Hush404

Please let this be more than a Rumor

2012-01-27T00:42:00.000-04:00

So, I'm just going to jump right into it. There are heavy rumors that Rocksteady, the team behind Batman Arkham Asylum/City are hard at work on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's game akin to that of Arkham City.

If true. I'm going to be immensely happy. Their Batman titles blew me the hell away and to think that the same amount of love and dedication could be put into a TMNT game... gahh. I'm at a lost for words. As a youngin' I grew up on a few solid franchise. That being Batman (the animated series mostly) TMNT (both the cartoon and the movies) and GhostBusters (again Movies and cartoons) and thus they all have a huge place in my geeky heart. We got a fairly decent Ghostbusters game in 2009 and Batman has had 2 amazing titles swoop into gamers hearts... I would love if TMNT were to follow.

The article mentions an Arkham City like progression/story with bosses like Shredder, Krang and more. Appearances by Rocksteady, Bebop (funny that the name matches the studio huh?) April, Casey, footsoldiers, the Turtle Van and more ^_^

Please, please, please let this be real... and not just a bogus rumor. PLEASE!

Some of my all time fav movies

2012-01-22T15:28:00.000-04:00

Why not mix things up and just go with a random idea? :) I always seem to go a little overboard with things, in thinking I need whip up a monster of a blog to get out some very simple idea... this Time I'll try to keep it as much to heart and simple as I possibly can.

This will be a collection of films of which I enjoy very much, can watch a number of times and still enjoy the hell out of... in no particular order and I'm sure I've forgotten some key titles.

Donnie Darko

I was asked what exactly draws me to this movie... and I can't really pin point it. The characters, the story, the mystery around most of the story, the themes? *Shrugs. I love how it ends, I love both Donnie and his friend Frank, I love how he deals with life when he is assumed, by others, to be very different and sometimes even wacky. It's music haunts me, it's underlying values make me think. It's a movie I can watch a gazallion times and still get chills from. 28:06:42:12

Jurassic Park

Maybe I've got a thing for Dinosaurs. Just putting that out there. But when I first saw the intensity that is Jurassic Park... I near shit my pants. I would of been... 7 when it came out... so that no doubt factored in how it impressed me... but to this day I can still stick that sucker into my movie player and enjoy the hell out of it. The Dino's of course steal the show but I dig some of the characters as well. It's funny seeing Sam Jackson in such a 'non-hard ass' role and over all the entire movie packs a wallop with believability and suspense. The sequels weren't even close to reaching that peak... as the first stands alone as the big picture in my eyes.

Avatar

I think the world and the visuals created are what shine in Avatar and I'm fine with that. I'm a Sigourney Weaver fan, so seeing her in it was special and each and every character seemed to play their parts well... but in the end it was the amount of work put into the unique world and look that it all has that impressed me most. nI heard many a comment at the time that the story was a 'Pocahontas rip off" - but I say, 'what's wrong with that?' Pocahontas was a decent love story about two factions that were more or less at war as the two key characters saw through that to be together. How much to the core can you get than that?

Leon (The Professional)

Known simply as Leon in some circles. I've only recently saw this title (sometime last year) and I absolutely love it. The characters and bond they have through out the movie are stronger than steel and I loved seeing that relationship blossom. Each character seemed to bring something that added to the other and in the end they were both better because of it. It's subtle at times and I feel it's a bit slow paced, but it works perfect for the movie. One I'll deff be watching again and again. Oh also, it doesn't hurt that I'm big fans of both Portman and Reno.

Ghost Busters 2

I loved the first one as well, but the second one is the one I have more attachment to. Much like Jurassic Park, it's something I grew up on and thus nostalgia is there as a factor to my love for this movie, but in the end I still love to watch it because of the characters, the humor, the unique premise of it and the over all quality of the film. Too bad, not too much has come out of the series in a long time. They did that game for PS3/360 which I loved (though had some gameplay issues) and a horrible top down shooter that tried to introduce a new character set over the old ghostbusters... but it was horrible. Rumors of a third film have been in the works for ages... but Bill Murray is a stubborn fuck head, not wanting to do it and even the other 3 actors are iffy on making it about them, rather wanting to hand the torch down to a different GB team for the future. Sigh.

The Dark Knight

I love MOST Batman films (Batman&Robin was trash and Forever was okay) and Christopher Nolans take on the franchise really impressed me. Begins was superb, but TDK really took it to a whole new level. Ledgers joker did a supreme job, something I questioned as I love Hammill's Joker from the animated series (and Rocksteady based Arkham games) and the feel of the movie over all was solid. I'm pumped for The Dark Knight Rises... but have fears of it being much less a mammoth awesome movie as TDK was.

Alien

Can you believe that this movie is a product of the 70s?? I'm not trying to say that movies from the 70s are garbage, but that you don't usually see movies from that era stand up visually to movies of today. This movie looks like it could of been shot just yesterday. Their focus on real world probs instead of cheap gimmicks really paid off. It sure as hell didn't hurt that they had a core recognizable and unique alien set, thanks to Giger's brilliant mind, as well as a creepy, mood setting tone and a great premise. Each sequel has been hit and miss depending on situation (like Alien 3's horrible use of crappy CG), but Alien is my favorite.

Dragon Heart

A movie not well known to many. It's the story of a Dragon Hunter whom goes on a quest to slay every dragon until he finds the one that destroyed a boy's (the future king) future by tainting his pure heart by sharing his. He ends up befriending one of the last remaining Dragons, working with him to fool the rich in giving them money for taking him down. Eventually, he learns that the dragon he befriended is the dragon he's been searching for and he's forced to make a decision to either kill the dragon, which he believes will heal the boy of his wickedness, or let his new dragon friend live. It's a touching story and the dragon is great character. The sequel was garbage.

Scarface

I've actually wanted to view the first Scarface movie as I hear it's good. But, the Scarface I know is an excellent movie on it's own. The climbing of the latter than Montanna does from dirt to king and then the sequential fall from said high place along with all of the people involved in between, the loyalty of friends, etc in the world of drugs is an incredibly interesting and thrilling one. Going back, it's a bit of a long watch, but you seem to not notice as you're watching it as you're caught up in the whole thing. Be it the bathroom scene where Tony and his budd were about to get torn up or the iconic scene where Tony makes his final scene, it's golden through and through.

Evil Dead 2

ED2 simply because it's SOOO much like ED1... just with a bigger budget :P I love both of them and even the third one, but ED2 is what got me into it. It's silly, but also interesting as hell and just goes to show you what you can do with the right amount of ambition and some friends willing to back your ideas. Have been a fan of Bruce Campbell ever since. Loved Raimi's style ever since and while some of the monster effects were cheesy... it's pure gold in my books.

The Devil's Rejects

By far, the BEST Zombie produced movie yet. His first title, House of Thousand Corpses was alright, but leaned more on cheap grusome effects than actual good directing. It's sequel, TDR is a much better film. It's moves quicker, has much more fleshed out characters with a better story line, better music... and just over all a better scope over it's campy predecessor. It's ending scene will always stay burned into my head as one of the greatest I've seen.

Reign over me

Admit it. When you think Adam Sandler... you think goofy hack, right? Did you know that he's actually got some solid talent? Every so often he does a movie where this shines through as he takes on a more serious role over that of comedy punching bag. This tale follows a man whom finds a friend of his from college wandering the streets and begins hanging out with him. Before long you learn there is something off about Sandler's character and Cheadles character attempts to help him out... all the while also trying to be the friend that sandler needs. Eventually we learn that sandler's entire family was killed in a tragic even and it's really messed him up. There's ups and downs and it's really like roller coaster as you watch it. It's superb.

Pitch Black

The whole universe crafted by Diesel and team is one I enjoy very much, much like Avatar. Unlike Avatar, this movie doesn't rely on a lot of special effects to get it's tone across. The sequel was okay and did a lot more effects, but the focused in small project feel of Pitch Black worked better IMO. The Riddick character is one I like very much, the feel and tone of the movie is what kept me.

My 2011 Games of the Year

2012-01-13T12:04:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's silly to name just a few titles your "Games of the Year" but... ehh, Everyone has their favorites and it's fun to share. You may or may not agree with my choices, please discuss that in the comments section :P I decided to just copy the style I used last year and place the appropriate titles. Do note that I've only included title's I've actually bought and played (at least some). *I took the "best fighter" category out because I didn't have a single title to insert.

Genre and Category awards:

Best Music: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

While I considered Skyrim for many a category, it was rather clear that it would win the best music category. MGS HD gave it a run for it's money - mostly because I love the music for MGS games - but seeing as Skyrim's melodies are new and not part of an HD collection, I'll give it to Skyrim. From the opening theme to the quiet scores that accompany you as your journey through the lands, the music is memorable.

Best Graphics: Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception

While some PC peeps may go on and on about larger textures, more anti-aliasing and physics based volumetric effects in their games... Uncharted 3 stands above technical babble and delivers a gorgeous looking treat to your eyes. Sure, there are some high quality poly models and the textures are fine tuned to look great... but it's how it all comes together that makes it special. The way the sand blows around, the way ruble crumbles away when destroyed, the way the sun peaks through holes or how the characters interact with their environment, giving it a surreal feeling.

Best Shooter: Killzone 3

So... I mulled over the winner of this category. I kept in mind the large popularity of Cod/BF and such titles... be realized, "Hey, this is my Goty, not the general gaming audience's goty". So... seeing as I don't care for Call of Duty and merely played the beta for BattleField... those games aren't even runners up. I also did consider Gears3 for this category... but in the end, I enjoyed Killzone 3 more. The amount of variety put into the environments and things for you to do really ensured you never really got bored. The story was alright, nothing spectacular... but it sufficed. The rest of the game shined with delicious visuals, solid sound, music and rock solid mechanics.

Best Racer: MotorStorm: Apocalypse

This was a harder category to fill in... as I hadn't played too many racers this year. I enjoyed the demo for NFS The Run and I've been continuing to play the hell out of NFS Hot Pursuit... but I never purchased The Run and Hot Pursuit was a 2010 title... so I had to do some digging. Dirt3 let me down and Test Drive Unlimited 2 REALLY let me down... which really just left the new MotorStorm title. I actually haven't played it nearly as much as the other two Motorstorm titles... but it's a lot of fun. Avoiding destruction while trying to win isn't easy and it really mixed up the feel of the game from Pacific Rift.

Best RPG: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Was it really a surprise that Skyrim would win best RPG? Checking over my list of 2011 games, I was wondering what other RPGs would even compete... I noted Dragon Age 2 (which I didn't care for) and Dungeon Seige 3... which was good in it's own right... but not on the level of Skyrim. Does the Witcher 2 count? I actually count that as more of an action/adventure title tbh... and I don't have a single JRPG from 2011... so, Skyrim easily squashed the competition. While it's got it's flaws, I love just losing myself in it's world and doing stupid stuff. Much like Oblivion before it, I can tell that it's a title I'll keep coming back to over the years and enjoying just as much.

Best Adventure: Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception

I debated giving this to the Witcher 2 (as I mentioned above, in the Skyrim for best RPG bit, I felt the witcher2 more action/adventure than RPG)... but in the end gave it to Uncharted3 because of it's superb method of story telling. I like Drake, I love Elena and Sully is prob the kewlest old dude I know :P The back and forth each character has through out the entire game entertain me and make me feel like I'm in on a much bigger thing than just a game of exploration. We get to learn about Drake's past, of his errs as a human and the incredible journey that has taken him and the player to the point they are at now. Rare a game lets you get this close to the characters. I love it for that.

Best MMO: DC Universe Online

I'll be the first to tell you that I really don't care that much for MMO style games. The idea of actually paying per month for them really doesn't sit well with me and while I did buy and play around with DCUO when it first came out... it has since been made into a free-to-play title that anyone can download and try on their PC or PS3. When I think MMO, I think elves, mages and knights with point and click gameplay, hours of level grinding and item collecting. DCUO doesn't seem to fall into that... as it's obviously super hero based on modern times and offers much more 'action-game' like controls for it's combat. Something I appreciate very much and perhaps why it appealed to me. It's far from perfect and I only dabble in it... but the fact that it's held my attention past the first hour or so (such is the fate of most MMOs I drop) is impressive.

Best Free-to-play Game - APB Reloaded

When you say the words "Free to play" oft time you think of a half-hearted game that doesn't seem to hold your interest more than a sitting or two. Thankfully, a lot of MMOs seem to be jumping on the trend of 'free to play' status, allowing gamers to jump in without spending a monthly fee. APB use to be a paid service game, but went under and was picked up by a new company and made free to play... and holy crap it's fun. It's heavily action based and gets crazy fun when you start teaming up with others. Sort of like the multiplayer aspect of GTA IV - only done right - you join either the cops or gang like groups in the struggle for the city, earning new customization options as you go through the ranks.

Solid Nod - Portal 2

I wanted to add this category to give credit to a game that didn't win any other category and yet seemed too important not to win something. Portal 2 is one hell of a game. It takes the first and improves on it's charming silliness, while adding a completely robust co-op mode in along with it. Even better, you can play co-op between PS3 and PC which is something I've been looking for in games. It's puzzles seem to be the perfect middle ground of thought provoking and simple to solve and it's sense of humor, style and awareness is second to none.

Best Download Title (original) - ilomilo

I loved the hell out of ilomilo and played it quite a while. The later levels made me want to kill an elf in frustration because they get HARD. I would like to go back and complete the game 100%... but I don't know if I have the patience. The premise is simply. You control 2 little plush looking things, often on separate planes on a 3D cube based maze. You've got to use both, switching back and forth to get them to meet up with each other. It's tricky but rewarding, fun, charming and oozes originality. I loves it.

Best HD Remake (single) - Beyond Good & Evil HD

I'm currently playing Stranger's Wrath HD so... that was some of the stiffer competition... but BG&E it's a better game. I'll admit, I loved the game on the PS2 and it really hasn't lost it's charm. This whole game is charming. It's characters make me smile, it's style makes my eyes smile and it's smooth gameplay makes my fingers happy. I love that it feels so real... even if the game looks cartoony and is set on a world where animals act like humans... I love that it feels about just the right amount of difficult, that it gives me some freedom even if following a decently linear story. I just love BG&E.

Best HD Remake (compilation) - Ico/Shadow of the Colossus Collection

I was going to put MGS HD here... which I own... but haven't played... so... while I know it's good, it's not going to fit my criteria. Ico/SotC however is just as good. Having the two in crisp HD and being able to live their experiences yet again is something special.

Pleasant Surprise - Payday: The Heist

I've said this before, but it's 100% true. Payday really surprised me with how cool it is. I got it free for pre-ordering the pack of games PSN had on sale and if it hadn't been for that I might not of even heard of it. As it stands I still jump in once in a while to play it's unique cops/robbers style gameplay and still enjoy it - which is quite a feat for an online game in my world (as they usually bore me).

Most improved Sequel - Resistance 3

I have to admit... I'm not the biggest Resistance fan. I liked the first... and was pumped for the second one but felt it kind of cheap and I hated the PSP title. Jump to R3's release and it's an understatement to say I wasn't exactly anticipating it. But surprisingly they did it right. The extra year of development time REALLY showed and this game is great. It's not amazing, but it's - by far, the best Resistance yet. Bravo Insomniac.

Best New IP - L.A. Noire

I'll start by noting, I did not finish LAN... but what I did play, I enjoyed the hell out of. The unique take on the detective genre mixed in with the cool special effects they pulled off with the actors really made this one stand out. It sure doesn't hurt that the actual game is fun to play :)

System Awards

Best PSP - Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy

So... while Duodecim is a fun and awesome game... it kind of won by default... as it's the only 2011 PSP game that I purchased. lol. Final Fantasy characters are back, beating the hell out of each other in a much more unique way that I thought square would take it when I first heard the concept.

Best DS - Pokemon Black

Again, by default this wins as the top 2011 DS title. Guess handhelds had a crappy year as this too is the only game I bought. I don't love black. It's still pokemon, but I still have nostelgic feelings for games like Red over black.

Best PC - The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

I actually had a hard time choosing which game on the PC deserved this as there were a number of candidates... but in the end I chose the Witcher 2, for a number of reasons. First, it's a gorgeous looking game - which isn't everything, but it's still nice to see. It's also got some great characters, acting, and most importantly, gameplay. I had issues with the way fighting worked in the first witcher title.... this one takes a more standard method on the issue. I also love that this game is from a small studio whom is all about the love they pour into games :).

Best PS3 - Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception

Counting the amount of games I bought for PS3 really only solidifies that 2011 was a great year for PS3. It had the most titles (for me) to look at and choose a goty for that system. Various games were considered but in the end Uncharted 3 wins. Naughty Dog continues their line of high quality and story rich, character strong games which have a cinematic quality like none other. Drake's latest adventure is as superb and engrossing as the others and really solidifies him as staple character for the company. It looks gorgeous, sounds the same and plays like butter (that's good).

Best 360 - Gears of War 3

Now flip and... we're back to a system where I am left with a small list of 2011 games I purchased :S I thought I had a larger list of 2011 360 games... but it turns out I just bought more 360 games that were released in a year before 2011, lol. Thus, the biggest for this year is Gears3. I enjoyed gears 3. Visually it really stepped up over Gears2... but gameplay and story wise? I think I still prefer Gears2. I felt like there was just WAY too many areas where you get into incredibly boring firefights with standard grunts, one after another after another after another... gaaah. I eventually just ran through a good portion of the last third of the game because I was completely sick of mowing them down. So, while it's a good game, it still left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Best Wii - Monster Hunter Tri?

Umm yeah. If it's weird to pick a game for a system's goty from a list of 2 or 3... it's even weirder to pick one from a list of zero. I have yet to pick up Skyword Sword and thus have not bought a single Wii title in 2011 (well, I bought a few, but they were older games). Monster Hunter Tri has entertained the hell out of me and is probable the most played game on that system. But yeah... :P

Game of the Year - Batman: Arkham City

Ahh Batman. I was actually debating on a few titles for Goty. Skyrim was the closest competitor... but in the end Batman won. Skyrim is astounding for sucking you in and keeping you... but IMO Arkham City is a better game. Every damn aspect of it... just oozes quality. The visuals are top notch, the sounds equally as such, the story, characters, environment lay out and so on. I love Batman and this is by far the biggest nod to people like me... in the history of batman. Even something as simple as the combat seems fresh and challenging. There's tons of content to find and unlock, challenges to complete, characters to interact with, references to find, gahh... I just love the title to death. That said, I actually didn't finish it... possibly because I had to restart it 3 times because of my PS3 dying... but also because I'm kind of scared to finish it... as it means it'll be over :|

The Stinkers:

Worst Game of 2011 - Test Drive Unlimited 2

Ugh. A game I watched for some time and loved the hell out of... until I played it. The driving is okay at best and the rest of the game screams amateur to me. Visually it's not as strong as I'd of liked, the story and characters are HORRIBLE and over all... I just got extremely bored of the entire thing. Boourns.

Hardest to get into - E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy

Holy Crap. If it's not the SUPER complex system they've built around the lore, or the lack of good tutorials around that system, perhaps the 6000 buttons and menus that need navigated to get the most out of your experience... then it's the complete backwards online infastructure that the entire thing has. It's a very "into itself" cyberpunk RPG/Shooter kind of game which really appealed to me... but the learning curve is BRUTAL. I spent like 4 hours playing with a friend and still didn't have a clue as to half of the stuff I needed to know to understand it. That and it took us a good 2-3 hours just to get up the online. As there was no way for us to simply connect to either each other or a server so we could do co-op... we needed to go to a third party app that created a virtual private network over the internet that fooled the game into thinking we were playing a LAN game. Talk about gaming from 1997 eh? lol.

Most Disappointing Sequel - DiRT 3

DiRT3 isn't a bad game... not by any stretch... but Codemasters took a franchise I LOVED and just made it unplayable for me. I would rip through turns, speed past spectators and go for the gold in both DiRT 1 and 2... but I can barely keep my fucking car on the road in DiRT3. I have no idea what happened... Ugh. I may try going at it again in the future, but right now... I'm just upset with it all.

Most Disappointing Title - Rage

I think the Hype around Rage is what I'm really getting at. By the way they presented it... it was the next coming of gawd... the likes of which would bury Fallout and Borderlands in the dust it kicked up. It's FAR from that. Thus far it's a decent game, but NOTHING compared to what it was hyped up to. Lots of people have major issues with running it too (on PC) meaning they didn't even manage to debug it enough to ship it in a decent state. The whole 'Mega Texture' thing... is garbage is RAGE is anything to go by. It makes landscapes and far away items look GREAT... but if you happen to get close enough... it looks like hell. That's just not a trade off I think is worth it.

The Game no one played - Two Worlds II

Two Worlds can't seem to catch a break. The first one was a competitor to Oblivion and while it was flawed, it was a kewl first attempt. The second one comes along and it's got quite a bit of improvements and is actually a decent game... but most people who played the first aren't looking for a sequel... and everyone else is waiting for Skyrim. It's actually not too bad of a game... but it got sooo buried and forgotten it's sad.

I would also like to mention Alice: Madness returns. It took seemed to have a tough ride. It's not an amazing game, but very decent in it's own light. It got passed over by many as well.

An evolved christmas?

2011-12-27T22:25:00.001-04:00

I've discussed this with a friend in an email earlier (lol yeah, some people still send emails :P) and just thought I'd share the same thing with you guys/girls here.

It's something I've been becoming aware of more and more over the last few years and this year it really just sunk in and solidified. Remember when Christmas (or even just the holidays in general) meant a whole lot of hustle bustle, time spent getting things ready, shopping for 'mega gifts' and items you were sure would make Christmas a 'big' thing, decorating for the occasion and more or less succumbing to an entire holiday that seemed to suck so much more time away from your life - at least in preparing for it than the actual time spent enjoying it? I sure as hell do. We may not have ever gone 'CRAZY' with Christmas as much as some families do, but there effeminately seemed to be a whole lot involved in the entire scheme of it all.

This year was a bit different. For a few reasons, one being my mother and her inability to get up and do things as easily as she'd like, our time focused on helping her out and getting any tasks she'd normally take charge of into our already busy schedules, stuff like Christmas shopping, Christmas dinner, tree decorating, getting gifts for others ready, and so on. (She had to have more surgery early this December, which went well btw, she's recovering nicely). Couple that with the passing of one of my Aunts a few days before Christmas (she's been battling cancer for years, we knew this was coming, but that doesn't make it suck any less) and we've got a lot on our minds to say the least. But, we managed, just fine, to get things done.

Come Christmas morning... the day had a different feel. Our family's tradition is to wait until everyone is up (or wake them up :P) and open gifts together, sharing what each has gotten and from whom, during this I noticed how nice it was to just sit down and enjoy some down time. Quiet, something played on the radio in the background as we systematically tore through the piles of gifts anointed to each member. There were your typical "I didn't know what to get, so ... here's something random sweets, clothes or other impersonal gift" but then there's those gifts that you know mean something. It's interesting because they can be the tiniest things too. For me, I got a book mark (I've been reading a lot lately) with Michael Scott on it (of The Office, a show I enjoy very much) from my brother... and while it was a small, simply gift... I loved it because it encompassed 2 wonderful things I'm into and it took thought on behalf of my brother to connect those.

I also got a small Batman figure from my cousin's girl friend, Just because she "Spotted it and thought of me". I was floored by how awesome that was. I noticed a few other instances in my families' gift unwrapping where you could tell there was something more to the gift than the actual item. That coupled with the low key, quite peacefulness of the entire rest of the day and I'm left in awe at the awesomeness of this Christmas, despite there being some large bumps in the road on the way there.

Which outlines the bottom lining to the whole idea. Christmas and anything really, is so much nicer and meaningful if you just take time to breathe; time to sit back and enjoy the downtime from the hecticness of life and also just enjoy the thought put into the bobbles purchased for you based on your character.

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That said, it's always nice to receive some kewl gifts as well. Here's a few of the kewl items I am proud to of received this year:

3 books, Bioshock: Rapture, Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth and Deus Ex: Icarus Effect - all video game related, and all sound REALLY sweet. I love reading a book based on a game I already love. They all look a bit shorter than Im use to, so it should take too long to get through them.

2 Games - Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, which I was PUMPED for :D Can't wait to get into it and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, a game I've been meaning to get and now don't need to, thanks to my bro.

3 movies/dvds - Super8 on Blu-Ray as I loved seeing it in theaters. Didn't like the ending, but the rest of the movie made me smile. Batman Year one - Haven't seen and the box set of Batman Beyond :) Yay batman :)

These items made me smile the most. I got a pair of leather driving gloves from my sis that have already come in handy :) *Get it, handy? :P lol. Gift cards, money and other things fill up the rest of the space (gift cards are so lazy IMO). Over all, very kewl Christmas. How about you?

No Light without Dark

2011-12-19T12:11:00.003-04:00

*Don't worry, no real spoilers.

While I understand that the show in question isn't everyone's 'bag of tea', I simply adore Dexter. The basic premise behind it is simple; each episode you follow Dexter Morgan, a blood splatter analyst for Miami Metro Homicide whom uses his expertise and position to track down the scum of the earth (murders and the like) and kills them. However, the weight behind his character, his background, reasons for killing those he does and his entire universe created by the (well, originally created by the author of the books, Jeff Lindsey) the team behind the show is one of supreme crafting.

As the seasons go on (the 6th just wrapped up) it seems to be less and less about the kill and more about delving deeper into what makes Dexter tick, what makes him human and the flaws he and everyone around him has. When the killing bits do interweave into the story (as they often do) it's an exciting entrapment of suspense as you wonder exactly how things will play out; constant twists come to mix you up and destroy any kind of path you assume you see forming.

