Attendance the last few weeks has been horrible. Maybe you’re all tired of playing Warhawk every Wednesday. We have been at this for quite some time and have seen more timeslot and host changes than Family Feud. Perhaps we all need a change of pace, try something new. I know I could use a break.
So I say we change games for a while. We could race around in Burnout Paradise, crashing into each other and performing cool stunts. We could go on a rampage through the streets of Liberty City, cleaving both the evil and righteous in twain with mighty assault rifles of vengeance. We could even take the non-violent route and hit the links in Hot Shots Golf. Just let me know what you want to play or you know, whatever… I don’t care.
Not that I need to game on Wednesday. I have other things to do with my time. I don’t need you to keep me entertained, I’m perfectly capable of amusing myself. I wonder if there’s anything good on TV.
[Post your PSN ID below so I can… do something... screw it.]
Ah, the good old Highwind. One of my personal favorites.
Video games have given us many different forms of transportation over the years. We’ve been given a chance to drive sports cars, pilot spaceships, and ride around on the backs of giant chickens. Some of these methods of transit have more meaning to different gamers than others. Some people like smashing though obstacles with a tank, others prefer to stomp around the terrain in a mech. For me though I’ve always preferred to take to the skies in my favorite fictional mode of transportation ever, the Airship.
I just love the aesthetics of them, the mash up of old and new technology. I enjoy in when genre are mixed together and airships represent the perfect balance between sci-fi and fantasy. I know that we technically have them in the real world but I’m not really talking about your standard zeppelins and blimps. No what I’m referring to are those fantastic machines that resemble a strange crossbreed of a battleship and a helicopter. Those are the vehicles that have captured my imagination since I was a kid.
In the Navy...
The first game that I can remember playing that utilized airships was Final Fantasy 4. The concept was so intriguing to that I was actually a little upset when I was actually given control of the characters and discovered that I couldn’t just hop in one and explore at my leisure. After I finally got my hands on one again I immediately set about flying around the world landing on any strip of land that I could and searching for hidden locations. I even took a liking to Cid, the engineer that built and maintained the Red Wing fleet.
My interest didn’t stop a videogames though. I wrote stories where my characters flew around the world in airships exploring new lands and fighting monsters. My Trapper Keeper was full of little doodles of airships of various sizes and styles. Whenever my friends and I played pretend I always played an inventor while my friends ran around as knights and wizards.
Man the sky-torpedoes.
My fascination continued into my teen years as well. My stories turned from little distractions to keep myself occupied on rainy days and road trips into English assignments. Sessions of make-believe were also altered, augmented by twenty-sided die and manuals but little else was different. I remember spending an entire Saturday with my DM ironing out the specifics of a custom inventor class for use in his campaign.
Despite my real-life love, it seemed that airships had stagnated a bit in the digital realm. I was bored of using them only as a means of transportation and occasional battle ground. Luckily Skies of Arcadia came to my rescue. Now I could fly around discovering ancient ruins and engaging in epic midair battles. The extended use of airships and the general sense of wonder have cemented this game as one of my favorite RPGs of all time.
Even Bowser knows how to fly in style.
Things are different now that I’m an adult. I no longer spend my time writing short stories about air-pirates, just overly verbose, self-indulgent blogs. Also gone are the weekend afternoons of pretend sword fights and rolling dice, replaced with errands and household chores. On the other hand I now have greater financial resources and can make my dreams a reality. I have been putting off the test flight of my prototype, which I built out of a canoe and a Russian military surplus helicopter rotor. I’m hesitant because I’m almost certain this won’t work out as well as it looks on paper. I think I'll put it off a few more months, at least until my new health insurance kicks in.
I know we’ve had our rough spots in the past but I always believed that we could work through them. We’ve been through it all, lineup changes, time changes, expansion packs. No matter what obstacles were thrown at us we saw them through. It seemed for a time that no matter how bad things got we’d get by, as long as we’re together.
Last week though my faith in our relationship was severely tested. Last Wednesday we agreed to meet at our usual spot but you never showed. There was no call, no email, explaining your absence; you just left me waiting around in the cold. I sat there for hours, worried that something happened to you. When I questioned you later you said that you were busy, work was hectic and you had lost track of the time.
I know the truth; you were with him weren’t you. Ever since GTA IV came into the picture you’ve been withdrawn, cold even. What can he offer you that I can’t? Cheap thrills and petty violence, that’s what. Well I don’t care, go be together. Live your life of vice and sin, see if I care. Just don’t come crawling back to me begging for forgiveness when it all falls apart.
Oh, who am I kidding? I need you. I know that I’m not exactly perfect either but I’m willing to change, just tell me what you don’t like and I’ll do my best to fix it. Listen, if you’re willing to give me another shot meet me at “DToid_WNW” at 8PM EDT. Let’s see if we can rekindle some of the old magic.
