Malik
(7/06/05)
First off, I was
planning on posting yesterday...I was until, on my day off from work
to catch up on sleep in order to be writing this post at 3 AM this
morning (and to do my lamezor day job that requires about 16 hours
from me today...with no overtime...am I bitter? yes...I am), until I
had a very rude awakening yesterday morning from a certain person
who left his cell phone at my place the night before and was too
lame to think of actually finding out if it'd be cool to wake me up
at 6:45AM, on my day off to catch up on my future lack of sleep,
arrived. Was it cool to wake me at 6:45 on my day off? No.
Anyway, I was too
pissed off and tired yesterday to post. I won't dwell, but I will
say that that type of action is freakin' lame as hell.
Ok, to start
things off, a few minor news things I saw at Gamespot. These are
also lame things, like being woken...sorry, I said I won't
dwell.
So, Sony
is not going to bundle the HDD, which will measure at 80GB, with
the PS3. Instead it will be an add on. I don't know if Sony learned
from the PS2 HDD or not, but add on hardware doesn't sell. I mean
let's look at the Sega CD, the 32X, the N64 memory unit, the N64
disk drive, the Jaguar toilet (that's the CD drive), the PS2 hard
drive...shit, the list of failed add on hard ware is about equal to
the number of add ons ever made. True, Sony is already going to sell
their PS3 at a major loss, but that's only because the PS3 is being
made with too many fancy bells and whistles that will never be fully
utilized. I love how Sony, in order to further reduce their losses,
has such a bad idea as planning add on hardware before the system
even launches.
Secondly, the cast
has been announced for the Dungeon
Siege movie. This cast includes Ron Perlman (one of my favorite
actors) and Burt Reynolds. On one hand, I don't know why Mr.
Reynolds is in this movie. It makes no sense. On the other hand, I
can't help but think that this movie makes no sense. I see another
D&D the movie in the future, and it's name is Dungeon Siege. At
least D&D had a great acting job, despite how it makes no sense
when you say it aloud, from Marlon Waynes. I don't think Burt
Reynolds can pull this one off.
On a final bit of
gaming news, Gamespot's
Rumor Control had an interesting things about the 360's power
and abilities. It's not determined how likely this rumor is, but
it's being said that the 360's CPUs will, despite being so numerous
and powerful on paper, run about 2 times the speed of the XBox CPU.
So, despite this not being confirmed or denied or whatever, I feel
like adding my own two cents about this. Here it is; the current
consoles have no reached their limitations yet. If you don't believe
me, just look at GTA:SA. This game is so much more powerful than
GTA:VC, which was once heralded as the most powerful game that the
PS2 could handle. The same could be said about many other games from
this generation (be it XBox, PS2, or GCN). So, while we may be
thinking, as a community, that the 3+ year old consoles have reached
the end of their abilities, this is not true. So, if half the
implied CPU abilities of the 360 have not been utilized, then what
the hell makes people think the full abilities of the 360 will be
reached in it's little 4 years of fame? It's only because we, as a
geek society, always expect bigger and better, despite how we don't
take full use of the bigger and better things we get. It's like
demanding a new TV every year because it might now come with mood
lighting (I wish I can find a link for this thing...I saw it on a TV
ad; it's a plasma screen that has lights around the TV's edges that
give off a variety of different colors...about as useful as putting
neon accent tubes into a GMC Gremlin). We don't need it, so let's
not assume, blindly, that we do.
Secondly, if this
is just being based on CPU speed, then I just say we need to look at
computers. The increases in computer CPU speeds have fallen off
lately. We used to see a nice increase in CPU speed every few
months, yet we are now seeing almost no increase. However, the looks
and feel of the average PC game has jumped in leaps and bounds in
this same time frame (Half-Life 2...need I say anymore). This is
because CPU speed is not the primary driving force in game quality
anymore. It now is more coming down to the video cards, the memory,
the hard drives, the...well, almost everything is as important, or
more so, than the CPU. This is probably the case with the next
generation of console games, as well. We don't need massive CPUs to
see a new age of games. In fact, I think it'll be Nvidia and ATI
that will wow us the most with the new consoles...that and,
hopefully, the game developers who will push more quality out and
less of the same old cliché crap.
Anyway, I'm
probably only half coherent right now. I blame it on being so damned
early that I can't have seen the sun rise yet. So, I'm just going to
leave things off here. I'm hoping to play some more Tales of
Symphonia tonight, after I post this. I don't know if I will, since
I'll be getting home in about 15 hours (which is about how long I
should run between waking up and sleeping again). Anyway, I'm off to
a fun filled day of hell. Viva no overtime! Blah!
