Phoenix654

This really varies from game to game, but since you caught me at the end of going through the excellent first person puzzler The Turing Test, yes. Reading through some of the crew reports on their situation is oddly gripping and really got me into the backstory. Also, it's clear the people who made the game are really into space exploration and astronomy as they sprinkled in quite a few cool details in the game. It adds a great deal of flavor if you feel like seeking it out.

I don't know if it counts to cumulatively add up everything I've spent on the Rock Band franchise, but lets put it this way... I purchased all the Rock Band games new (so Rock Band, 2, 3, 4, Beatles, Green Day). Assuming each was $60.00, we're already at $300.00 plus tax. I know for a fact that I bought the initial Rock Band bundle AND the one for Rock Band 2 (because the first drum kit was terrible), so let's conservatively double that number. I also bought a version of Beatles Rock Band that included a replica of George Harrison's Gretsch guitar, so add on another 80 bucks. Then I bought the ION drum kit for RB3, that was $300 new. THEN, over the years, I have amassed a song collection that is 1200 songs strong. Subtracting the couple hundred you get from the games themselves... oh, and Rock Band Blitz, forgot about Blitz, that included a bunch of songs too... each song is 2 bucks a pop, let's say I've paid for just 800 of them... fuck me.

I've spent close to $2,300.00 on Rock Band over the years. I need to re-examine my life choices...

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Okay, I've re-examined. I have fun playing Rock Band with friends and family, it's given me a deeper appreciation for music I would never have heard before, and I've learned to sing and drum (not simultaneously, I'm not Don Henley) reasonably well. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned.

The few I've had have only been obvious later in the dream. My lucid dreams take a while to become strange. Usually when I notice I'm dreaming, I try levitating, which is an intoxicating feeling. It's amazingly cool to experience and I am very jealous of people who can do it on command. The first company that makes a device or drug that induces lucid dreaming for the public will make all the money.

Btw, useful tip in case you think you're in a lucid dream, look at a book cover or something with text on it. Look away, then look at it again. If you're dreaming, the language center of your brain is essentially shut down and the text you saw the first time will have changed. It's kind of like a video game world that doesn't render unless you're looking at it, except it has no memory of what it rendered the last time you looked. Then you have to focus on not waking up and enjoying the ride.

@babychoochoo: Dayum. That is a far better explanation of JSRF than I've ever received. Perhaps if they put it out, I will give it another try. Hell, might even dig out my copy and see if it works on my 360 come Extra Life day this year.

Not sure if this counts, but my friends and I play games for 24 hours every year for Extra Life. It's not ever one game or even one kind of game or even all of us at the same time. For instance, last year, I set about trying to beat Bubble Bobble on the NES while they played a round of D&D (just not my thing). It always leaves us wrecked the next day, but it's fun to do.

@oursin_360: I think either option works, it should be similar to the Xbox 360 back compat. You can either (A) buy them digitally and play with no disk or (B) put in a disk, the system will download the game and essentially use the disk as verification that you own a copy. Details here, a story from E3 earlier this year.

I feel the same way, though the version I got on a Steam sale a while back is so goddamn glitchy that I barely got off the first ship and never got off the first planet before getting too frustrated to continue. Hopefully this version will let me enjoy it in all its original glory.

This isn't a slam on the game, it clearly has a devoted fan base, but I never really got the big deal about Jet Set Radio. I played it on a friend's Dreamcast and later got a free copy of JSRF when I bought my Xbox, but I never really got into it. Maybe I was just too invested in the Tony Hawk trick system or something. What did I miss about Jet Set that literally everyone else seemed to latch on to and enjoy?

Burnout yesssss. Such good times with 2's crash mode and pretty much all of 3.

Also, anyone every played Quantum Redshift? It was a Mario Kart + Pod Racer kind of game, was actually pretty good from memory, but I have no idea if it holds up. Early Xbox exclusive.

The original Xbox (and thank you once again Microsoft for making it confusing to say the Xbox 1) was the first console I bought with my own money. I'd been a Nintendo kid virtually all of my young life, but I needed a console to play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and later on*, so I compared the three consoles and went with Microsoft's new hotness. I eventually bought the other two as well, but the Xbox was my standard console for that generation. That's why I was so excited to hear that Phil Spencer was bringing Xbox backwards compatibility to the XBone and now it seems that titles are starting to pop up. The current suspects are...

• Crimson Skies (obviously, Phil said so)
• Ninja Gaiden Black
• Psychonauts
• Fusion Frenzy (Bill Gates will be PSYCHED)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Dead to Rights
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
• Bloodrayne
• Grabbed by the Ghoulies
• Red Faction II
• King of Fighters NeoWave

I think the list is interesting. I have fond memories (and in some cases, discs) of a few of these like Psychonauts and Ninja Gaiden, but I completely missed others like Prince of Persia and Bloodrayne. I've also heard good thing about Pirates! but never played it myself. I was totally surprised to see Grabbed by the Ghoulies since it's already in the Rare Replay collection, but I guess if you just want that game, why not have it be loose and available. How about y'all? Anything big missing (I know Project Gotham Racing is a sad omission) or an old original Xbox fave you wanna see?

*Yes, THPS 1 and 2 were available on the N64. No, they weren't good, but I played them.

Edit: For the record, I pulled these games from an image in this Polygon article.

@darkeyehails: Agreed, the Tucci factor cannot be overlooked. More movies should be rated on that scale.

This has dropped to 18% (though 54% on audience score). For the record, The Core ended up at 41% (33% audience).

Riiiiiiight... "Amazing." Maybe even "...amazing!!!*"

*pulled from a review by a newspaper/magazine owned by the studio that made it.