[Post your PSN ID below so I can yell it out while pounding on a cathedral window.]
I’ve found myself playing a lot of racing games lately. Normally these types of games aren’t my thing. I prefer gunfights to car chases and new skills to engine upgrades. That’s not to say I never play them, I just usually find myself playing one of the other genres. I have put some time in with some of more prolific racing franchises out there and I figured I’d share some of my thoughts on these games as a gamer who's lacking the need for speed.
Gran Turismo Realism = me crashing into walls every few seconds.
Despite near universal acclaim I cannot get into the Gran Turismo series. I just find them way too tedious to hold my interest for too long. Getting the licenses to move forward with the game is a chore. During races I often spend most of my time off the track because I took too wide a turn or didn’t take it widely enough. Either way there’s a level of finesse required that I don’t currently have and don’t really have the patience to obtain.
My friends tell me that the main appeal of this game is the wide selection of cars and the fact that each one drives differently. The developers spend a lot of time making sure the vehicles handle like their real world counterparts. This might appeal to me if I was a car guy but I’m not. Right now I drive a 2001 Chevy Lumina, I will continue to drive it until something important falls off, and then I’ll just buy the cheapest car that still offers air-conditioning and a stereo. It’s hard to get excited about getting a chance to drive the car of your dreams when all you want is one that will get you to where you want to go while listening to music and avoiding the summer heat.
Burnout Hey guys, check out this wicked jump.
I played the first Burnout back when it was released, I thought it was alright. I liked the concept but nothing really jumped out at me as being anything special. Sure it was fun crashing into people and watching the carnage unfold but that’s all I ever wanted to do. I had no desire to do normal races; I just wanted to cause chaos.
All this changed when I played the Burnout Paradise demo. It was no longer the mildly entertaining vehicular homicide simulator that I knew from before, what I found instead was the closest thing to a next-gen remake of my one of my favorite games: San Francisco Rush. I loved memorizing all the little shortcuts in the city. I found myself actually doing the races and stunt runs instead of just driving 120 mph down the wrong side of the road to see how long it’d take me to hit someone. It’s now one of my favorite games and I wish I could get more people to join me online.
Mario Kart Then I get hit by a blue shell.
I have only ever played two Mario Kart games before, the original for the SNES and the new one for the Wii. The original holds a fond spot in my heart. I spent several years of my childhood racing with my friends and family and shooting multicolored shells at each other. I’m not sure why I chose to skip the next four installments. They all just became some of the titles in the long list of games that I never got around to playing.
By the time I picked up Mario Kart Wii, I knew some things would be different. New weapons, new characters, and new tracks were to be expected but I wasn’t really prepared for some of the new elements. I had heard of the blue shell before but it wasn’t until I experienced it firsthand that I realized how cheap those things really are. It didn’t stop at the blue shell though; the game is full if instant hit weapons that ruin your lead. While I found myself having fun for the most part but I grew frustrated after I was hit by the following sequence of weapons right before the finish line: blue shell, lightning bolt, blooper, and red shell. After I watched Peach cross the finish line I ejected the disc, put it back on my shelf and haven’t looked at in since.
Wipeout What’s cooler than hover-cars? Hover-racecars.
This is actually one of my favorite game series ever. In high school my friends and I used to spend hours playing Wipeout XL though the PlayStation system link. After a while I drifted apart from the franchise. I skipped Wipeout 3, I played Wipeout Fusion but it was terrible. Then I just kind of forgot about it for a while, Wipeout Pure came and went without as much as a second thought from me. The series was now little more than a memory in the back of my mind.
Then the footage for Wipeout HD was released. The beautiful new footage and gushing from the fans reminded me of the fun I used to have. I picked up a copy of Pure and Pulse in the hopes of brushing up on my skills before HD came out. After a few races I was reminded of all the things I loved about the series, the fantastic setting, the balanced game play, and the weapons that trip you up rather than annihilate. Now I’m hooked again. My PSP, which used to get little play time, is now my second most played system. Wipeout HD also went from a game that I was just only mildly excited over to one of my most anticipated titles.
There you have it, my thoughts on some of the major racing franchises out today. I avoided franchises that I have little to no experience with, thus the lack of Forza or Need for Speed. Basically my taste in racers boils down to two main points: realism: bad and breakneck thrills: good. Obviously not everyone agrees with this, there are a lot of people that love the Gran Turismo experience and not everyone appreciates Wipeout. This is just the opinions of a gamer that was forced out of the car when he was being taught how to drive a manual car because his instructor was afraid that I was going to ruin his transmission. Hey, it's not my fault, stick shifts are the devil.
