Knights in the Nightmare is unlike any tactics game I've ever played.  And the more I play it, the more I wish games in general would take risks with breaking with convention.  Having to dodge bullets while giving your soldiers orders seems kind of arbitrary, but it's like throwing hot sauce on what would otherwise be an ordinary burger. 

I like hot sauce.   A lot.

I guess Atlus is ultimately responsible for bringing us Knights, and to me they're endearing themselves to gamers by porting games that would otherwise stay in Japan.  I've been playing the Chinese import of Demon's Souls for a bit, a fun if brutal game, and since Atlus is going to be bringing that to us shortly I'm going to put my copy on eBay tonight.  Not just because of localization or compatilbility with U.S. players when it comes to multi, but because I have this rare sense of wanting to truly give back to a company that seems to have their customers in mind, as opposed to stakeholders.  I guess for a company like Atlus, we should all be stakeholders in that we want them to continue to succeed.

Are fantastic.  I adjusted to the gameplay from playing other online shooters, but after playing with the high precision controls last night, my kill-death ratio jumped like crazy.  Good job, Guerrilla Games.  Also, being able to stay in the same squad is great.

When people talk of remakes from now on, they're going to probably point to Bionic Commando as a poster-child for "How It's Done."  The game is true to the original in almost every way, while adding little nudges here and there that make it worth revisiting.  Take the Bazooka for example.  In the original, it pretty much fired a big ball or something.  In BC:R, it fires an actual rocket that twists and turns in a semi-unpredictable fashion.  Despite the dramatic graphical shift, the weapon achieves the same effect as it did before.  Take that, and apply it to the overall design of the remake, and you have a game that fully respects the original.  It's also hard as balls, omg hard.  I remember beating the game ten years ago in about 2 hours no problem.  This one seems somewhat more brutal, but then again, it seems the same.  Maybe my skillz have atrophied to the point that I should be focusing on things that are easier for someone my age, like making babies or drinking lemonade on the porch in the hot humid summer afternoon.

Found this story off Shacknews about how some folks just can't let Diablo 2 go.  In fact, they're so devoted that they only play on the hardcore difficulty setting--you know the one where if you die, that's it?  No respawning in town? 

I continue to mine the Greatest Hits for the PS3, my latest acquisition being Resistance: Fall of Man.  It's definitely a solid FPS, as you probably know leaning more toward convention than revolution. Not too bad though, the action is fun and the game is pretty.  For $30 it's an even value.  Plus multiplayer looks interesting.

Also, Teekazeek sends word that Burnout: Paradise is now hovering around the $30 price point despite not being listed as a GH.  Supposedly the game has some seriously good downloadable content that boosts the title's worth considerably.

When I think to myself "Yeah this isn't bad for a console game," what I really think overall is that I could find a more refined and ultimately better use of my time elsewhere.  That's what I think most hermits from the QuakeWorld days react if they manage to put themselves into a situation that has them controlling the foot soldier portion of Warhawk.  They've played Battlefield 2 on the PC to death, and a side by side comparison between it and a seemingly watered down shoot-em-up (granted, Warhawk's over the shoulder so it's not a 1-to-1 taste test) played with a Dualshock 3 just amounts to a mound of meh.

Then you pick up an actual Warhawk (re: the things that fly and go boom in midair), spend a few hours merely getting shot down and running into things.  Finally, you get your first kill, and declare the game the true spiritual successor to the multiplayer component of Starfox 64.  In fact, it's like dogfighting in an Arwing while loaded on ecstasy.  I guess. I've never done drugs, but that's what the kids do these days, I'm thinking.  Anyway, Warhawk's flight combat component is one of the most frenetic and challenging contests you can find online on any platform.  And it's $30.  You should consider buying it.