Now I’m not going to lie. I’m a bit of fan of ‘The Sims‘ series. I first played the game at a friend’s house back in grade 4, and was amazed with the concept that I could play god. I could watch a couple give birth to a child, (well, not so much give birth, as have a baby magically appear out of near thing air). Then I could watch that baby grow into a child, miraculously skip the hell that is ‘teenage life’, and turn into an adult. Here I could proceed to make him or her make out with as many sims as possible, marry various people in the neighbourhood, and then put them in a room with no doors soon after and have them die. Ahh yes, the memories.

A couple of expansion packs were released for the original Sims title, and they sold pretty well, which resulted in numerous packs coming out, including the most pathetic, ‘The Sims: Makin’ Magic‘, where the characers could pretend to be the little twits in the Harry Potter series, except they lacked any spells that could kill other sims, which would be the best spell of all.

It was inevitable, as the Sims was the best selling PC-game of all time, a sequal was coming at some point. The game was very amusing for me, and I enjoyed killing my sims just as much as in the previous game. Although, after a couple of months of playing, I realized something. EA, (the publisher of the game), had lied to me. These sims weren’t like you or I, they were the same old, poorly computer generated personalities that we saw in the original game, with a slight facelift. Its kind of like the Liberal Party of Canada. No matter how many times you change the leader of it, its still the same, party with the same old bullshit.

I stopped playing the game soon after for that reason, and because I had come to realize that if I couldn’t manage my own life properly, I shouldn’t be focusing on the virtual lives of data on an LCD monitor.

After milking the living shit out of ‘The Sims 2‘ by bring out expansion pack after expansion pack, somebody at EA said, “Hey, these expansions don’t seem to be selling as well as they used to. I think its time for CODE SEQUAL”. And with that we have the announcement of the upcoming title for the PC, ‘The Sims 3‘.

When I heard the annoucement for this title, I became very excited, as I wanted the personalities in the game to become more realistic than they were before, and I wanted more realistic graphics. EA is saying that the characters in the game will be much more realistic than before, and have deeper personalities. Upon reading this, I quietly sung the Final Fantasy victory song to myself. I was excited to see the screenshots of actual gameplay, and after wating a minute for the damn pictures to load, (seriously EA, get some more bandwidth), I was incredibly dissapointed.

“Oh god, what the hell happened here?”, was what I first thought to myself when I saw this “Asian” esque screenshot of a character in ‘The Sims 3′. The character has been hit with the ‘Uncanny Valley’ effect, which is the theory that the more photorealistic computer-generated characters become, the creepier they begin to look. I’m sorry, but I don’t want my sim making out with this chick in the game. She looks so ‘android-like’. Hell, she looks like she game out of the 2nd Sims game. If it weren’t for ‘The Sims 3‘ logo in the bottom, right hand corner, I would think that somebody made a damn good mod and improved the graphics slightly.

I see that EA is really trying to make as much money as possible with the third iteration of ‘The Sims’. Despite changing game engines, the graphics look only slightly better than the previous game. I know, they have a lot of time to fix the graphics, but common if you are working at EA, you’re going to want to release the best looking screenshots that you can, and I’m afraid this might be them.

The screenshots give me a vibe that this game is going to be more of the same old Sims that we know, and have maybe even become sick of. They say that the characters will be more realistic when it comes to their personalities, but they’ve said that before. Supposedly, the character creation is more in-depth, and maybe it will be, but will I really be able to create a sim that looks exactly like Jennifer Anistion Jessica Alba for the in-game version of me to make out with? I doubt it.

I hope that my senses are wrong when it comes to this game, but EA has failed to deliver recently, and the effort they put into The Sims series is abysmal. I guess we’ll all find out whether I’m right or wrong in 2009 when the game is set to be released.

Labels: the sims EA PC simulation

While browsing Amazon I came across a page for Gears of War 2. Amazon is actually a very good source and reliable source of information I find. The site says that it will be coming out on November 15, 2008. I imagine It will more then likely be pushed back though. Interestingly enough the other GoW (God of War)will be launching number 3 on November 15 as well, so this creates a few questions. As well, Soul Calibur IV (a.k.a: Breasts with swords)Will be released on June 1, 2008.

The new generation of gaming is not being too kind to videogame giant ‘Electronic Arts’, as it lost $195 million dollars last quarter. The company also had to get rid of 350 employees.

                The company, which is the world’s largest video game publisher, came under criticism for not putting enough effort into Nintendo’s console, the ‘Wii’ when it first launched. The company predicted the company to be a flop, but realized they were wrong when it edged past Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in August as the top selling console of the three between Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony.

                Now, after missing out on a lot of profit during the ‘Wii gaming drought’, which continues to this day as a time in which there are few games out for the Wii that are of quality, EA is trying to play catch up. The company has redrawn plans to create more games for Nintendo’s little white console, as well as the DS.

                EA has always relied on creating games based on movies, and also creating numerous sequels or expansions for their intellectual property that was created back in the early 2000’s. An example of this would be ‘The Sims’ series, which has at least one expansion released a year.

Labels: EA

If you've been on the bungie forums recently, you would have heard of some weird events. Players have been getting emails with a strange poem. Some one has managed to dicpher everything and after visitibg a long chain of sites, he has discovered this site. http://206.16.223.65/ . Recently Bungie has said that they were planning to release big news, and maybe this is it. Hopefully it wouldn't lead to another countdown like the God of War site.

