I'm starting this thread for people to catalog games they're excited about for this year and maybe present some info for others. With gamestop having a 25% off coupon that works on preorders for orders over $100, good for the rest of the month, I'd like to know more games I should preorder now.



Alan Wake

4/11/2010 3:38:19 PM

I'm also adding a gamertag list for psn and xbl to the thread:
[PSN]
smoothcrim packpower21
Shrike shriket
Mr E Nigma DerekL
needlesmcgir NeedlesMcGirk
baonest K-Nigs
FanatiK FlashFlooder
goalielax goalielax
Arab13 Cainius
BigMan157 h00th00t
Golovko Golovko
Amk772 Kahnquerer
Money_Jones Money_Jones
Dammit100 dammit100
Dave w0lfatncsu
scotieb24 scotieb24
dannydigtl dannydigital
guitarguy guitarguy316
traub traub
Nate2010 NATE_DoGGG
packboozie NCSUBoozie
peakseeker Wolfblazer
philihp philihp
Lucky13 lucky13
SoundBoy4 soundboy4
CalliPHISH angeredcopasetic
BoobsR_gr8 ngaplz
RawWulf RawWulf
Shrike ShrikeT
coppertop redwolf222
Smath74 Smath74
eleusis goiterjoe
rosschilen rosschilen
b_rimes CVandtherailers
Jeepin4x4 MikeMayhem187
AxlBonBach dinodunksuit
The Dude SgtSobchak
kdawg(c) cadinkis
moron ironmanncsu
Wolfman Tim headphase82
Mattallica poohgrenade
skedmond soopascubasteve
whotboy hiswhiteness
Fry xLionhart
Specter skyfire3000
ViolentMAW Geek_USA_3
morpheus647 ChaosJester
dweedle go2hellCarolina
ShinAntonio DarkVendetta
Slave Famous RickyRopes
katiencbabe katiencbabe84
BluBalls iStoleurName
BJCaudill21 ElbowDeep
Rat Soup PoopCat
BDubLS1 ncsuwxguy
logo logo7
bkfemme msriflegirl
Zel zelnasty420
Dynasty2004 dspruill04
bobster ncsubobster
robster rttaylor619


[XBL]
smoothcrim = packpower21
Byrn Stuff = byrn stuff
Azaka = plzdieirl
Slave Famous Squadoosh
AstralAdvent Wallz1441
NyM410 nym410
TreeTwista10 Akwatic
Golovko ktk golovko
DoeoJ DoeoJ
tracer saturn1118
Azaka PlzDieIRL
Pikey Pikey412
wahoowa daBEANnHCL
Slave Famous Squadoosh
GKMatt ac1dburn79
BigT716 iNth
KyleAtState donk3y rid3r
spydyrwyr spydyrwyr
dubcaps snv
dFshadow shadowdenial
skeeter herpgonasflaids
Axelay Silent Scope EX
Mr. Joshua RationalSolid
The Gringo Beer Tundra
jdbyrd onenastybyrd

[Edited on April 11, 2010 at 3:58 PM. Reason : .]

4/11/2010 3:56:50 PM

see, i think castlevania is going to be precisely a god of war clone

but i'll play the shit out of it anyhow

4/11/2010 4:56:29 PM

Alan Wake seems like it should have been coming out for decades.

4/11/2010 5:52:22 PM

I'm also adding a gamertag list for psn and xbl to the thread:
[PSN]
smoothcrim packpower21
Shrike shriket
Mr E Nigma DerekL
needlesmcgir NeedlesMcGirk
baonest K-Nigs
FanatiK FlashFlooder
goalielax goalielax
Arab13 Cainius
BigMan157 h00th00t
Golovko Golovko
Amk772 Kahnquerer
Money_Jones Money_Jones
Dammit100 dammit100
Dave w0lfatncsu
scotieb24 scotieb24
dannydigtl dannydigital
guitarguy guitarguy316
traub traub
Nate2010 NATE_DoGGG
packboozie NCSUBoozie
peakseeker Wolfblazer
philihp philihp
Lucky13 lucky13
SoundBoy4 soundboy4
CalliPHISH angeredcopasetic
BoobsR_gr8 ngaplz
RawWulf RawWulf
Shrike ShrikeT
coppertop redwolf222
Smath74 Smath74
eleusis goiterjoe
rosschilen rosschilen
b_rimes CVandtherailers
Jeepin4x4 MikeMayhem187
AxlBonBach dinodunksuit
The Dude SgtSobchak
kdawg(c) cadinkis
moron ironmanncsu
Wolfman Tim headphase82
Mattallica poohgrenade
skedmond soopascubasteve
whotboy hiswhiteness
Fry xLionhart
Specter skyfire3000
ViolentMAW Geek_USA_3
morpheus647 ChaosJester
dweedle go2hellCarolina
ShinAntonio DarkVendetta
Slave Famous RickyRopes
katiencbabe katiencbabe84
BluBalls iStoleurName
BJCaudill21 ElbowDeep
Rat Soup PoopCat
BDubLS1 ncsuwxguy
logo logo7
bkfemme msriflegirl
Zel zelnasty420
Dynasty2004 dspruill04
bobster ncsubobster
robster rttaylor619
aph319 gilbertssyndrome


