This was a tardy special to Reviewspotting 52. There are five clips of music in here, each from a Playstation game (PSone - not PS2). Guess 'em all or not at all! Answers... somewhere below. I think it's in my blog post for Podcast 32, in the Comments section.
[video=dn01kTKs5bkOvjTf]
MrCHUP0N Blog
It is time for the Twilight. (Updated: Why Ocarina took so long to finish)
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
I finally completed Ocarina of Time. And only nearly 9 years after it was released. The largest weight on my games backlog has now been lifted. I'm FRIGGIN' FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Oh, and I'm keeping Ryan Davis' email in my inbox as a souvenir. (If you're clueless, see blog entry below.)
Why did I only just finish Ocarina of Time, reputed to be one of the greatest games ever made?
I actually never owned a Nintendo 64 back in its heyday. I first laid my hands on my own console in early 2002, and the game I was spending time on was F-Zero X. It was a quick pick-up-and-play game that I could play to accompany my sessions of Gamecube and PC games. I owned neither The Legend of Zelda N64 series nor Super Mario 64, as they seemed like daunting tasks that I just wouldn't get to complete with the ferocity they required because I was awaiting Metroid Prime (which, in and of itself, was a daunting task that I wouldn't complete for two years after I started to pursue it).
Sometime around 2004, I got myself the Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition - the disc that packaged in The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Being the senile nut for old 2D gameplay that I am, I just started spamming away at Zelda II before forgetting about it a few days later. I went back to my other Gamecube games, and started trying to find my way around the horribly loopy first castle area of Wind Waker.
At some point I realized that I'd been shunning Ocarina of Time unjustly. It just kinda sat there on my shelf, crying a little and maybe even bawling. I believe it was around February of last year that I decided - dammit - that it was time to play this thing and finish it, especially in light of the impending release of Twilight Princess.
It's taken me nearly 12 months of on-and-off playing to complete mostly because I found it somewhat intimidating. This is similar, again, to my situation with Metroid Prime. The long Japanese RPGs I had been playing during college sort of wore my brain thin - as games that focused more on exposition than mental challenges (e.g. dungeon puzzles), they were easier for me to marathon through despite their length. (Yeah, I'm pretty dumb!)
When I wasn't being intimidated by the puzzles, and most recently the Water Temple, it was the graphics. STOP YELLING. Hear me out. There are some 3D games that don't age particularly well. For my eyes, Ocarina of Time hasn't aged entirely gracefully (though it's still easy to tell why it was considered so excellent-looking back in the day). The biggest culprit for this is the frame-rate, followed by the coloring. Back in 1998, this game indeed was amazing-looking. It was incredibly, richly detailed and considering what was being demanded of the machine, the framerate was very, very admirable.
However, I really did not have the pleasure of playing this game back in its prime. I've been spoiled by the 60 frames-per-second performance and detailed textures of games like Metroid Prime, Half Life 2, God of War and Ninja Gaiden. Now, this isn't to say that graphics make a game. I'm guilty of continually trumpeting the cliche that it's gameplay over graphics. What made it difficult for me to look at Ocarina was the fact that I've grown so used to smooth framerates that the very slight bit of chop in Ocarina of Time - and to be fair, it performs very consistently - manages to make me a little motion sick. Combining this with textures that - while they were once considered detailed - are a little muddy just made me a little sicker.
ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, STOP THROWING PITCHFORKS AT ME. Let me re-iterate: I don't dislike the graphics. Quite simply, it's just that they make me a little queasy. I'm not using that as a troll remark or an insult at all. I truly, honestly got very, very small headaches while playing the game. It's just like how the original Half-Life made the_antipode motion sick. It's just one of those things that happens, and Ocarina did that to me - end of story.
Past the intimidation and graphics, though, the only other reason it took me so long to complete Ocarina of Time is because I have a problem with focus. I can't sit down for half an hour at a time and be able to accomplish something in Ocarina of Time, because it feels like a game that requires completion of huge tasks in order for progression to take place. I need to be able to complete a temple in at most two sittings before I forget what I was doing and get confused, and considering I'd had very few stretches of hours at-a-time at home to play console games, this just wasn't happening.
