Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on December 10th, 2008
Saw gets axed, No Aliens for Sigourney Weaver, and Age of Conan tanking - Welcome to the column that is considering slicing its wrists if it has to do any more writeups on remakes of Nintendo 64 games known as Dare to Play the Game.
Finally, I got my 120gb hard drive for my 360 on Monday night. There were a few messups in communication between the third party seller and myself but everything was resolved when I received the package. It was opened, however the hard drive, transfer kit, cd and manual all looked brand new as described on Amazon. I hooked it up to my 360 and started to transfer my files. Took about a little over half an hour. Then when it was finished, it said the curious message of “Some files were not transferred…they have been deleted”. Oh lord. So I replace the old hard drive with the new and power it on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 7th, 2008
Most women would consider Matthew McConaughey a hot guy. Hubba, hubba, the whole nine yards. Typically when he stars in a new motion picture, women flock to see the show for him to walk around for ninety minutes preferably with his shirt taken off and speaking romantic to some leading lady. For those ninety minutes, those women wish that they were in his arms, they were in his touch. But what if Matthew was portraying an out of work treasure hunter, broken down on his luck and owing some guy named Bigg Bunny a whole lot of money? I think this will all depend on whether his shirt is coming off or not.
On July 24th, 1715 in celebration of the marriage of King Phillip of Spain, the largest treasure fleet in maritime history set sail from Havana, Cuba. The 500 million dollars worth of gold, silver and jewels came to be known as the Queen's Dowry. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to consummate the marriage, King Philip ordered the fleet to sail at the worst time of the year. And so, the great galleons, heavy with their sparkling cargo, sailed straight into a massive hurricane and were never seen again.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on December 3rd, 2008
Dominating 360’s, GTA IV making mistakes, and Escapist Gaming - Welcome to the column with copy protection that can only be decrypted with sharp wit or a giant pair of “hackers” known as Dare to Play the Game.
Last week was Thanksgiving. I ate lots of turkey, I ate lots of pie. The combination made me sleep until well today. No, okay okay not really. However, I had no desire to go out to Black Friday and found myself sitting at home for most of the weekend. Instead, I did what a lot of Americans did, I shopped some online. There were deals to be had and I didn’t have to punch a grandma or trample over somebody at Wal-Mart either. So, I’m trying to wrap up my Christmas shopping as soon as possible and not fall into a trap of not being able to provide something to the people I have to shop for.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 1st, 2008
My experience with the UFC is more of a classic one. I remember watching various pay per views on DVD and VHS of the old matches back when they had 1 night tournaments and everybody was either talking about Gracie, Shamrock or Severn. Recently, I had started watching random fights on the Spike Network to pass the time when I wasn’t interested in WWE or TNA wrestling. However, the one thing that got me most interested in UFC or MMA as of late is one man. No, not Kimbo Slice. That man would be Brock Lesnar. The man who would came to UFC to prove he was a true fighter and put away of those rumors that existed about wrestlers and not really being able to compete. UFC 87 featured Brock vs Heath Herring and a Welterweight championship fight among 8 other matches on the card. Was it time for the “Next Big Thing”?
UFC 87 Seek & Destroy -August 9th, 2008. This event took place from the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ten matches were on the card leading to a packed evening of fights. Many matches highlighted the card. In Lightweight action we had Kenny Florian against Roger Huerta. Huerta prior to the fight looked unstoppable and a force to be reckoned with. In heavyweight action we had Brock Lesnar who had suffered a loss to Frank Mir in a prior ppv due to mostly inexperience. He was facing the “Texas Crazy Horse” Heath Herring who had been coming off a victory against Cheick Kongo. Kongo incidentally was also on the card against Dan Evensen, fresh off some wins in BODOG.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 1st, 2008
TNA Wrestling is currently a very exciting place in the world of wrestling. Two factions have formed: Main Event Mafia and the Frontline. MEM is five former & current world champions and they are a deadly combination not seen since the heyday of the NWO. They want to teach respect to the other faction known as the Frontline, composed of TNA Originals and young upstarts who have worked their tail off and believe that the MEM should step aside and pass the torch to them. However, one forgets what led to these two factions forming. Three pay-per-views that happened from July 2008 to September 2008 laid the groundwork of the current state of affairs in TNA. Victory Road, Hard Justice and No Surrender.
Victory Road 2008 – July 13th, 2008. In the blistering heat of Houston, Texas, two events were firmly on the minds of the TNA fans. The World X Cup and whether Samoa Joe could truly show he was a credible World Champion. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were also intertwined in a brutal war over their mutual love interest: So Cal Val. In the tag team division, LAX (Homicide & Hernandez) was trying to ward off Beer Money (Robert Roode & James Storm) for the gold. Taylor Wilde was fresh off beating Amazing Kong weeks before the women’s Knockout title and Christian Cage, AJ Styles & Rhino were busy dealing with Kurt Angle and Team 3d.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on November 26th, 2008
In the Army, Fable II DLC & The Size of 360 Games - Welcome to the column that tried to copy itself to the Xbox 360 drive and realized it was 20 gigs (19.99 of which was pictures of Morgan Webb) known as Dare to Play the Game.
