Ryan Goes To IGN Part 2

Wow... what a damn weekend folks. The podcast went off pretty well I thought, and I managed to get everybody nice and buzzed in the process with the booze I brought along. Craig Harris claims he couldn't write anything until after 4 o'clock... probably because he was drinking vodka straight out of the bottle. By the way, you can download the podcast here. It's episode 155.

I can't express enough how awesome Friday was as a whole. A huge thanks goes out to not just the podcast guys, but to everybody over at IGN for making it as awesome as it was. Before the podcast I was given the chance to spend about 20-30 minutes with Final Fantasy XIII and another 30 minutes with Cave Story. Final Fantasy XIII looks absolutely amazing and the combat system was very engaging. It has a very real-time feel to it. The character I was using could queue up 3 actions at once. Below where your actions lined up there was a bar that filled over time. Once that bar was filled your actions would begin, and each action would drain the bar an amount equivalent to the length of that action bar. Now, I say 3 actions could be queued up, but I pretty much only used one attack action in my time, so I have no idea if other actions actually have different lengths and allow you to line up more than 3 at a time. But, it became important to continuously pay attention to the battle, as even if you stop attacking, your enemies do not. I should mention that I didn't get any tutorial, so I'm sure I only scratched the surface. Ryan Clements of IGN gave me a quick rundown of the controls as I was playing. He said it gets incredibly in depth as you progress and obviously he didn't have time to run me through everything, but I was able to win a few battles and had a good time doing it. One thing that was new was the ability to assign one of your characters to take on one job during combat. So, for example, I had a character in my party who was able to heal. I could press L1 (I was playing it on a PS3) and select an option to assign her to heal me throughout the engagement. It definitely came in handy with my high levels of suck.

I saw Greg Miller playing some ModNation Racers. It's a very Mario-Kart-esque PS3 exclusive with fully customizable cars, characters, and tracks. He described it as Mario Kart meets Little Big Planet. It actually looked like a lot of fun and I could definitely see myself picking it up. You can check out Greg's "Deep Dive" here.

Later that evening we all headed out on the town. I'll spare you all the details, but it was a hell of a night.

Anyway, now that that's all over I'll resume my regularly scheduled gaming experience. I'm hoping to get into Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tonight for at least a little bit. I also still have Heavy Rain to work on. I'd better get to it...

Ryan Goes To IGN

This is AirstrikeRhino, reporting live from my friend's couch in California. I was just forced to watch Grey's Anatomy. That show blows, but it has doctors banging nurses. And really, if you're going to go to school for 30 years, there had better be some perks. I think banging nurses qualifies.

As I said, I'm in California, and that's because tomorrow is the big day. I will be appearing on IGN's Game Scoop podcast tomorrow morning at 10:30 pacific time. The podcast should be up on IGN's website tomorrow evening. I'll be posting a download link here, of course. I'm really excited for this opportunity. I have to ride the BART across the bay in the morning, then catch a cab to the IGN office. I'm pretty near Oakland right now, so my main goal pre-podcast is to not be stabbed by a hobo.

In gaming news I played a lot more Borderlands last night in order to level up my character enough to actually tackle General Knoxx on Playthrough 2. I finished up Playthrough 2 of the main story at level 54. I'm hoping that's good enough because Playthrough 1 of the DLC was offering almost zero challenge and zero XP. I have access to an Xbox 360 while I'm here so I'm hoping to keep my wicked levels high. I even brought my 360 hard drive, wireless adapter, and headset with me. I sound awesome right now.

I also spent a little time with Lazy Raiders (big thanks to Daemon Hatfield for the free download code). It's a puzzle game where your rotate the maze-like world to send the ragdolling Diggabone sliding and falling to collect treasures while avoiding traps. So far it's been fun, but the 75 levels included seem like a daunting task. I'm still having trouble getting through the 50 in 'Splosion Man.

Next up, I downloaded Greed Corps. I've only read a little about it, but it seems interesting and I look forward to tackling it soon. Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan were both mentioned in reviews, so I figure it can't be horrible.

