Pagoda of Gaming

Man oh man, shit has been happening. E3 is next week, and it seems that some people couldn’t save their load until then. Like always, I won’t be there physically, but there in spirit. But before I get to the news I’ve actually been playing some vidyagames since my last post.

I think I’ve finally gotten over the hump in Red Dead Redemption. Whilst I still can’t play for more than a couple of hours before I get exhausted from it, I do see now what it’s doing so well. The beginning story arc of the game is a rather slow grind, filled in between with activities the game doesn’t quite explain very well or even at all. I had no idea I had a teleporter in my pocket until I listened to the last Giant Bombcast, where it turns out that the “Basic Campfire” you always have in your inventory is actually a fast-travel device that never runs out of steam.

Its a very unique game - you could easily claim that it is the best Western themed game ever made, and I’d probably agree with you. There are so few after all. I’ll endeavour to complete it and I’ll let you know when I do – maybe with one of those review things I’m so bad at writing.

APB’s Keys to the City event (a.k.a. “Open Beta”) is now on and running until the 17th. I played a bit yesterday and was rather surprised. I’ve said before that the game runs like shit with me, but Realtime Worlds must have patched the hell out of that game since then because the game is actually running rather well for me. Ok, that statement might be a bit misleading, “Rather well” is about an average of 10-15 FPS on the games most minimal of graphical settings. But it was enough for me to get in and enjoy the game system despite being unable to accurately kill anyone or drive more than a meter before lagging into a wall.

I created the character you see on the left, and did so within mere minutes, minimal funds and the barest of unlocked content. (FYI – that is the ‘breast slider’ on it’s maximum position). I took her through the tutorial and a little beyond. Did some really awesome grouped missions.

I’m not sure where the NDA is for the Beta and such, so I’m not going to dwell on the finer points of the game right now, I’ll have plenty to say when the game launches. But if I must say something is that I hope they put in proper 360 controller support for the game real soon – because driving is a bitch on an analogue keyboard.

I have a spare Key for the public beta if anyone I know wants it – I got in ‘for free’ since I was in the closed Beta.  just leave a comment in this post – grovelling is encouraged. You can also keep up with the game on the game’s newly launched community site.

You may remember about a year ago that I set myself the task of playing nothing but DS games for a month in celebration of the DSi’s launch. Well I’m thinking about doing the same for the PC once I get my new rig. The DS Experiment was a bit of a flop – I found only one game I truly loved on the console, and at the end I very much regretted buying a DSi. I’m in the same kind of position I was with the DS back then but with PC games – I have the means to play them, but not so much the drive.

Anyway, I’ll talk about that once I figure out how to go about getting this new PC. The official specs for APB are now available, so I really need to hit that at least. I’ve been looking about the internet here and there for PC shops – the place I keep coming back to is Chillblast. I especially like the look of their “Fusion Reactor” build, and it hit’s the price point that I can handle (well, once I take out the Monitor and add in some extras). But I’m still not 100% on it – I’m still open up for suggestions. I’ve got about 2 weeks I reckon before I can order it.

I reckon I should probably get a new Keyboard also. My current wireless one doesn’t seem to like me pressing the “A” key sometimes – and in those sometimes I really need to strafe to the left. I like the look of the new Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard – and the reasonable price for a backlit keyboard.

In the meantime, before I lock myself out of my consoles I’ve got some games to play. I took a look at my Achievements list the other day, and there are a lot, like too many, games that I’ve got to go back and finish or complete to satisfaction. I returned to Battlefield Bad Company 2 and got my SPECACT Achievements from the last DLC Pack. And then in the spur of the moment I’ve moved back to Modern Warfare 2 – intent on completing the single player game on Veteran and collecting all 45 of the Intel collectables. I’m as far as “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday” mission, which is the one on the Oil Rig. The Biggest kick in the balls so far from that difficulty level was “Takedown”, the mission in the Brazilian Favela, and I expect there’s going to be another one right around the corner in “The Gulag”.

