All Game Reviewers Suck. Except Us. Well.....

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It's been a long, long, long October guys. But we've been totally busy! From Extra Life to Left 4 Zelda to The First Impressions to some of the personal things we've gotten through, we've been doing a lot of stuff for you guys. One thing that totally comes to mind is the recent stuff for first impressions.

Now, If you haven't listened to our first impression stuff yet, that's cool. I'll give you a quick rundown of the entire thing. We talk about games that have recently come out and I give a small little review based off of what I've seen and played so far. In no way shape or form is it a full fledged review. Usually, I have the game for about a hour or a day. When I do give reviews, I would wholeheartedly give a fair and honest review to what I would think the game deserves. I'm no fan of the number scale, I would much much rather tell you to get the game or pass by it. I would think that's totally fair. I'm only going off my own experiences. I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks that the original Assassin's Creed was miles better then any of the sequels that came out or someone that thinks that the original Uncharted is more action-packed then Uncharted 2. It happens all the time. We should however, clear the air really really quick.

We are not, the end all, be all.

There is way too much behind the scenes when it comes to gaming for me to say without a shadow of a doubt that "professional" game reviewers aren't some sort of bias when it comes down to publishers and their games. A event comes to mind back in 2007. Jeff Gerstmann gave a overly negative review of Kane and Lynch, a pretty big Eidos title . It wouldn't have been a huge issue except that Eidos at the time was shelling out a huge ton of money towards the ads of Mr. G's home website, Gamespot. When the review dropped, Eidos threatened to pull promotional ads for the present and the future if action was not taken. Instead of Gamespot not backing down, They fired Mr. Gerstmann instead. I've made clear to people that I actually enjoyed bits and pieces of Kane and Lynch but it wasn't a stellar game by any means. As a gamer, you don't want to hear drivel shoved in your ears, you want to hear the truth. Truth was that Kane and Lynch couldn't cut it as well as we all would have hoped. Fast forward 4 years later, and EA has been shown, when asking for reviewer copies, getting a little more personal information then really needs to be like "Has the reviewer reviewed _______ before? What score did it give receive Does the reviewer like FPS's? etc." It may not seem like much, but it was a ton of information for a "PLZ give free game". On top of all that, a ton of reviewers a couple days prior to Battlefield 3 launching decided that the PC game and the console game should be reviewed separately, due to EA insisting that there was no possible way to gauge a console release since there was going to be a day one patch on the consoles. Like dolts, they all did just that. Now, don't get me wrong. BF3 deserves a crystal clear shot at greatness. However, there are plenty of games that get day one patches. What made BF3 any different?

Youtube Reviews, you're not out of the woods either. Youtube is the biggest soapbox out there and everyone inspires to be a AVGN or insert some crazy equivalent here. However, for every well thought out review, there's 10 that are just plain strange with reasons being "I don't like X because it isn't Y." Or "This game just sucks. I can't tell you why, but it just sucks." That doesn't help at all, genius. Explain WHY this game isn't all that great. Explain why I shouldn't spend 60 on this wonderful game that is wowing the crap out of me. But then again, It's Youtube. Everyone can be great on Youtube with enough effort.

And then there's us. TCPS. We make no point in sugarcoating anything (hence the explicit tags on our podcast) and the witty banter often goes unchecked and we're not exactly the spot to go to for immediate go to news. If you're looking for unbias, we'll try hard as hard as we can, but try telling Megan that when Zelda: Skyward Sword comes out. We are, however the spot to go to if you want to hear two seemingly normal but totally not normal at all adult talk about gaming old and gaming new. We are the spot to go to if you want to watch Megan find her gaming childhood one NES game at a time. We're random and we're damn proud. That's our charm. We're not exempt at all from bias, but I'll tell you upfront when we're totally bias.

You know who's the best game reviewer of all time? YOU. Only you know who you really like. You see a game. Think it looks cool? Spend the money and cop it. Who gives a damn what Game Joe gave it or Snoozepro? Who knows, you may find yourself with a hidden gem. Reading up on reviews, I thought that Bionic Commando 2009 was terrible, but when I got my hands on it, it turns out not to be a bad game at all. Reverse for Dead Island where people were touting that game to be amazing, and I thought it to be pretty bland and not that much fun, even with multiplayer. Sometimes it just pays off to just dive in head first and pick a title. If it wasn't diving in headfirst, I would have never played some of my favorite games of all time. Including Chrono Trigger.

