The story mode in Street Fighter IV is nothing like this mode. Of course it isn’t a story mode; it is an arcade mode, an arcade mode that punishes me. My first attempt at arcade mode ended in frustration. This happened because the computer cheats. This isn’t just the anger of a bad gamer, it is the anger of a person being punished by a computer that is bitter about getting its ass handed to it for years and years.

Graphically this game is beautiful; they took the look of the old 2d game and 3derized it. The backgrounds are all fun, with people moving around and cheering, not so much that it is distracting but enough that it makes for some entertainment when they computer is kicking your ass.

The AI in this game is ridiculously good. I think that the developer modeled it after that kid in the arcade that could play all day on one quarter taking on anyone and everyone that challenged him. On top of that they have horribly unbalanced characters. Take Abel for instance. He will grab me, throw me and then the instant I stand up again he throws me, repeat this and it makes for a pretty quick fight.

Abel is one of the four new characters that come unlocked. Rumor has it that there are other new characters, I will probably never see them since I cannot get past the third opponent in the arcade mode. I even practiced, using the training mode to learn the moves, and I still cannot make it through the arcade mode.

Aside from Abel, a big burly fighter and the most traditional of the new characters, the other three are just ridiculous. There is Rufus, a big fat fighter who thinks he is the best fighter. C. Viper who can shock you and light you on fire. Lastly there is El Fuerte a cooking luchador. None of the new characters have any sort of projectile weapon and therefore suffer when fighting any of the traditional characters that have projectile weapons.

I can’t lie. I am really enjoying Street Fighter IV. Frustration and all it is one of the most enjoyable games I have played in a while. The nice thing about it is that by being so damn frustrating it forces me to do homework. I will be so made that I was just beaten by Ken again that I will pull out my history book and read it. It is crazy.

I would like to send a message to Street Fighter IV. I am coming for you. You suck. I am going to kick you ass at the arcade mode. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but maybe tomorrow.

Just a heads up.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

My original 360 was a first generation Xbox and had all the problems that went along with that. I had some preliminary problems with overheating which I solved by placing it somewhere that had better air flow. That solved the problem for about a year. Unfortunately when it did get the RROD it was well out of warranty territory which sucked but is one of the risks of being on the cutting edge of console gaming.

When it finally died I went out and purchased a new one. This one had HDMI which my new TV could use and the new cooling system that is supposed to help with the RROD. I have had it for just over a year and it even survived the 18 hour Guitar Hero Marathon.

The new one was being used primarily as a movie machine. Since I don’t play games during school we used it to watch Netflix and other movies. It was during just such a time last week that it died. I was settling in to watch a kung-fu movie and do some homework when it got the RROD.

At first I was sure that it was just a bad connection. I check the AV cables and the power cable, nothing. I even shut it down for a while and let it cool down, just in case that is what caused the problem. When that didn’t help I realized that it was toast. I hopped onto my new laptop (thanks Harper) and cruised over to Xbox.com.

Luckily Microsoft has realized the error in their console building abilities and have extended the warranty covering the RROD to three years. This means that instead of having to pay $99 to get it fixed it is free including the shipping. Nice.

The downside to this is that now Sarah and I lack any way to play movies on our TV. I haven’t looked to hard at the WiiVideo hack, which might be a solution, and not having an Xbox kills the current love fest we were having with Netflix. Without the ability to stream movies to our TV what is the point of having Netflix. On top of that, how are we going to finish season three of Heros.

My experience thus far with Microsoft and repair has been similar to the experience that I had with Apple when Sarah’s Laptop got sad. The only advantage is that I didn’t have to talk to an actual person to get my Xbox taken care of. The ability to send your Xbox in for repairs without having to speak to a person is a nice touch.

Though it is all good now, this experience could change. I will keep updates coming as the process continues. I figure I should get the box soon and I will send off my Xbox.

Get well my little sick Xbox friend.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

I would love to see in myself where I fall in those scales. I figure that I am generally a good person, certainly no saint but still a good person. I try to help people when I can and enjoy helping people. So I guess I would be leaning towards good on that scale. The Pure/Corrupt scale is a little trickier since I have been know to download things from the Internet that you are supposed to pay for. I have limited it to things that I have a hard time finding normally but it is still stealing. I also speed at least five over the speed limit if not ten, which is technically breaking the law. On the other hand I haven’t murdered anybody or knowingly participated in genocide. I am probably leaning towards Pure but who knows how much.

The really interesting thing about having one of these would be if you could see other peoples. I am sure that this would lead to all sorts of problems. If you did really bad things you might find that you have a hard time getting jobs or finding a place to live. This would become a whole new form of discrimination, which would in turn affect your Pure/Corrupt scale.

This would also become problematic during trials and the like. Imagine how hard it would be for police to not automatically pick the person with the worst morality scale. Also troubling would be trials, a person guilty of many bad things may be convicted of something they didn’t do purely because their scale makes them look guilty. On the flip side a mass murderer could counteract his misdeeds by doing loads of really good things allowing them to murder and appear to be even on both scales.

I guess that morality scales would cause more problems then benefits if everyone could see them. I still want to be able to see mine and see how day to day activities would be reflected on them.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

In the past couple years I have played Oblivion, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto Four and Saints Row. I have enjoyed each in its own way but have yet to find one that combines everything that I love from those games into one cohesive package. Fable II comes pretty close to doing this. It has a minor RPG element allowing you to level and increase your stats which is like Oblivion. Like GTA4 and Saints Row you are allowed to do whatever you want, killing whoever and whatever. This leads us to the Mass Effect good vs bad system. In Fable II you are able to become a demonic psychopath with very little work. Unfortunately like most games that have a good/evil track this has very little effect on the actual game play. NPCs act no different towards you when you are evil then they do when you are a saint. I guess technically they are more likely to run from you when you are evil and charge you more for equipment and the like, but this has little effect on you since you can kill people and take their stuff/gold/anything you want.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the game has been the real estate system. You can but pretty much every building in the game. Sure it costs a lot of money to buy the really nice buildings but you are able to adjust prices on stalls that you own as well as charge rents for the houses you buy which makes buying more property really easy. Another thing that the designers did right on this game is that you make money in game even when you are not playing. This means, since I own most of the world, I make about 21000 gold every five minutes in game. This number is reduced out of game until it is 1% of that every five minutes out of game. This is about 210 gold every five minutes or 60000 gold every day spent not playing the game.

This has led to the other problem with the game. I have money to burn, I can buy everything in the game without batting an eye. Like most RPGs you eventually reach the point in which you cannot be killed. In fact in this game I am un killable. I cannot be knocked out, hurt or anything. This takes a little bit of the worry out of the game. I am not worried for my character’s safety so I am not very dedicated to protecting him during combat, I just stand toe to toe with no strategy.

Spoiler: the ending is lame. I was so disappointed that I haven’t played any of the after finishing the main quest missions at all.

FALLOUT 3

Thanks to Jon I have just started playing Fallout 3. It takes every other RPG I have played and makes it cry. Not only is it post-apocalyptic in all it’s glory, but the story is engaging, it has great creatures and it has a fancy combat system.

There is nothing I like better then wondering around a wasteland, getting attacked by giant mole-rats and actually being afraid for my character’s life. It kicks some major butt. I don’t have much more to say right now since I just started but suffice to say it is my current favorite game.

I am not going to speak to the middle of the game because there is so much to it that you can’t even begin to sum it up into a few measly sentences. I will say that my favorite part of the game and also the worst part is that making a simple mistake and trusting someone you shouldn’t leads to you killing the entire planet. THE ENTIRE PLANET.

I think Sarah got a kick out of the look on my face when I beat it. I was appalled, I was upset, I was crying. What kind of game makes it so you play a basically good character, I never killed an innocent, never stole, only got hooked on one drug and killed all of the bad guys, and still destroy the world.

My tears still haven’t dried from the experience.

The next day I started a new character. Instead of going combat happy I went social skills happy. Talk about a much smoother game. I was able to talk my way into and out of any and all trouble.

I didn’t finish the game with that character, mostly because school started and I avoid engrossing games like the plague during school, but I imagine that he would have made it through the game with the minimum amount of killing and the maximum amount of awesome.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

In most table top RPG’s you spend a long long time reading and understanding the rules, creating characters, finding people to play with, putting on disguises so people won’t recognize you and telling your wife that you are just going out with the boys to a strip club or bar. With CCG’s the time commitment is much less, the characters already exist you just have to figure out your strategy and destroy your opponents. One other thing that the WoW CCG did was the raid decks. Now I haven’t had time to play any of them yet, mostly because John and I need someone else to play with so that we can have a deck master and have all sorts of fun. If anyone is a Colorado CCG player and would like to play, shot me a comment or email.

