Muscle March

Best game ever on the Wii? Signs point to yes.

Add comment Posted by Scott on December 4th, 2009

iPod/iPhone Tons O’ Funs

I  recently got an iPod touch, and now I don’t go anywhere without it.

Here are a few games/apps that I am currently enjoying, and definitely recommend:

Bejeweled 2
A puzzle game. I’ve been playing Bejeweled for years, so naturally, I wanted it on my iPod, and the version is so seamless & smooth, I fell in love with it all over again. I am also looking forward to Bejeweled Blitz, as an add-on, which was previously a Facebook exclusive, and will be fully integrated with Facebook so you can upload & share scores.

3D Fantasy Tunnel
A racing game, for lack of a more applicable genre. Awesome, and awesome. Utilizes the accelerometer in a way that makes you wonder the whole time you play: “Why the heck hasn’t this always existed?!” One word that may describe it: Trippy.

Crush the Castle
Yeah, you literally just crush the castle. It’s kind of physics-based, and tons of fun.

Trace
A casual platformer. Use your strategizin’ skills to draw your way to each level’s goal. Avoid lots of obstacles, don’t get pwned. Tons of levels, and very fun.

AppSniper
Not a game, but totally worth the 99 cents. Browse by recently discounted apps (yes, this includes “temporarily free” kinds of promos, of which there are way more than I expected), set it to alert you when apps you’re interested in drop in price, and also find way more cool free stuff in general than you ever could in the regular app store. Get it, and remember to check every day for one-day-only price drops.

Add comment Posted by Katy on November 10th, 2009

Random News

Sega has a pair of quite cool Zippo lighters. Show your love for the Saturn and Mega Drive the next time you need to make a fire. Maybe not $114 worth of cool, but still cool never the less.

Nintendo is coming out with yet another iteration of the DS. This time it’s the DSi LL. It’s the DSi, only bigger. I wish they’d spend more time controlling the hundreds of terrible Wii games that keep getting the ok instead of pushing out a new DS every other minute.

The Left4Dead 2 demo is out. Any impressions?

Epic Mickey looks awesome. Warren Spector meets Mickey Mouse? I’m there.

Updating an older post here: Champions Online turned out to be a snoozefest. Aion is now where it’s at.

You can now use Facebook and Twitter on your Xbox 360. I’m not sure why you’d want to, but hey, it’s there.

DJ Hero is amazingly fun. Look for a future post on it.

MaxConsole claims to have specs for Wii 2 . 1080p and Blu-Ray? Hm.

Add comment Posted by Scott on October 29th, 2009

Random Again

Scott’s randomness for this week:

Enjoy the Zork walkthrough in song.  If you don’t know what Zork is, you’re most likely fairly young and need to explore this classic game.

Is it a cheese or a font?

Currently taking up too much time: Crush the Castle, Crush the Castle: Players Pack and the iPhone/iPod Touch version. So addictive.

A simulator: You fell asleep watching a DVD.

Do’s and don’t with babies. Amazingly helpful.

Microsoft shows you how to make quite the creepy Halloween mask. Sorry Apple owners.

The Monstropedia is fantastic. Warning, there may be some Victorian era topless paintings in there.

I had the Little Professor calculator as a kid. Not to date myself, but I loved this thing and it was the last video game I had until the Atari 2600.

Add comment Posted by Scott on October 16th, 2009

“Internet Eyes” – Redefining gaming… by a lot.

Have you heard about the UK’s newest game, “Internet Eyes”? It utilizes their preexisting CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) system in a way only Orwell could have imagined. It’s the talk of thousands of journalists, bloggers and civil liberties activists throughout the UK, and has become an increasingly popular web buzz topic in America, too.

During a research project, “On the Threshold to Urban Panopticon?”, conducted by URBANEYE, coordinated by the Centre of Technology and Society at the Technical University of Berlin, it was estimated that the UK is home to approximately 4,200,000 cameras – one for every 14 citizens.

Internet Eyes is a web-based game set to launch next month. Visitors to the game’s official website can play for a prize of up to £1,000 ($1,627) by watching live streaming video from various, “secret” locations and reporting possible crimes. Winners are determined based on a points system (highest scorer wins), where users accrue points which are awarded based on the “accuracy” of their reports. Prizes, or “awards”, as the company prefers to call them, are rendered each month.

