Frothing Demand

Art of Fighting Anthology review was posted. Persona 3 review now complete. Have to throw together this week’s Warp Pipe, and part of next week’s before I leave for Queensland tomorrow. Yay.

The new Warp Pipe is up.

Spending the weekend with Mario Galaxy, and a kitten that thinks it’s a puppy.

Meowing kittens in my ear and people shuffling up and down outside of my room all day have made productivity difficult. Taking a quick break from this week’s Warp Pipe to just settle my mind – I was unhappy with the first draft, so I’m rewriting it. Thought I’d have it done by 2pm, but I didn’t even start until 2:30.

Ditched the webcomic. Van hadn’t made an appearance online in two weeks, and my expanded role at Internode for lots more monies has made the concept of working on anything for free less than desirable. While I think the comic would have worked, I think I’d have had to put a lot of effort into educating him about gaming, since his knowledge was limited to driving games.

Waiting on Next-Gen to get back to me with regards to their Australian writer position. Had a chat to them a month ago and I was the front runner, but they were not 100% on the need for such a writer just yet, and requested I talk to them again later on.

No published articles today. Lazy sod, etc.

Silly Jamie from SI sent the games to the wrong address – we went to the old house to see if the owners were home to forward on the mail – it looked like said package was in the mail box, but we’ll wait and see if they forward it on. Moogle (the kitten) seems to be settling in well – meowed the whole way home, and was only interested in playing and exploring last night. She settled down a bit today, so she should be good for the long haul. Warp Pipe article plan done today, real thing to be written tomorrow. More Geometry Wars needs to be played, and Turok will probably get the review treatment soon. Sick of Ricky Ponting 2007 and its glitchy achievements, so I’m not going for the 1000 on it anymore.

This weekend has been declared Super Mario Weekend so that I can beat Galaxy before I go to Queensland next week.

Alien vs. Predator review finally posted. Persona 3 and Art of Fighting Anthology appear to be taking their sweet time, too. More Geometry Wars Galaxies to be played today. Have to drive up to Balwyn tonight to pick up our new kitten – it’ll be my first time in peak hour, shall be interesting.

So I finally got off my butt last week and put in the pitch to Internode for a column to fill the gap left by Easy Mode. The result is The Warp Pipe, which is pretty much Easy Mode in spirit, but will run weekly, and will probably feature a little more serious content, rather than piss taking and unjustified ranting. You’ll be able to read The Warp Pipe every Sunday on the Internode Games Network.

My role with IGN will be expanding greatly in the coming months. Can’t really talk about what’s happening, but it’s all very exciting.

Yeah, yeah, more like weekly froth, but it’s been a little busier. Crapload of uninteresting news on the blogs for posting this morning and reviews of Persona 3, Art of Fighting Anthology and Geometry Wars Galaxies to be done in the next week. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem review still not posted. Will be doing a lot more work with Internode in the coming months – they have big plans, of which I am not able to speak freely about, but look out for their gaming portal to become something much better.

7/2 News

Winning Eleven Renamed – ZZZ
New DLC for Test Drive Unlimited – Game is boring
Fight your way to WrestleMania 24 – But you have to play the awful Smackdown vs. Raw 08
Red Faction III confirmed – Will be limited like the first two
First Guitar Hero IV song confirmed – This corpse will be flogged to death
Bungie’s next effort to be “totally different” – Better not be another fucking FPS
Daxter goes double platinum – To be expected when its free with every PSP
Japan to receive Satin Silver PS3 – Gimme
PS3 The Best due in March, Platinum range “likely” – Hopefully not with massacred box art like PS2 Platinum
Metal Gear Solid compilation due in March – Gimme
1 million PS3 owners Folding@home – As opposed to playing games, of which there are few

Lousy AusPost hasn’t delivered my Geometry Wars Galaxies, and lousy UPS hasn’t delivered Lost Odyssey or Fire Emblem.

The move is complete and we’re all settled in, so I can get back to writing now. Not much work was posted while I was offline – Strategy Informer published my reviews in the reverse order of which they were submitted.

Warhammer 40K: Squad Command – Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War is essentially the game to beat as far as RTS and I are concerned, so it’s a bit of a risk trying the turn-based thing. It could have worked better than it did – they’ve got some solid game mechanics in there, but the pedestrian difficulty and horrendous interface really sour what they achieved with gridless movement.

Also, I somehow moved up into the top 150 Australians on MyGamerCard despite not having played the Xbox 360 since Friday.

Having a bit of a haphazard work schedule at the moment, and moving house on the weekend and losing the net for 5-7 days is not going to help matters any.

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice Review – I liked this game for its rather high octane thrills, but it has a number of minor issues that really pull it back. I’d like to see BigBig Studios take on something a little different now.

Currently working on a review for Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and starting Warhammer 40K: Squad Command for tomorrow or Friday. As far as other projects go, I’ll soon be collaborating with an artist for a webcomic – more details to come on that in the next few months. No work on the book this week sadly. Also trying to get 1000 achievement points in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Musou, which is fun despite its deep rooted repetition. Passed 35,000 achievement points yesterday actually – don’t know of any writers in the country with that many points. Then again, I don’t know of many writers in this country that play as many games as I do, which is a little troubling.

Yes, still not daily, but then I haven’t been publishing work daily because the industry is so bleeding slow at the moment. Spent the day working on my book, which I will discuss at a later date.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit announced – Atari is determined to draw the last little bit of blood out of this stone to keep itself afloat. Problem is that DBZ finished first airing in the United States some 5 years ago now, and the sales curve is very reflective of this. The DBZ audience has yet to shift to the new consoles, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Bionic Commando remake for PSN/XBLA – GRIN is doing the next-gen version of Bionic Commando (hopefully not as shitty and lifeless as their GRAW PC games), and now they’re doing a remake of the NES version. Problem with this is that they’re completely removing any references to the original Japanese plot, which was about reviving Hitler as a super soldier. Hooray for sensitivity, political correctness and all that shit.

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice review still not up. Belated reviews of Alien vs. Predator and Warhammer 40K for PSP early next week.