Everyone's doing it

I hate them. But I don't want to knock it without trying it, this isn't the internet... oh wait. I never did a Games Of the Year list, because I never felt I had enough entries, either from physically lacking enough games from said year, or from not caring about them enough to rank them. Since I now had a neat catalog of crap I've purchased over the course of 2009, I decided to give it a shot. You know what? I bought a lot of shit, and It was pretty fun to do. Not only did I have more then enough items, I actually couldn't fit all the ones I wanted, and had to argue with myself over the final rankings. As usual, the disclaimer for this website is that I'm not like everybody else, so this list will look very different from other GOTY '09 lists. I also cheat by including import games, so you'll see stuff like Baynotta and 3D Dot Game Heroes on there even though they haven't hit America yet. Also, I'll save you the trouble of scrolling all the way down, then back up here to read the rest. Unleash the wrath:

1. Street Fighter IV - Capcom
I don't think any game will ever come close to the feeling I had when I popped the disc in and sat back to watch the intro. Goosebumps, when the theme switched from 'Indestructible' to the instrumental. The return of the king!

2. Nostalgia - Tecmo/RED/Ignition
The best RPG of the year. C-L-A-S-S-I-C. I don't ever remember writing a letter to RPG developers telling them that I was bored of turn based combat, random battles, and little munchkins trading hits with rats until someone dies. A vote for Nostalgia is a vote for fun.

3. Muramasa: The Demon Blade - Vanillaware/Ignition
It's not a particularly innovative game, but it exists for the sole purpose of being 2D in a 3D world. I respect that, a lot.

4. Baynoetta - Platinum Games/SEGA
Easily the best action game of the year, and probably the best 3D action game to date.

5. Mushihime-sama Futari Ver.1.5 - M2/Cave
Cave's finest to date. You will die, a lot, but you'll always want to press Start to try again.

6. The King Of Fighters XII - SNK/Ignition
SNK delivered on it's promise of a redrawn KOF. Aesthetically it's a perfect 10, content, or lack there of, drags it down.

7. Ninja Blade - From Software/Microsoft
If it wasn't for Bayonetta, this would be "action game of the year." Riding a motorcycle down the side of a bus 1,000 feet in the air above a city will do that for you. Did I mention you're a ninja?

8. BlazBlue - Arc System Works/Aksys
A fantastic fighter from a developer not known for fantastic fighters.

9. Deathsmiles - Cave
I don't like horizontal shooters. I like Deathsmiles. Not dying when touching the floor or ceiling, the first sparks of Cave's design brilliance.

10. 3D Dot Game Heroes - Silicon Studio/From Software
This game is the punchline, the game industry is the joke.

From this list we get:

Developer Of the Year: From Software
They tied with Cave with two apiece, but From brought new titles, while Cave ported old classics.

Publisher Of the Year: Ignition
What? This totally surprised me. They sure know how to pick 'em.

Some games I wish I could put on the list:

• MadWorld (Platinum Games/SEGA)
  
• Star Ocean 4 The Last Hope (Tri-Ace/Square Enix)
  
• Knights In the Nightmare (Sting/Atlus)
  
• Tekken 6 (Bandai Namco)
  

Too much competition, or not enough effort. Really bummed I couldn't put KItN up there.

PC Game Of the Year: Machinarium (Amanita Design)
Out of the two games I played. Runner up: Mata Hari

Best Dreamcast Game: Rush Rush Rally Racing (Senile Team/Red Spot Games)
LOL

Worst Game Of the Year: Arcana Heart 2 (Examu)
I want my fucking money back!

Out of the 35 games I bought this year, nine were RPG's, the most of any genre, but only one made the list. The RPG industry isn't going anywhere, but it is lagging. Shape up, you bums! Let Nostalgia show you how.

My eyes are blue, but I know samurai moves

Yeah, this one's pretty bad. One of the earliest descriptions from a location test was "Soul Calibur lite." It sure is. It's also a pretty badly designed game, in addition to being unoriginal. The character animate so quickly, it's hard to tell what they're about to do, which isn't helped any by the low lighting in many stages. This leads to a lot of cheap hits. Not only that but the hit detection is a little screwy for some of the new characters, which often leaves one wondering just how exactly that move hit, and why? The gameplay has been dumbed down from the move-based 2D combat, and turned into a Tekken/Virtua Fighter tap-fest. You're back at square one with this one, since none of the old techniques work any more. Gameplay wise this game comes up far short.

