Subsistence. Persistence. Existence.

Much to my delight, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence has finally arrived. Well, delight and disappointment but only because I still have yet to finish the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Shame on me.


If you know me, you'd know that I really like to collect video games as well as play them. I'm usually more than happy to pay more for a game just to get some stupid little extra. It doesn't really change my experience of the game - that's just the way I am. Pretty silly if you think about it. Anyway, I just had to get my hands on the Limited Edition version of MGS3: Subsistence for the extra 3rd disc which contains a movie like edit of the game's cutscenes.

For some reason, this 3rd disc is only playable on the PS2. Why I don't know. The video isn't rendered in real time like they are when you play the game. Instead we get a moderately high compressed video that could, and should, have been playable in DVD players. In my opinion, since Existence is only playable on the PS2, it should have rendered the scenes in real time so the video quality would be better. I haven't watched all of the Existence movie, I don't want to ruin the story development that I haven't seen in the game yet, I just watched the intro to see what it was like.


I have spent a good amount of time playing the online mode though. It's pretty damn fun. Aiming is a bit difficult, 1st person camera is useless, and claymores don't seem to work. Those are my biggest complaints so far. I just had to get used to the aiming system, which is odd since I don't think it's changed since Snake Eater was released. It could just be the new camera mode.

I'll comment on the new camera mode once I've gotten a chance to play around with it. Until then, it's time to finish Snake Eater and play Metal Gear Online during my breaks.

PixelBlocks

I just opened my latest blog which is dedicated solely to recreating my favorite video game characters using PixelBlocks. I hope you find it as interesting as I do!

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.

Shadow of the Colossus Art Book

Amazon.co.jp has a listing for a Shadow of the Colossus Art Book that includes pictures of unused colossi. Pretty neat stuff, as shown by this forum post on Games Are Fun. Again, I wish more merchandise like this would reach our shores (without having to import).

Nintendo DS lite

What the heck just happened? Didn't Nintendo just say that there's no redesign in the works for the Nintendo DS? And yet, here we are with a new announcement that the Nintendo DS lite will be released on March 2nd.

Now, I don't mind the redesign all that much. Sure I'm annoyed that Nintendo keeps releasing better designed handheld systems after I buy them, but it's something that I should be used to and expect from Nintendo by now. I was never really happy with the NDS design anyway. To me, it's too bulky and heavy to be a portable system. The NDS lite's design is not all that dissimilar to the design that I drew in a previous post. The main point of my drawing was to show that the new design would be slimmer. My guess was correct (I even guessed correctly about a brighter screen!).

Based on the image that Nintendo provided, it seems as though the directional pad and face buttons will be made of the same plastic that is used for the GameBoy Micro's buttons. Good choice. Something that I don't like is how the bottom LCD screen seems to be elevated (or at least have a ridge around the screen). This ridge/elevation is on the original NDS design as well, but it seems more pronounced in the NDS lite.

Sony could learn a thing or two from this design (another of Nintendo's seemingly Apple inspired designs). Note that the Nintendo DS can no longer be powered off by accident (power button is now in a similar position as it is on the GBm - or seems to be at least). I've never had that problem with the NDS myself, but others complain about it now and then. And while Select and Start have been moved, they seem to be very easily accessible still.

The real question to me is: Will it continue to use the old GBA SP/NDS charger or use the GBm charger? Hopefully it'll be either one. Yet another charger would suck. I also think Nintendo has learned its lesson about not having a standard headphone audio jack in their systems, so there should be no problem about that. I'd also like to know if Nintendo is going to replace the crappy volume slider in the NDS. I hate the volume slider on the NDS. It sucks - I can never adjust the volume to a level that I like.

Looks like I'm replacing my bulky NDS afterall.

Six days...

I haven't posted lately about Shadow of the Colossus. I haven't lost interest in the game yet - I've just been busy with other games. I only write about SotC today to inform everyone that in less than six days, SotC will be finally released in Europe. Those poor gamers had to wait a long time for this game. Believe me Europe, it's worth the wait. Sony has officially updated the Shadow of the Colossus website for those new languages.

The one thing that bothers me though is that the European version of the website has a much more artistic design that fits the SotC universe. It is far better than the Japanese and American versions. This leads me back to my previous complaints about box art for American games. Why does America get these cold and unartistic designs? Is it just a matter of getting the game logo in as big a print as possible? Or is it that publishers (or marketers) think that artistic designs won't sell the product?

At least give us something relevant to the game's universe and subject matter, okay guys? Let there be no more fiascos like that of ICO. Thanks.

My week in review

My week has been pretty eventful. The majority of it was spent playing Spartan: Total Warrior - a game I recently received in the mail. I'll be reviewing it in a day or so.


If you didn't already notice, I achieved my first Onyxia kill on Friday. It's something I'm very proud of. The battle seemed very basic overall due to Onyxia's limited AI. Don't get me wrong, the battle was still challenging - she hits very hard. You try playing as a priest and keeping your group healed along with the main tank. =D

The battle did remind me of fighting the dragon boss from Phantasy Star Online. In either case, it was damn cool. I can't wait to go to Onyxia's Lair again.

