Throwback Thursday (2/23/2012)

Thursday is upon is once again, so let me tell you my pick for this weeks throwback.  To break the trend of nothing but video games on this website, I bring you a movie.

Kung Fu Hustle

I can’t explain it, I love this movie for some odd reason.  It is one of those movies, where if it is on TV, I have to drop what I’m doing and watch it.  It is a total guy movie.  It’s goofy, has great over the top fight scenes, and it has Stephen Chow in it.  I mean just look at this scene where they introduce the fearsome “Axe Gang”.

You have no reason not to check this strange movie out.  It has been out for a while so you can get it cheep at any movie store.  (Unfortunately it is not on Netflix streaming.)  Trust me, you will love it and well be a good addition to your DVD/Blu-ray collection.

Making Movies

There is a question that has been asked on almost every message board, game website, and game channel.  It is a question that we all can’t agree on.  What video game should be made into a movie?  Now before you start answering this question, I’m going to ask a counter question.  Do we really need to turn video games into movies?  With how far the gaming industry has come, I don’t understand why fan boys and girls are so eager for their favorite games to hit the big screen.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but, video games can be better than movies.  Not only do you get sucked into a great story, but you actually get to play as the characters instead of watching an actor surrounded by special effects do everything.

The thing is, I don’t know if the average player understands that current games are treated similar to movies.  Even though it is all digital, the creators still need to worry about a script, lighting, blocking the scenes, transitions, continuity, etc.  The first time I really understood this was when I saw a video in which Hideo Kojima was showing the intricacies if the engine that Metal Gear Solid 4 ran on.  The ting about the video that I remember the most was how he could instantly tweak the smallest detail of the lighting, and the particle effects of snakes surroundings in real time.  The funny thing is that people made fun of metal gear solid for being more of a movie than a game because of the number of cut scenes in it, and every time the original question is posed, people want a MGS movie.  On a similar note, Uncharted 3 is practically a movie.  The uncharted series is one of the most realistic looking games on the market.  This is because the game is motion captured and voiced at the same time.  This means that there is no longer a disconnect from the voice actor and the motion.  This adds more realism because the voice actor can get into character better and do a better job.  Below is a short video interview with the actors of Uncharted.

For me, I’m not sure I could ever like a video game movie more than the game the characters originated from.  I say this because one of the aspects of movie would be casting the characters, and if the characters voice doesn’t match it would bother me.  I would rather a director change the look of a character slightly over changing the voice.   Nolan North will always be Nathan Drake, Carlos Ferro will always be Dominic Santiago, and Link will never have a voice.

In the end, do we really need another video game movie.  Just look at the track record of these movies.  I mean, don’t get me wrong I would pay to see Matthew Fox as Commander Shepard in a Mass Effect movie, or Nathan Fillion as Nathan Drake in an Uncharted Film.  but is it necessary.  I would love to see original ideas coming out of Hollywood for a change, but that is for a different post.

Hell, for the fun of it there is a poll if you want to vote.

Throwback Thursday (2/16/2012)

It’s Thursday, so lets jump into our second Throwback Thursday.  Now, for me the is going to be a long weekend because of presidents day.  With that, I have picked a good game for you and your friends to get together and waste the day…

MARIO PARTY

By now if you have never played a Mario Party or don’t know what it is, I’m sorry, but where have you been for the past fourteen years.  Mario Party, on paper, must have sounded like a bad idea at first.  With all of the great adventure games, RPGs, and puzzle games Mario has been in, who would think to put him in a digital board game.  We all can be thankful that this series was created.  Mario Party is a simple concept, you and three other friends get together and try to make your way around the game board buying stars.  The person with the most stars after a predetermined amount of turns is the winner.  Of course Nintendo wouldn’t be able to squeeze eight games out of just that (Okay well maybe they could).  After every player has moved, they all engage in a mini game.  These mini games are varying between 4v4, 2v2, and 3v1 (the teams are determined on what color space they land on).

That video is a trailer for the ninth installment of the game on the Wii, and give you an idea what the game is about.  Over all, just go out and play this game.  It shouldn’t be to hard to find seeing as you can get it an any Nintendo system since N64.  You and your friends will have a good time…if they are still your friends after (No one likes getting their stars stolen). 

Tim Schafer Asks For A Little, Gets A Lot

It all started when in an interview when asked about Psychonauts 2, Tim Schafer told Digital Spy, “I’d love to do that game, but I’d have to convince someone to just give me a few million dollars, that’s all.”  Mr. Schafer has been trying for awhile now to get the game funded.  He pitched the game to developers using this fan made trailer/mash-up of the original Psychonauts and Inception.

