Para los fanáticos de Xbox360, del anime, de los soldados, de la guerra, de Master Chief, y de todo eso, les traigo el Anime de uno de los juegos más interesantes de los ultimos tiempo, me refiero al gran Halo.

Trato en lo posible no convertirme en un Wariano, andar publicando enlaces a RapidShare, Megaupload, Mediafire, etc., no es lo mio, pero hare una excepción solo porque mi hermano me lo pidió.

Capitulo 1 “The Babysitter”

Primera Parte !
Segunda Parte !

Disfrutenlo!

Weekly Video Game Podcast – Nov. 23, 2009 27 mins (12.1 MB)
^ right click to save

• Jamie Gore and Chris Karpyszyn
• No surprise, Modern Warfare 2 sold a lot
• Surprise, the Xbox 360 had a bad week despite Modern Warfare 2
• It’s that time of year; we start talking about games of the year
• Also, Sony doesn’t care about the PSP Go either; just like everyone else in the world.
• Chris wants you to check out www.desertbus.org. IT’S FOR CHARITY, PEOPLE!!!
• All our sales data comes from www.vgchartz.com
• Continue reading for all the release dates and expanded sales figures

Video Game Sales for the Week of November 14, 2009

Video Game Releases This Week

Monday, November 23, 2009

A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia (Wii-Virtual Console)
Bit.Trip.Void (WiiWare)
Castle of Magic (DSiWare)
Electroplankton: Lumiloop (DSiWare)
Electroplankton: Luminarrow (DSiWare)
Electroplankton: Marine-Crystals (DSiWare)
Electroplankton: Sun-Animacule (DSiWare)
Electroplankton: Varvoice (DSiWare)
Harvest Moon: My Little Shop (WiiWare)
Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 1 (WiiWare)
Little Tournament Over Yonder (WiiWare)
myNotebook: Blue (DSiWare)
Super Mario Kart (Wii-Virtual Console) (read my review)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Cook Wars (Wii)
Dreamer: Zoo Keeper (Nintendo DS)
Hello Kitty Party (Nintendo DS)
Karaoke Revolution (PS3, Wii, Xbox 360)
LittleBigPlanet (PSN-PSP only)
Marines: Modern Urban Combat (Wii)
Tekken 6 (PSP)
Your Shape (Wii)

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Madden NFL Arcade (Xbox Live)

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Madden NFL Arcade (PSN)

Here’s the first Fairy Cute t-shirt prototype.  WAY cute, huh!   Very popular at a recent show we did in Phoenix.  We’ll be getting these properly printed up in the future…stay tuned!

Doodle 282 - Master Chief and GIR

My nephew had another request, this time for Master Chief from Halo with GIR from Invader Zim.  Not sure why, but I was happy not to have to think of anything to draw today.

Without glasses
to correct my vision
there is a halo
around my lights.

Without drugs
to correct my chemistry
there is a fire
inside my mind.

Without society
to correct my beliefs
there is uncertainty
throughout my soul.

Without correction
life is pure.

The only chaos
is control.

Via Opinio Juris, a Swiss NGO has produced a report on the promotion of violations of international humanitarian law in video games. [PDF] This is a subject that’s actually bothered me before, and I am glad to see someone giving it some serious thought. Not only is the report’s game-by-game analysis of possible international law violations fascinating, but I’m completely on board with the authors’ stated purpose:

The goal is not to prohibit the games, to make them less violent or to turn them into IHL [International Humanitarian Law] or IHRL [International Human Rights Law] training tools. The message we want to send to developers and distributors of video games, particularly those portraying armed conflict scenarios, is that they should also portray the rules that apply to such conflicts in real life, namely IHRL and IHL. We would thus like to propose the producers to incorporate the essential rules of IHL [obligations].

First person shooters are pretty much the only game type I seriously play, but as a general rule, I don’t play FPS games that involve hunting down and killing other humans. My avoidance of them is due to a variety of factors: in part due to a dislike for the game concept, in part due to personal squeamishness, and in part due to an inability to suspend disbelief enough to become immersed in a game when I’m busy murdering people left and right. I would never advocate censorship of video games, but I would love for developers to be more aware of their games’ incidental promotion of war crimes, and to see new games incorporate into gameplay some of the real considerations involved in armed conflict, including compliance with humanitarian law.

As it stands today, many games treat war so callously and so unrealistically that they are not only offensive, they are also just plain bad and boring to play. I remember Army of Two, which is discussed unfavorably in the NGO article, being particularly nasty. Aside from the gameplay being laughably asinine (collecting “agro” so your partner turns invisible? For reals?), I had serious problems with playing two white dudes who are happily blasting their way through various hordes of Somalis and then blasting their way through various hordes of Iraqis, with the general mission guideline being “if someone looks like a native, shoot them.”

The game was even more disturbing when you realize that its timeline (1993 in Somalia, 2003 in Iraq) explicitly matches up with real life armed conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in. These games are not about theoretical, imaginary wars where only bad guys die — they are about very real events that resulted in the very real deaths of many innocent civilians.

