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Archives for 2004

EA Employees = Medical Residents?

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EA working conditions:

“My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I’m what you might call a disgruntled spouse.”

Reading this made me somewhat sad for these people. I’m not naive enough to think it doesn’t happen elsewhere, but I imagine most people in the business of making games are truly passionate about games and love making them but they are managed by people who don’t.

Kinda makes me happy that I picked up ESPN NFL 2K5. Not that their any better to their employees, but at least I haven’t read about it yet.

It’s aLIVE!

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Cursed be Microsoft and their free two-month subscription. After convincing the wife that I’d only use the two free months, I signed up for Xbox Live and have already cut my teeth on a few rumble pit matches in Halo 2. Things are going good.

I’ve never really hated on Xbox Live, I’ve sort of watched/listened with a twinge of jealousy as people raved about how great online console gaming was. I guess the jealousy stemmed from Nintendo thumbing there nose at online gaming. But I never thought I’d actually take the plunge. I always figured it would be another time waster vying for my precious time. Well, after an hour of Halo 2 online, I can attest that it in fact is a time waster, but a dang fun one.

Bungie has been touting their matchmaking service, but good-night is it slow. It’s been said in countless other places: you wait five minutes to get into a game that lasts another five. Not exactly fun. But I must say, after two quick matches and two optimatches, everything within the game is pretty nice. I only noticed one little lag-induced jitter, otherwise it runs smooth as silk. The matching also seems to work according to design. In the two optimatches I played in, The disparity between first place and last (not counting the cats who bailed early) was usually only three or four kills. Not too bad.

If you see “I aint yer Pa” out there, it’s me, drop me a message. I’m sure I’ll be around again tomorrow.

More good stuff.

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At Popular Culture Gaming, the topic of women in video games and in particular their use in magazines comes up, this time discussing their prominent display of scantily-clad (man, that’s a cool phrase) women on magazines. He says he’s ashamed to be a gamer. When I see this stuff I can’t help but agree. It doesn’t do anything but further pigeon hole us gamers into male teenagers (and tweenies) with raging hormones. But I think this problem is deeply rooted in pretty much all print media. With the advent of the internet, I think it’s clear that print media is struggling to find its place and magazines are using sex to sell issues. Just look at any magazine rack at your local 7-11. Unfortunately, I think video game magazines are particularly guilty of this.

From the I-could-have-told-you-that research, apparently guys prefer video games to TV. Yup. I watch one or two shows regularly (Lost and Scrubs) and sports, but I definitely prefer games to TV. Unless one of my sports teams is on TV, I’d rather ve gaming. Sometimes that means waiting until the wife is done with her shows, but often she shows me the love and watches her shows on the little TV in the bedroom and I get the big TV for gaming. This particular article concentrates on online gamers and comes for the UK, but I think it’s pretty applicable here, too.

Also from the article –

Global rivalries are strong online, with a third of UK gamers (31 per cent) choosing the US as the nation they most like to beat online followed closely by the French (18 per cent) and Germans (11 per cent)(3).

I love this!

From Guardian Unlimited Game Blog

Catching up

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I’ve been rather occupied with a certain game the past couple of days so not many updates lately, but I’ll be watching Lost tonight and that should give me a chance to catch up with some non-Halo 2 blogging. I don’t have much time now, but a blog post can’t be complete without a link, so here’s a sweet review by The Video Game Ombudsman, cutting and pasting all the glowing comments from various Halo 2 reviews. It’ll make you want to rush out and by Halo 2 right away.

How did Halo 2 score perfect tens again? (Not trying to troll, just trying to remove the mask of hype and blind fanboyism). I still think it’s a fabulous game with a tremendous upside with Live. It’s not perfect, but it sure beats the pants off 98.4% of the crap out there.

Live Blogging – Halo 2 Style Continued

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Well, after an hour or so of playing, I must say it is rather tasty. The cutscenes are great, the story so far isn’t bad, I like what I see. Controls are extra tight, but I do have one major gripe. In Halo 1 I use the “Boxer” button configuration, where the L-trigger is used for melee attacks. In order to dual wield, you have to use the second trigger (the grenade button in default mode) to fire your second gun. If I wanted to use the Boxer configuration, I’d have to use the B button to fire the second gun. That defeats the purpose of being able to dual wield and aim at the same time. It will take some time to get used to the melee attack being the B button. That being said, dual wielding is BOSS. Very well done and extremely enjoyable.

Visually, Halo 2 is pretty dang polished. Everything looks like it did in Halo 1, only better. Sounds are spot on and the music evokes all the emotion of the first game.

