Metal Gear Ac!d 2 knows you won’t read the manual

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I’m pretty bored this Sunday evening, so here’s a blog post that no one will actually read.

I picked up Metal Gear Acid 2 on PSP with the extra little scratch I got from trading some games in (more on that in a future article). First thing I noticed was the manual was a five or so page black and white pamphlet. I’m used to pieces of crap like this from EA, which seems to be pushing just how close they can get to three page manuals including the first page of warnings. But Konami doing this with one of their (as they call it) signature series? It didn’t make any sense, especially since the art inside the case is wonderful.

My answer came up on the first page of the manual – the real instructions were a pdf found on Konami’s website. →  It’s not you, it’s me.

Lame discussion – What makes Metroid Metroid? Part 1

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After finishing Metroid Prime 3, resident Metroid fanatics Don, Matt and Christian were eager to discuss not only Corruption, but the Metroid series as a whole. Presented here is the first part of an in depth look at what, if anything, makes a Metroid game a Metroid game.

Don: I think the most relevant issues are what makes this a Metroid game, what makes it NOT a Metroid game and how it can compete in what is, frankly, a pretty badass set of this-gen titles.

Matt: Which Metroid titles have you played, Don?

Don: All but the original Gameboy ones. I’d like to get the move to 3d out of the way.

Matt: Ok, so you’re good with Metroid lore then.

Don: Yeah — totally. 3d: it works, it has since mp3 and we’d all be bitching if it was 2d

Christian: I wouldn’t bitch. →  18 Wheeler American Pro Reader

The most racist-filled place on Earth: Xbox Live

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Is it just me, or is America filled with racist pigs? I’ve been playing Halo 3 online since it came out, and there has not been one night where I didn’t hear a racial slur slung at me. And half the time it’s for no reason! I’m just sitting there, tea-bagging some guy after sticking a plasma grenade in his mouth, and I get called the “N-word”! That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?

I am not a black man, but I still get very offended when people say this. It’s not right, and it’s saddening that people are still subjected to this kind of juvenile behavior. What if I was a black man? How do you think I would feel? All I’m doing is playing a video game, trying to relieve a little stress from a hard day’s work. →  Up to 6 billion readers.

Review – Heroes of Mana

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What do you get when you cross Final Fantasy Tactics with Warcraft? The answer, Heroes of Mana, is about the closest I have come to a perfect game in a long time.

I love my DS; it goes everywhere with me and I play it almost every day. Usually there are very few games on any platform that can get and keep my attention for more than a few hours. I think this is partly because when I play my DS I do so for only half an hour at a time and therefore, it is hard for me to establish a connection to a game that lasts longer than that. It’s like being forced to take a bunch of five minute breaks throughout a two hour movie; you just can’t get into the film. →  You do not simply walk into reading more.

Is Nintendo Power biased? A semi-serious statistical survey

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Nintendo Power is going to be outsourced to Imagine Media, meaning the long-standing and proud magazine will no longer be run by Nintendo themselves. This inspired Jay and Christian to resurrect this old project. Most people claim that Nintendo Power review scores cannot be trusted, or are at least suspect, considering they come “in house” rather than from an independent source. Now that this will no longer be the case, let us look back at the old Nintendo Power and see how they stacked up to the rest of the gaming world when reviewing Nintendo DS games.

A few nuggets of info before we start. The numbers used are the weighted averages from Metacritic, Nintendo Power’s scores, and the minimum and maximum non-Nintendo Power scores. All numbers are for the top 30 and bottom 30 DS games. →  All the lonely gamers, where do they all belong?

Does Nintendo care?

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With games like WiiFit and Face Training becoming the staple of Nintendo’s wares in this “new generation”, most hardcore gamers are left asking, “Hey, what about me? Where are my kind of games at, son?” I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Nintendo doesn’t care about you anymore. They have moved on to greener pastures. Which is to say they want your mom’s money now, not yours.

The number one indicator for this theory was their show at the 2007 E3 conference. We had nearly 20 minutes of WiiFit, but only 20 seconds of Mario Kart Wii.

They didn’t want to show more because Nintendo was in front of all the world’s media, and they wanted to send out the word that they’re all about the non-gamers now. That’s why they focused so much on WiiFit. →  Onimusha 2: Samuread’s Destiny

ZOMGzors – Bungie and Msoft split up

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Fuck me, every time I put on a clean pair of pants, something like this happens. I won’t make this blog too long-winded, as I’m sure you want details. So here they are, in a nice list format for easy reading.

-Bungie is now an independent company, entitled Bungie LLC. They have no real ties to Microsoft anymore…

-..but they still have a long-term publishing agreement with Microsoft.

-Microsoft owns the IP rights to Halo, so in theory, Bungie may not make the next Halo installment (see below for delicious commentary).

-Bungie is still working on DLC for Halo 3, as well as collaborating on the Halo/Peter Jackson project.

-Both companies <3 each other, hoping to make Bungie/Msoft babies in the future.

What does this ultimately mean for us gamers? Not much, really. →  The Last Readment

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.5.07

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Dream team created to make MMO
One of the three guys behind Fallout and 17 ex-Blizzard guys all in one development team? You know these are going to be amazingly well crafted fetch quests that change absolutely nothing in a static MMO world. And think of the grinding!

Halo 3 is the biggest event in human history
The release of Halo 3 makes John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald look like footnotes in history. The moon landing is dwarfed by Bungie’s newest game, which sold approximately thirty thousand times more than any other product ever created. There are now significantly more copies of Halo 3 than wheels, and just about the same number of grains of sand.

This game topped the charts in Japan last week, proving that in a tepid market environment an American game can actually sell well in the East. →  Lose belly fat now!

Review – Halo 3 campaign

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You kids like your Halo. I’ve read, in scores and multitudes, that it’s the bee’s knees, really. All manner of laud, pomp and, indeed, circumstance was made at the Halo 3 launch.

Just here in Chicago, in fact, like, a billion total nut-job game dweebs sat for hours both inside and out of any number of gaming venues through the eve of release just to snag a copy at midnight-plus-one. This is, I presume, because they were all of them mistaken; thinking, perhaps, that there was some sort of limited supply of the new nectar and that this wait would somehow result in an assurance that they get the rare and beautiful flower which, to be sure, couldn’t simply be stamped out by the billions for pennies at the press.

It was like a goddamned hardware launch only the following morning the mass of those proprietors overrun by game dorks just hours earlier would be rich with bloom; their walls stacked to bear out those morsels to which Bungie executives owe their Hummers, Audis and yes, the occasional EVO. →  Show me the reading!

PS1 games you may have missed: Non-RPG edition

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Believe it or not, I like a few PSX games that aren’t RPGs! Of course, several of them are still hard-to-find (because I like to like things nobody knows about).

Unfortunately, I do not have copies nor solid recollections of all of them. But I can tell you about a couple more to look into that I’ve left of the upcoming list: Tomba! and Einhander are both solid games that are a good deal of fun. Tomba! being an action/adventure, and Einhander being a solid Square-made shoot-em-up.

However, on to the games!
Yes, aliens did give the ancient Greeks their superior technology and philosophical insight.

A solid co-operative game as well as an action-adventure game of some depth, Herc’s Adventures is an entertaining romp through ancient Greece. It’s a spiritual successor to the SNES game Zombies Ate My Neighbors. →  Oops, I did it again.