Just beat Windwaker. A weekend sprint to the finish. Of course, it was a fabulous ending. Up until recently, I wasn’t digging on it, it started to feel like Metroid Prime did (I just wanted to get through it). But Windwaker had a sweet aftertaste after it was all said and done.

Wow, really dark. I’ll spare the details but I was really thinking R rating for the ending bits. Geez. Very artistic though, the way Ganon goes. I think in the NES version he just blinks away or something. In Windwaker, my jaw was on the floor.

I guess the Japanese really know how to finish things (Akira).

There were a bunch of things I left undone. I didn’t do all the little sidequests to death. I did some. I could never sort the mail fast enough and the picture puzzle on the wall I just left alone (I hate those things even in real life — you know, the sliding puzzle things). I did however manage to clear the gauntlet thing. That was grueling. Hardest part in my opinion (and I mean down to the heart piece).

I had a row of hearts plus 2, however many that is.

Overall, the gameplay was really great. I had only played the NES zelda before, I know the series is so much more involved than these two. Regardless, it was great to see all the classic stuff back in action. You had the boomerrang, the triforce, recognizable enemies, bombs and arrows.

Some side things were really fun. Getting the trading routes with the shop was very lengthy but I liked the result. Catching the girl at night stealing from the safe was a very clever little side story. Good times. I found myself waiting a lot on animations and other things. I wanted to play a little bit faster than the game would let me. Very small detail.

Phew. Well, good relaxing weekend. Ready for Twilight Princess sometime next year.

Windwaker was not without inspiring me to record this. Opening credits, has been the theme since I can remember.

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I was reading Kotaku and suddenly this post jumped out with an ad for Ultra Games. They were pimping their brand of NES titles (like Skate or Die) and although the brand loyalty was lost on me at the time, I do clearly remember gravitating towards a NES game called Defender of the Crown.

I think mostly it was because Mearth owned it. I remember watching for hours on end, wondering what the hell was going on. Meh, I didn’t care. It was Mearth’s house! He had all the toys! I had Elevator Action and Metal Gear (Metal Gear, the game I still can’t get through).

Yeah, file this under “brain forgot about it”. I fired up the emulator and got some laughs at how this used to seem so hard. Pre-RTS maybe? I dunno. It’s all pixelated and forgotten now.

Anyway, you pick your dude at the beginning screen. Then it switches to a world map where you can move your army around like Risk. You take over more crap, earn more money and there are little side games. You can joust, launch rocks with a catapult, do some sword dancing with your nemesis. It’s really disjointed and underwhelming I suppose. I don’t know what people were into these games back then. Maybe no one was.

I think the shear quantity of space games, D&D clones, chess games, medieval dragon adventures and so forth killed off all the nerds in the 1980s and that’s why we see the Guitar Hero and Madden titles of today. No one wants to go into space. No one wants to play chess. There was a mass kill effect and the jocks and cool people were sucked in by the newly created vacuum. The vacuum of which would also procure new red Firebirds complete with switchblades, mountain dew stash and Cinderella sow-on patches with auto-jazz-band geek beating mechanisms.

Wow, really got off on a tanget. Um, anyway, I suppose this post is another nostalgia marathon. Well let this be a lesson to myself. Whenever I think “man, where did the 80s go”, I’ll wake up and say: Jesus Christ, I was a fucking idiot back then. That game sucked. Why wasn’t I playing FF1?

Ah, I hadn’t mowed enough lawns to buy it. Heh.

One more thing…

My retrousb modded controllers came in (since my smartjoy snes died). They both work great. It’s the real deal (dents from usage).

So on gamespot forums, people were getting into it about FPS’s and Halo etc. A few people hinted that Gears of War (GeOW) plays like Halo. This saddened me. I read and read and found no one saying the opposite. A lot of people are saying “I love Halo and I love GeOW”. So I’m taking that as gospel and waiting. However, then this guy wrote a semi-decent post. He said people aren’t looking for depth again, Atari games from the 1980s never had any depth. So GeOW might have some small amount of depth but Atari games had none. I agreed with him but then he said this…

and all FPS are generic…they were built that way…Halo is just like Half Life is just like Doom is just like Wolfenstien 3-D…if you can make one that isn’t generic then make it and stop complaining…otherwise go do something else…no one is forcing you to play video games

So I wrote this…

I was agreeing with you up to this point. The 1980s depth is a good point, however some games had “ahead-of-the-curve” depth. Take Adventure on the 2600. You’re a block. You run into a blocky sword. Now you are a block with a sword. The graphics were pretty close to Pong but for some reason you believed you had a sword to fight blocky monsters.

