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As a constant poster -slash- lurker on the GameFaqs.com message boards.  I see many topics popping up complaining about “Lag Switchers” (mostly in the Super Street Fighter IV message boards).

Personally I was unaware as to what specifically was being mentioned here at first, although I did kind of get the jist of what was being implied, as ever since my first foray in to online PC gaming back in like 1999, I’ve been aware of what Lag is.  If you’re unaware, then see below.

Definition of Lag: In computer networks, lag refers to delays in information transmission between network nodes. Latency is the time taken for a sent packet of data to be received at the other end.

Today I came across a topic on lag switching, that linked to a video, that not only showed me what a lag switch was, but also taught the viewer how to make one.

I swiftly “thumbs down” rated that video as soon as I realised it was the real deal, and I was happy to see a lot of the recent comments on it (at the time I watched it) where hating on the guy for posting such a tutorial.

I CANNOT believe the lengths at which some pricks will go to in order to obtain an anonymous online victory.  Nor can I believe how they can climb the online leaderboards and actually feel any sort of pride in what they’re achieving.  Super Street Fighter IV is not a game where online leaderboards are seen as a true measure of skill in the first place (it’s face to face tournaments held globally where players prove dominance, in a 100% lag free environment), and it’s no wonder why when you have assholes like these “lag-switchers” in circulation.

Another example of how the leaderboards in SSFIV aren’t a true measure of skill is how the currently #1 player on XBL (in terms of overall player points) has been many a times referred to as a “rage quitter”.  I’m not going to name and shame this person in question in this blog, simply because I haven’t fought that player personally, and no one has uploaded video evidence of this on YouTube, although with so many people backing up the accusation (and with allegations of this rage quitting user dating back to the Soul Calibur IV days) it seems highly likely.

Rage Qutting: The act of exiting the game/ turning off your console/ disconnecting your internet whilst you are losing before an online game/ match is finished.  This saves you from having a loss put on your record, and causes the winning player to not receive his win.

**Rage Quitting and Lag Switching is not limited to fighting games.  It is used in FPS’s, sports games, and many others.

It would bring me great pleasure to watch, or play these players who have such glamorous online records (through cheating methods) in real life, and see them exposed for the cheating scrubs that they are.

If/ when I have children, if I ever caught them playing video games online doing tactics like the ones mentioned in this topic, I’d take away there copy of that game, or worse yet take away there online gaming privileges.  I don’t condone this kind of behaviour at all.

Video games are meant to be a source of fun/ entertainment.  If you put enough time into a game and develop great skills at it, then that’s awesome.  However, if you want to cut corners, cheat, and effectively live a lie through the game, then you’re the urinal cake of society, whom I and many others would love to pee-on.

Apologies if anyone was offended by the increase in profanity in this post, but it really is a topic that just called for it.

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Extra:

Example of online rage quitter >>here<<

A rare example of a REAL LIFE rage quitter >>here<<

Rage Quit T-Shirt >>here<<

I was linked to an interview on Videogamer.com with Capcom’s Yoshinoro Ono yesterday in which he [Ono] mentioned that he feels the entry barrier to fighting games needs to be lowered for them to truly capture a big audience.

[Source: Videogamer Interview with Yoshinoro Ono]

Now it doesn’t take a genius to realise that in terms of game sales, what he said is true.  Although on the contrary, speaking as a long time fan of fighting games, it is almost a tradition that any good beat em up will need to be learned for me to have any chance of succeeding within it.

I personally know quite a few people who have picked up fighting games over the years due to hearing good things about them, or because they had seen someone else play it and liked what they saw.  Yet once they take the game home, they’ll give arcade mode a try once or twice and then from there they’ll just let the game collect dust on there shelf.

I’d say about 75% of the time the game they’ve bought is a solid game that providing they had stuck with it, they could have potentially lost many many hours immersed in it’s great gameplay. Yet because they didn’t stick around to learn the game, they got bored out of frustration with it and left it behind…

For me personally the fighting series I’m most familiar with is Street Fighter, as I’ve dove into various Street Fighter games at several points in my life I have learned the fundamentals to playing a lot of 2D fighting games.  Even still…I know when I pick up a new 2D fighting game, one with a fresh fighting game engine in comparison to the games I’ve played before, that within the game will be a lot I will have to learn (and I’m talking many hours of learning here).

This seems daunting at first, because generally we play video games for fun, and steep learning curves can be a big turn off.  Another issue is the fact that playing against computer opponents is nowhere near as fun, or a true measure of skill, as fighting human opponents is.

Before the advent of online gaming it was something of a necessity for your friends to have the same beat em ups you have, so that you could learn to play the game at home alone, then hook up with friends to play some multiplayer and test your skills out.  Ideally, if you lost, you’d be determined to improve and learn more, then come back for redemption.  If you didn’t have people to play with though, the hard work you’re putting into learning that game is going to go unnoticed, and unless the game in question has put a lot of unlockable rewards or incentives to pat you on the back for your play time and skills, then you might not have been driven to keep at the game for that long.

