Pure Randomness #13 - Muscle March

This is bizarre. And maybe gay. And on drugs. It's essentially Cho Aniki plus Hole In The Wall in terms of gameplay and style as bunch of muscle-bound people and a polar bear chase down people who stolen their protein supplement. Nothing but high-quality weird from the people who brought you a crotch-plate flamboyant king of space and whatever the hell Noby Noby Boy is.

Pseudo First Impressions On The New Version Of Marvel VS Capcom 2 On The PS3!

I'm not lying when I say there is some language.

When I mean by "pseudo," I mean that my real first impressions were from when the demo was first available on April 30th. And my parents were there to see me download it, since the PS3 is in the living room. And, they are not tolerant to me cursing. Plus, there was no camera. But, mark my words when I say that what I'm saying in this video is what I feel about the demo.

Plus, this is the first time I posted a video to YouTube and my first original video for BPR. :) Expect more.

One more thing: F**k the Knicks.

VOTM: "Playing With The Boys" on Top Gun Day

This is Video of the Moment, or VOTM, a whenever-I-feel-like-it series of post highlighting a certain video that I'm liking for the moment. And, today, I'm liking Top Gun, a 1986 movie about US Navy pilots attending a fighter school for advanced pilots. Today, May 13, is Top Gun Day, a fusion of Talk Like A Pirate Day and Tom Cruise. In celebration, here's a video. Above, is one of the most infamous scenes in Top Gun, where Tom Cruise, Gilbert from Revenge of The Nerds, Val Kilmer, and some other dude who isn't as famous as the other three play volleyball. It's so infamous, there's an easter egg on the recently-released iPhone/iPod Touch game where you can play volleyball just by changing your pilot's name to "VOLLEYBALL". Plus, there's two more easter eggs (including another Tom Cruise reference) that are discussed here.

Also, if you're wondering who would win in the epic matchup between them, The Love Of Sports posted 5 reasons why should be rooting for the Ice...man!

Now, if you excuse me, I gotta sing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" over on Lips for the 360. Who will be my Goose to my Maverick?

Pure Randomness 12 - Mega Man 2 Drumline

You may have seen this, you may have not. I'm going with not. This is the Winter Drumline at Kansas University performing material to Mega Man 2. It is geeky. It is good. It is cheap. It's still good. Drum me up a beat! I want a drumline and a college choir do "Libera Me From Hell". Someone pass this down!

Also, new non-Pure-Randomness post and content coming. Pinky swear.

Video discovered via Destructoid

Prepare to pay full retail (and then some)

Pic courteously from Destructoid

I was genuinely excited for Hasbro Family Game Night. You can call me a casual dumbass for saying that, but the idea of playing board games with others is an ideal I support. Hell, I even bought a travel version of Sorry! just so I can play with others without having to get the full version. And, the idea of playing Sorry! and several other games (including Battleship and Scrabble) online with others via Xbox Live made me consider getting the game. That is, until the pricing was shown to the public.

The Xbox Live Arcade version of FGN is free, but it comes with no board games. If you want those, they will set you back at 800 M$P (or $10 in US currency) per game. And, only a select few - Battleship, Connect 4, Scrabble, and Yahtzee - are only available with the others (Sorry!, Sorry! Sliders, and Boggle) coming soon. Honestly, I think that's bull-cacca. Even though I spent $9 for SFIV costume packs and blew money on 360 themes and gamerpics, I'm not willing to spend excess cash for these titles (even though they may be technically cheaper than the real McCoys).

And then, I remembered something. I remember seeing this game listed for the Wii and PS2. And, when I went to the official web site, lo and behold, those versions existed. Guess how much they cost? $40 and $20 respectively, and both come with 6 games, the lone excemption being Scrabble. Guess how much it will cost to get all seven on XBLA? 5600 Microsoft Points, or in better terms, 70 bones. 70. United. States. Dollars. Horse Armor is technically better than this price-gouging bullshit.

While curse words fill my head (and probably yours, too), here's something I just discovered along with the price. This is technically a la carte gaming, in which you pay for only the things you care about instead of having to deal with the whole shebang and get crap you won't play ever. I remember hearing and reading about how the FCC has been hammering on the cable and satellite companies to allow the existence of a la carte services, giving the consumers to pay for only the channels they want and supposedly save some cash. This proposal technically led some companies like DirecTV and Dish Network to create cheaper "Family" Packages to allow consumers to get safe-for-the-kiddie networks ranging from kids networks (Disney Channel), kid/adult hybrid channels (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim and Nickelodeon) and general-interest/infotainment channels like Discovery that won't corrupt a child's "fragile little mind" (like the Dirty Jobs host artifically inseminating a cow by shoving bovine semen up a cow's vagina). The problem is that if the channels you want cost more than paying for the Total Choice package that contains the channels you want plus more at a cheaper price, it's just economically smarter to just go ahead and get the Total Choice package and fiddle around with the settings so you can only see the channels you care about.

