Elk's blog

A look back

2010-12-20T23:23:00.003-06:00

I have been remiss in my duties as a video reviewer over the last several months, I've sadly been too busy around the web and with day job madness to sit down and put something together. Now finally I've been able to get scrounge some time together and guess what? We've run out of games for the year. So rather than review something already a few weeks old I decided to take a look at something that recently became 15 years old: Duck Hunt.

This was also an excuse to check out some different video stuff. Enjoy!

Linux fortress of solitude

2010-11-28T22:31:00.004-06:00

I've had a rough past few weeks with technology here, after some strange video card issues and motherboard issues afterwards I've found myself without a desktop PC. Fortunately I still had my backup Ubuntu computer which is really just used for Boxee. I've never really made Linux my primary OS until now and I must say that I'm pretty darn impressed with where the OS has come in the last 5-6 years since I last really tried using it day-to-day. Installing software is a breeze compared to the old method of extracting, building, changing attributes and installing and you no longer have to edit a darn text file to change a resolution. In so many ways I could make this my main PC if only I could do just about anything that I'd really want to use my PC for day-to-day. My webcam drivers give a terrible frame rate and poor quality, there's also no support for my video capture card for game consoles and of course capturing PC games is out of the question since none are compatible, with the recent exception of Minecraft. It's rather a shame, I like the OS and I'd love to be able to use it but it just so happens to fail at just about everything I need my desktop to do, of course this is due to compatibility with my hardware but these recent thanksgiving Steam deals would still be useless to me anyway.

So without a PC I've been spending a lot more time on game consoles. I've played through Fable III again to try out the evil method and I couldn't be more disappointed, everything is spun in a way to make it seem like you're working 'for the good of the people' rather than being the evil, murdering b**tard that I'm trying for. Near the beginning of the game I needed to get the support of people in a city and collect 100 guild seals, instead I murdered everything I saw until I collected enough seals, at which point people cheered for me and pledged their support. I see the angle the game is going for but if you were to use a D&D analogy I'd say the game only really supports lawful good and chaotic good play styles and I've found this to be understated in most reviews that I've read.

I've also touched on several Wii games such as Sonic Colours, Donkey Kong Country and Goldeneye but I'm not really far enough to pass any judgment beyond saying that they all seem like great games so far. I've instead been rather wrapped up in Assassins Creed: Brotherhood which might be the best game in the series yet and more recently, Gran Tourismo 5. I'm really enjoying GT5 so far but some of the decisions in that game really baffle me to no end, not being able to choose a colour for your car unless you've owned a car of that colour before might just about be the worst, I guess it extends the life of the game and gives a reason to build collections but it just seems so, arbitrary. Progressive damage is also a real oddity, not allowing any simulation damage on cars until you reach a high level. I'm glad that the series is trying new things rather than just taking decals and customization from Forza, but just because a decision is brave doesn't mean I have to like it. It's easy to point out the failings of a game that's been in development for so long rather than point out what it does well: weather effects, new racing modes, great detail on some 1/4 of the cars and of course the driving is still top notch. I'd go as far to say that this is the best simulation racing game on the PS3 - on second thoughts that might not be much of a stretch.

That's all for now, I usually like to blog when I have a new video ready and my first retro video was due long ago but it'll have to wait until my PC parts get back from warranty. Until then you could look at some of the videos I've done over at AndroidSPIN.com but I really do want to get back into doing PC/Console reviews again, soon I hope.

Later gators

What was old is now new again

2010-11-01T19:09:00.009-05:00

I've always been drawn towards retro gaming a little more than most and after talking some with Steve Lin at AuroraFeint about his collection I decided it was time to begin to rebuild. That lot up there cost about $200 with the exception of the VCR and N64 stuff and it seems like a pretty good deal. There's a top loading NES that I've never heard of and about 6-7 games with a pair of controllers and a lightgun, An ugly USA SNES with a pair of controllers and Super Metroid, a Saturn, Dreamcast and a Sega Genesis with Sega CD and several games. With luck I hope that I'll be able to do a little something with all this and I'm thinking of doing a weekly video where I put in a new game I've purchased for a couple of dollars.

Back to the present day, I've been enjoying Fable III which I completed last night, it's not a 'bad' game per se, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed with some of the direction that the game took, it makes me wonder if Lionhead doesn't have the same control over their games and schedule as they once did. I've also been playing a little RockBand 3 which lives up to what I'd expect from a new RockBand game but the real game will begin when I get the Midi controller for my keyboard sometime next month. There's also still Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 that I haven't touched and Fallout: New Vegas and Dead Rising 2 that I've barely scratched the surface of. I'm very glad my job isn't as busy as it has been, with all of the things I'm trying to juggle at once I don't think I could fit much else in.

That's all for now, I need to get working on this Fable III review and start thinking how I can capture footage from these old systems, it should be fun!

The Legends will never die

2009-03-12T00:15:00.001-05:00

It’s that time again for another retro roundup

Ghostbusters – C64

I’m sure many of you long time gamers have had the pleasure of carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back, taking out bank loans and ducking under the legs of Gozer the Traveler. This isn’t a usual pick for my list of obscure old games but with all the talk about the new Ghostbusters game due out in June I’ve had the old game on my mind. One of the most memorable things about Ghostbusters for the C64 was how the terrible speech scared the hell out of me, but not enough that I didn’t have a great time singing along with the bouncing karaoke ball.

Did you know that the NES version had such terrible spelling and grammar?
”Conglaturation !!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes !”

You’re Winner!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYSVgE5Kwg

Park patrol – C64

More Activision greatness. Park Patrol is one of the top C64 games I’ve played, I have to wonder if Activision hoped that this would end up in arcades as it truly did all the right things to make it a great eater of quarters. The basic idea was to run around and pick up trash before you run out of energy, you also have to deal with killer swimmers and turtles while ants take food from your storage hut. Fantastic and simple, makes me wonder where the developer has gotten to now. Unlike the Ghostbusters developer who’s making iPhone games, Tony Ngo seems to of disappeared entirely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Up77H268E

Moonstone – Amiga

The most frustrating game on this list by far is Moonstone for the Amiga. Three lives and the constant threat of instant kills may not sound fun with real time combat, but the tactical combat and crazy gore would always pull me back for some more punishment. If you don’t watch any of the other youtubes that I’ve linked to at least watch this one, it still doesn’t look to bad graphically and still isn’t half bad; perhaps that’s why it has a fansite http://www.moonstonetavern.co.uk/ and sells for $45 used!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLMFybclOJM

Startrader – C64

Startrader brings us back to the obscurity as the game was only available on a crazy cassette that had ten games on one side and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It's Christmas?” on the other. Under $10 for ten games and money donated Famine Relief in Ethiopia is a crazy deal by today's standards, I only wish they picked different art for the box, it freaked me out pretty badly.

I see a lot of people calling Startrader a poor man’s Elite and they might be right, even still, I had the darn music stuck in my head a couple of nights ago and I couldn’t remember it at all come morning. Sadly this game is so obscure that I can’t even find a YouTube video for it, so instead I have a link to lemon64.com where you can subject yourself to a tune I’ve heard over and over.

http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2453

Gumshoe – C64

Untill I just stared researching I had forgotten that Gumshoe actually came in the same pack as Startrader and it’s perhaps the best game in that little package. Now I’m sure a lot of NESheads are thinking of their light gun game, it seems as is Nintendo must of bought some of the rights from A&F Software with the change in their pockets. The premise is very simple shoot guys, and reach the top, perhaps that’s why it was so playable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORDZUIjo_0

And so ends another walk down memory lane for me, I hope I’ve reminded some of you with games forgotten and given the rest of you an interesting quick look into my gaming childhood.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin review – Xbox 360

2009-02-16T21:44:00.001-06:00

Monolith’s bringing the F.E.A.R. back home with their new sequel.

It’s been a rocky road for the F.E.A.R. franchise over the last three years, squabbles over the game's ownership between Monolith and Vivendi made it seem that a true sequel with the F.E.A.R. name had become impossible. A few months ago however, both companies were able to bury the hatchet (under a bundle of money) so Monolith could present us with the continuation of the story that they began with the original F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon, forsaking all previous attempts by TimeGate Studios. So what does all this crazy industry business mean exactly? Well if you’ve played either F.E.A.R. Extraction Point or F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate then you can wipe that experience from your mind as if it never happened, because as far as F.E.A.R. 2 is concerned, it didn’t. For those who missed out on the original then you missed out on what was named shooter of the year 2006 by some and is also one of the most disturbing shooters on the market.

F.E.A.R. 2 puts you in the shoes of Michael Becket just before the explosive ending to F.E.A.R. and keeps the same broody atmosphere, reflex time and creepy little girl that made the first game stand out so much. Storytelling has improved greatly giving you a far better grasp on what is going on and why you’re there. This is all helped by competent voice acting and sixty pieces of collectable journal intelligence which tell the story as you progress, but it’s hardly a rollercoaster of intrigue and has little in the way of surprises. Open endings are in style right now and the ending here isn’t any exception, there’s plenty of room for further sequels after this game’s climax.

You won’t be spending the whole game by yourself

Core gameplay is largely unchanged, but since every FPS needs an angle F.E.A.R. 2 presents to you intractable cover table flipping (a-la Stranglehold) and mech combat (a-la – uhh, MechWarrior?). Firstly the cover system, like several other aspects of the game, heralds from a slightly older school of gaming in that you don’t ‘snap to’ cover like you would in Gears of War and blind fire around corners. This isn’t necessarily a failing since it doesn’t create a game full of waist high walls for you to hind behind after every corner. The cover system does occasionally confuse the poor replica soldiers, several times I witnessed a soldier stand out greatly from the cover, making him an easy target or I’d see several soldier running back and forwards over a large open area taking cover at either side. The AI isn’t bad on the whole, but it does have some quirks and generally isn’t as revolutionary as F.E.A.R. was three years ago. Good use of cover makes combat a whole lot easier, but being equipped with a fully operational mech armed with machine guns, rockets and heat vision is a better way of tipping the odds into your favor. Those who played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo will likely say that a mech section that uses up a third of the demo has no more place in F.E.A.R. than it would in G.R.A.W. but fortunately in the context of the full game these sections are used rather well. After battling a few mechs while on foot, entering one yourself doesn’t feel so out of place and while it does remove you from the creepy and vulnerable sensations you’d be experiencing otherwise, these sections are used very sparingly and don’t equate to even a tenth of the game.

It’s obvious by now that F.E.A.R. 2 has two goals: solid combat and creepy atmosphere. For the largest part it succeeds at both very well. The guns have a great feeling of impact when they connect, although the gore on impact can be a little overused. Some replicant soldiers must have a destruct button hidden somewhere on their body as landing a grenade a few feet away from your target will often cause the soldier to explode into a gorgeous sea of crimson rather than being thrown from the blast. I can’t really vouch for the realism of this gore one way or the other having not personally thrown any cooked frag grenades into crowded areas. Other weapons such as the laser will allow you to satisfyingly dice your targets in two even through some cover, which is sure to have you squealing with glee. The weapon selection isn’t huge and totals around eight in all with a generous four gun inventory system, especially handy when ammo is running short. F.E.A.R.’s combat might be a shock to the system for some when you find that you’re not blessed with the supernatural ability to regenerate health by standing still, unlike so many recent games. This will require a sharp change in your playing strategy after the numerous health pickups from the beginning of the game start to become far less frequent.