Presentation wise it's a very welcome return to form. This looks, sounds, and reads like a classic Samurai Shodown game. The game is 100% in "English" with Japanese audio and subtitles for the cutscenes. There's also a choice to flip the language to Japanese, which changes all the text, and the announcer voice to the original language. English is in quotes because just like old times, the grammar and vocabulary have been mangled into some sort of pseudo language. It's awesome! I hope they keep this up in future games. The art style, and character portrait artwork is great, but we've seen it all on the website already. There is also a large gap between the 2D art and 3D models, where almost no one looks like they do in the pictures when you start fighting. The 3D is much uglier than the 2D, it's a little jarring. The music is also very good, but maybe not quite as brilliant as the older games. It's definitely a natural progression from Tenkaichi Kenkakuden. The sound effects are loud and appropriate, and a lot of the old voice cast return. The only gripe I have is the American announcer sounds like such a generic guy, and is not nearly as memorable as the Japanese dude, who sounds exactly as he did in the old days. The old fatalities are in, but loose something without the buckets of blood. There is no blood at all when fighting, but the hit sparks are now red which gives the illusion of blood. Even though the English game is on the disc, it still lacks the violence seen in the overseas arcade version.

Being a 360 gamer in Japan can sometimes feel like you're a third class citizen, much like being a Playstation owner in The States felt during the mid-90's. Black and while manuals, containing no useful information, disc art that looked like it was printed using a home printer, with only the red ink cartridge inserted. Again, maybe to make up for the actual game's content, SNK did it right with this one. The manual is in full color, and has a movelist for every character. The stickers came from the OST CD (which I purchased separately, the game and OST are not a bundle). Overall, I'm happy with it, since it's a new Samurai Shodown game. I've grown used to the fact that they pretty much suck these days in the gameplay department, but I'm happy to see the series get it's shit together after the half-assed Zero, and the complete spastic mess of Tenka. Keep all the non-fighting stuff, and revamp the gameplay and this series can be great again.

Day 0

I played catch up with some of the downloadable things released recently over the weekend. One of the games I tried out was Gulti's 0 Day Attack On Earth. One thing that struck me as odd was the game's user rating, as seen on the download page. It averaged three out of five stars in the US, and two out of five in Japan. Wut? Even the most braindead shit never scores below four. The game is another one of those Centipede-like, twin stick shooters, like Geometry Wars. It's biggest claim to individuality is the four player simultaneous gameplay. When playing solo, the other ships are controlled by the AI. There looked to be about eight playable ships, each with a unique weapon upgrade path. It's all very fast paced and hectic. The music is very grand and fitting the whole humans VS alien invaders theme. (The other composers in addition to Sato, are Kou Hayashi, and some other guy.) It is a very competent game. It takes a little getting used to it, but it's very playable. The credits mention that the creators "respect all legendary shooting games." That's certainly true, since this is pretty much Zero Gunner 3. The "0" in the title was very intentional. I'm going to assume the low rating, especially the Japanese one, was due to the over-used control scheme. I can accept that. Even though it's the most logical and appropriate for a game of this type, it's not traditional. I hope, for the sake of mankind, it's not because the kids these days don't respect Zero Gunner.

Out of the gate

Thankfully, we're in for a slow week. The only thing that I have marked down is the District 9 Blu-ray. USPS should be delivering my Crystal Bearers sometime this week, so I'll have something to do when ignoring Darkside Chronicles. Also, just noticed that the Hori Pad EX 2 is in stock at Hori Store USA. The next noteworthy release is Sands Of Destruction on January 12th. Here's to hoping 2010 will be a better gaming year then '09. It certainly starts off strong.

Merry New Year

SNK released their New Year's greeting "cards" on their site a few weeks ago. I like the KOF 2002 one. Also interesting is the Orochi Team one. Is SNK setting them up for a comeback? About time, I say. We need the ridiculous KOF story line to come back. And SNK needs to localize it themselves. Samurai Spirits Sen is crap, but the nonsensical story is what makes it fun. More plz.

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ARIKA made a new game. No it's not another Street Fighter EX. No it's not a shooting game port. Surprisingly it's not even some licensed anime dreck. It's Jewelry Master Twinkle, and it's available via XBLA Community games. Is that even allowed under XBLA's terms and conditions? ARIKA is a real company, not some guy in his basement. I don't think this is what the community game initiative was meant for. It was to give an outlet to those who had no other means of getting their ideas made into games, not for companies too poor, or cheap, to buy a publisher license. If I give you 400 MSP for this shit will I get The Grand Master 4 on 360?

