Mario Kart Wii Sucks

written by owen, published 2009-Jun-11, comment

Here I will list reasons in my opinion why the Wii release of the popular series is probably the worst version ever;

• Bikes. Why would someone add a second type of vehicle into a game that is called Mario "Kart"? Not only that but make it so that they are faster and better handling than regular karts.

• Having 12 racers breaks the balance of the item distribution. You either have to be at the very last position or at first to be certain of what you are going to get in your item box. And even then you might get something that is of little help.
• The item distribution itself is broken. Try playing a 2 player vs match without the computer AI. What you will end up with are 2 racers trying to kill each other with bananas. If a gap is created between the players it is impossible to catch the other player because all you will get are bananas.
• Losing your hard earned item when you drop of a ledge, or get hit by lightning makes it impossible to maintain any kind of strategy when holding items or retaliating after being hit. You either got to use it as soon as you get it or pray that somebody in last place doesn't use a lightning. Item hording is a choice, removing it only make the game shallow.
• Stupid, superficial items. Why would you have a item in a game that when used has not effect on computer controlled players?
• Lack of realistic hit physics. Now I know, "realistic" may not be the appropriate word in this scenario but I remember when I hit a player with a red shell while he/she was in a power slide he would go flying off a edge into a hole. Yeah I know it is evil to do but it was fun and required exact timing. Now, nothing happens the person get hit, flies straight up in the air on the spot. Pure BS.
• Team Battles should be optional. In fact the whole battle mode is a mere shadow of what it once was.
• Blue shells that explode. I've read about this numerous times. The last thing I've noticed is that if the first place racer has already crossed the finish line then the blue shell comes after whomever is next in rank. Meaning a world of pain for those who just want to be left alone with their third place position.
• Having more over powered items in the game without removing the old items throws off the random item selection mechanic. I can't remember the last time I got a fake question mark box. While at he same time you get bananas, 3 bananas, 3 boost, single boost, gold boost, green shell, and tons of other stuff that becomes unnecessary now, because the only real item that can make you win is the Bullet Bill or Star. Every other item becomes a useless waste of space. Bomb, Green shells? useless.
• Something is off with the controls I can't really tell exactly but the rainbow track is awful to drive on.
• Poor hit detection on shells. Total travesty!
• The menus look very primitive.
• Power sliding seems to be made useless, not sure if its because of the track design or the handling of the vehicles but something is not right with it. People who can do manual power slides seems to have no advantage over the regular automatic mode.
• Tracks; I am not sure about these new tracks. They seem to interfere with the player more than necessary and have no good short cuts or places to jump across. The tracks in Mario Kart Wii seem more like site seeing trips rather than race courses. Odd bumps and distractions are all around. The Mario Track from the N64 version is probably the best track on the thing.

Basically the more you suck at Mario Kart Wii - the more you enjoy it.

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The DSi Sucks

written by owen, published 2009-Apr-15, comment

If you don't know what that means then feel free to ignore this post. For this post I'm just going to be dropping random thoughts and rambling wildly about the device that was recently released in America to cure cancer.

Nintendo is releases another gimped product.

• Yeah the Dsi is pretty much done as far as features are concerned. They should add GB, and GBA games to the shop. Apart from that in my opinion its the same as the DS lite which is pretty disappointing. They should have added some must have features such as rumble, and tilt detection (which when I think about it could be done by using the camera to watch the background). hmmm...
• I bet they could add GBA cart with a sd slot and new firmware to run the DSi operating system from the cart. f the cameras. but will they do it? nooooooo because the dsi is different not by much, but just enough to kill any hows hopes of merging the two while still allowing them to live side by side.
• i'm pretty disapointed with it as a upgrade. Its basically ds lite 1.2, wasted oppurtunity to produce something worth its money.
• The only useful feature I have seen is a very basic hack which is totally useless.
• It reminds me of the current gen DSi. But I guess people will still buy it - which is the problem. it reminds me in the sense of it being a half-assed/poor upgrade over the previous version of the same system. I mean when you compared NES->SNES (a real upgrade in everyway) to GB->GBA (more colors? faster processor? same buttons?). There needs to be new word for what they are doing; something like "side-grade" instead of upgrade.
• The quality of SNES vs GBA is better overall in every way BECAUSE of the buttons. the GBA though faster than a snes is not a better upgrade. Similar to what is happening with the DS and DSi now. Minor updates only put more plastic in land fills. Build good hardware and people will keep it forever.
• The DSi does NOTHING well....NOOOOTTTHHINNNGG. My old cellphone takes better pictures, plays mp3s and has more internal memory. I can imagine that they were going to put 512mb of internal memory in it and then some body said "wait the wii has 512mb, we can't do that, it would look like we are purposely making handicapped hardware to keep our customers buying new upgraded versions" of last gen hardware.
• I really don't know why they have to half-*** EVERYTHING! yeah they get good battery life which the psp failed at, but I mean theres got to be a middle ground. and apparently you loose a couple hours of battery life as well.
• My 3 year old motorola phone plays mp3s. They better not try to sell mp3 functionality in the future.
• WTF is with that dam manual that they pack into the box? Its got like a 2 trees worth of paper in it. The manual comes in 3 languages and is roughly 90% of wieght of the package. This is a factor of total laziness and no concern for the environment. I'm sure that manual alone costs 10 dollars to produce and kills endangered animals.
• The 1000 free points that they give you is basically a gateway drug for DSI shovel-ware shop. Just a enough reason to get you to find a nerd to hook up your WIFI point and hook into their global Dsi tracking website. Its masterful. Thats all I can say. Its probably even included in the price of the Dsi.
• I don't hate it. I'm just disappointed :(
• I don't know if the people realise this yet but when nintendo releases a new console, all your downloaded clocks and calenders will be tied to the dsi that you bought them on and so you may have to buy them ALL OVER AGAIN.

