The Smash Brothers Brawl Delay

Ok so I know that this delay was announced a while ago in game and tech tme but I think until now or recently at least it hasn't had a major impact. You see the day I heard that brawl was announced I said to a friend of mine, "I'm not really upset about the delay of the game itself but more how it will effect the flow of information about the game". Now what I meant when I said this was thus: You see if you did not know, every single day at 3:00(EST) in the morning the Brawl website gets at least one update to it. Now there are a lot of people(like myself) who wait patiently for these updates b/c they are usually very good, however if you think about it these posts will also be effected by the delay.

First of all lets assume the announcement was made last week for example. Now as of last week it was roughly a month until the original release date of the game. Hmm, now if we extend that to the new release date it becomes 3 months, yes I said 3 months. that is three times as long. So lets think, if the people at Nintendo promised they would update the site every day until the game came out then they now have three months worth of updates to plan out as opposed to two months, and lets not kid ourselves into thinking that Nintendo is bad at what they do in any way, they are an incredible company and thus would have planned all of the updates or at least 2 or 3 weeks worth of them in advance. So with that in mind they had to take the one month of planned updates and extend them into 3 months, then when they had extended it as much as they could and there were still unfilled dates for updates they would have had to take content that was previously not secret about the game but also not worthy of its own update and make updates about it. Now in lame mans terms this means two things. As I said earlier they sometimes put up more than one update per day, these days where the would update sometimes even 3 times in one day will be gone almost completely. now obviously they are not gone altogether because of todays update where there were two things but I doubt we will see many more. Now the second thing this means is that things that are not truly news about the game and were previously unimportant and didnt need to be said in the updates became updates to fill the new span of time until release. case in point, yesterday's update(Handicaps), 11/13's update(taunts(this one wasn't.  horrible, but seriously who cares?)), and 11/7's update(grab and throw(this was in the last game and imo was a great gameplay mechanic so taking it out would simply be their loss)).

Now I'm not saying these things are not be updates(except the handicap one, I mean seriously who gives a shit)but they are a little weak for updates compared to stuff like King Dedede and the one about the old items that will be showing up in the game this time, or the Gray Fox one. I just can't get past the feeling that updates like these would not have even been on the site if the delay had not occurred or would at least be coupled together. Well that might just be my opinion but discuss it in the comments if you'd like. Well I'm signing off.,

Shin Megami Tensei

So I may not have brought it up yet but I am a major fan of Japanese RPGs and my favorite series ever made for Japanese RPGs is easily the Shin Megami Tensei series. The series has always stood out to me because it has themes in it that you usually do not see in any other series. First there is the fact that it is incredibly dark(or at least most of them are). They tend to focus on apocalypses or on worlds that are entirely different from ours. Most of the games do not have voice acting which for me is usually a turn off but in these games it has ever been once I realized how good the story was. Now another thing that has appealed to me over the years has to be the battle system. You see instead of it being a standard turn based system they usually use a token based system. Now how this works is your team has x tokens and x is the number of characters that are alive. Now you can loose tokens by attacking someone with an attack that uses an element they are strong against or you can gain them by using ones they are weak against. Now when you use something they are strong against you usually loose the rest of your turn because party limit is generally 3 and it takes away two tokens which is exactly how much you will have after attacking once. Now if you hit them with their weakness it gives you a half token which can be used in place of a full token to perform an attack. So basically when you hit their weakness you gain an extra attack that turn. Also when a player passes his turn to another character only half of the token is taken so if you have a character that can hit an opponents weakness but your currently selected character does not you can basically pass the turn to that character so they can perform a stringer attack. With team limits of three you can do this in any situation you have 2 tokens or more and it will get to the player you need eventually.
The system works perfectly but more than the battle system it is the incredible stories that draw me in. Honestly the games are incredible and if you like RPGs and have a PS2 these are probably the best ones you will find short of some Final Fantasy games and in many cases they are the best you will find including Final Fantasy games. The only problem is that they usually don't do more than one pressing of the discs meaning once the shipments go out for the game, that's it they usually don't release a second shipment. This little fact makes them the hardest games to find on the PS2 that are worth buying. If you see a game in a store and like RPGs and have the money do not hesitate, buy it. Although if you are an online shopper you should be able to find them relatively easy on sites such as EBay or Play-Asia so check them out. However wherever you find them expect to pay at least 40 dollars for any of them(even the non-PS2 ones). The series has been around in Japan for a long time(since nes) and is still going strong. Currently 10 of the games have been brought to America and all of them are hard to find. The games in America are: Jack Brothers(Virtual Boy, yes seriously), Demi-Kids Light and Dark Versions(both for the GBA, these are similar to Pokemon but with an actual story and are both very good), Persona(PS), Persona 2(PS), Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne(PS2), Digital Devil Saga(PS2), Digital Devil Saga 2(PS2), Devil Summoner:Raidou Kuzunoha VS. The Soulless Army(PS2), Persona 3(PS2). Also note there is currently an unnamed game beign produced and developed for the PS3.

