when it rains...(podcast list)

so i've been thinking.

i think it's fair to assume that most people have an ipod or an mp3 player (note the distinction that no, an ipod is not just an mp3 player) these days.

to get the full use out of it, one cannot subsist on a diet of fallout boy, pearl jam and cobra starship alone...

for me, i filled the gap that comes when you can look at 6 gigs of music and not find anything that you haven't listened to in a while, with podcasts.

podcasts can be anything, but for me they need a few elements to be listenable.

i like recordings that don't ignore audio rules, like quality mics, mixing, levels and planned topics and i like personalities.

so here is my short list of podcasts that make me laugh and look a little crazy on the subway:

1) radio bam - yes, this is not a podcast. it's actually a ripped (see: stolen) mp3 of bam margera's radio show on sirius satellite radio, but because it's on sirius, there are no holds barred as to the content or language on it. it's always funny, always interesting (if you find skateboarding or jackass antics even remotely funny) and sometimes he gets some rad guests.

2) smodcast - another pseudo celeb podcast here. kevin smith (auteur of clerks, mallrats, dogma, chasing amy, jersey girl, jay and bob strike back, clerks ii and now filming zack and miri make a porno) and his longtime friend/producer/fellow canadian scott mosier make a properly recorded and well produced podcast with only their own banter filling almost an hour. while it's toted as being weekly, expect busy smith times (like now, since he's currently filming the previously mentioned flick starring seth 'the man' rogen) to have blackout weeks where no podcast surfaces. always racy, most often funny, a quality download.

3) arrow pointing down - a great little find and it's brand new to boot. jeff gerstmann (formerly of gamespot until a very scrutinized and very public firing*) and another former gamespot editor, ryan davis, make a very odd-topic and quick moving podcast about, ostensibly video games, but they often spend more time talking about gatorade, candy bars, and sleeping til 2 now that they're both out of work. if you like video games and funny dudes shooting the shit, this is another great one.

that's it. three. but i'm sure there are more good ones out there, possibly better than my picks, but for some reason i thought that maybe people might like to see what i was listening to.

layabout love to you all (as in, that doesn't involve moving from a prone position in front of the tv, controller in hand),

JD

*for more on gerstmann-gate read: here and the one below it. there are some links.

long time no update

well, i haven't updated in a while because...well...i have very little to say.

i mean, it's rare that i ever have nothing to say about a topic, it's just that there isn't a whole lot going on that interests me right now.

smash bros.

smash bros isn't out til march 3rd, and i'm not guaranteed a copy right then either. i guess, as opposed to fire emblem and other less desirables, the pr company that front nintendo in canada has been inundated with requests for loaners of this particular game.

now, if i were nintendo, i would want every person who could write about smash, to have a copy in their possession before launch, but that's just me. they're so super secretive about the unlockables in the game, the new characters, and basically everything but the main brawling that i don't think exposure is even a concern.

with the dojo and the fact that most American (or Japanese i guess) companies put very little money into Canadian press, i've not got my hopes up.

gaming these days

but it's not to say that i'm not gaming. in fact, the predominant use of my time recently has been plugging away at a few select games.

i've given up on mass effect entirely, so that's one thing i've stopped worrying about. there's just too much talking and too much walking. it's too much like real life i guess, but with more aliens and guns.

nhl 2008

i am almost through my inaugral nhl 2008 season finally! i've had the game for many moons but always played a few games here and there. i mean, i love the game and the new controls, i just kept getting rad games to take up my time.

lost odyssey

i've also breached the third disk in lost odyssey and i'm finding that, with a good chunk of the game done, i'm still loving the combat but finding it hard to sit down and play.

why? because once you get into a dungeon or new area, it's damn hard to put down.

for one, the save points later in the game can be few and far between. now, i rarely die in these instances, but the situation between me and my fiancee tends to detoriorate as i keep saying 'just one more minute...i seriously just need to find the next save point...'. this problem is documented here on kotaku.

skate.

