A new dawn

2005 is coming to a close. This year we saw World of WarCraft literally beat the life out of every other PC game released this year. We saw the slow trickle of Nintendo DS games being released. We saw both the uneventful launch of the Sony PSP and the embarassing world wide introduction to the next generation of consoles with the Xbox 360. And lastly, we watched as the layer dust on top of our GameCubes increased at an exponential rate.

In a few words, 2005 was kinda boring for gaming. We had a handful of stand out titles, but for the most part we saw a bunch of lame rehashes. It didn't help that the biggest title of the year, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, was pushed back to Spring 2006.

The tip off that 2005 would be boring should have been obvious, judging from this year's pathetic E3 showing. Will 2006's E3 be better? Only if Nintendo shows off playable Revolution games and Sony shows off playable PS3 games. Sorry guys, tech demos won't cut it. If Microsoft wants any chance at beating the Ps3, they had better get the Japanese developer support that the Xbox 360 so desperately needs. And no, having games that will appear, or have appeard, on a Sony console won't help the Xbox 360 one bit.

What am I looking forward to in 2006? I'm just dying to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Hearing that the game will be playable with the Revolution controller is an unnecessary, but welcome, bonus. Just don't fuck it up. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence should be cool. I hate the new camera angle, but I'm interested in the online mode and the movie DVD that's included. I'm also looking forward to the upcoming expansion pack for World of WarCraft. And that's about it. I'm sure there's more on my wish list for 2006, they're just not interesting enough titles for me to take the time to mention.

I will say that I'll be buying the Nintendo Revolution at launch - just because I have to. Hopefully there will be an actual Mario game to play this time. Luigi sucks. If we're lucky, we'll also get a Metroid title at launch.

I'm still on the fence about the PS3. My guess is that its launch will be very similar to the Xbox 360. It'll have a title or two that is "unique" to the new platform plus 20 ports from the current generation. Keep in mind that the two "unique" titles will be nothing special either. I'll most likely wait until (a) Sony lowers the price of both the console and the games, (b) Sony gets rid of the systems that are guaranteed to die and DRE after a couple of months, and most importantly (c) the PS3 gets a good amount of quality games.

And since every Dick, Tom, and retard has a top "something" of the year list, here's mine:

Top 5 Games of 2005
1) Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
2) Civilization IV (PC)
3) Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS)
4) Lumines (PSP)
5) Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS)

I should add as a side note that I would have put World of WarCraft as #1 on my list (I did spend roughly 240 hours playing this one game over the past year), but it was released in 2004.

And just for fun, here are the worst games of 2005.
1) Burnout Legends (Nintendo DS)
2) Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (Nintendo DS)
3) Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (GCN, PS2, Xbox, PSP) (tie)

Amazingly, I still have my free copy of Marvel Nemesis (PS2) in mint condition, shrinkwrap and all. Yes, that's right, I have not burnt this game yet - that would be a waste of a perfectly good match.

Let's all hope that 2006 will have more memorable games and at the same time show us what the next generation of gaming will really be like. Happy New Year!

Even more Shadow of the Colossus videos

I finally found a site with all 16 colossi speed run videos. These guys are really really insane with the way they kill the colossi. I highly recommend watching this batch. Enjoy!

Also note that these videos come from the Japanese version and that the killing blow to the colossi have a cool bullet-time slowdown effect. I wonder why I this little minute detail was left out of the American version.

New Epic items

I got some cool new epic priest tier 1 gear in Molten Core today: Pants of Prophecy and Vambraces of Prophecy. I still have yet to obtain the Eye of Divinity so I can get Benediction. Hopefully that will drop this Saturday. If you're wondering about the Benediction quest, I found some videos that show what a priest has to do to obtain the kick ass staff. Wish me luck!

Catching up

I haven't talked about recent events in the video game industry lately. So I guess this is as good a time as any.

The Xbox 360 has finally reached all three major markets: USA, Japan, and Europe. While the Xbox 360 isn't doing as well as Microsoft hoped (which was expected as such by me), the system is pretty much dead in the water at this moment in Japan. Despite what ever pompous comment J Allard has to say about the Xbox 360 launch lineup, I feel that it's the lineup that is hurting the Xbox 360 the most. Sure it has awesome graphics and a snazzy new integrated Xbox Live interface but what does all of this fancy crap mean when there's nothing worth playing? It's really sad that Activision's Call of Duty 2, a PC port and the #1 selling Xbox 360 title in the U.S., is the game that shows what the hardware can do. Of course, CoD2 and Kameo were the only two playable titles at every demo station so that could have only helped that game to sell more. In fact, there's not one title in the lineup that hasn't been already seen in some way or form on another platform. And Microsoft wants us to pay $400 for the system plus $60 per game? I don't think so.

Oh, and kick ass job on adding the dated Final Fantasy XI demo with every Xbox 360 system in Japan. There no better way to show off the abilities of a new system with a PS2 port. Kudos!

