Cerrax

Although it incorporates a lot of modern electronic sounds and beats into it, "western" sounding music to it.

That looks like Infinity Blade with the Hylian Crest photoshopped onto the shield. Infinity Blade is a really cool game, but definitely does not fit the style of Legend of Zelda.

I've always felt that the mid-air dodge in Melee was incredibly stupid. I like the way it was changed for Brawl. I still think the original Smash Bros. was the best (mainly because Link had his best moveset in the original. He got nerfed pretty bad in Melee and then slightly buffed for Brawl, but the original moveset is still the best). A lot of the "improvements" of Melee kind of ruined it for me. Even the graphics, I love the low polygon models of the N64. It may be just nostalgia, but the original just felt much more complete. Melee and Brawl both feel like Nintendo wanted to fix things that weren't broken.

I saw Pacific Rim tonight and it is fairly standard by all means of qualification. It practically follows Independence Day beat for beat. But the execution is top-notch and while the lack of any real connection with the characters is disappointing, the movie never felt dull or underwhelming. That said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a summer blockbuster disaster movie with giant robots and killer monsters. If you're looking for more than that, you might be asking too much from this flick. The fight scenes are the meat and potatoes, and as long as you like those meat and potatoes, this movie is f-ing awesome.

Most companies want at least a 10% profit margin to pad the cost of production, and over %30 is considered a "success". Average AAA game budget: $40 million "Successful" game income: 2-3 million copies (about 30% / $12 million profit margin) Average high-end cable show budget: $3 million per episode "Successful" TV show run: 5-6 million viewers per episode (about 30% / $900 thousand profit margin) So no, 3 million games is nothing to sneeze at for video game sales. It is the fault of the budget, not the sales, if a 3 million copies cannot recoup the cost of producing the game. And 1 million viewers is an abysmal number for how expensive Breaking Bad is to produce (about $3 million per episode), though I'm sure AMC is jacking up advertising costs during that hour of programming. NCIS on CBS averages about 10 million viewers, so Breaking Bad is probably a very good comparison to Pikmin. It's doing well enough, but it is not stellar by any means. Not to mention 1.2 million copies for 24.7 million Gamecubes means that Pikmin was bought by almost 21% of Gamecube owners. The percentage of households that own TV's that are watching Breaking Bad is less than 1% (110 million households with cable TV, 1 million viewer average for Breaking Bad).

Yes because I can call up LeBron James and shoot some hoops with him and the Miami Heat. Or give Bill Belichick a ring and take the coach's hat for a few games. Or ask Sidney Crosby to take a seat and I'll finish the third period for him.

I have always admired Nintendo's quality, innovation, and creativity. Unfortunately, I don't like the direction the company has gone and I can't really figure out why. Ever since the Gamecube, I haven't really liked anything Nintendo has done. It's not that it's bad, or uninspired, I think I just grew apart from it. I'll admit, I've never liked Mario. Starfox Adventures and Assault pretty much murdered that franchise for me. Same with Wind Waker, I really didn't like most of what they did with Zelda. By all accounts I wanted to like Twilight Princess,a photorealistic mature Zelda game, but I just didn't like it. Even Smash Bros Brawl failed to keep my attention for more than a few months. Metroid Prime also failed to entice me, despite my professed love for Super Metroid. I placed all my chips on the Wii. I thought I'd give them another chance. The GC was bad, but the Wii sounded so fresh and new and exciting. I haven't used my Wii in over two and half years. Something happened to Nintendo. I'm not sure what it is, but I just don't give a crap what they do anymore.

and Yoshi, and multiple routes and multiple goal lines to end the levels, and the ability to scroll the camera to peek at the level without moving, and the ability to hold a second powerup in case you lost your first one, and the ability to save games and the exclamation blocks that can literally alter entire levels Yeah, you're right, SMB3 and SMW are totally the same.

I do believe Dr Awkward recently did a rap album of Ocarina of Time.

