Malik
(1/9/06)
Let's
think of how things are starting this week as a "do over".
Last week, I started to post my friend Raven's web comic "World
of WoW". Well, there's been a couple of changes. For one, let's
call Raven "Fayne". It's the name he's best known as on
WoW, so this makes sense. Also, while we're calling things by
different names, let's call World of WoW "Rested
XP". Besides that, and some changes on the text of the
first couple of comics (reposted for all of your enjoyment, with the
updated titles, etc.), things are not really different...they just
have a different flavor. Speaking of new flavors, there's also a new
issue of Rested XP. Enjoy. Beyond
that, there's very little actual news going on today. While I could
try to make an attempt at geeking out over BloodRayne
being in theaters, I just can't find the fake enthusiasm. For
one, the movie looks like a made for TV movie. In fact, worse than
that, it looks like an episode of some half-assed attempt at making
a new Buffy rip-off for one of the non-digital cable channels (maybe
USA would be a good home to this). I'm only judging this from the
commercials, but I think it's a fair perspective considering the ads
for this movie make it look like all the budget on... Ben
Kingsley and Michael Madsen used to stand for something. They were
both in some damned good movies in the past. To see them make the
jump to a poor looking video game based movie makes me wonder. Was
all of the budget spent on making sure they would star in such a bad
movie idea? Did anyone actually think this through? When will we be
free from the bad movie adaptations of video games? Needless
to say, if you are looking for an impression of this movie, you
won't find much here...well, you won't find much more than "I
don't even have the slightest urge to see this apparent pile of
shit". After
spending part of the weekend watching football with a few of my
friends, and then pulling out my PSP to play Legend of Heroes while
one friend played the new Fire Emblem and another played Mario and
Luigi (DS), I came to two conclusions. The first was that this
weekend did not live up to it's potential in terms of the playoffs.
In fact, I think I've never seen such a boring and uninspired
opening wildcard weekend before. The other conclusion was at least a
little better; M&L looked hella fun. So,
I bought M&L last night, and have played it almost non-stop
since then. It easily lives up to all that the GBA title first gave
us geeks, and is also one of the first games that made completely
logical use of the dual screens without just trying to force the
touch screen on us in an attempt to apease Nintendo (I'm looking at
you, Castlevania...). For example, while you walk, the top screen
shows the map, and in combat it will either show you the airborne
action (since there is occasionally interesting stuff up there), or
it'll show you the button timings for some of the complicated
"Bros. Items" (which are basically your special
attacks). Anyway,
I'm still giving my love to Legend of Heroes, but I'm determined
that this may be the final game I get for the PSP. Unless things
really change, the PSP will soon be one of the first systems I'll
consider selling. While the DS and PSP both have limited good games,
at least the DS has Nintendo (who can always be counted on for some
fun). Also,
if you're wondering...since I've given my analogy on the PSP
"It's like
you can use outside" ads, I'll fill you in. The mice/rats that
love cheese are either Italians or at least New Yorkers (it's a
mixed accent that seems to change a couple of times during the ad).
So, I now see them saying that African Americans, Latinos, and New
Englanders are all puppets to be controlled by the voice of the
non-regional white guy, who is actually a puppet of the Japanese. I
see it more that way than as a simple ad for a game system (for
those, I look more towards Nintendo). Ok...before
I go, I figure one bit of stupidity about Sony deserves a friend.
