Archive for the 'Games' Category
June 18th, 2008 by cybrpunk
So we’ve watched the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie (which I still say is an outrageuosly long title for a movie). Before that we refreshed our Indy knowledge rewatching Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. [Have you noticed that the first move now has "Indiana Jones and" prepended to the title on the newer releases? It wasn't like that when it released.]
So you would think I’d be all work out at this point of anything with a fedora and a whip. But I really want to play the new Lego Indiana Jones game. Muse and I played the Lego Star Wars II game on Playstation 2 for a bit but we never really got very far. I thought it was a lot of fun though and I can see how the Indiana Jones franchise could really take advantage of the Lego game formula.
I just need to add it to the ever growing list of games I want to buy before I leave Hong Kong. XBox360 and PS3 games are quite a bit cheaper here since the market won’t support the ridiculous $60 USD per title price that is charged in the United States. Most games releasing in Hong Kong start at or around $39 USD per title when they come out and you can always find some older/cheaper ones too. I will definitely miss that when I’m gone.
June 12th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Oh, Jack Thompson, you poor deluded old idiot. I know Jack’s disbarment hearing is old news at this point but a lot of my readers don’t follow this kind of news on a regular basis.
Jack Thompson with his favorite video game
Jack Thompson is the florida lawyer who deems himself as a “moral crusader” who has slapped lawsuits against everyone and every thing over the past two decades (at least). He’s the one who got Howard Stern banned from something or other (no big loss there) and the one who flocks to every school shooting and teenage violence case to feed on the carcasses of the families left behind. He’s the worst kind of ambulance chaser because he doesn’t just try and make money off of other people’s tragedies, he parades these people in front of the world as a symbol of his insane fight to try and censor everything that ‘he’ deems improper.
Finally, the public and the government are catching on to this guy and doing something about him and is working to get him disbarred in the state of Florida. He walked out of that hearing. He refused to acknowledge the judge as a judge and accused her of falsifying her credentials among other things. He wrote a 14 page essay against his hearing where he actually stated “You don’t know Jack.” This guy has been a lost cause for a long time but I think he’s completely and clinically cracked at this point.
He’s also made it very clear that he has already applied for the ability to practice law in other states since Florida is obviously just out to get him. I’m hoping that no other states approve him but I’m not sure I have that much faith in the government. It’s hard to say at this point.
June 2nd, 2008 by cybrpunk
The cat wouldn’t stop meowing and howling all night. It’s been sick for over three or four days and is just starting to feel better. All that sleeping during that time had oviously been stored up to stay awake all freaking night. And then when it seems that he has quieted down an amazingly loud and bright lightning storm erupts right outside our windows sending out big dog (Chini) into hysterics and climbing over us to be protected. She’s terrified of storms for some reason and the one this morning was a doozy. She whimpered and pushed and shook for at least an hour or more keeping us both awake even more.
Over all I don’t think either of us got more than an hour of consecutive sleep last night. I am so wiped out today I’m barely even functional at work. Maybe some ice cream would help.
Most of the weekend was a lost cause due to taking the cats to the vet and going back and forth to pick them up or to ask questions. In the off times, I did a little drawing in Illustrator and then got my troll Hunter in World of Warcraft to level 50. Leveling is so much faster than it was a year ago. There seems to be more money available too because I’ve never had so much in game before.
When I get home tonight, all I want to do is take the dog’s out for their evening walk and then take a nap. Eating dinner is optional at this point. I’ll work on Thursday’s comic tomorrow. I’m to burnt to do it today. Today’s up on time though. As usual.
May 27th, 2008 by cybrpunk
According to an interview with Tomonobu Itagaki over at CVG, it’s the end of the line for both the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series of games. Itagaki is the famous creator of both those hugely popular video game franchises. He states in the interview via a translator from his native Japanese that he and his closest colleagues have accomplished everything they have wanted with those games.