Going toe to toe with a mech isn’t too wise

If you’re not in combat then you’ve likely reached a horror section of the game, after clearing out a few rooms of foes your HUD will flicker and fuzz signaling another interlude as you begin to expect creepy girl Alma to appear behind you in a reflection at any moment. Not being much of a horror movie fan myself I did find that the constant shifting between combat and the horror sections becoming tiresome and a little too played out by the end. You do have to appreciate these sections though, some of the sick, twisted and unusual things you see do keep things interesting, it’s just a pity that you’re constantly mentally classifying each section combat to horror to combat to horror. Then again, I might be overanalyzing this whole thing. One of the biggest gates to a quick progression through the game is often in the form of a small padlock in the corner of a large room, perhaps I’m spoilt by waypoint markers but there’s nothing fun about wondering through the same rooms over again just to find the exit tucked away in the far corner.

While you may be surprised by some of these gruesome and twisted goings on in F.E.A.R. 2 you’re unlikely to be knocked off your feet by the graphics. Nothing here jumps out as looking bad per se but this is the same Lithtech engine seen in Condemned and the previous F.E.A.R. games, so despite the enhanced textures it still doesn’t always graphically feel like a new release. That said, Monolith sure does know to use effects to enhance atmosphere. Rather than a clear vision you’ll often have to deal with interference fuzzing up your heads up display or having the display in the mech go haywire after taking one too many missiles, these effects go a long way towards creating the atmosphere and are well used, much like the audio. There’s the usual whizz bangs of rockets flying and guns firing, spoken dialog is well read and scripted, one little gem of dialog is when your warned that Anya wants to devour you like “free pizza at an anime convention”, while a good laugh the humor fortunately begins and ends there. The music is especially effective even though barely heard. Dynamic orchestral scores aren’t anything new but having everything quiet but tense keeps yourself in tune with the current situation.

Most guns aren’t original, but they are satisfying

Those of you who are hoping to be able to play through the story with a friend for comforting support will have to just rely on moral support as F.E.A.R. 2 doesn’t feature any co-op modes, hardly surprising due to the nature of the story. There’s also no split-screen online, although you do get your usual online modes of deathmatch and team deathmatch along with a basic experience based leveling system and four other multiplayer modes:

Armored Front
Team on team combat over a large area with five command points. Plays a lot like the UT2004’s onslaught with mechs and gun emplacements. A whole lot of fun.
Blitz
Essentially capture the flag (or Phlag) but instead of one flag in each base your whole team either has the role of attack or defend
Control
Plays a little like Armored Front but with only 3 control points and no mechs, makes for a much faster game.
Failsafe
The toughest mode of them all, team based bomb planting and bomb defusal, with no re-spawns. Definitely one for the more experienced players.

Multiplayer is fast, furious and fun despite a feeling that it’s all been done before and is worth looking into if you want to get your full moneys worth out, but doesn’t solely merit a purchase for most people.

Boo!

F.E.A.R.2 perfectly meets the expectations set by the previous game and it doesn’t go out of its way to attract new players. The single player mode will only give you roughly seven hours of gameplay so hopefully you’ll get the extra millage out of the multiplayer. Overall F.E.A.R. 2 is a solid PC style FPS with some traits from some of the more recent console multiplayer console shooters.

Retro Revenge

2009-02-13T15:47:00.001-06:00

I really enjoying putting together my previous retro games blog post so I figured it was time to put together another. So without further ado, here’s more games that you’ve likely never heard of.

Creatures (Clyde Radcliffe Exterminates All The Unfriendly Repulsive Earth-ridden Slime) II: Torture Trouble C64

We've had people complaining about torture in World of Warcraft like it's a new thing. Creatures brought torture to the C64 back in 1990 with every 2 levels of platforming being followed by a puzzle torture section, these torture puzzles were so popular that Apex put out a sequel that focused purely on the torture. Watching the YouTube video will give you a pretty good idea of what most of these single screen sections involve, but you're missing the gory deaths of Clyde's cute friends.

Extra kudos to Creatures 2 for having one of the most bizarre cheats ever. Lick your finger and rub it up and down the joystick ports for infinite lives, yes I know it seems crazy but it really worked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc0QDlaRFeo

Best Cheat

JetStrike Amiga CD32

Jetstrike plays like a combat version of Choplifter, with a whole lot of variety beyond the usual missions of picking up people and dropping them off, You'll have to deal with: Dogfights, Stunt flying, recon and tank bombing missions in a large selection of aircraft, such as: A-10 Warthog AH-64 Apache, Spitfire, Acro Jet and Dragons. The maps were rather small and it was pretty hard to see what was coming when you really started to move along fast (just like Sonic games after 1995) but the gameplay, variety and CD32 music is a recipe for win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si69-4giMcs

Super Skidmarks Amiga

Super Skidmarks and Worms two games whose names alone gave me a lot of entertainment through the years. One of the biggest reasons that Super Skidmarks stood out from the crowd were its smooth animations, high quality graphics and tight controls. There's not a whole lot of real content here that's particularly groundbreaking or original but it took the existing sea of Supercars clones to the next level, it's just a pity that the YouTube video below doesn't do justice to this great game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0EU1ocGjrY

Buck Rogers Countdown to doomsday

As much as I do enjoy medieval fantasy it’s nice to get into a good sci-fi RPG no matter how quickly the in game music brings on dementia. I expect this will be one of the better known games on this list just due to the amount of systems it was released on, but I’m curious to know what people thought of this game. For some reason I believe that it wasn’t well received, but I loved it and it’s the only game on this list that I’ve actually completed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MzAPrpVFk0

Halls of the things ZX spectrum

About as basic as a game can be (except for the bewildering controls), run around a maze, shoot things, collect rings, win game. There’s a good chance this may have been the first game I ever played and I have many fond memories of playing this at my Aunts house when I could still count my age on one hand.

Others have fond memories of this game also and there’s a updated HD version. Crazy! http://retrospec.sgn.net/game/halls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_O5eR5nAQo

Feeling retro + Sonic Unleashed

2009-01-25T23:38:00.001-06:00

A few things recently have got me thinking about old game, I don’t mean PS2 games or PS1 games, I mean really old games. From those who read this I’d be interested to hear what’s your first game, but here’s a list of a few games that have been on my mind and why these random games hold any kind of significance.

The Chaos Engine (Amiga 1993)

This will be the only game on this list that I expect anyone to remember (Likely Danny O’ Dwyer). The closest comparison I can think of is Gauntlet, but if you watch a small part of the video you’ll quickly get the idea. Sadly the Bitmap brothers never released their GBA version as they announced but since we saw Speedball on the XBLA I hold hope that this series isn’t forgotten

Kennedy Approach (c64 1985)

A strange game for a 7 year old to be playing, but without the internet and IMs I barely knew my way around a keyboard. Kennedy Approach is a keyboard driven game where each plane needs to be called by typing its ID and giving it a direction and altitude, it’s all rather rudimentary but it sure did teach me a lot about ol’ QWERTY at a young age.

Kettle (c64 1987)

I’ve been playing a lot of OCremix tunes recently, some good tunes without lyrics do wonders for my concentration when I’m trying to work/write and there’s a lot of noisy distractions around. Kettle is one of the first games that I ever just stopped and listened to the music.

Atic Attack (Spectrum 1983)

Very popular back in its day, Atic Attack was made by the the same guys that founded Rare, back then they were known as Ultimate. One strange thing about this game is that every time I see that turkey I can hear Hugo Myatt saying “Careful team, your life force is draining”

Liberation: Captive II (Amiga 1994)

I wrote rather extensively about this back in March (http://www.gamespot.com/users/Elk/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25355260). Captive II was my young Oblivion, the game was huge and there was a whole lot to do for a tiny Amiga game. It’s sad that I can find nothing about the developers and the publisher is now doing games that have Noel Edmonds on the cover.

So congrats to you if you’ve played any of those games, you’re officially old.

Also I wanted to take a few moments to talk about my distain for Sonic Unleashed. Sonic Heroes was the last Sonic game that I played, I think actually own a copy that I’ve only played for 10 minutes, which is a little strange as I didn’t have a ‘bad’ experience. There’s a demo of Unleashed out there right now which is a glowing example of everything that’s good about the game, plain and pure Sonic running along. Now even this best part of Sonic has some pretty fundamental issues which I’ll get to later, but sometimes I wonder if they added some of this extra stuff just to kill the scores of the game. I didn’t play through the whole game so I’m not going to get into a lengthy review, instead I’m going to break it down into bullet points so it’s suitable for a future PowerPoint presentation.

5, Human’s don’t look right in a Sonic game: There’s plenty of creatures that have been discarded (Nack the Weasel anyone?) why can’t cities be full of other creatures rather than these cartoonish out of place humans in these middle areas?

4, The middle areas: Memory’s never been a strong point for me, but the central hub in Sonic Adventure worked pretty well, kind of like Mario Sunshine, however in Unleashed you have hubs set in may different areas that are rather a pain to navigate and it’s never very apparent where you need to be going.

3, The Werehog: Now although these sections are by far the weakest point of the game I do have to applaud Sonic team on trying something new, obviously their existing formula isn’t working out but Sonic games aren’t really about combat. For those who haven't tried Unleashed, the combat works God of War style but far slower and a whole lot less enjoyable…. Actually now I think back to Sonic team trying something new, I didn’t much care for the Knuckles levels in Adventure and the Tails levels were just horrible.

2, High Speed: Sonic is all about speed right? But speed shouldn’t mean constant trial and error to achieve anything because you only have a split second to react to any obstacles around you. If you want to give us this high level of speed then do us a favor and zoom out so we can see what’s coming. Yes I know Sonic looks very pretty in HD and you want to show him off but when we are “Rolling Around at the Speed of Sound” it’d be nice to see more than a few meters in front of us.

1, Artificial lengthening of the game play: One of my biggest pet peeves and perhaps the main reason I never finished the game. Unleashed requires you to collect so many Sun and Moon medals, to collect these you have to replay older missions and rely replaying some levels time and time again to find an item because you have to jump right at a certain point. Before playing Sonic Unleashed I’d just finished dealing with this same damn mechanic on Prince of Persia and that almost crossed the line and that game is FUN for the most part, the areas in Unleashed were bad the first time around, I don’t want to keep going back and playing them to find a damn item!

Back in the later 90’s there were a lot of platform games that simply copied Mario, I wish Sonic had taken this route 10 years ago and worked on a few 3D platforming fundamentals before things have gotten this far. Honestly I don’t think the feel of the Sonic controls have ever really felt right in 3D, there’s just too much emphasis on speed and not enough of tight and precise movement, like they are trying to run before they can walk.

Bottom line, Sega need to swallow their pride and ask Nintendo for some help, sure it won’t come cheap but there aren’t that many who know how to make a solid platformer these days, even Rayman seems to have given up.

Phew that was long, but I haven’t focused on gaming in my blog for as long as I can remember. Hopefully most of this makes sense, I usually allow myself time to read back through my blog posts and tighten them up but I’m feeling a mixture of laziness and tiredness, so you’ll have to make do with my disjointed rambling.

Back to the grind

2009-01-20T14:41:00.001-06:00

I’m back from the sunny west coast and wow somehow that city manages to be the exact opposite of Sonic unleashed. Alright, let me explain. Just before I left for California I set myself a goal of getting through Prince of Persia and Sonic unleashed, I had enough time so it seemed pretty reasonable, Prince of Persia was exactly what I expected, no more, no less and rather quick to get through, so then it was time to put the old ‘chog through his paces. Since Sonic Unleashed isn’t a new game I had plenty of time to get my expectations adjusted by the experiences of others which have been entirely negative, but being the sucker that I am I set the game of on the GameFlu and was astounded to find that the game wasn’t able to meet my amazingly low expectations, in fact I couldn’t complete the game (fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to review it). To steer my ramblings back to my original analogy, I had an idea in my head of what I’d expect from San Francisco and somehow the city exceeded my expectations in every way. There you go Sonic Unleashed <> San Francisco or perhaps Sonic Francisco != San Francisco depending what takes your fancy (I prefer the latter)
My new wallpaper (helps to have 4 screens)

There’s a few peeves I have about most American cities that I’ve visited, mostly the problems are with the planning and the store selection. Where I live (Kansas) has a very ‘city in a box’ feel, as if I’ve been let loose on SimCity and made some generic heartless area, where building placement is decided by metrics and numbers “These people are so many miles from a Walmart, place another”, “the people need more Applebees” etc. One of the greatest things about SF is perhaps how it reminds me more of a city like Torquay with its feel but just far more geeky and of course, geeky is win. I love the small business, grocery shop feel, I love the fact that I saw more iPhones and smart phones in 4 days than I have in my life and I generally love how it’s not Kansas.

Perhaps my favorite shot

We got to do a lot of neat things while my wife and I were there for 3 nights, as you saw before I rudely busted in on the Giant Bomb crew, but I brought British gifts, so hopefully tonight's Bombcast won’t be scolding me for my actions. We also saw just major historic sites, such as the worlds largest LOLcat

The CNet / GameSpot building (didn’t get a chance to enter

Loud fish mammal creatures

And plenty more on my Picassa Album (http://picasaweb.google.com/madelk/SanFran09?authkey=ciB0RUwjay8)

Obviously I had a great time and I look forward to getting back into the city, I just wish more places were hiring and not firing.

Started my vacation with a BOOM!

2009-01-17T13:30:00.001-06:00

Achievement unlocked!

Here's a link to the best photo's I've taken since I've been here in SF.
http://picasaweb.google.com/madelk/SanFran09?authkey=ciB0RUwjay8#

WOO San Fran baby!

2009-01-15T19:23:00.001-06:00

Image by davidciani via Flickr

I’m working on getting all my stuff packed up and DS’ charged for my trip to San Francisco bay early, early tomorrow morning. I’m pretty stoked about the trip and hopefully I’ll meet some interesting folk there, which seems pretty inevitable.

If you’re around the bay and want to meet up for a pint of poison then hit me up, you know where I am.

DING *29 MCMLXXX

2009-01-09T11:32:00.001-06:00

No, I'm not back to playing World of Warcraft, instead today is the 29h anniversary of my birth and I'm hoping to get an apprentice mount next level.

The trip to San Francisco has been delayed a week (we were supposed to leave today) but it made more sense to go at a time when we actually had money in the bank so we could actually do things while we're there.

I've been wondering if any readers live in, or have visited the SFbay as I've been thinking about what to do while I'm there. I was hoping to get some kind of tour of the CNET office but I'm really not sure if anything like that is offered, or even who to contact if it is. I'm also looking for places any good places to eat or see. Places like Fisherman's Warf and the bridge are obvious photo spots so I'll be sure to have some good photo's for you all by the time I get back.

Lastly, for your reading pleasure I've uploaded my reviews here for you to take a look through, but check out the versions over at Citizen game for HTML IMG added goodness including the new Rise of the Argonauts review. Please read and comment on what you can.

Thanks for reading my 29th anniversary post and please let me know if you have any San Francisco incite.

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

2008-12-31T09:20:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year Everyone!
At last a holiday we can all agree on.

I was wondering if you've been setting New Year's resolutions, if so then please share. Resolutions don't sound like something that I'd usually go along with, if it's important enough to set a goal for then you shouldn't need some arbitrary date to set yourself goals. However, setting reasonable resolutions works and helps you better yourself and your life, with that said, here's my dumb goals for 09.

Gaming

Complete 2 Zelda games - so this doesn't really better me or my life, but I've only completed 4 Zeldas, 3, 4, OOT & TP. This is especially sad since I own every Zelda except for the first two. Not sure which I'll play through, perhaps Wind Waker and Phantom hourglass, but I'm also tempted by Majora's mask.

Fitness

Hundred push ups - I'm not in terrible shape, but I could always stand to be fitter. I managed day one on the harder routine which meant 45 pushups with 4 one minute breaks, I still hurt. If anyone wants to join me on this path of pain then checkout
http://hundredpushups.com/

Career

Complete at least one piece of paid commissioned work - I've been writing reviews on and off for quite some time now and have gotten rather serious about it over the last 2-3 years so it's about time I set myself up with the next level. Honestly I'm a little skeptical about this but I've thought of ideas for a column in a paper, so with enough stubborn behavior I may get this harder achievement to unlock.

I hope you all do well with your lists and may all of your achievements unlock.

Chest nuts nibbling at your toes

2008-12-25T22:06:00.001-06:00

Hi all, I trust you all had a great Christmas!

I thought I'd give a quick list of some notable gifts that I received, as is the custom around these here parts

3 months of XBL
1600 Microsoft Points
Mario Kart (W/Wheel)
A stand for my tx2510us laptop
A great chair for my desk

I think I gave pretty well.

A D610 Laptop
GForce 7800 Video card
19” Widescreen monitor
4-5 Bugs Bunny trinkets
Gears of War book

Some other gifts given to others by others in our house

Xbox 360
Mortal Kombat Vs DC
Some kind of basketball game
A Proposal of marriage

Sure there were a lot of other gifts which were all pretty awesome, but most aren’t so interesting to write about here. Nothing I gave can quite top a marriage proposal and all six of us had a great time.

I did get one other gift though, which is so outstanding that it doesn’t even belong in the same list as the rest. A three day trip to San Francisco starting on my 29th birthday (Having a wife is awesome. FACT!) We’ll be in the Fairmont about 20 minutes from the CNET office so I’ll be sure to take a look at where it is since the building does look rather cool. I’m honestly not sure exactly what we’re going to be doing in and around SF besides snapping a lot of photos, but Dana says she has plans that she doesn’t want to spoil so I’ll just have to wait a couple of week before I find out.

What was the best give you gave and received this Christmas?

So this is Christmas, What have you done?

2008-12-21T22:48:00.001-06:00

Now you have John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over) in your head, you’re welcome.

Things are looking pretty good on the Christmas front, the tree is packed! I’ve a couple of gifts to wrap once the final package arrives for my wife on the 24th but other than that I’m geared and ready. I’m so glad I got in and ordered early from Amazon, although the stores don’t appear to be anywhere near as busy as previous years. I guess that’s just a sign of the times.

I’ve been thinking a lot about 2008 and how things have changed for me personally over the year. On Gamespot things have changed drastically. I used to write a daily Amazon.com deal of the day, rather a tedious affair, but I wanted to prove (to myself mostly) that I can pick something like that and stick with it and I did a rather good job, up until the end of May when I packed it in. Also more importantly I went from exactly 0 comments on each blog to the dozen or so that I see here regularly, thanks guys and a special thanks to Carstairs and Galadriel for being the first two regulars here, I’d like to think that perhaps my blog is a little better to look at now than it was before.

Outside of Gamespot, I’m happy that this weekend I finished my 2008 new years resolutions. Reading books isn’t really my thing, I’d much rather stare at a screen of brightly colored lights, but I decided that it’s about time I expanded my horizons a little, so I borrowed a copy of “The Road” by Cormack McCarthy. After getting really psyched up for Fallout 3 at the end of ‘07 I decided that reading a little post apocalyptic fiction might be the way to go and I wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps it’s a little dark for most people with numerous mentions of suicide but it gave me exactly the moment that I wanted, I kept reading and found it hard to put the book down. Now I get to be one of those jerks when the movie comes out next year when I say “The book was better”

The second resolution was to get a little closer to working in the game industry. I’m sure you’re all tired of me redirecting you (look at all these hyperlinks!) but of course CitizenGame is a home to me now and we have a game of the year vote going on right now, so head off there quickly and vote, my blog should still be here when you get back, baring any sudden apocalypse. Speaking of Citizen Game, I’ve had a blast the last couple of weekends playing Gears of War 2 with the guys there. Now Gears isn’t exactly my game of choice but the guys make it a tone of fun anyhow, we even had Don (ex GameSpot) in our voice chat for a while, good times

That seamless segway brings me onto the games I’ve been playing Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts a whole lot, mostly thanks to the recommendations from Carstairs and I’m stunned, calling it a driving game is calling Fallout 3 a FPS or RPG, N&B is more like a platform racer, which sounds treacherous but is instead tremendous! New games for me this week have been Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Left 4 Dead and Lips which I’ll likely go into another time and I’m getting real close to reaching 50,000 Gamer Score points by ‘09.

Alright, this post is running a little long so I’ll cut it here, even though I’m barely started talking about games but I don’t want to chew your ears off. Have happy holidays guys, I’m terribly jealous of all you who have time off school!

Animal Crossing: City Folk review

2008-11-24T21:05:00.001-06:00

Nintendo's mortgage simulator arrives on the Wii with new places to visit and greater connectivity options.

Animal Crossing keeps the formula from the previous two games, make a life for yourself in a village full of anthropomorphic creatures with some bizarre dispositions. In your new village you'll experience a very open world of choices that can be compared to The Sims or Harvest Moon, you have no defined goals and it's up to you to make this sandbox into a game. After building your character (or importing from the DS) you'll step off the bus into your new life, just remember that with great life comes great debt, you'll quickly meet everyone's favorite racoon tycoon, Tom Nook. Nook'll recruit you into his shop and give you a tutorial by sending you off to do some quick meets and greets before he casts you off into the world, this'll sound familiar to players of the last games and sadly so will most everything I have to tell you about City Folk.

Every house needs its own Triforce of power.

Being cast off into the world can be a disorientating experience, your only real goal is to pay off your mortgage by pawning off items you find, fortunately there's a good list of other things to do if you take the time to look around. Most of these tasks bring a lot of monotony and it'd be easy to burn any joy out from the game in just a few hours, but here's where Animal crossing uses a rather unique trick, the internal clock. You could gather fruit, but there's only so much each day, you might want to shop in the store, but their stock only recovers overnight. This can require you to change your gaming habits as you can't see what Animal Crossing has to offer by playing a 20 hour weekend, instead you are rewarded for taking it easy and just playing for an hour or so each day. Failing to attend to your village for some time will upset your villagers, fill your town with weeds and bring a plague of bugs on your house, this can be a problem depending on your gaming habits. If you're someone who plays your Wii daily already it's probably no big deal to throw in Animal Crossing for a few minutes, personally I find these restrictions better suited to the DS but that's a personal preference. There's a definite draw to returning to the village for a short while each day to see what's new in your town, new people visit, events occur and new items are stocked op on shelves, of course if you connect with a friend then there's a another whole village to explore.

Of course K.K. Slider is back again.

The DS brought the first level of online play but allowing people to visit your town and trade items, City Folk extends the connectivity in a few ways that were sadly missing previously, Downloadable items, Inter-town mailing, and the much touted voice chat using the new Wii Speak. The improvements show that Nintendo were paying attention to what the fans were asking for, of course you still have friend codes, but there are other features clearly learnt from experience, like being able to go to the post office and report an animal who's been taught to swear like a sailor. Some other improvements such as having the animals in your city not lock themselves away when players visit and the option to have 4 characters each with their own house show off the extra capabilities of the Wii, although some restrictions still apply, such as not being able to visit the city or simply design patterns while the doors to your town are open.

Ride the short bus into the city.

You'd expect the city to provide the big changes but sadly you'll find that it's mostly just a refuge for animals that used to set up shop in your village. Gracie (fashion), Katrina (Fortune Telling), Shampoodle (hair styles), Redd (rare goods) and Shrunk (the shrink) are now just a bus ride away whenever you need their obscure services. There are a few new things to do in the city, like shoe shining and exploring the HRA academy, but all of this could of just existed in your current village and is different just for the sake of change.

The city at least looks interesting

Since you'll spend a lot of time talking to the AI creatures that live in your town it's fortunate that this is one area of the game that has received a fair bit of attention, even though it's never mentioned. Animals have new lines of dialog and tasks for you to perform, nothing revolutionary but playing games of hide and seek or fishing someone's keys from a river adds some surprise variety. Animals will also talk about the other humans they've met and will occasionally ask you to pass messages across to them, such as "Next time you see Doug remind him to come talk to me about interspecies procreation" or whatever the wacky AI is into. The other animals can keep you entertained for a while but the reason for Animal Crossing to exist is for the multiplayer, whether you're on the same system or using the WiiConnect24 features.

Don't bathe in Cherry soda kids, these are trained Elephants

Controls are still a worry to me when a Wii game is released, but fortunately Animal Crossing keeps things pretty basic and simple, sure you can hoist the controller to cast a fishing line or swing a net if you want to, but you'll get the same reaction by simply tapping A. Things control best with a controller/nunchuk configuration rather than simply using a stand alone controller, using the nunchuk to walk around and then using the controller to activate, rather than pointing at the screen to stumble around the town, typing is a lot easier when using a Wii controller rather than scrolling through letters. You also use the Wii controller to paint the patterns which requires a very steady hand, these patterns are also a fine example of how the series hasn't evolved. Sure you can now make designs that allow you to customize the front and back of a shirt but you're also still restricted to the same old basic pallet selections. In this day and age of HDR graphics it's hard to tolerate using a Mario paint style 15 colour pallet.

Pattern desiring fails at any evolution

The monotony of Animal Crossing may not appeal to some, but it can be a great way to keep in contact with family, it sure is easy to get into and if you have some distant relatives who've already picked up a Wii for the bowling and fit then this can be a fun way to keep people together. For those who play by themselves then you'll find Animal Crossing still appeals to the obsessive compulsives that liked the previous games as long as you're not expecting any drastic improvements. There's no NES games (as expected) to play back at your house, no real decisions or choices to make about your life that'll effect anyone else, it's still just a game where you'll do mundane tasks to earn enough money to expand your house so you can fill it with more garbage. In the end you'll either love this or hate it, just don't expect much more than the feeling of an expansion pack over the previous games.

365 bells down, 299,635 to go.

Should reviewers play through?

2008-11-08T22:43:00.001-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

So now I have Fallout 3 done and reviewed at Citizen Game (please go take a look), I'm now looking ahead to Midnight Club: LA and I believe this will be my first review without playing through the entire game first. It's always been my thought that no game should be reviewed without completing the main story first, but really, where does that end? To see all that Fallout 3 has to offer would require more time than reasonable and these side quests are really no less relevant than the main one except that they are purely optional. It makes me wonder if freelance writers get paid more to review Tales of Symphonia than, say, Gears of War. Either way, it should be up to the writer to decide how much of the game needs to be played and if you trust them enough that you're taking their review seriously then you should trust their judgement on when to cut the game short and put pen to paper (data to screen?).

What are your thoughts guys? Have you written any reviews without getting through the whole story? Where you satisfied with the outcome?

War has only been this much fun twice before

2008-11-03T21:20:00.001-06:00

No I'm not talking about another sequel to Cannon Fodder (click links for +1 awesome) instead I'm talking about the never changing war of Fallout, which I finally completed yesterday. I just thought I'd take a break from my review and write a quick blog post, which is gradually becoming a weekly thing. I also managed to get through Fable 2 on Saturday, so it was a pretty game-completing weekend for me. I am kinda bummed out about both games though, the endings both seemed rather anti-climactic and the Fallout 3 ending doesn't allow you to travel around after the ending sequence, unlike Oblivion, but true to Fallout, I can't say much more without giving spoilers. One thing I do like about reviewing PC games is that I can at least take my own screenshots without the task of pointing a camera at a TV and hoping the result doesn't look like garbage.

So here's the screenshots I have so far for Fallout 3, I've already cut some and now I need to decide on which to axe so my review doesn't turn into a picture book.

Thanks for reading guys and just to let you know my review of Saints Row 2 is live on CitizenGame.co.uk and I surely wouldn't be opposed to you going there and commenting on it. :)

And the flood of games continues

2008-10-27T23:50:00.002-05:00

As I post this the time for Fallout 3 arrives, I may be missing the midnight release, but hopefully I can find some collectors editions at a Gamestop or Bestbuy, the sad thing is that I'm still not done with Fable, I have a little more to see in Saints row and I've barely scratched the surface of Midnight club. At least I did manage to get my Saints Row 2 review finished, it's only available on my blog right now, once it appears on citizengame.co.uk for a few days I'll post it up on GameSpot with the rest of mine.

