Thursday, September 25, 2008

Repent or thou shall be forsaken!

Yes people, it has finally happened. Some flare has gone off inside the head of the mother creature and she took me out with her to purchase Wii Fit. Not just any Wii Fit, but a FULLY PRICED copy of Wii Fit! Sure the only catalogue that had it on sale was Myer (which doesnt stock games in our one) but she doesn't care since this looks to be a nice impluse buy.

I will admit however that once I got the balance board set up and registered both of our Miis through background shoutings of 'Hurry up, I want to play!' that we both had this strange feeling when we played. I think this emotion is called...fun? Well whatever it was, it made both of us put in a full 30 minute session each of yoga, muscle excersies and hula hooping. Now I give myself about a month before I banish Wii Fit back into its case and never speak of the balance board again (unless I pick up Skate It or some other equally gimmicky piece of software) and as for dearest mother, I give her a week at most. 2 if she finally learns how to turn on the Wii and start up the game herself.

On a more positive note I was able to pick up a little something for myself during the trip to JB Hifi as you can see in the picture below. Now that I'm wrecked for the night I guess I'll start playing this before bed and hopefully finish it in a day or two. 

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Developing the Game Down under follow up

A couple days late, but better late then never to show off the rare occasions in which I nab software in its intial launch period. Review should be written up in a day or two after I spend some more time with the game, but since Eco Gamer reviews only go up at a rate of one per week it may be a while. Outside of the game itself I did have a couple of little annoyances that I just need to get out of me now instead of surpressing them like my inner carnal desires.

In a sort of followup to my 'Developing the game Down Under' piece published in The Box I feel the urge to talk more about the Australian made game. Back when folks from Krome were in Melbourne showing off Hellboy and Star Wars at the ACMI center I discussed with them if they felt their game was identifiable as Australian (or even just Krome itself) made. Sure enough they were confident with the hype they had been generating for the Wii game thanks to their exclusive content and multiplayer modes, even making it sound like the 360/PS3 devs were trying to play catchup. Now quality of the games aside, after nabbing my copy of TFU I couldn't help but notice how easy it was to miss the Krome logo on the back of the box while Lucasarts was plastered right on the front.

While the name Krome doesn't generate as much hype (or even casual acknowledgement) as something like Lucasarts, I can't shake the feeling that this is just a dick move in advertising the brand over the artists who put time and effort into this game. Sure in retrospect the Wii game was always going to be sitting in the shadows of its tech heavy bigger brothers, but the point is why do the developers get pushed to the back of the box while someone else takes their credit away. The people at Krome were doing more than porting a PS2 engine to the Wii, they were making an entirely new game seperate to the 360/PS3 showoffs with their own talents. Ranting here wont get Krome front page of Hyper magazine and an appology from Georgey boy himself; thats what hitmen and big bags of money are for. The point is unless you are 'in the know' about the scene, Australians will once again let another locally developed title slip away from their graps while the government continues to ignore the countries potential in the industry. 

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Me 0: big bad world 1


Not in the mood for witty comments today, in the middle of one of those 'teen angtsy' moments the youth of today claim makes them extremely suidical and depressed. Frankly, all its done for me is keep my away from the junk food I normally eat when I'm sad so it seems to have bettered me.

Since its been a friggin long time since my last post I figured its best to let people know I'm not dead and give an update on stuffs, so here goes:

Economical Gamer - still plenty of reviews to come, and now that Anthony is doing a few it wont be the typical 99% my reviews list thats there. I'll still try to get through at least one a week for now and I'm just about done with Madden 09 All-Play + Sonic Rush Adventure reviews. In an attempt to better connect with the masses I've decided to take requests for reviews. Right now the list stands like this with my decisded reviews and requests

Wii

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Red Steel
De Blob

PS2

Yakuza 2
Devil May Cry collection (1-3 were released in a bundle in the US so I'll just pretend we also got that)

DS

Sonic Chronicels The Dark Brotherhood

Always open to more requests since it saves me time + effort in trying to decide for myself during the slow periods, and with an extremely sad holiday line up for the PS2 and Wii its gonna get frusterating deciding what to review. Also before I forget there will be a holiday buyers guide written up in the next month or so for the site by yours truly covering what are expected to be the big sellers, and some friendly tips/recommendations for game buyers and givers. Look forward to it!

The Box - this is pretty much going to shits for lack of a better word. There will be no term 4 issue of the magazine and I havent really heard anything back from them in continuing the games stuff. With everyone else who originally jumped on the idea giving up/dropping out/being extremely unreliable its safe to say this was just a one off. Guess that means more time to Eco Gamer and other places.

And thats pretty much all to report on what is a surprisingly sunny day.

Cheers