Ninja Gaiden II will be available as an XBox360 exclusive on June 3rd, 2008 and is currently available for pre-orders. For nostalgia sake you can also purchase the original Ninja Gaiden through XBox Live as a downloadable game for 1200 Microsoft Points. I doubt there’s a need to do so story-wise though.
The final game in the Dead or Alive series is the disappointing Dead or Alive 4 which launched with the XBox360. My Hong Kong XBox360 came as a package deal with DoA4 and I’ve been regretting that one ever since. I’d always been a huge fan of the series but the changes to counter-attacks in the game really ruined it for me. I refuse to link to the Dead or Alive Volleyball spin-off games.
May 21st, 2008 by cybrpunk
I… I am weak. I’ve reactivated my World of Warcraft account. After almost a year of not playing, I finally got drawn back in. Well, Yoshi had a lot to do with that. He’s evil like that. He’s such an enabler. And now I’m trying to get Muse to re-activate her account. *sigh*
I know I make it sound bad but its really not. It’s just what seems to be expected when someone admits that they are getting back into an online game that they used to play. I don’t see it as a weakness or an evil in the least. It’s just a game. It can be a bit addictive at times and it certainly is a time sink, but it’s really no worse than spending hours playing “casual” games from PopCap or Reflexive. I would just as easily spend 3 hours playing Peggle as I would Warcraft.
Anyway, if you are playing WoW and are on the Lothar server, leave a comment with your character name and I’ll see if I can find you. However, if you play one of those evil, under-handed Alliance then I may have to try and hurt you. Fair warning.
May 12th, 2008 by cybrpunk
It’s Monday and I’m sitting at home still un-showered and working on comics. Today is a public holiday here in Hong Kong. It’s Buddha’s birthday! Who am I to argue? Sadly though, public holidays are a double-edged sword. Sure you get the day off, but unless you feel like pushing through crowds of people everywhere you go, you pretty much just sit at home all day. Like I’m doing.
We say Iron Man on Saturday afternoon and it was awesome. I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to comic book to movie adaptations and I know many of them aren’t that great. Iron Man definitely lived up to the hype in my opinion though.
After the movie, Muse and I split up and went with our friends to different places. Me and my friend went to Sham Shui Po to go to the computer and game malls to look for a Sony PSP for me. I thought about getting a second hand system but decided it was too much risk for too little discount. So I went for a new one. Unfortunately all the cool colors of the new ’slim’ PSP are all twice the price (or more) of the standard black, white or pastel colors. So I found a shop that still sold the ‘fat’ versions. They had a few of the limited Japanese releases so I went for one of those. Just to make Colin jealous if nothing else.
Oh yeah, that is a metallic blue Sony PSP. Only released in Japan but everything ends up in Hong Kong eventually. Sometimes I love shopping here in Hong Kong.
May 10th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I think there’s something wrong with me. I came across this simple web game called TypeRacer and actually found my competitive nature kicking in and making an otherwise productive day into a keyboard melting experience. And the odd thing is that it’s probably good for me.
The whole idea is that it gives you a paragraph from a book, movie or song that you have to type, accurately, as fast as you can. At the same time, other people are racing against you to type the paragraph faster. Little Volkswagen New Beetles race along the top of the screen to show the progress. The first to complete the paragraph with no mistakes wins. Then you go on to the next race.
The thing is that I nearly flunked my typing class when I was in high school. I’ve gotten better with typing in my computer career but I still make plenty of mistakes. But making typing into an on-line competition? I’m already up to 60 words per minute! Granted that’s in a short burst typing out one paragraph, but still - it’s improvement.
Of course there’s also a leaderboard that shows the fastest typers and obviously there are some robots that play this game too because I don’t hink it’s humanly possible to type at 217 words per minute. Perhaps there’s a cheat like Aimbot for typing or something. Who cares. Try it out.
April 28th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Not that it was longer than the standard two days, but this did end up being a nice long weekend. I would tell you all about it, but my wife has already gone through all the trouble of writing it all out, so I will just ask that you go read the details at her site.
