E3 Is Right Around The Corner

Well on it’s here again, E3.  Starting Monday my DVR is going to be filling up with press conferences and demo footage.  I look forward to this even almost as much as NYCC.  Honestly, I haven’t been reading up on whats going to be at the event, I want to be surprised.  The only game I have seen an image for is the new Gears project.  It is going to be the cover of the next gameinformer.

I will be posting more after the event is over on my thoughts of what company has come out on top, and what game I’m looking forward to the most.

Cave Johnson Here

Ahh, three simple words that get me excited.  I love Portal 2 and the character Cave Johnson, and Valve has just releaced a new video showing off a new addon to the game.  Take a look…

The best part about this video, is that they are still using Cave.  I hope they keep the character around and use him on other games… possibly Half-Life 3 (if they use the Black Mesa and Aperture are competing laboratories story).

P.S. I have not forgot about this site, just have a lot of work with the end of the semester.

Throwback Thursday (3/22/2012)

Spring is upon us, and because of that I haven’t been playing to many video games this spring break.  I have been outside enjoying the unusually warm weather.  The warm clear days gave me a great idea for this weeks Throwback Thursday,

Boktai

The sun is in your hands 

 This game is very interesting, and unique.  It was the first of its kind because of the technology inside the cartridge.  This game used a solar sensor to power your characters main weapon, the Gun Del Sol (solar gun).  Now this game didn’t just encourage you to go out side and play it, it was required at times.  You would use the power of the sun to recharge your gun to fight.  If by chance you ran out of sun you were SOL.  Now don;t worry this game is playable at night time.  When playing the game there was a bar on the bottom of your screen indicating the amount of sun the cartridge was picking up.  This acted like a battery storing sunlight to be used later in case it got shady or you wanted to play before bed or something.  Another cool feature of the game is the fact that is had an internal clock that would effect game play.  If you were playing at night different enemies would become active than if you played in the daytime.  This game is also make by Konami, the makers of metal gear, so there is also a stealth aspect if you want to conserve your sun powers.

This silly cartoon shows hot the game works and the cool small details are in the game.  Even thought this game is cool and original you can still find copies of the game at gamestops or other used game stores.  I’m sure you can find an emulator for it but it loses a lot of the fun when you cant actually charge the game up in the sun. Regardless give this game a try if you can get your hands on it.  Enjoy

Ghost Recon Online Stream

So how was everyone’s weekend?  Mine was very busy.  Over the past couple of days I have been playing SFxT, working on homework/studying for midterms, oh and getting a beta key for the Ghost Recon Online closed beta.  This post is delayed because of the home work, but in-between studying I have been getting a couple of games in.  Now, before I tell you my first thoughts on the game I want you guys to take a look at it for yourselves.  Later today I am going to be streaming a couple of games I recorded last night.  I will be streaming on twitch.tv.  During the stream I will be answering questions (if they are any), and commentating what you are seeing. If you miss the stream you will still be able to watch the recording on twitch, and at the end of the week I might edit together a video and put it on YouTube.

Link to my Twitch.tv page: http://www.twitch.tv/aggrocragg

P.S. You can also ask questions in the comment section below if you miss the stream.

Throwback Thursday (3/1/2012)

Unfortunately this Throwback Thursday is going to be a bit short, I am busy with school work, working on fixing my resume, and writing cover letters.  But who cares what I’m working on lets get started.  This week we are going back to an old favorite.  If you owned a SNES, chances were you owned this game.

Super Mario World

Come on,  look at that cover.  If this game doesn’t portray the awesomeness of this game I don’t know what does.  Okay so the cover is lame but trust me this game is awesome.  This game is your classic Mario game but updated.  This game took everything amazing about Mario 3 and made it better.  This game gave up new power-ups.  Not only that, but it gave the player a way to store power-ups in case you get hit.  This game was long too.  It has so many secret levels you will be playing this title for hours.

Trust me this game is fun and probably my favorite Mario game.  And because I like you guys I’ll give you a link to where you can play it.  Don’t day I never did anything for you.

 

P.S. There are mods out for this game where people create their own challenge levels.  they are excruciating, just take a look.

 

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.

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.