In addition to that I really want to go back and play through ODST again in Legendary. Halo in general is at it’s peak enjoyment when it’s played on legendary and I expect ODST to be the same – I did nonchalantly stroll through that game when it first came out, and did so in about 4 hours. There’s also Metro 2033, Darksiders and oh yes, Alan Wake to return to and all before my own personal PC Revolution. I doubt I’ll have time for it all, but I’ll try.

There’s a multiplayer Demo out for Transformers: War for Cybertron. And you know, it’s actually pretty good! I don’t remember much about watching the original show as a kid, but I know enough to know that this is where all of that game is coming from. In a nutshell, the Multiplayer component of that game is basically Modern Warfare 2, but class-based, with Transformers. Though the demo only lets you control two of the 4 classes – neither of which turn into jets, it’s enough to let me know that it has extreme potential. I suggest you check it out if you ever owned an Optimus Prime in your pre-teen years.

I’d say that the best trailer to come out the past weeks, not including the Mortal Kombat Movie kerfuffle, is the new one for Deus Ex: Human Evolution. I only played through the second Deus Ex game (haters gonna hate, but I actually liked it quite a bit) so I don’t really care how far removed it is from it’s predecessors – but you cannot deny the epicness of this trailer:

I’m getting mega Mass Effectey vibes from this, like it collided head on with FF13. I’d really like to see some gameplay though – especially to confirm if it’s going to be a first person or third person game. Maybe we’ll see some next week.

E3 is of course going to be exploding in our faces all of next week, and I’ll be offering the same coverage as I did last year. Though I think I’ll give the Nintendo Press Conference a miss this year – they’re always so depressing. But I’m very much looking forward to what Sony and more so Microsoft bring to the table. I don’t have any predictions for you yet, I’ll put them up in front of the semi-live-blog I’ll do for each of them. If you’d like to follow some professionals covering E3, I’d say that these guys are probably the best equipped.

The best non-gaming news to come out the past fortnight, undoubtedly, was that Patrick Stewart was knighted. About time really, I’ve already been calling him ‘Sir’ for years – he is the captain after all. Anyway, it gives me a great excuse to post this utterly amazing  video:

I caught the Season 1 Finale for Stargate Universe this morning and It was fucking awesome. By the end of it we got a Cliff-hanger for each and every major character overshadowed by a major “Kill Everyone” event. The show finally got round to introducing a threat from the old shows - The Lucian Alliance – which according to the Wikis is a crazy intergalactic Mafia (whom all inexplicably speak English in either British or American accents). But it was done rather well. I’d go as far as saying that it’s my new favourite show left in the power vacuum that Lost and Battlestar has left behind.

On the Anime Front, io9 reports that the creators of the Death Note Anime are making a series based on Supernatural. At first I was really perplexed, but thinking about it, it really makes some sense – it’s going to be based on the earlier seasons of the show, back when it was still very much a monster of the week affair, I think that formula really lends well to a 20-odd minute anime. I’ll be keeping my eye out for it.

Remaining on the Anime front, I recently this last week discovered Crunchyroll when they signed a deal to LEGALLY stream up to date subtitled episodes of Bleach, which unknown to myself they already have set up for Naruto Shippuden and a ton of other shows. And all for free – apart from a one week delay on new content for non-subscribers. It’s pretty damn amazing if you think about it. Anime channels have always had a hard time existing, always being usurped by Fansubbers and bit-torrent. Now we’ve got a service that for free delivers the two most popular anime shows that are currently running. Sure it’s add supported, but a lot less of what you’d put up with on regular TV.

Beyond Naruto and Bleach I’ve taken a liking to “Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao” which I have no Idea what it’s supposed to translate to. My idea of the premise is that it’s basically “what if Japan had made Harry Potter?” – so it’s completely retarded with heaps of weird nudity that occurs too regularly. I’ve also caught a couple episodes of “REBORN!” – which features a baby assassin trainer called Reborn (in that he is a baby, and does not train babies) who has to train a failing high school student how to become the head of a Mafia family – how retarded does that sound?

