RunTimeErrorBoy's Video Game Shelf

Merry Gear Solid 2: Ghosts of Christmas Past

2010-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

PACMAN: THE MOVIE TRAILER from Therefore Productions on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

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

2010-04-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

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%

2009-10-07T09:04:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-07-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

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 >.<.

The Plot Thickens?

2009-06-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

No not really, but I want to be dramatic at this point. Imagine a gaming community that is slowly taking over by renovating games for a purpose greater their original intent and you have about summed up the HL:1, HL:2, and the Source Engine in general.

So why would the community not want a new game if they liked the previous one?

Well the answer came actually straight from the mouth of a Valve Developer Dave Newell
"So each time we've released one of those (updates) for Team Fortress 2 we've seen about a 20% increase in the number of people who are playing online. And that number is really important because it determines how many community created maps there are, how many servers are running, and so on. So we'll do the same thing with Left 4 Dead where we'll have the initial release and then we'll release more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements, because that's the way you continue to grow a community over time."

Well to my count they have released some achievements with the new "game type", but has not released any futher "movies", "characters", "weapons", or "unlockables" to this date, but to be fair the original game was a buggy piece of crap that took a good two to three months to sort out. Lets just say if they are hiding all this update stuff for a reason then it really is a coverup for perhaps something bigger like L4D2 somehow mimicing Team Fortress 2, but that sounds like crazy talk. Gabe Newell has officially commented saying "We aren't changing our plans for L4D1." in context of the "original development plans" which conviently can be anything he wants in a legall context.

L4D is developed by Valve and it has been their tradition to produce an Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow for gamers to add their personal touches to games, but little did they know that profit could, and was being made from these "Mods". So this is what I believe is their current stategy to marginalize that gap.

So why the announcement for the release of Left 4 Dead 2? To marginalize the gaming community's ability to produce extra gaming material for themselves, and for Valve to break free from old promises. The gaming comunity as it stands is not very united on our user rights because of the willingness to steal what we could easily purchase, but I believe the reason why Valve has offered such great servies in the past is primarily because their game security tied with Steam that has cut back on game piracy.

It is not that hard to believe it could simply be the profit margins from a stand alone game were anticipated to yeild a higher profit, but if this community is really intent on recieving the updates they were promised Valve's ploy may backfire. In any case my expectations are the game will be reviewed by large corperate publishers and boadcasters before the release and will recieve great reviews on its enchanced graphics and multidimensional game play, but on its released someone is going check to make sure every single detail Valve promised is in the game, and if not attempt to raise the alarm for other gamers.

Personally I think the number at the end of L4D pretty much just counts the years since Valve sold out its gamers. Logistically it will be extremely difficult to provide what they have promised by November before the first community is litterally left for dead.

Kill Box Juggling

2009-06-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Watch more videos of Gaming

If you didn't already know I am an author, a video gamer, and yes a juggler. Enjoy my new video of me attempting to juggle some very explosive stuff in Rocketcrowbar: Source's "Killbox" map.

Free Game Mod Link: Rocketcrowbar: Source

The Ship Music Video

2009-06-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

Don't tell the White Stripes I made this... hah

Watch more videos of The Ship

"The Ship World Leaders" Patch Review

2009-06-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Margret Thatcher shiving Kim Jong Il in a jail cell... Controversial enough for Bristish and North Koreans!

Seriously she looks scarey....

A dictator, and his murderer.

The scapegoat himself Osama Bin Ladin.

Tony Blair is the Character I use throughout much of the World Leaders Arcade Mode.

Ronald Regan after murdering Fidel Castro with a cane.

George Bush looking stupid as usual.

The game "The Ship" is based around the rich tycoon sociopath "Mr.X". Mr.X is bored with life it seems and wishes to see others lives toyed with so he has taken the passengers hostage and those who are daring enough can enter into his challenge. While playing the game each character needs to eat, sleep, drink, talk, and clean youerself to maintain your health. Each round of the challenge Mr.X assigns each "Hunter" a target "Prey", and each participant is "Prey" to another Hunter, and the Hunter stalking you is never your "Prey". Scoring is calculated using a list of weapons with assigned "Kill Values" that can found on board the ship. Depending on the game type the first person to reach a certain amount of wealth becomes the winner. But there are a few rules!

And if you can manage to play by all the rules you end up with something that looks like this....

This game is has barely been reviewed little alone strike a controversy, but yet it features not only a President that is still live, but former dictators of at least three other nations, and the purpose of this game is quiet litterally to kill for personal greed. Now with this in consideration how come the events that are precisely mimiced from history in "JFK Reloaded" are viewed a negative conotation when there is another game that takes precisely the same principle, but puts a fictional twist turning the nations of our world into bloodlusting criminals!

There is a lesson to be learned in this, but I am no ethicist. Enjoy my video.

Because of this games tendency to crash I am going to leave it unrated at the moment, but it is "very good". It has many game modes, and the multiplayer action can become intense and humorous as players forget to take care of their "needs", but simply put the development team as admited that it is giving no support to Vista users so be very sure your PC meets these minimum requirements before you purchase the game.

Transparent Warning: Adult Content

2009-06-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

As of this morning I would like to officially announce that RunTimeErrorBoy's blog will be set to have "Adult Content" and is at the discression of the viewer to close this page before any of my written material shows up.

