f4t4lfury

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f4t4lfury Blog

Advance Wars: Dual Crackle

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I started playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike a few days ago, but I noticed a problem with the sound. It crackles. Not just a little, but serious, ear-bleeding crackling. I'm going to exchange it as soon as I get a ride to the store, but it's really annoying.

I'm kind of on the fence about the game though; I'm not sure if I really like it. I generally like turn-based strategy--I really loved Battles of Prince of Persia--but this one, I'm not so sure about. Maybe I like turn-based card strategy? I like Shining Wisdom/Force...that's not card-based. I don't know. I'm trying to decide if I should ask the store if they'll let me exchange it for store credit and buy a different game.

Maybe it will grown on me though. What I did play of it, I breezed right through the battles (I think I completed 4 or 5 of them). Does strategy actually come into play later in the game? I'm sure playing it with the sound helps too. :p

This is why I need GameFly. Or a job. Both, really.

Rummy Rumble

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Moved up a few spots on the Rummy ladder in Clubhouse Games! Here are my latest stats:

Points: 45
Rank: 356/3109
Percentile: Top 11%

Yay. I haven't been able to play as much as I'd like, so I'm still far away from my 100 points goal. Soon though! :twisted:

Finally cracked open Marc Ecko's Getting Up yesterday. I'm really enjoying it. I think it has a very interesting story, even if it is a bit slow in telling it. The gameplay does feel a bit clunky, but so far I've been able to manage okay. I'm playing the PS2 version, so I don't know if there's a difference between it and the Xbox version. There is more customization (regarding grafitti tags) than I expected, so that is a nice surprise. It looks to be a somewhat short game, so I should be done by the middle of January. Then I can throw a review up.

When I was out and about tonight, I picked up a few games. I finally found a great deal on Mario Party 6, so I can re-add that to my collection. (I had sold it right before MP7 came out so I could afford it.) I played it briefly tonight with my girlfriend and it was every bit as fun as we remembered. :)

I also found Advance Wars: Dual Strike for a paltry 10 bones, so I snatched that up. I will be checking that out in a few minutes when I log off of here. I'm way into Turn-Based Strategy games, so I have high hopes for this game. The last good TBS game I played was Battles of Prince of Persia. My favorite of the genre, however, is Shining Force on the Genesis.

I also bought Rocket Power: Beach Bandits for some reason. Well, it was only $5.00 and I always liked watching the cartoon in high school. So, I was moved by nostalgia, I guess. :oops: I don't expect it to be good, but I think I'll enjoy running around as the little kids. My girlfriend was excited about it as well until she realized that Rocket Power was not the same as Rugrats. Ha.

While I'm chronicling my purchases here, I should add that I found a few movies at crazy prices. Exit Wounds and Criminal for $2.50, and Domino for $3.99. I've always wanted to see Exit Wounds and Domino, and their respective prices are cheaper than a rental cost, so rock on. I hope they're good.

And that's my last post of 2006. Have a happy and safe New Year everyone (who isn't Jewish or Chinese or any other culture of alternate calendars)!!

RPG Void

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I need an RPG to play on my DS. : What RPGs are even out there? All I can think of is Final Fantasy III.

I just saw GT's review on Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime Adventures and that looks like a game I'd really be into. While it's not an RPG, it would certainly be a game with a compelling storyline--which I guess is what I'm really looking for. I want to be engrossed in a story.

I'm also really interested in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

I've been playing through Pokemon Silver on the GameBoy Color recently, and it's really envigorated my interest in Pokemon games. I like the improvements Silver made over Yellow. I still hate that I never know where I'm going on the damn maps. Sometimes the random battles are more annoying than fun, as well.

All that considered, I think Mystery Dungeon looks like a great fix for everything I have a problem with. I've been watching gameplay videos and it looks like each mission is pretty clearly laid out, so there wouldn't be as much running around wondering what the hell I need to do next.

Well, who am I kidding? I can't really afford to pay $40 for FFIII, so that's pretty much out. Potrait of Ruin, I suppose, will still be at least $30 everywhere for quite a while. I saw Dragon Quest Heroes for $20, but it's out of stock right now. I spotted Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for $20, in stock, online.

At the moment, at least, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon seems my only viable option. Is it worth it though?

However, I've also found Chibi-Robo for $12.99 and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows for $13.99. So, I'm kind of torn. I've been interested in Chibi-Robo for a long time, but it's on the Cube, and I really want an adventure (or RPG) game for the DS.

Decisions!!! I loathe you!

Clubhouse Games rankings

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Here are my worldwide rankings from my Clubhouse Games online play...

