TFU

So clip that - I DID buy Force Unleashed and about 5-6 hours in I'm pleased. But then again I am a huge Star Wars fan.

Otherwise this is just a well done God of War clone.

I'm not complaining at least its not that Conan game. THAT was a piece of garbage.

Also I read that Silicon Knights laid off like 30 people. That sucks, but really 180 people worked on Too Human for what, 10 years? More like 4 actually but still after all that and it still sucks that hard?

God I wish I could have the job where you come up with ideas for video games. I'd be so good at that I swear!

been a long time... shouldn't have left you

Even though no one reads this tiny video game blog, I feel bad for not updating it. Here's what's been happening since April between me and video games:

- My roommate who owned half of the games I was playing, no longer lives with me.
- I bought Halo 3 and COD 4 as they were not originally mine
- Castle Crashers totally rules
- Haven't bought Force Unleashed... YET
- NHL 09 is simultaneously one of the best and most frustrating sports games of all time
- I haven't bought Rock Band 2... YET
- Viva Pinata is better on the DS than the 360
- In NHL 09 I am a 6'7 220 lbs monster of a defensive defenseman

Luigi's Mansion: I beat this game like 2 years ago, cool huh?

Sports!

As some of you people may have noticed, in addition to games like Halo and Advance Wars, I regularly play sports video games. This is because I like the thrill of competition with the option of just quitting if something totally bullshit happens. Unquestionably, my favourite sport tis hockey and thus, my favourite sports video games are hockey ones.

I recently wrote a top 10 list that was not posted on Gamefaqs website because they are in love with bad spelling and shitty opinions. So I've decided to post it here instead, in two parts. So now, you will be the proud reader of my top 10 hockey video games list.

The Top 10 Greatest Hockey Games of All Time

With the news that EA has made a serious bid to buy Take-Two, the owner of the 2K Sports franchise, we may be in the last days of a competitive, high quality sports video game market. So let's take a few minutes to remember the (possible) days gone by with the top ten greatest hockey video games of all time.

#10 Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey (N64)

Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey is one of the earliest N64 games (the first to be released with 4 player support), and despite it's lack of EA-style realism and it's abundance of hideous graphics, at the heart of this game, there is a nice little arcade-style hockey experience. Get four friends with multi-colour controllers around the old Zelda machine and you've got yourself a few hours of fun in between playing endless rounds of Goldeneye.

#9 Ice Hockey (NES)
Pretty much the game that started it all, Ice Hockey is part of that classic NES pantheon of sports games named after the actual sport it features. Other memorable entries include: "Tennis", "Baseball" and "Golf". In Ice Hockey you choose between 6 countries (Canada's jerseys are green, ?!??!??) and then choose between 3 types of players for your 4 team roster: Skinny, Medium and Fat. If you were anything like me you loaded your team with fat guys and had one skinny guy who was obviously Wayne Gretzky.

#8 Mutant League Hockey (GEN)
Mutant League Hockey was made by EA and as a result, bears a striking resemblance to the NHL 93, 94 and 95 games that came before/around the same time as it. Luckily, it also contains the same amount of excellent gameplay and fun with a wacky arcade-like twist where you control teams made up of skeletons, goblins and killer robots with names like Puke and Killbot. If you like the early EA hockey games and haven't tried this one, I highly recommend you do so.

#7 NHL 08 (X360)
The latest in the storied EA franchise is easily the best in years. The skillstick feature from 07 is perfected and mixed with the solid multiplayer from XBOX live/PSN not to mention the hilariously quirky teams from Sweden and Finland (make note of the Lukko "Sly Coyotes" and Tempereen Ilves logos) make this game a real winner. The only place the game lacks is in it's puzzlingly bad off-season features. Seriously EA Sports, why did half the league retire after my first season?!

#6 Blades of Steel (NES)
Blades of Steel is simultaneously the best Hockey and best Fighting game for the NES, ever. The game features the first good fighting mechanic and is still revered for it. An additional bonus being that when you won the fight, the guy you beat goes to the penalty box. (the same thing would happen in Ice Hockey) Bonus points go to BoS for the rare Gradius minigame in between periods, although more often than not all you get is that damned panda bear shooting the puck.

Stay tuned, Top 5 coming up soon...

HIPSTERS!! ARRRRRRRRGHHHHH!!

Hey gang, so earlier in the week I get to work and immediately log onto to facebook and this is what happened:

"No surprises here, ok, oh someone named
another photo album "randoms"
ok standard - wait a tic - WHAT!?!?!"

It's at this point that I (obviously pictured above) saw a group of improv enthusiasts (some who are friends of mine, but mostly full of stupid hipsters) sitting around in a theatre of some sort just playing numerous games of Goldeneye and Mario Kart for N64 - Nintendo 64 - NINTENDO FUCKING SIXTY-FOUR.

Why is it that video games have to be 10 years old before it's cool to play them in public with a shitload of people? I WANTED TO DO THAT IN GRADE NINE.

