-Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out this week. It is excellent. The online isn't perfect, but it's perfectly passable. I actually logged in to play a few matches the morning it came out, which was a terrible idea for my ego. I beat the first guy I played in a normal match, then decided to go for the ranked matches and got DESTROYED. At its best, I can vouch for the game's netcode being lag-free because one guy I played against had zero trouble getting me in an infinite combo against the wall with Magneto.
-MvC2 players are their own worst enemies. I doubt this game will foster many new players for the scene because the level of play online (especially in ranked matches) is very high, and the experience of losing to the best is absolutely demoralizing because you never really get a chance to breathe. Right from the start you're swallowing air combos from Magneto and Storm with helper attacks from Sentinel or Dr. Doom.
-August is here and that means the release schedule is finally going to start flowing again. This week is a total blast from the past with G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Queen games coming out, but then it starts to get interesting the same way it does every year, with Madden NFL. Then there's Trials HD, MvC2 on PS3 (I'll be getting that, too. Add Polybren to your PSN friends list if you want a piece), Shadow Complex, Wolfenstein, Batman, a new Professor Leyton, and Final Fantasy: Dissidia. Then Guitar Hero 5 hits September 1 and it's a breathless sprint to the second week of December full of big releases. Color me stoked.
-So the fourth anniversary of the HotSpot was a couple weeks ago and I completely neglected to mention it on the air. My bad, but I'd like to thank the original crew of Bob Colayco, Greg Kasavin, Jeff Gerstmann, Rich Gallup, former hosts Tor Thorsen and Vinny Caravella, and everyone who's sat in on the show, been interviewed for it, called in, sent e-mail, completed a homework assignment, listened to it, or even uttered "It was so much better when it was just Bob, Greg, Jeff, and Rich." You were all vital in your own way to ensuring the show would last this long. In other milestone news, the coming week's episode will be HotSpot #200.
-I've been reading the DC anthology of the old Haunted Tank comics. It's about a World War II tank that's haunted. A brilliant Confederate Civil War general acts as the tank's guardian angel since the captain of the tank crew is named after him, so they manage to get out of all kinds of nutty scrapes. Very formulaic after the first few issues, but still lots of fun.
-Puzzle Kingdoms for the DS is a fine game. And it's cheap. If you liked Puzzle Quest and don't mind some pretty bad aesthetic choices in the graphics, check it out.
-Back on the fighting game front, BlazBlue finally arrived from GameFly today. I played a little this afternoon and it was pretty not bad. I played as Carl, a little boy with a mannequin sister that he can animate and have fight for him sort of like a ventriloquist's puppet. If you've ever played JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, it's a lot like the character with the psychotic dummy, only you're having to control both at once instead of switch between them. Kevin likes the game a lot, but I doubt I'll get too deep into it. Besides, I've got Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to play at the moment.
-I also just finished Titan Quest: Immortal Throne on Epic difficulty and promptly started right back in on Legendary. It's rare that I beat any game twice, much less one that takes as long to play through as Titan Quest and its expansion. The in-game timer says 3 days and change. It's not quite 100+ hours, but I guess it's enough to put it up there with Disgaea and Giant Gram 2000 in my upper echelon of gaming timesinks.
-Saw a copy of Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich in Half-Price Books today and it made me smile. I guess someone picked it up from Steam and got rid of the physical copy. I hope it finds a good home.
-I like sports, but this is hands-down the worst time of year for them. No hockey, no football, not even any basketball.
-The Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick is the best product MadCatz has ever made. Yes, even better than those snap-on controller faceplates with the NFL team of your choice, or the Gears of War 2 replacement Xbox 360 faceplates. Ok, it's just a great arcade joystick in its own right. I put a bat top on the joystick, swapped out the square gate for an American-style octagonal one, and it feels like coming home again. It breaks my heart to see arcades going extinct, but at least there's enough people around with fond memories of them that top-of-the-line joysticks like this can get made. I've never been happy with an arcade stick for home systems before this. And if you don't want to blow the money to buy it and mod it to your tastes, the SFIV FightPads are pretty great too.
-I was on a street corner earlier today looking the other way when there was a car crash in the intersection. I think when I was younger, car crashes actually sounded like terrible, traumatic things. This sounded like a collision of Tupperware containers.
Comments
I'd love to play Titan Quest, but Diablo 2 consumed my life for too long to risk it all again.
Like I wrote you once before, I think you're doing a great job with the HotSpot. Of course it's hard to live up to the days of Bob, Jeff, Rich and Vinny, but after all that's happened since that fateful November, the HotSpot is still a major part of my gaming week and it's mostly thanks to you.
man_hammer
I have a lot of fond memories of all the different lineups. All the way back from Rich, to Vinny, to Tor, to you. You're doing a great job Brendan.
I still remember that episode of The Last Word with you and Tor announcing the name of Nintendo's new system, the Wii. You were already annoyed at the Wii jokes and referred to it as "the system formally known as the Revolution."