I suck at Geometry Wars and every time I play, I get crushed by the sheer weight of defeat. My high score is probably in the range of 30,000-40,000. Pitiful, I know! My dear friend, Capn Rocket, on the other hand, was at one time "best in the world" on the original PGR2 version of Geometry Wars and puts me (not a very difficult thing to do) and most others to shame. Fortunately, I was able to tap into the psyche of an accomplished Geometry Wars pro to bring you some tips. Here they are, straight from the horse's mouth:
In light of the upcoming release of Geometry Wars 2, I thought I'd throw out some GW:RE tips for those needing to brush up their skills on the 360's original killer app.
1. Unlike the original, GW:RE is a multiplier game. Once you get to about 5x or so, use your bombs to keep that party rolling.
2. Try to make every shot count. The rapid fire is obviously the best weapon. Although the spreadshot helps against black holes, it will usually put you on the defensive. Bomb when the boot-to-ass ratio slips into the negative.
3. Use your ears. Once you've learned what sound each enemy makes when it spawns, spin up a playlist well-suited for rampant destruction.
4. Make the bastards chase you. Running laps is still the accepted method for staying alive.
5. Beware the loner. It's always the stray oddball that gets you.
6. Play until you need to buy another controller. Consider tracking down some Gel Tabz thumbstick covers.
Enemies Guide
Green diamonds: line these passive-aggressive hippies up against the wall and mow them down.
Pink squares: You can't outrun the pigs, but you can out-corner them. When surrounded, you can finesse an escape if you don't shoot toward your exit.
Black holes: Neither black nor holey, you can activate them to buy some time. For maximum points, destroy them after they're about to go supernova. If you can't, better get good at picking off Blue Cheerios of Death as you run like a little girl.
Red magnets: You can 1) kill them immediately 2) Hope your rapid fire overwhelms their shield or 3) sidestep them at the last second. Ole!
Snakes: Shoot at their heads until a path is clear. Remain still if surrounded. Like the magnets, they are highly succeptible to black holes. Curse Cakebread and his minions for inventing these.
Mayflies. Think of them as multiplier fodder. This will keep you from filling your pants as you try to punch a hole through the line. Try bombing partway through the spawn to reduce their numbers. You can also try flying to the opposite corner to buy time.
Final tip: You can check your multiplier by dividing the point value of a green diamond by 100.
Good luck, Chuck! You're gonna need it.
There it is folks! El Capitan has spoken. You can also check out a video of his amazing accomplishments after the jump.
Kind of a bit of self-promotion here, but in light of it being E3 week and one of Microsoft Game Studio's biggest holiday titles being shown, I thought it appropriate. For the past few months we've been working hard to launch a brand new Gears of War community site and I have to say this is one of the coolest things I've ever had the privilege to be involved with. I've been able to work with some fabulous designers and developers who listened to feedback, embraced creativity and were open to suggestion. This hardly ever happens when working on a large corporate website. We had our bumps and our struggles but ultimately I am very very pleased with the way the site came out. So, I have to say thanks. Thanks! I am super stoked to put this in my portfolio.
Check out the fruits of our labor over at the brand spanking new Gears of War 2 website. You can explore many new features of the game and check out screenshots, concept art and download a few cool wallpapers. Now back to your regularly scheduled geekery.
Just a little disclaimer, The Weekly Geek isn't affiliated with MS in any way, I just happen to work at Microsoft Game Studios currently.
I live in a tenement. Sure, it's called "comfortable urban living at sustainable lease rates," but it is, in fact, a tenement. During the day it sounds like a cross between an octogenarian Jewish guy's memoirs of Brooklyn, circa 1937, with screaming kids with names like "Sparky" and "Squeezit" playing stickball while their mothers chat away folding laundry outdoors and their fathers trudge off to work in the coal mines or for some guy named "Lucky", and, by night, a Tijuana Red Light District, with more arrests for drugs and prostitution per evening than the Netherlands has a year.
But hey, there's rent control.
My upstairs neighbors recently moved away, and they've been replaced by a new gaggle of titwits who can only be described as the worst, most obnoxious sort of gamers. Now, mind you, I write here for God's sake. I write tabletop supplements. I am comfortable with gamers, even bad ones. Like paraplegics, pedarasts and puppeteers, they're my people. I enjoy watching their strange habits and they generally keep their distance, except for Chris, who has become so clingy in his senility that I've had to expressly forbid him from standing less than two feet of me. He's taken to poking me with a bamboo rod, but I'm willing to compromise. He's a good kid.
Still, my upstairs neighbors cross the fucking line. They went and got Wii Fit. These kids weigh a good 500 lbs between the two of them, and even walking down the hall to take a piss is like the the scene in Jurassic Park with the waterglass and the tyrannosaurus. I'm a fan of loud music, so I, too, can adapt. I'm very good at adaptation.
Now, of course, Centaur #1 and Centaur #2 have decided to get in shape, and using Wii Fit is their ticket to ride. At least, I think it's a Wii Fit. A complete alternate theory exists in my head, and that is it's actually a BDSM dungeon. I hear a lot of pounding and rhythmic thumping, with grunts, moans and plenty of swear words, and that's a complete possibility. All I know is that I can't sleep.
And, like the Incredible Hulk, you wouldn't like me when I can't sleep.
Anyone heard of Chrono Trigger? A little game released back in 1995 for the SNES? I realize it's obscure and all but I expect you pinnacles of geekery, you princes of Maine, might have heard of it at some point in your exhaustive games-centric research. Chris informs me (between Chrono Trigger induced pants-wetting sessions) that the original SNES version of Chrono Trigger is "one of the rarest SNES games you can find".
Well, come this holiday season, a version of Chrono Trigger that isn't a complete and total clusterfuck like the PS1 port will be coming to the DS. Excited yet? The mere mention of a port to the DS is enough to cause spasms of delight in even the most stoic of geeks. So I hope you're sitting down, as the DS port will add wireless multiplayer and a new dungeon to explore with your friends. In the palm of your hand. On Chrono Trigger.
