Not Actual Box Art

The plot is straight out of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past: A long time ago, there was a big bad guy who did big bad things. Six smart, wise guys got together, and trapped him in a parallel world of his own creation a glowing Orb. Some wizard has sucked up to the king, stolen the Orb, and plans on unleashing the power of the Big Bad. It’s up to you, who just happens to be the direct descendant of the Previous Hero, to save the world.

Sound familiar? Sages are called Scholars, Dungeons are Temples, but otherwise it’s all very much in line with what we know and love. Which, in my opinion, is a great thing.

Graphically, it’s closer to The Legend of Zelda, only in 3D. Kind of like the reverse of Super Paper Mario: Instead of 2D sprites in a 3D world, it’s blocky-sprites in a blocky-sprite world.
Okay, maybe the analogy doesn’t hold up particularly well… But you get the picture.

The game is full of references to past games, from direct quoting of famous lines, to references to the cheat codes and other such trivia that gamers of a certain age will remember fondly. Even the sound effects have been crafted in such a way as to be reminiscent of other titles.

What, then, does this game bring that is new? Sadly, not much. It does contain a rather robust -- if complicated -- character creation tool, but other than that it is a retro game in high-def.

Which is not at all a bad thing -- because 3D Dot Game Heroes has a sense of whimsy and sincerity about it which truly sells the idea. This isn’t something crafted over a weekend by some guy in his basement hoping to cash in on your love of old stuff. No, it’s a love letter to the past, a thank you note for all the fun what we’ve had, and a reminder that such fun need not go away as games evolve into… well, whatever the fuck Twilight Princess was.

Frankly, this is a game that Nintendo should have made, and would do well to take notes from. In many ways this game is more Zelda than the last console entry in the franchise.

I don’t think I can recommend it highly enough.

Just Cause 2 - PS3 Boxart

It’s a game that’s super easy to talk about, because there’s no real risk of spoilers. That’s not to say there isn’t a story to the game, as there is – it’s just that the story is mostly there to get you to move about the map, and isn’t an actual driving force behind gameplay.

It’s actually quite refreshing, and a welcome addition to my game library.

The basics are this: You are Agency agent Rico Rodriguez, sent undercover to the island nation of Panau to find out what happened to the last agent that was sent there, and… Um… Blow shit up? There’s something to do with the government being a military dictatorship, and oil, and other nations having more interest than is probably healthy in this tiny nations future… It’s fun to watch, but nothing too serious.

The game has a tone like an Bond film directed by Micheal Bay, if it was both written by and starred Vin Diesel. Think xXx with a much larger budget, and bad accent. The action is completely over the top – and constantly finds ways to get more ridiculous. Without giving away too much, one boss battle involves a tank on top of a sky-scraper and a guy with satellite targeted missiles raining death down upon you.

Explosions are huge, you spend a lot of time jumping from car roofs to other car roofs, hijacking flying choppers, then jumping from them onto another chopper, hanging from planes and generally being more awesome than is humanly possible.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3evnPPBZE_g

A short search of YouTube shows much of the other crazy mayhem one can get up to in the game. Truly, some epic level fun can be had with this.

Not everything is perfect with this game: The enemy AI can be down right retarded at times. Sure, they’ll take cover and use that to their advantage quite a few times, making you hunt them down – while taking massive damage. However, where they take cover isn’t always the best of spots. Occasionally they’ll hide behind huge tanks of gas, or the standard exploding barrels.

Health packs are damn hard to come by, and the mini-map is damn near useless for finding enemies. Oh, and jets are really, really slow…

Those gripes aside, the game is damn fun. It’s the perfect game for anyone who enjoys blowing shit up, shooting dudes, or wandering lush island paradises. What I’m trying to say is this: Download the demo, give it a spin. Then add the game to your GameFly queue (or head over to Blockbuser), and spend a few days wandering around the Panau countryside.

I’m fairly sure you’ll be glad you did.

Borderlands Box Art

I’ve heard some refer to Borderlands as a RPS (role playing shooter), or “Diablo with guns”. I tend to agree with the latter; while it is a shooter, there is little to no roleplay – or even story. Like Diablo, you can customize your gear and your skills, but will end up spending most of your time running through areas, shooting things until they stop moving, and collecting sweet loots.

