1P Start

While everyone in the world is either waiting in breathless anticipation to get their hands on a copy of GTA IV or already in their non-stop GTA IV sessions, I’m one of the few people that doesn’t have any plans on playing the game any time soon. Why? Well, here’s my top five reasons I’m not playing the greatest game in the entire universe:

1. I’m Old:

There used to be a time where I got so excited about a video game release that I couldn’t sleep at night. Now I’m 29 years old and in gamer years that’s like ten billion. In my advanced stage of life I’ve got a whole host of other things going on that distract me from playing GTA IV. When I was a kid I’d get the newest game (If my parent’s would buy it for me) and spend every waking minute playing it. Now I’ve got a full time job along with writing on the internets. I’ve got a lady in my life that’s like a plant that needs constant watering. And by watering, I don’t mean sex unfortunately. In the few hours a week I get to play games, I’ve got a ton of them that haven’t been touched or beaten. The last thing I need to do is to get another game that I can’t devote any time to when I have tons of other games collecting dust.

(more…)

This week’s Rock Band DLC brings us more Smashing Pumpkins and a couple of songs from the Mother Hips. All three songs are master recordings and are not available at a discounted three pack. The songs will cost 1.99 (160 Magical MS Points).

The songs are:

* “Zero” - The Smashing Pumpkins

* “Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear” - The Mother Hips

* “Red Tandy” - The Mother Hips

Hipsters unite for more Smashing Pumpkins action on Rock Band. This makes their third entry to the game with one of their most memorable songs.

If you’re not familiar with the Mother Hips, they had a serviceable song that came as “bonus” music on the Rock Band disc. What’s funny is that somehow they’ve been promoted to real band status because the price for their songs is equal to that of Zero. Who knows, maybe enough people liked that first song so they thought they were in the big leagues now or something.

(more…)

Who doesn’t like Ghostbusters? Okay, Ghostbusters II kind of sucked but the original is a sci-fi comedy classic without equal. I’ve got some high hopes for Sierra and Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters game that they have in development for the PS3 and Xbox 360 with the lame ass name Ghost Busters: The Video Game. You can head on over to IGN for some screen shots that, put frankly, rock my socks off.

(more…)

There is a big debate currently raging over whether Wii Fit, the fitness simulator and computerised exercise trainer already out for the Wii in Japan and Europe, and due out in the U.S. soon, could ever be a viable option for real exercise. That game, combined with the massively popular Wii Sports, means kids can potentially get a wide ranging session of exercise all from the comfort of their own home, and playing their games console.

Greg Chin, a teacher at Archbishop Joseph MacNeil in Edmonton, Vancouver, decided to test the games out to see how much of a good workout they actually gave his class full of junior high school students.

He had them compare real exercise with playing Wii Sports, and came up with some interesting results. While he won’t know the results in full until next week, he has already noted that some of the kids heart rates reached 170 beats per minute, only 10 beats off the 180bpm expected of someone at that age taking part in a proper workout.

(more…)

Over on 1up a couple of guys with one of the coolest jobs in the world (one of them is in charge of overseeing interactive game content done with Marvel’s characters) have a blog where they intermittently post articles of high interest to geeks like me. One (planned) series of articles of most interest to me is the history of Iron Man in video games. The first post and only one that is up right now deal with Iron Man’s appearances in such classics as Captain America and the Avengers and Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems. Okay, I’m sure you never heard of the second game, unless your a true comic book loving video game geek. I hope they keep up with the posts, I love comics and history so this is a marriage made in heaven.

Link: Here’s a super awesome review of Captain America and the Avengers. Yes, it is a shameless plug. Also, the sketch is from my buddy Jacon who is an awesome artist and funny guy. Check out his stuff here.

I had a feeling this would happen. What do you do when you have a kick ass game featuring guitars and some other company makes a game that’s as great as yours, but adds more instruments? Add more instruments to your game in the sequel! The Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick, has been quoted as saying, “It’s not just about guitars. We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally.” What other instruments? Well, common sense would dictate that we’re at least talking about drums and a microphone here. We’ll keep you up to date as the situation progresses.

The CEO also stated, “It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands.” Oh goody, the prospect of playing songs from some shitty local band is so exciting! I can barely contain myself.

Link: Comic found here. Don’t know who made it though.

Grand Theft Auto IV is still three days away from release, and the vast majority of people won’t have yet had the chance to sample the game. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping no-nothing do-gooders from calling for the game to be banned, before it even hits the streets, and before any of them have even played it.

We’ve already seen adverts for the game being pulled off buses in Chicago due to a biased piece of reporting from Fox News, and now more opinionated people have decided to butt in.

Parents Television Council president Tim Winter started the invented outrage by declaring:

“This brutally violent videogame must be kept out of the hands of children, and we are calling on all major retailers to reconsider any decisions to sell this game.”

The next day, California state senator Leland Yee sent a message to parent urging them to “avoid (the) latest ultraviolent videogame.”