Now, it's done, and I'm glad to have played it. I'm intensely upset that I didn't play this in its prime, because I probably wouldn't have been annoyed by the framerate. I also probably would have enjoyed it better than I did; Ocarina of Time is a fantastic game and I can see where - like Halo, or Half Life - it gets its accolades from. Like Half-Life (not Halo, but that's just my personal preference), I think this is a really great game. But - and I need to make this clear - like Halo and Half Life, it doesn't rise to the top of my list. I still like A Link to the Past better. I enjoyed what I played of Twilight Princess (yep, I cheated and played about 3 hours of it) more than what I had played of Ocarina at that same point. Final Fantasy VI and Metroid Prime still top my all-time favorites list.
This is going to be difficult for me to review, no doubt. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to give you a score, I'd predict that using the Gamespot rating system, it'd end up getting at least a 9.0. (I hate scores, but I'll humor you this once.) Yet, I'm pretty sure I should brace myself for cries of, "9.0 isn't good enough!" (Comically I'll also probably get "9.0 is too high j00 fanboi lolz stupid" - just ... shut... up, please.) I guess all I can say is, "Oh Well." All that really matters is that now, it's time for Twilight Princess.
Oh, and I'm keeping Ryan Davis' email in my inbox as a souvenir. (If you're clueless, see blog entry below.)
Why did I only just finish Ocarina of Time, reputed to be one of the greatest games ever made?
I actually never owned a Nintendo 64 back in its heyday. I first laid my hands on my own console in early 2002, and the game I was spending time on was F-Zero X. It was a quick pick-up-and-play game that I could play to accompany my sessions of Gamecube and PC games. I owned neither The Legend of Zelda N64 series nor Super Mario 64, as they seemed like daunting tasks that I just wouldn't get to complete with the ferocity they required because I was awaiting Metroid Prime (which, in and of itself, was a daunting task that I wouldn't complete for two years after I started to pursue it).
Sometime around 2004, I got myself the Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition - the disc that packaged in The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Being the senile nut for old 2D gameplay that I am, I just started spamming away at Zelda II before forgetting about it a few days later. I went back to my other Gamecube games, and started trying to find my way around the horribly loopy first castle area of Wind Waker.
At some point I realized that I'd been shunning Ocarina of Time unjustly. It just kinda sat there on my shelf, crying a little and maybe even bawling. I believe it was around February of last year that I decided - dammit - that it was time to play this thing and finish it, especially in light of the impending release of Twilight Princess.
It's taken me nearly 12 months of on-and-off playing to complete mostly because I found it somewhat intimidating. This is similar, again, to my situation with Metroid Prime. The long Japanese RPGs I had been playing during college sort of wore my brain thin - as games that focused more on exposition than mental challenges (e.g. dungeon puzzles), they were easier for me to marathon through despite their length. (Yeah, I'm pretty dumb!)
When I wasn't being intimidated by the puzzles, and most recently the Water Temple, it was the graphics. STOP YELLING. Hear me out. There are some 3D games that don't age particularly well. For my eyes, Ocarina of Time hasn't aged entirely gracefully (though it's still easy to tell why it was considered so excellent-looking back in the day). The biggest culprit for this is the frame-rate, followed by the coloring. Back in 1998, this game indeed was amazing-looking. It was incredibly, richly detailed and considering what was being demanded of the machine, the framerate was very, very admirable.
However, I really did not have the pleasure of playing this game back in its prime. I've been spoiled by the 60 frames-per-second performance and detailed textures of games like Metroid Prime, Half Life 2, God of War and Ninja Gaiden. Now, this isn't to say that graphics make a game. I'm guilty of continually trumpeting the cliche that it's gameplay over graphics. What made it difficult for me to look at Ocarina was the fact that I've grown so used to smooth framerates that the very slight bit of chop in Ocarina of Time - and to be fair, it performs very consistently - manages to make me a little motion sick. Combining this with textures that - while they were once considered detailed - are a little muddy just made me a little sicker.
ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, STOP THROWING PITCHFORKS AT ME. Let me re-iterate: I don't dislike the graphics. Quite simply, it's just that they make me a little queasy. I'm not using that as a troll remark or an insult at all. I truly, honestly got very, very small headaches while playing the game. It's just like how the original Half-Life made the_antipode motion sick. It's just one of those things that happens, and Ocarina did that to me - end of story.
Past the intimidation and graphics, though, the only other reason it took me so long to complete Ocarina of Time is because I have a problem with focus. I can't sit down for half an hour at a time and be able to accomplish something in Ocarina of Time, because it feels like a game that requires completion of huge tasks in order for progression to take place. I need to be able to complete a temple in at most two sittings before I forget what I was doing and get confused, and considering I'd had very few stretches of hours at-a-time at home to play console games, this just wasn't happening.
