Rage Quitter 87's Blog

E3 round-up

2011-06-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

E3 is over. Were there any good things? Well there were a few:

MAIN POINTS OF EXCITEMENT FOR MYSELF:

-King of Fighters XIII getting a console release date

Finally, thanks to Atlus. This game looks like what the previous one should have been if they hadn't of rushed it out. More characters, more special moves, the camera zoom is gone (I never liked it), and other cool stuff. The only problem for me is that this hasn't got an actual European release date yet, I hope someone does pick it up. At worst I'll just import the US version.

-Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Online Edition

The main announcement for this game is that it is going to be using GGPO netcode, which is meant to be really good. I've only ever expierienced it with Final Fight: Double Impact, which worked very well online, so hopefully it will be the same for this. Glad to see that Capcom have finally taken note that they need to step up their fighting game netcode. And along with that, I saw a video demonstrating all the extra modes they were putting into this. The parrying challenge modes are a really good idea, so I'll be getting this on the day of release for sure.

NOT QUITE AS EXCITING THINGS:

-Aliens: Colonial Marines

This game has been in development for ages, but I didn't see any gameplay footage for it at E3, I only saw a trailer. It has four player drop in and out online co-op, I just hope those rumours about it having quick time events aren't true.

-Shinobi 3DS

A new Shinobi game! And it looks like it plays a bit like the old ones for the Genesis, but with polygons instead of sprites. I still have no plans to own a 3DS any time soon though.

-Halo Remake

I knew this was coming, and I imagine they'll re-do Halo 2 as well. I won't be buying this at full price and I'll wait until I see what exactly is going to be included. Only 7 multiplayer maps is lame, and you can pretty much guarantee they'll put more out as DLC. Blegh.

-Modern Warfare 3

Modern Warfare 3! And it looks a lot like Modern Warfare 2 but with slightly better graphics. A special ops mode has been confirmed at least, that was my favourite mode of the previous game. Still not that excited about it though.

AND NOW WHAT YOU CAME HERE FOR: IDIOCY

-Disneyland Adventures

This was bad, but still, it doesn't come close to Disney's 2007 E3 moment.

-Mr. Caffeine
Stay classy, Ubi Soft.

NAT is no longer a problem

2011-06-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned on my site before, I have a lot of issues with NAT (Network Adress Translation) on my Xbox 360. The problem is that my NAT was always "Closed" when gaming online. I could still play in most games, but I have never been able to make a game and let Ragey join it and vice versa.

So for me and him to game together we had to to stupid measures to do it. We could only get into games which supported more than 2 players for a start, severely limiting us on what we could play. Most of the time it was Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2, and even then, this is an example of what we would have to do:

1) I join a game.
2) I send an invite to Ragey
3) Ragey accepts the invite
4) If he's lucky, he gets into the game. But by the time he's received the invite and accepted it there was a good chance the game might be full already so I'd have to leave and we'd have to try and find another one.

So yeah, it was stupid. I could only guess that my router was the problem -it was a Belkin N Wireless Router, model no F5D8233-4v3. Whilst I set up a network with it for all the computers and laptops in our house, it just was not letting me open up the NAT for the 360. Plus it seemed to have problems where it would just drop connections for no reason at completely random times. Let me say right now that you should NOT buy one of these routers for use with an Xbox 360.

^The face of the ENEMY.

So anyway, I got one of these instead. A Belkin F7D4302uk Play Wireless NN+ Cable Router:

The price of this thing was quite high (£65, or $105) but it was worth it. It took me about 20 minutes to set up a new network, and when I tested my Xbox 360 with it, I booted up Modern Warfare 2 and saw exactly what I wanted to see:

And after inviting Ragey to a game of Castlevania, he actually got in, so finally we could play each other easily and without having to do all kinds of tricks.

^Getting your NAT set to open makes your spelling worse.

And that is the amazingly dull story of getting your NAT open: buy a new router. I did and I was fixed up with minutes. Now watch me and Ragey OutRun things up a little.

