I am weak...

I found copies of Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and The Legend Of Zelda for NES for pretty good prices, so I picked those up. Later today, I hope to pick up Battletoads for Genesis and Yoshi's Island for SNES (prolly just jinxed my chances though), and I've got a line on some cheap copies of Need For Speed and Return Fire for 3D0.

There's also some new Deus Ex 3 info out today, and it reminded me of a conversation I had on a message board not too long ago regarding the upcoming game:

mistrmojo: Can't wait! Deus Ex 2 was a lot more fun than the original and hopefully this title will continue that tradition.

twicesliced: I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'm gonna agree with what you wrote anyway. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed both Deus Ex 1 and 2, I much preferred 2. All of the cries of "consolisation" are usually just based on superficial complaints from selfish dorks; there was a really dynamic gameplay experience based in a very solid world in Invisible War. 

If you wanna knock Deus Ex 2, give me better arguments than high system requirements (still looked great on low settings), smaller areas (but with way more character than the original), and unified ammo (it's sci fi kids; how about a little suspension of disbelief?).

BlackCat9: I'm entirely fine with the "console-ization" of Deus Ex 2. Honestly, I hardly noticed it, and I'd even say that the UI improvements were quite a bit better than DX1. But there were two things that made the game a let-down for me. 

First, I didn't find the world as believable as DX1. Because they pushed the timeline out further, it pushed the plausibility of it. The world of DX1 felt like a very real future to me. DX2 was an idea that was farther off and I didn't feel as connected to it. Because of that, I didn't feel like the things that happened mattered as much. 

The second issue, and the one that's really much larger, is that I also felt disappointed by the presentation of choice. Part of the marketing for the game was that they were going to make a game where you could choose how you wanted to play, but I felt like ultimately, that made it so that choices were presented in a very gameplay-oriented way. In DX1, scenes could unfold without ever telling you what the possible outcomes were. Rescuing Paul, helping the owner of the 'Ton with his daughter, stopping Ana from killing the NSF leader on the plane, letting the leader of the Illuminati die, these things were all choices that came about naturally from your interaction in the environment. I felt like, because there was so much emphasis on choice in DX2, all the choices had to boil down to a binary good or evil decision. Similarly, in combat, I felt like they had to balance every possible choice so much that there was never a big advantage in exploring different styles of play. The way choice was presented in Deus Ex, even at the ending, was more about the player's personality than the gameplay mechanics underneath, and that's something that no game has been able to do as well.

I love it when people really rise to the challenge and offer a well-supported argument.

Oh, and tearing down the final straightaway on Nürburgring Nordschleife in a Ford GT (in Forza Motorsport 2 on XBOX 360) is suprisingly exhilarating! :)