While I was out shopping earlier this week, I got the chance to try out the Black demo from EA. Hmm... I suppose I should choose my words carefully from here on. Let's put it this way. Based on what I played, Black seems like an average FPS. The only differences I saw were an AI system that is seemingly loosely based on AI found in Halo and that hiding behind objects is now out of the question as bullets now destroy windows, walls, cars, barrels, etc. Of course, while I did find it neat that games like Black now have more realistic bullets and physics, I should point out that Black seemingly does not do anything else to push the envelope of the FPS gameplay style to make them interesting again. We'll have to wait to see if Black offers anything more than just faster paced gameplay. I personally wouldn't hold my breath - but then again I'm not a big fan of FPS games.

I'd also like to point out to everyone that it was proven that shooting cars won't cause them to explode (as proven by the Mythbusters). I'm sure this is true for barrels as well.

Back to Black for a moment, I'd like to point out that while playing I found myself struggling with the PS2's controls to keep up with where I wanted to move and aim. It could be that the movement speed just needs adjusting or the controls are not yet tuned to perfection yet. Of course, those are developer's reasons (if they were to respond to my comments). The real reason is that the controller just doesn't feel right for the FPS genre. I'm sure there are some that will disagree with me, but those people are Halo fans and thus their stupid opinions don't count. Console FPS games should give the user the option to use a mouse and keyboard - the only way to play a FPS (unless the Nintendo Revolution can do better).

I also found it awkward to have the crouch button placed on the L2 button. In my opinion it should be placed on one of the face buttons where it can be accessed easier. Customizable controls will fix that problem.

Also, at the same store where I played the Black demo a customer was chatting with the salesclerk about the Xbox 360. Naturally, I listened in on their conversation for a while. Basically, the customer was non stop praising the Xbox 360. He even boasted that once the Xbox 360s are more available, he'll buy a new one and sell his old one so that he'll have a system that doesn't have any hardware problems. He never really mentioned how great the games for the Xbox 360 are - he only mentioned the graphics. Beautiful graphics. Is that all the system has to offer? He didn't mention any game titles. The closest he came to mentioning a game was when he said "that football game." In any case, this type of "gamer" pisses me off the most. Games shouldn't be played for their visual appeal. To me, gameplay rules above all.

I also found it funny that he's going to buy Burnout Revenge for the Xbox 360 even though he has it already for the Xbox. Not that I think he played it all that much though - he said that there's only one track in Burnout Revenge and commented that Burnout 3 had a lot more tracks. But whatever, I just think that if you're going to praise a game you should at least play more than the basic unlocked levels.


Moving off the subject of video games, I'd like to complain about DVDs. More specifically, DVD releases from anime publishers. I once complained about how many different DVD releases Neon Genesis Evangelion was getting. There was first the standard edition (8 discs), then the compilation package (all 8 in one package), then the director's cut DVDs, then the platinum edition (7 discs), and finally the platinum compilation package. There might be a remastered eidtion in there somewhere... I don't remember though. I thought it couldn't get worse than this. I was wrong. The Robotech series is now the king of re-releases. It first had the standard releases, roughly 4 episodes per disc (85 episodes total, Robotech audio tracks only). Then three compilation packages, one package for each "generation" in the Robotech series. Then came the Macross/Southern Cross/Mospeada editions that have both the Robotech audio track and the original Japanese audio tracks. Then came the Remastered editions, followed by the Protoculture Collection package (Robotech audio tracks only). And now finally, the most recent release with the original Japanese audio track and a new English track.

I don't care much for the new English audio track - it just doesn't sound right since I'm so used to the Robotech audio track. What I'm most pissed off about is why they have to release so many god damn versions of Robotech. I can understand the reason for the Macross releases - Robotech is basically a huge cut and paste of the Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada shows. I don't know about the rest of you, but it pisses me off to buy a series on DVD only to find out that the studios are going to release a (usually) better version of the same series you just bought. Maybe it's just me...

(If you're curious, I own the non compilation Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum Edition DVDs and the Robotech Protoculture Collection. I'm really interested in seeing the original Macross story though - I hear it's quite different from the Robotech story.)

Crappy American Box Art

Yet again, North America is screwed out of the beautiful box art featured on the Japanese release. Just take a look at the Japanese box art for Street Fighter Zero 3 Double Upper.


And now take a look at the box art for Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max.


Why do game companies change the box art when they release the game over here? Why?! I'm sure some marketing guy would say: "the box art is changed to better catch the eyes of American customers" or some garbage like that. I just hate it when they ruin the artistic value of a game's box art just so they can make the game's logo stand out more. I hate it. It's garbage. It looks awful. Give me my Japanese box art.

