Elk is back, tell some men... rub my back, rub my back, rub my back...
That was some hiatus huh? It's been over a year since my last written review and starting today Elk returns as a dedicated iOS reviewer! I do still cover Android of course, but it doesn't seem so appropriate to cover here with my other commitments.
I can'tguarantee that these reviews will be arriving on a weekly basis, but I'm shutting down my Xbox and PC gaming considerbally to focus more on mobile. I'm still going to be playing the big hitters, but these games I've recently played (Red Faction, Alice, Duke) I could definately live without if it'll free up more time.
So there it is, check out my written review and with any luck video reviews will also be coming soon
I came across this rather cool site recently called vyou.com, it works a lot like Formspring except that questions are answered in video form. So go ahead, ask me anything, I'm on the Internet:http://vyou.com/madelk
Man, it's hard to believe that this month my GameSpot account will have active for nine years, although what might be more frightening is the knowledge that it's been 9 years since I was 22.
I really don't plan on turning this into a bi-monthly blog, but here's some of the things I've been up to:
I just beat Yakuza 1 this last week. After seeing @carolynmichelle's coverage of the forth game I decided to catch up on this series which past me by and I'm really enjoying the story so far. After hearing so much of a comparason to Shenmue I was expecting a little more sidequest and a lot less action, but it seems like the newer games bring a lot more sidequests and dumb things to do, I'm all for that.
I'm still trying to get myself a job in the San Francisco area but if nothing comes up in the next month or so it's looking like we'll be uprooting and moving to Dalas, TX as my wife has a good looking job offered to her there. I'm not too worried about finding a job myself, as I always seem to land somethingbut hopefully something in San Francisco will come through, I hear Texas can get quite toasty.
My retro video game collection continues to build, I'll have to shootanother video at some point as I recently collected an old Sega Master System and an Atari 2600. It's safe to expect that all these system will ever do is play Alex Kid and River Raid but that's a pretty good life for 25-30 year old game systems.
I'll have to cut this shorter than planned as it's already 23:00 and I'm sure work tomorrow will continue to be a PITA. Good health to you all, I'll go through a few of your blogs tomorrow to see what you're all up to
Alright, so I've been gone for a while, big whoop, want to fight about it!?
(Image unrelated)
Yeah, it really has been a long while, but since I dislike reading blogs talking about how they've been gone so long and the reasons let me just skip over all that.
This blog is more of a quick check in, rather than blogging because of some major every, heck I used to make a blog every time I created a new video but since I've been doing them weekly it'd be a little much. Keeping up with all this Android business hasn't kept me away from bigger games and I finally got around to playing Dead Space 1&2 after hearing how great they were. I've never really been much of a fan of horror games and I was never too sure why. Back when Resident Evil was out I blamed the clumsy controls and item management but I think it's more how these types of games have to always keep you on edge. I wouldn't say I get scared playing these types of games, although both games did get a jump out of me once, but expecting something to jump out around every corner just becomesexhaustingafter trucking through 15+ hours of Dead Space horror and it had my pining for the childlike joy of something like Mario Sunshine. That all said, Dead Space and particularly Dead Space 2 are amazingly well put together games with many great moments, but I'm in no rush to play a third.
I've been playing some other 2011 games this weekend and I threw a good hour or so into Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and You Don't Know Jack. Marvel Vs Capcom 3 seems like a fine game and is exactly what I'd expect from a sequel although I have to admit to missing the "I wanna take you for a ride" tune. I've never been very good at trivia games so I'd never touched the You Don't Know Jack series in the past but I'm so impressed with the humor and presentation of the game that it's hard not to love it. The scripted humor reminded me more of playing a Teltale adventure game than I expected, except that it's a lot more fun to play with others.
My wife and I also just finished going through Star Trek. Over the past year we've watched: Deep Space 9, The Next Generation, Voyager, The Original Series and Enterprise. I've actually been throwing around the idea of watching the animated show since it recently appeared on TV.COM, I don't expect it to be much good, but at least it's short. The most surprising thing about going through all these old shows has been how much I enjoyed DS9, even though I never really cared for it back in the day. I always thought about DS9 as being Star Trek: 90210 as it focused so much on the characters and less about exploration. I don't know if it's my age or if I never gave the series enough of a chance, but I absolutely loved the main storylines and the relationships between the characters and I could really go for another new series should one come around.
