tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63265288634583601262024-03-13T11:40:45.244-05:00Press X RapidlyQuicktimin' so you don't have to.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-8759633312720337062010-01-14T13:57:00.002-06:002010-01-24T01:33:10.554-06:00Bayonetta: In Control<span style="font-style: italic;">Inspired by a recent Sexy Videogameland <a href="http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2010/01/if-you-run-out-of-ammo-you-can-have.html">entry</a>, and sorta reposted from a comment I made.<br /> </span><br />I've seen the word "leering" used a lot in criticism of the more sexually-charged camera angles. I think that word is far to strong for what's going on in this game. Bayonetta is a sexy game, and Platinum wants you to know it. Bayonetta herself certainly knows it. There's the blowing kisses to break barriers, the hair thing, the fact that she's dropping innuendo in her dialog left and right, and the fact that almost all of these sexually suggestive poses the game puts her through end with a coy wink at the camera. She's aware of her sexuality, and she certainly seems aware that we're watching. To put it bluntly, she wants it. She's in control. She's not being victimized. To me, that's not leering.<br /><br />Imagine if in, say, Half Life 2, Alyx Vance was sexualized in a similar way, but was still the same person. Put her in skimpy outfits (even skimpier outfits to be unlocked upon completion of the game), upgrade her breasts to TITS (as Penny Arcade put it), put her in sexually suggestive poses, have her get tentacle-raped, what have you. No winking at the camera, just same old Alyx Vance with some tarting up. I think this would be what I would call leering. Sexuality isn't part of her character. Other than Eli joking about her and Gordon makin' grandkids, it's almost never brought up. The game would be effectively forcing this "strong female character" into becoming a sex object. Bayonetta isn't being forced into anything. Bayonetta is titillating, but I really feel like it's an entirely different thing.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-36120719467974490412009-12-23T15:53:00.002-06:002009-12-23T16:34:42.207-06:00Wired on Duke Nukem Forever<blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist.</span></blockquote>At some point, coverage of Duke Nukem Forever hit a wall. Blame the tight-lipped developers or a lack of creativity on the part of games journalists; either way, most articles that showed up amounted to some variation on "Duke Nukem Forever is coming soon" with a snide editorial comment about how it probably won't be coming soon. The true story behind the game's twelve-year life and recent death, however, has continued to be the cover story that every game magazine editor wishes they could write. It was only a matter of time before someone did. While Clive Thompson's Wired article isn't quite comprehensive --most of the contributors are anonymous, and co-founders George Broussard and Scott Miller declined to be interviewed-- it's the best stab anyone's taken at the story of Duke Nukem Forever's production. Also, check out the fantastic illustrations by A Life Well Wasted poster designer Olly Moss.<br /><br />Wired: <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1"><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed <cite>Duke Nukem</cite></span></a>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-802314011363043112009-05-14T10:50:00.005-05:002009-06-30T01:00:55.706-05:00Review: ROM CHECK FAIL<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sgw-IRohkxI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/mHjZMSduHvA/s1600-h/romch.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 280px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sgw-IRohkxI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/mHjZMSduHvA/s320/romch.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335707970420445970" border="0" /></a>When Naked City's self-titled LP debuted in February of 1989, it brought with it a whole new way of looking at music. Inspired by everything from Napalm Death to John Coltrane with cartoon composer Carl Stalling as the great unifier, what John Zorn and crew brought to the musical table was genre hopping; often, within the same song. Naked City was one minute Ornette Coleman, the next Brutal Truth, and then whatever the hell they felt like. The sound has aptly been compared to a radio on seek; that is, if each station you came upon featured the same band playing something different. It went on to inspire avant rock for years to come; indeed, where would Mike Patton and his associates be without Naked City?<br /><br />Refrencing Naked City seems like the best way to lead in to ROM CHECK FAIL, a quirky freeware game born out of Tigsource's <a href="http://www.tigsource.com/features/vgng/">Video Game Name Generator competition</a>. RCF is almost the literal video game equivalent to Naked City; imagine if someone wrote a program for the Wii that randomly and dynamically switched virtual console games on the fly. One minute you're Link facing off against a horde of Ghombas; the next, you're the ship from Defender versus the Space Invaders in a Pac-Manified version of the first stage from Donkey Kong to the tune of Stage 1 Double Dragon.<br /><br />Despite the absurd mess that the above makes ROM CHECK FAIL sound like- and in some ways it is- it <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>a real game with a set, achievable goal. A few things stay the same despite the random changes: each stage has a set geometry that doesn't really change (though its textures do); your goal, whatever you are at any given point, is to destroy all enemies onscreen, whatever they are at any given point. Kill them all, you move on to the next stage (twenty stages in all).<br /><br />In reality, the game itself is about as simplistic as most of the games that its emulating. The real fun comes from the absurd clash of game mechanics that come from the switches. It's not just sprite changes; both you and the enemies play like they would in their respective games, and that means everything. It adds a whole new layer as far as attention goes: since each "phase" of the game lasts for something like ten seconds, your position becomes a thing to look after. For example, if you have a line of floating asteroids right above you that suddenly become solid, gravity bound Ghombas and drop, you're screwed. And then you have Pac-Man, a character that starts running in whatever direction you were previously pointed towards as soon as the switch occurs, which gave me more than a few instant deaths. Luckily, that's not impossible to master. As you play, you pretty quickly get a feel for how long each segment lasts, and the game does give you fair warning in that the screen and sound glitch a few seconds before.<br /><br />And then there's the game's replay factor. I'm honestly hyper-skeptical of most claims that "no two play-throughs in X game (*COUGHLEFT4DEADCOUGH*) are the same!", but this game is the most literal interpretation of that idea that I have ever seen. When I say that no two games are the same, I mean the appearance of the stages, the music, the enemies, and hell, even the character you control. ROM CHECK FAIL embraces randomness in almost every aspect of the game, and it's kept me playing through multiple times. Luck plays an important part, too. A stage that might take me several minutes could also be completed in less than a few seconds; it's all based on the luck of the player character/enemy combo draw. Of course, therein lies the games biggest flaw (if you want to call it that): it doesn't even pretend to be a balanced game. Several of the player characters, such as the Spy Hunter car and the Defender ship have ranges limited to 1-2 directions. In the case of the near-useless Space Invaders tank, not only do you get one firing direction, you lose y-axis movement. When your enemies are bubbles or ghosts, you're pretty much finished. It's frustrating, sure. But the game, in general, is definitely on the easy side. You gain extra lives at the drop of a hat, and it's pretty well guaranteed that you'll at least make it to the last few stages on your first try.<br /><br />With ROM CHECK FAIL, developer Farbs has created a rapid fire nostalgia-fest viewed through the lense of a trigger-happy radio selector. It's equal parts classic arcade, WarioWare, and Naked City. RCF is a game that does John Zorn and Yamatsuka Eye damn proud.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9/10</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Links:<br /></span><a href="http://www.farbs.org/games.html">Free download from the offical website</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>Some Naked City for your listening pleasure:<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkrfVZGmLL8">Speed Freak</a><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFjDDfB3tG0">Jazz-Snob, Eat Shit!</a>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-74742947382556951142009-05-07T20:13:00.007-05:002010-01-07T22:19:18.727-06:00What I Want from Special Editions<div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SgOII70hjnI/AAAAAAAAAPI/OrI06mnxmyM/s1600-h/Criterion_Sm.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333256070815125106" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 175px; cursor: pointer; height: 240px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SgOII70hjnI/AAAAAAAAAPI/OrI06mnxmyM/s320/Criterion_Sm.jpg" border="0" /></a>The Criterion Collection is one of best things to come out of the home video industry. Releasing high priced DVDs that often contain veritable gold mines of information about important films (as well as "definitive" versions of the films themselves), Criterion in many ways forms the basis of what I want to see from game publishers in the future. Now that the Special Edition SKU is in full swing (name a big name title coming soon; it has a special edition), I would like to see special editions that are more than just a tin box with a game disc and an action figure inside. I'd like to see a Criterion Collection of gaming.<br /><br />It's a bit much to ask this of the special edition of, say, Resident Evil 5. The video game industry is tight-lipped, and you wouldn't expect the level of honesty of a Criterion Collection even from a newly-released film. You have to give it some time, of course. Or, in this case, you could just go back in time and, with the unlikely permission of the original publisher, give us the special edition of an important game of the past?<br /><br />What would you pay for Super Mario Bros. - Criterion Collection? It's easy to imagine the very basic idea of what that could be. A nice package; the original manual; a disc containing the original game and an in-depth documentary on the making of the game. Don't get me wrong; the documentary could be awesome. Video game development was still an untamed land in the early 1980's, and an in-depth story on how one would make a game back then-especially when that game is Super Mario Bros.- would be fascinating.<br /><br />What I'd really want out of a video game Criteron Collection is something that would work a bit like the albums of unreleased demo's some bands release. Let's take Rhino's colossal 7-disc release of The Stooge's Fun House album. 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions documents every take from the Fun House recording sessions. And they aren't all pretty; there are plenty of false starts and studio dialog in the 142 tracks provided. But the real joy is seeing how one of the most important albums of the 1970's came together. Some songs never made it to the final album (Lost in the Future, Slide). Freak became L.A. Blues, while Loose was originally titled I'm Loose. We get a sense of the atmosphere of the studio through the tracks of studio dialog and get a glimpse at what could have been; a radically slower version of Down on the Street, an obscure single mix of the same track with Don Gallucci pretending to be Ray Manzarek of The Doors. We get to see Iggy Pop slowly putting together the final lyrics with each take.