The fact that the PSP is tanking in every market is not surprising. It's been out since March 2005 and there still is not even one must have title. Yes, I do enjoy Lumines very much, but it is by no means a must have title. If you think about it, the PSP suffers from the same problem that the Xbox 360 is suffering from. All PSP titles to date are simply direct ports from the PS2 - minus some features but with the same exact price. Huzzah!

And I still think that anyone that buys a UMD movie is a dumbass. DVDs are perfectly fine thank you. DVDs have an added bonus, for a lower price you get better quality and more extras. WOW!

Poor Nintendo. The GameCube platform is fading away from gamers' memories. Oh where art thou Link? Come and bring back the life to our GameCubes. On the other hand, the Nintendo DS is fairing very well thanks to Nintendogs (not my kind of game, but my girlfriend really enjoys it). The games that really valided my purchase of a Nintendo DS are Castlevania and, of course, Mario Kart DS. I do hate the fact that Mario Kart DS is missing an online Battle Mode, but hopefully Nintendo will learn from this and no exclude a major feature of their future online games. I'm even more amazed that the Game Boy Advance is still selling as well as it is. It didn't really have any big titles until the end of the year - that being Final Fantasy IV Advance.

Well if you think about it, the Nintendo DS had a very slow start. Maybe the PSP will have a better go in 2006. Or maybe not... look out for the PS3 and Revolution. 2007 maybe? Hmm... no, Nintendo will probably announce the Game Boy Evolution at that year's E3. The PSP is screwed.

Speaking of the Revolution, some hardware specs have been unveiled. While there's no way of knowing these specs are true, they are very interesting. Personally, I feel Nintendo is doing exactly as they said they would when they announced the GameCube. They said that the GameCube platform will be used for the next 10 years or so (I'd quote it, but I can't find the original comment nor a reference to quote from other than my memory). This statement will hold very true if the Revolution is just an upgraded GameCube. Without snazzy graphics to make the casual gamer sheep follow the revolution, Nintendo will have to have so really kick ass titles at launch and soon after launch. Hopefully, unlike the GameCube, the Revolution will launch with a Mario game. A Metroid title would really help in the U.S.

I do applaud Nintendo for trying to bring new ways of game playing to the industry. However, at the same time, I'm worried that casual gamers won't be as interested in playing something so radically new. It's not as "safe" as playing on the PS3 or Xbox 360 where you're guaranteed to play a sequel or something you've already seen previously. Let's hope my worries aren't warranted.

Leaving the City of Villains

For the past month, I've tried my best to stay interested in City of Villains. I even purposely stopped my WoW subscription in order to give this game a fair chance. Needless to say, I still barely played the game. It's just not that much fun. I found the missions to be repetitive. Every mission is "go here and kills all these mobs" for whatever reason seems dandy at the time. Occasionally you'll get to "collect" items for your mission giver, but even then the mission itself is basically the same kill everything style. From what I'm told, this mission style is the same as City of Heroes. While CoH was a great MMO, one must remember that it came out before World of WarCraft. City of Villains could have taken the successful CoH and improved upon it by adding some WoW-like features (or more of them, depending on how you see it). In order to be successful in this post WoW MMO genre, you can't simply re-release last year's game with a minor graphics update. You have to take what innovations you can from that other game, and try to improve upon it.

That kinda leads me to my next gripe about CoV. You just don't feel evil. You want be become a member of Lord Recluse's army... for some unknown reason. Alternatively, being a hero is easy - all you have to do is stop evil doers from their insane schemes. And since CoV is essentially CoH with a new coat of paint, your supposed villain is acting more like a hero to the bad guys rather than a bad guy to the heroes. In order to be a successful villain, you have to have some schtick, a reason for being bad, some overall grand scheme to take over the world... hell, even simple revenge would work. That being said, CoV's story structure is just too generic to achieve the feel of being evil.

Whenever I did play CoV, I found myself wishing it played more like WoW. I wanted the Stalker class character I created to play like a Rogue from WoW. I wanted the UI to be more friendly and simple, just like it is in WoW. Okay, I'll admit it. I wanted WoW in comic book form. Oh well, time to cancel my CoV subscription and resubscribe to WoW.

Lesson learned: When you release a stand-alone expansion pack, it had better be vastly improved over the previous title. Otherwise it'll feel dated. Oh, it'd also help that a game about being a bad guy makes the user feel like they're being evil.

More Shadow of the Colossus videos

Yes, I'm still very fascinated by Shadow of the Colossus' unique gameplay experience. I've also been looking for the latest speed run videos. I still haven't found anyone's speed runs for colossi #12 to 15, but did find one for #16 (part 1 and part 2). While not a speed run this cool video shows how to climb up to the Secret Garden. I'll keep posting these as I find them. Enjoy!

MGS2: Substance

I finished MGS2: Substance last night. Time to start on MGS3.

Video Game Awards?