I don't think Final Fantasy is the best game ever, nor do I think that Hunted was the worst game I've played this year. No, that's reserved for MindJack and Call of Juarez: The Cartel. No matter what we think, however, make your own judgement. Too many great games get missed because people are too afraid to have fun and draw their own conclusions. If you want some sort of hilarity with your reviews, stick with us. Come for the games. Stay for the conversation.

Strife out.

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No More Heroes and the Waggle War

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Suda 51 is the shit.

For those of you who don't keep up with your game directors, Suda is the wonderful director for games such as Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, Killer7, Fatal Frame IV and the wonderful No More Heroes. To give you a brief summery, you play as Travis Touchdown, a nerd whose new mission is to defeat the top ranked assassin in his new job of killing everyone in his way. It's rude, it's vulgar and best thing of all time, I love and it's one of the best games on the Wii. Hands down.

PS3 is getting a port of the wonderful part one this summer, so I gave the Japanese version a shot.

But before I get into that, let me give a little bit of info on the waggle war.

Back in 2006, Nintendo launched the Wii, the thing that would soon single handedly destroy their competition for at least 3 years. With it's innovated motion control gaming, it stood on the top of the mountain and laughed at Sony and Microsoft. Both Sony and Microsoft came out and called the Wii's gaming "cute" but none of them could topple the giant. That is, until 2010. Sony released the Playstation Move. It looked just like the Wii, but with wireless nunchuks and a ball on top of the remote. Microsoft released the Kinect the same year touting the tagline "You are the controller." The Kinect sold a lot more then the Move did, but aren't we all forgetting that Both competitors came up with such technology to cut into the Wii's success? And whatever system has the better games is completely to the eye of the beholder because the three consoles have their quality games:

Kinect has Dance Central, a pretty big flagship of a game.

Move has Resident Evil, SOCOM, NBA2K, Killzone, and a few other games that can use the move.

Wii Has your Mario, Zelda, Metroid and other misc games that are just awesome.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you are into. I, personally, have a Move and a Nintendo Wii. There's nothing that interests me on the Kinect. I don't care for Dance Central and that's just about it as far as "good" games. I have a Move and Killzone was awesome to play on it as well as Resident Evil 5. The Wii gets the most playtime just because I like the quirky games to come out on it. Trauma Center Series. Madworld. TVC. Brawl. Other M. No More Heroes.

*Sigh* No More Heroes.

I love the game, but it doesn't flow as well as it should on a system on the ps3. It struck me as colorful, vibrant, and just as cartoony as the world that it was depicting. On the PS3, The graphics are much better, but it became a darker world in the process and I found myself missing the little things in the game. The Control scheme for this game should have been easy, but it just feels like they were a compiled mess. The game was indeed, made for the motion controls and it should have never been stuffed into a controller. Towards the end of the first boss, I just felt frustrated and mad that half of the moves that I could easily pulled off on the Wii were getting me killed on the PS3. I can see this being playable for US audiences only if you're going to be using the PSMove. If you're looking for getting this one, make sure that you have the move.

Travis Touchdown fumbled on this port. If this is the way that we're going to handle ports from now on, we should have No More Heroes.

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Prinny Invades my Game Difficulty, Dood.

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So, The 3DS is awesome, but it's sitting in a corner right now. My A.D.D attention span (and not wanting to get up) has drawn me to another game.

Prinny. Yeah. The Peg-legged penguins from Disgaea have their own game. And it's fucking awesome. It's a normal platformer game that gives you 1000 lives and says "finish me". Sounds like overkill? It's not. The Difficulty is rammed up to 11 and you'll need every single one of those lives. And that's only the easy difficulty. On hard, it's one hit kill-ville, and it's population you. I've have yelled obscenities, thrown the PSP, and overall made people hate me as a neighbor, but I've had more fun with this game then I have in a long time. Mostly because this game has kicked me in the balls and laughed at me while I'm in pain.

For me to say that I like difficult video games is a general assumptions. I like games with a challenge, which is more then I can say for 9/10ths of the games out there today. I know, I know, some of you are impressed with your Halo Legendary run through, but even that doesn't amount to how difficult games back in the day were. Try playing "Bionic Commando". No, not the remake. The old one with a life bar that you had to earn. That was hard. How about "Ninja Gaiden?" And yes, the new one was crazy difficult. Just like the old one.

