The Recycle Bin

The real question is going to be if I want to spring for $90-100 for a copy of MLB for the PS3 + Vita. The integration between the two versions looks very promising.

I know there’s a lot of interest out there about our PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita integration this year so I wanted to make sure I touched on our Cross-Platform Saves functionality. This feature allows you to take your Franchise, Season, and Road to The Show save files up to the cloud where you can then access those files from either your PS3 or PS Vita. You are limited to one file per mode per PSN user account, which can be overwritten as many times as you’d like.

Now I just have to commit to getting a Vita; I have three different Amazon pre-orders on file, but have yet to order a game. MLB 12: The Show for the Vita looks like the perfect way to waste away time on a portable system, and a 3G Vita, coupled with PS+ auto save updates, sure would come in handy for anytime, anywhere MLB Cloud retrievals.

I love the concept of getting bonus goodies as a ‘reward’ of sorts for playing previous versions of a game. As long as the reward doesn’t cause game balance issues – either too powerful or you are shit out of luck because you didn’t play the previous installments.

PSB: Are there any special treats reserved for those who are holding on to their Final Fantasy XIII save files? Can you share any details on how that will work?

Toriyama-san: If you have any save files from XIII, they will be recognized upon the start of XIII-2, and you can get extras. Some of the bonuses include adornments for monsters that can be used in-game, and a bonus that can be obtained from the title screen. You don’t necessarily have to have save data of the finished game; you can still get something even if you’ve only played a little.

Cool concept. Now just have to actually find some time to watch, play, and finish FF XIII.

WTF is wrong with EA? I’m sure there is a very valid and reasonable explanation for EA not offering Vita-PS3-Vita game save transfer capabilities. EA is not rushing FIFA 12 to market quickly, delivering a sub-par handheld FIFA outing in order to capitalize on early Vita release opportunities.

EA must really care about their core target audience, and are showing a willingness to do anything to get the Vita version of FIFA 12 in the hands of demanding FIFA fans – because EA cares.

It would be a terrible precedent if all the first generation Vita sports franchises (looking at MLB: The Show, FIFA, and Madden) do not offer the ability to switch from console to portable gaming via game save transfers just to make an early release date. Thankfully MLB: The Show gets it and allows gamers to do just that:

Then there’s the hotly anticipated PS Vita version, which will mirror virtually every game feature, mode, and mechanic from the PS3 version and displays graphics that sparkle on the system’s 5’’ OLED screen. You’ll also be able to share your PS3 save files to the cloud, then pull them down on PS Vita and pick up your progress seamlessly.

Of course the San Diego (SCE) team behind the MLB: The Show franchise continues to push the boundaries on sports franchises. Following the same link from above, we learn:

… ultimately thought it made the most sense to recreate the entire PS3 experience on PS Vita. The Vita’s powerful enough to do that. So every single feature this year, from MLB 09, 10, 11, and 12 are all in the PS Vita version.

… research shows that handheld players play for 15 to 30 minutes, tops. We give you the ability to fast-play through a game by cutting out a lot of the presentation, the camera cuts, to shorten the length of games.

Unlike EA, Sony is going balls out with its franchise. I understand that time to market is important, but color me very disappointed with EA’s approach to FIFA 12 for the Vita.

I earned my fifth platinum Trophy earlier today after completing The Sly Collection: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus. What a major bitch. All in all the game is not really that difficult, but some of the boss battles are … well … a bitch.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up the latest edition of Qore (#43 – December 2011 – via my PS+ subscription) and noticed some dude that is NOT Veronica Belmont doing the opening junk. My first thought – oh no, WTF is Veronica?

A quick search and a couple of clicks later revealed the harsh reality – Veronica is no longer the cute (almost sexy) hostess of Qore. Too bad. Not to say that the new guy will not do a good job. He is just not the cute and dare I say it again, semi sexy, Veronica Belmont.

Qore will never be the same …

Or rather The Last of Us looks absolutely fantastic.  These days, with so many games, and such a huge backlog of titles, it takes a lot to get me excited about a game.  And I am excited about this one, just from watching the trailer.

That’s rather unlike me, but The Last of Us looks compelling and captivating.  I doubt it is just another take on a post-apocalyptic survival horror setting, but more info needs to surface before we can be sure.

Really excited to see how this one progresses.

No workout today; heading to ATL to watch the Falcons beat down the Vikings.

In order to balance Trophy whoring and real life fitness objectives, I have decided it makes sense to do at least two workouts, instead of one longer routine. This should actually burn calories, keep things interesting, and get me to those ‘complete 20 xyz routines’ that much quicker.

Hopefully I will be able to knock off a couple before Christmas.

Saturday
Started the morning off with a 20 minutes Fitness burn of 159 calories, which was good enough to bump me to Level 65.

