6 posts tagged “games”

I will begin by saying I'm not one of your hardened shoppers who stalks and waits for the deals and such... I just went mainly as I wanted to gift Sol and Aurelia their presents early for Christmas. The line was terribly long... We all waited in line by the loading docks at about 4:45am in the chill cold. Personally, I regretted not wearing my wool coat out as I froze pretty quickly. We all were talking about some of the old times in our lives and trying to laugh to forget the bitter cold. Once 5:00am hit, the store opened the flood gates... What I witnessed was pure animal-like shopping chaos. People shuffling, mass hoarding items, waiting like cattle to get claim checks for high demand items... It was something that would get companies like OSHA concerned.

The art of Black Friday shopping has seriously evolved since the advent of new consumer technologies. I saw many people with mobile phones trying to have other family members triangulate items together to rendezvous at a central point to ensure they would get the best sale items. Some power shoppers had their Bluetooth headsets on so both hands could focus on grabbing items... Of course with human nature, you had people yielding to their territorial instincts of hoarding items and fighting with others over a single material item because it was the last one on sale. The local police were on hand to handle things like major riots, which I didn't see any of those luckily.

My main purpose was to try picking up a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo ($29.99) for my PSP for movie purposes but well, that was a failure as they changed the deal to a 2GB model for $17.99. Though my main purpose was to to get Bluetooth headsets for cheap to give to Aurelia and Sol for an early Christmas. They are two people who are on the phone quite a bit with their friends and complaining about how their hand or neck hurts from all the talking they do. Sol ended up getting the exact same model Bluetooth headset as me for his phone. He was a bit limited in his choices due to his phone being an older model Sony Ericsson P910i, so I got him the HBH-V705 which is a nice, sleek model with a very professional polish to its look. I managed to snag that for 50% off which was an awesome kill! Aurelia was hoping for the slick Jabra headset she had her heart on, but well she found a Plantronic MiX tower that had more female oriented headsets there. She would get the MiX 330 which is a remix of the original Plantronics Explorer 330 with a white and silver body color and adorned with Swarovski crystals. The MiX 330 ended up being $20 off so it was not too bad. They both were stoked for me to front for their gifts, which ultimately made me happy.

I was not about to leave empty handed, I wanted to see if I could pick up a PSP title for cheap. I found the last copy of Guilty Gear Judgment (with the bonus Guilty Gear XX #reload) and a screen protector for normal price, but it should be plenty fun for when I need my "fighter" or "beat-em-up" fix. While the game was not popular, it beats the imported edition from Japan where Judgment and Guilty Gear XX #reload were both separate game UMD's at $30 - $40 a disc.

Everyone walked out happy, which I was thankful for. Sure, we waited in bitter cold for about close to an hour to get in the shop, but the "spoils of war" were grand. The expensive part of my gifting is done, but the last will come in 2 weeks when I go shopping at Strapya World for everyone else. I just want to put some good karma in the pool for all of those who've supported me when I was down. Not all things can be had at Black Friday, however...

This year, I have noticed that the deals were mediocre rather than spectacular in the paper/in-store ads. The online shops are finally getting better with their "ads" or Thanksgiving sales. Apple did their sale online with slashing prices about $300 here and their on their machines. Newegg has continued on with their tradition as usual. Some shops like Best Buy and Target has some "ONLINE ONLY" specials that you simply couldn't rush to the store for. I feel the next step forward will only be a fusion of both sorts of sales for places that have a physical store front... But at the same rate, they need to make sure the servers can handle the loads of shoppers pounding the servers. I was unable to get in on a deal at Frys.com for the 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo as the server kept timing out, but on finally being able to... the server had a MySQL error preventing the transaction from going on any further. Oh well, there's always next time.