Malik
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Malik
(7/07/05)
I really hate the
Summer months. It's bad enough that last year held only a couple of
worthwhile games, but this year is even more pathetic. Between the
lack of movies (ok...the lack of good or original movies), the lack
of games, and the lack of game news, this is shaping up to be one of
the slowest Summers I've seen. I, at least, was hoping for a little
something in the news department with the impending release of the
360 only a few months away, and the fact that Sony better start
cranking up the PR machine to make people realize there's more to
the next generation than Microsoft.
I guess you could
say some news about the TGS (on Gamespot)
would serve as news. But, as I've said a hundred times before, I
just don't find announcements about things to be announced of any
worth to anyone besides the companies involved...who think of this
type of "news" as a great way to stroke their egos.
Blah.
It's like when
Square Enix, who's the biggest offender in this category, announces
that they will announce a new game at an un-released date. Is there
any news in that? No. Yet Square Enix keeps doing it ever since they
first did it with FFXII, a couple years back. The only thing you can
walk away with from this type of crap is that some company, like
Square Enix, is trying to jerk you along and manipulate you into
being hyped about something that is not even hype-able yet.
To randomly change
subjects, I have started to watch Firefly...yeah, I joined this geek
party a little late.
For those who
missed this show when Fox completely f#@%ed up with it, this is one
of the best shows that Fox ever f$#@ed over. I mean Fox did
everything to sabotage this show when it first came out in
2002.
The main reason I
missed the show when it aired on TV, and almost refused to watch it
when Velveeta brought it home last week, was that Fox's idea of ads
for Firefly based around showing as little of the show as possible
and trying to make it look like some bad action-based clone of
"Space: Above and Beyond". If only I knew...if only
everyone knew. Plus, it probably didn't help that it was shown on
Fridays at 8, which is about the worst timeslot on Fox (besides
Thursdays at 8...which claimed the lives of enough good shows on
it's own), and that Fox considered the pilot, which is awesome and
explains a lot, the last episode to show. Hell, without the pilot,
you don't even know what the show it about.
Anyway, I just
hope Fox pulls a 180, like they did with Family Guy, after Serenity
(the Firefly movie) comes out in theaters. Either that, or I hope
Joss Whedon tries to pitch it again to some networks that know how
to treat a good show...in other words, a network that doesn't screw
over awesome shows like The Tick with bad time slots, or Emmy
winning shows like Futurama with random time slots each week.
Anyway, it's doubtful that this show will return, simply because it
was far too entertaining...but somehow things worked out for the
best for Family Guy...
Anyway, I'm still
only half "here". My day yesterday of 16 hours of work
(for those keeping score, that's two whole work days) and 2 hours of
sleep is still messing with my head. So, here's where I'll just log
instead of trailing on in a thousand ramblings.
Malik
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Malik
(7/08/05)
So, I guess
there's now an RPG being made for The Justice League (as I saw on Gamespot),
that defies all reasoning. First off, I thought something this far
back from the average geeks mind would only merit a GBA RPG.
However, not only is it coming for a major console or two, as in the
XBox and PS2, it's coming out well after the XBox will be nothing
but a memory (and the PS2 will be a little more, but not much more,
than a memory). Yeah, it's coming out Fall of next year. I don't get
a few things on this, but mainly why it's coming out for the
previous generation of consoles. By this time, the 360, at least,
will have been around about a year, and this means an XBox game will
sell about as well as a PSX game sold after the PS2 had been out for
a year (in case you've forgotten, they would sit in a special
section of a game store, where neither the customer or the clerks
would know they existed).
Beyond that, I
don't see good things coming from an RPG of this material. It's one
thing for the X-Men, who are not nearly as overpowered to have X-Men
Legends (which I'd bet is the primary reason for this game...an
attempt to steal Marvel's thunder). However, if I'm watching
Superman, as a game character that faces the problems of leveling
up, I'm going to be quite disappointed. I mean the JLA characters
are a little too beefed up to go through the standard convention of
RPG leveling.
Anyway, this is
all from a guy who sees the comic battles in a very clean cut way. I
think of fully powered, but usually more dull as characters, in the
DC superheroes. They are not the ones who keep having to improve
themselves. Meanwhile, I see the Marvel cast as the ones who are
usually fighting an uphill battle that requires more training.
Anyway, I'm rambling...damned week of no sleep.
Also, I don't
think of this as news, but what the hell...everyone else seems to
think so. Rare is possibly going to make DS games, according to this
little thing from Gamespot.
