Thursday, December 31, 2009

Aerith Signature

This is a signature of the videogame character Aerith, from the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy franchise.

A very simple signature that I made specially for new years. With the sound off for a whole new year, we leave behind a year and a decade filled with both sorrow as joy. Which is what I hoped to accomplish with this image. The simply and sober background with a character that symbolized joy and hope.

At any rate, have a happy New Year everyone!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas, everyone!

From everyone over at Greyarch Entertainment (just me o.o)):

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope that you were showered upon with plenty of presents and a delicious, filling dinner that you're still picking from your teeth!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

WIDS: Final Fantasy X-2



Hello and welcome to: Why it doesn't suck.

People say something sucks, but I think otherwise. And I tell you about it! This is where I do it. This was the first episode of this which I made a while ago and I want to go somewhere with this. So leave your comments filled with critique and tell me what you think!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Jak and Daxter: The lost Frontier signature



This is the signature that I made for the videogame: Jak and Daxter: The lost frontier. Now, the left image of Daxter is actually from the game Daxter. But meh, right xD

Monday, December 14, 2009

Greyarch Entertainment 2k10


Am I but a mere puppet of an organization? Rented out to replace a man fallen during Halloween? Dreams of another life seep in to my mind every so often, of events that never happened to me personally. Speaking a language I have never even uttered, I lived amongst people that I have never met in a country I have never been in. Or should I say that Puddle has never been there? Yet, I am him. I am myself. I think. I don’t know, it’s all so confusing.

Here I am, certain that I am the man called Puddle Jumper. Looking and acting exactly like him, I also have his memories and feelings. Strange that, even though they do feel like my own, they still feel foreign.

Ever since that dreadful week surrounding Halloween, I have been looking up all mysterious events revolving around the monster that Screwattack’s staff had released. Apparently I am not alone. More people have been feeling like they do not belong. They too remember waking up in a facility known as The Playhouse.

After some intense hours of research, I’ve discovered that The Playhouse deals in lives and replacements, that they not only clone human beings but that they also have the ability to create lives in terms of personality and memories. They can put a whole person inside of a body or they can create a new person by cobbling together different persons. Is this what happened to me?

That settles it then. Knowing that whatever I did, Puddle Jumper had already planned, I will take on a new name and head out in to the world to discover who I truly am.

From now on, I will be known as: Bobby Doll! I will travel the world to find myself! FAREWELL!

To be continued ~

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Halloween 2k9: Playhouse Saga begins

Part One:

As previously seen on: http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/pjs-halloweeeeeeeeeeen-2k9/ Hello and welcome to the spookiest of the my blogs to come out in 2009! This is but the first the few that will be written. Can you get passed the chills and terrors? Well then, follow me! Mhuahahahahahahahaha Halloween 2k9 Part one Aaaah, Halloween. It's become my favorite holiday over the years. Living in Belgium, I've never truly experienced Halloween myself. It's pretty much dead around here come Halloween, save for a few decorations here and there that are just abominably bad and in stores. The people could care less about it and they'd much rather wait in anticipation for Sinterklaas or Christmas. The only times I ever got in to a costume was for Carnaval. Kids in schools everywhere dressed up that day, parades were held and what not. Me? I dressed up as the White Power Ranger once (the ninja outfit from the movie), The Red Power Ranger ((both ranger costumes were made by my mother <3)) Zorro, a cowboy and a pokémon trainer. Although the pokémon trainer was just me in street clothes with a pokédex ((a working one with the original set of pokémon in it)) and a pokéball. For me Halloween started a couple of years ago. In school I had a class called P.A.V. Or Project Algemene Vakken, translated as Project General Coarses. You see, this embodies all the classes I wasn't getting at the time like history, geography, others alongside with classes I was getting but that were incorporated anyways like languages and such. The entire year was divided in to several books made by the teacher herself and she chose Halloween. It talked about its history and it also talked about a lot more. It was at that time that I truly got interested in it. And that I did something special for Halloween each year like watch a horror movie or take a risk. Around that time I was also an active member of Gaiaonline ((yes, yes, I know ... Shoot me ...)) and it was pretty big on the holidays aspect and it was no different with Halloween. I fell in love with Halloween even more because of that. Three years ago however I really got the bug with Cinemassacre's Monster Madness. My god did that get me hooked on both horror as Halloween. The entire month of October is Halloween for me and I'm loving every single minute of it. I mean, this year I'm planning to watch a few horror movies ... Which is probably it because of the lack of Halloween here ... Fucking Belgium. So, what do I have planned for Halloween of 2009? Well, I've ordered Evil Dead 2, I'm listening to the Jonas Brothers ((What?)), watching 1408 and I'm going to read Jurassic Park and I'm going to play a few scary games. Which brings me to the end of this blog because I'm saving the games aspect for parts 2 & 3. What are they? Well, Part 2 is going to be a B&B and Part 3 is going to be an LGR. See you then and happy hauntings!

Part 2:

As previously seen on: http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com Boo and welcome to the second part of this Halloween edition of my blog! At first I was thinking of doing this very special B&B and LGR but since then I’ve found this brilliant idea that I could even stretch all the way to the christmas! Wondering what I’ve cooked up? Well, wait no more as I dive in to this thing! Halloween 2k9 Part 2 Part one: http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/pjs-halloweeeeeeeeeeen-2k9/ Most people talk about scary games when they want to do something for Halloween. Or they talk about something scary anyways. But, why not talk about Halloween … IN … games? Enter: Halloween Town. Once there was a nightmare before Christmas. It was a wonderful nightmare of beautiful songs, great animation and a horrific story. The nightmare introduced us to the undeniable lord of Halloween: The Pumpkin King Jack Skellington! Two people have worked together to create this nightmare that, when put together, always manage to produce unbelievable things that will be remembered by those who watched it for their entire lives. Then came something that nobody had ever expected. Another collaboration that not even Nostradamus could have predicted. What if one of the lead companies in RPG’s teamed together with the company of our childhoods? Squaresoft was known for its Final Fantasy series. RPG videogames about a fantastic world in grave danger. Disney had created movies and stories that every child in the western world has seen. Boys wished they were the heroes of these tales whilst the girls always thought of the girls of Disney movies when they thought about the princess’s that they wished to be. These two companies were as far apart as the Teletubbies and Saw, yet the masterminds of Kingdom Hearts managed to blend them in to one. You play as Sora, an original character who is accompanied by Disney icons Donald Duck and Goofy. Using the keyblade that has chosen him as its wielder, Sora travels from world to world to close the keyholes there that can be used to go in to the heart of that world. He is doing so because there are vile creatures out there known as the Heartless, a manifestation of darkness that has consumed the heart. Apparently nearing the end of his adventure, Sora comes across a world that has transformed him in to a monstrous being. Donald and Goofy are affected as well. Where could they be? Welcome to Halloween Town! Instead of making this a full recap of the world, I’ll just write what I thought about it. This to not spoil it if you haven’t played it yet. This is definitely one of my favorite worlds in the game. Based off of one of my favorite childhood movies, Halloween Town does a pretty good job of translating it to the game. The makers of the game understood that Jack Skellington is the Santa Clause of Halloween. That he wants to scare the little kids because they want to be scared. Truth be told, we were all just the same. We wanted to be scared shitless back then. There’s nothing like the sensation of being frightened. Willingly we put ourselves through the scariest things. The story of Halloween Town fits the movie quite well, as Jack and the professor are trying to find attraction for this Halloween. The only regret I have about this world is that the songs are absent. Luckily we still have all the epic environments and the characters to interact with. Now, there’s another side of Halloween that’s a big part of the entire event. Enter: Bully/Canis Canem Edit. There’s nothing like a little controversy to boost the sales of your game, am I right or am I right? I thought so! Rockstar games is well known to be the champion of controversy as their games as usually packed with things unimaginable for parents and white knights in politics. Most known is Grand Theft Auto. I really don’t have to go deeper in to this subject because even your great grandmother knows of this game and how ungodly it is according to the most reliable source in the world, Fox News. Nothing could have prepared the world for one of their other projects however: Bully. The name alone has to be reason enough to raise an eyebrow with parents everywhere, but the combination of Bully and Rockstar had to have pissing in their pants. And, once more details were revealed, they grabbed their forks and torches and gathered up a large mob to go and crucify everyone involved. What’s the big deal about this game you ask? Allow me to explain. For you see, in this game you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a troubled young boy who is sent off to Bullworth Academy after he was kicked off of his umpteenth school. Being the troubled youth that he is, Jimmy can do a lot of things. Like, for instance, put kids in lockers, dunk their heads in the toilet, give them a wedgie, knock them out, sexually harass the girls, get a nerd to pee his pants and a lot more delightful things. The game is split up in to several chapters, each one spanning a single season. The beginning of the game is of course the season to be frightful as Halloween is coming! You can see Halloween coming as well because the more story missions that you do, the more the weather changes and more decorations are added to the environment. From pumpkins to lights, the school has it all on Halloween night! Unlike Halloween Town, there’s nothing scary about this night. Besides Gary of course … This is Halloween as it is today. Everyone gets dressed up. You see skeletons, cops, a bunny, princesses and more. You can spend as much time as you please on this night as the clock is gone and time doesn’t pass. You can do whatever you want in this colorful environment as long as you don’t finish up all the tasks. These are quite fun though. You need to do everything from putting up kick me signs on people’s backs, egging people, throwing itching powder on them, stink bombs and even blowing them away with some heavy duty fireworks. Simply put, it’s just loads of fun. Probably my most favorite thing about the entire game. After these assignments comes the big prank. This is quite lulzy to do. I wouldn’t recommend skipping it because it’s a blast to do. Halloween Town embodies the spirit of Halloween, Bully goes for the fun of Halloween and if you combine these two games with a horror game, you have the perfect Halloween experience. Halloween is the best holiday of them all. It’s got a rich history and a bright future. You will be scared and entertained. The entire month of October isn’t just about Rock, as everyone gets in the right mood for Halloween. If you’re reading this before Halloween, I hope you have a nice Fright. If you’re reading it afterwards, I hope that this was a nice closer for your Halloween experience. This has been Puddle Jumper with my Halloween blogs. I’ll see you later! But you might not see me MHUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

