supreuph's blog
That's right. Since the summer started, I've had my wii up at work to help my crew waste the hours of dead time. As a result, I haven't had it at home on my wi-fi network. So I've pretty much had to put my online brawl and mario kart campaigns on suspension. That leaves me with just a ps3 at home, so that's been getting most of the burn lately. And it sucks, because I haven't had any good games to play. But with this DBZ title being everything you'd expect a DBZ title to be (simple, deep fighting system) I've got something to waste away my hours on at home. I'll be fine-tuning and getting adjusted to the new system before I go online, so look for me on in about a week. Until then...u better hope you're not mediocre. I crush mediocre.
I'm a big fan of quirky, random humor, and the last 6 months have provided me with quite a few commercials to laugh at. So I'll be ranking the top 5 ad campaigns in order of the amount of joy they've brought me. I'm not just ranking a single commercial, but a campaign of at least two commercials with the same theme. So here we go...
5. Dunkin' Donuts
Dunkin Donuts isn't big here in the southeast, so I had never really seen any Dunkin Donuts ads. But they've broken through with an ad campaign that first caught my attention with its mockery of sophisticated coffee. With a catchy, funny, sing-songy real-life song in every ad, this campaign makes number 5 on my list.
4. Skittles
Skittle has always had a somewhat entertaining run of commercials, but the last two put them over the top. The office environment with a zany twist brought us the long-bearded potential employee who feeds his interviewer with 15" of chin hair..."No experience..." The second commercial shows a psychologically damaged employee with a paper-like exterior who had been beaten by a coworker who regrettably but innocently wanted some chocolate skittles and figured that his coworker's appearance meant that he was just a pinata full of candy. Priceless.
3. Jack Link's
Big foot running ramped in the woods with idiots who think that mocking a sasquatch was a good idea...what more needs to be said. Big foot always gets the best of these guys, and it's always funny.
2. Budweiser
They've scored big with the "Wassup!" campaign and the Budweiser frogs. And while this campaign is a little more subtle, it's no less effective. Highlights from these commercials are the disgusted "dude" as he watches his friend marry a female bodybuilder (or a man?) in Las Vegas, and the slightly perverted "dude" as he listens through the wall of his hotel. Great Stuff.
1. Snickers
This medieval/modern day mash-up of misfits has brought me much enjoyment over the last few months. "Alas my love you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously..." followed by a chorus song from a hawaiin warrior, a pilgrim, an English king, and two other characters who I can't remember. These commercials are all about the feast. Even Robin Hood has gotten into the act, stealing the feast from the rich to take back to the poor. "The feast...it's ruined."
So what are your thoughts? Different order? Did I miss some? Let me know.
Oh yes...that's right. Just as the PS3 seems to be stockpiling the great titles, another reason to own a 360 instead of PS3 has evaporated into thin air. Bioshock is coming to the PS3 this fall. Being released to great reviews, the game was praised as an RPG hybrid of sorts with great imagination and execution...and I am all about that over here.
This will effectively give PS3 a solid RPG and a proverbial "nanny nanny boo boo". I'm psyched because I figured this would happen, I just didn't know how long it would take. Anybody wanna celebrate with me?
...A shooter from either the first or third person point of view where you play an officer of a unit in some armed force. The location is quite possibly on earth, but very easily another planet where the political dynamic is the same and you stand to make a national, if not worldwide impact with your mission. You use weapons that always follow the mold of a machine gun, a shotgun, an automatic pistol, and several grenades. Your forward, backward, and lateral movement are all controlled independent of your ability to turn. Oh, and there's guaranteed to be one exceptional weapon at your disposal that is supposed to make this game different from every other game like it.
What game is this? Too many to name.
I had heard so much hype about Haze that I was certain that this was to be the game that changed my mind about the ridiculously stale genre that is FPS. So I download the demo and I'm severely disappointed. It's just like every other FPS there is. Haze, Halo, and Call Of Duty 4...they don't differ enough to gain merit as separate games imo.
In my eyes, you could take every "great" FPS of the last 5 years, give them all 1 generic name, and release them 6 months apart as 1 massive series of reivented installments; similar to the Final Fantasy universe. Some installments of the series are good enough to spawn their own sequels & prequels, but they're all part of the larger monster which include very similar gameplay, circumstances, and objectives.
How can anybody get excited about the same old thing over and over again? The FPS genre is very hard to get excited about. And as an individual who disliked the genre since I first played Doom on PC, I find it absurd that the genre gets so much attention and single handedly powers 360...along with Madden.
Over the last two months, I've done something that I said I'd never do: buy into hype. Whenever a highly anticipated game is soon to be released, the forums light up with glee as gamers attempt to express their barely contained excitement over the title. Being apart of the online gaming community is still somewhat new to me, having joined GS less than a year ago, so wasn't aware of the kind of influence that the community can have on you. I found myself looking forward to games I had never heard of, one of which was Super Smash Bros Brawl. I truly had never heard of the game since I hadn't owned a Nintendo console since SNES. But after reading countless threads, previews, and hands-on analyses, I decided that the game might be for me.
And I was right.
SSBB is, quite simply, pure fun. It's deep enough as a fighting game that you will need days to truly get the hang of any one character. It's simple enough (only 3 main buttons) that anyone can pick it up and play it. I've had a great time playing online with long time SSB players and sharpening my skills. The diversity in character design is outstanding, so everyone plays different (which the exception of a few characters from the same universe). Each one of my friends uses different characters, so their personal tendencies multiplied by the different character strengths gives me multiple opponent sets. I can turn the game on, jump online, and run 1 on 1 matches for at least a couple of hours.
SSBB panned out for me, mostly because I enjoy a solid, strategic fighter. The last one I really took a liking to was Marvel Vs Capcom 2, so I was long overdue for another. I could possibly see another 2 full-fledged fighting titles coming my way in the next 3 months with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (whew) and DBZ: Burst Limit coming out. That should supply me with enough fight for the rest of the year at least.
PixelJunk Monsters is the most fun downloadable game that I've played this gen. It has a way of feeling incredibly rewarding. Just looking at all the rainbows from the perfect stages feels great. It has also got a way of not making you feel like a loser when you lose. Monsters got the best of you? It's ok. You remember which monsters come on what waves, what direction they go, what towers work on them, and just try again. I'm quite excited about Sony releasing additional content for the game. That $10 is the best money I've spent this gen.
I was madly in love with Folklore when I first started playing it, but the game has started to slide a little. I'll save the details for my review of the game.
Now, there's the business of Grand Theft Auto 4. It's quite amazing that for the first time this generation, a consensus can be reached that there is finally a fantastic game all the way around. What I'm curious about is the fact that the game can have so many technical problems and not catch any flack for it. More than anything, it shows that a game's reputation has a tremendous effect on how it's received. I don't think a new franchise could have as many bugs and still receive a perfect score. But then again, if the reviewers didn't encounter any problems with their copies of the game, the game's score shouldn't suffer. Not to mention that I was quite disappointed with GTA3. It was the same thing over and over again with bad graphics and pointless (honestly) violence. This game seems to be different tho, so I won't judge it from its predecessor.
At any rate, the overwhelmingly positive reception of GTA4 has me seriously considering purchasing it. Before that, I'll most definitely buy Mario Kart Wii, an extra Wiimote, and an extra wii wheel. It's summer time, and I'll have my wii up at work for a mostly slow summer so that all of my staff can get acquainted with Nintendo's fun machine. After that, GTA4 may get a serious look, if not Okami for Wii.
That's all for my gaming update. More to come soon.
There's been building exciting about Nintendo's WiiWare platform, particularly after its Japanese launch. There have been some promising looking previews, some outlandish title announcements, and some less-than-fulfilling DLC details. But what really concerns me about WiiWare, what will make the break the service for me, is the longjevity of the content it sells.
Big whoop, right? They're only $5 and $10 games, right? I shouldn't be expecting so much out of content with such tight tight size restrictions, right? Well I find it hard to disagree with any of those objections. And if it wasn't for the fact that original games have already been offered on the other two platforms, I'd say you're right. But unlike the great online debate where XBL gives you a superior service for a fee and PSN & Wii give you something for nothing, this debate is an open & shut case since there is one uniform similarity between downloadable games on all platforms: Price.
The $10 I spend on a WiiWare game are the same $10 I spend on a PSN game. And it's just hard for me to consider spending money on an updated flash game where my mouse is replaced by a remote pointer. This isn't the majority of the WiiWare titles, so let's consider the incredibly promising looking ones. Lost Winds looks particularly interesting imo, as does Square Enix's rip-off Final Fantasy RTS ($15 for the game, and up to an additional $15 for all of the dlc). But outside of these titles, very few catch my attention. There's the Super R Type, which IGN has detailed as extremely disappointing due to its lack of a 1 player campaign. It seems that the game only has a time attack mode (?). Then there's the zany competitive eating game, the game with stick figure people, and a couple of other titles that have me wondering exactly what the standard for these games is going to be. I downloaded PixelJunk Monsters off of the PSN store for $10 and have enjoyed the game for 50+ hours. And I'm still not done. That kind of playability for a $10 is the kind of value I'm looking for from WiiWare. There seem to be mostly short, quirky thrills headed to the service, and it's got me wondering whether everybody's looking forward to WiiWare because it's showing some promise, or simply because we're happy Nintendo has an original dlc service.
