20 Jun

The Other Ones

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , .

This is the second of my two E3 articles for the year. Then on to some more reviews!

The press conferences of the Electronic Entertainment Expo are usually the most hyped part of the show, and for good reason, but they’re only half the story. The show floor invariably reveals a few uncelebrated diamonds in the rough every year and E3 2012 was no different. A great many games that were absent from the five press conferences showed up on the floor and tried their best to impress.

Here are five of my favourite non-conference games from this year’s show, in no particular order:
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Project P-100
Completely absent from any of the Nintendo press conferences, this incredibly quirky trans-genre… thing looks surprisingly fun to play on the Wii U. Best described as a cross between Pikmin and a drawing-based superhero game, it came as no surprise to me that the sheer hectic pace of the cartoony action was engineered by none other than Platinum Games, developers of the excellent MadWorld, Bayonetta and Vanquish. Bring it. Continue reading

18 Jun

Conference Call

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , .

My internet connection has been giving me real problems of late, which has made this piece a little later than I would have wanted. Alas.

That magic week in worldwide gaming news has already come and gone for another year. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for the affectionate/professional/lazy, delivered less surprises than in past years, but there was still plenty to talk about. The aftermath has been dissected a million ways already. Chief among the topics of conversation, as always, were the five big press conferences. Here I throw in my 2c on them by ranking them in terms of how strong I thought they were, from least to most.

Continue reading

16 Jun

Movie Review: Prometheus

Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: , , .

I saw this highly anticipated Ridley Scott epic last Tuesday. Thoughts follow!

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Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron
Director: Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner)
Rating: M
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If you were Sir Ridley Scott, director of such massive critical and commercial successes as Gladiator and Black Hawk Down and architect of one of the most ponderous sci-fi films ever made in Blade Runner, you could probably do whatever you wanted with your late career. So thirty-three years after he practically reinvented the horror genre by sending it into space with Alien, Scott figured it might be a cool idea to revisit the fictional xenomorph-infested universe he built himself with a new film, Prometheus. In doing so he whipped up a storm of hype and, as so often happens with these things, all kinds of questions started flying around fan circles. Would the film be a direct prequel or just set in the same universe? Why that odd title? How would the advent of CGI impact the atmosphere of the film? And perhaps most importantly, in what new direction would Scott take the series? Continue reading

10 Jun

What a Wonderful Month

Posted by vagrantesque in Lists, Misc.

Oh June, how you treat me and drain my sleep!

Oh the hidden goodness you contain!

There is a reason why I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since the start of winter. Between scouring for news coming out of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles and watching Euro 2012 in the early hours of the morning, rest has plummeted ever  lower on my list of priorities. Even though E3 is done and dusted for another year, there still remain plenty of reasons why June 2012 will keep bringing the goods. Here are just five of them: Continue reading

17 May

Ten Cubed is…

Posted by vagrantesque in Gamecube, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , .

In some ways it’s hard to believe this day has come. Today is May 17th and that means it is exactly ten years since the launch of the Nintendo Gamecube in Australia.

On May 17th, 2002, ten years ago to the day, my school had a Staff Development Day, so we didn’t have to go to class. It was clearly put on so the teachers could all go grab themselves a shiny new Nintendo Gamecube.

Featuring one of the most comfortable controllers ever designed.

That day represented the first time I had ever purchased a video game console with my own hard-saved pocket money. That little black box was also the first console I had ever taken home on launch day. Its graphical power, quite impressive at the time, blew me away after years playing Nintendo 64 games, but more importantly the Gamecube provided just as many wonderful gaming memories as its predecessor. Its handle and small size meant it never stayed in one place for too long, making temporary homes at friends’ places, where the good times rolled on.

What follows is a list of my top ten favourite Nintendo Gamecube games of all time. Continue reading

11 May

Capture Testin’, Phase Three

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, PS3. Tagged: , .

Though it was a hassle to set up in standard definition (I had to have it on my normal HDMI connection and then set the AV settings and switch over), I was glad to discover that I was able to take some decent PS3 screenshots using the Kaiser Baas Series 8 Game Recorder. See my Xbox 360 test shots here.

PS3_1

The icons are so massive!

PS3_2

The PSN home screen

Continue reading

9 May

Capture Testin’, Phase Two

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Xbox 360. Tagged: , .

Continuing to test my new Kaiser Baas Series 8 Game Recorder (see Phase One here). Moving on to some standard definition shots from a high definition console. These Xbox 360 screen captures came out surpringly well, all things considered.

360_1

Standard definition, stadard sight.

360_2

Xbox Home – topical centrepiece there.

Continue reading

7 May

Capture Testin’, Phase One

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Wii. Tagged: , .

I recently acquired some basic game capture hardware, namely a Kaiser Baas Series 8 Game Recorder. It runs in standard definition through AV cables and I have misplaced said cables for my Xbox 360 and my PS3 (who knew I would ever need them?). Luckily I have a Wii with which to test the screenshot features. Here I do just that.

I’m running The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. You can read my review of the game here.

SS Map

Faron Woods Map, sick auto-border.

'Shrooms

Dang them ‘shrooms.

Continue reading

30 Apr

TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life

Posted by vagrantesque in Misc. Tagged: , , , , .

Something a little different today: A plug for one of my favourite wiki websites. Get ready for a wall of text!

Stop me if any of this is unfamiliar…

You’re sitting in your lounge room one evening having just finished watching a certain movie or TV episode for the first time. As the credits roll, something about it doesn’t seem to click for you. Maybe the plot has the smallest of annoying holes, or perhaps an aspect of someone’s characterisation doesn’t quite make sense. You mull over it for a while, then later on you open the fridge door to get a snack and BAM! A really good explanation hits you. You have just experienced an instance of Fridge Brilliance.

You’re reading a series of books and you like how one of the main characters is written. Self assured and intelligent, the character has already been responsible for some pretty impressive villain-busting theories in the series, or at the very least he/she has proved to be a lucid presence. Yet in the book you are reading, the same character seems curiously blind to a potentially crucial plot development and remains so until its almost too late. For the sake of plot, the character’s intelligence has taken a temporary drop. The author has handed him or her the Idiot Ball. Continue reading

29 Apr

Movie Review: Battleship

Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: , , .

Back to back madness! Here’s a review of the latest “blockbuster” effort from Hasbro’s association with Hollywood. It came out in Australia two weeks ago. The Avengers it certainly ain’t.

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Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson, Rihanna
Director: Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Hancock)
Rating: M
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Who could possibly have expected to see something like this in theatres? Toy company Hasbro, who pushed the Transformers film franchise into existence and rebooted the My Little Pony television series into its most successful edition ever, must have been so confident in their ability to put their toys on screen and bums on seats that they thought a celluloid adaptation of a board game was viable. Now, after a huge marketing push, Universal Studios have released the multi-million dollar project in cinemas. The results are what you might expect. Continue reading

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