Hyperbole Kills

Friends don't let friends read IGN previews

- The second level of the demo is when my entire face was blown off by maximum awesome.

In case you weren't sure, that's his entire face, not just a small portion. But then, I suppose the awesome would not have been "maximum" if it only took out his eyes and nose.

Note: this preview was about Sega's upcoming Bayonetta, which evidently features Maximum Awesome on the second level.

Too Many Games!

Rebel FM is really making me want to try Gun, it's too bad I'm already playing some lengthy games and am about to have June drop on me.


Maybe there's a demo...

inFAMOUS Demo Impressions

The demo for inFAMOUS dropped a few short hours after I was mentioning it here as part of my summer list and I had a chance to play it a little bit this morning. So far it looks to be exactly what it's been billed as, a lot like Crackdown, but with more of a superhero feel to it. The powers were a lot of fun to use, your character has some great freedom of movement, feeling a bit like Spider-Man with his ability to stick to surfaces on the fly and quickly move in and out of situations.

The controls feel a bit wonky, I'm not sure if this is just a result of my general (and longstanding) discomfort with the Playstation Controller's layout and analog sticks, or if the controls themselves could just use some tightening. I suppose time will tell.

I'm definately looking forward to playing some more.

These People Really Exist?

Girl becomes an atheist at college, family overreacts a little bit:

Dear Margo: Our daughter started college a year ago, and we’ve noticed during her visits home that she’s not the sweet, innocent girl we sent away for higher learning. We raised her with strong Christian beliefs, but lately she’s saying that she’s joined an atheist club on campus and is questioning everything we taught her. Now my husband refuses to let her in the house and is threatening to turn her in to the FBI. I’ve tried to cure our daughter and reconcile with her, but nothing seems to work. I’ve prayed over her at night while she sleeps, enlisted friends in a phone prayer tree and even spoken to my priest about the possibility of an exorcism. I’m at my wits’ end. How can I recover my daughter and keep her from hell? — God-fearing

Dear God: Whoa, dear. While I am sympathetic to anyone’s devotion to their religion, you need to realize that your daughter is a sentient being with the right to reject your religious views if she so chooses. Your husband is pathetically misguided if he thinks he can call the FBI to report the "crime" of your daughter joining an atheists club. Ditto for the exorcism. This young woman is not possessed, demonic or doing weird things; she is merely thinking and questioning the religion she grew up with. I would encourage you to understand that all people, your daughter included, have the right to think for themselves, particularly about something as meaningful as religion. As for hell, well, she appears willing to take her chances. — Margo, contemplatively

Whoa indeed.

Meet the Spy

In honor of the new Team Fortress 2 update released this weekend, I thought I would draw some attention to the really amusing "Meet the Team" videos that Valve's been putting out to promote the game. Their latest video, "Meet the Spy," is arguably the best so far, but they're all highly amusing.

Christmas in June

Looks like the second half of May and on into June are maddeningly full of potentially high-quality titles, I need a game plan.

UFC: I played and really enjoyed the demo for this one, but i'm not sure if a really involved sports game is the best move for me right now, since I already have a few long term games on my plate.

Verdict: Put it off or Rent

Bionic Commando: I keep hearing good things and the game is reviewing pretty well so far, but I'm big on combat, which I hear takes a bit of a back seat to the swinging action.

Verdict: Rental

Infamous: Man... I love Crackdown and I love the decent Spider-man games, everything i've seen about this game has looked like an addicting marriage of both.

Verdict: Must Buy

Prototype: This one looks a hell of a lot like Infamous, I'll have to see how it reviews.

Verdict: Wait and see

Ghostbusters: I've played it, I liked it, It's fucking Ghostbusters, I'm buying this game, period.

Verdict: Day One

Red Faction Guerrilla: RFG came out of nowhere and really shocked me. I remember playing (and quickly casting aside) the original Red Faction, which I felt was a clever gimmick in the form of destructible environments and not much else. The demo for this one showed something that feels a lot more like Grand Theft Get Your Ass to Mars. It looks like there's a lot of game here and tons of open world mars action, but much like UFC, I think this one is going to ask for a lot more time then I have to give right now.

Verdict: Pass, evaluate later.

So that's the plan, let's see how well I actually stick to it when I'm standing in Gamestop.

Podcasts: Out of the Game

I realized recently that I listen lot of Podcasts, so much so that I think I've become either an expert or an addict. To that end I decided to shed a little light on some of the shows that have been occupying so much of my time.

Out of the Game

OttG is a podcast featuring ex-game journalists (enthusiast press or whatever) Jeff Green, former Editor in Chief at Computer Gaming world, who has moved onto development at EA; Luke Smith, formally of 1up, now employed by Bungie; N'Gai Croal, once mainstream media's most prolific gaming voice, now a freelance game design consultant, Robert Ashley freelancer, musician, and creator of the fantastic internet radio show, A Life Well Wasted; and hosted by Shawn Elliot, who now hangs his hat alongside Ken Levine at 2K Boston. For those who have been following the gaming media, this is something of a dream team. With the exception of N'Gai, every one of these guys is a legend in gaming podcast circles.

On would think that getting a group like this together would lead to some sort of mega-gaming podcast, but the kicker of OttG is that they rarely discuss games at all. Instead this show's topics range spans books, movies, the internet, family, and even the occasional game, everything is open to discussion here.

Out of the Game serves to remind listeners that personalities can be far more important then topics.

Weekend Gaming

One of the major changes to my gaming habits since slowing my WoW consumption down has been the incredible variety of games that have been crossing my plate. This weekend is a perfect example.

First order of business was taking Fable II out of its Gamefly sleeve and finally getting around to popping it in. I'm not at all a fan of the original Fable, so I really wasn't expecting very much out of this experience. Much to my surprise though, I found myself mostly engrossed by the charming world Lionhead put together... even more surprising was that I found myself liking the dog... yeah, me. But it's not just the lovable pooch that has me enjoying this game. It's the feeling that even though you're given a relatively straightforward Hero's Journey to fulfill, you're dropped into a living, breathing world that has things going on in it that are completely unrelated to your quest, and they are a wonderful distraction from the guided experience that you are engaged in. From the optional quests, to the jobs, to the social interactions, to the world economy, these are things that you would normaly never see in a game like this, but here they are front and center.

Though no fault of Fable II's, I decided to take a break and dust off the old Hori stick for some Street Fighter 4. The Championship Pack they installed really reinvigorated my interest in the game. It seems that the new tiered structure goes a long way towards separating different levels of players. Now it's not at all unusual for me to face someone who I'm clearly better then in the first round, someone who is nearly an equal in the second, and then someone who, while I have a fighting chance, is still clearly my better in the third and final round. I was no longer finding myself facing insanely high ranked people playing Akuma in every single match, now I only see them in the third round of a typical tournament, it's a definite improvement.

Rounding out my 360 play this weekend was Burnout Paradise, a game I haven't played since I returned it to Gamefly, even though I've since bought it during Circuit City's Going out of Business Sale. In the interim, they went ahead and added even more content and redesigned the interface yet again, sometimes I can't believe what Criterion have done with this game, the platform they've built is just spectacular. Every time I play this game, I'm as stunned by the vastness of the city as I am of the incredible variety of things that there are to do there. In the interest of rewarding them for putting out such a great product with so much free content, I went ahead and bought the Legendary Cars pack, which features just different enough to not be infringing versions of the Back to the Future Delorian, KITT, Ecto-1, and the General Lee. Sure, they are cheesy little gimmicks, but they are damn fun cheesy little gimmicks. Unfortunately, I think this stint in Paradise City is going to come to an early end. You see, unlike its predecessors, Paradise is the kind of game that rewards you for dedication, not unlike a really good RPG. You get to a certain point where you've invested so much that you, without thinking about it, throw everything else into it. With the number of games I've been playing and the massive influx coming in June, I don't see that happening.

Giant Bombing

I have an achievement problem, sure it's not nearly as bad as some other people's achievement problems, but I still do uncharacteristic things like play games that I would rather be done with just so I can add some more achievements.

This is already a problem.

And here comes Giantbomb.com, who added a bizarre and brilliant achievement tracking system to their site. This new system assigns a letter grade for each game based not only on how many points you actually have, but which achievements you get. For example, lets say you and I both have 15 achievements in a given game, the 15 that you have are pretty much the same that most people have, you'll likely get something like a B. Now, lets assume that of my 15, 5 of them are insanely rare and very few people in Giant Bomb's database have them, i'll get a higher grade.

This is a living record, so the more people get my rare points, the less valueable they will become, and the lower my grade in that game will be.

The thing I like most about this is that it fosters competition in a whole new way, since the more the community does, the more you're pressed to do in order to keep up.

I should note that this system also allows for the inclusion of WoW achievements and someday soon, Steam... they are just getting warmed up!

And I thought I was bad

When I visit Japan, I typically buy an impressive array of crap, or at least that's what I thought.

This guy has me beat... by a landslide...



The full tale of woe is here

The Mangod Bringith?

So I've been carefully considering picking up a Japanese Xbox 360 during my next visit to Japan for the sole purpose of getting my hands on the myriad of shmups that have been coming out for that system. Between Otomedius Gorgeous, DoDonPachi, Mushihime-sama Futari, Raiden IV, and Death Smiles, i would have a hell of a lot to play.

Enter Shane Bettenhausen, former game journalist for 1up.com and current executive at Ignition Entertainment, a publisher who's recent trend has been towards localizing japanese games for the American market. Shane was a guest on a recent 1up podcast, where he hinted that Ignition may have some announcements for E3, and that these announcements may be 360 exclusives.

The 360 really doesnt have a whole lot going on in the land of the rising sun, so it's not a big leap to think that these games (if Shane isnt just fucking with everyone) could be from the one genre the console has a lot of, shmups.

Who knows? maybe Ignition got their hands on some awesome Cave or Treasure shooters!

Kenka (not at all)Liveblog!

On Saturday night, i found myself at Kenka, a very unusual Izakaya in the East Village on St. Mark's Place. I had a pen and paper with me and decided to record my thoughts as the night went on and as my glasses of sake became empty. This is not a review, not really, but more of a transcript of a live blog of my experience:

Right now I'm sitting in Kenka, easily the strangest Izakaya I've ever seen. It's aggressively Japanese and purposefully so. It reminds me of the Japanese version of the 50's diners which in trying to hard to be everything 50s, prevent themselves from accurately mirroring the source.

The massive, colorful menu features a variety of flamboyant Japanese movie protagonists from a half dozen movies, while the back page sports the gigantic visage of Gamera alongside the bar's bizarre rule set, which includes gems like "Graffiti must be in Japanese" and "masturbation is forbidden!"

The walls are adorned with vintage movie posters and product ads from that era, the tables are warped slabs of wood and the chairs are barely wicker stools which much like the distorted music blazing out of the speakers, it probably there to accentuate the place's "Japanese-ness"

Fortunately, the place isn't all overwhelming kitch, the aforementioned menu is filled with dishes the likes of which I've never even seen in this country. That said, i didn't come here to eat, I'm here to drink, and that's where this place knocks it out of the park. The first six pages of the menu are devoted entirely to alcohol. There's a page for beer, one for cocktails, then two for shochu and two for sake.

The sake section is impressive features a few of my personal favorites, so I went ahead and ordered a glass of Suishin to start me off, the delicious and often elusive Suigei will be next.

The place smells of cotton candy, I see people outside making it at an adjoining stand, i guess that's a way to keep the people waiting entertained.

The food looks delicious and the crowd keeps ordering up dish after dish, perhaps they know something that i don't. I really wish I were hungry right now.

One "Authentic Japanese" thing here that i can do without is the open air front entrance, it's only 75 degrees tonight and this place is already uncomfortably warm.

The distorted music now playing has been identified as "she wears short shorts," I'm convinced that I'm experiencing some sort of fever dream.

Short Shorts was followed up by "if you're happy and you know it," in Japanese.

There's a group of college-age girls at the table in front of me, they look very confused and when they took a look at the menu, their expressions only got worse.

They ordered french fries, I'm guessing the deep fried whole frog turned them off...

I've come full circle on my opinion of this place, it is a kitchy, over the top 50's diner... just the Japanese variation.

I LoLed

Wired has a hillarious writeup on the lapses in military stragegy present in the new Trek flick.

No one loves the Department of Homeland Security. But just look what happens when DHS isn’t around! Poor Vulcan had no evacuation plans or Code Orange threat warnings.

The Empire Strikes Back?

I've been trying to find the right words to describe how I feel about Sony's recent announcement that they've usurped the publishing rights for the Ghostbusters game in Europe and will be granting their platforms some timed exclusivity (IE: they are delaying the release for 360, Wii, and DS). This is most certainly more in line with the PS1/PS2 era Sony that I remember not at all fondly. The words still escape me, though I think Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade found them quite handedly:

Sony publishing Ghostbusters in Europe just strikes me as hilarious. Part of that might be that I'm not really out anything - I don't live there. It's purely a thought exercise unfolding in a theoretical expanse. I seem to recall the official Sony position being that to secure this kind of exclusive was an immoral act of almost bestial desperation, but maybe that's only when other companies do it.

Aces!

Just found out that Raiden Fighters Aces is available in some outlets already. If you don't know what i'm talking about, Raiden Fighters Aces compiles the first three games in the Raiden Fighters series, and retails for like $20, it's a must buy for any schmup fan!

Duke Nuked

Eight years ago, i went to E3 for the first(and only) time in my life. At the time, Duke Nukem Forever's development time (four years as of April, 2001) was already an industry punchline. During this conference, my friends and i made it into the Duke Nukem truck parked in GOD Games fabled Promised Lot and saw the first (and last) full on trailer for the game. We were convinced that this game was A: going to be awesome, and B: was coming REALLY soon.

This morning I learned that after 12 years in development, the developer of Duke Nukem, 3D Realms, would closing its doors, and Duke Nukem Forever will finally be put out of its misery.

Duke.a-13.net has an excellent development history along with a highly entertaining list of historical events that have taken place over the course of the years since this game was announced.

Lastly, if this isn't a sufficient argument against preorders, I don't know what is!

District 9

This looks pretty damn extraordinary, almost like Alien Nation done -dare I say- more realistically.

District 9

Speaking of Blades and God of War Clones...

Instead of finishing my Ninja Blade review for Videolamer.com this weekend, I fully entrenched myself in Raven's new Wolverine game.

In short: The bloodiest depiction of Wolverine in any medium, ever. But when you consider that his "power" is essentially "having a number of foot long unbreakable blades coming out of his knuckles and the ability to heal from any injury," then a gory, visceral affair is exactly what one should expect.

I want to go into this more and possibly fire off a full review at some point, but for now I'll just say that Wolverine is a very competent God of War knockoff that succeeds where many such games -like Ninja Blade and The Force Unleashed- fall short.

Japan Planning

I'm planning a trip back to the Land of the Rising Sun in October, to that end I've been working on a Google Map featuring locations of interest in and around Tokyo. I've combined some very good maps that i found a google, including akadot's awesome Akihabara map and a nice map of the Shibuya crossing area, and combined them with my own notes from research and previous trips to the region, mainly in Shinjuku.

I figured that this would never really be seen by anyone other then my girlfriend and I, so i was shocked to find that in two weeks, my map has already been viewed almost 700 times!

Suddenly I feel as if I should be putting a little more work into this :)

Puma's Guide to Tokyo

Recovery

This past week I got hit with some sort of annoying flu, I seriously doubt that it was pig related.

In the meantime though, I got to play a bit of Dark Sector (im a bit behind). I was originally interested in this game because i thought the glaive would mix things up a bit and prevent this one from being a bit too generic, and to a point it does, but my problem with this game is that while the glaive does feel good and works nicely, everything else in the game feels clumsy and awkward.

That said, it was three play sessions before it went back in the mail to Gamefly.

On Friday I got a chance to play around with the demo for the mildly maligned game based on the highly maligned Wolverine movie. This game really is God of War, starring Wolverine, which runs the risk (like Ninja Blade) of just being a pale immitation of an established game, but Raven keeps things fresh via some incredibly visceral combat and unapologetic gore. I picked the game up today, and am looking forward to quite a few hours of cutting dudes up.

One last thing, I downloaded the new Power Up pack for Street Fighter 4, which adds a sort of open bracket tournament system to the online play. So far, my experience has been vastly superior to the old ranked match system, great job Capcom!