Welome to the first and sadly last Geek Freak of the 4 week. This series will sadly not continue but it might return in the future. So please do enjoy this last entry and if you want it to continue well you can always email MasterAbbot ([email protected]) and tell him so. The winner this week is … Cellophane Girl
Okay so this weekend was my birthday. I celebrated it by basically totally geeking it up all weekend. Saturday (my birthday) my friends and I went to a store in the area called “Blast to the Past”, which honestly has degraded into a huge store full of junk and hidden treasure. We spent 2 hours looking through stacks of just about EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine. We would have stayed longer but it was over 100 degrees out, and the place had no air conditioning or airflow.
Everything in the store is a dollar.(25 items for $20) We sort of hit the jackpot on some comics. I think we bought a total of 100 comics. Which of course caused us to pull out the long boxes we had all our comics stashed in when we got home. We spent HOURS talking about comics while we looked through what we had.
On Friday My fiance had to buy a whole new shelf just to have some place for all of our figures. We have dubbed it “the shelf of awesome”. He also lined the entire hallway with Star Wars figures.
Friday 3 of us went to a few fleamarkets to look for comics. I didn’t find any comics I wanted (the other 2 people who went with me both got some good deals). But as we were leaving I found this 4 figure set from FFVIII (which is one of my favorite games). I pretty much pushed the people I was with out of the way and said “OH! I’LL TAKE THIS!”
If you’re annoyed because you didn’t win, well you need to know that Cellophane girl won because she wrote about one incident, took photos and the entry was the geekiest and maybe the weirdest. So well done Cellophane Girl, you get something from MasterAbbot’s Goodie Bag.
2. Matt Vella
This one time we got a new chick in our TAFE class, who was a major hottie. Being the awesome dude I am, I tried to act cool just to impress her. But no, I had to ruin that didn’t I?! Somebody mentioned a scene from Terminator 1, claiming it was in Terminator 2 in class. He also called the Terminator a cyborg. I had to correct this fool! So my inner nerd was released, and I began shaming him out in my Terminator knowledge and began a 10 million year-long rant. Needless to say, the girl lost interest in me and I struck out straight away cause of that. As much as I blame Arnie, I still stand by the fact that pawning this n00b was was worth it. Kind of.
3. MasterAbbott
I have like maybe 2 rooms full of video game memorabilia. I don’t know where to start, I have Atari 2600, CBS Coleco Visions, Matel’s Intellivision, Nintendo consoles, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, on both AU, US and JP formats along with all the Gameboys from the original to 3Ds (AU and JP) including some of the cute little Gameboy Micros, Oh I also have like 20+ original Game & Watches from Nintendo, like Donkey Kong, Parachute, Octopus, Donkey Kong Jr, Fire, Fire Attack, Mickey Mouse, Popeye. Sega MasterSystem, Mega Drive + plus the 32bit extension, Saturn, the DreamCast (about 3 of those). The original Sony Playstation, PS2, PS3 (2 of them),the XBOX (3 of them) the XBOX 360 (4 of them) I know I’ve missed out on something for sure.
Then we move on to the FREAKY amount of Capcom stuff that I catalogued and shared over at Capcom-Unity before I started Capsule Computers, this is when I actually had time to do this short of stuff. I have probably ¾ of my Capcom stuff catalogued and photographed. I don’t think I could ever go back and do the rest as I just dot have enough time, but I’m still collecting like CRAZY !!!
Now lets not get started on games. I believe I have between (and this is an approx, it could be more) 1000-1500+ games on all consoles dating back to the Atari. Just on the XBOX I have over 150+ games that I haven’t even opened yet. Yes I buy games and then leave them shrink wrapped. WHY ?? BECAUSE I HAVE FRIKEN PROBLEMS !!!
This was taken approx 1.5 years ago there is a crap load more now (nearly trippled)
Then we have toys, figurines, Knick-Knacks such as Pac-Man pins and magnets, Asteroids keychains, a truckload of Super Mario toys and figurines, Gears Of War figures including my GEARS OF WAR LANCER! and also hidden in the Garage I have my prized possession, my original DOUBLE DRAGON stand up arcade machine, I also have the boards for Double Dragon 2 and 3 as well along with Street Fighter 2 and Commando and Ghosts ‘n Goblins.
I know I’ve missed a crap load of stuff but I think this should be enough to hopefully qualify me into GEEK FREAK OF THE WEEK 😉
4. Michael Irving
I don’t really even remember how it began, but sometime in early High School I started cobbling together everything I could find, and damn, The Simpsons is a marketing juggernaut.
