***I am going to preface this with letting you know that I have not played Mass Effect 3 nor looked at what happenes at the end.***

There has been a whole lot of rants/complaints about gamers feeling “dissatisfied” with the Mass Effect 3 ending. In an insane move, Amazon & Origins are offering FULL refunds on this purchase. What is this garbage?

I can’t imagine a single incident where I would demand a refund for a game or a movie because of an ending. I have seen movies with awful endings that made me hate it or even a non-existant ending and I still didn’t feel the need for a refund. You pay for the service, if you don’t like it then you don’t like it and don’t recommend it and the opposite if you do liked it.

What is up with this self-entitlement that gamers have? The only other similar incident I can think of is when Aziz (I’m sorry I’m not funny) Ansari went to an IMAX film, watched the whole thing and then demanded a refund because it wasn’t really IMAX (size of the theater). His complaint was reasonable since IMAX is not really IMAX nowadays, but sitting through the whole movie doesn’t make the case that you object to the fakeMAX.

If you went to a restaurant that you heard was 5-Stars, ordered, ate your food, and paid for it; then came back, said it only tasted like a 2-Star place. What are the chances you would get a refund if you demanded your money back because of what you thought? The answer is none.

This cannot be good news for the gaming industry. This won’t push developers to make better products but just safer and more generic products (ie: Call of Duty 2038: Modern Warfarez). Why should they try for a different style/ending if people will just get upset and “demand” a refund?

I’m not saying it is not okay to dislike a game or a game’s ending, that is your opinion and right a person. What I am saying is if you bought a game and beat it then demand a refund, you should punch yourself in the face a few times. But once again, I am just talking…

The 3DS Circle Pad Pro is exclusive to GameStop. This does not SCREAM 3DS redesign with another slider. What it does scream is something else that should make you happy; Nintendo doesn’t think this device is necessary for every game and it’s only for “hardcore” gamers who want to play X or Y games.

Just like Xenoblade Chronicles is exclusive to GameStop (and Nintendo.com), it is only given to what Nintendo thinks is the place for “hardcore” gamers to shop. If you feel you need this extra slider, you will “be hardcore” and seek out this device and not casually walking through any store to pick one up. That is all that this is saying and it make sense. Majority of people don’t need this extra nubbing to play games they enjoy. There has only been one or two DS games I felt needed an extra stick and they were both FPS games.

Is this Nintendo listening to the fans’ cries/whines on a 2nd nub? If so, it feels like a brush off. “Here is your thing, enjoy your two games. Let us know when you are over this and you can come back and play.”

This doesn’t mean that 3DS won’t get a redesign but I’m not holding my breath. I am reminded of the rumble cart for the DS. It is okay to have, not game breaking to not have.

3D games do NOT need a camera stick/slider. And I’m sorry, but complaining about bad camera control is not an additional control function’s fault but a game design fault. Still…I’m just talking.

Let me preface by saying that I played and enjoyed Gears of War 3. I was satisfied with the ending of it as well as the ending of Act III but not how they did it in either case. Now that that is out of the way…

I believe Gears of War 3 is doing it wrong. The combat is great but it is the other part of the game that has the wrong idea. You know…the story?

Gears3 did not feel like a Gears game. They took the fun combat of Gears and tried to duct tape a good story to it. I say this because the game seems composed of a repeating sequence: go to area/arena, kill all monsters coming at you, hit switch, cut scene. With this structure, it hammers this procedure into your brain. But Gears isn’t the only game to fall for this, half of the reason I still think Resistance: Fall of Man is the best Resistance title is cause Resistance 3 made the same mistakes. Sure you are creating an “experience” or whatever, but you are not helping in making a feeling of a linear story.

But this wash, rinse, repeat, isn’t my main complaint about the story. There is something wrong with the tone. CliffyB and his boys are trying oh so hard to get that emotion story going and I commend them. Even though I think the story behind Gears went like this…

In 2004, an EPIC Games exec came up to CliffyB and said, “You need to make a game with EMOTION! No more of this Unreal Tournament junk.” So he got hard to work, played RE4, Killswitch, and watched C.H.U.D. and made Gears of War.

After the launch of Gear, the exec came back to CliffyB, “Congratulations on the success of the title. But I got to ask you, where’s the emotion? I told you to make a game with it!” Cliffy responds, “What are you talking about? It is the yellow liquid underground. I at first didn’t have the slightest idea what imulsion was but I made it a reality and based a whole trilogy around it!”

It was soon pointed out to him the difference between emotion and imulsion and that’s why Maria had to die in Gears of War 2…oh no, spoilers!