Wow I should learn to keep up

So I haven't blogged in a while but whatever. So I am currently in my first year of college and I am loving it. I have to say it is a great experience. Currently the only systems I have with me are my WII and my SNES(yea I roll like that) however I am still able to play my PS2 games b/c a good friend of mine has a PS2. I am in the game design and development program here at RIT(Rochester Institute of Technology) and I love it. The program's director Andy Phelps is awesome and overall its just very good.

SO I have been playing a lot of new games recently. I think I will start with Orange Box. Okay, so I am incredibly happy that they included Half-Life 2, Episode 1, and Episode 2 because I didn't own HL2 before and I hadn't completed episode 1 yet. I am in the middle of Episode 2(I'm slow I know)but o far it is amazing. I love that they made the AUX Power for the suit and the flashlights battery different this time around because it always pissed me off. Also I finally have a great computer to run it on so that also makes me happy about it. Now Portal is a great game but it is just too short for me. I love the pseudo-story they implemented(THE CAKE IS A LIE) and overall it worked out well enough. Also considering it technically only cost 10 dollars for portal because there are 5 games in the Orange Box it is easily good enough for the money. Finally there is Team Fortress 2. I cannot express how much I enjoy this game into words. I would play it more if not for the blaring fact that I suck at it. Despite this though I still find it to be one of the best multi player experiences on the PC. I personally love the Demo Man and Pyro classes. Also I recently got a bit better with Heavy so I may be trying him a bit more often. I want to become good with Spy but since it is a strictly multi player game its hard to get practice without embarrassing yourself. Moving on.

This is even older but Bioshock. Okay so this game is incredible. I am about halfway done and must say it has replaced HL2 as my favorite adventure FPS. I love the way you play and how you make so many choices that influence the game and the way events play out later. For example I once hacked a health station to decrease the cost of it and later in the game I didn't know what to do and was forced to go back and in mid battle with an enemy they ran to the health station and boom they were dead. It was great. I think the way they implemented the fact that you can fight in so many ways and develop plot in a few ways works well. I also think the atmosphere of the game is so good. It truly warrants an award for level design at the least. I don't want to rant about Bioshock but let me say if you have not gotten it yet at the very least you must play the demo.

Next I must talk about Beautiful Katamari. Now I have never really mentioned on the blog how much I love Katamari gamers but if I had to rate them on my all time favorite games they would be up at the way top. I love the simplicity of the games and enjoy the way they don't take themselves anymore seriously than they need to. The music helps too. Now I have probably logged over 200 hours in We Love Katamari easily because I play it like every 3 days but that doesn't matter because we are here to talk about the newest game Beautiful Katamari. Okay first of all the Co-op is by far better than it was in the previous game. A friend of mine and I spent near 3 hours playing this alone and believe me it was incredibly fun. Now there is a warning that comes with this, though the co-op is great you need to play it with two people who are GOOD IN SOME WAY at the game. If you do not then you will not find it to be a good experience and it will probably just frustrate you. It helps to have to people of the same ability of skill level however as long as you both know what you're doing it should be fine. Next I want to talk about new features. Now it is Katamari so they didn't really have much leeway with this type of stuff however what they did add was good. First off is the fact that when you hit a large object and shake it, if there are other smaller objects on or in it they will then pop out and you can pick them up individually. this may not sound like much but any true fan knows its awesome and adds more to game play than we would expect. Net there are the online leader boards which are by far my favorite new feature. They add a sense of competition which I always felt were missing from Katamari. I personally have always wanted to show off my mad skills and these gave me a chance. Now I haven't messed around with them much but I can tell you that it ranks you based on your score and you can get an overall rank of skill be competing in online versus matches where you win cookies(????) and the people with the moist cookies are on the leader boards. UMM also the load times before levels are longer but there are now no load times in level and the levels are much bigger. The graphics didnt change much except that they are higher resolution. They are still good but in my opinion could stand for slight improvements. Finally the music doesn't compare to the previous games but there are select tracks that are enjoyable. I must head off now however I will return with more updates soon.

