ps3

G-Mate Mag Gun Adds Another Piece to the Perfect Gaming Setup

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About a month ago I wrote about the 3rd Space FPS Gaming Vest, a really awesome tool in the gamer's toolbox. This month I have another for you out of Hong Kong; the G-Mate Mag Gun.

Designed to put you much more firmly into the action by feeling like you're part of it, the Mag Gun has built into it all of the controls you'd find on a standard console controller.

(Please read the rest of this story at GeekBeat.TV!)

Bayonetta Micro-Impression

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Bayonetta
Image via Wikipedia
I recently had the chance to pick up Sega's  Bayonetta and give it a run on the PS3. From the little I've played so far though, it seems like a fantastically polished, fast, furious and fun game. It's exactly the kind of quick combat oriented game I can throw in the machine and have some fun with for a short time, without worrying too much about how much progress I make.
From a design perspective, one feature in particular caught my eye. During load times you retain control of your character in a way that reminds me a little bit of Assassin's Creed's Matrix-like loading feature. Bayonetta takes that concept and makes it even more useful. You can practice your combos while waiting for things to load. This is very handy for a gamer like myself; I gravitate more towards role-playing games and shooters than combo-fests. When I picked the game up, I assumed I'd have to get through it with a little luck and a lot of button mashing, but this practice feature gives me some hope that I might be capable of actually learning a few of the cooler moves at some point. It also makes the load times much easier to bear, though the update that allowed the game to be partially installed to the system's hard drive results in load times that are pretty easy to handle anyway.
This post is my first experiment at shifting my game impressions from my blog to Google Buzz. Let's see how this works out!
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Holy Game Explosion!

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Valkyria Chronicles
Image via Wikipedia

It's been forever and an age since I posted anything significant, and that's because my gaming world seems to have exploded. I've got so much stuff to play I don't even know where to start writing about it all - and so I've decided to post a written thumbnail gallery of what I'm going through right now.

Games I'm Still Playing

Star Ocean: The Last Hope, XBox 360

A Kingdom for Keflings, XBox 360 Live

Games I'm Playing But Haven't (Yet) Written About

Fantastic Contraption, http://www.fantasticcontraption.com

Amazing little web physics game along the lines of The Incredible Machine. You must get an object from one place to another by building fantastic contraptions out of various types of wheels and rods. Free to play with extra content if you're willing to pay a little. It's well worth it.

Little Big Planet, PS3.

I haven't dug too much into this one yet; I just picked it up a couple of days ago. I'm late to join this party and it's a shame, it's a pretty mind-blowing gaming experience. At it's core, LBP is a fairly typical platform game, but they expose that core in an unprecedented way by giving you all the tools you need to create a rediculous variety of worlds of your own to play in, alone or with friends.

Persona 4, PS2

I caved into temptation and started playing Persona 4, and was hugely impressed. As fantastic as Persona 3 is, Persona 4 takes a small step beyond it in nearly every respect. The steps may be small but the number of them adds up to a great difference; Persona 4 is one of the best RPGs I've played, so far. I'll be writing it up soon.

Valkyria Chronicles, PS3

This game really blew my mind, even more so than Little Big Planet. When I got myself a PS3, I got it for two reasons - it was the cheapest BluRay player available on the market at the time, and because I want to get Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 when it's released. If I'd known about it, Valkyria Chronicles would have been more than enough justification. It's a strategy roleplaying game, not a genre I've ever tried before, but now I think I've been missing out. I'm not going to rave about this one too much, it's my #1 priority for an Impression post; I'll save it for that, coming up soon.

Pain, PS3 Store

This is a pretty small game I was introduced to just last week. The idea is to flick a living crash test dummy of a character around a scene, causing as much destruction as you can. It sounds kind of brainless and silly, which it is, but it's amazingly addictive and satisfying to play. The base game comes with one scene and a couple of characters to throw around. Two additional scenes and a large number of extra characters are available for purchase on the Sony Online Store.

Games I Am No Longer Playing

Persona 3 FES, PS2.

  • I'm still sucked in by the story on this one, but sadly I reached a point where I could not defeat a boss encounter and don't have enough saved games to go back and level up to try again. I will start a new game in the future, manage the early game days better, and possibly play at Easy level just so I can get through the story more effectively.

Harvest Moon - Tree of Tranquility, Wii.

  • A good game, one I enjoy, but I'm too far off the target audience for it to hold my attention against the likes of Star Ocean, Persona 4 and Valkyria Chronicles.
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