The Top 5 Most Viewed In Third Person Posts of All-Time

Because I write In Third Person solely as a personal outlet of gaming nerdiness, I don’t pay much attention to my analytics. Even if no one in the world were to ever see this blog, I would continue writing in it anyway, just to get these gaming-related thoughts out of my head and onto something a bit more tangible. Well, as tangible as the Internet can be. If you or anyone else decides they want to read my musings, power to you.

And read my musings you have. Sure, my traffic may not rival the Craigslist posting your mom put up to promote your family garage sale, but there are a consistent number of people that frequent my site, according to my numbers. Thank you to everyone that has ever read my blog and a special thanks to everyone who checks in regularly.

Whether you’re a regular reader or just found my blog on a whim, I’m going to present to you the five most popular posts on my site. I was actually kind of surprised by the results. Click through to find out what the hottest content is on In Third Person.

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Capcom vs. Namco and Namco vs. Capcom Rumors and Speculation

According to a number of hints dropped by Street Fighter creator Yoshinori Ono, Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada and a report from Game Informer indicate that the game Yoshinori Ono will announce is not just one game, but two. According to Game Informer sources, Capcom is making a Capcom vs. Namco game with the Street Fighter IV engine while Namco is making a Namco vs. Capcom game based on the Tekken 6 engine.

While this sounds exactly like what Capcom and SNK did, the element of 2D vs. 3D makes this a whole new beast.
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Street Fight Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 2: Punishing Mistakes

This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing

PUNISHING MISTAKES

One of the most common mistakes in Street Fighter is a poorly-timed projectile attack. For instance, if I’m Ryu, and you properly react to my fireball, you can jump over the fireball and kick me in the face before I can do anything to defend myself. In Street Fighter, when your opponent makes a mistake, you want to punish them for their mistakes by hitting them with the most powerful attacks as possible.

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Excited for Rock Band 3?

When it comes to my level of excitement for the release of a game, not many games in my life matched the hype I felt the original Rock Band. I was in the apex of my Guitar Hero love around the time when rumblings of a full-band music game from the developers of Guitar Hero II appeared on the Internet. When the rumblings finally turned up this initial video for the Rock Band proof of concept, I was sold. So sold, that I was the first person to pre-order the full Rock Band kit at my local EB Games and was even the first to pick up my kit because I showed up at the same time as the guy who was delivering the Rock Band kits to the store.

Three years, four Rock Band branded games, hundreds of hours played and hundreds of downloadable songs bought later, I’m kind of burned out on the plastic instrument formula. I forced my way through Lego Rock Band for the achievements and can’t find the motivation to even begin the career mode in Green Day: Rock Band. Rock Band 3 looks to revive the genre with new features, new songs, and for those who want it, a pro mode that takes the genre into realistic new heights. Are these changes enough to bring me back in?
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Street Fighter Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 1: Spacing

For many years, I’ve been an avid basketball player. I’ve played in a few leagues, on a few school teams and participated in a few basketball camps. I am by no means the next LeBron James, but I had the skills to make some noise on almost any given local court. Over the last few years though, finding the time to hit the court has been extremely difficult. During my basketball downtime though, I got really into Street Fighter IV on a serious level. I began to really pay attention to the concepts behind the game and how to use them to my advantage.

This year, my life has really settled down and I now regularly play basketball again. While I’ve had to work hard to get back into game shape (I lost 20 lbs and counting since I started playing again in April), and I’ll never have the raw physical talent that I did in my prime, I do have something now that I didn’t have before: Street Fighter knowledge.

Oddly, I’ve been able to apply much of the thinking involved in playing Street Fighter into my thinking of basketball. Has it made me a better player? I think it has. I’m not saying that Kobe Bryant should dust off his E. Honda to get better, but having that parallel helps me see basketball in a different way, allowing me to play the game smarter. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to apply these concepts in a one-on-one basketball situation, because adding in more players will make this more difficult to explain than it should be. I have at least four parts to this series ready to go, with more possibly in the future.

I don’t need to set this up any more. Here is part one of Street Fighter concepts that made me a better basketball player.
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Get Hype! EVO 2010 Starts Today!

Last year was a monumental one for everyone involved in the Evolution fighting game tournament. Besides it being the debut of the massively-popular Street Fighter IV, it broke records for participants, attendance and for the first time ever, it was all viewable live to anyone with an Internet connection. EVO was no longer just the one YouTube clip of Daigo parrying all of Justin Wong’s super combo hits. Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in throughout the weekend to watch Daigo and company play out the fighting game magic. I was glued to my computer that entire weekend; watching arguably the best fighting game action I’d ever seen in my life. That tournament even went as far as inspiring me to level up my own skills.
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Canada’s Contribution to Video Games

Today is a special day in my home and native land. While I should be enjoying my day off by playing hockey and tending to my igloo, I’ve decided to do a little bit of research and put together a not-that-serious piece on Canada’s contributions to video games. Find out if your favourite Canadian contributions made my list (and don’t be mad if they didn’t).

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Pick Up Post: Join the Darkside

Back in January, this THQ game caught a lot of people by surprise. People who were expecting it to be a God of War clone were surprised at how Zelda-like it’s gameplay was. It reviewed well and as far as I know, sold above the company’s expectations.

For a number of reasons, I kept tabs on it until it came down to a lower price. A few weeks ago, it hit $20, and I grabbed my local Best Buy’s last copy.

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Thoughts on the e3 Press Conferences

When it comes to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the main event has always been the press conferences by the major platform holders to start the show. Over the last few years, the major third party developers have begun hosting their own events, which I care little about to be honest. The “megatons” always come from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, so I make it a point to watch the press conferences no matter what.

This year was a bit weird, as I had to “work around my day job” to watch them. However, I saw them all and would like to share my impressions on those conferences with you. Did Kinect connect with the hardcore and mainstream audiences? Did Nintendo abandon the hardcore gamer for good? Did Sony ride its momentum to e3 2010 glory? Hit the link for my impressions.

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Summertime Bits and Bites

Summer is about as close to an off-season for video games for me as it gets. Sure, I’ve dabbled a bit in a bunch of different games on different platforms over the past few weeks, but I’ve been very much caught up in the spoils of the season, such as good weather, outdoor parties and street basketball.

Gaming and writing about gaming have taken a serious nose-dive on my list of things-to-do of late. For the few people who follow my blog regularly, I apologize. I’m hoping I can write more in detail about what’s happened and what’s to come, but for now, I will give you some snippets of things that I’ve been up to gaming-wise and my thoughts on current gaming events.
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