Tag: video games

Street Fighter’s “new” character

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Capcom unveils a new character named Decapre for Ultra Street Fighter IV.  Decapre joins former Street Fighter/Capcom veterans Rolento, Elena, Hugo and Poison when the expansion releases.

The knee-jerk reaction that seems to be prevalent is that Decapre isn’t really a new character, but a weak-effort palette swap/modification of Cammy.  Obviously, the parallel is not difficult to see as she is pretty much Cammy with a mask on, and no amount of sugar-coating and bullshit-flinging can change that, but it is funny to see and read how people are trying to defend it.

The bottom line is that I have to side with those that feel that Decapre is more or less a copout by Capcom in trying to declare her a new character.  Tell me all about her mask, her Russian ethnicity instead of English, how her bracers have claws in them, and how her attacks are charge-based and not directional, when the day is over, when the sprite’s back is turned to the screen (which I imagine it will be, since it’s pretty much Cammy’s ass), nobody will be able to tell the difference between Decapre and Cammy.

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Zelda fights aren’t as epic in real life

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Long story short: girl has argument with live-in boyfriend, girl calls ex-husband for consoling. Ex-husband arrives to house, confrontation with boyfriend erupts. Boyfriend happens to be a Link-cosplaying nerd, runs to Lost Woods bedroom to grab Master Sword replica to defend himself with. Husband is stabbed and slashed a few times by very real-bladed sword, but gets in some offense himself by breaking a pot over boyfriend’s head, before authorities arrive.

Imagine the arrogant, shit-eating grin on my face while I was reading this. Some days it’s really difficult for me to find something to write about, but occasionally there’s a story like this that just makes writing so fun.

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When video games effortlessly mimic reality

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was having a conversation the other day about how the WWE’s minor league federation, NXT was either by coincidence or strategy, placed on Thursday nights.  Thursday nights are when TNA wrestling, the WWE’s main “competition” airs, and has been the norm for I don’t know, a year or two?

The joke is now that TNA is screwed, because they’re going to get outclassed and outdrawn by NXT, which is pretty much the equivalent of a Ford Mustang getting smoked by a Toyota Corolla, or Outback Steakhouse getting murdered by a Taco Bell in profit margins, or any other instance of something thought to be of moderate quality, getting owned by something thought to be of inferior quality.

I’m not entirely sure how that segued into talking about old video games, but at least I got to take my shot in at TNA in the process; seriously, this is going to be like the late 90’s when one hour of Sunday Night Heat started outdrawing three hours WCW Monday Nitro.

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Inevitable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It was my original intention to have traveled this past weekend, but due to Icepocalypse, that couldn’t happen.

Not to say that I didn’t salvage a busted weekend with a little productivity and helping out some other friends, but I really did have my heart set on gorging on pigs and flesh of lesser creatures on the food chain.

Naturally, the weather was gorgeous, sunny, and not at all intolerably cold the entire weekend, and looking out the window would make anyone believe it was inconceivable that it was a gray, dreary ice blanket outside just a few days ago.  Furthermore, in spite of all the condemnation of Hartsfield Airport due to the mass cancellations during Icepocalypse, and despite that my destination was showing oversold flights, it turns out that I would have made it out fairly easily had I just gone and tried, probably due to people having given up earlier, drove instead, or re-booked and the software didn’t account for it.

My response to such details can only be summed up in the above animated gif I had the time to create, alternatively.

Sing along, now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I curse fairly liberally when I feel that it’s appropriate, I don’t really want a bigass F-bomb graphic to sit so prominently on the brog facing front. So as lame as it may seem, I’m taking the discretion to mosaic it up and save the real one for the jump, although it’s pretty obvious what it might be, given the allusion and the fact that I may not have mosaic’d it up too harshly.

Anyway, most anyone who’s ever played a Sega Genesis has heard this, the Sega logo splash for Sonic the Hedgehog. If not, click the link and indulge in a six-second clip to understand the rest of this post.

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This “gamers as athletes” is going a bit too far now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The guy on the left is Shin-Soo Choo.  Shin-Soo Choo is a Major League Baseball player, and an extremely talented one at that.  Aside from that, Shin-Soo Choo is something of an international hero, as he has been a chief member of the Korean National Baseball team that enjoyed moderate successes in tournaments such as the World Baseball Classic as well as the Asian Games.  Shin-Soo Choo is considered a genuine five-tool player; he hits very well, he hits with power (read: home runs), plays excellent defense, has a great throwing arm, and runs very effectively.  It is safe to say that Shin-Soo Choo is the most talented and successful Korean-born Major League Baseball player in history.

The guy on the right is Dong-Hwan Kim.  Dong-Hwan Kim plays Starcraft for a living.  He sits at a computer for a living, staring into a monitor, playing a video game.  The only physical thing he really demonstrates is dexterity with his fingers, or as those in such a scene like to refer to as “Actions per minute (APM)” which is basically just how good a guy is at repeatedly clicking a mouse and a few keys on the keyboard.

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EA Sports presents eSPORTS ’14

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s right. A video game about people playing video games. And why the hell not? As long as eSports are being recognized as professional sport, why shouldn’t they be able to have a game made out of it?

Think about that for a second. Imagine creating a character that plays video games, but not just any video games, but other EA sports video games. There’s a repeating image kind of redundancy about it, but that’s what professional gamers do for a living sometimes; why shouldn’t EA try and capitalize on that, and make the players in the game play other EA video games? In fact, they should make the capability to make their players play other EA titles as egregiously priced downloadable content, so that they can make even moar moneys!

But back to eSPORTS14. There’s so many directions that a game like this could be developed. Like FIFA, you could choose a nationality; the Koreans and the Chinese would be stupidly overpowered in talent and capability, but have single digits in charisma, marketability and personality. Europeans would score high in charisma, marketability and arrogance, and South American nations would have a 99 in trolling ability, and nothing else except maybe FIFA. And since North America is pretty much EA’s stomping ground, they would be given a fairly balanced kit to work with.

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