Rabid commentary on video games, movies and television.

Continuining with more Youtube video stuff. This is a three part series detailing my Xbox 360 collection. Still getting used to the camera, as well as actually being on camera. Not umming seems impossible at this point, but I will get there.

Be kind

Charly and I decided to start doing our own collection videos for Youtube, since we’ve basically just sat around and watched those instead of TV for the last few months. I did my PSP collection to start with. As you can see I’m not used to the camera yet – bit of umming and aahing, the lighting is crappy and the light reflects off the game cases (due to the awesome condition I keep them in ).

I’ve been slack on doing acquisitions updates since April. I got Charly to take pictures recently of everything we’d bought after our anniversary in June. Charly says the pics aren’t the best, but to me, they get the job done.

First up is, yes, a new Xbox 360 Elite. My launch one packed it in, 6 months out of warranty. This particular deal was $AU429 for the elite (before they cut down on the cables), Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST (not pictured). I’ve not really spent much time with it, unfortunately.

Here we have a bunch of bargain Xbox 360 games mixed in with a couple of new releases. The two Warriors Orochi games were under 15 bucks each, VF5 was only 10 bucks and Sonic Unleashed was about $30. As much as I like it, I can’t really afford to keep NHL 10, but it’s a great little game. The Beatles: Rock Band is actually Charly’s.

And here we have another bunch of 360 bargains. These range from $10 from Project Sylpheed to $39 for Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. Barely had the opportunity to play any of these. Would have preferred DMC4 on the PS3 as well, but thems the breaks.

I’ve become a little more intrigued with the Game Boy in recent times, so I’ve expanded the list of things we’re after. Mario Pinball Land was a steal at $14.95, particularly for that sort of condition. The Rescue of Princess Blobette was one of those games I never expected to see complete, and it cost me all of $4.77 – really happy about that. Metal Gear Solid is arguably the best game on the Game Boy Color, probably the best of the 2D Metal Gear games. Back in April it was hitting up around a hundred bucks, but I got this one for $61.08. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe was something I’d been after for a long time but wasn’t having any luck finding it complete for a good price – Charly picked it up for my birthday. Same goes for Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow – I only need Circle of the Moon to complete the handheld “Metroidvania” series.

I’ve developed this naughty little habit of getting Japanese versions of games, mainly for completionist purposes for franchise series, because the art is better or because they’re cheaper (handy when a game doesn’t require Japanese knowledge, like fighters or beat em ups). Batman Returns is the best pre-Arkham Asylum Batman game, a Final Fight style beat ‘em up by Konami. Grabbed it from the awesome Yamatoku for $16.65. Next to that, but slightly obscured by the light is Return of Double Dragon. This came across the pond as Super Double Dragon, but apparently that was not only censored, but based on a beta build of this version. Another birthday present (isn’t she lovely?).

The Japanese version of Zelda: Four Swords + was bloody cheap on Play-Asia ($23.98), and comes with a GBA/GCN link cable and the Tetra’s Trackers game, which isn’t in the US or PAL releases.

Policenauts Limited Edition was a steal at $2.25. Comes with a sort of vinyl cover holding the game and an art book. Normally goes for about $50. I usually like to get the spine cards with these things, but this was too cheap to pass up. X-Men vs. Street Fighter contains the game and a RAM cart – it’s by far the best home port of the game, and set me back about 35 bucks.

We’ve been sweeping the bargain bins lately, since many of the stores are having clearance sales. You’ll no doubt laugh at the quality of the vast majority of the games in this shot, and perhaps even poke fun at the fact that I rated some of them less than 5/10, but they were all between $14 and $27.

Due to a manufacturing problem, Mario DDR tends to be pretty tough to find, so I opted to go with the PAL version, Dancing Stage Mario Mix. Cost about $63 – seller decided to ship by sea to save me some dough, but it took over 3 months to arrive.

I’ve been clamping down on impulse buys (that aren’t at clearance sales) lately, but when I saw Play Asia had new N64 pad stock, I was unable to resist. It’s been impossible to find new official N64 pads for ages, so I bought one of every non-grey colour they had. Fortunately we don’t have Mario Party yet, so they should stay in good working order for a long time.

My 26th birthday occured recently (time needs to freeze), and Charly went overboard with the presents. Metal Gear has become one of my favourite franchises in recent years – would you believe I hated the original the first time I played it? Just need the Japanese versions of these two games to complete the multi-region set of each, which will put me closer to a full PAL/NTSC-U/NTSC-J Metal Gear set. Smash Bros is something we’ve been after for ages, but have had trouble finding in good condition. Mario Superstar Baseball brings us closer to a near complete Mario Sports collection – I can’t think of more than half a dozen games we need for that set.