The original Kinect had facial recognition that wasn't half-bad. I would go to my friends house and try to activate it and it refused to respond to my voice or movements, but it immediately reacted to my friend (who owned the Xbox). Of course, she has it set up to recognize faces and voices, but I have no doubt Microsoft could easily have it do that automatically.

Don't forget that developers aiming for a multi-platform release are going to develop with the lowest common denominator in mind. If XBO has only 5 GB for game, only 3 cores for games, and slower RAM, developers aren't going to push to unlock the full potential of the PS4 because they'll want one build that works on both. Especially since they both have x86 architecture. They may try to boost certain options on the PS4 version, but just like this generation, there's going to be little difference in which one is superior.

Apparently SSB4 won't have tripping! It never bothered me that much, but I can see how competitive play could be seriously disrupted by it.

Smash Bros. is the only reason I still pay attention to Nintendo at all and Brawl lost my interest fairly quickly. But they have Mega Man now so we are best friends again. OHMYGODFUCKINGMEGAMANYES!!!! Seriously, the Wii U wasn't even on my radar, but now it's almost definitely on my must-buy list.

I'm skeptical of Sony's claims about DRM. Remember how Sony jumped up and down about Linux running on PS3? And then how they crushed Geohot for....enabling his PS3 to run Linux?

The only part of the Xbox One that I think needs to be eliminated is the mandatory 24-hour check-in. It is ludicrous to expect a consumer to log on to the Internet once a day to use their device. As it stands now, the Xbox One is a Cadillac with fingerprint recognition ignition that must go to the dealer every day before you turn it on. F-ing absurd. It's an awesome if you live next to a Cadillac dealer and are the only one driving it. I understand what Microsoft is doing. By making Internet connectivity, the Kinect, and DRM mandatory, they're creating a standardized platform that developers and publishers can utilize to create interesting new software. Unfortunately, because Sony has not followed suit, those efforts are probably in vain, and likely will be reduced or eliminated. Microsoft tried to predict the market on this One, and they failed. This feels very much like when 360 and PS3 released. 360 had nothing to really show besides a few games and PS3 made all kinds of promises of how "next gen" was gonna play out. Then when it came time to deliver, PS3 fell flat on its face because publishers didn't utilize any of the extra features that the PS3 had because they aimed for multi-platform releases. The 360 was arguably the less promising system at launch. I think Microsoft has promised things they can't deliver because publishers and developers will go for the lowest common denominator, and PS4 has promised much less than Xbox.

From interviews I've seen with several developers working on Xbox exclusive titles, the always-on is being utilized to send data to the cloud for processing. Specifically, Forza 5's realistic driving personalities (which they've conveniently already buzzword'd as "drivetars") are formulated from data collected about players as they play the game. This is something that would require a guarantee that the console will be able to contact a server to send and receive that information. Games on PlayStation do not have this guarantee, and as such, will not be able to utilize these resources. Not to mention that the DRM, despite what consumers think of it, is a huge incentive to publishers. Take note that almost all of the features that Xbox One claims as part of its DRM are already practiced on Steam, GooglePlay, and Apple's App Store and no one seems to have batted an eye about it.

So..........how about that Sony press conference.......I'm not quite sure how Xbox One can stand against that. The only thing I can imagine is that in the long run, the always-on connectivity of the Xbox One will prime it for a lot of extra features that a totally offline device like PS4 couldn't do.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes

Wow. Sony totally just sucker punched the Xbox One with no DRM.