Moving back to the original interview that inspired this post though…

When you’re lucky enough to find that special [fighting] game, one that several of your friends have, and thus enabling you to have some truly amazing competitive matches, that time you’ve put into the game, and into getting good with specific characters becomes very worthwhile.  In the past 2 years I’ve been playing a lot of the Street Fighter 4 series (naturally only Super since that came out), and with that came a lot of new things to learn about the game.  Not only do I need to learn about the fine mechanics of the game play, but I also need to learn many many match ups.  I need to know the advantages and disadvantages the character I use has against all of the other in game character choices, and beyond that there are differences in how people can use certain characters (some could be aggressive and offensive, some may be defensive and more tactical).

I have been lucky that I have local friends who play the game whom I can test my skills against in some intense and very fun multi-player sessions.  Local multi-player has certainly been a catalyst for my devotion and time spent on the game.  Although Super Street Fighter IV definitely benefits from having a decent matchmaking system online, so I can always find opponents to spar with, whether I want to specifically face people of a similar skill level, or just take on anyone who comes (whether much weaker or much stronger).

Super Street Fighter IV is a very deep and finely tuned game.  So much so that it would take a lot of time to try and break it down, and even if I tried I’d probably miss something.
The in game ‘challenge mode’ does a fairly good job to teach you a character’s moves (ranging from the basics to the advanced combo’s), the in game ‘training mode’ has a great offering of options to allow you to practice things and try out new things that even the challenge mode didn’t teach you too.

As good as those 2 modes combined are though, it’s not enough to turn a fresh newbie to the game into a good competitive player.

Now…

Finally on to the question of lowering the entry barrier in fighting games.

Yoshinoro Ono said the following in that interview:

“What I mean by broadening the appeal is that where hardcore players are at the moment, with all their hyper super techniques, that seems to isolate themselves from the rest of the players. What I want to do is connect those people and casual players together so that the progression is a bit more continuous than it is at the moment, where a few of the elitists deem their skills amazing and don’t want to play with other people.”

Reading that has me [as a fighting game enthusiast] a bit worried.  Is he implying that perhaps the deep level of gameplay that we’ve come to expect from a high level fighting game needs to be dumbed down to be more simple and accessible for new players?
I encourage you to sound off in the comments section on how you interpret this.

If and when Street Fighter 5 is to be announced, it would shatter my faith in it being a good game if I was to hear it was being made simple to play.  I would want it to be like all traditional games in it’s series before it, and require me to put a lot of time in return for me realising that I have definitely improved myself along the way.

If Capcom wanted to capture a wider audience and attract a new crowd to the genre, then I’d much rather they make some sort of fun party game type beat em up (like Mario Kart is to racing games), heck “Street Fighter Kids” or something.  Give them a balanced and fun to play game in the fighting game genre that just doesn’t require an extensive amount of time to learn.  Then if these players enjoy that, they can then move on to Capcom’s other games (it’d sort of be like going up in difficulty like you would in Guitar Hero or something).

Alternatively! and this would be my preference here.

Keep making these amazingly deep, satisfying to master games.  Just make sure that you deliver an in-depth training mode, yet make it interesting and fun for them to sit through it.

A lot of great fighting games, in fact a lot of the best (imo) fighting games do very little in regards to teaching you the game.  For me, guides in game magazines, or better yet; internet forums.  Those have been quite vital for me to become good at the games I’ve wanted to be better at.

Another option would be to do what Super Mario Galaxy 2 has done in Japan/ Europe… Include an optional tutorial DVD with the game.  Mario Galaxy 2′s training DVD is provided to help people who have never played a 3D Mario game before, it also teaches them all of Mario’s available moves, and eventually builds its way up to advanced creative tricks that even some veterans might not have even thought of trying.

DVD guides like that are pretty much irrelevant to veterans of a series [MEGA64: Video parodying the Mario DVD], but I can certainly see how they would be beneficial to new players, and helps ensure they’re not so alienated by the hardcore player.

Everyone happy?

If you didn’t know, the weekend just gone saw one of the biggest events of the year take place.

No, I’m not talking about the World Cup (kudos to Spain on that).  I’m talking about the Evolution Championship Series or “Evo” as it’s more commonly referred to as.

Evo is the world’s biggest yearly tournament on the fighting games calendar, where  every year players from around the world gather together to show there skills at some of the greatest fighting games of our time.

Tidbits:

• Held in Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas
• This year players from over 30 countries gathered.
• There were 7 brutal knock out tournaments covering 6 games (Super Street Fighter IV, SSFIITHDRemix, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Tekken 6, Blazblue, Melty Blood Actress Again).
• Thousands of people entered, Prize money was it’s biggest yet.
• Capcom showcased a mini invitational tournament for the current build of Marvel vs Capcom 3, as well as allowing the public to play it.
• People from Capcom and Namco where at the show to watch the finals and tease people on upcoming projects, as well as MarkMan23, a dedicated beat-em-up fan from MadCatz who’s brought the fighting game community some great products.