Trip to the dentist

2011-06-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

11:00am Get to Dentists
11:01am Meet Dentist
11:05am Leave Dentists

Amount I had to pay for check-up: £17.00

New ambition in life: Become a dentist

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 thoughts

2011-02-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

MvC 3 has been out for a week now and I've been playing it on a near daily basis. Just some thoughts on it so far:

The controls
The previous game had four attack buttons (light punch, heavy punch, light kick and heavy kick) and two buttons used for assist attacks. MvC 3 simplifies things slightly by giving you three attack buttons (light, medium and heavy attack), two buttons for the assist attacks and then a new "special" attack button. This button lets is used to start an air combo -say you are using Ryu, and press this button, he'll do a crouching uppercut to launch the opponent into the air.

This new layout took some getting use to and quite a few attempts on configuring on my fight pad to what I was most comfortable with, eventually I went with the light, medium and heavy attack buttons for the top row of the pad, then special, assist 1 and assist 2 on the bottom row. It was weird for a while playing a Street Fighter game with only three proper attack buttons, especially since I've been playing Super Street Fighter IV a lot before starting this. But I'm now much more use to it and I do like the new control scheme -I can now actually do basic air combos fairly consistently.

The cast

I read a lot of negative comments on the cast of characters for this game and the fact that it had less then the previous one. I have no problem with the latter. MvC 2 had almost every character from the series, but they all had their old sprites from the previous games with maybe a couple of new moves or changed animations. With MvC 3 Capcom had to build everything from the ground up and I think 36 characters is a really good amount.

There are some strange choices with the cast though. Modok managed to get in over Mandarin? Who is Taskmaster? Where are the likes of Strider Hiryu, Captain Commando and Venom? There is a chance more characters will be put into the game via downloadable content and I suppose it is a good way for Capcom to make some more money by making some of the more wanted/famous characters paid for DLC. Overall the cast isn't terrible and I have a favourite team (Akuma, Sentinel and Wolverine).

X-Factor

A new feature is X-Factor, which you can only use once per match and is done by pressing the three attack buttons and special button together at the same time. When you do this, your character will have a red aura around them and will do more damage whilst also being much faster than usual. The effect lasts for several seconds.

But there are three levels of X-Factor, all dependant on how many characters are alive on your team of three. If all three are still alive and you use it, you get level 1 X-Factor which increases damage and speed a good amount. However, if you've only got one character left alive and you use it, you get level 3 X-Factor which increases damage and speed to stupendous levels...apparently. I've yet to properly test and mess around with the X-Factor system, whilst I have used it online and had people use it against me, I haven't yet seen any of the "X-Factor breaks the game" claims I've read at several fighting game forums. A lot of people are unhappy with the X-Factor system and I've read stuff about Sentinel being near unstoppable when in level 3 X-Factor mode. I'll have to try it out more to see for myself, but I doubt that it "breaks the game".

Team air combos

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(Video by atemSK5)
The other main new feature is the fact that you can start a combo and switch characters whilst continuing the combo. So say I'm playing a team consisting of Akuma, Wesker and Magneto. I used Akuma and launch the opponent into the air. I then press the light attack button, then the medium attack button, then I hold right and press the special attack button. What happens next is Akuma will leap off the screen whilst Wesker leaps on and hits the opponent. I can then press the light attack, then the medium attack, then I hold up and press the special attack button. Wesker will then leap off and Magento will strike the opponent and you can continue the combo, but you can't do any more character switching from that point.

I'm not sure about this feature, because not only does it cost no hyper combo gauge to do, you can do it whenever you start an air combo (as long as you have at least 2 characters alive) and it lets you build lots of hyper combo gauge each time you do a team air combo successfully. I can do them OKish

Online play
Before the game was released, Capcom said it would feature "lightning fast" netcode -a pretty bold statement given the poor track record they have as far as netcode goes in their fighting games. Then the game was released and there are two things that can happen when it comes down to online play:

The first is that you are in for a terrible time. It can take a long time to even connect to another player, due to constant time out errors. Then when you do start playing, games are choppy or run in slow motion and are completely unplayable. Just the usual Capcom netcode we are all use to.

But then the second is that everything runs perfectly. It can take me a while to get into a game, but when I finally do, there is no lag. And then after the match, I find that my opponent is from America or even as far away as Japan and there were no problems at all.

