Category: Random

So Many Games It’s Like Being Strangled With My Own Hand

evil-dead-handHaving more money and less time on my hands than when I was younger has led to me a terrible dilemma: too many games, not enough time! I have games from two Christmases ago that I have yet to even play, let alone beat.

Thanks to my newly purchased Wii from Eddy, the unplayed games total just got bigger. It spans 4 different systems, 2 different generations and that doesn’t even include classics from the Virtual Console and PSN! Plus, I have a one game subscription to GameFly that usually gets played more than the games I own! I seriously am putting an end to any and all game purchases (except for PSN and Virtual Console…a guy’s gotta have something new to look forward to) until Christmas of this year. By then, I hope to have made a few dents in the Wall of Games I have sitting in my room, laughing at me. Quit laughing at me!

I know that I will not come close to getting all these done by Christmas, but I want to have some of them out of the way. Problem is, Killzone 2 and Call of Duty 4’s online multiplayer keep distracting me! Plus, I have movies and books that I want to enjoy…I am seriously stressed. So what I do when I get overwhelmed is I make a list and as I complete the items on the list, I get to cross them off. I am very OCD this way, but it feels really good.

So here is my list, broken down by system:

Playstation 3
Resident Evil 5
Killzone 2
Fallout 3
Call of Duty 4
Elder Scrolls III: Oblivion and Shivering Isles
Civilization Revolution
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds

Wii
Mario Kart Wii
Super Smash Bros Brawl

DS
Dragon Quest IV
Dragon Quest V
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Contra 4
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy V
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy Tactics A2
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

PS2
Final Fantasy X-2
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

PSN Games/PS1 Classics
Suikoden
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Syphon Filter
Calling All Cars
The Last Guy
Super Stardust HD
High Velocity Bowling
Pixeljunk Monsters
Age of Booty
Lumines Supernova

Virtual Console
Super Mario 64
Super Mario RPG
Secret of Mana
Super Punch Out
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King
Contra III
Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
Breath Of Fire II
Super Metroid
Super Castlevania IV

Current GameFly Game:
Super Mario Galaxy

If time is the fire in which we burn, as was once famously said, then my fire is fading fast! I have hours and hours of gaming ahead of me and it’s time to get organized and kick some ass! So I will be periodically updating you guys on my progress or lack of progress, hopefully the former. Soon as I finish Super Mario Galaxy (25 or so stars to go), I will try to play some Killzone 2…but the online is so addicting that it’s really hard to play the single-player mode!

Eddy also has a backlog as does every gamer these days. Here’s a look at his:

360
Fallout 3
Penny Arcade Episode 2
Dead Rising

PS3
Killzone 2
Valkyria Chronicles
LittleBigPlanet

PSN/PS1 Classics
Suikoden

DS
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VI
Chrono Trigger

PSP
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
Final Fantasy Tactics

Now, that is a very reasonable list. I envy him. Looks like Final Fantasy is on everyone’s list of games to get through. I think you really have to be in the mood for that. The problem we all have is that with games like Oblivion or Fallout 3, you can beat it, sure, but never really complete it. And so you keep coming back to it and let other games sit on the shelf. That’s why I stopped playing Madden. Never got around to my other games.

So that’s our sob stories, what does your gaming backlog look like and how do you go about thinning the herd?

Cube of War Trailer

Once again, got to love the April Fool’s posts from all over the Internet today. Actually, you don’t. I mean, while I think it’s funny that everyone does gags, it actually irritates me that for a whole day I can’t read anything real online. Kind of lame.

However, this fake trailer for a new God of War: Chains of Olympus play mode featuring the Companion Cube from Portal is the opposite of lame. In fact, it’s incredible. I’d totally play this game.

GamerSushi Asks: April Fools?

april-foolsApril Fool’s Day is here, so there will be almost no video game news out over the next 24 hours that we can even hope to trust for the most part, which will make for an undoubtedly slow posting day. Already, people are dropping rumors like Final Fantasy VII on PSN, Dragon Quest IX on sale in Japan, and then some.

So, it got me wondering if you guys have any funny gaming pranks or feats you have ever pulled off? They don’t necessarily have to be related to April Fool’s, but any kind of trick you’ve pulled on someone else related to gaming, or had pulled on you.

For me, it would have to be WCW Vs. NWO for the N64, where I would play as a character named Dr. Frank. My friends all swore that Dr. Frank was cheap and had boosted stats, and I always defended the good Dr. and said that he didn’t. Well, after some research, we found out that the character actually was cheap. So, they edited the character while I was gone and put him in a bikini and changed his name to “Eddys A Cake”. Sometimes, they still use that name just to make fun of me.

