March 2009 Archives

Lots of great stories out there.

The movie was really good and really funny! Reese Witherspoon's character goes through some simple, but solid character growth. I really like her ending, and she is charming while having plenty of awesome moments throughout the whole movie. There are also references to various things all over the place! It's a bit spoilerish, but I'm going to try to recount the references I recall.

Meteor Man

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Beverly Hills Cop

Spaceballs

DDR

HAWX is basically an Ace Combat-inspired game using the Tom Clancy universe as a backdrop for storyline. It's not as melodramatic as Ace Combat, but it definitely feels similar. It's impossible not to draw parallels between the two games, as they both fall under the arcade/flight-sim category. HAWX is very easy to play, with easy-to-read graphs that represent each plane's effectiveness and generic missile loadouts that clearly state their roles in combat.

The Assistance OFF mode is probably one of the big draws to HAWX and the one way it distinguishes itself from Ace Combat. It's a totally different approach to playing the flight-sim genre, and looks very cinematic in its execution. In this mode, your plane's safety measures are turned off, and the maneuverability is increased with things like air drifts, J-turns and stalls possible. It's an exciting break away from the usual monotone of being inside the cockpit view all the time.

In practice, Assistance OFF is meant for dogfighting. It was very fun to play as a bomber, rocket strafing enemies, then hearing the lock-on and quickly switching off assistance to dodge the missile as it barreled past me.

This is a fairly good game solo. The devs have done a good job in implementing co-op mode as well. You can see little color-coded boxes next to enemies that your allies are targeting. This lets you call out your targets and aids coordination. The mini-map also draws dotted-lines to show who the enemies are currently targeting, so if you take the time, you can check the map and try to help a friend out (though in practice, it's too chaotic for me to notice. Jon does a good job of taking bogeys off by back, though).

Also, most importantly, the game spawns more enemies depending on how many players are in the game. This turns what used to be 1v4 battles in single-player mode into all-out "furballs," when 3 players are present. 3v12, with multiple missile locks blaring off at once. Pretty easy stuff since I was able to pick it up and play, but fun nonetheless.

Pretty happy that there are fun games out there now. SF4, Resident Evil 5 and HAWX are good things. Tomb Raider Underworld is also fairly nice. I'm a bit sad as a big Tomb Raider fan that TRU doesn't stand out right now as the best game around, but it's because the comparisons are great games. =) Also bought UT3 recently because it was on sale. It's ok. I'd probably enjoy it more if I could figure out how to turn on mouse acceleration. =(

^　さんせい〜

Why is this woman so awesome? o_O;

This game is a very fun and solid co-op action/shooter. It is good. I'm drawing comparisons to System Shock 2, which I played with Sam a couple of months back. SS2 had great gameplay and really felt like the two of us were fighting together against an unknown enemy, but eventually the gameplay grew stale and wore thin.

I don't really see this happening with Resident Evil 5, though. The game does a great job of introducing new enemies throughout its chapters. Then again, as a current generation game, it's most likely shorter than SS2 was as well. The action in RE5 is slow paced, and the game does a good job of making each player fully competent, yet effectively supportive of one another. The co-op in this game doesn't feel gimmicky like in Gears of War or especially Army of Two.

Everything about RE5 is more fun than Army of Two, sadly. Even though the Resident Evil franchise has been traditionally, "survival horror," RE5 is a better co-op shooter than Army of Two (which was completely designed around the concept of a co-op action shooter). The story is far more cohesive, as would be expected of the RE series, and the world is full and fleshed out with lore coming from a series of games from the past 11 years. The shooting is slow, but methodical - every shot counts.

There are some segments where co-op actions are forced, but they are extremely small (such as boosting one player up to a higher platform) and short, unlike sections of Resistance or Gears of War having the two players essentially running down long corridors by themselves. The stages have been designed so that when the players are separated, one is always fairly undisturbed, and has good firing angles to cover the other so that the players never actually feel separated.

Other instances of pure co-op are when one player gets pounced or is incapacitated by a zombie. They are capable of shaking themselves free, but it's much quicker if the other is available to cut or punch the zombie away. I hope that I will have more time to play this, and I sort of wished that it was available on PC so I could play it with Sam.

Also, Tomb Raider Underworld is a solid and fun game. It's outshone by Resident Evil 5, however. I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that Sheva Alomar is more attractive than Lara Croft. hah

I have no problem with DLC as being add-on content, though I am spoiled by Valve's literally incredible support for its own games, adding new content for free. In the case of L4D, the game was crippled on release, but TF2 was a solid game that is still receiving free content update.

My problem comes to the fore when Capcom begins charging for DLCs that literally complete an incomplete game. In Street Fighter 4, the DLCs comprise of the costume pack "add-ons," which are set at a price point of around $4 per 5 costumes. I wouldn't have too big of a problem with it if the costumes were completely newly crafted, but it's plainly evidenced that these costumes were already available from the get-go (as they are present in the Arcade version of the game).

In SF4, this is some cosmetic thing that they've released. It's a part of the game that's already there, but to gain access to it, the consumer has to pay a little extra cash. There's no way Capcom could sell SF4 at an $80 price point. That's ridiculous, when most games are $60 on consoles. But that's how much SF4 costs if you want these cosmetics.

