What's shiny black and desperately trying to get cheaper?

A price drop for the PS3 is a good thing for everyone, except Sony.

The first reaction I get from that comment is how more PS3s will increase potential game sales. This is true, but also a gamble. If you look at it from Sony's perspective, it is not an easy decision.

The PS3 went on sale with a value bundle version compared with other consoles in order to serve the user a more encompassing solution. There is little doubt this was done very well with blu-ray, built in wireless, included hard drive, battery-less controllers, free online services, etc. With all this great stuff jammed into our shiny little black box, the initial price of production increased.

It took until January of 2009 that the PS3 hardware began to become profitable. This profit is not large by any margin. The PS3 took loses of almost two billion into the fiscal year of 2007. This kind of loss does not make anyone happy, especially the share holders.

So now the question Sony has to ask is, "should we sacrifice the little profitability we have now for the gamble of a larger install base for game software sales to pick up the slack?" I do not gamble, and I'm pretty sure Sony's executives are not going to take this kind of gamble against their jobs in this economy. For a company, and job security, it just makes sense to hold onto the little profitability you have at the moment. With a hot lineup of exclusive games hitting this year as well, Sony has a number of reasons for consoles to sell themselves. It just sucks that you have to pay for them.

A quick moment of RE5 OMGWTF

Just wanted to post a quick picture from last night early this morning.



Yes, that is 54 deaths. 54 times of pressing 'X' to begin another session of torture. 54 times of wondering when will the pain end. This is one of the last bosses on Resident Evil 5 on Professional difficulty after a full day of work and a morning of no sleep but more determination than a wall street executive trying to suck as much money as possible from a stimulus bill.

Introducing Antoninus to Shiny Quarters

Hello, world. Dee-jay Antoninus is in da house, yo-yo. I'm gonna break it down to ya. These blogs written by my friend and companion, Tashpool - well - they were pretty good. But now the real man is in. And he's kicking ass and taking names. And the girls love me. No, strike that. Everyone loves me.

Now that I'm finished with my narcissism and with my convincing you that I'm saving lives by not pursuing a career as a D.J., I'd like to introduce myself. I'm the all-powerful, all-omniscient gamer Antoninus. But really, I'm humble. I know everything, but I am humble. I've been gaming since the days of the NES and the 80's, and I'll be publishing stories about PS3 games, PC games, XBox 360, and all the times I get to light Tashpool on fire in an online internet game. He is not very flame retardant. I hear that lighting Tashpool on fire makes for a good fireworks show. You should get to know him and try it some time.

Tashpool and I have been playing Resident Evil 5 in co-op mode, and nothing is quite like feeling guilty for killing so many African zombies and making us feel like complete racist jerkfaces. I wonder how other culture zombies feel, like Japanese zombies and Caucasian zombies. Anyway. Tashpool and I will report our adventures soon. Until then, ciao.

Nothing says Action RPG like making out in a golden bikini!

Here are two new Japanese commercials for the upcoming action RPG on Wii, 黄金の絆 Ougon no Kizuna or Golden Bonds. The first one with the golden fish isn't too interesting. The second one with the golden bikini couple is a bit more, well, different. Let's just say I'll never ride the bus the same way again.


This seems to happen pretty often since no one on the bus takes any notice.

Here is some more information and screen shots from Famitsu last year (click for the screen shots, this is a Japanese only web page). Looks like a cross between Shadow of the Colossus and Zelda Twilight Princess.

Chun-Li invades Playstation Home

Now for ONLY five dollars, you too can dress to impress with hair buns and legs of sexy thunder! Or you can buy pieces of Chun-Li's outfit, mix and match, and make home look like a rave for the confused clothing designer in all of us.


Sadly, that neon reflection is due to my camera and not some uber cool effect in Home.

Looks like every piece of Street Fighter flavor is going for a dollar. This is double the price for most of clothing being sold in the Threads store in Home (with some exceptions). Is a wig of Guile worth a whole dollar to you? If I could get my hair to stand up like that in real life I would easily pay a thousand. For an avatar in an online world, well, that's a whole different question.

Right now the guys can choose between Ryu, Ken, and Guile outfits. While the ladies can only choose Chun-Li. Personally, I'm waiting for the Sakura school girl outfit to come out. What? It has nothing to do with the short skirt, she's my favorite Street Fighter character. Really!

Lastly, there is a whole new room devoted to Warhawk that has opened up.


Welcome to Warhawk central.

Upon entering the room, there are info terminals along the side of the wall. Simply press X to enter them and start reading. Then you can press every fraking button trying to figure out how to get out with no luck until you realize the start button pulls up a menu for exiting. The "Start" button. As in, I want to start to get out? This is a bad button config. I wonder why Sony lets Home developers drink on the job.

The best part is the sandbox table for planning out Warhawk strategies. The first person on the table gets a long menu on the left side of their screen that allows them to place markers and troops from each warring side on the different maps available. Any other user who views the table there after becomes a spectator of the action.


It helps when Ryu and Chun-Li know what the frack their doing.


Finally got Ryu and Chun to go make out in the other room and leave the planning to someone who actually plays Warhawk.


As you can see the green arrow will come behind and destroy the red tank.


Blue Squadron Echo, you will drop off the pizzas at home base. Bravo will meet you with the payout and tip at 1900 hours.

