Yes, there have been additions to the original, new characters, new stages, etc. That’s really nothing special if you ask me, that’s just meeting the minimum expectations. Capcom clearly listened to fans when putting this together, so many of the things we talked about and wished we had when playing the original are here now.

• “Endless Mode” – This is akin to quarter mode, or spectator mode.  For fans, seeing a good match is not a bad way to pass the time when playing with your buddies
• “Team Battle” – So you and your friends can team up and take on another team in single elimination.  Teams with players who know multiple characters have an edge here.
• “Replay Channel” – This seemed so halfway implemented in SF4, but they didn’t fuck around this time, basically every match you’re in is recorded and you can review and save them, or watch them with friends later.
• “Rebalanced Gameplay” – This one is important.  In online play for SF4, players gravitated to a very small pool of characters.  Now that things have been reworked, I have been seeing people playing all sorts of characters – we will see how long that lasts.
• “DLC Carryover” – DLC like alternate costumes from SF4 is unlocked here.  Not really what I expected, seemed thoughtful

I am a bit sad to see some of the other challenges gone like time trial and survival mode… I love going for high scores.  I played about 2000 matches in SF4, hell we were playing it the week before this one came out, and I don’t expect to play this one any less.  Super Street Fighter 4 made a very good first impression making it the definitive SF title for me unless someone wants to play HD Remix.

If you haven’t read Berserk and are into manga or comics, I recommend it.

Wow, so there it is, the final battle. It’s nice to see Anya in uniform there with Delta where she belongs. I wonder if they’ll bring Mataki the sniper from the novels into this game, it would be nice to see her make a cameo at least. Also, Dom is sporting a wicked looking beard.

Anyone that’s gotten into the story of Gears knows how many losses humanity has faced on Sera. I think it’s interesting that they show them in what appears to be a one of the cities annihilated by the Hammer of Dawn – mankind’s own doing.

Anyways, I’m pretty excited about this.

As far as the game goes, I liked it quite a bit and would probably give it a 6 out of 10. I felt the best parts of it were the voice acting, the stylized graphics, the gallons of blood, and the soundtrack. The elements I didn’t like were the weak platforming, and how short the game was. I died more times missing a jump than doing anything else, which was a bit annoying – luckily there’s no real penalty. But fighting lots of enemies at a time… parrying attacks, throwing enemies, cutting them up, seeing blood splash everywhere was amazing. Another thing that struck me as a nice design was how the “life bar” was implemented. Characters would appear bloody as they get close to dying including Afro, no old school life bars.

After completing the main story mode it was fun to see the recorded statistics. I enjoyed seeing how many guys I killed, how many gallons of blood were spilled, how many enemies were split between the eyes. The other unlockable “treasures” include a soundtrack and concept art.

Overall, I would say this is a nice rental. Jump on xbox.com and download the demo to your 360.

]]> http://patrickmjones.com/blog/2010/04/10/the-number-two-headband-afro-samurai/feed/ 2 http://patrickmjones.com/blog/2010/03/28/gaming-q1-2010/ http://patrickmjones.com/blog/2010/03/28/gaming-q1-2010/#comments Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:19:35 +0000 Patrick http://patrickmjones.com/blog/?p=247 For me, gaming in early 2010 has been like a mad rush. There are key titles for other systems I would probably be playing, Heavy Rain and God of War 3 for example, but I have a 360 and barely have enough time to keep up with my games as it is. Here’s a look at the past 3 months of gaming for me.

Borderlands – The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
2K games really took it to the HNL for this add-on to Borderlands. This add-on has it all… new shit to kill, new bosses, humor, and zombie brain eating zombies. I have already played through this add-on more than I’ve played Left 4 Dead (and have enjoyed it more), and would have no problem playing through it a couple more times as my friends pick it up.

Mass Effect 2 – January 26, 2010
I had gotten on the original Mass Effect bandwagon late after asking a coworker why his shirt said N7. What’s crazy to me is how incredible this game is, and how many friends I have that still haven’t touched it. The universe is filled with so many details… there’s a copy of alien pornography in a shop (it has a photo of what looks like a jellyfish on the cover), there are tons of solar systems to visit and planets to land on, side missions, and crew relationships. I got through this game on Veteran and started my second playthrough on Insane in the weeks I had before BioShock 2 came out but have had to shelve it since then. I’m hoping to get back to this during this summer and wrap up my second playthrough.

