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This is my boomstick

Ok, so maybe it's not a shotgun, but I did receive my 360 street fighter fight stick today!

Picture 'splosian time. (I'll get pics of the insides when I get home)



UPDATE: I took a bunch of shots from the inside -- initiate project Gut the Fish

Oh sweet, time to upgrade....ooooor not

So I bought a new receiver for my TV.

Awesome.

It's been a long time coming, and frankly I deserved it. My previous receiver had been blown out but a total dick about 5 years ago and my poor floor standing Athenas have been doing nothing but looking /awesome/ in all that time.

I figured I'd grab some mediocre 5.1 speakers while I was at it (for the time being) and then upgrade those at a later date. C'moooooon royaties.

Anyway -- currently my TV was in the left corner of the room, with two bookshelves to the right of it. Of course my fucking OCD has been raging about that for months because it's not symmetrical but there was really no reason to fucking move it, and it just made sense having the TV in the corner as it faced into the room better.

However, now that I was going to have speakers coming out of my dick hole I figured -- woot -- GTF over TV we're moving your ass over.

Things are starting good

Looking Good














And then...

disaster struck.



WTF IS THIS SHIT -- Argh.

So much fail going on here. I don't know why it never crossed my mind that, ya know, the plug in the wall doesn't actually move WITH the TV when you move it. I can't exactly put the shelves up against the wall when it can't go up against the wall...

FUCK


UPDATE: Oh fuck I have another surge protector in the house. I'm still in buisness!

We had some good times surge 'ol buddy...but I've found someone new



Oh hey, who's this over here...

You're looking mighty long corded








YES -- my evil plan is coming together. Soon all shall bow to my decibels.

A new challenger appears!

I've finally received my copy of street fighter 4 from slowmazon.

I can't wait to go home and boot it up even though I won't be receving my SF Fight stick until Monday (Thanks Slowmazon!). I'm really loathing playing it on the 360 gamepad...that fucking dpad is the WORST. I bought the special edition for some reason that is unknown even to me (like always) and as soon as I opened it up of course Crimson Viper was already makin friends with the rest of my desk-mates.

The excitement from first playing the game has dwindled a little bit, but I think Street Fighter 4 is here for the long haul, or at least it's here long enough for people to really delve into it. At least unlike the previous eras of games, even if after the pros have decided who's broke, and who's not, the game can be patched. I'm interested to see how patching a game like this will play into it's longevity.

Even though the game is no longer "fresh" it's STILL tough trying to play it at lunch. Though the line of people trying to play has dwindled, it's still lame having to wait around just to get a match or two in. Maybe I should just be better =P

So today we ended up playing Tiny Genesis. Which is fucking /awesome/. It's literally a tiny genesis which has Hyper Street Fighter 2 on there. So you can get some secret stash street fighter on when the main TV is being molested =P

Joystick or not I'm going to be getting my practice on this weekend. Bitches won't be knowin what hit em on Monday.

Chains of Olympus Gets Handheld GotY at Dice

Congrats to everyone on the team as we've officially won the Handheld Game of the Year at tonight's Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards at DICE. It's amazing to think that the first game I've ever truly worked on is such an amazing game. But winning awards is pretty meaningless on it's own.

Looking back at the last two years I can't even begin to express how far I've come as a designer. Having the opportunity to work with such talented people day in / day out, grow as a designer, AND work on kick ass games that I myself want to play...crazy.

Knowing that other people think our game is as good as we thought it was is just icing onto the bad-ass cake. But as I read about the win and take the news in it only serves to bring the hint of a smirk to my face; they have no idea we're just gettin started...

Typical Lunch

Well now that Street Fighter 4 out it feels good to finally switch up the daily lunch game of street fighter 2...with street fighter 4! Haha. Eric was getting his fight on with Dana.


Welp. Too bad so sad Dana =P

Review: Saints Row 2

I sent the following, through a friend, to the people at Volition. It basically sums up my review of Saints Row 2:

I play a lot of games – a lot. And to be frank I don’t like very many of them, which can be verified by almost anyone that hangs with me for too long =D. A side effect of working with good people, and in a company that’s so brutally honest with itself is that you come to be that way with every game you play. So on occasion, and if I have the opportunity, I will e-mail people who worked on games to tell them how I truly felt about the game; by which I mean of course a laundry list of complaints.

But this is a first.

It is so rare, I mean so fucking rare, to find a design team who truly understand the philosophy of player convenience that we try to follow here. Convenience was definitely the guiding focus of Saints Row 2 because it shines through in every decision made. From the rewards of missions, to the weapon-provided activities, to the intuitive garage -- oh the Garage – it’s almost so convenient that you don’t trust it at first. I know you must have had such wonderful test sessions where people couldn’t believe it the first time they came back to the garage to find their beloved, and so totally just destroyed, vehicle back in all its purple paint with banging rims customized glory.

As far as I am concerned the bar has been ripped from the fat bloated corpse of GTA and has been firmly set miles beyond, and if I as a designer ever work on an open world game the metric with which I will judge myself is Saints Row 2.

When I play games I use only one metric for how much fun I’m having and that is how often do I forget to blink and rest assured I sat in front of my TV, bottle of eye drops, painfully enjoying every moment.