SCREWATTACK'S HALLOWEEN CLIP OF THE WEEK

There was a Clip of the week over at Screwattack.com that involved the crew being attacked by an unknown monster of the sorts. This caused the community to go nuts and start making blogs and videos themselves. I myself found it to be the perfect way to begin a little something I like to call: The Playhouse Saga. Enjoy:

WELL, F YOU TO SCREWATTACK

You know, I wrote that halloween blog with a lot of love for the community here and at Teh Pwn Shop and I get bumped off of the first page in less than an hour. That's just plain retarded people. I've been a member of this community for a lot of years now and time and time again I get pushed aside for some half decent fuckup that can't even write or makes videos far worse than mine. What's even worse is what I get bumped off for. For fucks sake people. It's just a goddamn video. IT'S A CLIP OF THE WEEK. It's fake, you asshats. I fucking hate you all so much right now it's not even healthy. Well, FUCK YOU TOO. Seriously guys, I really wanted to ... wow, that's some serious thunder out there. But seriously, this is the last straw. Getting bumped off this ... JEZUS, that was so close... It's just not worth it guys. This is my last blog here. I'll see you all NEVER ... assholes. It's thundering like mad here th ... Call an ambulance! FUCK! GOD DAMNIT! ARG, There's a chair leg sticking out of my chest. Tell them to hurry! PLEASE! And then RUN! RUN FOR IT! It's real! I'm ... so ... sorry ... sorrrrrryyyyyyy .................................... -------------------AUTO POSTING MESSAGE----------------- -------------------ADDING MEDIC REPORT---------------- Arriving at the scene we discover that the apartment building was the only one targeted by the monster. If rumors are to be believed, a screwattack.com g1 lived in that house. Though that is still unconfirmed. Knocking on the door was fruitless. Following this we hailed a police officer who arrived at the scene shortly to open up the door for us. Entering the apartment it was already clear to us. We wouldn't find anyone alive. The entire living room was demolished, with blood splattered all over the walls. My partner noticed brain matter sticking against the wall next to the computer, which was covered in blood and guts, and the police officer informed me to look up. I still can't believe what I saw. As a medic I've seen a lot of strange stuff. Foreign objects lodged in odd places, arrows that went clean through a man's head without causing damage ... but this ... The man seemed to have been impaled by a chair leg which was then rammed in to the ceiling. I don't know how he kept hanging up there for so long, but from the moment we noticed him, he dropped down on to the ground so that we could see his front side. It was ... Horrible. Consider this my resignation.

MEDIC'S BLOG 5487/78

Following the events over at the home of the late mister Jumper, I checked my e-mails to see that my report was automatically added to his blog. With this I also managed to gain access to his account, curious as to what exactly was going on. I never expected to feel at home over here at Screwattack.com, but this community has made me feel as such quite rapidly. Unfortunately, the more I felt at home, the more I felt like a g1. Now ... it's too late for me. I can already feel the monster at my home. It must have unimaginable powers if it can travel around the world at such incredible speed. So many lives have already been lost and now I'm afraid that I am next. I don't want to die! I'm still to young! Nobody should die before their time. Now that I have finally found the love of my life, I can't tell him how I feel. He will never know that I want to spend the rest of my life with him! Damn it. I can sense that it's close by. That same feeling. It's strange. I thought that I felt death crawl down my spine in Puddle Jumper's apartment. But now I know that it was that monster. That it was still there, watching me. It must have known somehow what was going to happen. It will not claim my life! That is something that I still wish to control for myself. So, to expedite the matter, I have swallowed down my entire supply of medication. It's effects have already started to kick in as I type this. I can barely keep my fingers typing. One thing I know for sure. When that thing comes for me, I will stare it in the eyes and laugh at its failure. Farewell

HALLOWEEN RECAP:

Hello and welcome to a little recap of the Halloween that I have experienced. First of all, let's talk about others first. Halloween started for me with the Monster Madness series hosted at Cinemassacre.com http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?page_id=1373 Then over the month I was bombarded with a lot of Halloween blogs and videos from all sorts of people. Here at Screwattack I only have one blog to share with you that really freaked me out. http://screwattack.com/node/31437 That picture alone was enough to send chills down my spine. Thanks for that, Super Munkky. Ya creep :P For the rest I also enjoyed the AVGN episodes that appeared on Gametrailers.com http://www.gametrailers.com/screwattack And I also had a few shits and giggles with the special by The Spoony One http://www.spoonyexperiment.com/2009/10/30/fmv-hell-halloween-special-bloodwings-pumpkinheads-revenge/ Me? What did I do? Why thank you for asking, good sir or madam. I wrote this little gem for that one website on which I am an author of and that you should totally check out http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/pjs-halloweeeeeeeeeeen-2k9/ http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/ Everything was quite normal up to that point. Of course, it was the beginning of the month. But still. It wasn't until Halloween that things started to get really weird. I still remember a few things from that night. First of all, I uploaded my second Halloween blog here. http://screwattack.com/node/31400 It was rather ignored because of the event that followed one of Screwattack's videos, the clip of the week. http://screwattack.com/node/31313 Poor Destin. He had no idea what was going on. http://screwattack.com/node/31324 http://screwattack.com/node/31344 That ... monster ... It didn't just stop with the Screwattack HQ. It seemed to travel all across the world and kill off g1's. Which is something I didn't even know until this morning. I don't remember any of it! With no idea what exactly was going on, I went out to investigate. One thing was confirmed. In the back of my mind I did have vague memories of writing another blog. http://screwattack.com/node/31414 But in that blog ... I died! How can that be? I'm still here. So how could I have died? Apparantly, after my supposed death, the medic that found me took over my account to find out what was going on for herself. http://screwattack.com/node/31435 Official reports claim that the monster didn't come to her house. That she took her own life because she was depressed. I don't know what to think anymore. The monster hasn't reared its ugly head anymore. Nobody has seen it, nobody has survived. Nobody but me ... or did I? I remember waking up this morning in some sort of a facility. I was being scanned by this odd machine and I asked the man if I had fallen asleep. He said that I have and I didn't think too much of it. Saying that I was free to go, I did just that. As I was walking out, I overheard someone talking about Playhouse and dolls. No idea what they were talking about. I just wanted to get home. So, at home I discovered all of what I had written and I couldn't help but research this playhouse. What I came up with was unimaginable. They seem to deal in programmable human beings. What does this mean? Am I Puddle Jumper, or am I someone else? I think I'm him ... me ... I don't know. When I look in the mirror I still see myself. Or am I just programmed to see that?! SOMEBODY TELL ME! One thing is for sure. Even if it will take me till Christmas, I will figure this out.

ATTN: Readers

Check back on the fourteenth to see the Playhouse Saga continue!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Assassin's Creed II review

Desmond Miles, the unwilling hero of the first Assassin’s Creed installment, returns in this sequel to show us the story of Ezio Auditore de Firenze. Is the Creed of the assassins as strong as it ever was or is it starting to grow a little stale? Find out here in my review for Assassin’s Creed II!

Teh Pwn Shop presents

A Greyarch Entertainment review of:

Assassin’s Creed II

We begin this fantastic tale where the first game ended. After a few revelations in the first few scenes, we find ourselves in a whole new location with a few new people. They introduce Desmond Miles to the Animus 2.0, an improved version of the machine that allows people to relive past lives. It’s most notable feature is that people can stay in the machine longer.
Enjoy these first scenes folks because that’s all the Desmond you’re going to get for quite a while. Needing to be trained in the ways of the assassin, they send him back to one of his ancestors in Italy. His name is Ezio Auditore de Firenze, son of Giovani Auditore, star of the live action prequel movie of the game: Assassin’s Creed Lineage. We follow him through a decade of his life as he embarks on a journey of revenge. Wanting the people that killed his father and brothers dead, Ezio finds himself being pulled deeper and deeper in to a conspiracy that stretches its branches far and wide. Though it’s quite ridiculous to see Ezio thrust some people from the word: “hi”, it’s still a story that keeps you sucked in to the game at all times.
The already infamous scene involving Uncle Mario is but one of the many humoristic events in the story. Some might come at you from left field, whilst others are a tad more obvious. Still, it’s a welcome addition to a story that has so many dark, sad and plot twisting moments.
Besides the main story arch, you also get a few other ones to discover. Scattered throughout the cities are pages of a Codex, which belong to a journal written by Altaïr after the events of the first Assassin’s Creed. Some of these pages contain nothing more than pictures, but most of them have several paragraphs to plow through.
For all you historical nuts, there’s also a database that has a lot of information on all the people you meet and places you discover.

