Burnout's Back Baby!

It's pretty hilarious how one simple addition breathed new life into a game I used to love and loathe at the same time. Now it's just love all the way.

Burnout Paradise, released over a year ago, is surprisingly engrossing, especially so for a decidedly different take on the "drive this car to the finish line" formula. Instead of racing in a point A to point B style like, oh I don't know, a normal racing game, Criterion decides to mess with our heads and tell us "Just get to point B. I don't care if you go through points A, C, D, Omega, or Niner. Just get there."

Yes, this racing game takes place in a city that you navigate for missions ranging from a simple race to a death match on wheels traveling through the streets of Paradise City like a pestilence.

The only problem at first? As you complete missions, you earn points towards upgrading your license, from a lowly Learner's Permit to D to A and eventually the Criterion Elite License. The easiest way to progress is to beat one and move on. At first, when you fail a mission, you can easily move on to another. this becomes a problem later on when you've completed a large majority of the missions, so you'll have to drive long distances just to get a new one.

The new February update adds the ability to restart failed missions. This greatly improves the way you play the game in case you fail a mission.

Cosplaying Gone Right

Yes, that man is wearing a playable Game Boy, so don't ask.

Quality Time with the Halo Wars demo

Ensemble Studios is releasing Halo Wars, an RTS (real-time strategy) game take on Bungie's ever prominent Halo franchise. In all three games of the Halo game trilogy, the player takes the helm of super soldier "Spartan" Master Chief, the last of the Spartans from Earth's super soldier program.

Players are used to playing the seemingly invincible Master Chief from a 1st person perspective. Halo Wars however, pans the camera out for you to control either Earth's UNSC army or the Convenant forces in massive battles with you calling the shots over a large area.

The transition for me however, was easy. And by that, I mean the transition from shooter to RTS using the ripe Halo backstory and franchise was great. All the great units I've fought against and alongside with from the shooter are a blast to see in action en masse in an RTS. From the cannon fodder Space Marines to the few but strong Spartans who can be upgraded to wield the deadly Spartan Laser and the Convenant Hunters and Elites; everything that was memorable from the shooter is jusst as iconic and memorable in a large scale RTS.

Just imagine having three Spartans, all wiping out the front lines with this baby.

The only caveat is the question of whether classic Halo fans will bite. Certainly the curious ones will, but what of the hardcore shooters? I'm not even a big fan of RTS, and even I know that RTS games belong on a pc. Picking apart specific units to send into strategic positionsisn't exactly easy when I'm using a control pad instead of a mouse.

However, the one stand out thing to set Halo Wars apart from other RTS are the units' special abilities. You see, sicking a unit on an enemy with the X button may yield predictable results, but using the Y button for it's special ability can be far my interesting and fun. For example, Warthog vehicles will ram, Space Marines lob grenades, The Prophet of Regret calls down a daming space beam.

Yes, that last one was a leader unit. Leader units are above all the best units you'll have, leading the fray with useful skills like the Cleansing Beam, Repair and Regeneration, or a good old fashion murderous frenzy.

Halo Wars is shaping up to be a fun romp if not at least for long time Halo fans. It might not be the easiest RTS to control due to the console's natural limitations on precision, but it'll be one hell of a ride at least.

A Hilarious Romp Through Nostalgia and Masochism

The title is a nod to the classic Mega Man II intro

I Wanna Be The Guy! (henceforth abbreviated as IWBTG!) is retro throwback to the classic 8-bit games. It's chock full of references and parodies to such classics as Mega Man, Bionic Commando, and Metroid. It was made by a rag tag group of misfits so it's free to download at the above link.

But be warned. IWBTG! isn't just some lame game to cash in our childhood dreams. The following statement is not a hyperbole: You will die within the first two seconds of playing the game. Seriously guys, the game can make you go borderline insane if you seriously want to beat the game and become the Guy. Levels are made in such a way that you'll never see your death coming unless you've done some sort of trial and error. So here's a spoiler about your first death, depending on the direction you take in the game: an apple falls on you.

Yes, the traps engineered into this game is compounded by the old one-hit-kill game design philosohpy a la Gradius or Contra. However, you get a number of save points to save your progress (how numerous they are are dependant on the difficulty level you choose) and you get an unlimited number of retries.

This doesn't make the game anymore bearable. Many traps are teeth-grittingly difficult, so even if you know how the trap works, it's still difficult. Many times in the game, the margin of error is literally one or two pixels.

Believe it or not, it gets worse...

However, despite these problems, IWBTG can be a surprising joy to play through. Everything in the game are recycled sprites and music ripped from the original source games, so when Ryu suddenly shoryukens you out of no where, it's the actual sprite and sound from the actual Street Fighter II game. Even the background music is ripped straight out, so you'll be enjoying the tunes you heard when you beat Super Mario World or Mega Man II.

Make no mistake, this game is hard. But it can be an enjoyable experience for the truly hardcore, or as I did, watching a friend play it and seeing him claw and scrape his way to victory (after 350 deaths).

Manic depression as caused by IWBTG!

Circuit City: A Not-So Tearful Goodbye

Circuit City has always been a sort of odd man out in terms of electronics stores. I see far more advertising for Best Buy and I see more press, both good and bad. Fry's has relatively no advertising on television or on the internet, and yet it's no doubt it has a large store with a wide range of products and prices.

Circuit City to me was the middle child. No outstanding characteristics, but safe from most exposure with it's brothers receiving more attention.

Here was my last, unfortunate experience with Circuit City.

It was another lazy Sunday afternoon. January 25, the day before classes resume, and I had finished my textbook shopping on the Friday before. I had been following Circuit City's liquidation like a hawk over it's prey, though I guess a vulture on a dying animal is more accurate. What I wanted was an external hard drive. The drive on my laptop had been filling up with videos and misc applications and games, so I needed some new space.

Hopping over to my nearest CC in Huntington Beach, I peruse the aisles for it's external memory storage aisle. My location, unfortunately, was just another location like all the others. 10% discounts on most with 30% at best on a random assortment of pcs. It was big disappointment as the $99 hard drive I had my eye on for the longest time had only a 10% off tag.

I leave bitter and angry, and decide that out of spite, I'll drive to Fry's. The nearest one was 5 miles away from CC; 2 more miles when taking my drive from home into account. I had classes to get ready for, so it probably wasn't a good budget of my time, but I was determined to find something of worth today.

Here is the Iomega 160GB external hard drive. It was $60 at Fry's, but $55 since it was opened. It works perfectly, and has offloaded 50 gigs of data off my laptop.

In all honesty, I don't remember how large the capacity of the hard drive from Circuit City was. However, 160GB is more then enough for me, and I definitely saved a ton of money. Moral of the story? Always shop around before making a purchase. You never know how much money you'll be saving on the next great price.