So that’s all I’ve got for you this week. I’m putting the Magical Ninja Deck Chef on hold for a couple of weeks hiatus – just until this E3 and PC business is taken care of, though I’ll still take suggestions if anyone’s got any. I’m off to play some Red Dead and do some Prep for next week’s E3 blog posts. I’ll leave you with the greatest evolution in Spy Warfare (I totally want one):

not the same without a gun

On the previously mentioned Blog updates, it turns out that they would charge me, ‘they’ being my servive provider, if I were to get them to even update the blogs version of wordpress. Sooo, I think I’ll hang off a while before I give it a go myself. As I said in my initial email to them, chances of me fucking it up = extremely high. It was really just for a couple of things: Change the banner, Add a Twitter feed to the sidebar. Embedd my gamercard… somewhere. But for now, if you wish to see my gamercard, check out the Contact page. And I’ve made an additional page as a temporary place to put the Twitter feed, so I don’t have to embed it every time I make a post. I’ll also update the Pile of Shame sometime this week too.

Yesterday’s Aberdull excursion was certainly an experience. I forgot, once again, what wonders the city offers the general nerd. As opposed to other…. local places. After an early-ish bus ride, regretfully filled with smelly pentioners, I went straight to KFC for Brunch. Then Hellboy 2, then shopping and Hair taming, then Batman, then Mcdonalds, then Bus. Simple, yet hella fun.

I picked up a Dualshock 3. I thought, considering the games that are on their way for PS3, that I’d better get the new controller. 35 is a bit much for a controller (they don’t even throw in a charging cable). Regardless, I tried it out a bit this morning with Burnout Paradise, and it feels SOOO much better with the rumble. It’s also got that “new controller feel” - All the buttons are tighter and snappier and the analogue sticks have a better spring to them. Yet to try out any Sixaxis activities with it yet, I’ll keep you posted on that. All in all, the rumble does make a major improvement on a pretty lame controller.

Which brings me to my next item, I also picked up a set of THESE. They’re called “Real Triggers” for the PS3. Basically, they snap onto the back of the L2 and R2 triggers, and make them feel more trigger-like. So no more fingers slipping off the back of your controller, and it makes the controller, in general, feel a bit bigger. Which isn’t a bad thing if you’re used to the 360’s pad. I give them the official MissingNin stamp of approval. And now that I think about it, I think I saw some similar item somewhere that gives you better pads for the analogue sticks…. I’ll take a look later, and keep you posted.

As mentioned on my Twitter Feed (yeah, I am overpimping that), I did also pick up an awesome 3 bargain copy of Hackers on DVD. Includes Angelina Jolie naked breast! And I picked up the new Naruto DVD box, Part 1 of season 4. Which includes the awesome Itachi origin stories. I’ll slowly be watching them throughout the week.

I didn’t want to buy much more than that, even though I did take a good look in all the usual shops. I remembered all the stuff that I ordered over the net that shoud be coming over the next fortnight. Namely Spore, Tongan Ninja DVD, Warhammer Online Collectors Edition and the second MC Frontalot CD. Not to mention the impending WAR subscription. Tally that all up and it’s quite a sum.

Hellboy 2 was…. I dunno. Part of me didn’t like it, and part of me kinda did. There was just soooo much Cheese mixed in with what I think was supposed to be serious plot. Infact, I got the same feeling from it that I got from the first Hellboy film. The Dark Knight, however, does not spoil with subsequent viewings.

And while I was there doing that, people were wrapping up PAX. There wasn’t much new news, with exception of what I’m going to talk about next. But from all the related podasts I’ve been listening too, it seemed like a really fun time. Maybe in some distant future, I’ll get to go. A Nerd can hope.

So the first info on the elusive XBLA Magic The Gathering title surfaced. Namely THESE screenshots and THIS forum thread And THIS shakey cam footage compiles all of the known data. I must say, I’m mildly impressed. Though evil visions of MTGO and Battlegrounds surface every time Magic and Videogame are uttered in the same sentence. I’m also worried that they’re going to considerably dumb the game down from it’s cardboard counterpart. Chances of Phage + Endless Whispers = pretty slim.

