I woke up earlier to go to CVS to buy something. I ask the retard manager there if this was something he would recommend but instead I received a half-assed response because he fucking fails at life. He then thought I was probably trying to steal. Whatever, I bought what I needed and went home.

I get in the house, take a warm bath and after I got out, I've been under the covers with my laptop ever since. Reading all the game news and flame wars between idiots about the 360 Elite's RRoD probability, combined with the gentle soothing aura of me being underneath the covers had put me in a 30 something minute sleep. I wake up and realized I still haven't purchased the full versions of Banjo-Tooie and Virtual On yet, but they're downloaded to my 360 as trials. Fuck. I'm also hungry but not THAT hungry. I was contemplating on fixing eggs and toast with jelly but now I'm just like "fuck it", and I think I'll stay under the covers a bit while longer. I'd be fucking pissed if someone woke me up from this dream resort. Decapitations and uncensored chainsaw deaths would just be the beginning.

Oh, and I watched some YouTube vid of Dead Rising on the Wii. Looks horrible and I would be fucking embarrassed to play that piece of shit. That was clearly a pity game, Capcom. Fuck you, the Wii doesn't need your pity.

By the way, anyone download Outrun Arcade? It's a fantastic game. Everytime I play it, it feels like I'm at some sunny beach arcade or some shit. The gameplay is great and the music is 90's fantastic. I love Sega AM2. They make all of my retarded heavily saturated 60 fps dreams come true. AfterBurner Climax on XBLA! I demand it now!

Follow me on Twitter-oh wait I don't have one. I don't think I could stand to push F5 all day like a retard.

9:44- just woke up
9:45-getting out of the bed now
9:45:1-thinking what to type next
9:45:9-phew, barely made the last millisecond

I'll be at the Baltimore NARP this weekend. I'll be wearing a Metroid shirt, because bitches don't know about Samus.

Metroid All Day Son

Resident Evil 5's "The Mercenaries" mode is great fun. It's awesome fun even, picking a character and blasting hordes of infected creatures and scoring big. Hell, I would have to say it's even better than RE4's Mercs. 8 stages with 4 characters with different costume and weapon setups equals infinite re-playability.

Now I'm writing this because I'm seeing and hearing a mass bunch of people bitch and moan about this mode being too difficult. Like most Capcom games, it requires patience, timing and memorization. You can't just expect to hop blindly into a level and expect to get a SS Rank. Unless you're me, but unfortunately in your case, you're not.So here are some tips and tricks to help you land triple figure high scores and beat those pesky Asian players once and for all.

And if you think I'm joking about that, check the leaderboards.. LAND OF THE RISING SUN.


The most important thing in Mercs always is choosing a right character for the job. Chris, Jill, Sheva and Wesker all have their strengths and weaknesses. Chris is your default character with firepower with shotguns and grenade launchers, Sheva is more of a rifle, longbow and machine gun type of gal, Jill relies heavy on weak weaponry and melee attacks(and she moves slightly faster than the others), and Wesker is pretty much instant death to all who stands in his way. Usually on first level runs, you'd want to pick a character you're the most comfortable with. Don't expect to get an A, S or SS rank your first time through; take the time out to locate everything. Time bonuses, combo time bonuses and the different "regions" enemies spawn in. Each level has 149 enemies to spawn and 1 chicken(except for Mines which apparently has 2 chickens). The game can spawn demi-bosses in two ways:

A. Randomly, or when the game has spawned enough enemies to bombard you with a boss
B. When you kill X amount of enemies, where X being the variable qualification the game requires

Unlike the main game, bosses follow you everywhere you go. So that means on Public Assembly, the Executioner WILL jump up to where ever you are, even on the bus and other seemingly inaccessible places he couldn't reach you in the campaign. Bosses once defeated, drop a health item. Green and red herbs, and first aid sprays randomly. If you're going to defeat a boss, make sure you keep chaining enemies around it. Even though the boss can kill you with one hit and put you in a dying state, as long as you keep your distance you can easily chain the boss with a combo, especially if you're using a high powered weapon character.

Use the invincibility frames to your advantage. Picking up items, going through doors, and climbing ladders put you in a state of "HAHA YOU CAN'T HIT ME" for a brief period of time. It even works on bosses; so right before the Executioner slams down the axe on you, pick up an item and he won't hit you. Depending on the area you're in, the behaviors of enemies act differently and independently. Sometimes the enemies will surround you, grabbing you and leaving you open for pure ownage. This can totally mess up your combo since you barely have time and you have to keep moving to keep the chain going.

