buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

Archives for November 2006

I wish I knew how to quit yOu(endan)

Last night I got ready to play some Burnout Revenge before I retired for the night. Then I saw the DS sitting there, calling me. I fired up Ouendan around 10 o’clock, figuring I’d help out the fat Egyptian lady win over her Roman heartthrob. Then, three and a half hours later I was struggling to keep my eyes open while I was trying to help out a dad save his city from a giant rat. The game is that flipping good. I must have said, “one more try,” an hundred times.

What sets Ouendan apart from other games that rely on patterns is that it’s actually fun doing the same level over more than once. Even though the patterns are exactly the same, the music is so infectious and the rythm tapping is so satisfying that you never feel cheated when you fail at the level once again. It’s just “oh well, let’s do that again.” No biggie. That is the hallmark of a great game.

Another bonus is that it passes the “Wife Test.” Mrs. Buttonmasher loves this game. She is very casual gamer, so getting her involved with this game was something I didn’t think I could do. But all it took was one round at the easy level and she’s already hooked. In fact, she’s probably better than me at it. I only get to play when she’s done.

Speaking of the music, even though I have no idea what they’re singing about, I am now a huge fan of Japnese Pop music. I found all the soundtracks from the game and there are on heavy rotation in both iTunes and my iPod. It is so easy to listen to. Even the little buttonDaughter loves it.

So even though I have a pile of good games I could be playing, I just can’t quit playing Ouendan. I owe the Nintendaddio a huge thanks for recommending this game to me more than once.

Iron Mike at his best

From the underrated sports site, Joe Sports Fan, I present for you entertainment: Iron Mike’s Real Legacy, a look at Mike Tyson’s finest hour: Super Punch-Out for the SNES. It’s hilarious. Read the whole thing. Talking about King Hippo:

Hippo was a cross between Sloth Fratelli and George “the Animal” Steele, a massive, somewhat retarded beast that lacked the skills to stick with the polished Mac.

Anyone who can include references to the Goonies and classic WWF wrestlers in the same sentence is okay in my book.

Fish or cut bait?

Blog or play games?

After a relaxing extended Thanksgiving weekend (Happy belated Thanksgiving, BTW) I’m back to the old grind. Now I’m faced with the age-old question: Do some gaming or do some blogging?

I’ve got a large number of posts in varying stages of completeness in the queue, but I’ve also got two rented games that are already overdue but both immensely enjoyable calling my name. I’ve got Burnout Revenge, which is pretty sweet the second time around and I’ve got Lego Star Wars II which is a total blast. Decisions decisions.

Over the long weekend I took my 360 home to my parents house to hook it up to my Dad’s HDTV. He’s got an older Toshiba TV (this model, Toshiba 42H81) that has weird resolutions (480p, 540p, and 1080i) but at 1080i things looked pretty darned good. He’s also got an excellent Bose surround sound system which adds a whole new dimension to the experience. I am now totally jonesing for a new TV. Dead Rising looked great on Bobster’s 22″ Samsung but looked a little better with an extra 20 inches. Gears of War was excellent, especially with the surround sound. And Burnout was jaw-dropping at times in 1080i.

So I had a good weekend of gaming. I got Mrs. buttonMasher hooked on Ouendan. I downloaded all the Ouendan songs and they are on heavy rotation on the iPod. I also played the heck out of Lego Star Wars, co-op style, with my bro-in-law and really enjoyed it. It’s great to have a good Star Wars game after so many duds (I’m looking at you, Star Wars Bounty Hunter). The subtle humor they use re-telling the Star Wars story is a welcome laugh.

I also notice that I’m slowing morphing into a Gamerscore addict. I looked at the achievements for Burnout Revenge and lamented the fact that a large portion of them included playing the game online. That’s not a huge deal, but I imagine there probably won’t be many people playing Revenge online when they could be playing something else. (Wonder what that could be?) Anyway, if you’re on my friends list, I may be sharing a clip or two with you from Burnout Revenge. Gotta get those easy points!

So now that I’ve blogged a little, it’s time to go fishing. I mean gaming. You know what I mean.

Gears of War, a week later

Image1.jpgSo last Thursday, I finished the Gears of War single-player campaign. Here are some observations from the single player game.

I’ve noticed this a lot with games lately, but it seems like there is so much detail paid to setting the scene, creating the mood and starting the story that the rest of the game never lives up to the first few hours. I’m sure it’s not intentional and more of a consequence of schedule pressure and deadlines, but it’s unfortunate. Gears of War suffers a bit from this problem, but a bigger issue is a disjointed story. If you hadn’t been paying attention to the trailers and teasers before this game launched or if you hadn’t read the manual, you’d have no idea what was going on with the story. Then things happen so fast that there isn’t time to fill in the story. Things just happen, without a whole lot of explanation.

That being said, the pacing of the game is excellent. There’s no backtracking, no pointless objectives, just non-stop action. Checkpoints were seamless and the action moved quickly. This is the way action games should be paced. I just couldn’t believe how short the game was! I didn’t time myself, but I bet I didn’t spend more than eight hours here. That’s disappointing. Sure, I’ll spend some time trying the game at the higher difficulties and play a bunch of multiplayer, but the single player is just too short.

