Christmas

Another Tragic Christmas

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The Christmas after I left my parents home for good I wrote out my list and mailed it to the North Pole, like I had every year. For the first time in my life, Santa Claus did not come. It took some time to make peace with this fact. While attending college I still went home for holidays and summers and Santa kept delivering. Apparently, once you graduate and fully move out of your parent’s home, Santa is made aware, likely via Christmas magic, and considers you an adult unqualified to receive gifts. I am mostly over this unpleasant reality, though it still stings a little. But what came next is simply wrong.

Since my child could speak, we have made a list of requested toys and sent it off to the NP. And since we started this tradition, my kid has received exactly zero gifts from Santa. Every Christmas is full of dashed hope and fresh tears as we realize we have been snubbed yet again by Saint Nick. →  Shadow of Read

A Christmas Revelation

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Despite what the man wants you to believe, video games are fairly true to life. For example, people do drop money when you kill them, and while you have no literal meter filling up with points, you do gain experience that makes killing the next person easier. And, if Catharism is to be believed, and I can see no reason it shouldn’t, dying in real life simply results in respawning, much like in a game. This realism makes games a great tool for educating our children but there is the hidden danger that they learn unfactual things, or unlearn factual things from them. One of the widest spread misconceptions from video games, movies, and lithographs is the lie that skeletons can smile. (Technically, skulls smile in media and not skeletons but if you smiled at me wearing all of your muscles and skin I would say something normal like “Your body has a nice smile,” and not something weird like, “Your face has a nice smile.”) →  Max Post 2: The Fall of Max Post

Tales From Behind The Counter – A Time of Loathing

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When working in retail there is one time of year you dread above all others: the holidays. It means angry customers with no time and no money, pissed off that they have to brave ice covered roads and bumper car parking lots instead of being gleeful and warm in the comfort of their own homes. In video game retail land, there is one other time that I have come to regard in the same way I would a diagnosis of colon cancer: EA Sports Game Release season. Also called, the Unholidays, with a long e sound on that i.

During this time, Electronic Arts decides to rain shit from the sky in the form of a new NCAA everything, new Madden, new baseball whatever, and [shudder] Nascar 09. I would rather play most of these sports over having to deal with the people who come in to buy these games and that, my friends, should tell you something. The day my chubby ass wills itself to throw a football or (God forbid) run bases over doing something video game related is tantamount to Jesus Christ donning a pair of rabbit ears and chilling in Hugh Heffner’s vagina-shaped hot tub for an evening. →  The gamers have only interpreted the games, in various ways. The point, however, is to change them.

A Christmas Story

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Gather around children and let me tell you a story of a Christmas long since passed. The year was 1991 and I was eleven years old. It was that magical white time of year when all a kid my age could think of was snowball fights, playing video games, and Christmas morning. You see children, 1991 was not just any other goofy year. Oh no, 1991 was the year the Super Nintendo came out and I was sure that come December 25th, my chubby butt would be glued to a television playing that sleek, grey piece of gaming heaven.

crying.jpgI’m sorry kid, Nintendo is hoarding all of the Wii’s this year. How about a Playstation 3 instead?

 

As the countdown to Christmas began, the yearly rituals were gone though. Santa’s lap had been sat upon, letters had been mailed, and the right people had been told of my Yuletide desires. No, I did not believe in Santa but I believed in the wrath of my parents who said that if I spoiled Christmas for my little brother, the SNES was going to be but a figment of my misguided imagination. →  Hell is other gamers.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 11.30.07

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Gamespot editor allegedly fired for giving a bad review
Jeff Gerstmann was supposedly let go because he gave Kane and Lynch a mediocre review (recent updates indicate the firing was a culmination of multiple reviews that angered sponsors). The story goes, Eidos was paying CNET a ton of cash to promote the title and threatened to pull future ads because of the review. It’s true that when this story broke yesterday, the Gamespot site was covered head to toe in stupid K&L ads. The people who say the firing happened because of the review range from Penny Arcade (who confirm the comic isn’t simply a joke in their forum), to a freelance Gamespot writer (who gave Shenmue a bad review…breath in…), to mods in the Gamespot forum who said things like – if we tell you what happened we will be fired, and don’t blame us, it’s all CNETs fault.

