I Hate Fanboys

I really do.

For those of you that don’t have an extensive knowledge of the video gaming industry’s terminology, a fanboy is a person who will defend the respect of their favorite franchises and consoles until their last dying breath, no matter if what they’re defending is worth defending or is a huge pile of crap. For example, someone saying “LOLOL MICROSUCK…SUCKS, SONY IS WINNAR” would probably be declared a fanboy, and they’re saying Microsoft sucks for no reason but Sony is awesome.

I myself used to be a fanboy of sorts. For all of my history of video gaming, I’ve always used a console made by Sony, with the exception of my Xbox 360 (I’ll get more into that later) and my first console the Sega Genesis. I never fanboy’d against the Gamecube or the Xbox because I didn’t feel the need to. The PS2 was on the top of the gaming world. It had a mix of all types of games (the Xbox was more shooter orientated while the Gamecube, I felt, was more for the kiddies), it had pretty good graphics, and it was an extremely flexible system, all at a reasonable price. But then the Xbox 360 and the Wii was released, and unfortunately the PS3 came much later stumbling out of the gate. At that point, the shit really hit the fan.

When all that happened, I was a new teenager and I started forming my own opinions on things more easily. No more following everything my parents told me down to a key; I knew what was best for me, I knew how to schedule things, and I knew how the world works. But with the coming of these new opinions, I started making opinions on video gaming consoles. Being the life-long Sony fan that I was, I really didn’t know any better. I would get into meaningless internet conversations or debate it with my real-life friends. I’d make up things that weren’t true just to get my point across, and in no situation is that ever the right thing to do, but I did it anyway.

My friend Garrett was trying to decide which console to buy (he was a life-long Nintendo fan, but disliked the Wii), and I of course told him to go with the PS3. Sure, it was $600, but look at it! It’s beautiful! It’s built like the 360, has the same graphics, free online play, and the Sixaxis controller is basically a Wii controller. It’s like having both the Wii and the 360, even though with the $600 price tag, you could buy both of the consoles and still have some money left over for lunch. But who cares! It’s amazing!

Isn’t it?

Well, not really. After I got out of my dumbass “Defend Sony at All Cost” phase, I finally came to the point where I would have to buy my own console too. So, I went back to the drawing board to look at all of my own opinions and statistics to each of the consoles.

I immediately ruled out the Wii, because 1. I’ve never been a huge Nintendo fan and 2. Fuck it. I’ve always thought the Wii was stupid because when I go to play video games, it’s not to flail around like a retard or to tire myself out; it’s to relax myself and to have a good time. To me, the Wii doesn’t present either of those things. But what about the PS3 and the 360? I’ve always been a huge Sony fan, so didn’t I go with that?

Nope. And I’ll tell you why.

I looked at the Xbox 360 and it’s got better online capabilities, awesome graphics, a funny system called Achievements, and a great selection of games right out of the gate. For all of that at a reasonable price, that sounds pretty good.

Then I looked at the PS3 and it…doesn’t have crap. It’s got a shitty controller that doesn’t have vibration but, in its place, half-assed motion controls, its got free online play that’s definitely not as intuitive as Xbox Live (but hey, it’s free!), its got about the same graphics capabilities as the 360, it has a Blu-Ray player I don’t want or need, and all of available games at launch were total ass. All of that for just $600! Are you kidding me?! I may love Sony but sweet Jesus, are you kidding me?

So I went with the 360. It’s not that I’m a fanboy for saying all of that about the PS3; it’s that I know a good deal when I see one.

So let’s go back to the fanboys again. Fanboys of Sony would call me a “traitor” for buying the Xbox and not their precious PS3 while fanboys of Microsoft would pat me on the back and tell me I made the right choice. Why does any of this exists? Who cares what friggen’ console you choose; they’re just video games people. Are you going to get anything out of arguing with another person about which VIDEO GAME CONSOLE is superior? Now I can get arguing about politics, but video games? Talking to a fanboy is like talking to a child.

