Jagged Pixels

Review: Soul Calibur V

2012-02-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

Soul Calibur has long been a series that I've had a love/hate relationship with. On one hand, it's always been a fun party game that is more accessible than hardcore fighters, such as Street Fighter and Tekken. The downside to this is that you could always select an Eddy Gordo character and win without really knowing what you did. This is why I went into Soul Calibur V with lots of skepticism.

However, SCV managed to prove me wrong. I really enjoyed this game. There are things I didn't like about this iteration of the series, but the core mechanics of it felt so much better than previous iterations that it feels less like a party game and more like a competitive fighter.

The fighting mechanics feel so much better in this version. While I'm not an expert on Soul Calibur mechanics, I remember the past ones feeling one-sided at times. There was few ways to come back if you were low on health. Just with the implementation of a super meter, matches feel like, for the most part, they are closer. Few of the matches I played felt like blowouts. With new features, such as the Brave Edge (think EX attacks from Street Fighter IV) and super moves, the tide of battle can turn in an instant.

The characters are largely the same, though many have received revamps. Many characters have been replaced by their students or children. For instance, series veteran Kilik has been replaced by Xiba (or Zima, as I call him), a student of Edge Master, who is also in the game. Kilik appears as an Edge Master-like character, using random weapons from male characters. Series favorites return, like Mitsurugi (aka "That foot stabbing move is so fucking stupid"), Nightmare , Raphael ("the French Pervert"), Yoshimitsu, Cervantes, and Ivy, as well as others. The character design, as usual, is horribly degrading to women. Characters are colorful and well-animated. There's still character design decisions that wouldn't translate well to the real world, like a top-heavy ninja or Nightmare holding his sword with one hand, but most of the characters look really cool, especially Voldo and his amazing spider head codpiece.

Ezio Auditore also makes an appearance in this game and is actually pretty balanced. Unlike previous games, where Darth Vadar had an overpowered throw, Yoda had a tiny hitbox, Spawn had an overpowered everything, and Link had bombs, Ezio doesn't have that many tools to work with. He has a crossbow, but it's not all that reliable. It's nice that the token guest character isn't completely overpowered like in past games.

There is a story mode, but it's fairly short. There are quite a few game modes, ranging from "Quick Match", where you fight against custom CPU characters, online fighting, a six-stage arcade mode, and a six-stage annihilation mode called "Legendary Souls", or "Get Destroyed by Kilik Over and Over Again" mode. There is a character creation mode is back and is wilder than ever. Horse heads, thunder drums, and other crazy items fill a pretty intricate creation system.

While this game is good, it's not perfect. The announcer, usually a staple in Soul Calibur games, is pretty forgettable. He doesn't sound like he's that into the action. The corny announcer from the past games added some atmosphere. This announcer sounds about as interesting as Hayden Christensen. There are also stages that are not fun to play on at all due to their narrow sizes. Also, probably more of an annoyance than an actual problem with the game, is Kilik. I want to play as Kilik with his staff and only his staff. I have not been able to figure out how to do this. Xiba is supposed to be the new Kilik, but why would they make Kilik look so badass and make his weapons random? Like I said, it's not a real gripe.

For those whose souls burn for this series, Soul Calibur V is the most polished iteration. It feels like a competitive fighter fit for EVO. It's still a great party game that will either strengthen or destroy your friendships, depending on if you play as Mitsurugi or not. While it leaves a little to be desired, Soul Calibur V will satisfy the itch for 3D weapons-based fighters, at least until they make Bushido Blade 3 (none of this Kengo bullshit).

Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2012-01-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, sequel to 2006's Oblivion, should be illegal under the grounds that it is highly addictive. For the uninitiated, this game is an open-world RPG, toting a massive map, plenty of dungeons to explore, and several kinds of climates. If that wasn't enough, it also includes hundreds of weapons and pieces of armor, which can also be crafted by the player. Compared to Oblivion, this game is better in every way (except the charm of bad voice acting that Oblivion had). Compared to other games, this game is still excellent and, not only my favorite game of 2011, but also one of my favorite games of all time.

Open-world games are pointless if there is nothing to look at or if there is nothing to do. Skyrim doesn't disappoint in both of these facets. While some of the textures look pretty bad up close (on consoles), this game still boasts some of the best graphics I've seen on a PS3 or an Xbox 360. It's the reason why, in a world where you can kill dragons, become a master assassin, or participate in a civil war, you might take a few minutes to climb to the top of a mountain just to see the view. Even the parts where the graphics look somewhat awkward don't detract from the experience. If you're not climbing to the top of a mountain for absolutely no reason, you can also enter random dungeons for absolutely no reason. The game boasts hundreds of points on the map to discover. Both from my experience playing and watching others, you can spend lots of time simply walking around the world looking for points of interest. Fast travel is available, of course, but Skyrim makes you not want to use it as much.

The weapon and magic system has been completely overhauled and is one of the best ones in an action RPG that I've ever played. You can dual wield one-handed weapons now, which can be useful if you use different kinds of enchanted weapons. For instance, I use a mace that steals the enemy's soul, but I also use a sword that paralyzes them, making fights both fun and hilarious as the enemy falls to the floor, completely defenseless. There is also a robust crafting system and enchanting system that I haven't experimented with very much, but I've seen my friends spend hours upon hours making weapons and armor. Magic is also quite robust. Instead of only being able to buy spells from certain vendors, you can also find them in tomes in chests, dungeons, etc. Each spell is unique, instead of having 3 variations with different elements tacked on. The skills have also undergone some changes. Instead of choosing your top skills at the beginning, you can choose your sign by finding it in the world. You also never choose certain skills to accelerate faster than others permanently, so you can always change your character's play-style. This also means that you can level up everything to 100 if you so choose. Yes, you can be a stealthy battle mage if you sink enough time into this game. Also, pickpocketing is a skill, which is awesome. Nothing feels more satisfying than emptying somebody's pockets without them knowing. And yes, I mean that in real life, too.

The story is almost unimportant to this game. The main quest is great, but what really shines about this game is the side quests, such as the Daedric quests, where you do strange and sometimes hilarious quests for Daedric Princes (think of them like demons) for awesome items, guilds, which include the Thieves' Guild, the Dark Brotherhood (assassins), the Companions (fighters), and the College (Mage's Guild), and all of the random quests in between. You could be on your way to a dungeon and get distracted by another dungeon, which then turns into a quest. Before you know it, you forgot what you were doing in the first place. All of the extra content doesn't feel distracting, either. It gives you a feeling like you are actually in the world changing it.

I could go on about how amazing this game is and how it will suck your life away from you, but none of it would do it justice. If you haven't played this game at this point, you need to. It does have flaws, like several quest-breaking glitches, as well as some hilarious glitches, but those are just amusement or mildly annoying. There were better made games this year, but none of them had an effect on me like Skyrim did. It was one of the first games that I can honestly say has affected my grades negatively. That's how good this is. Unless open-world RPGs killed your parents, I can't see any reason not to play this game.

Grand Theft Auto V: Possibly the Game of my Dreams

2011-11-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Grand Theft Auto V trailer looks like a next generation console seller. Many, including myself, speculate that it will be available for the next console generation, which means that it would be out in approximately 2013, assuming it's available somewhat close to the launch. This is a long time to wait, but the game looks so great. Because it's being held in the San Andreas area, there is a chance that it could incorporate some of the zanier parts of San Andreas in graphics that make GTA IV look old.

GTA has always been a solid series. Each one adds something new to gaming. This game, though the trailer only shows a little bit of it, looks enormous. It looks like a true HD replica of the Los Angeles area. The trailer only showed a little bit of car chases and guns. It really focused on the environment. If the actual game encourages this, I think it can be a much deeper game than any GTA before it. If they manage to fix the social function so that it consists of more than Roman calling you to look at "beeg Americahn tee-tees", I think that this game might be the best-seller for the next generation of game systems, assuming Call of Duty doesn't release a launch title. I need to actually play this game before I can pass any judgement, but, from what I'm seeing, it looks like a lot of fun.
(Video via Brian Crecente of Kotaku)

Review: Catherine

2011-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Catherine is unlike anything I've ever played. Normally, games seem to try to merge gameplay and story. This game, however, neatly separates them. The game is extremely story driven, yet most of the time a player will spend will be in the extremely hard puzzle-platformer areas. These are very Qbertian in nature, as well as being incredibly hard. Why, I had to switch from normal mode to easy mode at about stage 4 because I hit a literal brick wall. Even so, I still love the game.

In the game, you play as Vincent, a 32 year old who is dating a girl he met at a high school reunion, Katherine. After a night of drinking, he wakes up next to an extremely attractive woman named Catherine. Vincent is also having horrible nightmares where he is a sheep doomed to climb blocks or face death. It's kind of weird. I'm not sure how the premise of this came, but I'm guessing the block climbing came first. The rest was just built around it. Somehow.

There are two main components of the game: the story, which mainly unfolds through cutscenes and the bar area of the game, and nightmare levels, which is a majority of the game's gameplay. The bar levels allow you to talk to many people, including people you may know from the nightmare levels. It is also a vessel for the story to unfold. You can reply to texts that both C/Katherines send you. Your reply affects a "morality gauge", which determines your ending. It's pretty fun. Each of the character has a backstory that is interesting and engaging. The game's graphics are some of the best cel-shaded graphics I've seen since Windwaker. Cutscenes are either rendered in in-game graphics or are animated. Both variations look incredible, not that it's surprising, as this game comes from the makers of the Persona series (a series I've been wanting to delve into).

The nightmare stages are incredibly hard. However, the game doesn't leave you to figure it out by yourself. As you clear stages, you can talk to others enduring the same nightmare and receive advice on how to climb. None of it sinks in for a while, but it's really helpful advice. It's frantic action that also involves a lot of strategy and reflexes to quickly implement that strategy. Pressing the back button (on 360, I'm guessing it's select on PS3) allows you to undo a move up to 10 or so moves. This feature allows for trial-and-error learning without consequence. You can collect continues, but after using all of them, you have to load a previous save and there's no autosave in this game. Honestly, games should have an autosave feature at this point in time. I know it's part of the challenge, but it's a bit too old school. The camera is also a little bit problematic when attempting to navigate around the back of a wall. The controls reverse when you're behind a wall, so the camera not working doesn't help.

This is a strange compliment for the game, but Catherine has one of the best localizations I've seen. I've played games and seen TV shows that attempt to bridge the "cultural gap" between Japan and America and utterly fail. That, or they have horrible voice acting that is either atrociously bad or horrifically hilarious. If you're lucky enough, you play a game like Chaos Wars. However, Catherine sounds incredible. I talked to everybody I could and they all sounded fairly normal. Nobody was overacting or half-assing their lines. The dialogue was all well-done too, as if it were written by an American studio (well, it would be, if the game wasn't so Japanese). All the in-game text is neatly translated, so there's little Japanese on signs, shirts, etc.

This game isn't for everybody. It plays out like an anime with its exaggerated plot twists and overall demeanor. The gameplay is still incredibly fun and has caused me to start seeing it in my sleep. Few games are able to do that to me. Even if you finish this game quickly, there are many challenges you can attempt to beat, like getting gold awards on all the levels and completing the "Babel" challenge mode. I would recommend this game, but I can understand if the heavy anime influence turns some players off. For any fan of puzzle games like Portal, or anybody who can stomach anime, I highly recommend this game.

The Need for Cutscenes and Plot

2011-08-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading my Facebook entries (you should be), you would know that I recently beat Metal Gear Solid 4. I'm not going to review the game since it's pretty old and, while I'm known to review games way after they're released, I'm not quite that bad. One thing struck me about the game, however. It's a very narrative-based game, as are all Metal Gear games. It was littered with lengthy cutscenes, separated by, at times, seconds of gameplay. The entire last act was 1 sneaking area separated by over an hour of cutscenes. This isn't to say I didn't like it. I thought it was a fantastic game. I actually wish more games were like this.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a lazy gamer who would rather have a game beat itself for me, but I enjoy a nice narrative. Most games have, at most, 10 minute cutscenes occasionally. This would be ideal if the games weren't 8-12 hours long. I feel like Metal Gear Solid 4 was about that length, just with 8 hours of cutscenes added on. I liked this. I like a good story.

When I was playing it (and I need to continue to play it, since it's a really good game), Final Fantasy X was really good for this reason. It had lots of cutscenes, but there was also a lot of gameplay in it. I felt like it was a good balance between the all-gameplay games and MGS' seconds of gameplay and hours of cutscenes approach. Final Fantasy XIII faltered in this by making the story extremely sluggish and boring for the first 30 or so hours (in case somebody tries to use this as an argument against this post).

My point is that nobody utilizes cutscenes very much. Most of them seem to try to explain plot points that people understood the entire time. A lot of them are very short, too. I wish there was a return of the narrative game. A game that plays like a movie. I enjoyed MGS4 because it was such a good story. That's another thing I hated about most games. There's no real emotion anywhere. The end of MGS4, I thought, was so good that I'm not sure I can handle playing a regular game again. The narrative seems to take a backseat in today's games. MGS4 was the first game in a while that I really felt the need to continue to know what happens next, hence the reason I powered through it in 2 days (the second day sort of spilled into 4:30 AM the next day).

For some reason, at least in America, gameplay has taken precedent over plot and a moving, cohesive story is often sacrificed in order to show off the game's pretty engine. I don't think that the story is more important than the gameplay, but, rather, they are equally as important. If a game doesn't play well, why should I play it? On the same token, if a game tells a boring or generic story, why bother with it? As multiplayer becomes more prominent, stories are getting less and less important, and it's a shame. I think that we need a new series that tells a gripping story while seamlessly melding gameplay with it. Then again, I'm pretty much saying the perfect game needs to be made.

Why are people afraid of cutscenes? Some of the most moving moments in video game history have been from cutscenes. People seem to think that they're filler. They can be. They can also be what keeps people buying games in a series. Metal Gear has always had crazy plot twists in the cutscenes. Final Fantasy has had the best looking cutscenes that have brought grown men to tears. Of course I'm primarily using these two examples since I haven't really seen games that use cutscenes as much (JRPGs with text boxes don't count, those aren't cutscenes, they're reading exercises). Plot needs to be a bigger part of games. Did I mention I'm playing Catherine? Here's a good video describing its relationship with me.

Review: Infamous 2

2011-08-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Infamous 2 is the sequel of the breakout hit from 2009. The original felt like the spiritual successor of Sly Cooper, before they confirmed a new Sly Cooper at E3 this year. Characterized by the large city "Empire City", a clone of New York City, free roam mission structures, and a morality system that affected the upgrades you could get, Infamous was the first Playstation exclusive to really show me what the PS3 could do. However, many sequels suffer in quality due to it being tied to the same kind of gameplay and story.

Infamous 2 doesn't. It is a fantastic game that plays similarly to the first one, but has many welcome changes. The story is even fairly different. At the beginning, the main character, Cole MacGrath, must go to ~~New Orleans~~ New Marais in order to find "blast cores" to defeat this giant being called "The Beast". It picks up right where the last one left off. Only you've lost all your powers. It's not really a big deal, since the ones you get in this game are far better than the ones in the first.

One of the most annoying things about the first game was mobility. You could only grind on telephone lines or railroad tracks if you wanted to get around. This was OK, but it was annoying to get around on buildings. Climbing was a chore. Now, at least with the good side of the morality system, which I'll talk about in a minute, they have given you options. You can unlock a move that literally launches you 20 feet in the air, in case you need a little boost to get on a building. Towards the end of the game, there's an upgrade that lets you shoot an "electric tether" on a building and pull yourself towards it with it. After that point, it becomes Spider Man.

The moral system is back. I feel like it's a little less moral than it was in the first. Many of the choices feel like they're just choosing which powers you want. There aren't as many "Save or Burn the Orphanage" choices as there were in the first one. It's still not as deep as Fallout's moral system, but it works enough to inspire 2 playthroughs. I would have done 2, but Redbox is a bitch with rentals. $2 a day is harsh without a legitimate source of income. I need Gamefly.

Probably the only negative thing about this game is the melee combat. They gave Cole this weapon that looks like something found at a power plant. Use of it is fairly simple. Mash square and press triangle to finish somebody off with enough charge. It's so weak, however, that it's not even worth using after getting a single upgrade to Cole's main attack. It's only use is to kill enemies that get too close. It's not really a big deal, since Cole has so many weapons.

This game isn't going to make you cry or change your outlook on life. However, it is a very fun game that is worth a playthrough, if not two. It is a lot of fun and functions quite well. The free world exploration will keep you looking for collectables for a bit (there's an upgrade at the end that makes doing this a joke), but the story is both entertaining and immersive. It retains all of the comic book charm that the first had while still expanding on the story. If you have a PS3, play this game.

Alienware 14x: My New Best Friend

2011-07-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got a new laptop. I figured that I needed a laptop that doesn't have an 18 inch screen so I could actually bring it to class. However, I wanted something similar to the Panormous (named after the Pizza Hut pizza, which my old laptop has the exact dimensions of) in the sense that I wanted a gaming PC. I couldn't afford both a laptop and a tower, so I decided to get an Alienware. I've normally heard mixed things about Alienware computers. After specifying my computer, I found that it was more than $2000! It wasn't all bad, as Microsoft was running the student deal where you get a free Xbox with a laptop $699 or more, though I had to negotiate with Dell for that. Dell didn't do very well with that promotion, as only a select number of computers qualified and they were not good computers at all. After ordering it, I sat back and waited for July 7th to come around.

June 30th rolls around and, at about 1 PM, I am woken up by my roommate walking in and throwing a box on me. Somehow, the package came over a week early. I can really only describe it as being a kid on Christmas. Only it's worst since I had to buy it. After transferring a bunch of things and setting the keyboard color scheme to make a rainbow (which is badass), I installed all my Steam games and Starcraft 2 in order to put my new machine through its paces. Lo and behold, it kicks absolute ass.

A screenshot of Starcraft 2 in which I am playing with my good friend Nate (manwithpants). This is running on High settings.

Another shot of my match with Nate. These are also running on High settings.


A close up of the action in the previous screenshot. This is running on Ultra, the highest setting.

It goes without saying that this computer might be the best thing that's happened to me. It runs everything smoothly on very high settings, has almost no trouble loading games (Bit.Trip.Runner didn't work once, but I blame Steam), and, surprisingly, it's very portable. It's less than 7 pounds (according to the website) and fits in my messenger bag. It's slightly bulky, but it's still comfortable to carry around. It has 3 USB ports, 2 of which are 3.0, and 2 headphone jacks, which is cool, at least to me. It has cool function key utilities, like the ability to control the computer's volume with F7, F8, and F9.

Overall, I really enjoy this computer. It runs incredibly fast, especially for a laptop. I have yet to run into any difficulty with this. And if you want an 18 inch laptop like my old one, but meant for gaming, they have that, too. My laptop was about $2300 with all the specifications and tax, which is a lot, but I suspect this laptop will last me for a while. My specs are as follows:

Monitor: 14.0" High Def+ (900p/1600x900) with WLED backlight
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 2720QM 2.2GHz (3.3GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
Video Card: 3.0GB DDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M using NVIDIA Optimus™ technology
Sound Card: Internal High-Definition 5.1 Performance Audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi Audio
Hard Drive: 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
Optical Drive: 8x SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Slot Load Optical Drive
Wireless: Intel® Advanced-N WiFi Link 6205 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO Technology

This picture doesn't really do it justice.

If you ever need a portable laptop and don't want to sacrifice gaming power, the Alienware 14x gets the job done handily. I highly recommend this to anybody who is in the market for a new laptop and can take the hefty price tag.
[Alienware 14x Website]

E3 2011: Wrap-Up

2011-06-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've lived my dream and the dreams of several of my friends. I have been to E3. I have been to Mecca. How was it, you ask? Why, it was incredible. I have never been to a place quite like it. However, because it was my first time going, I was wildly unprepared. I was both unprepared in the sense that I didn't have my shit together and in the sense that I didn't know what I would see.

Before I went in, I felt so sick to my stomach that I couldn't eat anything. I was a nervous wreck. I was mainly concerned that I would stick out because I was really young and wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Apparently, this is pretty professional for E3. I saw people wearing tails. It was weird. I was also nervous that people would see that I didn't really belong there. Then I saw this. E3. Only for industry professionals.

As for my actual experience, it was exhausting, but great. I should have prepared more, like by actually seeing what I was allowed to play and where everything was. I then should have scheduled where I was going to go and what questions I would ask the people. It's hard to think of things to say when you're playing a game. It's also really hard to hear the people with the loud music and such. It must be easier for other first-timers who have people to ask about what they should do. No matter. I feel like I have a better feel for it now that I've been there.

One thing that pissed me off was the camera I used. It was some horrible Olympus camera, so it wasn't ideal, as you can see with every picture and video I uploaded. This is mainly a money thing. When I go next year (I do plan on going next year), I want a better camera. A nice camera that both does pictures and video (one of those cameras that Ashton Kutcher uses to take pictures of girls when they're not looking). Because I keep this blog ad-free, donations would be nice, though I know every single one of you guys will just tell me to get a real job or some stupid shit like that. Real jobs are for people who have given up on their dreams of being a video game blogger.

I also learned that doing E3 alone is hard. It's easier going in pairs and taking turns with the demos, though Matt was little help, as he's horrible at non-sport video games. I'm not very good, but I won't die during demos for the most part. This is the other side of me wanting to bring somebody else. I would love to have somebody to help me with everything. I'll probably hold a selection process to see who would be the best person to bring. This wouldn't be a contest. It would be more like a job interview. This is a while away, so I'm still unsure about all the details. I'll talk more about it later, when my plans become more concrete.

As for actual things about E3 that I liked, I would say most of the games I played were great. Deus Ex gets my "Favorite Demo", as I kicked that thing's ass. There were a lot of things I didn't see, like Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, and Skyrim. I wish I played those demos, but that "Exhibits Only" pass sucks. In terms of trailers, I saw some cool ones. If you've ever played any Hitman games, the new Hitman game looks insane. I loved Hitman since I got Silent Assassin with my old tower several years ago. While no gameplay was shown, I'm still super excited. Even though I didn't get to play it, I did get to see the Wii U. It actually looked really good, assuming they can release a multitude of games for it. The Wii was a bit limited, so the Wii U has to be the Super Nintendo of the next generation. The hardware and gameplay options look great, though.

I hope you guys liked the E3 coverage. I certainly enjoyed giving it to you. I'm not sure I can cover any of the other video game trade shows, but that's up to you. Spread this blog EVERYWHERE. Send it to your friends, family, enemies, and neutral acquaintances so that I can bring you guys better coverage. In fact, I will make this a contest. I have some swag from E3. It's mainly lanyards and little toys, but I also have a Witcher 2 poster. I will give swag out based on how many people you can get to like this blog on Facebook. They have to message the page, saying that you sent them. They also have to send a timestamped picture of themselves in the image (I want legit fans, not 50 fake ones). The person who gets the most fans (minimum 20) will get a free, retail game preorder as long as it was at E3. It doesn't matter if I covered it or not. I will preorder a game (up to $60) for the winner. The other participants will receive swag as I see fit. I don't have much, so I'll try my best to be fair. It starts today and goes until July 31st, so start converting your friends! I've decided to cancel this "contest" due to extreme lack of interest. Still spread the blog. I'm just going to give away swag as I see fit. This means I'll just give it to you if you ask. I really don't give a shit about any of it, unlike those greedy bastards on eBay.

E3: Day 3: Day 2

2011-06-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

E3 is done, but I'm not. I have a lot of things to talk about. I played many great games and saw some great games, too. Unlike yesterday, I actually went to Nintendo's booth and Sony's booth and played a bunch of games. So, without further delay, here's my coverage from day 3 of E3!

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
I had serious doubts about this game last year. I was never a fan of Motion Plus, as, in my experience, it never worked all that well. Of course, I only really played Wii Sports Resort, so I held my reservations. Now that I have played it, I'm impressed with how well Motion Plus works with it. The swordplay actually requires certain movements and isn't just random flailing of the Wiimote like Twilight Princess was. The art style was a mix between realism and Windwaker, which actually looked really good. I'm a huge fan of Windwaker's art style, so I was nervous that this game would take more from TP than from WW. However, it looked really good. In the video, you can see that my camera man "Robbie" (aka my brother Matt) was filming me. This was because Nintendo wanted footage to show the players and how they were using the motion control. It was a bit hard to get at first, but, after getting the hang of it, it all controls very fluidly.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations
I played the multiplayer demo for AC:R at Sony's booth, since everything else was "VIP only" or some stupid shit like that. It's the same premise as Brotherhood's multiplayer, only it has been improved. You can now have powerups, like landmines and bystander cloaking, where you can make everybody in a crowd you're hiding in look like you, making it hard to tell which person you are. There are also team modes now, so it's not FFA only anymore. I must say I enjoyed the demo, and not just because I destroyed the other team. I'm a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed series (except Assassin's Creed), so this game entices me. It'll be interesting to see if the series, which is now taking a yearly release approach, can keep making great games that are different from each other. From my experience with Revelations, they're doing a pretty good job doing so.

Street Figher X Tekken
If you didn't see on the video I posted on Facebook, I'm not very good at this game. However, that isn't to say I didn't like it. This game is a cool expansion of Street Fighter IV, but it has different mechanics. Like Tekken Tag Tournament and MvC, you can swap out characters. More like TTT, you can use these tags as combos. Even though I only got to play for a match, this game impressed me with how the skills from Street Fighter IV crossed over so well. I think everybody in that area was watching my match and laughing at me. Matt wouldn't shut the fuck up about how I lost at a game I've never played to a guy who probably ranks decently on the leaderboards in SSFIV. Anyways, look out for this one if you like SSFIV and Tekken Tag Tournament.

Sonic Generations
I played the 3D portion of this game this time. In 3D. Jesus Christ I almost threw up. I understand that 3D gaming is supposed to be more intense, but I'm not a huge fan. I like not dying due to minor aneurysms in every part of my brain, both in the game and in real life. I said last time that this game looked like it played a little sloppy. That wouldn't be the right way of putting it. If you're a long time reader, you'll know that I tried to play Sonic Unleashed. This plays a lot better than that. It's still hard to collect rings when you're going that fast since you can't really tell which blurs are rings and which ones are scenery. Still, this looks like it's following the trend of Sonic Colors in the sense that Sega is actually releasing good Sonic games. And I'm not trying to be awkward, I just couldn't hear the guy talking to me and was really preoccupied with the intensity of the 3D.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Matt tried this. He didn't do so well. I just thought I would end my coverage with a video of him trying to play this game and doing worse than I did. Somehow.

So that was my last day of E3. I'll post a wrap-up, where I talk about all the stuff I saw and what I personally experienced with it. I'll also announce what I'm doing with the swag. I'm not planning on keeping much of anything, so I'll pass it on to you, my loyal readers! For a price. More about that later.

E3 2011: Day 2 (because fuck day 1)

2011-06-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

Before you guys start bitching at the lack of content, E3 is so tiring. I have content. I will put it on YouTube soon. In the meantime, I'll talk about what I've seen. I'm going back tomorrow, so I'll probably get to a lot more things done. And I'll have better videos. Here's what I've been doing:

Modern Warfare 3
I had the pleasure of seeing the following trailer. I tried to film it so that it captured the mood, but it was hard. There were screens everywhere. Everything was playing a different thing. It was hard to focus. I have to admit, Activision knows how to promote something. That was one of the coolest things I've seen. Also it outs the release date of MW3.

Ninja Gaiden 3
The demo I played was pretty fun. It was classic Ninja Gaiden gameplay, but it felt different. It felt like the combat worked better. The camera seemed much more cooperative than the previous titles. The camera would zoom up on Ryu as he would finish off an enemy. It's pretty visceral. I have some gameplay footage (I'll upload it later), so enjoy that.

Sonic Generations
I only played the old, fatass, 2D Sonic part of the game, so I can't speak to how the 3D Sonic plays. I saw the demo played, so I can try to comment on that. The 2D Sonic worked just like you would expect a 2D Sonic game to work. I liked that quite a bit. It also had a feature that was cool: instant dashing. Instead of charging up your dash by holding down and pressing the jump button, you just push square (on the PS3) and instant dash. It was a neat feature. The 3D Sonic looked like it played kind of messily, but that might have been user error. I can't say it controls bad until I actually play it. (Note: Check Day 3 for my experiences with the 3D version)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I have some footage of the intro cinematic that played, but I didn't have anyone to film my amazing playthrough of the demo, so that's tragic. Anybody who knows me knows I am absolutely horrible at Deus Ex. Human Revolution was no exception. I decided to play with a tranquilizer rifle, but I ended up wasting all my ammo on the first set of guards (not even getting them all). After picking up a handgun and wasting all the ammo in that, I thought that I was done for. Determined not to die in a demo at E3, I did a stealth playthrough where I just ducked into cover and around guards until I got to a checkpoint. I did this for the entire demo, as I couldn't find ammo. I somehow beat it, which goes to show that I am amazing at video games in the way that Whitney Houston is great at staying clean (yeah I'm the classiest blogger ever).

What was interesting about Human Revolution was that, after waiting in line for a while and seeing several people play the demo, the game wasn't played the same way. Some people went for an offensive skillset where they just went and killed everything that moved. Some people played like they have played Deus Ex before and actually used some stealth. Still, nobody played like I did and I am proud of that. What this shows is that Human Revolution, much like the original Deus Ex, can be played several different ways and each way gives a different experience. I like this game quite a bit, despite my unique way of playing it. (The Day 3 post has another alternative playthrough)

Anarchy Reigns
This game is being made by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta and MadWorld. It's also interesting to note that the founders of this studio were key developers in the Capcom studio Clover (makers of Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and the wonderful Okami). Anarchy Reigns is an online beat em up that is the spiritual successor of MadWorld, as it contains a bunch of characters from the game. The demo was a multiplayer demo between me and 3 others. Amazingly, I got 3rd place, thanks to the guy running the demo telling me how to activate the power within (or something, my character started killing everything after I clicked the analogue sticks). It's a really interesting concept and I legitimately had fun playing it. I'm not sure how this will translate into a full game, but it was pretty good. It felt like Power Stone. I'm not entirely sold on this being a full retail game, but I'm guessing that there's going to be some sort of single player. It's something to keep an eye on.