Everyone has been putting in their two cents about the quality of GTA IV. Some people love it, some hate it. Either way they’re likely to go into great lengths to describe how they feel about. We’ll I spare you the usual pile of words and break down my feeling into short and sweet little nuggets. When it works I love it, I love it more than I could possibly love another person. When It doesn’t work I hate it with the fervor of a cartoon supervillain. At least I used to, now I just sit back and chill. You have to learn to take it easy, easy like the Sunday recaps.
This week brings more changes to the schedule of everyone’s favorite getting stabbed by shipero simulator. First change is that Wednesday’s server will now be ranked. So now you can earn those badges and unlock sexy new costumes to play dressup with. Secondly Warhawk is going to be taken off the rotation of Friday Night Fights and replaced with GTA IV. It’s been in the rotation for some time now so we figured that we’d change things up. Now this change isn’t set in stone, if you guys would rather keep Warhawk on Friday let me know and I’ll keep hosting.
We start the fun at 8PM EDT, look for “DToid_WNW” and remember we roll with non-dtoiders tonight so you might not be able to get on if you dillydally for too long. Of course this is assuming that anyone shows up at all with GTA IV being everyone’s current obsession. If everyone’s just going to spend all night playing GTA IV I might as well close up shop so I can stab some hookers and drug dealers. Hookers need stabbin' too, although the Denver Police Department and I obviously don’t see eye to eye on that.
[Post your PSN ID below. Also, if you know of any good place to discreetly dispose of hooker corpses in the Denver Metro Area your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.]
IMPORTANT NOTICE for all WEDNESDAY NIGHT WARCAWKS players
We would like to thank all players for their keen interest in taking part in Wednesday Night WarCawks.
However, we regret to inform you that due to extraordinary levels of traffic from all around the globe, we have been unable to run the service to the level we expected.
As a temporary measure, we will be deferring the European players (Takeshi) and start once we stabilize our server.
We would like to apologize for all inconveniences as well as confusion caused.
We would like to add that due to the above reasons, we will be making the following changes to the schedule:
1) Start date: Planned for 04/30/2008 17:00(PDT). While the start is planned for the weekend, this may change due to unforseen circumstances.
3) Wednesday Night WarCawks closure: This will now be on 04/30/2008 at 20:00(PDT) rather than 04/23/2008 at 20:00(PDT)
What's change #2? That's for us to know and you to find out. Just trust me when I say that it will be a change so epic in scope that it'll blow your fucking mind.
*Pst!* Hey, I’m not supposed to be telling anyone this but there’s super secret early access that only the cool kids know about. You look like a pretty righteous dude so I figured I’d clue you in. It starts tonight at 17:00(PDT) Look for “DToid_WNW” and enter the password of “TOID” and you’re in like Flynn baby. Just keep this on the down low, we don’t want a bunch of dorks crashing the party you dig?
[Post your PSN ID and 12 digit access code below.]
For quite some time now we’ve started Wednesday Night WarCawks at 7PM Eastern. I’m sure this works out great for Dtoiders on the East Coast, falling beautify between dinner and American Idol. However, for people on the other side of the country, such as myself, this time is kind of a pain in the ass. I’m in the Mountain Time Zone so I usually have to rush home after work in order to get the server up at 5. Then there are also those on West Coast who are just getting home from work by the time we’re just wrapping things up.
So for tonight we’re going to do something different, we will start at 8PM EDT. Hopefully this will make it easier for the West Coast players to get in on the action while affording me the opportunity to actually enjoy dinner instead of inhaling it as I set up the server. Also, the later time could give some of the married people a better chance of getting control of the TV from their spouses. It really works out for everyone, except Takeshi who now has to stay up until 3AM. He brought it on himself though, if he didn’t want to stay up so late he really shouldn’t live in Holland.
Nothing else will change, the server will still be called DToid_WNW, the password will still be ‘TOID’, and I’ll still be cutting fools. Just now you have an extra hour to kill, read a book, call your mom, or make sweet love by a roaring fire. I really don’t care how you spend your time but I swear, if I don’t get to eat my SpaghettiOs in peace I’m going to start killing people. Seriously, my path of carnage will be marked by tomato sauce and gore.
[Post your PSN ID and any suggestions for what wine goes well with canned pasta below.]
Some people say that games are easier today then they were back in the NES era. Some even say that a lot of the games being released today are easy to the point of being boring. I personally feel that the difficulty of games today is fine because there is a big difference between being challenging and being violence-inducingly frustrating. Obviously since this is a Games that I Regret article we’ll be looking at a game that falls into the latter: Mission: Impossible for the NES.
Mission: Impossible was released in 1990 and was based on the 1988 television series revival. You switch between the members of a three person IMF squad. Their goal is to rescue a kidnapped scientist from the clutches of The Sinister Seven. You must shoot, punch, and boomerang various thugs while infiltrating their inner sanctum.