In this way, I appreciate the minor attempts of developers to push the immersion. I haven’t finished Halo2 but mainly I think it’s intellectually exhausting. Whereas young kids have no problem playing it and enjoying it (or even people who just want a simple game), I cannot. I love Halo’s weapon feedback. You pull the trigger and it’s believable. Reloading is great, I get the feedback of real hardware. But I don’t like the culture and massive polygon-feel. It’s totally preference and I’ve failed every time in discussions trying to convert Halo people. You get Jazz or you think it’s lame, boring and quiet. Not that Halo isn’t Jazz or Halo is Rock. It’s the same old crap, angle and perspective on really what boils down to a media product.

The Halo series to me is:

• levels are massive polygons with hardly texture bricks, hard corners
• military themes and aliens
• you are the special hero recruited to save the Earth
• the counter-plot, the heretic are nice add-ins but I think were deliberate story elements to add the illusion of complexity
• Live seems full of people younger than me

Whereas HL2 comes off to me as:

• feels like you’re this counter-culture
• the Gman represents a government secret or someone who holds something you don’t know
• Gordon doesn’t say anything. Intentional silence. Gordon is you.
• The Combine is a play on words. They combine their world with the one they are invading instead of destroying it.
• physics puzzles
• you are a scientist instead of a marine – this pretty much sums it up

So believe me, I’m trying to keep an open mind but the camp is certainly divided. And maybe us PC FPS-ers who have been playing for a while come off as elistist bastards. But there have been more thought-out games imho. Some really take apart a game, some don’t care. Both are fine, do what makes you happy, life is hard enough.

Unreal Engine 3 is quite a technological step. They’ve completely rewritten the polygon count book with their normal map generation from the detail mesh. They’ve nailed a lot of the lighting details. I don’t think I’ve seen better fog, I dunno if they are using 3d textures here. But even though GeOW looks really good from the reviews/previews so far, I think I’m wary of diving into another Halo I won’t finish.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Did you ever see Ice Age? You know how the nut scenes were freaking hilarious but the parts like

My family abandoned me. They kinda migrated without me. You should have seen what they did last year. I mean, they got up early, and quickly tied up my hands and feet, and gagged me with a field mouse, and barricated the cave door, and covered their tracks, and went through water so I’d lose their scent, and… and… who needs them anyway?

were kinda like “um, wait, I don’t have any kids” why aren’t I watching Lethal Weapon? Well, that’s what KH1 was like. It was kinda like Ice Age. A good movie, but would you see it again? No. Would you buy the DVD? No. Do you feel like you aren’t going to get laid watching it? Yes. But are you married? Yes. So maybe you should have some more popcorn and see Ice Age 2? Pass the butter.

Anyway, 56 hours to beat it. The ending and the parts leading up to the ending were extremely satisfying. The very, very last screen says “The End” with the covershot. It doesn’t repeat, it doesn’t let you start a new game. The end is the end and the only way you can start any other task is by resetting your PS2. And that’s the way it should fucking be. I’m looking at you NES Rampage.

I’m done with pre-orders. On a un-related visit to EB Games, I was asked if I wanted to preorder Final Fantasy XII. Similar to the question “would you like to preorder a 360?” I cast my finger out at the employee and screamed Foul tempter! … Of course I want to preorder XII! As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm for the national economy, I don’t think pre-ordering is good for my world view anymore.

Besides the time-value of money concept that my otherwise useless college degree granted me, I found myself overwhelmed by the lack of scarcity when picking up my reserved copy of XII. My $5 call ahead seating to McDonalds™ granted me a special edition Big Mac™ with no drive-thru queue.

“Do you want any fries with that?”
“I thought those were extinct!”
“Sir, we’d do anything for you.”

