Pagoda of Gaming

I’m just not reading CAD anymore, shit’s making me facepalm. IT’S BEEN GOING DOWNHILL FOR A WHILE and I just can’t be ARSED with it. I’m purging it from my favourites.

The WAR beta has gone on hiatus for a couple of weeks, this might be public knowledge, so I’ve been playing alot of CoD4 instead. And so has the rest of the world, it seems. I’ve managed to get myself to about rank 49 so far, and I don’t think I’m man enough to go into “prestige” mode, aka “delete all your shit and start again” mode. There doesn’t seem to be enough incentive for me to do it. I’ve been playing the most antisocial online mode they’ve got, Mercenary Team Deathmatch. And honestly that’s pretty much all I’ve played of the online modes. I think I’ll explore more when I get to Rank 55. Not to honk my own horn here, but I’ve been getting quite good at it, the whole shooting people and getting points thing. To the point that I’m usually within the top 3 players in any match. It bugs me a little on the lack of achievements the game gives for online play (hint: there are none), It is satisfying for all the people I’ve ran into online to see my sick scores and high-ish rank, but I’d love for people to see that when I’m not online. But hey, there might be some in the ineveitable DLC, which I’m probably going to have to get.

I love the final sniper rifle, the Barrett 50. Cal, especially on “Bog”, when it’s range can reach the other side of the map. If you’re in need of some strategical help with the game, THIS ARTICLE seems to be quite helpful, it says alot of shit that I could write here to teach the nooblets, but I’m to lazy for that.

I’m starting to get annoyed with Neogaf. I’ve been trolling and posting there for about a year and a half now and it’s starting to piss me off how goddamn american they are. What I mean by that is all the rejoicing and happiness for all these games they get to play that we here dont, and especially their lack of news that’s about anywhere but the US. I need a brittish gaming forum, where people sit and drink tea and eat crumpets and complain about the incompetance of Nintendo of Europe, and yet still finds and posts nice peices of news that I can enjoy because it affects me and not some faggots who live an ocean away.

And I know there is one like that, a really popular one where brittish devs and game-press people post sometimes. This is a cry of help, please aid me in my quest.

I’m happy to see that MGS4 has finally gotten a release date, which at the moment is being heralded as a worldwide one. Amerifags can preorder the game and get themselves a beta key for the open beta of Metal Gear Online. My internal games analyst, the one that glows red and sits on my shoulder, whispering nefarious words in my ear, is unsure if the beta will come to european shores. On the one hand, they should, hell I’d preorder for that. On the other hand, they’re probably a bunch of faggots. My internal game’s journalist, who sits on my other shoulder, agrees.

I just found out that MC Frontalot has a second album. I’m going to have to get that, on disk. yeh, I actually want to buy music for a change. Hell, it’s only £10 and I should probably get one of those awesome shirts too…. come here wallet, I need to rape you.

This’ll be the last post before I head back to… 0_0!… OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK MOTHERSDAY NEED PRESENT NAO! GTG!

first off y’all better make me a sandwich

It snuck up on me like a rogue, or more preferably these days, a witchhunter. Looks like the Lost Game is going to get released on friday. Now I really don’t want to go home for the weekend, in b4 usual failserboring bitching. There has been some impressions on the game, though maybe not the best impressions. I’m still going to be there day 1, or day 4 I suppose, since I wont get back until sunday night. There has also been mentions of “easy gamerscore”, which sounds like fun to me. So yeh, that means I’ll be picking up the 360 version.

I’ve actually been enjoying the new season so far, even though it appears to be at a slow start. Last week’s episode was probably the best so far, even just for the giant twist at the end, and Kate is usually the flashbacker of a good episode. I’m more eager to get a story from Desmond at this point, since he seems to be one of the 2 that got off the island that wasn’t one of the oceanic 6, and is in my opinion one of the less explored characters of the show, and he should be explored. I’m also very eager to see this season’s Sawyer episode, since there’s always atleast one and it’s usually fucking awesome, ala Long Con. (lol - list of Sawyer’s nicknaming)

Looking at the euro release calendar, March is looking to be quite interesting, with Bully on the 7th and Condemned 2 on the 14th. And looking at the rest of the calendar, it looks like lots and lots of shite all up until GTA4’s release at the end of april. I guess that helps with some aspect of my scheduling.

Alot more details on the first Eye of Judgement expansion has been released. And I’m liking what I’m seeing. They seem to be slowly redeeming themselves into the game that it should be, so maybe by the third expansion they’ll be up to snuff. It’s probably enough for me to go and play it again, which is saying something, considering it’s the most orphaned of my PS3 games. I’m liking the new abilities on the cards and especially the ingame encyclopedia, that should help a ton with deckbuilding.

I saw the Shawshank Redemption last night. Shit that’s a fucking good movie. First time I’ve 5-starred a film from Lovefilm. I also saw Jumper last week, and it’s not as bad as the critics are saying it is. Though to be fair, there is something wrong with it, I just can’t exactly put my finger on what. Actually now that I think about it, the wrong thing could be Hayden Christensen.