Two bargain buys from the Harvey Norman sales. It’s a bit of a dubious honour to own more than one copy of Alone in the Dark (2008), and a source of amusement for a number of other writers. Riddick I wanted for 360, but I can never find it for less than $80.

I’ll be frank; I’m a complete special/limited/collector’s edition whore. Even if the bonus content is shit, I have to have it. I even get remorseful after the purchase, but I can never seem to let them go. Metroid Prime Trilogy was a must for me, especially since it’s got the first two games with Wii controls – art book is neat but would have been nicer if it had more pages. Soul Calibur IV – got the 360 version with all of its fancy shit, but the PS3 version came on sale at Video Games Plus for only 35 bucks, couldn’t resist, plus the US contents are different. Next to that are the NTSC-U and NTSC-J Metal Gear Solid 4 collectors editions, bringing my MGS4 total up to 5. To complete the set you could argue I need a PAL standard and an Asian Limited, but the PAL standard is in the PAL LE (albeit without the slip case) and the Asian LE is identical to the Japanese one without a CERO rating. Finally, there’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, great game, crappy limited edition.

Finally, we have a bit of a mix of things. That neat little book on the side is a fan-written guide for Mother 3 – and it’s arguably one of the most well made play guides I’ve seen. Simply amazing. In the middle are two more presents, both of which are Capcom games which didn’t get nearly enough attention. The first is Strider 2 which is the true sequel to Strider, as opposed to Strider Returns, which is utter tosh. The other is Cannon Spike, a Smash-TV style blaster/beat ‘em up starring various Capcom characters like Arthur, Mega Man, Cammie and B.B. Hood/Bulleta. Next to that is ICO Limited Edition – normally that’d cost a lot of money, but someone on the PALGN forums was feeling charitable and let it and a Shadow of the Colossus go for cheap. The SOTC went to Charly’s sister for her birthday. Finally, there’s a copy of 1080 Avalanche, which I grabbed from Play Asia for $20 on a whim.

There’s probably a whole heap of stuff we’ve missed over the course of the year, but we’ll sort it all out sometime.

Won’t change the way I do these despite GON’s recent change to “2 minute reviews”.

Reviews
Trials HD (XBLA) at Games On Net
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Ashes Cricket 2009 (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Wolfenstein (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) at Games On Net
Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP) at Games On Net
AFL Challenge (PSP) at Games On Net
Guitar Hero 5 (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox 360) at Games On Net

Features
The Warp Pipe – Feature Demotion at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Playing the Wild Card at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Dreamcast Retrospective at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Unrealistic Product Pitch at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 26/08 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 02/09 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 09/09 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 16/09 at Games On Net

Copped it again. Not sending this one in for repair since it’s out of warranty – going to hold out until the 23rd for the pricedrop + Halo 3 ODST bundle. In the mean time, I can use Charly’s machine to get my work done.

Time for some quick capsule reviews in the mean time.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
The Layton sequel brings more of the same sorts puzzles and mystery solving – fortunately it fantastic the first time around and works well again here.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Battle of the Androgynous Sissy Boys with a decent fighting system and solid RPG elements surrounding it. Jarring difference in the quality of character conception between the first six Final Fantasy heroes and the later four.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Latest Caped Crusader outing is one of only two games he’s in that doesn’t make me want to puke. Succeeds as both a Batman product and a video game due to high production values (including the involvement of the animated series crew) and some fantastic gameplay that makes players feel like Batman for once.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned something about developing some other skills to compliment my writing, along with producing more original content for this blog. Of course I did absolutely nothing about it until today when I captured and pieced together this video of me playing through The Terminator on the Mega Drive.

The game came out in 1992, well after the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, let alone the original film. It actually looks pretty good, but there’s not a whole lot to it. This playthrough is on the Easy mode – on all other difficulties there is a fight with a mini-boss (kind of like the T-1 from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) before you can get the machine gun. It’s not my best run through the game either – you can see a few moments of hesitation and I take way too many hits.

Dave Perry was the game’s lead programmer – before he went on to become a hotshot with Disney’s Aladdin and set up shop at Shiny and then fail miserably on Enter The Matrix despite years of awesome games like Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah and Sacrifice. Also interesting is that the producer is Neil Young, who’d later set up the Medal of Honor series at EA before becoming an iPhone magnate at ngmoco.