Which brings us to the world itself. Information about these places is all fine and dandy but how does it all look. Abso-fucking-lutely amazing.
The outside plains of Italy are barren for the most part, with a few towns and landmarks scattered about where you can collect a viewpoint or treasures. There’s not much there that is remotely interesting, besides a few locations like a monastery or historical ruins.
Now, it’s the cities themselves that are the main draw for this game, as expected. On the ground level, the cities are very details and beautiful. In a lot of games you can figure out where you are quite easily because a lot looks the same with a few landmarks in place to help you. Not here though. Not at all. There’s so much variety and detail that it’s easy to just get lost and roam about the city, gently pushing people aside to not let anything hinder you in admiring the view from down below. As the game is built with parcours in mind, all of the buildings have objects on which you climb such as banisters, windowsills, bars in front of the windows, bricks in the wall, beams on the rooftops and … ladders, though I barely use them. Ladders are for pussies, you see.
What really made my jaw drop on the floor, costing me a few hundred bucks for the dent it left, were the major buildings across the cities. Though liberties were taken with the rest of the city, these buildings are as accurate as it gets. Climbing them in the game or in real life would be the exact same experience. They are that well done. Combining the city’s regular streets and buildings with these landmarks, you have an experience that’s as close as a replacement to actually traveling to these cities as its going to get.
As far as the characters go, some are very well done whilst others are a bit dodgy. You’d think that this only goes for minor characters, but a member of the Auditore family itself looks really, really off. Scarily even. Clothingwise however, it’s all good. Some things are astounding whilst others are plain and simply, but believably simple.
As with the rest of the world, Italy knows a night and day. The environment is very beautiful by day. But the night is sometimes to dark and you will not be able to enjoy as much of it as you wanted to.
The effects of the Animus were a bit disruptive at first but once you got over it, you barely notice it and just focus on the wondrous Italy that slowly opens up all it has to offer as you progress through the story. Although I really started to hate Venice after like twenty minutes. Here’s how it went: I ran, I jumped, “Ffffuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed. I ran, I jumped, “ffffuuuuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed. Fuck it, I’m walking. I ran, I turned around the corner, “Ffffuuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed.

Jesper Kyd once again returns to helm a 30-piece string ensemble and 13-person choir at Capitol Records in to recording compositions which he created for the game. Though Genesis from Justice isn’t quite in the game, there’s still a tune in there with a little hint of the song. Because let’s face it, the trailers for Assassin’s Creed II blew our collective socks off with that song.
As with most games of the current generations, voice acting is present. With unbelievable talents behind the modern setting such as Nolan North and Kirsten Bell, the voice actors for the characters in the past are up to snuff as well. Some have said that English doesn’t do the game justice and that Italian voices are the way to go, but the English voice actors do their very, very best and deliver a great performance. And besides, Mario’s joke would have been lost to those who use a different language setting.
The rest of the sounds are quite adequate and sublime even. From the swords to the footsteps, it’s all good. However, I did find an annoying glitch that really annoyed the piss out of me. Because I use a headphone when playing games, I presume that I moved it around too much when the sound is dampened and that I just need to secure it again. So when the horse’s sounds suddenly become muffled, I start widgeting around with my headphone with no luck fixing it. At long last I realized that its only the horse that’s muffled. Not sound related, but the horse tended to warp from one spot to the next if it gets stuck following Ezio on foot.

Before I get to the gameplay, I have to talk about everything that you can do in this game. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of landmarks in this game. Many of these landmarks have glyphs on them, which, when scanned, open up a puzzle for you to solve. Once all glyph’s have been found and solved, you have all the pieces of the video called: The Truth, of which a piece is given to you each time you solve one. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds though. As you progress, you’ll encounter the most difficult puzzles that you have ever encountered. Because not only do you have to be intelligent, but you also have to guess as to what the puzzle wants you to do. Like for instance, one where you have to turn a wheel to match up numbers with symbols. You do this by finding a symbol and a number in the puzzle. But what is a symbol and what’s just part of the pictures. What’s a number and what’s a letter? Was that a one or an L? I don’t know it’s too small!
Many of these landmarks also serve as viewpoints. Other viewpoints are around as well, often found on top of towers or larger buildings. Viewpoints are needed to clear out the white spaces on the map. Each viewpoint opens up a section of the map which in turn reveals locations of interest like shops and others.
Two of these locations of interest are Assassin’s Tombs, which are regular old dungeons that you need to plow through for a nice reward in the end. And the other are the Codex Pages I mentioned before.
So now you already have to collect Glyphs, viewpoints, tombs and codex pages. But that’s not all my friend. Oh no, there’s one more thing that needs collecting. One hundred feathers are scattered around the entire world that you need to collect as well. Not just for a trophy, but for in game items as well. These however, aren’t shown on the map. And believe you me, even though you can check how many are left per district, sometimes you only get to know that you have one feather left in an entire city with the surrounding farmland and ruins. Oh yes, there will be searching.
Besides all of this collecting, there’s one more thing to add to the to-do-list. And these are the side missions. You can do assassination quests, messenger quests, races and beat up quests where you have to beat the living snot out of an adulterous husband. Some of these side missions are easy, some are not. It all depends on the requirements like a time limit or if you can be seen or not. It’s quite fun though to do it as spectacular as possible, using many of the gameplay elements to deliver an assassinations that would be mentioned in the history books if it had happened that way.

Now let’s get on to the final part of this review, the gameplay.

First of all, let’s talk about the one thing that brings my piss to a boil in a lot of games, the camera. And yes, it hurts like living hell. What did you expect, my piss is boiling. The camera is not very helpful in close quarter situations. Like for instance, inside one of the Assassin’s Tombs you will more than likely have to make your way through close quarters. Or you will find yourself close to a roof and walls but the point is, sometimes the camera either locks itself in a certain position when it’s where you can actually leap towards the next part of the parcours or it can’t be moved to where you want it to be. Of course, aiming and jumping is like trying to drive straight when you’ve got more alcohol in your veins than blood if you’re not jumping straight backwards. I mean, come on. It’s that typical thing where you need to think about what the game wants you to do. Does it want you to jump in the direction that the character has to jump or does it want you to steer to where the character is going to jump according to the camera.
This only happens on rare occasions but it’s still quite annoying when it happens.
It’s been mentioned a few times now so let’s get on to the parcours. Easy enough, all you have to do is press two buttons. The run button and the legs button (more on that after this) will do all the work for you. If you only press the legs button, you’ll be slow as hell so I advice against it.
There are four buttons on my PS3 controller that have shapes on them. You have triangle, square, circle and cross. The top button is the triangle button. It acts as the head button. You can go in to eagle vision mode with it and you can head but someone. The square and circle buttons are for your arms and the cross is for your legs.
This rag doll system makes combat very easy. As you will quickly associate the location of the button with Ezio’s anatomy. It makes for an easier adjustment. So now that we’re at the combat, let’s look in to that shall we.
Starting with unarmed combat, you can either go in to a fist fight or unarm an armed NPC. After you either draw or obtain a weapon, all you need to do is wait for your opponent to strike and simply counter that attack. There’s a lot of cool looking animations to go with that. But it’s not all you can do. You can also throw sand in their face, sweep their legs with a spear, use a smoke grenade or attack without countering.
Stealth is where all the fun is at though. Which is where it’s supposed to be, Ezio being an assassin and all. As you unlock Codex pages through the story, you can have Leonardo Da Vince decipher them and give you new toys to play with like a dual hidden blade, poisonous hidden blade and a pistol attachment for your hidden blade. The origins of these items is quite intriguing though. As, let’s say the pistol, is already way ahead of its time for Ezio, the origins make it even more intriguing.
And yes, I did say Leonardo Da Vince. And truth be told, if there’s any reason for you to buy or rent this game, this is it. As a gamer I have commanded armies, conquered worlds, found lost treasures and exploded mythological locations but meeting Leonardo Da Vinci is definitely something I’ll remember for a very, very long time.
Now, many have said that the combat is still repetitive and that the A.I. is pants on head retarded. But I don’t think that’s the case. The enemy NPC’s are quite skilled swordsmen if you think about it. They wait out for an opening and then strike. They don’t just go and attack hoping for the best, but they actually use strategy. Which is something most people tend to forget.
One final thing about gameplay involves the notoriety system. Where every one of your illegal or impressive actions will cause its gauge to fill up. Once it’s filled up, you go from anonymous to notorious, where the guards will attack you from practically the moment they see you. To empty this meter, you need to either tear down posters or bribe a city clerk.

To further aid Desmond in his adventure, Ezio has access to different shops where he can repair his armor or buy things to make it easier for him to do his thing. There’s a tailor where you can buy pouches and knife belt upgrade. You can also dye your clothes there. There’s a blacksmith where you can buy armor, weapons, ammunitions and repairs for your armor. There’s also a medic that can not only heal you, but who also sells medicine vials and poison.
And finally you have the art salesman where you can buy maps to find treasures in a certain location or paintings for your villa. Did I forget to mention that there’s also treasure chests to collect? I did? Oh, well, there’s just so much to do in this game! A man can easily forget right! Like how Uncle Mario looks like. But who can forget that It’s a him! Mario! (You had to know I’d work this in somewhere …)

Once again mentioned before, let’s talk about the Villa of your dear uncle Mario. The villa and the surrounding town are all yours to refurbish and expand. The more people live in the town, the more taxes you receive and the more money you get.
Through the shops and side missions, you will obtain weapons and armor that add to the city’s value. And of course the beautiful paintings collected at the art shop. Every feather and Codex page you collect and bring there has that effect as well.
Mainly though, restoring the city’s hot spots like the thieves guild and the whorehouse alongside with leveling up the shops will get you enough money eventually to buy the Vatican.

As for going from city to city, you have transportation. Horses are used for traveling from city to city but once you get there, you can use a fast travel option that zips you right to another fast travel shop in another town. Then there are mission specific vehicles like Da Vinci’s wings, a chariot and a boat. The first two you get to control yourself but the boat is like the fast travel option.
Lastly, to traverse the waters by yourself you can use gondolas at your disposal. Just don’t jump on them when you’re escorting someone or they’ll jump out like the good NPC’s they are.

