WoW

It's been some time since I last updated my blog. There's been a good amount of stuff for me to comment on since then and I've been wondering what subject I'll talk about next. But I realized, why think so much about a blog post? It's about damn time to just talk about me having fun playing games.

I've been working on getting MGS3: Snake Eater finished before MGS3: Subsistence comes out next month. Those plans have been mostly delayed thanks to the Winter Olympics and World of WarCraft. Now that the Olympics are over, I should be playing more MGS3 (since my TV is now once again free of sports programming).

The World of WarCraft server I play on just recently had its Gates of Ahn'Qiraj opened. As you can see from the screenshot above, Silithus was jam packed with players wanting to join in on the opening events. At 9:00:00PM the gates were opened. At 9:00:01PM, the server crashed. Three times, to be exact. The madness didn't stop there. For the next two hours after the opening, that I played, I experienced the most amount of lag that I've ever seen since the times when I played WoW via dial-up. Ugh. Let's not forget to mention the extreme queue times my server is now experiencing. Anyway, despite the lag and the crashes, the event was a total blast. Sometimes it's just fun to get in a guild raid and kill things mindlessly without having to worry about strategies. We even tried to take out a huge ass bug, which naturally kicked the crap out of us in 5 minutes. Rage mode FTW.

This Saturday (Feb 25, 2006) I finally was able to join the guild raid kill of Ragnaros and thus have killed every boss in Molten Core. Naturally, I had to take a screenshot. Sure everyone else has taken a similar screenshot, but what the hell, I was proud of having completed Molten Core. Who's that silly druid in the background ruining my picture? I'm still waiting for the priests with more DKP to get their Eye of Divinity so I can finally get my stupid Benediction staff. Freaking Major Domo should drop an EoD everytime he's killed!

Against my money-saving-inner-voice, I went ahead and imported Street Fighter Zero 3 for the PSP. It came with this attachment that is supposed to improve the PSP's dpad. I can't really say whether it'd work or not because I'd rather not glue a permanent and ugly attachment over my PSP's dpad. Other than the PSP's stupid controls, SFZ3 for the PSP is awesome. Arcade perfection in portable form. Makes me kinda want to find SFA3 for the GBA and compare them. I still wouldn't recommend buying a PSP though. It's over a year old now and still without any games that make it stand out. Oh well, I'm stuck with my stupid purchase. At least I didn't buy an expensive space heater. coughxbox360cough.

I also bought Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X for the PSP despite recently buying the Mega Man X Collection for the GCN. I just wanted to see what they changed. For the most part, the game is exactly the same. All Capcom did was change the layout of a couple stages to incorporate the changed locations of the armor upgrades. A nice touch was adding a new difficulty and a new game where you can play as Vile. Pretty cool stuff. Playing as Vile is a nice new challenge that I'm enjoying. I wonder if they'll update the other Mega Man X games too.

Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X also included a demo of the upcoming update to Mega Man 1. I can't stand this game. Mega Man is rendered in the super deformed style. I can't correctly time my jumps at all thanks to the huge ass head that Mega Man has now. It may sound stupid... but it really is the truth. My jumping and timing is all thrown off by the art style. I'll stick to my Mega Man Anniversary Collection.

I'd love to go to E3 this year so I can play some Revolution games. I can't wait!

Stop ruining the fun for everyone else

I was at the Sunnyvale Golfland Arcade today with some of my friends for its special $6-infinite-play evening. It was very nice. Not too many people. Nearly all arcade games set to Free Play. Bliss... or so I would think.

There is one aspect of the arcade scene that I do not like at all. You know those people that are better at you at acrade games like Street Fighter II? Did you know that the majority of them are total jerks? You see them standing around watching other people's games and seemingly not interested in using a free machine on their own. Well, that is until you sit down to play the game yourself. They wait until you put your money in and play a couple of games before they decide to join in and just ruin all your fun. This doesn't matter as much for an infinite play evening, but the idea is still the same.

Why do these asses have to ruin all your fun? Yes, I know I'm not that good of a gamer as you are. I don't fucking care if you can play Street Fighter II with one hand tied behind your back (yes, that happened tonight to a friend of mine). It's a nice and impressive skill I'm sure, but it's both impractical in real play and makes you look like a jerk all at the same time.

So why bother showing off? Do you get a boost to your ego for beating up on a n00b or average gamer? No one benefits from these actions. It only ruins the fun for the average arcade gamers. If you had any honor, you'd try your fancy one-handed street fighting against a fellow expert street fighter. Do that to show off your skill. And I must stress this point again, beating up on n00bs or average gamers just makes you look like an asshole.

Of course, there are also those people that insist on insulting you while you're playing. "Oh my god you suck." "Holy crap, don't you know what you're doing?" "Get off the machine, you're wasting people's time." You know what? It's people like these that ruin the arcade experience. Arcades are not just for the expert gamers. They're for everyone to enjoy. Arcades are a place for both serious competition and friendly carefree gaming.

You want to know the real reason why arcades are fading away? It's because of the jerks that think they own the place just because they can pwn n00bs. To those jerks, all I have to say is: Get a fucking life and let the average arcade gamer have their fun.

Microsoft knows not of shame

Microsoft has announced that Halo 2 will be released for the PC. If this a normal Halo product announcement, I'd be saying "who gives a fuck" right about now. But this isn't a normal Halo product announcement. Microsoft, in all of its glory and wisdom, has announced that Halo 2 will be only for PCs with the Windows Vista operating system. Now, PCs aren't video game consoles. But hell, I think this is just a low brow attempt on Microsoft's part to make people upgrade to their new resource hog of an OS. So not only do the PC gamers that want to play Halo 2 on their PC (all 3 of them) have to buy the new OS, but they have to buy hardware that is compatible and powerful enough to run it. That's a huge kick in the already drained wallet of a gamer.