The first thing you should usually do when the mission starts is to just gather all the Time Bonuses as soon as possible. Doing this will give you precious time to hunt for combo bonuses and gather weapons and healing items, without the worrysome of running out of time. You can find time bonuses of 30, 60 and 90 seconds respectively, and you can get a 5 second bonus of killing an enemy with a melee attack. If you're playing Duo mode, have one person find time, and the other combos. Shin Oni and I managed to pull a 90 something combo streak on Public Assembly by doing this, easily managing time and enemy disposal very well.

Speaking of enemy disposal, don't camp. Each map has different regions enemies spawn in, so hanging around one area for a long time will get you nowhere. Constantly move around and have at least one enemy hanging around so in case your combo meter starts flashing, you can kill it and usually more enemies will spawn at your location. This is good for laying down proximity mines. Proximity mines can be your best friend, since you don't have to be around to kill enemies. The feeling of getting an instant 10 combo while being on the other side of the map is indescribable.

When climbing ladders, jumping, or doing an action with a long string of animation, do a quick reload. That consists of going into your menu and just combining your ammo into your weapon, giving you a reload without the time consuming animation. This will totally save your ass when fighting a large horde of enemies and bosses. Learn how to multi-task and also ready whatever item you want to use after the action animation. So if you want to use an herb, quickly memorize where it is in your menu and access it through your menu. Also d-pad shortcuts are your best friends.

Stock accordingly. The most important type of grenades are the flash ones. There's nothing more that sucks ass than being on a 73 combo streak, killing a Majini only for it to spawn a parasite out of it's head, killing your combo. And those clamshell parasites are the worst. One hit dying state move is gay. Flash grenades get the job done.

That's pretty much it. RE5's Mercs takes a lot more time to develop skill than it's predecessor. Unless you're naturally gifted at such things like this, it'll take you more than a few tries to get all 8 maps down and all character strategies figured out. I would recommend playing Solo, then playing with a friend to practice.

And no, Sheva's revealing outfits will not help you score more points. Even thought it's great eye candy. :D

Resident Evil 5 was an incredible game. Sure it just took what RE4 started and didn't really expand on the formula, but it took the engine and made it into a phenomenal experience. OK, OK, so it's just RE4HD. But still it was a great game. Being human and having an opinion, here's a list of things that I personally think could have made the game better and a lot more memorable than being "just a sequel":

1. They should have kept the mirage effect. Well ok, it's still there with the reapers(shoot any part of their body and they release a game that makes mirages of themselves), but if the whole game had that effect, be it the Las Plagas had attached that to about every enemy in the game(or the ones that make sense at least), the atmosphere would've been a lot more dreadful to progress though. You wouldn't be able to tell what is real and what's not, leaving your own fate in despair.

2. The marshlands were creepy areas to traverse, but they could have been even more eerie at night. Let's face it, having this installment of Resident Evil in the daylight was a bad idea. Well, it really wasn't a bad idea when they attached all of those unique ideas onto it(dehydration, mirages, adjusting eyes to sunlight), but when Capcom scrapped those ideas, they took the scary along with it. The marshlands are a prime example; massive crocodiles in the water, an ancient tribe trying to kill you, and voodoo and shaman shit everywhere. I could only imagine seeing the crocodile's glowing red eyes in the water at night, and the tribal's glowing bright red eyes in the darkness. You wouldn't know where they would be coming from, with your only source of light being your weaponry. Same thing with the temple. Even though those are my 2 favorite parts in the game, they were a totally missed importunity with suspense and terror.

3. I really wanted to explore the Kijuju town more. The earlier trailers depicted Chris walking through alleyways and open areas of the town. There were areas in the trailer that never showed up in the actual game, with the only "big" area of the village being the Public Assembly area. The game does have a reasonable amount of backstreets, alleyways and buildings to explore, but it felt too small compared to RE4's village, which was massive on comparison. And what happened to the villagers using a rope to bring down the bus in the Public Assembly area? It was in the trailer, but I guess they took it out.