Sexy chaos

The Oboro Muramasa Youtouden Original Soundtrack is coming this week. It's like the internet doesn't care, or more likely, doesn't know. Marvelous mentions it on the game's home page, so if someone visits eight months after the game was released, they would know about it. Ignition is coasting in neutral as is, so they can't be bothered to update their site. VGM World and Play-Asia don't have it in their databases, which is what bothers me. Every one seems to have missed the memo on this. Luckily Amazon.co.jp ships music to America. Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos is also hitting this week. I was all for it at first, but as usual, my interest has subsided since then. I'll grab the Best version eventually. Oh, and there is some game people seem to be excited for, Final Furlong or something. Don't care much for horse racing myself.

#1 ore da!

I've been wondering what ever happened to that alleged new Goketsuji Ichhizoku game they surprised everyone with at the last AOU. So I decided to actually look for info on it. Looks like it's been out in game centers since July. Noise Factory is in fact the dev, and Type X is the system. It features 22 characters, at least nine of which can transform into alternate forms. Five are new, though two are palette swaps. A very well rounded cast, featuring old mainstays, new faces, and returning fighters (White Buffalo, oh snap!). Since it is developed by Noise, it's pretty much Matrimelee 2, but much more polished and competent then that game ever was. The new character are all original sprites, and feature unique fighting styles. Also a lot of the reused assets have been touched up and the whole thing feels much more like a real game than a rush job. The music is still awesome.

The Australian

I was just looking over Gulti's blog. They've been quiet since Mamonoro shipped, but had announced that they're working on 0-Day Attack On Earth for Square Enix around TGS. I then clicked on Go Sato's blog link in my bookmarks folder, fully expecting to see the same old post from February. Well fuck me. Looks like he's been doing the music for 0-Day all this time. Was going to check it out because it's Gulti, but now it's an insta-purchase. Game hits on the 23rd according to the man. Who am I to argue? Sato Get!

This ain't even funny

The contest for the last PS2 game continues. Bandai Namco is publishing Flight-plan's Summon Night Why The Fuck Is This Still On PS2!? at some point during calendar 2010. That's right. This would make it a game running on 10-year-old hardware. My question is when was development started? The 360 has been on the market four years now, dev kits were available at least a year prior to launch. What exactly is your excuse Flight-plan? And I see it's half in English. Are we expecting an international release by chance?

Game needs revision, badly

Man, Wizardry is "classic." They really went all out to include old school contrivances into this game. I can't help but question that mentality. Why would you do that? Old games were obtuse because they were the first, there was no precedent or HIG. (There still aren't any, but there are at least commonly assumed staples that most designers adhere to.) They were fun despite that, not because of it. A perfect example is Suikoden. The first thing that struck me as I began playing is how similar this Wizardry is to Konami's game. Six party members, arranged in two rows, characters in the back can't physically attack with short range weapons, multiple rows of enemies, limited numbers of spell usage (no MP), multiple "levels" of magic. It even has that annoying "Confirm/Back" dialog after I enter all my commands. Yes I'm sure, I just spent 60 seconds telegraphing what I want these jokers to do, if I changed my mind, I want back and changed the command. This is what I'm talking about. If this was the first RPG ever made, I understand why that option is there. But it has no place in the second RPG ever made, or any future RPG's to come. We'd all know how to play the game by the time those are out. It's very possible to remove little annoying things like that, that add nothing to the proceedings, and still have a very traditional, and streamlined game.

Another old school element I never missed are randomly powered enemies. As soon as I step into the cave I get ambushed by 10 level one imps. I beat them off without even loosing any health. The very next step I run into a T-Rex that breaths fire and blasts my entire party away with a single attack. If I'm on a level one quest, as described by the Guild where I accepted it, I expect to fight level one enemies. The T-Rex could be the boss at the end of the cave guarding the treasure, and by the time I'd reach him I should be powered up enough to withstand his attack, and defeat him. This is one of those modern RPG tenants that is generally understood. Giving me that option to save anywhere is a crutch, not a solution. With skillful, thoughtful play, I should never have to see a game over screen. (*cough*Tales of Vesperia*cough*) The game doesn't have to be a cakewalk, but it has to give me the tools necessary to level the playing field.