Seriously, I don't know how those people in the top 10 have thosands of points. One can only play Rummy so much before going crazy. :shock:

Rummy - Top 13.6%
Rank: 399/2936
Points: 32

Bowling - Top 16.5%
Rank: 1653/9999
Points: 22

Texas Hold'em - Top 20.1%
Rank: 916/4553
Points: 10

Darts - Top 47.5%
Rank: 4558/9596
Points: 9

Word Balloon - Top 55.7%
Rank: 652/1170
Points: 37

Billiards - Top 75.2%
Rank: 3297/4385
Points: 0

Memory
Rank: 0/0
Points: 2

Ludo
Rank: 0/0
Points: 0

Atrocious is my highest scoring word

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I've been playing a lot of Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Wii) and Bomberman '93 (Wii-VC) lately. Bomberman 93 is a hard little game. :lol:

I also bought Star Fox Adventures (GC), which isn't as terrible as we've all been led to believe. It's not engrossing, sure, but it's an okay adventure. A few of the puzzles I hadn't encountered before, so that was a nice reward. For the most part, control is good, and the storyline moves along at a brisk pace. The sidekick concept is kind of interesting, albeit completely unnecesarry--each additional power the sidekick offers, could easily be attributed to Fox's repetoire. Still, it was an $8.00 game, and good value for that price.

Just yesterday, I found the goodness that is Bookworm Adventures (PC). A spelling RPG! I would have killed this game in elementary school. :P It's a nice diversion from the meatier console games. And it's a great vehicle for me to listen to podcasts. I genereally find podcasts unbearably boring, and thus, don't ever listen to them, but Bookworm Adventures provides enough of a distraction that I can let the podcats play over it and actually enjoy them.

So yeah, I'm a giant nerd and there's the proof.

On a side note, I don't think I'll be getting Twilight Princess for Xmas. :( My girlfriend has become anti-Christmas in a weird twist of fate. It's peculiar. First, she doesn't want to get a tree, then tonight she said let's not get presents this year. She's not hanging stockings. This all coming from a woman who bought stockings for our cats in August.

It raises an eyebrow.

I think I'm still going to get her a small gift though.

Wii Data in the Wild

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The SD card I ordered finally arrived in the mail today, so I spent all day playing with it. Here is some (not so interesting) information I've discovered so far...

You can transfer your Wii's Virtual Console games to an SD, save that to your PC, and erase them from the SD card to free up space for other things, and then transfer them all back (PC - SD - Wii), and they will still work fine. Obviously, the VC games have to be played on the same Wii you bought them on, so no sharing for you!

Secondly, when you peruse the Wii data on your PC, you'll see this folder tree:

private - wii - title -

Within the "title" folder you will see folders with 4 capital letters. What these are, of course, depends on your data, but what I can tell you is....

REXE = Excite Truck save data
RRBE = Rayman Raving Rabbids save data
RTHE = Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam save data

I saved one Virtual Console game to the card, which is also listed in this folder as:

PAAE = Bomberman '93 (TG-16)

So, from raiding Wikipedia for obscure console aliases, I have deduced....

The first letter in these folders represents the console it is from. For example:

R = Wii (think Revolution and it will make more sense)

P = TurboGrafx-16 (I'm thinking the P stands for PC Engine, which was the TG's name in Japan)

F = NES (Famicom in Japan)

N = Nintendo 64

M = Sega Genesis (or the Mega Drive in Japan)

Now, the only one I don't know is Super Nintendo, because I haven't downloaded any of Super Nintendo games, but it might be an 'S'.

I'm taking a guess on this part, but I believe the last letter represents the language of the game...

E = English

I guess we'll have to wait and see if J = Japanese when it hits over there to know for sure.

Now, for the two letters in between, the only identification marker we have left is the game, right?

EX = Excite
RB = Rayman Raving Rabbids
TH = Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
AA = Bomberman '93

I think all VC titles are going to be represented by an alphabetical two-letter code. Bomberman '93 is the first TG-16 title, so it gets 'AA', Bonk is the second one so it gets 'AB', and so on. That's just a guess though, but if it does in fact follow that formula, that means we can look forward to 676 titles for each system, yes? Maybe? I'm not good at math. I wonder if the code will always be limited to four letters....

So, in conclusion, I think, the Wii game data reads like this:

System - Game - Language

Examples:
REXE = Wii - Excite Truck - English
PAAE = TG-16 - Bomberman '93 - English

Also of note, perhaps, is that VC games are stored within their cryptic folders as content.bin, while save data is stored as data.bin.

And for the uber-nerdy among you, Bomberman '93 takes up 3.54mb (considerably more than a ROM... quality? control schemes?).



And now, I have to go to bed before my white- and nerdiness overtakes the world.

