Re: Santana appearing as character in Guitar Hero 5 (3 years ago)

Gentlemen, gentlemen, what is all the hub-ub about?

Guitar Hero Riffwars competition! (3 years ago)

Hey peoples,

This is gunna seem really random, but I need your help. I, along with my brother and a few of his mates, recently entered a Guitar Hero competition for the website tektime.com.au. Some of you may remember the Riffwars competition from the eGames expo the last two years (you'd definitely remember the host, Ash, and his saying "YEAAAAH BOIIIIIIIIIII!!!")

We've just filmed our performance for the competition in the preliminary rounds and now it's down to voting before we can get into the finals. We played "Pull Me Under - Dreamtheater" on GH:WT with a full band (Drums and Lead Guitar on expert and Vox and Bass on Hard) and ended up getting around 1.46m points. I'll chuck a link to a video of the performance below.

Anyways, in order to make it through to the finals we need to get as many votes as possible on this website - b1gleague.com. Our band's name is Sexual Chocolate, and the video of our performace can be found here.

I know this is really random, but it would mean a huge deal to me if you guys could vote for us. I'm not exactly great at GH (which is why I was relegated to Vox - or maybe it's because I was the only one stupid enough to agree to sing on film) but my brother (lead guitar) has been playing for ages and I want us to make the finals for him.

In order to vote, just register at this link and then go to our video and click "vote for this performance". You won't ever get any confirmation emails or spam or anything from the site, so they're pretty cool.

Anyways, here are a few photos of the performance to whet your appetite:









Just a fun factoid, this is apparently the world's first multi-camera Guitar Hero competition. Whodathunk? It was hellishly fun to perform in a real studio infront of a real crew playing in a fake band on plastic instruments.

Anyways, I know this is massively whoring myself out, but it would mean a huge deal to me if you guys could vote for our band. If anything, do it because moistflaps (who is apparently now big_banana and no longer has flaps that are moist) would want you to.

Cheers guys,

- Perch

PS. Yes, I am very much aware of how much of a douchebag I look in that video. Thank you.

Re: Web Comics (3 years ago)

I've been reading Least I Could Do for about four or five years now and I've gotta say it's one of the funniest yet most down to earth webcomics I've ever read. It's about a bachelor called Rayne Summers and his life. The only way I can explain it is by a blurb I read about it on one of the LICD books:

Love means never having to say you're sorry. Casual Sex means never having to say anything at all!

For a webcomic based mostly around adult and sex humour, it has a huge amount of heart, a great cast and, most importantly, an awesome storyline that doesn't base itself around penis jokes and low-brow humour (...well, not all the time).

There's also a ton of references to other pop culture things (ie. Batman, LOTR, Wii, even Vivid Entertainment) that aren't just random throwbacks.

I highly recommend everyone checking it out, and if you want a bit of background into Rayne read the "A Christmas Carol" storyline from 2006.

Re: M&M's news....... (3 years ago)

That's what she said.

And, yeah, I've seen a ton of companies doing that. Cadbury made their medium sized bars smaller, yet made the price go up. Not sure what the deal is there, but I think this all started a few years ago when they made Cadbury Creme Eggs smaller. Where will the madness end?!

Re: Your BEST Bargain EVER!? (4 years ago)

Best bargain would be getting a HD-DVD player add-on for the X360 along with about 12 HD-DVDs for about $7 per HD-DVD and $20 for the player. I also got the Heroes Season 1 HD-DVD boxset for $20 as well.

I saw an official Liverpool away Champions League jersey signed by all the 08/09 players + Rafa Benitez and with a COA on ebay for $150 (getting one with just Steven Gerrard is usually around $400) but I didn't buy it because I didn't have a credit card set up. Would've been fairly awesome.

I'm heading to Thailand in two weeks, so I'm looking forward to getting some decent bargains there and haggling people down from paying A$0.40 for something to A$0.10. Just for the hell of it.

Re: Post your Pix (4 years ago)

I know you can get Dr Pepper from a store next to us at Eastland, but I haven't seen Mountain Dew in a while now. Nothing came up on eBay and google searches have so far been fruitless.

http://brandsite.pepsi.amnesia.com.au/Stock.html <-- this is the direct website for stocking Mountain Dew, so you could possibly ask them about their prices and get it direct, though you'd be stocking up quite a bit and paying a regular weekly or monthly rate, or see if you can't find out whether any stores nearby stock the MD.

Also, when the heck are you having a massive old-school gaming party? People could dress up like the old school gaming characters, get their drink on and go nuts on your arcade machine of awesomeness. You could also see if you can't get Mega Man 9 running on a 360 and find a foosball or air-hockey table from somewhere to increase the level of awesome to "Unbelievably Awesome".