But back to the original point, the story. At the end, I did have sense of the emotion but there is a reason for that…the main characters stopped doing one-liners! That is all they frickin’ did the whole game. I understand it is to lighten the mood or make the game a bit more fun but when 90% of the dialogue is one-liners (and obvious ones at that), it breaks the mood and adds annoyance. Also, why is it so horrible to break the mood of the world ending? It should not be a lighthearted affair. Isn’t that what multiplayer and horde mode is for?

I understand all the arguments for the little bits, but it felt like it ruined the atmosphere for me. The one-liners turned an end of the world story line into a meathead valley. I’ll probably turn off voices next time I play through. That’s how serious I am about this. Then again, what can I say? I’m just talking…

Looking around the internet after Nintendo finished their conference at E3 and all I see is hate. Seriously? Nothing but complaining and moaning and trolling. Why so ungrateful? For months and years people have been hankering and saying they want a WiiHD, that they want Nintendo needs “to step up to the big leagues & join next gen gaming,” which apparently means pixel counts for HD resolution. And now Nintendo is finally essentially doing that. They are pretty much making a WiiHD and what do we hear? More complaining!

Read More

The resistance series and Gears of War series are way too similar in my mind. Perhaps I made it that way with my own actions but it is battle to see who will come on top.

Read More

I probably don’t need to but I thought I’d explain a little what Angel Decoy is. I feel quite stifled at work and just aching for chances/places to use my creative side. I’ve actually wrote three scripts for a undeveloped (YouTube) video series but I am just missing actors. Of course it requires other people, it will be dead in the water until a cast is found. This led me to look for something I can do on my own. Since not all comics require the best drawing…why not try it out? But instead of something long and drawn out, quick and easy?

ANGELDecoy is exactly that. The idea is a quick draw comic composed of Twitter images, whether they come on paper or a napkin, as long as they are taken a picture of and posted on Twitter. I like to call it a TwitComic.

I know I can’t draw but I at times feel very creative. I don’t want my ability (or lack thereof) to draw to hinder me. That is why I created my other Tumblr account AlienHunters. It was a way to make a comic without the need to draw. But shortly after starting it, I realize that that series is very demanding. From taking the pictures to finding the background to shopping the figure, it is a long process that would take me multiple hours to get it to a point where I would feel proud of it.

That being said, I don’t want to give up on AH since I liked the idea and some of the story lines I storyboarded. But I am exploring this new comic idea since it seems like it will be fun. I am also open to ideas on how to make the AD series better. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a better writer/drawer?

Dead Rising 2 just came out and not being a fan of the first one, I decided to rent the sequel. I like zombies but a lot of things seem off with the first Dead Rising. The controls, the gameplay and most importantly, the leveling.

The same level-up system in Dead Rising is back but this is not a good thing. Countless times I have been told from fans of the series “BEFORE you play, go down to the garage and drive over zombies until you reach level XX.” Wait, you are telling me before I play the game I need to go down there and level up to enjoy the game? That is called one of two things, bad game design and the definition of “you are doing it wrong.” I know you don’t have to go down there but when everyone says to do that so you have more health/items/moves/fun, it is kind of a given.

Playing Dead Rising 2, I didn’t think it was completely necessary to level up at first. But after getting so far, I feel I hit a brick wall. There are other problems I have come across like being five feet away from a psycho and shooting him 10 times in the head with a gun causing zero damage, throwing a steak in front of a tiger to eat but he just runs past it, and poorly designed/implemented “create-a-weapon.” But back to the leveling feature, this game reminds me of a poor version of another game I played. What was that game…oh yeah, an RPG.

If you haven’t picked it up by now(which it is pretty obvious), Dead Rising requires you to grind just like any bad RPG. That said, there are tons of RPGs that do not require you to grind. Won’t throw any names out but I know of many people who love/rave about Dead Rising and in the same sentence will say how they hate RPGs cause of grinding. They are the same thing!

I would point my finger back at me about being a hypocrite but all the RPGs I love do not require you to grind and for these games, In general, I don’t mind grinding and have actually found myself doing it on accident cause I was digging the play mechanic. In that case and the case with most RPGs, leveling is there but not required to pass section A.

No game should require and promote grinding. It is a simple sign of bad game design. The fact that they give you the ability to restart with all your skills is evidence of that. I am not saying the game doesn’t have it’s place and is a total loss but I am just glad I rented Dead Rising 2. Now if only I had rented Lost Planet 2. Is it me or does it feel like Capcom is putting out nothing but junk titles save for Monster Hunter Tri?

I didn’t mean any disrespect with the title, this is just something I needed to get off my chest so I am just talking.

