the-inbetween.com

Game of the Year Awards

Everybody else is doing it, so I will too!

The annual the-inbetween.com's 2004 Games of the Year That I Have Played (and some I haven't) Awards. It just rolls off the tongue, don't it?

The "Best of the Best" Award:
Gradius V
Chronicles of Riddick
Halo 2 XBL
Metroid: Zero Mission
Astroboy: The Omega Factor

The "Best Games That I Need to Play More Of" Award:
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Outrun 2
Metroid Prime 2

The "No Sir, I Don't Like It" Award (is it really an award at that point?):
Ninja Gaiden
Final Fantasy XI PS2
Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (they are very loose with the "treasures" designation)

The "Awesome!! Really Good! OK. Got Old Quick" Award:
Burnout 3
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

The "Perpetually On My 'To-Get' List" Award:
Paper Mario 2
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

The "I HATE Having To Unlock Shit In A Game That I Bought" Distinction:
Hot Shots Golf Fore

The "Best Games That I Bought But Haven't Played Because I Know They Will Take Way Too Long And I Don't Have The Time For Super-Long Quests And Leveling Up To Level 9999" Award:
Disgaea
Phantom Brave
Tales of Symphonia
(also known as the "WTF? I used to like JRPGs" Award.)

The "Best New Old School Fun" Award:
Metal Slug 3 (despite the annoying continue system)
Mega Man Anniversary Collection
Alien Hominid
Gradius V

The "Funky-Assed Theme Song" Award:
Katamari Damacy
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

The "It Has Vin Diesel In It And I Don't Absolutely Hate It, How Did That Happen?" Award:
Chronicles of Riddick

The "Dumbest Most Irritating Map That Nobody Ever Wins On" Award:
Coagulation (Halo 2)

The "Games That I Haven't Played But I Hear They're Good, OK?" Award:
Half-Life 2
Far Cry
Paper Mario 2
World of Warcraft
(often known as the "Not-A-PC-Gamer" Award.)

"Surprise of the Year"
Katamari Damacy actually getting a domestic release and being successful with it!

The "Where The Fuck Are They Already?" Award, sponsored by Capcom:
Killer7
Mega Man Anniversary Collection GBA
Resident Evil 4 (almost here)

The "Most Anticipated Game of 2005 That No One Will Buy" Award:
Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament

And, lastly, Game of the Year goes too... (dramatic use of the extended entry field):

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Random Shopping Tales

The post wherein I write about the pre-Christmas shopping period in a random stream of consciousness way.

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PSP vs DS Round... Four?

The videos of the now infamous popping-UMD defect in the PSP (one of many defects!) are spreading around a lot, including the one where the jettisoned UMD lays the smack down on a chilling DS. I think it's even more amusing in animated gif form:

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Shit Awards

The Spike TV Video Game Awards were on yesterday early last week, and I actually managed to sit through the entire fucking shitfest. Here's a show meant to celebrate video games, and yet it makes me feel completely repulsed for the whole medium and makes me want to quit playing games forever. Way to sell the medium, Spike! I think the whole two hour affair caused a mass brain-cell genocide. Millions perished.

Now I know where Spike TV derived its name from. Watching it is very much like having a Railroad spike pounded into your abdomen.

Pretty much anyone that has played more than two games in their life was equally repulsed, as their coverage shows.

What follows are my live, but belated, transcriptions of the show -- with some edits and comments and clean-ups here and there. I think my frustration with the whole show is evident...

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The Monopolization of Sports Games

Electronic Arts, forever content with repackaging Madden's own turds every year, started losing ground to the new contender, SEGA Sports. The underdog, with its arguably superior game, went at EA's jugular with a low, low budget price. It started to work. EA's market-share began to slip.

EA couldn't stand this, so they made a deal: buy two sports games, get one free. No one really cared. Then they lowered their prices, but not as low as SEGA's. No one really cared. So, naturally, when the competition became tough, they fought back the only way they know how: they beat SEGA to a pulp with their giant, Scrooge McDuck like, money bags.

