So I sent EA back the guitar that they sent me. It was just so bad. The strum bar was a little sturdier, which I didn’t like because I prefer using a pick. Also, when my buddy Adam was using it for the while he was, he couldn’t activate the Star Power/Overddrive/whateva. He was convulsing and mimicking seizure victims just by trying to get the guitar to activate its…power-thing. But now my original guitar is working fine, and it’s great. The only thing now is the DLC is either hit or miss. And usually miss.

Episode 9 will (hopefully) be recorded this weekend in Colorado. I’ll be there for my days off from work, and I really have no other time to do it. Plus my bro will be there, and Jose’s in the UK selling merch. I think the show will be great though. Here’s the selling point: We’ll talk about porn stars. And to clarify, ‘female’ porn stars. I apologize to 12% of gamers out there.

I got Eye of Judgment from my lil’ bro and sis. I’ll be playing it tonight and post my impressions later. I also recently purchased Project Sylpheed which i think is a ton of fun, just not worth the initial price point. I’ll discuss that a little more on the next Bluecast.

And speaking of Bluecast, Episode 6 will be recorded Saturday morning, so expect it to be available by the afternoon. Just with the Holidays and all, we figured we’d wait a little bit (plus, it’s my only day off). We’ll talk about what we got for Christmas, and go over our anticipated titles in 08′.

Ever since the new Halo 3 maps came out I have been in Foundry with Forge making a lot of maps.

Here are some of the maps:

Shipment from COD4

House( this one took a long time) : There’s a big House.

The Dump : Just a big pile of scenery

SPB : Start in a tiny room and try to jump all the way up to go through a maze.  Then get on top of the room and kill your enemies, that are still at the bottom of the room, with fire grenades and setinal beams.

Heaven and Hell : The top has energy swords and plasma gernades.  The bottom has a flamethrower and fire gernades.

Asplode : A big open area with man cannons, gravity lifts, fusion coils, brute shots, mongooses(or mongeese) and all of the gernades.

Tower of Power

Download them here.

I’ve always been a fan of Westwood’s RTS’s, but the past few from the Electronic Arts assimilation have been…just okay. When Petroglyph formed from scattered Westwood remnants, I knew not all was lost. I didn’t enjoy Star Wars: Empire at War. But in all fairness, it was a different kind of RTS. Earlier this year Univers at War: Earth Assault was revealed, and I just knew Westwood had to be back.

Just this week I picked up my copy of UaW:EA. And so far…meh. I don’t know why, but it’s not pulling me in at all. I’ve only messed with two of the factions, and while I dig their design and tech, the actual gameplay seems primitive. The graphics aren’t even that great and the HUD is lacking. And I think I have an answer for this. Consoles. UaW was also designed to be played on the 360. And not just designed to be played on, but also designed to be played with the consoles. So with out a doubt, some comprimises had to be made in order for the cross-platform between PC’s and consoles to work. Could this really be the reason why I find UaW so…dull? This is not my final word by any means, but there are a few things that need to be done.

First, fix the HUD. It’s just messy. Go back to classic style RTS HUDs. We all love them. Oh, but this is designed to work with a gamepad, you say? Well, know wonder.

Secondly, the text. I guess this is another ‘console’ thing, but the text for anything is just obnoxious. Even Relic’s latest CoH patch shrunk their text down. We’re playing on LCD’s, man…we need that text small and descrete.

Lastly, graphics/animations. While this solely shouldn’t be an issue, coupled together with the first two, I feel like I’m eating a Key Lime Pie while having a cold. Sure, it might taste good…but right now, I can’t tell. The graphics are decent for some things, but the animations seem just silly. And cutscenes…let’s not zoom in on those models. There’s a reason night clubs are so dark. Oh, I could probably add in there the controls too….why did they stray away from staple RTS mouse controls? Oh yeah, consoles.

I really want to like this game, and I won’t give up. I’ll be sticking with it through the campaign, or at least try to since it is pretty boring. But what might be keeping me going is a great thing, really: Frank Klepacki. So far these tracks have been pretty rockin’. But that’s what expect from the man….I guess the same should go for the Petroglyph devs.

This might sound all negative, but I won’t give up.

Rock Band is supposed to be the hot item this year alongside the Wii. But, fortunately I have my ways of getting these hot-ticket items. Let me just say, Rock band is worth it. It’s totally worth it with a group of people. There’s not much more that needs to be said other than bring me some Offspring and Chuck Berry. Although, I do have an issue with the red drum-pad not being recognized occasionally, unless it’s just me.

Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 is also a game I’ll tag as worth it. During the Wii’s life cycle, there hasn’t been an FPS that took advantage of the Wiimote. Most of the time, these FPS’s would turn out rather bland, or just too much emphasis on the wrong parts of the Wiimote. But what EA has here, is nearly perfect. After tweaking with the somewhat robust control options, I was able to get an enjoyable control scheme. This consisted of using the Wii Zapper, but holding the nun-chuck in the other hand. I made the dead-zone box as small as possible, which I believe an obsolete one would do better. Then, playing in the game world, I never felt the controls as being overbearing over unnecessary. Twitch up to reload, thrust forward to melee, and with iron-sights up, twitch the nun-chuck left or right to lean out of cover left or right. With a grenade in hand, press the trigger near a target and pull back the remote and ‘throw’ forward. There goes your grenade chucking. Controls aside, the game offers Campaign mode as well as Arcade mode that plays similar to ‘House of the Dead’ or ‘Time Crisis’. The graphics aren’t too good, which are easily overlooked by how immersed you become. Online play consists of 32 players, but the combat is too fast for the control types to really enjoy it. I say ‘buy it’ just to have it. It’s fun to pull out every once-in-a-while for some fun(that’s what she said).

At first, I wasn’t planning on getting Assassin’s Creed because the reviews were all over the place. Gabe from Penny-Arcade made a good point about what the reviewers had to say. Basically, he made the point that reviews have to review games. They look at games differently than a normal gamer. Also, AC was a game so large, that during this time of so many ‘AAA’ titles, there was just no way of absorbing the game that AC was. And he said that game was good. I went ahead and bought it, and while my first impressions were what I thought, they only got better.

Then they got worse.

IGN’s recent podcast made mention of what Gabe had said - which the way they delivered it was unnecessary, but he was defending himself. Then Gabe made another post. But this is what I have come to realize. And as Adam Blue of BlueGamer, I feel this opinion is very valid.

Assassin’s Creed is not much of a game. You only have a few simple game play types. Save a citizen, pick-pocket, find flags, eves-drop, interrogate, and assassinate. Each one of this is very simple, and takes no time at all. The fighting is as simple as pressing ‘x’, then the right-trigger at the correct time. Tonight, I realized I’m bored of this. The game features TONS of these same things. Over and over. And over and over. I want to see the ending by playing through, but it was be grueling. The game is huge, has great graphics, but has no real ‘game’. It does nothing new, it does nothing inventive, and it contains what developers should not do.

Gabe made a point about their relationship with Ubi-Soft. He said they will only advertise games that they thought were good enough to be worth the space.

So, while he made good points about reviewers reviewing games and the bias that can come from that, Assassin’s Creed is very mediocre. I would actually think that Gabe would feel the same way. But, with all the games to play right now, it’s possible to put only enough time in the game to think you dig it, but for the reviewer they had to finish it which made the problem with the game apparent - there is not much of a game here.

This week, most of my game playing has been done between Assassin’s Creed and CoD4. The unlocks for CoD4 are just addicting. On Thanksgiving I brought my 360 and computer monitor over to my parents house to do some CoD4 online with Sean. We played a whole lot. I love how much you can customize your load-out. And I think certain combinations will suit different players to their needs and likes. Right now I mainly use an M16 and double-tap, and before that I was a big fan of ’slight of hand’.

The one thing that bugs me about Assassin’s Creed are the controls. I feel like the control scheme is a little much and could have been simplified. I also think Ubi Soft relied to much on Prince of Persia and didn’t seem to evolve much from it. Too many times in AC I’d be ’steering’ my character only to to some times hydroplane when I really shouldn’t have. Sometimes I’ll take dives into the ground or jumps off a wall when that was not at all what I was trying to do. But I can totally look past that and enjoy the game.

At Toys R Us, I picked up a Wii Zapper and Ghost Squad. I need to mess around with it a little more, but so far the Zapper feels a little off. I also picked up these nice Wiimote chargers. It came with a charger to stand the Wiimote in, along with two batteries and can be charged via USB if so pleased. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

We’ll have more on all this on tomorrow’s podcast.

