it's here! (rainbow six vegas 2 edition)

finally got my copy of rsv2! pretty darn excited to get it up and running as i've heard good things.

i may not be a good fps-er (or third person shooter), and i may have sucked the big one at the original rainbow six-which, to be fair, i played a total of 1 time(s)-but i've been told they've scaled the play a bit so that even the worst fps-er who didn't play a call of duty, rainbow six or anything of the like, can have fun playing.

so even i have a chance!

i will definitely be booting up the campaign mode this weekend when i go back home for some family visit time at least in between rounds of bully and rock band.

gonna love me some vegas tactical shooter.

will post impressions once i get it in the ol' 360.

later days,

JD

three (fairly obvious) reasons why i think xbox will win the (2008) console war

so this is a weird topic for me, i realize, as most times i keep my opinion to myself (ha!) but i was thinking about this topic and it suddenly dawned on me.

i have a wii. i have a ds. i have a 360 and i will probably have a ps3 before too long. but there are a few select reasons why i just can't stop playing 360 and i think they're fairly universal.

even though, as i've mentioned, they're patently obvious, i thought my stunning insights were worth a blog post for those wii-ers who don't understand the appeal of a 360 (me 8 months ago) or diehard sony fanatics that have either blindly adopted the ps3 or couldn't let go of the ps2 (me 2 years ago).

achievement points, price of used games, sheer catalogue,

1) achievement points

i know. i know. i didn't want this to be a factor. but after only a scant few months of playing games on my 360, i've found out one important fact.

achievement points are addictive.

that's just a fact, like cheese-strings are awesome and the pope has to have 6'9" doorways so he won't hit his hat.

i swore to myself that i would never become a slave to achievement points or even care, but i've become addicted to that little 'boop' noise and the phrase 'achivement unlocked!'.

sony and nintendo have no counter to this and haven't even bothered to copy it.

2) catalogue

the 360 has just been around longer. there are more good games on it than any other console because of that.

that, and the fact that the wii had an extremely rough start for everything but first party-ie. nintendo-made-titles because of how new the platform was and how difficult it was to design for.

the ps3 has little excuse as they somehow went from the most sought-after console that everyone was willing and wanted to design for to the one with the bad reputation for being hard to design on and that everyone actively avoids.

3) price of games

and this is the clincher for me and many other people. even if you set aside used games, which some people do, because it's a dirty business where eb (or gamestop if you're in the US) make a ton of money and developers still struggle to stay afloat, there are the platinum titles and price cuts galore.

wii games never go on sale. and the good ones don't even depreciate more than $5 to $10 as used games! as of now there is no such thing as a wii greatest hits title, and therefore great games like super mario galaxy, no more heroes and even excitetruck (which was a launch title!) stay the same price forever.

ps3 games just seem expensive in general, they've not been around long enough for greatest hits and like the wii games, don't seem to get into the 'easy to buy' category because of high prices.

it's easy to walk into a game store and leave with a couple $10 or $20 games that are still great but came out in maybe 2006. it's harder to leave with a couple of $50, $60 or even $70 (on the ps3) games. you have to be way more choosy.

just a thought,

JD

tid-bittal update

just a few notes to keep the brain juices flowing.

bully patch?

first, rockstar proved both themselves and me to be liars as the bully patch has still not surfaced.

after surfing various forums on this topic it seems that the general mood can be summed up into three categories:

1) exceedingly upset that they mentioned a date they couldn't stick to-which was a week and should have had it out by friday.*

2) refusing to open their copy until the patch is released-so, i guess, they can take it back if the patch isn't released?

3) are imploring everyone to remain calm as the patch is still on it's way, rockstar just shouldn't have promised it would be out so soon. supposedly it's already with microsoft QA-which i believe i mentioned in an earlier post-and that can sometimes take a couple of weeks.

smash bros. brawl

so i finally dug into the subspace emissary mode in earnest this weekend and i can safely come to the conclusion that it was not designed by a platformer designer.

crap if it isn't flawed.

it just seems that every other level you have impossible jumps, lose all your men, and have completely ambiguous goals.

the most important part to understand in platform video game design (to me) is that everything should serve a purpose in telling the 'story' of the game. nowhere recently has this been most evident to have been ignored than in smash bros sse mode.

there are times when you go through a door and just walk a short distance until the level fades out. i was left yelling at the tv, why is that there?

and sometimes, like in the snake challenge, you're not quite sure what you have to do to open a door you just see lights flashing. at first i thought i was doing it wrong because i kept seeing alarm lights, but then i figured out that was actually me unlocking one of the four sets of doors to progress further.

too often am i backtracking un-necessarily because nothing in the game is explicitly clear.

that said, now that i've tried some more characters and had some time to brawl a little more, it is fun.

the fighting is great, snake works-which was unexpected-and it's a good buy. it won't be a 10/10 for my review like everyone else, but there is a lot to do in brawl, even if they actual combat hasn't evolved that much.

rock band

so, after having my copy of rock band for a few months now, this weekend was my first real multiplayer experience.

my buddy andrew was over and we went through a nice little chunk of the game with him on guitar, my fiancee jen on bass and myself helming the band from the drum throne.

definitely a better experience than the single player venture and i'm beginning to understand why it's such a guitar-hero killer even though we bombed the jet song.