EA has bought 5 years worth of NFL exclusivity, and in doing so has essentially killed the SEGA's NFL line, 989's NFL GameDay line, Microsoft's NFL Fever line, and overall competition in the marketplace. EA now has free reign to republish the same shit ever year, at a stupid price, without ever needing to up the ante. Everyone else loses big.

The gaming boards, the realms of the more dedicated gamers, responded with a united "Holy Shit". They see the problems this causes. The sad thing is, come next football season, the casual gamer -- the one that buys the sports game here, the military shooter there -- will not know or care about what transpired today. They'll just go to get their annual football game, and they'll be greeted with one option. The memories of those other choices will become long forgotten (the stuff of legends), and EA's evil shadow will spread, bringing darkness and terror to all.

Unbiased

I'm probably going to get a PSP when it's released here. I already have a DS. As such, it's hard for me to be biased to one or another. In the end, I'm not tipping the sales in favour of one or the other. I'm not the kind of person that either Nintendo or Sony would go for because they don't need to do anything to win me over.

My gamer loserdom meant that I was sold on these devices the minute they were announced. I have certain issues with both of them, yes. I hate the fucking UMD convergence shit that the PSP is pushing, and the DS is clunky, but the mere fact that you can plug games in and play them is good enough for me.

I mean, christ, I own a GameGear and a Wonderswan... and I haven't played either of them. (I really want a fucking "Turbo Express" and a NOMAD too.)

But, regardless, the bottom DS-bashing photo posted on John Ricciardi's game log is amusing.

Edit: I will, however, try my damned hardest to resist getting a Sony product on launch, as Sony launches with the shittiest pieces of plastic shit that have ever been shitted. The DS has had problems with dead pixels -- a minor problem, but an annoying one and one that has hit me too -- and Nintendo has promised to fix all DS' at no charge. A day into the PSP's launch, and I'm hearing about dead pixels... and dust in the screen... and air bubbles... and defective buttons... and broken UMD trays that either won't close or open arbitrarily while using the system.. and, of course, systems that won't power up at all.

Glad to see that Sony quality hasn't changed after all these years!

Needs

I need to change this style sheet. I need to change my cms. I need to redo my portfolio site. I need to work on personal branding. I need to get business cards done. I need to do quick proposal layout changes tonight. I need a shower. I need to pay my phone bills. I need to finish that game concept prototype. I need to get Alien Hominid. I need a new sofa. I need a new desk. I need a new PC. I need to get Christmas gifts. I need to get dinner. I need blinds. I need to clean the kitchen. I need to post this. I need a change of pace. I need a change of job. I need a stronger lead, first. I need not comment on that now. I need dental insurance. I need to finish Metal Gear Solid 3. I need to need fewer things.

Metal Gear Solid 3 impression

Over the weekend, the cellophane wrapping on that new copy of Metal Gear Solid 3 was finally unfurled. The disc was taken out of its case and placed on a dusty Playstation 2 tray. The tray was inserted and the television tuned.

I played it for about 15 minutes.

It took two and a half hours.

I'd play it more so that I could give a proper impression of it, but today I have 30 minutes worth of work to do...

Sudden Winter

Winter's arrival was sudden.

Without any warning, millions of people in the Toronto area woke to white-out conditions and note-worthy accumulations. Tens of thousands of those Torontonians, at the very same moment, instantly forgot their driving experiences from every other winter they have lived through. The roads were slow.

Lucky for me, I don't have to deal with those morons anymore.

Though the trade-off is that I now have to pack myself into crammed streetcars everyday. Twice. A tight situation, that. One that's made all the more squeezed on such days of poor weather and slow traffic.

Poor as it is, I still enjoy it. Not walking through it. No. But that nice frosted coating that it produces. That crisp air. That crunch under your shoes. It makes me nostalgic for winters past.