So the game is made to kill me with ease. Granted. It should be trivial then, for me to resume my quest and get back into the fray. Ha! If the entire party is wiped, only the main character is magically warped back to the church, with one hit point left. Everyone else is dead, and need to be resurrected. The church ain't a charity organization, though, so that's gonna cost you. 10 gold pieces per level. Level one priestess, 10 GP, level three fighter, 30 GP, etc. Fine. Simple and intuitive. Every one comes back with one HP. Ok, annoying, but I'll deal with it. Off to the Inn. Another pillar of RPG game design is the Inn pricing. The first town usually is free, or costs very little money, compared to what the enemies drop, allowing the player to easily get back into fighting shape, and resume his quest. Alternatively, the price for recovery scales along with the characters levels. Low level characters are cheaper to heal then high level characters. Wizardry wants 200 GP to fully heal _one_ character. That would be just dandy, if the level one imps dropped 1,000 GP each, which they don't. I just got wiped out, that means I didn't kill the big bad that probably drops fat loot. That means, after paying off God, I'm broke. The game gives the player a "break" by offering a half price special for 50% HP recover. Half of 200 is 100. I'd be lucky to have that much, and if I did, it does me little good to have one guy with half his life, and five on the verge of death. The devs threw us a bone, I guess, with a free magic recharge. But if my priestess can get back all her spell charges, she can just heal everyone for free. If that was the intention, why throw the 200 GP roadblock in my way? Why not save me a few button clicks and give me free HP recovery? This one makes no sense even when examined through the lens of the old school.

So far the music is uninspiring, the dungeon design poor, relying on warps, and spaces with no textures (it's a cave it's supposed to be dark, hurrr. Then why can't I see the torch light all the way on the other side of the cavern which appears right in front of my face as soon as I step back into "the light?" *crickets*). It's exactly what I always expected out of Wizardry. The only reason I got it was for the hot artwork, and it doesn't disappoint in that department. But even here we have head-scratching decisions at work. The game offers six character slots in a party. But there are only five character classes, each represented by a male and female variant, making for a total of 10 characters. That's not an even fit, so that means one class would have to be represented twice in a full party. It's not any sort of deal breaker, but just seems a little odd, especially since there seems to be no long range, physical fighter, like an archer, who can attack from the back row. (At least Suikoden had that.) It also means that I can't have an all-girl party, unless I clone one. Boo~.

This is not exactly the Wizardry Renaissance they've been advertising, but it is a classic entry, in a classic series. At this point in time, I guess we should be grateful for at least that.

That's better

With all this irrelevant shit clogging up the headlines, the REAL news gets lost in the shuffle.

*tumbleweeds*

I was (sort of) right. I fully expected to get a shitty DS game out of this partnership, but flooding VC with games that I already own was a very real possibility as well. Everyone does seem as excited about this as Vic had proposed they should be, and I can't figure out why? Is there a magical Telenet property that I'm not remembering that was so ground breaking, and has aged so well that I should be throwing my money at it? 'Cause I can't think of a damn thing. Valis was a dime-a-dozen action game with bad "physics" and boring level designs. Ernest Evans was just bad. Annette Futatabi was better, but still very much a generic Genesis game. Oh, and the Sega CD is not emulated in VC, so those are automatically out. I have Exile. My policy of not buying VC games for systems I actually own means that only NES and SNES games are under consideration, of which I can't remember a single one that I pined over while flipping through the pages of EGM back then. Sunsoft + Telenet = I still don't care. And will continue to do so until a _new_ physical retail product is announced. Or until they add the Sega CD to VC, and Gaijinworks gets me Vay.

Tale of the forsaken land

Just "picked up" Wizardry PSN this morning. In order to do so, I had to acquire (see what I did there?) a pre-paid code worth some yens. For some reason, getting one on the internet is like pulling teeth, from a bear. The problem for the usual suspects is that they don't make any money on those things. They can't mark it up much, and on top of that, customers will use it to buy games from someone else. Not an enticing proposition. The cards themselves are fairly easy to find, but in this 100% digital market, a physical trinket is 100% useless. I once paid $80 for some one to ship the plastic retail packaging containing a 4,000 MSP card via EMS. Never again. NSCX was the pioneer in digitally distributing these codes by email, but their stock allocation has been horrendous ever since they began. I found an interesting website that claimed to have the cards, and was willing to send the code via email. $43 for ¥3,000 is not a bad deal, factoring the middleman fees and such. The website is a sort of Japanese shopping service. Users in Japan post pics of stuff they see in a store, users who want to buy the item PayPal the money to the site operators, who hold it until the seller confirms the item was acquired. This is ironically almost exactly how buying shit from import sites has worked for years, only these guys are honest about not having any of this stuff in stock. Even with the running around, and communication involved, I got my code less than 24 hours later, and downloaded the game this morning. I support this FlutterScape service, and will definitely use it again in the future. It's a little too Web 3.0 for my taste, but it works. The guy I got the PSN card form also offers Microsoft and Wii Point cards. Mushihime-sama Futari Black Label is coming.