will rock out with my...uhhh...maybe i'll just rock out for now,

JD

*one guy even said he was going to boycott GTA IV because rockstar didn't come through with their promised patch date. i'm sure they'll be hurting when that one guy doesn't buy what will most likely be the biggest and best-selling game of 2008.

what i'm playing this week (carcasonne edition)

carcassone

so you may be shocked by the title because yes, i am indeed getting hooked on that free xbox live title that was sent out in november of this year. it was the 5th anniversary of live! and ms wanted to show some love.

either way, i'm just beginning to realize how sweet and fun this game is, but i won't digress into actually explaining it. it's basically (oh well, a little exposition never hurt anybody) a city building board game where you drop pieces and try to get them to connect and close off properly to build roads, cities, monestaries and farmland. you get points if you leave a follower on the land and it gets finished.

either way, it's really fun once you get used to it, and i have the strange suspicion that i've played it before.

brawl

sadly, between this newfound obsession and not being able to let go of some of the more annoying goals in assassin's creed (flags and templars) i've been completely remiss in my brawl time.

it's not that i don't like brawl, it's just that the more i'm forced to play through the sub-space emissary mode, the more i hate nintendo for making it such a long process to unlock all the characters.

i'm just impatient and feeling a slight addiction to achievement points which i'm hoping to just as quickly curb.

reviews

other than that i've been busy writing and publishing some more reviews. just got up my hack and slash review of tony hawk: proving ground where the best thing involved was the music, and i've got an ace combat 6 (i know, old!) review in the bank for next week.

expect reviews of phones, some more games (mostly old) and other reviews to come churning out in the next couple weeks.

the (infamous) rocketmen

oh, and i got my review code for rocketmen last night. jeez. that game kind of sucks. i'm going to keep at it for now though, as i've heard that, like dead rising, it gets a lot more fun when you've upgraded your character enough to be competitive. will get a full review up of that probably next week too.

i'm a busy busy busy bee,

JD

bully patch imminent

well hear it here first (or second if you frequent the site rockstar watch)...

the much lauded and completely real issues with the 360 version of bully, the scholarship edition, are nearly over.

the patch, that rockstar exec sam houser said would take a week (from last friday) is completed and just awaiting go ahead from microsoft QA.

while this news comes third hand, via a nameless rockstar contact that rockstar watch contacted, it's definitely good news.

the issues left the game virtually unplayable for some, with huge framerate issues and worse, freezing problems.

for some it just meant being a little more careful and saving every couple of missions so as not to lose a couple hours of work. for others, what is stated as a problem with the rockstar team developing on newer xbox hardware, not even entire missions are playable before freezing occurs.

the really scary thing is that it seems so random. this is almost as bad as the smash bros. crashes, except that nintendo leapt right up and told everyone to send their consoles away for 'cleaning' and would get them back within a week.

for bully 360 owners, i sincerely hope this patch is as good as they say it is.

but jeez, between guitar hero iii for wii, smash bros. and bully, it's seeming more and more dicey to buy a new game at launch.

sad sad sad,

JD

added! - a new link in the right nav

just wanted to give a quick update that i've added a new link in the 'friendly links' section on the side bar.

jeff gerstmann and ryan davis, of the gamespot-gate debacle fame, have arisen from the ashes and replaced their podcast-arrowpointingdown-with a website and podcast called giant bomb.

i'm a big fan of the podcast and jeff's writing pre-firing, so even though this site is in the infancy stages, i think it's going to be great.

also check out their video series, the aptly titled 'how to build a bomb'-which will no doubt garner them some negative reactions from google, which is a neat insight into what it takes to start your own games website (and the thousands of dollars they appear to be investing.

smash bros. impressions

just wanted to give an update that smash bros. is indeed fun. not sure how much more fun it is than the last two games, but it's neat.

i think it's gotta be the depth of interaction that's stemming the good early reviews because for me, the platforming part of the game just ain't cutting it.

tried to play a little while with jen last night but we both got bored and quit to take up our respective couch hobbies. assassin's creed for me and surfing/blogging/e-mailing for her.

the actual 'smashing'-which is how i refer to the brawl element-is fun but without a big group of people or trying the online play, there's not much to report.

meta knight still kicks ass and i've concluded that the sideways wiimote, and the wiimote and nunchuck combo control schemes are useless. it's wavebird of classic controller all the way.

if anyone thinks any different i'll cut their arms off smite them with all my might be interested to hear about it.

have a smashing and stealthy evening, i know i will,

JD

p.s. i've also figured out how to put my gamercard in the sidebar...so that's new. i know i've not got much in the way of gamerscore but i've only had the 360 2 months, lay off.

it's here!

well, now i feel a little silly about my excitement, but i really am dying to get another crack at this game-SSBB.


the small delay in getting it only further whetted my appetite. it ended up arriving at 5:15, 10 minutes after i left work, and 15 minutes after a receptionist was there to receive it.

another employee on my floor took it in, shoved it in my mail folder in the mailroom, and was goodly enough to leave me a voice mail to tell me it was here (since he didn't know where my desk was).

in my haste to grab it out of the mailroom, i forgot to take down his name and deleted the message. so here's a thank you to the anonymous dude that saved my smash.

arm and legfuls of gratitude,

JD