I had this one friend over the internet named Jared. Jared was a great guy; always voiced his opinions on things, was my best buddy, and we wanted to make a forum about video games because we both liked them a lot. But the one thing I could not stand about Jared was his devout love for Sony and the PS3. Every conversation, he’d say something like, “Killzone 2’s shaping up to look pretty good. Better than that Halo 3 piece of shit,” and I’d say back, “Yeah, it’s looking pretty good.” Mind you, this was before I made my decision to buy the 360. So, after that little exchange, he’d tell me more about Sony and how Microsoft sucks and I would just lightly agree with him, hoping he’d shut himself up eventually. If I asked him to shut up about it, he’d call me Microsoft’s bitch and a 360 fanboy because I didn’t want to listen to him talk about Sony.

Then that day came when I went and bought my 360 and told him about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have; maybe I should have told him I got a PS3 or never told him anything at all, but by me telling him, this brought everything to a whole new layer of fanboying. Not only did he talk more about Sony and their constant ass-kicking of Microsoft, but now he started making comparisons to every 360 game I bought to their PS3 counter-parts to try and show me I made the wrong console choice.

Finally, enough was enough. One day, I was reading the Wikipedia article on Grand Theft Auto IV and there I read:

“On 2 August 2007, Take-Two announced that Grand Theft Auto IV would miss its original release date of 16 October 2007 contrary to their previous statements, and would be delayed to their second fiscal quarter (February–April) of 2008. Their stated reason for the date change was “due to additional development time required to complete the title.” In a later conference call with investors, Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick attributed the delay to “almost strictly technological problems… not problems, but challenges.” It was revealed that technical difficulties with the PlayStation 3 version of the game contributed to the delay.”

That lying son of a bitch! A few months earlier, Jared had told me that “the PS3 version was completed but the 360 version was shitty, but since they had to release both versions of the game at the same time, the game had to get delayed”. So I presented him with my new-found evidence that he was lying all along, and after a few moments of silence, he started rambling, “Yeah, well the game’s going to have better graphics, and the multiplayer is going to kick more ass, and blah blah blah blah blah blah-”. Without even reading the jist of his reasons, I said, “Shut up Jared” and I haven’t used Windows Live Messenger since.

I’m just sick and tired of all this fanboying bullshit. There’s absolutely no point to it. Sony will never close up shop because one person thinks Halo 3 is x10 more awesome that Killzone 2 and Microsoft will never throw in the towel because you think Warhawk is more amazing than Gears of War.

Do I like my Xbox 360? Yeah, I do. Do I want Sony to drop out of the console race? No, of course not. When I bought my 360, it’s not because I love Microsoft, but because it was the better deal, and that’s all there is to it.

Two of the Greatest YouTube Videos of All Time

I’m having a hard time deciding which of these two videos should be crowned “Greatest YouTube Video of All Time”. Surprisingly, both of these videos are from the same musical group.

The first video is called “Klabautermann”. After waking up this morning with my neck hurting and in a bit of a surly mood, I searched throughout YouTube for something to cheer me up, and “Klabautermann” did just that. Why is it one of the greatest YouTube videos of all time? Because it’s such a crazy mix of randomness and happiness for it to warrant it that much. Just watching it gives you a guaranteed smile across your face and a couple of laughs here and there.

The video is a performance from the musical group Dschinghis Khan (German for Genghis Khan), a German disco group which sings about historical people and places. In “Klabautermann”, they sing in both German and English while wearing silly costumes. The song is basically a German take on the Ghostbusters theme, but about pirates.

The next video I’m having trouble deciding which is better is called “Moskau, with english lyrics!”. This video, once again, features a performance by Dschinghis Khan, singing their most famous song “Moskau”, but with “English” subtitles added in. The funny thing is, however, is that the “subtitles” are what the uploader of the video thinks the German words sound like in English. Coupled with more silly costumes and hilarious synchronized dancing, “Moskau with english lyrics!” is ecstatically funny in every way possible.

Which one do you like better and which one deserves the crown? Or more importantly:

Dschinghis Khan: Great Musical Group or Greatest Musical Group?

If you’re still interested in Dschinghis Khan, click here to go to a playlist I created with my favorite Dschinghis Khan videos.

Tin Foil Movie Review - Iron Man

Walking into Iron Man, I actually had high hopes for the movie. I saw the trailers beforehand and the fighting looked awesome, Tony Stark looked awesome, and the jokes were awesome; just pure awesomeness all-around. Was the movie awesome? Not really. Was it bad? Not really. Do you recommend seeing it? Yeah, I guess so.

