Man, I’m so out of it, I forgot that I had to do this post today. You know you’ve had a good vacation when you get back home and you don’t remember how to do anything. Either that or you suffered some sort of brain damage while you were away. In my case, I think it’s the former, but I was timing myself to see how long I could hold my breath under water, so it’s possible it’s the latter.
At any rate, not a lot coming out this week, but Heroes of Ruin finally gets its North American release, so I’m stoked for that.
New Releases
I’m not sure if the demo is still on the 3DS eShop, but if you’re at all wary of Square’s four player dungeon crawler, Heroes of Ruin, you can download it and try it out. Or maybe you can’t. I played it at last year’s E3 and enjoyed it and I enjoyed the demo I played even if I got to the level’s boss before I should have, and was still able to wear it down and kill it. I’m interested in seeing if the gazillion days of DLC that Square is promising turns into a reality. I seem to remember similar claims from THQ in regards to Saints Row 3 and we all know how well that turned out.
Back in the day, I played a ton of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Grinding the helicopter blades made me feel like a god among men. Relive sick tricks and skateboard derring do with Tony Hawk PS HD. This also kicks off Micosoft’s Summer of Arcade, which is a little late to be an entire Summer of Arcade. More like Half Summer of Arcade. Sheesh, Microsoft, look at a calendar every once in a while.
Dyad is a psychedelic racer available only on PSN. The trailer looks ripped straight from the 80’s. Seriously. I half expected the Kool-Aid Man to break through the wall.
Finally, filed under M for “miscellaneous”, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles get split up for PSN releases, Knights of the Old Republic I and II get a PC collection, ME3 gets yet another MP DLC pack and Max Payne 3 PC players get the Local Justice Map Pack.
Deals
Target – Get a free $25 gift card with purchase of a SMB Wii bundle, get a free $10 gift card with purchase of a DSi. Get a free $15 gift card when reserving Just Dance 4 and purchasing any Just Dance game.
Best Buy – Get a free $30 gift card with purchase of a 160GB PS3. Get Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or Spec Ops: The Line for $49.99. Get Max Payne 3, Battlefield 3 or CoD:MW3 for $39.99. Get CoD:MW2 for $19.99.
Chewing up Steam sales and playing Secret World for me, with digressions into Tales of Graces f.
Fring, you were asking and four hours in I am loving it. The first section is a really well done extended prologue that sets up a lot of characters and relationships for the main game. Enjoying the flow of combat, though my quick step is hard to engage for some reason, but people with better reflexes would be able to handle it.
I really love the title system and the new eleth mixer. Looking very forward to more!
Awesome. And, man, I can’t believe The Last Story got pushed all the way back to mid-August. At least it’s giving me plenty of time to catch up on stuff.
As for XC, I think I’m really going to shoot for beating it or at least making a profound amount of progress on it. I spent the majority of the last two weeks questing, which has been very fun, but it’s time to try to finish the game off.
Still loving it of course, especially trying ridiculous teams like Melia, Shulk, and Riki (where, when it works right, Shulk and Riki stand on opposite sides of the monster and trade off on pulling aggro so that the other one can backstab it).
I’m probably going to have to put off Tales of Graces f for awhile, though, since I’ve got other stuff to work through, but I’m glad to hear good things about it. I haven’t really played a Tales game since that Wii sequel to Tales of Symphonia (I think it’s subscript was something like Dawn of the New World).
Ridiculous teams are the best and I actually had to use one for the last boss anyway, since Reyn suddenly went from being über-tank to useless for no reason.
I was gutted they pushed Last Story back, but I’m saving it for the holidays anyway ;).
You have the right subtitle for the Symphonia follow-up too, but if you haven’t played Vesperia yet, that is definitely the Tales game to get. I am early on into Graces so that may change, but Vesperia is hands-down my favorite of the series so far.
Yeah, but, console-wise, I’ve only got the PS3 and the Wii. Mainly because I can’t even get around to playing all the PS3 games I want to, the Xbox seemed like it would just depress me. So, no Vesperia for me (unless I wanted to import it, which I don’t).
I actually feel bad, but I don’t use Reyn that much (minus the fact that I use everyone quite a bit to maximize their link thingies). I feel like Dunban pulls a lot more aggro than Reyn and has the added bonus of more damage and plus status modifiers. It might also be that I don’ really like playing as Reyn, so I haven’t set him up as well as I could. But, my “real” team is Shulk, Sharla, and Dunban.
Yeah, I thought you might just have the PS3; for some reason I thought Vesperia had come out on PS3 in NA but it was a Japan-only release, ignore all the good stuff I said about it ;).
Dunban is apparently a WAY better tank, though I could never bring myself to maximize his dodge by wearing no armor. Just seemed very counter-intuitive to my JRPG sensibilities ;). Allegedly you can get by without Sharla as healer too, though I never managed to figure that out either.
I never played as anybody but Shulk, even when you get the chance to swap him out of the main party. It’s really his story in my mind, and also I friggin’ love the Monado. 😛
You have no idea how funny your typo in “Micosoft’s Summer of Arcade” sounds to a Brazilian Portuguese speaker.
And looking at that first screenshot, it’s official: Heroes of Ruin has jumped the shark. Or it has jumping sharks, not sure which.
Oh, by first screenshot, I actually mean the second. The one with a dude dual-wielding huge pistols and firing at tiger sharks equipped with arms and legs.
That right there is the main reason to get the game.