Articles

Guitar Hero 2 Demo

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Damn you Harmonix, damn you to hell. The Guitar Hero 2 demo is only four songs large, and I haven’t been able to play anything else all day. Curse you and your innate ability to create unbridled gaming fun!

Yes folks, if you haven’t heard already the new issue of OPM has nice little demo of GH2. Jay and I have it. Now let’s talk about it:

Songs: I’m hearing some recent dissent about the Guitar Hero 2 soundtrack. Whereas the original had a wide variety of rock, the sequel seems to have a heavy focus on classic metal and hair bands, as well as prog. rock. I understand that everyone has different musical tastes, but for a game called “Guitar Hero”, the tracks seem to be appropriate. →  I got served!

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.6.06

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Uwe Boll in talks for a second BloodRayne movie
If you missed the first BloodRayne movie, you owe it to Ed Wood to go see it. It’s not as terribly good as House of the Dead, but its crappiness is better than the mostly just bad Alone in the Dark. I will also be going to see Dungeon Siege on opening knight (hahahahaha, get it?) if anyone wants to join me.

For some odd reason a lot of people hate Boll and want him to have a massive heart attack and die, or at least stop directing movies. I come from the Leprechaun school of horror films (Leprechaun in the Hood is overrated, I recommend Leprechaun in Space) so Boll’s schlock is something I really look forward to. →  Sly 3: Honor Among Reads

The Tekken arcade stick praised; the Tekken games condemned

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A few weeks ago, while browsing my favorite gaming forum, one of the posters reported an unconfirmed clearance sale at Gamestop/EB. The item? The Tekken 5 anniversary box. The price? $30, down from its previous $60 price, which was down from the original $100 MSRP. The package of course includes Tekken 5, as well as a very nice DVD box for storing all 6 Tekken games. The crown jewel of the set however is a limited edition arcade stick.

Normally this isn’t a big deal; you can buy arcades sticks everywhere some for as low as ten dollars. Not to mention that other game-branded sticks have shown to be of rather horrid quality (such as the Street Fighter Anniversary stick from Nubytech). →  Read it your way.

Concern that FFXII may suck

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Put in the FFXII demo and try something. Get into a battle and then put the controller down. You’ll win. The gambit system sets up the AI in your party so you don’t actually have to play. I did this experiment months ago and was slightly concerned but figured that it was just a demo; Square would no doubt make some changes that encouraged the player to participate.

The new EGM has a review of the game, though, and one of the reviewers describes playing exactly how I did. He put the controller down during random encounters and had no trouble at all. Boss fights still may require human intervention.

The reviewer gave FFXII game an 8.5. I’m not sure what’s stranger, Square making an automated battle system or reviewers not caring that Square made an automated battle system. →  Welcome to read zone!

Why the PSP is a success

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Many online sources have declared the PSP a failure. Others, including print magazines, haven’t gone that far but have acknowledged the PSP may currently be failing. The difference being the tense of the verb to fail. Here are some declarations that the PSP is dead or dying:

Should we consider the PSP dead?

RIP PSP

PSP: Just Die Already

Developers: The PSP has “failed”

But common wisdom is wrong: the PSP is not a failure; it has actually been quite successful. Sony took on a company that had around 95% of the handheld market. As of July, Sony has shipped 20 million units compared to Nintendo’s 21 million DS’s sold. There is a difference between units shipped and units sold, though how much is up for debate. →  Disaster Readport

They hate my baby… and Tom Chick is an asshat

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Read this. Also read Tom Chick’s original response post, and if you really care, his review (Chick’s response is at the bottom of the above article, and his 1up article is linked in his response).

I want to give hats off to Tom Chick, for masterfully pulling off this bit of PR. Because that’s all this is kids, it’s a “look at Tom Chick, he’s so abused!” play. And, it makes him more of a name brand, because I even read the Galactic Civilization 2 manual and have no idea who he is. So I guess he needed it. Or maybe I’m outside of his target demographic.

Ok, let me make my rambling into something cohesive. Tom Chick wrote the Gal Civ 2 manual. →  Hey, hey, hey, it’s time to make some crazy reading!

A shocking revelation

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Today I spent hours playing Ghosts and Goblins on the Capcom Classics Collection. The game is an absolute classic and it is also nearly impossible. It took me about a thousand lives, but I finished the game…only to be told that it was all a dream and I’d have to do it again. So I did.

Sometime during the second playthrough it struck me — this game sucks. I know it sounds like blasphemy to a lot of people, and it sort of disturbs me to say it, but it’s true. This game may have a cult following but it’s a piece of crap.

The game is not hard because it is well designed. It is hard because its controls are horrendous. →  Up to 6 billion readers.

Graphics over gameplay: is it really all that bad?

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Whether or not graphics really add all that much to video games has been heavily debated in the last few years. And once the Wii and PS3 come out to steal the 360’s spotlight, we’ll surely hear about it all over again.

Though it may not seem like it due to the clever use of lighting and camera angles, the colossus is actually only an inch taller than you.

But, if we think about it logically, is there really a difference between the two? Some would say, “Of course there is! What are you, high? You can’t play with pictures!” And yes, they’d be perfectly correct. But what people don’t think about is the complementary effect that graphics can have on gameplay. →  One must imagine video games happy.

Weekend Spotlight

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After reading about the 10 anniversary of the Nintendo 64 over there at Infendo, I decided to play… my SNES. My urge for nostalgia went a little farther, I guess.

Anyway, after dusting the ol’ SNES off and finally figuring out which controller worked completely, I popped in one the greats: Final Fantasy VI. One of the best, if not THE best, RPG of all time.

Incidentally, I’ve never actually beaten the game before, and this is after I bought the thing for like $50 on eBay last year. The game is great, but it’s hard to find time to play all these 40+ hour fantasies, now that real life has reared its ugly head. The last time I left off, I just completed the famous Opera scene. →  If you die in the article, you die in real life.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.29.06

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Opera free on Wii until June ‘07
Though I have absolutely no proof to support this fear, I’m worried that browsing the web on the Wii will require a subscription. Imagine some horrendous system that costs something small like 2 Nintendollars or whatever every time you open the browser. That would seriously limit the time I’d be able to spend on the couch watching pornography with my parents.

I don’t remember playing as an aging guy with a mighty war flute.

Microsoft makes up for broken consoles
Wow, good for them. Does the tracking chip they implant in the machine come free of charge?

The old RPGs are coming
At least in Japan. I may have to play Final Fantasy 6 again, but that’s ok since it’s the pinnacle of the series (Cloud is teh suxx0rs). →  SNK Article Classics Vol. 1