This is a “Level up!” blog. Every time my GameSpot level increases I publish one of these, explaining the meaning of the level’s title. It can be an interesting learning experience for all involved.

Level 44
Rank: Violence Fight

Violence Fight is an arcade game released in 1989. Instead of attempting to explain it, I’ll just let the game speak for itself.

View this blog on GameSpot

I got into the PS3 beta for Battlefield Bad Company 2.  GameSpot.com is giving 65,000 keys out.  Download it and installed.  When I went and tried to play it asked for a password.  Had know idea what it would be or how to get it.   I looked back on GameSpot’s website it said it was open to U.S. residents only.  I was like, “shit”.  Then I got thinking may be my Battlefield Heroes password would work, it did.

So far I have tried 1 and a half rounds.  From what I have tried the map is huge, there is a lot going on and it looks great.   Like most online fps games I play I die a lot and have know idea were I got shot from.  I did manage to get a total of 8 kills. LOL.  All so like most online game you can hear the people with head sets yelling and bitching.  That can be funny but most of the just plain annoying.

of Rachel’s life just passed by.

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but sometime during Rachel’s stay at the hospital, probably while we were in San Francisco, she received an Amazon gift card over e-mail. At the time, and still, I felt this was fucking ridiculous. I’ve already said why. And I’ll say why again. $20 is about enough to buy what I got (I’ll get into that in a moment). It’s not enough for groceries, not enough t pay rent, not enough to make a car payment. Basically, not enough to do anything useful, which, at the time, we were in desperate need of doing. So, in essence, it’s just enough for the individual to say, hey, we’re thinking about you, but not enough to actually do anything of use. I don’t remember who the people were who issued this gift card. I don’t reemmber if I even ever met them. But what pissed me off at the time was that if they were gonna bother to get her a fucking gift card, why not either have it be for an amount she could use, or for someTHING she could use. I guess I feel that if you’re gonna send your best, either do it or don’t. Like that bitch, Bev, who sent Rachel a nauseatingly flowery card about trusting in Jesus and Rachel’s miracle coming. Such a gesture serves only the gesturer, not the gesturee. Thus it’s a selfish act, having nothing to do with the sick person. It’s a way of assuaging guilt. And to that, as to other things, I say, eat your fucking guilt. Guilt does not feed people, nor provide housing, and it sure as fuck doesn’t heal people. I’d honestly rather someone just keep their fucking mouth shut than provide some meaningless, selfish condolence. And yet people do it all the time. I’m guessing so they don’t feel like assholes. Well, guess what? You are an asshole. And the less I know about that, the better.

So anyway, Rachel did nothing with the gift card because it was fucking useless. Since I know her e-mail account information, I forwarded the gift card to myself. I’d intended to use it on something like a game or… I didn’t know. For months… actually, for over a year, that stupid gettin’-rid-o’-guilt gift card sat in my inbox. I got really sick of looking at it, and yet wasn’t ever inspired to get anything.

Until yesterday.

I saw an announcement on GameSpot that the Star Trek DVD/Blu-Ray, etc. was coming out Tuesday. I was gonna buy it for myself anyway, and was about to do so when I suddenly remembered the Il Uselesso Amazon card that I’d been harboring.

As I’ve said before, Rachel and I had had a pact that I’d go see the recent Star Trek at the Braodway MetroPlex (in uniform) in downtown Portland with Cheryl and afterwards, Rachel’d make fun of me. Rachel died months before we’d have that chance. I saw it in Hollywood with Succinctrix and others. But now, it’s come full circle. In life, Rachel couldn’t join me for the geek hoorah, so in death, she just bought me the damn DVD.

IGN and GAMESPOT have both had some hands-on time with the latest build of the PSP version of TEKKEN 6.  They’ve given their thoughts and impressions on it and so far… They’re pretty positive about it!  Check out each site’s preview by clicking below!

• IGN – TEKKEN 6 (PSP) Hands-On
• GAMESPOT – TEKKEN 6 PSP Update – Game Modes and More

According to this article from gamespot.com, Modern Warfare 2 is being billed the biggest entertainment launch ever selling $310 million in ONE-DAY sales in North America and the UK.

Since the release of Modern Warfare 2 XBOX Live has had a record 2 million hits.

