Hoshnasi

In 1996 I received a game I didn’t like to play in the dark.  Its of course Resident Evil.  Telling you nothing you don’t already know, it was a pretty ground breaking survival horror game. In 98′ Resident Evil 2 was released and very important to my point the DualShock controller with two analog sticks was released in 99′.  Which in turn caused a re-release of RE2, which had rumble and dual stick support.

Up until now, RE1 and RE2 were the only games I could stand to play. I enjoyed the fixed camera and stuck in wet cement movement feel.  The game was very intense for those two reasons alone.  It really worked at that time.  I didn’t play other installments in the series except for RE4, which I just couldn’t play.  The controls didn’t work with the very FPS-centric gamer I had become.

The level of enemies on the screen and what I fell to be shackling aiming control frustrated more than made me tense.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but before RE4, all except RE installments except for parts in Code Veronica the camera was set at fixed points on a section of the map, or level.  As the player moved the cameras perspective would change.  Aside from the increased graphics on different systems and depth of story RE4 was the first serious departure from the standard “Survival Horror” and exploration in the RE series.   That’s not a bad thing, but its a leap in the evolutionary path, be it good or bad.

That brings me to the point.  Appreciating what RE is about and what makes it special I really think its time to open the control scheme a bit more than RE5 did.  I really like RE5, the new (Gears-esque) control scheme is a serious upgrade to that of RE4 and actually gives me something I feel is highly approachable to the gamer I am.  With that said, I don’t think its going to pull in all those Halo and Call of Duty players.  I’ll go a step further and say, when speaking on the controls alone, they feel more suited for the PS3 crowd than that of the 360, at least when considering the types of games available.

There has been a heated debate on both side of this control argument since RE5 was announced and that press release video commenting that “Move and Shoot” would be in RE5 then later recanted DID NOT HELP.

Lets try and put this in the simplest of terms.  If there were options in the game for both “stop to aim and shoot” or “run and gun”, which do you think players would use?  It would seem obvious that the run and gun option would make up the majority.  I can hear it now,  “But that’s not Resident EEEEEVIL!”  Well neither was over the shoulder camera until the RE4!  The game has evolved already.  Much of its classic ambiance building - stuck camera, slowed movement and single d-pad control (tank control) are GONE.  Why has “stop to aim” become the last peak the purists have decided to make their stand on?

With my dirty laundry on the neighbors coffee table I have to say, I like RE5;  Even with what I feel are in some cases frustrating controls.  As many of the control purists have said “Try the demo first if you think the controlls are an issue“…  I agree 100% with this, if you are a CoD or Gears player activate the last controller option.  The one with left stick strafe (mostly) and right stick camera.  Then at least the game feels a bit more fluid.

Wanted to get these pictures in.

Here is the bad ass pool:

Lobby, with what I was told is a million dollar chandalier:

Here is a shot of our room after we messed it up a bit:

Finally, a picture that for me is pretty moving:

I never stayed at Nevada Landing, nor have I ever wanted to. I always imagined it was a real dirt bag hotel. However, it was a major landmark on the way to Vegas and always a sign of how close I was. It also symbolized that over the top Vegas spirit. I mean, think of the guy who thought “I want make a river boat into a casino”.

I captured the picture on the way back to LA. I was so shocked on the way up I forgot to take a picture.

I had a chance to stay at Red Rock Resort Las Vegas this weekend. I’ll make this simple and quick because I can’t upload my iPhone photos for some reason, Flickr is pissing me off.

Anyways, check out the Gallery of photos on the Red Rock site. The photos admittedly look like some one went buck-wild with Photoshop on them. However, the rooms look almost identical to the pictures in reality. I stayed in a standard King room (with two queens swapped in). Frankly I was impressed. Very high quality experience. Everything felt well placed. The tactile experience was very nice. From the wood on the furniture to the deep sunken tub in bathroom which was lined marble.

High points:

• Amazing pool!
• Posh rooms, points go to the TV over the tub.
• The modern decor was flowing and well themed throughout the resort. The carpet of the casino was actually pleasing to the eyes.
• The bars are great. Video poker is a standard for bars, but the massive chandelier is NOT, its beautiful.
• Traveling from parking lot to lobby to room can be done without seeing a single slot machine or table.

One thing that happened the first day was running into a dealer I met when I played roulette for the first time (back in 2003 at Caesars), he is now the pit boss over at the Red Rock roulette tables. it was very cool and he actually remembered me. Either because I was a horrible spaz, or because of my obscene beginners luck.

