Misfit119's Rantings

Last 14 SSBB Guides are up!

misfit119 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:12:52 +0000

They were actually posted yesterday but I was feeling a tad bit lazy. I think I’m sick, not sure with what, but it won’t go away. But here are the last 14 character guides:

http://www.gamesradar.com/wii/f/guide-to-everyone-in-super-smash-bros-brawl/a-20080314154131456042/p-5

With that done I can go back to trying to actually play Brawl. I will say this though, I can’t see giving this game any more than a 8, 8.5 rating. Essentially it’s the same game as Melee with a few new characters, some who are gimmicky and useless (Olimar and Pokemon Trainer) and others who are just more clones (Wolf, Toon Link). I’d seriously like to see some more originality with the characters. Olimar and Pokemon Trainer had some good ideas but they’re both gimped.

* Olimars damage per move is dependant on what Pikmin is next in row. A pikmin gets stronger the longer it’s been active and not flung off stage or destroyed. Ugh! So yellow works okay for throwing people, whites work best for being thrown AT people and purples are for knockback. And remembering all this is worth it when I can just use someone strong, like Marth, why?

* Pokemon Trainer… the stamina thing stinks, hard. It’s so lame to be fighting someone, in my case it was Bowser and Peach, and have your freaking Charizard get tired when you need to eliminate them. It’s really freaking hard to eliminate someone with Squirtle or Ivysaur dammit. Took an interesting character and sank it.

Subspace Emissary is a wad of crud. It’s got some really cool cutscenes but the gameplay is a mess and it get’s really repetitive really fast. The Great Maze was a time of particular “why the heck am I still playing this, oh right to unlock Sonic” mindset. If not for the unlocking characters way easier I would never have bothered. And is it just more or do the enemies seem stuck on Hard difficulty when you encounter the optional fights. When I was playing on easy just to unlock characters and came across Wolf, he whupped the holy heck out of Lucario before I could do much of anything. Even more peculiar was that Lucario isn’t exactly light and he gets stronger as he gets hurt so you’d think I’d put up at least something of a fight… but no that’s not the case.

I dunno, I think overhype struck again. It’s Halo 3 all over again for me.

Tagged, let’s get it over with

misfit119 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:12:08 +0000

Hmmm… Five things that people don’t know about me? Seeing as how I’m fairly quiet about myself that shouldn’t be too hard to do.

1 – I’m a pasty little mutt. As in I’m part Swedish, part Irish and part Puerto Rican. Regardless of that I don’t speak a lick of coherent spanish. I can sometimes piece things people are saying together with a bit of thought but I can’t really speak the language.

2 – By nature I’m a very quiet, insecure fellow. While I act like I do online (joking, refusing to be serious, prone to saying stupid things, etc) I’m more prone to just being quiet and not speaking up, especially if I’m in large groups of people. Some people claim I have anxiety issues, I think I’m just super shy. Who knows.

3 – I’ve been arrested. Twice. Both for getting into fights. Once was when a guy grabbed my then girlfriends rear and I clocked him. We fought, I got arrested and no big deal. I told her that I didn’t want to go to that club, but noooo. Stupid girlfriends. The second time was for a guy who was harassing a female friend at the time. The cool part of that was when I went to jail for a few hours I was in a cell right next to Peter Steele, front man for Type O Negative.

4 – I love me foreign women, dunno why. All my life I’ve been attracted to girls with foreign accents or different skin colors. Especially the accents but I also like me some darker skinned ladies. So far I’ve dated a number of black girls, hispanics, an egyptian girl, an Iranian, a Japanese and one German girl but that was only online so it doesn’t count.

5 – If it’s popular, there’s a good chance I don’t like it now even if I used to. Stephen King? He’s a hack. GTA? Couldn’t care less. Final Fantasy? Pathetic. Super Mario Galaxy? Boring. Wii in general? Overpriced kids toy. Popular roleplaying games like D&D? Over the hill. Vampire the Requiem? Sad rewrite of a better game. One would almost think that I’m loathe to seeing things progress from what I’m used to, kind of that old 50 year old cranky man… except I’m only 25.

3rd & 4th SSBB Updates!

misfit119 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:11:16 +0000

The third and fourth updates to my Super Smash Bros. Brawl character guides have been posted. The third one has 5 entries and the fourth one has 6. I’m hoping to have 7 ready for the Friday update and then 7 more for the monday update and finish these things off. I’m starting to get a little burned out on SSBB due to spending so much time with it doing these guides. It’s fairly likely that I perma-loan it to a friend for a bit and buy it again after a few months. I’ve been spending a bit too much time with it and I’m starting to really, really loathe it so I’m definitely gonna need to stop for a bit in the least.