4. I would've liked to had seen more B.O.W.'s. The Licker Betas were a great comeback, but that's really about it. The enemies in the game were cool(I love the designs of the Plagas parasites, U-8 and the bat-thing), but they were too far in between. Uroboros was really repetitive, and I know it's the theme of the game, but fighting it 4 times(counting the Wesker fight) is overdoing it. RE4 had more varied boss battles, and 5's just are quite as memorable. Who doesn't remember fighting U3 in the cages in midair, only to escape cliffside and thinking you killed it, only for it to climb back up the cliff and kill you?

5. The Merchant was awesome. That's all I have to say.

6. Even though this RE was more canonical than 4 was(take away Leon, Ada and Wesker and you wouldn't think that was a Resident Evil), Capcom still left open plotholes. We see the head of Umbrella after all of these years, where the virus comes from, and the Doomsday project mentioned in various RE's in full effect here, but at the same time, the Las Plagas nonsense still sets center stage here. It's never explained how it got to Africa. And where the hell did Tricell come from? It's once again yet another pharmaceutical company to battle, in which I'm going to assume will be the antagonist corporation for RE6 and beyond. They could have done more with Jill, and I'm assuming that Sheva is now part of the main character party, so I expect to see her in later games.

7. The machine gun wielding Majini. Jesus Christ. I tolerated that, but Capcom, never do that shit again. Chapter 5-2 to the end of the game really kill the suspense mood by having us fight those things. And thanks to them, I personally don't like playing those chapters unless I have to. It's like my feelings with the Island on RE4. The village and castle was great, but the Island just sucked serious balls and totally didn't make ANY sense.

That's pretty much it. Past those flaws I found RE5 to be a great game. I didn't bitch about the controls because it's not intended to be a "Gears of War" or whatever(in fact RE4 inspired that game). I played with Type A controls with the control speed on Fastest so it was easily accessible. I just wish Capcom could have stuffed in a bit more content before sealing the deal. The game has a lot of replay value, that's for sure. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of downloadable content in the future, as a lot of side quests are missing akin to Assignment Ada and Separate Ways. Even though the game suffers from copypasta, I find myself hopelessly addicted to it, and jumping in and out of games after you complete it is just fun.

After playing with Shin Oni yesterday in some Resident Evil 5 offline co-op(he managed to pick it up early from an import/dosmestic) store, I have to say, Resident Evil 5 is not as easy as one make it seems.

Shin decided to drop by, to give me a quick sample, which later on became a meal, of what was to come to me come Friday. Anxiously inserting the game into my 360, the game I've waited 3 years for, and the main reason why I bought a 360(or a next generation console in general), had finally arrived.

We enabled co-op mode and set the difficulty to Veteran. Mind you that there's a difficulty after that, Professional, that is unlocked once you have beaten the game. Once we started up the game, our hellbound journey through Africa began.

Skip past cutscenes, we gather our equipment, only to be surrounded by a huge mob of Majini. Here I am, trying to fight them, and Shin is just like "turn around and run fool". After dying(by the way I am a RE vet, but this totally threw me off guard), we restart the scene again and manage to escape.

I'm just going to make a long story short; to those who have said RE5 was really easy and ammo was plentiful, you are dead wrong. Throughout the game, Shin and I struggled, yes and I mean, struggled to find ammo for our weapons. The Majini came from all sides, through dark alleyways, caves, mines, and oil refineries. There were barrels everywhere, yes, but they were mainly filled with gold. We struggled to find herbs and first aid sprays, having to sell out precious weapons for a few hundred just to buy a few sprays.

There were so many "we are fucked" moments that I can't even count them all. From being ambushed, to no remorse from the game as a chainsaw wielding maniac came our way while we scourged for the littlest bit of ammo. Every piece of ammo we found counted. Majini took about 7-8 handgun bullets to the face, about 4-5 with a shotgun, and about 30 with Machine Guns. Grenades helped, but not as planned, they only slowed them down. And the minibosses? Forget about it. Once we made it to the Marshlands, the Tribal Majini we encountered there were faster, stronger, more agile, than the ones found in the village. They leaped into their air with their spears, wielding grenade infused bows, firing at will. Shin and I struggled to gather as many herbs and ammo as we can.

Then...the tribal leaders came.

These huge guys with elephant tusks on with giant staffs come chasing after us. Once you're hit by one of them, you're pretty much screwed. Shin and I died about 10 or more times in that area alone, and about 15+ times in just about every chapter and chapter checkpoint.

