• 27Oct 09

  Tired and cranky thoughts - I haz proto drake edition

  Hi all, I've been pretty busy lately, so sorry for the lack of posts. Also, kinda beat today so I'll skip the formalities and get to the nitty gritty.

  In terms of gaming, I've managed to finish a few games these past months. On the 360, I darted through both Condemned games - I enjoyed them quite a lot. Not nearly as scary as they were hyped during their respective releases, but enjoyable nonetheless. Got almost all the achievements in Condemned 2: Bloodshot, even on multiplayer. Never aimed for that much of a completion percentage on that, but a few people needed help with online matches and I ended up getting the achievements myself in the process. Bloodshot's multiplayer is fun at first, but gets old fast, kinda shoe-horned into an otherwise great single player game. The forensic gimmick is really underplayed and downright arbitrary at points, on both of the games. Anyway, all in all, I had fun with both.

  Still waiting on my copy of Red Faction Guerilla to arrive. Thanks to snail mail, it's taking more than a month to arrive. In the meantime, I picked up a copy of Halo Wars a couple of weeks back on the cheap, but haven't really played it much. Jumped back to Street Fighter IV for a whim during the weekend. I gotta be honest, hearing about Super Street Fighter IV had picked my interest in the series again, but sadly I'll only play that game late after release due to monetary and geographical limitations. On the other hand, Gamespot buddy celdweller is generously lending me his copy of Arkham Asylum for me to play through - hopefully that'll get here soonish. I was going to pre order Forza 3, but the nationally released copy of the game is getting shafted here in terms of the DLC, so I'll be skipping on it 'til I get a chance to play an U.S copy whenever that happens. Tried to get Dead Space on Games on Demand today but yep, got the numb end of the regional lock bat to the face. Argh, I hate that.
  
  On the WoW front, yes, I still play that from time to time, I got a pretty cool ride to brag about - the violet proto drake. The special thing about this dragon is how it is acquired... through yearly events, like Halloween's cousin Hallow's Eve event or even Christmas. It all started late last year for me, when I finished all the Winter Veil achievement awards and hell, it ended on the first day of Hallow's Eve this year. It's a pretty sweet and fast mount, and it's funnily enough, the easiest of the proto drakes to earn, the others being two random loot drops, raid rewards and a rare spawn enemy that needs killing.
  
  
  Yep, I was turned into a ninja for this picture - darn those trick or treaters!
  (alternative link - http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o37/edubuccaneer/WoWScrnShot_101809_120051.jpg)
  
  
  Not sure how long I'll keep playing World of WarCraft, since I haven't been into a raid in quite a while, and my subscription is about to end. Maybe I'll hold off 'til Cataclysm, the new expansion?

  Reviews! Been writing a bunch of them. The latest that got published are:
  
  Contra Rebirth (Wii)
  Left4Dead Crash Course DLC (PC/360)
  Red Alert 3 Commander's Challenge (360)
  Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay (Wii)
  Zombie Apocalypse (PS3/360)
  
  Soon to come - NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits (wii), LostWinds 2: Winter of Melodia (Wii), Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3 (PC/Wii) and Axel & Pixel (360).
  
  At the same event I bought Halo Wars, I had the chance to buy a whole lot of comics on sale, and will finally be reading up on Preacher. Already gone through Alex Moore's Swamp Thing - pretty good stuff. Got three volumes on Preacher, two on 100 Bullets and a few Slam Dunk mangas too!
  
  Talk to you guys again soon!

  • Posted Oct 27, 2009 4:10 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
  • 6 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet
• 9Sep 09

  Reminded to remember: Dreamcast's 10th Anniversary

  It's hard to believe, but today marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dreamcast. I can't say it feels like yesterday, but man, it's a long time for sure.
  
  I was finally able to nab one of the little plastic white boxes in late 1999, after having a chance to see it on different occasions. The game shown was always some sort of fighting game, but I knew there was much more to it. My new system came with Flag to Flag, the (now deceased) CART Championship Auto Racing Team game, Sonic Adventure and for some odd reason, Monaco Grand Prix. The first two were my choices, and the third, my father's. He thought he'd get into games again, so he got an F1 game for himself. His mistake. What an awful game to get back to - no official license, it pailed in comparison to Flag to Flag in just about every way. On the other hand, Flag to Flag was awesome, even though it was broken to no end in the fact that you could 'bump-win' your way through every race and take out literally the entire competition.
  
  Anyway, before the Playstation 2, the Dreamcast really felt like a "new gen" console, a step above the then current crop of games. Graphics were a huge improvement from past systems, and for a while, it seemed like there wouldn't be a match to Dreamcast games in terms of presentation and feel. Even today, Dreamcast games look very good, specially when hooked up to a VGA monitor using the special adapter, and it's one of the few consoles that emulated almost flawlessly various arcade games.
  
