10. Achievements: i hate these stupid things. i hate playing a game, and a message pops up saying i just got 10 gamer points because i did some silly task. oh boy, i completed a stage, better give me those points that i can`t do anything with! get lose.
9. RPG`s with Inventory Limitations: if you`re going to be a game that throws butt loads of items at me, for the love of God Rugal don`t make me have to fiddle around and decide what to keep and what to toss. just let it all pile in that giant backpack and sit there and do nothing.
8. Armor Not Changing How You Look: if i put new armor on, i want some sort of cosmetic change. weapons look different, but in too many games armor looks the same. this pissed me off to no end in Infinite Undiscovery. there are games where it happens, so i don`t see why they still make games where it doesn`t.
7. Breakable Weapons: it`s one thing to have wear and tear on weapons so it reduces their effectiveness, but to have them just shatter and be gone forever really steams my clams. and any game i have played where this happens, to offset the fact that you were continually breaking your weapons, they would just have 500 billion weapons laying around. so it has never been an issue of being weaponless through this mechanic. it has been an issue of constantly equipping a new weapon.
6. Escort Missions: these wouldn`t be so bad if the goddamn people you were escorting didn`t seem so bent on getting themselves killed. they either get in your way, move through groups of enemies, and just stand around taking damage. and if you are able to issue commands to them, they are apparently just suggestions. ass.
5. Non-Controllable Squads: this is an extension of the Escort Mission gripe. any game i have played that had AI team mates for you, they always were unreal useless. they block your view, throw grenades at you, freak out in corners. they just don`t DO anything useful. stay home, let me handle this alone.
4. Teleporter Puzzles: these are simply a huge pain the rear. i don`t even think i need to explain this.
3. Quick-Time Events: i simply hate being punished because i can`t hit a button in a fraction of a second. and a lot of the time it`s not even like, well i missed it, but i just took some damage or didn`t get something extra. no, i missed it, i friggin` died. i`m here to play your stupid game, not SLAP JACK.
2. Unskippable Cutscenes/Credits: if i played your dumb game already, and i want to play it again for whatever reason, i don`t need to see all of the stupid story again. and unskippable credits? that should be criminal. it`s usually in games that have a new game+ feature too. if i wanted to know the 6,000 people who made this game, i`d go look it up.
1. Insane/Inane Requirements: things like the Chocobo Race in FFX where you have to get UNDER 0 seconds or BEAT THIS GAME IN THE MOST UNFUN AND IMPOSSIBLE WAY requirements in Metal Gear Solid games. the items and features they unlock are not needed, thats a fact, but come on. i paid for this effing game, cut me some slack. you know what? i can dodge 200 lightning bolts, but why should i have to? it takes too damn long and it`s boring and when you mess up at 198 you have to start all over? this is a game, not a job.
Sep 29, 2008
Sep 27, 2008
Scribble Jam Edmonton
The Event
Scribble Jam is this big organisation of rap/hip hop events and MC and DJ battles that take place all over the USA (and Edmonton Alberta Canada) culminating in a big throwdown in Cincinnati. The Edmonton edition featured a handful of MCs and DJs competing for their chance to participate in the big leagues and about 10 local hip hop acts for extra entertainment value.
The Crowd
Every black person in Edmonton was there. The other half of the bar was filled with white kids and a scattering of asians. I felt like I didn't really fit in because a: my clothes (very ordinary, no bling), b: I'm not really into hip hop culture and, c: I'm too old to go to bars. Good crowd though, they were very enthusiastic and well behaved. The floor often errupted into impromptu breakdancing sessions. Very postitive vibe. At one point one of the rappers (this "big boned" chick) started asking the crowd how long they'd been listening to hip hop for. How many of you have been listening to hip hop for five years? BIG CHEER. How many of you have been listening to hip hop for 10 years? BIG CHEER. Etc etc until she reached 25 years and another big cheer went up, which was BS because the average age at the event was probably 22. I wanted her to keep going because they would have just kept on cheering. How many of you muthuh ****uhs been listening to hip hop for A HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE MUTHUH ****IN' YEARS? BIG CHEER!
The Acts
I don't remember all the names and there was no program, so apologies in advance. There were about 10 acts and the organizers gave them each about half of a full set. To be honest, that was waaaaay too much. That would have been way too much for me even if the line up was Ladytron, Queens of the Stone Age, The Donnas, Sahara Hotnights and The Beastie Boys. (Yeah yeah, if I were any whiter I'd be clear. I know.) There were actually a few really good performers. There was this one hot girl saying overtly sexual things into the mic and I liked that for obvious reasons. Oh, and she sounded pretty good too. She was wearing these things on her hands that were either boxing wraps or fingerless gloves and I kept trying to figure out which they were every time she walked by. I hope having some scruffy tourist staring at her hands all night didn't traumatize her. Then there was this multi-talented fellow who played the drums AND the sax AND arranged his own beats. He was a pretty good rapper and as a performer he was brilliant at engaging the crowd. I couldn't remember his name so I just called him "Backflipper" all night because he kept doing backflips off the stage. The highlight was probably Kaz Mega who eventually went on to win the DJ competition. He looked like somebody gene spliced Urkel with Kid N' Play. This dude was all about the 80s; he wore a thriller jacket and an NES controller belt buckle. He also sounded awesome and was easily the best all around entertainer of the night. As a whole though the show wasn't all that good. The problem was there were too many guys who just got up and spat unintelligible into a poorly tuned mic over off-the-shelf beats. It didn't help that there were a couple of acts that I really disliked, like the guy I'll just call Emo Rapper. Rap and Emo don't work well together IMO. (Though to be fair, Emo doesn't mix well with anything. Not even itself.) The event dragged on and on to such an extent that near the end of the evening I wasn't enoying some acts that I otherwise would have, like the duo from Calgary who just tried to be as crude as possible. I would have found them amusing four hours earlier, but by that time I just wanted to hear the rap battle finals and get the hell out of there. The event ran 6 hours. Six. Hours. 1/4 of a full day. The DJ and MC battles probably took an hour combined, and maybe 2 hours of the rest of it was worth listening to. It would have been much better if they had either drastically cut the number of acts or limited each act to 1 or 2 numbers. Even the crowd who live and breathe this stuff seemed to be losing interest for the last 1/3 of the show. A hint to the organizers: sometimes less really is more.