and when i'm not playing hockey, or defeating giant bugs and enchanted thugs in lost odyssey, i'm battling xbox live and ea nation to get some online skate action in.

i don't think i've been this obsessed with a sports game since the first two tony hawks came out. it's really really good. course, connecting to games is a pain in the arse and i can't figure out if the matchmaking fails so many times due to ea, live!, my internet connection or some combination of two or three of those ingredients.

so, i can say that at least i'll keep busy until smash, mario kart wii, or anything else compelling are released.

later days,

JD

and now's my time to chime in...

so, the much rumoured commodore games to vc move has happened.

annouced at GDC (games developers conference) today and reported on kotaku, it seems that there will indeed be commodore 64 games on the wii's virtual console.

my first thoughts were 'yeah! i get to play all those games i loved playing in grade 3 on huge floppy disks with that worn out joystick in ms. davis' class!'. but then i read a little lower.

The first titles to appear on the VC will be International Karate and Uridium, priced to go at 500 Wii points each.

excuse my french but, pardon eh moi?

you're saying that games that ran on a computer i wouldn't use as a paperweight now...well, maybe as a paperweight actually, but anyways, games that run on a computer that's over 20 years old are going to cost the same as NES games? in my first-and hopefully only use of internet lingo in this blog-WTF!

i mean come on! how is that the same value as an NES game. i'll gladly pay $5 for a working and easy to boot version of blades of steel or kirby, but commodore 64 games? f no.

just had to chip that in there. i think it's patently ridiculous.

either way, i've had not much more success with lost odyssey this week, haven't touched rock band for that same amount of time and got the skate. glitch i've heard so much about.

but that's about my week as it stands. the rest of it? there's a guy coming to look at our pipes (not like that you dirty minded jerks) tonight to try and fix the persistant wet patch in the middle of our living room (yay for carpet!) and i'm going to try to get off the first disk of lost odyssey by the weekend.

happy trails, pardners...

JD

what i'm playing this week (whatchoo playin'?)

so, as the man who is always at least a year behind the times, i'm digging on two games that are way old, and one that is brand new this week.

right now, i'm dedicating the majority of my time to completing every last offline objective in skate. holy crap is it good. but i'm guessing you know this, as it came out like 6 months ago.

and even further back, dead rising came out. yes i've had a 360 for only a couple months, so give me a little credit, but oh man, once you get above around level 14, this game becomes fun defined. i've plateued as of late, but i may go back to it for a few more achievements and unlockables.

but most recently, i was sent, without asking for it, a copy of the 4-disk epic lost odyssey.

now, before i got ahold of a copy, i was seriously making fun of this game.

i mean, not only was it made by mistwalker, the company behind the atrociously long and boring blue dragon, which i have infamously not spent more than 2 hours on, but it was rumoured to clock in at 4 disks long, and was touted as 'too simplistic an rpg to be exceptional'.

well, take everything you've heard so far about lost odyssey and forget it.

like the protagonist in the story, get amnesia, and then pick up this game.*

i mean, if you hate rpgs, or if you've never played ff vii (or don't know what that means) then skip it.

but for everyone else, this is epic. it's a lot of reading, yes. and it's a lot of long cut scenes. there's also a fairly simplistic fighting and weapon/skill management system, but this is what makes the game so fun.

it's not just about the battles and the collectibles (though those themselves are still really, really fun), the game is as much about the story as it is about the journey.

it's just a rad rad japanese cinema epic, housed in a four disk game. i really expected to hate it, but i've been missing out on precious hours playing skate for this game. and as for value, it's 4 disks, which i've heard are almost 10 hours apiece if you're not snooping around too much, so you get a pretty nice ton of gameplay.

it may be a little too much like ff vii, and that may have something to do with why i'm so infatuated with it, but either way, the implication of a game being too much like ff vii is preposterous to begin with. it just increases its cred.

either way, i'm having fun with a game i expected to yawn at and place neatly in the pile marked 'don't open til bored and poor' with tony hawk: proving ground and blue dragon.

