Console and PC video game news and opinions without the hype, pompous writers, and obnoxious Flash ads.
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Overall rank: 194693 Number of inbound blogs: 37 Number of incoming links: 87 RSS: RSS feed ATOM: ATOM feed Last update: 2008-08-11 06:09:02 GMT Estimated value: $58,948
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Latest Posts
The Error Macro Video Gallery - A Three Dimensional Joystick Made Out of Meat
Stumbling bleary-eyed through the bowels of a hulking 95-hour Fallout 3 save game, along with a continuing fruitless job search (unemployment does wonders for 95-hour game saves) and arguing with Google over ads (note the newly tidy side bar -- I lost) has left me distracted from the site of late. But in sifting through old notes I've got left on my hard drive, I notice I had a set of links for another video gallery that I never actually put up. Well, there's no time like the present, even when the time was supposed to be three months ago.
Starting off is a tongue-in-cheek rap performed over one of Donkey Kong Country 2's most popular BGM tracks, Stickerbrush Symphony. I think it's impossible to tell someone "this is a rap set to video game music" and make it sound like a good idea, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.
When I Think Rock, I Think Chicken
For those who felt the Pontiac and Axe ads in Guitar Hero III were too tasteful:
"KFC and Guitar Hero® share a fan base that celebrates good music and great food," said Javier Benito, executive vice president of marketing and food innovation for KFC. "We're confident chicken lovers and gaming enthusiasts will come together to enjoy our breakthrough in-game integration and amazing giveaways."
Imagine being the kind of person who has to say those words out loud and live with himself.
At any rate, between the product placement, the cringe-inducing advertisements and adding a vocal track to Joe Satriani's instrumental Satch Boogie, it's good to see the series is in safe hands. As those hands plummet towards the earth wreathed in flame.
The Air Seems A Little Cleaner, The Sun Shines A Little Brighter
My guesses for his new career: Column in a conservative magazine or full-time Fox News commentator. But if someone at one of the big gaming sites like IGN or Gamespot was real smart, they'd hire him on as a reviewer. You think people like listening to Yahtzee rant about things..
Catching Up
I've spent the last couple of weeks clearing my backlog of Real Work instead of podcasting my Twitter vlog on the blogosphere, but here is my general catching up/responding/announcing post.
1. The news - I want to clarify that I had no problem with doing the news. Sometimes I even liked it. I just can't continue to do it while also trying to hold down a "normal" job. If one of you mugs happens to be a rich oil baron or editor for a game site (you'll find they're often one and the same) who wants to offer me a paying gig, I'll be happy to, but otherwise I need focus on things that buy me food.
Actually, I should ask the Escapist, they could use a real news section and they seem to be throwing money at anyone lately.
2. Donations/subscriptions - I thought about the subscription model (not very comfortable with donations), but there isn't the audience. I'd need practically every person who regularly reads this site paying $15 a month before it became viable, and that isn't remotely realistic.
3. But if you just advertised.. - I don't really have the funds to do so, even on a small scale. More important, though, is the fact that Error Macro by nature is just a hard site to get spread around. Places like Kotaku and Joystiq get visitors from articles and exclusive news, neither of which EM provides. A pure aggregator is only ever linked on occasion whenever someone makes a forum post complaining about existing game sites and asks where other people get their news.
4. Then you should make exclusive content! - I'll do that with the time I have not doing the news.
5. You said that last time - I know.
6. You're a fag - I know.
7. Other options - I've been informed that a site called Pirate vs. Ninja has taken the Error Macro style and attempted to carry on in my absence. I'm sure you'll all wish them well as they begin to regret this decision within the first month.
Just so this post isn't only about my lack of money, I'd like to also officially announce that Mercenaries 2 is one of the buggiest products ever released by a major publisher. It's practically impossible for a play session to go by without experiencing some kind of glitch, from small things like objects floating in mid-air, to blatant screw-ups like unlocking 8 achievements at once, 7 of which I hadn't earned. Even down to the last moment the game makes an ass out of itself -- I didn't actually get to see the last in-game cutscene because the camera got stuck in the nose of the helicopter, juttering around helplessly. The only consolation is that that was probably more entertaining than the actual scene.
Rent it for the stupid enjoyment of blowing things up, but I wouldn't advise spending $60 on it.
Yeah, it's not coming back. Not unless someone plans on paying me for it, anyway. I simply don't have the time to spend 20+ hours a week on newsposts in addition to my real job. Sorry.
Error Macro is on Hiatus
Will return next week.
Maybe.
Monday Newspost for August 11, 2008
In this scene from the thrilling climax to the Max Payne movie, Max faces off against his deadliest foe yet: a small plot of dirt in a railyard just outside Renovo, Pennsylvania.
Analyst Michael Pachter says the Warner Music exec complaining about low license fees for music game tracks is missing the point. "His flip comment disregards that the songs downloaded on Guitar Hero are not songs--they are videogame files with an embedded sound track. The value of the music is near zero without the game file, and nobody downloads Guitar Hero content to play on their iPod."
The NPD Group has released a report on gamer demographics. It features useful trivia for your next cocktail party, such as PS3 owners being more likely than Wii or 360 owners to have a second next-gen system.
Eternity's Child creator Luc Bernard is giving up on making games. He's still supporting Eternity's Child on the PC, and the WiiWare version will still be released, but won't be releasing any future projects as games.
Gamasutra has an interview with Simon Jeffery on the evolution of Sega. He mentions that Yu Suzuki is no longer a Sega employee -- "He's kind of his own man right now."
An online poll at What They Play finds respondents more concerned about their kids playing GTA than watching porn. Then again, a separate poll on the site found that people were more offended by sex (and gay men kissing) than severed heads in video games, so maybe the more important point is that online polls are crap.
Edios has a new Lara Croft model to tour around and show up at events. It seems like they have a new one every few weeks.
Midway Austin has laid off 90 employees and canceled a game in production called Criminal.
300,000 units of Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone have sold through in 20 days. Quoth Sega of America president Simon Jeffery: "That's a substantial business. It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform."
The official Playstation blog has details on Warhawk's v1.5 update, tentatively scheduled for August 27.
Sony is discontinuing sales of the PSP extended battery kit. GamePro interprets this as an indication consumers are happy with the system's battery life, which may be a bit of an assumption. Personally, I didn't know the thing existed, but then I never use my PSP in the first place.
MTV Multiplayer talks to the creators of Geometry Wars 2 about fixing the problems of the original game, the design of certain game modes, and what's in store for the future.
Madden NFL 09 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox, DS) - Based on that new "footed ball" sport the kids seem to be into. Very likely the last major publisher release to come out for the original Xbox. $59.99 on the 360 and PS3, $39.99 on the PSP, PS2 and Xbox, $29.99 on the DS.
Bangai-O Spirits (DS) - A 2D shooter from Treasure that features a level editor and a method for sharing levels via the DS microphone. $29.99 at Amazon.
Are you ready for some football? You'd better be, because that's all you're getting. That and Imagine Teacher. The full release list is at Gamasutra, but keep in mind they seem a bit off their game today. Near as I can tell, Line Rider 2, N+ and Mazes of Fate are not coming out this week, despite being on their list.
Weekend Newspost for August 10, 2008
Atlus PS2 RPGs Odin Sphere and Disgaea have been added to the Greatest Hits line, meaning both can now be had for $20. I seriously doubt either actually sold a million copies or whatever the qualifying amount used to be, so the Greatest Hits designation is now more of a recommendation than a mark of accomplishment in sales. Not that that's a bad thing -- that's the only way Final Fantasy Tactics got reissued on the PSX.
However, speaking as someone who happens to be slogging through Odin Sphere at this very moment, here's some advice: Skip it.
GameSetWatch looks at the problem of separating players and protagonists. How do you accomplish tragedy in game stories when the player has a vested interest in seeing the protagonist succeed?
Words on Play is assembling a list of "secret" books on game design. "Books that are not explicitly written about games, but which any game designer who reads them just knows that they are really about games."
Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is a big Guitar Hero fan, describing himself as "one of the top 100 Guitar Hero players in the world."
Bionic Commando Rearmed will be $15 on the PC as opposed to $10 on consoles, but Capcom says it has nothing to do with piracy. "It has to do with different business terms/expectations in that sector and more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts."
Indie developer Cliff Harris wants to hear from pirates about why they pirate his games. "I want to improve my business, and ensure I stay afloat, and to do that, it would be mad to sit in the corner and ignore the opinions of that section of the public who pirate my games."
You might have heard about Tenchu 4 coming to the Wii and wondered why anyone is bothering to keep that series going. That's because you haven't yet seen the STEALTH CAT GAMEPLAY.
The Error Macro Video Gallery - This Story is Happy End
A montage of bad NES video game endings. I think it's clear Ghoul School does not belong in here.
Friday Newspost for August 8, 2008
I came across two separate posts on two different news sites today that misrepresented and misquoted the story they were reporting on. I can't help but feel something's a bit backwards here when I'm having to fact-check these people after they've posted their news.
Maybe I should give up this racket and become an editor. At least then I could smoke a lot and yell at people like J Jonah Jameson.
A computer has beaten an 8-dan professional Go player in a 9-stone handicap game. This is a major achievement, despite the handicap, as Go has been an extremely difficult game to get computers to play well at all.
John Carmack, who's getting quoted a lot all the sudden, says id no longer makes decisions around PCs. "The ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles."
Seven new tracks have been confirmed for Guitar Hero World Tour. In addition, there's a rumor about three Tool songs appearing in the game.
Three teenagers arrested for firebombing cars in Atlanta claim GTA taught them how to make Molotov cocktails. I think just seeing what one looks like gives you a pretty good handle on how they work.
Brenda Brathwaite is tired of hearing about "women in games." Me too. "I don't think about my gender any more than you probably do yours, unless someone brings it to my attention. In my case, that happens once or twice a month, and it's only when a reporter emails me to ask if I have any contributions to a particular piece."
Author Warren Ellis says he did some work on Dead Space. Specifically: "I wrote a bunch of the groundwork, backstory and structure."
BioWare has described a possible DS Mass Effect title as "an awesome way to keep interest alive and keep it going in addition to to the next one [Mass Effect 2]."
To confront claims that the Wii doesn't have much interesting on the horizon, GamePro presents 21 Upcoming Wii Games To Drool Over. "#21: Wii Music." Awesome start!
Sony is expanding the Home beta to Europe. They will be contacting "consumers who have been most active on PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store" to take part.
The official Playstation blog has details on Pain trophies.
Braid creator Jonathan Blow says "unnecessary" requirements for Live Arcade games hurt game quality. "I put in a tremendous amount of work meeting all these requirements, when I could have put that work into the actual game, and made it even a little more polished, little bit better." He also admits positives about working with Microsoft, however, including how they bent some rules for him: "For example, the way in which you can launch Braid and be directly in the game -- that is technically illegal if you go by the book, but they saw what I was trying to do and went with it."
Denis Dyack says Too Human can last 50 to 80 hours if you want to get to level 50. But your first playthrough will be "around 15 hours."
This is why government offices have monitor walls. Don't buy that "oh we need all these screens to keep track of important terrorist information" business.
The Madden Curse is so strong it's struck itself, as the cover of Madden NFL 09 will have Brett Favre in a Packers uniform despite the fact that he just got traded to the Jets. EA says they will issue a patch prior to release that puts Favre on the right team, and you'll be able to print out an alternate cover from EA's website if you're really anal.
EA plans to make games based on the ..For Dummies books for the PC and DS, including titles like Solitaire for Dummies and Brain Training for Dummies. Same casual crap, different name.
Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman isn't happy with the "paltry" license fee for music for video games. "I think the [games] industry as a whole needs to take a very different look at this business and participate more fully and in a much more partnership way. And if that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games."
Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde will appear in Guitar Hero World Tour as characters. Along with them will come the Ozzfest venue and songs Crazy Train and Mr. Crowley.
Ubisoft is suing a disc-replication firm they hired, alleging that an employee of the company was able to take home a copy of the PC version of Assassin's Creed and post it to the Internet through "an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence."
Asus has created the Eee Stick, a motion controller very much like the Wii remote for their Eee PCs.
Now Nintendo's got Patrick Stewart is doing DS commercials. "You see I touch this witch and she tries to cover herself but it's too late. I've seen everything. I've seen it all."
Fable 2 has been dated for October 21, and 1up has details on the collector's edition.
Tales of Vesperia is getting a collector's edition too. That means, uh.. it has a soundtrack in it.
The official Braid walkthrough tells you not to use a walkthrough. "Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don't rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!"
Gamespot has a selection of screenshots from the various games shown at Square Enix' ridiculously titled DKΣ3713 event, including this one from Parasite Eve: The Third Birthday. I suppose a gun battle in a wedding dress is still an improvement from the last time Aya was in formal wear.
Forbes has an article on the casual game boom going bust. "The possibility of your doing well is really, really low. Regardless of how well your games sell, you're not going to make a lot of money."
If you've played the demo then you already know this, but Kim Kardashian has joined Peter Moore in the growing list of, uh, celebrities that are selectable as characters in Facebreaker.
In the wake of the murder of a taxi driver in Thailand supposedly inspired by GTA, the Thai Ministry of Health has released a list of the ten most dangerous games. No, "man" isn't on the list.
How They Got Game talks about the ongoing project to archive virtual worlds, and presents video of the final five minutes of EA Land, formerly known as the Sims Online. This is the way the world ends -- not with a bang but a "lost server connection" error.
Capcom is refining Spyborgs "considerably". Christian Svensson calls it "pretty much as significant an overhaul as Dark Void underwent from its first announcement to its first big reveal."
DLC on the 360 has brought in $240 million, with 180 million of that made in the last 12 months.
During a keynote at the Develop conference, Bungie's Damian Isla spoke about Halo's AI systems.
He also mentioned that Bungie has "a lot to learn" from the success of Call of Duty 4. "They did some very innovative things to keep people going and their experience-rewards system was something that we paid a lot of attention to."
Rare senior software engineer Nick Burton talks about the Live Arcade version of Goldeneye. "It's just what happens legally sometimes. Not necessarily with games, but you see it with music and films. Things get locked in this legal limbo. Even most of the parties involved, probably all the parties involved want to solve it. It's such a complex issue."
Jonathan Blow has explained why Braid is priced at 1200 points. "There is a significant possibility that Braid would have been the next Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil (critically acclaimed but nobody played it), even at $10. If that happens at $10 then I am in debt and have to get a job and can’t make games any more. If that happens at $15, maybe I can still make games."
Monday's newspost took a powder following my router exploding and plastic shards flying into my eyes. I'm writing this right now with a speech-to-text converter nipple banana aardvark.
You're probably aware that the Large Hadron Collider is due to begin operations soon and proceed to kill us all. One Reddit user has been forward-thinking enough to send the team a red crowbar.
Thailand's leading game distributor has pulled Grand Theft Auto IV after an 18 year old robbed, stabbed and killed a Bangkok taxi driver while imitating the game.
Soul Calibur IV has debuted at number one on the UK sales chart. Mind you that's the combined formats chart; with games separated out by system, Wii Fit is still on top.
The ESA has received over $280,000 in legal fees from the state of California due to an overturned video game law.
Meanwhile, Stuff Magazine has revealed more Guitar Hero World Tour tracks. Beat It? You.. You just did a search for anything with Eddie Van Halen in it, didn't you
TotalFilm has an interview with Mark Wahlberg with more information on the Max Payne movie. "We’ve been shooting at 1000 frames per second. And I’m not on any wires, either! All the jumping and firing and flipping and landing on my head... That’s all real."
Further responding to Diablo III style complaints from fans, the game's lead designer looks at some fan-altered screenshots of what the game "should" look like and explains why they don't work. "I think one of the things that these lack is if you stuck every one of these re-done shots right next to each other you would not be able to tell that they’re in different areas."
John Carmack says Steve Jobs doesn't care about games, and that's why Apple doesn't "deeply get" gaming. "This is going to be one of those things that I say something in an interview and it gets fed back to him and I'm on his s***head list for a while on that, until he needs me to do something else there. But I think that that's my general opinion."
GamesCampus has announced an open beta for their MMO Asda Story, with the promise that they'll pay you $30 if you don't like it. Naturally it's not quite that simple: You have to hit level 40 by September 4 and then fill out a survey about what you didn't like.
Signs spotted at Best Buy list "Final Fantasy VII" on the PS3 with a date of August 16. The question here isn't so much as to whether this is some big secret release (it's not), but how the screw-up happened. There's nothing remotely Final Fantasy related coming out anywhere near then.
There's a rumor that Phil Harrison left Sony because of the PS4. "He could see he was about to get involved in another PlayStation cycle, and obviously wanted something new."
This week's Live Arcade title is Braid. Despite Microsoft's denial of earlier reports, the game does indeed cost 1200 points.
Microsoft says Avatars will be for E-rated games only for now. "That doesn't mean it won't change -- but this fall they won't be able to blow each other's heads off."
Gears of War 2 will include violence filters that will eliminate cursing and replace blood with sparks.
There will be a Game With Fame event on August 7th in which you can get the chance to play Halo 3 with Hawthorne Heights. I guess bands these days are all named after suburbs?
There's an Xbox Live phishing scam going around in the form of messages from people in your friends list. If you get it, you'll know your friend was dumb enough to think loginxbox.tk was a legitimate site for getting free Microsoft points.
And it just goes downhill from there. Gamasutra hasn't even bothered to do a release column this week, so you'll have to turn to Gamespot for a full list of all the nothing coming out.