What about you guys? Go!

When Left 4 Dead Becomes Left 12 Dead

You all know of my nerdy fanboy-slobbering love for all things Valve, specifically Left 4 Dead in recent months. As many have discussed on this before and even today, it’s a great co-op game that requires the utmost teamwork between 4 players in order to survive.

Well, what happens when you add 12 players? It becomes awesome, that’s what. Check out this new mod that requires lots of trickery but ends in good times. Kind of great.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF0fm5zvfeU[/youtube]

Source- L4D Mods

GamerSushi Asks: The Most Beaten Games?

vc-2I’m in the middle of trying to finish way too many games right now. Currently, I’m doing a massive battle royale with Dead Rising, Valkyria Chronicles (still), Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3 and Halo Wars. This was a bad move on my part, as now I’m nowhere near finishing all of these games. Actually, it’s been awhile since I’ve beat a game at all.

This got me thinking- when I was a kid, I used to beat games like nobody’s business, and then go back and beat it again immediately. Those days are kind of long gone, but it’s fun to think about the ones that I used to play over and over again, to the point where I knew them like the back of my hand.

The main games for me were Shadows of the Empire (loved the final space battle), Metal Gear Solid (skipping cut scenes, I could beat this game in 2 hours) and Super Mario 64, where I once got 40 stars in an hour and a half one day.

So what about you guys? What are the games that you’ve beaten the most in your lifetime? Go!

The Alternative Rock Band Names List

rock-bandI’ve always wondered what goes into naming a potential big brand hit in video games. Do they pick the first name that sticks, or is there a much longer process, for instance? Today at GDC, Harmonix revealed several of the trial names for Rock Band, before they ultimately decided on the one that we know and relate to. And let me say: they picked well, considering these other options:

  • ROCK GODS WORLD TOUR
  • TOTAL ROCKSTARS!
  • START ME UP! ROCKSTAR
  • POWER CHORDS
  • GARAGE BAND
  • METAL LORDS
  • MY LITTLE CONCERT
  • I WANT TO BE A ROCKSTAR
  • BIG BAND BLOWOUT
  • EAR SPLITTER
  • ROCK BAND: WORLD TOUR

Makes me wonder if other franchises go through this. Any chance that Grand Theft Auto was once Hooker Shooter Extreme? So, which of these has your vote?

Today’s WTF: Resident Evil 6 Could Take 8 Years

arnoldOk, this is just one massive WTF bomb right here. After taking, I don’t know, about 4-5 years to make Resident Evil 5, Capcom said today that Resident Evil 6 could take up to 8 years of development time, “but hopefully only four”. Wtf? Seriously? I mean, I’m all for taking your time and making a good game, but we could be on the PS5 and XBox 1 Million by then. Arnold will be serving his re-election as President of the United States.

And Japanese developers wonder why they’re having trouble competing with Western developers these days. It’s because the rest of the gaming world is moving on while they’re stuck in molasses, I suppose.

So what do you guys think of the possibility of an 8 year wait for Resident Evil 6? Fair/foul?

Source- D+Pad

Layoff: The Game

Ah, gotta love the news media. They can take a story about a video game and twist it however they want. Take this story about a new game called Layoff, for example. It’s a bejeweled clone which lets the player lay off workers, and instead of a high score, your points come across as the amount of money you’ve saved the company.

Clearly, this game is made to demonstrate a greater point through satire. But even still, the news show can miss that point, go on the streets, get soundbites from uninformed interviewees and then claim that the game has upset quite a few people. This is why I don’t watch the news anymore.

What do you guys think? Is the game too far?

By the way, if you want to play the game yourself, check it out here.

GamerSushi Asks: Extend the Story?

ff7-acOver the weekend, I got sick as a dog. For real. Burritos and stomach viruses do not mix, and apparently I don’t go well with with those two, either. Anywho, my brother was in town visiting, and since our options were limited to anything I could do while plastered to a couch, we chose to partake in the glorious fight scenes of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

All complaints about the movie aside, the fight scenes are some of the coolest I’ve ever seen in any medium, but beyond that, the movie itself is total fanboy service in terms of the content it delivers. I mean, really, they revisit nearly every single major or minor character and even give you a glimpse at life after the events of the story. Hell, they have the main bad guy show up again.

This got me wondering- what other franchises or video games would you love to see get the Advent Children treatment that Final Fantasy VII got? If you could have a ridiculous fanboy-loving movie sequel to any game that allowed you to see what happened to your favorite characters, and even threw in pants-wettingly awesome action sequences, what would it be? Go!