For some reason unknown to me, Spike TV hosts some annual farce called the Video Game Awards. Why they think they're qualified enough to host it, we'll probably never know. In any case, Spike TV's VGAs are nothing but the breeding grounds for bringing stupidity to the gaming industry. On second thought, they bring more stupidity. Half of the awards are for rewarding "good work" to members of the Screen Actors Guild - the group that bitched and whined for more undeserved money for their half-assed performances in our video games.

I'd like all the publishers in the industry to know that I hate 99% of the English voice acting in video games. They suck. A user's experience can be single-handedly ruined by the crappy performances they give due to their lack of understanding the emotion of the moment in the game. Yes, some games have wonderful English voice acting, most notably the Metal Gear Solid series. But other games, Final Fantasy X comes to mind for its horrible "laughing scene", just don't seem like anyone gave a rat's ass. What I'd really like in all of our games is the option to use the originating language instead of English. While I wouldn't have any idea what the hell they characters are saying, at least I'd get the correct emotion from the speech (assumingly) to go along with the text on screen.

But I'm off topic...

There's another thing I hate about awards or top ten lists. There are a lot of categories that seem to exist only to justify giving a popular game an award. In other cases, it seems like Xbox related material has to be mentioned at least once whether the point was valid or not. Most notably, in this IGN article stating the Top Ten Controller Innovations and 1up.com's Top Ten reasons why the Xbox 360 won't be the next Dreamcast.

IGN's article is riddled with errors. The error that pisses me off the most is that reason #8 fails to mention that the Sega Saturn 3D-pad had trigger buttons before the Dreamcast. My real problem with that top ten list is #7. Breakaway cords are just stupid and they have no effect on the way the user interacts with the game.

For 1up.com's article, #7 makes it obvious that a fanboy made the list. The Dreamcast has a lot of awesome games, but it sucked because it doesn't have Halo 3. But Xbox 360 owners are lucky, cause they're gonna have the awesome Halo 3! Oh by the way, if you didn't know, Halo sucks major ass.

Halo is one of those games where people think it's the best thing ever - when it's initially released. Given enough time, people will realize that it didn't age well. A perfect example of this is Donkey Kong Country, made by Rare who was owned by Nintendo at the time. When DKC first came out everyone thought it kicked ass. Nearly ten years later, we're seeing it being re-released on the GBA. Let me tell you, time was not kind to this "gem" at all. I cannot believe I actualy found this game fun.

Games like Halo and DKC are remembered not for their gameplay nor for their story, they're remembered for their graphics. People always misunderstand me when I say that graphics don't matter (and I say this all the time). Yes, graphics are the first thing the consumer sees and usually what sells the game. But pretty graphics are just that - a selling point. Games can be played and enjoyed no matter how good the graphics are. If the developer makes their game enjoyable enough, the user will be happy with whatever graphics are used. Can you honestly say that your #1 favorite game is because of its graphics? If so, then you're not a gamer at all.

Metal Gear week

Since the gamecard on my WoW account expired, I decided to take some time off from the timesink so I could finish up some of the other games in my library that I've been meaning to get to. One of those games is the entire Metal Gear Solid series (except for the PS1 version of MGS). The only game that I haven't really played is MGS3. As for MGS2 and MGS: Twin Snakes, I never played them per se, but I did watch my friends play them from start to finish. And if you're wondering, both times were a single segment run. MGS2 took my friend about 14 hours and MGS:TT took my other friend about 8 hours. I tried to stay awake through both, but sometimes I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Now that I'm playing them myself, I'm sure to be awake.

Unless I get distracted by some other game (Final Fantasy IV Advance) I should be able to finish all 3 this week. Then I can start playing Prince of Persia: Two Thrones.

As time goes by

So I'm a year older today. What have I learned in the past year? Outside of video game related knowledge, practically nothing. Working at EA this past year, I did learn a lot about game design solely by being forced to sit through genres I normally would never play. Who knows if I'll ever get to use that knowledge.

Oh, I also learned what it's like to own a $250 paperweight. It's clear that Sony had no idea what they were competing against when they designed the PSP. What's the mindset you have to be in, in order to actually think that people would be willing to pay $30 for a movie on UMD - keeping in mind that the UMD movie has less extra features and costs more than a DVD of the same movie.

Anyway, I'm getting old real fast. I suppose it's time to start thinking about settling down and start a family of my own. Is a job in the video game industry stable enough to carry all of that? Maybe not. That probably explains why I haven't been searching for industry jobs lately and going back to my programming roots. I'd love to stay in the industry and reach my goals for game design, but maybe it'll take too long and it isn't financially good enough. Or maybe that's just my parents nagging that's stuck in the back of my head.

As my girlfriend says, "choose a career that you enjoy and the money will follow later." And I always tell her, "it's hard to do that with constant nagging by parents."

Best Auction Ever

Lot's of people try to sell Xbox 360s on eBay for profit, including this dumbass. He thought it'd be cool to include tickets to a local sporting event and make even more cash. Well, the plan backfired and the auction ended at $80 - because that's the maximum price allowed for resale tickets in Kentucky. Lesson learned, if you're gonna scalp tickets do it offline and if you're gonna sell an Xbox 360, just sell the stupid Xbox 360. To the buyer, grats on your awesome purchase. To the seller, it really sucks to be you.