When I went tonight to pick up my copy a day late, there were at least 100 on the wall. EB Games has a special metal version of the case, special certainly not in quantity. I resisted the Bradley game guide preferring the easily searchable version but not completely digitizing past the lust for polished paper professionalism.

I’m more than 90% done with Kingdom Hearts I. It’s been a great run, I have no plans on grinding the game to the 99th level, leaving no thing undone. It was a bad break-up with FFX,GT3 in that respect and I don’t want to get hurt again. I was young, dumb and full of thumb. Now my schedule and my RSI just can’t roll like that anymore.

Back to my medium XII, large coke, hold the pickles … I wholly expect that it will play as tasty as it sounds. Just like every other burger-eater, we’re all in for a fatty treat from a non-elitist RPG series. However, beside my Billions Served brethren, the self-loathing lemming in me chuckles as I coin the term XII Monkeys.

A quick list of the WiiWords that I’ve been finding around on the net. It’s getting a bit out of hand although the Wiit is really impressive. I think Nintendo would like to downplay the puns, might be a little too cute maybe. Understandably, I can imagine if a game had Wiimember as an OK button in saving system or game settings.

Wiimote – The Wii’s controller. This is pretty common language.
Wiiosk - The Wii demo kiosk.
Wiiview - A Wii game review.
Wiivolution - The Wii’s revolution codename.
Wiiplay - A replay in a Wii game.
Wiibate - A coupon for the Wii?

Penny Arcade has been posting some top-notch blog material of late. The bit about the lancet liver fluke forced a mental stare for minutes on end. I might have to adjust my religious view to accommodate such a strange living thing.

Seriously, rolling on the floor laughing. I don’t know why this comment on Kotaku struck me as so funny.

dMek says:
Is this a national geographic simulator or a video game? I’m hold judgement to see if the gameplay has evolved, or if they simply regurgitated Far Cry’s mundane FPS mediocrity.

XD National geographic simulator. Now that just cracked my ass up. Especially in light of how the FPS is just a video stress-test in some regards. Even the PS3 is going this sim route with their title Afrika. Hey, I’m all for learning and exploring virtual areas that I can’t afford the plane ticket to (or even time). I suppose every new innovation sees its lack of innovation by thinking “We’ll create a virtual reality environment!” ala Second Life, VRML, countless virtual reality collaboration experiments.

1. See new graphics chip, graphics technology, input device or other shiny object.
2. Think “reality is dead”.
3. Write software.
4. It doesn’t work.
5. Think “my software is dead”.
6. Wait for next shiny object.

We’re so not there yet guys. Anyway, funny stuff dMek.

Playstation3s are hitting ebay. My favorite is this one with a Buy It Now! price of $1999. Somehow, I feel like I’ve seen this before. Oh yeah, Playstation2.

I remember my boss in 2000 ordering me to take the day off and go stand in a line at Best Buy and get him one. He had done all the research on unit quanitities, given me a bunch in cash and let’s not forget gave me the day off to buy him a video game console. I got in line, with tons of excited geeks, at 4am. I missed the initial hand-out by 2 people. However, I was put on a reserve list. This was a list of backup consoles that Best Buy had to keep in stock in case there were any returns. Later in the week, I got a call by the manager and he told me to come into the store (but quietly). So I went into the store and told a worker that I was here to get you-know-what. The manager got the PS2 out of a locked safe and personally escorted me up to the counter. All the other customers stared at my blue box knowing what they would sell for on eBay.

We hooked up Madden 2001 and were completely blown away. It was marginally better than my high-end PC at the time, citing eye-balls on the football players that actually moved. We were shocked. At the time, everyone was screaming dreamcast. Take this usenet post from 2000:

Topic in uk.games.video.playstation
Sun, Aug 27 2000 12:00 am
Mark Stevens

I’ve given up the notion of pre-ordering now. What’s the point? Why pay an inflated price on launch day, with a poor selection of titles to choose from, when I can wait 6 months and then buy it at a more attractive price (and probably a model with a firmware upgrade too), with a wider range of (hopefully) decent titles to choose from?