The game does enable one to drop in and out of other peoples games, for a co-op style of play… But I’ve not really messed with that much. I tried it, once, and it wasn’t too shabby. That is to say, the feature worked as advertised. I’m sure if you are a social gamer, that this feature would be a fun one – but I’m not, so it’s not something I actually give a damn about. Mostly I wander the world of Pandora, alone, shooting dudes and taking their stuff.

There are cars, which you can drive and shoot and run people over with, but frankly it feels really cheap. While in a car, everything is a one-hit kill. Creatures that normally can take a crapload of damage splatter under the wheels of your dune buggy. Thankfully, most areas aren’t open to cars – you have to leave your ride outside.

The main draw here is the weaponry – and what weaponry it is! Sniper rifles that cause folks to burst into flames, shotguns that electrocute folks, revolvers that cause dudes to explode… it’s all here. I’ve heard tales of even crazier weapons – like shotguns that shoot rockets, but have yet to encounter them. Mostly, though, a huge part of the fun – what makes many of the challenges worth while – is finding a chest containing some new guns. It’s almost always worth it – rarely do you not find something neat, which you just want wait to try on the next mutant you come across.

This is quickly becoming my favorite game – it’s pretty much the only one I’ve played since I got it. With the promise of even better stuff available on the second go-through, and some sweet zombie fueled DLC available by the end of year, this is more than worth it’s $60 entry fee.

The Middleman - Complete Series

The Closed Caption Conundrum

or

Middleman Middlereview Middlemaddness

My copy of the Middleman DVD box set from Shout! Factor finally arrived yesterday, and after much anticipation (and drooling over the intricate packaging) Nadia and I watched the first episode (“The Pilot Episode Sanction”), and it was greatly enjoyed… By me. She also liked it, but not quite as much as I did. Not because she didn’t enjoy it, or think it funny or a great show (she compared it, favorably, to Firefly, which is bot a major plus and some major nerd cred right there), but because of the language barrier.

Which brings me to the point of this posting: Why is it so damn hard to get Closed Captioning working while playing back a DVD? Shout!, for whatever reason, decided it would be better to have the captions on this set as Closed Captions, instead of subtitles. I’m not sure why this is – subtitles are simple to use from a consumer standpoint, and universally supported from a player standpoint. But CC? Not so much.

The PS3 will not pass CC through HDMI – in fact, a quick bit of google-fu shows that this is a pretty standard, known problem. So, my $400 media monster won’t allow my girlfriend to know everything that’s said on this show.

You Microsoft fanboys can just shut the hell up now too – it also will not pass the CC information through. Or, if it does, it does so in a very odd, unintuitive way – which is basically the same thing. So that’s another $300 well spent.

Thankfully, my Mac mini, which I use for a media center anyway – not only has DVD playback baked into the OS (why any modern OS wouldn’t have this feature I’ll never understand), but it does fully support CC. Which is why we’ll be watching Middleman on a computer via DVD…

The box set is great – the package is great, with lots of neat touches, the picture quality is freat, the sound quality is wonderful… But the fact that so much work had to be done just to get the damn CC working (Total time spent dicking around: half an hour… on over a $1000 worth of equipment) makes Shout!’s choice of captioning a fail in my eyes.

I would still reccomend this set to anyone who likes fun, unless they were deaf. In which case, it’s just too much of a hassle.

Seriously, Shout! – Get your act together soon.

Kind of like Crackdown, or Saints Row 2, I suppose. A sort of “One more mission, okay, one more mission, really, I mean it this time, just one more… You know what? I’ll just play another hour or – it’s what time?! Well, one more mission won’t hurt” logic starts running through my head. I can kill hours doing almost nothing in the game, and enjoy it all.

Yesterday was Apples developer conference; nothing major came out of it. Cheaper laptops, cheaper (sort of) iPhones, updated OS’s for both… Nothing revolutionary, nothing really worthy of causing me to head to the Apple Store this weekend to spend money.

One nice thing, though, was the price structure for the next OS X upgrade: $30. That’s right, $30 to upgrade the OS. $40 if you want to do it on five machines, and $130 if you don’t want an “upgrade” version, although what the difference is I’m not sure. Compare that, if you will, to Microsofts price structure. Vista upgrades start at $90 per machine, and the full OS is $250. So, yeah, you might pay a bit more upfront for the Mac, but it evens out over the life of the machine.

