Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.
If you’ve never actually visited Giant Bomb then you probably don’t know that it’s the greatest user-populated video game database on the internet and a pretty darn cool concept. The gist is this: you get all the editorial content that you’d expect from a video games site, only now you get to also create a super-detailed wiki, of sorts, where you can associate games with abstract concepts like “Full Body Awareness” in Left 4 Dead, meaning that when you look down (you’re already in the first person perspective) you don’t just see floor, you see your feet, or objects like crates or, well, you get the idea.
That’s all pretty great on top of the personalities on the site with their hilarious sense of humor and features like This Ain’t No Game, which reviews video game movies, and the aforementioned Persona 4 Endurance Run, but now they’ve gone and done something big.
Users can associate their gamertags and WoW accounts with their Giant Bomb accounts to attach their achievement status to their profile. This creates a site-wide database of achievements that is compared against itself, ranking achievements in terms of rarity and grading each user on a per-game basis for their achievements. Rarer achievements give more points, but if you still are underperforming, guess what, you’ll get a D or :gasp: an F in Halo 3. Max out achievements and get an S-rank that is not able to drop based on the user curve, unless more achievements come out for the game.
Right now they can’t handle PSN trophies thanks to Sony’s lack of a released API, but they will soon be adding Steam capability. I can’t wait until my page updates!
SPOILERS!
Wow, what a crazy season it’s been! The finale went and blew away everything we’d all been expecting. Who could have guessed that the final episode would be Jacob-centric? What the heck happened? Where is this going next year?
It’s the home stretch for Lost. Sixteen episodes left and you can bet that Abrams, Cuse, and Lindelof know that there’s no more space for filler. It’s balls-to-the-wall time.
I have to admit that I didn’t guess that Locke was the body in the crate, but I knew it was someone. What I did know was that Locke was somehow being manipulated by Jacob’s nemesis (hereafter known as Esau, cause, why not?) because, as a bunch of characters have stated, dead is dead, even though it really isn’t. What does it mean that Ben killed Jacob? What will happen to the island now?
I’m 99% sure that the bomb Juliet managed to detonate at the Swan will not eradicate the future. That would invalidate the recent murder of Jacob and I don’t think the show wants that to happen so soon. I predict that the bomb and the electromagnetic energy will combine in some way to just send them somewhere else in time. I don’t think that the Lost folk would want to sacrifice Juliet, Miles, Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Jin to this, although they might :sob: keep Juliet dead.
No, I don’t think they will erase the five seasons before it and start anew, although that would be pretty ballsy, wouldn’t it? For the show to just throw away everything that’s already happened, start from status quo ante collisio (fragor is supposedly Latin for crash, but it’s also Latin for crack, so it could be just the sound…I’ll use the Latin word for collision instead) and go from there in what is turning out to be the epic struggle between Jacob and Esau.
Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, they elevate things higher. You go from it being about Widmore and Ben to this new conflict.
Things we learned:
- Jacob interacted with most of the main characters - He did not interact with anyone currently dead on the island, Juliet, Rose, Bernard, Lapidus, Miles, or Ben, that we know of - He physically touched each one of them in some way at pivotal moments in their lives - He was unable to be killed directly by Esau - Esau is able to assume forms. We can probably assume that he was the Alex who commanded Ben and that he might be the smoke monster, another creature known to assume forms (Christian, a spider, the horse, Locke, Walt, Mr. Eko’s brother Yemi) - Richard Alpert probably came to the island on the Black Rock - Someone hijacked Jacob’s cabin. Since it’s not Jacob and since Christian has appeared in there, it’s probably Esau - I think Ilana is another ageless one like Richard. Either that or she knows about Richard from Jacob. Since they’re both servants of Jacob, I’m going to assume the former.
Things We Still Don’t Know:
- Why does the statue foot only have four toes? - Why the ancient Egyptian motif? - Where the heck is Claire? - What happened to the people in 1977? Quick aside: it’s pretty clear that Jack did what he was supposed to do and as Miles said in causing the incident. The fact that Dr. Chang got his hand impaled supports this, since it probably wouldn’t have happened that way without Jack and the gang showing up and shooting the place up. The environmental dangers on the island probably stem from fallout of some type. This is probably why babies die on the island too. - What is Jacob? - How is Richard Alpert kept alive? - Will dead Jacob mean aging Alpert?
That’s all I can think of right now. Too bad we have to wait for January to see the next one.
It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.
What a real bummer…
The biggest news since last week, if you hadn’t heard already, was the drug test that Manny Ramirez managed to fail.
This is now the biggest baseball star to fail a drug test and win himself a 50-game suspension along with a black mark on his hall of fame chances.
It goes like this:
Manny Ramirez saw some physician in Florida who gave him a banned substance according to MLB rules. The substance, whose name I don’t totally remember and am too depressed to look up, is a female fertility drug that is also used to mask drops in testosterone following a steroid treatment cycle. Seems pretty clear cut.
It’s also the most disappointing news I’ll receive this year. Alex Rodriguez’s situation didn’t really bum me out. He’s kind of a jerk and I wasn’t too surprised to hear that he was a cheater too. Manny was just so goofy and charismatic and I hate that it’s true.
