Sony couldn’t have paid for better advertising

Damn that little black gadget, getting more and more tempting with each passing day. We all have too many games and not enough time. If you’re like me, you’ve begun planning out how to make the most of your schedule by figuring out which things (such as reading a book) can be done on your lunch break and which can only be done at home (such as busting out the Xbox). Of course, it’s all the more maddening when you have to stand in a line, sit in a waiting room, or otherwise kill time, thinking to yourself the whole while, “I could be playing Daxter right now.” After nearly a full year of sparse releases of mediocre games, the PSP seems to finally be coming into its own this month. The buzz on games like Daxter, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, and Pursuit Force are the highest the system has ever seen. Recent announcements include a non-Value Pack SKU selling for $199.99, an upcoming E-Distribution that will let you play PSOne games off the Memory Stick under emulation, and several other gizmos to expand the functionality such as a GPS module. Pile all of this onto the constantly hacked firmware allowing for SNES emulation and you’ve got yourself one hardcore machine in your pocket.

Sony, you vile temptress! Don’t you realize I have no time to squeeze in any more gaming?!?! Although, I do spend a lot of time at stop lights on the way into work. Hmmmmm……..

I may have bitten off too much this year for Winter Games ‘06. The five game list is pretty standard, but in my case four of the five games I’ve chosen are RPGs, which I find take more time to complete because of their nature. My theory has been born out thus far as the only game I’ve crossed off my list is the FPS Ghost Recon.

Luckily for me, I really enjoy RPGs. Recently I’ve been splitting time between WoW and Dragon Quest 8. Dragon Quest 8 in particular has been a shining light in a genre full of cheap knock-offs. You should really take the time to poke around the site a bit, the gameplay videos will give you and idea how well put together this game is. I’ve talked a bit in the past about what in general pleases me, so I thought I’d tell you a little about some of the fun details in the game.

(Read on …)

Great googly-moogly, the podcast was finished and I forgot to post about it. The podcast for March 13th has some gaming headlines, a bit about Winter Games 2006, Dodongo’s review of No One Lives Forever 2 (scratch that one off the list), and new releases for this week. If you’re not already subscribed, shame on you. Grab it here (link requires iTunes). Enjoy!

Finally, my first completed game of Winter Games ‘06! While the ending of NOLF2 lacked the surprise twist of the original, it was still good. I only wish that a certain missile defeating task that was carried out in the cinematic could have been part of the game. How great of an ending would it have been if Cate had to strap on a jet pack and chase after a nuke?

This one’s for you, Daedalus…

(Read on …)

America…FUCK YEAH!

There’s nothing quite so disappointing as gearing up to play a new game that you’ve been looking forward to all day, only to have the experience fall short in the end. Ok, I can probably think of a few things more disappointing, but right now I don’t care. Wednesday night we found a new passion and it didn’t cost us a cent. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is the game that began as a single-player expansion to Return to Castle Wolfenstein and ended its development cycle by trashing the campaign and releasing instead as a standalone multiplayer game available for free download. The final product, a refinement of the objective-based team gameplay found in the original game, is a spectacularly fun achievement in coordination and FPS strategy. A well-organized team using voice chat would be able to execute attacks that would make the members of the greatest generation beam with pride.

Assuming, that is, that those attacks could be executed.

What we’ve found is that the network code seems to become extremely unstable when a voice client is utilizing some of the bandwidth. This is no lag slideshow either…we’re talking about full-on controls-wrested-from-the-user puppet show. Guns fire on their own, your character jumps around in any and all directions simultaneously (think rag doll in a dog’s mouth), and you become just as likely to suicide as you are to murder. Removing the voice chat can improve the situation, but makes good coordination that much more difficult. However, last night not even killing the voice on 3-on-3 matches entirely fixed the problem. While it might play silky smooth during one match, the very next match would turn into a crack fiend’s POV as the pings spiked for no discernible reason.