The Good

Good Fighting: For what little fighting there was in Iron Man, it was surprisingly good. Iron Man kicks ass and takes names just like he does in the comic books. It wasn’t pansy fighting either with the goal to incapacitate the enemy rather than kill them. No. Iron Man doesn’t fuck around. He’s packed with rockets, missiles, repulsor beams, and machine guns. Basically anyone who got in his way died, and quite frankly, that’s how I like my superheroes.

Great Acting and Perfect Casting: I don’t think Iron Man would have been as good as it was if Robert Downey, Jr. hadn’t of played Tony Stark. There’s no mistaking it; this guy is Tony Stark. He drinks, he macks it with the ladies, and he knows when to give and take a joke. Downey, Jr. just got Stark down like no other actor possibly could have. Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard played their roles respectively also, but it’s Downey, Jr. who’s steals the show here.

Satisfying Ending: As I was watching through Iron Man, I really didn’t know how it would end. Would Iron Man save the day and marry Pepper Potts? Would he die at the end from the fight you knew he would have with Obadiah Stane? To me, it was either one of those endings (because they’re so predictable and common [with a little tweaking] with superhero movies). Thankfully, it was neither, and the ending to Iron Man is both satisfying and sets itself up for a possible sequel without throwing us a crappy cliff-hanger ending.

The Bad

Second-Rate Special Effects: Movies these days are loaded with special effects, so like with next-generation video games, you could tell with Iron Man that the graphics used here weren’t as good as they could have been. After watching an astoundingly realistic movie like Transformers, Iron Man’s effects were some-what noticeable. I’m not saying they were horrible, but they were…noticeable.

Very Few Fights: For what should have been an action packed movie, Iron Man didn’t include very many fight scenes. From what I can remember, there were only three: where he breaks out of captivity, where he goes back to kill a bunch of people, and the fight at the end with the Iron Monger. That’s it. Three 15-minute fights in a 2-hour long movie. Totally lame.

Really Sucky End Battle: Throughout most of the movie, it becomes obvious that Tony will have to fight Obadiah Stane at the end. With such other good action parts throughout the movie; shouldn’t have this one been awesome? Yes, but unfortunately, it was seriously a load of crap. It just includes a lot of bad dialog, cheesy special effects, and a few unexplained mysteries. Some action movie goers might not mind the fight too much, but true fans of Iron Man are going to feel disappointed.

Genre Confusion: Being a reviewer of both movies and video games, it was particularly hard for me to decide which genre Iron Man fitted best into. The movie labeled itself as an action flick, but to me, Iron Man contained a whole lot more comedy than it did action. Even the few action scenes throughout the movie were humorous at times. From blowing up a tank with a tiny rocket to the fight with the Iron Monger at the end, the movie is just loaded with comedy and is hard to take seriously.

All in all, Iron Man is a decent movie and is definitely worth checking out. Whether you’re a fan of either action or comedies, Iron Man does a decent job at pleasing fans of both.

Game Impressions

Here are my impressions of the three games I bought two days ago.

Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs

For every PC game, there are usually a couple of expansions that come out after it to expand the life of the original and to add new flavor to the mix. Unfortunately, most expansions don’t usually add much to the game and can be used as a developer’s trick to milk more money out of your pocket. Thankfully, Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs is an exception.

The game adds a whole lot to the original and gives the game a whole new life. In the expansion, three new civilizations are added: the Iroquois, the Sioux, and the Aztecs. Each of these new civilizations aren’t built up and as renown as, say, the British, so each of these civilizations play differently then the original civilizations from the original game.

For example, the three new civilizations are deeply rooted with the land and nature, so their explorers tame wild animals instead of killing them. The Sioux, who were renown for moving about the Great Plains, following buffalo herds and living in teepees and who were excellent horse riders, get an instant 200-count to their population. The Iroquois were adept with European knowledge, and can train long range sniper units. The Aztecs…eat chocolate, or something. I forget.

