thirdworldgamer

Dishonored. Every gamer out there talks about this game like it's the greatest thing. So I went ahead and picked it up. I had pretty high hopes for this game. Granted there are some great parts to it. It's really nice how you can teleport around like Nightcrawler. That's cool. But there's one thing that really, really bugs me about this game. The game gives you the most awesome killing implements; you've got your sword, a gun, some traps, some skills that let you summon an army of rats, a wind spell like Skyrim's FUS ROH DAH! and many more... ...and ten minutes into the game, the game tells you that YOU CAN'T KILL ANYONE. What the hell is this? OK to be very clear, the game actually tells you that you have to have a low body count or else you will get a 'dark' ending. Why would they do this? I mean, seriously. Why tell the player, no, why punish the player for playing however they like? Yeah well I don't really know what the game means ...

My wife has given her thoughts and has provided a lot of the 'facts' about this story. I only caught wind of it today and I thought originally this was just some minor thing with NBA2K13 being the only game at issue. Upon reading more and finding out over 2 million worth of games were seized, wow, I realized this was pretty serious stuff. I also saw other posts on Pinoyxbox and other blogs about how bad it was, with the store being closed and essentially putting a halt to their business operations for a day or two....Looks like Datablitz was subjected to public humiliation in this incident. Note that not all people are gamers so to people not familiar with the games business it just makes them lose a bit of face to have police coming in, and word going around about selling pirated games for a store with a large ORIGINAL signboard at their stores. I've read most of the stories and know some of the facts. In the end I'd rather side with Data Blitz on this. They're...

Datablitz, the biggest gaming software retail chain in the Philippines, has just been accused of selling a ‘unauthorized’ game of NBA 2k13.  ( Source )   Not because it was downloaded illegally and burnt to a cheap CD but because Datablitz did not buy some(?) of  their copies from the official and exclusive Philippine distributor of the game, XPLAY games.  Based on the article posted, PNP-CIDG (Philippine National Police -  Criminal Investigation and Detection Group) raided stores and the warehouse of Datablitz.  The complaint was filed because the games being sold apparently did not have the XPLAY sticker like the one shown in the image below.  Those in the Philippines might be wondering why the PNP-CIDG and not the OMB (Optical Media Board) well this is not about piracy but trade and business. The truth is Datablitz is the errant party here --- if we are going to base it according to the law.  They probably got some copies from the gray ...

First off I'd like to say I'm not a big fan of local movies. I just don't like the way they're shot, and their storylines. They are very, very formulaic and you can tell from the way they're shot that all the acting bits were probably done in about a week's time (minimum) or a month at most. It's just hard to see the effort when there's just one or two camera angles. The sound is usually the type produced by equipment from the sixties or seventies (and there's always the same distinctive footstep noise that they use in every movie! And we're in 2012 already, wow...) I'm just glad those elements weren't in Tiktik. I went in this movie with rock bottom expectations. Their marketing says it's comparable to Avatar / LOTR; I wish they didn't say that, though. But if you do compare it to the local 'big effects' films, Tiktik is practically light years ahead of all of them. (example: try watching Enteng Kabisote, then try w...

As usual, just so busy lately so haven't been able to blog about this. I already finished the game several days ago. Overall I thought it was a great effort from Capcom, and that's saying a lot considering what happened with Street Fighter X Tekken. - Jake - interesting character with a lot of what seemed to me were experimental ideas on gameplay. Those were generally ok but the experimental stuff may be off-putting for many, particularly the snow area and the motorcycle chase. He's a great character with a great resolution, but one thing i didn't like was all the repeated boss battles, which are recycled from Leon/Chris. - Ada - Shorter campaign, again feels recycled through most of the other three....but in terms of story it goes somewhere (though admittedly, not very far, and nothing too risky). I like her explosive crossbow. Quick shot for easy kills with no need to aim. What's unfortunate about Ada is they could have put more impact in her final cutscene....

Finished the Chris campaign, here's more impressions of RE6 from my experience so far: - The game design of having four different campaigns with different characters seems like a great idea at this point. The game just feels BIG. Nobody can complain that they finished this in 10 hours. And even if they do finish it that quickly, it just won't feel that long with the different campaigns and cutscenes to enjoy. - A major event happens in Chris's campaign which I wish didn't happen. Let's just say that it would have been better to keep some characters alive for future iterations of the series, but hey, it's Capcom's decision in the end. - I think the philosophy of Capcom when they make games these days is to focus on gameplay. While there's a lot of cutscenes in RE6, story-wise, the franchise literally goes nowhere. It's basically, here's your guns, now kill some monsters and enjoy. There's no focus on telling a story anymore...well i supp...