Every time I begin to doubt that it's the future something like this happens. Screw flying cars and pill-food, I'll take Chrono Trigger on a device the size of my hands thank you very much.
Too often when we play games from our childhoods do we experience the "rose colored glasses" effect. Our memories of these games are marred by the gaps - when encountered with the original product after so many years, we often end up disappointed. Lucky for us Capcom has remastered Street Fighter II in order to match our memories. The HD remix remarkably manages to be just like you remember Street Fighter II. No crappy port to 3d. No gimmicky control scheme. Just pure concentrated childhood. Thank you Capcom for your surprising amount of restraint.
posted by SecksCab on June 23, 2008 5:31 AM in Games
Yes, yes, yes. We're all aware that the Spore Creature Creator has been released. The above blasphemy oozed forth from the Cthonic mind of Scythemantis, lead proprietor of www.bogleech.com. And while the fact that several thousand literal Cock Monsters will be flooding forth from the vile reaches of the Youtub, the question remains: "Why, and to what end?"
God Games have long been the "intellectual" gaming alternative to the more plot/explosive based games of tomb raiding and war craftsmanship. Will Wright, of course, has made his Carnegie-esque fortune off exploiting the public's fantasies of being meddling civil bureaucrats, ant colonies, and combination voyeuristic sadists and micromanaging interior decorators. His latest, Spore, promises to combine the finicky nannying of his previous creations with the rough and tumble world of MMORPGs, essentially fusing Felix Unger and Oscar Madison into one freakishly, well, spore-like spore of Odd Couple.
Ultimately, of course, we pause and ponder if this is good for us. We now have within our power to literally be gods, any time we wants, when we wants. While one part of American society is obsessed with "Intelligent Design", another wants to be able to design their own little intelligences, cute though they may be, running around a virtual landscape. While I'm not saying it's wrong to want to play God now and again (Victor Frankenstein was, of course, the HERO of the book), my idea for Wright, SimEtary, never really got off the ground. Or rather, out of it.
posted by Chris on June 20, 2008 10:09 AM in Games
This the first generation of consoles where I've finally been able to experience all the medium has to offer. That's right, I've finally completed the set and picked up an 80gig Metal Gear Solid 4 Playstation 3 bundle. My reasons are most likely different than most, I'm not a fan of the Metal Gear series and most of the titles out for the PS3 don't really intrigue me. I was more interested in the backwards compatibility since I no longer own a PS2 due to circumstances. Divorce circumstances. That's right, I lost custody of my PS2.
There are a few games I am interested in, most notably the Playstation Network titles such as Echochrome and Everyday Shooter. And hey, maybe I'd like Metal Gear too. Who knows.
After a few hours with the machine, I have a few issues. Now that I have "caught 'em all" (to use Pokémon parlance) I feel like I have a nice objective view of what the Playstation 3 offers and doesn't offer versus the other systems.
First off, cons:
Game installation. Why in the name of sweet zombie jeebus am I forced to install games and still suffer long loading times? Is this my consolation prize for purchasing games from lazy developers? If I am committing a small portion of my hard drive to a certain game, I expect some sort of benefit. One of the main selling points of a console is that you don't have to tinker with it like you do with PCs. I don't have to worry about having compatible drivers or the most advanced video card. I don't have to worry about spending hours installing a game and downloading patches, I insert the disk or cart and it just works. Even the PSN games have this problem, you have to download them and then install them and only then can you run them. And you have to do all this manually. Which brings me to...
Convoluted Information Architecture. I'm a web designer with a specialty in user experience and semantics. I think about information architecture wherever I go. For the unfamiliar, information architecture (or IA for the cool kids) is the discipline used to develop user interfaces for websites. Basically you wireframe and mock up how a user will flow through your website and ideally you streamline the process to make it as easy as possible for people to access your information. This will make or break a website. Have you ever been to a website that has one too many registration forms before you go to the shopping cart, and you abandon the cart in favor of Amazon's on-click ordering? That's poor information architecture. Sony is horrible at IA. From having to blindly accept license agreements that have zero bearing on my own personal use of the console, to putting my money in a virtual wallet instead of just outright purchasing the damn game instantly, everything feels like the worst puzzle fashioned to confuse and discourage. It's like they had focus groups that told them that hands down they loved watching loading bars, and they all got a perverse sense of satisfaction from selecting "I accept" over and over again. No, I don't want to take your survey. I could give two shits about your licensing agreement. No, I don't want to receive product information and deals from Sony. I just want to play your damn game. Can I play the game I put in my system now, please?
Feature bloat: Subtlety is a skill Sony truly lacks. From the obnoxiously shiny outer shell, needlessly flashy touch-sensitive eject and power buttons and the useless compact flash/sd/memory stick slots, the Playstation 3 is trying way too hard to do too many things at once. It forgets that it needs to do ONE THING well - play Playstation games. Why not sacrifice the outmoded compact flash slot for a Playstation 1/2 memory card slot? While memory cards are indeed old-tech, it would have been nice to not have to purchase an adapter to transfer my old save files. I want to play games on your game console, not have a locked-down system that pretends to be a media center. If I want to transfer my photos via compact flash somewhere, I'll use my existing computer, not my freaking game console.
Lack of features: Seems like a contradiction, but stick with me here. Even though the Playstation 3 has a load of features, they don't tend to be the right features. Sure I've got this media center where I can play games and music and videos, but I already have a place where I store my videos and music. I'm not about to transfer my entire music collection over to my game console. I want the ability to stream my content over your box, and I want it to be as easy as point and click. Every solution I've found to stream media from my Mac to my PS3 has been a tinkerer's dream and my nightmare. I don't want to have to run Terminal every time I want to play music. I just want to be able to press start and have it go. I don't want to have to tweak a bunch of settings in order to run my games and media at their max potential, I just want it to work. Just make it work. Update: I was pointed toward Nullriver's MediaLink software, which works like it was built-in to my Mac. Should have known the creators of the excellent Connect360 would have my console streaming solution.
