VidyaGames

My Left Hand is Numb

2008-07-04T18:57:00.001-07:00

So, it's no secret that I'm a huge Aerosmith fan, so of course I was going to go out and buy Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Now, of course, my first complaint is that there's not enough Aerosmith in the game (each "level" has two songs by other bands before you get to unlock the three Aerosmith songs in that level). All told there's 24 Aerosmith songs (plus an additional three from Joe Perry's 2005 solo album). I will say that they have a pretty good collection of songs though. Most of the songs (thankfully) come from Toys in the Attic (1975), and Rocks (1976). There are four tracks from the first (self-titled) Aerosmith (1973) album, but they've all been re-recorded. I like the new versions, but having spent the last 18 years or so having listened to the original, it's a surprising (but not unpleasant) change.

A good number of the songs that come from other artists are songs that I know pretty well, or have at least heard more than a few times, including Lenny Kravitz's Always on the Run, and Cheap Trick's Dream Police.

What really makes the game fun to play (and most especially watch) is how accurately they've modeled the movements of each of the members of Aerosmith. I've seen them in concert a number of times, as well as seen numerous shows on TV, DVD or whatever, and I swear it's almost creepy how they've replicated the way the band moves and performs on stage. Great examples include watching Joe Perry with his Voice Box while playing Sweet Emotion, and the way Steve and Joe sing together during Toys in the Attic.

Alright, so I'm biased, but damn this is a fun game.

Microsoft Game Studios Should Get Off Its Duff

2008-03-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

Links 2004 was one of the first games I'd ever played on the Xbox, and it quickly became one of my favorites. I never thought I'd enjoy a sports game, much less a golf game, but Links 2004 was really fun. I've played one or two of the Tiger Woods games from EA, and they just don't have the same feel and play style that Links did.

So please, Microsoft, we need Links 2008 for the Xbox 360 this year.

An Open Letter To Microsoft

2008-01-09T20:41:00.001-08:00

Here's the thing. I like my Xbox 360. Sure, I'm on my third one, but this one has lasted almost a whole year now. I like the games, I like the media center extender, and I think the Xbox Live Marketplace is great. I've bought a couple of TV shows, and rented a movie. I'd like to get another Xbox for my bedroom, because quite frankly, with the new Media Center Extenders from 3rd parties starting at around $300, it just makes more sense to buy another Xbox.

But here's the thing. I got mine in April of 2006, and I got the platinum system, which came with the 20GB drive. Unfortunately, only 12 GB of that drive is user-accessible. So, after almost two years of downloading expansions, arcade games, and stuff, I don't have any room.

I have less than 3GB free on my drive right now, which may not seem like a lot, but... I don't think I could rent a movie if I wanted to. And I want to. I don't have a specific title in mind right now, but there are a lot of movies out there that I wouldn't mind seeing, but I don't want to buy the DVD.

Maybe I should just sign up for Netflix or something. But you know, I don't even watch the DVDs I have now.

But back to my point.

$180 for a 120GB hard drive? That's a bit much.

And you know, as soon as I buy one, they're gonna come out with a 300 GB drive for $150 (which is probably more reasonable *ahem*).

So, this whole thing is a bunch of crap. If Microsoft is going to keep providing bigger and better offerings through the Xbox Live Marketplace, they need to make it easier (and more reasonable) for people to store the stuff they buy.

Been a while

2008-01-09T20:37:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted a lot lately, so here's my official Post-Christmas entry.

I got two games for Christmas.

Wii Play (fun, but I wish my wife and I had time to play it together) and Super Mario Galaxy (it's a trip, and a little disorienting!)

I'm still playing The Orange Box and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Take My Brain - Please

2007-10-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

Last month was my wife's birthday, and one of her birthday wishes was for a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 2. Obviously, this was an easy choice for me, and she's been loving it. Training her brain and playing soduku every night.

Me, I've been playing BioShock. I've actually played through it once already, but I'm considering having another go at it to get more achievements. I should probably return it to my Brother-in-Law, though.

I haven't got Halo 3 or the Orange Box, yet, but I'm hoping to get them both soon.

In Anticipation of Halo 3

2007-09-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Yeah, my wife's birthday is the day after Halo 3 comes out. I probably won't be buying it that week.

Besides, I wouldn't mind playing BioShock first.

Corruption

2007-09-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I just finished playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (on Medium), and damn that was a fun game. Unfortunately, it was a little short. I finished in under 23 hours of game play, and that was with a lot of back tracking and finding 100% of the items in the game. So, I do wish the game was a little longer, but it felt like the game was easier than the previous 2 (or especially the last one).

