tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134047132024-03-12T23:54:01.674-05:00Virtual ViewpointsLorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comBlogger222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-58653840023329384582011-05-31T23:30:00.001-05:002011-06-01T10:05:49.267-05:00DC, What the Heck Are You Doing?The rumors had been swirling for a while that DC would be rebooting the universe after the Flashpoint mini-series and just yesterday it became official. Not only are they rebooting the universe, they're also supposedly rebooting all the books back to #1 and over 50 characters are getting an overhaul in design by Jim Lee.<br />
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The first book will be Justice League #1, coming out the same day as the end of the Flashpoint event on August 31st. I figured Flashpoint may be a cool Elseworlds-like mini-series, but now it seems as if a new DC Universe is coming out of it. One with new origins and updated, real world connections. The even bigger news is that with the reboot also comes day-and-date release digitally for the comics as well. I find that to be the better news out of the two big announcements.<br />
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I just can't believe they're going to revert Action Comics and all the high numbered Batman books back to #1. We all know that Marvel has attempted the revert to #1 before, mostly around the Heroes Reborn time. In that case every comic eventually went back to their original numbering (Amazing Spider-Man, the now fully closed Fantastic Four, Hulk, etc.) and I also expect DC to eventually move into the old numbering too. I just see too much of a backlash with the aforementioned books.<br />
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There was also an image released of the new Justice League. Supposedly it will have 14 characters with the key central characters being Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Cyborg. Biggest question is whether that is Bruce or Dick in the Batman outfit, but it is also obvious the Flash is Barry Allen with the blue eyes.<br />
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This will be interesting and I'm not to high on it at the moment, but I'll surely give it a good chance.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-13943424320692684762010-11-11T09:00:00.004-06:002010-11-11T10:28:37.676-06:00The Need for Lower Prices on Lower Profile GamesSorry that it's been a while since my last post, been busy writing reviews and having a busy work environment in my full-time job. Just today I put up <a href="http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=20482">my review</a> of Activision's <em>James Bond 007: Blood Stone</em>, a game with an original story with Daniel Craig, Judy Dench and singer Joss Stone supplying their looks and voices to the game. I open up the review talking about game pricing and how with the 360 at its 5 year anniversary and the PS3 at its 4 year anniversary why the game pricing structure hasn't changed.<br />
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It is obvious if you play the game that the production budget was not as large as many AAA games out there like <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops</em>, <em>Medal of Honor</em>, <em>Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood</em> and many others. Those games will sell like hotcakes at the $60 price point, but something like <em>Blood Stone</em> (which is a good, but not great, game) simply isn't going to sell well at that price point. If they dropped it down to $50 or even $40 as I would recommend, there may be more people willing to buy it and in the long run I think they'd make more money than bringing it out initially at the $60 price point. Sure, you're losing $20 on each sale, but the potential extra buyers at that price point should offset the loss. Given the money put towards the game is less you should still come out better in the end.<br />
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So, let's say <em>Blood Stone</em> sells 100k copies across the 360 and PS3, that's $6 million profit on the game at $60. Let's say at $40 the amount of copies sold are doubled to 200k, that's $8 million (at $50 we'd be talking $10 million) and with a larger install base the word of mouth could spread and the game has a "long tail" on sales. Where the game may have only sold that 100k at $60, there is the potential to sell at a greater multiplier at the lower amount because more will pick it up because they save $10 or $20 on it.<br />
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My argument is that early on the companies could get away with $60 for a game (then there's Microsoft which started 1st party games at $50 with the 360, but now they are $60), but now that we're several years into the systems we should really start to see some games that are more regularly budgeted come out at a lower price point in order to maximize sales and get the word of mouth out there. I just think these recently released games may have done better in sales at lower price points, including the obviously dying instruments/rhythm games that could have had stand alone copies dropped in price:<br />
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<em>Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock</em> (<a href="http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=20007">my review</a>)<br />
<em>DJ Hero 2</em> (<a href="http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=20292">my review</a>)<br />
<em>Rock Band 3</em><br />
<em>James Bond 007: Blood Stone</em><br />
<em>Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions</em><br />
<em>Castlevania: Lords of Shadow</em> (<a href="http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=20153">my review</a>, an excellent game that would sell well at a lower price)<br />
<em>Alan Wake</em> (it is less now, but when it came out it may have sold better at a lower price)<br />
<em>Crackdown 2</em> (<a href="http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=18410">my review</a>)<br />
<em>Vanquish</em><br />
<em>R.U.S.E.</em><br />
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Those are just some off the top of my head. Each game would be considered below a AAA game in terms of production budget. Given it isn't a top notch game that will generate a lot of pre-buzz, why not bring the game out at a lower price point allowing more people to play it and possibly get the good word out on them. All those games range from good to great from a critical perspective, but word of mouth could really sell them and potentially make more money for the publishers at a lower price point.<br />
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Maybe I'm out of line with my thinking, but as we move into the last half of a decade with the 360 and come close to the half decade mark with the PS3 I think it's time for them to tier prices, which may be a difficult thing for them to figure out, and attempt to make as much money as possible. The budget conscious buyer out there is waiting for many of these games to drop in price before picking them up. Why not make it enticing right off the bat at the budget price because we all know games generally sell big when they first come out and trail off from there. There are aberrations out there like <em>DJ Hero</em> that had "long tails" on sales, but generally if you don't sell straight off you aren't going to sell.<br />
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So, what do you guys think? I'm going to post this over at Colony of Gamers in the General Gaming forum to get some discussion going.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-77465409706500896022010-08-30T06:00:00.000-05:002010-08-30T10:58:19.542-05:00My Problem with Swearing in Gaming (Enthusiast) JournalismI'll be the first to admit that I do swear pretty much everyday, but that my mind is cognizant of the situation I am in and is able to somehow turn the swearing switch off and on. Where I don't swear is in anything I write about gaming. I also try as hard as I can to not swear in forums either, including at Colony of Gamers. When I do swear there it is usually to point out something someone else said in the thread through the use of quotes.<br />
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With that out of the way I have a major problem with the amount of swearing I see and hear in gaming (or enthusiast) journalism. I use the word in quotes because many people feel that most video game writers sit in the enthusiast section and really aren't journalists in the broad sense of the word. In many ways I agree with that since most sites, including CoG, fit into the enthusiast genre more than mainstream journalism. Then there are the pulp sites like Kotaku, Destructoid and the like that may have some people with journalism backgrounds, but take a fully "throw the spaghetti at the fridge and see what sticks" mentality.<br />
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I was recently checking out one of the blogs I read regularly. I won't name it, but they recently added another contributor to the blog. A person I had worked in the past with on another site I used to write reviews for. Reading this person's blog posts there are a lot of the f-word being used. This person has at least one kid and reading through the posts I just don't see a reason for the swear word to be there. It doesn't really add anything to the conversation at all, so I'm not sure why you'd put it in there.<br />
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I don't listen to podcasts either. I never know when a podcast might have a swear word in it and it really takes me out of the conversation when one is used. These are freely available sound recordings that any child could go in and download from iTunes or wherever. Many of the people that do podcasts that I know also are in the radio industry. Would that industry allow you to swear without using the 7-second delay? Of course not. So, I don't understand why the mindset changes from being on the air to doing a podcast. Yes, you're in a more comfortable situation, but I would think a radio personality would be pretty hardwired to not swear when talking into a microphone, but maybe I'm mistaken.<br />
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I know I'm missing out on a lot of things by not listening to podcasts. Are there any gaming ones out there where swearing is used sparingly or not at all? I would guess some of the more major sites like Gamespot, IGN and maybe even Game Informer wouldn't allow swearing, but am I right about that? I also realize we have print magazines out there that allow swearing and that's fine because they made that decision long ago. However, as gaming journalists (or gaming enthusiasts) we should really be talking about gaming at the lowest denominator we can and allow children to hear stuff they might be interested in without swear words flying about.<br />
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Maybe I'm a prude in this respect, but there are many gaming journalists out there, or what I consider gaming journalists, that don't resort to swear words to spice up their reviews, opinions, interviews or whatever. I think this is yet another example of what divides the enthusiasts from the actual professionals. We're probably too far down the line to change anything about this, but I implore those aspiring gaming journalists out there to not resort to swearing and think about the full range of people that may be reading your site or listening to your podcast.<br />
