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...