All in all, this is a pretty sweet FREE update. You get to play commander on a big table and laugh at all the retarded Street Fighter mix and match characters. I hope in a future update, there is an option to upload a youtube type of animation for friends and clan members to view your Warhawk game strategies. Or a Sakura update. Yeah, that would be swell.

Hadouken!

So, I went ahead and picked up my copy of Street Fighter IV. Needless to say, non-stop fighting ensued afterwards for the most part.

I'm happy to say that the game is all that I had hoped for. SFIV is has gone back to it's roots and plays more like the the old school SFII games as opposed to the crossover games that everyone seems to love.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like those crossover fighters just as much as the next guy, but this is refreshing. Street Fighter IV doesn't rely on insane combos and flashy tag attacks that happen every 10 seconds. No "dial-a-combos" that lots of other games do. Instead, its gone back to the technical glory that it was once all about. You string together what you can manually and the game just feels much more tactical.

Okay, pretty much to sum it up in as few words as I can, Street Fighter IV is, well, Street Fighter. Despite the fancy new graphics and a few new gimmicks, this game is the 2D fighter that we all came to know and love from back in the day. The one that most people would credit as the fighting franchise that created the fighting game fan.

As far as complaints that I have for the game? The last boss. Maybe its just me, but he does seem horribly over powered after you beat him the first round. Seth just seems broken. Second, complaint? The inability to "quick continue." Do I really have to go back to the character select screen only to choose the same character again during arcade mode? There really should be an option to just continue with the same character after a loss. It really does save on the loading time.

At anyrate, go buy the game if you're any sort of self-respecting fighting fan. Its good. I promise.

Gaming plus Mac equals painful

In case you did not know, QuakeLive is, well, live. Well, at least for anyone on a windows computer. *grumble*



:(
Me and my mac are going back to newgrounds.com, where all computer types are accepted. -iMac slowly cries in it's sleek aluminum shell, without anti-virus software, and kick butt Unix internals-

Wall Street Fighter 4 - so bad, it's good!

Hilarious!

のびのびBoy - NOBY NOBY BOY first impressions

What is NOBY NOBY BOY?
It's a cool casual game where you take BOY, and stretch him anyway you wish. It's kooky, quirky, and pretty fun actually. Aside from stretching you eat up just about anything you can see and fart it out if you are not stretched long enough, like a snake, to hold it. Yes, I realize how bizarre this sounds.

One neat feature is the ability to create movies inside the game. You can create regular movies and also link up directly to a youtube account and upload with no hassles. Check out one of my first movies playing the games,



Another interesting feature is the relationship of BOY, SUN, and GIRL. As the player takes the role of BOY, you stretch him as far as he can and report your progress to SUN (which you can reach by flapping your arms and flying high enough!) SUN then tallies your length AND all the other players of NOBY NOBY BOY that are signed onto the PSN network and updates a world wide length. This length stretches GIRL and when she gets long enough, GIRL will be stretched far enough to reach the Moon and eventually other planets as well. Each new planet gives the player a new area to explore in. I'll write some more feedback as I get more into the game. That's going to be hard though since I have Flower on my to do list as well.

If you're looking for something simple and easy to play you can't go wrong with NOBY. It's a quick five bucks in the States and that can't even buy you a movie ticket anymore.

I Hate Resistance 2

Is Resistance 2 a good game?
Hell yeah!

Why is that?
Truck fulls of Chimera (the alien looking bad guys with six eyes - could you imagine how silly they look in glasses?) to shoot, explode, and gib. Not to mention an above average single player campaign, cooperative class online play, and some deathmatch throw in for flavor.

So why the title about hating Resistance 2?
Well, this is the ending of a typical game for me,



16 wonderful kills in that game!

I still don't get why you hate Resistance so much?
Ok, let's look at my all time stats here,



2,106 total kills. Which means, I only need, 10,000 - 2,106 = 7,894 for the final fraking 10,000 kill trophy! It's the last one I need for platinum.

In other words, if I made 100 kills each day, it would take me 79 freaking fraking days to make that quota! Now the game IS good. But it is NOT 79 days good.

There are also a number of issues with online competitive play that just strip the fun out of your day. You have auto aim turned on in multiplayer and without a mouse you're pretty much screwed if someone comes from behind you; you can bet that's going to happen quite a few times in large games. Also, most of the weapons only marginally help in some levels so I haven't switched from the carbine/rocket launcher combo for weeks now. Lastly, you have a meter that you must fill to trigger a special ability. You would think it would fill up faster when you are killed in order to give the player a small boost back into the game. Of course not. Those who do most of the killing, get to select the rocket launcher sooner and kill you just that much faster.

Did I mention you can't select the rocket launcher (which is a one hit kill weapon by the way) until after you hit level 15 in competitive play? In other words, any n00b who tries to join now will enjoy eating a rocket with a healthy dash of frustration until they get killed enough times to level up.

I know trophies are not mandatory. Personally though, I take a lot of pride in thoroughly finishing a game. Having one last trophy sit out there is a frustrating thing for me.

The online play is fast and easy, but it's just too easy and the game is setup to reward those who have been playing in excess of days instead of forming a team ensemble. So if you're like me and want to hit up every trophy available, save yourself some pain and look elsewhere. I fraking hate Resistance 2 and its unreasonable many month expected playtime for average competitive online play.