the anti-fanboy message boards

i recently gamefly'd marc ecko's first foray into the video games industry; half expecting it to be like any of the other games "infogrames", the french company who bought the name "atari" has churned out over the past 5 or so years. having tested for them in the past, i can say from personal experience that they don't so much "develop" games as congeal them in the latrine. past masterpieces include that awful superman game and that awful terminator game (the one before T3). it looks like this whole wretching out horrible games thing has worn off with their recent financial troubles, as getting up and test drive unlimited are changing my view of their company.

usually i wouldn't remark on the publisher before the game, but when something this good comes from a publisher that has turned my stomach with their games in the past, i have to say something. the first thing i noticed was the magnificently well done opening cinematic. talib kweli, one of my favorite artists next to his freind mos def is perfect as the voice of trane, an inner city youth trying to build his name. the game takes place in a somewhat cliche "fifteen minutes in the future" orwellian nightmare. no flying cars, the only thing different being the government.

one thing i really appreciated was that the city looked, sounded and felt real. roaches scatter out from under trash, buildings have dings and scrapes, chainlink fences are rusty with inconsistent patterns in the links... the attention to detail was astounding for an atari game. the gameplay was simple enough to learn, and everything has layer after layer of options. the tagging selection alone could be a coffee table book. the fighting system is very impressive for a game i thought would be an urban prince of persia. the story of the game pushes along quickly enough to keep you interested in completing it, but if you get side swiped by an oncoming train, you won't want to do over the tags.

tagging in the game works a little bit like the warriors, in that you use the left analog stick to paint. unlike the warriors, you have unlimited cans, but a time limit and a constant need to shake it. this isn't really a nag, but it eats up time. once you get to the subway levels though, a pressure upgrade makes this a non issue. overall, this game is surprisingly well done, almost worth buying. almost.

there are issues with the camera, and sometimes the fights can be a bit one sided in either direction. the graphics can be a bit... ugh, but on the whole they are pretty impressive. the game's dialogue certainly earns the M rating, with motherfuckers scattered throughout the cinematics and ingame taunts. certainly not a game to get "little johnny". dammit, who buys that lil bastard all these games?

verdict: 08/10; rent it, if you like it buy it.

remember this guy? he's the star of our newest advert. click the post header to watch the original commercial in all its retardation.


feel free to put it somewhere on your site. thanks for your support.

i'm in the middle of finding a server and registering a domain. after i do that, we'll have adspace ready, along with a renovated site on wordpress and a forum. reeeaaal professional-like. in between now and then, i'm pretty damn broke, so if you have any hosting/registering suggestions, please pass them along. i can be reached at antifanboy@gmail.com .

as for forum choices, i'm torn between vbulletin, invision powerboard, and phpbb.

if all else fails, i'll set up my own server out of an old barebones.

i wonder what keeps olympic curlers from blowing off the back of their skull with a shotgun. as i flipped through the usual channels early this morning, (the digital cable's guide has no program data again) i happened across curling on usa. i know it's this time honored tradition, and nbc (who owns usa network) has bought the license for the olympics every year, but as i watched grown men in an empty stadium yelling orders at eachother while they feverishly broomed a rock down an icy alley, i wanted to ask them if they were happy with their life. all you cubicle workers, dreading your next day in a grey walled office building, can tell yourselves, "hey, atleast i didn't dedicate my life to curling."


even more despicable than the fact that curling is an olympic sport is the fact that it has commentators. commentators that commentate on EVERYTHING. it's not enough that i just saw a swedish guy SCREAMING at the rock he just slid across the ice, they have to fill me in on what i'm (sadly) watching. if i were one of the guys in that booth, i'd try a little autoerotic asphyxiation. atleast when they found me dead, i'd be smiling. you may ask why i hate curling so much; well, it is not a real sport. it requires no athleticism, and minimal skill. see, bowling requires more coordination and skill than curling, as you don't need two buddies to steer your bowling ball post throw. bocce ball requires more skill, and old sicillians play that after they eat, drink, and fuck. these guys TRAIN for years to get to this point in their failure of a life. congratulations, swedish hairlip guy, you've wasted what could have been a productive, cancer curing life. who am i kidding? you'd probably just molest a pony. naaaaay indeed.

so there's this problem, right? it has to do with full auto. for a while, i was kinda psyched about the whole next gen car gun combat thing, ever since i first saw it at e3. then a few weeks later, i got to play it. the version was nowhere near final, infact it was a slightly updated version of the e3 demo that the g4 anchors were treated to live. i was not impressed, but that's definitely not rare for a game that isn't past beta. i saw more screens, and movies, and i got more and more amped about it. then i got my 360, and within a few months, oxm released the e3 demo.

this, i never got. why can't the game's producer's get a more recent build of the game out to demo when everyone is ready to decide whether or not to spend their money on it? 'board buzz can sell or kill a game based on a magazine's demo. the bad news was, it continually froze the 360, most times never getting past the initial rolling start animation. that made jim a very sad panda. so i popped it in once in a while, whenever i had nothing better to do than watch it freeze my system, until the newer demo was eventually released over the xbl marketplace. hoping that it would be a fixed version, maybe the same race but with a few bug fixes (framerate issues, freezing), i was let down. badly.