There was also alot of WAR info, along the lines of what every beta player wanted to hear. Basically they’re wrapping up major features for the next pre-open-beta patch. Stuff like Auction houses, Full Art world map, and that all the content is ready to roll. Check out the interview HERE. I seriously can’t fucking wait for WAR, Game boner is officially stoked.

Half PAX, Half Dr Horrible for today’s video. Found it on Felicia Day’s Blog. I lol’d HARD.

I’ve got pretty much a week to get through some more stuff in my pile of shame before Spore and WAR arrives and takes over the next 2 months. I’m hoping to get through The Shivering Isles this week, and sporadically try to get through CoD4’s Epilogue on Veteran. It feels like a good time to be a gamer. Now, I’m off to play some Nerdcore on Rock Band. Later.

I?ll break it some more

My living situation is rather odd, as people I’ve actually told about it will probably agree. My flatmates, who I haven’t seen since about christmas, are a bunch of messy fucks, especially in the kitchen. And since I really don’t want to clean up their shite, and I don’t want them to think that I should be, I simply rarely use the kitchen. This is a bit of a pain, sure I still use the microwave and the oven, for about 15 minutes every couple of days, but I never engage in any actual cooking. So I leave the real food for the takeaways and the fast food. And I find it satisfying that someone else cooked my food, hence removing me from the blame game should something go wrong. The problem comes when I run out of cash, as it did this week with my payments for GTA4 and the aforementioned cards from america. I was living off the 3-for-2 on all ready meals thing from tesco all freaking week, and I craved real food, something handmade. And then I remembered my mother mentioning to me several years ago about cooking bacon in the Microwave, and the look of horror on her face when she realised I actually didn’t know you could do that, like she just opened pandora’s box. Out of… Well… fear I suppose, all those years I never took the chance I had to experiment in the kitchen back at the failserboring homestead. Now was my chance, and it was delicious. 16 rashers cooked in under 15 minutes. Eaten in under 3.

I woke up Friday morning determined to get myself set up for the Metal Gear Online Beta. I went through the motions of signing up for one of those stupid Konami ID things (you know, a third party solution to something that the 1st party already took care of) and all that. But I can’t actually find the fucking client. I’ve looked, several times, for hours on end trying to find the damn thing in every nook and crannie within the “new and improved” playstation store. I emailed konami about it, and they haven’t gotten back to me. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s hard to tell if the servers are up or down, and communication between the devs and the testers has been extremely limited. So I guess I’ve missed my window entirely. Nevermind, it’s out in about a month anyway.

I dinged 500 Tournament Points yesterday in Yugioh Online. For the uninitiated, allow me to explain. Winning any weekend event in the game gives you Tournament Points, and if you accumulate over 500 points by the end of every season, you get a card of your choice from the entire catalogue, and a special looking Duel Disk avatar part as a sort of trophy. I dinged in a rather epic way aswel - getting a 8 win streak in Gunslinger with my Six Samurai deck. Though to be honest, most of my focus, especially late at night for some odd reason, has been focused towards Trading. I initially thought it to be a bit of a grind, but I find it rather exhilirating.

I managed upon some amazing trades in my ventures, namely an Exodia Set and a playset of Cyber Dragons, and the very last cards I needed to make my Six Samurai deck ultimately complete - a Shogun Shien and a Grandmaster. Though I did trade ‘golddust’ level cards for most of them, essentially all the cards I won from all the Weekend Events I’ve played in so far. I think my trade partners were a little off put by me offering them, and I didn’t understand why it is they wanted them, they’re not particularily great cards. It’s lead me to the belief that there’s a trading subculture in the game that people partake in when they’ve run out of Duelpass Points, and that it’s become a little detatched from the main game, valueing rarity over useability. Now doesn’t that seem a little exploitable .