Now, it's done, and I'm glad to have played it. I'm intensely upset that I didn't play this in its prime, because I probably wouldn't have been annoyed by the framerate. I also probably would have enjoyed it better than I did; Ocarina of Time is a fantastic game and I can see where - like Halo, or Half Life - it gets its accolades from. Like Half-Life (not Halo, but that's just my personal preference), I think this is a really great game. But - and I need to make this clear - like Halo and Half Life, it doesn't rise to the top of my list. I still like A Link to the Past better. I enjoyed what I played of Twilight Princess (yep, I cheated and played about 3 hours of it) more than what I had played of Ocarina at that same point. Final Fantasy VI and Metroid Prime still top my all-time favorites list.
This is going to be difficult for me to review, no doubt. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to give you a score, I'd predict that using the Gamespot rating system, it'd end up getting at least a 9.0. (I hate scores, but I'll humor you this once.) Yet, I'm pretty sure I should brace myself for cries of, "9.0 isn't good enough!" (Comically I'll also probably get "9.0 is too high j00 fanboi lolz stupid" - just ... shut... up, please.) I guess all I can say is, "Oh Well." All that really matters is that now, it's time for Twilight Princess.
Red Steel Is Bad, Part 63 of 284 (and, Ryan Davis spammed my inbox! ^_^)
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
It's not like you all didn't know this already. But it's fun to see just what's wrong with Red Steel. Among the many things: voice acting that doesn't match the character design; floating bodies; the concept of fighting a fat dude wielding a baseball bat with a samurai sword, especially when you've got a gun on your hip waiting to be reloaded and itching for some action; enemy AI that leaves some enemies brain-dead until you literally walk up to their nose... oh, my stars!
Today I present to you part 63 of my 284 part documentary: Red Steel is Bad. I tackle the poor voiceovers, the idiocy of putting away your gun when you clearly would have had the upper hand, and the frustration at not being able to just have fun and cap a subdued enemy full of munitions. Part 27 - Glitchy McGlitcherson - will come later this week.
[video=ISA7kDb-5bkPujTa]
Special thanks to former Gamespot's Editor in Chief Greg Kasavin for enduring this game long enough to actually review it.
Random Ending - Ryan Davis sent spam to my Trigames.NET inbox!!!111one
Today I present to you part 63 of my 284 part documentary: Red Steel is Bad. I tackle the poor voiceovers, the idiocy of putting away your gun when you clearly would have had the upper hand, and the frustration at not being able to just have fun and cap a subdued enemy full of munitions. Part 27 - Glitchy McGlitcherson - will come later this week.
[video=ISA7kDb-5bkPujTa]
Special thanks to former Gamespot's Editor in Chief Greg Kasavin for enduring this game long enough to actually review it.
Random Ending - Ryan Davis sent spam to my Trigames.NET inbox!!!111one
Trigames.NET Podcast 33 Available
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
Thanks to the amount of conversation mustered by the mailbag questions you all so graciously sent us, we managed to fill up our entire episode with listener questions. Thanks to slunks, JamesonV, Ryvvn, and jimb0 for basically outlining our roadmap for this episode!
Download here.
Don't forget: you can digg us too!
Keep sending questions and feedback to our mailbag (mailbag [at] trigames [dot] net, or our email form here).
(Oh, and don't cut off the podcast before the end of the full 1:20:28. Random sound effects are good for the soul.)
Download here.
Don't forget: you can digg us too!
Keep sending questions and feedback to our mailbag (mailbag [at] trigames [dot] net, or our email form here).
(Oh, and don't cut off the podcast before the end of the full 1:20:28. Random sound effects are good for the soul.)
Podcast in Editing - Feedback requested0rs
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
Podcast 33 went in the editing room yesterday. You guys sent such high-quality and varied questions that we spent the entire episode answering them - thanks so much, again, for the questions.
In addition to questions we'd also like feedback. What kinds of things would you like us to talk about? What do you think of the intro music, the interludes (introduced in episode 32 and more of which you'll hear in this episode), et cetera? What segments would you like to hear, or should we just keep it simple with just the news like the HotSpot and open with "What have you been playing" like 1up?
You can send feedback to the mailbag too (please don't leave it here); we'll read it aloud as well. Just don't expect Tony to hold back if he hears something he can make fun of ;)
In addition to questions we'd also like feedback. What kinds of things would you like us to talk about? What do you think of the intro music, the interludes (introduced in episode 32 and more of which you'll hear in this episode), et cetera? What segments would you like to hear, or should we just keep it simple with just the news like the HotSpot and open with "What have you been playing" like 1up?
