While I’m a little disappointed Castle ‘Crash’ers or XBOX live (not sure who to blame here) was choking last night, I’m not discouraged. My first experience with Castle Crashers was amazing amidst a flurry of XBOX live connection issues. No problem, I just mashed my way through single player and gained some levels in preparation for future online stability

I can only describe this game as Golden Axe + Mario World + Smash Brothers + Your favorite MMOPG, mashed into a nicely packaged 2d action game with a ton of content, features, and game types.

There’s even a game mode where you eat food. I’m not sure why, but you know… sometimes you’ve had enough head-bashing, and want to own an eating competition, right?

The graphics are very nice, the art style is awesome and seems to be applied very consistently and elegantly throughout the various game types and levels. The writing (or lack there of) is a little random but it is humorous, and keeps me entertained. The style/theme just seems to work. Technical issues aside, the game play is smooth, actions are precise and enemies, items, and players seem to interact as you would expect from a quality 2d scroller over XBOX live. Some moments can get a little hectic, yet, you still have a handle on the action. It is the pinnacle of button mashing. Controlled chaos. A wonderful thing.

A good selection of game types is always good. Multiplayer FTW. You can play 4 players locally or over XBOX live in any combination. You can play though the levels in co-op fashion or duke it out in an arena brawl, smells good to me.

There are 4 different types of arena matches, so plenty of options to mess around with.

I especially enjoy the different bosses, and how the encounters play out. Each boss seems to take a different approach to kicking your ass, and does so repetitively until you find a niche. The game feels difficult without a ridiculous learning curve, though I’m not sure how I’ll feel once I’ve played through it a bunch of times and leveled up a variety of characters. It has to be done though, I’m going to have to unlock all the combo’s, weapons, and magic. So far it’s just too much fun!

I can see Castle Crashers getting a little repetitive at the end of the day, but it will be well worth 1,200 MS points before that is a reality. For now I will let my eyes bleed… Just got a light saber, w00t! See you at the round table. Shotgun Blue Knight!

This is an exclusive top-secret sneak-peak into the various tools and machinery we use to produce all those fine t-shirts you get to enjoy on a regular basis. In fact if you’re reading this, and looking at the photos, there’s probably armed men heading to your house right now.

Mr. Eliminator eliminates screens? I have no idea what that machine eliminates, but suffice to say it’s surrounded by a lot of screens (the wooden stacks).

This is no ordinary tape gun. As you can see its been battle damaged on a few occasions and bears the scars of our epic struggle to repel foreign barbarians. It’s the Japanese packing specialist’s second favorite tool of destruction, and his number one favorite tool of taping things.

The Conveyor Belt of Doom. We’ve tried to surf this thing a few times, but only after a few terrific wipeouts did we learn that it’s probably more advantageous as a tool for moving rather than people.

Big Daddy printer. This is the automatic press that can spit out shirts faster than you can smell the ink fumes invading your lungs, only to cause popcorn lungitis after years of repeated exposure to miniature paint particles! As long as you position the shirts properly this sucker can spit out about sixty thousands shirts an hour. Give or take sixty thousand.

More lonely screens. These things take up too much damn space.

Mount SplitReason. Of-course we still need the raw goods to print our designs on, and because we’re only in the business of treating our grown-up employees like slaves, someone else still has to dedicate the child labor to produce our fine garments. (fact check: 99% of our shirts are made in North America by adult slaves, don’t worry kids we sort of have a conscience)

The key is not to disturb Mount SplitReason as its prone to box avalanches, and if you’re caught up in one of those you may be trapped under a metric tonne of cotton and cardboard; your only hope of survival, eat your way out and pray that your digestive tract realizes this a life and death situation.

Just look at all that beautiful ink. It’s like a pantone color palette had one too many to drink and proceeded to pay homage to the porcelain gods.

A solitary screen awaiting a reprint order of the Wiicked or TetraGrammaton Cleric design.

Mr. Eliminator (aka the dryer), awaits for someone to feed him some t-shirts he can scorch.

Forgot to post about these a few days ago… so here you go, new cotton for covering up yer belly!

Albeit short, the demo for Force Unleashed left me wanting more. I mean in this in the sense of: “I want to play the full version of this game now! kthxbye!”. Graphically, from what I’ve seen it’s not a stunner, but the game-play seems quite solid. There’s just something so deliciously satisfying about playing a bad guy that perhaps that’s clouding my objectivity. Then again, I don’t know why more games don’t go down this path.

