It's (nearly) May 2007, and your PS2 STILL isn't dead.

the best MLB game on PS2 to date

Well I got God of War and, on a whim, Okami. GoW hasn't blown me away, feels like a pretty standard hack 'n' slash to me, and the button mashing could become v tiresome. Okami, well it annoyed me with its 20 mins of play-free exposition, and it still feels like an extended tutorial, but it could be a grower.

i love tutorials, it often feels like the only part of the game where the people who made the game are actually thinking and caring about you. maybe that's why i like Ico so much, it's like one long, ever-more-difficult tutorial

Tracer as I understand Odin Sphere is less of an RPG and more of a side-scrolling beat em up with a few RPG elements.

Yeah Will, it's only an RPG as far as exp points and such, but even that isn't handled in a conventional way. You get HP exp for eating food and weapon exp for killing enemies and absorbing their life force, that's it. And there's an alchemy system, but it's pretty simple. Everything else is straight up action.

More about the food: I think ILG would be interested in hearing about the SHEEP SEEDS. You can plant a seed that sprouts into a plant bearing ACTUAL SHEEP, then you have to chase down the sheep and kill them to get some meat on a bone. You can eat the meat and throw the bone at an enemy.

You can also find chicken eggs that will hatch if you drop them, then you feed the chick three seeds and it will turn into a full grown chicken which you can kill and eat and chuck the bones at fules just like the sheep.

There are more conventional seeds, berries and fruit and such, and all of these are grown by letting them absorb that enemy life force (called Phozon) instead of drawing it into your weapon. You can take all of these ingredients, the meat, fruit, berries and herbs (along with Mandragoras that squeak when you walk over them on the ground, you jump on the spot that squeaks and then kill the fucker, they're mostly used in alchemy) and take them to a resturant where they will make you dishes with tons of exp and HP bonuses.

GrimGrimoire on the way, Persona 3 pre-ordered. I'm gonna milk this PS2 for all it's worth.

I think ico sucks. I am alone in this, I know!

-- kv_nol, Friday, 18 May 2007 16:26 (Friday, 18 May 2007 16:26)

Fucking ico. Tried it again last night. So boring and fiddly. I hate it almost as much as Kingdom of Hearts that I got free with PS2 originally.

Growlanser V: Heritage of War getting a mad limited release, gonna preorder my copy as soon as possible... I love me some Growlanser garbage. August 28th, woo!

I've never played one of those games, what are they like?

haha marmot I got the FFXII collector's edition used with the guide for $25

lay off the haterade for a couple weeks and you might even enjoy it! :D

Guitar Hero Eighties is pretty lame, although it was really fun to play "Police Truck" and "Los Angeles". I'm already finished with the thing and it's only been a few days.

Yeah totally :(

It seems as if they didn't quite realize that in a game that doesn't come bundled with a guitar and therefore has no first-time players, "expert" should be really, really fucking hard.

I breezed through it without a fail, and I suck at this game! I want guitar hero to end up all mentally difficult and beatmaniesque!

If you breezed through Expert you definitely don't suck at the game. I can't beat the Extreme song on Expert. :( That and "Jordan" on GH2 are the only songs I haven't been able to beat.

I actually thought it was cool that they introduced some new techniques (the fast 1 finger to 3 finger transfers on "What I Like About You", the green-orange chord, quick transitions from green-red-blue to green-yellow-blue (for instance), etc. But once I got used to it, they weren't so bad. "What I Like About You" on Expert totally destroys my wrist, though!

I am trying to five-star everything on Hard and Expert. I'm one star away on Hard (fucking Extreme again), and have five stars on all but 7 songs on Expert.

the last Fire Pro Wrestling game is getting a US and possibly Euro release, y'know

marmot: the growlanser games are pretty cool, it's like a tactical rpg or whatever, except you move in lines instead of on grids, and it's quasi real-time... like, everyone is moving simultaneously, but you can pause to input moves and such. each attack/spell/etc has a recharge time before you can walk or attack or whatever again. it's really good, but at a certain point, at least for me, growlanser 3 got MEGA hard due to one particular mission involving a rotting floor.

and yeah, new fire pro wrestling game = get in my belly plz.

is shadow hearts covenant good? i always hear insanely good things.

persona 3 has 87 on metacritic, which is mindblowing for a non-final-fantasy rpg, imo.

okami, FFXII, FFX, and DQ8 are the only (currently) higher-rated RPGs over Persona 3. Now, to be fair, the numbers are a bit inflated because the only people who have probably reviewed it are either fans of the series, interested enough to actually put up a pre-release review, or both. It'll probably dip in a month... but still. It's above both Kingdom Hearts games, and those are pretty beloved by the critic community.

I never really thought of Okami as a RPG but I guess that's true!

shin megami tensei and stuff is like too japanesey for me

like, just outside my venn diagram

although I did just remember I made this for some reason
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/112/307746132_f5dcb91f88_o.png

yeah but you just bought FFXII, you'll be cosplaying Vaan in no time.

it's a slippery slope.

I'm back on a little ps2 kick right now. With most games running in the 10-20 USD range - they seem a lot more appealing than the sixty dollar stuff coming out on the new systems. Honestly - I'm not sure if any game I've paid sixty dollars for has given me sixty dollars worth of entertainment (except maybe Orange Box). I like being able to just try whatever out - tho it's too bad a few of the ps2's more interesting looking games have gone out of print (Ico!).

It's a little funny that even though I've had a ps2 for a long while (ever since the slim version came out, whenever that was exactly), I never bought too many games for it, but now that it's on it's last legs, it's really seeming like for me, its time has arrived & my library is growing (rapidly).

Oh - do you have any specific recommendations of out-of-print ps2 games that I should definitely try to track down sooner rather than later?

I finished a night degree in June (October), and now I'm catching up on 3-4 years of PS2 games I never got around to buying/playing. This summer will be insane.

THE NIELSEN COMPANY ISSUES TOP TEN U.S. LISTS FOR 2007
Video Game Console Usage
April-November 2007

Rank / Console / Usage Minutes %

1 PlayStation 2 42.2
2 Xbox 13.9
3 Xbox 360 11.8
4 GameCube 7.1
5 Wii 5.5
6 PlayStation 3 2.5
7 Other 17.1
Source: Nielsen Games

Note: Data from April through Nov 2007. Usage Minutes % is the percent of all measured console minutes. ‘Other’ consists of any other console systems found in the home.

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=23756

Persona 4 has been cancelled for the ps3, will be coming out for ps2 instead.

dragon quest X to appear on the SNES

chrono ditchdigger slated for release as a dreamcast title

"metal gear: thick snake moan" set to debut on symbian handsets, will eventually roll out to a multiplatform java applet

Midway to bid on radio spectrum for Mortal Kombat VII: Wireless Babality, allowing instant shitty gameplay with anyone in the world, lag-free

I picked up Castle Shikigami 2 over the weekend. For about ten bucks, it seems like a pretty great vertical shooter! I think it may be out of print right now(?), but it shouldn't be too hard to find. The graphics are also really sharp - maybe some of the cleanest I've seen on a ps2 game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQVi-vds1hw&feature=related

it's nearly february 2009 and your PS2 still isn't fkn dead!!

I mean, I think persona 4 is the only AAA title coming out in the near-term but the back catalogue of odin sphere, grimgrimoire, breath of fire: dragon quarter, yakuza 2, zone of enders 2, etc is keeping me v.occupied at the moment

annoying that some of the most covetous titles are really creeping up in price now tho: MGS3 subsistence, ar tonelico, wild arms 5 are all edging towards £40/50 on ebay : //

i got a hdloader hooked up & am back in PS2land. so many good games! still obsessed with Persona 3.

is the hdloader thing any good? do you need a chipped ps2 to run it (or can you do it using swap magic?) where do you get a ps2 chipped? can you bonk mitsuru in persona 3?!

doesn't it force most games into 4:3?

oh, I totally misunderstood what hdloader was! it's the thing tht lets you run games off a HDD rather than the thing that forces non-480p supporting PS2 games into 480p!!

In North America (and in Japan too) last year they released a collection of all three Metal Gear Solid games that's still in print for 30 bucks - surprised to read that didn't come out in the UK. Pretty essential stuff.

I do find it extremely weird that game publishers don't do a better job at keeping their old games in print. I can't quite understand it - it's like throwing away easy money. I wish the games industry took its history a little more seriously. You should be able to buy most every significant old game, they way you can with old music or movies, without resorting to the collector's market or emulation / piracy.

can you bonk mitsuru in persona 3?!

u can date her

no chipping, just a network adaptor & the hdloader disc (and a compatible hard drive, obv). luckily i only had to buy the disc. loading times a lot quicker, no fannying around with discs. works great! don't know about senpai bonking, think i read somewhere that you can go on a date with Elizabeth though! haha.

jeff, interesting that the three games collection includes subsistence (which is what I really want, just for the full camera); I have swap magic but I'm reticent about opening another PS2 (I duffed my fat one doing that)

I am pretty early into persona 3, talk of dating mitsuru is pretty premature

it has to be her tho, no yakuri for me ^_^

i'd like to fuck around wit the hd loader if only for the quicker loadtimes but it seems kind of expensive since id have to but the hard drive and the ethernet adapter

You should be able to buy most every significant old game, they way you can with old music or movies, without resorting to the collector's market or emulation / piracy.

It should be easier, since you don't have form purists, everything is already 1s and 0s!

mana khemia being localised

devil summoner 2 ltd. edn.p announced

anyway play ar tonelico 2?