[XBL]
smoothcrim = packpower21
Byrn Stuff = byrn stuff
Azaka = plzdieirl
Slave Famous Squadoosh
AstralAdvent Wallz1441
NyM410 nym410
TreeTwista10 Akwatic
Golovko ktk golovko
DoeoJ DoeoJ
tracer saturn1118
Azaka PlzDieIRL
Pikey Pikey412
wahoowa daBEANnHCL
Slave Famous Squadoosh
GKMatt ac1dburn79
BigT716 iNth
KyleAtState donk3y rid3r
spydyrwyr spydyrwyr
dubcaps snv
dFshadow shadowdenial
skeeter herpgonasflaids
Axelay Silent Scope EX
Mr. Joshua RationalSolid
The Gringo Beer Tundra
jdbyrd onenastybyrd

4/11/2010 6:12:36 PM

^XBL: tromboner950 = Dr Happiness

4/11/2010 6:13:22 PM

^
XBL: davidkunttu TJ Snooters

I'm pumped for Metroid Other M, as well as half your list.

Quote :

"Alan Wake seems like it should have been coming out for decades."

for real.

4/12/2010 11:31:47 AM

Quote :

"see, i think castlevania is going to be precisely a god of war clone but i'll play the shit out of it anyhow"

I'm sort of hoping that it'll be like the DS games with more interesting level design because it's 3D. I want to gain all sorts of swappable abilities and items.

[Edited on April 12, 2010 at 11:53 AM. Reason : .]

4/12/2010 11:53:40 AM

i guess i missed something....but why are there 4 Snakes?

4/12/2010 12:06:36 PM

they've been saying Alan Wake is coming out the last 3 years

4/12/2010 12:28:15 PM

Quote :

"i guess i missed something....but why are there 4 Snakes?"

no idea, but the story has been too confusing since mgs2. every time a new game comes out, it seems to contradict the previous games' story lines just to screw with you.

i'm assuming this is in the time of big boss? maybe, they had another cloning job kind of like Les Enfants Terribles with solid and liquid... only decades earlier and with exact copies

also, i thought raiden was supposed to be the main character in the next game. i want to do more naked cartwheels!

[Edited on April 12, 2010 at 12:50 PM. Reason : wait, this is just for psp? lame.]

4/12/2010 12:48:12 PM

the 4 snakes is because the game supposedly supports coop over wifi

4/12/2010 2:30:06 PM

XBL: Thunder Pack

4/12/2010 4:16:05 PM

Red Dead Redemption is going to be awesome.

4/14/2010 8:22:13 PM

xbl: th3federali

4/14/2010 8:27:47 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_in_video_gaming

4/14/2010 8:32:05 PM

eh, that page doesn't have any bias to shitty vs not

4/15/2010 6:33:16 PM

Quote :

""see, i think castlevania is going to be precisely a god of war clone but i'll play the shit out of it anyhow""

Actually there was a page about it in Playstation magazine around December that hinted to it following shadow of the collosus. Which is a huge deal to fans of the nostalgic PS2 title, cause it basically brings both epic boss battles with the inclusion of smaller ground skirmishes.


[Edited on April 15, 2010 at 7:31 PM. Reason : similar to god of war but not so linear]

4/15/2010 7:29:32 PM

just played a couple hours of splinter cell on my gf's 360. had a couple freezes in a row, now it consistantly rrod's. ah well, time for one with hdmi. this game is phenomenal, though. normal difficulty for a really good player feels like god-mode most of the time. with the mark/execute mechanic, I can pull off some crazy shit. realistic was doable but super hard. I ended up taking it down to normal just because the story was engrossing enough that I didn't want to access at the pace of realistic (too many deaths making level clearing slow).

4/15/2010 11:32:07 PM

I put in pre-orders:

Alan Wake
Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands
Portal 2
Singularity
Alpha Protocol
Crackdown 2
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Arkham Asylum 2 (2011)

<3 "25off" coupon code

4/17/2010 12:57:40 PM

all set for a year of owning a 360. I modded my hard drive and stuff a newegg 250gb in there. now all the games run off the hard drive and I don't have to have my volume at MAX to drown out the 360.

