energy crisis

Delivery. Feeling out a path like an expert navigator and arriving just on time to make the choice, salvation or destruction? With a shaky trigger finger and the instinct to climb every building I see, inFamous satisfies the urge to save someone, with precise recklessness.

Empire City is a dying playground. After a devastating catastrophe, the city becomes a wasteland, but one filled with gaps, poles, ladders, and epic skyscrapers made of trash that leave an urban explorer/messenger like Cole asking, "is that high enough?" Gripping onto ledges wide enough just for fingertips to hold onto and balancing on electrical lines like tight wires, Empire City is the jungle gym evolved. From point to point, Cole navigates the city like a veteran cab driver, which provides the fun, swift exploration on par with Assassin's Creed. Though building hopping is a treat that came from a disaster, the citizens of Empire City scour the ground looking up for a savior, or in fear of a menace.

With a bomb in hand, Cole is as sure as dead on arrival. The city leveled and many dead or dying, destruction has been delivered, along with superpowers. Cole is reborn as the electric enigma, the death or life of Empire City. Ridding the evils of streets feels as smooth as the PS3's finish. Sending electric shocks to a gang members while sliding on train rails and launching shock grenades is how superpowers should be used, but after cars have ceased their alarms and citizens come out from hiding, how gang members are still standing is baffling. Precise head shocks and megawatt hammers may provide a sweet death for the scum of Empire City, but helmets, armor, and mounted machine guns can put up an even bigger fight. All this commotion from just one delivery.

Empire City is what is truly inFamous, but in a good way. Its dark, ugly, and falling apart, but totally fits. Sure, superpowers can make the fun, but without the city, its just another bullet point. Gentle hums of generators and neon signs pulsing with electricity, the city is the life of the game.

A delivery caused an energy crisis. It also solved it. Explosively.

SYSTEM ERROR

I've been having some hard times with my Playstation. From marathons of inFamous and constant upscaling of streaming movies from my PC, my almost two-year-old console has prematurely lost it's life. Having been a victim of failing systems, I saw no stress in sending the out-of-warranty PS3 in for some official Sony "repairs". $161.21 and PS3 wiped is my price to pay for keeping PS2 backwards compatability. Worth it. Kind of.

After getting the PS3 back from Texas, I was sure that everything should be repaired. Sony support was nice enough on the phone that my faith in them was surely high. Polished and dust-free, I was ready to keep up my gaming summer. For a bit. Fans as loud as leaf blowers didn't help my focus on the gaming at hand, or lack thereof. So, second repair in warranty. No big deal.

Pixels blinded the Capital Wasteland, the WWII Pacific Theater, Brooklyn, and the streets of New San Vanelona until there was just a frozen image of what was. Third PS3. Fully loaded with peeling serial number sticker, pixel pop-in, and constant freezing. "Repaired". Customer support was much more aware this time after exclaiming, "So, third time in a month? That's quite unheard of." Transferred to "Special Support Team" to emphasize the seriousness. After a long, and quite technical talk with A-Team, another repair is in progress. Third time's a char...yeah.
But, when I could stand wind tunnel fans or pixel junk, I did play and beat some games.

inFamous=done.
Uncharted (again)=done.
Persona 4=undone, but fun.
BF1943=BF1942.
Trash Panic=the solution is fire.
GUN=done, but not fun.

Practice makes perfec... whatever. I need more practice writing if I'm going to get a hang of this Journalism major, so impressions, reviews, and stuff will be more frequent. Errors aside, there's much ado on the blog front. Now, to get nicker to start writing...

-misclet

ambiguity

Canis Canem Edit

Dog eat dog. The high school life knows no less than deception, corruption, and detention. Well, the Bully high school life thrives on those things. Considering that my high school life was as normal as teenage TV shows try not to be, Bully became so liberating. Becoming Jimmy Hopkins is the reason why people should play video games, to do what they can't do (or could've done) in real life. I have always wished "kick me" signs worked. I have always wanted to stuff kids in trash cans. I have always wanted to pull off the epic prank that would have been the stuff of legends. Well, I did it all and it was worth it. Kids struggling out of lockers, kicked with tremendous force in the behind, slipping on marbles. Bullworth Academy's finest moments. Bully isn't all about the antics of a mischievous high schooler, its all about frienemies. At one moment, you can be fighting along side the greasers taking on the jocks. Then in an instant, you can be pelted by stones and eggs just because you kissed a greaser's girl. High school romance through and through. Students are believeable and memorable, even if they're based off teenage stereotypes. That's what keeps Bully entertaining. It embraces the feeling of nostalgia instead of giving you generic student #4. Rockstar really put its heart in Bully, and it shows through its detail of dialogue and overall atmosphere of Bullworth. Bully is what this generation of video games should be doing, keeping it fresh and charming. Bully is education at its best.

Rants on COD4

I know that Call Of Duty 4 has been out for a while now and most people are waiting for CODMW2 but a lot of people still play this classic, too bad most of them are noobs. Now, don't get me wrong there are still very skillful players out there playing the game with well....skill, but, and I mean a very big BUT, there seems to be a overwhelming amount of people playing using what I like to call "noob cannons", which are ALL of the light machine guns and shotguns. And not only are they using these weapons that require no aiming or skill, they wait in corners and pick you off by spraying there thousands of rounds of bullets into you while you sit there helpless. Now I know that theses guns are put into the game to expand the catalog of weapons but I think personally the could of done without them. I mean I hate snipers but at least they require a certain amount of skill to aim and shoot accurately while still trying to remain hidden and let's not forget the skill it takes to kill someone with a sniper in point blank range, but with the light machine guns and shotguns, all you have to do is press down on the trigger and you have a 80% chance of killing the other person. SO as you may have noticed the word I used a lot in this post is "skill", which is something these guns take away for the game and hopefully they won't be put into the next game, which they probably will cause I hate them, and the makers of Call of Duty know that and want to ruin my life.

Thanks for reading,
Nick Asmar

Next up: BULLY

...because "kick me" signs never work in real life.

in the heart of darkness... with infinite ammo

Survival horror. Action horror. Just action actually. The recent exploits of Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar is an explosive, skull-punching, and relatively not very shocking journey through the various terrain of Africa. The weirdest aspect of Resident Evil 5 is how unphased the characters are to the utterly jaw dropping creatures they are faced with. So some beautiful women just transformed into a boat-sized behemoth and all Chris can focus on is how much he loves cliches. Taking a page from fellow Capcom comrade, Devil May Cry, the dialogue here is, ahem, a hell of a time. Chris is one of those characters who say things that sound so cheesy, but when we're waiting for him to crack a smile like Dante or Nero, he just keeps the bad dialogue rollin'. Playing the game, though very methodical, felt like a conundrum wrapped in frustration. Taking your time through an action game is like oil and water. You need to aim your shots accordingly, whilst a mutant praying mantis and his soldier buddies rush toward you from all sides. Also, Sheva, though competent when in attack mode, can go too aggro and get herself killed, wasting all the ammo and ending the game for both of you. And here's where co-op shines. I played the first 3 chapters of the game with a friend of the Playstation Network and was extremely satisfied. Not only is my partner now aware of his/her surroundings, someone can now hear my comments on the ridiculousness of each situation we get thrown into. From shanty towns to volcanoes, Resident Evil 5 provides the variety in environment like no other game in the series. The best part of this game is what I thought was the best part of Resident Evil 4, upgrading your weapons. Maxing out the firepower in any of the guns and plowing through what ever is thrown at you makes the game worthwhile. While mowing down enemies with a Magnum with infinite ammo, you can't help but how good the environments look. Lots of evening sunlight and the feeling of the sweltering African savannah kept the game from looking generic, but that didn't keep up throughout the game. Dull textures and boring environments like freighters or oil factory took away from the stunning caverns and marshlands of the rest of the game. Overall, Resident Evil 5 has tied up some loose ends in the Resident Evil universe, but has hit a wall in the gameplay aspect. For an entry in the series, there was so much potential for true terror and horror, but the earlier titles can easily beat this game out of the running. Don't you quit on me Resident Evil! /endcliche. Oh yeah, RACISM.

brand new heights

taking things nuclear

a dark sky has never been so blinding. the first moments outside of vault 101 proved to be the most striking parts of Fallout 3, but also, a more familiar feel. 2 years since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda have seemed to improve upon the "single hope of mankind" formula with Fallout 3, but the aging similarities get in the way of innovation. V.A.T.S., the weapons, and the setting were all great contributions to the action RPG world, but adding those aspects to muddy textures (and yes, i know its a wasteland), dated animations, and stiff conversations doesn't help bring out those features. nevertheless, my time with Fallout 3 was not as dystopian as the landscape. the setting of Fallout was by far the best part of this journey. over every hill or valley was something untraversed and mysterious that i just had to take a minute (or hour) to explore and know all the in's and out's of every fort, power plant, or house. its sense of abandonment gives such a thirst for more knowledge on what happened, who was here, and how much more can i carry? Oblivion had the whole exploration aspect as well, but Fallout has the pull and the sense of mystery that Oblivion did not convey as much. as dilapidated as the landscape is, i can't help but to want to know more... and loot it. though there are many titles to be played, exploration of the wasteland will not be hindered.

Weekly Top 5

Hello all im starting a new weekly post called Weekly Top 5 where I will run down a top 5 list of video game topics. This weeks topic is top 5 video games of 2008.

1.Fallout 3
2.Little Big Planet
3.Metal Gear Solid 4
4.Mirrors Edge
5.Burnout Paradise

Runners up: Resistance 2, Madden 09, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead

what i've been doing (other than posting)

2009 so far has been a rough year. from the get go, the tragic news of EGM's closure and the 1UP layoffs set the tone of how things are going to go, but though tragic, it is also inspiring. ex-1UP and ex-EGM staff have shown while they are down, they are definitely not out. RebelFM proves to be the hand bursting out of the rubble. talkingorange's plans proves to be the inspirational rise from a damaging fall. though i say EGM forever, the future can be even brighter for those affected by the layoffs. That hope and optimism shown by those groups of people have inspired me to write in order to support the cause of game journalism. game journalism seems like one of the best jobs, but it should be all about the passion. the layoffs are rough, but the passion for games still stands. and i'll stand by it.

through the filth and the fury caused by winter break, i managed to get though my pile of shame with great vengance. here's the list:
-resistance 2
-mirror's edge
-fallout 3
-prince of persia
-littlebigplanet
-yakuza
-persona 4
-and a shitstorm of movies (randomized game thoughts, but who cares?)

so i'll write. we'll write. and stay writing. forever.

-misclet