2P START! Live!: Ray Jumps In Edition
December 1st, 2008
In this episode, Ray discusses his first impressions of his shiny new Xbox 360 along with the better version of Sonic Unleashed!
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In this episode, Ray discusses his first impressions of his shiny new Xbox 360 along with the better version of Sonic Unleashed!
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I didn’t listen to the podcast yet, but I did want to post this little comic thing I put together:
C&P START! Smashville
Nintendo wasn’t thinking about the repercussions of building a stage miles above a town, were they?
Sure it’s really cheesy, but whatever. I also had to save it as a jpeg because photobucket shrank the png version…oh well. Just pay no attention to the fact that all of a sudden it’s winter and he’s wearing different clothes…
Also, can anyone figure out which 3 comics I copy and pasted from (two should be really easy)?
Cool Comic, Welcome aboard, Fellow Comic maker!
Hmm, I should probably test out the 360 version of unleashed to compare.
*puts on “Property of Ray Hargreaves” shirt
What bugs me most about the final battle was how weak they made Super Sonic. Hurt by exploding rocks? HAVING A LIFE BAR!? And at the end of the game, there is some sudden serious business from nowhere.
I got featured? Sweet! But I was just using him as a model, I never expected him to get one until the next gen.
You know what’s kind of funny? In every commercial I’ve seen for Sonic Unleashed, they have only shown footage from the Xbox 360 version. The 360 version is better, and even the developers know it!
And by the way, since I’ve heard that Ray has gotten a 360, I’ve seriously started to consider getting one myself. At first, I felt like such a dork for wanting one just for that reason, until I read some other comments and found out that I’m not alone. Now I feel accepted because we can all be dorks together! Yay!
Remake/re-imagining of this comic? Lol.
I once contemplated getting a 360 too. But then I realized I had a perfectly good PC. And then found out that PC games can be modded and thus most games get much more re-playability, way beyond what was originally meant.
Cyber Monday ftw! Don’t even have to set foot outside, what with it being 35º outside too. >.>
Okay, again, my notes have reached a back page.
1. I’ll be “Jumping in” this Christmas. Can’t wait.
2. Pfft. I have a 42 inch. XD Not in my room, granted, but still.
3. Okay, who was making that tin foil-y sound? It sounded like someone was opening a candy bar. XD Berserk status!
4. Corruption had some pretty spiffy achievements and rewards. The screenshot taker was awesome. And I’m not sure if you’ve played it recently, but there is a new Brawl sticker for your ship.
5. I’d have tons of gamer points too if that applied to the Wii?
6. How many Wii games do you have Ray?
7. Kung Fu Panda…meh. Licensed games. XD
8. I still have to see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…and I will be seeing it eventually.
9. Green is awesome Way better than red. XD The only thing that compares to green…is orange.
10. Mirror’s Edge will probably be my first 360 purchase. It looks really interesting. And it’ already gains points for not having lives. It has interested me more than Mario Galaxy ever did, and I’m not going to be surprised if I like it better. Oh and I think I’ll try to get that achievement for not killing anyone…
11. Rez HD. You said you have a hard time recommending…yeah, I guess that’s kinda how I feel about Endless Ocean…except I recommend it anyway. XD
12. Rollercoaster comic would’ve been really funny even without the Werehog bits.
13. I still can’t believe that these Sonic games are completely different.
14. Sonic Adventure 2 had a demo?
15. I’m with Anon on this one, Sonic Heroes was good.
16. Okay, I watched the GT review for Unleashed and do they really have those human characters? They just look out of place.
17. I thought the Biolizard/Final Hazard was a fine boss. Same with Chaos.
18. Remember developers, gigantic monster bosses, only okay in Metroid. XD Okay not really, but that’s the only game I’ve played where they’re okay….that I can remember.
19. Once again, whenever Sonic Team or whoever, decides to create a new character, they should stop there and add Rouge instead. XD
20. No. Difficult boss fights are not epic, they’re annoying.
21. Yup, the Greenhill music is pretty good.
22. And hey, I wasn’t completely influenced by Ray’s choice to buy a 360, it just reminded me about how I was thinking about getting one…okay not a good excuse really but it’s true.
23. IMO, Black Friday is kinda stupid. I don’t know why you would stand outside in the cold for hours to buy stuff you don’t really need.