Screw people who like things just because they're retro.

I swear to god hipsters, the next time you get a bunch of your lame-drama-improv-dweeb friends around you fucking better be playing something from THIS generation and it better be system linked and it better involve a Halo.

(Ok it can be something other than Halo, but NO Wii sports)

GAH! Hipsters!

National Hockey League 2008: A plea to a gaming giant.

There's nothing more rewarding to a sports gamer like myself than to get thoroughly involved and dedicated to a team or season in your favourite sports game and see them through years and years of development.

A few weeks after I picked up NHL 08, I was through my first season with my leaf squad (who now includes Mike Cammelleri AND Jay Bouwmeester for all you hockey fans) when I go to check the "Players who retired" message in the stupid EA Messages thing. I was surprised to find that well over 80 players had retired from the league. Including players like Martin Brodeur and Daniel Alfredsson who are in their mid 30's and enjoying prime seasons!

For those of you not familiar with Hockey this is basically like having Derek Jeter or Tim Duncan retiring at the end of your MLB or NBA seasons.

This was one of the regular 90 problems I end up having with Hockey video games. Others include: Why did they remove the Fantasy Draft option? and Why can't I edit a players attributes like in the 2k series? WHY?

Seriously EA Sports, do you test these things? And if you do, does this person know anything about the sport they're playing?

Here is something that I honestly want to do so badly that I would make serious personal sacrifices to do it: I want to work with the EA team that develops the NHL series and help them create a complete, realistic, yet fun experience for hockey fans. It is my belief that they have not achieved this since NHL 2001 for the PC or NHL 95 for the Sega Genesis. Mainly I'm talking the menus, the GM features, the way the create-a-team and players systems work and trading and signing free agents.

EA SPORTS, I CAN HELP YOU, SERIOUSLY.

GRIFFED!

Halo 3 fans need to play this weekend. Now that the heroic maps are free, the gametype offered for the double exp weekend playlist is Grifball. Yeah that's right Grifball, get into it man, it's like football but with gravity hammers and swords.

If ya don't know, now ya know, fellows.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "But what about rules and why do you get a hammer AND a sword?" To that I say don't even stress out man, why you comin at me with all these questions? Get outta here man, you're steppin in my space I don't like that, alright pal, back of the line one more outburst- sorry, for a second there I thought I was a bouncer at a nightclub and you were a drunk guy trying to get in...

Anyways, in honour of the Grifball weekend, most of which will be spent away from my 360 >:O, here is a list of other, famous Griffs:

Doug E. Doug as Griff on "Cosby"

This is the only famous Griff I could find.

See you guys next week!

The Tentacle Beast of Glon'ark

The troubles of EA have been left behind. I could actually feel my blood pressure rising every time I tried to get that Tiger Woods game face thing working so I said screw it. And you should too! Maybe I'll try again sometime, but not as long as excellent things like Halo 3, Advance Wars: DOR and the black and white DVD version of The Mist exist.

So to recap that, I took Tiger Woods 08 out of the case, punched it in its stupid HD-DVD face and spent the weekend playing Halo 3 (4v4 custom games with friends) Advance Wars: DOR (just picked it up) and I finally saw The Mist.

First of all, everyone go get the DVD for the Mist and watch the 2nd disc, which is in Black and White and is how the director meant for you to see it. I won't ruin anything for you, but the movie contains a tentacle beast, or as I named him, the Tentacle Beast of Glon'ark. Trust me, that didn't ruin anything. I'd be willing to say The Mist is one of the best Sci-Fi/Horror films I've seen in a long time, go see it now.

GAMES:

Games wise, I bought Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for DS and played it quite a bit. I've always been a fan of the Civilization series and those of you who are also Civ fans, you'll probably like it too. I say this because DOR is a solid turn based tactical strategy game with a pretty neat little story to boot. If you're like me and you find yourself searching through shelves of shitty kids games at your EB games or Wal-Mart for something decent to play on DS, I highly recommend it.

Finally, here's a little piece of video I've been laughing at for the past 4 days. It probably won't be available for much longer but it's what happens after Kenny gets high on cat's piss. Enyoy.

EA Sports can eat shit.

You heard me. It's now been 2 days of me trying to get EASPORTSWORLD.COM to fucking allow me to upload 2 goddamn pictures so I can be freaked out by my own face in Tiger Woods 08.

The site is apparently in beta still and this is why it is an utter pile of monkey shit.

My patience is wearing thin. I now know how Darth Vader felt when he went to the 2nd Death Star only to find it was filled with a bunch of guys sleeping on the job and jerking off all day long. Except I don't have an Emperor to frighten the shit out of EA Sports to double their efforts to get their asses in gear.

Why do I need 2 different profiles logged in and why can't you link to my fucking Xbox 360 profile? The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.

RE5, SDB and COD4. Uh, what?