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Fact is I'll simply stop reading or listening if I feel a swear word is used for no apparent reason at all.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-13731537259818433802010-08-26T06:30:00.001-05:002010-08-26T10:23:08.139-05:00Growing Up 8-Bit: Sample PDFSince the Kindle Sample doesn't really hold any content from the book outside of the cover and much of the Table of Contents, I've decided to upload a sample PDF of the first eight pages of the book starting at the Preface which explains my unique perspective with playing games my whole life.<br />
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The PDF document should be downloadable to anyone via <a href="https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1HXnM1lBuoqMzVhZjcwNTAtZWI5OS00ZDg3LWEyMzktNzZmYWY2Y2NhNWQx&hl=en">this link</a>. Enjoy.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-16439982656984152052010-08-22T09:25:00.000-05:002010-08-22T09:25:46.844-05:00Excerpt from Growing Up 8-Bit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4911057530_d64722754c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4911057530_d64722754c.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Here is the excerpt about <i>Yars Revenge</i>, one of the best games I played when I was younger. This should give you an idea of how each game is presented in the book and what the general writing is like. Hopefully this will entice you to pick up the book through Amazon as noted in the post below this one. Without further procrastinating, here is the excerpt:<br />
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<blockquote><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Yars Revenge (<b>Gaming Milestone</b>)</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Developer</b>: Atari</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Publisher</b>: Atari</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Systems Played</b>: Atari 2600</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Released</b>: 1981</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If you’ve never played <i>Yars Revenge</i>, can I suggest trying to find a 2600 and a copy of this game? Hours upon hours of my early life was spent with this game on the 2600. My grade school friends and I used to get together on weekends and just play this game, handing the controller between us. I was young when this game came out, so I can honestly say I don’t think I knew the story behind the game until I recently looked on Wikipedia. I remember seeing the comic book that came with the game, but heck that I remember what the story was. Basically these two alien races are fighting each other over the fact that one destroyed a Yars world and they’re seeking revenge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is interesting to note that the game was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw, who went on to create the horrendous E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial game. In Warshaw’s defense, he did only have five weeks to create the game, but it can certainly be pointed out that the massive money loss for Atari on E.T. started the snowball of Atari going belly up.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Yars Revenge</i> was the best selling original game on the 2600 and that title is certainly deserved. You play an insect that can shoot a pellet from his mouth. At about a third into the screen vertically is a neutral zone of static where you can’t be killed by either the roaming/homing single shot or when the cannon on the right turns into a swirl. Your task is to take out the shield around the cannon by shooting or touching/eating the shield so it gradually disappears. The key thing with eating the shield is that it helps you build a missile on the left side of the screen that you will then use to take out the cannon either in its static form or if you’re lucky when in the swirl mode.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>The trick of course was when firing the missile to line up correctly and hit the cannon. To exasperate this, on some stages there was a full rectangle shield that the cannon was in and you’d have to shoot/eat it down enough to get a missile shot to the cannon or await its change into the swirl. As you went on and your points got higher the color of the shield changes and the cannon changes to swirl mode more often and at the higher levels gets a heat seeking power added to it that makes the neutral zone even more important to you since you are faster than the swirl, but watch out! This game was highly addicting and even the simple sounds fit right in with the rest of the game. For those interested, there are several videos on YouTube showing the game off. The way I explain it probably sounds strange, but once you see it in action and remember that it is from 1981 it will blow your mind.</blockquote>Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-72709308459096933362010-08-22T09:14:00.001-05:002010-08-22T09:16:58.838-05:00Growing Up 8-Bit Available Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4911057530_d64722754c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4911057530_d64722754c.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div>I know it's been a while since my last blog post, but I figured this area would be the best place to give some excerpts from my newly released book, <i>Growing Up 8-Bit</i>. The book is about my experiences and real-life connections to the over 100 notable games I played that came out between my birth in 1976 to 1990. This books is the first of at least three books. The next one will chronicle the years 1991 to 2000 and the other one will cover 2001 to 2010. Both will probably have more games than this initial book.<br />
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The book is set up with over 100 chapters in the Table of Concepts by system, game and real-life event. You can feel free to jump back and forth between games or read through the whole book if you so desire. <br />
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The book is available currently only through the Kindle service on Amazon. The nice thing about Kindle is that you don't need the eReader to purchase and read this book. You can download a client that allows you to read it on a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android. All the software downloads are available here <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771">at this link</a>.<br />
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The book itself is priced at $2.99, the lowest price I could set it at in order to get 70% royalty from Amazon. Those of you outside of the US can also buy the book. Here are the two links to the US and UK versions of the book:<br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/9hqg0w">US Version</a><br />
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<a href="http://amzn.to/dBMTCO">UK Version</a><br />
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With that out of the way my next post will be an excerpt from the book itself since Kindle's Sample download only goes through part of the Table of Contents and doesn't really touch any real content. This will be about <i>Yars Revenge</i>, one of the best games I ever played as I was growing up. It is part of the many gaming milestones I note in the book in my opinion.<br />
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Thank you for reading this and please feel free to purchase Growing Up 8-Bit. I hope to have it available to Nook customers as soon as Barnes and Noble opens up its publishing website that is supposed to happen sometime this summer.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-49865637555190482792008-05-13T10:40:00.000-05:002008-05-13T10:41:39.353-05:00Too Human (360): I've Never Given Up On YouAs of 11am Central Time (the time this post goes up) my good friend (and boss at <a href=http://www.evilavatar.com>Evil Avatar</a>) Nick Puleo has <a href="http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50838">this interview</a> with <i>Too Human</i> creator Denis Dyack available in both MP3 and transcript form on both <a href=http://www.evilavatar.com>Evil Avatar</a> and sister site <a href=http://www.co-optimus.com>Co-Optimus</a> that Nick runs.<br /><br />I proofread the interview yesterday and the first question obviously stood out for me.<br /><blockquote><b><i>Nick</i></b> - So we'll start with the big one: Are we going to see Too Human this year?<br /><br /><b>Denis</b> - Yes! Our Launch date is officially going to be August 19th.</blockquote><br />Finally! This game is finally coming and it is coming pretty quickly in just over 3 months from now. I've always believed in Silicon Knights and Dyack himself. This is the 2nd game that has gone through multiple systems and delays for the company. <i>Eternal Darkness</i> did quite well (check out <a href=http://www.gamingtrend.com/Reviews/review/review.php?ReviewID=195>my review</a> from Console Gold a long time ago that was actually featured on Silicon Knights website for a long time) and I always believed <i>Too Human</i> would be a great game even with the E3 2006 fiasco.<br /><br />Reading the interview I come away with the belief that this is going to be a game that is going to surprise everyone. Nick told me when he came back from the MVP Summit a few weeks ago that he thought it looked awesome and looked very different from what he had last seen. I know many people out there have put this game on the back burner, but be prepared for it to go to the front burner and get red hot.<br /><br />It is disappointing that there is only 2 player co-op instead of 4, but I think Dyack does a good job of explaining why they did this. It sounds like the character classes and the balancing of them in relation to speed was problematic. I'd honestly rather have a really well done 2 player co-op experience than a problematic 4 player co-op experience.<br /><br />This game is also sounding like everything <i>Hellgate: London</i> wasn't when being compared to the <i>Diablo</i> games. It also sounds like the other 2 parts of the trilogy may be coming on the next Microsoft system, but I still have hopes at least the 2nd one would find its way onto the 360.<br /><br />Just be ready for this game because I think it could be one of the greatest examples of a turnaround in gaming ever.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-69600676474479400532008-05-12T02:33:00.000-05:002008-05-12T12:02:56.453-05:00Grand Theft Auto IV: The Unscorable GameI worked long and hard on getting everyone together and edit all the pieces that turned into the <a href="http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49969">Evil Avatar: Liberty City Diaries</a> piece that was put together for posting last Monday. Some of my co-writers on the piece asked about putting a score on the review and I noted that this type of game doesn't deserve a score and we should just hone in on our experiences with the game. There weren't any people that went against what I said, but once the piece went up there were many forum users that were asking where the score was. Personally, I feel the <i>GTA</i> series as a whole is unscoreable (I made up a new word..woo!). There are other games out there that share this power (another recent one is <i>Super Smash Bros. Brawl</i> on Wii), but <i>GTA</i> is easily the most visible one.