In high school, I was writing a story. One of the characters was a clone of the main bad guy who decided he didn't want to follow the path of his progenitor. He (like all of his cloned brothers) had a symbol branded on the back of his neck to differentiate them from the original guy. I needed a name for the clones to identify them, and at the time I was in Spanish class. I flipped to the back of the book to find a Spanish word for "close". Cerra, is Spanish for "close", unfortunately I neglected to realize this meant close like "close the door" rather than "close to the edge". Regardless, I used this and stuck 'x' on the end because it was 2001 and X's were still cool. So the clones in my story were known as the Cerrax. Fast forward two years and I released my first album. I had really liked the word Cerrax and decided to make my album look more legit, I'd make a fake "record company" logo called Cerrax Records, complete with the Cerrax symbol that the clones had on the back of their necks. The album tanked, and I was starting to hang around the forums here. My original forum name was Cerrax Records, but that later just became Cerrax. I have the Cerrax symbol tattooed on the back of my neck, just like the characters in the story. It is also on the banner of my website: http://www.cerrax.com TL;DR - I wrote a story with beings called the Cerrax. It slowly wriggled its way into my life and became part of my identity.

The $500 price tag is not unusual. $500 is the average price of a console at launch.

Unless Sony can prove that they learned from all their mistakes with the PS3, I'm going to remain skeptical of the PS4. Their GUI was awful, the forced installation and slow boot up time for games was stupid, PSN is a joke compared to Xbox Live, and the Blu-Ray meant practically nothing to multi-platform games because all the assets were made to fit on a DVD. Some games even managed to look worse on the PS3 because it doesn't do upscaling like the 360 does. Not to mention their exclusives (with the exception of the Ico/SotC HD remake) were not my cup of tea. With exception of the RRoD, I've never had a problem with my Xbox 360. I enjoy Xbox Live quite a bit. The GUI is nice, and most operations are transparent rather than muddying up the screen with "I'M DOWNLOADING. NOW I'M INSTALLING. HEY ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THIS? SHOULD I UPDATE THIS? NO YOU CAN"T LOOK AT THE STORE BECAUSE I'M UPDATING A PIECE OF FIRMWARE YOU'LL NEVER EVER SEE."

Brandon, I'm playing on Xbox so I'm not sure if it maps the same, but the final combo was X, A, Y if I remember correctly.

The context-sensitive finishers have impressed me. Depending on where the enemy is standing and where you are in relation to the enemy, the finishers are quite different, which makes the combat look much more natural than most "press B to kill" systems. The Combo Lab system has actually forced my to learn the combos. Most brawlers I just learn two or three very effective combos and I can beat the whole game like that. But because you are constantly changing how the combos affect combat, it's important to know all of them. The boss battle I'm in right now requires me to have quick Cooldown combos and a long Regen/Power Combo, which means I have to know the combos to be able to build and utilize them effectively. My only gripe with combat is that there is no "lock" option, so Nillin switches targets abruptly, which ends your combo. Granted, most of the time this happens because one enemy will jump in front of you to break the combo and protect his ally. That and the camera hangs kinda low during combat which makes it hard to see what you are doing. Again, this may be to heighten the tension and frenzy of the fight. Plus, getting surrounded is very easy and usually very bad for you. Overall I like the combat. The Brain Lock (whereby an enemy will sneak up behind you and zap your head with a cattle-prod looking weapon) effectively disable your special moves temporarily, which throws a hefty monkey wrench of unpredictability to the fights. And as I've said, the combat is frenzied and tense, and relies on keeping your cool to fight effectively.

I don't think putting all these extra features in really hurts the Xbox One. When I was growing up, my parents did not like the idea of buying a machine that only plays video games. The only reason they bought me an SNES is to bribe me into passing second grade. If the SNES could have played movies, or music, or do anything besides play games, it might have been an easier pill for my parents to swallow. Hell, my mother to this day loves PlayStation because PS2 has a DVD drive and PS3 has a Blu-Ray drive. And let's not forget both of those non-gaming technologies have pushed games to new limits. Games were never stored on DVDs until PS2 came out, and games weren't on Blu-Ray until PS3. This has allowed games with more content, more detail, and better quality graphics and sound. Skyrim is 4.6 GB. That would have taken over 7 CD-ROMs (the storage format of pre-PS2 games), which would have to be stored on a hard drive because Skyrim is a non-linear game. Thanks to DVD technology, Skyrim can be played without installation from a single disc on an Xbox 360.