Re: Games of 2009 Part 2 (4 years ago)

One game that I'm looking forward to, simply because of who is producing it and to find out what the concept is about, is Ubisoft's "I am Alive".

Also, it may possibly be coming sooner than you expect... I can't say much more about that, though.

Re: The Past! The Past! OMG! It's The Past! (4 years ago)

My favourite part of this is the page with Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions, simply due to the blurb attached to it:

If that's what MGS: Special Missions had, I may have actually bought it...

Re: Your newest purchase (4 years ago)

PS3 Mirror's Edge ) $120
PS3 Resistance 2 ) all up through Game and EB

PS3 Far Cry 2 - $47
X360 Call of Duty: WaW - $48

Goddamn I love staff discount

Re: Killzone 2 Closed Beta Ends, Public Beta Begins (4 years ago)

At the eGames expo I got to play a bit of the campaign from Killzone 2 (which, by the way, is absolutely epic) and I talked to the Product Manager from Sony for a while (he also was in charge of LBP and Resistance 2, so this guy is pretty much a god to me).

He told me that the public beta should probably be starting up very early next year, maybe in January, and to keep an eye out on the Playstation forums for some details.

This game is going to be unreal.

Re: Report: eGames 2008 (4 years ago)

I've got a video of my brother playing Cult of Personality in the GH final (he was the guy in the Guitar Hero tshirt who won), however my dad was videoing it and the quality of it is so bad that the entire internet would cry if they saw it.

It was funny, though, because he had a 2-3hr "discussion" with my parents about why he should be allowed to go and play in the final, even though his last exam is today. Totally worth it now.

eGames was pretty rad this year. I got to play through a bit of Killzone 2 and abso-freakin-lutely loved it. Seriously, it's f-ing amazing. The only thing that disappointed me about the expo was Nintendo, but I guess they didn't have much material to go with this year. Here's to hoping that 09 is absurdly epic for Ninty.

Re: eGames 08: Prince of Persia Preview (4 years ago)

I think I've played this game for a grand total of two hours now (I know a few of the Ubisoft guys from some events I've been to), and this game is going to absolutely rock.

They've taken the Prince in a really cool direction with his character, opting out of "Emo Prince" from the last two games and going with a Prince who doesn't spend the whole time listening to Fall Out Boy and covering the scars on his wrists with f*ck-me bands.

Plus the combat in this is hella fun.

Seriously, do yourself a favour and get all over this.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 4 Demo Available Now (4 years ago)

Isn't it a bit odd for them to release a demo for the game so long after it was released? Most people who would be interested in grabbing the demo would probably have the game by now, and if they don't then they would probably be able to find a second hand copy of the game somewhere...

I don't think it'll get downloaded much, especially with LBP and Resistance 2 out now/soon and the Killzone 2 beta happening in the next few weeks.

Weird move.

Re: Free Slurpee's at 7-11 tomorrow! (4 years ago)

Last year I got 4. I'm gunna see if I can't find a way to beat that tomorrow. Even if it means I stop off at every single 7-11 I see all day.

Re: What made you smile today? (4 years ago)

I love customers like that. I especially love their line of thinking:

"This guy will be willing to accept $200 to give me something that I'll can't wait 24 hours for, even though it will cost him his job".

Getting Fable II for free today made me smile.

Re: LittleBigPlanet (4 years ago)

I picked up LBP earlier today. Started playing it at around 1pm. 5 hours later, I realise that I haven't exactly moved from the couch for a while. And I've got an important exam tomorrow.

Looks like I'll be doing second year again...

Re: US Elections - If the world could vote (4 years ago)

3rd row, 6th from the left:

I didn't realise the Colonel was elected President of the USA...

Re: US Elections - If the world could vote (4 years ago)

Just listened to the speech that Obama gave. This is easily one of the best decisions that America has ever made. To vote John McCain in would be to vote for the political system to continuously wade through a quagmire and not move forward with the world.

Even if Obama doesn't fulfill every single promise that he made during the campaign, and I can't imagine that he or anyone possibly could, he has given the world the one thing that it needs right now.

Hope.

Re: Change just one word.. (4 years ago)

"You might remember me from such self help tapes as 'Eat yourself thin' and 'Get some confidence, Stupid!"

Re: The games you have completed : 1000/1000 (4 years ago)

FIFA 09 has a 1G achievement for playing the game for 50 hours. It's pretty easy to rack that up in multiplayer and Be a Pro mode, but theres a 19G achievement for scoring in the 89th minute, which might be a bit easier to get.

I kinda wonder if anyone would go out of their way to get a 1337 gamerscore knowing that if you got 1315G from a bunch of games and then then 19G from FIFA 09 and 3G from War World you could have the nerdiest/awesomest gamertag in existance...

Re: RESISTANCE 2 thread - with first review (4 years ago)

I tried to play through a bit of the single player campaign, but I got continuously frustrated by the health system and getting shot from every which where so I stopped it.

