The funny thing is that elements that were dismissed as SWERY not knowing what he was doing (for example, the town layout) were intentional. Greenvale was based on a real town. That is why Greenvale has the sense of scale that’s not found in other games’ towns.

@angryjedi I’m not sure if the European cover for Deadly Premonition is better than the NA cover.

@beige I never replay games any more either, and there’s something about Deadly Premonition that draws me back, even though I only need the difficulty-based achievements to 100% it.

@angryjedi I’m really looking forward to reading my friend’s copy of this month’s Game Developer Magazine’s post-mortem of Deadly Premonition.

I live in NYC, and the most recent example of a weird sense of locational deja vu in a video game was Prototype. We walked through Central Park on Sunday, and I picked out places where I fought soldiers and mutants.

@RedSwirl I tried the Mafia II demo last night, and it turned me off from considering it as a possible purchase. It’s much too heavily scripted for its own good. Two examples:

a) The fat mobster won’t kill the guy he’s wrestling with in the staircase until I reach the bottom of the stairs. I could shoot the guy, but I can’t kill him because the game insists that the fat mobster has to kill him. The enemies in general stick to patterns of movement and combat with little flexibility.

b) When we were escaping the warehouse, we came to the elevator, which was busted, so I went downstairs, but Joey didn’t follow. I went back up to see if I was missing something about the elevator, and Joey started yelling at me to get a move on. I went downstairs and finally walked far enough to trigger the explosion, which finally got him downstairs.

And I know that there’s some sense of honor, but why couldn’t I shoot the civilians in the warehouse? If I’m going to play the amoral mobster, as the protagonist seems to be based on developer interviews and how willingly he picked up a gun and became a gangster, let me also be a psychopath.

Also, the frame rate took a dive on my 360 Elite when we were going through the building the first time and when the building caught fire. Demo and all, but not a good sign.

To follow up @angryjedi’s post about his recommended XBI game, it’s in the Marketplace as “BlindGiRl.”

@RocGaude @sinfony They put last year’s Summer of Arcade games on sale prior to this year’s Summer of Arcade, and Trials HD, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Shadow Complex, and Splosion Man were definitely on sale separately earlier during the year. I’d assume that this year’s Summer of Arcade entries will be on sale over the course of the year too.

I’ve bought more collector’s editions of games as this console generation has gone on. So far, I have the Persona 3 and 4 special editions, the Fallout 3 lunchbox, the gigantic BioShock 2 box, the Dragon Age: Origins package with the cloth map, the Mass Effect 2 special edition, and the Alan Wake collector’s edition. I’m looking at the Fallout: New Vegas collector’s edition, Halo Reach special edition (but not the legendary edition) and eventually the StarCraft 2 collector’s edition.

I can’t figure out why I’m compelled to get the collector’s edition sometimes, but I suspect that my enthusiasm for a game overwhelms my common sense.

I’m listening to the SquadCast about Pathologic, and I’m wondering if anyone ever went back to complete the game with the Devotress. Even the Something Awful Let’s Play thread is focused on just the Bachelor, and Ice-Pick Lodge’s forum has but a few threads about the Devotress’s scenario.