FLYmeatwad

I wish those Disgaea games would come out on handhelds. There's little chance I spend over 100 hours in front of my PS3 just playing a game like that. Would make a great dent playing it a couple of hours a night before bed while watching TV on my Vita or 3DS though.

I doubt there's really any sort of chance that Microsoft drops XBL Gold subscriptions.

I wasn't going to buy a 3DS until a Fire Emblem, FFTA, or Advanced Wars game was announced. Then it was. I bought a 3DS XL in August and have been waiting since. Played Mario 3D Land which was fun, but a drag until the back 8 worlds and even then it still kind of felt like more Mario but still better than SMG so there's that. Much like LoZ I guess I don't care about Mario too much until it becomes consistently fun again. Once you go R&C and J&D you never go back, I guess. Will definitely pick up Pokemon X or Y (don't know which yet, whichever seems less popular I reckon, make myself a trade commodity or something), but outside of that and FE I'm not super excited for much on the 3DS until I get a demo or a few reviews of the new Luigi's Mansion. Some cool e-Shop stuff though (Pushmo never hooked me though, and I haven't picked up Crashmo. None of these scratch the same itch that Picross DS and Picross 3D did, but I'm hoping a Picross game comes eventually so there's that too), and I imagine successful DS and GBA franchises will eventually make their way to the 3DS. It's a quality system. The Vita, as a piece of hardware and a longterm investment, has it outclassed in all aspects except, possibly, portability if you don't buy a case or something. I may just be afraid of breaking it though and don't travel too much anyway.

Thinking about it, the DS was kind of a let down after the GBA, huh? There were some great games on it, but hardly anything compared to the GBA. The top down Zeldas on GBA were better, the tactics games were mostly better on GBA (though Advanced Wars was better on DS and DS has Picross DS), and there was not 2-D Metroid entry which was a huge bummer. Weaker RPG selection as well, by a pretty wide margin. Nintendo needs to step its shit up.

@AndrewB: Heh, I actually bought my Vita just for P4G (I don't know what it is, but I have trouble sitting down and playing JRPGs on a console anymore, but love playing them on handhelds. Handhelds are the perfect JRPG platform, I think, actually. Haven't played P4 since it first released on PS2 either, so it was cool to see all that again). Figured I would get VLR on my 3DS since that's where I played 999, but then heard about the save bug that was fucking up people's 3DS saves and figured I would just pick it up on Vita. Still need to do that, but from what I hear the Vita is the superior version anyhow. Can't wait to finally play it though.

Memory on the Vita is atrocious though. Sony really screwed up there.

@leejunfan83: Thanks for reposting that, I appreciate the support.

@Veektarius: Thanks. Maybe, it's just a pet peeve of mine when people use "based off" because to me even though I know what they mean and language is flexible I am still stuck in my old ways and it annoys me because it really doesn't mean what people mean when they use it.

@Veektarius: I'll see what I can find. The collegiate classes I took where I had to write papers had professors specify that "based off" was not correct. I'm not sure if it's in Strunk and White or whatever, but googling some college websites led me to this (I went to TCNJ, not WSU, if that means anything) and some Mirriam-Webster thing that doesn't say it's wrong just frowned upon (not that it matters what they say, OED for life!). Certainly "off of" (as most use it) creates a needless preposition. "I jumped off the building" is simpler, cleaner, and quicker than "I jumped off of the building."

Using two prepositions back to back is not improper (though I imagine the "off base" part does make a good deal of sense and I would need to look at a few grammar rules and linguistic history to really prove that it's incorrect), but it seems that the definitions do clash with one another.

That said there's the case to be made that language is constantly changing (it is), and as long as we understand what another person means/usage becomes common enough then prescribed codes become even more irrelevant (they do/are). So really it doesn't matter if I say "I spoke to my friend" or "I worked to my friend" if the majority of people understood "work" to mean the same thing as speak rather than what work is generally accepted to mean, regardless of any fixed definitions.

I get this upsetting people because at times it bothers me too, but I think the more widespread problem (big on the Bombcast, and more so the nation, perhaps even world but I can't really speak for outside the US) is the use of the term "based off" which means exactly the opposite of what people tend to mean.

That Aliens: Colonial Marines game is based on the Aliens movie, not based off the film. To say that it is more like Independence Day would be pretty off base. The 'base' is something that is built upon as much as it is a makeshift sports metaphor here, so if one is basing something off of a pre-existing story or franchise, then one would actually be creating something new entirely. There's a disconnect between based off, while based on implies a connection that is generally implied when a movie is based on a book.

I'm just not sure why anyone trusts MS (or Sony to a lesser extent) to compete with Steam. We're talking about a company that charges $60 a year (an increase in what used to be like $45 or whatever) to talk with other people online...while still covering all their dashboard tabs in ads. A company that runs discounts on games years after they come out without any sort of price adjustments in the meantime. At least Sony's PS+ gives the illusion that you get free stuff even if you never own any of it, and their sales are much more frequent/substantial than the ones run by MS. Even there though I'm not sure that Sony would actively compete with Steam (or, really, other services since Steam has kind of become the Amazon of digital distribution. Decent prices on products, but nowhere near the best, mostly coasting on name recognition and public perception at this point in time).

@WinterSnowblind: Right, but I'm not sure I can go out and spend $400 dollars on a PC (assuming it's a pre-built one. I get building a PC is easy, but the assumption is that there's a unification to consoles that differs what an average consumer gets when they buy a new console as opposed to a new PC. Not to mention upkeep and higher likelihood for viruses and what not on PC, which I think still factors in to an average consumer's experience as opposed to how people like you and I approach playing games) and have the same convenience that a console offers.

What I'm saying is that if you tell me there's nothing I'll have to add on after the initial price investment, I can't buy used games but there will be a financial equivalent to Steam sales on XBLA and PSN, memory is going to be open or much cheaper than it currently is for things like the 360 or the Vita, and I don't have to worry about viruses but I can't really mod. Then I'll take the console over the PC. I just don't trust Sony or Microsoft to do all of that though.

@Oldirtybearon said:

@K9 said:

I find this sentiment of "if this rumor is true I will go to pc gaming" puzzling since the used games market is nonexistent on PC front first and foremost.

It has nothing to do with the availability of used games and more to do with the fact that if the platform holders want to lock their consoles down and prevent ANY second hand gaming at all, why would I put up with their walled garden BS when I can just build a gaming rig and be done with it?

Used games isn't the main focus here, it's removing options from the consumer due to blatant greed.

My guess would be that the standardization of consoles makes it generally cheaper to invest $400 or so for a top end machine once every five or six years instead of spending about $600 and time assembling then constantly upgrading over the years. If XBLA and PSN worked like Steam in terms of constant sales and pricing, I wouldn't care if I couldn't buy used games and saved on total machine cost.

I am definitely in favor of a PC as a primary game machine, though at present I don't have the money to build a gaming rig especially not knowing what next gen PC equivalents will be.