Everybody’s favorite bounty hunter, Samus Aran has a new game out. Controversial as it may be, it does lead me to a lot of thoughts. These thoughts aren’t the ones you’d expect since it doesn’t have anything to do with review scores. That’s your opinion, have fun cause I know I will.

Leading up to the release of Metroid: Other M, I decided to brush up on some of the previous games of the series. I didn’t overdo it and play every game, just Super and Zero Mission since I couldn’t find my copy of Fusion. Previously I have beaten these games multiple times so it was more of a crash course. There is one thing that kept presenting itself to me. That is speed or quickness.

Whether it was in Super Metroid or Metroid: Zero Mission, I was speedily going through, blasting enemies left and right. Whenever I decided not to decimate the enemies in a room, I quickly jumped past them and was on my way. Who am I to be bothered by the nuisanse they provide? And this was me not trying to do a speed run (was never good enough for those).

Metroid has been known for their speed runs. People doing special things to jump ahead in the game, acquiring special items early on. Using skills like wall jumps and saving high speed spinesharks up makes me think that Samus is more than an ordinary bounty hunter. She is a ninja!

*image via JDillon.net

Not everyone can do what Samus does, then add on the space suit and it shows off her skills even more. I am sure the Power suit does add a decent amount of extra movement ability but even without it, Samus is able to perform these actions in the Zero Suit. Do you think any space-goer could continue a spineshark charge through multiple rooms? How many people you know that can jump back and forth up walls? Do you know anyone that can do multiple flips in the air? I didn’t think so!

Running and flipping by enemies, some of them don’t even knwo what is going on. Now that is a ninja if I ever heard of one. I am going to go one step beyond that and call her a Space Ninja. It suits her better than any other space soldier/marine title.

This is another reason why I am not upset by the idea of Team Ninja creating Othe M. Fast, quick action in the Metroid universe doesn’t seem like a huge cry from where the old Metroid lie. I am ready to embrace Samus “The Space Ninja” Aran’s latest outing and so should you, unless you don’t like the Wii. But that’s just cause you are a hater, move along.  :P

PS: This was written before playing Metroid: Other M or reading any reviews on the game. I don’t read reviews on games I am 100% getting.

Don’t worry, I am fully aware that half of you just rolled your eyes and the other half of you aren’t even going to bother to read this. But this is just something that is bugging me completely because it is ruining multiplayer on Xbox Live (PC). 

This all started way before my experience but I can only talk about my knowledge of the situation. To me, it all began with Monday Night Combat. I’ve had a Xbox Live Silver account since August without regret. At PAX East, I was able to play some MNC. During this trip I also received a free 12 month card of XBL Gold. Since I enjoyed what I played, it only made sense to use the card when I got the game. I also wanted to jump into this game since I have grown tired of all the PC Team Fortress 2 games/rooms being full of mods. Little did I know my troubles would not be solved just yet.

To start things off, playing Monday Night Combat is quite fun and looks great. It reminds me of TF2 even if a team of Assassins and Snipers are over powered and matchmaking might not be the most fair. It is mostly about the basics of team based multiplayer. But there is a bigger issue than just people being invisible to stab you in the back and hiding far away behind a wall. The game is dead quiet. It took me four games until I found someone with a microphone and he barely talked. For a system that comes with a mic, hardly anyone seems to use them. I can find more people with mics online on PlayStation Network than XBL.

Now people have commented on my Twitter tweets about this saying they are probably in party chat and I have even had one person in game tell me he was in a party chat but only came out of it cause his friends went away so he was able to exit it (they weren’t even in the game with us). People chatting, not even in the same game! This is why I hate Party Chat and it is ruining multiplayer.

Team based games are all about communication. It forces you to rely upon your teammates to help accomplish your goal. But you can’t do that if you have no mic or not listening to your teammates. How are you going to know if there is a rush coming on the right side? There are even times it was enjoyable and not hostile to chat with the opposing team in lobbies. Otherwise, I might as well be playing a game full of bots.

I don’t have full knowledge on the game, but doesn’t Modern Warfare 2 lack Party Chat support? Although it was done primarily to discourage cheating, I can’t help but think that my reasoning is one at least a secondary reason for it.

I understand why people want to Party Chat. You want to talk to your friends. It allows you to stay in contact with friends 100% of the time, whether you are dead or not. Lastly, it does save you from the little kids and excessive cursers/racists/homophobes. But it cuts you off from the rest of game and forces you in a whole other world that is not even remotely close to the game world you are playing in. It is essentially creating a wall of exclusion from other people. Who needs them right?

