GTA: Don't try this at home...

Browsing through the internet, Im bound to find a couple of interesting stories. Some more bizarre than others but none the less, still interesting. Pick of the day: a man playing Grand Theft Auto IV for 40 continuous hours. What?! Thats what I said. I mean we've had an all night gaming session or four in our time, but 40 continuous hours is ridiculous. Especially when you consider the game, which in my opinion is not all that. Not from my experience at least. 20 minutes to a half hour was the longest I would spend playing this sixth addition to the GTA series.

 During our last class, we discussed this game in particular. How it is set in a fictional city based on modern day New York City (excluding Staten Island for some odd reason). It follows Niko, a war veteran from Europe, who comes to NYC in search of the American dream. Rather he gets involved in violence, crime and corruption. Good story line, but is it worth 40 hours of exploration? Chirantan Patnaik, a resident of Mumbai, India, thought so. "I enjoyed the game very much. It's fun playing long hours. It wasn't that exhaustive for me, as one might feel," Patnaik told long-running Indian news channel Zeenews. Is he crazy, one might ask. I think so, one would say. But hey, who am I to speak. This guy now holds the Guinness World Record for "Grand Theft Auto IV." He beat the previous record held by a U.S. citizen which stood at a mere 28 hours and one minute.  Sheesh. How do you stay awake that long? Even with an allowed 10 minute break every hour, how do you play GTA for that long?!  While my questions remain unanswered, one thing is certain, it makes for an interesting story. 



What is the longest single-sitting you dedicated to GTA? Or any game of that matter...

Release of COD5.

                    

             In one of my older posts I bluntly admitted that Resident Evil 4 was not as good as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Does this upset me? Absolutely not. I've watched my boyfriend play COD4 before and played it myself on my friends Wii, its a cool game. Playing it on the Wii was super hard and after I died about six times, I  gave up. My boyfriend (along with his 3724 friends) still hasn't,  he plays all the time. Literally ALL the time. Which brings me to something of high importance for all die hard Call of Duty fans: the release of the sixth installment of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on November 10th of this year.

 

Woohoo! Excitingggg...

          Modern Warfare 2 continues the gripping and heart-racing action of Modern Warfare as players face off against a new threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. As Sgt. Sanderson, you  will be able to lead soldiers through battle in harsh combat scenarios that range from mountains in Siberia to the streets of Rio de Janeiro. You can face the threat alone or with other players in SpecOps mode. If you're looking for more intense action, there is always online. 

          
          I'm pretty sure I'm late on all the Call of Duty propaganda but give me a break, I was just introduced to the video game industry, okay? Speaking of an introduction, back in July, Activision said that the game was going to be "Modern Warfare 2" and that this was a big enough brand on its own right. Rumors led to the assumption that it was no longer going to entail the label of Call of Duty. As a copy of the cover leaked onto the web, the assumption was proven false. Now we must wait and see if the game lives up to all the positive buzz around it.

Holy game, Batman!

And the Guinness World Record for the Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever goes to...

 Arkham Asylum!

With this in mind, my friend, Kathy, went out and bought the game. I invited myself over and watched her play on her PS3(normal, right?). After watching the trailer in class, I automatically assumed it would be a great game, I didn't know it would be this big. 
This single player action game which explores Arkham Asylum, the famous nuthouse for DC Comics supervillains  (Riddler, Two-Face, Posion Ivy from Batman), gives you an insight to what seems like one of the longest days of Batmans life. Although the point of the game is to make you feel like Batman himself, I believe Joker is the main character. Heres why. Because from beginning to end (I suppose), he is moving the plot along. After he lures you (Batman) into Arkham, and traps you there, he taunts you. Joker then releases all the prisoners forcing Batman to not only face his enemies but also save the staff and figure out Jokers evil scheme for Gotham.  Even when not on screen taunting Batman, Jokers voice punctures the speakers. 

I didn't watch her long but it was long enough to realize that like most games, there are predetermined points you're forced into some sort of game play. In this case Kathy was the victim. When assaulted by a gang of thugs, she had to constantly press the X button to punch them all unconscious. (Its humanely possible to press it 16 times per second, she was at about 4). This doesn't work when enemies creep up from behind though. Fortunately the game gave you a little hint before they attacked (some sort of halo over their head) so when they do, you can counter the attack by pressing the Y button. Poor girl led to Batmans death plenty of times when she didn't know what to do. The game however explains tips to a solution on the Game Over screen, clever Id say. 


Batman, well Kathy, has to examine every nook and cranny in order to successfully stop Joker. I cant tell if she did. I will tell you one thing though, this game is quite entertaining to watch as it is being played by somebody else. Its a super dark, dangerous in a fun way, adventurous game that captures the true rivalry between Batman and Joker from day one. I recommend you go play it.


IGN Video Review of Arkham Asylum

Fact is, we love facts.

I soak up useless trivia. I came across a few interesting yet pointless facts from the world of gaming, and I would like to share them with you. 

~ Until recently, Sonic The Hedgehog wasn't only the name of Sega's speedy mascot, but also a gene on chromosome 7 of the human genome.

