Affiliation

Although I have been a Play-Asia affiliate pretty much since I first made my account and my first purchase, I haven't really used it at all. But now I'm going to try =D.

If you've got a keen eye you will have noticed that the fancy things to the right of this page have been reordered and have had some things added. One of those things is my Play-Asia Affiliate link.

What does that mean for you?

Well, if you're interested in importing games, Play-Asia is a good place to do that, and all I'm doing is guiding you there (I also get a commission ;D).

Oh and today I managed to complete all the Burning/Midnight Rides of the Burnout Paradise Bikes Pack. The bikes are so cool xD.

I'm out.

Long Time No Post

Very long time. Ok so it has been about a month, so it's not that long, but it's still kinda long.

I sat my last exam this morning; Discrete Structures. I am now officially done until University kicks in again next year. This means I get a sweet-as 4-or-so month holiday in which to kick back, chill, and relax. Fuck yeah.

I've made a lot of headway in Guitar Hero. From my initial fumblings when I first picked it up on Wii around a year ago to now having it on 360 and tearing shit up. Although I'm nowhere near being one of the top players (hell, I'm barely in the top TEN THOUSAND (10000) players) I am a whole lot better than I was circa 2007. Now I can actually pull off some of those ridiculous solos which I would normally had to have Star Powered through, and it feels nice being good at it. Which makes sense because I've never been good at a game I didn't like =p.

So now Guitar Hero: World Tour is due out next month, with Rock Band a few days beforehand. If RB pops up for cheap then I might snag the standalone game. My fear is that the GHWT instruments, much like the RB2 instruments, will be less-than-compatible with the original RB. But so what? I don't mind just playing through the guitar, bass, and possibly voice (o_O;;) careers, and if RB2 ever comes down under, well, then I can export all of RB anyway xD.

One of my more recent purchases, however, is MegaMan 9. What do I have to say about it? Fuck you, MegaMan, that's what. I still haven't beat mother fucking Concrete Man's stage. A lot of the bosses from the MegaMan X games are cake. MegaMan ZX, too. But this MegaMan 9. It's ridiculous. So incredibly ridiculous. But I love it. And someday (probably a year from now >_>) I will beat it. But until then...

I also like Beat'n Groovy, which is just a stupidly American version of Konami's Pop'n Music. It's cool, but a bit awkward playing with the controller, and apparently the higher difficulties have been left out, so I've given it a miss for now. BoomBoom Rocket at least gave me a bit of a run for my money, but this new game seems very stripped down. But what can you do? Actually I might try pick it up on PSX (old PlayStation).

Ok that's it for now. I've been up since some time before 6am and it doesn't feel good.

Rufi out.

I, Guitar Hero

So this weekend has been fairly relaxed. I chilled out. Had way to much cordial. Even burnt some pancakes. But now, after close to a year of playing, I did it.

I beat Guitar Hero III. I beat it on Expert. What the fuck is up?

Know what else? I beat mother fucking Dragonforce, bitches. Through the Fire and Flames. COMPLETE.



Not to mention that I also managed to beat all of the Dragonforce DLC songs.

Guitar Hero II, III, and Aerosmith have got to be my favourite games on the 360. I can't wait for Guitar Hero: World Tour, and if Rockband ever decides to show up on our shores, I'll be getting that as well =D.

I AM OUT!

ps: I rock (at games).

Sweet Child of Mine...

Well, not really. You see, this blog is more of illegitimate bastard child that I sold to some street vendor so that I might afford some crumpets and tea. I like tea. What can I say?

However I am now thinking of attempting to possibly kind of try and almost revitalise this withered husk of what one might consider my former glory. For almost all of this year I've been in school. And it's not that the work is hard and taxing, but the lifestyle is, and when you're away for the better part of everyday it takes it's toll and you slowly forget to post and all that jazz.

Now I want to start posting again. Or at least try.

I was thinking that once I get my Diploma in a month's time that I could start talking about pretty much whatever I do. Play a game, whatever, and then Blog the experience. I know it sounds obvious, but it's hard to do when you have a bitch of a timetable for school.

I may also attempt to pop up some more YouTube videos of stuff. Especially since I'm in the Beta test for Lich King, and I also just beat Guitar Hero III on Expert (it only took a year).

So let this be my resurrection of this god awful thingy-majiggy and hope that it gets better from here on out! ... OK!

Rufati out!

More on GTA

It has been a long time since I posted and I will have to keep this brief because I have a pile of University work I need to get done.

But an article over at Gamasutra has really enforced my view that the people that we (the consumers) trust to critically review games aren't even able to do that anymore. And for what? To be the first person out the door screaming "GTA is super"? I don't know when it happened, nor do I really care after having disregarded review scores for a long time now, but something happened to change reviewers. Really change them. From being top notch journalists with the ability to be objective and critical, to something out of a current affairs program.

Funny to think that Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation fame, might be the only honest voice out there at the moment. As over the top as he might be, he is also more than willing to point out all the faults of a game (and sometimes its strengths), and never pigeonholes any game into a particular rating slot.

Now I've got to get back to work, but I will be back harder, stronger, faster, whatever, in about 2 weeks time when my semester is done, with impressions games that I've had in depth play sessions of.

Cheers.

side note: My attempt at submitting a news article to PALGN was a failed one D:

GTA (Hero) IV

Yes I'm doing it. I'm going to talk about the oh so ever hyped up ultra game that is, GTA4.

Just to get the main point out of the way:

The game is good. Great, in fact. One of the better games of this generation, and of 2008.

But best game ever? Hell fucking no. Deserving of a perfect score? Yeah, on a cold day in hell.

The only other game I can recall getting a perfect 10 from something like IGN.com would have to be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and I'd say that game is more deserving of that score.

Why, you say? That game showed how a franchise could evolve from the real of 2D into 3D and do it well. Obscenely well. Other games that, while they may not have gotten perfect scores, also made that change very well. Like the Super Mario franchise, Metal Gear Solid and Ninja Gaiden among others. All these franchises are fairly old, but their re-inventions were superb.

GTA4 doesn't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't even really refine elements that were in past games. Its controls are decent, albeit clunky at times. The AI of NPCs is dodgy, very dodgy, and that's a shame when you consider that this is the first game to utilise the Euphoria engine. Citizens of Liberty City make little to no effort to run away from you as your car hurtles toward them. Compare this to Crackdown, where mowing down pedestrians is hard, and doing the same to enemies is a chore (those mo'fo's know how to duck and weave).

The only things that GTA4 brings that set it apart from other games are its superb voice acting, and cinematic presentation. Mass Effect had a go at doing a similar thing, and whilst it was good, GTA blows it out of the water. From the opening movie, complete with credits, to every bloody cut scene in the game. They're all well animated, scripted and voiced. It is awesome, without a doubt. That isn't to say that there are flaws in the graphics, but for all artistic intents and purposes, GTA is a 5/5 in that department. However with a bunch of graphical flaws that plague most of the game, I feel as though the technical aspect of the graphics is lowly rated in my books. From clipping issues, visibly loading textures, very visible pop-in, and so on. I just can't see how the graphics, rated as a WHOLE, would get a 10/10. A 7 or 8, sure, but 10 is exaggeration at its best.

In short, I now feel as though most review sites are corrupt, with their review scores based on either video game hype, pressure from readers, or pressure from sponsors. I would blame them if they were struggling to make ends meet in their everyday lives. But given their success, no one should have to bow down to any pressure.

This is why I haven't cared about review scores in such a long time.

YouTube?

More like YouAreADickTube.

Seriously, where do all these people come from? America probably.

All of my YouTube video comments are either hateful and insulting, or nice and full of praise. I know I've put up mostly WoW videos, but honestly, is there not a single male out there aged 15-25 with even the slightest bit of intelligence?