<br /><br />The fact that 29 sites gave its top score to the 360 version and 20 did the same for the PS3 version simply shows that these games just cannot be scored. All of these magazines and online sites of course have to give the game a score, but really is it going to make any difference to the consumer? They're going to go out and buy <i>GTA IV</i>, <i>Super Smash Bros. Brawl</i> and the upcoming <i>Metal Gear Solid 4</i> no matter what it gets scored. These games just rise above the review process. What strikes me as odd with both GTA IV and Brawl is how much people just default give it the top score. I haven't played Brawl, never really liked the series, but I have played GTA IV and it certainly does not deserve the top score. If I was to do an actual review of it for Evil Avatar I would most likely give it a 4/5 or 4.5/5. It has a lot of wonderful things in it, but there is also a lot of missteps that keep it from being the "be all, end all" of videogames.<br /><br />I hated the last GTA, <i>San Andreas</i>, yet 30 sites gave the PS2 version a perfect score. Although it was the largest of the GTA games, I just didn't like some of the directions Rockstar North went with it. I would have scored it a 3/5 or 3.5/5 at Evil Avatar. The whole keeping CJ healthy (or not healthy if you're into that), which was a core mechanic to the game, was a total turn off to me as was the story itself.<br /><br />Bottom line is why even give scores to these games? Why not just talk about the experiences you had and whether you liked it or not. I like what we did with the <a href="http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49969">Evil Avatar: Liberty City Diaries</a> piece and am glad we attributed no score to it (honestly it would be hard to equate 12 scores into one final score and people not fly off the handle about it). Maybe more places should take note and not score these games that are guaranteed to be picked up by the public no matter the score given to it. Why make a fool of yourself giving it your top score when you could easily give your reviews on the game with no score?Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-23721810707704605412008-05-12T02:01:00.000-05:002008-05-12T11:45:48.583-05:00We're BackYep, it's been a while readers. As you can see the layout has changed a bit and I hope to finally start having more regular posts. On the right side is now the publications I write for as well as reviews of movies and games that I've been playing with links for those that are published. Any more questions, feel free to ask.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-46145885547226283252008-01-01T18:01:00.000-06:002008-01-15T21:16:51.399-06:0012/28/07 - The Day Marvel Pulled a Wall Punch<center><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2251/2157915263_a721293eb4_m.jpg><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2205/2157917301_330aca0788_m.jpg></center><br /><br />Last Friday will be a day that will live in infamy for comic books as a whole. It was, at the exact same point, Marvel's (or should I say Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada's) stupidest and most brilliant move ever. Spider-Man was retconned by 20 years in our time (who knows how many years it actually is in comic's time) and the 6 plus years that J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) has written <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i>. We no longer know if "Sin's Past" (I will get to this somewhere in this post since it does relate very closely to "One More Day") even happened, if Ezekiel ever came to Peter or even, going way back, if "Kraven's Last Hunt" ever really happened.<br /><br />Most of us guessed early on when "One More Day" (OMD from now on) started (and even when it was first announced) exactly what was going to happen, but it was extremely sad to see that everything we guessed would happen came true with one stray thing we never saw that I will get to later.<br /><br />Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson made a deal with the devil (Mephisto in this case). Let that sink in for a while. Remember that Joe Q was against having Peter and MJ divorce because it would send the wrong message to the younger readers. Instead he decided a pact with the devil was a far better message to send to younger readers. Good one there Joe Q! We all know Joe Q has been against the marriage for a long time and in one felt swoop he gets the ending he so desperately wanted. He says that the need for a single Peter Parker had much more story potential than a married Peter Parker has. I call bullshit on that, but what do I know?<br /><br />You may ask where the brilliance in this move comes from. Joe Quesada was smart enough to totally destroy the Spider-Man universe, but have the next arc, "Brand New Day" (BND from now on), be headed by some of the best and brightest in the Marvel camp. Starting off will be Dan Slott writing and Steve McNiven penciling for 3 issues. Then Marc Guggenheim writes and Salvador Larocca pencils, then Bob Gale (best known for writing <i>Back to the Future</i>) writes and Phil Jimenez pencils. Finally Zeb Wells writes and Chris Bachalo pencils. This also enters the cycle of <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i> coming out 3 times a month. I am going to guess given the delays in OMD that these guys could be several months ahead of schedule with issues. Many people would love to drop the book from their pull list over OMD's finale, but then you look at the talent coming up and the fact that the arcs will hit hard and fast and you can't help but see it through at least through the Slott/McNiven issues, the first ones up, right? It's a tough game to play because Joe Q is counting on the issues bought increasing because of the great creative muscle behind the "relaunch" and that will validate him doing the DC Wall Punch on Spider-Man as a whole. It's an evil circular cycle and one that every comic fan has to choose to take or not. One thing I highly doubt is that an increase of new readers will come from this simply because Peter is single again.<br /><br />The saddest part of the OMD ending is that JMS leaves the book on a low note. He will be blamed by many for the ending much like he was blamed with the "Sin's Past" weak reveal that totally screwed the innocence of a character long dead (Gwen Stacy). Thing is neither flub was his fault and we can lay all the blame for both at Joe Q's feet. "Sin's Past" was supposed to reveal that Gwen Stacy's twins were indeed Peter Parker's children. This is logical given the title of the arc, but instead Joe Q wanted to keep Peter somewhat pure and editorially mandated JMS to have Norman Osborn be the father of the twins. This goes down as one of the biggest mistakes in Spider-Man history and I wonder how pure Peter is going to be now that BND starts up. Supposedly there are plenty of new women along with MJ in Peter's life in BND. Is he going to live the chaste life or is he going to get down and dirty with some of the girls? If it's the latter it will make most of us laugh at Joe Q's attempt to keep Peter innocent during "Sin's Past". It is also very obvious reading the last two parts of OMD (and the extra Joe Q writing byline) that although the words may come from JMS that Joe Q is standing right over his shoulder saying what needs to be portrayed.<br /><br />So, what does the ending of OMD leave us with? A whole bunch of questions that supposedly will start to be answered with ASM #546 coming in a week and a half. It is an extra sized issue that supposedly will give us info about the new people in Peter's life and, we hope, explain how exactly he can:<br /><br />1. Still be part of the New Avengers<br />2. How the reversal of his unmasking couldn't have changed the outcome of <i>Civil War</i><br />3. Any number of other questions<br /><br />There are lots of questions and they stack up each and every day. I feel sorry for former DC editor Steve Wacker (who did half of <i>52</i> before moving to Marvel) whose task it is to sort out this mess with continuity that Joe Q has left him.<br /><br />The lone hope is that this will be just as short of a change as Peter's unmasking (which supposedly had <u>TONS</u> of story potential, but only lasted a little over a year thanks to the Civil War delays), the Other powers and the change to Iron Spidey was. That's the hope at least, but who knows what is going to happen. In some small way I hope this is just Peter and MJ in Mephisto's little world living through "eternity" until they come together again. Maybe that is what MJ whispers to Mephisto, that she wants Peter to be in a world he can be happy and he is no longer in the Marvel Universe as a whole (but can be explained away as being gone for a few minutes from the MU after everything wraps up). That's a big wish though I think. However this could be very akin to the X-Men's "Age of Apocalypse" or the end of Grant Morrison's run on <i>New X-Men</i> where this is indeed an alternative universe and everything is on the up and up in the regular universe. We can only hope though.<br /><br />The lone plus to the ending of OMD is that Harry Osborn is alive again. In many ways it is akin to Aunt May resurfacing years after supposedly dying in ASM #400, it's just that this is a retcon. Are they trying to say that since Peter and MJ never married that Harry didn't go crazy during Inferno (if Inferno even happened that is, remember this retcon affects the MU as a whole) and eventually die?<br /><br />I am interested in what Brand New Day is going to bring, but I also hope many people are outraged enough by One More Day that they don't pick up the 3 times a month ASM. That will send a message to Marvel, but I have a feeling with the creative power behind the new arc that people will at least try the first 3 issues with Slott and McNiven.<br /><br />Just pray this doesn't last very long...Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-42581939740720177052007-11-19T00:43:00.000-06:002007-11-19T11:58:25.419-06:00Game OverloadI'm sure many of you are experiencing a gaming overload. As a freelance reviewer I have found myself having to put some pretty top shelf games on the back burner in order to devote enough time to reviewing. These are the games I am currently trying to play:<br /><br /><i>Super Mario Galaxy</i> (Wii)<br /><i>Assassin's Creed</i> (360)<br /><i>Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare</i> (360)<br /><i>Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction</i> (PS3)<br /><i>Uncharted: Drake's Fortune</i> (PS3)<br /><i>Mass Effect</i> (360)<br /><br />These are the games I currently have on my review plate:<br /><br /><i>Virtua Fighter 5 Online</i> (360) for <a href=http://www.gameshark.com>GameShark</a><br /><i>Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3</i> (PS2) for <a href=http://www.evilavatar.com>Evil Avatar</a><br /><br />Along with those two I plan on reviewing some of the above mentioned games for Evil Avatar, but I need to pick which ones. I figure <i>Mass Effect</i> will take the longest, so that goes on the back burner and hopefully someone else will play through it and review it for EA. <i>Call of Duty 4</i> has <a href=http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39548>already been reviewed</a> at EA, so the other 3 are fair game and I will probably review them, so they will be my next major experience after I have given VF5 enough time to write a review.<br /><br />Luckily I am already a good chunk into <i>Ratchet & Clank</i> as well as <i>Assassin's Creed</i> (I just had to see how good/bad it was for myself and playing fighting games for review constantly can get a bit tiring), but I have not touched <i>Uncharted: Drake's Fortune</i>.<br /><br />I'm not sure how other freelance reviewers out there handle their load, but as soon as I get something that needs to be reviewed every other game goes on the back burner and the review games take center stage. Yes, the allure to play the other games are there, but I also have a job that needs the most time I can give it.<br /><br />At least there is some time off in my future where I might be able to sit down with the other games once the reviews are done. There is also a chance that other games could enter the scene that need to be reviewed as well, so everything goes on the back burner once again. At least the light is somewhat visible...Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-45231210381142162802007-11-19T00:09:00.000-06:002007-11-19T11:40:28.442-06:00Game of the Week (11/18): Mass EffectThe gaming crunch finally subsides after this week. What is weird is that many of the games that are shipping this week I already have in my possession, but we'll get into that later. This is another tough week to pick a Game of the Week, but I think it has to go to:<br /><br /><center><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2189/2047919540_203a7e5089_m.jpg></center><br /><br />There are some other interesting games coming out (highlighted below), but the honor has to go to <i>Mass Effect</i>, the next RPG game from BioWare. I already have my copy and played it a bit last night (I have a lot of games on my plate at the moment, including review needs) and I have to say I am quite impressed by the graphics, the story, the huge amounts of text/voiceover in the informational screens and even the gameplay itself. I just finished the first planet and will probably play more, but it isn't on the front burner at the moment. Yes, it is a lot like <i>Knights of the Old Republic</i>, but things are handled mostly in real-time outside of switching your teams weapons before a fight. The game takes things from <i>Gears of War</i>, such as reliance on cover, and makes it an engaging experience. No question this is the Game of the Week and should fulfill everything people have been looking for in an RPG on the 360 finally.<br /><br />Other games this week:<br /><br /><i>Unreal Tournament III</i> (PC): Played the demo and was pretty impressed by it, but I am not a very good UT player when compared to the masses out there. The game is as fast as I remember the last version being and a lot of fun should be had. I'm not sure if this will stand above other FPS games that have valid online components or not though.<br /><br /><i>Link's Crossbow Training w/ Wii Zapper</i> (Wii): Not excited in the least about this. From all accounts the actual Wii Zapper controller is a dud and really won't amount to much in the end. It is cool that it combines the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, but I can only see its validity going so far.<br /><br /><i>Rock Band</i> (360/PS3): Yes, <i>Rock Band</i>. I've never really been a big fan ever since it was announced. Harmonix seems to be a highly regarded developer (which they are given the pedigree of games they've made) and everyone falls face first into loving them. From all accounts, the difficulty in <i>Rock Band</i> is not as high as <i>Guitar Hero III</i> (expert in RB is like Hard or possibly Medium in GH terms) and I would think that would turn a lot of people back from getting this game, but what do I know? I think it is cool for people that want to do stuff with 3 others, but for me I'd rather have single or dual guitars to play with.<br /><br /><i>Time Crisis 4</i> (PS3): Still a pretty popular series, but it would be hard to justify $80 for a short game with a gun included don't you think?<br /><br /><i>Godzilla Unleashed</i> (PS2/DS): I did some interview questions a while ago for GameShark, but I have no clue if they were ever answered or not. The game from all the movies and developer diaries has looked good, but the play is the true test. Much like the recent <i>Dragon Ball Z</i> game the Wii version is delayed a few weeks from the PS2 release.<br /><br /><i>Uncharted: Drake's Fortune</i> (PS3): Sony did end up sending it out early last week, but I took that out of last week's GotW stuff since it was looking like the 20th was still the release date. I have the game, but have not gotten a chance to play it as of yet. Much like <i>Mass Effect</i> it is on the back burner<br /><br /><i>Soulcalibur Legends</i> (Wii): All indications are that this is a bad game, which is too bad considering it could have been a worthwhile 3rd party release on the Wii (of which there are very few).Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09499044750910062041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-16238558447226632122007-11-12T00:06:00.000-06:002007-11-12T19:48:36.659-06:00Game of the Week (11/11): Super Mario GalaxyEveryone, check your wallets because this is quite possibly the toughest week this season with games depending on what type of stuff you're looking for. Next week is the only one that could come close to challenging it. This is also a tough week to pick a Game of the Week, but one key first-party title stands out:<br /><br /><center><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2124/1979660738_56869eabdb_m.jpg"></center><br /><br />Yes indeed, <i>Super Mario Galaxy</i> is my pick for Game of the Week. This should be the game that will prove whether all those millions of people who have picked up the Wii are interested in more than just <i>Wii Sports</i>. This was a tough one to pick out of the group, but here are some other notable releases this week.<br /><br /><i>Assassin's Creed</i> (360/PS3): This game is either going to be really good or fall flat on its face. Ubisoft has a lot invested in this game and I have a hard time believing that a game years in development is going to flop, but then I read the latest EGM which had a small story on AC and it didn't make me that excited. Then some reviews popped out late last week, like from the hometown magazine <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/Games/Review/200712/R07.1106.0938.00452.htm">Game Informer</a>, that gave it a 9.5. Evidently review embargoes are held until Tuesday, so we shall see what happens then. At least they give you a day to decide if you truly want it.<br /><br /><i>Beowulf: The Game</i> (360/PS3/PC): Another game from Ubisoft this week. This one is based upon the movie coming out this Friday. I'm interested in possibly renting this game, although it is a game based upon a movie which usually falls flat in the videogaming universe.<br /><br /><i>Blacksite: Area 51</i> (360/PC): The PS3 version is delayed for a bit, but the 360 and PC versions are coming out this week. I'm not very interested simply because the Area 51 game that came out last generation wasn't anything to get excited over. It is funny that Midway moved this away from <i>Halo 3</i> and now it faces off against a lot of top notch games this week which are not FPS games.<br /><br /><i>Crysis</i> (PC): What more can be said about this game? It looks nice, but many people won't be able to get the best out of this game unless they purchase an all new computer with bleeding edge components. Some people will do such a thing, personally I don't think this game is big enough to justify such an action. Having played the demo and the beta, I still feel it is a lot like an updated graphical version of <i>FarCry</i> with a new storyline.<br /><br /><i> Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3</i> (PS2): The Wii version is coming next month, but given how good the last game was this one should be good as well. Atari is in a world of hurt right now and they could really use a sales influx in order to keep this license and keep themselves from going under.<br /><br /><i>Kane and Lynch: Dead Men</i> (360/PS3/PC): Really haven't kept my eye on this game, but the big pull here is the ability to play co-op. EA's <i>Army of Two</i> sounded similar to this game and was going to be out this same week, but EA moved it back to next year. Now this game stands alone and Eidos probably has a lot riding on it.<br /><br /><i>Medal of Honor Heroes 2</i> (Wii/PSP): This game seems to be a big surprise in the controls section. IGN gave it an 8.4, which is pretty high. It also has a 32-player online component for the Wii AND it supposedly runs well. That is amazing in itself and should give an Wii owner something to smile about with games upcoming.<br /><br /><i>Need for Speed ProStreet</i> (360/PS3/Wii/PC/PS2/DS): EA Canada takes the NFS series in what looks like an all-new direction. This could be good or bad. I liked the demo for what little you got to play out of it, but I am also apprehensive about changing a formula that I felt wasn't broken with <i>Most Wanted</i> and <i>Carbon</i>. This game seems to be centered around street racing and around teamplay. Supposedly I will be reviewing this for GameShark on the 360.<br /><br /><i>SimCity Societies</i> (PC): While Maxis is still hard at work on <i>Spore</i>, EA moved the next <i>SimCity</i> game to Tilted Mill, best known for <i>Caesar IV</i> up to this point. This game looks interesting and looks to take the series in a new type of direction. Unfortunately it will probably be mostly overlooked with everything else coming out this week.<br /><br /><i>WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2008</i> (360/PS3/Wii/PS2/PSP/DS): Finally...the Rock has come back to PS3! Last year's game on the 360 was really good, but it still sounds like the loading times are here which is just a buzzkill and something that should be fixed by now several years into this series. Career mode sounds like it is more open, but I tend to wait for reviews of this game before even touching it.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-42607847873126327382007-11-05T00:39:00.000-06:002007-11-05T10:50:39.248-06:00Game of the Week (11/4): Call of Duty 4: Modern WarfareWell, I'd say last week's pick of <i>The Witcher</i> was actually a good one. I haven't picked up the game yet, but outside of the huge amount of loading the game sounds like a winner, especially with the version 1.1 patch. This week was not as hard as some other ones will be in November. The only true standout:<br /><br /><center><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2270/1875580780_36fd8ed9eb_m.jpg></center><br /><br />Yep, the no-brainer this week is <i>Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare</i> coming out on 360, PS3, PC and DS. I will be picking up the PC version simply because I have been with Infinity Ward since the beginning on the PC; plus it is $10 cheaper than the 360/PS3 versions. It sounds like single-player is short (which is not unusual for the CoD games), but the multiplayer is where the action is at.<br /><br />Other notable games this week:<br /><br /><i>Empire Earth III</i> (PC): I liked the last game in the series and can't believe they'd screw this one up.<br /><br /><i>F.E.A.R. Expansion</i> (PC/360): The standalone F.E.A.R. expansion comes out this week. I only played a bit of the original, I should pick it up now that I have a better video card.<br /><br /><i>Gears of War</i> (PC): The game comes out on PC, now with extra levels. Wonder how powerful a computer will have to be to make this look as good as the 360 version?<br /><br /><i>Viva Pinata</i> (PC): If you missed this game on the 360 and have a computer, it is imperative that you pick this up. The kids will love it and you will love it.<br /><br />Strong PC-centric week before the consoles take over for the rest of the month.<br /><br /><i>Sam and Max Episode 201: Ice Station Santa</i> (PC/Gametap): The second season starts for this series on Gametap this week. It is great to have Sam and Max around again honestly.