There’s apparently a boat level later on. I wouldn’t know, I’m stuck in the damn sewers.
The main problem that I have with the game is the fact that it’s confusing. Every time I play I make it to the sewers and can never seem to figure out exactly where to go next. Aside from the main mission objective you’re never really given a full understanding of what exactly it is you have to do. All you can do is move from building to building getting items and vague clues from what I assume are other IMF agents. An example: early on you can get a keycard from a guy in a bar. On the card is a number, in another room is a door locked with a numerical password. I naturally assumed the two were related but I later found out after much experimentation that they were not related at all, the number was pointless.
The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire. At least I guess that's a roof.
Trying to figure out where you’re going isn’t the only way to occupy your time. You also spend plenty of time trying not to get killed by the many hazards surrounding you. Of course there are plenty of enemy agents out to get you, conveniently color-coordinated according to attack type. Not all of them are so easy to spot though, some dress as civilians in order to lull you into a false sense of security. You’ll be walking down the street when suddenly one of the old ladies will spin around and start stabbing you in the back. Who knows, maybe they’re not even undercover agents, they could just be disgruntled. Perhaps grandma is just sick of taking care of her ungrateful children’s spoiled crotch-spawn and she going to take it out on you because you kind of look like that guys that felt her up at that barn dance when she was but an innocent young girl.
Watch where you’re going, jackass.
Surprisingly though, your main threat doesn’t come from terrorists or grannies that are angry that you took their innocence. The environmental hazards are far more deadly. Cars go whipping through the narrow streets at break-neck speed and if you are unlucky enough to be clipped by one of these supersonic death-machines your agent will go flying off the screen and into an early grave. The streams of sewage in the sewers are equally deadly if you happen to get caught in one while crossing the makeshift bridges your agent will get swept away to drown in a sea of liquid feces. While not technically deadly, you mission will also come to an abrupt stop if you happen to injure one of the sane civilians walking the streets. Cut down the wrong brown suited businessman in a hail of gunfire and you’ll be whisked away in a helicopter to face involuntary manslaughter charges. While you do have three agents to play with, if one gets killed or captured you continue with the ones you have left, but they all have different weapons and abilities,. Not a bad prospect unless your stuck with the guy who punches things in a room full of machinegun wielding terrorists.
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I obviously dislike this game but I’ll admit that it’s not really terrible; it’s not just my thing. I’m sure some people out there would like a challenge and since this game has the reputation of being one of the hardest on the NES it might be right up their alley. Maybe the other levels get better after you finally navigate your way out of the unimaginable labyrinth that is the sewers. Seriously, I was almost expecting to stumble across a minotaur just lazily bathing in the sewage.
Side Rant: While looking of footage of this game on YouTube I discovered something that surprised me; there are a lot of Angry Video Game Nerd wannabes out there. Each one trying to propel themselves into the upper echelons of internet stardom on a rocket made of profanity and poop jokes. Allow me to pass on some words of wisdom to all the people copying AVGN’s style: You don’t fucking have to say “fuck” every other fucking word. You occasionally have to fucking say something fucking clever in-between the fucking profanity you fucking fucks! Although I do have to admit, it does help to get your point across.
You’ve read about them in the papers and magazines. Now experience them first hand at the hit new show that has all the critics raving; Angry Gamers: Live (formally known as Wednesday Night WarCawks). Watch real human drama unfold before your very eyes.
Watch Samit angrily question why the airstrike only killed him when there were several other people within the blast radius.
Witness Liam curse the gods as he is brutally brought down by a hail of sniper fire.
Hear Takeshi bitch about lag while getting stabbed in the throat.
Here’s what the critics have to say:
“A powerful, hard hitting drama that will make you reexamine not only you life but also your entire system of values.” Kyle Johnson – TV Guide
“Rarely is such raw, emotional power seen on the small screen.” Alison Jennings – LA Times
“What the hell did I just watch?” Steve Brown – Entertainment Weekly
So tune in and see what people all across the nation have been talking about. Angry Gamers: Live airs tonight at 7PM EDT/4PM PDT after a very special episode of Blossom. Only on PSN.
Also, the server will be closed with a password of ‘TOID’. I couldn’t figure out how to work that last part into my fake TV advertisement. If you can, then fuck you. I don’t want to hear it.
[Post you PSN ID below to… uh… get your TV to… Oh screw it; just post your damn ID.]
About Me
Also, This:
I've been gaming since my parents first bought an NES when I was two. Even though I've been playing for twenty years I don't consider myself a "hardcore gamer" The difficulty levels in my games never go past medium, and I've used a game shark on more that one occasion just to see a game's story.