So that was E3 today. I'll update this post with videos as soon as tomorrow's event is over. I want to try to be alert for tomorrow's rounds, so I'm not pulling an all nighter. I'm also going to have some sort of contest with some of the swag I get. It'll involve spreading my blog. There will also involve a prize that I didn't get for free. Amazingly, I'm having some troubles finding swag at E3. That'll probably be because I spent the entire day in 1 hall when there were 2 to see. I'll spend my time there. I'm still pissed I didn't get a picture with Katsuhiro Harada and Yoshinori Ono when they were signing autographs. ;_;

E3 2011: Pregaming

2011-06-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I'm going to E3 this year. I figured I would actually talk a little bit about how I'm preparing for the event, what I think the show is going to be like, and what I'm looking forward to. This will be a glimpse at my opinion of things before the show, in case I end up getting disappointed with things, for whatever reason.


A picture I found somewhere that represents last year's E3. It's pretty badass, though I don't know the person who made this. I like how it indcluded Tak Fujii.

Last year's E3 was pretty cool. Kinect attempted to wow us, Move tried to move us (I'm such a good writer), but Nintendo ended up conquering the conference with the 3DS and many hardcore titles, such as a Kirby game (which wasn't really hardcore) and Donkey Kong Country Returns (which was hardcore enough for both it and Kirby). With this year's E3, much speculation hangs around Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. What is Sony going to do with Move? How is Kinect going to attempt to resonate with a more hardcore audience? Is Nintendo's new console going to bring back the core audience? There are also several games, like the Halo CE remake, the new Deus Ex, the new Elder Scrolls game, Mass Effect 3, and so many others that are expected to make announcements at this year's E3. So what am I excited about?

To be fair, I've already seen the Microsoft conference, so I know about how a TV service is coming to Xbox Live. Other than that, there's the Halo games and some Kinect news. Kinect looks cool, but they seriously need to work on that price. $150 for a kickass webcam isn't exactly fair. I'm also not sure why you can't use a headset to do voice commands. At least they're not fucking up Mass Effect 3 with movement controls. Again, a headset would have worked fine for the voice controls. The Halo CE remake looks pretty cool. If they keep faithful to the weapon set and don't add things like Spartan lasers, I think it'll be a fun game. Halo 4... not so much. They're going to have to reinvent a lot of Halo in order to keep it relevant. Even Reach was kind of boring.

Sony's conference was alright. I liked the Playstation Vita and the games they were showing off. Uncharted 3 looks pretty good. The new Sly game interested me, though it'll have to really be a strong game, as it's the 4th in the series and I'm wondering what more they can do with it. The PS branded television was funny because it's pretty expensive for a 3D TV that size. Vizio has ones that are cheaper and that size. If you're going 3D, why get such a bad TV? Go big or go home, I always say. Perhaps it's overcompensation that makes me say that...

Nintendo was fantastic. Luigi's Mansion 2, the Wii U (another strangely named console of theirs), and that weird announcement for a 3DS Smash Bros made my day. That wasn't hard to do, as I spent most of my day today in DIA or on an airplane watching the Food Network on somebody else's TV screen. They didn't really announce that much, though, as I noticed a couple of Kirby logos in the corner at the end. Hopefully more gets announced as the week progresses.

I'm also looking forward to playing several games. Below is my priority list that I'll be bringing with me in order to maximize my time. I won't get to all of these, but I'll try to get to most of the high priority and some of the medium priority. Feel free to comment here/on Facebook about how I forgot some incredible game and I might just check it out.

High Priority:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Deus Ex 3
Mass Effect 3
Wii U
Playstation Vita
3DS games (in general)

Medium Priority:
Uncharted 3
Street Fighter X Tekken
Modern Warfare 3
Ninja Gaiden 3
Battlefield 3
Catherine
El Shaddai
Journey
Skyward Sword
Halo CE:A
The Last Guardian

Low Priority:
Kinect games

One game that actually really interests me is the game Catherine. It looks weird. I can't really tell what genre it is. I hear it's a platformer. An erotic platformer. My love for these kinds of games can only lead to one future:


Again, no idea where this picture came from. Gotta love the internet.

I'll update as things change. I'm going to actually be at E3 the 8th and 9th. I'm super excited/nervous, so with me luck and hate me in the most inner part of your soul! I am fueled by the jealousy!

Review: Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode 1: We Negotiate with Terrorists

2011-05-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Hector: Badge of Courage is a point and click puzzle game for the iPhone, though I'm not sure the phrase "point and click" works. In the game, you are Hector, an alcoholic detective charged with negotiating with a terrorist who is taking hostages. The game is well written and very humorous. It's only downfall is the downfall I feel plagues all games that are episodic, but I'll get to that later.

The game features many things that many portable titles from bigger developers don't feature. This includes fully animated cutscenes and voice acting. The only problem with that is a similar problem I had with Metal Gear Solid Portable: putting your iPhone on silent doesn't make the cutscenes silent, only with Metal Gear, nothing was silent. This means nothing unless you're in a public place, like a college classroom during lecture (yeah I'm the world's worst student). As a point and click adventure, the game is solid. It has the strange puzzle solutions that I loved in games like Monkey Island and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. The humor is so well done that it makes you want to click on every object to listen to Hector's twisted take on everything. Conversations are what you would expect, only the subject matter isn't. It's the same thing, though. I still selected as many conversation objects as I could, even if I knew they were the wrong thing to press.

My only problem with the game is my problem with every episodic game. I don't really like the concept of having to pay for a game in installments. I can see the advantage of how it lets me sample the game so I don't have to pay for the entire thing, but it also means that, if I like the game, I have to both wait to play the rest and remember that it's coming out. I'm horrible with that. It's fine with some games, like this one, since it is pretty cheap, but with games with Strong Bad ($10 a pop for the Wii, my system of choice for that game) and Sonic 4 ($15, fuck that), it gets a little expensive. Especially for games like Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, where the five episodes aren't even on a continual storyline and are about 1.5 hours each, it gets annoying to pay so much for what feels like 5 really short games. I think the prospect of episodic games in terms of releasing one game over a series of time is alright, but it's annoying. I feel like this has become a norm to either get a game out faster or, in Sega's case, to collect a lot of money on a game that shouldn't be as long as it might be. I don't know how many episodes they're planning for that, but Sonic 4 can suck my dick. It's not even good.

Regardless of this, Hector: Badge of Carnage is a really funny game that I recommend to any iPhone owner. It's also on the PC ($10), Mac ($10), and iPad ($7). The cheapest version is the iPhone version, which is $4. Just make sure to cover your speaker before a cutscene plays.
Game's Website

E3 2011 Announcement

2011-05-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years, when I do E3 coverage, I usually do them while watching G4's live coverage of the convention. It was a bad way to cover E3, but it was really all I could do at the time. Not anymore. I am pleased to announce that I will be attending E3 this year! After getting rejected once, I thought E3 was but a dream. This goes to show that if you bitch enough, your dreams will come true. I won't have a press pass, as I'm not going as a member of the press, so I won't be able to actually attend the press conferences, but I will be able to give first-hand impressions of unreleased games and probably even get my grubby paws on the new Nintendo console. I'll be there for the last 2 days, since there's no real point of going the first day if I can't go to the press conferences. I'll still be covering those, though, so make sure to still check my blog for updates. If anything changes, I'll update this post.

Review: Portal 2

2011-05-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Portal 2 is one of those games that can either be really good or really disappointing. After 2007's revolutionary Portal, its sequel has big shoes to fill. It had to work against not having the same effect on people as the original did, as millions played the first one. However, after playing it, I actually think Portal 2 is better in nearly every way. There wasn't too many problems with the original, but the main one, the short, bare-bones story left people longing for more. Portal 2 not only has an actual plot, but it is also significantly longer. It doesn't feel like a cash-in either. There's enough new ideas in this game to keep it fun without overly-complicating everything.

The game takes place long after the first game, so, while there's a sense of familiarity, the environment looks really run-down. Because of this, there's more of an organic feeling to it, as opposed to the sterile, doctor's office feeling of the first. Even though this is a game run on Source, it still looks pretty good. Of course, this doesn't mean Valve shouldn't make a new engine/Half Life 2 Episode 3/Half Life 3, but it still looks nice. The story is phenomenally done. As soon as the game starts, it's nothing but hilarity. The story is also actually a story, unlike in the original, which felt more like a concept loosely tied with a scenario. There's also other characters besides you and GLaDOS, the evil, yet lovable machine. The other character who is on screen is Wheatly, a clumsy robot who is apparently voiced by one of the writers of the British version of The Office.There is also Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science. He is entertaining since he gives Aperture a sort of backstory. He is also voiced by J. Jonah Jameson. Somehow, Nolan North is also in this game, though that's less surprising, since he's in fucking everything.

The game's single player is a very fun experience that is both reminiscent of the first, yet completely different. While it's not as long as other games, it's still very well written and very engaging. I was almost able to beat it in a single sitting (and I would have been able to if my roommate didn't come home and order me off of his copy). Few games are able to hold my attention for that many hours in a row these days. The dialogue is snappy and humorous in a way that doesn't distract you from the game. There are several very funny easter eggs, too. The single player is only half of the game, though.

It's not really half. If I were to put a percentage on it, I'd say it's a quarter of the game. The cooperative campaign is the longer and more challenging part of the game. I wish I could say that I beat ever level of it, but my campaign partner won't play with me, despite the fact that he has all the free time in the world. He's a bit of a douche. He also refuses to read my blog. I'm sure that 90% of the people reading this know exactly who I am talking about. I have, however, seen much of the cooperative campaign played by two other friends (one of which was a featured writer for this blog). One of them is probably the best gamer I know, as he is scary good at many genres of games. The other had never played Portal before and is generally horrible at video games (it's always fun to make fun of readers for problems I struggle with). From what I saw (I barely remember the puzzles at all), it seemed like it was not a detriment to the more experienced player that the new player was not good. The puzzles were difficult, but they weren't impossible. I also noticed the new player was often being led around by the more experienced one. So don't fret if you suck at puzzle games. If you play with somebody who's good, you'll still have fun. The new player did.

Many have complained about how Portal 2 "was designed for consoles and poorly ported to the PC blah blah blah PC fanboyism", but it is actually a very well made game. That being said, I played it on the 360, so I have no idea how the PC version is. However, based on my assumption that Valve didn't fuck up the PC version, Portal 2 is a game that anybody with any interest in games should play. All roommate bashing aside, this game is fantastic. It is a great follow up to a very revolutionary video game and, while it doesn't deliver the same effect, it is some of the most fun you will have this year. I might be speaking too soon, however.

How Gaming is Like an Abusive Boyfriend

2011-04-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

In case you went to a boring high school like I did or never watched crappy teen dramas like I watched, there is a popular scenario where a nice, attractive girl dates a douchebag. When confronted about said douchebag, she often says "He's nice deep down" or "He used to be a sweet guy" or whatever. I'm not really basing this off of any experience I've had. I'm basing it off of the movie Spiderman. I don't even think there was a part where Peter Parker talks to Mary Jane because he's too busy slinging his web all over his room like any kid his age would. Now, you might be asking if the only point of this post is to make Drake jokes and have random Dr. Pepper product placement. Think about a company that announced a sequel to a game you have been looking forward to for years. The game comes out and it's absolute crap. You think, "Eh whatever. The next one will learn from this one's mistakes." Next one comes out. Complete crap, even more than the first one. This is the exact thing I am talking about. I can cite at least 2 recent events that I have had this experience with.

Sonic is the classic example of this. After Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the series has had a difficult time being as amazing as it was. With games that were alright like the Sonic Adventures series (SA2 didn't suck for it's time, fuck all y'all Shadow haters! Rogue can die, however.) to some horrible entries like Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Heroes, it's been rough for Sonic fans. When Sonic Unleashed was announced, many were excited at the prospect of Sonic returning to his 2D roots. However, the game switched from 3D to 2D so horribly that the game was frustrating and annoying. That doesn't include the "Werehog" levels, which I can only describe as "God of Bored". Sonic Colors looked like it fixed most of the issues, but I didn't play that game, as I am not one of those fancy video game bloggers with a fun thing called money, readers, or a sponsorship. I play what I can get my hands on.

Recently, a game called Sonic Generations was announced. It has a Mega Man Universe twist on it, with both the slim, modern, pedophilia/bestiality-loving hedgehog we pretend we don't know and his fat-ass predecessor we could never forget. By the way, if anybody can make it through that cutscene form the 2006 Sonic game, congratulations, for you are a better man than I. The new Sonic game features classic side-scrolling with classic Sonic and fast-paced Sonic Adventure-style gameplay with Slim Fast Sonic. Even though Sonic has a history of having hyped games be horrible, I can't help but get excited for this. This is probably the closest I will get to an HD remake of Sonic 1,2,3, & Knuckles. Call me stupid, but I can't see this game turning out horrible. Sure, maybe the 3D levels might suck, but they have 2D levels. Plus, it's not Sonic 4 2D, so it's actually fun (fuck locking on to enemies in a 2D game). It's too early to tell who's Mary Jane and who's whoever the hell she dated in high school (I never read the comics).

Another example of this can be found with Nintendo. Nintendo is normally associated with "hardcore gaming", or, as I remember it, games that are so difficult and fun that they simultaneously take years off your life and build fond childhood memories. However, that's not the abusive boyfriend aspect of Nintendo. The Wii was a real departure from their usual audience. It was marketed towards kids with low self-esteem and parents who barely know how to turn the TV on. It was a casual console meant for people who were both bad at video games and who had desire to become better. Though many games (Metroid Prime 3, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Mario Galaxy) were targeted towards the old Nintendo fans, many games, most of which were third-party games, were focused on the casual market. They were meant to reinforce self-esteem, not build character. So, understandingly, a lot of the more dedicated gamers are unhappy with Nintendo.

While Nintendo is yet to say anything about it, there have been a boatload of rumors that Nintendo will announce a new console at this year's E3, effectively doing exactly what Microsoft did with the Xbox 360. The console, in case you're lazy and don't like reading more than one site, is rumored to be more powerful than the Xbox 360 and PS3. It is also rumored to have a weird controller. This controller is said to have a touchscreen and a front mounted camera, as well as buttons, such as twin analogue sticks and triggers. I recently made a Facebook post about it, where a couple of my "friends" said they weren't excited for this. With Nintendo finally entering the HD era and bringing back a normal(ish) controller, I'm cautiously optimistic. I doubt we will see Skyward Sword on this system, but the touchscreen intrigues me. Because there aren't even images out yet, it's too early to tell if the touchscreen will be a gimmick or if it will be a cool feature that will be seamlessly integrated into games. Chances are it will be slightly gimmicky. This is Nintendo, after all. I don't see this new console taking the same course as the Wii did, however. Then again, I remember being excited for the "Revolution".

I'm not quite sure if I'm the only one who thinks like this. I could be horribly naïve. I do think that we make excuses for bad video games, though. There are boatloads of examples of games not living up to the hype, like the later Jak and Daxter games, Final Fantasy XII, XIII, and XIV, the fourth generation of Pokemon, the Tony Hawk franchise... the list goes on. The only real remedy for this is that video game companies need to either start making better sequels or stop making so many sequels. If the industry focused on new, original IPs, the market would not be saturated with a bunch of old series that have bad sequels. The only other remedy I can think of would be to not pay attention to hype, but that's hard to do. In the end, nothing will be as good as you think it will be... except for Skyrim; that will be everything you think it will be and so much more.

Review: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

2011-03-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a visual novel-type game that was headed by Shu Takumi. For those of you who don't look at developers as celebrities, he created Phoenix Wright, one of my favorite franchises. The game has one of the strangest premises out there: you are dead and can possess objects. You can also prevent people's deaths. It starts out simple enough, but gets incredibly complex by the end. While the game is weird, it's still incredibly good. The story dos not contain any obvious plot holes (I don't know if I missed any) and controls quite nicely. If you hate reading, you'll hate this game. Of course, if you hate reading, you've probably stopped reading this after seeing there's no score. If you love weird games with weird and well-told stories, this game delivers.

The whole premise of the gameplay is that you're a recently deceased ghost who has lost his memories and must get them back before dawn. You have the ability to manipulate objects and save people who have recently died. You do this by moving your soul from object to object. This allows for very cool puzzles in the game. The puzzles are quite good in this game. While some of the later puzzles are unfair and trial-and-error, most of the puzzles are well made. Eventually, you get other powers, but it comes later in the game.

The most striking thing about this game is the art style. It's done in a somewhat similar style to Phoenix Wright, only it's far less anime-y. Probably the coolest thing about this game is the on-screen characters. The animation in this game is incredible. The characters move around quite a bit. Several of them dance throughout the game. Animation for DS games is often choppy looking or limited. This game has the most fluid animation I have ever seen on the DS. Movement in the game is key and it delivers quite nicely.

The story is filled with colorful characters and the strangest plot I've ever seen in a game. I say this after playing all the Phoenix Wright games. It's not quite Katamari weird, as it makes sense, but it's... creative is the best word to describe it. The characters are all strange. Not one of them is normal. Each has a quirk about them. The animation helps accentuate that. In particular, you meet a dog in the game that is the most adorable thing ever. That's the only word that can describe his lines. If he annoys you, you have no heart. Like I said earlier, this game is a novel. If you don't like reading a ton of text in your games, then this game might not be fun to play. It's interesting, but it is a lot of text.

Ghost Trick is one of the best DS games I have ever played. It is a fast-paced visual novel, possibly the only game of it's kind. The game looks incredible, is very well written, and has some of the most imaginative puzzles I've ever seen in a visual novel-style game. It defies all convention while retaining the feel that the Phoenix Wright games had. It's funny, dramatic, and an all-around great game that any DS owner should play. The good news is if you don't own a DS, it's out for iOS in Japan, which means it'll be out for iOS in America sometime (possibly). It's a game that anybody who can read should play.

Review: Marvel vs Capcom 3

2011-02-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

More than ten years ago, Marvel vs Capcom 2 graced arcades and home consoles. Since then, it's become a staple of tournaments and arcades. After much demanding and fanfiction, Capcom has finally made Marvel vs Capcom 3. The game features many new characters, as well as fan favorites, like Mag-fucking-neto and the mango Sentinel. Many people have voiced their concern (read: bitched on forums) about how their favorite character isn't in this game, regardless of how terrible they were compared to Storm, Magneto, and Sentinel. The control scheme's also been altered greatly to match more of a Tatsunoko vs Capcom style of play. Even though they've left out a few characters I wanted, like Strider Hiryu (my only hope for Strider 3), Venom, and Cyclops (OPTIC BLAST), the game has a great cast and is highly enjoyable for both a veteran of the MvC series or people who are horrible at it, like me.

First thing's first. The graphics. They look amazing. It's weirdly cel-shaded in a way that makes it look like a comic book, but not cartoony. The stages look great, too. The attacks are bright and colorful and maintain the comic book looking effects. The only real thing that bugged me about the aesthetics of the game was the voice acting. On the Capcom side, it was really good. Most voice actors reprise their roles from their respective games. It's the Marvel side that bugs me. There's not really anything wrong with it, but it's unsettling to hear the voices not be the ones from Marvel vs Capcom 2. Something about those voices were amazing. It might just be the optic blast thing.

The game has a huge cast. It features many staples, like Ryu, Magneto, Wolverine, Hulk, Morrigan, and Chun-Li, as well as some new characters, like Deadpool, Thor, Dante, Amaterasu, and others. There's already confirmed DLC, so maybe getting Blackheart or Mega Man will still be a possibility. Each of the characters play differently. It seems like they put a lot more time in making each character unique, as opposed to what they did in Marvel vs Capcom 2, which was to have a ton of useless characters. Each character in this game seems to serve a purpose, though there are characters (Felicia, C. Viper) I will not play as. It's a matter of pride.

The controls are far more different from any fighting game I've played. Apparently, they're modeled after the Tatsunoko vs Capcom controls, but I never played that game, so I wouldn't know. There are six unique buttons you can press, but only 4 of them are attacks. 2 are for assists. There are low, medium, and high attacks, as well as the "special attack" button, which serves as a launching move that hits your enemy into the air to be juggled multiple times. You would think the simplified controls make combos easy, but it doesn't. Combos are still quite difficult to pull off and require precise timing. Luckily, they have a mode that teaches you combos for every character, called "mission mode" or "I fucking did that combo you stupid fucking game" mode. It's pretty frustrating, but it's a nice addition to instruct new/horrible players on how to do actual combos beyond what I call "strategic button-mashing". There's also a playmode called "Simple mode", where the controls are even further simplified. There's a button for main attacks, special attacks, the launch move, and hyper combos. It allows for combos to be done by mashing one button. It's a cool mode for beginners, but it doesn't substitute skill, as even I am able to defeat someone using that control scheme.

There's a robust training mode, as well. You can set any setting you can dream of. Want your enemy to attack? Sure. Want him to jump in place? You can do that, too. Want to change your assist options? You no longer have to go back to character selection. It's pretty great. The story mode isn't quite what it was hyped to be. Capcom said this story would have a robust story. It ended up being a generic "arcade" mode where you go through several stages before facing the boss. It's a bit disappointing that the story of this game was so undeveloped, but it's a fighting game. Fighting games have bad stories, with the exception of Guilty Gear and Blazblue, which have very well fleshed out stories and a weird way of telling it. There's also online mode if you feel like getting murdered by a stranger. It was a bit laggy when I tried it, but I somehow beat my opponent, who seemed to know what he was doing. I'm guessing the servers are pretty busy right now, so the lag might not be an issue in a couple of weeks. There's a customizable player card you can have that shows your stats. It's pretty cool, since it shows what kind of player you are.

There are few things wrong with Marvel vs Capcom 3. The general lack of a tutorial is annoying for a game with a learning curve like MvC3. The mission mode's alright, but it's a bit unforgiving and unhelpful. It would be nice to see a demonstration of the combo I'm trying to master so I can at least know what it'll look like. An actual tutorial would be nice to help with timing issues with things like "cancels", which is when you cut a move short to do another move. Others have taken it upon themselves to make a tutorial for this game, so it's not a huge deal. The story mode was also a letdown. It's hard to want to beat the game with every character. It's not hard to do if you're lazy like me and put the difficulty at "very easy" and just grind your way through, but it would be nice if there was a unique storyline for each character. A weird thing that bothered me was the DLC that they're releasing. They're releasing costumes for some characters. It seems like costumes should be unlockable. I don't mind paying for characters, but costumes are useless. I guess it sold on Super Street Fighter IV, so it'll sell here, too.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 certainly changed a lot from MvC2. From what I've seen in videos with pros talking about it, they've altered a great deal of characters to balance problems they had in previous games. There's been a ton of work that's gone into this game and it shows. The game plays so well that any professional will have fun with it. Any new player will enjoy the most refined version of Marvel vs Capcom. Because DLC is coming out in March, the characters currently available aren't the only ones that will be playable. Any fan of fighting games or anyone curious about this franchise will love this game. Just expect to get killed a lot.

Review: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

2011-02-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

If you had a Game Boy Advance back in 2001 or so, you might have played the original Golden Sun and later the sequel Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Those games were incredible for the time. They were 20+ hour RPGs on a portable system. They not only had a solid combat system, but they also had a neat class system that also controlled the summon system, as well as amazing puzzles. The Lost Age even had a cool feature where you could transfer your character data from the original game to the sequel so you got your characters with identical stats and items when they joined you in the game. That was a while ago. Since then, many RPGs have done things to surpass Golden Sun. Modern portable RPGs have better stories (looking back, Golden Sun's story wasn't that good), better graphics, and larger worlds. Golden Sun has long been absent from gaming. It only recently made a return with the third title in the series, Dark Dawn, coming out in late 2010. Though it does a lot right, a lot of it is frustrating when you look at other modern RPGs.

The first thing I didn't like about Dark Dawn was the story. It was less that I didn't like it and more that it was long and annoying. The essential story was alright. It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was coherent. The way it was told was horrible, though. There's no voice acting due to it being a long DS game, so it's all text. It's so much text. There are long cutscenes of nothing but dialogue and it gets annoying after a while. The game is very long-winded. This wouldn't be bad if the writing was good. The writing's not bad, but it's not good. It's extremely repetitive and boring. They do some things right, like having an encyclopedia you can access during cutscenes in case you forgot all the details of the original games like I did, but all of the lore is very boring. They spend lots of time describing it in order to tell you what to do. You can't skip them, either. It would be nice if you could speed through it, but you can't.

There are other things wrong with it, too. None of it is as bad as the long, uninteresting story, but it's still bad. Traveling takes forever. You have to walk most places. The places you don't walk, you sail, but that's later in the game. You travel so slow. There seriously needs to be a better way to travel faster. In the Lost Age, you had a flying boat. It ruled. That leads me to my next thing: you can't backtrack at all. Let's say you missed a Djinn (a thing that affects your character's class and summons) like I did. If you missed one in certain areas, you're shit out of luck. You can't go back and get it. This annoyed me to no end. Roadblocks aren't cool, developers. They're dick moves. Other than stupid roadblocks, the game isn't all that hard. You steamroll most of the enemies throughout the game and get equipment pretty rapidly. The bosses are easy, too. Pretty much ever boss can be beaten by a strategy I call "Summon Rushing", which is when you just set all your Djinn to standby (you set them to standby so they can summon shit) and then summon until you run out of Djinn. It's fail-proof. It's like "Baby's First RPG". It has interesting concepts, but if you're a veteran of RPGs like I am, this won't be a challenge at all.

There are good parts of this game. While it's easy, it doesn't play badly. Sure, you get sick of monster encounters when they're frequent and pointless, but the combat's pretty cool. The class system's cool, though it's easy to get away with not experimenting with it. The graphics are really good, especially the summons. The summons are amazing. The entire game has a cool magical steampunk feel to it, sort of like Fullmetal Alchemist, which is no surprise since the magic in Golden Sun is called alchemy. The character design is cool, too. The monsters look nice until you see recolored repeats. There's still cool looking monsters, despite the obligatory slimes and rats. The critical hit system is really cool, too. You can now master a weapon by using it in battles. The more you use a weapon, the more of a chance you'll have to use one of many criticals. They're pretty cool looking, just like in the first games. I know I said the plot sucks earlier, but I feel like the actual plot wasn't the problem. If the game spent less time trying to explain every detail to you, I think the plot would have actually been good. The basics of it are fine. There are twists. You see them coming, but they're still not bad. The only really bad part about the plot was the ending. It just ends on some weird cliffhanger and says "The End...?". What the fuck kind of ending is that? That's not how you set up a sequel. Good games leave loose ends in the plot to intrigue players, not force a twist right at the end. It was really cheesy, like the end of Casino Royale when Daniel Craig just nails that guy in the leg and looks like he's about to interrogate him. Then the movie just ends. I still liked Casino Royale, but the ending sucked. And the sequel.

I've said a lot of negative things about this game, but it's around 30 hours or so. I played it through to the end, which is apparently a rare thing for me to do, according to my "friends", so there's obviously some fun with it. It might be a nostalgia factor or just a fun RPG that doesn't require that much thought. This game isn't horrible. It's disappointing, but the first 2 Golden Sun games might suck more than I remember. If you are looking for a fun portable RPG and are allergic to Pokemon and Dragon Quest, you could do a lot worse than this game. A lot worse. If you're looking to feel that feeling you felt when you first played the first Golden Sun games, still pick this up. Who knows? Maybe you haven't been spoiled to it like I have.

How Much Is Too Much: When to Put the Controller Down

2011-02-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, a developer named Jane McGonigal wrote a book called "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World" in which she discusses how video games make us better people. I haven't read the book (yet), but there are interviews where she explains what her book is about, including on Fox News and The Colbert Report. I thought it was an interesting subject to talk about. How long is too long to play video games? Now, I don't have kids. However, I was once a kid. What a kid I was. I played so many video games that I'm surprised I haven't shot anybody yet, according to politicians and lawyers. This isn't a question of what kids should be allowed to be played, since it's all relative to what the game is. It's more of a question of how long should kids be allowed to play video games per day. It's also a question of how long an adult/teenager should play.

I'm not even going to pretend I was a good kid. I played an incredible amount of video games. It got particularly horrible when I started playing Phantasy Star Online and Super Smash Bros. Melee. It wasn't that I had bad parents, either. I had really good parents. They constantly limited my playing time. The problem was I was crafty and willing to wait until they went to bed. I was also really good at making it look like I wasn't playing anything really quickly. The main thing about my mass amount of playing is that I never saw any harm in any of the games I was playing. That might have been because I played games like Harvest Moon and Paper Mario when other kids were playing rated M games because it was edgy or something. The games I was playing were either helpful in developing some sort of real-life skill (resource management, hand-eye coordination, quick time events, etc) or I was being social while playing it. If I wasn't playing Phantasy Star Online with random people, I was either playing it with friends or playing Melee with friends. I played a ton of video games, but it wasn't wasted time.

So how much time is appropriate for kids? I never played more than 7 hours a day. This was until about age 14 or 15. Some parents give their kids Draconian amounts of time, like 30 minutes or an hour. I think this is horrible. You can't do anything in 30 minutes. That's not even a full Metal Gear Solid cutscene. I think around 3-4 hours is fine. You can make progress in a game and have plenty of time to find a stopping point. I hated when I was told to find a "stopping point", especially for Final Fantasy VII, which doesn't have as many save points as I would have liked.

Kids should have no more than 4 hours, in my unprofessional opinion. What about adults? Adults can handle more games and should play more, right? Wrong. Ever play for 12 hours in a row? You feel like crap afterwards. I remember beating No More Heroes 2 in one sitting a little more than a year ago. I ended up getting a high fever and had to drive myself to the doctor while hallucinating. Not fun. I got through about 90% of Psychonauts in one night and it ended up ruining my sleep schedule. My roommate regularly stays up until 5 AM playing Starcraft 2. Are any of these habits healthy? Not in the slightest. That is why I think adults should at least attempt to limit themselves. Adults aren't like kids. They can't sit in front of a screen for several hours and be perfectly fine afterwards. Ever wonder why people who work in cubicles look like zombies after work? It's partially because their work is mind-numbingly boring, but it's also because of them being in front of a screen from 9AM-5PM. It's a necessity for people to see sunlight at least once a day. I don't have any scientific proof for this. I just think people should see light once a day.