The control scheme has a slight learning curve, but overall becomes less unwieldly with every minute that passes. What really has me excited however is that there seems to be a very large and open combination of moves you can perform with your Sith apprentice. It’s just that extra bit of attention to deepening the combat experience that distinguishes a game from turning into a button mashing slog fest and one where you enjoy each fight for its unique way to surprise you with how you eventually dispatched your enemies. My only minor complaint is the now played out context sensitive cut scenes. Whose idea was this to put into games? Press button whatever at appropriate time to trigger cut scene removing all enjoyment out of defeating a tough enemy. I’m so sick of these. Just let me fight and take down the boss my way!

Overall however, I’m pretty psyched about playing this one now, the middle of September can’t come soon enough, I highly recommend you at least try the demo.

Another appearance from our Japanese Packing Specialist, he can be a little stubborn.

There’s been some chatter recently on a few gaming blogs regarding the possibility of including competitive video gaming in the Olympics. Thankfully this has been for the most part dismissed by the throngs of fanboys as being completely retarded. A sentiment I completely support. But hang on there for a second chipmunk…

If things as ludicrous as Show Jumping and Skeet shooting (I’m sorry those are not sports) are somehow deemed Olympic worthy, then is there some outside possibility that as interactivity with video games continues to rise, ala the Wii route, that video games may one day be deemed as a sufficient combination of hand-eye coordination and physical prowess to be included? Can video games ever get to the level where we’re bouncing off walls in some holodeck like structure and compete for the gold medal in FPS dodging or RPG speed-running? Something to think about, as retarded as it may seem right now.

So it’s been a couple of weeks now since Geometry Wars 2 came out and the general consensus which I happen to agree with is that it’s been a terrific update to the first game. This story however is not about my futile attempts at trying to beat Kenny’s inhuman scores (he’s like the Michael Phelps of Geometry Wars), but rather a look at the various geometrically malevolent enemies one must face in this seizure-inducing carnival of shapes and lights.

Let’s begin with one of the more palatable bastards in this game. The floating double cube (note: I’m making up my own names for these):

The Floating Double Cube is probably one of the less annoying shapes, as far as double-cubed floating shapes go that is. It merrily floats, almost seemingly randomly throughout the playing field and on the odd occasion you’re running for your life and happen to slam into it, it most often evokes the emotion of: “OMFG, I can’t believe I just ran into that stupid thing”.

Cubes of Circling Stupidity. It’s not bad enough that these things take the most ridiculous unpredictable circular patterns while chasing you, resembling a drunken mosquito, once you’ve actually hit one, it splits into two smaller circling cubes that are seemingly even faster and more vicious than their blown-up parents. Go to hell you purple bastards!

Swarms of Diamonds. That almost sounds like a new playing card I just invented. These things are pretty dumb as far as maniacal geometric AI shapes are concerned. They do however possess strength in numbers as they are often seen aligning themselves with their three zillion buddies and swarming your ass. It’s like the Zerg rush except they’re all diamond shaped and probably produce less drool.

Airplanes of Doom - There is no other shape I loathe more in this game than these orange fucktards. They run relentlessly in a horizontal or vertical fashion across the screen, often times in waves along with their fucktard buddies ready to decimate anything in their path. I equate these enemies to that retarded kid you had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting when he ran into you headlong while wearing his safety helmet at recess.

If the fucktard Airplanes of Doom are the enemies at which hands I die the most, it’s these Ultra Pests of Green that are easily the most annoying shape. Yeah they’re pretty dumb and you can corner and fool them by using their avoidance of your fire against them, but when it’s just a random few of these floating around, you’re very often tempted to just nuke the living daylights out of them and then yell awkwardly at your TV while friends and relatives look at you disapprovingly: “YEAH TAKE THAT YOU GREEN ASSHOLES!”

Snakes - I have nothing more creative to name these things and I imagine that’s what most people call them anyway. Every time I am sent to the cold and dark grave of space by one of these things I am tempted to concoct some sort of newfangled device that will FTP a donkey punch to the game’s designer, Stephen Cakebread. The key with these things is to hit them early and hit them hard, otherwise they’ll pwn your ass harder than your strap-on wielding best friend.