I can still recant the day that I sold my original first generation PSP... It was a hard day as I had grown to like some of the system's nuances, but at the same time Sony had hit the brick wall with lack of good games. When Sony was just selective on approving titles to come out to the American market, that was when I simply had enough. The DS was enjoying a lot of niche Japanese games and Nintendo of America was eager to approve almost anything to market. So from that, the DS flourished with fans of all ages buying the system. The PSP in America? While Sony of America was barely approving games, they were in bed with Hollywood to try to save the dying UMD Video format from becoming quickly obsolete from one matter of fact: American users found that ripping from a DVD, then transcoding the video to MP4 format to load on a Memory Stick Pro Duo lead to a far more better quality with regard to sound and picture quality. The best part was battery life was even longer as the system was not spinning the disc drive to read the disc, as you could watch almost four 2-hour movies rather than one 3-hour UMD movie.

The irony in selling my PSP was about a month later, Sony finally "pulled their head out of their ass" and finally opened their doors to approve a wider library of games. One of those games happened to be quite possibly the two best games of the Castlevania franchise ever. Konami named it "Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles" with the primary aim of the game to be a more updated 2 1/2 D remake of the PC Engine game Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (or Turbo Graphix 16 with a CD drive, for you American folks). The kicker was that in the main game, you could unlock the ORIGINAL versions of Rondo of Blood AND Symphony of The Night. The news of a Symphony of the Night remake really hurt me, because I had my "Greatest Hits!" version (with the cheeky green packaging) stolen from me and the culprit was never found. After my hopes for a Gran Turismo Mobile were broken by yet another delay, this news of a Castlevania remake and bundle made me bitterly hate that I sold my PSP to the auction block. I vowed one day to get a PSP again so I could regain what I had sorely lost...

Over last week, I managed to get a bit of a surplus of cash due to pulling max-out shifts for my weeks and hitting near overtime so I scored a PSP Slim core package (system, charger, battery, manuals) and Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles for myself. For once, I am seriously impressed with what Konami has produced. Before I go on to that... I would like to link to pspZine's blog archive for those who are unaware of the PSP Slim's differences: pspZine - PSP versus the PSP Slim. Over all, I like the the reduced weight and the slightly improved ergonomics of the device. Though Sony of America has me waiting in desire as the "Photos" portion of the Cross Media Bar (to be abbreviated to XMB) has a "camera" icon. This icon looks like the Japanese "Chotto Camera" or European "Go!Camera" but Sony of America has not announced when they will release this peripheral. Almost counter productive of the new 3.72 firmware release to have this feature but lack the peripheral itself. The XMB interface is finally customizable, which I remember that being a big complaint that the PSP community harped on the most. It's not a big deal, but for some... it was a part of the software that they wanted to customize to their liking. Though going slim has its disadvantages... The battery life is significantly shorter, as the PSP Slim's battery is a 3.8v 1200 mAh batter compared to the original's 3.8v 1800mAh battery. The accessories are still sparse for it, with the "best" one being the component display cables which allow the game play to be displayed on an HD TV. For those who are not HD TV owners, the composite cables (aka RCA cables) cannot partake in the same joy of playing games on the standard definition TV's, although they are still able to enjoy movies and images on their TV. Accessories are still not here for the PSP Slim, even though the system has been out for close to 2 months. One would have expected Sony to make some, but apparently they haven't yet. Enough on the geeky and mundane verbal hardware pornography...

(Zero's Note: For those wondering why I didn't opt for the Vader White value pack or the Daxter Silver value pack, it's because I didn't like the bundled games nor did I like the Vader graphic on the white PSP. I have plenty of Memory Stick Pro Duo's because my phone uses them as well.)

Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles has a very unique intro movie... The narration sounds like it is in German, if I am wrong, feel free to correct me. The movie shows a very unholy ritual that reawakens Lord Dracula from his slumber with by anointing him with fresh blood. Even though this game follows the more old fashioned Belmont whip carrying lineage adventures, it refreshes things by using new skool technology with the ability to save automatically at end of levels, give the user the ability to level select, and the ability to do a "quick save" in the middle of a level. That is a good thing with consideration that no one likes passwords and that whole mess anyways that was remembered from the earlier Castlevania games from the early 1990's. For things that have "changed", there's quite a bit. The movie scenes are now changed from anime cut scenes to 3D computer generated ones with really crisp detail. The art goes more in favor of the "antiquated" drawing/painting style with more respect to the same sort of thing that emblazoned Symphony of The Night's art. If you are a fan of the Castlevania art movement that was more biased towards the anime look, you may be disappointed with the art for this game. The levels "pop" a bit at you, not like in Symphony of The Night or the two DS titles where only the graphical effects from combat or magic stood out. Some of the things within the levels were changed however to incorporate the "secrets" within the new Dracula X Chronicles packaging. We'll discuss this later on the review.

