Back in Black Ops, they left a lot of extra story behind in the computer you could use from the main menu room. Hopefully Treyarch won't forget about the story they left there and remember to show us a couple of moments from it.

Just recently Skullgirls was released over to PSN and Live to mostly positive reviews. That's great, congratulations. Now if everyone would friggin wake up and properly review this game like it should be. What do I mean? One thing I've been noticing is that people seem to have lower standards when an indie game is involved than when a big company name game is involved. What the hell, guys? Are we really going to lower our standards just cause a game is made by an independent group? Really?

The sad part is that the majority of the indie games that are popular out there aren't even really that good to begin with. Let me show you with these reviews:

http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/cave-story-review

http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/super-meat-boy-review

(I really like this guy, he tells it like he is. Now if only he would review more of those indie games)

As for Skullgirls, at least it's safe to say that it's praise is not misplaced. I've managed to play the demo and I can see a pretty solid system in there. It's main focus is a Marvel vs styled system, but I can see some Guilty Gear elements in there. Yet, I must praise Mike Z for making it work. There are some thing I must question such as the team size select(Taking a cue from CvS2 Ratio system) it seems it isn't as balanced as it should be(BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? LOL). 8 characters in the roster is kinda small though that's not necessarily a bad thing. However, the game does allow you up to 3 characters on a team and with just 8 choices you don't really get that much variety for your team of 3.....if you choose to go with 3.

BTW, no in-game movelist is inexcusable, don't give me that didn't have enough time excuse. It is far too inconvenient to always be checking it online or printing it out. Skullgirls has it's flaws, they shouldn't be ignored because it's an indie game. No, I don't care that it's only 15 bucks.

Indie games deserve and should be treated like big name games too.

http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/angry-birds-review

this

I would like to take a moment to talk a bit about nostalgia. We all have something that makes us feel nostalgic, whether it's a game or movie or something that reminds us of our past. Why just recently I decided to download a gameboy emulator with a Warioland rom and play through the whole thing remembering the days of my childhood playing this as well as where every hidden treasure in the game was.

When it comes to gaming, we have the fortunate chance to re-live those gaming moments or even see what we missed with developers constantly bringing back old favorites....or by playing them illegally through roms and emulators.

I sometimes wonder whether we're being too nostalgic. What makes me think this the most is the Megaman series. Yes, 2011 was a crap year for the blue bomber, but that's not the point. I would like to point out Megaman 9 and 10. Capcom went with 8 bit style for these games to appeal to the nostalgia of Megaman fans. I'm pretty sure MM 9 and 10 were pretty good, but the way I see it, the whole 8-bit graphics thing is just a gimmick to me. One that I consider pretty poor and just plain lazy.

While we're on the Megaman subject, I would like to mention some Megaman styled doujins/fangames. First, I will mention Megamari. This game is a Megaman take on the Touhou series starring Marisa and Alice as the playable characters. It naturally comes with a Touhou flavor of having a ton of projectiles on screen particularly on boss battles. But my point is that both characters play like Classic styled Megaman(Marisa moreso).

This bring me to my second game, Rosenkreuztillete, another Megaman clone. This one isn't based on anything as all the characters are completely original. It's easy to see the heavy Megaman influence though, many thing in this game are taken straight from the Megaman games. Even the main character Spiritia plays like Classic Megaman.

So here I mentioned 2 doujins based on Megaman which use the classic style. Personally, I don't like Classic Megaman so much, not after being spoiled by the X series. In my opinion, everything Classic Megaman did was vastly improved with Megaman X. I simply cannot go back to Classic Megaman without the X series' Dash and Wall Jump mechanics. The influence these two particular abilities have is bigger than you think as they also appeared in the Megaman Zero and Megaman ZX games. Taking this into account, I'm glad Rosenkreustillete provided a special alternate mode in which you could play as one of the bosses instead of Spiritia, this one being Grolla. Grolla takes twice as much damage as Spiritia did which made the game harder, but instead of playing like Classic Megaman she played like Zero including the dash and wall jump mechanics. I didn't bother playing as Spirita and went straight to playing as Grolla. I didn't care if the double damage made the game harder, having the dash and wall jump was enough for me and I welcomed the added mobility they provided.

I end this with one more fangame that I only have seen a video of, Rokko-chan, this one is once again based on Classic Megaman. Rokko-chan even looks like a female version of Megaman(Well....more like if Roll was Megaman). This one really brings the nostalgia as you have a MM1 reference with just 6 robot masters, Rokko-chan cannot charge her buster just like early games in Classic megaman and the main villain even takes a few cues from Wily such as his wiggling eyebrows and beggin for mercy once Rokko finally beats him. On top of this, the entire game and audio is completely 8-bit. Personally, I take this as a step back considering that both Megamari and Rosenkreuzstillete had at least 16 bit graphics with wonderful music. Rokko-chan simply takes idea Capcom had with MM 9 and 10, use the gimmick of appealing to nostalgia.

There are more examples out there and even other fangames I could point out, but at this point I can see somebody out there just thinking that I'm merely complaining that people just don't want to use Megaman X style for their fan games instead of Classic Megaman style. Maybe they're right, maybe if they were X style I wouldn't care about the clear obvious appeal of nostalgia they're trying to bring here. I came a little late, starting off from the SNES, so that could be why I prefer at least 16 bit graphics and gameplay styles that came a little later.

tl;dr: Nostalgia is a nice thing to have, but like everything else too much of it is pretty bad.

Here's a topic you see every day. I'm pretty sure many out there have posted something involving this. I'm also pretty sure 98% of them are from idiotic fanboys from one of the two series. Fanboys of anything are fools, but these two types particular irk me for one reason. You simply CANNOT compare Call of Duty and Battlefield to each other. You may be asking, "But hold on, aren't the two of them shooters?" Well, if you want to use that logic, let's compare them to Team Fortress 2 while we're at it, how about Quake, Unreal tournament and Half Life as well(Stay with me here and take off the nostalgia goggles.). Now you probably are asking, "All right, I get it. But aren't they both military based shooters?" Yes, they are. But you know what? Apples and oranges are both fruits. Just because you like one fruit more doesn't mean that the other fruit is worse. In a similar way, Battlefield and Call of Duty are two completely different experiences(fanboys, shut up). Call of Duty follows the "classic" arcade run n gun gameplay from other games like Halo while introducing it's own twists to the formula(Which would then be ripped off by other games), meanwhile Battlefield is more tactical and team based, requiring one to think more and work with your teammates together to achieve the goal. Both games appeal to different types of audiences, some prefer the run n gun(like me) and some prefer the squad like tactical play. Neither game is better than the other simply due to how radical different they are, which makes BF and COD fanboys look even more foolish than your typical brat. On a final note, I would like to point out the common claim that COD games are milked out and don't offer anything new to each game. While, I somewhat agree with this, allow me to point out a few other series that "don't offer anything new" to each game: Super Mario Bros(and its Mario Kart spin off) Legend of Zelda Pokemon Halo Street Fighter King of Fighters Fable And the list goes on.

Been playing this early afternoon. Personally, I don't think I would really call it an Open beta if you still need to look for the code for it to enter. Guess that would explain why matchmaking was slow. The game itself seems pretty fun and the gadgets are an interesting addition in an attempt to set itself aside from every other shooter out there. Also, I don't think there is Host Migration in this, which is a pretty big no no in this, especially when shooters are prone to having one team dominate another and making people rage quit cause of it. In this case, i don't blame them. Seeing your team losing by a HUGE score with no sign of any comeback is depressing and I would honestly prefer to quit out and try my luck in another game than continue on in an obvious losing battle. At any rate, if you're into shooters, this might be worth a shot. If you think every shooter out there is the same, I doubt this will change your mind.