Month: August 2007

Metal Gear Silly 4

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I should begin this blog with a disclaimer – I have played all of the Metal Gear Solid games, and sooner or later I know I will play 4. With that out of the way, I want to say that the hype for MGS4 can get puzzling at best.

Now I’m not saying that the game deserves no hype. Anything MGS is guaranteed to get people talking, and for good reason. It just seems weird. Unless I wasn’t paying attention, it felt like MGS3 had the least amount of hype and talk before its release, and yet it for my money its the best game in the series. Now with MGS4 we get a new trailer ever few months, and from just this we’ve got floods of comments where people are already claiming it to be the best game of this generation. →  PaReader the Reader

The Bioshock Occlusion

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HateComputer

My PC is stout. A 3.2ghz Quad core, 8gb RAM, GeForce 7950 SLI (x2) beast with a raptor managing triple boot, 2tb of SATA storage and a 1000 watt PSU to keep the cheesy blue cathodes and 8 case fans humming wildly in PC mod rapture. I can run any game at any resolution (yes, even with the months old 7950s) at hundreds of FPS. It makes little girls cry, old men shit themselves and, if the moon is just right, can grab hold of the minds of all within a forty block radius and twist them to my devious desires.

So I guess it only makes sense then that I bought Bioshock for the 360.

I was given a choice, you see. The PC version was right there next to the xBox version on the special Bioshock end-cap at my local blue-shirt-crap-shack. →  The Read Star

Review – Madden 08

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The Madden Curse Comes to the Wii

For years we’ve seen each Madden cover supermodel fall to the “curse” of becoming overpaid, injured and irrelevant. And just as eerily, the infamous curse is plaguing the upper right corner of its cover as well.

I know I’m supposed to unconditionally lower my expectations for the Wii’s substandard graphics and love it because of it’s removable showerhead inspired controller, but this is just lazy. (And by the way, the joy of flailing a little white rod at my TV is neither new nor innovative.) Crowd shots, backgrounds, stadium flybys and even the loading screen still shots rely on heavy, let’s say, “artistic” blurring to compensate for these worse than average Wii graphics. Whereas the animations have finally improved on the other two consoles, the motion capture for the Wii looks like it was recorded in the Madden bus toilet using a breakfast burrito and some pork rinds. →  Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing memory cards.

Bioshock and Awe

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First of all, let me say that I hope that everyone who can play Bioshock is trying their best to do so. This is a big, important game that we need to discuss campfire style.

Second, I want to tell everyone to please, please, slow the hell down.

Thanks to Bioshock’s art deco style, mesmerizing visuals, and Randian plot and philosophy, there are already people declaring this an instant work of art. By the end of the year you will no longer hear chants of “Ico! Beyond Good and Evil! Shadow of the Colossus!”. Instead the only weapon many gamers will wield will be Bioshock.

ReggieHatesYou

Again, I say to this – slow down. Wait until everyone has played it. Wait until the initial excitement and hype has died down, as this has a huge inflating effect on our opinions of a game. →  Drakenread 2

What are we Playing?

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I don’t know what you dear readers are playing, but I’ve got myself a tough choice, as demonstrated on the right:

Don’t pity me. I’ll somehow play them while still squeezing in Prime 3 this month.

I promise reviews as quickly as possible. At least for Bioshock.

Retrospectives – Metroid Prime

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I don’t know about you guys, but with all these Metroid videos popping up all over the place, coupled with the release of three Metroid titles in a three week span (Metroid, Super Metroid on the VC, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Wii), I have developed full-blown Metroid-fever. GameTrailers has an awesome video retrospective on the entire Metroid series, while Nintendo has been so kind as to relay eight preview videos for the soon-to-be Wii masterpiece, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, right to our very own Wiis.

But then I became a little sad. Corruption is going to end the Prime trilogy as we know it. What happens next, no one knows. Would the series return to 2D adventure like SNES’s opus, Super Metroid? Would it continue the First-Person-Adventure legacy? →  Ba da bam ba baa I’m readin’ it.

Square Enix and the Merch

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Man Square Enix, you just live to piss me off, don’t you? Apparently you’ve opened your merchandise store to the west, and rather than being a force of awesome, you’ve filled it with lousy merchandise and worthless jewelry so teenage otaku have something to go with their black nail polish.

Let’s look at the subcategories on the side navigation bar. We’ve got specific links for every Final Fantasy from 7 to 12…. oh wait. FF9 isn’t there. Sorry Zidane; guess you weren’t emo enough pal. The rest of the FF’s, as well as all of Dragon Quest are each lumped into a big series category. Just great.

I guess we can still look at what they have. Hmm. Seems the other FF’s have nothing to offer me but figurines of summons. →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

Super Metroid lands on VC, slaps your face

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…and makes you its bitch. Super Metroid, regarded as one of the best games of all time, has become available for a meager eight dollars through the all-mighty Virtual Console service. EIGHT DOLLARS! If you don’t take the smallest of steps to secure this game on your Wii, then may God herself have mercy on your soul.

But seriously, get Super Metroid. You’ll be surprised how accurate all those crazy fanboys on the net really were. It really is one of the greatest games of all time. I myself would say that it is the best 2D adventure ever made, and any gamer should play it at least once. You owe it to yourself to part with that $8 you stole from ol’ Granny.

Trust me, if she played Super Metroid, she would have done the same thing.

Dreamcast Mania! – Canceled games: PC Ports

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The Dreamcast was home to many excellent games, but due to its early demise, it was also home to many canceled games. These games, though varied, can be broken up into three main categories – ports of PC games, games that made it to other consoles, and games that never came out. Today, we will look at the PC ports and imagine how things would have turned out had the Dreamcast lasted a few more years.

Black and White
What was it?
A very well received god sim by Peter Molyneux.

Would it have been good?
Probably but it would be infuriating without the Dreamcast mouse.

Would it have sold?
Yes but not nearly as well as on the PC. Complex PC games and console games have different audiences.

Would it have actually come out? →  Uncharted Waters: New Horeadin’s

Sony’s Jamie Macdonald lies to Spong

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Digg led me to a hilariously bad review of Bioshock today. The site the review is on is called Sony Defense Force and, luckily, the entire site is hilarious. It may be a parody but it’s hard to tell, especially after the All I Want For Christmas is a PSP debacle.

Browsing the SDF page, I came across this gem of a story: PS2 still outselling Wii in all Major Markets. The bloggers own comments are excellent – “Looks like Wii won’t even be able to catch PS2. Get ready for another Sony dominated generation.” More importantly, the quote from Jamie Macdonald is an obvious lie:

“Jamie Macdonald: Could I just point something out – that PlayStation 2 is still outselling Wii in all the major markets.”

Unless he delivered this interview from last year, he is wrong. →  This post are sick.