I’ll probably add a commentary track to the video and do this sort of thing more often (even thought about putting it up in the Let’s Play board on Something Awful). Challenges in producing this sort of thing are time – capturing, editing and recompression take ages, uploading to YouTube takes even longer. This is a game I know inside out, and it’s really short, so I thought it would be a good one to start out on. In future, I might produce something more elaborate.

Sometimes the best review is a quick one. My bank account doesn’t necessarily agree, but sometimes you can tell someone all they need to know in 50 words or less. I figured I’d do that here and slap on a traffic light styled rating system for those people with even shorter attention spans and ratings fetishes.

Shadow Complex
Everyman stumbles upon extremist plot to take over USA while looking for kidnapped girlfriend in action/adventure inspired heavily by Super Metroid et al. What it lacks in gameplay originality is made up for by its sheer quality.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra
Deplorable tie-in to a not-so-bad summer action film feels like it was rushed together in record time. Very basic gameplay structure, difficulty is absent, and variety is minimal. Plays like a bad Contra game.

Ashes Cricket 2009
Latest Codemasters cricket title features a very in-depth bowling system, which came at the expense of the rest of the game’s quality. Far too many glitches than acceptable in a retail product, poor presentation and too easy to master.

Madden NFL 10
EA’s latest American Football effort still feels inferior to their 2005 game on last gen hardware. Some nice new presentation features, but everything feels shakey and disjointed; only die-hard fans will be able to detect and appreciate any changes.

Trials HD
Don’t let the dirt bike fool you – Trials HD is a devious, spectular and addictive physics based puzzle game. Starts out easy and gets crazy hard but never becomes exceedingly frustrating. Level editor and excellent leaderboard implementation will make it go further if you’ve got a few friends.

Too many games are released with the subtitles Heroes, Origins and Legends. I propose that we outlaw these subtitles. To appease the poor sods in marketing who rely on these titles, I suggest consulting a thesaurus.

How about an example. Instead of Origins, why not use Genesis, Alpha or Emergence? They convey the same thing, but sound cooler, and haven’t been run into the ground.

Decided to do things differently and perhaps produce some original content/commentary for the blog, so the work updates are going to be separate.

Reviews
Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) at Games on Net
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Wii Sports Resort (Wii) at Games On Net
Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii) at Games On Net
The Conduit (Wii) at Games On Net
‘Splosion Man (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net
TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (Xbox Live Arcade) at Games On Net

Features
The Warp Pipe – More Absent-minded Pondering at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – A Wrong Turn at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Where’s The Hype? at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – 64-bit Game, Two-Bit Movie at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Even More Random Video Game Facts at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Gaming Book Club (EA 25th Anniversary/Book of Games) at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 08/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 15/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 22/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 29/07/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 05/08/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 12/08/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 19/08/2009 at Games On Net

Been ignoring the blog again, go me.

Some shuffling at GON is probably going to result in a downturn in my work. Fair enough – I’ve probably been doing a little too much there, but it’s good money and they pay on time, which is something I cannot say for every other outlet I’ve ever worked for.

Since I won’t have as much work, I think I’m going to dedicate some time to upskilling. I want to pick my Japanese studies back up, learn a bit about basic video and audio editing. I could, you know, keep a regular work week and do normal-person things too. I’d like to spruce this place up a bit, since I’ve had it 18 months and done nothing with it.

Reviews
Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (PSP) at Games On Net
Virtua Tennis 2009 (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Klonoa (Wii) at Games On Net
Bionic Commando (PS3) at Games On Net
Red Faction Guerilla (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
InFamous (PS3) at Games On Net
Prototype (PS3) at Games On Net
Trash Panic (PSN) at Games On Net
New Play Control! Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat (Wii) at Games On Net
Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Wii) at Games On Net
Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits (Xbox 360) at Games On Net
Ghostbusters: The Video Game (PS3) at Games On Net
EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis (Wii) at Games On Net
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (Wii) at Games On Net
Punch Out!! (Wii) at Games On Net
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PS3) at Games On Net
The Sims 3 (PC) at Games On Net

Features
The Warp Pipe – Crappletoads and Other Stories at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Market Rise on Memory Lane at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Just Beat It (and put it back on the shelf, please) at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Those Tender Moments at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 10/06/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 17/06/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 24/06/2009 at Games On Net
Coming Attractions – 01/07/2009 at Games On Net