Last week, I mentioned the fun subject of storage. My dvd spinner arrived and was assembled on Monday. On Tuesday, we took the liberty of splitting up my current spinner so they would be even. It looks much better and as promised I have put a for trade list on the forum. Here is the link. Maybe we’ll get some pictures up if you folks are interested in that type of thing. Now, I’ve gotten in the habit of seriously looking at my game room and can see myself consolidating with maybe a couple more spinners. They are so easy to build and are usual better built than those media shelves you can buy from Target, Walmart, etc. Perhaps a project for down the road.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on November 24th, 2008
The original Fallout 3 was held in the firm hands of Interplay Entertainment under the working title of Van Buren. Developed by Black Isle Studios, that title never saw the light of the day when Interplay Entertainment went bankrupt and laid off the entire PC development team in late 2003. In 2007, Interplay sold the rights to the Fallout franchise to Bethesda who had developed the popular Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda scrapped the original code and worked on the project from scratch. It paid homage to many Fallout concepts and Fallout 3 saw gold in 2008. It was a long five years between the layoff of the original creators and the company who ultimately got the right to release the game. Was it worth the wait?
Graphics
The first thing that might strike you in the graphics department when you play Fallout 3 is that one never realized there are so many different shades of bleak. Shades of grey, black, brown & white are very prevalent here. But the good news is that the graphics are extremely detailed. People are easily seen and the darkness can sometimes be your best friend. The animation on a clean head shot and having the head roll down the hallway is one of the most satisfying pieces of graphic footage I’ve seen in a long time. My only real complaint is that once you get into the vast wasteland, the graphics while great tend to blend together into one continuous rock quarry.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on November 19th, 2008
Real Pirates, Street Fighter IV Arcade, & Who exactly owns a particular piece of Software? - Welcome to the column that holds all rights and privileges to the work contained within, except there really is no work involved within known as Dare to Play the Game.
When you love a hobby such as video games and collecting dvds, you often find yourself running into problems. One of these problems is storage. The holidays are fast approaching and that spinner that is holding the majority of my dvd collection is filling up fast. The only things it doesn’t hold is some random TV sets that sit in a shelf towards the back of the family room and the adult dvds which *caugh*, sit in the game room, away from people who might frown upon such things that might visit us. The normal dvds are filling up so fast, that I am probably going to buy another spinner pretty soon. Once I figure out the shade and size of my current one. I often go through the labor buying dvds and putting them in a shelf above my computer where I will take forever to catalog them into my database before figuring out how to fit them into my spinner.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on November 14th, 2008
In 2004, the world received a top notch role playing game in the form of the original Fable for first Xbox console. It promised a lot of things, ideas and concepts that were sure to revolutionize the gaming world. The crew at Lionhead studios delivered on most of those promises and the game went well over double platinum. Among many things it promised, one of these was a true concept of good and evil. Every action has a reaction whether positive or negative. It was this concept and others that were expanded when it came to the making of Fable II. The game is dubbed by its designer Peter Molyneux as a game that even non-gamers should be able to enjoy. To be honest, he doesn’t even want traditional game reviewers to review the game. Lucky for him, tradition and me broke ties a long time ago.
Graphics
The original Fable was a beautiful game only held back by the power of the console. For Fable II, the graphics are improved dramatically from the beautiful towns to the countryside to the little characters like you and me. For those who downloaded Fable II Pub Games or stayed close to the Fable web site were introduced to dozens upon dozens of breath taking art. Of course, other companies had done this only to see none of it make the final product. I’m happy to report that these shots and more found its way into the final product and it really shows the attention to detail that the artists and designers took in constructing the look of this game. This is really some of the best graphics I have seen in a game, period. The only minor complaint I have is that the subtitles for the game are a bit small.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on November 12th, 2008
Losing Suits, Being Less Ambitious & Outgrowing Games? - Welcome to the column that would only outgrow games if Obama admitted himself to be a level 70 Tauren Shaman known as Dare to Play the Game.
Tuesday was Veteran’s Day, hopefully most of you took a moment to observe what those brave men and women did for the United States of America. I offer the following piece of courage for those who might have missed the day. To be honest, it snuck up on me as I had forgotten about the holiday until late last week. But we owe them a debt of gratitude. Even though we might loathe most of the nation’s politicians, we know that these fine people still believe that this is a country worth fighting for. We salute them.
