I Guess I'll Give It A Look

Apparently there's something going on PS Home today. The Playstation Blog says it's some sort of Alternate Reality Game (ARG). The two biggest ARGs that come to my mind were the two associated with the releases of Halo 2 and Halo 3. I Love Bees (Halo 2) was absolutely incredible... I'm only sad that I didn't discover it until well after the fact. However, the audio clips associated with it (found here) played out a really good story. The Halo 3 ARG was fun to watch unfold, but ultimately didn't do much for me. I'm about to hop onto Home right now and see what this one is all about.


UPDATE: Now that I've checked it out it looks like they've at least put a story together for the whole thing. I'm not sure if this is going to be some kind of game release announcement or some new things in home. It sounds like you're assisting some group called AFK who (in the ARG at least) assisted in the creation of home. The team leader was apparently working on a side project called Xi. It looks like there will be periodic updates with new tasks that unlock new pieces of the puzzle. There's some kind of emblem you're collecting pieces of... however when you scroll over them you can see a shadow of the piece I assume will be there. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody puts together a composite of the thing early. If this is some kind of new Scion I'm going to be pissed.

Warring in Halo

Halo Wars is a real time strategy game made just for the Xbox 360 console. This marks the first rts game I've played for the next gen consoles and I must say it has been a great experience. It has been stripped down from the usual rts game models and streamlined for console controls. However, there are less units to choose from because of all the simplifying. While normal rts games have over 15 different unit types, Halo Wars falls short with 10 for the UNSC and 12 for the Covenant. There's not much to say except that it's fun to play. I still prefer rts games to be played on the PC but this is a nice diversion from my norm. There's a really easy learning curve and I recommend this to anyone who's a fan of the Halo universe.

Toaster Technology Is Still A Few Generations Behind...

I found this over at Kotaku... who posted several links as to where they found it. As Kotaku mentions it's brought to us by a modder named Vomitsaw with more pictures of the process here. I heard his next project will be a grill that requires you to play a series of waggle-laden mini-games to flip your burger.

No, We're Not Dead...

Well it's been a while I know... but I really want to start showing up here more often. I'm hoping my fellow "writers" here will come along as well. Tag and I have recently become income challenged (damn you economy!) and still haven't posted. I recently took a trip to Austin and Tag and I spent some time discussing things pertaining to this site. First and foremost we agreed that while having absolutely nothing to do, not posting is completely unacceptable. So, here I am! It's my belief that most of what should be on this site will not only be gaming related... but will aim to get ourselves and others excited about playing games. So it's not likely that you'll find full extensive reviews... though I'm sure we will give our opinions... I think most of what you'll see will be our gaming experiences: how we felt about a game or a description of the fun we had with one (or lack thereof... War World).



So to get to current events, we've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead lately. For those who don't know, the game puts you in the middle of a world that's been infected by a type of zombifying virus. You play one of four survivors who must make their way from safe house to safe house enroute to a rescue vessel. In addition to the normal infected that attack you from every angle, there are four types of "Special Infected". These are the Smoker who attacks from long range with a tongue that chokes your character while dragging them. The Hunter which jumps on you, pins you, and mauls you. The Boomer which vomits on you. And, the Tank who resembles The Hulk and punches really hard.



We finally got Poops to make the purchase... which was really just the trigger for the rest of us to go out and buy it. Well, that is everybody but Fenris because his roommate apparently likes to leave their router wide open for all to use. This has recently made it difficult for him to maintain a constant internet connection. Anyway, It's damn near impossible to just get Poops to buy a game... he's not as blantently irresponsible when it comes to his game spending. Well, I thought this was the case until he bought 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand... it tuns out that Fiddy does in fact get his skull back. Thank the Lord for that. But, I digress. With Left 4 Dead finally in our posession I have taken on the full responsibility of delivering as much friendly fire as possible to my teammates. This is not a task I take lightly as I constantly make sure to send random rounds flying squarly into the backs of my teammates. Some might say it's my fault... I say they're a bunch of stammering idiots who should know how to stay out of my GD way... I'm looking righ at you Poops.



