• 3Mar 09

  New website that I'm calling home

  Hey all. This isn't exactly a good bye post or anything, but recently some old Gamespot friends got their fingers into a new gaming site called thevgpress.com, and they have pulled me in.

  I had been fighting the urge to leave GS for a while since I've invested so much time here, but the fact is I'm really not enjoying the forums anymore. There's been an increasing amount of negativity over the past year. Not sure if it's due to Gerstmangate, an economy that increasingly makes it difficult to enjoy multiple consoles, or just an increasing amount of frustration and fanboyism due the the new format of the console wars. Whatever it is, people are starting to get bitter and uppity.

  So that brings me back to vgpress.com. It's a simple site that updates gaming news daily, has a near weekly podcast,blogs, and a couple small forums. It's only populateda handful of people right now, but they're all pretty smart guys and there's no snotty attitudes, no "my console is better than your console", and no mods that delete your post when you come up with a clever one liner that insults someone's mother and taste in gaming.

  So despite the smaller community I already find myself posting there with great frequency and am enjoying myself again. Check out the site if you have a minute. The navigation still needs a little work but it's getting there, and it's a great source for news if nothing else and you'll likely see a number of familiar gamespot faces.

  • Posted Mar 3, 2009 8:19 am PT
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• 27Feb 09

  No Street Fighter IV for me

  I'm just about driving myself insane. I really want to play SFIV. As a Wii owner I have no chance in hell of ever playing it. As a one console owner I knew there would be games that I'd miss out on and that's fine. Between 2 jobs, wife and kids there's not enough time to play everything I want on one console, let alone 2. But this is the first time I truly am regretting it.

  Street Fighter II was just legendary to me. When I first became interested in the game I remember trying to play it in the arcade but the lines was too long. So instead I settled for the original Street Fighter that had the punch pads. But one of those pads was ripped off and I ended up cutting up my hand on some of the exposed metal.

  Despite the injury I never lost interest and a few months later I bought a SNES and a copy of SFII along with it. And it was amazing. Worth all the hype that I had heard. I remember the shock of seeing the 4 bosses the first time. Each one infinitely harder than the next. Vega was a complete blur. How the hell were you supposed to hit him? And for the love of god look at Sagat!!! He's huge!!! And Bison with the Psycho Crusher? Screw that I quit! But I of course preservered and in time got half way decent.

  And I played each of the next installments, Championship Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super SFII, etc. The Alpha series would eventually go on to be my favorite, particularly Alpha II. Loved the aesthetics of it, loved the cast, and it just felt perfectly balanced.

  But now here I am without a system to play the new installment, which looks simply magnificent. I'm sure in a couple weeks I'll be able to deal once Madworld and Rune Factory: Frontier come out, but right now it's hell. I guess I'll take some comfort in knowing that I wouldn't be able to play as either Adon or Rolento and those were my fighters of choice in the Alpha games.

  Crap... it doesn't work. This sucks.

  • Posted Feb 27, 2009 5:55 pm PT
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• 22Feb 09

  Deadly Creatures - And.....we're done.

  Picked up Deadly Creatures last week at launch and yesterday I finally had the time to finish it off. Overall it was a great experience, though I'm not sure I'd call it a great game. If I look at it as just another game it was too short, lacks replay value, suffered from a few camera issues, and had just a terrible ending.

  That all being said, I don't regret playing it for a moment. It was such a different experience that it'll go on my "Win" column for no other reason that it was so remarkably original that I couldn't help but enjoy it. Whenever someone starts up with the "games as art" argument I usually roll my eyes and just shut my mouth, but with Deadly Creatures makes one of the strongest cases for it that I've ever encountered.

  Adventuring as the tarantula and scorpion and experiencing the world through their eyes inan area that's probably no bigger than my front yard really was something else. Add in the scorpion's combat, the back story of Billy Bob Thorton and Dennis Hopper, and the Tarantula's final boss battle (which despite being brief is damn near legendary) and you've got the makings for a game that I'd recommend to all. The developers tried something truly different and for the most part pulled it off. Got to respect that in a day and age where the biggest games all have IV's and V's after them, if not XIII.

  And now that this game is finished, it's time to patiently wait for MadWorld. . . It's going to be a long two weeks.

  • Posted Feb 22, 2009 9:57 am PT
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