If you read most of the reviews about MP3:C, they all pretty much say the same thing: This is the Wii's game for gamers. One of the reviews actually criticized the game for being more game than most Wii players could handle. That it was too involved, and wouldn't appeal to the casual players the Wii was designed to attract. However, most of the reviews are positive, saying that it makes the best use of the motion-sensitive controls to date.

I whole-heartedly agree. While Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a longer, more epic game, the controls were just modified Gamecube-style gameplay. With Metroid, you actually use motion and direction sensitivity with tools such as the grappling hook, access controls, and using your arm cannon as an overpowered soldering iron.

The game also gives you the ability to unlock bonus content such as galleries by earning points for scanning enemies, performing special movies, and reaching checkpoints, not unlike the Achievement system on Xbox Live.

I haven't had a chance to trade any friend vouchers in for friend credits yet, because none of my Wii friends have the game. But as soon as I do, that Mii Bobblehead (?!) is mine!.

Oblivion Revisited

2007-07-28T16:53:00.001-07:00

OK,
I know I don't update this - ever.
I'm going to try and commit to updating this blog at least once a week, so let's see how long that keeps up.

So last night, I was having dinner with a couple of friends from out of town, and my buddy Rick asks me "So what's the deal with Oblivion, every time I log onto Xbox Live, you're playing Oblivion." This is the story I told him.

Oblivion was the third game I bought for the 360. (I bought G.R.A.W. and Fight Night Round 3 when I got the system.) I had sworn up and down I wasn't going to buy it, because I knew I would get hooked on the game, and I was supposed to be writing a book (which has since been published). I ended up getting it anyway, and I played it more than I should have, but I still met my deadlines.

When I started playing, I intentionally avoided the main quest. I thought it would be more fun to do all the faction quests first, and just explore the game. One of the quests I came across is the infamous "RockShatter" quest.

In it, Maeva the Buxom tells you a heart-wrenching story about how her good-for-nothing husband ran off with a family heirloom, a shock-damage mace called "RockShatter." Her husband is hanging out with a gang of bandits at Fort Strand near Anvil. Depending on your level, Fort Strand is easy money. Most of the bandits have decent loot, which you can sell in town and make bank.

Anyway, I'd work my way through Fort Strand, and find the villain, kill him, and loot his body.
At that point in the game, any reasonable person would have taken RockShatter immediately back to Maeva the Buxom, and collect their reward. But since it was a decent one-handed blunt weapon, I decided to hang on to it for a little while.

I hung onto it so long, in fact, that when I was running low on funds, I went back to Fort Strand killed all the bandits, and noticed that whathisname's body was still there. I went to look it, and lo and behold! Another RockShatter! Fully Charged! Zero Weight!

Well, I kept going back again and again, till I had something like 9 RockShatter maces. When I tried to give one of them to Maeva, she acted as if I didn't find it! Always with "Did you find RockShatter yet?"

Apparently, this exposed another bug in the game. The first bug was having the ability to pick up multiple RockShatters. The second was Maeve treating RockShatter != 1 as RockShatter == 0. Bethesda fixed the first bug, but not the second. Essentially, they told me that the problem was fixed in a subsequent patch, but did not apply retroactively. Meaning if I ever wanted to finish the RockShatter quest, I had to restart my game from a save prior to picking up the second RockShatter.

That was more than 100 hours of gameplay I would have to undo. I probably would have ignored it, but I ran into a problem in the main quest, where Count Hassildor's argonian assistant was running around in the forest. She's unkillable, but she'd always get attacked by bears and spriggans and the like.

So I put the game down for months.

Then I started from an earlier save.

So, basically, I've been playing catch-up, and I've only recently gotten past where I was before I gave up.

It's not Land of the Dead, or so they keep reminding me.

2006-08-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

So I picked up Dead Rising on the recommendations of both my best friend Ethan, and my brother-in-law Jon.

You guys are bastards. I'm never gonna get any work done. At least the book is finished, but Oblivion threatened to kill that project.

So Dead Rising... It's about zombies in a shopping mall. It's a pretty fun splatterfest game, although, I have a few issues with it.
The problems I've seen with it are:

The save system sucks

The people you are trying to rescue are usually morons

No in-game gamma controls

Some of the enemies are harder than heck to beat

This is what the game has going for it, though:

Zombies. You never run out of zombies

The "Queen Bee" as a weapon

Using pretty much anything in the enviroment as a weapon

Being able to run around with a giant mini-fig head (It's a Lego term, look it up).