War crime-promotion is disturbing in itself, but also bothersome in that, oftentimes, games that require the indiscriminate killing of human beings do so at the expense of having an enjoyable and nuanced story line. Pretty much all the games I do play, with one partial exception, feature clever and creative stories that avoid any need for human-on-human carnage. As a result, I can happily blast my way through Gears of War’s Locusts, Left 4 Dead’s zombies, and Halo’s Covenant troops without ever worrying about accidental humanitarian violations. (Well, okay — I sometimes feel a little guilty for mowing down terrified Grunts. But I do it anyway.)

The one FPS I enjoy that does involve killing humans is Half-Life. A lot of the shooting is directed at adorable little head crabs and antlions, which is cool by me, but the game also requires you to shoot at human Metro Cops. However, even there, thanks to the masks and voice disguisers, the CP’s are fairly easy to dehumanize. In terms of the game’s narrative, killing them does not tread as far into moral gray zones as do other human-killing games; they are an Orwellian paramilitary police force whose troops are all citizens who have become traitors to humanity. So shooting a couple in self-defense ain’t so bad, and doesn’t entail any risk of torture, summary execution, POW mistreatment, or abuse and murder of civilians.

Essentially, there is no game-based justification for why a game should allow players to engage in consequence-free war crimes. Designing games based upon a theme of wanton murder is a cheap cop-out by developers; gameplay could only benefit if violations of humanitarian law had serious in-game consequences, forcing players to either find a way to accomplish an objective without committing a war crime, or else go ahead and commit the war crime but then be forced to pay a substantial cost as a result.

I’d also point out that that even if a video game does not involve shooting humans, there is still ample room left over for indulgent, ivory tower analysis of gameplay under international law. Many important legal questions remain, such as, How is it in Halo that the UN finally got together the funding and state support necessary to create the elite UN Marine force? How do the laws of international organization responsibility apply to ODSTs? Does the treaty that formed the COG in Gears of War actually permit the forced conscription of soldiers in return for feeding their families? Not to mention, if a massive zombie invasion breaks out in an allied nation, does NATO require other states to act in collective defense of that state?

-Susan

And here I thought it was going to be a calm monday evening while I marathon Seitokai no Ichizon (I’ll blog about that tomorrow). The news made my blood boil for a few seconds.

I’m currently participating in this little forum discussion about the growing acceptance of anime. I don’t believe we should exaggerate this development, but it would sure as hell suck if anime production companies were to start catering my anime specifically to the casual TV watcher demographic. And what better way to do that than to have an American company steer anime adaptations of presumably Western works towards American watchers.
The first issue I have with this move is the hijacking of the term anime. I’m sorry, but just because Funimation might hire cheap Japanese labor for producing animation does not mean I have to call it anime. They might release it in Japan as well, but will its content be tailored for the Japanese audience first and foremost? Do I need to mention Afro Samurai? I’m afraid it would be like mentioning Hitler in an argument, but it’s up there. What I’m honestly afraid of is such titles becoming popular in the future. It’s bad enough that IGN classifies Avatar: The Last Airbender as anime. I mean, you can easily dispel such a notion, but can you do that with a show that’s going to be produced and released in Japan? The upcoming Halo animation comes to mind.

But the fundamental question of WHY still remains. Why would Funimation do such a thing? Is their thirst for world dominance really that strong? Or perhaps it’s an indicator that anime isn’t good enough to fuel their engine? The latter sounds more plausible to me. Then again, they saw what happened to Urban Vision, Geneon USA and ADV, didn’t they?

No compromise for the sake of successful international co-productions is worth the possibility of compromising the identity of this beloved Japanese entertainment medium. And with this closing line, I’m loading Seizon 03 to Media Player Classic.

I prefer a video game with a story: otherwise what carries you through? To achieve a certain skill level? Bragging rights? Not all that interested. But games with a good story are just so addicting!
So we have purchased all of the Halo series over time but in the past week or so I actually went through the entire campaigns for 1, 2, 3 and ODST at the normal level. One night I stayed up past 4 finishing off the last. The online games can be fun (especially Halo 1 on the PC and ODST Firefight) but I’m not as drawn to these as much as to the storied campaign. I really like the history of the Forerunners, the Covenant and Master Chief/Cortana: it’s engaging and interesting with lots of twists. One day you’re fighting the Covenant and then the Flood and then you are allied with the Covenant against Prophets or the Flood or both. And in ODST there’s a lot of back and forth movement in the time line which grew on me, even though I was annoyed by it at first.
Again, it’s the story in Assassin’s Creed that drew me in. It is fascinating and involves both the future and the past in an interesting way. I like the fact that it’s a Canadian game and that it merges in real history as part of the experience. I also love the climbing and leap of faith abilities of Altaïr. I haven’t tried the newly released sequel yet but I’ve still got to finish the first one.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is quite a different animal. Although I have tried other COD titles they haven’t proved to be as interesting to me as the Halo series. What can I say, I’m a sci-fi fan and writer. In this case it was the hype that attracted me even though I haven’t tried Modern Warfare 1 (I didn’t even know the story line carries on from it until after). I’ll admit I was interested in what was drawing so much interest.  Activision has created an interesting game though and it is quite different in that your characters actually die in the game. I don’t mean they die because your skill and luck failed and you were killed, I mean that the characters in the story line who you have assumed actually die. And by betrayal. It left quite a cold taste in my mouth. I don’t like all the violence in shoot ‘em up games like these normally but Modern Warfare 2 really brings it over the top. In the end I find it, surprisingly, an anti-war game. The graphics are so realistic, stunning and blah blah blah that I felt dirtied by the act of playing. But the story made it even more so. After this game I find it even more amazing that mankind has been addicted to war for so long.  I’m glad I went through with the experience of doing the Modern Warfare 2 campaign but I’d rather be playing Halo or Assassin’s Creed.
In the end of this marathon of playing these games I am glad to get it out of my system. I’ll stay play, occasionally, but I need to get more done of a creative nature!

