Family Feudin' | Return of the Prodigal Bud

There's nothing better than having fun with your family and friends. Here at TooMuchGaming we like to have fun by playing video games.

My cousin just came home from his summer vacation in America. He passed by here since he dropped by his school (which is near my place) and brought his two brothers along with him and what perfect way to celebrate his return then by letting the salt flow in a couple of fighting games.

First up was of course Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the fighting game that brings the most salt and yet is still the hypest thing around. We maybe scrubs but we love this game. After that was a little bit of Street Fighter x Tekken. 4-player scrable mode equals mayhem. A little bit of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was played but we didn't hang there long. I also had them try out Skullgirls but wasn't streamed because I had display setup the wrong way.

After all the fighting games we went into one of the best 4-player games out there, NBA JAM. I have NBA JAM: On Fire Edition saved on my PS3 and we used to play the bejeezus out of NBA JAM on the Wii. With some awkward games at the start since we had to adjust ourselves with the PS3's controls, we eventually got the hang of things (for the most part) and had a blast. I know it may not be the most entertaining thing to watch but I archived what was streamed to my personal youtube channel and made a playlist for them.

These games weren't played in sequence since we switched things up but I grouped the games together to avoid confusion. Part 1 for both UMvC3 and NBA JAM I forgot to change the audio source to my laptop microphone so that's why you'll hear game audio, skip to part 2 to hear us being stupid while having hella fun.

I used Flash Media Live Encoder to stream this with the video bitrate set to only 350kbps due to my low upload speed (0.47kbps) but the videos are still very watchable. Just don't expect anything remotely close to HD.

Recent Buys: Episode 7 - The Legend of Extreme Vs. Skullgirls

Like I said in my Skullgirls demo impressions post, I got a $20 PSN card and bought Skullgirls. I also bought some more videogame toys so let's get into it.

So Skullgirls, I bought it, checked to see if it really did install the full game unlock, went into training mode and tried some other characters for a few minutes. Outside of that I haven't played it for real yet. This is my first weekend since getting an internet connection setup in my home (finally) so Ziggy (my PS3) is busy downloading and installing update for every single disc I pop in. Those update can't be downloaded in the background so I'm stuck watching a very boring screen for 10 minutes to even an hour NOT playing the game. No worries though since I got a whole Sunday still ahead of me.

Aside from Skullgirls I also bought a Legend of Zelda gashapon set. Usually these come in one of those random capsule machine where you don't know what you're getting until you open it but since I got mine from a local hobbyshop (GreatToysOnline), it was already a complete set meaning no duplicates. I'm sure most of you will say that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the bestest 3D Zeldarific game ever but in this figure set I gotta say that the Ocarina figure are the weakest of the bunch. Young Link is in an ok pose but is facing all the way to the side of the stand and young Zelda looks like Master Yoda with those big eyes and big ears. My personal favorite from the bunch are the Wind Waker figures since they look exactly like their video game counterparts (w/c are adorable) and is what sold me on getting the set in the first place. The Skyward Sword ones are pretty cool too since I like the new design of the characters. Paint job on the figures re pretty spot on considering they are gashapons though to be fair they are one of the expensive gashapons (they went for 200php a piece which means 4 tokens per draw) so at least the QAs did their job.

On to the items that are in sort of the grey area of things. Not quite recently bought but more like recently acquired. Finally got my hands on the import of Gundam Extreme Vs. that I sent for back in February and the custom printed t-shirt that a friend of mine did for my birthday present. Since shit is still downloading, installing, and updating on my PS3, the Gundam Extreme Vs. game is still sealed in it's plastic shrink wrap (NRFB mode). Still deciding whether to open it tonight or save it for tomorrow and try Battlefield 3 online for the first time instead.

Skullgirls (Demo Impressions)

I know this is a little late seeing as Skullgirls came out a month ago but seeing as I was finally able to get an internet connection at home earlier this week you could cut a guy some slack.

After watching a few videos of Skullgirls matches on the youtubes, I got instantly hyped for it. Obviously watching is avery different from playing and up until this morning I had not played Skullgirls so I didn't know how the combat mechanics work, I could only guess. I figured that the combo chains are similar to that of Capcom's Versus series where you could chain a basic Low to Med to High attacks but would resemble more like the style of Melty Blood. Looking into a few more matches, I noticed that you can choose to have either 1, 2 or 3 members in a team with each setting having their own benefits and drawbacks. The best comparison you could make about this game is to compare it to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 with it's 2D and since you have to option to have up to 2 assists and tag out. Having fewer characters means less assist options but in turn have more powerful characters.

In the demo there are only 2 characters available for play out of the 8 in the roster. The first is Filia, a school girl who plays host to a demon made of hair. The second is Cerebella, a circus performer whose hat sprouts 2 giant arms. From what I guessed I was right. The combo system does feel very similar to Melty Blood (even the soundeffects sound alike) and supers are performed like in MvC2 wherein you perform 1 motion and hit 2 attack buttons. Dashing can also be performed in the same manner by simply pressing 2 attack buttons.

I only tried out what I think was 2 battles in Arcade mode then dived straight into training mode. The demo is very fun and I can't wait to purchase the full game ($14.99), I'm planning to get a $20 PSN maybe tomorrow. If you like fighting games but is still a bit iffy about Skullgirls then try out the demo. You might just like it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayrRNSqRr1Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nIAzbCjuUI[/youtube]