Hello world
posted on 12/20/2005

First things first, I am very opposed to blogs. I do not care what people think about what Susie said about Mark in 3rd period. This blog will not be about my life. Not my real life that is, no stories of trips to the bus stop at 5 in the morning. No complaints of caffeine addicts looking to me for their next fix of Dunkin Donuts coffee. No, the only thing I will complain about is my video game life. That life that all of us here at 1up.com share. The life that starts after work, and for some of us, after the kids go to bed. I will do more then complain however. I'll praise games and the minds behind them. I might even reach a fanboy level of intensity when that new side scrolling Super Mario game comes out for my DS. So stick around, you might learn something.

Bungie is a bunch of hypocrites
posted on 12/20/2005

I hate ranks in games, especially Halo 2. Matchmaking sounded like such a good idea at first. Being ranked against people of similar skill was a great idea and for the most part it works(if you ignore the cheaters and high ranked players with secondary low rank trial accounts). I never thought though that your rank would be prominently displayed right next to your name where ever you go. Even though bungie claims that the ranks where never meant to be representative of a player's skill, this causes people to take pride in their rank, as it represents them. This is a problem. This causes people to talk trash about their rank when they win and cry about it dropping when they lose, some people even start crying about rank mid game. Its sad.

So why are bungie hypocrites? Because several months ago they released an unranked playlist called team snipers, and I loved it. It was fun, it was competitive, yet nobody had a rank in it to wave around like they're trying to compensate for something. Then more recently bungie updated the playlists again and low and behold team snipers is now ranked. Bungie says rank is not representative of a players skill, yet they give in to the demands of those few who feel that increasing the number next to your name is more fun then just playing and having fun.

None of this really matters seeing as I no longer play Halo all the time. I still play occasionally, but now I play Battlefield 2 most of the time. Battlefield has a rank system too, but people are less cocky about it. Also it takes more skill to advance your rank because you need a certain number of medals, total points, and points per hour instead of just overall wins like in Halo. This prevents a group of high levels from boosting a lower level. I'm not saying Battlefield is perfect, it has a host of problems just like any other game, including Halo. But at least I don't have some 7 year old telling me to bow down to his level 38 which he totally didn't get from cheating.

A very merry Christmas
posted on 12/29/2005

Aside from some other stuff I received a pile of great games for christmas and I'm so excited I decided to write about it in here.
Heres the list: (games in italics were picked out by family members and not bought with a gift card)

-Half Life 2 (PC) Thanks Dad
-Star wars: Battlefront 2 (Xbox) Thanks Pat
-Darkwatch (Xbox)
-The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox)
-Psychonauts (Xbox)
-Killer 7 (PS2)

Thanks to mom for the gift card to EB!

Darkwatch Impressions
posted on 12/29/2005
Darkwatch is one of those games that reminds me of why I like video gaming. There is no other hobby in the world where you can be a vampire cowboy that kills zombies, banshees and even innocent people if you choose to go down the dark path of the game. The two paths don't differ much except other characters reactions to you. I personally find the dark side comments to be funnier then the corny praise the NPCs lay on you. I'm still holding out for alternate endings and I get back in here once I beat the game all the way through. I've also yet to try multiplayer beyond a little one on one splitscreen with my girlfriend, but as far as I can tell, its not going to beat battlefield 2 or battlefront 2, which are my two favorite online shooters at the momement.

Xbox 360
posted on 12/29/2005

I've been thinking lately about why anybody would want to buy an Xbox 360 right now. Beyond the desire to have the latest and greatest at all times, which is something many gamers suffer from. The current lineup has some compelling software, Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero immediately come to mind. Plus better looking and in some cases, better playing versions of new titles such as Need for Speed Underground: Most Wanted and King Kong. However none of it makes me want to go pay $400 for the system and then 50+ per game. Especially when the current generation of consoles still has alot of life left in it.

There are plenty of games I haven't played on the current gen systems including, Metal Gear Solid 3, Metroid Prime 2, Dragon Quest 8. The list goes on and on. On top of all of that there are a whole bunch of games that haven't even come out yet, such as Final Fantasy XII which I am anxiously awaiting on account I never played XI due to monthly fees which I refuse to subsribe too.

My point is, I represent the typical gamer, and most of these people upgrading to the new system probably haven't played 90% of the AAA titles out there, yet the still shell out $500+ dollors to play games that at best resemble current gen online shooters and at worst, salvaged N64 games like Kameo: Elements of Power.