IPHONE

okay so today i will talk about the iphone like i was supposed to yesterday. okay first of all if you don't know what the iphone is yet, it is a cell phone made by Apple. it has cingular phone service and will give you internet access,a video and music player, and a portable version of mac osx. In theory it is basically a cellphone, an intenet browser, and a video ipod all combined into one with a cut down harddrive and the ability to run executable files because of the mac osx os(operating system). it also has a completely touch screen based interface, this means that typing will probably be similar to the nintendo ds, or a palm pilot which can be annoying but works for simple things like search terms and web adresses. Now because it can run executables it is possible people will make ways for you to play roms on it but the likelyhood is low becaause of the touchscreen interface. It has ab uilt in camera like most phones nowadays that can take up to 2 megapixel images with it. For wireless internet acess it has a wifi connection, EDGE(idk what that is please comment and tell me, and blutooth connectivity which makes me wonder if you will be able to transfer files from your pc if it is bluetooth compatible. it has a 3.5 inch screen which is bigger than any ipod currently on the market and its resoluytion is 320 by 480 at 166 pixels per inch. Now despite its ability to play music and movies it only has a 4gb or 8gb harddrive which is not horrible for a portable device but it is still too low in my opinion. because it is from mac it is compatible with things such as widgets and uses the mac preferred web browser Safari. It has all the basic phone features and an incredibly high quality screen. Because it uses the edge network provided by cingular many people are assumiong that it will be sold by cingualar mainly whˆch means that many of you verizon fans like myself may not be able to get one without switching services. Finbally it is currently priced at $500 not including a phone plan or any of that crap that phone companies sucker you into. Now i don't know if this price is for the 4gb model or the 8gb model but it is probab ly the 4 in which case vuying either model of the phone might ot make much sense because with that money you can buy a ps3. well that is all i have to say on this but if you want more information on it you can go to the apple websites main page on the iphone at this link http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/ .

World of Warcraft, WarioWare, and the Iphone

Hey so its been a while since ive posted. I know i said a while ago that i would post a review of the zune and the ipod video to compare but that didnt end up happening. Sorry about that but i ended up not having the time after the wii came out and i got one. So my day today was pretty good however I thnk im failing my calculus course, still. So other than that the only thing im mad about is that i have to save up like 300 for prom and that means my new graphics card will be delayed and that sux balls. Well anyway onto the title. First of all I joing World of warcraft sadly thoiugh i did this right before burning crusade came out so now there are a whole bunch of people who started playing and are slowing down my server. World of warcraft is really good however the problem im finding is that its not incredibly fun unless you are questing with someone else. What is good though is the econmy is controlled really well because they make items that are really strong impossible to trade or auction to other players so it is impossible for one person to take full control of the games economy by selling a whole bunch of shit. Hey one piece of advice. if you ever get to a really high level and need some money find some people who want help with a low level dungeon and have them pay you to walk them through the dungeon so they can loot all of the items. So yea next is Warioware. Warioware smooth moves for the nin tendo wii is very good ghowever the problem is that un like most of the warioware games you can't play minigames for an unlimited number of rounds. However despite this flaw the game uses the wiimote so well it is amazing and the shear randomness of it makes it an enjoyable experience for anyone who loves either party games or minigames. Okay i have to go but i will post another article in about a half hour about the iphone c ya.