Souls and swords

The thing that interests me the most this week is Samurai Spirits Sen. To be perfectly honest, the game's release was just an excuse to pick up the soundtrack along with it. Samurai Spirits hasn't been relevant since about 1996, so I'm not expecting anything out of this one either. The problem is that you can't bring SS into modern times without destroying everything that made it great. I'd rather they turn it into an action game series, instead of releasing things that look like fighting games, that aren't fighting games. Or better yet, Samurai Spirits RPG II. You've done stupider things, SNK.

Ironically, the latest Toshinden is dropping on the same day. This one is not a Tamsoft project, so it's hard to even consider it part of the same series, but it shares the name for a reason. Takara Tomy felt that it has more relevance then a new IP? I think they've been grossly misled. I do have some nostalgia for Toshinden 2, but after giving it a spin a few months ago, it has nothing to do with the gameplay anymore. *shudder* I'll keep a fain glimmer of hope for the music, but I think even that turned to crap after 2.

A last minute addition to my calendar is Acquire's Wizardry PSN release. I always see these games on import sites, but have never actually played any of them, foreign or domestic. I do know that it is a hella old series, that's why I never really tried to get into it. "Classic" is an euphemism for "unplayable" most of the time. But since this one is part of a Wizardry revival which seems to be aimed solely at Japan, I'll support their decision. There's a demo up for this one for those interested. This is the only "demo" I need.

Mission complete

In my opening rant of this blog I mentioned that the three shooting games I wanted too get for the PS2 were Thunder Force VI, Psyvariar Complete, and Homura. Can't say I don't finish what I put my mind to. This one's a year late to the party, though. I haven't even given it a fair shot, just dicked around using an emulator. It doesn't inspire me to keep going. It's no Shikigami no Shiro, that's for sure. Main guy moves slower than the Raiden ship, always a killjoy. After Mushihime, I don't think I can ever go back to games like these. Maybe if I hook up one of my RAP's.

3D ghosts

What an impressive game. After this and Deathsmiles, I think I'm beginning to understand the hype surrounding Cave. Mushihime-sama Futari incorporates all the basic shooting game ingredients, as well as enough innovation to create something unique, and still manages to be accessible to just about anyone. The subject matter can be a little off-putting at first, but as soon as the screen fills up with bullets and explosions, you can't even see who or what you're shooting anymore. Besides, who hasn't ever wanted to shoot a dinosaur in the face? If school girls aren't your thing, there's a kid riding a dragon in there. I'd recommend using him for the majority of the play time anyway, since Reco sounds like she needs a NyQuil injection, stat. The kid remains largely inoffensive. It doesn't hurt that he also has the strongest shot.

There's an interesting note about the music. It turns out that Cave has been using Basiscape for their games for a long while now. Nothing in this game has been too exemplary, but I did notice a whole lot of similar sounds to those found in Muramasa. Muramasa is a game developed in 2008, Mushihime is from 2006. Interesting. Maybe this is what Sakimoto meant about being disappointed with how Muramasa turned out.

The 3D Dot Game Heroes OST is a bit of a disappointment. Why the hell are the tracks so damn short? Two and a half minutes is the longest you're going to hear. My favorite track gets chopped down to 60 seconds. I know they're all simple loops, but give me a chance to get bored of it before you change it. The game was supposed to be a celebration of everything old school about gaming. ADD was not part of the experience back then. Give me a second disc, I'll gladly pay $10 more. Hell, give me a 7.1 mix on a DVD. I'd buy it just for kicks. This one comes courtesy of SuperSweep, and Shinji Hosoe. It all comes together.