</div><div> </div><br /><div>Perhaps game publishers could take a similar approach with versions of games. Game making is, from my limited knowledge, an iterative process. Ideas are tossed around. Things change. The product that is set out to be made is often times not the product we recieve. Just try searching for beta versions of classic games on Youtube, and you'll find such gems as this SNES <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEY0I8GnwzA">Wolfenstein 3D</a> video with it's gore still intact. Or try this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhSSZl_nt4">Super Mario Bros 2</a> prototype video. And those are pretty mild examples. What if Super Mario Bros. Criterion Edition contained <span style="font-style: italic;">every</span> playable version of the game? What could we learn about how the game was made, or even video game design as a whole from playing these unreleased versions of one of the most revered titles ever released? I think being told about it could be fascinating, but being shown, or even better, playing these versions would be far more rewarding.<br /><br />Of course, I wouldn't expect something like this anytime soon. The video game industry is far too tight-lipped for the kind of honesty I'd want out of this; and I don't at all begrudge them for it. But give it a couple decades-and video game's eventual wide recognition as an art form-I think we'll be seeing something very much like this.<br /></div>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-8772548366878474602009-05-03T14:55:00.003-05:002009-05-03T15:28:20.454-05:00It finally happened<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sf37PUn0RpI/AAAAAAAAAPA/KsXedIStv5Y/s1600-h/ohshit.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sf37PUn0RpI/AAAAAAAAAPA/KsXedIStv5Y/s320/ohshit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331693774528857746" border="0" /></a><br /><br />As of Saturday, May 2, 2009, the red ringed tragedy has finally hit home. The three-red-ringed tragedy, specifically. As it turns out, Microsoft's official 360 support page lists four possible combinations of red rings, which in turn point to four separate issues (I guess?) My Xbox fell victim to the big one; the reason for the supposed 30% failure rate among first-gen 360 hardware.<br /><br />A warning to future red-ring victims: the crash will scare the shit out of you. Mine came as a frozen screeching screen of fucked-up colors while playing Bully. I took it as a sign to quit playing Bully; to be honest, I wasn't complaining. So I gave it twenty minutes, booted the system back up, and went upstairs for a drink. About halfway up the stairs, I hear a sound emanating from my TV that I can only imagine approximates what hell must sound like. The damn thing froze mid boot. I tried it a few more times before getting that final conformation, the red rings of death. Saturday pretty much sucked.<br /><br />But hey, repairs are free.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-42632354126738238332009-05-01T13:39:00.007-05:002009-05-01T17:45:39.396-05:00Game Log #11<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sft4n_LUw6I/AAAAAAAAAO4/ACSGRJ_Q8M8/s1600-h/burnout-paradise-ss-62.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 175px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/Sft4n_LUw6I/AAAAAAAAAO4/ACSGRJ_Q8M8/s320/burnout-paradise-ss-62.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330987212292277154" border="0" /></a><br /><ul><li><strong>Burnout Paradise</strong> is a racer with the OCD gamer in mind; or, rather, the Crackdown fan. The idea is thus: combine the basic tenants of the Burnout series with over the top violence (strictly car-on-car in Paradise City) and widespread quick events, which kept Crackdown interesting for a few hours. It's also got the same eaisly-accessed collect-o-mania that kept Crackdown interesting long after that. Paradise succeeds where Crackdown fails in the variety and depth of it's various events. Whereas Crackdown's events where largely beat-the-clock affairs that felt like afterthoughts, Burnout manages to keep throwing in new and exciting things to do, while spacing them out enough so that you never feel you're doing the same thing too much.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dark Sector</span> is the kind of game that I like but know that I'm not going to actually finish within the first hour. It's mechanically sound; in most ways, that is. If you think Gears of War moves and shoots well, you'll agree that Dark Sector does the same. The game's most marketable feature, a remote controllable triple-bladed boomerang called the glaive, has some issues. So far, the unique aspects of the game (some of which are very noteworthy) are often drowned out by paint-by-numbers level design and hideous character designs. I'll try and stick with it as much as I can.<br /></li></ul>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-51712434108461712742009-03-24T11:49:00.006-05:002009-03-24T12:21:15.629-05:00Reductionisim in Discussions of Games (The Bad Kind)Reductionism as a method of critical attack is highly popular among message board users, bloggers, and podcasters alike. One common argument I've seen is the use of comparison to an older game as a means to demean the game in question. In other words "your game from 2007 is no different than this game from 1987. And that's bad."<br /><br />We saw it pretty strong around the release of Call of Duty 4 and it's single-player component. The endless spawn closets, enemies with set positions, and linearity drew claims that the game was no better or different than Hogan's Alley or Point Blank. This, of course, is a valid claim. Much like Call of Duty 4, Point Blank was a game with near-realistic graphics, a diverse arsenel of weapons, vehicle missions, and a fantastic, well acted-storyline that plays on modern issues. Oh, and don't forget the ability to move and take cover. All of these were ripped straight from Point Blank. <em>Right.</em><br /><br />Sarcasm aside, I feel like that's where this argument breaks down. The level of reductionism required to say "X game is basically Y game" to the level people have with Call of Duty 4 is not only absurd and a disservice to the game as a whole, it also feels disingenuous. It seems to me that when you go into a game with the mindset of ignoring everything about the game in favor of a straw man comparison, you've gone into it with a vendetta.<br /><br />Depending on what theory you subscribe to, there are <a href="http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html">one to thirty-six plots in literature</a>. I think it would be interesting to ask how many and what are the basic game types (plots?), perferably outside the review or discussion of one particular game. Despite all the video game industry has innovated over its many years of existence, it falls to reason that game mechanics are no more complex than literature, and can probably be boiled down in the same way.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-51689213679047218152009-03-23T19:35:00.006-05:002009-03-24T00:25:02.968-05:00Why I Can't Play Evil in Fallout 3 (and Why I Can in Fable 2)Having completed Fallout 3, and currently playing through Fable 2, memories of the comparisons of the two around their release dates are all coming back to me. With two sandbox, time intensive RPGs being released within the same month, comparisons were bound to be made. Sides were chosen. Months later, now that the dust has settled with neither game a slouch in sales, the similarity that has been sticking out in my mind is the element of moral choice, an element both games were promoted highly for. In particular, I was struck by my own moral choices in both games.<br /><br />My character in Fallout 3 is basically John Wayne of the American Wasteland. The fearless avenger; always looking out for the little guy. Rather than bother with diplomacy, I killed the entire slaver camp on sight. By the end of the game, my Karma was about as high as it could go. Fable 2, on the other hand, has pretty much been the polar opposite. My "hero"-in the loosest sense of the word-is a dirty rotten bastard decked out with horns, glowing eyes, and whatever having your corruption-purity slider all the way to the left side does to you. I've taken almost any opportunity to be Albion's biggest asshole; from gleefully murdering the entire city of Oakfield (which, much to my chagrin, didn't seem all that affected by it upon my return ten years later) to sacrificing my husband for points at the Temple of Shadows. And don't get me started on monogamy and extra-marital group sex.<br /><br />Several hours into Fable 2, I realized that I was playing these two games as polar opposites. It confused me at first. They're both games with good-and-evil moral choices. I should be consistent on both, right? Now that I'm close to the end of the game, I think I have a few theories as to why not.<br /><br />First, and what I first thought of, was the tonal differences between both games. Fallout 3, for all it's satire, black humor, and science fiction underpinnings, is fairly realistic and, in comparison to Fable (or anything Molyneux), tonally consistent. It picks a mood-the bleak, mutually oppressive environment commonly associated with post-apocalyptic fiction-and sticks with it 'till the bitter end. Everyone, from the defenseless NPC to the bandit oppressor, is having a shitty time. The depressing, poverty-stricken imagery of Fallout serves to add more weight to the "good" side of moral choices; do you really want to screw this guy's life up more than it's already been?<br /><br /> Meanwhile, Fable 2, true to Lionhead fashion, is a cartoon. While it's story goes serious and interesting places, the game's self-aware humor, colorful visuals, and Nick Park-esque character designs give the world of Albion a far less depressing outlook than the Wastelands. Moreover, it's a world where both good and evil seem to coexist in equal portions. The mechanics of the game play into this as well. It is a game where you can slaughter an entire village of innocents, true; it's also a game where the rite of passage to join the quest-giver is eating "10 baby chicks". It's a game where you can cheat on your spouse, and then pose for a couple minutes to make it all better. It almost feels like I'm slighting Fable 2 when I say that the game's tone and style give the moral choices in the game a lot less weight than Fallout 3, but it rings true. Unlike Fallout 3, playing the evil guy in Fable 2 has been a no-brainer from the get-go.<br /><br />My other theory, the one I've found most revealing of myself as a player, is the sense of empowerment these choices give. As stated, Fallout 3 is a world where even the most well-off inhabitant isn't doing well for himself by our standards. When given the choice between doing good or evil, leaving my mark on this world factored into my thought process. Certain moments in the game aside (big changes can be made to the world by playing the bad guy), I found that playing the good guy many times held a rebellious quality to it. When I'm giving random guy outside of Megaton a glass of purified water, I'm going against the grain; sticking it to the man, whatever that might be in this game. In a world where the bad is turned up to "11", I've found the way to leave my mark was to play the good guy.<br /><br />My play style in Fable 2 is largely a reaction to how different the environment is than in Fallout 3. In Fable 2, a game with less emotional baggage and a goofier atmosphere, playing the bad guy feels empowering. The game's renown system and the fearful dialog your actions can inspire from NPCs certainly adds to that (despite some weird inconsistencies I'll highlight on in an upcoming review.) It's the guilty pleasure that many gamers still feel uncomfortable acknowledging: in the right game, it's fun to be the villain. The sales of the Grand Theft Auto series confirm this, while much of the critical reaction to Grand Theft Auto IV confirm my point about Fallout 3. The fourth canon edition in the GTA series stripped away much of the goofy playground aspects of the old games in favor of realism, and in response, many critics and players approach GTA IV in a different way. While some claim that the ability to go on a killing spree breaks the overall narrative, I've seen many who reacted to the game by not even wanting to go on a mindless killing spree in the first place. The strength of the story was probably a factor for some people, as was the more difficult police chases and realistic car handling. But I think some of this reaction must have been from the overall realistic approach. Killing an innocent person in Grand Theft Auto IV feels less like killing a doll like the previous games, and more like killing an innocent person.