L.A. Noire - PlayStation 3

So there I was at Gamestop tapping my foot deciding if I should buy this game. The game has been out for quite some time now and I was looking at the cover and the price tag, $17.99. It's pre-owned and on PS3 and you know that with a PS3 game you have to be a real abuser of Blu-ray discs to scratch the shit out of the game so I knew the disc would be spotless. I already have a Powercard with Gamestop and I know it will save me some money probably bring it down to $16.99 or something.

I stood there for a good five minutes thinking to myself "Are there any better games than this?" The reason why I was extremely iffy about this game was an opinion from another Bear Gamer who told me he disliked the game a lot only because it was considered boring to him and that it wasn't "FUN" the whole interviewing process and looking to see if they're telling the truth or not was too frustrating for him.

I was just standing there hearing all the bad things he had for this game going through my head so I took the chance grabbed the case and gave it to the guy at the cashier. It wasn't the Complete Edition which had all the DLC but if I liked the game enough to purchase it I would pay the $11.99 for all of the content. So I went home and played the game, it seemed rather fun. Some of the reasons why I like this is because of old Los Angeles, old Hollywood back in the days when the Hollywood sign had Hollywoodland. It was just interesting if you look at Hollywood now it's considered Hollyweird and Los Angeles is becoming more and more ghetto by the minute so going back into the 1940's on this game was like heaven cause I would finally be able to find out how it looked and be able to be a cop from that era.

I didn't want to spoil myself by driving all through the entire map I stayed in Los Angeles and went around seeing places I've never heard of before this would be a huge history lesson for someone who wanted to learn about the famous landmarks from the 40's. The thing that made me think the PS3 version was far Superior than the 360 was the space. The PS3 version is one disc, all that shit including the face motion capture sequences all put onto one Blu-ray huge advantage for games that are requiring more than just a compressed 7GB DVD. 360 has what three DVD discs? It just feels that most new games will be holding back games for 2012 including GTA V. Time to ditch the 360 and concentrate on making for PS3.

As I progressed through the game it was becoming more and more harder for me to understand the whole interview process, I had trouble at first but then got the hang of it when I got promoted. The higher the promotion the more you got closer West, when I reached to the Hollywood police station I was in Vice cases which were more about drugs and other shit in the Hollywood area. The only person that caught my eye was Rusty, just had this thing about him that made me want to stare at his face and his voice mmmm... Even the actual actor who played him is extremely yummy. I think whenever I replayed the missions for Homicide I enjoyed Rusty and having him in the car with me.


Also while playing through the game it almost seemed like Rusty didn't give a shit about the person he knew they did it and sometimes even accused of the person of doing the murder or crime. Could you imagine him in bed? WOOF! The game was really good, I played this almost 8 hours a day and finally managed to reach Platinum trophy within 7 days, I liked it so much I ended up spending the money for the DLC. I suppose I now have the Complete Edition now still have to play the other case files and will enjoy doing it, though I am not sure that the DLC will have any kind of Homicide cases with Rusty in it! FUCK FUCK FUCK! I wanted more missions with him beating the shit out of the suspect.

I am actually coming to find out that this game sort of reminds me of Heavy Rain, but you're actually more in control of your character with L.A. Noire. With Heavy Rain it's like playing a long FMV scene and you had to press buttons to do this action. Even when you managed to control your character on Heavy Rain it felt like you couldn't go traveling around the area as much. With L.A. Noire you can travel within the map, have a lot of places to explore even realistic landmarks that were in the era. It's amazing that most of these landmarks are still standing today but probably not as fabulous and glamorous from what they looked like in the 1940's and 50's.

This game is not full of action packed guns blazing you should get a FPS for that, if you want a game that will make you think, investigate crime scenes then this game is definitely for you. If you played Heavy Rain and enjoyed it a lot then you will like this game for sure! I also found out just recently that the bear gamer who told me about how he hated L.A. Noire he never played Heavy Rain so does this mean that he might not enjoy games like this? It certainly answered a lot of things as to why he didn't enjoy this game, if he's never played Heavy Rain then he probably found this game boring for a reason.