Who can we trust from the steroid era now? The only name that I’m able to unequivocally trust nowadays seems to be Ken Griffey, Jr. It’s a real shame. I hope that the new drug tests will keep catching new cheaters so that baseball can be clean from here on out.
The NO PED Zone
Ryan Zimmerman has got himself a 30-game hitting streak. The record is, of course, 56, but seeing him approach it is super exciting, especially for a Washington team that has otherwise not been doing very well at all.
Evan Longoria is on an AL MVP pace with his production this year. Man do I love this guy. Keep it up.
The Rays are 7.5 (!) games out of first place in the AL East, only half a game up on the last place Orioles. We’ll see what will happen once the Blue Jays start playing teams in the East. Hopefully the Rays will start to catch up in the standings.
Meanwhile, the Marlins are a much more respectable 1.5 games back from the first place Mets, half a game behind the Phillies, and a game up on the Braves. The Nationals are…7.5 games out of first place. Wow, that makes me worry way more about the Rays, although the Rays do at least have a win percentage a full 0.100 higher than the Nats.
Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.
IGN is at it again with some “first-pass” localizations of A-list Japanese video games. This time: Final Fantasy XIII. The first one I posted is significantly funnier than the second, but they’re both pretty funny.
If you’re trying to find the common thread that weaves all of these games together, don’t keep racking your brain, I’m just covering a ton of different stories and experiences.
Tangled Up in Blue
Street Fighter IV created within me something of a fighting game…well I hesitate to call it a renaissance, cause there was never a naissance, so to speak, but, should naissance actually be French for birth, it did birth in me the fighting spirit. I haven’t played the game in a while, mostly because I’m trying to save the world and attend high school (Persona 4) at the same time, but I figure I’ll get back to it soon, especially with that new tournament mode in.
The reason I even bring that up is because of the upcoming game BlazBlue has got a pretty sweet pre-order bundle set to launch alongside the game. Buying the game early, at no added cost, will yield soundtrack CDs and, my favorite feature, a DVD with top players going over the moves and strategies for each fighter.
Being the fighting game newb that I am, I find this kind of thing to be an invaluable help in creating strategies and managing opponents. I just hope it’s not too high level that I can’t understand or implement the things they’re doing. It should also help me to find the most bizarre, obscure character to master. I don’t always go for the strangest guy, but I definitely make an effort to try and choose lesser-used characters in fighting games mostly because I tire of seeing Ken all the time.
Source: Kotaku
Royally Screwed
Staying on track with fighting games, the two extra King of Fighters XII home version fighters were announced and they…don’t include Mai?! There’s still time to announce Mai in the game, but the release date is rapidly approaching. Why they didn’t have her in the arcade release baffles me in the first place, but why they’re not including the absolute fan favorite in the home version absolutely blows my mind. We’ll see how this continues to play out.
Oh yeah, the new fighters are Elizabeth and Mature. Stupid name on that second one, if you ask me.
Stats 4 Me
If you know me decently well, then you know that I love stats. Very few things excite me more than seeing a nice, clean breakdown of how I did in certain aspects and how I fare against certain situations or match-ups, etc. It’s why I hate the stats section of SFIV (Why don’t they have stats for how I perform against each character as each character? Why don’t they have stats for each opponent I face?) and of SSBB (Actually, kind of the same things here.)
Leave it to Valve to satisfy my every craving with the detailed Left 4 Dead stats page that you can check for any player. Where else would you be able to see that I have 100% accuracy with an assault rifle or that my favorite Tier 2 weapon is the hunting rifle?
Can’t say “Screenshot or it didn’t happen” anymore, can you?
Granted, these stats were collected a few weeks (months?) after the game came out, so I probably don’t really have 384 Assault Rifle kills or 100% accuracy, but you can bet I probably won’t pick up an assault rifle again for a long while until I’m sick of looking at that sweet 100% mark.
It’s interesting too that my Zoey count is so low (only 55%) considering that I always prefer to play as her. I blame quick games, where my character choice is not left up to me.
Oh yeah, here’s a link to my stats page.
Stats I will be working on:
-More Zoey! -Increase revive:revived ratio (currently 1:2) -Improve finales survived (sitting at 12.5% right now) -Drop average damage to teammates (this one ballooned after I spent a whole game on easy shooting my partner for fun) -The fact that I’ve only shot one cartridge with the pump shotgun makes me laugh. So long as I’m never Francis or Bill, I doubt that number will increase too much. -Want to know why my hunting rifle headshot rate is only 5%? It’s not cause I suck zoomed in, it’s cause zombies die in one hit with the hunting rifle, so why aim for a small target? Don’t expect that to rise. -More versus! The new maps are out. I need to play them. I need to have a more lopsided (in the wins direction) record. -I should throw more rocks as the tank. -More survival mode medals. I need more! -More achievements
Darek’s got more friends playing, so I should be able to find people to continue to play with and keep improving. I’m excited.
