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Daigo Vs. Justin At the Super Street Fighter IV Launch Party

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Last night, I was feeling a bit under the weather and I passed out the moment I got home. As a Street Fighter IV enthusiast, this kind of worked in my favour as I woke up just in time to catch the Super Street Fighter IV launch party taking place in the west coast.

The main event was a must-watch for those who follow the scene, as it featured two of the top Street Fighter IV players, whose rivalry has led to arguably the best Street Fighter matches of all-time. When they did battle last night, they went back and forth and finished with probably the craziest ending possible. Click through to watch the final round!
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Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll

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Although I haven’t stepped on an actual skateboard since I was 10 years old, I’ve had some good times with skateboarding video games. I started with the genre oddly enough on Tony Hawk 2 on the Gameboy Advance, which I thought was great. I then bought Tony Hawk 3 on the Gamecube and it was the pinnacle of video game skateboarding fun for me at the time. The last serious foray into skateboarding games for me was Tony Hawk: American Wasteland on the DS, which was alright, but I never played it for more than 30 minutes.

Metacritic and My Video Game Collection

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Hate it or love it, review aggregators are becoming an increasingly important service for consumers of just about anything. In the video game space, people like them because it gives them a quick and quantifiable way of knowing what games are good and what games suck. The counterpoint to those people are those who don’t feel that aggregates tell the whole story and put an emphasis on a number rather than the context from which that number is derived from.

I’m not here to choose sides. Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to take my XBOX 360 and Wii game collection, full retail games only, compile all of their Metacritic scores and see what the results say about my game stash. I must preface that this is far from scientific and that my collection has changed since I compiled these numbers.

With that said, lets hit the results.

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Pick Up Post: I Got The Magic Stick

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After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to purchase an arcade joystick. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV happening in a few days (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 having just been announced), I figured now would be the right time to finally give this arcade joystick thing a shot. As a long-time pad player who has always struggled with joysticks in the arcade, this is a bit of a risky investment. The market for joysticks varies wildly, as the prices can go as low as $30 and as high as $200 for products that do the exact same thing. All of the joysticks also vary wildly in features, build quality and the ability to fix/mod the joystick yourself.

As much as I would like to immediately jump to the top-of-the-line MadCatz TE stick, I’m not ready to invest $200 on a controller that I may never find as comfortable as a regular controller. With everything taken into consideration, I ended up putting down the money on this arcade joystick.

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Call of Duty: World at War Pushes Me to the Brink

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Call of Duty: World at War was a game that, even after Modern Warfare 2 blew my mind, I had no interest in going back for. It had two major hurdles: it was a World War II shooter and it was made by Treyarch, whom I’ve been lead to believe made the “not-so-good” Call of Duty games.

Well, I decided to give World at War a shot when I saw it on sale at a price I couldn’t refuse. Did it earn a Purple Heart, or make me wish I was killed in action? After finishing the solo campaign, I would say a little from column A, a little from column B.

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Game Design Talk: Soul Calibur IV and the Apprentice

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Within minutes of first playing Soul Calibur IV, the game has already figured out how to infuriate me. I’m not even close to being a good player at any Soul Calibur game, but I did play enough Soul Calibur II to beat the game on normal difficulty with every character. Having been out of practice, I decided to get reacquainted with the systems by starting out in Arcade mode.

Up until the second last level, I was doing just fine. But it was then that I was pit against the Apprentice.

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Pick Up Post: You Say You Want A Revolution

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Over the weekend, I just so happened to be at an HMV when I stumbled across one of the most ill-conceived games of the last decade (if not of all-time). I have made fun of this game incessantly since it was announced in May of 2008 and have watched it fall into the absolute bottom of the bargain bin. I have seen stores have difficulty selling the full kit for $10 and the disc alone for $5.  At the price of $2 (which was the price I got it for), even I had to stand there and think about whether or not this would be a good investment. It probably wasn’t, but at least I can now speak first hand on why this game sucks.

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Closing Thoughts on Mass Effect 2

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When this game first came out in January, the Internet buzz surrounding Mass Effect 2 was insane. People were hailing this as the game of the year 2010, regardless of what else was to come out in the next 11 months. I got so caught up in the Mass Effect 2 that I went out and bought Mass Effect 1 and beat it just so that I could get the full Mass Effect 2 experience.

Mass Effect 1 rocked my socks pretty hard. If it weren’t for a few excessive RPG elements and technical issues, it could have been right near the top of my unofficial “best games I’ve ever played” list. With such lofty expectations built up for this game, did they live up to them?

Yes. Yes they did.

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Pick Up Post: Cobra Clutch

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Earlier this week, I found myself hanging out at my local EB Games while my mom was at the Lenscrafters across the mall. After cycling through their inventory with my brother, we talked to the on-duty cashier, who just happened to be my brother’s friend. I had come into the store with no intentions to buy anything, but he made me an offer on a game I couldn’t refuse.

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Suicidal Thoughts

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(WARNING: This post is about the endgame for Mass Effect 2. I will try my best not to spoil anything, but feel free to skip this if you fear I may ruin something for you)

I just finished Mass Effect 2, and I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the endgame sequence to the game. I have been hyper-critical of endgame sequences in the past, but I am glad to report that Mass Effect 2 does not fall by the wayside. It’s a fantastic experience from beginning to end, but the gravity of the situation and the choices you make leading up to the final mission build up to one of the most epic and varied endgame sequences I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

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