I sometimes blog about music, too. Here's an example.
Share the love.
Keep it locked.
Netsky released this badboy predominantly as a "Fuck you" after journalists leaked his album preview onto the interwebs. I fucking love this track, it's quality is the final nail driven into the coffin of everyone who stole this great album :D
B-Complex get's kudos both for this stunning b-side to the epic (and arguably overplayed) Beautiful Lies and, also, the album art is fantastic. Might need to get a plate and frame it, next to my 12" of City Life by Logistics.
Bop got signed after sending his homebrew melodies to the Hospital Records Democast - this tune, one of his earliest, is a fucking masterpiece.
I can't remember if I have seen C&K live, but I should probably hunt down a gig soon because they are on fucking form right now.
Another Netsky track. Too much love? Hater's gon' hate.
Nostalgia plays a huge role in the marketing and design choices of videogames. Every year will see dozens of new additions to franchises that bear almost no resemblance to their original counterparts. It is the opinion of many that to qualify as a "real" gamer, one must have been educated with the classics. However to expect every man to have played them all is, I feel, a little naive. To further imply that his opinion is somehow diminished by his lack of familiarity with what you deem to be the roots of his addiction is also unfair.
As with every medium there will always be those forms that are allowed a timelessness. Or so i'm told. One does not have to play The Legend Of Zelda to appreciate the impact is had had upon an entire generation, and it's ripples can still be seen floating across the placidity of the internet. Such an example is fitting, as it embarks the list of games which, for one reason or another, I never got round to playing and have always felt slightly guilty about as a result.
I never owned an N64. That's probably the best excuse I can muster. I had friends that did, of course, and I am fully versed in all the multiplayer classics - Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Super Smash Bros - all featured heavily throughout my upbringing. The single-player adventures were always discarded, as we never had enough time or patience to establish any real headway with some of the greatest games Nintendo has ever made. Apparently.
My first 3D platforming adventure was, therefore, Crash Bandicoot for the PSX, a game which I loved and continue to love retroactively. I only ever got to play one level of Super Mario 64 when I was visiting a friend. I got to explore the castle and complete the first level. You know, the one where you need to run up that hill and defeat the card/domino shaped guy up the top? Anyway, my clunky Playstation fingers struggled to grip the janky-ass N64 controller and the game was hastily changed.
It sometimes seems like all the good 3D platformers were on the N64, which sucks because I never got to play any of them. The closest I have got to Banjo was in nut's and bolts - a game I frustratingly surrendered to having discovered it to be more vehicle-based sandbox than actual platformer. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not what I wanted. N&B teased the potential for a great platformer, then stubbornly refused to deliver. Bastards.
The Xbox is the other console I never got around to owning, being of the age where I could only afford one console and had somehow managed to come into possession of two: The PS2 and Gamecube. The result was a had barely enough money to buy games for one console, let alone them both - and the Xbox wasn't even a blip on my radar. So while I was up to my ears in timesplitters, final fantasy, super smash bros and mario sunshine, there was very little in the way of the Master Chief. We finally became acquainted many years later prior to the release of Halo 3. I'm predominantly a multiplayer enthusiast but I don't know if I have it in me to ever really commit to a halo game. I'm sad that I missed this game in it's prime though, as whenever people speak of it their words express such reverence. Apparently it was "ground-breaking" but unfortunately I was standing on the wrong patch of ground.
I only ever got shitty bottom-of-the range laptops until I was about... 21. This meant I never really had a powerhouse PC the likes of which I currently possess. If I got to play PC games at all it was several years after their release, once the tech had caught up. By the time I owned anything resembling a machine that could play Counter Strike I was already addicted to the original Call Of Duty. I have since become addicted to Team Fortress 2, so I guess it all evens out?
One of those super early capcom games which people seem to simply assume everyone has played at some point. I can confess, shamelessly, that I had never played a Mega Man game until last year when my housemate bought Mega Man 9 on the Wii Virtual Console. I don't really get what all the fuss is about, but apparently it was a big deal at the time?
Another one of those classics which spawned dozens of copycats and is referred to as the source of that maze-like action sidescrolling that we are doomed to repeat forever. Someone told me this is the game that Shadow Complex was based on, which is high praise, I guess?
