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The Ponza Report

P.Review - Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
System: Xbox 360 (Exclusive franchise)
Rated M for Mature

Bigger, Better, and More Badass.

Unfortunately, I'd have to agree, on many levels.  I did say unfortunately, didn't I?  I'll explain as things progress.  This is my first review of 2009.  I thought I'd start it off with the 2nd most hyped title in the Xbox 360 lineup from last year.  Gears of War is a franchise strictly created to push the power of the Xbox 360, and the egotistical might of Epic Games as a developer.  While the Unreal engine is at work giving great visuals and stunning graphics in long doses, it's certainly not the engine that needs work.  The game itself needs work.

Let's start on the positive here: Gears 2 has this awesome new mode called Horde mode.  It's phenomenal, a true testiment to the way online gaming should be treated.  You and four friends, that's 5 players, can get together online and defend a map from 50 waves of Locust enemies.  Teamwork is demanded, and the difficulty increases as the waves rank up.  Ammunition is somewhat limited, and a different array of guns come to you as do the Locust horde.  Strategy, toughness, and comradery are the ways of this mode, and saving your friends from near death is definitely a help.  Any map can be used, so it's definitely a thrill, and can help you learn the locales of multiplayer.

If you wanted to play the multiplayer, that is.

Everything that is awesome about Horde is scrapped in multiplayer due to an extreme amount of glitches and bugs.  Attacking through walls, lag issues, matchmaking woes that have been patched, only to suffer more, the list goes on.  A game "so awesome" that problems rise up everywhere in a hurry.  There are many people who abuse those glitches too, making the experience not a laughing matter, it's more sad than anything.

The campaign levels in this iteration of Gears are also kind of sad.  The first game was all about co-operation and tactical movement.  This second game is all about railshooters (seriously?) and vehicle driving.  The main problem with railshooter levels is if you don't know what to shoot, you'll become frustrated.  I became frustrated rather early.  Word to the wise: if you make a shooter, and you have a turret level, don't make the levels to chance.  If I'm firing a turret, and it overheats when I need it most, I have to start the level over.  Especially annoying considering I played most of those levels by myself.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with working these levels into the story, it's just difficult to play unless you have friends there with you for the campaign there.  The vehicle levels are plenty, with a couple of shockers in the story, but really, it feels like half the game relies on driving or shooting guns while being driven.  I thought Gears was a tactical shooter?  Odd.

The gunplay is as always top notch.  You feel good hitting that active reload perfect enough times to get the achievement.  There's satisifaction when shooting a foe in the head with a sniper rifle, or catching a larger enemy with a Torque Bow round.  Blood splatters the screen when you chainsaw someone else in half, and the ass-kicking you're leaving on the battlefield is evident.  The boss battles are alright, and keep you moving, but are forgettable.  Finishing the game was a chore and a half for me, but I found comfort right away with the things I unlocked after completing campaign.

Gears of War 2 is a bloody mess, figuratively and literally.  The story you know gets turned upside-down, around, and right back where you expected.  It's just a shame that all of the problems with matchmaking and online play keep appearing, which is a sign of terrible quality assurance.  With the recession around, skimping on QA for a high-profit franchise like Gears of War is only going to turn off the fans.  As a result, this game only deserves the following score from me:  RENT.
Posted by Ponza at 1/8/2009 1:31 AM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Rest in Peace: Electronic Gaming Monthly

Earlier today, Ziff Davis Publishing sold 1up Network to UGO Entertainment, and closed the print magazine "Electronic Gaming Monthly".  Over 30 editors, video game reviewers and others lost their jobs, while holding the highest standard of presumably unbiased, ethical video game reviewing and news reporting.

Let me empathize:  EGM will be missed.

Normally, this would be considered, and has almost immediately been considered, the death of print media for video games.  I beg to differ in a lot of ways.  I love the print media, and I have bought many EGM issues off the newsstand.  (I also used to subscribe to Racer Magazine, for my racing news, but found that it was easier just to get the issues I wanted, rather than the biased crap I was regularly reading...)  EGM started really dying when Dan "Shoe" Hsu left the magazine.  I'll talk about that later... no wait, I'll discuss it now.

Editorial integrity in the video game market is ridiculous.  It's utmost impossible to maintain, unless you have a sound mind of journalism.  Seeking the truth is what journalism is all about.  Dan Hsu did just that, and still does for his own site I'm sure, Sorethumbsblog.com.  Dan has always questioned other magazines and their integrity over the advertising money they receive from publishers.  For realistic purposes, no amount of money should change how terrible your game is, as if it does, that's corruption of journalist integrity.  Calling out other print magazines for this is potentially hearsay, though, but having the balls to talk about it is something else.  Later in his career, Shoe called out Peter Moore, while the 360 was "winning the war" so to speak, on the hardware issues that Microsoft's console still has today.

I'm not saying that editors have balls any more, but what I'm saying is if I was a publisher, I'd want this guy on my print mag or website.  He asks the questions that the people want asked.  He's like the Larry King of video game journalism (maybe that's a bad reference).  When he left EGM, that dealt a huge blow to the popularity of the magazine as a whole, and turned the empathesis away from the print magazine itself, and more towards online journalism and blogging, much like the battle between the entertainment networks are having right now for your bandwidth.

Personally, I kept reading (and buying!) EGM after Shoe's departure.  The magazine went to letter scores (which I hate with a passion, because I hate review scores, and totally prefer a buy-rent-garbage structure) and flourished with awesome developer interviews and interesting event coverage.  James Mielke had, forgive the pun, a big Shoe to fill.  Now that I think of puns, he also had big pants to fill.  During the Gamespot-Kane and Lynch incident, which led to the wrongful firing of Jeff Gerstmann, EGM seemed to be in open arms of anyone willing to leave Gamespot for EGM.  That was all Shoe's doing, praising good journalism in the wake of bad corporate decisions.  It seems that EGM was doomed from that point going forward, when the economy began to worsen. (It actually did, in December 2007, when the recession truly began.  Shoe left in April '08.)

Perhaps I'm just a really casual gamer when it comes to certain things, but when it comes to print mags, it's all I've really truly come to trust for my news.  The internet just doesn't make it the same, but it's mostly opinionated.  I'll miss EGM for the good times, for the Halo stuff, for the epic lulz near the back of every issue, and the letters to the editors that make for very entertaining poking and chiding at some silly readers.

So, without Ziff Davis getting my money any more, there's still Future and IDG, right?    Let's see here, we've got... OXM and Nintendo Power!  Oh... and alright!  GamePro!  Sweet!  We'll have to move the EGM issues into a safe place, once I finish scouring that December issue for Watchmen details, even though that movie isn't coming out.... 

I digress.  Rest in Peace, Electronic Gaming Monthly.  Good luck to those who lost their jobs, I hope you find something a hell of a lot more stable... just not with Ziff Davis.

 - Ponza

P.S.:  I'm sure SoreThumbsBlog will get bigger shortly.
Posted by Ponza at 1/7/2009 12:49 AM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Getting caught up to speed

Ponza is now definitely back.  I've had some wacky holiday weekends in my years, but none as weird as this year.  I have survived, thankfully, and I'm ready to dish out the details on what I'm doing in the future.  The past is definitely behind me.

I'm on track for some reviews, most written, but as of today, I am no longer 360-less.  Before Christmas, my Xbox 360 Elite met with the long thought forgotten "Three Red Quadrants" and had to be shipped to Ontario.  Almost a month later, it's back to me.  This brings up a necessity of mine to do my first video review of a game I've been wanting to do forever:  Fable 2.  I think it will be timely, too, since the Knothole Glade DLC is coming soon, and my real life name is actually in the game: Gordon!  I'm apparently an inventor with a submarine.  Fun.

So, let's look at the review list here:

- Fable II
- Gears of War 2 (Now reviewed here)
- Fallout 3
- Little Big Planet
- Rock Band 2
- Kirby Super Star Ultra
- NHL 09 (for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, the first of the console battles)
- Tritton Technology's AXPRO 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound Gaming Headset (with reviews related to both the 360 and PS3 end of the gaming aspect, including DVD and Blu-ray playback)

If there's any games I'm missing, I'll probably get to them later, or even just talk about them in Episode 5 of the show. (That's right, I haven't forgotten I have a VIDEO or AUDIO Podcast, ugh, so out of the loop.)

I can officially confirm an appearance in the United States in April.  I have airline tickets to Pittsburgh purchased, and this will be my first trip outside the country of Canada.  A lot of people are shocked that I went through with it, but now that I'm more prepared to make the trip, I think it'll be easier to accept.  Half of the costume I'll be wearing for a day down at Tekko is complete.  The other half isn't, and I've been putting things off way too long.  Now that my 360 is back, I think I'll get more restless, thus screwing my prep time even more, so I really, really, really need to work on these things that keep getting put off.  I'm going to go start some of those right now.

For those wondering, I do have a proper camera now, and the Fable II review will be done in First-Person, so it should be cool.  I'm excited for the idea of it.  I hope by this week an audio podcast will be out, and I can start making calls on Skype to prepare for it.

Stay tuned!
Posted by Ponza at 1/5/2009 6:49 PM | Add Comment

So it's January 3rd...

Hey Ponza, just where the hell were you?  You said you'd be updating on January 2nd!

Long story that I am very willing to share.  On December 31st, I was invited to a party in Halifax that involved some of my friends from university, some of their friends, and a very awesome keg of Alexander Keith's Traditional Ale.  Needless to say, a lot of drinking began, much hockey was watched, and many video games were played.

So what happened after that?

While some of us crashed, a winter storm moved in that was supposed to give us 20-30 cm of snow, only it stuck around all day January 1st, and gave us hurricane winds and snowdrifts in excess of 1 metre.  Luckily, we didn't have to dig out the Nissan Xterra that much to get out, but the roads were hell, so we weren't going anywhere.  Also, the bus I was supposed to take home wasn't running all day, so I was stranded in the city for an extra day.  I had hoped to have auto-updates prepared for the site on January 1st, to roll out a series of reviews on the 2nd, but I was far away from my save files and GoDaddy information to log in.

Moral of the story is: my well-being was more important than getting home on New Years Day.

What's the status of the site right now?

Pretty boring actually, I need to advertise more.  Also, I have articles lined up for Monday launches now, just because it'll be easier for me to watch the traffic, and dig through more snow.  
Posted by Ponza at 1/3/2009 1:36 PM | Add Comment

Is It Safe?

Ponza Returns.

January 2009.

PS3, 360, Wii, DS, PSP, PC Casual, Gaming Hardware reviews, podcasts, interviews, live streams, and special reports.

Stay Tuned.
Posted by Ponza at 12/28/2008 10:30 PM | Add Comment

Podunkton.com Launches Open Beta

I said I wasn't blogging unless it was absolutely necessary, so in this case, it certainly is necessary.  Something that has been in the works for a very long time is about to launch for the very first time, to an unsuspecting public.

Podunkton.com is launching tonight.

One of the masterminds behind Podunkton is in fact one of the many people that I hope to have interviewed about this very project, his name is Jordan Miller, and his online handle is Cycon (or some know him as cycongod).  He's been in the Flash animation world for a long time, took a break, went to Purdue, and now he's got this crazy yet awesome creation coming out, that certainly looks awesome.

For a brief history lesson about Cycon, I'll throw some information out there, because that's what Ponza does, you see?  First, he was a member of go-gaia.com, now called "Gaia Online", which I also frequent to this day.  Gaia Online is a anime-inspired online community.  Sick of the way some people were treated as high as God on Gaia, Cycon began a revolution against the storyline being developed, and many Gaia members hopped onboard the train.  From the revolution group, Twitchblade Kreations eventually spawned from the friends who all met in that one revolutionary group, and here I am.  Ponza, Gaia's Splinter Cell.  Defender of the Community, and the Opposition of Gambino.

Since those days, the anime-inspired part of Gaia has twindled to nothing more than another massive community site, like Neopets or video game forum sites.  With Cycon giving us Podunkton, it gives us norms a new place to hang out, enjoy having a common goal, and make the coolest looking avatars in the history of the Net!  I hope you all check it out and see what Cycon, Vallos and the gang at Podunkton.com have to offer.

- Cheers,
Gordon Allen, aka Ponza.
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Posted by Ponza at 10/28/2008 7:41 PM | View Comments (5) | Add Comment

I'ma holdin' mah Episode 5

People, I know, I'm really lazy at getting Episode 5 to you.  There's some hiccups along the way, mainly the fact that I haven't nailed down an interview yet like I had hoped.  As well, due to recent events, I may have to legitimately hold my reviews until Mid to Late January.  There's a deeper reason to that, and it'll be revealed depending on what happens to me in the next few weeks.  I'm optimistic when I say that the reviews will definitely come back, and if I don't hold them, then there will still be plenty of reviews to come.

The major problem with me wanting to produce Episode 5 is personal health.  I have an intense cold, and it's driving me crazy.  My nose is running like a faucet, and my head feels like an Adrian Wilson freight train came through and jarred something loose.  Feel free to leave get well wishes here, and I really hope I can go to work in this condition, but I hope none of you get like this.  This is worse than any flu.  This is like saying my body is leaking from my face.  LEAKING.  From my FACE.  Not cool.


Posted by Ponza at 10/7/2008 2:56 PM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Debate '08 - Geek Style: Nintendo DSi - Upgrade or POS?

Nintendo just announced their lineup of games at their October Summit, and so far, everyone's first statement is:  OMG Nintendo DSi!  Evidently, people are enjoying it.  Unfortunately, I am not.  I'm not enjoying it for a variety of reasons.  The main one: It's a piece of shit.  This isn't jealousy talking.  This is in all seriousness.

Let's look at the gameplan Nintendo has had for the past few years:
  • The "Core" Do Not Come First
  • Innovation is Worth the Risk, because "We're Nintendo, it's in our history."
  • Online Support is a must.
So we look at those core values for a second ~ if I can even call them VALUES ~ and we think to ourselves "Yeah, the DSi is just following the template."  Allow me to elaborate about what I've seen and know about the DSi.

(Stats and numbers from this point on are retrieved from PC World's hands-on.)

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Posted by Ponza at 10/3/2008 2:32 AM | Add Comment

I played some Metal Gear Solid 4...

And yes, it's awesome.  Definitely a reason to buy a PS3.

I still want a Gunmetal Grey model.
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Posted by Ponza at 9/22/2008 6:56 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Tekkoshocon VII -- Pittsburgh, PA, April 3-5, 2009

To some people, this is a shock, to others, they've known about this long enough, so I thought I'd make it official on the site here.

In association with TwitchbladeKreations.com, and featuring elements of RedMatterSite.com, Ponza is taking over!  The Splinter Cell of Gaia will be infiltrating the David L Lawrence Convention Center and attached Westin, in downtown Pittsburgh.  Inside will be a convention featuring many forms of Japanese Culture.  Anime, video games, and other things will be represented.  Ponza is entering never-before-seen territory with this mission:  NEVER has he been to the United States, NEVER has he been to an anime con, and NEVER has he met anyone from Twitchblade in real life.  Included in the trip will be live reporting via Twitter, interviews when he can get them, as well as pictures and of course, random shenanigans that people expect out of this nerdy hero.

Should be... interesting.

 To prepare for the trip, I needed a few things.  I'll go over the list, as I still need stuff to happen before I make the trip to Pittsburgh.

  • Passport.  CHECK!
  • Luggage.  CHECK!
  • Clothes.  CHECK!
  • Money.  Somewhat CHECK!  Vacation pay right now sits at an easy 1 large, pre-taxes.
  • Laptop.  Going to be investing in a Dell Mini 9 in the near future.
  • Camera.
  • Cosplay gear.  Need jacket, glove, punk jeans, T-shirt, wig, glasses, and beam katana. ;)
  • Airline tickets.
This trip is definitely going to cost me a bundle.  I can tell it'll be totally worth it.  I'll meet people I've been dying to meet, and vice versa.  I'll see parts of the US I really want to see (sorry, no Penguins games during that time).  This is the adventure I've been meaning to have for quite some time, and I can't wait to make it happen.
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Posted by Ponza at 9/17/2008 1:30 PM | View Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Looks like Morgon is an Omeganaut. Good luck at PAX 2008, Jason, I'll be cheering you on from home.