory could easily be missed or ignored, but neverless it's just there like it would be in real life. I came across that as if it was a crime scene, or like I was an archeologist. I cherish that depth of science and history.

I want to know about the exchange between the race and the attacking Reaper. I want to know about the giant Drive Core the Normandy runs on, the role of honor in Turian culture, the reasoning Mordin has behind the genophage, what the surface gravity of Tuchanka is, what roles a Dreadnaught plays in space battles, and how Grunt's illness is due to a lack of Krogan upbrining, culture, and the rite of passage. I even love how they refer to the internet as the extranet because of the fact that the network no longer is confined to a single planet and therefore it makes sense the word would change to give you the idea that the network now is extraplanetary, extrasolar, and spans the galaxy.

I want to know everything about the ME universe because I truly feel like I'm living a second life in this world. I'm not just some "insert name here" Shepard roaming around the galaxy fighting for the sake of fighting, for 360 achievements, or just to beat the game. I treat my Shepard like an extension of myself and try to make dialogue choices honest to what I would hope to do in her situation. Needless to say I don't take any choices lightly, and I'm always worried about how my actions will affect the world around me in ME.

My Shepard: is a beautiful soldier class FemShep. Her pre-service history has her as a colonist from Mindoir that had her family and friends killed by slavers and was saved by a passing Alliance patrol. Her psych profile is the War Hero meaning that once she was rescued by Alliance and enlisted, she went on to save Elysium from a Batarian attack. The personality I made up for my Shepard is that she knows what it feels like to loose everything (her family and home colony) but she also knows what it feels like to survive, fight, and achieve total victory by saving Elysium from the same fate. My Shep isn't unlike Julian's. She gives people the benefit of the doubt even to her downfall. She wants to do what she thinks is most ethical, and she doesn't think ends justify means.

Just a little bit earlier I said that I don't want my Shepard to be a space marine badass like some people do. I treat my Shepard like she's the Captain of a starship in Starfleet from the Trek universe. The Normandy is my Enterprise and our mission isn't one of conquest, fame, wealth, or conflict of any kind. Our mission is to seek knowledge and alien life. However, the Normandy is well armed, my Shepard is a trained soldier, and we can defend ourselves or others if diplomacy fails in any given situation. Similar to how well armed the Enterprise is and the prime directive it follows. Once you understand that, you might start to see that the combat mechanics in the ME series are almost irrelevant to me. Some people just want to create a quick Shepard, roam around, blasting everything in sight so they can collect their loot, go bang whoever they're romancing, etc. By treating my Mass Effect experience like Star Trek, I'm getting something out of these games that is far deeper and more meaningful to me than just entering a room and shooting the mercs inside. I'd rather go down on Tuchanka and study the Krogan's in their natural habitat, study the sociology of Turians, mediate between conflicting parties, make peace, and learn about everything. And if the Reaper's threaten to destroy all of that, I have to stop them. I usually kill anybody or anything that is very dangerous or disrupts some kind of balance in a situation, like Reapers, random mercs, or the Thorian. I refused to kill Wrex, I saved the Geth heretics, I saved the Rachni Queen, I did all the loyalty missions and all my crew survived the suicide mission, I always try to teach Garrus about mercy and patience (the Dr. Saleon mission in ME1), and I always debate with Mordin over the ethical reprocussions of the Genophage that the Krogan suffer from because of him (on Tuchanka in ME2).

Ashley: I thought it was great that you guys brought up Ashley and her religion and how you all felt about it. I likewise was affected by it and by her character development. Ashley and I are very different and very similar at the same time. I thought she was very interesting and the way she fits into the universe is unique, and I appreciate her a great deal.

For a quick background to my points about Ashley, I grew up religious and my whole family is religious, but I'm not anymore. I don't believe in God, fate, magic, and I worship nothing. I would call myself an athiest (don't believe in any God) but when you say that most people don't know what it means, and almost everybody will have preconvieved notions about it. You'd be surprised how many people still think athiests are a sad, hopeless, evil cult, or that they worship things in any fashion lol. You could say I'm part of the Freethinker group, meaning I have a philosophy that says my opinions should be formed on the basis of science, reason, logic, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or dogma. I would accept that classification as part of who I am, but it doesn't explain the complex ethical system I have. Classifications or not, I don't believe in any Gods and I'm happy, confident, and hopeful. I'm a natural skeptic, but not for the sake of skepticism. I have an open mind that is suspect to constant updating and learning. I don't agree with religious people on their beliefs, but I can get along with them, study them, and treat them with respect. They don't often show me the same respect, but I try anyways. I'm not always perfect either.