The furture sceduel of blogs is a follow up blog on "JFK Reloaded" comparing it to other games, a very indepth review of Super Columbine RPG, a VERY special exclusice interview with Ilan Dallas creator of the Unfinished Swan, and after all my new material runs out I intend to write a opinion filled synapse of the "Evolution of Gaming".

So what exactly makes a good game?

2009-06-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

While looking for games to review for you guys I decided to get a little nostalgic and review a couple of old controversial games. The first game I want to review is "JFK Reloaded" because clearly it seems a tad off even pretending to assassinate the President of the United States, but this is an important part of our history that has been immortalized in every other medium so why not video games? Even though this game doesn't even show the real Zapruder film that was notoriously placed in "JFK" starring Kevin Costner it does have some startlingly realistic animation derived from the film in mildly grotesque detail that can be removed in the Options section of the game.

Warning Humorous Violent Content

Lyrics | Soul Asylum - Can’t Even Tell lyrics

The video was composed using the replay feature that comes along with the game that really just tops the whole game off. The report generates a score based upon the accuracy of your assassination as compared to the original, but I am an artist so I free handed this vid. As the presidents convoy passes by the red Texas Book Depository I make the clean headshot on President Kennedy, body shot the Governor's wife trying to kill the driver woops, then the shot to Secret Service Agent Clint Hill who was in the Zapruder Film climbing on the back of the vehicle to protect Mrs.Kenedy, and a successful shot to the divers head causing them to crash uncontrollably into the lamp post at the end all neatly brought together by the song "Can't Even Tell" by Soul Asylum. Enjoy.

It is a very short PC game with little room for graphics errors because game mechanics are limited to not even allow walking movement, but it is an excellent simulation all the same. Simply put this game was never an "abomination" and in fact very clearly mourns the loss of the President after every assassination.

I believe that if one is to look at this game objectively and I mean that quite literally it is of my opinion this game was created as a historical account of what is commonly regarded as a "conspiracy theory".

The game "scores" the player on their ability to accuracy recreate the events as seen on the Zapruder film, and as such only 3 bullets are ever supposed to be fired in this 60 second game, and has been noted that its creation was to help validate the "Single Shooter Theory" as it currently stands historical. The perfect game is as follows...

1) 22.1 Seconds into the simulation Oswald fires and lodges a bullet into the scenery. This bullet was never found by the Warren Commision thus can be fired anywhere, but can be heard in the original "Zapruder film".

2) The second shot dubbed "The Magic Bullet" because it appears to pass through 7 noncontinuous sections of both the Kennedy's neck and the Governor of Texas's back and various other locations. This bullet is fired precisely after loading the second bullet into the chamber. (hardest shot of the game)

3) The third and final dubbed "The Kill Shot" hit President Kennedy in the head instantly killing him as verified by the "6 seconds in Dallas" released in 1967 when the court held that "there is a public interest in having the fullest information available on the murder of President Kennedy. Thompson did serious work on the subject and has a theory entitled to public consideration …"

As creepy as it sounds this person scored a 98% on the game. It is probably really similar to what really happened that day from the killers point of view.

WARNING EXTREMELY VIOLENT CONTENT

The game then takes you through a 3D report showing every bullet trajectory before and after impact and showing multiple wounds along with a written synapse.

As a "Game" I would say it has a certain amount of replay value considering it is so short and quick to load, but as a historical document not only debunking some conspiracy theories, but also as a testament to the dangers of wielding great power either as President or shooter.

For my next controversial game I have three clues!

1) This game takes place in a Highschool
2) You get to choose between two main characters
3) It is also a simulation of a real event

Game Download: "JFK Reloaded"

Extra! The real Soul Asylum Video shot Clerks Style. I can tell I will love their struggles no matter how miniscule for the rest of my life.

Have you ever felt disapointed?

2009-06-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been disappointed in a video game because a carefully marketed commercial misleads you to believe it had more features, better graphics, and new creative game play only to leave you with "the same old thing"? This is why I created RunTimeErrorBoy's Game Shelf to review games from an angle unbiased perspective free from large impersonal gaming companies pressuring me to rate games from zero to ten rarely giving below a six, and I am RunTimeErrorBoy.

I have my problems with many games and their developers, but Left 4 Dead's marketing and Valve's development strategy continues to confuse me. When I purchased the game in early November they had already announced that a SDK would be released by December. This has yet to be fully released with a beta version that appearntly satisfied the community into feeling it is worth the wait, but yet they have already announced the release of Left 4 Dead 2 on November 17th, 2009?!

A major problem behind this decision to release a new "stand alone game" instead of an "expansion pack" is because much of the current L4D community purchased this game under the impression an SDK would be released promptly allowing enough time for user created additions to be not only created but appreciated by a large fan base. There is a Steam Communty with 35,00 users calling for the boycott of Left 4 Dead 2 largely on the premise that a new stand alone game would destroy any chance of major developments on L4D as its community vanishes to play L4D2.

As a company participating in a free market they do have the right to create a new stand alone game, and if the enchanced material is worth the likely $59.99, perhaps by adding duel chain saws for melee weapons, even I will purchase the game. Unfortunately this feels like another "Fable 2" conspiracy, and while boycotting games makes reviewing them difficult I will admit to agreeing with many of the principles of the steam L4D2 Boycott group. Left 4 Dead is still a very good game and will always have a place on my shelf, but with more experimentation using the SDK the comunity could significantly enhance the product that will be L4D2.

Watch me work....

2009-06-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Watch me work on some stuff, and chat with me.