captainfish

I seriously cannot believe that there is a $25 skin for a mount, and that it sold a lot. I'm assuming a lot of it was gifts for people who play the game. I also would not call a $25 purchase a "micro-transaction". I haven't really seen how closed Bnet will be for things like player icons and stuff, so they might offer that stuff, but I severely doubt that they will be selling things that effect the balance of multiplayer SC II. I'm pretty much already on board to get a collector's edition SC II (~$100 cdn), so I'm not going to be looking for ways to make that purchase more expensive.

"Since your a mac owner, you shouldn't worry, your videocard will probally not be strong enough anyways. Honestly though, you probally would of really enjoyed the game.  "

" it's not tough to max out those games. "

He only reads descriptions for the wiiware/dsiware games, and it's just stuff from the store pages. There are no boxes or back of the box descriptions. This poll kinda sucks, because he's asking if they should stop talking about wiiware/dsiware games, not all releases. You can't talk about some online game delivery services and then ignore the Nintendo offerings without being clearly biased.

I think the problem is that no game company is saying, "let's put advertising in this game, so we can pass the savings on to the consumer," They don't give a fuck. They only care about reducing their bottom line. If they could fill a game with ads and still sell it for 60 bucks, they would gladly do so. Also, aside from the fact that no advertising works very well, the products in games never seem to be directed towards the people who would play them anyway. Dr. Pepper in SC:Conviction? Who hasn't heard of that drink? They should probably try to advertise their own games in there, at least I would care about the things they're selling.

***Reading this over, seeing as it's pretty much a review at this point, I'll probably do another draft and submit it as a review. I originally intended it to be an analysis of the game's qualities and my personal experiences, but it came out very review-y. There are other games coming that will be dealt with in a much less review formatted fashion.***

Seeing as it's summer, and I have a fairly large backlog of games from my Steam sale binging, I've decided to try to playthrough a bunch of games on my list, to find out if there are any gems. The first game I ended up playing (mostly due to it's small size and thus quick download) is the NosconRocket Knight by Climax.

One thing I really liked about this game, is that it has full controller support, not just Xbox 360 support. The game launches a little settings dialogue where you can choose your controls, but you can't choose which controller, of those plugged in, you'd prefer, at least I couldn't.

The game looks great. It's in 2.5d, which is fully three dimesional sprites locked in planar motion. It features a very cartoony style that really fits in with the content. The game also features nice background work that often incorporates the character models in action. For example the first stage has an opossum being threatened by a wolf, who upon seeing Sparkster leaves her to attack the rocket knight. Little touches like this really give the impression that you are saving the kingdom. Some of the textures on background objects aren't the highest res, but the animations and the depth more than make up for that fact. Sparkster's jet pack effects look really nice, with great cartoony puffs of smoke. All in all, it's a great take on the very cartoony style of the original games.

A lot of you guys are kinda missing the point. He's not really bashing the review itself, although having 10 pages is a bit silly. It's the idea of putting out a press release that reveals a ton of bias in the product. It's fine that they discuss the 6 covers and badges, as those are magazine marketing points. Even saying that your review is the only that matters, is a valid marketing technique, albeit a bit brazen. However, the language that they use to refer to Galaxy 2 is very biased in it being a great game. Miyamoto's masterpiece, the latest and greatest mario game, this is the work of marketing people performing what is supposed to be editorial work. The more important thing to take away from this article is the lines between who is the editorial voice, the voice that reviews and discusses games, and who is the marketing voice, the voice that determines ad sales and marketing initiatives. In order for any magazine to really work, these voices have to be independent, that is, working completely separately and communicating to the public in that manner, or if they do work in tandem, the editorial voice has to throttle what the marketing people are allowed to do. This is a case of a marketing press release filled with editorial content, which is sleazy.

Edit: Chris, I can't really believe that you posted in here, but no one is really calling you out on whether or not you are a fair and balanced editor, reviewer, of if the same can be said for your publication. The real issue here is that the press release to promote your magazine ends up promoting SMG2 with an editorial voice. I think it's very possible to create a marketing focused press release about ONM's SMG2 coverage that has much less hyperbole and and focuses on the reasons why you should buy that magazine. "6 covers, badges, news on the upcoming Wii Mario galaxy game and an in-depth review."  That sounds a lot less biased than what was released.

Also I can't believe you guys took this discussion of how a magazine advertises it's content into a tirade against Official console magazines, nintendo, fanboys, reviews and whatever you wanted to see. Maybe Jeff shouldn't write articles like this anymore, because a lot of people take them to mean much more than they actually say.

I switched to a stick a year ago to play SFIV vanilla, and I've got to admit, I've had mixed success. My charge character play improved instantly (but I don't main any charge guys), and moves that I believed were too long to do with short timing became feasible. Advanced techniques like kara throws become much easier with the buttons. Full circles and half circles also became a lot easier to do, but my quarter circles were (and still kinda are) terrible. I was kicked back down to that time as a kid, where I could do hadokens from one side, but not from the other. I'm still working on that, but we're not talking about me, we're trying to help you, on to the tips. 

First, I would experiment with various hand positions until you have a style down. Page of Tips and positions. You may find that different positions work in different situations, so try to keep it loose. Start out with exaggerated movements with the stick at the throw (maximum) tilt, then try to reduce tilt and extraneous motions. SFIV is great for this because it has good prioritization, for example down back to up forward punch will still give you a hadoken. Also don't forget that button positioning is just as important as the stick grip. You need to be able to hit your throws/reversals, focus attacks, and (most importantly) your taunts at will. Since there 6-8 buttons and you only have 5 digits, you'll need to have flexibility here too.  Practice is the most important thing to do. Try to play a little everyday, if you have trouble with certain moves, go into training and try to do several (10? 25? 50?) in a row without error. To be honest, this is hard for me to do, I just wanna get online and play, but if you take a little time it will improve your game.

I didn't know Michel Gondry played Castlevania, or DDR now that I think of it. He must be a Konami fan.

Opera, the granddaddy of all the stuff other browsers do now. Gotta love the voice support and fully featured mailbox.

The fact that those character pictures are in game models kinda blows my mind.