Technically, I only care about a few games (Sorry! Sliders, Scrabble, Battleship, and maybe Yahtzee). But, there will be a few Xbox 360 users who are going to get all the games. And they are going to get burned big time when they pay $30 or $50 dollars more than the Wii and PS2 versions for the privelage to say, "Hey look! I got the same game as you, but I can play online and have Scrabble included as well!" The creators (EA) and Microsoft need to do what Rock Band (ironically a product that EA distributes) and others do: Offer the board games together at a discounted price. Like, say, the initial 4 for $30 and the next three for $20. Sure, that tallys up to be $10 more than the Wii version, but a logistical counter-argument will be the ability to play online and Scrabble. And, it's still cheaper than 70 effin' dollars.

BTW, Buy The Get The Funk Out Track Pack For The Rock Bands NOW

I love Rock Band, or Rock Band 2 to be specific. It introduced (at least on the home console level) the ability to play as a complete band (guitars, drums, and vocals) simultaneously and made paying over $160 for plastic fake instruments cool and hip. It also pioneered the use of Downloadable Content, with virtually weekly releases of songs that could easily make up multiple versions of Rock Band that could be sold at Gamestop for $60 a pop. Plus, the song selection is eclectic, spanning multiple genres and decades. One week, you can have the best of The Who, and the next you're sampling country music. It's Awesome.

Although, it sometimes doesn't look like variety. Recent stats have shown that there are more rock and alternative songs available for the game. Hell, there's more metal songs than progressive rock, punk, blues, and country songs combined. Check the chart. It's somewhat sad. But, things are looking good, at least for this week. A wide variety of songs came out this week, but the most notable is the "Get The Funk Out" track pack. For about 440 Microsoft Points (or about $5.50 for those with the PS3 version and don't have to deal with Microsoft's Space Bucks system), you get three songs from James Brown, Average White Band, and Earth Wind & Fire. I played through the guitar tracks on each song, but these songs make me want to get some people together and create a band to play these songs. Or, at least get a microphone to wail through "Get Up (I Feel Like a) Sex Machine." If you have Rock Band 1 or 2, and you haven't gotten the Track Pack yet, get it NOW! I'll see you on Xbox Live.

BTW, buy the Track Pack on the 360 here. For a preview of the songs, click on the videos.

Video(s) Of The Moment: XBLA In Brief - Crystal Defenders/Peggle + Bonus FoD Vids

I enjoy following/reading Joystiq Xbox (formerly called Xbox 360 Fanboy). Sure, most of the posts now are actual posts from Joystiq proper, they still put out some regular features exclusive to the Xbox section like XBLA In Brief. This weekly video series features playthroughs of the week's newest Xbox Live Arcade demos as host Richard Mitchell describes whether or not you should pay full price for them. This past Wednesday's was special. It featured the two new titles out, Crystal Defenders and Peggle. Crystal Defenders is a tower defense style game made by and featuring jobs from Final Fantasy. Peggle is Peggle, a pachinko-like game hailed by many as extremely addicting. If you haven't played Peggle yet, play it here or here if you have IE. I have both games, and both are very good. You can blame the video above for me buying them.

BONUS VIDEOS FROM FUNNY OR DIE!
Funny or Die, the humor video site from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, gave the geek world two delightful gems. One features Jon Hamm of Mad Men as Lex Luthor. Another stars Malin Akerman (aka Silk Spectre II from Watchmen) and quite possibly the worst roommate ever if you are beautiful and star in geek cinema. Since both are awesome, the full versions are posted below. Watch them if you haven't seen them yet. Or, watch 'em again. Your call. (Metacomment: One day, I'll figure out how to do the "Read More" tags, but I'm too tired to care now)

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

Watchmen Tour with Malin Akerman from Malin Akerman

Seth VS Deathbringer

I have been playing Street Fighter IV ever since it came out two weeks ago. And, quite simply, I love it. The fighting mechanics are solid. The graphics are great. And, outside of a few nitpicks regarding features that could have carried over from Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (like you not knowing who your opponent selected), online's a blast. But, outside of the online components, there's one other thing that I don't like about SFIV:

Seth Sucks And Is A Cheap Bastard.