The Battles
I was a little disappointed in the DJ battles at first because I was expecting them to produce their beats live. Instead they all just got on stage with their iPods and pressed PLAY. Once I got over that though it was actually pretty cool. The beats these guys produced pretty consitently had me bopping my head. My favourite of the pre-lims (and possibly the night) was by Backflipper, but he lost the next round. Kaz Mega was consistently awesome and secured a well-deserved victory in the final.
The MC battles were the highlight and were what I presume everybody came to see. As the competition went on the guys who only had a few good lines in them or the ones who said the same stuff to everybody (You can't even compete with me! I'm the dopest MC! Your lines are wack! Get off the stage, Jack! Etc) were weeded out. Surprisingly the final ended up being between 2 scrawny kids with similar styles who had consistently come up with awesome disses specifically targeted at their opponents. In the end M.C. Chedda Cheese, the shortest, youngest, scrawniest, squeakiest, whitest competitor won it with his scathing rhymes and unfaltering pace. Don't underestimate him, Cincinnati. (See his goofball Gnome rap here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaCVUKsRtw&feature=related )
Overall
There was honestly some pretty good stuff there, but the other two thirds of it was mediocre or worse. It didn't help that they split every round of the battles up. It was real frustrating at 1 A.M. to hear the semi finals of the MC battle and then have to endure more mediocre rap for the better part of an hour to hear the final. In the words of the friend I went with: "This would have been an awesome event if they'd have squeezed it into two and a half hours".
Sep 26, 2008
Top 10 things that are really Top 5 things
I haven't been able to contribute of late, but here's a list of things currently "under construction" that will be "coming soon".
1. Video review of CONTRA 4 DS
2. How to play DOUBLE DRAGON theme song on the guitar (video)
3. Live action T.HAWK music video
4. Review of DEATHNOTE manga + anime + movie
5. KOF issues, vol.4 "LAMEPLAY"
P.S. We should have exactly 13 brog entries every month.
1. Video review of CONTRA 4 DS
2. How to play DOUBLE DRAGON theme song on the guitar (video)
3. Live action T.HAWK music video
4. Review of DEATHNOTE manga + anime + movie
5. KOF issues, vol.4 "LAMEPLAY"
P.S. We should have exactly 13 brog entries every month.
Sep 18, 2008
Pimp My Ride PSP
How bad could it be?
So help me, I like the show. I like Xzibit's positivity, I like all the weird custom junk they do to the cars, and I like how excited and happy people get when they see their new whips. I also thought the best part of Midnight Club 3 and all the NFSU games was designing your car. Of course this game looks like a cheap license grab, but hey, how bad could it be?
What’s wrong with my PSP?
You can think of the graphics as a metaphor for the entire game; they barely work. It looks like Virtua Fighter 1 with a little texture mapping. You can tell that cars are cars and trees are trees, but that’s about it. Looking at the game will give you no pleasure, and it’s often difficult to tell exactly where you need to turn.
I liked Guitar Hero. Should I buy Pimp My Ride?
The first sign that something's amiss is that they don't let you start pimpin’ right away. First you have to “earn” cash, which you do by participating in PIMPIN events you’ve never heard of, like “Ghost Riding”. Ghost riding consists of getting prompted to press circle three or four times within 45 seconds and getting 12 hundred bucks for it. There are various little mini games for earning money, but they’re all variations of rhythm games that seem designed to challenge quadruple amputees. The best part about these mini-games is that there’s no way to tell which ones you’ve done, and no way out once you hit enter. “Have I done this one before? Yup. Looks like I’m doing it again!”
Salvador? Is that you?
Quick quiz: You are producing a driving game. Who do you hire to program the physics? A) Einstein B) Newton C) Stephen Hawking, or D) A surrealist painter from the 1930s. Well, it seems MTV chose D.
So help me, I like the show. I like Xzibit's positivity, I like all the weird custom junk they do to the cars, and I like how excited and happy people get when they see their new whips. I also thought the best part of Midnight Club 3 and all the NFSU games was designing your car. Of course this game looks like a cheap license grab, but hey, how bad could it be?
What’s wrong with my PSP?
You can think of the graphics as a metaphor for the entire game; they barely work. It looks like Virtua Fighter 1 with a little texture mapping. You can tell that cars are cars and trees are trees, but that’s about it. Looking at the game will give you no pleasure, and it’s often difficult to tell exactly where you need to turn.
I liked Guitar Hero. Should I buy Pimp My Ride?
The first sign that something's amiss is that they don't let you start pimpin’ right away. First you have to “earn” cash, which you do by participating in PIMPIN events you’ve never heard of, like “Ghost Riding”. Ghost riding consists of getting prompted to press circle three or four times within 45 seconds and getting 12 hundred bucks for it. There are various little mini games for earning money, but they’re all variations of rhythm games that seem designed to challenge quadruple amputees. The best part about these mini-games is that there’s no way to tell which ones you’ve done, and no way out once you hit enter. “Have I done this one before? Yup. Looks like I’m doing it again!”