Anyway, the only gripe I have with the expansion is how odd some of the civilizations feel when fighting in certain locations. The whole Age of Empires series is based solely around history, so it’s pretty odd to find Aztecs fighting the Russians in the Yukon. Or, if you buy the second expansion The Asian Dynasties, Sioux indians fighting the Chinese in the Caribbean. It doesn’t affect the gameplay of course, but it certainly is awkward.

So, in short, if you have a copy of Age of Empires III and you haven’t picked this expansion up yet, then you should definitely do so. It expands the life span of the game further and truly adds a lot of new gameplay tactics to the mix.

Fable: The Lost Chapters

When I first started playing Fable, I got bored really quickly. Everything just came back to me and I started thinking “Well crap. I’m just re-doing everything I’ve done a bajillion times over the numerous characters I made months ago.” Even so, I sludged through the training half-heartedly, but now that I’m finally getting to experience the game world again, I’m having a lot of fun.

Before, I used to have a ranger-type character who would wear dark clothing and primarily use a bow, but I’ve decided to go a different route this time and I’m making a Good Warrior, fit with plate armor, bald head, and a sheriff’s mustache. My guy’s already layered with scars because I boast before all of my quests and end up doing them all naked.

Fable’s a stupid game, but it’s my stupid game.

Max Payne 2

Eh. I did the first mission and half of the second one, but…eh. I just can’t really get into it, ya’ know? I just don’t feel like playing it right now. I’m basically surrounding myself with RPG games at the moment (I’m playing Oblivion, Fable, and creating my own RPG game with RPG Maker VX), and then here’s ole’ Max Payne 2, the modern-day shooter game which stars Max Payne, a guy who’s killed over 600 people and has apparently aged 25 years from the last game.

It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but I just…don’t feel like playing it right now. I might replay the first game first to get that Max Payne feeling back. I might review the first game too. I didn’t the last time I completed it because I couldn’t experience the game patched, but that’s a really stupid reason come to think of it.

–

Ah well, there are my impressions. I might review the War Chiefs, but my little impressions here pretty much sums up the game, then I’ll review Fable once I’ve completed it, and I’ll review Max Payne 2 whenever.

Shooters, RTS’, and RPG’s, Oh My!

I recently got three new PC games on the cheap:

Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs

I recently found my installation CDs to my old copy of Age of Empires III (which, the last time I played it, made my computer have a seizure because I put the Shader quality level to High), so I popped those in and gave the game a go. After playing the game for awhile, the whole magic to the game came back to me and I decided to go out to GameStop and get me its first expansion pack (rather than the newer, pricier second one, The Asian Dynasties).

Fable: The Lost Chapters

I used to own a copy of Fable for the PC a long time ago, but I lost those awhile ago. Seeing as how I’m pretty psyched for Fable 2, I decided to go out and buy it again (besides, I never finished it when I did have it, so that was another reason for purchasing it).

Max Payne 2

The first Max Payne game was okay, and seeing as how this one was going for the ridiculously low price of $3, I got this game as well.

–

I’m going to play Age of Empires: The War Chiefs first, then probably Max Payne 2, and finally Fable: The Lost Chapters. I’ll definitely be reviewing these games in the near future, so stay tuned for those.

Age of Conan Beta PVP Weekend

I was recently accepted into the Age of Conan Beta PVP Weekend, which is pretty awesome, and will be my first time participating in a beta of any game.

After just quitting WoW, I’m going into this game without any hopes or expectations. Right now, all the game is to me is another MMO where you can hack off peoples heads.

The game, from what I’ve seen of it, looks pretty interesting. There appears to be a whole lot of customization to your character, something WoW sorely lacks, and I’m pretty excited about that. The concept of going into an engaging battle every time seems more like a dream instead of a goal. WoW’s fighting system was simplistic: Hit this button, hit that button, auto-attack for a second, hit that button, and then your enemy’s dead. Rinse and repeat 60 times and you’re done your quest.

Congratulations.

For Age of Conan though, its being implemented with an “Attack this side of the body, attack that part of the body system”. Is your enemy heavily armored but are his legs unguarded? Chop his legs off. Is he decked down in complete steel armor, but he’s not wearing a helmet? Cleave his head off. The system sounds extremely interesting and hopeful and I’m hoping that it won’t turn out anything like WoW’s combat system, but seeing all of the other MMO’s that have come out since WoW, it’s probably not going to differ much. We’ll just have to wait and see.

