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Quick Gaming Thoughts Round-up

Even more on Super Street Fighter 4:

- Okay, Ken didn't get completely screwed after all. His Shoryuken is much better than before, and nothing beats the poking range of his jumping roundhouse kick (for guys without uppercuts/anti-airs).

- M.Bison is my new favorite character, and I've picked him as my main now. I love all the options he has and how there's more variety to playing him than the usual shotos.

- Ryu and Sagat seem to feel like the same characters but with far less damaging attacks. Then again, the whole cast's damage was decreased, so matches last very long now.

- Online is probably 75% good, 25% bad. The 25% being that you will still get those matches that lag horribly, regardless of region select. But yeah, the netcode is still better than vanilla SF4.

- What happened to all that storyline stuff they set up in vanilla SF4? It's as if they never happened. Too bad Capcom doesn't want to take too many risks with the storylines for their main characters.

On the new Xbox 360 Jasper:

- Just picked one up yesterday and it really does surprisingly emit far, far less heat. I also have a PS3 slim and for some reason, my PS3 slim is a bit warmer than the Xbox 360 Jasper.

In either case, I hope both of these consoles last long. This generation of consoles is just marred with hardware failures on both sides; a friend of mine recently got hit by YLOD, and I can imagine it must really be a horrible experience (I myself having lost so many 360s already).

On recent gaming news -

- It's slow on all fronts. Reading Kotaku, they're really stretching it as far as 'gaming news' is concerned.

It's always like this in the gaming industry, apparently. Except for those years when everyone knows a new console is coming out, where there's news practically weekly. But for now, all the big news comes out near the holidays, and all the big games get released by then, too.

That said, I find myself surfing gaming stuff for just 5 to 10 minutes lately. Except when I'm reading Street Fighter related forums, though---those are always informative. But for other games and genres, it's just slow on all fronts.

On Alan Wake

- The episodic style kicks ass! 'Previously...on Alan Wake....' hehehe. But I read somewhere that they are going to DLC their customers to death. I hate it when companies do that.

Consider that games are already expensive. The whole DLC thing....I've bought them before and to be honest, they don't add too much value. You get maybe an hour or three hours more of gameplay and story, and normally it doesn't really add much to your original game purchase. I guess the only situation where DLC is good to buy (or, where you're forced to buy it) is with map packs.

On not paying for online play (Playstation Network)

- After a lot of games of Super Street Fighter 4 on PSN, I am really starting to wonder about Xbox Live's paid online service. What exactly are gamers paying for, anyway? Granted, on PSN the online service has its own issues, like not being able to invite players at any point in a game, or not seeing what the other players are doing on their console (which sucks when you're waiting for a response)

But having spent a lot more time on Playstation Network, in terms of online multiplayer experience, I think the truth is there isn't much difference between it and Xbox Live. Which begs the question for me....what exactly are Xbox players paying for? I'm saying this because the lag on Xbox Live in a game like Street Fighter, for example, isn't that much different from the lag on PSN for the same game. In the end, connections are peer-to-peer on both console platforms, so I'm not quite sure where the money goes when you pay for Xbox Live.

Because of this, I'm not too sure I'll be back on Xbox Live anytime soon. I just have too many bills to pay, and this is not one that's worth paying for, if the alternative is available on the other console anyway. Yes, there's Gears and there's Halo eventually....but I think I can live without their multiplayer. Single player should suffice.

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