First of all, many people use this news to confirm “conspiracy theories.” →  Games are the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

Are you ready to rock? … well you can’t.

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Way to go EA / MTV. Way to f up the launch of what should have been your biggest title this Christmas season. Rock Band launched today, or so gamers were told. In reality it seems like there were only a handful of units shipped to retailers with little or no warning about the shortage. The only press release I’ve seen even hinting at production shortages was unearthed yesterday, in which the EA spokesman said that there might be a little supply crunch … until MARCH OF 2008!

Best Buy held midnight launch parties at about two dozen locations across the US and reports are coming in that a large majority of those stores got shipped a paltry number (one store in Kentucky received two PS3 bundles, and that’s it) or no games at all. That means people waited all night to get a rain check for a game with no future restock date. Websites for retailers GameStop, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and Walmart have removed the bundle package listing completely. →  Let’s get read-y.

The State of Japanese Gaming Plus A Couple of Signs That the End Times Are Upon Us

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As I type this, I am covetously inspecting my growing stockpile of canned goods and rice. Earlier I cleaned and loaded my Colt .45 Airsoft pistol with silencer and under barrel flashlight (think Metal Gear Solid 3). Within the next couple of hours I will be ready for what I am guessing is either going to be the zombocalypse, the Second Coming, WWIII, or possibly the release of a Vanilla Ice Greatest Hits album. One way or the other something bad is going to happen and I am going to be ready.

The Japanese are doing curious things that have tipped me off to our fast approaching doom, let me explain.

First, as I was browsing through the video game section of one of my local electronics stores I spotted a Japanese man loading up his shopping cart with: A) Halo 1,2, and 3 B) An Xbox Live membership card and C) one or two other 360 games that I couldn’t make out. →  Apply directly to the forehead.

Finishing the Fight

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Sorry folks, but I need to put videolamer’s bold blend of criticism and cynicism on the back burner and brew a fresh pot of Game Fuel. That’s right – we need to talk about Halo 3.

Rest assured, we will be featuring a review of the game in some form or another, despite the fact that it is rather useless to review the biggest-game-of-the-decade-until-GTA4-comes-out. Though perhaps I am wrong about that – if vl’s readership is anything like its staff, there may be some of you who are unsure about this franchise, in which case we’ll have lots to talk about. But before a proper review is done, we have to play the damn thing. And before even that happens, there are a few things we should get out of the way.

How do you feel about Halo 3? Are you sick and tired of all of its hype? Are you sniping at fans the way I did with Harry Potter fans during book 7’s release? →  It’s not you, it’s me.

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. The PS2 has been trumped by the Wii every month of this year except for March. The Wii has outsold the PS2 in Japan since launch. →  Readalations: Persona

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 5.4.07

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Sony markets to teens
Sony decided this was a smart business move after analyzing the figures:
Selling games to 10 year olds = totally lame (Nintendo sux LOL)
Selling games to 14 year olds = awesome to the max (we rulz)

The All I want for Christmas is a PSP, Sony’s first attempt to market to teens, went over slightly better than September 11th. Most failed ads don’t bring in more customers, this failed ad led to current customers donating their PSPs to their walls at 15 MPH.

EA noticing Wii and DS appeal to kids, plans bad mini-game game to cash in
EA Playground appeals to “the kid in everyone.” How exactly did EA deduce this? There are the obvious things that appeal to kids but not adults, like finding the opposite sex disgusting and eating chalk. Then there are the childish things that appeal to some adults, like sliding down banisters, pouting when things don’t go your way, and calling someone a “crapface”. →  The review for ‘Shark Sandwich’ was merely a two word review which simply read ‘Read Sandwich.’