Final notes:

To answer that question I asked in the beginning: Yes, the Creed is just as strong as ever. Two years is a long time and that time was spent well.
The story is deep and complex, far more fleshed out than in the first game. Visually this game is equally as impressive as the first game, even more so with the most beautiful Italy as our host this time. The music is so good that it makes your ears orgasm and the gameplay is quite intuitive once you have it in your fingers. Adding the villa to the mix was a good idea as well, but it’s like with other games. It’s easy to get rich fast. Newer gamers should avoid it though.
Clocking in under: “Ohmygodwhatthefuck look at the time” hours, this game has earned every single penny. Especially if you’re a pack rat like me and want to collect every single item in the game.
Now, if you’re a fan of the original you’ve already bought this game or are saving up to buy it. If you’re not a big fan, here’s my recommendation:

Rent it!

This game might not be your cup of tea. Plowing through the main campaign is always a good experience but this can easily be done over a weekend.

This has been Puddle Jumper with a review of Assassin’s Creed II, available on the PC, Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves review

The following blog exists out of two parts. one will be about the game itself whilst part two will revolve around the Downloadable Content released at Thanksgiving of 2009 Enjoy!

With the coming of a new Screwattack.com comes a whole new me. You’ve all been with me through many reviews of last generation games and now it’s time for me to do my first official review of a current gen console. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now the proud owner of a 250GB PS3 Slim Uncharted 2 pack. It’s been unpacked for a few weeks now and I’ve been playing the game and the console ever since. For my first review I’ll start with the game, followed by a quick review of the Slim in another blog. So, hold on to your butts everyone, it’s time to say bye bye to Kansas.

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Greyarch Entertainment presents

A Puddle Jumper review of:



Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

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The Single Player campaign can be summarized in two words basically. These two words perfectly describe how you feel 90% of the time as you are playing it, seeing everything happen before your very eyes. And these two words would be: Adrenaline Rush. Yes, that is exactly what you feel. I literally drove the people around me insane as I was playing this game. More times than not I would just start shouting out things like: “Oh crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap” as the next big thing came after me or set piece crumbled before my eyes. Or I would just shout: “Oh come on!” when something would happen right after something big happened. This is a good thing of course because a game has to be really awesome to make me shout out at something positive. Negative on the other hand has me kicking and screaming in less than a second.

For me, one of the major selling points of Uncharted 2 was its story. Combining the concept and feel of a lot of movies like Indiana Jones and National Treasure, U2 still manages to be fairly unique and witty, creating something that is both familiar as new. The Main story involves Drake being pulled in to the search for a treasure that Marco Polo discovered in a place of legends. As a starting point, Naughty Dog used the mysterious surroundings of Polo’s return to the main land where many of the 600 people with him had perished. A fanatic man today has spent a lot of money and manpower to know everything that he could about Marco Polo and he wants to hire Drake to retrieve an item that he believes will lead him deeper in to the story of Polo.
Besides but a few clever references to the first game, it can be considered to be a stand alone story. For those of you who are familiar with the previous installment in this franchise, these jokes will be pretty amusing whilst for others, it’ll either be a hit or miss. All in all though, the main story arch is done really well and you can tell that a lot of effort is put in to it as they combine fiction with reality all the time.
Now, the individual characters in this game are all very well fleshed out. And, as I said before, you can get to know who they are by this game alone. Recurring characters like Elena Fisher and, my personal favorite, Victor Sullivan, look and act exactly like before whilst the new characters all are full individuals with a past and a future. The fun thing about the characters in this game is that we get to know them not when the developers ram their stories down our collective throat in cut scenes, but rather in on the fly conversations during the actual gameplay. Returning from the previous game, there are now more of them and they are very fun to listen at. You’ll almost want to restart to the nearest checkpoint because the NPC was too far away for you to hear. Using these on the fly conversations, Naughty Dog gives us the history between these characters in a subtle and amusing way that we don’t even have to sit through if we want to. We could just ignore it and move on with our game!
One of the main complaints about Drake’s Fortune was that it was way to short. Well, say goodbye to Mini-me as Doctor Evil comes around. If you don’t understand the reference, GET OF MY INTERNET. Kthxbai Photobucket
Is he gone yet? No? I can wait … … … … … … … …



No, no, wait! Don’t go! I’ll continue! Look, I’m typing! STOP!

The main story and the characters are both well in to familiar territory but still pretty unique in their own way. We’ve all seen it before but that’s okay this time as Naughty Dog wraps it all in a very unique blanket.
Throughout the game we are also re-introduced to the humor of Drake’s Fortune. It’s back and with a vengeance as you will laugh from start to finish. Some jokes might be a little to subtle or obscure even for some people but all in all there’s still a lot of it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Graphics wise, the first game was pretty impressive. The water effects were absolutely stunning, the environments were great, but repetitive and the characters themselves looked pretty damned sweet. Not to say that it showed that it was early in the PS3 era.
Now, take Uncharted: Drake’s fortune and pour gallons of awesome sauce over it and PRESTO, you have Uncharted 2. The term awesome sauce applies here perfectly seeing as some sections of Naughty Dog say that if something needs to be improved, they just say that the person needs to make it awesome. Which is exactly what they did.
From the snowy Himalayas to the jungle of Borneo to the streets of Nepal, this game is the best looking game of 2009. I’m so obese from all this eye candy and still I want to go back for seconds. The characters all look so incredible that it’s sometimes hard to say if you’re watching a game or a live action movie of Uncharted. Not only do they look great, but they also interact with their environment so well that the play station 2 would literally explode if it tried that. Crates fall over realistically, things fall like they should, environments crumble or fall down as if it was happening right in front of you and your character will even shield himself from fire when close to it.
If these small things are impressive, then wait till you stand in front of a panorama like on the hotel in Nepal. Absolutely stunning the amount of detail, adversity and distance there is in this game. It’s like they took a picture of the actual place and digitalized every single thing of it as tiny as it may be. There are also major set piece moments that happen in real time and you will swear that you were actually in it. It’s so real and impressive you “splooge in your pants” at the sight of it.
Most importantly however, even with all this beauty, the Playstation Trey never stutters. No framerate, lag or anything of the sorts. It’s amazing. Or nay, awesome.

How does the game sound like? Well I’ll tell you! Obviously… this is a review after all. Voice actors come in all shapes sizes. Usually they’re just sitting in a booth, doing a Krusty. They come in, spew out their lines and get the fuck out as fast as humanly possible before any soul was actually put in to it. Okay, that’s just a rash generalization but the truth is that most voice actors just come in and stand alone in a booth. But in Uncharted 2, everything is done during the Mo-cap. Literally. The voice actors are hoisted in to a mo-cap suit whilst they re-enact their scenes, lines and all to create the best cut scenes that I have ever seen and heard. And Claudia Black in a Mo-cap suit is still Hot, FYI.
For the rest, it all sounds great and very real. There’s so many sounds that you thought that they actually went out and did everything in the game in real life just to get the sounds.
However, there’s one Villain character that sounds amazingly ghey... Iiiiiincoming … *shrugs*

I’ve discussed the story, the graphics and the sound. All that’s left now is the gameplay I guess. If Indiana Jones and National Treasure inspired the story, then you could say that Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider and Gears of War inspired the gameplay.
Platforming is once again a large part of the game as you traverse all territories hanging from a ledge or jumping from one platform to another… flailing your arms like an idiot sometimes but that’s besides the point. Sometimes its hard to tell where you can climb or not but most of the time the game will give you subtle hints as to what to do and where to go. For instance, in an icecave you can’t immediately see what to do whilst standing on a large rock. But there’s only one place you can reach by jumping and one part of that place is different than the rest, which indicates that this is your safest bet. All you need to traverse like the Prince of Persia are three buttons. The analog button, the jump button and the drop button. Hanging from a ledge it can be difficult to have Drake prepare to jump in the right direction but with some help from the six axis, you should do just fine. The one thing that I love about this game is that it incorporates new things to the plat forming all the time. One time you’re hanging and jumping on mountains and the next you’re doing it on a train moving through the jungle.
Moving around is now covered but what about the action. There’s shooting and fighting in this game and they blend together quite nicely without ever feeling like you’re losing maneuverability whilst doing one of the two. Seamlessly you will go from shooting your foe to beating the snot out of him and back again, sometimes even combining the two by using the stealth combat techniques.
Covering in a shooter seems like second nature these days. In First or Third person, covering is a part of the game. Sometimes you’ll pull back to another camera whilst in cover, as seen in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, whilst other time’s you’ll just go in cover like in Killzone II or Gears of War. Covering is so present these days that you’ll automatically want to do it in older games where its not present. Gears of War is one of the main reason why it’s so present. Naughty Dog took this covering idea, improved it and made it their own. You can move around freely behind cover and your character will automatically adapt to the cover he’s behind. From that cover you can shoot by aiming or by using blind fire, where Drake will just stick out his gun and shoot. Which is now accompanied by a nice crosshair. Lastly, when an enemy is close to your cover, you can point your analog stick towards him and use a stealth attack to quietly put him out of his misery.
Shooting is as easy as breathing in this game as all it takes is the L1 and R1 button. Aiming is fairly easy as the analog stick moves your crosshair fluently and fast if you want it to.
Stealth is a bigger factor in the game than in Drake’s Fortune as you now have a few levels that you can traverse by using stealth alone. Quite nifty if you ask me.
The controls of this game are very simple to get to know and easy to master with some practice. You’ll be monkeying around, shooting enemies without even knowing you pressed the button to do so. It will all come natural after a while as your subconscious will press the button before you even think about doing it. And trust me, this will happen once you are immersed in this game.
There is one thing sticking out like a soar thumb though. Covering might be a pain in the ass sometimes as coming out of it is sometimes too hard to easy. You’ll be covering and move your analog stick the wrong way only to come out of it because of that. Or you’ll be wanting to go out of cover and find yourself unable to do smoothly.