Assasin’s Creed is great. I never realized it was pretty much just a GTA Prince of Persia. But I’m loving it. It’s huge! I wish I could get more play time into it, but I got a new movie game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. It is simply badass. Imagine playing a game that at no point you thought, ‘Ok, this is the last part for tonight’, or ‘Agh…I’ve got to start over from here? I’m done’. No. You don’t do that. I didn’t want to stop playing. But I had to. The first few chapters(maybe only two?) so far kept me on the edge of my video chair(think rocker on the ground). I wanted to know what was going to happen next, story-wise, and when the story wasn’t the center focus, I was Prince of Persia-ning around the jungle, or playing an action game. It’s seriously two games in one with an awesome story. I compare the shooting to WinBack, which I still consider one of the greatest games of that generation, and one of my top favorite on the N64. The cover/shooting/rolling mechanic was way ahead of its time, and it seems like only now that other developers are using it. It does require a little more skill, though. While in cover, you can’t see where the reticile is. When you pop out to shoot, you then have a few seconds to aim your shot, in which this game teaches you to be a crack head-shot artist. It’s definitley a win for the PS3, but with all that hating out there, no one’s going to notice.

I did some more tweaking with the site. The header problem still boggles the mind, but I’ll eventually get around to it. I think I want a semi-elaborate background design, which covers a portion of the page, but then transforms itself into the explosive BLUEGAMER title. Yeah.

It will take me a long time to get all the stars in Super Mario Galaxy.

There’s probably another game or two I could reference in the title. But yeah, that’s what I’m playing now and for the rest of the month…and next month. There are just so many games to play, but for now I don’t have the time to get it done quickly.

Super Mario Galaxy is fantastic. Every release of a major Mario game was alwasy a big deal to me. I remember how large Super Mario World was. How much there was to do. All the secrets. Mario 64 was a fully 3D game…it was amazing. But Mario Sunshine was rather boring. It was more of an expansion of Mario 64, rather than a whole new Mario.

Mario Galaxy brings back the kiddie giggles. The big change Mario made was from 2D to 3D, and now Mario Galaxy seems to be this insane THREE-DEE. There’s no where you can’t go. I haven’t played too much into it, but so far every mission for a star is different. Yeah, it goes back into Mario 64’s star collecting, but the means of collectiong are so varied that I feel I’m going through multiple gaming experiences to do so. It’s addictive, and similar to the addiction to puzzle games, like the first few hours of Lumines that never stops. It’s a deep puzzle with infinite variables and total freedom of minipulation.

I’ll probably pick up Assasin’s Creed tomorrow, only because I can see it as the game to fill the void between the abundance of games from here on out. The game is supposed to be rather big with much to do, and like I’ve said: I don’t have the time to play all these games. So, when I beat CoD4 and Mario Galaxy, inbetween Haze and Uncharted, I’ll have time well spent with Assasin’s Creed. Also, if you’ve been paying attention to the internets, you probably know by now that no one understands how to score Assasin’s Creed. Gabe said it best.

Well tonight I plan on cramming in a ton of Mario Galaxy. Yes, this is a game I’d definitley buy the Wii for.

I don’t understand any of this Gamestop/EB Games hate. Sure, they always ask you to preorder or trade in games, but it’s part of the business. Like having to tip a waiter. I recent Penny Arcade article mentioned the problem of a game store not having a particular title on its release day. Now, a few things here. The game is huge, it can sell out like crazy. But you may ask, why didn’t they order much more? Well, it’s simple really.

Funcoland was the place to go for used games. Used games and trading in games is a great source of profit. See: EBay, Garage/Yard Sales, Craig’s List. Now, a company purely selling new games won’t make any money. They sell the games for how much they bought them for. That’s why Blockbuster got into the used territory. They know there’s money to be made there. And Best Buy has been debating this structure, and if I’m not mistaken, some stores tested this. Gamestop soley relies on used game sales and preorders for their money. That’s why we can see, and they will make, many stores pop up around every corner.

Now, back to the PA article. They go in for CoD4 and are first asked if they preordered it. They say no, so they don’t get a copy. The scenario here is, by preordering the game, you get it early…that was the deal with CoD4. Now, since most stores already had it, they did go a head and sell it early, negating the benefit for the preorderers.

Now, if it was the day the game was supposed to be out everywhere…I’m talking about the actual date the publisher advised, and I was told I couldn’t pick up a copy….well, then they are wrong, because I will pick up a copy and leave the store. This is where I’m assuming most gamers decided to leave their scrotes at home.

I hear it all the time though, “GS/EB eployess are incompetent, wah, wah, wah…”. But honestly, they’re are like anyone else in retaill There are the good and the bad.

Why does this bother me so much? I hate going into forums of gaming sites and seeing all the douches cry over what reality is. Gamestop is no different than any other retail chain, and you are the customer, you are always right. If not, do what I do, and make the system work for you.