So that's all for now, I'll likely have some more to say once my 32X arrives sometime over the next few weeks as long as I can find some games for it. Until then, stay frosty!
I have been remiss in my duties as a video reviewer over the last several months, I've sadly been too busy around the web and with day job madness to sit down and put something together. Now finally I've been able to get scrounge some time together and guess what? We've run out of games for the year. So rather than review something already a few weeks old I decided to take a look at something that recently became 15 years old: Duck Hunt.
This was also an excuse to check out some different video stuff. Enjoy!
I've had a rough past few weeks with technology here, after some strange video card issues and motherboard issues afterwards I've found myself without a desktop PC. Fortunately I still had my backup Ubuntu computer which is really just used for Boxee. I've never really made Linux my primary OS until now and I must say that I'm pretty darn impressed with where the OS has come in the last 5-6 years since I last really tried using it day-to-day. Installing software is a breeze compared to the old method of extracting, building, changing attributes and installing and you no longer have to edit a darn text file to change a resolution. In so many ways I could make this my main PC if only I could do just about anything that I'd really want to use my PC for day-to-day. My webcam drivers give a terrible frame rate and poor quality, there's also no support for my video capture card for game consoles and of course capturing PC games is out of the question since none are compatible, with the recent exception of Minecraft. It's rather a shame, I like the OS and I'd love to be able to use it but it just so happens to fail at just about everything I need my desktop to do, of course this is due to compatibility with my hardware but these recent thanksgiving Steam deals would still be useless to me anyway.
So without a PC I've been spending a lot more time on game consoles. I've played through Fable III again to try out the evil method and I couldn't be more disappointed, everything is spun in a way to make it seem like you're working 'for the good of the people' rather than being the evil, murdering b**tard that I'm trying for. Near the beginning of the game I needed to get the support of people in a city and collect 100 guild seals, instead I murdered everything I saw until I collected enough seals, at which point people cheered for me and pledged their support. I see the angle the game is going for but if you were to use a D&D analogy I'd say the game only really supports lawful good and chaotic good play **** and I've found this to be understated in most reviews that I've read.
I've also touched on several Wii games such as Sonic Colours, Donkey Kong Country and Goldeneye but I'm not really far enough to pass any judgment beyond saying that they all seem like great games so far. I've instead been rather wrapped up in Assassins Creed: Brotherhood which might be the best game in the series yet and more recently, Gran Tourismo 5. I'm really enjoying GT5 so far but some of the decisions in that game really baffle me to no end, not being able to choose a colour for your car unless you've owned a car of that colour before might just about be the worst, I guess it extends the life of the game and gives a reason to build collections but it just seems so, arbitrary. Progressive damage is also a real oddity, not allowing any simulation damage on cars until you reach a high level. I'm glad that the series is trying new things rather than just taking decals and customization from Forza, but just because a decision is brave doesn't mean I have to like it. It's easy to point out the failings of a game that's been in development for so long rather than point out what it does well: weather effects, new racing modes, great detail on some 1/4 of the cars and of course the driving is still top notch. I'd go as far to say that this is the best simulation racing game on the PS3 - on second thoughts that might not be much of a stretch.
That's all for now, I usually like to blog when I have a new video ready and my first retro video was due long ago but it'll have to wait until my PC parts get back from warranty. Until then you could look at some of the videos I've done over at AndroidSPIN.com but I really do want to get back into doing PC/Console reviews again, soon I hope.
I've always been drawn towards retro gaming a little more than most and after talking some with Steve Lin at AuroraFeint about his collection I decided it was time to begin to rebuild. That lot up there cost about $200 with the exception of the VCR and N64 stuff and it seems like a pretty good deal. There's a top loading NES that I've never heard of and about 6-7 games with a pair of controllers and a lightgun, An ugly USA SNES with a pair of controllers and Super Metroid, a Saturn, Dreamcast and a Sega Genesis with Sega CD and several games. With luck I hope that I'll be able to do a little something with all this and I'm thinking of doing a weekly video where I put in a new game I've purchased for a couple of dollars.