Now hang on a minute Mr. Winter and Mr. Yee, how do you know the game is going to be brutally or ultra violent? You haven’t played it, so you are just guessing based on the old iterations. Now okay, GTA IV is going to have some scenes of violence in it, but then it is a game about criminality, and violence is an unfortunate part of that. We all wish it wasn’t obviously, but life is unfair.

(more…)

I don’t know how this game passed by my attention thus far, but when my roommate downloaded the demo to Operation Darkness I thought, “Hey, a turned based 3D game based on WII that’s cool.” Sure, it was populated by douschebaggy looking anime characters, but I’ll take it because I have no other choice (check out my side rant below). What sold me though was that some of your soldiers are WEREWOLVES. It was like there was a scientific think tank put together to come up with a game idea that would make my head explode. I love me some werewolves, I love turn based strategy, and I love alternate history, but I love werewolves even more. The game seems to be pretty decent, but even if it turns out to be kind of sucky I’ll have to purchase it on principle alone. I need to encourage the development of more turn based strategy games that take place in significant times in history that features monsters of lore.

(more…)

One of my favorite rock bands is Def Leppard and when I mean rock bands, I mean a fun band to sing along with when you’re drunk. There’s few bands that make me rock out with my cock out, but Def Leppard is one of those bands. Oh yeah, you don’t want to be anywhere near me for any reason if there’s the chance of Def Leppard in the air. In fact there’s not one band that I really want more on Rock Band than Def Leppard and the fact that they are going to have a few songs on Guitar Hero III as downloadable content gives me a little hope… except for the fact that two of their best songs, “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph” are live versions of the songs. I’m not a fan of live versions of songs unless they are significantly different than the masters and even then I only want to listen to them occasionally, not play them in a game. Live versions of songs on Guitar Hero or Rock Band are one slight step above cover songs.

Why are Guitar Hero fans stuck with live versions? Well, there’s no answer right now. My crazy theory is that they wanted to emulate Rock Band where the crowd sings along with certain songs, but then again that’s only my crazy conspiracy theory. It was probably something more mundane like a legal issue with the record company.

Source: Filefront’s Gaming Today

Nintendo are having a good year. That’s a slight understatement but it’s the main thrust of the latest press release to come from the company’s headquarters, as it reports a massive surge in profits for the last twelve months.

Net profit rose 47.7% to a record high over the last fiscal year, after the phenomenal success of the Wii and DS, both of which have exceeded expectations, and beaten all rivals in their field.

The net profit for the Nintendo group as a whole was ¥257.34 billion, or $2.5 billion. So just a slightly successful year for the Kyoto, Japan based company then.

(more…)

No reason for this other than I like chicks.

Over on Gametap there’s a great article that delves into how achievements work and how they could be fixed. At first I thought the idea was silly, why would Xbox 360 achievements need to be fixed at all, they didn’t seem broken in the first place? However, the answer is that there is room for improvement and I’ve gathered my responses here. So here’s how it works, go there and read the article and come back here to read what I think and post your own thoughts. Got it? Good.

(more…)

When Tony Stark started drinking, that’s when things got really weird.

Normally, I avoid almost all super hero related games since traditionally 99% of them have sucked major balls. Worse than the superhero game however, is the movie tie-in game. Through logical reasoning then, a superhero movie game is the ultimate in total garbage with a few exceptions. For some reason that I can’t explain, the Iron Man movie screenshots I’d seen had gotten me a little more excited about the game than I’d normally be. I guess it helps that the game is being produced by Sega. While Sega has had a questionable track record over the years, the name equates a little more in terms of quality than EA does with its usually horrendous licensed games.

(more…)

There is currently a spate of violence occurring in Chicago which has seen 37 people shot, 2 stabbed and 7 dead according to CBS News. Why is this happening? Well, who knows, maybe maybe its gang violence, the weather, or just a spate of unconnected crimes. Or maybe its because some poster adverts for Grand Theft Auto IV have started appearing on the sides of buses in the city to promote the Rockstar game due out next week?

Now, of course, I don’t believe for a minute that the last option has anything to do with the violence, as tragic and depressing as it is, is occurring, but that’s because I’m someone who has two brain cells. Unfortunately, Fox News doesn’t, and the local affiliate in Chicago brought up the adverts during a report in to the violence.

Instead of ignoring the scaremongering, the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) decided to remove all of the adverts. Just like that, they gave in, over one ludicrous claim as to the effect they were having on the city.

(more…)

As mentioned previously on 1pstart Mortal Kombat is it going to make it’s first leap onto “next gen” consoles and it’s going to feature heroes from the DC Comics universe. In addition to the announced characters of Scorpian and Sub-Zero making their way onto the next game, comic book nerds will get to play as Batman and Superman in the Mortal Kombat universe.

More details and ranting after the break:

(more…)

Over on File Front I saw an interesting post pointing out some candy cigarettes that have Sega’s mascot Sonic the Hedgehog on the package.

(more…)