To finish the single player aspect of this game I want to say that the train sequence is my favorite level of any game now. That entire thing is so epic that it still makes me giddy just thinking about it.

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Now then, the other aspect of this game is the multiplayer. Where more than one person comes in to a single place in the game to shoot things!
There are several things that you can do in the multiplayer. You have your standard deathmatch, elimination, level based, objective based multiplayer maps and you also have co-op levels that are basically mini campaigns that last half an hour each, adding a few hours of gameplay easily all on its own.
Deathmatch and elimination are self explanatory I think so let’s take a closer look at the objective based maps. You have King of the Hill, two teams and one hill, whoever has it the longest or reaches the goal wins. Chain Reaction, five hills and whoever gets them all in a row wins. Plunder, capture the treasure and bring it to your camp a few times to win. And then there’s another king of the hill where there are five hills all the time instead of just one at a time.
Besides these modes there’s also an all objectives mode that has several deathmatch variations like Snipers and pistoles or grenades and handguns or simply an RPG deathmatch.
Co-op mission are three man missions that exist within contained parts of the single player campaign or maps from the multiplayer, depending on the variation you’re playing.
Co-op objectives take you from point A to point B with an objective. Either its getting a treasure or saving NPC’s, you and two others have to traverse the levels and face off against hordes of NPC’s that even go as far as being vehicles of mass destruction. They’re as much an adrenaline rush as the single player campaign. Done right, you can go through these levels by punching the living shit out of foes alone, if your teammates handle the heavies. I don’t wanna stroke my own ego here (yes I do) but I kick ass at co-op objectives. 60 + kills easily with skilled people next to me and 95+ kills very easily with noobs next to me. Not surprisingly, I get 90+ kills a lot.
Lastly we have Co-op arena. Multiplayer maps where wave after wave of enemy forces is thrown at you and two others, increasing in difficulty with each round. Very exhilarating if you have good people with you where at least one has a mic and takes control. Otherwise … yeah … not happening.

That is the multiplayer at its core. The gameplay is simplified when it comes to hand to hand combat and the sound and looks are basically the same. It’s one of the best multiplayers that I have ever played in my life and I just wish that it wasn’t so … how do I describe this in a politically correct and socially polite manner … : Meh.
Here’s some of the gripes that I’ve experienced whilst playing the game.
Grenades have a will of their own. You can’t cook grenades but they will explode whenever they want and they will have a blast radius of whatever. Usually it’s: you suck and the other guy is better. Your grenade will explode too late and your grenades range is one inch whilst the other guy’s grenade will kill you no matter where you stand. And I swear to god I’ve seen people ROLL OUT OF GRENADE EXPLOSIONS even though they are standing right on top of it when it explodes. What a load o crock.
Next up is the hangman death. You are hanging from a ledge, reaching up and pressing the square button to pull an enemy over the edge. You grab them and they are almost off their feet as suddenly they kick you off, even though that is impossible. The other way around is just as much bullshitty if you ask me. Because they will kick you off from a spot where twice as far as the length of their legs.
Warping is another issue in multiplayer. Not just against other people but in Co-op as well. For instance, you jump over a gap and almost halfway to the other side you warp back to the edge and you get pulled down. Or you jump and you get warped back in the arms of enemy having your next snapped, or you warp back up to the ledge for the enemy to kick you off.
And then there are the boosters. I swear to god some people hack to enhance the effects of their boosters and even add ghost boosters. There’s a booster that allows you to drop a grenade after you die and I’ve seen plenty people drop a grenade without that booster. Down the Irons is supposed to enhance your accuracy but in some case it makes every single shot hit you from whatever distance.
And then there’s the bullet’s paths. You can see bullets whiz by and miss you completely, not hitting you once and yet you die. You can pump ten clips in to an enemy without missing and they will casually turn around and beat you to death in two blows.
I’ve seen people beat me to death in one blow, without being hit before that. And it always takes two.
People, if you’re going to play multiplayer, do it with friends so at least you’ll have some fun. And if you’re doing it alone, play co-op because the worst thing that happens there are people that steal your kills.

As if this single and multiplayer wasn’t enough, Naughty Dog still has some things up their sleeve to lengthen your experience with this game.
In the single player campaign you will be able to collect 101 treasures throughout the entire game that are sometimes hidden so well that you will scratch your head until you bleed brain matter. Fun fact, the Strange Relic makes another appearance, which is a Precursor Orb from the Jak and Daxter series.
Multiplayer is where its at though as you will earn money with every match you play. With that money you will be able to buy new character skins, from both the villain as hero side, booster slots, which are bonuses like added accuracy, co-op weapon upgrades and taunts like making a kissing gesture or flexing your muscles. With this money you can also purchase things for your single player experience like “tweaks” that are basically cheats, skins, guns and more.
Besides all of that you can also buy concept art and bonus movies that are basically a making of Uncharted 2. There are about 9 movies of 5 - 10 minutes.

One interesting feature about the Uncharted 2 Multiplayer is the Cinema feature, which allows you to rewatch a previously played match from any angle, any player, any time. You can take fast forward, rewind and take screenshots. How did someone kill you at that time? How did they do this? Do that? Want to relive what you did that one time? Then do it!

Basically, this game is worth every single cent. Now, as for a rating, I’m going to go with Screwattack’s method from now. So, what should you do? Buy it? Borrow it? Or bounce it? This game is a definite:

Buy!

It’s the game of the year, no doubt about it. It’s a thrill from start to finish and because of the multiplayer, the finish is where you want it to be.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this review. Check out my other stuff and I’ll see you next time!

- Puddle Jumper is also a contributor over at Teh Pwn Shop, go there or be square!

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http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/

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Part 2


Noooooo, this is not a review of that crappy band with the wannabe celebrity. This is a continuation of my Uncharted 2: Among Thieves review, which can be found at the following location for you loyal readers at Teh Pwn Shop: http://tehpwnshop.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/pjs-uncharted-2-among-thieves-review/
And here if you wish to view it on Screwattack.com: http://screwattack.com/blogs/Greyarch-Entertainment/Uncharted-2-Among-Thieves-review-3

Uncharted 2
Thanksgiving Thieves

For you American folk, Thanksgiving has come and gone. A time for stuffing not only a turkey, but yourself as well. Where you thank what or whoever you need to thank and be jolly that you have something to be thankful for.
I myself, living in Belgium, have never had the pleasure of experiencing a thanksgiving evening myself. But the concept of it is great, even though the origin might not be as honorable.

The greatest videogame developer of all times, Naughty Dog, has recently released a videogame to which they had planned to release DLC on the Thanksgiving weekend. And for free! How awesome is that? Quite awesome, truth be told. The weekend has come and has almost passed and the DLC is now resting peacefully on my hard drive, being the awesomeness that it is.

For the completeness of it all, I hereby present to you my review for the Thanksgiving DLC of Naugty Dog’s: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

First of all, I’d like to warn all of you whose internet connection or subscription isn’t up to snuff. The DLC is over 100 MB. That was quite a shock for me as most certainly I will not be able to do much of anything until the fourteenth December. Which sucks monkeyballs. ((DISCLAIMER: no balls were sucked of people whose username contains the word: Monkey.))

The DLC is all about the Multiplayer and “need to know cosmetic updates”. The two most notable additions are the Leaderboard and the Player Card. The Leaderboard is easy to explain as it is nothing more than a ranking for the game. Which spot you’re in and how you fair compared to your friends. The Player Card has all of your own statistics in a single card so that you can easily keep track of your 1337 skillz.

Then we have the new map: The Fort. Based off of the Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune level 13: The Fortress, The Fort is a rectangular map with two levels and a side hallway. It’s the best looking map there is in my honest opinion. Within the confines of The Fort, there are so many details that every time you play it you will see something new. Although you still can’t see climbable things against the wall, you’ll forgive it as it blends with the environment so well, creating a beautiful scenary for you to chew on.
What really made my jaw drop on the ground was the panorama you see when at the side hallway of the map. This view alone warrants the 100 MB plus download as I literally spent five minutes soaking it in as the King of the Hill game unfolded itself behind me. You really have to see it to believe it.

Lastly we have the Thanksgiving event. Doughnut Drake and Doughnut Lazarevic … suuuuuuuuuuuuck. I’ll be glad when this event is over and I can play The Fort for real for once. And then there’s the double cash weekend. That’s fine I guess. For the people that are new to the game this will be a welcome thing but to those who’ve already played it, it’s nice to buy some bonus material or things you didn’t want to buy because you wanted to keep the money for when you need to bail out and fork over 40k.

So here’s my final verdict: Is this DLC worth cashing over 100+ MB for a mandatory update? (Yes, you have to give up Multiplayer altogether if you don’t wish to download it) Yeah. for the view alone.
I mean, the multiplayer is still riddles with bugs and everything I bitched about in my review is still there. But yeah, it’s worth it. Download it!

Naughty Dog might just be dangling pretty keys in front of us whilst our cribs are falling apart but it’s worth it eventually. It would have been nice to have it as a Co-op mission as well, but alas.

DOWNLOAD IT!

This has been Puddle Jumper with my review for the Thanksgiving DLC and event, I’ll see you next time!
Naughty Dog <3

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Anouncements 12/10/2009

Right, time to get some things straight!

Teh Pwn Shop:

TPS is a community of people that regular several websites, joining up at a forum by a member of said communities. After partnering up with yet another forum, the Bobo and Dylan's forum of win was born. Then it was said that perhaps we should get a website. And thus Teh Pwn Shop was made and a new wordpress site was born! If you're not already a member of this awesome forum, and a regular viewer of the website, I highly recomend doing so.

