Too Successful or Mega Fail?

It looks like Microsoft has decided to extend its Games for Windows Live Spring Sale for the Personal Computer. Not sure if this is a sign of their success from last month's sale or perhaps this is just an indication that they were not able to generate enough revenue from it but who cares as long as I am going to benefit from the extension! The sale will reveal 3 featured games for the next several weeks. Going for the stingy route again, this week's special is Red Faction: Guerrilla for half the price. Please let it be Dirt 2 and the Fallout 3 expansions for the next two offers!

Come on, you can do better than this Microsoft!

3 New & Delicious Nintendo Rewards!

Nintendo just added 3 awesome new rewards for Club Nintendo members so it's time for you to sit your butt down and complete all of those Post Play surveys just so that you can get enough coins to purchase them all! My favorite out of the three is the Mario 3-Poster Series that follows the design mentality of Nintendo's previous poster offering featuring The Legend of Zelda. I hope to see more of these kind of posters in the future! There is also Game & Watch Collection 2 for the Nintendo DS which include Octopus and Parachute plus a new game featuring a concoction of both of those games! Less exciting is Grill-Off with Ultra Hand!, a Wii mini game where you have to remove steaks off the grill onto the plates using gesture based controls. It looks a bit silly but it could be fun and it costs only 80 coins! One thing for sure though, Nintendo did a great job on the little commercial for the game that can be seen on the game's official website. I am glad that I held off from ordering something the last time I was on the Club Nintendo site. Thank you Nintendo for the cool new rewards!

Achievement scores and Trophy counts should be used as reward currency!


Offbeat humor at its best.

Demigod Co-Op: A Heroes of Newerth Hope!

There is just something about tower defense team versus strategy games on the Personal Computer that turns a lot of people into raging maniacs and rude lunatics. Many tales tell the story of how unforgiving the community is on Defense of the Ancients and how they are able to spread their seeds of evil into games like Demigod and Heroes of Newerth. I have played latter two games and boy the ratio of friendly matches to criminal-level abusive matches is 1:100. What's more disturbing about the rude people in Demigod and HoN is that they self-destruct on their own team mates when they should be focusing on their opponents.

I have played my share of online matches on Demigod when I first picked it up. After realizing that high rudeness encounter ratio mentioned previously, I stopped playing the game online entirely. I then exclusively play the game offline with my dumb A.I. teammates - it's really strange how your team A.I. is significantly dumb compared to how smart they are on the opposing team - but hey, you won't see me yelling and cursing on the top of my lungs or typing out curse words from the frustration. Playing with the A.I. gets a bit lonely though, so two nights ago, I decided to go online. Instead of joining the player vs. player matches, I opened my own "co-op" game room and set the matches to human players versus the computer. I was able to get two full games going and guess what - I have never met people this friendly in this game before like they were during the co-op matches I created. I suppose when your stats is not in jeopardy and you are fighting against the A.I., all of that fear, hate, and murderous intents just dissipate. For the first time in these online games, I see people joked around and "lol"ed while playing it. When someone died, I didn't see the "oh you idiot" message anymore. This behavioral change made me a bit hopeful that IF it is possible to set bot matches in the finalized release of HoN, I may be able to find fun of playing that game online.

And the best thing about this is that you still get rewarded with online Favor Points!

Speaking of HoN, I played the game two days ago as well just to check out if the community has changed due to the open beta phase. The answer? No. Two of the three matches were horrifically filled with abusive people. Heed this advise: if you haven't mastered this game to perfection - if there is even such a thing when the new tutorial indicated otherwise - do not join a "Match Making" game even though this mode matches you up with 9 other solo players. During the first minute of the game, everything I did was questioned rudely. I didn't honor them with an answer and when I realize that the abuse wouldn't stop, I just dropped out of the game. This game records the instances when you quit before a match is over, which in turn will prohibit you from joining games with a "No Leavers" requirement but believe me, I rather have that than voluntarily subject myself to constant harassment.

Don't touch that!

Of course the best solution for these games' problematic online community is to play with friends and I need to find them because I enjoy playing these two games enormously. With the "co-op" success I had with Demigod - I am going to try and recreate these friendly matches on a periodic basis - there may be hope for HoN after all.

New Game Alert: Sakura Blossom Edition!

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is the latest entry to the the very popular Sakura Taisen series from Sega. This is the first time ever that a game in the series receives a domestic release in North America. After more than a decade of drooling and fantasizing about playing a proper Sakura Taisen game - I have only played the Columns-inspired spin-off - I just can't believe that Sakura Wars is here! The game is released for both the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii. If you have the choice, get the PS2 version for the extra goodies included in the game's current "Premium" packaging: you'll get a cute poster, a separate game disc with the original Japanese voice-over, a glorious art book presented as an authentic theater brochure, and a really, really thick instruction manual. For those who are not familiar with the Sakura Taisen series, it is a strategy role playing game with heavy mech combat and a risque dating simulation element: you can probably see why it was so hard to get this game localized outside of Japan. The new cast in this game - judging from the manual and the cover art - are not as attractive as those find in the previous game with my favorite being Maria Tachibana but they are your archetypal anime girls with one of them being extremely androgynous. Please make sure that you support the domestic release of this legendary Sega brand by picking up this game soon! Its success may lead to the eventual releases of the series' previous entries!

This game takes place in America so it's typical that the Japanese
developer would choose a ditsy Texan girl as the game's prominent character.

Linux Gone, Trophies In!

Linux users may not be happy with Sony's decision to remove Linux support on the older version of the PlayStation 3 console via today's firmware update (v3.21) but at least Sony is gracious enough to add a secret content within that firmware. In case you still don't know it - which only means that you hardly ever go there - PSN Home now contains trophies to unlock, which include as many as 5 easy Platinums. You got that right - five! Heck, just visiting your own personal space for the first time after the update will provide you with a Gold trophy! Many trophy whores will enjoy the challenges provided by Sony to unlock these and they include ridiculous things like:

a) dancing for 1 minute at every Home space.

b) visiting a friend's apartment.

c) standing still for 5 minutes.

d) watching previews from the theatre.
e) adding others to your friend's list.
f) decorating your personal space.
...and many more!

It's no longer the official Achievement/Trophy Whore Month but let the whoring commence!