Apparently, we're all playing Resident Evil 6 wrong....the game is missing a badly needed tutorial that would make the experience less frustrating. Also, it isn't set up by default to optimal settings. See below: (note: all button references are for the Xbox version) - For your laser sight, pick 'Classic' which would revert to a tracing-style laser instead of a red dot. Much easier to aim. - For your camera, set it to speed 2. - For your aiming speed, set it to 7. These two camera/aiming settings should reduce the clunkiness of the movement. - So you don't run out of bullets too fast, press LT + RT for a quickshot, which hits enemies that are very near you very quickly without aiming! It can also be a stylish animation depending on your character and equipped weapon. - Quickshot uses your stamina bar which is that thing below your life bar. If you use all those up, you won't be able to do effective melee attacks. - Melee also uses your stamina bar....

I'll keep it short and sweet because I have a day job and I don't have much time. That said, I think Capcom needs to know what they did RIGHT and what they did WRONG in this game. First off, Capcom, this game is not as horrible as the review sites say. I'm playing this at the same pace as every normal human being is, and I'm not rushing through it like a reviewer does. I'm not getting annoyed at little things though some things are worth mentioning for your next project to be better. So listen to me, and ignore Gamespot, if you want to make more money. - The camera. Guys, this really needs work. It's just too close. Compare it to Gears of Wars's camera....that one is just perfect. Some things i found odd is when you turn your character you can end up looking at your character's face/front. I think this is the problem. The camera should work in such a way that if you turn left to right, you should still be looking at your characters' back. That ...

I will concede...maybe IGN was right about the game's difficulty. I've got a really bad win-loss record in this game right now. After a few days I suppose the ones who live in the arcades have finally picked this one up, and they're now proceeding to decimate all the newbies in their path. Including myself. I'll admit, this game got me infuriated at times. It was about Marvel vs. Capcom 3 level infuriation. I do admire a lot of things that Namco has done with this game. Great number of characters, great number of features, the online is perfect....a lot of what they did is great, heck I'm even glad they were nice enough to put proper CG endings on most of the very large cast. And not charging for costumes is one of the best things they've ever done. But in terms of learning curve, it soon became apparent to me that this game is not for regular people like me. Well, okay, I'm still going to play this actually. I do like it. But I think I've come t...

Just picked up Tekken Tag Tournament 2 from Data Blitz the other day on launch. There has been a lot of good feedback from many gamers the world over about its netcode. Well, those gamers are in first-world countries so their connections are much better than ours over here in the Philippines, where our major telecommunications providers won't even interconnect with each other because of their business interests. Fighting game network code has not been so great for many games now, but the most recent releases like VF5FS and Persona 4 Arena have proven that it really is possible to have good online matches with fighting games. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 represents the next big evolution in online network play for fighting games. It comes with a ton of extra features just for online mode, include a detailed statistics-collecting website that connects with your game to let you know more about your own personal progress. It's a step in the right direction for the genre. While it is t...

So yesterday we were just casually browsing at SMART SM Megamall, they have this store called 'JUMP' that has all the nice smartphones on display for people to try out. We were approached by this salesman and he does his usual sales pitch. Of course I was thinking...well, give the guy a chance. Actually, we were in SMART yesterday because occassionally we've been annoyed by our phone connectivity issues with Globe Telecom. SMART trashes Globe a lot on the radio with their advertisements, but I can't say they aren't accurate. Every time I call my wife I have to say "CAN YOU HEAR ME?" over and over, at the beginning of the call. For some reason our voices get so badly distorted....and this is a problem that has never happened before. I recall for many years Globe's service was okay; we don't really think about it when there's a dropped call or delayed message here-and-there. But lately, it has become so bad that I never end a conversation with my...