You can send feedback to the mailbag too (please don't leave it here); we'll read it aloud as well. Just don't expect Tony to hold back if he hears something he can make fun of ;)
Red Steel is Comically Bad
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
I'm trying to beat Red Steel as quickly as possible. As mentioned in my blog entry below, it's not disastrous, but it is comically bad. It's like a Steven Segal movie in that respect - you may find yourself having fun and feeling guilty about it, but ultimately there's just so much material in here that you can string together for a really good "unintentional comedy video" of sorts.
Aiming reticule resetting?
Farcked up enemy AI?
Being able to flip over a solid wood desk for cover, but not able to do the same for a folding table?
Engaging, sublime enemy chatter and dialog such as, "I'm gonna get you moron" and "Just give me a good old gangster movie, none of this wire fu crap"?
Stereotyped minorities whose voices and dialect sound like a mixture of Keanu Reeves and Matthew Broderick?
Oh man, as soon as I beat this, I'm making this video...
Aiming reticule resetting?
Farcked up enemy AI?
Being able to flip over a solid wood desk for cover, but not able to do the same for a folding table?
Engaging, sublime enemy chatter and dialog such as, "I'm gonna get you moron" and "Just give me a good old gangster movie, none of this wire fu crap"?
Stereotyped minorities whose voices and dialect sound like a mixture of Keanu Reeves and Matthew Broderick?
Oh man, as soon as I beat this, I'm making this video...
Red Steel is... not disastrous...!?
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
Red Steel does not completely stink up my room.
...
Does not compute. I think there's like, a divide-by-zero error or a null pointer or something.
Huh? Red Steel doesn't blow chunks?
I should note, however, that just because something's not disastrous doesn't mean it can't be bad. Red Steel is bad - comically bad. But that's a story for later. Today this is all about why Red Steel isn't a total disaster.
To be serious for a second, sometimes I play reputably poor games for the sake of doing all two of my readers at Trigames.NET the service of either confirming or denying popular opinion. This happened with Rayman DS, wherein I purchased the game with the sole intent of reviewing it quickly so that people could make their decision on it. You'll remember that the game released during the Nintendo DS drought of early 2005, and reviews for the games weren't coming out all that quickly. Well, that game ended up making me cry and I wrote up an appropriate review.
With so many mixed reviews on Red Steel, I decided to give it a shot to see if I could help shed some more light on the disappointing title's stigma. I found it on eBay for about $30, which is perfect since you can basically trade recent titles in for at least $25 worth of store credit (nevermind the fact that I just don't have the big chunks of time to pay a monthly rental subscription).
Red Steel has gaping flaws, and is irritating at times - many times. But when you're taking down gangs of poorly-voiced enemy thugs, the feeling is nice and cathartic. I mentioned how tasty it was to shoot down opposing forces with the Wiimote in Call of Duty 3, and the core feeling is the same here. I like the design of the environment, with its fusion of Japanese and American. The graphics have quite a bit to complain about, but at times there's some really decent texturework that gives the game a cleaner look than Call of Duty and some more-than-impressive lighting effects. About 10 minutes into the game, I couldn't believe that I was actually enjoying it a bit.
For a game whose turning speed is that of a rotten mushroom, that's impressive.
But let's talk about that turning speed for a second. It's abhorrent. No, there aren't too many instances where you'll find yourself turning to face enemies, but they're there. If you choose to go gung-ho with a shotgun, step up to enemies and put a fat one in their grill, you will obviously come to the same close-quarters turning speed frustration that comes with all 3D shooters (1st and 3rd person) that control with analog sticks with no lock-on (yep, even Gears - sorry.. except, of course, Gears generally kicks the pants off of this title).
The other part of it is that if there aren't many instances where you're turning to fire upon foes, is it really that well-designed at all? No one's flanked me yet. No one's really advanced on me tactically except head-on in a Doom or Serious Sam style of banzai rush. Everyone seems to start out firing upon you from the front, and it starts to feel like a shooting gallery. It might be enough for some people, but not for me. I've even come across some instances where I'd approach a dude from the side and catch him unawares with the awesomeness of my uzi, but he'd still be standing there staring ahead of himself... waiting for me to come into his field of vision. Riiight.
