MS(g)B is your link for KittyWheelbarrowing

MS(g)B Productions has recently created two works for your entertainment pleasure.

The first is entitled Mr. 5-in-1.



The second is entitled FUK LBJ - Kitty Wheelbarrow



The second.5 is a behind the scenes look at Kitty Wheelbarrow



Don't know what FUK LBJ is? Check out this trailer for the upcoming movie!



Be the first to tell your friends about MS(g)B Productions!
Subscribe to our Youtube channel!
got ideas or need some actors? MS(g)B would love to help you film things!
e-mail us at lyndonbigjohnson@googlemail.com

Lil Big J will be in Thailand for the next year, but he'll pass the e-mail on to the JoFu

That ugly, dirty feeling in your chest- Prototype

Ugh...I just beat Prototype. Ugh..I will like this game the more I think about it, but as it stands the controls were really really frustrating. I spent an hour in a boss fight. It's cool that you get mauled by forces actually trying to kill you rather than pretending to try to kill you for your sport, but then you need the powers to actually fucking kill a thing. The powers you get sound really cool, but then you have to use them. I spent most of the game looking for a tank to steal or a missile launcher to use because I really couldn't go toe-to-toe with...anything. Ok, I could take out zombies and civies just fine.
The game's concepts are really cool. The web of intrigue is neat as shit. The NPC voice acting is sweet. They cracked me up all the time. The military uses all these cool code phrases like calling an airstrike a rain-dance and telling RC (Red Crown) to make it wet. Burrrrrrrrrrahh!
A lot of this game is really good, but it's also a "sandbox" game. That part sucks. Besides story missions, there are a bunch of side missions like racing or killing or warring or consuming folk. This is basically what you do in the story missions. It also has little to nothing to do with the story itself. You just do 'em to get exp, and after a while exp is really useless. It unlocks cool gimmicky attacks, but it's a bunch of shit you don't need. Stats bonuses are the most useful.
The story itself is also really weak. It's like playing GTA3. There's little character-to-character interaction or character development. Most video sequences are just mission briefings with one little bit of interaction.
The buildings are also fucking ugly.
This game looks like it's development was pushed, like they had so much content already that they just shirked here and there. Otherwise...I wouldn't rent this game. I bought this game. I'm gonna go sell it to buy a soccer game. Gamestop is going to rip me off. This game frustrated me. I loved parts of it. I don't know. Don't play this game. Watch it on youtube. It'll be better than playing it. Or wait for the movie to come out and hope it's good. It'll probably be weird.

I was soooooo damn excited about this game...I hope the sequel's better.

Nostalgia you sonuvhabeech

Jean-Claude Van Damme is awesome, particularly in Street Fighter: The Movie. Speaking of movies a week ago or so I went to see Moon. Now, the thing is I love a good old fashioned Sci-Fi movie. 2001, 2010, The Abyss, The Fountain, & Solaris among other films are movies where some really cool idea/story is being told where it doesn't use action as an excuse to submerge you in geeky stuff. That isn't to say I love my Aliens & Matrix and other action heavy sci-fi flicks, it is just nice to see something that doesn't shoehorn in action for the sake of entertaining those who need it. So I was pretty pumped to see Moon cause it had plenty of 2001/Solaris vibes in terms of atmosphere and feel, the viewing was disappointing to say the least. This is one of those situations where the trailers make it seem a lot more interesting and cooler than what it was. I almost feel bad that for once I had expectations for a movie because I've grown up on sci-fi flicks. To summarize it in not as many words, it is an above average movie that I felt really let me down in the direction it goes. This is primarily because I didn't think it really did anything with what it had.

So yeah movies are good times. The nostalgia I am referring to is FF7. Last week my former roommate from VT came up to visit. Since he hadn't been in the D.C. area in quite some time we went to some of the museums during the day. After the long day out when we got back we plopped down to relax and he bust out his laptop and started some FF7. My memories of the game immediately hit me like a freight train and I had a huge urge to play the game. The immediate problem stopping me was that I wished I could just continue playing it on my PS3 instead of using my PS or PS2, the lack of memory card ports on the PS3 made me sad. Nostalgia screamed "find a way" and I immediately ordered a memory card adapter as well as an 8GB memory stick duo. Why is it that I ordered a large memory stick duo? Why to purchase the game yet again off the PSN in order to play it on the go on my PSP and I only had a 1GB duo stick currently (the game needing 1.4 GB or so). I had been told "but why not use the remote play feature of your PS3?" and while that is a great feature which I will use for other games, playing a multi-disc game that way would just not workout. Now I am about ready to get down with my blast from the past and finally beat Emerald and Ruby weapons (the last save I was working on had maxed the clock out at 99:59:59, I have 3 master magic materias from mastering them all 3 times around, and had all my summons maxed save for Knights of the Round which was level 4 aka too much time has been spent in that game).

Also due to the incredibly huge itch for FF7, despite the fact that I still maintain the plot is not that good, I picked up Crisis Core cause I wanna know more of the back-story. My zeal has been slightly derailed since while waiting for my memory card adapter I had started playing FFTactics PSP again (1 class away for Ramza and a few more for my other chars for all mastered classes before I continue on to Riovanes Castle). Games from the 90s/early 2000s were so rad, gotta love the great feeling of playing games you've grown up with.

Despite all the delays for some titles what kinda games are you all looking forward to in this fall lineup? I am extremely pumped for Demon's Souls, Disgaea 2 PSP port, and the Persona remake on PSP for my RPG fix. I can't wait for Muramasa, Brutal Legend (Tim Schafer is wonderful), & bayonetta (I think this got pushed back) and I am curious about Wet and Shadow Complex. I can't think of any others since I can never keep tabs on all the stuff that is coming out.

Remembering that dumb feeling - Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road, grim Fandango, etc. etc.

Remember when you were a kid and played video games? Remember how you could get to one part of a game and then you got stuck, had to start the whole game over to actually play because you hit some speedbump that was impassible without your big brother's help.

One year, my neighbor got me a game genie for my birthday. Nice fucking kid! So much easier to beat games then.

So, you get what I'm talking about, right? Sometimes you just gotta reach for the goddamn strategy guide because whatever the game's trying to make you do 't aint natural.

I'm not good at older games. I guess a lot of people aren't because they were more difficult. I blame a lot of my weakness on the fact that controls used to suck. Suck out the fucking ass suck.

Example of an older game's controls-
A- Shoot
B- Jump
D-pad is d-pad

You can jump. You can shoot. Forget dodging like a human might dream of. It's like comparing old Resident Evil with new Resident Evil. Some sort of fear is lost in the fact that the old controls were shit and hard to use and now shit's a lot easier to control.

However, that isn't my problem (damn, when am I ever going to get to the point?). My problem is that older games tend to make me feel just downright stupid. Like in Jak & Daxter where I just don't seem able to do certain things. I kind of remember why I hated these zeldaesque games. Because when presented with some challenge it's hard to know whether you're even capable yet of completing said challenge. Maybe you have to come back later with the Big, Black Dildo of Comeuppance to slap that bitch so she'll drop the Platinum Filling of Herpes out of her mouth. Fuck if I know.

I play this game and I die so often I've started to expect to do it when I enter any room in the game. Every step is a recon mission for my next turn at life.

So, I feel dumb.

Ratchet & Clank's shoot-em-up and jump style was more to my liking. I'm proud to say that I beat three of those games in the course of a week, and I only stopped beating 'em because the other ones cost money. Three more plus some PSP titles and I'll have played them all. Ratchet & Clanks are best at humor and weapons and leveling up said weapons.

Jak & Daxter is best at making me feel dumb and telling myself, "This happens to a lot of gamers."

I felt the same kinda way about Monkey Island and a lot of the other old adventure games. I hit speed bumps and then I got out a strategy guide because I knew I wasn't smart enough. Or maybe I'm just holding myself back. Maybe I am smart enough, I just don't want to admit it or spend the time to find out.

Jak & Daxter frustrates me with its difficulty. I'm serious. I find it harder than Ninja gaiden! If you've beaten these games, laugh at me. Some 8-year-old could tell me off and all I could say in return is "I have sex with women."

LyBel Johnson

p.s.(My brother's band's name is Libel. He's on myspace!)
p.s.s. I still remember some HTML!

My appreciation of the PS3 continues

Lately I have been addicted, yet again, to some good old Diablo 2. Even though I am weaning myself off of the blast-from-the-past I still do my fair share of random countess/chaos/baal/andy/pit runs. I have been trading off attention to my handhelds, I imagine it would be similar to entertaining two children with equal attention (heh I wouldn't know). On the PSP has been a lovely classic JRPG experience with Crimson Gem Saga, lots of fun with this one so far. On the DS I have had a great time with SMT: Devil Survivor which is enjoyable but some magic from the console SMT titles is missing I feel. That shouldn't be a mark against SMT: Devil Survivor though since it is still a great game that has a complex and gratifying combat system (strat rpg/standard turn based rpg hybrid). That being said I have been giving my consoles a bit of the cold shoulder. Getting back into the groove this past weekend I started the PS3 up.

Yesterday I picked up Fat Princess which is loaded with fun. I felt a bit detached from the gameplay since I am lacking a headset to coordinate but that was minor. I enjoyed most of my time playing the game as a worker or archer class. Charging up arrows and letting loose was great while dancing about avoiding getting hit. Gathering resources and reinforcing the defenses was also rather entertaining. One problem I noticed was the great amount of time spent on trying to find/connect to games. At first I was curious if it was my problem but I have just recently been upgraded to a FiOS connection so that was unlikely. Destructoid says that Sony will be working on it. I look forward to that being a little more smooth.

I have also played a good amount of Savage Moon which is a terrific TD game that I got while it was on sale for $5 on PSN. It is very challenging, I am not used to my cattle fighting back while herding them in a TD.

Finally I have played a large amount of Wipeout HD this weekend. I grabbed the new Fury DLC which practically doubled the amount of content in the game. While I had dabbled in the title a little when I had gotten it during the previously mentioned PSN sale for a great price of $14.99 (the DLC was $9.99 which is great considering what you get) I finally sunk my teeth into it this weekend. All I can say is WOW, this is one of the best downloadable titles I have played on a console yet. That statement is taking into consideration Castle Crashers, Braid, Ikaruga port, Rez HD, Geometry Wars 2, Pixel Junk Eden, and what have you. I think it's the fact that I already enjoyed Wipeout Pulse as my entertainment for most of the flight to and from Japan, now that I can have the same experience at 1080p with 60fps and blasting music/sfx it floors me. As an additional icing on the cake they have a photo mode. I never figured I would enjoy this since it didn't seem like much on the PSP iteration, my god it is different on the PS3. The options you have and the kinds of pictures you can get out of the game just leave my jaw on the floor. I'll just let the pictures do the talking. Lighting... textures... I am just amazed.

There's no crying in guerilla warfare- Red Faction Guerilla

Man, oh, man! I just spent the last two and a half days in a dreamworld playing this game practically non-stop. I could have spent more, but I'm trying to get a job.

So, anyway! Let's talk about it.

The new Red Faction game is fun as hell. Why? Well, it's not horribly original. There are story missions and then side missions. Completing the side missions helps you complete the main missions, so there is some incentive. It also takes place on a massive map that you drive around to complete objectives. Sound familiar? Saint's Row, Just Cause, gta, Bad Company, etc, etc. What's original? Being able to blow up just about anything. In fact it's a main gameplay aspect. I love you, geomod!

What else? Chaos. You enter an enemy compound (probably alone, there's few options for teamwork with NPCs) and you get swarmed, so you gotta run around with your four weapons (others are available by collecting salvage or by stealing off dead enemies) and blow up every building before MORE enemies come and start fucking your shit up and causing more problems. Also, destroying buildings takes a lot of thought as to where the weak points and best ways to take it down are, and since enemies are usually swarming you, you gotta do it fast and faster than fast. It's really really challenging in an interesting way.

I've played this same game several times in different forms, but it doesn't really matter because it's fun. The story is kinda so-so, but they do take settling on Mars in an interesting direction. The environments are beautiful. The cars are really cool and so are the buildings. It's a very pretty game. The AI will kill you easily, and they have no regard for their own personal safety.

What else can I say?

I still wanna play this game even though I gave it back to Blockbuster and I got shit to do. I would ignore my children (if I had any) to play this game.

yea

-Lyndon Big Johnson

Enjoy the Silence

Many moons have passed since last I posted, and lots of stuff happened. Some of that time was spent wrapping up school and graduation, I visited Japan during this time as well and had some good times there. Also in this time I was fortunate enough to receive a fair share of gifts from my graduation. Using some of this I recently procured a Playstation 3, I am now fortunate enough to have all three of the current consoles. Yeah, basically it is pretty sweet.

While visiting Japan I picked up some rather cool tidbits that were game related. I was tempted to pick up a game for my PSP or DS while there but figured the difficulty I would have for translating it outweighed my desire for any of the titles I saw. I picked up a full set plus extras of some SMT One Coin figures (a picture, the seventh character being a wolf) as well as a lovely Gwendolyn figure from Odin Sphere. I missed out on a gorgeous Valkyria Chronicles figure due to limited luggage space, I also just missed the last Etrian Odyssey gunner figure that was in a store. Finding well done figures from games that I've played is rather exciting...

Ok that's enough random talk about figures, now about games. Having gone on a long trip with plenty of time on an airplane as well as a new console to boot I dug into plenty of games since the last time I posted. The end of my semester was spent playing metric ass-tons of Rock Band and Resident Evil 5. My roommate and I SS ranked all of the mercenary levels save for maybe one? It's been a while but damn co-op mercenaries is hella fun. On my trip to Japan I played a huge amount of Wipeout Pulse for PSP as well as the Star Ocean Second Evolution port (stuck in the same part of the bonus dungeon as I was back in 2000/2001). I had gotten to the last disc of Lost Odyssey while at school, when I eventually get around to finishing it I need to do a summarizing post since the pacing really slowed and it has become slightly tedious to play. Finally, in my time since getting back from Japan I have been putting my PS3 to the test in terms of time in use. I started playing Folklore which I picked up from Bestbuy for $30 and LOVE the art direction/atmosphere but the actual gameplay is a little lacking. I have played some Little Big Planet, it is very unique but I am unsure if I will be able to personally use the customization elements to its full effect. Noby Noby Boy is something that, well it just needs to be experienced because you can't really describe it. I played lots of PS3 demos, in particular the demo for R&C: Tools of Destruction and it reminded me of all the reasons why I loved the first 3 Spyro games on Playstation (yay Insomniac) so lotsa fun there. To end it all before I ramble too much longer I played and beat MGS4 (stayed up this past night cause I couldn't put it down once I had gotten back to Shadow Moses MMMMM so good). That was a very satisfying and great first experience with the PS3 and I hope to make a more detailed post of my very late impressions of the PS3, particularly in comparison now with my other current consoles.

Cat Shit One Movie Trailer - The Animated Series

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

From Hotdogday

"Studio Anima has announced its development of a 12 episode full CG anime adaptation of Motofumi Kobayashis 1998 manga series Cat Shit One. The anime series updates the setting of the original manga from the Vietnam War to modern military conflicts and updates the protagonist rabbits from US soldiers to employees of a private military company. The series is designed as a serious and realistic modern war drama that happens to star cute and fluffy animals."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gaming memories

Well, this could be like a segment.

In Bloodrayne 2, your health and shit upgraded when you did the most nastiest of things to the baddies. I didn't know this until I had Rayne sliding down a pole, saying, "Oh, I could go all night."

It gave me a wide grin.

Ya hear me talkin to ya?

Plugging our own uploaded videos. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.

I'M BACK... but for how long??? (AND A NEW SEGMENT)

Yes, I DO still exist and I AM still a part of this blog. Every time I make a post, it seems like there is a promise that I will contribute much much more... and it never happens.

RANDOM SIDE NOTE: onlinebootycall.com is an absurd concept... makes sense I guess?

Anyways, I won't make any promises that there will be more posts by yours truly. Especially because I just can't take lying to you, the good people who read this, anymore. But I REALLY do want to post more. Maybe a little encouragement would help?... maybe?

As always, I digress. This post serves one purpose: the introduction of a new "segment" to the MS(g)B Centerstage Universe. I have a roommate who seems to have split personalities. Normally, he is a model citizen with an outstanding permanent record. But every so often, he becomes something else... something OFL (pronounced: awful). No one quite knows what causes the change, but what we can be sure of is OFL's honesty is brutal and his insight to the world of gaming is frighteningly accurate.

So without further adieu (I love colloquial language) let me present to you OFL's REVIEW OF... Flower:

"This is like way better than Wii right here."

I promise that I'll do my best to keep this thing running as long as possible. Potential next review from OFL? Little Big Planet of course. Stay tuned.

-JFuK wishes he was JCVD

Bullshit! - Not the Penn and Teller kind

-Tired of RE5 racism debate. The tribal costume for Sheva is iffy. Chris saying, "There's no humanity here" in that trailer is also iffy. Africa is a sensitive place. Everybody's interested in it these days. The 24 season is also in Africa. Is RE5 racist? Well then, don't play it.

-Scored grim fandango. It's sweet. The dude was doing some sweet stuff when he made that game. When I play it, I keep thinking "That's the second-biggest monkey head I've ever seen" from Monkey Island. I go cackle cackle cackle. Thx JFu.

-Little Big Planet is sweet for being a game that anybody can pick up and enjoy and a game that people who play games a lot can enjoy too. Sweet soundtrack. Sweet level design. Sweet thinking that went into that shit (THE BOSS FIgHTS ARE SO COOL!). Sweet multiplayer. Sweet user-generated content.

-Old Street fighter is very ugly. HD Remix did more than I realized. New Street Fighter very not ugly, but I still find it clumsy.

-RE5 is very very good from what JFu and I played so far. Funny that 24's in Africa too and the offline co-op looks like 24 when they show different characters doing shit at the same time.

-I feel like I should go beat Dead Space on Impossible difficulty to prove how easy that game is. Also, I'm a dick.

-We like the Wire. I started watching Underbelly, which is supposed to be Australia's The Wire. In terms of camera-work, it's very UK. What does that mean? Watch a UK show. You'll see. Characters are deep, but they have a tendency to only focus on one character per episode. This means the pacing is kind of odd. There were a lot of quick cuts of the same person but at later times of the day. That always throws me off. I'm of the opinion that if you're only following one character, keep following that character. Don't cut to a radically different setting because I keep thinking you're going to show another character with another storyline. Still, it's an interesting story. There's a narrator and at one point she says, "And that's what started the gangland wars that were to last over 9 years and cause over 30 murders." I wanted to laugh because there's at least 30 murders in season 1 of the Wire alone. Season 4 has over 200. The difference is Underbelly is more closely tied to real events (as far as I know...). The other difference is that criminal characters in Underbelly tend to have wives and children and live in nice suburban homes. These areas are much more transparent than the streets of Baltimore, and the Australian government probably has much more adequate funds to deal with the nuisance.

-MS(g)B Productions released a short. I haven't told JFu about this yet, but I did want to do a FAQ on it, but wanted his help to write it. Please ignore the continuity error of penis size. You may notice the first time I showed my cheesy-Nectar-drenched penis I was a little shy and it appeared smaller than actual. The second time I bare my penis is...more accurate. Two people gave us 5 stars! THX, YO!

-Something else I wanted to say

Lyndon Blah-blah-blah-blah-blase Johnson

Yah- Here is your weekly post - Yah

Weekly Post! Weekly Post!

LyBoJo has yet to finish Z.o.E. 2, but he got money so he wasted it on the first and second Ratchet & Clank games, and boy, are they fun! Well, the first one is. LBJ hasn't hit the second one quite yet because he's too busy playing Samurai Warriors 2, which he also bought. Isn't it great how cheap PS2 games are these days?

Samurai Warriors 2 is the best goddamn game in the series, and I've played just about every game (minus the expansion packs) in the series. It's the most intuitive. The character development is challenging, but not too hard. The stages in the game still require you to be in fifty places at once, but horses are a lot easier to get, which makes things much easier.

And the stories are sweet. The writing is weird at times (sometimes characters respond to each other by talking about a completely different topic), but the stories themselves are Hollywood-worthy. Each one could be a movie, but even better, you as the player get to play each story from every perspective. In one story, you kill your lord. By playing with a different character, you stop the guy who would kill the lord. Then you can play the lord and suffer the betrayal. Over time, I've started to feel really touched by what's going on even though I'm button-mashing while doing it. I was killing peasants out of duty to my lord, but thinking, "I really don't want to do this, but to unite Japan, I must!" Samurai Warriors 2 shows an era of warring states that was full of tragedy and pointless conflict and people with deep inner and outer conflicts. It's also fun to be a fucking badass.

I really really like the game.

I had a revelation where I may have finally admitted that I don't like fighting games or that my expectations for a fighting game are too high. I keep thinking of a fluid, almost choreographed scene of fighting and either that doesn't exist at my skill level or it doesn't exist. They're also repetitive as hell.

-LyBoJo

Rent Only

This guy who recently bought a PS3 is asking me, "What are the good games to buy," so of course, I respond with...

Well...I said, "I think there are a lot of games worth renting, but not worth buying."

That comment deserves a few qualifications

1. I have enough shit in my house
A gamecase takes up space in a house that isn't mine. Oh, yeah, I guess I should mention where blogging has got me, a bedroom in my mom's basement.

2. I beat games fairly quickly
I marathon to the end and then tend not to feel any particular attachment to it. Dead Space is the exception, but I bought that game when I didn't have the money to buy that game and that always makes a thing more important that it should be.

3. I don't do multiplayer
I don't really have the friends or roommmates around to play split-screen, and I'm a shy online gamer, so I don't have a lot of PS Network friends. Also, there haven't been a lot of multiplayer modes or whatever in games I've played recently that were all that appealing. I like Warhawk. The SF4 multiplayer thing is cool, but the game itself is frustrating, so what's the point there?

So, there. Why own when you can rent? I feel this way about homes too. I make these statements in hope of consensus or controversy.

-LBJ paying the landlord in da white house

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! - Street Fighter 4

I hate being this pathetic at a game! Tekken made much more sense to me. This one feels clumsy and unresponsive and unintuitive. Sometimes you're actually supposed to zig-zag with the control stick. WTF? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

It's so pretty!!!!!!! (minus the anime scenes. Anime in a game is lame)

What've you been playing?

I think putting a weekly post just talking about what we've been playing would be a good idea. They do it on Destructoid's primary podcast and I think it's a great idea to throw some impressions of stuff around without exactly giving a full-blown review/final thoughts of a game.

I have started to play the new Prince of Persia (borrowed from a friend) and honestly don't like it so far. I saw my friend beat it as well and wasn't impressed, in fact was slightly irritated by it. I also feel the story of it near the end resonated a lot with Shadow of the Colossus for me, and SotC is by far a more superior game in my eyes on multiple fronts. I'm nearing the end of Crackdown (I think so at least) and have experienced co-op online with my friend and really enjoyed it. I have also been playing a huge amount of Geometry Wars 2 and N+. N+ is addictive as hell to me, the perfection demanded by some levels is frustratingly delicious. Geometry Wars 2, while a very different game from the first, introduces some amazing different gametypes. Pacifism is freaking awesome and I am addicted to it.

On an unrelated note I bought both Mastodon's Blood Mountain and Leviathan albums and they are freaking amazing. This is during my recent adventure into metal.

P.S. JFU do you have PixelJunk or Flower or Super Stardust HD? I want to try those so much since I have found a deep love for the gems I have been finding XBLA.

About this bullshit I'm doing...- Z.O.E. The Second Runner

Personal Story

So, one day, me and the John Fu decide we're going to stop putting off playing Z.O.E. That it's high time that we play the sequel to a very fun game. Well, it's really fucking hard and we have a lot of trouble with it. We end up giving up at the second boss who is the first runner and the main character of the first game. He has two forms, a flying motherfucker and a mech form (a.k.a. Orbital Frame). You can only damage the mech form, but the flying form shot out a lot of shit at us. We couldn't survive long enough most times to fight the mech form.

The fact that you fight the first runner, I always thought that was kinda cool. Albeit this kid didn't have to fucking fight you like he did, but he sincerely thought you were an enemy so who blames him.

I always thought about that and so when I saw Z.O.E. 2 for 7 bucks, I picked it up.

Nothing's changed. The same two problems John Fu and I had back then I have now.

Real shit

Z.O.E. requires you to think fast. Not only think fast, but perceive fast. In less than a second, you have to attack, figure out what your attack did, and figure out what to do next. Not so uncommon, right? Z.O.E. 2's as fast as Ninja gaiden but with a lot more flashy lights, and the flashy lights are really really distracting. It's easy is Z.O.E. 2 to button-smash square twice and suddenly be slammed up against a wall with half-health barely understanding what just happened. As far as you know it sounded like you were hitting something, the controller was vibrating but that could have meant a hit too. I don't know if the fact that the stimulus you get in fighting is hard to discern represents a design flaw. It does make the game harder.

And speaking of design flaws, let me tell you about some ridiculous shit to exemplify a video game standard that I despise. That standard is condition-based damage-dealing. Ok, so you are Dingo Egret in your Orbital Frame. The orbital frame of the chick you're working for has been taken over by a battle A.I.. In order to remove the battle A.I. from the chick's orbital frame, you must grab the orbital frame. Unfortunately, you can only grab the orbital frame after crossing swords which takes a shitload of timing. Of course, she's not always ready to cross swords. You have a limited number of chances to cross swords with her and a certain amount of times you must cross swords with her in order for her to fall back stunned so you can grab and delete her. If you succeed or fail, she will then move on to her attacking stage where she either tries to hit you with a super energy beam or throws little exploding shits at you. Do this over and over again because it will take some fucking time on normal difficulty. Worse yet, be sure to not fuck up and actually hit the other orbital frame because that will eventually kill her and cause you to lose. Don't take hits yourself because you'll lose that way too. And don't leave that crazy bitch in the orbital frame alone because the a.i. will shock the pilot and that will do damage to the orbital frame and you will lose. Do you understand yet how difficult this is?

Condition-based damage-dealing is bullshit. It's that shit in Ocarina of Time where you waited for the spider thing to drop from the ceiling, turn it's back, so you could hit it once, and then it turned around again, so you had to wait again. It's really really boring to have to wait to hit, and especially in cases when motherfuckers can hit you all they want. It's most difficult because you never have to do it just once. You have to keep doing it until the other thing is dead, and I hate that. This part of Z.O.E. may be stretching me harder than anything I've played in a long while, but it's annoying and I lose patience with it very easily.

It's in every game. There are always good times and bad times to attack. Ninja gaiden had a softer version though. You could still attack bosses in the middle of their attacks, it just wasn't advisable. I prefer softer versions like this because it's quicker and there's less waiting around.

I think I can do this thing...

Ok, so I did that thing. Now I'm stuck on a similar battle where I very rarely have chances to do battle, and I'm just very very slowly wearing down the boss' health. Another part of gaming I hate is when difficulty increases solely by enemy health increases. It's not harder now, it just takes longer.

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lyndon BJ

HOLY F@&K

My posts never tend to include thoughtful analysis of a game... and this one will be no different. For your viewing pleasure, I present to you the crazy awesome, epic trailer for God of War III. Seriously, I don't think any game can even come close to matching the sheer brutality of this series. I am weak in the knees. Enough chat... watch the badass!

F.E.A.R - That's right - F.E.A.R.

Boring personal story

Yeah, well, I mean the gamer makes the experience which makes the game. 3 years ago John Fu bought this game for me for graduation (I think it was graduation anyway). He and I and a few others played it. One of the guys was flat hilarious and for every cheap scare, he screamed and said, "Oh my god, F.E.A.R.!" For whatever reason, three years ago, I stopped playing this game at the second building. This time was different.

Actual talk on F.E.A.R.

The best parts of F.E.A.R. (god that's obnoxious to write) are when it makes you question what you're seeing and when the A.I. fucks you over with their super flanking skills.

The worst parts are the bland bland environments which are larger than life itself and impractical as shit. Also, the repetitive enter a room, get attacked by people random battle format gets overplayed like some shit. The puzzles are ok but, without a map, are some times unnecessarily difficult. The game is also slightly immature. The voice actors cuss at really inappropriate times and make inappropriate comments that make you wonder who you're really supposed to like in the game. Maybe that's just me, but I'm not a fan of an exec dismissing sexual harassment complaints as bullshit or your commanding officer calling a hostage an incessant bitch. There are also some technical issues like the Doppler effect and how you may be three floors underneath blood dripping from a ceiling but you can still hear it loud as day. Loading times. Volume control. No subtitles. Pauses in gameplay when something's about to happen. Off-kilter Scripted sequences.

The story goes both good and bad. First of all, I gotta make a comment about this "learn-as-you-go" thing that's come into fashion. It takes a lot of attention, and I wasn't always paying that hard of attention because it was late at night or the voice-mail thing was bothering me or I was looking at a poster or I just thought the concepts were lame. So, I looked up the Wikipedia article to see what I'd missed. John Fu and I ended up doing the same thing for Resistance 2. I would love to spend the time collecting all the intel in the game, but I really don't want to spend the time. Wikipedia's quicker.

So, a prominent defense contractor decides that creating a psychic commander to control its clone army is a good idea (WTF? A psychic commander?), and so they make a psychic commander, but...whoops...he goes nuts. That brings you (nameless, faceless character) in. The fact that you're nameless and faceless becomes important later and would have shocked me if Bioshock hadn't pulled the same trick years later and if I had played these games in chronological order. But, I feel like I'm giving too much away. The game is fucking scary. The villain is very well-characterized by the end. I'm excited for the latest one.

-early in the LBJ

Max Payne the Movie

Well, I hope it helps bring in money and interest in a third game...

The movie has some great instances of character development, especially with BB who has a really twisted monologue. They even mention Max's father, which is sweet! The Valkyr has neat effects on Max. Visually, it's pretty beautiful. I think it takes a lot from Sin City, but it also resembles the source material.

In a lot of other ways it doesn't resemble the source material. Like the ongoing inner monologue has been removed. Mona Sax's sister is now Russian, played by Jackie from That 70s Show/Meg griffin. Bravura is Ludacris. Lupino is latin-american. And Max Payne is working a cold-case unit, not undercover That part especially is troublesome to me.

The old game cover reads "Stand Back, A Man with Nothing to Lose." In the game, that's true. Max is wanted for murder by the police and wanted by the underworld for being a cop. He hits a point of no return and never looks back.

Max Payne in the movie has a career and a chance to explain himself and work with Bravura to get justice. He chooses not to.

Ok, but I'm an asshole.

I would have started this movie out bullet-time gun-fight, heavy inner monologue and explain my way back in between the shooting. You can explain the bullet-time with Valkyr as a combat-enhancing drug. Then cast fucking Michael Madsen as Max! I would also have the guns in the movie have recoil or semi-automatics run out of bullets.

This movie wasn't horrible. I just wanted to direct it myself, you know.

I'm that asshole

-The Lo Bo Jo

When acknowledging a good game is not good enough

In about 2 weeks Killzone 2 will be coming out for the PS3. Judging by the amazingly positive reception it is garnering from reviews it should be an awesome payoff for those who have waited patiently. I do not have a PS3 but I did play the first iteration on the Playstation 2 I thought it was pretty solid, multi-player FPS games are not really my thing anymore. One primary praise I have seen for Killzone 2 so far has been the amazingly stellar level design in it's multi-player levels. This would be a huge incentive for me personally when picking up something like this. So what is the point of this post? I love video games, evidently another really good game has been made and one would think the world would rejoice in it's impending release to the public. No, that isn't the case because inhabitants of the interwebs can't allow it to have a peaceful reception.

Jim Sterling from Destructoid wrote an awesome overview of this phenomena which is apparently happening. Overzealous fans always seem to want to ruin it for everyone. Not only has there been a volatile response to the lowest review for Killzone 2 on Gamerankings from Total Video Games but fans of the game in question have been quick to post on most anything related to the game. This is causing me to recall months ago on Gametrailers how multiple times a week people were making a thread on their forums about Killzone 2 and how they were looking forward to it. As opposed to listening to most of the comment responses and making a Killzone 2 permanent post in the PS3 section the fans had to keep starting threads in general discussion every week. That is either an unfortunate group of fans which the game is ashamed to be associated with or an incredibly genius marketing scheme. On top of it all these crazed fans (I sympathize with rational fans who are unfortunately tied to these people just because they appreciate a good game) are attacking reviews that give Killzone 2 a perfect score. Adam Sessler makes a great response to his critics that described G4's review with "Sure it's a 5/5 but it killed you guys a little on the inside, didn't it?".

If anything this news has put a smile on my face at how ridiculous it is. Honestly though it's rather depressing when the controversy caused by this game is made more by it's most loyal fans in being not satisfied enough with it's high review scores. Evidently if someone gives a game an 8/10, which is still a great score, because it is not perfect and differs from other ratings the person should lose their job? Fanboys disgust me and just need to get out. I personally like playing games. I don't care what console it is on, when a game is done well I am happy.

A Crossover for the Ages

I like video games. I also like David Bowie. In fact, I like both a whole lot. God bless you Destructoid for taking the time to combine the two.

Starman will blow your mind

I'M BACK BITCHES

YES... this means I have a new, WORKING laptop... which might mean I will post more but only time will tell. I've got a few things to say... maybe they will eventually make it on to this blog. Anyways, know that I haven't abandoned all of ye 3 readers. Huzzah for hp and backlit keyboards!!!

Bits and Bobs

So first I wanna cite two awesome posts that were put up on Kotaku earlier today.

First some people over at SA produced a bunch of oldies/"classic" covers for games here. I love the retro look to them and the somewhat simplistic presentation, very cool. Also they featured an author's take on the Columbine shootings here. While the subject and issue has been beaten to death many times I found the excerpt a refreshing read and piqued my interest in one day checking the book out.

Also I found the title of this special unit rather humorous. This obviously means a zombie outbreak will be ensuing near VTech.

I am now heading out to pick up some stuff from Best Buy with a handy Reward Zone coupon. I aim to grab some more Microsoft Points and then pick up R-Type Dimensions which came out today on XBLA. I love shoot-em-ups so very very much. Although I don't think I am very good at them I am absolutely entranced whenever I play them. I am glad that I own quite a bit because the differing styles of gameplay amongst them offer such unique experiences. Oh god I have so many now that I think about it, they definitely end up working off however much you pay for them because you revisit them so much.

A Million Endings

You know how Lord of the Rings had a million endings, and so did mgs4 and Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2? You know how the millions of twists to make the millions of endings undercut the original motives of the characters?

I'm used to that now. I think I'm starting to be ok with it. I don't like it, you could have made a much tighter ending, but there are a lot of things that I'm glad didn't happen at the end of Yakuza 2....so whatever. It could have been worse.

The honeymoon with that game has been over for a long time. It ended about halfway through. When every thing but the main story is spectacular, watching boring cutscenes with the tear-jerking up to 11 makes the whole gaming experience feel...ughh

I Love Christian Bale

I saw a link to this and just wow. This is awesome.



I honestly can't judge the situation since you hear about how strung out and stressful working on the set of a movie can get. Especially when they're under pressure to get stuff done on time while taking enough material to satisfy when putting the movie together. Either way it's intense and awesome as hell.

Saints Row 2 - Voiceover Trailer

Eliza Dushku is fucking hot and Daniel Dae Kim is a badass!

This is that shit I was talkin about before. This sets the tone for the rest of the game. Your character is above law and order. Cops are just a nuisance.

How come no one else played a hot african-american female? Aren't video games for escapism? I mean, at first, I was kinda uncomfortable, but...it was so worth it.

OK OK OK OK OK OK OK NOKAY? OK? FUCK YOU, KAY!

-shit

RE5 Impressions

Do I need to introduce this game or its demo? No, so now my goal is to make you, the reader, laugh or nod your head accordingly. So, let's do it.

Shit!
There is a lot of shit going on in this game! More enemies, pyramid heads, and another person's inventory and health to manage. Not that she's a burden, actually I feel like her AI's a better and quicker shot than me, but still suddenly she's too close to the pyramid head and he'll chop her down, suddenly she's knifing people and you think, "Oh, how cool that she's conserving ammo" when really she's out of bullets! Suddenly as you're about to uppercut some dude, she shoots him and he dies and you curse her for wasting her ammo! Do you even need to conserve ammo as much in this game? And where am I supposed to hide? Are there actually good cover positions? Shit, this shit stresses me out. I'm gonna throw a grenade to "help" Sheva...

MATTER OF FACT...


Sheva
Bitch, fuck your accent, and fucking help me! There's a vaj comin' out of that dude's head and it wants me! Why are you making me jiggle my left stick so hard? I don't know if that does damage to the controller long term! Oh, yeah, and stop calling me partner! It sends mixed messages, "tiger!"

Survival Horror?
Why the fuck can't you run away? I mean that's not really the point, but every once in a while when Sheva is too dumb to back away from encroaching zombies, I really just want the safety of running the fuck away or jumping fences or some shit. Survival horror = run away please!

Environments
Bigger, seem much bigger and somewhat intimidating to navigate. They're prettier, fun to explore. Thank god for red barrels.

Sound
Chris, why you make so much noise when you run? What is all your equipment here even for? And goddamn, why you gotta pant after every time you change weapons? It's like, "Sigh...I guess I'll pull out my rifle..." Xx_Chris_xX! Fucking do it! Zombies comin' up the hell right now!

Chris v. Leon
Leon's a little smarmy, you know? Chris seems a little nicer. And I wonder about Sheva and his relationship to her.

Africa
I remember thinking there was some imperialist/colonial undertones in having a game like this in Africa. I mean, if you want, you could see RE4 as a rural/urban class struggle, maybe even some feudal shit with that little spanish Napoleon dude. I don't know, so I thought I would feel uncomfortable. I mostly just feel scared. Sure, the game takes advantage of the unstable nature of African nations, but...I don't think it's to a negative effect. I don't know. Shit. I aint no anthropologist.

I think this'll be a fun game once I stop feeling so stressed out about basic combat. Shit!

-Wazzza mah nahme, huhh? Wazza?

An RPG that made me feel like I was in the 90s

These past two weeks I have been back at school I have started my venture into the game Lost Odyssey. It was made by the studio Mistwalker which is headed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. This amazing man birthed the first Final Fantasy game in 1987 and the rest is history from there. Mistwalker even has Nobuo Uematsu on board to score the games. Not only does this line-up have the father of Final Fantasy games but the creator of all the memorable tunes as well working on this game Lost Odyssey. Despite all these ties to groundbreaking, in my opinion, titles I had mostly missed their progress these past few years. Part of it was most likely due to my not having a 360 until last summer so I tended to not pay attention to news regarding consoles I don't own.

Over winter break I noted that I had listened to a lot of Destructoid's podcasts, mainly RetroForceGo! They had constantly referenced Lost Odyssey as a recent RPG that really echoed the feelings that they experienced when playing some of the older RPGs from the 90s such as FF4 or FF6. This peaked my interest since up until purchasing Lost Odyssey I didn't own any JRPGs for my 360, and that is one of the primary food groups in my gaming diet. After refreshing my memory about Mistwalker studio, big news years ago but I didn't own a 360 at the time, I decided it was time to try the JRPG offerings on my Microsoft console. Going into this I have relatively high expectations, something I try to not do but honestly how can you not if you're a huge fan of the FF series.

The game comes on 4 dual layered DVDs. Noticing this reminded me of the ridiculous arguments I would see on blogs regarding PS3 or Xbox superiority. It also made me realize that multiple disc games, while cumbersome, is an aspect that I really fucking love about games. It's like having multiple books in a series that are later released in a complete collection that's about the same size as a single book due to something new and awesome. In my mind either one is cool, but having multiple books each with differing cover art and that sense of progression when you finish one and get ready to dive into another is something that I dig. So when I was about 18 hours into Lost Odyssey and it was disc swap time, I had flashbacks to good old FF7 (that new sense of purpose after losing a team member and it's time to pop in that next disc and hunt this ass-clown down). So yeah, obviously if it was on one disc I'd be cool with that too. Something about that "inconvenience" of swapping discs filled me with some great nostalgia.

Ok now the characters, story, and graphics. Looking at the cover I don't really dig the character design. Yes it IS very cliche, but honestly you're playing a JRPG so I have lenience for them in that department. The story is shaping up to be similar to classic FF tales from the SNES era. One thing that I do enjoy though is that FOR ONCE there is a reason for the main character to be so "emo" or bored with life. Kaim is an immortal, he has lived for thousands of years and has witnessed most everything. If having loved ones and losing them through the ages numerous times wouldn't desensitize you to the world, I wouldn't know what would. Also the almighty power of amnesia strikes again on the hero, but what I think is the reason not a cop-out at all and works well. Also the Thousand Years of Dreams sequences are freaking AMAZING. Granted this will probably only appeal to some, basically as you play the game certain areas or events will trigger a lost memory (from the amnesia) from the recesses of Kaim's memory and fills you in more on what he's been through and are just good stories. While the overarching story is shaping up to be pretty derivative, I feel that the Thousand Years of Dream sequences along with the backgrounds of some of the characters is making it such a fleshed out experience that I am loving it.

The characters are interesting, Jansen is shaping up to be one of my favorite videogame characters EVER. There are Cooke and Mack who are kinda clones of Palom and Parom from FF4 but much more developed. One thing that helps a lot with the game is the amazing voice acting. Initially I thought Kaim's voice was sort of boring and not that great. Over time though I have grown to be quite fond of it, especially since you start out just after an exhausting and depressing battle which obviously would leave him sounding deflated and tired. I laughed a good amount at dialogue and the voice actors from games such as Persona 3 & 4 as well as Digital Devil Saga or Shadow Hearts. This being said, Jansen's voice actor had me collapsing on the ground dying of laughter with some of the stuff he says. The graphics are beautiful, there are a lot of cut-scenes at the beginning as you are hammered with story setup but once you get into the rhythms then it isn't really an overload. One thing to note, upon starting up a new game when that opening cut scene began I honestly felt the same blown away experience of seeing that cut-scene of the mechanical spider chasing Squall from 8. That whole "being floored" magic of the video I honestly hadn't felt in a while. This isn't to say the opening cinematic is the best thing I've seen to it, for some reason it struck a chord with me. Definitely more so than the unexciting (in my opinion) trailer of FF XIII that was released yesterday or so.

Now we have the mechanics. The combat returns to good old turn based with a twist. It has a system I would say is similar to the rings from Shadow Hearts for attacking. This and a front/back row system which reduces damage to the back row as long as the guard meter has something in it. The guard meter starts at a value the same as the total hp of the members in the front row and is not refreshed when you heal your members. You do eventually learn skills which assist in refilling the guard meter. This and the immortal/mortal skill system allows a method of character customization for equipping skills which I find enjoyable.

So yeah, I am currently on Disc 2 and loving Lost Odyssey. I understand completely what the RetroForceGo! crew meant by saying the game is an older RPG with current-gen-trappings. There is some sense of purity in the feeling that I get when playing it, the same as when I played Dragon Quest 8. It has gone back to the barebones of what an RPG is for me. I think whatever this "feeling" happens to be is what is missing from my experiences with Final Fantasy games (the last one I felt amazed with was 9 but I hope to give FF10 a second chance this semester at some point, and maybe finally get around to playing 12 since I never did and have no opinion of it yet... except that I think Vaan is a stupid character). So yeah this game rocks, I can't wait to see it unravel and I also can't wait to try my hand at Blue Dragon as well. The lukewarm reception of both of Mistwalker's RPG titles on the 360 has caused them to cancel their third RPG project that was slated for the 360. This fact has me in tears, oh well.

I have also began playing Crackdown recently. I had never understood the appeal of GTA games despite acknowledging them being solid games, I wonder if Crackdown will be a good way to ease me into this weird sandbox genre that I am so foreign to. I just never got the desire to want to just walk around in a game and goof off I guess? Not to say that is what you do in them but that is one of the appeals. I am enjoying in Crackdown my crazy jumping and scaling buildings and picking up cars and being a complete bio-engineered badass while cleaning up the city. Partially why Prototype is looking interesting to me. Also I would like to say that I own GTA4 and hope to finish playing through it at some point so I can have a solid opinion on the game & it's series, but I get bored so quickly.

Saints Row

Update, blah blah blah

I watch a lot of Bruce Campbell and Bruce doesn't really like to kill people in his shows. Otherwise I watch Battlestar galactica, and that makes me uncomfortable a lot because people kill Cylons or they're dicks to each other for no reason (this is kinda unrelated there, dude). Ooh, and Burn Notice (it's a Bruce Campbell show but he's not the main character), I watch that a lot too. A new episode just went up tonight! How grand! But, yeah, since the main character can't leave Miami, it's a bad idea to get the cops on him by dropping bodies.

Oh, and Yakuza. Not a lot of people die in that even though most moves you use in-game would kill a normal person.

Saint's Row had great music. It had a lot of nice touches too on the old gta framwork. It also surprisingly has character development. In an extra sequence of the game, an old friend of the main character asks, "What the fuck is wrong with you? The Saints were supposed to clean up the streets. Now you peddle drugs, prostitutes, murder police at will. Why did you become a sociopath?"
Your character's answer is along the lines of, "This is my city. I run it my way," and you shoot your old friend.

I had to spoil that for ya'll because I thought it was neat. Your character is an asshole and kinda-Kratosish is his/her murderous rise to the top. So, Saint's Row 2 is the sociopath's gta? It's Postal 2 if Postal 2 were gta? Something like that. It reminds me of Max Payne and Max Payne's clone...game whose name I don't remember. Both those games were similar but had their own stylistic differences.

Both gta and Saint's Row are really good games. The writing and voice-acting in Saint's Row 2 is pretty good, and some of the cutscene direction is out-of-control epic, really fun to watch! The camera was a little funky. The controls are too. The worse part is the memory and this may be a ps3 issue. The game forgets cars in the time it takes you to turn around. It's a goldfish swimming in a tank. The game gets progressively difficult but not too much so. A lot of the missions are go to a place, shoot some gang lieutenants, repeat, repeat. Some of the biggest difficulty comes from the memory and control issues.

That's what I got.

1/29/08

Earlier business-

I feel like gta4 was part of a movement in the entertainment media questioning our love of violence and general shoot-em-up thingies. Since gta4, I've had some moral dilemnas killing folk in a video game. In Fallout 2, you could kill whole drug families, and I kept feeling, "These people don't deserve this. Why don't I use my guns to establish common law?"

Saints Row 2 throws that all out the window. Lemme give you an example.

One of your buddies is accused of murdering 300+ people, so you shoot your way into the courthouse (the comic included is a dramatization of the cutscene), and as you fight your way back out of the courthouse, the judge of your buddy's trial has a shotgun. This shit is bananas.

There's no cover system like gta4. In fact, your health magically comes back and is only really threatened when you're charging at least five dudes with assault rifles.

Am I complaining?

Shit, no! Saints Row 2 is some surreal ass fun and the character customization system is amazing. I got me a hot female main character, and I love to play dress up. I know. It sounds creepy. I'm...I'm kinda ashamed, yeah...

I just...I dunno...if I uploaded my character on to eHarmony as my ideal woman, maybe...you know, maybe she would be up there? I'd like to think she would.

Oh, man. Umm, I need to cry. I'll finish this up later.

-LBJ

Update
I'm not as upset anymore. I got my character to turn towards the screen and kept hitting the compliment command. She really really likes me, you know. Our connection is special.

Yakuza 3 - That shit looked weird

Did you see this? I thought it looked weird...

Until I saw this video!

NOW I BELIEVE! KAZUMA KIRYU! DRAGON AMONG MEN! I LIKE YOUR NEW HAWAIIAN SHIRT!

-fanboy

Prince of Persia-The New One

Whooo...

There were a couple of things I liked about Prince of Persia. I liked the fact that you play in a world and you can progress how you'd like to. You can just kinda keep swinging and jumping and roof-running and you're playing the game, fertilizing the fertile grounds, collecting the light seeds, fighting the corrupted. This in combination with the talking system was neat. So you talk with Elika about wherever you are at the moment if you so desire or you talk to her about silly shit. It's neat because the game doesn't force cutscenes on you or progress slower than you wanted. You control how much information Elika tells you. It's a really cool idea, especially because the game is so sandboxish. The sense of time is also interesting. You wake up the demon god and then I felt a sense of urgency to stop this resurrection thing before it happened, you know? There's a really good sense that events are occurring in real time. The game takes about an afternoon (I assume), and that's about the length of the story too. The physical relationship between Elika and the Prince is very tight. They really work together like Ico and his crazy spirit girl, which makes the banter confusing to me because I would have problems touching someone who kept putting me down like an asshole or flip-side I would have problems wanting to help some tight-ass bitch.

Alright, so I was positive there for a little bit.

I liked the idea of the talking system...but...goddamn...the main character is a sarcastic, pretentious prick, and the female counterpart is the spiritual, sensical one. This means they get stuck on some abstract concept over and over and have arguments about it that are deep, yo. Oh, yeah...that was sarcasm...see? Now just imagine everything I said was dipped in sarcastic or some pseudo-playful tone.

It's pretty cliche. The writing of this "banter" they have is also pretty bad. There are good moments sometimes like when the Prince keeps pestering Elika to play "I Spy" with him, but it would be much more powerful to me if the characters showed a lot more depth earlier on or actual real emotion. Example- unwillingly awakening a dark god you didn't even believe in would cause me to be irrationally angry at the girl who led me into that situation. The whole mission to me would be primarily driven by guilt, and that would make things all "dark." Who likes dark shit, anyway? (grumble grumble, I FUCKINg DO!) My point is Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are famous for their relationships because in both cases the characters are very drawn to each other in act and word...well, I mean Wanda can't really talk with the horse, but the frightened neighing gets the idea across. The Prince and Elika are almost constantly bickering. It would have even been cool if the Prince and Elika started off awkwardly working with each other and then gradually began to trust one another, but it just didn't seem to be happening.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but the premise for the game itself is very flimsy and also cliche. Prince wondering around with donkey finds chick running away (not very clear why she was running away) from dark figure. Prince fights dark figure. Dark figure turns out to be father of Elika and leader (maybe?) of some tribe protecting a god of light, but for some reason he thinks he should stop doing that and chop the tree sealing the god of darkness. Boom! Apocalypse coming! SHIT! well, I guess we better stop that...

Talking with Elika reveals more about the Corrupted you're fighting, but their backstories are very simplistic. This guy was looking for power, he got it, then it corrupted him. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This is why I stopped. The story feels like an afterthought to the whole game.

I don't know. Maybe you will like the type of dialogue between the prince and Elika. I know people who talk like that and they have smarmy smiles, patting themselves on the back for the clever things they're saying, but I keep thinking they're just bad actors and wish they would open up more. Yes, this is a personal judgment on some people, but if I don't know you, reader, then don't take it personally.

I didn't beat Prince of Persia. I actually had to stop myself from playing it because like the other Prince of Persia games since the first one, I kept playing it to see if it would get better until the moment I was assured it didn't. I stopped because I knew it would let me down at some point and I would feel very odd about it afterwards.

And finally, goddamnit, MeCool and JohnFU...Shinobi was a great fucking game. It was quick and hard. It demanded a lot from the player so it was really engaging, and I have fond memories of miraculous Tate attacks in Bibbles' basement.

I'm as pretentious an asshole as the people who wrote Prince of Persia.

I love Peanut sauce. Put that with some dutch mayo and ketchup on a falafel or with Frites...DELICIOUS!

L0Y0N0nY B DC

OhBAMMA!

Bamma jamma bamma lamma!
OHBAHMAH!

In four days, that inauguration stuff goes down and I may just have an in.

WHAT IS THIS POST ABOUT?

Why the top game of 2008 or something (I'm really bad with time periods since I play a lot of older games)

It is (In my humble opinion)...

gta4
or
Dead Space

If Yakuza 2 came out in America this year, then that's the fucking best game of the year. I like Yakuza 2 so much that I have no complaints. Well, except that sometimes the story gets really cheesy. But it's like when I played Fallout 2, no complaints even though the team NPCs were shite and it was hard as fuck. You work around that shit and you become stronger because of it.

"I'm a piece of work just ask anyone"
-Constantine

2008 In Gaming For Me (AKA realizing how few new games I played)

I was going to do my top 10 of the year and after browsing over releases from this year I realized I have spent most of the year catching up on 360 games. Having purchased the console this summer and getting my hands on things like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Rock Band, Lost Planet, Forza 2, etc. then I have not actually played through a large number of releases this year. Because of this I barely played over 10 games that were released this year. Because of that I will put together my top 5 favorite releases of this year.

1. Braid
2. Persona 4
3. Rock Band 2
4. Dead Space
5. Devil May Cry 4

Ummm, well I honestly only just downloaded Braid last week and played through and completed it. I just found out there is more that I could have gotten, but at this point I am proud of my completion of the game with a friend and putting together all the puzzle pieces without aid from hints. That being said I had no expectations and was pleased and blown away by the elegance and grace that the game has. It just exists, and I found it a refreshing change of pace from the norm. Persona 4 was rad and satisfied my JRPG hunger for the year (I started it right after completing Nocturne for a second time through, I got the neutral ending this time whoooo). Next Rock Band 2 improved on the first iteration in so many ways, I also live by the amazing DLC. Dead Space was a game that, in my opinion, was executed well and drew on source material that I grew up with so I ate it up. While some critics have sighted it as unoriginal or a sign of stagnation in the survival horror genre (I have heard some people insist that the genre has died all together and Dead Space and RE4 are just action games, which I partially agree with) I found it cured my itch for a scary gaming experience. While it may not be as psychologically streamlined as the Silent Hill series or as creepy as other franchises I liked it. Off the top of my head I can't think of how many sci-fi horror games there have been in recent years, and Dead Space filled that hole in my life. Finally I really liked DMC 4. While I feel that it wasn't as good as the first or third iteration of the series, it is a solid game and I have accumulated a good amount of playtime with my copy.