EVO 2010 from richhhard on Vimeo.

Being located in the U.K meant I was 8 hours behind Vegas time, and meant I had to sacrifice any decent sleeping pattern in order to follow the live streams over the weekend of the event.  This was the first time I’ve followed “EVO” live during it’s weekend, usually I would catch the highlights and matches on the internet the weeks after.  However I believe this has been the best year yet in terms of production value in it’s coverage.  Thanks to the guys at Level Up Series, as well as the great commentary thanks to people from SRK, Seth Killian from Capcom, and various other knowledgeable people from the heart of the fighting game community).

It definitely has the potential to be an amazing weekend of professional gaming worthy of full TV coverage if you ask me.  Unfortunately there just never seems to be enough video gaming coverage on TV these days, although Evo 2010 did get some time under the limelight as the American cable network G4TV are doing a short feature on the event.

As I’m very much fond of Capcom and the Street Fighter series, I do a lot of reading within the message boards of the fighting game community and I’ve read a number of great write ups from people who attended the event regarding their impressions of it.  So with all the great things I’ve heard and seen I am now very enthusiastic about attending my first ever EVO (as well as my first ever trip to Vegas) in the summer of 2011.

Street Fighter II HD Remix Finals:  DGV (Ryu) vs (Zangief) Snake Eyes

Super Street Fighter IV Men’s Finals – Daigo Umehara (Ryu) – (Rufus) Ricky Ortiz

Watch many more video’s here (Level Up Series on YouTube)

Here’s some other related articles of interest from around the web you may want to read

Hadoken For Realz!

David Sirlin speaks about SankeEyes incredible rise to the top at EVO2010

Hilarious Street Fighter meets Craigslist topic from SRK

Game Informer share there thoughts on who should actually win the [in game story] Street Fighter Tournament

I also personally got a reply by tweet from Yoshinori Ono (Producer at Capcom for Super Street Fighter IV) regarding a possible Nintendo vs Capcom cross over game.

I like how he smiled.  Now excuse me whilst I find how to contact Masahiro Sakurai at Nintendo on getting this project started.

Breakfast with Zangief

Firstly, it CAN’T RROD.  This isn’t to say it can’t break, it’s just Microsoft have removed the RED L.E.D’s inside the console.  Meaning you won’t be greeted with that legendary visual indication of your 360 having died with the new version console.
[source:  GameTrailers]

In an effort to keep the new 360 slim from meeting an untimely end, Microsoft have implemented a temperature fail safe shut down for the console.  Meaning if the console detects it’s getting too hot it will shut down.
[source: Play.tm]

360 Slim – £185 at ShopTo.net (due 16/07/10)

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Microsoft have now listed a price for “Kinect”.  According to the official Microsoft store Kinect will set you back $149.99 [USD].  This translates today at roughly £101 (or €122).  However, things rarely ever simply translate costs that way overseas, and with import taxes and such I can see Microsoft marking that up somewhat to approximately £119.99 when it’s released in the UK.
[Source: Microsoft]

You will also need to make sure you give at least 6 feet of free room between Kinect and yourself to make use of the device (for games at least) as on that item page it states:

It’s been about a week now since E3 2010.

An event where Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all gave reasons as to why we should own and have money ready for their consoles over the next year.  Also an event packed with some cringe-worthy and time consuming presentations on motion controls or hardware that can only really be done promotion justice with actually hands-on playing of said devices (i.e. Microsoft’s Kinect, or Nintendo’s 3DS).

I wouldn’t say there was an outright winner of E3, although I do feel Microsoft were the weakest this year…

I say Microsoft’s was weakest mainly due to the fact they were a bit TOO extensive and cheesy with the Kinect demo’s, plus it’s hard to judge quite how well the device works from there presentations, obviously Microsoft will feed us the idea that it works amazing, and we all should buy it, but things of this nature are never quite as good as they lead us to believe.  Still, Kinect differs itself from the Wii and PS3′s take on motion controls, and the minority report style menu navigation is cool, so it has potential.

I did like the idea of the ESPN service shown, although I’m doubtful on if that will actually be released in Europe.

The new 360 slim looks nice for those who may want to update, with it’s (finally) in-built wi-fi support, 250gb Hard Drive, and better connectivity for Kinect (due it requiring extra leads on the older 360′s).

Although they showed off some good games, they spent the most time focusing on COD: Black Ops, Halo Reach, and Gears of War 3 in.  As promising as they all look, it was a bit crowded in terms of shooters if you ask me.