4/24/2010 9:10:16 AM

Here comes a new challenger!

4/26/2010 10:07:34 PM

bttt, did anyone play The Saboteur?

5/3/2010 1:44:42 PM

the game that's $20? mixed reviews on metacritic.

5/3/2010 5:03:38 PM

so I feel a little silly ordering all those games and forgetting the new Fallout, the new Spider-man, and a few others.

5/3/2010 5:15:21 PM

new codes comin soon my son.

[Edited on May 3, 2010 at 5:26 PM. Reason : 20used for 20% off used]

5/3/2010 5:24:04 PM

I also feel a little silly knowing I'm going to spend $400 on games next year. I buy one here or there and ignore a few of the other releases, but this time I just went all in.

[Edited on May 3, 2010 at 5:38 PM. Reason : $$]

5/3/2010 5:38:14 PM

Quote :

"bttt, did anyone play The Saboteur?"

I have. Very fun game. And only $20 now, of course.
It's got a lot of obvious flaws, and the 7 and 8 scores it's been getting are totally deserved, but none of the flaws are really of the sort that detract from how fun the game is to play.

5/3/2010 6:12:21 PM

25OFF
SAVER
25DEAL

all working on gamestop.com right now. 25% off all orders over $100, including preorders

5/11/2010 12:45:04 PM

http://kotaku.com/5536261/first-assassins-creed-brotherhood-details-slip-from-the-shadows

I think I might need to add AC3 and Fallout: New Vegas

5/11/2010 1:48:18 PM

Is AC2 worth picking up for 30 bucks? the first one got old after an hour of play so im not sure

5/11/2010 2:03:38 PM

I'd say so. The gameplay/missions are more varied, and the mysteries are more intriguing. I had a lot of fun just tracking down codexes and such.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/assassinscreed2?q=assassin's%20creed


[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 2:10 PM. Reason : .]

5/11/2010 2:06:59 PM

AC2 is a lot better than the first one. Much more variety, almost none of that sitting on benches bullshit. Worth playing through just to get all of davinci's loot, but don't expect to be doing every single side quest especially if you didn't like the first one. It can be as repetitive as you want. All in all the gameplay feels a lot more natural as far as the whole prince of persia aspect goes. Buildings are much more detailed and you can do shit like grabbing on to things if you fall, jumping vertically on walls etc. There are more weapons but each weapon in each class is more or less the same with more damage. Basically its like we were at regular saiyan and now its super saiyan, but this isn't like super saiyan 4 or that fusion bullshit from DB:GT


I'm AstralAdvent and i approved this message.

[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 2:28 PM. Reason : ]

5/11/2010 2:27:23 PM

alpha protocol is lookin REAL good
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/alphaprotocol/video/6258764

5/11/2010 7:23:19 PM

fusion was in dbz too

5/11/2010 7:25:22 PM

euro version of alan wake is already out with an 86 on metacritic

5/12/2010 11:12:23 AM

alan wake and red dead... can't decide which to play!!

5/18/2010 9:13:51 AM

alan wake is absolutely killin it. definitely a must buy. tried red dead free roam but no one was online. I guess everyone is doing 1 player first

5/21/2010 12:20:51 AM

i don't have an xbox but Alan Wake looks cool as shit.

5/21/2010 12:44:07 PM

I'm in the middle of episode three of Alan Wake, and I'm really eager to find out what's going on. I think my favorite parts have been the TV and Radio episodes. Also, flash bangs are cool as shit

5/22/2010 2:27:52 PM

I am just hoping they will announce Borderlands 2 soon.

5/23/2010 12:59:11 PM

Fuck, Alan Wake gets so good in episodes four and five. Oh man, I can't wait to finish this afternoon.



I didn't think this was all that bad until I turned on the TV inside the game and end up watching a Verizon ad.

[Edited on May 26, 2010 at 7:37 AM. Reason : .]

5/26/2010 7:36:56 AM

^^While on the subject of Borderlands...

I played Borderlands when it first came out. It lost all replay value quickly for me:

- I hit the level cap before I finished my 2nd play-through. Once I capped I didn't see much incentive to continue.
- Each character only has one "skill", the rest of the skills are all passive. So there are all of 4 skills in the game. There wasn't much incentive for me to go back and try out different builds because there's essentially one build per character. Two if you count deciding to pump up damage % with one weapon class as opposed to another.
- Kinda hard to quantify, but the item drop formula was off. It seemed like certain bosses always dropped the exact same things and drops were too plentiful. Sure, there were 800,000 potential kinds of pistols, but 99% of them were all the same. So it lost replay value when I knew what unique items I was going to get and roughly when to expect to get them. No surprise, no need to grind for items because there was never a lack.