I mean, seriously, he sucks. He is an uncontrollable cheap bastard. In case you don't care about SFIV, Seth is the final boss in the game. He looks like Dr. Manhattan with a frickin' yin-yang ball in his mid-section, he can use the best moves from select fighters (the Shoryuken, Sonic Boom, Yoga Teleport, etc), and his Ultra combo involves literally sucking you inside his midsection and spitting you out. Also, he can be cheap with some of his moves. For example, almost everytime I faced him, he always seem to execute one special where he uppercuts you, jumps up in the air, and then does a spinning piledriver on you. And, he does this move almost every friggin' time I faced him! He sucks ass!

In fact, I'm actually beating the same old drum now. Almost everyone who has commented on SFIV has talked about the cheapness of The Other Blue Naked Man. Some people have even compared him to the final bosses of SNK games like The King Of Fighters. (BTW, I'm getting KOF 2002/2003 on the original Xbox soon) However, there's one other boss Seth reminds me of. That person is Deathbringer from Battle Fantasia.

Battle Fantasia is a fighting game from Arc System Works, the people behind Guilty Gear. And, that's about it since Battle Fantasia dumps GG's love of future-tech and 80's butt-rock for more fantasy setting, excluding one character's usage of a chainsaw/sword/gas-poowered hoverboard mid-battle. The final boss is Deathbringer, a dark knight. When you first encounter him, he's just like every other character and not some supreme d-bag. However, it's not until after you beat him the first time when he becomes a supreme overpowered douche. It is in this final form Deathbringer becomes a true a-hole. All your attacks - punches, kicks, specials - don't do damage to this jackass. It's only when you're in Heat Up mode, the Super Saiyan of Battle Fantasia, that you can do serious damage to him, if he hasn't beaten you to a pulp, cancelling your Heat Up mode, and pull off his final, megaton death blow that I have not yet learned how to avoid, if at all. The final version of Deathbringer has been such a problem, and so much different from his previous form, that I call him Deathbringer Turbo. He's that much of a dick. Hell, he might have even inspired Seth since Yashimori Ono, SFIV's producer, has credited Battle Fantasia for inspiring SFIV's 3D-style-meets-2D-gameplay attitude.

So, how does Deathbringer Turbo like Seth? They're both final bosses and they're both cheap, hard, and almost impossible to beat. On the easiest settings for both games. It took me over thirty times to beat Seth as El Fuerte, and Deathbringer Turbo has made me afraid to even progress further into Battle Fantasia. Who's the bigger douche? Who knows? They could probably be out-douched by the final bosses in BlazBlu (Arc's new 2D fighter) and King of Fighters XII when they come out later this year. And, I'll be getting both, get abused by them, and love every single minute of it. Just the way God attened.

Why Circuit City Failed

As many of you have heard/read, electronics retailer Circuit City, after trying to get new investors/suitors like Blockbuster and contemplating bankruptcy protection, announced last month to shut all of its stores and began to liquidate and sell all remaining items and fixtures, a process that supposed to end on March 31. It is sad and not awesome to see a retailer collapse, especially one that your parents frequently shopped and got their television sets and Playstation 3s, and it's a little bit cruel to state that you took advantage of liquidation prices to pick up Rock Band 2 and a wired X-Plorer guitar controller for underneath 60 bones, like I did a couple of weeks ago, when it's the same retailer that got you three of your favorite games of all time - Guilty Gear X2 and Amplitude on the PS2 and the Gamecube version of Skies of Arcadia - in one trip many moons ago. However, a trip yesterday to my local Circuit City allowed me to examine why Circuit City failed. The reason?

THEIR PRE-LIQUIDATION PRICES WERE TOO HIGH!

Seriously. They had way higher prices for most of their products when compared to the direct competition like Best Buy (who was actually across the street in Savannah), especially for computers and computer accessories. Example: Yesterday's trip was the result of me wanting a new external hard drive. All they have (beyond the portables) was a 500 GB Western Digital My Book Essential; they had plenty of those on stock. The liquidation price was 30 percent off the displayed price. The displayed price? About $140. [/shock] Yeah, meaning the liquidation price was about $100. A fellow shopper near me, also looking for computer parts, said that he wasn't going to pay those prices and thought about heading towards Best Buy. So, shortly after the little conversation, I went to Best Buy. Guess what? The same 500 GB My Book was available, at $99.99, non-liquidated. You know what happened next? I ended up buying a different hard drive - a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Desk - which only cost me $79.99. $79.99. And, I ended up using the $20 difference to pick up the Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy album. Talk about adding insult to injury. And, that's just one story! I bought my laptop in 2006 at Best Buy because they did away with mail-in-rebates and factored in the rebates into the actual price you paid up front, a technique I don't even know if Circuit City adopted.

