Jayge

Jayge is further convinced that Nuts and Bolts is a great game.

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  • Nov. 20, 2008 - 12:20 p.m.
    Jayge just posted on Fawk's wall
    It's become annoyingly apparent through your numerous erroneous review comments that you have no idea how the GiantBomb rating system works. To save everyone else the trouble of reading most of your fallacies, I am providing you with a link so that you may educate yourself properly and stop looking so dumb. http://www.giantbomb.com/help/ You will find the description in the FAQ question.

  • Nov. 19, 2008 - 5:34 p.m.
    Jayge just posted on Lies's wall
    She melts me :3

  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 5:18 p.m.
    Jayge just had a submission approved for Daxter
    Jayge just made 4 changes on the Daxter page and now has 1,455 points.

  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 5:16 p.m.
    Jayge just submitted a new trivia question:
    In Assassin's Creed, this famous beauty lends her voice to a character:
  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 5:11 p.m.
    Jayge just submitted a new trivia question:
    In the PSP game Daxter, what does Daxter use to get around the city?
  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 5:04 p.m.
    Jayge just posted on JackiJinx's wall
    See, you appreciate fine art. And crazy Peter Griffin drawings.

  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 4:58 p.m.
    Jayge just added a new blog
    Jayge's New Profile
    Read it or not. It all depends on whether or not you want your mind permanently scarred with sarcastically bad freestyle lyrics and the most amazing combination of HTML and pixels ever.

  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 4:29 p.m.
    Jayge just posted on DualReaver's wall
    Always babe. Always.

  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 3:29 p.m.
    Jayge is further convinced that Nuts and Bolts is a great game.
  • Nov. 16, 2008 - 11:46 a.m.
    Jayge just posted on Virago's wall
    Yes ma'am.

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About Me
I'm the Orgasmic Pilgrim.

You fear me, embrace me, lambaste me, encast me.

You try to rule me, fool me, straight up school me.

But you don't, you won't, you just plain can't.

I'm the man with the images, the living rant.

Thank you. Thank you very much.


My Blog
Added by Jayge on Nov. 16, 2008 | |
Read it or not. It all depends on whether or not you want your mind permanently scarred with sarcastically bad freestyle lyrics and the most amazing combination of HTML and pixels ever.


Added by Jayge on Nov. 12, 2008 | |
Too good of an image to pass up. This will stay until Thanksgiving. Remember, kill your Natives and steal their techniques! It's the American way!


Added by Jayge on Oct. 24, 2008 | |

This post relates to: Are you going to give up World of Warcraft for Star Wars: The Old Republic?

And even if I did, I doubt I'd drop it for another Star Wars MMO. Especially a KOTOR MMO. Even WoW is almost guaranteed to be more quality then that.


Added by Jayge on Oct. 20, 2008 | |
Click Here for Epic.

Felt like sharing some retro love. Enjoy, anyone who missed this.


Added by Jayge on Oct. 15, 2008 | |
Seriously. I read Kotaku lazily throughout the day (on the off-chance they report something interesting) and this douche's articles pop up continuously. Always condescending, rarely benign, guaranteed to completely insult somebody, he's an author with what must be a mostly troll or generally idiotic audience. I seriously don't get why this guy still has a job. I'm fine with negativity (hey, you've all seen me post) but he takes things that people should really respect (and I even cringe at what he says about things I don't even like) and stomping over them in such a condescending manner with no rhyme nor reason, or even anything besides stereotypes as substance to back it up is a terrible way to write. And while that may sound exactly like me, the difference is the fact that I give respect where respect is due and I always have a well-reasoned argument to back up my statements. He's also doing quite the disservice to all of his own Australian comrades, to be honest. Anyone who sees him (knowing his nationality) and then watches Yahtzee is going to wonder what's up down under.

Yes, I know Ben Croshaw is British.

Also, the World at War beta. That thing has done nothing for itself but lose sales. Seriously. I posted a fairly large mini-essay on the subject of my dislikes HERE. It covers maybe 60% of my problems with the game, and the others are either too technical or nit-picky to bother posting.

And if you have a PSP, get Firmware 5.00. It's the bomb. If you *DON'T* have a PSP, get one.


My Lists

1. Favorites

A list of 16 items by Jayge last updated on July 31, 2008

Jayge: Favorites


2. Wishlist

A list of 18 items by Jayge last updated on Sept. 5, 2008

Jayge: Wishlist


3. Articles to be Written.

A list of 4 items by Jayge last updated on Sept. 5, 2008

Unless someone beats me to it, I'm just going to make a list of articles for games that I have that need to be written here.


