More Binary Wrestling

11.16.2004

It's been a busy couple of months for me and my wrestling game fetish. I got Day of Reckoning for the Gamecube, which made me get a Gamecube, so while I was at it I got 2 more older wrestling games for the Gamecube. I've learned that wrestling games on the Gamecube are fairly disappointing. I got the latest Smackdown game for the PS2, my annual "it's November, get new wrestling game" fix. It too, was a bit of a disappointment this year. This leads me to the wild card of wrestling games, Rumble Roses.

Rumble Roses isn't the traditional wrestling game. It's chicks. All chicks. All showing off the latest in graphics with bouncing boobs and butts. And a mud wrestling match. Now, as much as that sounds like a porn game, it's actually a good wrestling game. The move sets are well animated. It's not too arcade-like (except when the evil cyborg shows up at the end and starts whirling around). I especially like the way you can concentrate on a specific body part to wear your opponent down.

As far as story, the game plays more like DOA 3. You start with about 10 characters. You pick one and start a story mode that lasts about 10 matches. While each story follows roughly the same track, each one has back story differences unique to the character. Once finishing the story line, you unlock alternate costumes along with the character's heel (or face, depending on which you're playing) character. You can then play an abbreviated story mode with the unlocked character to unlock more costumes. Once you unlock everybody, a new character is unlocked (I've got 5 more to unlock before I find out, but I'm betting the bonus character is the cyborg chick).

It's a fun little game. Going through the story mode for one of the characters takes 20-30 minutes, so it's a nice little diversion. It lacks a lot of things that most other wrestling games have come to offer as standard - creating your own wrestler, different types of matches, guys - but I think that not trying to do everything is what makes this game good. Except for the voice acting. Oh god, it's just horrible. It's like it's been translated from English, to Japanese, back to English with inflections in all the wrong places. But I don't think anybody plays this game to listen to the actors. It's all about the bouncing boobage.

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Electronic Arts

11.15.2004

One of the reasons I became a programmer was that I wanted to make a video game (my long awaited wrestling game that I'm hoping one day to at least get a good start on). Recently, I've seen more and more ads on tv for schools specializing in gaming - design, production, art, etc. If those things had been offered back when I was in school, there's no telling what I would really be doing now.

But what about the companies that make the games? What's it like to work for them? I doubt it's the dream job every 13 year old thinks it is, sitting around all day playing video games. Electronic Arts has been around forever. I think their sports games are probably their best sellers (they have the Madden franchise), so odds are it would be a good place to work. Well, it looks like it may not be the dream job it could be based on one former employee and a current employee's wife.

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Tickets. Oooh Yeah!

11.10.2004

Saturday morning I had the feeling there was something I was supposed to be doing. I had slept late (9:30-ish), and had been talking to Gina on the phone. After I hung up at 9:53, I started to wonder more about whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. I looked at the clock again, and it hit me.

WWE Raw is coming in Dec. Tickets were going on sale this morning. At 10:00. Well, there's no way I can make it to the VBC in 7 minutes, especially seeing as how it's a good 25 minutes away. Hmmmm, I'll try Ticketmaster.

So to Ticketmaster I went. I loaded appropriate pages of ticket information, seating charts, got my credit card ready, and then I waited another 2 minutes before the tickets actually went on sale. Seeing as how this was going to be on TV, I was only going to get a ticket if I could find one near ringside. The last time I went to see wrestling, over 2 years ago, I had gotten a pretty good floor seat to see TNA, so maybe my luck would hold out. The 2 minutes passed and the tickets were suddenly available to the world. I quickly put in my search for "1" and "best available" ticket and waited to see what would pop up. I was shown a floor ticket, 5 rows back from ringside. Sounds good to me, that baby's mine now!

Everything went off without a hitch. This morning I got an email notification that my ticket has been printed and will be mailed soon. I guess it's ended up being worth the extra $12 that Ticketmaster tacks on top of the ticket price. I didn't have to leave home, wait in line, drive 25 minutes. Tipity tap tap and "here's your ticket".

I'm hoping I get a chance to hang out with my favorite lighting designer Uncle Jason when they come to town for Raw. Unfortunately, there's a PPV in Atlanta the night before, and they're taping Smackdown in Nashville the night after, so he's going to be pretty busy and pretty tired. But maybe I can hijack him for a little while!

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Eeeek

11.09.2004

I made a discovery during one of my infrequent cleaning of the couches. I found a mouse in my couch. I dead mouse. A dead, flat mouse.

Evidently the dead flat mouse had found its way to the comfort of the part of the couch where the back and bottom come together. There were even lots of little mouse droppings underneath the cushion, so the mouse had been there a little while before becoming a dead flat mouse.

Thanks to a childhood experience (that oddly enough is centered around a family of dead mice, but I'll leave that for another day), to this day I have a little mouse phobia. So even though I knew the mouse to be dead, and flat, I went and found a pair of tongs to retrieve the mouse from the couch. Even with tongs, I'm pretty sure I was making an "oooh, icky" face while getting the mouse. But I got the mouse without incident, disposed of said mouse, and went about cleaning up the couch with my handy dandy Super Shark hand vac.

Now if only the other mice will stay away this winter since I'm known as the home of dead flat mice.

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Binary Wrestling Bliss, Part II

11.08.2004

I had completed my chores (well, enough of my chores). I had caught up with work. The weekend was here. It was wrestling game playing time.

The latest PS2 wrestling game: Smackdown Vs Raw was nestled within my PS2 ready for some cans of whoop ass to be opened. After playing it the majority of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I think I'm ready to tell the world my review.

It's ok.

This is the game I annually wait for the November update, and every year it gets a little better, except for this year. I guess after 5 years of getting gradually better I shouldn't be surprised that there's finally a little bit of a let down. Each year they add some new features and take away a couple of old features. I eventually don't miss some of the old features and come to enjoy the latest version better than the last, but this year something's lacking.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good wrestling game. Game play wise, it's the same game as last year. Same controls. Same moves. I'm good with that, I like the game play. It's the extra options that seem to be lacking. So what's the differences?

• Story Mode - It's still your basic "choose your own adventure" path, but this year it lacks the "randomness" of the participants. I'm in my 3rd virtual year, and I've already had the same feud with Chris Jericho and Randy Orton 3 times.
• Fewer Titles - Last years Here Comes The Pain let you fight for up to 7 titles. This years there's 4.
• Smackdown or Raw - Last year you could choose which brand to wrestle for, and if you didn't have a title you could switch between shows, which was good in case you got tired of fighting the same characters. This year, you're stuck on the show you initially choose.
• Legends Characters - Once again you can unlock legends. The choices between the 2 games is a little different, but the number seems about the same. The drawback (to me) is that in Smackdown vs Raw, the unlocked legends are only avaialable in exhibition mode. Being a story mode kind of guy, I liked adding the legends to the roster in Here Comes The Pain.
• Rosters - Here Comes the Pain had 55 wrestlers. This was about the best roster I've ever seen in a game. It had the big names form the WCW years like Goldberg and the nWo guys. Hogan. Booker T. It had the great WWE guys like Shawn Michaels, HHH, and the up and comers like Randy Orton and John Cena. Smackdown vs Raw has about 30, losing most of the WCW leftovers.

So, it looks like I'm a little disapointed in the new game. I still like it better than most other wrestling games, it's just not all that I had hoped it would be. Maybe I need to give chick wrestling a chance when it's released this week. game

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