When most of your hits are coming from America, probably fucking not.

Xbox LIVE Wishlist

If I could make any suggestions about ways to improve Xbox LIVE, the following two things would be the biggest and most helpful/effective changes.

You see, as I write this I'm attempting to find a ranked online match in PGR4, and I can tell you that it is an obscenely long process at times. Just now I was able to find a quick match after a few minutes of patience, but honestly, I shouldn't have to be waiting a few minutes for every game I want to join. If each one was a championship length series of races, then yes, waiting a few minutes for something that might take 30-minutes to an hour might be worth it. But for a few laps around one track and then ending it, a few minutes is a lot of overhead.

I've had similar problems in finding ranked matches for Gears Of War, where a friend of mine usually hosts a game, and I try to join it. We normally make Annex-type games (which are kind of rare, so it's easier to find his game) but 100% of the time it doesn't appear in the list. That's right, I've never participated in a ranked match with one of my own friends. The whole thing is impeded by 1) not allowing invites in ranked matches of Gears Of War (I'm not sure what other games follow suit) and 2) what looks like a poor implementation of the matchmaking or server set-up system.

There are two words that can solve the number one problem or having trouble finding games, or people hosting games without a decent connection, or even people hosting games for the sake of host advantage.

Dedicated Servers.

I can not, for the life of me, tell you why LIVE (or 360 games in general) allow for dedicated servers. From the all-powerful World Of Warcraft, to the humble days of StarCraft, Diablo, and the battle.net service. Why, now, is it okay for the user to be their own host? Yes some of us have good connections, but there are people who won't. The only games I ever play in that aren't destroyed by latency are ones hosted by my friend Robio on his adsl2+ with 1Mbit upload, or games hosted by me. Even ping indicators are broken in most games. Having started playing Vegas2, I was greeted into many games with green three-bar'd ping indications, but suffered what felt like pings in excess of 300-500ms -maybe more. Whereas if I want to play a game of TF2, I can hop on Steam and have the choice of hosting my own server, or joining a dedicated server.

Woe is me.

And the next problem is determining who on Earth (literally) is playing what game at any given time. Maybe if I threw a friend invite to every second person I played a game with I wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to play with, but I don't want to do that. Why is it that I can read statistics telling me what the top ten games played on Xbox LIVE are, but I can't go anywhere to see those numbers for myself (if there is such a place, tell me, I want to see it). As a member of MyGamerCard.net, I can see a list that's updated every 5 minutes of who is playing what. This is list is barely a few pages long, and not indicative of the entirety of LIVE players. CoD4 does it with it's list of game-types, letting you know how many players are actually playing CoD4 online games, and how many are playing in the currently highlighted game mode.

Where is this feature for the rest of Xbox LIVE?

Honestly, if I could hop onto LIVE, check out who is playing what, and decide on what I want to play. I might have an hour to play some games, and while I've been writing this entry, PGR4 has been ticking away trying to find me a match. It has probably been 15 or so minutes now if not more, and still no game has been found. So I don't want to spend 25-50% of my game time looking for a match to get into. And when I do get into a game, I want it to be reliable. With dedicated servers, quitting or disconnecting could just be counted as a loss against that player, so that any winning streaks get broken so you can't just hax your way to getting achievements or good ratios. That and you won't get kicked by a bad host.

I know that I praise LIVE for how good it is, however it still has its flaws. They seem to be minor at first, but then they start to add up after a while.

In short: LIVE is good. Great when compared to PSN and Nintendo WFC. The best of the 3, in fact. However that isn't saying much, because Nintendo WFC is fairly crap, and PSN is a less feature packed LIVE. So although it is number one, it didn't have to work hard to get there. I might check later to see if there is some kind of feature suggestion thing, or something similar, so that I can attempt to suggest these things in the same way that I suggested ideas to YouTube.

I'm done for tonight.

Ikaruga? That's what your mum said last night!

