There’s less than a week to get your submission into the Carnival! Don’t delay!
Gaming
Happy Halloween!
Why must they torture us?
It’s almost that time, fellow gamers, when a certain Cable TV station hijacks our hobby and makes a complete blubbering mockery of it for two hours and makes us feel nauseous. That’s right, it’s time for the Spike TV VGAs (Video Game Atrocities)!
You can go to Kotaku for the complete press release, but I’ll break it down for you, because that’s what I do. It’s well known that we at buttonmashing.com are not friends of the VGAs. I believe my exact words were, “Hey, Spike TV! I want those two hours of my life back.” So it looks like it’s going to be 2004 all over again.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. What is World of Warcraft doing in the “Game of the Year” Category? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not) but WoW was released LAST YEAR. Shouldn’t that, uhmm, disqualify it from consideration? It’s not like 2005 had a dearth of good games and so they had to hold a carry-over from last year. There’s plenty of great games to choose from. How WoW slipped through the cracks boggles the mind.
Let’s get some obvious out of the way. How is a game (King Kong:Blah Blah Let’s make some money off Peter Jackson’s name!) that isn’t even out nominated for 6 awards? And King Kong is the only suspect. There are others. I can’t list them. My brain hurts. Why do we have an award for “Best Cast”? Why is Advanced Wars: DS not included in the “Best Military Game” but Splinter Cell is? Why is it that the more I think about this, the less I want video games to go “mainstream” (and by mainstream I mean hip-hop and Hollywood)? Arrggh!
I’ll just say this: If Resident Evil 4 comes away winless, I will turn off the TV (after the show airs in December), crawl into bed and weep silent tears for witnessing such a horrible tragedy take place. Yes, I will watch it. I will live-blog it so you, my faithful readers will not have to endure it. I will suffer the pain (and desire to gouge my eyes out) so you don’t have. It won’t be easy, but it’s the sort of thing I would do for you guys (and girls).
More: Oh, I almsot forgot! I’m not sure if I should congratulate the nominees for “Best Gaming Blog” or console them for being recognized by Spike TV period. And where’s the love for buttonmashing.com? This is easily the eighteenth or nineteenth most popular blog people visit, right? It’s worth $41k!
Come join the Carnival
Don’t look now, but the Carnival of Gamers #8 is just around the corner. The Carnival will be hosted over at Aeropause, so get your entries submitted right away. You can get all your Carnival info from the HQ page. Also, if you’re interested, you could take peterb’s challenge to review a IFComp game and submit that as your Carnival post.
I also noticed the Instapundit linked October’s Carnival, so I’m sure the participants will see an uptick in their traffic today (I know I am). It’s a little late but better late than never. Glenn Reynolds is a blogging machine, I have no idea how he can keep up with all he does. Thanks for the link, Insta! (Is that his first blog name?)
Also, we’re still looking for new volunteers for Carnival Hosts! The Game Chair has stepped up to the plate for December, will your blog be next?
I missed the chance to join this month’s Roundtable Discussion, but Corvus has the goods at his site.
In the mail
I was sent a review copy of Smartbomb : The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
You can find more info about the book and its authors at their website: Smartbomb
What I’m playing
I like hearing what other games people are playing. Every week I look forward to Evil Avatar’s “Weekend Gamer” to read what the current gaming zeitgeist is (right now it appears to be Shadow of the Colossus). It puts a human touch on our collective gaming hobby. It’s good to see that other people are enjoying similar games and someone always mentions an older classic that brings back good memories.
I’ve done a “What I’m playing” a few times here on the blog. I’d like to do it more often. I’d also love to hear from readers what they’re playing.
Anway, on to what I’m actually playing. I’ve jumped back into Guild Wars. I’m getting used to the interface and reacquainted with my skills. My Necro/Mesmer just hit level 20 and I’m getting close to ascending. It’s good to be back into the swing of things and the lack of paying a monthly fee has freed me from the shackles of feeling guilty if I’m not playing every day.
I’m also playing Resident Evil 4, trying to get 5 stars on each level in the Mercenaries mini-game. I can’t get enough of that game. It’s challenging but hardly ever frustrating. My current favorite character is Hunk (pictured, sort of) and his neckbreaker is devastating. I’d like to go back and beat the main game on the hard difficulty. There are two months of releases left this year and it doesn’t look like any titles will be unseating RE4 as Game of the Year. Why hasn’t Capcom capitalized on the success of RE4 and released all the Gamecube Resident Evil titles (remakes and ports) in one big compilation? I’d be all over that for Christmas.
Finally, I’ve been playing a lot of Advanced Wars on the DS. This is a great game. How great? This great. That’s all I have to link about that.
So that’s what keeps me busy. What about you?
Guild Wars Help
A lot of people arrive at buttonmashing.com searching for all things Guild Wars. Many get pointed to my Guild Wars review (due to the fact that the review includes all the topics they’re searching for) but are actually looking for help on a specific topic. Because we here at buttonmashing are all about serving the gaming community, I’ve rounded up some helpful links to help you get your Guild Wars on. Hopefully this helps.
