So here it is. Late. Late and short.
Was it worth the wait?
No. No it wasn’t.
But hey, to follow-up talk of Nate Liles last week, we have a quote from the immortal Lusipurr!
How’s that for a pitch?
News Roundup #005 – September 14, 2009
Sunday, September 13th, 2009While You Were Out… – Grande No Water With Whip Tazo Chai Week
Sunday, September 13th, 2009Yikes…
That’s a long title.
Anyway, here’s some links to some highlights.
-I discover I’m better than Riddles at video games and then I brag rudely about it.
-Riddles has a Hey! Look! Listen! renaissance with two great editions to the series. Not only was Riddles on the top of his form, but he introduced us to the irreplaceable PS3FTW and his timeless wisdom.
-In honour of Riddles’ most hated week so far, I start my Chai Count and eventually describe the perfect autumn beverage.
-Riddles talks about five licensed games that he thinks are good, despite the bad rap that comes with the “genre”. Could you call licensed games a genre?
-I introduce a Trophy Tramp rivalry with Abe80 with insane stakes. More details still to come, including other reader involvement…
-And moments ago, I started a new segment!
That’s it! I should take a second to genuinely thank all our readers for making this the most diverse and interactive week yet! Your comments are encouraging and appreciated and the reason we keep this site going with the level of content we produce. But enough gushing, I’ve got a late News Roundup to make…
Scatter Storming. Issue #001
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Damn straight, kidlets! I’ve decided to launch a new mini-feature out of the blue! There’s no release schedule for it yet, and that’s kinda the point. Because I have so many scattered thoughts, and I don’t really have enough to say about any one thing, I’m going to just spout out whatever comes to mind about a topic and move on. It’s like scatter-brained brain-storming. Scatter Storming. GET IT?!
Good.
Now I’m going to order a pizza, so let’s do that and see how much I can write before it comes.
POW! I’m Still on the Fence About Resistance 2! -
Seriously. I can’t make up my mind. On one hand there are REALLY FUCKING STUPID parts when the game becomes trial and error and you have to die over and over until you memorize when the stupid invisible dumbasses are going to leap out at you, or where the goddamned grenade launcher is so that you can beat one of those giant ugly-ass mother fuckers because it turns out that’s the only way you can do it. GOD FORBID I use the game’s mechanics to cleverly find an alternate way to beat an enemy. Can you tell I get pissed just thinking about it? I start to swear like a cunt and type incoherent run-on sentences. But just when I think I’m about to write off the game, I get a bunch of amazing weapons, I defend myself against a horde of zombies with my bare hands (yes, I was scared shitless), I shoot through walls onto unsuspecting soon-to-be-dead saps, and I make a mad dash out of an exploding spacecraft. Gah, I don’t know how I feel. But I do know that all the trophies I got from it aren’t enough to catch me up to Abe80. His recent defeat of Batman took him too far.
WACK! The Last Guy Isn’t as Great as Greg Miller Says! -
Seriously. I mean. It’s cool and all. It’s got a wacky sense of humour, and it’s fun, but Greggy hyped it up so much that I can’t help but feel disappointed. It also gets hard fast…and I can’t always tell what’s going on. I don’t think the controls are perfect either. If I reviewed things with scores and numbers and things, it definitely wouldn’t receive the 9/10 that Greg gave it. Maybe I’ll go back to it, but I doubt it.
WOOSH! PSN Things -
I have some of you on PSN, and that’s wonderful. Feel free to add me (ethostar)! But don’t be offended if I don’t reply to messages. I don’t have a USB Keyboard yet, and typing out using the DualShock is far less than optimal. But once I get one of the keyboard badboys hooked up, you can bet I won’t be as silent.
GIGGLE! DS Games -
Yup! Mario & Luigi and Kingdom Hearts: Dumb Name! I’m hyped! Mario & Luigi tomorrow, actually. Goodbye Suikoden! *sigh*…I’ll miss you…
SLUG! Still Looking For Artists! –
Yup. You wanna draw for us? Please let me know, or else I’m going to have to continue making the banners sometimes, and that’s just not right. Especially for your eyes.
CHOMP! Pizza!! -
It’s here!
SUCK IT!
Content Forthcoming!
Sunday, September 13th, 2009Hey kiddos, the News Roundup will be a little later this week. Liikkee…late tonight/technically early Monday.
Now I just woke up and I’mma go play some video games. So you’ll be hearing from me soon!
Chai Count: 8
‘ELLO GUV’NAH! – September 11th 2009
Saturday, September 12th, 2009Okay, so I’m more posting this on September 12th…
Still! Forgive me! Riddlethos has been hopping tonight, so I’m distracted by keeping up with all the comments!
