Posts

Now Showing: Nintendo Channel

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If you believe the moronic notions of some of the bigger internet games """"journalists""" and seasoned developers then the Nintendo Wii , aside from having the dust continuously wiped from it is now a legacy platform. You know, now that the Wii -U hasn't even been released yet. Anyway, judging from the output on the Nintendo Channel the hype might be true. This is what we find odd about the Nintendo Channel. It is essentially a marketing tool for Nintendo products that comes with every Wii and according to the software data there's at least 500,000 players that watch it. That being said, the coverage is inconsistent at best. A number of promotional series have started and then abruptly been discontinued (the Warioware and Monster Hunter ones spring to mind) and since ONM have been in charge of the 'regular' Nintendo News episodes the quality has been very hit and miss. The recent E3 round ups were pants and there hasn't b

Xenoblade Chronicles: Initial Thoughts

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Well we've spent about 20 hours with Xenoblade Chronicles and overall we're enjoying it. First up is that you can download twelve tracks for free when you register the game with Nintendo which is nice. Something for nothing (well, for £40 but hey). Is it one of the best jRPGs or even RPGs of this generation as many reviews have been claiming? Possibly, but there are a few gripes even very early in. 1) Sound Bites. The noises that your party makes during battle get repetitive very quickly. They start repeating after about one battle. I'm sure that as the party expands you'll get to hear some more lines but how did nobody spot that it is irritating to hear the same phrases over and over again? It is grating and somewhat undermines the fiction of the game unless your characters are supposed to have short term memory loss or a total lack of imagination when it comes to battle cries. 2) TITS. Currently, the best armour for the female in the party seems to be a pair

Mad Catz Pro circuit is... Maybe OK?

Mad Catz are getting more and more credibility these days, i remember the days when 4 people sat round a console and "player 4" got stuck with the cheapy 3rd party controller that everyone dreaded. That controller used to be made by Mad Catz. Now they have released these controllers specifically for the gaming elite, for the "pro-gamers" allowing for things like interchangeable team plates. But most excitingly interchangeable D-Pad/Thumbsticks, making the 360 more like the PS3 controller, and vice versa. I'm still pining for this, 5 years on from getting the 360 I still prefer the DualShock PlayStation layout. However what bothers me about this incarnation and the thought and process put into it is that the 360 D-Pad seems the same. I really really fucking despise the 360 D-Pad, and have done from the start, firstly it's in the wrong place, though this is fixable on this gaypad, but it frequently just does not function well. It suffers from I-pressed-Up-no

The tragic cogitations of DS/Pokemon Loss

Shock horror, dismay and tears. Over the past ten years of playing pokemon there were certain things that caused me dismay, the battery on "Red" depleted loosing all the hours spent on that. Telling doppelganger to get Pokemon, then further down the line him thrashing me in a 6v6 battle. And most recently, Taking my DS on holiday with Pokemon Black. I lost it, I left it on the plane, I spoke with KLM several times to see if it had been handed in, but no :( it's lost... gone... stolen... moved on... It is... no more Well it's not the worst thing in the world, the DS can be replaced, I may even get the 3DS for the hell of it. The thing that bothers me most is Pokemon Black and the time I invested. Along with that I have lost my Celebi, Zoroa, Zoroark, and Victini. Several event-only (i.e. time-sensitive) Pokemon, Zoroa and Victini were actually ones I was using when going through the game too! So, i dont know, do I play through the game again? do I ju

NoA: DoA

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I only recently found out about Project Rainfall from that homo-du-jour Jayjay-Fahid Sulley, editor of a little website called videolamer we used to write for. Turns out Nintendo of America hates JRPGs. With a passion. Amazingly, there are currently no plans to release The Last Story , Xenoblade Chronicles and some other emo game in the United States of America. Crazy news huh? I thought Europe had it bad but Another Code R and the awesome Disaster Day of Crisis didn't get stateside either. I guess it's because Nintendo don't want people playing the old Wiis with Wii-U around the corner. God forbid people keep buying games for one of the best selling consoles of all time. That would be insanity. Can't wait for this crap though. Give me a poorly controlled generic cockney simulator over some crappy japanese games anytime you muggy bint.

Why is the Escapist so shit Part 2

Part 1 is here. This may be why the Escapist continues to be so shit. Here be a few gems from the Reddit: Robomonkster in response to the escapist claiming the crunch has caused strain: How are they 'feeling the crunch' with that many fucking ads? Have they found the other end of the online ad-revenue bell-curve, where they spend more money on the bandwidth for them than the ads bring in? Amen to that even if I did have a desire to sift through their poorly designed website through all that crap to find some theoretical gems the constant ads would drive me away. As it is I try other ways of watching Zero Punctuation so i don't have to visit the site and get inundated with advertising before, after, above, below and around and content. Acid Super Sam : "I respect the Escapist" Nooooo ho ho. What kind of person says that. Why god why?

Eight Little Touches to Little King's Story

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That see it rise above the crap that has outsold it. I recently completed it so it only took me just over a year . It's a really good game . We aren't good enough with words to express it. It's a great game even are there words to express better than great? Here are eight little touches that, for me, made it a really greatastic game and why my heart is made heavy with the knowledge that we won't see a game quite so beautifully crafted or surprisingly fresh for a long time. 1) Detail in everything . Everything from collectibles to the snippets that your civilians will offer up in conversation through to incidental details in the cutscenes draw the eye. It's all been lovingly crafted to reward players who will care to look for those tiny little details. 2) Naughtiness . Not as in, lame pre-watershed sex scenes or characters who stream cusses but genuine naughtiness. Citizens send you rude notes , perhaps my favourite of which is a letter rating the princesses (O