Jeebus that Earth views visualizer is pretty.
Additionally, the lack of a system like Xbox 360's achievements is one of the biggest failings. Xbox has set a new standard for how games are played, an innovation classically reserved for Nintendo. The d-pad, analog stick, rumble... all of these changed the way we play games, and now with the persistence of the Internet and social media we want a way to show off our progress to our friends. While the 360 feels like a party every time you hear the blip and see one of your friends sign on to Live, Sony's system still feels insular, like a console for loners. I'm not compelled to flesh out my friends list like on the Xbox.
And now, Pros:
Now I can play my PS2 games again.
Are any of you PS3 owners? Can you fill me in on why people think this console is so awesome? Cause I'm just not seeing it at the moment. Even Metal Gear Solid 4 feels like the most popular game in some parallel universe.
Oscar Wilde once stole a bit from William Shakespeare, who in turn stole it from me, when he said "Brevity is the soul of wit." To verify this undisputed truth, old people are very rarely funny. Occasionally you'll meet a truly hilarious geriatric delinquent, like those old bastards who yank out their dentures to scare small children and rodents, but for the most part, old people aren't very funny at all. The longer something goes on, the less funny it is. This is a solemn, brutal reality, and something I'm about to prove, because this is going to be a very long article, and I dare you to find something to laugh about while reading it.
Take, for instance, The Satyricon by a dead old Roman named Petronius. The thing is supposed to be a hilarious comedy of errors as a slave is freed and suddenly inherits millions of drachma, in sort of a Sid Meier version of Brewster's Millions. This thing goes on and on and on and on, until finally you realize that there is absolutely nothing funny about it all, and you're just reading pages of what the nouveau-riche Roman ate for dinner (flamingo tongues and stuffed dormouse, BTW). It's absolutely dreadful. Still, they classify it as a "comedy", and it apparently was considered to be so in it's day. The Emperor Nero, a man with a high sense of camp if ever there was one, found absolutely nothing funny in The Satyricon, and sentenced Petronius to commit suicide for besmirching his family's reputation with anti-comedy. To further prove that drawing things out beyond their duly alloted minutes is unfunny, Petronius spent his last evening alive reading poetry loudly while slowly bleeding himself to death, tying and untying a tourniquet around his arm during the course of this terminally unfunny party.
Watching Kung Fu Grip is very much like watching Petronius commit suicide. It's long, it's painful, and there's a certain post-ironic bent in knowing that everything about it has already been done somewhere else, funnier. The concept is relatively simple, much like it's intended audience. Some fleeting source of gamer humor is drawn out, suffocated, drawn, quartered, defenestrated, and finally dunked under an icy lake like Rasputin with action figures and dolls. Much hilarity is presumed by invocation of rape, poop jokes and casual racism.
Now, to be fair, I like jokes about rape, bowel movements and casual racism. I am quite the connoisseur, actually. To do these sorts of jokes correctly, they must be served like prosciutto, not like Spam. Thinly sliced, delicately positioned, and surrounded by as many tasteful things as possible. And then jammed up one's nose.
The problem is that we've already seen this thing before, both in ToyFare Magazine's "Twisted Toy Theater" and the mindbogglingly dreary Robot Chicken on Cartoon Network. The advantage that both of these have is production value and the creative goad that is editors/producers/advertisers. The Internet, being srious bizness and all, tends to breed a certain sort of "entertainer" without any sort of limitations to guide the flow of their creativity, leading to a free-for-all of bad taste, bad production, bad timing.
I hate to end a review on a hateful note, call it the softening of this barnacle encrusted heart of mine. Kung Fu Grip... I admire your Mickey Rooney "HEY KIDS LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!" kind of mentality.
Onward and upward!
On the opposite end of the scale is Broken Pixels, a weekly offering starring the Internet's version of Baby Jane, Seanbaby. Seanbaby is a firm believer in the Law of Anti-Charisma, which states that you will be much more interesting, funny and charming if you surround yourself by persons who are socially inept, unfunny and boring. Broken Pixels is a show about old, bad video games, territory that Seanbaby staked and claimed over a decade ago.
For those of us who are old timers at this Internetting thing, Seanbaby used to be the end-all-be-all of awesome websites. His site was witty, well designed, original (for the time) and, most important for the New Media, completely self-absorbed. Seanbaby is an arrogant ass and we loved him for it. He knew we love him for it. And we kept going back. Then, in about 2001, his site went dead, a bleak relic of what we thought was the end of an era. He resurfaced in EGM as their "Crazy Back Of The Magazine Rant" Guy (i.e. what I do here) and occasionally showed up on G4 shows from time to time.
Broken Pixels is a mixed bag. Like I said before, brevity is not this show's gimmick. While each episode is about 15 minutes long, it's at least broken up into several bad games before wrapping up. The hope is to be a Mystery Science Theater 3000 for video games, with Seanbaby and pals yakking it up and exposing some true horrors. Unlike the utterly brilliant Zero Punctuation, which takes brevity to a level of grandeur not seen since Peppin the Short, Broken Pixels takes it's time. Seanbaby takes many long, languid sips of beer.
At the risk of continuing to talk and breaking the brevity thing (oh well, you weren't laughing anyway), most of the games Broken Pixels is mocking have been mocked ad nauseum online for years. The Cho Aniki series, for example, is the standard by which Japanese weirdness can be measured, the Greenwich Mean Time of Nippophilic Insanity. The oddball rail shooter, Space Pirates, has been dissected and snickered at for almost as long. There's just not that much ground here to cover that hasn't been covered.
BUT!
And there is a but! There really is! I swear!
The real charm of Broken Pixels is not the video games, not the set-up. The charm is the feeling that you're sitting around, listening to guys tell bullshit stories and goof off. At the risk of sounding like I'm hitting on him, Seanbaby has some really, really great stories to tell. One story, referred to here as the "Spunk Burrito" story, is worth the entire price of admission. What Broken Pixels does that I can appreciate is basically take an established format, surround it with a specific topic, and then let a few funny people be funny. It's similar to Stephen Fry's Q.I. in that way. Kung Fu Grip takes the same approach, but fails. Why? NOW YOU KNOW WHAT'S IN THE BURGERS.