Well I'm glad you had fun with my mother playing some Xbox LVE Arcade games. That sure was nice of you.

If you don't already know, Ikaruga was released onto the Marketplace this past week to the oh-so-wonderful tune of 800 MS points. For the unknowing, that is about $12AUD compared to the grotesque sound of something like $90-100 for it at retail on the beloved Gamecube as can be seen below.

It disgusts me, too.

The reason I'm pointing out the savings of getting this gem on the LIVE that is Xbox is because it is a gem. As far as 2D Shoot 'em Ups (Shmups) go, this is one of the best ever made. I'd say that the reason for this would be that it is a stock standard shooter up to a point, and then tacks on something obscenely cool to mix it all up. Let me explain:

In your standard shooter you pilot some kind of land- or aircraft. Your job is to be a one-an army against a more-than-one-man army which involves dodging any number of bullets, enemy ships, and obstacles on the path to glory. Typically, you'll have either a life-bar of some sort, or a less forgiving one-hit one-kill situation (it's how coin-operated games make their money). Your craft has one or more weapons and to even things out you will generally have at least 1 field leveling (literally) super weapon. In Heavy Weapon it's your nuke, Geometry Wars has that bomb thing and Ikaruga has fancy homing laser things.

One thing changes the way this game does the Shmup genre. That thing is polarity.

Your ship can alternate between light and dark polarities. The enemies in the game are either light or dark and as such they sure bullets of that same polarity. How does this change things, exactly? Well, your ship can actually absorb bullets of the same polarity as you. So if you are dark, and shooting at dark enemies who are shooting back at you then you are practically invincible. Get hit by a light shot, however, and it's R.I.P. for you. The downside to this is that shooting enemies with the same polarity only does normal damage. Dark enemies are weak against light polarity bullets. They do double damage, in fact. So now it's a matter of playing to be an efficient and risky killer, or a slowly but safely kinda thing. Then, for those people looking to get into the high-end of playing the game, there is a combo chaining system.

This system isn't just a matter of pewpew'ing your way through a stage and getting an uber score. It's much harder than that. In order to increase your chain by one you need to kill 3 of the same polarity enemies in a row. You can take as long as you like to get the 3, but your chain won't go up until you pop the third one in a row. Kill two lights then a dark, and your entire chain resets. It may sound easy, but amidst the torrential downpour (at times) of bullets it is difficult to maintain a chain.

If you like 2D shooters at all, then you will love Ikaruga's gameplay. With humble beginnings about 7 years ago on the Dreamcast, then moving on to the Gamecube. That same game is here on Xbox LIVE for a much nicer price and you'd be hard pressed to find anything else as good and cheap.

But now, on to slightly less important things about the game.

The graphics are as good as they were back in the day, maybe even better. From what I understand, the graphics were re-done or optimised or something to that effect for LIVE, but that is inconsequential. The game runs perfectly, and the only slowdown you will ever experience is when the boss of a stage explodes and disappears. But where there are 30 or 40 or more enemies on screen and bullets flying everywhere, the game doesn't even flinch.

I believe my friend Robio best described the music of the game when he said it was "epic," and I agree. The music never intrudes on the game, it's only really overpowering at all the right times. Even if you find yourself failing on a stage over and over, that music will never get old. I should know, Robio and I tried some co-op the night we got it, and fail a lot we did, but the music was always awesome no matter how many times we heard it.

And there is not much more I can say. Given the fact that it is 7 years old and was initially released on a (great) console that would ultimately be doomed to failure, this is a great game. It shows what can be achieved when you take a stock-standard genre, and apply innovative new features to it. That's not to say that every game should feature a polarity system. But that if you have something that you could add to make it more interesting, then go for it (if you can do it well).

I don't really like giving games a score. If you like the genre, then you will most definitely like this game. If you don't, then you may not like it. The only sure way to tell is to go and download the trial version of it, have a go, and see for yourself.

It is 1337.