Picked up Persona 4 Arena for the PS3 a few days ago. I've spent a little time with it and it's a great game. Atlus's Persona universe coupled with Arc System Works' grasp of fighting gameplay is a great combination. I only worry that this game will fall through the cracks, with TTT2 already due in a few weeks. Quick run through of my thoughts on it: The actual fighting game engine seems smoother than Blazblue, and the user interface is incredibly flashy. At times I find myself just admiring how good the UI is for this game. Really simple for starters. All characters get a 'Mash weak punch' combo....basically you can just press one button, and get your character to do cool things that end with a super combo. Really nice, at least for me....I've never played the arcade version so this makes it feel worthwhile even if you just play it casually. Story mode is done in Japanese 'Visual Novel' style. Will probably turn a lot of people off; it works f...

I remember when the Xbox 360 and the PS3 were about to be introduced, there was a lot of excitement. There was a lot more to look forward to and following the gaming news was a lot more exciting. Fast forward to today, and there's just too much secrecy with these new systems. With the stuff that was revealed (that game from Ubisoft which was supposedly next-gen)...it's great, but not really a huge leap. Maybe I'm just getting older, but what I've seen so far isn't that exciting. I do want it to be but it just isn't. Also, a lot of the gaming news these days doesn't really paint a great picture for game development. People getting laid off immediately after a game becomes a success; developers just ignoring their fans' feedback; game prices getting higher even if the content isn't that much better....it's not a great time for console games. It just feels unexciting. I've had more fun following the film industry than gaming lately....with t...

Long time no post...been busy with work but still gaming on the side when I have the time. One thing I have been trying to fix for practically months now is getting NAT TYPE 3 on my Playstation 3 when connected wirelessly via a Linksys WRT120N Router connected to Globe Telecom's PROLINK Modem/Router. NAT TYPE 2 is the ideal set up to find games online easily and to connect to more players. I'll probably update this post some time later today to clarify some things...in a rush because I'm also working... Here was my setup before: Linksys WRT120N - Has DHCP Server On - Getting an IP address from the Globe modem of 192.168.254.x Prolink Modem from Globe - Apparently also a router of some kind - The public/dynamic(?) IP address from Globe was in this device and not in the WRT120N device, as evidenced by an address that was not 192.168.x.x - Username and password was in the Prolink device. After reading a LOT of information online, including this one: http://co...

I sit here wondering to myself, how is it possible that Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is a far superior game to Street Fighter X Tekken? Here we have two games, both in the same genre, with the same basic selling point for both of them (multiplayer competitive fighting)...one game has a much bigger budget and development crew than the other...one had a much larger marketing campaign and loftier promises...That was SFxT. I was one of the millions of gamers the world over waiting for the greatest fighting game experience since SF4 revitalized the fighting game scene. So when all the controversies for the game occurred, I'm one of those that were affected. When I bought SFxT it was practically an investment. You buy a fighting game knowing it will give you hours and hours of gameplay. You know it shouldn't end in just a week or a day. Multiplayer gaming guarantees the endless availability of competition, that the constant desire to improve at the game will drive you to keep on ...

Quick review: - Netcode is excellent, only had very few laggy games. - Online matches are very fast; it's only a few days but I've had over 60+ matches already! - The game feels easier for some reason (or maybe it's because of all my previous practice from years before) - Just 15$ on PSN, FREE on Playstation Plus! - For the price the game has a ton of value....you don't need to know every move to enjoy this game, just play it even with only a few moves and it can be quite enjoyable. - So far the game is new so there's a wide variety of players; not everyone online is a 'super-pro' just yet, but that will most likely change over time (when people start moving on to other games...) so that only means one thing: the best time to play this (where you'll have the most fun playing it) is NOW! - Playing on WORLDWIDE settings so I don't really think about the region of my opponents; but it never seems to be a factor at all...gameplay is just really sm...

So, a lot of gamers are playing Diablo III right now. I gave the Diablo III 'demo', which came out a few weeks ago, a test run and honestly the gameplay wasn't really that compelling. It felt like a graphically updated version of Diablo II and not much else. I'm not sure if the first part in the demo is also the first part in the full game, but it felt severely lacking in exposition. The old adage 'Here's a big sword, now go kill something' was pretty much Diablo III, at the very least that was my experience with the 'demo'. Maybe I'll try it someday. I just don't feel like spending 3,000+ pesos on it right now. Where is gaming now? I don't really feel any huge interest in any upcoming games. There's Halo 4, sure, but that project feels like a cash-in more than anything, with Bungie giving up on it and basically Microsoft just pushing it so they're guaranteed some money come Christmas-time. There was Street Fighter X Tekken wh...