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-84390442118252111982007-11-05T00:15:00.000-06:002007-11-05T10:38:54.125-06:00Sony Ads and TimeshiftSomeone must have awoken the sleeping giant. After screwing up time and time again Sony actually has a, dare I say it, great ad campaign going on. After last year's launch campaign with the <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkNPcUMffU>crying baby ad</a>, <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qamwVJaYW8>exploding Rubix Cubead </a>, and the <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qamwVJaYW8>crazy Sixaxis egg ad</a>. The only good ad to come out was the <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIYcInKmtlk>one for MLB 07</a>.<br /><br />Sony now has brought an ad campaign that is truly the best they've had in a long time. Here is the <a href=http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/10/31/new-ps3-tv-ad-campaign/>60 and 30 second commercial</a> that shows off first party games via the Playstation Blog. In the 60-second commercial they show off <i>Gran Turismo 5</i>, <i>Ratchet and Clank Future</i>, <i>Uncharted</i>, <i>Warhawk</i>, <i>Heavenly Sword</i>, <i>Spider-Man 3</i> on Blu-Ray, the upcoming <i>Home</i> and the Playstation Network. That is the way to make a commercial that gets people excited about a system. I already own the PS3, but man that commercial jazzed me up. I'm a big fan of the Saliva song used here, but I know many people don't like it.<br /><br />Also, while watching football yesterday I saw commercials for <i>Assassin's Creed</i>, <i>The Simpsons Game</i> and <i>Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction</i>. The funny thing about the first two is that they were PS3 ads where only the PS3 logo was shown even though both games are out for the 360 and other systems in the case of <i>The Simpsons Game</i>. Sony must have paid big money to advertise these games and make the illusion that they are PS3 only. I thought the Ratchet and Clank one was very funny. Maybe the new $399 price was the catalyst for Sony actually making great synergistic commercials (since they all end with the PS3 w/appendages turning into a regular PS3). All I can say is Sony has certainly brought its A game to the arena for the holiday and maybe this will finally spark some sales.<br /><br />Even though they took out Backwards Compatibility, dropped the hard drive down to 40GB, took out the memory card readers and eliminated a couple USB ports the PS3 is very attractive at $399 with the <i>Spider-Man 3</i> Blu-Ray movie included. It's amazing how far Sony has come since last year's $599 release at 60GB and $499 at 20GB. Now they are more in line with the 360 and even though the 360 has more software choices I think Sony is on the right track. It's just too bad it took them to wake up to reality.<br /><br />OK, enough about that, let's talk about <i>Timeshift</i> for the 360. I will be reviewing it for <a href=http://www.gameshark.com>GameShark</a> and I'm close to being done with the game and then trying out the multiplayer side of things. I have not read any reviews (I like to come at my reviews from a clean perspective), but I have seen the scores. They seem to be squarely in the 7s and in the case of <a href=http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/timeshift/review.html?sid=6182099>Gamespot a 6.5</a>. Then again this is Aaron Thomas writing again, the guy who gave <a href=http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/ratchetclank/index.html?tag=result;title;0>Ratchet and Clank Future a 7.5</a> while other sites are handing it scores in the 9s.<br /><br />Just given the scores for <i>Timeshift</i> I have to say I largely don't agree with them. I am going to guess that many of these reviews are probably comparing this game to the ones that it is sandwiched between: <i>Halo 3</i>, <i>The Orange Box</i> and the upcoming <i>Call of Duty 4</i>. It's unfortunate that this game comes out in the middle of those three, but come on! This game is really good and I personally am surprised how good it is. The graphics are really good (with a little tearing here and there if you move the camera slowly), the puzzles are not too hard, the time powers are cool and the game is pretty lengthy. If there are weak points it is in the story itself and the AI is pretty dumb. The story is told through flashbacks and really doesn't get you at all interested in it. It is the standard time-travel sci-fi mumbo jumbo. At one point before the game was bought by Vivendi the main character actually had a name and I believe was going to be voiced by Randy Quaid. Now you are just an unnamed physicist who is going after the other time suit that the overall leader of the experiment stole and went back in time to change the past. The other problem is the dumb AI. You can really trick them into coming at you in smaller groups than one big group where you have to be on your toes. They are pretty good shots, but they'll stand in the middle of the road shooting at you, making them easy targets for a time freeze and kill.<br /><br />Unless the game falls apart in the last 1.5 levels I just don't see this game being in the 6 or possibly even the 7 category. It is unfair to rank a game given the other games out there. <i>Timeshift</i> cannot compete with the total number of games in <i>The Orange Box</i> and it cannot compete with already established franchises (<i>Halo 3</i>, <i>Call of Duty 4</i>), so why even bring them into the review? Let the game stand on its own. It is a really good FPS game that is a sleeper in my mind, but it obviously won't get much business with it coming out this time of year and so many other games out there competing for our gaming dollar. Would it have helped to hold the game back to early next year? Well, it was already a pretty late game as it is, but what would have hurt other than the financial quarter to bring it out early next year? It could have been another success like <i>Lost Planet</i> was.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-13038601106936219312007-10-29T01:15:00.000-05:002007-11-05T10:51:02.957-06:00Game of the Week (10/28): The WitcherThis week is a tough one to pick a Game of the Week. I am expecting many weeks in November to be much the same way.<br /><br /><center><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/1799623728_d2c1aaaf81_m.jpg></center><br /><br />I am going out on a limb and picking <i>The Witcher</i> as my Game of the Week. I have no inside info on it nor have I played it at any stage of its creation. I have heard some good things about it and I think it shows the most promise this week, so I give it my endorsement. Plus its Holloween week and this is right up the alley for that.<br /><br />Other games this week:<br /><br /><i>Hellgate London</i> (PC): This game has flop written all over it. I played in the beta and played the demo and I am still not all that excited about it. It feels like an MMO (the subscriber stuff that came out a while ago is a good indication that it is an MMO) and in my mind they really should have kept it single-player and told a story. Funny how Bill Roeper has fallen so far after <i>Diablo</i>.<br /><br /><i>Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock</i> (360/PS3/Wii/PS2): The safe choice for Game of the Week, but I didn't take the bait. Everyone and their brother will get this game and I will probably get this game. I did not stand at midnight in order to get it though, was in no rush to do that.<br /><br /><i>Naruto: Rise of a Ninja</i> (360): Another safe choice for Game of the Week. The previews on this have been gushing and everyone that has played it says it is the best Naruto game so far. It encompasses a lot of the Naruto storyline into a game, so it should be pretty long. This game is 360 only at this point and it could be a big seller given the amount of people that love the anime show.<br /><br /><i>Tabula Rasa</i> (PC): Also played the beta in this. It was kind of cool, but the MMO grind started to take over after the initial 1 hour of pure joy. Feels like a cross between your standard MMO and a 3rd person shooter.<br /><br /><i>The Simpsons Game</i> (All systems): I'm still not sure why EA didn't hold this until the movie DVD comes out in December. In fact, I have not seen much in the way of ads for it on television or anything. EGM gave it a review in the 7s which is pretty good by their scale. This game has money written all over it, but when it isn't advertised much how are people supposed to know it is even coming out?<br /><br /><i>TimeShift</i> (360/PC): I will be reviewing the 360 version for GameShark. Both the demo I've played on 360 and PC make the game look interesting and the graphics, especially the rain, looks really good. This game could be different enough to stand out among the FPS quagmire out there, we shall see though.<br /><br /><i>Virtua Fighter 5</i> (360): VF4 was one of the best fighters ever and I have no doubt VF5 will be as well. The 360 version gets online play and I will be testing that out when I receive the game to review for GameShark as well.<br /><br />Exciting week...and it only gets worse after this.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-36103134948553401782007-10-22T00:46:00.000-05:002007-11-05T10:51:25.104-06:00Game of the Week (10/21): Ratchet and Clank Future: ToDWho knows how far this will go, but I'm starting up a Game of the Week item here on Virtual Viewpoints and what better game to usher it in than <i>Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction</i> for the PS3.<br /><br /><center><img src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2196/1692724551_a4577dbfa8.jpg?v=0></center><br /><br />Outside of <i>Uncharted: Drake's Fortune</i> coming next month, this is the game that will most likely be the Playstation 3 Game of the Year. This is the next game in a proven great franchise and Insomniac would have to really screw things up in order to not make a good <i>Ratchet and Clank</i> game.<br /><br />It is a sad state of affairs that Sony's best games are coming out so late in the year for the Playstation 3. I don't think this game is going to spur sales in any way, but it should be a really good game and probably the best game so far for the system.<br /><br />Other games this week include:<br /><br /><i>Eye of Judgement</i> (Sony, PS3) - will be reviewing once copy is here<br /><br /><i>EA Playground</i> (EA, Wii/DS) - looks fun with a lot of sports games<br /><br /><i>Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation</i> (Bandai Namco, 360) - some people swear by this game and there is even a <a href=http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=200302>controller to go along with it</a><br /><br /><i>Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles</i> (Konami, PSP) - must get if you have a PSP. <i>Rondo of Blood</i> in 3D and 2D as well as <i>Symphony of the Night</i> included<br /><br /><i>Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution</i> (Tomy, Wii) - sounds like a good fighting game for the Wii<br /><br /><i>Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trails and Tribulations</i> (Capcom, DS) - many people love this series, so why not pick up the new one?<br /><br /><i>Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure</i> (Capcom, Wii) - good word of mouth so far on this one<br /><br /><i>Painkiller: Overdose</i> (Dreamcatcher, PC) - a mod that turns into a full gameLorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-65867457243489437212007-10-19T01:57:00.000-05:002007-10-19T11:05:45.932-05:00Portal, Tony Hawk Beatdown, Demos and NPD NumbersObviously the love for <i>Portal</i> is <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2541-Zero-Punctuation-The-Orange-Box>all</a> <a href=http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3163578&sec=REVIEWS>over</a> <a href=http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/10/12>the</a> <a href=http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/portal/826434p1.html> place</a>. I also loved the game as well, although I'm not as crazy <a href=http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38012>as some people are over the ending song of the game</a>. It's cool and it goes along with the deadpan jokes throughout <i>Portal</i>'s wonderful 3 hour playtime, but let's not get carried away.