On Friday night I spent a little time finishing up the last chapter of American Gods by Neil Gaiman so I could start on a new book on Monday’s commute. I’d heard from a lot of people that American Gods was a good book and it definitely did not dissapoint. I’ve been a big fan of Neil Gaiman since the Sandman comics series first came what seems like forever ago. If you are a fan of his and have not read American Gods, I highly recommend it. I really can’t say much about it because I don’t want to ruin any of the details for anyone. I’ll be checking the used book store for Anansi Boys since it has a few of the same characters although I understand it’s not actually a sequel.
On Saturday, Muse had a nice long nap so I finished playing Bioshock on the XBox360. Considering all the hype and glowing reviews surrounding this game I have to admit that I had pretty high expectations for this game. Especially since the creators were some of the same people that created the classic System Shock and System Shock 2 games many years prior. For a lot of the game I felt kind of disappointed and even a bit bored with the repitition. However the mechanics are decent and the story is somewhat interesting so I kept playing and I’m glad I did.
I’m guessing that the reviewers that gave it the good ratings that they did had completed the game because it just doesn’t work until you’ve finished the game and seen the whole picture and the whole story (or at least as much is available in this game). Some parts of the game are tedious or annoying ( I lost count of how many Little Sisters died on my watch in The Proving Grounds) but the overall look and feel of the game is perfect. It’s not a flawless game though and I encoutered the typical errors that are found in most games in regards to graphics, AI and physics. It’s a good game and well worth playing all the way through but I don’t think it was deserving of all the hype that it received.
It has been mentioned that perhaps I need to take a break from playing video games because I seem to be getting jaded in my opinions of new titles. Which I think is untrue as well as impossible. Untrue because there have been a number of games that I have played recently that I have absolutely loved (or at least really liked). Impossible because video games are a huge part of my life and I can’t imagine life without them. That may change but not today.
March 27th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Although I would really prefer a Warhammer 40K MMORPG be created for my entertainment, I’m not above being interested in the alternate universe of Warhammer Fantasy. It’s not as interesting to me but at least it’s something. The online game version, which has been in development for a very long time now, has been shaping up to be a pretty involved game. I’m still not sure how they will stick to some of the core conventions of the Warhammer table top games but maybe they won’t need to.
Some say that this is looking a lot like World of Warcraft but that is really unfair and untrue since Warhammer has been out for at least 20 years longer than Warcraft. Warcraft owes a hell of a lot to the Warhammer games in it’s races and designs. However now it looks like Warhammer is taking at least one queue from Blizzard. They are releasing a very cool looking collector’s edition of the game that is now available for pre-orders. Considering I bought a collectors edition box set for both releases of World of Warcraft so far, I am definitely their target audience here.
Yes this version will cost a lot more and no it’s not really worth it in the long run but dammit if I am going to buy this game I don’t want it unless I can have the collector’s edition. I am a sucker for cool marketing and this just looks awesome. Add to that the requisite exclusive in-game content and I’m sold. Yeah I know. It’s a sickness….
March 25th, 2008 by cybrpunk
If you’re not familiar with the whole Gamespot fiasco late last year (where a premier editor was fired after giving a bad review to a heavily advertised game), this Ars Technica article shows a timeline of his firing followed by the departure of five more major Gamespot staff, many of which claim say has to do with the original firing. Gamespot can claim that the firing was unrelated to the advertising and the review, but somehow I doubt it.
While I was poking around in the user comments though, I noticed a link to a site called Giant Bomb. This is a new start-up games site by Jeff Gerstmann (the Gamespot editor who was fired) and other recently ex-Gamespot staff including Ryan Davis and Alex Navarro. I’d say it’s pretty likely that even more recent Gamespot retirees will start having their name show up on this site as well.
The Giant Bomb site has only been posting content since February but they already have some game reviews and news of the quality that I used to come to expect from the old site. If you’re interested in games and gaming news, make sure you bookmark this site as I expect it to become a major player very soon.