There's also been a lot of talk about the high profile firings at Infinity Ward. I'm not sure what to make of it until more facts come out, but if some of the things that West and Zampella are alleging are true, then it sounds like Activision might be able to do for waterboarding what they did for rhythm games. I don't have a basement, so I'm not sure where I'd keep the peripheral. As for West and Zampella, I look forward to EA releasing Call of Honor: Current Battle, staring a British SAS operative named Shampoo Macintosh, in 2011.

Alright, it's late... and even later by Texas time which I still feel like I'm on. I need to get some rest so I'm nice and rested for the podcast. I'll talk to you folks tomorrow. If you're bored, Grandma's boy is on TV right now. Goodnight everybody!

Arcade Style

It's been a few days since I posted, and I apologize for that. Things have been kind of busy, and I don't see that changing until after April 16th. So please, bear with me here.

In addition to playing around in Borderlands, I've spent a lot of time over on Xbox Live Arcade. There was, of course, my time with P.B. Winterbottom and 'Splosion Man, but since then I've played a lot of Wallace & Gromit (Episodes 2 & 3), and A LOT of A Kingdom For Keflings. Outside of the Xbox, I've played about 2-3 hours of Heavy Rain and started the God of War Collection.

I'd like to touch on a Kingdom For Keflings a bit. It was a great change of pace after Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, and more Borderlands. It's got the whole tech tree thing going on like an RTS, only there are no enemies and no real way to fail. You can use your Xbox Live Avatar as the "Giant" who sends the Keflings out to gather resources while you build stuff. If you're bored and need some violence, you can kick your Keflings around or destroy buildings. It's great! It's also excellent for drinking... you can just sit there, drink, and let your Keflings continue to gather resources without the fear of an impending enemy attack. I did have one genius start piling rocks up in one spot rather than taking them to the stone cutter. She paid for her sins by spending the next 2 hours moving that rock to it's proper location. YOU'RE IN MY WORLD NOW KEFLING!


If you're looking for some relaxing, semi-brain-teasing mystery solving, the Wallace & Gromit games are fun. The stories are funny enough, but really I just like the solving the little puzzles along the way. It's a pretty traditional point-and-click adventure, but it definitely has it's own personality. I especially love the way they manage dialogue when you're controlling the mute dog, Gromit. I also like the way they've adapted the "point" portion of point-and-click for the Xbox. You can cycle between selectable objects by using the right thumbstick or by using RB and LB (my preferred method). I'd love to see the Sam & Max games find a way to incorporate this. Those games are absolutely hilarious, and if the object selection was a little better in the console versions they'd be damn near perfect.

I had planned to spend some more time with Heavy Rain last night... but this kind of killed that plan. I hear things are all squared away now. 2010 as a leap year? Somebody looked at the wrong Olympic schedule. Also, I kind of suck at quick-time events apparently. I think my main problem is that this is the first Playstation system I've owned. I keep mixing up the circle and square buttons... too many years of A, B, X, Y.

Finally, I'd like to remind everybody that I'll be headed to San Francisco in a few days. I'll be on IGN's Game Scoop podcast this Friday! I'm super excited, so expect updates and pictures along the way.

It's A Good Day In IYA-Land

I'm still not playing anything other than Mass Effect 2 at the moment so there's no new news there. It continues to flex its awesome. I think tonight I'll have a lot more time to spend with it than I did last night or most of last week. I basically had a Mass Effect 2 I.V. going all weekend, so I'm pretty well hooked.

I want to talk about a few game related things later, but at the moment I just want to announce a couple of things.

First, our resident AZN, Barry is once again employed. I won't say how long it's been since this last happend, but there were back alley hand jobs in his very near future (and I don't mean receiving). So, let us all congratulate him on his return to the work force. Lucky him, his Xbox 360 will be back just in time for him to start a new job and simultaneously relocate. That always makes for a lot of good gaming time. Good thing nothing big came out recently........

Lastly, I would like to announce that I will be appearing on an episode of the IGN podcast, Game Scoop. I spoke with Greg Miller and Daemon Hatfield this afternoon to try to nail down a date, and it looks like things are set for March 5th. The Axis hasn't struck it big or anything (yet!); I just donated a little to their IGN For Haiti fund raiser and ended up with this opportunity. I'm glad to help out, and I get to do something awesome like this now. Needless to say, I'm very excited. Also, I'm pretty sure they're still taking donations via that link so you should stop by and help out.