24. Okay that Wal-Mart trampling. We were talking about this earlier. I CANNOT even fathom how people are so idiotic that they did not realize they were stepping on a LIVING person. Who’s so stupid that they don’t realize what they are running over isn’t ground. And no offense, but I think we know what kind of people Wal-Mart attracts, there should’ve been higher security. They should seriously find a way to track each one of those people down, and try them for accidental murder. I’m sorry, but that ticks me off.
25. Ray I don’t 100% remember what you were referring to, but you said,”…because no one uses their brain.” And boy that certainly epitomizes the world.
26. Target lost a driver’s license? Isn’t Target supposed to be the good store? XD
27. When it comes to reviews, I generally rely on GT, Gamespot, and IGN, though I tend to agree with GT the most.
28. Oh, and Ray, with those horrible reviews of Sonic Unleashed, welcome to the reviews I’ve been reading of Harvest Moon and City Folk. City Folk’s scores I can kinda understand, but it makes me mad when they say that fans shouldn’t buy it. That’s obviously not true, there are tons of people who have all three. I’m not saying that if you don’t own all three you aren’t a fan though. As for Harvest Moon, the constant complaint is that it’s too similar to the previous ones. To be quite honest, I hate that as a reason to knock a games score down, that just bothers me to no end. But it’s especially annoying it the Tree of Tranquility review as ToT stuck to the formula, but definitely changed enough to keep it interesting. IMO, it would almost be like saying that Twilight Princess was too similar to OoT or something. Weird.
Okay, that’s it for now. 😀
It good that you jump in rey
Gotta say YEAH! Kick them reviewers butts! Why? Well, lets just put it this way.
1. I’m tired of people who don’t like genres getting stuck reviewing a genre. Take, as an example, the typical Untold Legends/Dynasty Warriors review. Rather than tell you where the game fails or succeeds, they decide decide to rant for five paragraphs on how Dynasty Warriors sucks. Like how despite having many, many multipage reviews, it was only in a favorable review where someone said the Musuo Mode content of DW6 was dramatically lighter than previous iterations. Or how popin still remains an issue. Or even how the new Renbu combo system takes away some of the variety in the combat. Most reviews ranted on bad story, how it’s Dynasty Warriors again, and how you can mash your way to victory (false). Basically if you hate a Sports game, you shouldn’t be reviewing NBA Live. If you hate JRPGs, what the **** are you doing with Lost Odyssey in hand? Get the reviewers off the genres they hate.
2. Be honest about how far you got in the game. One MMO reviewer got caught by the publisher when, despite the claim of many weeks in the beta, they exposed the fact that this “reviewer” commenting even on end game content had only played for under two hours. One nasty review of Enchant Arms specifically mentions and moans about the annoying initial party lasting the full 40 hour game despite people who actually played it knowing that everyone in that party except the lead dies in the first three hours of the game. If you coudn’t stand the game to the point where you quit early, say so. Don’t pretend you beat it when most of your review is based off screenshots sent by the publisher.
3. Quit picking games to make an example of. One thing I noticed is that, on occassion, a reviewer will pick a game to completely and utterly destroy. Giving this game excessively low scores to make an example of the title just so you can tear it apart for amusement isn’t cool. Lots of people spent lots of time working on that game you’re crapping on because your girlfriend left you and you need something to hit. One of my favorite examples of this even became a meme. H4.5E. If they are going to tell me Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a better game than Haze, well, any credibility they once had is gone. Often the websites pick “b******” that are relatively niche so that when people complain, it’s no big deal. The problem then becomes niche titles get reviewed less and suddenly that 1.5 you dolled out for giggles brings a games meta from 79% down to 43%. That’s cute. Meanwhile the idiots who hang on these meta reviews never question the absurdly low score and preceeds to rant on how the game sucks so maybe someone who WOULD be interested in the genre and game, bypasses it entirely.
Frankly, most game reviewers are becoming pricks. Plain and simple. Tiny jaded little men like the dorfs you see hanging out in record shops ranting on your sucky taste in music because you bought a CD from someone who was actually published by a higher volume print job than your friend “Hank” who published the “true music scene of ______.”
Exactly. They’re really starting to pull away from the point of having Super Sonic in general…
32.
