picture by Tomycase from deviantart
It’s no secret that I have a mega boner for Mega Man. When I heard that Keiji Inafune was leaving Capcom and they were ultimately canning their Mega Man Legends 3 project, it was bad news bears for me and many other Mega Man fans worldwide. Inafune, refusing to accept defeat in, what he thought was, the failing Japanese game development community, eventually went on to form his own development studio called, Comcept, bringing other Capcom talent with him.
On August 31st, Comcept brought their Mighty No. 9 campaign live on Kickstarter. In less than a day, they already had met their funding goal. Clearly this was the answer Mega Man fans had been waiting for. What is Mighty No. 9? Go look for yourself on their kickstarter page. It’s basically an updated Mega Man style game, enhanced for a new era. It will have the same classic 8/16 bit style of gameplay, but they will be taking fan input to help mold their game. You play as Beck, the sole robot to not be affected to a insanity causing virus which causes other robots to go berserk. Fight through levels in any order you choose and mix it up with an evil robot boss at the end (sound like Mega Man much?)
The game is being developed for PC, and recently announced, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. However, it has an estimated release day of April 2015. With almost 2 years to go, the gaming landscape will undoubtedly change quite a bit, so I’m sure we’ll see additional releases on the newer systems as well. The PC will support gamepad controls, which are 100% necessary as anyone who’s tried to play a Mega Man game on emulator with a keyboard should know. And if you’re saying, “Well I have no problem playing NES emulators with a keyboard,” shut up, I wasn’t talking to you. It’s hard for me? OK?!
I really can’t express in words how excited I am. They even are releasing retro style box art and manuals. The only thing that could make me happier is if they have a physical disc to put in that case rather than just a digital download.
Ok, so E3 has been a pretty big deal this year with 2 new systems being shown off and everyone’s bashing Microsoft and arguing which system they’re gonna get, Xbox or Playstation. Well screw all that. Nintendo wins E3 as far as I’m concerned. Simple mathematical formula: Smash Bros. + Mega Man = Win. There it is, it’s science. All other arguments are invalid. I can almost, ALMOST, forgive Capcom for cancelling Mega Man Legends III….almost….
WARNING: Blood Dragon is built for speed, it’s got everything that Uncle John needs.
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is basically a raging-hard-on-induced, love letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, or 80s action movies in general. As Michael Allocca put it, “It’s like if Duke Nukem took an untested amount of mescaline and traveled back to 1982.” Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon gave me a boner so hard that my 6 year old self was able to touch it.
Most people were introduced to Blood Dragon via this trailer, which was originally thought to be a hoax.
And then, thankfully, we found out it wasn’t.
First off, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon really has absolutely nothing to do with Far Cry 3. It is its own entity completely and doesn’t even require the original game to play – a stand alone download available for $15. So why did they call it Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and not just Blood Dragon? Probably because they were hoping to bank on the success of Far Cry 3. Other than sharing the same game engine, they really have nothing to do with each other. This made me worry slightly about the quality of the game, but even more so, I was really anxious about them feeding too much into 80s sentimentality without any real substance. Fears were unrequited. Yes it is highly sentimental of the 80s, but the game is awesome. Anyone of any generation who’s a fan of FPS games will enjoy Blood Dragon. If you don’t, there something wrong with your brain. It’s not the game, it’s you.
You start with what is basically the opening scenes from Predator. If you’ve ever seen the movie, you’ll recognize it immediately. And if you haven’t, dear God, please, do something about it. Now. Like, seriously. Stop reading this and go watch Predator. Crouching produces an icon clearly resembling the silhouette of the T-800 crouching upon his transportation back through time. Granted the references are numerous, it’s not just a parody on Schwarzenegger 80s pop culture, it’s a self-aware parody of the video game world itself. The ubiquitous gameplay tutorial is a hassle. More games are forgoing the packed in physical manual for the hand-holding, in-game tutorial – WHICH IS ALMOST NEVER SKIP-ABLE! True to form, it is impossible to skip the tutorial in Blood Dragon, however, in its heightened sense of self-awareness, they mitigate the aggravation by intentionally trying to aggravate you with its asinine-ness. Thus, the snark-laden tutorial comes of being cleverly stupid by pointing out the ridiculousness of the trend and provokes a few chuckles rather than slinging expletives at your TV. For example, “Press A to indicate your ability to read,” and, “To look around, look around,” are two such commands given during the tutorial.
It’s not just all silly jokes and puns though. The gameplay is top notch and brings everything you would expect from a great FPS. You can chain stealth kills together, it’s got plenty of weapons, and plenty of action. To lend some genuine authenticity, they even got Michael Biehn, best known as Kyle Reese from Terminator and Cpl. Hicks of Aliens, to do the voice of Rex Power Colt. Soundtrack by Power Glove, who must have written the soundtrack to James Cameron’s dreams; picture Terminator meets Blade Runner and that’s pretty much what Power Glove sounds like.