I just caught the season finale of the 6th season's run and while the episode itself was a bit sporadic with it's pacing and excitement level, in the end it cleared up a lot of loose ends from the season's length and even brought to the surface some plot points which lots of people were no doubt wondering about and suspecting to rear up at some point. I won't go into detail as I hate to include spoilers and ruin it for anyone whom watches the show, but suffice to say, the events in this last episode (for the season) has mixed Dexter's world up in more way than one.

Deb plays a big role in the majority of season 6 and grows quite a bit as a character.

IMO, the shock of season 4's end was a much bigger thing, but the news presented and played out in this end of season will no doubt have bigger waves in how the series plays out from now on. Gladly, this season, even including Colin Hanks as Travis, was a step up from what I consider a low point for the series in last year's season. Perhaps it was the fault of the end of season 4 that season 5 couldn't stand up in comparison... but as it stands season 6 beats season 5 by a long shot.

Including Edward James Olmos (of BSG fame) to this season's cast was also a high point, for me at least, as I love seeing the guy in any role.

I yearn for more. Sadly, next season won't start airing until next September (which is a long ways off) and while I do have the first 2 Dexter books (which the show is based off of) I fear reading too far into them and then ruining some plot point they plan on using for the show... which I wouldn't want to do at all.

Are desktop PCs becoming irrelevent?

2011-12-17T14:34:00.001-04:00

Just a thought that stems from a changing environment I see. The idea really sparked from the other evening when my brother and I were discussing a movie of which we didn't know the name. Stumped, we decided Google might know and my brother reached for his 3DS as he exclaimed "It'll take 5 minutes for my PC to turn on and boot up to a point where I can search" and that's the sad truth. If your PC isn't on... you're in for one hell of a sluggish wait compared to other electronics today.

I for one, reach for my android "smart" phone if I want to look up something quick, my brother his 3DS. Others their ipones, tablets and compatible devices that aren't anywhere near as clunky and time consuming as the PC. Sure, the PC is the more powerful hardware and at times the easiest to deal with (in regards to a normal keyboard/mouse combo, compatibility with various media forms) but... it would seem that the big ol clunky desktop PC is becoming a dinosaur of the tech world.

Netbooks had a quick run and I even read that Dell has dropped the idea altogether due to the popularity of tablets over netbooks. Netbooks were the "speedy, low-powered version of a laptop" which seemed like a good idea at first over more beefy laptops for those quick, less intense uses... but the tablets seem to be a smarter move for that kind of thing.

I love my PC for the game's it's able to run, it's multitasking swiftness (it's not always easy running a media player, browser, chat clients and download software simultaneously - if at all - on other smaller devices) and power to run dedicate stuff like Photoshop, 3D modeling and other such heavy software... but for every day tasks... it seems that people are taking the easy route and just picking up a tablet like device.

Whether you want to check facebook, browse youtube, watch a movie on netflix, surf the net, play some games, chat with others, check your banking, or download an app that makes fart sounds - tablets (and like devices) seem to be the easier way to go. The prices for these devices can some times alienate people... but tech is becoming more and more affordable each day as countries like India experiment with tablets that cost a mere $32-$60. While those "uber-tablets" now cost upwards and beyond $500, in the next few years I can see them dropping out and down to the sub $200 range easily, with cheaper models going under $100.

With the popularity of the iphone/pod/pad and the ever growing market of smartphones (and again, like devices) in general, it would seem that this kind of 'easy tech' is only going to continue to integrate itself in our lives more and more.

Flash update on game experience

2011-12-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

Hey team :) I haven't published a blog in quite some time... I've written a few but... end up just not liking them and then just leave them in their unfinished state. One of which was quite a lengthy "mini review" piece again and honestly... there's nothing "Mini" about it :P So I decided to do a "game experience" piece in which I try to keep a tiny blurb about each game I'm currently engaged in short but sweet. Please do offer some comments as to each.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PS3)

A blast. At times incredibly frustrating. Been working on completing the remaining races, aiming for gold in each. Also looking to pound out it's trophy collection.

The Saboteur (PS3)

Having never completed a platinum trophy (PS3) and knowing I was really close with this title... I sat down for a few hours and ironed out the last I needed for this. The game is now 100% complete - both gameplay wise and with trophies.

Mafia 2 (PS3)

Same deal. Finished story before, had just 1 trophy left to snatch. Insanely hard part (killing Derek) took like 60 tries (since I hit that part). Finally did it (almost by fluke), now it's 100% complete in game/trophy. Working on the 3 DLC chapters now.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (PS3)

Been heavily considering picking this up again. Need only complete the 'Crushing' mode to get the plat. Crushing mode is aptly named.

APB: Reloaded (PC)

APB had a bit of a short run as a gang vs cops MMO but has since been resurrected by a different company and made Free-to-play. I've got a couple hours in it already and enjoy it :) Insanely detailed character creator too :P

Duke Nukem Forever (PC)

Got cheap, as planned. It's actually kind of fun. Lots of people hated it, but my presumption of their hate being that of the old-skool method it uses for gameplay, thus far seems to be accurate.

Assassin's Creed (360)

I misplaced my PS3 copy of AC (yeah the first one) and so I grabbed a 360 copy at ebgames (it was on for $2.99) as I've had a desire to go back and refresh on that story before I jump back into AC2 (which I never finished) after which I'll get brotherhood and eventually revelations.

Chrono Trigger (PS1)

Got on PSN a little while ago, been playing on PSP, still love the hell out of it. Thinking of getting Chrono Cross after I finish this.

Starhawk Beta (PS3)

Got into the Starhawk private beta recently and gave it a few hours of my time so far. Just one map in CTF mode as far as I can tell, but it's decent. Much like warhawk before it, they mix things up with ground and aerial units (or jet packs) and the whole "Build your base on the fly" idea actually works quite well. I managed a few flag captures for my times (as I'm decent at that) but it's not easy to get in and out without being swarmed. I'm actually looking forward to the story more than multiplayer, but the multiplay was still fun :)

RAGE (PC)

Thus far I'm not impressed. The gunplay works, the Vehicles not so much (feels clunky), the environments look spectacular... but the interior environments look like hell. Low poly models, laughable textures... ugh. Honestly, wtf happened? I still need to pour time into it to decide if the game itself is worth it... but engine wise... meh. Hearing John Goodman right from the get go was kewl tho :)

The Last of Us

If nothing else, the Spike VGAs are good for reveals and trailers and this year was no exception. With it came the announcement of "The Last of Us" which has me really excited. I love Naughty Dogs attention to detail and the mammoth amount of work put into their characters, NTM their solid story lines and beautiful games. TLoU seems to continue that trend and the reveal trailer is great.

Vita out in Japan soon

The Vita is set to hit Japan on the 17th (Saturday) and some reviews for it's launch games have started coming in. So glad to see the likes of Uncharted doing rather well on the platform. Can't wait till February 22nd to get mine.

Gotham City Imposters

So... I hear that the beta for the game is starting up... sigh, I've signed up, even used the card that came with Arkham City as an "extra push" to get in line... and no word :( I really would love to try it.. hope I get in. Trailer here.

Hitman Absolution

The 15 minute gameplay video released a while ago sold me on the game. The new trailer just sweetens the pot.

Final Fantasy Type-0

Not only confirmed for North America, but will be playable and optimized (at least control wise) for PS Vita. Me likes.

I heart HD collections

2011-12-02T14:48:00.000-04:00

So, I just spent some more time wandering around in Shadow of the Colossus (please tell me someone got that Sotc pun), hunting down fruit and lizards to boost my health and stamina as I plan to start out and take down my 3rd Colossus and I noticed something. I love these 'HD Collections' packs that companies seem to be hoping on board with.

I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but the PS2 era (6th generation as some call it) of gaming is by far my favorite. I own a ton of current gen games and would never give up amazing titles like Mass Effect, Bioshock, The Witcher, Assassin's Creed and the numerous franchises that started out in this generation of gaming. Jump backwards and I have mad respect and nostalgic feelings for games in the 16 and 24 bit system area with many favs from that time too and even the 64bit era has some titles that changed my life in gaming for sure. But the PS2 era is by far the largest for me. Perhaps it was just my gaming prime ages or something along those lines, but what ever the reason I seem to resonate the most with it.

Anyways, to see companies dip back into that pool, drudge up some gems and touch them up to play on our new consoles, really makes me happy. The first one to do this was Sony, with their God of War franchise, bringing the first 2 God of War games from the PS2 to the PS3 with updated visuals and a nice smooth run over to enhance it for it's new home on a beefier console. This is a step of dedication beyond simply packing games together in a box set and labeling it as a "collectors pack". Since it's success there have been a growing number of titles, some well done and some less well done, for gamers to be nostalgic with and dig into the well of gems from the console generation past.

As I mentioned, I picked up the Ico/SotC collection (haven't touched Ico just yet) and along with it, the God of War Origins collection (which includes the 2 PSP prequels to the GoW franchise). Now, the 5 games in the series of GoW games sit next to each other on my shelf, readily available to me when ever I choose to throw one in, that's incredibly awesome. They join my copies of The Sly Collection and The Tomb Raider Trilogy - both of which are incredible sets with some superb titles packed into their discs. I've been meaning to grab a copy of the Prince of Persia collection (the 3 PoP games from the PS2 era), but haven't seen it around.

In the near future, I am excited for the Metal Gear Solid HD pack (which includes MGS 2, 3 and Peace Walker) as well as the Zone of the Enders pack (ZoE 1 and 2, the second one I've never touched). Both of which are shaping up nicely. Since I started this blog post (a little while back, it's been sitting here unfinished) it's been leaked and confirmed that a Jak & Daxter is being prepped for the PS3 that includes it's 3 PS2 outing (minus the cart racer JakX)

The Silent Hill collection... I'm worried about... as they've excluded SH4 (which I enjoyed very much) and are changing the voice over for the games (contract dispute /w the original actors)... (at least for SH3, recent news reports that they'll have the option to choose either original or new VO for the SH2 copy of the disc) we'll see how it goes.

Not all HD collections seem to be golden

On the flip side I hear the Splinter Cell collection was done without love. Frame-rate issues, less that impressive HD visual upgrades, exclusion of multiplayer and other nasties make it much less appealing. Capcom decided to release each of their 2 PS2 Resident Evil games as download titles (RE4 and RECV) at $20 a pop - a curious move as the trend seems to be one of packing a few titles into a retail disc, but reviews seem to point out that not a lot was done to the two titles to upgrade them. RE4 looking near identical to it's original (albeit in a higher resolution). Was that their way of "cashing in" without actually doing a lot of work? Perhaps. As it seems, most of the HD Collections are looking to provide a product of labor (and love) to it's fans and at $30-$40 a pack (of 2 or 3 games) it's hardly a grab for money ($10-$20 per title hardly seems like such).

Some misguided cash ins aside, there seems to be promise from the studios that that their time and do justice in upgrading these aging titles for current consoles.

Ratchet & Clank seems to be a franchise that would be prime for packing into an HD collection, as the franchise is still very much alive today with the PS3's "R&C Future" series of games. I would think that this title is probably already in development and we've just not caught wind of it just yet.

I would LOVE to see a Xenosaga HD pack made for current generation and I loved the series on PS2 and would love to go back and experience it. Seeing as the company whom made it is now owned by Nintendo, that might mean some issues.

Kingdom Hearts HD anyone? The PS2 was the starting point for the series and while it's spun off and done GBA, PSP titles, DS titles, upcomind 3DS titles - I would still love to see the first two games and maybe even Re: Chain of Memories packed into a disc, updated visually and control wise to match the power of todays consoles.

Any other titles you feel would be great as an HD compilation pack?

Mini Reviews - Gears 3, Toystory 3, Payday...

2011-11-17T21:05:00.002-04:00

Last time I shared some thoughts on my dreams, this time around we're going back to the basics and getting back into the games :) I've been playing a lot of games as of late and while they're not all finished, I have completed a number as to rate and voice an opinion on such. I've not the ambition to do full blown reviews, so I decided to slip in some mini reviews and go from there:

Gears of War 3 (360)
Score: 8.5/10
Synopsis:

Thus far the Gears franchise... gives me a mixed bag of thoughts on it's quality. The first Gears, I enjoyed going through with a cousin... but the predicable "run from one area of cover and firefights to the next" really grew boring for me and I really felt they should of mixed it up more. Gears 2 comes out and I'm floored at the amount of variety they put into it, it seemed as though I never got bored of the gameplay and it didn't feel like room after room of bad guys hiding behind cover.

Jump to Gears 3 and... well, game play wise... I find it stuck between Gears 1 and Gears 2. There are moments of brilliance, especially boss battles, but by the end of the campaign I was attempting to run through the remaining rooms of hunkered down bad guys just so I could continue the story. I did enjoy battling the new and different type of baddies... but the standard grunts that stand upright like humans and fire as such... bored the hell out of me. The game rarely deviates away from these battle rooms and even when they do... you're stuck in a vehicle or something just gunning at stuff - rather than testing your skill driving or escaping or something beyond a rails shoot fest. Again, compared to Gears 2 which seemed to give you something new to do every 10 minutes, I was let down by Gears3's lackluster inclusion of these kind of scenarios.

Story wise it's decent as you get a nice mix of new characters as well as more fleshed out returning characters and a touching story. There are a few key moments in the game that'll tug at your heart strings, but IMO they don't match those used in Gears2. The visuals on the other hand are frakking breath-taking! You really need to just stop and look at stuff to enjoy it better. The textures are great and lighting really kicks it up a notch, bringing the scenes into a better light (oh!). The music is decent (as always) and the voice acting good, but neither surprised me.

In the end, I played a game that looks superb visually, yet seems to take a step back from the freshness of Gears 2 in favor of taking a look back at the original game and how it did gameplay. I gave it an 8.5 simply because I rated Gears1 an 8.0 and Gears 2 a 9.0, so it's a good middle ground :P. I must also mention that outside of the beta experience, I've not played the multiplayer and don't plan to and as such didn't rate the game based on that aspect.

Payday: The Heist (PS3)
Score: 8.0/10
Synopsis:

As you may of been able to tell (thanks to a blog post a little while back) Payday surprised me with it's solid core despite it's flaws. The game, while lacking a 'AAA' visual style, still looks rather good for a download title.

The controls feel a bit sensitive, even when adjusted, but once you pin them down, it's rather easy to do exactly what you want. You play one for 4 masked men (odd clown masks at that) whom are, more or less, professional theives who take on jobs of robbing banks, infiltrating diamond strong holds or breaking other criminals out of armored transport vans. Each plays the same, but they all seem to have their own personality and quirks as characters which help you in the immersion of the title. The team could of gone farther with using those unique characters to make them more memorable... but as it stands they're not too bad.

Co-op is key, as you work together with 3 others (human or AI) to go about the tasks given to you to complete the job. You can be drilling into a vault, burning a hole through a floor or hacking security computers all the while strategically trying to control hostages, fight off the police (and later their more difficult special forces) and make sure the rest of your team isn't killed or captured. The interesting part is that you get a set amount of health at the first and while your perks help out with better armor and (for some classes) a 1 time use med pack; you're more or less dependent on trying not to get shot and relying on team mates to help you up if you've fallen due to low health. Without working together, it's easy to be overcome by the law enforcers as you're often left to defend in areas without much cover and the cops storm you in relentless waves. Ammo too is limited (again you can get a perk in one class that allows a drop of an ammo bag) and you must pick up the ammo from downed cops; you can't take their weapons, as your load-out is based on a menu you choose before the heist, which really only adds to the strategy. All of your weapons, health limit, body armor and other helping tools are contained in these perks (some are constants, like body armor level or gun power increases, others like weapons and bags of ammo or medical supplies are equipped in limited slots).

The idea and execution are tight and equals a lot of fun. Like mentioned, it's not the prettiest game and the sound is adequate, it's got touchy controls and there could of been more flavor put into it's style, but over all the game play outshines the shortcomings to give you a unique and memorable experience that keeps you coming back.

Toy Story 3 (PS3)
Score: 8.0/10
Synopsis:

I wasn't expecting much out of Toy Story 3... being a kid friendly game and a movie tie in at that... I expected to jump in, play around for a bit (I had heard the Toy Box mode was fun) and I actually got sucked in for about 15 hours of enjoyment.

First out, the game is better in co-op with a friend than it is by yourself. Co-op is jump in/out, so it's not hard to join and the screen splits vertically, giving you a full view for each character to do as you please. My sis and I ripped through the "story mode" in one sitting and it's your typical run through the movie's story, loosely told with key areas presented. In the single player you can collect items to use in the Toy Box mode, which is where the girth of gameplay actually is.

This Toy Box mode is a rather large map made up of about 9 different areas, all based on parts of the movies and the characters that inspire them. The first is a town in a desert which is connected to woody and the old west, others like a Zerg tower, Sids haunted house and lotso's magical zen garden place are all unique and offer different types of things to do. Your goal in these areas is to collect stuff for your town, building it up as you go. You unlock horses for riding and racing, cars for the same use, new shops for customizing your town and it's citizens and a huge plethora of tasks. You're asked to find items, race take specific pictures with a camera and even play dodge ball and kick townsfolk through makeshift football goal posts. It's crazy, unique and a hell of a lot of fun for quite some time.

Once you've collected enough coins and have unlocked all of the buildings, interactive objects, weapons and what have you, it starts to get a little tedious to play. You have and endless supply of little tasks that the towns folk give you and there is a mammoth amount of stuff to collect both in Toy box and story modes... but at that point there really isn't much need to do so outside of your lust for completion or trophies/achievements.

Presentation wise, it's top notch - adopting a style not too different from the movies and everything is voiced, music plays in the background, there's no large glitches to speak of... it just works as intended. It's easy to control, you've got visual queues to tell you what to do and for a good 8+ hours you'll be enjoying going about the tasks of the world. Sadly when you've reached the limit... you've reached your limit and it's best just to move on to a new title :P.

Battle: Los Angeles (PC)
Score: 2.0/10
Synopsis:

It's been a while since I've played a game this bad. Visually it's a mixed bag... as I thought the weapon models were decent and some of the texture work okay... but the character models are bad even for PS2 era graphics (of which this game is not). The voice over is HORRENDOUS! The music is equally just garbage. Ugh, the A.I doesn't even look at you while shooting, cant' figure out how to move around a car and is more or less cannon fodder for the hour and a half that this game lasts.

Yep. I spent 1 hours 40 minutes in this sucker and... that was while goofing around... if you ran through it, it'd last even less. The cut scenes are badly drawn 2D images accompanied by the horrible voice acting and a story that more or less has a group of militia make their way through a city after being attacked by aliens. The aiming... works... but it doesn't matter as the game is brain dead. The controls are limited and in my case, playing the game on my PC - for some reason, even though I was playing with a keyboard/mouse it would send rumble feedback to my connected 360 controller... without any option to turn that off.

I've had more fun playing Half-life 1 mods from 1999 which were done in 15 minutes. This game is pure garbage the likes of which you should NEVER buy for any reason. Even if the movie of which this game shares a name was your favorite title ever, avoid this POS.

Is someone trying to tell me something?

2011-11-08T15:07:00.000-04:00

What do dreams really mean? It's something people have been mulling over for ages and in the end, we really don't know, but there are some decent theories out there.

The most logical idea, that a dream is a practice taken by our subconscious to play things out in an attempt to unravel ideas, thoughts and scenarios to better arm ourselves for the complexities of the world. I kind of like this idea, but it doesn't seem to apply to some instances where dreams just get wacky crazy. Some even believe that dreams are our subconscious's way at testing things we'd really like to do in real life, but for some reason can't seem to. This all seems to make sense to me... but again, there are dreams that don't seem to fit in these categories.

Others, whom are obviously more spiritual, believe that dreams are meant to be lessons and glimpses from entities of beyond to both help us through life and tell us important things. While I'm not especially spiritual, nor follow any religion seriously, I do believe in an state of being after death - the likes of which we don't quite fathom at the moment. Thus, I believe that mesages from beyond this life could be possible.

Which leads me into my initial thought that sparked this blog post.

I've been having dreams over the last 6months+ and while not every dream does, a number of them seem to have a reoccurring piece that's starting to play with my head. It's making be wonder why this subject (actually a person) keeps popping up in my dreams. I don't seem to notice, while in dream, that I've seen this person before, but when I wake - I know it's the same person I've seen in a number of dreams. I've never seen this her in real life, she has no name, I don't know anyone whom resembles her in my life (currently) and yet... I feel like I've known her forever. It's strange.

The first dream that I can remember where she appeared, was a cryptic one in which we found a VHS video tape addressed to me from my grandmother (whom has been dead for about ~12 years now) and after being popped into the machine to play it, it turned out to be a family video tape of sorts, including large portions of the family on my mom's side. We thought it really weird though, because not only is my grandmother in the video in scenes we don't recall being at, she's also there along side grand/greatgrand-children whom were not born or at least not at the age they were before she passed. The dream is chunked up here and there for quite a bit but two very vivid scenes stand out after that first scene. One being this girl showing up, in this instance as a "professional" whom can investigate videos tapes like the one we got and when she arrives to do her job, she is dumbfounded by myself and the tape as it turns out she was contacted by my grandmother (I assume before she died) and was shown (in a dream?) that one day she'd meet her again and she would lead her to her future husband. The second scene is one of myself and her on the side of a mammoth bridge, I release this large banner like cloth to the wind, while holding on, letting it's huge size ripple in the wind. It's red and has type or logo or writing on it, which I'm told (from a disembodied voice?) that I would be known for that... then the dream ended.

If that wasn't odd enough, I've seen this same girl pop up in various dreams since then, she usually just pops in and smiles, or stands by watching what ever scene is currently in session play out.

I don't even have a 100% image of her. If I saw her in real life I would be able to pick her out... but to describe her... it's difficult. Shorter than myself, she has mid-long black hair and a lighter-dark complexion (which looks more like Indian descent - or rather that part of the world, not necessarily that nationality, that's just what comes to mind), dark brown eyes, slim, pretty and with a gorgeous smile. I went looking on google and found some images of girls that kind of look similar.

Then, just last week I had a much more vivid dream (most dreams feel foggy and merely memorable in quick glimpses, occasionally like this time, I remember the dream in near painstaking detail) in which I meet up with her again. Oddly enough, it's got a connection to my mother's family again.

This time we're spending time in a hotel for some kind of family function. For some reason I acknowledge my father not being there, having to work instead of be there for the gathering. A rather long series of events lead me to a lobby like area where I sit at a bench seat/sofa and whip out an old skool gameboy to play pokemon (awesome right? lol), then SHE comes along. Like I mentioned above, this girl is unknown to me in my dreams (but recognized once I wake) and she sits down next to me, gameboy in hand and we hit it off, discussing the game, playing together and so on. Time flies, almost on FF as the day melts away and eventually we reach a scene, same sofa, relaxed, my arms around this girl as she either rests or sleeps beside me. I wake her to remind her that we've got a dinner or something to attend (I assume with my family) and we head off to that, magical clothing change on the way and I find myself sitting at a table, my family behind me somewhere. At the table a large family of, which I presume to be people of an Indian descent (again it could be a number of nationalities, it's just what springs to my mind when I think of the dress they were in and their general look). I remember a whole lot of randomness, talk, a guy dancing? and a number of little things almost on FastForward again and then every thing kind of zeros in and I'm left talking with an older woman of the group (whom I assume is either the mother or grandmother of the girl I met in the lobby) who is asking me questions and I feel the entire group sort of looking and paying attention. It's finished with my trying 3 different foods in front of me and after an approval of my like for a certain dish, the older woman smiles and throws her hands in the air which leads to the same thing from the rest of the table. To which she exclaims I am now allowed to marry this girl whom I met earlier. Overjoyed, I wake.

I always feel amazing after each dream where she appears but also kind of confused as I'm clueless as to whom she is. It's an odd feeling. Also worth noting, in no way are these dreams sexual, they're rather pure in nature, which is fine with me, it just further makes me wonder about the meaning behind these dreams. Has anyone similar stories? Thoughts? It'd be interesting to get some different views.

A pleasant surprise in Payday: The Heist

2011-11-06T13:54:00.002-04:00

Don't you love it when you get a game, usually just on a whim, not expecting it to blow you away but rather be something of a time kill for the tiny amount of effort and money you put into obtaining it and then it turns out to be much more than you expected?

Such is the case with Payday: The Heist.

I merely got the game free via PSN as Sony offered it up if you went ahead and ordered the other 4 games in their "upcoming PSN releases" special (I forget exactly what they called it). Street Fighter 3rd Strike Online topped the list followed by the impressive looking BloodRayne title, a third in the series for DeathSpank (The Baconing) and the top down Renegade Ops. All of which I had an incline to play and didn't mind ordering them all at once to secure some bonus themes and the aforementioned Payday game.

I didn't even really know what Payday: The Heist was... but, for free I was willing to take a shot in the dark and now I'm hooked.

The game has a simple but decently executed premise. You're one of 4 masked men whom rob banks. In later levels you're doing things besides robbing banks - like ambushing prisoner transport vehicles - but it all works around the 4 player co-op, communicating with others on how best to avoid getting filled up with lead from the countless amount of law enforcement personnel coming your way.

Teamwork is key. Communication a must.

I've sunk about 6 hours into the game before I had my PS3 die, but have jumped back in and started out with 2 hours more, ranking up as I go. With new ranks, new weapons, items and power-ups become available which really allows you to play how you want.

