But, all things aside I finished in the top 20 (tied 17th) which is not bad at all. My other two highest finishes were when I placed 4th at NJIT, and 3rd at an admittedly low-turnout King of the Couch in Morristown. I can confidently say that my play has improved from last year. I don’t wake up unsafely as much I used to. I still have my issues with defense (I get grabbed easily and my blocking isn’t fully solid yet) however I have gotten better at avoiding some situations. On the other side of the coin, my offense has experienced the same growth. I am trying to make the transition from being a brawler to a more refined fighter. Yes, it’s a slow one with no real metric in which to measure your success, but I’ve noticed I have been winning a bit more in ranked matches online.

I finally made a return to Next Level for the big Two tournament series. I get there, I’m excited to play, but then, just my luck, I get to play a Spam ‘Rog and his cheap El Fuerte on stream . Overall, I didn’t do too bad, but I see that the potential here. I looked way better here than I did at Apex, but I’m still too inconsistent. I missed a few key punishes but I reacted well in some situations. If you’re wondering how I did in the overall tournament, I was blown up I haven’t gone 0-2 in a while so it was refreshing to be put down for once. That means I still have work to do, but just where do I get started?

Fortunately for me, Shoryuken has many posts on how to level up your game. I have been following them when I am in the lab, however I’ve just been playing online more to see what people are doing and get a feel of what I should be doing with my character. I just don’t feel that I have enough experience versus some characters or situations. Top players have been in some fight situations over and over again, and they just know what to do without wasting time to think about it. Me? I have to think. I’m also not able to accurately manage my meters without looking constantly. I still find myself peeking when I’m mid fight. I feel that if I can get better, more intuitive with my H.U.D. management then I can do things like make better reads on my opponent by looking at his life bar, super meter or even time with ease. I’ll also be able to mentally access my situations a bit better. I think the only cure for that is experience, so I have resolved to try and make it out to more local tournaments.

I think with more practice, I’ll build up the muscle memory required to not drop combos too often. I’ve made some progress, I just need to work out the kinks. I do not easily spook under pressure, it doesn’t affect me much, so I know that isn’t the problem. I however need to be able to take my comfortable, casual state of high-level play to tournaments. The transition seems to be giving me a hard time and I think that leads to my erratic play sometimes. I’ll keep working at it!

In any case, like always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on getting better. Tweet to me guys!

Role Optional Alerts and the Team Buff

Two of the exciting features we’re rolling out for Game Update 9 are Role Optional Alerts and the Team Buff. We have metrics that show us who is queuing for what, how long they’re waiting, and a number of other really useful things. As I’m sure you know when you queue for a Duo, you tend to get in and are able to start playing right away. Alerts are a different story, especially for those of you queuing for the damage role.

It has nothing to do with Duos only requiring two people. It’s that they require any two people. As is common in a lot of MMOs, there is a population disparity between the different roles. There are as many players queuing for Damage as there are all the other roles combined. Healers are the least common, followed by Tanks, and finally Controllers. So the end result is Healers don’t wait long at all, but Damage tends to wait much longer.

All Alerts are now role optional. Generally it shouldn’t take much more than a few minutes for an Alert queue to pop regardless of your role, assuming there are enough people willing to play that Alert. When the matchmaking system tries to form a group out of the pool of queued players it tries to form a balanced group first. As minutes pass, the system becomes increasingly less picky about finding a specific role for a given group slot.

The Role Optional Alert feature is made possible by the Team Buff. Any time three or more players are grouped together, within range, and in line of sight of one another, they gain a bonus to compensate for roles missing from their group.

If your group is missing a Tank, every group member gains additional damage mitigation.
If you’re missing a Healer, group members gain a small amount of Health regeneration when they begin to take damage and gain a further health regeneration boost while holding the block button when health is at critical levels.
If your group is missing a Controller you will gain a small amount of additional power regeneration when your power begins dipping low.

The buffs are by no means a replacement for having the actual role in your group. But with some self reliance, it will provide you with enough of a boost to allow you to complete the Alert successfully. The Team Buff is not applied in PvP arenas, during Legends matches, nor will it function during Duels.

The end result of this is that wait times to get into an Alert should be dramatically decreased. Provided players are queued, you should be able to get into an instance in a matter of minutes, no matter your role.

