buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

Archives for August 2004

Cheap games at Best Buy.

Thanks to the deal-finders at Cheap Ass Gamer I was alerted to some clearance deals at Best Buy so I went over on my lunch break to check it out. I picked up R: Racing Evolution and XIII for the Gamecube and Onimusha Tactics and Max Payne for the GBA. All for $9.99 each! I wanted to pick up a copy of Simpsons: Hit and Run for me and my brother-in-law but all the stores around here were sold out. Bummer. R: Racing Evolution comes with Pac Man Vs., the game that uses the GBA/GC connectivity, so I’m looking forward to trying that out, it’s supposed to be pretty fun.

So now the games are piling up for me to play. I am still mainly playing NCAA but now that I’ve got some new ones I’ll try to get some playing with those in. But I watched some kids play Madden 2005 at BB and it looked sweet. But so did ESPN NFL 2k5. What to do, what to do.

So many games, so little time.

Outlook 2003

This has nothing to do with games, but I recently upgraded to Office 2003 at home and I use Outlook for my email account and I must say the new anti-spam features are top-notch. I have the level set as “high” and I rarely get an unwanted email in my inbox while my junk email folder is filling up more and more. I got about 200 emails last week, 150 of which were junk email and all but 3 or 4 made it to my inbox. Pretty good work there. And adding senders to a “safe” or “blocked” list improves its efficiency even more.

I often don’t toot MS’s horn, but I’ll give them props for this one. It also finally has some security features for HTML emails, as well. At least it seems like they’re trying to get better.

Nintendo and Microsoft

So now that I’ve had time to think about the news story I linked to earlier, I wanted to comment on it. I know it’s older news, supposedly Bill Gates tried and failed at buying Nintendo a few years back, hence the Xbox. He knew that there is a lot of money to be made in the living room and wanted a piece of that action. Say what you will about him, he didn’t get where he is by luck alone. He knows what he’s doing.

Anyway, I’ve thought about what could come of a merger like Nintendo + Xbox. Here are a few thoughts I’ve had:

Online – Like it or not, Nintendo has dropped the ball here. With only 2 games utilizing the broadband adapter to play online is pretty sad. While there aren’t a lot of games that could utilize it, an online Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, or any sports game would be great. By combining Xbox Live’s success with Nintendo games, possibilities are endless. A 16 player F-Zero race online would rock.

Franchises – Nintendo has tons of them, Xbox really only has HALO. Bring Zelda and Mario in the fold would be perfect. With Nintendo’s knack for making fun games and the power of the Xbox would be unbelievable.

Fan base – Nintendo fanboys are fickle creatures. I’m sure most of them would feel that Nintendo sold-out and they’d be mad. But most of us would realize the possibilities and embrace the change. For one reason or another, I don’t want to see the PS3 win the next console race and an Xbox/Nintendo combo could easily knock it off its high horse.

There are other positives, and I’m sure an equal number of negatives, but I’m an optimist so I try to look past that. Either way, I doubt it will happen and we’ll have a 3 console race once again. I can’t see it going past that, though. Someone will have to drop out. Who will it be?

I’m going to play some NCAA 2005

Halo has been destroyed.

B00005NZ1G.01._AA_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpgI have completed Halo, I’m proud to say. It took me less than two weeks, playing about an hour or two, with a couple longer sessions. I thoroughly enjoyed it, everything looked and sounded great, the vehicles are a blast (I really liked the race to the finish), the fact that only two weapons can be carried is genius. The music was moody, but often triggered at weird times. My biggest gripe, of course, is the level design. I understand that some areas need to be repeated, but not every darn one of them. Some were a pain to navigate, but on the whole it never was overly frustrating. The pace was perfect, maybe a tad too fast.

Overall, I look forward to trying on the harder difficulty levels at some point, but I’m going back to NCAA 2005 for now. I left my team in a lurch and they need their coach.

I give Halo 4.75/5 buttons mashed! I also eagerly waiting its sequel.

Resident Evil 4 in 2005

I guess I spoke too soon on games I’m looking forward to this coming fall/winter. According to Gamespot (via EvilAvatar) it will ship Jan. 11, 2005.

From what I’ve seen, it looks spectacular. I didn’t play any of the RE games until I tried the RE remake on the GC and it was great, but I didn’t finish it. I’ve been wanting to go and play through the series so I could see how everything fits together and now that RE4 has been delayed, maybe I’ll actually be able to do that.

Games of 2004

I, like most people, like to make top ten/five/whatever lists. Top ten movies of all time, top ten fight scenes, whatever. I made a top five Gamecube games of 2003 last year on epinions.com. I was thinking of games (Gamecube in particular) of 2004 and which one’s I’ve enjoyed so far and I’ve only played a couple games released this year. While there are a bunch of games I am looking forward to, I still can’t believe I’ve only played two games released in 2004: Wario Ware Megagames and NCAA 2005.

There are some good ones that are out already that I should play: Zelda Four Swords Adventures, Mega Man Anniversary, Spiderman 2, and Tales of Symphonia. Those are some good titles.

But the upcoming games are looking great. I am particularly looking forward to Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2 Echoes, and Pikmin 2. These will be the titles vying the top five of 2004. There’s also a handful of Xbox games I’m looking forward to playing, but that’s another topic.