dreaming dreams of a thousand years,

JD

*if you need help with this, there is a rad episode of south park where cartman attempts to knock himself out so he can travel back in time in a vision to see the signing of the declaration of independence and not have to do research for his report. it's f-ing fantastic! it'll give all you kiddies loads of great ideas for conking yourself out, amnesia or no...

suh-suh-suh-suh... SUPER SMASH BROS BRAWL

i know that's a little more emotion than i'm prone to show, so i'll calm it down there.

count to 10 and backwards.

there are a few different reasons i feel this way. partly it's out of excitement because smash is very fun to play. i don't think anyone needs to set aside any time for worrying about whether or not they've done the series justice or whether or not there is enough inside the game.

trust me. it's giant. it's giantess is not exceeded by any other offering. and it looks like nintendo is mopping up the mistakes they've made previously, both in smash offerings and in wii versions of cult series (ie. strikers).

but without further ado, here are my impressions, replete with *SPOILERS*, which aren't really spoilers unless you're intent on knowing absolutely nothing about the game before launch day. and really, who managed that so far?

premise

not as different or as crazy as you'd expect barring the obvious disappearance of master hand as an adversary. there's a new evil boss in town changing our heroes into helpless statues.

the polygons, once the faceless and mostly shapeless fighters for a group of weird looking dudes called primids.

but all of this info is useless for two reasons: 1) because i've forgotten the name of the bad boss - a fact i was told but failed to write down and 2) it has little to do with whether or not the game played well.

gameplay

this is a true smash game. i tried every controller configuration in my 45 minutes battling with other game journos (of which i was victorious about 30% of the time).

the sideways wiimote style is actually functional and a great intro for mums, dads, kids and the like as it doesn't lend itself to the 'there's that many buttons james? how the hell do you expect me to do that' kind of look.

from there you can add a little extra control and comfort by adding a nun-chuk or classic controller.

for me, though, the best feeling controls came from a wavebird (or wireless gc controller) that took me back to the good old days of melee and the original.

the controls feel tight, if not a little too tight - as i was constantly sending starfox off the sides of small stages with him jumping around like a madman.

but when you finally connected a smash attack, it felt legen...wait for it...dary.

the final smash, i'm still not sold on. for those of you who've seen video of this device, where you have to run around and kick/hit/punch a glowing orb to activate your devastating final smash, it's just as weird in the game as in the video.

i really hope you can tune the game to not include this feature because if you can't, it may get old fast.

features

but features and customization are where this game take off and leave other wii games feeling quite un-featured.

firstly, there's the expanded and involved single player campaign, the subspace emissary. according to the nintendo rep, it could be packaged as a game in it's own, and is a multi-hour jaunt of sidescrolling action.

the great thing about it is, much like teenage mutant ninja turtles ii: the arcade game on the NES and double dragon a second player can jump in at any time to help out the 1st player.

their role and the character they play will change based on the goals of the mission, but it's a nice feature, especially when you consider how rad it was to have a second player be able to hop on during galaxy.

there's also the biggest feature that i haven't touched on yet that is going to blow some minds...

a level editor.

that's right, nintendo has gone mod-tastic with this game. not only can you create your own levels, with your own music and pieces, but you can send them to friends over wifi and play on them.

oh, but that's not all, you can also submit them to nintendo, much like miis in the look at mii channel, to potentially become the featured download of the month that will be automatically shipped to smash owners who are subscribers to the smash service

now, while this sounds amazing, my first question after this announcement went unanswered and is still burning a whole in my brain. how much space do these levels take up?

i mean, i know they're not going to be as intensely detailed as a normal map, but the wii doesn't have an external 20 gb hard drive (the minimum size of hd for competing consoles) so how many maps can we keep at a time. this is especially a concern if we're being sent extras as part of a download service.

i also asked about possible featured dlc (downloadable content) straight from the developers at nintendo, and while i was told this was a possibility, i was also told it's not planned right now.

there's also the regular features in the stadium section, like multi-man marathon fights, homerun challenge and target smash. when i asked about race to the finish, i was just told that there are some cool unlockables in the game with a wry grin. no idea what that means.

chars

so, as some people who have already talked to me on the subject know, this was the only really disappointing part of the whole demo. while i got to try a bit of the single player campaign (FUN!) and brawled with my fellow journos (WHEE!) we were only shown a fraction of the game and were certainly not shown any of the sought after, unlockable characters.

this was a little heartbreaking for me as i was really looking forward to seeing snake and sonic in action, but i was told i'd have to wait until march like the rest of you schmucks for that privilege too.

the ones i did try were cool and i'll give a brief rundown on some old favorites and new ones too:

pokemon trainer

god, i hope this guy doesn't suck as much as he seemed to when i played with him. for one, it's not completely obvious how to change pokemon while you're fighting, and bulbasaur sucked. i also found out that you can't plug in a new attachment while playing, which may have affected my experience with the pokemon trainer. there was a five minute stretch where i couldn't move horizontally, only vertically and attack.

basically, it seems as if all his attacks are too simple and the variety is supposed to come with the different pokemon. lame.

link

ahhhh, link. one of my old favorites from melee, who as an old favorite from smash bros. 64. he handles just as he should, a little on the heavy side but with some fantastic attacks. that, and he comes in a wicked 'dark link' colour as one of his alternate costumes. rad looking to say the least.

he also won me the first battle of the afternoon, which was super rad. i immediately established my dominance. it was quickly taken out from under my feet by the guy who was there who actually competed for mlg in smash bros. melee, but i had a nice and brief reign of dominatingness...

bowser

the first character i got to perform a final smash with. giga bowser has to be seen to understood. it f-in' rocked.

overall, his attacks seem comparable if not the same as melee, but it kind of felt like his up and b (the shell spin) attack's power was reduced a little.

marth

loved him in melee. indifferent to him in brawl. just doesn't feel as quick or as powerful. had a hard time performing regular smash attacks with him. doesn't mean he's written off, but wasn't a particularly fun time. will need to spend more time with him when i get a copy.

metaknight

left this little dude for last because of how much ass i kicked with him. holy crap. i can't even remember what series he's from (i think maybe kirby?) but he's got this arial spinning attack that is devastating. and it's not just a straight line or a diagonal attack. it's sort of like a combo of fox's firefox with captain falcon's kick, but with a suck-in drilling action.

i know that makes no sense but he's really fun to play with and that attack i just detailed goes in a straight line, but can be bent downwards to follow a moving target slightly.

overall

loved it. still disappointed over the lack of secret characters on display at the demo, but i guess it just makes me more eager for the march drop date.

i hope the multiplayer is better, faster and more reliable than strikers and i'll let you guys know the minute i know if the world play is for real, or a lie (like strikers was).

hugs and kisses (during the retardedly delayed post i've been working on since tuesday) and happy v-day,

JD

a little smash bros. brawl anyone?

just a quick weekend update because i forgot to blog about this on friday.

i was too busy running around trying to get stuff ready for another wedding-prep weekend and missed an important point.

tomorrow, at 4pm i will become one of the first people in canada to try out nintendo's new smash bros. game.

i know, i know, it's already out in japan, but since neither i, nor any of my friends are in japan, this is kind of a big deal to me.

got the invite last week, but it's just starting to set in. i was a pretty big smash fan back when it debuted on the 64, and i liked the gamecube entry quite a bit as well. didn't put nearly as many hours into that one as the original, but that doesn't mean brawl won't hook me back into it (at least until soul calibur iv comes out).

will post impressions on tuesday as i'm sure i'll have something to say about it (or at the very least about what it's like to play as solid snake!).

excelsior!

JD

demo'd - the club and turok edition

so it's a two-fer to make up for missed days today, and here are two games that i had unexpected reactions to.

being that i'm really not much of an fps-er (due in part to my massive amount of suckage in the genre that stems back to early attempts at doom and quake in the mid-nineties) i had two expectations coming into these two:

1) i would like turok, since i didn't mind the 64 game, way back, and i couldn't see a foreseeable way to not like a game with raptors and guns.

