Oh fuck...

I don't have the energy to write right now. Double entry tomorrow.

Cry More

So, got my hands on the Crysis demo and a computer good enough to run it. I have to say I am pretty impressed. I don't think the game is a big revolution or anything, but it will be a good title.

First off, and this should go without saying, the graphics are amazing. I was able to play the game on all High settings and x8 Anti aliasing. Originaly I had it on x16 but it was artifacting like hell. The lighting, the trees, the people, the guns, all the little details are fucking awesome. One thing I found nifty was when you use a gun sight, the areas around it become blurred as if you were really looking down it. Little stuff like that impresses me. Coming out of the ocean, water drips off the visor of the suit, a nearby grenade explosion will throw dirt onto the display, shooting an enemy up close causes blood to spray, fast running has motion blur, and a ton more. Graphically, the game it set.

The suit is a very cool trick to the game. You get 4 suit abilities, Strength, Speed, Cloaking, and Armour, that you can use at any time, but only one at a time. It runs off an energy bar that you can see above your health on the HUD, and it recharges quickly so you can use it more the once per fight. I really abused the cloaking and strength. It's so fun to run up invisible to an enemy, switch to strength, melee them to death, cloak again, back up, shoot, etc. The speec it pretty cool to. You have a sprint option by default, but when your in speed mode, you run at a sprint normally, and run at an uber speed when you use sprint. I ran through a group of guys, turned around and shot them all in the back with a shotgun. It was really cool. I found the gameplay surprisingly solid. I thought that it was just a pretty FPS until a few videos I saw on Game Trailers two months ago. Good stuff.

My favorite part of the whole game is the environments. The distance you can see things, the interaction, the ability to affect everything. Everything blows up. Everything. You can knock down trees, shoot up houses, toss chickens. It's awesome. I haven't had this much fun shooting and blowing objects up since Red Faction 2. There is a lot of free roaming too. You can take any route you want to get an objective done. The travel distance is impressive also. I was surprised at how much of the level I traveled and how little load time there is. One thing I did see was plant popping. If you have played Oblivion, you know what I am talking about, and it is evident in most games too. It was not as noticeable, but I did see it happening. Oh well, it seems like it's something that's hard to avoid.

I can't wait to see the full game. I hope I can get a computer good enough to play it since I wont be mooching off good college computers for long.

Zombies and Playstation 3's

I went to Pittsburgh this weekend with a few housemates and friends for Zombie Fest and it was pretty cool, but pretty lacking at the same time. I'm used to big huge anime conventions where you can beat the shit out of annoying people and no one will care. Oh well. I also went to the zombie walk and that was fun as hell. It was a walk through the mall where the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed, altho I didn't look like it since it has had a lot of renovation since.

I also got my hands on a Playstation 3 this weekend, or I got to try one on a one on one basis for some time. My housemate got an early birthday gift and it happened to be a PS3 but it was mostly dominated by my friend James. He played a lotta Motor Storm and almost beat Heavenly Sword. I also saw a little bit of Folklore. Motor Storm is a...racing game. That is about it. Heavenly Sword I was really impressed by tho. The combat was fun, the plot was neat and that characters were entertaining. The main bad dude, who was voiced by Andy Serkis, was really cool, as were his main helpers. I never saw much of Folklore to make a good opinion but, it feels like it will be good. We also got Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which reviewers are creaming themselves over, and they have the right too. It is a damn pretty game and it follows the awesome, fun ganeplay of the Ratchet and Clank series.

A lot of things about the PS3 make me go "Whaa..?" tho. Every game needs to be "installed" before you can play it. In addition, the system menu is such shit. It worked for the PSP, but a full blown system like this with a hell of a lot more going on for it needs a more compact menu. The thing is huge too. We had it next to a 360 and it was like a huge black guy staring down a skinny white fella. I'm pretty sure it would just fall on a Wii and attempt to crush it (and I say attempt because if you have ever owned a Game Boy, you know that Nintendo makes the toughest damn consoles on earth).

I really can't wait to see a few things on the PS3 now, Metal Gar Solid 4 out of everything. Haze also looks real interesting, plot-wise. I am interested in seeing where the PS3 goes this holiday and hope to play some games on it since I can mooch off someone now.

"Ok, I lied..." and Street Figher 4

Fine, I lied. I didn't post for three days. I was sick. And I almost didn't post today too because I never thought about it. Oh well, lets talk about one reason why i am doing this blog: Street Fighter 4.

Street Fighter 4 was announced about...two weeks ago now I thinks? Well, it is big news to the video game and fighting community. This is the first new Street Fighter in a decade. The Shroyuken forums had a Street Fighter 4 section up within the second of the announcement, and after two seconds was clogged with bullshit that no one had any idea about but people asked anyway (2D? 3D? Characters? TIERS?? PARRIES?!?! DEVELOPMENT TEAMS!?!?!?!?). Everyone is happy that SF4 is really gonna happen, but there are obvious worries too. Will it suffer the same fate as KoF? I fucking hope not. On to my own speculations...

It was found out a few days after that Capcom Japan was working on SF4, despite Capcom USA owing the rights. This is great news. I think it gives SF4 a much better chance to be a great fighting game because UK and US developers don't know how to make a good fighting game.

