buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

Archives for January 2006

Carnival #10

by 4 Comments

The Carnival of Gamers #10 is up at Kill Ten Rats.

You can digg this here.

Slashdot linked to the Carnival, highlighting Jeffool’s entry, which I also think was great. From the comments, it looks like this Carnival was a little more well received than the original. Which is good to hear, since Slashdot will be hosting the next Carnival.

Update: Just a quick update. The Unbeliever, blogging at the delightfully unsavoury (his words, not mine) MMODIG, has graciously volunteered to host the April edition of the Carnival. You can find all the Carnival information, as always, at the Carnival HQ.

I love being right

by 7 Comments

I picked Texas a month ago (I also picked Penn State by a field goal, but who’s keeping score? Of course, I also said OSU would win big and Ted Ginn Jr. would have a big game. Man, I need to be betting on these games!). I’ve been going back and forth with my brother-in-law about this game. He said USC by 14. I said no fricken way, Texas by 8. In the end, I took Texas and the points. Like I said, I love being right.

Oh, and let’s all welcome Matt Leinhart to the “Kellen Winslow Jr. Sore Loser Club.” After the Buckeyes beat Miami for the 2002 National Championship, Kellen Winslow Jr. said, “They didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves. We’re the best team in the country. They’re not. We just beat ourselves. We didn’t execute.” Leinhart told Holly Rowe, “I still think we’re the better team.” Welcome to the club, Matt.

Classy, the two of them.

Don’t look back in anger

by Leave a Comment

I’m making necessary preparations to upgrade to WordPress 2.0, so I took the opportunity to take a look back at the past year of buttonmashing.com. Here are a few highlights:

  • Resident Evil 4 took control of my gaming in early January. I was so impressed with the authentic Spanish phrases that I started keeping track of them, with their English translations. This ended up being one of the most popular posts I made this year. It was popular when the Gamecube version was hitting its stride and then had new found popularity when the PS2 version came out. It’s been linked in numerous forums and the like. I’ve tried to keep it updated and I’m pretty proud of it.
  • The greatest moment of 2005 was, hands down, the birth of my son Mason. He’s now almost 10 months old and is starting to like playing with the controller when dad is playing games. He’s another button masher in the works!
  • Of course, the best blogging moment of 2005 for me was the birth of the Carnival of Gamers. It started with a simple proposal, resulting in some interest. The first Carnival rolled through these parts in May (with a little controversy thrown in) and has continued on ever since. I’d like to thank all of the people who have been involved with the Carnival, whether it be participating or hosting or simply taking the time to enjoy the blogging, it’s been wild ride. I’m looking forward to many more Carnivals!
  • Discussing 2005 wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the Hot Coffee mess. I had some thoughts about it and posted them, as usual. I was actually playing GTA:SA at the time, how convenient. In the end, it wasn’t about the game, it was about everything but the game. Hopefully everyone learned their lessons in that case.
  • Mentioning Hot Coffee and not mentioning Jack Thompson is, like, a crime or something.
  • The Xbox 360 was released to the gaming public, making me instantly jealous of anyone who had one.

Phew, what a year it was. And what of 2006? A few predictions:

  • I’m not going out on a limb saying this, but the Nintendo Revolution is going to follow in the DS’s footprints — its initial reception will be lukewarm but once Nintendo starts releasing killer apps, it will explode. I’m talking BIG TIME. People will be praising it the way the DS is getting praised now.
  • Nintendo will learn from its initial mistakes with the Nintendo WiFi Connection and improve its online functionality for the Revolution, giving Xbox Live a run for its money.
  • The PS3 will suffer greatly in the US as backlash from all the Sony troubles and debacles (Rootkits on their music CDs, graffiti “ads” for the PSP, constantly crippling the PSP with updated firmware) of the past year. It will still sell like hotcakes in Japan but will not have the same success the PS2 did here in the states.
  • PC gaming will be declared dead no less than three times, only to be revived with releases like Neverwinter Nights 2, Spore, and the WoW and Guild Wars expansions.
  • I will still have a pile of games to play this time next year, resolving to get to them “sometime.”