Playing this game during the week and really enjoying it. - the characters are really entertaining. They seem to be written like RPG archetypes which is interesting in a Gears of War type of game - Not using the voice feature in the game because of my living situation at home (don't wake the baby!) - Action is really hectic and fun, it feels like a good old Japanese shoot em up with a TPS mixed in I read somewhere this sold well below 100k which makes me feel really bad for Sega. They churn out great work like this, and it never sells.... so strange, really. I guess they can't (afford to) buy review outlets like the big Western game makers can.

Just finished Mass Effect 3 in about two days (20 hours). Rushed through it like a Call of Duty game. That said I went in there assuming the worst, with all the negative feedback the game has been getting. For some reason I enjoyed it. A lot. I enjoyed it without the hype, without the marketing, without hoping for some kind of mind-blowing revelation at the end. The game, by itself is so well crafted. It has some issues here and there like every other game (the cover system needs work) but that's about it. Overall, this still has what made the other two games great, particularly the dialogue system and the fantastic cutscenes. With this game, the cutscenes reach a level well beyond Square Enix's efforts with their own JRPGs. Now, to the main issue at hand (with most people anyway). The ending. I liked it. It's unfortunate people didn't like it, but based on what I've seen i think a lot of people are imagining going to conventions dressed up as characters from the se...

It's a strange irony that even with the added technology that we have today, people who use the technology to interact with others don't seem too happy at all. This stuff is supposed to make life easier but for some reason people still seem as miserable as ever (or probably more so) Take any kind of pre release hype for any big game. Online conversations always start with great hopes and aspirations, reflections of games past and how "good" older games were. You find people who like the same game as you do and you start talking on the internet to hype each other about how great it will be when the game comes out. But it always, always ends the same. Expectations aren't lived up to, none of the hype turns out to be real, and the game always looks worse than it really is. But I sometimes think that the Internet is what really adds to that effect. Imagine, you have these thousands of people finding anything and everything wrong with your 60$ game. Instead of making t...

So out of curiosity I made a Japanese PSN account. In sfxtk matchmaking I noticed that, most of the time, players in Japan appear with yellow or green bars. Every other game had 0 to 1 bar. I was getting annoyed sitting there waiting for games on the Ranked Match screen half the time...so I guess this was worth a try.... Making a Japanese PSN account was easy...the form fields are almost the same as the others, and the postal code had no validation so I just put in a lot of 1's. When I looked for games in Endless Battle, all the games that appeared had yellow bars! I was able to play a lot of practically lag free games thanks to this! Some other positives: - spectator mode works! - ranked match fight request occurs very often -fewer rollbacks This is on a 2mbps Globe connection. So if you're on Globe Telecom DSL and are loathing the fact that you always get laggy games from the USA, try making a JP account. The net code really shines on good connections! I'm on PSN as takes...

It's pretty easy to review SFxTK if you play fighting games already. I wouldn't call myself a competition level player; I really just play for fun, but I wouldn't say that I don't hold my own when playing online. SFxTK is really a fun game and if you already enjoy fighting games and obssess over how to play them right, you'll surely enjoy this. If you don't enjoy fighting games, this game can try to convert you but if you don't handle losing very well, it will be the same story as other fighting games. Honestly I didn't handle losing in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 very well, which is why I didn't invest in the next game, UMvC3. Marvel can be pretty infuriating, even with all the practice you put in, it all seems to boil down to character tiers (which characters are really the 'best' in the game). Unlike with SF4 where, while tiers do matter, you'll still have a fighting chance if your opponent is not very skilled. Early on, SFxTK does not seem inf...

Just recently purchased a car :D Honestly I've never bought anything this big in my whole life so this is a really new thing for me. I got the 2012 Kia Picanto, which is the new model with the styling made by that guy from Audi who Kia hired recently. That said, I'm just posting this to help out anyone on the internet who bought a 2012 Kia Picanto in the Philippines. If you're looking for where the VALET / PROGRAMMABLE SWITCH / BUTTON is on the new 2012 Kia Picanto, it's a black button that's directly behind the lever that opens the hood. The people at Kia couldn't tell me where it is...so I had to look all over the dashboard for it. It's a very useful button, in case of emergencies related to your car alarm, or if you need to configure it. That's all for today :D