Saturday, May 10, 2008

PixelJunk Monsters Encore!

All 15 levels rainbow'd!




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echochrome: Course A

Woot. Rank 6 baby! This took me a ridiculous amount of time to get right. I made a lot of stupid errors and I even made some in this video! It's very hard to go through 8 levels in a row without making a mistake.







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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Unreal Tournament 3 in 2D

Here you will see Samus, Cloud, Zack, Master Chief, and anyone else I forgot battling it out in UT3 but in 2D!

CTF 2D:





DM 2D:





All credit goes to the mod makers.

http://www.ut3mod.com/
jbizzler (author)

I got some of the character mods from:
http://www.evilengine.net/forum/
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Saturday, April 5, 2008

Metal Gear Online Beta!


The time is drawing near, and the Metal Gear Online beta is coming soon! Pick up your copy of the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2 from your local video game store in order to get the promotional code that enables you to download and play game.


In collaboration with ScoobySnack from the Metal Gear Solid 4 GameFAQs board, there is a listing of people who plan joining in on the beta test. This listing can be found here! When you hover over the GameFAQs user names, you will see their PSN ID so you can add them and play together. My site does work on the PS3 as well so you will see the extra information when you hover even on that browser.

If you want your name added, click on the link that says: MGS4 GameFAQs PSN ID Listing Topic and post!
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Sunday, March 2, 2008

The problems with IGN's Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online review

The Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online review posted on IGN.com back in August is filled with factual errors and bitterness. The review was done by Jeff Haynes. The review doesn't cover the content of the game correctly and the unfair criticisms are just simply unprofessional. Criticizing the game's content but not even talking about the game content is laughably awful. The opinion of price is something that should be considered (oh and it is), but in the sections that I have copied and pasted for this blog, these opinions are stated way too many times. The parts in bold illustrate the times this is mentioned. It should be noted that the original T5DR review was done by Jeremy Dunham.

Details about the game in the review:
- Up to eight players can fight it out, testing their skills against the winner, who remains on until he or she is dethroned.

- As you wait your turn in each room, you'll be treated to Tekken Live, a direct feed of the battle that's taking place between the current challenger and champion.

- This feed is particularly nice, because it manages to capture the action with minimal lag, even if the participating fighters have somewhat questionable connections.

So far, what is being described sounds pretty good. You can have up to 8 people in a room, and you can watch matches as they happen.

Price Whining

Thoughout the whole review, the price is mentioned over and over again. The concern about the price is something that is obviously a issue for people, but reading it more than once is something I shouldn't have to do. It seems like the reviewer just wanted to make the expansion look worse than it really is by stating this point over.

To remedy this situation, Namco Bandai recently released this mode in a new "patch" for the game, entitled Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online. While it's definitely something that strengthens the title, it's one of those features that should've truly been included in the original title.

Plus, while the ability to jump online and challenge just about anyone is enjoyable, this isn't anything that shouldn't have been included with the original title when it was released in March.

The game was released at a budget price of 20 dollars with little content. More content was given and the game is still only 10 dollars more expensive than it previously was. Should haves shouldn't be a reason to knock the expansion continuously throughout the whole review. It didn't have it, now it does. If it were to have it on day one, is there any proof that the game wouldn't be 30 dollars anyway?

The fact that you have to pay an additional ten dollars for this content is perhaps the most ludicrous aspect to the add-on for players that already own the original PSN download.

At the most, this should've been a free patch or one that provided additional fighters, costumes or gallery items to justify the extra expense.

The game already included fighters not in T5 for the PS2. It also includes Jinpachi who was never playable before. New gallery items were given. Not only this, but there was the survival mode and the practice mode given. A mode that is never once mentioned. This game isn't Tekken 6. What exactly is this reviewer expecting here?

This isn't a comment on the game itself, which is still enjoyable and still an impressive title. But to justify making players pay for a basic something that should've already been in the game is a bitter pill to swallow.

Let's move away from the price complaints written all over the review to the actual problems with the content described in the game itself. Price complaints are excusable even if they are mentioned numerous times, but flat out factual errors should not be in a review.

Factual Error 1

Unfortunately, there's no internal friends list within Dark Resurrection Online, so you'll need to exit the title and add an opponent to your friends list (like most PS3 titles) to extend an invite to a match.

There is a friends list within T5DR. Here is the exact process that shows that you can send an invite to friends, recently met players, and even a random name that you think up of. There is no need to exit or even add a single person to your friends list.



Select Create Room.


Select Create.


Select an empty slot and press Triangle.


Press X on the "To".


Select ID is for people on your friends list.


You can choose more than one person, just like when you create a message. In fact, this does just that... it creates a message for people to see on the PSN. Press X on the person you want, then when you are satisfied go down to Ok and press X.


You can also select a person you just played in T5DRO who isn't on your friends list. You aren't limited to Tekken either, you can select a person that is on your Recently Met list from any game that supports it. They will appear without a picture icon as shown here.


Enter the ID of someone that you somehow know off the top of your head or possibly read or remember from a forum. Press X to proceed to the screen to do this.


Press X to bring up the Virtual Keyboard.


Type the name of however you want.


Select Ok to be brought back to the Send screen.

Factual Error 2
Apart from the online mode, Dark Resurrection provides Survival, a new offline mode for players. However, if you were looking for extra items to be added to the gallery because of the inclusion of Survival mode, you're out of luck.

