Virtual Adept

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((Sung to the tune of Rockstar, by Nickelback.))

I’m through with standin’ in line
for game systems I’ll never get
It’s like being corpse camped
and I’m never gonna win
this toon hasn’t turned out
quite the way I want it to be
(Tell me what you want)

I want a PS3, 360 and Wii
my own episode on RvB
And a bathroom I can play WoW in
And a big ass TV big enough
for Mellen to see
–(So what you need)–

I need a a credit card that’s got no limit
And a big ass pipe to the internets
Gonna join the uber clans change my
name to something like Fatal1ty
–(Been there done that)–

I want a gaming rig with quad-SLI
My own web page on GameSpot
Somewhere between Meier and
Miyamoto is fine for me
(So how you gonna do it?)

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even take a bath and change my name

[CHORUS]
‘Cause we all just wanna be a gaming god and
Live in convention rooms driving rental cars
The girls never show but the Dew comes cheap
We’ll all stay skinny (maybe in our dreams)
And we’ll hang out in online bars
in Azeroth with the DKP stars
Every good gold farmer’s
Gonna wind up there
Every Night Elf hunter
With her long purple hair
And we’ll…

Hey, hey, I wanna be a gamer god
Hey, hey, I wanna be a gamer god

I wanna be great like Wright before EA
Hire prostitutes that love to love on geek
Sign a couple autographs
So I can get my hardware for free
–(I’ll have the gf8800, ha-ha)–

I’m gonna dress my ass
with last week’s dirty pair
Get a front door key to the Carmack mansion
Gonna date a ‘centerfold’ that loves to
stare back from the screen at me
(So how you gonna do it?)

I’m gonna trade this life
For fortune and fame
I’d even take a bath
And change my name

‘Cause we all just wanna be gamer gods
And live in online worlds riding chocobos
The drops come seldom and the lewt ain’t cheap
we’ll all stay cranky cuz we just won’t sleep
And we’ll hang out in Second Life bars
in the VR worlds with fake movie stars
Every good gold farmer’s
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
wouldn’t even dare
And we’ll hide out in private chat rooms
With the latest gossip of
who’s cybering who
They’ll tell you anything
with that >:) smiley
Everybody’s got a
Pizza Hut on speed dial, well
Hey, hey, I wanna be a gaming god

I’m gonna play GTA
that offends the censors
Gonna pop my carts
in my DS maybe or
Get power-level service playing all my toons
Trade XBL saves to jack my ‘chievements up

Well we all just wanna be gaming gods
And live in TDU driving virtual cars
The girls never show, but the Dew is cheap
We’ll all stay crazy, God I need some sleep
And we’ll hang out at E3 or maybe GDC
in the VIP with the pro gamer stars
Every good game blogger’s
Gonna wind up there
Few Playboy bunny’s
hawking gamer wares
And we’ll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest scoop of
who’s fraggin’ who
They’ll tell you anything
like “global launch”
Everybody’s got
GameStop on speed dial, well

Hey, hey, I wanna be a gamer god
Hey, hey, I wanna be a gamer god

Sony’s supposedly 100% fully backwards compatible Playstation 3 is actually somewhat short of that mark. The BBC is reporting that at least 200 or so games from Sony’s previous systems are not fully compatible with the PS3. While this is still quite a bit better compatibility than the Xbox 360 is with the original Xbox, it does show the difference between how Microsoft handles the press and Sony. Microsoft just comes out and says which games work, assuming that none do, while Sony lies that they are 100% compatible and then leaves it up to the gamers to find which games won’t work after the launch. Now, presumably Sony has a plan for making all of these glitches go away, but as for now, you may have trouble with some of the most popular games on the platforms such as:SOCOM series
Final Fantasy Anthology, Origins, Chronicles, XIII, IX, XI
Guitar Hero controller not working
Need for Speed series
Metal Gear Solid series
DDR games mats not compatible
Burnout 3 Takedown
Devil May Cry series
Onimusha series
ICO
Chrono Cross

Sony has an online database where you can check the status of your older games here. However, many gamers are reporting that that database is not entirely accurate. With the vast number of titles to check, it’s actually no big surprise that the database is not complete yet.

I forgot to send out a note to the blog last week letting readers know I was going on vacation. Just got back from a cruise to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. Had a fun time, didn’t do much gaming apart from Star Wars Legos and Burnout Legends on the PSP. I should be able to resume daily blog posting tonight or tomorrow. Later!

Here is a list of the new games being released this week thanks to videogameblogger.com for this great write up with all the links to the various game pages (blatantly ripped off, be sure and go visit his site, it’s great). Put my comments in as well.
Monday:
1701 A.D. (PC)
Deal or No Deal (PC)
Elite Beat Agents (DS) - not sure how well a rhythm game will work on the DS but looking forward to renting this one.
The Fifth Disciple (PC)
Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA) - must have! Love those old FF games on portables.
Reel Fishing: The Great Outdoors (PSP)

Tuesday:
Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses (DS)
Blitz: The League (Xbox 360)
Bomberman Land Touch! (DS)
Call of Duty 3 (PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360) - definitely going to get this one, probably for 360, but will wait for the Wii version to see if it’s better or not.
Digimon World DS (DS)
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (PS2)
Gears of War (Xbox 360) - this is a must buy, a real system seller! I won’t buy this at launch though because I’ve blow my spending limit already this month. Maybe get it as a Christmas gift.
Guitar Hero II (PS2) - waiting to see how 360 version turns out.
Hard Rock Casino (PS2, PSP)
History Channel Civil War: A Nation Divided (Xbox 360)
Left Behind: Eternal Forces (PC)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (PS3)
Micro Machines V4 (DS)
My Frogger: Toy Trials (DS)
Polarium Advance (GBA)
Sega Genesis Collection (PS2)
The Sims 2: Pets (GBA)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault (PS2)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo 2 (PSP)
The Sopranos: Road to Respect (PS2) - this one has me curious but will wait on reviews.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent (PC)
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (Xbox, Xbox 360, PSP, PS2, PS3) - definitely going to check this one out on 360.
Winx Club: Quest for the Codex (GBA, DS)
World Championship Poker: All In (Xbox 360)
Yoshi’s Island 2 (DS) - definitely will at least rent this one.
Wednesday:
Contra (Xbox Live Arcade) - frickin’ sweet!
Patriots: A Nation Under Fire (PC)

Thursday:
Disney’s Chicken Little: Ace in Action (PS2, DS)
Viva Piñata (Xbox 360) - while everyone is creaming over Gears of War I think this one has a good possibility to be very unique. I will definitely look at reviews and possibly rent this one.

What an AMAZING week of games!! It don’t get much better than that. And considering that just last week we had Phantasy Star Online, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Final Fantasy XII?! Dude, I’m in heaven.

So the latest news for Xbox 360 is that you can spend your hard earned money to download videos in standard or high definition. How much? Well, it sounds like movies will cost between 320 and 480 marketplace points, which is between $4 and $6. But most of the content that they’ve announced so far is TV show episodes, and I don’t know the pricing for that yet. I think that’s a bit crazy high. Supposedly HD movies will take up between 4 and 6 gb of your hard drive space. Considering that the 360 only allows 12gb for the user to begin with, I can see where this is going to be a very tight fit. Hopefully MS will come to their senses soon and announce a larger HDD upgrade for the 360. We need it. Bad.

Update: Sony had this to say about the new 360 video downloads (via Kotaku):

PLAYSTATION 3’s content is designed for everyone to enjoy right out of the box, no matter which configuration you purchase. We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system. Both PLAYSTATION 3 versions available on November 17 include hard drives for downloading content.

That’s all well and good, Sony, but for $400 I can get HD downloadable content on my 360, either in the form of a 360 core + HD addon, or a 360 premium, and the cheapest I could do that (if I could do that) on the PS3 is $500. So solly, loo looooze!!! What idiots. No, Sony, you’re not “shutting anyone out” (/sarcasm). Assholes. As if I could even buy a PS3 before sometime next year. Sony, you need to just learn when to sit down and STFU.

Play World of Warcraft on three monitors?! I sooo need to get this.

Had a really good time this weekend playing EverQuest 2 that I got in the SOE Station Access Collection. Lyndal and I got it at the same time to try out. For one thing we have been using Xfire and/or Teamspeak to do voice chat during the game and that just makes it a heck of a lot more fun. So we got some evil characters up to around level 9 or so in EQ2. Here are some random thoughts about the game.

First, leveling up is way faster than EQ was, but maybe it will slow down a lot later. I think it’s even faster than wow up to 9. Secondly, the game has some very decent quests. Way better than the quests from EQ1. About on par with WoW, really. I enjoyed the quests, especially the one where you have to go murder this guy’s ex girlfriend because since they are for opposing factions he can’t have her so he’d rather her be dead. There were other choice ones, like poisoning a loud mouth dark elf, and of course the standard go kill N mobs, or collect X widgets. But I did enjoy them overall.

The graphics to me are not as good as World of Warcraft. Sure, technically they are fairly impressive, but artistically I just think WoW is heads and shoulders above EQ2 and pretty much every other MMORPG. I also think the animations in WoW are much smoother and nicer looking than EQ2’s. Also the environments are nowhere near as compelling as WoW’s, at least not so far as I’ve seen. I was able to get EQ2 to run in a window much like the way WoW works so that was nice, I like being able to access Firefox or whatever while playing. EQ2 didn’t want to play nice with Xfire though, so I had to disable that.

The bottom line… would I pay $15 a month to play EQ2? Well, in a world without World of Warcraft, for sure, no problem. But I think I still prefer WoW over EQ2. I can see myself getting a toon or two up into the mid teens or early twenties in EQ2, though, because it is pretty fun. I will say that EQ2 is so far the best MMORPG I’ve played besides World of Warcraft, even better than City of Heroes which I liked a lot. So if you don’t like WoW for some reason and still want a fantasy MMORPG, check it out.

A mouse pad any pedo could love.

Here is what happens when all your friends are World of Warcraft forum posters.

Weird Al loves da nerdy white boys.

Scatological arcade action.

Here is an online game guide for Bully.

Charging for cheats in Xbox 360 games wasn’t enough for EA, now they want to do it for the PC, too.

Here is a nice review of Titan Quest, the latest Diablo 2 style game for the PC. I tried the demo for this and was pretty impressed, so I bought the game. But I haven’t had time to sit down with it for much quality time. My initial impressions of it are that it’s a very good D2 style game, and if you liked Diablo 2 you should definitely take a look at the demo at least.

Whatever you do, do not ever pre-order anything from bestbuy.com, ever. You won’t get your item. I pre-ordered Neverwinter Nights 2 from them, the Limited Edition, because their online store was the only store that was offering pre-orders for the limited edition. Now after two frustrating phone calls from their customer service center in India, I have come to the conclusion (although I have not been told this by them, because they refuse to just tell me the truth of the matter) that I will never receive my game. So I did what any red blooded American would do - I went to eBay. And I paid. Through the nose. Because Best Buy Sucks.

In days past, if you bought a game, you could go online and find codes to unlock content via cheat codes. Now EA wants to charge you for that privilege. Xbox Live Marketplace now lists approximately $50 worth of content-unlock codes for EA racing game Need for Speed Carbon. That means you spend $60 for the game, and if you don’t want to just play the game to unlock stuff, you spend another $50 to buy cheat codes to unlock the content. Cheat codes used to be free, but now EA wants to get PAID, dawg.