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So I got a xbox360 to borrow

written by owen, published 2008-May-20, comment

So I got a xbox360 to borrow in exchange for my Wii. Apparently Carnarge is a first-person shooter nut. I am going to now review all the games I got my paws onto. I should note though that I am from the PC-FPS crowd so I hate the aiming with the right analog stick. So it may affect my liking of certain games. Note also that I've played alot of games and have never seen a xbox360 upclose. What I notice about the xbox 360 games is that often times it like I'm watching a movie instead of playing a game. Or I'm playing the game so that I can get to watch the next movie. I like playing music in the background while I'm playing games (sometimes). The user profile and achievement system is good and nicely implemented. So without here goes;

The xbox360

I ripped Eminems: The Curtain and The best of Sade to the harddrive. Its kinda nice, but the brick makes alot of noise and fear it may red ring if I play it for more that 3 hours.

Turok

Lots of green and the knife kills everything. I like the knife. Nothing more to say right now.

Call of Duty 3

More WWII, I may play this later if I get drunk enough.

Just Cause

250,000 Acres of bush but it has beautiful water. I kinda ran around in this game for a bit and might decide to eventually finish it. The vehicles are kinda meh but the overall game is like GTA on a Caribbean island. The AI is flaky at most some points and the music is mental but the freedom and the diversity of the island makes it a interesting adventure shooter game. Except maybe when you have to travel 2500 kilometers to your next mission ON FOOT! For a sandbox that big the main story is incredibly short, it ended before I realised that I reached the 25th mission. Its still fun though, at least I can tackle the side missions.
The game engine is superb;
Can't wait for part 2.

Prey

So the game started out in bar and I'm like "cool, I can turn off the lights just like in Dukenukem". Then 10 minutes later I got abducted by aliens - I meant really? Why do you have to set you game in a dam alien space ship? Everything is dark and shiny in the Doom3 engine and I'm like why am I here? Rooms, rooms everywhere! sometimes I wondered why aliens had so many unecessary rooms with one entry point and one exit. I mean if a fire should break out on that spaceship those aliens are fucked.

The Darkness

I watched a guy play this game and I think he was skipping the cut scenes because the story lost me at some point while he was going through the subways. Why does the dude like to talk to himself so much? Was he born yesterday? zero back story. I didn't play this one at all - couldn't bother.

Condemned

Dark and moody. From what I heard about the game I kept my gun close to me until the first mission when a CRACKHEAD KNOCKS ME OUT AND TAKES IT AWAY :(. I end up chasing the guy through a unfinished crack house. The main character of this game must live in the worst part of the nieghbourhood because the whole game looks like a big UNFINISHED CRACKHOUSE. Not saying that the game looks bad, but can the environment be any less depressing? I forgot to go back to this one.

Full Auto

Two words: Sucks Ass. I have to admit it gets kinda better if you play the career mode - single player. Though on the canyon track the cars tend to launch into the air if you touch certain parts of the wall.

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

The aiming in this game is baaad - I think the pointer moves too fast or too slow or something. High production values but the game itself I think is just too cluster-phobic. Point black shots will often miss, cops/enemies rain down on you, bullets everywhere and most likely you WILL ALWAYS GET SHOT FIRST.

Quake 4

I like it, simple stages that actually make sense. Some slow down and stupid A to B story telling. I am this point where I come out into the open and I see this tunnel across the way, so I make a B line for the tunnel only to have the mothership land infront of me. So I say to my self I hope I don;t have to go into that stupid ship just some EXTRA WASTE OF TIME STORY CRAP. So said, so done, I get forced into the stupid ship for a half and hour of talking only to get sent out INTO THE SAME DAM TUNNEL.

Blacksite Area 51

So far it seems like another generic army shooter. Starts in Iraq, then in mission 2 goes to the Nevada desert which looks EXACTLY like IRAQ. I have seen enough sand for one game. Simple run and gun game, I might attempt to finish it. After playing it abit more its just too "A to B". The AI is silly, the level design is linear and has nothing new to offer to the player. The audio is good though, it would have been a better movie, I would sit and watch it. Finished it, waste of time, totally forgettable. I'm beginning to hate UnReal Engine, it seems like just an excuse to make stupid pretty games with no substance.

Topspin 2

Tennis. It doesn't seem to be better than Virtual Tennis on the Dreamcast. Its ok.

John Woo Presents Stranglehold

Its good. Its like Max Payne on steriods. Nice voice acting, gameplay, cut scenes. I will definately try to finish this one just to see who else gets killed IN STYLE!! After a while so many enemies came into the stage that I just stopped playing. Its ridiculous, my hands got tired.

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The Nintendo Wii Review

written by owen, published 2008-May-04, comment

Originally it was called the "Nintendo Revolution" then close to launch Nintendo renamed it to just "Wii". Now when this name was announced I was like "wtf! are they crazy?". Well apparently if you build it - they will come and almost 2 years later the Wii is still selling like hot cakes. The console is self is pretty simple it has the motion controls used for playing games and it lacks the ability to play DVD movies.

Hardware

Its white like a ipod. It seems that white is the new black. Technically the Wii is not a Playstation 3 or a Xbox 360. Nintendo went for the cheapest route possible which is probably why it costs $250 USD in and only has 512 mb of internal storage. Its very quiet and has a SD card slot on the front and 2 USB ports on the back - thats it. The controllers use bluetooth to communicate with the console and use AA batteries for power. Instead of building a whole new console from scratch Nintendo used an upgraded version of their previous console (the Gamecube) which makes it 100% compatible with the games and controllers released between the year 2000 and 2006 - which is always a good thing. The Wii also has built in Wifi which you can use to surf the internet on you television or download games from the Nintendo "Virtual Console" Service ( referred to as the VC).

Software

On the software side good games are few and far between. The Wii is a patient man's console. There are alot of games available but you will have to wait 3 or 4 months for the AAA titles to be release. AAA titles are usually well polished and include the usual Mario, Zelda, Metroid first party Nintendo titles and a select few good third party releases. On the other hand the Wii comes with Wii Sports which include 5 mini games. Most people will play these games forever. The VC is the third option for getting games - basically every monday morning Nintendo releases approximately 3 (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Graphix 16, etc) games. The games are priced between $5 and $10 USD. The games are downloaded the Wii's internal memory and can be played at anytime and are exact ports which does have a certain nostalgic factor to them - so if you had a NES back when you were young then you can get those same games again without the blowing. So far I've bought Sonic The Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros and Streets of Rage 2.

Overview

The Wii in essence is a bridge between a VCR and dvd player. Its cheap, unique and has enough "wow" factor for it to standout from the crowd on its own. Its an experience that cannot be found anywhere else, a big gamble which Nintendo surprisingly won. Right now the Wii is in the same position the Playstation 2 was 5 years ago - extremely popular with tons of lackluster/quick to the press video games. Not a bad position, eventually the games came but sometimes I wish it was just a little bit faster.

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losing my favourite game

written by owen, published 2003-Aug-12, comment

I'm going to buy The Legend Of Zelda: The WindWaker (it's a video game). Even though I had previously decided that I wasn't going to buy another piece of new technology. I hadn't played the previous 2 games in the series. Lack of funds and such. So I bit the bullet and decided that it was simply too good of a game to miss.
Being a zelda fan, I often like to wonder through never ending dungeons, dark forests, caves and such. Not you'd understand any of this of course. As surreal as it may seem. It's video games pretty fun once you get the hang of it.
minimum requirements: brain, extended attention span and rupees. A whole lotta free time.

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