Marc Kusnierz | Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 9:52PM Seriously. No joke. This is a "real" game and I heard about it, but seeing it in action is just priceless. What more do you need from me, just watch the video. Don't think about it, just do it.
DO IT
Marc Kusnierz | Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 5:27PM 
How cheap you may ask? Real cheap, like free cheap. At GameFest 2008 today Microsoft announced that GFW Live, the PC version of XBL, will be completely free. The service used to be free only to those who had a XBL account, but now it's free for everyone. This change will affect all GFW-Live games: past, present and future.
Microsoft also announced plans to introduce a XBL Marketplace type system for GFW-Live as well. So it will feature the usual content like demos, trailers and DLC etc. You can expect to see those changes sometime in the Fall. I think this is a great idea, but it may be a useless change now. Steam has really gained a lot over GFW-Live and I don't know if there is any honest chance for the service anymore. Only time will tell, but right now they're headed in the right direction.
Linkage: GFW-LIVE Now Free
Marc Kusnierz | Monday, July 21, 2008 at 8:30AM 
ALIVE AND LAUNCHED. Go and check it out!
Love it.
Hold it.
Squeeze it.
Just friggin' go to it.
Marc Kusnierz | Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 7:22PM 
For those of you who may not know...there is a new gaming site called Giant Bomb that was started up by Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis and co. It was originally in a blog-like form while they were getting the "real" site ready. I noticed earlier today that the site was down and it wasn't hard to figure out why. I just recently checked back and now they officially have a "landing shortly" filler page.
I have been watching over the site since it's birth, it's little baby explosion. I'm hoping that things go well for the guys over there and I hope the community is better than what you find in other places (trolls can suck it!). Below is some linkage of explosive sausagely goodness.
Giant Bomb Viddler(Videos duh)
Marc Kusnierz | Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 2:20PM 
Siren: Blood Curse is a survival-horror game that will be coming exclusively to PSN (Japan will be getting a retail version as well). There was a Siren game for the PS2 and Blood Curse is a new and original story shown with the same style and design as the original.
The big selling point is that you take control of multiple characters and see the story unfold through multiple points of view. It’s a very interesting idea, but the demo didn’t elaborate, or show any of this particular aspect...probably because the demo was about 12 minutes long. The length of the demo may seem like meaningless information, but it's actually quite important. The fact that this game will only be downloadable(import!) worries me. The demo was very short, but it still came in at over 500MB. If the full game was about 6GB in size then it would not only take up a nice hunk of space, but also take a decent amount of time to download. The download speeds on PSN have not been that great and if that doesn’t change I can’t personally see myself downloading a file that big.
Before worrying about file sizes etc, it’s probably best to say whether it’s even worth the thought of download first. The game is very boring from what I played and the way episodes are set up is very strange. I am assuming that the episodes will be a grouping of missions like the two (missions) featured in the demo. The problem with this is that these missions take about 6 minutes to finish and you may get a few cut-scenes scattered in that short time period as well. It makes it very hard to get immersed into the game and it kept me from enjoying the experience. Besides that the game just isn’t much fun. It doesn’t do anything new and everything it does has been done better somewhere else.
All this game has going for it right now is the interesting storyline structure and the fact that it’s a “real” game that will be 100% downloadable on PSN. Having a story that is told through multiple points of view is an interesting idea, but that doesn’t matter if the story is garbage. The demo doesn’t give much away about the story, but if it’s a good story then this game may be worth a try. If the story is on par with the latest Indiana Jone movie...then I'd rather play Jumper again.
Sausageshots
Marc Kusnierz | Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 10:18AM 
Too Human is a game that is almost impossible to honestly preview. Unless I call it a masterpiece, a game that is better than the best parts of GTAIV and MGS4 combined, people will say, "I told you it sucked and came out of my pooper". Coming out with the impression that the game is "ok" and not amazing means that is bad to every single hater who bitched about the game(without ever playing it themselves). The game does have it's problems, but it also has some good aspects too.
The most obvious issue is it's camera. The fact that combat takes place on the right analog stick means that you can't use it for camera movement. This makes you a slave to whatever the camera wants to do and just makes things frustrating. The camera doesn't pose as much of a problem when you zoom out(there are 10 "levels" of zoom), but any angle close to your character is a problem. The presentation is also sub-par. The cut-scenes aren't awful(not everyone has Kojima's resources), but they are unpolished and uninspired. While I was watching the opening scene I couldn't help but say, "I've seen this all before in Mass Effect and it was better".