Too many great games
posted on 01/14/2006

I haven't updated in awhile because all my free time has been going to playing all the great games I got for Christmas. Speaking off, I can add another game to that list of games I received for Christmas. My dad bought me a copy of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, for the Xbox.

In other news I beat Darkwatch and all in all I think it was a good game. The AI was pretty dumb, but that's ok because the weapons make the killing oh so much fun. Each weapon has it own unique melee attack that's usually pretty powerful. And the various vampire powers really spiced up the game play. My favorite was the dark side power called Soul Stealer, which killed every enemy you could see and give you their energy as health. I've only played through the evil side of the game and sometime in the future I plan on playing through the good side of them game so I can try the other half of the powers and see if the good ending matches the awesome evil ending.

I've played through a good deal of Psychonauts already and I must say it is the best 3D platformer I've played since Mario 64 invented the genre. I'm not sure weather its the almost Tim Burton style of the game, the quirky and well designed characters, the engaging story that's full of twists, the awesome Psypowers, or some combination of the above, but I am sure of one thing, I LOVE this game. Sure at heart it's just a platforming collect-a-thon but it just has so much soul. I can really tell that the creator, Tim Schaffer, really loved his game too. I'll have more on Psychonauts when I beat it.

I'm not very far into Half Life 2, but so far its amazing, the level of interactivity in this game far surpasses what I was expecting and yes, the graphics are as good, if not better than, everyone has hyped them up to be. I have been playing quite a bit of Counter Strike Source, which I'm not proud to admit I'm terrible at. However I will get better, and until then the maps are so gorgeous to look at, that I'll have no problem being entertained.

Now we get to Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I'm torn on this game. First of all the new race modes in this game are awesome. I especially like speedtrap mode, which has you racing against 4 other racers, but instead of trying to place 1st, you are trying to go past police radar detectors as fast as you can to add to your overall score. Its awesome and it plays out really well. EA also dropped drift races which I thought was a great decision seeing as the drift races in NFSU1+2 were always boring breathers between the real races. The also dropped the number of drag races you can choose to participate in, but the ones you do get are probably the most frustrating races in the entire game. This is due to the fact that the same pedestrian cars will be in the same spots on the track every time, so drag race mode just becomes a memorization game as you try to stay in the lane you think doesn't have any cars coming. There is one thing that EA took out of the game that really bothers me. The customization options are really lacking. On the bright side, you do all you customizing from one shop, which is really handy. Unfortunately though, they axed all aftermarket lights, neon and exhaust tips (among others) and the combined the front bumper, rear bumper and side skirt options into one called, you guessed it, Body Kit. All of this really takes a lot of the creativity out of designing your ride. What's there is great looking and really makes your ride stand out, but seeing a series go from 2 to 3 and actually lose options is kind of disturbing. Hopefully EA will address these complaints in the inevitable Most Wanted 2.

Ahh Star Wars Battlefront 2, how I love thee. This game is basically Battlefield 2 with a Star Wars paint job but lemme tell you, it works. The troop classes, weapons, vehicles and heroes really cover the entire universe. Anything you've seen in any of the Star wars movies, original trilogy or the new one, is in this game. It's truly a star wars geeks dream.


Onto Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from butcher bay. Wow, sometimes its hard to believe this is on Xbox, this game looks almost as good as Half Life 2. Unfortunately it plays like any other FPS, which isn't a bad thing. I'm mostly here for the story anyways (yes, I'm a Riddick geek) which so far is good, if not unsurprising, more when I beat this game.

Killer 7, man what a disappointment. All the reviews told me to avoid this oddball shooter from Capcom. But the cool celshaded graphics and promise of an offbeat story about a Schizophrenic assassin made me buy this game. Unfortunately the controls are strange and hard to get used to and the maps are maze like to a fault and confusing to navigate. I'm going to leave this one for a rainy day when I have nothing else to do.

Battlefield 2 (Xbox)
posted on 01/21/2006

It is finally time to address Battlefield 2 for the Xbox, which has been my multiplayer game of the moment since a few weeks after it came out in late October 2005.

I first played the online portion of the game a few days after its launch. I was disappointed to say the least. My very first game froze up with a terrible buzzing sound, which forced me to restart my console. I proceeded to pick a different server and continue but the same thing happened again. Frustrated I turned to the single player experience, which actually turned out to be fun, although it was a mediocre replacement for the 24 player online shooter I was looking forward to. The hot swapping has got to be the best feature in the single player portion of the game. It allows you to instantly switch to any soldier on your team you have a direct line of sight with. This makes combat very flexible and fast passed. I did run into a game-crippling problem about 5 missions in however. I defeated all enemies in the area I was supposed to defend and went beyond looking for more. All I found was the edges of the level and at one point more enemies sitting beyond the edge, but since I could find no way to engage them, I decided to give up on the single player aspect.