The game is still survival. While it may not be survival horror in the sense of shit coming out of doors and hallways, it still has that classic Resident Evil feel to it. There were so many heart pacing moments I had where it was either life or death, herb or reload, and wondering where my partner, Shin, was at. We bound to stay close together at all times, and the brief times where we had to separate were dreadful and uneasy.

After reading previews, I don't see where the hell these people have got this "its a walk in the park" and "ammo was everywhere" bullshit from. From what I've played so far(we made it into Chapter 4), this game is not easy, at all, period. It's more nerve wrecking, suspenseful and dreadful more-so than all of the Resident Evils before it. And you know what? I loved every minute of it.

I'm so pumped for Resident Evil 5 that I'm constantly playing the demo everyday and watching the trailers almost the same; so if you're a true Resident Evil fan at heart, feel free to read what I think, are some of my predictions with the story and how it may turn out. Please note that the following speculation I have gathered and gone all fan-giddy with have mainly come from places pieces together from different trailers. Well enjoy.

So who is the girl in the bird mask?

That's quite of hard question to answer, but I personally think it's Jill. By piecing together some lines thrown out from Wesker such as "We last met in the Spencer Estate" to telling Chris "Your partner has arrived. I'll give you time to..catch up" sort of states the obvious. Sure Sheva maybe Chris' partner in this game, but she's pretty much with you all the time. So what other partner could it be? Also if you look closely while Bird-Girl is fighting, they flash the Jill Valentine gravestone frame for a quick second. This makes me come to believe that the woman we saw inside the tube is Jill Valentine, going through some type of experiment to make her super-powerful or something. Why does Wesker want her? Is it obviously going to be part of some elaborate plan? Well, duh. It's Resident Evil.

It was all a setup. Really?

With the scenes with various members of the BSAA rushing in somewhere(can't remember where), to Chris' line something or another of it being all a setup, makes me think that the BSAA is all a setup by Wesker himself. Soldiers dropping like flies and getting infected like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps the BSAA is a cover for Wesker's plan to revive Umbrella, and by having a group of elite soldiers fall for the ol' bait and switch(we saw this with S.T.A.R.S. at the Spencer Estate), it seems that Wesker is once again the master at creating false organizations for the sake of his own experiments. There's also going about on the RE5 official website where the message "Sheva Knew" can be seen in the background.

The Las Plagas T-Virus. Wait, what?

In Resident Evil 4, it was stated that the Las Plagas was in no way related to the T-Virus at all, and Ada was playing a double agent role, pretending to help Wesker but at the same time retrieving a sample for the company that she's really working for. Now in 5, we have a parasite that pretty much is the Las Plagas, but under a different name and form. Infected people grow tentacles out of their head, parasitic bat-like creatures fly out of their bodies, normal animals such as alligators and dogs are mutated beyond size and growing additional body parts(the dogs splits their heads into two different ones). If Capcom has done the story right(in this case I'm pretty sure they tried to sum it up), Kijuju(the game's location) is supposed to be the origin of the T-Virus deep underground and the original starting point for Umbrella(as seen in the trailer with Chris wiping off the dirt to reveal an Umbrella logo). Also shown in that scene are flowers with spores coming out of them, differentiating itself somewhat from the fossilized state the Las Plagas were in. It seems that Umbrella has extracted these spores into a vaccine and with scientific technology, it evolved into many viruses such as the T, G, and Progenitor Virus(which is the plot device for RE5). However while the incident in Raccoon City might have mutated it's hosts on it's own regards, it failed to correctly dominate human test subjects as they were instantly killed and "zombified". While the Las Plagas went through multiple stages of growth inside of a human host, the T-Virus barely did anything but make them flesh hungry. The only human subjects close to resembling those of the Las Plagas would be the Tyrants, whom grew massive arms, tentacles of death and pretty much almost close to be invincible. There isn't really much I can say here, but I hope Capcom can explain all of this, as it's very confusing and to be quite honest, I don't even see how the hell this "parasite" relates to the Umbrella distributed viruses in the first place, especially if RE4 was just a "side story" and had nothing to do with Umbrella, at all.

