In the mean time how are you all?? I am good thanks for asking.

….oh really?? that is why you should always check for crabs my friend.

yes I heard it itches, but no more than napalm to the face, be a man suck it up and take the pain, but remeber real men also cry, but do not be a pussy about it!!

in conclusion…. Hello/Goodbye

you play the President of the United States which has been over run in a coup d’etat, instead of surrendering he decides to say “Fuck that shit!!” and fight the army single handily in the only way he knows how, by using a Mecha suit to blow the crap out all and sundry. guess what country this came from??
JAPAN!!
and they say Western Devs have the edge?? not when I comes to balls out insane plots they don’t!!

The Name of this game METAL WOLF CHAOS

please check out the following video:

please can you localise this?? Nintendo did with Sin & Punishment and all the VC sales Tresure are making S&P2 for the Wii, maybe if this gets enough downloads they might make a sequel. (please have the british PM with some hovering/transforming mech armour as a secondary player!!)

more metal wolf chaos vids can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=metal+wolf+chaos&aq=0&oq=metal+wolf+ch

As a Man past his twenties and nine years shy of forty. I face a mid life crisis of the gaming kind.

To game or not to game? that is the question

As a child of the mid 80′s and early nineties, video games are in my blood. my gamer heart beats Nintendo and SEGA. I have played many consoles and Arcade machines.
Owned and sold many. handed hard earned pocket and paper round money money to shops and traded my old Gen friends in for the latest and greatest next machines. Machines I wish I still owned today.

there is talk of a classic golden age of gaming around the 8 – 16bit era, when machines at home lacked the raw power of the arcade behemoths. so game play was king, more depth more challenge more replay more innovation , compared to the pure adrenaline blast of the beautiful looking arcade games designed to take your money. I used to justify the price of a console games comparing how many times times playing at home would stack up against the amount spent in the arcades.

but to me the golden age of games died with the end of the Dreamcast. No longer did we have two companies that the hard core felt so strongly about making machines. two rivals who tried to win our loyalty by producing more and more elaborate, creative and wondrous works for us to sink our gaming teeth into. because of this events took place that some thought would never happen back then in those heady times (but a few secretly hoped would) Sega were creating games for other systems and Sonic and Mario appearing in the same Games.

as Gamers of that Generation we have gone from Space Invaders to Mario 64 to GTA IV, Single player to Multi-tap to LAN to Online.
Advances in graphical power, interaction and interface. at the core the way to engage and enchant the players.

but that is the paradox as games get more involving and life like and demand more from players we simple don’t have the time to commit anymore, life and responsibilities get in the way and shifting back to the old adrenaline pick up and play games is what I am craving more.

People would mock Nintendo for the lack of graphical power and strange ways of playing that the Wii and Ds would offer. Nintendo on the other hand have the finger on the pulse of our Generation of gamers. look at the sales they have.
sure GTA IV will help to shift a shed load of Xbox 360′;s and PS3′s but in the long run I doubt it will overtake the Nintendo sales.

My Gaming crisis is many fold. but is summed up in one sentence ” I don’t have the time to play games anymore”

back in the day a couple of hours of Shenmue would turn into an 8 – 12 hour marathon. I could play Actraiser round my friends house for Hours after school.
Now I cannot take more than the length of an hour to play any games.
I buy Mario Kart WII and no more heroes and I havent even played Mario Galaxy through yet But I am not Whining I don’t Lament this I just cannot see how I can Viably do this.
My Fiancée has told me many times she loves the way I am passionate about games (Read Closet Geek) she herself is not a gamer in any shape or form. (except for Wii sports)
but still I couldn’t see myself playing for hours on end like a used to.

I want to play GTA IV but I may pick it up in a few years time for cheaper but as for now I can wait.

for now the DS and the pick up and play games it offers satisfies my game fix.

also the Next problem is this.
should someone my age be playing games still and my Answer is Hell yes!
I don’t see why people should brand what I am doing as sad or anti social.
why can people who support football teams such as Arsenal or Man United support them all their life but a man who is passionate about Games and news relating to gaming be told he is sad? I say screw that!

Gaming is my passion I don’t drink or smoke or am into Football so why is my hobby less of a hobby??

I don’t think it is anti social in anyway I have a friend i have known for over 16 years who I have bonded with over many a game of SF II or micro machines, and too this day we still play the old classics thanks to the VC (much to the chagrin of and bemusements of both our Missus’ )

we are facing a crisis for golden generation many hardcore gamers are now married with kids or in serious relationships with commitments in life. we cannot devote the time anymore that we used to and as the generation at the forefront of gamers when is the time to give up the old ways? I hope we never have to, I wish to continue to play until I am in my old old age. ( I still think on the day I day I will hear the Music played when Mario dies in Super Mario Bros)

To Game or not to Game, There is no Question!!

I just don’t know in what form

SEGA Sammy have a press release stating as such

Does this mean he will still be involved with SEGA or AM2?? Said news indeed.

The man is a legend in SEGA he gave us some great games such as Daytona and The Virtua Fighter Series plus Shenmue, he is easily one of greatest game creators of all time up there with Shigeru Miyamoto.

so many memories of playing his games on the Saturn and Dreamcast, I really hope he is not bowing out for good or if he does please can he join Prope and team up with Yuji Naka and kick some ass, we need a new Daytona or Shenmue III of some kind but what will happen we don’t know only time will tell

and if the worse case scenario  does happen?

Altogether now:

News Sources:

Kotaku

NeoGaf

SEGASAMMY Press Release

Well Recent news from Nintendo, is that a new firmware update to Version 4.0 allows Virtual Console and WiiWare games to be saved onto high capacity memory cards (rumours are saying up to 32GB SDHC is being supported).

A new SD card Icon is added to the Wii menu allowing saved games on the card to be booted.

you can download directly to the card.