I don't know what is going to happen when it comes down to gameplay. No one does. Anything I put in the next paragraph is speculation. I think is going to be 2D. When we were told by Sven to take a real close look a the trailer, I did and some things came out of it, not all gameplay tho. The big thing people are seeing, and being the most convincing evidence that it will be 2D, is that Ken and Ryu never move out of a 2D plane. People are also hoping for throw breaks, and I have to say I am too.

The art in the video is awesome. It reminds me of Okami, so I can only hope that Clover Studios is involved in making the game (lol). Actually, again, we don't know who is doing the art. Sadly UDON, who did SF2HD, isn't and neither are the guys who did SF3. Damn shame because both games are amazing looking. I hope that they can take the art style that they had in the trailer and put it into 2D. If not, I can settle with 2.5D, but SF in any kind of 3D is still something I am warry of.

People want characters. A lot of characters. I do to. I want to see Sakura come back. I want to see M. Bison, I want to see Vega, I want to see Cammy, I wanna see fucking DAN. Lets bring people back. This is the first game in a decade, I want to see some epic character lists. It is probably going to be released with updates once or twice, and that is cool. Maybe start out with a decent size list and throw in some extras each release. They have done it with every other SF.

That's all I got for SF4 speculation. I have high hopes for it. This is the first game that is going to be released where I am not walking into the scene solo, I am walking into it with everyone else.

Team Fortress 2 - If only fighting games could be this balanced...

For anyone living under a rock, Orange Box is out. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that is why I linked it. I am going to look at one game in the Box right now, and that is Team Fortress 2.

So, if you have played Quake, you should know about Team Fortress. If you played Half-Life, you should know about Team Fortress Classic. Both were amazing teamplay games that ranged from Capture the Flag to Point Control. It was amazing. 9 classes, multiple abilities, different grenades for each. The level of depth was great. It has been about 10 years now and Valve, after getting Team Fortress Classic to run on the Half-Life engine, has made a very awesome and quite perfect sequel.

First thing everyone notices is the look. Well, look at this...

Those are the original 9 classes. You can see them all and point them out very well. I love it. The art style is amazing and the way they presented all of the characters is perfect. You know right off the bat who is the Heavy Weapons Guy or the Medic or the Demoman, etc. They got rid of the bland looking and almost identical looks of the old TFC. I TFC, sure, you always knew that the Heavy Weapons Guy was the dude with the big gun, but a Medic or Soldier could somtimes be hard to spot. Everything is definitive. If you bought the game and watched/listened to the commentary that came with TF2, you know how much effort was put into making the character act and move as well. Here is a recent video called Meet The Demoman that Valve put out. (Eventually they will have all of the classes. I think Meet The Demoman is the best one so far.)




That is all in game. All the motions and face expressions can be and are taken advantage of while playing TF2. It is just so awesome to see something like this being done, having the random characters you play as be given so much personality.

On to how it plays. I can sum it up in one word, and this is a pretty big work for anything: perfect. I have never been so satisfied with any multiplayer gaming experience then this one. Every class does what it is suppose to do without going overboard on anything or too weak in something else. This brings up a good, and valid, question: Why have other classes then? Because, as I said, every class does something well, but not everything well and are weak somewhere and have some need that another class fills. Engineer turret have your Scout pinned down so he cannot grab the opponents flag? Bring a Demoman to lob some grenades around the corner since he is the only class who has grenades. Is a Heavy with a Medic romping around outside your base? Get a Spy to sneak behind the Medic, backstab him and the get a Soldier to finish the Heavy. It wall just works!

So, how does this relate to fighting games? Well, I know a lot of time was put into Team Fortress 2. Since it was going to be released along side Half Life 2: Ep. 2 and that was delayed half the time that Duke Nukem Forever has been, a lot of development time was given. But I think if a company can be given the right amount of time to have a fighting game in the works, they can produce something as mind blowing as this. Perfect balance.

Stuff like character personality seems to come easy for most fighting games. Look at Guilty Gear. That has some of the most...uh...flamboyant cast of any game I have ever seen. What I want to see is balance like TF2 one day. Maybe this is just a dream of mine or maybe one day some company will make the perfect fighting game. Who knows. But until then I shall still say "If only fighting games could be as balanced as Team Fortress 2..."

I hate Blogger...

I really do. I don't know what it is, but I hate Blogger. But right now I am going to put up with it until I can find a good place to do this. So, here we go...

What the hell is this? This is a place that will, hopefully, be some kind of place that a person, namely me, can talk about fighting games and gaming in general. Mostly fighting.

What about me? Well, fighting game-wise I have been playing Guilty Gear XX since Sophomore year is high school in 2003. That was my first fighting game and I played it for years, mainly because I never knew that two update versions were released. I now play Guilty Gear Accent Core as Axl and 3rd Strike as Ryu. Gaming overall, I have been playing games since I watched my dad play Doom when it first came out. I'm 19, to be 20 in December, and a college student for the next three months. My user name comes from Guilty Gear. It is one of Johnny's attacks, his Force Break in Accent Core. I'm not sure if it was in previous versions.

So what got me to do this blog? Not much actually. A few though provoking things that I have read in odd places. The announcement of Street Fighter 4 was a big push here too because this will be my first fighting game that I will be learning with everyone else. It is pretty exciting actually.

So, what to talk about first? Well, I'm not sure really. I have been up all night and need to stay up all day if I want to fix my sleep so, you may not hear or see anything on here for about two days. I know I have 100,000+ people looking at this every day and I hate to let you all down but, I have to here. Sorry.