<br /><br />In many ways I can equate the greatness and shortness of <i>Portal</i> with one of my other favorite games of all time, <i>ICO</i>. Back when I <a href=http://www.gamingtrend.com/Reviews/review/review.php?ReviewID=184>reviewed</a> <i>ICO</i> for Console Gold (now Gaming Trend) I got a question from the owner of whether the game really deserved its score given how long it takes to beat (roughly 4 hours of straight gameplay, not adding all the trial-and-error). This is a very subjective area of game reviewing in my opinion. I think you can have a masterful game that is short and still give it high marks. <i>Heavenly Sword</i> is a short game, but it also isn't as masterful as <i>ICO</i> or <i>Portal</i>, so I would rank it lower (probably in the B area via GameShark ratings).<br /><br />Anyway, if <i>Portal</i> was on its own and not included in the Orange Box I think there would be a lot of backlash given the length of the experience. The fact that it is one of 5 games in the box helps it a lot in the reviewing department. What is also cool is that people have figured out how to use <a href=http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/18/the-best-thing-youll-see-today-portal-gun-in-half-life-2/>the <i>Portal</i> gun on any Source-based game</a>. Sure, it pretty much screws with the way the games were built, but it is pretty cool to set up ambush scenarios.<br /><br />Since I talked about review backlash, I think it is important to point out how badly <i>Tony Hawk's Proving Ground</i> is getting reviewed. Yours truly is reviewing it for GameShark once the game gets here, but I was a bit shocked by the reviews coming out for it. The TH games have pretty much been review proof since its inception, much like the <i>Madden</i> games are commonly seen with high 80s and 90s review scores. No matter how derivative or "yearly boost up" type feel the TH games had (much like the roster updates and small tweaks for <i>Madden</i>), the games were still reviewed well. This year though it seems the major sites have given <i>Proving Ground</i> a beatdown:<br /><br /><a href=http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3163735&sec=REVIEWS>1up - 5.5</a><br /><a href=http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/sports/tonyhawksprovingground/review.html?sid=6181206>Gamespot - 6.5</a><br /><a href=http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/828/828249p1.html>IGN - 7.1</a><br /><a href=http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1399/Tony-Hawks-Proving-Ground/p1/>Team Xbox - 7.4</a><br /><br />Granted, the TH reviews have gotten lower as we've gone along, but this is a pretty big beatdown. Why are the scores so low? Well, it has to be because of <i>skate</i> (<a href=http://www.gameshark.com/xbox-360/reviews/2768/skate-Xbox-360-Review.htm>my GameShark Review</a>). Reviewers got to see something new from <i>skate</i> and they're all aflutter with the new control scheme. I liked the new control scheme and with some minor tweaking it could easily make this possible series even better than the Hawk games were in their heyday. Almost every review points out how much better <i>skate</i> is from a gameplay perspective and I'll get to check it out myself here pretty soon. It is funny though that the Hawk games become the first series to get the beatdown, I would have figured the <i>Madden</i> games - which have been around far longer - would see a critical beatdown earlier than the Hawk games. Then again, there is no real competition for EA on the football front.<br /><br />PC demos of upcoming games are hotter than fresh pancakes right now. In the past few weeks we've had demos for <i>Call of Duty 4</i>, <i>Unreal Tournament III</i> and <i>Hellgate: London</i> just last night. The <i>Crysis</i> demo is coming soon (October 26th), but I have also played in the beta for that game. I'm impressed by just one of those games so far: <i>Call of Duty 4</i>.<br /><br />This isn't to say that <i>Unreal Tournament III</i> is going to be a bad game, it's just that I've never really been into that series and there are tons of people that are far better at that game than I could ever hope to be. With my limited time of playing <i>Hellgate: London</i> I was not excited at all, but I will play more of it. With <i>Crysis</i> it isn't that the game sucks it is that the system requirements are just staggering and I keep thinking that EA/Crytek are limiting the possible sales that this game could generate. They like to say that <i>Crysis</i> can't be done on consoles, but I'd be willing to bet we'll see the game on the consoles in 2008. <i>Crysis</i>, just given the greatness of <i>FarCry</i>, should be made of money. It's just that EA/Crysis have priced themselves right out of the game except for those that want to spend lots of money on an all-new system.<br /><br /><i>Call of Duty 4</i> gets special mention here. Infinity Ward is much like Pixar in the gaming world: everything they touch turns to gold. They were not part of any of the sucky <i>Call of Duty</i> games and now they are back with a modern variant of the game. I was surprised how well the game ran on my aging system and unlike some of the other games I didn't have to whip out my more powerful laptop to play it on. It's the same old <i>Call of Duty</i> gameplay, but it is like a perfectly tuned symphony in play. I will probably pick this up on the PC since that is all I've played the Infinity Ward games on...why change now? This game will most likely be in the hunt for Game of the Year and the jump from the rut of World War II to modern times hasn't hurt it at all.<br /><br />And finally the NPD numbers were released yesterday. First hardware and then software numbers ranked in order:<br /><br />Xbox 360 527.8K<br />Wii 501K<br />Nintendo DS 495.8K<br />PlayStation Portable 284.5K<br />PlayStation 2 215K<br />PlayStation 3 119.4K<br />Game Boy Advance 75K<br /><br />1. 360 HALO 3 - 3.3 million<br />2. WII PLAY W/ REMOTE - 282K<br />3. NDS LEGEND OF ZELDA: PHANTOM HOURGLASS - 224K<br />4. PS2 MADDEN NFL 08 - 205K<br />5. 360 SKATE - 175K<br />6. 360 MADDEN NFL 08 - 173K<br />7. WII METROID PRIME 3: CORRUPTION - 167K<br />8. 360 BIOSHOCK - 150K<br />9. NDS BRAIN AGE 2: MORE TRAINING IN MINUTES A DAY - 141K<br />10. PS3 HEAVENLY SWORD - 139K<br /><br />So, the 360 wins the console sales by a hair. Both Microsoft and Nintendo have to be happy with the results in September. The Wii trails right behind the 360 in overall sales even with <i>Halo 3</i> having come out and the DS sold almost 500k units as well. Sony, although they will spin this ("we sold 334k total Playstations" (PS2 and PS3) or "619k in total Playstation brand" (PS2/PS3/PSP)), should be absolutely devastated by both the hardware and software numbers.<br /><br />Only selling 119k PS3s versus the over 500k that the Wii and 360 pushed is really bad. They had the cheaper system out there plus the 80GB version and I don't see them recovering any ground through the holidays since they have such a weak lineup of games outside of <i>Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction</i>. On the software front <i>Heavenly Sword</i> sold respectfully, but was outsold by <i>skate</i> on the 360. A first-party game outsold by a third-party game for another system...ouch!<br /><br />I'm not even sure the $399 40GB system is going to push a lot of systems out the door. All it takes is for Microsoft to drop the prices a bit more and they've effectively blocked Sony's ever closing chance. And now Jack Tretton has <a href=http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/18/tretton-financial-math-new-ps3-ps2-old-ps3/>the gall to say that buying a PS3 AND a PS2 will solve all your backwards compatibility issues for less than the original price of a PS3</a>. Although the math is indeed correct, I think a lot of people would rather play their old PS2 games on a PS3 and not have to worry about having 2 (or more if you have a 360 and/or Wii) systems set up. The fact that they eliminated BC is just a spit in the face of those people who owned the PS2 and want the graphical upgrades that the PS3 gives many of the games. I'm still not sure why they dropped support of it unless it was a section of the company that was bleeding red with no possibility of ever catching up.<br /><br />As we head into the holiday season I see the Wii, 360, DS and PSP to have a really good season. The first two have some big games still coming (<i>Super Mario Galaxy</i>, <i>Guitar Hero III</i>, <i>Rock Band</i> and <i>Mass Effect</i>) and I think we will start to see an interesting pattern as we see if Nintendo can continue to push on with looming shortages (whether just words or reality is questionable) or if the 360 is going to sell really well this Christmas with an abundance of systems to pick up. Who knows, but it will be a fun ride.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-4465228147950802672007-09-30T00:22:00.000-05:002007-11-05T10:52:26.435-06:00Halo 3 Review (360)<center><img src=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1103/829099880_0cde734a6b_m.jpg></center><br /><br />Title: <i>Halo 3</i><br />Developer: Bungie<br />Publisher: Microsoft<br />Platform: Xbox 360<br /><br /><u>My Recommendation</u>: Must Own<br /><br />It should come as no surprise that I recommend this as a Must Own, however there are some caveats. For those only wanting to go through the campaign and not dabble in the multiplayer options, this is purely a game you should rent. It shouldn't take you very long to beat the campaign and then you have the final chapter of the series. If you are into multiplayer and being able to build your own "items" into a given map, this game tops them all and for that it becomes a Must Own.<br /><br />The campaign itself is well done with a couple sections here and there that I really didn't care for. I've never been a big fan of the Flood and any section revolving around them goes into the "I just want to get through this section" mode instead of the "man, am I having fun trying to think ahead of all these enemies. With the Flood there is no strategy, they are a legion that just keeps coming after you. They have no tactics or anything, they just want to overwhelm you.<br /><br />Any section revolving around the Covenant is really good. This makes up the majority of the game with the Flood being the pain in the ass toward the end. The enemy AI is really good and grenades almost become useless against the Covenant because they are so smart. There are a variety of Brutes and Grunts you will go through, some with stretches of invulnerability attached to them or a strategic weak point to take them out.<br /><br />The weapons are nice here as well. I'm happy to say the Assault Gun is back after it was forgotten about in <i>Halo 2</i>. In fact there are many sections where a friend actually throws you the Assault Rifle in a cutscene. It is funny that it was gone for a game and now it is the main basic weapon in <i>Halo 3</i>. The coolest additions to the weapons are the Gravity Hammer and the Laser gun. The laser comes in handy in at least two sections of the game, one of which is a little to cheap if you ask me.