Of course, it's not always about prices, because it it was, we would be ruled by Walmart. When I was at work later that night explaining my trip, a fellow co-worker expressed two seperate instances where Circuit City's customer service was crappy to him. In one instance, the store charged him more for a season set of South Park, even though it was in a bin with a bunch of other South Park seasons on sale for 20 bones. In another instance, he asked a clerk in the gaming department if Guitar Hero 3's Les Paul guitar (PS3 Version) would work with other guitar games on the system; the clerk was clueless (although in this situation, I would have consulted Joystiq's Instrument Compatibility Matrix for help, in which it says it works with all of them). Prices sometimes mean nothing if good customer service is factored in. The last remaining factor, the only place in town that carries said product, can be rendered pointless with online shopping unless you lack the means (again, becomming more pointless with gift cards being able to do online shopping).

So, in hindsight, Circuit City was probably destined to fail. But, I didn't get bad customer service from them when I was there, and if they had the crap I want (like anime) and weren't gouging me for them, I would have shopped there more. Alas, by March 31, Circuit City will join the ranks of Goody's, Montgomery Ward, and Toonami in becomming nothing more than a distant memory. I hope those that are affected (like employees) hopefully land on their feet and get new jobs as quickly as possible, despite how crappy this economy is. And, I hope that the executives weren't Greedy McMoneybags in causing its destruction, like those who sold Midway Games for $100,000 plus the debt.

VOTM: Wall Street Fighter 4

I've been playing Street Fighter IV since I got it on Tuesday. Beyond the ultra-cheap final boss, Seth (expect a much detailed post from me in the coming days about him), the sometimes laggy online mode, the pension of every player online to pick Ken instead of, you know, ANY OTHER CHARACTER (Hell, I would like to see someone pick Ryu when they face me online), and the overall crappiness of the Xbox 360's D-Pad, it's an awesome game. It's truly not like an updated version of SF II or Alpha clone some have been calling it thanks to the combo mechanic and the Super/Ultra Combo systems. And, I'm in so much of a mood, check out the above video from CB FRESH. Maybe if we see Wall Street executives duke it out with thier fists and go all MMA on themselves via Pay-Per-View, the recession would be solved. Or, make us forget a little bit that these are some of the same douchebags that got us into this mess in the first place. Either way, someone's going to get their ass handed to them. Yay!

Thank you, ShadowGUN from the Toon Zone forums!
BONUS LINK: F*CK YOU, SETH! (BahamutZero's blog on Destructoid)

Video Of The Moment: Mad World meets "Mad World"

Mad World is this year's biggest risk-taker. It's graphics are in black-and-white (save for red blood and the comic pop-out words), it's uber-violent, and oh, yeah, it's on the Wii. But, it looks uber-fun and may be the first Wii game I've bought and play since Smash Brothers Brawl last year, along with another M-rated title that came out this year, The House of the Dead Overkill. If you want to see my point, check out the trailers for it, or watch the video above. The good fine people over at Games Radar played the first three levels of it and have set the footage to "Mad World," the song loved by Donnie Darko and Gears Of War fans (right next to the Cole Train song at the end of Gears 1). Watch, enjoy, and be shocked. :)

BONUS STUFF

-Evolution of Death in Video Games (Games Radar) [extra bonuses: things influencing games and game logo evolution]
-Capcom's 10 Commandments (MTV Multiplayer)
-Evangelion 2.0 Japanese release date (ANN) [extra bonus: El Cazador]
-HD 101: Why there are black bars on HDTVs (Engadget HD)

"...Actually, It IS You."

Dear Criterion Games,

I like you guys. I like your games. More specifically, I like your Burnout franchise. I enjoy arcade racers more than sims, and my favorite games from the N64 era were the San Francisco RUSH franchise - which does include the N64-exclusive RUSH 2: Extreme Racing USA, one of my most-played games from the era. I enjoyed the thrill of driving cars really, really fast and seeing them wreck spectacularly, and I was glad to found a potential successor last console generation when I played the original Burnout on the Gamecube. I had fun when you unleashed Burnout 2 on the PS2, but it wasn't until y'all hooked up with EA and gave the world Burnout 3: Takedown. I played that game to death. Being able to take out your opponents with aggressive driving finally made Burnout the RUSH successor I wanted to play. I did get Burnout Revenge, but it wasn't my favorite of the franchise.

