judyonthenet

So busy at work, I’m three days late with a video game tab post. Oy.

Didn’t feel like unplugging the headsets, so I took this pic on our messy desk

Video games and other gaming related purchases:
SteelSeries 5H v2 USB headset (PC) – $107.00
Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 headset (PC) – $79.34
StarCraft II (PC) x 2 – hookup from friend
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (360) – $36.99 from Amazon
Total cost: $223.33

Even though my racist Mexican friend hooked me up with copies of StarCraft II, I still managed to spend quite a bit on gaming. I didn’t even include the $200+ in RAM Kelvin and I bought (2x2Gb each).

And the SC2 games weren’t free… he’s using them to guilt trip me into making him baked goods and giving him company swag (from… a biotech company?). I still have to figure out a baked good that’s worth shipping and I won’t completely eff up. (I don’t know how to make anything except bread right now.) I’m leaning towards cookies. Still, I don’t know if I can make and deliver $120 of cookies. Especially ones that taste like their worth.

I bought two sets of expensive headsets to replace our busted cheapo ones. Neither perform all that fantasticly on my computer. I was originally going to use the SteelSeries, but I can’t get them to work right at all on my computer. Mic’s always too soft or too noisy or has retarded low-pitched beeping. The Turtle Beach ones Kelvin chose work okay on my computer, but they’re heavy (4 speakers in each ear!) and clamp your head. However, sound is pretty good (after noise filtering), so I opted for the Turtle Beach ones while Kelvin took my SteelSeries. I still had to do a lot of ridiculous settings tweaking for decent mic clarity. It’s so much more complicated than the cheapo USB ones we had. I suspect my board has shitty audio drivers. We’ll see how long these last. I probably should have returned them, but I’m lazy and don’t want to go without a working headset. If they break within a year, I’m never spending more than $20 on a headset ever again.

You might notice there’s an extra copy of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift if the background. That’s the first copy I received from Amazon that arrived all busted up with the disc fallen out of the broken holder and ending up with scratch marks. I requested an exchange, and Amazon one-day shipped a second copy. Which is handy, because now I can use its packaging to return the first copy.

Games I beat:
Heavy Rain (PS3)
Mass Effect 2 (PC)

Now that I work hard, I play hard, too. I managed to pull myself away from TF2 to finish a couple games. Heavy Rain was very good. The graphics take some time to get used to, as the characters go into uncanny valley all the time. Gameplay is reminiscent of adventure games to me: very linear and you have to hunt for things to interact with to progress the story. Since I love adventure games (pretty much how I got into gaming), this action-light-story-heavy style of game is something I appreciated. The only thing that’s different is the emphasis on quick time events as a primary gameplay mechanic. I just played one ending. There’s other paths to take to the end, but I’ll save them for when I return my coworker’s copy and find my own. This isn’t really a game that would have a sequel, but I hope Quantic Dream makes more games like this.

Mass Effect 2… I made a whole blog post about it. Technically, I made three because I kept reposting it so it would show up in Facebook news feed properly. Yes, I’m a dork.

Now I’m working on the single player campaign in StarCraft II. (I’m too sucky to do multiplayer.) One annoying thing I’ve found is that the game actually uses most of the function keys. I was using F11 to do my screenshots, but since the game uses that button, most of my StarCraft II screenshots look like this:

Thankfully, Fraps has implemented Alt+<key> as a hotkey option, so I should be able to take screens without a message log in the way now.

New thing I learned today: The difference between ice cream, sherbet, and sorbet is their milk content.

I beat Mass Effect 2 a couple weekends ago. Overall, definitely an excellent game. I liked where the story went in this game (especially finding out what was up with the humans disappearing), so this time I paid attention enough to where my knowledge of the Mass Effect universe is now slightly-better-than-vague. Sniping people was enjoyable as always, graphics were nice (though my Shepard still had fake eyelash issues once they grew back after she came back from the dead), and characters were diverse and likable (except Miranda… shut up Miranda!). I miss Wrex, but Mordin’s my new favorite character. There were also plenty of side missions to play, choices to make, and even some useless junk to collect, which I’m always a fan of. (Except for maybe the fish. EDI can manage an entire ship’s systems but can’t feed my fish for me??)