I've been having a lot of fun with Fable and taking things nice and slow, but I've had some great moments so far:

1, The general store was shut and I have a very sexually demanding wife, so I had to search all the cabinets in the house in the hope of finding a condom.

2, I didn't realize one of my two wives were following me when I quick traveled to see my other. I looked around and saw the wife on follow, then saw my other wife running full pelt towards us, so I had to have the both of us run HARD in the opposite direction.

3, My wife was playing with her husband, she didn't have any condoms and she hears her husband say "I knew we should of used protection.... uhh, I mean, that's great news darling". Up pops a baby crib in the house. My wife then accidentally hits B (spells) instead of A (action) and casts a fireball on the ground, her husband runs from the house pleading from his life, while the baby giggles in amusement.

Those are the only examples I can think of, but they're such unique and unscripted events that I just had to share them.

Talk to you later guys, and remember; war, war never changes.

I've moved to a new page

2005-09-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

Elk's blog

2005-09-15T18:09:00.001-05:00

That can't be comftable

2005-09-15T18:09:00.000-05:00

Big Tony likes his cake

2005-09-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

Which are you afraid of?

2005-09-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

Don't drop laptops

2005-09-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

Dan in an action shot

2005-09-15T17:57:00.000-05:00

Cat in a box :)

Strange things

2005-08-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

I've got together a couple of blog worthy links.

No1.
When the one you love is cheating on his/her spouse for you there's a card to make everything right Secret Lover Collection. This should belong in a 'now I've seen eveything' category

No2.
A link I received yesterday at work from Ryan, the result of translating Starwars into Chinese and back to English
Episode III Backstroke of west it has a very ALL YOUR BASE feel to it

Random image

2005-07-31T16:33:00.000-05:00

I've had this image stored up for a while, I can't help but think that someone should use this someplace in a caption compo.

Oh and some of you may recall that I had a remote control jammer back in the UK, a relatively irritating device.. However it has been bettered by this!

Pure evil

Google/MSN Dare to compare?

2005-07-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

I just heard about MSN's new mapping system, decided to compare it to Googles (which I currently use) I must say that MSN totally blows it away

Google - MSN

Update:
Well it seems the perma link function on MSN sucks compared to Googles (Googles also runs faster under Opera) For some bizar reason it likes to show Atlanta

Update 2:
Also seems MSN is pretty well censored, the federal building is blurred and most of the area south of Las Vegas has no imagery, where as Google has the whole 'area 51' in detail.
Area 51 on Googlemaps

Feeling Stupid?

2005-07-17T22:32:00.000-05:00

But more stupid than the time you locked your keys outside of your car?

My Desk

2005-07-17T19:18:00.000-05:00

Hey, just a quick update. I want to start posting some images about the place we live now. But I'm going to start with the new desk that was part of Security Savings bank's old stock. Many thanks to Dan and his friends for helping me get it here!

New iPOD!

2005-07-14T18:08:00.000-05:00

I just had to post about this new design!

Ipod Flea

Come to Kenya, we've got...Leopards?

2005-06-29T20:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, this is pretty amazing (If it's true). The thought of someone hearing a voice in is head telling him to drop the knife and attack a Leopard with his bare hands... He must be a sandwiches short of a picnic basket

Full story

The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. “A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide-open mouth. I obeyed,” M’Mburugu said.

The Battlefield

2005-06-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

I should of been paying more attention to
Torrentspy it seems that
Battlefield2 is now ready for download! I just finished downloading Batman begins and hope to watch that tomorrow. I've heard good things, I hope I'm not
disappointed

2005-06-19T23:54:00.000-05:00

Well a whole weekend has past. Turned out pretty unproductive. But I did discover city of Heroes

and I finally sat down and watched episode 3 of StarWars. Although I never thought I'd say this but I honestly think they overrated it with the action, espically towards the end it seemed to drag on and became closer to the ridicules. I guess I am never happy after berateing the first two for not having enough but it definitely bettered them in the end and leads nicely onto the classic films. Although I have to say when you see Darth Vader in his outfit for the first time, I had to wonder which button called his parent to pick him up... Must be that I've seen Triumph the insult dog too many times.

Weekend!

2005-06-17T23:46:00.000-05:00

Horray for the weekend! A random image to get it started!

Civ IV

2005-06-16T07:42:00.000-05:00

My name is Mark and I'm a Civilization addict. Or at least I will be in November

Linkage!

Tennis?

2005-06-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

100% of fact

DS Survives Everest: Expedition Update : Kotaku

2005-06-14T19:09:00.000-05:00

In today's news.. A DS survives a trip up Everest

"We totally had so much electronic equipment, and I’d say the Nintendo DS held up the best of any of it…

We were using a CB radio to stay in touch and that would consistently go bad… then we’d bring it back to life…

It was because of the wind and the cold, we had a Dell computer that got fried, a Polytechnic screen that went out… we had three of the four MP3 players go bad….but the Nintendo DS units keep hanging in there… "

Jacko!

2005-06-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

Well I for one am glad to see Jackson was proved innocent. Seems to me the prosecuting woman was a nut! But seems I'm in the minority on this one, seems that only 40 percent of the web is with me on this one. Well hopefully this will be the last time he's in court all this money has to come from somewhere

Test

2005-06-12T20:42:00.000-05:00

I just posted this with my cell!
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

It's a start

2005-06-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've decided to start posting here, seems everyone else has a blog nowadays, and well, I'll see how it goes.

So far I've posted a few pictures from Picasa which is one of the best photo organizers I've ever used. Feel free to comment!

2005-06-12T16:53:00.000-05:00

A great outside view of our new house in Salina, Kansas

2005-06-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

A old picture of me back in Bristol

?

2004-05-11T02:55:00.000-05:00