Personal Gaming Thread

[Brad Company]

Lol,those are awesome. The non-partisan takeaway is that demand for next-gen is real and strong. This holiday season will be huge.

On the other hand, MS is out of bullets. Does winning necessarily matter? Man, Halo 5 better be the shizzz.

Then again;

[BDSooner72]

Never cared for Halo, Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break are the only 2014 MS Exclusives I am interested in right now (not including exclusive indie titles like Below, which looks awesome). Project Spark was once on the list but the beta turned me off.

Will Sony win worldwide? Yes.
Will MS be successful enough to not pull a WiiU?  You betcha, the WiiU is the turd of this gen.

The Xbox One is outperforming the 360 by quite a bit in comparison to each systems first few months after launch and the Xbox One is doing so with the PS4 eating up sales, the 360 had no new consoles to compete against.  No doom and gloom here. 

Just offer a Kinectless model or drop the who thing to $399.  With only multiplatform games the next few months I do not expect to see much from MS until the Fall.  They better have one heck of an E3.

[BDSooner72]

Forgot to add...  Buy Trials Fusion! Support Red Lynx and the only motocross game worth a damn on consoles.

Do have some complains.  Hate the trick levels and the trick system as it is janky but fortunately there are only a few of them to deal with.  Get rid of the Panda (ATV) and stop making tracks that they are the only available thing to ride with. It controls like the Hindenburg and takes away from the skill set that makes Trials what it is.  Too few tracks and too many of those are beginner/easy/medium tracks.  We need double the hard tracks and a couple more extreme. Also, too few tracks and skill events to begin with.  I bought the Season Pass so it will be nice to have new official tracks pop up every so often. Online Multipayer, why the hell did you not launch with this? 

Just waiting for people to get rolling with the track editor to start adding new content.  One cool thing is that each track has 3 option obective to perform. Some things hidden, others are trying to beat the track with a specific bike. It adds to the longevity of each track.

[Jason]

I agree...the Xbox One will definitely not be another Wii U. It won't win in hardware sales against the PS4 but it will be far from a failure. I am waiting for them to start talking about how cloud computing will make the Xbox One even more powerful, which is really going to amount to nothing.

On a personal note, I'm playing the shit out of The Show. What I like the most is that while pitching, each at-bat against the CPU is a battle. I'll have to throw a minimum of 8 pitches per at-bat.

I also helped my 3-year-old son beat Lego Batman 2 on the DS. What's surprising is that he played about 70% of the game and I only had to help with 30%. He's playing through it a second time all by himself.

I have the Sly Cooper Trilogy and God of War 1 and 2 Collection ordered for the Vita, so I'll have no shortage of mobile gaming any time soon.

I'm passing on Trials Fusion and any other version of Trials...I have enough aggravation in my life already.

[Ted]

Are you using the quick counts at all?

[BDSooner72]

I'm passing on Trials Fusion and any other version of Trials...I have enough aggravation in my life already.

Game is a breeze until you get to the extreme levels. Oddly enough I am better on the hard and extreme tracks than I am on the 3 easier levels (leaderboard wise). My hands are actually shaking right now as I just finished all the extreme tracks in one setting. They can put some serious wear and tear on both your hands and left thumb.

I also helped my 3-year-old son beat Lego Batman 2 on the DS. What's surprising is that he played about 70% of the game and I only had to help with 30%. He's playing through it a second time all by himself.

Pretty sure when I was three I watched Sesame Street, broke most of my toys and pooped in my pants. Kudos to your youngest son.   

[BDSooner72]

Hardware numbers, minus Sony since they have not posted console numbers instead.

PS4: Best selling platform.
Xbox One: 311K
3DS: 159K (-30.9%)
Xbox 360: 111K
Wii U: 70K (+4.5%)
Wii: 28K
Vita: 10K (-69.7%)
PSP: 5K


Maybe they should consider not posting those handheld numbers either, Vita has been horrendous for some time now.  Another kudos to your youngest for not just being good at games, at such an early age but knowing which handheld to play.

