I ran across 2 interesting things today. One is about Konami supposedly flashing winning images in their slot machines while the game is being played:
"The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News."
I guess the machines are being pulled. You can read the whole article here.
While searching for other subliminal messages in videogames I also came across this one which supposedly exists in Wario Ware for the DS. This one is kinda strange but you can see for yourself here.
Does anyone know if subliminal advertising really works or not? Or if anyone has some other examples in videogames please let me know.
So since we have been on break and I've been trying to catch up with some missed games I've been playing a lot of random things here lately. The Wii is getting some play so is the PS2, PS3 and the 360. Not to mention the good old standby of the DS. So I saw this system sitting over on the side and figured I would turn it on again.
So lets get this right out of the way, I'm not bashing the PSP nor am I praising the DS or vice versa. The PSP has some great games that I've been going back and really enjoying. Tekkken is always fun to go back and play and I'm starting up on Syphon Filter and Every Extend Extra. Lets not forget the PSP sold an obscene amount in the month of December - a million units I think it was in America alone.
HOWEVER - there are 2 things that baffle my mind as to why they were done in the first place. First is the volume controls. They are these 2 really small buttons that I can never find when I need them but why are they buttons in the first place? My car has the same issue when it comes to temperature controls. I hate turning the heat on and it's at like 60 and I gotta mash the up button all the way to 80. A slide control for the volume is always a much better route to go. Why Nintendo decided not to do this with the GBA Micro baffles me.
Although what annoys me more than these 2 buttons is how the volume controls are handled. When you don't have a game in you get this great on screen display of how loud/quiet the volume level is at:
This thing is super great at telling the user how loud things are. Unfortunately when you are playing a game this overlay doesn't appear when you press the volume buttons. Not sure if they felt that it was a bad move to have it interfere while playing a game or what but I hate it and wish I could somehow turn it back on. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't been able to figure it out.
The 2nd thing that drives me nuts is the power light which normally looks like this:
Yeah I'm aware of having to plug it in because the battery could be better but thats now what we are here to discuss.
So what happens due to the placement of the battery light, when I'm playing a game I NEVER see the damn thing because it gets covered up like this:
As you can see my thumb completely covers up the light. The battery has ran out many times without me realizing that it was low. I have no idea if they will ever redesign the PSP but I hope someone fixes my 2 complaints.
Enough complaining! So I'll admit I like to peruse the area of the internet known as GAF from time to time. Setting up an account seems way too hard so I've never got around to doing it so I never chime in on the conversations going on. However one that caught my eye was this guy talking about how everyone should play Kim Possible: Whats the Switch? He even included a video that he had uploaded to youtube to show off the gameplay:
As you can see it looks completely awesome! She even has a grapple hook which for some reason speaks straight to my Bionic Commando lovin' ass when I was a kid playing it in the arcade. The game is totally Viewtiful Joe but done right. Has really great level design and interesting gameplay mechanics. You have you standard enemy and he takes like 3 or 4 hits to die and you have this gum that you use to hold levers into place. If you throw the gum at the enemies it will keep them in place and only take 1 hit to finish off. She even has a divekick which stuns enemies. Not only that! But she has both of Wolverine's dive kicks - the angled one and the straight down one which you can use to break through weak floors and find hidden secrets and stuff.
Oh yeah - I wanted to comment on the pole swing that she has. When she reaches the apex of her swing she changes direction in the anim. This was a really smart move because they force the player to only jump forward not having to deal with jumping backwards and all that silly nonsense. Whoever decided this - good job. You can see what I'm babbling about in the video - like 30 seconds near the end of it.
My only real complaint about the game is that it really is too hard for what the target audience should have been. Not only that but it's probably a little too long for what it is. Some of the later levels go on for what feels like forever and you can only save once you've completed the level. I picked it up new for $30 and had a lot of fun with it. You get to find hidden tokens that give you new outfits throughout the game and the cut scenes even have you in the outfit you are wearing - was rather impressed. Thanks to the GAF forum member who suggested this game.
Wow, where to begin. Well since I am on holiday I decided to get back into the swing of things and play some videogames. Of course the first game I had to pick up is Ghost Rider. I had played a little bit of it during E3 so I knew what to expect. Such great things as him going into the pose to pull a lever just like Kratos then deciding to kick the lever instead.