Top Contributions

Wipeout Pulse
320 Points

Dead Head Fred
235 Points

Far Cry 2
132 Points

Age of Chivalry
103 Points

Noodles
94 Points

Fallout 3
81 Points

Jukebox
52 Points

My Reviews
Reviewed by Jayge
Sept. 4, 2008
Very Long Too Human Review of Ironic Naming Conventions


Too Human- the game that everybody and nobody wants to play. At once. Paradox? You'd think so, unless you saw the recent turd-flinging contest between developers, media, fans, and random people that was the Too Human release aftermath.

Too Human is indeed a strange beast, a game who's development I've followed for several years now. For those of you who don't have much background (how could you not?), Too Human is developed by Silicon Knights, the much-lauded developers of titles such as Eternal Darkness, MGS: Twin Snakes, and a Legacy of Kain title. It takes place far in the past, as a sci-fi re-imagining of Norse Mythology, offering a unique take on cyclic history and old Scandinavian tales. You play as the god Baldur, a member of the Aesir corporation, a Private Military Company specializing in cybernetic implants. You are charged with defending humanity's last vestiges from the impending robot invasion. Sound generic? Read on.

Let me start off with one of this title's hot subjects: the story. To put it in the simplest terms possible, Too Human's story is phenomenal. That being said, the storytelling and presentation is something you wouldn't expect from a game that was made after the year 2000. Silicon Knights, a development house notorious for its stiff and fairly emotionless animations, decided against Motion Capture use in Too Human. As a result, main characters often fail to convey their feelings adequately, despite generally admirable voice work. Ironically, it's two of the main characters, Baldur and the rambunctious Thor, who's voice talent needs to be changed before the next iteration of Too Human. Overall, cinematics fail to do justice to the writer's epic re-telling, often leaving you yearning for more, scratching at the surface to get at the beauty you can see just under its crust. The game starts to pick up and start getting things right just in the last level, with the last cutscene leaving you going “Why the hell wasn't the rest of this put in one game?”.

In terms of graphics, another catch-22 presents itself. The art style- is entirely magnificent. The large, open environments, gigantic backgrounds and detailed, interesting designs never cease to impress. The graphics themselves are (can you guess what's coming next?) a fairly large let-down. Average by all means, they don't do much other than show you how great things could have been. Polygon count is low, facial definition is spotty and oddly low on polish, although it's an area that you'd expect to see a story-driven game to excel in. Hair is the worst offender, looking flatter than Amy in Soul Calibur 4. Weapons and armor are designed beautifully, with detail and uniqueness enhanced by the color rune upgrades available on the cheap in the Weapon and Armor stores. Some skins can border on ridiculous, and there seems to be a mild case of “WoW Shoulders” going around town; but you can never say that you don't really feel bad-ass. The game does a great job of making you look like god from the beginning, and somehow manages to keep the feeling of awesomeness rising as you level up continually, all the while updating with more ridiculous names every time. Looking at screenshots of the game in '06 while it was still on the Unreal Engine 3 is an exercise in sadness, as you can clearly see much smoother models and what is apparently an actual head of hair for Freya; but I digress.

Gameplay is the real meat of Too Human, and that is where it tends to excel. Many harp the controls for their “unintuitiveness”, their tendency to be “too clunky” and “retarded man, like a button masher but WTF NO BUTTONZ NO WAI”. I have to chalk those complaints up to people who just can't get into something new, however. The controls work beautifully- allowing all the combat action of a button mashing game without the finger fatigue, allowing for long dungeon-crawl-style play sessions without having to get repeated Carpal Tunnel surgery. Targeting and locking on is all handled by the right thumbstick, movement with the left. Once close enough to an enemy, you may hit the attack button and perform a slide, speeding up and hitting the enemy with your godly... hoverskates? Who knows. It just looks cool. As you continue to build a combo count, your speed increases and you begin flying around the map with frightening speed. Shooting is done with the triggers- simply hold one or both down and point the stick in the direction of an enemy. Tap the right stick once (twice for pistols) to adjust targets and shoot multiple enemies. If you happen to have trouble with the guns targeting dead enemies repeatedly, take both fingers off the trigger and manually re-target your intended baddie. It works, but it takes skill. In addition to these main mechanics, you have special attacks. These consist of Ruiners, Spiders, Battle Cries, and Sentient Weapon Abilities. Ruiners are Area of Effect attacks, triggered with the right bumper. They use Combo Meter, the game's equivalent of Mana. You build Combo by battling, forcing a good mixture of combat and special moves that results in a well-rounded experience. Battle Cries are rather self explanatory, they are group skills that apply buffs for as long as they run, and they also require Combo. Spiders are another story. Press Y, and you have a little AI buddy come out and do something, whether it is deploying shields, attaching bombs, or being an amazingly bad-ass support turret. They have limited charge times, and have a long downtime. Sentient Weapons work by deploying a shadow version of Fenrir, your sword, which goes out and literally destroys anything in its path. It's amazingly fun to use.

