Street Fighter IV has, as most reviews will suggest, been a positive experience thus far. However, this post isn’t about the game. This shares some of my thoughts about the Street Fighter IV Collector’s Edition.

The Negative - Let’s get this out of the way.

The Collector’s Edition (aka, the CE) comes in a box that is smaller than what I expected. At the least, I thought that the much hyped “hint book” would have taken up some room. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.

The “hint book” for Street Fighter IV CE is a very thin, glossy paper thing with a very small number of pages. It is easily the most disappointing part of the SFIV CE. In fact, I seriously thought that the hint book had been left out of my CE because it was no where to be found inside of the box.

Only once I opened the Blu-Ray Street Fighter IV animation did I find this supposed… “book”. It’s more accurately described as a flyer at best. You’re familiar with the advertisements that come with products these days; the ones on glossy paper that are tucked into DVD cases and the like. That’s pretty much what the “hint book” turned out to be.

This SFIV “hint book” lists (seriously) only a few (four? five?) of the characters, and in turn only a few of their moves. There are no hints, nor any information, nor anything else. There isn’t even text aside from what is absolutely required to list the moves and the names of the characters. The only good thing about it was the artwork.

If this was supposed to sell me on the official SFIV Prima guide then it is has failed miserably. I won’t even bother looking at the thing.

The Okay - Cool, but not made of awesome.

Laying somewhere in the middle is the animation, Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind. This skin-deep introduction to Street Fighter IV is definitely not a high quality anime story, although the artwork itself is done well enough. On the other hand, I don’t think that anyone was expecting a deep story from this. It is, ultimately, a long intro movie for the game, and many of Street Fighter IV’s animated endings make direct references to the events in The Ties That Bind. (note: you can currently find the entire movie on Youtube and elsewhere).

As a part of the SFIV CE it’s not a bad perk at all. The voice acting (I only watched it with Japanese audio) employed some decent talent, and the image quality is good; of course, it’s Blu-Ray so you kind of expect that. The animation & artwork quality isn’t the best that I’ve seen in an anime movie, but it’s far from “bad”. If you do watch it on Youtube then keep in mind that you’re probably not watching the HD version.

The sound track also deserves to go here. Here are some thoughts on the Collector’s Edition sound track:

Thankfully - and yes, I do mean thankfully - the Street Fighter IV theme song itself is not on the CD. I just don’t even want to think about this song, so moving on…

Track 3 on the sound track is a good example of what makes this OST decent. It’s befitting a fighting game, but it’s use of strings, appropriately Asian drumming, voice (think group “hua!”), and fast paced music makes it something that’s actually well worth listening to. If you liked the music in 9 Dragons then you’ll totally dig this tune, though it’s a faster tempo than what you’ll find in that MMO.

The new Chun-Li theme (track 7) is also fairly well done. It’s clearly identifiable, but it’s been brought into the present with instruments, modern synths, and additions that make it an over all enjoyable listen for fans of the Street Fighter series. This music is only played during a “Rival Battle”, so it does have a more serious sound to it. Rival Battles: Serious business, amirite?

Track 16 is a mellow, nonetheless upbeat techno tune that I’ve heard occasionally played in the Lobby between online matches. It’s good for chilling for a moment before hitting “Ready!”.

The closing track, track 17, is a catchy Jazzy version (complete with synth Sax) of a traditional Street Fighter tune. Oddly enough, it reminds me of the background music found in the Out Run series of driving games.

Track 3 alone almost moves this OST into the “Good” category, but the rest of the tunes on the CD (all of which I skipped here) are firmly set in the category of “background noise”. At least to my ears.

The Good - Now we’re getting somewhere…

While I’m very disappointed in the “hint book”, the Street Fighter IV Collector’s Edition is, in all, a pretty good buy. Taken all together I’m not disappointed in spending the money for it. The addition of the Blu-Ray animation, the Ryu figure, and the sound track are all bonuses that come together to make it a good edition fitting any gamer’s collection.

The Ryu figure, which I have not removed from the box at all, looks decent enough from what I can see. The artwork on the box is pretty good (although I wish they’d stuck with Chun-Li, I have an obvious bias).