Novice Raids

In an effort to let more players experience more of the game, we’re launching Novice Raid modes for Game Update 9. Novice Raids are far less demanding than the Expert Raids. They are intended to allow more casual players and random pickup groups a chance to experience some of our best content they might not otherwise be able to experience.

The combat rating requirement is just a little bit lower for Novice Raids so you can hit them a little sooner than you can the Expert version. The content, play flow, and boss fights are identical but the fights themselves are much more forgiving. That’s not to say they will be a complete cake walk! You’ll still need to learn and execute properly on the mechanics of the boss fights if you want to succeed. Some may find Novice Raids are a great way to get some practice in while they are gearing up for the Expert versions.

Novice Raids do drop loot, however the loot will be of a lower item level. They also award the same badges, but you earn fewer of them. Novice Raids share the same lockout timer as Expert Raids, so you can’t earn loot and badges in both during the same week.

Some existing feats can be completed in either the Novice or Expert version of a Raid. However others such as the speed feats can only be completed in Expert mode. Finally we’ve also added new feats for completing the Expert version of a raid.

New Soder Colas plans available!

Plans for Soder Cola Prime and Soder Cola Max are now available for purchase from Research and Development vendors. These recover more Health and Power than a Soder Cola Extreme but provide no additional buff effect and require no Exobytes to make.

“The Bandwagon Effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with “the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so”.As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments. For example, social pressure has been used to explain Asch’s conformity experiments, and information has been used to explain Sherif’s autokinetic experiment.

When individuals make rational choices based on the information they receive from others, economists have proposed that information cascades can quickly form in which people decide to ignore their personal information signals and follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain why behavior is fragile—people understand that they are based on very limited information. As a result, fads form easily but are also easily dislodged. Such informational effects have been used to explain political bandwagons.”

Thanks Wikipedia <3

Note the first sign.

We’ve all seen this in action so many times before. When a team catches a hot streak at the right time everyone suddenly a fan of said team. Stadiums are full and once cheap tickets are now super expensive. If you want to see it in everyday life look at all the ‘new’ Yankees or Giants fans (sorry, I’ve never been a big football guy, but I did like the Chargers in the Junior Seau days) that pop up whenever the team is competing for the c’hip (or championship). For the purposes of this article, I’ll use three really good examples: The Miami Heat once they signed Chris Bosh and Lebron, The L.A. Clippers once they got Chris Paul and Chauncey Billups and the Golden State Warriors when they made that incredible play off run that produced highlights such as this.

After that dunk, Warriors tickets became the new thing for everyone. The Clippers are currently going through the same thing. This phenomenon is not just limited to sports, or politics, it also extends into the gaming world. Allow me to give you some background before I rage the hell out.

In fighting games picking a character is a much like picking a tool box. There are different tools in each of them for different situations, but they all serve the purpose of winning the match for your character. In most competitive games (especially fighters) people tend to pick their characters, teams, weapons, etc in usually one of three ways.

The first type of player picks by character loyalty. This means they simply like the character design so much that they play as that fighter/race/whatever for that reason alone. These people will usually use the same character over the course of multiple installments of a game. It’s like those die hard sports fans who like their team even if they’re horrible or someone who likes a band that everyone thinks is terrible. The second type of people pick their character based on whether the character-in-question’s play style fits in with their current skill level. For example, in my early Street Fighter IV days, starting off with a complex character like C.Viper wasn’t a good idea because at the time I didn’t have the execution required to play her effectively. This skill-based approach to choosing also leads them to experiment with other characters after they get to a certain level of proficiency with their main character. The third and final type are the people who pick characters because they are easier to win with, or ‘high tier’ ones, meaning they have attributes that outrank a considerable number of characters in the roster. While this may seem shameless, it is in fact a valid strategy. In the end, the game is about winning, so you pick whoever gives you the best chance of winning.

Teaching them early, huh pal?

With that said, you’d think things would be pretty cut and dry, right? No, they aren’t. In fact, there is a fourth shadow group no one wants to admit they are a part of. The assholes are called the bandwagoners. These are the people who I despise the most. “But Phire”, you ask, “Why all the hate towards the bandwagon?” Simply put, for the fact that these are the same people who, to use a fighter as an example, will talk about how bad your character is, how weak/low-tier they are and how you need to switch them. However, if something changes or new tech is found, they’ll jump on that character too and talk about how good they are with everyone else. Of course, if you confront them, they will deny they ever said anything negative about them and claim that they had “played them before”. Come on. It’s like they just saw the ugly girl from High School hit her stride, become hot and they’re the first in line, claiming they always had a crush on her.

