Sunday, October 26, 2008

What makes a great FPS ? Cool weapons !

As Larry Garrmond once said, "you ain't gettin' a good shooter 'til you get the righ' gun, son."

Well, sort of...

So, here we go, let's try to find "the right gun".

One of the best candidates would surely be the fruit of years of dedication and labour which would have resulted into the creation of a most advanced design, a perfect balance of power and finesse. Developed in Japan by a talented engineer, Mr. Nobumichi Tosa, this weapon is called the Newton Gun (presented at 2:23). Forget about the Microwave Gun, the Directed Sound Gun or the Gravity Gun, they don't stand a chance.
Fearsome.

An other claimant should surely find a place in any self respected soldier's arsenal: the Image Fulgurator, an intricate device which uses concentrated beams of coherent light in combination with a series of sensors and an embedded monitoring console, in order to instill pre-programmed feelings, or even thoughts, into the minds of people affected by its area effect, with the neat bonus ability of bouncing off walls and almost invisible until it hits you.
It does require some degree of mastery to exploit its full potential, but once there, you got a hell of a weapon of mass mass destruction, yep.

A documentary about the 8-bit stuff

Something's down the pipe, almost cooked apparently, and that thing is a documentary which deals with 8-bit material: sounds, games, art culture, pizzas, skydiving and shibari.
Well, I can't tell if it's going to be good or just surfing on what's actually stylish, or even worth any skittles, but here's the link anyway, and a trailer... that left me rather unimpressed.

Wait & See.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Drink Letsu Tapu! (of course)

A bit late on this.
Go to the official website, click on the second tab, then on the first bar which opens a small window with the typical Japanese family trailer.

Mmh...
Thank you. I'm sure your flat's neighbours are going to love that.
They say it works very well when you put the control device on the Wii and smash it very hard.
Do we need to need to pay a fortune for that piece of junk really?

Oh, in case Umbr... Nintendo didn't manage to turn you into a casual zombie yet, be sure to "watch" this:





*sigh*
Feel the power of the R&D. Arguably, it looks nice on my page once you play it. Now it's not like I urge you to play this, really.

Monday, October 06, 2008

What the hell Google??

Thank you Google. Really.
As I remembered that I bothered including a traffic counter to this blog, I dug the password , and went on to verify the entries. At the top of the list, I noticed that my blog was referenced for the following research.

Obviously, our Japanese fellow was looking for a combat game's torrent. Most amusing being how Google bolded the game's name, which it usually does when at least one of the words in your query is found on the site in question (but it also fails a lot). OK, I did type the word torrent (OMG), and it was put in bold as well, but never the name of that frakin' game. I didn't even know it existed.
Same nonsense with this game. From Malaysia this time.

I don't know what's Google's magic super algorithm that makes them print money, but it's obviously broken.

.-.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Have some more piracy until you vomit

Since I'm not original and piracy is the big topic these days, I just decided to copy/paste myself here (first step towards madness), so I'll just have to drop a link to this post instead of bothering repeating myself ad vitam aeternam. It's about DRMs. This bit, I originally typed it after reading more of respected Mr. Molyneux about his view on the PC gamer market, right or wrong, that he believes is in tatters (whole interview at VideoGamer).
Escapist expanded on this, by looking at a former report from TorrentFreak, about how Spore had already been downloaded 500,000 times via BitTorrent. Spore was released between the 4th and 7th of september. TorrentFreak posted their article the 13th.

Politician: I'm a gamer at heart too, but you should accept DRMs, it's meant to protect you, to honour those who are honest with themselves, who play it fair. If Spore has it, I suppose it's a good thing.

Journo: But Spore has the highest pirated download rate ever recorded on a torrent site.

Politician: My numbers don't agree, Spore is certainly not the most pirated game you can find on torrent.

Journo: That's not what I said.

Politician: Look. People are misled by false numbers and don't realize how DRMs would help the PC market, which is in turmoil and despair. People loose their jobs, families break, suicide rates explode and kittens die day after day. Anyone who doesn't approve DRMs is pro-piracy and has a responsibility in this societal and economical disaster. They should be ashamed.

Sarcasm aside, I share his view on how people cite the flood of obscure casual games or the sovereignty of MMOs such as World of Warcraft to show how the PC is a healthy gaming platform, often neglecting to think about the games which typically thrived on this same market some years ago, notably its most renowned genre, the First Person Shooter.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Without an i ... you die !!

Joystiq's staff has been very quick to put out a comparison of all three latest portable machines to play games on:

DSi Vs. PSP-3000 Vs. iPhone.

So we sort of salute Nintendo's newest variant of their eponymous handheld console, now sporting the most trendy i like some sexy tail.

I couldn't care less about slightly bigger screens, which, amusingly, GamesIndustry reported that they would be slightly larger, at 3.25 inch, which is the size of the DS tank's screens.
I couldn't care less about those screens since the dual screen is the most retarded thing this console boasts.
I couldn't salivate to the addition of two cameras (3 and 0.3 MegaPX, this will be as useful as the microphone!).

But there's that online store system coming in, the DSi Shop, which is an obvious reply to Apple's App Store and Sony's PS Store.

I'm still waiting for Sony to add something meaningful to their handheld.

All it can do for the moment is bring a couple of exclusives, which will artificially keep the PSP alive.
Artificially because it doesn't offer anything that different from other consoles, aside from games. That's kinda poor when the console was supposed to be much more.

Besides, opponents have superior complete formulas to offer now.

Sony's attempt at boosting PSP sales is the PSP-3000, which only raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when it was presented, with its new TV output, Spyke friendly microphone and two new exciting colours, Pearl White and Mystic Silver (too bad, I craved a Bloody Red).
Again, what about a touchscreen? Nothing.
There's support for the GPS.
Huh, it's not like there are a thousand exciting games to make using the GPS.

- Where are you?
- I'm here, two stations away from the café!
- Hey! It's true, I can stalk y... I can see you! That's such immense fuuun!!1!

In Japan, kids gather and sit, playing Monster Hunter 2 (a repetitive boring game about mob slashing). They don't walk separate ways with their PSPs and play online. That's precisely why it didn't keep people's attention when the new console was presented. They're not so hot on the online thing that lets thousands of cunts badmouth other players on servers.

Most amusing with the DSi is the addition of the new memory stick slot. Surely, Nintendo must have also put a hardware slot-protection against the R4 in the process... never mind, it won't stand long enough, and people will start to crack the firmware to launch games from the sticks, like it's done on the PSP.
Say goodbye to the GBA slot. An issue if you planned playing GBA games legally... unless, he he he, you're going to pay for them again on the DSi Shop. Beware the price.

I'm seriously thinking about adding an i particle to my name.