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I am testing the length of custom messages. How long can this message get? Yes, how long indeed? It has been going on for a while now. Let's see if it stays up or if it gets truncated.

I actually liked it quite a bit better than the first film. Has anyone else seen it?

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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When the game starts, I'm supposed to perform a weapons demonstration or something.

First thing I did was pick the gun up off the table and try to mow down the audience of soldiers. A message popped up in the middle of the screen: "FRIENDLY FIRE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!" No one screamed, there was no scolding. The screen simply faded to black, and then I was back at the beginning.

Blah. This game had better shape up quick, if it hopes to top Way of the Samurai 3. In that game, you can even cut down the lady who tries to give you the tutorial (only small children are invincible, no doubt due to the remarkable healing powers of youth).

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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RAIDEN: "It even rained the day I was born!"

SNAKE: "You've got it all wrong! You were the lightning in that rain! You can still shine through the darkness!"

//Zig

8/10

Mood: Venteristic

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I don't think I ever reposted this one before. It's pretty terrible (from 8 or 9 years ago), but here goes.......

***********************************************

Bakuretsu!
Explosive!
Muteki!
Invincible!
Bangai-O is one of the most fun and addictive games to come around in quite a while. Imagine a cross between Psychic Force, Ridge Racer, and the Bouncer, but without any of the hand-to-hand action of Psychic Force, none of the car-racing scenes from Ridge Racer, and none of the beat-em-up action or cinematics of the Bouncer. Then, and only then, can you begin to comprehend the madness of Bangai-O. It's a shooter but more than that, it's an experience all in itself that must be played to be enjoyed. Some people have dared to try to compare it to Thexder: yes Thexder was a shooter, yes you controlled a robot in Thexder, but that was a side-view exploration game which is nothing like the random explosions that fill the screen when you play the "exploration requires thought, I'm too deep for thought" Bangai-O. Speaking of playing, it does play similarly to Smash TV (or Robotron, for the geriatric crowd) where the D-pad is used for movement and the analog stick (or the buttons) are used for shooting. In a way, Bangai-O is also similar to Cannon Spike (short levels each with a boss), but this game has a lot more levels - 44 in total.

Most important in this game is that sometimes you dream (when you die and need to continue) of niku, known as "a hunk of meat on a bone" to those of us in English-speaking countries. This is a tribute to Castlevania, which was actually the first video game to ever feature hunks of meat (also called niku!) in a prominent role. What is meat used for in Bangai-O? NOTHING! It's just there when you dream! You won't be dreaming too often, so whenever you see yourself running through the Gardens of Eden, chasing after the loincloth-wearing, masked pig, bearing only your mighty meat, you can look at the picture and think back to when you first played Castlevania, which by the way, is nothing at all like EXplosive... INvincible... Bangai-O! (In short, EXINBO, though I will never call it that)

Speaking of explosive...

The gameplay in EXINBO is beyond any of the "cinematic" offerings that SQUARE has put forth lately! Imagine if you will, two fistfuls of pudding. In the one hand, you have tapioca (beloved by millions). In the other hand (the left one), you have chocolate pudding, beloved by millions more. Now suppose someone unscrews both your hands (but is kind enough to later screw the right one back in). If you take those two fistfuls of pudding, smash them together (or rather ask someone else to, since you no longer have hands), and then expect people to eat the grotesque gooey mess, everyone would look at you as though you were insane. But --- if they were desperate enough for a yummy dose of pudding, they would greedily lick it right from your hands, throwing their gamers' dignity to the wind. Such is the evil nature of SQUARE! Although their symbol is an open cube, Treasure (the company that developed Bangai-O) is not Square. How do I know this? Pineapples are crucial to achieving a high score in Bangai-O, and even if people are desperate for a bite of pudding (be it tapioca, chocolate, or some god-awful mixture of the two), no one puts pineapple in their pudding.

So as you move from short level to short level (all 43 of them... I deny the existence of the 44th level!!) you will fire your missiles (not your missiles of love you sick puppy) and uncover buku barrels of lovely, delicious, FRUIT!! You will uncover and recover mangoes, bananas, pineapples... but you will never ever find the glandular fruit borne by the loins of your pet cat. So, fans of civet, please be warned and play some other, less meaningful game.

Taking a break from the review...
The BAD!
* main character is fairly small
* though lengthy, the game is fairly easy
* lots of explosions hurt the eyes of lesser, casual gamers
* the soundtrack is not performed by Queen

Back to the review...
Sometimes things are said in the mid-game conversations with bosses and the "informant" Miss M that initially make little sense, but Bangai-O always makes certain to explain later on! Although there are times that the game never explains anything. For example, why do you pilot a robot rather than join a ballet troupe? This is never fully explained. In any case, as I played through Bangai-O for the first time, I danced as I reached 130 simultaneous onscreen explosions. This feat would later be forgotten (although obviously I remembered it again) as I achieved the unspeakable - dare I say it? SAY IT! No... YES! - 142 explosions! But the beauty is these are not the types of explosions you find in other, lesser games like Toshinden, these are explosions of love that will make you wish that you too, like the cute-cute heroine Mami, had a Super Big Brother by your side. Alas, even if you have a big brother (Super or Stupid) you shall not play together as the game is single-player. While you shower the Kosmo Pirates with justice, he can study to become a lawyer.

Oh, the pudding in my example from four paragraphs ago was intended to represent Square (tapioca being their action games, and chocolate being their role-playing games). In retrospect, pudding was meant to be rubbed through ones' hair, not eaten. The gameplay in Bangai-O is so simple (yet fun!) that only a jar of sentient fecal matter could fail to enjoy this game. And I already ate that pile of poo.

Speaking of fecal matter...

If you saw a bowl of chocolate pudding, and a bowl of feces, would you be able to tell the difference? If life were like Bangai-O you would be able to, because the bowl of feces would scream: "Eat me first! I'm feces and you loooooooooooooove feces!" Hopefully an intelligent soul like you would ignore the raving bowl of feces and the quiet-yet-enticing bowl of pudding, and would instead reach into the Frigidaire for an orange. You might not want to admit it -- but fruit is better for you! Don't play the tasty but Nutrasweetened Bouncer! Ignore the blatantly-crappy-yet-still-tempting Tomb Raider Chronicles!! Remove those two and only one game remains: Bangai-O!! Buy this game, live the madness!!

//Zig

Graphics: 7/10
Music: 7/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Replay: 10/10

Mood: Venteristic

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I thought I had a massive freckle on my hand, but it turned out to be chocolate.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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16gb iPod Touch (second generation). Barely used. Includes all the important parts, but I tossed the box.

$180 shipped (on sale at Amazon right now for $230). More if you live in some foreign devil land.

PM if interested.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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Alert, alert -- there's actually a good top ten list up at GameFAQs, delivering intriguing information about the top ten games of the 1970's (one per year).

Check it out. We may never see a good top ten list again.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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When you walk into a Gamestop store, you often have the option of buying a game new or buying it used. You could turn to eBay. Amazon often offers new or used. There are even used game dealers for imports (such as www.wolfgames.com).

One argument used by game pirates is: "why buy used? It doesn't support the original developer". These people would rather cut off the knees of people who stock legitimate retail versions of out-of-print games. Or, more accurately, they would rather play a game for free instead of paying money. Since pirates are uncool (especially compared to ninjas or vikings) I will not discuss them any further here.

But even game developers question: "Why buy used? It doesn't support us." The developers of Crackdown once pointed out that used game sales deprived them of 1 to 1.5 million sales. That's a lot of potential income, which could make the difference between whether a publisher hires them again or not.

For the record, in the developers' own words, Crackdown sold about 1.5 million copies. That means 67 to 100 percent of Crackdown purchasers didn't want to keep the game and sold it back to game shops. For the record, I have not played Crackdown... and these numbers (from the developers' own words) make it sound like I should continue to avoid it.

I suspect that the Crackdown guys drastically inflated the used sale numbers to make their point, but in the process they made it look like their game is so crappy that no one liked it. Why should I care about the continued existence of companies that make bad games?

When you go to Gamestop, there are certain games you won't see used. I overheard someone ask for Crimson Gem Saga the other day, and the clerk informed them "You will want to check eBay. That's the kind of game people buy to keep. We sold all of our new ones."

Used game sales aren't stealing business from developers -- they're shifting money from crappy, overhyped games towards new copies of games worth keeping. That's a positive trend because it puts the dollars into the hands of developers who create "long-term value" titles.

So, for some games, customers see value in owning and keeping the product. For other games, customers like the ability to trade in CRAP and put their money towards something else.

Now the PSPgo has been released. It does not play physical media -- it only plays downloadable games that cannot be traded in or sold. These games tend to cost the same as the physical version, so you're not saving money by downloading games.

What you ARE doing is putting more money into the hands of publishers/developers before you've tried the product. And if you don't like the game, you have no useful way to express that distaste -- you can't trade the game back in.

This means people will have to be far more careful with their game choices. If you're operating on a budget, which (fictional) PSP game would you purchase -- Persona 5 or Killzone 3: Kratos Strikes? Now ask yourself... which game do you think more people would buy?

Download-only saves companies money. They don't have to pay retailers, and they don't have to spend money on physical packaging. Niche developers could really benefit from that. But when they're competing directly with mainstream-marketed games, and no one can trade games in for store credit, there's less chance of that money going towards the niche developers.

In theory, mainstream-ish games could be released on UMD and niche titles released via download. But since the PSPgo can't play UMDs... that possibility is removed. Niche and mainstream truly are competing directly, without the "used game" balance to keep things level.

******************

The above was all theoretical conjecture. Since the PSP can't play PSP discs, has an inferior screen, costs $250, and has a really uncomfortable control layout, it's going to flop and everyone will infer that "digital distribution only" was a bad idea. The PSPgo is one of those things that probably started as a good idea, but then everyone chimed in and gave their input until it became a collaborative mess that meets no one's needs.

It certainly won't meet quality game developers' needs.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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I know this topic is early, but bookmark it. Nominations will stay open until December 25 -- this way, you have time to ponder and recall the games from early early on that you enjoyed.

WARNING! No stupid nominations allowed! If someone nominates a game that isn't out yet, then that game will be DISQUALIFIED from the final vote. So if you simply must nominate some hot new holiday release, please wait until it actually comes out first.

I'll start by nominating Gears of War 2 and Uncharted 2.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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The hero of Star Ocean 4 is a fellow named Edge Maverick (yes, really). He travels on a spaceship with his friends. While traveling, you can stop in to visit and see how everyone is doing. When you lead Edge to the female showers, here is what happens:

What I find interesting about this Youtube video are the comments afterwards. Here are a few:

XxAngel96:
I love the way Edge meows even when Reimi's shooting him!

khoiavo:
it's probably no coincidence that he acted like a cat when he got busted
"curiousity killed the cat"
get it? get it???

ShaitanMistral:
NO WAY!! is that a fucking spoiler'?? ;O;

Reading through further comments showed that yes, ShaitanMistral really did think that Square-Enix had the main hero of Star Ocean 4 get killed by the female love interest because he accidentally peeped on her.

And that got me to thinking how awesome it would have been if that were true.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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This is a Japanese commercial for Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, demonstrating the controller-shaking functionality.

Itagaki's games demonstrated some flash, but . . . not like this.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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I got a free PS3. While setting this thing up, I scraped my ankle, sliced open my other knee, and rammed my temple into the entertainment center (drawing blood). And the damn thing ONLY COMES WITH RCA CABLES. Not even component!

I hate Sony.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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If you want to play a Cave shooter on your domestic 360, you'll get your chance in November.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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PSP-3000:
* 1-2 millimeters smaller from top to bottom, but screen is the same size.
* About 2 millimeters thinner.
* Weighs less.
* Right arrow on D-pad doesn't stick.

PSP-Older:
* Slightly brighter screen.
* Graphics are significantly clearer on 2D games and still images. This is probably due to some technical reason I'm not aware of. The 3000 almost appears to have scanlines!
* UMD less likely to fall out of the system if you drop it.

Overall, I would recommend the older model PSP.

//Zig

Mood: Venteristic

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This poor fellow couldn't beat Airman. My favorite bit is at about 2:58 in.