In the days of emulation and save states, game difficulty has gone down a ton. I'm under the impression that few gamers that grew up on Xbox and Wii, don't really have a grasp on what difficult games are. When I play a game, I don't want to be able to breeze through it. I want to have a game that makes me feel like I've accomplished something by finishing it, not make me feel like I just wasted my time. There's not too many games like that out there like that.

Ghosts and Goblins was difficult. You got hit twice, and you died. Battletoads was incredibly difficult. TMNT was a bitch to finish as well. Contra: Hard Corps. Comix Zone. Castlevania. Games that weren't hard by going to options and clicking Very Hard; These bastards were difficult by design, and I think nowadays, games don't do that. People don't know about limited continues. They know about auto saving and quick aim.

You crazy kids get off my lawn, dood. Until then,

Bulletstorm, The Matrix, And Game Endings

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First off, I'm sorry for lack of updates. Things have been crazy on this side as of late, so I'm going to update twice this week to compensate.

I've pulled my foot out of people's ass in MVC3 long enough to put in Bulletstorm and finish through the campaign. Bulletstorm is a straight macho charged game resembling a FPS version of Epic's pride and joy, Gears of War. It was crude. It was charged. I've never heard so many creative references to a penis before. It was a bit on the easy side. The most important thing? It was a blast to play. There's a certain rush that you get (not to mention bonus points) when you drag your enemy (a la Scorpion) to your face, attach explosives to his neck, and kick him back to his co-horts and watching them all explode. (For the record, that one was entitled GangBang. Get it?)

Too bad the ending blew. Hard.

(Spoiler alert ahead but if you haven't seen The Matrix Trilogy, I'm sure you're on the wrong site.)

I remember being so excited about watching Matrix Reloaded. I'm sure I'm one of the many that genuinely enjoyed the movie while I was in the theater. "Oh man, the fights were pretty cool, Holy shit they got out of the ship. Neo's in a coma. Who is that....Oh man, it's Bane/Smith! What's gonna happen no...."

*Spits out Popcorn*

"What the fuck is this shit?"

Now, before I get tons of "WTF, some of the best games have this, you have no idea what you're talking about" mail, let me clarify. Sometimes, and under very rare circumstances would something end on a to be continued and it work. Especially with gaming. I could name of a couple off hand, but since some of them are on the newer arc, I'll refrain, but some of the older trilogies that come to mind are Halo, Prince of Persia (confusing as it was at the time), and Phoenix Wright just to name a few. Ending a game on a Cliffhanger that was a pretty epic thrill ride is one thing, but I can't help but feel like sometimes the developers use that as a cop-out nine times out to ten. It feels like a cheap sitcom saying "Tune into next week for the exciting conclusion to this $60 dollar game!" And just like The Matrix Reloaded, it promises big things and like it's anti-climatic conclusion, it often fails to deliver. I didn't pay $60+ Whatever DLC to have a friggin incomplete game. If a RPG did that, I'm pretty sure I'd develop a well written letter telling the company to fuck themselves.

I can understand cliffhangers, but when the game just ends with no amazing finish to it, it just feels rushed, incomplete and I drop the controller because now I have to wait however long the developers decide to stop milking their "Highly successful hit game" and actually finish my game. People are STILL waiting on a half life 3 and that's supposedly been in the making for years. You know, they decided that they didn't want to finish at that moment so they release half done. Movies can get away with it, but it's usually not for the best (See Matrix Reloaded) and with Television, it's almost expected and accepted. Games is a bit testy just because when we purchase a game, we expect a story. A beginning, a conflict, and it's dramatic, fun filled conclusion. Conclusion, being the keyword.

In Prince of Persia (The Sands Of Time series), The story telling was so epic, It could afford the cliffhanger ending at the end of Warrior Within. .The huge difference was that there was a conflict that felt resolved. Destroying the The Dahaka (or the hot chicka, can't remember her name) felt like a huge accomplishment. (Spoiler note, I found it really cool that no matter what ending you got, You cannot change your fate still rang true.) Half Life 2's ending on the other hand... depending on how you look at it, was a slap in the face for people who waited for 7 years for this game and have such a blah ending. Tack that on for people who played it when it first came out in 1998 and you have people who have been following this series for 13 years and is STILL waiting for a conclusion to a video game. You can't climax forever, Gamindustri. After a while, we all just stop caring and move on to something that's more filling. It's not me, Bulletstorm. It's you.

Oh, and the Matrix Revolutions can blow my balls.

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