I do find it annoying that you cannot see the quality of the opponent's connection before you start to fight though. It would save a lot of time if you could, as you could just decline fighting them if you can tell the connection isn't great. But overall this is definitely a step in the right direction. Capcom have said a patch is in the works to solve the online problems, so hopefully that will improve things.

As far as rage quitters go I've only had one at the time of writing, but the deal with this game is there is a "Rage Quitter hell". Basically if you rage quit repeatedly, you get put into a special group with other rage quitters. I don't know if you can get out of this group but the fact that I've only had one guy quit on me so far seems to have scared the rage quitters away. Although this does sadly not deal with the rage mail you can get.

(And this guy beat me! Great spelling of pathetic there, tough guy)

At the moment I've got 125 wins and 41 losses in ranked matches. My best win steak is 19, and the main team I use online is Akuma, Sentinel and Wolverine.

Other minor stuff

Characters now have individual endings again, unlike in MvC 2. I like this as it give me a little more reason to play through the single player mode and beat Galactus with each character. Galactus was pretty much the only Marvel guy left Capcom could have used as a big boss, since they already used Apocalypse twice and Onslaught was used in the first MvC.

Each character now has their own music theme, many of which are remixes from previous titles. Some of the choices are either weird or I don't really like. Magneto had a great theme in X-Men Children of the Atom, a good one in Marvel Super Heroes and an OK one in X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. For this game, his XvsSF theme was remixed and it sounds like this. Did they really need to spell out his name in it and then start chanting "electric"? I guess them remixing these old tunes probably was for the best though, since the music in their recent games, such as Street Fighter IV, has been forgettable.

I also liked some of the little extra touches, such as certain character specific win quotes and pre-fight dialogue. Good to see them making the extra effort for stuff like that, especially since MvC 2 had nothing of the sort.

Overall I am liking this so far. If you've played MvC 2 you'll soon get the hang of this and newcomers to the series can start out with the simple controls before moving up. I look forward to seeing it at the upcoming fighting game tournaments, because I'd like to see some high level play.

Also check out SRK's guide and this article.

X-Men thoughts

2010-12-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

I downloaded and played through X-Men a couple of times yesterday and I didn't think that much of it. Whilst there are 6 characters, they don't have enough moves each. They basically have one combo and one jumping attack. Plus you can hit fallen enemies if you are close to them. That's it. Well, there are mutant powers, but I'm going to get to those in a minute.

There isn't a big enough variety in enemies. Scrolling beat 'em ups are notorious for this but it was particularily boring fighting Sentinels, who are the most frequent bad guys in this, over and over again, with the only difference being they had different colours. Another thing I really hated was the fact that you had to fight every boss you'd beaten once already again in the last level. That's just lazy.

The mutant powers, special attacks that will kill most standard enemies, pose a problem. You only get to use these a couple of times per life (and they drain health when you use them) but in the original arcade version, you were obviously going to play carefully to make your quarter last and not have to use a credit. The Xbox version has infinite credits, so most players don't care. So when I was online, people were just using up all their mutant powers, getting killed, then as soon as they came back onto the screen, mutant power spam time. (Watch the Colossus player in the video below). It also meant that, when playing in the 6 player mode, some guys were just standing around doing nothing because another guy was mutant power spamming the boss.

Another thing which irked me was the fact that there was no interactivity with the scenery. There are no weapons to pick up, or any background objects you could you against enemies.

This Xbox port actually has two versions of the game with it: the American version, and the Japanese version. The main difference is the Japanese version has items that replenish your health and give you more mutant powers, making it significantly easier that the American version. You seem to get to use mutant powers a lot more as well.

There are a couple of things I do like with this game. The graphics are very colourful and I do like the way the characters look, although as mentioned earlier they could have done with some more animations. The other plus is the music, which is excellent. Check out "Here comes the hero", "All that X-Men" and "Junk Factory" -I'll be adding music from this game to the music section on my site, that is for sure.