Yes, it was included with Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. You could play through the entire ‘City Escape’ level, and the music was without vocals.
I agree. Perfect Chaos was a lot of fun because you were playing as Super Sonic in 3D for the first time, and Biolizard/Final Hazard stepped it up by including Super Shadow as well. Plus it was the direct sequel so it was a bit expected. Whenever they do that sort of ending now it just feels old and tired.
I have mixed feelings about Heroes, but since it wasn’t as good as Sonic Adventure 2, then I’ve always seen it as starting the decline of the Sonic games. And what was up with everyone having ‘shiny’ bodies?!
Yeah, I hate the shininess of them too, I liked heroes to an extent but I hated how the enemies took more than one hit and the bosses took more than ten… Enemies should die when you attack them, Bosses should not take an hour to defeat. I liked the return of the Chaotix, even though I hate what Sega did to them (NO I DO NOT WANT TO FIND THE F’ING COMPUTER ROOM A’IGHT!?!?) I also liked how it looked more like the ‘retro’ Sonic games but hated how it was mostly ‘floating above deathpits of deadly death’ for most of the levels. The only team I beat it with was Team Rose, and I got the the final boss with Teams Sonic and Chaotix… I gave up on Team Dark because the ‘obligatory grinding down a canyon’ level is next to insanely unlikely to beat… too bad the game ‘broke’…. oopsie >:)
Yeah, when I was playing Heroes with my sister, she took Rose and Sonic, I took Chaotix and Dark. I actually don’t recall finishing the game though…I remember in Chaotix I got stuck on the one where you had to blow out all the torches…or somewhere near that. I might of finished Dark, but I’m not 100% sure…it’s been a while.
Thanks, although I didn’t really “make” it so much as throw together a quick copy and paste (as should be obvious by the blue that I never took out from around DK). It’s still all Ray’s artwork and everything. I just came up with the idea, and the comic itself took maybe 10 minutes. I feel like I did a decent job on the logo, though, considering it’s spliced together from other parts of the logo.
Anyway, as far as the actual podcast goes, @Tim’s Black Doom Award: Ugh. It frustrates me when people are so selfish and greedy that they stop using their brains. I just can’t comprehend how somebody can be stupid enough to rationalize to themselves that stepping on a person is OK because they just HAVE to have some item…and everybody else is stepping on the person too, so really, it’s not their fault. How do you convince yourself of that?!?! At Christmas, are you really going to be proud that you got somebody the perfect gift when it involved somebody being killed partially by your stupidity? Even for the people fighting over the 360’s…it’s like, if you stopped to think about for two seconds, do you really need to rip that out of somebody’s hand? Is the 360 that integral to your Christmas that you have to physically fight somebody for it? Aaagh, sorry for the rant, but I just can’t see myself in those situations, and I can’t fathom how people can convince themselves that they NEED a certain deal on a Christmas gift no matter what they have to do to get it. It just boggles my mind.
Exactly. Heroes started that ridiculous idea, and it took them a long time to get off of it. Shadow, Sonic ’06, Secret Rings, Even Sonic Rush carried it on… So I was thrilled to see the day stages in Unleashed finally break away from this idea.
I liked the idea of leveling up your characters, but hated how they all reset to level 1 if you died. I would be towards the end of the level, die, and then it would be nearly impossible to finish since all my characters would be so weak.
I liked the idea of the special stages, but they were broken in many ways. Something Heroes got right was the game’s structure. Two acts and a boss, five-second cutscene, and you’re on to the next level. If they did that structure with 12 different types of levels using the Hedgehog Engine from Unleashed then Sega would have a serious winner on their hands.
Well I’ve been considering getting a 360 since Lost Odyssey came out, so you had nothing to do with it Ray. XB
RPGs FTW!
I completely agree about the hate of the Crystal Skull.
And I’d like a 360 too, but being realistic, I know I don’t have the money or time to play all the games. Heck, I still have GCN games I need to finish.
And if you talk this much about Unleashed (which you seemed to enjoy at times) I’m worried about when Black Knight comes out. Undoubtedly someone will play it and then start a hurricane of hate (or at least thats what I’m assuming from how it looks so far).
And no Musical Misfits?? tear
Looks like I changed my mind about getting a 360. The arcade sucks, so I would get the $300 dollar one, plus a wireless adapter, which raises the price to $400 AND the monthly subscription fee (I HATE subscription fees).