Any business or organization which is in possession of a property where a CCTV camera is located may participate in the game by offering their video feed for viewing on the site, and also contribute directly to the success of the game by being determining factors in how “accurate” each user’s crime reports are.

From the official site: “The camera owner will… feedback (rate) the result of the alert. Their feedback is converted into points and entered into a Viewers monthly league table. At the end of each month the highest scoring Viewer will receive the reward money; this could be split in the event of a tie.”

Also from the official site, crime “events” which may warrant reporting include:

* Shop lifting
* Anti social behaviour
* Burglary
* Vandalism

In more recent news, the company behind Internet Eyes, known only as “Internet Eyes Ltd” (despite some research effort on my behalf, I cannot seem to find more information about the company), is eyeing (no pun intended) Australian citizens, because of their difference in time zone, to monitor its presented video feeds during the late night hours while the number of UK viewers may drop.

Information used in this entry was pulled from dailymail.co.uk, news.com.au, urbaneye.net, wikipedia.org and the Internet Eyes official website.

2 comments Posted by Katy on October 15th, 2009

Time to Pie. What do?

I slept really badly last night, so I may as well make a pie. Because I love pie almost as much as sleeping, pie and sleep are interchangeable like that. So…also making up recipe as I go because sleep deprived. Ingredients list at the bottom for those interested.

Prepare for the longest post ever :3

Filling Ingredients:
7 – medium/large sized mcintosh apples
lemon juice – squirt it like lighter fluid
¼ cup – granulated sugar
2 tbsp – whole wheat flour
1 ¼ tsp – ground cinnamon
¼ tsp – ground nutmeg
¼ tsp – ground ginger

Topping Ingredients:
½ cup – BUTTER!! Yeah, the whole stick.
½ cup – packed brown sugar
⅔ cup – all purpose flour
⅓ cup – oats
1 tsp – more cinnamon
a couple dashes – ground cloves

Now it’s time to play some FF6. YEAH!!

Add comment Posted by Christine on October 6th, 2009

From Console to Handheld…PS1 Classics on PSP

The way my schedule in life works, I don’t have access to my home consoles a majority of the week. So a majority of the time I play handheld games. Which is great, because handheld games are great. But sometimes I want that console experience in the palm of my hands…and that’s where PSOne classics come in.

The PlayStation Store offers old PlayStation One games up for download, and I couldn’t be happier with the service. I can download these games onto my PS3, and then transfer them to my PSP! I grabbed a cheap 16GB memory stick off of Amazon (only $65, which isn’t bad considering a lot of them go for well over $100), and currently have the original Metal Gear Solid as well as Final Fantasy VII on my PSP, available to play whenever I want.

Practically the actual size, all the actual awesome.

Now of course there are some minor issues. The PS1 controller featured two analog sticks, and four shoulder buttons. The PSP has only one analog sick, and 2 shoulder buttons. That’s where the restrictions come in: Dual-Shock only games will never be available for PSOne play, and older games have modified control schemes. The L2 and R2 buttons are delegated to left and right on the analog nub, with up on the nub designated to L2 and R2 pressed simultaneously. That fix aside, though, it’s awesome.

And you still get the complete package. You can change discs and controller input from the home menu (so you can complete the classic Psycho Mantis boss fight in Metal Gear Solid), and you can view the entire manual, as well as front and back art. Nothing’s been scraped and it plays great.

On top of that, due to the greater resolution of th PSP screen and the superior sound system, these old classics look and sound BETTER than the originals! Not by much, but Final Fantasy VII is sharper by comparison, and Metal Gear’s cutscene dialog couldn’t be clearer.

Ever since Sony had to kick it up a notch at E3 this year, they’ve put attention and care into everything they do. The PSOne lineup before then was awful, with a handful of mediocre titles. Since then, though, we’ve seen Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Tekken, Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, and many more coming in the very near future. It’s great to see so many classic titles readily available, and for so cheap! Titles have yet to exceed $9.99, and considering that Final Fantasy VII goes used for upwards of $40, that’s more than a bargain.