No one was there for these days in Vanilla 4 or Super Turbo.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well since I started playing the SFIV series I’ve watched my Cammy develop from an ’0-2 and out’ champion to something actually kind of dangerous. With the new 2012 patch, Cammy is no longer nerfed to hell. I remember in the original Arcade Edition when they took her dive kick I was about to commit seppuku and find a new main (had my mind set on Yun at the time) but I decided to stick it out with her, and my patience paid off becuase now, I like the way she plays. But now I’m seeing Cammy players popping up EVERYWHERE claiming to have a good one, which 90% of the time they really don’t. They lose to characters that they should be beating, and when fighting against Cammy they lose horribly. Playing online, I tend to win the mirror matches because 80% of the time I know what I’m looking for, what to watch out for, I’m not doing anything stupid, because I know how she works. This is the main problem with bandwagoners, because they really don’t understand the character they’re choosing. They will see videos, or watch some matches and say “Oh man that’s so cheap, I want to do that too!”. So they practice that set of moves, go out to try, then lose to high level players who know their bandwagon character is fraudulent or they lose via being counter-picked because they have NO match up experience.

Even he wasn't safe from Bandwagon fans after death.

Having beaten several ‘Cammy’ players far worse than I should have, in situations that wouldn’t have happened (like misjudging her drill distance) if these people actually knew her well enough to call their play style ‘unique’(which most bandwagoners do by default) we wouldn’t have this problem. I personally feel that people should just pick either what they like, or what they are most comfortable with and just play the game. I think it would make for a better game overall because we’d have more diversity rather than cookie cutter clones of a particular character and play style. Newsflash: This ultimately serves you and the community no purpose, because you aren’t choosing a character you’re invested in, you’re just trending. However, this may be part of a larger problem as a whole with players who aren’t willing to do any work to win popping up in large numbers. I’ll examine that next time.

Here are the five worst characters to have on your tail as a video game villain. NO THE GODDAMNED BATMAN IS NOT ON THIS LIST, HE IS A COMIC BOOK CHARACTER WITH A VIDEO GAME.

5) Sonic the Hedgehog/Link

At number 5 it’s a tie between Sonic and Link. Sonic is a hedgehog with super speed that can destroy most object by simplify JUMPING OR ROLLING into them. You build this amazing robot death machine only to have a blue hedgehog jump and roll it to death. To make matters even worse he can become a super hedgehog capable of destroying things just by touching them and he can breathe in space. They only thing that could stop this hedgehog is not having any rings (which the world seems to have an abundant supply of), drowning him (but you’d have to make sure there’s no cracks so air can leak or or have a completely underwater fortress and risk drowning yourself if Sonic does come through and beats the snot of out of your base),trying to crush him or trying to get him to fall into a pit(both of which are completely random). And no matter what you’re planning to do Sonic will always find out and show up pissed about it.

Link is equally annoying. Think about this you have this amazing power from the Triforce, you’re immortal and you are overall bad ass. Then all of a sudden a kid in a green tunic shows up and ruins everything. The most screwed up part about it? It’s a different kid almost every time. So you’re immortal and doomed to having a kid in a green tunic just tear you up all because it’s a tradition to give every kid a green tunic at a certain time. Why don’t you just kill off all the children in every village? Then you won’t have anyone to rule over. Catch 22.

4) Ryu

So you are holding a fighting tournament to try and find a new body for yourself? You’re an inter-dimensional being that just happened to be threatening two worlds at once? Are you the most brutal Muay Thai fighter ever and have no challengers? Well it sucks to be you because Ryu is probably going to show up and punch you in the face. Even if you’re just a regular fighter he’s still just going to punch you in the face. The man wanders the world LOOKING FOR FIGHTS barefoot no less. He has fought everything from aliens and giant robots to super heroes and demons. What makes it even worse is that in the chance you actually may be winning, he’ll tap into some hidden energy reserves and go evil making him even more dangerous. His moves are always so basic but they are insanely strong. Now that he has the Soul-Glo in Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 this makes him that much more powerful.