That’s a lot of people in the world playing one video game, so feel better knowing you’re not the only girlfriend out there whose boyfriend is glued to the game. Check out the article linked below for more details.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/modernwarfare2/news.html?sid=6240148

In news that should surprise no one following Sony’s quiet announcement that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves had passed the million sales checkpoint, the October 2009 sales numbers have been released by the NPD Group and Nathan Drake’s widely loved return was the top seller for October 2009, right alongside Wii Fit Plus. Word of mouth proved a good barometer for the financial success of Borderlands, as well, with Gearbox Software’s shooter-meets-RPG riding just behind Uncharted 2. The question on everyone’s mind, though: where’s Brutal Legend?

The top ten software sales for the month:

1. PS3 Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Sony, 537,000
2. Wii Wii Fit Plus, Nintendo, 441,000
3. 360 Borderlands, Take-Two Interactive, 418,000
4. Wii Wii Sports Resort, Nintendo, 314,000
5. 360 NBA 2K10, Take-Two Interactive, 311,000
6. 360 Halo 3: ODST, Microsoft, 271,000
7. PS3 NBA 2K10, Take-Two Interactive, 213,000
8. 360 Forza Motorsport 3, Microsoft, 175,000
9. DS Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Square Enix, 169,000
10. 360 FIFA 10, Electronic Arts, 156,000

My review for Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure went up on GameSpot today. It’s a fairly standard update to a classic franchise with the obligatory audio and visual upgrades. Local cooperative play is a nice addition, and the game goes a long way toward correcting the problems of recent remake efforts like Rainbow Islands: Evolution (PSP) and Rainbow Islands: Revolution (Nintendo DS), but the lack of some important features make it feel stuck in the past. If you’re a fan of the series looking for some nostalgia (because, let’s face it, there are no new fans of Rainbow Islands), you’ll probably find something to like. Otherwise, stick with Bubble Bobble Neo.

http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6239408/index.html?tag=topslot;thumb;1

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare 2 has been released.

Read more about the game on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2

Gamespot hasn’t released their reviews and gameplay review video, so just wait for it. Once its out, i’ll post the link here.

WHY GAME REVIEWS SUCK
An exercise in hypocrisy.

Everybody, everybody, roll on up for the hot new game everyone is talking about: Dragon Age: Origins! 8.5/10 GAMESPOT! 8.4/10 IGN! 8/10 EUROGAMER! Wow, these guys must be really unified in their opinions!

Hold on a second, that last one can’t be right…

If you click through to the Eurogamer review of Dragon Age, you’ll find 3 pages of seething disgust for the game and everything it stands for. Every aspect of the game is ripped apart, piece by piece, good points brought up only to emphasise the horrible ones. The game is called cliché, bland, and overdone, only succeeding in spite of itself. The storyline? An emotionless mess, designed by a committee in such a way as to suck any heart out of it whatsoever. And so, the shell-shocked reader turns to the final page to gaze upon the final nail-in-the-coffin judgement score on this game that the reviewer has so mercilessly torn down, to find that he’s given it:

8/10.

What the hell.

It’s nothing new. Every single game that isn’t either a shining pearl of brilliance or a steaming crud-pile of mediocrity gets an 8. I’m not talking about Eurogamer here: I’m talking about everyone. They cover it up well, I’ll admit: 8.5, 8.9, 8.3- there’s a marvellous range and flavour of eights. That doesn’t change the fact that 8 IS NOT A BAD SCORE. I recall a scandal a while ago over some hapless reviewer giving GTA4 an 8, to the outrage of all. That this was considered a bad score shows the truth: 8 is the average, given to everyone.

God knows why we listen to game reviews, or why we pay so much attention to it all. Because they’re shit. Game reviews seem to have perfected the art of telling you everything about a game while leaving you without the slightest idea of whether you want to buy it or not. We wade through pages of talk on the games mechanics, sound design and graphics in a hopeless search for the bit where they tell us whether it was good or not. Even upon reaching the score, that beacon of hope that should instantly tell us everything in a stroke, we find the game has gotten an 8. Only another 8.

Why are game reviews so vague, muddy, and shit? Allow me to provide an answer:

If you go up to a man on the street and ask him about a game, he will give you his opinion. If he happened to be a huge fan of Gutsplatter 3X, he’ll say so, and probably go on to gush enthusiastically about the high-tech gut-splattering effects, or the total immersion in a living, breathing, gut-splattering world. If he hated it, he’ll go ahead and say that, and then attack the over-emphasis on gut-splattering sidequests or the lacklustre gut-splattering soundtrack.

If you go up to that same man, however, and give him a games journalist badge and a laptop and tell him to write a REVIEW of a game, that will then go on to be published on a professional game-reviewing website, then he will suddenly become very unsure of his feelings towards Gutsplatter 3X. When it comes to a review, he can’t give his personal OPINION- he has to give a sage, unbiased, objective judgement of every aspect of a game. He might have hated it- but can he really, truly say it was a bad game, when he thinks about it?

When you try and be objective about your opinion, madness ensues. Madness like putting decimal points in game scores, as if you can calculate how good a game is to the nearest percent. Madness like trying to judge how every single person who plays the game would judge it. Madness like never rating a game below 8.

Give us the old five stars, for gods sake! Scores aren’t meant to show precisely how good a game is so you can stack it on a chart, they’re meant to give you a rough idea- go for the fives, avoid the ones!

Give us your damn opinion, for gods sake! Put a disclaimer saying “YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE MAY VARY” if you have to, but just tell us what YOU thought of the game, not what you think we will think of it. Doing that just confuses everyone.

And if you didn’t like a game, for the love of god, give it a bad score. If a game is bad, give it a 4 or something, not an 8. If a game really is great, give it a 10- what are you saving 10’s for anyway, some mythical perfect game that will descend at the apocalypse?

I think part of the problem here is perhaps that we all seem to take reviews as gospel, unshakable truths that pronounce whether a game is good or bad like the judgement of god. We care about these things so much! If a reviewer gives a game we like a bad score, we’ll clog up the comments section raging at him! Why? Why do we care? It’s just his opinion.

So, everybody, don’t go online to find out whether or not to buy a game. Go to your friends- to someone you know in real life, who’s played the game- and ask them about it. They may be biased, inaccurate, un-objective, and exaggerate like all hell- but that’s what an opinion is. And that’s something you won’t get from Gamespot.

COMING UP SOON: A review of fallout 2!

Jack – The Machination, Creative Director, Badass

Visit my Gamespot Profile: http://uk.gamespot.com/users/AltairJohnson/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/MatthewHurwitz

And my Tumblr: http://novicereviews.tumblr.com/

GameSpot reports that the release of Harmonix’s The Beatles: Rock Band has helped Viacom reverse its trend of slumping rhythm game sales.

Let’s Suppose…

You go to your local game trader (GameSpot, for example). You see a new game (Borderlands, perhaps?) that the THEYs (magazines, websites, G4TV, government spooks) have been praising.

You also see three or four older, cheaper games (WWE Day of Reckoning, Worms 3D and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem?) that have been out for years. You have always wanted to play them, but never had the money for them when they were new.

Now, altogether, they cost the same as the new game, but you can’t decide which one to purchase. Four mediocre games just aren’t the same as one awesome one. You need an Nth opinion, but where can you get one?

FAQs, Reviews, Et Cetera, Oh My!

GameSpot has a separate website called GameFAQS, in which the content within is contributed by the users. The primary function of the website is to provide reader-written reviews and walkthroughs of video games, from systems such as the Atari 2600 all the way up to the Nintendo Wii.

In addition, you can download saves for use in your Action Replay or other game modification device (when available), check prices at GameStop, EBGames and Amazon, even ask questions about the game and answer other peoples questions about it (registration required)! As well, GameFaqs features an active message board community, if texting people is more your thing.

Continue? Of Course I Want to Continue!

However, as with all community-contributed websites, the quality and quantity of the content is wholly dependent on the interests of said community. Fortunately, GameFAQs has such a wide and far-reaching fan base, that most games have all the information you should need in making your decision.

So whether you need advice on how to make it through Streets of Rage 3 PERIOD, or you just need a little reassurance that you should not regret buying Prototype over inFamous, GameFAQs has all the FAQs laid out for you.

I took a look at The 4 Most Shameless Videogame Marketing Efforts at Gameist and distilled, for your reading pleasure, three insights for use in pushing games or anything else you are currently paid to market.

Promise what you can deliver

Because of untrustworthy release dates, Nintendo is video game land’s worst offender in broken promises. With Virtual Boy, a console that used depth perception tricks and the color red to make you think you were in a virtual reality environment, they reached too far and dreamed too big. Nintendo wanted us to believe a legitimate virtual reality could be found in the console, but the closest you might get to that was seeing the real world with rose-colored rods and cones after long play sessions.

The games were actually fun but shelling out close to $200 for an uncomfortable and non-”virtual” experience was extremely disappointing. The technology wasn’t (and still isn’t) commercially available for virtual reality, and Nintendo should have owned up to that before they decided to make 3 million units.

Make the message fit the medium

Similar to Virtual Boy, the Wachowski brothers’ vision for The Matrix sequels was simply too grand to realize. Trying to tell a cohesive story over vastly different mediums like video games and film is possible, but incredibly difficult with large audiences. A small and dedicated audience for a niche product, not a blockbuster film, has a better chance of consuming a whole story.

Even George Lucas hasn’t tried this with Star Wars. His “universe” has loads of products and story elements separate from the films, but that’s probably why they sell fairly well. They’re not one piece of a large puzzle consumers have to navigate to enjoy the story; each product can more or less stand on its own with little interaction from others.

Overstretched, The Matrix product bonanza was at a disadvantage from the get-go, because back in 2003 there weren’t nearly as many ways to interact with fans as there is now. Set those movies up with Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and they might have a better chance of letting everyone know they can get more of the story by rearranging Matrix M&M’s.

It also helps if the game/film/comic is considered good in the first place.

Stay authentic

It’s important to stay authentic and not lie. Gamespot, a video game review site, got a lot of bad press and damaged credibility when they fired an editor for giving a bad review of a game they essentially cobranded with. “Kane and Lynch” was plastered all over the site and when the negative review was placed, they not only edited it and changed the score, they fired the reviewer and then lied about doing it.

Is compromising your entire business’s integrity really the way to get more money? Since publisher Eidos was so interested in cobranding, GameSpot management would have been wise to use that connection to get an even earlier look at the product than usual. If they didn’t like it, they likely could have had a different
featured game, since Eidos is fairly prolific.

What else can we learn from these marketing flops? Let me know what tips you have in the comments section below.

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last few days, no, I’ve not been off snogging in a love nest with Sarah Palin — as enticing as that prospect is. I’ve been offered a position as Senior Editor with Nexon.com helping out with content and helping run the official Web sites for a whole bunch of great games. I’m really excited about it but before I begin my new position, I need to clear up all of my freelance and project work. That’s where I’ve been — neck deep in a couple of really big RPGs that I can’t talk about and preparing for Halloween and a whole bunch of other stuff too.

I’ll be back blogging near the end of next week, in the mean time, here’s a couple of links to my latest articles:

My review of the PSP version of Naruto Legends: Akatsuki Rising on GameSpot

My review of the PSP version of Obscure: The Aftermath on GameSpot

My latest “basket of kittens” guest post for L.A. Parent on sports games for kids

A really sexy picture of Catherine Bell designed to pull in traffic:

See you in a few days!

The new DSi (DSi LL in Japan, XL in Europe and America) that was rumored to be coming out will release November 21. It’ll have 4.2 inch screens diagonally.

DSi XL compared to DSi:

The new DSi will have a large pen which will probably be hard to lose, unlike Nintendo’s old stylus.

 It’ll also have 4/5- 13/17 hours of energy (4-5 on highest brightness, 13-17 on lowest).

The DSi XL will come in three colors, black, white, and wine red.

No news as to if it’s coming to the US yet.

There’s a rumor circulating that the Wii will soon get Netflix. Considering it was just recently announced that the PS3 will get Netflix next month it seems very likely that this could happen. Some are saying that it will be released along with the “Wii HD” and others say it will come out as early as December.

Nice Reddy

Links:

Gamespot’s Take on the New DSi

Cryptic releases the second part of their video history lesson leading up to the start of Star Trek Online and there is some more Klingon goodness to be had and an unknown race is revealed but enough of what I have to say here are two sources to choose from GAMESPOT TRAILERSPY both are HD. If you haven’t seen PART 1 follow the link