Thursday, March 30, 2006
Droppers be damned
I realize this is old news but I really don't care. Consider this both a public service announcement and a warning. If you know someone who partakes in this most heinous of acts, feel free to remove one of their thumbs. If you are one of these despicable people, you have been warned.
I just played a few rounds of Mario Kart DS online. I love this game. It's objectively the best Mario Kart ever made. Even I, the snootiest of all Mario Kart-isseurs, think this is a worthy entry in the series. In fact, I do not have a single complaint about the gameplay. The problem runs deeper than mere programming code. It is a fundamental flaw that was brought to light by lesser beings masquerading as humans. Because of these ruddy dirt balls, the online is completely broken. Don't worry, this is not one man's crusade against snaking. As lame as drifting down a straightaway is, that is at least a legitimate gameplay technique. What is driving me mad with the rage of a caged hamster is all the sore losers who drop out. Stay away from high school if you must, but do not ruin my enjoyment of Mario Kart. Do not run with your poop encrusted tail between your chicken legs when a loss is in sight.
I felt like going a few rounds in Mario Kart while I waited for a muse to strike me. A round is only four races. It only takes a few minutes to complete the whole circuit. And yet, I am not here to gloat or even regale you with a tale of a wayward shell snatching victory from my wanting hands. I wasn't even lucky enough to meet my fate on the end of a Blue Shell. Only one race did four drivers actually line up and finish. Only one round was a victor declared. Only one time was I even able to race until the very end. You see, when a quitter drops and I have no one to race, it's as though the competition never even existed. What a joke. People who take games this serious should simply not be allowed to play them. What losers only play games to win anyway? Ugh! It's a sad day to be a gamer and a human.
Tetris DS may be out of my collection, but at least it had the decency to punish those who couldn't stack up.
I just played a few rounds of Mario Kart DS online. I love this game. It's objectively the best Mario Kart ever made. Even I, the snootiest of all Mario Kart-isseurs, think this is a worthy entry in the series. In fact, I do not have a single complaint about the gameplay. The problem runs deeper than mere programming code. It is a fundamental flaw that was brought to light by lesser beings masquerading as humans. Because of these ruddy dirt balls, the online is completely broken. Don't worry, this is not one man's crusade against snaking. As lame as drifting down a straightaway is, that is at least a legitimate gameplay technique. What is driving me mad with the rage of a caged hamster is all the sore losers who drop out. Stay away from high school if you must, but do not ruin my enjoyment of Mario Kart. Do not run with your poop encrusted tail between your chicken legs when a loss is in sight.
I felt like going a few rounds in Mario Kart while I waited for a muse to strike me. A round is only four races. It only takes a few minutes to complete the whole circuit. And yet, I am not here to gloat or even regale you with a tale of a wayward shell snatching victory from my wanting hands. I wasn't even lucky enough to meet my fate on the end of a Blue Shell. Only one race did four drivers actually line up and finish. Only one round was a victor declared. Only one time was I even able to race until the very end. You see, when a quitter drops and I have no one to race, it's as though the competition never even existed. What a joke. People who take games this serious should simply not be allowed to play them. What losers only play games to win anyway? Ugh! It's a sad day to be a gamer and a human.
Tetris DS may be out of my collection, but at least it had the decency to punish those who couldn't stack up.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Another bloody Tetris....
I hate to say it, but I'm already kind of bored of Tetris DS. I just got the game last week - the same day I got Metroid Prime Hunters and Nick brought Oblivion into my life - and, for a couple days, I was really enjoying it. Believe it or not, I haven't owned a real Tetris title since the Gameboy original. Tetris DS brings the grand total of Tetris games I own up to an astounding two. If you're keeping track, I have owned twice as many different Tony Hawk games. The reason: Tetris is always Tetris. Even though the Gameboy original didn't sport a nifty highest score feature or even colors, it has been enough to sustain me for the last 17 years. And now that I own Tetris DS, I have to ask myself why I spent $30 more on a game I already own.