Resident Evil 4 is probably one of the best video games I've ever played. Many people, including the makers of Resident Evil probably feel the same way, which is why I shouldn't be surprised that footage of the new, 5th installment looks shockingly similar to its predecessor. I swear, if they don't put strafing in this one, I'm going to be straight up pee-aced.

Oh also, 1up has a cool story about the new Super Dodgeball game for DS. I foresee me buying this and playing the shit out of it.

Finally, our house is the proud new owner of COD4 and Tiger Woods 08. After only briefly playing both, I can say COD4 - visually - is amazing and Tiger Woods was much better 4 years ago. Also, would someone do me a favour and nut-punch whoever created EA's website(s)? A more confusing mess of slow-loading flash menus I have never seen. EASPORTSWORLD IS A FUCKING DISASTER OF A WEBSITE. BETA SHMETA, MAKE IT WORK.

News: DS heavy!

First of all, I lied, I probably won't write a part 2 from the previous post because I want to move on to more pressing issues. Maybe I'll revisit why I'm not, nor ever have been, excited or optimistic about the Wii at a later date.

Anyways, I digress. Some news items:

- According to this IGN article that whimpered it's way onto the internet last Wednesday, there will be (as was probably rumoured) a DS version of Guitar Hero. You plug this weird handle with 4 buttons into the GBA slot and use a special pick-stylus to strum the touch screen. This is all well and good, but watch the crazily lame commercial for it, if you can get past the kid's amazing fake-fun-having skills, does it seem like you have to hold the thing in an incredibly awkward way to anyone else? It's like you're constantly ticking off a check box while about to throw a frisbee.



- Supposedly (according to 1up.com) some Sonic the Hedgehog 360/PS3 screenshots were leaked on the internet via a Sega ftp? Does anyone actually care? Do the 9 people who still like Sonic the Hedgehog as more than a whimsical memory crave Sonic knowledge so much they're combing through hundreds of animated gifs on Sega's ftp looking for Hedgehog news? I guess the answer must be yes? Weird.

- Finally, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for DS is being released this week, with EGM/1up's incredibly nerdy, somewhat annoying, yet very knowledgeable Shane Bettenhausen giving it a glowing review. Despite the fact that it looks pretty great, I still have to get through Phantom Hourglass and then buy Advance Wars: DOR, so I won't be playing this for a while I think.

Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be on live playing against our rival house in Halo 3 and NHL 08.

Getting the Brawl Rolling

For the first post of this, yet-another-video-game-type blog, I'm going to say some nice things and some not so nice things about Super Smash Brothers and Nintendo in general. Consider this a stream of conscienceness post while I'm still trying to find the voice of this blog.

First of all, I've played every iteration of SSB and have on the whole, been fairly impressed. I remember originally thinking SSB would more along the lines of a traditional fighter a la Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. When I was met with the pseudo-platformer, 4 player (ahem) melee I was pleased. However one thing stuck in my mind. I couldn't shake the feeling that out of the probably hundreds of Nintendo games I had played as a kid, this one was only using characters from 9 of them. Really that's all you got?

In the original SSB you had:

• Captain Falcon - F-Zero
• Fox - Starfox
• Donkey Kong - Donkey Kong
• Pikachu - Pokemon
• Jigglypuff - Pokemon
• Mario - Super Mario Bros.
• Luigi - Super Mario Bros.
• Yoshi - Super Mario Bros.
• Samus - Metroid
• Ness - Earthbound
• Kirby - Kirby
  
• Link - Zelda

So let me get this straight Nintendo - after the entire run of both the NES and the SNES, not to mention a good ways into the N64's life span, the best 12 characters (created by you) that you can come up with includes Jigglypuff AND Kirby. Was the one round pink blob not enough?

Now I understand the whole thing is to include only 1st or 2nd party characters, but are you kidding me? 12 characters from 9 games is all they could come up with after utterly dominating video games for 14 years? Does anyone else find that a bit depressing? They all don't have to be the same level of popularity as a Mario or Pikachu, but jeez, can we get a few more names in there? Where the hell is Little Mac?

Don't worry Mac you'll appear as a fucking
item in the 3rd one... Hey did you get that
Goddamned Nintendo Power subscription I
mentioned earlier?

As it turns out, this was my first, sad reminder that Nintendo has 9 good franchises (arguably, as I've never been a Metroid fan), 2 of which still haven't seen full sequels in North America since the SNES, if at all. That's 7 - ok, we'll add the SSB series and make it 8 now. But the fact remains: Since 1985 Nintendo has probably 10 good game franchises under it's belt. That's 23 years of repeating the same 10 games every few months.

Considering 3rd party developers haven't received much support since the N64 era, Nintendo has a long way to go to reclaim their popularity with, let's be honest here, Me - whether or not Nintendo cares about that, I guess I'll just have to wait to find out.

Coming soon: Part 2: Why SSB Brawl is a good sign and why the Wii is a piece of true garbage.