At this point, come September, I should have the money stuffed away to pick up – with cash – a new 13″ MacBook Pro the “family” pack of Snow Leopard to update my current Macs. I’m going to offer Nadia my current Mac, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll figure something else out.

So, how’s it work?

Well, not to mince words: It works great. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been this happy with a new piece of hardware, but the DSi is just great.

It’s roughly the same size as a light, if a bit thinner and lighter. This is due to no longer having a GBA port. The shell isn’t that slick, glossy plastic that was on the DS Lite – it’s a matte finish, and doesn’t feel like it’s gonna slip out of your hand. Not sure how it’ll stand up to scratches over time, but since none of my other handhelds have ever had a problem with scratches, I don’t expect this one to either.

The screens are much larger – and both brighter and more colorful. It’s much easier to see what’s going on, and games just look better on it. I’m not kidding – comparing the DSi and the DS Phat, it’s easy to see which one looks better in terms of graphics.

The buttons, I think, are placed better than they were on the DS Lite as well. Things are spaced better, and my hands no longer want to cramp as I’m playing. Can’t really say exactly why, but that’s just how it is.

So, the hardware is – in my opinion – better.

How’s the software?

When you power the system on, the system menu is a combination of the standard Sony XMB (seen on the PS3 or PSP) and the Will home screen – a welcome update from the funky, dated four-button mashup that was the original DS screen. Going in and out of any of the included software (settings, camera, recorder, etc) is simple, and – get this – does not require a re-boot of the DSi! Amazing, huh? Finally, changes can be made without having to power down and back on!

In a related note, simply tapping the power button acts as a soft reset- doesn’t power the system down, but does cause it to reset back to the DSi home screen.

The free web browser, available as a download from the DSi Ware store, sucks. It’s not good at all – it’ll barely display web pages, but it does so very slowly. Even though it’s based on Opera, it’s still a pile of crap. Hopefully other, better freebies will show up in time.

The OS is also vastly improved.

How’s the camera?

It’s a mixed bag. Taking pictures with it – in good lighting conditions – is fun. The camera works, in that pictures are taken – and some of the filters are fun too. By popping in an SD card, you can transfer your pictures off your DSi and on to a computer… And, as you can tell by the gallery below, this is not a replacement for a regular, real camera. It’s not even close. But, for messing around it’s pretty good. I’ve included a gallery of shots taken on my, and Nadias, DSi.

Final Thoughts?

All told, this is a great system, and the DS that you should by if you don’t already have one. If you still have a DS Phat, it might be worth considering a trade – it’s far superior to the old hardware. If you happen to have a DS Lite, however – it might not be worth it.

All told, with my DS Lite as trade, the system set me back $120. I think it’s money well worth it – I’m actually happy to play my DS again.

Full disclosure:
I created a list of words to ignore in order to generate this list; the ignored words were:

am, comments, don, dunny, dunny0, entry, moar, modified, pm, posted, tags, views

These words are those that, because of the template, are artificially included in every post.

So, what can we learn from this exercise?
Well – I enjoy the word “awesome”, and “fucking”; I use the word “bring” an awful lot, although I couldn’t begin to explain why; “work” get’s mentioned far more than it should.

While we’re on the topic of words, I’m going to attempt to post at least one (1) blog entry every day this month. We’ll see how that goes.

Then I realized that I don’t really need to spend as much time detailing everything – it’d be better for everyone if I just summed stuff up, and moved on to a new post.

So, here’s the short version:

XBox 360:

• Updated Interface – Pretty, somewhat more useful
• Avatars – New, Mii like fellows good for… Something, I’m sure.
• Netflix Streaming – Best new feature. Worth the $10 monthly Netflix fee.
• More Reliable Hardware – Finally updated the hardware so it’s far less fail prone. You can actually trust it to keep working.

