Console Gamers Are Idiots

I’m tired of seeing comments on reviews from reputable sources dogging the reviewer for being biased. I have a feeling that 90% of game reviewers don’t give one iota of one percent of a fuck about what system the game is on. They didn’t have to buy the console to play the game, they are given an assignment and usually can play on their employer’s dime. A game does not become great just because it is on the Xbox 360 or PS3. A game is good because it has merit, it has some sort of redeeming quality to make it stand out from the mountain of trash that is produced every year.  Its a sad day when kids have to sit around and belittle others to justify their 400 dollar game console purchase. All I can say is that you should have invested that 400 dollars into a gun to shoot yourself in the head. Console owners like to get a stick in their ass because they consistently pay 10-20 dollars more for the same game released on the PC.

Another good example of this debate is my previously posted article and the comments that follow Mr. Hip-hop’s spiel on how Gabe Newell hasn’t created anything that lives up to KZ2’s “quality.”

It’s hard to try to have a logical debate with these kinds of people, because they don’t use it. When you try to debate the finer points, your mother and her genitals are thrown into the picture, or you are called a homosexual.

Sometimes I wish the internet wasn’t the internet. In my opinion console gamers (fan boys) are tools of the man. Literally. You are mindlessly promoting a product, and you aren’t even getting paid. Its a very jingoistic attitude towards video games, and quite detrimental to the gaming community as a whole.

You don’t have to take my word for it…

“Hip-Hop Gamer” and “Real Talk”

Ok, my blog may not be the pinnacle of game journalism, but I think I have a somewhat objective point of view when it comes to gaming platforms. Each system has merits and pitfalls, good games and bad games, but if there is one thing that I can’t stand is “fanboy-ism.” Check out the Hip-Hop Gamer’s nice article on Valve.

I can’t use 1st hand knowledge about Killzone2 because I don’t own a Playstation 3. However, the reports I have been reading are here and there, some good, some bad. The overall impression that I get is that it has pretty good graphics and good gun play, but doesn’t do much to break boundaries. With that said lets dissect what Mr. Hip-Hop had to say about Valve.

“He refuse to develop games for the PS3 console because of its hard-to-develop-for cell, or so he says. This means we wont be seeing any PS3 port of Left 4 Dead.”

As a PC Games developer, to get the most bang for their buck, sticking with what you know makes creating good games easier.  Gabe Newell understands economics and doesn’t just make games. The PC and 360 use vary similar architecture, making ports very easy. Making PS3 games would require a significant investment of time and money just to learn the technology. Valve uses a Kaizen philosophy with their games, meaning that they continually test and improve their games until they are “done.” I think that Valve would not be able to the quality games that they want to to make if they had to learn the Cell Architecture.

“Valve hasn’t ever made anything close to the quality of killzone 2 this generation on the so called easy-to-develop-for platform labeled Xbox 360.”

First off, Valve is primarily a PC games company. You should be comparing the PC and PS3. Half-Life was released in 1998. It was stunning because of the games narrative(or lack thereof), the interactivity of game (I.E. puzzles). Half-Life 2 again was lauded for its story and use of puzzles, and stunning graphics for the time. Portal was a quirky game that surprised most critics in 2007 with a great story with fairly limited set pieces and unforgettable characters. Not to mention TF2 and Left 4 Dead, oh yeah Counter-Strike the most played online shooter ever. What has Killzone2 done? Look pretty? I guess. Has Killzone 2 redefined any boundaries, does it make you think when you play it? Do you have any sort of epiphany or catharsis when you play? Do you get emotionally attached to any of the characters? Do you do anything more than shoot monsters and take cover?

“Gabe Newell, as a well respected game developer should welcome the challenge, game development is not always going to be easy and you have to work hard at it to get amazing results as shown in Killzone 2”

Again, this is more of a numbers/money “thing” than it is a challenge to make a game for the PS3. The Game Biz is a tough industry, and if you can’t make back your loses from making a PS3 game, you probably shouldn’t make it. As far as Amazing results, what does that entail? A fully working beta game? Pretty graphics? 1.1million pre orders? That is just telling me that Killzone 2 might be the only shooter, or game for that matter, that is worth a damn on the PS3. Maybe I’m not smoking enough chronic to see the “amazing results.”

I don’t want to say that KZ2 is a bad game, but you can’t tell me that it is some how superior to Half-Life2. I am seeing the COD-syndrome here. Lets take something that sells well, lets rehash the same shit, and put it in a new box to sell it. Valve is guilty of that to some extent, but I sure as hell didn’t pay $60 dollars for Episode 2.

If you get a chance, read the nice comments at the end of Mr. Hip-Hop’s article.

FFVII: Advent Children

Alright. I’ve seen it. Inspected every bit. I want to know WTF is going on.  After wasting 90 minutes of my life watching this movie, I had a few notes. Maybe some one can help me out here.