Nah, I’ve made my mind up to buy a Dreamcast ASAP. Virtua Tennis, Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, F355 Challenge, Shenmue, D2, Type-X: Spiral Nightmare, etc. I’d rather spend the next 6-12 months playing some of those than paying over the odds, twiddling my thumbs until MGS2 arrives.

Yes, the dreamcast was a good system. But the PS2 succeeded. New titles aren’t coming out for the DC. And the PS3 is a franchise with full backwards compatibility, the DC is … um … well the point is hindsight is 20/20. It’s all good to say Wii360 until you are blue in the face. The fact of the matter is, no one can predict the future and the PS3 has more horsepower than you can discount. Specifically, I’m talking about a post on DailyTech (a site that is swarmed by morons):

NEW! P$3
By Crusader on 10/10/2006 5:47:27 PM , Rating: 2
This isnt enough PS3s to saturate the market enough. P$3 is dead. Xbox360 is taking this Christmas, having mass quantity out this season was crucial. Later Phony.

Yes. The PS3 is dead. Before it hit the shelves. Give me a break. I mean, what’s up with the hating. Is it the price? Are these people who are broke? Is is the burns that Sony has left on the community? Is it the obvious blueray push? There’s definitely a major meh going on. Let me list:

- Vista looks like crap – PCWorld says even RC2 is pretty bad
- no one cared about Apple’s new nano or 80gb ipod – Even I am doubting Apple’s ability to make a dent in Vista, no matter how crappy. Windows is good enough™ apparently.
- HDTV isn’t taking off en-masse
- blueray and HD-DVD is a CF
- the Wii’s sensor bar fails in sunlight
- no one is buying the Physics cards
- and who gives a damn about Microsoft’s Zune and Urge service? “Biggest flop of 2007″

Of course, this is all up for debate. I read DailyNews and Digg which is just chalk-full of negativity.

Kotaku runs a story that gets me in an EA bashing mode. NBA07 is bad, Madden07 is worse and gamers still continue to pour money into their titles. EA has a crapload of titles to support and they crank them out like no other, however, I think they’ve had a few quality problems. Maybe I need to explain…

For one, take this gray picture here. It’s EA’s support site; which like all huge companies is impossible to navigate to find patches. The developer is different than the publisher is different than the operations people, is different than the people who admin the game servers (likely). However, you’d think that gamers and geeks would throw their arms up in rage at the obvious and numerous typographical error LINUS SERVER. Like a nominal dart that has hit the bar’s waitress in the head, Linus Server is hilariously off target. But not without consequence. The community is shortly going to be calling the cops and it’s EA’s permanent record that will be charged with darting-with-intent-to-name.

EA has friends too. Valve’s lame attempt into Linusing has produced such great admin interfaces as the steam console, something I have to script to death to make usable and quick. Running a CS server is something that is rewarding after reading geocities documentation and researching what the hell “Free Sound List is Full!” means: it means they don’t handle errors quietly.

Valve neglects the dedicated server usability, EA neglects the Gates Server.

PA mentioned a certain trailer from the Tokyo Game Show. It is indeed as impressive as they claim.

Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo emit no will crushing pheromones. Compare that to the White Knight clip, which is a fairly comprehensive tour of my private desires.

The trailer might look pretty bland to some but to me I see smooth transitions, integrated cut-scenes, smooth animation, variety in play, coop with computer controller help and ridiculous potential. All of this in my view is really the next-gen beyond graphics. I’m sure I’ll love the Wii but here’s your $600 right here.

Like I said, it looks pretty typical. I guess you’ll have to watch the trailer to see the subtlety .. like how he puts his sword away and does a sleeper WWF move as if the female person in your party is supposed to jump up on the top rope and finish him off. She does but it’s a super fast backhand bitch slap.

This game gives me hope like nothing I have seen before on the PS3. MGS looked great but I never got into that series. However this game (perhaps because of the h.264) really showcases the fluid movement and the crazy handdrawn detail as if this was how cell-shading or “water color” style was supposed to look like. There’s no UT2004 super ultra glow going on. There’s no massive distance rendering problems of Oblivion. It looks like the PS3 is singing next-gen chorus written by God.

But who knows, it could be gay.