Playstation 3:

• Tweaked UI – The best interface on a console this generation. Easy to use, easy to find stuff, quck and responcive.
• Best Store – Perfectly laid out, easy to navigate and super fast. Doesn’t  use any strange points system, uses real money for transactions.
• Flash Support – With the built in browser, this allows you to watch YouTube and Hulu on your TV. Sure, it’s not Netflix, but it’s the next best thing.
• Weak Online Support – No standard features for games, no cross-game chat, no universal message box. All very “last gen”.
• Home Bites Ass – Sure, it just launched, but it does bite ass. The player creator is weak, the system is slow, and it’s just not really worth the time or effort to play with it. Maybe it’ll evolve, but right now it’s ass.

Wii:

• Same As Last Time – There’s been no change. Is still easiest to use of them all, but without any real games worth checking out it’s really not worth bothering with. Great for playing the classic stuff, or for parties, but not a Real System.

So, there you have it – My thoughts on the current crop of systems, updated and short.

Dunny0 - XBox Avatar

The Avatar on the left is me… As you can see, it’s a slightly more sophisticated version of the Mii. As of right now there are a few (three) games that will allow you to play as this little bugger. Creating one isn’t too difficult, and once done you can spend some time playing dress up too. Right now the clothing options are a bit sparse, but I’d expect that to change quickly as game devs jump on the bandwagon and offer branded shirts for your little guy to wear.

Netflix streaming is another neat toy added to the XBox’s repository of stuff it can do – and one that I expect to get a lot of use from. The interface is very Mac like, which is a plus, but you are unable to browse for content on it, which is a minus. You still must build your queue on your PC, and then the XBox will see it and allow you to play the movies – kind of cumbersome, really, but not too horrible I suppose. Works great for people who plan out their movie nights, but for those who just want to sit down, find a movie and watch it… Extra work. But, all considered, it’s a darn good service.

Finally, there’s the new UI – which I’m not really liking. It’s been re-done into some mash-up of Apples’ FrontRow and the PS3′s XMB. The whole thing is pretty, but messy. Some options, like friends list management, are not available from the normal menu, you gotta dig into the “other”, secondary set of menus to do that…

So far I’m not a huge fan – the old system worked just fine, this new one just seems like a hasty way to make aging hardware seem hip and current. I’m sure, over time, I’ll get used to it, but I still would rather they had allowed people to decide between using it and not using it.

Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Saint’s Row 2 on the PS3. I bought it on a bit of a whim – LittleBigPlanet was pushed back a week for some rather dubious reasons, but I still wanted something new to play. I had really enjoyed the first Saint’s Row, and since I had just traded in Grand Theft Auto IV for store credit, I figured what the heck, it wouldn’t cost me a thing to pick it up.

I’m really glad I did.

To be frank, I didn’t enjoy GTA IV much: It was a Serious Game about Serious Things, and it reminded you of that fact every chance it got. When allowed to play the damn game, it was fun – driving was good, weapons were good, the AI was good – but the story was Serious, the acting was Serious, and a good chunk of the humor that I really liked from previous installments were missing. I spent the majority of my time playing in the multiplayer mode sans other people, just so I could do the fun stuff without the damn in-game phone going off every three minutes trying to launch some side-mission or another, or some assclown trying to go bowling with me.

SR2 does none of this. It is not a serious game, it’s a humorous game. There are some Serious Moments (Which are actually pretty damn striking plot twists), but all in all the game never loses sight of the main thing a game should be: Fun.

First, the whole city is open from the start: No lame ass road-blocks or other stupid shit preventing you from going wherever you might want to go. Secondly, the missions are done at the pace you set for yourself: The phone only rings occasionally, and even then you can ignore it with no major hindrances…

Where GTA got rid of the “crazy” weapons, SR2 gives you more than you could need. Where GTA took out flying stuff, SR2 gives you a rather nice assortment of them. Where GTA had clothes that do nothing for you, SR2 relies on them to boost your stats so you can move on in the story.

Biggest of all: GTA starts you off as a peon, who must work his way up the food-chain, SR2 starts you off at the top of your gang, and you must lead them to victory.

Basically, in my mind, it tries to distinguish itself from GTA by being – in some ways – a parody of GTA, and in other ways the opposite of GTA. It’s a game with a bit of a bad rap, but a game that deserves an honest shot because you just might enjoy it.

Is it perfect? No.

But it’s a hell of a lot of fun.