Late Night Session

As much as I hate to say it, I still don’t have the Beyond Good and Evil review and at this point it will probably never come. Why? Well, you can blame life for that. Because of it being my final two quarters of college, and I am getting to the wire here, I need to bunker down and get good grades this quarter.

I love writing about games just as much as I like reading about them and playing them. But I’m not doing this for money. If I was then I would devote more time into this, but I don’t ever want to play games for money. It ruins the experience for me and I just don’t think its right. Gaming journalism is a path I considered but there are only a few gems out there that seem to have that high morality that I have when it comes to viewing the games.

And one of them has gone under to a site that I have no regard for. So for now, I will keep my ideas to myself and not post them on LNS. Unless it’s a really special idea. Then maybe.

~Clover Out

Thanks to Kotaku I was able to feast my eyes on another amazing musical feat with video games. His name is Andrea Vadrucci and is a virtuoso drummer and believe me, it’s amazing what he does. I’m sure he’s not the best in the world, but he’s by far the best I’ve seen.

Vadrucci does an amazing Super Mario Bros. 3 drum medley, but I personally like his Super Mario Bros. 2 version better. He also has his 8 million viewed Super Mario Bros. medley as well and other songs.

I’m very happy that I found this because it’s not very often you see a drummer do remixes of video game music. Sure it’s easy to do it with guitar and stuff but to me percussion, specifically set percussion, is the most technical instrument. Seeing this has made my day. Hopefully it made your day too.

By the way, hope you all have a wonderful new year!

The world will never cease to amaze me. More specifically, the nerds will never cease to amaze me in their endless creativity and effort in which they put their efforts into. For example, I found this video via Kotaku. I’m not embedding it because it’s wide screen and I haven’t changed the layout of the blog to fit that yet.

Seriously though, there are so many great things that people do in the name of gaming. I’ve posted one of those things here before, but a few others that come to mind is the response to Activision’s viral marketing and when that father made a Mega Buster for his child for Halloween! Amazing.

I hate how many games I have and have not finished. I hate how I just end up quitting halfway through a game or use the excuse of “I’m too busy” to finish what I started.

What set this off? 1up has a podcast called 1up FM and they have a segment called, “Backlog.” It’s where they find underrated games and play them and talk about them. Past games have been Shadow of the Colossus, Indigo Prophecy and Psychonauts. This time around they’re playing Beyond Good and Evil. Once again, what set this off?

I have Beyond Good and Evil and I got a PC version of it for $2 at a thrift store and it bugs me. I could’ve finished it and yet I haven’t. I know it’s not that big deal but it bugs me that I haven’t finished it yet. I also have a huuuge list of other games that I haven’t finished and yet I keep buying more every month.

Here’s a small list of the games I have yet to finish:
Half-Life
Beyond Good and Evil
Odin Sphere
FFXII
…just to name a few.

So here’s what I’ll do. Every two weeks, probably every other Saturday, I’ll have a game review up of an old game until I finish all the games on my list.

My first challenge will be Beyond Good and Evil. Expect a review by the 10th of January.

~Clover Out

Ale sent me this article last week and I have FINALLY just finished reading it. It’s quite the good read albeit, long. It’s a critical look at what the piracy condition of today is, mostly focusing on gaming. It goes through history, definitions and predictions of the future if piracy keeps going at the rate that it is going.

I’ll be writing an article on NegativeGamer talking more about piracy so I won’t talk about it too much here. Once the article is written, I’ll link it.

The funny thing about this article though. When I got the link, I had just started my torrent for Prince of Persia for the PC. As I was reading the article, it made me feel like a hypocrite. So I stopped reading the article once the game had finished downloading.

I’m about halfway through the game and I’ve stopped. I don’t normally just stop in the middle of a game (more like at the very end right before the final boss battle). Not only did I stop because the game glitched and Elika won’t follow me anymore, but also because I plan to play it through again when I get a 360. I feel like any kind of platformer feels more natural on a controller than a mouse and keyboard.