Salvador? Is that you?
Quick quiz: You are producing a driving game. Who do you hire to program the physics? A) Einstein B) Newton C) Stephen Hawking, or D) A surrealist painter from the 1930s. Well, it seems MTV chose D.
What do you do when you want to make a 3 point turn in a driving game? Usually you go in reverse and turn the wheel right, stop, then go forward and turn left. If you try that in this game, here’s what happens: You go in reverse and your car veers off in the direction opposite to what you intended. Then at some instant the game realizes its mistake and you whip around in the direction you did intend, but by this time you’re in a different position and don’t want to go there anymore. Then you throw it in gear, so obviously the car has to enter a state of quantum indeterminism until you hit 55 miles per hour at which point you regain the ability to (sort of) steer. That scenario takes place in an empty parking lot. If you try it in a street with obstacles, “Pimp my Ride” starts looking a lot like “Pinball on Ice Covered in Soap”.
Pimp my Crazy Taxi!
At last! The pimping of the ride! You can’t buy rims, bumpers, neon, muffler tips, etc to try to make your ride the pimpin’est. No. That would actually make sense, so it’s forbidden by the game. Instead you get two minutes to frantically drive around the city to all the custom shops to get parts. Remember what I said about the controls? Remember what I said about the graphics? This was me: “Hey, it says on my map there’s supposed to be a rim shop there, how do I get in? I can’t see. I'll just cut across this meridian here... uh oh, I just hit the magical invisible barrier that surrounds the grass. Okay, no problem, I’ll just turn around. (45 frustrating seconds later) Turn! I said Turn! TURN! YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF JUNK TURN!”
Pimp my Crazy Taxi!
At last! The pimping of the ride! You can’t buy rims, bumpers, neon, muffler tips, etc to try to make your ride the pimpin’est. No. That would actually make sense, so it’s forbidden by the game. Instead you get two minutes to frantically drive around the city to all the custom shops to get parts. Remember what I said about the controls? Remember what I said about the graphics? This was me: “Hey, it says on my map there’s supposed to be a rim shop there, how do I get in? I can’t see. I'll just cut across this meridian here... uh oh, I just hit the magical invisible barrier that surrounds the grass. Okay, no problem, I’ll just turn around. (45 frustrating seconds later) Turn! I said Turn! TURN! YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF JUNK TURN!”
Okay, so you finally made it to the rim shop. Now you get to choose rims, right? No. There are just four rims. The first one is cheap and earns you one “pimp” star. The second one is slightly more expensive and earns you two “pimp” stars, and so on and so on. Since your job is to make your customer happy, there’s no real choice but to buy the most expensive set, and she’d better REALLY like those rims because you might barely make it to one more shop before the timer runs out. If you’re lucky.
So, how bad was it?
I’m strongly of the opinion that if a game loads up and does what it’s supposed to do, it should get at least five out of ten unless it belligerently goes out of its way to be poorly thought out. What should have been the driving part of the game was the worst rhythm game I’ve ever played, what should have been the pimping part was the worst driving game I’ve ever played, and there wasn’t actually any pimping part. I think that qualifies as being quite poorly thought out. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you have more fun writing the review for a game than you had playing the game itself, it deserves as low a score as you can feasibly give it. So without further ado:
1 point for not crashing the PSP
1/10
So, how bad was it?
I’m strongly of the opinion that if a game loads up and does what it’s supposed to do, it should get at least five out of ten unless it belligerently goes out of its way to be poorly thought out. What should have been the driving part of the game was the worst rhythm game I’ve ever played, what should have been the pimping part was the worst driving game I’ve ever played, and there wasn’t actually any pimping part. I think that qualifies as being quite poorly thought out. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you have more fun writing the review for a game than you had playing the game itself, it deserves as low a score as you can feasibly give it. So without further ado:
1 point for not crashing the PSP
1/10
Top 10 video game pet peeves
You know, you're playing a game, and you're having a good time, and then you're hit in the face with something that makes it not fun. At all. It could be an annoying detail, an oversight, or just a plain bad idea. Whatever it is, it leaves you thinking "Videogames are supposed to be fun. This isn't fun. There's no possible way anybody else finds this fun. What were they thinking?" Sometimes these things crop up again and again and become pet peeves.
#10: Birds (and everything else that flies)
This is at number 10 because it's not longer all that applicable, but it was my first ever videogame pet peeve so it has a special place in my heart. It all started with Ninja Gaiden for the NES, back when platformers were the dominant type of game. There was this one spot where you had to jump off a ledge, catch the bottom of a cliff face, and jump from there to this really inaccessible platform. This is pretty hard all by itself, but Tecmo decided it would be even more fun if there was a bird gunning for you while you did it. I'd just about make the jump and the bird would come and knock me in the pit. I tried everything, but it always ended in the same result. It must have taken me two hours to get past this one tiny little obstacle in the game. I went from rage to exasperation to resignment back to rage again and completed the cycle a few more times.
NES controllers are indestructible. Experimentally verified
Ninja Gaiden was the first game to piss me off with birds, but sure as heck wasn't the last. It was a problem with a lot of platformers. Usually you had limited control in the air, and limited angles you could attack with, and you had no choice but to make this one stupid jump and a bird or a bat or medusa head or whatever would swoop in and knock you in the abyss, often with no warning whatsoever. Like I said, it doesn't matter so much anymore because platformers are all but dead, but to this day anything that flies becomes the target of unreasonable fury and I'll happily ruin my game just to kill the hell out of it.
#9: Using the game engine against you
Games aren't supposed to be 100% realistic. I get that. Even games that try to be as realistic as possible and present you with an immersive experience can't get it right. It's a computer generated facsimile of reality, not reality itself. Every engine has its limitations and that's fine. What is not fine is when developers make working around the limitations part of the game itself. It happens here and there, but the first time I really noticed it was in Doom 2. You couldn't jump in Doom 2, but you could walk up small steps. There was this platform that was 1 millimeter too high to step up, and on that platform staring you right in the face and taunting you was a key. A key to a nearby door that you needed to get through to pass the level. "Haha, want this key do you? Well you can't have it because you can't jump and this platform is a pixel too high. Screw you" I'm supposed to be a space marine. You're telling me there's no way I can get this key that's right in front of my face? It's like the developer is reaching through the fourth wall and giving you a slap in the nuts. Thanks John Romero. Prick.
#8: Ice levels
What's more fun than videogames? Videogames you can't control. I can understand why programmers like making ice levels. They get to make shiny backdrops full of shimmering ice crystals. It puts a little diversity in the game, and it's an easy way to increase the difficulty of the game. Unfortunately it's an artificial and exremely annoying way of increasing difficulty. You get used to the controls for an entire game and all of a sudden that rug is swept out from underneath you. Thousands upon thousands of games have had ice levels, and every single one of them irritates me, but none pissed me off like Wipeout. Just getting to the last track in the Venom class is a chore, and once you get there? Ice level. I'd love to have been at that brainstorming session. "You know what would make this racing game even more fun? Taking away your steering!" The best part of it was the cars in Wipeout flew through the air. Explain to me how the track could possibly be slippery. Please. Other racing games with tracks slippery from rain are committing the same sin. Makes me crazy.
#7: Baaaaaad interfaces
This can take many forms, obviously, but it's frustrating every time. To make a game from scratch is a tremendous enterprise, but the interface is a comparatively small part of that. Moreover, it takes just as much effort to make a bad interface as a good one. So why make a bad one? Sometimes you play a game in a genre with well developed control scheme conventions (like an FPS) and it decides to do it differently for some reason, and it won't let you change it. Would it have killed you to add a controller configuration option in the menu? One of the worst offenders is Oblivion because it's a game of such grand scope but the menu makes no sense. It's counter intuitive, and even once you get used to it it's a pain. Half the space on the screen is wasted. The map screen for example has a giant border that serves no purpose around the map portion and there's no way to zoom out so there's no way to see the whole map at once. The only way to look at the world map is through this tiny window zoomed in real close so just looking around the map is a pain in the ass. And I know Bethesda could have done a better job because I've played Morrowind. Honestly, Mr. Programmer, if you're going to spend millions of dollars developing a game it's worth making an interface that lets you play it.
Exploring Cyrodiil 10% at a time
#6: Sewers
Any time you load up a game and get a first person or even a third person perspective, you're going in the sewers. It's almost a guarantee. Not that it's impossible to do a good sewer level, but most of them are boring. Tunnels that intesect each other at right angles. It's like a throwback to Wolfenstein 3D. Visually they're drab and featureless, game-play wise they're simplistic. And there are always crates down there too. Sewers filled with crates. Why? Makes no sense. I suppose developers like sewer levels because they're easy to do, but I would just as soon they gave me one less level.
#5: Bad camera
I can't imagine this particular item being absent from anybody's list of pet peeves. Sometimes the camera gets stuck behind a wall, sometimes it's at some awkward angle. The worst ever was playing some Gauntlet game on the N64 and having the camera literally whirling around in circles at one point. Whatever type of bad camera you're dealing with, it's extremely irritating when the game doesn't let you see the game you're trying to play. You'd think that in this day and age programmers would have this problem sorted, but that's not so. Recently I was playing GTAIV and I was in a firefight in a stairwell, and because of the unchangeable perspective I had to go around corners without being able to look where I was going. It's irritating when you're not allowed to see what Niko Bellic sees but you're ostensibly supposed to be Niko Bellic. And then you get shot in the face for it.
Imagine playing it in a centrifuge
#4: Unlocking things
Sometimes unlocking stuff is okay. Sometimes you get little bonuses just for playing the game, and that's nice. Sometimes you get little rewards for doing well, and that's okay too. Sometimes though big parts of the game are locked and they make you jump through ridiculous hoops to get it. Mortal Kombat Deception is the worst example I can think of. It's a fighting game and half the roster is locked at the beginning. Not that that's unusual for a fighting game, but in MK you unlock those characters by playing Kwest mode, which is this unbelievably terrible RPG. So in order to play MK I first have to spend 30 hours playing some garbage (and believe me, it really is garbage) RPG just to unlock the game I already paid real money for? Well, I suppose you could call me an idiot for buying an MK game, but that's another matter.
#3: Grinding
This pertains mostly to RPGs but sometimes in other games too. Grinding is any time spent doing some monotonous tedious task just to progress in the game. I'M ALREADY REALLY GOOD AT SELECTING "ATTACK" ON THE MENU, OKAY? I DON'T NEED MORE PRACTICE. Some RPGs are designed so you never have to grind, but others insist that you do a lot of it. If a game makes you grind, it's nothing more than a way to artificially inflate the length of the game at the expense of your boredom. Unforgivable!
#2: Randomness
Sometimes randomness is good. Done right, random elements in a game force you to get good without relying on patterns and can keep things fresh. Randomness done wrong makes me eject discs and crush them in my fist. When I spend 5 minutes doing a mission or a level or whatever and some random factor screws me I go ballistic. Possibly the worst offender of this is Midnight Club 2. The random traffic is part of what makes the game fun, but it also makes it brutally hard at times. There's nothing like being in first place at the end of a five minute race and having a bus come out of nowhere and block path and making me lose. Nice.