Anyway, let’s get on with it!!
Final Fantasy IX-
Yes, I wrote a post about this, so I won’t go into much more detail, but I will reiterate my love for the multi-perspective story-telling this game maintains for much of the tale. I haven’t been following FFXIII coverage by choice (we can do it, Mac!) but I feel like it has the potential to do the same thing. Fingers crossed.
Resistance 2-
Deerwolf of the Entire Population instantly returned my borrowed copy of Resistance 2 saying something like “I’m bad at games”, I don’t remember, but either way I thought I’d try it before I returned it to its original owner. It was fun. I didn’t like it at first, but then I was warming up. I know a lot of people are torn on this game, so I’m curious to see where I end up on the opinion map. Also, it got me a few new trophies for the competition!
Guitar Hero 5-
I know a few of you don’t like Guitar Hero including Riddles. Although Riddles doesn’t count because he hasn’t tried it, so: OPINION VOID. Anyway, I was previously in the camp of generally preferring Rock Band, but Guitar Hero 5 does so much right with presentation and accessibility that I can’t not be impressed. For the first time…er…ever, I want to see Guitar Hero features implemented in Rock Band. I would go in more detail, but I haven’t been up this late in weeks and I’m tired and hungry and about to throw a tantrum. So moving on to the last one…
NOT Flower-
Nope. Didn’t play it this week. Can you believe it?
THAT’S IT ASSHOLES! SUCK IT!
I mean…er…Right so, chaps! Call me on me mobile!
Riddlethos’ First Rivalry
Friday, September 11th, 2009Well well well. I’ve been mentioning a personal friend and a friend of Riddlethos, Abe80 a few times recently. But now his role is changing. Goodbye euphoric friendship of champions, hello bitter rivalry to the death. And by “to the death” I mean “ongoing until further notice”.
Yes, seeing as I DON’T EVEN HAVE RIDDLES AS A FRIEND ON THE PSN (what a lazy fuck), Abe80 and I are going to have a trophy battle. This is probably for the best anyway, because if Riddles and I had one more thing to fight about, this whole website might end in messy divorce. And nobody wants that…yet.
Anyway, it works like this: there’s this site, ps3trophycard.com, that gives a slightly arbitrary world ranking for your PSN id and makes a little HTML card for it. Abe80 and I discovered that we have very similar rankings and so we decided to have an on-going competition for the highest ranking.
So far we sit:
Versus
(I realize I’m starting a little behind. I’m willing to take that hit).
Here are the rules that Abe80 and I agreed upon today:
-Every Monday, a weekly winner will be determined based on their PSN World Ranking. That winner will receive (or hang on to) the highly coveted Dog Chewed Controller.
-When a player first reaches a 5,000 rank milestone (45,000, 40,000 and so on) the other player must play one hour of The Bouncer.
-Competitors must obtain their own trophies (unless it is a specific co-op trophy)
-Trophy whoring is unacceptable, trophies can only come from games we would legitimately play normally (eg. Hanna Montana: The Movie game trophies are not acceptable).
Here is a pictured of the coveted Dog Chew Controller (the angle doesn’t allow you to see the non-exsistent L2 button)
Let the games begin!
Chai Count: 7
Five Good Licensed Games
Friday, September 11th, 2009Well, I just finished another lively session of Batman: Arkham Asylum. I had a blast as always, and I think I’m finally nearing the end. I would have kept going, but I got hungry and decided it was Wendy’s time. Saw a fender bender on the way back home, which apparently was worthy of no less than four police cars, two ambulances, and a fucking FIRE TRUCK. I think the fire truck was pissed, though; it came screaming in, parked for about two seconds, and then drove away in a huff.
Man, I love Murfreesboro.
Anyway, getting back to the point, playing a game like Arkham Asylum causes one to wonder: why can’t all superhero games (or licensed games in general) be this good? Why has it taken so long for a developer to actually get it right?
But while Arkham Asylum certainly takes the cake, there are some licensed titles from the past worthy of mention. How about we take a look at one or five?
Spider-Man 2
I spent so much time with this game upon its release in 2004 that it’s ridiculous to think about. Was it really that great? No, not at all. The gameplay was repetitive, the story was ridiculous, the voice acting was laughable, and the graphics were shit.
Why, then, am I even including it on this list? Because developer Treyarch got one thing very, very right in Spider-Man 2: the web-swinging mechanics. Unlike previous Spider-Man titles, where you basically just felt like you were flying – webs would attach to invisible objects in the clouds – Spider-Man 2 integrated realistic physics and mechanics into the web-slinging. And that’s not all: the game gave you a huge, open-ended version of Manhattan to swing around in. The result? Hours upon hours spent just swinging around, and stopping every so often to beat up some thugs. (Combat was actually pretty good too, if I recall.)