In all, the CE itself is the best part of the CE, aside from the game itself. As a package, it comes together well.

Good night folks.

Technorati Tags: Street Fighter IV, SFIV, Street Fighter, Collector’s Edition

You’ve read the hype, but what about the reality?

The following was my response to a pal asking me how the game was, and it paraphrases the game perfectly:

There was not one single thing during Dead Space (includes ending) that was not 100% predictable or otherwise obvious. Was the ending decent? That depends. It was step-by-step by the books, but was it executed well? Sure. It’s kind of like grading a test though.. how well did they follow the steps?

Dead Space: The Gist

What steps am I talking about? If you’ve watched a horror movie in the past 20 years, you’ll know. I’m talking about the by-the-books bag of tricks that all horror movies take from: things such as when something jumps out to give a cheap scare, the sound effects that are used to keep you unnerved, and even the music to heighten a scene.

Add to that every cheap trick that any “scary” game has ever used, such as when you’ll get attacked, or when something quickly runs by up ahead only to vanish, and other such norms, and you have Dead Space’s repertoire that leaves no cliche unused (and in some cases, blatantly abused).

EA took hold of this bag’o tricks and dug in like a little kid on Halloween. Dead Space isn’t bashful of upending this bag and using everything that falls out. EVERYTHING. I do not lie nor exaggerate when I say that the game even goes so far as to clearly use the Psycho “reak!, reak!, reak!” sound. Regularly (at least in the beginning. maybe I grew deaf to it after awhile or it eventually stops using the sound).

Audio

Like the game as a whole, it’s not that the audio is bad, it’s just that no originality was to be found. The music could have easily been taken from any 80’s (or 90’s) horror movie, while the sound effects and extra-loud volume always kicks in when you’re fighting anything. It doesn’t matter how simple the fight is. It could be a single little monster. The “Oh My Gosh I’m Being Chased By Monsters!” effects will begin playing and the volume will suddenly be twice as loud as it should be.

Game Play

Dead Space is Resident Evil on an abandoned space craft. It’s that simple. There is no further need to explain the controls or how the controls feel. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, I got annoyed at the fact that you can’t so much as switch guns without stopping to wait for the animation to play out, but that’s the way that these kind of games go.

That said, there were some sequences during the game that I found to be especially frustrating. Occasionally your character will be grabbed by a giant tentacle and you must shoot the one large vulnerable spot on the tentacle to destroy it. This is all well and good, but unfortunately the folks at EA took the path of “frustration equals difficulty”: Your camera shakes violently and your gun becomes very difficult to control.

I understand the idea behind this, and had it been executed well then it would have been fine. It wasn’t. Often times even the beams of light with which you aim would be pointing off at a 90 degree angle, completely out of whack with where the gun was actually shooting.

When you fail to take out the tentacle you’re treated to a long, dramatic death animation as your character is pulled into a small dark hole and struggles to escape but ultimately fails. It’s cool at first, but not when you’re repeating the scene for the 4th or 5th time because the good-for-nothing laser lights are shinning off into the wild blue yonder and you have no idea where in the hell you’re shooting.

There is one of these scenes in particular that made me want to set down my controller and call it quits. This is because in addition to the above, all of your controls are also reversed. So you have the shaky camera, the seemingly unresponsive controls, the beams of light that defy physics, and now up is down, down is up, left is right, and right is left.

If that sounds frustrating, you couldn’t be more right! I about had it at that point, and it didn’t help that the death sequence was longer than usual.

Technical Issues

There were two very noticeable technical problems that I had with Dead Space:

1.) When you finally make it to the ship’s Bridge you walk down a very short incline, take a right, and enter a door to get into the actual control room. The entire ship vanished, with the exception of the inside of the control room, while walking back up to the bridge proper. The visual result is that my character was walking on nothing out in the dead of space while the control room (and bits and pieces of the rest of the general area) floated in space with me.

2.) At one point I backtracked to hit a save before a fight. This required taking an elevator back up to a previous level. The game slowed down massively when the elevator began to move. It was so extreme that I honestly became concerned that my XBox 360 was about to die. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and when the elevator stopped at the top the game began once again playing at full speed.