Excite Truck is my new Katamari Damacy

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Is it just me or do you find yourself saying "Super Tree Run" when driving down a road flanked by trees and "Super Truck Smash" when cars in front of you nearly collide?

Yeah....so just me then...

:oops:

Rushed Wii Reviews?

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It seems like all the Wii games are getting negative reviews. Take Excite Truck for example; I bought that game and I'm seriously loving it. It's so much fun to play. The GameSpot review complains about how the controls make it too difficult--for me, the controls make it really easy. I've won almost every cup (one race left to win in the Platinum--effing Canada! lol).

The thing that really bothers me is all the reviews talk about how poor the graphics are in all these games. I have yet to play a Wii game that has bad graphics (granted, I've only played 4, but I've seen videos of the others). Seriously, once we hit the last generation, the importance of graphics hit a plateau. In addition, Nintendo has said before to expect GameCube quality graphics. So, I don't understand why everyone seems to be so dumbfounded when that's just what they get.

Furthermore, who cares? The race tracks and rain and trucks in Excite Truck look just fine to me . I can clearly discern what everything is; I see trees in the distance and they don't pop up on me; the rain changes directions if you're going uphill as opposed to downhill.... I really don't understand what is so terrible about these graphics, much less how they are supposedly hindering the gameplay experience.

Many reviews state they feel this game or that games appears rushed. In my opinion, many of the reviews I'm reading (especially on GameSpot) feel rushed. When I read a review, I expect you to have played through the majority of the game. I've read three reviews (for each of the games I bought) where it appears that the reviewer has only played the first mission of a game!

In Rayman Raving Rabbids, for example, every game scenario mentioned in the review takes place in the first two days (so maybe the first 20 minutes of the game). The game is extremely repetitive and forces you to druge through each mission in order to unlock it for multiplayer play. In fact, the game is pretty much only fun if you do play it in multiplayer mode (think how dull the solo play is in Mario Party). It's not that RRR is a bad game; it's just not a "great" one (as the 8.0 score claims).

And that is what makes me question the depth of all these reviews.

Maybe in their crusade to be objective, the reviewers have forgotten that FUN is the most important factor in an overall rating. Maybe they have been jaded by playing all these graphically-superior 360 games. I don't know. All I know is I skip right over the graphics section in any review, because I couldn't care less. I still play Super Mario Brothers and the original Tetris because they are FUN games. Graphics (as long as they don't interfere with gameplay) really have no place in a review.

I'm sure all that just makes me sounds like some sort of fanboi, but I don't really care. I own a PS2 and have many, many games for it. I love playing it, not because it has better graphics than GameCube, but because it's FUN. In fact, most multiplatform titles I buy on the Cube because it supports 4-players. Graphics don't make it or break it for me.

In the end, I bought the Wii for fun, innovative gameplay, and that's exactly what I'm getting. :)

Are You Wiixperienced?

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Here's a humble admission: I've spent about an hour designing various Mii's. Never mind the $150 worth of (3) games sitting there...I want to pick out the right combination of eyebrows and facial features. Eeep! I have to say, however, I am quite proud at my accomplishments. I designed Mii's that look like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt (for the girlfriend ;), Jesus (I named it Wiisus), and Jin Kazama. XD

Wii Sports is fun for about 15 minutes at a time. I get bored easily, I guess.

I've been playing Excite Truck the most. It's an absolute blast. I had no intention of getting it until I watched a gameplay demo a few days prior to launch, and saw that you could jump over the Great Wall of China. How could you not want to play a game that lets you do that? lol Love the controls--seriously, where has the Wii been all my life? When I play racing games, I normally move my controller around in the direction I'm steering, so it's just so natural to move the Wiimote in the direction I want to go.

I just discovered you can use your own mp3s in Excite Truck. That would be awesome, because the music is pretty crap. I think there are two variations on one song in the whole game. Only problem is, I don't have an SD card.

Rayman Raving Rabbids is okay. I was disappointed only a few games were available to multiplayer play right out of the box. It's supposed to be a party game, right? Not much partying going on with only four minigames. : I've been slogging my way through the solo mission just to unlock more multiplayer games. If I were to sum up my feelings on RRR, I would say it's the game we all expected Rayman Arena to be when we bought it and foolishly threw away our receipts. Still pissed about the unlockable content though.

I haven't played Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam yet, because that's the game my girlfriend wanted the most, so I'm going to let her unwrap it and play it first. I think she would like that. :)

It's really too bad no games are WiFi compatible right now. :( Excite Truck would have been fun online. Of course, I don't think Nintendo is actually ready to support online games just yet--considering the forecast channel is not going to be available for another month.

Overall thoughts...I love it. It was definitely worth every hour I spent in line and every penny I spent for it.