I myself am an author at this website, responsible for my blog sections such as Bullshit & Best Boss Blogs and Last Gen Reviews. There's plenty more authors over there though so check it out now!

tehpwnshop.wordpress.com

Greyarch Entertainment:

Since it isn't exactly my personal website, I can't show off certain things like random videos or art or other things. Which is why I created this blog. Plus, it allowed me to finally use the name Greyarch, on which I've been sitting for quite some time.

December:

For the month December I've planned a few things. For one, on the fourteenth, expect to see a new video. It's not going to be a review. Just wait and see. It's going to be a part of a blog which will tie in to the Screwattack.com Halloween event blogs which I created in response to the massive monster rage. But don't worry, I'll put them up here as well.

I'll do that in two days, as tomorrow I'll upload my Uncharted 2 review and the day after that I'll upload my Assassin's Creed II review.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Caught up!

Well, mostly anyways. You can find my B3 Blogs over at: Tehpwnshop.wordpress.com. I definitely recommend going to this website as there are a lot more people contributing to it that are all very talented and gifted people. Certifiably insane, but talented and gifted none the less.




<3

You've seen my art, my videos and my blogs. Now all that's left are my two prides of joy but they deserve some better attention so I'll probably post them up later this week. Until then, enjoy what I've put up so far!

E3 2009

Right, this is going to be a very long blog post as it will involve ALL of the conferences that I've watched with a special video and blog in the end. Hold on to your horses, it's going to be a long one.

Microsoft Conference:

I'm not promising to do the other conferences here but I'm happy to have witnessed this conference. Why? Let me tell you! The entire conference started with a weird but cool looking trailer of Beatles Rock Band, a Rock Band game entirely devoted to The Beatles. it was a good concept to start the show with but it went on for far too long. Though Paul motherfucking McCartney coming on was just plain EXCELLENT! Though they were obviously reading off a prompter and stoned off their ass. Next up was Tony Hawk Ride. Nothing new was said but again, the guest speaker was the interesting part. Tony Hawk himself. Now was where the fun started. Namely Modern Warfare 2. Easily able to surpass it's predecessor. This game is looking quite awesome. Mustache man is back. We find ourselves in a snowy area. The surroundings look good, the character models look great, the sound effects are very realistic and the vehicle sections, snow scooter, shown looked pretty well done. Kitase himself now came up stage to show the first ever footage of the 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII. Nothing new except some english voicework. It sounded pretty solid but then again, they only said a few words. Though there was a brief showing of a summon known as Odin, added specially for E3. It, looked GREAT! And it's expected to be released in spring of 2010 Exclusives HOOOO! Yes, the exclusives are coming up next. XBLA will soon be getting a sidescroller hoping to be as good as Metroid named Shadow Complex. As far as I could see, it's pretty damned sweet. You can use the environment, jump, duck and all that jazz. The motions look fluid and the graphics look good for an Arcade exclusive. They then showed a cartoony races using the 360 avatars named Joyride! yeah, moving on. Crackdown 2 trailer. Looked cool. Lots of action, lots of good graphics, good voicework. Awesome in general. Next trailer was Left 4 Dead 2. It had humor, ZOMBIES, guns and chainsaws. Yup, that's pretty much all we need to know. It was the next trailer that I was most exited for though. Namely Splinter Cell Conviction. It's a 360 exclusive this time, even though Double Agent was far superior on the PS2 but I'll let it slip :P Gameplay: This time you still play as Sam Fisher. Moving about like the prince of persia is a lot more smoother and faster this time around. Since there is little need to sneak about now. Environment wise, Sam uses it like Batman did in the Batman Begins game. For example, you are up on some beams in a room and Sam shoots down a chandelier that crashes on to several people. This causes fear in your opponents who start to run to the crash like headless chickens. One thing I noticed though is that Sam surprisingly used a lighter version of CQC. Sam Fisher meets Solid Snake? I'm game! The story in this game is entirely in Real Life and you are in control. The story is about the death of his daughter and that's all we know really. All in all, one of the best demo's and gameplay demo's of the morning. After Splinter Cell came Forza Motorsport. the only thing I found notable was the fact that you can use skins created by professional artists. Excitement all around as Halo ODST was announced! You play as the rookie of the team. Something happened to a large city and you are there to find out what. By using flashbacks to other characters, you collect clues as to what exactly happened. Since you are no longer a Spartan, you can use silenced weapons and a whole new SPlinter Cell like Visor that uses different modes. The HUD looks intuitive, the Pistol is back and OverPowered as usual and all in all it looks solid. However, after ODST, a trailer was shown to Halo Reach. A simple trailer but very impressive. Unfortunately, anything else about the game is TOP SECRET, but Beta keys will be handed out with ODST. Alan Wake graced us with its presence next. A Resident Evil/Silent Hill type of game that seems to handle a lot smoother, looks a lot better and is in general creepier. It show a lot of promise, this one. 360 news was next. Last.FM will be providing news services to the system and Netflix will be updated. Sky TV will now also be providing the UK and Ireland with Live tv. Live Party will also allow you to watch a movie online with your friends at the same time, with your avatars sitting in a theater and the movie is being played out on the screen. There is also a new partnership with Facebook with a more than awesome interaction between it and the games, which by the way all happens simultaneously if you will. Lastly, TWITTER is coming as well. And now the moment we were all waiting for really. It was Don Mattrich himself that came on stage and introduced to us, for the first time at the Microsoft Press Conference: Hideo Kojima! He was there to announce that the Metal Gear Franchise would come to the 360 with its new installment Metal Gear Solid Rising, where you play as none other than Ninja Raiden… Wait … As already mentioned in several threads, I FUCKING CALLED IT. Lastly, Project Natal. It’s an EyeToy V.2 where you attach a device to your 360 so that you can act as the controller. It has motion detection, voice detection and it works surprisingly well. By the way, it’s Steven Spielberg approved apparently because he came to talk about it on stage. It didn’t interest me much until Peter Fucking Molyneux introduced us to Claire and Mylo. Claire is a real life woman who is in front of the LCD TV and the 360 using the Natal. Mylo is a virtual character that interacts with Claire as if he was a real life person. He reacts, responds and acts as if he was real. His voice, his emotions and more. The way Claire interacts with him was amazing as well as, for example, she drew a fish on a piece of paper, said what she was drawing and how and then handed the piece of paper over to Mylo. Literally. She held it over the TV. The Natal had scanned the paper and the SAME paper was in Mylo’s hands. The same color and size and he acted as if the fish was really drawn on it. Amazing really! That was pretty much the Microsoft conference. I hope that you enjoyed reading this and that it helped you enjoy E3 some more. If I can’t be with the other conferences, sorry. But I’m as sure as hell going to make another blog saying what I liked best about this year’s E3. This has been Puddle Jumper, see you later.

EA Conference:

The EA conference kicked off at the right time and in the right way. Bringing us in the mood with a nice opening video, we were about to be treated to a lot of new and exiting games. Or so we thought … The first trailer shown was definitely promising. Dante’s Inferno was very, very cool. The graphics were familiar though. Dark, bloody, brown and gritty. That didn’t bother me much though because it looked awesome, the story looked to be amazing, the sound was great and it was of awesome length as well. A big name came on stage and talked about The Sims 3. Where after a trailer was shown. It shows that The Sims 3 sticks to the formula to the letter. It’s goofiness and goofy voices. It’ll definitely please fans. Proudly the man then introduced Chip Liang from Hasbro. Look, it’s the crapper, let’s get in it, EA says. First he talks about Littlest Pet Shop expantion packs, three of them for the WII and the DS. Then about Littles Pet Shop online. Next up was Dyan Williams with Charm Girls Club. CGC at the mall … PJ party … minigames like combing hair … grooming hair … Wii game … Yeah … no! Please EA, move on will ya. DO NOT CLAP! AUDIENCE, DO NOT ENCOURAGE THEM. My eyes are burning! Make it stop! Wait, who’s this? Patrick Soderlund … Need for Speed Shift? Hell yeah! NFS returns to the tracks with this one. No more street racing. The entire game’s pitch is about three things: First: This will be the first NFS with multiple developers. Second: The Cockpit view is extremely detailed, filled and realistic. Unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Third: It’s extremely deep. Meaning that your driving influences your game and how your driver evolves. To be honest, it looks very good. To all at E3: There’s a BMW to win over at their booth too! Ray and Greg from Bioware then came on to show Dragon Age Origins. The first part of their talk was in extremes like best, darkest and more. The trailer was perhaps the best for a fantasy game evarrrrrrr. It was kickass, it looked great, sounded awesome and it was overall bad assssssss. Next up was perhaps the most anticipated title: Mass Effect 2. Acording to the speaking, Shepard is a kickass hero. At any rate, the story is going to be very emotionally charged with a lot more new characters, new worlds and a lot more. The trailer looked cool. The presumed dead Shepard is back in a great trailer that definitely was worth the wait. Everything about it just screamed that it was going to deliver. And then came … Russia? Wait … What? Ru … OOOOOOH, it’s a trailer for their next segment! EA Sports is here! Peter Moore comes up and brings us Fight Night round 4. He said that it will raise the level for the gaemplay as FN 3 raised it for the graphics. The game focuses on the four S’s. These are Speed, Strength, Strategy and Style. It looks a bit better than FN round 3 but it sounds a lot more painful. I was about ready to strap in a cup because I was afraid I might get hurt. Like every other game already shown that’s worth two shits, they aim for realism and this game pulls it off well it seems. We just have to wait and see. But we don’t have to wait long because the released has been changed to June 25th of 2009. Also announced: EA MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts. Steve Chiang came to play and talked about Browser games for EA sports. Including an American Football team builder game and a Madden football game. Nothing to get exited about really. Or at least not for me. Now we got to the good stuff as Tom French from Pandemic Studio’s came on to talk about The Saboteur. The Sean Devlin trailer that he showed looked realistic but at the same time a lot like a game. Which is something I miss about most games nowadays. To me this game looks to be a toned down Sin City during World War II. Hoo-rah! Gameplay showed us that it is a lot like Assassin’s Creed in the sense of that you can climb everything and that you have to sneak around to kill or blow up. The only other thing I could pick up was that the minimap looked good and the gameplay looked fluent. Near the end there was also a small driving section. EA Partner time as Tim Schafer came up to discuss Brutal Legend. Apparently he finds Jack Black to be funny. NO WAI?! Mostly he discussed about the characters and how that one guy can fly with his hair. No, seriously, that’s what he said. And all that the trailer did was make me wish I was a roadie … And to buy the game because OZZY FUCKING OSBOURNE is in it. WIN. Lastly there was a special message from Jack Black himself that was … euh … weird … To say it nicely. But it was extremely effin funny though. Cevat Yerli talked about Crysis 2 after that. It’s for the PC, PS3 and the 360. It will use the Cryengine 3 to maimize its overall performance for graphics, sound and A.I. A new partner was announced. RealTime Worlds is developing a game known as APB or All Parts Bulletin. It’s set in a single, modern city. One hundred people will be put in a single server and it is their job to become as famous as possible in the shortest amount of time. RTW is aiming for the best and most realistic as possible graphics with this game and they’re definitely pulling it off. Here’s to a good game guys and I hope you have a good time over at EA. Then the room went dark, an orchestra started to play and we all awaited what was coming next. Then the music starts to sound familiar and when we realize that it is nothing less than a song from Star Wars, actors appear on stage dressed as Sith and Jedi. Ray and Darrel come on stage to announce Star Wars: The Old Republic. Made by Bioware, they are promising a game unlike we’ve ever seen before. Every person you will encounter in the game will be voiced and on top of that, it will be voiced by their own unique voice actor. So, a fully voices game with a different actor per character. AND there’s a unique story behind every playable character for a unique experience per playthrough. How awesome is that? And then came the trailer. Holy SHIT. How was it, you ask? IT’S STAR WARS, YOU WANKER! It Rawked my bawls off! This had to be the best trailer shown so far. There will never be a trailer as good as this one and it will be written in stone that it will be worshipped. It deserves a 10/10 on every aspect that you can think of. Seriously, go watch it now. What are you doing, staying here if you haven’t watched it yet? GO! I can wait. The conferecne was over anyways and Peter wrapped it all up after this. Well, that was the EA conference for you. I won’t be doing the Ubisoft conference but I will attempt to follow Sony and Nintendo. I can’t guarantee anything. This has been Puddle Jumper, I’ll see you next time!

E3 So far:

Looking at these two conferences together has made me realize that 2007 might be kicked off its throne. So far, '09 has given us a lot of awesome footage, surprising footage and long awaited service to new consoles. Though they have kicked themselves in the ass somewhat by making certain segments too long like Beatles Rock Band and by adding very unimportant segments like EA girls and EA Sports Active. But, all in all, both of the conferences were solid. The Ubisoft conference I didn't watch and I have to say, I'm happy that I didn't. Because for god's sake did that suck monkeyballs. The only notable event was the Assassin's Creed trailer that looked just as good and just as awesome as the Star Wars trailer. Other trailers that have already been shown for E3 all promise very good games. Nier, Batman Arkham Asylum joker gameplay, Just Cause 2 ... These games deserve a medal. Lego Rock Band and Lego Harry Potter however should be brought behind the tool shed and have a two barrel shotgun placed in their mouths. I know, they might look pretty and be very friendly but it's best for all that these diseased, inbred mongrels be shot to oblivion. between Screwattack, Gamespot live and Twitter I've been following E3 quite nicely really and I would just like to thank everyone for their awesomeness.

Nintendo Conference:

After a full day of eager anticipation, E3 continues with the press conference of the Big N. Right on schedule, Nintendo begins its presentation with a video and the announcement that Cammie Duraway is up. After a long and useless speech, that promised us new and awesome innovations, a nifty little Mario montage appeared to guide us through the years of Mario. After which we got New Super Mario Bros WII! Bill comes on stage and shows us this game which is a side scrolling Super Mario, but with four players at the time. Not exactly invoking us to ooooh and aaah but it’s good enough for an opener. We also see a Propeller Suit, that propels you in to the air, and a stat menu at the end of every level of how you did. The game launches in the holidays of 2009. Cammie’s back to talk about WII fit and how it is the best sold game and that it is a whole new platform of gaming on its own. She announced: Wii Fit plus. Wii Fit V.2 really. Yawn! Next up, talk about Balance games. Seriously guys, you only got 60 minutes. Reggie Fils-Amis comes on and introduces to us: Mii Motion Plus. We’re already acquainted, thank you. We don’t need to know you’ll be releasing a supplement to the controller that will allow it to work like it always should have worked. Seventeen minutes in and still nothing guys, hurry up! Bill is back and shows is Wii Sports Resort. It looks good, graphics wise. But that’s where it ends. We see skydiving, archery and basketball with Reggie. More Wii Motion Plus talk. Games for it will include Tiger Woods Gold, Virtua Tennis and Red Steel 2, the only decent thing so far and it’s only shown as a fucking title on the screen … RPG talk is next and how it will be revolutionized by the WII. A trailer is shown for Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers. It looked decent enough. The graphics were okay and the voices were okay. If it weren’t for the fact that this game announcement came completely out of nowhere, I would have been more pumped. Luckily we were given more time to prepare for Kingdom Hearts on the WII. Because they actually took their time to announce it. Sort of. It still came out of nowhere after a speech. God, do they love to speech. Reggie then discusses a new Mario RPG known as Bowser’s Inside Story, where the two brothers are shrunken to a microscopically small levels and they are trapped inside of Bowser himself. This game will come out on the DS and will be released this fall, but frankly, all I could think of was how desperate this idea really is. And then … The most awesome announcement so far. Are you ready for this, reader? Here it comes: Golden Sun DS was announced. Very nice! It sort of upgraded like Pokémon did but it has its own style and such. HALLELULIA Nintendo at least has something! … Cammie shows James Patterson’s Woman’s Murder Club: The game. It looks good graphic wise but I think that is where the fun ends … Seriously, Nintendo? SERIOUSLY? Then C.O.P.: The Recruit was announced. A comic meets Anime style GTA clone on the DS. It looks promising. Suck, yay, suck, yay, suck yay … Make up your mind Nintendo. Style Savy: a game for girls on the DS is announced. Zwinky on the DS, really … ‘Nuff said … Moving on … DSi Talk. Aw, hell no. Knock it off, Nintendo. Stop hiring speech writers to do your job! You’re doing what now? Tossing numbers at us? One million units sold for the I and 400k Lite’s. Interesting … Finally, a return to games comes but as usual it comes out of nowhere. First they make you doze off with their boring speeches and then WHAM … Something average. Something liiiiike: WarioWare: Do It Yourself. Yeah, nothing more was said. Then came the announcement that you could upload media directly to Facebook in the future. Then we were treated to TWO SENTANCES about The Legend of Zelda: The Spirit Tracks and a nice title image on the screen. I’m sorry if its so short per paragraph guys, but that’s just the way it is. If there was more to talk about per item, I would do it … Satori Iwata comes on and tosses more numbers at us and a really long, pointless and boring speech. SUNUVA BITCH. It’s a Game convention guys … You’re talking to Gamers. Not businessmen. The reporters there aren’t interesting in all that shit! TEN MUCKING MINUTES later we’re finally getting somewhere. He pumps us up, he thrills us, we’re getting … oh wait, never mind. It’s just a Vitality Sensor for the Wii that shows you your vitals … Bah Cammie’s back! Yay …! …? She says that she’s going to further stimulate us … WHUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough* Okelidokeli. Wait, what’s … OMFGWTF! Is that? Could it be? YES, it IS Super Mario Galaxy 2. It looks like the first game, it sounds like the first game and it’s just slightly bigger on some levels than the first game. Disappointment all around. At this point, applause has gone down to a minimum. Hell, EA girls had more applause than they did. Sad really. Reggie returns and shows us a barrage of awesome games in under ten minutes. But to be honest, they look like Jesus Reincarnated compared to the craptastic 50 minutes that had already passed. First up, a Conduit trailer. Nothing new, but it gets us pumping for the next ones. Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. A rail shooter that looks very nice for a WII game. Seriously, the graphics were superb. It also promises to have a story unlike ever before seen in the RE universe. We’ll see about that. Dead Space Extraction follows with a dark and scary trailer. In the end, this is too few too late. Sorry Nintendo, but … Hey Reggie, ‘Sup? Sorry if I don’t believe you’re actually building up atmosphere for something good. Hehe … Then comes the trailer. Team Ninja and Nintendo present. Wait, what? Team Ninja and Nintendo? Okay, now I’m curious. The trailer starts. It looks awesome. Dark, stylish and with more colors than the usual games. The sound is excellent. Yeah, this could be what we’ve all been waiting for. Suddenly a woman says: ‘My name is Samus Aran.’ HOLY SHIT. OMG! The title then comes along: Metroid: The New M. This is the best trailer of the Nintendo conference without a doubt. With this trailer alone you managed for me to forgive you Nintendo for this craptastic Conference. Look that trailer up if you haven’t seen it already, it’s amazing.