That was the only time that I experienced this level of slow down, though smaller moments were experienced at a couple of other points.

Conclusion

EA played it safe from start to finish. There is not one ounce of originality in Dead Space. It’s set on a derelict space craft filled with (what are effectively) zombies and they used every cliche in the book to drive it to the most predictable ending possible. Were it a movie rather than an interactive video game I would have fallen asleep.

So it’s like I said: It’s kind of like grading a test. Did they follow the steps well?

The answer is that it should be impossible to make a mistake when you’re being as deliberately - even blatantly - unoriginal as EA was with Dead Space, and that holds true. Though way over used through out the game, they did manage to use these standard props very well indeed. Were I grading a test I would leave them a note to suggest that they not write their essay quite so dryly, but would easily give them a perfect score.

Is that a good thing? My opinion is probably clear from the tone of this review - I was bored to death rather than scared to death during the entire game - but obviously many people have enjoyed Dead Space despite its formulaic construction.

And really, it’s not a bad game. The voice acting is done well, the graphics - though mostly identical through out the ship - are quite nice, the audio is of a good quality.. it’s all well executed.

There’s just not a single drop of originality to be found anywhere through the entire experience that is Dead Space. Not in any technical aspect, not in the story telling, not in … anything.

The game is OK, but don’t buy into the hype.

Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox 360, 360, horror, scary, survival horror, Dead Space, EA

I’ve read that Nintendo is planning on finally releasing a console capable of HDTV sometime around 2011. As a 30 year old guy who has been gaming since the Commadore and Atari, here are on my thoughts on Nintendo.

The problem with Nintendo is that they are always a generation behind. During the era of the original X Box Nintendo considered online play to be unimportant. Everyone else knew otherwise, and then Live hit. This generation they considered HD capabilities to be unimportant. Have you seen a Wii on an HDTV? A pal of mine has a 60″ HDTV, and the Wii is a woefully unpleasant experience.

With each successive generation Nintendo is playing catch up; touting features that are, as others have pointed out, five years too late.

Then there’s the problem of their games. I’m not saying that Zelda and Metroid aren’t cool, just that they’re Zelda and Metroid. I’m 30 years old now, and those games are identical to what they were when I played them as a kid on the NES. The only difference, of course, being graphics, but literally everything else about them are the same! The (annoying) music that plays when you open any chest in Zelda, or the fact that Metroid is the same formula as ever.

Nintendo refuses to take any chances with these games because they bring in money, but it’s backed them into a nasty corner that they now need to claw their way out of.

Lackluster hardware, a distinct lack of innovation in their games (controllers merely change the way you do the same’ol thing), and negative comments about hard core gamers has made me even less inclined to get the Nintendo Wii or their future products. This is coming from someone who didn’t so much as have the Nintendo 64.

They give mature gamers every reason in the world to go to the other team and stay there. Nintendo is still focused on kids. That’s who they’ve always been focused on, and I suppose if you repeat the same thing long enough then you’ll have another generation of kids to market to.

Unfortunately I can’t make this post more in depth than it is because I have to get on with the day. See you folks around.

Technorati Tags: games, Nintendo, Wii

This (screen shots after the jump) is the dark elf female in Neverwinter Nights 2 after installing player made face and hair mods. This is SO much better than the monkey-like appearances for dark elves that were created by Obsidian!

The character’s profile is “quick and dirty”. There wasn’t much room to write a proper profile, but I think that you’ll get the point.

I had an incredibly difficult time choosing the class, especially knowing how enormously biased Neverwinter Nights 2 is toward melee classes. This strong bias carried right on through to the expansion. This new dark elf model looks so damn cool in assassin or similar armor that I nearly could not resist. I wish that the game was not a linear path, else I would gladly make about 3 more classes at least.

Screen shots after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

This Spore creature was made using Maxis’ Spore Creature Creator, which is available on the official Spore website.

Obviously I like horror and spooky things, so that’s the kind of creature that I made with the creature creator. The idea behind the creature is that I want it to fly, obviously, but I don’t know if that will be possible in the game. Spore is not yet released so there’s no way to tell, but you can put wings onto your creature.

