Posts (page 2)

Never did I realize how out of touch I was with what's popular in music than when I saw the Top 20 MP3 downloads on Amazon's site. It's not that I hate any of these musicians. I didn't even know who a majority of them even were.

I forgot how awesome this game was. I remember Computer Gaming World panning the game, I think largely because it uses a checkpoint system. I don't know if it's still like this (not that it's easy to check, since so many of them went under), but computer gaming mags hated anything that didn't let you save whenever you wanted.

CGW in particular saw this as a concession to consoles. The magazine would regularly bring this up and I remember several articles from their editorial guy that used to always appear on the last page of the magazine. Reviews would also mention save game limitations if a console title ever appeared on the PC. FFVII comes to mind, although you'd think that the reviewer would realize that there's an item that lets you save anywhere in the game even in the console version... Basically implying it was a choice, not a requirement due to the PS1 sucking.

The N64 was a big hotpoint too. Going to cartridges alone was a big problem. But the idea of consoles focusing so much on true 3D was also threatening. I remember the editorial guy, again, saying that polygons weren't that important and that it wasn't a big deal that Mario could move in 8 different directions in Mario 64... After all, he could do that in Ultima years ago!

I don't even think I need to explain the difference between those titles.

I remember their reason for consoles sucking also revolved around the lack of FPS games, which gets me back to Powerslave. There was a bit of a to-do for the game being game of the month or something for Saturn in another console gaming mag. CGW, in all their wisdom, saw this as a combo attack possiblity. Consoles suck, Powerslave sucks, the end.

I always think about this when I play Powerslave... Mostly because it's just so ridiculous. People like talking about the console wars and certainly fanboys in that case are annoying... But I remember back when it was far more PCs versus consoles, at least as far as CGW was concerned lol. I never really understood it. I enjoyed games on both. The animosity was always weird and, honestly, it was offputting. I stopped subscribing to the magazine largely because of those reasons.

Powerslave is essentially similar to Blood and Duke Nukem. It uses a version of the same engine. Goofy one-liners, probably way too much gore. It's completely focused on Egyptian themes and basically revolves around breaking into ruins and so forth. I like it.

I was going to hold off on Bionic Commando Rearmed, but to my surprise I had 800 points sitting in my account. So it's mine.

The game looks and sounds great. I SUCK at the original Bionic Commando, but I've played enough of it to enjoy the updates and little references. The game is actually genuinely funny at times.

I've never been good with the grappling mechanic in the original game and I'm not great with it here. It's essentially the same set up. The game, overall, feels slightly more forgiving and it's not been as much of an issue thankfully.

I've not gotten far with it but I'm enjoying it so far. August has been really strong on XBLA.

Alan just showed me this:

http://www.eegra.com/forum/showthread.php?t=303

What a bunch of shit. Group Sounds did this years ago. And now another idea I wanted to push further is dead.

I'm sure people have been doing this for a billion years, but it does stink. Particularly since ours were focused entirely on games too.

And if you do, your favorite song is probably Tyler because it's fucking awesome.

But as you may know, they're together again and touring. New album called No Deliverance is out in 9 days.

It's 68 degrees out right now. Apparently it's Fall already.

So I'm in the Warhammer Online closed beta finally. Apparently that's all I'm allowed to tell anyone.

Download should be another hour or two.

So yesterday was my birthday and I had a lot of fun.

This has been a busy week. Between work, helping my grandma out, yesterday... not much time to do anything else. I guess I could be doing worse things (chained in some dank basement somewhere?), so it's not bad in that sense.

I've been making some progress on that social network with Alan, but it's slow going on my part. I had it 99% finished and I lost almost all of it when I had that virus problem. Recreating things is hard. I can tell it's not the same, but it's hard to pinpoint why... and it's also hard to work on something that was already finished. The same drive isn't there. Coupling that with my time lately (and now that I feel sick today), I am just so behind.

I lost a bunch of Naps the Cat stuff too (I still have my drawings, but these were all in and vectorified), which I'm not pleased about. I also lost a big project I had been working on for my job, but I managed to throw that together again by working longer.

Oh well. I hope I get ahead this week.

With all this Batman love going around I want to confirm that Captain America is still my favorite superhero.

I'm still not sure that I can accept Bucky in that role.

So when first starting Braid I was impressed by the presentation. The title screen itself is gorgeous, the animation is great, the backgrounds are beautiful and the music is absolutely excellent. Going forward I was generally impressed by the game in general. It's easy to play, the rewind mechanic is neat, the obvious homages to Super Mario Bros. are cute...

But where it really shows its colors is in collecting all of the puzzle pieces. Fans of New Super Mario Bros. used to claim that about that game, but there's really no comparison. Even in the demo getting all of them requires some incredibly clever things. I was so impressed by what was done there that I just forked over the $15.

Good job.