The actual game play is a mostly good with a few flaws. There have been many different descriptions of the in-game action. Some call it “stop-and-pop.” Hiding under cover and knowing when to pop out and shoot and when to blindfire, keeping yourself safe, is the name of the game. Me, I’d describe the game as a next-generation whack-a-mole. There were countless times where I’d be hiding under cover, being shot at by three different bad guys. I’d pop out to shoot and have to guess which of the three was going to pop up first. The first time it happened, I thought to myself, “I’m playing whack-a-mole.” What a buzz-kill that was. Where was the innovation? Where was the new game play? I sure didn’t find it.

After finishing the single player, I jumped on to Live to try out some multiplayer games. Most games are four-on-four, with different objectives like “killing the leader.” Most of the guys I ran around with were pretty cool and the games were fun but nothing special. The games are quick and demand teamwork, but with the pick-up ground aspect of matchmaking doesn’t really lend itself to developing that “teamwork.” Another problem with the matchmaking is the fact the game kicks you out to the main menu after the match is over. There’s no lobby or any other way to socialize. The games themselves are enjoyable but the overall experience was uninspired.

I was gonna try to jump into some co-op, but I haven’t been successful with that yet so far. Hopefully I’ll be able to give that a fair shake soon, to complete the experinece but overall, I’m satisfied. Not overwhelmed and definitely not blown away. This is not a 10/10 game. I would recommend this game with qualifiers. It’s short, yes, and it’s multiplayer experience is less-than-stellar, but it’s still a fun game.

So this new Zelda game…

zelda twilight.jpgIt might be sorta, kinda good.

I was cruising my favorite meta-review site, Metacritic, checking out the new Wii titles when I browsed over to the new Zelda: Twilight Princess page. Right now, it’s clocking in at 9.8. I guess that would mean it’s a pretty solid launch title, right? Three reviews scoring it a perfect 100 and another at 99. IGN’s review hasn’t been integrated into MC’s score, but they gave the game a 9.5. Wow.

So this has to be the highest rated launch title, right?

I haven’t read any of the reviews, as I want to go into Z:TP completely unspoiled, so I’ll have to take these scores at face value. It just happens that said value is very high.

Waiting for my Wii

As I mentioned earlier, I was planning on picking up a Wii from Amazon.com. I figured I could get in on a preorder and be happy with that. There was talk that Amazon would resume taking preorders at some point. I held out hope. I believed!

Then I got this email from Amazon this afternoon:

Important News For Amazon.com Video Games Customers

The Nintendo Wii will be available for purchase on Amazon.com on 11/19, Sunday morning (PST). We will be limiting purchases to one per household and we anticipate that we will sell through our inventory very quickly as we’ve received email notification requests over 100 times greater than the number of units we will have available for sale (i.e., for every Nintendo Wii we’ll have for sale, over 100 people have signed up to be notified).

At this time, we do not have any information on future Nintendo Wii offers, but we will post updates on future availability in the customer discussions on the Nintendo Wii product page:

http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Wii/dp/B0009VXBAQ.

Thank you for your continued support of Amazon.com.

I guess I’ll be camping out in front of the computer Sunday morning (PST) whatever that means. Arrgh! Looks like the arrival of my Wii may be delayed for a while. A hundred-to-one ratio of Wiis to people who want them? I’m screwed.

Hacking the Wii giftcard

Target is handing out Wii GiftCards in anticipation of Nintendo’s release of this remarkable console. The cards are a bit thicker than your regular credit card and house some pretty nifty electronics. Pressing the button on the outside of the card turns on a ominous blue Wii glow that lasts about ten seconds. I’ll pop the case on this little thing and check out the internals. After that we’ll add a bit of functionality to the LEDs.

Instructables (via MAKEBlog)

Blogging update

If you’re a sports fan (more specifically a college football fan), you’re aware of a little game this weekend (just look at the countdown in the middle of this page. It’s been there for over a month.). That’s right, the Ohio State versus Michigan game is HUGE. HUGE is actually the understatement of the century. This game is going to be HUGER than HUGE. It’s something that’s never happened — an undefeated Ohio State team ranked #1 in the country playing an undefeated Michigan team ranked #2. It’s basically a mini-National Championship, a prelude to the BCS Title game in Glendale.

So I’ll be busy this week blogging at my other site, Men of the Scarlet and Gray. We’ve got a lot of content this week that will be taking up my time. We’ll also be participating in CSTV.com’s Battle of the Blogs. Our piece will be up on Thursday.

So I’ll try to keep the posting here, too, but it may be too much. This week is just chock-full of stuff going on. The game on Saturday, the release of the Wii six hours later and this football geek’s head is going to explode. It’s gonna be sweet.

I’ve got some Carnival updates coming soon, too. Unfortunately our December host dropped out but Michael at MMOGNation (Zonk from Slashdot Games) has agreed to take over the hosting duties for December. You can get your submissions in whenever you’re ready. I’ve updated the Carnival HQ page to reflect the changes.

So I’m excited about this week. I’m excited about the Wii. I’m excited about “The Game.” It’s Ohio State/Michigan. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

And if you’re wondering, I don’t really care much about the state of Michigan.