What next I wonder? Every 5 years will Microsoft release a new version of Microsoft Office that only runs on the latest OS? Are we going to be forced to buy booster packs for Vista just to get the latest security upgrades? I'm sure there will be tons of upgrades and hotfixes. Shits and giggles abound.

If there's one thing I hate Microsoft for, it's for allowing developers to patch their Xbox games after their released. I expect that for the PC just because there is so much variation it's almost impossible to get everything working 100% on every system configuration. Patching doesn't belong in consoles. It makes developers lazy. Instead of making the game the best it can be when it launches, developers will just "half-ass it and fix it later if anyone notices" as seen in many of Team Ninja's games.

I'm sure there are benefits to being able to add content to a console game. New maps are always nice I guess. How many people actually use the downloaded maps for those game though? I'd say only the fanatics do. I'd like to see more effort on developers' parts on getting the game right the first time. Isn't that more important than having your game look like a hack job?

Spartan: Total Warrior

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been playing Spartan: Total Warrior since the beginning of the New Year. I know that in that post I said I would have a review for the game ready in a couple of days, but I never foresaw the difficulties I would have in the story mode, and thus I did not review the game until now.

Visually, Spartan is impressive. The environments for each of the missions are nicely detailed and full of life. Even more impressive is that while playing, the player will be surrounded (literally) by at least several dozen NPCs and/or enemy soldiers. Sure, the NPCs and soldiers have a low polygon count, but this is understandable given that so many enemies are on screen at one time. You’ll never notice this while fighting anyway.

At the heart of Spartan is a classic arcade style beat-em up that successfully recreates the gameplay that is expected from the genre. The controls, for the most part, are very simple with the face buttons consisting of vertical and horizontal attacks, jumping, and a context sensitive action button. The controls become slightly more complicated when dealing with button combinations to block, deflect enemies, roll, or shoot arrows. Rolling to avoid enemy attacks is somewhat useless, as you are not given direct control over which direction you roll in. Instead a roll will circle about the nearest enemy.

My biggest complaint about the control style is how the game handles shooting arrows. Rather than giving the player an easy means of aiming their shot, the aiming system will automatically lock on the nearest enemy and force the player to slowly shift through the queue of targets one by one before selecting that barrel that they want to blow up. Keep in mind that the player is still vulnerable to attack while selecting their target. It’s not the best aiming system for such a high paced game. It only leads to frustration and could have been easily avoided by implementing an aiming system like the one found in Resident Evil 4.

Each mission in the game is basically the Spartan vs. the entire enemy army. There’s hardly a moment when the Spartan isn’t surrounded by at least 20 or so enemy soldiers. Each mission has its own set of objectives ranging from setting buildings on fire, destroying key enemy resources, or the dreaded “protect the NPC(s)”. Protecting NPCs in this game isn’t as bad as in others, but only if you run ahead of the NPCs and kill the soldiers before the NPC gets there. If you don’t do that, the NPCs literally commit suicide by running up to attack the soldiers. Unarmed citizens versus battle hardened Romans – you get the picture.

The missions as a whole don’t provide much variety. Most of the challenge comes from being surrounded at all times by the enemy – naturally, you can only block in one direction at a time. However, the biggest problem with the game comes from the way the missions themselves are divided. Each mission has at least three submissions where upon completing a submission, the game will autosave your progress. This is kind of a mixed blessing as while I appreciate not having to restart a mission from the beginning, I usually found myself too low on health to face the onslaught of the remaining Roman army. The low number of health recharge stations and the fact that enemies won’t drop health unless you’re nearly dead doesn’t help this issue. (If you’re curious to know, this alone was the reason for my long time it took me to write this review).

I’d also like to point out that this game would have greatly benefited with multiplayer capabilities. Killing soldiers by yourself is fun, but if your friend(s) can join in would make it all the more fun.

There is also an Arena mode that lets you use the unlocked items from mission play in a gladiator style battle. It is a novel concept but I found it to be less fun than the missions because of the total lack of mission objectives. In the arena, your only mission is to survive the waves and wave of soldiers and get a high score – fun for a while, but gets old pretty quickly.

Needless to say, even with all of these complaints Spartan: Total Warrior is still a very enjoyable game. It may be a frustrating experience at times, but if it didn’t have these challenges it would have been a very generic beat-em up. I especially like that you are able to replay any of your favorite missions at any time after you’ve completed it.

If you enjoy beat-em ups like Final Fight or Dynasty Warriors, you should check out Spartan: Total Warrior. Let’s all hope that there will be multiplayer modes in the sequel.

Dumbass Quote of the Century

"Nintendo games aren't going to hold up."

That's what Xbox Live Arcade manager Greg Canessa has to say about Nintendo's Virtual Console technology in the upcoming Revolution. Is he really suggesting that games like Bejeweled, Joust, and Breakout have more and longer lasting appeal than Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda? Or is he just being hypocritical? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Xbox Live Arcade just a fancy GUI based emulator as well?

A friend of mine, Shay from Rattox.com, says: "If a game is good, it's good forever." That statement is mostly correct (with a few exceptions). If a game was fun 20 years ago, it doesn't mean that it's still not fun today? If Canessa's feelings were true, then why is there such demand for retro games?

In the end, Microsoft should be pleased. For once, Nintendo is actually taking another company's idea. It's just that when Nintendo does it, it'll be better thanks to the much richer game library and history.

It's okay to be jealous, Mr. Canessa.