Ultimate Spider-Man
To this day, I can’t believe how underappreciated this game was. A year after Spider-Man 2, Treyarch brought us Ultimate Spider-Man, a game that took the groundwork laid down by the previous game and improved upon it in every way. The same sharp web-swinging and combat mechanics were present, the side-missions were far less repetitive and obtrusive, the graphics were beautiful, and the storyline was just fantastic. Hardly a surprise, given that Ultimate Spider-Man writer Brian Bendis himself penned the tale.
For some reason, though, neither critics nor gamers seemed to give a shit. Spider-Man 2 was well out of theaters, so there was no Spidey-related hype to give the game a boost. Ultimate Spider-Man wasn’t without its flaws, but it’s still the best Spider-Man game ever made.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Yeah, I know this one isn’t a superhero game, but it’s still a licensed game. You wouldn’t expect EA, of all companies, to somehow make The Lord of the Rings work as a hack-and-slash action game, but somehow they did. Combat was extremely solid, and the large-scale battles really captured the intensity of the battle scenes seen in the films. Couple that with some great uses of the license (such as music from the films, and solid voicework supplied by the stars themselves) and you’ve got yourself the best Lord of the Rings game ever made. Hell, for that matter, you’ve got one of the better hack-and-slash action games ever made.
Kingdom Hearts II
Okay, I know this one is really reaching, but seeing as how it includes DISNEY characters, I still consider it a licensed game. Kinda. In any case, the game deserves a shout-out for so perfectly blending Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise with, of all things, Disney’s immense repertoire of cartoons. There’s something undeniably awesome about fighting through the depths of Hade’s underworld with Auron in tow. As we all know, there’s another Kingdom Hearts game nearly upon us. I frankly don’t have high hopes for it, but the series hasn’t let me down yet.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
I’ll just go ahead and say it: Ultimate Alliance is the best game based on Marvel’s immortal heroes ever made. In terms of gameplay, it’s nearly identical to the X-Men Legends games, but Ultimate Alliance took the framework from those titles and upped the ante in every possible way. The story was long, epic, and packed with all your favorite Marvel heroes and villains. Fanservice is present in spades. Gameplay is fast-paced, appropriately varied, and incredibly fun, especially when playing with friends. While Ultimate Alliance doesn’t quite reach the levels of artistry that Arkham Asylum displays, it’s still one of the best licensed titles ever produced, period. Which brings to mind: a sequel is due out in a mere four days…
Agree? Disagree? Any other licensed games you feel are deserving of mention? Well, comments are a great way to get your opinion out there. No, really. It’s true. Give it a try.
Hey! Look! Listen!
Thursday, September 10th, 2009Is it time for yet another one of these things already? My goodness, how the time flies. Sure, it’s only been like two days, but it seems SHORTER STILL.
Still trying to get the sleep schedule back on… uh… schedule. Not working out well so far. I blame Mike Babasick.
I know none of you know who that is, I just wanted to say his last name because it’s a source of eternal amusement to me.
Ahem. We must move on.
It IS pretty...
PS3 Slim Sells a Shit Ton
I know I had a similar story in my last HLL, but this time Sony has actually commented on the spike in PS3 sales since the release of the Slim. In a statement from Sony:
“Our top retailers have reported a 300% lift in PS3 hardware sales and an increase of 140% in total hardware revenue across the PlayStation portfolio when comparing the first week of September to the week before the $299 price adjustment”
Who knows what the actual figures are, but a 300% increase can only be a good thing. We attempted to comment PS3FTW for comment, but uh… we were unsuccessful. (Kotaku.)
Batman: Arkham Asylum Sells a Shit Ton
This honestly came as a surprise to me. According to the publisher DC, Eidos’ Batman: Arkham Asylum has sold almost two million units. (Kotaku again.)
Good news, because it’s well-deserved. Hopefully, Arkham Asylum’s success will set an example for future publishers of licensed titles; it’s literally a bar-setting title.
We'll catch those damn piraters, Gordon
Batman Hates Piracy
It’s true. The PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum proves it. Evidently, a glitch has been deliberately placed into the game’s code to ensnare those who download the game illegally before its release on September 15. Cheshirec_the_cat, resident of the Eidos forums, wrote:
“I’ve got a problem when it’s time to use Batman’s glide in the game. When I hold “,” like it’s said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding. So he fels down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel me, what should I do there.”
