Posts by Izuno

  • Left4Dead 2

    I'm actually curious as to who here plays which version (PC or 360). My sense is most people played the PC version, but would love to know the proportion. Guess I should start a pole :role:

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    I know many of us here are not in the US, but today was Thanksgiving day and aside from stuffing ourselves silly and watching a lot of football, we Americans hopefully are giving thanks for what we have. So I thought I'd start a list of gaming related things I am thankful for:

    - #1 on my list are my wife and new daughter (and extended family).

    Now to the gaming related things:

    - I have a great business in the industry and work with great people.

    - My awesome clients, both the succeeding and struggling

    -Borderlands - Oh how thee have hooked me with thy leveling, lootage and twangy gunslinging, ye. I appreciate thoust Original IPiest goodnest and thy independent studio origin

    - Uncharted 2 - You taught me to dream again, to laugh and know fun cinematic romps aren't dead but have awesome potential. And you gave me reason to love my PS3 again.

    - MW2 - Other than the "No Russian" level, I enjoyed you greatly. Thankfully your MP delivered to make it worth the price.

    - WSOP on iPhone - Now i can pretend I'm in the final table of the main event and play 30 hands a minute.

    - Monopoly on iPhone - Not the best execution, but on sale at $2.99 it was worth it.

    - New Super Mario Bros on Wii - now my wife will play video games with me. She's better at it than I am

    - Tiger Woods Golf '10 on Wii - finally a golf game that actually feels like you are going through the golf motions

    - Best Buy - you opened up a location within a 5 minute walk of my house. I never saw it coming. But now I can do retail checks and interrogate sales staff whenever I want. And you're next to the In'n'Out burger.

    - World of Warcraft - while my lvl 80 Druid still lay in slumber on Mok'Nathal (since June '09) I miss you. You are the other woman in my life. I know I can go back to you any time but be happy that in your absence, I have been able to complete many excellent games and not just have time to play one or two hours worth. You taught me so much about the MMO category which has been invaluable on many consulting projects.

    - Sony - you get it know. It's not about your brand power. It's not about your esoteric launch TV spots. it's not about eating hotdogs for a year to afford you. It's not about Blu-Ray. It's about the games. It's about the love. You get it now.

    - Mapcore - where else would I go to read visceral analysis of industry trends and events, see (un)clever use of BBC emoticons and roll my eyes at the ramblings of OT? I've been here over six years now...longer with IRC. You complete me.

  • Yes, I'm a dad (since July)

    Thanks guys.

    Being a dad is great, though it is tough in the beginning and it will change your entire life. I encourage all of you, when ready, to have kids and teach them to be good gamers regardless of what career they would end up in. However if my daughter chooses to own all in Call of Duty: Space Warfare 9 sometime in the next couple of decades and make millions, I'm fine with that.

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Teaser

    Quote from Gloglebag

    I know! If you recall the original tagline of the first Call of Duty, it was "No one fights alone." This was a direct evolution from the Medal of Honor games where you were bit more of a lone wolf. I know the first CoD still revolved around the player (duh, it's a shooter game!) but the feel of it was more of "i'm part of a team / Band of Brothers / etc." So that whole brothers-in-arms (sorry GBX friends) concept has stayed true through the series I think, even though there is no actual squad control. (sorry I'm being distracted by a crying baby I have to go help so I'm rambling here...) Anyway, the little touches in MW2 like with what Ghost does/did is in alignment with that...

    Ok baby feeding time...the more MW2 on PSN woohooo!

  • EA lays off 1.500

    One thing to keep in mind is that for the traditional console/handheld retail games market, the majority of growth in 2007 and 2008 came from Nintendo hardware sales and music category of games. Guess what happened in 2009? Market saturation + global recession. So after huge double digit growth in topline sales the last 2 years, some air is getting let out of the bubble. This is a good thing in the long run and it had to happen. Growth of gaming (and consumer spending on it) does have a limit and a pullback was bound to happen.

