Gamefly and Amazon Deals Make My Cheap Ass Happy

Cheap Ass Gamer (CAG) has posted two really good deals on the site.

Amazon is having a buy 2 get 1 deal on all Xbox 360 platinum hits. You can grab up some hit titles like Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Gears of War 2 and more for a great price.

Gamefly has used games on discount prices. You can ;pick up Batman: Arkham Asylum, Halo: ODST, Red Faction: Guerrilla for under $20.

Hey, You Got My Social Networking In My Video Game!

Social networking is a huge thing on the internet. It seems like people have grown obsessed with letting other people know what they are doing every second of every day. Social networking has worked its way into many different platforms in the world, and video games are no exception.

Gamers game for different reasons: to waste time, to be entertained, and to have something to share with someone else whether it be an experience or a score. Social networking is a great medium to share those scores and experiences with other people. Sites like Facebook and Twitter allow gamers to share their latest high scores and tell people what they are doing.

The last Xbox 360 spring update added Facebook and Twitter functionality to the dashboard. It allows gamers to contact these social networking sites and tell their friends and family what games they are playing, what achievements they are getting and how good they are at a game.

Sony has its place in the social networking game as well. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has Twitter integrated in it. Gamers have the option to allow the game to auto-tweet their milestones within the game. There has been some controversy about the game tweeting when gamers complete a mission. That has since been removed in an update.

There is one problem that the Uncharted issue addresses with social networking and gaming: spoilers. Gamers who follow other gamers can have their experience spoiled when they see that their friends are tweeting about a major plot point. That may not be an issue for some gamers and that is fine, but for some that could be a major issue. It can cause people to lose followers or be blocked or hidden because they are minimizing a person's excitement for a game because they are telling him or her the story without realizing it. Some people really want an experience to be as fresh as possible.

Gamers like to share what they do. The experience of a game is something that should be shared with others. Social networking sites are the bridge that gamers can use as another way to share fun times, every small character at a time.

Would you play Bioshock if it had grotesque mutants?

Joystiq has a post with a photo of one of the mutants that was cut from the original Bioshock.

 The ugly creature looks like a mix between a human and a roach or fly; it is really gross. It has a semblance of a Dead Space creature with the classic movie, The Fly.  

Bioshock is filled with goons who are mutated in their own right, but not as bad as this bad boy here. The splicers of Bioshock showed pain in their structure along with the insanity that the fall of Rapture introduced into their lives. It was beautiful, painful and awesome to fight these drug-abusing humans while knowing who they were.    

Would gamers want to know Bioshock’s world if these ugly beasts stalked the dark corridors of Rapture?  

Anybody Want to Take The Metro?

Announcement: Metro 2033, the post apocalyptic first person shooter based in a subway in a future Moscow, will be the upcoming Robo-Review.  

Transformers: War for Cybertron sounds AWESOME

Arthur Gies' description of the new Transformers game makes me excited for a product I had absolutely no interest in.

Transformers: War on Cybertron takes place before the first generation on a Cybertron that fans have not seen. It tells the stories behind relations of popular decepticons and autobots and reveals why the Transformers came to earth. 

The gameplay sounds action packed and worthwhile. Little touches like having the Transformers blend with the environment they interact with is a nice touch that  High Moon studios added. 

Check out the Gies' full feature over on Team Xbox and listen to him talk about it on Rebel FM.     

Robo-Review: Final Fantasy XIII

Square Enix has released their thirteenth installment in the main series of Final Fantasy. Beautiful environments, characters with depth and a combat system that flows like water make up the essence of Final Fantasy XIII and it is a great game, if you don’t mind being pushed from place to place.

Final Fantasy XIII follows the formula that Square has set for its Final Fantasy video games. You have scenery that expands from rain forests filled with dangerous creatures around every corner to a city under siege by a forceful government. Take control of intriguing characters that get tangled together by one cause and thrown into an epic adventure where they have to save the world or lose all they love.

Combat has been changed in order to create a rhythm with fast thinking. The mixture between turn-based actions with real time fighting is what makes Final Fantasy XIII’s combat fresh. Players can either create a smooth fight by actually thinking about their decisions or use the auto-battle command which lets the AI choose what to do depending on the situation at hand. The AI does a good job at choosing what attacks or skills to use at any given moment, and you can basically play the game like that and just mash the action button every fight. The choice is up to the player.

One of thing that is not up to the player is where he or she wants to go. The game is extremely linear. You go from beautiful dungeon to beautiful dungeon, beating monster after monster till the big boss arrives at the end. Some environments do have certain aspects about them that make them unique like the rain forest where you are able to control the weather and what monsters appear. Most Final Fantasy games allowed the gamer to travel to different worlds and do whatever they wanted, whether it is to look at the beautiful cities or one of the dangerous dungeons to get something you missed before. It just doesn’t let you have all the freedom you had in games in the series such as Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy VII.

While you’re running through these dungeons, you advance your skills and attributes with the new upgrade system called crystogenesis. Using the crystarium, you upgrade a character’s class using points won through battle. For example, commandos can be upgraded to learn more up close attacks and medics can learn more powerful healing abilities. Every character has a particular class that he or she is good at, but it is good to switch up the classes in order to save your party from certain death.

Paradigms are the latest addition along with the crystarium. Paradigms allow players to set what classes the party can be. A paradigm group that is offensive would have a physical attacking commando with two magic wielding ravengers or group that enhances each other would have a commando, a medic and a synergist who temporarily enhances the group’s abilities and attributes. While in battle, players can switch between each paradigm simultaneously. It can turn the fate of the battle around dramatically if you learn how to use them wisely.

Final Fantasy XIII is a big footstep in the trail of Square Enix’s masterful stories. Characters that make you feel for them when they are in despair and drive you to run through the straight forward dungeons is a great experience for any JRPG fan to enjoy.

Robo-Review: The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom

The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a one trick pony that menaces you with grueling puzzles and pie.

The goal of the game is to feed P.B. Winterbottoms lust for delicious pies that are scattered throughout the world. PB Winterbottom must solve puzzle after puzzle using clones in order to get his plump, greedy self some pies.

The puzzles start off easy at first, but grow harder and more diabolical as they come. they start from simply platforming to the desired pie to creating as many as six clones in order to progress. The gameplay is fun, but the fact that all you can do is create clones that copy your actions seems a little dissatisfying. There is potential to equip Winterbottom with enough power to feed the hungry man, but not make it look like a clone of such titles as the classic Prince of Persia or Braid.

The adventures of PB Winter bottom is wonderful game that was created by a creative group of college students and worth a playthrough.