Hanging out online with, and pwning the asses of, Yugioh fanboys, it’s hard not to notice all the talk about the new anime, Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s. I must admit, I’ve watched it, infact I’ll embedd the pilot below. It’s rather… well…. good I suppose. Sure it’s a little retarded, you can figure that out within the first five minutes. SUDDENLY MOTORBIKES THOUSANDS OF THEM! but when you look at Yugioh in general it makes a bit more sence, or atleast it does until the inevitable introduction of ancient egyptian prophecys and the fate of the world hanging on the outcome of a children’s card game. Besides, I find that it’s put together rather well, and I don’t think they’ve broken the rules of the card game yet, which the older shows were notorious for, but I jsut can’t wait until next weeks episode. Check it out below.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

I’ve been checking out some other animes aswel, besides the usual BleachRuto combo. Blastreiter had a usual anime preface, something about demons and robots and saving the world, but I’ve heard praise about it so I’ve got it, I just have’nt watched it yet. The other show, which I have watched, and loved, is Soul Eater. It’s like a mish mash of Shaman King and Death Note in a weird-assed Tim Burtononic world, and it seems to work rather well. I think the best thing about watching these new animes is that they are beautifully animated, especially compared to some of the classic stuff that everyone takes as the standard for anime. I’d better stop before I start singing praises for Fansubbing and BitTorrent, I could go on all day.

I’m going to leave you with some music today aswel, a little bit of chillout from the Animatrix soundtrack that clawed it’s way into the back of my mind. Enjoy.

And now a look at the week ahead, only one thing is really standing out as the pinnacle of the week. GTA4. Need I say more. There’s also Iron Man I suppose, as a little treat for the weekend. And there’s the extention to my ever-increasing overdraft that should come in and allow me the delicasy of non-microwaved food. Speaking of, I think I’ve got sausages and mash for tonight.

But I believe there’s a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love

So I was going to write up a HUGE -ish post on Condemned 2, BUT, our good friend Yatzee bet me to the punch. Check out the fideo for his (mine) opinion on the game and get some lulz out of it. If you actually do want my opinion, I’d say that if you want some pure Condemned, go for the first one - availabe now in your local gamestation bargain bin, and also for about £5 on PC.

So onto topic #2, which is the reason why I’ve been neglecting certain things, like blog posts, real world contact etc. It’s actually quite funny… well, sort of. I’ve been playing THIS.

So… yeh. I can’t really remember how I came across it, It might have had something to do with me being stuck in fraserboring for a week and realising that the Nintop could process the damn thing. Certainly the 10 free duels helped, though I did start paying before those 10 duels were up.

Let me lay it down, because it get’s a bit more complicated here. You pay for the game by buying duelpasses, which cost just a little less than a regular booster pack. Each Duelpass comes with 10MP (mileage points, i think) that you can use to boost your collection via the in-game store, and a different structure deck, depending on what kind of duelpass you register, and 30 duels. There are new duelpasses released every couple of months, to keep it all fresh, and usually coinside with the virtual release of a set. Now your asking, “well, how long does 30 duels last you?” I guess that depends on how much you play the game. I’ve certainly been blazing a trail with the game the past two weeks, so I’ve gone through about £20 worth of Passes, but I can certainly see myself winding down in the future. And if you think that cost’s bad, you’ve obviously never played a TCG.

The game operates rather well, like your usual MMORPG. You start off by creating a character, who looks like he was just pulled off the screen from the anime. I have created GhostOfAChance, whose name may be familiar to you, I was rather surprised that it wasn’t already taken (though I did try LimeyMan first). And then you get into the game and you get to walk your character about a 2.5D environment and explore a pretty decent recreation of places from the anime. Then you duel. Win or lose, at the end of every game you get a card (or three, if you played a best of three) from a booster expansion of your choice.

In the future, when the new-car smell is gone, I can really see myself only playing during the weekends. Since they hold events every weekend. Borderline tournaments, to some degree. I won’t go through them, you can check out the DETAILS yourselves. There are also big tournaments, but I’ve yet to try them out, since I have yet to reach the pre-requisites.