Having bought the re-released HD version of this on XBLA I remain slightly confused by why people seem to hold this game with such high regard, and frustrated that I CAN'T FUCKING JUMP. What sort of bullshit platformer is this? Fail.
Never played a Hitman game. I'm not a stealthy kinda guy. Shoot first, then try to think of some questions later. Hitman supposedly offered lots of freedom from the traditional linear storytelling that seemed to exist elsewhere. I missed it, primarily because I was existing. Elsewhere.
Jungler represents every arcade game, ever. I live in Wiltshire in Great Britain. We don't have arcades. We barely have electricity. Up until my 6th birthday if you wanted flashing lights you had to get someone to point a torch in your face and then turn it on and off really fast. I never got to play arcade machines, so the entire contents of Game Room is a complete waste of time as far as i'm concerned. My avatar wonders it's dusty halls with an expression of acute bewilderment. These games once meant something. These are the beginning of the medium to which I am willing to devote my whole life. For them to mean so little to me is therefore, emotionally confusing. I feel like I should somehow pay homage to this stuff but I can't. I'm too busy playing Starcraft 2.
I'm sure there are others which I have forgotten. Please don't assume I have played all the games that aren't on this list. These are simply the ones that are repeatedly referenced as "games we assumed you had played". Well, I haven't played them. And i'm probably not going to.
It makes me sad that the bombcast will no longer be a shared experience throughout the userbase. That was perhaps the strength of this website and the gel which holds together what people loving refer to as "The community". I know these guys have got to make money, and to do so they should exploit what brings people to the site in the first place. After all, this site is built around the popularity of it's staff. But to so transparently and crudely whore out their personalities can only cause resentment.
I no longer want to pay for a subscription that implies I support this decision. I think this is a terrible idea, both for giantbomb and for it's users. I don't want to stir up a big mess so i'm not going to post this to the forums. I just wanted to weigh in on what is proving to be quite a controversial issue.
EDIT
Time has passed and I have calmed down a little. I'm going to shuddup, not because I have changed my mind but simply because I can't think of a better alternative. It sucks, but I just have to deal with it. I'm buying a yearly subscription to support the site that has kept me entertained for the last two years and asked for nothing in return. I think splitting the bombcast up is a dumb fucking idea but it makes sense from a business perspective.
All i'm going to say is: They could probably make the bombcast free and they would get MORE subscribers. Goodwill goes a long way.
Oh, and that T-Shirt had better be fucking mindblowing >:(
Recently I feel I have got back into the swing of writing. Sometimes I go through a phase where I feel obligated to blog and it becomes a chore. However if there is one thing I never feel obligated to do, it's keeping it simple...
For 400 MS points this is perhaps the best deal on XBLA right now. It has a small story arc, multiple characters, bosses and, oh yeah, zombies. It looks beautiful and runs much smoother than I remember the original ever performing. Still not convinced? It gives you the ability to strap a garden rake onto a car battery. You are breaking the law if you do not buy this.
Free Weekends
I hopped back into LOVE and it's amazing how much has changed since a few months ago, let alone since launch. There is now a full weather system and when it rains, the entire planet can flood - leaving surviving players stranded on islands and mountain-tops. Magical game!
I can't understand why people are getting excited for this. I hate all you "Always bet on duke!" smug bastards. Call me when it hits shelves, then we can talk. Until then I refuse to accept DNF for anything more than smoke and mirrors.
It's time consuming, exhausting, and often your work is met with complaints, sarcasm, and worst of all; dismissal.
The hardest thing about blogging is finding something to contribute
something to make the blog worth writing in the first place.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of blogs. There are those that reflect the opinions and ideas of an individual who is content to flick his own two cents onto the existing heap of cents. Then there are those which are aware of the heap, acknowledge the heap, then walk straight past it. A good writer forms the words that you were too vocally clumsy to architect yourself, sometimes so succinctly that they become instant truths. A good writer deals in the definitive. It's a thin line down which few may walk.
Nobody wants to sound stale.
