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Playing UFC Undisputed w/ Houston Alexander

This is the result of my playthrough of UFC 2009 Undisputed with Houston Alexander, last week’s cover story in the Omaha City Weekly. Here’s a link to the review at OCW’s Web site. The previous post has a good image of the cover.

“UFC 2009 Undisputed”
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Yuke’s Osaka
System: Xbox 360, PS3
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Released: May 19, 2009

Despite being prominently featured in the game, Omaha’s own mixed martial arts fighter Houston Alexander hadn’t played “UFC 2009 Undisputed” until we invited him to the City Weekly offices to check it out a couple weekends ago.

“It freaked me out when I saw my brother playing it,” Alexander said. “Wouldn’t it freak you out if you saw yourself up there?”

Houston Alexander playing UFC 2009 Undisputed

It probably would. Hell, I was a little unnerved just watching digital Houston on his back taking blows to the face.

“They’ve got everything pretty accurate,” Alexander said. “This game is pretty damn accurate.”

Got the cover story last week!

So a couple weeks ago I got the chance to play UFC 2009 Undisputed with Houston Alexander in the Omaha City Weekly Office. Turned out to be a pretty cool story and the Cover Story last week. Here’s a link to the review.

An interview with NCAA Football 10 designer Ben Haumiller

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with NCAA Football 10 designer Ben Haumiller. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our discussion.

Cornfed Gamer – You only have one year between releases of NCAA, how do you balance the time between adding new features and improving the core, on the field experience?

NCAA Football 10 has substantive improvements to trusted formula {review}

Here’s another sneak peak of my review for the Omaha City Weekly this week:

Budgets are tight, and this game comes out every year. You need to know if it’s worth it to drop the dough on the newest iteration.

Bottom line: yes it is. There’s so many improvements this year that I’m having a hard time squeezing them all in to this review. NCAA Football 10 has many substantive enhancements to both the on-the-field action and new gameplay modes.

On the field, you will find an additional layer of strategy with the game planning feature. It has 11 offensive and defensive keys where you can set your players to react aggressively or conservatively. For example, if you tell your defense to focus on stripping the ball, you will create more fumbles at the expense of more facemask penalties. Telling your offensive line to hold their blocks longer will give you more time in the pocket and potentially more holding calls.

Certain offensive plays are linked together, allowing you to run one play to set up the other. Once a play is 100 percent set up, the defense is more likely to bite on the play action and you’re more likely to bust a large gain.

Delayed gaming (xkcd)

From xkcd.com

A game-themed comic from one of my favorite Web comic sites! Click to see a larger version.

Virtual bank heist pays for son’s real-life medical bills

EVE Online

I don’t play any MMO games, but every time I hear a story from the EVE Online universe I am intrigued.

EVE Online, set in humanity’s space-faring future, has 300,000 subscribers. Players can organize corporations and use underhanded tactics to lie, cheat and steal their way to ingame fortunes.

The strategy is so deep that working banks have emerged within the EVE Online universe. Banks that accept deposits, make loans and issue bonds.

In a story that highlights these troubling economic times as much as the nature of the game, an executive at one of these banks embezzled 200,000,000,000 of the game’s currency, causing panic and a run on the bank.

Fight Night Round 4 {review]

Here’s another sneak peak at my review for the Omaha City Weekly this week:

Fight Night is like sushi, oysters or stinky French cheese: it is an acquired taste. It is a complex game with a non-traditional control scheme. Once you master the controls, however, you will relish the versatility the scheme provides. The challenge is hanging in long enough to reap the massive rewards in this game.

Fight Night Round 4

If you are a Fight Night fan, Fight Night 4 delivers enough improvement to justify upgrading. First, the character models have never looked better. Realistic muscles move under the fighters’ skin and beads of sweat are atomized with every punch.

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker now a collector’s item

Moonwalker

Michael Jackson’s role as a musical pioneer is being examined at all levels today at the news of his passing. But what you may not know is Jackson was somewhat of a pioneer in the video game industry as well.

Moonwalker is a game where Michael Jackson uses magical dance movies to rescue young children from a mobster. It was released in 1990 and based on the movie of the same name. The game was co-developed by Jackson himself, which has to be among the earliest examples of a world-class star collaborating with developers on a video game. Jackson even went on to work with Sega again on the music/rythym game Space Channel 5

Jackson doesn’t walk across the screen in this beat-em-up, he dances and glides. His attacks are taken from his dance repertoire. When he does a dance kick, magical energy comes out of his foot, knocking down whoever is in the way. His special attack captivates his enemies with his moves and causes them to join Jackson in a choreographed dance number. Of course they can’t keep up with the Smooth Criminal, and dance to their deaths.

Micheal’s pet chimp, Bubbles, is even in the game as a powerup that transforms Jackson into a laser-toting robot.

Wow! Now that’s a game.

And as of this writing, copies of the game are being auctioned on Ebay and Amazon for up to $300. The actual arcade cabinet is also listed on Ebay for $1,500.

The Life Cycle of a Videogame {Gamespy}

Via gamespy.com:

GameSpy: The Life Cycle of a Videogame – Page 1.