<br /><br />It is worth noting that, at least as far as I've gotten, Fable 2 hasn't tried it's hand at a choice as big as the Megaton bomb. In fact, some of the choices feel forced to the point of self-parody; in The Spire, you're forced to listen to prisoners begging for you to feed them. It isn't trying in the same way as Fallout 3 but, as Peter Molyneux has been adamant about since the original Fable, it is trying, and it's interesting to see my own reactions to the moral choices in both games.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-15834306119246702022009-03-20T16:41:00.003-05:002009-03-20T16:55:04.534-05:00I could never be a thug, they don't dress this well.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/ScQQJuYc2gI/AAAAAAAAAOI/6A-b4DWtLB8/s1600-h/c.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/ScQQJuYc2gI/AAAAAAAAAOI/6A-b4DWtLB8/s320/c.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315391219459480066" /></a><br />Kotaku posted a link to <a href="http://8tracks.com/teamteamwork/the-ocarina-of-rhyme">this gem </a> of a nerd rap mashup today. It's Team Teamwork's Ocarina of Rhyme, a grab bag collection of rappers set to Koji Kondo's Ocarina of Time soundtrack. Video game hip hop mashes are nothing new (for some good ones, check out Chrono Khalid's amazing <a href="http://kevinnottingham.com/myblog/2008/01/04/american-gangster-remixes-rounds-61-64/">American Cyborg</a> or the infamous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXzg0D-cKds">Snoop Dog V.S. Kirby mix</a> from YTMND), but Team Teamwork has preformed quite a feat here: namely, limiting themselves to samples from a soundtrack that even diehard fans tend to forget and creating a highly listenable mixtape. Best moment? The use of the treasure find theme in creating a highly kickass beat. I'm definitely more partial to the indie rappers on this mixtape, though things like this tend to address one of my biggest problems with mainstream rappers: often times highly talented artists rapping over near unlistenable Casio keyboard riffs. Whatever your opinion, if you like hip hop at all, you'll like this.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-45395767159358957892009-03-10T13:38:00.012-05:002009-03-16T01:23:46.496-05:00Mobile Game Review: Wolfenstein RPGSomeone at Id Software must really like Chunsoft. I like to think that that someone is John Carmack; a man trapped into his own niche of creating first person shooters, when really all he wanted to do was make his own Shiren the Wanderer sequel. Perhaps in his current situation, the only he could pull this off is by shoehorning the genre concepts into one of Id's well known properties. This is the only way I can internally rationalize Wolfenstein RPG, Id Software's attempt at turning the original first person shooter into a psuedo-rougelike RPG.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SbcmgbPNTEI/AAAAAAAAAOA/LmVTbkErydY/s1600-h/header_wolfenstein.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 134px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SbcmgbPNTEI/AAAAAAAAAOA/LmVTbkErydY/s320/header_wolfenstein.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311756624016002114" /></a><br /><br />Released for various mobile platforms, Wolfenstein RPG is a halfway sequel to the just as outlandish Doom RPG. In both cases, the rougelike comparison is apt. Despite being in first person, you have four possible movement directions. Moving, using an item, or attacking uses a turn. Once you take a turn, each person in the game (mainly enemies. This game has little in the way of NPCs) take their turn as well. Unfortunately, this comparison breaks down when you note the lack of random items, randomly generated dungeons, and the rougelike genre's emphasis on changing it's world rather than character persistence. Right off the bat, that's where we get to the root of Wolfenstein RPG's biggest problem: despite it's RPG trappings, the game feels like more of a gimped, nonsensical first person shooter.<br /><br />The Wolfenstein part of the title is certainly there. Despite the weird controls, it plays just like Wolfenstein 3D (and Wolfenstein 3D had pretty bad controls to begin with.) The enemies are an outlandish mix of awkward Germans and even more akward supernatural monsters (some of which look like they were ripped straight from Doom.) The story is more linear than something like the original Wolfenstein 3D, but it's still incoherent and nonsensical. And, of course, there's the basic weapon progression that shows up in any generic first person shooter: start with a pistol and work your way up until you have the best weapon in the game. Where the RPG in the combat comes in is that many of these weapons, especially the machine guns, allow you to attack more times per turn. The pistol gets one shot, the chaingun gets four. Despite some extra weapons found throughout the game (a sniper rifle that can shoot outside of the four cardinal directions at the price of putting the game in semi-real time), it is a definite progression. Eventually you get to the point where you have the "best weapon in the game." There's almost no reason to use an old weapon once you've found a better one. It's one of the problems in the game that prevent any sense of reward from the various loot drops in the game (the other problem being that most of what else you'll find are health packs.) When you take this into account with the high level of linearity in the game, lack of any real NPC interaction, and it's almost single-minded focus on combat, there's little in this game other than it's interface to distinguish it from a plain old first person shooter.<br /><br />And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. My Chunsoft joke aside, Id were smart for understanding that the fast-pace action in games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D don't translate all that well to a Cell Phone keypad. The RPG part was more than likely an attempt at adapting Id shooters into a phone-friendly game, and that's already worlds better than my excruciating experiences with Contra and Megaman 3 on phones. But as I alluded to, it's not a particularly good shooter, and the interface downright clashes with it. In the game, the amount of actions you can do per turn is figured-as best I can tell-decided by your agility. The problem is that as the game progresses, enemies get higher agility. It eventually gets to the point where almost every enemy in the game can attack and move in the same turn, while you... can't. Sometimes, pumping yourself with syringes (stat altering items found throughout the game) can make you fast enough to keep up. Sometimes, not so much. What this mechanic amounts to is that almost every firefight is a boring, repetitive activity as you get shot, shoot, get shot again, wait for the enemy to move back in the same spot, and so on. What's worse (or better, given the combat) is the games total lack of difficulty. Despite the aforementioned movement issues, health pack placement is highly liberal. The damage you take isn't all that significant. The two boss fights in the game are easily won by binging on syringes.<br /><br />At the end of the game, I was surprised to find John Carmack and a good portion of Id software worked on the game. It just feels like something that was farmed out to some random Asian country. The dialog could not have been written by a native English speaker, or at least a sane English speaker. My thoughts about the dialog are summed up by the final line from the game's last boss: <blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">NO! *GRRRR* I will find your blood! your descendants will pay! I-WILL-BE-BACK! NOOO!!</span></blockquote><br />Wolfenstein RPG is a cool idea. Rougelikes aren't exactly common nowadays, and it's almost unheard of for American developers to take stabs at the genre. But unfortunately, the game falls short in many respects. Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of a cell phone game, but I know a flawed product when I see it. Be that as it may, I'd like to see Id take another stab at RPGs. Despite how the game turned out, a sequel could improve on the problems I've outlined. It'd take a hell of a lot of work, though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4/10</span>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-28946254020745514872009-01-31T23:36:00.011-06:002009-12-21T00:06:44.794-06:00Rez HD<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SY93zd-rfWI/AAAAAAAAAN4/swnKN2Y3Km4/s1600-h/rezboxart.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 251px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SY93zd-rfWI/AAAAAAAAAN4/swnKN2Y3Km4/s320/rezboxart.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5300587012542922082" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Even for when it was released, Rez feels uniquely old-school. One only has to look as far as the "Story" page in the Options. That's right: rather than convey the story through the game itself, Rez explains the relevant background information through a page of text that you'd really only find if you just happened to stumble upon it. That's not all that far from the days of the NES, where the most likely place you'd find story to put the game in some context would be the accompanying instruction manual. Aside from some extras (of which there are a surprising amount), the game is comprised of five relatively short stages and, on top of that, the gameplay is, despite all it's fancy trappings, a rail shooter.<br /><br />The core gameplay feels like StarFox without direct control; the game takes your constantly morphing avatar on a scripted trip while you move and fire with a targeting reticule. It's fairly simple and not all that original, but the presentation is where the game really hits off. The first comparison that comes to mind is the Disney film, Fantasia. Rez portrays a world where music exists not only as accompaniment, but also takes the place of incidental sounds and finds its way into the player's interaction with the game. There are no explosions or laser noises to be heard. Each shot fired has a corresponding musical result, usually adding to the overall song in the background. Single shots result in single staccato notes, while targeting multiple enemies, fire multiple shots, creating 8-note sequences.<br /><br />The game is at it's best when the main track and the music created by the player's actions sync up well. One great example is the boss fight from the first stage, a floating machine encased in a disco ball shield. Chipping away at the shield produces a thumping sawtooth rhythm (I found myself naturally hitting the fire button to the rhythm); taking down the swarms of missiles fired your way produces a hail of snare hits; after taking down the shield, the song triumphantly shifts gears with a synth flourish while the boss morphs into another form. The psychedelic visuals, the music, the games fantastic trance vibration system, and the naturally emerging rhythm from your own hands comes together to produce this sense of interaction with the soundtrack that I've rarely seen in other games, no matter how obviously scripted these interactions are.<br /><br />Rez is a product of a fantastic, unified vision, where the music is complemented heavily by the visual design. Each stage is a highly scripted track that pulsates and changes with the music. Produced by then-SEGA employee Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the world of Rez (a computer simulation) shares much in common with the visuals of Mizuguchi's other games: neon-bright, polygonal shapes that are low on detail by high in polish and, most importantly, sit well with the electronic soundtrack (a recurring theme in Mizuguchi's work.) The game plays up it's raver visuals with various references to enlightenment and eastern philosophy (one of the player character's forms appears to be a man floating around in a state of meditation.) One of the best examples of the developers tailoring the visuals to the music occurs in the game's third stage. As the player approaches the Sphinx-like gateway to the stage's boss fight, the screen's bright colors suddenly go negative and washed out just as the usual techno fair ceases behind a slow, distorted bass drum beat.