Ion Storm was an interesting company. Its active presence on the market was relatively short, being founded in late 1996 and going belly up in early 2005. For being around nearly a decade there are only two games that most people think of when they hear the company's name. The overhyped and woefully underwhelming Daikatana from Ion Storm Dallas, including one of the most legendary and tasteless advertisements any game has ever had. On the flip side Ion Storm Austin produced the critically acclaimed instant classic Deus Ex. The company later produced a sequel to Deus Ex in 2003 and the third game in the Thief series in 2004, months before closure. Sandwiched between all of these was a game called Anachronox, releasing in 2001.
After the surprisingly fantastic experience I had with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon on the Nintendo Wii, I became curious about one of the other two Wii games with Clancy's moniker, H.A.W.X. 2. I have been aware of this series for quite a while but had never played one of the games. Much like Ghost Recon on the Wii, H.A.W.X. 2 is a game completely independent of games with the same title on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. With H.A.W.X. 2 I kept my expectations low and went in hoping for a low-rent Ace Combat rip-off. To a certain extent, that's what H.A.W.X. 2 is. So, is it worth checking out? Let's take a closer look.
Once upon a time, I was walking through an OfficeMax to get printer paper or some such, when I spotted the PC games cart. Do you remember those? This was sometime in 2004, so pretty much every store imaginable had some sort of budget or reduced price PC cart, and given the breadth and width of PC gaming at that point in time, the contents of the PC games cart were always a surprise, and this time was no different. From the middle I pulled out an orange "small box" PC game with the title, Konami Collector's Series - Castlevania & Contra (KCS-C&C) printed all over. Per usual, I had no idea what I was holding in my hands, though I was pretty sure it was a collection of pre-1990 PC ports of some of the most beloved classic console games, and that had me very excited.
I imagine you can see where this is going. Wait, wait, don't look it up yet; you will spoil the fun and possibly deprive yourself a good chuckle at my expense. The rest of you - well, you know what's coming.
This is in its own way a companion piece to the reflections in Zophar53's recent article, What is Nostalgia in 2018? I wanted to respond and take the conversation in a personal direction but I realized I needed the room to let my thoughts breath, so here we are.
Many of our collections, video games and otherwise, are initially based off some form of nostalgia. Mine is no exception. As I've referred to in past write-ups, it started with a simple childhood dream to own every video game so that anyone at our home could play any video game whenever they wanted (myself included!) Many years and a family of my own later, that has transformed into the desire to use the medium of video games integrated in our lives as ways to connect socially, unwind mentally, and develop conversations culturally. I am very pleased to say it has been generally successful. That said, of course there are games and systems I have a special fondness for due to my earlier time spent with them. Over time my greater connection has come from games I played with friends that I now keep in memory after their passing, and I imagine that to continue. I also have no doubt our children are building their own nostalgia from specific titles our family enjoys together.
I'm starting a sort of sub series to complement Review The PS2. In this sub series I'll be looking at PS2 games that are perfect sequels, games that outdo their previous installments in every possible way. Originally I was going to do Jak 3, but I ended up writing this one first. A second sub series was also going to accompany that video, and they're still in the works, so stay tuned for that.
Posted on Jun 13th 2018 at 12:00:00 PM by (Pam) Posted under video, analysis
With the recent release of God of War, I got to thinking about how many recent mainstream games have had you playing a father figure... and how few games let you play a as a mother. I go over a few examples of playable mothers, then expand the scope out to non-playable mother characters and the categories they tend to fall into in games.
Warning: If you're fussy about character spoilers, I talk about the fates of mothers in about 40 different games in this video. I don't think I've given away anything too shocking or unexpected though.
Atari was clearly trying to cash in on the fighting games craze of the early 90's, and Pit-Fighter was a bit late to the party, when it came to the Game Boy. That may have hurt sales, somewhat. What hurt sales even more was that this was not a good conversion. What was a reasonably fun, middling arena brawler in the arcade, had been reduced to a one-dimensional, low tech, mess of a fighting game that had very little going for it. And unfortunately, many kids and parents were probably duped to buy a copy of the game. Sadly, they weren't treated with a fantastic handheld gaming experience. Why do I say this? Watch the video, and learn for yourself all the shortcomings and "pitfalls" of this particular arcade port gone wrong. Enjoy!