Labels: countdown, halo 3

The guys over at the NeoGAF forums have posted a bunch of scores for games and rumors that are in the January issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Wii
Zelda (Platinum) Jeremey - 10 Crispin - 10 Shane - 10 Game of the Month
Downhill Jam - 7.5 8.0 7.0
Madden 07 - 6.5 6.0 4.5
Red Steel 5.0 4.5 6.0
Wii Sports - 6.5 5.5 7.0
Excite Truck - 7.0 7.5 6.5
Elebits - 7.0 4.0 4.5
Trauma Center - 6.5 7.5 7.0
Rayman RR - 7.0 7.5 7.5


PS3
Resistance (Silver) Garnett 8.5 G. Ford 8.0 Joe 9.0
Genjii - 6.0 5.0 4.5
Untold Legends - 4.0 5.0 5.0
NBA 07 - 6.5 5.0 5.0
Ridge Racer 7 - 8.0 6.5 6.0

PS3 vs Wii winner - Wii (I'm shocked. Haven't read this article yet, but they all pick Wii.)

XBOX360
Gears of War (Gold) - Shoe 10 Bryan 9.5 Andrew P. 9.0
Sonic 5.5 3.0 3.5
DOA Extreme 2 (SotM) - 4.0 4.5 4.5
Viva Pinata (Silver) - 9.0 8.0 8.0
Tony Hawk P8 (Silver) - 9.0 8.5 8.0
Call of Duty 3 - 6.5 7.0 7.0
Rainbow Six Vegas (Silver) - 8.5 7.0 8.5
Phatasy Star Universe - 8.0 7.0 6.5
Superman Returns - 3.0 6.0 5.0
Marvel UA - 7.0 8.0 7.0

Handheld
SOCOM - 6.0 6.5 8.0
Thrillville - 5.5 5.0 3.0
Sonic Rivals - 3.0 6.0 3.0
Vice City Stories (Silver) - 9.0 8.5 9.0
Portrait of Ruin (Silver) - 8.0 9.0 9.0
Kirby Squeak Squad - 7.0 7.0 6.0
FF V (Silver) - 9.0 9.0 8.5

Rumors
-Sticky Balls - New Katamari for Wii, PS3 and Xbox Live arcade.
-Turning War Around - Microsoft is crafting a brilliant plan to flip flop Gears and Halo every year, so expect Gears of War 2 in 2008 and a new Halo game in 2009.
-Count the COMs - three new SOCOM games are in the works. One on PSP and two on PS3.
-Mii Crossing - Mii's will be your avatar in the next Animal Crossing. All the shirts and accessories you collect will cross over to other games.
-Hudsun is releasing a TG16 pack with 3D remakes of Bonk, Adventure Island, and Super Star Soldier for the PS2
-Rare is working on a Viva Pinata Kart racing game.
-NFL may drop EA once it's contract expires in a few years.

Link

Labels: Microsoft, Nintendo, Playstation 3, Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

Well, it was only a matter of time before this happened. A group of guys have figured out how to crack the SNES Virtual Console game 'F-Zero', and, get this, they have posted it online available to download via bittorrent. The size of the file seems reasonable at 3.8MB, which is about the size of most SNES roms that you can get off of emulation websites. Here is some info about the torrent that is avaliable to download here:

iND presents,

F-Zero.SNES-VC.NTSC.Wii-iND

Size : 3 487 808 octets
Support : SD Card / Wii
Protection : Nothing

Needed:
          - Nintendo Wii
          - SD Memory Card
          - Saved Channel *Included*

Instructions : Access your SD card and place the file named 'private'
onto the drive. Take the card out of your system and
place it in the Wii. Navigate to your Wii memory management settings
and find the section that is labeled 'Channels'. You will find two tabs
inside, one for your Wii and the other for the SD card. Select the SD
tab and you will find the saved channel present. Copy it to your Wii
and you will be done.

UPDATE: We've tried it here at GoNext and we jumped the gun. Sorry to report this guys, but its true. The games WILL be hacked at some point, but Nintendo will come out with a patch for it as soon as it happens.

Labels: Hacks, Nintendo, Wii

A new device is coming out for the Wii that will allow users with a Nintendo DS Lite to charge their unit using the Wii's rear-end USB ports.



This is the first time that the USB ports for the Wii will actually be used. If you are a Wii owner, then you have more likely than not, never touched the USB ports. They kind of just sit there as of now. If you have ever been curious, and tried plugging in an optical mouse, you would find that the bottom light brights up, but doesn't do anything.

It has not been confirmed, but you can probably charge the unit by plugging it into a computer. As of yet, there have been no announcements for a North American release.

Labels: Device, Nintendo, Wii

If you suffer from "Wii-Elbow", then why not try stretching before jumping around the room like a maniac? Follow these simple instructions, and you shouldn't be walking around with a hunched back after playing Wii-Sports for 50 minutes.


Thanks Sicka

Labels: Nintendo, Wii

Hey guys,

Here is the boxart for the North American version of Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii.

The game, which is the first Sonic game for the Wii, will come out sometime next year. The game was previously called "Sonic Wildfire", but since that sounded to cool, Sega had to change the name to something as lame as "the Secret Rings".

Oh well.

Labels: Nintendo, Title, Wii

First I'd like to apologise for our 2 week hiatus. Now onto the news.

Fresh off the release of the PS3, worldwide several important members of Sony are leaving their positions and moving to others. The list includes Ken Kutaragi, Jack Tretton, Kaz Hirai, Akira Sato and David Reeves. Kutaragi is now chairman of Sony. Hirai is filling the position and is now the president of SCEA.

Labels: Akira Sato, David Reeves, Jack Tretton, Kaz Hirai, Ken Kutaragi, Playstation 3, Sony