Getting the swing with ‘Spider-Man 2’

I’ve only scratched the surface of Spiderman 2 (I’m sorta holding off until I’ve seen the movie) but what I’ve seen has been really fun so far.

CNN.com – Playing mind games with ‘Psi-Ops’ – Jul 2, 2004

I’d passed over this one. After reading this review I might stick it in my Gamefly queue.

I first saw coverage of this on G4TechTV’s Pulse. Ben, a young boy with leukemia was approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and asked what his one wish would be. He decided he wanted to make a videogame.

So they set out to look for a game developer that would help him. All the really big shops turned him down. Fuck you, Electronic Arts, you heartless bastards. (I believe Microsoft and Activision were two other major gamedev shops that turned the project down.)

Enter the good folks at LucasArts! (/cheer LucasArts!) and specifically Eric Johnston, the game developer who met with Ben once a week to work on his game (except for one Tuesday when Ben couldn’t make it because he was grounded. 🙂 ).

Well, here’s the CNN article but its dry going compared to the Pulse piece.
CNN.com – Former cancer patient debuts cancer-fighting video game

And you can find the game itself available for download here:
Ben’s Game

Stories like this one, and the Children’s Charity Fund that the folks at Penny Arcade put together last year at Christmas…they don’t get as much media coverage as all the ‘violence in videogames is creating a generation of monsters’ garbage. But these are the stories that tell a truer tale of the gamer lifestyle, if you ask me.

Think of how many gaming fan-sites are put up every year. Gamers work hard to help their fellow gamers enjoy the hobby. And that’s the foundation of hobby’s community. It just builds up from there. Sure they squabble on message boards and don’t always behave as well as they should, but at the end of the day, if you go to a gaming board and ask for help, you’ll get it. Gamers are naturally a supportive bunch.

BTW, in case you don’t click through the article, this story has a happy ending. Ben is in remission and doing well. 🙂

Online gaming addiction: The next legal hotbed

Thank goodness I’m not addicted to these games! I can quit any time I want. I just happen to not want to right now… 🙂

CNN.com – Video game review: ‘Riddick’ redefines Xbox gaming

I’m reading so much good press about this that, while I was out getting myself DRIV3R, I picked up Riddick, too!

Atari CEO harshly criticizes Sony over PSP – Jun. 9, 2004

Interesting read. Bonnell thinks the PSP is going to cost $500. But he seems to be just guessing. Still he makes a lot of good points about how many things we really don’t know about the unit.

Does this make my determination to buy one waver in the least? Nope. I HAVE TO HAVE ONE! /drool

I picked up EyeToy Groove the other day and just gave it a brief workout. Looks like it’ll be fun. It’s pretty much what you probably expect: DDR played with your arms and body.

I like DDR but I don’t think my downstairs neighbors like it much, so this’ll be a nice change when I just feel like jumping around looking silly now and then. It certainly doesn’t give the cardio workout that DDR does, but after not too long my arms were in fact tired.

The only real negative I see so far is that the songs take a long time to load and there’s a lot of Yes/No menu questions between them, which really breaks up the rthym. And other little dumb featurs are missed, like it asks for your name to put in the high score list….every time you make a high score. It should just default to the last name that you entered, y’know? So little kinda polish things weaken it a bit.

I’ll have to drag a kidlet down and play some multiplayer and see how that goes.

Still, its pretty much what I expected, and I’m content. Really looking forward to the second generation EyeToy stuff, though, like that hoverboard game!

I finally fired this up last night, with Carmina (a dedicated Onimusha fan…I guess the male lead is easy on her eyes 🙂 ) watching on. It was late and we basically just get started, but already I’m hooked. Hell, the intro movie was worth $40 to me. It was stunning. The in-game graphics are really good too. Gameplay hasn’t changed much, but that’s fine with me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The voice acting is still kind of weak, sadly, with the exception of Jean Reno, who delivers all his lines in French, so its hard for me to say if he does a good job or not, but it lends an authentic feel to the game and I’m glad they went that route.

The technology that lets them map real actor’s onto 3D models is really astounding. I mean, in the CGI scenes, its sometimes hard to tell this isn’t a real actor. And in game they look really good, too. Very authentic.

Looking forward to spending more time with this one.