I really can't think of this as news since Rare has already made a
few GBA games since being bought by Microsoft. I mean, there's the
current project of Donky Kong Country 3 being ported from SNES to
GBA, but there's a few other games. Like how It's Mr. Pants was a
Rare title (which made it even harder to ask about at game
stores...how do you ask for a game with that title, and then say
it's from Rare, considering Rare is Microsoft owned?). In fact, this
should definitely not surprise anyone.
If someone is
thinking along the lines of "...but Microsoft owns Rare and
Microsoft hates Nintendo!", then it just means that person's a
f#@%ing idiot. Seriously. Microsoft may compete, to a minor degree
(it used to be stronger), with Nintendo in the console front, but
there's no competition in the handheld market. Further, Microsoft is
a business that knows how to make money. One easy way to make money
is to make a product that will sell, and to not give another rival
business. Well, with the DS, Nintendo is not a rival (did Microsoft
make a handheld and I slept through it? I think not), and DS games
are selling. Thus, Microsoft would be smart enough to jump on the
money train. They've done it, despite what people want to believe,
for the GBA a few times already.
Lastly, and I love
how it's an actual...sort of...news day, there's more
bullshit from politicians. In particular, this would be a
Californian assemblyman (Leland Yee). I should also mention this
man's a child psychologist, and a person who brought about a bill in
California about how a violent game (with depictions of violence
against people) should only be sold to a person over 16. Well, Yee
is now saying that GTA:SA needs to be AO rated. I love his
logic...
Yee, in
particular, points to the supposed hidden and lost code in GTA:SA
that allows CJ to have sex as a mini-game. The funny thing is this
has not really been confirmed anymore than Leatherface being in
GTA:SA. In fact, even if this code is on the disk, it is not
something a person could just turn on the game and access. In fact,
it's doubtful, in my eye, that it even exists since the only
depictions of this hidden code is some really poorly (visually)
shown videos that look about as genuine to the GTA-addict as
Gamespot having a single review for both the XBox and PC versions of
GTA:SA seems like a good idea.
Anyway, beyond
that fact that Yee's main issues is seeming to come from something
that's 99.9% likely to be bullshit, I'm left with two thoughts. For
one, little kids should have more supervision. Secondly, I know for
a fact that games don't cause violence (if they did, I should be the
single most brutal and f#@%ed killer ever known...but I'm
not...sorry, Yee), but parents/guardians need to watch their
charges. A child needs to be raised by more than just a TV and a
game system. However, that entails not trying to ban games, which I
should point out that Yee isn't doing (he's only trying to limit
their exposure to under-supervised children...I'm actually pretty
cool with that concept), but holding parents accountable for their
negligence. However, if the kid still ends up f#@^ing crazy, then
the answer becomes realizing the kid is f#@^ing crazy! It's not a
hard concept. I mean if a kid watched a shit ton of violent movies
and went on a killing spree, he would be considered crazy, but if he
plays a lot of violent games then it's the game's fault. I love
shit-tacular reasoning.
Anyway, I do have
to say that a gem shouldn't be rated on content that is fully locked
or only rumored to exist. So, to give an AO to GTA:SA is bullshit.
However, to keep games in a place that requires at least a small bit
of parental supervision (at least in buying the game) is not such a
bad concept. I mean too many parents just don't give a f@#% about
their kids, and this is what really needs to be worked upon.
Anyway, I'm
rambling. Partly this is due to sleep not being in my schedule, and
partly this is due to...ok, a final thing before I part ways for the
weekend...
I used to work as
a temp for an agency. Some people would look at it this way, but
it's actually better put that I was whored out as a temp worker, but
an agency that worked much like a pimp. At one point, I was whored
out to Microsoft. This job lasted for an entire 5 hours (no, I
wasn't fired or something...it was just a short job of hanging some
posters on their campus to promote some upcoming meeting...and
hanging posters isn't exactly an all day, or whole week, job). I
should also mention that it was 6 years ago.
So, yesterday I
got a call from Microsoft about being part of a focus group. I
answered some of their questions correctly, and found out that I'm
not qualified to be in their play-test/focus group stuff since I had
put in so little work with them so many years back. Hell, if you
look at the situation...I wasn't even their employee. I worked for
my temp agency, and I got my W-4 and paychecks all from them, not
Microsoft. Anyway, I guess the important lesson in this is that it's
better to have a short memory (most people would forget this type of
shit after one or two years...but I have a damned memory) and to lie
your ass off than to actually remember things and be truthful about
them. I bet Microsoft is still just pissed off about the
class-action lawsuit from their temps from about 5-6 years ago.
Couldn't someone had told me that by accepting that job for my pay
of about $30 (after taxes), I would no longer be eligible for game
testing and getting the free swag from it (that's worth far more).
Blah.
So, yeah...I enter
this weekend tired and pissed. Should be fun.
Malik
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