32 Gb sd cards are expensive at the moment but give it a while and they will drop in price leading to a fairly cheap storage solution for the Wii, (will this increase the file size limit of WiiWare games?)

though as of writing this a 16gb SDHC card can be purchased from Amazon for fairly cheap £20-£40

also in the same news is virtual console Arcade, a new addition allowing Arcade games to be downloaded onto the Wii at the moment the games are old school titles, but here’s hoping for Daytona and Virtua racing

Source: http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/YpowLLy9l1Sh9x8i2rWr5kwibrzvTN7D

The stop has one of those advertising windows with the vertical scrolling adverts.

naturally to pass the time waiting for the bus the young girl started to notice the adverts,
one of them had an advert for children with measels.

the young girl asked her mother what was wrong with the children, the mother replied measles and the advert scrolled onto the next one, when the measles ad came back the Girl mentioned the faces of the children.

“I know they look like something out of resident evil” was the reply the mother gave.
no comment from the child as to what resident evil was, she just agreed with her mum and the bus arrived and they hurried off to get it.

let me be honest for a second…..

I have never sat down to with the intent to complete a GTA game before. usually I would dip into it on a friend or family members machine and try to cause the most amount of mayhem I could.

I would play a mission here and a mission there, always thinking to myself  “hey this game is fun but I am not sure if I want to buy it mostly due to the time that would involved in completing the game.” or something along those lines

I have played the first GTA and enjoyed that (not to completion but in the same dip in and out fashion)

caused mayhem on the PSP versions

and when I got a hand on go at GTA IV on a friend’s machine I swam to the Coney Island level  got out at the beach then proceeded punch a couple of tramps , crashed a few cars and just caused mayhem. until the police busted me or I got killed. that is the extent of my GTA IV playing.

so forgive me if I am a GTA virgin.

so why was I looking forward to this game so much??

at the time I envisioned either a completely old school GTA style vibe with the overhead view in a pseudo 3d with 2d Chars, or a low poly third person style game such as Vice city.

when the first in game screen shots appeared my first reaction was

“aww man they are fucking this up” and “what is this??” Luckily and not for the first time: I was going to get egg on my face.

Seeing the game in motion changed my mind.

But I still had misleadings about the use of the stylus would it be chocked full of random mini games or just some kind of after thought?

again Proved wrong I would be!!

My fascination was due how far the game would push the DS in both a technical capacity and how the game will deal with the mature themes. would Nintendo censor anypart of the game would it be watered down?

so how would it the GTA experience translate onto the DS?

fast forward march 20th and my copy has arrived in the post from amazon £17.99 (not including post)

I booted the game up to be met with the intro screen of a suitcase full of drugs being opened dealt out and money appearing .  in its place with the Rockstar logo at the bottom of the case – Cool!!

the game got rolling and damn it’s now about 3 hours later!

I must say the game comes off really well.  the amount crammed into the game is comparable to a bigger budget console titles

The game is huge and right from the off you can where you like.
A virtual mini city in which to call your playground….

so I jumped in the sea stole a jet ski and headed off to see how far I could go.

then when I arrived ashore I stole a car and cruised around town. hit random people avoided the fuzz and repeated for about half an hour.

then I decided to get down to actually playing the game, it’s a blast!

Story wise you play Huang Lee son of an assassinated Triad boss. flying from Hong Kong to Liberty City (NY) to deliver a sword to your Uncle to ensure your uncle can become a triad boss. unfortunately when you arrived you promptly kidnapped thrown in the back of a car and then driven into a river to be left to drown.
you escape by smashing your way free using the touch screen to break the car windshield swim to safety and this is how your adventure begins:

anyone familiar with GTA will know the basic setup, Meet contact speak to contact (via Cutscene) get mission details and go perform said mission, complete mission (earn monies) and repeat.

but the way the game is thought out, holy hell they have actually built a GTA game on the DS from the ground up !!

this is not a cash in or some random GTA hybrid this is the real thing:

The game is designed so that the top screen displays action and the bottom screen is used for a your map and PDA:

Video copyright IGN

the touch screen works so well Rockstar have really thought out the uses and ways to implement it during the game. such as to hot wire cars, fill up Molotov cocktails, play scratch cards and for your PDA.
you don’t have to use the stylus you can use your finger. so no need to pause ingame and get it out (fnar fnar)

the detail of the game it amazing, little things like how when it rains people on the street will put up umbrellas.

How cars will roll over if you clip a curb or smash into other cars. how each car varies from car to car. the amount of music you can select to listen to. right down to buying scratch cards to win prizes.
the city is so sprawling but and is easy to get lost in but your GPS will take car of that. you can display the route on the top screen

Mission wise the missions are bite sized allowing for on the go gaming with good use of save points but the game is deep enough allowing for long gaming sessions.

Positives:

this is a damn fun game engrossing as hell

the little details in this game

the music works really well for the Jazz and Dance tracks due to the quality of the samples so much thought and love has gone into the game.

The graphic engine is fantastic in motion and the level of detail to the  in game city is amazing.

The stylus is touch screen element is integral to the game and work so well

Ingame physics for each car

such much to do ingame (scratch cards/Drug running and side challenges) this will keep you going for some time.

transparency effects for the overhead train track

The PDA is a great touch

Ability to save the game easily.

level of customable options

Negatives:

Cars are (mostly depending on the model) like boats to control so you end up crashing into traffic/pedestrians.

Lock on issues during multiple enemy encounters is annoying so I just gun the crap out of enemies

Occasional texture/pop up issues.

Overall

its GTA on the DS in full with no shovel ware, a Mature on an otherwise thought to be system for kids.

A must buy and a damn fun game!! if you own a DS and can get if for a great price and are over 18 buy it!!