Merry Gear Solid 2: Ghosts of Christmas Past

The jokes are corny, the graphics are bad, but indie games are becoming more and more important to get increased feedback on products before investing heavily as game development costs increase in correlation to the days technology. A good metaphor for this trend is turning a high school stage production into a full fledge CGI Hollywood blockbuster.

Despite an increasing demand for indie developers many have choose to remake old titles that are often our most memorable. Perhaps they are avid programmers, with plenty of free time, and a lot of creativity, but after playing a little of Merry Gear Solid 2:Ghosts of Christmas Past by Insignificant Studios America it is clear some of these programmers are more then simple hobbyist.

So the story begins with the recent past events being narrated by Dr.Hal "Otacon" to Snake. This is a classic reminder of all the Metal Gear games, but the details are a little different then we remember from Metal Gear. Saint Nick had been forced to deliver packages on foot after the events of 9/11 because of heightened flight security, and during an exfiltration of a naught kids compound Snake holds him up with suspicion of being a clone of Big Boss according to a leaked mission report out of the White House that explains Saint Nick's mission was to bio-engineer the perfect beard. It appears to Snake that he assassinated Saint Nick aka "Big Beard" in this fortress in the previous game's project "Los Bigotes Prefectos"; but of course things didn't quite go as planned. With the memory of destroying Christmas "haunting your mind" the current mission of penetrating mall security on Christmas eve is easily distracting while scouting for Intel and making bad puns. Defeating more difficult opponents will have never been more fun, and challenging at the same time that is truly for all ages.

Cons: Running back to the beginning of the "map" to get the "Holey Socks" was a huge pain to place about half way through the game, but if you can make it past that point go ahead and finish.

Pros: The dialog was fantastically corny which I enjoyed, and went a long way to balance the action and story aspects of the game. Also the weapons were easy to use, and Otacon was actually an efficient teacher.

The save function on the game was intuitive. Music was used in a memorable way to create a Christmas theme throughout the whole game. Without spoiling this games best feature let me just say it has an interface that is very diverse, and will show exactly why indie games are perfect for testing ideas.

Download Source

Haha. A naked Snake! Isn't he supposed to be in Metal Gear Solid 3?

Pacman Movie Trailer

PACMAN: THE MOVIE TRAILER from Therefore Productions on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Starcraft 2 Finally Released! But do I still care?!

Nope!

I pre-ordered the game in about June of 2008.

They pushed back the release date over a year.

Opened a beta version to a random selection of Starcraft owners.

And I just got the call announcing it is available to me last Saturday.

I am totally going to steal this game.

Fuck you blizzard.

A summary of hate - RuntimeErrorBoy

The Plot Thickens? Part 2

This is a little late, but here it goes if you haven't seen this abomination.

So I am sick and tired of these "special offers". How strange of a world would it be if you bought a new monopoly game and as a special bonus received another Shoots & Ladders cardboard cutout kid. Basically it would make no sense.

Additionally the concept of releasing expandable games was originally intended for ADDITIONAL USER CREATED CONTENT and not so gamers could purchase the remaining half of our favorite game three months after its initial release. Making and breaking promises seems to be the way of the giant game developers at this particular moment in a strange attempt to entice consumers with over priced pixels, and I for one will not put up with their bullshit.

Past Treasures

YouTube Comments

"That is how we get Rick Roll'd in Japan."

"Thriller ain't got nothing on this."

Occasionally I will run across a video relating to a game -- I might want to share. This one seems to be a commercial from Japan for the original Legend of Zelda SNES game which you can play here online.

April Fools!

Red Ring of Death... Xbox360 Failure Rate 54.2%

Xbox and Microsoft have tried to disjoint their perfect union, but eventually this quazi PC realm will adapt to become something cheap as PC computing abilities continue to soar. -RunTimeErrorBoy

Gamers were key in the progress to get home computing levels where they are today. Otherwise everyone could still be working on their Commodore 64 the highest selling PC of all time; and even in gaming our famous Nintendo 64, named for its 64-bit CPU, was not released for over a decade after the Commodore. I for one am done with these sorts of products because the companies have some how achieved a stance of not fixing what is "obsolete" because the next product will outshine its predecessor in performance. Additionally the price of these quazi PC's continue to rise while diminishing in quality, and in general the overall number of consul gamers has not shown the rapid growth I had expected over this past decade.

Well, I wanted my factory flawed Xbox fixed for essentially shipping cost because it broke just sitting in my room; and Microsoft thinks I have used it as a Frisbee or something. To put this on a time scale my PS2 although sputtering and on its last leg still performs but has performed for 9 years vs. my Xbox360's 2 years + 1 year extended warranty which I assume the company has already figured into the cost of my system...

The current console gaming "market" created by Microsoft is the rapid breeding of console systems with unreliable hardware, exclusive rights to all accessory components like jump drives, controllers, hard-drives, etc.., and often exclusive rights to publish popular video game titles they purchased and had little to do with developing only to release them on their systems alone.

Over all Microsoft's current impact does little but reduce the diversification of the genre I love most. In comparison its hardware superior competitor Sony has sold over 138 million PS2's at roughly the cost of $200USD while only 31 million Xbox360's at a cost of over $250USD have been sold, and at a whopping failure rate of 54.2% compared to Sony PS3's 10%.

As soon as Microsoft admits it actually is responsible for the failures of the Xbox corporation the sooner it can begin satisfying its customers. I for one am not satisfied with being told to throw $100USD at the situation to make everything alright. In the mean time my good buddy is taking my Xbox360 to an uncertified mad scientist with a wielding torch, and I just hope it comes back in one piece.

Update:

My Xbox360 is now in about a million pieces, and in a drawer somewhere. If anyone wants to purchase spare parts contact me.

Video Gaming: Culture Vs Counter Culture?

Sorry just hopping out of the hot tub...

So from what we know about games it litterally can get into any genre and even ultimately have the ability to tie multiple genres together like in Kingdom Hearts, and as such I would expect to see more video games relating to literary works just as movies have done. My postulation is that for stories such as the Bhagavad Gita and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the technology has just recently reached a level capable of delivering these full bodied texts.

I think a platform of the Bhagavad Gita would be ridiculousy popular in India if not further just because of familiarity with its metaphors, but also just because for once a game would reach for a eastern world beyond God and Satan's duality.

And if one really wants to delve into the deranged genius of Hunter Thompson then acting out the role is truely the only way beyond picking up that book.

It has been almost a month since I wrote anything and this is a poor excuse for a blog. I have been preoccupied in my thoughts. More to come soon! I really enjoy making videos from replays I have noticed... So weird what inspires individuals to create >.<.