My blood wants to say hello to you

I can’t remember the last time I played WoW, It must be about 2 weeks by now.

Here’s the list of happenings that I found were worthy of a mention, yeh, that just means that I’m to lazy to go into this stuff in depth.

The Developers Rant - It’s fucking awesome. Moar HERE.
FREE MS SOFTWARE FOR STUDENTS - get it while it’s hot!
New Nine Inch Nails tracks for Rock Band - Very nice, how about letting me play some Huuuuuuuh?
The Zero Punctuation GDC Special - Need I say more?
Quake Live - More info on the free-to-play browser based version of Quake.
New Console CoD4 Patch - Increased sniper accuracy and matchmaking fixes ftw!
Still Alive planned for Rock Band - You know, the portal song. Srsly, no more, we’ve heard the song enough.
Portal Co-Creator lets slip announcement of Portal 2 - Can I get a hell yeh? Gabe Newell must be a little pissed by the announcement.
Microsoft Press Conference - Lots of talk about XNA development and how easy it should be to get your stuff into the hands of Live gamers.

—===The Megatons===—

Possibly the worst kept secret in gaming, like stumbling into your own surprise party that you helped organise youself. I’m sure it’ll be a decent game, but I’m not gay for it, considering the shitty teaser trailer that was shown for it (it could have easily been made using gears 1 tech). Though, as this video shows, there seems to be extreeme improvements to the engine. And ofcourse, the party doesn’t get started until snoop dog Cliffy B. hits the scene.

Nice to see that Realtime (which, to pimp myself a bit, is just round the corner from where I’m sitting right now) is finally talking about the game. I think it was E3 ‘06 when it was first shown, only in concept video form. It looks BADASS. My greatest hope for the game is that it could turn out to be the MMO that actually works on Consoles. Check out the Preview HERE and the video’s HERE, be sure to check them all out. Shit looks sooo cash!

Required Listening
Get more news and some awesome interviews from the 1up crew on their various GDC podcasts (HERE, scroll down, they’re near the bottom), the Warren Spector and Paul Wedgewood ‘cast is a must, so is the Ken Lavine one.

After all that, I’ve come away with feelings of revolution. I mean, who’s going to have time for WoW when we’ve got Spore, APB, and Warhammer Online to feed our need for bloodlust and digital social interaction. Want to know what I have been playing this past week instead of WoW? The WAR beta. And that’s all NDA allows me to say. But really, isn’t that enough?

I dunno why I haven’t posted this yet. This is the old Warhammer Online Cinematic, it’s pretty badass.

This video should fill in some of the blanks about the game.

I realise the post is a bit late, but I wanted to wait until gdc was totally over until I put up a post… then I wanted to wait another 2 days because I’m super lazy right now. To make up for it I’ll put something up tomorrow too. laters.

Turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky

I just had a really weird weekend. Full of fucked up sleep patterns, two whole seasons of Greys Anatomy, spur of the moment movie visits and a craving for cheap bakery goods and kebabs.

What I played at the weekend was a mix of pretty much everything. I remember a night I spent from about 3am til about 8am playing the Spectromancer Beta, It’s completely free, yet oddly restricting for a beta, but well worth a look if you’re into the whole digital CCG genre. If you need more convincing, two words - Richard Garfiled. I also dabbled a little with Everyday Shooter and the newly released Audiosurf, my opinions at a later time. And finally, a game that I can’t really talk about, even though my typing of this sentence could allow you to figure it out. I really want to talk about it, but I cant.

THIS nice thread popped up on Neogaf. Some new info and alot of nice hi-res screen shots from the game. It’s looking as badass as ever and I just can’t wait to zombify some of my CS:S nostalgia. Unfortunatly, according to THIS, the game has slipped along with Spore to Q3 2008.

Yeh, Spore’s delay, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was one of the talking points of the non-existant weekend post. It annoys me, thought it only does so because the Hype machine started way too early. It’s nice and all that they’re relesing the creature creator in a couple of months, but shouldn’t the full game be ready by now? If you want some more info on the game, there’s some nice impressions on the latest episode of GFW Radio.

I nearly Shat bricks this morning as I turned Kotaku to THIS press release from Wizards of the Coast. I’m hopeful for a MTGO without incremental payments on XBLA, but considering WotC’s track record with digital equivalents of Magic, It’s something to be dearly desired. Also take into consideration that the game is coming out on both PC and XBLA, so don’t expect a MTGO clone. But really, who would want a MTGO clone. Microtransactions on that sort of level is murderous.

Today’s video is some gameplay from the next gen… well, new gen, Dragonball Z game. You know I’m gay for it.

My aforementioned trip to the cinema was to see Juno. I really just wanted to see what all the Fuss was about, and honestly, I haven’t formulated an opinion yet. It was a bit of a mindfuck. Lovefilm sent me The Aviator, and it was pretty good, maybe a bit long, but worth a watch. I also got Shawshank from them, but I haven’t watched it yet.