#1: Waiting
This in my opinion is the worst sin a game can commit. You play games to have fun and waiting is boring. So when a game makes you wait, it's defeating its own purpose. It's even worst when it's used a game-play mechanic. Oblivion is the worst offender in this category in recent memory. So many missions make you wait. Wait to drop the deer head on the dude. Slowly escort whats-his-name across 15 miles of countryside. Meet so and so at the tavern at 7 a.m. Sure there's a "wait" function, but you have to go through a couple loading screens to use it so you're waiting in real time anyway. Oblivion might not be the best example of waiting in a game, but I found I had to do a little of it quite a lot. Enough to make me not want to play it anymore.
Bonus pet peeve Silver Edition: Fetch missions
Go to point B. Person at point B tells you to go back and talk to person at point A. Person at point A tells you he/she needs something from person B. Person B gives you item. Person A tells you he/she now needs you to deliver item to person C etc etc etc. This should be a familiar scenario to everybody. Any time a game makes me do a bunch of pointless walking I pretty much quit playing it.
Bonus pet peeve Diamond Platinum Edition: Worst of both worlds
What's worse than waiting? Having to wait during a mission and having your success at the end determined randomly! Supply lines in San Andreas is the worst offender of this. Anybody who played it will know what I'm talking about. Not to mention the shoddy controls. Come to think of it, supply lines might be the worst mission of all time in any game ever.
Well, there you have it. I hope everybody enjoyed my little rant and can relate, and I invite you to post your own pet peeves in the comment section below.
Mass Effect and Me
when Mass Effect was riding the hype wave, i had no idea what it even was. i go through phases, you see. i will spend months at a time just not paying any attention to what games are in development or what games are coming out. i just totally detach from game related media and go back to the good old days of buying games based on BOX ART (which leads to the classic blunder of buying awful games).
cut to august of 2008. i get a brand new BrickBox360 and start looking for some games to expand my library. now, i had HEARD the name Mass Effect before, but i really did not know what the game was. i understood there was some sort of a CONVERSATION TREE mechanic in the game. i had a vague idea that it was some sort of an RPG. i was fairly certain it was IN OUTER SPACE or at least a really dark part of the ocean. long story short, it was 30 dollars so i bought it.
there is certainly a lot to Mass Effect. the character creation system is actually fairly robust. male or female, 3 x 3 backstory options, and 6 character classes. you can also customize the look of your character, but that was somewhat lacking. the hairstyles and beards were severely limited, and quite frankly, i don`t care for them. that is one small complaint i have with this game, and honestly it is one of the few.
Mass Effect is a game where you run around with 2 other AI controlled squad mates and shoot the crap out of dudes. you get experience points towards gaining a level, which then allows you to spend skill points in various areas to improve your character and learn new skills. the first time through the game i did not even know how to use the skills i was learning because i was not big on tutorials or PRESSING BUTTONS AND HOLDING THEM. as i got towards the end of the game, i was having an exceedingly difficult time in not getting blown to hell. then i actually learned how to access the skills and boy did they make things easier.
the skills range from classic buffs to your shields and attack power/rate as well as skills that would overheat enemy weapons, disable their shields, and even throw them against the son of a bitching walls. to access these powers you could assign one of them to a hot key, while the rest had to be accessed via a menu. the menu was accessed by holding the right bumper (it might be the left, i`m not a master of telling the two apart yet) and picking the skill you wish to use, as well as aiming the direction in which to use it from that menu. while you do this the action pauses, so it gets a pretty big thumbs up for that. one menu, easy to select the skill or check what it does, one button to fire it off, back to the action! it works well.
the weapons in this game were well done. rather than hassling the player with ammunition, the weapons have bottomless magazines. the catch is that weapons generate heat as they fire, and continued use overheats them, forcing the player to switch weapons or wait for the weapon to cool down. there are 4 weapon classes: pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and shotguns.
pistols are totally bad acid because they fire super fast, are accurate, and generate fairly little heat. assault rifles i used to think were just grand, but i don`t even want to touch them anymore. they fire fast, overheat at a modest rate considering, but they are super inaccurate, even in short bursts. but when you gotta lay down some fire, i guess they get the job done.
sniper rifles and shotguns are similar while being different. they both overheat unreal fast. shotguns can usually get 3 to 4 shots off before overheating, while sniper rifles get 2 to 3. but at their proper ranges, they are really nice. the sniper rifle is incredibly hard to aim with at low skills levels, but once you get the hang of the sway and put some skill points into it, it comes out smelling like roses.
now, while any class can use any gun, they are not skilled in every gun. for example, my ALL TIME FAVORITE CLASS the Infiltrator is trained to use the pistol and sniper rifle. now, i can equip the assault rifle or shotgun, but i do not have any special abilities for the weapons, nor do i get the option to zoom for a more accurate shot. you are basically just shooting from the hip with weapons you are not trained with, and that ends up being a disaster.
the armors are super gay looking. they come in 3 sizes (light, medium, heavy) and not every class can use every size of armor. i think only the soldier class can learn to wear the heavy armor. some classes are stuck with light armor the entire game. each armor has 3 different statistics to think about: damage protection, shields, and biotic protection. the biotic attacks are essentially MAGIC. all of the armor is pretty much form fitting, and a lot of the colors are real homosexual looking. i`d say it didn`t matter because you aren`t looking at your dude all day, but you sort of are (the game has pretty long and regular load times in elevators where you just look at your dude all day).