Black hole sun

Sunsoft is back. Victor Ireland and Gaijinworks are helping them out. The first thing they're doing is putting the NES' Blaster Master on Virtual Console. They allegedly have a big announcement coming next week, too. Everyone is chiming in with "Albert Odyssey plz." And I don't care. Firstly, Sunsoft was always a fourth string publisher in my book, along the likes of Jaleco, Vic Tokai, etc. But even if I was a fan of theirs, I still wouldn't care. If all they will do is put their old games on VC, it's useless, since I'd already have them (again, assuming fandom). Since I never cared about their games in the first place, I'm not going to care now either. If they're planning on continuing their old franchises, like Blaster Master, or Albert Odyssey, the friendliest market for that would be the portables, DS specifically. Again, something that holds no relevance to me. Unless next week's announcement is going to be Albert Odyssey 3 on PS360, I don't care. And if they try to "re-boot" anything from their past in order to make it relevant to kids today, it will likely wind up as offensive and illconceived as the recent Estopolis or Silent Hill debacles. I can't see how this recent development can be anything other than irrelevant, at best. Too bad. I'd love to proven wrong, though.

Competition

CRI Middleware shot out a press release today that proclaims their technology is in use on over 2,000 products. That may well be true, but they're cheating a little bit, since they count stuff like Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! (Japan), Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! (Asia), and Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! (Best) as three different titles. Good for them in any case. CRI is one of very few companies in the middleware business in Japan, so they deserve all the publicity/hype/goodwill they can get. The lack of widely available, customizable, shared tools is believed to be the the number one reason Japanese game development has fallen behind other regions. While their tools, and those of their competitors like Silicon Studio, aid in content creation, there is still no such thing as Unreal Engine in Japan. Part of the problem might be that Japanese devs aren't going to ask for one, but I'd bet they jump at it once a homegrown solution became available. Give me Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! (USA) and I'll make sure that number climbs towards 3,000 as fast as possible. More so than I already do. Going through their database, it reads like my game shelf at home. Congrats CRI!

This might be one of those "good idea" things

R-Type III (?) on the SNES started the first level by showing a brief scene from the pilot's viewpoint as his ship decelerated/warped out/whatever from light speed/subspace/the fuck into the playing field. It was a small tech demo for the SNES. I never gave it much though at the time. That scene might be the savior of the franchise, though. The strategy R-Type games are crap, period. To celebrate the release of the second one Irem put up a Project Silpheed-style (another bastardization, but that's another story) 3D third-person game/demo/thing up on PS Home. The first thing I immediately flashed back to was that scene from the SNES game, then the fact that R-Type is cool, then remembered that the new games kind of suck, THEN that a 3D space shooter like Silpheed would not be wholly inappropriate for the franchise, again, all thanks to that one opening scene from a 16-year-old game. Transitioning shooters into 3D has been a contentious topic for many years, mainly since no one has done it right (again, see Silpheed), but ever since Omega Boost I remain hopeful that someone will figure it out one day. This one looks a little sim-y, with a fuel gauge and all that jazz, but it can still be playable, with skillful direction (as long as I don't have to click the R-stick to fix the cyclotron every 10 seconds). Shit. Now I'm going to have to set up a Home account to try this thing out.

Someone forgot to tell the marketing guys

Arcana Heart 3 got its usual publicity update today. But, instead of three characters, it features four (all of which are returning veterans). A new addition was the release date, which is a tentative "late December, '09." That's as concrete as you're ever going to get with an arcade game, unfortunately. If this is coming out in late '09, they have like three more weeks left, and like 30 more characters. Better get cracking Examu.

REload

This is the first game in a long time that sold me itself purely on the basis of it's quality. Good job Cavia, where's my Bullet Witch 2? I'm a casual Resident Evil fan, and pretty much stop counting them at Code: Veronica. I've also always complained about the lack of ammunition in these games. I guess I missed the point of "survival horror," but damn it, it's fun to shoot those assholes in the face. Finally, someone got my memo. RE game with infinite ammo, sign me up. This + fast cursor tracking (a lack of which has been a perpetual bane of Wii shooting-gallery games) = I'm there. Also, if your game reminds me in any way of Cyberia, I'm also there. Now if only I could have mouse support. Maybe in a few years when they get the emulators up to speed.

The controller is for those times when the Sixaxis battery dies. I would like to make it a permanent replacement, but I don't think that can happen. This was purchased on the assumption that the parts, and build quality would be, at least, on par with the 360's EX pad. Inexplicably, they're not. The sticks are by far the biggest offender. The original Saturn 3D controller had a better analog stick. Why are the thumb rests so god damned small? Hori's bipolar disorder strikes again. This one does have better '2 buttons, though (read: not analog). Seriously Hori, we need to talk.