I've run through the game once, and got the worst possible ending. I guess I have to keep trying.

Wow Holy Crap

2006-07-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

I guess it has been a while since I've made a new post. Let's see...
In that time, I have:

a new job

an Xbox360 (bought with my royalty check from the book)

Well, OK, so it's not all that much, but with the new job and the book I've been co-authoring, I've been busy.

Anyway, I bought the Xbox 360 after all, and I got the following games for it:

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Fight Night Round 3

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Call of Duty 2

I'll post my impressions/reviews of them later.

Xbox Nation

2006-01-14T14:09:00.000-08:00

Alright, so a good friend of mine was in town last week, and we hung out for a while. He's a guy I worked with back in Omaha, and so he still keeps in touch with people we used to work and/or hang out with. He informed me that pretty much all my friends in Omaha now have Xbox 360s. Now, I pretty much swore up and down that I wouldn't buy one unless the price drops, but man I gotta say I'm a little jealous.

Other than the price point, there are no real killer apps for the system, so I still don't need to get one. I'm not sure what game would be a must have for the system. I consider myself more of a casual gamer, anyway.

Burnout Revenge (PS2)

2006-01-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Alright, so my Brother-in-Law bought a couple of PS2 games before he actually bought his PS2. And one of the games he picked up was Burnout: Revenge. I play all kinds of games, and while I don't consider racing games my favorite, I do like playing them, and they make for great two-player games my wife and I can have fun with. I think Rallisport Challenge for the Xbox is probably one of the few games I've played until it is finished.

In any case, I totally dig on Burnout Revenge. Now I've never played any of the other games in this series, so I don't know if they're as exciting, but man this one is fun. My only complaint about this game is that the load times are awfully long. I'm curious if the Xbox version addresses this.

The Warriors (Xbox)

2006-01-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

I can't say that The Warriors has been one of my all-time favorite movies, because I'd never seen it from beginning to end until recently. But I picked up the DVD, knowing that Rockstar Games, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto Series, was making a game based on the 1979 cult classic. I was surprised at how much I actually liked the movie, it's more than just a cheesy flick. So wanting the game was a no-brainer.

My wife, actually got me the game for Christmas, and I really like it. While it carries a lot of the gameplay elements from the GTA series, it has its own mood and tone that really sets it apart. It's a great weekend distraction, and since I'm really only a casual gamer, it's made it really fun to start it up, play a mission or two, and then go do something else.

I guess if I had to be disappointed in anything it would be the visuals. There's one in-game cutscene where a train pulls into the train station where the warriors are standing, and the light that comes off of the front of the train, instead of being a real nice translucent lighting effect looks like two big solid white triangles. I thought for sure the GPU in the Xbox could support better shading effects, but maybe not.

All in all, it's a really fun game.

We Heart Katamari (PS2)

2006-01-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, I gave my wife We Love Katamari.
We played through the game in one night, but there are so many little nuances to the game, that it has excellent replay value.
The whole idea of the game is just crazy fun. For those of you who have never played it, you roll this ball, called a katamari, around, and collect things.

Things stick to the katamari, to help it grow bigger and bigger, like a snowball. In fact, there's a level in We Love Katamari where you have to push snow and other items around to make a head for a giant snowman. There's just no way to describe how crazy cool the game is. The game is, in fact, a sequel to a game called Katamari Damacy. It takes the gameplay from the original, and expands it, without growing repetitive and boring. As much as I hate to admit it, I decided to use an Action Replay to extend my time on some of the levels just to see how big I could get my katamari after accomplishing the goal of the level.

So, as far as We Love Katamari is concerned, we do, indeed, love it.

Meet the new blog, almost the same as the old blog.

2006-01-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

Alright. So here's the scoop. I've got profiles on three different gaming sites, none of which I visit too often, but I do play a lot of video games, so I've decided to try and be more active online.

This blog is just my way of unifying the different blogs on those three websites, in case anyone is interested in my opinion on video games.
I know, they're not.

In any case, I have a profile on 1up.com, another one on gamespot.com, and yet another one on playstation.com.
The Playstation one is kind of tricky. I don't know if there's a way to look at my profile without being logged into the site, but if you own a PS, PS2, or PSP, you probably want to register on that site anyway, because they have some cool news and updates. I also have a profile on Xbox.com.

So feel free to check out those sites, or my personal site, available in my profile.