Wii Fangirl Rant

(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of a Wii fangirl that wii_gift_17Anthony made up for the purposes of humor and irony. They do not reflect the views of GamerSushi.com. In short: it’s a joke!)

You know, being on top isn’t easy. Having a Nintendo Wii is so rewarding, yet exhausting at the same time. In between my playing the most popular video game system in years, I constantly have to defend myself against attacks from the “hardcore” gamers. These mouth-breathers, so busy bathing in their bloody games full of filth and cursing, seem to think that the Wii is a lesser system than their giant boxes of boredom. I mean, the PS3 is so large and bulky that if a leopard came at me, I could kill it! And I’m an 11-year-old girl!

There are so many great things about the Wii that these hardcore gamers can’t see. By the way, I may be young, but I know “hardcore” is a type of adult entertainment found on the Internet a lot and for most of these people, it’s as close as they are ever getting to a person of the opposite sex. And plus, look at my amazing grammar! You don’t see such good spelling anywhere on those hardcore message boards, do you? See what I did there?

A lot of these people talk about how dumbed-down Wii games are. What a joke! “Super Smash Bros Brawl is so easy! Just hit ‘A’ to win!” Well, Smarty-Pants, try it. Hit “A” over and over and see what happens. Super Smash Bros Brawl is a game of intricate strategy. You have to do more than hit “A”. Often, I have to jump to get items, dodge attacks and mash ALL the buttons in order to win! And even that doesn’t always work. So if you are having problems winning at this game, maybe you aren’t as hardcore as you think you are, tee hee.

The other game they like to cry about is Mario Kart Wii. They use some term called, “Rubber-band AI”, which means the game actually tries to help the people losing. What’s so wrong about that? When I first played, I beat my big brother 3 times in a row! I made an amazing comeback by getting Blue Shells, Bullet Bill and a TON of Mushroom Turbo Boosts! I went from 12th place to 1st in half a lap! He was so mad and he said a lot of very bad words about Nintendo. So you see, that’s why I think rubber-band AI is so good because my big brother needs all the help he can get!

Another thing they don’t like are Friend Codes. But Friend Codes are made for pretty little girls like me! They protect me from all the evil guys I see on “To Catch A Predator” and that hang out at my bus stop offering me candy. So now, those guys can’t get to me online when I want to make Miis of myself and all my friends! Plus, even the non-creepy guys always want to talk to me and they like to curse when my brother plays Halo, so I am glad I don’t have to deal with them.  Nintendo seems to think that everyone online is a pervert, so who needs them?I have real friends in the real world, I don’t want friends online. That’s what WebKinz and Myspace are for!

So for all those hardcore gamers out there that seem to hate on the Wii and us younger gamers who have fallen in love with it, I would like to say one thing: get a life! Just because you have great graphics, diverse gameplay, accessible online gaming and lots of games who’s favorite color is brown, doesn’t mean that you have it all. I have the Wii and when Nintendo releases the Wii 2 in a year or so, with graphics that are slightly better and a touch screen you can stick over your TV screen and play DS games on, you will be even more jealous than you are now!

The Eight Hour Halo Wars Duel

halo-wars-rtsYeesh. Talk about an online multiplayer slugfest. While browsing through the Halo Wars forums today, I caught this thread about a particularly epic battle that a poster’s roommate was involved in.

You see, it started out as a 2v2 match, in which the poster was defeated early on. His roommate (scruffalupogus) held his ground however, and proceeded to battle the two opponents to a standstill. This continued for a while. And by “a while”, I mean all night and into the next morning. And the afternoon. Eventually, one of the teammates quit, leaving just two combatants, scruffalupogus and GL0RYSEEKER to duel it out, RTS style, for a grand total of an 8 hour Halo Wars match.

Yes. 8 hours. You can check the match out here. Hit the jump for a few noteworthy statistics…
Continue reading The Eight Hour Halo Wars Duel

Today’s WTF: Mario Bros Vs Ronald McDonald

There are really not many words to describe this other than WTF. Apparently, Ronald McDonald wants to destroy Burger King. And uh, I guess the Mario Bros. want to stop him? Also, the Hamburglar appears. Just… wtf?

Hilarious List of Video Game Sex Offenders

waluigiWhile sex offenders are in general no laughing matter, sometimes you can’t help but chuckle at dudes that might happen to look like Chester Molesters. Straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, binoculars and all, these dudes are easy to spot in a crowd. But what about in video games?

As we all know, gaming has more than its fair share of weird looking dudes. That’s why Destructoid has put up this handy list of videogame characters that look like sex offenders for all of us to look and laugh at. These are some of gaming’s ugliest and creepiest looking dudes by far.