In no way, shape, or form do I endorse responsible gaming. If I did, I wouldn't be the person I am today (which, looking back, might have been a good idea to not play so much). These are in no way, shape, or form scientific facts. They're just my musings. If you follow my parenting advice, then I feel bad for your kids. Actually, that would be hilarious. I don't even think anybody reading this blog is a parent besides my dad. Just remember that your kids are craftier than you think and 99% of the time, they're disobeying you.

Portable Gaming: The New Frontier

2011-01-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

Portable gaming has been something that's been around since the 90's. The original Game Boy was amazing, but every iteration of portable games, pretty much through the PSP and DS, has been aimed at being gaming-centric. Sure, the DSi has some online functionality with Facebook, but it was a gaming-centered device. However, with all the recent announcements of new portables, as well as the iPhone and Android phones' dominance over the mobile market, it's become clear that portable gaming has become much more than just gaming. The 3DS now has far greater functionality beyond gaming and the PSP2, or NGP, seems to be striving to do everything a smart phone can do without actually being a phone. It seems like games just aren't enough for portable systems now.

This isn't a particularly bad thing, however. Look at the smart phone market a few years ago. I remember having a Samsung Blackjack for a few sweet weeks before accidentally crushing it. It was amazing. It could go online and browse the internet. I think this was before 3G, so it was incredibly slow. I remember getting a really incomplete version of the Legend of Zelda and thinking that it was incredible that a phone could do that. Fast forward a few years and I now have an iPhone. Some of the games are pretty horrible looking. A lot of them look really good. Infinity Blade, though it's pretty much Myst with fight scenes, looks like it could be a console game. The trend for a lot of mobile games is to have them be low concept and have lots of replay value. Angry Birds, the most popular iPhone game, sold millions off of a simple puzzle concept. Of course, the touch controls make any high-precision gaming difficult, which is probably why I keep dying in Secret of Mana. That or I suck at it.

While I love iPhone games, I feel like they're missing something substantial. It's not even the touch controls that bother me. I think they work fairly well. It's the fact that most of the non-port iPhone games are devoid of any meaningful experience. This is something I hope the PSP2 and the 3DS do not lose. Nintendo portables have always been near and dear to me since I was a child. I remember Pokemon being the first game I sunk a considerable amount of time into. I've always been more of a portable gamer than a console gamer. The cool thing about portable games is that they were able to convey very similar experiences that console games give, only they did it at my convenience. They've always been lower tech, but they've always impressed me with how they aren't bogged down by it at all. Many portable games are phenomenal and look horrible. The original Golden Sun looked pretty good, but some of the enemies had what I call "Gumby Syndrome", which is where they look like claymation figures. This never really affected the gameplay. As time went on, the DS came out and the graphics started actually looking good. The PSP came out, too. The PSP looked goddamn amazing in the 8th grade. For the short time I had it before it "mysteriously disappeared", I still had lots of fun with it. That was when I discovered that Morrigan was actually a character from Darkstalkers and not just some slut vampire from Marvel vs. Capcom.

The PSP2 is said to produce graphics similar to the Playstation 3. The 3DS has the graphic levels roughly of the Gamecube. Obviously, these machines are going to be incredible. However, my greatest hope is that they release good games. From the looks of the 3DS, it looks like there are several games that look great, though two of them are rereleases. The PSP2 has so few details that it's impossible to tell what the games will be like. However, with the school of portable gaming that the iPhone represents, it would be feasible for Nintendo or Sony to half-ass games and, instead, focus on apps to make the devices more suitable for on-the-go consumers. I don't want to say "casuals" since that word now means "bad at FPS games". My hope is that the new portables will focus on quality rather than versatility. I think the entire games industry could do that, as I'm starting to have a hard time telling shooters apart and Final Fantasy games are starting to be bad. iPhone games could be better, too. I'm waiting for the Super Mario 64/Metal Gear Solid/Halo of the iPhone to come out, since Angry Birds is fun, but it's not an epic like those games are. I think everything can improve, but the main point of this point is that the portable market is changing rapidly and it would be a shame if big companies started to streamline portable games to be more playable on-the-go.

2010: A Year in Sequels

2011-01-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

2010 was a busy year for gaming. Many great games, like Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption, came onto the market, while several less than good games, like Medal of Honor and Black Ops, have sold quite well, Black Ops getting over $1 billion in sales. Every system got really good games, like God of War 3 for the PS3, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii, Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Dragon Quest IX for the DS, and even Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PSP. Something troubled me about all of these, however: they're all sequels. There were a few originals, like Bayonetta and Heavy Rain, but most of it got overshadowed by big sequels.

There's nothing wrong with sequels, as seen with Assassin's Creed 2, but with all of the sequels and reboots, there's few original titles. Original titles are nice because they are not shackled to the genre that the first game was. Hell, they released Super Mario Galaxy 2 this year. That, in my opinion, barely expanded on the first Galaxy at all. Sure, it added Yoshi, but you use Yoshi so little and his control's not all that different than Mario's (the flutter kick and eating). I'm a huge fan of Mario games, but Galaxy 2 showed what I hate most about sequels: they sometimes derive too much from the original. They can start to feel stale and even ruin the original. Some games take bad parts of the original and fix them. Look at Mass Effect 2. I remember playing the first Mass Effect and wondering how the shooting and cover mechanisms worked so poorly. Mass Effect 2 played so much better than the first one. It's the exact same with Assassin's Creed 2 and the first one. Sequels work well at advancing a narrative and fixing problems that a previous game had. Too many publishers these days, like Activision and Nintendo, see sequels as ways of making more money, which is sad.

What's even more sad is reboots. Reboots either show that a company wants to legitimately resurrect an old brand in order to make it appeal to a new generation of gamers or, like in most cases, it shows how a company is willing to dig up the corpse of a brand and shock it with lightning until it comes to life as a horrible, undead creature. I'm alluding to Medal of Honor with this analogy. The game doesn't look original at all. It screams "Call of Fighting: Battle for Modern" in a shop in Shanghai. It's something that I imagine was conjured in a marketing meeting that was called in response to Modern Warfare 2 doing well. They also tried to veil it in controversy by adding the Taliban as an opposing force. Sure, it's realistic to the very real war we're fighting and it's not real people dying in the game, but it's something that would obviously upset people. I'm sure there were people in the company that knew the decision to include the Taliban (up until the controversy affected sales) would upset people, but ultimately, any news on a game is free publicity. I'm not making a blanket statement that all reboots. Most of them suck. Others, like the Prince of Persia reboot, are actually good. I believe that when you mix business with art, it ends up spoiling both the actual product and the sales of the product, unless you put Call of Duty before it, apparently.

And after 2 paragraphs of negativity, I will end this by talking about what I liked about 2010. The early release season was created, which is nice. Publishers started releasing games in January and February and they still sold quite well. This has been pretty unprecedented, as the big releases often happened during the holidays. Games have a shorter shelf-life too. I don't know if the two are related, but I want to say they are. Games that came out in earlier 2010 were much cheaper later in the year. Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2 were going on near bargain bin prices around August. It means playing catch-up is much easier for poor people like me. Who knows? They might lower the prices of games in response to this. $40 always sounds better than $60.

Gamewise, there were several games I liked. There were several I wanted to play, like Heavy Rain, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Fable 3, MGS: Peace Walker, Metroid: Other M, Nier, Sonic Colors, and probably a few others I've forgotten. I might get to some of these later on if I feel like it, though don't hold your breath for Fable and Other M. Those aren't as high on my list as Heavy Rain and Lords of Shadow. In terms of the games I actually played, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Pokemon: Heart Gold/Soul Silver, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Super Meat Boy, Halo: Reach, Dead Rising 2, LIMBO, God of War 3, No More Heroes 2, and probably several others I can't remember since I only remembered these by going back and reading what I reviewed this year. I hate end of year recaps. I can barely remember what happened in my own personal life over this year, let alone what happened in gaming. I think I almost died once. Anyways, enjoy this year, as your youth is escaping you rapidly and you squander it away in front of a screen living an imaginary life. Just remember that life is a river: you're never the same person and try not to read your older writing from earlier in the year. It's kind of depressing.

Review: Kirby's Epic Yarn

2010-12-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

Kirby hasn't been up to much in a while. The last console game he had was in 2000 or so with The Crystal Shards. When I say the last console game, I mean not that piece of crap Air Ride. That game sucked. I don't care about those people who said "It was actually really good if you take some acid before playing it!" Kirby's had a lot of portable adventures, but he's been absent from console outings, not counting Smash Bros. His new game, Epic Yarn, is strange because it's not at all like any Kirby game. Kirby can't absorb any powers. He instead uses a piece of yarn to unravel enemies. It looks and plays quite differently than any other Kirby game. Sometimes, completely changing the gameplay of a good series is signs of the series going stale (see Air Ride). However, this game shows that Kirby's still good, even after that weird anime phase the franchise went through.

One thing about the anime phase Kirby went through was it tried to make Kirby edgy and hardcore. Let's face it: Kirby's a cream puff. You can't make an "extreme" cream puff. This game's graphics immediately take the edginess off of Kirby. The graphics look like something that belongs in a Kindergarten classroom. The characters are made of yarn and the backgrounds are cloth. The "real world" Kirby is made of paper, which I thought was cool. The whole thing is kind of like a story book. It had an announcer that sounded like he was from Winnie the Pooh. The music sounded kind of public access, if that makes any sense. The whole thing seemed like something that would be on PBS Kids or something. That's probably because this game is heavily geared towards kids.

The game's difficulty greatly fluctuates. There are some levels that are quite difficult, but a lot of it is very easy. Anybody who's played a Kirby game won't have too much difficulty beating this game. A new player might not do as well, though. The gameplay mechanics work very well. Kirby snatches up enemies and can throw them. Different enemies can be thrown in different ways. Some are homing. Some go through enemies. It's pretty cool. Kirby can also transform into various things at parts of stages. You can be a giant mech tank, a snowboarding penguin, a space ship, a dolphin, or other things. Each transformation gives you a different kind of gameplay, so it gives the game variety. As a spaces ship, it plays like a shoot-em-up like 1942 or Ikaruga, though not even close to being as hard. As a dolphin, it's like Ecco the Dolphin. Most of them are really cool, but some of them (the train transformation) control very poorly and aren't fun to use at all. Still, a majority of the transformations are really good.

At about 9 hours, Epic Yarn is pretty short. You go through different themed stages, like tropical, space, dessert, fire, and snow. My personal favorite is the dessert level. Something about jumping around on cakes is just amazing. It's something that only Nintendo games really do. The story's not exactly elaborate. It's a story to a Kirby game. The only thing I noticed about the story is that the evil wizard who turns Kirby into yarn (first cutscene spoiler alert) looks somewhat Mexican. By that, I mean he looks like he's a Mexican from a Western. He has a sombrero, a poncho, a giant mustache, and is colored like a Mexican poncho would be. Not sure if that was intentional, just something I noticed. Also, everything I just said wasn't racist, so I don't want to hear a bunch of white people calling me a racist. I know how much they love to claim that other white people are racist to feel like their ancestors didn't contribute to slavery. White people are weird. And they can't dance. Bunch of jive crackas. There. I've equaled out any racism. Suck it.

While the game is short, there's things you can do to extend it. You collect furniture in stages, which you can furnish your apartment. You can also furnish other apartments to get people to move in. This unlocks minigames. Most of these minigames are along the lines of "Kill X enemies in Y amount of time" or the classic racing minigame, but they're pretty fun. It adds some length to the short story mode.

While Epic Yarn is pretty short for a full retail game, it's a very good. It has the old Kirby charm of the 90's with gameplay like nothing I've ever played. I was quite surprised at how fun it was. It was pretty easy throughout, but anyone looking for more than 50% completion will find plenty of challenges. The game is varied enough with Kirby's various powers, which add different game genres to the gameplay. I thought of this game being "baby's first Kirby", since it's a good entry-point into the Kirby series for anyone who hasn't heard of Kirby. I assume that most of those people are babies, since everybody's heard of Kirby. Kirby's Epic Yarn brings enough challenge to entice veteran Kirby fans who've been with him since Kirby's Dream Land, while being friendly to those who are new to Kirby, assuming their hands are big enough to hold the controller. The only people who wouldn't like this game are fans of the Kirby anime "Kirby X" or whatever it was called. Video game anime sucks. I miss when video game shows were made by Disney and warned kids about getting molested.

The VGAs

2010-12-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight, the Spike TV Video Game Awards were held. I didn't watch since I don't have cable and really don't care about it at all. Pretty much the only thing I cared about were game details that came out. After reading a summary of the show, I pretty much decided that doing homework on a Saturday night was a better use of my time. I've seen this award show before. I thought that Million Dollar Baby was funnier. I wondered if I had a poor sense of humor and this is what's funny to normal people. It seems like this show just sucks. Luckily I haven't made the mistake of watching it again. The important thing is new announcements. There were some good ones this year.

Probably my favorite one was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Only a short trailer was given with no gameplay, so not much is known about it. Apparently it has a new engine, which is nice, since the Oblivion engine was kinda glitchy. It has a release date of 11/11/11. Fun release time, but it's still 11 months away. This announcement seemed inevitable. Even with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, fans still wanted TES V. It's surprising because we've heard so little about it. It's odd that they chose the VGAs to announce this and not E3 2011 or CES 2011 or something. Since so little is known on it, it's hard to talk about it at all, but believe me when I say I was as giddy as a schoolgirl when I saw that announcement.

Mass Effect 3 has a trailer now, as well as a holiday 2011 release window. Honestly, I'm pretty excited for it. I haven't played much Mass Effect, but what I have played of it makes me want to play it more. It'll be interesting to see if it focuses on being on Planet Earth or if interstellar travel is still going to be a large part of it. Also, are you going to have to re-recruit a team again? Again, much unanswered by the trailer, but it looks pretty amazing.

Uncharted 3 also has a trailer and a release date of 11/1/11, sort of doing the Skyrim thing minus a 1. I haven't actually played an Uncharted game, but this game might be the game that makes me play the other two. I hear they're on the shorter side (about 10-12 hours each, funny how that's short), so it won't be too hard to catch up. It looks pretty interesting. It's in the desert. You shoot stuff. That's most of what I got from the trailer. It looks quite good, though.

A new SSX game was announced with a trailer, called SSX: Deadly Descents. It kind of looked bad to me. All of the previous SSX games weren't as serious as this one seemed to be. I remember them being the most colorful, techno driven craziness ever where you somehow did kickflips with snowboards.This is looking to be more like one of those snowboarding movies advertised on college campuses. Not quite sure if I'm liking the grittier direction they're trying to take the franchise in. Plus, if there's a story mode, I don't think it will be good. Look what story modes did to Need For Speed. Most of the newer Need For Speed looked kind of over-dramatized (not the newest, that one looks amazing). This one will be interesting to see in action.

Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) is making a game with Volition (Saint's Row, Red Faction) called inSane, which had a trailer at the VGAs. There's not really all that much to say from it. It was some sort of mouth, maybe? Pretty much the only details it had was it's coming out in 2013, assuming the world doesn't end. It's pretty far off, which leads me to ask why this wasn't announced at E3 or something where context could at least be given to the game beyond "You will shit your pants."

Prototype 2 got a trailer, as well. It looked interesting enough. I didn't like the first Prototype at all, but that's partially because I couldn't figure out how to beat a mission and the game wasn't being helpful at all. This one looks like it could be interesting, since the main character of this one is trying to kill the main character of the last one. It looks like it has potential, but it's a long ways off. With a 2012 release date, this game's got a long ways to go.

There were a couple of other things, like Kratos being in the PS3 version of Mortal Kombat, Dr. Hugo Strange being in Batman: Arkham City, or Forza 4 being announced. It was a pretty eventful night for announcements. I kind of hate it. So many great games are coming out Fall 2011. I don't have the time or the money for all of them. Hopefully a couple of them will get delayed. That's a horrible thing for me to say, I know, but spaced releases are nice. Funny how trailers are the best thing about the VGAs. After the host Neil Patrick Harris won an award for "Best Male Voice Actor" over Martin Sheen in Mass Effect 2, I realized these awards are like getting a "Kid's Choice Award" or an MTV movie award. It's kind of sad the gaming industry's big awards show (the one that gets televised) is so painfully bad.

How Things Work Here

2010-12-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

I just realized that, because I just made the Facebook page, I'm going to be getting a bunch of first-time readers that have no idea what the hell this site's about. So here's a brief introduction to the site... 3 years after my first post. Basically, you just need to know the kinds of articles I post. There are several headers I use. They include previews, reviews, and "reviews of games I haven't beat". I also have many random articles about random games I play that aren't exactly reviewable (flash games, short games, indie games, etc). Sometimes I rant about games I don't feel like reviewing but feel like talking about. And occasionally, I decide to write an article about something interesting happening in the video game world, like when somebody says video games aren't art or when Kinect gets jailbroken.

The tags are pretty much self-explanatory. Preview means I played a demo to a game before it came out. It's contents are my impressions of the game. They are not reviews since demos are not the final product. Reviews are games that I've either beaten or beaten enough of to get a good idea about the game. Often times, I stop playing a game at the last boss if it's either too hard (Brutal Legend) or if the game's pretty much the same throughout (Super Meat Boy, though I ended up beating that game). There are some games that I just stop 3/4 of the way through or something due to the length of the game (Final Fantasy XIII and yeah it wasn't even close to 3/4 of the way through) or just general anger. I call those reviews a "Review of a Game I Haven't Beat". There's usually a good reason for why I didn't beat the game, though. Sometimes. Pokemon: Soul Silver is an example of a bad reason: I got bored. I feel as though they're as reliable as real reviews unless the part I didn't play changed the gameplay so much that the game suddenly becomes either amazing or horrendous. Is this an example of journalistic integrity? Probably not. I really don't care. I figure most games that drag on for that long are pretty uniform throughout. Not that long games are bad. I just think that my opinion of them wouldn't change if I forced myself to beat the last boss or whatever I didn't beat. Except Final Fantasy XIII and Pokemon. Those were cases of laziness pure and simple. I've fallen out of the habit of not beating games and posting reviews of games I haven't beat, so don't really expect too many of those.

The articles are just random stuff. If I find something interesting, I'll write about it. If you find something interesting, tell me about it. I might find it interesting and write about it. In the journalism world, we call these "tips". I fully welcome tips for both random stories and games I should play. Except bad games. You know perfectly well what "bad games" means. I've played some bad games in my time, so I don't really like to waste my time now that I know suck. Or I might. I don't know. Bad games generally make funny reviews. Or me attempting to make a .gif image. General rule: if it was made after 2007, don't recommend me to review it. If you recommend X-Blades, I might review it. Then I would kill you, since that game looks like as much fun as substituting my contact lenses for glass dipped in lime juice. Commenting's usually dead, so that's something I hope might actually change due to the Facebook thing. Either Facebook commenting or on-site commenting works. I don't really care. Pretty much all that I ask is that it's not horrible comments. Go to 1up.com and look in the comments section for a review. There are usually about 4 horrible comments per review. Don't make those and I'll be happy/won't delete your comment. That's pretty much it. Another thing that pisses me off is asking about the Youtube show I was going to have at the beginning of the summer. I don't have a camera or editing tools or any ideas as to what it would look like, so don't ask about it unless I mention it. Cool? Cool. Thanks for reading. It's good to know I'm not the only one reading this. Hope you keep reading!

EDIT: A fun fact: the farther back you go in this blog, the shittier the writing becomes. Try not to go back past, say, 2010. If you do, you're going to see what is, in my opinion, bad writing. Of course, I end up never really liking anything I write, but I think my old posts are pretty bad. Now that I've got this whole blog thing figured out after 3 years, it's best to leave the past in the past. So please: don't read that much of my old stuff. You'll just see bad writing, typos, and me experimenting with different ways of writing. Consider the more recent posts the golden age. Thanks!

Announcement: Jagged Pixels is hitting Facebook!

2010-12-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

You would think I would have done this sooner. I'm making a fan page on Facebook for my blog since I'm not all that happy with my page view numbers. This isn't to say I'm ungrateful to you guys. I was talking to my good friend Jacob and he told me that nobody reads Buzz. I figured he was right, so I'm using Facebook now. Also, it's easier to spread it to more of my friends who might not be on my Gtalk chat list. The link to it is on the sidebar. I'll update with random shit I find funny or interesting there, so it's worth liking. Plus, you'll get regular updates on my new posts. It's also a nice way to directly communicate with me if you hate email. So like me on Facebook. This is starting to sound kind of pathetic...

Rant: Tekken 6

2010-11-27T01:57:00.000-08:00

This game is old as hell, so this isn't as much of a review as it is a rant on what I think about the game. I picked it up yesterday for Black Friday for $10 (along with MGS4, which rules) since I figured I might as well try every fighting game on the market. Let me tell you, I got a good price. This game is not very good. Let me qualify that: the story mode in this game is seriously one of the worst things I've ever played. That's not because I'm "bad at the game" or "don't get Tekken", the gameplay is just... bad.

I play with my Fightstick. My Street Fighter IV Fightstick, not that wireless Tekken one that doesn't work (from what I hear). Tekken and Street Fighter controllers apparently have different layouts. This means that I had to go through and change the controls to make them resemble some sort of layout. This is difficult, since the onscreen picture was that of the Tekken layout. Seriously, that controller looks like shit. First, it's wireless, so there's a good chance it's not very precise. Secondly, the layout's possibly the most confusing thing I've ever seen. Who would design a controller like that? Why not change the mapping of the controllers buttons to something that can be used outside of Tekken? Anyways, I hate the controller's layout and configuring it was annoying. That was the easy part of the game, though.

I decided to play story mode to get some achievements. Story mode is basically the worst designed beat-em-up I've ever seen. I honestly don't have a point of comparison to this game. The controls don't work at all. You walk around normally until an enemy drops from the sky, automatically locking you on. It then turns into regular Tekken controls, though the camera's still floating above you, making combos extremely hard to do. Then, because the game's a dick, they threw in multiple enemies. You can change targets, but it's kind of hard to do with a Fightstick. You're hands are always at the attack buttons, so pressing a different button to change targets breaks up combat and makes fighting enemies harder than it needs to be. It's quite exceptional that a game like Tekken has such a horrible part, though I can't be too surprised.

The story's pretty bad, too. There were a bunch of cutscenes at the beginning showing what happened in the past 5 Tekken games. I honestly couldn't give a shit. The story's so convoluted and uninteresting that I wonder why fighting games still try with stories. Street Fighter IV did a good job dodging the story, for the most part. There's a story, but it's so unimportant that you don't really worry about it. Seeing as how Tekken 6 has a STORY mode, it might be time to maybe make the story less boring. Another funny thing: Tekken's really bad with languages. During the story mode, I saw a soldier talk to Nina Williams (the character that looks like she's from a Brokencyde video) in Japanese. Nina then replied in English. The soldier replied to what she said in Japanese. Does that make any sense? Why would they reply to each other in different languages? They obviously both know Japanese and English, so why not talk to each other in a single language? It makes no sense...

The game isn't complete shit. The arcade mode works pretty well. It has a near identical structure to Virtua Fighter 5, I believe. It's been a while since I've played it, so I'm not going to claim that Tekken's full of thieves. I will say that fighting games need tutorials. I seriously have no idea how to play Tekken. It plays differently than Street Fighter. I need a tutorial to teach me how to effectively chain combos instead of using the same low kick over and over again. Street Fighter needs a better tutorial, too. I hear BlazBlue: Continuum Shift has a tutorial. Fighting games are seriously the most unforgiving games to new players.

Was Tekken worth $10? Sure. It'll give me some fun times with the arcade mode. If I ever find something to make the story mode better, then I'll play that, though I don't think anything on this planet can salvage that mess of a story mode. If you see Tekken 6 and love fighting games and have perhaps played more Tekken than I have, you might like it. However, I would look elsewhere for a game with an intelligible story and good, beat-em-up action.

Review: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

2010-11-26T20:29:00.000-08:00

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has some pretty big shoes to fill. Ever since last year's unexpected hit Assassin's Creed 2, everybody's been wondering what the next one would entail. When it was announced that it took place in Renaissance Italy and would be released a year after AC2 was released, people were worried that it would be a rushed release. However, Brotherhood is not a bad game at all. In fact, it's very good. Though some more development time would have helped it, it's still a fantastic game for those who liked AC2.

The game takes place pretty much right after the second game. The game doesn't catch you up in case you forgot what happened, so that's kind of frustrating. Another dick move the game does is if you completed the last game (or just played it), it gives you all the gear you had in the last game (I'm pretty sure, I had the same black outfit I had in the last game). However, as a story scripted event, you lose everything. Kind of frustrating when the wetland ebony color isn't available to Ezio in the main game. The game takes place in Rome, which is way bigger than any city in the second game. However, I'm not sure if the combined areas of the cities in the second game are bigger than Rome is. It's not like you're limited, though. The game gives you lots of ways to explore Rome.

One way they give you to explore Rome is by restoring it, much like you do to your home city in the second game. However, you can now buy landmarks (the Pantheon, Colluseum, etc.), so you're not just collecting money with the best gear halfway through the game. However, they also added "shop quests", which is where you have to collect items to get better equipment at stores. This would be cool if they told you this earlier. I initially thought that the items were just random things to sell, so I sold a bunch of them and then discovered shop quests. They should have made the whole item thing clear. However, that's not a huge deal since there are ways to get the items, like getting mugged. Bandits often have good loot on them. Each one is like a treasure chest that you have to kill first, though that's not new in games. You can also get unbreakable armor from doing "lair" quests that the second one introduced, though it's with these weird wolf people.

The game controls the same as the previous game, though the combat's easier to do. You can do an "execution streak" which consists of mashing the X button (Xbox 360 controls) after killing a guy in a fight. This allows you to do as many 1-hit kills as you can do. There's also ways to use projectiles without equipping them (by holding down X), which makes fights easier if you don't want to bother with countering. There's also a crossbow in this game, making long-range kills possible.

The game introduces some actual strategy you need to use to get certain assassinations right. You have to liberate parts of Rome before buying them up, so you have to kill a captain in the enemy's army. One in particular was giving me trouble since he kept running away on horseback whenever I got close. The only way I could kill him was to kill my way to a haystack and call my assassins to kill a guard nearby, prompting him to check the hay stack, where I then stabbed him several times. Assassin minions are a key to most strategy. You gain them by liberating portions of Rome and saving citizens in distress. You can then level them up by sending them off on various missions around the world, each one giving different experience based on the difficulty level. Each level makes them get better gear until they become full assassins. You can have them kill a target while you sit back and watch, have them distract others, have them take out a large group of enemies with arrows (provided you have enough assassins), or have them back you up. They're quite useful and available in almost every mission, giving you flexibility in how you do the missions.

The missions are similar to the second game, only now you are ranked, sort of. You can either get 50% synchronization by just doing the mission or 100% synchronization by doing the mission with certain conditions met, which can be as easy as killing your target with your assassins or as hard as not getting detected or not killing anybody except your target. It's a welcome challenge to the game, as it gives another reason to replay missions.

The game has a lot of really good parts, but it has some problems, too. It's somewhat glitchy, a problem that more play-testing could fix. None of the glitches have been that game altering, though. Most of them involve getting temporarily stuck in a wall. The story seems kind of strange, too. That's not a bad thing, seeing as this is technically a science fiction game and it's supposed to be weird, but the ending is sudden and makes no sense. There are far more Desmond (the guy controlling Ezio) parts, too. That might be nice for some people, but Desmond is kind of boring to play as. It's all just easy platforming and cutscenes. That and I kind of hate Nolan North's voice. It seems too... normal. He sounds calm in situations where if I were Desmond, I would be a little more shaken up. That's less about the game and more about how Nolan North's fucking everywhere. For some reason, I want Desmond to be voiced by Patrick Stuart, since he belongs in every video game. The voice wouldn't work at all, but I would like it. That, or David Hayter. Solid Snake would make his voice better.

The multiplayer might be the strangest multiplayer in any game I've ever played. You are a Templar (enemy of assassins) in a training program with several other Templars. You go around several levels trying to take out a target (another player, it tells you who) while not getting killed yourself. This sounds like it doesn't work at all, but it actually does. Quite well, actually. The pacing is so strange that it becomes really fun. It can go from slowly tailing a target to frantically running away from another agent really quickly. It gets some getting used to, but it works much better than I thought it would. There are several specific aspects of it that I won't get into, but it makes the game worth a look.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood might not be a game for those who haven't played the second Assassin's Creed, but it's still a very good game. It's worth a playthrough for those somewhat caught up on the story (everything up to AC2 is unnecessary and can be read on Wikipedia) due to it's story and the gameplay that takes place in the giant city of Rome. The multiplayer, while being somewhat a foreign concept, is really fun. It's another reason to check this game out. It might be personal tastes to decide if this is good or not, but I thought the multiplayer was a strange and fun variation on a classic deathmatch. Despite several small problems, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood manages to be a big hit this year. The blend of stealth and action make the game a must play this season.

Minecraft: More like Minecrack or Minecrap?

2010-11-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Honestly the title of this post was just so I could make those two puns since I don't play Starcraft 2 or World of Warcraft. From all the hype about this game, you can pretty much assume that this game isn't bad. Normally, I'd say the opposite, since hype is often the publisher trying to mask the faults of a game with fake excitement, only this game is different. It has no publisher. Pretty much all the hype comes from fans, whether they're legions of restless fans (and assholes) or famous web comic artists. Of course, I'm not saying the consensus of the people is truth. That's why I picked up Minecraft. That's also about the time I realized I might fail out of college.

Minecraft is incredibly addictive. It's like an unholy mix of Legos, Harvest Moon, and Silent Hill. I say Harvest Moon since you have to harvest materials during the day, making it somewhat like that game. Needless to say, I loved Legos, I played Harvest Moon 64 for about 300 hours or so (at age 9 or so), and I love survival horror games (haven't gotten to Silent Hill 2), so there's very little to hate about this game. You start out on a mysterious island. There's not really even instructions or a tutorial as to what to do. Online guides are a must, since it's really the only way to figure out the mechanics of the game.