Halo Reach é o novo game da premiada serie com o “mascote” da Microsoft Master Chief; um pequeno teaser foi mostrado mas nada foi confirmado desde então, até agora quando por meio do Twitter o site Game Trailers confirmou que Halo: Reach será mostrado oficialmente ao mundo no dia 12 de dezembro, durante o Video Game Awards 2009, que escolherá os melhores títulos do ano e eu vou assistir aqui e trago depois a lista com os melhores pra vocês!!!

Bom, no quesito historia nada ainda se sabe (mas deve ser otimo)mas creio que deva ser antes mesmo do que Halo 1. Especula-se que o novo game tenha novidades como controle de esquadrão, sistema de personalização por “perks” como em “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” e, claro, novas armas. Vamos ficar de olho!

Confira o trailer:

Halo é uma série de jogos de tiro em primeira pessoa onde você controla o fodastico Master Chief, um super-soldado combatendo os Covenant, uma aliança que reúne várias raças alienígenas com objetivo de dominar a humanidade. Recomendo pra quem gosta de um bom titulo de tiro ou ação!

Até mais!

S. Blokes…

= Shoist Blokes…

Good things about Melbourne. ~Bad~ sunsets…

Chucking a fris…

Chucking a wheelman…

Chucking an amp…

Chucking a shirt…

Chucking a stick, cuz…

And making some cool shit – for some other S. Blokes I know…

ODST was awesome!!! I loved the way they design the campaign to wrap around back into it self with the rookie, I also enjoyed the back story with the sound bits from the ringing pay phones. Although it was great I do think it should have been DLC (Downloadable Content) at half the price. To me it felt like it started and ended like a DLC expansion pack, Im not saying its a bad thing though as a matter of fact it was perfect, it just wasn’t meant to be a game all by it self. Bungie the masters, made it all business though which is fine by me, the more power to them! Being I think it should of been DLC is just one fans opinion.

On Dec 12 Gamers will get to see games, they wil get to see celebrities. They will see lights, cameras and a whole lotta bullshit. Last year i expressed my distaste for Spike TVs horse and pony show on video games. I even called some winners even before the show aired on live TV.

Truth be told this award show is phony. People think that they are the ones choosing the winners from each category? Tell me why Game of the Year has mostly games that were released in the past 3 months? Why are there no Nintendo games nominated such as Pokemon, Scribblenauts or Muramasa: The Demon Blade? New Super Mario Bros Wii is getting critical notoriety yet Spike TV ignores the games for GotY.  Thats Bullshit!

Still need convincing? OK, lets talk about other categories. Best Music Game and Best Soundtrack. Some reason Spike loves to put games like Guitar Hero and Rockband in both categories. There are tons of games with wonderful soundtracks yet they dont get nominated. Such as Muramasa, Street Fighter 4 etc. Ohh wait!? I think spike added a new music category? Best Orignal Score? Ohhh what a shock! Games that all came out no less than 3 months ago. You started to see a patter here?

Now here is some real BS for ya. Best DLC and the nominations are from two games: Fallout 3 and GTA4. Wait, wait, wait! Out of all the games that had DLC they choose two games for four nomination slots? No Marvel Alliance 2 for added roster and new missions? No Batman for PS3 exclusive bonus to play as Joker as well as more challenge stages that were all FREE!!! I mean seriously I came up with two nominations and even if there was no chance for them to win at least you give the fans a choice between four different games! Sounds like voter manipulation to me.

Im calling winners right now. Most of the game awards will go to Modern Warfare 2. Uncharted 2 will get one or two. Guitar Hero will get one and so will Rockband. Batman will win best voice actors by either Quinn or Joker. Best cast will go to Ghostbusters la la la blah blah. Case in point the VGA’s are crap! Nominations are bought by game publishers to advertise this years releases for hopes of holiday season profits. Instead of watching the VGAs why not just sit down and enjoy your favorite game or play a new one. It’s a better use of your time.

Here’s your top 10 retail games for the last week, based on unique users connected to Xbox LIVE across ANZ.

1. Modern Warfare 2
2. Halo 3
3. Assassin’s Creed 2
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
5. Call of Duty: World at War
6. Forza Motorsport 3
7. Grand Theft Auto IV
8. Halo 3: ODST
9. FIFA 10
10. Borderlands

This list looks a lot different than last time I posted! Such a great time of year. We get so many awesome games through these holiday months.

- jinx