This is bad. I am aware that not everyone is worth hearing/talking to on XBL (for sure) but that is why they created the fancy, amazing, and simple to use mute button. As a matter of fact, some of my best gaming buds were found randomly in games. I just played a game; we had microphones, become close playing a game we randomly found each other on, and stuck together. Soon we were jumping online at the same time for fun times. But this will not happen anymore since people are stuck in their “whole other worlds”. No more meeting new online gaming buds, no more coordinated attacks, no more teaming up with people you respect in the game. And as briefly touched on before, this also does include no more horrible/annoy people giving you hard times.

So why is this all bad? If my reasons already listed aren’t enough, imagine this. If you Party Chatted or only gamed/talked with friends, you wouldn’t know who I was or be reading this right now. Before you started following me on Twitter or heard me on a podcast or whatever, you didn’t know whom I was. Turning on a game and playing online opens you up to new people just like listening to a new podcast, reading a new article, or following someone on Twitter. These people are initially strangers but not for long. Strangers aren’t a bad thing. If you are single right now, chances are your next girl/boyfriend is a stranger to you. That is not to say everyone will be memorable, it is just luck of the draw.

What if you are a fan of The Electric Hydra and happen to stumble upon one of us in a multiplayer match. Would you want us to be in a Party Chat or open to talk to you, the stranger? Same goes with game developers when they jump in games. I can guarantee they aren’t in a party chat and I am sure you would be upset if they were. You may call these special situations; I call them every day fates. You never know whom you might be playing with. They could be your worst enemy, next best friend, a “famous” writer, a developer, or who knows…the point is Party Chat is killing multiplayer, in my mind. Maybe more of the friendly, openness of multiplayer but if I wanted to play a game with a bunch of bots I’d play Alien vs. Predator’s Skirmish mode or a single player game

This experience has completely discouraged me from trying to play any games on Xbox Live in the future. I have been really debating on whether to get Halo Reach or not. I am curious if it is anything special/new or just the same old generic space shooter. But now I am dispirited since I will have to play the multiplayer based game in silence since no one has a microphone (if you are in a Party Chat, you pretty much don’t have a mic since you offer no value to other gamers). The same goes with PC gaming with Ventrillo/Skype/etc, but I don’t play PC games much. And when you inevitably say to just play with friends, I will direct you to a list of friends who are either not online, only playing Ultra Street Fighter 32xHyper Tiger Edition or using their Xbox like a Netflix box.

Xbox Live is dying or dead to me.

The Nintendo 3DS is (probably) a little over six months away from being released. March 27, 2011, for $300 with maybe a movie and/or  game packed in is my guess. Most gamers are already in love with this upcoming handheld. But where there is love, there has to be the hate. And I am not talking about the X-bot hate.

After reading about a “popular” gaming analyst (whose name I shall not mention), it seems that some over-enthused iPhone/Apple fanboys have taken offense or maybe even feel threatened causing them to lash out and attack, calling it a “A Broken Business Model.” And who wouldn’t when talking about “quickly selling 10 million units?” Oh yeah, people who don’t work for Apple!

Well, let’s overlook that tiny detail and see what is wrong with this picture.

Part of the issue is comparing it to the iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone 4 and it does play games but there is no replacing a dedicated, gaming (Nintendo) handheld! Comparisons with price and value are typically on the ends of people’s tongues but when you replace your phone every one to two years on top of expensive monthly payments for two years versus the handheld of 3+ years, it seems the value could be in the handheld side. Add on a lasting list of software (minus a few exclusives not many care about) that is compatible with all hardware versions and you have relinquished the need to upgrade and created more value.

That brings us to the next concern when dealing with the iPhone/iPod Touch vs. 3DS which is of course the online store and apps. This is point is meant to conquer and “out date” the idea of going to a store for games. It’s the same point that Apple/iPhone fanboys become blind to the fact that Nintendo has launched a seemingly successful online store for their handheld. It is true that currently there are more apps out there for the i-device, but not all apps are compatible on all versions of the iPhone. This forces the user to upgrade the phone sooner than they might have planned if they want to play a new batch of games.

Many more pros and cons exist in this debate like the transferring of purchased items from the old device to the new one and ads placed in games that you’ve already paid for, but when you can download a Mario title on the iPhone, get back to me. Oops, let my Nintendo fanboy slip out there.

The point is, this has all happened before and sadly will happen again. Whenever Nintendo has a new product that is said to take the industry forward, everyone condemns it and writes it off as an upcoming failure or a gimmick. You’d think that by now, after the DS and the Wii, people would give Nintendo a little more credit. Not to mention that they have already stated their increased dedication to online support via service/games and have kept a strong flow of games coming to the DSiWare library

But that’s just me and I’m just talking…