For anyone looking to get extra use out of their PSP, or looking for fun things to do with their new PSPGo, I highly recommend the underappreciated PSOne classics library. It’s one of the best ways to get a full on console experience in the palm of your hands.

Add comment Posted by Mike on October 2nd, 2009

Randomness Part 309

How many people are in space right now?

Behold the wonder of Zlad Vladcik’s Elektronic Supersonik.

Listen to “Conquer the Video Craze”, a record of videogame hints from 1982.

How long can you bounce one ball while balancing another?

The Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes.

Public Domain 4U has a terrible name, but lots of good, old blues tracks for download.

Amaze your friends by quoting from the dictionary of old hobo slang

For no reason other than to waste your time, here’s the square root of two to 1 million digits.

1 comment Posted by Scott on October 2nd, 2009

Brutal Legend Demo Impressions

Tim Schafer is a genius. With point-and-click adventure classics like Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games, as well as the much ignored 2005 action adventure Psychonauts, no man has been better known for funny, fun, addictive, and charming video games. It’s not often the games industry has a single man behind a game like so many films have directors, but Schafer is in a small group of people alongside Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, and Shigeru Miyamoto who are sole visionaries for gaming classics. His new game, Brutal Legend, is out soon, but the demo is available for Xbox Live Gold members until October 5th. And you need to download it.

Brutal Legend is a game all about heavy metal culture. If you were ever into heavy metal bands, especially in the 80s, this game is a tribute to it all. With environments ripped from Iron Maiden covers to characters voices by metal legends such as Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy, this game is not just a love letter to heavy metal culture, it’s a part of it. The game stars Jack Black as Eddie Riggs, a roadie for a terrible nu-metal band, as he gets thrust into an alternate dimension full of characters, enemies, bosses, and environments all inspired heavily by this culture.

The game stars Jack Black, someone who I can’t stand. Even as a performer on Mr. Show, one of the greatest sketch comedy shows of all time, he managed to annoy me to no end. On top of that I am someone who is strongly against the use of actors as voice actors in games and animation. And yet, somehow, Jack Black manages to do a fantastic job in this game. He’s quiet, down to Earth, friendly, and funny in this game. He’s not the loud and obnoxious Jack Black people are normally used to seeing. The writing, as well, is absolutely fantastic if the demo is any indication, with great jokes and dialog. Writing is very important to me in all mediums, and this game does a fantastic job.

I actually don't want to punch him.

The gameplay, of course, is what will make or break this experience, and it’s definitely there. While it’s not awesome or bringing anything new to the table, what’s there works great. Traditional hack ‘n’ slash gameplay domintaes a majority of the playtime, going back and forth between an axe and an axe. One of those axes is a guitar; the other, an axe. The actual axe slashes bad guys, whereas the guitar uses the power of rock to electrocute enemies. Doing the two together creates an earthquake that destroys enemies and the surrounding environment. The two used in conjunction create very satisfying combos.

There’s a bit of driving in here, too, with Eddie’s vehicle capable of running over dozens of bad guys at a time. It’s even used in the demo’s uninspired but artistically satisfying boss battle, as a way to remove the boss serpent’s giant fangs from the ground. But the best bit of driving comes just before the introduction of Eddie’s vehicle, where you drive a giant creature-ish vehicle down a hill made of skulls and bones. It gives you a look at the breahtaking scenery, something I couldn’t even come close to appreciating with my standard definition TV.

The demo gives you a solid feel for the game, and while it omits a demo of the strategy portion of the game that consists of Eddie overseeing an army to take on legions of foes, you get a great idea of how this game will be. The writing and character interactions are outstanding, the animation is Pixar-quality, the environments are wonderfully inspirted, and the gameplay, while, simple, should be able to stand the duration of the full game’s length.

Pop this demo up on your 360 while there’s still time, but if you can’t make up your mind even after that, this demo has proven to me that this game is a must-buy. Tim Schafer, you’ve done it again.

Add comment Posted by Mike on September 25th, 2009

Your fix of “adorable” for the day.

Add comment Posted by Katy on September 24th, 2009