Playfire now tracks PS3 trophies, so why not you?  

So on my vacation last week I decided to get caught up on Assassin's Creed.  And by caught up I mean start.   
 
So Assassin's Creed.  That's a broken game.  I beat it.  Painfully in a 24 hour period.  The story is good.  Honestly my favorite portion of the game occurs after the credits, investigating the Abstergo offices as Desmund with Altair's Eagle Vision.  Maybe I should defend my comments on it being broken.  Assassin's Creed seems to want the player to use stealth in the game.  One instance I had with the game's broken stealth was heading for a target using the blend button.  As I approached the target I noticed he was surround by bums and guards.  What this means is if I stop blending the guards will automatically notice me.  But if I keep blending the bums will walk faster than me and push me.  So I opted to be pushed.  Unfortunately in the seconds that Altair was pushed between blends was enough for a dozen guards to identify and attack me.  Don't even get me started on the dock level.   
 
Lucky for me though the light at the end of the tunnel was Assassin's Creed 2.  Absolutely, mind blowingly amazing game.  AC1 had me convinced that there was no fixing these mechanics and AC2 did that and more.   They added a likable main character, wonderful story and music, an awesome inventory and village system, a compelling story, and mass intrigue.  This game is so amazing.  It might actually be the first  non-downloadable game I get all the trophies in.  The feather quest might try my patience but since I noticed in the DNA sequence it tells you how many feathers you have left in each city, that might even bearable.  I still cannot believe this game came from AC1.  I'm excited to get to Brotherhood but I imagine I will have to take a break after AC2 since its such a big game.  

I wish whatever the deal with Sony and Giantbomb not having PS3 trophies in here would work itself out.  Every time I login and look at all my achievements I think, that's not the last game pIayed.  Oh right, no PS3 trophies.  Plus there are all those PS2 games I played recently.  Or old PC games.  Or Bioware PC games that I purchased physically.  Oh well, its not like I'm competing anyway.  Too many good games for me to spend my time getting all the awards.  

I could tell you how utterly amazing the Transformers game is.  The interesting thing about that is if you're a Transformers fan, you'll at least try it knowing that.  If you're not a Transformers fan, my opinion will suddenly become null and void to you because I am a Transformers fan.  

Over the years Transformers have released some terrible, terrible games.  From the Japanese release only NES game starring Ultra Magnus (or whatever his name is Japan) to the horrible Transformers Armada, Hasbro really doesn't give a rats ass about their games.  Yes that was a coherent sentence, deal.  

I've heard Transformers get good reviews but a lot of them claim the game does nothing original which is absurd.  It may not be ground breaking and mind blowing like Portal or Batman Arkham Asylum, but the gameplay surely is original.

For instance you could say, well Gears of War lets you-nope.  Stop right there.  There are no cover mechanics in Transformers.  There are powers.  And you can transform into vehicles for faster travel and occasionally, to bomb or run robots over.  

Well what about Devil May Cry or God of War?  Nope.  You're way off.  Those are stylistic button mashers.  Tranformers involves guns and a bit of style, but is much more skill based.  And its much, much easier to die in Transformers.  

Seriously, folks, I thought I could come up with a few more cheesy comparisons but I can't.  Transformers takes the weapons you'd get in a first person shooter and then elaborates on them.  For instance with the grenade launcher you can launch your entire clip and then click the detonate button.  Each robot has its own abilities like flying, party buffs, healing, detecting invisible enemies, shielding the team, and the list goes on.  Point being, this game rocks and I need people to play it with me because I'm relatively certain that the co-op is in the area of amazing.  

Our latest episode we split into two episodes.  Pretty much its a lot of talk about the E3 conferences and the games.  And gay jokes.   
 
http://thecarouselpodcast.com/2010/06/20/turn-6-e3-and-the-evil-eye/

TheCarouselPodcast.com 
 
We have 3 episodes out so far, the first of which features us talking a whole lot about The Halo: Reach beta, the second of which we talk about Iron Man 2 and upcoming Marvel movie rumors, and the third of which we just talk about a whole lot of video games.  Stay tuned because the next couple episodes will have some special guest stars.  

So I really don't have any use for this blog.  I have a way too many blogs as is.  Most of what I write is on wordpress and streamlined to other websites as such.  And honestly, I love RPG's and while I do listen to Giant Bombcast and am entertained, they barely have anything good to say about RPG's.  Its RPG has reached the heights of racism with the token RPG member of the cast occasionally showing.  Its not a serious gripe, if anything its a really funny realism and not meant as a knock to anyone.  RPG's simply don't sell as well as FPS games.  I'm really only stating this as to why I haven't blogged on here yet and why I don't feel much compulsion to.  
 
Now the website is very much an interesting creation and I've noticed they've really taken the whole acheivement/trophy bit that most video game websites have incorporated and taken it way, way out there.  I mean talk about an awesome idea, a website that aspires to be the wikipedia of video games, where you let the users do a ton of the work.  
 
So I just performed my first edit only to realize its going to be declined after reading the description of the entry.  Yes I added the rest of the SMT games to the SMT entry.  Oh I am very well aware that there is differentiation between SMT and MT in Japan but I do not see the Japanese language option on the site, which leads me to believe that the entries should be based on US releases and standards.  And in the US, its all SMT.  Now do I actually care about the inevitable decline?  Not at all. 
 
SMT is actually my favorite video game series.  I own all the US releases except for the demi-kids releases and I haven't bothered with the MMORPG as I don't like MMORPG's.  Pretty much I contracted Hotchkin's Lymphoma in 2004 (oh yeah, I just pulled the cancer card) and picked up SMT: Nocturne.  I put hours and hours and hours into that game as I went through chemotherapy.  I have never encountered a game before a sense that had such an atmosphere and in game history as Nocturne.  The sheer amount of philospohy combined with demon fusion and the creative "press turn" system was complete biss for me.  I've since been impressed by almost every entry in the series since.  A very interesting historical read of the Megami Tensei series can be found here:  
 http://hg101.kontek.net/megaten/megaten.htm