Oh hai! Just thought I'd come and check in on you guys, here. What's up? Gearing up for the long weekend? Are you going to be going outside and grilling animal flesh with the rest of the US, or perhaps you will shun the sunlight as I do and partake of some games? Here's what I've been playing recently, what are you playing this weekend?
GTAIV - Of course, this game really doesn't leave my Xbox. I haven't had much time to devote to gaming this week (hence the lack of game diary posts) but when I do get a chance I like to sit down and envelop myself in the trials and tribulations of one Niko Bellic. I'm a good 70% through the game now, just got all my friends to over 90% and I'm spending a fair bit of time just messing around with the side quests, whereas a week ago I was completely into the main storyline. The main storyline continues to amaze, don't get me wrong, but I really appreciate how I can just sit down and do a few side quests in a short period of time. Very good for the hard-casual gamer such as myself.
The World Ends With You - Seriously, you guys need to be playing this game. I have no idea why the gaming press hasn't covered it more because it is completely brilliant. It's the perfect commuter's game, great for short bursts of satisfying play, and is as deep as you want it to be. I want all games to be this thoughtful, precise and engaging. There's little sense in explaining it. You have to experience it for yourself.
Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode 1 - Like any good PA fan, I downloaded the shit out of this game and proceeded to devour it. It's a gorgeous game and genuinely hilarious, though the battle system took me a REALLY long time to figure out. I'm still not sure I understand it. I'm playing the XBLA version, which apparently was designed last as the controls are horrible. It's difficult to target things for one, but it also doesn't help that the UI is slightly confusing at times. It took me a while to make sense of the battle UI and it took me even longer to realize which player was highlighted. I'm also having conflicting thoughts about the massive amount of dialog for every single little thing. On one hand it's consistently hilarious, and on the other hand I feel compelled to check every trash can and mailbox, which feels like a shallow gameplay device. I'd rather the locations I can investigate be a bit more hidden instead of right there in my face. But maybe it will pick up? At the very least, congratulations you guys. It's awesome to be able to say "this dude I know made his own video game". Despite any niggling concerns, you guys did a fucking fantastic job.
Below the jump, in all its uncensored glory, is a new ad for Sony's Playstation 3. It's below the jump because it is most assuredly NSFW. Looking at this ad I can't help but wonder about just what exactly it is they are trying to imply. Is it alluding to a rare talent that only the discerning PS3 owner possesses? Is it encouraging a new kind of play or is it a call for genetically modified, but sterile gaming supermen? I have no idea but I can tell you that I am afraid.
I've avoided making Game Diary posts this last week because A) I've been taking a "vacation" as it was my last week of unemployment and 2) I've just been playing Grand Theft Auto IV. That's not to say I haven't had any fun, I've been enjoying the crap out of it. The story, the game play, everything about this game is a love letter to the video game industry as a whole and if you haven't checked it out for whatever reason, at the very least rent it. You'll most likely enjoy the sandbox as much as I have. Niko, as a character, is one of the most compelling I've seen in a game, right up there with Gordon Freeman for me. He is a criminal, sure, but his motivation for his actions is something you can actually relate to. The dialog wanders from funny to poignant, surprising you in its serious tone.
I'm only about 50% through, as well. The game is just plain massive. I can see it's going to stay in my Xbox for quite some time. I haven't even taken the shrink wrap off of Mario Kart Wii...
What have you guys been playing? Anything interesting I've missed out on?
When I first heard about Midway's 8th incarnation of their Mortal Kombat series Mortal Kombat vs DC I was stoked. As my friends moaned and whined about how illogical it is for the Mortal Kombat cast to go up against the DC Universe I was busy imagining all the ways Batman was going to make Scorpion his blood-soaked, weeping, reptilian bitch.
My keen optimism lasted for about a day. A day which rapidly spiraled into the sad realization that in all likelihood this game would not be the game I was hoping for. Between Midway aiming for a T for Teen rating, DC being obsessively picky about what they'll allow to befall their characters, and the subsequent abandonment of the Fatalities as we've come to know and love them through the years it looked as though Mortal Kombat vs DC was going to be just about as lackluster as the Oracles at Gamephi proclaimed.
But according to Ed Boon, the brains behind Mortal Kombat, that's all a load of hogwash.
There was never any statement on our part that fatalities will be gone or that finishing moves will be gone. We did acknowledge that we won't be able to do the same kinds of outrageous moves, like tearing someone's head off and the spine being attached to it. But there are a lot of assumptions that there will be no blood in the game, that there are no fatalities in the game. It's an assumption that, because the DC characters will be in there, those features will have to be dropped. My response is that, no, we're modifying fatalities. But I have every intention to keep finishers.
That's great and all, but if you're the kind of Mortal Kombat player that I am, tearing someone's head off and triumphantly jiggling the attached spinal column as it drips blood on the viscera covered floor is the highlight of my day. Although to be fair I have been playing Mortal Kombat since 1992 and as we all know violent videogames turn you into a bloodthirsty maniac.
As far as creating a plausible storyline for how Sub-Zero is able to wail on Superman I'm still not concerned. Oh Ed claims there will be one, but let's take a moment to get a little perspective, shall we? Mortal Kombat is a game about magic ninjas using their magic ninja powers to magically ninja their way into the back of your skull by way of the front. Adding a cast of DC superheroes to that mix doesn't shatter my suspension of disbelief and to be perfectly honest, they could do away with storyline altogether so long as I'm able to rip Superman's still beating heart from his chest like I've always dreamed. Everything else is just dressing.
Nintendo's insistence on using an arcane series of numbers to connect to friends on the Wii hasn't stopped the majority of intrepid internet users, as yet another website is making it easier to link up to friends for some hot kart on kart action. WiiTransfer has a nifty tool that allows you to share your friend codes with other Twitter users, so if you have a bunch of friends who like to be kept up to date with every single mundane detail of your day, this service is for you.