Now that I've covered the 3 core components, let's discuss replay value. In a game like Too Human, a dungeon crawler with hybrid Action game combat, you'd expect to want to play the crap out of it. Not so. Although the level cap is 50, it is a tedious and rather boring journey to reach it. Completing the game gets you about halfway through, landing at level 26 or 27. The rest of the game is endgame exploring and looting, something that quickly becomes tiresome. The game has 4 large areas, of roughly 1-2 hours each. The second level is an anomaly, often taking more than 3 hours to complete. That would be all fine and dandy if it weren't for the annoying Token system. Collect tokens by playing through sections of the level, with the best boss loot only available if you've gotten every token in the level. Tokens are very annoying to gather, although you can do a section of a level, leave, and come back later still possessing that token, allowing you to break it into bits. The problem is environment variety. Only the Ice Forest is really distinctive, and even that is just another oddly bumpy floor with lights that takes you through the annoying door with more enemies. The only incentive is Epic loot, but even that fails to draw in your attention long enough to spend 100+ hours on the game (although people report having done exactly that already).

So overall, in conclusion? Too Human is a fun game. A good game. Not great, above mediocre, and certainly not bad (I'm looking at you, Jim Sterling). If you enjoyed the demo, this game is for you. If you thought it was ok at best, give it a rent. It's a good weekend-buster (averaging 12 hours of length) for the lull before the explosion that is the Fourth Quarter of Release Hell. The game certainly isn't without its design flaws, but several innovations shine through that leave me instilled with confidence in the second iteration in this trilogy. I would recommend a healthy background in Norse Mythology before you dive into this, if you'd like to get into the story. This game hits slightly between the 3 and 4 mark, so I'll leave you guys with a rousing 3 and a half stars. A solid addition to any library, it should be tried (in demo form) by anyone remotely interested.




1,459 Points
Ranked #389 of 23,824

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Jayge Stats
Date Joined: July 26, 2008
City:
Gender: Male
Alignment: Neutral
My Friends
BiggerBomb
is searching for the meaning of life....he thinks it might be Microsoft Paint.
1 hour, 52 minutes ago
super_machine
Motivation status: 5:30pm
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coonce
is checking in image code...
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loves Moss, Roy and Jen
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Mexalen
just bought L4D :)
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StarFoxA
is so tired
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albedos_shadow
is transferring like 1000 songs to my laptop.
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JackiJinx
won blackout at bingo!
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Dalai
is done for the day.
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Disgaeamad
is an L10 on the L5 scale of madness
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Jayge's Wall
Gameboi
on Nov. 21, 2008
Your avvy scares the crap out of me, and I embrace horror themes.
zitosilva
on Nov. 20, 2008
Oh my god, this Pter Griffin is the most awesome/creepy/disturbed/ and again awesome thing I've ever seen.
Lies
on Nov. 19, 2008
You WOULD submit Kristen Bell trivia.
LightYagami245
on Nov. 18, 2008
I'm afraid.
Hamz
on Nov. 16, 2008
lol nice profile man, very nice....
JackiJinx
on Nov. 16, 2008
I gots ta do what I gots ta do. Know what I'm saying?
DualReaver
on Nov. 16, 2008
Hold me.
Virago
on Nov. 16, 2008
JAAAAAYYYYGGEEEE. That's all, you crazy wizard.
DualReaver
on Nov. 13, 2008
I'm the real Jayge.
systech
on Nov. 12, 2008
Can I get a "what? what?" for Kristen Bell?
Coltonio7
on Nov. 12, 2008
Jayge....your new icon scares the shiiiit outta me.
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