It's the first time since moving out that I, sort of... missed Mississauga. The snow just doesn't seem the same when it's covering lower-income urban apartment buildings and crack-whores.

Letter to the FCC

This isn't very surprising. What's surprising is that it's working.

Dear America,

please keep censoring your own cultural creations until you censor yourself into irrelevance. The rest of the world's cultures will thank you.

Love,
the world

PSP Interest

A few places already have production PSPs thanks to some promotional auction by Sony, and they have written about it. Neither one of them gets into the nitty-gritty of it, and neither one wants to give out a verdict. Which is weak, as they don't have a pre-release version but the actual unit that will be on sale (somewhere, in short supply) next week. Granted, they don't have any games for it, but a hardware review would be nice. Hell, just some real-world battery life information would suffice!

The GameSpot preview is particularly weird, and feels very rushed. More so than the usual GameSpot standards dictate. I mean, what the hell is up with this sentence: According to our calculations, the unit weighs in at 282 grams (9.7 ounces) with its battery and Memory Stick Duo; by comparison, the Nintendo DS weighs 276 grams (around 10 ounces).

The system is about to come out in Japan (in limited quantities), yet we still don't have any word on a N.American release date nor any USD price confirmation (nor any official word on region locking -- or was there? I can't remember.) Sony's nebulous and vague PSP launch is making Nintendo's DS launch look like a friendly, open invitation to fun.

The PSP looks to have some hot games coming its way, but come on Sony... my interest can only be held for so long. Ooh, shiny stuff outside my window...

Green Onions

At this very moment, I'm sitting at home in front of the computer eating a tuna salad sandwich with green onions. Despite the fact that the tuna salad has green onions in it, I've peppered more on top. I've been putting green onions on everything lately. Making eggs in my new frying pan? Throw some green onions in. Cream cheese bagel? With green onions! I like green onions, but not this much.

Living alone made me realize that a lot of food goes bad a lot quicker than I assumed it did. Living in a house with a growing teenaged sister and two parents pretty much guaranteed that the bunch of tomatoes or that loaf of bread would be fully consumed before any weird microscopic nomads move in and start working on their new home's best-before claims. Not so here.

That first bunch of green onions and that first giant cucumber and that first half-loaf of bread I had to throw out taught me good. A couple days of eating out, and I fall behind my best-before date quotas. The best solution to this was to buy food in smaller quantities. This I do. It means I have to buy food more often, but that's a small sacrifice to make.

It's just that those damned green onions always come in large bunches.

Driller DiSsed

Since I last wrote something, I've been playing Halo 2 and Super Mario 64 DS (yes, I got a DS on launch. First launch-system ever!), working on a never-ending freelance project, and trudging through what seems like an adjustment period for my body. I think the new bachelor life has caught up to it, and it has fought back by hitting me in the gut. A couple of times.

It's not that I'm eating bad, I'm just eating inconsistently. For the most part, I'm consuming more fruits and vegetables and juices and water than I did back home. For the most part. Now, there are also those occasions where I come home from work, put on Halo 2, eat a cold left-over pizza from the previous night, down a beer, and just sit for the rest of the evening. The clichéd bachelor life!

Having spent a lot of that clichéd time with Halo 2, I do have to say that my impressions of the matchmaking service have warmed considerably. It works well, and it keeps a lot of the games surprisingly competitive. Blow-outs, while they still happen, are far more rare than I've seen in other such games. So yes, it's good. I had a far longer write-up about this, but it's in limbo now and I don't feel like resuscitating it.

There is one point that I want to regurgitate, though, for the benefit of DS owners or those planning on getting a DS. One of the "launch window" titles that I most wanted was Namco's Mr. Driller. Today I have heard word that the US version is missing a full play-mode and single-cart link play. A week into a new system's launch, and Japanese publishers are already bastardizing their North American releases. W.T.F.

And I can't figure out why. Wouldn't the task of removing features from a game take longer and cost more than, you know, just leaving them as is? The mind reels.