Now if only Nintendo would bring voice chat into the game, it may actually be playable online.
You know those booths at comic book or anime conventions selling game soundtracks? Yeah, those are usually dirty pirated bootleg knockoffs. Same goes with soundtracks you buy on eBay or from *most* websites. Square Enix bootlegs are notorious, considering they have such a vast library of hard to find soundtracks. The official SE store has a sale going on right now, so you have absolutely no excuse not to purchase the official Chrono Trigger Soundtrack for $16.99. Also on sale are soundtracks for Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, XI and The World Ends With You. Sweet!
We all feel that sense of dread when we have to call customer service to try and troubleshoot a malfunctioning product. You have to wait while a computer routes you to a disinterested associate who may or may not solve your problem and may or may not be polite to you. Some dude named Jason has figure out how to get to escalate your problem quickly to someone who is a bit more skilled than your typical call center specialist.
Check out the super simple procedure over at Jason's blog.
Wondering how EA and Harmonix were going to make the Wii version of Rock Band successful without all of the amazing downloadable songs? Today comes the announcement of Rock Band Track Pack volume 1, which brings a nice selection of 20 songs previously available for download on the PS3 and 360 versions to the PS2 and the Wii. Set to be released on July 15th, here's the track list.
30 Seconds to Mars The Kill
All American Rejects Move Along
Blink – 182 All the Small Things
Boston More Than a Feeling
David Bowie Moonage Daydream
Faith No More We Care A Lot
Grateful Dead Truckin’
The Hives Die, All Right!
KISS Calling Dr. Love
Lynyrd Skynyrd Gimme’ Three Steps
Nine Inch Nails March of the Pigs
Oasis Live Forever
Paramore Crushcrushcrush
The Police Synchronicity II
Queens of the Stone Age Little Sister
Ramones Teenage Lobotomy
Smashing Pumpkins Siva
Stone Temple Pilots Interstate Love Song
Weezer Buddy Holly
Wolfmother Joker & the Thief
**All 20 tracks utilize original master recordings**
What I'm curious about is whether you have to switch your disks out when you want to play these specific tracks, or if just inserting the disk into the system somehow unlocks them on the original disk? Hm. While this is a great thing for Wii and PS2 Rock Band owners (personally the DLC is the best part of the game for me) I'm really curious as to how it will be implemented.
Up for sale on Etsy as of today, a painting I did in college called "The Death of Peach".
Mario is grief-stricken in this nightmare scenario where Princess Peach is impaled callously by a giant pirahna plant. Toad watches in horror as Mario prepares to hurl a Bob-Omb and avenge his love. Oil on canvas 38"x36"
posted by Chris on April 30, 2008 8:03 AM in Games
Like most socially under-developed geeks, my mood is directly affected by the weather outside. While I don't like to go outside (I hear there are bears?) when the sun shines brightly through my apartment windows it lifts my spirits immensely and gets me motivated. Besides other activities such as painting and website stuff, I've been playing...
Call of Duty 4 - Still slowly progressing through the single player campaign and still being blown away by the production value. I've avoided online multiplayer like the plague, but a friend of mine suggested just shutting off voice chat, which seems to work like a charm!
Rez - Nothing like sitting down early in the morning to play through Rez in beyond mode. I like the fact that they give me a bunch of bonus modes and options to tweak things like my starting form and beam type. I've been messing with the sound and visual filters too, just for a little variety
Grand Theft Auto IV - Like everyone else in the world. It came early Tuesday morning and I played it into the night. I'm essentially a GTA virgin, though I did play a ton of the old top-down GTA 2 back in the day. I'm really enjoying GTAIV, way more than any of the previous titles. It has its flaws - visuals are often hit and miss, voice acting is dubious in parts (why does everyone sound like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?) and your character controls like some sort of tank. Other than that, the story is fed to you in even enough intervals where you don't get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you can do in the game, and the cell phone menu system is clever and very well integrated. I'm noticing little moments where Niko rests one foot on the curb while the other is on the street while chatting on the phone, or small details about the city that make it feel alive such as pedestrians getting phone calls themselves and having full conversations. I imagine I'll be discussing it more as I progress.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try and make my in-game girlfriend not hate me anymore.
Thought you guys might enjoy watching a video of me hit by a sudden burst of inspiration today. I've been thinking of something to fill up this canvas I painted over a month ago. The subject? Only one of the creepiest villains in game history: a Combine Hunter from Half Life 2: Episode 2. I wanted to keep it simple and exercise my brushwork skills while capturing the strangely vicious kinetic energy of the things.
It's been a strange week, filled with job interviews and exhaustion, leaving me little time to play as much as I wanted. Though it has allowed me to think a bit about my play habits. As of late, I've been a sort of ADD gamer, bouncing from one title to the next. After all the progress I made in Rock Band I've had a craving to explore a lot of other games that I haven't given much time to. I've also secretly been anticipating GTAIV. Don't tell anyone! What I did play this week was awesome, however.
Lost Cities - If you haven't at the very least downloaded the demo of this awesome XBLA game, you owe it to yourself to try. It's perfect for picking up and playing a quick game (each game takes maybe 20 minutes total to complete) but you'll soon find yourself saying "just one more game and then I'll take the dog for a walk". When your dog starts peeing on your rug in front of you out of spite is when you know you're a bit addicted.
Devil May Cry 4 - Ridiculous, overwhelmingly Japanese, violent and wonderful. I don't care what anyone else says, I like the over the top action cut scenes, even if the characters do crazy tricks that I have no hope of ever attempting in-game. There's a certain visceral satisfaction from being able to juggle an enemy in the air, constantly grappling them back up to you and slamming them down again.
Call of Duty 4 - I've avoided this game for no other reason than I dislike the stigma attached to people who play only online shooters. I don't like online first person shooter deathmatches because I am horrible at them. Also I have tender, virgin eardrums that catch on fire whenever a cuss passes through them. The single player campaign in CoD4, however, is stunning. It has an exciting pace and does well to make you feel like you are actually there. The story is a bit generic, but it's so well presented I am willing to forgive it.