2) i would hate 'the club' since the premise and gameplay sounded kind of stupid, basically a tony hawk style multiplayer combined with killing people using semi-automatic weaponry.

as is expected i was wrong on both counts.

demo'd: turok

scenary

well, for the demo, they went with the tired old beef of mine, the underground/closed in space level where there is nowhere to hide or run.

it looked ....alright i guess, but because of the lack of light and constantly being jumped by vicious velociraptors, it was hard to appreciate my surroundings.

chars

the dude, for this i'll call him john turok*, as i can't remember if that's his name or not, is another 'deep-talker' carrying a big stick, or automatic weapon really.

he's not big on the personality, but more on the ridiculously obvious statements like 'be careful' or 'this looks strange' when he sees a corpse.

gameplay

not only is he a little shy, mr. turok can't fight worth s**t. at least not with me at the controls. it may have been partly due to my suckage at fps games, or the fact that i'm tired or playing claustrophobic levels with monotone backgrounds (see. cave) that don't feel fun in any way.

i started off with a partner in crime, and very quickly, he too was seperated from me, leaving me to be quickly taken down by 4 raptors, while i shot bullets that must have been made of pillows or marshmallows, because they didn't seem to effect or slow down any of the dinosaurs i was shooting.



so, yeah, i felt that maybe the gameplay wasn't balanced. again, i concede i may just suck, but it wasn't fun...really at all.

controls

there were some. they were pretty much what you'd expect. right trigger shoot, left stick move.

verdict

this is a big miss for me, which is a shame, because i was decently anticipating this one. i just don't see a reason to track down someone to try out a game with a miserable, predictable and un-fun demo.

demo'd: le (the) club

premise

for this one, i feel the premise (or lack thereof) for this game is important to understanding it.

the plot, i guess, is that you play one of a number of differently skilled assassin's, mercenaries, former cops and soldiers and just plain whack jobs that have been offered a sum of money (or to be taken away from their debts and criminal records) to compete in a tournament where man-hunting and killing is the name of the game.

if this sounds a lot like the premise to bruce lee's last and greatest work, enter the dragon then you and i are on the same page.

gameplay

the club - or le club as i've come to refer to it - plays a lot like a game of pinball, or tony hawk. while the aim is the same as most fps's in that you need to get from point a to point b while shooting a bunch of guys, there is one fundamental difference.

like a game of pinball, but more like tony hawk and other 'extreme' sports games, for each kill you get, you get another bar of multiplier to your score. but to keep this multiplier going, you need to keep getting kills. it will slowly tick down for every second you spend not killing. after a certain amount of time, it will move down to the next lowest multiplier until eventually bottoming out.

you still have to balance this against health concerns and eventual exit of the level, but you are also rewarded, much like tony hawk, for variety of kills - headshots, zoomed in snipe shots, explosive shots, etc. - and penalized for doing a lot of the same.

while i don't think i'll be checking out the full game, it's at least nice to see some innovation in the fps genre beyond fancier weapons and nicer graphics.

controls

it has some but you probably won't need to worry about most of them besides the different location of the 'jump' or 'roll' commands and the 'zoom' one. these will just give you a boost in your killing if you work them into your 'lines'.

verdict

a cool little shooter that, for fans of the genre, may well be worth checking out, though without more details on the depth of the full game, i'd hesitate before buying it new.

and that's my little taste of demo'd for today, i hope it satiates your burning desire for information on gaming for now.

will update later when there's more news to report.

cha...

JD

*during my search for photos to illustrate the 'bullets that do nothing' in turok, i found out the main character in turok is actually called joseph turok! so i really wasn't far off...

i just want to blog!

honestly i do! unfortunately, i'm knee deep in it right now, so my first impressions on the 'turok' and 'the club' demo, and final thoughts on metroid and fire emblem on wii will have to wait for a less busy day.

but i promise that they're coming! and not like i promised to put up a huge update about san francisco, replete with a story chronicling my stay, promise. no, these will actually come to pass soonish!

later days and lazier times (missing),

JD