Phantasy Star Online Returns

I have found myself drawn back into playing Phantasy Star Online ever since I found this site. I've always wanted to play PSO online with my friends, but was never willing to pay a monthly fee to do so (I didn't have a Dreamcast at the time the first PSO was around and thus could not play on those free servers). It wasn't until PSO Episodes 1 & 2 was released for the GameCube that I really got to sit down and play PSO. And while I had fun, I still didn't get to play multiplayer - on or offline. World of WarCraft ended my PSO playing. Now that I've found a free server to play on, some of my friends and I have found ourselves being drawn back to PSO. We can finally play online now. And I must say that, for it time, PSO did online multiplayer beautifully. Now where can I get my character one of those Spread Needle rifles?

Nintendo also sucks

As usual, once we spend our money on one of their handhelds, Nintendo announces either a new handheld or an update to the current one. In this case, roughly a year and a half ater after its launch, the Nintendo DS will see an update. My guess is that the new design will look very similar to the GBA SP. It won't have a bulky and curved clam shell design that it currently has. I expect the updated Nintendo DS to be slimmer and flatter if not totally flat. It should keep it's current size screen, if not improved (brighter, slightly larger, more pixels). See my crappy concept illustration below.


This would make the Nintendo DS a much easier and lighter handheld to carry around - one of my biggest complaints about the Nintendo DS. It'll still have the GBA slot thanks to using left over parts from the GameBoy Micro design. Watch me sell my old style Nintendo DS and buy the slimmer one like the idiot that I am. Stupid Nintendo. =D

Apple Sucks

I hate Apple. No, not because there's a lack of a gaming scene on their Macintosh platform. It's because they make everything so god damn sexy, people think that they just have to own one or look uncool.

Now, I don't own an iPod. This is because I only listen to the music that is being played while I'm playing a game. There are some exceptions of course. I'm just not interested in the iPod. Plus, I don't like how freaking everyone, especially teenagers, walk around with those damn white iPod ear-buds stuck in their ears.

Anyway, the Apple product that I am really interested in is their computers. I like the sexiness of the operating system. It just seems so simple. It just seems to do everything right that Windows has gone wrong. I was actually thinking about buying a Mac Mini, but decided against it because I'm not looking for another desktop system. I have been looking for a notebook though, I for a while I thought that the Power Book was the way to go. Of course, the only thing that really stopped me were the facts that the Apple platform is just too expensive and Apple just announced the new Intel based notebooks - the MacBook Pro. And yes, the new notebook is the king of Apple sexiness.

I really want to start playing around and working with Macs. It seems more and more jobs require knowledge of the Mac platform nowadays. There is the illegal course - VMware plus finding the developer ISO of x86 Mac OX. But I don't want to screw up my main computer - and if I can't play a Blizzard game, I'm not a pleasant person to be around. I guess I'll just have to wait until I have more disposable money.

Arcades dead? Not yet.

I'd like to respond to this article, posted at Slashdot, that states that the arcade scene in the U.S. is dead. He justifies his claim by leading towards the notion that Dance Dance Revolution dumbed down the gamers at arcades.

If you actually think about it, arcades were already declining in attendance by the time that DDR came around. In fact, DDR probably re-energized the arcade scene for a good 5 years. It brought gamers back to the arcades. It gave them an experience that they could not find at home.

And that's just it. Arcades are a place for gamers to play games that they cannot play at home. Arcades have low attendance now because, quite frankly, home consoles can now offer arcade like experiences at home. For a while, DDR did just that.

When will the next re-energizing arcade game come out? Hard to say. Home entertainment systems and video game consoles are so powerful now, there's no technological peripheral that can make arcades stand out. The fact that all next generation consoles are going to have online gaming doesn't help arcades either.

But for now, Mario Kart Arcade GP is good enough to get me back into the arcades.

Blu-ray for the win!

Microsoft, in all its wisdom, has decided that the Xbox 360 will be compatible with HD-DVD. But it's not what you think. Rather than screwing over early adopters of the Xbox 360 and release a new version with a built-in HD-DVD drive, they screw over everyone and have them buy an external HD-DVD drive for at least $300.

Naturally, it'll be an awesome peripheral as it is attached to the console via USB 2.0 and its blazing fast throughput. Yeah, right.

As any gamer should know, external perihperals are supported immensely by 3rd party developers. Granted, not all of the peripherals I linked to were accessories intended to be a major part of that console's gaming, but keep in mind that some were. The HD-DVD peripheral falls into the latter category.

For an extra $300, Microsoft is going to have a hard time influencing people that they need that drive. Especially if they want to further promote the Xbox 360 as the wave of the future. Hmm... I wonder... $400-500 would get me a PS3 that already has the latest optical disc technology while for an additional $300 (on top of a $400 console) you could get the other format for your year old Xbox 360. Yeah, tough choice there.

How much you wanna bet that Microsoft will screw themselves over and release Halo 3 only on the HD-DVD format? I can only hope... I'm dying to see the Halo series die. If not Halo 3, definitely Halo 4. Keep up the awesome work Microsoft! Way to let Sony walk all over you.

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.