Did any of the DLC or patches address any of this?

[Edited on May 26, 2010 at 9:56 AM. Reason : -]

5/26/2010 9:55:05 AM

5/26/2010 10:04:59 AM

^^yeah, I wish they made the level cap higher, and they also should have made it so you max out your level on the first playthrough. I see what you're saying about the weapons and passive skills, and hopefully they will address this in the presumed sequel. Still one of my favorite games for 360, and definitely the most fun I've had playing co-op in a long time.

As far as DLC goes, I couldn't tell you, I haven't downloaded any of them...I probably will if I decide to do another playthrough.

[Edited on May 26, 2010 at 1:01 PM. Reason : .]

5/26/2010 12:52:35 PM

^^southpeak is the old game studio from SAS

5/26/2010 1:06:25 PM

Quote :

"- I hit the level cap before I finished my 2nd play-through. Once I capped I didn't see much incentive to continue."

If you finish Playthrough 2, you unlock an unofficial Playthrough 3 in which every enemy in the game is balanced around level 50 (so every boss is at least level 51, ect).

Also, the Secret Armory DLC raised the level cap to 61 and added a new and genuinely very hard final boss (Crawmerax the Invincible, level 64 enemy on all playthroughs).

Quote :

"There wasn't much incentive for me to go back and try out different builds because there's essentially one build per character."

Not at all...
-The sniper had three distinct paths: Pistols, Sniping, and Hawk-Using
At end game, this merges into two distinct paths: Guns and Hawk-Using
Those two paths would have completely different playing styles. A gun user would forget he even has the special ability button there because his hawk is useless, while a hawk-user only needs guns to occupy the time that the hawk is on cooldown.
-Brick had a handful of endgame paths... he could max out punching with some tanking, max out taking with some punching, or put points into the explosives and guns path (which was unfortunately near-useless compared to his punching talents)
-The siren I know less about
-And the Soldier had similar paths of ability-centric or gun-centric, but with more subtleties (survival through healing/health, survival through shields and damage reduction, or damage)

Hell, that's if you take the extremely limited view of only seeing the skills/talents as game-changing. The guns you equip have an enormous effect on your playstyle. Each different weapon in your 4 slots is effectively a different 'spec' that you can switch between (assuming you use the setup of shotgun/sniper/fully-auto/miscellaneous).

Quote :

"Sure, there were 800,000 potential kinds of pistols, but 99% of them were all the same"

Virtually every item in the game that was not Purple or Orange was only there to sell and make you more money. Even most purples were worthless, in terms of actually using them. I actually liked this, it made it all the more special when I found something which upgraded the thing I was already using. I'd actually say the flaw is in not having enough drops, as many players could go 10 or more levels without trading some weapons out, which starts to make things a bit stale after a while.

Also, it just so happens that pistols are the worst example you could have picked for this... they're actually the most varied weapons in the game. With the right 4 pistols equipped, a character can have the equivalent of a sniper, a shotgun, an SMG, and a mid-range rifle (and most of them will be more powerful than the weapons they are filling in for). I actually had this 4-pistol setup on my sniper for a while.

Quote :

"So it lost replay value when I knew what unique items I was going to get and roughly when to expect to get them."

Unlike Diablo II, bosses in Borderlands were not the main source of loot. Mass groups of enemies and chests were. Besides that, virtually all of the unique boss drops sucked massive dick anyway (seriously, a boss's unique purple was often worse than a decent non-unique green item... practically the only one that was even situationally useful was Sledge's shotgun, just as a quick way to heal teammates when playing as Roland), so I always had incentive to go out into the world randomly slaying things in the hopes of finding the great items. The way to actually upgrade your loot was to run around between known chest-holding areas and hope you got badass enemies to fight along the way. And you never knew what to expect with chests.

As for replayability... Mostly at level 50 (playthrough 3, after beating the final boss), before getting the DLCs, if I started the game up I'd usually only teleport to one particular area just to fight a massive group of antlions because it was fun as hell (there's one spot where it spawns at least 50+ of them before stopping, with a lot of badasses mixed in)... the chests and stuff just happened because, hell, I was on the way and in the area, so may as well grab them. Before I knew it I had 20+ orange guns just sitting around in my inventory (I wasn't selling them unless they were near-duplicates), so I started wanting to find more, and that became a sort of incentive.