Instead of some helpful advice, Mr. Cheshirec_the_cat instead received a verbal bitchslap from forum administrator Keir:
“The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free. It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.”
Shyit. I can feel the burn from here. Still, it’s difficult not to chuckle at Mr. Keir’s “holier-than-thou” stance on piracy. In fact, it’s often difficult not to chuckle at the industry in general for the exact same thing. 1UP
omg this is so offensive
Courtney Love Apparently Still Does a Lot of Drugs
My apologies, I couldn’t resist. Anyway. Um. By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Kurt Cobain of Nirvana will be appearing in Activision’s upcoming Guitar Hero 5. Apparently there’s been some slight controversy as to the “appropriateness” of such a thing, seeing as how the dude’s dead. I never quite bought into that personally, but Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, has… and she’s PISSED. Just read what she wrote on her Twitter:
“For the record this Guitar Hero shit is breach of contract on a Bullys part and there will be a proper addressing of this and retraction.”
Later, she added:
“WE are going to sue the shit out of ACtivision we being the Trust the Estate the LLC the various LLCs Cobain Enterprises.”
Bitch obviously means business. However, her story doesn’t quite line up with what Activision told Kotaku:
“Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5.”
Who to believe? Who to believe? Personally I’m hoping this turns into a huge, hairy, newsworthy ordeal. Sadly, I think this entire ordeal can likely be attributed to what I titled this post. (Kotaku. Again.)
This is a screen of the game, not the boycotters.
Left 4 Dead 2 Boycotters Sell Out
Familiar with the (rather large, loud, and annoyingly prominent) Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Community? You know, all the people who somehow think Valve is stabbing them in the back by releasing a sequel so soon? (As they place their reservations at GameStop for Modern Warfare 2?) Well, apparently they were such a pain in Valve’s ass that they actually INVITED two of these fuckers to their offices to try the game out for themselves. No joke. Users Walking_target and Agent of Chaos got to play L4D2 for an entire day, and report back to their community about it. And guess what? They actually liked it.
That’s not the interesting part, actually. The interesting part is that, upon reporting to their community, they were instantaneously branded as sellouts, traitors, faggots, and the like. I’ll just let Steam community user “N1MM duz it” do the talking:
“valve has turn the leaders of this group into there puppets .. they got them to change their minds and trying to influence us. open your eyes !!!”
Yes. Indeed. Open your eyes, N1MM duz it. Perhaps you’ll realize what a moron you actually are.
Oh Hey, Little FFXIII Tidbits from Kotaku
Sheesh, I’d love to know how many references Kotaku gets from us these days. That aside, if you’re the type just dying to whet your appetite for Final Fantasy XIII even further, these two articles might interest you. First, PS3 controls for the game have been revealed, so if you wanna know exactly how you’ll control the game, check out this article. And if you’re REALLY desperate, check out these little snippets from the new trailer that premiered at TGS.
Yikes. That one got long. Hope it kept you entertained throughout. But if it didn’t, I don’t really care. I had a blast writing it all.
Oh, and my count is still at zero, and I’d be surprised if it got any higher.
So I Played Some FF9 Last Night
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
So moody!
Those who know me might roll their eyes at that title, but believe it or not, I actually barely play the game.
It used to be that I’d beat it at least once a year, but over the past few, that has definitely not been the case. Even during Lusipurr.com’s The Summer of IX feature, I failed to even beat the first disc. I’ve been such a gaming schizophrenic recently that my old habit of replaying my favourites on a regular basis has all but disappeared. But last night I picked up where I left off with my Summer of IX failed attempt, and played about an hour before I fell asleep at the ridiculously early time of 1am.
Anyway, the point is that I really do love that game. I know I say that all the time, but it’s so satisfying to replay a game that you claim as your favourite to find that you really do enjoy it. The tone, the pacing, the gameplay all just fits. I realize that there is so little that I would change about so much of the game. It’s like returning to a childhood cottage and finding that everything is just as you remembered and loved.
It brings me the same feeling of warmth, comfort, and calm excitement that the autumn and titular Starbucks drink of the week bring me. Anyway, we all have nostalgia, I just thought I’d write about it.
Now here’s a ball of yarn with the word “nostalgia” on it.
Chai Count: 5
Finally…
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009…a contest for Canadians! Thanks, abe80 for giving me this link. No, I’m not really a Halo fan, but I can PRETEND to be for fame and prizes!
Abe80 and I already have ideas, but if you have a great idea for a picture that would depict me as the ultimate Halo fanboy, you just e-mail me at feedback@riddlethos.com.
That's me!
Chai Count: 4