On a whim a short while back I started playing through the co-op game with a mate of mine. Seriously, co-op on Resistance 1 is damned awesome. It's a hell of a lot more tactical than some other fun FPS co-op games (ie. Halo)... or maybe that was just our beer tactics talking.

I still can't say that I enjoy the single player campaign, but buy it and play through the game in co-op and enjoy the awesomeness. Drinking and playing it through is also recommended for some extra awesome.

Re: PALGN Top 100: Results! (4 years ago)

Wow, if Ocarina of Time gets knocked off next then that'll be basically what would have been my top three in the top ten.

Re: PALGN Top 100: Results! (4 years ago)

I'd like to see the original Mario for the NES and pong get up there, but I can't see that happening.

Re: I dare ya! (4 years ago)

I bought pizza once from my local pizza store dressed as a pirate with full pirate accent and everything as a dare.

The pizza shop now knows me as "that pirate guy".

Re: LittleBigPlanet (4 years ago)

Wow, I'm really impressed that they went out and made a statement like this. Especially because that's the main point (well, besides the whole "OMGZ WHUR IS IT COMIN LATE FOR?!!?!?!1?") that people against the censorship brought up.

I'm glad to see that at least there is some level-headedness coming from this, as opposed to it turning entirely into hating and xenophobia.

Re: Ubisoft upcoming game impressions (4 years ago)

If I had been going to town on the bar tab, my impressions would've been a hell of a lot more detailed:

"OMGZ, teh sxplosionsS!1 are amazin! like, ishot a guy abnd he just went son fier!"

I agree, though, the PC version might be the way to go for FC2 if you've got a good enough rig. Maybe it was just a matter of getting used to the controls at first. I remember that I felt a little uncoordinated when I first played COD4, especially speed running through the testing course at the start.

Damned loose night though, eh?

No problems man. Yeah, it would've been good to spend a bit of time on Last Remnant. The last RPG I played was Lost Odyssey, and I ended up spending around 65-70 hours on it. I can't really see myself spending that much time on an RPG again, simply because I won't have the time anymore. It's a pity, though, because Squeenix RPGs have always been one of my great loves.

Yeah, I know. It was a bit disappointing, but not all that surprising. I was more disappointed by the lack of Jade Raymond. Now *she* would've been someone to ask some questions of... or hopefully get a number from...

Ubisoft upcoming game impressions (4 years ago)

Hey guys,

Sorry in advance about the massively, massively long post, but I wanted to give you guys some detailed impressions on some stuff that I just checked out.

I just came back from a Ubisoft event where we got to play near-final and final builds of some of their new games, so I thought I'd give you guys my impressions of what they were like and what to expect from them:

Far Cry 2

In one word: Explosions.

The game handles somewhat like COD4 with the left stick being pressed in making you run, however to use a melee weapon you don't press B (now used for crouch), you have to change to your melee weapon and attack. You can get close to some people and press Y for a one hit kill with your melee weapons, which is pretty cool. This kinda thing will come in handy for levels where you're sneaking around villages at night.

I don't know much about the story, simply because I asked to be kept in the dark about it, however it's set in Africa, you're working to find this guy called "The Jackal" and you've got malaria. Because of this some of the story gameplay can be affected by your malaria, plus some of your stuff (ie. guns and cars) can break down or jam (only if you've taken the guns from your enemies, the ones you buy don't jam).

The coolest thing about the game, though, is the explosions and the fire. One of the first things I did early on in the demo was got myself a rocket launcher and walked straight into a town that was supposed to be a cease-fire. The cease-fire ended when a rebel copped a rocket to the face. Hilarity ensued. The explosions are really amazing, and heaps of fun as well.

I later grabbed a molotov cocktail and set some grass on fire outside of a village. When I had surrounded nearly the entire village with flames, I waited near the only exit and picked off the enemies as they tried to escape the oncoming inferno.

I played a bit of the final multiplayer game as well, and it was pretty solid. It took a short time to get used to the control scheme (turning can be a bit temperamental at times...) but it was a pretty fun game. The game is mostly about the single player experience, though, not multiplayer.

Also, I saw someone quickly go through a bit of the map editor and it seemed pretty cool. I didn't get to play around with it much, but needless to say it's pretty mad. From what I heard, they started with the FC: Instincts editor and expanded from there.

Prince of Persia

This game is pretty f-ing rad. The cel shaded look works perfectly with the game. I couldn't hear much of what was going on, but I got to play through the demo level that they premiered at E3. Elika is a pretty cool sidekick and having her does change up the gameplay a fair bit. You control the Prince with Square being attack and X being jump, while all of Elika's moves are controlled with Triange. So in order to double jump, you first click X to jump with Prince and then Triange for Elika to make you double jump. Pretty cool.