Playing through the Too Human demo a few times made me yearn for a game on Xbox 360 that was more fantasy RPG.  However, I just don’t think thats ever been made on the 360.   So now, I’m looking at the achievements for Oblivion.  I never played Oblivion on the Xbox.  I had it on the PC and I didn’t like it that much, bad balancing and menu design made the game feel really console like.  Which I don’t think will bother me on the Xbox, but killed it for me on the PC.

Too Human and the escapades of Silicon Knights president Dennis Dyack have become infamous. Its hard for any enthusiast to not have an opinion about one or the other -regardless of Dennis’ rants on how anyone should NOT do so. Too Human for those do not know has been in development for nine years and due to a very poor 2007 E3 demo has received almost an endless paddling session from many enthusiasts on different game blogs/forums. At the time I wouldn’t have disagreed. The game looked like ass. However now, with a new demo out. I decided to keep an open mind and give it a whirl.

First and foremost, I treated this game like I treat all demos -with kid gloves. There is no manual, so if its complicated I expect to deal with a learning curve. In Too Humans case, I wasn’t disappointed, it was indeed complicated. While melee combat wasn’t difficult to get in terms of the smacky-smack simple stuff. The more rewarding air juggling and troll mounting took a little bit longer to grasp; there are good reasons though for figuring these advanced combat moves out. First, air juggling breaks enemy shields and troll mounting gets you out of the range of the very strong troll hammer smash, which for all intensive purposes has one of the biggest area effects I have seen on a monster in a long time.

As many already know, attacking both melee and ranged in Too Human requires the use of the right analog stick, which is normally the camera control on other games. For the haters this is the biggest gripe of the demo/game. It was for me as well on my first play through, The lack of camera control was hard to grasp initially, vaguely similar to getting used to GTA 4. However again, I had to learn that I needed to be more proactive on either snapping the camera to my back, or using the D-pad to go into a zoomed out Diablo-esqe camera view. Although I do still have a camera gripe. The setting of this game is massive and beautiful. Interior passages which look like an ancient tomb are amazing. Not having the ability to flick the analog stick around and feel like I’m there on the ground, verses being pulled along with a fixed view floating in a balloon takes away from the immersion. I know many can say “There is a free look mode!”, but all I can say is I hate free-look and don’t usually remember how to do it when needed. I’ll go a step further and say a majority of gamers would agree with me.

At this point I’m sounding like I’ve made alot of consolations for the demo and to be honest I have. I gave the demo an honest and FULL play through and while I have my complaints, like the game taking it self to seriously and my natural human opinion about Dyack and his up-his-own-ass rants on 1UP Yours podcast in regards to forum attacks to his game and his personal retaliation (which are not defendable in my mind). I still like the game and will be buying when it comes out and here is why.

Eighty percent of my gaming is social, either Team Fortress, Halo, COD4, Diablo or hell Uno and Catan. I like playing with people. I also like a good story driven RPG. I think Too Human takes a little bit from most of the aforementioned games. A good thing here is it takes me back to working with friends like in Diablo. Making a party and sharing loot to bolster effects and guarantee success is a huge plus to me. With gobs and gobs of items to loot in the demo I can only imagine customization of your character will be massive. Of course you will have to make sure you turn OFF the auto salvage feature, something I had set to ALL on the first demo run.

Too Human is going to be too much for some of you who have an opinion that they can’t get around. Either that “Its not nine years worth of game.” or “The camera is too much to deal with.” or that you just don’t want Dyack to win his NeoGaf bet (or fill his wallet). Still I’d recommend everyone check out the demo. If you like the game in the first play through I’d rank its a buy, even with some frustration on the controls. If you like the idea of the game co-oping on Live then its also a buy. If you can’t handle the camera even in Diablo mode (as I call it) stay away.

Heres my list of pros and cons:

Pro:

• LOOT LOOT LOOT, I’m looking forward to building a monster commando personally
• Shared skills and competent class system make me look forward to Co-op
• Skills trees that pull in the spider and war cry add versatility to classes. The three classes I ran through (Champion, Commando and Defender) seemed well thought-out and balanced
• Combat is fun, both up close and away once you get the hang of the Advanced Combat system. My big “Ah-ha” moment came when playing the Commando. Holding right trigger performs auto fire, however if you don’t use the right stick to pick a new target you’ll just be spraying bullets into a dead corpse after too long. However a flick to the right or left causes your character to turn ninety degrees. What you have to do is flick up or down, that selects the next adjacent target. For the commando, this meant alot more death to goblin hordes
• The demo both in the tomb and the Fey world were picturesque. I didn’t miss much when in Diablo camera mode, I just had to figure out I needed to be there!