A great place to start is the Guild Wars Wiki. You can pretty much find everything that you could possibly need — locations of skill traders, mission maps (along with bonuses), crafting. It’s a one-stop-shop for your Guild War needs. There are other sites that also have strategies, skill descriptions and other helpful hints. The Guild Hall and Guild Wars Guru are both sites I frequent. I lurk in the GW Guru forums, where a lot of good info for the Guild Wars player can be found. There are a lot more sites than the two I list here. A fairly complete list can be found at the Guild Wars website.
While Guild Wars doesn’t seem to have the breadth or depth of WoW or EQ but jumping back into GW this past week has reminded that it is still a fun game. Even though it may MMORPG-lite, it’s still good fun. It’s good to be back to slaying the bad guys.
I plan on updating this post as more GW searches come in. It will be broken down in terms of search topics. For now, most of the searches coming in are for crafting, so we’ll start with some helpful crafting links. More will follow.
Crafting
This is a good discussion about Salvage Kits
Of course, once you salvage all those goodies, you’ll need a place for Armor Crafting Recipes.
Handy Salvage Guide, so you’ll know what kind of crafting material you can salvage from what items.
Builds
This link is a good resource for different strategies for different builds.
And more…
(Last Update – 12/12/2005)
I want it all…
… and I want it now.
Man, the flow of new games right now is killing me! There are just too many of them. Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright are both calling me, I haven’t played a Castlevania game in years, so Dawn of Sorrow is looking good, and even though Trace Memory hasn’t been that well received, I still think I’d like it.
Battalion Wars and Fire Emblem for the Gamecube look like fun. I didn’t experience Ninja Gaiden when it first came out, so I’m tempted to get NG Black. Far Cry Instincts looks great as well. And that’s not even mentioning all the new sports games (Tiger Woods, The League). Oh! And Age of Empires III. Can’t forget that one. What’s a gamer to do?
That brings me to a question for all you readers. Who out there is using GameFly? I’ve been toying with the idea of giving their service a try but I’m not sure yet. I would probably go with their one-game-at-a-time deal since I have plenty of games to keep me busy as I await the next one in my queue. If you use them, what has been your experience? What plan would you recommend? If you don’t use GameFly, what about the other GameFly-like places are out there? Inquiring minds what to know! I’m tired of the weak selection of my local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video so I need a new source of game rentals.
With all the great games out there it’s impossible to play them all but I’d sure like to try.
The Flicker e-Zine
Jason and his cohorts at Flicker Gaming have joined forces with Play Everything. He’s also started a gaming e-zine and Flicker will be reborn as an e-zine.
Jack Thompson, you got served!
Ahh, even though I mentioned his autobiography the other day, I haven’t really been keeping up on our good friend Jack. Well, things have really come to a head lately with the King Kook himself, and he refuses to eat the huge platter of crow that he has been served. Even though someone has probably already said this, someone set him up the BOMB!
So I guess I could recap with a huge reblog. (I’m glad other’s are keeping up with this. My brain hurts everytime Thompson opens his mouth.) For those who don’t know, Jack “challenged” the gaming community to make a game, based on a morally reprehensible premise he proposed. He then promised a $10k donation to a charity of Paul Eibeler (the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive). More than a few people took up the challenge and some modders made a sweet GTA mod (apparently slashdotted, PA’ed or Dugg). In true BatJack form, he claimed he was “just kidding” and he isn’t gonna pay. Excellent. Of course, the ever-charitable guys at Penny-Arcade came through and delivered the goods. They donated $10k to the ESA Foundation which will certainly help keep JT off their proverbial back. The best part of this is that they had already zinged him on his “weak” donation amount. That go a rise out of him. Sweet!
What a wild week or two it’s been. And I’m just scratching the surface. This isn’t going to end on this.
The guys at Ctrl+Alt+Delete have had their run-ins with Jackie-boy as well and they have a few things to say, too.
On a seperate but equally awesome note is that America’s National Institute on Media and the Family basically told Thompson to stop invoking their name when he makes his asinine comments. You know you’re alone in the battle when a pro-family, right-wing conservative group condemns you. You’re supposed to be on their side and they’re basically asking you to leave. That’s pretty sad. Of course, Thompson can’t leave well enough alone. You can not make this stuff up.
Oh, and there’s this, too. (a little old, but who cares)
Have I had enough of Jack? Probably not. He’ll step up to the plate and say some more ridiculous things with spurrious proof and the media will still let him on their pulpit, but hopefully more and more people are starting to see him for what he is — a bat-crazy, spittle-flying, deranged crazy person.
For now, I’m gonna go play some Resident Evil 4 and blast some zombies into oblivion. Resident Evil 4 is an excellent self-defense-against-deranged-Spaniards Simulator.
Update: This just gets crazier by the minute.
More: I want to stop, but I can’t.