Nintendo did try to at least offer a reason to buy this game for people who have already played Tetris to exhaustion. I admit they included enough modes and options that I should be grateful. However, only a handful of them are actually fun. Standard mode is just like the original Tetris. For some reason, there isn't the option to play endlessly when you first buy the game. Of course, if you aren't good enough to get 200 lines in Marathon Mode, I guess you won't really miss the endless option. I played this until I achieved the magic goal, and now I don't really feel like trying my hand at endless. Standard Mode also includes the god-awful 25 line challenge thing that's been around since Tetris was created. You know the drill - choose a difficulty and how much crap you want on screen - and play until you clear enough lines. I played this once, on the hardest setting, merely to get the notch on my belt. Needless to say, I won't be going back.
Unfortunately, Standard is still the most fun mode in this pack. Push and Catch are both pretty worthless. Push is a two-player only mode that plays just like normal Tetris, except your pieces come from above and your opponent's from below. Creating lines "pushes" your opponent closer to death. It's fun, but not nearly as fun as playing on a board that isn't constantly shifting height and pieces. Catch is a bastardized version of real Tetris. You rotate your ball of Tetrominoes and catch pieces that are falling. When your block is big enough it explodes. The fun only last for a minute or two, and then I find myself speeding up the falling blocks until my game ends. Don't think I'll be going back to that one any time soon.
Touch mode is completely worthless as well. You have this tower of Tetrominoes and you have to push them with the stylus to form horizontal lines. It plays like a slow, boring version of real Tetris. They do include a puzzle mode in this, but it won't exactly light your world on fire.
There's also a standard puzzle mode that is all kinds of broken. There's a random mass of blocks on screen and you are giving a handful of Tetrominoes to destroy it. The thing is, this is just a game of trial and error. There are a finite number of possibilities. You don't have direct control over you pieces. Rather, the computer places it in the best possible position. To further help you out, you don't even have the option to put down a piece unless it erases a line. So there are only about 10 different possibilities to each puzzle. Needless to say, you won't be stumped for too long.
Don't worry, Tetris DS isn't completely without worth. I haven't really tried my hand at Metroid Prime Hunters online mode yet, but Tetris DS easily trumps every other NDS game. Unlike Mario Kart, players are punished when they drop. Also, because the games are so quick, you don't have to wait long to get started. While I never play the two-player Push Mode or the four-player mode with items (which make the game significantly less fun) I do enjoy a standard two-player duel. It's not as good as Tetris Attack or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but Tetris is still a damn good two-player game. It's just a shame the variants are worthless and the one-player portion has lost its appeal so quickly.
I can't imagine I will be putting too much more time into this apart from the multiplayer modes. Meteos certainly had its own problems, but I did put in more than 20+ hours before I moved on to another game. Tetris doesn't even have the pleasure of staying in my NDS for a week. I have already moved it to its comfy home and replaced it with the far superior Metroid Prime Hunters. I really thought a puzzle game would be the perfect handheld title, even if it is twenty years old, but Tetris just doesn't thrill me anymore. Here's hoping Nintendo and Capcom get together and release a compilation of Puzzle Fighter and Tetris Attack on one cart. Or we should be prodding the developer of Meteos and Lumines to get away from the X360 and make some more portable puzzle games. Either way, unless your a Tetris whore, there's no reason to spend $35 on this game.
Nintendo did try to at least offer a reason to buy this game for people who have already played Tetris to exhaustion. I admit they included enough modes and options that I should be grateful. However, only a handful of them are actually fun. Standard mode is just like the original Tetris. For some reason, there isn't the option to play endlessly when you first buy the game. Of course, if you aren't good enough to get 200 lines in Marathon Mode, I guess you won't really miss the endless option. I played this until I achieved the magic goal, and now I don't really feel like trying my hand at endless. Standard Mode also includes the god-awful 25 line challenge thing that's been around since Tetris was created. You know the drill - choose a difficulty and how much crap you want on screen - and play until you clear enough lines. I played this once, on the hardest setting, merely to get the notch on my belt. Needless to say, I won't be going back.