Now it is time to talk about the gateway game that will get you started playing these games. The game I am talking about is BANG! the cowboy western card fame. It is packaged as an innocent play with your family type game, but at its heart is a CCG just waiting to happen. The fun part about it is that it takes into account transportation and classes in a new way. For instance if you are the sheriff you want to kill the crooks and the vigilante, if you are the vigilante you want to kill the crooks and the sheriff, if you are the crook(s) you want to kill everyone else and if you are the sheriff’s deputy you help the sheriff and take his job if he dies. The first time I played this it was in Chicago with Harper and Matiss, I think when I got my tattoo and I received it a while ago for a x-mas present. Unfortunately Sarah recognized it for what it was and we haven’t played it that much, but you never no maybe I will trick her and out friends into playing. Its either that or getting her to play the WoW one with me. Right.

There is a new book that I am reading, well it may not be new but it is awesome, called A Dirty Job. The basic story is about one man’s struggle with being death. It is one of the funniest books I have read in a while and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, needs to read it. I am specifically looking at Harper, but the rest of you should read it as well. One of the great parts of the book is the way the author builds the relationships between the characters. That and the Hell Hounds.

Apparently there are some jokers online that are talking about the early realease of GTA IV. They even put together a pretty good looking letter about it that was supposedly sent to retailers. This fake has gotten a lot of people excited and me wish that it was true so that I could get the game sooner. Oh well.

At work it has been decided to stop using the Internet interface of Google apps and revert back to outlook. I am of the opinion that this is lame. Harper feels the same but the boss is the boss and he decided that he wants to go back to outlook and so poof we are back to outlook. Work is going good, aside from the usual issues of people not paying rents and the like, and while I enjoy the people that I work with I find the overall work frustrating.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

After I was done opening my cards John and I sat on the couch and watched Sweeney Todd. It was awesome. I cannot lie and say that I hate musicals, because deep down inside I know that I love them. And blood, I love bloody movies. This had both and to top it off cannibalism, what could be better. Johnny Depp was awesome, overall style of the movie was pure Tim Burton and, though I was worried at first, it wasn’t as gory as I had read that it was. The worst part of the movie is the slide\crash of the bodies when they are sent to the bake house. I don’t think that this movie is for everybody. I think that if you where a nun who dislikes musicals then this movie might not be for you. In fact if you hate musicals you probably should avoid Sweeny Todd as it is a musical, a bloody good musical. Sorry about that.

After enjoying Sweeny Todd John and I moved on to our new favorite pastime, killing terrorists. By killing terrorist I am, of course, referring to Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 on the Xbox 360. This is quite possibly the most fun co-op game that we have played. You have a team of four, two computers and two humans, and you spend most of the game rescuing hostages, disarming bombs and killing terrorists. It is quite a bit of fun, in a terrorist killing way. Another interesting part of the game is the addition of an almost RPG type element. As you progress through the game you gain XP which furthers your rank within the Rainbow organization. How do you gain XP? by killing terrorists of course. What do you get for leveling up? Armor, camouflage and other cosmetic equipment. On top of that they have added the ACES system which gives you credit depending on the method you employ to kill said terrorists. CQB: close quarters- killing when they are really close, Assault- killing them with explosives and Marksman- killing them from long range. Each time you reach a new ACES level it unlocks weapons. With the combination of the XP and ACES you unlock a plethora of weapons and armor making you the ultimate terrorist killing machine.

Monday, which I had off from work (thanks Dad), was spent running around getting Sarah ready for another week at school. Which of course included a little shopping, a movie and the last bit of cleaning. My little bit of shopping was buying Endless Ocean, a SCUBA simulator of sorts. What is interesting about this game is that it is addicting like crack. I have only played it for about thirty minutes and already I have the itch to explore more. The entire point, if you can call it that, is to explore and find all of the different species of fish in the game. There is a huge fictional ocean to explore and it is quite pretty to explore, even though it is on the Wii. I spent most of my time in the Coral Forest, interacting with the fish that I saw twelve years ago in Cozumel, and then headed towards the deeper ocean areas in hopes of seeing a Whale Shark or Blue Whale. Hopefully they didn’t include Orcas in the game since I don’t really want to be eaten. I have also spent a lot of time playing with an African Penguin on the deck of my boat and trying to make friends with a dolphin under water. One thing that bothers me just a little is the way that the game choose to handle DCS and other diving maladies. It chose to ignore them. You are able to go up and down and stay under for ridiculous times without you depth affecting you air consumption. I understand that it is a game, but as someone who fully understands the dangers of SCUBA diving I think that they should be mentioned at some point early in the game. Something like ” Please don’t try this without proper training” . That will just prevent Nintendo from being sued when some kid takes his parent’s SCUBA gear goes into the ocean or a lake, gets the bends, AGE or runs out of air and dies.

This next week is going to be awesome, first off a week from today is the release of GTA IV. Which means that I will be busy for most evenings and weekends playing that game. At first I wasn’t very excited about this game, I mean who needs another GTA really, but after seeing some of the videos and reading some impressions by people that have played the game, I need another GTA. I have played pretty much every game since the first one and I have enjoyed them all in their own way. The first one, which Harper brought home from college, was what really got me hooked on video games as a form of entertainment. I had always played games, but not with the enjoyment and intensity that I played the first GTA. As I moved on to the other top down GTA games I found them to be more frustrating then fun. The first one had the beauty of being the first and best of the games, it had a simplicity the led to a further enjoyment of the game. The last two top down games suffered from trying to be to complex and thus losing the fun that the first one had. Luckily they reinvented the genre and the game world when they released GTA III.

Even if they borrowed a lot of story elements from Hollywood, the simple fact that you could do anything made this game the best game ever. GTA III was great because it allowed you to follow the story and then wonder off and kill police, sleep with hookers, be a taxi driver or vigilante and, best of all, just wonder around and take in the scenery. Following the same path as the original they released GTA Vice City, a Miami Vice storied expansion/sequel that added the most important element ever added to the GTA-style game. Motorcycles. With the addition of motorcycles the world opened up and what used to be a couple of minute of screwing around for every hour played became a couple of hours screwing around for every day played. There was nothing more fun then taking a crouch rocket to the airport and heading along the runway towards a conveniently placed ramp and fling across the city. It was awesome.

When they released GTA San Andreas they had hit a wall. It was all about size. They gave up on creating a single city and instead created an entire state. They took every west coast hip hop stereotype and threw it into the game. Your crew consisted of a group of guys the could have been NWA a rising rap star reminded us all of 50-cent. There where crooked cops, turf wars and new to the game exercise. Yep exercise. There is nothing more fun then exercise. The world was huge and had a jet plan, helicopters, crazy off road vehicles and a jet pack. Even with all that it seemed forced. The area was to huge. There where vast expanses of open space and it took forever to travel somewhere you needed to go on the other side of the map. Of the three 3-d games San Andreas was the most disappointing. Because of this my hope for GTA IV where pretty slim.

But then the first trailer came out. OMG, I mean, OMFG this game looked sweet, still I wasn’t excited. Oh yeah it’s the next generation of game systems, so of course it is going sweet. Then I started to read about the game engine, the physic engine and other engines as well. It started to sound cool. Plus Rockstar had included a cover system, finally fixed the aiming issues from the previous three games and added a fully functional online multiplayer. I am still worried for the game, I am afraid that they had gone too real, gotten away from the fun of the previous game and taken it to serious. I am still going to get the game and I will probably enjoy it. I just hope that the mindless fun is still there. Though if the fun has fled I am sure that it just ended up in Saints Row 2 for this fall.

Also a quick update of this. We finally broke 1000000 spam messages blocked by google apps. And by we I actually mean me. In my account in our google apps there have been 1000000 span messages blocked. It took three days longer then my 30 day prediction but its ok cause it is awesome.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

Here is a breakdown of my favorite characters thus far:

1. Zelda: There is something about kicking ass as a princess that just feels right. I mean. Never mind. She is a great all around fighter and has the ability to teleport. I probably play as her 40% of the time. She rocks.
2. Kirby: When I first saw that Kirby was one of the fighters I started looking for the Dyson as an unlockable fighter. Alas this is not so. However being able to suck in people and steal their powers is awesome. Plus he comes in so many fabulous colors.
3. The Shock Rat: aka Pikachou is a pretty good pick up and play character. Mostly because he cheats. So much lightning and so much rage. He is an angry little bastard. Probably because he is stuck in that ball all the time.

Another great part of Smash Bros is the fun I had at lunchtime with my cousins. We quickly got lunch and then went to do battle. Basically we battled for about 45 minutes and all in all it was a fun experience. I worked out the handicapping to so that I was not owning them as much as I was at the beginning of the game. The last game was an evenly matched fun fest that was fought on top of moving cars from the F-Zero series. It was nuts.

The only downside so far is the online mode. Apparently Nintendo wasn’t paying attention to the world of online gaming. They have a random person finder that dosen’t work… ever. The friend mode is great, except I have no friends with wiis, so I have no wii-friends. I have to go to websites to find wii-friends and so far almost all of them have turned out to be total asses. At least on xbox live you can mute d-bags and continue to play them and laugh that they are losing. My first online match I was basically pummeled by two young kids on the same console that didn’t even bother to fight each other they just ganged up on me. Some day the Internet slap will work and they will all pay.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post