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Archive for September, 2010

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The Perfectly Sane Show Volume 2 – Episode 5: The Reach Around

By
admin
– September 17, 2010Posted in: Shows, The Perfectly Sane Show

Ouch… that title is bad and blatantly obvious isn’t it? Oh well, while Halo: Reach is the main focus of the show this week we still manage to talk a bit about Spider-Man, House M.D., DJ Hero 2, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Plants vs. Zombies, some random news and we make our NFL picks. But honestly we’ve all been playing Reach and loving every minute of it.

Yes there was a post about a chance to win a copy of Deadly Premonition from us on Wednesday. We received a rather weak showing for the question so we ended up cutting that part of the show but be advised, if you commented your name will be held for the next chance to win and if you participate in that one, you will have two chances to win. Anyway sorry about no game give away this show but we did not forget you.

Oh and if the editing seems particularly bad this week, like far worse than normal. It’s all Chris’s fault because he rushed the editing and mixing out so he could go play more Halo. Seriously.


Music in this episode:
Strike of the Devil’s Axes OC ReMix by CarboHydroM & LuIzA
Overture by Martin O’Donnell & Michael Salvatori
At Any Cost by Martin O’Donnell & Michael Salvatori
Halo Insurrection by Krispy

E-mail comments (or questions) to pefectlysane@vagary.tv or follow us on Twitter and send them there.

Tony – iamnapoleon1066
Jeff – JustSomeDude899
Cyrus – FozzyTehGamer
Chris – kariyanine

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n00bketeers Episode 35… I Think I Peed Myself

By
Noob
– September 16, 2010Posted in: N00bketeers, Shows

Another episode with only the amazing Wonder Twins… Oh wait, you say they are the worst super heroes ever? Never mind then, Another episode with only the amazing Britt and Beez Duo… Much better. This episode is particularly interesting in … Continue reading →

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16bit Radio: September 15, 2010

By
VTV Staff
– September 16, 2010Posted in: 16bit Radio, Shows

In this week’s broadcast, we talk about the nightmarish return of Alice and why we don’t give a damn about Halo: Reach.

We’ll also take a look at a macro addon for Warhammer Online in this week’s “Help With Adds,” 13 Star Wars titles in “Dirt Cheap Games,” Mario’s 25th birthday in “This Week In Gaming,” and we rip apart Borderlands in “The Good, The Bad and The Pixelated.”

Tonight’s music will highlight Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Mortal Kombat 3, Lagoon, GoldenEye and Killer Instinct.

Find out more on this week’s show by visiting 16bit Radio.com or listening live, each and every Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST on UltraWorld Radio.

You can also email us at comments[at]16bitradio[dot]com

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View From The Top Episode 17 – We’re Back!

By
Ferrel
– September 16, 2010Posted in: Shows, View From the Top

Karen and I have returned after the summer hiatus! With all of our traveling and con going it has been hard to get the show put together. We’re not going anywhere, however, and we returned with a fairly decent show about what we’ve been up to!

Show Notes

  • Where have we been?
  • What happened at Fan Faire and Dragon Con?
  • EverQuest II Extended thoughts!
  • You make the call!
  • Adam is making a sales pitch? Lame!

Acknowledgments

We would like to shout out to Green Armadillo, Chris from Game by Night, the SOE community staff, and several other people who deserve some love! We’ll step back in soon with another show and a guest!

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“Presentation” in games

By
Magnus Risebro
– September 15, 2010Posted in: Blogs, Magnus' Blog

On my everlasting quest through countless gaming forums, magazines and articles I  have noticed how often the term “graphics over gameplay” or its variants comes up, most frequently in silly fanboy-populated flame-wars.

Of course, to a point, these “gameplay-supremacists” are right. I would much rather have a game with slightly lackluster facial textures than one with monotonous and boring gameplay, but at what point does one distinguish “presentation” from the “gameplay experience”?

Would Red Dead Redemption be the same without the awe-inspiring vistas of the old west, as that surely goes in the “presentation” slot, right? In this writer´s humble opinion those breathtaking views are one of the defining aspects of the RDR experience.

And story? Story can´t count as “gameplay” right? Even when the tale of John Marston is central to what Red Dead is, it is to be passed of as simple window dressing?

