rareexample

I’ll cut straight to the chase, don’t waste your time or money. Both games equally suck.

I have PS3 Sean White and XBOX360 only Stoked and am incredibly disappointed in both. I’m a big snowboarding game fan and was expecting so much more then these 2 games.  Perhaps my expectations were heightened because of the polish on games like Skate where intuitive controls and realistic environments and physics are key. Guess it doesn’t help that these two titles aren’t from the EA monopoly where budget is king.

Even then, these games both seemed rushed, incomplete, drowning in bugs, poor performance, graphical and collision glitches. It kind of feels like your playing a PS1 game on a PS3 console. It feels dated, cheap and just not fun.

Amped was fun, I finished all the challenges twice and played countless hours of it, I also recall ESPN Snowboarding for the PS2 was quite awesome as well.  Both these games were played for an average of 30 minutes and will now sit on the shelf collecting dust or get traded for 4$ at EBgames.  Damn, I ‘ve got to really remind myself to rent games before I buy them…

I was actually going to do a comparison but there’s no point and I’m just too upset that I wasted $140 on two incredibly dull titles.

FUCKIN GARBAGE | DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY | RENT BEFORE YOU BUY

None, the Wii fuckin sucks. Burn it, trash it, stick it in a stew.

It’s been in my living room untouched for approximately 1.5 years.

Nintendo, the once magnificent leader of games has become nothing but a gimicky marketing focused consumer rip off. The whole thing reeks of cheese and is currently the most dissapointing gaming experience next to the sony PSP.

Do not promote shit people, spend your money on good, not bad.

Perhaps, what isn’t wrong should be the question because not much seems to be clicking over the past 2 years. Everyone’s been blamed from GM’s, coaches, goalies to players. Shit trickles downward, perhaps starting at the top of the pyramid? Mr. Melnyk seems like a great dude but in all honesty how much attention can you pay to your NHL team when you have a dozen other million dollar ventures going at the same time?

I think the team started right from 96 to 04 with Jacques Martin who had the great essential building blocks. His goal was to build solid defense first which he certainly did. Chara, Philips, Volchenkof, Redden (when he was good)etc… Unfortunately, the defense has been ripped out and replaced with rookies who can’t handle the puck or break out of their own zone.

Mistakes

• Trading Hossa and Devries for Heatly. Hossa is consistently a top player in the NHL. Heatly stands around with his stick in the air waiting for a pass and never helps the Defense. Laziest player of the game, highest paid. Doesn’t make sense.
• Ray Emery. He was never the great goaltender everyone thought he was, his defensemen kept his stats up, primarily Volchenkof who made the majority of the big saves. He should have been discarded early as the warning sings were quite apparent to fans let alone staff.
• Loosing Chara instead of Redden. Chara vs Redden, this is a no brainer. A giant warhorse who can move the puck, destroy people’s faces with one punch and has the hardest slaptshot in the league making defense turtle their heads vs a coke head with confidence issues. This one blows my mind, what the fuck are you thinking?
• Gerber. Should have never been on the team let alone the NHL.
• Joe Corvo for Mike Commodore? No words needed.
• Now that all Defense is gone, they get rid of , Wade Redden….
• Moving Murray to GM. Murray as coach took the team to the Stanley Cup playoff.  Murray as GM took the team to the bottom of the league.
• Jason Smith, a two-year, $5.2M contract. He’s ok, but not that ok…
• Throwing Rookie goalies in Net to try and fix the team’s shortcomings. Elliot and Auld, thrown to the wolves. I think the coache’s decision here may have hurt these promising goalies career. Absolutely skilled, much potentials but the absolute lack of defense has to be demoralizing especially when the weight of fixing your team’s moral is put on your shoulders. It’s like ” Hey kid, get in net and see if you can fix this shitty team.”
• Ruutu. 3 years/$3.9 Million. Sens already have a pain in the ass and that’s Chris Neil. His shenanigans are not helping the team’s woes in any way and if you’re going to get a pain in the ass, get one that can fight and not chew on people’s fingers.
• Firing of Coaches.  If a team sucks fire a Coach. If the new Coach can’t fix it, it probably means the team sucks and not the Coach… Throw another Rookie Coach (Clouston) to the wolves

Ok, so enough with the negative, what about the positive?

What or who is working right now for the Ottawa Senators?

Stats wise, nothing or no one.  Most of the team is in the negatives for +/- with the the exception of

• Kuba +6
• Donovan +1
• McAmmond +1
• Carkner, Zack Smith and Peter Regin who are all at 0, primarily because they have yet to play a game.

That’s correct, the rest of the team has negative +/-.

While Elliot and Auld plays as fantastically as possible, I think it’s incredibly unfair to them that the rest of their team sucks asshole. You can only goal tend so well until your brain turns numb from watching your team turn over the puck, create odd man rushes, can’t break out, can’t connect a pass, can’t skate and most of all can’t score. If I was one of these goalies, I’d do whatever it takes to get off the Senators because they’re going to ruin their potential to become great.

So you have 5 players who play well for the team. While it may not show in statistics I think there are a few more that have a good work ethic and deserve to be salvaged. Fisher, Alfie, Vermette, Kelly, Philips and Foligno give their best each game. Unfortunately for some of these guys, their best is still sub par.

Conclusion

You can blame goalies, players, GM’s, coaches all you want, but when a company sucks, it starts with the CEO. If the CEO doesn’t realize that his staff suck, the company dies and this company is a downhill spiral.