<br /><br />The story overall is done well. Anyone who hasn't played the other 2 games is going to be really lost, especially about the whole Gravemind aspect of the game. The Gravemind is around in this game and you see his tentacles, but (SPOILER!!!!!) you never go against him face to, uh, face.<br /><br />There are a few boss battles in the game, but nothing to write home about. The first appearance of the Scarab is awe inspiring, but once you encounter them here and there through the rest of the game they don't seem as cool. The boss battle toward the end of the game is a very weak one with the aforementioned laser gun, which is too bad because it involves a character that is a central character to the series itself.<br /><br />The nicest thing about the storyline is this: (BE PREPARED FOR SPOILERS):<br /><br />At the end of <i>Halo 3</i> you come to the realization with the final mission title of "Full Circle" that the series has done just that. You blow up the rebuilding Halo from the first game, you take out at least a sizable chunk of the Flood (if not all of them) and after the credits have rolled you see that the Master Chief and Cortana made it through the portal still alive. The Chief goes into a cryotube and tells Cortana, "Wake me when you need me." That is exactly how the Chief started Halo: being pulled from a cryotube.<br /><br />Do I think this is the end of the Halo series? I doubt it. Bungie is in a dangerous position. They have to create a new IP that people are going to jump on. If they can't do that I have to believe there will be a <i>Halo 4</i> in the future. The door is left open for a <i>Wing Commander</i> like rebirth. The Covenant could decide they want to attack again, there could be internal struggles on Earth or there could be an all-new threat. Not killing off Master Chief leaves the door open for him to come out of the cryotube once again.<br /><br />The multiplayer aspects of the game is where the real meat is. I've only played a little bit online, but I also realize the broad range of games you can play online. There is also the Forge mode where you can drop items into the maps of the game. You can't change the map terrain, but you can create an all-new experience to play with your friends online. Much like <i>Halo 2</i>, chances are multiplayer is going to help <i>Halo 3</i> live for years and I can only guess that Bungie has a lot of downloadable content coming.<br /><br />In the end, you really can't say no to <i>Halo 3</i> if you are into online multiplayer at all. If you only want to play the campaign and see the end of the story I say you should rent the game. It should only take you at most a few days to finish the fight. If this is the end of Halo, it went out on a high note.<br /><br />The big question is whether it is the best 360 game out there? From a multiplayer perspective probably. From a graphical, story and overall perspective, probably not.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-3942774308062382792007-09-17T01:29:00.000-05:002007-11-05T10:52:41.426-06:00Review: Heavenly Sword (PS3)<center><img src=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1036/829047090_62b71d4a4f_m.jpg></center><br /><br />Title: <i>Heavenly Sword</i><br />Developer: Ninja Theory<br />Publisher: SCE Europe<br />Platform: PS3<br /><br /><u>My Recommendation</u>: Rent It<br /><br />I'm not reviewing this game for Gameshark (although my <a href=http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/2742/Warhawk-Review.htm>Warhawk Review</a> is now up), so I thought I would give a review of this game on my blog instead.<br /><br /><i>Heavenly Sword</i> is a beautiful game that is hindered by its length and the borrowing of many aspects from the <i>God of War</i> games. Many people will say the game goes beyond a straight GoW clone, but I think it borrows a little too heavily on it to really stand out as something different. It is obvious that Ninja Theory put a good amount of time into both the game graphics and all of the cutscenes that make up the story. The story doesn't necessarily grab you, but watching the cutscenes is just a sight to behold.<br /><br />Much like <i>God of War</i> the main character dies at the beginning of the game and you go back in time 5 days and play through what leads up to Nariko facing off against thousands of enemies. The 5 days make up the first 5 chapters of the game, with the sixth chapter being the final boss fight. Nariko is put in a sort of hub where the Heavenly Sword comes out of the ground in 6 different places which correspond to the 6 chapters. There are then circles on those swords that point out how many missions there are in each chapter. Some chapters have a lot of missions, some have very few.<br /><br />A majority of the game is spent with Nariko taking on an overwhelming number of enemies. In many ways it is far bigger in battle concept than <i>God of War</i>, but Nariko has far less combos and tricks than Kratos has. Nariko cannot jump, which makes things a little interesting. She has three stances she can fight from that all use the Heavenly Sword. The first stance is the speed one which is just used by pressing the Square and Triangle buttons. The range stance is accessed by pressing the L1 button along with using Square and Triangle. The power stance is accessed by pressing the R1 button along with using Square and Triangle. Most of the time you will be using the speed and power stance, but the range stance comes into great use on at least two bosses.<br /><br />As you go through the missions you can get a total of 3 glyphs by doing things within the mission. As far as I know there is no way of knowing exactly what you have to do in order to get those glyphs other than the bar at the bottom of the screen that increases as you do things. Supposedly getting all the glyphs is one of the reasons to replay this game, but I honestly saw no need to go back and do it all over again.<br /><br />The funny part is that the best sections of this game is when you take over as Kai (Nariko's cat-like friend) or if Nariko has a long-range weapon to fire/throw. As you fire off the weapon and hold down the Square key you can use the Sixaxis controller to guide the shot toward your intended target. This helps immensely when Kai is shooting her arrows ("twing-twang" as she calls it) or when Nariko is taking down enemies storming the fort. Aiming arrows at enemies clear across the screen was just awesome and I almost wish there was more of this game type than of Nariko running around swinging the Heavenly Sword around.<br /><br />In the end I found myself going through the motions in order to get to the end of the game. The long-range things were a welcome change of pace, but I honestly found no reason to use combo attacks versus button mashing in the Nariko vs. an overwhelming army sections. The only place combos help a lot are the boss battles when you are able to pull one off.<br /><br /><i>Heavenly Sword</i> also borrows from <i>God of War</i> with the "press a button at the right time" gameplay. It doesn't happen very often and the buttons pop up very quickly. I had many times where I had to replay a section because the buttons popping up caught me off-guard. In the GoW series I never felt surprised by when the buttons came up to press, but here is a different story.<br /><br />The boss battles are interesting as well. They all have weak points and have a cycle of moves that they make. The final battle is the best of them all, but it can also be very frustrating. I have heard people being able to beat the boss just mashing on buttons, but I found that to be impossible. Instead there was a way to deflect some things back to the boss and that helps a lot. The boss battles are not as interesting as, say, <i>Metal Gear Solid</i>, but they are somewhat memorable.<br /><br />In the end I can only recommend that you rent this game. I'm glad I rented this game. If I added up the amount of time I spent on the game, I'd say it was 5-6 hours. I'm of the belief that length doesn't necessarily hinder a game. I use <i>ICO</i> as my example of an extraordinary game that was extremely short (4 or less hours). With <i>ICO</i> I replayed it multiple times, in the case of <i>Heavenly Sword</i> I don't see myself playing it again other than to show it off to people that want to see nice high-def graphics, but then I'd have to rent it again.<br /><br /><i>Heavenly Sword</i> is a really good game, but it's only worth a rental because of its length and the heavy borrowing from the longer (and better) <i>God of War</i> games. Don't buy the game because you can literally beat it in a day, but renting it should satisfy your need for a really good exclusive PS3 game.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-80481737407405601182007-08-23T00:39:00.000-05:002007-08-23T11:36:28.705-05:00Proof that the Wii is not the true Market Leader?This week we may have finally gotten proof of what I've been saying all along that the Wii is only going to have 1st party games that sell well. Everyone and their mother (and grandmother) are picking up a Wii in order to play things like <i>Wii Sports</i>, <i>Wii Play</i> and <i>Mario Party 8</i>. The 3rd party offerings have not been great and I don't expect many of the people who own the Wii to buy them. This is where Nintendo being the market leader in Worldwide sales (they passed the 360 recently) isn't really telling the whole story. So, what game do I feel is proof of this concept? <i>Madden 08</i>.<br /><br />Thanks to <a href=http://www.vgchartz.com/aweekly.php>VGCharts</a>, we have a good handle on how well <i>Madden 08</i> sold last week. Here are the sales numbers (with rank):<br /><br />1. Xbox 360: 889,072<br />2. PS2: 546,403<br />3. PS3: 204,025<br />7. <strong>Wii: 57,247</strong><br />8. Xbox: 56,841<br />13. PSP: 39,170<br /><br />If you note, the Xbox version only sold 406 less copies of <i>Madden 08</i> than the Wii version. That's pretty bad if you ask me. It's also bad that the PS2 version outsold the PS3 version by over 300,000 copies, but that's for another post. Those are pretty bad sales for a major 3rd party title on the Wii. By all accounts, the game itself is better than last year's version on the Wii. I personally don't know because I don't own a Wii.<br /><br />Other sales on the Wii also tell the tale that the Wii is going to live and die by its 1st party offerings:<br /><br />4. <i>Wii Sports</i>: 89,280 (4,242,200 total; <strong>note</strong>: this equals total Wii Sales in US)<br />6. <i>Wii Play</i>: 59,006 (1,932,191 total; <strong>note</strong>: a controller is included)<br />10. <i>Mario Strikers Charged</i>: 44,601 (233,517 total)<br />14. <i>Mario Party 8</i>: 37,521 (990,672 total)<br />21. <i>Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition</i>: 21,777 (304,570 total)<br /><br />There are others on there, but the rest are 1st party as well. The only 3rd party game to hit "big" is the one above. 300k+ is respectable and is the exception to what I was talking about. I still stand by my idea that the Wii software sales will be poor for the most part outside of 1st party games whereas the 360 and PS3 will have 3rd party games that sell really well. It is a mirror image of the GameCube except that everyone loves <i>Wii Sports</i> and <i>Wii Play</i>. It would behoove Nintendo to continue making those types of niche games because it is the only way they'll be able to push respectable sales numbers in my opinion.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-62697954334340951282007-08-20T01:23:00.000-05:002007-08-20T21:39:20.578-05:00Good News/Bad NewsI was going to post this last weekend, but the weather was pretty traumatic up here in the Great White North (Minnesota). Power went out twice for 4 hours each time (early Saturday morning and Monday Night) and we've had quite a bit of rain. I ended up having to replace my router because the WAN port was sketchy at best (although I can't corroborate it, this could have been part of the Xbox Live problem weeks earlier). Everything is working at the regular speed now, so everything's great.