The game itself isn't the most jaw dropping, graphically, nor is it perfect with controls (default controls felts too loose for me, I had to tone down the sensitivity) and I felt it weird as a first person shooter (I felt a third person view might make more sense) but it's over all experience really makes up for it's rough edges. There are varied levels, each with unique tasks to complete and enemies to take on. The enemies range from regular cops to tank like Bulldozer units whom take a ton of bullets to down and the Taser units whom freeze you in your steps with their electrical attacks, among others. Civilians play a role, you must keep them in control, but they can also be used as bargaining tools with the law, which equal out their usefulness. The music kicks in when appropriate and I actually felt it a perfect mood enhancer when you're hunkered down, barely able to move and need an incentive to make a dash for it.

The other issue... I felt that the team didn't put enough personality into it's 4 masked characters. They chat back and forth and have a glimpse of a personality... but I felt that the dev team could of taken it much further and really made each of them into their own recognizable characters - something akin to Left4Dead, which it bares a similarity to anyways. It doesn't cripple the game, but it would of been easier if you could connect to the characters rather than just their masks.

Capturing Hostages is important, you also get penalized for killing them.

To be blunt, I don't play a lot of games online. I don't enjoy randomly killing a bunch of people for hours on end in a death match like setting with the end result being some XP and bragging rights. That perhaps is why I like The Heist so much... as it's really about the experience and working together for a goal. That same kind of gameplay is why I still played L4D on the PC and why this game could be one of the few that holds my interest outside of a week (as with most online games I've played).

I am thoroughly impressed with Payday: The Heist, not because it's a near perfect high profile game, but because it's charming enough to really hold my interest despite it's shortcomings. In a world where cookie-cutter game play (especially in multiplayer) seems to reign supreme and bore me to death, Payday is a pleasant surprise.

Payday can be purchased either on PSN or Steam (PC) for $19.99.

Dis n Dat - Nov 2011

2011-11-03T20:39:00.003-03:00

Why hello there, little one.

Ahh, so last blog post was a bit of a sad one... in that I detailed the demise of my beloved PS3. It now rests inside my closet, power cord wrapped around it's corpse, in the dark. My new slim model PS3 in it's place, complete with it's newly swapped in 750gb hdd drive and (so far) clean look.

Yep, I went out and got a slim model, 160gb version... but with the management I had to do with my 250gb (on my Phat PS3), I knew I would need an upgrade. Right now, the largest drive you can get in the specs that meet the PS3's needs is 750gb. At $130, I thought it a great purchase. It (new PS3+hdd) set me back a bit, bank balance wise, but I'm just glad to have the extra space and a working machine

I also purchased something special for my new PS3 from ebay, but will detail that in a later blog.

I've got quite a bit of downloading to do, to get a lot of my games, DLC, updates etc ready to go on my new system... but I hope it's not too bad, just something I'll tackle when I'm sleeping.

I did start a new file on Arkham City, while using the stock 160gb hdd in my new PS3, planning to just upload the save to my PS+ save space and download it when I swapped in my new hdd... but I forgot to do so... and now need to start the game for a third time. I'm pro at the first 5 hours :P lol.

On the very day that my hdd drive arrived, I also received my collector's edition of Uncharted 3. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the belt buckle (have never worn em) or the Ring, but they're very kewl and are actual items, not just cheap knockoffs. The statue of Drake joins my others on my computer desk and demotes my new batman one to the shelf (mainly because it's the only one that will fit on my shelf).

Lets see. Batman? Check, Uncharted? Check, Gears3? Check. Skyrim is coming soon and... honestly... that should be good for me for a bit (whoops, forgot the MGS HD collection :P). I'm going to try and cut spending on games again for a little while. They've been sucking the ol cash out of my bank account a lot lately, which is never fun :P I did pretty well all summer, warding off buying any games, but this fall is brutal with the amount of amazing that's been out. Eek. Perhaps I'll drop a few on a Christmas wish list and forget buying them myself? :P

Speaking of spending money, check out what I pre-ordered today:

Isn't it beautiful? I find they could of been more true to her actual design, but in all it's quite the awesome looking piece. Mass Effect 3 in March :D

-----

Lets see, what else is up. Umm, a Tree (or rather, half of it) landed on my car...

Thankfully, just some dents left as damage. The window is fine and no paint chipping as far as I can tell.

- Hydrophobia Prophecy (an update to Hydrophobia) finally came to PSN and it's free for PS+ subscribers (hells yeah)
- Started play Chrono Trigger (PS1 game on my PSP) a little while ago, loving the hell out of it :) Been AGES since I've played this title.
- Square just announced Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 5 and 6 for PSone classics (my PSP is happy)
- Need to jump into Uncharted3. It's been sitting on my desk just a little over 24hours now... which feels wrong :P
- The Netflix app for my android phone now works in Canada (it didn't previously :S). I caught an episode of 'Til Death' while on my break at work today :D
- I love Netflix.
- Bane is apparently going to be in the new Batman movie. That's awesome.
- The Batwing and BatBike, looks stupid in the new Batman movie.
- Anne Hathaway seems like she'd make a nice Catwoman though. Deff can't be worse than Halle Berry.
- Finished Spaced, a charming show staring Simon Pegg. Going to miss it.
- Jumped into this season's 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' and couldn't of laughed harder. It's such a funny show :D
- Behind in Dexter, The Office and Community! Eek, shame on me! :P
- Saw Paranormal Activity 3 the other day, Garbage.
- Been having rather vivid and interesting dreams lately.
- Halloween was rather dull this year.
- GTA V.
- I'm tired of writing, as I'm sure you're tired of reading. Peace.

Farewell old friend, you'll be missed

2011-10-29T23:55:00.001-03:00

Sigh. Batman killed my PS3.

So, today was one of the first days in a bit where I didn't have anything to do before work and so, I went to bed early the night before, got up at a decent hour and started playing some Batman: Arkham City. I got a good solid 5 hours into the game and reached a part in the museum, dealing with Penguin and his goons when my PS3 shut it self off and obviously my game while it was at it. This kind of thing has happened in various games over the years, bugs I presumed, and so I just restarted and thanks to Arkham City's great checkpoint system I was brought maybe 2 mins away from where things went all crazy. Jumped back in, whooping some butt and BAM a shut down at the exact same moment.

Scratching my head, I headed online to see if anyone was experiencing the same thing in this location, but came up empty. I turned my PS3 back on and just left it at the XMB for a bit while I continued to look around online and... bam, it shut down again, I wheeled around in my chair and my heart sank. I turned my PS3 back on and it didn't even get to the XMB when it reset and beeped at me, it's power indicator flashing red.

My PS3 died.

I actually backed up ALL of my PS3, PS2, PS1 and PSP mini saves about a month ago... to a USB stick (and some to Sony's cloud service, as they were copy-protected and refused to save to the stick) so I should be able to transfer them all over and not lose much of anything (besides my Arkham City save, which came after the backup). I also managed to turn the PS3 back on and eject my Arkham City disc... so that's not a lost cause :)

*Shrugs. I'm assuming it's the GPU... because I've been having weird graphical glitches across a lot of games where textures would pop out for a second, replaced by large solid colored polygons. I just put up with it.. for like 6-9 months now. Also, it's been getting louder and louder depending on what game I played. Sounded like a freaking Jet engine at times :P Guess I should of been more concerned with those signs, eh?

Hundreds of hours put into games over the years and it's never faulted me before now. Being one of the 60gb launch models (I didn't get it at launch but the manufacturing date was before launch, so I called it a launch unit :P). I will tear it apart and attempt the usual methods at repair, like applying new conducting gel on the CPU/GPU or w/e is involved, to see if I can resurrect the beast... but I really don't have much incline that'll work. Sony wants nearly as much to fix it as it costs to buy a new one... which is silly... but may also be an option sometime down the road.

I'm getting a new slim model tomorrow, as cheap as they come, as I've already got a new 750gb HD on order too, so stock HD doesn't really matter. I'm going to lose the ability to play PS2 games... which sucks a lot. I'm heavily thinking about getting a new PS2 as well... cuz I still enjoy the hell out of PS2 games. But I may way a little bit... so I don't stretch my bank account too much (I still need to invest in winter tires for my car sometime before it snows, which will set me back several hundred further, ntm other bills that need taken care of).

I can't wait to get back into Batman: Arkham City... but fear my save is gone. Uncharted 3 comes out this week too! So I can't just go without a PS3 :P

Ahh poop. Farewell PS3, you will be missed my friend.

It's finally here :)

2011-10-21T13:31:00.000-03:00

Three days feels like forever when you're waiting on something. I was told my Arkham City pre-order had shipped on Monday, via courier, which I assumed would be here the next day (Tuesday, the ship date) as courier services are generally really quick to get stuff to it's destination. Turns out they sent it via the regular mail system and because they shipped it in such a mammoth box (seriously, it's like 8X the size of the smaller box that the collector's edition came in) I had to go pick it up at the post office :S

But, now I have it :) I put it's Batman statue near my more awesome statues and noticed that I need to dust or something... :P

I redeemed all of my DLC (It came with the Dark Knight Rises costume, Penguin lounge challenge map and Catwoman DLC as well as a beta code for Gotham City Impostors and a code to download the OST). I'm actually waiting and hoping they release all of the pre-order dlc for the game on PSN/XBL so I can get it all! Cuz I need to play as robin and kick butt as batman from the animated series :D

Took the game disc out of it's holding place (in the back of the artbook) and put it in the steelbook I got for ordering through futureshop (which is great and much better than using the artbook). Have yet to pop it into my PS3 (waiting for the DLC to download) but I hope to break into it a little bit before I have to head into work :)

I'm on Act2 in Gears 3, that's now on pause, I started a new game in Chrono Trigger, which I downloaded from PSN and slapped on my PSP... that's on pause too. Other games I'm currently playing too... are going on pause as I dive into Arkham City :D I'll talk to you in a few weeks, when I come up for air :P

02.22.12 is the day

2011-10-19T12:23:00.000-03:00

Let's get right to it. I just saw some hellish awesome news pop up last night.

Playstation Vita is hitting world wide (aside from Japan who get it in December) on February 22, 2012 :)

One Please. 3G not needed.

I'm excited :) After hearing vague "sometime late 2011" for the longest time I accepted that perhaps Japan would be the only region in that estimate and that the rest of the world would be seeing a late spring/summer release for the new handheld. Pleasantly, Sony announced the end week of February for the launch in the rest of the world. Much sooner than I had anticipated, but if I play my cards right (cut spending) I should be able to snatch one on launch.

I plan on getting the Non-3G model... as I really don't see a need for online gaming on the go... especially when you need pay for a separate 3G bill with the likes of AT&T. If I can't be somewhere with Wifi (honestly, how many places do you go without Wifi?) then I'll just enjoy the machine as a single player device. Being 4+ months away, I should be able to have enough to get the system, a hefty memory card and hopefully a few titles at launch. :)

The specs, the beautiful screen and the games all really have me foaming at the mouth ;) Can't wait. I especially like the idea of starting a game on PS3, saving to a cloud and playing the exact same game when I'm on the go, simply saving (again) to a cloud (a term for a server in this case, not a cloud that rains... :P) to pick up again when I get home on my PS3. Very kewl stuff.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss, my single most anticipated game for the Vita.

Cancelled my Arkham City pre-order

2011-10-09T13:43:00.001-03:00

Yep that's right... I cancelled my Arkham City pre-order...

...

With EBGames and re-pre-ordered it with FutureShop :)

Reason? Oh... how about this AWESOME Steelbook case! (at no extra cost!)

Until recently, I didn't even know this was an option! Hells yeah futureshop for scoring something kewl for us Canadians :) I was even worried about a case as I'm getting the collector's edition which as far as I can tell, comes with a cheap cardboard sleeve instead of an actual game case.

So, now the game can sit with the rest of my PS3 games :) Though... I'm going to need to find a bigger shelf or something... as I'm stacking PS3 games on each other now... as I've run out of space. *Perhaps I'll move them to my larger shelf and move my PS2/Wii/360 games to the current PS3 shelf...

Has anyone noticed that Japan gets a colored version of the batman statue that's included with the CE of the game? What's up /w that?

I can't wait for the game :) It's got to be my most anticipated of the year (yes more than Gears3 or Skyrim), as was Arkham Asylum when it launched. Playstation Mag Aus has the only review up right now, but we should start seeing some more soon - btw, PTOM AUS gave it a 10/10. I just hope that all the DLC being released at various stores for promotion (the different batman costumes, robin costumes, challenge maps etc) all make it online before long so I can snatch those too :)

Speaking of Batman, did you know that DC has done yet another of their awesome animated movies for the Dark Knight? (Not the movie, the man himself). It's based off of Frank Miller's comic of the same name and has Bruce Timm attached (the guy behind the animated series of the 90s), with Bryan Cranston as James Gordon (a kewl thing for sure) and Eliza Dushku as Selina Kyle/Catwoman. The whole thing sounds very kewl. If DC's previous efforts are any indication, this one should be well done :)

Here is the trailer for that:

Link for those reading my blog somewhere other than my site.

A grab-bag of random

2011-10-05T14:03:00.000-03:00

Heh.... so I noticed... my last blog post was on the 13th of September. That's like... 3 weeks ago :P It's partially because I've been busy with stuff outside of the internet and partially because I haven't felt like writing out something in full. Either way, I got some good feedback on my cyberpunk post; here at gamespot, on facebook (a cyberpunk group no less) and a few other places where I post my blog and it's really encourages me to take a more "journalistic" approach to future topics in an attempt to make something informative and article like, rather than just ramblings about what I'm up to every blog :P That idea, however, takes quite a bit of effort in making sure everything is crafted well enough to make sense, that the facts used are correct and so on.

Anyways, this blog isn't like that. This is more or less just a catch up blog.

What's been playing:

Ack, lately I'm all over the place with my gaming. Jumping from game to game, not finishing a whole lot and really just killing time rather than sitting down to a good story.

Hard Reset - (PC) At one point, I picked up Hard Reset on Steam and rather enjoyed it. It's a pretty and decently fun throw back to shooters of yester-year. Not particularly strong on story or characters or anything besides nice visuals and fun (kinda frantic) gun play. I didn't find it particularly hard... but then again... I played it on easy. I'll try harder some other time :P Only about 4-5 hours long... but I enjoyed it. Gave it a 7.5 on GS.

Timeshift - (360) I was playing this game a while ago and kinda liked it but... would run into situations where I died a lot simply because I didn't know exactly what I was doing or whom was killing me. I got curious as to how far I was when I left it so I looked up a walk through and learned... that I was like 5 seconds away from beating it... lol. So I booted it up and tried my hand again at the boss and literally walked through another building and laid the final shot into the boss and I was done... I can't believe I was that close to finishing it all this time :P The game looks great for a 2007 title and the gun play works well, but the narrative is bad, acting bad, and over all story - you end up not caring about. Throw in some odd difficulty variation and it's a 6.5/10 :P

Street Fighter Third Strike and 4 - (PS3) Ahh SF :) Got a random urge to play some Street Fighter :) Downloaded SF3TS and f'n love it :) Such an awesome hd update to an awesome game :) It also pushed me to throw in SSTIV and give that a go again. Seth... I think his name is... is a cheap FUCKER! But I enjoy the game like no ones business. Juri is DEFF my fav new character.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 - (PS3) Not impressed. The game seems so awkward. Like it needed double the amount of development time? I hate the story/characters, don't care for the world it's set in and even the driving itself is just passable. I can see myself not finishing this one :S Never know though... lol. A shame as the trailers and media made it look awesome.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - (360) Ahh, transformers :) I don't remember exactly when I picked this up, but it's been on my shelf for a bit, begging to get played... so I threw it in. The actual game play can get a little dull, but it's not too bad and controls well. The A.I, I think brings it down. But it's story feel good and it's fun going through out it. I finished the Decepticon portion of the story and I'm like 3/6 chapters into the autobot continuation of the story. I jumped online with it as well and did not too bad taking down some foes - even when I was one of the few low level bots :P I kept messing up the transform and melee buttons tho... so when I was going to land a deathblow to a foe... I'd instead turn into a vehicle... lol. My vehicle had a large cannon attack though... so it wasn't all bad if I managed to avoid a melee attack from them :P Not done with it yet, but it's fun :)

Fear - (PC) Decided to give the FEAR series a go. I wanted to play it on my 360... but they're near impossible to find and at a good price. So I got them from steam. Just barely got into the first one... but it's kewl thus far, they have very good sense of timing with spooky stuff. I went up a ladder or something a whipped to the right to see alma creeping past a door... I thought that very kewl that they'd trigger that just as I looked :)

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD - (360) Superb :) I went through SS1 a long time ago and tried to do it again on my 360... and was SOOOO BORED. lol. Decided I'd give SSSE a shot... and it's quite a bit better :) Looks much nicer and is just more engaging. Very fun.

Demos:

Been trying a few demos too:

Duke Nukem Forever - On 360 as well and it's what I expected. Really oldskool "kill everything before going to your next boring objective" which I know a lot of people hated and ripped on it for... but I wasn't that put off on it, knowing what I was in for, I accepted it and had some fun. I honestly feel people were so frustrated with the game because they expected more from it. That said, I'm not dropping $60 on it :P

Bastion - I downloaded the trial for Bastion on XBLA and what I got to play before my power went out (during a storm :P) was kinda kewl. I didn't like falling off the ledge so easily and I was shocked at how quickly monsters whooped my butt, but it's got a superb sense of style and unique feel to it. I don't know if I want to drop $15 on it right now, but it's something I'll keep in mind (most likely grab it during a sale on Steam).

Driver: San Francisco - (360) Was a surprise for me. I downloaded the demo for 2 reasons. 1 - it looked alright and 2 - I had enjoyed the original Driver. The mechanic of leaving your body to take over anyone elses is weird... but unique and a lot of fun :) The demo gave you a few different scenarios but each was fun and the handling was both unique and really well done. I'll have to get this game some time down the road.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War - On the 360 is a decent little game. I actually won a code for it in a contest and I'm glad I did... as I prob wouldn't of given it much through if I hadn't. It's a small scale RTS/tower defense kind of game, but the strategy is solid, unique and a lot of fun. I love playing at the commando powerup - who weilds a machine gun, rocket launcher and just causes chaos while screaming "YEAH GET SOME!!!" :D So... while this is under Demo, I actually have it and enjoy it :)

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon - Downloaded this on my PS3 and was blown away. Honestly... most flight games I get totally disoriented and confused, never seeming to be able to catch up with baddies and take them down... but this demo completely changed that! I was whipping my jet around with precision and their DogFight mode (just take a button when behind an enemy) makes everything so butter smooth - OMG I love it. Will be getting this one at some point (if not at launch).

Dungeon Siege 3 - Also on my PS3 I got the demo for Dungeon Siege 3 which also impressed me. I wasn't sure exactly how things were going to play out as the developer is not the team whom did the first two... but I rather liked it. Having 1 of 2 characters and a solid experience revolve around that is kewl and everything just worked well (I would of liked better camera control through).

Other things:

Been watching this season's Breaking Bad since July and this coming Sunday is the finale... and it should be GOLD :D The show really kept up this season with the anticipation! Can't wait for it.

Dexter started on Sunday :) I love Dexter :) Can't wait to see what they do with this season.

Batman: Year One. I found out about thanks to amazon, want to see it.

Speaking of Batman - Akyham City is getting RAVE reviews and I couldn't be more excited for it. Got the CE pre-ordered.

Also waiting on Uncharted3, Skyrim and a number of others :)

Have not picked up Gears3 yet. Money management and all :P Thinking SotC/Ico and GoW Origins collections are my next pick ups, Gears after that perhaps? Rage is out too... :S lol. Too many games.

Promise the next blog wont be as random... :P Peace.

Is the gaming world getting a Cyberpunk phase?

2011-09-13T00:29:00.005-03:00

Everything seems to go in phases as certain themes become popular with pop culture; today I've noticed that the Cyber Punk theme seems to be creeping it's way into people's hearts.

Cyber Punk in a general sense, has us look to the near future where technology reigns supreme, the general population lives in giant city-scapes - lit with neon and with a contrasted image of high end technology life and the poor underbelly of everything else not included in such. A world where the internet has evolved into a much more complex system, where A.I is at a point of everyday interaction with humans, where even humans themselves are augmented with technological parts and sometimes even residing completely in technology itself. A common theme of "Big Brother watching" seems to span across a lot of CP works and the genre is, more often than not, tightly tied together with science fiction.

You look to films and you've got examples like Blade Runner, The Matrix (though slightly different take on it all), The Fifth Element and Tron (again a slightly different take) that all play with the idea of high tech worlds, the likes we've never seen. Jump to novels and you've got a mammoth bank to choose from ( Just about anything by authors Philip.K.Dick or William Gibson) and even manga and anime (Ghost in the Shell, Parasite Dolls, Akira) show it's love for the genre.

With games though... there are some examples that you can draw on from the past; games like the original Deus Ex, System Shock or Syndicate, but they seem to be few and far between.

Just recently (the end of August) Eidos Montreal pushed out their new take on the Deus Ex franchise, in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, bringing one of the more beloved cyberpunk series back into limelight. The game has done very well for itself as critics and fans alike sing praises of the developer for not cheapening the project and creating a well crafted game, deserving of the name.

Little known studio 'The Flying Wild Hog' has been working on their own cyberpunk styled game since some time around 2009 and is set to release the title today (Sept 13, 2011). Relying on more of an arcade-y feel of gameplay (it's been compared to serious sam), it's a first person shooter which is said to pull inspiration from Gibson, Dick and Stephenson among others. Check out their steam page where you can download the demo or purchase the title for yourself. It's a PC exclusive (sorry console owners).

Jump ahead to just recently (within the last few days) and it seems that EA want's in on the CP action, as they've announced a partnership with Starbreeze Studios on their re-vamping of a fan favorite, Syndicate. Fans can be torn on this as they want to protect the idea of (one of) their favorite titles, but here's to hoping it's done with love and things fall into place, much like they did for Eidos and their recent upgrading of the Deus Ex franchise.

Now we jump to the rumor mill and the possibility of Kojima and team either working on or at least thinking about returning to their early 90's Cyberpunk romp, Snatcher. Again, borrowing heavily on the ideas found in Blade Runner, Kojima (whom wrote and directed the project) and his team really haven't visited the cyberpunk theme so vividly again, as they've been mostly busy with the Metal Gear Solid franchise... but if rumors are true we may get a new Snatcher title in the future. Kojima even confirmed that a radio drama based on the world of, will soon come into fruition. So, keep your fingers cross.

All of this points toward one very exciting thing. Cyberpunk seems to be catching on with the game developers as of late as a new setting for their stories. I am a huge fan of the genre and would love to see more games (film and just about any other media too) take on task of creating interesting worlds in these confines; but only if it's done right. It would only take a few bad games to ruin it for the rest, but from what I've seen so far, it seems that developers are doing something right with it and I'm excited to see it continue. What about you?

Now playing: Chimera edition

2011-09-08T19:27:00.001-03:00

Hey team, how are things? Hopefully things are well :) Did you know this fall season is packed with games? I started a blog post detailing some of the titles I'm looking forward to... and it's actually a larger list than I realized. So, I'll leave that for now and just jump into what I've been playing.

Before I hit that though, are there any Matt Good (of Mathew Good band fame) fans in here? I just recently learned of said artist coming my way (well, a City ~ 2 hrs from me) this October and I've decided to head up and see him perform live (bought the tickets already) :) Been chatting with some friends and family and now plan on traveling up with a cousin, his girlfriend and friend of mine to see the show, hope it's a good time :) *Link to his wiki page here.

Now to the main purpose of this blog:

(PS3) I picked up Resistance 3 just yesterday as I was doing some grocery shopping (I love that I can do both in the same store :P) as I've had my eye on it and more or less enjoyed the last two. I've spent a few hours with it's campaign mode and I'm impressed.

I'll back track for a second and let it be known that I enjoyed the uniqueness of Resistance: Fall of Man - including story, setting and way they laid our the narritive; I felt also that a lot of that was lost with Resistance 2 in favor of upping the pace and seeing how big the bosses could get... but I still enjoyed it for what it was. Resistance: Retribution on the PSP made me hate my PSP. Technically it looked nice and I enjoyed some of the narrative... but the controls were bad and the gameplay more boring than banging my head against the wall for 6 weeks straight.

Jump forward to Insomniac's newest iteration in the series and I'm shocked. The team really has dug in and really taken the time to amp up the feel of the fights, pour emotion into it's characters and present a world that feels more meaty than R2 ever did and even tops that of R1. The combat is, at times, so intense I find myself gripping my controller too firmly - or my eyes become strained from not having moved for 15 straight minutes as I try to take on a hoard of Chimera. The visuals look better, the music more in-tune with what's happening on screen; the Chimera seem more willing to poke around and hunt you down (instead of just hiding behind cover and popping off shots) and the controls themselves feel just right.

I'm not saying it's perfect... it's still got that same Resistance feel... it's just better. If you hated the series before... it might not win you over now... but I stand impressed at what some extra time with the game has done for it with moving it forward. Bravo Insomniac, Bravo.

That said, I'm no where's near done. Just a few hours into the campaign and I haven't even touched multiplayer. I'm interested to see if the strong starting will continue and lead to a satisfying ending.

