Fable II is what Fable should have been.
That is all.
I’m only two hours in, and I can tell already.
In [Nat and Brock’s] Hands: Fable II
“Nat? Getting an M-rated game?”
Yeah, I’m weak. You don’t know the half of it. Right now, I’m too ashamed to share why. Brock, on the other hand is just a video game addict. He’ll probably add to this later.
I’ve not even cracked mine open because I lost a battle and ended up watching an old Family Ties episode via Hulu via PlayOn via my PS3 last night.
LittleBigPlanet – Recalled?
Originally, this post was about how I had the title in my hands twice yesterday and my experiences with the retailers not selling it to me—but they had them on the shelves.
I guess this might be a good thing because it appears that Sony is recalling the title with less than a week to release. Why?
Somebody screwed up and included a song that has lines from the Qur’an. Apparently, this is a no no.
Quoted Sony:
During the review process prior to the release of LittleBigPlanet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an. We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence that this may have caused.
I only have one question. A patch? I don’t understand why a patch would not fix this? One of the most customizable games ever made and it simply cannot be just turned off or told not to play?
IF “offending song” PLAY
THEN PLAY rnd(“other songs”)
Fixed.
(I’m not a game developer for LBP, and I know this is simplistic, but…)
I’m seriously considering taking my $60 and getting another title now. Also, this doesn’t make my experiences I had yesterday almost purchasing it all too funny.
As if It Wasn’t Painful Enough
Dead Rising:Chop Till You Drop screenie via kotaku. They have more, but it hurts my eyes.
Looks like they chopped enough to get gamers to drop it.
Tokyo Game Show Dead Rising Wii Impressions
Luke Plunkett from Kotaku was able to sit down at TGS and give Dead Rising for the Wii a good, old-fashioned try. His comments scare me.
The whole point of the first Dead Rising was that there was hundreds of zombies. Because they were slow, and stupid, and slow, it was the sheer weight of numbers that provided not only the challenge, but the enjoyment. Zombie survival fantasies don’t involve evading/killing 2 zombies, they involve evading/killing thousands of them.
You know how many zombies I saw on-screen at one time? Six. Six zombies. And that’s not in a room, or a store, that’s across the massive concourse at the start of the game. Yet they still shamble. There’s no urgency, there’s no danger. There’s no fun. To compensate, Capcom have added a few new enemies: killer poodles and killer parrots. They’re vaguely ridiculous, and do very little to make up for the lack of more shambling corpses.
Some of us were excited about using the Wii-mote to play. Well, uh…
What’s worse, the controls are woeful. To pick up a dropped item, you don’t press a button. You press the Z button and the A button. They’re on opposite sides of opposite controllers. It’s stupid. The Wii Remote aiming controls are woefully twitchy. and to switch weapons you need to us the d-pad while aiming. Meaning you can’t use the Wii Remote at that time, requiring you to aim with the nunchuk while reaching with your other hand. It’s messy. It doesnt work.
I know the game has not been released yet. It’s even been pushed back to early 2009. So, there still may be time to address the issues. I guess the craptacularness of it will make it easy for me to stick with my no violence rule a little longer.
Nintendo Gets Closer to the iPod
They announced the DSi earlier today at it’s Fall presentation.
From what I’ve been able to gather:
- It’s 12% thinner
- It’s $178 (Sorry, Japan only right now)
- It has a camera
- It’s not replacing the DS Lite
- It has an SD slot, but no GBA slot
- It has internal storage and plays music
- It has bigger screens
- It is awesome
My DS Lite is currently going on the fritz. However, it’s too bad this does not look to be released in the States until after Christmas. It would have been the toy of the season. While cool, I think Nintendo is shooting themselves by not releasing it here at the same time.
LittleBigPlanet Gets Bigger…
…or, basically, some more info on what appears to be a wonderful game. (Can it be called that?)
Aeropause is reporting that the release date for the game may be moved up from Oct. 21 to Oct. 7. This is Good.TM
GameSetWatch has an indepth article covering the LittleBigPlanet game jam at NY’s Parsons School of Design that we mentioned earlier. The amount of creativity exhibited in this game in just 24 hours is staggering. I personally love the concept of telling stories with the game.