I also got a chance to play a couple quick multiplayer games. The maps we player were uncomfortable at first but I’m sure that will change. I love Rocket Battles and they are done well again. I love the change they made to the fly-out path of the missile, it’s much more realistic. Attention to detail is important to me.

Alright, I could go on but I’ve got work tomorrow. I will resume the campaign and I look forward to our first Halo 2 party this weekend. I’m Audi.

Live Blogging – Halo 2 Style

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Well, after standing out in the cold for thirty minutes, Halo 2 is in my hands. I think I may be the first person to live blog a game (you know, like live blogging the debates). Luckily I conned a friend to go wait out in the cold with me. I must say that the Einsteins over at Game Crazy didn’t really plan to well for the midnight shoppers and were ill-prepared for the people that did show up. Finally, after waiting in the cold for an eternity, I was able to buy my copy (along with a free Game Crazy hat, what a sweet deal!) and we headed home.

I have expected to find a bad copy of Halo 2 in my case, but all seems in order. I also noticed a coupon for two free months of Xbox Live. Very very tempting. We shall see.

Well, off I go to save the world, again.

Week In Review

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Back for another installment of of the weekly review of gaming blogs (at least the blogs I know of, I’m always on the look-out for more blogs!)

First off, to get this out of the way, Joystiq has a good list of some of the bigger Halo 2 reviews. The scores look good, many of them perfect 10s. At RedAssedBaboon, the question is raised about scoring a game a ten but then saying it’s not perfect. That also strikes me as being oxymoronic. I am going to refrain from reading the reviews for a pristine impression when I play it late tomorrow night. I am planning on picking up my copy in twenty-five and a half hours, where I will be live-blogging my Halo 2 experience.

Also related to Halo 2 (but not really blog-related) was Kotaku telling us about the big mistake Meijer made, selling Halo 2 a tad early.

It may be hard to believe, but there is more than just Halo 2 happening out there in the gaming world (not much, but more). Scorched Earth looks at the expansion to Star Wars Galaxies. I was really tempted to jump in Galaxies right off the bat. I’m a big Star Wars fan who isn’t) but I’m glad I didn’t and this preview of the expansion reaffirms it. The Star Wars universe could own the MMORPG world but it just can’t deliver. So much ambition and promise but no dice. At least not yet. I doubt ever.

I do love the Metroid series, Metroid Prime 2 looking very tasty, and over at Gamer’s Adventure there’s some nice Metroid tid bits to whet your appetite.

There was also some noise about the “New Games Journalism”. I don’t claim to be part of this, although I do recognize my part in it as a blogger. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

Retro Gaming, Nintendo style

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My parents cleaned out their basement a couple months ago and brought over a load of my junk, including my old Nintendo Entertainment System and a few of my old games. I fired it up, played a little Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, while a tear of nostalgia welled up in my eye. I was saddened that my Super Nintendo was nowhere to be find, however. So this past week I splurged and picked up a used SNES from one of my local video game haunts. I also picked up Super Mario World and NBA Jams. So right now, in addition to all the new releases coming this month (Super November, to say the least) I’m also on somewhat of a nostalgia trip as well.

Gaming-Age Forums – Halo 2 street date broken

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Gaming-Age Forums – Halo 2 street date broken – Not sure about this one. From Kotaku, there’s word that Meijer is selling Halo 2 oh, about 119 hours too soon. If this is true, I’m sure MS/Bungie has already quelched it. I’ve got a Meijer two minutes away, I’m considering a quick trip but I will probably pass. Nonetheless, I wonder if some poor eighteen year old didn’t realize what he was doing and caused a big boo-boo.

That’d be funny.

Update: I never did make it over there. If I’m in the neighborhood tomorrow I’ll poke my head in.

Symphonia? Can someone tell me what that means?

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I had a free rental to burn before November, so I picked up Tales of Symphonia. I’m still not sure what a Symphonia is, but I’m playing it nonetheless. It’s not too shabby.

It looks beautiful but the beauty seems superficial. It’s beautful nonetheless. I like the look and feel of the characters, it’s got the Viewtiful Joe feel, the anime flair is well done. The battle system is a lot fun, it’s a mixture of real-time and semi-turn based battle. To pull off combos you have to be a proficient button-masher, for which I certainly qualify and I’ve been proficient at combos from the beginning.

Unfortuntely it isn’t perfect. The story line is extremely wooden. So is the voice acting. Most of the Japanese RPG cliches are there, but that’s not too much of a problem for me. But the story is so lame, I often struggle with it’s cheese. But seeing past that, this is definitely a good game. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish it, though, as I think a good game will be in my hands Tuesday morning at 12:01am and I’ll be pretty busy with that. Oh well, hopefully I can get back to it sometime in the future.