Combat is very, very different to the Sands of Time series. A lot of it is about countering and using Elika effectively. I was able to get into a pattern of how to attack and kill the boss in the demo pretty quickly, but I was also told that there were a number of different skills that Elika had that could be unlocked later in the game. It'll be interesting to see the kind of things that they'll do with her, and even more interesting to find out what the story is with her.

Speaking of story, I got to see a little bit of the "corruption" that is your main enemy. Elika is used to purge areas of corruption after defeating bosses. This takes the world from grey and bleak to colourful, green and more alive. Plus then you can traverse the level to grab these light blue spheres that are used to unlock new abilities for Elika.

The only issue that I had (and that a couple of people said as well) was that every time you fall you are saved by Elika and taken back to the last ledge you were on. This pretty much means that you can't see a game over screen. It's similar to using the Sands of Time when you fell off a ledge, only that it saves you all the time instead of whenever you've got sand to use. I didn't have much of a problem with it, because it did take me a bit of time to come to grips with the control system at first (and thus feel off ledges a lot) but some people might feel like the challenge is being removed from the game if you keep getting saved whenever you make mistakes.

One other thing I learned was that the game is running of the Assassin's Creed game engine (which explains why it feels really, really familiar). You'll definitely be able to notice some similarities between the two when you get your hands on the game (which could be as early as the eGames expo, from what I was told).

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this game (almost more than FC2). Hopefully it sells better than Sands of Time did, because I reckon it could become an awesome series.

Rayman Ravid Rabbids TV Party

I didn't spend as much time on this (or any other games) as I did on FC2 and PoP. It seems like a mix between balance board games, crazy Rabbid-style minigames and a bunch of Warioware style microgames. The microgames come in the form of ads that happen in the middle of your game. This could potentially be annoying or disrupting, but when it happened to me I got a bonus of extra strength from finishing the microgame, so I think that they could come in handy, especially when competing against friends.

It feels pretty much like any Rabbids game does. Abso-freakin-lutely insane. The minigames are very fast, sometimes hilarious when competing against mates (there was one game where you basically ride a hog down a ski slope like a snowboard) and fun. I wouldn't say it's a must-have, like FC2 and PoP are, though.

The Last Remnant

I only watched someone playing this game. I can't see myself picking it up, even though I do love SquareEnix. The combat looked pretty slow and confusing. There was one point where the main guy got attacked by about 6 or 7 enemies in a row without having the chance to defend or do anything. I dunno, maybe it would've made more sense if I had've played it, but FC2 and its sexplosions kept calling me...

Shawn White Snowboarding

Again, didn't get around to playing this one. From what I heard, though, it's better on the X360 than the Wii. Could be a balance board issue, who knows. The X360 version looked a bit like SSX or Amped. A cool thing I saw was the ability to pick up snowballs and throw them at other players/NPCs. One guy hit an NPC from about 30-40m and he stacked massively then rolled. Pretty hilarious. I think that I'd need to probably spend a bit of time behind the controller for this one. The snow looked pretty sweet, but its how it controls that matters most.

Other tidbits

Here are a couple of other cool things I heard on the night:

- PoP and FC2 should be available to play at eGames Expo. At this stage, there might be a LAN setup of FC2 (similar to Resistance and Crysis last year)
- There might be a more recent demo coming out of PoP for eGames expo (ie. more recent than the E3 version... not sure if TGS had a new one or not...)
- I asked about Assassin's Creed 2 and the response I got was "Look, nothing has been announced, but there are always people who are looking for ways to take the game and improve on it in the future". Take that however you want.
- I Am Alive, being produced by Jade Raymond, probably won't be seen again for a while. They're pretty early in development at this stage, so I can't imagine they'll have it out before 2010.

Overall, it was a mad, mad night and getting to check out some of the new games was pretty awesome. I was shattered that I didn't walk home with a copy of FC2, but you can't have everything in life.

So in conclusion, FC2 and PoP are looking absolutely rad, so I'd say definitely grab FC2 when it comes out and (if you're in Melbourne) head to the eGames expo to check out PoP.

Re: This Week's Releases - 20/10/08 (4 years ago)

I was playing Far Cry 2 tonight at a Ubisoft event. Wow... blowing shit up has never been so much fun.

Re: URGENT - FOCUS TESTERS NEEDED - 2009 Cricket Title (4 years ago)

Assuming it doesn't clash with uni exams, I'll be there with my big VB sombrero and a 6 pack of cold ones. You can't play cricket games any other way.

Re: Movember (4 years ago)

My ability to grow facial hair is pretty poor, so I figure that I may do a different take on Movember and grow a mohawk. Any thoughts?

A friend of mine has decided to do Octobeard as well, which I thought was pretty epic. He's gunna shave off everything but the mo for Movember too, so he gets two months of facial hair madness.