In this third installment of Stuck in the 80's, Duke must dig through the recesses of his mind to uncover his memories of Transformers. Can he repair another time fragment? Watch and find out!
Before I begin, I want to give a small disclosure on this. Thoughts may be very disjointed and I may end up jumping around a bit as I remember some of the early parts of this story. This is partially because I'm writing after the fact for now and will be more linear as we catch up to now. On to part 2!
So, we left off when the house had no furniture, no food, but a Super Street Fighter 2 cabinet with Marvel vs. Street Fighter inside of it... Since then, there's been a lot of progress. We have replaced 2 light fixtures, swapped out the light bulbs for daylight LED in most of the house, and are starting to do some prep work on the bedrooms for painting.
One thing that I missed describing before was the back yard and how the previous owners left the house when we took possession. After what we've been seeing, it really explains a lot of what we've found along the way.
The day we took possession, we were told that they shut off the water because they found that the hot water line going to the laundry room was leaking after they removed the hoses. They shut off the main water line as well as the water heater. So, now we're in a new house with no water. My dad helped us replace the knob where the rubber seal had eroded away and now we can use the sinks!
They also mentioned to us that they had scheduled a bulk trash pickup for some things they didn't want to take with them. Unfortunately, they left all of it on the side of the house, not actually at the curb where, you know, the trash is picked up... So, as it was doing for most of April, it began snowing as we carried their stuff to the curb along with the boxes of trash left in the garage. Because of that, we also began dismantling a swingset that was in the back because it was held together with basically one bolt and rotting wood. If we're moving their trash, they can pay to haul some other stuff away.
The weather has since been warming up. One thing that we needed to do was take care of the leaves in the back yard. The previous owners just left them in the yard. My wife and kids did an awful lot of raking and bagging of leaves. I was amazed with just how many bags it took though. Our city offers a program where you can pay a one time cost to purchase a 95 gallon yard cart that you can put your leaves, small sticks, and things like that in and they will pick it up on your trash day. So, while the bags weren't absolutely necessary, they certainly helped speed up the process. The first round, we had probably 10 or so bags to go along with the cart. Over the next few weeks, we filled the yard cart as well as 60 bags of leaves.
Oh, under the leaves in back, we also found that they had left many trampoline poles behind the shed for us to take care of as well. Managed to get them to the curb for the bulk pickup. So, that was fun.
Now that the yard was cleaned up, it was time to do more work inside. Our home inspector did a radon test as a part of the initial inspection. If you are unaware, radon is a colorless, odorless gas that is radioactive and can cause cancer. My part of the country has pretty high levels as it is and the levels detected were over twice the levels where you should have a mitigation system installed. That was honestly not a terribly large expense in the grand scheme of things and was already completed. We also knew that we would have to install a new HVAC system. The furnace appears to have been original to the house from 1983. That installation is scheduled as well.
One thing that we requested was left as a part of our offer was the Nest thermostat and smoke/CO detectors. I've been researching various smart home pieces and if I could save some money by having them already there and installed, I'm all for it. Nest is a home automation platform now owned by Google. They started with a smart thermostat, but have since expanded to other smart home products like a security system, locks, and cameras as well as integration with other smart home products by other manufacturers.
To go along with the thermostat and smoke detectors, we went with the Nest Secure system. The up front cost is a little higher, but there are no monthly fees for any of the functionality. There is a monthly fee if you want to have 24/7 professional monitoring though. But, right now, we have one app that we can check the smoke detector batteries from, change the thermostat temperature, check if any of our exterior doors are open, and set an alarm that will go off and send a notification to our phones if it does.