Why am I in my own crosshairs?

Of course, there’s still things to gripe about. Most of the time, unlocking extra goodies only yielded money, which is about as rewarding as omnigel (meaning… it’s not). This time around they made up for the crappy inventory management of last game by not having any; I almost never messed with the weapons setup of any of the characters. I hated that missions were on separate levels that you can’t go back and explore. And the alien (not)sex scenes were weak (Jacob is not hot and has the personality of a potato, so I didn’t even bother with the human one).

And there’s always bugs. The most annoying one for me were collision issues people and objects in my game always seem to have. Walking next to tables was a dangerous act for Shepard, as she would enter a mysterious tabletop zone that she could never leave, often requiring me to load to my last save.

Shepard stuck in the CIC display thingy

This next one, Shepard’s on the wrong side of the counter. I can’t remember if the game crashed or not, but I remember she couldn’t even move or wiggle when she got in this position.

Shepard stuck at a random Citadel stall

It didn’t even have to be a table surface sometimes. In this next one, Shepard got too close to a rock wall, scaled up the wall, and started walking on thin air. Then Grunt and Mordin began tagging along.

Shepard, Grunt, and Mordin stuck in some random place

Even the bad guys wanted to get in on the air walking action.

Enemy walking into air via box

Annoying, but also entertaining. Slightly better than getting stuck underneath a mountain.

New thing I learned today: Your surname in Mass Effect, Shepard, is spelled “Shepard”, not “Shepherd”.

For some reason, I thought the Mass Effect protagonist’s last name was Shepherd, and I had used it through my post until I saw its correct spelling in the Mass Effect wiki.

Once again behind in video games news, I discovered today that Amaterasu from Ōkami (my favorite PS2 game second only to Shadow of the Colossus) is the latest announced character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I don’t care much about fighting games, but Kelvin does, and I’m pretty sure this is a Day 1 buy for him. Things like this will make me appreciate the game more when I know I’ll have to listen to this in the background for days.

I dunno, I feel like they should have made Ammy a bit more brushy looking. Still looks pretty good though. I love the arcade-techno-fied Ōkami background music. That game had one of the best video game soundtracks ever.

New thing I learned today: Thor‘s hammer is called Mjolnir, which is pronounced myol-near.

Ammy isn’t the only deity coming to MvC3. Thor was also recently announced.

Video games and other gaming related purchases:
The Deus Ex Collection (PC) – $4.98 from Steam
Total cost: $4.98

I’ve been wanting to play Deus Ex forever. I think I actually have a hardcopy somewhere because someone meant to lend me a different PC game and accidentally gave me Deus Ex (and never wanted it back). For some reason, I wasn’t inclined to play it back then. Now, I have no idea where that CD went, so I just gave up my five bucks for that game and its sequel. Another two games for my ridiculous backlog.

Games I beat:
WarioWare: Touched! (DS)

I listed WarioWare: Touched! because I completed the “story” and unlocked all the game modes. Not very long if you play it to that point, but it’s got a lot of replayability. Regardless, I admit it’s a pretty weak game to mark as complete.

Prior to starting work, I had been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2. I thought I would beat it by now. For some reason, having a job makes me want to play Team Fortress 2 more, so I’ve been slacking on games that actually end. I was starting Saboteur also, but I think Mass Effect 2 is probably the next game I’ll finish. Check back next month!

I’m a little bummed that no one at work really games, except for the HR guy that dealt with my hiring. I lent HR guy my copy of Uncharted 2 because he was having issues with his copy, and in return he lent me Heavy Rain. A game I’d usually buy because I’m hella possessive, but I heard it has little replay, so I’m good with borrowing it.

New thing I learned today: A fiducial is a marking that imaging systems use as a point of reference.

I hope there’s a lot more being announced outside of the press conferences, because the press conferences were overall not very good. Microsoft was a disaster, Sony was snooze-worthy, and Nintendo had a lot of rehashes of old stuff.

Microsoft
Terrible conference. I’m already not a fan of Xbox franchises (Halo, Gears of War), but then they made a huge deal out of Kinect. Kinect took up most of the conference even though it already had its own press event the night before!