The visuals are minimalistic. Pretty much everything in this game is a block. The visuals don't get in the way, however. The daytime scenery looks quite nice, with animals walking around and the world beckoning you. It's almost a shame the daytime is so short. The way they use light is really interesting. If you stand under a tree, the light gets dimmer. It's pretty cool to see a game do this with the graphics it has. That's not to say this game has bad graphics. Like I said, they're minimalistic. Night time is pretty much dark with no animals. Instead, monsters walk around. There are many different kinds of creatures, so the obvious goal for the first night is to make a small shelter. It's very much like Cast Away or Robinson Crusoe, only with zombies instead of a narrative.

The game's mechanics are so immense that I can't imagine anybody figuring everything out the first, second, or even third time playing. A guide is a must. Normally, I'd say guides are for pussies (as I'm looking at a guide on GameFAQs in the next tab), but this game doesn't really tell you much. It gives you basic controls. You need more than that. That's probably the biggest, if only, problem that I have with this game. It needs to give you more than it gives you, which is nothing. Well, that's what Youtube and Minecraft Wiki are for. This game is in the alpha right now, so any tutorial's probably still in development.

The game's available at the game's website, though it's kind of slow since so many people play it. It's 10 euros, which is about $14, depending on the market. It's going up in price when the beta is released, so $14 is a good deal right now, even if some of the game is problematic (slow servers and no tutorial). The game's definitely worth a look, even if it's just in the free version. This is one of the weirder games of 2010, but it's definitely worth a look, if not a purchase.

Technology and Video Games

2010-11-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

Today we live in a time where the technology is far more advanced than anybody thinks. A big chunk of the technology that brings science fiction into reality is right in front of us, yet we don't see it. The reason? These tools are also known as "video games". Yes, popular video game hardware double as great pieces of technology.

An example is the Playststion 3. While it may just look like a giant black system (or slim grey system, depending on when you got it) with no games (which isn't true, it has tons of games), but the US Air Force saw it differently. Back when the PS3 could run Linux, the Air Force used the system as a computer, since it's much cheaper than building a PC with similar specifications. After the firmware update, the Air Force wasn't so happy. Though this is isn't exactly a testament to any peripheral for the PS3, it's a testament to how the console itself was good enough to be used as a computer for the Air Force because of it's high specs and low price.

Each console has had a cool bit of technology with it. The Wii, for example, has tons of applications. There is a camera inside the Wiimote that detects infrared lights that are emitted by the sensor bar in order to track it's motion. However, people have used Wiimotes to make many things, like digital whiteboards (using gloves with infrared lights, so it's more like the Playstation Move), 3D effects, and I've even seen it used to make interactive holograms. If you search Youtube for weird, science fiction technologies, you'll find many examples of how the Wiimote is being used to make the technologies of tomorrow seem achievable.

Even the Kinect has many uses, even though I still think it's a piece of crap as a gaming peripheral. In some recent news (probably the reason I decided to write this article), a $3,000 bounty was put on cracking the Kinect with an open source driver. Somebody won the competition, meaning the hacking community is now hard at work at putting that technology to actual good use. Kotaku reports that there's already development for a hands free interface. Keep in mind Kinect came out just 8 days ago in North America. Kinect is possibly a way to get that crazy setup Tony Stark has in Iron Man and Iron Man 2 with all the holograms (though the holograms are completely different, I'm just talking about the way he interacts with them). It's still far too early to say that the future's in Kinect, but it looks damn promising.

My point here is that motion gaming seems to be serving far more purposes than just gaming. Hell, game consoles in general are serving more purposes than just gaming. Gaming's shaping the future of technology and science, regardless if the politicians like it or not. What does this mean to you? Unless you like voiding the warranties of expensive electronics in a way only an engineering degree can explain, it only means that motion gaming's not all bad. It might seem like the "casuals" are taking over, but it's just progressing through technology. Gaming with buttons will always be around, since motion detection is still horribly inaccurate compared to using buttons, not to mention most gamers are lazy and don't want to relax by standing in front of their TV flailing their arms like Kermit the Frog after a Jagerbomb. So sit back and watch every science fiction movie come true. We're more advanced than you think.

Review: Super Meat Boy

2010-10-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Super Meat Boy might be one of the strangest, yet one of the simplest games on the market. The main point of it is to get your character (Meat Boy, a boy made out of meat) from point A to point B (Bandage Girl, a girl made out of bandages and Meat Boy's girlfriend). It's always the simple concepts that create a game that test your patience and the strength of your drywall. This game might be a reason (along with McDonalds) that my heart might give out before I turn 30. However, that's not because this is a bad game. This game is punishingly hard, but every part of this game is great.

First of all, the music. I love the music in this game. From the awesome main theme to the world themes to the boss music, it's all invigorating. It's never really annoying, either, which can be a problem for a lot of games with repeating soundtracks. This is one of the few games I actually want a soundtrack for. Another thing I love about this game is that it is old school in every sense of the word. The intro for the first world is a parody of the Street Fighter 2 title screen. You can access levels through "warp zones" that resemble older game systems, including a Game Boy level. It takes everything you love about nostalgia while not dwelling on the past instead of focusing on the game it's presenting. Amusingly, there's an achievement called "Living in the Past" for beating 5 of those warp gates.

The game is hilarious. It seriously might be one of the funniest games I've every played. It has a very dark sense of humor most of the time, with other jokes coming out of left field. The nostalgia jokes are pretty hilarious too. The first time I saw the Street Fighter 2 parody, I almost fell over laughing. Hell, the trailer is a parody of Sega's commercials in the 90's. Everything about the game is hilarious. Well, except for the gameplay.

The gameplay is frustratingly hard. It starts out easy enough in the first few levels, but you very quickly begin to see that the game was programmed by Satan. There are only lives in the warp zone parts, so you can die as many times as you want on the main levels without having to start at the beginning of the chapter. The game understands what parts of nostalgia to tap into, meaning lives are stupid Nintendo, stop putting them in Mario games. As if the main levels weren't hard enough, there is a "Dark World" which you unlock by scoring above the par time on the "Light World" levels, aka the main levels. The dark world might be one of the most unforgiving things I've ever played. It's a nice kind of unforgiving, though. You feel like you're getting better throughout it and the levels aren't broken or anything, just hellishly hard. The warp zones are hard since they have lives, but the lives are mainly just a reminder of how games used to be.

There's a great collection aspect of the game, too. You collect bandages throughout the game. Most of them are absolute bullshit to collect, but they're rewarding. You unlock characters with the more bandages you have. They're good characters, too. You can be Commander Video from Bit.Trip.Runner., Tim from Braid, Ninja from N, Alien from Alien Hominid, Gish (he's from a game from the Humble Indie Game Pack), a knight from Castle Crashers, The Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy, and others, like the PC only character "Minecraft Guy". You also unlock certain characters from special warp zones. (Note: there's a glitch right now where some bandages don't register as being collected, but they're added to your total. It's bullshit. I have 25/20 bandages on the second level. Hopefully they'll patch it soon.)

I could go on about how good this game is, like the artwork, the level design, and the challenge levels that Team Meat releases occasionally. I really can't recommend this game enough. It's so fantastic. If you don't have a 360, get the Wii version or the PC version when they come out. This game seriously might be one of the best games I've played in a while. The game shows, once again, that games don't need a $40,000,000 budget to be fantastic. Fans of retro games and platformers will love this game. People too young to have experienced the NES should play this game to experience the 1980's and the early 1990's in a way that doesn't involve searching eBay for an NES that still works and that can somehow plug into an HDTV. You will laugh, you will cry, you will rage, but you will never be disappointed with this game.

Flash Games and Indie Games

2010-10-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

I love flash games. I've been playing them since I was a kid, due to me never buying that many games. I've always been a fan of games from Newgrounds as well. Though many of the games I've played there have been complete shit, there have been many games that have been exceptional, even for being extremely low-budget and usually made by a team of no more than five people. In many circumstances, flash games are made by only one or two people. A recent trend in gaming is to take flash games and expand them into full titles, often released as downloadable titles. I just love this.

Many excellent flash games, like N, Alien Hominid, Dad n' Me, and Meat Boy, have spawned successful XBLA and PSN games, such as N+, Alien Hominid HD, Castle Crashers (it plays a lot like Dad n' Me), and Super Meat Boy. There are probably several other examples of these games, but these are the ones I came up with. Flash games, while being quite archaic in terms of use, are quite fun. They're like indie games, only they're less douchey sounding since I despise the word "indie", as it implies that some guys in thick framed glasses programmed the game to be ironic. That's not to say I don't like indie games. That kind of goes without saying, though, since I've played a ton of them and enjoy quite a few of them, such as the little bit of Minecraft I tried so long ago, Eversion, VVVVVV, I Wanna Be the Guy (probably THE hardest game I've ever played), and Prenubra.

One of the most appetizing thing about most of these games is they are free. If you want to be entertained/tortured for several hours, get I Want to Be the Guy. I have lost my voice yelling at that game before. Other games are still very cheap. I usually pay about $10 for a game, if that. With the quality of indie games improving faster than the quality of huge budget games, it's hard to say no to such cool games. Of course, you can still say no if you prefer your games to have enough polish on them to kill 400 brain cells every time you inhale. I would argue that flash games and, more recently due to the decline of people making flash games, indie games have been better than many big budget titles. With many popular genres, like "modern era shooters", slowly merging into a single game with slightly different plots, it's nice to see games with such variety. I'm still not a gaming hipster, though. I love me some Halo.

You may be wondering if the timing of this article has something to do with Super Meat Boy coming out today. It probably has everything to do with that. I have it and will review it within the next few days. It's a long-ass game, so don't expect me to complete every single level, though you, my readers, never expect me to actually complete me a game before I review it. I'll just say now that you may want to buy Super Meat Boy before reading my review if it interests you. It's on sale for $10 instead of the new usual $15. That's another reason I love indie developers. They put their games on sale the day they come out.

EDIT: I forgot about this gem. It's probably one of the best flash games I've ever played.

Review: Halo: Reach

2010-10-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

Due to a few factors, like school, multiplayer, the copy of the game not actually being mine, and other things, this review took a while. I had to find time to play campaign since the person who owned the copy, my roommate, beat the campaign really fast and then moved on to multiplayer. The game is Bungie's last Halo game and a prequel to the first Halo. The unique thing about this game is that instead of there being only one Spartan, there are many. You are part of a team of 6 Spartans called the Noble Team. The game takes you through the events of Reach, which, if you read the book "The Fall of Reach", you'll know how it ends. Actually, just knowing the title of the book is a good indicator of how the game will end. So is the indicator that Master Chief is the only Spartan left in the first Halo.

The campaign is pretty damn good, especially since the Halo 3 campaign was kind of shitty, in my humble opinion. I'm not going to pretend I really get the whole series, due to the fact I've never read a novel, I've seen Halo: Legends once, and I've played most of the Halo games (completed them all except ODST and didn't even bother with Halo Wars). That being said, the story seemed to give some pretense to the first Halo game. There are some questions left unanswered, like why Master Chief can never use a jetpack or why swords suddenly become unusable in Halo: CE, but those questions are pretty unimportant. I've played missions on every difficulty, excluding Easy, since that's not a difficulty mode. I ended up beating it on Normal for the sake of time, but the AI is quite intelligent, especially on Legendary. Your allies' AI is not quite as intelligent, but it's not that important since you never really expect to rely on your allies in a Halo game.

The controls are completely different. They look more like the original Halo's controls, with the exception of the melee button, which is now the right bumper. It's strange at first, but it works pretty well. I mentioned jetpacks earlier. You can have "armor abilities", which are essentially upgrades to your armor. You can choose from sprint, drop shield (bubble shield that restores health), armor lock (basically the cheapest thing in multiplayer), dodge (you just roll out of the way), active cameo, hologram (sends a fake spartan in front of you), and, of course, the jetpack. The guns have gone through a large makeover. The scoped pistol is back, the BR is now the DMR, which has one shot bursts instead of 3, there is now a "needle rifle", which is basically a DMR that can blow people up, and others.

The multiplayer is largely changed, too. Instead of the "skill" system, you now get experience points which can be used to customize your character. There are a bunch of new modes, like the objective based "Invasion mode", which pits Spartans against Elites in large-scale objective-based missions. Forge is also largely changed. The way objects can be situated has been improved, so you can now have objects poking out of the ground or hanging in the air. There is also a large level called "Forge World", which is essentially a Forge playground. You can make any kind of level you can imagine. There are several zones that allow for different kinds of gameplay. Bungie even remade several maps from Halo 2, like Ascension, Coagulation, and Sanctuary. I haven't messed around with too many user-made maps, but the few I have seemed pretty fun.

Firefight is back and it's fully customizable with several maps. You can fight nothing but grunts with nothing but rockets. It's pretty amazing. Another cool thing Bungie's doing is the daily and weekly challenges. They post several challenges a day and a single weekly challenge that people can do in campaign, matchmaking multiplayer, matchmaking Firefight, or any of the three. They can be pretty fun, though some of them are bullshit, like get 30 assists.

If you like playing Halo at all, I can recommend Reach wholeheartedly. If you're not an FPS fan, I don't think Reach will convert you. It might. It's definitely worth a try. If you're new to Halo and want to try it, this is a good starting point since Halo's going all Call of Duty after this one, only instead of Bungie losing it's founders, they're just making new games. If you've always hated Halo with a burning passion due to it being "maed by M$ and Bill 'Satan' Gates", you're probably too retarded to read anything without 1337-speak. Plus you're probably 14.

Review: Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

2010-09-05T00:02:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, when I first heard Dead Rising 2 was releasing a short piece of gameplay for 400 Microsoft points, I was pretty angry. I thought this was the beginning of paid demos. I thought that Case Zero was going to be a short part from the beginning of Dead Rising 2. I was mistaken. This game is actually a prequel of Dead Rising 2, though I'm sure you wouldn't really need it to enjoy the game. At it's heart, it's a marketing tool to build hype for the main game. It's a damn good marketing tool, because I wasn't excited for Dead Rising 2 until I played Case Zero.

Case Zero introduces you to the main character, Chuck, a pro motocross racer trying to save his daughter from becoming a zombie. The narrative is certainly more engaging than the first (HAY GUYS I'M FRANK WEST I'VE COVERED WARZ I'M HERE TO ZOMBIE IT UP!!1), but it's ultimately unimportant. What is important is that there are a fuckton of zombies and you can use many weapons to kill them, including, but not limited to, a moose head, a broadsword, shotguns, benches, and wasps. Yes wasps. They are basically grenades that kill an area of zombies instantly. It's pretty useful. A majority of the game is a long series of fetch quests, but even fetch quests are more fun when doing them with a bunch of zombies. You can pick up survivors like in the previous game, only they're not quite as thick. They can defend themselves pretty well and actually get through groups of zombies if you call them. Even with one of the survivors who couldn't walk, it wasn't horrible since they made the "carrying survivors" mechanic work way better.

Another great thing about this little snippet of a game is achievements. I thought it was just a little thing you played before playing the full game, but it actually has 200 achievement points. They're not horribly difficult to get, but they do require you to either get the best ending, which isn't all that hard, or do multiple playthroughs. The game actually encourages multiple playthroughs. You can get up to level 5 and get several "combo cards", which are basically recipes for awesome weapons, like a kayak paddle with chainsaws at each end. Most of the game is built on going around and killing zombies in mass hoards. There's something therapeutic about being trapped in a sea of zombies and somehow being the only one standing at the end.

If you're on the fence about this, think about this: it's $5. You could go a lot worse for $5. It's like a little version of Dead Rising 2. It might be kind of short, but for $5, it's pretty great. Hell, LIMBO was $15. Though I still love both games. One gripe I have about this game is that you always feel like you're on a timer. You get nervous about exploring the town. I think an infinite mode would have been great. Who knows? Maybe there is one and I haven't unlocked it yet. I doubt it, though. The gripe is kind of lame since, if you try for the best ending, you'll see plenty of the town. Possibly the only other marketing tool like this was Fable 2 Pub Games, and this kicks the shit out of that. If you like killing zombies and don't hate the shooting/walking around in GTA, this game will entertain you for a bit. It certainly put Dead Rising 2 on my radar.

Recommendation: Alien Swarm

2010-07-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Instead of reviewing this game, I feel like I need to phrase this as a "recommendation", mainly because of one thing: IT'S FREE! Yes, the good people at Valve have proved through this and their many sales that they are a company focused on bringing the gamer good gaming regardless of the obstacle of if they go outside, if they are poor, or if they are broke. Digital distrubution has made PC gaming more popular since most retailers today don't stock PC games anymore. With only game development and advertising costs, there's no wasted money on worthless packaging (I'm looking at you Halo Legendary editions). Though you have to settle with an online instruction booklet and the older games don't work well without tinkering, it's still an excellent medium, and Alien Swarm only makes it better.

That whole last paragraph was me just advertising Steam. However, Alien Swarm is free. That's what this is about. Free is a funny word, though. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's worth it. Yes, that sounds strange, since you technically have nothing to lose since it's free, but think of Toyota's advertising attempt on the Xbox 360. Yes, the Yaris game. That game was free. However, many, including myself, thought that this is a game that you had to be paid to play. It's horrible. The worst part about it is that I have a couple of achievements for it, so, not unlike herpes, I'm stuck with those forever. I don't have herpes, by the way. Thought I would share that. So free isn't always good enough. Is Alien Swarm?

Amazingly, yes. Yes it is. It's a bit like Geometry Wars or I Made a Game With Zombies In It (I'm not even going to try to spell it like they do) in it's controls. However, it's slightly more to it. There are 4 classes you can play as: medic, engineer, soldier or commando or something, and the last one I forgot. It's irrelevant since I only played as an engineer. They pretty much do what you would expect them to do: one can use shotguns, one uses a giant autogun, one heals, and the engineer, or tech, whatever it was called, opens doors. Pretty straight forward. Apparently it was a mod for UT2004 and the modders who made it back then made this one after getting hired by Valve. That alone is one of the reasons I love Valve: hiring modders instead of suing them. This game is pretty fun to play, but I imagine it's more fun with people, since I played with AI. AND NOW MY PLAN IS REVEALED! You can't go wrong with free if it's not Yaris, so download Steam if you haven't and get this game.

Honestly, I would have paid $5 or $10 for this game. It's pretty fun. Also, I read a Kotaku article about the "real reason" the game was free: modding. So there are tons of mods out (I saw one of Pallet Town) and it's pretty good. I'd say free is a great price for this mod supported wonderland.

Edit: I might have been somewhat hard on the Legendary editions of Halo. I agree, you get a lot of cool stuff, like a plastic head or a figurine set. It might be worth the extra money and it certainly is fun to flaunt it to your poor friends. It's mainly the "special edition" of Halo 2 that pissed me off. It was a "special DVD" and an aluminum case. For $10 more. I feel that is a complete rip-off. Some special editions are worth it, but most are useless. Just wanted to clear that up. I am not against plastic Master Chief heads.

Review: LIMBO

2010-07-22T19:18:00.000-07:00

Gasp! A review? Of a game I actually beat? You'd better believe it! Naruto aside, I have a gem for you guys. It's called LIMBO. It's a platformer for the Xbox Live Arcade. It's the first of several games in the XBLA Summer of Arcade, with Hydro Thunder, Laura Croft, Castlevania, and some game called Monday Night Combat. By some game I mean it looks horrible and for $5 more you can get Team Fortress 2. Of course, I'm judging it based on the promos and on the fact that it's a 3rd person shooter for the XBLA. Still, it doesn't look promising. However, I'll talk about that in a few weeks. LIMBO is what I'm here to talk about. LIMBO is a game like no other. Maybe like one other. Eversion. Yes, I'm mentioning that fantastic game again. Eversion is a comedy compared to LIMBO, though. LIMBO is much darker than most rated T games. Hell, it's darker than a lot of rated M games. And I'm not just talking about the art style. But does the darkness make it seem cheap and immature as many modern "horrors" seem to be?

LIMBO is one of the few games that makes you feel uneasy throughout. This is not because of an overabundance of violence or bad gameplay. It's generally creepy. The game presents nightmares of any kids, including a gigantic spider who sets the tone for the entire game: "Holy shit the spider's back". The beginning levels leave you confused and not sure what to expect next. The art style, which is a monochrome with extra black, will set feelings of depression and lifelessness. This game's a downer. There's not really happiness in this game. There is a feeling of anxiousness throughout the game, though, so it works really well as a horror-type game. Also, the art style makes some cool parts where it's completely dark and the only thing you can see is your character's eyes, which glow white. If I were to call this game artsy, I would be underselling it.

The gameplay, which is an important thing in a game, is pretty simple. Walk/run, jump, and use object. However, the control scheme is the simplest thing about the game.The puzzles in this game are really well made and take a while to figure out sometimes. Much of them are timing based, so it's not just figuring out how to solve a puzzle and frolicking about past it. Much of the game you get the sense that you have to rush forward. Some of the puzzles sort of solve themselves in really weird ways that you have to look at and actually think about how you did it. I know at least one example of this happening. There are also some really cool physics in this game that work really well. Also, any game that uses beartraps for puzzles is a great game in my book. One annoying thing about the game's puzzles is that a lot of them are instant death type things that you won't see the first time. You'll have to die a few times to understand exactly what to do. This is mainly annoying since there's an achievement for dying 5 times or less. The game has checkpoints, so it's not like you die and restart from the beginning.

There really isn't that much of a narrative. The description of the game is "A boy searching for his sister enters LIMBO" or something to that degree. You don't know exactly what LIMBO is or if it's related to the area between Heaven and Hell or anything. It's kind of cool, though. The entire game is shrouded in mystery that way. It could be a kid having a nightmare for all I know. The more you explain something mysterious, the less mysterious it gets. It adds to the mood when you're wandering around without a known goal or destination.

Probably the worst things about the game are the length and the price. It's not too long of a game. It's about 3-5 hours, depending on how bad you are at certain puzzles. It's 1200 MS Points, which is $15. It's not a horrible price. I've payed $20 for an XBLA game I haven't played yet (Penny-Arcade Adventures). Still, seems like $10 would have been better. Of course, everybody is saying "Stop complaining it's just $15! When did $10 become the magic number?" Most XBLA games are $10 and all the Summer of Arcade games are $15, so it seems like Microsoft's secretly raising the price of games on us and testing the waters to see if it will upset fans too much. Still, it's a fantastic game that's worth playing, especially a few times. It's hard to take everything in after one playthrough.

Review of a Game I Haven't Beat: Super Mario Galaxy 2

2010-07-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

First, a quick explanation as to why this isn't completed: I was playing this in Virginia and had to leave before I could finish it. I got to the second to last world/universe/I have no idea what the fuck they're called. I think I experienced everything new, so I think I'm "qualified" to review it. I don't think it significantly changes near the end, though, if it does, please tell me. I will go get it and beat it if it gets different. In fact, I'm probably not qualified to review it, thus the Haven't Beat tag. Feel free to disregard this review if you feel like the last world changes the game completely.

Mario Galaxy 2 was one of E3's surprises last year. Sequel of one of my favorite Mario games, this new one promised new hats, harder challenges, and Yoshi. I love that guy! However, some saw it as being a cheap cop-out to a true sequel to Mario Galaxy. They essentially saw it as Nintendo milking Mario as hard as they could. I never really doubted that they weren't already doing this ever since Mario joined Sonic at the Olympics in possibly the most unfair footrace ever. So how does this Mario game compare to other Mario games? Is it another brave voyage in the final frontier or a crash landing on a distant, boring planet?

Well, this game wasn't as good as Mario Galaxy. I'll start there. It wasn't even close. There were really fun parts in the game, but it did have that sense of being a cheap sequel. I don't want to say it was bad, since it was not at all. It was bad compared to Galaxy. It's unfair to compare games to other games, but this one uses it's source material quite faithfully. A lot of it seems like you've seen it before. Plus, there were several little things that annoyed me.

One of those several annoying things was your home ship. This isn't like Peach's Castle, Delfino Plaza, or even the ship from Galaxy. It's a tiny ship shaped like Mario's head. It's so lame. I don't know how to put it any more eloquently, but it's lame. One of my favorite things is running around the large world selection area, exploring secrets and such. The ship from Galaxy was smaller than the others, but it was still pretty explorable. This one has so little to explore. You unlock things like an on-board Yoshi and a bunch of little critter friends, but it never gets bigger. At least from where I played, it stays the same size. You select worlds in a Super Mario Bros. 3 type map. It makes finding maps easier, but it also makes it more boring.

Another thing I didn't like was the world structure. Most worlds have, at most, 3 stars. There were a ton of worlds, sure, but you barely spent any time in them. I always enjoyed spending a couple of hours in each world, trying to figure out what the stars mean. There are secret stars in this game, but they're incredibly hard to figure out. That's kind of nice, I guess. Most of them are just bullshit to get. You can explore some levels for a while and not find them and find others on your first run through the level. Most levels are pretty linear, too. I can't remember if there are 2D levels in the original, I want to say there were, but they're in Galaxy 2. There are too many, in my opinion. In general, the levels lost their exploration and increased their quantity. I believe in quality over quantity, so this annoyed me.

Yoshi actually was a good addition. I like how he played. He didn't disappear when you touched water or got hurt like in Sunshine (did he disappear when you got hurt?) and he had powers of his own, which he got by eating certain berries. Some made him run really fast, some made him light up and show invisible paths, some turned him into a balloon. They were cool. His tongue attack worked really well, too. As for Mario's new powers were pretty cool, too. They had cool puzzles attached to them and were one of the only things that made this game feel like a sequel, other than Yoshi. There were other additions, like a second player being able to kill enemies and the person from the first one teaching you how to beat levels, but it didn't really count as real additions, since no real Mario player needs hints like that.

Probably the most disappointing part of the game was the story. The story was so bad. It unfolded almost exactly like the first one. I initially thought the entire Mushroom Kingdom had some sort of amnesia and that would play into the story, but it didn't really. Since I didn't see the ending, I don't know if it did, but I'm going to guess that Bowser's defeated, Mario rescues Peach, and everything is exactly the same as it was. The last Mario had a new character that actually played a role in the ending, so excuse me if I suddenly expect Mario to not have a sucky story. Why can't they be as good as Paper Mario? Those have the best stories.

Ok I know I said lots of negative things about this game, but it's not a bad game. It's pretty linear, but it's still a Mario game. It won't appease the Mario fans that have been there since 64, but it won't make them lose hope in Mario either. I felt that it was kind of "meh". Nothing special. It has some of the Mario charm, but it's missing the open ended levels and the exploration aspect of it. This game isn't a "run out and buy it so your life can be enriched", but it's probably worth playing if you have a Wii and money to blow. To sum it all up, it was average. This ultimately proves Mario games need to be in different scenarios each time. Admittedly, there's not much else to do after land, space, and sea. An ice related game would just be a game full of everybody's least favorite levels. Still, this wasn't as horrible as I made it sound. It's just a bit disappointing.

Review of a Game I Haven't Beat: Pokemon Soul Silver

2010-06-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Pokemon has always been a franchise that has been close to my heart. I fondly remember playing the original Blue version on my clear plastic Game Boy Pocket. I also remember playing Yellow, having as much fun, if not more, with it. Then kids found out how good I was at Pokemon. At first (aka when I lived in Texas), the kids would ask me to perform the Missingno. cheat for them. For some reason, I was the only person in the entire school who knew how to do it. I was a second grader. When I moved to Colorado, I learned Pokemon maybe wasn’t as popular as it was. Either that or everybody in the 4^th grade was assholes. I think that was it, actually. Being that as it was, I didn’t play Gold and Silver since “it wasn’t cool”. Sadly, it was and I had no idea that, in a nearby elementary school, all of my current friends were trading Pokemon cards and talking about how their level 100 Blastoise was the best Pokemon of them all while others argued how their level 100 Tyranitar was way better and way cooler. Point is, I never played the second generation. It was after meeting some of these people that I even played the third generation. I never bothered to play any roms of it since I knew, after Fire Red and Leaf Green, they would eventually remake Gold and Silver. In fact, after seeing the day and night features in Diamond and Pearl, I was convinced that it would come. I was right. There is now remakes of each version for the DS that run on the Diamond/Pearl engine. I, personally, played Soul Silver since I like to think I have soul, plus it has some awesome cover art. But Diamond and Pearl showed that Pokemon was about as oversaturated as Guitar Hero, so how does this one stack up?

What did you guys think of my line up there? It was meant to bait you into reading the rest of the review. Obviously it worked. So, before I continue, it’s important to say where I am. Obviously, this is a game I haven’t beaten. I’m about 40 hours in. I have all 8 Johto badges (Johto’s the first place you play in, for those Poke-noobs out there) and I’m literally trying to catch Lugia (the guy on the awesome cover art). I’m maybe just under halfway done. 40 hours and I’m halfway done. That’s an indicator that this is a long game. That’s a plus for me, however. This game is $35 and it plays for more than 60 hours. I’ve bought $60 games that barely played for 12 hours. This game is a really good value. It’s obviously still Pokemon. Nothing’s changed from Diamond and Pearl except the Poketch is now an awesome cell phone thing. The Poketch was kind of a dumb interface, though. And the name. Ugh the name. It plays similar to Crystal version (I hear, I can’t confirm this for myself, nor do I want to), so there’s more of a story for one of the legendary dogs.

The roaming works better than in previous games for the legendary dogs, so that makes things way easier to find them. There are cool features that bring Pokemon from generation III and IV into Johto and Kanto (Kanto’s the other region in this game, in case you’re retarded and can’t figure that out by yourself). There are also cool events, though none of them have come out in America (except this one where you get a Pikachu, it’s so gay). Probably one of the biggest changes is the addition of the Poke-Walker, aka a Pokeball shaped pedometer. You put a Pokemon in it and take it for a real life walk, where it will gain experience and gain a level. It’s kind of annoying how you can only gain a level at a time, since it’s a pain in the ass to sync it every time you want to get it to go up another level. It’s a quality pedometer, though. You can’t trick that thing easily. I’ve tried. It requires some extreme measures. I haven’t tried those, though. I’m far too lazy. I just took it to class with me. Yes, I’ve taken this thing to college classes. I’m very sure I’m not the only one. There are also fun little mini-games for catching Pokemon and getting items that you can transfer to your game. It’s like a Tamagachi that makes you less fat. Or like a DIGIMON! It’s like they’re fighting the competition that they killed years ago. It’s like if Best Buy suddenly ran an ad campaign talking about how shitty Circuit City was.

