Konami

I just love days like today! I was back in Ithaca for Yin and Lee’s awesome wedding. Being in the wedding kept me from taking too many photos on my own, but I’ll put up what I’ve got later. I had a fantastic time back in Ithaca and I wish them both the absolute best. Movies Too busy with weddings! TV The League - Always raunchy and hilarious. I really enjoyed the high school reunion episode when it aired and I liked it yet again. Excited for the return of this show. ...

This was a piece I wrote for Gamers With Jobs to try and score a writing gig. They ended up going with two other writers, so I figured I’d post what I wrote here. Enjoy. It was last month when I realized that something had gone terribly wrong . There were fifteen people in my apartment, maybe a tenth of them lifelong gamers, and they were all here to play video games. Most strange of all: there I was, microphone in hand, belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” in front of my friends. As my voice cracked on the high notes I wondered how I reached this point. Wasn’t I the same guy who refused to go to karaoke bars to avoid singing in public? Weren’t these people the same ones who scoffed at Final Fantasy and Halo? ...

Hey loyal readers, I need your help in deciding what game to play next. I haven’t quite gotten my polling software down, so here’s a nifty embedded poll instead. Basically, I want to continue to write impressions about games that I’m playing, but I don’t know which one to move on to next. A little about each of the choices: Earthbound (Mother 2) A fantastic, Dragon Quest-inspired RPG series by Shigesato Itoi, Earthbound is fantastic, quirky, and interesting. I played this back when I was in middle school, but I think it deserves reexamining. Ideally I would be hooking up my SNES, which I still have, to get this to work, so that would be an adventure in and of itself. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Let’s start with a little NSFW. Remember that game Left 4 Dead? Remember how Zoey was a great example of a non-sexualized hero, something Valve specializes? Remember no more, because diligent modders have released the Nude Zoey mod ( Kotaku story mildly NSFW, but no actual nudity in it). The designer of the mod wasn’t happy with just slapping on a nude skin, nope, apparently it wasn’t complete until Zoey featured realistic boob jiggle. Modders have too much time on their hands, perhaps? ...

I’m not a fan of the horror genre. Not even a little bit. The only “survival horror” game I’ve ever played was Eternal Darkness and, despite how awesome that game is, it scared the bejesus out of me in some places. Yet here we are again with another horror game tempting me with it’s interesting aesthetic. The Silent Hill series has always been the more “intellectual” survival horror game compared to Resident Evil, in that it relied more on psychological scares in places and was designed to reflect that. The enemies and locations were generated from repressed psychological instincts rather than just using standard horror tropes. Combat was never any good because the point of the game was that the protagonist was a regular Joe, not someone accustomed to fighting freakish monsters. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. E3 is a magical time for video games. So much news happened in this past week that this is gonna be an epic post filled with tons of trailers and news. In no particular order, here it goes: Look! A three-headed monkey! First off we have the Monkey Island news again. Tales of Monkey Island will be debuting next month (!) on 7 July from Telltale Games. Yes, it’s super exciting…yes, Telltale has proven that they can have moderate success and timely release with episodic adventure games…but I don’t feel the humor of Ron Gilbert in the trailer. ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. 2K has been silent as to whether or not this will be localized, but here’s the latest trailer on my favorite baseball series: MLB Power Pros! Bring this stateside 2K. There’s a dedicated fanbase that will buy it.

The Dark Knight I saw The Dark Knight twice on Blu-Ray this week and after three viewings, this movies still undoubtably holds its own as the best movie in the summer and even fits into my top five of all time. What Christopher Nolan did with this movie was incredible, creating a superhero movie that feels decidedly not like a superhero movie (in that nothing that happens in it is that far beyond what you’d see in any action movie), and still retains a sense of cinematic integrity and depth beyond any Batman movie before it (save, perhaps Batman Begins). ...

It’s time for the moment many of you have been waiting for: my review of Hideo Kojima’s epic masterpiece: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain story spoilers. Read at your own risk! Operating mostly on the basis of a promised beautiful, cinematic, amazing future of games, the PS3 launched back in November of 2006 with many of its purchasers anxiously awaiting the arrival of one specific game: Metal Gear Solid 4. Arriving quite some time later, is this the game to finally make the PS3 a worthwhile purchase? Let’s have a look. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out in a few short weeks and it will be the end of an era. Twenty years of Metal Gear and we’ve finally hit the end of the series. :sigh: What a great time…wait, what? Video game news has been abuzz since about last week when Konami made it clear that there will, in fact, be a Metal Gear Solid 5, despite Kojima’s statements in the past that MGS4 would be the last MGS game ever. While gamers are used to having Kojima claim to be done with the series permanently, they certainly didn’t expect to see another announcement so soon. ...