The whole backlash against Sony and the spyware/malware/whatever
that they included with some music CDs a few months (almost a year
now) back has reached a
settlement. While The XCP CDs from Sony may have caused some
computers to be completely f$#@ed, Sony doesn't even have to take
full responsibility. Instead of having to clean up all of their
damage, Sony is instead only being required, by the settlement, to
either give one album worth of downloads, a replacement of the
original CD (with a non-harmful one), and $7.50, or Sony can give
the replacement CD and three albums of downloads. So, in the end,
Sony, who kept their mouths shut on this whole attack (let's face
it...XCP CDs were listed as one of the highest malware/virus threats
of 2005) for several months and then made no real concession of
being guilty are now able to get away with this shit. Instead of
being force to maybe pay an amount that would allow a person to get
their PC repaired (not everyone is good with reinstalling their OS
and all applications), they only "have to" force their
download service on the consumers they hurt. Wow. It's like saying
that if I make a program that wipes out a hard drive, I may be
forced to make up for it by giving a free trial of another one of my
services, in an attempt to win them over to this service. Anyway,
if this judge (U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald) wanted to
show she was not just trying to end this case, and was rather trying
to help the hurt consumers, maybe I could offer an idea or two of an
appropriate settlement. Here's an idea...since consumers were just
wanting some good (or their idea of good) music when this happened,
let's give the hurt some music back; Sony would pay for three albums
from Napster, iTunes, or any other competing music store (not their
own). After all, to use a music service, you usually have to give a
fair amount of your information to the service, so to
"punish" Sony in this way would only give them a list of
customers to solicit their services to, legally. A better idea, the
judge could have said done along the lines of forcing Sony to pay,
to each customer hurt by their ineptitude, the average cost of what
it would take to fully repair this damage at a PC repair place
(usually around $80-$160+ to fix a Windows problem and reinstall the
OS). If this judge wanted to be so nice to Sony, then at least she
could have forced Sony to arrange a repair service (which they could
probably get at a discount by pulling some strings with any number
of retailers that have repair centers, like Comp USA or Best Buy) or
paid an equal dollar amount to those who already fixed their PCs on
their own. Either
way, a judge should be responsible for doing more than
"punishing" a music seller by forcing a small free sample
onto the company's victims. Hell...Sony may end up with more
customers from this sad excuse of a settlement. Malik
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Malik
(1/10/06)
I'm having an
interesting time; between the move (which is only about 10 days
out), my current apartment going inane with forced changes for the
sake of change, and now feeling like my working day is just an
uninspired remake of Office Space (including coworkers who just
don't see that anything is wrong with some of the crap that's going
on and think I'm insane for rebelling against the ineptitude)...it's
been a hell on an interesting 2006 so far. Anyway, since I'm not in
a good mood, by any means, today I'll focus on some of the stupider
and more frustrating of news;
BloodRayne,
the movie, is getting it's ass handed to itself in many ways
after it's opening weekend (this last weekend). On one hand, you
have the fact that the movie's distributor actually sent about two
times more copies of the film out than theaters wanted, so many
prints just sat collecting dust. I wonder how this could be...I mean
it's not only BloodRayne, and it doesn't just look like a made for
TV movie, but it's a new Uwe Boll gem. That says instant classic to
me...
Beyond that, the
movie brought in about 1.2 million dollars. In terms of movies,
that's pretty sad...and funny. Considering it's "amazing"
debut, I don't think that BloodRayne will even generate enough
revenue to cover the paycheck for any of the films highly known
actors (Billy Zane, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, etc). If you ever
want to make a really bad video-game-to-movie film, a great idea is
to spare all expenses on talent, because you will not recoup those
loses.
There's more stuff
going on with the whole line of retarded
PSP ads (I'll use that word since it's fits, since these ads
seem to have been partially completed before being launched). This
time it's NYC (Queens) Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who is trying
to get Sony to pay for these ads. The sad thing is that NYC is one
of the few places that can't complain about the ads. While Sony may
have done illegal graffiti with some of the locations they picked
(like any abandoned buildings, which they did not have the ability
to pay for the advertising space on), the NYC locations were all
paid for to the building owners.
So, instead of
just going off about how pointless this advertising campaign is,
Vallone is trying to obtain a $20,000 fine against Sony. On one
hand...yeah...$20,000 to Sony is like asking one of you to pay a
dollar fine for something you legally were allowed to do. In other
words, it's not a punishment, it's a punishment for something that's
sadly legal to do, and it only further gives word of mouth
advertising to Sony. If Vallone wants to tackle the ads, why not say
something like the inane and stupid format will encourage children
to become idiots.
By the
way..."Urban Nomads"...I know we all like to coin new
phrases, but Sony...come on. I guess, by definition of that term, I
think Sony is trying to sell their $250 (overpriced) gameless wonder
to homeless people. Interesting concept. I guess it's only fitting,
since first bums were used to sell items, via Bumvertising,
and now they are expected to save up the $1 to $5 and a box of
Newtons for a PSP.
Also, while LotR:
The Third Age may have been complete crap, and while the geek world
is just about done with anything LotR (too much of a potentially
good thing...), EA has decided to keep pushing their luck.
Supposedly, according to one software engineer, EA is working on a
new LotR RPG; The White Council. There is no literally news
available on this. EA hasn't acknowledged it, there's no rumors
(beyond this one blurb linked above), and there's no clues as to if
EA will actually make this game into something that anyone would
want to play. All I can say is that I probably will never be turned
on to an authentic LotR RPG for one simple reason; an authentic one
offers far too many shortcomings, since there are no healers (besides
the type who just help you to mend with plenty of rest), only a half
dozen magic users in the world, and mainly a bunch of fighters and thieves.
If it has more of the healers and mages, I'd be happy as a gamer
(not as a half-assed LotR fan) and the other way around would leave
me unimpressed as a gamer. LotR may have all the makings for being a
book, a movie, an action game, a strategy game, blah, blah...but it
doesn't mean shit in the RPG genre.