Thanks to Rob for pointing me to this article.

The Soul Still Burns (and not in a good way)

Apparently it is possible for the Soul Calibur 3 savefile to become corrupted. From what I've read, it occurs when you delete, move, or update a savefile that was made previous to the SC3 savefile. Here is Namco's official response. Basically, that means once you save a SC3 game, you can't play another game if you don't want your SC3 data to become corrupt. That's just stupid.

Having worked in the testing division of the game industry I can see why it got overlooked. I would have never thought that deleting a savefile would affect another game's savefile. I do remember seeing something similar at work (Eron may remember what I'm referring to), but it was nothing close to this. IMO, there's a really stupid/sloppy programmer working on the Project Soul team at Namco Japan. The tip-off should have been that the game autosaves after every single versus battle. UGH!

I'm not so much concerned about the SC3 data on my memory card. If that gets corrupted it's no big deal - at least to me. I'm more concerned about the other data on my memory card. There's countless hours of gaming saved on that memory card and I'd be seriously pissed if SC3 caused it all to become corrupt.

It reminds me of a previous incident about savefile deletion. Earlier this year, the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo on the OPM demo disc would delete the saved data off the memory card in slot 1. Who knows why a demo has to access the memory card. But for whatever reason, it severely pissed off a lot of people.

Needless to say, I'm kinda scared to play SC3 now.

---

Penny Arcade agrees with me...

They think Perfect Dark Zero sucks ass,

And that Arcane Missiles don't work at all. (I told the guys at work this, but no one believed me. Maybe if they actually played mages.)

Although, I don't agree with PA about Killer Instinct. That series just needs to stay dead.

Colossal Viral Marketing

As we all know, I've been looking for Shadow of the Colossus stuff lately. I find it sad that Sony isn't doing more to getting more gamers interested in SotC. To the naked eye, there's only the print ad which appears in various gaming magazines. In an earlier post, I showed you a video of a discovery of a colossus-like creature in the snow. That video is apparently a part of Sony's viral marketing campaign for SotC. The videos are fun to watch and should be checked out if you're a fan of SotC. All videos, etc. of this campaign are conveniently located at a blog about Giantology. (view posts from Oct. and Nov. 2005)

Finally, I found the preview/concept trailer for NICO, which is what SotC was called during its development. This trailer was taken from the NICO DVD was provided to people who preordered SotC in Japan. Enjoy!

And yes, I'm looking for the full DVD.

Star Wars AND Transformers?!

If you know me, you'll know that I'm a big Star Wars fan. If you really know me, you'll know that I'm a huge Transformers collector. Well, not so much anymore. But I still enjoy getting a nice rare Transformers item now and then. Much to my amazement, there's a new line of Transformers coming out that are Star Wars based. Obi-Wan looks pretty stupid imo since the toy doesn't even look anything like Obi-Wan. Grevious looks the most like the movie character. I'll probably pick up Vader and Grevious whenever I see them.

I've also been looking for the Shockblast figure from the Alternator line of Transformers. They just don't seem to carry it in the stores near me. Kinda sucks since I'd rather not order it online.

Lazy Dumbass Finger Pointers

Politicians suck ass. "OMG! There's violence, sexuality, racism, and religious themes in video game! We must protect the children! Oh why doesn't someone think about the children!" Hey guys, all that stuff is in the movie theatres, television, radio, and printed media. Oh and there's that little thing called the Internet. Why just blame video games? Why punish just us? It's not our fault today's parents have no control over their children.

Just today at the mall, this one lady's kid (maybe 6 or so) was running around, bumping into people and making a mess. For 5 minutes, while I was waiting in line for my food, the kid never stopped moving nor once shut the hell up. All the mother did was say "stop that." I mean, wow. That's awesome parenting. I can tell right now that that kid is gonna be a failure at school. Congratulations lady, your kid is yet another idiot bogging down the schools for everyone else.

Anyway, my point is that parents should point the blame at themselves for failing their children, not video games or any other media. Yes, media has a heavy influence. But the parent has the ultimate power to restrict that media in the home.

How can I put this in a way that you'd understand it...

You see, Anakin was a promising padawan. He had all the potential in the world to become the greatest Jedi Master. Yet, the Jedi council, and more directly, Obi-wan didn't take heed to restrict Anakin from falling in love with Padme nor restrict Anakin talking with Senator Palpatine. They weren't the parents, or teachers, that Anakin needed to focus his abilities. They let him roam free to do as he pleased. The only discipline Anakin got was "mind your feelings, they betray you." Yeah, that really taught him a lesson. We all know how the rest of the story goes.

