I forced my wife to watch me play the first hour of Heavy Rain. She doesn't normally like video games (except for the occasional puzzle game or Rock Band session), but I thought the cinematic aspect of this game would interest her. I did the same thing for Final Fantasy XIII. These were her initial impressions:
"It was so slow."
"The graphics were okay, but the water looked really good."
"Yelling the boy's name over and over at the mall was annoying." (my fault!)
"There should be more options to do things."
I forced my wife to watch me play the first hour of Final Fantasy XIII. She doesn't normally like video games (except for the occasional puzzle game or Rock Band session), but I thought the cinematic aspect of this game would interest her. These were her initial impressions:
"All I remember was some guy with a bird in his hair."
"I guess the graphics were good."
"I wasn't really paying attention."
"It looked like a cartoon movie."
This album chugs. In a good way. Aloha is a post-rock band that's been around since the late 1990s, and I've followed them for quite some time now. They used to be "that post-rock band with a vibraphone", but they stopped using it in earnest a few albums back; now, they're just a plain old post-rock band. But the best part of this band is that they still rock like it's 2002. In other words, they've continued that layered, drifty, and unconventional post-rock sound capitalized by bands like Minus the Bear, American Football, and to a lesser extent Cursive, well after these bands disbanded or altered their sound.
It's refreshing to hear a band further refine a sound that's been relatively abandoned. Second track "Moonless March" is the perfect example of Aloha sticking to their guns to dramatic effect. The song starts out fast and continues the pace throughout, while changing melodies often and with a deft precision. For a band whose members live in different cities scattered throughout the East Coast, this is a concerted and carefully orchestrated effort, and it's my favorite album by them in several years. Every track has something worth paying attention to, be it an interesting vocal hook or their always-excellent instrumentation. If you're looking for something a little off the beaten path, but rewarding nonetheless, you'll probably like Home Acres.
The character you see above you, is Capcom's latest addition to Super Street Fighter IV, Hakan. Hakan is an "Arabian grappler" who douses himself in oil before each fight starts. However, the real question is: Why, Capcom? Why?
I can't help but feel that this guy not only looks stupid, but that he also seems very similar to E. Honda, both in the way he looks, and in the way he plays. To see this for yourself, check out the video below:
I'm sorry Capcom, but this guy looks like he would be absolutely no fun to play as, and he just looks really uninspired. Personally, I don't think I'll be getting Super Street Fighter IV when it comes out, because the new additions don't really inspire me, and I'm really nervous about T. Hawk being in the game -- I'm convinced that he'll break the balance of the game, just like he has in every other Street Fighter game he's ever been in.
Is anyone else thinking about getting it? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.
A 10 hour head start isn't much when playing a Final Fantasy game. The introduction of characters, the slow and steady primer on battle mechanics and levelling up; the ins-and-outs of what makes a Final Fantasy needs time to develop and settle-in. While I expected the traditional slow start of any Final Fantasy, XIII seems especially sluggish and unnecessarily drawn-out. It seems especially contradictory to the faster pacing of the story and out-of-sync with the streamlined battle system. While I can see its disparate elements eventually coming together to become a focused experience, it's coming at a very slow rate.
In rich contrast to standard JRPGs today, Final Fantasy isn't afraid to make risks in evolving its recipe for success. In a lot of ways, XIII feels like the complete opposite of XII. Gone are free-roaming exploration, micromanaging turn-based combat systems and the traditional town and country design. What you have left is a game that is very streamlined. And because XIII is so stripped down, its success is highly contingent on the quality of story and combat, i.e. what Final Fantasy does best. While I still have a long way to go story wise, the battle system is refreshingly efficient while maintaining the strong tactical element.
While a majority of the changes serve as a way to make this iteration more accessible and action-oriented, the unnecessary glacial pacing and strict linearity inflicts XIII with an identity issue. Its struggle in momentum can be infuriating, but I'm willing to stick with it.
It's a little-known fact that four-fifths of theeasymode.com staff (or 80%….MATH!) uses Apple products as our primary computers. It's also a little-known fact that all five-fiths of us like to play these things called video games. Personally, I've loaded Windows onto my beautiful, shiny 27" iMac just so I can play PC games from time to time. But when it comes down to it, I'd much rather play games on my iMac natively rather than boot up Windows. This is why Valve's announcement yesterday that Steam is coming to Macs is so exciting to me. And it should be exciting to you too (if you own a Mac), and here's why:
1. Backwards compatibility: Valve has already announced that they're bringing their Source engine to the Mac Steam. They mentioned that these specific games will be available in April: Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. That's a great start.
2. "Steam Play": Basically, this feature means that if you bought a game on Steam for Windows, you can play it on Steam for Mac, for free. Not only that, but they touted a feature called "Steam Cloud" which would allow you to play a game on one PC and jump to that same spot on a Mac.