I was able to accept Ashley in ME1 and feel comfortable with her because at the end of the day I don't necessarily have problems with religions and sprituality, I just have problems with individual people. People should always be accountable for their individual actions, emotions, and words, and nobody should be generalized. It's just logic. If Ashley hates aliens, that means Ashley hates aliens, it doesn't mean religious people hate aliens. I'm surrounded by religious people and I know folks across the whole spectrum. I know peaceful people, militant people, rational, irrational, well educated, poorly educated people of all beliefs and cultures. In school I knew a Satanist, a few Wiccans, a couple Muslims, Jews, and the majority were Christians of different sects. I see how all the varied people are all similar, different, sometimes beautiful, sometimes dangerous, flawed, and at the end of the day, human.

I want peace and I don't want people of different beliefs to kill eachother or enforce their systems or mythologies on others. Being an "outsider" looking in on all these different parties in conflict makes me feel like I'm watching Animal Planet sometimes, but I try not to despise them for their differences. I prefer to focus purely on Science, Ethics, and Philosophy as opposed to Theology (which is what my Mom is studying in school at the moment) but sometimes it's still interesting to learn about people's mythologies whether it be Christian, Greek, Norse, Roman, etc. I don't think it's fair for people to label Ashley as a Republican racist God lover or anything of the sort. Ashley is very xenophobic for logical reasons like Rob was saying, but Ashley is intelligent and can be reasoned with. She's not a war-monger, a zealot, and she certainly doesn't wage a holy war or species war. I'll defend Ashley and her right to her beliefs because she is an intelligent, reasonable, and honorable member of the crew.

I really liked Ashley because she was very different from me, but I could still reason with her, connect with her, and convince her to be more accepting of aliens. Another really big reason I felt connected to Ashley was because she was like me, except in a bizzaro world where everything is backward. In real life I am a non-believer surrounded by often fanatic believers. In the Mass Effect universe Ashley is a believer surrounded by assumingly non-believers. In daily life I'm quite alone in my opinions, observations, and I'm surrounded by people who don't have a problem with making fun of me or throwing me under the bus just for being who I am. Ashley is quite alone herself and might be surrounded by a future society that might think she's crazy for being religious. Even though I don't share Ashley's beliefs, we are both still human and encounter the same feeling of being alone and cast aside by the majority in our respective societies. There's no difference between a zealous religious person and a zealous athiest, both disturb the peace and can be equally as dangerous. I don't want to be associated with either side. I feel that I can relate to Ashley that way and band together with her. Being human is far more important to me than being religious or non-religious. Ashley and I don't berate each other, we just do our jobs and get each other's backs. I want to take this time to remind everybody we are talking about a video game lol. I think it's remarkable a video game makes me think that much and care that much about characters. It's certainly a first. Knights of the Old Republic is amazing, but I'm much more invested in Mass Effect.

Favorite things in Mass Effect: I can't get enough of the cinematics. I also love the vistas like playing through Eden Prime and seeing Sovereign leave the surface and take off into the atmosphere, or being on Horizon and seeing the Collector Ship taking up the whole skybox like a giant skyscraper.

As far as the character developments go I love talking with Mordin about the genophage. The solution that the genophage offers to the problem of the Krogan Rebellions is a solution that can be very divisive. It's completely logical and understandable, but it's totally unethical to me and I can sympathize with the plight of the Krogan. It's not unlike America using atomic weapons to end World War II. It's logical and it worked, but I don't think the means justify the ends, and in Mass Effect my Shepard doesn't either. There's no honor in pushing a button and deploying a WMD or biological agent to kill men, women, and children alike whether they're armed or unarmed. I would have rather been overwhelmed and killed by trillions of Krogan than push a button and destroy their ability to reproduce. My choice would likely spell doom for the galaxy but it would be because I failed to find an honorable way to win. War in general is sometimes necessary but it's never good, never ethical, or righteous. But when you do enter conflicts you should still try and hold onto some sense of honor and structure.

My favorite missions in the games are both in ME2: When you go to Tuchanka and learn about the Krogans, and when you meet Legion. In ME1 they painted the Krogans and Geth as mindless things with only the need to kill. In ME2 all of that changed completely and you realize both races are far more complex than you thought. My favorite part of ME2 was going to the Krogan homeworld and seeing how their clans interact, what their behavior is like, how the females fit in to the civilizations, and basically how Krogans deal with one another. It was very brutal and primitive but I thought it was the most fascinating thing. I learned that Krogans have evolutionary reasons for being so tough and indestructible, and when the other races came in and tried to "civilize" the Krogan and give them technology the Krogan used it to destroy themselves. They eek out a brutal existence and eat foods that would tear a human's stomach apart, and it's incredible. I love learning about the Krogan because they are very relatable and human. They represent the more violent and primitive aspects of human beings where violence is often just for the sake of violence. If I could go to the Turian homeworld and study the Turians I would love that even more lol. The Turians are likewise very human and relatable. They represent a different side of violence and primal nature, one that is more sophisticated, and relies heavily on Turian honor and benefitting the greater good of Turian society.

My favorite character is Legion, I can't believe Patrick's game crashed and lost his saves before he could come across Legion. Talking with Legion blew my mind and let me know that the Geth aren't mindless machines. They have culture, they think, communicate at the speed of light, make decisions together, and can disagree with each other. I was amazed to find that all the Geth that have been shooting at you in the series are heretics that decided to worship Sovereign while the majority of the Geth refused. I couldn't believe it when Legion gave me the choice to either save the heretics by rewriting them, or destroy them. When you ask Legion why it's giving you this huge responsibility it says, "Because we cannot come to consensus. You have fought against the heretic Geth and seen them first-hand, so I will leave the choice up to you Shepard." To me destroying the Geth like that would be similar to a Krogan genophage, it's quick and efficient but it's not the choice I want to make. I'd rather save them all and give them the chance to become allies, and accept all the risks that come along with it. I sympathized with the Krogan and Geth choosing to save them any chance I could, but I absolutely turned against the Illusive Man and his wishes to save the Collector Base. I destroyed the Collector Base and all the tech inside, because I thought the Illusive Man would only do harm with it. I don't trust him at all.

This didn't have anything to do with my Shepard's lesbian romance with Liara, but for the record I banged Liara in ME1, I failed to bang anybody in ME2, and I'm hoping I can continue with Liara in ME3. I really tried in ME2 to bang Jack but that failed miserably. I failed with Miranda because alas she doesn't like the ladies. What surprised me is that I failed miserably with Kelly Chambers the personal assisstant. Fancy big shots are always banging their personal assistants and secretaries in real life lol! So I figured Chambers would be the easiest to influence and get in bed, but nope. I banged nothing in ME2.

Thanks Nick, I'm smitten now that I have a new Slim up and running. During the time when I was without a current gen console I would occasionally look over at my big stack of games (I've invested a lot in my 360) and I'd be so sad lol, because that whole stack of games would be useless. Now that I have the new Slim I've been looking at all my games as if for the first time and I'm happy that I can play them again. There are so many games I want to play this year, some of them new, and some of them older. I really want to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Syndicate, Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 3, Silent Hill Downpour, Mass Effect 3, South Park rpg, Halo 4, Prey 2, and other stuff.

The Vita games and memory cards are definitely choking hazards, they certainly have to be in the case or the Vita not only because it would be easy to loose them, but they would be easy to get a hold of and choke on. I use to think the PSP UMD games were small, but these new Vita games are even smaller, or at least from what I remember.

I understand what you mean Joaquim. I think when I buy new computers they would most likely all end up going through the mail, well at least a gaming rig would have to. I wouldn't want to walk into a department store and spend a long time customizing what I want, looking at all the options, and doing everything under pressure and in public. I wouldn't want to go pick up a computer in a store in general I guess. I'd rather have one custom built, do the research on my own time, and think about it at my leisure. I exaggerate a little bit about the Vita cartridge lol, the games are tiny but they're not really that tiny or light. The memory cards are much more along the lines of something that could be wisked away, because they are literally the size of a fingernail.