(PS3) Now - a game I've had longer than R3... but have prob played less. I dun even know why I keep putting off... but I do. First it started out that I had zero time at home to get down to it (work and social stuff) but when I did get the time I ended up just watching something on netflix :S I did manage to sit down to it for a few hours and I rather like what I've played... but I'm still looking around for air vents so I can try and be sneaky... (there seems to be very few)... so I end up walking around and accidentally run into people then have to kick their butts loudly which means the whole stealth thing is thrown out the window. *Shrugs, I dunno, lol... maybe I suck at stealth?

Question! Why do I use some kind of energy point system to 'stealth take down' guys but I can run around and spray tons of bullets at fools like crazy without any kind of over-head system (besides avoiding getting shot myself)?? Doesn't that almost force people into taking the easy route and just gunning everything and everyone down? Geez. I know I can upgrade that system, but I shouldn't have to! I should be able to take my heavily mechanized body and snap necks like it was child's play.

Anyways, the game looks superb and I rather like the level design and character work... I just need to be focused when playing it to get into it more. I picked up the Aumented edition of the game... which I'm sad to see doesn't come with a standard game case (something I like, over large custom ones). It's kinda hard to shelve with my other games without it sticking out. It joins my CEs of MGS4 and Castlevania LoS as giant boxes that don't fit :P

(PC) Ahh, GTA... I thought I was bored of you. With all the talk about the ICEnhancer mod that has been circulating this summer, I decided to give it a try myself (as it's free if you own GTA on the PC) and I did give it a go for a good hour or so... but it destroyed my Frame-rate in certain areas of the game... so I just uninstalled it and decided to try playing some GTA IV on it's own. Holy crap GTA4 is a fun game :P I originally played a lot when it came out (how many years now?) on my PS3, but hadn't finished it (was just a few missions from completion) and never really touched it again until this most recent time. I'm going through the story (and messing around a lot) just got burned out of my first apt a little whiles back and am busy meeting some key people in the story line, it's a blast.

Ha, during the game I took my cousin Roman out for a night of drinking (and driving). It started off with me landing of my face more than once, and eventually lead to us getting into our car while Niko commented "I'm too drunk to drive, I should call a cab" - to hell with that, This is a video game Son!! We were all over the road, hitting things and people (they did a very good job making you loose complete control of the car when driving intoxicated) and eventually the police caught on to us and chased us down a few streets. Eventually we were cornered as our car got wedged between a tree and a building, but not before the car decides to go one fire (why do the cars go on fire so easily in the game?). I stumble out, fall on my face again and the cops take aim behind their cover, asking us to surrender. To my horror, Roman makes his way out of the car, yelling, as he is set ablaze while stumbling around drunk. Our scene ends with our car exploding and my body being hurled towards the cops as the screen fades to black.

0_0 - only in GTA... :P

(PC) To a lesser extent, I've also been playing Borderlands. I've owned Borderlands for quite some time and even had it downloaded in my steam client... but never spent too much time with it. Some time this summer, I started a new character and decided I'd give it a more thorough playtest. Borderlands is fun :D The whole weapon collection system is great and reminds me of RPGs of old (on the PC) and the visuals and characters I've met so far are rather interesting. Luckily I can jack all of the visual options up to max and holy crap it looks nice, I'm so glad they went with the style they did.

I occasionally get my butt handed to me because I wonder off too far and get into pits of baddies whom are much higher level than I (a weird feeling in a FPS title) but I'm learning to go a more subtle pace. I haven't really done much of the Co-op thing, as I'm still learning things from the game itself but I may venture into that kind of gameplay at some point.

(PC) Oddly enough, the last game I've been spending time with is "The Sims: Social" a facebook game no less which is sucking my soul away. Raptr (which tracks gameplay) tells me I have ~12 hours sunk into it... and that's scary. I usually can't stand facebook games and... this one does have some of that "Hey you can only play for X time before your "energy" runs out" and "Bug your friends for shit" but... some of that retarded stuff aside, it feels more like a game that most facebook games. It's basically The Sims thrown into a facebook app. It's interesting to say the least and I've been playing quite a bit of it. *Shrugs, I dun even know why :P.

OMG-Z is superb

2011-08-25T18:34:00.002-03:00

Holy crap. It's not too often that I just throw in (or click in this case) a game and am totally blown away by it. Especially when it's a cheap (technically I got this free through PS+ on PS3) download title which I just downloaded to see what it was like. But that's just what happened.

I'm starting to get burnt out on bad download titles when it comes to tiny games be they on a phone or something akin to PSP minis or XBL indie titles. There's A LOT of them out there and A LOT of them are either bad or just plain boring. OMG-Z is neither.

I sat down the other night and learned the basics needed to complete a level and learned more as I went on in this OMG-Z game... which I assume is "Oh my gawd - Zombies!" ... but it could be Onion Meat Garnish - Zebra! for all I know

In game screen, lots of blood.

Anyways, about 4 hours later, I was finished with the title (though admiditly I've gone back to try and get better metal awards)... yep, killed my through it's 80ish levels, have all the upgrades have had a hell of a time with it.

It's not a typical zombie killing game. Instead of some ammo king who runs around and slaughters everything in an arcade-y like setting, each level is just one screen (with various locations throughout the game) and you a lone shooter whom stands a-top something and has just 3 bullets to pick off the entire mess of undead (well over 100 zombies at times). You can upgrade your weapon's ammo to 6 shots through-out the game, but for the most part you'll be working with just those 3-6 shots. The strategy in play is with the different zombies, their chain reactions and how you upgrade your various skills.

The upgrade screen. This helps out A LOT.

Some zombies explode which take out others around them, others turn into acid pools that trap fellow zombies; police zombies fire a round before going down and the army undead fire a few bursts of ricocheting bullets when killed. Each of these types effect other types and depending on upgrades you choose (from money you receive with medals you earn in each level - Brownze, Silver, Gold and Platinum) their effects will be raised and even upgraded with new abilities as you progress. Mix in your own upgrades of ammo, weapon strength, explosive barrels, zombies with varying health and obstacles... and you've got a bit of a thinking game mixed in with your zombie shooting.

It feels truly unique and is addictive like you wouldn't believe. It's got a black/white (and grey) color scheme with only the blood and your reticule showing color, which is quite helpful, as the game gets a little chaotic at times. It's pixel art, much like games of yesteryear and even playing in on my PS3 on a 1080p HDTV(it's built for the PSPs 480x272 resolution) it looked great - very retro.

If you've got a PSP or PS3, get this game I got it for free, but I would of gladly spent $5 for it at the least.

Le Sigh... another personal blog post.

2011-08-20T01:06:00.001-03:00

Hey, you. Yeah you, with the pretty eyes and such :) How you doin? ;) Ahaha.

Sad puppy is sad.

This a bit of an odd blog... but bear with me. Ever have those days where you wish you could turn the world off and just... go away? Today is a day like that for me. In general I'm quite the content individual, enjoying my day in various degrees, having ups and downs, but for the most part seem to have a very chill personality. That's not always the case and occasionally I seem to dip so far into "crap mode" that I literally feel no joy in anything, no cause to stand for, no person whom matters to me. I turn completely off and become sludge. This kind of thing never seems to last too long, generally a day - or a few - and then I level back out and get on with life... but holy shit does it suck when it hits.

My entire day was spent, completely speechless, I didn't utter a thing to a single soul, heading to work I had to play the part enough to not appear as a huge asshole, but I was still more or less dead inside, hating the entire shift. A few times, I felt like just walking out and going somewhere off, by myself... but... consciously I knew the consequences of doing such and honestly, it's not something I can afford at the moment... least I can think that much when in such a state, hmm? All that said, this kind of thing isn't fun at all.

So yeah. Yay for bullshit, eh? I do feel better than I have most of the day. I've got some soothing music playing right now (weird 90's shit that I rarely listen to seems to calm more than my usual music) and no doubt after some sleep, tomorrow should be better. *Fingers crossed anyways :P

-----

Okay, enough bitching and whining from me.

GTA IV is a lot of fun :P I snagged a copy from steam recently to try out the ICEnhancer Mod that's blown up recently... but the mod kills my FPS... so I'll just leave it till sometime I upgrade my hardware. Been playing a lot of the actual game since then though :) It's been quite a while since I've played it and it feels really nice.

Not really playing much else besides that.

I have decided to start drawing again. I'm not that great, but I still like doing it. I got a comment on a little sketch I did and posted on deviantart which really sparked my urge to start in on it again, so I'll try to make some time for it. Kind of looking forward to seeing what I can whip up :)

Got to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes... it was decent. Felt too short IMO, but did a good job with the characters, especially the main chimp, Ceasar. Would like to see them do more in that vein... cuz I HATED the Tim Burton film 'Planet of the Apes'.

Andy Serkis plays Ceasar and... holy crap that dude know how to act through body movements.

Gamespot just gave Xenoblade a 9.0 ... sigh... I wish Nintendo would hurry up and just bring the game to North America... it's seriously one of the few games I actually want to play on my Wii... and they're being fucktards about it.

Dues Ex: Human Revolution is coming very soon though :) That'll make me happy. It's been getting superb reviews thus far too, so that makes it that much better.

Speaking of kewl games. Omikron. Not many people know it. I plan on doing a blog post on it, so check in soon :)

Is Steam making me less a Pirate...

2011-08-13T22:18:00.001-03:00

No moar 'Arrrrr'?

So, funny thing. I've come to realize that I've hit a point where... instead of downloading a PC game illegally from a favorite torrent source... I'll go looking for it on Steam FIRST.

I'm dumbfounded. When did Steam wedge itself into my life like that? If you had told me years ago that such a situation would slide into place, I might not of believed you. Back in the day it was all about pirating games, sharing discs with friends and all that fun stuff, but... Steam really has blossomed into a service that makes it not only easy to get those games and assure they're working (automatic patches and almost always a post in the game specific forum if a problem does arise) but does so generally at a superb price to boot.

I've been a big fan of Steam's constant sales (they do daily, weekend and mid week sales every week as well as big sales on tons of games through out the year) since I started using the service. Really, out of the 200+ games I own on the service, I've only ever paid full price for... I think, 3. Left 4 Dead, one of my fave online titles I got for $1.24 at one point.... you just can't beat that kind of deal.

Just recently I decided I'd give the ICEnhancer mod a go to see how it is (as everyone has been talking about it for weeks now :P) and realized that I didn't own GTA IV on the PC... so it's like I said; I checked Steam first and that's when I came to the realization... Piracy is becoming a thing of my past in the world of games (* As long as the content is available online on a service like steam).

It's not just Steam either, as I've collected quite a number of titles on Good Old Games (GOG.com) as well. At $6-$10 a piece and extra work put into them to ensure the older games work without problems on modern systems, it's a freaking steal.

I wonder how many other people are being turned by the services such as steam (there's many out there, you might have your own fave) away from piracy because of the simplicity and good sales on the content at hand?

03-08-11 - Pickups and such

2011-08-03T20:31:00.001-03:00

A little BSG humor there :P

Hey dudes and dudettes, how's things? I did plan on dropping quite a hefty blog on you today which has taken some time to write, edit for errors and search for pictures... but still I'm not done... and it's mostly because today is my day off... and I instead spent the day doing rather leisure things.

My brother and I ripped into town to do some random shopping. I initially wanted to get some compressed air (you know those keyboard duster things)... but I couldn't find any... so we just hopped around a few stores without much mind of any one thing we wanted to nab, just window shopping if you will. We ended up at FutureShop - a tech shop of sorts along the lines of BestBuy (actually, I think the same company owns them both...) anyways... I try to avoid the place because of their just plain weird and pushy sales people... it's never a fun experience.

For example - today I had an employee tell me that she was hugely into beta testing games and that she beta tested most of the games available in the store. *Rolls eyes. I just nodded and went about my business, later commenting to my brother what a crock of shit that was. We just went around picking through shelves of games and movies and such and the same employee showed up and spent 10 minutes trying to sell my brother a specialized World of Warcraft keyboard thing which made quick the act of hitting hotkeys for the game... I laughed as I walked away, letting him deal with her. I over heard him say a number of times that he really wasn't THAT into Wow... that he only played it a bit and didn't really need such a device... but she kept on it, again *Rolls eyes :P

Once we got rid of the pushy sales folk we go back to poking around and making fun of stuff (annoying employees included). I broke my streak of not buying games at this particular store :S Hell, I went a few months, so I'm proud :P Each title was only $15... so at least I didn't buy a "new" game eh? ;) Right? lol, I'm just trying to convince myself :P

Anyways, I picked up Resonance of Fate, Valkyria Chronicles, Test Drive Unlimited 2 and Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds - all for PS3.

Then I rounded the Blu-Ray section, my eyes darted around a bit and then I found the 'TV seasons' boxsets section and started looking for something in particular.. and spotted it both as a DVD boxset and a Blu-Ray boxset... and having watched most of the series in a DVD quality format.. I decided the extra cash for the Blu-Ray version was worth it:

:D Battlestar Galactica :D Rather pleased that it includes pretty much everything too. It's got seasons 1-4 and the 4.5 set they released as well as "Razer" and "The Plan" - two movie esc pieces they did along side the series and all of the web-episodes they did for promotion are packed in too. Can't wait to see it in crisp clear quality.

I snagged a copy of DC Universe Online at EBgames for $35 (PC) namely for the awesome batman statue that came with it. But now I have a copy of DCUO that I'm not going to use because... I already own the game (but wasn't giving up the kewl swag in the CE for $35). Soz... anyone want to purchase a PC copy of DCUO? lol.

I also put my order in for some pre-orders that'll be coming in the next 6 months, those being Batman: Arkham City (PS3), Uncharted 3 (PS3) and Mass Effect 3 (360) all for the collector editions, which I'm totally pumped for. I did it through EBGames.ca which means I need not pay a cent on them until ship day, which is extra nice considering one comes in October, one in November and the last in March 2012, so it shouldn't dent the wallet all at once. I'm waiting to order up on ESV Skyrim as they haven't announced a collectors edition yet and I want to see if they do.

Just a few items... but quite a bit spent out sadly. *Ehh, w/e. I've been good over the last few months - even put $1000 down on the debt for my car. So a treat was in store... right? ;)
_______________

Like I mentioned above, I'm working on a sort of hefty blog, it'll look at something in the industry that affects quite a few gamers and I'm sure at least some of your will agree with my view on it. If all things go as planned it'll be up in less than a week.

For now, hope you sleep well :) Peace.

3DS price drop and a New obsession

2011-07-30T12:07:00.002-03:00

Hey team, what's up? Been busy as of late, clocking in a nice 90 hours (for 2 weeks) at work for the paycheck... which is quite a lot of time... but great come pay day :) It's really cut my gaming back a bit... well that and 'my new obsession' :P I'll get to that in a minute, first:

The 3DS just went from $249 to $169 in a single day. The week before that, titles were being cancelled, others delayed and concerns about the system's sales brought into question. I was a bit surprised but, hey!, honestly at $169 the system seems like much closer a possibility to me than it was at $250. That said, I'll prob still not buy one (at least right now :P). I'm still waiting for the Vita to come along :)

With that out of the way.

BattleStar Galactica.

Frack :)

I'm so into this series right now, it's scary. I just finished season 3 (one season left to go) and I literally started laughing during the end of the last episode I just watched because it had me excited for what was next. The series is fracking brilliant. The length in which they delve into each and every character on the show is like nothing I've seen before. Each character seems so fleshed out and real, it's really something that most shows never even get any where near. Right now, I'm watching downloaded versions of the show, but I'm strongly considering the blu-ray boxset as a Christmas gift for this year :)

I've also stumbled on a browser based online (they mention MMO around certain circles.... but I wouldn't call it MMO from what I've seen) game for the series, titled simply "BattleStar Galactica Online". Anyone with an interest for the series should check it out, as you get to pilot ships (starting off with the Viper Mark II as human, a light Raider as Cylon) and build up your rank as part of the fleet, interacting with the cast and crew and feeling like you're part of the whole scheme of things. It's quite awesome for a completely free title (they do have a way for you to pay real world money for cubits - it's currency- but thus far I'm doing fine without that :P) and actually looks quite a bit more like an actual game, than you'd think it'd look for a Java based game run in a browser.

Are there are other BSG fans here? I know Roy digs the hell out of it, anyone else? If not, I suggest you give it a try. It's a bit of a slow burn at first, but after a handful of episodes you begin to get hooked into the characters and then it becomes wonderful :)

Dipping back into the classics

2011-07-25T16:57:00.001-03:00

An incredibly fun/unique game

So... I'm still working on the idea of finishing up some games and foregoing buying more until I finish some that I have stockpiled; I've been doing rather well, I must say. I did pick up a game on steam called Magika because a friend of mine wanted me to play it with him (and I'm all for co-op so I agreed) and it was on sale at that moment, so I decided "Why not". But besides that I've done REALLY well. No disc based games have entered my house and aside from free games on PS+ I really haven't gotten anything else via digital means either.

Sickeningly good character development

I was playing a number of titles and then just did the whole "Stop!" thing as I got really hooked on watching Battle Star Galactica (blew through the mini series, season 1 and 2 and am now on episode 8 of season 3) which is a fucking blast! Having watched Caprica before it, I was assuming it had the same slow burn, yet incredibly complex and fleshed out character progression that I was use to and I'm pleased to announce that it really does. I love shows that can really work with the characters. I've got the rest of season 3 to finish and then season 4 awaits - I'm excited.

Jade is such a strong character. Fitting for such a strong game.

Anyways, back on topic. I've dug into Beyond Good & Evil and I'm loving it. I enjoyed the hell out of it on the PS2 back in the day and I eventually got my hands on a PC copy... but the PC copy always had issues with working correctly... so I haven't re-played it until now. It's really fun and I love the two main characters. Wonder when they're going to get around to finishing up the sequel?

I've also got inFAMOUS2, NFS Hot Pursuit, Alice: Madness Returns, Gears of War (decided to replay the original) and L.A Noire (which is now with a friend whom wanted to borrow it) on the go... but I just didn't feel like playing any of them. So, what did I do? I grabbed my PSP, transferred some PS1 classic titles from my PS3 (where I had them downloaded) and started in on some older games :)

A lot of these games I've had for a while or I got free thanks to PS+ and thus far I'm quite impressed. I've jumped into Xenogears and I'm really impressed at how awesome it looks, both in game and the superb anime cutscenes. Also loaded up the first Spyro game and that too really impressed me with it's visuals! I guess I had an image in my head of what a PS1 game should look like and then keep getting jarred awake by what they actually look like :P I love having them on my PSP too... it's just a different feeling than sitting down infront of my TV to play them.

I've been combing through the PSOne classics section on the PSN store and notice quite a growing group of awesome titles there! Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9, Syphon Filter, Resident Evil, Castlevania SotN and more top the list... I guess I wasn't paying attention to the awesome that they have up there :P Honestly... at $5.99 and $9.99 for each game... it's quite an awesome deal. There are a number of titles I'd like to nab there, but will again leave it until later as I finish up some titles.

Another awesome thing I ran into. Turbo Grafix 16 games are transferable to your PSP :) I wasn't aware of that either... I moved Neutopia over and I'm insanely pumped.

I've got some more titles to play and enjoy... and I didn't have to spend a penny :P Hells yeah.

How do you top that?

2011-07-18T16:49:00.000-03:00

Wow... just wow.

So... on Thursday I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Halifax (about ~2 hours from where I live) with my brother and a co-worker to check out a live music event happening there.

Seether did the best out of all the opening acts. I don't know a lot of their songs, but what they did do was decent. They even preformed a version of Nirvana's 'Heart Shaped Box', which put a smile on my face :)

Other opening acts included Matt Mays, Protest the Hero, and Coheed&Cambria... but IMO they all did piss poor jobs in comparison to the main event.

The last, AND BEST, to take the stage was none other than:

METALLICA!!!

Yay fire! and Metallica! :)

They blew the fucking place up, to put it bluntly. Last fall, I got to see Lamb of God perform live and I thought that was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen... and while I still have major love for that band... Metallica puts on a show like no other. The place was filled to various capacity through out the day of music, but when Metallica showed up the place was PACKED. The entire area filled with tons of people whom had come to see the band who last visited the area 18 years ago.

Young, old, the crowd was all over the place, but they all were there for the music. Beer and food were insanely expensive, but were still bought in mass quantities. I managed to pick up a shirt, hat and poster at the merch stand - but lost my poster somewhere in the crowd once Metallica came on stage (which is a bummer as I carted that damn thing around during the entire event (the event started around 3pm and finished around 12) but I've got my shirt and hat sitting on my bed next to me :) A nice memento of the event.

An even better way to remember the thing tho, is video! :D I've got quite a bit of the band performing via my phone (brought my camera but left it in the hotel accidentally) and while it's not the best quality and the music sounds muffled due to how loud it was, it's still there :) Take a look at this compilation I threw together from the various clips I took:

Links for the 2 part video:

Video Part 1

Video Part 2

Also, check out some (kinda crappy) shots I took:

This was pretty early on, not a lot of people.

A few more people showed up once Seether took the stage

Singer for Coheed and Cambria - crazy hair! :P Didn't care for the singing tho.

Mr Hetfield I believe.

Most of my Metallica pictures were blurry and crappy... so just watch the video :P Which is still a bit blurry and crappy, but works better than the pictures :P

Vroom vroom

2011-07-10T13:18:00.002-03:00

Ahh, what a nice feeling. Well... not the whole debt thing... but hey!

I got my first car. :) I've gone quite a while without my own... mostly relying on parents and such for theirs when I could snag it from their grasp (or lining up drives /w friends for events), but on Friday I finalized the paper work with the dealer involved as well as my insurance company and finally my bank - whom lent me the remaining sum I needed to purchase the vehicle.

It's an 08 Chevy Cobalt, dark grey in color and I'm pleased as pie to know that it's come with niceties like power windows, locks, remote start and AC :) I would of done without those, but it's hellish nice that they're included in this particular model. It's still got a few years left in it's warranty for the motor and such (the complete 'everything' warranty is about to run up in about a month) and honestly, I didn't have to borrow much from my bank to afford it. That and the person I dealt with (I don't know her title) actually got me an amazing deal in which I will be paying just 1.9% interest on my loan for the first 6 months of it... which... if I'm careful with my luxury spending should be well enough time for me to pay that off (else it jumps to 16% after the 6 months).

So... I'm pumped! But also kinda weary... now that I've dropped so much money into a car - that I'll end up messing it up :P lol. It feels different when you're driving something you put your hard cash into.

Amerrriiika and Caaaaanada fuck yeah!

2011-07-03T17:18:00.000-03:00

Haha, before anything, check out this video:

:) I dun even care for the series anymore, but I love that trailer/song combo.

This IS your god, right? ;)

Happy 4th of July to all of you crazy Americans :D (Okay, you're not ALL crazy...) I know the day is one of celebratory activities including fireworks (lol I almost wrote firefox) and such and I hope yours is AWESOMEEEMEMME!!!!! WITH CHEERRRRIIEEESSSS ON TOP! ;)

To any fellow Canadians, HAPPY CANADA DAY!!! WOOO!

Little known fact: Both our male and female hockey players are completely wasted while playing in the Olympics - and we still whoop ass ;)

This past Friday was Canada day (July 1st for those who don't know) and I believe it's much like the American 'July 4th', in that we do fireworks (almost wrote firefox again lol) and have a hell of a time celebrating our country.

Hope everyone has a safe, long weekend and enjoys the hell out of their respected country.

To anyone reading from other places around the world. Stay awesome and get some fireworks anyways and celebrate something awesome too! :D

Peace.

Nintendo is... losing me

2011-06-30T12:16:00.000-03:00

Nintendo: A thing of my past?

Growing up, Nintendo was king in our household. The SNES our first system, it reigned supreme for quite some time. Eventually we got our hands on an NES and even a Genesis for a bit, but rather fond memories are still with the SNES. At one point in my youth, my brother, sister and I decided to pool money together (it took a lot of saving) and sell our SNES and NES (the Genesis was already gone) in order to afford an N64. Looking back today, I think it silly of us to sell those two awesome systems... but back then, being kids with little to no income, we did what we had to.

The N64 blew my mind when I first got to see Zelda in 3D! Many an awesome game later and it came time for the new generation of gaming and... the PS2 was my choice over the gamecube/xbox. GTA3 is really what did it for me, at the time I had never seen another game like that. Time went on and I loved my PS2 and my sis got her hands on a Gamecube of which I was able to experience what I wanted on the system (namely Zelda). FF>> a number of years and I even snag one myself from ebay for cheaps to replay some Zelda goodness.

GTA3 - showed me a world outside of Nintendo... and I liked it.

Since the Gamecube though... Nintendo has never been the same in my eyes. Those mammoth hit games didn't seem to be on the gamecube and for the exception of a handful of titles, I really wasn't that put out not owing the system during it's generation. Along comes the Wii and same thing really. I did end up buying a Wii (again cheap) mostly (again) for Zelda... (which is my weakpoint eh?) and for it's kewl virtual console feature. However, my Wii gets the least amount of use out of all my gaming systems, right behind my DS and I'm left scratching my head as to why.

Quite honestly... I'm not even sure why I purchased a DS... (maybe Zelda? of which I own both)... my experience with it has been quite "meh" to be honest. A few titles I've enjoyed like the Zelda titles, the Kingdom Hearts game, Scribblenauts, the Pokemon gold remake and no doubt a few more... but now that Nintendo has a new handheld out... and the games have shifted to that... I've come to a realization that I really don't care for my DS.

Not a lot of love for these two...