Let's not talk about the swordfighting too much, or I'll hemorrhage. Basically, the parrying is way cool. The sword swinging? Way not. It feels like Twilight Princess sword fighting. Let me clarify this before all the Zelda fanboys start tearing my scalp off and stabbing my tongue with a rusty screwdriver ("Blaaam!"). The sword waggling in Zelda works just fine, because in the context of the game the only real goal is to swing the sword and hit bad things. In this game, you're given the illusion that you're holding a long sword that you can control like you can in real life. So Ubisoft took away one-to-one motions, and your sword swipes are all pre-animated attacks. Ok, that's a little terrible, but I can sort of learn to kind of maybe possibly potentially live with it. However, there's a setting that you can toggle to have your sword strikes respond to long, sweeping movements or shorter, choppier movements. I chose the latter, since I don't want to swing my arms like a madman.
Now, I'm fighting "fat dude #3 with baseball bat" (who looks hispanic, has Jehri curls, and inexplicably sounds like Matthew Broderick) and I try to give him a quick one-two combo - waggle left, waggle right. Right? Wrong. It didn't respond to my command. So I tried waggling it like I was paying Zelda, and presto - combos came out. Ok, so sure, I got the fighting to work - but I don't like it! I don't like just jostling the Wiimote to get a combo off.
Wow - that was quite a long rant on the sword fighting. Let's touch on the presentation real quick before my boss comes back. (Wait, I'm working from home today. Nevermind.) Much of the design is actually really well-done. Well, I personally like it. The texture work can get icky at times, but it can also get really sharp - well, considering it's at 480p and there's far less than 512 megabytes fo video RAM to work with. These textures - the ones that received hard work - are as good as they can be without any bump- or normal-mapping, in some cases better than Twilight Princess (which is still the best looking game for the system). The character designs are an absolute bore, but from a technical standpoint they're built with a decent amount of polygons and look very well-rounded.
The lighting effects are all very, very well done. They're on the same level, if not a bit more impressive, than Twilight Princess. If you look out the window in one of the opening stages, the glare of the sun setting in the distance is almost blinding (well that's going a bit far, but you get the picture). Vending machines and lamps emit a haze of light that starts to dissipate as you draw closer.
There's quite a bit more to say about this game that's not so positive, but I'll leave you with this thought:
Gamespot's own great ex-EiC Greg Kasavin gave this game a 5.5. I don't know that I'd disagree with that score, but I will say that there's a reason that it didn't get lower.
Hmm, that's not such a ringing endorsement. How's this? I'll happily finish this game, but I'm selling it back the instant I do.
...hmm... oh nevermind.
...
Does not compute. I think there's like, a divide-by-zero error or a null pointer or something.
Huh? Red Steel doesn't blow chunks?
I should note, however, that just because something's not disastrous doesn't mean it can't be bad. Red Steel is bad - comically bad. But that's a story for later. Today this is all about why Red Steel isn't a total disaster.
To be serious for a second, sometimes I play reputably poor games for the sake of doing all two of my readers at Trigames.NET the service of either confirming or denying popular opinion. This happened with Rayman DS, wherein I purchased the game with the sole intent of reviewing it quickly so that people could make their decision on it. You'll remember that the game released during the Nintendo DS drought of early 2005, and reviews for the games weren't coming out all that quickly. Well, that game ended up making me cry and I wrote up an appropriate review.
With so many mixed reviews on Red Steel, I decided to give it a shot to see if I could help shed some more light on the disappointing title's stigma. I found it on eBay for about $30, which is perfect since you can basically trade recent titles in for at least $25 worth of store credit (nevermind the fact that I just don't have the big chunks of time to pay a monthly rental subscription).
Red Steel has gaping flaws, and is irritating at times - many times. But when you're taking down gangs of poorly-voiced enemy thugs, the feeling is nice and cathartic. I mentioned how tasty it was to shoot down opposing forces with the Wiimote in Call of Duty 3, and the core feeling is the same here. I like the design of the environment, with its fusion of Japanese and American. The graphics have quite a bit to complain about, but at times there's some really decent texturework that gives the game a cleaner look than Call of Duty and some more-than-impressive lighting effects. About 10 minutes into the game, I couldn't believe that I was actually enjoying it a bit.
For a game whose turning speed is that of a rotten mushroom, that's impressive.
But let's talk about that turning speed for a second. It's abhorrent. No, there aren't too many instances where you'll find yourself turning to face enemies, but they're there. If you choose to go gung-ho with a shotgun, step up to enemies and put a fat one in their grill, you will obviously come to the same close-quarters turning speed frustration that comes with all 3D shooters (1st and 3rd person) that control with analog sticks with no lock-on (yep, even Gears - sorry.. except, of course, Gears generally kicks the pants off of this title).
