Christmas Eve

It's the eve of Christmas and I'm sure everyone's anxious to open their presents tomorrow morning. I'm sure by then you'll all be opening up a can of whoop ass all over some virtual world. I myself am awaiting my laptop, for which is unfortunately delayed. The online website i ordered it from, mwave.com, requires a faxed authorization for laptops because it is such a large amount of money. Oh well, I will be able to survive until then.

So PC Gamer is having a contest, cleverly called "The Next Top Reviewer". Simply put, it's a contest where you submit a review entry (150 words) of the game Peggle (which is a huge hit in the PCG offices). The top entries I believe will go on to a next section where they will review another game, until a single winner is chosen. That person will be added as a freelance journalist to work for PC Gamer Magazine. It's a great opportunity for anyone who's interested in a job in the video game journalism industry. I plan to put in my own entry, it'd be nice to see what kind of feedback I could get. I can see it now, that Journalism 101 class I just took is going to pay off big time.

To finish off for today, here's my Christmas wish list (pertaining to video games):
5. Unreal Tournament 3
4. Logitech G51 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers
3. Xbox 360 with Rock Band
2. Nintendo Wii
1. Voodoo Omen PC

It's been too long

I apologize for the lack of posts and what not, but the past week or two has been quite busy. From final projects to final exams, quite a lot has been going on that I had to attend to. Nevertheless tedious reading material must be brought to your attention! I'm more than happy the semester is over with, as I get to kick back and enjoy a break.

Oh, did I mention I got Call of Duty 4?

I got it as a present for Christmas from a friend (THANK YOU SO MUCH) and I can say this game lives up to everything. Of course the game's been out for a while, but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents. I've only ever seen my friend Dan play it on the Xbox 360, which was too exciting. Less players, worse controls, PC outdoes it in every way =P (I love PC fps' way more than on the console). Sure the console version gets prestige, but meh that's not important. I don't want to bore you guys with any stuff about CoD4 but if you want I'll chat with you about it.

On to more important topics. One of which I swear I nerdgasmed from. I'm getting a new laptop! And yes, it's quite powerful, especially compared to my current desktop. It's the current Asus G1S-B2, which you can order online. 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo, 3GB of ram, GeForce 8600m GT, and all in a nice little portable dish of gaming goodness. Oops, got a little on my keyboard there. Now the reason I got a laptop as opposed to a cheaper and better desktop is simple, I'm starting to need the portability. The fact that I'm a college student who often has to work in other places than my own room is one factor. My home is also not nearby, and it's a big pain to lug my desktop from place to place. I've also been out on trips and felt very naked without my own computer to keep me company. All in all, I'm very ecstatic.

So some real gaming news you say? Well for starters and rumors you hear about Half-Life 3 are as of yet untrue. Apparently all that's really been said is that Valve stated Half Life will not end with episode 2. This leaves you with the fact that Half-Life could turn into a pinball game for all we know.

Oh and look what I stumbled upon. IGN's Best of 2007 List. The overall's haven't been picked, but each little category has. Some quick opinions on some of them:

PC - Bioshock wins game of the year, no big surprise there although there are a few really good contenders that I wouldn't have minded winning either (*cough*Orange Box*cough*). It also won quite a few other awards which makes me kind of sad, Orange Box needs some more McLovin'! Portal and TF2 did win seperate categories. I was surprised TF2 didn't win best multiplayer, but I guess I can't argue since I've never tried World in Conflict.

Wii - Mario takes the cake in Galaxy as the Wii game of the year! No huge surprise either, Galaxy is a fantastic game, I don't know why people would dislike it, it's so vibrant and fun. Another runner up, Zack and Wiki, I've heard is a very good game. However it's not doing so well, reminds me of Psychonauts. The awards can give you an idea of how few top-notch Wii games there actually are, as the Wii is being flooded with poor quality games. Games which received only a score in the 8's were winning multiple awards.

