playstation 3

Game Design Talk: The Money Play

JettLeave a comment

The first time I remember finding a “money play” was in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. After a few fights with Rocksteady, I figured out a cheap way to beat him without him ever touching me. If you’ve ever played this game, you probably figured this trick out, too. If you don’t, the image above shows how to do it. If you’re perched up on those boxes with Donatello and attack down, Rocksteady will just eat your attacks until he dies with no way to fight back. I was only six years old when I figured that out. Before I ever took the time to think about how video games worked, I had already figured out how to exploit the system.

Continue reading →

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

JettLeave a comment

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!
Continue reading →

Death of the Video Game Instruction Manual

Jett3 Comments

Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced that it will no longer make instruction manuals for it’s games, beginning as early as this fall. As someone who grew up in the 8-bit era, when instruction manuals were critical part of the experience, it kind of saddens me to know that this is probably the beginning of the end for paper instruction manuals. Back when I was younger, I used to love reading the instruction manuals on my brand new games as I was being driven home from the store. Some games were totally incomprehensible if you try and play them without reading the manual first. Also, as someone who used to trade in games a lot, keeping the original box and manual would always increase the value of your trade-in.

In the grand scheme of things though, the death of video game instruction manuals is probably well overdue.

Continue reading →

Metacritic and My Video Game Collection

JettLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

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

JettLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Game Design Talk: Soul Calibur IV and the Apprentice

JettLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Pick Up Post: You Say You Want A Revolution

JettLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Game Design Talk: Taking Control Out of My Hands

JettLeave a comment

(SPOILER ALERT: This post will discuss major plot points in Modern Warfare 2 and Prince of Persia)

The terrorist scene in Modern Warfare 2 has been dissected from every conceivable angle by now. Odds are if you’re a fan of reading niche video game blogs like mine, you’ve probably played this sequence and have already come to your own conclusions about it.

For the record, I hate it. I hate it for a number of reasons, but for the sake of this discussion, I’m only going to get into one reason why I dislike this scene. I don’t hate it for the fact that you get to shoot innocent people. I applaud Infinity Ward for leaving that option open. However, that entire scenario is fundamentally broken because of the people you can’t shoot.

Continue reading →

Game Design Talk: Burnout Paradise and the Feeling of Progression

JettLeave a comment

For a game that is fairly one-dimensional at its core, Burnout Paradise does a lot of little things to motivate players to keep playing. You will unlock new cars by either winning races or taking them out as they randomly drive by you on the road. The game keeps track of all the super jumps you complete, fences you smash and billboards you drive through. You can even race for the best time on basically every street in the game against your friends or against the world.

Those little things have kept me playing this game longer than I usually plan to. However, each of my sessions usually ends when I realize how far away I am to making progress in the most important measure of progression in the game: the licenses.

Continue reading →

Game Case Nightmares

JettLeave a comment

I get the feeling I’m in the minority here, but I know I’m not alone on this one. I like to take care of my games. I take pride in keeping everything intact and in top shape. This includes the cases that my games come in. Back in the days of Nintendo boxes, I would go as far as storing all of the cardboard boxes in a safe place. Nowadays, it’s a lot easier to keep everything in top shape, as game cases are well built to withstand average wear and tear.

However, having bought a number of used game stores and more recently, having bought a number of used games, I’ve seen so many games with messed up packaging. Everything from broken cases, to missing box art, to stickers all over the box. The majority of these cases makes me wonder: what are you people doing with your games?

Continue reading →