Base on Kotaku, it looks like Jeff has left Gamespot for good. The rumored reason for his ‘release’? He gave Kane and Lynch a 6.0 review score. Right … Im sure most of you can see what the HELL is wrong with that sentence. Why would anyone fire a guy just because he gave that game an average score? I can only assume one thing … MONEY.

If you don’t know who Jeff is, to put it simply he’s the (former) editor in chief at Gamespot. As long as I can remember, Jeff has been with the company ever since it started. To me, he’s a cool guy and I like the way he review games. He did a pretty awesome job taking over ‘On The Spot’ show after Rich Gallup left the scene.

Jeff and Rich back on the old days of On The Spot

Back to original problem, as I have mentioned it was rumored Jeff was fired because of the low score he gave for Kane and Lynch. It seems like Eidos weren’t too happy with that, especially when they have poured tons of money to advertise on Gamespot (heck you can even skin the Gamespot page with Kane or Lynch or Both). I assume that due to the pressure from Eidos, CNet had no choice to get rid of Jeff in order to please Eidos. Money sure talks …

Eidos is trying to prove to the world that as long as you have money, any shit game you create can have good reviews scores. Isn’t the whole purpose of game reviewers is provide us consumers with honest reviews so that we can get the best bang out of our buck? If money can change how a review go, what’s the point of reading them anymore? Imagine paying good money for game that is “suppose” to be great but out of the package, it’s nothing but pure crap

Eidos has definitely entered the Hall of Shame in the entire gaming community. I can assure you, I will never again buy another game produced by Eidos and you have my word for that. I will not support a company that uses money to get their way.

Oh by the way CNet, you’re not any better as well.

Update : Rumour > Alleged Gamespot Employee Spill Guts on Valleywag @ Kotaku

Update 2 : Official Statement from Gamespot

Although Gamespot has made their official statement about Jeff leaving Gamespot, they have yet to disclose the reason behind his departure. Base on how things are; edited review of Kane & Lynch, removed video review kinda says it all, don’t you think?

(updated 4th December 2007)

I tell you one thing, these guys just wouldn’t give up. I just read another article posted by Gamespot about politicians giving ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) another round of hoo-hah. If you are too lazy the read, I will just give you a quick summary. The politicians wanted ESRB to reconsider their way of rating games, especially on the Nintendo Wii due to it’s motion sensing wiimote. The argument they give is that, games such as Manhunt 2 allows the player to ‘act’ out the killing moves thus promoting bad influence.

To be honest I’m getting a bit fed up seeing the issue being repeated over and over again. I don’t know, are people’s brain sometimes too stubborn or they are too ignorant to take game ratings seriously? It’s a game meant to be played by a person whose age is 17 and above, NOT some 10 year old! Give me a break! Why do they keep emphasizing that children will be involved???

“That system permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders in Manhunt 2 rather than simply manipulating a game pad,” the senators wrote. “This led one clinical psychologist to state that the realistic motions used with the Wii mean that ‘You’re basically teaching a child the behavioral sequencing of killing.’ While this was not cited as the reason for the BBFC decision, we do believe that the ESRB should take the Wii Remote controller, and future advances in game controllers, which create more realistic gaming environments, into consideration.”

Please, for God’s sake somebody tell these politicians that a 17 year old isn’t a child!

Thought I would share something cool with you gamers out there. This is actually pretty old but Proxicide (the dude behind this fantastic series) just recently release the final(?) part for MK vs. SF after 2 years prior to the original two. All three are not directly linked but you can see the difference of his work as the years go by. If you are a street fighter or mortal kombat fan, don’t miss this out. This is definitely one of the best fighting flash movies I have ever seen.
Mk vs. SF

MK vs. SF II

MK vs. SF III

I am practically giving PC fanboys a free ticket to come whoop my ass for being a “so-called” console fanboy. Actually I do prefer consoles over PC but in terms gaming only. Back then (or even nowadays) you can still see flame wars between the two counterparts. PC guys will argue saying that you can do a lot of stuff such as downloading porns, illegal softwares, free anime as compared to a console which does nothing but play games or watch DVD. Those kind of arguments might be valid back in the Playstation 2 era but today, you can do a lot of multimedia activity on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and even the Nintendo Wii. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft suddenly adds Office into Xbox Live Marketplace.

A good reason to tell your boss that you need Xbox 360 in the office

Anyway the real reason I wrote this post is not to bash PC gamers but merely a satisfaction for my own purposes. You see, a lot of good games came out for the PC recently (Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War) but I can’t play any of them. Although my laptop is pretty powerful in terms of application usage, it really sucks when it comes to gaming. The ATI x1600 barely runs most of todays game at 1024 x 768 @ low detail and I’m the kind of gamer who settles nothing less than medium settings (at least). Some of you may say “gameplay over graphics” (likewise the NDS and Wii), but sad to say I can’t do that when it comes to PC games.

Hmm I can see it in your mind now, I know what you are thinking … You are thinking …

“What kind of an idiot gamer would use a laptop to play games?! DUH!”

Was I close?

To end your curiosity, I chose laptop over desktop was mainly because I wanted to get my work done anywhere especially since I need to move around quite frequently. Can’t possibly carry a desktop no?

Anyway ….

The points I am about to present is base on me, myself and I only. Those factors may include my lifestyle, my habits, my attitude etc. What applies to me doesn’t necessary applies to the general public. So sit tight, grab some popcorn and enjoy my rants.

I Save More Money!
Buying consoles is actually cheaper than buying a PC. Let’s use the Xbox 360 as a comparison. A USD$399 price tag vs USD$900+ price tag for a mid range gaming PC. Of course it will dumb to compare price per se as both are made out of different components (generally the PC will have more), but look at it from a different perspective, in terms of lifespan. A console lifespan is average between 4 to 5 years as compared to a PC which last to an average between 6 months to a year (depending on your hardware). You may be playing a game at max settings today but after 6 months, you will probably need to tone down the settings. I quoted this from my cousin “After you have experience gaming at max settings, it’s pretty hard to settle for anything less”. I find that statement to be true.

Would you settle for anything less?

To be honest it’s pretty costly to keep up with the PC technology. The developing speed is going way too fast and we see new hardwares coming out in every few months. Your PC will be outdated even before you can even say “I need a new PC!“. Alright that may seem a bit too dramatic but reality, thats the problem faced by midrange PC gamers (like myself before). Any game that comes out after 6 months from your date of purchase will start giving your PC a hard time. You will start to wonder “Why I can’t I set ‘High’ for this setting” or “Why this game lags??”. Thus thats why I feel spending $399 that last for 4 to 5 years is hell lot better than spending $900 on a PC that only last for 6 months, no?

I don’t feel screwed!
One of the best things about console is that everyone shares the same ups and downs. If a game looks good and performs well, it will be the same for everyone else and vice versa. For PC, graphic quality and performance differs from one another base on their hardware. The difference could be as bad as comparing the graphics between Playstation 3 and Playstation 2 (sometimes Playstation 1).

Just imagine if a ‘new’ Resident Evil came to the PC
Picture A would be my comp, Picture B my cousin’s comp

Taking a trip over to my cousin’s place “killed” me off. With his PC, you can run current games at gorgeous mouth watering graphics with great performance. 6 months ago he was using Intel Dual Core with SLI 7900GT. Now he’s running Quad Core with 8800GTS. Talk about major upgrade within a few months. If it was me, I would probably be using an old Nvidia 6800 I bought ‘last century’.

I don’t know about you but I will lose my mood in playing a game after seeing how well it runs on a friend’s hardware. It sounds lame (yea I know) but that’s just my bad nature. I’m not trying to be ‘kiasu’ (scared to lose) but I just want my games to run at a smooth rate too. Most of the time, they ran like crap.

I can still remember the time I went over to Neko’s place back in the year 2000. He just bought a new PC, equipped with 500mhz Intel Pentium III processor and was testing out Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun. I can assure you that you can see a “W-T-F” expression on my face. A harvester, a unit that is suppose to be one of the slowest in the game, was moving like as if Michael Schumacher needed to pee desperately during a F1 race.

Trust me, getting a console solve that problem instantly. Spare yourself the pain and agony you have to suffer (if you are like me).

I get less problems!
There’s nothing worse than getting home with a new game only to find out that you have gotten an unknown error, which was caused by a corrupted directX file and after you that you find out that you had insufficient spaceandyouneedtoclearsomefilesbutthosefilesareimportantandafteryouclear
yougetsomestupidsounderrorfromyoursoundcardandyouendedupreformatingeve
rythingandthenthepchangandbluescreensappearand…………..

Man look at the problems PC gamers have to face! With consoles, no worries! Just pop in the disc and you are good to go. No sound card error crap, no insufficient space problem, no drivers crashing yada yada. The less stress you feel, the healthier you get! That reduces your blood pressure too!

“Oh f*ck …..” – Shin Asuka (Gundam Seed Destiny)

Alright I think I rant enough crap in this post. The bottom line is, I’m just jealous of people who has high end PC Consoles actually has more advantages than PCs. You spend less and suffer less! What more can you ask for huh?

Once again, this ain’t a REAL flame war between PC and consoles. This is just a post from someone who is bored …

The scare factor of Fatal Frame games are subjective. Some say it’s so scary you will crap in your pants, while others say King Koppa’s face looks worse. Okay that doesn’t make sense but you get the idea. To me, it brings up the meaning of Horror up one notch in my book.

I have to admit I freaked out quite a number of times when playing through this game. It gave me such a fright that I didn’t dare to drive out during late nights (Usually I stay out until 12 or 1am before heading back home) and sometimes I need to leave the lights on to sleep. Being the fact that I’m quite superstitious about ghosts makes it worse. My mind will go imagine figures appearing in mirrors or under my bed and such. There was once I dreamed that a ghost appeared on my back mirror when I was driving … *shivers*

“Umm … Welcome to Himura Mansion! I am Boogie the Butler”One of the few things I liked about Fatal Frame is the gameplay mechanism. It was the first time a camera was ever used as a main weapon in a game. To make things even sweeter, that mechanism was carried out perfectly, with added tweaks and functionality for the later games. There is nothing more satisfying than hitting a ghost with 3 hit combo or combining blasts between combo and “Crush” special attacks. I was kinda disappointed that the 180 degree spin was removed from the 2nd and 3rd game. It kinda makes ghost “scanning” a lot easier when fighting against bosses.

The other factor which make Fatal Frame a great game is the atmosphere. The old Japanese settings along with ruined surroundings really capture the eeriness of a horror game; Dark rooms, hanging ropes and dolls, wooden houses, graveyards etc. It gives the player a feeling that something is lurking around the corner. Sometimes things happen when you least expect it, like a doll just suddenly move as you pass by it. It may not seem dramatic but a sudden cut-in through your concentration can give you a shock.

“I want that hamburger!!! Giv me~!!!!”The Ghost presentation is definitely the best part in Fatal Frame. The combination of the way spirits appear, attack along with their creepy voices will definitely give you goosebumps. Couple it with heartbeat sounds and tremendous vibration (on the dual shock controller) adds up even more tension and suspense.

One of the most memorable moments was in Fatal Frame 2. Me (controller), Neko and another friend (spectators) were just starting around the early parts of the game. We found a film so we head on to one of the houses to view it. Seeing that the camera angle wasn’t good, I went into 1st person mode so we can see the picture clearer. Half way through the film, it suddenly cut off and one stupid ‘Broken Neck’ ghost appear all of a sudden … RIGHT in front of us. Ever since that incident I never dared to watch any of the films I picked up throughout the game. Can say I have gotten a phobia over that.

Fatal Frame series is one of the best horror games you can find on the Playstation 2. In my opinion it’s better than Silent Hill or Resident Evil, but you can’t really compare them as they go around differently. Regardless, Fatal Frame is definitely one of my favourite games of all times.