There are the usual things like glasses, mugs, figurines, soft toys, tins, clocks, etc, but I prefer the random stuff. Among my collection are Simpsons guitar picks, shoelaces, a doorbell that quotes Homer; a cuckoo clock in the shape of Moe’s, with a little Homer who pops out and Woo Hoo’s on the hour; a remote-controlled version of the family car, that hideous pink thing; a working telephone; an Etch a Sketch, and board games with a Simpsons twist. I’ve never lived in a place with enough room to set everything up on display, so most of it is in boxes. The image included is only the contents of one of the Roll N’ Store boxes. There are six more, plus several of those massive canvas bags.
But my piece de resistancé is either my 5-foot Homer statue who sings and dances on a motion sensor, or my official production art, including a pencil sketch of Homer, 2 animation cels and a storyboard page, all signed by various directors.
I also have the uncanny/awesome/geeky ability to identify most episodes by a single quote, or the first few minutes, and spout the episode name and season. I don’t actually know how this superpower evolved: I didn’t deliberately learn them, but it sunk in somehow.
Well thank you so much for joining me in this weird and fun adventure. I hope you do at least enjoy the rest of other weird articles.
It’s getting closer. Gears of War 3, exclusive to Xbox 360, nears its September 20 release date after a delay last year. With the release date so close now, Epic Games have decided to reveal a truckload of multiplayer maps for your enjoyment. It is quite a list so keep up. They are:
Checkout – Checkout’s combat takes place in the carcass of an abandoned superstore.
Drydock – This shipyard stands full of undelivered goods and the necessary tools of a society’s infrastructure. Its most prominent landmark is the rotting husk of a cargo ship that will forever stand in Drydock.
Gridlock – This ashen street was once a bustling tourist destination known for its quaint inns and waterfront cafés. Even the water is gone now, replaced by the burnt shell of a crater that stands as a testament to the loss of Seran humanity.
Hotel – Small island resorts such as this one catered to the opulent tastes of vacationing Serans. But as the Lambent infection spreads across the globe, tides are shifting to flood once popular beaches, and fierce winds batter and push at the walls of humanity’s creations.
Mercy – This area was once a bustling town square filled with people, but it never recovered from the UIR mortar shellings of the Pendulum Wars.
Old Town – Several remote areas of Sera managed to stave off the impact of Emergence for quite some time. Island towns such as this one were able to sustain themselves with small farms and a steady bounty from the ocean.
Overpass – Battles in this highly dynamic map often focus around the elevated Overpass, where teams can hole up and take advantage of the protected position and emplaced weaponry located there.
Sandbar – This observation post once had a commanding view of the distant horizon. Never threatened, it was thought to be impenetrable due to its unpredictable coastline and the constant shifting of sandbars along the shallow water of the coastline. And it never did fall; it was simply abandoned when humanity fled from a threat that nobody could ever see coming.
Thrashball – This stadium was once home to a different sort of national hero, one who fought for honor and glory, instead of scrambling for survival.
Trenches – The Locust have begun to carve mines and tunnels into the rocks of the Seran Deadlands, eking out any existence that resembles the underground passages of the Hollow they once called home.
Man that is a lot of maps. Congrats to Epic Games for giving the players quite a bit of choice. The multiplayer offerings are just as good. Just to recap, Gears of War 3 has Horde Mode, Beast Mode, regular competitive online and offline and four player co-op campaign. But there is more. Gears of Wall 3 will include a Casual Versus Multiplayer playlist where new players will have the option to compete against one another.
Expect the game on September 20. You can pre-order three versions of the game: Standard (AUD $99.95), Limited (AUD $129.95) and Epic (AUD $199.95). Have your say about the multiplayer maps below.
The post-apocalypse nuclear backstory has been done, well, a lot. Suffice to say everyone has seen and played their fair share of games in that setting, a disappointing number of which are actually pretty poor, Fallout and Metro 2033 being examples from my Steam library that (in my opinion at least) failed to deliver anything really memorable.
So what then has Nuclear Dawn, a class-based multiplayer FPS got to add to the debate? Believability for a start. In stark contrast to the incredibly samey and almost sterile environments of the Fallout universe, Nuclear Dawn provides a host of maps that incorporate authentic world landmarks and architecture. From Westminster tower and the deserted city streets of England, to the sand swept hotels and Persian-era archways of Dubai, to the snow covered industrial complexes of Russia; Nuclear Dawn is eerily easy to associate with. Billboards twinkle and flash, plants move in the gentle, ash-speckled breeze, planes pass noisily overhead, and the game just does a great job of looking and feeling pretty spectacular.
