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Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.21.06

It’s not vandalism if it’s illegible.

Getting Up game mediocre enough to inspire Hollywood movie
This makes perfect sense to me. The game wasn’t very good and was style over substance. Why wouldn’t they make a movie out of it and say… seven sequels to the game? When has quality ever been something consumers cared about?


Guitar Hero 2 is coming

Awesome to the max. More songs than the first one and more importantly, new modes. Bass guitar I could take or leave, but two player mode with one doing rhythm and the other doing lead sounds like a lot of fun. Now I wish I’d invested in that cherry red second guitar. It’s a tad keyboard heavy, but I really hope Rainbow in the Dark is in this game.

Scratch that, just give us some Hammerfall.

PS2 price drops, like analysts, and everyone with a pulse, predicted
$130? That’s not much of a price drop. Make it $100 and I’ll buy a second, slimline PS2. But at $130, I’d rather buy a second, slimline DS.

I noticed a lot of people were unhappy about this price drop, and then a lot of people were unhappy those people were unhappy. This really has nothing to do with games, but what’s with these people who act as the defenders of capitalism? They argue asinine things like we should be grateful that companies even allow us to buy goods and services. Like the “if you don’t like America then leave” patriots, these defenders of capitalism fail to see their stance contradicts what they are trying to defend. Without people like me to be unsatisfied with price cuts, the markets would not function properly.

So if you wanted a new 100 dollar PS2 but are hesitant to complain about a price cut, don’t be. Fuck you, Sony, make the system cheaper. That felt good, didn’t it? And it didn’t even make you a Communist.

“So I’ve got this awesome new idea for monkey bars…”

Katamari Damacy creator curiously closed minded about the Revolution
How unexpected. Takahashi doesn’t think the input device should matter, which is a valid opinion perhaps, but seems strange coming from a guy who claims to not like video games and hang’s out with that Ico guy. Katamari Damacy would have been better on the DS than the PSP, some theorize, and now Takahashi is critical of the Revolution? Obviously he’s been bought by Sony and when he says he plans on leaving the game business to design playgrounds, he means quit Namco and join Sony…to design playgrounds for their premises. It all makes perfect sense now.

The HD-DVD players are here
Do not buy one. Wait.

Family Guy game explained
I’m not a psychic, but I predict this game will be bad. Cartoon based games have a long history of sucking because they always fall prey to the problems of a licensed game. The main one being fans of the license will buy the game no matter how terrible it is. The Simpsons games were mostly atrocious, or was it just atrociously hard? Both. The South Park games were disappointing, and even the mighty Futurama was turned into a mediocre platformer.

Are there any exceptions? The Ren and Stimpy game was palatable, and the Genesis Beavis and Butthead game was actually quite good. Family Guy fans can pray for the best, but I recommend saving your prayers for something worthwhile. The last game the guys doing the Family Guy game made: Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude. Or was it Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

This G4 host is not just a pretty face. She also sings backup for Lindsay Lohan. Be still, my clenching bowels.

G4 plans on sucking even harder
What exactly is going on here? Some shrewd businessman noticed a small but wealthy demographic of men in their twenties and thirties who play a lot of video games and are rather tech savvy. So this businessman decided to create a TV show for these people in hopes of making some profit. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t (it didn’t, the station sucks) but now he wants to expand his demographic to horny young men in general by shedding some of the tech/nerd stuff. But aren’t other stations already fighting to cater to this demographic?

Maybe I’m alone on this, but if I want to be aroused I have an internet at my disposal. If I want to watch a poorly acted and over produced show about games that stars a woman who looks like a model, though, I used to go to G4. The station is pulling a Radio Shack by watering down their original idea in order to appeal to a wider demographic, and as such they are going to become redundant.

GameStop gives out community service grants
This is good, but I’ve never been one to not find the bad in everything. Instead of putting money into the communities, the first step for an ethical business is to not rip off its customers. So how about it, GameStop, will you ever stop selling used games as new?

Soul Calibur movie on its way
More movie news, but at least the source material is a good game. According to my research, the people who own the rights to the Soul Calibur movie, Anthem Pictures, also put out: Microwave Massacre, Red Shoe Diaries the movie, The Boston Strangler, An Ordinary Killer and a handful of other schlock horror flicks. Why didn’t Namco just sell the rights to Uwe Boll? His movies tend to have that so bad it’s good appeal at least. Now enjoy one of my favorite quotes from House of the Dead.

Rudy: You did all this to become immortal. Why?
Castillo: To live forever!

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Stefan
Stefan
17 years ago

Takahashi was, I like to think, reacting to sort of control the hype surrounding the controllers. As a fairly smart person on slashdot commented – If you take his statement and replace the words “revolution controller” with “HD Graphics” or “PS3’s Polygon Count”, then it makes a lot of sense, in the sense that those are just features, and should not be thought of as making a game good.

Stefan
Stefan
17 years ago

It is different, but perhaps not entirely different. Particularly with a RAM upgrade, it removes some limitations to what game designers can do. The Revolution’s controller seems like it will do the same thing. These are both good things – if used well by designers. CD-ROM systems offered new ways of making games because suddenly you had tons more storage than cartridge games. It was heralded as a revolution, and then people went and produced “Night Trap”. Of course, in the end people made good games, and it was a revolution…but it wasn’t just the new possibilities that made for good games. Just as the 2nd button on the Atari 7800 joystick (or the 13 extra buttons on the 5200) didn’t make the atari games of the mid-80’s better than those of the early 80’s, or the d-pad didn’t make NES games good. What will truly make the revolution’s games great is their design and execution, not the controller used to play them. It takes the realization that the d-pad and ram upgrades allow you to create a new kind of game that features jumping on platforms and mushrooms in a scrolling environment…and that’s where things get good.