All the pretty graphics, bells, and whistles won’t change that Pokemon is essentially the same game it always was. This game is pretty much Gold/Silver with the pretty weather effects/abilities from the third generation. It also looks prettier. That’s not a bad thing. Gold/Silver was considered the best Pokemon game by some of my friends. I would actually agree. It’s actually a sequel that provides closure with the first game, surprisingly enough. I hope that wasn’t a spoiler alert. Whatever. The game’s about 10 years old. If you love Pokemon and skipped a generation, you’ll love this game. If you love Pokemon and need something to hold your attention until the busy fall release blitz, this is a good game to do that. If you are sick of Pokemon, this won’t change your outlook. It’s the same grindy RPG with the same Pokemon. It doesn’t add any more, if that makes a difference. So that’s the end of the review. Rant time!

There are way too many Pokemon. It’s nearing 500. There’s a new one coming out, too. I think they need to find a way to make a bunch of Pokemon go extinct. That would be a cool plot device that would refresh the franchise. I seriously don’t think anyone’s going to miss Ratatta or Goldeen. Also, why does there always have to be so many new Pokemon? Gold/Silver only added 100. They integrated the previous generation really well into the game. Now they need all new shit Pokemon to annoy you while you search for a Ditto to breed Eevee with. Also, why does there always need to be an evil organization (or two in gen. 3) trying to either control Pokemon or use them to destroy the world? It seems like that happens so often it wouldn’t even surprise most people. It would be much more interesting if the story was about how regions are at war with each other and you, a young trainer, are on a mission by a guerrilla terrorist group to defeat the leaders of both armies and bring peace to the regions. By use of Pokemon battles, of course. That actually sounds really bad ass. There needs to be some sort of petition to get me to be a writer for some popular Nintendo games. I think I could get Mario a darker story about how Bowser raped and killed Peach and he uses his connections in the mob to get revenge. The tagline would be “Your Princess is in Another Castle”.

E3 2010 Wrap-Up

2010-06-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

I have to say that this E3 was actually pretty dull. Last year, E3 was so exciting. Then again, sleep deprivation makes everything more intense. I got plenty of sleep this year, so none of it was in a surreal fog. However, there were surprising moments in the show. They all occurred in Nintendo's presentation.

I hate to act like a fanboy, but Nintendo makes such a good case. They announced so many great games. A Kirby for the Wii that has a yarn artstyle? A new Donkey Kong Country by Retro Studios? A new Goldeneye? Yes please. All of those looked excellent. To all the Wii haters, there are now enough games to justify purchasing a Wii. It's only $200 and now has great games. Nintendo made the point that the Wii had something for everybody. They have been pushing for the casual crowd for years. For a while now, hardcore gamers have feared that they have been forgotten. I feel like this presentation made the case that the Wii wasn't abandoning core gamers.

There was also the 3DS. I thought the design wasn't bad. It's very similar to the DS. It differs in several ways, like a control stick, a widescreen upper screen, and 3D that works without glasses. Possibly the greatest addition is the graphics. From what they've shown, the graphics are far better than the DS's graphics. They might be at Wii level graphics. That doesn't sound horribly impressive, but as a handheld, it's pretty damn impressive. The games coming out for it are also impressive. They have Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, STAR FOX 64, Metal Gear Solid 3, a new Kid Icarus... if any of those are launch titles, this is worth getting on day 1. Also, speaking of portables, there wasn't anything on the new Pokemon, but another RPG series I loved in the 6th grade is getting a DS sequel: Golden Sun. That looks pretty incredible. It's also a 2010 release, so it's going to be a good way to pass time before the 3DS comes out.

So I loved Nintendo. I thought Sony and Microsoft weren't as good, though. They are at a video game convention and they decided not to focus on video games. Sony seemed to focus a lot on Move and 3D. It was pretty game related, but nobody watches E3 to learn about features that most people already knew about. They announced new games like Sorcery, but they just seemed to be uninteresting. They're turning the PS3 into a Wii on steroids. With 3D. It's all kind of boring to me. They did announce a new Twisted Metal, but it seems to be too big. Twisted Metal didn't exactly control that well to begin with. In a large environment, it seems like it would be hard to be accurate. Sony didn't suck, but they weren't as good as they were last year. It all lacked the friendly atmosphere. And had too many montages. They announced the Sly Cooper collection in a MONTAGE. Something about their priorities are wrong.

Microsoft had a boring presentation. I'm sorry. They were so boring. They had a few things about games, but Natal, now called Kinect, was their center of attention. They had some cool things, like video chat that follows you, but the gameplay they showed didn't seem like much fun. It was all fitness shit and Star Wars simulators. Also ESPN looks interesting. If you like sports. I personally don't follow anything, so it looks boring as hell to me. I would have preferred Hulu support. The best thing about the press conference was the Xbox 360 Slim. I laughed a little at the whole Oprah thing they did when they gave everybody in the audience one. It seems like most of the audience is made up of games journalists who already have Xboxes, making that whole stunt kind of pointless. Plus they didn't play it up at all. They were just kinda like "Oh yeah we have a slim Xbox now. And everybody here gets one. Yay." It's hard to type in a boring voice.

The most brilliant move of E3 was during Nintendo's presentation. They were presenting the 3DS and the new Zelda title after the presentation in the theater where it was. By presenting, I mean they had demos for both. This was brilliant because people would stay and play Zelda and the 3DS up to the time when shuttles to the Sony presentation arrived. They kept people away from Sony. Sabotage. Genius. Also Sony's conference had a brilliant speech by Kevin Butler. Sadly, it belonged at the Nintendo conference, since it reflected their attitude better than Sony's attitude.

I'm including a video from Konami's presentation. I didn't see it live, but the video makes me wish I did. It's very strange. And hilarious. It may not have awesome production values, but god damn do they deliver. The video may be kind of small. I'm bad at getting videos to fit in this tiny blog window.

EDIT: So after looking at some videos, I've decided that Konami wins. That press conference was so hilarious. Look up all the videos on Youtube. There are several great ones. You will be sucked.

Steam

2010-06-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

Now that E3's over, I'll make an E3 post about how much I liked E3. Later. Now, there's something on my mind that has nothing to do with E3.

Steam. Because my audience is mostly console gamers, I'll explain. Steam is a client made by Valve that allows people to download full games to their PCs. Of course, you probably already knew that. After all, my audience isn't comprised of uninformed morons. Some of you might have Steam. This is for those of you who don't. Get Steam. Don't have a computer of your own? Is your computer not good enough to run games? You people need to get better computers, then. PC gaming is not only viable, but it's also cheaper, especially with Steam. There was a special today that made the original Mass Effect only $5. Mass Effect 2 was about $25. That crazy low. I didn't buy either since I already have saves of both games on my Xbox, but you get the point. There are lots of sales. Plus, most games are $10 cheaper at launch. That adds up.

Another reason you should get Steam is that it's like a trimmed down Xbox Live, only free. You can play online (unless your game requires a subscription fee), have friends, and access content for free. There are also many great games on Steam. I just bought a game for $5. I've talked about it before. Eversion. I learned that earlier this month, they released an HD version of Eversion with a new ending and a new level (I think). Sure, it has the shitty first song instead of the glorious one, but you can get the free version online and get the song off of there. Easy. I bought the HD version because I like supporting smaller developers. Oh. Steam also has achievements, so you can be an achievement whore on nearly every console (I'm looking at you, Wii). So for those who don't have Steam, download it. It's free. For those who have Steam, my account name is Epsililicon, so friend me and I'll eventually get games we can play together.

By the way, I'm not being paid by Valve. I just need people to play with. PC games are just as good as console games, if not better in some ways. Ever play an FPS on the PC? It's grand!

Sony E3 Synopsis

2010-06-15T13:54:00.001-07:00

Sony's presentation was not as strong as it was last year. They had some strong points, namely Kevin Butler taking the stage and delivering an epic speech calling gamers to unite as one, whether they be casual or hardcore, but not much else happened. A few things were announced, but they talked a lot about Move and 3D support. They also announced Playstation Plus, which is like an XBL gold membership, only it's not necessary. You get free games and get demos earlier, so it's not like you need it to play online.

They showed off several games, like Heroes on the Move, a game that's essentially a mash up of Playstation platformers, Sorcery, a game that you use Move to hit goblins with spells, and Killzone 3, which has Move support. They also announced the Sly Collection, a collection of Sly Cooper 1-3 for the PS3. Gabe Newell took the stage in a surprising way to announce Portal 2 is coming to the PS3. He also showed a trailer. It looks more organic. There was a trailer for Infamous 2, but it was short. A new Twisted Metal game was announced. It looks like it's on a bigger scale than any of the previous entries. The PSP had a few good looking games, but I was hoping for a new PSP due to the fact that nothing comes out for the PSP anymore. I don't see a reason to buy a PSP at this point unless it's under $100. I wouldn't say the presentation was disappointing, but it wasn't as good as Nintendo's amazing presentation. It certainly wasn't as good as last year.

Nintendo E3 Synopsis

2010-06-15T10:29:00.001-07:00

Holy shit what a good presentation. So many awesome things happened here. First, there's a new Zelda game called The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. There's also a new Kirby game called Kirby: Epic Yarn. It's a bit unfortunately named, as it was shown after a gameplay demonstration of Epic Mickey. There's a new Donkey Kong Country for the Wii. Golden Sun DS is now Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It looks amazing. There's a new Goldeneye game coming to the Wii. They showed off Metroid: Other M some, too. It was a lot of running, but it looks like it's a game that switches between 3rd and 1st person perspectives. Pretty awesome.

They also announced the 3DS. They're sticking to that name. I wish they didn't, since that doesn't imply it's not next generation. If the footage they showed is accurate, it's next generation. They announced a launch title. It's a new Kid Icarus game. Guess Nintendo actually listens to their fans, after all. The 3DS actually looks really good. Like I said, if the graphics are real, then those are as good as, if not better than, the Wii. Damn. Good job, Nintendo. You took years of disappointing me and made me forget all about them.

EA and Ubisoft E3 Synopsis

2010-06-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

EA and Ubisoft presented after Microsoft, so here's what's up with them.

I'll start with Ubisoft since that's fresh in my mind. They announced a few things, but some of it was old news. There's a new Rayman game for the XBLA and PSN called Rayman Origins. I never played any of the Rayman games, but it looks really nice. It's all hand drawn animation. It looks really clean, like a 2D game should. They also announced a new Ghost Recon game. That looks pretty cool. It's pretty stealth oriented. There's a new Driver game. It doesn't look bad, but Driv3r was really bad, so I'm hesitant. They also showed Shaun White Skateboarding and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Those both look really good, particularly Shaun White Skateboarding. It looks like an old Tony Hawk game: completely unrealistically awesome. AC:B looks like it has a better combat system. There's a Kinnect/Move game that I really want, though. It's called Child of Eden. It's pretty much Rez with motion control. Rez was awesome, so this has to be as good, if not better. It's hard to screw up that formula. It's made by the same guy, too. It's a spiritual successor.

EA had some cool announcements. They opened with Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, a new NFS game made by Criterion. They made Burnout. I'm very optimistic. Dead Space 2 had footage. It looked like it had more diverse environment than the first one. The new Medal of Honor looks almost exactly like Modern Warfare. It has 24 multiplayer, though. It also uses Linkin Park's song New Divide for it's trailer. I was expecting Optimus Prime to come out and wreck shit. Bad Company 2 has an expansion pack coming out that takes place in Vietnam. Whether that's just where it takes place or if it's a time period shift is unknown at this point. Crysis 2 looks pretty good. It's going to be in 3D, so it's still lookin' purty. The Old Republic looks like an essential for any Star Wars fan. There was just a cutscene, but what a cutscene. More will come when I see gameplay footage, which should surface soon, since a playable demo is available at E3.

So that's what they're offering. So far, it's pretty good. There's a lot of casual shit, but it's not as bad as Microsoft's. Tune in tomorrow for Nintendo, Sony, and Konami. Here's hoping Kevin Butler does the Sony conference.

Microsoft E3 2010 Synopsis

2010-06-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just got done with their E3 keynote presentation. I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed. There were some cool things, but nothing was really all that new. They had some gameplay footage of cool games, including Metal Gear Solid Rising, which looks like Ninja Gaiden, but it was all focused on Natal. Also, Natal is now called Kinnect. Because Microsoft spent a majority of their time talking about Kinect, I'm going to spend a majority of this making fun of Kinect.

Kinect seems to work alright as a camera and tracks movement alright, but the games all seem like they require tons of physical activity in a way the Wii didn't. The Wii was nice because it didn't involve heavy exercise to use. Hell, most of it is just slightly moving your wrist. From what I saw, Kinect doesn't look like much fun. I don't want to play games by running in place really fast. I want to play games by sitting down with a controller. The whole casual gaming thing bugs me. I feel as though video games are turning into some sort of family fun machine. I find that gaming is only evolving in its novelties more than it's evolving in its other aspects. Well, somewhat. Good games still exist. I just hate the casual game wave.

Also they announced a new Xbox 360 that ships today and will be in stores this week. It's slimmer, quieter, and has wifi built in. This is my punishment for being an early adopter. First the PS3 Slim, then the black Wii, now this. Will my torment ever end??

Update to the Hiatus (also Mass Effect 2)

2010-06-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said the hiatus wouldn't be as long as I said it would? I lied. I shouldn't say I lied, but things got... worse. On Monday, one of my surgery scabs somehow got open and I started hemorrhaging. I lost anywhere from 1-2 liters of blood. The amount's kind of iffy since I didn't bleed it all out at the hospital. That fever was literally nothing to that. Anyways, I'm actually almost fully recovered now (...somehow), so that's the good news. The bad news is I've decided to go to Virginia to help my mother move into her new house, as well as see some relatives. I get back July 6th, so shortly after that, I have a killer first episode planned for the show. It involves Link outfits and milk. So the hiatus is still in effect, though I can update for portable games, so I might just do a Soul Silver review so I'm not leaving the blog for a month.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about Mass Effect 2. I know Tony reviewed it, but I had a chance to play it since Blockbuster doesn't seem to like to carry more than 2 copies of Mario Galaxy 2 or Red Dead Redemption. I must say, this game makes the original Mass Effect look like crap, in my opinion. I found the shooting to be annoying in the first one. I also thought the driving sections were complete crap. Overall, it wasn't that fun of a game for me. The second one has way better shooting. First of all, you can take cover. You're not constantly dying since cover in the first one is standing behind a rock. They also took out the bad driving sections. This limits your exploration, though. Instead of exploring planets, you "probe" them. That's probably the most boring part of the game, but it makes upgrades way easier to get. The leveling system and skill upgrade system is pretty good. It's not overly complicated like Final Fantasy XIII, but it at least pretends you're doing something. You just throw skill points into different skills. It's nothing special. Sometimes, complexity makes things frustrating. Then again, I'm pretty retarded and overly complex things leave me huddled in the corner in the fetal position. Either that or I figure it out and feel really proud of myself. That almost never happens though.

So Mass Effect 2 is superb. The story seems to be solid from what I've played, the gameplay has vastly improved, and it's got replay value. Also, you get $10 of free DLC if you buy it new. If you're like me and doubt everything, don't doubt this. It's pretty great. Also, no I haven't beaten it. I rented it Sunday. I was in the ER Monday and Tuesday. I think I started playing it Wednesday. I'm not calling this a review, so don't go saying I reviewed it. So Mass Effect 2 good, updates sparse until July, video in July.

EDIT: Sorry for not updating the Formspring. The questions are answered and I'll answer more if they come up. Also, there are no dumb questions. I can salvage any question and make it funny. By the way, that's a challenge.

Hiatus

2010-05-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've done this before, but I think it was for pettier reasons. The blog Jagged Pixels and production of the Youtube show are now officially on hiatus. As of recently, my health has taken a turn for the worst. I am currently recovering from surgery I had on my throat (tonsillectomy) and it hasn't been smooth. As of right now, I have a 102 degree fever, so it's hard to keep awake, let alone play any video games. Also, due to the nature of the show, it's hard to be creative when a fever is causing you to hallucinate. It probably doesn't help that my surgery area probably got infected. Anyways, before I go into any more gory details, the blog/show is on hiatus until I'm able to stay awake for 12 hours in a row, which is difficult to do when I'm not on painkillers, so fingers crossed. Thanks for your understanding and the only thing that will stop this blog is death itself!
Tempting fate,
The Management

EDIT: The hiatus won't be as long as I thought it would be. I just learned a lesson with throat surgery: always keep well hydrated. Last night was not a huge deal. Still, I'll need to recover a bit before I start writing the show. Also I have a thing called Formspring where you can ask me questions or something. A friend of mine had one, so I figured I'd make one too since I'm a trend following tool!

Review: Splinter Cell Conviction

2010-05-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

When the first Splinter Cell came out, I thought it was a fairly stealthy game. You were a spy who infiltrated malls and took pictures of the release schedule at Gamestop. In this game, you're trying to get revenge for your dead daughter. Honestly, I stopped playing Splinter Cell after the first one. The shooting wasn't too good and the stealth wasn't even that good. That and the game was just boring. Nothing happened. Conviction seems to have the opposite problem.

Sometimes, too much goes on. You'll have a bunch of people shooting at you and there's really no way to escape stealthily. It's like Gears of War, in a way. It's heavily cover based combat. The only reason you should leave cover is if you have been spotted and you need to sneak around to flank the enemies. They're... thick. If they lose sight of you, they will attack your last known position, making combat really easy most of the time. What balances the enemies' AI is your health. Sam Fisher (the main character, if you haven't picked up on that) doesn't only look old. He can only take a few hits and, even when he's behind cover, grenades are pretty lethal. This is, of course, strange for video games, where people are sturdier than the cover they are hiding behind.

One thing that the game does well is shooting. It's straight up Gears of War, but it works pretty well. You hold down a button to take cover, which, after getting used to, is pretty useful. You can also "execute" your enemies, which means you beat a guy up, mark several enemies, and then press Y and watch Sam shoot the enemies you marked while you stretch your fingers or something. They're not exactly flashy. It's just a quick way to kill enemies without really doing anything. You can upgrade your weapons with points you get from doing random things, but there's no reason to upgrade anything that's not a silenced pistol. They have infinite ammo and don't attract attention. I used a shotgun maybe twice and a silenced machine gun once the whole game. There's no real reason to not use a pistol.

The stealth isn't exactly hard in this game. As I said, the enemies look for your last known position, so you can slip past them really easily. There's no way to really distract them, though. The game encourages you to kill everybody. Hell, the enemy AI seems to talk shit since they know you're right next to you. They don't, however, actually know that since they're thick and all. All that does is give their positions away and make you want to shoot them in the head. It's like a stealthy version of Gears of War. I have used that comparison way too much, but that's the best way to describe this game. There's no real tension for getting caught, since you can shoot your way out really easily. There's also no reward for sneaking by undetected. If you want a stealth game, play Hitman: Blood Money. If you want a shooter with stealth elements, this is for you.

I didn't hate this game. At the same time, I wasn't impressed by it. It had a cool thing where it would display your objectives on walls like they were lights and cutscenes would be projected on walls. It was cool, but I didn't really pay attention to it. It was small things that I really didn't care about. The whole thing seems pretty quick. Stealth games are supposed to be tense and drawn out. It works alright as a shooter, but not too well as a stealth game. Also, it goes by fast since it's really short. It's about 6 hours, so don't expect a huge campaign. There's multiplayer, but fuck multiplayer.

If you think this review was kind of half-assed, that's because I have surgery tomorrow and my mind's really not in the zone. So next up: a drug induced review of Nier! They were out of Galaxy 2.

Review: God of War 3

2010-05-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

(Note: Skip down a few paragraphs if you want to get past the non-review stuff)

It's been a while since a proper update. The reason for this is college. I like doing well in college, so I limit my video game playing. Doing this makes reviewing games really hard. That and not having a job. But it's finals week, so I've been playing a ton of God of War 3, so here's a review!

God of War 3 is the thrilling conclusion in Santa Monica Studios' thrilling trilogy where they manage to take Greek mythology and beat it until it needs Micky to cut its eye to see. I like to think that I know some about Greek mythology due to that one year long class I had to take in high school, along with the Latin I had to take where we, for some weird reason, studied some Greek mythology when datives got boring. What's amazing is how much mythology is packed into this series. What's even more amazing is how it's actually kind of accurate (minus Kratos, the main character). There's a problem here and a confusion there, but it's pretty solidly made. They don't make certain gods have some strange ability they didn't seem to have in mythology. I haven't seen Clash of the Titans (either one), but I think that after playing God of War, it would be a letdown.

I haven't exactly been very good with playing God of War games. I played a demo for the first one and thought it was pretty cool. You fight a hydra and blood is everywhere. I was 13 at the time, so I was still in the phase where I was trying to convince my parents to let me play any rated M game. The demo looked promising though. I heard tons of good things about it, but I didn't get around to playing it. God of War 2 came out and I was older. Not that much older, but old enough that my parents stopped caring about what I played. Thanks GTA: Vice City! I noticed that the first level was really fun. You fought a colossus and destroyed a city in awesome armor. Then Zeus stabs you and you lose everything. After that, I got bored really quickly. The rest of the game didn't really live up to the first battle. I obviously quit really quickly, seeing as my attention span is horrible.

God of War 3 was different. The first thing that caught my eye was the graphics. I said Final Fantasy XIII looked pretty good. I think this might look as good or even a little better. It looks incredible and plays in a constant frame rate. There are no slowdowns and very few load screens. Some of the people can look kind of weird, which is something Final Fantasy does way better. Still, the enemies and bosses look amazing. It's really hard not to be impressed with it. The next thing you'll notice is that it plays an awful lot like the other God of War games. That's because it's almost exactly the same. There might be different weapons and items you use, but the same concepts there: hit things with chain-sword things/other weapons. There are combos, though, and mashing heavy attack won't get you anywhere.

The game mostly plays the same throughout. You have hundreds of combat sequences where you fight several kinds of enemies. You also fight quite a few bosses. The quick time events are still there, but I feel like they define the series. They allow you to, instead of killing a cyclopes, rip out his eye and then kill him. Some of the QTEs (anything involving the analogue stick) are bullshit, but they're not impossible. Yes, there is a sex scene. Yes, there are QTEs with it. Yes, it is really hard to do with one hand. MOVING ON. One nice thing about the gameplay is the puzzles. There are actual puzzles and, while none of them are terribly complex, they are well thought out. Most of them involve pulling a lever of some sort, but there are puzzles that require timing and platforming and such. It's nice to see an action game that isn't focused entirely on combat.

The story is also quite good. I've sort of missed some of it, but Wikipedia helps. The story is told with really cool cutscenes meant to imitate Greek pottery. The story is kind of... convoluted. It's a really cool take on Greek mythology. Honestly, I would have cared more about 9th grade history if I played this series during that time. Then again, my history teacher had a snake in the room that was more interesting than Thucydides. I was a very lazy child with borderline ADD. The game wraps up the series nicely. It feels like a tour around Greek mythology, only, instead of taking pictures, you kill gods.

If you own a PS3, this is a must-get. If you haven't played the first two games, play this one or play the first two then play this one. You can get all of them on a PS3. I wouldn't say this is a reason to drop a bunch of money on a PS3, but it certainly is among a bunch of reasons to get a PS3. This game is a fine piece of gaming that provides entertainment that isn't brainless. The over-the-top violence is a selling point in itself. It's almost comical how violent it is. I was never disgusted by the game, but I am desensitized to violence, as Fox News and all the anti-video game people say. Didn't read the review? Fine. PLAY THIS GAME. Also learn to read, prick.

Jagged Pixels Show Update: HELP ME!

2010-05-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

The show's not going too well. With finals week coming up and a paper due the day after the Iron Man 2 midnight showing, a May release of the show is unlikely since I have literally nothing written yet. That is what this post is about. I need help brainstorming. If you happen to see this, comment with ideas! It's episode 1, so it will be non sequitur. That is to say, I won't be reviewing anything. I won't be discussing some issue. It might turn into a sequel for that video I made a while ago. In fact, that was my plan so far, since I'm out of ideas. If anybody else has any better ideas, please post them!

Yeah I know I'm being lazy, but most writers aren't full time students. Also, to the people saying this won't happen (aka Garrett, aka dickface who got me banned from Xbox Live), fuck you this is happening. So let's see some genius ideas. I'm like a forest: I just take a spark to get a big-ass fire going. The part of Smokey the Bear will be played by Colorado State University today.

Review: Getting banned on Xbox Live

2010-04-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

I learned an important lesson: always watch what your "friends" are doing when they are using your Xbox Live profile to play games. A couple friends and I were playing Halo 3 online and one of my friends, the one who refuses to read this blog, decides it would be funny to change my bio to "cock". He also manages to insult several people while playing Halo, so they check my profile and, sure enough, they can have revenge to that asshole sightlesssniper!

Later that night, I want to play some Halo with another friend, so I try to log in. I get a notice informing me I have been suspended for 2 days. I wonder why, thinking this is a case of mistaken identity and I'm innocent. I then look at my profile and, sure enough, cock. My friend with me says, "I didn't know they could ban you for that. Couldn't it mean something else?" I then try to explain to him that when somebody has the word "cock" in their profile, they aren't expressing that they are a rooster. I contact my friend and yell at him, to be told, "It's your fault, man. It's your profile, so it's your fault." I try to tell him that what he just said makes no sense and it was his fault I got banned. He's as stubborn as ever, so I just give up.

Today, my ban was lifted, so I decided to change my profile so that I wouldn't get banned again. Seems as though Microsoft already did that. In fact, my entire profile has "CODE OF CONDUCT" plastered all over it. Thanks, Microsoft. Actually, they're just doing their job. Still, I wish they sent me a polite message telling me to change my bio. They said they sent me an email, which is funny since the email I use for Xbox Live actually got deleted and I forgot what email address I used as a "parent account" when I was 15. The lesson there is to keep your shit together.

There is a lesson you can gain from this story: if you have friends over playing on your Xbox Live profile, make sure you are watching what they are doing at all times. Leave for a minute and, bam, your motto is "Yum yum delicious semen". As for the review portion of this, I give getting banned on Xbox Live TWO THUMBS WAY DOWN. No Netflix or Halo for 2 days is like 2 days without crack for Tyrone Biggums. So fuck you, Garrett Peterson, gamertag Ninja Monkie.

Announcement: The Jagged Pixels Show

2010-04-17T16:50:00.001-07:00

The other day, I had a conversation with a friend. I was chewing him out for not reading my blog. I was pissed. I wanted people to read this. But, alas, he wasn't having any of it. He gave me a condition that he would read my blog: if it was in video form. He's a smart guy, but he's extremely lazy, so he doesn't want to read. I figure that's part of the reason the blog doesn't have much exposure. That and it's an amateur game blog. There are literally millions of them on the internet. The difference with mine is that I find myself to be a better writer than most of them. That may be pompousness, though.

I've done videos before. I made this video for a talent show/male beauty pageant thing I did in high school. By made this video, I mean I was an actor/voice actor, a director, a writer, and an editor. The other half of those positions was my good friend Jacob, who you'll recognize as the guy who gets a Nietzsche book thrown at him. The main joke of it was that we made and edited this video instead of writing a paper on the book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". It started out as being a parody of this, but it really quickly became a parody of Dragon Ball Z. Also, our recording equipment was a digital voice recorder that had a USB connection device on it. It was ghetto.

Honestly, this is something that I have been wanting to do. I love writing about video games, but some of the humor is lost in the length of my articles. Also, I ramble quite a bit, so the videos would have to be on subject. I think that doing this will be a great way to expand the blog by making it do what I want it to do in the first place: be interesting and informative and make people laugh. I imagine it will be sort of like X-Play meets Mega64. I also have a small "production team", aka a few people who will help film it and be extras, as well as maybe help me write it.

Expect to see the Jagged Pixels show (possibly renamed to something better) either in May or July, depending on when I can get a good start on it. Also, this isn't replacing the blog. It'll be "video supplements" to go along with reviews. Most will also involve me either dressed as game characters, hurting myself attempting stunts, or a mixture of the two. It'll be great fun. COMING SOON!

EDIT: If you are interested in being part of the Jagged Pixels show as an actor or part of the crew, contact me at jon.pait@gmail.com. Or leave a comment here. No experience is required, since I'm really the only person who's part of this show with any experience at all with any of this. It's not exactly a high budget production. That's part of the charm of it. It's going to look like shit. Also I need a theme. Something that says "this is about video games", but something that doesn't suck. This is less crucial. I can steal parts of songs for now.

The End of an Era

2010-04-15T00:41:00.001-07:00

Today, Halo 2 shut down. Halo 2 was a game that I truly cherished. The funny thing is I am actually quite bad at Halo. I have always been terrible at first person shooters. Halo 2, though, holds a special place in my heart. It signifies a time when everything was simpler and we didn't have to worry about the future. Actually, all of that was a lie. That is what Halo 2 means to my friends. To me, it means relatively nothing. The game I associate with those feelings is Phantasy Star Online (you would know that from reading a single post of my blog, which is basically a PSO fansite). However, to nearly all of my friends, it is a sign of when the point of life was to level up through the matchmaking system.

The night began around 7 PM. A couple friends and I got online and played for several hours. As the hour passed 1 AM, the game continued, though it was supposed to shut down. I guess Microsoft decided to give those late gamers a little bit more time. I had to quit around 1:30 because of my roommate. So Halo 2 ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. A whimper that says "Turn off the fucking TV. I have an exam in the morning." Throughout the night, I had several good games, but most of it was my usual playing: horrible. I am not good at first person shooters at all. It's just not in my blood. When the kids were playing Goldeneye, I was playing Harvest Moon 64 (Farmville before Farmville). Hell, when PSO's servers were shut down, I wasn't broken up about it at all, since I stopped playing for a year or so when it happened. However, something about Halo 2 made my friends want to play it online one last time.