Cons:

• The menu system is poorly laid out. Hitting start for the menu takes you into a rotating dial type thing where Skills and Equipment -the most used branches for me are spaced at opposite ends. Leaving you to scroll back and forth when you need to access both.
• The menu sounds are ear piercing. My Fiance was doing work at home at her desk and couldn’t stand the wretched noise as I went from the root menu to the Equipment branch.
• Shield breaking for the range classes seemed tough, I don’t think I ever figured it out aside from letting the mob attack me, launch it into the air with my sword then air juggle it with my riffle. It seemed like I was missing another way to do it
• How the hell do I use the War Cry? I just couldn’t get it to work. I had the skill points and what seemed like a full combo meter, but no amount of spamming X on the Commando made him do a thing. The game did notify of my failure by giving me another horrible tone with every press

Cooper Lawrence of MassEffect smashing fame came out with an apology in a New York Times interview yesturday. Here is an excerpt:

“…Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.

“Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

That was a very classy way of handling this. She sounds like a completely resonable person and does not need to be thrown into the Jack Thompson pile with the rest of the sensationalist bozo’s.

I’m really quite glad with this positive turn of event. I hope we can all look at Cooper in agreement that she is reasonable and at least willing to put forth some research before taking a bad position.

Kudos! You can read the full story here.

Either that or they have been living in the studio for some 20+ years.

Again video games are in the media. This time a piece on Fox News. Mass Effect is the target of a psychologist Cooper Lawrence, a dumb blonde anchor and an ethnically diverse panel, NONE of whom have actually played the game. Oh there is also Geoff Keighley trying his best to shoot these morons down.

High points on the banter:

- Wannabe psychologist Cooper Lawrence calling Keighley “darling”, then asking the anchor to “let me at him.”

- The panel of morons talking about the Good-ole-days of Atari.

- References to “Full Digital Graphic Nudity” and “Ability for players to engaged in sex and to control the characters actions”

- Wannabe psychologist saying “…they are seeing women as objects of desire that are only wanted for their sexuality and its a man who decides who he wants to be with.” Hosh note: Insanity, Cooper Lawrence pushing her own agenda here using a game as the spring board. Mass Effect for all intensive purposes is a pretty unbiased game. As Keighley said, “You can play as a woman or a man”. I’d also like to add, that in this game the characters in your party are valued members of the team not for sexuality, but for specialized skills used in battle

- “Boys who play video games cannot tell the difference between reality and what they are seeing in a game”

- 30-somethingish host saying “I just had my first experience buying a video game recently” Hosh note: WHAT THE HELL. What country do you live in? Are you a member of a nomadic arctic circle tribe that hunts seals for food? If you have no field of reference you opinion is moot!

- “Who can argue Luke Skywalker meets “Debbie Does Dallas” is a good thing?”

Hosh note: Again, what is wrong with these people. The game isn’t called Mass Screwing. They make it sound like you spend the whole game scoring chicks and objectifying them. The game has little to do with the small sexual scene and its there for character development.

A young kid isn’t going to sit down pop in Mass Effect for the sake of seeing side-boob. Its a FORTY FREAKING HOUR game. The scene in question isn’t for hours into the game. No child has the patients to see a boob that badly, hell. No one does.

This story is getting alot of attention. Cooper is getting book review slammed on Amazon and other gaming sites have picked it up.

Kotaku, Game Politics

Work takes alot of my time during the week Then there are the general chores and eating to think.

Most days however I can sneak a break on Travian. Travian is an online nation building game. Its all web-based and is pretty simple at first glance. You have a field of resources. In the center is your village. You upgrade the fields to yield more resources. Then spend the resources on buildings, research and troops. The games typically run for months. Alliances are made with other players and epic wars are fought. Towards the end, a new race appears. In the form of an admin controller race called the Nadars. In their villages they have ancient tomes for creating world wonders. After raiding the Nadars for the ancient tomes an alliance can construct a wonder. Completing the wonder ends the game and feels very much like Civilization 4. Thats the game in a nutshell.

However there is much much more. Since it is played online with other players there is a ton of aggression and fighting. Those without an alliance find their villages smashed and pillaged for its valuable resources. Sometimes leaders with large armies will request protection funds to keep the smaller villages from getting smashed, normally by the leader providing the proection.

Its an easy timewaster and with most web-based games free to play and enjoy. Try it at your peril though. Its highly addicting, esspecially once you see some jerk with a massive army come raid you. The learning curve is light, mastery however is very difficult.

I don’t know about you. I thought the weighted companion cube would play a larger part in my portal life. For those who want to relive its companionship, like me. Check this link