The other part of it is that if there aren't many instances where you're turning to fire upon foes, is it really that well-designed at all? No one's flanked me yet. No one's really advanced on me tactically except head-on in a Doom or Serious Sam style of banzai rush. Everyone seems to start out firing upon you from the front, and it starts to feel like a shooting gallery. It might be enough for some people, but not for me. I've even come across some instances where I'd approach a dude from the side and catch him unawares with the awesomeness of my uzi, but he'd still be standing there staring ahead of himself... waiting for me to come into his field of vision. Riiight.
Let's not talk about the swordfighting too much, or I'll hemorrhage. Basically, the parrying is way cool. The sword swinging? Way not. It feels like Twilight Princess sword fighting. Let me clarify this before all the Zelda fanboys start tearing my scalp off and stabbing my tongue with a rusty screwdriver ("Blaaam!"). The sword waggling in Zelda works just fine, because in the context of the game the only real goal is to swing the sword and hit bad things. In this game, you're given the illusion that you're holding a long sword that you can control like you can in real life. So Ubisoft took away one-to-one motions, and your sword swipes are all pre-animated attacks. Ok, that's a little terrible, but I can sort of learn to kind of maybe possibly potentially live with it. However, there's a setting that you can toggle to have your sword strikes respond to long, sweeping movements or shorter, choppier movements. I chose the latter, since I don't want to swing my arms like a madman.
Now, I'm fighting "fat dude #3 with baseball bat" (who looks hispanic, has Jehri curls, and inexplicably sounds like Matthew Broderick) and I try to give him a quick one-two combo - waggle left, waggle right. Right? Wrong. It didn't respond to my command. So I tried waggling it like I was paying Zelda, and presto - combos came out. Ok, so sure, I got the fighting to work - but I don't like it! I don't like just jostling the Wiimote to get a combo off.
Wow - that was quite a long rant on the sword fighting. Let's touch on the presentation real quick before my boss comes back. (Wait, I'm working from home today. Nevermind.) Much of the design is actually really well-done. Well, I personally like it. The texture work can get icky at times, but it can also get really sharp - well, considering it's at 480p and there's far less than 512 megabytes fo video RAM to work with. These textures - the ones that received hard work - are as good as they can be without any bump- or normal-mapping, in some cases better than Twilight Princess (which is still the best looking game for the system). The character designs are an absolute bore, but from a technical standpoint they're built with a decent amount of polygons and look very well-rounded.
The lighting effects are all very, very well done. They're on the same level, if not a bit more impressive, than Twilight Princess. If you look out the window in one of the opening stages, the glare of the sun setting in the distance is almost blinding (well that's going a bit far, but you get the picture). Vending machines and lamps emit a haze of light that starts to dissipate as you draw closer.
There's quite a bit more to say about this game that's not so positive, but I'll leave you with this thought:
Gamespot's own great ex-EiC Greg Kasavin gave this game a 5.5. I don't know that I'd disagree with that score, but I will say that there's a reason that it didn't get lower.
Hmm, that's not such a ringing endorsement. How's this? I'll happily finish this game, but I'm selling it back the instant I do.
...hmm... oh nevermind.
My most cherished gaming moment(s) of 2006
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
I guess this should have been posted at the end of last year, but I was dr- occupied.
I have to say that my favorite gaming moments of 2006 were not actually getting my hands on my very own Wiimote and Nunchuk or unearthing the hulking Xbox 360; in fact, it had nothing to do with actually playing a game.
No, my favorite gaming moments of 2006 were shooting, editing and polishing my Sony and Nintendo launch footage in late November. It was great because it was my first time actually getting a close-up look at launch events - seeing happy gamers pooled together, doing or about to get something they all loved with no ill will towards anyone else, was just a great feeling. Plus, it was also an up-close-and-personal way for me to witness the final moments of the Gamecube/Playstation 2/Xbox era - the "last gen".
These were the moments that made me feel like part of the industry. Sure, I'm still an outsider looking in; my current job doesn't follow this career path so far. I can't get many exclusive interviews (except for this and this) or early scoops on breaking stories (except for this one). I don't have the time to be a current-day review writer, and must resign to the fact that I'm limited to reviewing old games I've beaten and games that will take months to beat on my schedule such that they're not new anymore.