One thing I noticed about Halo 2 is that Bungie is a really dedicated company. They not only participated in the last night of Halo 2, but they changed all of the "Did you know?" boxes to custom and humorous messages. These messages included them admitting that the default spawning weapons in the game were a bad idea and that "superjumping" made you a douche. They really show that they care about everything they do. Another thing I noticed is that there are some insane people playing Halo 2. I literally have no idea how people manage to get that good and still make enough to live off of. Unless they live in their parent's basements, which is a real possibility.

I think most people have at least one video game that they cherish because of what it meant to them. For me, I have multiple ones, like PSO and Harvest Moon 64, as well as Star Fox 64 and Pokemon: Blue and Sapphire versions. Strangely enough, Sonic Adventure 2 is one of those games, too. Call me crazy, but Shadow doesn't bug me as much as he does everybody else. I have friends that think Goldeneye was the best game ever made, while others are obsessed with Halo 2. Hell, I have a friend who says Final Fantasy X was an integral part of him growing up. I believe that even horrible games can be great if played at the right time. A perfect example is my love of Sonic Adventure 2. The game controls weird, has long Chaos emerald searching levels that suck, and a story that attempts to be serious with anthropomorphic animals as the main characters. Still, the countless hours playing the levels and playing Sonic Advance to get rings to raise Chao's made the game way better than it was. That and I was in the 6th grade.

I have heard many people tell me that the games I play are "shitty" and "horrible". These people also have never played the game. They claim they don't want to play the game because it didn't score perfect 10's in every gaming magazine or just because "it's a bad game". I'm always willing to try a game once. I've played Super Princess Peach to the end and actually liked it. There are some games I can assume are bad, like Bratz: Anything or most movie tie-ins. You'd be amazed what you'll find when you let down your guards and try something random.

I've forgotten what I was writing about. Oh yes. Goodbye, Halo 2, you marvelous game. I have not been very good at playing you, but you gave me excuses to stay up until 4 AM on weeknights. You will be missed, since Halo 3 kind of sucks. While I'm not horribly broken up about you not being online since this was my first time online in a year or so, you did make high school less sucky. Valla con dios. Con guerra.

EDIT: It's 2:30 AM and Halo 2 is still strong. Apparently it's not the end of an era. I think it's just an elaborate joke.
Slightly later EDIT: it's 4 AM Mountain time. I have an 8 AM class. Xbox Live is still up. Well played, Microsoft.
Another EDIT: DISREGARD THIS ENTIRE POST! Halo 2 is STILL online. It is 3:20 PM as of writing this edit. I feel so sorry for those who said they would play until it got shut down. I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion that this was a publicity stunt so people would play Halo 2 again. And it worked.
It's the final EDIT: It's over. It's finally over.

Indie Games Watch: Eversion

2010-04-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

So because games take forever to beat, I have come up with a way to update this blog without beating full length games: post indie games! I love indie games. They're free and really creative. They're not meant to appeal to a mass market, so they try new, strange things. I have played many indie games, so a lot of these updates will be for really old games. It's just my way of passing the word of these games to you, the reader, even though you have probably heard of the game already. These aren't reviews, though. If I hated a game, I'm not posting it. So here's a game I don't hate.

The game is called Eversion. It's a cool 8-bit platformer that's happy and awesome. You play as a flower thing that collects gems and jumps on these happy looking Goomba-like creatures. You feel bad for jumping on them, though, since they look like they're having a great time. You don't feel bad for them later on, though. On the download site, you'll notice that it says "Not recommended for those of a nervous disposition". This is due to the twist that it has. You can "evert" to change the stage up, changing the enemies, music, and objects that appear on the stage. You do this to get to gems you can't reach normally. Since I really don't want to spoil the game to anybody who hasn't played it, the eversions are what make this game better than a generic Mario clone. It's a really cool concept that is done really well.

One of my favorite things about the game is the music. I had an earlier version of the game (1.52 or something), so I don't know how the newer versions sound. The older version had great 8-bit music that was strangely catchy. You'll be humming them even when you're not playing. The game isn't terribly long, but it is quite good and is worth your time. You can get it here, completely free. If you don't play this game, there really is something wrong with you. It's free. FREE. Meaning you don't have to pay for it. I'll probably post a couple more games before I get around to my God of War III review.

New Pokemon Games Were Announced

2010-04-09T01:59:00.001-07:00

If this is your source for news, then please go to Kotaku. They get news way faster than I do. Hell, I get my news from them. Like this news. New Pokemon games were announced. Or something like that. They're called Pokemon Black and White versions. Normally, after Diamond and Pearl managed to do very little for the series, I'd say "Not another one! It's gotten so saturated with too many Pokemon and no innovation!" I have reason to be concerned. If you look at the games in general:

1st Generation: It's the first one! It created it all!
2nd Generation: Added breeding, time, berries, hold items, 2 new types
3rd Generation: Added EV values, natures, weather, abilities, made breeding more tedious
4th Generation: Added... online play. That's it.

I probably left out some major details or mixed them up. Whatever. The point is that the 4th generation showed little progress in the series. This might show that they ran out of ideas. So am I excited for the new games?

Yes! I'm very excited! They finally got rid of the stupid valuable gems and metals! Black and white have many meanings, such as Yin and Yang, good and evil, light and dark, etc. This could show that the series might be maturing a little. There might be a story here! Anybody who reads this blog knows how much I love getting lost in a good video game story. If they combine that with Pokemon, that would be beyond amazing. Perhaps the characters might not be vessels for cheap lessons to "try your best" or whatever. They might have real problems and deal with them by training Pokemon. Or it will be the same story of a trainer collecting badges and defeating some organization that wants to destroy the world for some retarded reason.

Another thing that might change is the gameplay. Because the formula up til now has gotten stale, in my opinion, this is a perfect opportunity to update this 12 year old battle system. It is a new generation, after all. It would be stupid to rehash Diamond and Pearl with new Pokemon. I take that back. It would be really smart in a fiscal sense. It would cost so little money to do. However, many fans, like me, would be turned off by it. Maybe. Soul Silver is a remake and I really enjoy it (mainly because I didn't play G/S as a kid).

One final thing they could do is maybe throw out some of the more useless Pokemon. The current count of Pokemon is 493. This includes a Pokemon that controls space, a Pokemon that controls time, and God. I'm very interested to see how they're going to keep it interesting. I just hope there aren't too many new Pokemon. There are already almost 500. Catching them all seems to get more and more annoying.

I'm wildly optimistic about this, though. This could be the series' evolution (lol pun) into a very well made game. The past titles have followed a formula. The title of this one breaks the formula, so maybe the gameplay can, too. Also, the name is so fucking cool. I just have to say that. I wonder if you go black, if you can ever play white version...

EDIT: Gamefreak released this statement:
２０１０年４月９日。
ついに私たちが開発している完全新作のタイトルが広報されました！
「ポケットモンスターブラック」
「ポケットモンスターホワイト」
私たちは、ほんの少しでもクオリティを高めるべく、
いま多くの時間をこの作品につぎ込んでいます。
いままで楽しんでくださった方々に更に喜んでいただけるように。
プレイしたことが無い人にも満足いただけるように。
そして今回は、ポケモンを卒業したと思っている方々に。
多くの方々に楽しんで欲しい。
そんな思いで制作しています。
この作品によって、ポケットモンスターは革新的に生まれ変わります。
ご期待ください。
チャオ。
It just makes me more excited.

AND ANOTHER ONE: I have a connection that can get me this game at launch. That connection is my dad, who lives in LA and says there are Japanese stores there that supposedly have the Japanese version at launch. Basically, that means I'd review the game before the embargo or whatever expires, since I'm not exactly sponsered by anything. Plus, I might know enough Japanese to actually understand the story by that time. If I don't, I can still fake my way through it. I did play Diamond in Japanese, as well as Rockman.exe 3.

Long story short: I can get this game on Japanese launch and I may be able to read it. Hooray.

Review of a Game I Haven't Beat: Final Fantasy XIII

2010-04-08T22:12:00.001-07:00

Final Fantasy XIII, like every other Final Fantasy, is really long. It is too long for me to sit down and play then review without it being August. People speculate that it's about 60 hours long, so I think my basic playing of it (around 8 hours) is enough to give it a basic verdict.

The thing I really like about Final Fantasy XIII is that, compared to Final Fantasy XII, it's really good. Then again, compared to FFXII, the story to Made in Wario is more interesting. After Final Fantasy XII, I really had a hard time bringing myself to forgive Square. I thought I would never play another one because FFXII was really bad. It wasn't just the story that was horrible. It was also the gay "monster hunting" missions and the horrible battle system. It was like a really slow version of Monster Hunter. I say this with no experience with the game Monster Hunter. I played PSO, though. I think they're really similar.

Final Fantasy XIII decides to go back to the battle system that made Final Fantasy fun: turn based battles. They involve those time bars that everybody loves, but they work differently. You assign roles to your characters to determine what kinds of attacks they'll use. You then control one character, known as the leader, and use him/her to attack while the rest of your party is controlled by AI. You can perform a "Paradigm Shift", which basically means you change everybody's role and change how they fight. This is useful with the Medic role. You can have somebody both attack and then heal you. The combat takes a while to actually unfold due to tutorials and such, but it's quite fun after they let you fight. Your health also restores after each fight, so you don't have to worry about being out of cures right before a boss.

From what I played, there wasn't exactly much free-roaming. The story takes a while to develop. That's actually a huge minus with this game. Usually, Final Fantasy games don't take this long to turn you loose. It's a bit long winded, which is a funny word to use for a Final Fantasy game, since they're all long winded. This one, in particular, moves kind of slowly. It takes a lot of time to get to the juicy parts.

Another complaint: why so complex? The leveling up system in this game is really weird. Your character doesn't level up. Your weapons level up when you... feed them items. It's hard to describe since I don't really get it. You also upgrade your stats by using Crystarium (aka experience points) to upgrade your roles, getting additions to your stats. I sort of miss the simplicity of Final Fantasy IV, where all you did was fight monsters and level up. The game didn't trouble you with all this complicated shit and you could get taken in by the story (boy what a fucking weird story that game had). Even games like VII and X had a simplicity to their gameplay where you didn't have to micromanage a bunch of things (though X has a similar system to XIII's role leveling up thing). They allowed you to really get into the story. I bring up these examples since I have only played IV, VII, X, XII, and XIII, so don't email me calling me a hater of VIII. I intend to play that one. Someday.

One thing can be said for sure, though. This game looks gorgeous. I played the PS3 version since it has Blu-Ray and I want to see the fullest extent of Blu-Ray. It looks absolutely amazing. I have literally never seen a game with such great graphics. I can't even tell the difference between the cutscene graphics and the gameplay graphics. If it's one thing Square can do, it's make a gorgeous game. It also sounds great. The music is pretty good, the sound effects are also good, and the voice acting doesn't piss me off, though I miss hearing Bender in Final Fantasy X.

Once again, this is a review of a game I HAVEN'T FINSIHED. This is more of a first impression than a review. I only call it a review since I'm not coming back to it later. I'm finishing it, but I won't review it since it's too long and I have too many games to play as it is. If you love Final Fantasy, you'll love this. If you want a game that will last you a while, this is a great game to pick up. If you love instant gratification, this might not be the game for you. It is by no means a bad game. It is a very good game. However, the game takes patience, which many gamers don't have. If you've never played a Final Fantasy, maybe start with an older one. You really can't go wrong, unless you choose XII.

The End of Jagged Pixels

2010-04-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a good run, but circumstances have forced me to shut down the blog. Specifically, these circumstances:

Yes I am dead. I have committed suicide because of today's announcement of Mario and Sonic Galaxy. Shit looked horribad. How I'm typing this post, I have no idea. It's quite possible I'm a ghost. Well, I'm off to haunt people and cross streams!

EDIT: For my thick-headed readers, Happy April Fools day! The blog's not done. Not by a long shot. I have Soul Silver and God of War 3 on the way, as well as Final Fantasy XIII, if I ever get around to finishing it.

Feature: A Perfect Game

2010-03-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about No More Heroes 2 is that it's about 12 hours long. The game I'm playing right now, Final Fantasy XIII, is nowhere close to being 12 hours. I'm 8 hours in and "not very far", so this post is a new kind of post, a "feature", which basically means a rant. I will rant about a subject for a while. This, weeks, it's about the idea of a "perfect game".

The idea of a perfect game is like the idea of a perfect anything. It's impossible. Perfection is highly colored by one's perceptions and preferences.

Review: No More Heroes 2: Desparate Struggle

2010-03-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

No More Heroes 2 is the sequel of No More Heroes. God this review's going to suck. The original No More Heroes was a really strange game for many reasons. One reason was it's content. It was a crass, violent, profane game. The sequel picks up where that left off. In the first battle, the main character, Travis Touchdown, says "fuck face". That about sums up the dialogue in the game. The whole plot is not what I would call award winning. The first one was basically about a guy who likes anime who buys a lightsaber on eBay. He then, for some reason, decides to become an assassin. He then becomes the top assassin. Then there's an ending. I think the ending for the first game was meant to make so many loose ends that a sequel would be nearly impossible. Hell, a character says at the end "Too bad there won't be a sequel!"

Then they made a sequel. It tries so hard to tie up all the random characters that they just skip the recap at the beginning of the game. The best way to describe the plot would be a generic anime plot. The only thing about that satement is that the game is so self aware of itself that I mistook it for Skynet on several occasions. They don't break the fourth wall. They shatter it. All of the parts meant to be funny are pretty hilarious and all the parts that are meant to be serious are also funny because of the nature of the plot. The ending, however, is not even close to the first one's ending. If you're aware of generic anime elements, the story will be hilariously corny. If you don't here's another reason to play this.

The gameplay, while repetitive, is pretty damn fun. Most of it is just running around and mashing A, but, hey, it looks pretty when you do it and you can pretend you're Luke Skywalker with tourettes. There's also an awesome mechanic called the Ecstasy Gauge (or something like that), which, unlike real life ecstasy (believe me on this one, I went to an Infected Mushroom concert a few days ago, what I saw was hilarious), makes you go batshit insane in several ways, kind of like doing cocaine. Not that I would know what any of that's like. You can either try your luck with some slots that appear when you kill an enemy or you can activate what I like to call "Goku mode" by pressing the - button. One cool thing about Goku mode is you do fast attacks at a rapid pace. It's not as powerful as the slot attacks, though. The slot attacks can make you shoot fireballs, go into super-fast mode (or Clockstoppers mode) where you attack people while going really fast, or tiger mode, where you turn into a fucking tiger and maul people. It's not all that intricate, but you can be a tiger. That mauls people. I really think that should be on the back of the box.

What made the first game really special was the fact that the side missions were actually fun to play. They had cool way of working. I think. I really don't remember them too well, since I played that game 3 years ago. I remember them using the Wii controls pretty well. That's pretty much it, though. So NMH2 decides to make the mini-games go Mega Man 9 and turns them 8-bit. Like Mega Man 9, they are actually really fun. They vary from cooking steaks to Pipe Mania to collecting coconuts. The coconut game actually has a really funny description, claiming that kids have lost touch with traditions of the city you live in and that Travis must gather coconuts to spark kids to gather more coconuts, thus reviving the tradition. I laughed at how shitty of a tradition that is. That comment probably lost me some readers on some Central American island. The only side mission I hated was the last one you unlock. They don't even try to make it 8-bit. It's just a regular 3D mission. I think it might be in the original one. I hated it in this one, so I'm pretty sure I hated it last time too. You also improve your strength and HP with 8-bit minigames from the most flamboyant trainer. The HP minigame isn't too bad, but the strength minigame gets incredibly hard. Still, it's quite fun.

NMH2 isn't about mini-games. The main attraction of this game is the boss fights. NMH2 delivers. While the first game had very similar bosses, NMH2 puts some variety in the mix. You fight many more bosses than the first game, including a few from the first game. You also play a level in a mech. A mech. It's literally one of the funniest boss fights ever. It's so incredibly corny. The fights themselves aren't terribly hard. The enemy's attack patterns aren't too complex, so anybody who's played a hack-n-slash will have no problems. You also play a few bosses as different characters, which is fun. One's a boss from the last game who can jump, which is cool. She is also "moe", if you know what that means. I know this because she says this every time she gets health. The other one is the guy from the ending of the first game. You only play one boss fight with him, though. Kind of lame. More time with these characters would have been a little better. The one gripe about the bosses I have is the last one. The last boss is so horrible that the game sort of admits how bad it is. You know who the last boss is early on in the game, but when you reach him, it feels like you've been cheated out of an epic boss fight. The whole game's a comedy, so I guess this is part of the joke? I could think of way better bosses than the one they used.

If you own a Wii, like the first one, this one is a must-have. If you can't afford this one, at least rent this. I say this since guest contributor Tony told me he was "saving for Mario Galaxy 2" instead of paying $7 to rent this for a week. I beat this in one sitting, but I wouldn't recommend doing that, since it took about 13.5 hours and I got really sick after doing it. I would, however, recommend getting this, since it's a solid game that has replay value if you're into playing the game again on a harder difficulty. If you don't, it's still worth a playthrough. It's gameplay and humor is definitely worth it.

Review of a Game I Haven't Beat: New Super Mario Bros Wii

2010-03-06T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'm introducing a new segment called Review of a Game I Haven't Beat. This is, obviously, a review of a game I haven't beat. I know I do full reviews on games I haven't beat, but this is different. This doesn't mean I'm on the last boss and it's bullshit, so I rage quit and write the review. This means I'm nowhere close to beating the game, but I feel like nothing's really going to change. This works for NSMBW since it's Mario. There aren't any twists. There isn't really even a plot. It's just Mario. So, without any further delay, a RoaGIHB (man that's one ugly acronym)!

Nintendo decided to throw a bone to the "hardcore" gamers and release an old school Mario type game. I'm not exactly too keen on the hardcore vs casual argument, since it's all stupid. I consider myself a hardcore gamer and I've been admitted to Peggle rehab twice. So this new Mario game. It's like the DS game. There are some differences, such as item storage (you can't use items in the middle of the level, but you can store a lot of them and use them at the beginning of a level) and new powers (ice flower, weird helicopter hat, and... penguin... suit...), but it's pretty much the same game. The biggest difference is multiplayer. The multiplayer in the DS version was a stupid coin grabbing game. This game has co-op. One might think that this is a good thing.

Think again. It all depends on who you play with. I played with my little sister, who, bless her heart, absolutely blows at video games. I always see myself holding back a lot and still dominating, and I'm not actually that good at video games. Because of this, co-op was hard. She would steal the good power-ups and get hit 2 seconds after getting it, throw shells at me, knock me into bottomless pits, and lag behind. I would often tell her to press the A button, which turns her into a fetus-like bubble, so I can get through a part that requires great skill and speed without worrying about her lagging behind to pet the nice turtle. She'd occasionally do something right, like kill a boss, but she used 16 continues. 16. I used 3 and acknowledged that I was playing like crap that night.

There were times when she came in handy, though. When you don't have a power-up you need to get a star coin, you can always jump on your partner. However, it would take several tries. We would also run out of time often, due to her inability to play at high speeds. This was with 2 players. I can't imagine what 4 players would be like.

So the moral of this review: if you play multiplayer, play with really good people and don't suck. It gets really frustrating if you play with "noobs", since it's a skill oriented game. Also, where the hell are Wario and Waluigi? Who wants to play as the two toads? Those guys are the worst ideas ever! There's also a hint system somewhere in the game, but I didn't use it since I'm so pro. I actually didn't see a reason for it. The game's not that hard. It's not easy, but it's not "look it up on GameFAQs" hard. It's fun for the Mario fan who has skilled Mario fan friends.

Review: Halo Legends

2010-03-05T22:51:00.001-08:00

A movie review? On my video game blog? Yes! It's true! It's a video game related movie, so I figured it's worth reviewing. Halo Legends is a movie that's 2 hours long and made by several famous anime directors. So it's Halo anime. I know several people who love the Halo plot and love anime, so this would probably make them all kinds of excited. To me, the Halo plot line is better described in Red vs Blue terms, since I believe the best part of Halo was the multiplayer. Sadly, this isn't the RvB animated series that I think I heard something about. It's serious business. Also, the word "review" is loose. It's more of a synopsis. A really bad synopsis.

So it starts out as a 2 part backstory. The backstory is BORING beyond belief. I think it would be more interesting if you read the books, but I'm cool. I don't read books. Seriously, though. It's so boring. Plus, Cortana couldn't be more generic robot unsure of its existence. It then goes into this really terrible part called "The Duel" which I can only describe as a Playstation 1 cutscene. It's also really bad and makes no sense. Next, there's some story about this Spartan in a red suit. I think it's trying to imply that it's Samus, since the Spartan's a chick. Anyways, that one is pretty generic. The next one is... one of the worst things I have ever seen. It's about "Spartan 1337", so you know that it's a nerd-off. It's pretty much an unfunny DBZ rip-off. I know I'm going to get complaints about how it's "a parody", but it's not. Parodies are funny. Also, I know I'm not getting a single complaint, due to the fact that nobody reads this. That's about the halfway point.

Since it's halfway through, you're pretty much stuck now. "Prototype", the next piece, is about Master Chief mechs or something. I don't really know. All I know is that it's probably the most bad ass one, but the voice acting ruins it. When a person has an angry face, a "meh" voice doesn't fit, especially if it's "Shit shit shit I'm going to die" or whatever they say. I had actually seen a preview for the next one. It didn't look bad when I first saw the preview. ODSTs are pretty hoss, based on the game ODST. The episode was actually not bad. It featured stealth action and snipers. It's also not riddled in back-story, which most of these suffer from. I thought the second half was all better. I was wrong. The last story is HORRIBLE. It's CG, so all the people look like shit. There's a chick who's boobs don't really look like they're situated right. I don't know if it's because she's wearing a latex suit or not, but it looks... unsettling. It's supposed to represent what the game owuld be like if it were awesome and not a boring FPS. There are even moments when it goes to a person's HUD. It's kind of a "fuck you" to the gamers who like Halo, saying "This is what Halo could have been! Crouching tiger hidden dragon shit! WOO!", or something to that effect. Basically, bad CG that only looks good when there are only Spartans on screen.

After looking at the production companies that did this, I'm surprised to see that the I.G. Productions, which made Ghost in the Shell, aka the worst movie to watch drunk, made The Duel. I honestly thought it looked like bad CG from Brazil with a watercolor filter on it. I was shocked and appalled that with how good Ghost in the Shell looked (I think), this looks like it did. Of course, the bad DBZ rip-off (called Odd One Out) was done by a guy who worked on movies for DBZ, so it's not a surprise that it turned out like it did since DBZ is funnier when you make fun of how poorly it's written. The rest of them, while they may have been better, didn't really stick out as things I've seen/heard of, though feel free to write in telling me how I'm a monster for not liking Wolf's Rain or Appleseed. I don't care. It's all amusing to me.

Ok that sounded mean. It's not that I'm discrediting your anime. It's just that a lot of it's terrible to me. Then again, I watch Bleach, which is like a bad slashfic of Yu Yu Hakisho, DBZ, and any samurai show (we'll say Ruroni Kenshin). Feel free to bag on me for that. I happen to like it. It has pretty flashing colors that keep my attention for 22 minutes a week. In conclusion, you'll pretty much only like this if you're in love with Halo and dress up as girls at anime conventions. Maybe not the last part, since I fit in that category and didn't really like it.

Also, the music's recycled more than Linkin Park's "New Divide" in Transformers 2. Kinda like in the game.

Review: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

2010-03-02T19:44:00.001-08:00

Ace Attorney Inbreastigations: Miles Edgeworth (henceforth to be called "Miles Edgeworth" since that's a fucking long name) is the fifth game in the "Ace Attorney" series. If you've been following the blog at all (I know you haven't, but I'll forgive you this time), you'd know that ever since getting the third Ace Attorney game in a bargain bin at Best Buy, I've absolutely loved the series. Except the fourth game. The fourth one had a terrible story and forgettable characters, completely opposite of why people even play the series. This game is, surprisingly, unlike all of the games.

The game almost never takes place in a courtroom. There's a case where you're in a courtroom, but you don't really do any lawyering that has made the game so famous. Instead, you become an investigator. This game is kind of like CSI in the way that prosecutors have to do everything themselves. It seems like in this nightmare vision of Los Angeles/Tokyo/where ever the fuck this takes place. This isn't new, since Phoenix had to do lots of investigating of his own in previous games. Sadly, he didn't make it to this game. He wasn't even named. 2 characters, who were friends with him since elementary school, mention him, but don't seem to remember the name of a good friend. Not sure why he couldn't be a background character, since everybody else makes an appearance.

The investigating is interesting in the way that you can actually walk around a room and investigate objects instead of playing "I Spy" with a picture of a room. You also use "Logic" which is basically thoughts Miles gets and stores in his head for later use. You fit the pieces together to make evidence. You can also gather evidence. They haven't changed the core part of the game, however. It's still hot courtroom action, only testimonies can now be "arguments" and instead of cross examinations, you have "rebuttals". It's all pretty much the same. You press people, present evidence, and make them look foolish. The whole thing still feels more refined and less like a GBA level game with a new, terrible story and characters who could be orphans and I would still hate them. Whoops. I guess there's no reason to play the game anymore.

Speaking of the story, it's way longer than usual. There are 5 cases instead of the normal 4 (excluding the first game's bonus case) and the fifth case is like fighting an enemy who instantly regains health. It's a long game. The whole thing ties together, but jumps around a little bit, making it kind of hard to follow. In the end, it ties together in the usual Ace Attorney happy ending where everybody takes a picture together.

The characters are actually pretty good, too. Your female partner is no longer a useless bitch who does magic tricks with her panties (that sounds like something a slut would be able to do, anyways). Her name is Kay Faraday, a thief who actually fucking does something. In the Phoenix Wright saga, Maya, the female lead, would turn into Phoenix's dead boss and help him win the case. Capcom seemed to understand that people want a sidekick who does more than summon a weird wooden doll from a hat (I think it's name was Mr. Hat, which makes me wonder if they get South Park in Japan). Kay helps recreate crime scenes and, thus, is probably more useful than most people in the game. There's also a detective named Badd. The name reminded me of a Yin Yang Twins song that Richard Cheese covered, so he automatically became awesome. There's also a guy from some fake Asian country who reminds me of that one Duran Duran song about being hungry like a wolf or something. Pretty much all of the main characters after that are old characters or vary from case to case.

One thing I noticed was that the game was kind of clean. There wasn't any swearing. Then, in the last case, a character pretty much makes up for a lack of swearing in 4 sentences. That actually has nothing to do with my opinion of the game. Just an observation.

The game is the game that Apollo Justice should have been: a game that utilizes the DS. Though the touch controls are optional, the game actually seems like a game that utilizes the graphic capabilities of the DS. One thing that I didn't like about the game was that it didn't actually take place in a courtroom. I felt like it was less of an Ace Attorney game and more of an Ace Detective game, since you're never an attorney in the game. If they make another game in the series, I think blending the investigation system that this game introduced and the courtroom system that made this series famous would be the next logical move. Of course, the argument/rebuttal system tries to do that, but it didn't feel like the courtroom. Most arguments aren't in succession like in the courtroom.

I hate to use the phrase "fans of the series will love this game", since fans of the series don't read reviews for the game (I don't even know what it got), but it's confusing for anybody who hasn't played the game. I found the best game of the series, the third one, in a fucking bargain bin. It shouldn't be too hard to find. My suggestion is to pick this up after playing one of the earlier games, since the way this game is played isn't exactly the way any other games are played. This game is a must play of the series with it's captivating story, likable characters, and new control system. It's a reason to pick up old Ace Attorney games if you're interested in the series.

Be warned that the fourth one might piss you off.

Guest Review: Mass Effect 2: A DJ Ninja Remix

2010-02-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine, Garrett (aka Ninja Monkie), decided to edit Tony's review. This is the DJ Ninja Remix, while mine is the DJ EPsililicon remix. Don't ask about how that's my online name. It's a long fucking story.

This review was shit until I edited it. You can tell because now it’s more than one paragraph. Literally the very first ‘sentence’ was a fragment. Jesus.

Mass Effect 2 is the second chapter in Bioware’s sci-fi trilogy. For this reason, it is the darkest chapter. You could say it’s the Empire Strikes Back of the series. Things aren’t looking good for Shepard from the beginning. His crew is scattered, the imminent threat of the reapers is not acknowledged by the council (assuming you kept them alive in the first title), and Shepard is forced to work for the shadowy organization known as Cerberus. The galaxy is in bad shape as well, Geth still roam the outer reaches of space and colonies are being harvested. These tensions have the galaxy separated by race, each looking out for only itself. Shepard must work to overcome and prepare the galaxy for the reaper threat. If he fails, space will fall back into the endless cycle the reapers have become exceedingly effective at maintaining. Thankfully, Shepard has a few new advantages this time around.

The game plays like a shooter, cover is intuitive and the new reloading element adds depth to the gameplay. For example, the assault rifle was overused in the first game but now that you can’t just spray and pray through every fight you find yourself seamlessly switching to other weapons. The old, arguably underpowered pistol and shotgun have been rebalanced and you are no longer required to use the scope of the sniper rifle. The new heavy weapons are fun and come in many varieties but you can only carry one and they use their own ammo. Very big, very deadly, and very fun to use, they can quickly change the tide of a battle. The new ammo system does require some getting used to, especially if you played the first game. Heat Sinks, as they are called, will work as ammunition for any weapon but you must have the weapon that you want to pick up heat sinks for equipped. It works in combat; in between skirmishes is where it becomes a hassle. You may forget to load up all your weapons, assuming you find enough ammo in the first place.

The new power mapping system works great, and has even been integrated into squad combat. All you have to do is bring up your power map, hover over the target with your reticule, and select the power you want Shepard or a squad mate to use. This can make for a devastating effect when you come out of the power wheel, unfortunately all the hotkeys are reserved for powers and cannot be used for weapons.

The customization aspect has been significantly trimmed down in this installment. There are fewer weapon and armor choices and the N7, your starting armor, is the only armor that can be customized. You can purchase additional add-ons for armor, such as an off-hand ammo pack, but the original armor itself doesn’t change throughout the game.