Jump back to home consoles... and the Wii - with a software lineup coming to a close with the Wii U announced... sits on top of my 360, waiting for me to turn it on. Again, Zelda rawks - but thus far a Wii-mote version of Twilight Princess is all we have for it. The Metroid Prime trilogy really made me smile, as it's a blast of a series (again even though 2/3s of it is gamecube games), Mario is usually goto for a romp and the New SMB along with 2 Galaxy titles were decent and I've had fun with Donkey Kong and Monster Hunter (even if Monster hunter is better on the PSP) but... my "awesome" experiences with it seem to extend solely from Virtual Console games... which is sad.

Three titles I've been looking forward to (and also happen to be what prompted this rant) for the system have just been thrown into limbo. The Last Story, Xenoblade: Chronicles and Pandora's Tower are now all under the status line of "there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas". Yep... the 3 titles that I thought would be the biggest bang for me on the system I feel has done a poor job of entertaining me... might never see the light of day.

I think it hilarious that Nintendo keeps touting their love for the core gamer and how they're aiming to get that crowd back and yet... they pull stuff like this. Awesome guys! You know, just cut off three wonderful looking titles that bring a hint of core gaming to your system and keep pumping out mini-game collections and over priced remakes. Woo.

Zelda is sad... and so am I.

Oh hey, I almost forgot. Did you hear!? In the new Zelda title, both Link and Zelda are in boarding school! Woo! Yeah!*Rolls eyes.

Ack! If the hate and rage hadn't built up enough.... I was interested in their new Wii U system... until I read things like this:

"The Wii U supports just one touch-screen controller per console, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed. But if a game should require more, a 3DS could theoretically be used instead.(link)"

Not to mention that everything they were showing at E3 on the device was either conceptional (faked) or not even footage run from an actual Wii U machine.

0_o Really?... NINTENDO?

Why in the hell would you show off and sell a system that's literally all about it's new "innovative controller" and then say "Oh, btw you can't have friends use one too, it's just one per console" and then expect anyone who wants to play multiplayer to pony up $300 for a 3DS.... ACK!!! That literally makes me want to walk down to Nintendo HQ and kick each and every one of their higher ups in the face.

It frustrates me so, because I like what I've seen from the Wii U thus far... and yet there's these big ol stakes in the road that Nintendo keep tossing our way and assuming it won't matter.

If Nintendo doesn't do something other than talk lies and not deliver, I may of just had my fill with them. Even if that means no more Zelda.

//Rant.

Free beta code and a PS update

2011-06-25T12:01:00.000-03:00

Hey team. Anyone want an Uncharted3 multiplayer beta code? I got one with my copy of infamous2... and really have no use for it (don't generally care for betas... just would rather wait for the full game). It's only good for North American (USA & CAN) PSN accounts (decided to give the code to a gamespotter in Aus who tried to use it and it didn't work). So, if anyone's interested, say so, I'll PM the first who does so, with the code.

Other than that... it's been about 4 or 5 days since my last blog, which outlined some games I was working on beating... and I haven't touched any of those in that time. Nope. I think the only game I played was Plants vs Zombies on my PS3 :P Oh that and a new infamous-facebook game... which is a little weird but decently done.

**For anyone who doesn't know, Pinksquadron.com is a site I run with the help of *punkhead66 (here on gamespot - not sure if they want their real name used :P) and a few others whom act as freelance support that focuses on strong female characters in video games.

I've been a little lazy of late when it comes to pinksquadron... letting articles pile up, unpublished... and it's mostly due to good weather (being out, enjoying it) and work. When I do get slouch time to just chill at home, it seems I prefer watching TV shows I've downloaded or movies if I have the time. I did manage to force myself to sit down for a bit the other day and pump out a number of pieces for the site - but I fear some times my laziness hurts the place - which isn't kewl.

That said, Pinksquadron is going along rather well in my eyes. We average 2000-2500 hits per day, have a small but growing number of facebook fans and thankfully there's enough news on the subject at hand to provide a decent amount of new content (when I'm not lazy ;)). One thing we need to work on is reviews! That again comes from my laziness - but reviews will start soon, I swear. One very kewl thing with the site, is the analytical software google has in place to allow me to see exactly what's going on and who's visiting. I get updates on where traffic is coming from (to better aim my promotion), what posts are being read, what key terms are being searched for when the articles are found, what browsers people are using, where in the world they are and when they're visiting. It's all very interesting and incredibly useful to knowing where and how to be promoting the site.

I just got a bug with my domain host fixed, which took people visiting pinksquadron.com (without the www. prefix) to a default error page with them, to redirecting to to the real www.pinksqudron.com. I actually didn't know this was an issue for quite some time and then once I noticed it... I had to fix it... cuz that's not kewl at all.

We're actually also in talks with a professional artist whom is crafting a few characters of original design to represent the site in a more unique way. Right now we just use some well known video game characters to get our image out, but some time this summer, we may have our own look, unique to the site. I'm rather excited for this.

If you've got any interest in the subject matter, I suggest you visit the place :)

Time to finish up some titles!

2011-06-21T13:29:00.000-03:00

So... I've reached a point where... again I've stockpiled some games and have decided that I'm not buying anymore (Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the end of August doesn't count :P) until I start finishing some titles I have. I managed to just skim over a shelf of cheap games today and not buy any! Woo! (I did end up picking up a few DVDs though :P)

That's a good step... as I find it hard to pass up cheap games that I've considered buying at some point. Be they online from steam, gog, PSN or XBL or in a bargain bin at a local retailer for $10-$20 - I generally find it hard to pass up a game I think will be even half decent. Then there's those titles I've been anticipating for their entire creation cycle - those are usually pre-ordered - or games I receive as a gift for birthdays, Christmas or some other random occasion. The point is... they add up and I end up having big stacks of games, some half finished, some not even put into the system it was intended for (or in the case of digital downloads - not even downloaded).

I'm not going to bother listing them all... as that would take effort, but suffice to say, it's a rather large list. Here's what I'm chipping away at right now and I'll be sure to keep a tally of what I finish as to keep an incentive to continue the trend.

L.A.Noire - Have only a few hours into this one, but really want to get back into it. It's really a mood thing... as I feel like I need to pay attention in the game... something I can't do when I just feel like shooting something or running something over in a quick 20 min session of adrenalin pumped fun.

infamous 2 - Just got it... when ever it came out. I couldn't even break open the package (got the Hero edition) for a few days because I was busy with life stuff... but I managed to start in on it and do a few missions. It's very similar to the first one I find... and those baddies still catch me off guard with how effective their bullets are when fired at me :P

Alice: Madness Returns - Ahh Alice :D I loved the first game from years ago (which comes as a free download with this new game - AWESOME!) and from what I've played of this new one I really enjoyed. Same voice actors, as far as I can tell, some great visuals and twisted sense of style too. Hope the narrative holds up :)

American McGee's Alice - The game that came before Madness Returns - I downloaded it the moment I had it's sequel in my PS3. I may just pick away at this one... as I've beaten it a number of times on the PC over the years.

DiRT3 - Yeah... I'm kinda having my ass handed to me in DiRT3. I've always liked the series for it's mix of arcade and simulation racing (hybrid?) but... I just can't seem to drift very well in any vehicle in DiRT3 and even end up spinning out on normal races.... what gives? I've tried messing with the various settings.... but it feels like either the game is driving for me or I end up spinning... not kewl. It's a shame really because I kicked butt in the first two games, flying down narrow paths, navigating my cars around corners with ease. Gonna keep trying.

Red Faction: Guerrilla - I planned on beating this before I got Red Faction: Armageddon... that didn't happen, lol. I did do a huge part of the campaign in that time leading up to the new game though. It prob wouldn't take too much to finish it.

The Witcher 2 - I had this title pre-ordered for quite some time and started downloading it the instant it was available for download. 17gb took a little while to acquire... as our connection is far from blazing fast... and I got to play it... once I think... yep once. Didn't even finish the intro. Life got in the way and when I got back to it... a new 9gb update to download... sigh. It's at like 42% ...

StarCraft 2 - Back when I had PC issues (hard drive issues) my copy of StarCraft 2 wouldn't work. Uninstalls, reinstalls etc... didn't work... and I was left without the game. Once I got my hard drive diagnosed and replaced, I had forgotten about the game and it was a few months later before I remembered. Popped it in, installed, updated and was ready to go. Got a few missions done on the single player but haven't had a chance to delve into it as much as I'd like. Soon I hope, soon.

Timeshift - So this game is from 2007 eh? It's impressive - visually, for a 2007 game... I'm surprised I only paid $8 for it :P It's a pretty standard run and gun shooter except for the whole slow down, reverse and stop time mechanic - which can be fun. I can only stomach small bouts of the game as it gets old quick... but I still want to finish it.

IloMilo - Addictive little XBL puzzle game that makes my brain bleed. lol. The game was pie - easy at the first and generally didn't offer too much trouble... but I've reached a point where I'll sit and stare at puzzles for what feels like forever, wondering how to solve them. It's SOOO satisfying when you do though, gahh, like nose candy ;)

Wow... E3 was lame...

2011-06-08T09:52:00.000-03:00

Holy crap. I remember having mixed feelings about last year's E3... but damn, some kewl games were announced for various systems last year. That sure wasn't the case this year.

Sitting through the painfully bad Microsoft press conference made me want to bash my face in... with a Kinect. *Rolls eyes. Sony pulled up and I thought "Hey, they've got NGP right, that's what they'll talk about!" ... no... instead we get a ton of Move crap mixed with with some game trailers of games we already know about followed with some little NGP (or Vita) info and a whole bunch of extremely boring "We're Playstation YO!" *Rolls eyes. Nintendo stepped up and IMO has the best showing... but I'm iffy with Wii U and there really wasn't much shown, new game wise to get me excited. NTM, I just got my Wii... and now I need another system? No so fast Nintendo.

Microsoft -

Likes:

Halo anniversary - I'm not a big halo fan... but the first one is deff my fav... so an updated version of that is kewl :)

Tomb Raider - Was shown in action :) Can't wait for the game.

Mass Effect 3 - Got to see a tiny little bit from the game.

Dislikes -

Call of Duty - Don't care.

Halo 4 - Ditto.

EA Sports - Ahhh... nope... please shut up Moore.

Mass Effect 3 - Kinect? Really? *shakes head.

Kinect - OMG 90% of their show was Kinect. I don't care about kinect, kinect can eat me.

Over All - So... I enjoyed seeing Lara Croft in her new game. 2/10

Sony -

Likes:

PS Vita - Named, priced, rough release date announced. Bioshock title announced for it, Street Fighter X Tekken, Uncharted, LBP and MNR all shown for the device.

God of War Origins Collection - The two PSP GoW title on the PS3 in an HD collection? Sign me up.

Ico and Shadow HD coming this fall - About time! I can't wait for this collection.

Starhawk - Looks tight as hell.

Bioshock infinite - OMG the game looks stunning.

Dislikes -

PS Move - I like the idea of move... but they spent WAY too long on it and showed horrible demos. The NBA 2k game with kobe bryant was a joke. The medieval game where gestures control your weapons was equally as bad.

Dust 514 - I was excited for the news (which was leaked before E3) but the gameplay looked soooo generic.

Exclusive EA content - They announced various EA games would come with free content "Only on Playstation" - this stuff includes new weapons, cars, skins etc - just bullshit garbage. Yet they bragged it up.

A few titles I liked and we got a price for PS Vita. 4/10

Nintendo

Likes:

Wii U Announced, shown off. Controller explained. Looks kewl, some core game franchises lined up to appear on the machine.

Skyward Sword coming this fall :)

Dislikes -

Wii U - Is a dumb name. Not all specs revealed, no price, no solid RD, most games mentioned, not shown. I don't know if I'm sold on the idea. Also, I was thinking. Nintendo releasing an "HD console" to match the PS3 and 360 later on in 2012... seems a little odd no? Give it another year or so and I have no doubt both Sony and Microsoft will be releasing consoles that leave the Wii U in the dust graphically and technically. It'll be the same story the Wii has suffered this generation.

A whole bunch of remakes, re-releases, half-assed sequels and other crap announced. Remember when Nintendo did original games?

Little to no support for Wii. Not kewl.

Over All - the Wii U's dumb name still has me looking at it in question. 5/10.

Holy crap... lets hope TGS is better this year or maybe next years E3...

Top 10 (pre E3) anticipated games list

2011-06-04T12:22:00.000-03:00

Holy moly! ;) There is a huge flood of info coming our way this week.... and E3 hasn't even started!!! Tons of new trailers, info, screenshots - it's like christmas! No doubt this coming week will be ever crazier as the big players in the game (nice pun, no?) come to the plate and swing, your way, what exactly their plans are for the next year and beyond.

Before we get new footage of awesome new and expected titles, I want to lay down what exactly I'm looking forward to this coming year.

Special mentions - Games that are either not coming out this year, or have no release date yet:

Bioshock Infinite, Bionary Domanin, Dragon's Dogma, Final Fantasy VS XIII, Final Fantasy Type 0, The Last Guardian, Spider-Man Edge of Time, Starhawk, XCOM. Also, infamous 2, Duke Nukem Forever and Red Faction Armageddon - all of which drop this week :P

10. Prey 2

I rather enjoyed the first Prey game. It actually felt like a perfect throwback to the Id games of old (Doom, Quake etc) with just enough polish and kewl ideas to stand out. The story and characters were laughably bad, but it was still fun. The new one looks to take it in a slightly different direction, but I really trust the team at Human Head Studios to do a spectacular job.

09. Xenoblade

It's been some time since I've been excited for a Wii title. The team behind this though, I have some respect for and the game itself looks phenomenal. Quite ambitious for a Wii title and that's exactly what I want to see.

08. Zelda: Skyward Sword

Strange that I mention it's been a while since a Wii game impressed me... but Skyward Sword... IS a Zelda title... of which I have a soft spot for. Not sure if I'm going to like the whole "Do everything with motion controls" idea... but I'm willing to give it a shot.

07. Darkness 2

Now... I loved the Darkness. The game was SO incredibly awesome. The new title looks to make it a lot more action based with quad wielding. That sounds weird... but it's going to allow you to use 2 guns along with your two snake like evil powers to devastate your enemy. I don't care for the new cell shaded look of the game, but if it's got near the same amount of detail in character design and story, I'll be happy.

06. Tomb Raider

I've always been a casual fan of Tomb Raider since they started doing it right - around the time of TR Legend and generally hated the clunkiness of the old games. This new title seems to be something else altogether. An origins story that has Ms Croft portrayed as a real life person with fault and shortcomings. I love the idea.

05. Uncharted 3

I'm pumped for Uncharted 3... but I also pretty much know what I'm in for. The series is superb with great characters, action and such... but again, I already know that... so my hype meter is a little less than something like... Tomb Raider - which is a completely fresh experience for that franchise. That said, I still have it a notch higher because I still know it's going to rock my world.

04. Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect is one of my most beloved titles this generation. I really want the last story in the trilogy to be epic as hell. I'm kinda scared about rumors floating around though. With EA president claiming stuff will be changed in ME to suit casual gamers... that kinect support may be in.... ugh... I really don't want them to mess up my fav franchise just to be gimicky and reach out to casual gamers :(

03. Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

I can't even fathom how many hours I've sunk into Oblivion... it's hundreds for sure. The idea of a completely open world where you alone (more or less) face the perils of that world and it's evils with sword in hand and some rat meat to help you through - is completely awesome. The new title is bigger, prettier, sounds better and should just be grander on every scale... I'm excited.

02. Batman: Arkham City

Ahh batman. How I love you so. Arkham Asylum was one of my favs when it launched in (2009?) and I've been anticipating the sequel ever since. We've got more villians, some returning, a playable catwoman, batman with a whole slew of new gadgets and a game that is oozing style!! GAAH!

01. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I wasn't sure if this or Batman should get the top spot... but DX3 beat out the competition just by a nudge. I can't even put into words my excitement for a game in a cyberpunk theme, that looks spectacular, offers open choices on how to play and is backed by a solid universe that's already proven itself awesome.

Ahh, the good ol days :)

2011-05-28T19:04:00.000-03:00

Quick little blog outlining an awesome little deal I fell into recently. :)

For some time now, I've been thinking of buying up an original Gameboy... mostly for nostalgia purposes; Maybe play some Pokemon or Robin Hood :) I happened to mention this idea to a co-worker or mine and she told me that her mom had one (her mom died about 2 years ago) and that she was looking to clean some stuff out anyways. It took a little while (2 months or so) and I asked her about it again, as we'd not talked about it since that day, sure enough she still had it and had actually gathered up a bunch of other stuff that belonged to her mom (whom was a kewl gamer btw) and listed it in a facebook message to see if I wanted any of it.

...I took everything :P

I got my original gameboy, as planned with some titles but also snagged an original (well cared for too) NES with controllers and games and even an N64 with the same kind of deal (controllers, games). At the awesome price of $100 for the entire lot. Some of the NES titles even came in their original cases... which kinda surprised me and really brought a kewl factor to the whole set. I took a few snaps with my phone to give ya a glance at the titles and goods:

The N64 is going to my sister, as I already have one, but everything else is staying. I'm even keeping the original boxes (though, I'm throwing them in the closet instead of having them out).

I was REALLY surprised to see Dragon Warrior in the mix... and Blades of Steel can't get any more awesome :P I'm extremely satisfied with my purchase.

Who needs graphics when you've got nostalgia. XD

Hells Yeah! MHP3 (and other PSP titles) coming to PS3

2011-05-22T11:31:00.003-03:00

I woke this morning to a couple bits of awesome news. The first, my copy of The Witcher 2 had finished downloading on steam (yeah!!!) and I see, through my sea of RSS feeds staring me in the face of my homepage, that Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is getting an HD port over to the PS3.

Sony, apparently happy with the result of porting PS2 games over to the PS3 with HD visuals and all the fancy trimmings a PS3 game would sport, is going to start in with the same thing for select PSP titles. The exact statement:

“PSP Remaster” titles will deliver rich and immersive gaming experience on the PS3 system through stunning high-definition graphics as well as through additional new features for these titles, such as operability on the PS3 Wireless Controller (SIXAXIS and DUALSHOCK 3), new add-on content or stereoscopic 3D support. Users will also be able to utilize the same save data from the original PSP game for the “PSP Remaster” version and enjoy the game on the go with the PSP system and continue the game at home on a large TV screen using PS3. Ad-hoc mode gameplay will also be supported through “adhoc party for PlayStation Portable” application on the PS3 system.

So, while this new Monster Hunter isn't built ground up for the PS3... it's much closer than I thought we were going to get for the foreseeable future. With Sony touting their new NGP to feature a hardware structure similar enough to the PS3, enough at least - to be able to port titles easily between the two, in theory being able to take your home games on the go, it's not hard to see why they wanted to test the waters with this kind of move.

With adhoc (a downloadable tool on PS3 which allows you to use the system as an internet hub for the PSP already) serving you to the online action and the comfort of 2 analogue sticks (on a PS3 controller) and some revamped visuals - Quite honestly, I love the idea. There are a number of amazing PSP games that would look superb on the big screen with an HD glaze over. I would hope a "collection" series would be in the works to see games like MGS Portable Ops and MGS Peace Walker bundled together. Maybe even the two God of War titles?

^_^ Right now, I'm pumped for MHP3 :)

Here's a clip of the game working on both PSP and PS3.

Link for those not reading on my site.

Enlarge your Johnson!

2011-05-20T13:39:00.003-03:00

What did you think you were in for with a blog title like that? Rest assured, I'm not trying to sell you male enhancement supplements... rather, it's the name of the latest trailer for a game I'm kinda pumped for.

View it here: (link for those reading the blog somewhere other than my site)

So, yeah. Swing that Johnston! :P

The game at least got an eyebrow raise from me back when it was first introduced - simply because of the names behind the project. We've got Goichi Suda aka 'Suda 51' (Killer 7, No More Heroes) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, Vanquish) sitting in the head seats for directing the project. Akira Yamaoka (composer for Silent Hill) is heading up the game's soundtrack (which is free with pre-order btw) with the lovely Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (voice actress for GitS's Mokoto and vocalist whom has worked with Yamaoka on most of the silent hill games). Quite the dream team if I've ever seen one :D

Cut to the trailers released thus far (the latest above) and one can tell it's going to be a title which is full of comedy. Something we don't get too often these days as titles that make fun of themselves and are meant for the player enjoyment are rare it seems... as most titles want you to be 100% serious about the subject matter. Not Shadows of the Damned.

The story is a simple one. You play Garcia Hotspur, a demon hunter who must make his way through Hell to save the love of his life. Aside from that, we know it's a third person shooter, with a crazy looking skull that turns into all of your needed weapons and helps you against these minions of hell. If the title had popped up from any other studio, from any other collaboration... I probably wouldn't be as excited.... but this combination they've come up with screams that it should be a worth while title :)

So, go a head and give it a look, to see if it's for you.

Hush404, out.

Broken game design, which bugs me

2011-05-18T16:20:00.000-03:00

So... I picked up Dead Rising2: Case Zero on XBL a little while ago, as it was on sale... for like 200msp and I thought I'd give it a try. I didn't like the first Dead Rising game, for a few reasons and that's why I didn't buy DR2... but I figured I'd give this small download title a chance and see if I could get into the series.

It didn't help. When I started it up and went about killing zombies I was actually having some fun... you know... killin zombies isn't exactly a boring way of life... but I soon ran into some problems that bugged the hell out of me. Invisible walls, time limits, unrealistic time progression and erratic difficulty spikes. Those are some of the biggest issues I have with games at points and this game had them all. WTH? Really? Did Capcom set out to make sure I didn't like the game?

That said, I can't just leave you with a tiny list about stuff I don't like, you need some explanation! :P So, here is some stuff in games that bug the hell out of me and generally ruin the experience for me.

1. Time Limits and Unrealistic time progression

The fact that there's a modeled watch in the game bugs me even more

This is probably the worst thing for me to encounter in games... because I like to play the game at my own pace, which - a lot of the time involves me messing with the game and it's engine, stressing it's limits, seeing what physics are in play, how objects interact with others and the environment and so on. I've played many a game and instead of just powering through the story, I spend hours doing weird, little things that aren't necessarily something the developer would assume you wouldn't do for so long.

Example - I spent like an hour strategically destroying sections of a large bridge in Red Faction: Guerrilla which would allow traveling traffic to fall into and I would enjoy watching them struggle to stay on the bridge. It's a little odd, sure, but I love doing stuff like that in games.... and if I'm restricted by a game which tells me I have 5 minutes to do task X or 20 minutes to complete a day cycle - or something else equally ridiculous which ends up in me failing at what ever they outlined for me... I get mad.

Connecting with my above experience with DR Case 0, I felt that I didn't have enough time to do what I wanted (kill zombies with flare) without being penalized for it. Having staying pretty strict to what I had to do for the tasks at hand, I still barely made it in time to my end task.

Want to give me a time limit to complete a race for a side mission? No prob. I'm fine with that. If you want to include a day/night cycle in a game, I'm fine with that, but make it so it doesn't feel like I'd run out and barely able to complete one thing before the entire day is over... it's just silly. Especially if restrictions are then put on you based on the time of day.

Dead Rising abuses these ideas more than any game should. You can't play the title like you want because of the extremely strict game style and time keeping. For that I hate it.

2. Invisible walls and unrealistic obstacles

Really? It sure looks like I can go that way...

Honestly, I understand the need to section off levels and stop the player from reaching points where they can't go... but please get creative with it. I don't want to run down a road or alley way and have it look like I can continue to go, just to run into an invisible wall preventing me from doing so. Equally aggravating is the idea of putting every day crap in the way and telling us we can't get by it. It IS NOT acceptable to put a trash can in my way and say "Nope, you can't get past that!" it's insane. A dump truck... sure, I can see it being hard to get past a dump truck in the way... but not a trash can.

Another beef I have is locked doors. Especially in a title where I'm packing shotguns, axes and a million other items that could make dust of those flimsy doors and their crappy locks. Making me search for a key, hidden in retarded location X so I can unlock the flimsy door to get that med pack is extremely stupid.

Case 0 features both of these frustrating elements. -_-

3. Erratic Difficulty Spikes

The image speaks for itself.

It's A-Okay with me to include various levels of difficulty or even an adaptive A.I that ramps up the difficulty the better you play or even a difficulty that ramps up evenly as you play through the title... I don't, however, condone random spikes of difficulty that make you shake your head. Why do games exist, where you can be enjoying yourself for a few hours, thinking "This is actually decently easy" or "The difficulty isn't too bad" and then run into something that causes you to rip your hair out?

Bosses need to be difficult, else they're not really memorable... but there's a limit of difficulty one should face, especially when it's near the first of the game. Many a game I've simply just dropped and never wanted to pick up again because of this.

Dead Rising: Case 0 may be one of those (which I never play again). I was dealing with my time limits and just managed to squeeze by, in time to give my daughter the shot she needed so she didn't turn into a zombie... and then some weird hick with a shotgun-taped-to-a-pitch-fork decides it's time to whoop my ass? WTH? I'm armed with a spiked baseball bat, a hotdog, a crowbar and a flashlight.... which do almost nothing to stop him from splashing my blood around the small area. Bam, time to load a new save, right? FUCK THAT. Back to the 360 dashboard and a "Fuck you" to that game.

This is also a huge problem with a lot of Japanese RPG games in which you can be going along, enjoying a story and then be forced with a boss that is 10gazzilion times strong than you.... but strategy really doesn't mean shit... you need to go back and grind for another 10 hours to get past the part..... FUCK THAT. Life is too short and filled with much better games to bother wasting time on that shit.

4. Partial Voice acting

Cutout pictures? Text boxes? No voice over? Acceptable during the SNES... but not now in 2011.