Gotta Catch ‘Em Again
Nintendo announced today (but in the Japanese today, which is still going on, but at 2230 or so right now) that they would be re-releasing Pokémon Gold and Silver as Pokémon Heart Gold and Pokémon Soul Silver on the DS Generation IV engine. Exciting news for Pokémaniacs, since Gold and Silver were perhaps the longest, and neatest games. Not only did you go through the new region in those games, but your quest actually required you to return to the original region and collect all those badges too. With one fell swoop, the geniuses at Nintendo have managed to bring all of the regions, minus the Gen III region into the future. It’s an exciting time for someone who wants to catch ‘em all, but we’re all wondering out here in the West when Nintendo is finally gonna get around to letting us import our Platinum dudes into Pokémon Ranch, much less our new Gold and Silver buddies.
Source: Bulbanews
“You must be a master of sales”
If you got the obscure and kind of lame Resident Evil reference there, go you. For everyone else, let’s move on.
Capcom has released a listing of its top-selling game franchises to give you an idea of how well its game series sell and are popular relative to each other. Here’s the list:
Resident Evil – 40 million (56) Mega Man – 28 million (124!) Street Fighter – 27 million (62) Devil May Cry – 10 million (11) Monster Hunter – 8.5 million (11) Onimusha – 7.8 million (12) Dino Crisis – 4.4 million (13) Ghosts ‘N Goblins – 4.4 million (16) Final Fight – 3.2 million (10) Ace Attorney – 3.2 million (12) Breath of Fire – 3 million (15) Lost Planet – 2.7 million (7) Commando – 1.2 million (2) 1942 – 1.2 million (3) Sengoku BASARA – 1.2 million (10)
Note that there are numbers in parentheses. This is the number of games released in that series, which gives me a great idea. You see, this list, in and of itself, does not accurately represent how well each game performs on a per-game basis. It’s not really accurate to say “Wow, Mega Man is way better than Street Fighter” when Mega Man has had 124 releases to SF’s 62 and only outperforms it by one million. Here’s the adjusted list in sales per game:
Devil May Cry – 909091 Monster Hunter – 772727 Resident Evil – 714286 Onimusha – 650000 Commando – 600000 Street Fighter – 435484 1942 – 400000 Lost Planet – 385714 Dino Crisis – 338462 Final Fight – 320000 Ghosts N’ Goblins – 275000 Ace Attorney – 266667 Mega Man – 225806 Breath of Fire – 200000 Sengoku BASARA – 120000
What does my expert analysis show? Well the top three series are all more modern A-list Capcom games. Games have become far more serious business in recent years, so this makes sense. Expensive games plus the increased numbers of buyers make these franchises more successful. The most glaring change in this list is the move of Mega Man to the near bottom of the list. What else can you expect from a series that got its start on the NES and has released 124 (!) games, many of which are portable or spin-offs not meant to sell. In fact, the last real Mega Man release was Mega Man 9 and that was released digitally.
This list really doesn’t prove anything, but it’s at least fun to look at.
In an interesting move by the Texas legislature, sex offenders may be required to register their online identities with the state, according to this article at Kotaku. While it (intelligently) doesn’t explicitly mention Xbox Live or the PSN, it’s clear that they’re talking about services like that or AIM. The bill, if passed, could even be extended to restrict sex offenders from even having identities on social networking sites altogether.
It’s a bizarre move by the government to limit freedoms, but then again it’s to convicted sex offenders. I’m no lawyer, but I’m not sure how the constitution falls on this topic and I predict that if Texas does pass this into law, it will quickly be challenged as high as it can go. Not that I don’t support vigilance with respect to sex offenders, but it just seems a little too big brother-y to not let you use a social networking site, since the government doesn’t have control of those. Not allowing you to teach or work with kids is a smart, good thing, but cutting you off from the (if the trend continues) vein of modern society seems harsh. I do support registration of online identities though, since it’s really no different than publishing on those websites where they all live like in Knocked Up.
Poor Cole Hamels can’t catch a break. A poor spring training with injury leads to two starts where he’s beat up, another start where he’s hit by a batted ball, and another where he rolls his ankle and lands on the DL again. Hopefully his luck starts to turn around soon, a month of the season has already passed us by.
The Blue Jays lead their division by a game. An improbable fact only matched by the fact that the Royals also lead their division or the fact that Seattle leads the AL West. Zack Greinke continues to pitch like he was genetically engineered to. 0.50 ERA and six wins.
Florida finally lost its share of first place last night with a loss to the Reds putting them half a game back to the Phillies. The Mets are miraculously still ahead of the Braves.
Tampa Bay took three of four from the Red Sox, but remain in fourth in the AL East. 6.5 games is a tall mountain to climb, but hopefully twice-named player of the week and player of April Evan Longoria can help them get back to a respectable position at the very least ahead of the Yankees.
The famous McGraw Tower. A Cornell icon…
…About to be consumed by Domo-kun
Auto-Tune – a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings.
It is often used by artists such as T-Pain.
Apparently the Gregory Brothers are fans too. Their video series Auto-Tune the News is a pretty awesome way to take in the week’s news. Here is the second of their videos.