At 800 points X-Men isn't great value for money either -at the end of the video below I even get an achievement for beating it in under 25 minutes, and that was on my first try -and there is really nothing to come back to after you beat it. Most of the achievements are extremely easy to get, surely Konami could have come up with some more challenging ones? I guess the main selling point for this game was the fact that it had never been released on a home console before, so that was enough to justify the price. It seems to have worked, as when I was checking there were absoultely tons of games you could join, and most of them had at least 4 people in them.

A quick note about the online mode -the netcode seems solid, and you can join in a game in progress at any time. The game gets very hetic with six players but there was no noticeable slow down or lag when I was playing.

Anyway, here is a video of a playthrough I made last night with 5 other people. We were playing through the Japanese version of the game. I'm Nightcrawler.

Some notes:
-Watch the Colossus and Storm players to see what I mean about mutant powers spamming. I was laughing a couple of times when they were doing it to a boss, because it was just funny watching the boss get tossed around like a rag doll thanks to constant mutant power abuse.

-Everything Magneto says in this game is hilarious. The other bosses all say thing too but everyone was so busy beating the DNA out of them they often didn't get the chance to speak.

-This video took over 8 hours to upload. Then when it was nearly done it crashed, so that meant another 8 hours. NEVER AGAIN.

Welcome to die!

2010-12-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

Quick note: the 1992 X-Men arcade game by Konami is now available for the PS3, with the Xbox 360 version due out tomorrow. I'll be getting the Xbox version (it costs 800 points) and might record some videos of it tomorrow, specifically showing the online co-op mode. I've never played this game before. and it seems to be more well known for Magneto's wacky words rather than the actual gameplay, but I'll find out how good it is for myself within the next 24 hours.

Also, I made it so anyone can post comments on these posts now, you don't have to register.

Hokuto no Ken: I can see what is happening edition

2010-12-11T05:53:00.000-08:00

Discotek Media announced a while a go that they would be releasing the entire Fist of the North Star series on DVD, across four box sets. Two of these sets are now out and thanks to Ragey (He uses Amazon and I don't) I now have both sets.

When I wrote up the episode overviews (which I started doing late on in 2008), I had to use a bootleg set. Whilst this set had all the episodes, the picture quality was disgraceful, especially when things move at a fast speed. But since I had no other option, that was what I had to use.

The image above shows the transfer used in Discotek's set (above) compared to the bootleg set (below). The colours are slightly different, but the Discotek one features a clearer image.

But here is where the real difference is: when things start to move. The Discotek set is completely clean and you can tell what is happening, whilst the bootleg gets all pixelated and horrible. What I might do one day is re-do all of my episode overviews and use images from the Discotek set, just because it looks that much better. It'd be a long undertaking though. Also, despite the fact the sets are labelled as "Region 1", the discs are actually region free, or they are at least region 2 compatible.

Remember, tin foil can't talk

2010-12-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't had any interest in buying a new Transformer for a while but after Ragey offered me a free Cyclonus from the Transformers Universe line, was I going to say no? No.

The toy itself is quite cool -it looks like the original 1986 Cyclonus and has good articulation whilst also coming with a Targetmaster (the smaller robot in the above image can transform into a gun that Cyclonus can hold). As with the original, Cyclonus transforms into a sleek looking jet.

But far more impressive with that is the incredible packaging Ragey sent this toy to me in. Most people would use a box or at least a padded envelope, but Ragey?

Yeah, that's a Cheerios box with a heck of a lot of parcel tape. Squashed up nicely, this is hte best packaging I've ever seen since that one eBay seller sent me a t-shirt rapped up in newspaper. Better yet, the toy itself was wrapped up...

With six, count 'em, six plastic bags. Even better than the Christmas wrapping paper I used for Bomberman Act Zero. Thanks Ragey!

I CAN'T DO TITLES

2010-12-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

I spent five minutes of my life trying to start this thing off and yeah I'm still not getting anywhere. So to put it simply, this is Rage Quitter 87's new blog and I intend to put some smaller updates and features here which are more blog like material than site material. So expect some small reviews and general ramblings on toys and games, plus other dull stuff like transfer quality of Hokuto no Ken DVDs. Yeah, I expect this blog to get at least 2 people looking at it on a monthly basis!