This weekend I'll probably be delving further into CoD4, what are you playing this weekend?
I'm admittedly a huge fan of ultra-nerdy board and card games. We try to have a board game night at least once a month which really ends up just being an excuse to get together, drink a bunch and throw salted cashews at each other when things aren't going our way. This group play seems an awkward fit for the Xbox Live Arcade (mainly due to the lack of cashews, salted or otherwise), but in this reviewer's opinion the majority of XBLA games in this genre are gems. Uno, Catan and Carcassonne are some of the best games available, period, for the XBLA, while games like Word Puzzle and Sotrilo Solitaire flop. This week we see the newest in the board/card game genre, Lost Cities.
At first glance this game is super complicated, but like with any good game in this genre you spend the first couple rounds incredibly confused until all the pieces fall into place and it clicks. This process, at least for me, is pretty darn satisfying. It took only two rounds of demo play before I purchased Lost Cities, and I've spent all afternoon with it since. It is a fairly unique yet instantly familiar game, straight from the first menu which displays random semi-literary looking characters. I like the grey-haired bespectacled professor the best, who incredulously lifts his eyebrows and grimaces as you scroll through the different options. I heard him in my mind saying things like "huzzah! achievements!" or "what what leaderboards pish posh!"
posted by Chris on April 23, 2008 2:28 PM in Games
You can always tell when a game is a labor of love. The amount of detail and quality is noticeable, and when a skilled fan is set to the task, they can take a classic game and turn it even classic-er. Check out this video of a fan game loosely based on Metroid II (originally for the spinach-green screened GameBoy). It skillfully captures what is so captivating about the Metroid series: its isolation. Exploring the murky, eerie underwater depths of an absolutely alien planet while strange ambient music bloops and beeps is an immensely satisfying experience.
Hopefully the creator, Destructoid Community member Von Richter, has the chance to release this game just long enough for me to play it before Nintendo's lawyers sic their pikachus on him.
posted by Chris on April 18, 2008 4:42 PM in Games
It's been a busy past few days as I have been working on a (not so super secret) project. What games I've played tended to lean more on the pick-up-and-play side, though I've tried to make time for some...
Devil May Cry 4 - I missed this game when it was first released, and ended up borrowing it from Qais this week. I haven't played through any of the original games, though I enjoy the fast-paced action of the series. What I find consistently laughable, though, is the strange juxtaposition of great graphics and presentation with poor menus in Capcom games. They seem to be obsessed with horrible typefaces, Photoshop glow filters, confusing UIs and cheesy sound effects. And damn there's a ton of cut scenes in this game. Don't get me wrong, they're pretty spectacular and all but we'll see if playing for 5 minutes and then watching a 10 minute cut scene starts to grate.
Puzzle Quest - Building up my main character in the 30s has been painfully slow, though I really enjoy just poking around the map and getting into random battles. Level grinding never really felt like work with Puzzle Quest. I feel a little guilty sometimes for skipping through all the dialog, so I started actually reading the quest text which to my surprise is actually top notch.
Rock Band - Still working on expert drums, at this point it's just practice , practice, practice. My back hurts.
I think this weekend I'm going to be giving most of my attention to Devil May Cry 4 or Mass Effect while I'm not working on that other thing. You know, the thing.
We've been speculating for a while about when the first full albums will be released for Rock Band, sources said Nirvana Nevermind and The Who's Who's Next were slated to be the first (to much excitement!), but today it was announced that full albums are coming April 22nd, with Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance, followed in May by The Cars (that's just what I needed!) and in June by The Pixies' Dolittle.
While I am incredibly excited to be able to play these albums, I'm saddened that we are apparently only getting one per month. In addition, I'd like to see a better way to make a playlist in the game proper, such as being able to select an album and play it all the way through without shupp shupp shupp-ing through the entire giant playlist every time we want to rock out to Judas Priest.
posted by Chris on April 16, 2008 9:35 AM in Games
Why, Nintendo? Why can't you bring your illustrious club to the States? All we get when we register our games is a few measly wallpapers, but in Japan they can get points to trade in for stuff like this special limited edition Super Famicom classic controller for the Wii. Curse you, Japan!
Have you ever had a weekend where you just popped back and forth between a handful of games in your collection? That's what this past weekend was like for me. I had this immense craving to go back to a simpler time and hear some of that sweet delicious SNES music once again. I spent my time this weekend with not only retro gaming, but some more recent titles I'd put down long ago.
Secret of Mana - One of my all-time favorite games still holds up to this day. Putting the cart in and turning it on, I realized I still had my original save file from back when I was a kid. There it was: Frodo level 99. I started a new game, however, so Jinny and I could play through together. This game was really magical to me. One of the first games I can remember fully absorbing, just soaking up all of the detailed art, experiencing the music in eardrum-shattering stereo sound. I'd explore every single corner looking for lost weapon orb chests, grinding levels in order to get the best spells. Multiplayer is near-perfect in Secret of Mana, I'd say bested only by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Really looking forward to playing more and feeling wave after wave of nostalgia. That's what it's allllllll about.
Tales of Symphonia - I picked up the Gamecube version of this off Goozex a few months ago and never really sat down to try it. I love the combat and gameplay elements, but the story (at least in the beginning) is the same trite anime crap as a million other horrible RPGs before it. I sincerely hope that aspect improves because I'm the weird kind of geek who gets really annoyed at anime-style writing.
Rock Band - Back on the horse? After finishing the drum solo tour on hard, I decided to attempt it on expert and absolutely ripped through it. I have about 15 more songs left and have been really enjoying the feeling of accomplishment from my increase in skills. We rocked band world tour as well, grinding through the venues on expert and unlocked the million fan achievement. We were at a total of about 980,000 fans and only needed a small bump to push us over the edge and ended up getting 250,000 fans in one 4 song setlist. I guess gold-starring songs really helps when you're looking to gain fans.