This is why the “graphics vs. gameplay” discussion is fundamentally flawed. In a great game, there should be no surplus material. Every line of ones and zeroes in the code should be something that the game would be lesser without.

Of course, there exists many games where I did not give a flying fornication about story, art design, and other non-gameplay elements.

Did I like these games? Sometimes, yes, but a game will inevitably be better when all elements, be it visual, audial, interactive, or story, compliment each other perfectly.

In some cases, such as with puzzle games like Tetris, the best way for story to compliment the game would be to have no story at all, and the best way for the graphics to compliment the game is for them to be as functional as possible.

Even so, Tetris fits the rule of elements complimenting each other, but in this case, by some elements being as minimalist as possible.

In my experience, the place “graphics over gameplay” is the most popular is in communities of avid Nintendo-fans. There it is often used as an argument for why it is pointless to have a console with higher graphical capabilities than the Wii.

Unfortunately, these people are a little naïve. Just as Wii sports would not be the same on the 360 (let´s forget Kinect for now), certain technically-demanding games would be worse off on less powerful consoles.

So despite all the good intentions of not focusing on the visual aspects of games, we must in fact realize that, in some games, technically demanding elements are central to the experience.

No matter how fantastic Zelda is.

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Film Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife

By
Chris Scott
– September 14, 2010Posted in: Movie Reviews, Reviews

The Resident Evil game franchise is not renowned for having an amazing narrative, so it is quite surprising that the series has been able to carve out a series of moderately successful films for nearly a decade. Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth and latest entry into the series and if you have not previously watched the Resident Evil films you may just want to stop reading here and go about the rest of your day because Afterlife is deeply entrenched in the overarching narrative developed by the previous three films. If you have in fact experienced the up and down roller coaster that the Resident Evil film series is you may also want to stop reading here and go about the rest of your day because Afterlife is not just a bad film, it is a bad Resident Evil film.

Afterlife picks up shortly after the closing events of Resident Evil: Extinction. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has decided to wage war on the evil bio-chem company Umbrella by using an army of clones to attack a secret underground installation in Japan. Despite having an army of identical superhero supermodels, the opening assault on the Umbrella facility is one of the most bland action sequence put to film in recent memory. Imagine the lobby shootout scene in The Matrix but suck all the fun out of it and you may have an understanding of how Afterlife opens.

After the sleep inducing opening sequence the film enters La La Land, Alice loses her superpowers and travels around the barren wasteland of earth looking like Amelia Earheart. She sets out to find her friends but just ends up with a conveniently amnesiac Claire Redfield (Ali Larter). From there the film begins to make less and less sense as Alice decides to land her small plane on top of an old prison surrounded by zombies (the only ones actually in the film) to team up with a movie producer, his assistant, a waitress and a basketball player.

If it all sounds like a bad joke then you’ve figured it all out because it is a really bad joke. Do you want to hear the punch line? Wentworth Miller plays Chris Redfield, Claire’s brother that she doesn’t remember. He is locked up in the prison but knows how to escape it. Hysterically ironic isn’t it? After all Wentworth Miller was the star of Prison Break. That is about as smart as the film gets and I have a feeling it was not intentional. The film has giant gaping plot holes around every corner and with the execution being so utterly devoid of fun there is nothing redeeming about it in any way shape or form.

Say what you will about the series narrative in the previous films and the games but it is at least entertaining. Afterlife is just stupidity put to film. Writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson delivers an absolute turd with Afterlife. Its not good on any level. It is not even good in the so bad that it becomes entertaining kind of way. It is just absolute garbage and worse yet its boring garbage presented in 3D, so it costs you more to self inflict the torture for nearly a 100 minutes.