Time will tell on most of those, but that last one is pretty much a forgone conclusion.

Buckeye Blogging, Fiesta Bowl Edition (10-2)

by 4 Comments

The Ohio State University Buckeyes – 34
Notre Dame Fighting Irish – 20

Troy Smith, proverbial pain-in-the-neck for the University of Michigan, just introduced Charle Weis and the rest of the Irish faithful (get it?) to Lloyd Carr’s reccuring nightmare. Single-handledly accounting for over 400 yards of offense, Smith shredded the Notre Dame defense with both his arm and his legs. He played like a man possesed. (A 2006 Heisman hopeful?) Notre Dame’s defense will also see Ted Ginn Jr.’s crazy legs in their sleep for the next eight months. Those moves he made on that 68-yard end-around were sick. Santonio Holmes may have played his last game as a Buckeye; talk about going out with a bang! And let’s not forget Antonio Pittman. That boy can run! OSU’s offense racked up 604 yards. That is insanity. They ran 66 plays. My handy-dandy calculator tells me that 9.15 yards a play. That is, as Brent Musberger so eloquently put it, was a Buckeye Butt-kicking.

Of course, there was the play of the stout OSU defense, which came to man-handle yet another team. Notre Dame certainly got off to a quick start but seemed to sputter the rest of the game. Throughout the game, the Notre Dame offense looked tight. They never looked comfortable. I was suprised with the number of dropped passes. Could that have been because of the tight leash Charlie Weis put on his players during the week? He called it a “business trip.” I don’t agree with that sentiment at all. Super Bowl trips in the NFL are business trips. College football bowl trips should be fun. Last time I checked, no one on either side of the football was receiving a paycheck after this game. That’s not to say Tressel let his boys party the whole time in Tempe, it just seemed like Weis was a little too strict.

Notre Dame just seemed overmatched. Their Brady Quinn-led offense never lived up to its billing. We knew their defense would struggle but we thought their offense would have put up a better fight than they did. Maybe OSU was too strong and a little faster. A.J. Hawk and Company may have been initially caught off-guard with that first drive but they buckled down and did a good job harassing Quinn all day along.

But in the end, it wasn’t OSU’s defense that won this game. It was Troy Smith. I’ll close by quoting a very prescient Charle Weis (speaking of Smith):

“He worries me the most of anyone on their team,” Weis said. “What scares me is any time you have a quarterback, and especially a quarterback who started out with a reputation of being a runner first and a thrower second, and now has reversed those roles, you have a problem.”

Best of 2005

by 12 Comments

I know it’s a day late, but I present to you the buttonmashing.com “Best of 2005” Awards. This year I decided to go with a straightforward set of awards, nothing fancy or witty like others. Just the games I liked and played this year. On with the awards:

2005 PC Game of the Year

I didn’t play a lot of the big releases on the PC this year, but the one that sucked most of my time this year was, by far, Guild Wars. In a crowded MMORPG landscape, Guild Wars really rose above the rest with its accesible gameplay, deep PvE and PvP, and of course the absence of a monthly fee. I played the heck out Guild Wars this year and think it is most deserving of the PC Game of the Year. The Guild Wars team has done a great job adding free content (the holiday bits were wonderful) and of balancing the gameplay. There is a wonderful balance of skill and teamwork. Aside from it’s beauty and music, Guild Wars is simply a great game and I look forward to continuing my time in Ascalon.

PC Runner-up: Fate. This Diablo-esque hack and slash was refreshing and a blast to play. Unfortunately with gaming time at a premium, I didn’t get to play Fate as much as I would have liked.