3) Megaman

He doesn’t look like much. He looks like he’d be at home in a toy chest.If you are a robot that’s gone evil or renegade, then he’s the worse thing ever. Not only does he keep coming back if you defeat him. He has probably killed your allies and took their abilities to use on you or he is going to kill you and use your ability to kill your allies. What makes him creepy is that he always shows up without saying a word and just stares and blinks at you,later in the series he talks but for a few years he was a silent killer. And to think all this started because two old guys had problems with each other.

2) Snake

This includes the original Snake the one that the current Snake is cloned from. This man is a combination of spy, special operations soldier and mercenary commando from a black operations and espionage unit. He is tasked with disarming and destroying the latest incarnation of Metal Gear which is usually a bipedal nuclear weapon-armed mecha which is another word for giant robot. Usually Snake has to deal with people with ridiculous powers or armed with incredible skills to do so. You know he’s out there. You’re doing something that ridiculous you know that he’s going to be there and he’s not coming to negotiate anything with you, ever. While you’re trying to get your plan to completion, he’s either killing your allies or hes tranquilizing them and taking pictures of them in compromising positions, who knows what else he’s doing to them. You know what that’s going to be your fate too. This man has taken down so many organizations, robots, people in robots, ninja robots, vampires, ghosts, etc. that anything you can come up with he’s ready for. How do you stop a man like that? You don’t, you just pray that he kills you.

1) Belmonts

At the top of this list sits one family, the Belmonts. If you’re a citizen of the night this name strikes terror into your heart. If you’re a vampire and have a castle it’s even worse. These asshoels will show up at your front door, destroy everything in your house, steal your treasure and money, kill your tenants, find you in your panic room, beat the hell out of you and then sink your castle or destroy it. They ALWAYS show up and they more than likely will bring a friend or two. There’s really no way to get rid of them and they will always lecture you on morals and why what you’re doing is wrong. What if you’re not a creature of the night but have a castle? All it would take is one rumor from the towns folk and you’ll have them sniffing around in no time. I don’t think they even ask questions they just whip the hell out of everything and leave. And to top it all off they WILL be prettier than you with better hair and look cooler (in some cases) than you ever will.

What’s your top 5 ? I’d love to hear it tweet it to me or post on the Facebook!

I got 9th place out of 27 people. It’s not bad considering I just started playing this game a bit more serious. Some of the things I’ve noticed is that I tend to drop combos. Talking to Megaman Steve he told me that I should practice combos in different situations such as training dummy crouching and jumping since the hit scaling is different from the standing states. I’ve been doing vs crouching opponents in AE but not Marvel. I feel that Marvel while combos are easier there’s way more memorization and muscle memory involved because things can drastically in a combo all based on what you do to start off the combo. In the tournament I was sent to losers by an 8-bit Dojo regular, Baydo. I did ok in losers but I dropped crucial combos with every member of my team at different points. Eventually I would have had to fight Baydo again in losers if I wasn’t such a scrub.
I think he probably would have beat me again seeing the fact as if he looked like a man possessed when he took third place.

In AE there were 32 fighters and I took 4th. Not bad for my first time out of the dojo in a while. There was obviously some rust and some combos dropped abut I did my best and played solid. I didn’t do too much crazy stuff but I did do unsafe things. I fought bad match ups all day such as Guile, E.Honda and Balrog. I had to be moved away from Sol Lekz in the second round though. I ended up playing a pad Blanka with a throw macro, while not illegal it’s sort of silly and generally frowned upon because it removes some of the actual skill involved, and lost (later the dojo told me what I needed to do to win against this). I fought well in losers and I avenged my PAX demon by defeating a Chun Li when I need to. I did pretty well till I ran into Chad Viper, who defeated me with his alternate character Ryu. To be fair Ryu is a 50/50 match up due to the fact that he’s so balanced you’re going to have to out play him to win. I should have won that match up because Ryu is the most common character you see online, so at this point I should know what the situation was. The match between us is going to be available sometime on the net.

Looking back at the match I could have done so many things differently. Part of that I’m sure was tournament nerves, the other part of my loss was execution. I had Sol Lekz in my corner coaching me not so much on the game but to keep my focused at the task at hand and not let me get too wild with the things I do. He even gave me a shout out on his facebook.