I personally liked Heavy Rain except for trying to uncover all 18 endings that's when it got fucking ridiculous trying to do mistakes and crap just to get the 18th ending and the trophy for seeing all the endings. This game can certainly have the same out come but it all depends on the choices you make, the evidence you find and being able to learn how to find if someone is telling the truth during the interview process it all comes down to getting a good grade and finding the right person to blame the crime on. It might be frustrating at first but you will get the hang of it when you look for the clues that you couldn't find the first time playing... This is definitely worth the buy especially if it's at Gamestop for $17.99 GET THIS BITCH!

Tomb Raider Anniversary - PlayStation 2 & 3

I figured I would talk about both Tomb Raider Anniversary for PlayStation 2 and for the PlayStation 3 as it's apart of the same game.

When I first bought Tomb Raider Anniversary I was expecting the game play to play just like Legend but with a few added stuff that Legend didn't have. Though I think they did remove the running at a high speed cause there was no need for Lara to run really fast on Anniversary.

If you played the game on your PC, original PlayStation or even Sega Saturn you would know that the graphics aren't up to par with today's standards since everyone has drenched themselves in the HD experience and some with the whole 3D gaming which to me is a huge waste of money.

Then you would find the first Tomb Raider to be horrible! But who would of thought they would remake the first Tomb Raider game and making Lara look sexy and hot and not ugly and with those horrible triangle boobs lol The music has changed but it still sounds the same but updated. Voice actress has changed but it's still the same chick who did Legend which is a plus cause I hate when they constantly change voices for Lara.

The PS2 version was ok, they did made one for the 360 which was better in graphics with HD and 5.1 surround sound but PS2 lacked a lot of those features so it was scaled down to SD but if you had your PS2 hooked up to a Progressive Scan TV then you could play the game with a bit more clarity. Wasn't much difference in detail and the Widescreen feature was lacking a bit.

The storyline is also the same but in the original game I thought there was Larson and the three dudes then Natlia but in the remake there are only two dudes and Larson. So where did her Magnum guns go? You get your weapons from the Skater dude, the big scary dude and Larson but the magnums are no where to be seen I kind of shook my head in confusion with that. Oh yeah if you care to watch a video of me playing Tomb Raider Anniversary for an hour then feel free to check it out below. I managed to upload videos from my Justin.tv broadcast so expect future updated entries of game play footage from me playing on Justin.tv. :)




I really did enjoy it on PS2 but then when I seen that recently they came out with a PS3 version of it along with trophies, HD and Legend and Underworld I was set so I bought Tomb Raider Trilogy. Sadly people complained that you didn't get the Anniversary DLC that came with the 360 version people felt cheated. Well PS3 users did get a extra bonus since it was ONLY for PS3 and not 360.

The graphics for the PS3 look really good especially in 1080p, the sound is also Dolby Digital 5.1, only complaint I had with it was that the sound was WAY too loud it almost seemed like it was sound boosting and I barely had my receiver up all the way. I think Sony should continue releasing classic PS2 games but I think they only do it for trilogies like Tomb Raider, but then they also do like games that were popular on the PS2 but they try to change textures and make it widescreen. I think it's just another excuse for people to buy the same games with nothing new unless you care for getting easy trophies since the PS2 never had trophies.

The Tomb Raider games will always be a favorite just wish that they would remake a few Resident Evil games for the PS3 and 360.

Classic Gaming - D2 - Sega Dreamcast

This game was a real big time favorite on the Dreamcast, so many people NEVER played the original D so when they played this game they were like "OH MY GOD the original D sucks compared to this game" indeed it was true. D2 was light years more improved and different than it's original on the PlayStation, Saturn and PC.

Since this was ONLY released on the Sega Dreamcast nobody really had the chance to play it except for those who owned a Dreamcast, sadly the system didn't last for very long and copies of this game were VERY limited in the U.S.

I got my hands on a copy from a person off Amazon used. It was like $17.99 for what the person was offering, hardly any scratches on the game I've had it for so long and decided to play it and record some game footage. 22 minutes worth of game footage :) But it's mostly just the opening movie and some of the opening parts of the game. I haven't played it in so long I totally forgot how to play it lol

I will tell you the reason why some people would prefer this game over the first D game. It's because the first D game was done with almost 96% FMV, and the only things that you had to do was push directional buttons, open doors, turn cranks and that was pretty much it. There was no save feature for D, you had to pretty much play the game ALL the way through and without a guide on how to beat the game you might eventually be playing this for quite some time. I do have a small guide for the turning room which was a bitch if you didn't know how many times to turn the room.