You have a much a larger team this time around, each offering different abilities and talents. I found myself using the same two members all the time, but found very little difficulty in adapting to any other squad member I chose to bring along. I felt there were too many possible squad members by the end of the game making it impossible to fully explore the backstory of each one, especially in a single play through.

The visuals in this game are incredibly impressive, even on a standard definition television, but bring a magnifying glass, it can be difficult to read the text. The phenomenal voice acting compliments the visuals. Among others, Martin Sheen, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Seth Green all do a superb job. This combination leads to a very immersing and emotional game. For example I had decided to stay faithful to Ashley until I heard another character’s accidental slip up telling me she cared about me, and decided to leave Ashley. I was a little stunned by how it caught me, but a great story requires great characters and these voice actors give the whole game great depth. I felt closer to my former crew than I did any of the newcomers but I just didn’t trust them. Bioware created these feelings and combined them with the Mass Effect universe to create a stunning and believable world within a game.

The amazing story builds on this atmosphere. Mass Effect 2 is a huge game, I put 30+ hours into my first playthough and didn’t complete half the side mission. Bioware has always been great at telling stories and there is no exception here. The feeling that there is something at stake, that it is you against the universe, creates an arguably cliché feeling but successfully forces you to take decisions seriously. You have to constantly keep in mind that every action you take could have profound effects on the rest of the story not only in this installment but in Mass Effect 3 as well. I also experienced something I have never felt in a game, the feeling that I’m stuck with the decisions I made in the first game, for better or worse. This makes a play through of Mass Effect 2 feel like it really is your story, and it will be different for anyone else who plays it. The story has a much darker, much grittier, more visceral tone this time around. The environment plays a key role in this, each planet giving you a unique insight to the different races. Each area feels unique and the effects of war can be seen everywhere.

As a final thought, newcomers to the franchise be warned, you will miss out on much of the shock value. The ’Oh My God’ moments will not hold the same significance if you have not played the first game in the series. You really have no reason not to play Mass Effect at this point, go buy it and experience the trilogy as it was meant to be played.

Also this:

“If I did I would have to turn it into my Nazi high school literature teacher to tell me how many fragments and grammatical errors and how much he hates me are in it.”

Hahahahah need I even say it? You’re welcome readers.

Guest Review: Mass Effect 2

2010-02-28T20:31:00.001-08:00

Editor’s Introduction: It must be said before this review that Tony really, really likes the Mass Effect series. As such, he has used lots of terminology that may confuse those of you who haven’t played the first one. I’ll try to clarify some points in something I call “Editor’s Notes”, where I put something in brackets and explain it. Either that or I explain how I don’t know what it is or how I don’t understand what he’s trying to say.

Review by Tony Ramirez

Mass Effect 2 is the second chapter of famed developer Bioware’s space opera trilogy. The game is very dark, not unlike a similar trilogy’s second chapter, The Empire Strikes Back. When the game begins, things immediately don’t look good for the main character Shepard. The galaxy is in bad shape. Geth still roam the outer reaches of space, colonies are being harvested, and internal tensions have the races looking out for only themselves. [Editor’s Note: Geth are pretty much enemies. They kinda look like they belong in Tron.] It is against these odds that Shepard must work to overcome and prepare the galaxy for the reaper threat or fail and fall back into the endless cycle the reapers have become exceedingly effective at performing. [Editor’s Note: I have no idea what the fuck a reaper is. SPOILER ALERT I guess.] Thankfully Bioware gave Shepard a few advantages.

The best way to describe Mass Effect 2 is this, a tactical shooter, though the game cannot be considered very tactical because of how many pure shooter elements it has, yet to rely only on your guns only set you up to be bent over in the harder difficulties. The game plays like a shooter. Cover is intuitive and the reloading element found in every shooter is here too. They also went through and worked on every weapon, making each one play better for certain situations, as well as tweaking problems from the first game. [Editor’s Note: I wrote this sentence as a replacement of a really fucking long part about each individual weapon, so it might not be all that accurate. It’s an assumption].

The new mapping system works great, and has even been integrated into squad combat. In the customization aspect, there are far fewer in this installment. There are fewer weapon choices and fewer armor choices, but there are also more squad options and more romance options. The N7, your starting armor, is the only armor you can customize. You can purchase additional add-on armors, such as an off-hand ammo pack for your arms, but the overall armor is what you have for the game. You can change the color and designs of this armor, but you cannot change any of the DLC. Your squad mates also can’t change their armor. You have a much a large team this time around, each offering different abilities and talents, and offering a different experience. I found myself using Grunt (Wrex’s bloodthirsty Krogan replacement) and Garrus (from the original), but found very little difficulty in adapting to any other squad member I chose to bring along. You can, of course “score” the Paramour achievement in this game as well. Stress has different ways of affecting people or species…lot of loving. The visuals in this game are incredibly impressive, even on a standard definition television, but bring a magnifying glass it can be difficult to read the text. Not enough can be sad about the voice acting, with talent such as Martin Sheen [Two and a Half Krogans], Carrie-Anne Moss, and Seth Green, just to name a few big names. They all do a superb job, and to give you an idea [SPOILER ALERT, I think], I had decided to stay faithful to Ashley ( one of your female love interests from the first game) until I heard a certain character’s accidental slip up telling you she cared about you, and decided to leave Ashley. I was a little stunned by how it caught me, but a great story requires great characters and these voice actors give them great depth. I felt closer to my former crew than I did any of the new comers, not to say they aren’t great in their own right, but you just don’t trust them, which is what Bioware was trying to get across.

The story is absolutely phenomenal. This game is immense. To put it into perspective, I put in 30+ hours into my first run though, and didn’t complete half the side missions. Bioware has always been great at telling stories and there is no exception here. You feel like there is something at stake, that it is you against the universe. Even paragon players will find it difficult to walk their path. Every choice here feels like it carries weight, and sometimes you really don’t know what the right thing to do is, if the problem wasn’t you just didn’t want to do it. The story gives off a much darker, much grittier, much more visceral tone. The environment plays a very key role in this, each planet giving you a unique insight to each race. The Normandy is really an experience all on its own, roughly twice as big from before. You have access to your own personal computer and your captain’s quarters are much more luxurious then before. For those of you that are upset that you don’t get all your crew back from the last game, do not fret they all make an appearance and play a role in Shepard’s journey. There is so much more to talk about in this game, but I do not have the time or the room to give this game a review truly worth its praise. If I did, I would have to turn it into my Nazi high school literature teacher to tell me how many fragments and grammatical errors and how much he hates me are in it. [This same literature teacher is literally from Germany, so that’s what the Nazi reference is about. He is also the principle of the school. He recently banned t-shirts. No joke.]This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t has its flaws, the characters could have been gone in depth more, a larger customization array could have been granted, the mineral gathering process could not be as tedious, and the text could be easier to read on standard definitions. All the things this game does great, outweigh all these problems…by a lot. If you love a good RPG, Bioware, or just a good game in general, this is a must play.

Guest Review: Introduction and a Review of the Introduction

2010-02-23T22:09:00.000-08:00

Before I write this review, I think I should just say a few things. Who am I and why are you qualified to write a review a game on JP’s blog. I am a freshman college student, and I have been playing video games for over 12 years. Starting with Super Mario Bros. on the NES and progressing from there. I was involved in a local community Halo 3 tournament where my team took 5th place. While Jp may be considered a general gamer, I am a much more specialized gamer. I own only two current gen systems (Wii, and an Xbox 360). I have also been mentioned on JP’s blog before for the 1 night game spree where I proceeded to beat batman Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2. If you need any further reason to take my word as a gamer I have a gamer score that’s over 9000! So why write for the jpnicator you sound more qualified than he does. While that may be true, I am a better gamer than he is, he by far has more knowledge of it than I do. So it is my pleasure to write a review for him. I will stick to the same format as jp, I will not give you a score for the game. That to me cheapens the game in its own right. No one would say that an art piece is an 8/10 or a B-. No I will tell you what I think, you will know what I think of the game, but I will be a critic on the game not give you a review.

The review: This is basically me introducing Tony. I call it a review for the lulz. Tony is a friend from middle/high school who happens to go to CSU with me. He's a pretty good friend of mine. Tony is also an insanely good gamer. There's not really any games that I'm better at than him. I think he's been gaming longer than I have, too. He played SMB on the NES, while the first game I played was Mickey's Dangerous Chase. That game is hella hard. I haven't known Tony my whole life, so I can't say whether he's been playing longer than me or not, but I imagine it's about an equal amount, though he's a little more obsessive compulsive and can complete games really quickly. I did get 1000 gamerpoints in Assassin's Creed 2 before him. That's pretty much it. He's also into shooters more than me. I like shooters, but him and shooters are like me and weird Japanese games (case and point Katamari).

I also say he's more obsessive since he did beat Batman and Uncharted 2 in one, really uneventful night. It took me several days to beat Batman, so needless to say, I was impressed. He isn't quite in tune with all the current happenings as I am, but his knowledge of gaming is pretty good. I'm really just fucking weird like that. As "hardcore gamers" go, he's not the guy covered in gaming tattoos, but he's the guy who can name most of the games the tattoos are from. It also helps to say I haven't really read his writing until now. He offered to write a review for Mass Effect 2, which made me glad, since I wasn't planning on playing that due to my plate being full and seconds being on their way. So that's Tony. He also rapes Yoshis. Thought I would say that. You're welcome, Tony. That's for the fucking weird formatting you sent this in with!

Guest review coming soon!

2010-02-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I am quite busy with my life, so I don't play too many games outside of my interest zone. For some reason, that includes most shooters. I know, I'm a blasphemer for not being into shooters too much. I have a friend who not only likes shooters, but likes the Mass Effect series. This is a game that I've actually been somewhat interested in, but my interest in No More Heroes 2 would trump that. He beat both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, so he's graciously offered to write a review of Mass Effect 2. I, of course, accepted the request, since I'm working on a game of my own (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, as soon as I get 100% in Katamari Forever). It'll be up tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much editing work I need to do with it. I imagine it won't be much, since he's a pretty good writer. Stay tuned for his review (it'll be posted under my name, but I'll include his name in the post). Toodles!

EDIT: Just got my last item in Katamari Forever! By far, my friend Jacob had the best response.

Jon: :O I just got 100% on katamari forever

Jacob: you just got 100% on not friends with jacob anymore... forever

News about the review: I just got it. It's long. It doesn't have separated paragraphs. It might be up next week.

Xbox Originals

2010-02-11T14:28:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah I know. I still haven't reviewed a game. To be fair, I have every intention of buying Ace Attorney Investigations when it comes out. By buy, I mean actually spend money on it. By buy is kinda an awkward phrase, isn't it? It's like saying "Bye bye" only with different spelling.

This post is about how Microsoft is run by monkeys. Quite retarded monkeys, too. Nothing like a 3 headed monkey. As you may of guessed, this is about Xbox Originals. This is a bit of a dated subject, seeing how they aren't made anymore. Still, I had an urge to play Jet Set Radio Future a couple of days ago, seeing how that was one of the coolest games I've ever played. I then remembered that my Xbox did whatever the original Xbox's equivalent of red ringing is. I also lost all the hardware (controllers, inputs, etc.), plus I don't actually own Jet Set Radio Future. I borrowed it from a friend.

While writing this, I just realized that it's compatible with my 360. Still, I don't own it. Where am I going to find it? Gamestop? I think not. Gamestop didn't have BlazBlue. I doubt they would have a 2002 game in stock. It got fairly good reviews and was even bundled with the original Xbox, so surely it'll be on the XBLA. For some odd reason, it's not. The more obvious explaination is that the person in charge of deciding what games should be ported to the XBLA should be relocated to Detroit. He also has to wear a KKK outfit at all times or a Battle Royale collar will fuck his neck's shit up.

The Xbox Originals part of XBLA has some good games. It has the original Halo, which was really fun in the 8th grade. It has Guilty Gear XX #Reload, another fun game in the 8th grade (though it's hard to appreciate back then just how fucking weird that game is). It has Psychonauts, a severely ignored game that I think every gamer needs to play. There's also GTA:SA, Max Payne 1 and 2, Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy), Ninja Gaiden Black, and Jade Empire. However, they also have some really fucking bad games on there.

Raze's Hell. I actually remember this game. I thought, "Wow. This looks like a shitty Conker's Bad Fur Day rip off." I was right, from what I read in the reviews. It's a game where you violently kill Teletubbies. It's also rated M, so the target audience, who's under 17, couldn't even buy it. Fusion Frenzy. I had an Xbox at launch and I didn't get Fusion Frenzy. That's how bad it looked. You might recall it has a sequel that's only purpose is 1000 gamerpoints for about $3 or whatever your local Gamestop is selling this piece of shit for. There's also a Spyro game and a Crash Bandicoot game. The two franchises that refuse to die with their reputations in tact. For some reason, somebody thought people would buy them online so they could relive the game that was so great. Oh wait it wasn't it was exactly like the last 30 Spyro/Crash games that were only good on the original Playstation.

Then theres...Zapper: One Wicked Cricket? What the fuck? This game exists? I've been following video games for nearly all my life and I've never heard of this. Luckily, Wikipedia heard of it. It's Frogger. Literally just Frogger. This made it on the XBLA and Jet Set Radio Future didn't. What the fuck. There are many games that I wish were on Xbox Originals, like JSRF, Metal Wolf Chaos, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Otogi 1 and 2, the Prince of Persia trilogy, Phantasy Star Online (hey another PSO reference), Project Gotham, Silent Hill 2, KOTOR, Time Splitters: Future Perfect, Tony Hawk 2 or 3 (though an XBLA version would be better), and probably a few more that I'm forgetting. What I'm saying is that I now have to go to eBay to play JSRF. How come that game didn't get chosen but Zapper: One Wicked Cricket did?? It's simple. Monkeys chose it. Monkeys at Microsoft.

Edit: I just got JSRF from my local used game shop. I gotta say it's not as good as I remember it. I guess everything looks better through the rose-colored glasses that is nostalgia. I don't want to say the game is bad, since it plays alright, but the soundtrack is terrible for a game that markets itself on having a good soundtrack. Seriously. I literally found Linkin Park to be more suitable to it than what they had. There's also no choice to alter the soundtrack. At least not initially. It's still a game I'll play. I also got Luigi's Mansion. Hopefully that's better than Resident Evil 1. I wonder if they'll make Luigi's Mansion 4 and have it be an over the shoulder shooter where you vacuum Hispanic ghosts.

More shit about Project Needlesuck!

2010-02-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

After asking fans to submit Sonic fan art, Sega has revealed that that Project Needledick is, in fact, Sonic 4...Episode 1. I will start with how they revealed this name. Fan art? Seriously? That's not something I'd ask Sonic fans to send me. First, I'm guessing about 30,000 of the art submitted was Sonichu. Second, have you ever seen some of the shit on DeviantArt? Sure, it looks like Sonic and sure, it's well shaded and all, but he's fucking Tails! Go to DeviantArt and prove me wrong! On second thought, don't. I know there's hetero Sonic porn. I wish I didn't know there was even Sonic porn at all. Sadly, somebody made DeviantArt and I've pretty much seen the entire cast of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yes, even Kirby. Let's just say he didn't gain any powers.

Changing the subject from video game porn, Sega made it Sonic 4. That's actually a good move, in my opinion. This shows that Sega has gone all Domino's Pizza and actually listened to what the fans want (HINT HINT NEW SUPER MARIO BROS WASN'T MARIO 4), though I still think Domino's isn't the best pizza, even after their "transformation". It's nice to see that Sega still gives a shit. Maybe this means Phantasy Star Online is releasing a new episode for the Xbox 360.

So Sega got the Sonic 4 part right. They were so close to getting my praise. They just had to add the "Episode 1". That made any hope of this game not pissing me off die. Why is Sonic suddenly an episodic game? Are they going to make you pay for each zone or something? Is each episode a full Sonic game and you get 5 or so? Apparently, it's "part one of a much larger adventure", associate brand manager Ken Balough told gaming website Gamespot, so the episodes will either be long enough to not piss me off or there will be 15 episodes, a-la Sirens: Blood Curse (whatever that game is called, it has such a generic name I can't even remember what horror cliche it is).

I made some comments earlier about how the 2.5D visuals would look like shit based on Sonic Rush. After seeing the trailer, I have to say it actually looks good. This shows that the DS has sucky graphics and mislead me and, therefore, my last statement isn't my fault. It's Nintendo's. The graphics just look like a well made Sonic game. I'm actually really impressed with it. The gameplay, from the description, looks like a classic Sonic game, sans Knuckles and Gay Fox (lol MGS joke). Also, since it's on a modern console, characters can still be DLC, depending on how many characters they want to add. In my opinion, Tails and Knuckles and maybe Shadow if he promises not to brood are good choices. I'm hopeful for this game. Right now, it looks solid. I've been disappointed before, though. Sonic Unleashed was so bad that I'm still skeptical.

The iPad's not revolutionary, it's not even new

2010-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

Today the iPad was announced. In fact, it was announced just a few hours ago. I read that it was "revolutionary" on a website. That made me angry, since, after reading several things, this isn't revolutionary. It isn't even original. It's an iPod Touch, essentially.

You have the iPod feature, which isn't really a good name for it. They should have called it "iTunes", since the iPod is portable. Sure, this is portable, but not as portable as the iPod. It's about as portable as a laptop, though not my laptop, which is about 15 pounds and has an 18.4" screen. It has WiFi and 3G, like... an iPhone and an iPod Touch. It runs apps, again, just like the iPod Touch/iPhone. You can go online, too! Just like blah blah blah.

The web browser sucks. It's the same one used for the iPhone, which doesn't support flash. If you wanted to play Domo-kun's Angry Smash Fest, like I like doing when I either run out of money or run out of patience with modern games, you're shit out of luck. Also, is there keyboard support? I'm not entirely sure there is, seeing as keyboards are "obsolete" now and typing at slower speeds on a smudgy surface is more hip these days. Also, most of the touch games on the iPhone suck, especially the ports of games that use a "joystick" that doesn't work for shit. It would have been nice to see comparability with a keyboard, seeing as sometimes buttons work better than bad touch controls.

Probably one of the most original ideas I've seen on it is a paint app. Still, it failed at being useful to artists by being a FINGER CONTROLLED APP. ARTISTS ABOVE THE AGE OF 8 DON'T FINGERPAINT. I can see some cool things being done with it, but seeing as this is an Apple computer, it probably won't have any good tools that artists use, like layering. I have to admit, when I first heard about the iPad, I thought the potential for being a tablet computer with a surface that you can draw on like a piece of paper. Instead, it's really just a big iPhone. I probably just haven't seen enough of it, but I'm not impressed with what I see right now.

EDIT: Just remembered that they have a book reading feature... like a nook or a Kindle or a book. People are still going to buy this instead of a Kindle or a nook since ZOMG IT'S APPLE and they're going to get this instead of a book since reading books isn't trendy anymore. Sometimes I hate modern society.

DOUBLE EDIT!!: I found a funny video about the iPad. Funny thing is you can't view it using the iPad since it doesn't support Flash for... security reasons or some terrible reason.

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman

Project Needlemouse is going to suck

2010-01-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

If you've been following gaming news at all recently, you've probably heard of Sega's publicity stunt where they took a list of possible Sonic characters and eliminated them until one remained. Everybody on the internet and a few Amish people easily guessed that Sonic was the only one not crossed off. Many astute people also saw that there were characters missing from that list, namely Tails and Knuckles. Also missing from the list was Silver. This is reason one why Sega has room to fuck up with this game. Silver the hedgehog.

I've never understood how people hate on Shadow so much, but Silver's perfectly OK. Shadow's way cooler than Silver. I might say this because I had a kickass hamster who I named after Shadow. It might be because Shadow was in that game where he was on a motorcycle and shot guns. I admit that game looked terrible, but not as bad as the Sonic game where Sonic joins the knights of the round table with all his furry friends. Shadow being a gangsta is way cooler than Sonic larping.

Well, getting back on topic, Tails and Knuckles weren't listed. That's another way Sega could fuck this game up. Tails and Knuckles were never part of the downfall of the Sonic series. Maybe Knuckles turning into a rapper and Tails being gay for Sonic also contributed. Furry porn is also ruining the franchise, though that's a different discussion for another time. Tails and Knuckles have been great additions since Sonic 2 and 3 & Knuckles. I always thought that the addition of characters that did the same thing as Tails were what was making Sonic shitty. Also underage making out. Sonic's a pedophile, I swear to god.

What Sega (by Sega I mean Sonic Team, who's most likely making this game) needs to do for this game is either make a hand-drawn looking Sonic game in HD like Street Fighter 2 HD Remix (whatever it was called) or make an HD 2.5D game that doesn't look like shit like Sonic Rush. I know it was a DS game. It still looked pretty bad to me. Also that Australian raccoon in Sonic Rush Adventure made me want to firebomb Outback Steakhouse. I then remembered how awesome their steaks are and reconsidered.

I will estimate that Sega's not going to listen to it's fans at all and make Sonic a remake of the first game, essentially. If they were listening, they would have noticed that everybody hates all the retarded characters, not the 3 good characters. Also, there's going to be a rich story that's going to suck. One reason I actually think Shadow is better than Sonic is that Sonic always has this upbeat attitude about doing what's right and saving the world and reporting child molesters. I sort of wish that he would just shut the fuck up in the games. Sure, Shadow was emo and said "It's all my fault!" more than Cloud does (yeah I never beat FFVII, so feel free to call bullshit on that one), but at least he's not cheesy. No wait he's a generic emo character with enough angst to reach the 8-14 demographic. Still, it's more interesting than the goody-two-shoes act that Sonic has.

I want a devil may care hedgehog who doesn't give a fuck about what happens. I want a hedgehog who has something personal to gain by defeating Robotnik and doing the right thing is just a coincedence. Essentially, I want them to take Dante from Devil May Cry and make him a hedgehog. Of course Sonic wouldn't do this, since it's kind of mature for who plays Sonic. Still, that would be so bad ass. Well, I'm going to find fan fiction where they turn Sonic into Dante. I'm sure it exists. I've seen shit that leads me to believe that furries do too much with Sonic characters. They're like Vietnam flashbacks.

Edit: The Sonic cartoon on Toon Disney was so incredible. It's a work of art.

Oh yeah, there are some changes too

2010-01-12T05:27:00.001-08:00

I made a banner. I like it. I think it's cool. If anybody knows how to put a background image on a blog, relay that info to me so I may make that weird dot pattern my blog's background (they're jagged pixels lolz).

Review: Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition

2010-01-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

The Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition is a special controller. Now, I know what you're thinking: "JP, what the fuck? A controller? Why are you reviewing a controller?"

Look at that thing and tell me it's "just a controller". It's a big controller, too. It's more wide than I am. Almost as big as the original Xbox's controller (ba-dum-tish). This controller not only gives an authentic arcade feel, it's made with the "Sanwa Denshi" standard. Basically, that's the standard Japanese arcades use. But why the standard of a Japanese arcade? Have you ever been to an American arcade? It's fucking sad. The buttons come out of the machine, you have to pound your fist on the punch button to make it work, there's gum everywhere, some douche named "Tim" scratched his name in the plastic on the machine... the list goes on. Also, all the high scores are "FUK". Nobody wants to authentically experience that at home.

The stick, I must say, is better than any arcade cabinet I've seen in America. Of course, I've been to Canada for like 2 hours, plus Niagra Falls is barely Canada, so my international travels aren't exactly vast and exotic. Still, I've been going to arcades since I was a wee boy and this controller delivers the arcade experience by making the real arcade experience seem like shit.

The buttons are feather sensitive. I literally brushed my pinky on the A button and, suddenly, I'm playing time attack in Street Fighter. Get frisky when you play? The start button is on the front side of the controller (the back button is, too). There is also a switch you can use that locks the guide button. This controller thought of everything. The joystick can also be set to be the left analogue stick, the right analogue stick, or the D-pad with a similar switch. That's pretty amazing. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

There's this "turbo switch." It does... something... turbo. Honestly, I can't figure out what the damn thing does and how to get it to do it, whatever it is. I also lost the instructions. All I know is that, despite that, this is a sweet-ass controller. Now for the price. I paid $150 for it. This is because I had gift cards to Best Buy. I ended up paying $50, so no big deal. However, after shopping around, I found that Amazon has it for $100. That's definitely the best deal, especially with Super Street Fighter IV coming soon, plus all the fighting games already out.

Even the one bad thing about this controller was good to me. Everybody was complaining that it's a wired controller. I don't see the problem here. First of all, you're not going to be that far away from the TV. If you are, just get a USB extension cable. I'm sure they exist. Second of all, there are arcade controllers that are wireless. One came with Tekken 6's special edition package. That package is something like $55 on Amazon right now. That's a game and a controller. Know why it's so cheap? The controller is a piece of shit. Because it's wireless, there's input delay. I also hear the controller's just not that good.

Another advantage for wired controllers is PC gameplay. If you have a Windows PC, you can plug in the controller and use it to play your various PC fighters, if you have any. I'm still trying to get it to work with MAME (an arcade emulator), but I don't see why it wouldn't work, since it's a game pad recognized by the OS.

I've tried the FightStick with many different games, such as BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Soul Calibur, and, of course, Street Fighter IV. The pad may not give the authentic arcade experience (fumbling for quarters when you lose, having random douche bags challenge you when you're about to beat a CPU opponent, etc.), but it gives you the feel that most arcade machines wish they could give. My only complaint is the price. What the hell, Best Buy?

Random Genius Idea

2010-01-09T18:24:00.001-08:00

I had this idea. It has to do with the Tony Hawk gaming franchise. It's probably one of the biggest jokes today, since they've tried to make the game "more like real skating", even, lately, adding a peripheral where you have a skateboard and use it to skate. I think there was an arcade game like that back in 1999 or something. I remember one like that.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is one of my favorite games of all time. Tony Hawk 3 was my favorite of the series since it allowed for mass combos with "reverts", making 2 minute runs last 10 minutes. I played up to Tony Hawk's Underground 2, the one that was like Jackass: The Game, only not since they actually made that game. I shouldn't say that since I did play American Wasteland, though I thought it was kind of stupid, since, because I rented it and didn't finish it, I never saw Tony Hawk. He's like a last boss. You don't make a game called "Sonic the Hedgehog" and make Sonic an unlockable character. That game was never made, but I'm sure Sega will manage to make it.

What I don't get is why Activision/Neversoft thought it was a good idea to make it a "realistic skating simulator". It's a video games. Gamers played it. Gamers can't skate, for the most part. Hell, THPS made me try skating and it also made me realize that rollerblades were easier, though way, way gayer. I always thought of the series like a fighting game. You enter a combination, like left, right, and B, and you do a special move. They don't realize that real skaters didn't play Tony Hawk because it's a video game. Skater's don't play video games. It's too conformist, or whatever the fuck they call it today.

I think that Tony Hawk should have ended a while ago, since they did everything they could with the series. However, I think that Tony Hawk 2 and 3 would be awesome if they upgraded the graphics to HD, whatever that means, and made it an Xbox Live Arcade game/ PSN title. Tony Hawk 2 and 3 were 2 of the most well received games of the decade, so it would make sense that a rerelease would spark interest, since EVERYBODY played Tony Hawk when they were out.

So there's my idea. Tony Hawk 2 and 3 HD rerelease on the XBLA/PSN. None of that retarded "click the control stick and move the skater's feet like a couple of retarded worms" gameplay that the recent entries are offering. Just good old fashioned Tony Hawk skating. And Wolverine. Best secret character ever. Darth Maul too.

Review: 2009

2010-01-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

It's now 2010 and it's the end of the decade blah blah blah. I'm seriously sick of these people on TV saying "IT'S THE END OF THE DECADE! LET'S REMIND YOU OF WHAT HAPPENED CAUSE YOUR TOO STUPID TO REMEMBER TWITTER AND FACEBOOK AND YOUTUBE!!1" I'm not going to talk about the best game of the decade. I'm going to talk about 2009 in general, since talking about a whole decade is stupid.

Talking about a year is stupid too. There were plenty of good games in 2009. I don't think there should be a "GAME OF TEH YEAR" like other bloggers want to say. I prefer to talk about good games in 2009. There were plenty. I will now briefly talk about a bunch.

Modern Warfare 2 was a very good game. I haven't reviewed it yet, seeing as I just got it, but it is a game that may have a story on par with a Michael Bay film, but it's online base is amazing. The whole RPG aspect of leveling up your weapons returns and is very well refined. Admittedly, I have no idea what changed from the last game. Still, it's just more of a good thing. I'm not going to complain when I eat lobster 2 nights in a row. I think that's my review of this game, actually. Don't expect a review.

Like portable games? We got those! Well, DS games anyways. If I ever find my PSP that mysteriously disappeared 4+ years ago, I'll start reviewing PSP games. Super Mario RPG 3 was a very good game. It's a good Mario RPG with a whacky story and Bowser's there, too. It gets a little repetitive but, let's face it, you know the ending and all RPGs are sort of repetitive. If you like Mario RPGs, this is a must have.

The new Zelda looks alright. I personally haven't played it, but I played the first one, so I can safely assume they are exactly the same. I guess you should play it if you like Zelda games for the DS.

Rhythm Heaven was pretty good. The American version blew in terms of the localization of the music. My advice would to be either to get the Japanese version (it's not exactly hard to figure out how to get through the menus) or to get a version online that has English text with Japanese music. Buy the game first, though. Piracy is bad, mmkay?

To be honest, I can't remember a good Wii game this year. To be fair, I'm poor and don't buy games all that much, so that might be part of it. I also think it might be because my memory doesn't quite work the way it should. I'm not sure but Rhythm Heaven might be a 2008 game. Anyways there might have been good Wii games but I don't remember playing any.

There were quite a few good PS3 games. Killzone 2 was excellent, though it seemed very similar to Call of Duty. Infamous was probably my favorite PS3 game of the year (never played Uncharted 2). It was like Sly Cooper only Emperor Palpatine was Sly. It also was like an awesome comic book. There was also Katamari Forever, which managed to be unoriginal beyond belief, was still like a "Greatest Hits" album for Katamari. It got me using my PS3 again, so it's a good game in my book. Flower was also a great game.