Xbox 360 - COD4 wins out in game of the year. Must of one hell of a tough choice for the IGN editors, the 360 was just smothered in great games for that console. Almost makes me wish I had gotten a 360 instead of an Ipod Touch. But it's okay, PC Gaming will always be my preference. Just like Gordon Freeman over Master Chief. YEAH that's right, Gordon will own your face anyday.

Movies - Best fantasy movie was Stardust? I saw that movie and it really wasn't that great. Wtb better fantasy movies. Hottest Movie Babe was Jessica Biel? Understandable, but Megan Fox was smoking in Transformers in my opinion.

So that's just a quick summary of what I saw, I haven't actually gone through every single award yet. The overall awards is what's really going to interest me, the madness that is the number of great games this year is such an overwhelming sensation... oh god damn it I just cleaned that up.

Are you ready to lose your life to a virtual world... again?

Blizzard has recently announced that they're making a new MMO... not related to Warcraft or any of their previous IPs. This makes me kind of sad that I won't be seeing WoStarcraft anytime soon, but a new IP? That's going to be interesting. Blizzards basically been the same 3 IPs and staying on top as one of the juggernauts of the PC industry. They also said the new MMO won't be similar to WoW. Something along those lines.

I've gone into a small anime streak recently, after hardly watching any this semester. Downloaded plenty to prepare for the upcoming winter break where I unfortunately cannot go back to Beijing to visit. Instead I get to sit at home and be bored. *sigh*.

Anyway that's all for now, finals week is next week and I've got to prepare.

Work is a bitch.

So I've been doing a lot of work recently, with projects and homeworks getting stacked up, all of which are due on Monday or Tuesday. Then after this next week school, it's finals week for which I've got to actually study my ass off. All this work is a bitch, I don't think I've ever had to do this much work before. On top of that, I'm actually doing it all (or attempting to). God, makes me feel like some sort of college student or something, the atrocity!

I though I'd talk about some tv shows this time. The two shows I've been following are Heroes and Chuck, the latter of which I have yet to see the season finale. Both I love, although I agree with most in that the second volume of Heroes did not deliver as well as the first. Some episodes definitely gave you that "OH SHIT NO WAY" feeling, I know my roommate looked at me funny when I yelled out those exact words. I'm probably going to be spouting out spoilers here, so if you don't want anything ruined, stop here (just a tiny spoiler).

So Heroes was in its second season, after a stellar showing in its first. It introduces some new characters, and brings back a lot of the old. I'm going to have to say that Elle is one of my more favorite new characters. Not only is she sinisterly innocent, but I've always like Kristen Bell (kekeke fanboy alert). Of course you have to keep in mind that the whole Writer's Guild strike caused pretty much every show to end early, so plots got a little messed up if they wanted to try to wrap the show up before production went completely on halt. The ending for Heroes in particular wasn't that great, it left some plots too open, ending off with a huge cliffhanger and unsatisfying ending. Sure seeing the way Adam was taken care of was pretty awesome, but everything else: Nathan's assassination, Sylar's recovery, horn-rimmed glasses dude's future, Nikki's fate in the fire, etc; all those make me really want to watch more. The ending was just not completely satisfying. However, overall if you loved the first season of Heroes, watch this one. It's still a really good show, and hopefully it'll only get better in the next volume.

**end of Heroes spoilers**

Chuck is one of those new shows this season, and it's great. It's about a nerd gamer who works at a Buy More named Chuck, who basically is thrown into this whole super secret spy thing. It's really a interesting and good show, with maybe the first few episodes not so great, but it picks up and gets good. It also brings some good laughs and some references to video games =P.

Now while I was writing this blog, I went on IGN and watched the latest Video Preview of No More Heroes for the Wii. All I can say is holy shit I want to play this game REALLY bad. I suggest you all check out the video at IGN. That's all for now, and keep checking out our blog.

