Well right now I’m wondering if it will ever get to the stage where the Australian government succeeds in its efforts to close off the country to anything they may find objectionable that they end up blocking my access to my own web site… sounds crazy, I know, but then trying to filter the Internet is some crazy stuff to begin with.

Recently I’ve seen some stories posted on the web telling of how the Australian government plans to use their Internet filter to block sites selling mature rated games. These are legitimate sites we’re talking about that are selling products that aren’t even banned in Australia. To add to that, this is a country that deemed DVD region coding to be an unfair restriction of trade practices and allowed PS2’s and other devices to be modded so that they could play discs from other regions (as well as pirated games, though that’s a whole other story).

To top it all off, this also affects online games that may contain adult content, including Second Life… maybe the Australian government just want to keep all the furries out of the country, or maybe they prefer the people to have sex in real life… or maybe it’s just “WON’T SOMEONE PLEEEEEEEAAASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN”… yeah, that sounds about right. Well it’s nothing new I guess, after all Sexy Poker for WiiWare was just the latest game to be denied classification in the country… though it’s not like we should really care about watered down porn where you have to work to get to the watered down porn part…

Meanwhile, whether Australia will ever get an R18+ rating for its video games is still up in the air and not going anywhere at all… but at least I know that the government is doing all it can to try to tell us what we don’t have the right to view/play.

I was really sure that Nintendo would announce that the DSi would be getting “Virtual Portable Console” support during this year’s E3. After all, it would make sense on so many levels… though at this point, I don’t really know what to think with Nintendo. They obviously have a plan they’re following which they think will get them a lot of money for the least amount of effort, that much is obvious…

Putting the “Are Nintendo supporting the hardcore or not?” argument aside, it puzzles me as to why Nintendo didn’t announce VPC. In fact, Reggie Fils Aime, Nintendo of America’s President was quoted as saying that they had no plans for such a service.

So then why would a company who obviously wants to make a lot of money as easily as they can pass up on something like this? I mean, it’s not like they’d have to put any huge effort into bringing back the library of ye olden Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games of the past. We all know that Nintendo as well as Sega and other third parties have milked quite a lot out of Wii’s Virtual Console. It really is easy money and would convince a lot of people who don’t already own a DSi to actually buy one.

To top it off, the DSi Ware I’m seeing at the moment is extremely uninspiring. There are a couple of gems in there, of course… but overall there’s nothing I would like to spend my free 1000 Nintendo points on. Maybe if they release a VPC version of Metroid II: Return of Samus and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, I’d actually have something to look forward to on the download content front.

There seem to be many factors as to why Red Steel was made of so much fail. The use of the Unreal 2 engine, the obviously rushed development process despite much support from Nintendo… but mostly it was just the fact that Ubisoft wanted to make this game for as cheap as possible to try to prove that you can make cheap games on Wii that are still quality works. From Ubisoft’s point of view, this is a great thing. After all, Ubisoft did convince quite a lot of people to buy Red Steel, including myself. From the beginning of the game’s development, they were continually assuring people that they were the ones to lead the third party charge on Wii. Ultimately Ubisoft has become a source of “shovelware” for the system.

The game has a unique art style and tries to draw the player into some unique gameplay. And according to the magazine images coming straight from Ubisoft, a very good looking game. Unfortunately, there was quite a backlash when people realised the images shown in those magazines and later released on the net were touched up images and didn’t actually resemble the final product at all. To add to that, when the game was finally released people soon discovered that the gameplay wasn’t all that they had thought it would be. Turning was excruciatingly slow and the sword fights were a pain to pull off with the hit and miss motion controls.

Another great part of Red Steel are the many surprising glitches that pop up as you play, each more funny/annoying that the last. You start off with a few small AI glitches, and then a couple of moments where the animation for the enemies don’t load and they do that stiff stand straight with arms out default post thing and simply stand there. Sure, it starts small, but it soon gets pretty big and pretty had half way through the story mode. Here are the top three moments:

3. Invincible enemies: During quite a few moments throughout the game, enemy characters would spontaneously become invincible. Depending on the situation, you’ll either have to save your ammo and run for your life… such as it is, or simply restart the game, or die…

2. Never ending level: One of the levels has an ending where you have to get to the exit doors of the building for the level to end. Of course, you’re making your way to the end of the level, you’re being chased by a horde of henchmen all packing machine guns, ready to take you down. So, I get to the end of the level and suddenly nothing happens. I know the level is meant to end when I get to those doors, but… nothing! I immediately turned around and started having a shoot out with all of the henchmen that were chasing me. After awhile I decided that it was ultimately pointless to go on and simply walked out of my cover spot and let myself get shot. The level was…. COMPLETE! I had successfully finished the mission as soon as I died… well, whatever, I guess.

1. Again and again: This one is hands down the most annoying glitch in the game and almost made me stop playing altogether… though I know 99.9% of your are asking why I even bothered in the first place. Anyway, the #1 glitch in the game is a very simple one… The game works with a mission system and each new mission is given to you in a bar. There was one particular mission I completed which felt pretty long, so naturally I was glad to get to the next one… unfortunately, as I started the next mission I discovered that the next mission was in fact the exact same mission I had already finished! Why? I have no idea! It just decided to reload the last mission I played and have me replay it for absolutely no reason at all. The worst part is that I didn’t save in the bar, so I had to end up saving at the start of that mission and just turned my Wii off. I decided to spend a week or two playing some other games after that, it was just too much for me.

Yup, you either want to avoid this game at all costs, or actually try it just to see how bad it really is. Either way, you’ll ask yourself why anyone has bothered to play this game in the first place.

Despite the problems of the original, Ubisoft has decided that Red Steel deserves a sequel. Perhaps it’s their way of trying to make up for past mistakes and to try to give the series a second chance by reinventing it. So far what has been shown is that the game will be a little bit western and a little bit samurai movie set in a modern day city. They’re going for a new art style and are promising new things.

As crazy as it sounds, I’m currently neutral about Red Steel 2. I’m going to wait and see how things turn out. Ubisoft has made a lot of mistakes with the first Red Steel so chances are the sequel will definitely turn out better than the original… the question is, even if it’s better, will it be good enough for someone to actually buy and genuinely enjoy?

The first words you’ll hear anyone utter when you ask them about Dead Space is most likely going to be, “It’s like Resident Evil 4″… and it is for the most part, though that’s definitely not a bad thing. In fact, as you play through this game you will realise that they made it to try to do everything that Resident Evil can’t or has stopped doing recently.

Shadows and sound are the two elements Dead Space uses so damn well throughout the game. You’ll be walking cautiously down a corridor onto a mission object when all of a sudden a shadow is cast from behind you of something running by. You turn to find nothing there but the same empty corridor… and you love how the game just made you do that. You’ll have a lot of those kinds of moments in Dead Space where you’ll be keeping an eye out for things and also keeping an ear out for strange sounds. Hell, the game even goes as far as to try to take away your sense of sight by putting you into a pitch black environment or into an environment where the noise is deafening that you can’t hear the Necromorph about to stab you through the heart right behind you.

The way I describe Dead Space is that it is what you would get if you smooshed (yes, smooshed) Resident Evil 4 together with Metroid Prime. Many of the gameplay elements are present from Resident Evil as well as the whole survival horror premise, however it also borrows from the Metroid series’ ambience. It goes so far to put you inside the world of Dead Space that your HUD is in fact a holographic projection of your own suit. Now at this point I could go on about the story… but I think I’ll just leave it to a YouTube video to do that for me lol.

It seems strange to me that this game hasn’t sold very well. In fact from what I hear, it sounds like that Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles has actually sold more copies than Dead Space has.,, and RE:TUC was only released on a single platform… Wii. Why haven’t more of you gone out and bought this game? I demand an answer!

EA has made a conscious choice to try to bring this franchise to the masses by releasing various media on different platforms. While the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC gamers get to enjoy the game on their respective platforms, they’re also able to download an animated comic which focuses on the events before the game from XBLA, PSN and some gaming sites around the net. Along with this, an animated movie that is also set before the game called Dead Space: Downfall was released on DVD and Bluray. Wii gamers don’t miss out either with the release of Dead Space: Extraction later this year… and also the recent information that Dead Space 2 is being developed as we speak.

It seems that EA is very confident of this franchise and its ability to grow, and I hope it does… if the quality of their later works is anything like the original game then we’ll be seeing some good stuff. I hope the series can grow and evolve and I hope that more people get into it because it certainly deserves the attention.

Throughout Wii’s lifespan there has been a considerable amount of talk about whether Nintendo is still a traditional video game company, or if their new found audience has turned them into something entirely different. Of course, these kinds of criticisms are not unknown to the company since they’ve had a certain image problem with certain groups of gamers ever since they became a video game industry giant.

Nintendo has been striving to create new experiences on its console with the different control method. So far we’ve seen some interesting results. Unfortunately, these results are being produced on games that more traditionalist gamers have trouble appreciating. Not because they’re unwilling to try them but because it just doesn’t fall within their tastes.

Through all of this, Nintendo continuously tries to assure those who they have described as “core” gamers that they are making the kind of games core gamers will enjoy. It is true that Nintendo has been making more traditionally based games, however the most they’re coming up with is just the same old thing with added Wii functionality… so much so that they’re even re-releasing GameCube games on Wii for that purpose.

I haven’t been seeing many surprises from Nintendo on Wii when it comes to games more aligned with my own tastes. The most I’m seeing is sequels with added Wii functionality, remakes with added Wii functionality and the revival of an older generation game, Punch-Out! with added Wii functionality. I think the thing people are craving for the most at the moment is really just… something brand new.

Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse and Another Code (aka Trace Memory) R: A Journey into Lost Memories. These three games currently have little to no hope of ever being released officially in North America. But why? The simple truth is that Nintendo of America has no interest in investing their money on these titles for a niche market when they could be spending their money promoting Wii Fit and Wii Music.

With all the criticisms aside, you can see why Nintendo doesn’t bother to invest money on new franchises for the “core” gamer. Just have a look at how MadWorld and Zack & Wiki have faired… not very well. The Internet hype machine isn’t going to make them money and the niche is too small to make that kind of a risk with new franchises. Nintendo has already made their share of risks this generation by reaching out to a new audience… to add to that, back in the last generation with the GameCube, Nintendo was doing all it could to reach out to the “core” gamer and it didn’t get them anywhere.

When E3 comes around the corner, chances are we’ll be seeing a lot of sequels announced and possibly one brand new IP. However, I seriously doubt that new IP will have any real impact and will probably be met with a fair amount of scepticism. However, Nintendo will run with that one new game franchise and use it to say “Yes, we are supporting the core gamer, look at this new IP we’ve just announced, this is for all of you who have been waiting patiently.”… but will it be enough? Surprise me Nintendo, at the moment I’m growing bored with the same old thing… and please, don’t try to surprise me with a new Wii Sports or Wii Fit, I’m not a part of that particular audience group.

I wrote a review of Valkyria Chronicles quite some time back and while it is one hell of a great game, it’s unfortunate that not many people are buying it and discovering how great it is for themselves… well at least until recently when we started getting reports that Valkyria Chronicles got a sudden sales boost. A lot of why I think the game is getting a boost in sales is because of the newly released Valkyria Chronicles anime in Japan, however it may also have to do with the download content popping up on the PlayStation Network spurring people to find out exactly what this game is all about.

There are three separate packs to download and I’ll try to go through them in here without being spoilerific.

Enter the Edy Detachment

This mission features Jann and other lesser characters not worth mentioning… okay, okay, Marina is worth mentioning but that’s about it. I’ve personally never been a fan of Edy, especially when she gains her “Rosie Hater” potential in the main game. There’s no room for Rosie haters in my squad.

Anyway lol, the first thing people want to know about DLC is, “is it worth buying?”… is Enter the Edy Detachment worth buying? No. Not unless you’re a Valkyria Chronicles nut like I am and would’ve bought it anyway (or you just wanted to have even more Jann goodness) . The reason it’s not worth buying is because it’s a single straight forward and boring mission that isn’t very special at all. A group from Squad 7 gets cut off from the others and Edy takes it upon herself to yada, yada, yada…

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Behind Her Blue Flame

On the other hand you have Selvaria’s mission pack… yes, a mission pack, not just a single mission. Anyone who has played Valkyria Chronicles knows who Selvaria is and knows exactly why they need to get this mission pack. For those who don’t know, the only thing you need to know is that she’s the one with the huge tits. In any case, this mission pack has it all and more if you’re good enough. You get to play as the enemy, you get to control Selvaria herself and watch that crazy breast jiggle animation as she runs, and you get to play through a number of levels… but I won’t tell you how many, all I’ll tell you is that you’d better aim for an A rank for all the levels right from the start.

While the Edy mission isn’t really worth it, I feel that you can’t miss out on Selvaria’s mission pack. It’s well worth the money and you’ll spend plenty of time enjoying… you know… what you see.

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Hard EX Mode

This pack is ONLY for the challenge lovers out there who don’t mind failing your mission a few hundred times trying to figure out exactly how to achieve victory. This pack basically does one simple thing: it adds an Expert difficulty mode to all of the Skirmish missions. Bottom line is this one shouldn’t be bought unless you’re very much into Valkyria Chronicles and play it almost religiously.

Normally you would have access to your tank, the Edelweiss, in the skirmish missions, however for Expert mode, Welkin will have to go on foot as a scout. The unfortunate thing is that Welkin isn’t a very good scout and in pretty much every expert skirmish mission you’re set up with a scenario that could mean that Welkin is put in imminent danger if you don’t do something about it right away. If you lose Welkin, it’s game over… and you’ll be seeing quite a lot of that lol. It’ll frustrate some, but for those who love a challenge? My advice is to do as Vyse does… “Woooie! Our hero’s in trouble now…haha!”

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Okay, maybe I can say a little more than just that lol. How about I share with some of you who haven’t really bothered to look into One Piece or haven’t realised its awesomeness just why it’s such a great anime and why it’s one of my absolute favourites…

The man who created the manga known as One Piece is Eiichiro Oda, a man inspired by Vikings and various pirates throughout history. After many years of developing a story called “Romance Dawn” he finally released the first chapter of One Piece in the Weekly Shounen Jump magazine on the 4th of August, 1997. Over 500 chapters have been released since then and the manga is still on-going. It is currently rated as the third most popular manga in Japan. Not only that but volume 27 of the manga holds the record of most copies sold in Japan with 2,630,000 units sold in its first printing alone and is also the fastest selling manga to reach 1,000,000 units sold. So with all those numbers and facts flying around in this paragraph, you can probably tell by now that it’s pretty damn popular in Japan… and has quite a following outside of Japan too. (Though you should probably note that those facts are probably a little out of date at the moment lol)

The great popularity the One Piece manga gained in its first year spurred on a direct to video feature in 1998 and then on the 20th of October, 1999, the anime TV series of One Piece aired its first episode. It’s almost 10 years from that day and the TV series is heading into its 400th episode in May.

So now that we have all that out of the way, I can go on to how I came across One Piece, what drew me in and made it one of my most favourite animes ever.

I actually stumbled upon One Piece quite a few years ago by accident while looking for images of a totally different anime on the net. The first thing that struck me was its unique art style, which to me, was totally crazy and fun compared to the cookie cutter anime art styles I had been seeing at the time. It was something new, something fresh… something I couldn’t take my eyes off of. I ended up searching for more One Piece art and the more I found, the more excited I got! Each image was crazier and more fun than the last! I had to find out exactly what all this was about! What the hell is One Piece?

I finally managed to download a few episodes of it from the net a couple of months later after collecting a tonne of art. What I discovered was an anime that seemed to completely know what I wanted out of an anime: Humour, adventure, hot chicks and lots of surprises and truly epic moments. With each episode of the anime I watched I knew that what I was watching would become a favourite, however it never truly hit me until I reached the Arlong arc… those of you who have watched One Piece will know what I mean, for those of you who haven’t… The best way to describe that group of episodes is that it’s the first time the Straw Hat Pirate crew truly comes together to save one of their own. It’s also one of the many times in the series where you will be hit with a very tragic back story on a specific character that highlights their motivations and allows you to understand them on a deeper level.

The world in which One Piece is set doesn’t fail to impress either, and the story is set in such a way that with each new chapter of the journey you and the Straw Hat Pirates will discover something totally new and different from their last adventure. Each member of the crew has their own dream they want to follow and together they’ve been through some pretty amazing things.

Now that I’ve caught up with the latest episodes of the anime, I’m running around in circles waiting for each new episode to be released each week. I want to see Luffy become the Pirate King, Zoro becoming the strongest swordsman in the world, Nami drawing a map of the entire world, Usopp becoming a brave warrior of the sea, Sanji finding All Blue, Chopper becoming a great Doctor who can cure any disease, Robin finding the Rio Poneglyph, Franky building his dream ship and Brook finally keeping his promise to Laboon.

I’ve come to love each member of the Straw Hat crew and while this series has been going on for well over 10 years now, there will be an ending… I can’t wait to see it when it comes and to discover who things turn out… but at this point, there are still many adventures left to be had.

And with that, I think I’m all typed out for today… but I would still like to keep on discussing it with people in the community. I know that there’s a One Piece thread in the general forum but how about we make this the official One Piece fan hangout for Twilight Lynk?… not that you guys have a choice lol.

Now that that’s out of the way… Welcome to Super Twilight Lynk!

Okay, it’s just the regular Twilight Lynk and nothing has really changed except for a few small things… I just thought it would be cool to add “Super” to the front of the title to make it sound like “OMG WOW!”…

As you can see, there’s been a change in design though it’s not as drastic as it may look. All I really did was change a few CSS elements and a couple of images and there ya go lol. The site layout is exactly the same as how it’s always been so don’t worry, you won’t get lost. This is just a bit of a cosmetic change… because I felt like it. Along with the redesign I’ve also taken the time to update the software that powers this site as well, though you guys probably don’t care about any of that… just as long as everything runs.

If you have any questions or comment or whatever, let me know. Don’t be afraid to tell me what you want me to do with this place if you guys have any good ideas I’m probably not thinking of…

Thanks, and enjoy!

Jeff and I have just played through Resident Evil 5 in co-op mode on the Veteran difficulty. It was our first run through of the game and we did pretty damn well since we didn’t know what to expect… during our play through, I did notice a very funny and very silly habit that Jeff has…

He’s a chronic whiner lol, and the line I hear most from him is “GOD DAMMIT!” whenever something really stupid happens in the game like we get killed a split second after the cutscene ends and the gameplay begins again… and these are legitimate times to complain. For example, there is one boss battle where at the start, if one of the players has a minimum amount of health, there’s a chance that the boss will kill you right at the very beginning of the battle itself if you’re not fast enough to dodge the attack.

In any case, Jeff saying the words “GOD DAMMIT” is now tattooed into my brain because he’s said it so many times. Of course, he’s not the only one with a silly gaming habit. I have to look around at every little corner of the game environment whether Jeff has already been there and cleared the room of items or not. I don’t know why, maybe it’s just the “exploran gaem” fan in me that tells me to do it.

I also have another strange gaming habit… Whenever I get hurt in a game in any way I’ll go “ow” or “ah” or something along those lines as if I’ve really been hit myself and not the character in the game. I have no explanation as to why I do that… I just do.

So anyway, tell us about your silly gaming habit.

Originally released on the GameCube in 2005 and ported to the PS2, PC, as well as to mobile phones (lol) and Wii. This game has been around, though for good reason. It’s a great game and Capcom obviously wants to milk as much from it as they can. Even with all of these different versions floating around, the undisputed definitive version is the Wii Edition.

Despite the games visuals showing their age, especially with the HD capable consoles sporting Resident Evil 5 in all its visual goodness, I still believe RE4 to hold up against newer games. I see Resident Evil 4 as being one of those obscure horror movies you’d only find at video rental stores that still have VHS tapes. The picture is blurry and you can see the grain of the film and the imperfections everywhere and the sound is nowhere near as good as things get now… but that’s how it SHOULD be and you don’t want it any other way. After all, what has Resident Evil been but a series of very cliché horror movies?

The game has become a classic, something I think all gamers should experience and the Wii Edition is the way to experience the game at its best. It includes the same quality visuals as the GameCube version, the added content of the PS2 version and the addition of Wii Remote functionality which is oh so perfect for this game. Plus, if you want to go back to the traditional controls, simply plug in a GameCube controller into your Wii and you can play the game exactly how it was played originally.

You COULD go back to the original control scheme, but I honestly don’t know why you would want to. Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition is a perfect example of how to adapt a great traditional game for a system that throws tradition out the window. The aiming mechanics are precise and the control scheme mapped to the Wii Remote and Nunchuk perfectly. You can shoot three Ganado’s in the head and watch them all explode in a shower of blood and brains and then shoot a fourth Ganado in the face to make him stumble. While the headless remains of the first three Ganados are about to fall to the ground, you’ve already performed a melee attack that kicks the stumbling Ganado and all of his friends who have surrounded you and knocks them all to the ground. All in the space of 2 seconds. Sounds like I’m exaggerating? Well, I’m not.

If you own a Wii and don’t own this game… for shame!

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Second Opinion

Mr. Weasel says:

That Dr. Salvador is a pretty cool guy, eh chops off heads and doesn’t afraid of anything! This game may be old, but it plays better than a lot of current generation games. Plus, Ashley has some nice warm ti… okay, I have to keep focused and abreast of the situation… I’d like to restate what Lynk said earlier, but in my own little way… If you own a Wii and don’t own this game… I’m going to find you, and I’m going to claw your eyes out!… You know I will.