Good

• ESPN for Xbox Live, free – I don’t even like sports, but I can see how their target audience has a lot of overlap with video games. I also wouldn’t mind checking out some poker tournaments. I’m a little surprised there’s no subscription fees with this.
• Call of Duty Black Ops – It still looked pretty good, despite not being an Infinity Ward game.
• Metal Gear Solid Rising – I’m not even sure if I should include this since I’ll probably get this for PS3. Looks incredibly violent, but also incredibly awesome. I <3 Raiden even if he looks like a cyborg girl.

(bleh, not sure how to make these stupid GameTrailers.com videos smaller.)
Bad

• Anything Kinect related AKA 70% of the conference – God. GOD. Kinect Sports? I already have this game for the Wii!

Okay, to be honest, I actually kind of liked the Your Shape: Fitness Evolved demo. I like the idea of making fitness more fun with video games, and the Kinect technology actually looked interesting in this game. Everything else was pretty much a disaster. All the fake enthusiasm was making me cringe. I feel bad for the folks forced to demo these Kinect products.

I’m sure these games are a lot more enjoyable in your living room than on an arena stage.

Nintendo
They’re really going for the nostalgia, these guys. I personally feel they had the best showing, in terms of new game content. But everything they introduced is based off an already existing IP. Even the only new game, Epic Mickey, has strong nostalgia tied to it due to everyone’s familiarity with Disney. I was hoping for more original stuff, but I’ll settle for fun-looking, if derived, games.

Good

• Epic Mickey – Looks great and love the art style. Warren Spector is in charge, and it’s got Mickey.
• Nintendo 3DS – Originally wasn’t sold on this, but after seeing the list of 3rd party support, I’ve changed my mind. A new Layton and MGS? Yep, sold.

Bad

• GoldenEye – I never played the original, though I understand its importance. But DAMN, that game really shows the limitation of the Wii’s graphics capability. Yuck!
• Kirby Yarn – I actually think the game is cute, and the gameplay looks fun (and reminiscent of Paper Mario). But couldn’t they tie a new character to this? I like Kirby and all, but what does he have to do with yarn or fabric? They lost an opportunity to create a new Nintendo original and instead milked an old character in the process.
• No mention of Pikmin 3 – WHY?

I thought Metroid: Other M still looked pretty good, but it’s coming out in a couple months and isn’t new information. I didn’t really grow up with Nintendo, so all the new games of familiar Nintendo IPs (Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus) don’t excite me as much as they would others. Still, everything looked fun, jaggies or no.

Sony
Aside from Kevin Butler’s speech, not very impressive. I like the Move demos, and like the 3DS, I’m more sold on it now than before. I’m just not sure if it’s something I’d drop money for. Everything else wasn’t worth sitting around for.

Good

• Kevin Butler – Sony marketing is genius. To come up with a fake executive solely for the purpose of advertising their products… just genius. We’ve seen what crappy drones real executives are when they speak during these press conferences. Kevin Butler’s speech was awesome and full of truth. I just hope people heard the message (basically: gaming is for everyone).
• Move/Sorcery – Of all the gimmicky stuff, I liked the Sorcery demo. Especially when the ball changed colors. Oooh, colors.

Bad

• Lack of Last Guardian – WTF? This was the only thing I wanted to have mentioned in this entire show. I would have also settled for an HD remake of Shadow of the Colossus.
• Marcus Rivers – Sony scored with Kevin Butler. Now they’re bringing in some annoying snot-nosed kid to promote PSP? Um, why would a disrespectful child who thinks he knows everything make me want to play anything? He’s probably not even old enough to play half the games I’d want to play… according to the ESRB anyway.

Sony has the best presentation skills out of the three, but nothing they showed was a must-buy to me. (Well, except Gran Turismo 5 because Kelvin wants to drive his RSX in a video game.)

Let’s hope for some more interesting announcements in the next couple days.

New thing I learned today: Kevin Butler is played by actor Jerry Lambert, who was in the short-lived ABC sitcom Sons and Daughters.

In his speech, he says gaming is “girls who know that way to a man’s heart is through a melee attack”. Amen.