i would talk some about the combat system, but it`s pretty straight foward to anyone who has played a third person shooter. you aim your gun at the dudes, and shoot them until they die. if you get shot too much, they win. i will talk about your AI partners though.
you get a good mix of squad mates to choose from. the squad has an overall rating you can view on the squad selection screen, broken into three categories. i like to find a balance between combat, biotic, and tech strength. and by balance, i mean it`s basically 60% combat, and 20% each of the others. i would talk at length about how this matters, but i have no actual idea. i do most of the work anyway, my squad is mad lazy.
your squad tries to help, but all they are usually good for is soaking up some damage so you don`t have to. there are squad commands to issue, but outside of "shoot that dude" they are all pretty useless. you tell them to hold position, but they simply don`t listen for very long. they occasionally get in your way, but it`s not a major concern.
nearly every mission you take on has you landing on a planet and driving around this super fly car called the Mako. now, when i read some reviews after playing this game for a bit, it seemed like everyone hated this thing. i didn`t mind it at all. the 3 major gripes i have with the Mako are 1) if you are on angled terrain (75% of it) you will have a hell of a time hitting anything with your weapons. 2) the shields take an unreal amount of time to recharge. 3) if you get damaged heavily, you often have to repair twice in a row, and you have to be totally still with everyone inside and just sit there and wait for like 10 seconds. none of these are deal breakers by any stretch, but i just can`t write about a game and not having SOMETHING negative to say.
i`d talk about the story, but i don`t really remember it. some douche was being a douche and sending robot dudes with flashlight heads all over the damn place and making me miserable. he turns into a big robo-skeleton at the end and you gotta bust his balls with extreme prejudice. then some big squid looking spaceship that is also a lifeform gets it`s balls busted by a bunch of other spaceships. oh, and there are big retarded aliens that look like they would be lazy.
this is already turning out way longer than i wanted it to, so i`m just going to wrap this stream of consciousness-esque review up by saying Mass Effect totally rocked by socked and i would give it a 9/10 for serious. i am considering adding it to my TOP 10 GAMES OF ALL TIME list as a matter of fact.
cut to august of 2008. i get a brand new BrickBox360 and start looking for some games to expand my library. now, i had HEARD the name Mass Effect before, but i really did not know what the game was. i understood there was some sort of a CONVERSATION TREE mechanic in the game. i had a vague idea that it was some sort of an RPG. i was fairly certain it was IN OUTER SPACE or at least a really dark part of the ocean. long story short, it was 30 dollars so i bought it.
there is certainly a lot to Mass Effect. the character creation system is actually fairly robust. male or female, 3 x 3 backstory options, and 6 character classes. you can also customize the look of your character, but that was somewhat lacking. the hairstyles and beards were severely limited, and quite frankly, i don`t care for them. that is one small complaint i have with this game, and honestly it is one of the few.
Mass Effect is a game where you run around with 2 other AI controlled squad mates and shoot the crap out of dudes. you get experience points towards gaining a level, which then allows you to spend skill points in various areas to improve your character and learn new skills. the first time through the game i did not even know how to use the skills i was learning because i was not big on tutorials or PRESSING BUTTONS AND HOLDING THEM. as i got towards the end of the game, i was having an exceedingly difficult time in not getting blown to hell. then i actually learned how to access the skills and boy did they make things easier.
the skills range from classic buffs to your shields and attack power/rate as well as skills that would overheat enemy weapons, disable their shields, and even throw them against the son of a bitching walls. to access these powers you could assign one of them to a hot key, while the rest had to be accessed via a menu. the menu was accessed by holding the right bumper (it might be the left, i`m not a master of telling the two apart yet) and picking the skill you wish to use, as well as aiming the direction in which to use it from that menu. while you do this the action pauses, so it gets a pretty big thumbs up for that. one menu, easy to select the skill or check what it does, one button to fire it off, back to the action! it works well.
the weapons in this game were well done. rather than hassling the player with ammunition, the weapons have bottomless magazines. the catch is that weapons generate heat as they fire, and continued use overheats them, forcing the player to switch weapons or wait for the weapon to cool down. there are 4 weapon classes: pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and shotguns.
pistols are totally bad acid because they fire super fast, are accurate, and generate fairly little heat. assault rifles i used to think were just grand, but i don`t even want to touch them anymore. they fire fast, overheat at a modest rate considering, but they are super inaccurate, even in short bursts. but when you gotta lay down some fire, i guess they get the job done.
sniper rifles and shotguns are similar while being different. they both overheat unreal fast. shotguns can usually get 3 to 4 shots off before overheating, while sniper rifles get 2 to 3. but at their proper ranges, they are really nice. the sniper rifle is incredibly hard to aim with at low skills levels, but once you get the hang of the sway and put some skill points into it, it comes out smelling like roses.
now, while any class can use any gun, they are not skilled in every gun. for example, my ALL TIME FAVORITE CLASS the Infiltrator is trained to use the pistol and sniper rifle. now, i can equip the assault rifle or shotgun, but i do not have any special abilities for the weapons, nor do i get the option to zoom for a more accurate shot. you are basically just shooting from the hip with weapons you are not trained with, and that ends up being a disaster.
the armors are super gay looking. they come in 3 sizes (light, medium, heavy) and not every class can use every size of armor. i think only the soldier class can learn to wear the heavy armor. some classes are stuck with light armor the entire game. each armor has 3 different statistics to think about: damage protection, shields, and biotic protection. the biotic attacks are essentially MAGIC. all of the armor is pretty much form fitting, and a lot of the colors are real homosexual looking. i`d say it didn`t matter because you aren`t looking at your dude all day, but you sort of are (the game has pretty long and regular load times in elevators where you just look at your dude all day).