As cool as this trailer was, he had no takers.  This was until Notch, The creator of Minecraft, heard about this.  He tweeted to Schafer a simple “Lets make Psychonauts 2 happen.”, followed by a “;D Also, I’m serious.”  Of course the two of them had to talk about it.  So far the official word is “Tim and Markus are talking. Who knows what might happen?”  A couple of days after Tim and Marcus’ tweets, a Kickstarter page from Double Fine popped up.

Now this page is to fund a project is for an unnamed game.  One can only hope it is a fund to help pay for the creation of Psychonauts 2.  Unfortunately for all of us, The original Psychonauts cost about 13 million, and this page only had a goal of 400k.   But as you can see from the picture above the donation period has 27 days left and they have already collected $1,387,750 more than they asked for.  Regardless of what they make, fans of Double Fine are willing to pay up to get a new game from this company.  All we can do is pledge our money, and hope for something amazing.  Again this might be a fund to pool Double Fine and Notches money.

With all Double Fines success with kickstarter, I wonder if other independent developers are going to start doing this to cut out publishers, and make the games they want.

First Throwback Thursday (2/9/12)

Starting today I’m creating a new weekly article where I suggest a classic game, song, or movie for you to enjoy and get reacquainted with(or play for the first time if you missed it).  So bust out your old consoles, dust off the VHS players and lets dive into the first Throwback Thursday.

First up is a classic game for the NES,

BATTLETOADS

For those of you who played this game as a kid knows how cool it is.  You may even remember how hard it was, i mean, can you remember anything past the first level.  The strange thing about this game, is how high the ratings for the game are, considering how extremely hard it was.  The game has even been included in tons of times among the hardest games ever made.  Now that you are grown up, or at least more skilled at video games, I challenge you to try this game again.  Just try not to get to frustrated with it.  If you do you can always leave it on in the background and listen to the funky music.  Personally, I love the music in this game.  In fact, it has one of the most recognizable pause music.  The AVGN even makes a reference to it in one of his videos (as seen in the GIF below).

You can play the game here: http://virtualnes.com/play/?id=NES-8T.  You could also get lucky and hit up your local Goodwill or flea market and pick it up for a buck. Just don’t call up your local GameStop and ask for it…It really pisses them off….Ya know what do it, call ‘um up it will be funny.

WE ARE BACK

Sorry folks for the long break in the posts, but it’s only me and the holiday season was crazy.  Honestly you can blame SWTOR for taking loads of my time.  Oddly enough, I am in the groove of this spring semester, and have more time to write (the best part is I can make posts during work).

Well, lets get down to business.  I was recently asked one of the hardest question you can ask a gamer.  In no particular order, what are your top ten favorite games?  Now you can see why this is a hard question.  We all have played a lot of great games over the years, and pumped countless hours in to our favorites.  But does play time constitute a coveted spot in your personal top ten?  I mean I’ve played a lot of NBA Jam (Xbox 360) with my friend frank and had a great time, but I wouldn’t call it one of my favorite games.  This list will change because I guarantee you that I overlooked games, but as of right now this is my list.

Again in no particular order:

1) Bioshock

Bioshock has one of the best stories ever written for a video game.  It is full suspenseful moments, action, and times where you question human nature and free will.  This game is honestly for everyone. If you are good at shooters great play this the guns and ammo are interesting and fun to play with, alternatively if you suck at shooter play it anyways because there is no penalty for dieing.  Honestly, if you die you instantly resurrect at a vita station and you can continue the story.  Most of all, I had my favorite scene in any game.  The moment you descend into the ocean and see Rapture (the underwater city where the game takes place) for the first time is breath taking.

2) Xenogears

There isn’t much to say about this game except that it changed my views on what a RPG could be.  It was a mature title from Squaresoft, that was unlike the well known Final Fantasy titles.  I had its own combat system that used combination button presses to activate a “Deathblow”, a move with a cinematic feel.  For all of you  mech fans, you didn’t just fight as a tiny human, but also in your own robot. Overall this game may not have had the best story, but it really left a mark on me because of how amazing the combat was and how cool the cut-scenes were.

3) Monster Rancher 2

Monster Rancher 2 was one of my favorite games on the Play Station.  It was a really simple game in which you worked with a single monster, you trained them, and would fight them in tournaments with the goal to be the S-class champion.  Now this sounds like Pokemon, I know, but it’s more interesting than that.  Unlike Pokemon, your monster has a lifespan.  This means that you can’t max out its stats by training all day.  If you did that your monster would die before he even entered a tournament.  As a kid I remember getting to a C-class tournament was big, and winning was a huge achievement.  The best part of this game was its most interesting part too.  The way you got monster was you generated them from your music CDs laying around the house.  I remember it was an event for me and my friends to get all of our CDs together to see what monsters were living inside them.  The challenge was getting the right CD to make a really good monster, and train it.  After in game years more monster became active and would be available to get.

4) Minecraft

Minecraft is one of the best indie games ever.  Did you enjoy Legos as a kid, then you are going to love Minecraft.  you want to explore, go to it.  You want to build a replica of your house, no ones stopping you.  You want to build a giant underwater glass castle with an automated mine cart transportation system, start reading forums on red stone.  The only limit with Minecraft is yourself.  When creating by yourself gets boring, you can easily create a server and host a world where you and your friends can create what ever you want.  The best parts of this game is its low price and the fact that Mojang is constantly updating it.

5) League of Legends

League of Legends is a action RTS tower defense PC game.  This game is addicting and extremely fun.  You and four other friends can choose from 92 (as of 1/31/2012) champions to try and defeat 5 other player in an online battle.  The more you play you level up which unlocks skill points to add to your skill tree to get stronger, and in game currency to unlock more champions to play.  When you unlock a champion the are available forever.  You have the option to buy a skin to make your love for a champion known, and to make them look cool.   This game is constantly updated with new champions and skins for the champions…. Oh did I mention its FREE!

6) Gears of War

Gears of Was was, for me, was the game that defined the Xbox360.  It was the sole reason I saved up money to get one as soon as I could.  This game was the first in this fantastic trilogy, and was my absolute favorite.  This game not only had fantastic game play, I had a fantastic story.  Besides Gears, I cant name a shooter that made you care about the characters.  Having a great multilayer experience doesn’t hurt either.

7) Alan Wake

When my Xbox360 red ringed for the second time I was pissed.  This meant I was going to have to go out and buy a another console, and being a broke college student, It took a lot out of me.  When I finally got around to buying a new one I was one of the sleek new black consoles that came with two games.  The games I get were Forza 3 and Alan Wake.  To save room in the box and to cut cost, I guess, Alan Wake was a download code.  Because of this I didn’t download it and play it immediately.  When I finally got around to playing it I was extremely surprised on how good it was.  The visuals are stunning.  The controls were smooth. The writing kept me entertained and wanting to know more.  For me this game had my attention.  It is so good one of my friends wanted to be around to watch me play it because of how interesting it was.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the survival horrors of the past like Resident Evil and Dino Crisis, but there is something about fighting your imagination and writings with light that appeals to me.  If you haven’t played it try it, you’ll love it.

8) Metal Gear Solid 2

Metal Gear Solid is my favorite out of the series.  A lot of people don’t like it for the reason that it is almost the retelling of the original game, just without Solid Snake as the playable character.  Of course of you play the game they explain why this is but regardless, it is great.  This then new addition to the series made it possible to look down the sites in a first person view.  This brought a whole new level to the game, where not you could be more precise with where you shot a guard with a tranquilizer dart.  This game also introduced a new character, Raiden, who people hated at first but later became cooler as the series progressed.  This game was my first introduction to the series and to this day is extremely enjoyable.

9) Portal 2

I chose Portal 2 over the original Portal for many reasons.  First being that Portal 2 is a stand alone game, not an add-on to resell Half-Life 2.  Now again I’m not saying Portal was rushed or bad, it was just short.  Portal 2 actually felt like a complete game.  Like the original it was challenging and funny, even more funny than the first with the addition of Stephen Merchant as Wheatley.  not to give any away but the best part of the game is when they added the orange and blue paint…oh and Cave Johnson.  This game also included a two player co-op experience that didn’t feel tacked on at the last minute.

 10) Spider-man 2 

If you were Spider-man, what would be the most fun thing to do?  Thats right, web sling.  Spider-man 2 for the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox was the first Spider-man game to have this mechanic in their game.  When you created a new file for the game, before you started, you were given the option of easy or precision web slinging.  This meant that if you chose precision web slinging you had total control of Spider-man from where he shot the web, the angle and speed of your swing.  Not only did they get the web slinging physics correct, they also gave you an amazing version of Manhattan to play in.  At this point you don’t care if the story is good or what the missions are because you have lost track of time and have been swinging, and running/climbing on buildings for hours.

Like I said, this list is going to change but as of right now I’m happy with it.  Leave a comment either here or on our twitter page with your list of top ten. —————-> (Follow button on the side bar)