What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Avaitor]

I have family over, and they surprised me with $100. I used that to help pay off my 360!

Now keep in mind that right now, you have to pay $50, and you'll get a $20 Visa card rebate after you fill something in online. I'll use that to help buy a game or two, like the DMC Collection, which aught my eye for only $15.

And I also got the $5 insurance. I didn't forget about the red rings of death.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Cool!

That reminds me of another suggestion: Renegade OPs.

For the Jackal fan in all of us.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Is it an older model or a slim edition? Either way, as long as your X360 was manufactured after 2007, then you should be good. My first console broke down on me, but I got a free replacement in 2008 thanks to the warranty, and it has never given me any problems since. Well, actually it occasionally will not run certain DLC (like the Blade Wolf campaign in MGRR), but issues like that are pretty rare and a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

And yes, DMC HD Collection should be one of the first games that you get. Just know to skip the second game since it's garbage, but 1 and 3 are great, and Dante's Awakening alone is worth the full price of the game, IMO.

[Avaitor]

Guess what game I picked up for $5 at a pawn shop? I'll just say that it's the perfect compliment for when I finish NGB.

I also got Bioshock Infinite for $6, so I'm doing well so far.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Guess what game I picked up for $5 at a pawn shop? I'll just say that it's the perfect compliment for when I finish NGB.

I should warn you that Ninja Blade isn't that great of a game, Avaitor.

Spoiler

I wonder if anyone even remembers that game's existence.

[close]

Also, I haven't thought about this before, but if you own a Nintendo DS and can find a cheap copy of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword online, that's worth playing as well.

[gunswordfist]

I hear the 3D Splatterhouse is good and comes with at least one classic game

[Spark Of Spirit]

I liked the 3D Splatterhouse game. Even though it had such a messy development history, the game turned out pretty good for it.

[gunswordfist]

Gotta read into that.
Foggle forgot to mention Wolfenstein?

[Rynnec]

It's soundtrack is pretty godly too, especially if your a metalhead.

I've been trying to find a copy of Splatterhouse 3D myself, but none of the Gamestops in my town have them, and the only way you can buy it for an affordable price on Amazon is if you get it used.

[Avaitor]

Welp, it looks like my next purchase is a hard drive.

I guess I'll watch a movie instead, lol. I've been in the mood to rewatch The Conversation, anyway.

[Foggle]

Foggle forgot to mention Wolfenstein?

The 2009 game? It's a really underrated title IMO - actually quite excellent. Speaking of which, Singularity (by the same studio) is another great FPS for the Xbox 360 most people probably haven't played. And that X-Men Origins: Wolverine game they made was pretty good too.

If you mean New Order, the reason I didn't recommend that one (or The Evil Within, for that matter) is because Bethesda's last gen ports are kind of bad. They aren't awful - I mean, I played the PS3 version of TEW and still loved it - but since Avaitor is low on funds to begin with, he should probably just wait until he gets a $50 PS4 five years from now to check them out.

Oh yeah, you should also try to find a copy of Hitman: Blood Money. One of my all-time favorite games - can't believe I forgot to mention it before! There's a collection out that also includes Hitman 2 and Contracts, but be warned that those games are punishingly difficult and super janky. You should play them in reverse release order if you choose to go that route, as Blood Money is the only one with a competent tutorial and tight mechanics.

[Avaitor]

I picked up a 60 GB hard drive for just under $30 at GameStop. I might be able to do better if I looked hard enough, but I wanted something ASAP, and checking Best Buy and WalMart for comparison makes it look like I picked the right place.

In the next few days, I'll check more pawn shops for games. GameStop has some decent prices, but I think that I'd rather go looking a little more. I don't want to spend more than $10 per game right now, with some exceptions, like the DMC Collection, which I'd gladly pay $15 for.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Seems like a pretty good deal to me, especially since I've been stuck with my measly old 12 GB hard drive since day one.

Also, I should mention that at least half of the appeal of games like Ninja Gaiden Black and Devil May Cry (the good ones in the series) are in their replay value. That's not to say that your first playthrough shouldn't be a challenging, rewarding, and overall fun experience, but rather that the true worth of these games is only apparent upon revisiting their harder difficulties or partaking in their extra content and truly mastering what they have to offer.

With NGB, after you beat the game on Normal, you unlock Hard Mode as well as Mission Mode. Beating the game on Hard unlocks Very Hard, and beating it on Very Hard unlocks Master Ninja. What's great about these higher difficulty settings is that individually in and of themselves, they aren't a tremendous jump from the previous difficulty. If you can beat Normal than Hard isn't really that much tougher. If you can beat Hard than Very Hard isn't totally out of your range, and honestly Master Ninja feels very similar to Very Hard in difficulty just with rearranged enemy sets. And that's another thing, each new difficulty will not only rearrange the enemies that you fight in various areas throughout the game, but will also introduce brand new enemies and mini-bosses that weren't featured in previous difficulties, in addition to changing the locations of certain weapons and items, raising the prices of upgrades and items at Muramasa's shops, and even changing the contents of what you find in chests. Rather than simply just giving enemies more health and making you take more damange from your attacks, the game goes above and beyond to make each new difficulty compelling to play through, and essentially feeling like a new game from what you previously just played. And Mission mode gives you bite-sized chunks of combat that take a few minutes each, and with 50 minutes to play through and 4 difficulties to conquer for each one, you could spend hours on end just trying to master that mode alone. Of course, if that sounds too daunting you don't have to go through all of that, but it's still fun just to try and see how far you can go. That said, it is worth beating the game on at least Hard mode, which unlocks the original Ninja Gaiden arcade game. You really do get your money's worth with this title.

Comparatively, while DMC 1 and 3's harder difficulty settings don't change quite as much, they do still rearrange enough stuff to keep each new challenge interesting, and the richly deep combat system as well as the ability to play through the game as Vergil in DMC3 (who has a vastly different combat system from Dante) gives these games just as much replay value to them. If you play these games once and then put them on the shelf then I still believe that you'll have a good time, but I do recommend coming back to them if you feel up to it, because the experience only evolves on subsequent playthroughs.

[gunswordfist]

I forgot to mention Sleeping Dogs. Damn good.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Don't forget DuckTales Remastered!