So far, the only real complaint I have with Age of Conan is its story. You start off as a slave on a galley but you break free somehow or something.

Okay, that’s cool and all, but what I liked about WoW is they dropped you into the story as nobody. You could imagine and pick what you wanted to be. For Age of Conan, no matter how many characters you make, they will always just be that slave that escape from that boat and then made a name for themselves. That, my friends, is a bit disappointing. I can just imagine it now: That first character you made will be a blast. The game will feel perfect and intriguing. But one day, you get bored of your warrior and decide to make an archer. Oh, guess what? You’re back at the beginning. Slave escaping from the galley. Level 1. No differentiation to the story at all. In WoW, you start again, you’re level 1 again, sure, but at least you could be different races and start out in a different place each time while fighting for one of two factions. From what I’ve seen, Age of Conan doesn’t really have any of that going for it.

Oh well.

If my computer can run it, I’ll get to decide if Age of Conan’s really worth playing or not. Shame by contract that I’m not allowed to tell you though…

-Alex

Tin Foil Game Review - Aladdin (SNES)

Growing up as a kid, we watched a lot of Disney movies back then that came in those white, squishy Disney VHS cases. For me, my all-time favorite Disney movie was Aladdin. The action scenes, the characters, the voice actors; everything came into this perfect combination of greatness, and for it, became one of the finest Disney movie’s ever created.

Other than movies, we also had a Sega Genesis. One of the games that I owned (and still do) was Aladdin. Unfortunately, my old Genesis is missing a couple of cables so I wasn’t able to play that version of the game, but I did get my hands on the SNES version.

Aladdin looks like your basic side-scroller, and for the most part, it pretty much is. You start out with a couple of hearts, which act as life bars, and if you walk into an enemy, you get hurt and lose one heart. As the game progresses, you attain more hearts, which helps a lot as many enemies will be coming after you in the later parts of the game.

Speaking of enemies, the enemies were designed with a lot of care in mind and stick true to what you might find in that section of the game. For example, you start out in Agrabah, a city, so many of the city guards are after you. In another part of the game, you’re in a cave, so there are plenty of bats and scorpions around. To defend himself, Aladdin is equipped with 10 apples which are used to stun enemies for a short duration. The apples are really useless though, and don’t really begin to help until the last sections of the game. Aladdin’s primary form of defense is to simply jump on your enemies. From the city guards to birds made out of sand, nearly every enemy in the game can be jumped on. It’s a bit of a disappointment, seeing as how Aladdin never jumped on anything to kill it in the movie (I would of rather used his sword), but the game is a platformer after all, so I really can’t complain too much about it.

The gameplay in Aladdin is simplistic (it was made for the kiddies after all). Your main objective is to hop and bop your way to the end of the level, going from the left side of the screen to the right. There are a few items you can get in the levels, which includes some food items that replenish your health, a couple of colored diamonds which, if you collect all 70 red diamonds, unlocks a different credits screen, a flying golden scarab that you can catch which unlocks a bonus game, and paper bags, but I dunno what the hell those do. You get two credits when you start the game and two lives to play off of. The number of hearts you have depends on which level you’re on. When you run out of lives, you can use one of your credits, which sends you back to the beginning of the level you’re on (there are sometimes one or two checkpoints in a level), but you get another two lives. Once you’re out of credits, the game is over. You can enter in a password given to you at the end of each section (each section consists of two to three levels, divided by a cutscene), but that brings you all the way back to the beginning of the section and you have to replay any levels that you did before you ran out of credits. It’s a decent system, with an easy, 4-slotted picture password system (the password selections are characters from Aladdin instead of numbers or letters), but it can really become a pain the balls during boss fights or extremely hard acrobatic situations, as it sends you all the way back to the beginning of the section, granted you can remember the password.

