PixlBit

This was a pretty good episode of the sony fanboy fanclub hour lol. Kidding, but it was good to see Julian beat the drum for the 360 a bit, I would have to agree that if Super Step was open to getting one of the last-gen consoles the 360 would be a great choice.

I still haven't bought any of the new consoles but I'd prefer to have them all if I could. Picking a single one of them and sticking with it for the whole generation seems like an extremely sad and limiting prospect. If I had to only get one console I'd rather just play all PC games instead.

Patrick should know that I played the Destiny demo that Bungie released and I got addicted to even the demo. I really didn't want to play Destiny at all, it seems terrible and everything about it seems like it's not my type of game, and I'm a huge Bungie/Halo fan from the beginning. Once they came out with the demo I gave it a shot anyways and I got sucked into the grind of it.

The encounters are super lame and uninspired, the level designs aren't anything special, and the mission designs are probably the most egregious examples of fluff and busy work in an FPS ever, but the second you come across other real players and do random crap together it changes everything. I didn't think I'd say that but it happened. Playing Destiny alone is terrible, but the fact that other players just seemlessly come in and out of your world makes things super fun. I find myself roaming around looking for other weird Destiny demo players like myself to play around with and there's a lot of dumb fun to have. Today I spent a couple minutes in The Tower kicking a soccerball around with strangers and it was great. I don't know why, I hate soccer, but it was great.

With all that said, I have no money for Destiny. I may find a chance to grab it later in the year though so.....I guess I more or less like Destiny? It's not even a good game but I totally want it.

Thanks for going so in depth on the backlogs subject, I was definitely curious where everyone was at with theirs. Since I don't have a new console I've been almost 100% focusing on my backlog. It's such a great time to be picking up 360 and PS3 games. They're super cheap, easy to find, and there's lot I haven't played yet.

Yeah, this is the time where I'm looking to pick up cheap games that I missed, as well as a couple extra controllers for the long haul. If the hardware ever gets cheap (surprising that 9 year old consoles are still over 200 bucks) I will buy a backup PS3 and 360. I missed out on getting a new PS2 when they were selling them for 100 bucks, and I regret it.

I have to say, I love the way that people seem to convince themselves that they like Destiny. But then again, I did that with Too Human, so I can't talk. :P

I didn't even think about grabbing extra controllers or hardware until you mentioned it, but now I'm seriously considering it. I have a big library for the 360 and I've been through three different red rings. Once it hasn't happened for a few years you start to feel complacent about it all. I definitely should do the same and try to grab hardware and controllers sometime when the price is just right.

Destiny is bad, definitely a huge bummer for somebody like me who has been waiting for the next Bungie IP, but if I can grab it at $20 or so this year I won't feel any buyer's remorse. There's at least that much fun to be had out of that sandbox they built.

I unironically love The Hobbit by Sierra on GC, as well as that disappointing Turok reboot that Touchstone put out in 2008 so I have no room to talk about liking bad games. I even kind of liked parts of Soldier of Fortune 3 and that's absolutely the worst FPS I've ever played.

What you also need to remember is that Destiny is ever-evolving.  At this point the game is failry different than the game that launched back in September and it will continue to change.  There was some leaked information as far as what Bungie;s plasn are with the game.  From that information, it looks as though the game could be drastically different by the end of 2015.

I understand the issues with Destiny, and I will not defend some of their design choices...  where the hell is couch co-op?  I think that the actual gameplay is solid, some of the best I have seen in recent memory. I ended up avoiding most of the hype around the game, and recieved what I expected from the game, solid gameplay with a paper-thin excuse of a story.

Sorry, I just can't seem to put the game down...  I do want to.

Destiny 2 definitely has all the potential to be something pretty great but the 1st game seems creatively and substantively to be a colossal letdown. The most disappointing thing is that there's some really solid gunplay, co-op, and really cool ideas like making a lot of gameplay elements and sociability be so seemless, but they really bunked just about everything else. They have a lot of solid core mechanics and rad ideas they can build on for Destiny 2 thankfully.

Destiny is definitely a disappointing game, but the demo still got me addicted and made me want to buy the game still. It's fun, but I'm under no impressions that addictability means I'm playing a good game. A lot of people get addicted to bad games, like Farmville for example lol. Once I get the game I'll still get quite a bit of fun out of Destiny despite its massive shortcomings I'm sure. It's a dumb mindless sandbox with some pretty fun things to do socially.

I read somewhere that Bungie made all versions of the game in house.  They wanted to make sure that everybody had the same experience, regardless of which console you played it on.  This leads me to believe that any sequel will be amazing.  They will no longer be shackled by the old hardware and will be able to make the game everybody was expecting.

There are some other things that I would like to talk about on this subject, but I think that I best save them for a proper blog, or better yet, a BaD blog.