The games controls feel a tad stiff like a traditional whip user Castlevania game, so the movements are not quite fluid as say a more modern title like the DS title Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. For the nay sayers who may say "The controls plain suck!", they are just failing to realize the demographic of this game. Play Castlevania III on the NES, Super Castlevania IV for SNES,if you want more support on the "stiff controls"... Compared to those two, the game is a little more fluid. The game is a "one difficulty fits all" sort of game... So if you are not down with a challenge, this game may enrage or even frustrate you to insanity.

I will issue the disclaimer for those not used to older, traditional titles with short tempers to either wear your PSP wrist strap or avoid this game.

While the game is not sadistically hard like say the "Ghouls and Ghosts" franchise of Capcom, the levels seem to be challenging and one needs to have good timing at times (like with stages chock full of pitfalls and Medusa Heads flying around). Compared to the original Rondo of Blood which was unlocked, this new "remix" is actually pretty damn close to the original save for the graphics, sound effects & music, and minor level changes to incorporate the use of game unlockables. Dracula X Chronicles would be what I would deem a VERY faithful remake with respect to the original. This is something that would surely make any purist, true, die hard fan of the older Castlevania sing with joy, especially because it was better than the Super Nintendo rehash released in America as "Castlevania: Dracula X" with a lot of things were sacrificed or changed due to the limited abilities of the Super Nintendo.

The unlockables is where things get fun. In the main game, you can find the ORIGINAL versions of Rondo of Blood, Symphony of The Night, and "Peke" (A system card error mini game with regard to Rondo of Blood). There are particular criteria to get these games and when the condition has been fulfilled, the game is unlocked and may be played in the "Original Game" option on the title screen of Dracula X Chronicles. From Rondo of Blood (PC Engine), I would imagine it keeps true to the original Japanese title with respect to what I have played or read on reviews from sites like GameSpot or users on GameFAQs. Symphony of The Night was a real big treat to me, as it combined some interesting aspects from the Japanese Sega Saturn version with parts from the original Playstation release. The big treat I enjoyed was if you had the language set to "Japanese" for the audio dialogue in Dracula X Chronicles, that is also applied to Symphony of The Night. The dialogue is much more refined in this rendition, especially when you consider that the American release had terrible voice actors and a poorly translated to boot. If you remember the prelude level "Castlevania: Bloodlines" with the dialogue of Richter and Dracula on the American release... this line probably made you laugh:

Die monster!!! You don't belong here! - Richter Belmont.

The American voice actors are actually pretty good and I give them credit for being so much better. There are a few changes on some sound effects, but no changes in game play. The "changes" with respect to the Japanese Sega Saturn and Playstation version include the incorporation of 2 more familiars (the sprite and nose devil) and the ability to play Maria being the most notable ones. Truly a treat for those who cannot quite afford to purchase the original American release of Symphony of The Night but already own a PSP. As far as the "Peke" mini game, I have not unlocked that yet.

(Zero's Note: Yes, I am well aware that the XBOX 360 folks have the ability to purchase Symphony of The Night from XBOX Live. I encourage any person who owns an XBOX 360 with no interest to purchase a PSP to buy it.)

I can say that Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles is a good buy IF you are into traditional game franchises. If you're open to buying this remade classic gem, I advise that a good temper is required as well as wearing the PSP strap to avoid game induced rage. If you love Castlevania, this is one game you will not regret buying.

Well... Where do I start with this? And it's not a discussion about life elements or anything of that sort. This is actually a bit of a video game review and rant. Some of you all know that I like some of the oddest games out on the market... Some of these are even so mind numbingly painful that they could cause severe damage to a person's psyche due to pure insanity. I know that my dear friend Noirsword gives me the sigh when I go off on how much I love the sadistic difficulty of a game. Once could call me the royal ass clown who makes some of the "hardcore" Japan-o-phile gamers look like petty thugs because of liking some of the weirdest games that barely make it to the US or never jumped ship to America.

A while ago, there was a title on the Nintendo DS that got lots of flack for being so lacking on many factors. The graphics sucked, the bird's-eye view perspective blew ass, and hell the music was absolutely dreadful! I am talking about the American "limited" release title Tenchu: Dark Secret, the translation of the Japanese Tenchu Z: Dark Shadows. The game could be a lot better, I will admit... even better if GameStop/EB wasn't ripping the title at $29.99 (better than the original $34.99), but my local Fry's Electronics had the Japanese Tenchu Z for $19.99. Which I am a bit reluctant to buy the Japanese one as my comprehension of Japanese is a bit basic at best... Nothing like going "What the heck am I supposed to do?" when I don't know if a mission says "kill all enemies" or "defend your area" from my limited Japanese vocabulary.

The gameplay mechanics could be significantly better as small commodities in the Tenchu games are missing, such as the grappling hook or even the simple third-person view. It is a bit unrealistic that the jump can get you over most walls. The graphics are sadly dated and could have been refined better. The great part about the game is that you can build and craft your own ninja tools and weapons, provided you have enough provisions. The wi-fi comes into play with the crafting items as you can sell your gear to friends or people on the internet at whatever price you wish to make a spot of profit. The crafting should have been implemented a long time ago as I remember the early Tenchu games (without cheating) buying supplies and tools got EXPENSIVE! You can assemble high grade traps and equipment if you're lucky which have even more effectiveness, if you're lucky.

The comedic value is more in chaining up combos of traps. Why? You apparently get kill image scrolls from that. What's so cool about it? It's more from the fact that the images are pretty funny, if not down right cheeky. The problem is... well, is chaining up traps to earn some of the high level scrolls. It's not as easy as it sounds in theory. some of the enemies like the bears have very erratic patterns that are unpredictable to plan for, with the novice in mind. (From the GameFAQ boards, it seems that the bear is one of the easiest to get the high end kill scrolls from). All in all, there are no "built-in" cheats known so far and it is a little frustrating to even some of the casual gamers.

I am one of the few who missed when games were pretty hard to the point that you wanted to just fight the system and just play a game to the end because it was just so involving. Tenchu comes close, but sometimes it's more frustration rather than inspiration for greatness. I would like a revival of games like Thunderforce V, Lufia or any other game that just plain sucks you in because of purely addicting game play. I mean, I love RPG's and FPS games, but those entertain for so much and then become somewhat bland when you're burned out from them. With games trying to rest too much on the laurels of past wins (see Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core et al), it muddles the fire of inspiration. Instead, you get rehashed plots or half-baked game play. I hope that more and more people see this light, because gaming is stagnating in many vectors while you have folks in the PC and Nintendo realms pushing for the limit.

I won't lie... I love games. Though with my professional life encroaching more and more to a lifestyle that has me moving all about as well as needing things to work, I have found myself to be a very mobile person. Sitting in front of a TV to immerse 80+ hours on an immersion from a RPG where I am striving to save the world from doom is not something I have the luxury of doing anymore. Things like a game where you can "suspend" the session in the memory, then power up the system to resume has become something I can go with. I owned both a Sony PSP and a Nintendo DS at one point... Odd as it sounds, I actually used my PSP for more "off-label" uses such as music playback, movies and digital magazine reading. The DS, I actually liked the challenging games or the niche genres. The unique part was the remixes on some classic franchise games. Eventually, my gaming age would shatter and quickly become nothing more than just another memory as I sold everything I had to just get by.

I finally nabbed one and it's a reward for my hard efforts to fight in school again... and the times certainly have changed since I last owned a DS. Lots of great games, but little modularity on what you can do online, except if you cheat and I don't endorse that in any way, shape or form. There are some games where wi-fi is a gate to play and battle online, cooperative gaming, or even a trading realm. It's nice to see Nintendo is exploiting the abilities of wi-fi net gaming for their games like Pokemon and the ability to verbally chat to your traders and rivals while dueling and swapping monsters and items. Other studios have yet to exploit the possibilities yet... I would like to see more games get innovative with implementation of the wi-fi networks.