1 out of 5

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The Perfectly Sane Show Volume 2 – Episode 4: It Went Back In

By
admin
– September 10, 2010Posted in: Shows, The Perfectly Sane Show

This week we discover the fact that Tony is superhuman when it comes to Mario games. We also discuss our experiences with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – Reflex Edition, Killzone 2, G.I. Joe, Mass Effect 2 DLC, Metroid: Other M, The Runaways, Vanquish, NHL 11, and Machete. In news, Fozzy and Tony go in depth on the problems with college football and the whole group discusses rainbows and unicorns as well as trying to prestige in Modern Warfare 2 without killing anyone. The guys give their NFL picks of the week and we wrap it all up with Fozzy on a desert island playing Mass Effect 2 while everyone else is playing Halo 3 multiplayer and enjoying socialization. And if you haven’t been listening to the entire final song, you might want to do so this week. Just saying :) On second thought, you might not want to…


Music in this episode:
Strike of the Devil’s Axes OC ReMix by CarboHydroM & LuIzA
Desert Snowstorm by Ziwtra
Spreading the Culture by The Orichalcon
Warriors of Light by Darangen

E-mail comments (or questions) to pefectlysane@vagary.tv or follow us on Twitter and send them there.

Tony – iamnapoleon1066
Jeff – JustSomeDude899
Cyrus – FozzyTehGamer
Chris – kariyanine

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Film Review: Machete

By
Chris Scott
– September 10, 2010Posted in: Movie Reviews, Reviews

For all intents and purposes, Machete is a film that should not exist. Based off of a fake trailer attached to the Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino collaboration Grrindhouse, Machete is something that has been talked about a lot but that few thought would ever actually materialize. Robert Rodriguez though kept the idea in his head and has unleashed the story of Machete upon film going audiences.

Machete is an interesting experiment. Rodriguez takes the concept he developed for a two minute trailer and has fleshed it out into a full 100 minute film and that in itself should be admired. Just because he has accomplished this feat though does not necessarily imply that he has succeeded in delivering a quality film because Machete as a film is a mixed bag.

The film is the story of Machete (Danny Trejo) an ex-Mexican police officer who watches his wife’s murder and is left for dead all at the hand of the evil drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). Three years later Machete is in Texas during a time when a strong crackdown on illegal immigration and this political hot point is the main theme driving the film. Machete is tasked with assassinating Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro), of course the assassination attempt is just making use of Machete as a patsy to drum up support for an anti-immigration fence.

There are added layers to the overall plot but if you have ever watched a 70s exploitation film you know where this is all heading because it is about a subtle as Danny Trejo’s face. Personally the lack of subtlety is a major drawback for me. Whereas Rodriguez’s Grindehouse installment, Planet Terror, was a proper tribute/parody of the exploitation genre, Machete is just a straight exploitation film.

Yes, it is fun and a lot of that comes from Rodriguez’s natural ability too make fun movies however it is fun in the ironic way that actual exploitation films are fun. To be short about this, Machete takes itself too seriously. Rodriguez obviously wants to deliver a political message with his film. Sadly the way he delivers it makes his film come off in the wrong way. Regardless of where one stands on the immigration issue that Rodriguez attempts to tackle with Machete, it is undeniable that the issue is much deeper than the black and white, good and evil examination that the film offers up.

Much like Grindhouse itself, Machete is a polarizing film. If you are a fan of over-the-top action films, 70s exploitation films and can ignore poorly delivered political messaging, then Machete is a film that will float your boat. Everyone else should probably steer clear.

3 out of 5.

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n00bketeers Episode 34… Late Bloomer Double Rainbow

By
Noob
– September 9, 2010Posted in: N00bketeers, Shows

Who’s ready a podcast without Red Dead spoilers? Ah, I thought you guys might be, well thanks to Britt not spurting out random tidbits and plot points to popular games I can definitely say, this episode is spoiler free! There … Continue reading →

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The Multiverse – Episode #25: “Episode XXV – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ I”

By
Chris
– September 7, 2010Posted in: Shows, The Multiverse

Hey Gang,

Even though I’m absent this week, I wanted to pop in to share the latest episode of the Multiverse with you. Ferrel was at DragonCon this week, so Riknas and I held down the fort talking about everything under the sun. Specifically, here are some of the things we hit on:

  • Cryptic serves up their first weekly episode; Cryptic as a studio; possibilities for the future
  • Mortal Online “One of the most iincomplete MMOs ever released” says lead developer
  • PAX and DragonCon have begun!
  • FFXIV Open Beta – public reception and Chris’ thoughts

I hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording. Remember, you can contact us at multiversepodcast@gmail.com. We also highlight 5-star iTunes reviews, so drop us a line!

Enjoy!

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