<br /><br />First the good news. I was lucky enough to get an offer from Bill Abner (the sport's reviewer and part owner of the <a href=http://sportsgamer.blogspot.com>Sports Gamer Blog</a>) to review for GameShark. It is sounding like EA's <i>skate</i> (check out the <a href=http://www.ea.com/skate/home.jsp>website</a>) will be the first game I'll be reviewing. Bad news is that I'm getting the 360 version and may not have mine back in time, so I may have to venture 40 miles to where my brother-in-law lives and play there. There are other games I might review, but I don't want to give any information away in case I'm not chosen to do them. I'm excited about <i>skate</i>, although I think you have to get into the mindset that this is like real-life skateboarding and not <i>Tony Hawk</i> moon physics where you can pull off impossible moves. It will be interesting to see if it is a good first effort, because then there is a possible challenger to the crown the Hawk games have worn for many a year.<br /><br />Being a reviewer again is awesome, but the writing style is a bit different. It's more free form and is more about how you feel about the game instead of talking about features and all that like I used to do. I am no longer bound by sections as I was before. The best news is that the GameShark position allows me to fulfill a dream I've had since I began writing...getting paid for it. With that fact and the fact that GameShark doesn't have a lot of PS3 reviewers, I picked one up for the $500 price point and my first reviews will go to pay that off. So, I'm now a (proud?) owner of a PS3. I still don't own a game for it yet, but if <i>Heavenly Sword</i> isn't the first one, <i>Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction</i> will definitely be.<br /><br />Onto the bad news. I am not very excited that Irrational Games was turned into 2K Boston and 2K Austrailia. I figured for sure if <i>BioShock</i> hit it big that Irrational would be bought up by a more "cash happy" publisher than 2K Games. 2K Games is in a world of hurt currently in my mind. <i>Grand Theft Auto IV</i> was pushed back and <i>BioShock</i> becomes its only big game this year I believe. I am still thinking <i>BioShock</i> is not going to sell as much as everyone thinks it will. Remember, <i>System Shock 2</i> sold pretty badly (well under 100k sold) and that was a critically lauded game like <i>BioShock</i> currently is. It could sell well and I hope it does, but this game may not be for everyone.<br /><br />That's it for the bad news except for the post below this one.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-5899520631472680102007-08-20T00:23:00.000-05:002007-08-20T21:15:04.535-05:00Xbox 360 DiedYep, my launch unit finally died. I was hoping it would last through BioShock's release, but it was not to be. I just sent it off today to be replaced and I don't know how long it will be before I get one (hopefully with the extra heatsink and a quiet DVD drive) back.<br /><br />I had been noticing over the last few weeks that Xbox Live would log in slower and some games like <i>Guitar Hero II</i> would lock up after a while. It worked fine with <i>NCAA Football 08</i> though, never locking up. Once I started to download the <i>BioShock</i> demo things started to go south.<br /><br />I am likely to miss <i>BioShock</i> (but am downloading the PC version to see how well it runs to see if I can pick that up) and <i>Stranglehold</i>, but hopefully it will be back in time for <i>Halo 3</i>. I will probably also miss <i>Medal of Honor: Airborne</i>, although much like <i>BioShock</i> I may be able to play it on PC.<br /><br />It's just not a good time to have an Xbox 360 down, is it? It makes the Halo 3 Xbox 360 look more enticing though. It does <a href=http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=020076>look cool</a> as well.<br /><br />Thanks to my brother-in-law for letting me play the <i>BioShock</i> demo over the weekend. That game is HOT, but I always though it was HOT. He even though it was HOT and was thinking about getting it.<br /><br />So, I'll be tracking my UPS shipment of the 360. Hopefully it won't take too long, but who knows.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-20908442509577907512007-08-09T01:39:00.000-05:002007-08-09T10:06:08.762-05:00Demo Thoughts: Eternal Sonata and Stranglehold (360)Like many of you I downloaded both the <strong>Eternal Sonata</strong> and <strong>John Woo's Stranglehold</strong> demos and I thought I'd give my thoughts on them.<br /><br /><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1421/1062289724_6d3b53b41a_m.jpg"><br /><br />First up is <strong>Eternal Sonata</strong>, a game I have been looking forward to playing. The demo takes you through a section of the game and face a boss monster at the end. The battle sequence is pretty different in that you are given a certain amount of time to move and do actions before the next participant, whether friend or foe, begins their active time. There is a bit of strategy involved because the best option is to rush in to attack and then start to backtrack before your time is up so the enemy doesn't have an easy shot at you.<br /><br />The graphics were really good in this game, but they really didn't make me feel like I was playing a next-gen caliber of game. It seems like a much sharper version of the <strong>Final Fantasy</strong> games from the original Playstation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the colors are vibrant, but anyone looking for a graphical explosion is probably going to be disappointed.<br /><br />The other thing I wonder is how much speech there will be in the game. Talking to NPCs was like the FF games of old where you read the information instead of a game like <strong>Oblivion</strong> where almost everything is spoken. This game is very old school in how it is presented. I am looking forward to this game and I will at least rent it depending on how long of a game it actually is.<br /><br /><img src=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1295/828014127_62445d1a07_m.jpg><br /><br />I was really excited to play <strong>John Woo's Stranglehold</strong> to see whether the fears I outlined in my <a href=http://virtualviewpoints.blogspot.com/2007/07/upcoming-games-august.html>August Games Preview</a> were true or not. After the demo, which actually is a pretty lengthy one, I am still worried about this game being too <strong>Max Payne</strong> for its own good. The graphics are impressive, but there are times where the character graphics actually look worse than those in <strong>Max Payne 2</strong> which was released almost 4 years ago. I would expect some more realistic looking people from a next-gen game like this.<br /><br />The gameplay itself was pretty fun, but I still think it is treading a bit too much on the <strong>Max Payne</strong> blueprint for my liking. The destructible environment is certainly a new thing. You can shoot at objects above enemy heads to kill them (they are highlighted with a shiny spot to show you can use it) and there is even a couple cool points where you are facing 3+ people at once and you go into a mini-game kind of section. You can move Tequila to the left or right to dodge bullets and then you can shoot the person (or an object to take them out) and you go to the next enemy. The other cool thing is when you get the precision aim ability and you can aim a shot and you watch the bullet go directly to where you aimed on the enemy. Those kinds of things certainly aren't in <strong>Max Payne</strong> and makes this game stand out a bit.<br /><br />For what I played I was impressed by the game (I am a big <strong>Max Payne</strong> fan) and will at least rent it for the 360 (or the PS3 if I ever get one in order to get the Hard Boiled Blu-Ray disc). The cool montage after the demo is done shows some of the rest of the game and it does look good. Midway may push this into at least the good category, but I reserve judgment on whether they can deliver a great game or not.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13404713.post-16848419123645527442007-07-31T00:17:00.000-05:002007-08-09T09:39:06.128-05:00Spider-Man: One More Day/Brand New DayMarvel has always said that 2007 was going to be a huge year for Spider-Man and given what is coming up at the end of the year confirms this. I honestly don't know what to expect from One More Day (J. Michael Straczynski's final Spider-Man arc after 6 years with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada doing the covers and pencils), but the San Diego Comic Con started showing some hints of light on it (thanks to <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/">Newsarama</a> for the info).<br /><br />1. Quesada noted that the "retro" covers on One More Day (the first two are below) evokes the feel of a certain era in the Spider-Man history. To me he's talking about the early days as being the 70s/80s era of Spider-Man where covers were busy with words and multiple panels. It was in the really early days as well, but I think it was much more prevalent in that era.<br /><br />2. In <a href=http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=123395>Zeb Wells' interview at Newsarama</a> (he is one of the 4 writers on the 3x a month ASM along with Dan Slott, Marc Guggenheim and Bob Gale) he let it slip that the web shooters were coming back. As it stands now Peter has organic webbing like in the movies.<br /><br />3. All of the preview art for both One More Day and Brand New Day show Spidey in his original costume and not the black one he is wearing now. This probably means that Aunt May is not the body on the cover of ASM #543, the issue before One More Day starts, but who knows (we'll find out August 22nd).<br /><br />There are other things that were divulged, but I am both anxious and excited about One More Day and Brand New Day. I have to believe they are about to reverse about 20 years of stories. This is the 20-year anniversary (real time, not comic time) of Peter and MJ getting married and Quesada has said on multiple times that he wants Peter single but is not willing to do it through divorce. I have a sinking feeling that Peter is going to ask Dr. Strange to wipe everyone's mind (and possibly his own) of him unmasking, marrying MJ, being given the Other powers, the whole spider totem, letting anyone know his secret identity, etc. He will be given "one more day" with MJ knowing everything she knows, but after that everything is at square one. Peter may or may not remember everything, but MJ will no longer be married to him and no longer in danger for being around him. Obviously she will still be in his life, just not at the level it was before.<br /><br />Brand New Day will be him starting at square one again with everyone. If the mind wipe is actually happening I hope that he remembers everything and is able to reconnect with MJ. I hate that the marriage is probably over, but done correctly I could stay on with my favorite superhero. I am very excited, but also anxious, about One More Day and Brand New Day. Marvel has been doing pretty good with keeping things interesting, although wiping the knowledge that everyone knows Spider-Man is Peter Parker will certainly lessen one of the major plot points from Civil War.<br /><br />It is an interesting time to be a Spider-Man fan, that is for sure.Lorenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06675354857275832702noreply@blogger.com