That sounds a bit like a system used by one of the greatest goshdarn games ever made, Godhand. It used what I call “adaptive difficulty curve.” Basically you have “levels” in your main GUI. Level 1 means Easy (keep in mind, these are the guys who made Viewtiful Joe so “easy” is a relative term). If you avoid damage, string combos, etc, you move up to Lv2. The enemies then become fiercer, recover faster, break combos and counter, and take less damage. If you excel at this level, it moves up to “godly” lv3 where everything will hurt you… hurt you badly. Should you start doing poorly at these levels, it will dial you down to an appropriate level. Of course the games default difficulty is HARD so it doesn’t help much. Most of the reviewers who complained about this confused THEIR characters level with the difficulty of the game. I read one review where the guy raged at the fact that being lv2 didn’t last long for him and he seemed to do less damage.
Also…
ig0rpwnwEd…
Despite huge complaints to the contrary, the Arcade isn’t that bad of a deal. You can easily snag a 20GB for under $20 to upgrade and of course hunting for deals on Live subscription is a good idea as well. My live subscription is coming through the mail and I paid $42 for 12 months. But I got that premium bundle which has PGR4, headset, text chat dongle, and the Live subscription.
As for the wireless adapter, it sucks. Cat5 FTW.
Ray I think those feelings your getting for sonic are not natural.
How can you kill a kitten…
Ray, I think I know what you mean about a console not really “being me,” or fitting your style/whatever.
Being a mainly Nintendo guy, I felt slightly weird about getting a Dreamcast recently, but as that’s part of my classic game heritage, (Nintendo vs. Sega) it didn’t seem to bother me too much ironically enough. (Why hate on a console/company that’s already lost?)
I’ve been tempted by a few PS3 and Xbox 360 games here and there, but I just can’t very well imagine owning either console, and just seeing it there in my home… I don’t know. The controllers, the HUD… it just wouldn’t feel right. I guess I’m happy enough with my Wii, and hopefully I’ll get in on the HD bandwagon next generation, with some hopefully crazy new innovations by Nintendo.
I can tell you one thing, if Nintendo doesn’t VASTLY improve their graphics capabilities for yet ANOTHER generation, you can count me OUT! (I don’t think we have to worry, as they’ve basically reassured us that they always develop based on technology trends) I’ll still most likely have plenty of Wii and Gamecube games to play, not to mention all the hand held games I’ve missed over the years. (I could go my whole life without another console, and never finish all the good games.)
I may be a Nintendo fanboy, but last generation was fine graphic wise. Metroid Prime anyone? I’m not sure if I’m insulting the Wii or complimenting the Gamecube, but to be honest, I didn’t see too much difference between Prime 1 and Prime 3. Maybe I’m just blind (probably) but I dunno. I just wish during the elevator scenes in Prime that they wouldn’t zoom in on Samus’ suit…then it looks pixelated.
Nice podcast guys! It’s too bad that neither of you liked Mirror’s Edge. Also, reviewers have seemed to become very… idiotic and biased. Anyway, yeah, another short comment. 🙂
Tim, you could’ve discussed ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the overly long title’ with me on The Lame Show, but you have to remember to show up…
This is a really old podcast (but I assume you guys still get notified when a comment is posted), but I feel more qualified to comment now that I have finished the 360 version of Sonic Unleashed.
I have never played the Wii version, but I would assume that one of the reasons the Wii version was ranked higher because of the lack of sun and moon medals which was a huge pain in the 360 version. But you’re right, I watched some clips of the Wii version, and comparing Adabat in the Wii and 360 versions…the Wii version looks straight up boring, but the 360 version is quite fun even though it’s got some sections that easily kill you.
Also, I doubt the reviewers even got to Eggmanland, but if they did, that could also be the reason the Wii version was ranked higher. I don’t know how the level was in the Wii version, but it was completely ridiculous in the 360 version. It’s a 30 minute long level and that just is not acceptable when they are usually 5 minutes long. It’s an atrocious level that is also glitchy (I fell through the entire level once). And the final boss fight is also horrendous with it’s various kinds of time limits. It’s worse than the Time Eater fight from Generations…no doubt in my mind.