So, Soul Calibur IV comes out this Tuesday. So today. I will be buying it. It’s a little-known secret that I love fighting games–particularly Soul Calibur. At first, I wasn’t too thrilled by the screens I saw of Soul Calibur. The same old, same old–just more glitzy graphics and some finishing moves that looked like they might break the game. But as time has gone by and the release date come closer, I popped in Soul Calibur 3 just for kicks and messed around for a while.

I missed Soul Calibur 3.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind getting a little shot at Darth Vader. No, he shouldn’t be in the game. No, I’m not going to buy the game just for him. But really, playing as Darth Vader and maybe even Yoda is admittedly pretty cool.

So I’ve had a bit of Change of Heart, and my opponent has stolen me for a turn and put me on their side of the field (curse you, Yu-Gi-Oh!).

The problem is, it seems like they’re looking to sacrifice me. And all of us.

From this nice analysis put up by “Mike Masashi Murakami III“, seems like Yoda will be unlockable on the PS3 version and Darth Vader on the 360 version–but only if you scrape up the cash as downloadable content. In other words, you have to go on the PlayStation Store or onto the Xbox Live Marketplace and buy something that’s already technically on your disk.

Now, I have absolutely no qualms with forking out money for stuff I don’t have. That’s the point of buying. But when I need to pay money to get stuff I already own, I get a little pissed off. Example: iPhone. I want to use my songs as ringtones. You’d think if I can put them on my phone and listen to them, I should be able to use them as a ringtone. Wrong.

Instead, I have to actually go onto the iTunes Store and buy them again. Not only that, but I think I need to pay a $1 fee to turn them into ringtones. That’s two dollars–for a sound your phone makes when it rings. You may think it’s not a lot, but two dollars is the price of a quarter gallon of milk. Two dollars is enough to buy some stuff on the PlayStation Store that I don’t own. Whereas these songs? I already freaking have them on my phone. Why can’t I use them?

That’s much the same situation we’re finding in Soul Calibur IV right now. I could pay money in order to be able to unlock Yoda on my game. It’s tempting. But at the same time, why should I have to? He’s already on my disk! Can’t I just, I don’t know, beat the game on Very Hard Mode without dying? What happened to unlocking content based on skill?

Mike Masashi Murakami III is calling for people to boycott the downloadable content for Soul Calibur IV. Maybe they’ll make it free if they see how few people are accessing it. Then again, why would they make it free? It won’t benefit them in the slightest.

So I guess we’re just royally screwed. If you 360 fans want Darth Vader, or if us PS3 owners want Yoda… we’re going to have to deal out the Washingtons. Or maybe even the Lincolns.

Or yen and Euros, if you’re that person.

Share on Facebook

Please listen.

I’m not one. I never was one. People, if I were a Sony fanboy, I wouldn’t carry my DS around everywhere. It’s in my backpack right now. I’m playing Animal Crossing. I have Jam Sessions. I loved Twilight Princess. I have a Triforce badge and I own original copies of SNES Chrono Trigger and Earthbound.

The thing is, Nintendo has let me down. Check this comic out, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Scott Ramsoomair knows it. I know it. We all know it.

And Microsoft has been doing things wrong from the start. Porting games to the PC because you want to sell more copies of your software is not good business for your console. You wouldn’t have to charge for online play if you just let exclusives sell your console. But Microsoft doesn’t care–they seem to just want to crush the competition. They deal out absurd amount of money to turn titles like Final Fantasy XIII and GTA4 multiplatform.

What happened to when we were all calling the Xbox 360 the “Xbox 180″? Why have people overlooked the hardware limitations and the RROD? Have we forgotten how cheap Microsoft has been with us? Are we all going to be hypocrites and pretend we like Halo 3 just because everyone else says they do?

Here’s Halo’s story for you: A race of English-speaking aliens whose ethnic groups don’t look anything alike despite supposedly being the same race put a jihad on humanity for no real reason and follow religious leaders blindly to a giant Ring Planet which is secretly a massive weapon (which, for some reason, is left floating in space, abandoned, and easy to access) designed to starve a race of evil crap that lives on it. A dude with no personality called Master Chief (why have people forgotten how stupid that name was from the original Halo?) blows up the ring planet. Then the aliens invade Planet America and afterwards teleport to another giant weapon, and then there’s seven giant weapons.

Then Master Chief just kicks everyone’s ass, practically alone. There’s also an alien called the Arbiter. He has no other name.

The only reason I’ve stuck with Sony–despite delays, broken promises, lost exclusives and titles that are not as impressive as advertised–is because they still release exclusive content and they still have the best policy and strongest hardware out there, trying to give people more power to play with when developing games, allowing them to do more and more. There’s a lot you can do with a pencil and paper, but Nintendo went for construction paper, and Microsoft turned into a printer. When are people going to realize what painting in three dimensional space can do?

PS3 is my only hope for this Next Generation. Come on, guys. Just try to break out of the box and look at the situation.

Share on Facebook

I’m going to talk about the E3 conferences in order, starting with Microsoft today, Nintendo tomorrow and Sony the day after. I have good and bad things to say about each, and will be doing it in short blurbs.

The Good: Microsoft has things lined up for the future. Good–there’s a world outside Halo 3.

They’re changing their interface to look like Windows Media Center (which I have always hated… but it works similar to Sony’s XMB, so what do you do?) and they’re adding Avatars, which are like an answer to PS3′s Home avatars and Nintendo’s Miis, only resembling Miis a great deal more.

They’ve also got a good lineup of games, including Fable 2 of Peter Molyneaux fame and every other multiplatform game we already know about like Resident Evil and Rock Band 2. Exclusively, they have Gears of War 2 and a few Square-Enix-published games.

The Bad: I was no excited by Avatars at all. While I appreciate companies trying to represent players in a virtual environment and I’m looking forward to Home and everything, I’m starting to become frustrated that it’s becoming a gimmick to incorporate avatar representation. Hopefully Microsoft Avatars will be just as customizeable as Home avatars and will not be as static and bland as Miis have turned out to be.

I didn’t fail to notice the fact that they only had really two big-name exclusives on their lineup. Of the four Square games Microsoft boasted, only two (Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery) will be exclusive–the other two being Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII–the latter announcement which I already expressed my disappointment in. Both exclusive games are only published by Square Enix, developed by tri-Ace.

Also, I feel this being more or less a confirmation of Microsoft’s less-than-honorable payoff to Square. It also details some of Sony’s sneak tactics, which I’ll elaborate on the day after tomorrow.

Lastly, why did they change their interface? I never thought there was an issue with it. I remember actual complaints about the PSN store being the reason it was changed–and to resemble Wii Channels, no less–but giving the Xbox that WMC XMB new interface is rather uncalled for.

Nintendo’s Good and Bad coming tomorrow.

Share on Facebook

So yes, I still read Penny-Arcade. Why? Because while their humor has trailed away from that once gloriously sadistic and satirical jest that I so admired, they’re sometimes still very funny. Even if only I think so.

But they have recently let me know that Bioshock will be available on PS3, finally, while I lose myself in the drudge of final exams and not writing any posts for weeks because my brain just can’t take the pressure (The school year is almost over; bear with me and final exams will be done and I will have NOTHING TO DO save write articles for you saps).

This concludes yet another Xbox game that loses its 360 exclusivity. While I’m not implying the 360 has ever had a guise of an exclusives-strong console, it’s still a little sad to see. I’m just waiting for Mass Effect on PS3 now, and the journey will be complete. There will simply be zero reason left for me ever to buy that thing.

I’m almost kind of diappointed.

Share on Facebook