Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2009
2-20-09
About a year and a half ago I bought a GameCube and several games, which I proceeded to never play. I finally pulled out Resident Evil 4 the other day and, holy crap, it rocks. Notice to 360 owners: if you've got a friend to play it with, you must immediately download the Resident Evil 5 demo.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
11-27-08
So I finally played the Wii today. I guess it's fine for stupid "games" like Wii Fit, but for anyone who wants to play an actual, you know, game, it blows. I played the new Smash Brothers and, with the Wii controller, it was worse than the N64 version.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
11-8-08
In case you missed it, Fallout 3 is amazing. Very different from the first two, but a brilliant game in its own right.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
9-28-08
"Money can't buy you love, but love can bring you money. In software the only sustainable way to earn money is by first creating love, and then hoping that some folks want to demonstrate that love with their dollars.
The cheddary 'Free to Play' is not just a cheesy marketing slogan, but a shift in assumptions; it costs approaching nothing to give away some bits, or let people play Puzzle Pirates for free. Every player, free or paid, adds value to the community and excitement for other players. Free players are the content, context and society that encourages a small fraction of the audience to willingly pay more than enough to subsidize the rest.
'Not fair', the vendor of music or packaged software cries. Well, tough shit. Nobody added your business to the list of protected species, despite what your lobbyists and lawyers say. Find a business model that's actually appropriate to the 21st century."
-- Daniel James, at Penny ArcadeSaturday, September 20, 2008
9-19-08
Speaking of new versions of classic games, Desktop Tower Defense has been upgraded too. There are new towers now as well as various challenge modes. Unfortunately, the old scoreboards have been cleared, so my mazes are gone forever and I'm going to have to relearn the game.
9-18-08
I don't know when this happened, but there's an expanded version of Stick RPG. That mall thing that was closed before is open now, and you can do crazy things like upgrade your house and play in the stock market.
The best way to make money is still just to max intelligence, though.
The best way to make money is still just to max intelligence, though.
9-16-08
So Rock Band 2 came out and, honestly, it appears to be crap. The song list is lame and there's nothing new except a handful of completely unnecessary interface changes. I swore off the Guitar Hero series after witnessing the abomination that was GH3, but Guitar Hero: World Tour actually looks a lot more exciting.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
8-23-08
Dave bought Soul Calibur 4 for the 360. Namco's major accomplishments with this one are as follows:
- Yun-Seong has been turned into a gay pirate. This is not a joke.
- Ivy's boobs have gotten even bigger.
- All of the characters' eyes are now blood-rimmed, as though they'd just been snorting coke. With their eyes.
- Cervantes has a beard. He is actually now the hottest character in the game.
The excellent story mode of Soul Calibur 2 is apparently a relic of the past, as the designers seem to have spent most of their time pandering to repressed teenagers by making all of the characters hotter (see "Cervantes" and "beard," above) and giving them bigger boobs if at all possible, and by making it trivial to unlock every single character within .5 seconds of inserting the disc.
True to the spirit of the shitfest that was Soul Calibur 3, a bunch of new features have been added that add nothing whatsoever to gameplay, such as an "equipment destruction" system which is really just an excuse to transform the characters' already revealing clothing into even more revealing clothing as the battle progresses. Men lose their shirts and fight barechested. Women are much better about keeping their shirts on, but all of their clothing becomes tattered and jagged as large strips of it are ripped off. I wonder how many repressed teenagers will subtly throw matches with female characters in an effort to see how much ass they can glimpse. (Answer: quite a lot, and I recommend Sophitia.)
Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, everybody's still a bit slower than they were in Soul Calibur 2. This means you can usually attack into a blocking opponent and still have time to block their counterattack, making combat a tedious block-centric affair where the only way to deal damage is to hope that your opponent does an attack at the same time you do and that your attack randomly supersedes theirs. To be fair, there is now a "soul gauge" that eventually flashes red if you block too much, at which point the next attack from your opponent will pierce your block and send you into a state of "soul crush." But the inclusion of this feature is essentially an admission on the part of the developers that Soul Calibur 3 was a piece of shit, because Soul Calibur 2 was perfectly fine without any such shenanigans. Moreover, the soul gauge recharges so quickly that the threat of soul crush is rarely relevant. Things like this make me wonder why game designers are so reluctant to, you know, keep doing what works.
Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, characters perform fewer moves than they did in Soul Calibur 2. In 2, pretty much any button combination + direction resulted in a different move. In 3 and 4, many of the combinations are either redundant or do nothing whatsoever. For a game that's (let's face it) resolved primarily by button mashing -- or, okay, intelligent button mashing -- the dramatic decrease in combat variety continues to be disappointing.
So in short, if you're wondering, "Have they found a way to make a Soul Calibur game that isn't strictly worse than Soul Calibur 2?", the answer is still no.
- Yun-Seong has been turned into a gay pirate. This is not a joke.
- Ivy's boobs have gotten even bigger.
- All of the characters' eyes are now blood-rimmed, as though they'd just been snorting coke. With their eyes.
- Cervantes has a beard. He is actually now the hottest character in the game.
The excellent story mode of Soul Calibur 2 is apparently a relic of the past, as the designers seem to have spent most of their time pandering to repressed teenagers by making all of the characters hotter (see "Cervantes" and "beard," above) and giving them bigger boobs if at all possible, and by making it trivial to unlock every single character within .5 seconds of inserting the disc.
True to the spirit of the shitfest that was Soul Calibur 3, a bunch of new features have been added that add nothing whatsoever to gameplay, such as an "equipment destruction" system which is really just an excuse to transform the characters' already revealing clothing into even more revealing clothing as the battle progresses. Men lose their shirts and fight barechested. Women are much better about keeping their shirts on, but all of their clothing becomes tattered and jagged as large strips of it are ripped off. I wonder how many repressed teenagers will subtly throw matches with female characters in an effort to see how much ass they can glimpse. (Answer: quite a lot, and I recommend Sophitia.)
Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, everybody's still a bit slower than they were in Soul Calibur 2. This means you can usually attack into a blocking opponent and still have time to block their counterattack, making combat a tedious block-centric affair where the only way to deal damage is to hope that your opponent does an attack at the same time you do and that your attack randomly supersedes theirs. To be fair, there is now a "soul gauge" that eventually flashes red if you block too much, at which point the next attack from your opponent will pierce your block and send you into a state of "soul crush." But the inclusion of this feature is essentially an admission on the part of the developers that Soul Calibur 3 was a piece of shit, because Soul Calibur 2 was perfectly fine without any such shenanigans. Moreover, the soul gauge recharges so quickly that the threat of soul crush is rarely relevant. Things like this make me wonder why game designers are so reluctant to, you know, keep doing what works.
Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, characters perform fewer moves than they did in Soul Calibur 2. In 2, pretty much any button combination + direction resulted in a different move. In 3 and 4, many of the combinations are either redundant or do nothing whatsoever. For a game that's (let's face it) resolved primarily by button mashing -- or, okay, intelligent button mashing -- the dramatic decrease in combat variety continues to be disappointing.
So in short, if you're wondering, "Have they found a way to make a Soul Calibur game that isn't strictly worse than Soul Calibur 2?", the answer is still no.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
8-5-08
Eschalon: Book 1 is a kick-ass RPG. It's old-school, but the graphics are still pretty good, the story is cliched but intriguing, and the character system is excellent. If you've been bummed that the last good pure RPG came out like ten years ago, be bummed no longer.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
7-31-08
Geometry Wars 2 is amazing.
Now, the original Geometry Wars was the best Live Arcade game of all time -- really, the only good game -- so naturally you'd expect the sequel to be a huge flaming pile of ass. But no. It is unbelievable. Imagine everything you ever loved about Geometry Wars. Then imagine it all doubled. Then imagine playing it multiplayer. I mean, jesus. If you own a 360, you either need to buy this game and play it, or buy a shotgun and shoot yourself in the face.
Now, the original Geometry Wars was the best Live Arcade game of all time -- really, the only good game -- so naturally you'd expect the sequel to be a huge flaming pile of ass. But no. It is unbelievable. Imagine everything you ever loved about Geometry Wars. Then imagine it all doubled. Then imagine playing it multiplayer. I mean, jesus. If you own a 360, you either need to buy this game and play it, or buy a shotgun and shoot yourself in the face.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
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