Atlus finally got the preorder bonuses to Amazon, which means they could finally get the bonuses to the unhappy preorderers such as I. It was kinda worth the wait. Because of it, we don’t have to deal with the material being bent to conform with the DS box.

This makes me wish Romantic Fool did more art for games… and more art non-featuring the creepy, injured one-eyed girl. I rather like his art featuring …uh… melons instead, if you know what I mean. Anyway, feel free to take a peek at the melon filled mini-poster below, as well as the reversible cover for the game.

Romantic Fool

You all might as well be trying the demo for the DJ Max Portable 2. For those who have never heard of the DJ Max series, you can think of it like Beatmania or something. The demo is actually pretty freakin hard XD. Took me about 3-4 days to beat the demo, which is only about half of one of the songs… It’s actually deceptively hard, since it’s only in 5 button mode…

You can get the demo, and find out how to install it, here. Yea, it was released over a year ago, but oh well. You can see an interview PM Studios did with Siliconera about DJ Max Fever here.

Image courtesy of Moai

My PS3 is dying. No two if and or buts about it. I’ve been experiencing graphical glitches and auto-shutdowns for a while now, but I was able to stomach it. Now, it’s gotten so bad that some games just up and freeze during gameplay. I made the call to SCEA and I’m sending it in for repairs, quite possibly never seeing the same unit again.

Farewell, my 60GB PS3. I will miss you and your backwards compatibility (I god, I hope that they can fix you, or at least send one of those 80GB units with BW compatibility.) You were a good soldier.

EDIT: I guess this means more manga posts from now on, amirite?

Well, after playing episode 7 and watching the preview for episode 8, I can now safely say two things: this game is getting pretty scary and I have no idea what is going on anymore. Unlike most of the other episodes, this episode is purely confined to Howard Wright’s perspective. I’m still wondering how he stays alive…. The rest of the post is full of spoilers.

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I got the whole pack of 12 episodes of Siren when they first came out and finally finished up to episode 6. This game is pretty creepy. Not in the way most horror movies are, where they try to scare you using loud sudden noises and actions. It’s more of the fact that you’re powerless/weaponless for a good part of the game and that the Shibito can easily kill you. That, plus the somewhat creepy heartbeat feeling coming form the Dual Shock 3.

One of the things I really like about this game is its presentation. It seems like it is some kind of TV series. At the end of each episode, there’s always a TV-esque, next episode preview shown. This is kinda fitting because part of the cast was intending to record footage for some TV show in whatever village they are in.

Another nice touch is the archive. As you go along the story, you may get access to stuff such as certain IDs (from colleges usually) or the voicemail from a cellphone. The game more or less starts you out without any sort of backstory, which is somewhat confusing. I actually don’t know what’s up with the Shibito, either. I’m sure all of that is explained later. The archive, though, does explain why a great deal of the characters are in the town in the first place.

I won’t do an episode summary for each of these episodes, mainly because I don’t remember clearly what was in all of them. I’ll start doing mini-summaries for each of the episodes starting with Episode 7. Those will contain spoilers, so I would express caution when reading them.

Pixel Junk: Eden was finallyreleased today for all regions. The game is pretty simple, you go around (by jumping and swinging) in order to grow plants from seeds and to collect spectra. Actually, everything becomes crystal clear once you watch the videos. The point is, the game is awesome and only costs $10, get it

It seems that the third time isn’t a charm when it comes to the Xenosaga series. It seems as though they have trouble figuring out how to make a battle system that is actually fun… or at least not boring and slow. It’s really a shame, too, since that’s the only glaring flaw for the game. The plot is more or less what you would expect from a Xenosaga title, so there’s nothing really to talk about.

I’m not actually quite sure what exactly is wrong with Xenosaga’s battle system. The animations don’t last very long like some other RPGs. I think it actually has more to do with the sheer amount of HP the enemies seem to have compared to the amount of damage your characters are capable of doing. The battles seem more of a battle of attrition than anything else.

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Apparently, Atlus screwed up the Amazon preorders for Izuna 2. If you get your preordered game without the poster, don’t worry since they will be sending it at a later date (hopefully not too far in the future.) They ask that you resist the urge to look up how to construct molotov cocktails, advanced explosives, and other potentially anger-motivated instruments of revenge.

Sourc: Atlus forums.

I really didn’t believe it at first, but it appears as though Square Enix has decided to port Final Fantasy XIII to the 360 for the Western territories. It’s actually a shame for Westerners, though, since apparently development of the 360 version won’t start until the JP PS3 version is completed. Why is that a shame? Because S-E is committed to releasing the 360 and PS3 versions at the same time in the West. Oh well, them’s the breaks.

I’m currently in love with Hyadain’s videos. Hyadain takes old msuic from games and remixes them with lyrics. He does all of the voices for the characters (yes, even the female ones.) His original videos aren’t that great to look at, but some people like to make their own videos using his music, like the one above. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t distribute the mp3s of the music he makes, the songs are fairly entertaining.

If you want to see more of his videos (untranslated,) you can view his youtube profile here.

As opposed to just WiiWare as I originally thought. Even though I have a Wii, I’d rather use PSN to get this title. I have a slight preference of using real money as opposed to points. Oh, by the way, if you hadn’t heard before, Mega Man is back… in 8-bit form. You can watch some gameplay footage here.

Yep, 2.4 finally came yesterday night (as far as EST goes.) My, oh my, I’ve become such a whore. Only one of my games supports it so far, so I’ve been a bit limited. Oh, in-game XMB is nice too.