Why would you put voice acting in your game for some sections but not others? It's lazy. Either you're going all text or you hire them voice actors to do all scenes. Cutscenes, cinematics, conversation in game etc. Don't give me 2 of the 3 and think that's kewl because it's not.

Guess what! Case 0 does it.

5. Lack of control options or bad controls

"Just give me a min, I can't seem to stop aiming at the sky."

I play game with the camera inverted. Up is down and down is up in my world and that's the only way I play. If your game doesn't include an option for this, I won't play your game. It's really that simple... because any game that has camera control... generally needs camera control and if I can't used an inverted style... then I can't control my camera. Silent Hill: Homecoming doesn't have an option for inverted camera - and a patch for the game never came to include such a feature, so I've never played more that 10 frustrating minutes of it. I also remember playing Uncharted 2 for the first time and kept going into the menu to switch the inversion option, thinking it was sticking, but ended up not saving my preferences and spent the first half an hour struggling with it and wondering why - stooped me, I figured out and then instantly was able to run around with ease.

Equally maddening is the idea that I can't may controls to my liking, OR the controls are extremely bad choices for a particular title. 99% of shooters generally either have a scheme where my reload is the left most face button, which I love - some decide it's best on one of the top buttons? *shakes head. No. At least give me the option to change it.

-------

Okay, rant over. Dead Rising sucks. Peace.

So... PSN is back *insert smile face

2011-05-17T01:40:00.001-03:00

Hey team (remember, that's what you're called now :P) I'm going to try something rather different for me as a blog post... just something quick that I can give me two cents on instead of slamming a lot into a big blog that a lot of people just skim anyways :P

**Let me know what you think of this new, quick format.

The Topic:

PSN is back online worldwide (except Japan).

The Breakdown:

Taken offline on April 20th due to the mammoth hack job someone (strong rumors suggest anonymous) pulled off on with Sony's servers, the Playstation Network (PSN) has been down nearly a month as Sony started rolling out the hook up just the other day, starting in North America. The world, except for Japan - due to some weird stuff, is now able to get their PS3s and PSPs online and play with friends, compare trophies and so on.

Sadly, the PSN (digital) store, where gamers get demos, download DLC and buy games (and so on) is not yet functional as Sony continues to work on it.

Sony has already laid out plans on a few fronts. Working with companies to prevent identity theft - if such a thing arises from the hack, they're offering their services free (paid by Sony) to anyone with a claim. More awesome to a gamer's ears, Sony is offering up some free "Welcome back" goods to anyone with a PSN account prior to April 20th as an apology offering to gamers who couldn't get online for the near month.

Full games like infamous and little big planet on PS3 and Mod Nation Racers and Killzone Liberation on the PSP are being offered for free once the store is brought back up.

A full list of the possible free games and services offered here.

My Thoughts:

I'm glad to have PSN back, to tsee what friends are playing, to jump into some online games on my system - I had other online systems to play while PSN was down, so it wasn't too bad of a wait, but still :P it's nice to have back and to see Sony is making headway since this craziness started.

Personally, I like the idea of the offer to give back to gamers on the service... but in my case I own all of the PS3 titles being offered, except for Wipeout... which I don't care for. So I'm left either downloading nothing or grabbing something I already have, now in digital form. On the PSP offering, I don't own Mod Nation Racers or Little Big Planet... so I may snag those... but I'm not that excited for them. The addition of 2 months of PS+ membership is a nice touch as it makes up for the near month that I've lost because of the service not being up and then gives me an additional month... but I still feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel... all because I buy lots of games.

I honestly feel like I should be able to nab what ever title of my choice from the store, rather than those in the list. Even if it was just one title, I'd gladly give up a choice of 4 ones I don't care to own for that one title I want. I've seen some comments on Sony's blog saying the same thing... but I doubt we'll be heard.

For anyone without the titles, it's actually a great deal! You get two full PS3 games (two of which are large retail releases) and if you've got a PSP, two full PSP titles as well. Throw in some PS+ for free, some home items (which I forgot to mention before now, there's suppose to be ~100 free items) and even some movie rentals for those interested (from Sony's movie download service) and it's quite the bundle. Sadly, not one that I can take too much advantage of.

Quarter of a Century... eek

2011-05-14T14:34:00.000-03:00

Hey team, just a short blog today. I do have a few blogs done up, ready to be posted on a few subjects, but decided a light-hearted blog will do for today :P

So, blogger was down for about a day, EEK! lol, It felt weird having blogger down and not being able to A) Make random blogs or B) Post content on pinksquadron (we use blogger as our platform). Some posts were even messed up by the outage, as blogger reports they had to revert some data to a backup on Wednesday, which did funky things to posts that were posted after that point. Had to re-post some things and change some things that were effected by these errors. But all is well now :)

But, back on topic. Quarter of a Century... That's a sizable chunk of time hmm? Just so happens, today is my 25th birthday :) Cha, 25... crazy huh? I know I've got many a friend here on GS who are past that age... but for me, at least, it feels weird. It's one step closer to 30 and then... oldness :P lol. Dun worry about me though, I'm keep gaming till I'm dead :P

Oh, btw, if you wanted to get me cake, either of these will do:

It's amazing what some people can do with cakes, huh?

The absolute best thing about this day though... isn't my birthday... but the fact that it marks the first of 9 days I've got off from work :) Free time seems to be in short supply as of late and getting away from work to just chill is a welcomed break.

What I'm playing:

Bioshock (PS3)

*Insert loud Big Daddy growl

Holy fuck I love Bioshock :) I had originally played the game on my PC when it came out (as I didn't have a 360 at that time and the PS3 didn't get it until later) and I fell in love with the atmosphere and idea. I got the PS3 version as a Christmas gift... not this year, but I believe the year before and never popped it into my machine until now. Some updates and 5gb game install later and I'm back in rapture :D

Taking a look at the trophies... I decided I'd try for the one where you must defeat the game on Survivor Difficulty - without using Vita Chambers. Survivor difficulty is the 4th difficulty, a level beyond hard... and it lives up to it's name. I find it takes A LOT to kill even the basic splicers and ammo is scarce like you wouldn't believe. I had a robo-drone helping me out for a bit and before he blew up, he was quite handy. I notice the game goes much slower as I'm trying to stay alive (as opposed to just plowing through on easy). I've noticed that when I do get some ammo, the weapons beyond the pistol are hellish handy. Shotgun burst and shots from the Tommy gun are extremely effective at stopping splicers in their tracks. Hope I'm able to stick with it and complete the game on the difficulty I set out for.

Red Faction: Guerrilla (PS3)

Meet my giant sledge hammer, bitch.

I had left this title alone after starting it sometime back in 2009 (that was when my last save was dated) and I guess... I haven't played it for an entire year (prob got buried under other titles) but I've come back to it and I'm REALLY enjoying it. Busting stuff really doesn't get old.... at all. lol, I've spent hours smashing the hell out of buildings.

I've done a large chunk of the main story missions and even tackled some side missions as well. It feels great as you can go at it, at your own pace and how you choose to do so. Generally, finding a mech and destoying everything in your path is the best way to go :P Sadly, mechs are scarce! I just unlocked the Jet pack for my dude and it's come in handy on a number of occasions. I was so impressed with the title, I went ahead and pre-ordered the new title coming out in June (Red Faction: Armageddon).

Brutal Legend (360)

"What do you mean the story is retarded?"

Another title I've put of playing for some time, Brutal Legend. I'm iffy with the title. I love the comedy, the art is fan-fucking-tastic, the music makes me giddy and over all it feels very well done. That said, I have no clue what's going on in the story and the strategy bits usually just have me pressing buttons in confusion - having no idea what I'm doing. Too bad the game wasn't more adventure and less strategy... I would of preferred that.

Monster Hunter Tri (Wii)

Hunter monsters is a lot of fun - even when the game is kinda ugly :P

Damn, monster hunter is kewl. I've played one title before this on my PSP and really liked it so I instantly wanted to play the Wii version. I use the classic pro controller (looks kinda like a PS2 controller) for it instead of the actual Wii motion controls (which Im not a fan of) and it actually works rather well. Oddly enough though... the game looks bad... lol. I shouldn't expect too much out of a Wii game... but I swear the MH I have on my PSP looks sharper than this does :P I've just been playing the single player thus far, haven't tried it online.

Goldeneye (Wii)

Decent looking for a Wii title and it's fun to boot.

Another title I was really excited for on the Wii is Goldeneye. I picked this up the same time as Monster Hunter and I don't have a strong opinion on it just yet. I've played 3 or 4 levels on the single player mode and I like that some things feel like the old 007 title... but a lot of it has been reworked and thus - it feels a lot less like 007 than I wanted. During the level where you start off in the vents above a bathroom, a grin grew on my face. Once I jumped down and found myself in some strange bathroom not resembling the one I remember, my heart sunk. I did give the multiplayer a bit of a go and got to kill some random peeps online.

Anyways, that's it :) Peace sukkas.

Buried Treasure Vol 3: Unknown PC gems

2011-05-06T13:41:00.000-03:00

^_^ The buried treasure segment is back! This time around, I was looking at some PC games that are much more independant projects rather than full scale retail behemoths of the past. These titles are generally made by just one person or a very tiny team and usually depend on their own websites as the main place for promoting the title. I would like to share with you some of the ones I've found over the years and enjoyed.

The Dark Ages 1 and 2
Price: Free
Genre: RPG
Link: DA1, DA2

The first Dark Ages game (subtitled "The Continents") really impressed the hell out of me when I first played it (many years ago) and going back to it today still leaves a grin on my face. It's a rather 'by the numbers' take on an RPG of old in which you quest to avenge your slain family and take down the powerful wizard responsible for their deaths. You set out to collect medallions in order to take down this wizard, whom is going across the world, conquering everything in his path.

Complete with it's own map of a land inspired by the likes of Lord of the Rings, Dark Ages has quite a bit of game space to travel in it's over world and the dungeons in which your traverse. The battles are turn based, as most traditional RPGS go and you collect your main stay of potions and weapons to outfit your hero with. It is a DOS made game and thus you'll either need a really old PC that does DOS naturally or pick up the superb emulator "DosBox" (which you can download from their site) for more current operating systems.

The visuals are charming (and way oldskool), the music on the same level and the whole experience something you'll probably enjoy if you dig older RPGs.

Michael Hoopman - the guy behind Dark Ages, went and gathered a few into a team to help him create it's sequel, aptly named Dark Ages 2: Engel (A german word for angel).

The new title, is a bit more updated and sports visuals that are a step up from the DOS original. You can use your mouse for this adventure (the first title is keyboard only) and it follows three characters as they begin in the thieves guild. Set 500 years after the events in the first game, magic is said to of destroyed any kind of governing system and now each town and area is on it's own (in regards to rules), with factions acting to protect the people.

The same charm is back from the first game and while I dug the art of the first game more (nostalgic?) the new game does well presenting itself. This title runs in XP and below and (unconfirmed) should run in newer operating systems as well.

Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch
Price: $12.99 - Free Demo
Genre: RPG
Link: MarkLeung.com

I'm not even sure how I heard about this game... but the idea floored me. It's a fairly modern game - which actually looks like it could be a download title on XBLA or PSN. It's an RPG in which you play a character whom dumps his girlfriend. Sounds simple enough.... but the game get's wicked crazy from that point on.

Cutscenes are live action pieces done by a cast of hilarious actors - in a world that actually resembles that in the actual game. Gameplay takes place in a cel-shaded world in real and turn based time. You start off fighting rabbits, squirls and other little creatures... whom spray blood when attacked. *shrugs.

The entire story is about making fun of the industry and the idea that all RPGs take themselves WAY too seriously. It's actually really hard to describe it properly... so here's an except from their site:

Journey into the world of Untitled with Mark Leung -- a selfish Communist and hapless Ginseng collector. He finds himself caught in a petty rivalry between two wacko religions -- and haunted by his ex-girlfriend to boot. Help Mark as he battles cute, blood-spewing cats, unremorseful loltrolls and the gun-toting McFunny.

The game looks gorgeous, plays beautifully and makes you laugh the whole way through. The free demo alone is enough to check out and if you decide it's for you, it's just $13 to purchase. Here's a trailer:

Planeshift
Price: Free
Genre: MMORPG
Link: planeshift.it

This genre (of free MMOs) seems to be a growing trend in the industry as of late... however, this MMO is completely free. You won't find the good items as ones you need to buy with real world money or better servers and quests if you subscribe to their service, nope, this sucker is completely free.

The entire game runs from servers and donations made by fans and generous interested parties. You simply download the client application, install and you're ready to go with registering. The game is also cross-platform, so you can play on Mac, Windows or Linux.

It's graphical style is akin to WoW and you pretty know what you're in for when we say MMO. Hours of questing with friends and strangers a like in a world populated by creatures that need a slaying and baddies whom try to get in your way. It's not revolutionary.. but it's well done and a good bout of fun for anyone who likes the genre.

UltraStar Deluxe
Price: Free
Genre: Karaoke
Link: Ultrastardeluxe.org

Do you like to sing? Most people do... regardless of their talent, we all like to sing along to our favorite songs. Based on the idea of a game based solely on sings - in SingStar (a Playstation title), this game aims to provide gamers a place to sing all their favorite music without limitation.

The title allows you to import your own music to sing to - which the game creates a pitch map for, for scoring purposes. You can also play any video file in the background to that song. It's pretty basic in how it works, but it looks elegant doing so, adopting a style straight from the Singstar series.

With support for multiple singers and downloadable for Mac, Windows and Linux... it's really the ultimate karaoke machine for free :P

Shattered Galaxy

Price: Free
Genre: RTS/MMO
Link: Sgalaxy.com

Think - Starcraft (the first one) set in a persistent online world with a lot more people playing at once. The game boasts matches that top at 50 players controlling about 500 units in one mammoth battle. With as many as 100,000 simultaneous combatants in a single universe competing for domination. The game also boasts great tactics as you command small groups as generals to help the battles play out and even develop hero characters which take a bit from the RPG realm and level up as you win more battles; allowing you to raise through the ranks and take your beefed up heroes into fame.

I found, you really need to enjoy the genre to get the most out of this title. It's not going to sway those not into the idea of oldskool RTS games (read resource management - no tower defense here). If you like that, however, or are willing to give it a chance, it's quite a bit of fun. The graphical style screams starcraft (the original) and the controls feel very fluid and easy to navigate.

Now playing: Oldskool surprises and more

2011-04-25T12:32:00.000-03:00

It's Monday... but fuck it, I'll blog. I've been forcing myself to start gaming again... something I've had some issues doing for a little while. Here's some titles I've been busy with:

Holy cow, I love when random old games pop up in my world and thrill the hell our of my face. :) One such title, I spotted on PSN (before PSN went down :P) and I've been playing it since. It's called "Neutopia" and it's a title originaly on the Turbo-Grafx 16 system and it plays near exactly like Zelda of NES fame.

Nostalgic looking, no?

A big bad dude steals the princess and you must travel an over-world finding dungeons so you can collect the 8 medallions to be able to save the princess. Sounds a lot like Zelda, eh? Totally and I dig that A LOT. I went scouring the internet for more information and I learn that, not only is this game also available on Wii's Virtual Console (the online store) but it's sequel as well :D Perhaps when I finish the first, I'll go get the second there :).

I also threw in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PS3) as I've been thinking about it lately. I played for a session on Saturday and finished on chapter 11 out of 14 (had to recheck that) but only because I forced myself to stop and chill in the living room a bit with the family. If I had continued to play, I prob would of beaten it in that one sitting... but I left that for yesterday when I sat down again for a few hours and pushed through to the ending.

Andy Serkis is great as Monkey. Trip and Piggy are equally great.

The ending really threw me off! I wasn't expecting it to end like that. But in the end, it was a heavily decent game. I had issues with some of the combat, a camera that felt too close and little graphical quips, but over all I thought it was a moving, character driven story that was worth playing (much like the teams first project, Heavenly Sword). The characters themselves kind of reminded me of the Beyond Good & Evil pair of protagonists. I scored it an 8.5/10 on gamespot.

Been thinking of just plunging into random games that I haven't beaten (or started) yet and just blasting through them. I've been putting gaming off for a little bit and a large collection of games off as well. So, why not just pick on and plow though it and get onto the next? It's really that easy. Thinking about perhaps some Brutal Legend for my next play through. We'll see.

I've also been dropping some serious hours into Red Faction: Guerrilla, as of late. The game is a lot of fun... erm well, the destruction is :D I don't really know what's up with the story too much... outside of the bad guys being bad and the rebels fighting back :P Mechs are killer for ripping down buildings though :)

Hi, I'm Mech... and I'm gonna rip your house down!

Just the other day, I jumped from a speeding vehicle to have it ram into the house of some poor soul and I saw it launch through the floor, come flying out of the roof and then explode, the blast ripping the walls from the structure and then the remaining chassis come smashing down on the structure's last support beams, bringing the whole mass of debris to a crumbling mess at the bottom of the embankment... how incredibly awesome is that for a Sunday drive on Mars? :P

Another title that seems to take up some of my time is Dragon Age: Legends. It's a facebook game oddly enough, but it's got enough good about it to keep me coming back. It's basically a crappy (I use the term lovingly) flash version of what you'd expect from a DA title. You build a character, do turn based RPG battles, level up, collect junk and such, but you also own a castle and workers who craft potions and such for you.

My character, Kaitu at the bottom.

I can only play about 5-15 minutes at a time as I run out of stamina and potions (stamina builds up after time and potions take time for workers to craft) but I think that's a good thing, as it allows me to just casually play it when I've got a few minutes to burn. It's nothing riveting or exciting and it sure as hell doesn't match a real game, but it's got it's charms.

Have also been giving gaming on my new Android based phone a go... it's okay for a distraction... but really not that advanced, I must say. If flash games are your thing, go for it... else, I think I'll be sticking to my regular handhelds... as it's a joke to sit back and call gaming on touch screen phones anything but silly. Even tetris is a bit touch and go as pushing a block with your finger is tricky at times... and tetris is as simple a control scheme as you can get really. Thus far, the best gaming I've got out of it is the emulators for older systems :) Who doesn't like a good old game of Pokemon Red on their phone? :P

With that, I leave you suckers.... so I can go about more gaming :) Peace.

4 years gone by

2011-04-20T15:22:00.001-03:00

Hey team (you're my team now, okay? :P) what's shaking? Last week, I spent the time to announce that in fact I was of the male sex, this week... something a little less crazy.

**Before I start, anyone reading this blog post somewhere other than my website, please head to www.hush404.com to check out my new blog design, as I took a lot of time on it and love how it looks.

It's 420... you know what that means! No silly, while it is indeed seen as the day where one should indulge in copious amount of Marijuana smokeamage, for me it's got a different meaning.

Four years ago today, I went out and purchased my Playstation 3 at our local "Super Store" at a premium price of $699 +tax, (yep, for a month, Canada decided to raise the price $50 over the Canadian price of $649 (it was $599 in USA)... which... sucker as I am, I decided I wanted :P). I didn't care. I had saved up the sum and more over about a year and actually had the cash on me much sooner, but it was impossible to find the system in stores.

Anyways, I went about shopping for games first and picked up two that I had been looking at getting for quite a while, MotorStorm and Resistance: Fall of Man. With those in hand, I also picked up an extra controller and one of the memory card transfer units that were out at the time to transfer my PS2 game saves from memcards to the PS3's hard drive. Went to cash and picked out a 60gb system I also wanted (they had them behind cash in the electronics section, I assume to prevent theft) and just over $1000 dollars later, I'm off with my new PS3 in hand and a smile on my face.

I've still got my original PS3 too :) I swapped it's 60gb hdd out for a 250gb at one point and it's got a nice batman vinyl skin on it now, but it's still the same ol beast :) *I did some digging and found some old pictures I took at the time (I backup my pics all the time) I bought my system:

I then went about taking pics to mock up my PS2 for sale. I eventually got a call and sold it for $200, this is what I sold with it:

So yeah, 4 awesome years and the games are still getting better :D I can't wait for the new MotorStrom and while Resistance isn't my fav series, the new one looks like it could also be fun. Hoo-rah.

Yay, PS3. My first console this gen and prob my fav as well. *I've since gone and got 360 and Wii for their respected exclusives, but PS3 will always have a special place in my heart.

A very personal blog.

2011-04-11T16:20:00.000-03:00

Hey guys & girls, what's going on with you? Before I start in on the deeper stuff, something has come to my attention and I need to clear the air about, before it gets any weirder.

I am male. Was born male, always have been male and I'm not exactly sure what, if anything points the contrary.

Heh, it kinda makes me chuckle... but this isn't the first time this kind of thing has popped up online. A certain someone, whom I've been "gamespot friends" with for at least a couple years now was discussing something with another one of my friends (who I met on GS - one who knows quite a bit more about me than your average gamespotter) and just so happened to mention me as my online handle 'hush404' followed by "she this" and "She that", which confused the hell out of my friend and story short, ended in laughter, or so I'm told :P Things have since been set straight, but I've been getting a few comments from a few different users here on gamespot that makes me think the ol confusion machine is at it again.

Maybe it's my female avatar? (I've sported a female avatar for a long time now, think it started with Motoko Kusanagi - ala Ghost in the Shell) Maybe it's the fact that I started and run a website dedicated to strong female characters? (Which incidentally started off as a union here on GS) - not sure. Maybe it's the method in which I write? *shrugs.

So, yeah. I'm a dude, not a dudette. But you can call me Hush404 :P

No... I'm not Jeff Bridges... as far as I know...

_

Now that that's out of the way, on to my reason for not blogging. It's been nearly 2 weeks since my last blog and at times it boils down to laziness or business... but this time it's because my mom's been going through a rough patch.

I originally wrote quite a lenghty piece, going into detail, but later decided I didn't feel like sharing all the details. So, you get the very abridged version. My Mom in the last few weeks, has had to have 2 surgeries, the first was fairly straight forward and easy going. The second was meant to be a 1.5hr thing and somewhat straight forward, but ended up being a 5 hour ordeal with more doctors called in to assist as things got complicated and required more work. She's spent some time in the hospital, recovering, but was let out to come home - mostly due to a retarded scheduling conflict where the particular surgery was only allotted x amount of days in the hosp, but due to complications she should of stayed longer and for some stupid reason the system didn't have a way to deal with that. So she's home, she's got dual catheters, a mammoth stapled wound, and while she's doing better than she was a few days ago, she's got my sis taking care of the medical part of things (my sis is a licensed nurse) - which helps A LOT, but still, even she feels that Mom should of been under hospital care for a number of more days than allotted.

So yeah... that's kinda what's been occupying my time and mind as of late. That, and I've still got to work and take care of regular every day stuff as well. Work's been pretty good about it through, as I got a couple days off when the surgery was going on as well as my schedule shifted around so I can get my bro and I around to work without too much difficulty schedule wise.

I do try not to worry though and to keep my mind on other things (else I'd go crazy :P) but it's hard to just pretend like everything is peachy. So, yeah, that's why I've been absent and not blogging. I know the whole blogging thing doesn't really matter - in comparison, but I still wanted to share why I've been gone.

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Now, on to something a bit more upbeat. I got a new phone :) Except for a hiccup with getting my old number moved over to the new phone, it's been perfect. It's model name is "Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate 3G+" which is a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo. It's an android based smart phone, totally touch screen (except for the power button and volume) and it's hellish sexy. I've already been playing with it, grabbing some useful apps and even shrieked as I found emulators on the android marketplace. Anyone have some droid apps to suggest?

Been playing very little games lately. Started a new game in RoboTrek (SNES) a lovely game from Enix which I have a soft spot for. Borrowed my sis's copy of Windwaker as I wanted to give that another go and purchased Plants vs Zombies on PSN - which is a lot of fun. Have thoughts of jumping into other games, maybe finishing off some others, but not in a huge gaming mood atm. We'll see.

Rapid Fire Tidbits:

Ordered Tron Legacy and the original Tron on Blu-Ray the other day from Amazon and hope to have them this week. I've been waiting to see Tron Legacy again since I saw it in theaters.
Seems Sony and Hotz got over their suit and agreed to some kind of terms over the cracking of the PS3.
Itching bad for L.A.Noire to get released. Skyrim and The Witcher 2 nearly as bad.
Been considering upgrading my PC, seems to be something I do every Spring now :P I think my vid card is fine but I'd like to up the quality of my Ram and CPU to match.
Blew through the first 2 seasons of Californication - it's a decent show, onto the 3rd season :)
Gamespot's new beta look (beta.gamespot.com) is interesting, nice and clean at least.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time looks awesome.
Recently ordred the limited edition of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on ebay for $30 :) Waiting for it to get to me.
Had part of this blog written up with random stuff about me - may put it in another blog, or just ditch it altogether... hard to say.
This blog is fairly void of pictures... something I don't usually do :P
Have an awesome day, yo.

Sincerely, a male Hush404 :P

Fuck Yeah, Mario.

2011-03-30T20:47:00.000-03:00

Give it up for the most Bad-Ass Plumber around!

Hey guys/girls, what's happ'n? I know... I know... it's Wednesday... so I totally missed my whole Tuesday blog schedule. Eh, what can I say? I tried, I really did Try... but yesterday was a day of complete laziness where I didn't even want to play video games... I just instead, watched some movies and TV shows that I had downloaded. Well... that made up my evening at least. I spent a good portion of the day shopping - initially for my brother's birthday (which is tomorrow, the 31st of March) but as always, I've picked up some things for myself :P

Pimpin Mario there (in above Pic) is one of the items I came across and decided I MUST have. :P Both his arms move and I think he is bitch'n awesome (damn, I'm going to need to edit this for gamespot). I also nabbed a copy of Scott Pilgrim on Blu-Ray as it's a bitch'n movie ;) Mod Nation Racers for $20 was too good to pass up and did you know Cadbury Creme Eggs come in mini size now? :D

I got a few things for my bro, but one of the kewler things I happened on is a 1:24 diecast model of the 2005 version of the Ford GT - which just so happens to be his fav car in just about any racing game (not so much the year, just the car in general)- especially Gran Turismo.