Apart from Online, Survival and Practice were given as offline modes for the players. There were new gallery pictures added in the expansion of T5DR. I can see how someone might not know about the gallery, but how the hell do you forget about the practice mode?

Factual Error 3
As it stands now, it's squeezing players for money for practically no improvement on the overall experience.

The practice mode alone is worth the purchase and improves the overall experience. Now people can actually practice move for move in an isolated setting. A person who doesn't want to play online can take advantage of this as well. No practice mode in the original T5DR was the biggest missing feature, not the online. If being able to practice doesn't offer an improvement to the experience, I don't know what else can. I mean, it apparently isn't the online mode according to this review.


Practice mode: Why doesn't Jeff Haynes love me?

In practice mode you have the following:

- Stage Select
This allows you to practice in real situations and allow you to form strategies for moves and consider walls and area of each level.

- Mode Select:

Freestyle Training:
In this mode you can do whatever you want to an idle AI. You can set what you want to do with the Dummy (guard, crouch, etc). You can also set the Dummy to a second controller and have someone play in practice mode with you

VS CPU Training:
You are given the ability to face an AI in any difficulty level you wish

Defensive Training:
In this mode you can set which moves you want the Dummy do to do you and how fast the AI will do it to you.

Command list:
In the command list section, you can view all the moves the character you chose can do. You can press X to watch the move. You can press Triangle to hold that move on the screen during gameplay. You can then push down L3 or R3 to choose the previous or next move.

There are other little features that I did not mention, but these I feel are the most important that actually need some details to them. This is something that obviously isn't done in the review since the practice mode isn't even acknowledged.


Factual Error 4

However, for what you pay for the patch, you're not really receiving a huge return on your investment. Apart from the offline Survival mode, there's no additional content to be found or unlocked. Online play, while fun, is relatively generic and nothing that you haven't seen before.

For what you pay for the expansion, you get Online, Survival, gallery items,and a Practice mode. That is the additional content. It gets annoying beating on a dead horse, but when the reviewer wants to take up word count on his review with the same ideas over and over, I must do the same as well. The expansion doesn't add a whole lot of content, yet the reviewer can't even get the content it does add right.

Odd Comments

Perhaps some people don't agree with me, but I feel that there are just certain comments made by the reviewer that are just weird. I'll point them out here with my comments right after.

... But it's not anything that you haven't seen before.

I've never seen an Online Tekken before. Nor have I seen a Fighter(aside from MK2) that was online on the PS3. The modes that were described in the review tell the reader that the online mode has some nice features. It isn't a simple 1 on 1 match.

It's a decent patch, and the inclusion of the online space is much appreciated.

Is this meant to be a patch? From my understanding, this is an expansion to the game. The word patch makes it seem like it was something that is supposed to fix errors or something of that nature. That isn't to say that patches can't add new content though, Warhawk is a good example of this. So I suppose this comment isn't too bad.

However, there isn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking that you're going to find within this mode.

Aside from playing an Arcade perfect port of T5DR on the PS3 online, nope. That's nothing to downplay though. That's a great accomplishment. You get to play with up to 7 other people. You can play with your friends. You can watch people battle online. There are rankings. These are some pretty good features. Some of these features are non existant in many games.

The rooms themselves look extremely generic, with bland text windows set in Tekken fonts that highlight the number of wins that a player may have or what region a player is in.

What else is really needed? Every single thing needed is given when in a game room. You see the players name, you see their rank, you see their win count, and you see their points. If you choose their name you even get all the details of that person. The colors are easy to see, and each person has a separate bar in which they are placed on screen. The menus are extremely clean, and clear. What more are you asking for?

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Is this honestly that generic looking?

Perhaps the reviewer wants something that looks like this instead:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Yeah, thats some pretty noninformative looking crap right there. I'll take my informative and prettier looking T5DR lobby without crappy sounds.

Conclusion

I read IGN reviews all the time. I read and listen to reviews from tons of different sites. When looking over the reviews IGN has posted, I notice that their scores are a bit laughable. The expansion to Warhawk which costs 7.99 was given a score of 8. That expansion, despite being really awesome only adds a new map and the ability to use a dropship in all levels. Of course, this is a really good thing and changes the game a lot, but I still see a problem. If an expansion to Tekken that isn't even reviewed properly adds something that gives significant content, why wouldn't the score be above the score 7? The game wasn't online before, so an inclusion to online is a huge deal. The inclusion to survival could be considered meh to a lot of people. The inclusion of a practice mode is a significant thing to consider though. If someone wants to have a practice mode, reading both of the reviews separately gives the impression that no such mode exists!

The random score of the expansion doesn't matter though. What does matter is how does a person think about the expansion and the original together? Why didn't the online mode just get included into the original review as an added section? Does the inclusion of Online, Survial, and Practice as a whole bring T5DR above the 8.2 it originally received? The game can be bought has an expansion or the game can be bought as a bundle. If a person is going to buy the bundle, do they read both reviews and consider both scores and average them together? That doesn't make sense, especially since that would lower the score of the original title. The game is called Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online. Does this mean that somehow when you buy the expansion or the bundle, the game somehow loses its score by 1.2?

What irks me about this is since August this review has been up and the factual errors have not been fixed. This is something that has been mentioned in the IGN boards yet nothing happens. What's up with that?
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Saturday, February 9, 2008

PixelJunk Monster Rainbows

Here is gameplay for PixelJunk Monsters. These playthroughs are all perfects/rainbows.
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Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Online

Some gameplay from T5DRO


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