But for a few hours on the midnights straddling November 16th and 17th, and November 18th and 19th, I - and my friends who do the Trigames.NET podcast with me - felt like we were part of something - part of an industry - that we love, that is loved by many others like us.
Maybe these nights were testament to the sad fact that anyone with a digital camera, a half-decent website, a few friends and the ability to pretend like you know what you're talking about can get wannabe hacks like me press passes to a launch media event.
At the very same time, though, I prefer to think about how passion for something and the desire to know it inside and out, the right way, can drive you to succeed even if it's just a tiny success. In the grand scheme of things, these were videogame console launches. People line up, people buy machinery. Big whoop. But I'll say it again: to see people so happy, so intense, so passionate; to be able to interview these people who like what I like; to document the experiences so that you never forget those nights; these are the reasons why I got out of my chair on those nights and stayed up 'til butt-o'clock editing those videos.
It's cliche, but if you truly love something and want to make something out of it, spend every waking moment you can towards that. If I never end up in the game industry, I'll still have those two nights as part of the crowd to remember.
For the hell of it, here are my videos. I'm keeping it to links-only so that the post doesn't get too bloated to read:
Playstation 3 Launch: Part 1
Playstation 3 Launch: Part 2
Key moments:
1) Hearing someone say she was getting a PS3 for her boyfriend, and then - when doing my recap of their interview - saying that she, brave soul, was getting it for her girlfriend. She immediately corrected me with vigor. Pwnd.
2) Me muttering to myself: "That's Tim Surette. Just chillin' with Fat Man Scoop! ...Fat Man Scoop could eat TEN Tim Surettes."
3) Misspelling Tim Surette's name as "Tim Surrette" in the video.
4) Catching someone bribing a wrist-strap holder with $400, only to see him around the back entrance half an hour later with no PS3 in hand.
5) Meeting Tim Surette - not on video unfortunately - at the end of the night, shouting out, "Tim Surette, GAMESPOT!" and shaking his hand... and possibly scaring him away from ever coming back to New York City.
Wii Launch: Toys R Us, Times Square
Wii Launch: Nintendo World Store
Key moments:
1) Numerous instances of Ethan filming me filming Ethan filming me.
2) Getting press badges for the Wii launch. (This was the result of me learning from my mistake of NOT preparing enough for the PS3 launch :()
3) Meeting Ryan (Mac Donald), Ricardo, Tim and Vinnie (if you don't know, he operated the camera for them that night) from Gamespot... and then shouting out JodyR and DrFish62 (Brian) while being interviewed on On the Spot's live coverage.
4) Apologizing to and basically groveling in front of Tim for misspelling his name the night before on my blog and making sure he knew I fixed it, and possibly scaring him away from ever coming back to New York City even more.
5) Seeing Ethan and Tony - who hadn't preordered anything anywhere - get their consoles without waiting on line (press passes), while Al and myself waited on a 5 hour line at the Nintendo World Store the next day to retrieve OUR PREORDERED consoles.
I have to say that my favorite gaming moments of 2006 were not actually getting my hands on my very own Wiimote and Nunchuk or unearthing the hulking Xbox 360; in fact, it had nothing to do with actually playing a game.
No, my favorite gaming moments of 2006 were shooting, editing and polishing my Sony and Nintendo launch footage in late November. It was great because it was my first time actually getting a close-up look at launch events - seeing happy gamers pooled together, doing or about to get something they all loved with no ill will towards anyone else, was just a great feeling. Plus, it was also an up-close-and-personal way for me to witness the final moments of the Gamecube/Playstation 2/Xbox era - the "last gen".
These were the moments that made me feel like part of the industry. Sure, I'm still an outsider looking in; my current job doesn't follow this career path so far. I can't get many exclusive interviews (except for this and this) or early scoops on breaking stories (except for this one). I don't have the time to be a current-day review writer, and must resign to the fact that I'm limited to reviewing old games I've beaten and games that will take months to beat on my schedule such that they're not new anymore.
But for a few hours on the midnights straddling November 16th and 17th, and November 18th and 19th, I - and my friends who do the Trigames.NET podcast with me - felt like we were part of something - part of an industry - that we love, that is loved by many others like us.
Maybe these nights were testament to the sad fact that anyone with a digital camera, a half-decent website, a few friends and the ability to pretend like you know what you're talking about can get wannabe hacks like me press passes to a launch media event.