Sony's conference:

Microsoft has stolen the show from the word go with their more than excellent conference. Nintendo disappointed us all but managed to sneak in some pretty awesome games, though you couldn’t blink or you’d miss them. And finally, EA and Ubisoft presented us with some pretty solid conferences themselves. Now was the time for the other big name. Sony’s up! How did they fare? Let’s find out. The pretty epic opening video promised a lot as it left the video’s of the other big names eating its dust. It’s a tad long though, but still epic as hell. Jack Tretton comes on stage. He is the president and CEO of Sony. Apparantly he needs the Wii’s Vital Sensor because he’s so nervous. He made a long speech but it was modest and solid. It was mostly talk about games that will be on the PS3. Then he begins to talk about the Playstation 2. Praising it, Jack talked about how they will not be stopping with the PS2 for as long as people are buying. And if you look at the numbers he tossed at us, the PS2 is still the King of the Hill. On a final note, the PS2 will be getting over 100 new titles. After some PSN praise, Jack introduced Evan Wells from Naughty Dog. There’s only one game from Naughty Dog here and that’s Uncharted 2: Amongst thieves. He talks more about the single player campaign. Then he shows a video that totally blew my mind away. The gameplay looked just as solid as the first game. Acompanied by the NPC known as Chloe, you free run across town with her not being a bother like … She who shall not be named. Chloe’s voice actress is Claudia Black so that brings this game to even higher levels. The gameplay looks very thrilling, seeing as you are also fighting choppers. Combine that with the awesome graphics and the cinematic nature of the game, you have a hit on your hands. And lastly, the humor was amazingly funny too. Jack then introduced Andy from Zipper Interactive to show us MAG, or Massive Action Gaming. This is a MMO first person shooter where 256 people are devided in two teams. It’s further split up in to four platoons. The demo shown is with a full server. It looked very good with a nicely filled HUD that could be a little confusing at first. There was no lag to speak of. Interesting fact was that you needed to complete an objective first before you can respawn. Jack was back at this point to talk about future PSP games like Assassin’s Creed, a Hannah Montana Bundle and more. Yes, you heard me correctly. A HANNAH MONTANA PSP BUNDLE! Kaz Hirai then was tossed on stage to talk about the PSP for the next while. First he announced the PSP GO. The thing will cost 249 USD. It slides open on the side, which is pretty sweet. It has a 16 Gygabite internal flash drive, built in Wi-Fi, integrated Bluetooth and more. For the PSP services was also announced: MediaGo, a community service for media sharing. And SenseMe, which will analyze your mood for your music playlist. The Toolkit’s price will also be dropped by 80%, there will be more content to the Playstation Store and some more speeches. I don’t care because the speeches are good, unlike at the other conferences. Yamauchi announces Gran Turismo for the PSP after that. It runs on full screen at 60 FPS, it has 800 cars, 35 tracks and 60 lay-outs for those tracks and a single player mode with standard stuff. The special feature will be a multiplayer for up to four people and the ability to trade cars with other people. A video was shown at this point that shows a very detailed and graphically great image. It releases on October first of ‘09. Kaz returns to introduce the man of the days: Hideo Kojima. Kojima announces a new Metal Gear Solid game on the PSP named Peacewalker. Set ten years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3, you return to the battlefield in Costa Rica as Big Boss. The trailer showed play station 2 worthy graphics with MGS4 like gameplay. PSP time is over and Jack returns to the stage. The man announces that Resident Evil is coming for the Playstation Portable alongside games like Little Big Planet, Motorstorm, Harry Potter, Hannah Montana and many others. More PSN talk now as numbers are being tossed at us, but not for long as its announced that Final Fantasy 7 will be available for download. And then comes some Home talk that nobody cares about … An announcement was made that they were going to release content for multiple games such as Infamous and many others. Then came a video with previews of what was in store for the PS3. It was a lengthy video but it was made out of pure win. There were games in it like Katamari, Battlefield and others. Jack hyped up Rockstar to announce an exclusive for it known as Agent, a spy game set in the 70’s. Talk about it stopped as Jack introduced Sebastian to talk about Assassin’s Creed 2. Returning to the game is Desmond Miles who is now returned to his ancestor in Venice, Italy during the renaissance. One word can be used to describe the assassin Ezio. And that is: Ninja. The gameplay demo revealed that it’s a lot smoother, more fluent and a lot faster than in the first game. You can use inventions from Da Vinci like the flying machine, which you use to fly over Venice to your target, and the hidden blades, of which you now have two. The seeker A.I. is also shown. This means that certain NPC’s will look for you in the hiding spots. You are able to fight barehanded and you are also able to disarm your enemies. There’s also a smoke bomb and Ezio can swim. This game is promising so much and I want to bet that it is going to live up to its name and deliver us even more. It’s scheduled to release this holiday. Jack returns to talk about Final Fantasy XIII. After which he shows a video about it. The English voices were kind of off if you asked me. It was like the characters themselves weren’t talking and the guns weren’t the ones making the sounds. At any rate, it looked awesome enough as always. The story is promising to be quite emo though. But more importantly was the next announcement. Final Fantasy 14. The video shown promised us a fantasy world again with great graphics and chocobo’s. And it’s a new MMO! Next up was the new Motion Controller. From the makers of the Eyetoy comes a nun chuck like controller that uses a sphere at the end to interact with the Eyetoy on the TV. From first glance, this controller is just as good as the Wii Motion Plus. But it would be used a bit differently than at the Wii. For instance, you’ll be turning it on and throwing a fireball spell in RPG’s. The sensor at the end of the controller makes it look like you are holding an item on TV like a baseball bat and more. And I do mean you. The Eyetoy camera, remember. Unlike Nintendo, the developers of this controller welcome casual games but will focus more on hardcore gamers. Fuck, yeah! The sword and shield demo was pretty impressive and so was the archery demo. Seriously, if the end result is going to be this impressive, the Wii has no chance in hell. However, the only problem was that the controller looked like a Dildo … and so anything they said on stage was just oozing with sexual innuendo. It launches in Spring of 2010. Little Big Planet news after that. New downloadable costumes will be of movie characters such as Jack Sparrow and Mister Invincible. Also announced, Mod Nation Racers, a Little Big Planet game but with cars. There’s nothing more that could be said about this really. Jack then showed us a trailer of the next game by the team behind Ico. Namely: The Last Guardian. It seems that the leaked trailer was in fact real but the real E3 trailer was twice as long. The action shown in the last part was quite exhilarating really. It looked amazing as well. What also looked amazing was the trailer for Gran Turismo 5. Because DAMN, did that look good. Last to be shown but definitely not the least: God of War 3. As Jack said, it’s not just for the play station 3, it can only be done on the play station 3. The demo had blood, awesome graphics, gruesomely realistic sound and kills, interesting enemies and it was sheer epic win. I mean, you jump at a harpy, grab it and start stabbing it repeatedly so it will take you over the large gap that you couldn’t cross. You can also Zerg Rush enemies like Wolverine did on that wooden bridge at the beginning of Xo Wolverine: the game. The Gauntlet gameplay was pretty solid as well as Kratos literally Fight Club stomped the guy to death. Quick Time Events are back but that’s more like a Fucking Duh statement. Lastly, the demo showed big bosses with QTE’s. In the end, this video was amazing and I too awwwww’ed alongside the crowd as they had to cut it short. Find this trailer now and watch it a hundred times. This blog is pretty much over because the conference has ended. Sony has climbed to the top of E3 with this conference and I doubt that they can be knocked off. Sony wins this years E3 and this year’s E3 wins the Best E3 ever award in my books. Sony would have tied with Microsoft if it wasn’t for those damned games for girls that they showed and the awkwardly long Beatles Rock Band sequence. Sony just never fumbled the ball really.

E3: Final Thoughts



E3: One More Day

One more day of E3, huh? Well, let's see what we ... *he came buckets at this point.* JAK AND DAXTER THE LOST FRONTIERS? FUCK E3! THIS IS THE SHIZNIT RIGHT HERE! So, I clicked on the video that I've been waiting for all E3 and eagerly anticipate what's coming. You've seen everything I've done about E3 so, right? I've noted down everything there was said in the Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony press conference and as a bonus, I also did EA, and then I typed it up as a nice blog and posted it here for all to see. And I also made one blog reviewing E3 up to that point and a Final Thoughts VIDEO. But all of that fails in comparison to this one video that I ... What's this? PSP? FUCK THE PSP! I want Playstation 2 footage, BITCH. What's this? FLYING? Oh wooptie fucking dooda! How will Jak look like? What will Daxter look like? What's the story? What's GAAAAAAAAH What IS this shit? Over after 45 seconds and they showed nothing?! You can fly ... Oh woohoo! Blow me ...


Video Games | Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier | E3 09: Official Debut
XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii
Anything else noteworthy about this E3 day then, because this is lamecakes to be honest. Army of Two gameplay ... Yeah, okay. That's at least done right. A Walkthrough of The Agency? Three videos of gameplay and it's ... Oh wow, looked good. Tekken 6? Nice. A Left 4 Dead 2 walkthrough? Pretty Fuckin-A-Awesome Hot Chick filled Postal 3 Video? AWESOME. Lawd, G.I. Joe is promising to be another Movie to Game disaster. Dead to Rights is back. Meh ... Didn't really care much. The previous titles had good trailers but the gameplay was rather generic and the story was meh. As I'm typing this, there's still no Beyond Good and Evil 2 talk or trailer or anything of it. here's to hoping it'll come soon ... Bugger it all to hell ... For me, E3 ended yesterday with this blog: http://screwattack.com/node/23693 Anything remotely interesting was said during the big 3 conferences ... Bah!