This.... this is amazing: http://www.twitch.tv/adam_ak/c/3312164

For some reason I felt compelled to give Persona 3 another shot, this time the FES version, whatever the hell that means. I hated this game when I first played it, described it as an abomination, and have gone around calling it one of the most disappointing experiences of my adult life.
 
This game is still pretty fucking awful almost all the time, though I have difficulty mustering the same amount of venom for it seeing how they took this busted-ass structural concept, fixed all the problems with the way the system generally worked, added legitimate content to it, and actually did something productive with this in Persona 4. A bit of a revisionist history way of looking at this not terribly good game I guess, but something that I saw as being tangibly good did come from this, so whatever. I guess to a degree I could look at it with a fresher perspective because I got to see what could be done with a game with this sort of structure, I didn't immediately get turned off by the vapidity of the social links, or how much of a fantastic nuisance the 250+ floor dungeon was. I still didn't like the way most of that worked, but I've come to see this game as a lot more productive and well-meaning with some interesting ideas as far as how you tell a story in the medium.
 
I didn't totally hate the game this time around, felt that certain things in the later parts of the game worked enough to offset everything else that the game did poorly. Rather liked the ending too, all things considered, I found the very last scene unexpectedly moving, somewhat irritating that it wasn't until the ABSOLUTE END that something worthwhile happened. I thought the Aigis character was actually rather well written and performed, even enough to negate how generally silly and contrived all the story elements were that she came from, just a shame they waited until the end of the game to do anything with her and only gave her a side storyline in the FES version for some fantastically stupid reason. I felt like the game got its shit together the more she became the focus point of the story, seeing as how she's the only character that really matters in the whole thing, you can lose just about everybody else without losing much of anything. Also, the music got really good by the end of this game too, enough to make you forget that this game is unmoving and shallow, Shoji Meguro deserves virtually all the credit for creating an interesting thematic atmosphere towards the end, like the soundtrack to a much better game.
 
I had been playing a lot of older RPGs lately too, stuff like Xenogears that didn't hold up enough for me to even get more than a few hours into it, and I'm almost inclined to give Persona 3 some credit for at least being more vivid than empty and hollow stuff like that, even if Persona 3 is only vividly empty and hollow. Persona 3 has some good ideas that they don't really do much with, the game ends up being just a 100 hour simulation of what it's like to have bad/uninteresting people in your life. I almost found the inexplicable suicide imagery inadvertently appropriate given how much the fantastic emptiness of all the people in the game's world do nothing but fill you with violent nihilistic rage. This is a backwards reading, of course, the game assumes you can care about the insipid dick whose function in life is to jerk it to older women, or the fat fuck somehow unironically justifying his existence by eating triple his body weight daily, or the devil incarnate selling worthless shit on his television show who manages to be infinitesimally less human than THE ACTUAL DEVIL INCARNATE that you bump into elsewhere in the game, or all the dull humorless jerks lazing about day and night in your dorm that fundamentally lack the capacity to get anything out of their worthless existences. Rarely did I ever find it worthwhile, but I did like a couple of the characters amidst the inescapable sea of repulsion the game has to offer. This is not what they intended, but I ended up finding this unusually real, this sea of faces you'll never be able to make a worthwhile connection with, even when you earnestly try to, making it a rather big deal when you find yourself actually caring about any of them. I didn't really get personal satisfaction from this very personal reading of the game, if anything I found it intensely depressing, engaged in a way where I probably didn't want to be engaged, causing reflection of things I maybe didn't want reflected. But that's more than I could say for something like Xenogears, the first few hours of which did nothing but made me want to never play videogames again. At least Persona 3 made me want to shoot myself in the head.

I played through Arkham Origins. It's easily the weakest of the three, but still playable and with a decent enough story (though it gets kind of stupidly convoluted at times.) I can't really think of a single innovation or improvement over Arkham City. The open world Gotham is pretty much void of anything to do except beating thugs (who just kind of stand around doing nothing) to a pulp. The side quests are pretty much exclusively fetch quests and I think the stealth missions are much more poorly designed and infrequent than the other two. It kind of feels more like a total conversion mod of Arkham City than an actual new entry into the series.
 