In all seriousness, the game is a ton of fun. It is obviously running off of a very old engine, but somehow that thing still holds on and manages to produce a lot of fun (Orange Box anybody?). I do however recommend playing with 4 actual people and not letting the computer AI control one of your teammates. You can't communicate with them, therefore they don't really stick to the plan. Last night, we had 3 human players and one AI. First we all decided to try for the achievement which requires you to avoid the witch through an entire campaign... Louis (the AI player) screwed that up right off the bat. At the end of every campaign mode you're required to make a run to an escape vessel... If one player is left behind and beyond rescue, the best method is to just make a run for the escape (in this case a boat) and be done. However, the computer AI stands firmly behind the "no man left behind" credo. So, when Tag was pinned down, Poops and I made a run for the boat... Louis did not. The level won't end until all remaining survivors are on the boat.... I should also add that a giant horde rush usually accompanies the arrival of the rescue. So, Poops and I were standing on the boat trying to keep the muphuggers away while Louis "Forrest Gumped" his way into a failed rescure of Tag... and then limped his sorry ass back to the boat. Actually, now that I think about it... and AI player at least makes things more interesting all the way through. Plus he'll sacrafice his med kit to heal you rather than himself... and how do we repay him? We let smokers drag him off and kill him while we make our stand. Dude needs to learn how to be a team player.



Left 4 Dead is an A+ in the fun department... buy it.



In addition to L4D I started up Bioshock again yesterday... I'm way behind. With the sequel being announced already I figured I should finish the first one. So far so good.



Lastly, Tag and I have co-oped Halo Wars and HAWX all the way through... we even did HAWX a second time a few nights later when Fenris bought it. I hope to recount our adventures in HAWX some time soon (or at least talk about new adventures... we need to play that some more). I'll give Tag a chance to talk about Halo Wars since he's spent the most time with it.



Alright kids, that's all for now!



Also, if you're actually reading this, comment or something... this includes you fellow Axis members.

Dear Nintendo, Stop Being Stupid

Dear Nintendo, could you please get yourself some kind of achievements system? I don't just mean for the Wii... I mean for the DS. Actually, make that ESPECIALLY for the DS. See, I have this thing now where I'm pretty much addicted to the idea of earning arbitrary points throughout any game I play. I'll add here that I think Sony should link trophies through the PSP and PS3 as well. I assume this is a system they will be using from here on out... as I assume that Microsoft will continue using achievement points... so why not take that step now?



Anyway, back to you, Nintendo. I've been traveling a lot, and carrying my DS. Which is great... I can "get my game on" while I'm travelling... but I'm not getting my achievement fix. DADDY NEEDS A FALSE SENSE OF FULFILLMENT!!! I know the rest of the crew feels me on this, as they are even larger Achievement whores than I am. Tag beat Mass Effect 18 times just to make sure he got them all. He and Poops each have over 20,000 gamer points.

So please Nintendo, step ya game up.

Perspective

Today is Airstrike's 27th birthday. I get a message today that he plans to play xbox tonight starting out with a game of Uno that we are all invited to play in. This immediately raises a few inquires, dim red lights are going off in my head in the form of hypothetical questions.

- We are definitely not his only friends, we don't even live in the same city. So why has he chosen to stay inside playing xbox with us? How would he feel if we didn't show up/get online. Sure, not being online sounds proposterous but I sure hope I don't let him down.

- I'm not saying Uno isn't a good time but one would think other activities besides sitting at home playing games, technically alone, isn't the norm on your birthday. He's only 27, what's next year, bingo night?

- In a broader sense, is this some sign of maturity where you don't need to go out to get wasted with your friends for your birthday?

- Has this become some kind of trend for our generation to "meet online" and hang out? With the 360's new xbox experience, we spent an hour one night just playing dress up with our avatars. We should probably keep that on the downlow...

I'm sure he has other things planned for the weekend but at his age, the artheritis could be slowing him down. I look forward to some Uno and possibly Castle Crashers tonight, happy birthday Airstrike!

Highlights of Today's Game Chat...

We're not funny... that's been proven over and over again as the 4 of us stand there, the only ones laughing. I don't think it's that we're not funny... it's that we have an almost constant dialogue throughout any given day. So, why would anybody find our obscure references to something that happened 3 weeks ago, funny? To those people I say... "shoulda been there." And now you can! Sorta... you'll find that you probably didn't want to be anyway...

Email Chat:

Tag: Sweet, word on Mass Effect 2 from this years GDC...

Fenris: Tag, Whatever you do don't freeze yourself until it comes out. It will end badly for you.

He used punctuation, we're so proud of him!

Airstrike: Yeah, nobody's even heard of Mass Effect 500 years from now.

Poops: Given the opportunity I bet Tag would replay both ME's until 2509 just to make sure that he played through with every possible permutation of dialogue choices.

Airstrike: God, could you imagine the storage he'd need for all those spreadsheets?

You know, now that I read this, it's funny, but I'm pretty sure people still don't get it. Nobody FULLY grasps Tag's love of both, Mass Effect and spreadsheets.