The game has been getting terrible reviews and it's really *not* that bad. It's not a great game by any stretch of the imagination but something about it makes me smile. Mostly because I know what it's like to work at a 3rd party developer and some publisher comes in and is all, 'make this really boring license that no one cares about and these games are really popular (gow and dmc) so make it like them!' Trust me, I was in plenty of those meetings with games that fortunately ended up getting cancelled. Every damn meeting for like 2 weeks after MK5 came out wanted blood just like that game.
So the opening starts and it has decent presentation done in a comic book style. I beat the whole game and I still don't understand the story so bleh on that one. Something about my motorcycle leaves fire trails and the path i was forced on opens up a gate to hell!!
Back to the beginning of the game - you get introduced to wayyy to much at once: these 2 different meters that took me about 2 hours to really process which one is what. L2 seems to do a lot of damage at once where as L1 is sort of like Devil Trigger mode where you do more damage on all of your attacks and take no reaction and everyone gets circles above their heads and if you throw someone you drain the rest of your meter but kill that monster off right away. It's not a bad system but for some reason it's all sorts of confusing in the beginning. Mostly because they are like - these orbs do this and blah blah and never really explain how it works. Either that or I just skipped the whole damn thing.
The controls...are strange. He has neutral jump attacks and running jump attacks. Why? I'm not really sure - seems like a waste of animation space to me. It was like neutral jump triangle was good and running jump square was good - i would have removed the other two personally. Going from stand to run is a frame or two laggy but nothing terrible. There are a ton of small problems that drove me nuts like holding R1 for block then still holding R1 and pressing square to do an attack but not going back to block even though I never let it go. Although...doing the same thing with triangle and I do go back to block.
Although not the worst idea but maybe the worst presentation is how they have a combometer just like DMC with words that say how great you are doing and it going from D to C to B to A to S. Enemies show up with a shield around them that actually have the text to indicate which level you need to be at. So if you need to get your combo to 'Brutal!' level the enemy will have a shield of 'Brutal!' floating around them. It's not a bad idea but seems like there could have been a better way to convey it.
The motorcycle parts are..interesting. The motorcycle gets double jump even though you don't! Haha, not really sure why - something about Earth Magic makes the motorcycle double jump. They do one decent idea - Square attacks fools on the left, Triangle attacks fools on the right. It's a nice mental divison so the player doesn't get too overwhelmed. Although I upgraded my motorcycle attack really early on (triple homing shot!) so all I did was spam that button and never had a hard time what so ever. Besides not being able to see due to how dark the levels were and I even turned my brightness all the way up.
It's a short game (4 hours on normal mode) and I think every level is re-used twice - once forwards then backwards. The upgrades unfortunately don't keep the game interesting long enough. I maxed everything out so early that i was getting bored near the end.
There is a documentary on the game that you can unlock that left me a little bummed. Just comes off as instead of saying dmc, ninja gaiden, etc have good combat ideas he just makes fun of them. Oh well - i'm fucking sick of arrogant european developers trying to say everything else is 'rubbish'. This one goes out to Alex Ward when I say, "I beat Ghost Rider!'
EDIT -- So it seems that a couple of websites have put up their reviews - IGN, then 1up and most recently Gamespy. IGN's review is a little odd - talks about how they think the game is better than part 1, yet we get 9.7 where as first one got 9.8. Fucking 0.1 tax for either being a sequel or for being on 'old' hardware. Bitches.
Game Informer put their review up...9.75. Man, these hookers just need to round up or something! Oh well.
Enough nitpicking. This time around feels very different for some reason. The studio so far has done Kinetica (yeah, i never played it either) then God of War 1 and 2. This one somehow feels like we have cemented Sony Santa Monica into being an AAA studio, not just a fluke. For better or worse we are now the God of War studio - much like Bungie being the Halo studio.
I think part of it was that I joined the GOW1 team pretty late, a month or so before Alpha. Cory kept telling me to join some team making Dark Odyssey but I had no idea what he was babbling about. But this one...this one was with all of us from the very beginning. This was our shot and I think we did a really good job. I'll leave it at that.