Console Wars

So I'm not the greatest console guru in the world, nor the biggest console player. The amount of time I spend on my PC can attest to that. But I do still follow the industry, I still have played all 3 of the current-gen (NOT NEXT-GEN. How can something that's been out for over a year be considered "next-gen") and I just wanted to share my opinion on all 3 of the consoles currently out. First of all, this WILL be biased. I'm a man of my own opinions (based on other people's opinions). I will not, however, be blindly bashing a console. I try to base all this stuff on what I know, if I do get something wrong and you feel I fail because I bashed your favorite console, leave a comment and let me know. If you want me to even edit some content, slip me some greens and I'll get to work. Anyway, first off is my personal favorite, the Nintendo Wii.

So in terms of total install base, the Wii is the winner. In fact, it's still having supply shortages to this day, over a year after it came out. That's definitely got to count for something. Now I know you can argue that a huge number of those people could be casual gamers, parents, grandparents, little kids, etc, not true hardcore gamers. Thus in such may not spend as much money for accessories or games or anything. You have to understand on the flip side, that Nintendo made profits off Wiis sold from the get-go, the cost for them to manufacture a single Wii is cheaper than the sale price. Not only that, Wii games are only $50, as opposed to PS3 and 360 games starting off at $60 generally. But enough of the prices, everyone knows enough of that. Lets get on to the games.

I think the Wii has one of the better game selections, and definitely comparable to the 360 IF you also take into account the virtual console. The virtual console trumps xbox live arcade imo, just because it brings in a huge library of games that people cannot easily get their hands on anymore. Many of which are great classics that people can still enjoy. XLA certainly does have good games in return though, like Geometry Wars (which is a huge one). I believe the Playstation 3 falls behind in this category. I have not heard great things about the PSN, and although I believe much has been fixed, there were big problems with backwards compatibility on the PS3.

Now you wonder, what about current-gen games? The Xbox 360 wins in this category, then the Wii, then the PS3. The 360 had a year headstart on the others, and I've heard it's easier to code for than the PS3. Also it has a bigger install base than the PS3 (Although with the recent price drops, the PS3 is slowly gaining too). Games that are cross-platform between the 360 and PS3 have been often tested and shown to run much better on the Xbox 360. Take many of the sports games from EA, they run at 60fps on the 360, but only 30fps on the PS3. This isn't very excusable in my opinion. Meanwhile the Wii is stuck with a PS2 version port. That said, Madden NFL played quite well for a launch title on the Wii. So in this perspective, the 360 has games out like Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Skate, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Forza Motorsport, GRAW, and DiRT, to name some of the better ones. While some of those are cross-platform, they generally outperform the PS3. I'm ignoring the PC in this discussion. The PS3 has Ratchet and Clank, Unchartered, Resistance, Ninja Gaiden, and Folklore. Certainly the PS3 has some bigs game coming out soon, that being MSG4, Little Big Planet, and GTA4 to name the big ones. However they still won't be out for a while. The game selection is certainly looking good for the PS3, but will it be enough? The Wii isn't totally out of the equation either, they get huge credit for killer games like Metroid 3, Zelda TP, and Mario Galaxy. But that's not all, there's still Mario Strikers, Trauma Center, and a few other worthy games. Most of the rest is crap that's been rushed out just to cash in on the huge success of the Wii. They still have SSBB on the horizon though, and that's going to be huge.

Graphics wise I think the PS3 wins in terms of raw power. The 360 looks very very nice too, comparable to the PS3 in my opinion. The Wii obviously is behind those 2, beating out like the PS2 only. However I think we're at the point in time where graphics are not the biggest issue. We're approaching the point where some stuff looks so real, it looks blatantly fake. That and Mario Galaxy proves to us that games on the Wii can look amazing, I don't think many games can match up to its vibrant and pretty graphics.

So enough of my opinion. I kind of just went through and listed stuff out as opposed to an organized and well-thought out argument, but maybe it'll help those who don't know much about consoles. It's not very detailed, but I could definitely follow up on any criticisms you might leave. As a final word, here's my rank of the consoles: Wii, Xbox 360, PS3. I think a lot of people would interchange the first 2 on their list, but not many can deny that the PS3 seems to be lacking right now.