I have to say one of my favorite games of the year, hands down, was Assassin's Creed 2. It made the first one look more like crap than it was in the first place. With a story with a main character that makes people want to give a shit about him and a setting that sucked in the tenth grade and sucked in the first one. The combat even feels a little better. Everything seems better.

Batman was pretty good too. I've never played another Batman game, mainly because they were all really shitty. This one felt like a really good action stealth game but didn't feel like combat was terrible in case you fuck up royally. Also, Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill.

ODST was probably the biggest change from the original Halo formula, which made it notable. Stealth plays a part in it, since you are more vulnerable to bullets. Also, Master Chief is nowhere to be seen. It also had a fun mode called "Horde Mode". No wait it wasn't. I forgot the name of the mode, but it was like horde mode, so it was alright with me.

There's probably a lot more games I'm forgetting due to the whole memory thing, so make sure to leave comments if there's a game that you liked that you want to tell me about! Chances are that I've played it and I forgot about it. Or I haven't played it but your recommendation was what I needed! Not like I have anything better to do.

EDIT: I just want to iterate how much I hate these end of the year recaps. I can barely remember what came out this year, let alone remember every game I played. I would honestly have to write down the games I've beaten to remember them. Hell, I had to use Wikipedia to write this article. Usually it doesn't matter when games were made. If their good games, they can be made in 2008 and played in 2010 and still be good. Unless it's a Madden game. I think. The last football game I've played was NFL Blitz for the N64.

Preview: Disco's Inferno

2009-12-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

I felt like the title's going to set a good mood for a preview for Dante's Inferno. This game is bad. There's not really another way to say it. This game is like if God of War were "based" on the Odyssey. The game is supposed to be based on the book "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri. It might as well be based on a book written by Dante from Devil May Cry, since it doesn't exactly follow the story of the book very well.

You start out as a soldier in the Crusades named Dante who meets Death and kills him (thus ripping off nearly every single Castlevania game ever made). You steal his scythe like anybody would do and proceed to go batshit insane. You sew a cross on your skin for reasons only known by the developers. He then goes back to his home where his lover's been taken by Satan for what can only be seen as "extreme rapin's". Satan was nice enough to leave one of her boobs hanging out of her shirt for you to look at as Dante screamed in a very Colin Farrell kind of way. You then somehow make your way to a church, where you get to see both of your lover's chest puppies hanging out and waiting to be raped by Satan. Then Dante does some puzzle somewhere and ends up at the gates of Hell with none other than Virgil! Then the demo ends. See I saved you 30 minutes downloading it and another 30 minutes watching it with that synopsis!

I have never read The Divine Comedy, but I'm pretty sure Virgil was with Dante from the beginning. I'm also pretty sure that Dante was still a poet in the book and not a crazy veteran who jacked Death's scythe from him. This is like First Blood gone horribly wrong. I guess a realistic version of this game would be boring since it would be more of a tour of Hell than a psycho going through and killing everything in sight. It could be the next Pokemon Snap, only with Hell instead of Pokemon. I'd play it. Also, how does Dante kill anything?? They're already dead. They're in Hell. Where are they going to go?

The gameplay's where this game really shows that it has nothing to offer the gaming world. The game plays like Ninja Gaiden, God of War, and Devil May Cry. It's blended together in an unchallenging, unmotivated bland experience that will make you wonder if you can time travel to get that hour you wasted back. The graphics look alright, but all it makes me wonder is how this got such a big budget and how No More Heroes for the PS3/Xbox 360 can't find a publisher in America. Hell, even the boobs were kind of boring. I've never been a fan of video game boobs, since no matter how good the technology is, they'll never look real. Also, this game really forced the boobs, as if to say, "HEY GAMER LOOK AT THESE KNOCKERS!! THAT'S WORTH $60 RIGHT?!!" It's kind of sad, really.

If you want an experience similar to Dante's Inferno, play Ninja Gaiden 2 while watching porn. It's cheaper and more enjoyable. If you prefer all the horror elements, set up a new screen of some type and watch Saw with the porn and Ninja Gaiden. In conclusion, Dante's Inferno is worst than a combination of Saw, Ninja Gaiden, and porn.

Review: Brutal Legend

2009-12-04T01:55:00.000-08:00

Brutal Legend is the second game released by developer Double Fine. If you've been reading this blog, you'd know that the first game the studio released, Psychonauts, was one of my favorite games of the last console generation. Hell, I liked it better than Halo 2, and I played Halo 2 enough to make a WoW addiction look tame, though I played after Halo 3 was released. Brutal Legend even is about a subject matter that's very close to my heart: metal. Yes, I enjoy metal. I enjoy going to concerts and having my 110 pound body thrown around in a mosh pit until I lose my sight (true story), I enjoy being the only one to be able to sing a Chimera song in Guitar Hero, and I enjoy Metalocalypse. Basically, I'm as metal as my weight class will allow. Also, this game has Jack Black, one of my favorite actors (I have really low bars on what a good movie is). Basically, this game sounded like it was more perfect a game than Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube.

I have no idea how they fucked this up, but they did. No wait I do know. They fucked the game up the same way that they fucked up Halo Wars (though that wasn't pretending to be something else). This is an RTS. That's a major spoiler, since, in my preview (I think I previewed it, at least), I said that this was a fun hack 'n' slash game. The game is more like a driving game with a lot of RTS missions. Since this is the biggest thing I hate about this game, I'll start here. Console RTS's are shit. Before you say, "But JP, you amazingly scrawny man, you can't insult an entire genre! What are your credentials?" Admittedly, I have only really played a demo of Halo Wars and this game, but I've had a long standing history with the RTS genre.

When I was in the 7th grade, I had a foreign exchange student from South Korea. I think you can guess the punch line. He got me into many games, including Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty (now it's Call of Duty Classic, which is bullshit at $15), and Guilty Gear XX. He also got me into a game called Starcraft. I've never met a Korean who's hated Starcraft, and I've met a lot of Koreans. I also played/still play Warcraft 3, though a Korean didn't introduce me to that game. He did, however, get me into Medival: Total War. I'm no stranger to RTS games. The thing that I hate about console RTS games is that there's no precision. Let's say you have a small unit of melee units and a small unit of cavalry units. You want to send the cavalry units at one target and the melee units at another target. On the PC, you can select the individual units and send them to different places. In Brutal Legend, you only have the appearance of doing that. The selection system doesn't work for shit and you just end up sending everybody to the place you want the couple of units to go.

That's not all! The game is also really unbalenced during the RTS parts. I had been playing through the game on "Brutal" difficulty, which is hard mode. The game was painfully easy, where I only had to retry a few missions. That was until I got to about the 3rd last RTS battle. I could not see a way of beating that mission on brutal difficulty. I then decided "Fuck the achievement" and switched it to normal mode, where I swept the mission in record time. All I ask for in a game is either a gradually harder experience or a level experience. Brutal Legend had neither. It favored a more "FUCK YOU FOR PLAYING THIS FAR" approach. It's like going out with a girl and her leading you back to her dorm room, only to reveal she is a spider that wants to murder you. Ok it's nothing like that but it's 4 in the morning so that makes sense to me.

One thing the game is notorious for is not telling you how to do anything. For instance, it was only about 3/4 through the game I figured out that you have to get those chained up dragons to tell me stories about how some evil demon hates things or something. I wasn't paying attention. I also learned through GameFAQs that you can run. It really didn't matter, since you spend 90% in your car.

It is varied with side missions. By varied, I mean not at all. You can kill enemies, kill animals, or race a guy a few times. You can do collection missions, but those get boring and frustrating quickly, as my last post illustrates. Also the ambush missions, where you kill people, get really easy when you gain a summon of a giant zeppelin that kills everything, making attacking the enemy a waste of time. The whole thing gets very routine.

There are so many other things I hated about Brutal Legend, like the lack of a minimap and the inabilty to have custom markers on your map. Honestly, it's too much to keep this review shorter than a term paper. If you expect this game to be both interesting and funny, as well as play well, prepare to be surprised. Even the humor wasn't quite up to par. Some of it was good humor, but most of it was dry story moments. The game could have at least been better if there weren't any RTS moments, since most of what I hated was that part alone. This game teaches a great lesson: even something that does everything right can go horribly wrong.

Assassin's Creed II can suck a dick

2009-11-26T23:05:00.000-08:00

So I just found out that you can search your memories or some shit in the DNA menu and see how many feathers you are missing in each level. I'd been searching all the big levels for feathers, but it turns out that the one I was missing was in the home base level, where I had 3/4 feathers. I had spent something like 6 hours searching all the cities. Now the game's past due and I didn't go to Thanksgiving dinner to find the feather. Thanks Ubisoft. You ruined Thanksgiving. You French fucks.

Review: Assassin's Creed II

2009-11-24T18:41:00.000-08:00

Assassin's Creed, as in the first one, sucked. It was a cesspool of mediocrity. It showed promise, but ended up fucking up in the end. It was a lot like me. I don't have any children. However, if I had a kid that grew up to be the President of the United States and solving our problems in the Middle East, then Assassin's Creed II would be my president son that I mooched off of.

Maybe I can't really judge the original game, since halfway through it bored me too much to ccomplete it. I beat this game in a few sittings, but boy were they long sittings. I would start playing at about 8-9 in the morning and end sometime in the evening. I literally played from dusk til dawn to beat this game. That's something I never could do with the first one.

If I could summarize Assassin's Creed II in one sentence, it would be: This game is better than its predecessor in every conceivable way. They pretty much fixed everything. There are few complaints I have about this game. The gameplay's less boring and not as repetitive, the combat's better, even the story makes me actually give a shit about the main character. In an effort to not give any spoilers away, the last boss is awesome. I have no idea how that actually got into the game, but the last boss is easily a reason to beat the game. There are also collectables, such as armor, including the armor from the first game that you get from visiting several dungeons, feathers, which are... feathers, and these crazy glowing glyphs that unlock a puzzle that can only be described as being written by a hysterical hobo telling his doomsday theory on the corner. Another new aspect is currency, though it gets really unimportant at the end of the game, since you get a lot of money really early in the game and quickly run out of things to buy.

This game seriously might be one of the greatest games of this year. This is because there's nearly nothing wrong with it. I found it to be one of the few games that lives up to the hype. I got stuck in a wall once, the controls don't always do what you want them to do, and the characters are bilingual, so it's like ordering dinner in Little Italy (I came up with that joke before Penny Arcade, I swear). Honestly, that's about all I can think of. Most of that stuff doesn't really count as being "cons".

If you didn't like Assassin's Creed but loved Crackdown, this is a must have. One thing I've learned is that when you have 99/100 of an item, it is a BITCH to find the last one. I've been trying to get 100%, so I've been collecting all the feathers. Problem is, I can't figure where the last one is. I don't even know which town it's in, and I've sweeped each town like I was the police looking for a 10 year old in the woods (woo tasteless kidnapping joke!). I've never hated a game so much. Still, it's a good game. Just make sure you catalog every feather you get. It makes the game at least 100 times easier to get 100%. Now I'm going to shoot myself to end the torment that this one feather is causing me.

Review: Assassin's Creed II

2009-11-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

It'sa me! Mario!
(I made this post before I started playing the game. A review will be up before the end of the week.)
(PS: I'm kicking your ass at this game, Pablo!)

Preview: Bayonetta

2009-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Bet you didn't expect to see that, did ya? Bayonetta, a game slated for release in 2010, previewed in 2009 by a small time blogger! Truth be told, I won this contest by waking up really early (aka not going to sleep the night before) and being within the first 40,000 people to enter. Honestly, it was the easiest contest ever. But my irregular sleep schedule helped me win and damn it I will preview this game in honor of it.

Bayonetta, at first glance, looked like a Devil May Cry clone. It looked like a person with guns fighting weird monster things, which is essentially Devil May Cry (though it doesn't have any filling of dark souls with LIIIIIIGHT ). After playing it, Bayonetta seems to be faster paced than Devil May Cry. It consists of alternating between punching and kicking, trying to get weird things to happen, like to have the main character's clothes come off and attack the enemy. Seriously. They do that. Also the demo was called "First Climax". I don't know if that's a theme of the game or if they expect the American audience to be whacking off while playing. Honestly, I'd believe either one.

This game is very visual. That sounds retarded, so let me explain what I mean. It's a spectacle game. The game focuses on making the main character look as awesome as possible, even with her clothes disappearing randomly during attacks. The attacks do look really good, though. The game itself looks good, too. This is a good game. Since I know that the game is done, since it's out in Japan already, I have to say I'm pleased with how this game came out. It definitely looks like something to get when it comes out, especially if you liked Ninja Gaiden or DMC.

Weird News

2009-11-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't cover news. Actually I never cover news. This news, however, is so hilarious that I have to share it. It comes from Kotaku. Apparently Gamestop plans on selling DLC in their store. This isn't something like DLC on a disc or point cards. You have to actually download the content. After going to Gamestop and buying it. The only people I can imagine doing this are people who are too retarded to operate the Xbox Live Marketplace. Seriously this is such a terrible way of capitalizing on DLC. Who would drive to Gamestop to get DLC and then drive back home to download and play it? All it does is waste gas. And why would Gamestop want you to waste gas?

Gamestop's secretly owned by Exxon Mobil. If you look at the facts, this can be the only rational explanation for selling DLC at stores. They want you to use more gas getting games so that you have to fill up your car more often. Pretty soon, an extreme gamer line of gasoline will be released. This "gamer gas" is only special in the way that it has to be used in 3 days or it'll turn into water. Gamers will feel obligated to go to Gamestop to get everything, from using their gamer laundromat to signing up for gamer internet, which is like regular internet but $40 a month more expensive. Pretty soon, everything will be rebranded as being "gamer" and Gamestop will release the one console of the 8th console generation after buying and liquidizing Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. This console will not run unless it is at a Gamestop approved location, leading to Gamestop appartments, where you have to buy the apartment at full price, but sell it at 5% of the value back to Gamestop, who will take $5 off of the full price and say it's "used". Gamestop will rule the gaming populace. This is what happens when Gamestop sells DLC at their stores. It's a slippery slope.

Windows 7

2009-11-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

Recently I got Windows 7. I got Ultimate since I was getting it for free (it's complicated how I got it, so complicated I'm not really sure how I did). This post is mainly a PSA to say that if you have a laptop with Vista and want 7, unless you play lots of old PC games (Call of Duty 2, Warcraft 3, Unreal Tournament 2k4, etc), get the same version of 7 that you did with Vista. For example, if you have Home Premium Vista, get Home Premium 7. There's an easy upgrade option that keeps all your settings and drivers in tact. I give you this warning since now my touch pad mouse, biometric security, touch pad volume control thing, and webcam all don't work. Also, it's really hard reinstalling the drivers and I haven't gotten one to work yet. EDIT: Yeah my webcam still works. Just not the preloaded webcam software that came with the laptop. No big deal. Still missin' those biometrics...

So besides losing most of my hardware, I kinda like Windows 7. It doesn't crash. It runs noticably faster. I have yet to try games with it, but my guess is they will run faster since it uses memory better or something. All I know is that Vista sucked and 7 is a must for gamers. Just get the right version.

Review: Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

2009-11-11T02:48:00.000-08:00

Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is the third game in the Mario and Luigi series, a series that I have ignored. I decided to pick this one up since I have always liked the Mario RPGs. The first thing I noticed about this game is that it's story was a little... lacking. Mario stories are pretty much all lacking, since apparently nobody wants to see Mario in a meaningful story. Super Mario RPG for the SNES is probably the only Mario game with a really good story. Paper Mario and Super Paper Mario had alright stories, but they were very simple compared to Super Mario RPG's story that actually had the side characters have a back-story.

Since nobody cares about the story all that much, the gameplay is the important part. This part is pretty fun. The battles are better than the standard JRPG's in the sense that you can dodge things. This has always been a feature in Mario RPGs. You can both cause more damage by pressing a button right before attacking or you can dodge an attack by jumping/hitting something with a hammer. It's also nice that there's no unavoidable attacks. One gripe I have about the game is that there are parts (long parts) where you play inside of Bowser's body. These segments take place as 2D platforming segments, only Mario and Luigi have different jump buttons. This means that a lot of the time, Mario will make a jump, but Luigi won't. Luigi will then land on an enemy you couldn't see. This starts a battle you have no idea is going on until the enemy attacks first before you realize what's going on. It's annoying, at worst, though.

This game is long, but isn't much of a challenge to anybody who's beaten a Final Fantasy game. It's about 24 hours if you put in a little bit of effort into doing a couple of side quests, but it's nnot really hard. You never think "FUCK I CAN'T BEAT THIS ENEMY". It's a fun game if you love Mario RPGs and don't mind seeing the insides of Bowser. Seriously. That's probably the biggest gripe I have about the game. It's not that Bowser's insides is gross, but when you let your imagination run wild, you start to imagine some gross shit.

Preview: Left 4 Dead 2

2009-11-08T01:09:00.001-08:00

I was on Xbox Live today and noticed that the demo was up, so I figured I would play it and preview it. This game has a lot of controversy around it, though pretty much all of it is gone. People said that it was too much like the first Left 4 Dead. Immediately I noticed that it was different in the way that it took place during the day time. Also, everybody had a really bad Cajun accent. Still, those are just things that have nothing to do with the actual game.

My experience with Left 4 Dead is "god damn it stop getting in my fucking way Che Guevara!" Yes, the original game seemed to enjoy getting in my way while I was shooting at zombies. I also never played with human players, so I might have also defeated the entire purpose of the game. Since I'm an anti-social shut-in, I'm playing Left 4 Dead 2 alone, too. I must say, though, the AI's way better. You don't get healed whenever you take 3 damage like you did in the first one. Also, in an unrelated note, enemies seem to fall apart better. That is to say, when you shoot an enemy with a shotgun, he doesn't just fall down dead. It's almost guarenteed that part of him will fall off. It's kind of nice. I forget if that was in the first one, I don't remember. This might be part of the whole lighting thing.

One new thing I noticed was melee weapons. These range from frying pans to machetes to guitars. Yes, you can kill zombies El Kabong style. It's nice to have melee weapons with the whole problem of ammo, but what I don't understand is why a person can't hold a handgun and a melee weapon. I guess it doesn't really matter, since the melee weapons just destroy zombies like none other.

Based on my short time with this game, I actually kind of like it. It's weird, since I didn't like the original. I found this one to be a little more fluid, as well as having melee weapons. Even the new special zombies don't piss me off when I'm slicing things in half with a guitar.

Review: Ballad of Gay Tony

2009-10-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

Well fuck that last post. In case you missed it, the DSi's being remade for old people. Pretty much it. Now on to more pressing matters.

Grand Theft Auto IV is an interesting game in the sense that after having 2 story expansions. The first, Lost and the Damned, which I reviewed (it might still be on the site, but I'm too lazy to check), was fun, but wasn't really all that much of an expansion and added a few new guns, a few new cars/bikes, and a new story mode that managed to be as depressing as GTAIV was. The Ballad of Gay Tony (henceforth to be known as BoGT) is a lot more entertaining. In LatD, you took missions from characters Niko (main character of GTAIV) met and even team up with Niko a couple of times. You do meet characters from the past two games in this iteration, but they're more cameos than actual characters that matter. It was nice to see that this game is not as connected to GTAIV and LatD as LatD was to GTAIV.

The game is much lighter hearted and reminds me a lot of Vice City (the only other GTA I played before this one) in that there's never a sense of sorrow or despair. Even though you get in some serious shit in the game, it's never like the other games where you feel like your character has a terrible life. Luis, the main character, though in serious shit, is still better off than he was before meeting Tony, a nightclub owner and his boss. This is apparent when you meet Luis's mother and see where he came from. It sort of reminds me of Pulp Fiction a little bit in the way it tells the story (not the content, this story is nothing like Pulp Fiction's). Also Princess Robot Bubblegum. This was the first thing I did when I got this game. I watched this. I almost fell over laughing. This is why I love GTA games: their satires. This is why I listen to talk radio stations while playing and this is why this show was hilarious. Rockstar knows how to do this, since hilarious radio programs have been around since at least Vice City, if not longer.

The gameplay... is GTA. There's better guns and better cars, the missions are way more interesting and fun than the other ones, but the core gameplay is still GTA. The parachute does return from San Andreas (I've played a little bit of it) and boy do they like to use it. You freefall from tall buildings and helicopters in several missions. There's even a base jumping minigame that you get an achievement for doing a bunch of. It might be GTA, but this is the best a GTA IV level game will be.

One major gripe I have about the game is that it's kind of short. I forget how long I played LatD, but I'm guessing around 20 hours. BoGT is shorter; I beat it in about 10 hours. However, there's a new feature that lets you replay missions. You try to take less damage, get better accuracy, get more headshots, get a better time, etc. to get a higher score. It makes GTA competitive. I'm not sure if you can upload your score and compete with others in missions, but it sure would be awesome if you could.

If you already have GTA IV, this is a must have. Not only do I like it more than LatD, I kind of like it more than GTA IV. The story makes it way easier to play as Luis without feeling like taking him to the tallest building and taking him out of his misery. If you don't have GTA IV, I would still recommend getting the Episodes of Liberty City disc, which apparently lets you play LatD and BoGT without GTA IV. If you like GTA, get this. If you like sandbox games, get this. If you like Resident Evil 4... still get this. It's basically that but with Russian mobsters instead of Spanish zombies. And you can drive.

Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-10-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Is this the first game I've both previewed and reviewed? I think so. Pretty great occasion! Let's celebrate with a review!

Batman games have never been good. At least all the Batman games I've heard of, which isn't many. Yes, there really haven't been many Batman games, and, to my knowledge, they've sucked. However, Arkham Asylum doesn't suck. It's, in fact, a very fun game. As everybody, including me, has already said. Better late than never!

First of all, the graphics. Oh the graphics. Since I played it on 360, I didn't get the nice 1080i graphics that the PS3 has to offer, but it still looked great. The characters are very well made and the environments look incredible. This game is really well made. I pretty much never saw a glitch, save for a henchmen occasionally spazzing out on the floor for about 3 seconds. Most of this doesn't count for shit, though (except for the whole not glitchy part), since it is the gameplay that matters.

That part holds up, too. The game plays very well. The combat never makes you feel like you're fighting the controls instead of the enemies. You press X to kick everybody's ass, you press Y when somebody tries to kick your ass, and you press B to stun somebody before kicking their ass. You also unlock moves, but you can't use them until you get an 8-hit combo (or a 5-hit combo with an upgrade). They just make Batman look more awesome as he kicks the shit out of death row inmates with makeup on.

As many people know Batman has many different gadgets.

The same goes for the game, only they're not quite as retarded as the picture above. You get several gadgets that are used to solve different puzzles. These puzzles aren't too hard, but that's if you're just playing to beat the game. The Riddler leaves you many collectibles, like Riddler trophies and, well, Riddles. You can also destroy chattering teeth for the Riddler, for some odd reason, and you can pick up interviews with Arkham inmates to learn more about them. The riddles were really hard for me since, well, I don't know shit about Batman. I didn't know who the villain in Batman Begins was until very recently, and I saw that movie when it was in theaters. Most of the riddles are made for Batman enthusiasts, so be prepared with Wikipedia unless you own the animated series on DVD. I'm sure there's easier ways (aka Gamefaqs) to solve them, but to do it legitimately, you should brush up on your Batman.

One thing I talked about in my preview was the stealth. After playing through all the game's stealth sections, I've noticed that there's a pattern to killing enemies, but it's not one you can follow every single time. By that, I mean you use very similar tactics to kill armed henchmen (Batman only fights well, he apparently doesn't know how to use a handgun), but each level makes it a different experience. For instance, in the first stealth part, you just pick them off one by one. In other levels, they can't see you ever or Joker will kill hostages. Even in one level, you can't kill any until you kill this one henchman who's in the hardest place to reach, or Joker kills the hostages. Stealth can be frustrating beyond belief, but it's never impossible in this game. The enemies are just retarded enough to let you swing on the ceiling just over their head, but they're not retarded enough to let you waltz around like a fairy and kill them without having to hide after killing one. It's a great balance that's not like Hitman or Metal Gear Solid, but not like Halo, where you just run in and kill everybody with your manliness and rocket launcher.

Probably the coolest thing about the stealth was the Detective mode. Detective mode means you can see the skeletons of the enemies walking around all frazzled, even when you're hiding in a grate waiting for them to scratch their balls so you can leap out and strangle them. It's kind of hard to see exactly where a skeleton is, though. A minimap would have made that better, but I GUESS WAYNE ENTERPRISES COULDN'T AFFORD TO PUT A MINIMAP IN BATMAN'S FUCKING EYE HOLE THINGS! THEY CAN AFFORD XRAYS GOGGLES, BUT NOT A MINIMAP! Yeah there's no minimap in this game. That was something that this game could have used, since it's impossible to navigate around with the map you're given, since you have to pause the game to figure out if you're going the right way. Yes, this game isn't perfect.

Like the boss fights. You fight Bane, Bane's 50 bajillion brothers, skull Bane, and a few actual bosses. Pretty much all of the bosses are really easy. Most of the time, you kill their henchmen and defeat them in a cutscene. Killer Croc, a giant mother fucker, would've been so much fun to kill, but you spend the entire level tiptoeing through a sewer and throwing a Batarang at him when he pops up. Literally that's it. That's not a spoiler, either. They pretty much tell you that when you get there. "Walk slowly and wait for him to pop up, then throw a Batarang and pretend nothing happened." Most boss fights seem to be very repetitive, since most of them are henchmen and a Bane or two. There are some unique ones, but that's literally one. Poison Ivy. And that's barely a boss fight.

The Scarecrow levels are strange. They're good, just strange. Scarecrow decides he doesn't like a sane Batman running around and 3 times in the game, he makes him go insane and imagine he's in a 2D sidescroller. It's a bit more 3D, though. It's weird. It's like Little Big Planet, only less happy. It wasn't quite a boss fight, but it was a fun change of pace.

Batman has, in fact, made good games. I say this after reading Wikipedia while writing this article. However, they've all been beat-em-ups for the arcade and the SNES. The rest of the games, aka the 3D ones, are shit. This one makes me think that Batman isn't like the Hulk. Batman can have a good game (I've played Ultimate Destruction, it was shit, I don't care what everybody else said). While it did seem to be nostalgia porn for those who remember their childhood at that point (I pretty much remember DBZ, Tenchi, Gundam, and whatever else was on Toonami when I was 8), so the story wasn't quite as deep as The Dark Knight, but it makes up for it with great stealth gameplay that is unlike any other stealth game. This is Batman done right.

A tribute to Tony

2009-10-17T13:53:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine, Tony, is a gamer, much like me. One thing he has that I don't is a room mate who has all the newest PS3 games. Basically, Tony pulled something impressive. He played Uncharted 2 AND Batman: Arkham Asylum in one night, in a 16 hour marathon. For that, he get's a congradulatory blog post. I've done a marathon before. Hell, I've pulled so many marathons in my life that I could have probably done well in high school if I didn't. However, never have I beaten not just 1, but TWO games in one night. To that, I raise my glass to Tony. A glass that is probably filled with Mountain Dew: Code Red.

I kinda want DJ Hero, also random musings

2009-10-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't keep up with gaming news, DJ Hero is basically the game that's coming out about 6 years too late for me. You get turn tables. Mother fucking TURN TABLES. Had this come out back when I still watched Toonami (or when Toonami still existed), I would have gotten this so fast. Still, after watching some of the trailers, I still kind of want it. Mainly because Daft Punk is pretty much the most publicized artist on this. Something about being a DJ is just awesome, and being Daft Punk makes that about 30 times better, since nobody wants to be any of the other DJs. Whoever they actually are. Honestly Daft Punk's the only people anybody would ever want to be. I would be Daft Punk in real life for no reason. Honestly. If I could get an outfit with a working helmet, I would walk around town like that. I don't care who talks about me. I would be content as Daft Punk. Also, Guitar Hero co-op? I saw a video of the Killers/Rhianna (something, I don't fucking know how to spell her weird ass name) and there was a guitar part. That actually looks cool. If only they had like every song on Discovery with a guitar part. Ok this post is pretty much the "I would pay $150 for a game just to play as Daft Punk", but whatever. It's been a slow week. Also, I think they need to make an appearance in a fighting game. I would love to kick somebody's ass as Daft Punk.

Let's see... what else has happened... Super Mario died. Well, the guy from the animated show who played him in the live action segments died. That sucks, since I've seen that show maybe twice. Still, I remember the ending song. "SWING YOUR ARMS FROM SIDE TO SIDE! COME ON, EVERYBODY! DO THE MARIO!" Sad story.

What else... Brutal Legend came out. Based on how much I loved Psychonauts, I'm probably going to play that. I hear it's pretty good. Not as good as Psychonauts, so I hear, but nothing really is. Hopefully it won't piss me off like some games do. By some games, I mean pretty much every game pisses me off eventually. The less they piss me off, the more I end up liking it.
EDIT: Next game review ISN'T Brutal Legend. Thank the local Blockbuster for that. I will be reviewing Batman next, since that seems like a game that should be reviewed.

Halloween's coming up. I guess that's major. This is the first time I could be arrested for trick-or-treating, but I'm pretty sure I'll be fine as long as I don't hit on any 6 year olds. I'm going as a shinigami from Bleach, so I finally get to use that $100 outfit I bought at an anime convention. I'll post pictures, probably. I'm getting a friend (oh you probably know it's Garrett if you're reading this) to be Kurt Colbain. I don't know who the rest of my friends are going as, but I'm probably going to beat them all with production values and Garrett's going to beat them by having me straighten his hair (if you don't know Garrett, he has long, blonde hair which would look like Kurt Colbain's hair if straightened). Basically Halloween will be fun. If you're reading this and want to chime in on Halloween, comment! Comment on what you want to go as for Halloween, what you plan on doing, or what you're playing instead of

Anyways, I've noticed that there is NO feedback. Literally, none. For those of you reading with a Google account, just log in and give me some fucking feedback! I don't know if these articles are any good without anybody telling me! Also, I'll review games you, the viewer, request, as long as it's not something stupid like "Madden 10" or "Wii Fit Plus". That's right. I'm a troll, too. Until next time, I'll be being lazy, as usual!