<br /><br />While I've never played any of the previous versions (I didn't own a Dreamcast back in the day, nor a modded PS2), the claims I've heard of Rez HD's triumph over them holds true: mainly, there is almost no slowdown. This keeps the game as fast and fluid as possible. Not much can be said about the HD component other than that it looks great. Rez is a game that wanted to be HD when it came out, and now it really has it's chance. With, the caveat of not having previously played the other versions of Rez, this one feels like a special edition Criterion Collection-esque release. There are a surprising number of extras to be had: visual and sound filters (if you ever wanted to play Rez in Sepia with your ears underwater), an option to play through through the entire game in one run (which I feel should have been an option from the beginning, but whatever), a "lost" level, a score attack mode, and multiple play modifiers unlocked throughout the game.<br /><br />Perhaps the game's most annoying attribute (to once again bring up the game's archaic nature) is the esoteric manner in which these things are unlocked. The optional things i.e. using First Person Mode are strange enough:<span name="intelliTxt" id="intelliTxt"> Rank 1st in Area 5 on Score attack mode</span><span name="intelliTxt" id="intelliTxt">. Who would just know that right off the bat? But things like that are forgivable due to their optional nature. The game's final stage must be unlocked in a similar manner. Each stage has a number of cubes that must be shot to gain 100% analysis rating, but these cubes are easily missed in the hail of shots and colors the game is constantly throwing at you. Without 100% analysis on the first four stages, the player cannot progress to the fifth and final stage. The final stage of a game is most certainly not "optional", and I found it frustrating that I had to replay two of the stages just to unlock the final one. As I said before, archaic is the right word; I wouldn't have thought twice about something like this in the 90's, but doing this in modern day feels strange and out of place.<br /><br />Rez HD feels like a labor of love. It's a classic, unappreciated title who's extras feel like the man behind it loved it too much to simply give the game a cursory 720p face lift and throw it out on the market. Rez HD is a unique audio-visual experience; an interactive visualizer that should be played by anyone with a love of video games and music.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9/10</span><br /></span>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-85696183444913527372009-01-27T20:11:00.004-06:002009-01-31T23:36:03.170-06:00Resident Evil 5: Demo Impressions<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SX-_T-vlQkI/AAAAAAAAANw/POEalcKE0cc/s1600-h/ResidentEvil5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 178px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SX-_T-vlQkI/AAAAAAAAANw/POEalcKE0cc/s320/ResidentEvil5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296162036791984706" border="0" /></a>I am one of the few. Is Resident Evil 5 really Resident Evil 4.5? Possibly. Does that diminish from my experience? Not really. True to form, Capcom's demo (released several days early for Xbox Live Gold users. Sorry, have-nots) is short and to-the-point, showing off two fairly intense scenes from the game. The unfortunate thing about the Resident Evil 4 style is that it's not very conducive to being cut into a demo. What made the game great was it's unparalleled sense of pacing; the player was constantly put into different situations with a solid sense of when to play it slow and when to ramp up the action. In that sense, I think the more frantic moments in Resident Evil 4 were best taken as part of the whole. That's what this demo is: two scenes, both of which are essentially kill-rooms (or, in the first one's case, a timed kill-room). While I think both are well done, I feel Capcom could have done a little more to show of the variety that I'm sure will be in the game. Sure, they probably don't want to spoil much, but we've already seen videos of Chris and Sheva fighting off zombies on a truck; couldn't we have played some of that?<br /><br />It feels weird to say, but this demo combined with the previous trailers have really made the quality of the game a foregone conclusion to me. It's roughly the same team working on a similar game to one of my all-time favorites, and if the videos are any indication, the sense of variety and pacing, what made the game truly great will certainly be there. The menu's are refined, and now support in-game weapon selection (a feature the series has needed since it started.) The enemies, while not all that different from Los Ganados, are still every bit as good at creating that sense of a mob bearing down on you. The numerous message board complaints of the game feeling outdated by it's "walk or shoot" controls worried me. Then I played it and remembered that the limited controls were one of the best parts. Having to pay attention to when to stop, fire, reload, and get out of the way added to effectiveness of the mobs of enemies who weren't all that fast. People seem weirded out by the idea that controls they consider "bad" were made that way for a reason.<br /><br />It also feels weird to admit that, honestly, the only true innovation we've seen (and now played) so far is co-op. I have to admit that without the addition of multiplayer in the demo, I probably would have been more soured by the same-ish content. The old adage of "games are always more fun when you're playing them with other people" holds here. Not to say that Resident Evil 5 isn't fun on it's own; it's just that the cooperative play fits so well with the Resident Evil formula. I've played through the demo's two stages with multiple people, and already the moments of shared panic and elation rival some of my favorite Left 4 Dead stories. The second stage (Shantytown) involves taking down a tenacious, chainsaw-wielding psychopath amidst a mob of zombies. The level design deserves praise; we were able to find multiple strategic points within the area and, after dying several times, we actually took the time to plan out the attack. After multiple close-calls (the chainsaw is a one-hit-kill) we managed to take him down with my last pistol shot. It was epic; a fantastic moment made far better with a friend playing and shouting out internet high-fives.<br /><br />When it comes down to it, I'm more excited about Resident Evil 5 than I was when I saw the first trailer. I was expecting"more of the same", however fantastic that "same" is; what I got was "more of the same that I can share with a friend". And that makes a difference. Co-op made Too Human bearable for me. For a most-likely great game like Resident Evil 5, it'll make it that much better.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-13394291768658068492009-01-09T11:54:00.005-06:002009-02-23T17:29:05.191-06:00Game Log #10<p> </p><ul><br /><li>Perhaps against my better judgment (and the judgment of most of my 360 owning friends), I've been playing <strong>Call of Duty: World At War</strong>. "Against my better judgment" because, despite the insane amount of time I've put into the multiplayer, none of my friends are really playing it all that much. If they're playing a Call of Duty, it's Modern Warfare (I was told as much by most of them; I ignored them based on the fact that WaW was 20$ off at Target.) The latest of my long list of weird perspectives on games is that I have yet to play Modern Warfare. In fact, other than playing a lot of CoD 2 at a LAN Center, this is my first Call of Duty in a long while.</li><li>I was pretty steadfast in my personal decision that Fallout 3 was my game of the year. And then I played <strong>Left 4 Dead</strong>. We all knew Valve had a winner on their hands over the game's long PR cycle, and finally playing it confirms that. My review is in progress, but I'll give a couple thoughts here. I really believe that more than any other co-op game I've ever played, Left 4 Dead succeeds at it's team dynamic. The usual subversive magic of Valve's games are present, this time in gameplay mechanics designed to encourage staying together. The AI director is every bit as effective as you could hope. The 360 controls are some of the best console shooter controls I've ever used. It doesn't match the speed or precision of a mouse, but with it's subtle auto-aim tweaks and quick but manageable turning speeds, it definitely approaches it more than anything I've ever played. More to come.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mortal Kombat V.S. DC Universe </span>has been my big in-person multiplayer game. Not sure what my thoughts are about this game other than "hilariously unbalanced." I'm sure that's what they were going for, though.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fable 2'</span>s been played a lot as of late. I'd have to say that of any game I've played with a customizable character, Fable 2 has possibly created (somewhat without my help) the most accurate portrayal of myself in a video game. And by that, I mean a great big fatty with sideburns and a pirate hat. The horns and the three consecutive divorces are creative license.<br /></li></ul>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-57632318812977818262008-12-14T00:36:00.008-06:002009-01-12T22:40:19.231-06:00Fallout 3<div>It's a commonly held opinion among gaming critics that the more airs of realism and freedom a game puts on about it's world, the easier it becomes for the illusion to fall apart. We saw this a lot in Grand Theft Auto IV, with it's extreme dissociation between it's story and gameplay, and I think we see it a lot in Fallout 3. And the first part of the above rule fits: Fallout 3 tries it's damnedest, and succeeds in a lot of ways. There were definite moments where I felt for the characters, was immersed in the world. But like a grease stain on your best Sunday shirt, the aberrations stick out like a sore thumb. In this article, I'm going to point out some I found interesting, funny, baffling or what have you. Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Alzheimers</span><br />The citizens of the American wasteland are a forgetful bunch. A common thread I've found with Bethesda's games is the bizarre disconnect between an NPC's role as an element of the plot and the NPC's role as an NPC. There are many times when one will be saying one thing while the other will be saying the exact opposite. So far, one of the best examples I can find so far occurs fairly early in the game. If you take the "good" path in Megaton and disarm the bomb, you'll be periodically visited by a lady in the town bearing a gift. I say periodically with some reservations: the situation is so bizarre that it almost seems like it has to be a glitch. She just keeps giving me more stuff. I even figured out the time: I was greeted by the lady, went to sleep for a 24 hour period, and found her outside again waiting with another box of Blanco's Mac and Cheese. The real punchline, however, is the dialog. Upon greeting me, she tells me how much the town appreciates what I'm doing for them. They've scraped together and saved to get me this gift, whatever it may be at the time (a box of apples? Shotgun shells? 'sall good.) Then I try speaking to her right after, hoping to maybe press her further and maybe find a new questline, only to be met with "Go away. I have no time for strangers." Shit.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Flop</span><br />One of the weirdest issues in Fallout 3 is it's repositioning of bodies each time an area loads. I haven't had time to test it, but in general, loading into an area with a dead body seems to cause it to literally drop from the sky. I assume it's another one of those side effects of having such an expansive world onscreen at all times. Still, it's endlessly amusing to see a super mutant flop around like a fish on the pavement. </div><div> </div><br /><div><strong>Missing Person(s)</strong></div><div>The Capital Wastelands is a world full of mysterious disaperences. And by that, I don't mean the same mysterious disaperance that comes with double-crossing the mob or angering the Disney Gestapo. They just fuckin' disapear. Take the water treatment plant worker in Megaton. I didn't have the good sense to look around online and see if this was a recuring problem, and I'm not going to take the oppertunity now to do so. All I know is this jerk bought 200 caps worth of scrap metal from me and I haven't seen him since. And I know it has to be a glitch. I looked <em>everywhere</em>. If there's some kind of secret bonus round stage in Megaton that I just don't know about, I'd apperciate being told about it.</div>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-61688974494489878152008-12-02T20:45:00.005-06:002009-01-12T22:40:56.501-06:00Game Log #9 (with the promise of more frequent posts)I pretty much stopped this Game Log thing. Hell, I haven't been posting much at all. It's no use lamenting this fact, however. I'll commit when I'm damn well ready. It's probably now, but who knows.<br /><ul><li>Going against my long-standing self-imposed ban on renting games from video stores (it's a price versus time thing), I rented a copy of Mirror's Edge. The game's somewhat short length (my playtime was around seven hours), it luckily fit in the 5 day rental time. I wasn't too busy that week. The stars aligned. I will be writing a review on Mirror's Edge, though I'd like to offer some quick comments here. Mirror's Edge is an interesting game with an fantastically implemented set of mechanics who's main, fatal flaw is that it's developers often times seem to be at loss on how to "break up" the game play. In short, the parkour gameplay has the potential to get monotonous (though I'm not entirely sold on that. More in my review). The games attempts to break up the possible monotony fall in line with the genre DICE seems to be trying to distance themselves from: the modern First Person Shooter. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, just... misguided? More to come.</li><li>I've recently found the time to get back in to Dragon Quest 8. I've spent some time recently with some other JRPGs as of late, and my view has changed somewhat on the game. I like it a lot more, first off. Many of the games biggest issues for me, mainly the archaic nature of some of it's mechanics, are actually fixed by abilities you receive in-game. "Some" is the operative word. I appreciate JRPGs, and many of the mechanics that haven't really changed all that much in the last few decades are precisely. Maybe I'll find time to elaborate on that. In short, I'm not the kind of person who necessarily feels that game mechanics should be abandoned as soon as they're well-worn. But when it comes to things like the ordeal the game puts you through to save your game, I can't show any love to that. If there's one thing I hope Japanese game designers learn from this recent downturn (and hopefully rebound) of their industry is to put less idiotic restrictions on saving your game. And the game never really fixes that. Luckily, one of your characters learns a spell that fixes one of my biggest issues. In Dragon Quest, if one of your party members die in a dungeon, you're fucked. You have to get out, trek back to a nearby town, then pay some arbitrary sum of money to a priest for a resurrection. It's extremely annoying, especially in dungeons. Leveling up Angelo gives you Zing, which gives you a 50% chance of resurrecting a fallen party member. It certainly makes the game easier, and I assume that was the point. I don't think granting shortcuts to players after they've reached a certain point is a bad idea. But do they have to make it so damn hard? Japanese RPGs are a strange genre for me. I love them, and tend to rush to their defense when people are hatin'. Too bad these games seem intent on fighting me all the way. Chrono Trigger had cross appeal among non-RPG fans because it stayed away from the awkward tropes I'm talking about. Too bad none took a page from that book.</li><li>I borrowed a copy of Diablo 2 from a friend. It's mostly a trial for me, as I'm planning on buying the Battlechest. After all, two people can't play on battlenet at once with one CD key, and playing with said friend is one of the reasons I wanted to get into Diablo. More on that to come, but so far, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Necromancers seem like the way to go.<br /></li></ul>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-13792293273710241362008-10-28T21:55:00.016-05:002008-10-29T19:07:40.665-05:00The Electric Haunted Hayride<div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SQfR6c3K0GI/AAAAAAAAANQ/QPXckYw79AM/s1600-h/img_3442_left4dead.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262405491715919970" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 320px; cursor: pointer; height: 240px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SQfR6c3K0GI/AAAAAAAAANQ/QPXckYw79AM/s320/img_3442_left4dead.jpg" border="0" /></a>All this talk of zombie invasions in <a href="http://kotaku.com/5067574/world-of-warcraft-plagued-by-zombies">everyone's</a> <a href="http://kotaku.com/5068751/because-zombies-%252B-anything--more-awesomer">favorite</a> <a href="http://kotaku.com/386941/gta-multiplayer-wait-im-a-zombie">games</a> with the general resurfacing of zombies as a rule during Halloween is bringing back my bizarre 10 second musings on how awesome it would be if a zombie apocalypse ever happened. Never mind that I'd probably be one of the first to go. Luckily, if my activities this October are to be believed, I'd make one hell of a zombie. In between intense readings of The Walking Dead, a comic I took far to long to read, I've taken an odd job at a local haunted hayride.<br /><br />Whitetail Farm's haunted hayride occupies a bizarre space somewhere between exceptionally hokey and genuinely scary. I'd feel extremely awkward criticizing the ride if it were some sort of family-friendly wacky Halloween fun ride, but the rather gory props used and attempts at genuine scares seem like they were going for a somewhat older audience. At the same time, it plays it ridiculously safe in other areas. Is a cliche chainsaw-wielding Jason or a flying white sheet ghost really pushing the horror envelope? And that's where I come in. The ghost part. Not a zombie per se. That's the job of a friend of mine several yards down the ride, while another guy I know jumps at passers by in a devil costume between conversations with a Priest who, none too ironically, is a total pedophile. Does lusting after underage girls negate the stereotype?<br /><br />There is a truly bizarre thrill to be derived from scaring a trailerfull of Missourians pulling a rope behind a tree. With the hood of my raggedy jacket down low, crouched behind a couple thin trees who's seems fairly dubious, the frightened screams from up ahead serve as a wonderful confirmation that I succeeded. It's not that I'm particularly overjoyed with my having what it takes to become a haunted house worker, if that is something to be excited about. It's just nice to be vindicated for the effort. "Did you see those punks? That's right. I <span style="font-style: italic;">scared </span>them. Beat that, McDonalds Burger Flipper man. Damn straight I'm earning that $6.25 an hour." And let's bring that back to where we started. I'd be one hell of a zombie because I'm already doing a damn good job scaring people for minimum wage. Imagine how good I'd be at it if minimum wage was <span style="font-style: italic;">brains</span>?<br /><br /></div><div> </div>And like a preacher myself struggling to bring a story about my niece and her skateboarding friends back to the Lord, it's time to bring this exciting anecdote back to games. I've been building this weird metaphor in my head between my weekend job and Valve's upcoming multiplayer horrorfest Left 4 Dead. The game is like the virtual extension of a haunted hayride. The survivors are the paying customers ($60 dollars, in fact) on a ride crafted to some degree to scare the living shit out of you. Meanwhile, the zombies are the paid employees. Except it's like if you wanted to pay to work at the hay ride. I guess that's not totally out of the realm of possibility. There are paid internships and unpaid internships. I'm sure it can go into the negatives. Left 4 Dead is one of those fun games I get to talk excitedly about with my friends who don't happen to be internet-reading game nerds. It's a big budget zombie game coming out at just the right time, Halloween. As a result, a lot of my friends just know about. Something odd I've been noticing though is that many of them don't seem to know about playing the zombies. Perhaps it's not something sold very heavily in the advertisements?<br /><br />The zombie side has me flip-flopping on whether I'm interested or not. All reports from the field make it sound pretty fun, for sure. The survivor side sounds like where it's at, though. The AI Director system which dynamically restructures the game based on your preformance and experience, really speaks to Valve's unique approach to making games. As anyone who took the time to replay the Orange Box games with commentary knows, Valve loves to focus test. But they seem to take it from another angle. Rather than dumbing down their games based on rumblings from the peanut gallery, they come up with new and creative solutions that include the idiots while keeping the more seasoned players from walking away in disgust. It'd be interesting to know the kind and amount of focus testing was involved in the making of Left 4 Dead based on the nature of the game. Valve promises restructuring encounters, making them easier on you if your ragged and beaten, or upping the ante if you're doing too damn good. It would be interesting to see how they found out when to let off the onslaught. What is too much? Hopefully me and Valve will agree on when and when to ramp up the difficulty. If Portal is any indication, I'm sure we will.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-65458243999033014702008-09-28T21:25:00.011-05:002008-10-28T21:54:25.110-05:00Toonami is Dead. Long Live Toonami.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOA-zmWbgDI/AAAAAAAAAMw/NqmqmnFU93M/s1600-h/3453-toonami-1-nlbki.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOA-zmWbgDI/AAAAAAAAAMw/NqmqmnFU93M/s320/3453-toonami-1-nlbki.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251266221702873138" border="0" /></a>And so, after more than 10 years (you better be right, Wikipedia), Toonami is finally dead. Shows over, folks. And to be honest, I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I wasn't around for it's humble beginnings of running Thundercats and Voltron. I didn't even really get cable till around 2002 (and we'll get to that.) I sure as hell didn't really stick around for the end, either. My interest tapered off around the end of 2004 due to the general lack of anything new or interesting. I had already discovered the joys of fansubs and high speed internet, and, to be honest, had no interest in the shows on at the time. I did catch on to Gundam SEED later on though, and later became a Megas XLR super fan. But that's another story.<br /><br />But it was that 2002-2003 Toonami stint that I remember the most. I can probably thank those programs ran during those 2 years for ultimately solidifying my love of anime. Some of them (namely Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z) don't really hold up now that I'm somewhat older and wiser in the medium, but it was definitely a step up from what I had been watching before. As previously stated, my Saturday morning cartoon watching was limited to whatever was on the basic channels in the area. Admittedly, some of these were Batman TAS and Sailor Moon. But most of them were KidsWB throwaway cartoons that maybe aired 2 to 3 episodes before realizing that no one really cared. Pokemon, of course, was still hot then, but even then I was growing tired of it. So the switch between that and weekday afternoon viewings of Toonami was pretty staggering to say the least. "What's that you say? You guy's have got cartoons with killing and PG swear words!? Sign me up!" Ah, the thought processes of a young anime fan. At the time, I was at least semi-aware of the fact that Toonami edited their programs and that the opening sequences were by and large cut out, but it was mostly irrelevant to me. I hadn't even seen Adult Swim when I started out, much less an episode of DBZ with it's original audio. Put simply, I had nothing to judge it by.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOQYB9Og7nI/AAAAAAAAAM4/h5Yes0QC9Ps/s1600-h/ShiningGundam.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOQYB9Og7nI/AAAAAAAAAM4/h5Yes0QC9Ps/s320/ShiningGundam.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252349487315218034" border="0" /></a>Toonami sort of drilled into me a lot of the prefrences and tastes I have when it comes to anime. G Gundam, which debuted in 2002, was probably what made me the giant robot freak I am today. For all the flack the series gets from, well, MOST anime fans, I think G Gundam is, in many ways, one of the best introductions to the super robot genre. It really carries on many of the traits that make the genre awesome. It was a series with a borderline idiotic premise that existed for it's writers to show off how zany their international robot designs could be, and where every character always has something crazy and melodramatic to say, most notably Domon Kashu's Indigo Montoya-esque repeated battle speech. As much as I through enjoy Gurren Lagann, shows like G Gundam were doing the over the top impassioned monologues years before Gainax tried their hand at it. The action was fast and furious, without any care to outdated concepts like "logic" and "science" and "realisim". And the special attacks? Totally memorable. Despite having some of the most bizarre names ever (Bakuretsu God Finger? Hot.), using a burning mech hand to crush another mech's head is about as visceral as it gets. I was totally pumped at every new episode for the whole production of stock footage and the aforementioned impassionate battle speech, followed by the attack name screams. To say that it's stuck with me would be an understatement.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOQYhVo30KI/AAAAAAAAANI/bVdybzYaOsU/s1600-h/yu+yu+hakusho.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SOQYhVo30KI/AAAAAAAAANI/bVdybzYaOsU/s320/yu+yu+hakusho.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252350026444165282" border="0" /></a><br />And then there was Yu Yu Hakusho. I had seen a couple episodes from it's short run on Adult Swim, but I never got fully into it until it made the switch to Toonami. I've actually been slowly trying to rewatch the series as of late. I've watch only the first 3 or so episodes, so the jury's still out on whether it holds up. The first couple episodes are, as remembered, pretty damn slow (who's bright idea was it to begin a shonen fighting series with episodes of Touched By an Angel?), but we'll see where that goes. And of course, there's Kenshin and the Dragon Ball shows which, say what you will know, where totally fascinating to me back in the day. The Big O, another classic robot series, ran a bit before my time, but when I caught it rerunning on Adult Swim, I fell in love with it's outlandish designs and obivous Batman influence.<br /><br />I'm not sure really what to say. It's a shame that Toonami got to the state it did. It's really an sign of the times. Anime (and action cartoons in general) are on the out. Cartoon Network is making no secret of wanting to switch to some kind of live action dominate format like Disney Channel. I'm definetly not going to have an outburst over them betraying their name or anything ridiculous. They can do what they want, and I probably wouldn't watch their channel either way. I do fear what this will do for the anime industry as a whole however. One must assume it won't be a change for the better.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-12310271065324002312008-09-24T21:54:00.009-05:002009-07-08T23:27:31.513-05:00Silent Hill 3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SNr90eM9kXI/AAAAAAAAAMo/-u-MQeocrZg/s1600-h/SilentHill_3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SNr90eM9kXI/AAAAAAAAAMo/-u-MQeocrZg/s320/SilentHill_3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249787393556189554" border="0" /></a>I often find myself a latecomer to game franchises. It sort of just happens that way. For example, my first Metal Gear game was Metal Gear Solid 2, followed by 3. It's been only recently that I went back to play the first Metal Gear Solid. My experiences with the Silent Hill series have been similar. Walk in to a used game store (at least in the great state of Missouri) and there is a decent chance you'll find a $10 used copy of Silent Hill 2. You're going to have to look hard for anything else. 3 is noticeably vacant. The Room is abundant on the Xbox, but I've sworn off of Xbox games based on my prior experiences with the 360's shoddy emulation. Meanwhile, if you DO find a copy of the original Silent Hill, be prepared to pay upwards of $50. So when I found Silent Hill 3 at my local Game XChange (after me and my friends narrowly escaped death from tornadoes that turned out to not actually be there), I bought that shit in an instant. I'm sure completing an entire game in a single day is wildly unhealthy. I was surprised that I was able to finish the game in just under 7 hours. Surprised, but not really disappointed.<br /><br />The two Silent Hill games I have played have kept me coming back as a result of expert presentation. The music, visuals, and story are what allows the game to vastly excel over it's often weaker gameplay aspects. One of the most defining aspects of this presentation is the music and it's relation to the events on screen. Team Silent composer Akira Yamaoka obviously understands something that I wish more composers, both in video games and in cinema, would catch on to: <span style="font-style: italic;">sometimes the best music for a scene is little or no music at all. </span>Silent Hill 3 is a game with no shortage of tense battles and utterly disturbing moments. I think one of the things that sets Team Silent apart from the rest is that in most games, you'd expect some rousing John Williams-esque orchestral score, perhaps with some guitars and latin chanting to accompany these scenes. In Silent Hill, you're often treated to little more than a pulsating background noise. It's brutally effective for conveying the chillingly surreal, dream logic-<span>contingent </span>world of Silent Hill. I think Yamaoka's skills also lie in variety as well, which serves to add emotional depth to the games. He sets the intense mood for the game with the hard rock opener You're Not Here, while tracks like End of Small Sanctuary give us a break from the paralyzing horror of the game.<br /><br />The variety in music definitely helps, because the game changes environments quite often. In addition to the area's around Silent Hill, the game often lapses into the "Other World", a rusted, shit covered nightmare version of the real world. You could be cynical and say that the Other World concept largely exists as a means to reuse the same maps with different textures, but sometimes great gameplay design is born from budgetary constraints. The change is often times jarring and unsettling, and I think in many ways more effective than in Silent Hill 2. For example, the hospital in Silent Hill 3 becomes a fiery red throbbing mass where you'll find yourself running against the walls in order to find out where the hell you are. As usual, Team Silent's fetish for rusted grates and fans are more than present. It all contributes to this grimy, cerebral universe that really makes the series is so great.<br /><br />In some ways, however, the story is a step down from it's predecessor. Silent Hill 2's deeply personal story is, in my opinion, almost unrivaled in the gaming industry. And Silent Hill 3's is definitely an interesting endeavor. A tale of a girl with a connection to the mysterious town that draws her back in after years of absence. It's a story that definitely works, but it very rarely surprises. There aren't many twists and startling revelations to be had when compared to the original. It's a largely straight forward horror story. And that's good, really. I found myself liking Heather by the end of the game, but the same level of obscurity just isn't there. And I'm not sure that's really a mark against it. It's really just something to mention.<br /><br />As I ready myself to play Homecoming, the newest entry in the series, I'm finding myself tallying the differences between 2 and 3 and 4, and wondering how much Homecoming will build upon it. But ultimately, it's really only the presentation that I'm thinking about. Much like a point and click adventure game, I'm not looking for game play advancements in this series. They'd be nice, but as long as Double Helix supplies the same interesting level of presentation that Team Silent has maintained over the last few years and hopefully takes it to new places, I have high hopes.<br /><br />9/10ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-55642144032785886662008-09-14T17:17:00.002-05:002008-09-21T19:48:02.017-05:00Game Log #8A crash course in why I should keep these up to date:<br /><ul><li>Played and, over the span of one Saturday afternoon, beat <span style="font-weight: bold;">Silent Hill 3</span>. This marks the 2nd Silent Hill game I've played, the other being Silent Hill. If only the other games in this series weren't so obscenely hard to find. I'll save my thoughts on 3 for my review.</li><li>Played and, over the course of a week and a half, beat <span style="font-weight: bold;">Resident Evil 4</span>. Expect a review for that as well.</li><li>I'm afraid I'm about to do with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Persona 3 </span>what I do with far to many RPGs: namely, I'm not going to finish it. I can't get over my feelings on this. I've put 40+ hours into the game; that's far to much to turn back now. But at the same time, with so many other, shorter games to play, and so many new games on next month's terrifying horizon (Silent Hill Homecoming, Fable II, Fallout III, and so on), it's easy to put away a game that has, by all accounts, 50 more hours to go. And I hope I don't give up on it; I'm still enjoying the game. It's the pacing that's keeping me down, mostly, and RPGs are, in general, designed to be slower-paced. It's weird how attracted I am to this genre that seems so obivously not made for me. As for my progress, I've got 4 full moons to go, supposedly. The boss fight wasn't especially challenging, but satisfying as most P3 boss fights are. As I've said before, the exploitability of the combat system is what makes the game truly unique for me. Hopefully, I'll have the game completed before Persona 4 see's it's stateside release. Is that an unrealistic goal? And even if not, will I even PLAY, much less beat Persona 4? Good question.</li></ul>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-80305207991764061302008-08-30T14:06:00.001-05:002009-07-14T12:06:16.841-05:00Game Log #7Most of my gaming attention has been dividing between two games over the past couple weeks:<br /><br />- Still chugging through <span style="font-weight: bold;">Persona 3 FES</span> with constantly shifting feelings on the game. The high points are high, and the low points are very, very low. I think what's really kept me in the game has been the combat and dungeon exploration side of the game which, ironically, is the part of the game I hear a lot of people disliking. In particular, there's a pretty vocal contingent of the internet that can't stand how exploitable the battle system is. I, however, find that the main draw. It's not the most strategic JRPG I've ever played, but exploiting the enemies various weakness and managing your 2 Persona-per-turn limit is a welcome change of pace in a genre where grinding is a central component. There's something truly beautiful in being able to drop a boss in more ways then simply leveling up for hours on end. I want to find time to tweak with the Persona fusion and weapon creation systems at some point as well.<br /><br />I do feel that the game does have a bizarre difficulty balance throughout, but I'm not sure it really bothers me all that much. You could do battle with a boss weak to Zio and finish him off in a couple minutes, and a couple floors later get brutally raped by a tower boss with no weakness to anything. I do have to begrudge the game for how it handles death. I've really reached the point where it's hard for me to handle games where I can lose hours of progress by dying once (something I'll get to in my second game.) The nature of Persona 3 makes it difficult to simply leave Tarturus to save, as you would have to restart again from the last warp floor. I've found myself longing for Dragon Quest's idea of halving your gold and sending you back to the next town. Couldn't just take some of my Yen, but leave me my new persona's and gained XP?<br /><br />But what really gets under my skin with this game is the story. I've come to reconcile how awful the majority of the social link conversations are. I'll just skip through them and get my next rank. But then there's the dialog that's more difficult to skip, as it pertains to the main story. And I WANT to like the main story, I really do. There's a sort of feeling of wrongness under the surface; it's the same type of feeling I got from watching series like Evangelion or Revolutionary Girl Utena. The story seems like it's going to morph into something entirely different, and I anxiously await it's transformation. But I do this at the cost of a boring quasi mini-game where I have to go hit on girls at some stupid beach.<br /><br />-My handheld experience as of late has been a used copy of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer</span>. After hearing some good things on the game from an episode of Retronauts, I found a used copy at my local Vintage Stock and gave it a go. I'd have to say that other than a few experiences with Nethack, Shiren is probably the first hardcore roguelike I've really played. I got used to the global turn concept pretty quickly, but I'm still trying to figure out all of the exploits therein.<br /><br />It's a game where dieing once means it's game over. No matter how much you have leveled up your character, it's all gone. It's not as scary as it sounds, however. The leveling up is far faster than your average RPG; I've gotten Shiren to level 15 several times, and none of my single play throughs have been much longer than an hour. There is also an element of item persistence as well. Blacksmiths in the game can level up weapons for a price, so you could find a weapon to level up, even if you loose your own.you can find warehouses in the game at which to store items. This means that you can play it safe and store your Katana +6 for a future playthrough.<br /><br />Another interesting concept is that the game really encourages you to, well, die. Various characters and events, such as the aforementioned blacksmiths, can only do their job once per play through. The sidequests you accomplish stay accomplished even after your death. If helping someone allowed him to join you as a party member, he can join you again on subsequent playthroughs. So far, it's been an interesting experience. Now if only I could figure out how to keep my food reliably stocked.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-72168247369957349142008-08-20T17:00:00.002-05:002008-12-09T05:18:14.100-06:00Electric Bibleland: Wisdom Tree Funpack #2 (Part the Uno)<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Sometimes, people make mistakes. Sometimes those</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" > mistakes involve making Christian-themed video games. Whenever that happens, we'</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >re there. This... is <span style="font-weight: bold;">Electric</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Bible</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">land</span>.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SC8ay_pUsPI/AAAAAAAAAGc/0C3X5jpXTTM/s1600-h/TheKingIsComingTitlePage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SC8ay_pUsPI/AAAAAAAAAGc/0C3X5jpXTTM/s320/TheKingIsComingTitlePage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201405558016749810" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">King of Kings: The Early Years</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1mTTDa-I/AAAAAAAAAIM/5Mq1op1rgW0/s1600-h/King+of+Kings_001.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1mTTDa-I/AAAAAAAAAIM/5Mq1op1rgW0/s320/King+of+Kings_001.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235774973926403042" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1mgZMDNI/AAAAAAAAAIU/mMocIY8nJkI/s1600-h/King+of+Kings_002.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1mgZMDNI/AAAAAAAAAIU/mMocIY8nJkI/s320/King+of+Kings_002.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235774977441795282" border="0" /></a><br />The first thing you'll notice about King of Kings is that it is a fucking cheater. This isn't ONE game, Wisdom Tree. This is MANY games. Some might even say THREE. If we're counting the title screen, it's FOUR. I didn't sign up for this shit, and neither did you, reader/listener/viewer/watcher/erotic PI (God I hope so.)<br /><br />The three+ game pack is pretty common within the NES Wisdom Tree pantheon. I'll give King of Kings a 1Up over the rest, however. Why, you might ask?<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKmsbNt4wpI/AAAAAAAAAJE/0_h7Jx_6kJM/s1600-h/King+of+Kings_004.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKmsbNt4wpI/AAAAAAAAAJE/0_h7Jx_6kJM/s320/King+of+Kings_004.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235905625333482130" border="0" /></a>That's right. Someone at Wisdom Tree realized that even the most uncultured Christian children might not be entirely cool with Wisdom Tree's majestically repetitive music and gave you the option to turn it off. Somehow, We Three Kings doesn't translate so well to the NES sound chip, believe it or not. I like to think that the man who volunteered this brilliant leap forward in game design was the sound programmer himself.<br /><br />In my version of the Wisdom Tree story, his wife and children left him after he unwisely brought home the Exodus soundtrack (limited edition vinyl pressing. I own it. Do you? Loser.) And who could blame them? Could she (I guess her name is Bianca Bianca) ever truly except the MONSTER she had married? With the combination of his children getting a new daddy, and his failure to be nominated for any awards for Exodus drove him over the deep end. It's enough to make anyone loose faith in their work, especially when that work is the subversion of Nintendo children. Subversion involving 3 separate, but equally awful, video games in one truly powerful cartridge. The bad kind of powerful.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >The Wise Men</span><br />The Wise Men is a game about dicks. That's what it is. It's a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System about dicks. There's camels and exciting desert animals and scripture quizzes, but it's mostly about dicks.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1HD8tcgI/AAAAAAAAAIE/lL-uJZ5MYFQ/s1600-h/King+of+Kings_032.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk1HD8tcgI/AAAAAAAAAIE/lL-uJZ5MYFQ/s320/King+of+Kings_032.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235774437230211586" border="0" /></a>In this game, you collect dildos. I'm not sure what they do, but you collect them. Sometimes they change colors. I guess that's cool.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk2AmTph6I/AAAAAAAAAIc/BdjMZp3jCeY/s1600-h/King+of+Kings_014.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKk2AmTph6I/AAAAAAAAAIc/BdjMZp3jCeY/s320/King+of+Kings_014.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235775425705772962" border="0" /></a>Here's another penis. It must be some kind of Sand Penis Demon, brought into the desert by Satan himself as a means to anally violate Jesus's old people friends on their way to his birthday party. I guess that's pretty bad.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/Thepane/AnimationKingofKings_016.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 185px;" src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/Thepane/AnimationKingofKings_016.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>I'm pretty sure this is also a penis. If I had to choose my favorite penis in the game, this would be it. Sand penises are fantastic, but phallus cactus takes the cake. Except instead of a cake, it's actually a penis.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKm4Xtha91I/AAAAAAAAAJM/GOrHrORxIo8/s1600-h/Animation+King+of+Kings_007.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKm4Xtha91I/AAAAAAAAAJM/GOrHrORxIo8/s320/Animation+King+of+Kings_007.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235918759291189074" border="0" /></a>The Wise Men is a game about riding Camel Birdo through the desert in search of Jesus I guess. I'm inferring this from the game's soundtrack (the aforementioned We Three Kings), a song about riding Camel Birdo through the desert in search of Jesus.<br /><br />The Wise Men is a shining example of what Wisdom Tree excels the most at: making games with shitty control. Every platformer Wisdom Tree laid their greasy fingers on played greasy. The controls are slippery as all hell. You remember when you'd play those old generic NES sidescrollers that all had the generic Ice Level with slippery terrain, which forces you to adjust your timing and input accordingly? The Wise Men is like playing an entire game of that ice level. You always end up jumping just a little farther than you should, something which can easily throw you off in a game filled with some pretty difficult jumps. Perhaps it was just industry standard at the time, but considering the audience that Wisdom Tree was aiming for, the level of difficulty some of the jumps reach is pretty surprising to say the least.<br /><br />On top of that, you're wrestling with a Friday the 13th-esque Camel Birdo attack (pictured above) that conveniently arcs over just about any enemy in the game. You have a decent chance of hitting birds when they're right in front of you, but for just about anything else, you'll have to institute a bizarre "jump backwards and shoot" approach to any confrontation.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKySnFcTNQI/AAAAAAAAAJU/48A3lRX4e6I/s1600-h/Animation+King+of+Kings_039.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SKySnFcTNQI/AAAAAAAAAJU/48A3lRX4e6I/s320/Animation+King+of+Kings_039.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236721666898474242" border="0" /></a>Lucky for us, successfully landing a hit can cause some <span style="font-weight: bold;">goofy wacky hijinks</span>, such as the above picture. This isn't even a glitch. You just fight a fox miniboss that can also do crazy fucking backflips. I guess the fox can also lay eggs. I'm not sure if that's cool or not. Anyway, it's been a wacky time, and I was planning on beating the game to see what crazy shit happens in the end. But then this happened:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/Thepane/AnimationKingofKings_047.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/Thepane/AnimationKingofKings_047.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Next time: Flight to Egypt, a game about being able to jump but not being able to jump on anything.</span>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-40106392423433132882008-08-09T22:57:00.007-05:002008-08-14T23:09:18.460-05:00INTERNET<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SJ5qCP2wYGI/AAAAAAAAAHM/jRHEVUqZ70U/s1600-h/internet_0.img_assist_custom.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SJ5qCP2wYGI/AAAAAAAAAHM/jRHEVUqZ70U/s320/internet_0.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232736403899572322" border="0" /></a><br />A recent dispute with my bank involving bogus ATM fees left me with a closed account and a recent paycheck of 300 dollars burning a hole in my pocket. Luckily, I was in walking distance of a Best Buy and, like any non sensible person would, I decided it was time to blow 138 of those hard earned (not really) dollars on finally connecting my long dormant (not really) Xbox 360 to the internet. So, wireless adapter and one month live card in hand, as well as the newly released second volume of Gurren Lagann, I walked out having spent enough cash to get a free gift card. This is money that could have, and probably should have, been spent on necessities like food, gas, saving for college. But who needs that?<br /><br />The following bullshit is presented in convenient bullet point format because it's convenient and it's not inconvenient and I'm right.<br /><ul><li>Questionable n-router purchases at Goodwill Stores can, and in my bizare case, do turn out well.</li><li>My connection occasionally goes dead for reasons I haven't had time to analyze. It's either a problem with the router (more likely), a problem with the adapter (God, I hope not), or Murphy's Law in exciting action.</li><li>My friends are cheap assholes without 360s. As a result, my online gaming experiences include such exciting events as listening to a twelve year old white kid talk about black people and arguments over whether Halo 3 is indeed better than Grand Theft Auto IV. Worth $100 dollars? You be the judge.</li><li>Braid is awesome and I want Braid.</li><li>I downloaded the Alone in the Dark demo. I could never have expected the game would involve blinking as a gameplay mechanic.</li><li>I haven't even watched the first disc of Gurren Lagann. I haven't watched the first box set of GaoGaiGar, either, but I own it; I'll own the second box set in a few days. Perhaps I should stop buying anime untill I actually <span style="font-weight: bold;">watch </span>it? Of course not. The Otaku way is to die surrounded by more volumes of pornographic comics and 70's robot shows than any human being could ever have time to consume.</li><li>Persona 3 is stealing all my fucking time, so I'm not watching anime anytime soon. I'm still finding time to watch Kaiba, aparently.</li><li>Kaiba's opening theme could be a Bjork song, but it isn't.</li><li>Back to Xbox Live: Being a sniper in 360 Team Fortress 2 is impossible and completely unfun. Is it really that big of a deal to add mouse and keyboard support to your games, Microsoft? Really? If Sony can do it, so can you.</li><li>Much to my dismay, GTAIV's saves cannot be transferred between profiles on my Hard Drive. It's not a HUGE deal that I have to use two different profiles for playing GTAIV single or multiplayer, but it's inconvenient. Convenience is the flag I fly. Why else would you even have bullet points in this sham of an article? If I can have bullet points, Rockstar can have fucking save transfers.</li><li>Instead of getting names with homosexual connotations banned from Xbox Live, I feel Microsoft's effort would be better spent banning white children with names like Gangstah Chef.</li><li>My only USB keyboard is shitty and ergonomic and I hate it. I got it for free, but I hate it.<br /></li></ul>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-60218169757105599112008-07-24T03:04:00.003-05:002008-07-24T03:16:53.466-05:003:103:10, too late to be up my dear<br />Riot gear cash cow, don't you just bring the fear<br />With a tight install base, you got it just right<br />In those bastard's sights, Lord just might smite it<br />And grant you a well deserved respite<br />Seems like, song keeps droning<br />No new news, old news, build your building, but first call zoning<br />They'll have your head for this, you know what happened last time-<br />Crisis, crime, scraping grime off your life as you see your own light at tunnel's end<br /><br />Now I have never, called in to question, the possessions and repossessions<br />Playing tricks on your own secession<br />So let me have my time, 3:09<br />Get back to bed, you Deadhead, redead army<br />It isn't time<br /><br />3:09ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-9410001812492698922008-07-23T15:24:00.006-05:002008-12-09T05:18:14.494-06:00Condemned: Criminal Origins<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SIeX_dikLFI/AAAAAAAAAG8/4zH-FVaIhck/s1600-h/criminal.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SIeX_dikLFI/AAAAAAAAAG8/4zH-FVaIhck/s320/criminal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226313009103907922" border="0" /></a>I think violence in video games is something we now take for granted in some respects. There's the ongoing Jack Thompson-led battles to convince us that our games are indeed driving us to insanity, but that's it. The only issue anyone really takes with the violence in our games are the disgruntled, misunderstanding outsiders who believe it's just too violent. Playing Condemned made me realize there's another facet of video game violence we often miss: the emotional impact of violence. It's been touched on in games like the Metal Gear Solid series, but never, I think, in the way this has. Violence is a means to an end for gamers. Devil May Cry, for all it's fun, is basically a flashy action film where any individual kill barely leaves a memory. I do not believe this is always a bad thing; not in the slightest. We need gaming's Total Recalls to it's Saving Private Ryans. Otherwise, it'd all be dire, depressing material. But I think that's where I appreciated Condemned the most: for making me feel repulsed, disgusted, sometimes even <span style="font-style: italic;">sorry </span>for the violence I was committing on the screen.<br /><br />Condemned was really messing with my emotions all throughout the 10+ hour experience. The manipulation of fear is obviously central to the experience of a horror-themed, and Monolith proves they have an excellent grasp on how to do it. In a game with a central theme of tracking a serial killer while stalking dark, decaying buildings and battling deranged druggies, I could really tell Monolith was taking generously from the Silence of the Lambs pot. The effective atmospheric effects create a sense that an enemy could come from any locked door, maybe even right behind you. So much of the game reminded me of the final confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill in the basement, and I found that fascinating.<br /><br />Much like Silence of the Lambs, Condemned uses it's brutal violence to back up that sense of fear. After all, without the threat of consequence, what is there to really fear? The violence within Condemned was so harsh that it sometimes made me want to avoid fights. I think there are many contributing factors to this. I think part of it is that the violence itself is so stripped down. We're used shooters where we take down the enemy with a bullet from a few feet away. In Condemned, you're beating down deranged hobos with nail-covered 2X4's and lead pipes. The combat is given a sense of weight and impact, helped along by the game's Breakdown-esque manipulation of the first person camera. Motion blurs occur at appropriate moments, while choice points in the game involve vomiting on the floor and being thrown down stairs with the appropriate twists and turns of the camera. On top of that, the game tells the bulk of it's story without reverting to cutscenes. The game's story in an of itself seems to take place within the span of a single night.<br /><br />One of the most interesting aspects of the game's visuals is it's use of "psychological effects". Without warning (and loading times, surprisingly) the world around you will suddenly change from nightmarish to even more so in Silent Hill fashion. One of the spookiest moments in the game involved entering a room owned by a stalker of the main character and seeing brief flashes of walls covered in photos. But Monolith managed to add more to these moments than a scarier paint job, going so far as to slowing your movements, an extremely effective trick for fostering a sense of helplessness.<br /><br />Ironically, the game doesn't even play much like an FPS at all. If anything, the combat is most analogous to a late 80's/early 90's arcade brawler like Streets of Rage. Fights often boil down to drunken strikes with makeshift weapons. Finding firearms is a rarity, and even then, are disposable due to the complete lack of ammunition. Unfortunately, the combat can often feel slippery and difficult to control, and often falls apart when multiple enemies are brought in. Your slow movements in-game make it difficult to handle more than one attacker. While the game was obviously developed to be slower paced, being a first person game developed with consoles in mind first, the enemies don't seem to accommodate this as much as I would like them to. Beyond the mechanics of the game, the combat leaves a strong impression due to how <span style="font-weight: bold;">brutal </span>it is. Your usual enemies are clearly insane; they'll scream and swear loudly while relentlessly following you. The heavy sounds, camera, and violence level all contributes to pretty unsettling fights with finishing moves that leave your opponent with a broken neck. It's the kind of violence that keeps itself from jumping straight over the top, but disturbing enough to give you the appropriate chills.<br /><br />I didn't really know what to expect when I bought Condemned, but I came out pretty satisfied. I think I value the horror game that can truly grab and manipulate my emotions the most, and Condemned worked beautifully in that regard. The story's somewhat abrupt ending and the potential for improvement in the game has left me wanting more, and I certainly hope to get my hands on the sequel in the near future.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9/10</span>ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6326528863458360126.post-16339497461043511712008-06-25T23:37:00.007-05:002008-12-09T05:18:14.697-06:00I Don't Get It<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SGMd7xfE_sI/AAAAAAAAAG0/zupRwS-Y0G0/s1600-h/Advice_broken_electronics.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H5Uj2-5MKF8/SGMd7xfE_sI/AAAAAAAAAG0/zupRwS-Y0G0/s320/Advice_broken_electronics.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216045706158341826" border="0" /></a>Playing video games competitively has always been a concept I could never quite wrap my head around. Any time I could spend "training" with Street Fighter 2 to show off on the anime convention tournament circuit would be, at least in my opinion, better spent playing the million other games I haven't actually played yet. That's probably why I just don't like fighting games. Whatever depth in the combat there is, I don't want to spend the hours learning it all.<br /><br />I've come to understand that games like Virtua Fighter 5 aren't for me. They're games designed for the perfectionists who get their kicks learning every combo in the book. The late-nighters holed up in your local anime con gaming room while hitting on underage catgirls and munching on strawbery filth-drenched Pocky crackers. The tournament kids who live for the hot-blooded Guilty Gear contests with ill-defined prizes. The cool kids of the gaming room. In their own way, they're the closest people who know what the hell a "Guilty Gear" <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>to embodying the famed alpha male of 4chan. Did you see that combo? It was so cash.<br /><br />Me, I'm left out in the dust. I got about as far as memorization of the Izuna Drop before my brain shut down and let the Flying Swallow do the work. I just smile and nod. Despite the rampant insanity and pederasty apparent in the very eyes of these damned human beings, the face of terror is not here. Well, not here in this specific group of people. But in this room of flashing DDR machines and 50 screens running Naruto games, the true unspeakable Lovecraftian horror resides in the dark, scary Super Smash Brothers corner.<br /><br />What is it that drives these people? Indeed, the people who have latched on to Smash Brothers the most are indeed the exact opposite of it's intended audience. Fighting games are ultimately a niche designed for the most obsessed. Smash Brothers was designed as a fighting game for people who don't like fighting games, much in the same way that Mario Kart is a racing game for people who don't like racing games, and Mario Party is a game for people who don't like fun video games. So what is it that gives people the idea that it's the kind of game that you should be pouring your heart and soul into?<br /><br />The insanity of the situation is pretty self-evident. In Mario Kart, any success you find thanks to that golden mushroom can easily be undone by a randomly-shot blue shell. Likewise, Smash Bros is a game where victory is never guaranteed by skill. No matter how good you are, you're finished the second some bright-eyed newbie picks up hammer or successfully summons a Snorlax from the bowels of Pokemon hell. Nintendo practically screamed at the tournament players to stop this nonsense by adding tripping in Brawl. Needless to say, people were angry. But yet, they still play. A game where each character has little more than 3 moves and final smashes can cover the entire screen with no way to block. And yet, they studiously play. Madness.ToHellWithPovertyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146428317443700642noreply@blogger.com0