Vivendi and Activision: An Overview

There's been a lot of talk recently about the biggest merger in game publishing history between Vivendi and Activision. To those who know these companies and what they represent, you'll know that this is ridiculously big news. There's been a lot of optimistic talk about how Activision Blizzard might be able to compete with EA.

(On a side note, I've never been a really big fan of EA. Although EA has released a lot of good games, they've released a disproportionate number of SHIT games recently. Their poorly optimized, multi-platformed, barely differentiated sequels have been getting more and more annoying. Not to mention the exclusive rights they have on sports games, which they repackage and sell with updated rosters EVERY YEAR for a full retail price is just a dick move by them. )

So here's what seems to be the breakdown:

Vivendi essentially equals Blizzard. But one other interesting fact is that Vivendi owns Sierra Entertainment, which in turn is the game publisher for *dramatic pause* VALVE. (NOTE that game publisher is different from game developer.) So essentially Vivendi has been in charge of publishing/distributing: Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Orange Box (TF2, Portal), the multiple iterations of CS (unfortunately CZ), the Warcraft Series (including WoW), the soon to be Starcraft Series, and the Diablo Series. I personally find that pretty damn amazing.

(NOTE again, Valve does not have any obligation to actually use Vivendi as a publisher as they are two completely seperate entities, and in fact Valve let EA handle the PS3 release. AND THE PS3 BUILD BEEN PLAGUED WITH PROBLEMS MAINLY WITH OPTIMIZATION. so HA.)

And then there's... Activision. Although their games might not produce as high review scores or hype as Blizzard's, they make up for it in sheer quantity of games released. This beast of a company has released over 100 games in the last 10 years (compared to Blizzard's paltry 9 games, 5 which were technically expansion sets). Some of their notable games include the Call of Duty series, the Quake series, the Tony Hawk's series, the Doom series, KOTOR and of course Guitar Hero.

And as IGN pointed out, they compliment each other nicely with Blizzard being PC-oriented and Activision rendering it's services mainly towards consoles. With their philosophies on game developing being so radically different, who knows what could happen.

SO. In conclusion, I guess you could say Activision Blizzard is in direct control over: Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, CoD, Quake, Tony Hawk, Doom, Guitar Hero, KOTOR and a huge number of other games. Although all these releases are in the past and it really depends on how Activision Blizzard can seize this opportunity to develop and publish new titles. There are still a huge number of other BIG publishers to consider like: Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Rockstar Games to name a few. Is it enough to challenge EA? My final conclusion after all this research? who knows. Really makes you think huh.

EDIT: Just wanted to say that Activision Blizzard confirmed Guitar Hero 4 and Call of Duty 5. - mkg

The Whole Gamespot Fiasco

So Jeff Gertsmann *formerly* of Gamespot has finally spoken about his recent firing. An article on joystiq talks about it, and informs you what he's been thinking about. Here it is Gertsmann Speaks.

So if you haven't been trolling any gaming news site or blog (meaning for some reason this is your only source of gaming news *gasp*) and you haven't heard about the whole Gamespot and CNET deal, here's a quick rundown. Basically rumors have been flying around that Jeff Gertsmann, a long-time editor of Gamespot (one of the more trusted gaming website for news and reviews), was fired apparently over a poor review he gave the game Kane and Lynch. Gamespot had been running ads like crazy prior to this review, and people are suspecting foul play, that the higher-ups at CNET (company that owns Gamespot) were unhappy with Gertsmann's review and thus fired him.

Now I'm not completely clueless about journalistic integrity, and something like this obviously opposes the values that journalists hold. Being payed to put up a good review? Blasphemy. While I do agree it's virtually impossible to put up a truly objective review of game (after all, you need to score it and give your impressions), one can manage an objective light in terms of relativity to other games. I've never played Kane and Lynch, and I don't plan to, but I really haven't heard anything that astounding from it. IGN gave it a dismayal 7/10, stating it wasn't that it was hyped up to be. If all of this controversy about Gertsmann being fired over his review (which I've seen, you can find it on youtube) is true, then I fully support Gertsmann. Gamespot itself has been under riot too, the reader reviews for Kane and Lynch was bombarded with 1.0s, forcing them to disable score submitting from readers. Even the forums were getting spammed with protests and uses wanting their accounts disabled. The poor innocent forum moderators had to clean it up as best as they could too.

