tempest in a teacup

I spent most of the day at PAX today, since I’d never been to a gaming convention and there were a few games I wanted to check out. I actually didn’t get to play too many of them (the lines were way too long for me to be standing around) but I did get a reasonable idea of how some of the games I’m looking forward to are shaping up.

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…of why I play the airblast Pyro in Team Fortress 2.

The backburner can be great fun in pure ambush play, but the ability to just run up to a control point and BLOW PEOPLE OFF IT is just too awesome. Bonus points if said point is suspended over an instant death pit :D

Here’s last month’s edition.

Games that have been knocked off the list due to completion:

• Devil May Cry 4 - Beat it on Devil Hunter, although honestly I don’t think I’m really done with it yet. I can’t say that I’ve really mastered any aspect of the game (except maybe Nero’s Devil Buster but it’s LOL EZ anyway).
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams - I’ve gotten all my C ranks and unlocked the true ending to the game, so it’s leaving the list. I’ll still keep trying for A ranks and better scores from time to time, though (it’s a freaking score attack game - who wouldn’t). Maybe I’ll put some footage up here when I try it out.
• Zack & Wiki - I’ve beaten the main story quest, but I haven’t found any of the hidden treasures yet. Still, that’s good enough for me for now.
• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition - Beat it shortly after my last list of doom post. I’ve fiddled around a bit with the other modes (the Ada side missions and the Mercenaries minigame) but I haven’t gone back to the game yet.

Games still being played:

• Super Mario Galaxy - Would you believe I’m still stuck on that one Luigi purple coin mission?
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - Really haven’t touched it at all.
• Sonic Rush Adventure - That last Sol Emerald is a bitch.
• Mass Effect - I’ve just finished up the Noveria story quests. It seems that there really aren’t that many main story quests which is a little alarming, but I’ll see what happens. I’ve started to get a good feel for my final opinion on the game, too…and it’s a little uneven.
• Beyond Good & Evil - Still fun - I’m right after the part where Pey’j gets kidnapped (spoiler).

Games that were started and beaten over the course of the month:

• Metal Gear Solid - Great boss fights, great sneaking areas, terrible gun controls, WALL OF PLOT is annoying.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance - Boss fights are somewhat less great, sneaking is much more fun, gun controls are better, WALL OF PLOT is still annoying.

New entries on the list:

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence - Not too far in. I can’t say I’ve gotten the hang of CQC yet - for some reason every time I try to grab someone from behind I end up throwing them and setting off an alarm.
• Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword - this is surprisingly good for a handheld conversion of Ninja Gaiden. There are some cutbacks (simplified combos, only one melee weapon and two ranged weapons) but otherwise it’s fast and furious just like the console versions.
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune - my first PS3 game! Think Gears of War crossed with Resident Evil 4 with a minimal bit of Tomb Raider splashed in for good measure. Very polished and slick - nothing to complain about so far.
• Bionic Commando: Rearmed - I never played the NES version, but even so this game is pretty cool. While the levels and bosses themselves are pretty well-designed, I particularly like the Portal-style Challenge Rooms.

And that’s it for August!

It just occurred to me that my Wii backlog is basically empty now (except for Galaxy). Any Wii game recommendations? Keep in mind that I’m a lonely bastard who plays games by himself all the time.

Amazon is going to be having PS3 deals all day today (August 27th), starting at 12am PST for the big daily deal and then lightning deals every four hours starting at 6am PST. Just a heads up in case there’s some PS3 game or accessory that you’ve been on the lookout for.

And no, I don’t know what the deals are going to be in advance, so don’t bother asking. You can usually make a pretty good guess from the clues on the Gold Box page anyway.

EDIT: The list of deals is up - the daily deal is Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. The lightning deals haven’t been revealed yet, but here are my educated guesses:

6AM: Resistance: Fall of Man
10AM: Ridge Racer 6
12PM: Ratchet & Clank Future
2PM: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
4PM: Devil May Cry 4
6PM: Warhawk

Looks like either games I have no interest in or that I already own. Urgh…

And now to pad out this post a little more, here’s what my desktop currently looks like (click to view full-sized version).

Why yes, I am rather obsessed with sandviches at the moment.

Somehow in the space of two hours I have managed to not only leave my cell phone at work, but fill my apartment with smoke. How did I manage the latter, do you ask?

Why, I cooked some instant noodles!

In the microwave.

Without adding water first.

Do you know what you get when you cook flavour powder, dried mushroom, dried rice noodles and oil in a microwave without water? You get a giant block of simmering carbon. And a crapload of smoke.

And my apartment STILL smells like smoke, 3 hours later.

Fun fact: this apartment I’m living is was refurbished after a fire accident prior to my renting it.