Problem with the Sens is the inability to realize that everyone is collectively sucking. It’s not a slump, it’s not the goalie, it’s not the GM, it’s not moral.  I keep hearing ” This team is bursting with talent, what’s wrong?”

It comes down to this. Yes, these players were good, past tense. Many of them are simply no longer good, so this team is no longer bursting with talent. You have to keep the positive, and rid the negative starting with the defense. With rules, contracts, salaries there will be no quick fix to this problem as the only fix is to blow the team up and that takes time. So if you’re a Sens fan like me, we may be waiting quite some time before we see this team get to another Stanley Cup playoff. I’d love to hope, but if you’ve watched the team play this year you’ll know as I do, this is currently a very sad hockey team.

JUST KIDDING!

This is my philosophy, surely someone else’s too, but I say this all the time and people always shrug it off. Well it’s time I explain the method to my madness.

My wife says I look into everything too deeply, I agree with her but this subject is one I can’t help. I always have my ear open to catch those ” Just kidding! “s.

So wtf am I talking about? If you’ve ever had a friend, co-worker, family member say something out of the blue, followed by “Just kidding” then you know what I’m talking about.

Some examples:

• Co-worker introduced to your wife for the first time and says “I’d tap that, hahaha just kidding”
• You get a new haircut and your friend says ” Wow, you look gay, just kidding hahahah”
• You fuckup a project at work and your boss says ” You’re fired, just kidding! hahahaha No really, you’re fired HAAHAH, just kidding”

If all of those jokes have been pulled on you, chances are:

• Your co-worker wants to bang your wife.
• Your new haircut looks gay.
• Your about to get fired.

If you think about it, these “jokes” are probably not jokes, it’s actually the first thing that pops in their head, which is usually the person’s subconscious truthful thought pattern.

Remember that old game “Say the first thing that comes to mind?” I think people just blurt out their first thought and immediately realize “Oops, did I just say that? Better pretend I was joking JUST KIDDING !”

Shit, what do I know, I never studied psychology, but I’m pretty good at calling “Bullshit” on someone. Mind you, when I see someone bullshitting, I usually don’t call out “BULLSHIT”. Hmmm… Come to think of it, I have, but it’s immediately followed up with a “Just kidding.”

So next time someone gives you the ol “just kidding”, pay close attention and be careful with your haircuts.

La Fin.

Reason why I stress unbiased unpaid is most of the game review sites are either drunk as fuck, off the rocker, paid by the game corporation or just plain ain’t an actual gamer. I play games because I love them, played them since my first game of pong, old school with the actual paddles.

I feel compelled to give an honest review here because I’m quite disappointed with the game. I’ve always been a huge fan of Skating games, played and owned them all. Skate 1, best skateboarding game by far. Skate 2, while having much potential, not so much.

Keep in mind that I am playing the PS3 version, so things may be different in the 360 world, which I haven’t tried yet but just may to see if it’s the same mess.

GRAPHICS AND PERFORMANCE

One big downfall is the graphics and performance of this game. I’ve tried setting the game to 720 and 1080 and both resolutions are equally shit. It actually feels like the graphics are from a first gen PS1 console… They’re that bad, pixelated, blurry and drab. The game often stutters and has problems when you start skating fast, or bail. It’s like the PS3 just can’t handle it, which is confusing because the resolution seems so reduced.

ONLINE

Things don’t get better here, if the game can’t perform well offline, add network latency to the mix and you have yourself a powerpoint slideshow. You can barely get a grind off because the game stutters so much, it’s quite sad actually. Especially when you try to do any kind of challenge as a group, you simply can’t because everyone is lagging.

SOUND

The only real positive I found in the game was the music. I loved the tunes but unfortunately you have that stupid douche bag following you around again. This guy says the stupidest fuckin shit you’ll ever hear and if I had a friend who spoke as often and inanely retarded as this guy, he would get many punches to the face. Unfortunately you can’t mute him because he’s a core part of the game. Big downfall.

FUN

I loved skate1 and was hoping for the same fun with this considering it’s cool new features like, moving crap around and getting off your board. Unfortunately because the game “chugs” so much, it’s hard to enjoy, the fact the textures look like shit doesn’t help either. I’m a sucker for games with good graphics. When you get off your skate board, it more frustrating because you feel like a gimp fucktard and the camera angle gets all clunky and trying to turn or look around is less then ideal. The whole point is to reach new places but you can’t even climb anything. Again, quite sad and disappointing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Do I recommend this? Probably not as of today, unless a patch comes out to fix this shit, I see it sitting on my shelf along side Sean White snowboarding which was equally crappy. With EA laying off the black box team who created the game, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I had my hopes up because of the videos, reviews and screenshots from other sites looked quite promising but this is ultimately a let down and misleading cause it’s not the same game I played.

When I look at other screenshots, it’s as though they were provided by EA, hence the EA logo and have some fish eye, photoshop retouched goodness applied to them.

SCREENCAPS

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/sports/skate2workingtitle/review.html?tag=topslot;title;2

http://www.gamershell.com/ps3/skate_2/screenshots.html?id=372404

Checkout a shot taken from my screen, quite a difference… Even the game text is blurry. Notice the poor texture on the garbage bin especially the phone booth,  and the pixelation on my character… Sad.

UPDATE! – Just tried the XBOX360 VERSION and it is much smoother, but again equally dull textures.

UPDATE! – A patch was recently released, easing up on the framerate drag making the game enjoyable but the game is still underperforming in half pipes and pools. When you open the menu, it’s almost like the game secretly tricks your TV to think you’re looking at 1080, but when you open the PS menu, you can see the fonts are all jagged like the PS is actually in 720 or lower.