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) 

I Feel Like I Was A Little Harsh

I feel like I was a little harsh yesterday, and I don’t want to be this negative.  Let me start by telling you about my experiences with WoW and then you might see where I’m coming from.  I haven’t been playing since vanilla, I started when Burning Crusade came out.  I was instantly hooked.  In fact, I tried it on a friends computer and went out and bought the game the same day.  That was only the beginning.  After I started playing, I got all of my other friends to play it (If they weren’t already playing).  We ended up playing all the time.  The game was extremely fun and became even more enjoyable at level 70 when the game became more challenging.  At level 70 I focused on PVP.  I remember rocking a full merciless set on my bloodelf warlock.  I worked extremely hard on getting that gear.  I was proud of it too, because back then when you was a player with a full set of gear you knew that they were skilled and knew what they were doing.  The same was true with PVP, if you was an opposing player with the Warglaives of Azzinoth you ran.  Now with PVE, you had to have friends or work hard to get a pickup group to raid.  With the game being challenging, the people who focused on PVE were a more focused player who understood the game type.  For example I was entirely possible to log on, find a group, raid, wipe between seven and thirteen times, to then finally down a boss (not always the case).  after all of that you might not even win a roll for gear, but after all of that you would call that a good raid because there was progress made.  Any progress for you and your guild was a big step. In the early days of wow being a hardcore player was the only way to see end game content.  Blizzard realized this and wanted to include the casual player.  In vanilla and BC there was no pug queue system, so it took longer to get gear because you had to go out and find people who wanted to do that instance on your server.  It was a similar problem with PVP.  If you wanted to win an Alterac Valley, and not have it take three hours, you were going to have to join as a group.  Now because there was no place for casuals , Blizzard changed some mechanics around and added features to be more accommodating in the later expansions.  Unfortunately for Blizzard, once they started making these changes, the started the downfall of their community.

In each expansion following Burning Crusade, Blizzard created features to make end game more accessible to the masses.  On of the major features, that at low levels is helpful but later in the game gets extremely annoying, was their PUG (pick up group) System.  This feature would queue you based on your group roll, to then create a group the the proper composition.  With this feature Blizzard made it possible to be grouped with players from different servers.  This system on papers sounded good, everyone was happy at first because there would be shorter queue times and you would get geared faster.  In reality, this system caused more problems by creating a new type of player, the loot ninja.  Because you were grouped with players from other servers it was entirely possible to down a boss and have someone need roll of a piece of gear just for the gold and instantly leave group.  Now because they are from another server there is no way you can stop this person.  Even if a player didn’t steal a piece of gear, there is still the problem of players leaving for no reason.  Because a player no longer needs actively search for a group they feel no consequence for dropping group if they don’t receive the gear they wanted.  As the game progressed ninja looting became more prevalent.  It continued to get worse when Blizzard set gear restrictions to enter some of the instances.

Now these are just some of the reasons why the community has taken a turn for the worse.  Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of good and decent players who play WoW.  Unfortunately the bad egocentric players over shadow the team players.  I can tell you I will not be buying the newest expansion because, I cancelled my account over a year ago.  Like I said, I loved playing WoW, but after Blizzard turned on “easy mode”, and unintentionally ruined their community, I can’t justify making that $15 payment every month.

Blizzard, I’m not sure what you are doing

Blizzcon happened last week, and Blizzard has announced a lot of videos and info regarding their IPs.  Now I wasn’t there, and I don’t know everything they are planning, but from what I have seen it seems that Blizzard is changing.  They don’t feel like the same company that I loved years ago.  I used to get excited when they would release new videos on WoW.  Now with the most recent expansion video “Mists of Pandaria” I feel like they aren’t trying anymore.  Back in the day when Blizzard released a trailer for a new expansion, you watched the video and leaned where you were going to go, and the evils you were going to face.  For example in this tailer for” Burning Crusade”, the new area looks incomplete and not  rendered yet, but Blizz was still was able to show you what you were going to be fighting and and where.

Even more recently, when the patch for “Wrath of the Lich King” came out you knew what was up (even if the expansion title game it away).  I remember when this trailer came out, and how excited my friends and I were.  We would be able to down Arthas.

But now Blizzard puts out this trailer…..

This shows me nothing.  This looks like World of Warcraft ” Kung Fu Panda”.  From what I gathered in this trailer is the level cap is now 90, but there is no way to get there because there is nothing to fight in this new panda infested area.  What am I going to be killing, what is my ultimate goal, and who is the final boss standing in my way.  It’s funny really, they showed all of the other endgame bosses to then show you NOTHING.  I looked even further and I found another trailer on Blizzards youtube channel about one of the instances that you can take on.  Everyone is commenting on how the music is really pretty, but no one seems to notice that the dungeon is EMPTY.  There is no boss preview, not even trash mobs roaming around.

But enough with the new expansions, let’s talk about how it seems like this once confident company is scared of other MMOs.  Blizzard announced a deal.   If you sign up for 12-months of World of Warcraft via the WoW “season pass” you will get Diablo 3 for free….really?  You can still be billed monthly too. so you don’t need to shell out all the money all at once.  Not only will you get instant, free access to Diablo 3, but you’ll also be guaranteed access to the next World of Warcraft expansion’s beta.  Blizzard will also be giving an exclusive mount, Tyrael’s Charger.  Now is Blizz hurting that bad that they are going to give you a brand new game, a mount, and a beta key for “panda paradise” to continuing to play their MMO that you were planning on doing anyways.

What happened to you Blizzard?

Oh and I’m not done here, there is more to come on Wednesday.