Beautiful Katamari - I was in the mood to roll some stuff up, so I decided to visit the King of All Cosmos for the first time since last year. I don't really prefer this version, actually. While I love being able to unlock achievements and such, I feel that the gameplay is too unfocused and lacks the charm of the original PS2 Katamari Damacy. I attempted a few online matches, which have one of the worst lobby systems I've seen. The other guy just kept walking around instead of starting the match, throwing cookies at me and putzing around. I'm all for the concept of play, but sometimes I want to get down to business. Katamari-related business.
World of Warcraft - My undead priest is now almost level 20 and I'm really excited to be playing a healer again. This time around I know my strengths and limitations and I am having a ton more fun jumping around Azeroth like some spastic bunny rabbit.
For the rest of the week I have a feeling it's going to be ADD gamer time, with me bouncing back and forth between titles. I'm also going to attempt hacking my PSP. Wish me luck!
It's difficult these days for parents to figure out how to deal with their kids being exposed to what they may deem inappropriate content. Our pop culture has become less preoccupied with self-censorship, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Things that parents might not find appropriate for children exist in the world, and eventually said children are going to become adults and get exposed to this content. While your six year old shouldn't necessarily be watching Sopranos and shooting hookers in Grand Theft Auto, eventually that world is going to reveal itself and you can guarantee they will be asking questions.
What They Play is a website for parents in order to help them better understand the games that their kids want to play. Instead of providing a giant list of "bad" games for parents to keep their kids away from, What They Play accepts the fact that kids are already playing these games, either at a friends house or their creepy uncle's apartment. The site provides level-headed, well-researched analysis of games. Not necessarily qualitative reviews, but an overview of what you are going to see and experience in the game. Their article on Grand Theft Auto IV is a great example. Not only do they provide a run down of all the "controversial" things you can do in the game, they acknowledge features such as the Rockstar Social Club, the tie-in with Amazon for music downloads, and an overview of what the limited edition contains.
It is classically difficult for older generations to keep up with younger ones. Trends change, technology advances and often the easiest thing to do is throw your hands in the air and resort to quick judgment and censorship. We've seen it with comic books, rock and roll, and I am sure in the middle ages there was some sort of sheep-based trend that parents just didn't understand.
Keeping things taboo just increases curiosity in a kids mind. It's up to the parents of the world to decide how to effectively deal with seemingly negative influences, and it's nice to see a website that chooses an intelligent, unbiased approach instead of the typical knee-jerk alarmism we've come to expect. I'd really love to see this site become the de facto location for parents-in-the-know to get the information they need to effectively raise their children in this new media future.
Love them or hate them, the Puritans at least had a goal. Several of them, in fact. Redeeming the Church Triumphant from the besodden hands of the Papacy and Powers Temporal, saving the souls of the faithful, guiding them toward an outward perfection suited for their inner Godliness, moving the educational and aesthetic commonweal toward the everlasting love of Jesus Christ, and burning an assload of witches. At least you knew where they stood on any given subject.
Good was good, bad was bad, and in case of confusion, steer toward hatred. They were anything but not apathetic. Sure, they were vicious bastards who'd slit your throat and throw you in the oubliette if you so much as talked out of place, but what's the harm with that? I can think of few people that need a good bit of 17th Century Puritanical asskicking more the absolute titchuckers at Spike TV.
If, in case you are doing the reasonable thing when faced with modern reality and your head is currently encased in a bucket of rapidly solidifying Plaster of Paris, you haven't heard of Spike TV, perhaps you've heard of it's predecessor, The Nashville Network. The "The" is capitalized because it was founded and perpetuated for twenty years by people who called it "TNN", instead of "NN", which logically it should have been. Then again, we are dealing with the utter fuckwits who would watch something called "The Nashville Network" in the first place. People so neanderthalic that the sheer concept of images moving around on a lighted box constituted entertainment, doubly so when said moving images were SINGING AND YODELING, just like the folks on the radio tube!
The fact that "The" in "The Nashville Network" was capitalized is a sticking point, because it led to a cultural dynamic that still haunts us to this day. While The NN never took a political stance officially, it was pretty much de facto Republican, and, along with the Pat Robertson owned Family Channel, built the fundamental anti-rational force of the 1990s, the Christian Coalition. These piddling little factories of nincumpoopery created the atmosphere that led to the fullscale official amnesia of the Bush administration, fed by the belief that nothing between Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan actually happened. When pressed, TNN would revert back to "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC!" just like Robertson would retort "IT'S ALL ABOUT JESUS!", proving that country music fans are not only dogmatic and conservative to the Nth degree, but piranha like in their refusal to admit anything might actually be open to debate.
Then, of course, Viacom put a bead out on TNN, and it was assassinated with one bullet to the forehead like a Yucatan drug lord on a parade float. It was swiftly transmutated into "Spike TV", the idea being a snarky male response to the female Lifetime Network, which is similarly insipid in nearly every context. Whereas Lifetime produces overblown soap operatics by the bushel, Spike doesn't actually produce anything at all, and sticks to the truism that men actively enjoying being able to recite every line from every rerun science fiction and cop drama they can get their greedy, Cheetos-besmirched fingers on.
Spike TV, just so you understand, is a rerun dump. That is all it is, that is all it ever has been. in case Viacom has a movie or television show elsewhere, they advertise it ad nauseum on Spike, since the theory is that anybody who would conceivably want to watch Spike is at least sentient enough to have another, better, network on the Memory button, just itching for a reason to turn elsewhere. In fact, Viacom has taken this into account, and it's a somewhat twistedly brilliant example of Corporate Symbiosis in all it's evil, mutant glory.
As an irrelevant side note emphasizing their patronizing attitude toward the hand that feeds them was the notoriously silly "Video Game Awards", hosted by noted albino marionette, David Spade. I'll give you pause to snicker to yourself at that idea. HINT: They gave an award to "Best Power Up".