Back to the present day, I've been enjoying Fable III which I completed last night, it's not a 'bad' game per se, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed with some of the direction that the game took, it makes me wonder if Lionhead doesn't have the same control over their games and schedule as they once did. I've also been playing a little RockBand 3 which lives up to what I'd expect from a new RockBand game but the real game will begin when I get the Midi controller for my keyboard sometime next month. There's also still Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 that I haven't touched and Fallout: New Vegas and Dead Rising 2 that I've barely scratched the surface of. I'm very glad my job isn't as busy as it has been, with all of the things I'm trying to juggle at once I don't think I could fit much else in.
That's all for now, I need to get working on this Fable III review and start thinking how I can capture footage from these old systems, it should be fun!
This weekend I took part in the Extra Life charity event to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network and I'm glad to say that things went really well. They ask contestants to try to raise at least $96, however with the help of friends and the mentions on Citizen Game I was able to raise over $300 for charity! In general the event was a massive success, bringing in over $400k, more than double that of the previous year.
To compete in the event you have to simply play video games but for 24 hours straight, but I went an extra mile and managed to capture at least most of the footage live (http://www.livestream.com/madelk/video?clipId=pla_17b1d632-85bc-4d55-b16a-0b7ed6210c21) I'd probably have a lot more archive if I didn't have so many Internet issues, but livestream.com has the strangest interface for managing uploaded videos that I've likely missed a lot of parts in that link. Thanks to everyone who tuned it, that really made made a big difference!
Lastly I just want to share my most recent review, it's VERY different from the rest, but I think that's justified: http://androidspin.com
It's been a thoroughly busy month since I last wrote and outside of working 64 hours a week at my job (that's eight days) I've also been on a couple of trips around the US.
At the end of last month I flew to San Francisco to visit the Aurora Feint offices and meet with the staff there. This is was my first event I have visited as a journalist and it took a little getting used to. The guys at the office there are fantastic: They took several other journalists and myself out to lunch and dinner, then the next day we had the chance to interview some of them. I was a little worried about being in with other writers, as I said this was my first time doing anything like this and definitely my first time doing an interview and I was worried that I'd be quickly out cla$$ed by more experienced minds but actually the opposite was true. I didn't realize it during the interview but upon listening to the recording I made (I was the only one to do so) I noticed that it seemed to be only me asking any questions, with just a few exceptions. Not to besmirch the other writers there, I won't mention any names but they were great guys and I hope to meet them again at a future event. As for the staff at Aurora, I really couldn't imagine a better team. They are all so very passionate about games, especially one Steve Lin who has one of the craziest video game collections I've ever seen, not only does he own systems that most people haven't heard of but he probably has a prototype of them too.
When I got back from San Francisco my wife was at the airport to greet my with a new copy of Civilization 5 collectors edition. Really, how awesome is she?
Last week I was off again on more Android business to the Big Texas Android BBQ. It was a lot of fun meeting so many like minded folks there but sometimes I wonder why it's so hard for people to admit that another platform has any merits, as bad as the GameSpot system wars thread gets, you try going to an event like this and talking about the iPhone and you're likely to end up with a horde of angry Android geeks to deal with. It's the first time I've been to Texas and man that 12 hour drive seemed to take forever, my wife actually drove most of the way while I did some writing but still. The city of Austin really surprised me with it's size and busy downtown areas, although truthfully I'm not sure what I expected to find there. I came to the BBQ equipped with a handful of business cards that my Dad printed out and sent over from the UK and I ended up giving out most of them to vendors and I got chatting to the staff at HTC after I sorted out one of their employee's children with a DS and PSP to play while their dad tried to work. The strangest part of the BBQ was coming across someone who knew me from my writing and followed me around for a while, I can't decide if it was flattering of creepy, but it sure was unexpected.
It really has been a crazy busy month, but it's also been so awesome taking part in all of these things I never expected to happen. I hope you all get a few pleasant surprises also in the coming weeks that'll give you equally as good memories to cherish.
Also please check out my interview transcript that'll be appearing on AndroidSPIN.com throughout this coming week.
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