Alright, our exams are over, and we have 70 days of blissful summer to enjoy. And you know what that means…Updates! Regular, glorious updates for our starved fans that have clutched onto this sporadically renewed website.

Said updating shall begin soon enough, whenever Tristan finishes his editing on the new episode, but until then, I shall give you my thoughts on Sony’s E3 conference.

As far as it goes, I would have to say that Sony was on par with Microsoft. Natal just beat Sony’s motion controller, at least as far as marketing potential goes, and Sony’s future game lineup was superior to Microsoft’s.

Don’t agree with me? Tough luck, I’m the one with all of the writing privileges!

I mean, Uncharted 2, God of War 3, Final Fantasy XIV (Yes, it’s on the PC, but whatever), Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (If Metal Gear Solid: Rising is canon, I’ll eat a hat), Agent, Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, Fat Princess, and the list could go on.

A special mention goes out to Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, because it will, like all of the R&C games, be amazingly good.

I suppose that the main thing about Sony’s conference was the motion sensing controller. I’m all for it, even if it is a blatant attempt to jump on the back of Nintendo’s money-making bandwagon. However, they wish to actually use said motion sensing technology to its full potential, which I am happy to see.

The accuracy is second-to-none, and with the additional processing power of the PS3, the sky’s the limit. What we saw was a tech demo, and it was just that, a tech demo, but throw in some gameplay elements beyond firing a bow, and Sony will be on to a winner. Providing that they can incorportate a method for the player character to move about, of course.

Now recently I completed Bioshock (yeah I know, take my time why don’t I?). Now it’s a great game, I mean, how games can you fire lightning bolts out of your hands? (InFamous, D&D games)

…..OK well how many games force you to choose between the life and death of a little girl? (The Sims?)

…..Nah doesn’t count. The Sims is a over-glorified fishbowl, Bioshock is a gritty life or death, impulse shooting fishbowl experience. Since Dermot has already written a review about it, I’m not going into details. However I will talk about SPOILERS!!! So only read on if you do not want to read the good or any ending!!!

I guess what really got me was Andrew Ryan’s death at the hands of you, however the player is not in control, nicely done. Adding to the puppet theme that was recently sprawled all over your face by Mr. Ryan basically telling you, you were controlled the whole time by Atlas..

Even this is not what I’m trying to get at. No in fact, it is the ending that disappointed me. I choose to save the little sisters, all of them! Yes I’m an angel now, well done.  So I go to fight Fontaine, kill him. Game done.  It’s over too quickly, there is little to no build up in suspense. No reasoning why Fontaine looks like a deformed gingerbread man and why despite have no clothes on, has no gentalia? So I guess I am left to assume all this? OK… he got put in an oven for a few hours left to simmer with a few plasmids then drenched in EVE marinade.  And he never had any balls to begin with!…Oh please….

Sorry Bioshock, but you let me down! Seriously! For being such an epic game, like making me dress as a Big Daddy and all then to come out with a wishy washy ending? Sickening!  Playing on Normal feels like Easy (see Tristan’s last post), Fontaine isn’t remotely difficult, sure he spits fire and throws ice, but if I have all 9 Medikits, I survive without a scratch.

Are games getting easier? Where they ever difficult? The same questions plague examinations each year…. in video gaming, for me, it was a different matter entirely. I used to play for the factor of completing the game irrelevant of  how I did so, so it was easy all the way. Of course, easy can provide you with a cut down version of the game with corners cut on the enemy intelligence, abundancy of items and time required for puzzles. As I grew old and a bit more keen to push myself  I started going for normal or advanced difficulties (hard was still out of my league, I was trying to wean myself off easy), skyrocketing my playtime  and forcing me to spend months on one game.

Only when I had knocked advanced down to size did I even attempt hard. Deadspace on hard is not scary, its frustrating and wetting-your-pants-because-you-have-no-ammo-and-little-health terrifying, the scare is taken away because it just seems as if the game is jeering at you.  And I loath being jeered at, espicially by a game.  Then along came Farcry, and the standards changed.

Yes I understand that Farcry came out before Deadspace, but you are so lucky it doesn’t measure up in difficulty.

Farcry has its own difficulty scale. Beginner, Medium Advanced Veteran and Realistic. Trust me, Medium is like impossible.  Instead of being able to run around like some superhero, Farcry really makes sure that everyone on the map is a sharpshooter, there are about 33 of them and they are all hell bent on killing you.

And don’t get me started on the ‘things’ in the forest….No game should be THIS hard. Who plays this on Realistic?

The developers? However realistic that difficulty is, I couldn’t realistically enjoy the game. On the other hand, there is a good deal of bragging rights to be won here; for example “hey I just completed Farcry on Realistic in 10 minutes” to which we reply “dude, cheating doesn’t count Phail”.  This game assumes you are ready to win and doesn’t give other people a chance, it is a mean dick of a game.

It begs the question, maybe there should be a limit to how difficult a game is, or maybe I’m just being a whiney baby because I find it difficult

… SHUT UP!! It IS difficult! that is the reason this game is good though. It doesn’t take you by the hand through a safe and easy tutorial, you learn or die. I think some games often miss that aspect these days, trying to be ‘family friendly’. Give us some more diaboloically hard games for core gamers to chew on.  And maybe some other enticements like actual replayability.

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Now playing: Metallica – Mama Said
via FoxyTunes

As you probably know, there have been rumours of remakes floating around for ages, and speculation reached a new peak when the Pokémon Sunday TV show said a major announcement would be made this weekend. Nintendo seems to have jumped the gun to surprise us.

Gold/Silver was arguably the biggest step forward for the series, with the introduction of fruit trees, breeding, an in-game clock, weekly events and the ability to return to the setting of the original game after you’d finished with Johto, giving the game huge longevity. Plus, it was the first full-colour game, and introduced a whole two new types, helping to balance the vastly overpowered psychic type from the original.

Source and Source.

Sparky