Anyway, enough of
my enjoying other peoples' stupidity. I can't really add much,
except that Mario and Luigi DS is one hell of a great distraction
from the weights of reality...
Malik
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Malik
(1/11/06)
Third longest
stretch of rainy days for Seattle continues today...maybe we'll hit
number one. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to have it rain on the day
that I'm moving (because nothing is more fun than moving...except
moving in the rain!!!111!!). If I sound annoyed, it's only because I
am sick of being drenched...and I'm really sick of walking a mile to
work each day in pouring rain. Anyway...
Microsoft is
starting to come back to it's pre-launch plans for the 360.
Initially, Microsoft said that three games would have downloadable
demos at launch. That ended up meaning that Kameo would have a demo
and nothing else. With time, a few more demos have come our way, and
now it looks like another launch title is getting the demo
treatment.
I just have to
wonder what the point is in releasing demos of games that have been
out and playable for nearly two months, like PGR3, when there are
some good upcoming releases that should be getting this treatment.
It seems to me that this game is nearing the end of it's sales boom
life span and is soon to be relegated to the "old game"
(but not clearance) shelf. True, there aren't too many top notch
games coming out until spring, but still it would make more sense. I
mean, isn't that the point of a demo; to entice and to build
anticipation to boost initial sales.
Anyway, if you
want the PGR3 demo, Microsoft is making a big demand of one's time
and HDD space. We're talking about around 1.25 GB for the total
download, which comes out to about an hour or more of download time.
I guess with how this game just doesn't seem to pack the punch of
the earlier simulation racing games, with it's lack of low powered
cars and how you can play through all of the game with only three or
four cars, maybe the demo will spare some people the need to
purchase this game.
To make matters
more frustrating on the 360 front, the highly hyped DoA3
is having major glitches with erasing it's own save file. Since
it sounds like Tecmo is confirming this issue and is supposedly
working on a patch, this is one hell of a major bug. More than that,
this is too big of a bug to have happen. This is the type of crap
that happens when online and hard drives become commonplace on a
console. It means that games no longer need to be tested as heavily
prior to being launched. Instead, if a problem occurs (and this is
one bitch of a problem), you can come up with half-assed pass
through solutions, that many will not even see, while you work on
a...yup...patch. Because we all know that half assing testing and
then making a patch is not only the American (or in this case,
Japanese) way, it's also a great way to save on money and time, and
to be lazy.
Also, if you're
looking for a non-portable RPG fix (since Mario and Luigi DS and
Legend of Heroes PSP covers the portable RPG market nicely), Wild
Arms 4 is out there. I have always held Wild Arms games in a
special place in my heart, but this might be the one that kills my
love of the series. In fact, I'm so cautious that I am refusing to
buy this game until it's either Greatest Hits priced, or I find it
used for under $20.
It was bad enough
when WA3 made ARMs into something that was commonplace on all of
your heroes, but it seems like WA4 is not content to come through
without even bigger and more ridiculous changes. For example, there
is no map screen...well, not the one like we had on WA1-3, DQ1-8,
FF1-9, Suikoden1-4, etc. Instead we have the FFX style map screen of
just pointing to your destination and going there. I guess this is
for the "RPG fans" who hate random battles (you make me
want to retch...). The dungeons are mostly linear, and include
platforming elements. These actually sound fun...assuming you're
playing a character with a name like Mario or Link. However, the
largest change is in the battles, which now use a small S-RPG grid
system to control where each person attacks from. I think it's this
one that made my mind up about not buying the game until it's been
reduced, a lot, in price.
Malik
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Malik
(1/12/06)
Because I so do
love speculation with no basis (along with my love of obvious
sarcasm), this
may interest all the Sony fanboys who can't get enough speculation.
Basically, it's being thought, by many different people from
different occupations, that the PS3 will cost anywhere from
$399-$699. Wow. With that type of accuracy, and with such firm
reasons behind it, I can't help but agree. In fact, I'd like to be
even better at speculations; the PS3 will come out sometime in the
next 18 months, it will cost money to purchase (and the games/accessories
will also cost money), and it will have some technical and
logistical problems at launch. In fact, I'd vote for the same stuff
being true of the Revolution. Wow. I'm good. I should be an
analyst.
Seriously, it's
time for all speculations to end. For example, the PS3 will be
revealed better in the future (around GDC and E3). Until then,
there's absolutely no reason to speculate on things that are beyond everyone's'
knowledge (except Sony, who's staying quiet). To guess on this would
be like (before they passed on in our sleep) guessing when a
recently announced Working Designs game would actually come out. The
same is true for the Revolution, and Halo 3, and whatever other
games/accessories/hardware you are looking forward to.
