1P Start

Ladies and Gents it pains me to say my farewells to 1PStart. I’ve been here only a short time, though I’ve been at Xbox 360 Rally (another 451 site) for just under a year. I will miss you guys, though you’re probably throwing a party, chanting “he’s leaving! Huzzah! Huzzah!”. If you do miss me, though, you can find me at my new home BingeGamer.net.

It’s been fun, and I hope to see y’all around.

P.S.: Qbix — E-mail me, dude. I’m still gonna get your GTA IV to ya.

A staple in any gaming site, is a end of the year type list and/or holiday wish list. JW and yours truly have each picked the top three games for the main three consoles and some other categories for PSP, DS, Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console, and even finish our picks with the best console of 2007. To help with the ‘holiday list’ portion of this, I checked CheapAssGamer and Google for any good deals that will make sure you can save some cash in getting the… Top Ten Best Games Awards Holiday Picks of 2007! So lets get this going:

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Wow. A surprise hit has come to the Wii. Unlike Halo 3 or to a lesser extent, Bioshock, this is one game that is living up to the hype and then some (I would have easily accepted a tacked on multiplayer for Bioshock.. look at what it did for Gears of War.. I mean c’mon.. anyways, this is Marios time). I waited until I beat Bowser for my first time before writing this, and I had to quickly open up my notepad.exe and start typing away. For the nostalgic, this is awesome.

The game is all new territory, but if you have played your share of older Mario games, you will notice some throwback Mario feel in characters (of course) and music worked into gameplay (wait until you are chasing notes, you will know precisely what i mean). Difficulty level is set perfectly. Any easy part is either easy because the game is trying to help you learn a new technique and master it or it is easy because it is fun. Hard parts are a challenge, but beatable (so far).

This game has something I can’t just categorize under graphics or gameplay, it has a certain addictive quality, that is so easily accessible. Because there is so many levels and so much to do, I have found I am able to start up the game, play a level or so to get a star or two (that must be collected to beat levels and advance), get a little more of the non-memorable story, and then put it down so i can not be late for work (important stuff). Enough praise, let me tell you the possibly only bad things the game brings about, then back to the love fest.

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Let me make one thing perfectly clear right now: I am a huge BioWare fanboy. Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic still populate my games collection and I go back to them regularly. So, when I heard that BioWare was working on an entirely original IP called “Mass Effect”, I was understandably excited. Now, some two and a half years of waiting later I finally got my hand on this highly-anticipated Action-RPG.

And oh my freaking God I am in love with it…

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What is the Winchester Mystery House you ask?! Why that was the same question I asked my family as I was dragged along with them on my vacation this past week. Now that I have been, I can honestly say it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

A quick summary, it is the house a wife of one of the Winchester gun people had made after her husband died and she inherited a massive fortune. For 38 years daily she paid workers to build this house because she was mental and thought that all the people who died because of the guns the family had made were haunting her. So she was to build a house and not stop building till she died. This house is crazy, it is over an hour guided tour that I swear feels like you are taking a tour of the Wonka factory. There is an f’n door that leads to nowhere (can be seen in this picture).
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I am back! I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. After a much needed vacation from everything for a couple of weeks, I am well rested and back to my precious precious video games (okay, I managed to squeeze in a few hours of Call of Duty 4 at my cousins house on some restless nights in California). My travels took me from San Francisco, to L.A., and a few other cities that I can’t even remember (if you honestly didn’t know, Cali = Huge). Now onto a couple of gaming related happenings on my journey:

My picture of this claw machine does not do it justice in showing how big it was. Still, I had to share, it was taken on Pier 39. At the very same pier, my brother, cousins, and myself went to a fairly nice sized arcade, where we found a nice couple playing one of those drop a token in and hope to get some prize ticket type games called “The Simpsons Kooky Carnival.” If you own an arcade, do NOT buy this game!

I am a Simpsons nut, so I was pretty much waiting for these people to get off this machine already, then I looked down to see they had the biggest pile of tickets I have possibly ever seen (I do not exaggerate when I say they had well over 8000 tickets, when I was cashing in my tickets for prizes they were still at the prize counter picking out games/stuffed animals/candy, etc). I ended up waiting it out for them to leave at the same time watching their strategy. They had figured the game out, with just 3 tokens, you could easily walk away with 100+ tickets. After they left, I quickly got $10 in tokens, grabbed my brother and one cousin, and quickly got to work with 20 minutes until the arcade was closing.

The secret: Memorize where you make the coin go to hit the letters W, I, and N. Okay, so not a big secret, the thing is, memorizing those spots only will cost you a buck or two, once you have it, the tokens almost always would go the same way unlike most of these type of machines, where I swear they slick them down with baby oil so your coins always go different directions.

So that last picture isn’t gaming related. I just wanted to let you know, if you were thinking about going to San Francisco, be prepared to walk past a crapload of bums. I can’t help though and admit, they were all the most creative bums I had ever seen. Mixed in with bums are street performers, some with Wikipedia pages like “The Bush Man” .. who I swear smelt like both ass and crack.
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In my youth I was a huge wrestling fan. I was lucky enough to start watching wrestling at the height of the WWF/WCW wars of the 1990s, and actually switched my allegiance from WCW to WWF during what is now known as the “Attitude” era. Hell, I still own Stone Cold Steve Austin shirts, and I still wear them with pride.

Just not in public.

THQ has been pumping out the WWF/WWE games since 2000, and in fact has been involved the development and publishing of wrestling games since 1997’s atrociously bad WCW Nitro. Apparently, after a decade of practice, they still can’t get it right.

And it only enhanced the bad tastes Conan left in my mouth. (If any one of you sons of bitches makes a comment on that, I will hunt down your entire bloodline)

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When I was a youngster, I loved action movies. I loved the mindless violence and massive explosions that were quickly followed by the cheesiest of cheesy one-liners delivered by the biggest stars of the day: Arnold, Sylvester, Steven and Dolph. But, as I’ve grown my tastes have matured ever-so-slightly as to no longer want the mindless bloodbaths unless they have an engaging story and character development… yeah, I’ll just keep telling myself that. Anyways, when Conan came across my desk, I was naturally curious. After all, it’s based on the novels which brought about the awesome(ly cheesy) Arnold vehicles of the 1980s that were filled with blood, guts and sex, so naturally the game would as well, right?!

Unfortunately, once you get into the game the violence and sex quickly wears thin.

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I have been a huge fan of racing games since I was but a youngling, playing the original Need for Speed on that newfangled PlayStation. At the time I thought it was freaking awesome to see a 3D car slam head-on into a tree. As time went by, and I grew older, I demanded more and more realism in my racing experience. I wanted better track times, better control of my car, and an overall more realistic feel for the game.

Unfortunately, I was also raised in a poor household, so my family could never afford those fancy force feedback racing wheels that I hear all of you racing aficionados talking about. Well, gaming accessories company Kontrolfreek is hoping to change that with their new device, the ‘speedfreek’ for the Xbox 360. But what is the speedfreek, and how does it work? Well, read after the break for my full rundown on the device.

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You know, of all the franchises that scream “video game”, Gundam is it. I mean, think about it; you have giant robots with swords and guns beating the hell out of each other. Sure enough, there have been many cracks at a good Gundam game, but sadly, none of them have ever really lived up to the Gundam license.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam does it’s best to change that. Does it succeed? Keep reading and find out.

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