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| The team attacks in this game are great! |
It wouldn't be a What I'm playing without an update on Persona 4 Golden! By now I'm sure you all are absolutely sick of hearing me talk about this game but this will probably be the last time... I finished the dungeon for the true killer, the Hollow Forest dungeon, and the I'm in the dungeon for the true ending. Needless to say there isn't much more I can eek out of this game without another playthrough. Either way I am getting up to that 120 hour mark and every minute has been a blast. I'll probably start a new play through to catch a few quick trophies but I won't go for a full playthrough until I make some headway on this back log! If I could give any closing thoughts on this game they'd simply be that this is a must own for RPG fans, and a great first foray into the genre for Vita owners looking for the best the handheld has to offer!
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| Take that, social link! |
Since P4G was coming to a close I really didn't want to live in a Inaba-less world so with some birthday money I picked up Persona 4 Arena for the PS3. It's a fighting game that thinks it's visual novel lol. The story mode is pretty immense. It is not the exact same quality as Persona 4, so don't expect this awesome tale with tons of character development, but it is exceptional for a fighting game. It revolves around the reappearance of the Midnight Channel and the investigation team reuniting to figure out why. There are also several characters from Persona 3 as well, and they are tied in to the story pretty well. It's a great epilogue if you love the characters, but how is it as a fighting game? Actually, it's pretty impressive there too. Since it was developed by Arc Systems Works and as such it bares a whole lot in common with Guilty Gear and Blazblue. There is a fairly open combo system a lot of nuances to fighting like bursts, cancels, reversals, furious actions, awakened attacks, all-out attacks, you name it. Yes, there are even instant kill moves. Anyone who likes a fast paced 2D fighter like Gear will love this game as well, especially since it has a great online mode with 8 player rooms for that arcade feeling. The netcode is pretty smooth and after 20 or so games online only one had lag that affected the match at all.
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| Ever have a sticker that gave you super powers? Me either. |
Well Christmas rolled around and my lovely honey got me Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS. I've never played a Paper Mario game before so I can't tell you really anything about how it feels compared to those, but I can tell you I love it so far. It is like a Mario RPG in which stickers you collect become your attacks in turn based combat with familiar baddies from the Mushroom Kingdom. The story is very simple and straight forward, true to Mario fashion, but the gameplay is actually very enjoyable. It's no Persona 4 (I'm saying this way too much, aren't I?) but it's pretty much what I need after such a such an intricate game as P4G. The only complaint I have about this game at all is that the game tutorials are pretty sparse There was no mention of pressing the A button during my attacks to increase my damage and whatnot so I literally wasted tons of stickers dealing pathetic amounts of damage for nearly an hour into the game. Needless to say I was pissed that the game simply didn't see fit to share this vital info with me.
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| The new episodes of Justice League Unlimited are getting weird... |
I have a special place in my heart for Lego games, so when they started coming out on Vita that made perfect sense for me. I put a couple Lego games on my Christmas wishlist and my aunt ended up getting me Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes! So far I'm several levels in and I just got Superman as a playable character but I'm really hoping to get guys like Green Lantern and the Flash. I read somewhere there are a few exclusive characters for the Vita version so that's pretty cool but I can't confirm that yet. Either way it is mostly what you would expect from a Lego game, simple yet fun. The Vita version feels very much like a full console version of this game save for the lack of that free roaming Gotham City mode I hear the PS3 and 360 versions have. The only other difference is that the movies were compressed rather poorly for the Vita version which is kind of a shame since any Vita owner knows what the handheld is capable of.
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| The fellowship of the brick! |
Another gift I got was the Persona 4 Golden Solid Gold Premium Edition. I know what you're saying, "Don't you already have that game?" Well yes, but I also had the receipt too... See where I'm going here? I took the game and "returned" it and kept all the Solid Gold edition goodies. With the money I picked up Lego The Lord of the Rings for Vita. Once again I'm a fool for these games and I have a great love for Lord of the Rings as well so this was a great fit. Most impressive about the game is the fact they carry over most of the voice track from the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy for use in the game. The game is wacky of course, as Lego games are but currently I'm enjoying it.
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| I don't have any jokes to make here. |
Since I started playing Persona 4 Arena, I naturally got a little curious about the Persona 3 characters, so another game gifted to me from my wishlist was Persona 3 Portable. I've played bits of Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, and P3P before but I never got far, and always ended up trading the games in (due to the fact they kept coming out with new versions) save for P3P, which I am sad to say I played a not-so-legitimate copy of for PSP. I figured I'd finally buy and stick with one so P3P was where I settled on. So far I've begun a male and female protagonist but I'm not sure which one I'll follow through with first so I'll talk more about this one as I play more.
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| Real Houswives of the UNSC, Cortana edition! |
My brother, hilariously, bought me Halo 4 for Christmas. I say hilariously because this is about as much of a self serving gift as you can imagine. Yes I really appreciate the thought, but I can still laugh at the fact he bought it for me so he could play it as well. Well played sir, well played indeed. That chuckle aside the game is really great. The game really streamlines what Halo normally offers, while adding a bit of tactical shooter ala games like Call of Duty. What exactly is new is a sort of kill streak support package, only you don't have to remain alive for it to kick it. It accumulates slower (probably) than it does in a CoD game but unless you have an absolutely abysmal round you'll get at least one, probably two. The new maps are amazing, you have greater customization over the armor abilities and starting weapons, and the menus are gorgeous and efficient. Yes the menus. I love the menus. I want the menus in Halo 4 to have my children.
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| "What do you mean I'm not Batman?" |
My last gaming gift this holiday was that of Dishonored for 360. This game is the story of Corvo. Framed for the regicide (technically she isn't a king but she's the ruler of the city) and kidnapping and sentenced to death, Corvo escape with the help of a resistance made to counter the new ruler's evil intentions. Steampunk-esque cityscapes and a unique feel are a total selling point to this game while the sub-par stealth is not. Don't get me wrong, the game is good, just not the second coming son of stealth gaming's god. It does have a fair amount of choice when it comes to how you want to tackle your mission, but in the end the stealth is too tedious to use and suddenly your options are halved because of your desire to completely ignore it. I won't say much for enemy AI which is bad, but no worse than other stealth games.
Well there you have it. Quite the haul, I know. A lot of these games will carry over well into 2013 so I know I'll already be starting off a great gaming year!
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