Honorable Mentions:
Ninja Gaiden 2
Castle Crashers

Ninja Gaiden 2 is a breakneck action game, much faster combat than DMC 4 (I feel like DMC 4 had slower combat compared to DMC and DMC 3). This sometimes leads to ridiculously unlucky deaths to enemies and it does suffer from a wonky camera at times, but overall the game is way above average. Like the DMC series, the ultimate pleasure in these games comes from those completely mesmerizing moments where you're just in-the-zone and perform something amazing. Or that moment that you get past that frustrating section and it was beautiful.

Castle Crashers is such a great homage to beat 'em ups that I was filled with such joy while playing it. The art style is fantastic, humor that had me laughing constantly, and accessibility of classics like Gauntlet and Streets of Rage. A wonderful multiplayer experience that shouldn't be missed (the game was even fun playing solo as well which was a surprise).

Games that I sorely missed and need to try from this year are Lost Odyssey, Bangai-O Spirits, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Sonic Unleashed (I dun care, I need to experience it), Tomb Raider: Underworld, and possibly more.

Currently Playing: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend, Final Fantasy 4 (from FF Chronicles on Playstation)

What about you guys LBJ and J FU K? I know it's been a while since you've posted... but what has been up?

Persona 4 Impressions (Spoiler Free)

I Finished playing the game yesterday afternoon. My final save had a little over 120 hours clocked in for a first play through on expert difficulty. I actually think I may have had a tougher time playing through Persona 3 on normal difficulty than this game. I know that play time count is a little ridiculous but I think I tend to take abnormal amounts of time to complete games. One thing to consider is that I do not leave my console/game on and walk away, in fact most of the time if I do need to step away then I save and put it on the title screen and load it when I resume. I am not sure why I acquired this quirk (for RPGs mostly) but I like knowing the total time required to complete a game for some odd reason (I don't even consider playtime when considering the value of a game). I enjoyed the game a great deal, but am unsure where it ranks when compared to Persona 2 or 3 yet for me. I think I'll come to this conclusion a little further down the road when I have thought about it some more.

The story this time around is that you, the protagonist, are going to live with your relatives in a small town while your parents are out of the country or something. Right as you begin high school a series of gruesome murders begin, one thing leads to another and you become embroiled in a very unique and intriguing murder mystery which grabs hold and doesn't let go. The game is filled with plenty of social themes such as big store chains moving in on smaller family owned businesses, the pressure of inheriting family businesses, the normal lives of pop idols... you know typical RPG issues? Hah, the story does a good job of weaving these things, and obviously many other arcs, into a normal high school life drama that happens to have a killer on the loose in this small town. If I had to relate it to something it would actually be an anime, Higurashi. Granted it isn't similar to it in many aspects at all, but I felt it was close to it in mood (unfortunately P4 did not have it's own Rena). The story hooked me and it has some great twists and turns that keep you going.

In terms of gameplay they have adjusted it so that party-members can be set to AI or manual control. The ability to do things both after school and in the evening I think opens up more possibilities on how to allocate your time to events. The social link system remains similar to P3 and the fusion system remained the same from the previous iteration. I am sad that they didn't bring back the demon conversation system from Persona 2 but oh well, we can't have it all. I am still coming out of the trance of playing the game for such a long period so I haven't been able to "zoom out" and fully compare it to my other RPG experiences yet but I can say that it was fantastic and a solid entry into the Persona series. I recommend the game to anyone who is willing to pour a good amount of time into an RPG (I think on normal mode and going through it quickly you could probably do it in 60-80 hours? Just a guess). The only thing about this fantastic gem is that it isn't for everyone. I tend to play and enjoy most ANY type of video game. Whether it be Western RPG, JRPG, FPS, Platformer, Shoot 'em Up, Action, Racing, what have you I tend to enjoy them. I say this because I feel that even if people are down with RPGs they may not like the new iterations of Persona (see Persona 3 and on). The emphasis on dungeon crawling and introduction of the schedule mechanic and social link/interaction/dating sim mechanic makes for a very different and unique experience. Those that would find this interesting I think is someone who already plays dating/social life sims, already played the previous and liked it, or is just looking for a really different take from the average console RPG. While I loved Persona 2 the new direction the series is taking is enjoyable to me as it is something totally different than what I am used to.

Now to savor my last days of break...

Back From Long Absence

I guess once the semester was coming to an end and winter break started I adjusted primarily to getting work done, sleep, and playing the occasional game. You know, the basic life necessities. This did not prove very beneficial for my contributions to this blog so for that I apologize, if it really mattered or anyone was disappointed (probably not).

In the last weeks of school I borrowed Mirror's Edge from a friend who had it checked out from GameFly. I forget the exact amount of time needed, but it was somewhere between 6-9 hours of play time. I did not spend a good deal of time in the time trial mode of the game, it was a feature that I found interesting but it didn't tickle my fancy. The first point to lay down is that I don't really consider the length of a game a major factor BUT I feel that the price of a game should possibly factor in game length or amount of time one can spend with a game. My first criticism of the game would be that $60 for a game that is so short and the time trial mode is composed of the campaign levels (if there were additional levels not featured in the campaign I may have missed them). The online/multi-player angle the game features are leaderboards which feature the fastest player times and the ability to race against these player's ghosts. I personally felt that these features were not enough to warrant a $60 price tag and am very thankful that my friend had it rented so I wasn't duped into immediately buying it.

The major points to get out of the way which has been highlighted by any other reviews has been that the cut-scenes in the game are absolutely ridiculous. The in game graphics are so fantastic you wonder why they decided on e-surance commercial style interludes to convey a story. I found the story to be pretty 'meh' and boring. I have heard some found the game to be very unforgiving due to bad level design. I did not find the occasional death due to a jump in the wrong direction due to being chased to be a big hang-up for me. To sum up Mirror's Edge it is a great concept and worth a rent. While it is an incredibly cool concept (especially since parkour is super rad) the game itself feels overpriced for what it provides, a half-baked and rushed attempt (e-surance cut scenes and story).

I have been playing a large amount of Rock Band 2. DLC for that game is my best friend. The standout DLC songs that I have gotten have been the Metallica 3 pack, both NIN packs (I passed on Capital G though), All that Remains track pack, Pixies Doolittle album, Peace Sells... but Who's Buying album (and Megadeth's newer single), and finally The Colour and the Shape (My favorite Foo album). In my time playing Rock Band I have found I end up having the most joy when playing these ridiculous metal songs, the speed and intensity is awesome. While I have dabbled in metal before, it has made me have a new appreciation for it. I am unfortunately not a ridiculous shredder of the guitar controller or drums for that matter (I can manage to get by on hard guitar for most things, expert bass on most things, and only medium drums) but I love me some singing and can manage expert singing on most songs. Being at college the absolute joy of easily being able to play with 4+ people on short notice adds to the addictive nature of the game and the incorporation of the game as a mainstay in weekly entertainment activities.

Coming home after finals I was greeted with Persona 4 and the other Persona 4 swag that I had pre-ordered. I have been playing it religiously while at home, I am about 80 hours in and at the end of October in the game. Social Links seem easier to manage than Persona 3 and overall they have improved and tweaked so much of the previous iteration. They got rid of Evokers (I thought they were stupid in the first place) and have gone back to the previous Persona style of summoning animation. Now that I am probably about halfway, maybe a little more, I personally feel like there is less of an emphasis on the fighting/dungeon crawling than the third one and more events and dialogue. I am digging it and will have a more complete impression of it once I finish it.

Lastly I have been trying out Every Extend Extra Extreme and Castle Crashers on XBLA. They are both addictive and fantastic, I look forward to playing Castle Crashers more when I get back to campus after break as it really is best when played multiplayer.

While playing these games this break I have discovered podcasts! While being a little late to the party I am absolutely loving listening to Destructoid's various podcasts. RetroforceGO! is shaping up to be my new favorite addiction, and I was enthused when I saw Topher and Colette's names in the credits for Castle Crashers. Also listening to them with Chad (I love Chad so much haha) and Dyson discuss game related topics is AMAAAAAAZING and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in listening to pure awesome. That's all for now... I feel like I should put forth more effort into making some updates more frequently. It will probably happen.