Mashing buttons since 1984
Yes, I most certainly did!
Last night I completed the story in GTA IV. I don’t have a lot of time to talk about it, but I will say I thoroughly enjoyed Grand Theft Auto IV. It has its flaws (no checkpoints during missions is criminal) but taken as a whole GTA IV was a great time.
I want to still try and complete the rest of the side quests, get all the achievements, and finally try multiplayer, but it feels good that I can now move on to other games.
No, not a retro lunchbox like this one. An actual Nintendo Entertainment System lunch box.
Things may get busy around here this week, as I’m cleaning out some of my old drafts, posting things I should have posted weeks (months [years]) ago. Me procrastinate? Never!
Things were slow around these parts last week as I was deathly ill last week after a bad Burger King Croissan’wich (don’t ask) and then I was busy with the kids. Things at work are crazy busy this week and I’m going on vacation next week. So I want to get out out some posts and possibly have a something queued up for posts while I’m gone. You’ll still be in the capable hands of Nat while I’m gone, and there may be a robo-post in there, but I won’t be around much next week.
The wife and I are taking a trip to the Big Apple. It’s my first trip to the New York City, I’m pretty excited.
You can hear it straight from Bill O’Reilly’s mouth (h/t TheLeetGeeks):
I have been meaning to blog about this for literally months. I get countless hits from Google with people searching for MMO Sports Games (I have a couple posts on the subject). I still feel strongly that eventually someone is going to figure out a viable MMO Sports Game. I think golf is probably going to be the game that succeeds in this genre. Shot-Online came close, but the cartoony golf game never grabbed me. Enter World Golf Tour.
I actually first read about WGT in Fortune Magazine, of all places. The article raves about how realistic it felt and how it is the future of online sports gaming. With that kind of praise, I had to check it out.
It’s a pretty solid little golf game. As far as I can tell, there’s only a 9-hole demo at PGA Charity site, but the company behind WGT seems to have raised a decent amount of funding, and has a backing from TaylorMade Golf (my personal club of choice).
Graphically, WGT is beautiful. The mouse controls almost feel natural. The Tiger Woods swing stick is still my favorite but WGT’s controls aren’t bad. It’s hard to gauge all aspects of the game, due to the fact that right now, you can only play a closest-to-the-pin challenge. Hopefully that will change soon in future beta tests.
I am intrigued so far. It will be interesting to see how good WGT turns out to be. With things like friends lists, teams and other options, WGT could give Shot-Online a run for its MMOGolf money.
I’m working to finish up the last few missions in GTA IV, but last night I decided to work on an achievement or two before I make more mission progress. I figured the “Gobble Gobble” achievement, where you have to score a turkey in the bowling mini-game, would be easy enough.
Easy enough, right. The bowling mini-game in GTA IV is atrocious. Frustration would be an understatement. After an hour of fruitless bowling, I did that which I hate — I asked the internet how to do it. I’m not a fan of the cheats but I had wasted time trying to do this, so I ended up at YouTube and found a nice little trick to get the job done.
The point of this is that if it weren’t for the achievement, I wouldn’t have spent more than two minutes playing the bowling mini-game. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Time for a look back at another month here at ButtonMashing HQ.
We had a rather prolific (at least prolific for us) month of posting with 32 posts and 112 comments. Traffic for the month was up almost 11% from June. I think it’s pretty clear that more posts mean more visitors. Most people are visiting with Firefox and Windows XP. I love how someone is surfing with 3 monitors and a total resolution of 3840×1024. You, sir, are my hero.
The following posts garnered the most eyeballs in July (outside of the regulars):
5. Here We Go!
4. Give it up hardcore gamers
3. Funny Game Glitches
2. Finish your dinner
1. Customizable NCAA 09 Covers
A year ago, I was welcoming the newest buttonmasher into the world.
Two years ago, I was giving one of many MMO Sports games a try, Ultimate Baseball Online.
Three years ago, HOO BOY three years ago, the internet was ON FIRE because of GTA San Andreas and the dreaded Hot Coffee controversy. You heard it hear first (sorta), folks!
Four years ago I was taking my first crack at the first Halo. All in preparation for Halo 2 imminent release.
