Fallout 3 will be good. If it isn't, I swear to throw the disc away and never speak of it again. I'm sure everyone's seen the new videos, but if you haven't here's a link via Kotaku:

The Vids

The videos are also available via xbox live, and if you pretend really hard it feels like you're actually playing the game.

It's hard not to be excited about FO3, you blow up a fucking town, a FUCKING TOWN, WITH A NUKE! The guns are ridiculous too, shooting someone with a railroad spike is going to be the highlight of October 28th.

To all the people who love the original Fallout 1 & 2, just remember, the worst that can happen is this game turns out to be garbage, then you can throw it on the pile with Brotherhood of Steel and Tactics and wash your hands of it.

No, literally. The online multiplayer doesn't work right. I don't know how it happened, I'd like to believe it's Microsofts fault, and that they did something to it, but who know's.

Other than that the game's a lot of fun. I thought it was going to be a stupid Castle Defense game, because I hadn't been paying attention to the press around it. Come to find out it's a mother cluckin side scroller! In fact it was originally going to be called Ye Olde Side-Scroller which is an infinitely cooler name than Castle Crashers. I'm one of maybe ten people who hated Alien Hominid, so rest assured this is NOTHING like that. Whereas that stole the good things about shooters, namely the screen-punching difficulty, Castle Crashers steals the good from Side Scrollers.

You gain levels, you spend stat points. Your three methods of attack, melee, magic, and archery, all work equally well depending on your character. There's secret characters, a lot of them. You gain buy tons of weapons, and pets, and items like bombs that knock enemies down. You have a weak attack and a strong attack, and varying these two allows you to do new combos. When you level you'll sometimes get new attacks. The comedy, it's good. In all of my, now adult, life I never thought I would laugh at another poop joke again, but you have to outrun a giant monster on a deer that's propelling itself by shitting. It sounds immature, but it's quite funny. The scene is played out like something from Battletoads if you're curious as to how you're running away on a deer-shit rocket.

All of the mechanics are top notch. When your buddy dies you have to resuscitate him by playing a slider mini game, where you press a button as the slider goes over the heart icon. Best of all it's four players. You can have a person at your house, sitting on your couch, and a person across the internet, and you guys can all play together. It's epic. Now it needs to work.

I'm playing it right now, well not right now, but you know. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, the camera is two steps above the original Devil May Cry's camera. The combat seems impossible at first, but once you figure out all the little moves it's quite enjoyable. The graphics are pretty lackluster, and all the 'face shots' make me want to weep blood, I mean their mouth is either open or closed, and it looks so surreal to hear words coming out of those wide open flaps; Think a dubbed movie. Dying happens a lot, which is unfortunate because those fucking Valkyrie tramps take their sweet time collecting your soon-to-be cold corpse and sending it through the magic process of revival. Sometimes it's fun to watch the monster that killed you still go after your corpse while it's awaiting the valkyrie, Somehow I still can't shake the feeling that I'll be victory tea bagged. The skill trees leave something to be desired, as in maybe they shouldn't let you get to the final skill in the skill tree the first play through, let alone on the second level, this is a dungeon crawler after all. Though due to the majority of skills being nothing more than numbers increasing your chance to do something, I suppose I can overlook the issue.

Despite these flaws the game succeeds at being more fun than Gauntlet, which is it's intent I hope, because if they expect this to pull them out of some financial trouble they're betting on the wrong horse. I think a more appropriate price tag would be $40, and I swear to god if they release DLC weapons for this that are more powerful than weapons I'll inevitably be spending lots of time killing bosses for, I will rip the floor out from under the CEO's feet and send him screaming back to the depths of hell.

Not much really.

THINGS TO TALK ABOUT:

Warhammer online open beta is OPEN in one day from now, meaning I will lose my soul to yet another MMO.

ON THIS SUBJECT:

I've played an absurd amount of free MMO's in the last...months. Neocron is the shit. It's Deus Ex the MMO, it's fucking FANTASTIC. Unfortunately there weren't many people online, so whatever, also it costs money. Shot-Online is great if you're into that whole golfing thing. It plays like Hot Shot's Golf, except you level, and it's an MMO. It play's like Hot Shot's Golf but better. Requiem is a free WoW clone, except instead of WoW it's more like a nightmare! No, really, it's pretty mediocre. When you kill a monster their head flies off and they twitch a lot, which is kind of cool, but it's a grindfest and the PvP is akin to watching a dog sleep. RF Online if they fixed the hell out of this game, I would enjoy it more, but many aspects of it are broken. There is a very high chance that things you create will break somewhere along the line of creation, resulting in a loss of time and money. There's one quest per level, and the quest is usually done quickly, so grinding is all you can do. Grinding gets very old, very quick. The only reason this game held my interest was because I could pilot a mech, and when I reached that point it was fucking beautiful, unfortunately I lost interest in the game shortly after.

Without further ado, VIDEO GAME SHIRTS!

5)


I like, it's part video game and part America. Looks good too.

4)


Simple. I like to think that your wiimote landed in black paint and you didn't have your strap on tight enough so it flung onto your shirt.

3)


Delicious. I could state the obvious and talk about how chicken-esque it tastes, or I could let you imagine that Chocobo tastes like strawberries covered in chocolate...

2)


Yes, please.

1)


All thousand words of this picture told the tale of Pac-Man and his struggle for survival.

That is yours truly sporting the Nintendo Warriors scout armor. Foregoing the power glove, and that headset that you yell "Fire" into, the scout is the second most important unit of the Nintendo Army, the first being those two guys from Contra. Speaking of Contra, that's the game residing in that Nintendo strapped to my back. I'd like to acknowledge that the belt is upside down, well, that's the only side I'm comfortable with seeing a controller, pointed towards me. That vest is an N64 rumble vest, made by some company that most likely doesn't exist any longer. I considered adding N64 controllers as raptor claws, but thought it would be overkill.