I really like it. It brings me back, in a good way. That’s not to say it’s not without it’s own problems, every MMO has them. The matchmaking system is rather shitty, everyone of every nationality clamours into the English Lobbies, and you see the same staple cards over and over and over - that’s just to name a few. The only thing that really gets on my freaking nerves is that there’s hardly any online support for the game, any that I did get I had to pull from original card game sites, and that’s a slightly different game.

So what decks am I running I hear you not ask but I need a really bad segway. I’ve got about 4 functioning decks at the moment, though I don’t really consider any of them to be ‘complete’. I began working on a Six Samurai deck rather early; which is almost complete save for a couple of commons I never got. To get the cards for that deck I built up a simple Dark World deck, easily made considering the game gives you the base when you register your first duelpass, it works really well, but it still needs a couple of cards. And then I realised that I had quite a few Cloudian cards sitting in my collection, which I’ve put to good use as my third deck. Though, again, it’s really out of action at the moment since it’s missing some key cards on the monster support side. And there’s the deck that I built last night, based around the card Armed Samurai Ben Kai (affectionately known as “Ben-Gay” in the circle of people that don’t use him) which workes wonders in best of 1 games, and should work better when I get a much needed card drawing engine in there. And finally, the deck that everyone has - the Dick Deck, because the theme of it is to throw synergy out the window and shove every good card in your collection together because you want easy soulless wins, like the Dick that you are.

And onto the final question of the post - Why not MTGO? Quite simply, the answer is that it costs more, has less active players at any given time, and I’d rater play MTG sitting across from someone. And considering your avarage Yugioh player is a hyperactive 8 year old, I’d rather not sit across from that.

Considering that I haven’t posted in quite a while, I’m going to give you 2 videos today. First up we have the Premier episode of Yugioh Abridged, something that I’ve meant to post about a billion times before. It’s freaking awesome, and less than 5 minutes long! Check out more episodes HERE.

And next we have an updated teaser trailer for the upcoming Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, formally known as the Naruto 2008 Project… or something. It looks GORGEOUS! Day 1 for me!

Well, I’m off to prepare for tomorrow’s pre-release, which I’m not exactly head-over-heels excited for, I’d imagine it’s all the online dueling I’ve been doing. Impressions when I get back to Fundee, which should be about this time tomorrow.

Fantastic posing greed

As I went this evening to pick up my monday-night kebab, I couldn’t help notice that there was a hefty smell of paint-stripper in the air. Looks like it’s saint patricks day. Yet another excuse for the masses to get drunk and pretend that they’re irish. I’m not one of them, that make’s me happy.

My nostalgia trip continues, I can’t remember what started it. This time I’ve returned to Digimon, I’m partially embarrased to say. I have the movies and the first series downloading, and from what little I’ve watched, it still remains as exciting now as it did all those years ago. It seems that my throwback is well timed. There’s a Digimon MMO on the horizon, for americans atleast. To be honest, I would love for a Digimon resurgance.

Look’s like there’s atleast one smart person, well to some degree, running the brittish goverment. Check THIS out. I think we’re on even almost on even terms now. Me and the govenment that is. There are my dreams of a future where content is regulated for children by the parents, and not the government influenced by the zealos parents. I doubt that’ll ever happen. But what the hell do I care, I’m legal motherfuckers.

Thanks very much Harmonix for what’s looking like right now, our compensation for the late rock band release. Utter Pish. If there were two bands in the world I could erase from existance, off the top of my head, I would say Blur and Oasis. How about some real fucking compensation here, or a decent brittish rock band, or hell, a motherfucking release date! What really grinds my gears about this is that the amerifags are actually pissed off that they’re not getting these tracks. Uh huh.

Grats to Anonymus this weekend for what seems like another sucsessful anti sci-fag raid, as today’s video will show. As I was at home looking after the dog, my mother took time out of her trip to edinburgh to seek out the raid and get some fetching pictures of our favbourite internet superheroes in action. To be honest I nearly facepalmed out of embarrasment when she told me she actually talked to them and procured some informative leaflets.

I would’ve thought Anon would’ve been more ninja about it…. wait… no I’m really fucking wrong there.

In other news, LOL.

We know the game and were gonna play it