yes, you can now call this blog neglect

i realize it's been an inhumane amount of time that i've left this blog un-updated.

i apologize if anybody was still reading or subscribing through rss, it's been a busy and rough time.

after leaving my last job i took a bit of a break from writing but i've got a new project that is almost ready to start. it's not huge but will likely be the next place to find my writing online.

when it's ready, i'll put a link to it here.

in the meantime, you can follow me on twitter @jamesspeedy. (although i'm hoping to take over the abandoned @jdspeedy as soon as i get a go ahead from twitter, so if that link no longer works try that).

and maybe, after a while, i'll come back and re-invigorate this blog. i still love it, i just don't love love it right now and with my incredible excitement over doing some more writing now, it should only be a matter or time before this will be absolutely filthy with posts again. that just may not be tomorrow or the near future.

for now,

stay frosty,

JD

oh no! my littlebigplanet!

in all seriousness, this has got me feeling pretty cagey.

littlebigplanet has been delayed. and not a, 'the shipment was slow to canada' kind of delay where you wait one to three days to get a game they're already playing in the states or on illegally modded consoles.

it's delayed as in, you offended a giant portion of the world by including inflammatory passages from the q'ruan in the background music to your game.

that's right, in the background music to the first level of the third world (swinging safari) you can hear two selections from the religious book, something that muslims take as offensive.

according to Nsider's open letter to media molecule (producers' of littlebigplanet) via kotaku, they say that:

We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.

as someone who's not muslim, far be it for me to weigh in on whether or not they should be reprinted, all i can say, is that as a littlebigplanet beta tester, next week is going to be a long one.

i was planning on making a design document for a few levels that i would start on tuesday but, according to shacknews, i'll be waiting another week after that to finally get my hands on a full version.

i'm sure i'm not the only one who will be sweating the extra week's wait. i just gotta pray that eb doesn't pull their usual nonsense with getting in my pre-ordered games late once the edited disks get shipped.

sadly without sackboy,

JD

interesting...interesting

now i don't quite feel so bad for sucking at halo.

there's always a positive spin you can put on anything...

JD

properly implemented achivements= sales?

this is probably the most interesting video games study i've heard of in a long while. it's not just some slapdash gathering of sales charts that compares microsoft to sony to nintendo made games, trying to figure out if master chief could out arm wrestle mario.

no, this breaks down whether or not the proper implementation of achievement points in a game, that reward the player just enough for their hard earned time and money, and tries to discern how much that affects their sales.

in fact, the study, featured on gamespot, seems to link games where developers spent time and effort developing incremental rewards with over 30 achievements (or trophies, if the ps3 is your bag) with better game sales.

as a rampant consumer of video games I can honestly say that this is not only one of the smarter uses of bar graphs that i've seen used to take apart game sales metrics, but also the most interesting study period.

yes, we know more girls are playing games than ever before, and old people like the wii. but proper implementation of a reward system to foster a relationship with the user and encourage them to not only see all the different aspects to your game, but show them that you appreciate their time. wow. didn't see that coming til i pulled it off my google reader.

bloggin' and loggin',

JD

i don't even know what to think

so grand theft auto has been generally observed as a scapegoat for modern pontiffs of fear news (ie. 'video games are making our children kill/violent/eat human flesh, what can you do about it?').

just today i stumbled across this story on kotaku:

Grand Theft Auto Helps Preteen Save Family's Lives

???

well, that's certainly...good? i don't really know what to think about this one. i mean, great! she saved her families live potentially, but wtf? it's because of GTA? i thought kids weren't supposed to play that game?

maybe if she'd played burnout, she'd just be waiting for the car to reset on the road and reduced boost...

missin' the movies,

JD

downloadable games that don't suck

in the past, i've kind of ignored the downloadable games available to me with my three consoles, unless they're explicitly given to me for free and i test them for a couple days.

i played a couple capcom shooters (1942, wolf of the battlefield, the space one) and was left unimpressed. but recently there's been a spat of actually really good games that i find myself playing more than full disk titles. that is, until the next wave of killer games comes out; force unleashed, nhl 09, etc., etc.

here are a few i'm currently loving and a couple older ones that are great too:

bionic commando: rearmed (XBLA & PSN)


this one came out of left field for me because, admittedly, i'd barely played the NES original (read: never).

the swing mechanic (by which this title would succeed or epically fail) feels perfect and the combo of the incredibly inventive ways to kill the bosses, the upgradable and satisfyingly designed firepower with that perfect swinging makes for a game that feels like it could deserve a stand alone release.

this is a remake that doesn't feel like a remake (like all those frogger incarnations) and outdoes just about any other game on either psn or xbox live arcade right now. it's fun and has a free demo so check it out.

my only gripe= why is this not downloadable to PSP yet?

special note: pick up the PSN version if you have the option because it's much more fun to play with a proper d-pad and not the xbox's failed attempt

castle crashers (XBLA)


this nifty little game is barely out and the buzz around it is huge. it has one of the best multiplayer implementations out there in the arcade games and a tremendously addictive gameplay reminiscent of the old TMNT arcade games and double dragon style beat em ups.

the art style is wicked, there's cutesy blood and gore and really, most important of all, it's fun. it's not so challenging as to scare off new gamers (who don't love frustrating shoot em ups). it's just wacky and weird and violent and cool, it hits all my bases. i look forward to downloading the full version once i get together somewhat of a team to play through the full campaign with.

various boardgames and card games (XBLA)

the only ones i can truly recommend are UNO and carcassonne, and that's because they're fun, easy to pick up and great to play on live.

one thing to note, however, people are really talkative in the UNO rooms and to me, that's a good thing. if it's anything like when the game was available free on live back in last year, carcassonne is just full of people grinding out the 200 achievement points in complete silence. boring.

notable mentions

here are a few that might be worth your time, at least for a few seconds. they're not perfect and won't steal a ton of your time but they're cheap and quite fun, depending on how much you get in to them:

- geometry wars (1 or 2) (XBLA)
- super stardust HD (PSN)
- pain (PSN)
- soul calibur (XBLA)
- kirby's adventure (VC)

arcadin' and lovin' it,

JD

must read: todd levin's history of 'his' gaming

this guy...this guy.

i don't know how to even phrase this, but i'd have to say that it enters the shortlist for this year's 'media that seems to have been written expressly for me'.

this dude knows how to write, and has a confidence in admitting a personality that i have slightly less confidence in admitting closely resembles my own.

consoles i have known was a multi-part chronicle of todd levin's adolescence and early adulthood through the gaming consoles he has owned, from the radioshack pong clone forwards.

it's funny, scathing and incredibly self-deprecating and surely worthy of the short bursts of attention required to get through the entire thing.

please give it a shot, especially if you ever found yourself in the unique position of not caring about sports or school dances but not having enough attention to even fit in with the magic card playing or D&D nerds.

laughing my way to the poor house,

JD