Am I now justifying piracy because I plan to buy it later? Yes and no. I’m justifying it for myself, but it’s not a really good reason. My girlfriend gave me an analogy when I brought up the fact that I pirated Wall-E and I told her that I was planning on buying it later.

“That’s like having sex now and saying you’ll marry them later.” Just replace “having sex” with “pirating” and “marry” with “buying” and you’ll get the drift.

((Just a note, this was a feature article I wrote but that never really took off to get published. So I’m publishing it here.))

In the realm of handheld gaming, Nintendo has been the king ever since releasing the Game Boy back in 1989 up till now with their current generation handheld the DS. Other competitors such as the Sega Game Gear, Neo-Geo Pocket and the N-Gage have tried to usurp the Game Boy but have failed, and now live only as a memory. Because Nintendo’s handhelds have been able to survive for so long they are one of the best selling handhelds ever and continue to be so.

(more…)

The last fourth of the year is probably the busiest. In October you have Halloween, November Thanksgiving and in December Christmas. What do these all have in common? You spend money. Lots of it. And looking at it, from October to December, you spend more with every passing month.

Game publishers know this, so you would think the ideal time to release your big rated games would be this time. And their mindset isn’t completely wrong. But Luke Plunkett from Kotaku had an interesting rant. If publishers are going to release all of their big titles in the last two to three months, it’s going to epically fail. Expectations aren’t met for both the players and publishers. Players don’t have enough money to buy the games that they’re releasing and the publishers don’t sell as much because the players are out of money or don’t want to spend it.

Plunkett brings up a very good point about releasing a hyped game at the appropriate time.

Now consider this: when did Grand Theft Auto IV, the biggest game of the year, launch? It launched in April. Practically had the month to itself. When did Metal Gear Solid 4, the PS3’s most important game for the year hit stores? June. Again, it had the month to itself.

I seriously hope some publishers read Plunkett’s post because it makes a whole lot of sense. Not only will publishers get the benefit of selling more games, gamers will get the benefit of being able to buy more games and play them all. Isn’t that a win win situation?

You know, its always funny when people act out games in real life. Hopefully everyone remembers the Real Life Pacman or the awesome stop motion Tetris video? Well, Kotaku via DailyMotion has given me another video to add to the “Real Life” list.

Real Life Mario Kart.

I watched this in class and it got me laughing that I literally LOL’ed.

(I should really figure out how to embedd videos.)

There is absolutely nothing cuter than geek love, especially gamer love.

This video is a love song with a Mario Kart theme and damn it’s pretty. It’s apparently so good that it was featured on the front page of YouTube! Now if only I can download a copy of this song so I can serenade my girlfriend with it.

Today is Black Friday! I would raise my voice in a loud cheer but to tell you the truth, I’m not very excited about it. One reason would be because the BF deals aren’t very good. Well, I don’t know if the deal is good or not and I don’t care, they’re all just out of my price range. One ad from Game Crazy (via Kotaku) got me excited in buying a Xbox 360 (finally!!) but I would’ve had to find a store instead of buying online. Great. Meaning a guy with no car (or license for that matter) would have to go out and wait in the crazy lines that are BF lines for something he kind of wants.

And I say that I kind of need a 360 right now because I actually don’t have the money to buy one. With Christmas coming up and not being a selfish bastard and buying things just for myself, I have a small chunk of my money waiting to be spent for others.

But one of my friends told me about the awesomeness that is Windows Live Search. It’s not as sleek and clean as Google’s search engine, but it does have a cashback offer if you go to a website through the Live search. If you make a purchase, it’ll give you a small percent back in 60-90 days. If you’re spending a lot and you know what you’re getting for your loved ones, then this is the perfect way to spend your money. The more you spend the more you save. Interesting no?

EDIT: I just found a Canon SD770IS that I’ll be buying now.
EDIT2: The camera ended up being way to much akshully.