BioShock 2 – February 9, 2010
Having just played Mass Effect 2, jumping back into Rapture was a nice change. The atmosphere and story were what I played this game for and I felt it delivered well in that respect. I played on the hard difficulty and it really showed in some of the combat. The most interesting part of combat to me was defending the Little Sisters. To anyone familiar with the first title, you know very well what it’s like to take on a Big Daddy responsible for a Little Sister, this time around the tables are turned. The multiplayer was also interesting in that you have loadouts of plasmids and weapons to take into battle, but I only played until I was level 10 or so. Overall, I really enjoyed this.

Final Fantasy XIII – March 9, 2010
I’m about 55 hours deep into this game at the moment, and am pretty close to finishing the main storyline. Oddly, my impression of the game has changed while playing it. I was so looking forward to having a Final Fantasy to play that when I first started the paradigm based combat and very “on rails” experience sickened me. The first two discs were like playing an interactive movie, a very beautiful one. Thankfully as I reached one of the last chapters I was dropped into a giant area with monsters ranging from tough battles to impossibly huge and unbeatable, monster killing missions, and a chance to grind a bit. This part of the game saved it for me, I was looking forward to just finishing it and putting it away but I’ve already found myself going back and doing missions I would have otherwise skipped. The paradigm based battle system does add some strategy to the combat but it just feels like something to do while you watch your characters battle (you can only control your primary character in battle). If the ending is nice I might be able to give this a 7 or 8, but if the ending is weak I will probably be giving this a 6. To date I feel Star Ocean 4 was my favorite RPG for the 360.

So, that’s it. I’m looking forward to wrapping up my FFXIII and starting Fate of Resonance or going back and doing Infinite Undiscovery… we will see.

Recently I was working on a project where all the Javascript worked fine in the static templates, but had issues when integrated with the CMS. The templates were using jQuery and the CMS was automatically adding Prototype to the page output. First thing I say is, “No problem, I’ll just use jQuery’s noConflict mode.” After making the change I was still seeing errors. After digging around I saw that our site’s main Javascript file was using the $ variable… hmmm…

To make your life easier wrap your code in an anonymous function and pass the jQuery variable in. This is probably more obvious if you’re writing some code others will use like a jQuery plugin, but could help save your ass down the line.

This is what your site’s main.js probably looks like

$(document).ready(function() {
    // Do awesome stuff...
}

Adding the anonymous function and passing the jQuery variable in will prevent problems later with the $ variable.

(function($){
    $(document).ready(function() {
        // Do awesome stuff...
    }
})(jQuery);

For a demo: click here
To download the demo: click here

The easiest way to describe this game to other gamers is to say it’s very reminiscent of Super Metroid. Current generation gaming (or laming if you read the last post) means this isn’t a 2D sprite based adventure though. This game uses the Unreal Engine and it looks very good for a $15 downloadable title or, for that matter, a full $60 adventure game. While the environments are all rendered in 3D, the playable character moves more or less in 2D within a room.

So what makes this game work? I would say it’s all the same things that made its predecessors so much fun. To me the exploration was a big part of it. Your character is essentially a regular guy who finds himself in an underground military complex. As he finds equipment like bombs, missiles, and other tools this allows him to explore areas previously unavailable to him. The other part I liked was the solid control scheme.

Anyways, I played the game from start to finish twice already for a total of 15 hours of gameplay and will probably play it through once more to see if I can get that minimalist achievement. Check out some gameplay videos or download the demo and give this thing a try.

This looks to be an online hangout for lamers to meet and socialize. They can even schedule laming events for lamer clans, ladder tournaments, etc. Powered by Joomla and JomSocial this has some potential. Check it out.

http://www.callingalllamers.com

Update: He actually launched the real site “Calling All Gamers” at http://www.callingallgamers.com