Fortunately by this time, they had patched the multiplayer up a bit so it crashed less often and the lag wasn't nearly as bad. Unfortunately, to this day it is possible for servers to drop out unexpectedly or worse the game won't be able to locate any servers to begin with. When you can get it to work properly, the game shines. I find servers with around 8-12 people are ideal. The 5 different classes of soldier all have 5 different weapons or gadgets. At the begining of the game and after every time you die, you pick a class and a spawn point. If you are playing Conquest then there are multiple spawn points to spawn from and in capture the flag there is only one for each team. In conquest the goal is to go to unclaimed and enemy spawn points and hold the area long enough to raise your teams flag. It is a lot like plots/land grab in Halo. The game play is a lot of fun and very addictive, you score points for kills, taking flags, putting flags up, blowing up tanks etc. and your over all points, your pph (points per hour) and medals won go towards what your over all rank will be (private all the way up to five star general). As of this writing I'm a Chief Warrant Officer with 4 medals and a pph of 103. The rank up system has no effect in game other then bragging rights. Fortunately though, you don't hear many people bragging about rank, it is not nearly as big a deal as in Halo 2.

To me there are only two things that bring Battlefield 2 down. My first complaint only applies to conquest mode (which is my favorite mode), so if you're only planning on playing CTF you can ignore this. When you spawn you are invincible for about 3 seconds to prevent spawn killing. Seems like a good idea, except when you are trying to talk an enemy spawn point and invincible guy spawns on top of you, if he is any good, you'll be dead long before your bullets can have any effect. This can be very frustrating. My second complaint is more about the community. The game allows up to two more people on a team before it will force new players to join the other team, this doesn't seem like much, but on most maps, two good players can make all the difference in the world, on top of that, the game makes no effort to balance the teams when people quit often resulting in boring 6 vs. 2 match ups with one team dominating. I think the reason people choose to outnumber others is due to a desire to gain points and major victories. I know its too late now, but I wish the game gave you points for joining games and balancing out the teams, that would inspire more players to do that.

All in all the game is definitely not worth buying if you don't have Xbox Live. The single player experience is worth only a rental at best. The Xbox Live experience however is great, when you can get it to work. Score: 8.0 out of 10

My plans for Winter-een-mas
posted on 02/05/2006

So what is Winter-een-mas you ask? Well I'll tell you. It's only the greatest holiday ever! It is a weeklong celebration of games, gaming and gamers, starting in the end of January and going through the beginning of February. However most gamers, like myself, keep the Winter-een-mas tradition alive year-round.

Every year for Winter-een-mas gamers generally give themselves a goal to accomplish during that week. For example, last year I paid tribute to the best platforming series ever, by busting out my copy of Super Mario All-Stars (SNES) and proceeding to beat every game on the cart (Super Mario bros 1-3 and lost levels). This year I'm not going as big, but it will be as fun.

Diablo II has been one of my favorite games since it came out, but I've always taken kind of a limited approach to it, always choosing a Barbarian or Druid to play as. Well, times they are a changing. This year for winter-een-mas it is my goal to get a Necromancer and a Sorcerer to at least level 50 and beat at least Normal mode with each. As of this writing I have yet to start my Sorcerer but my Necromancer is doing very well at level 17. His name is Raehll and he can summon 3 undead fighters, 4 undead mages and a level 3 clay golem. And for those big nasty monsters I have a level 2 amplify damage spell to make my horde that much more effective. I plan on starting my Sorcerer some time in the next few days. She is as of yet unnamed, but I do know she will focus on Ice spells, because what better way to kill Satan and his two brothers then with ice?

For more information on Winter-een-mas visit www.ctrlaltdel-online.com

It is done
posted on 02/05/2006

I've finnaly loaded all the games I own onto this journal. Scroll down just a bit to view my collection. Whew, I sure can't think of a better way to spend $3000+.

I'd also like to say, that due to 1up.com not being totaly accurate in their games list, some games are shown for the wrong systems, for example I don't own a sega saturn, the one game I "own" on that list is acctually for the PS1, also my copy of Quake 3 is for the DC. There are other inconsistancies as well. Also, this dosn't represent my entire NES/SNES/N64/GBA collection either.