Nothing has ever been more worth the download price. And remember, C400 is like C4, but with two zeroes.
Awhile ago, back in July of 2011 to be specific, I found out that River City Ransom 2 was in production and was set to be released later that summer in Japan and sometime in 2012 here in the states. Well it’s the spring of 2013 now and it looks like the game has been put on hold indefinitely. *sigh*
About a month ago, indie game developers, Combit Studios, fellow fans of River City Ransom, announced that they will be making an official follow-up to River City Ransom. *rejoicing*They will be working closely with Million Co., publishers of 2004’s River City Ransom EX for the Game Boy Advance.
Set to release summer 2014, there really isn’t much to say or show yet as the game has only just begun the early stages of development. However, if you share the same eternal love for the River City Ransom that I do, you can sign up on the coming soon RCR site for email updates,
I know this isn’t the biggest typo in the world and not nearly as huge as Resident Evil: Revelaitons or Nartuo, but I still enjoy pointing out when people screw up. On the back of the PS3 version of Bioshock Infinite, you will notice that “forced to” has been combined into one word. It’s weird that it it only happened on the PS3 version but the other version on 360 and PC are typo free. Hey, why doesn’t someone hire me to be the editor?
Naruto: Powerful Shippuden, the most recent release in the franchise, exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS, recently suffered a dose of poor proofreading. I noticed this about two weeks ago when the game came out and it made me chuckle. Figured I would share it with the world. It’s not like it’s an A+ title or anything, so it’s likely this will get missed by many people in the stores, so here it is. In case you can’t figure it out from the picture, NARUTO is spelled NARTUO on the spine of the game case. The funniest part about this is that on the coming soon artwork stores displayed on shelves, it was spelled correctly. So where, in between marketing and production, did this go wrong? Seems intentional to me.
actual game case
coming soon cover art
Single Player Online Games, or, Why I hate EA
Remember when you could buy a brand new game, go home, open it up, put it on and play it right away? Well that may soon become just a memory and I fear that the next generation of gamers won’t even know what that feeling is like. More often than not when you purchase a new game, it requires an immediate update. Ok, fine, whatever. Download my update. I’ll go grab a drink and take a leak while it loads. “Sorry, but the servers are currently down for maintenance.” That is the most infuriating message to receive after just purchasing a new game and it is inexcusable. There is no argument, no line of thinking, no rationale, no excuses, NOTHING that can justify why that happens.
Let’s say you just bought a new car and it’s sitting in your driveway and you’re about to take it out for the first time. As you turn the key, instead of the engine starting, you get a message stating, “Sorry you can’t use your car yet. We still haven’t finished working on it, but we sold it to you anyway.” You’d be pretty pissed. A TV, a fridge, a toaster, ANYTHING – when you purchase it, you expect it to be usable upon receiving it. “Hey, Jimmy, why aren’t you wearing those new shoes you bought?” “Because they’re having problems finishing attaching the leather.” You would call BS on that immediately, and you’d be in the right to do so. It’s not okay when any other retailer of goods does this, so why can video game publishers get away with it?
Players of MMOs are quite familiar with the situation, but that’s to be expected when a game is played entirely online. Even so, it should work at launch. I can accept server downtime for routine updates, large patches, bug fixes, add-ons, etc. but when a game is released for retail sale, as a finished product, it should work out of the box. Especially if I’m going to be playing a single player game. Why do I have to log into a server to play by myself? I’ve heard all the arguments for this, but as I stated earlier, it’s unjustifiable. Oh, okay, you’re making sure I have an authentic copy of your game. EA’s Origin and Ubisoft’s Uplay network require constant online access to play any of their newer games regardless if you’re playing multiplayer or not. Fuck you! I bought your damn game. Let me play it on my own terms. This also brings into question the concept of true ownership of the product. If I can’t use something that I purchased, then is it really mine? Generally, something that I own, I’m free to do with and use as I please and is mine forever until I so choose otherwise. Let’s say, 25 years from now, I have this game that requires their servers to play, but the servers have been permanently shut down. Then I can’t play this game. I can still play my old NES games that I bought years ago without any problem, so why shouldn’t I be able to play this one? What did I really buy? Did I really buy anything or did I just rent it? Granted a long, extended rental period, but it would be a rental nonetheless.
my computer screen for about 2 days straight trying to log into sim city
In case you weren’t already aware, Sim City, a game published by EA, and the impetus for writing this, had a disastrous release. For over a week, servers were unstable at best and many users had long wait times to log on and even then would get booted from the game due to server instability. For the first few days, the game was essentially unplayable, with an almost complete inability to log into the game. Similarly, but not nearly so awful, Diablo III and Starcraft II had a near inability to log on the first few days; both requiring constant online connections to play even a single player game. EA said that they had no idea so many people were going to be playing. The Sims is the best selling PC game of all time. Did they really think that they wouldn’t need more than a few servers to accommodate such a large fan base? At launch, wouldn’t it make sense to go a little overboard with servers because everyone is going to be logging in all at once. Blizzard is awful with this.