It plays well too, even as a beta. The shooting mechanics are some of the most robust I’ve seen in the genre (particularly the weight of the guns, a pox on many source engine titles where typically even a desert eagle is about as nimble as child’s water pistol), HUD functions like ammo counting and displaying the map are handled in extremely clever ways for preserving immersion, the classes are diverse enough to cover all styles of play, and loadout packs provide the player with enough specificity to cover all situations with their chosen class, for example; while playing earlier today I was mowed down by a minigun wielding Exo (heavy) class player who had managed to corner me and my squad in the narrow aisles of a Grocery Store, and did so easily, taking advantage of my lightweight stealth loadout, but upon respawning I picked up a sniper pack, climbed up some ladders into the derelict shell of an apartment building, and was able to avenge my fallen comrades with a headshot through a broken window as he exited the store, thus the game allowed me to adapt to and solve a situation without changing class, something that not many class-based titles do. This is also one of the only titles I’ve ever played where the recon or stealth class isn’t nerfed beyond all actual usefulness, and his/her cloaking ability doesn’t deplete more quickly while running, a pet hate of mine which usually undercuts the classes’ actual billing as “recon” or “stealth”, since neither of those should ever translate to; “cloak and camp in an obvious spot until some dumb f*** walks right in front of you”, so much kudos to Interwave Studios for being one of the first developers to really nail that.
I’m still playing the beta pretty much every day right now, and have yet to explore a lot of the game’s features, but so far things are looking very good indeed.
During PAX 2011, 343 Industries held a panel in which they confirmed that Halo 4 will be the beginning of a new trilogy of Halo games. 343 Industries have taken the reigns of the Halo franchise and will begin their trilogy of Halo games immediately following the events of Halo 3.
Master Chief has awoken and is ready to reclaim his life. Thusly the name of this trilogy is “The Reclaimer Trilogy”. Not only that but it has been announced that the main villains of the trilogy will be known as “The Reclaimers”. Not much is known about The Reclaimers other than that they will serve as the main antagonists of the new trilogy.
Along-side the announcement of a whole triology of games coming our way, 343 also revealed some concept art for the upcoming Halo 4, which can be seen in the video below. What do you think of this announcement and concept art? Do you want another trilogy of Halo games? Let us know in the comments section below.
This year at PAX 2011, dimensions were shifted and heavy safes were lifted! That’s right, Quantum Conundrum, the innovative puzzle game from the co-creator of Portal, Kim Swift, was on display for the attendees of the event.
Those in attendence got a chance to check out Quantum Conundrum’s innovative dimension shifting gameplay mechanics. Which may sound somewhat reminiscent of Portal, both in concept and design.
However the puzzles here aren’t as simple as placing a portal in the right position. The puzzles on show here require you to swich through multiple dimensions such as the “Zero Gravity Dimension”, “Slow-Mo Dimension”, “Fluffy Dimension” and many more, in order to complete levels. Sometimes requiring the player to use multiple dimensions in rapid succession, which the developers are saying is rather tricky and takes some serious brain-power.
Quantum Conundrum is slated for a release sometime early next year on the Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and Steam. So until then keep you eyes on this dimension!
What do you think of Quantum Conundrum’s unique gameplay mechanics? Leave a comment below letting us know.
EA has just unveiled its television promotion for the upcoming football simulator, FIFA 12. Titled “Love Football, Play Football”, the ad features shots from the real world and in-game footage.
With big football stars like Wayne Rooney, Gerard Pique, and Kaka gracing the screen, this advertisement is another great way for EA to generate more anticipation in the leadup to the release date on September 27th (29th, or 30th, depending on which country you’re in). The real world and in-game footage are both quite similar in their appearance, which demonstrates the development of the graphics since FIFA 11, and the ad is narrated with lines like “If I can’t watch a match, then I’ll read about a match”, linking FIFA 12 as a way of connecting any football fans with the game.
Unfortunately, the ad does gloss over the new and improved aspects of the AI, and from the beginning it is clear the commercial is designed to be Sony-specific (a PS3 and PSP appear with FIFA 12 alongside them). However, hopefully EA will release more that will have us frothing at the mouth to get our hands on the title when it releases in a month’s time.