Left on the cutting room floor

I found a couple of interesting facts about Shadow of the Colossus. Apparently, the designers initially planned for there to be over 40 colossi in the game. Given that there are only 16 in the game (with an 8 hour average play time), 40 colossi would have been really amazing. If you think about it though, the game might have suffered with that many colossi. Time and money constraints rule above all in the game industry. Keep in mind, SotC took roughly 4 years to make. To make the game as unique as it is, not to mention make 40 unique colossi, would have taken the development team at least 6 or so years to do. I'm happy with the way SotC is, and so should you. We could always hope for a director's cut edition. =)

Here are some pics of colossi that were cut out of the final game.



Here's a picture of the 3rd colossus in his prefinal in-game-model. Note the much thicker armor.


Here's a preview trailer that shows some of the left out colossi. I wonder why they were left out of the game when they seemed to already have AI, models, etc. already completed.

Finally, here's a post on GameFAQs that ties (or tries to) SotC to the Bible. While GameFAQs may not be the best source for acurate information, it still is interesting to read.

Needless to say, I'm having fun searching for info about this game.

edit: Here's Wikipedia's entry for Shadow of the Colossus. (note: severe spoilers ahead)

Xbox Gamer Profile

Ignore the Xbox360 Gamer Profile link that's on this blog. If you click on it, you'll be able to see that I don't play any Xbox360 games. I just thought it'd be neat to have on my blog though.

It's a feature that I wish Blizzard would do for their games. I could link to my WoW characters, for example, and any interested person would be able to see how I spec'd that character and see what equipped items that character has. Hell, they could just unify all the logins for all of their games and then have a link to your win-loss records. Or even maybe have a smal database of StarCraft or WarCraft III replays! That'd be freaking awesome!

Shadow of the Colossus (video game heaven)

Having completed SotC over the weekend (freaking awesome ending, btw), I've been looking for videos on the Internet that are SotC related. Here's a strange one. I'll post more when I find them.

Now to beat Hard mode. =)

Here are some speed runs (note, severe spoiler alert):
1st Colossus
2nd Colossus
3rd Colossus (link to a tutorial)
4th Colossus
5th Colossus
6th Colossus
7th Colossus
8th Colossus
9th Colossus
10th Colossus
11th Colossus

Insanity!

So the Xbox 360 is finally here. Whoopie. Woohoo. Huzzah. So, are all of those who actually got one happy with your $400+ purchase? If not, you should feel "lucky" that you were actually able to get one. You should also thank the stars that you weren't robbed. Of course, if you're a rich bastard, you don't have to worry about such things and just buy it off eBay.

However, if you were an intelligent person, you'd at least wait until the PlayStation 3 launches and then buy an Xbox 360 at a lower price. I bet you that the games would no longer be $60 by that time too.

On the other hand, the PS3 should be pretty sweet. I mean c'mon, aren't you just dying to play games that you've haven't played since the days of the PS1? This time they're prettier. Oooooohhh.. Pretty bump mapping, sharp textures, the curves of the hundred million polygons... I just can't wait for new gripping styles of gameplay like what MGS4 will offer. Surely it won't be like MGS1, MGS2, or MGS3. Let's hope it plays like MGA!!! That's worth the $450+ price of the console.

Me personally, I'm waiting for Nintendo. Sure, I have absolutely no idea what the console offers. Other than a remote control wand. Sure as hell would make Star Wars or Harry Potter games more fun. Well, okay... just the Star Wars games.

All in all, I'm sure Microsoft is damn happy with their launch. But hey, if you're dying to get your hands on an Xbox 360 this Christmas. Why don't you import one from Japan? They'll have plenty of 360s to sell.

Hmm... let's call this segment: Insanity Part 2.

So I watched the video review for Perfect Dark Zero this morning. And I have to say... the game looks like garbage. Is it just me, or is the bump mapping for the game totally fucked up? I've seen better bump mapping in Halo 2. Freaking Halo 2! What a rush job. It'a also amazing how poorly rendered the hair is in PDZ. Especially when in their most recent games (Conker: Live and Uncut and Star Fox Adventures) hair and fur are rendered insanely. What went wrong? Who knows. All I know is that yet again Perfect Dark is just around to copy a previous FPS (this time it's Halo 2).

Finally, I'd just like to say that, for video reviews, it should be a requirement that the person demonstrating the game during the review should know how to play the game. The idea should be to show the game at its best and that cannot be done by watching a bumbling fool attempt to play the game. Oh, it'd also be nice if what is being talked about by the reviewer is shown on screen by the demonstrator. Just a thought...

Woohoo! My first epic item!

This afternoon, I looted my first epic item in WoW, The Eye of Shadow. Now I only need The Eye of Divinity and the Splinter of Nordrassil so I can form Benediction/Anathema. Needless to say, that staff kicks serious ass. More Molten Core tonight!

Quality - It's in the game

I recently started playing City of Villains. I wanted to try City of Heroes when it first came out, but decided that if I'm going to pay monthly for a game it had better be a Blizzard game. City of Villains, so far, is no World of WarCraft - it's not even close to the quality of WoW.

