Thursday, November 3, 2011

In case you hadn't picked up on it yet... I am a huge fucking dork

I haven't done a sort of "what I've been playing" brain dump of a bunch of games I don't have much to say about in a while, so I thought I'd write one of those here. I also scored some awesome deals the past few weeks so I thought I'd throw them up here, too.

First off, I scored pretty big in Mt. Pleasant last weekend. The local game shop had Xenosaga III (PS2) mint for $17.99, the lowest price I've ever seen it, so I grabbed that along with a mint The Legendary Starfy (DS) for $11.99 and near mint Star Ocean: The Second Story (PS1) for free (part of their constant B2G1 free sale, probably my favorite thing about that store). I haven't played any of those yet, but I was intrigued because it was the first time I had ever seen the PS1 Star Ocean game and I had just bought Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP) for a song the previous week (a Target coupon for $5 off their online store netted me the game for about $4 shipped brand new).

The previous week had been pretty good to me as well. My "requests" list on Goozex has started to bear fruit, and I received notice I would be getting Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (DS) in the mail in a week or so for 650 easily earned points (I will not be missing an extra copy of Izuna 1 (DS), Tales of Phantasia (GBA), or the battered copy of Mega Man (NES) I had received off Goozex once already - and I still have 900 points left over from those trades!). I've played four songs on it already, and despite not being able to read the language or understand what the songs are saying or what's really going on on the top screen, this feels like more Elite Beat Agents which is pretty much exactly what I've wanted since laughing my way through that game. The Ouendan are just as ridiculous and goofy as the Agents were, so I'm sure I'll play my way through that game, and maybe someday Goozex will send me the sequel, which sports a title including the words "Hot-Blooded."

Strangely, I've been getting ridiculously lucky on Glyde lately as well. I grabbed Mario Hoops: 3 on 3 (DS) for $12.99 shipped as soon as I saw it, as that is about ten or fifteen bucks cheaper than I have ever seen it anywhere since it came out like five years ago (right now on Glyde, the game in the same exact condition - "excellent" - I got it for is $27.99). The game will probably arrive in the next few days. I was also able to score Harvest Moon DS for $9.49 shipped in excellent condition, which I was thrilled about because I wish I never would have sold the thing a few years back in the first place and that's as cheap as I've ever seen it. There isn't currently an "excellent" condition copy available on Glyde, but right now a "good" copy is going for about $14 shipped. I got the Gamecube Warioware in excellent condition for $6.83 shipped, which is cool because that game is multiplayer Warioware on a big screen (and isn't like forty stupid dollars like the Wii version has been for years). I got Sim City DS for $6 shipped and Orcs and Elves (DS) for $5 shipped, neither of which are great games but I've been kind of interested in both since they came out and I figured they won't get any cheaper than that.

Probably the cream of the recent crop, though, is what I was able to snag a few days ago. I decided to log into my Gamestop rewards account for no apparent reason and discovered I could spend 6000 of my then 15000 points on a coupon for $10 off any used game. Since that coupon is usually 10000 points and the deal is only going on this week, I printed one out and went to the store. Lo and behold, someone had sold back a copy of Aliens: Infestation (DS) already! It was listed as $24.99, way more than I'd be willing to pay for the game, but at $14.99 plus my ten percent discount, I figured that was a good deal so I grabbed it.

Now I can actually talk about a game! I was interested in A:I because I had heard it was shockingly similar to side-scrolling Metroid. Since there hasn't been a new side-scrolling Metroid since Fusion, I have been dying for some of that so I read some reviews and put it on my to-buy list. First of all, this game is hard. The Aliens do not go down easy, and can kill you fairly quickly. When you play Metroid, you feel pretty much like a badass, because not much can stop you except maybe a boss. Not so in Aliens. Your marine guys are way weaker than Samus, cannot take much punishment, and are way less agile. The little guys who try to jump on you and suck your brains out or whatever are quite dangerous, because they can stop you in your tracks as you take damage from the big guys running around, who are VERY fast and can sometimes take quite a few hits to take down. You also have limited ammo for everything besides your handgun - and your handgun sucks! You can upgrade your weapons by finding upgrade kits strewn about the levels like missile tanks in Metroid, but they seem to be much rarer here.

I might write more about the game in the future, as it does some interesting things (such as how if one of your guys dies, they are dead forever - unless of course you power down your system before your next save or before the next time you beat a boss), but I must go play some more Balloon Kid (GB). It just came out on the 3DS VC, and it's a sequel to Balloon Fight with (gasp!) actual level design! Plus my girlfriend totally owns an actual cartridge. Prior to seeing her copy, I had no idea it even existed. I probably won't write about it here (there's not much to say - you travel left, collect balloons, and avoid dying) but it's pretty fun, and easily worth $2.99.

And thus ends a post in which I write a thousand words about damn near nothing.

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