The painting has started as well. My wife painted our bathroom and work has started on my oldest son's room. He is very excited to get his room painted because it means that he can start moving things over and decorating.
Spent a good chunk of time one Saturday replacing all of the exterior locks. The existing ones on a couple of doors were keyed on both sides, which is not only a pain, but also a fire/safety hazard. Plus, we put a smart lock on the front door as well. This lets us do a couple of things. We can send an electronic key to our friends or family if they would need to come in the house while we were away. We can also set times that the key is valid for, so we don't have to worry about someone coming in when we aren't expecting.
So, at this point, we have now painted all of the rooms we want to right away (kids' rooms, master bath, walk-in closet, and basement. This has allowed us to move most of our stuff from the old house over. We've now been staying in the house for over a week and have just moved the dogs over. Still need a little time to figure out where we're putting stuff for the cat and our sugar glider, but we still have a little time to work that out.
In the next part, I get to start the fun stuff: Cabling
I've been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. It kind of came to a head in the wake of watching the Ready Player One movie, but the kernels of my thoughts go back to the last handful of years. It's undeniable how fascinated people are with the concept. Every remake, re-release, prequel, sequel, and reference, we eat it up. Whether it's converting Tron to blu-ray with "never before seen" interviews, making a miniature NES that's effectively a Raspberry Pi with a few ROMs on it, or filling Ready Player One with every 80s pop culture reference Ernest Cline could think of, history has proven that people will buy into the phenomenon, but why is that? More importantly, what does nostalgia mean in a digital age where nearly every piece of media ever is available at our fingertips anytime we want it? Does the way we think of nostalgia need to change?
If you've paid attention to my gaming tastes over the years, it would likely be easy to peg me as a guy who loves old school, action games. I'm super comfortable with platformers, fighters, shmups, run 'n guns, and I've also got a soft spot for JRPGs. I tend to talk about these types of games the most, but there are some extremely modern genres that I enjoy just as much as those I grew up with. In this case, it's a the decision based, cinematic, story driven game Detroit Become Human. I have yet to play Indigo Prophecy, but have drawn a great deal of enjoyment out of Quantic Dreams previous titles, Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls. Based on my past experience with these two titles, as well as the intriguing setting of a near-future, pre-sci-fi world in which Androids have become common place in the homes and work forces around the U.S., I had no hesitation picking this one up day one to dig into.
Some ten or more years ago, a friend of mine and I spied a game on my shelf called The Warriors and decided to give it a shot. It was a game that we thoroughly enjoyed, with its fun combat, intriguing story, and interesting characters hooking us in until we finally rolled the credits. We enjoyed it so much that we drove to the local Circuit City (man, this was a long time ago) and picked up a copy of the movie of the same name that the game is based on, and we thoroughly enjoyed that as well. So fast forward to the present day, my friend and I once again scouring the shelves for a cooperative game to play, and we decided to revisit our old favorite, The Warriors, curious to see if it holds up after all this time.
[img width=700 height=24]https://i.imgur.com/N418D7u.png[/img] This snapshot was taken on 24/05/2018
For years I have found myself moving away from the mainstream gaming press, and even reaching the point of outright ignoring it. I could not mention the last time I went to any of the mainstream gaming press sites just to browse and see what news is coming out. The only time I end up there is seemingly by accident, browsing a forum, board, or group dedicated to an individual game or series that then links to a news release pertaining to the topic. Upon reflection of my own browsing habits and years of history I found that this relative ignorance of what the mainstream gaming press is actually saying pre-dates plenty of the recent major controversies. I was already years deep into this willful ignorance when Gamer Gate started to blow up. The exact reasons I started these habits are long forgotten, but with some time passing and new developments of the day, as well as the effect it had on everybody's browsing habits, then there might be more reasons than ever to justify the abandonment of the mainstream critic.
Join me for the stream of conciseness that is Neo's "A Brief Look At" series!
This month, we check out I Am Bread, a game where being toast is an aspiration! Sorry for the crazy crash at the end...more PC parts are ordered and bring installed as soon as they arrive.
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