~ The play area of GTA: San Andreas is roughly 17 square miles. That’s about five times the size of Liberty City and four times the size of Vice City.

~The maximum achievable score possible in a game of Pac-Man is 3,333,360 points.

~ In the original arcade Donkey Kong game, Mario was called Jumpman and he was a carpenter, not a plumber.

~ Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, got the idea for the worldwide Game Boy phenomenon after collecting caterpillars as a child and watching them change into butterflies.

~ While the original Atari Football game was first created in 1973, it wasn't released until 1978. It was delayed because the game couldn't scroll the screen -- players couldn't move beyond the area shown on the monitor. When the game was finally released, it became the first game to utilize scrolling, a key part of many games today.

~ The famously awful E.T. game for the Atari 2600 actually sold more than its most famous game, Space Invaders. (E.T. sold 1.5 million, while Invaders only a million.)

~  In 1986, Nintendo released a special Disk System peripheral for the NES in Japan. Among its features was a microphone in the controller, which certain games used, including an updated version of the original Zelda. You could only destroy a certain enemy by shouting into the mic. (I shout while playing as is.)

~ Mega Man is known as Rock Man in Japan. This was changed in America because 'rock' is well-known slang for crack cocaine, and the name stuck.

~  There are currently over 100 million Game Boys in the world; both the original and the colour variant. 32 million of them are in Japan, and there are 44 million in America.

~The name Atari comes from the Chinese game Go. 'Atari' refers to a situation where a stone or a group of stones is in imminent danger of being taken by another player; a state Atari ironically found themselves in when the brand was bought by French company Infogrames.

~The Xbox was originally named DirectXbox, as it was initially designed to show how Microsoft's Direct X graphics technology could benefit the console market.

~ The Texas Instruments TI-83 calculator has more graphics processing power than the Commodore 64. Amazingly, some basic C64 games can even be programmed into it.

~ The Original Devil May Cry was originally intended to be the next chapter in the Resident Evil series. The gun juggle move was a glitch, but became part of Dante's move set.

~Final Fantasy VII was originally designed for the Nintendo 64, but Square cancelled the project and moved to the PSone because of the lack of space in the console's game cartridges. FFVII would've filled 13 cartridges. 

~The first game to feature multiple endings depending on how you played the game was Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest on the NES.

~The Nintendo GameCubes proprietary disc can hold 1.5 GB of data, 190 times more than what an N64 cartridge can hold.

~ If you cheated while playing the Sega 32x version of Doom, after the game ends you're taken to a fake DOS prompt. You can't quit out of it, and the only way to escape the screen is to reset the console. If you didn't cheat, you get an extra cutscene.

~ Super Mario World for the SNES took 29,000 hours to program. Luckily, it went on to sell 17 million copies and was the best-selling game of its generation.

~ If, for some strange reason, you still have a Madden NFL 06 save game on your memory card, a special Madden van will be unlocked when you start up Burnout Revenge on PS2.

~ It's only humanly possible to press a button on a controller 16 times per second. This record was set by Toshuyuki Takahashi, a Japanese gamer.

~ In Germany, copies of Medal Of Honor: Frontline had to be reprinted because there was a swastika on the back cover. The developers also had to go back into the game and take out all the Nazi flags and other paraphernalia.

~ In its heyday, the Dragon Quest series was only ever released on weekends in Japan, because mid-week launches would see thousands of people pulling sickies to go and play it.

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Gaming is on the move.

I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what I have to do, let alone what I want to do. I went to Poland for the summer and over there it seems as if the day is never going to end. I had time for everything. Back home I'm always caught up doing something and before i know it, time for bed. I never have time to play video games. Never. I feel like I live in a bubble. Seriously, Im lucky if I get to play online once a week. As you can see Im not what you call an avid gamer. Curious to find out who is, I did some research. 


According to the NPD Group survey of the past six months, 63 percent of the US population is playing games, and 30 percent are playing more this year than last year. Gaming is on the move. 81 percent of US adults ages 18-29 said they are video gamers. To my surprise about only 20 percent play every day or almost every day. Consumers spend one-third of their entertainment dollar on video games. Studies show that the average gamer spends a little over $38 per month. And if you're an avid gamer, Im sure you spend a lot more (Being that you don't just buy one game a month and that those newly released games are around 50 bucks.)



People of all ages are picking up controllers and portables and playing hours on end. I get it, its addicting. The video game industry targets just about everybody. Apparently everybody but me. (Im going to start playing regularly so I can have better input, I promise). No, but seriously nowadays there are games that appeal to my 65 year old grandma, my 40 year old uncle, my 23 year old best friend and my 5 year old cousin. Thats why its on the move. Truthfully, anyone can be a video gamer, even an avid one. Some people have more time and are more devoted than others. I may not have time but 63 percent of Americans do. Grandmas playing Wii Sports at a retirement home, get the excitement and exercise they need without actually going bowling. People who never experienced war first hand still get to experience it second hand through a video game. I can go on forever because frankly video gaming has become a vital means of entertainment. Everyone has their own reason for playing. What is yours?