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/guide-to-everyone-in-super-smash-bros-brawl/a-20080314154131456042/g-20060510201220374042/p-3

Back to the grind. I’ve gotta work on Princess Zelda/Shiek now.

So, Persona 4, eh?

misfit119 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:10:02 +0000

Yeah, you know that the minute they announce a street date I am so going to reserve that game. The one thing I hate about Atlus though is that the way they release the Shin Megami Tensei games is so limited when it obviously doesn’t need to be that you can’t wait for price drops which makes things dicey when you’re, ya know, unemployed. Doesn’t matter though, I will own Persona 4 upon release and that will be that.

From what I’ve gathered so far the game sounds like it will be designed in a similar way to Persona 3, including the same art style for the characters. This is good news since it’s just more of a reason to keep loving your PS2 in my opinion. Even better is the fact that it will be made similar to Persona 3. While I liked the original 2 english Persona games, and those are hard to love, Persona 3 was a phenomenal experience to me. It was fairly open ended as to how you approached the game, nobody I know has played the game the same way twice. Some will go all for S. Links and pay attention to maxing their stats, others will go after their stats like a hobo on a baked potato and then worry about S. Links and yet others will get annoyed with the S. Links and focus on killing stuff in Tartarus. All viable methods of playing the game although some are harder than others.

Now Persona 4 talks about how it will take place in the countryside and involve a murder mystery. And somehow or another the weather will act as a clue as to when a murder will take place. So it’s likely that your character will learn something along the lines of the killer(s) only killing during a rainy night or some such. Obviously this will be no mundane murder mystery and things will likely keep a creepy adult oriented occult feel to it while staying gripping and compelling which sounds so awesome.

I cannot say how happy I am to have moved away from the Persona 1 and 2 dungeon crawling but fighting everywhere you go model. Sure P3 has a lot of dungeon crawling but that isn’t the whole focus like it was in the first two / three games. They were essentially giant dungeon crawls occasionally broken up by some exposition or dialogue and you can’t even walk through places like the malls without getting into fights. While having no safe zones adds tension to the experience there’s something to be said for the safe zone concept. It was probably the most intruiging parts of Silent Hill 4 and used to great effect in Fatal Frame 3 but in Persona 3 you really felt like you were living a dual life. On one hand you’re the normal school kid who makes friends surprisingly easily but on the other you’re the leader of an elite team of Persona users fighting against the forces of darkness.

The funny thing is I have a suspicion that this game is going to be used to try and bridge the gaps between Persona 3 and the rest of the series. If you’ve played previous Persona games you will realize that there’s something of a disconnect between the games beyond the combat model. The original two had interconnecting stories, many features that were mentioned in the games (such as towns getting cut off from the rest of the world by magic barriers) and even corporations that were mentioned. That’s to say nothing of the overly dramatic Persona summoning method in P3. Sure, there were some throwaway lines in P3 mentioned likely to help appease the fans but even still, it actually doesn’t feel like a Persona game.

Seeing all the success Persona 3 had I’m sure that they will capitalize on it and make a game with more interesting elements without rocking the boat entirely and I cannot be more eager for it. I’m looking so forward to this game and, to all you out there, if you find out info on it before I do please tell me. I’d hate to find out you were holding out on me…

Thanks to Symphonycometh for even pointing out to me that P4 was even being made. I don’t read Kotaku or forums enough to learn this on my own until it’s nearly too late, lol.

Second Batch of SSBB Guides

misfit119 — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:09:22 +0000

They are up and can be located here:

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/guide-to-everyone-in-super-smash-bros-brawl/a-20080314154131456042/p-2

I decided not to submit Bowser or Dedede and just make my next update a villain update, or at least anti-hero one, using all the bad guys and then guys like Metaknight and Wolf. So the next update should at least be 7 characters or so, maybe more depending on how big a headache the drooling monkeys living in the apartment above give me.

As a note, sorry for not posting to peoples blogs lately. Ive been sick for the past week or so and I’m only doing these cuz… well its my job as it were and I cant let sickness stop me. Everything else has been sidelined though, haven’t even played many games lately. Just some relaxing Viva Pinanta, heh.

First 5 Super Smash Bros. Guides Up!

misfit119 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:08:14 +0000

Huzzah! For anyone who is actually interested, and not getting this from another source you traitors :p, the first five of the 35 guides are up on Games Radar here:

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/guide-to-everyone-in-super-smash-bros-brawl/a-20080314154131456042

I decided that, after doing those main characters, to go a bit more obscure with the new characters, so I’ve got King Dedede, Sonic, Solid Snake, Luigi, Lucario and Pit. I threw Bowser in as well since I tend to use him a lot so it was easy for me to get a good wrap around what to do with him. Those should be up on Monday and then I’m going to be aiming for 7 a week, posted on mondays. Try to get this done with fairly quickly, heh.