I also feel like they should have highlighted XBLA.  The MS presentation basically ignored XBLA (although it did have some showings on the show floor at least).  I do feel as though this years Summer of Arcade line up is a bit weaker than the previous years, however it still has a chance of being good, and I’m quite certain Xbox live arcade is a nice money maker for Microsoft.  I just think it would’ve been a nice refreshing thing to add in between the other game announcements for them to cover the success of XBLA in the past year, the upcoming Summer of Arcade, Game Room, and what else is on it’s way…

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Sony didn’t have a problem with game range.  Gran Turismo 5, Little Big Planet 2, Agent, Twisted Metal, Infamous 2, Killzone 3…to name a few, as well as a better Dead Space 2 bundle, and a surprise announcement of Portal 2 getting the better version and potentially some sort of Steam support on PS3.

PlayStation Move got it’s fair share of coverage, and although it is pretty much just PlayStation trying to get a piece of the Wii market, so the concept isn’t too exciting, although they do have the advantage of having a much more powerful system, so when it comes to games such as Tiger Woods 2011…then providing the controls are equally on par (no pun intended), Sony would especially win if a purchase decision should come down to a visual comparison.

Sony were also bold enough to admit the PSP hasn’t been as strong as they’d have liked, although they’re still fighting with it, announcing a lot of support was still incoming for the console, mainly a new PSP God of War.

Still, Sony didn’t seem to rely on Move to ‘wow’ people as much as Microsoft did with Kinect, so with Sony’s strong showing of games they had a good E3 presentation.

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Nintendo showed off there new Zelda, which looks very promising (although the live presentation was ruined due to the show lighting interfering with the Wii sensor bar).  Donkey Kong Country 4, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn look to be some amazing 2d style platformers.  A new Wii exclusive “Goldeneye” is an exciting prospect, although whether it amounts to be a worthy successor or just another name hogging mediocre-fest like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent we shall see.

The highlight of Nintendo’s show (as well as one of the highlights of E3 overall) had to be the unveiling of the new Nintendo 3DS though.  It’s always exciting when a company has a new console to show, and this was no different.

Some key 3DS features:

• The 3DS graphical capabilities look to be at least on par with Nintendo Gamecube, plus on a small screen it’d look great.
• Top screen is wide screen, and the 3D effects have a slider to control how great the 3D is.
• Analogue Control, as well as in-built motion sensors.
• Many big 3rd party companies are already at work on 3Ds games, a new Metal Gear Solid and a Resident Evil are just the start.
• Much better wi-fi support, seems to be hinting at Nintendo offering something as good as XBOX live connectivity between users.
• The ability to watch 3D movies, “glasses free”.
• Has 2 camera’s on the outside allowing people to take 3D pictures.  Those whom have used this function at E3 said it was a very cool feature, and who knows…if ‘glasses free’ 3D picture frames are made, the Nintendo DS could perhaps pioneer the 3D camera movement.
• Nintendo says it’s battery life should be the same as that found on the DSi.
• Cart’s are supposed to average at about 2gig in size (where as the regular DS only went upto 256mb I believe).

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That’s it for this round up.

Round 2 will consist of some of the cool games and announcements from the many game developers/ publishers out there.

Time for another This & That.  An assorted bag of video game related topics.

This time I’m covering the following things:

• Competitive Gaming, and how I think it would be great on TV.
• The excitement that comes from E3
• Those annoying missions where…

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If you grew up playing video games then it’s more than likely that you have at one stage or another experienced some fun competitive multi-player with friends.  In today’s online multi-player bombarded video game market the chances to compete against other people are all to easy for us, hell, I know there are many people out there these days who will often opt for the game with the online multi-player added on over the good old fashioned 1 player game.

The point I’m getting at is that there is a lot of fun to be had with multi-player, and when you have people of an equal skill level, knowing all the ins and outs of a game and showing you all the game can offer, then you have the makings of some really entertaining gameplay footage.

In North America exists “Major League Gaming”.  A professional video game league that holds all sorts of events and tournaments on competitive multi player games to bring together some of the worlds best video game players (of specific games).  It has numerous endorsements and sponsors, so with the revenue they can offer some substantial prize money to these top players competing within “MLG”.

Sure enough there are critics against MLG and other such professional video gaming circuits, mainly due to controversies in the past (for instance, reportedly not paying people, or taking there sweet time to do so).  However I believe in recent years things have improved within these companies.

A few months back though I happened to be browsing the XBOX live marketplace and came across some MLG content that was free to download.  There are a number of downloadable videos offered on the marketplace but the majority cost a small fee to purchase.  However, THIS competitive HALO 2 match is FREE to download.  Now, I urge you if you’re reading this blog and have an XBOX Live account to download that video and give it a watch.  I was quite surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did as although I have had many hours of fun with a lot of the Halo franchise’s offerings, I wouldn’t of thought me watching someone elses match would have been my thing, but the level of play shown, along with the enthusiastic and informative commentary and good video editing gave it a great overall production value.

Another area where I have a lot of experience in watching professional gamers play is with Street Fighter (particularly Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV).  As I’m personally a big fan of the street fighter series, and try to keep up to date on what big events have been played within the Street Fighter scene, what’s coming up, and then lurking forums and websites trying to find the videos of some of the worlds best Street Fighter players working there magic.

Daigo vs Justin (Capcom Fight Club April 2010 Part 2/2)
Online Tony vs Alex Valle (West Coast Warzone 2).

Getting back to my point though.  I really love how the internet and the communities within games give us ways to be able to watch the very best at work.  Although I can’t help but dream of how if there was a TV channel (well in the UK anyway) offering these matches, I would definitely be glued too it, and it would become to me what watching “Sky Sports News” is to the sports nuts.  Obviously it would have to cover a number of different games and genres though, to make sure everyone was happy, but I think competitive gaming [when done with commentary from people who know there subject, and with good video editing]  is just as much fun to watch (if not more fun, coming from a hardcore gamer here) than many actual sports.

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As you may well know this week has been the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or “E3″ for short).  Which is generally regarded as the biggest event in the video game industry’s calendar.

Basically it’s a gathering (mainly for the video gaming press’s benefit) to showcase what a company has planned for the coming month/ year.  The big 3 (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony) generally try to raise excitement among it’s fans as well as attract new ones with upcoming games, features, and/ or hardware.  Plus you’ll have the big games publishers and developers doing similar unveils and announcements of new games, or showcasing new trailers, details, and demo’s on games not too far off their eventual release.

For the hardcore gamer it’s an exciting time of year, especially if you’re lucky enough to own more than just 1 console, as you can happily watch the majority of press conferences on show and generally be wowed by an onslaught of potential purchases.

I remember when I was growing up (we’re talking back in the mid 90′s here), when the internet wasn’t anywhere near established, in the days when it was the magazines that were THE ‘go to’ source for upcoming game information.  Over the summer months magazine after magazines would hit the shelves with big headlines on them letting you know they’d been to E3 and had a lot to show to it’s readers.  It was generally one of the most exciting issues of the year for the gaming magazines.

It’s those fond memories of the 90′s and video game magazines that made me realise, even as a kid, that E3 was somewhat a big deal.

As time passed, and the internet evolved into the “information super highway” that it now is.  We, the mass majority of gamers… the general public… have practically an all you can eat buffet’s worth of E3 coverage instantly available too us.

For the past 4 years or so now I have watched most of the E3 press conference’s LIVE, and before we was granted such great coverage, I settled with live text blogs from the video game press (such as IGN) from editors there attending the press conferences.

This year was great for me personally though, as I’m currently on a summer break from my university studies, so I had free time on my hands.  This year I hooked up my laptop screen up to my 42″ plasma, put the audio through my surround setup, and watched Microsoft, Nintendo’s, and Sony’s conferences live in HD thanks to GameTrailers.com‘s amazing streams of the show.  In previous years I’ve really let my love for video games be shown by the fact I’ve actually made arrangements in advance to make sure I could catch E3 live.  Such as either finishing work early on those days, or taking days off entirely.  That’s how much I dig E3.

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Lastly.  I was playing Bully: Scholarship Edition earlier.

In which I had a mission in which I had to sabotage a prized object of my (in game) opponents.  It was one of those missions you find in games where you have to do something fairly epic, but regardless of succesfully doing this act of sabotagery…unless you get all the way back to safety without dying it won’t count as being done.

I don’t hold much of a grudge though, as those kinds of missions are an integral part of video games, so I can accept them being there. Although on the other hand… God dammit! I did some serious damage to our foes… So what if I didn’t get back safe! I died fighting for the good of our side.  Now I have to start all over and do that whole sabotage part over again?  Jeez!

Did World War II widows get letters back saying: “Your husband killed 14 Nazi’s, saved over 20 Jewish war prisoners, but as he didn’t make it back safe, we must declare…Mission Failed”

I guess I’ll just take it as a nod to those difficult retro games I grew up with that didn’t believe in mid-way checkpoints, and really demanded you to bring your A-game and hope lady luck is on your side.

Over the past few days I’ve been dabbling in BlackRock Studio’s new racing game:  Split/Second.  The follow up to there 2008 high adrenaline ATV racer “Pure“.

To fill those in whom haven’t heard of Split/Second, the game is essentially a power-up driven arcade racing game.  However! It’s originality comes in the form of how the power ups themselves work.  Usually in power up racing games you would use weapons and boosts etc to beat out your opponents on the track.  Where as in Split/Second you use “Power Plays” to destroy or alter the track itself and it’s surroundings.

You build up your “Power play” meter by drifting round corners, drafting behind opponents, and from any air time you may get from jumps or the track.  You can choose to use your Power Plays pretty much as soon as you get them to blow things up and things of that nature to help you pass other racers, or to momentarily open up some short cuts on the track.  Alternatively!  If you save the meter till it gets red, you can do a drastic track altering Power Play which will generally be a big cinematic showing of destruction and leave you with a whole new route to the track.

It’s down to your careful use of power plays to help achieve victory in a race, as specifically saving up for the big effects all the time will a lot of the time not get you the best position. One thing to note though is that there are usually only a couple of points in the track that you can use the drastic track altering power plays, so it can sometimes take a couple of play through on a specific track to know where these can be used.  On the one hand this is good because it adds diversity to your experience, meaning you usually won’t see all of a tracks offerings in 1 race.  Although on the other hand this can sometimes mean you will have to replay/ restart certain events in single player a few times before you get 1st place.  I suppose you could say this adds to the lastability of the game though, plus you get points rewarded on your position (the better you place, the more you get) so it’s only if you strive for all golds that you’ll be faced with numerous re-plays of an event.

The career mode works similar to “Pure” in which you have a series of events in an “episode”, scoring enough points unlocks the final race in this episode and if you win this you unlock the next episode (set of events).  This works well enough I suppose, and it allows you to easily be able to retry any single event of your choosing if you want to go back to improve your position.  Another similarity to “PURE” is that Split/Second isn’t simply just “races”.  You have a variety of other unique game modes chucked in to test your skills in.

• ‘Air Strike’ where you have to drive around a track and avoid a helicopter firing missiles at the track.
• ‘Elimination’ where the racer in last position is eliminated every 30 seconds or so
• ‘Air Revenge’, a variation on Air Strike where you get to fight back against the chopper.
• ‘Detonation’, where pre-determined destruction will happen to the track and you have to beat the course under a set time
• ‘Survival’, where you have to overtake a series of Big Rig Trucks dropping explosive barrels behind them.

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Presentation-wise, this game is amazing.  The cars and environments look very impressive and definitely show off what HD consoles are about, the explosions and damage look great too.  I’ve also got to hand it to the HUD display too.  It seems racing games have forever been stuck in a similar routine of having the same generic HUD displays, showing us speedometers, the track map, lap number, position, and so on…  Split/Second tidies this up a lot though (in the outside car cam), having it neatly placed underneath your car, you’re not shown the tracks map, so you have to focus throughout the race, although sharp turns are nicely marked out for you, and the game gives off a nice sense of speed so you’ll know when you’re at top speed by the motion blur and the slight shake in the camera (this doesn’t disrupt play though).

The soundtrack is great too.  Gone are traditional “licensed” songs for a racing game, and in place this game has an original soundtrack.  All the songs are very fitting to the game and are what I can only describe as the sort of dramatic car chase music you’d get in a hollywood movie.  The explosions, engine noises, and other such sound effects sound great too.  Playing this game on a big screen HDTV with a surround sound set up turned up to a decent level will give you a great gaming experience for sure.

The game ties itself together with a reality tv format.  There’s an announcer after certain races and before certain events going over the premise of what’s to come, there’s not much depth to it, but that’s probably a good thing, it does just enough to nudge your optimism and imagination into thinking “this could be possible…if it wasn’t for people being vulnerable to dying”.  The announcer isn’t in the races themselves though, so you don’t have to worry about soon hearing the same annoying phrases over and over or anything like that.

The game does have one irritation though, something I could say the same for with “Pure” and this problem is with the A.I.  Just like with Mario Kart and many other arcade racers there is “rubberbanding” in place, to make sure you never get TOO far of the AI, as well as to make sure you don’t get impossibly far behind, and like with other games of it’s type you will sometimes have races where you spend 2 and a half laps in 1st place, then 1 powerplay attack could end up taking you from 1st to 7th or 8th at the last minute.  Which is always a bit of an annoyance in games like this.

There are also times when you’ll be taken over from a racer behind on a straight on the last lap from a car that you haven’t unlocked yet, which seems a bit unfair I guess.  There are no difficulty settings in this game either, so it’s not like there are solutions to these quibbles if you’re perhaps new to arcade racers.  Like I said earlier though, replaying tracks generally gets you more experience on what destruction and short cuts are available and where…so it’s this experience that will build up and come to aid you if you want to 1st place all the events.

One thing I will say too is that the game does start you off with some slow/ heavy to the ground feeling cars.  My very first impression of playing this game was that the car physics were a bit sluggish compared to some of the more slightest twitch sensitive racers out there.  Although if you stick with the game past the first few car unlocks you will find that new cars handle a lot better.  This early handling issue makes me think too… I didn’t play the demo of this game when it came out on PSN or XBOX live, but if I was perhaps playing this game in a video game store for a few minutes and I was picky about racing games, then those first races in the heavy feeling cars could’ve led me to believe the game wasn’t quite so fast and frantic as other arcade racers such as “Burnout Revenge”.  I’d love to be making or helping make games of my own some day and it makes you realise how important those first impression demo’s are, and that you really need to make sure you give people a fun experience showing that the game works well.

Getting back to Split/ Second though.  I haven’t tried the multi-player out personally, but I can confirm you can play locally offline with split screen.  The online has upto 8 players, although you can only use cars you have unlocked through the career mode in online play, so I’d highly recommend playing through that for a while first.  Plus, like I mentioned earlier, it pays to know what can happen on a track, so if you’re going online, expect experience to be a big factor in determining the winners.

The last area I want to cover is the Split/ Second vs Blur question people are asking right now.  As we have 2 high action racing games out on the market within weeks of each other.  I’ve played a number of races on Blur during it’s ‘beta’ demo stage, and while that game did impress me, it didn’t really wow me with much originality, now don’t get me wrong, it seems like a decent game and a worthy addition to the games collection to anyone who enjoys racing games.  Personally though, I prefer Split/ Second.  It offers a more original, fresh, experience.  It feels like a good evolution in the history of arcade racing games, and I would certainly be pleased if a sequel was announced.  That’s not to say I won’t be getting “Blur”, but I’m saying given the choice of one now/ another later, I choose Split/ Second.

It seems like every other article I’ve published on this blog is Street Fighter related.  Not that I’m really complaining, and it’s mainly due to the internet constantly being home to a lot of great Street Fighter related news, videos, fan tributes, and everything else…

As an example of the “everything else” did you know there is a company creating a Super Street Fighter IV themed LED HD TV? …They claim it’s the perfect TV for the Street Fighter fan, whether that is actually true I can’t say.

>>Click here for the details on the SSFIV TV<<

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Next up.  A certain Street Fighter series character ranked quite highly in a recent ScrewAttack.com “Top 10 20″.
Video >>  1 – 10 (or click here to start with 11 – 20).

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You may have heard of Kenny Omega, as the guy who did Zangief’s Ultra in a wrestling ring.  However it seems his Street Fighter love doesn’t end there.  He also does a Hadoken (close range, obviously without the fireball), and his actual Titantron video is Street Fighter IV inspired too (loops repeatedly as they wrestling intro’s generally do).

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You may also be aware of Daigo Umehara.  A Japanese video game player who is one of the greatest Street Fighter players on the planet (some may argue he is the greatest).  If you want to know more about Daigo, you may want to check out THIS video feature on him.  He became sponsored by MadCatz in April, and MadCatz will be consulting with him to create the next line of Fight Sticks later this year.

Daigo had yet another great match up with the also highly respected Street Fighter player “Justin Wong” in April at Capcom’s LA Fight Club tournament.  If you’re a big fan of the games you owe it to yourself to watch both parts of the video.
Click here for Part 1 ///   Click here for Part 2

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Ever wondered what the role entails to be a Street Fighter background character? …then check out Dorkly.com’s guide >HERE<

Also from Dorkly…Street Fighter characters on Facebook!

M Bison scored #19 on IGN’s Top 100 Video Game Villains

IGN named there Top 5 favourite Capcom game franchises, did Street Fighter score?

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I was also playing my PS3 copy of Super Street Fighter IV the other week and noticed I unlocked something for “home”.  I did some googling which didn’t turn up many results, but it seems the “Trespass” T-shirt which is what I unlocked, was for completing Arcade mode on Medium or higher without using a continue.  I’m pretty sure that is the only HOME unlock for SSFIV, although interestingly there isn’t any “Avatar” awards in the 360 version .  I also here that Street Fighter IV (vanilla) had some HOME unlocks too, although personally I only have SFIV for the 360.  Photo of the “Trespass” Tee below.

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My friend Drew got a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition (Round 2) Fight Stick the other day.  Here’s the unboxing of that if you’re interested…

>>Humor: The “counter chart” they don’t want you to see<<

>>Humor: M. Bison does level 1-1 of Mario<<

Humor:  Zangief made the accidental Video Game Porn archive with this “handjob”

….and that’s that for now

Europe!  In less than 2 weeks, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will hit the shelves.

The surprise sequel to the Wii hit “Super Mario Galaxy” released in 2007.  I say ‘surprise’ sequel seeing as how it’s quite Rare for Nintendo to do a mario sequel during the same console generation.  Depending on if you count Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island (as they were totally different games to be fair).  It was the NES with Super Mario Bros/ Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros 3 that were the last time we truly had Mario sequels within a generation.

From what I’ve seen and read though, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be much much more than just the “Lost Levels” of Super Mario Galaxy.  It will be a much more ambitious, more deeper, and much sweeter game to get into.

For a brief time this week Super Mario Galaxy 2 did something very suprising and knocked Zelda: Ocarina of Time off the GameRankings #1 spot (a site that tallys all the reviews for games up to give them there overall average). It’s no suprise that it did that though after numerous sites have given it amazing scores.  I was personally surprised and ‘upped’ my level of hype when I saw that Super Mario Galaxy 2 scored a perfect 10 from IGN, they’re not the only ones either, I hear it scored a 10/10 from EDGE too, whom are a bit critically harsh at times.

GameTrailers gave it a 9.7 also…peep the review below if you want to see some game footage.  Doesn’t really spoil anything major from what I remember.

So I figured that whilst I waited for SMG2…I would go back to Super Mario Galaxy 1, to familiarise myself with how great that was, and also to beat “Super Luigi Galaxy”.  Luigi Galaxy is basically playing the whole game in it’s entirety again, but as Luigi, although playing as Luigi has his trademark slightly improved jump and slidey stopping distance when trying to stop running.

Seeing as though it’s been like 2 years since I last properly played Super Mario Galaxy, re-playing from scratch again as Luigi has been a lot of fun, I’m currently about 35 stars in, and if I can continue to go for about 10 stars a day for the next 2 weeks I should finally get to see the secret bonus that is unlocked for completing the game with both characters .

I hear the reasons to replay Super Mario Galaxy 2 are much greater though, so I’m definitely looking forward to not only having perhaps the greatest 3D platformer in existence, but knowing that it will take a lot of hours for me to have fully experienced it all.

Just replaying Super Mario Galaxy again though just reminds me why I’ve never gone a single console generation since birth without having a Nintendo console…  That being that when Nintendo knuckle down in Japan with aspirations of making a great video game, you expect something special, and I’d say at least 95% of the time it’s not just a game worth owning…but a game worth hanging on to.

The level design and variety in Super Mario Galaxy is incredible.  It’s no wonder the 3D platformer competition has faded out over recent years because Nintendo keep raising up that quality bar.  Another series I’d love to see Nintendo work there platformer magic on would be Donkey Kong.  It seems ever since Nintendo parted ways with ‘Rare‘ they haven’t had any dev teams really wanting to make something of the Donkey Kong franchise (which let’s not forget is an older franchise than Super Mario).  Don’t get me wrong I really loved the Donkey Konga games and “DK Jungle Beat”, but that just seems like a passing phase for the Konga controller.  When Nintendo left Rare to take care of DK they really made something of DK.  Rare aren’t quite the same as they were in the N64 days though, as a lot of the people left Rare for “Free Radical Design” and other places.  However if Nintendo EAD got behind a DK platformer, whether it be a Donkey Kong Country 4, or a Donkey Kong 64 sequel…it would most certainly be great.

Back to Mario though.  Once I’m done with Super Mario Luigi Galaxy (and obviously it’s epic sequel) I ought to replay Super Mario Sunshine again, I only played through it once myself, and that was upto about 95% completion back in it’s GC days.  I kind of lost interest in Sunshine’s ‘blue coin challenges’ so I never fully 120′d it (although I did beat the final boss obviously).

I did enjoy Super Mario Sunshine though.  I thought it was a great game, not quite as legendary as 64 or Galaxy, but still a very decent platformer.  Then from there I should chase Sunshine with the original king of 3D platforming…Super Mario 64.  I 120′d (100% completed) back when I was 11, I didn’t stick with Super Mario 64 DS for as long as I’d of liked, and since re-purchasing Mario 64 from the Virtual Console on the Wii’s launch I think I’m only up to something like 30 stars, but I would gladly go for 120 again as that game still holds up great and is still a blast to play.  Don’t forget that through the Nintendo Wii you have the ability to play all of the current 3D Mario offerings.

So… I’m going to get back to jumping around the galaxies with Luigi.  Roll on June 11th!

Viva La 3D Mario Bros Adventures

Did You See #4: Retro Core

Retro Core is an amazing online video series created by a gamer who goes by the name of “Yakumo”.  Living in Japan, but originally from Liverpool (as you may notice from his accent in the videos).

He has literally an archive of shows online covering the greats and the obscure from gamings past.  With the advantage of being in Japan he is able to introduce you to a lot of games you may not of heard of before, as well as giving you some insight into some of the differences between Japanese and Western game releases.  Not to mention he does a lot of great features on rare gaming systems, and even some video trips to the Japanese Arcades (it’s a sight to see how much better they still are over the ones we have), as well as trips to some used Japanese Video Game stores (which again…totally own any I’ve ever seen).

It’s thanks to Retro Core that I am ever more eager to get my hands on a Sega Saturn, after seeing him showcase some awesome games I never knew the system had.  Also just seeing some games I hadn’t played in years, and some I’d totally forgotten about was a great bit of nostalgia.

All the episodes are available to download for FREE so I highly suggest going to SegagagaDomain and giving it a look.  There are over 40 episodes, and a Saturn Beat Em Up/ Fighting special is rumoured to be released at some point this year.  Each episode is generally over an hour long, so if you enjoy the show as much as I did that means you have literally a gold mine of great video game coverage to eat up your time or to give you some great background entertainment whilst you play your DS’s or PSP’s perhaps.

I’m unsure whether to suggest people to start with the Summer 2009 special to get a feel for what the show’s about, or to just tell you to go in at Episode 1.  Either way, if you still have a fond appreciation for retro games ranging from NES to Dreamcast, then you should definitely enjoy Retro Core.

>>> LINK TO RETRO CORE HOME PAGE – links to download all episodes is within

**If you will be watching these on your PC then I’d suggest just downloading the highest file size version, however personally I downloaded the majority of the show in .MP4 format, as I watched them on my PS3 and some of the .AVI episodes weren’t compatible with either my PS3 or XBOX360.