In [Nat’s] Digital Hands: WipEout HD (plus InstaPreview!)
I believe I’ve admitted before that I’m a closet WipEout (have to get the weird capitalization right now I guess) fan and today’s release on the PlayStation Network is no exception for me to miss. I’m not a hardcore fan, however. I’ve never really completed any of the games. They become hard. Extremely hard.
WipEout HD is basically a remake of previous game’s tracks in, well, HD. It is glorious. I would venture to say, initially, it’s one of the prettiest games on the PS3 right now. The sense of speed is not there yet, but it’s coming. I can feel it. Die hard players will know what I mean.
Also, there’s an added bonus that I didn’t expect in the game: a camera. I think I’ve spent more time there than anywhere else. This camera works a la Halo 3. However, it’s much easier to use and has a few more picture effects. I took these image with the Track Motion Blur effect.
Another perk the camera has over Halo 3 is that the image is saved directly to the system’s hard drive. You can then do whatever you want with it. I don’t have to go to some lame-o site and download it. The resolution on the images is pretty high. (The first one I uploaded full. Click on it to get the detail.) I expect to see some amazing images online. Take note, see the detail in the cockpit?
For $20, I believe it to already be a steal.
LittleBigPlanet to Offer More Than Gaming
In what appears to be an interesting turn for a “user-created” game, the developers of LittleBigPlanet (no spaces, please) hope the game can be
a whole palette of tools that can be used to create anything from a puppet theater to graphic novels to pop-up books to music sequencer.
Kotaku is reporting that
“Games have conditional elements,” said Kareem Ettouney, Media Molecule art director. “We wanted to make sure that there is a tool set in there that allows you to create those elements.
“But the exciting part of LittleBigPlanet is everything else you can do with it. We didn’t want to hinder people. What we wanted to make sure we widened the palette. The only real limitation is your imagination.”
So when Sony Computer Entertainment of America called Media Molecule and suggested that they hold a design contest at the historic Parsons School of Design in Greenwich Village, the team jumped at the opportunity.
Some of the ideas that these gamers and non-gamers came up with are pretty amazing.
The most intriguing of the lot was definitely Team Good Sportsmanship’s Sack Monster. The 24-hour creation told a story, albeit a short one, and included some very interesting design choices.
In Sack Monster the entire game is the Sack Monster. Sackboy has to take on the giant creature that, according to a fish out of water, is gobbling up sackboys.
I’m getting more reved up for this game. I’ve been disappointed with releases as of late. Give me something good on the radar.
Thanks to Kotaku for the news and image.
Cleaning House (and undercutting Gamestop)
I’ve been a little cynical lately regarding just about every area of gaming. Today, I’m going to touch on the used game market. Two words: Screw them.
With that in mind, just like last time, I’m going to make the offers here first before I go to eBay. Here’s the idea. I’ll sell the used games cheaper than Gamestop does but at a price higher than their trade-in value. The result is that we all win…if you want to own any of these titles. I’m only going to sit on this for 24 hours from the date of this post. Also, my opinions of the title follow.
| Title | GS $ | My$ | Comments | |
| Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise | 360 | 34.99 | 30 | Viva Pinata 1 with a new cover? |
| Ghost Squad | Wii | 26.99 | 20 | Excellent shooter. Just like the arcade. |
| Uncharted: Drakes Fortune | PS3 | 49.99 | 40 | Fun for a single play through. |
| Metal Gear Solid 4 | PS3 | 54.99 | 45 | Came with the PS3. Not a fan. Don’t care. |
| Overlord | 360 | 17.99 | 10 | A fun romp good for a play through. |
| Bioshock | 360 | 34.99 | 25 | Yeah. I was shocked, and I’m not into hyper-violence. |
| Star Wars: The Force Unleashed | 360 | 54.99 | 40 | Sigh. |
Oh, did I mention that shipping (USPS) is included in the prices above? As you can see, in most cases I’m $10 under (and still over) the market asking prices.