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Late to the Party: Words With Friends

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Ever since the release of the iTunes app store, I have been a devout Scrabble for iPhone fan. I took pride in having the real deal, even though there were countless other imitators that were available for free. As much as I’ve enjoyed iPhone Scrabble over the years, I’ve never had any friends to play with online. The majority of them aren’t willing to pay, mainly because they were playing Words With Friends. I’ve heard a ton about it, but my elitist ways have led me to ignore the title for years.

That is, until a few weeks ago, when I found out that a large number of my coworkers who had iPhone or Android devices had the game, and were all playing together without me. Though I may be years late to the party, I figured if there was any time to give Words With Friends a shot, it was now.

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Portal Review

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The original Portal has already cemented itself as one of the landmark games of this generation. Though it was originally positioned as an add-on to the Half-Life 2 Orange Box that could be beaten in about 3 hours, Portal has taken on a life of its own thanks to its revolutionary game design that does something truly new. Critics loved it, fans bought into it in droves and elements of the game, such as in-game lines and ‘the song’ have worked their way into popular gaming culture. While it’s sequel may not have the cultural cache as its predecessor, the game is still one of the best of the year and it sold extremely well.

Portal is without a doubt, a must-play game if there ever was one this generation. With that said, I’ve been ducking this game for years. I tried it in passing once, but I made the mistake of trying it out on my brother’s file, when he was over half way through the game. Needless to say, I was immediately overwhelmed and thought I was too stupid for Portal. Only recently did I put my initial impressions aside and try the game from scratch.

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Street Fighter IV: Volt Update Includes Two New Characters and Punishment For Rage Quitters

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Earlier this week, Capcom released its first update to Street Fighter IV: Volt. While the most obvious change to the game is the addition of Sakura and Makoto to the roster, Capcom has also taken measures to curb the rampant rage quitting problem that is ruining the current online experience. On one hand, it boggles my mind to see how childish the community has handled the online experience. On the other hand, it boggles my mind to know that Capcom did not build in any measures to punish rage quitters in the first place.

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Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is Getting a Free Balance Patch This Year

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Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition has been a huge disappointment for me. While most casual players won’t notice much of a difference to the core game from what’s found in the previous two iterations of Street Fighter IV, competitive players have been crying foul about Arcade Edition’s character balance since its launch in late 2010. I didn’t get my hands on it until early June, but it didn’t take me long to notice that their vision to intentionally unbalance Arcade Edition did not jive with what I wanted out of the game. Because of my bitterness around Capcom breaking what I felt wasn’t broken, I lost interest in playing Street Fighter IV competitively.

It looks like I wasn’t alone in this view, as Capcom has recently announced that they’re going to do something about it.

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Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Review

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The next game up on my list of pick-ups from Blockbuster’s epic closing down sales is Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. As with Split/Second and Vanquish before it, Enslaved is another one of those games that was critically acclaimed but a commercial flop. To be honest, I had little interest in this game until the positive word-of-mouth hit, though only enough to buy it on the cheap.

As I work my way through this stash of games in this category, it kind of makes me feel bad to know that I could have made a difference if I bought these brand new when they first came out, as the odds of any of these games getting a sequel are slim-to-none. To be fair, I’m not made of money, and it’s unreasonable to expect me to pay full price for everything. Anyway, this is quickly going into a tangent. Let’s talk about Enslaved based on its own merits.

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Out Now: “Focus” – The Mike Ross Documentary

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One of the cool side-effects of the growth of the fighting game community is that the personalities within the community have in their own way, reached pro-wrestler status. There’s good guys and bad guys, as well as story lines around the games themselves that fans intently follow. One of those players that has reached that level is Mike Ross, who is one of the best Street Fighter players on the planet. It also doesn’t hurt that he and Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez have been supporting the community with their Cross Counter content and that Mike Ross seems like a genuinely good guy.

Just days before EVO, G4TV decided to do the community a solid and release the Mike Ross documentary entitled “Focus” for our viewing pleasure for free.

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How About That Double Dragon 2 Remake?

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I love Double Dragon II on the NES as a kid. I played the heck out of that game, as it was one of the best beat-em-ups on the NES at the time. Seeing the headlines of a Double Dragon II remake called “Wander of the Dragons” yesterday got me excited for about…10 seconds. That’s when I saw the screen shots and video of the game in action.

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Societal Pressures and How They Influenced My Purchase of Catherine

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Shortly after writing my previous post on my time with the Catherine demo, I decided that I was going to purchase the game. Normally, when I’ve made the decision to buy a game before its release, I patiently wait until launch day and buy said game at a store. I like the experience of going into a store and getting the game immediately, rather than having the release date pass by while my game is in transit at the mercy of the postal service.

This time, I pre-ordered it online. I grabbed the PlayStation 3 version so that my girlfriend can play my copy too. I’ve never pre-ordered any games online before, and this is only the second time I’ve ever purchased a game online. No, I didn’t go out of my way to pre-order it so that I could get the bonus soundtrack and art book (though it’s a nice bonus, I guess). I pre-ordered it to save myself from any potential embarrassment.

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EVO 2011 Story Lines

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The biggest fighting game tournament in the world is only a week away. As a hardcore fighting game fan and stream monster, I can’t wait to sit in front of the computer all weekend to watch the scene’s best go at it all weekend long. If you’ve never watched a fighting game stream before, but have any interest in it, EVO 2011 is definitely the place to start.

If you do start here, you should know that this EVO tournament is actually the last tournament in the 2011 EVO season. A lot of drama has taken place between the start of the season and now. Unless you want to sit through hundreds of hours of tournament footage or read through much more comprehensive and better written recaps on the EVO tournament season, I can give you a primer on a few of the story lines surrounding EVO’s biggest games.

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Universal Fighting Game Guide: The Problem With Only Mastering Combos

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If you’ve ever had any sort of interest in fighting games, you’ve probably stumbled across a combo video or two. They’re very cool to watch, and you may have even taken it upon yourself to be as good as the person in the video by going to a guide and learning how to read an execute something like this from BlazBlue:

214D -> B (FC), 623D, dash, 3C xx 236236B, 214D -> C, 5C 2C 4D -> D, [j.C x n] [dj.C x n] xx j.214B – 50% Heat

While you may be tempted to learn the big fancy combos the moment you start playing a new fighting game, it’s not the best way to level yourself up. Mastering the physical execution of big combos is nice, but learning the big combos without knowing the context behind them first is like trying to run without learning how to walk.

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