I couldn't find a pic of the model online and I had already put my camera away, so here's a pic of the actual car the model was made for. It's quite a nice car.

---00---

Have you heard of Nintendo's 'Club Nintendo' reward program? I've recently stumbled on it and found out that a good pile of my gear and games qualify for the service. It's a service set up to allow you to register consoles and games with them in return for Coins which are used to get exclusive items directly from them. Registering my newly acquired Wii and some games managed to nab some 560 points from the service and now I'm looking through their catalog for something I can trade my points in for. Thus far the Messenger bag is looking really nice. The Zelda posters seem pretty kewl... but 350 coins for some small posters? C'mon.

To reach an 'Elite' status within the service you need gather 600 coins for the year (goes from July1 - June 31st) and that category always gets a special gift at the end of that give year for... I assume spending so much dough on Nintendo. Some example of 'Elite' or 'Platinum' status rewards that they've listed from previous years are stuff like a replica Mario hat, a crazy awesome looking statuette of a gathering of Mario characters and an exclusive version of Punch Out to download from the Wii store (only way to get the particular version of the game). I'm 40 coins away and plan on making sure I get those last coins before the end of June, as I like kewl stuff :P Seeing as you get 50 for registering a Wii title and 30 for a DS title, it shouldn't be too hard.

---00---

Did you know that both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner recently turned 80 years old?
Did you also know that I love the new Star Trek Movie? Re-watched it again a few days ago for the 18th time (approx) and still loved the hell out of it :P
Star Trek: Voyager was the only other Star Trek I got into. I went through all of the entire 7 season series in a few months thanks to Mon-Fri reruns on the Space channel back in 2004.
I finished my viewing of the Star Wars series as well. A new respect for the series, I have, mmm hmmm. ;)
I wanted Beyond Good & Evil HD... but don't have any MSP (360) and I'm not letting MS have my credit card info again... soz... I'll prob just wait till it hits PS3 in May.
Speaking of download games - Plants vs Zombies really surprised me with it's solid, addictive gameplay and candy-smooth visuals.
Some ideas I've been thinking of and prepping for blogs: Fav consoles, A blog all about The Legend of Zelda series and what it means to me, more Demoscene feature blogs, more Buried Treasure feature blogs, something to do with upcoming games and some other stuff I'd like to keep under-wraps :P
Looking into redesigning my blog's layout and theme now that PinkSquadron has it's facelift.
I really want to watch Men in Black... random, I know.
Slipknot meets Beiber... made me laugh and it's not a half band duo.
Natalie Porman has caught my eye in a number of films as of late. Loved her role in the prequel star wars movies, thought she did a SUPERB job in Black Swan, caught her in V for Vendetta (first time I saw the film) and re-watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (which is a sickly awesome film). The trailers for 'Your Highness' makes me want to see that (even though it looks like it might be sketchy..) and I see she's even in Thor, :D Loves me some Portman atm.
GWAR sucks...
As always, bullet point lists end with Rosie Jones.

Chao.

Untitled - 03/22/11

2011-03-22T19:22:00.000-03:00

Ack! It feels like forever since I've done a real 'themed' blog post and not just something quick on the fly. Alas... it's Tuesday, I need to do something! :P I've been busy of late, both with stuff IRL and trying to spend some more time gaming. Oh! that and of course PinkSquadron :)

The ol blog/site dedicated to kick ass ladies of the gaming world just got a big facelift with a ton of new features and improvements. I spend quite a bit of time reporting on news, creating content for and maintaining the site and while I love doing it... it kind of eats away at time I could be gaming and doing other things. I've got a few friends working on and a few whom said they'd like to do something for the site but if you're interested I'm still willing to accept any kind of help you think you can lend. A review perhaps? An article pertaining to something around the site? (*Oooh, maybe a catchy tag line? I've still yet to nab that :P) Just lemme know. Always looking to move things further forward :)

Ahh gaming, that's the next thing I'll touch on. I've been purposely been forcing myself to game as of late. I love gaming and really get into games once I do start playing, but there are times where I just end up spending hours on youtube, or working on blogs, or other distractions that put gaming to the side.

As in most games with the choice, my lead is female. (note this isn't my Hawke)

Right now I'm playing Dragon Age 2 - which... I dig... but I'm not hitting that "Ahh" moment... yet. I loved the first game, as each character was so incredibly interesting and traveling with them a joy. This one... while I dig the new combat system over the old one and the whole scale and graphical prowess has been upped... I've yet to feel that connection to the characters. The 'Sister' character is the one whom I have any real connection to yet (family, yo! :P) and even then... it's not half of what I felt for the characters of Dragon Age: Origins. Ehh, I hope it improves. A friend of mine mentioned beating the game in about 24 hours... which is another 'uncool' piece of news... as I've got over 50 in DAO.

I ALWAYS accidentally hit the magic button... thinking it's cancel... and end up frying people.

I've also got back into Fable 2 for a bit - played it for over 9 hours straight on a day off. Something I haven't done in a long time. The game is okay. I wasn't a fan of the first game and beat it in no time flat. This time around I was poking about trying to do some side stuff hoping to prolong the story in this title. Then I found the world of bigamy :P For some reason I find it funny that I have 4 separate families in villages around the world, some with kids, some with out and all totally un-aware of eachother. *EVIL FACE. Oh also... how come kids are conceived and then born in about 30 seconds? I assumed there might be some kind of waiting period. Eh, anyways :P

Mmm, that satisfying crunch.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (the 2010 remake) has got it's claws into me again too. When I first got it I played it quite a bit and really enjoy it... but I left it for a bit as I went about finishing up other titles and started it up again the other night. What a rush! It's such a pleasure to play, with great speed, superb visuals, audio and controls. Occasionally it's "Throw the controller at the TV" difficult... but that usually just means I need a break :P It's a TON of fun :)

Other than that.. I'm still occasionally plugging away at the remaining objectives in The Saboteur (game's finished, but there's left over things to nab) which I only jump into for 15-30 mins here and there as to not make it a chore.

I also started a game of Dragon Age: Legends - a facebook version of Dragon Age... which isn't that good :P I wasn't expecting much for a facebook game... but damn! EA is grabbing for money like you wouldn't believe. It starts off simple enough, you follow a point to point map, killing fools, leveling up etc... but really quickly you run out of coin and "crowns" (another form of currency) which you need to quickly produce potions (a necessity) and the only way to get enough to progress any is to put real world money into the game to purchase these things... something I am not willing to do.

I haven't touched Killzone 3 in a bit since beating it and giving it's online a go. It was a fun ride tho :) I rethought my score for the game (I initially gave it a 10) as I felt the fact that I was enjoying the game initially so much, i got caught up in it's kewlness. I re-scored it an 8.5.

Ooh, I got some new games too. Cheap games of course :) I've picked up Splinter Cell: Conviction (360) and Darksiders (PS3) and DarkSector (360), umm lets see, I also nabbed Enslaved (PS3) for and Dante's Inferno (PS3). Back a few weeks ago I got Metroid Other M (Wii) and Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii), while paying full price for Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii). Technically... I bought a Wii too (a number of weeks ago). I've had access to my Sis's Wii for quite a bit and even owned games for it... but she moved again, so I was Wii-less :P Now I have my own, Black of course :) All of these titles join my list of games I need to get to :P

What games are the rest of you playing?

A moment for Japan

2011-03-15T01:26:00.000-03:00

I had originally prepped another blog post for today (as it's tuesday) but felt that this topic is a bit more pressing.

Surely you've heard by now that an 8.9 magnitude earthquake has rocked the eastern part of the world, near Japan and caused not only major destruction across it's entire nation, but also caused massive Tsunami's to completely wipe out some parts of Japan. If you haven't you've been under a rock.

This Video really gives you a grasp of what happened LINK (video embedded on blog).

The quake happened on the 10th (Thursday) and it hasn't been a pretty picture since. Other parts of the world were warned of possible Tsunami's from the blast, even across the ocean at the west coast of Canada and the United States were in alert.

However, Japan is the worst hit. Homes and businesses are picked up and destroyed like they're nothing, airports engulfed just as easy, cars and just about anything else doesn't even phase the movement - they're tossed around like toys, oil plants are set a blaze, entire communities are wiped off the map. There's even talk now of a nuclear power plant which officials fear may not be able to be cooled enough to prevent a catastrophic meltdown. It's been reported that people have been evacuated from the are just in case, but still.

This whole thing has me glued to my PC, looking for footage on the happenings. I hate to see people suffer and this is a whole new level, that effects the entire world. I've taken initiative to share some of what I can for the people of Japan, donating to a few places to ensure help continues for the nation. It's going to take a lot of work, we're thinking of you all and have you in our hearts.

Whether you can donate to the cause or not, please take a moment to think of the people, for the thousands dead, the thousands stranded... just take a moment. For Japan.

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Some interesting ways people are trying to help Japan.

First off, I'll be putting some links below for anyone interested in donating to a variety of organizations who are scrambling to help the nation of Japan and it's people, however there's a few other noteworthy things I wanted to give my say on.

**Edit - Actually, CBS (parent owner of gamespot) has put up a superb page of info for those who wish to help out with the cause. LINK - It gives you lots of options to donate if you live in the United States.

Some others I'd like to point out:

Google has set up a page where you can send Yen (Japanese Currency) to the Japanese branch of the Red Cross via google checkout.

Paypal has setup a service where any and all transaction fees made for the next month will go directly to aid Japan.

CTV has listed a number of ways that Canadians can get in on donating towards assisting Japan.

Google has created an app to help families around the world find loved ones who live in Japan.

Other stuff -

Sony has delayed MotorStorm: Apocalypse (PS3) in Japan, possibly indefinitely as the game's subject matter of racing through environments being ripped apart by nature is a little too much for the time being. PSU.com wrote a report on just that and have example video. They've also shut down production warehouses.

Square-Enix has shut down servers for Final Fantasy XI and XIV (their two MMO projects) in an attempt to help their nation and save power.

Konami has taken a similar stand and taken Metal Gear Online... offline while the country struggles with the disaster.

It's reported that Irem has outright cancelled their upcoming PS3 title 'Disaster Report 4' which deals with the very subject matter at hand.

Lastly, Sega has delayed the release of Yakuza: Of the End out of respect for it's citizens.

Pictures - some of the more insane pics I've seen:

Most images from MSNBC.com, Video via Youtube.

3/8/11 - Point form

2011-03-08T13:20:00.000-04:00

Hey guys/girls, I almost didn't do a blog today *GASP! But I've been trying really hard to make sure I've got a blog for every Tuesday and dammit, I'm going to stick to it. Nothing terribly special today, just some thoughts from my head, some of what's going and the like.

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First thing I'm throwing out: Dragon Age 2 is out today (I think it's today) and so a few days ago I threw in my copy of Dragon Age: Origins for the PS3 and decided to finish off the story for my character Kaitu. It took a little messing around to remember what exactly I was doing and where in the story I was, but once I did, I fell in love with it all over.

Here is a shot of my character as shown on social.bioware.com - tho it's slightly outdated... as I know I achieved level 20 last night.

I have to say, the best part of the game is interacting with the people in your party. Leliana was always my love interest and I try to keep her happy, but the whole damn party loves my ass now (figuratively... ) It's interesting as hell the back stories and problems that Bioware has woven into these characters! It's a blast to sit back and talk with them, learning these things, as it brings the game to a whole new light. I felt for Zevran when he told me of his last mission with the Crows before heading to Ferelden and I laughed when Oghren got me totally drunk and we both passed out in the camp :P Shale is such a deep character too and strange that she was actually DLC and so not everyone got to experience her uniqueness.

Anyways, I was near done with the game when I stopped playing it. I just needed to finish the landsmeet (which I did last night) and then go to war... I presume. I didn't actually look it up, as to avoid spoilers. I did however get a result to the landmeet when I wasn't thrilled with... so I might go back and see what I can do about that with a previous save.

Anyways. Superb f'n game, can't get enuff. I also can't wait for my copy of DA2 to arrive by mail (amazon) so I can dig into that as well :)

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BULLETPOINTS - WOO!

I know it's still a ways off and there's no solid info on release date or price or anything... but Sony's new NGP system has me drooling. I honestly can't wait.
So... Anne Hathaway is going to be Catwoman in the new Nolan Batman film. Not sure how I feel about that. I think she's a decent actor... but question her for the role.
Recently jumped back into Fable 2 as well :) It's kinda fun... but I'm really sick of the series and it's 10 minute stories! Honestly, most of my time has been spent messing around, but I compared my time with going through the actual story and it's NOTHING. I'm nearly done and I felt like the thing just started.
Blew through Killzone 3's campaign both on single player (normal) and co-op /w my bro and am looking to finish it on Elite - which if I do will give me the last trophy I need to get plat ^_^
Speaking of Platnium trophies... I still have yet to gather any :P I'm really close in some games... but end up just moving to something else. They don't mean much sure, but I'd love to nab some for all my work :P Example, Uncharted (the first) I just need finish it on crushing mode and I'm done. Mafia 2 - Hard mode and I'm done. The Saboteur - just blow up the remaining few hundred Nazi installations (there's like 1400 in the game). Some more leveling and a few track specific trophies in NFS Hot Pursuit and I'm done. But... I just end up moving to a new game :P
When is Tron: Legacy coming out on Blu-Ray? I keep listening to the soundtrack, wishing I had it.
I am SUPER PUMPED for L.A. Noire! I haven't anticipated a game so bad for a while now. There's lots of games I'm looking forward to but LAN is top of the list for the foreseeable future. Batman AC and ESV- Skyrim come in just behind that.

Anyways, I'm sure there's more random stuff to note, but I'm hungry and in need of some lunch :P

Oh and of course, before I forget: Rosie Jones.

Buried Treasure Vol 2: PC gems

2011-03-01T00:17:00.002-04:00

Not content with doing just one buried treasure blog, I'm jumping straight back into it. This time I'm going to focus on some older PC gems that you may or may not of heard of; some I feel really deserve light shed on them and best of all all of which are available on Gog.com.

Gog.com, or Good Old Games is a site dedicated to bringing older PC games back to modern PCs in full functioning order at a very affordable price. For either $5.99 or $9.99 you can get your hands on a growing number of titles that have all been cared for by the gog team and made to work on windows XP, Vista and 7 without fault. All of these games are packed in a tidy installer, completely DRM free and the site even offers bonus goodies for each game as well, be it soundtracks, strategy guides, wallpapers, manuals, artbooks, screensavers, making of videos or what ever they can get together as a kewl bonus. I highly recommend taking a look at their library and picking up a few classic titles.

The following titles are ones I believe can be considered 'Buried Treasure':

The Longest Journey
Price - $9.99
Genre - Point n Click Adventure/ Puzzle

You take the role of an 18 year old art student, April Ryan, in a not so straight forward tale to save the world. At the beginning of the game she is having these strange dreams of another realm in which she is called upon to help. Dismissing these as just dreams she quickly learns that there is more to the 'dreams' than first perceived. It turns out, this realm, known as Arcadia, is parallel to our own and one that follows a system of magic and chaos in contrast to our logic and science take on things. In order to correct a balance between the two worlds, April must travel between each, taking a journey of a life time.

Setup as a point and click adventure game, the game uses pre-rendered environments that look absolutely lavish, and real time rendered characters that move around in these spaces. You'll be progressing the story mostly through dialogue with other characters and solving puzzles - all of which seem very intuitive and not nearly as brain bustingly confusing as some point/click titles. The dialogue itself, along with voice acting is superbly done and you'll really be enveloped into the world as you play. April is a deep and interesting character, as too are many of the characters around her, whether they be helping her or getting in her way of her goals. Topped off with some beautiful music, you'll be hard pressed to find many adventure titles that excel past this one.

Fallout 1 & 2
Price - $5.99 ea
Genre - Turn Based Strategy RPG

Sure, most people are now familial with the Fallout series... mostly thanks to Bethesda and it's hand in Fallout 3 and the follow up Fallout: New Vegas. But a lot of gamers whom love those games have ignored or outright not known about the two that stared it all, Fallout 1 and 2.

Set in the same post-nuclear setting (though, many years before) as the two newer games, both titles excel in story telling, character design, freedom of play and and over all finesse that you've come expect from a Fallout game.

In the first title you play a Vault dweller whom is sent out to try and find a replacement part needed for the vault in order for it's citizens to continue a healthy life under the ground. You'll run into radiation affected mutants, raiders, gangs and all of the other kinds of baddies that are all out for number one. You're set up with guns, melee weapons and anything else from the world and set into turn based fights to determine if you live another day. If you think of the VATS system in the new games, it's quite similar to that.

In the second title, you play a descendant of the character in the first game, whom is set to lead the people of a separate vault, but must first show your ability to lead, as you're given the task of heading out into the wasteland to acquire knowledge on the GECK (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) system (mentioned in Fallout3), a system used for purifying contaminated water - so that your vault may continue to flourish and it's people live peaceful lives. Again, you take up arms and defense and head out into the wastes for your journey of hardships and survival.

Both titles are EXTREMELY well done, each with just as much if not more attention to character, story and world detail than those in Fallout 3. The only thing that seems to snag people is the turn based combat system, which takes a little getting use to. However, once you do, you're in for one hell of a treat.

Syberia 1 & 2
Price - $9.99 ea
Genre Point n Click Adventure

Syberia holds a special place in my heart as one of my favorite point and click adventures on any system. It's unique premised, art direction and setting really drew me in and I loved every minute of it.

In the first game you play Kate Walker, a lawyer who is sent to a remote village in France to clear up some final details of a Toy manufacture take over. Once in the village, you learn that the owner of the factory has just died and that her brother will need be contacted instead. Your journey takes you across a good portion of Europe as you trailer this character in question, the whole while learning his back story and questioning your own goals.

In the second title, you pick up exactly where the first one left off and follows pretty much the same structure as the first, this time with different goals in mind. Most of the original cast from the first game make it back into the second game and it's solid gameplay with a story to match that of the first - just slightly familiar.

There's some beautiful music to listen to, extremely unique puzzles and memorable characters all wrapped up in a heart warming story. The world is pre-rendered and beautiful looking, the characters are real time based but look nearly as nice. Puzzles range in difficulty and most of the time the game eases you into them.

I'm trying to remain vague because it's all too easy to spoil a good adventure game by letting too many details through. Trust me when I say, if you have the patience for point/click adventures and $10-$20 to spare, this series will impress and leave an impact on you.

Demo Scene: Vol 1

2011-02-25T10:23:00.001-04:00

Yet another 'series' post I'd like to start. Every so often I'll be giving you my two cents on demos I've played and give you a heads up as to whether or not I think they're worth the download. I will also try to play the game on each system it appears on as to give a better view on the game as a whole, rather than just one version of it.

This week's titles are:

Killzone 3 - Single Player Demo - PS3
Dragon Age 2 - PC (Steam), PS3, 360
Nail'd - PS3, 360
Fight Night Champion - PS3, 360
Bulletstorm - PS3, 360

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Title - Killzone 3
System(s) looked at - PS3
Positives - Great visuals, spot on voice work, decent emotive pacing for cutscenes, lots of variety, title shows welcomed improvements to control fluidity - menu speed, loading and others over previous title, Jetpacks.
Negatives - Occasional screen tear or visual hiccups
Rating -9/10

A blast from start to finish, Killzone 3's demo of single player happenings is a rush. You get a few different scenes to play through, giving you freedom to try a variety of weapons including teaching you the new brutal Melee attack which is very satisfying. Also notable, you get to strap on a Jetpack and fly around, showing the Helghast who's boss - which feels like just the right amount of advantage tethered to a more reality focused version of how a Jet pack should preform. The controls are really tight and the responsiveness of the whole game seems to be a leg up over that in KZ2 (which was one of my few gripes with that title). The demo perfectly gives you a taste of what to expect in the final product and is very polished, I enjoyed it a lot.

Title - Dragon Age 2
System(s) looked at - PS3, 360, PC
Positives - Nice visual bump from previous game, controls very intuitive for console games, excellent voice acting, Bioware's signature character work, leaves you craving more
Negatives - Some loading (more noticeable on consoles vs PC), Change in action may put off some purists (again, console), a lot of inner-workings locked out for the demo, felt short
Rating -9/10

Another demo which I am totally satisfied with. Dragon Age 2 gives you a couple of scenes to play with, allowing you to get a feel for the controls, fighting, casting and dialogue tree. Right away, I noticed the way the game moved along, especially in action pieces, feels much more console focused when playing the game on the consoles. Unlike Dragon Age Origins where it felt like a controller re-mapping of the old tried n True PC click and go tactic, this game really lends itself to the machine it's on. That said, when you play the game on PC it feels much more like the old style we've grown to know (also seen in DAO) which makes total sense. I'm glad the team recognized that console gamers and PC gamers play differently.

The graphics have a nice new shine to them and from what I can tell, no frame rate issues or blurry textures to be seen on the consoles versions of the game. Sure the PC version looks sharper... but that's to be expected. Dialogue is handled on a wheel (sort of like Mass Effect) but doesn't support a "Good vs Evil" karma system like the aforementioned title, instead, you get icons on imply the kind of emotion behind a response - be it peaceful, sarcastic, mean etc which helps effect the relationships around you.

I knew the game was coming but wasn't currently really excited for it, this demo really impressed me and got me excited, which is exactly what a demo should do.

Title - Nail'd
System(s) looked at - PS3, 360
Positives - Decent sense of speed, Tight controls, music selection seems right for high octane racer
Negatives - Frame rate dips (on both systems), merely adequate visuals, grain effect takes away from visual pop, not much in terms of tricks, tracks laid out in confusing manner - leaves racers not knowing where to go, Pure - an older racer seems more polished.
Rating -6/10

While I wasn't looking for a new racer per se, I decided I'd give Nail'd it's fare shake and see what it was all about. From previous knowledge, I found out that Nail'd is pushing the idea of large jumps and insane vertigo as their selling points... and really, that's all there is.

Instantly I thought something wrong when I booted it up and saw how unappealing the visuals were. The 360 and PS3 share the exact same visuals - so it wasn't a 'broken port' scenario. The environments, while large in nature... seemed very blocky in terms of polygons and the whole game applied a weird grain filter that just made it look horrible. I'm reminded of Pure when playing this - which is over 2 years old now and is much crisper, clearer and overall a better looking game.

Visuals aside, the tracks are confusing and full of bugs. I rammed a train head on and it didn't slow me down, instead I went all the way through it and at the other side I fell through the map. Some trees I hit would knock me off my bike, others wouldn't even register as being there. Turns and jumps seem to lead no where and the game has a poor way of telling you where to go - you get lost often and end up just flooring it as far as you can go hoping you're doing well.

That said, at least the controls are tight and responsive. Your character can shift their weight around the bike with ease and the jumps really do look nice. Some of the tracks included for the soundtrack seemed spot on for a racer with such speed - which by the way pushes you along at a decent clip... but sometimes the frame rate dips noticeably as you fly along and meet with other racers.

Title - Fight Night Champion
System(s) looked at - PS3, 360
Positives - Continues trend of superb visuals, controls feel much easier over older titles, pick up and go fighting, decent sound work
Negatives - Stamina and slower pace may bore some, seemingly void of a soundtrack, only 2 fighters available
Rating -8/10

This demo is the kind that gives you just a tiny taste on the tip of your tongue. It does impress with what it has, but you feel like a lot more should of been packed in.

The visuals, as usual for the series look great as each fighter seems realistic, sweat and all. Punches connect well with bodies and each character reacts accordingly. The audio seems ample, but the music... well... I don't remember any :P You'd think there would be some - maybe I just need to listen again? But really, you don't rank a boxing game on it's music... you want the feel and ease of whooping some butt to count more toward the end result.

Thankfully, the controls are MUCH more streamlined and easy to understand over older titles. Last time we had a dual joystick operation where moves like uppercuts required you pull the stick straight down and then force it straight up or a side swipe requiring you swivel around the outside up to the top after slamming the joystick down first... which all worked... but wasn't very intuitive and actually caused problems for some people. This time around we've got a much simpler system that works on looking at the joystick as an 8-way device, with each of those 8 ways delivering a different punch. Straight up is a jab, uppercut a stright down, etc.

It really makes for a quicker game that takes less throught, allowing you to use more strategy. I actually skipped FNR4 partly because of it's controls and after this demo think I very may well get FNC.

Title - Bullet Storm
System(s) looked at - PS3, 360
Positives -Unique idea, the idea is described avidly, good showcase of what the game is about
Negatives -Tired 'unreal3 engine' characters, forced comedy is hit and miss (more miss), flipping people around to get unique kill counters gets old quick, over quickly.
Rating - 3/10

I swear, nearly every Unreal Engine 3 shooter around has the same dumb, muscle bound tards in it. That doesn't even begin to address my issues with this game demo. Much like Nail'd, Bulletstorm relies on one gimmick to stand out from others in it's genre.. and that gimmick get's tired quick.

As you may already know, the gimmick is combo-ing your kills to rack up more points. The more varied ways you kill people, the more points you get. Shoot them in partiular spots, kick them away from you, sling them into a wall of spikes, toss them over the edge, feed them to a mutant plant or do all of that in succession, it's your choice. The game even encourages you to keep trying different combos to keep getting a higher score for each level... but, at least in my case, I found once I blew through the given level I was instantly bored of the idea. I just wanted the brain dead A.I characters done with so I could continue... but no... I had to dream up repetitive ways to combo my killing together. Yawn.

The writing is dumb. It's that simple. The characters are meant to be funny, they curse a lot and more or less try to be like Duke Nukem... but fall horribly short. Each of them just comes off as developers trying to be funny and failing. The visuals are okay... but nothing worth mentioning. The controls work and the audio (aside from bad writing) doesn't seem flawed... but at the end of the day it's a boring idea that never feels fun.

Star Wars fever?

2011-02-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'll start this blog off by saying that I've always been a general fan of what Star Wars presented... but never a huge fun of the fiction itself. I didn't know the names of all the characters, nor the connections they all had. I was always confused about the whole storm trooper thing and how they were the bad guys - yet in the prequel movies they start off as the good guys .... anyways... suffice to say I've never paid enough attention to this universe to grasp a great understanding of it all and really appreciate the collectiveness of it all.

Until now. Ha. Well, I'm not going to say I'm a Star Wars encyclopedia, but I've begun to take steps to learn A LOT more about the universe and it's characters. It started simply with my brother and I deciding to watch the Star Wars movies from 1-6 and refresh on it all. We're not through them all yet... I'm currently on 5/6 and my brother just needs to watch the last one but we're really close and it's really sparked my interest in the series.

Chucking troopers around is a lot of fun.

While out shopping I nabbed a copy of 'The Force Unleashed' for the 360 thinking I might have some fun with it; little did I know that I would LOVE the game. I hated the demo that I played when it first came out and so I put it out of my mind, but when I sat down with this game I absolutely loved the feel of it... strange, no? I've gone and beaten it and have started a second play through as I'm still pumped about it and using my acquired abilities on harder enemies. I gave it a good 9.0 rating here on gamespot.

Deciding I wanted more, I re-bought Lego Star Wars Complete (use to have it for PS3 but sold it), this time for the 360 and I can't wait to jump into it further and see the similarities to the movies. Funny thing, while watching some of the movies, my brother would say "I remember this part from lego star wars" :P I also nabbed Star Wars: The Clone Wars for the 360 (all of these were $10ea, so even if they don't turn out great... no big loss) which I later see horrible review for here on gamespot... but I'll hold judgment till I play it.

I've got a copy of KotOR on steam that I might try to get back into and I have very fond memories of my copy of Republic Commando - a Storm Trooper squad based shooter that I actually beat a couple times because it was a superb title, which I may see if I can scrounge up. Even more recently I picked up a copy of Rogue Squadron for the N64 that I'm looking forward to playing. Researching, I see the PSP has done very well with Star Wars titles, as each one (even that systems version of the force unleashed) have decent review scores... so I may see about nabbing some cheap versions of those. Do you recommend any others? Just about any system is fine as I have the ability to play most systems.

I'm also interested in seeing the CG based "Clone Wars" series, does anyone know if that's decent? I picked up the DVD of the movie that started that series, hope to get to that after I finish the main movies.

I always thought this race, and specifically this Jedi was kewl.

My Gaming Abode

2011-02-15T18:02:00.000-04:00

Muahahaha, My PC is back in full function working order!!!! :D So blogging you will get... it is Tuesday after all :P

Which leads me to my first question! Whom of you would be game if I did a blog post every so often... that wasn't on the Tuesday schedule? I still plan on leaving the blogging to Tuesdays... but feel that smaller blogs may make their way in between the week span from Tue-Tue. Stuff like movie reviews, thoughts on games, demos etc that usually get pushed into a bit ol "Catch up" post would then become smaller posts through out the week. Is that kewl? Or should I stick to 1 a week? Let your voice be heard.

Now, as to the topic of this blog; I was torn between 3 different ideas... all of which are about half written... so I had to decide on one and this week, it's something fun rather than informative.

It's where I game (Minus the crazy Wii players here).

Just recently I've been re-organizing everything to better fit stuff around in my room. I took all my books out and put them on a 'family shelf' in the hallway and have moved all my PS3 games over to their own shelf while the rest of my games share space with my movie shelf.

First off, the Movie shelf; it's where I keep most of my games. Shown here, you can see some SNES cartridges beside some N64 ones, my (working) PSP, DSL and Blu-Rays. Below that my PS2, GC, XB and 360 games propped up by some PS1 games followed by my PSP discs. Down below, aside from figures and box sets, rest my PC games (the boxed ones, most of my games are either digital or in a big CD binder) and my PSP game cases.

I've included a shot of the entire shelf just to show it's awesomeness - I built it myself :P.

Next, my PS3 shelf... which is kind of hard to take a shot of... as it's tall and narrow...

Then, my PC desk, with various crap around - it's actually quite clean as I organized it along with my other stuff.

Turn 90 degrees and you've got my main entertainment hub with my game systems (N64, SNES, PS3, 360) along with TV, Receiver and a variety of controllers and clutter.

Opposite that, I've got an ottoman, that's sometimes used as a chair, but inside... all my my random gaming gear, controllers, wires and such.

Next, I'd like to showcase some of the kewler parts of thine gaming abode. First off, my kick ass StarCraft2 mouse pad - which I love. Next, my two current systems PS3 and 360 both with custom vinyl skins to give them a unique flare (Batman for PS3, Ghostbusters for 360).

Lastly, some of the nice posters I've collected over the years. All of which, I've just noticed are made of cloth material. We've got Cloud and Ms Alba on one wall and three parts of the Mass Effect 2 team along with the Major and Tachikomas of Ghost in the Shell on another.

It's a little cramped, that's for sure... but I think it'd be a hassle and a half to move it all around too much. I'm curious, what do your gaming areas look like?

Buried Treasure Vol 1: XBL Indies

2011-02-08T16:56:00.001-04:00

I've had this idea in my list of blogs I'd like to do for a while... and just left it mostly as a list of games I wanted to talk about... without much content to accompany them. I've decided that I'll do this as a series rather than just one blog and split them up into categories. Today's category is XBox Live Indies titles.

The idea I speak of is a sort of treasure trove of games that are either forgotten, perhaps unknown to a lot of gamers or independent projects that don't seem to get the publicity they should through normal channels.

In a non-ordered list, the XBL indies I think you should know about:

Lumi
Price: 400msp

Developed by Kydos Studios, the game is a puzzle-platformer which stars a bright yellow little blob who goes around collecting fireflies to help restore light to his/her world. The entire game mechanics revolve around your little creature jumping (he/she can't jump very high) and attracting themselves to rotating circles of light either blue or red in color. You use the left and right trigger to align your attraction to either Red or Blue to attach yourself to these wheels to propel yourself forward. This scenario changes things up with a law that dictates each color repels the other and color wheels that change in effectiveness.

I found the game under a random search for decent indie titles on XBLA and instantly fell in love with it's superb hand painted-esc visuals and charming music. It reminded me a lot of the feeling I got when I first got my hands on LocoRoco. It plays simply, looks beautiful and sounds charming... which is kind of surprising for an indie title. It feels more like a professionally developed arcade title rather than indie title - which more often than not turn out to look like messy first attempts at game design.

Aphelion: Episode 1 and 2
Price: 240msp (each)

Developed by Lunatic Studios, Aphelion is done in the style of a Japanese RPG, complete with anime looking characters, over dramatic dialogue and turn based combat. The story (thus far) seems pretty standard fare as you follow lead character on his quest, running into friend along the way.

What really sets this title apart from most other indie titles on XBLA is the polish of it's graphical presentation. It, like Lumi looks quite professionally done and is a delight to look at. The music does it's job and the team has created a very believable atmosphere for the characters. The battles are simple but well executed, items and such are easy to use, understand and if odd are explained. The only quirk is some of the writing.... which could use some work... but other than that, it's a nice handful of hours of JRPG goodness wrapped up in project not unlike Phantasy Star or Star Ocean of years past. (Note each title is 240msp (about $3) and thus you'll pay $6 in the end).

Arkedo 03 - Pixel
Price: 240msp

The last of our buried treasure series for today is the third game from the Arkedo studio whom have been doing superb games since their first title, Jump. The titles are simple but well polished and a great deal of fun. This title in particular is a platformer done in a smooth style pixel art with a white and blue color pallet. You control a cat creature whom must make their way to... the end of the level? Not sure exactly what the end goal is... but it's going very tight controls and plays nearly like a mario title. It's very well done and a lot of fun.

The Next Legend is Me™

2011-01-25T14:43:00.000-04:00

*Just a heads up... it seems Tuesdays seem to be a good day for me and posting blogs... so expect them every week... if I can keep up to such a schedule.

This blog is all about a little game I've gotten into. You may or may-not have heard of it... it involves superheros and... is an MMO (*gasp, right?). I'm of course talking of DC Universe Online.

Now... I'll start by stating, that before now... the acronym "MMO" kinda made me turn the other way with just about any title. As I've gone and given some MMOs a try and really didn't like them. Be it their mindless grinding to level up, their quests that mean nothing, controls that require you know a HUD from hell and the 15 thousand shortcut buttons to that HUD, or collecting Sword RX with uber firepower Z3 for my random ass characters... I dunno. Either way... I've blown through trials of World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Free Realms, Runescape and a number of smaller titles that all made me want to run rusty nails through my skull.

So... when DC Universe Online was announced... I really wasn't that pumped... as I just assumed it would be the exact same thing with super-hero skins placed over the typical knights, mages and dwarfs of every other MMO. But... the more I saw on the game, the more I watched it's trailers... the more I wanted to at least give it a try. So, I hopped on steam and found it for sale on the main page. Plopped down my $50 and proceeded to download the 12gb file. A few nights of leaving my PC on to nab the file I then had to wait for another 8gb update file :S Sigh. Was this a sign of things to come? Were they pulling a WoW on me that required 6 months of updating before I got to play? :P Anyways, eventually, I got my files and had a fully up to date system to jump into the fray.

To my surprise... while the game did resemble that of other MMOs with it's layout... it instantly felt like a different beast. I watched the incredible intro movie and got to creating my character. I really wasn't sure what I wanted... or what was usefull in terms of traits... but eventually ended up with a Heroine whom mentored under Superman with the ability to fly, control fire, attack with hand blasts (rather than weapons) and look awesome while doing so. WingpHor is the random ass name I gave her and I set out to see if I could get into this title.

I did some simple beginning quests that involved a race to test my flying abilities, a beat up on some of Gorilla Groods baddies and various little destruction, save people and thwarting the plans of the bad guys missions that lead to me dying twice. Well... it's not so much dying... as you are a superhero... but you get sent back to base to try again. You've really got to pay attention to the health bar and how many enemies show up to hand you your ass, else this will happen a lot.

Anyways, after getting the reigns of the controls, I decided I didn't care for the name WingpHor nor mentoring under SuperMan so I went back to the character creation screen to whip up another superhero.

This time I mentored under batman, had ice powers and could still fly (the other two options are incredible speed - like Flash - or great acrobatics). My Heroine had a similar outfit but different look to her and she was stuck with the name Radsidian. Again I choose to shoot things from my hands rather than a weapon (weapons include guns, staffs, swords, dual wields, fists etc) but now had an idea of how to use it all. Exiting the HQ, I instantly liked being under Batman a lot more than Superman. Instead of Metropolis (under superman) I was thrown into Gotham City and dealing with Batman central enemies - which is much better for me as I'm a huge fan of that universe and much less learned in the universe of other Heroes (such as superman).

I spent my time helping citizens escape the effects of Scarecrow's scare gas and then went hunting for collectibles to beef up my armor - as to better take on the bad guys. I've opted for a mix in controls. As the game, right from the get go, supports controller input methods and it's really well done at that. I use my PC's 360 controller to do all my movement, battling, etc... but find it easier to switch to my mouse for the menus (after pressing start to bring them up) and I still haven't figured out how to Zoom the camera with the controller... so I use the mouse for that too (which isn't often). It's great because the game plays more like an action adventure game that it does an MMO. Collectibles that drop from enemies either go straight to you or you hit a 2 button combo and they get sucked into you. Fighting is more or less 2 main fighting buttons mixed in with a block and 2 modifiers that allow you to open up side menus of 4 separate attacks (per tab) mapped to the facebuttons. For example, X is punch (360 controller) but if you hold LT and then Press B (for me) it's a power up technique that allows my hits more power, while something like Y is my power attack and LT+Y is my fireball/Iceball attack. It's all customizable and you can tell they put some thought into it.

Thus far there's only two issues I've run into. One, Audio seems to drop at times - no doubt a bug they're working on (as updates are just about daily to fix issues people are pointing out) it's a minor annoyance as it's only every for a second or two. I'm iffy with the idea that I've got to drop $15 a month to play, which is just me and my hate for paying monthly for games... but I think it may be worth it. The only other thing I worry about is the level cap, which is set at 30. About 12 hours into my play I've got one character to level 7 and the other to 5... I wonder how long before I max out? I hope the cap is raised... it seems silly to have it so low.

Anywho, my rant on the game is over. Thanks for reading. If you have an interest in superheros and the such I'd suggest you check it out, it's a lot of fun. I leave you with some screenshots of my two characters:

Some new reading material

2011-01-18T22:31:00.000-04:00

I like to read. A lot of the time I like to watch TV shows and play video games more than read... but I really do enjoy the idea of reading. You know, loosing yourself in another world woven by a good author. Taken to a new place, rich with characters and stories... that kind of thing. It's really the same reason I dig movies, games and TV shows so much... it's that escapism from real life into something else that's so fresh and exciting.

That said, my sis and I took a trip up to the city today (Halifax to be specific) to do some shopping with the hope that some stores there would be of greater variety than those we have locally. That didn't turn out extraordinarily true... as we seem to have about 90% of the stores located there available to us locally. Two exceptions were HMV - a decent music (and movie) store... something I miss greatly (we use to have a "CD Plus" which is very similar to HMV, but it's since moved out, *tear). The other is a proper book store, "Chapters" with a massive amount of space and selection that would make anyone drool - it makes our local "Coles" look like a book cart like you see in prison movies, in comparison. ;)

Anyways, I went to the check out with a stack full of books so tall I had a hard time holding them :P

First off, I was looking for some more William Gibson material. After reading "Neuromancer" I totally fell in love with the style and settings her puts his characters in (read - furturistic cyberpunkish ones). I manged to find these:

Actually, I already had "All Tomorow's Parties" but this is a slightly different version. I got my own copy of Neuromancer - as the one I read was downloaded. The four new novels are Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Idoru and Pattern Recognition.

I also went searching for some more Philip K.Dick novels and found some but they were hardcover and rather expensive... so I decided that the other books will fill the void for now until I finish with them. The one I did end up getting is a collection of short stories by PKD titled "Second Variety"

Again, PKD is a science-fiction writer and one who's style I really like. A lot of his books have been transitioning into movies (titles like BladeRunner, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly) over the years and while some good and some bad, they all point back to the tremendously awesome books.

The Next two books really took me by surprise and I really took an interest in them once I looked them over. Both are based on the DragonAge universe that Bioware has set up with it's game series and I'm eager to tear into them. One's Titled "The Stolen Throne" and the other is "The Calling".

I also picked up a small manga book (couldn't find a pic) that goes through the entire story of the N64 title "Zelda: Majora's Mask" which I thought was unique and very kewl. They also had copies of books that went through "A link to the Past" (SNES) and the first N64 title "Ocarnia of Time" but for now I just got the one book to see how I like it.

Suffice to say, I should be fine for reading material for some time. Currently I'm re-reading "If Chins could Kill, Confessions of a B Movie Actor" and autobiography by Bruce Campbell, which is an extremely interesting book that goes from his childhood, up through the Evil Dead movies and on till it was published (forget exactly where it ends, but I nearing the end now, so I'll know soon :P). I highly recommend it if you dig the actor.

Thanks for reading.

1/11/11 - Point form

2011-01-11T19:44:00.000-04:00

Oooh, Nifty date, no? :P

I seem to put so much effort into blogs at times... and it's one reason I don't do a lot of blogging... as it takes a lot of work... and a lot of time. Soz instead, here's a point form blog with some thoughts, news, ideas etc:

The Saboteur... a little rough around the edges... but still great.

Currently into 'The Saboteur' (PS3) and I'm having A LOT of fun with it. The controls felt a little loose at first and that bugged me... but I got use to it. The open worldness of it is great. Superb style too.
NFS Hot Pursuit is on the back burner a bit as I'm so dedicated to the saboteur... but I hope to jump back into that soon as it's a great deal of fun.
Speaking of fun games, I've started prepping my "Top 2010 games list" blog, just some work left in writing and maybe some pics to accompany it. It'll be posted when done.
Does Doom3 have a story? lol, I ask that because I'm also going through that and I'm lost. It just feels like I wander around killing monsters... which is really what doom was all about from the get go... but it just doesn't have the same feeling of Doom of old :(
Which reminds me, Rage is looking more and more awesome every time I see it.
This year's super Holiday Sales on steam didn't yield a lot for me :( Last year I picked up a TON of cheap games... but this year... I checked it every day during the two or so weeks it went on and only picked up a couple titles. I did take advantage of the indie games at 25-75% off and nabbed a few for next to nothing.
I did get BattleField Bad Company 2 on the Steam Sales for a mere $6.80 but have already completed the single player... and gave the multiplayer a go... but felt it no different than any other shooter out there so it didn't peak my interest.
Tried hooking up my N64 and SNES to my new TV and Receiver... but no luck :( I dunno what's up.
I'm not an MMO kind of gamer... but DC Universe Online has peaked my interest. I'll hold off for now... and see how it does, but I may pick it up at some point.
Test Drive Unlimited 2 seems drool worthy! Does it not? I'm impressed every time I see this game.
I already own it for 360 and PC... but I'm contemplating getting Mass Effect 2 for PS3... lol.
Got and finished the expansion for Costume Quest, titled "Grubbins on Ice" I actually blew through it rather quickly.

Caprica, Canceled... sadly.

Finished of the first (and sadly only, it seems) season of Caprica and liked what I watched. It was really slow to get going, but the energy put into developing the characters really appealed to me. My fav character was 'Daniel Graystone' played by Eric Stoltz.
Started in on season one of Battle Star Galactica to see if it's got similar character growth.
Also started in on the first season of Breaking Bad and I instantly love it. Every episode feels more like a tiny movie rather than a TV show. Some great watching ahead, I can tell.
Caught up on this year's seasons of both Chuck and The Office, both doing great. Sadly, this is the last year we'll see Steve Carell in The Office.
Blew through the third season of Metalocalypse and loled a bit... but hoped it'd be longer. The 15min slot really doesn't suit it anymore I find.

Sucker Punch is all style.

2011 movies I'm excited for: Green Hornet, Battle for L.A, Paul, Sucker Punch, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Super 8, Transformers 3, Alien (the prequel project), District 10, Fathom,+others
Holy Crap! A Neuromancer movie is apparently in the works :D
Still waiting on further word on Spielburgs Ghost in the Shell adaptation and the live action projects for both Cowboy Bebop and Akira.

Some kick-ass girls.

The PinkSquadron is coming along nicely. News seems to be either too much or not enough... its weird. It's like... sometimes we've got 2-5 things to report on a day or nothing for several days :S We've got some more original content being prepped for the site too to help it stand tall on it's own :) Make sure to visit if info on strong female game characters is something you're interested in.
There's a good possibility I'm going back to school this coming fall :) I've decided this whole working at something I don't want to do for the rest of my life is foolish. On to better things :P
Toshiba and Sony both showed of 3Dtvs at this year's CES which do 3D without glasses. I like 3D... I don't like expensive glasses that need charging just to see the effect, this this news sounds SUPERB to me.
Waiting eagerly for news on PSP2. Sheesh Sony, wth? You'd better announce at E3.
Totally awesome website I found called WallBase.Net - it's got one of the nicest UI and collection of amazing wallpapers in various sizes for your desktop. Visit it now!
Speaking of which, they've even got some Rosie Jones ;) (Note, this one isn't wallpaper size)
What ever happened to t.a.t.u?

Lol... that's WAY more than I expected when I started in on this thing. Hope there's something that peaked your interest.

Thanks for reading, Peace.

Tales of Christmas

2010-12-27T02:20:00.000-04:00

This Christmas was an odd one at best. At times it didn't even feel like Christmas. We held our usual Christmas activities during Christmas eve this year, including the opening of gifts, the big ol meal of awesome and so on... (due to work conflicts with various family members) so Christmas day (or rather the 25th) didn't really feel like Christmas... just a boring day :P Again because of work conflicts we didn't really go out and see anyone or do anything... twas an odd Christmas. Everyone's in decent health tho, so that's one plus.

How about you all? How was your holidays? Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's still tight to get some down time, right?

I've seen a number of blogs with people listing all the kewl stuff they got this year and decided I'd share something too. But rather than just flat out list a bunch of crap, I'll just include a few of the very kewl items that meant most to me:

First off, a simple Calendar. A Dexter Calendar at that :) Really kewl to begin with - as I LOVE Dexter - but what really shocked me is that it came from my father. Dad never seems to be the one who pays attention to one's likes and dislikes enough to pick up a kewl present like that and it really made me smile when I pulled it out of the random bag of goodies he presented me that morning. Very kewl indeed.

Next - another simple little item that just made me smirk and made my day. It's a small figurine of the mascot used by the phone company I currently have my cell through - Koodo Mobile's little Mucho-libre wrestler dude. The commercials involving this guy always make me chuckle and it's kewl that my bro picked up on that. *I got the one second from the left.

The third item I'm going to list... wasn't actually a surprise (as I stole the $10 movie cash out of it to see the new movie) but over all is still mega kewl. Tron Evolution for the PS3 as the Collector's Edition. Not really much in it for a "Collectors Edition" besides the aforementioned $10 ticket it included just the model Light Cycle... which is kewl... but I think they could of packed more in. The light cycle looks great... tho is a bit more plastic-y than I had hoped. Now I've got to figure out a place to put it :S

Last thing on my list... came from myself. It's something I've been looking at getting for a while now and thanks to some great pricing for the holidays, I finally just gave in and got it. A Sony Bravia 46" LCD HDTV and it's f'n gorgeous. It's replacing my Samsung 32" HDTV that I've owned for a number of years now and holy crap it makes my games (and blu-rays) shine. Kewl thing is, my sis offered to buy my old one (even before I got my new one) as she knew I was looking to upgrade and she needs a new one for her apartment (she currently only has a 20") and so it'll pay for like half of my new TV. Mega kewl.

Some games, movies, a new winter jacket along with odd little bobbles and nick-nacks fill up the rest of the list. But really... it's the top few things that really made my Christmas this year. Gifts from people who took a few minutes and looked for something they knew I would dig - really beat the hell out of just flashy crap any day.

Hope you guys had a good holiday as well :)

Holy Crap! Costume Quest is AWESOME!

2010-12-16T10:14:00.001-04:00

I thought about doing a review... but then decided against it. Instead, I'm just going to write up this blog and explain to you how awesome costume quest is... it'll be review-ish, but w/e.

I noticed Costume Quest for two reasons, the first being the art style which really stands out above most other downloadble games as it seems to replicate a style not unlike a proper cartoon series. The second reason is the name Double Fine which I know to be Tim Shafer's studio and thus the man/team behind titles like Brutal Legend and Psychonauts... which means the title in question is at least worth a look.

Come launch day I go and download the demo for the game, hoping to find something I like. Roughly 15 minutes into the demo and I'm hooked, then a few quick button presses later and bam, I own the full copy and dive right into the story. The story itself revolves around 2 characters, Wren and Reynold whom are identical twins that have moved to a new town and set out to do some trick or treating. You get to choose which of the characters you want to play and before long, your sibling ends up getting kidnapped by monsters who think he/she's candy.

Your quest is to save your sibling from the monsters. This is achieved by completing various tasks given to you by NPC characters around the world as well as defeating monsters in turn based RPG style battles. The RPG system sounds a little odd at first but it really does work. It's light in that you have one attack button per characters and then one super move built up after a few turns. Your attacks, as well as defense rely on quick time button presses in a few different flavors, so the game always has you paying attention. As you progress the story you collect parts for costumes which you wear in the actual word - some of which have unique abilities, such as the quick roller skate glide with your robot costume or the shield protection with the knight costume - but also transform into amazingly awesome suits for battle when you transition into one of those RPG style battle scenes.

You gather a number of costumes and even a few friends along the way to aid you in your quest. Each of which is unique and really add to the story. The story itself is all text based - there is no voiced pieces at all through out the entire game. Jutting at first, you quickly learn that voice over is really not needed, as the script of the game is strong enough to hold up and make you laugh all on it's own. I did however, enjoy the hell out of the music that's in the game. Not once did it get old, or tiring or boring. There was always the right amount of enthusiasm in the score which you grow fond of as the game progresses.

Like I mentioned before, the art-style is superb and really above and beyond what most games try for. It's a simple cell-shading... but not once while playing did I see any noticeable imperfections or weird technical issues that take you out of the illusion that this is a cartoon.

The only thing that I found to pick on was A) an occasional FPS slow down at parts which helped break the illusion just as bit and B) your character (or ones following him/her) can get caught on things in the environment which takes some screwing with the joysticks to get loose. Other than those small technical issues... the game is near perfect in my eyes. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for more. Seeing as an expansion is being prepped as I write this... I guess I won't be waiting long.