buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

Gaming

EverQuest II – /pizza

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EverQuest II – /pizza – At first I thought Jason at loonyblog was kidding. Then I actually followed the link.

Ever get those nasty hunger pains playing EverQuest II?

You’re in luck – pizza is just a few key strokes away! While playing EverQuest II just type /pizza and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com. Fill in your info and just kick back until fresh pizza is delivered straight to your door.

Now I will admit I’ve used pizzahut.com to order pizza before, but this is just crazy-talk. Do I ever get those nasty hunger pains? Heck yes, I do. But I think I’ll just satisfy them the old fashion way – by leaving my computer and making myself a dang quesadilla.

(BTW, shouldn’t that be “hunger pangs”? Or are they assuming you’ve been playing EQII so much that you’ve ignored the initial hunger pangs and now the sides of your stomach are scraping together, causing actual, physical pain? Something to think about)

I wanna see Mario, daddy!

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Ever since I rented Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, my two-year old daughter loves to watch me play Mario games. The title is the first thing she says to me when I walk through the door. She’s been watching me play video games since I could prop her up on a pillow (she watched me play Wind Waker all the way through) but until recently, they were just pretty colors on the screen with funny sounds.

Now that she’s realizing what is going on, now that she internalizes what she sees, it’s been a lot of fun to play games with her. I enjoyed the week of Paper Mario together, it was a fun game. (I didn’t get very far before I had to return it, unfortunately). I’ve gone back to Super Mario Sunshine and she loves that and I finally got around to opening one of my Christmas 2004 presents, Mario Power Tennis.

Super Mario Sunshine has been a mixed bag. It is still a really fun game with moments of insane difficulty and frustration thrown in. I still feel nostalgic when I hear the old-school Mario songs. I think Mario Sunshine is underappreciated.

Mario Power Tennis, on the otherhand, is pretty fantastic. The tennis is fun, the mini-games are a blast and while I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, I’ve heard it rocks. I haven’t played a tennis video game in ages but Mario Power Tennis has filled the void, in the same way I hope the new Baseball, Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball game can fill another void. Oh, that Pennant Chase is like SNK’s Baseball Stars. (But what about Mario Baseball? I’m so confused!)

The best part of all this is my daughter is getting a history lesson in Mario-lore. She already can tell the difference between Princess Peach and Daisy and she knows Mario is in the red and Luigi is in the green. I couldn’t be a prouder dad right now!

Gamecube and online gaming?

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Google does lots of things very well. Translating Japanese web pages is not one of them (YET!). But I do appreciate their translation tools. If nothing else, you at least get the gist of what the content you can’t decipher means. That’s the case with a link I found on del.icio.us. The Gamecube game referenced here is called “Homeland” and it seems to be a RPG that also uses the Broadband adapter. Follow the other links on the first page and Google will handle all the translations. Expect funny stuff like this.

While there’s no mention of a US release, stuff like this always gets me excited. Here’s to hoping!

New Kids on my Block (#2)

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Here’s in the second installment of the New Kids on the Block, which has already been renamed the New Kids on my Block, since a lot of the blogs I’m highlighting are new to me, but not the blog or gaming blogosphere. As this feature grows, it may return to its original name, but for now, it’s the “New Kids on my Block”. So on to the new kids:

I haven’t been reading loongy boi for very long but I like what I’ve read so far. It’s definitely a blog that’s more about games, but Jason (who works for Take 2) seems to love his games. He’s definitely been doing this much longer than I have, but remember, this is the New Kids on my Block.

Wonderland was a site I stumbled on when I first started this blogging thing but somehow got lost in the shuffle. A women’s perspective on things is always good, and currently there’s a dearth of said perspective in the world of video games. It’s slowly coming around, but Wonderland is a good place to get it, with pop culture peppered to make it more authentic.

arcon is a blog from across the pond, where comments about gaming pop up now and then. He seems pretty passionate about gaming, and that’s good enough for me.

I don’t know why I haven’t been reading Water Cooler Games before, I see mention of them all the time, I’ve just never taken the time to read them. Now that I have, I regret not taking the time sooner. Grade-A stuff there.

There will be more sites forthcoming, I’ve got a handful bookmarked that I still need to go through. Stay tuned!

Nintendo DS “Another Code” Movie

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I’m not totally enamored with the DS yet. I toyed around with the Metroid game, which was pretty cool, but I still haven’t been “WOW”ed by anything DS-related yet. Well that was until I saw this. I don’t understand any of the Japanese, but the game looks pretty amazing. The use of the dual screens looks really intuitive and blends the two together really well. If this is plays as good as it looks, they might have something with those two screens.

I’m still not sold on the DS yet, but this game looks extremely promising.

Leon S. Kennedy, Trash-Kicker.

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Leon and Ashley, RE4

Resident Evil 4
Many buttons have been mashed and this guy whom we’ll call Leon (for no other reason than he answers to said name) has kicked some serious trash, but now the Presidents daughter is safely home with her family. Yes, that’s right, the great Button Masher himself has completed Resident Evil 4.

After dying an unimaginable eighty times, killing nine hundred nine zombified Spaniards and other forms of unimaginable grotesqueness, connecting sixty-seven percent of the time the trigger was pulled and taking a little less than nineteen hours I have finished one of the best games of all time.

I won’t mention anything that could be spoiler material, but I will say that from start to finish, this has been one of the most enjoyable and intense games I’ve ever played. It was difficult and challenging, but never became frustrating. I try not to put too much stock into audio and visuals but here they are undeniable. Absolutely stunning visuals and spot-on sound. I pay attention to the little details and RE 4 is polished. We’re talking U.S. Army Boots spit-shine polished.