This brings me to the whole idea of the miracles the internet can bring. It can start digital revolutions and reveal lies and deceit. Anonymity and ease of use provide a very compelling platform for an average Joe to suddenly become Captain Revolution. Take for example the whole HD-DVD key thing that happened over Digg, where users kept flooding the news with the HD-DVD code. Kevin Rose, under pressure from those that sponsor his site, tried to contain the code at first. In the end resistance was futile, he had to give in as it was obvious the Digg users wanted the code revealed, stating "freedom of speech" and other loosely used rights. There's also the internet phenomenon Ron Paul (I have no say, I don't follow politics and don't really plan to). He's apparently gained a huge following over the internet, where apparently it is one of the only places he can spread his ideas and messages as the mainstream media is cutting his time short and making him look bad. The internet contains so much information, and allows anyone to add or access this information, that it cannot be simply censored by some organization or government.

Enough of that though. I'd thought I might give you some news on an upcoming Wii game that I think looks pretty damn awesome. No More Heroes is a game from Ubisoft that looks like it could be a sick game. I'm sure it'll obtain a cult following at the very least. You play as an assassin aiming to kill every assassin better than you and become number one. Not much of a story line, but the gameplay looks like it could incorporate the Wiimote very well. While the graphics on the Wii are obviously subpar to the other 2 consolers, Ubisoft tried to stylize the game instead and make it look good that way. The style itself looks good, but overall the graphics don't look as good as they could. It's still a bit plain and seems to lack too much detail. Mind you, this is all based off of screenshots and video footage, which you can find at IGN.com. If you've got a Wii, I think you should watch out for No More Heroes. Here's a screenshot of the main character for your viewing pleasure. As you can tell I borrowed it from 1up.com

The One List to Rule Them All

aka. IGN Top 100 Games 2007

Before you click on this link. I know what you're first going to check. It's Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Well, I love to rant and complain, so this is like a gift from the heavens.

Am I the only one to think that this list is a little... how to say... shitty? I've been sitting here trying to figure out how the HELL they came up with these rankings, and my final conclusion is... arbitrarily, and I have plenty of evidence to why i say that.

SO FIRSTLY i thought, hey, maybe they're ranking it purely on what the average score for that game is. But a LITTLE research shows that World of Warcraft (Rank: 83) should be way ahead of Super Smash Bros. (Rank: 50) by their respective average review scores (9.2 vs 8.0).

THEN i thought, hey... again, maybe they're ranking it on.... how the game has stood against the test of time. But then I realized.. who the hell plays Doom (Rank: 19), Mechwarrior II (Rank: 72), Tecmo Bowl (Rank: 70)

OKAY so then i thought, hey... man, maybe they're ranking it on how much of an influence this game made on the gaming world. But then I realized that Shadow of Colossus (Rank: 16) hasn't made an impact on the gaming world whatsoever. And on a sidenote. Shadow of the Colossus what the fuck. I played that game for like 3 hours before becoming disgusted with it's imprecise controls, bad camera angles, bad framerate and mediocre graphics.

Then I thought... maybe it's some sort of mysterious composite of all those factors. But then I realized that's way too complicated in terms of ranking and weighting to keep objective and effective.

I guess props to IGN for trying. I know i'm being picky and they DO give props to some sick games (I'm not gonna list them all but... Starcraft #11 sweet), but still they've tried to do something impossible.

On another note, Michael pointed out an interesting little factoid. 6/10 of the top 10 are from Nintendo. Props to Nintendo.