    A somewhat interesting comparison is to the US housing market. After wanking absurd growth from 2002 to 2007, the bubble burst. What did we expect? Real estate values to go up by 25% per year forever? [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif] Talking to a real estate agent in Southern California in 2007 was completely absurd. They'd say "Oh yeah, YOU HAVE TO BUY NOW because the market is going to REALLY grow in 2008...like 20 to 30%. Look where it's grown already!!!"

    ...so back to games...there is only so much revenue growth available in the plastic guitar controllers business. How many times are core guitar games fans going to buy yet another bundle? A higher % opted for the DVD only SKUs at retail, and that contributed to the chilling effect on growth we're seeing this year. And as for Nintendo HW, Wii sales sagged and a price break was long overdue, not to mention good games for both Nintendo core fans (Mario, Zelda, etc) and all the Wii Fit etc crowd. (What, you're still reading this spewage?)

    On the plus side for Nintendo right now, New Super Mario Bros is awesome. My wife LOVES it and she never plays the Wii anymore. I think that should certainly help Nintendo.

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Teaser

    Finished the SP campaign...total time about 5.5 hours it said but it felt longer I thought. I sure died a lot. I just played it on regular cause I'm simply too old to deal with the frenzy of Veteran or Hardened.

    Anyway, I finally started playing MP tonight (on PSN) and while a lot like past CoD games i still enjoyed it and really had no lag or technical problems. That said I have a fast cable connection and live in a big city (ironically about 3 miles from IW). Despite starting at lvl 1 tonight, all the lvl 20s, 30s and up players were actually nice and not talking crap on me, even when I lost the lead for a few times in close matches. Got to lvl 4 after a little while and concluded that it's still fun and overall worth the money since my cousin and I will probably play the co-op Spec-Ops stuff.

    Bottom line, a good purchase and up there with Uncharted 2 as GOTY candidate for me.

    PS... Composite I saw your sig on at least one level (Karachi (?) or something?) Felt like a composite level!

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Teaser

    While the graphics are awesome (I have the PS3 version) the amazing blood splatter on the screen when you take damage makes it a lot harder to see than the red stuff on the screen in just about any other game (past CoD games including). And when this happens, due to my lack of FPS skill in my old age of being over 25, I die a lot in SP. yes, I'm playing on only normal difficulty. It's a little annoying but so far the presentation is, as expected, pure IW awesomeness.

    I'm dreading playing MP since no doubt i will get utterly destroyed online.

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Teaser

    I feel like my favorite PC shooter MP games are old, one of which is a Call of Duty game.

    CS

    DoD

    original CoD and CoD: United Offensive

    Wolf: Enemy Territory

    And thinking back, dedicated servers on the interent and LAN were big reasons why. At this point I'm not going to question why IW is doing what they are doing since I've been planning on playing it on PS3 or 360 anyway. Guess the chips will fall where they may. As much as PC get's maligned these days CoD4 is one of the biggest PC MP games besides WoW.

  • --> Low Budget Sci-Fi "GEMS" !!! <--

    Been wanting to see the original Stalker film every since I worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. back in ye good olde dayes.

    It's creepy how the film came out 7 years before the Chernobyl accident.

    The Thing's f/x don't hold up over time, but the overall movie/concept really hold up. What a sick film.

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Teaser

    For all we know IW/Activision can be doing their own version from the page of GTA marketing: use controversy to get their mega selling franchise to sell even more? It's hardly needed, as everyone knows the game will be a blockbuster but I am assuming they know exactly what they are doing until proven otherwise.

    But beyond debating if the footage leak was a PR stunt or not I think the content of it builds on the edgy-ness of the sequence in MW1 with the 1st person execution. Sure, this is waaaaaay more edgy but it shows IW is thinking about pushing the boundaries as mentioned in this thread already. I'm still going to play the game (360 or PS3 or PC?) but honestly watching that clip kinda made me want to imagine thinking about possibly considering the contemplation of perhaps maybe puking...but it's still just a game. :roll: