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Disappointmentendo

Let me start this off by saying that I’m sorry for the lack of myself updating the website in a while. I’ve been busy, but since most of you know me of youtube fame, then you already know that. Now, onto more pressing business, and by “more pressing business” I mean the total lack of pressing business in the world of Nintendo.

With most of the top-tier and main franchise games already having Wii incarnations we, the gamers, expected to see either something new on the horizon or at the very least new versions of old favorites. Most of you should have already seen my E3 Nintendo Recap, so you know my disappointments with what they showed. It seems, for the most part, Nintendo is just toying with its fan base.

Looking at the upcoming first and third party game list its a little lack luster compared to the releases of last year. So far, 2008’s line-up of games has started fine but has slowed beyond a crawl. With very few games even worth looking at set up to release during the rest of the year, I can see my Wii getting a tad dusty for a while. This really hurts me as I have always loved Nintendo’s special brand of “innovative design”, but it seems they are just running low on ideas as of late.

The very few “saving graces” (if they could be called that) for the Wii this year are Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, de Blob, Wario Land: Shake It!, Cooking Mama World Kitchen, and of course Animal Crossing: City Folk. I see these few games as at least worth a glancing look into. If these appeal to you then you will be one of the few people out there still enjoying your Wii for at least a few months. However, in all honesty, I’ll probably only be checking out de Blob (because I am somewhat of an indie game supporter) and Wario Land: Shake It! (if only because of this comic here).

There is one tiny little game I would like to mention, although it will probably end up being one of those “cult classic“ type games. However, it interests me a lot just because of how insane it sounds and looks. Animales de la Muerte is by far the most promising WiiWare title, in my opinion, to be released within the last half of 2008. Here is why if you just have to know:

Oh, if you’re thinking I forgot to mention Megaman 9, you’re wrong. If you don’t already know about Megaman 9, you’re some sort of freak who never bothers to look on the internet and thinks that “mailing a letter” is still a cool thing. In which case, you’ll never read this and I can make as much fun of you as I want. For good measure though, here is a Megaman 9 video, because you earned it.

Therefore, my little pearly white Nintendo made friend with the little blue glowing light and the slightly suggestive name, save for a few little games here and there I will probably be off playing games I missed on your bulky Microsoft made cousin. That is until The Conduit and MadWorld are released at least. Until then I’ll be sure to dust you off occasionally to play a little bit of No More Heroes.

In Need of an Antacid: Poorly Executed Games Cause Stomach Problems

Here I sit after chugging down half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol with a chaser of Alka-Seltzer and Tums.  You may be wondering why I took all these things, it could what I ate last night, it could be my bad sleep schedule, but I refuse to blame these things.  In the past week I used a code to acquire a free month GameFly and few rent one get one free coupons for Hollywood Video, and after listening to a few other websites I rented what they called “good” co-op games.  However when the games arrived we discovered that we had been had, duped, bamboozled, we were SCHMECLEDORFED!  That’s not even a word, but I’m sure we were schmecledorfed anyway.  With that said, I’ll give you a little insight as to just -what- games we played.

Arriving at the Hollywood Video after adding GRAW2 and Rainbow Six Vegas to our Game Q on GameFly, we decided to throw caution to the wind and pick up Rainbow Six Vegas 2 before we got the first installment.  Now you may be sitting there freaking out right now saying “BUT THAT’S THE SECOND GAME!” to which I reply, I don’t care.  Why don’t I care?  It’s a FPS game, a very generic one at that, so the story is barely even prevalent.  While browsing around for the “get one free” game, I decided to go with something that I had already played before, but Corn and Spazzy (my girlfriend) had not.  That game was The Orange Box.  This choice would prove to be the best decision I could have made.

Now that you know what games I rented, let’s get onto the experience.  We saved The Orange Box for later when we arrived back at “The Bat Loft”, which is our base of operations, and went ahead with RSV2.  After putting the game in, we were immediately dropped into France…FRANCE!  I thought this was Rainbow Six VEGAS, not Rainbow Six Globe Trotter Expedition 3.  I expected the pretty lights, the gambling, the casinos, the hookers, the pimps, the nightclubs, and what did I get?  France.  It was by far the most “WTF” moment in video gaming for me in the past couple of months.  However, we ignored the glaring fact that we were not in fact IN Las Vegas for the first mission and pressed onward.  Soon we found our way into the land of sin, but we were hit once again with disappointment when we found that casino based levels in the game were so minimal, they were barely even there.  More of our time was spend in a random backyard with, and I’m not even trying to be funny here, what seemed to be illegal immigrants working in them.  I don’t know about you guys, but I lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years, do you want to know what I saw every day when I woke up?  CASINOS.  CA-@#$%ing-SINOS!  With all that aggregation and pent up rage out of the way however, the actual gameplay was mediocre at best, I felt no attachment to characters, I didn’t care what happened to my teammates, and I along with Corn, decided that Jung was, is, and always will be powered by the most retarded AI in the entire world.  It was just a bad experience from start to finish.

The next day Rainbow Six Vegas and GRAW 2 arrived in the mail.  We decided that maybe Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was just milking the Tom Clancy teat and played the first installment of the series right away.  What was there to greet us in the first level?  MEXICO!  What the @#$%!?  What part of VEGAS do these developers not seem to get here?  How hard would it have been to give a little back-story and just throw your ass right into Vegas without having to play the “lets explain the story that no one is listening to with boring environments and locations far away from where the game should be” levels.  How could they screw something up so bad like that?  It’s in the title for Christ’s sake!  Rainbow Six VEGAS!  Again, we were left with a hollow experience, sure, you end up in Vegas, sure, you go to a casino or two, but the game was ruined the moment we hit Mexico.  The same flawed but not overly bad gameplay was powering this not-very-fun but not-that-bad game.  All in all Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 (hereby called Rainbow Six Everywhere But Fucking Vegas) were a disappointment, and thereby must be shot out of a cannon into the sun.  Again, not because they are bad, but because they lie to you.  Oh, by the way.  Jung is in this one, and it seems he’s just as much of a dipshit.

GRAW 2, what can I say about it?  It was weird playing it, but it wasn’t bad.  In that respect though it couldn’t hold my attention much either.  When I started the game up, I enjoyed playing a bit, but then quickly abandoned single player for the multiplayer.  I’ll give GRAW 2 this, the Multiplayer was -fun-.  However, it let me down just as much as the singleplayer did as far as holding mine, and Corn’s, attention.  You can only blow up so many things with timed explosives before you say “screw this, let’s go play Halo 3 online and listen to people yell at each other for no good reason”.  This is exactly what happened.

Finally, after wading through Mediocrity Land we decided to finally throw in The Orange Box.  Bypassing all the other games and getting straight to the reason most people got the damn thing in the first place, we played Portal.  We played it, played it, and played it.  Now I won’t say that I’m really good at Portal, but after a while, you can kind of remember just about how to do everything in the game with enough practice.  Does that mean that it got boring after a while?  Did we abandon it to play Halo 3’s online multiplayer?  NO!  It was fun every single time!  We all knew GLaDOS’ lines by heart.  We felt attached to the Weighted Companion Cube, and felt bad every time we killed it.  Oh, and we love those little turrets.  Such the cute little bastards.  With that said, Portal, even after all this time, is one of the best games around.  Even cynical people who like ripping games a new one (like myself, and of course the more famous people like Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw) adore the game, and for good reason.

So, with all that said, I’m still in search for local co-op multiplayer Xbox 360 games that provide the same fun experiences that Army of Two, Gears of War, Ultimate Alliance, and the Halo series provided.  I’m open to suggestions, I’m all ears, so you little internet people, what have you got for me?

Cogs of Combat

Now that's what I call a main character.

So I literally just finished Gears of War just about 30 minutes ago. As many of you know I was playing through the entire campaign co-op with my girlfriend’s brother. Putting that together with the fact that we only played a little bit every night since Monday we finished it relatively quickly. Onto the review!

Gears was one of those games that helped sell the 360 in it’s early days and I can see why. Action, good local and online multiplayer, and a badass take no prisoners main character. It’s the same reason Halo helped the original Xbox from landing in the garbage can. So if you liked Halo you more then likely got Gears of War when it first came out and thus you need not read any further.

For those of you who didn’t jump on the GoW bandwagon and waited or are still waiting to get the game your thoughts are probably similar to my own. It was a great game especially while playing alongside someone else. However, with all the power behind the system it seemed like there could have been more visuals to go along with the game to make it more eye pleasing and less “brown”. Okay, so it’s a war based game, there is bound to be a lot of brown you say, I can agree with this. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have walked into Home Depot and had my eyes assaulted with more brown then Gears threw at me. All I’m asking for is a little bit of green or blue or something thrown in there.

Another issue I’d like to bring up is that in the midst of a heated battle Marcus, Dom, and just about anyone else in the entire game look exactly the same from a distance. So when I’m being shoot at and make a run to attempt a chainsaw kill only to find out that I’m about to chop off my partner’s head (which you cannot do anyway). Afterwards I promptly fall to my knees because while I was wasting my time trying to kill Dom every enemy in the world had their sights on me. It’s nice to have a character gimmick (in this case giant suits of body armor), but it would also be great if each of your character’s suits had a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) difference to it so you know just who is who.

On top of all that, I didn’t feel like I was drawn into the story like I was with other games in the genre. Even with Army of Two’s bad acting and B movie script I felt more compelled to get to the end more then just to shot the living shit out of everything in my way. With that said, closer to the end I felt like the story was somewhat there and the main character just chose to ignore it and do whatever the hell he wanted. I could however say the same for myself.

Now I’ve gabbed on far too long about what I didn’t like, and even though my dislikes are a bit more then I would like, I had fun playing Gears of War. That’s right, I had fun. FUN! Mindlessly going around using a chainsaw bayonet to rip the Locust into little tiny bits of grey skin jerky was more then enough to keep me playing until the end. There are enough guns in the game to keep anyone satisfied. Though I did find myself relying on the basic shotgun far too much, more then I would have liked atleast. It’s a good game and provides exactly what it is expected to, great online matches, a good campaign, and lots and lots of blood.

With Gears of War 2 on it’s way to shelves November 7th of this year all questions come down to this. Will you be playing the second one? So, to answer my own question, will I? Yes, but will I buy it? Maybe not. While the first one was impressive in some aspects it did let me down on a few key points. GoW2 looks to be bigger, better, and meaner then the first one. So fans wont be let down. If you haven’t played the first one yet and don’t much care about the storyline of a shooter then just wait it out and snag GoW2 when it comes out, I’m fairly certain you wont be disappointed.

…Did I mention John DiMaggio (voice of Bender) is the main character?! Kiss my shiny metal ass you Locust meat bags!

Sometimes Science Just Takes It Too Far

Alright so I was shown an article by a few friends that there was a new protein discovered in the human body. This new protein was named Pikachurin, after the pokemon Pikachu because:

“The “Pikachurin” protein plays a role in the efficient transmission of kinetic vision information from the eyes to the brain, so the researchers named the protein after the Pokémon character known for its fast moves.”

So I made a video response on youtube to sum up my feelings on the subject:

A Forum?! Mascots?! Logo?!

Since my review of Army of Two, I’ve been a little busy. Mostly with creating a forum, some mascots, and a logo to go along with this spiffy new website I have here. The idea for a forum and logo were recommended to me. Having mascots was my own little addition.

For the forum, it’s pretty much finished save for the logo and better looking icons and buttons. So if you’re one of those people looking for a place to get your geek on, feel free to check it out: http://z4.invisionfree.com/ExtraLives/

I’m not too skilled at making anything in Photoshop or anything like that, but I’ve been fooling around with logo making. I haven’t stumbled across anything I like yet, so if you’re artsy, feel free to submit ideas or actual logos for Living On Extra Lives. I’d appreciate it.

The mascots thing? That will be a secret until their designs and such are done along with a few other surprises to go along with ‘em.

In addition to all that, I was thinking of adding a donation meter to show how many donations I get per month. With that, I was also thinking of gifts to give out to donators to make it more worth their while. I’ll leave that up to you guys for what you think would be a good prize for donating.

That said, with my down time I’ve been recording Let’s Plays, Rom Hack Reviews, and playing Gears of War with Corn while Spazzy watched and provided useful commentary. Let’s just say you’ll be hearing back from me about our Gears of War experiences sometime very soon.

Until then folks, my inbox is always open, feel free to make comments, and I hope to see you on the forum!

Army of Two: The B Movie Video Game

These two have a bond like no other.

Alright so maybe I’m a little late on this review, but because of just how much it made me laugh playing through it all I figured it deserved to get it’s time in the sun. Before I get into an actual “review” of the game let me explain what led me to rent it. My girlfriend’s brother (who lives here with us) has not touched the 360 since I brought it over from Vegas. I figured I would find something built on the idea of co-op would be the best thing to get him started on his first trek into playing a 360 game. In hindsight I probably should have went with Gears of War or Rainbow Six Vegas, which I will probably rent one of those tonight. However, the name “Army of Two” just screamed “MULTIPLAYER!” so naturally I snagged it.