That is until you released Burnout Paradise on the next-gen systems. I got a taste of the demo on the PS3 last year, and thought it was the bomb. In that little taste, you gave me a fluid online system and an arcade racer meshing with an open world that makes me happy. And, when I got my 360 later that year, the trip to Paradise City was one of the first games I've ever got. And, it was filled to the brim with Awesome Sauce. The open world was fully realized. The online play mechanics integrated seamlessly into the gameplay. It was literally Burnout meets GTA in the sense that you can race around Paradise City and not even bother with the main quest until you were ready. It was fun, and it also got my brother into the franchise.

And, then, you took the base game and made it better through downloadable content. You did DLC better than anyone last year by offering game-changing content. Cagney was cool, but the Bikes Pack was truly the best and shows why some people (including myself) think you are the only developer worthy enough to tackle a revival/remake of Road Rash, one of EA's classic franchises (which include Wing Commander and the Strike series). And, all of it was free. You added more Awesome Sauce to the game without corrupting it. And, you are still supporting the game, adding in an offline multiplayer mode, 4 kick-ass tributes to pop culture's iconic cars (like the Ecto-1, the General Lee, KITT, and the flying DeLorean), and more coming down the pipline as paid DLC. And, all of it is good and cool. But, this is where we part, Criterion.

Look at the pic above. In order to access the Legendary Cars pack (the pop culture tributes), I have to download the latest update to Burnout Paradise. And, guess what? That update takes up over 870 MB of hard drive space; it's even more annoying that the download to activate the Legendary Cars is a little over 100 KB. And, you did the same thing with the Party Pack - large-ass free update, tiny activation pack. Now, this is fine and dandy, if I had a large enough hard drive. But, instead, I got a 20 GB, purchased when they first went down in price (better known as a "liquidation"). And, I'm not going to delete more space off of my hard drive to support this or any more of your updates. So, it pains me to say/type this, but we have to part ways, Criterion. I can't support your game anymore. My hard drive cannot handle any more updates until I upgrade to the 120 GB, which won't be for a while; other purchases like DVDs, food, graphic novels, and a backup external hard drive for my computer are more important at this moment. So, until then, or when you make another game, we part ways. Just remember: it's not you, it's me...

...Actually, it IS you. STOP RELEASING DLC THAT IS TOO HUGE! Those of us on both the 360 and the PS3 with small hard drives already near the brink cannot hold these updates without deleting stuff we want. Plus, the 1.6 update is gone from the XBLM servers! Do we still need it? I Need Answers!

Signed,
-Jonathan, aka Vyse the tetrisdork (XBL: tetrisdork)

Burnout Paradise's listing on the Xbox Live Marketplace (Xbox.com)
Criterion Games home page
Criterion on Twitter (looks like I know where to ask...)

"Welcome To The Future"

Welcome to the future, Welcome to the future..
Get into the new speed, Get into the enemy...
Mass communication (genemanipulation)
So what's the occupation? (what's your dedication?)
Welcome to the future, Straight into the future

-Lyrics to "Bigtime" by The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

Well, welcome to the future. My future. The Internet's future. A future built at first by blog posts. A future where, at the beginning, will be solely my thoughts, opinions, reviews, stories, and other writings. And, eventually, I will also include videos I created myself. Original productions of mass insanity. But that's in the distant future; how distant, I don't know. But, I do know is that I will deliver every post with an image and/or a video. THAT IS A FACT!

For the foreseeable future, this site is a work-in-progress. I will add more features as time goes on. I will also learn to alter the look so that the site will look purty and more to my style. I am working on it, but until then, this will do.

In the meantime, welcome to my place on the net. A place where games, music, comics, anime, movies, television, books, and sports collide into a smorgesboard of crazy and filled to the brim with Awesome Sauce. Because, it is my goal to build a site made with Awesome Sauce. And, trust me when I say, this is going to be awesome.

Welcome to the future. Enjoy the ride.

Welcome to Blocked Party Rock.

P.S. I love "Bigtime" by The Sondtrack of Our Lives. It fits the tone. :)

Lyrics taken from Dapslyrics.com