Text Message Chat:

Airstrike: Do you have Puzzle Quest on XBL?

Poops: No

Airstrike: Ah... there's a "Win an online match" achievement. I don't want to play some random d-bag.

Poops: What makes you think you'll win against me, douche-tard?

Airstrike: Because you're dumb

Poops: Your mom

HEY!... she's a nice lady.

Those are MY highlights from the day... gentlemen, care to add?

Recapturing My Youth

I spent several hours with NHL '09 yesterday, and I must say that I can see why it's being held in such high regard all over the web. I do of course, have my complaints. One of my favorite things about hockey games in the past was taking my player of choice and turning him into some kind of god-like super star... and I don't mean Wayne Gretzky good... that guy is an absolute pussy when it comes to the kind of stats you can rack up in a hockey video game. Hat Trick? Fuck that, I'll give you a hat trick of hat tricks. I would make sure every man on my starting line had a hat trick (I call that a hat stand). The Pittsburgh Penguins were an unstoppable juggernaut. I would play through entire undefeated season and with a Stanley Cup in 4 games outscoring my opponent 80-0 and injuring every player in their starting 5 (I couldn't ever hurt a damn goalie).

This is not the case with NHL '09... and it may be for a couple of reasons. 1) I'm not that far into it, and 2) I've been playing the "Be a Pro" mode. You see, traditionally in hockey games you play as a team... you control whoever has the puck. When on defence you can easily switch between players to take control of whoever is closest to the puck. This is certainly an option in NHL '09, but I get the impression that this isn't entirely the single player experience they want you to have. I say this because all of the achievements in the game are based around advancing your "be a pro" character (and uploading pictures/videos to EA... guess who already racked up THOSE little guys). This mode revolves around taking a single player from a 3rd string minor league player all the way to the pros. This means you only control 1 player in a game... which also means that to rack up your assists and goals, you have to rely on the computer to pass you the puck, OR worse yet, actually put the damn thing in the goal. I've set up an ungodly amount of nice 1-timers, only to have my teammate run right up to the goal and trip over the goalie. I win almost every face-off... only to see whoever the puck goes to immediately turn it over. I'm not faulting the game for this... I'm sure I just picked a shitty team... I just don't understand why I can only control 1 player in the Be A Pro mode. The game even goes as far as to give you a view from the bench when your player isn't in the game (easily fixed by turning off line changes... but COME ON).

As I stated before, I really haven't gotten all that far into the game yet. My player is still on the minor league team and thus surrounded by idiots. I have only played 1 game in the traditional way I mentioned earlier, where I control every player (which was a blast by the way). I've only played with the controls set up to use this "skill stick." That is fun, but I have a feeling I may be more successful with the old school controls.

I realize I've only put complaints here, and that's not at all fair. The game does look amazing, it's got a good learning curve and the game is certainly challenging. I just really need to spend more time with it. So, that's about all I've got.

Oh, and I played a little more Fallout 3 tonight... I can't believe how long that game is... wow.

A Little Change of Pace

It's been a few great months 'round these parts (and by these parts I mean video game happy fun land). I've busted through Fable 2, Gears of War 2, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2, and last night I finished up Prince of Persia. Not to mention I've filled in gaps with Little Big Planet and Fallout 3... and I fully intend to finish up both of those. But, today I plan to venture into a genre I haven't touched in a while... sports games... and more specifically NHL '09. According to the box it's won 7 sports game of the year awards, and I'm not one to argue with a box ("this end up" anybody?). I used to play a lot of hockey games in my younger days. I believe it started with NHL '95... that was the kind of game that made me actually go watch hockey. I live in a place that had an 85 degree Christmas, so, that was kind of a big deal.

After NHL '95 the next game that I clearly remember standing out for me was Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey for the Nintendo 64. What I remember most about this was me and my buddies playing 4-player at my parents house in high school, and every time ol' Joe Buck would say "looking to score" somebody would inevitably respond with "I'm always looking to score..." Then we'd turn off the Nintendo and go play Magic: The Gathering. We were so awesome.

In early college I picked up a copy of NHL Hitz that my roommates and I had a pretty good time with. But, since then I haven't really played a hockey video game.

Tag insists that this "skill stick" feature in NHL '09 (Well the NHL series for consoles) is "teh suck"... but I'm not buying it. I'm looking to recapture the fun of my hockey game youth... and of course, I'll be looking to score (thanks Joe!)...

Hardcore Inquiry

Of note, Poops finished his second playthrough of Kung Fu Panda before joining us in the chat.