EA has as least admitted they screwed up. To anyone who purchases Sim City before March 25th, they will be entitled download one free game – Battlefield 3, Bejeweled 3, Dead Space 3, Mass Effect 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Plants vs Zombies, and Sim City 4 Deluxe. It’s nice that they’re giving out a free download. They didn’t have to. They could have just said, “We already have your money. Things will be fixed in time. Until then, deal with it.” It doesn’t make the situation right, or fix the increase in constant online games, but it’s nice to see a big publisher admit they were wrong.
The point of all this is, don’t release a game if it’s not finished. I wouldn’t have minded waiting another week, or month, or whatever for the game to release as long as I get a completed product. I paid for it, I want to be able to use it right away. If it’s not finished yet, don’t release it. And this mandatory online crap has got to go. Bottom line, if a game has a single player mode, then DO NOT require online server access.
Capcom hasn’t entirely forsaken their Mega Man fans. Many were pretty upset when they pulled the plug on the Mega Man Legends game for the 3DS. But now they bring us, in my opinion, a far more scrumtrulescent addition to the Mega Man universe, a clash of my two favorite Capcom franchises – Street Fighter X Mega Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (there aren’t enough exclamation points in the world to express how awesome this is, so I’ll just stop right there).
This project was officially backed by Capcom, so it’s no mere level hack with new sprites. From the ground up, this is essentially a whole new installment in the Mega Man series. It’s everything you love from an 8-bit Mega Man game complete with 8 bosses, weapon upgrades, top-notch platforming action, and a soundtrack that feels perfectly in step with what you’d expect.
The best part is that it’s totally free to download. However, at the time of this writing, it’s PC only. I honestly don’t ever see this becoming an XBLA or PSN download, and as such, since we’re relegated to playing it on PC, a keyboard just doesn’t cut it for the precision required to adequately perform in a Mega Man game. If you don’t already have one, get yourself a standard gamepad for your computer. I recommend RetroZone if you want to get that authentic NES gameplay feel.
So what the hell are you waiting for? Go download this now! Who knows if they’ll keep it up forever? Just click on the picture up top.
I just love it when outraged people jump to conclusions and find the easiest scapegoat to blame any time a tragedy occurs. When are people going to understand that video games don’t cause people to commit murder?
An elementary school was shot up just the other day on Dec 14th, 2012 in CT. At the time, their top suspect was Ryan Lanza, who they quickly found out was an avid fan of Mass Effect. Well that was all the information they needed. Clearly Mass Effect was to blame for the incident. Within hours, posts of outrage began flooding Bioware’s official Mass Effect fan page on Facebook, calling the game “evil” and demanding it’s banning from the market. One particular comment struck me as funny – “God help protect us from all the evil our society promotes.” I hate seeing God invoked anytime someones personal agenda is threatened. “God save us from these evil abortion doctors,” “God protect us from all this evil gay marriage.” Why does anyone assume He would pick sides like that? But that’s another matter altogether…
Seriously though, do these people even know what Mass Effect is, aside from being Satan’s blasphemy, wrought by an evil game developer, whose sole purpose is to bring suffering to the world around those who play it? Are they aware that the game is about saving people and protecting the innocent? And an excellent point in fact is that there is a mission where Commander Shephard goes to a biotic training academy – a school – and actually saves the students from a shooting incident very similar to the one we’re talking about. I’m reminded of when the first Mass Effect was slandered as “pornography” by author, Cooper Lawrence, who had never even played the game. How can you condemn something when you have barely even passing knowledge of it? Look, I understand that parents are upset and are grasping for something that will help make their world sane again, but try to think rationally. This is how The Holocaust started. Remember? Hitler blamed the Jews, a bunch of people agreed that Jews were bad and then it was all downhill from there. Instead of arbitrarily placing blame on others, why not trying finding out the true cause.
The point is, video games don’t cause people to kill others. Misguided upbringing and emotionally disturbed individuals kill people. I’ve been playing video games literally since I was 2 years old. Many of them quite violent. I have never fired a gun in my entire life, nor do I have any desire to. I haven’t even ever been in a fist fight before. In fact, I would consider myself a pacifist. So if video games make people killers, where’s all my bloodlust? I was brought up in a very nurturing and caring environment and was taught right and wrong from my parents. And that’s where the problem lies. When a tragedy like this occurs, we should be looking to the people surrounding the individual as the cause.
I already have a follow up to this, but before I throw it out there, I’m curious to know what people’s general opinion on the matter is. Who would win in a fight: The finest warriors in the Imperium of Man, the angels of death who shall know no fear – The Space Marines, or the galactic peace-keeping, lightsabering, force wielders – The Jedi.
I know my answer, but I don’t plan on sharing it yet. I’m curious to get some feedback and comments on this. Oh, and arguments are encouraged.
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