This beastie intended to be a stealth hunter and thus has multiple bonuses to stealth, with some bonuses to striking, grasping, speed, and defense.

Image and Video:

Technorati Tags: spore, creature creator, spore creature creator, creater, creature creater, spore creature creater

So, I just finished the single player campaign of UT3. It was strange, having a story line taking such front stage in a game that’s little more than run, gun, and respawn. I found the whole “respawners” idea (the story’s way of explaining away the infinite lives that one has) to be a bit hokey. The rest of the story was interesting enough though, and the voice actors done a darn good job.

For all of its flash and popularity, UT3 is a very limited game that quickly becomes dull. At one point I found myself wondering why the game just didn’t end. There are only three game modes - CTF, DM, and “Warfare” - and that’s it. Through the entire single player campaign. These three modes simply are not enough to hold interest over a game that spans multiple levels on two different planet settings.

The real joy, however, comes from the bots. When I say “joy”, I mean this as sarcastically as possible. Here’s a quick little image: Read the rest of this entry »

I was playing around in the new Rise of Kunark expansion for EverQuest II when I came across this curious NPC. It seems that the folks behind the game enjoyed themselves quite a bit…. that, or they ran out of ideas for pets. I think that it’s the former, though, and I got a bit of a chuckle out of this.

Rise of Kunark has new pets for the characters. These pets do nothing but follow you around and try their darndest to look cute. Apparently there’s more than one, and these NPCs want you to “collect them all”!

Yes, seriously: They’re called Chokemon and the NPC says that they have to collect them all. You use a special magical ball to catch them no less!

This one is an image of my first Chokemon:

Enjoy getting them all!

Technorati Tags: Pokemon, Chokemon, EQ2, Everquest, MMO, MMORPG, EverQuest 2, Everquest II

Hello again folks,

I took this screen shot of Tabula Rasa a few days ago but I’ve been hanging out with a pal of mine, so I haven’t had the time to post it. The holiday santa hat was obtained by “using” the tree as one would any other world objects.

The Santa Clause hat has no stats on it, but it does make for a fun holiday decoration. Enjoy the view!

Note that this screen shot is VERY big and it may take a moment or ten for slower connections to download.

Technorati Tags: Tabula Rasa, Richard Garriot, mmorpg, mmofps, christmas, xmas, holiday, decorations, Christmas tree

Today’s Tabula Rasa play session was more enjoyable than the previous. My character has moved onto the next map where there are higher level characters and folks seem to be a bit more behaved. General chat was also significantly cleaner today, but I suspect that’s because today is Monday and most of the emos couldn’t get online.

The game play hasn’t really changed, but it’s become more difficult and, at times, a bit more intense. I had another moment of “wha..? cool!” today as friendly NPCs were drop-shipped into the area that I was running through. I have no idea why they came into the area. I’m sure that it’s a regular occurrence - just another scripted spawn - but it was a nice surprise.

At the time I was running through the area in an attempt to get a crate of bane goodies, but I was having a heck of a time reaching the crate. There was a small army of various bane critters in the area and running through it created a small light show as energy weapons hit me and my character’s reflective armor bounced some of it back. The view was messy, and there was really no way to get through in one piece.

So when a small army of friendlies arrived via drop ships (which teleport the NPCs down in a way significantly similar to Wraith ships in Stargate: Atlantis) and began taking on the small army of bane… well, it was a good moment. I spent several minutes taking out bane along side the NPCs. Those NPCs were not your usual weaklings either. Some of them were Rangers with net guns, which will be my character’s next weapon set.

My chara has a touch more than two levels to go before hitting level 15 for the third tier. Then it’ll be cloak armor goodness and net gun funsies for all.

Sadly, tomorrow will be spent making a few drawings for class and I don’t know if I’ll have time to work on progressing the character.

A random screenshot from today, shrunk from its original size.

I really like the style of this NPC’s clothing, especially because we players can’t have straight white or black colored armor. bah!

Yes, I should have removed the UI. Whatever. Deal with it. :-p

Later all.