[Brad Company]

Never cared for Halo, Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break are the only 2014 MS Exclusives I am interested in right now (not including exclusive indie titles like Below, which looks awesome). Project Spark was once on the list but the beta turned me off.

Will Sony win worldwide? Yes.
Will MS be successful enough to not pull a WiiU?  You betcha, the WiiU is the turd of this gen.

The Xbox One is outperforming the 360 by quite a bit in comparison to each systems first few months after launch and the Xbox One is doing so with the PS4 eating up sales, the 360 had no new consoles to compete against.  No doom and gloom here. 

Just offer a Kinectless model or drop the who thing to $399.  With only multiplatform games the next few months I do not expect to see much from MS until the Fall.  They better have one heck of an E3.

Obviously,not a WiiU deal,but it will be interesting to see what MS does. No-one would have predicted a $50 price cut 4 months in and the complete giveaway of their killer app. These reactions are without precedent in this space. This isn't 2006 and MS is a different company now. The market has changed as well and consoles face more competition.

Now will the "Kinect is Xbone,Xbone is Kinect" mantra continue? They've probably built so many of the damn things that not throwing them in won't save them any money.
Another price cut so early in the life cycle could send a message to potential buyers as well as developers and publishers. A message of panic and a kind of stink around the brand that may be damaging long-term. Having hundreds of thousands of these things sitting in stores is bad too. The pallets stacked with them everywhere looks bad,especially to casuals and undecideds.

[Jason]

Are you using the quick counts at all?

No. I'm in no hurry to get through my games and the pitcher/batter battle is so good this year that you're doing yourself a disservice by using quick counts imo.

The main reason I don't have to rush through games is because I can pause my game and put the Vita in sleep mode if something comes up and just pick up where I left off later. It's something I didn't even think about when I bought the Vita, but it's become such an important feature to me. For example, I started a game against the Pirates last night before bed and have it paused and in sleep mode until I can continue playing it later today.

[Ted]

Can't you just save and exit and later reload the game?  In 13 on the 3 you can do that.  I don't think it's a negative that you can put it in sleep mode just curious if they didn't include the save mid game feature in Vita, or it would be bad for me if it wasn't in 14 on the 3.  On the mainland this weekend and thinking of getting 14 for the 3  since I feel a 4 purchase is still on the distant horizon for us.

[Jason]

The Vita doesn't offer that option on 14 and I never noticed it on 13, so I'll have to check. What's nice is that pause and sleep mode works with any game.

[Jason]

I found out last night that there are mid-game saves in the Vita version of MLB 14. I've been playing exhibition games only at all the stadiums until the first patch was released and there's no mid-game saves in that mode. I started a new playoff series last night and the option to save my game was there.

[Jason]

On the mainland this weekend and thinking of getting 14 for the 3  since I feel a 4 purchase is still on the distant horizon for us.

Did you ever pick up MLB 14?

[Ted]

I did.  I've messed with it a bit, mostly the RTTS part and then some exhibitions with quick counts on with both fast play and then full broadcast because I wanted to get a feel for how it played with the different options turned on.  I already noticed additional animations and was particularly impressed with how the AI played balls of the wall in the outfield.  A minor addition that I really liked was the total pitch count addition in the score overlay.  Even though I'm anxious to transition to 14 I didn't want to mess with franchise until I finished my current season in 13, which concluded tonight with a 5th game loss in the ALDS against Toronto.  I battled back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the series and then lost 6-5 at home in the 5th game.  It was one of the best video baseball games I've ever played.  Toronto ended up losing to the Dodgers in 7 in the WS.

Now that that's over (in the year 2023) I'm ready to start again with 14 and sim the seasons while playing the postseasons if I make it.

Edit: I find the RTTS mode incredibly mundane and repetitive.

[Jason]

What fielding and batting modes do you use? I use button fielding and zone batting. I also use the "Normal" swing all the time and still hit plenty of home runs.

Yes, I noticed how much better the AI plays balls off the outfield wall immediately in this year's game. It's a small change that makes a big difference...at least to me.