Turok Review Up!

misfit119 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:07:24 +0000

My first review as an actual staff member is up for Gaming Excellence here.

http://www.gamingexcellence.com/xbox360/games/636/review.shtml

To those of you who enjoy reading such things, Turok is another of my “bad game reviews” although I toned back the snide humor a bit. Didn’t wanna seem too insulting to the game publisher and I couldn’t think of nice ways to say some of the mean things I wanted to say.

As an aside I put some good hours into the Super Smash Bros. Brawl on an import this weekend and I’ve started working on the character guides and it isn’t that bad. The worst part is trying to figure out how much damage an attack does, whether its more effective at close or short range and things like that. That and trying to see just how useful some of these Final Smashes are is going to take a bit. Hopefully I will have the first batch of them finished and I can then move on to working on them with a 1 or 2 per day set up. Here’s hoping that the PDFs look good when I’m done…

Oh, and Lucario can kiss my butt. I’m so sick of that glorified blue weasel whupping on me. Whoever decided that he should do more damage as he gets hurt needs to be beaten with a Wii mote and then strangled with the nunchuk cable. I got so sick of beating my friend, who loves this rodent, down with the likes of Link and Bowser only to have him whiff me with Lucario’s Hadoken move and shear the crud out of my health. Argh! Finally someone more annoying than Ness.

Persona 3 FAQ Finally Finished!

misfit119 — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:05:34 +0000

After a few months of delays and an arduous amount of typing, I finally finished my Persona FAQ. It took me about 400 gameplay hours, watching someone else play the game to see their S. Links and convincing them to help me out with them and finally playing through the game with an underpowered party lacking S. Links so that I could see what the weakest Persona looked like and how much they cost to retrieve. Phew…

It can be found Here on GameFAQs, Here on Games Radar or Here on IGN.

Well nevermind that. PoS GameSpot won’t let me post links apparently. Regardless, the thing is almost 900kb in text format. Yeesh. Now I move on to working on some exlusive guides for Games Radar. I’m going to be making a series of character guides for Super Smash Brothers Brawl so that should be time intensive but fun. I’ll post links to it when they’re up.

Edit: Took forever but I got them to work.

Writing Update

misfit119 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:02:44 +0000

So I’m still doing my freelance writing thing as a way to pass the days thanks to my damnable back. However there have been a few interesting changes to what’s been going on. I’m still freelancing for Gamers Temple but I think I’m done with CCC. They haven’t responded to me in a long while so I think we’re done there. Instead I’ve been asked to help submit guides to Games Radar. To anyone who doesn’t know, Games Radar is the company that Frank Provo, the freelancer demi-god, moved to after the whole Gerstmann thing happened. It’s like moving more in the direction of working for one of the bigger websites which is really awesome. Also, I’m no longer freelancing for Gaming Excellence, I’ve moved on to actual staff there which is really awesome. While some might say that the possibility of going to gaming conventions, like GDC, in the future is the best part of being full staff on a gaming site, I’m just excited to have been promoted like that. Means that my reviews are actually worth something.

Speaking of, here’s a few I haven’t posted. Nothing too spectacular mind you:

http://www.gamingexcellence.com/wii/games/1006/review.shtml

http://www.gamingexcellence.com/xbox360/games/1085/review.shtml

It’s for My Word Coach (the Wii port) and Tron for the XBLA. My review for Turok is going to be up soon, I can sum it up by saying that the game was bad. Bad!

That aside, I’ve been pretty quiet because I’ve been sick for the last two weeks. I do burst posting when I’m feeling okay so if I don’t respond to people please don’t take offense.

On another note I have Metal Gear Solid Essentials and Persona 3: FES pre-ordered and fully paid off. That gives me about 20 days or so to play my way through my 360 games and ICO before MGS distracts me. I have to play as many games as possible because the moment that P3: FES arrives, everything else will be forgotten. Must… finish the story…

Persona 3 FES! Score one for Me!

misfit119 — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:01:51 +0000

Yes! I just had, what the scientific community might refer to as, a joygasm.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6186665.html

I’ve been pretty quiet thanks to a seriously bad throat and stomach but this just drew me out of my shell. As I live and breathe this has made my year already. This and Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection are my two must buy games right now, forget Lost Odyssey and forget DMC 4. I must own these!