However, in spite of a few of the game’s core mechanics, the level design in Aladdin is simply brilliant. There are plenty of things to hop off of, swing from, jump on, fly over, etc. A lot of care was put into the level design, and it stays true to the movie, locales, and enemy placements. For example, you can swing from a horizontal pole, jump onto an enemy’s head for even more air time, grab onto another pole, and then kick some guard in the face. Simple scenario’s like this can be found all over the levels, and executing this “environmental combination” is extremely rewarding and extremely satisfying. Unfortunately, these fun experiments are usually hard to pull off correctly, and some of the end-game level design relies on you pulling off one of these tricks. It’s not too bad of an inconvenience if you have plenty of lives and credits left, but when you’re down on everything, those parts of the game can become nerve-wracking and frustrating.

To make the game flow more fluidly, there are levels of the game in which you don’t just exclusively go from left to right, but instead fly on a magic carpet, or fight a boss character. There are only three bosses in the game, which is a bit of a bummer, but the magic carpet scenes make up for that and are as challenging as the boss fights themselves.

To compliment Aladdin’s excellent level design is a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack. As with the levels and enemies, the music fits perfectly with the game, and is pretty damn good as its for an SNES game. The action, the boss fights, the carpet scenes; none of it would have mattered much if it wasn’t for the properly selected music, and the soundtrack delivers. It’s compelling and it just makes the whole Disney experience come alive.

There’s not much else I can say about Aladdin. While its difficulty may have been too much for the kids, it’s perfectly suited for an adult or teenage gamer, granted you don’t mind playing an Aladdin game. From its excellent level design, challenging foes, and outstanding musical score, Aladdin is a game which will live on forever in the great selection of the best games the SNES had to offer.

I give Aladdin (SNES):

5 out of 5 stars

Tin Foil Movie Review - Cloverfield

Cloverfield is a monster movie directed by Matt Reeves. It follows a group of people trying to rescue their friend in the wake of a monster attack. There have been many different monster movies in the past (Godzilla, The Giant Claw, etc.), but none of those movies were shown through the perspective of a video camera held by one of the city’s survivors. Because of this, Cloverfield makes itself one-of-a-kind.

Unfortunately, this unique camera perspective can make you nauseous at times, or more commonly confuse you as to what’s going on in the movie. There are other times where you know that it would be impossible to have the camera perfectly aligned with what’s going on, and that further dampens the whole effect.

Like with Kane and Lynch: Dead Man, the characters in Cloverfield are just hard to like. The main character won’t stop whining, the two women characters are bland (but totally hot), and the cameraman is annoying as all Hell. Nearly at all times throughout the movie, I just couldn’t find myself giving a damn about the people in the film, but I just wanted to see the stupid monster.

That’s another disappointment that I would like to focus on. The monster. It’s basically a giant cricket that craps AIDS. No awesome dragon. No bad ass whale. No rhinoceros-thing.

A fucking cricket.

That craps AIDS.

Genius.

All in all though, the movie’s really not that bad. Choosing actors that no one’s ever heard about was a great idea on the casting agent’s part. It really made it so you could immerse yourself further into what’s going on, and how it’s effecting the character’s personalities. For example, if the main character wasn’t this nobody actor and was, say, Zac Efron instead, the movie would have been total ass. The sounds are also nicely done, and the action scenes were pretty intense (except for a few cliché moments here and there [example: turning on the camera's night vision to see a bunch of AIDS monsters all around you]).

I believe you should give this movie a go and see it for yourself. It’s a lot like the video game Assassin’s Creed; you either hate it or you love it. Me? I’m right there on the divider.

I give Cloverfield:

3 out of 5 stars

Censorship FTL

Retarded class style fucking ass bull cock motherfucking dick shit out my ass with a suckers fuck.

…what? None of that got censored?! WordPress FTW.

Anyway, this is my new blog, as you should know by now. I haven’t really figured out how all of this works, but I’ll figure it out in time (just like with GameSpot).

I’ll be writing (and featuring) all of my new game (and movie) reviews here. Like with Giant Bomb, I’ll be using a 5 star system (because it just makes a whole lot more sense [and like Gerstmann said, "I don't need 10 different ways to tell someone about a game]).

In conclusion, I hope this blog turns out okay. I like not being censored and being able to say what I want. Hope to hear some feedback from you guys.

-Al

P.S. My first Tin Foil Review will be for an SNES game. I’ll write it as soon as I’m done with it (it’s a tough game :/ ).