2005 Xbox Game of the Year

My Xbox choice came down to the last minute. There were a handful of games released this year I really wanted to play but up until now I hadn’t. One of those was Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. There are some games that are able to move the player emotionally or otherwise. There are others where it’s just fun to run around and mindlessly blow stuff up. Mercenaries is one of those kind of games. Mercenaries is a fun game, plan and simple. The open-ended gameplay is such a riot. Taking money from the Chinese to knock off some Russian mafia-types and then driving to the Russian Mafia HQ (while running over some North Korean soldiers) to “make-up” with a little cash is just classic. Mecenaries gets the nod over a handful of great Xbox games.

Xbox Runners-up: Farcry: Instincts and Forza Motorsports. Farcry was a breath of fresh air to the FPS scene. Setting traps and watch people fly around as they set them off is sublime. While I love my racing games fast and frenetic (Burnout-style), I was really taken by Forza. It took a while to get used to controlling a car with real-world physics but it ended up very satisfying.

Xbox Disappointment of the Year: Jade Empire. How IGN, in good faith, could give this game a 9.9 is beyond human logic. Jade Empire was hyped to the moon and back but it failed to even come close to living up to it. It was linear, the combat was a joke and it was way too easy. 9.9 my patootie.

2005 Nintendo DS Game of the Year

Man, another tough choice in a sea of great games. In the end, I had to pick Animal Crossing Wild World over the rest of the DS games this year. Animal Crossing Wild World takes the friendly and addictive Gamecube title and makes it better. There’s no drastic changes here, the original formula isn’t scrapped, it’s enhanced and improved in every way. The addition of the Nintendo WiFi connection makes it an excellent multiplayer game. I know a lot of people are put off by the initial clunkiness of the WiFi interface but being able to control who you game with is a huge deal to me. Keeping the riff-raff out of my town has made Animal Crossing online great. Nintendo has a real winner with Animal Crossing WW and I can see this one being played well into 2006.

Nintendo DS Runners-up: There were so many games released this year for the DS that it is really hard to single out any one game as a “runner up” to Animal Crossing. Mario Kart, Advance Wars DS, Metroid Prime Pinball, all of them were great. There were more I still haven’t played yet – Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright, Castelvania. The mind boggles.

2005 Gamecube Game of the Year

This one was, of course, a no-brainer. Released almost a year ago, Resident Evil 4 is my pick for Gamecube GotY. I was a casual fan of the Resident Evil series before this one but I feel compelled to play the others to understand the history of the game and see what I’ve missed. I played RE4 start-to-finish without stopping for other games. That doesn’t happen very often. From the beautifully haunting Spanish Pueblos to the dark, mysterious island, RE4 was visual perfection. The time and effort put into the production of RE4 was obvious. Little details like the weapon reload animations and the authentic Spanish phrases really sealed the deal for me. RE4 was a fantastic game, top to bottom.

Gamecube Runners-up: While this year wasn’t rife with great titles not called Resident Evil, there were still a few great games to be played this year on the little black Cube. Fire Emblem and Super Mario Strikers are two games that I am currently enjoying and deserve some attention. Fire Emblem was great on the Gameboy Advance and it’s made a great transition to the Cube and Super Mario Strikers is another great Mario Sports game.

2005 Game of the Year

Once again – this was easy. Resident Evil 4 took control of my gaming soul and never let go until I had conquered it. It was tense, engrossing, exciting, everything an video game should be. A masterpiece. I place it in the Top 5 titles of this generation, arguably the best game of this generation. RE4 is the buttonmashing.com 2005 Game of the Year.

2005 has been a solid year for Video Gaming. There have been some fantastic games this year, a new console release, controversy out the wazoo, and video game blogging coming into its own. It’s been fun sharing this year with you, my fellow readers. Thanks for taking a few minutes of your time and giving it to me. I hope it’s worth it.

2006 is also shaping up to be a great year. We finally get Zelda (which is more and more looking like a Revolution title), the Nintendo Revolution and the PS3 and all the gaming we can handle. I can’t wait.