Check out my new Mario game, yeah it's cool, it's got levels and platforms and stuff. Who made it? Oh, just NINTONDO. Apparently Nintendo had an evil twin that designed the exact same games and stuff, except they cut back on the physical quality of the product. Check this picture out, it's mario right? Wrong! That is clearly an imposter, notice how the label is off by a lot.



That not enough to convince you? What about this.



NINTONDO STRIKES! You take 2 damage, and are confused. A closer look perhaps?



It is definitely the evil twin. Nintendo, which stands for hand of god or something about luck, has got it comin' to them, because this guy looks ready to rumble.
I wish I knew where this cartridge came from, but I found it, and I'm under the assumption it was originally sold by a guy at a laundromat.

To those curious, it plays exactly the same as you'd expect it to, like Super Mario 2, only the case is different.

In an alternate universe our method of coping with the normality of existence is threatened by a massive mechanical tank capable of firing nukes from ANYWHERE. Thanks to one mans power to overcome cloned soldiers who can only see in a narrow cone, we can rest easy in our alternate universe beds. I am of course talking about Solid Snake. There is no other game in the history of video games that has ever taught me patience quite as well as Metal Gear Solid has. Honestly, you have to wait like a fucking minute before the alarms die down. This is about Snake though. Why a tribute for Snake? Well, he's awesome, and he deserves it. He's based off of Snake Plissken, a bad ass from some John Carpenter movies, and since Kurt Russel played Snake Plissken, Solid Snake is basically based off of Kurt Russel. I like to pretend that the movie "Captain Ron" was never made.



There's a new game in the series coming out, you'd know that if you didn't live inside of a closet, keeping alive by licking a salt block and drinking from a man-sized hamster feeder. Despite what fan boys say, I think the game looks great, even if Snake has gray hair. Yes, things are looking good for our old hero, but I'd like you all to remember his roots and what could've been, he could've been killed by that FoxDie virus, and I'm still not quite sure why he hasn't been yet.

Now that I've run out of things to say after my Hiatus, I'd like to point you to my favorite video game website of all time: Eegra. They posted this feature up awhile back, but I still think it's the bee's knees.

Feature: Menus - A Celebration

I've beaten Golden Axe more times then I've urinated in the wilderness, and I used to be a pretty avid camper. I've never actually beat the arcade version though, which is apparently what the Xbox Live Arcade version is. I was a little put off by how easy this version is compared to the Sega/Classics Collection was. I mean, I had to fight Death Adder twice in the old days, all while walking uphill in ten feet of snow with nothing to warm me but a coat I made out of my own cut hair. This version was all "OMG DEATH ADDER IS BEING MADE OUT OF SNAKES WTF!?" but he was actually pretty easy, and his magic attack was a lightning mole thing. By far the worst thing about this game is the ending, which starts at 2:22 in this video I found on youtube.



I watched that at about 3 in the morning, and I asked my friend who beat it on live with me "Did I inadvertently take some LSD, or are you seeing this too?"

This game is teh suck
I cannot see the bad guys
Same as the first game

I was flippin' through the live tabs when an advert caught my eye. "Operation Darkness?" I thought, "Sure, why not." So I downloaded it, played it, then played it some more, then played it again. I wish the game was all ready released. I'm sure you agree that typical tactical RPG's are getting stagnant. We're in a new day and age, get rid of the fucking swords. Operation Darkness gives you rocket launchers, pistols, machine guns, and sniper rifles. It's like the combat in Fallout was turned up to 11. From what I've seen so far there's going to be werewolves and shit, and by and shit, I mean vampires, and zombies, and word over the rainbow is dragons. "But that's so typical TRPG" you say, well when was the last time you shot a dragon with a rocket launcher? I don't even know how they'd react. It's like "Yeah good luck deflecting this projectile with your scales lizard breath" because you ALWAYS have to call a dragon lizard breath if you're going to destroy him. Anyway, the story's like Hitler went super-occult and you're fighting his underworld minions in World War II with classic WWII weapons. Some of your guys are werewolves for some reason, and upon changing into their canine form you get boosts to stats. Cover's pretty important in the game, as is destroying buildings that are in your way. The only thing I hated about the game was the shitty camera, words cannot describe the amount of fail the camera excretes. If you have a 360 go download the demo now, then we can be Atlus Whore's together!

I'm very angry at Nintendo. They've offered many great games and products through the years, but they've done something unforgivable with Mario Kart, I cannot remap the controls for any of the control schemes. In fact, there aren't even different control schemes. The game is very fun, but the classic controller is set up so stupidly that it makes controlling your kart more of a chore than a good time. You'd imagine they'd set it up to play like the SNES game did, but you'd only be imagining, instead they make the gas the button on the farthest right so holding the controller itself kind of hurts. The "L" button is what you use to fire a weapon, and in the perverted fashion that your forced to hold your controller it makes it impossible to hold this button down to trail items behind you. Worst of all is the complete lack of support for the D-pad. I know people who swear by the D-pad, insisting that the joystick doesn't offer the same playing experience.

I personally hate the Gamecube controller, I wish that it'd be thrown in the grave that E.T. and a thousand Atari systems were buried in.

The Wiil (see what I did there?) isn't to bad, but holding something in front of you gets tiring. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, I don't know. It almost makes me want to do this.

On a better note, the gameplay is sweet. The level design for the wii stages are amazing, much better than the classic stages, though admittedly the redone Ghost Valley 2 has a special place in my heart. Adding split-screen support for online play is AMAZING, it justified my purchase.

As a final note, I'm slightly disappointed that I can't play online as Hitler. Apparently it's inappropriate.