I went into Gamestop last night and played around with their display Vita and I thought it was badass. I definitely don't have the money for it, but if I did I'd snatch one up. I really thought the screen was beautiful, touchscreen was crisp, and my favorite part to mess with were the dual sticks. I'd be nervous to loose the games though. The guy in Gamestop and I were joking that anytime your game isn't either in the case or in the Vita its odds of survival are slim at best. If a Vita game is out in the elements for even a little bit you're rolling the dice because you could sneeze, or a slight breeze could wisk it off, and you'll have lost it in no time at all lol.

There are always foes for each gaming software. Cartridges could be dropped or stepped on, and you had to blow into them all the time. Discs have the natural foe of scratches and scuffs. The tiny little Vita games natural foe could include the damn jetstream or chinook winds lol.

Great review. You said the format would be different than what you usually do, but I thought it was pretty nice and wasn't the bad version of different lol. I love my Dragon Ball Z and my anime, but I couldn't deal with the gameplay of this game, at least from the sounds of it. The presentation looks quite beautiful, and I'm sure there are some incredible and epic things to see in the game, but the gameplay doesn't seem to be something I want to get into. It's weird too, maybe I'm fooling myself, because I played Indigo Prophecy back on Xbox and I love that game, even though the gameplay is all quick time events and other button prompts. I didn't love the gameplay per se but I was able to deal with it well enough to progress the plot and keep digging into the story which is what I was interested in. Another reason I might be fooling myself is that you said the best comparison you could make is to Heavy Rain, and I really want to play Heavy Rain, so how could I be positive I wouldn't enjoy Azura's Wrath? That last sentence brought up a good point, I still need to play Heavy Rain at some point lol. I'm not worried about Azura's Wrath anymore lol.

I really like this series Esteban, great job. I never picked apart the environments in PoP and said, "That's beautiful line, color, etc" like an artist would, but I appreciated it as art. I knew the environment artists created this world from scratch and I loved it. It was huge, colorful, and I adored the way it was a stylized realism. Mountains look like mountains, humans look like humans, water, clouds, and fire all act like they would in real life, but the whole game was magical and enhanced real life in every way. In an artistic way. There wasn't a generic bone in that game's skeleton as far as the presentation went. It took imagination, skill, and hard work for the environment, character, weapon, etc artists to pull that gameworld off and I really loved it in the end. Seeing PoP running in HD in all it's bright varied color, giant scale set pieces, and acrobatic animation just made me so happy. It really was a pleasure to see that world and play in it.

Most people I know didn't think much of the mechanics, specifically the combat. My friend Justin quit the game because the combat was boring and repetitive, but I loved the game and I wasn't focusing on the combat. The combat is pretty inconsequential but the game itself wasn't inconsequential because of that fact. The point of the game for me was the relationship between Elika, Prince, the world around them, and how they moved around in it. I couldn't care less about the combat and the darkness monsters. They just showed up, I killed them, and got back to the aspects of the game I enjoyed the most: The environment traversal (platforming and acrobatics), and the story. I wouldn't have been upset if PoP knocked off combat all together in that game.

It's like Mirror's Edge. The game doesn't need combat in the way they implemented it. You don't need to give Faith a gun, because Mirror's Edge is most fun when you're using evasion and parkour (environmental traversal). You don't need to have Prince going toe to toe with a sword or anything, because the real star of the game is the platforming and acrobatics (environment traversal). They built a giant gorgeous world for you to move around in and uncover mysteries. The routine melee battles just take you away from the world and give you some filler that will keep you busy. The parts of PoP that stuck with me the most were the fact that humans corrupted the world and you need to figure out what happened and how to make it right. You get to explore the world and traverse it horizontally and vertically in incredibly exciting and high flying fashion, all while you pal around with Elika and develop a connection with her. At no point in that do I feel the need to insert some hack & slash.

The status quo says we need to have this and have that to make a good game, but I really think PoP might have benefitted from taking a dump on the status quo and trying something different. I want to create levels and gameplay, so those things are the most important parts of any game to me, but I don't make the mistake of assuming that combat always equates to fun. I had the most fun in PoP when I was just exploring the environment or evading something.