Nobody wants to repeat what others have already said, to live in the shadow of better more successful writers. So when it comes to something important, it's sometimes difficult to carve out your own corner of individual reflection. To make yourself heard in a world where everyone has a voice is difficult. To maintain that voice, to give it life and personality beyond the words it offers - that is the true test of ability. I like to write down my opinions because I often feel that, in the process of writing them down, I am awarded a fresh clarity. Blogging helps me organize my own inner insanity, my reasoning being that if someone else can understand what i'm talking about then I should be able to as well. However...
I shall not be so arrogant as to deny the truth, having already discovered it.
When Microsoft announced their new price plan for xbox live I was unimpressed.
The list of issues, additional costs and general problems I have had with my xbox is already lengthy and continues to grow. It's not a matter of choosing the right or wrong console, it goes far deeper than that. It's about Microsoft treating it's customers like dirt time and time again and, sooner or later, a line must be drawn. This sentiment exists and has already been put forward far more succinctly than I could ever hope to achieve:
" It isn't really about ten dollars. I have ten dollars; you have seen to it. It's the tug of the reins I don't like, the steel bit in my jowls which denotes mastery. As I've said, I find the service worthwhile at a few bucks a month, and with the cards I grabbed yesterday I'll be paying thirty-eight dollars a year for the foreseeable future . But God damn can I hold a grudge, God damn ; and making me resent you is the first step to my courting another. "
The message here is not that I shall burn my Xbox, boycott the next Halo game, stamp my copy of Gears Of War into the dirt. It's that when the next generation of consoles finally rolls around, in 5, 6 or however many years - I don't think I can ever bring myself to return to a company that consistently acts with such blundering inconsideration. Why should they be considerate? Well, they have all my money, for a start...
So this blog is not a groundbreaking addition to the current debate, nor oil upon the raging console war. It is merely a recognition, a mutual understanding, and a nod of approval. It's my two cents.
I'm in that weird limbo between taking an exam and waiting for the consequential set of very important results.
There's nothing I can do now but sit and quietly panic about the fact that I could have potentially fucked up. There is no longer anything I can do about it. That's unhealthy. That's got to be unhealthy. Right?
I'm trying to keep myself busy with my existing videogames, seeing as I can't afford new ones. I spent my last £5 watching Scott Pilgrim at the cinema (It's awesome) and then borrowed £5 so I could buy Scott Pilgrim on XBLA (also awesome). I'm also trying to get excited for Forza 3, though my usual interaction is to open the decal designer and silently imagine it's vast potential before becoming completely overwhelmed and turning off the television.
Sort of like this. Except nothing like this. The one game I have been playing in abundance is Epic Mafia. Epic Mafia is a free browser based game where players are given random roles, each with a unique ability, and divided into two groups - mafia and villagers. The mafia know how each other are but the villagers are all anonymous. The villagers have to find and lynch one person each day to try and remove all the mafia from the game. The mafia meanwhile are picking one person from the village each night and killing them. It's a game that revolves around intense mind fuckery. If you are a mafia you need to convince the villagers you aren't, usually by pretending to be somebody else. If you are a villager you need to help find the mafia, but without singling yourself out as a direct threat for the mafia to target. There's lots of backstabbing, uncertainty, misinformation and contradictions. All valuable life skills. Just ask HS21.
Speaking of fucked up social interactions
i'm also playing Persona 3 on my brothers PSP. It's... weird. It's certainly not Persona 4. There are big (bigger) gaps in the storyline that are completely un-nerving. I frequently find myself completely dumbfounded by the nonsense that Persona 3 requests me to swallow. There are plot holes everywhere, and the story lacks the general continuity that Persona 4 seems to have perfected. There is no relation between the tasks that you are being set and the relationships you have with your team - which makes the entire concept of s-linking seem secondary and trivial - and the grinding seem abstract and dull. Instead of having to rescue people you are just told to "explore these rooms before this date" which is both frustratingly vague and unrewarding. There are several aspects of the game which are just stupid. For example I seem to be buying all my weaponry from a POLICE OFFICER at THE POLICE STATION. "I don't know what's going on here, but I guess I just have to trust you" he mumbles, as he sells a Katana to a teenage boy.