Not a one of us would call this game bad. It is one of the most fun and focused multiplayer shooters I’ve ever played. Unfortunately, whatever problem that is occurring is making it completely unplayable over the internet. Perhaps EMB Weekend ‘06 will see a LAN marathon of ET gameplay. Perhaps the upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will not only have the refined networking code to support what we want to throw at it but will also be scalable enough performance-wise to work on the spectrum of PC’s and Macs that we have. In the meantime, however, we all remain sadly disappointed with the golden apple that hangs just out of our reach.

This weekend, with spring rapidly approaching, I picked up EA Sports MVP 06 NCAA Baseball for the PS2. As a New Orleanian, Tulane University Alum, and baseball fan, this was a no-brainer as the statistics and team ratings in this game have Tulane at the very top with an A+ rating.

Using the EA Sports MVP Baseball physics model, MVP 06 provides a no frills solid baseball game. You can play any team in any of the major and mid-major college conferences with each team’s ability based on their 2005 finish. Texas #1. Florida #2. Tulane #3. (This post is less about gaming and more about pluggin Tulane Baseball - roll wave).

In reviewing the game, let’s start off with the positives. I own several sports related PS2 games which feature play-by-play announcers including the Madden series and this game, by a landslide, is superior in terms of the announcers sounding natural. The play-by-play announcer is Mike Patrick of ESPN (Sunday Night Football) and if you happened to be in another room listening to someone play the game, you’d think you were just listening to a regular broadcast. Sorry Al Michaels, your “I end every sentence on a crescendo” play-by-play in Madden is severely trounced by this release.

The sound quality, including chatter between players - both relevant and irrelevant - really add to the experience. For example, if there’s a man on first and less than 2 outs, you’ll hear your infielders in the background talking up a double play ball.

Another outstanding tie-in is the music between innings, which is the same music used by ESPN during the College World Series. The music quality is excellent and provides a seamless liaison between innings.

Movement of the fielders with the analog stick is a little jerky at times and takes some getting used to. There are several methods of batting and fielding. Classic mode allows you to swing the bat simply by pressing the X button. However, for more control, EA has added the “Load and Fire” function which allows the batter to swing the right analog controller back to load up for power, and forward to swing the bat. This feature also has a bit of a learning curve as the player intuitively wants to fire the analog stick as fast as he can. This WON’T work. A smooth back and smooth through attack is the only way you’ll get base hits in this one.

Pitching control is excellent as each pitcher has certain pitches he is more adept at and you have exceptional control over location IF, and this is a big if, you are able to time the press in the perfect zone in the pitching meter. For those of you who are big baseball fans and understand pitching, the game has a very good sense of working a batter. In other words, if you keep throwing a batter outside fastball pitch after pitch, he will eventually catch up to it. Mixing speeds and locations, throwing unexcpected pitches at the right time, and throwing inside are all essential to success in the pitching department in this game.

From an overall presentation standpoint, this game is average. There are no flashy cut movies between innings or over the top graphics. The graphics are actually surprisingly rudimentary - almost RBI Baseball-esque. However, the gameplay itself is fantastic and quite enjoyable.

For those of you who have enjoyed the MVP Baseball series from EA in the past, you’ll surely enjoy this release. MVP 06 is an excellent baseball game and for under $30.00 is a worthwhile purchase. I give it 8.5 scrimps out of 10.

Play Ball!

Wipe another off the list, boy-o. 

Check it out - it’s an Ash chin.

My first experience with this game was less than stellar. But with some driver updates and a little time to cool my heels I was ready to come back.

 First off - if there’s one thing this game is….its nice and easy. Not easy as in “they’re shooting flowers at me,” but just very well portioned out. Its easy to learn, easy to digest.  Save points are predictibly spaced, health & power ups frequent, and successful tactics are not exceedingly complex.  

(Read on …)

Sometimes the circle of life is a beautiful thing. Plants are eaten by herbivores, which are eaten by carnivores, which eventually die and feed the plants. Sometimes, though, the circle of life is just plain ridiculous. Take, for example, the game Spy Hunter. You remember Spy Hunter. A car that was sometimes a boat and sometimes a motorcycle? Maybe this will help:

Spy Hunter was a classic arcade game. What do we do with classic games? We make them into awful movies starring B-list actors:

Here’s the best part. What do we do with terrible action movies starring B-list actors? That’s right. We turn them into video games:

And the circle of life continues.