Tracing issues on some of the floor exercise probably prevented me from going higher. I normally get solid scores on the various pushups and crunches, but not so much during this 20 minute routine. I am going to chalk this up to the morning lighting in the room interfering with the camera’s tracking.

Next up was a 20 minutes Combat workout, which burned up another 136 calories. I’m a little disappointed that more calories were not burned, but that is OK, because I actually enjoy the Combat workouts. At least the ones that track correctly with the camera + Move.

This was another solid workout, good for a 5% boost to Level 80. My second 5% boots this week; in one day.

I started to do one more 15 minute quickie, but decided to call it off so I could watch the kickoff of the Georgia – Tech game. Go Dawgs!

Friday
As has been normal this week, I started with a 20 minute Fitness workout, which was good for 163 calories.

I followed up with a 15 minute Advance Cardio routine, which, while good for 103 calories, left me huffing and puffing. Talking about being out of shape!

Of all the Mel B fitness levels, Advance Cardio may be my lowest. Some of this is due to periodic tracking problems; the sometimes gets confused and does not seem to track the Move even when I think I am following Mel B 100%. The rest has to be attributed to my poor ‘real life’ fitness level. Working on it. Working on it …

Yesterday Amazon ran a lightning deal for Batman: Arkham City for just a tick under $29. I had it locked and loaded, but in the end, I figured WTF was wrong with me?

I have decided that I need to play and experience Batman Arkham Asylum: Game of the Year Edition first before tackling what looks to be the extraordinary Arkham City. When it comes to games, I say it often, but really mean it. There are just too many great games and not enough time to enjoy them. I actually received Arkham Asylum for a Christmas present. Last year. It has been in my TO-PLAY list ever since.

Same for Uncharted 3 – I still need to play the first Uncharted, which I started, but got distracted, and never got around to finishing. Same drill with UC2; would like to actually play it before tackling UC3. At least I cannot claim owning UC2, and letting it collect dust.

More on UC3 after Christmas …

If this rumor is true, and the Vita can remote play any PS3 title, then holy heck will Sony have caught lighting in a bottle. Even with reduced resolution, the ability to play PS3 games on the game would be a huge win for Sony.

Hope this one proves true.

I got a burr in my butt and decided to break out Mel B yesterday. It has been a while; figured it was time to get off my lazy bum and get some exercise going in time to prevent catastrophic holiday weight gain. Or what I like to think of as exercising so I can eat and drink my way through Thanksgiving, Disney, three more Falcons tailgates, Christmas, and of course New Years.

Thanksgiving
I started off with a nice 20 minute Fitness 20 workout, good for 147 calories, which was good for a boots to Level 60. Fitness seems to be the hardest Mel B category for me to increase. Having a few tracking Move issues (too much sunlight) was detrimental to earning a higher score.

Before throwing some Thanksgiving ribs and burgers on the grill, I followed up with a quickie 15 minute Combat workout, good for 93 calories. Tracking issues did me in on at least one exercise, preventing me for earning a higher rating.

Wednesday
Today was my first time back with Mel B in weeks (months?), so I decided to go fairly easy. One 15 minute Fitness workout, which was good for 124 calories, followed by a 15 minute Step workout, which burned off another 116 calories.

Before I started, I weighed in at 174 lbs; the last weight Mel B had on record was 176 lbs, so I feel good that I am not a total nincompoop.

Future Days …
I’ll be at Disney this time next week, so my relationship with Mel B is going to be short lived; at least it will be start, stop, start, over the next 2-3 weeks.

I’m off my rocker, but I want to Trophy whore Mel B. I’m going after some of the repetition Trophies. I would like to earn some of the ‘Complete 20 xyz exercises’ Trophies before the end of 2011. Seems like a reasonable, yet healthy goal.

A semi triumphant of T&A Sunday; there is some ‘good’ news coming out of the ESRB, via PlayStation LifeStyle:

During the course of the game, a handful of female characters wear revealing outfits (e.g., low-cut at the pelvis, moderate amounts of cleavage)

Seriously, everyone has to be happy about this decision because now we can draw attention away from the quality of the next Final Fantasy game, instead concentrating on T&A, and how the game industry betrays female gamers. Yes, definitely ‘good’ news all around.

Of course the way some young girls dress (or rather don’t dress) these days makes the argument of sexualizing female digital characters almost pointless; however I think I will not digress into social commentary. Besides, I’m confident that some nut-wing conservative group will do us all proud and pick up the cause, thus further encouraging gamers, and increasing sells. See, everyone comes out a winner.

Happy Sunday morning!

I picked up Aragon’s Quest a few weeks ago because it was under $20, and I am a sucker for discounted games. I was also interested in the Move support, but unfortunately the controls are on par with a Wii game, not something I have come to expect for Move support (i.e. Sports Champions).