Not all is bad with the game. The combat system takes a little time to sink in, but when it does I found it to be very enjoyable. I can see it getting repetitive if you are doing the same exact thing for the entire game, as well as fighting the same enemies all the time. There is also plenty of loot(as promised) and while everything looks different and is unique; collecting loot isn't that rewarding. Every single piece of loot is a holographic disc lookin' thing and I never knew what I was picking up. The skill tree also didn't seem to be as deep as I expected, but I did only play through the first 45 minutes.
It's hard to really judge a game like this based solely on it's first hour. One of the game's biggest features, co-op, is not here. The demo features only one playable class(the Champion), and it's a class I would never personally choose. Overall my excitement level has dropped, but I am still going to give this game a chance. I wasn't left in awe of the game, but it didn't completely suck. It was an average game, but maybe with a little more time and some fine-tuning it can turn into a pretty good game.
*NOTE* I know that the other classes are unlockable in the demo, but that was unknown to me at time of this writing.
Sausageshots
Marc Kusnierz | Monday, July 14, 2008 at 8:02AM 
For those of you who may not know, the Too Human demo is now live and almost finished for me. The demo comes in at just under 1.1GB and other than that, I'm just happy that it is finally here.
*On a side-note*
Apparently I think this game is a masterpiece just because I haven't been a douche bag saying that the game sucks without ever playing it. I may end up disliking the game after trying the demo, but at least I judge a game myself, instead of claiming someone else's opinion as my own. This is completely off topic, but I hate it when people judge games without ever playing them. If you hear a game sucks, don't say that is sucks. Say that you heard that it sucks. Don't act like you've played it and that your opinion has any merit when it obviously means nothing. I sort of went off on a tangent there, but the download has finished to expect my preview soon.
Marc Kusnierz | Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 12:14PM I have never played a Tales game before Vesperia and that may be a good thing. The game does have so strong points, such as it's beautiful look. The game looks very nice and has great animation, but graphics can only take a game so far.
The story/writing seems to bad at it's best. This may be due to horrible translation, or maybe the writing is just that bad. Though I will say there are a few moments that made me laugh, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be laughing. The combat is also a mixed bag that could end up becoming a lot of fun, but as it is now, it's just too simple. The combat takes place in real-time and from what I played you simply just mash buttons. There is no depth and nothing to do besides pressing the same two buttons over and over again. I'm sure that changes and you progress through the game, but the demo did not show me anything of that nature.
The game does have it's problems, but the foundation is there for Vesperia to become a good game. It will just take a little balancing here and there and maybe an attempt at some better dialogue. Just watch the video and you'll see how awesome the writing truly is in this game.
Marc Kusnierz | Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 1:01AM Honestly I don't even know what to say about this latest "trailer" for Sonic Unleashed. It is weird; It makes no sense. They have honestly found a way to lower my excitement level as well. I am left speechless after watching this ridiculous video...it is actually worse than the "E-surance" Mirror's Edge trailer that recently came out.
It's bad. Really bad...like mayonnaise pudding bad.
Marc Kusnierz | Friday, July 11, 2008 at 11:23AM The Max Payne series has always been a favorite of mine and not just because I support Rockstar. The games had a great noir style to them and were a blast to play. When I first heard that they were going to make a movie based on the series I was pretty excited. Max Payne is basically a game that took most of it's inspiration(if not all) from a variety of films. It's a game/series that was essentially based on a specific sub-genre of film and instead of making another film they made a video game. I started to get even more excited when I heard Mark Wahlberg was cast as Max Payne. He is probably the perfect actor for the role and I remember picturing him as Max Payne when the first game came out.
The first trailer has finally surfaced and I found it to be well done overall. The vibe of the series seems to be intact, though the "angel"(?) did seem a bit out of place. Religion has always been a part of the series, but I can't remember anything to that extreme in the games. There were a few hallucinations featured in the games, but none ever dealing with angels etc; at least not from what I can recall. That part of the trailer did seem out of place, but at the same time I thought it looked interesting. Also...you only see her for a glimpse, but the actress playing Mona Sax seems to be dead on as well. I was pretty sure from that brief shot that it was Mila Kunis(from That 70's Show fame) and that's been confirmed from the film's IMDB page.
Anyways, here is the trailer for you viewing pleasure and be sure to remember one thing. 1 + 1 = 2 and therefore you love sausage too!