I'll admit, it's a shame that the DS does not have modularity via firmware updates, but I do appreciate great games that are easily gold titles in my library. For anyone who's a DS player and has the following games... Let me know if you want to sell items, buy items or even game with me.

I have the following wi-fi titles:
Tetris DS
Tenchu: Dark Secret
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Trade me friend codes and we'll have fun.

In the IRC room of #ubuntu-dallas on irc.freenode.net/, my leader schpenke told me quite the interesting promotion that Sony's been shooting for with regard to HD-DVD since last month. He recently dropped the money for his own PS3 recently and wanted to answer Maczimus' question in regard to HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray.

When you buy any qualifying Blu-Ray player from June until August 31st, Sony will give you 5 Blu-Ray titles for free. One of the qualifying players is, in fact, the PlayStation 3! For geeks and nerds alike, this is awesome... because with the price drop to $499.99, the free flicks, and the ability to install Linux on it, it's quite a good deal now!
schpenke from #ubuntu-dallas

This should be an interesting few months to see soon... With the Blu-Ray movie promotion and the PlayStation 3's price drop, that should be more than enough to put up an interesting fight with HD-DVD. If Microsoft could fit the HD-DVD drive into the XBOX 360 Elite while pricing it a good price, the battle could get quite dramatic.

For those curious... Yes, schpenke was trying to install Ubuntu Edgy on to his PlayStation 3. ;-) Even something slightly off tangent can relate to Ubuntu!

Let's take a time-warp back to the days of my youth. Back when 33.6k dial-up was probably some of the fastest and blistering speeds ever experienced in the year 1996. What was popular then? id Software's line up of Doom engine games, 3D realm's famed Duke Nukem 3D, and most of all... door RPG's. A door RPG is one that's simple in concept... Your character is created through some web forms. After creation, you are then given a set of "turns" which are actions you may perform. When you participate in battle, you expend these turns. Turns are then "regenerated" in a real-time conversion (depending on games, it could be an actual 24 hours for new turns or a turn every 5 minutes).

My biggest time sink back in 1996 was a game managed by a Korean internet company trying to it it big with a game titled: "Archmage: Reincarnation from Hell". The plot was simple... The land of Terra is one of death and rebirth. Some are born with the power to destroy the world, the power of the Armageddon Spell. Which on casting it, the mage is vulnerable to attacks while the incantation is being used... The spell takes 10 "days" which on a successful casting, destroys the entire realm of Terra, ending the game. The game lasted for a long while and then eventually development ceased...

What made Archmage so special? It was free and the story was well crafted. Back in the era of 33.6k or 56k dial-up loading extensive images was a death wish. So a game minimal on images and text heavy was essential to craft a successful web game. Archmage did just that. It didn't have fancy graphics, but the competitive game play made for a fun experience. Unfortunately, games had to "move on" with "killer 3D graphics". From there, the debauchery of gaming began. Games where the focus on was making them pretty with the computer generated stuff, but lack of a great story. Don't take that as me referring to all modern day gaming... After all I respect some of the well crafted modern day gems.

Let's return to the era of today: 2007. My buddy Noirsword recommended me to check out a funny game called "The Kingdom of Loathing". The game itself is interesting. The game is in the vein of an door RPG with images, but not anything spectacular... The kicker is that the art is stick figure drawings! Most people would probably think that a low graphics, tons of text, and poor art style would be completely stupid for a game. The charm is that there is lots of internet and gamer satire and humor. Things from the whole "leet' (or spelled 1337) computer culture to internet humor make their rounds, even things such as an item called 31337 7r0wZ0RZ. The story is pretty well crafted to boot. It's more turn based laughs, but with enemies like the Zmobie or the Baseball Bat, it just keeps you going! It's quite a fun game and well worth the time.

If you're into a game with a fun story, goofy art, and great tongue-in-cheek humor, Kingdom of Loathing will not dissapoint! It definitely has an appeal to the older gamer who respects the days when games needed a good story to be profitable. The author does offer nice gifts to players who donate for the server costs of the game... Veteran players say that the new "nerfs" to the errata have made the game harder, but it also presents a fun challenge too.