Unfortunately, Standard is still the most fun mode in this pack. Push and Catch are both pretty worthless. Push is a two-player only mode that plays just like normal Tetris, except your pieces come from above and your opponent's from below. Creating lines "pushes" your opponent closer to death. It's fun, but not nearly as fun as playing on a board that isn't constantly shifting height and pieces. Catch is a bastardized version of real Tetris. You rotate your ball of Tetrominoes and catch pieces that are falling. When your block is big enough it explodes. The fun only last for a minute or two, and then I find myself speeding up the falling blocks until my game ends. Don't think I'll be going back to that one any time soon.
Touch mode is completely worthless as well. You have this tower of Tetrominoes and you have to push them with the stylus to form horizontal lines. It plays like a slow, boring version of real Tetris. They do include a puzzle mode in this, but it won't exactly light your world on fire.
There's also a standard puzzle mode that is all kinds of broken. There's a random mass of blocks on screen and you are giving a handful of Tetrominoes to destroy it. The thing is, this is just a game of trial and error. There are a finite number of possibilities. You don't have direct control over you pieces. Rather, the computer places it in the best possible position. To further help you out, you don't even have the option to put down a piece unless it erases a line. So there are only about 10 different possibilities to each puzzle. Needless to say, you won't be stumped for too long.
Don't worry, Tetris DS isn't completely without worth. I haven't really tried my hand at Metroid Prime Hunters online mode yet, but Tetris DS easily trumps every other NDS game. Unlike Mario Kart, players are punished when they drop. Also, because the games are so quick, you don't have to wait long to get started. While I never play the two-player Push Mode or the four-player mode with items (which make the game significantly less fun) I do enjoy a standard two-player duel. It's not as good as Tetris Attack or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but Tetris is still a damn good two-player game. It's just a shame the variants are worthless and the one-player portion has lost its appeal so quickly.
I can't imagine I will be putting too much more time into this apart from the multiplayer modes. Meteos certainly had its own problems, but I did put in more than 20+ hours before I moved on to another game. Tetris doesn't even have the pleasure of staying in my NDS for a week. I have already moved it to its comfy home and replaced it with the far superior Metroid Prime Hunters. I really thought a puzzle game would be the perfect handheld title, even if it is twenty years old, but Tetris just doesn't thrill me anymore. Here's hoping Nintendo and Capcom get together and release a compilation of Puzzle Fighter and Tetris Attack on one cart. Or we should be prodding the developer of Meteos and Lumines to get away from the X360 and make some more portable puzzle games. Either way, unless your a Tetris whore, there's no reason to spend $35 on this game.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Keeping you posted
I just bought my first house in Oblivion. It's a rather drab, one-room affair, but it's got character. Nice warm fireplace, comfy bed (hey, I'm immersed, leave me alone), and a sizable table for me to dump all manner of weapons and Aprons of Adroitness on. I made a huge pile of flowers, herbs and various other alchemy ingredients in the corner, until I can afford a wooden barrel. Oh, and it has a fantastic view of the lake if you step out back.
Mmmm..... Dragons...
I am really not a graphics whore. When Nick was complaining that Oblivion didn't have soft shadows, I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. Oblivion looks incredible, but all I really care about are the physics. Oh, and the cool-looking enemies. Have you seen the skeletons in this game? They are actually made from 207 bones. Amazing. Anyway, even though I keep preaching how graphics are not important - how I don't even care that the NDS and Revolution are underpowered - there are a few things that make me giddy. Since there isn't a next generation dinosaur game yet (how many zombie titles are there? Where's my Raptor Rex?) we'll have to go with the next best thing.
This is from a PS3 game called Lair. I think it's going to be a launch title, but I don't know anything else about it. Who cares when it has dragons that look like this. Dragons!
This is from a PS3 game called Lair. I think it's going to be a launch title, but I don't know anything else about it. Who cares when it has dragons that look like this. Dragons!
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