You're getting in on BaD this year? Awesome, there's a lot of people who seem pretty excited for it.

I'll be super interested to see where Destiny 2 goes with its structure and scope. I wonder if they'll heed the widespread criticism of the base game and make sure more content is in the shipping game, and if they'll make any significant changes to things like mission structure. I don't expect Destiny 2 to be a huge leap in design choices, but I hope they'll iron a lot of the kinks out and expand on the good ideas they actually have.

I played the demo on 360 and the game looks pretty slick and performs well. It looks stunning on next gen and still peforms well from what I've seen. I'd like to see what they do when they're solely focusing on X1 and PS4.

I ... hated Boyhood. I did know about the 12 years thing and was hyped for it, but it just did not captivate me for its run time. It had great moments, but it was a bit too "real," in that it kind of meandered. Well ... more than kinda. Not gonna spoil anything, but for once I agreed with the Red Letter Media review. I do think I'd have liked it more if focus had stayed on the parents. I really did not like that kid, especially in the restaurant scene where in real life he'd have been fired. I enjoyed Bernie, which was filmed in Carthage next to where I go to college in Nacogdoches. Surprisingly, I wasn't crazy about Dazed and Confused, despite going to high school in Texas, albeit a Catholic one.

As for consoles, Casey is right that I don't have an old console. I wouldn't mind one, but Steam has most of the games I was wanting to play there and once I get my 360 controller and my PC hooked up to my HDTV, I get a similar enough experience that I don't feel the need for an older gen console. 

But the thing that sucks is that you indeed cannot predict where new IPs go, which is the main deciding factor beyond controllers. Maybe they were using a PS3 controller at the GameStop I was at? I don't think so though. And I don't have a family, but I am the type to buy only four games a year. however, when I have a console, I tend to like renting a TON, which would mean I'd want a steady stream to try out via GameFly. Oh well. I'll figure this out eventually. lol

Fun fact: Dazed and Confused was filmed at my middle school. I saw it for the first time a couple years ago, and it was surreal to see those classrooms and hallways and know exactly where the scenes were taking place. Also weird knowing that Ben Affleck was hanging out in a parking lot that I walked through every day!

I forget about the PC master race stuff. I have a new laptop now and might actually try to play Skyrim and Witcher 2 on it because it's a lot beefier than the one I have been using, but console gaming is where it's at for me. I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of my 360, but this entire weekend has been a PS4 binge thanks to blu rays, Netflix, and Saint Row IV: Re-Elected Edition.

Blu Ray is another deciding factor for me believe it or not. As you can tell, I do love my movies. 

"I ... hated Boyhood"

You just broke my heart Joe.... (i'm just kidding btw).

Well then you're not gonna want to hear what RedLetterMedia had to say about it ... 

I kind of get the feeling that even though Boyhood's getting all this praise, in a few years no one will talk about it or remember it. Just like they did with The King's Speech and The Artist. Either way, all I care about of movies from last year is The Lego Movie is the greatest thing ever.

Yeah, I wasn't AS big a fan of Lego Movie as everyone else, but I did like it. I think my favorite from this last year might have been Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, actually. Wouldn't have expected that, but here we are. I'd have to look again though, I forget what all I saw (not much).

So, I watched a 4 man speedrun race of Super Metroid last year.  It was awesome, and made me feel very inadequate as far as my Super Metroid skills were concerned.  I had been working on a Metroid Fusion speedrun a couple of years ago.  It was quite a bit of fun.  My best time for Fusion had been 80 or so minutes and I was hoping to get down to 75 or less.  I was kicking as on my last run, but skipped one too many energy tanks, and was having issues getting past one of the sequences where SA-X chases you.

I thought there was something else I wanted to say...  I can't remember.

It would be fun to try and go back and see how I fare with some of the older games. I was total crap at games as a kid, and it has been very gratifying as a so-called "old man" (pfft) and beat Megaman 2 without using a continue, or finally beat Gremlins 2 on NES. Take that, 7 year old me!

Julian, I think the "arms" game you were talking about is Thousand Arms.  I remember it being some sort of dating sim in an RPG.

It was actually Metal Saga. I get it confused with Thousand Arms and Metal Arms all the time because it was kind of a late PS2 release. I posted a pic on my twitter. The ad was fantastic.

HAA HAA HAAA! No way dude!

In that case, I ought to be really ashamed of myself because I have Metal Saga still brand new sitting in the shrinkwrap. I got it based on a recommendation from the clerk at my local (now defunct) brick & mortar game store.  He knew I loved RPGs and told me to definitely pick up Metal Saga because it was pretty interesting.  I seem to remember it getting good reviews back in the day.

This was also around the time where I realized that, as much as I love RPGs...I had too many to play, and kinda burned out.  9 years later...still haven't played the game.  But I just might now.