“As we progress, I continue to realize that Phire is no where near the “old man” status that he claims. He has the ability to absorb knowledge as well as execute. Coaching him is fun because as a player, although not as experienced in fighters but has coached a lot in FPS, knows what needs to be done but lacks the execution to do so. As to where Phire simply forgets at times but when you stay on top of him, he stays on top of the game as a whole.”

What’s next I’m going to try my hand at Savage Saturday this weekend and then Apex next month. I have to get ready for EVO 2k12 and do better than I did. I also have to run more 8-bit tournaments because I know you miss us.

Want to spar or tell me how free I am tweet it and expose me as a fraud.

First off these guys said that mobile is the future of gaming. While ambitious and very optimistic as this claim is, it’s also false. You can definitely do some pretty cool things on the mobile platform, it’s still a phone at the end of the day.

Let me break down what my phone has on it. I have purchased four game apps so far. The first being the T-pain app because quite frankly after playing Saints Row the 3rd I absolutely need a vocal box for myself so I can lay down the jive with my homies while I’m at the Bit, you dig? While not an actual game it is still for entertainment purposes. My biggest issues is that there’s no way that it functions like a true voice box because it has to record everything then auto tune it. You can set up some pretty funny presets I would have like to had the feature to you know do it live.

Second thing I downloaded was Infinity Blade. This was pretty good, it was a cross between quick time events, Demon Souls and a little bit of Dragon’s Lair/Space Ace. The game is very simple and just banks on a gamers’ OCD to collect items and level up. I did find myself playing this late night in bed alone (yes wearing horse head) with a few perfectly good consoles in the room next to me. I have killed the King and I have joined the King so in theory I am done with the game. The only reason why I still play is to get the weapons and armor that I want before I move on to the sequel which probably won’t use the save file anyway. In any case I wish Epic Games made more games this good.

The third thing I downloaded was the Angry Birds free version. I wanted to see what all the hype was about and I kind of was not impressed. I could see how people can get addicted to it but it doesn’t feel like something someone just has to play. It made me nostalgic for another actually.

Which brings us to the last thing I downloaded. The game called Eenies plays just like Gunbound (which Korean superstar Jake Choi bodied me free at). Angry Birds made me miss this game because you just adjust angles and control power to hit targets. Eenies is not exactly like the original game it was modeled after but the gameplay is what I craved and the practice.

Everything else I’ve seen so far I’m not too thrilled about most of the retro games I have on console already. The games based on franchises are usually really simple versions of the game which is fine if you never experienced the real deal before. The real issues for me stem not from the games but from the phones themselves.

This is more or less what my hand looks like, giant palm area tiny fingers. This is what they call a monkey paw the shape of most phones are made for people with human hands. Gaming on these things aren’t exactly comfortable I need a little bit more to wrap my hands around you know.I also suck terrible at touch screen anything it’s like my fingers flat and cold so the screen never picks up my presses ever. If you could only see me butcher the English language when I send out messages. So trying to do stuff on a touch screen isn’t quite so easy for me.

I am around video games constantly, if I want to play something I can. The only times I’m not around games is when traveling by train or in the bathroom usually then there’s a portable near by. I see if people don’t have a DS, PSP,etc and how a phone could supplement that but my diet is already rich with gaming goodness. Also my phone is my phone, it’s bad enough I double up by using it as my Mp3 player as well. My phone can’t be everything can it?

Does anyone have any suggestions on games I should play? Send em on my way. If you will excuse me I need to play some Infinity Blade.

It’s no news to anyone that the true stars of Jurassic Park are indeed the dinosaurs themselves and the models and coloring of the animals are just about the best things to look at in this game. While various areas of the game do seem to become more and more bland as your eyes venture into the distance, the dinosaurs look as lively as one could hope in a Jurassic themed thriller. Sadly this is about as good as visuals go here, while the characters themselves don’t seem exactly up to par with the modern style character models that provide the sizzle in the steak to mainstream line up of games we enjoy today, they aren’t exactly terrible either. What the game does tend to suffer the most from visually however is the random choppiness in the middle of the more action focused scenes, which there happens to be plenty of.