• What is up with the androgynous weirdoes. In a world filled with violence, there is only one masculine looking dude. Everyone else has long hair.
• Why is everyone so damn depressed? There is too much “emo” bullshit for me. It’s almost like an animated 90210 episode. Final Fantasy: High school.
• Over-over the top action. The matrix is one thing, but this is an entirely different beast. Motorcycles that can instantaneously drive backwards after spinning out?  Re-tar-ded in my opinion.
• Speaking of motorcycles, if Cloud can fly, why the fuck does he ride a motor cycle?
• The movie did have some cool 80’s metal/rock mixed with some interesting symphony accompaniments.
• There were some neat character designs, especially the dude with the gun arm.

I guess I just can’t get into the whole universe of FF. I liked “Spirits Within” but according to FF purists I know, it had nothing to do with the FF universe. I played FFXI for 6months still don’t get this movie. I’ll leave it to the PS3 fan boys  to cream over.

Call of Duty 4 Impressions

Call of Duty 4, a game I said I didn't think I'd much care for. However, there are times when you must admit that you were wrong and embrace defeat. I mean literally grab it and hug the damn thing. Although since I purchased my defeat on Steam, I can do little more than smile. ENOUGH with the small talk, you wanna hear juicy details.

I must say that Infinity Ward has our classed themselves. This is a top notch shooter on the PC platform. Previously I had played Call of Duty on the Xbox, Call of Duty 2 on the PC, skiped 3 because it looked like a shitty launch title for the Wii. Previous incarnations were WW2 themed, however, with a title like "Modern Combat" I don't think there will be any mistaking this time.

Game play is robust. Unlike alot of shooters, there is so much chaos and gun fire that you must move cautiously. Using cover, return fire, crouch and prone techniques you can work your way to the next position. The gameplay is based on frenetic battles, lots of guns, lots of confusions, but many of the maps push you in a direction and use keen scripted ques to help immerse you.

I found "Hardcore" mode to be most challenging. This mode removes all HUD elements, radar, and crosshair. Now it is imparitive that you aim down the gun to be most accurate.

Single player is very cinemattic. I provides that "stress" in games that makes you almost panic. As I said earlier, it uses the scripted events to help immerse the player into the action.

Multiplayer is NUTS. It is what BF2 should have been without the vehicles. Lots of cover, lots of debris, lots of stuff going on. Ive seen servers as large as 50, but that is too big for the maps. 30 players seems to be the sweet spot. Persistant online ranking allows for RPG style addictiveness to infuse the game. As you capture points, kill enemies, you earn Exp points towards the next rank and weapon unlocks.

I got the game via Steam, and I paid a premium price for it. However, the game is always up to date, I can get it wherever I go, but no server browser via Steam. You can get COD4 in retail outlets as low as $39.95.

I would definitely recommend this game if you got some cash to spend or looking for a new shooter.

The Definitive LAN Party Guide Part 1

Hello residents of the interwebz! Today is the beginning of a 3 part series about LAN Parties. With the DSL generation in full swing, many people today forget their fond memories of a LP past. If you want to get your party on, here are a few tips from LAN Party Pros. I'll tell you where and how to throw the best shin-dig around. Topics range from Games to Girls, Pizza to Players, and many many more topics. Sit back and get ready to take notes.

TOPIC 1 - Getting Started

• Set Date and Time
• Date of Party and Begining/End time important
• Where da party at?
• Tables and Chairs
• What should we bring?
  

First thing to do is to decided to have a LAN Party. If you live with roommates and/or parents, please discuss with them before having a party on the premesis. Next would be to decide when to have the party? Should you do it on a weekday, weekend, holiday? For me, having it on a Friday/Saturday or a Saturday/Sunday usually works the best. Everyone is off work, its a weekend so noone has obligations to fill. However, holidays work good if you want to come up with a fancy name for your LP. We like to use "LANsgibbing." Thats trademarked BTW so don't think about using it. So now that you have decided what day your party will be on, now its time to choose a time. Choosing a time is not as important as the date, but it still can give you a tactical advantage by choosing a good start time. Now, I don't know your friends, but if they are anything like mine, they don't like to wake up early or show up on time. So here are a few tips when setting your start time. Tip1: Schedule doors open around noon. If you take your friends into account (mine for this instance) 12noon gives us plenty of time to set up in the morning/evening before, late enough not to have to feed anyone, and early enough to get the slowpokes playing by 3pm.

Where Da Party At? How do you let your fellow gamers know you are having a LAN Party? Lets discuss some ways to get the word out about your party. We can start by the most obvious methods: E-mail, IM, and Hand Out Fliers. Fliers are good when you need to get the word out to massive amounts of people. This is good if you are having a very large LP at a school or a public gathering, not so much for your living room LAN. For most of us, E-mail and IM are going to be the easiest and safest alternatives. You should email your cohorts approximately a month before hand. This will give them time to talk to their boss/employer to take time off, clear their schedules of other crappier things to do etc. I suggest Email first with a list of things to bring, general rules, and an RSVP date. If your friends are like mine, noone will RSVP to the email, but everyone will RSVP one way or another. The RSVP makes it easier to do a head count for pizza or for our next step, securing tables and chairs.

Once you have the people taken care of, now its time to secure the seating arrangements. For me, its easy since I have all the equipemnt. I have long tables purchased from Staples and HomeDepot for approximately 30-75 dollars. Square tables allow you to maximize players in a given space. In the early days of LAN Parties, everyone had a CRT so monitors were a concern for table owners. Now, most people use LCD flatpanel displays so that is no longer an issue, and helps to allow more gamers per table. Chairs can be purchased at Staples/HomeDepot for approximately 9-15 dollars. If you can, try to secure enough seating/tables for a 10% overflow population (I.E uninvited guests, boyfriends/girlfriends of attendee). The more the marrier.

Ok, so you have your seating arrangements situated, now its time to focus on the food. What to eat, what to drink, who brings the beer, who brings the chips and salsa. Alright, all I can say here is Pizza. You can order alot of it at one time, it can be delivered, and its not that expensive. We have tried BBQ LANs, we have tried just about everything under the sun, but Pizza always turns out to be the easiest option. If you don't want to be out the money for pizza, put a cover charge on everyone who attends. Usually between 7-10 dollar will cover the pizza option plus any expenses that you incurr while planning the party. Just a tip, there is always someone who doesn't pay, make sure you have some extra dough on hand to cover for a douchebag. Party-goers should be encouraged to bring snacks and soda to share with other gamers. This way there should be something for all tastes.

Fox News; You're on Notice...

I'm a conservative and an avid video gamer, and to me this is abhorrent. If you have ever taken a journalism class, you would be familiar with "yellow journalism." It basically boils down to selling news. Just like the tabloids, Fox News uses sensationalistic headlines and stories to get ratings. It just goes to show you what kind of journalistic integrity Fox News has. Anyone who has Jack Thompson as an "expert" on the VT shootings shows no credibility what so ever. It just makes me sick to think that other conservatives eat this crap like candy.

What I want to know is why are parents buying kids a Mature rated game? Is it OK for your child to watch SAW 3 or Boogie Nights at 12 years old? For most kids; probably not. Obviously there are some cases where children are well adjusted enough and mature enough to understand causality (cause and effect). However to blame video games as the sole corrupter of youth is ridiculous. Movies are more violent now than ever before, but video games are killing our children.

Furthermore, uninvolved parents should be flogged, publicly. Buying a mature rated game for junior is ridiculous. Do some research; look into what your kids do. Be A Parent, not a friend. What happened to personal responsibility? This isn't just a "right wing G.W. Bush thing." Both the left and right sides of the istle are just as guilty of perpetuating this stereotype. These blatant lies only become fodder for politicians trying to promote their nanny state.

I think people in America, especially the Baby Boomer Generation ,are failing to adapt to the new technology. To paraphrase Adam Sessler, this is today's modern day comic book, and it will corrupt the youth. Today's games aren't like Pong or Pac-Man. The medium has grown up with the audience, and older folks are failing to see that.

It just makes me so mad I want to burst.

Back in Action

Well, I took about a month hiatus for personal reasons. Now I have something truly fun to talk about today. User Driven Content. Within the past few years, user driven content sites, such as Digg have been gaining popularity. However, something about this type of stuff smells fishy to me. Not the "OMGWTFBBQ that shit stinks" fishy, but the "hmmm, should I belive this shit" fishy. Looking at the "top stories" at any given time will give you a sense of what the internet community, or at least the subset of forum-flammongers think.

If you have ever dealt with the general public at work or for charity, you know that most people are not smarter than a 5th grader. It is is this subset of "crainially deficient" hooligans who always post their 2 cents. Most people who have a real life debate their differences with people in person. It could be about video games, it could be about Politics, what ever it is about, there is always someone trying to stir the pot or even piss people off.

It always seems that these forum whores and flame-tards always show up, even in the most civilized of topics. A story I read on CNN about Britney Spears' parenting problems should have been just that. A fluff story that fills space on the page. Someone one of the forum posters ended up some how blaming the Bush administration for all the woes of modern people in general. I as many conspiracy theories as the next wacko, but I mean come on people. Brit Brit's bullshit and theatrics is all put on by George Bush? I like Bush as much as the next pinko-commie, but in all seriousness, lay off the crack. The only Bush involved with Brit is below the waist line. That type of shit has no business in a fluff story if you ask me.

The internet seems to harbor the LCD. I don't mean monitors or TV screens. I'm talking lowest common denominator. The most basic and stupidest of people are the nosiest. Its really easy to criticize other, make them look stupid, or even make them feel bad, but it a hell of a lot harder to actually come up with solutions.

My point being about politicians, gamers, activists, whomever. Stop pointing the damn finger and actually do something about the problem. Our political process has legislated away the very fiber of what made this country great.People are so quick to judge that they would rather gripe and whine, instead of taking action to fix the problem. This is seen very well in the video game debate. States passing game laws prohibiting minors from purchasing "M" rated video games or banning games because they are too violent or too sexual in nature. What happened to parents? What happened to "knowing what your kids are doing?" This country is too great to be toppled by a bunch of Soccer-moms and dads who are too busy to police their own children. It't doesn't take a village to raise a family, it takes strong parents and families. Instead of crying when your demented child takes a school hostage, you should be blaming yourself. "Why didn't I ask questions, why didn't I know what he was doing. Why was I not involved in his life."

As a solution to this problem, lets all try something. Look at yourself in the mirror, look deep into your own eyes. Tell yourself that you need to start picking up your slack, and take responsibility for your actions. I'm tired of my rights being taken away because you don't want to admit your guilty.

Master Chief's Wild Ride

The year is 2000. PC gamers everywhere rejoice in the fact that the minds behind the Myth franchise are now bringing a totally new I.P to the he PC. Halo, slated as the game above all games. Everyone was very excited, that is until Bill Gates and his fleet of gray-suits marched on the independent developer. What could have been the single most influential game on the PC was now gobbled up and spit back out as an Xbox title, possibly never to see light on the PC....EVER.

We all know what happened after that. Seven years later, we have seen numerous books, magazines, and other licensed products. Now, the final chapter in the Halo trilogy is out, selling over $170 million in the first 24 hours of release. Let's face it, Halo 3 is a BEAST! A beast that could have been on the PC. However, now it seems after these long years that Bungie Studio's is now free. They are no longer part of Microsoft Game Studios. Bungie now goes back to being an independent game developer but MS Game Studios are still going to publish their future games.
What started as rumor last week, has now become a reality. I'm glad to see that Bungie wants to spread their wings a bit after being locked in a kennel for the better part of a decade. What is evident to me after all of this is the fact that Microsoft cannot sustain 2 gaming platforms simultaneously.

Microsoft has two business models, one for the Xbox, and one for everything else. By dissecting the target markets of both models we can see who MS is trying to sell games to and how they do it. Earlier this year, we heard lots of mumblings about the Games for Windows initiative, and Games for Windows Live!, the PC version of Xbox live. Six months later where is the "continued support" where is the cross compatibility, the cohesive branding? Its doesn't exist! Thats the point. All of it was a ploy to push Vista to the hard-core early adopters of the tech world. Mostly hardcore gamers like myself. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the push backfired in their faces. Vista's harsh requirements allow for only the heaviest of duty rigs to run it correctly. For most people including gamers, we don't need an OS that has tons of pretty frilly bullshit floating around the desktop. We want something that does what it should without requiring a $10,000 hardware upgrade to play a game at decent frame rate. This is where my conspiracy theorist comes out. All this is leading me to one conclusion. Microsoft doesn't want you to play games on the computer anymore. They want you locked into their Xbox 360 or whatever next gen shit that comes out. Here is a list of why MS might try this.

1. Hardware - Locking you into playing games on the 360 will only move more units, padding their pocket book. They own the platform, they make the hardware, so you can't build your own or buy it more cheaply from other suppliers. You buy it at their price, or you don't play. Period. Pretty much a text book vertical monopoly.
   
2. Software - As most companies learned from the demise of the Atari 2600, that product licensing means big bucks. Not just anyone can make an Xbox game. You have to go to Microsoft and ask their permission, usually meaning pay a sum of money to get their blessing and a set of development tools. This being in contrast to the PC, a truly open platform, where anyone can design a game. This limits the ability mod makers, indie developers, and other small time game designers to get their games out to the public.
3. Piracy and Profitability - The single factor that pushes PC developers to port games to every console is the fact that piracy is rampant on the PC. Illegal copies are floating around the net just waiting for you to leech the torrent. So if a developer plans to make a game for the PC, they are expecting a certain percent of their profits to be destroyed by game pirates. The fact that Xbox requires heavy copy protection on their software gives game developers a false sense of security. Developers are lured away from the PC because of their fears of pirates stealing their money. As big business devours the gaming industry, the bottom line will become more of a tipping point. "If you can't make money selling it, why sell it at all?"

Lets face it. It all boils down to money, and lets face it, Microsoft is good at making it. They have the majority of the market share for operating systems, what makes you think they can't do the same thing with gaming. I see the warning signs everywhere, but is there really anything we can do?