Recent Buys: Episode 12 - Sticks and stones may break my bones but bullets will surely hurt me

It's been a while since I've made a Recent Buys post and as you may have guessed, the purchases have piled up since the last post.

I'm going to do this chronologically which starts off with something big. This was the biggest single purchased item on my current list. I finally stepped it up, arcade stick wise, by getting myself the Hori Real Arcade Pro V3 Sa. Purchased brand new for 6500php, I am happy to say that I do not regret buying this. My transition from pad to stick is still a awkward depending on the game but for the most part I am leaning towards sticking with the arcade stick.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnpaCwj-77o[/youtube]

Next up is another arcade stick and this time it's the Hori Fighting Stick Mini 3 for PS3. From what I gather, this is a fairly new stick from Hori and as of this posting I haven't found any solid reviews for it yet which peaked my curiosity for it. Since I couldn't find a review of it online I decided to make one myself and I am very impressed with this budget arcade stick.

Third on my list could possibly be a candidate for my favorite game of 2012 and that is Persona 4 Arena, or in my case it's Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena since my PS3 could only play the R3 release. This game is so much and with it's magic netcode, this is the only fighting game that I can enjoy playing online.

Last up is the most recent of the bunch (happening only yesterday) and is a $20 PSN card. For what reason did I buy a $20 card? I got it mainly for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Yeah yeah I can already hear everyone saying "why get it on PS3 when it's so much better on PC?". The main reason for that is because my PC can't run it. Sure lobbies on PC can max out at 32 players per room while PSN can only have up to 10. But remember that the PS3 version does support cross-platform play meaning that I can also play with or against steam users online.

This is more of a runner up that anything but it still counts. CS:GO is $14.99 on PSN which left me with $5. I used the remaining $5 to get episode 2 of The Walking Dead game. Episode 1 was such a blast and I remember that episode 2 is already out. I remember getting episode 1 with the money left over after getting Skullgirls so a similar scenario happened in the case of episode 2. I would have gotten a PSone classic instead but the cheapest PSone classics title is going for $5.99 and I was 98 cents short.

Weekend, what are you playing?

This is the 2nd to the last weekend of August and we are almost at the "ber months" and when there are "ber months" there are a ton of new video game release. But while we still have time to clear our gaming backlogs, what have you been playing this weekend?

Migoy: I have literally not played any other video game this weekend except Persona 4 Arena / Persona 4 The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena on my PS3. Didn't stream any of it because I've been playing online and with my limited internet speed I needed all the upload speed I had. P4A has possibly the best netcode in any fighting game released so far. The best connection I've fought was at 2bar and I'd say it was very well near perfect. 1bar is also decent but you can feel the lag. 0bar has the most noticable input lag but believe me, it is still so much better than any of the other fighting games I've tried online. I just started Story Mode and man, 45mins worth of dialogue before I reached a save point or as they call it "bookmark". And I guess it's going to be that way for each character in Story Mode. Yep, this is definitely a Persona game.

Quash: I finally finished Dead Space 2 after a year. I played it a year ago when it was released on the PC, but thanks to some PC issues I was forced to reformat my hard disk losing my Dead Space 2 save. After that, I never got the chance to go back until now. Playing Dead Space 2 on headphones with the lights off were not as freaky as I thought, but hearing the freaky sounds through a headphone was a treat. They really took some time to create this scary atmosphere.

Weekend, what are you playing?

Again, sorry for the lack of a weekend post (and my lack of posting stuff in general lately) last weekend. Post or no post, things have happened and games were still played. So, what are you playing?

Migoy: Been streaming quite a bit this week partly due to the suspension of work and classes due to the heavy rains brought by the monsoon winds here in the Philippines. Lucky for me we didn't experience any power outage or loss of internet so video games were played. With my personal excitement for Persona 4 Arena, the new fighting game by Arc System Works (the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue guys), I decided to get a copy of Persona 4 for the PS2. Back when I just got a PS2, Persona 4 was released shortly after. I started hearing a lot of good things about it but thought that it was a series so I got Persona 3 FES first instead of 4. Since 4 has a different set of characters and a new storyline, not knowing the characters in P4A wouldn't make it as fun so me and my cousin booted up Persona 4 and are around around 13 hours deep (maybe 15 or so hours all in all if you count the game overs). Aside from that I played a bit of Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting for the SNES using an emulator so that I could use my arcade stick and man, the AI in that game is pretty tough which made winning feel a whole lot more rewarding.