i would talk some about the combat system, but it`s pretty straight foward to anyone who has played a third person shooter. you aim your gun at the dudes, and shoot them until they die. if you get shot too much, they win. i will talk about your AI partners though.
you get a good mix of squad mates to choose from. the squad has an overall rating you can view on the squad selection screen, broken into three categories. i like to find a balance between combat, biotic, and tech strength. and by balance, i mean it`s basically 60% combat, and 20% each of the others. i would talk at length about how this matters, but i have no actual idea. i do most of the work anyway, my squad is mad lazy.
your squad tries to help, but all they are usually good for is soaking up some damage so you don`t have to. there are squad commands to issue, but outside of "shoot that dude" they are all pretty useless. you tell them to hold position, but they simply don`t listen for very long. they occasionally get in your way, but it`s not a major concern.
nearly every mission you take on has you landing on a planet and driving around this super fly car called the Mako. now, when i read some reviews after playing this game for a bit, it seemed like everyone hated this thing. i didn`t mind it at all. the 3 major gripes i have with the Mako are 1) if you are on angled terrain (75% of it) you will have a hell of a time hitting anything with your weapons. 2) the shields take an unreal amount of time to recharge. 3) if you get damaged heavily, you often have to repair twice in a row, and you have to be totally still with everyone inside and just sit there and wait for like 10 seconds. none of these are deal breakers by any stretch, but i just can`t write about a game and not having SOMETHING negative to say.
i`d talk about the story, but i don`t really remember it. some douche was being a douche and sending robot dudes with flashlight heads all over the damn place and making me miserable. he turns into a big robo-skeleton at the end and you gotta bust his balls with extreme prejudice. then some big squid looking spaceship that is also a lifeform gets it`s balls busted by a bunch of other spaceships. oh, and there are big retarded aliens that look like they would be lazy.
this is already turning out way longer than i wanted it to, so i`m just going to wrap this stream of consciousness-esque review up by saying Mass Effect totally rocked by socked and i would give it a 9/10 for serious. i am considering adding it to my TOP 10 GAMES OF ALL TIME list as a matter of fact.
Sep 15, 2008
KOF issues, vol.3 "BENISTINKBOMB"
"A real big issue in KOF is a genuine lack of non-gay characters."
Not that I have anything against gays, but by and large, KOF has apparently grown to become a series by the gays, of the gays, for the gays. What's wrong with being straight? They don't even have straight attacks in KOF, for crying out loud!
I'm not biased against gays, but here is what I see when I look at the KOF Japan team. A highschool kid with a buttcut; a shirtless grabbler, and BENISTINKBOMB. What is the real point that SKN is trying to make here?
I'm not biased against gays, but here is what I see when I look at the KOF Japan team. A highschool kid with a buttcut; a shirtless grabbler, and BENISTINKBOMB. What is the real point that SKN is trying to make here?
BENISTINKBOMB as his name implies, is one of those characters who can't be classified as a shoto, or a charge character, or a grabbler. That makes him "different". And "being different" is synonymous to being gay.
He shoots an electric ball from his fist, which is more annoying than it is damaging. He also does a flip-kick, which is sometimes a charge motion and sometimes a dragon punch. Because KOF is really a puzzle game, I guess.
Before I forget about how gay BENIS is, let me talk about his spin-kick. He spins around kinda like his day job spinning around a pole at the go-go bar, only this time it's minus the pole. Sometimes his Stinkoo Kick will hit just once, and sometimes it will keep on hitting the opponent, and sometimes some electric balls will spin around with him.
"BENIS and his electric balls."
BENIS also has this great move where he grabs his opponent and gives them an electric shock therapy. For this, you have to make sure that you're standing close enough to give your opponent mouth-to-mouth, or it won't work. This move comes in really useful in typical situations where the guy you're playing against can't do anything because he's paralyzed from the neck down.
He jumps straight up a lot, and can fly over the entire screen in like 2 jumps. This makes it impossible for BENISTINKBOMB to do jump-in chomboes, but let's face it, who does jump-in chomboes in KOF?
Don't confuse BENISTINKBOMB to be a lousy character. If you think he's a failure, you haven't tried the other 34 characters in KOF.
"Don't forget to come over to my place tonight, darling..!"
Sep 9, 2008
I hate DOA so bad
I don't understand how anybody can stand up for DOA. It's such garbage.
I have a friend who was playing DOA with an aquaintance of his who liked the game enough to learn it. He was trying to play it and he was getting waxed. He just started mashing and his win ratio shot up to 50% instantly. That shouldn't happen in any game, even if the guy wasn't all that good. Hey, remember when spamming CARTWHEEL in DOA3 made you unbeatable? Yeah, they fixed that in 3.1 or 3.2 or some ****, but that doesn't matter. The fact that something that dumb ever existed in the first place shows that the people who made DOA don't have a clue how fighting games work. And if they don't know how fighting games work, the rest of the game can't be any good either.
She kicks high
Speaking of unpredictability, can somebody explain to me the logic behind the apparent hit levels in that game? Why do highs look like mids, lows look like mids, and mids can look like anything? Are they trying to make this game impossible to play?
Why is it that every time somebody is trying to tell us how awesome DOA is, they mention slow escape? One-hit stuns are a bad idea, so Team Ninja invents slow escape and that's supposed to be depth? It's not depth, it's a patch for a bad mechanic. It's a band-aid on a bullet wound. DOA fans should be EMBARASSED to mention slow-escape.
I just like the gameplay. Honest.