In response to this theory, Spike has actually found ways to start disregarding commercials altogether. To this end, they've come up with the "commercial show", which is a mini-show that runs IN THE COMMERCIALS, with advertisements in little sprawling banners under both shows. Where it used to be that you only put up with the commercials so you could watch the show, with the grim reality setting in that with seven million other options available to you on Comcast alone, advertisement and entertainment are now fused at the spine like some sort of freakish, hateful Siamese twin garden gnome that attacks you while stabbing your grandmother with a rusty railroad spike.
The rusty railroad spike, of course, is what the network is named after, y'see.
AH, BUT WHAT IS HE RANTING ABOUT, you ask. And rightfully so.
Weekly Geek (Greek?) HQ recently received a not so thinly veiled attempt by the Spike TV treants to get us to pawn off to you their latest awful idea, a Commercial Show called "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
Hold it. Scan up. Read that again. Then read it out loud. Then read it in a silly voice.
"Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
The morons reign victorious. We're doomed. Humanity only has a good few years left, it's been a great run, but all things need to come to a timely end. Yoko has joined the band. Better cash your Economic Stimulus checks ASAP, because it's the last hurrah before the concentration camps.
There is a saying in advertising circles, "No publicity is bad publicity". Therefore, we at the Weekly Geek will not be giving this foreskin wrinkle the time of day by linking you to it. That would be giving them exactly what they want. Oh, no. We have a much worse idea. I will be illustrating it for you with MS Paint.
The effect, to be frank, is exactly what we saw.
Braindead models stroking controllers like dildos, "bitchin'" pseudo-rock music, playovers of Halo greenscreened behind them.
Yes, we get it. You have absolute, utter disdain for your desired audience. And we can't blame you. If they're falling for this, we hate them too. The British equivalent of Spike TV, "Nuts TV" (yes, you read that just as correctly), has a show called "Fit and Fearless". Scantily clad models are locked in haunted houses with cameras, the idea being that presumably young British men enjoy a bizarre combination of sado-masochism and 19th century Blavatsky Spiritism.
Brilliant media commentator Charlie Brooker has written his piece about Nuts TV, and I boldly stride forth in his jowly shadow by saying that the point behind "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes" is equally terrifying: presumably you're supposed to be masturbating while watching it, but doing so means you're totally, undeniably insane. "Fit and Fearless" is the next logical step, followed by "Bikini'd and Bound", which is essentially just softcore dungeon play with a streaming banner underneath inviting us to purchase Axe bodyspray. After that it's just a long, languid close up of a bleeding corpse, although doubtlessly, Spike will ace that up a bit with some tips on how to avoid the police read by wacky, sarcastic jerks deserving of a good unwrapped SlimJim being rammed down their tanned, impossibly intolerable little snouts.
I leave this blahdy-blah with this final thought: according to Wikipedia. Spike TV's average viewer age is 42. Mayhap they should reconsider their concepts just a bit. "Hot Chicks and Tax Tips", 'Hot Chicks and Mortgages", "Hot Chicks and A Solid Plan for Building That Patio You've Always Been Talking About" may be a little bit less insulting.
Apparently all I needed to do in order to complete Run To The Hills on hard was attach some socks to my drums with rubber bands. Who knew?
All day yesterday and all morning today I was thinking of how to get the proper stickings for this song. It's got this galloping beat that is really fast, and hard to nail precisely on the pads. Even in the shower I was drumming with my fingers on the tiles, trying to get the rhythm down. Frustrated and sore, I took a break and looked on a couple Rock Band forums for tips. Many mentioned something called the "sock mod", which involves wrapping the drum head in a tube sock and rubber bands. It increases the tension of the sensor and improves gameplay. Turns out I wasn't bad at drum rolls, the drums were bad at interpreting my drum rolls. I finished Run To The Hills with ease and finished drums on hard. I love seeing that achievement pop up "3 for 90g". So nice of Harmonix to give you credit for all difficulties below the one you have just completed.
I feel so very accomplished now. The rest of my day was spent playing...
Ikaruga - I don't recall the Gamecube version of this game having so much engrish in it, but Treasure found a way to poorly translate even more text, including all the Xbox-specific text, such as saving the game. Hilarious. It's a good thing that Ikaruga is fucking brilliant. In HD the game looks absolutely incredible. Textures and polygons are smooth, there's little to no slowdown when a lot of stuff is happening on screen, and man. The music. Oh, the music is so very epic. I completed the first and second stages, unlocking the third. I obtained the achievements for completing both of those levels and decided to grab the dot eater one as well. Dot Eater is accomplished by not firing for a whole level. In Ikaruga, each enemy appearing on screen is precisely choreographed. They come in and exit at the same time, every time. It's entirely possible to memorize the patterns and get a perfect game. In the XBLA version, you have the new option to save replay videos and attach them to your leaderboard score. This is pretty awesome, as you can go to the top of the leaderboard and download a gameplay video of whoever is currently best in the world. You can then study the videos and improve your own performance. For obsessive types like me, this is a godsend.
Tomorrow? More Ikaruga and possibly back into Mass Effect or Burnout Paradise, now that one of my main goals for Rock Band has been accomplished. Huzzah!
I suck at Geometry Wars and every time I play, I get crushed by the sheer weight of defeat. My high score is probably in the range of 30,000-40,000. Pitiful, I know! My dear friend, Capn Rocket, on the other hand, was at one time "best in the world" on the original PGR2 version of Geometry Wars and puts me (not a very difficult thing to do) and most others to shame. Fortunately, I was able to tap into the psyche of an accomplished Geometry Wars pro to bring you some tips. Here they are, straight from the horse's mouth: 
This the first generation of consoles where I've finally been able to experience all the medium has to offer. That's right, I've finally completed the set and picked up an 80gig Metal Gear Solid 4 Playstation 3 bundle. My reasons are most likely different than most, I'm not a fan of the Metal Gear series and most of the titles out for the PS3 don't really intrigue me. I was more interested in the backwards compatibility since I no longer own a PS2 due to circumstances. Divorce circumstances. That's right, I lost custody of my PS2. 