Gameloft have started a week long “Good Times” Promotion for Android users. After overwhelming requests from fans for some Android love, Gameloft with no other road to turn down said “Hey, you know what? Good times everyone!” and that is how this promotion came into existence.
What is this promotion you ask? Well it’s certainly “Good Times” for Android users. With the simple purchase of a Gameloft title from the Android store and voila, you are instantly given a randomly selected number of free titles ranging from 1 to 4 free games per purchase. Before you ask, no there is no catch! Just pure and true “Good Times” courtesy of Gameloft.
The promotion begins on Monday the 29th at Midnight and ends on Friday the 2nd at Midnight. So you have a good deal of time to take advantage of the offer. For more details you can check out Gameloft’s announcement here.
With the full release of Trackmania 2 Canyon a mere 16 days away, Ubisoft have released a new ‘educational video’ for those not already sucked into the Trackmania world. It showcases the game perfectly, and is two and a half minutes of gloriously rendered racing and customisation gold. For those of you not already part of the near 10 million strong Trackmaniacs community, the game is a fast paced, realistically styled racer with a massive emphasis on users building their own custom tracks.
Some of the tracks featured in the video are in game already, playable in the online multiplayer beta available instantly for those who pre-purchase the full game. And if this news snippet sounds a little biased in the games favour, that’s because I’ve had a shot at the beta myself, and it is fantastic fun.
Check out the full hands on preview for a more in depth look at the beta (featuring my justification for that bit of fan service), and then for more information on how to get it for yourself, head here.
And of course (before I get carried away), have a look at the new trailer below, and let us know what you think!
Hole in the Wall Publisher: Microsoft Platform: Xbox 360 / Kinect (reviewed) Release Date: August 23, 2011 Price: 800 MSP – Download Trial Here!
Overview:
With the release of Fruit Ninja Kinect, Microsoft launched their first ever Arcade title that would make exclusive use of the Kinect peripheral. Microsoft has since released yet another Kinect only title, Hole in the Wall. The game is based off of the TV Game Show for children which airs on Cartoon Network in North America, which itself is based off of a game show from Japan named Nōkabe. Hole in the Wall could be a fun game for the whole family, but by using the Kinect only, how does it perform?
Graphics:
The game makes use of the player’s avatar which means that however your avatar’s face and clothing look, they will be represented in the game as your player. However your clothing will be covered in a silver metallic jumpsuit similar to that of the show, and your shadowy silhouette will be displayed to show how close you are to fitting the hole or if you are nowhere near it.
The set is a relatively good impersonation of the Cartoon Network version of the show’s set, and there is a pool of water which the wall will knock the player’s avatar in to as they make a mildly amusing pose. I wish there was more to mention but unfortunately there really isn’t. The set barely changes and that is all there is to it. The user interface is also very unfriendly and bland, the menu is boring to look at and is also unresponsive at times, feeling laggy whenever you try to select anything or switch between the two screens.
Audio:
Well, again there isn’t a lot to be said for the game’s sound. Players will be treated to a very limited voice over which will explain the rules, and when they fail they will be treated to a sound clip of people laughing in the audience. There is a little bit of music to be heard in the game, but most of it is relatively generic except for a few small pieces which may catch your attention for a brief moment.
Gameplay:
The central core of Hole in the Wall is making yourself fit through a hole… in a moving wall… Well it doesn’t get simpler than that right? Well unfortunately it is simple, way too simple. There are two gameplay modes that can be played, a survival mode which will place you up against an unlimited amount of walls that give you points for scoring and add up until you fail, then posting your final score to the leaderboards. The other mode of gameplay is the different shows which will put you up against five stages with the final stage having a twist.
Players are meant to make their body into a shape that is similar to the hole in the wall, which can be anything from a boy about to swing a bat, to a frog on the ground. The player will get into position and the shadow outline will show how well they are fitting into the hole by either being green for perfect, to yellow for slightly inside, and red for failing with various colors in-between. The better you are fit into the hole, the faster the lights around the wall fill up, when you fill the lights up you finish the wall, fail and you get a strike against you, with three strikes causing failure and game over.
Now Hole in the Wall also has a mode which allows you to play with two people and this is very enjoyable, as it is always great to bring a buddy in and make various hilarious poses as you attempt to pass each wall, unfortunately this is only a small addition to what ultimately becomes a boring and occasionally broken experience. The only highlight is playing a final stage which will mix things up by making the wall harder to see, or mirror your movements or something similar, which can help break up the mundane activity that Hole in the Wall quickly becomes.
