Experience Points: No More Heroes, Prey, SSFIV: AE, Shattered Soldier

I've been into quite a few games recently...here's my latest progress:

No More Heroes - I started this game up again recently on Bitter Mode...after having played Shadows of the Damned recently with my housemate, I was reminded about how damn good Suda 51 makes his games. I set out to go through NMH and NMH2: Desperate Struggle on Bitter mode as a result, but have hit a roadblock recently. A difficulty roadblock? Nope. The roadblock involves the fact that my housemate that I went through SotD with also started a game of No More Heroes and had never played it before, so I don't want to play it whenever he's around and spoil all the wicked boss fights for him. Once he powers through the game though, I'll pick it up again and continue with the sequel.

In Defense: Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes

I picked this game up maybe 6 months ago or so after seeing a thread about it in the forums over at SomethingAwful. Upon checking out the thread for some information about it and discovering that it was an 8-bit style, tooth-grindingly difficult side-scroller for the small price of only 80 Microsoft Points on the Indie Marketplace, I had already made my decision. Upon scrolling down and seeing one person comment that they'd love to see if there's someone out there that could manage their way through every level of the game...I also had a bit of a challenge to meet.

Profound Sadness: IGN on Boss Fights

Profound Sadness is a quote from Guy in Super Street Fighter 4 when he's depressed that he gets his ass kicked.

I've just now decided that it's also going to be the recurring theme of my opinions on articles that I strongly disagree with and think are stupid. Case in point, this following article from IGN.

Boss Fights: A Relic of a Bygone Era?

Experience Points: Shadow of the Colossus, Duke Nukem Forever, Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned

I've been playing through a lot of video games recently, and it was nice to wrap up a few this weekend. Here are some thoughts on my most recent video game excursions:

In Defense: Duke Nukem Forever

It has finally happened. Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released in North America as of June 14th, 2011. Going to the mall to pick up my Balls of Steel edition was almost surreal, and getting home and throwing the disc into my XBox 360 was doubly so. I played through the entirety of the single player campaign in the span of a day, on the hardest possible setting available to me (a harder one was unlocked after beating the game). I've already gone over the history of Duke Nukem Forever in a previous post, so I'm not going to rewrite it here...if you want that information, you can go check out my World Ten: Duke Nukem Forever entry. This is about the game itself, and whether or not I feel like it was worth my time and money, as it seems that a lot of the people out there who have played the game feel like it's a horrible, terrible thing that should be banished to the 6th circle of Hell and should never be played or experienced.

Experience Points: Alice, IHNMAIMS, Shadow of the Colossus

This is a new feature I decided to start throwing up on the site. Obviously I can only do so many massive reviews, entries, and reports per month/week/year/whatever timespan you want to use. Rather than do this for every game I'm playing, I'll post my thoughts about them quickly so I can not only cover more ground in the video game dimension, but also just blog more often without feeling overwhelmed by a massive post I'm working on. That's not to say that I won't do massive reviews of anything that appears in the Experience Points feature, as there are some cases where games just deserve more.

Carrying on!

New sidebar stuff

Just wanted to point out that from now on, I'm posting a list of all of the video games I've got on the go over in the right-hand column under "Currently Playing". This allows for two things:

1) You guys can see what the heck I'm up to in the wide world of video gaming as of late!

2) I can keep track of what I'm up to, because sometimes I forget about everything I've started up.

BUSY LITTLE BEE.

Video Games Live: Part 2

After the wicked intermission, we all got back to our seats to enjoy the rest of the show. The VGL orchestra kicked off the second half of the presentation with a bang: a Castlevania medley. As the orchestra played familiar tunes from Castlevania 1, 2, and 3, Tommy Tallarico (the creator of VGL) was wailing along on an electric guitar to give the tunes an extra edge. It sounded really amazing, and everyone geared up for the second half quite quickly. I was already on the edge of my seat again as I heard nostalgic tunes such as Vampire Killer and Beginning, performed along with flashes of nearly every CV game in existence on the screen in the background.

Video Games as art: A convenient follow up!

Saw this a while ago and figured it would be a good thing to link to, particularly considering I just wrote up a blog post about the subject a short while ago.

http://gaming.icrontic.com/article/nea-video-games-are-an-art-form/

In summary, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) of the United States considers video games to be a form of art. This can be seen in this particular paragraph, taken directly from the US Government's statement:

Projects may include high profile multi-part or single television and radio programs (documentaries and dramatic narratives); media created for theatrical release; performance programs; artistic segments for use within an existing series; multi-part webisodes; installations; and interactive games. Short films, five minutes and under, will be considered in packages of three or more.

Specifically the words "interactive games" pretty much cements it. That's one step forward for video games in this debate! BREAK OUT YOUR COPIES OF MARIO PAINT EVERYONE!

Video Games Live: Part 1

A little while ago, myself and a few friends attended a concert just thirty minutes away. This wasn't just any standard old concert, however...this was an event called Video Games Live. If you haven't heard of it, VGL is a show in which an orchestra plays various pieces of video game music. Some of these pieces are from very popular games, while others are lesser-known compositions. Either way, each movement is very well done and professionally performed, but with much less seriousness than you would expect from a usual orchestra. The audience is encouraged to cheer and clap whenever they hear or see something that they appreciate, and overall it's a very lighthearted show that's just fun to watch. I bought tickets for myself and my friends a good while ago, and it was awesome to finally get to go to the concert in April.