Let’s laugh at the weird people on the internet:
“fun things to do in dead rising” – You’re killing hordes of zombies with everyday objects. That’s not fun enough? You need to look for other fun things to do?!
“^^hal0 3 statz.^^” – Let’s count everything wrong with this search. First, what’s with the carets? They’re not necessary. Next, the “0” in Halo. That’s just dumb. Third, statz with a Z. If I could stab you through the internet, google searcher person, I would. Finally, the period. Thank you for punctuating your non sentence with a period. That makes everything else better.
“aj hawk’s girlfriend” – The poor guy has been married for over a year. Give him a break!
“can you get a machine gun on animal crossing wild world” – I’m often disturbed by what people search. This is one of those times.
“how do you eat in dead rising” – I’m guessing you haven’t survived long in the game if you’re searching for this.
Nat has been on fire with a new PS3 and new 360 games while I’ve been pretty stagnant. I reached a point in GTA IV that I thought was the end, but it appears I’m mistaken, as there are other things still going on. I’ve got that, Top Spin 3 and Space Invaders Extreme on my plate.
I should probably wrap this up and go play some games.
Week of August 5th
Crash Time
Week of August 12th
Madden NFL 09
Madden NFL 09 20th Anniversary Collectors Edition
Week of August 19th
Too Human
Smash Court Tennis 3
Week of August 26th
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Tales of Vesperia
Week of August 5th
Little League World Series Baseball ’08
Puzzler Collection
Week of August 12th
Madden NFL 09 All-Play
Week of August 19th
Pajama Sam in Don’t Fear the Dark
Ford Racing Off Road
Super Pick Ups
Week of August 26th
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play
Mario Super Sluggers
Margot’s Word Brain
Ferrari Challenge
Week of August 5th
Puzzler Collection
Rock Blast
Little League World Series Baseball ’08
Quick Yoga Training
GRID
Week of August 12th
Wordmaster
Imagine Teacher
Madden NFL 09
Bangai O Spirits
Air Traffic Chaos
Mazes Of Fate
N+
Week of August 19th
The Cheetah Girls: Passport to Stardom
Week of August 26th
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness
Margot’s Word Brain
My Chinese Coach
MLB Power Pros 2008
Digimon World Championship
From The Abyss
The Sims 2: Apartment Pets
Ferrari Challenge
PictoImage
Week of August 12th
Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm
Murder in the Abbey
Microids: Dracula III
Space Siege
Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition
GTR Evolution
Polar Sports, Vol. 1
Doggie Daycare
Babysitter: My Dream Job
Week of August 19th
Hoyle Card Games 2009
Hoyle Puzzle & Board Games 2009
Hoyle Casino 2009
Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Shattered Suns
Week of August 26th
The Sims 2: Apartment Life
Women’s Murder Club – Death in Scarlet
Flatout: Ultimate Carnage
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Week of August 5th
Monster Madness: Grave Danger
Week of August 12th
Madden NFL 09
Week of August 26th
Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Vampire Rain: Altered Species
Ferrari Challenge
Week of August 12th
Madden NFL 09
Fading Shadows
N+
Week of August 26th
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
B-Boy
Are you planning on picking anything up this month?
A little foul-mouthed in places (but not really, I just feel obligated to say that), but the payoff is worth it. You can watch the full-sized version here.
(I just noticed this is post 1,001. Nat’s Geometry Wars 2 post was our 1,000th post. Woohoo!)
I can’t stop laughing at this video from EA’s NCAA 09 (h/t EDSBS). I was briefly considering a purchase of this game following Bill Abner’s initial reports, but those became less enthusiastic. Then Bill Harris pretty much took the wind out of the sails. This video pretty much capsized the boat.
This is just ridiculous. Even if the CPU sliders were tweaked, this kind of behavior should never happen in a football game. Even Pee Wee football games aren’t this bad.
So now NCAA 09 is on my Gamefly Q, slowly bubbling to the top. I’m not particularly anxious to play it with so many other options at the moment. Which is a shame, because I’m a huge college football fan.
Video is embedded after the jump. (Thank you, EA, for giving us the ability to embed.)
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