The Masked Carnie

Gaming's been around for a long time, now.  The NES debuted in America in 1985, the year of my birth.  I am now 26.  We've grown up, many of us have kids of our own and they're starting to play games, too.  I heard a story about how my friends love to play Fruit Ninja, while their kid just loves watching the fruit fall and gets upset when someone cuts one.  Video games have passed generations, and upon this thought, I also came to realize that I'm actually a 2nd generation gamer, myself!

My roommate recently picked this up.  I've been trying to get him into board gaming, and since he's a big fan of GoW, this seemed a natural intro.  Honestly though, I expected this to be a big bomb.  It seems like just a big cash grab.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  We tried it with my game group and it was a big hit.  They're gonna need a few more copies to sell.  I don't know if this is going to be a staple for us, but it's really looking good.

  Hey guys, we all love Arkham City.  It's a truly great game.  I figure the adjustable difficulty levels would allow it to be accessible to everyone (wouldn't know, I don't try them) and it's really hard to find something wrong with it.  I take that as a challenge.  Here, then, is a list of the things I found upsetting about the game.

One thing developers often use to inflate play time is to have players do a variety of things not actually related to the story.  This offers a little something for those players who consider themselves more "hardcore" and want to get 100% completed (or whatever strange number is the maximum, like 200.6%).  Though sidequests do fall into this category, and are sometimes even hidden just as remotely, this chapter is going to address the idea of just finding junk laying around the game.  Junk collection like this can be as meaningless as just collecting them for the sake of collection.  They can also offer minor assistance to your character, which can pay off big once you have them all.

Remember, game companies want you to have fun.  It is in their best interest that your experience be as enjoyable as possible.  Because video games are an interactive media, you're actually involved in that experience.  It is therefore vital that the developers know you understand how to use the system, or at least how to get the rewards they most want you to get.  This can sometimes be a challenging task.  The Xbox 360 alone has 4 main face buttons, 4 buttons for your index fingers on both hands, 2 center buttons used more for minor functions, and even the 2 analog sticks can be pressed for further functionality.  Sometimes games will use both analog sticks while incorporating the D-Pad, essentially making 4-8 more buttons.  That's as much as 20 functions (plus sticks) to manage on a controller!  This is obviously an extreme example of how complicated controllers can get (run a search for Steel Battalion if you really wanna see crazy), but even ...

I've had an idea floating recently about writing a book about gaming.  I've done plenty of it, so I'd say I'm rather qualified to say something on the subject.  Specifically, the book would be about elements commonly incorporated into games, perhaps how to best work with them.  I guess the idea would be like what you thought you were getting in the old days that suggested they'd make you good at games (though they really just offered cheat codes or game-specific notes).  I don't know how realistic it is, but I figured I might as well make my notes here.  Yeah it's public, but so's David Sirlin's Playing to Win .  Besides, I'll be able to work on it anywhere and easily recall the progress I made.

  It's been a long time coming that I play this game.  I've been interested in it since the day of its release, mostly because I'd heard a lot of comparisons to Metroid Prime.  This thing really is the holy grail of Batman games, at least it is for my generation of Batman.  It plays very well both in combat and in stealth, truly representing what the character really is.  My only real complaint is in the marketing.  I had come to expect that every major enemy of Batman would be here.  Although they are all referenced, many of them are not present.  Still, a great game.  Hopefully this will serve as a good reminder for people on what they can expect.

I've finished watching all of Hikaru no Go.  I can see why people would enjoy it, though not being Japanese myself, it's hard to actually get myself involved in something so foreign to American life.  If I change the premise to being Chess though, I can understand it clearly  enough.  I'm going to see if I can find the manga that handles a part of the story that the anime doesn't cover.  All in all, this is certainly a quality anime, but it lacks any explicit action.  To fully appreciate it, you need to be a Go player yourself.  I'm not really that, but as someone who appreciates gaming in general, I can certainly appreciate the spirit even if I don't see exactly what's going on in their minds.  Anything less than that, you'll probably find it uninteresting.  Yes, this actually is an anime about Go.  No, they do not artificially inflate the action similar to Yu-Gi-Oh.

I've been watching a lot of Hikaru no Go lately.  I was initially really hesitant to watch it, even more so than how I felt about Yu-Gi-Oh way back when it was new.  An anime about a game, and an extremely non-symbolic game at that?  I figured the only way they'd be able to make it interesting would be to make the various shapes appear as some kind of creatures, and when it turned out to actually what it sounds: an anime about a guy playing a classic, abstract board game, I initially concluded it would be no good.  Actually, all that really drew me in was that in a small spot of the first opening, Hikaru's made to look literally identical to Shuichi Shindo in the Gravitation OVA. I've watched 58 total episodes out of 75 (sometimes I really hate that rule of 75).  Needless to say, I'm in love with it.  I'm experiencing a phenomenon watching this that I normally only experience when playing Street Fighter.  When two pro players go up against each other,...

When Super Street Fighter 4 was released, I committed myself to getting Zangief's new Siberian Blizzard down enough that I could use it consistently when I needed it, and only then would I decide whether it was worthwhile.  It turns out that was time well-spent, as I swear by it in over half the matchups.  Of course, I've had one heck of a journey identifying where it's appropriate and where it's not.  Believe me, it was a journey full of surprises. UPDATED!   Arcade Edition details follow the other general uses.  Also added Juri... I don't know how I missed her the first time.

Someone on the Chaos forum asked what the game was like without a 4th player.  I figured that subject has enough depth that I can just go all over it in here.

As the deadline for release creeps up on us, we're getting a lot more images to check.  I hope to use this entry to compile all these together.  Obviously, they're all kept after the break.  They're rather large in their real forms, so click them to get the full images if you can't quite see.

I've investigated this expansion to Chaos in the Old World as far as I could.  The information is actually rather scattered around Fantasy Flight's pages, so here's a little compendium of all the various things I could find.  All information is compiled from Fantasy Flight's expansion site .

It's come to me that there's an article on FFG's site about how to win by dial, but there isn't one really anywhere about how to win by points for all characters.  It seems rather unfair, so before it's made totally useless by the new expansion, I thought I'd put my thoughts out there on the subject.

I just had a rather interesting game of Chaos in the Old World yesterday.  It was the second consecutive session with this group.  One was a regular player (Slaanesh), another very bad at it (Nurgle), and the other brand new (Khorne).  I had been leading for a while, but eventually the other players started going after me.  My dial was doing very well, but after one unfortunate round, it became rather clear that I was not going to win that way anymore.  I was also doing really poorly in points, so I basically resigned myself to losing.  A miracle occurred that really taught me something about the game, details after the break.

I kinda went a little crazy last week and bought some expensive things.  One of them was the new controller, whose biggest marketing point is the new D-Pad.  All-in-all, it's a decent piece of hardware, but isn't enough to make me think people should get it if they don't already need a controller.  Details past the break.

You Don't Know Jack is definitely one of the best video game series you've never played.  It's one of those that has a bit of a cult following, yet anytime I introduce it to people, the reception is always a positive one.  Now they've finally released it to consoles!  I'll be anxious to see the sales figures for it, but sadly this does not entirely live up to the glory of its predecessors.  It still does an excellent job and is certainly worth the $30 price tag.  Yes, a new disc game at half the price you'd normally expect!

The X-Men arcade game was recently made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I'll admit that it was never one of my favorites in arcades, but it was definitely something I enjoyed still.  I love this style of gameplay.  Factor in the wide screen it had (it originally combined two TVs) due to the remarkable 6-player capability, and you have a very strong arcade beat-em-up.