Thompsonsoft
posted at 02/07/2006

So does anybody remember that little challenge that Jack Thompson laid out to video game developers awhile back? If you don't, [url]=http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883/]check it out[/url]. You know, I honestly didn't think anybody would make this game, but they have. They call themselves Thompsonsoft and their game is fun, violent and best of all free. This game is just one more blow to Jack Thompson's rapidly deteriorating career, and could be the final nail in his coffin. So Jack, now that we as a community of gamers have risen up to your challenge, what have you to say now?
Thompsonsoft: http://67.15.42.30/ImOK/index.html

PS: For even more laughs, be sure to read "A brief history of videogame violence" on the Thompsonsoft website. Hilarious.

Nintendo's next mistake
posted on 05/14/2006

Let me start this entry by saying two things.
1)I love Nintendo, I own almost every console they have ever made and most of the hand-helds and I think they all have awesome games.
2)I am not a graphics-whore.

Now I can get right down to it. Nintendo's next big mistake is going to be their graphics. The Wii is a beautiful system with, in my opinion, a beautiful control scheme. However, the graphics don't look much better then the GameCube's, at all. At least some 360 titles have smoother animation or better lighting then their Xbox counterparts. The Wii, though, at least at this early stage, doesn't look one bit better then the best that the GameCube can allready produce. I think that if Nintendo wants to be successful in this upcoming console war, they need to up the graphics on all of their games. I'm not saying this because its what I want, I think Nintendo's greatest graphical achievements occurred on the Super Nintendo. No, I think they need better graphics on their side because of the marketplace. I'd say the majority of video game buyers make alot of their choices almost entirely on graphics, so if Nintendo wants to make money, they should really make sure their games look next generation and not just feel it.

This is important to me because I love Nintendo and I want to see them continue to make enough money to keep producing consoles and hand-helds. It'd be really sad if, like the N64 dying because of its cartridge based format, or the GameCube dying because it barely had any online games, the Wii dies because it has last-gen graphics.

Black Review
posted on 06/04/2006

Black is a very confusing game. Not that it was hard to beat, far from it, I beat its 8 missions in less then 5 hours. No, its confusing because I love it, yet hate it at the same time. I love the graphics and animations, yet I hate the lack of multiplayer. Everything in the game is incredibly detailed and realistic, yet there are only 5 different enemies to shoot at. At times I'm really not sure what I think of this game.

First of all, the graphics are truly mind blowing, screen shots do not do this game justice. Everything is animated, even your gun. One of the guns toward the end of the game has an ammo belt that bounces off the side of the gun as you run. Its all very cool to watch. Also when you reload your vision goes blurry as you focus on the gun in front of you, then goes back to normal when you finish reloading. It all goes a long way into making you feel like you're in this world. The coolest thing about Black are its destructive environments. Enemy hiding behind a grave stone? Shoot the gravestone to make it crumble and give you a nice shot at your foe's noggin. Look around a room during an intense firefight and watch as the giant stone pillars crumble before the awesome might of your machine gun. This is all very cool until you decide to shoot at the cardboard box in the corner that doesn't react at all to a full clip being blasted into it. It takes the immersion right out of the game when you can blow up the big building in front of you, but can't do anything about the pile of scrap metal to your left. Its like the developers figured out what you'd most likely be shooting towards and made all of that destructible, and nothing else.

What really hurts Black is its length, with only 8 missions that would take an average gamer little more then half an hour a piece, Black feels more like the first half of a game rather then the full thing. Especially when you factor in the cliffhanger ending. Blacks other serious downfall is its lack of different enemy models to shoot out. When everything else in the game looks so beautiful, it hurts the game a lot when you only have 3-5 different looking enemies. Its even worse when you consider the same tactic can take out most of the enemies, and you only have to switch things up when the body armor guy pops his ugly head out. The final thing that made me say "huh" during gameplay was the games odd controls. It wasn't that it was hard to control at all, it just had no jump button or a general "use" button, two commands that have become FPS staples in the last few years. Everything you do in the game involves shooting. You even open up doors by whipping out your shotgun and blasting away, which is kinda cool the first few times, but quickly gets lame. Even all these flaws don't add up to Black's biggest shortcoming: No Multiplayer AT ALL. No splitscreen, No Xbox Live features, nothing. Beat the game, unlock some weapons...then do it again? Boring. EA had better include Multiplayer for the inevitable next-gen sequel, because finding out what happens in the poorly written and acted story is not going to be enough to make me buy Black 2, unless my cousin Dan Hotz is willing to sell it to me for $3 again.


Over all I'm going to give Black a 6 out of 10(with 10 being awesome and 5 being average). If you don't care about multiplayer, and are just looking for a kick butt single player experience, add two points to my score.

XerxdeeJ from Tied the Leader answers my email
posted on 07/22/2006

Check this out! I wrote XerxdeeJ a simple email asking for advice about good sportmanship and I end up getting a full page response. Not bad. Although he did get my gamertag and Halo 2 stats wrong, if you scroll down to the comments section I posted the correct link to my GamerTag stats, as well as an explanation into why DaedHead is spelled the way it is. Go read: http://blog.tiedtheleader.com/article/621/open-letter-from-a-fighting-irishman

Worms Open Warfare for the Nintendo DS
posted on 08/06/2006

This has always been one of those games that I had hoped would land on the DS. The touch screen is used for (almost) everything I had hoped for.

All in all the user interface is very well designed and easy to navigate. Some people might find it annoying to have to use the stylus to go through menus, but I don't mind. In-game the touch screen is used for selecting weapons, and navigating the camera via a small mini-map. The one thing I wish it did was allow us to aim with the touch screen, alas, you will have to settle for the D-pad.

The upper screen contains all the action with the worms waging war on randomly generated maps. The terrain and back rounds are highly detailed and look incredibly vibrant, even on the original DS which is what I currently own. The worms themselfs are quite ugly and seem to be made of three pink pixels and a white pixel for an eye, however the animations are acceptable. The weaponry looks cool on the touch screen menu icons, but on the game screen most of them are lame looking sprites. However the air strike looks cool, but has been nerfed in terms of power and is only a viable weapon against two or more worms.

The rest of the weaponry is really what made me enjoy this game. The ever present bazooka is here and it works perfectly in this version. The best weapon you'll start with is the dynamite which is useful for blowing worms into the water or simply doing 75 damage to a group of worms unlucky enough to have spawned next to each other (and hopefully an exploding barrel or two). Notably absent is the Holy hand grenade, my personal favorite from Worms: Armageddon. Also missing is the baseball bat, the giant axe, the bungee and the parachute. We do get a ninja rope, teleporter and jet pack, so moving around isn't really an issue, even if most of the terrain makes ninja roping a near impossibility.

The game gives you several options to play. Quick play picks two of the games 10 customizable 4 worm teams (right down to voice set and what tombstone falls when they die) and randomly generates a map for you to play the beginner weapon set on. Create game allows you to customize what weapon set you use and select maps. However, they only generate one map at a time and you have to accept or decline it, and none of the maps are as complex as in other iterations of the series. On top of that there is no option to create your own map, which is a crime when you consider the hardware this game is on. Instead you can put numbers into the map generator and spawn maps that way, however, there is no way to save a map you have generated, except entering the same exact number again, lame. The Challenge mode is the meat and potatoes of this game, but it is only 20 challenges long (23 if you count the unskipable tutorials, one of which is all reading) and the challenges don't even pretend to be challenging until number 17. Even on AI level 5 which is the highest in the game, the computer jumped off a cliff into the water after standing around thinking about it for 45 seconds. On top of all this you don't unlock anything for beating it, which is a huge thumbs down in a game that allready has so little.

The sound in this game is a mixed back. There are a handfull of voicesets, but most of them are hard to understand and quite annoying. I stick with the military themed voice set. The music is average, it won't spawn a top selling soundtrack like Worms 2 did, but its a whole lot better then Worms: Armageddon for the Gameboy Color.

Even though there is not much too it, it plays wonderfully and its portable. I personally like to set all weapons to spawn an infinite number of times starting turn one. That way its easy to get a worms fix anywhere. 7 out of 10 with 5 being average and 1 being poor.

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic Demo
posted on 09/18/2006

So last night I downloaded the Dark Messiah: Might and Magic demo off of Steam. It took a long time to download so I was expecting alot from it, unfortunately my hopes were dashed.

First of all the demo took longer to download then it did to reach its conclusion. When I was first dropped into the game space, my initial reaction was hope, the game looks really great, until you start moving. The walls have a very convincing stone look to them, and the lighting is great, it really makes you feel like you are in a dank dark dungeon. The demo suffers from poor frame rate, which kills any first person game. The framerate really drops when you encounter enemies, making combat a chore. It is way to easy to lose your enemy in the midst of combat. The parry move is too hard to time with the enemies attacks so holding down the parry button is the only way to effectively block. I did like how you could knock your enemy down and impale him to end the fight quickly, because straight head to head fighting is too hard and time consuming to be fun. Impaling your enemy is as gory as you probably hope, but this was the only fun part of the demo. The game has potential if they can optimize the framerate, but I doubt it will be worth picking up if you allready have the vastly superior Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.