Blizzard has really spoiled the MMO genre with WoW. There are so many minute details in the game design that you wouldn't notice unless you played one of the competition's games. You know, something like not having to select the server where your character is located everytime you load the game. And on top of that, displaying how many characters you have created for a given server. Simple stuff like that makes WoW so much better than every other MMO.

This takes me back to a previous post on my blog. Blizzard takes their damn sweet time when developing a game. And it shows. Even as you read this, Microsoft is in a rush to get every launch title ready for the Nov. 22 release of the Xbox360. To them, it doesn't matter how good the game is, just get it out there.

Perfect Dark Zero is Microsoft's flagship title. I can tell you right now, it's gonna suck ass. No, I haven't seen it in person or played a demo. I've only seen the screenshots that you have seen. Why do I think it'll suck? One reason. Microsoft has not yet allowed game reviewer sites, like GameSpot or IGN, to even play a pre-final version of the game. If a title skips the reviewers before being released, the publisher is very concerned over the reviews the game will get. Movie companies do this all the time. Microsoft is scared shitless that the game will get bombed by reviewers and thus PDZ would only sell to the really stupid. Microsoft could always use an excuse like "we didn't have enough time to get the game to reviewers before launch because the games couldn't be pressed in time." That, of course, is a lie. Game companies will normally send the reviewers pre-final software (before mass production begins).

Perfect Dark Zero will sell, no doubt. People just have not learned why Nintendo got rid of Rare in the first place. Rare just sucks. Out of all the games they developed, only GoldenEye for the N64 is worth playing. Sure, Conker is a favorite of mine. But by no means is it a good game - it's just entertaining enough to overlook the huge flaws in gameplay design. Granted, I've said this many times before and I know people still don't believe me. Hey, it's your time and money. Waste it if you want. Just remember I told you so.

I've also been playing a lot of Mario Kart DS - offline and online. The mix of race tracks from the previous 4 Mario Kart games is nice, although it does show how crappy Mario Kart: Double Dash is compared to the rest. And while an online Battle mode will surely be missed, racing online is just too damn cool. It just sucks that there's no penalty for disconnecting from a race. It's something that must be fixed in future online games from Nintendo. And yes, Mario Kart DS is the best Mario Kart ever.

Backwards Crapability

Microsoft finally released the list of Xbox games that will initially be playable on the Xbox 360. Thank god that Catwoman is on that list and not crap like Panzer Dragoon Orta or Project Gotham Racing. (end sarcasim)

What the hell is this broken backwards compatibility shit? Either you have backwards compatibility, or you don't. You don't give us this half assed approach.

Trickling the supply of the Xbox 360 to generate demand is a lame approach too.

I'm waiting for Nintendo's Revolution and Sony's PS3. Screw the Xbox 360.

Disappointing news

Couple of disappointing news items today. Mario Kart DS' online mode does not support Battle Mode. That seriously sucks major ass. I was really looking forward to playing that mode online. Mario Kart racing is fun, but was never as much fun as battle mode.

The other news item is that the creator of Katamari Damacy may soon stop making games. Yet again, the bottom line is more important than actually making games that are fun.

As if it weren't cool enough

I just found this video of one guy's method for climbing to the 3rd Colossus' head. Very cool indeed. Now, where are the speed runs?

Thy next foe is...

I've been playing a lot of Shadow of the Colossus lately. We all know that this game kicks serious ass and is definitely the PS2's best game ever. My question is why don't more companies give development teams more time to perfect their games? Sony's had two gems this year, those being God of War and Shadow of the Colossus. Both games had a development time of roughly 4 years. Other companies, such as EA, have much shorter development cycles - roughly 6-9 months from concept to retail. Far too short in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong here... I'm all for making cheap games to sell to idiots. Those morons keep the industry out of the red. I just want more gems in a given year.

Exciting times

I can't wait for November 14th. Mario Kart goes online on that day. I've always enjoyed Mario Kart - not for it's racing but more for it's multiplayer battle mode. I remember that my friends and I would spend an entire day just playing the 4 battle mode stages in Mario Kart 64. Those were the days. Even though Mario Kart: Double Dash really disappointed me, I have high hopes for Mario Kart DS. I just wish that more of my friends owned a NintendoDS so that we could all join in on the fun. Oh well, I suppose that WoW and Civilization IV will have to suffice for now. They'll cave in and buy a NDS soon enough. =)

Come Nov. 14th, I challenge everyone to Mario Kart!!!

Especially you. Yes, you. You know who you are...

Slime Keychains & Civ IV

I recently received some cool promotional items for the upcoming RPG, Dragon Quest VIII. As we all know, the slime creature has been the unofficial mascot for Enix and Dragon Quest for many years. Along with getting the DQVIII demo for free, I got two slime keychains. Pretty cool huh? Funny thing... I've never finished a Dragon Quest game. I still want to get around to playing DQ7 though. All I need is roughly 100 free hours to do so.