And in NO PARTICULAR ORDER cuz i don't try to rank my shit like IGN:
- How the hell did HL2 get voted higher than HL
- How did Shadow of the Colossus get on top 20
- How did WoW get only #83 but an average game (and i know what i'm talking about) like burnout 3 get ranked #66.
- How did NO unreal tournament game make this list
- How is HL only one spot above KOTOR
- What the hell is Pirates (Rank: 14)

If anyone can enlighten me on any of these issues, I would actually sincerely appreciate.

Actizzard or Vivision...

Vivendi and Activision, two huge names in the gaming industry, are merging in a $18 billion deal. And they're calling it Activision Blizzard. Wtf kind of a name is that. Trying to use Blizzard's name as a trusted name to buy from. I have to admit though, that this is definitely a very smart move, allowing this company to compete with the monster that is EA, but I sure as hell hope they don't ruin Blizzard's good name. Blizzard has already had a rep come out and say that nothing will be changed, and all the staff, management, production, etc is going to remain the same. If this deal were to somehow screw up Starcraft 2 there'd be a lot of angry gamers. I'm thinking this'll do more good than bad though.

In other news it has snowed where I am, which is pretty awesome. Can't wait for it to turn in disgusting gray muck.

In the meantime here's one of the most popular winter mini games, snowcraft. If you haven't played it before, do it now. Use your mouse to control your guys and shoot snowballs at the other team.

www.iconnicholson.com/holiday/

while we wait..

...for the first real post (other than the intro). I bring to you a good distraction. A flash game that i love playing in class. When i play it I look like i'm typing.. cuz i AM!
http://2addicted.com/words

High Score: 2032
try to beat it. just try... and fail.

The Beginning of Everything

And thus begins the first real "DinGi" collaboration. In case you haven't noticed, it's a clever mash up of a certain two person's last names. There's only two possible reasons if you still don't know what DinGi is. a) you don't know who the authors of this blog are, in which case it's perfectly understandable; or b) you're retarded.

While this blog is certainly free to be about anything we damn well want, I am more than likely going to keep my posts more game-orientated. Weison can do what he wants; we aren't a certain big-company-run operation that tries to control its own employees and fires them if they're discontent with their work, and on the side deceive its readers for more money from advertisements like a certain unnamed website. Of course if we were ever in any sort of situation where you're willing to offer us money to write about something with a little bias, I'd more than gladly accept. Hope you all find it all warm and comfortable here, because I'm hoping this is going to be a long ride.

As for my first topic, I'd like to start off with the game I've been playing recently. The game, Team Fortress 2, is from, as I stated in my post on Music Ink (great blog, musicink.blogspot.com), a gaming trifecta of goodness the Orange Box. It's a phenomenal game that kicks ass and looks good doing it. I'm currently in a semi-competitive clan that's doing pretty good. We aren't one of those hardcore 24/7 practice clans, but we do have scrims and practices occasionally. www.clanhex.net if you want to check us out. I plan to write a pretty big post on tips and useful information about TF2 in the near future, so watch out for that.

Continuing with TF2, I feel like it is a huge multiplayer game success, and almost does the class-based team game perfectly. Each class is balanced pretty damn well, although some are quite a bit more important than others. The medic isn't boring to play at all either, which I find amazing. Nobody ever wants to play the bitch that has to follow someone around and then get blown up first. The bread and butter of every team seems to be the soldier and medic though, basic firepower and support duo. The first Team Fortress was released over 10 years ago as a Quake mod, and was also remade into Team Fortress Classic, an extremely popular half-life mod. I think the last multiplayer shooter game that got me this addicted was Counter-Strike, which I'm sure a lot of people can relate to. I played CS for around 4 years, never competitively though, Just pwning noobs in pubs with my fellow CrU (Chinks R Us, hell yea). The rest of CrU hasn't been playing tf2 nearly as much as me. Seems like I scared off Chump when I rocked the socks off him one of the first times he tried it (yeah that's right, I owned you. What now, punk?). Nothing is as satisfying as absolutely dominating the other team in a game. Well, some delicious moist cake might come close, or hell even meeting one of those mythical "girl gamer" creatures.

Anyway, enough blogging. It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum.