Year: 2006

Review – Weird Worlds

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Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
Developed by Digital Eel
Published by Shrapnel Games
Released 11.4.05

Deep space
Unknown seldom means good in deep space…

I am one of those lucky people who is blessed with a job that is mostly unsupervised, and is prone to periods of downtime. As a result, I often find myself paid to play video games. Unfortunately, I am often required to get to work on a moment’s notice, thus precluding most online games from combating my work boredom. Further, my work laptop can’t quite run Civilization 4 at the speed I’d like it to. I found myself stumped for something good to pass the time.

I had seen a plug for Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space on Penny Arcade a few weeks ago, and figured what the hell. →  Article Hominid

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For absolutely no reason, here is Golden Axe

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Axe Machine
Why yes, that is a Van Gogh to the right of the machine. Thanks for noticing.

I learned how to ride a bike at 13, so it should be no surprise that it’s 2006 and I have now had my first experience with a digital camera. At this rate, I’ll kiss a girl by the early 2060s. Sadly, I do not own the camera, it belongs to my girlfriend (I know, that could easily ruin the last joke, but luckily for us, and Jesus, we believe in no touch love) but that hasn’t stopped me from taking as many stupid pictures as possible. The first pictures I took were of my video game collection, my crotch (soon to be featured on this site), and then my Golden Axe machine. →  Drakenread 2

Review – Kya: Dark Lineage

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Kya: Dark Lineage
Developed by Eden Studios
Published by Atari
Released 11.18.03

Evil vegetable woman
Fear my banana horn.

Kya: Dark Lineage is usually compared to Beyond Good and Evil, most likely because they are both action platformers with female leads. The similarities just about end there, since BGE is damn close to the epitome of the genre, while Kya is more a stock, run of the mill, average game. Of course I played to the end so there had to have been something there that made me play it.

The game starts off with you and your brother getting sucked into an alternate dimension via your father’s basement laboratory. You arrive among a few anthropomorphized dog like creatures who are all running away from some anthropomorphized wolf like creatures. →  Welcome to read zone!

Atheists case made for them

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50 Cent’s new game Bulletproof has sold over a million copies. I have not played the game, but despite this I will say it is bad. I wasted hours of my life watching Battlefield Earth just to be “objective” and guess what, everyone else was right. Bulletproof has bad to terrible reviews so I’m running with the idea that it sucks.

So what does this tell us about the industry, and if I can editorialize wildly and blow things hugely out of proportion, life itself? It says that image is not just 100% of what people look for because that implies a neutral stance towards knowledge. It implies people go out of their way to ignore reality, fight to maintain ignorance and probably should not be given the right to vote for their leaders. →  WELCOMETOTHENEXTARTICLE

Huge percentage of women cut from the video game industry

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Plastic falling out of a shirt
A booth babe working hard to make this loser believe she gives a shit about posing with him.

This year the Nazis at E3 have decided on a new rule for booth babes. “Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited [at] the Show.” This means that if there even are booth babes at E3, they will be dressed like your mom (no, not your mom, Billy).

These women, these booth babes, are role models for young girls who dream of making it into an industry dominated by men. Even feminists applauded the booth babes’ efforts to shatter the glass ceiling with their large breasts, and feminists hate everything. →  Think outside the post.

More Predictions, but these guys actually get paid for them

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Mike Wallace Reporting
Mike Wallace*
*Note that there is a slight chance this is a different Mike Wallace.

Analyst Mike Wallace of UBS Securities is probably not a household name to even the nerdiest family. I doubt his parents remember who he is. They likely purged all memories of their son after reading one too many of his astounding stupid predictions about the video game market. I don’t know Mike Wallace, so I can’t say he is a bad guy, but if he doesn’t do anything besides come up with predictions and projections he changes every few months, he makes too much money.

In a recent GameSpot news article, Wallace predicts that the Xbox 2 will maintain its lead over the other new generation systems. →  Read more, before it’s too late!

Bad Reviews

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I have read a lot of bad reviews, and not just on this site. There are things I feel should be mandatory in a good review besides just a breakdown of graphics, audio, gameplay and control. At worst, a review is nothing but three 80 word blurbs, half of each spent on being “funny” or about 300 words and then some pictures representing the reviewers feelings of the game, we in the biz call them emoticons.

Tell us who made the game. Mario Golf was not made by Nintendo, nor was Paper Mario. I cannot tell if this is due to a lack of research or if reviewers just think we don’t need to know. I guess their logic is that telling us Nintendo made a game is easier than telling us Camelot did. →  Readalations: Persona

Review – ChoroQ

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ChoroQ
Developed by Atlus
Published by Takara
Released 11.14.04

Choro Race
Win this race to unlock secret driver Lindsey Lohan.

ChoroQ caught my attention because it claimed to be a racing RPG, a genre I didn’t know existed, much less one I had any experience with. I figured, even if all I got out of the ten bucks it cost was another obscure game for the collection and a few minutes of distraction, it would be a worthwhile purchase. Disclosure: my experience with pure racing games is limited to a ton of time spent with Gran Turismo 3 and a de minimus amount of time spent on a few other, minor titles (not counting the Mario Karts of course). Gran Turismo 3 was a great game, and this was apparent to a novice in the genre such as myself, because of the depth of the gameplay, and the level of customization.

 →  Up to 6 billion readers.

Review – Mortal Kombat: Deception

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Mortal Kombat: Deception
Developed by Midway
Published by Midway
Released 10.04.04

Ta da
I got a small role in a Broadway play, it’s not much, but it’s a start.

I grade games on a 100 point scale broken down into several categories. Each category gives a maximum of 20 points. The combined total is score of the game.

A 100 = perfect.

Graphics: 15

Music: 15

Game play: 20

Plot: 15

Replay ability: 20

Total Value: 85%

Moooortaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal Koooooooooooooooombaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Test your might! Do do doooo dooo doooo!

Here is a cute story. When I was a young lad I was a Mortal Kombat master. I won a tournament at a local arcade out of 100 people for the best Mortal Kombat II player. →  What is a post? A miserable little pile of secrets.

And the future shall be as so

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Five Predictions for 2006 by Billy

1. Sony and Microsoft are going to duke it out again for the mainstream. While Nintendo is going to fall further into its niche market. However, there will still be several interesting things to look for:

Will the lead Microsoft is taking now really matter, with their dirty shortages trick? Will Sony’s whole root kit thing and failure to use good memory storage really hurt them and allow Microsoft to rule the domestic US game market? I have a feeling that if Sony doesn’t amend its ways and stop the nonsense many game companies will pull out and work more with the Xbox people in an attempt to not lose sales. This will especially be a big deal next holiday season when Xbox 360 and PS3 are going for each others throats. →  Double your reading, double your fun.