Also, for those
who speculate that the XBox 360 is crap and can't be left on for
extended periods of time; that one is also wrong. I managed to leave
my 360 on all night as I downloaded the PGR3 demo (big demo, and my
PC hogging bandwidth on bit torrent left me with a need to leave the
system on overnight). In the morning, the 360 was a little warm (not
hot) and was fully functional. Yeah! I break another bit of
ignorance. Just like with that one prior to the 360 launch that
"you will only get a launch system if you preorder a lot of accessories",
with was complete bullshit.
Here's another
great one; Oblivion will come
out on March 20th. If you believe this, then you have some
problems. It's not that this is beyond the realm of possibility.
It's rather that this is not in any way a solid date, especially
since it's coming from EBGames.com,
who has done great jobs in the past at guessing release dates (more
of that sarcasm...). They are even doing
it again with Lost
Odyssey.
Anyway, the
lessons to be learned on this are simple; don't trust people who
throw out random dates and prices for things that the developer
won't even comment on. It is rare that a game/hardware will be
released on a specific date, and yet the developer is unaware, or
seemingly unaware, of it. Don't believe the crap, and if we all just
try to ignore it, it might go away...leaving us with some useful
news in it's place.
Malik
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Malik
(1/13/06)
Fayne is back, in
a new issue of Rested
XP. This would be the fourth episode in what will become a long
line of Rested XP episodes.
Speaking of MMORPG
related items (well, it's not too big of a subject change...I
think), I did what so many others are waiting to do; went to Barnes
and Noble and got the February issue of OXM. I did it mainly so I
could find a time killer on the 360. Namely, I was banking on the
FFXI demo being my main amusement until Oblivion drops in a few
months.
While a standard
issue confidentiality agreement prevents me from discussing the game
(I know...many break these things, but if I'm going to have free
entertainment, I will be respectful to Square Enix...for once...),
there are a few things I can say that I believe should avoid the
confidentiality issue. First off, if you don't have a USB keyboard,
you can expect this game to be an exercise in frustration. In fact,
the install screens alone will use massive inputs for things like
your name, address, email address, registration codes (those will
kill you with a standard controller), blah, blah.
Secondly, you will
be worn down by the install. IGN
was not lying about how tiresome the install is and how long it
takes. In fact, it's safe to say that the North American version is
just as long as the Japanese. To make things better, even after you
get the install running, you will be asked to update everything a
few different times. Enjoy those downloads...I know I sure had fun
with them...
Best of all,
however, is how the install is like dealing with a two year old who
just discovered the word "Why?". Actually, for FFXI
installation, it's more like the words "Are you sure?".
Everytime you think it's ready to install and you can walk away, you
will be hit with another "About to
: Are you sure?". Then you have to hit yes for the 50th time in
a 30 minute span. However, when the install takes almost 2 hours,
you can expect to see a small chunk of your sanity go away.
So, after I sat
through two hours of pure tedium (special thanks to Mario and Luigi
DS in helping me survive with a little sanity left), I finally
started to play. I can't go into details with the confidentiality
thing, but I will say one thing; why is there a confidentiality
agreement on a game that is this old and is just like the other
versions (especially the PS2 version)? I really don't get this. If
you want to learn about the game, don't ask someone who's in the
beta. Instead you just have to go to a FFXI (PC version) message
board. It's that easy. It's a freakin' 3 year old game, after
all.
Well, I don't
honestly know how much this beta will remain in my hands (as in, it
will soon be relegated to a shelf, to collect dust). I wanted to
have fun, but it's a 3 year old game. Enough is enough in pushing
old stuff around and calling it new. While paying $10 for the beta
(or the OXM issue with the beta) is not a bad deal, I honestly don't
think I'd be able to pay full new game price and a monthly
subscription. To make things worse, with how Square Enix said they
may consider supporting the 360, this game may be used as either a
reason for doing so or an excuse to not. While I honestly can do
without Square Enix and their inane ability to be both a trend
setter and a fanboy's wet dream, I do want to see more Japanese
support for the 360, and this would be a major victory for the
console if Square Enix did stick around.
Anyway, it has now
been the longest stretch of my life of consecutive rain, and I feel
it wearing on me. This is also the second longest stretch of
consecutive rainy days in Seattle's recorded weather history. With a
forecast of rain non-stop, I think I may reach the end of my wits
soon. Blah. If you're not in Seattle, then a happy weekend to you
all. If you are here...at least there's always football on the
TV.
Malik
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