At the very same time, though, I prefer to think about how passion for something and the desire to know it inside and out, the right way, can drive you to succeed even if it's just a tiny success. In the grand scheme of things, these were videogame console launches. People line up, people buy machinery. Big whoop. But I'll say it again: to see people so happy, so intense, so passionate; to be able to interview these people who like what I like; to document the experiences so that you never forget those nights; these are the reasons why I got out of my chair on those nights and stayed up 'til butt-o'clock editing those videos.
It's cliche, but if you truly love something and want to make something out of it, spend every waking moment you can towards that. If I never end up in the game industry, I'll still have those two nights as part of the crowd to remember.
For the hell of it, here are my videos. I'm keeping it to links-only so that the post doesn't get too bloated to read:
Playstation 3 Launch: Part 1
Playstation 3 Launch: Part 2
Key moments:
1) Hearing someone say she was getting a PS3 for her boyfriend, and then - when doing my recap of their interview - saying that she, brave soul, was getting it for her girlfriend. She immediately corrected me with vigor. Pwnd.
2) Me muttering to myself: "That's Tim Surette. Just chillin' with Fat Man Scoop! ...Fat Man Scoop could eat TEN Tim Surettes."
3) Misspelling Tim Surette's name as "Tim Surrette" in the video.
4) Catching someone bribing a wrist-strap holder with $400, only to see him around the back entrance half an hour later with no PS3 in hand.
5) Meeting Tim Surette - not on video unfortunately - at the end of the night, shouting out, "Tim Surette, GAMESPOT!" and shaking his hand... and possibly scaring him away from ever coming back to New York City.
Wii Launch: Toys R Us, Times Square
Wii Launch: Nintendo World Store
Key moments:
1) Numerous instances of Ethan filming me filming Ethan filming me.
2) Getting press badges for the Wii launch. (This was the result of me learning from my mistake of NOT preparing enough for the PS3 launch :()
3) Meeting Ryan (Mac Donald), Ricardo, Tim and Vinnie (if you don't know, he operated the camera for them that night) from Gamespot... and then shouting out JodyR and DrFish62 (Brian) while being interviewed on On the Spot's live coverage.
4) Apologizing to and basically groveling in front of Tim for misspelling his name the night before on my blog and making sure he knew I fixed it, and possibly scaring him away from ever coming back to New York City even more.
5) Seeing Ethan and Tony - who hadn't preordered anything anywhere - get their consoles without waiting on line (press passes), while Al and myself waited on a 5 hour line at the Nintendo World Store the next day to retrieve OUR PREORDERED consoles.
Elebits is way cool.
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
Yep.
I like throwing crap around. The push/pull mechanic could use a little work, though. I think if they had added a function whereby you pressed both the A button and B trigger on the Wiimote, to kind of "steady your hand" as you push or pull something, it would work better.
As it is, whenever I twist a doorknob and yank a door open, the camera view goes slightly haywire. Sure, that's because I have the Camera Speed up to 4 (out of 5 speeds; the higher the speed, the less you have to move your reticule in order to get the camera to respond), but I need to play with a higher setting regardless or else I find myself clamoring for a mouse.
But damn does it feel good to latch onto a bedroom dresser and literally fling the Wiimote back to toss it up in the air. Too bad the voice acting is
H...
O...
R...
-rendous.
Just terrible voice acting.
I like throwing crap around. The push/pull mechanic could use a little work, though. I think if they had added a function whereby you pressed both the A button and B trigger on the Wiimote, to kind of "steady your hand" as you push or pull something, it would work better.
As it is, whenever I twist a doorknob and yank a door open, the camera view goes slightly haywire. Sure, that's because I have the Camera Speed up to 4 (out of 5 speeds; the higher the speed, the less you have to move your reticule in order to get the camera to respond), but I need to play with a higher setting regardless or else I find myself clamoring for a mouse.
But damn does it feel good to latch onto a bedroom dresser and literally fling the Wiimote back to toss it up in the air. Too bad the voice acting is
H...
O...
R...
-rendous.
Just terrible voice acting.
Slunks applying a Nibelung-Valesti to GH2's Jordan... without looking.
by MrCHUP0N on Comments
Ok. This is awesome. I don't care if you've done it before, I don't care if you've done it better, and I don't care if you've done it without looking 100% of the time (Slunks takes a few peeks near the end, only for about 15 total seconds or so). The fact is, this is the first time I've seen it done, and Slunks got it on video.
Rock on buddy.
[video=dnU1wjev5bkNujXf]
Video god, whoever you are, please stick his video on the front page.
Rock on buddy.
[video=dnU1wjev5bkNujXf]
Video god, whoever you are, please stick his video on the front page.
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