There is absolutely zero progression in Hole in the Wall. The best that you can do is unlocking new shows which change the themes of the walls. That is unfortunately it, there are no little additions to be achieved or anything to work towards besides the leaderboards which, let’s face it, provide little motivation to continue. The lack of enjoyability can make Hole in the Wall a faulty party game, simply because not only will it barely keep peoples’ attention for more than ten minutes, but a busy room is not the place to play this title.
The Kinect can be a very sensitive system, picking up most objects in the room and displaying it when it wants to, however nearly all of the games make the Kinect focus perfectly on the motions of the player(s) and help eliminate the background movements of small inconsequential actions such as someone walking past in the background or, god forbid a cat.
Hole in the Wall has a tendency to pick up every little thing moving in the room, which immediately will cause you to fail every single wall that you come against. My cat jumped on the desk which was easily three feet behind where I was standing, but Hole in the Wall and the Kinect picked up the animal sitting there, barely moving, the entire time and because it apparently though this completely separate silhouette was part of my body, I failed even the simplest of walls I fit inside of. One point I literally could not understand why I was failing walls non-stop, until I took a closer look and realized that the game was picking up on the ceiling fan’s blades spinning barely at the top of the wall. If you live alone or shut yourself off from anyone else while you play, then Hole in the Wall may work flawlessly for you.
That is of course until it completely forgets who is playing at the time. Hole in the Wall has a mildly infuriating tendency to forget who exactly is playing at the time, which means it will either sign you off or take you off of Xbox Live. This is when no one was in the room and it simply forgot who I was, which caused the subsequent survival mode playthrough to be absolutely useless as the scores couldn’t be posted because apparently I wasn’t on my own profile anymore.
Overall:
Hole in the Wall had a decent amount of promise. The game itself is simple and could have been a great game for parties where people can sit, laugh and have a good time watching people make poses and compete with one another. The game is indeed fun when you are playing with a friend but it just doesn’t have any lasting appeal. The user interface is just plain bad, the game itself is poorly presented and the accuracy of the Kinect is something that would make Kinect defenders blush in embarrassment. It doesn’t help that the game’s 800 MSP price tag makes it a mildly expensive, inaccurate and only slightly enjoyable title.
Hankering after some more Driver San Franciso info before the September release? Well Ubisoft have dropped a new developer diary video to show off the online multiplayer. When the game is released on September 1st players can expect 11 modes in total, with the developers even throwing in an FPS inspired Capture the Flag as well as the more expected racing fare.
The most exciting thing on offer here looks to be the new ‘shift’ feature, which allows players to jump between racers – those spectacular crashes no longer mean the end of your chances to win! Tear up one car and you can jump into another, with the mechanic even allowing players to transform slow vehicles like buses and trucks into streamlined racers.
If the video below sparks your interest then there is a multiplayer demo already released for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners (the game will also be available on PC and Wii), with two of the eleven modes available to try – Trailblazer and Tag. Already got it? Let us know what you think!
I have like maybe 2 rooms full of video game memorabilia. I don’t know where to start, I have Atari 2600, CBS Coleco Visions, Matel’s Intellivision, Nintendo consoles, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, on both AU, US and JP formats along with all the Gameboys from the original to 3Ds (AU and JP) including some of the cute little Gameboy Micros, Oh I also have like 20+ original Game & Watches from Nintendo, like Donkey Kong, Parachute, Octopus, Donkey Kong Jr, Fire, Fire Attack, Mickey Mouse, Popeye. Sega MasterSystem, Mega Drive + plus the 32bit extension, Saturn, the DreamCast (about 3 of those). The original Sony Playstation, PS2, PS3 (2 of them),the XBOX (3 of them) the XBOX 360 (4 of them) I know I’ve missed out on something for sure.
I have like maybe 2 rooms full of video game memorabilia. I don’t know where to start, I have Atari 2600, CBS Coleco Visions, Matel’s Intellivision, Nintendo consoles, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, on both AU, US and JP formats along with all the Gameboys from the original to 3Ds (AU and JP) including some of the cute little Gameboy Micros, Oh I also have like 20+ original Game & Watches from Nintendo, like Donkey Kong, Parachute, Octopus, Donkey Kong Jr, Fire, Fire Attack, Mickey Mouse, Popeye. Sega MasterSystem, Mega Drive + plus the 32bit extension, Saturn, the DreamCast (about 3 of those). The original Sony Playstation, PS2, PS3 (2 of them),the XBOX (3 of them) the XBOX 360 (4 of them) I know I’ve missed out on something for sure.