Another DLC mention: If you're stuck on the idea of boss-based loot runs, Crawmerax in the Secret Armory DLC fills the whole goddamned screen with loot when you beat him. Tons of stuff, and loads of that stuff is orange. Granted, there's not much replayability left by the time you're 61, Crawmerax beaten, and half your inventory is orange loot, but it's fun getting there. And you can always go back and do it again on another character.

Hell, even then you can find some replayability if you're the sort of person who can say "well, I'm max level, but I'm still not really maxed-out until I can find the absolute best four weapons in the game and equip them"... I'm not that sort of person, though, and I doubt you are too.

Quote :

"No surprise, no need to grind for items because there was never a lack."

Eh, maybe you were just equipping whatever you found (or even worse, equipping boss loot), but I found usable items to be fairly rare and worth grinding for. The only thing that could have upgraded my green Cold Torment pistol was another Cold Torment pistol (be it higher level, or blue, or purple)... the only thing that can upgrade a Masher is another Masher or a shotgun with 90+ Accuracy, virtually the only thing that can upgrade the Hellfire SMG is a better Hellfire SMG, etc.

Once you got to the point where an item is completely unusable unless it is one of a relatively small group of good items, the minor differences between two similar weapons start to become huge distinctions (though some of the diversity is taken away once your only two item categories become "The Best" and "Vendor Trash")... personally I hit that point around level 36-40 on most of my characters, so I'm not sure how you managed to feel the way you did all the way to the end of the game/max level.



...Wow, this post ended up being way longer than I originally expected.

5/26/2010 2:16:32 PM

My experience was a bit different. I played the sniper and by the time reached lvl 50 I had enough skills to max everything that seemed interesting in the hawk and sniper trees. I guess you could go back and pick hawk and pistol, sniper and pistol, or even just completely max everything in one tree but I didn't see the point. Most of the passive skills didn't interest me.

Like I said, it felt like each character had one skill. +2% damage to weapon class x or +1 ammo regen for weapon class y didn't appeal to me, at least enough to merit a separate play-through to lvl 50 to see what differences it could make.

Maybe pistols is a bad example. I don't remember. I haven't played it since the month it came out, so the similarities in weapons comment is based on a lasting impression. The game advertised millions of unique weapons, but they count a sniper rifle with 1.2x zoom as unique when compared with one that has 1.3x zoom. Different? Yes. Different enough to hold my interest? No. Not millions of weapons, 6 weapons that each have 6 modifiers where each modifier has a range of values. Millions of permutations, 6 weapons. Just an opinion - most of the weapons were the same for me, which killed my interest in grinding it out for better weapons.

Maybe it was a lack of truly unique weapons that were substantially rare and better than the orange weapons. Maybe they were there and I never found any.

I felt like I had seen absolutely everything the game had to offer very early on. Played one character to death, played the others enough to get a sense of what their one skill was, then quit. Meh, different strokes for different folks.


[Edited on May 26, 2010 at 4:23 PM. Reason : -]

5/26/2010 4:18:37 PM

Quote :

"+2% damage to weapon class x or +1 ammo regen for weapon class y didn't appeal to me, at least enough to merit a separate play-through to lvl 50 to see what differences it could make. "

You could actually do a complete respec for just a little bit of money at any of the little checkpoint/teleport stations. No need to replay.

5/27/2010 7:47:03 AM

Quote :

"Hell, even then you can find some replayability if you're the sort of person who can say "well, I'm max level, but I'm still not really maxed-out until I can find the absolute best four weapons in the game and equip them"... I'm not that sort of person, though, and I doubt you are too. "

I haven't played in a while, but when I used to do crawmerax runs with people I ended up getting some of the best weapons in the game. I have the best liquid orion (which IMO is both the best weapon and sniper in the game), the best aries (my favorite pistol), the best hellfire (IMO the best SMG), the best caustic pearlessent rifle (forgot what it's called), the best shield in the game, and several amazing class mods.

btw, best combo for crawmerax runs to my experience is a support gunner (for ammo regen), 2 catalyst (it's nearly impossible to die as a catalyst if you and at least one other have a good mod, whenever you're about to die you can phasewalk away and regen health), and a scavenger. gives you the best loot and the most good loot. keep your standard 4 weapon setup as a hellfire (for the green worms), either an orion, aries, or that eridian shotty (thunder?) for the skinny bastards, caustic whatever, and then a sniper for the criticals to take down the big bastard. I usually went with hellfire, orion, aries, and either my caustic shotty or a defiler (depending on what I had on me at the time, shotty works better if you don't have a support gunner just because then you don't split your revolver ammo)

5/27/2010 8:13:09 AM