Got any others to add to the list? I have to say that I disagree with Gordon Freeman, but the inclusion of both Marcus Fenix and Yangus from Dragon Quest VIII made me die laughing. Thoughts?

Source- Destructoid

Doom and Diablo, Together at Last

doomabloSometimes we get curious about video game mash-ups. Call it an adventure to blend things together that don’t normally seem to fit. While it may turn out to be crap, sometimes it’s total gaming gold.

Take Doom: Fall of Mars, for instance, which combines Diablo and Doom in a shockingly fun and really inspired way. How does this work, you ask? Well, imagine if you married the click and attack style view and mechanics from Diablo and the sprites and weapons of Doom, and then you’ll have a fairly accurate picture of the gameplay. And the most surprising thing of all is that I would actually pay money for this.

Luckily though, you can download the 3.3 MB demo for free, and enjoy the three levels. So what do you guys think? Face explodingly awesome or what?

Source- Rock Paper Shotgun and If Software

Do Video Games Prepare Kids for the Apocalypse?

Got to love the Onion, and their hilarious take on the ridiculous media taglines that seem to go along with video game coverage these days. In this skit, they ask the question if video games adequately prepare kids for the apocalypse, which as we all know is inevitable. Whether it’s zombies, radiation, or a combination of that and much more gruesome things, we do know that it is speeding towards us. Right? Anyways, watch the video so you can laugh and ignore the impending doom.

Today’s WTF: Man Takes Hostage With Sega Light Gun

segalightgunAh, the Sega light gun. What great games we might have played with you along the years for the Master system and beyond. We could play old school games like Gangster Town, Operation Wolf and even Rambo III. Apparently, we can also fool Brazilian police and take a hostage. Who knew?!

A few days ago, a Brazilian man took a 60 year old woman hostage a Sega light gun, trying to collect money back from a debt that was owed him. First he broke into her house, and then entered into a 10 hour standoff with police, before finally letting her go unharmed. I mean, really, the only damage he could have done to her would have been with the cord, I guess.

My question for this man is “seriously”? What did he even think was going to happen? This is truly WTF worthy, and I deem it so.

Source- Kotaku

Gaming’s Sweetest Records

lanEvery hobby has some kind of weird record associated with it. Or at least, that’s what I like to tell myself. Whenever I go on a particularly epic gaming binge, I like to think that surely, someone, somewhere, has committed far more heinous deeds than I. This is how I go to sleep every night. Plus, I snore.

Anyway, I came across a list over at CVG of what appears to be a list of 30 gaming world records. Some of them are bizarre, and some of them are cool, but most of all, I find them terribly interesting. Did you know that the largest mass-participation LAN party was 203 people for 36 hours straight? That actually seems small to me. Or perhaps you knew that the greatest gaming setup is a dude that owns his own motion picture screen with theater sound? Or that GTA IV had a voice cast of almost 900 actors? Well now you do.

If you’re interested in those tidbits and more, be sure to check out the list. Kind of awesome. By the way, I think GamerSushi could totally beat that whimpy 203 person LAN party. So what was the most epic one you ever participated in?

Source- CVG

Yuusha 30: The 30 Second RPG

The design philosophy behind the Halo series is “30 seconds of fun” on an endless loop. Yuusha 30 for the PSP is a game that takes this idea almost entirely literally. I heard about this over at BloodworthGT’s GameTrailers page today, and I find it to be incredibly fascinating, from a game design standpoint.

In Yuusha 30, the main premise of the game is that it is an RPG that is only 30 seconds long. You see, an evil wizard is casting some badass spell that is going to wipe out the entire world. As the hero, you have only that amount of time to level up and become strong enough to beat him, before it all comes crashing down. The result is total madness. Observe the first level:

If you thought that was nuts, it actually gets even more insane with each additional stage.
Continue reading Yuusha 30: The 30 Second RPG

So What Kind of Rig Does Valve Use to Make Games?

valveAs we know, Valve makes PC games. Some rather sweet PC games. So, you know how when you sign on to Steam, and you always get bugged by that survey asking what kind of rig you have? Well, Valve’s got their own that they use to develop with, and they are quite beastly. Do any of you have comparable PC’s?

* EVGA 780i SLI FTW Intel Motherboard
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Quad-Core Processor
* 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 1066MHz ram
(Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
* 1 x NVidia GTX280 1GB – OR – ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
* 1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* 1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* Antec Sonata III desktop case
* Zalman CPU Cooler
* 850W Antec power supply
* 1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30″ LCD – OR – 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1″ LCD monitors
* Windows XP 32bit

And if you think that’s good, wait until you see what they’re upgrading to…
Continue reading So What Kind of Rig Does Valve Use to Make Games?