Technorati Tags: mmorpg, tabula rasa, richard gariot, richard garriot, tr, rgtr, mmo, mmofps

The gist: The community is awful, but if they would drop the emo nonsense then the game would be a much more enjoyable experience.

The long version:

Tabula Rasa, on its own, is not a spectacular game, but it’s also not bad. It’s one of those titles that you can pick up for a half hour to an hour and actually do something, even if that “something” is nothing more than putting down some of the bane.

Logging in to take down some mobs is not quite as boring as it sounds thanks to the Control Points, which are potentially temporary bases that are scattered around the map. This morning was a good example of what these CPs can do for the game.

I quit the game last night with my character parked in what has to be the most heavily contested Control Point on the map: A place called The Landing Zone. This was a fairly silly thing to do and just goes to show how new I am to the game.

1. I logged in
2. I noticed that the server population was “Low” this morning and I thought of how much more difficult it was going to be to get a group
3. Once my character was in the game world I heard weapons fire and thought, “good, I have something to do right away”
4. I see the NPCs running back into the base and think that the fight is over…
5. …only to see a bane running through the base. A quick glance to the side revealed that the normal blue force field was now red.

This all happened (and was over) pretty quickly. I unholster the chain gun and begin emptying it into the closest bane, but it just wasn’t going to do any good. At least three drop shops came down inside of the base as teams of bane spawned inside, and my little, lone level 11 character couldn’t do anything against the attack force.

One person, one chain gun, and an assault force of bane may be fun, but it’s only fun for about 20 seconds before you’re respawning.

There was a brief moment when I saw some other unlucky player run out and be put down just as quickly. It was a cool but sad animation as his character fell, raised his arm as though he were pleading or trying to block some of the attack, and was promptly covered in a hail of energy and weapons fire. My own character must have been in an equally sad state.

This leads back to the community though, and sadly there’s just nothing good for me to say. I turned on general chat to report that the control point had fallen and I was immediately reminded of why I turned it off in the first place. I honestly can not think of another game in which there are so many people complaining, whining, and/or hurling as many childish insults as is seen in Tabula Rasa’s global general chat. It’s pathetic.

Imagine the Barrens chat from World of Worldcraft and replace every comment with someone complaining about the game, or how another class is so much more powerful, or cursing someone for beating them in a duel. There are no Chuck Norris jokes, there are only self-defeated emos.

I turned the general chat back off pretty quickly, but apparently someone picked up my message because a force of players did show up at the control point. My character died about three times as I tried to pitch in whatever assistance I could in retaking the landing zone, though I admit that at level 11 I may not have been terribly helpful.

General chat aside, it certainly gave me something to do immediately upon logging in this morning.

Even when the control point is not taken by the bane it is still frequently attacked, and defeating an attacker nets you a sort of “defense insignia”. Get enough of those and you can turn them in for some experience and perhaps an item reward.. can’t say that I paid too much attention to the rewards of it, I just picked it up and quickly went back to putting down the ugglies outside of the base.

Grouping in the game requires dealing with the above described emo community and it’s about as enjoyable as it sounds. You’re flat out ignored in local /say, nobody wants to group, and everyone attacks the same mob and hopes to out damage it to get credit.. it’s a real mess.

The only reason that people group in Tabula Rasa is to accomplish a very specific goal. The concept of grouping to adventure together simply does not exist; not that I’ve seen thus far. Once the goal (or goals) is accomplished then the group immediately breaks apart and everyone goes their own way.

That’s disappointing, because I don’t doubt that TR could be a fairly enjoyable game if people would just start treating each other like people. The game itself isn’t bad at all. The worse part about Tabula Rasa, thus far, are the people who populate it.

Edit: Here’s a screen shot from some extra play time today. The bane nearly recaptured the same point, getting so far (not shown in the ss) of taking down the blue forcefield. That was one of the few times of genuine fun, “woohoo more!” moments that I’ve had in TR up to this point.

Note that anti-aliasing is not enabled in the game. It’s not needed at that resolution, but it becomes obvious in a screen shot.

Technorati Tags: Richard Garriot, Tabula Rasa, TR, MMO, MMORPG, MMOFPS