I really wish I could say that there was something important on my mind while I was engaging in this minor act of arson, but there really wasn’t…

As you’ve probably noticed by now I’ve made the layout a bit wider, mainly so that the comment threads don’t get squashed smaller and smaller as more people reply. They still get compressed, but now it’s not nearly as much of a problem.

I’ve also added a new banner, which if anything emphasises my lack of creativity in coming up with something that actually matches my blog’s colour scheme.

And er, that’s all I have to say, so in the meantime have my favourite ending theme from the ARIA series.

So it was looking like while Kyoto Animation will be working on Tonari no 801-chan after Clannad: After Story wraps up, the fans of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu were going to be left out in the cold yet again.

Well, according to Zepy, it looks like we might get a lifeline! Of sorts.

Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san manga to be released in animated form on Youtube

…

This…wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a new Haruhi series. But hey, anything related to Churuya-san gets my seal of approval.

Also, if they’re going to be animating fanmade spinoffs, I hereby cast my vote for an animated version of Kyonko!

Valve is holding its third Team Fortress 2 free weekend this upcoming weekend - I would strongly encourage anyone with a decent PC to check it out. It’s easily become my favourite multiplayer pastime.

On top of that, it looks like they’ve been giving out guest passes for the game, and I have one that entitles the recipient to three days of free TF2. I’m putting it up for grabs here, so if anyone wants it, let me know!

(If you want to know what I mean by “decent PC,” the system requirements for TF2 are located here: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=440&cc=US)

I’m a regular watcher of Zero Punctuation, the five-minute review series started by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw on Youtube and later continued at The Escapist. His reviews are basically highly cynical, sarcastic looks at various games and their idiosyncrasies. He’s usually quite funny, but as of late I’ve come to realise that it’s hard to treat much of his work as “reviews.”

The first sign was his review of Super Smash Bros Brawl. He prefaced his video with a claim that he didn’t understand fighting games. That made me raise my eyebrow, but the rest of his review raised some valid points, so I let it slide.

Until today’s review of Soul Calibur IV.

Let’s get one thing straight - I’m not a Soul Calibur fan at all, and I have no idea how expert players regard this latest installment. Yet Yahtzee’s review, prefaced with the exact same disclaimer about not understanding fighting games, rags on inconsequential nonsense like the story, single player modes, AI and create-a-character modes. Unfortunately, the standards he uses to measure the other games he plays are simply irrelevant in the case of fighting games. They’re nice window dressing, but they shouldn’t take attention away from the fighting system, and more importantly, how the game holds up in versus play.

Needless to say, Yahtzee mentioned neither, therefore making his review another footnote (a humorous one, but still nonetheless a footnote) in the history of people who try to review fighting games without actually knowing anything about them.

That goes for all genres, really. Yahtzee’s best reviews tend to be the ones where he reviews games from genres that he likes, like FPSes and action games (although even these have some duds among their ranks).

Maybe I’m taking his efforts too seriously, but Yahtzee has indicated at times that he wishes to be taken seriously as a critic of videogames. However, without the necessary expertise, his videos are nothing more than humorous bile.

There’s a much more comprehensive and better-written take on the same subject here.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not singling out Yahtzee for doing this - he just happens to be the most recent example of a thoroughly irritating phenomenon present in just about all mainstream reviews these days.

Meet the Sandvich!

(No, that is not a typo)

The Heavy update has finally arrived, and I took the opportunity to put a few hours into the game to see what had changed. I’ve already seen Heavies running around with all three unlocked weapons, so the achievements are definitely quite reasonable this time around.

I haven’t tried Arena Mode yet, although I will eventually. I did get to play a few rounds on Badwater Basin, the new payload map. I like the fact that there are now several side passages and back alleys that I can rely on for my Pyro ambushing. On the other hand, it seemed like the last cap was just as entrenched as the last cap on Goldrush tends to get on full servers. Time will tell, I suppose.

I didn’t see any servers running cp_steel, which was a little surprising, given that it was a community map that was overwhelmingly recommended to Valve for inclusion in the update. I did, however, see my TF2 client either crash or boot me out of the server I was playing in for no apparent reason. Others seem to be having similar problems - a patch will be needed.

Still, the abundance of Heavies means ample opportunities to get those Medic achievements - or improve my Spy skills.

On an unrelated note, I nabbed the PC version of Bionic Commando: Rearmed off Capcom’s digital store last week, and so far I have to say it was worth the money. I never played the original NES Bionic Commando, but this seems to be a decent recreation (although by comparing footage of the NES version to the remake it looks like some of the physics might be different). On top of that, the developers have taken a page out of Portal’s book and added challenge rooms for people to prove their mastery of the bionic arm.

Also, because I turned on my Wii for the first time in weeks and noticed that Mega Man was available on the Virtual Console, I bought it, and played it for a few minutes. First impressions: this game is just as challenging as the Internet says it is.