The voice acting is also pretty dull. Batman and the Joker's voice in this game is  like hearing two of your friends doing their Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill impressions. The soundtrack was also a lot more of a rip-off of the Hans Zimmer scores than the other two, and I've always found Zimmer's Batman music to be really dull and unimaginative. I'm kind of surprised that there weren't any Batman Returns homages considering they were both set on Christmas. Maybe it's just that I have a soft spot for the Burton Batman movies.
 
But basically it's a game that's pretending to be two better games with voice actors pretending to be better voice actors and music pretending to be other music.

I am on a big Atlus kick at the moment, so I went back and finished Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I played this game ages ago when it was THE BIG THING, gave up on the game halfway through, and, if I recall correctly, went around these boards for a while getting into light arguments with people over how good or bad the game is.
 
Not totally crazy about the game, but I had some fun with it. I still don't really like what they did with the story. I mean, I get what they were going for and applaud the effort, this active mythological tale you get to participate in, but I have an incredible disinterest in mythology so I'm just not the target audience. It fell into the STUFF IS HAPPENING category for me rather than the STUFF I CARE ABOUT IS HAPPENING category. In their defense, I've never really seen a story like this, so points there, but that didn't make the experience all that much easier to get invested in.
 
Still, pretty much everything else about the game is pretty good stuff, even the location design gets pretty excellent at times, which says a lot given how Atlus usually either really sucks or cuts major corners in this category. The balance of this thing is mind-blowing, where you never really have to sit and grind unless you're trying to get cute with the way the system works. It still can be a pretty brutal experience, which is why I stopped playing it ten years ago, but it's more fun with an emulator and a walkthrough for when you get totally lost or aren't in the mood to die in ten seconds.
 
Not too noteworthy of an experience apart from that, really. It's an ok game, holds up to a degree, but I didn't find the experience all that engaging.

played through most of RE2 last night and made a video about it to kind of get it out of my system. mostly talking about prerendered backgrounds, i miss em
 
http://youtu.be/Q2PDstTaqrs

I've been playing through the PSX doom conversion, and aside from some of it's technical limitations, which mean some of the maps are simpler, I find its a much better experience overall than PC doom. 
 
The sound effects, the tense ambient music, the coloured lighting (while cheesy, is definitely a good addition)
 
It's really great.

I got to play fallout 3. it's good! even without hardcore mode, F3 feels a little more like hopeless survival than New Vegas does. wandering around and bumping into weird people who might wanna help you or kill you, running from scary mutant animals or psychos in power armor, generally not knowing where you are. same garbage I always write about. it also feels more like there's a world happening off screen and outside of your influence, whereas NV occasionally gives the impression that all these minor characters are just stupidly sitting around and waiting for you to show up.  
 
but I still think NV is better game, and I'd recommend playing that one first to anyone unfamiliar with the series. there are a lot of things in F3 that strike me as kinda undeveloped, corny or stupid in comparison to NV. I can't remember what exactly, but I recall bumping into some humor I felt was pretty bad and reminded me of the whole family guy reddit etc mentality. oh dukov's place, that was one. ha-ha! a boisterous foul-mouthed drunk Russian (??????) who loves the whores and the vodka and to party/fuck! I guess it's supposed to be funny that this guy still inexplicably exists in the post-apocalypse maybe
 
besides wandering around in the wasteland and all the neat minor places and events directly associated with that, I also felt F3 was a lot closer to being a typical RPG with its lawful good main plot arc and the kinda cheesy fantastical towns and locations. it also kinda feels like the devs were over-excited just to be making the next installment of the Fallout series and really wanted to include all these bad ass epic plot elements and locations. besides all that & probably at least half of Bethesda are dummies, it's a good game! like you said hundley, I don't see any reason the games need to be that polarizing. 

I am playing through FF12 for the first time.  Its a game that I had a for a while but never actually got to play- busted out the PS2 last week when my 360 red ringed on me.  So far it is actually pretty good.  Not sure where the negative fan-press that this game has gotten comes from, other than maybe the very underdeveloped characters and dialogue at times.   I actually really like the battle system overall, and it kind of helps keep things moving when you are dungeoning with the battle speed turned up all the way.   I would complain about the money situation, as it requires purhasing of everything in order to be able to use it, which really is annoying.  However, now that I actually figured out you can sell the things that you pick up form battling; that got a lot easier.