Before I would go, I would like to profess my hatred for the second opening theme to Dawson’s Creek, first heard in season 3. Why they would trash the famous “I DONT WANNA WAIT! FOR OUR LIVES TO BE OVE-RRRRR!” makes me facepalm and skip the first minute of each episode. Chalk it up to the tight assed american television executives.

GDC’s underway, so I’ll keep my eyes on the net and report in the next post.

…I reply to stupid-name-looks-like-juila-roberts-girl as the credit’s roll. Thanks for getting your ass into the mess I had to mop up. Roll Credits.

So I just finished DMC4, and now I’m staring at a harder difficulty level… I don’t think so, not now anyway, I have Ogres to hunt in Blade’s-Edge. It was fun, and certainly worth playing. Though it might be worth your while to play on the easiest difficulty, so you can appreciate the story, bosses, style and what not. Thinking I could handle the mode the game dubs “JOO CAN DO DIS IF YOU PLAD BEFOR KEKEKE”, also known as Devil Hunter Mode, I was regualrily pissed off at the game. It doesn’t matter anyways, I’ll have to play human mode (easy) because god forbid you’re given the achievement for finishing it if you have to go through the harder mode.

Nero’s about as awesome as Raiden, compared to Dante anyway. It really revitalises the game once you start playing as him. But, I’ll give you a spoiler you’ll want to know, you have to go right back through the entire game backwards visiting about 90% of the locations you’ve already been to as Nero, and fight 3 out of the 5 bosses you’ve already fought, because nero’s too shit to actually kill them himself. Actually, Nero only kills 1 boss in the entire game, like kill kill. The backtracking is somewhat forgivable, though blatant laziness on the developers part. Dante has soo much cool oozing out of his… everything that I found it more enjoyable going back through as the game’s proper hero.

Graphics are awesome. Look, we don’t need to talk about graphics in any game anymore, unless they are potential targets for mockery. Voice acting didn’t make my skin crawl, but srsly guys, ONE FUCKING METAL SONG, just one that’s played continuously, over and over, as long as you’re in combat. Some variation next time please.

Combat, the meat of the game is well balanced between the two characters. Nero’s pea-shooter sucks fucking cock, but that’s cool since you never need to use it thanks to his go-go-gadget-demon-grabber. And though Dante’s lack of an auto ‘get over here’ button is daunting at first, just go buy stinger from the unlock statue thingy and you’re safe. Dante also get’s some nice toys to play with, which nero does not, because he epically fails at killing bosses. The extra devil arms are welcome, but the devs have never made a sword cooler than Alexander or the Sparta sword, and it puzzles me to no end why they haven’t properly brought them back since the first game.

The story’s there, but it’s sort of hidden. Theres a heap of stuff there if you’ve played all the previous games, 3 and 1 as a pre-requisite, but you have to spot it yourself. Other than that, I really wanted to know more about this crazy Sparta religion and why the fuck didn’t everyone want to suck Dante’s cock as soon as he appeared for literally being the son of their god, but no, there’s about at much mystery here as your regualr episode of lost.

For those who already played to completion ZOMG SPOILERS. Did you shit yourself when the Ice-frog guy made his appearance, because I fucking did, I was sitting like a foot away from my TV at the time too, I haven’t had a fright like that since…. Condemned. And those fucking stupid lightning dudes. I hate those things like a fucking passion. And why the fuck did trish take Sparta? she needs to get back in the kitchen quick and make dante a sammich methinks.

To the Devs, how about next time we get down and dirty with Dante and Trish on a regualr mission for a change, or several regualr missions, that’d be kinda cool. And next time, when you’re at the music store buy the album, not the single.

On the subject of the first batch of PS3 Accomplishments, I was pretty much right. They are totally hidden within the game and there is no way to view them from the XMB. I srsly hope that Sony hurrys up and just rips off microsoft already, or they come up with something as awesome as XBL and roll it out as fast as possible. You can check out the achievements HERE, and damn, that’s a list that doesn’t give you any instant satisfaction. I would have done it in a completely different way, had I had the chance. Also, I’m all good with new difficulty levels unlocking at completion, but a gallery? srsly, developers are still doing this. Atleast add it to my PS3’s HDD so I could use it as a XMB background. This is next gen people, start acting like it.

So that’s my review. I didn’t even intend to write that, it just sorta came out. So there’s somthing random that popped into my mind when I was getting near the end of the game. Who would be the perfect cast for the DMC movie, if there actually was one. If there’s anyone out there actually reading this, give it a go and I’ll post my ideal cast in my next post, Just cast the major characters from the DMC lore, and plz give an imdb link if it’s someone obscure. Bonus points if you manage to use jay and silent bob.

And it seems that that is today’s post. There was actually alot of news that I wanted to hit on, but I’ll save it for the weekend. Well I’ll hit on one thing. What was with the zomg-shit-storm over DMC4 selling more copies on the 360 than PS3 in the UK? Protip, there are more 360’s in the UK than PS3’s, it’s not a big deal.

Before I go, I’m going to go tell you to get your european ass onto PSN and download Everyday Shooter, it’s out now. It costs you about as much as a foot-long from subway to buy it, and it makes you less of a faggot.

Shay plays on the fade slice like a ninja