Welcome to Kijuju my friend, I hope you enjoy your stay

All Resident Evil games never take place in the same area for too long. Resident Evil went from Spencer Estate, to Residence, back to Spencer Estate again then finally the Lab. Resident Evil 4 went from the Village, to the Castle, to the Island. So far we've seen Chris and Sheva battle it out in humid, dry villages and towns, in a factory like facility, on a bridges, in a desert and in some underground caves what looks like to have some type of castle underneath or something. Newer trailers have shown Chris and Wesker duking it out in a mansion-like area, and a really massive laboratory. Perhaps this is where the "traditional" Resident Evil comes in, replacing the explosive action sequences with "creepy dark atmospheres". Either way, the game's scenario looks like it will translate smoothly through these environments, and while I'm disappointed Capcom took away the heat and humidity effects(Chris needing to adjust his eyes to see, seeing mirages of enemies), I'm sure Capcom will throw some suspense surprises here and there to keep us all on our toes.

I have a lot to talk about, but I don't want to focus on just one particular subject. So I'm just going to do a daily rant of what's been going in my [gaming] life.

Prince of Persia: You Can't Die Edition

Now I'm a sucker for platformers. Be it collecting junk or scaling heights upon heights just to reach the top, I love it all(well most of it), so I decided to pick up Prince of Persia. Ignoring all reviews both positive and negative, I popped this game into my 360, and I was certain that this was the first 3D Prince of Persia game I've ever played and owned. If you're asking, yes I have skipped the last-gen trilogy. Why? I don't know, and I love these types of games. Same goes with Tomb Raider. I guess the older you get, the more expanded your mind gets and perceives a wider pool of games. Oh, and I'm 22, if that helps.

After watching a few cutscenes and being introduced to the new Prince and that magical chick, I wander off into the gloomy land, practicing platforming skills and combat. See, the thing is, Prince of Persia is one of those games where you can't "love" it within a few hours. It just sort of...grows on you. The first hour or two I really despised the "sticky" motion of the Prince(a bit delay before jumping just to name an example) and the invisible context sensitive button combat, but after awhile, I managed to get the flow of things. Once I had seen how the game really worked with the smooth animation transition between jumping from ledge to pillar, sliding down well, slides and swinging on poles, Prince of Persia really grasped me in gameplay mechanics. However, there were still a few negative things being shoved down my throat that I later on accepted.

Why must in this Prince of Persia, is that it forces you to collect these little "Light Seeds" to progress through the game? Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind collecting things(I thank Banjo for that), but it's like the only way Ubisoft wanted you to see the colorful worlds after you purified them was to collect stuff. That's really bad game design. Growing up with platform style games since the 80s, I've always had high tolerance when it comes to frustrating areas to tackle. I usually accomplish them anyway, so to say the whole "not dying" thing not being a big deal is actually true. I'd rather just respawn at area before I died, than to see a YOU DIED screen only to ask me something the game could have done itself. I know there are a lot of criticisms when it comes to this, and I can only say that it's up to the player to decide that the Prince's death being false can either take away from the challenge of the game, or make the game flow a lot more smoothly so you can make easier, smarter decisions. I'll take the latter.

The game flows so repetitive and predictable, yet I'm hooked on exploring these temples and worlds and such, only to fight a boss, purify the grounds and collect shiny things. I love the acrobatics and wall running and minor puzzle solving, but this game could have been so much better if they dropped the collecting bit. That Elika chick needs new powers to help the Prince. Gotcha. But couldn't that have been easily be obtained through story telling and just visiting the main temple, fighting a boss or opening a treasure chest? I'd rather have the game's worlds already be purified so that way I can only explore them once and move on, or twice with a new power. The light seeds collecting is an abundance and hinders down fluid exploration.

Prince of Persia also gives a really good illusion of danger. To be quite frank, there is no real danger. You rarely fight any enemies, the Corruption goo stuff is only there to hinder your platforming progress, and most importantly, you can't die.

I totally understand Ubisoft's direction with the not dying bit. It makes sense. For one, it can cut down on load times. Two, having Elika or whatever her name is grab you to drop you back at the last "land checkpoint" really helps the game's platforming elements flow very well, and three, they have seem to wanted Prince of Persia cater towards casual gamers.

Outside of the few nitpicks, I found Prince of Persia to be a very fun game. I just find it weird for the game's "natural" world to be so colorful and vibrant, could also be so empty and lonesome. But I'm supposing that's the theme of the game. If Ubisoft plans to continue this PoP's saga, I hope they take away the mandatory collectathons and enhance on the open world with smarter decisions in story and area progression, and most important of all: give the game an equal amount of substance to it's beautiful style.