There are plenty of other reviews out there, so I am not going to take a deep dive or anything. As a family game, is this fun? Sort of. As a Move game, is Aragon’s Quest worth a pick up? Nope; after a few hours of honest to goodness attempts to make things work, I abandon my Move and Navigation controllers in favor of the standard Dual Shock 3. If you are a fan of The Lord of the Rings, Aragon’s Quest has some entertainment value, but you may want to wait until the game hits the sub $15 mark.

For the most part, I enjoyed my time with the game, but as I moved into Trophy whoring, the game quickly became a chore. If you are going to go for a Platinum Trophy (I earned mine this morning, thus this post), you better follow a guide because the game can screw you over in a hurry, forcing an additional play-through.

It’s been a while since my last update, which is kind of similar to my free time for gaming. While often limited, my random gaming sessions have been all over the place. The theme of this post has to be ‘backlog’ – as in I could not purchase a game for the next couple of years and still have something new to experience.

With that said, let’s jump into a whirlwind tour of random gaming bliss …

The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest
I picked this one up a month ago, once the price fell below $20. I just started in the last couple of days. It is pretty much what I expected – LotR, with poorly implemented Move support (i.e. probably a Wii Remote straight port), but very family friendly.

So far I am enjoying it, but probably only because I am a huge LotR geek.

Days of Thunder: NASCAR
This morning I picked up Days of Thunder, along with Star Trek DAC, and Top Gun via a 50% off PS+ sale. While I have not played the other two games in this Paramount bundle, $7.50 looks like a steal of a deal for all three games. If nothing else, Days of Thunder is shaping up to be easily worth ~$2.50. Yes, it is arcade racing, and only loosely based on the movie with the same name, but so far my boys (along with day) are having a blast playing this one.

The game feature rubber band racing to the extreme, but that is OK, when the experience is still fun. I was shocked once I made it to the ‘Sprint’ circuit – Daytona became total hell on wheels, but in a fun way.

Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest
I cannot exactly put my finger on the reason, but I am very much looking forward to Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest, which is due a few days (November 15 to be exact) shy of Thanksgiving. What’s not to like? Family friendly, Move compatible, and based on lessons learned from Sports Champions.

PixelJunk Shooter
Let’s put this one in the looking forward to category, which will just add further to my backlog, but with a PS+ 20% off discount, who can complain?

Some people reckon PixelJunk games are a little tough, and well… yes, they are a little because I think games should be a challenge. However, what we’ve done this time is scattered loads of checkpoints so even if you do die, you’ll restart really close, and we also give you the option to downgrade your difficulty setting if you get a Game Over too. We’ve created 4 difficulty levels so everyone is catered for (I hope!).

For an old man gamer, I am giddy over frequent checkpoints and multiple difficulty levels for a shoot-em-up. Not to digress too much, but the October PS+ offering has been butt-nut crazy.

Afrika
While Afrika may not be the greatest ‘game’ around, it holds a special place in my heart. First, I love the experience. It is different, and I sometimes blow my wad over games that are a little off the beaten path. Of course it is hard to call Afrika a ‘game’ … at least not a proper game. Second, Afrika was my first Platinum. Your first is always special, and all that jazz. At any rate, this article was a fond remembrance of picture grabbing animals and insects in my romp through Africa.

GT5
When I first read about the GT5 2.0 update, I started longing for the game again, and when the F1 Championship winning Sebastian Vettel Red Bull was on offer a couple of weeks ago, I (briefly) jumped back in for the first time in a while.

Getting the $1 million credits was a nice bonus. I made the Bronze in-game trophy without too much difficulty, but didn’t spend much time trying to place higher. I now have some much needed money to burn, which should help me push forward in the game without having to stop for a short term grind.

I will be picking up the upcoming DLC, but I am far from maximizing the current DLC free version (that backlog thing again).

We are confirming that the Gran Turismo 5 DLC update will be available to download on 10/25. We apologize for the delay in the content however as a gift to our eager fans we are offering free bonus content. For those who purchase the “Complete Pack” by November 7, we will throw in a unique GT Academy dynamic theme as well the Honda NSX GT500 Stealth Model. Just to be clear, both the dynamic theme and the car are free with purchase of the Complete Pack. Again we are sorry for the delay and hope that fans will enjoy all of the fantastic new content to come for GT5.

It is not like I have ants in my pants or anything, so I am happy to wait another week and pick up a couple of free throw-ins by Sony for putting up the DLC one week later than originally planned.

Ico – The No Update, Update
I haven’t started on Ico collection; same song and dance. Never enough hours in the day. I guess my appetite for gaming is bigger than the time I have to appreciate the games.