Resident Evil 5 brings some more disturbing evidence. They've just release a new DLC for the game that enables competitive multiplayer game modes, something normally found bundled in with most games. The problem is, Resident Evil has been out for less than a week.

Capcom has deliberately left this gameplay out of the game only to charge an extra $5 for it. It's not much money, but again, it is literally either raising the price of the full game up from the standard cost, or releasing a deliberately incomplete product.

It's not even like they couldn't meet their own deadline, like L4D. This has been deliberately left out of the game. If this is the future of the game industry, then I'm disturbed. It's squeezing out every last drop with a smile.

I hope Valve doesn't go this way as well. They are two polar opposites. Valve is giving exceptional customer support for their games to the point of giving out freebies, while Capcom is dipping its feet into wringing wallets.

On another note, I am now in <3 with Lena Headey. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/7dfcae5581/lena-headey-in-mercy-corp-from-fod-team

I liked her lots before for her great mixture of rough-around-the-edges beauty, and tough class, but seeing her deliver humor is AMAZING. It reminds me of when I liked Nakama Yukie from Ring 0: Birthday, only to find out that she was amazingly funny in Trick. I like pretty girls with a sense of humor. =)

Photoshop's got some amazing color changing abilities. =D I found some alternate colors I liked from the piece.

But even if it doesn't make it, at least it's out there... and if I really like how it turns out, it's high-res enough that I can go to Kinko's and ask for them to print me a poster. hah.

I've just about finished installing everything I need to for the Vista-64 OS. It's eerie, since I don't quite feel like I'm starting a fresh new... generation of Kenny's Computers. Especially since my desktop is still completely functional, I'm having a bit of a difficult time trying to figure out the place of this laptop in my life.

Didn't work on the Don'tpanic fan art today. Going to get some sleep 'cause my back's hurting a bit, and go for it isshoukenmei tomorrow. Got PS and mah tablet ready. =D ... right. That's what the laptop's for. Mobility.

--

Also, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that there ARE in fact people out there on the internet who've seen/heard my stuff (how little of it there is) and actually like it. It's a good feeling... and I hope to be more productive in this same way in the future.

Times are tough. I have to remember to look to God.

I just turned it on- I don't know what the wireless password is, so it's a dead computer for the moment. It's neat though... I hope this computer will stick with me for years to come.

Sore ni, kamisama ni kansha shimasu.

Yay- it's finally here. =D

In other news, I'm working on a fanart to submit to the Don't Panic contest for an SF4 poster. It should be neat! And I've never worked so hard on a drawing before!

Friday, I also watched the Legend of Chun-Li with Jessica and Calvin. The movie was very different from the plot/setting of Street Fighter. It was as much Street Fighter as, "She's All That" was, "My Fair Lady." The basic plot for Chun-Li is intact (Bison kills Chun-Li's father. Chun-Li seeks vengeance), but none of the characters were really themselves.

Kristen Kreuk as Chun-Li delivers a heartfelt performance. It's funny how Chun-Li starts off Chinese and becomes more and more white as she grows up, though. Hah. Also, I noticed that they decided to pronounce all the character's names in English, regardless of what language the characters are currently speaking. (i.e. ni bi shu yao zhao Gen.)

Charlie Nash is a hotshot interpol cop who looks a lot like Neo. Also appears to be interested only in wine, women and getting stoned. Except Nash is originally a U.S. Military dude, afaik, and has a very professional, methodical demeanor.

Robin Shou as Gen was a bit awkward in his performance, but I do like the character in the movie. His best line was the one about groceries.

Boxer was a solid performance. Dictator feels very evil, though small-time in comparison to real-Dictator. Raul Julia's dictator had far more depth (delusions of grandeur, god complex).

Basically, none of the characters retained any similarities to their video game counterparts other than the roles they played in the plot. Gen at one point does train Chun-Li, though he's hardly the friendly glib man in the Legend.

Taking away that layer, though, the movie was a decent venture with its fun moments. I like it, though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The fight scenes were also rather loose for a movie that has "fight" in its title. Chun-Li's three trademark techniques, Kikouken, Hyakuretsukyaku and Spinning Bird Kick all make cameo appearances for the fans. These moves are pretty ridiculous, so it's hard to expect the choreographer to pull them off convincingly, but the director has done a good job of referencing them (the Spinning Bird pendant was really cool).

Actually, the Spinning Bird was cool. Hyakuretsu was sort of neat. Kikouken was bad.

Street Fighter 4

This game is fun. It's different from 3S, more accessible for sure, but I don't get the feeling that it's been dumbed down. It's not as complicated as 3S, but it feels deep nonetheless. I'll need to learn how to play it again.

SF4 has made me interested in a bunch of characters that I never really found interesting to play before. It's strange! I've never felt intrigued by so many characters in a fighting game (other than maybe KOF, since that game just throws slews of characters on you).

Sakura

El Fuerte

Cammy

Dictator

Chun-Li

Abel

Guile

Claw

are all characters I want to use. Roughly in that order as of this time, too. That's nearly 1/3rd of the cast. In comparison, 3S has 19 characters (including Gill), of which I share similar interest in:

Elena

Makoto

Ryu

Ibuki

Alex

KOF2002, which is the last of the installment that I played extensively, I liked:

K'

K9999

Angel

Kula

Whip

Vanessa

Iori

which is around 7/44 characters.

I'm interested in figuring out El Fuerte.=D