Resident Evil 4 PS2Is it a perfect ten? No, I’m not sure a game will ever achieve that lofty status. There are a few minor issues I have with the game overall but with controls in particular. A strafe option and a quick weapon switch would have been very welcome. Also, being able to turn quicker would be a nice addition. But these are minor blemishes on this masterpiece. Please don’t construe this as complaining. It would be like complaining you don’t have Italian Leather pedals for your Ferrari. The game is still top-shelf.

I’m mulling where this game ranks in “The List”. I will say, unequivocally, that this is a top ten game, all time. Game of the year contender.

Hyperbole aside, Resident Evil 4 is a great game.

New Kids on the Block (#1)

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New Kids on the BlockI mentioned I wanted to highlight some of the gaming blogs I’ve come across recently. As of right now, this isn’t a list of new blogs, but they were new to me when I found them. I’m not really endorsing any of these blogs, but if they end up on my bloglines blogroll then that might mean something more.

I found Hidden Peanuts from a link on Kotaku, and I haven’t checked it out much since. It seems like a regular blog with occasionally comments on video games.

bisti.org is a site that was, unbeknownst to me, linking back here. I noticed it in my referrer logs. Anyway, I haven’t seen much there, but maybe it’ll float your boat.

I am really liking These Damned Machines, they’ve already been added to my Bloglines subscriptions. Keep an eye on this one.

8Bit Joystick is a good site for all things gaming. They seem to have been around for a while. At least a lot longer than ButtonMashing. (They did support Kerry, but we won’t hold that against them.)

Another site that’s been around for a while that I just found is Geek on Stun. Lots of good stuff here, I’ll be reading these guys a lot more.

Idle Thumbs is a site that is very well designed site and is very witty and smart. I like it.

Insert credit seems to have a bit of a Japanese gaming bent, which is cool but not necessarily my thing. Nonetheless I’ll keep on eye on the site, Looks like there’s a lot of stuff there.

Intelligent Artifice seems like another decent site. I’ll give a few more reads before I pass judgment.

So ends the inaugural edition of the New Kids on the Block. (Okay, some aren’t new, but they’re new to me.) I’ll be using Blogline folders to organize these links over on the right side-bar. Just not right now, I’m going to play some RE 4. If you’ve got a gaming blog or you know of one you think I’ll like, drop me a note at buttonmashing at gmail dot com.

IGDA – Culture Clash – Jan05

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IGDA – Culture Clash – Jan05: I picked this article up from Joystiq by Matt Sakey, whipping the current state of games magazines on the bare bottom. He says as gamers (that’s us) grow up, the print media should as well.

“It’s time for the gaming press to grow up a little bit. Stop acting like the Nintendo Fun Club and start taking seriously the discipline of game development, and how the products of that discipline can uniquely affect us. The weird irony is that we’re seeing websites/blogs take this responsibility and run with it, while print media devolves to little more than delayed advertisements for technical features. Really the web’s timeliness and occasional amateurism is more appropriate for quick-turnaround reviews and impressions, while professional print is better suited to more deadline-inspecific meditative content.”

It’s a good read, check it all out. I like the tip of the hat to bloggers. My kind of guy.

Electronic Arts, ESPN hook up in exclusive 15-year deal – News at GameSpot

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Electronic Arts, ESPN hook up in exclusive 15-year deal – News at GameSpot: First and foremost: Electronic Arts is a company in the business of making money. Having exclusive rights to things like the NFL and ESPN will give them the only game in town. Having said that, they are playing quite dirty with Sega/Take Two. From Kotaku comes this story on Gamesport. From the post:

“Electronic Arts broke the calm of a national holiday today by announcing a licensing deal of epic proportions. For the next fifteen years, EA will be the sole licensee of the ESPN brand in the area of sports games, which will include console, handheld, PC, and wireless games.”

Right now, ESPN is on an extended time-out with me with the way they’ve treated Ohio State, so they are only a couple notches below EA on the “Eveel, like the Deveel” ladder with me.

I see like this: Sega gets hooked up with Fox Sports (who currently has the rights to the Super Bowl and World Series). I’m not a big fan of The Best Damn Sports Show, but they do have Max now in their lineup and they could roll some of their personalities into Video Game personas.

This does suck for most NFL video game fans, who have had their right to choose swept from under their feet, but as I said at the beginning, this is a business (currently a big business) so I don’t fault EA for the moves they’ve made, but this certainly doesn’t bode well for the little guy.

Week in Review, Vol. 2, #2

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Well, I’ll have to do this while the new Iron Chef America is on, because I won’t be able to pull myself away from RE 4 after it’s over. So here are some notable going-ons for the past week. (Great, Blogger just lost my post. I suddenly lost interest to finish this post, but I’ll carry on.)

So we had Gatmog from Tales of Schorched Earth giving his top ten for 2004, with Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines as his top pick. I’ve heard alot of good things about this game, I’ll have to give it a try.

Kyle at VGO wonders who he would run a video game TV station. He’s been talking a lot about G4/TechTV (I guess just G4 now) and I think he’s got some good ideas.

I started working on a translation cheat sheet for all the Spanish phrases you’ll here while playing Resident Evil 4. That games is absolutely amazing. You can find the guide here.

I’m thinking about maybe making the “Week in Review” into a biweekly or monthly thing. I also am working on my list of “new” gaming blogs I come across. Things are always evolving here at ButtonMashing.