And what is wrong with the movement in that game? I get frustrated in Tekken because I can't move back as fast as I'd like. In DOA the frickin' backdash is slower than Tekken's backwards walking speed. What the hell? Moving forward is no problem at all though. Any pressing of the buttons shoots your character forward at jet speed. No wonder all the action takes place at point blank range. Seriously, does the concept of controlling space exist in that game? At all? Is there even such a thing as a poke?
Hey, you know what I really like in fighting games? Getting run over by cars."Here we are at point blank range, I'll try a string... oh crap, he beat me to the punch. I'll try a counter, since you can do those out of HITSTUN... it worked! Great! Now I'm staging a comeback! I'm going to win! Oh no, I got eaten by dinosaur, guess I have to lose now." Utter trash
DOA4: Now with 20% more breast implants!
Honestly, gameplay wise, the worst MK blows it out of the water. Yeah, MK is stupid and broken, and any high level play would revolve around abusing the stupid brokenness, but hey, at least it's consistent. At least at the end of the match you'd be able to say that one player is better at abusing stupid broken tactics better than the other one. What can you say about DOA? The winner was luckier. Frickin' garbage tier game.
Sep 8, 2008
a brand new day
i spent most of today moving furniture around my room to make it a better SET for my stupid idea of reviewing games in video form. the games everyone hates or never really heard of. i should be done clearing the rubble tonight, or maybe tomorrow. or maybe in 3 months because get serious, i`m lazy.
when i finally do get this stuff up and running i was thinking of starting off with Kings Field: The Ancient City. or maybe Operation Darkness. i haven`t really played enough of that one to comment in real earnest, though.
when i finally do get this stuff up and running i was thinking of starting off with Kings Field: The Ancient City. or maybe Operation Darkness. i haven`t really played enough of that one to comment in real earnest, though.
Sep 7, 2008
movie review: SPIDER-MAN 3
There are movies that are terrible. Then there are some that are horrible beyond words. And then there is I, ROBOT.
SPIDER-MAN 3 is simply the pits, for the following reasons:
1. Really bad dialogue, like "that was our kiss!" (This should have been VENOM and EDDIE's line.)
2. I can swear EDDIE BROCK is supposed to be like Scott Steiner, not like DRAKE & JOSH.
3. Evil PETER PARKER still looks like a wimpy good guy.
4. GREEN GOBLIN Jr cooks an omelette and dances with MARY JANE.
5. They should've let SANDMAN cook an omelette and dance with VENOM.
Final score: Garbage/10
SPIDER-MAN 3 is simply the pits, for the following reasons:
1. Really bad dialogue, like "that was our kiss!" (This should have been VENOM and EDDIE's line.)
2. I can swear EDDIE BROCK is supposed to be like Scott Steiner, not like DRAKE & JOSH.
3. Evil PETER PARKER still looks like a wimpy good guy.
4. GREEN GOBLIN Jr cooks an omelette and dances with MARY JANE.
5. They should've let SANDMAN cook an omelette and dance with VENOM.
Final score: Garbage/10
Sep 6, 2008
lol2002 blackman
"Earlier this week, message board readers were objecting to my videos of TNA iMPACT! because I use the same moves over and over. I countered with the fact that TNA's moveset is limited and that's why they were seeing so many of the same moves when scoping their favorite TNA-Lister. Now that I've gotten to dig into how moves are setup in create-a-player, I can talk a bit more about that. Earlier I said you had four grapples, but upon further investigation, you have seven grab moves to pick in create-a-player -- grab button by itself; towards plus grab; strong modifier, towards and grab; grab while locked up; strong modifier plus grab while locked up; towards plus grab while locked up; away plus grab while locked up. How did I miss the three additional grapples? Well, the problem is that there are only a total of 14 moves to choose from (seven for your first three grab types and seven for your last four grab types)."
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/897/897719p2.html
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/897/897719p2.html
Sep 3, 2008
thanks, microsoft
so less than a week after i buy my XBOX360, it is announced that they are dropping in price by 50 dollars.
i hope i can somehow get a refund somewhere
i hope i can somehow get a refund somewhere
Sep 1, 2008
identity crapsis
thanks to all these free unlimited email services (all 3 of them), life's actually become more confusing and terrifying.
i have a one-track mind that can't keep track of whether someone has a Yahoo! or Hotmail or Gmail address. not to mention the problem with remembering whether someone has an UNDERSCORE or a DOT or a DASH or some other NORSE CODE in the middle of their name.
and why does everyone have to have different ID's for different places? like, why do you have to have a different name for Yahoo!, a different name for AIM, a different name for Message Board #1, a different name for Message Board #2, a different name for email, different name for Fartbook etc.
like, do you have a different name for everytime you walk into Walmart. and maybe a different name when you go to the 7-11. a different one for work. a different one when you go take a shower. maybe a different name for your girlfriend, and a different one for your boyfriend.
(well i guess the last one's okay if you're Miss LeLaunch.)
i have a one-track mind that can't keep track of whether someone has a Yahoo! or Hotmail or Gmail address. not to mention the problem with remembering whether someone has an UNDERSCORE or a DOT or a DASH or some other NORSE CODE in the middle of their name.
and why does everyone have to have different ID's for different places? like, why do you have to have a different name for Yahoo!, a different name for AIM, a different name for Message Board #1, a different name for Message Board #2, a different name for email, different name for Fartbook etc.
like, do you have a different name for everytime you walk into Walmart. and maybe a different name when you go to the 7-11. a different one for work. a different one when you go take a shower. maybe a different name for your girlfriend, and a different one for your boyfriend.
(well i guess the last one's okay if you're Miss LeLaunch.)
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