Quash: Last Tuesday I was able to trade-off my Counter Strike: Global Offensive Beta on Steam's game trading forums. I already had access to the beta and for some reason I had an extra one, so I decided to get a game for it. Dead Space 2 was the only offer that caught my eye. I've always wanted to play Dead Space 2 but never bothered getting a copy, that's why when it was offered to me, I took it in a heartbeat. CS:GO beta's value is around $5-$10, and Dead Space 2 is around the same value in the trading forums, so in terms of value - I wasn't ripped off. Plus, CS:Go is coming out in a few weeks so its perfect timing to let it go.

I just started yesterday and it's worth the trade. The eerie atmosphere and the feeling of isolation is why I love Dead Space. I'm a few chapters in and  so far nothing much changed in terms of gameplay. I did try some multiplayer matches though, and right off the bat I consider it a waste of time. I'm surprised people still play this multiplayer to be honest. Will continue again later tonight because game's like this must be played at night.

I dare you to play Slender

Last weekend in between Dota 2 matches, I've been playing what people consider the game to play if you want to shit your pants. It's not a flash game that provides those cheap scares forcing you to look close, this is an actual game that will only take you a couple of minutes to go through. That is, if you can get to the end.

Slender is plain and simple. You are in a forest at night equipped with a flashlight, and tasked to pick up eight pages before the "Slender Man" gets you. Simple right? Well that's what I thought. Not sure where Slender Man started exactly but this scary entity is a very tall and skinny man with very long arms. Slender man's face is purely white with no eyes, mouth, or even hair, just a white head like close to a manikin.

Creepy I know, but that's not why Slender freaked the hell out of me. It's the scenario that the game puts you in that makes Slender a very scary game. You are alone, not a single light in the forest but your flashlight, and all you can do is look for these pages that relate to the Slender Man. When you pick up your first page, that's when the Slender Man starts going for you. Each time you pick up more pages, the Slender Man gets closer and closer. At the start he just stands there for you to find him, around 5 up, he starts creeping behind you.

The sounds in this game delivers the fear perfectly. You hear this weird sound as if someone is walking towards you. When The Slender Man gets near your screen slowly starts developing static. When The Slender Man touches you it's game over. The screen goes complete static and you see Slender Man's face on your screen and the game literally just exits. It's such a simple game but it delivers the true fear so well that while I write this, I tend to look at my shoulder like a 7-year-old scared of the boogeyman, or maybe because I played it a couple of hours ago and the effect is still around. I haven't played a game that could deliver a feeling like this in a long time. My highest so far is reaching page 5. It's a bit hard for me to keep going after each session because the game gets to me. It made me jumpy through the night. It was great. A lasting appeal from a scary game that only took a couple of minutes to experience.

People say PewDiePew from Youtube started the Slender trend. If you search in Google or even in Youtube itself, you will find tons of gamers making Lets Play Slender videos. Here's one playthrough of PewDiePew playing Slender. Hilarious stuff by the way.

I wasn't screaming like that, a bit exaggerated if you ask me, but one of my encounters with the Slender Man did make me take out my headphones as fast as possible to the ground. Oh, did I mention that you have to conserve your flashlight's battery?

It gets  crazy fast when you start racking up the pages. You start walking faster because you know he's behind you. You have no defense against him, and the idea that he could appear anywhere got me looking everywhere. To make matters worse, I sometimes mistake the tree having The Slender man behind it, peeping at you with half his body revealed. Getting freaked out by that makes me look away fast , and to find he was behind me all along. My mind starts to play tricks on me. It's definitely one of the scariest games out in this generation.

It's Free to give you a heart attack

It's free. This short but terrifying adventure is easy to get. If you want to give it a go, you can head over to the site and start downloading. It's only 58MB big and is definitely not graphics heavy so you don't have to worry about that.

Turn down the lights, wear headphones, and start searching for those damn pages. Try to beat my 5 page score. Reaching five isn't so hard. It's after five where he starts showing up all over the place.

How video games work

With how good video games look these days, you tend to forget that these characters are just hollow shells rendered in a computer. Here's a gruesome look at the insides of Niko Bellic's head in Grand Theft Auto IV. Literally.