With that background story of the way, let us get onto the meat of this review. Just what the hell happened when we started to play the game? Apparently putting a scarred bald man with a pretty boy and throwing the most grunge masks on them as possible was deemed a “good idea” when they put this game together. While it works if you don’t take the game seriously, I’m sure there is at least one group of frat boys out there slamming their heads together, giving each other high fives, all while doing air guitars that will disagree with me. I could not help but laugh at just how hokey and B movie sounding the entire script was. It was like playing the original Evil Dead, but with two Ash’s…only one was bald and the other was a pretty man. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t have had a better time playing the game. From beginning to end Corn (my girlfriend’s bother), Spazzy (my girlfriend), and myself laughed so hard we could barely control ourselves. Just let it be known this game is to be taken with a grain of salt.

While the story is something out of a late night 80’s drive-in theater the gameplay is nicely put together. You really do need to rely on your partner’s skill at various points in the game, which make you realize “Oh that’s right, that’s why he’s there”. In reality though, most of the game you could just ignore your fellow iron mask wearer and happily slaughter anyone without that happy grim reaper face in your path. It is pretty well balanced as far as the guns you can acquire in the game, you either have a lot of ammo and a moderately damaging gun, nearly no ammo and a gun that could kill anything in your way, or a slight combination of the two. It works out well, especially if you and your partner have varying gunplay styles.

Overall, it was not a bad game, not something I would buy mind you, but I had a lot of fun.  If you have someone you want to play co-op with be it local or online, and this is definitely a good time to be had by all. Just remember to ignore the dialogue best you can.

….ELIOOOOOOOT!

I can feel the love.

Welcome One And All!

After the company I worked for had to make cutbacks it took me a while to realize that there is more that I could do then report video game news and do reviews for others. Having gotten some good experience being an official industry news reporter and reviewer I thought I had enough to go on to make my own site. Thusly this site was created!

As I’m pretty much freelance now I don’t make money in the normal sense, so I now accept donations so I can keep my site up and running. Now you may be saying “but this is a free site!” That is true, however, I do need to eat and keep myself alive, and that does take money. So feel free to donate if you are so kind, but don’t think of it as an obligation.

I hope to expand this website by including other video game aficionados, such as myself, to contribute articles and/or videos. I have a few people in mind, but again don’t let that limit you. Feel free to send me articles and such and I will post them and credit you as a part of my “Reader Contribution” articles. I can’t wait to see what you all may have to say.

Finally, I will be linking this website with my you tube channel. What does that mean? I will post newest videos here, along with text announcements of Let’s Play updates and so forth. So of course that means more Tatsudoshi for all you lovely people out there! Thank you for subscribing to my youtube channel as well as reading my articles, I hope to bring you the best news and reviews I can in the future.

Returning to Diablo

Written on: Jun 28 2008
Featured on: Write The Game Video Game Blog

Out of the rumor mill and onto the internet, confirmation of Diablo 3 has finally been released! Just what will be awaiting gamers when they finally make a return trip to a world that has not been seen in seven years. So far, not much is known about the game, but it’s shaping up to be one of the biggest game releases in a while.

Witch doctors and barbarians have been confirmed for Diablo 3 as character classes. Undead, khazra, gnarld walkers, and dark cultists have been added to the online bestiary. New Tristram and Caldeum are the so far established environments. In addition to this there has also been a dungeon announced as well as lore added to the official website. As we get closer to the game’s release, Blizzard will continue updating the website to give gamers a better look at what they will be in for.

There is not much to say about the game just yet, but just looking at screenshots and videos shows amazing promise. Will Blizzard be bringing the goods and delivering a great continuation to the series? It sure looks like it!

Enhancing the Game: Peripherals

Written on: Jun 26 2008
Featured on: Write The Game Video Game Blog

Recently EA Sports has announced that they would be using new peripherals, which will be bundled together with their new games within the next year. More information on this can be found in gamester’s article on the subject (Paris GDC: McCarthy Teases EA Sports Peripherals). With this announcement, it is only a matter of time before other companies begin to jump on the bandwagon and exploit more motion sensitive functions with new and more specific peripheral devices. What can we expect for the future?

David McCarthy of EA Sports was quoted on saying “I think you’ll see games using that Rock Band peripheral strategy from EA Sports, even within the next 12 months.” The strategy he was referring to is the use of controllers other then the norm to become more accessible and user friendly for non-gamers to play. Does this mean that EA will be releasing baseball bats, footballs, and basketball type devices for their games? On one hand, it would create a true experience for players. On the other hand this could recreate the scenario when the Wii was first released with the less then reinforced Wiimote strap. So be on guard because your television may be at risk if this is what they are going for.