The early F1 2011 reviews are mostly positive, which is to be expected based on F1 2010 being well received.

It is interesting reading TheSixthAxis reviewer’s take on the game. Before the summary, the reviewer discusses new F1 technical ‘innovations’ that are included in F1 2011 (KERS and DRS), but also mentions that casual gamers are not likely to notice. I would go so far as to say that casual gamers should stay pretty away from this title and go after a more mainstream racer.

Now the tricky part – is F1 2011 worth picking up if you already own 2010? That’s a question that only the individual can really answer – there’s certainly a good, extensive and solid game here but then a good chunk of it is clearly based on last year’s code and visuals, even most of the menu interface remains the same. The improvements are all for the better – that’s for sure – but perhaps we’d have liked to have seen more of them. Anyone that bypassed 2010 and held out for this years can relax easy, though, this is probably the best Formula One game we’ve seen for years.

An improved AI, along with the addition of offline split screen and co-op Championship mode have me pretty excited.

Eurogamer has a remarkably similar take on the marginal year-over-year improvements in Codemasters F1 franchise.

Now comes the tricky third test; can it do enough to establish a yearly franchise, an exercise that’s normally the reserve of publishers with a little more clout?

F1 2011’s answer to that particular question is, sometimes, not too convincing. Some areas remain sparse and many of its improvements can be measured in tenths rather than seconds. Still, it’s a sport where every little detail counts, and the finite changes do undoubtedly make for a better game.

Now I just have to decide if I attempt to whore any of the many remaining Trophies in F1 2010, or if I call it a loss, flip it on eBay while the flipping still has marginal value, and see if I can stay focused on F1 2011. Last year I lost interest – really don’t know the reason why because I gushed about it during the first few weeks after it was released. At least I didn’t play F1 2010 half as much as Sony’s last F1 outing (Formula One: Championship Edition).

The ridiculousness continues. Next week (Sep 20) sees the release of F1 2011, while the following week (Sep 27) gives us FIFA 12, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection, and Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, and Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland.

F1 2011
I’ll be honest; I love F1 games, but I didn’t really get enough out of 2010. No particular reason other than I suck or something. F1 2011 looks to be the perfect F1 gaming experience:

After watching the promo videos all these months I had the feeling that F1 2011 will be strictly for the hardcore, people who are gamers and who also follow F1 races every year. After playing a solid 2 hours with the preview build I believe that this game will only attract fans, resulting in to low accessibility.

Let’s hope that there are enough F1 fans who appreciate racing sims to support F1 2011 and continue to push the series forward.

FIFA 12
One of the top sports franchises; the Madden development team could learn a thing or two from the FIFA guys. I cannot say enough good things about this series – tons of replay value; I played the snot out of FIFA 10 and to some extent FIFA 11. The newest yearly release should not be any different. Platinum be damned; I’ll never get it due to the various online requires.

Thanks to Amazon, this one comes with a nice $20 credit, some sort of MLS Fathead (for the kids) and of course release day delivery.

ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection
I’ve written about this one a little over the last couple of months, so I am not going to go very deep here. I’ll just say that I have had this one on pre-order since Thanksgiving last year, so I am eagerly anticipating giving both of these classics a go.

Another Amazon release day arrival. I expect this one to go to the top of the play heap; let’s see if that actually happens.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny
In a weak moment, I pre-ordered this one site unseen. Mostly for the Move support, partly out of curiosity, and ultimately because I probably had one too many cold ones that night, which resulted in an Amazon clicking frenzy.

Tides of Destiny is coming out later this year in North America for the PlayStation 3 and Wii, which isn’t a combination of release platforms you see very often. I’m not complaining, especially when the PlayStation 3 version ends up looking this pretty. I can’t wait to buy this game, play it for a few hours, get bored, and move on to other things!

Replace bored with distracted and that will be me. Too many other gems in my gaming treasure trove waiting to be caressed and loved, and whored for Trophies.

Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland
Of course I had to get the ‘Premium’ version bundle complete with art book and CD soundtrack. This one has niche written all over it, but I expect Atelier Totori to be fun based on my typical enjoyment of quirky games and deep down love for JRPGs.

Unfortunately I’m usually constrained with limited clock cycles to burn on gaming, which means that I may not get around to this one for a while. I did promise myself (sort of) that I would attempt Atelier Totori’s predecessor first, Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland. Will it happen? That’s another article. Seriously, tackling a JRPG is an upcoming article.

The one thing nice about JRPGs, is that historically I have always been able to get my money back from any expensive collector’s edition should I decide to sell them down the road. For that matter, I can usually get my money back from regular editions. That is the beauty of niche gaming; of course you have to pre-order these games or you are the one paying a premium over MSRP.

Happy Saturday!