3. Future investment: Steam has promised that all future Valve games will launch simultaneously on Mac, Windows, and the Xbox 360 from here on out. I hope a lot of developers follow suit, now that Steam will give them a wide exposure to Mac gamers.
4. Valve's first Mac-friendly release will be Portal 2. Oh yes.
Truth be told, I don't like going into GameStop. I don't like being pressured to pre-order games, but mainly I just don't like how much they charge for used games compared to how little they give for trade-ins. That being said, I had a pretty good time at the store today.
I took 11 Xbox 360 games to trade in, ranging from good (Tales of Vesparia) to really bad (TimeShift). They're having a deal where you get an additional 50% on used game trade-ins, so I made more than I usually would have. 50% more, actually. What's even better is that there was a list of used games and if you brought two of those to trade in, they'd give you $40 towards Final Fantasy XIII; it just so happened that I had two of those games, and they would have only netted me $24 even with the additional 50% trade-in value.
All in all, I traded in 11 games that I'll never play again and I got Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, $24 in credit, and I renewed my GameStop "Edge" card for a year. Not a bad trip at all.
That's right, folks! It seems that this week, we have ourselves something special: we have ourselves a two-fer!.
On XBLA this week, we have Scrap Metal, the latest game from developers Slick (the developers responsible for N+), and the game looks to be like a mixture of top-down racer (think Micro-Machines or Pole Position), and Twisted Metal. The game will be available from the Xbox Live Marketplace from Wednesday 10th of March, and will cost 1200MSP. Check out the trailer for this below:
On the other hand, PSN will see Sega's HD re-release of arcade classic After Burner, with the release of After Burner Climax. This also releases on Wednesday, though there is no word yet on pricing. Anyone interested in some arcadey, aerial dog-fighting action -- in super-shiny HD -- should check the video below:
Is there a game that you guys wish you were still playing? One where you got to the end and just said to yourself, "No, that can't be it. Now what am I supposed to do?" like you were just unexpectedly laid off from a job?
I ask this because for some reason, I'm been feeling very nostalgaic about Far Cry 2 lately. I don't know why, but it feels like there has been a void in my life that has gone unfilled since I finished that game, which is weird, because the ending was the only bad thing about the game.
Usually, even if I really like a game, by the end I'm often just waiting for it to end. This happened with Bioshock, Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted, and probably some other amazing games. Is anyone feeling me with this?
Like most of the gaming world, I can't wait to play Final Fantasy XIII when it drops tomorrow (lucky Giang, tomorrow is today for him!). I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy X, waaay back in 2001, and I've been looking into getting into a linear, story-based RPG since my bouts with a couple Tales games last year. I went to look for some reviews, just to get a feel for what the critics initially think of the game.
Although IGN sometimes gives skewed reviews (in hindsight, was Grand Theft Auto IV really a "perfect" 10.0 game?), I still tend to check their reviews first. Unfortunately, that didn't happen due to some technical troubles. I then checked Gamespot's review, and was surprised to see an 8.5 out of 10. I mean, that isn't a wholly bad review, especially considering that Gamespot reviews their games a little low from time to time, but let's do some fact-checking:
Final Fantasy VII: 9.5 (IGN) / 9.5 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy VIII: 9.0 (IGN) / 9.5 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy IX: 9.2 (IGN) / 8.5 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy X: 9.5 (IGN) / 9.3 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy X-2: 9.5 (IGN) / 8.1 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy XI: 8.8 (IGN) / 8.2 (Gamespot) Final Fantasy XII: 9.5 (IGN) / 9.0 (Gamespot)
So if we were to base Final Fantasy XIII's score on Gamespot's precedence, this games stands somewhere between Final Fantasy XI (ugh) and Final Fantasy IX (one of my personal favorites). The jury's still out, but Metacritic is currently showing a metascore of "83", so you can draw your own conclusions.
The Easy Mode Podcast #5: This week is all about Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Heroes of Gaia, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, FEAR 2, and Prince of Persia.
Russ Crandall Senior Editor Mark Hill Associate Editor, Podcast Host Tyler Miller Associate Editor, Artistic Director Steve McKay Contributor, United Kingdom Giang Cao Contributor, Australia
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Bloguin is the revolutionary blog network specifically focused on helping bloggers get the most out of their websites. We're currently working on building a large network of online communities and hope to expand our blogging coverage to include a wide range of topics. 
The Bloguin Network allows advertisers to promote their products and services to our ever-growing number of visitors. We offer both site-specific ad placements as well as the ability to run a network-wide campaign. If you're interested in working with Bloguin to meet your advertising needs, please contact us.
The Bloguin Network is always looking to expand. We're specifically looking for blogs in the sports, entertainment, and video games field, but are open to adding any type of quality site. If you're a blogger and interested in joining our network, please fill out our application form.
The Bloguin Login gives you full access to everything our network has to offer. Your name and password will work for each and every one of our sites. Signing up is simple, and will allow you to post in all our forums, create member blogs, and access other cool features! What are you waiting for? Create an Account!