"The Price You Pay to Play"

Rus McLaughlin from IGN has an interesting editorial piece about how much games are really "worth." Entitled The Price You Pay to Play, he proposes different ideas that some games should be priced higher and other lower based on quality. One great example, Fallout 3 is waaaaaaaaay under priced for its quality in game play, hours of game play, and numerous DLC availabilities.

After all of that, I scrolled down to the ever-so-valuable comments. My favorite:

i only buy games if they're <$30, unless it's pokemon or something.

There are certain games I will buy at release and for a full price. The most recent of these platform games I've bought are Final Fantasy XIII, and uh.... interesting....

When I bought Modern Warfare 2, I was selling WaW back to help cut that price down, because honestly, I don't need two CoDs. I received Uncharted 2 as a gift. There really hasn't been an awesome Wii game in a while... I bought RE5 a year ago; good game, but severely let down... I just bought GH5, but only because I've been waiting for it to drop in price.

Hmmm, I guess I'm pretty smart with my gaming money. I have higher standards. And I like cheaper things. Yeah, that's the thought I'm ending on.

Character Battle Results

So, Link beat Cloud in the finals. Not surprising it came down to those two again.

But check this out.

The lead response to today's daily poll (at the time of posting) "What did you think of this year's Character Battle?" is that it was terrible. It really was terrible, and I'm glad other GameFAQs visitors agree with me on that.

The very close second response says it was pretty good, but wants fewer joke characters. If we go that route, why not just remove the strongest competitors? Because if we know the joke characters won't win (with the exception of L-block) then we also know that other deserving characters won't win.

You know, because they aren't Link or Cloud.

Expect a follow up later today, with final results.

UPDATE: Results stayed very close between "terrible" and "pretty good."



Now what we wait for is if GameFAQs will return to their crappy Link-Cloud-Mario-Sephiroth-Snake-Samus-same-old-same-old-Character-Battle. My thoughts: yes, unfortunately they will. And guess what? Our top competitors will still be competing against hopeless characters like Crash Bandicoot, Banjo and Midna. All the while, real competitors (read: ass-kickers) like Dante, Wesker (pre-RE5) and Soap get snubbed big time.

Return to my previous post about this stuff for more insight about something so useless, but otherwise still a great waste of my time.

FFXIII Impressions

Why write a blog entry here when I can get my content published at a respectable, student-run online magazine?

So check out my FFXIII Impressions article, published at Grand Central Magazine.

Please GameFAQs, Enough Character Battles

It's pretty much an annual event, GameFAQs.com does a Character Battle, where users and visitors to the Web site vote in the daily poll on which video game character they favor to win in a fight.

Well, at least that's the way it should be.

The Character Battles typically become popularity contests, or like two years ago, a complete (albeit hilarious) joke.

Here are each of the winners from each Character Battle (and Got Villians?, Battle Royale, and Tournament of Champions poll) with how many times they have won/runner-up:

Link (5/1)
Cloud Strife (1/2)
Sephiroth (1/2)
Mario (1/1)
Samus Aran (1/0)
L-Block (1/0)
Solid Snake (0/2)
Crono (0/1)
Ganondorf (0/1)

Currently happening is Character Battle VIII. Yeah, they've done this 7 (+3) times before. Link, Mario and Samus have already secured their spots in the quarterfinals, and Cloud, Snake and Sephiroth are clearly going to fill in the remaining spots.

See how useless this is? It's the same finalists every year. I don't understand how the results can change every year. The Web site should basically have the same core users/visitors (such as myself), and there shouldn't be an influx in new users, seeing as how GameFAQs is one of the most useful and friendly sites for gaming.

We don't need to whittle down 128 characters down to the same half-dozen every year. Even though GameFAQs does a great job in swapping in and out newer characters into the tournament, chances are you won't see anybody new (like Lightning, Ezio, Soap or Nathan Drake) make it to further rounds.

Now, I'm also not arguing for system-, genre-, or generation-specific tournaments. While those would be a little more interesting (which PS3 hero would win? which FPS gunner would win? which 8-bitter would win?) it would eventually lead us to the same outcomes, the same winners, and the same waste of time.

I don't want to complete knock the GameFAQs poll, though. I absolutely love the polls. It updates everyday and gives me insight on what thousands of other gamers are thinking. Plus, I've been known to sit around, watch the clock, and try to respond first to the poll (in fact, I have done it over 30 times in three years, very sad, I know).

I'm saying that this Character Battle tournament has become completely useless if we get the same exact finalists every time. Retire the winners. Allow for the gamers to choose the best from the remaining field each year. Let's see some more new characters. Those who have failed horribly in the past should be given the boot. Keep cycling something new. THEN when you have the top 16 (which would ultimately boil down to Link, Cloud, Mario and Sephiroth anyway) do your Tournament of Champions.

Or just scratch the whole damn thing anyway.

PlayStation Move

I think I've seen this before, isn't it called the Wii?

PlayStation Move at IGN.com

Nah, it all looks okay to me. I'm impressed Sony is doing this kind of work. Once you get more than one company going into the next big thing, you have good competition and developers start upping their game. Let's see something sweet now, guys. No more Wii Sports Resorts. Thanks.

Quick Fix

I have to give Sony some credit for this quick fix. Remember how five hours ago I was relaying that Sony hoped to have fix the clock malfunction by tomorrow morning? They've fixed it already.

For something that should have never happened in the first place (in no way, shape or form was 2010 a leap year) Sony acted pretty fast in fixing this glitch.

Sony says:

We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally.

Let's see Microsoft fix your red ring of death that fast. Suckers.

8001050FPS3WTF

I saw last night that PS3's were just dropping like flies. Inability to connect to PlayStation Network, system errors, trophy corruptions... this stuff shouldn't happen. It's not an XBox 360.

Well, IGN's got the skinny on this ERROR. (Sorry, but error seemed like a word that needed to be capitalized.)

And here is what Sony has to say about this.

I have an 80gb PS3, so it falls under that category as being a "fat" model, (i.e. not slim). This error could happen to me, if I chose to turn on my PS3. Which after hearing about this, I will refuse to turn on until Sony "engineers" fix this problem.

As IGN reports:

Sony says that there's a bug in "the clock functionality incorporated in the system". What that means is that affected systems are resetting their internal clocks to 12/31/99, and this is causing a whole mess of problems including the inability to log into the PlayStation Network, start games and play certain video rentals. In addition, Trophy data for the games you're trying and failing to play turns into "corrupt data".

Sony hopes to fix this problem by Tuesday morning. Until then, any trophies that were earned before syncing them with a PSN account probably will not come back. Any game save files shouldn't be affected at all, since it's on the hard drive.

To relieve my four readers (and four is a vast overestimation) I have NOT turned on my PS3 in the past 4-5 days, and after learning of this, I completely switched it off, and not resting it with the red standby light.

Now, I love my PS3. It is a powerhouse of a gaming system, and so much more. Sony has a great history of success and hardware that doesn't blow. They have great gaming libraries, wonderful graphic capabilities, a classic controller that holds onto its origins because, simply, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Now, when Sony says that the PS3 "does everything," you can include the Y2K bug into that mix.

(Really? A freakin' bug in the clock functionality? That's the way it goes down? I would have been more impressed if it could spontaneously catch fire like my our laptop has the potential to do if I ever choose to plug it back in. A CLOCK MALFUNCTION!? At least I know this can be patched, and I don't have to ship my system to the manufacturer. BUT REALLY???? A CLOCK. MALFUNCTION. It's not even a leap year!)