It's awesome hearing you guys talk about snow. I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, which is one of the coldest, and snowiest cities you can live in in the world. It's so brutal, I complain every winter, and wonder why I'm still here haha.

To give you an idea of how cold it gets, sometimes -40 celsius before windchill.. Not sure exact conversion for farenheit, but I do know that -40C is also -40F. deathly cold, literally.

And there's always feet of snow. last year we had snow from november until mid May... normally it's december until early april, but yeah, brutal haha.

It's also noteworthy that with all of this, I've never had a "snow day" or a "cold day", one time buses were even getting stuck everywhere, and I had to shovel my way out of my door, still had to go to work. I wish we had snow days... that's my rant today.

The $130 price point on a budget 3DS... or 2DS, is really smart. It makes it an easy choice as a gift for a child especially if as a parent you're concerned about 3D, which I wouldn't be too concerned about, but some are.

Also, if you're able to add me to Crystal Chaos. My login is RicVoman and my character is Lor Lionheart

I was lucky to get in on a stable server, the Moogle server.

I'm also a tiny little guy playing as a conjurer. I LOVE this game so far, something I've never really sayd about an MMO before.

Good question, the changes were mostly miniscule so if you have the 360 version, it's pretty much the same, with little changes like a couple typo fixes, slightly better textures for some of the graphics (but the graphics suck anyways, so it doesn't really matter), Audio has been "balanced" but still sounds uneven, and it has a 3D option for the PS3, as well as a few small added scenes of the main character that don't add much.

It's nearly the same as the original release, so nothing special about the Director's Cut.

Also, my least favorite of the FF series is easily 13, I tried so hard to enjoy that game and just couldn't get into it.

**EDIT** nevermind, Julian actually said he likes FF12 in this podcast. haha

I love how Julian's least Favorite Final Fantasy titles are two of my standouts - 8 and 12. I loved 7, but actually liked 8 more. I liked everything about its combat, levelling system, love story, epic battles, etc. I thought it was a neat departure.

The real time battles of FF12 had me hooked. The open sequence of that game actually had me immediately enthralled in the world of Ivalice. I was also a huge FF Tactics Advanced fan, so seeing Ivalice in FF12 was cool to me. I loved the characters, specifically Ashe, Balthier, and Basche, and thought the story of Ashe reclaiming her kingdom was awesome. The world was also beautiful in that game, and I was HOOKED to the hunts. And to end this ramble, the Judges of Final Fantasy 12 have to be some of the coolest villains in any game, period. That's my thoughts haha.

I definitely also agree with Mass Effect tipping the scale though. Mass Effect 1 I didn't like so much, I thought the shooting was meh, though the RPG aspects were great. ME2 was the perfect game though, one of my favorite of all time, so rich and diverse.

If you want to play this one online add me! RicVoman

Star Wars Trilogy arcade game hands down. Not the retro one, the recent one:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/118/1181242172216.jpg

I definitely had a hankering for some Sears shopping after that movie.. the ads always kill the experience for me in movies haha. Always a complaint, but felt they weren't very well "hidden" in Man of Steel. other than that and a couple minor things, that is my favorite movie of the year so far.

Booster Gold would be brilliant, really curious how they would make him look in the style of the Injustice game... could be a good comedic off-set to the rest of the game.

As for characters I think would natural fit in that'd be cool are:

Clayface from Batman
Scarecrow from Batman 
Mongul from Superman and Green Lantern
Bizarro Superman
Kilowag from Green Lantern
Superboy
Mr. Freeze (would be an easy Sub Zero clone) 

Martian Manhunter and Darkseid appear in the game as well. I hope they become playable characters. 

That game is awesome, I hope they make a sequel with a huge cast like this.

It looks a lot like 3D Dot Heroes to me, if you ever played that game. It was a Zelda: Link To The Past sort of clone with a blocky lego look. I loved 3D Dot Heroes.

To reiterate everyone else. Xenoblade is one of the best JRPGs of all time. Right up there with games like FF6, FF7, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Xenogears.. and on and on. It is an instant classic and was one of the best new games the year it came out here, despite already being a game that was released years ago in Japan.

If you can buy this game, do it. The price value is already going up on it as well due to its limited release.

That Cubeworld game looks so cool! I had never heard of it before, but it looks right up my alley, I may have to pick that one up after work.

Welcome to PixlBit! I checked out your blog and it's looking good.

Although in my head I was saying "I don't care" about everything non-game related my consoles can do. I did realize that I'm watching Netflix on my PS3 right now, the last time I rented a movie it was on the PSN rental store, If NBA TV worked on my PS3 I'd definitely use it. When I bought a PS3, half the reason for buying it is that I had a shiny new TV and it was cheaper to buy a PS3 to watch BluRay's on than any other BluRay player, the other half was for Metal Gear Solid 4.

On a past note, my PS2 was my DVD player for a long time. So even though games are THE important thing to me, those extras actually are quite nice. Though, I'm not a fan of waving things at a camera and shouting at them. But I figure the inclusion of things like netflix, bluray player, movie rentals, etc. really should be standard on a system now. It does make extra entertainment convenient, and does give some incentive to casual or non-gamers to pick up a console.

At the end of the day, it's the games, controller, ease-of-use to play games that really decide what console I buy. for the PS3 it was the Metal Gear exclusive that made me buy it. And The Last Guardian.... that game that sort of exists but will never actually come out. Sad face.

It's definitely underpowered, and I think the low reviews are warranted, as a lot of games are quite buggy, and I did end up running into some controller issues, but it seemed to depend on the game. I guess that's what you get with people making homebrew games.

The thing I do like about the Ouya is that it's a really good way for independant people to practice their game development, it's a lot like a big beta. There's some games that scream of amazing ideas, even with their bugs and issues. It's a small system of love, but not so much quality as of yet. It's fun, but I'd only buy one if you're interested in the idea of supporting and playing around with small developer experiments.

No worries, I'm not offended, nor are you wrong that there are Sony favoritism undertones in my article. You'll notice that I have a PSN tag, Wii U tag, 3DS tag, but no Xbox tag. I've never owned a Microsoft console and only experienced them with friends at friends places.

With that said, I do like Xbox. It sucked to not be able to play Halo 3, Gears of War, Mass Effect (I'm finally playing Mass Effect 1 through 3 now on PS3), in those early days. It sucked having terrible ports games on PS3 instead of Xbox 360 due to Sony's developer-hell "Cell" processor. I hated Sony's ridiculously high PS3 pricing, and waited until the $399 mark, and for Metal Gear Solid 4, to purchase one. Though I didn't like Xbox 360's controller bumpers or dpad, I think the ergonomics, joysticks, and triggers are much better than PS3's. PS3's original six axis w/o dual shock was a terrible controller as well. But obviously there's something I prefer with the playstation brand so far, as I've been an owner since the PS1 days.

However, what I'm referring to in the article goes beyond PS4 and Xbox One, it goes into Microsoft's mentality. The PS3 had a TON of mistakes to make up for, a ridiculously high price point based on too expensive parts under the hood, Riiiiidge Racer!!!, historical giant crab fights. How about PSN comprimising all of their users personal information (something that is a risk with all online systems, unfortunately), not having any online for a month, sneaking in online passes on games where you didn't realize it until after you buy a used copy.

There's a LOT of crap on both companies. but what Microsoft was recently trying to do with the always online, or at least what their lackluster PR made them seem like they were trying to do, was limit our freedom of physical items, treating an item you bought and can hold in our hand, as a license that they ultimately can take away from you at any moment. It was a strategy that seemed to have the purpose of "let's limit the players, but disguise it as shiny new features rather than restrictions". Only most people saw the underlying problems with always online.

There's no problem with some things needing always online, and there are some features that, in a digital atmosphere, seem very cool. For example, buying a digital copy of a game and sharing it with 10 "family" members is a really cool feature, but when you buy a disc, then that disc only works as a license, and the disc is essentially worthless, then why even have a disc drive and sell discs at all?

I don't have a problem with an all digital system, Steam is an amazing example of how good a digital front can be. The problem I have is that Microsoft wanted to treat physical items with the same restrictions as a digital item. And furthermore, they wanted you to have to be "always online" to attempt to monitor piracy for everyone, even though I can tell you I have never pirated a game on a console, it had the guilty before proven innocent logic.

What really makes the whole always online, region lock, and physical disc restrictions fishy is that there is absolutely no reason why the Xbox one can't treat physical discs the way that current-gen systems do, but have all of these upgraded features of sharing games with friends, gifting games to friends, selling a digital license to another person once, (except for installing and not needing to use the disc, for obvious easy piracy issues) these all can still exists side by side on the same console. I don't understand why Microsoft is pulling the plug completely on their digital features. I also don't think those digital features should require you to be always online.

I see what Microsoft is doing to move into the future, but much like Windows 8 (that's an entire other story), I think they were ALMOST there, but the mistakes they made were gigantic. In this case, the mistake of restricting your ownership of a physical item is restricting your freedoms of a citizen of any country. It's the principal of what it meant for consumerism as a whole that makes me see this as one of the biggest controversies in gaming. To go extreme, could you imagine selling a barbecue but not having it work because the license code only worked for the original owner? I doubt it'd ever get that extreme, but that's the type of message Microsoft was sending.

Also, to be honest I don't think Sony was ever planning to do the used game restrictions. I'm positive, much like Microsoft, that they questioned developers, had focus groups, etc. to see what would work. I think Microsoft has more interest in the digital sales area since they are a software company. These types of Policies are things they could have tried to implement into their Microsoft Office suite, for example. That's just me guessing, but if I was a software company, I'd have an interest in trying to normalize these types of policies. Sony's bane is that they sell hardware, so they tried to push 3D when implementing 3D TVs, they forced Blu Ray's to beat out HD DVDs by implementing it into every PS3, etc. Also annoying, but not freedom restricting.

Microsoft's "future" had some good ideas, but some scary legal policies. The always online will never really make sense either, as there's no reason why you can't have a digital market place, fully online, to buy, trade, sell, share games, but then have an interface, allowed to be offline, where you can play those said games.

The "future" they were looking at is a very limited, egocentric view of a world where everyone has full access to the internet. My cousins in Chile would never be able to play it as many people there can't afford, nor have access to internet, other than at an internet cafe. Or if you live in a rural area (which a lot of people do), the system is useless. While internet may be the future, it's a very limited future. When someone makes a single player experience, there's no reason why you can't play that experience offline.

If microsoft were looking to please the consumer, they'd have integrated these features completely within a console capable of online and offline. More options under the same hood. That's just my rant anyways.

And just so everyone isn't confused, the PS4 and Xbox One both don't interest me a whole lot. My biggest fear with gaming is that the focus on blockbuster hits (Call of Duty Clones, Gears of War Clones) has really taken over creativity and group activity. That's where, even though Nintendo is terrible at communicating, I love their first party Wii U stuff. That's actually what I'm most excited about, sitting at my house with a group of friends playing Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Game & Wario. Nintendo is where my true loyalty lies, as they've always put the fun before the graphics. They're niche now for sure, but I'm glad that their games are just simply that, games.

Even on current gen systems, my favorite games are the small creative ones - Braid, Bastion, Journey, Flower, The Unfinished Swan, just to name a few.

Heyo, I got my Animal crossing online now. feel free to add me 2019-9656-8503 . What's your 3DS code?

Your Wii U name is Cary? That is awesome that you snagged that. Also, I do play Animal Crossing on 3DS, unfortunately my 3DS wireless is messed up and can't find access points, so I'm trying to get that fixed and debating upgrading to a 3DS XL, IF I can find away to transfer my data from one 3DS to another without an internet connection.

They better just implode and the game should shut off in that case.

They wanted $100 down payment? EB Games in Canada is only asking $50 :)

Call me crazy, because I probably am, but on a personal level I think FF15 looks like it could have as big as an impact as ff7 did on me back in the day. It won't revolutionize RPGs the way FF7 did, but I think it's a big enough change/leap to get me very very very very excited. I can't wait for FF15... I didn't like 13, and I know this is sort of the anti-game to 13.

I agree 100 percent. None of it looked bad, but none of it looked ANY better than what we already have. BF4 looks like PC version of BF3, for example. I thought the Metal Gear trailer was the most impressive for actually showing a new style of gameplay, and phenomenal visuals... but it's a current gen game.. Ha!

The list does not improve over time, but much like the Xbox One, Pixlbit.com does require an internet connection ;) .