D2 was so many miles ahead of D. The only FMV cut scenes you would see are during the beginning and ending. Most of it was all in game stuff, also it gave you the chance of going in first person and third person mode. I never was able to finish the game I guess it was busy I just got tired of playing it and the monsters kicked my ass majorly, playing a lot of PlayStation 3 and then degrading to Dreamcast is just weird for my hands especially when handling the Dreamcast controller.

We never did see a D3 come out, though during the process of D2 there was a totally different type of game but they later scraped it, I believe it was suppose to come out for 3DO but it never was released it looked scary too.

PlayStation should totally release D and D2 on PSN Store cause it would benefit so many people, but at the same time you're probably looking at almost 4GB download for D2 cause it was spread on almost 4 discs which was insane cause D2 was on 3 discs for the PlayStation.

I still can't manage to find D Original Soundtrack, would of been nice to find it if people still have their copy of D Director's Cut and the mini CD that came with it. I was thinking of making a D Complete Soundtrack and adding in one or two bonus tracks from D2. Yet that's a project that will take a long time, same thing when I did Silent Hill 3 & Silent Hill 4 Complete Soundtracks, most people weren't even happy with the outcome. How sad, can't please everyone it seems. :(

Yakuza 3 - PlayStation 3

This game was on sale at Gamestop for like $16.99, thank god for that Game Saver card thingy. But I kept hearing this was a really good game. I took the chance, but hey it was a good investment I kept hearing it had elements similar to Shenmue which was an amazing game as well for the Sega Dreamcast. Sega can still make good games but it's system will live on!

So when I play the game I decided to get a fresh recap of what the previous two games were about, the best part is that I'm able to check out the storyline for the previous two games so I can be caught up. But you have to basically read a shit load of text to understand what's going on followed by cut scenes from the game.

After learning about the storyline you are left off just watching more cut scenes then you're finally in the game. I walked around the small area and I played some arcade games but sadly I couldn't play Virtua Fighter what gives? I would of loved to play it, maybe I need to beat the game or something?

From what the box says it's indeed ONLY on PlayStation 3 which is probably why you could fit a ton of shit on a Blu-Ray, 360 would probably compress the fuck out of it or put it on 4 DVD discs lol

Anyways the game is pretty fun, I like the storyline especially with the orphans you are taking care of, you get a chance to see the problems they face including one of the kids who is being bullied in school, not that the child is gay but it indeed happens to everyone including kids in Japan.

When you go into town you seem to find dickheads wanting to fight you, I think it was a total of 20 minutes and I ran into about 10 different gang members wanting to kick my ass it was like what the fuck? One of them says "blah blah blah I want to release my anger can we kick your ass?" Really if that's how it is in Japan I would need to bring a walking stick so I can beat the shit out of people walking up to me lol

After beating like a ton of people you are left with fighting bosses which you get a trophy for each boss you defeat which is now, but then there are like 40 other trophies that seem kind of hard as fuck to accomplish and I have yet to do it, the hard ones like the black jack and card games will be a bitch to get.

I've seen a few chubby looking guys on here as well, even older chubby guys, I wouldn't consider them bears but I am sure some would find them to be kind of bearish if you just add a beard or something instead of a mustache.

I'm actually quite hooked on the storyline and I'm hoping that there is still more story cause I think I played about 8 hours of the game so far, plus there are side stories and there is this cool thing where if you take pictures he will learn new moves and he posts it up on a blog I think it's calling revelations or some shit. It's quite cool, but then you have to press the correct buttons in order to take the picture, also need to learn the correct choice or else he'll send it and nothing happens.

The entire game is in Japanese, subtitles and all the other stuff the words are in English, but if you are going to look at a store or any of the signs in the town I hope you know Japanese cause I can't understand what is what.

Classic Gaming - Mortal Kombat Trilogy - PlayStation

At the time this game coming out I was excited to see what characters were in the game, from what I read you could play with characters from Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 even old characters like from Raiden and Kano from Mortal Kombat 1.

It even had stages from the older Mortal Kombat games. When I popped it in the character list was unlocked, I didn't know by pressing Select over Raiden or Kano you could switch from MK2 Raiden and MK1 Raiden and MK3 Kano and MK1 Kano.

You could even play Tournaments, and MK Two on Two Kombat which was only for two players but it was cool.