Just like the visual faithfulness to the original film itself, the soundtrack and ambiance of the island are all pretty praiseworthy. Sound clips from the film were used for creating an authentic feel for your stay on Isla Nublar, mainly in the most key areas of the game such as music, sound cues, the various sounds of each featured dinosaurs, footsteps and even mysterious ruffles of the bushes and tree’s in tropical terrain. All the island bells and whistles are well placed and on point and then there of course are the voice acting. The cast seems to range in different skill levels of vocally bringing their characters to life, Heather Judson does a great job of portraying the tween aged Jess Harding in addition to Nika Futterman (Nima) plays a very believable Costa Rican local with her heavy accent and memorable Spanglish dialogue. Sadly others like Yoder and Oscar come off more as ear splitting and often times straight annoying, causing you to only wonder “when is this person going to get eaten already?”, leaving the rest of the cast members passable.

The story is chopped up into 4 chapters that span roughly 20-30 minutes over an hour depending on how many blunders are made. While it won’t win any Emmy’s, it does deliver a pretty solid fictional perspective of the remaining staff members who wasn’t so lucky to have made it to the chopper with the survivors of the film and ride into the the sunset. Along the way are some decent nods to background and foreground elements of JP, minor plot hole questions are addressed and expansions on ground knowledge of the park are made. Episode 4 specifically brings the player into a underground portion of the park never before explored, featuring some prehistoric marine life, part of a work in progress aquarium style attraction for the tourist groups. The cast aren’t exactly lovable nor with they spark any other interest of connection with the player but they do actually make sense in the sandbox and don’t do anything that stretches the plot to feel unbelievable or outlandish.

A heavy bit of irony is placed within the title as Jurassic Park: The Game is actually quite far off from the actual experience and where the game suffers. Actual game play takes a backseat in favor of a much more heavily cinematic adventure where the player will spend roughly 80% of the game watching the story unfold. The only control given to the player is through quick time button prompts which either control the characters point of interest and dialogue options, both of which move the story along, or action sequences in which the player must help the characters survive given a number of allotted mistakes allowed before causing death. While the action sequences are fairly well executed and at the very least engaging, lack of a difficulty level difference will either leave this game unplayable for those with poor hand-eye motor skills or rather predictable for the more advance skilled gamers.

A comparison to Heavy Rain would almost be proper in describing this game if it weren’t for the absolute lack of control over all of the characters. You never get to control actual direction or movement, you simply help move things along and the dialogue options would provide a much better feel of involvement to the player if it weren’t for the fact that 90% of what is chosen will still lead to the same conversation. Leaving out the ability to actually explore the world is what hinders this game massively from being anywhere close to the potential of a blockbuster dinosaur game. Thankfully, at the very least, these QTE’s are evenly spread throughout the cinematics, in decent variety, giving the player something to do without too long of a pause between the action and story telling and maintains the level of interest.

In conclusion, Jurassic Park: The Game will come down to either a complete hit or miss depending on the gamer. If your a fan and knowledgeable of the Jurassic Park films and lore, there is enough content here to heavily appreciate the attention to detail and keep you satisfied all the way through. However should you just be looking to pick up a fresh dino adventure then it really come down to your tolerance of heavy, and I mean HEAVY, amounts of cinematics. Unfortunately both crowds will share the same complaint, satisfied or not, that there simply isn’t enough actual game play here to consider this anything more than an interactive movie. Telltale has done an overall impressive job with the JP world but the oversight of a major actual gaming element keeps this from living past a minor cult following.

Visuals: 7 The dinosaurs are very life like, accurate and motion captured very well, even more so than the humans. Isla Nublar and the park itself look very convincing but there are so random frame chops are happen a bit to frequent in a game that is pretty much on rails especially.

Sound: 8 Sound clips from the original movie compliment this game extremely well and are all placed properly without too much recycling.

Controls: 7 The on screen prompts make sense according to the action unfolding on screen. Joystick movements and button commands mimic the characters movements on a consistent, sensible manner.

Gameplay: 4 There isn’t any actual gameplay. Quicktime button prompts move the ride along but at the very least are responsive and accurate.

Replay: 2 Once your done there will be little urge to go back and do it all again unless you’d just like to collect a few achievements/trophies that were missed.

Not exactly a terrible game but for sure an acquired taste. Too many variables stop this title from reaching it’s full potential. A gameplay expansion on a sequel would leave a much longer lasting impression should Telltale want to keep this ball rolling.

Rating: 7.0

Let’s start from the beginning, the story of Saints Row picks up after the events of two and all its DLC. The Saints become media stars and filthy rich in addition to their gang banging (giggity) activities. During a ‘publicity stunt’ (a bank job) the Saints leader (you), Johnny Gat, and Shaundi get themselves into a sticky situation and wind up in jail. They find themselves at the mercy of Syndicate in a different town known as Steelport. Johnny Gat sacrifices himself for you and Shaundi to escape. The events following that are similar to the previous two games. You do various missions and activities to build up the Saints in Steelport. Very simple and stays tried and true to the formula. Interestingly enough the data from the second game doesn’t load so you have to make your character all over again, so you can make a new character or just try to remember what you looked like. I basically made myself, again and just started playing.

The game allows players now to share their create a character online with the community which is an nice,but not necessary add. I can only guess that they are trig to build up the the community more. However the create-a-feature is good but it’s not very robust. There are some options that were available in the previous game that are not available here in this version. This also applies to clothing, jewelery, tattoos,etc. it seems as if they simplified it so the game did not have too much to load, especially since you can play through the campaign in co-op mode.

So what could you do to improve on a design on a game that is the crazy slutty sister of Grand Theft Auto? Improve the graphics for one. The game looks leaps and bounds better than the first two, while not as graphically impressive as GTAV it has it’s charm. While there have been some improvements there have also been some back steps. As I mentioned earlier the character creation suffered for the graphical improvements. Also the lighting in some points tend to make characters faces look a little bit weird. Facial expressions are practically non existent in this game, not that their needed but it is very noticeable around hour two.

Steelport looks amazing as a city, it has a grittier feel to it versus the west coast sort of feel that Stillwater had in the second game. It rains a lot in that town but it is a bit less pronounced. You’ll hear the rain and see the water effects on the car and tires but not see the rain. Speaking of water, the water looks and behaves pretty well. The lighting has improved and at night Steelport looks beautiful. The fire effects have gotten a slight improvement not as good as Alone in the Dark (best fire effects ever) but not too shabby either.

Controlling this game is pretty simple they did not change up too much from the previous control schemes, if it’s not broke.. They added some new moves that can be performed while sprinting each with it’s own merits plus aiming down sights helps line up shots faster. Driving in this game is always a pleasure. Every vehicle handles different and has a unique feel. They simplified flying to make it a better experience so you can focus on more important things like carnage.

The music in this game is a point of contention for me. While the original score for some parts of the game is really good. The radio song choices don’t sit that well with me. There are some good songs I discovered playing this game such this one:

Grum – Heartbeats from Brian McBlade on Vimeo.

However a lot of the hip hop rap and rock tracks I wasn’t feeling too much. They included a few tracks from Adult Swim such as the venture bros theme song,stuff from Tim and Eric, and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme song. While none of this is bad it just didn’t move me in the way that they probably hoped/expected. I think it’s because I am an old fart. What I do give them credit for is picking amazing songs to line up with some key events in the game. The scene when you storm the penthouse is just impeccably done for instance. It feels as if they modeled this and other scenarios after the songs once they got the license for them.

The voice acting for this game is good. Some moderately sized to big names were brought in for this and it really gives the game some flair. Having Hulk Hogan break down the Luchador code for you to having Sasha Grey complain about her outfits ups the ante. The mayor (spoiler) being himself was absolutely amazing, I had no idea that was going to happen. I was going to initially complain about the main character voice but in light of beating the game and doing some co-op I think the voices work considering.

The game offers a bit but not too much in terms of length. In theory you can finish this game in one or two sittings. The diversion activities do not have that many levels and you can predict where you can find gang activities to break up to complete the areas that you take over. The co-op is fun and I think is best played between two people who have not played the game before. You can help a person out with your beefed up Saint but it feels a bit too easy at times. There is a horde mode(which is practically standard in almost every game now) called Whored mode where you take out various waves of enemies. It’s a horde mode so if you’re into that sort of thing then this maybe up your alley. I did about 20 waves and I was done with it. There are multiple endings and you can make different choices within the game which affects what you end up with in your arsenal, who is in your crew and how you make your money. So it is worth another play through to see the difference. For the achievement hunters in one playthrough I’ve unlocked thirty seven of the fifty achievements in the game. The game is not to difficult on Hardcore just a bit cheap (everyone seemingly has SMGs and shotguns) but this is ok because you can hide in the stores that you own, call off notoriety and become invincible to most forms of damage with the proper levels to counteract this. I personally felt that some of the upgrades held your hand while you played and didn’t buy them. You may need them so the devs put them in the game.

Overall this game is fun. It is satire plain and simple. It knows it’s a video game and doesn’t try to be anything it’s not. It pokes fun at other genres and pays homage to them as well. The crew of this game is obviously into the culture and tried to include as much of that knowledge as they can. However there are some issues with this game. It buggy and sometimes randomly die doing actions that you normally wouldn’t die for. The AI is absolutely terrible at driving, finding paths to get to you and just not walking in the line of your fire. Sometimes if there are too many vehicles or things on screen your Y button becomes your enemy. You’ll have a hard time trying to get into a car or taking people hostage, others you’ll answer your cellphone when you want to open a door or get into your car. There’s also the fact this game may offend some people because its super sexual nature, rough language and some of the stereotypes.

The Breakdown

Control: 9
There are some issues with the Y button when there are too many Y sensitiveness objects on screen. You may accidentally take people hostage if they are too close to your car otherwise the formula they have for this game works

Sound: 10
Aside from my beef with the music choice the voice acting and sound track are great. Three words make this game great aurally, Auto-Tuned Pimp.

Gameplay: 9
You’ve played this before there’s not much to it, very easy to pick up and play, I think they realized the side missions could be repetitive so there aren’t that many of them kudos for that. The game isn’t that hard overall just a little cheap at times.

Graphics: 9
Game looks good but there are some bugs here and there. stuff falling through the game, some wonky lighting effects and some funny glitches.

Replay: 6
If you’re an achievement hunter, you’ll have it all in 1.5 play-throughs. And you’ll have no real reason to pick up the game again until DLC or just to help out your friends. Story isn’t that long but there are some choices and cut scenes you may want to see again so there’s that. But once you’re done you’re done.

It’s like GTA‘s younger sister. She’s pretty and super fun but not like her older more sophisticated sister. They have their own two distinct styles but you can’t help but compare them. This game is an improvement on the other two but there’s still some work that could be done. The game has bugs that happen often however they aren’t world ending. The game is worth a play through, the game has more positives than negatives . I would say pick it up at a slightly lower price point or ask for it as a gift. I don’t say get it used because you lose your online pass (which I’m very disappointed with THQ for going down that path).

Rating: 8.5

For those who didn’t know who Josh was or what he did, he was a Rose player really active in the FGC community and on the boards. His Rose pissed off many people but that’s the sign of a good Rose. He was probably one of the nicest guys you could meet ever in the community. He was always willing to help and had some words of encouragement for other players as well.

Just like his character who was prone to being pressured he always seemed to find some sort of way to maintain composure and somehow swing things back in his favor. He was battling with some personal and employment issues but he managed to get through and he was on the path of turning his life around.

I am shaken because you were so young when you were taken from us. I remember trying to learn how to skateboard with you and Rob.

From all this I hope people take away that you have to cherish the people around you.

Thank you SK not only for being a good player but a good person.

Aksys Games will sponsor the winning team of the BlazBlue Revolution US Finals by providing full airfare and hotel accommodations to Japan, along with the pride of representing the United States in the BlazBlue Revolution Japan Finals. Not only that, but if the US Team is able to take the top spot in the Japanese Finals, an extra bonus prize will be awarded to the US Team! Now’s the time to grab two of your most trusted comrades and prepare for the revolution of a lifetime!

BlazBlue Revolution US Event Details:

Finals Date: 2/25/2012

Location: Southern California, venue TBA

Format: 3v3 Double Elimination, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift EXTEND console version

Prize: Winning team will win full hotel and airfare to Japan and a spot in the Japan Finals

Restriction: Winners MUST have their US passport or equivalent document by 2/25. NO EXCEPTIONS.

BlazBlue Revolution Japan Event Details:

Final Date: 3/24/2012

Location: Japan, venue TBA

Format: 3v3 Format Final Rules TBA, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II (V1.05) Arcade Version

Prize: TBA + Special US Team Prize*

*The US Team prize is a monetary award that will be given if the US Team is able to take the gold at the BlazBlue Revolution Japan Finals.

Full rules and event details will be announced on 12/17/2011 here. Until then, stay tuned for more information on BlazBlue Revolution at www.aksysgames.com.