so it was the same buggy crapheap as before, only this time it was official. by this time, i was invited to play the newest build, a near final one, for a last peak at the game so i may give it the correct review come that time. the framerate was a constant 60fps, every rough edge was smooth and brilliantly shiny, and it didn't freeze once. it was just as i had imagined it. i expected nothing more. apparently, some people did.

those people, namely, include tom price, of official xbox magazine. his "review" if you want to call it that, sounded like he had just found his wife's cock. he gave it a gloriously undeserved 5.5 out of 10. i started to wonder if he played the same game i did. in the same issue, a winter olympics game got a higher score. then i read it. the words were bitchy, cranky, and unwarranted. it looked as if he had written it after pulling an all nighter arguing with james carville. did he really expect a story? did burnout have a story? it's a simple game about crashing and shooting rival vehicles. if it had any story (or post apocalyptic mad max type setting like he offered), it would be laughable, like the others that came before it. it's been done before anyway, as twisted metal. (examples of story driven "carmbat" failures: jakx, 187 ride or die, that other game i can't even remember because it was so bad...) basically, my point is that he expected hot shit in a champagne glass, so anything less became cold diarhhea in a dixie cup.

i considered this extraordinarily low score a bit unsettling though. then, earlier today, i read xboxyde's latest impression, and my heart sunk. did something happen to this wonderfully fun game between my near final build hands on and the gold press? these guys atleast had video evidence. or so they said. yes, it is footage, but it doesn't support their cries of an unnaceptable framerate. not once in the video did it drop a single frame. the comments reflect that. so what the hell is wrong with these reviewers? it's certainly not reflected in other reviews. it got a decent score from teamxbox, who strangely enough run oxm's website/forums. it got an even better score from my pals over at 1up. so what's going on here?

i intended to find out. so when i got my copy of the game late last night u.p.s., i popped it in. simple menu, but impressive. burnout revenge's menu system was confusing as hell, and i'm just glad i can figure out how to get the game to do what i want. so far, the graphics are stunning on my tv. i can almost smell the simoniz. the first few races are a bit desolate, but pretty soon i'm tearing ass through fantastically detailed city streets, ripping the competition to shreds. this game is a blast.

so it turns out that some people don't like this game. they probably gave bad reviews to crimson skies and mario kart (before it was established). these people blow my mind.

verdict: 7.5/10; buy it, and ignore the bad reviews. cynics suck.

sloth love chunk, but evidently cap'n piccard doesn't feel the same way. with all the downer posts lately, i thought i'd make everyone's days a little brighter. do the truffle shuffle.

so the xbox 360 is almost in its ninth week, and i'm already as sick of it as my psp. don't get me wrong, i love it, hell, i'm playing it as we speak, but at this point, the next gen offering is kinda weak. i'm tired of the lag in call of duty and dead or alive, i'm tired of getting disconnected in perfect dark zero, and the FUCKING PANT-LOAD times in project gotham. i miss a target time by a milisecond, and i have to suffer ps1 loading times to retry. it makes you wonder if they even played the game before it went gold. they would have held it back until after launch. i'd be happy to send it back, like an undercooked steak, if it meant i could play a little next gen mini cooper cat and mouse, maybe without watching the gloss on my ariel atom dry.

full auto comes out soon, and i have both it and black preordered. i'm pretty psyched for both, since the last time i played full auto, it had an almost flawless framerate; and well, as for the last time i played black, i peed a little. by a little i mean full on pitcher of lemonade down the front of my dungarees.

but seriously, both my psp and 360 are pretty, shiny, white, and have about 5 good games out. both are also unfortunately littered with ports of other games. and can we do something about the terrible headset support? the xb1 headset, despite a major clip design failure, sounded better than my phone. now every time i talk to someone on the 360, it sounds like they are talking with balls in their mouths. spit out the testicles and talk to me dammit!

well, a few weeks back, my wireless keyboard died on me. turns out the batteries i replaced (three times) still weren't charged. i've had to make do with highlight, copy, and paste. sucks. so finally i have my keyboard back, and i find out my shitty futon (which i keep permanently in sofa mode) has bent down the middle. it's a hollow metal frame. the guys who made this have no idea how to make a load bearing structure. they should go back to tattooing pornstar's privates. "that guy's a redhead, and he's got a flame tat above his cack? unbelievable." so now, since i don't have the money for a new bed, and i don't have room for a full one anyway with all the shit in my room, wednesday i'm gonna try to build a bottom frame out of a discarded particle board bookcase. it's about the right depth, and i might be able to paint it and convert the front facing side into a hinged door. that might be cool. now if only the FUCKING SOUND DRIVERS were installed correctly on my pc too.

ice age is the only thing on television i haven't seen to the point of illness, and john leguizamo, ray romano, and dennis leary are the most annoying voice actors EVER. i feel like crying.