I’ve been reliving my youth by indulging in old nineties comedy, most specifically the work of Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Their work together lives among some of my most treasured comedy memories, and I still enjoy the work they put out today, most notably Herring’s podcast, which he does with Andrew Collins. Check it out, it’s worth a listen.
In other news, some of us played videogames, while most of us were at Miami, getting drunk and having fun. I was not at Miami, but I watched the live feed, which seemed to consist solely of Nick Chester playing Rock Band. That Nick, he loves he f*cking Rock Band!
Hit the jump for our games of the week, where most staff members were too busy partying to respond.
Also, I have been playing a lot of Metal Slug lately for some reason. Metal Slug is awesome too, that’s another one of my favorite games. You can shoot guys and blow up tanks. Then in the third one, there’s a level that has zombies, and if a zombie pukes on you, you turn into a zombie too. Then you can stumble around and puke blood on helicopters and their bullets can’t hurt you. You know, because you’re already dead. And it has big robot bosses and camels and aliens and all kinds of awesome stuff. And then Allen O’Neal shows up and he’s all “You’re mincemeat” and “Go home to mommy” and that’s always awesome, too. Definitely better than Miami. Oh, and Metal Slug 3 is on XBLA, and you can play that online, too. You should get it Jim, we can play it together. You probably wouldn’t like the gameplay much, because it doesn’t really seem like your cuppa, but I think you would still have fun anyway. More fun than those suckers in Miami are having.
And I played some Taiko no Tastujin DS, because that’s another one of my favorite games. Resident Evil 5 is out, and it has zombies, and I like zombies, but I don’t really have any money, and I never liked Resi all that much anyway, and I hear this one sucks a little. Kind of like Miami. But Taiko no Tatsujin is always fun, I play that on the bus and the subway a lot. And on planes and stuff. It’s another one of my favorites, and a great travel game. It has these drum guys with faces, see, and there’s a little bar on the screen where the drum faces scroll right to left, and you hit the drum when the face gets to a ring at the end of the bar and you can play along with awesome Japanese songs. You would probably like this game, Jim, cuz I know you like Gitaroo Man, and this is another really fun music game. With little characters that dance around and stuff while you’re playing. And it has songs from Aquerion and Evangelion in the new one, and old Namco themes and stuff. Miami doesn’t have any of that. You should get it Jim, and then next time we’re stuck in an airport together we can play versus mode, and that would be fun.
I also got to play a little bit of Madworld which is, in my opinion, the best amount of it possible. It’s weird because the game is fun while you’re playing it. But once I finished a level, I felt no compulsion to continue playing past that point. The nice thing about playing a game like MadWorld in Miami is that there’s always someone completely awesome that you can pass the Wiimote to and the game is totally fun to watch someone else play, especially if that person is Chad Concelmo. In Miami.
Oh, and I finally got to play Metal Gear Solid 4, finishing up the game on Monday after pacing myself throughout last weekend. I’m pretty sure it was amazing, but it’s hard to remember in the looming shadow of epicness that is Miami. I’m satisfied with the way Snake’s story was wrapped up and was surprised at how much I came to appreciate Ocelot as a character. All in all, a pretty great week.
Anyway, I just started a Franchise in MLB 09 The Show, which is just like the beloved Owner Mode in MVP Baseball 2005 — it allows you to control all kinds of things pertaining to your team and stadium, like the number (and type) of concession stands or the facilities available to your players. It’s awesome! I haven’t really done much other gaming this week aside from MLB 09, since I’m so engrossed in the Road to the Show mode. Samit Sarkar is 10-1 for the Trenton Thunder (the Yankees’ AA affiliate)!
Most of the rest of the week has been spent crying, since I couldn’t make it down to Miami. But now I shall redouble my efforts to go to PAX. Seriously, I will kill a baby* if I have to.
*This only applies to plants.
Chad: MIAMI!
As for games, whittled away at Loco Roco 2 a bit more. It’s a game I tend to play in bed for ten minutes before going to sleep, due to it being on a portable, and it being so god damn pleasant. If you’re the kind of person who has troubling settling down for sleep because you start thinking about all your problems/regrets/hardships, then I highly recommend adding some bedtime Loco Roco 2 to your sleep hygiene regimen. If Loco Roco 2 doesn’t mellow you out, nothing will.
On the Wii, I played some homebrew Rhythm Tengoku, out of an initial sense of paranoia that I ruined the Homebrew Channel in agreeing to the mandatory system update needed to boot up MadWorld. What started as a three second check-in to “make sure it worker” turned into an hour-long onion-hair plucking, wolf-child gymnastics, outer space-batting range extraveganza.
God, I love that game. The fact that Nintendo didn’t localize it is a sin.
Also played MadWorld and Gradius Rebirth for review. Both games are shorter than I had hoped for, but other than that, they are pretty much exactly what I wanted them to be. They are also games that are fun to play even after you’ve beaten them, due to new difficulties, weapons, and stuffs, so their short lengths don’t really matter.
Otherwise, I played as much as I could stand of Blue Dragon Plus, and have of course been keeping up with Killzone 2‘s multiplayer. Also gave Crystal Defenders a spin. I was going to review it, but I probably won’t bother.
Of course, this weekend’s main attraction was Resident Evil 5. Ended up with the PS3 version. I’m liking it a lot, my only annoyance so far is the fact that players need to wait for checkpoints before they can drop into your game. It’s great that other players can and will just join your game, sometimes bringing awesome cool stuff with them, but many of them drop before they can get in, because the wait is far too long. Otherwise, great game so far.
