Games of the Week for 12/28/08: 'Is that a raincoat?' edition

8:24 PM on 12.28.2008   |   Jim Sterling

39 comments

We decided to watch that fun family classic, American Psycho, last night. For your viewing pleasure, I present a classic scene, and one of the greatest scenes in movie history, where well-to-do businessman Patrick Bateman introduces Paul Allen to Huey Lewis and the News ... and an axe. Great film.

(Video may not be suitable for babies and puppies.)

In other important doings, there were videogames and we played those suckers like you wouldn't believe. Hit the jump for the usual.

Nick: I accidentally played Lumines Supernova on the PlayStation 3 in two separate 60-minute-plus sessions. I say accidentally, because I didn't mean to play the game -- I was simply backing out of Persona 4 on the PS3 and saw the icon. It was calling to me. As for Persona 4, I've dumped four hours into the game and have maybe played less than four minutes. That's a bit of a lie -- I finally fought my first boss yesterday!

I also played Anticipation on the NES, if anyone remembers that one. It's a weird mix of Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary designed by Rare and released in the late 80s. Any game where "space shuttle" and "space ship" are unacceptable answers but "space rocket" is correct ... well, that's a game that's some bullshit. Seriously, "space rocket"? Who says "space rocket"?

Colette: All my gaming was done on airplanes this week. I played a little Order of Ecclesia, a little Nintendogs, but I mostly spent a lot of time trying to get one of the obscure characters in Princess Debut. The fact I have not only enjoyed that game, but gotten replay value out of it, humiliates me to no end.

Orcist: Since I'm away from home for the holidays, I've been doing a lot of DS gaming. Professor Layton, Puzzle Quest, and Phantom Hourglass, especially. A little Mario Kart Wii and Tekken 5 at my cousin's house.

I also played Stay Drunk on Delicious Wine for three days straight.

Ross: Pretty much only Persona 4 before I went home for Christmas.  At home it's just been TF2 (luckily my dad's computer runs it), Chrono Trigger DS, and my new obsession, Pic Pic for DS. That game rocks.

Chad: I love you so much right now, Nick Chester. Anticipation is some bullshit (but I still love it). Haha. :)

As anyone who listened to the last RetroforceGO! knows, I like FPSes now, care of the okay Resistance: Fall of Man and the vastly superior Resistance 2. I played them all week and loved every second! Seriously, the boss battles in Resistance 2 are so ridiculously epic!

I also started playing Banjo-Kazooie for the 75th time, this time on XBLA. I have to say: the graphics for the game are so much slicker on the 360 that I may never play my Nintendo 64 cartridge again. And that makes me a little sad.

Nick: I was so excited to hear on RetroforceGO! that you were playing first-person shooters. This goes hand-in-hand with me playing JRPGs now ... well, at least Persona 4. Yay for branching out in 2009. Next up: sports games! Wait, no ... forget that. Where's Samit?

Chad: Yeah, sports games are like country music.

"What kind of [music/videogames] do you like?"
"Oh, I love everything ... except [country music/sports games]."

See? :)

Topher: "I was so excited to hear on RetroforceGO!..."

Lolwut.

Nick: Yes, I listened to RetroforceGO!, bitches. With my ears. 

Hamza: I'm along the same lines as Nick here. I've branched out from shooters this year to retro RPGs. Well, trying to play retro RPGs. They're a bitch to find. I've been getting into puzzle games a lot more this past year too.

Oh, and I finally updated my 360 with the New Xbox Experience. I gave my avatar shark teeth.

Dyson: Chad has always liked FPSes. Well, at least since the Metroid Prime FPS series came out!

Zing! That's right, Concelmo; Prime is an FPS.

Dyson has been playing two third-person shooters this week (as the Prime series should have been made -- oh, snap!). First is the epic space zombie fest Dead Space. And second is the PS3 title Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

I literally just started playing Drake's last night, so I have very little to say about it other than I've really wanted to play this game for a while. Dead Space, though, has been taking up most of this last week for me and I'm two chapters away from the ending. This game, while showing that there were many influences taken from other games in its presentation, is still rock solid awesomeness. Why didn't it get more attention? Shenanigans, I say.

Jim: Thanks to the PlayStation Network, I've been getting reacquainted with MediEvil, an old favorite of mine. I have also been playing LIPS for a late Destructoid review, and a crapload of XNA games for our Community Games review challenge. I am patiently waiting for my late Christmas present to arrive, a copy of Sonic Advance, which is one of my favorite Sonic games ever.

Topher: MediEvil kicks ass.

Samit: (A) Fuck you guys.

(B) I've been branching out this week, too -- I finally started an RPG (!), Fallout 3, on Christmas Eve, and it has consumed every fiber of my being. I mean, I haven't touched NHL 09 at all in the past seven days, so you know I'm addicted. In four nights (Dec. 24-27), I've already managed to log twenty-three and a half hours of playtime (I just made it to level 8 last night).

And when I say "nights," I mean that I've been playing until the wee hours of the morning -- in fact, as Snoop Dogg would say, til' six in the mornin'. I can't remember the last time I was this engrossed in a game -- it might have been Call of Duty 4 last winter, when I was playing the multiplayer whenever I could get the chance, or Uncharted, because I loved that game so much.

(C) I'm going to have to give MediEvil a second look on the PSN. I remember not liking the demo back in the day, and most of the people I've talked to since then have said that I'm crazy. It's the same thing with Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, an early PS2 game -- I rented it and didn't enjoy it, but if it sold well enough to be a Greatest Hits title, it's got to be good...right?

Topher: Maximo was fun.

Conrad: I loved Maximo.

The last couple of days have been practically nothing but Saints Row 2, which is consistently impressing me with how much fun it is. I've also played a lot of Puzzle Arcade and Meteos Wars.