Oh, well, that explains it then... The ease with which everyone seems to accept these completely surreal scenarios is a continuing bafflement to me. Persona 4 had, I felt, an appropriate knack for calling it's own insanity into a real context. If someone did something dumb, one of the characters would say "That's fucking dumb". In persona 3 they simply nod and agree, which makes me feel like i'm slowly being absorbed into some sort of cult. Well, it's not like we are going to mass suicide by shooting ourselves in the heads or anythi.... oh wait. Never mind.
I'm going to keep playing though.
The social interactions are still fun, the characters are still interesting. The worst thing is, this game came out before Persona 4 so it has an excuse for not being as good - and that makes me hate myself for getting angry with it's shortcomings. But i'm still going to tell you what they are: The grinding is probably the worst feature, especially as it has such fixed boundaries. Like a womans period the boss battles cycle once a month and, like a womans period, they bring huge discomfort and inconvenience for everyone involved.
I should stop writing this blog before I drown in my own self loathing :D
There are lots of useful features that, for some reason or another, a new user might not be aware of. For those of you who use the site frequently, there will no doubt be features here that you had forgotten existed. Sometimes new features get added without any real announcements being made as to their arrival. In making this list I surprised myself at least twice with areas of the site I had never seen before, and I use giantbomb every day.
If I miss anything, feel free to berate me in the comments below :D
#01
The text box in which you write comments is WYSIWYG interactive. What you see is what you get: So you can press ctrl + I at any time to make your font italics for example. Or you could press ctrl + B to make everything bold as fuck.
#02
If you want to check if the thread you are creating already exists and the search bar isn't showing any results, head to the wiki page of your chosen topic and check the "Forums" link on the left. This will show a complete list of every thread that has been linked to that game.
#03
If you go to your navigation bar at the top of the page and go to Users > Activity Feed you can see a live updating list of everything that's happening on the site in realtime.
#04
If you want to narrow it down, in the top right corner of the page click on the list of online users you are following and click the "Following XXX" link. This will take you to a page where you can filter the recent activity of the users you are following into blogs, who is online, and a general feed of all activity.
#05
There's a whole trivia section of the site where you can test your videogame knowledge, with questions entirely written by other users. There are leaderboards and streaks for how many questions you can get right in a row. For me that number is about 6. Because i'm an idiot.
#06
If you click the News button on your navigation bar and then click the Headlines tab, you can scroll through all the articles that have been posted on the site. If you haven't checked the frontpage for a few days then this is probably the best way to catch up with what's going on as some news can get pushed off the front page if it gets busy.
#07
The Whiskey footer at the bottom of the page is a great way to see what's happening with the other whiskey sites, but if for some reason you don't want that footer cluttering up your page you can click the "Slim Footer" link at the very bottom to hide it.
#08
If you have trouble reading the site with it's current colour settings, you can invert the primary colours using the button in your profile drop-down menu. This is great for people with bad eyesight but also people who like pain, as the white site burns the fuck out of your retinas! [EDIT: it's not actually as bad as I remember]
#09
If you click the Help button on the navigation bar, then go to Wiki Tasks, you can find a list of all the wiki pages that need work. Completing wiki tasks will earn you bonus points. You can see the wiki leaderboards by going to the Users > Top Users link on the navigation bar.
#10
You can actually read about the fellow members of the bomb shelter (We don't call it the bomb shelter) by clicking the "See Mini Bio" link which sits next to each users post on the forums. This is stupidly obvious but it's amazing how many people forget about it.
Free plug for Hamz :D
#BONUS
Thanks to everyone who dropped me a comment below, one thing everyone seems to love is the Konami code which I had no idea even existed. If you input the Konami code anywhere on giantbomb you will instantly be forwarded to the Contra page. It's because of shit like this that giantbomb is the best website on the internet. The code is:
↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B, A, Enter
Try it out. Go ahead, I'll wait for you.
....
Welcome back. Pretty cool, huh? :D
There are lots of other great features, too many to mention in one blog.
If I have missed anything you feel is being ignored please drop a comment and I will add it to the list. I hope that in reading this list you have found something or other that you weren't aware of that you might find useful.
Why should you be excited about this? Because The Walking Dead is a completely awesome graphic novel, the continuing zombie apocalypse story that isn't afraid of being absolutely ruthless with it's supporting cast. The trailer looks to be sticking pretty close to the source material so you will need to stay tuned, there are some excellent plot twists. People die frequently, unexpectedly, and in a variety of horrific ways. See for yourself:
Shhh! I have discovered that, apparently, I'm not very good at stealth games. I played about 3 hours of Metal Gear Solid 4 (not knowing how long the game is I can't really pass judgement on what I have seen. For all I know i'm just getting started.) and about 5 hours of Splinter Cell Conviction. Both encourage stealth, though each is forgiving enough to humour my thunderous attempts at it. Perhaps I am being too purist when I approach these games - being spottedat all is to be considered failure. What frustrated me were the segments of each game where, having established a stealth ethos, the slippers were abruptly removed and I was thrust forward into the spotlight. Usually when I am spotted my first instincts are:
PANIC!!
Hide until everyone goes away.
Unfortunately this usually means crouching in a dark corner for 2 minutes listening to hammy goon dialogue, then repeating the entire exercise again as soon as patrols have been resumed. The worst thing is knowing that, on the normal setting of Conviction on which I play, I could potentially just run around with a shotgun and blast my way through the cardboard enemies. Having tried this I can report that the game is much more enjoyable, though I feel slightly guilty in doing so. Shotguns in a Splinter Cell game are an awkwardness, a jarring juxtaposition on par with Marcus Fenix writing Poetry. It just feels... wrong.
the next Gears Of War novel is due to ship on the 25th. Anvil Gate is the third book in the series and will chart the events leading up to the third game. I don't give a fuck if you are interested, I am fucking stoked. Pre-order time :D
What else happened today?
Oh yeah, Left 4 Dead news at GamesCon. The next free Left 4 Dead DLC is titled The Sacrifice and patches in the original survivors account of The Passing for both the original and second Left 4 Dead games. Apparently we get to decide the fate of one of the original survivors deaths - which is kinda weird considering it was very definitely Bill that died at the end of The Passing. I don't know if I want to have to make that choice. That's going to be fucking hard. Could you send Louis to his death?
COULD YOU?
PILLS HERE! Ok... maybe you could.
Anyways, as an extra treat the DLC also contains a L4D2 version of the No Mercy hospital campaign. That L4D2 is really starting to flesh out into a decent sized game. Anyone with qualms over it's value can now be silenced. But not with a silencer because, as previously mentioned, I suck at stealth games.
I watched some gameplay on youtube, then experimented myself with the web-based version. The most striking thing about Minecraft is both it's similarity and inferiority to LOVE, the MMO made by a man called EskilSteenberg. The key factors to the success of Minecraft seem to be it's adaptability and it's accessibility. Namely:
It's free (the Classic version is, anyway)
it has the potential for amazing player created content and
it's easy (EDIT: Easier) to play and share that content with your friends.
Mincraft
LOVE is none of those things.
Complicated, convoluted, awkward and occasionally downright crippled. But LOVE demonstrates an ongoing patchwork production that pushes and probes it's own capabilities within a virtual environment, continually growing and changing of it's own algorithmic accord. There is an evolution to LOVE that demonstrates both reflection and ingenuity of both social and mechanical consequence. Having spent time with LOVE I can't help but feel Minecraft is a poor substitute. If anything, the success of Minecraft makes me disappointed that Eskil was shortsighted enough with his design choices to prevent his own success - obscuring his own game and allowing it to be beaten at the post by a free, simplified competitor.
LOVE Maybe i'm being too shallow here. The concept of competitiveness does not immediately spring to mind when playing LOVE so I should probably refrain from applying it as a critical device. Perhaps that's the charm of LOVE in itself. It remains untouched by the hordes of farmville players, the plagues of transformice and minecraft crusaders that could unwittingly overwhelm it's temperamental and fragile design. LOVE does not need the mainstream, nor does it deserve it. Perhaps levels of narcissism should be tolerated to prevent the casual from becoming casualties.
Fuck, I need to start playing that game again.
LOVE I'm excited for the new Atlus game, Catherine.
It's an abstract kind of excitement. There is currently no outward indication of it's existence, it is merely an underlying understanding that excitement is taking place, somewhere, as a constant state. This will continue until further notice. Or until the damn game gets released.
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