  I won't get into the history and the sad events of the Dreamcast's life, mainly because I'm just lazy to write about it, and since so many people will be doing the same, I'll leave it to all the other write ups about it. I'm here to remember it, hell, be reminded of it, since I still own my original system and it still works perfectly. The Dreamcast is the only video game I consider to collect games and items for. In 2003, after years of procrastination, I started my collection when I bought an original, nationally produced Shenmue game. Shamefully, up to that point, I had owned only a handful of legit games, with a bevy of burned copies I downloaded off the internet. But upon buying that Shenmue copy, something clicked, and since then, I've been building a healthy library of games and accessories. The rarest of the bunch are my Shenmue II European copy, which took lengths and lengths of effort to obtain and Garou: Mark of the Wolves that I bought while visiting New York last year. While both aren't exactly rare on other gaming system options, they are cool games to own on the Dreamcast for sure. Among the paraphernalia of items, I've managed to get one of the awesome arcade sticks from Sega, a Dreamcast keyboard, Seaman and even a mouse. Somehow, to me, the Dreamcast feels like something worth collecting and playing, even if it was killed off too early. I don't consider myself a collector, far from it, since I play every game I ever got for it and hardly keep them in shrines for 'mint condition'. My game collection has spread so far that it practically occupies an entire shelf in my room, among other assorted game crap there.
  
  
  My shelf - sorry about the flash, it's a rainy day. Sorry for the mess, I'm just a lazy bastard. If you look at the bottom left corner, you can see the box in which my Dreamcast lives nowadays. The left-most column is my extremely slim Sega Saturn library. And yes, that's a James Bond VHS collection in the upper shelf.
  
  
  It's worth mentioning how well the Dreamcast was supported in Brazil - TecToy, the local distributor, had a great line of games out for it, and to top it off, at reasonable prices. Unlike the current crop of games sold off at ridiculously overcharged prices, Dreamcast games were reasonable purchases, making it a good, current game system to own at the time. Sega had a great history with the Master System and Mega Drive in the past, supporting both way past their life cycle, to this day even, bundling both with built in games still found in stores, but it has been a bit different with the Dreamcast, as it's a rare find in stores, if at all. Either way, I'm thankful for the treatment it's been given, even going as far as owning a few of the nationally released titles like Vigilante 8 and Blue Stinger.
  
  Am I sad about the history of Sega post Dreamcast? To be honest, no, not really. They had an incredible console in their hands, and messed it all up with the consumer. They took their main mascot and trounced it with awful games. But in that wake, they brought out a great little new series of games with Yakuza (Ryu Ga Gotoku), which to me is almost enough to clean their name.
  
  What's important to remember today is not the series of mistakes Sega as a company made over the years, even though it's one hell of a laundry list, but how awesome the Dreamcast was and still, in a way, still really is. You doubt it? Look past its ridiculous name, and pop in a game or two, you won't regret it.

  • Posted Sep 9, 2009 6:48 am GMT
  • Category: Games
  • 16 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet
• 31Aug 09

  Hey! News!

  Hey, everyone!
  
  I've been pretty busy lately, so sorry for the lack of posts. Things have been pretty hectic around here, so I haven't been playing as many games past my review content. I did, however, reactivate my Lord of the Rings Online account on Saturday, after that free play week we had a while back. I'm surely more into the game now, and since I bought the Moria expansion a while back, I'm going to have a free month's worth of playing time to try to get to that content with my dwarf champion, who's currently sitting on level 20. I've also been trying to pickup the remaining achievements in Mass Effect, but it's turning out to be a pain in the nether regions, so I don't think I'll hit 1050/1050, but pretty close to it hopefully. Persona 4 is slowly, slowly creeping, I beat Rise's dungeon late the week before the last, and kind of left it untouched since then - should be getting back to it eventually, to try to keep up with GiantBomb's endurance run.
  
  Also, I had the chance to try out the new Policenauts English translation patch that was released last week! Seems pretty flawless and well made so far, I'm really happy to get to play such a talked about Kojima game. Luckily I had a Japanese copy of the game lying around that a friend of mine lent me, to try out this patch.
  
  As for reviews, you can find the following, as my latest at GameRevolution:
  
  Madballs in: Baboo Invasion (Xbox 360)
  Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Xbox 360/PS3)
  Splosion Man (Xb0x 360)
  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Re-Shelled (Xbox 360)
  Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures Episode Four: The Bogey Man (PC)
  
  Added 09/03:
  
  Shadow Complex (Xbox 360)
  Trials HD (Xbox 360)
  
  I should be getting review code for Wiiware's Tales of Monkey Island Episode Two today, as well as Red Faction Guerrilla soon. Red Faction will be my first payed review for GameRevolution, so keep an eye out for that! I'll be also taking the new DLC, Demons of the Badlands out for a spin, both reviews should be up soon, as well as my thoughts on Shadow Complex.
  
  Have fun, everyone, and keep safe.

  • Posted Aug 31, 2009 6:37 am GMT
  • 11 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet

See Previous Blog Posts »