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 Jake's Clever Banter And Sony even threw in an extra controller and a few extra cables to sweeten the deal. Good thing too, because they sent it to the wrong fuggin' address the first time! Grr. Anyways, my DDR is workin' fine and dandy now, and I wonder if I have to re-load my DVD remote drivers... Guess I'll have to test it later. Meantime, I've finally gotten the chance to play three cool games that've come out in the meantime- Rez, Maximo, and State of Emergency. Rez is kinda' tough to describe... A shooter composed of wire-frame graphics where there are no sound effects like you'd expect, but rather all sounds carefully placed into the level music to form a beat. Basically, everything you do in the game is reflected in the sounds of the music, and it's very cool when it all comes together. Not really a music-rhythm game per se, but rather, a shooter where the gameplay directly affects the music. If it sounds wierd, yeah, it is, but it ranks as one of my favorite games Sega's ever made, probably only behind Skies of Arcadia, Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, and the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Maximo is NOT Ghosts 'n Goblins. Be realistic- Castlevania 64 showed that that style of game can't be done in 3D anyways. What Maximo is, is a fun action game that pays homage to G&G, and is old-skool in the very best of ways. Relying very little on projectile combat (What G&G WAS), and more on hand-to-hand (In a way, a simplified version of Devil May Cry), Maximo is much more forgiving than G&G ever was (It takes more than two hits to kill you) but still keeps the very-hard gameplay that G&G was known for. At times, the camera gets very annoying, but all in all, this is EXACTLY the old-skool game everyone hoped it would be. State of Emergency is not GTA3. The best comparison I could think of between the two, is where GTA3 is the Gran Turismo of crime games (With tons of depth and zillions of options), SoE is the Crazy Taxi- not deep at all, but a good amount of variety, and tons of fun. And the game's designers were WAY off comparing this to Pikmin. The zillions of people runing around do so of their own will, and their own agendas, and the characters aren't nearly as small as Pikmin's. The entire game is total mayhem, and a complete blast to play- they should have released it in the arcades first, as it would have been perfect there. The game is also violent to the point of being hillarious. You're constantly being told to kill security guards or mow down gang memers. A game like this, you might expect to throw violence at you, but it throws it right in your face to the point of being silly. Although it certainly has a place in the game and isn't tossed in just for sensationalism, it doesn't seem to have the well-placed sophistication of GTA3's use of violence to push the game's atmosphere. Regardless, it's damn fun. Three games, three great additions to the PS2 library. And then, I look at the other side. I've been enjoying Pikmin a lot, although I can already tell the time limit will bite my ass in the end. Miyamoto's games have for the longest time been created for the exploration of the environment and characters, and the artificial rushing of all that seems wrong. *Sigh* C'est la vie... Also, a friend and I discovered that, while a decent port to be sure, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on the Gamecube has some signifigant problems. While my initial impressions that the graphics weren't on par with the PS2 version turned out to be false (Hey, it'd been a while since I played it), there are design issues in some levels where jumps aren't lined up properly. To make matters worse, the Gamecube version (And as web previews report, the XBox version as well) uses the same button for revert as it does for the clockwise-spin, which means unless you revert at the very last moment, your character will angle himself wrong and cause you to bail. Finally, it should be noted that my friend didn't like the Gamecube's D-Pad at all, and while I never had much of a problem with it, I'd have to agree that overall, the Gamecube controller just doesn't lend itself well to Tony Hawk. Unfortunately for Gamecube owners, the delays of both Star Fox Adventures and Eternal Darkness mean that the only exclusive games the system will be seeing until well into the middle of the year, will be a few sports titles, Wrestlemania X8, and Bloody Roar Extreme (Which is really only an altered version of Bloody Roar 3). And prettymuch everything else is PS2 and XBox ports. Now, I'm a long-time Nintendo fan, so I'm willing to be a bit forgiving if Nintendo itself doesn't put out any games on their system for a good few months, but when you're talking about an almost-complete shutout like this, it has to make you wonder just why the hell Yamauchi still thinks he's king of the universe. The XBox is faring a bit better. Soon enough we'll be seeing Sega's Gunvalkyrie (Yay!) and Jet Set Radio Future (Eh. Could be good, I guess). In all honesty, there's not much aside from that that's on the way that thrills me, but it's sure as hell better than what'll be on the Gamecube. Also of note is that they've just launched the system in Japan, and it's supposedly gotten a decent turnout. Early reports claim that so far, the system launch is comparable in sales and hype to the Gamecube launch, which could be either a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it. As for what's out at the moment, I have mixed reactions. Mainly regarding Wreckless. Although one can't help but notice that it's overall very well-done graphically, at times this choice is in direct contradiction with the game itself. When you have cars that blink and dissapear double-dragon style, and characters with annoyingly cartoony personalities, is it really appropriate to use almost realistic graphics? That may be a stylistic preference, to be sure, but at times these artistic choices affect the gameplay, as well. The sunlight reflecting off the windows and the neon lights glowing in the darkness sure look purdy, but also make it very difficult to see where you're going. And the tons of traffic and pedestrians you can choose to have onscreen just jumbles and complicates things. The game itself seemed to have a decent arcadey quality to it, but was a bit unforgiving for my tastes. All in all, it may just be me, but I think somewhere along the line, these people made decisions to an end to mae Wreckless a more impressive game, rather than a better-playing game. And then there's the IGN factor. Is it me, or has IGN decided that they love every game now? Not just XBox games, either. It seems time and again, they'll give really good reviews to games that everyone else says are only so-so. If it were just once, that'd be one thing, but this has happened time and again. I can't trust them anymore. *Sigh* Oh well... Meantime, I'm gonna' enjoy me some games... 2/20/02 - Meet the Pikmin... What a wierd game... A friend and I stumbled upon a demo of this game in a Toys R Us the other day, and it was... interesting. Although I'd heard good things about it before, I'd always been on the fence about wether or not I'd get it. After seeing it in action, though, I knew I HAD to. Just the way these little guys yelp with glee as the gang-rape a bigger predator was so hillarious, I just HAD to. Gom's not so thrilled about it, but I think that may be for other reasons... 2/18/02 - One of THOSE weeks Yeah, Tim's on another "Vacation"... Wasn't he just on one of those? In any case, Gom insisted we use this time to give him a chance to insult the world at large, and cause people to sue us. And although Tim's working on strips, they're not HERE, so... Let me start by saying first off- I like the Boondocks. They have some very good stuff in there from time to time. But I can't help but think that the knock at them in this strip is at least partially true. Although it may not be the topic matter of each individual strip, the general premise has characters that appeal to the lower-class type kids (And I'm not just talking about blacks, either), and then puffs up their egos by having them talking about topics that at least seem highly intillectual. Let me veer off for a second into something else- this was not meant in any way as an insult to blacks, and I hope no one ever thinks I'm some sort of racist or anything. It was meant, rather, to ask if strips like the Boondocks aren't perhaps taking advantage of the very demographic they target by making them feel all "Special". Oh, and by the way, diid you guys lose weight, today? Anyways, Gom will be doing the honors this week. And yeah, I've still got color strips in the works. Just wait... |
 Tim's Clever Banter Yes. It does. |
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