The bosses were also unlocked to and playable. Even had an easy way of unlocking cheats but there was not a whole lot of cheats out there. Mortal Kombat Trilogy lasted for a while until it was no longer a PS1 Exclusive it ended up coming out for Nintendo 64 and later on PC. The Nintendo 64 version didn't have the CD audio music but it gave people a new character. The graphics were also a bit dumbed down for Nintendo 64 as well which was normal since those N64 cartridges couldn't hold a large amount of data.

Seems that Mortal Kombat Trilogy was the last good Mortal Kombat game, then when they released Mortal Kombat 4 it all went down hill, not many people enjoyed the 3D aspect of Mortal Kombat but later people pulled out modded programs MUGEN which used Mortal Kombat's old engine which was fun since you could make new levels, create new fatalities and added your own music. Also add characters from other games to the mix as well. I wish a there were a few things they could of added to Mortal Kombat Trilogy but you can't do much when you are working with a CD with only a certain amount of information on it.

The audio on some of the levels were completely wrong this was probably due to not being able to fit more audio tracks into the disc so levels used MKII's or MK3's music especially the MK levels which went through a make over by taking out the old Shang Tsung sitting on his throne in the courtyard and putting Shao Kahn sitting there. I am sure if they were to release it again on the Next Gen consoles they would keep it all HD and make it look way better than the stuff on PlayStation One. Release it on both PS3 and 360, would get a lot of people buying it.

Classic Gaming - Mortal Kombat 3 - PlayStation

When my brother got himself a PlayStation back in the mid 90's I was excited when I went to Blockbuster and saw this in the PlayStation section since there were only a few games released for it. I rented it took it to my brother's apartment popped it in. I was shocked to see it was just like the arcade, even had the music MK3 on the SNES never looked like this.

The game even had still pictures and the storyline which tells you about what you missed between MKII and MK3. It even opens up with that classic Raiden picture. I dug into the game and it felt so like the arcade even having that Cemetery level which was not on the SNES version. I always wondered why they never included it.

During the 90's load times were a regular thing for disc based games like PlayStation and Saturn it would take around 10 to 15 seconds to load even longer if the disc was damaged or scratched. Also depending on how old your PlayStation is the game would probably even load during fatalities just so it can process the data.

The arcade version never had this problem since it was just a single ROM being played but the music was compressed a bit and so it didn't sound as clear as the PS1's version of MK3.

The game does tend to get harder when you're fighting some of the bigger guys like the bosses. I can never be able to beat them without cheating. I guess when it comes to it the games are arcade like feel but the computer still cheats like a son of a bitch

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City

If you managed to get super tired of Grand Theft Auto IV, then probably the next GTA game would be to buy is Episodes From Liberty City two games for the price of one is always a good deal. These were the DLC that the Xbox 360 managed to have first on its system until Rockstar put them on the PC and the PS3. The Lost and Damned was the first DLC than followed by The Ballad of Gay Tony.

The Lost and Damned is a great game giving you the ability to try out new guns, probably a few new cars, and a whole lot of new music added to the radio stations. Some people have already become tired of Liberty City nothing new was added to Liberty City but just different safe houses and other things. I won't go too much into the story just that you get a chance to try out new Multiplayer things and then getting new missions and even racing with bikes and using weapons to knock guys off almost like a game of Road Rash. Anyone remember that game?

The 2nd game is The Ballad of Gay Tony probably my favorite one but getting the trophies on this are a bitch! Thank god I was able to get my Platinum trophy for GTA IV a couple of weeks ago, probably one of my finest Platinum trophies that I've earned, very time consuming. But I think once I beat the game I will enjoy all the stuff that is unlocked such as the weapons and a great feature which was added just for this DLC the sky diving feature where you can jump off buildings and have a parachute to help your fall land safely instead of jumping to your death. With a great deal of new weapons, night clubs, and hot music this DLC makes the game even more enjoyable than IV.

I'm still playing the Gay Tony haven't finished it yet but stuff still applies when going for the trophies if you use cheats during missions none of the missions will register with the Rockstar Social server so that is a negative, though some people don't even use cheats, sometimes getting 100% on each mission can be a fucking BITCH to accomplish.

Now that GTA Liberty City has been done to the ground the future is only full of rumors that GTA V will be set in San Andreas or even in Vice City. To be honest I think San Andreas deserves to be remade, Vice City has already been done twice so give San Andreas some room to spread its wings on this next GTA V.