I've spent the good part of this week trying to get my hands on the Civilization IV Collector's Edition. You're only supposed to get it by preordering it. After being told by the local EB and GameStop that I should have preordered it, I was hoping that I'd be able to grab one from Fry's. After 4 delayed shipments, Fry's got them in on Friday afternoon (first told me Wed. morning, then Thurs. afternoon, then Fri. morning). So after being informed by a good friend that Fry's actually got their shipment, I went straight to buy it after work. How is the game? So far, I'm enjoying it a lot. More so than Civ 3. I'm not so impressed with how little effort went into customer quality control for the packaging and hardware compatibility. The game's two discs are mislabeled - disc two is labeled as the play disc when it's actually disc one. I've read reports that Civ IV doesn't work on certain ATi video cards. I guess I'm lucky - no problems so far with my Radeon 9700PRO. Let's hope it stays that way.

Level 60!!!

Hooray! My priest just reached level 60!

GameBoy Micro and its Awesome Packaging

I recently bought yet another GameBoy to add to my collection. Yeah, I don't need one but so far I have nearly every GameBoy model designed (I'm only missing the GameBoy Pocket). Was the GBm worth buying? I'd have to say yes. The screen is freaking awesome - it's crisp and bright. None of that motion blurr that occurs on the PSP and to a certain extent on the GBA SP. Sure the screen is small, but text is amazingly easy to read. While I previously used my NintendoDS to play GBA games, I'm going to switch to the GBm purely because of how light the unit is and how nice the screen is.

The GBm also supports faceplate changing. I doubt that I'd be willing to shell out more money to make my unit unique. I'd only be interested in the upcoming Final Fantasy themed faceplates that Square-Enix will be releasing for promotional purposes to coincide with FF4 Advance. Let's hope they release those here in the U.S.

I'd also like to comment on Nintendo's awesome use of packaging (at least for the GBm Famicom edition). The GBm I bought is the version that celebrates Mario's 20th anniversary. As you can see, the entire box is designed around the dungeons of Super Mario Bros. It's very nostalgic and very cool looking, to say the least. I wish companies in America took the time to design stuff like this. Instead, we get some crappy iPod wanna-be box design. =(

I also admire the compact design of the box. Not so wasteful with space.




Below, you can see the face of the unit as well as the back. Note how small the GBm is relative to the GBA cartridges it plays. Freakishly tiny.



While importing the GBm was't cheap, I'm very happy with it. I have a GBm that is unique to most U.S. GBm owners and I get a nice retro feeling GBA unit. Here are some more pictures that illustrate how small the GBm is when compared to other handhelds and everyday items. For a quick example, the GBm unit can fit within the boundaries of the PSP's screen!

If you have any picture requests concerning the GBm's size, feel free to suggest it.

Happy Mario 20th!

NDS E3 2005 demos

Here is something real cool. You can download these NDS demos that were available via WiFi at this year's E3 and send them to your DS at home. I really want to see that Zelda trailer they have up.

Decisions, Decisions....

There's a lot of deciding for me to do. Shall I continue my career at EA? Or should I try for a smaller game company? Perhaps leave the game industry for a while and pursue a career at Google? As of right now, I'm leaning more towards Google. Of course, any permanent job is a good one at this time. Working at EA, I've found that I'm enjoying the games that I buy less - I'm finding that I'm still doing work related stuff at home. That's not fun at all. And while I understood that working in the game industry would cause me to enjoy the games less, I never thought it'd make me this unsatisfied to play. I do still want a career in the game industry. It's just that maybe I need some time away so that I can regenerate my game ideas, designs, as well as my fun factor. Where ever I wind up working, I'm going to make sure I work my hardest. Not to impress others, but to impress myself.

Still worried about the Revolution's controller?

If you're still worried that the controller will alienate Nintendo from the "mainstream" games, Nintendo did announce at the same time that there would be a "conventional controller shell" as demonstrated in the mock-up image that IGN made.
Note that IGN has clearly stated that the image is not the actual Nintendo design, but a mock up of what IGN believes the conventional controller shell could look like.

Hopefully both controller add-ons will be included in the box when you purchase the Revolution. It'd be such a waste.

I also hope that an add-on such as this conventional shell will give no excuse to companies that just like to port their games to everything possible. They can't say that "the controller just won't work gameplay-wise for [name of game]". If they do, they're just lazy bastards.

Now with the controller shown, Nintendo can finally show us some Revolution games! Woot! Here's hoping for Spaceworld.

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On an unrelated note, there's something fishy going on with Blogger. I can't upload images and sometimes they won't load along with the rest of the page. What's up with that?

Controller of the Future

Nintendo has finally talked about the Revolution's controller! Is it everything that everyone hoped? Sure looks like it... and more. (Once you get over the shock of how it looks.)



If you're unsure about how this controller will be used, check out this video posted on IGN. It will show you the vast potential that the controller provides.

Remember: "Never underestimate Nintendo."

Ain't that the cutest...

Here's the cutest thing I've seen this week. Taken from IGN.com. Isn't that a cute kitten? =)

Also, Burnout Revenge has been released. I really enjoyed it - the gameplay is a lot faster than Burnout 3. My personal best was 89% completion in roughly 3.5 work days. Not too shabby, imo.


On Sept. 13th Nintendo's mascot, Mario, celebrated his 20th anniversary. I'd like to wish Mario a happy 20th and give thanks for the countless hours of pure gaming bliss that his games have provided.

Just a Headache

I finally tried out Resident Evil 4 today. Not my kind of game. I still can't stand the way that all RE games are controlled. Why can't it control more like Mario 64 or Devil May Cry? Needless to say, the game gives me a motion sickness like headache. From what I did play, I could tell that it's easily the best of the RE series... it's just my kind of game. And I still wonder why, out of all names possible, did they choose Resident Evil. The series original name, Biohazard, makes perfect sense. I don't see why they couldn't choose a similar name for the NA release. (The title Biohazard, to my knowledge, is apparently copyrighted and cannot be used.)

Too many games

Thanksgiving is coming very soon and with the holiday comes a very important season for the games industry. There a lot of high quality games coming out this holiday. While this holiday would have been perfect with Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, I'll just have to settle with: Shadow of the Collossus, Burnout Revenge, We Love Katamari, Mario Kart DS, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Lunar: Dragon Song, Civilization IV, and more. Not to mention all the other games I bought and have yet to play.

I'm finally reaching WoW's max level of 60 with my priest. I'm trying to play less WoW and catch up with all the other games I started playing. I just never finished them because of WoW.

BTW, God of War is just too much fun. =)

Fractals and Electric Sheep

A cool looking screen saver has caught my eye. Electric Sheep at its heart is a fractal generator - and the results are just beautiful. Check it out!

Super Mario: Reloaded

I was shown something really cool, something done very well. It's a remake of the best scene from The Matrix: Reloaded - except Mario (Neo) fighting Luigis (Agent Smiths). Very cool to watch, and I highly recommended it. I don't know where it's originally from, but my friend from work has it posted on his website: thetravisty.com.

Sad, but true

Penny Arcade always has the right idea.

All systems forward

Posting this update using my new system. I'll post a clearer picture of the leaky capacitors later tonight. It's time to put some stress on this system! BF2 and WoW! =)

Damnit all again !!!1111!!!!ELEVEN!!!!!!

While air dusting my motherboard and CPU, I discover that the capacitors on my motherboard have begun to leak electrolytes. Basically, all the time I spent last weekend reinstalling Windows, game, etc. was for nothing. I now have to go and buy a new motherboard and wipe my hard drive and start all over again. =(

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out Badcaps.net.

I'm thinking about going for the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard. This would mean that I have to upgrade my CPU from my Pentium 4 2.0GHz. I currently have my eye on AMD's Athlon64 3200+ (socket 939, of course). It also means that I have to upgrade my RAM to dual channel RAM. Yeah, I could just keep my current CPU and save trouble but I figure that if I'm going to upgrade the motherboard I should just upgrade the CPU as well.

I was hoping that my current system would last until AMD's Athlon64 X2 chips got cheaper, but I have to upgrade now or risk losing this new hard drive.

I'm going to spend another day-off from work fixing my computer... At least I enjoy building computers, otherwise I'd be really upset.

Sony is funny

Sony has recently said that the Nintendo DS is a gimmick and that they do not consider Nintendo to be competition to the PSP. I find that a funny statement, seeing as how the PSP is currently getting its ass kicked by the Nintendo DS in both America and Japan. Sony is just scared out of their minds by the Nintendo DS and in order to save face for the upcoming European launch of the PSP, they have to play dirty. Perhaps if they actually released games for the PSP, it would be successful. A couple of crappy ports of PS2 games does not count. As of right now, my PSP is a waste of $250. The only game really worth playing on the PSP is Lumines. But I'm still not satisfied by my purchase. Where are the games?! Perhaps it's the PSP that is a gimmick.

BTW, Advance Wars: Dual Strike is a lot of fun. =)

Damnit all

Ugh... Saturday was looking to be a great day. Didn't argue with my girlfriend. Had the day off from work. Playing WoW to my heart's content. Until.... hard drive failure. Luckily I had a spare hard drive lying around my room. I'm still trying to recover all my data from the drive with a dead boot sector. Sigh...

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Recently, Nintendo has announced that the latest Zelda game is going to be delayed. This leaves us with no big Nintendo title this holiday season. Argh! I really can't think of anything else I wanted to play this holiday. I guess that means I'll just be sticking to WoW even more now.

This news also brings worries about the Nintendo Revolution launch date. If Nintendo isn't going to make an announcement about Zelda's release until after March 2006, then when will the Revolution launch? Fall 2006 instead of Spring 2006 like everyone originally thought?

Still under development

As you can see, I'm slowly updating the blog to my tastes. It'll be a while longer before this thing is up and running.

Madden NFL 06 has hit the stores. Go buy one and enjoy. (And let me know what you think.)

Work Work (Zug Zug)

At lot happening at work. Too busy to do much of anything else. Must play more Diablo 2 and God of War.