And speaking of assholes. Gravity Wells are the detonating anuses of this particular game. I suppose that suggests that other games I’ve played have detonating sphincters as well, but perhaps this is just a dark seeded fantasy. Once activated, they begin to suck in other enemies (much like real assholes), and from there you better put them out of their misery quick. Otherwise you’re going to have a bad case of explosive diarrhea on your hands, and well, no-one wants that, especially when the poo is deadly and just generally bad for high-scores.

And to finish off we have the Blob. I’ve only managed to encounter this enemy in the Sequence mode of the single-player game since I think I suck too badly at the other modes to have seen this particular one yet. Think of this enemy as that fat kid whose layers of digested Snickers and Lays potato chips you needed to part before you could do any real damage in a schoolyard brawl. Then again, if you possess a bomb while encountering this enemy I suggest you use it. It’s like in a real fight with a fat kid, when faced with overwhelming waves of sweaty lard, often the best option is to go with the tactical nuke approach, a good swift kick in the balls.

I’m not a Rock Band player, I think it’s the sound of sticks banging on plastic, seems to have a nails-on-chalkboard effect on my senses. That and it’s just more fun killing dudes. If I did play, however, I would own these for sure.

I have no idea why that SNL celebrity Jeopardy reference crept into the title of this post, but it somehow felt appropriate! I’m here today to boast about my Xbox Live gamer-score. I’ve now officially become a member of the 20,000 club (as opposed to those other n00bs that run this site that haven’t even cracked the 4000 mark!), and here’s some highlights:

1. I got my Xbox 360 in March of 2006. (Jesus, has it been that long!?).
2. I’ve played a total of 98 games (20 XBLA games and 78 retails ones)
3. I’ve achieved a whopping grand total of 100% gamer-score on only 2 of these games! How pathetic is that?!
4. Received a total of 944 achievements.
5. Thrown my controller probably at least fifteen times.
6. Played Geometry Wars 2 way too much recently in vain attempt to beat Kenny’s stupid scores.

/boast complete. 30k here I come! And yes, I know that there are freaks like this, this and this that completely obliterate my gamer score but I do have a life you know.

This is pretty simple. It’s a screen shot and caption contest. Everyone and their cousin owns a copy of Halo 3, with a Bungie.net profile of ownage, so we thought we’d give your screen shots a chance to blow off some dust and let you showcase your career highlights. We have some sickly awesome Halo figures to give away, and an “I *SHOTGUN* Noobs” t-shirt to ice the cake. Winner takes all.

All you need to do is email your screen shot to brian@splitreason.com, with a chat bubble or caption included. Here’s an example:

Thermal underwear FTL.

The contest will be closed in a few weeks, or when I receive enough screen shots to shut it down. The SR crew will review each screen shot and select a winner, and results will be posted on the blog when the contest has come to an end. Good luck, Spartans.

Today was a good day for most of us, Friday usually is. Today was not a good day for our courier.

It definitely pays to have a Ninja in your warehouse.

One of our customers sent in a photo of himself while wearing our Shat Happens t-shirt getting to meet the MAN himself, captain Kirk, a.k.a William Shatner:

This may be the year my PS3 graduates from Blu-ray player to next generation console. While I have high hopes for the PS3, I’ll stick with the XBOX 360 when it comes to non-exclusives. The obvious reason: XBOX Live is better than PSN and well worth the $60 bucks per year that everyone complains about. Bitch if you want, I don’t have a problem paying money for a quality service that is only going to improve over time.



So that leaves me waiting for an exclusive I care about in order to log serious game time, and Metal Gear Solid 4, Heavenly Sword, or Kill Zone doesn’t make the cut.

Socom: Confrontation, however, looks like it will. I logged serious hours with Socom/Socom II on the PS2, and at the time, found it challenging to give my time to another shooter. Socom was an amazing title, one of the best shooters I have ever played. It has a great cover system, taking full advantage of a 3rd person perspective and offering controls that are both intuitive and effective. The maps were well designed; there was a strong array of weapons and player customization, a clan system, and seriously dedicated and competitive online population/community.

Socom was the first game I ever played where you had smoke grenades that were actually effective. I still smile reminiscing about the heavily fortified houses I used to smoke out, and the players I owned from the security of my smoke screen. Night vision FTW. I also really enjoyed the difference in game play strategy depending on your arsenal, there was a big gap between a gunner and sniper… if you wanted to stack kills with different weapons, then you had to master different styles of play. It was a good variety that kept the game interesting for a long time.

News regarding the next-gen incarnation of the game is exciting, and I’m happy to hear they haven’t turned focus away from teh hardcorez. They’ve moved forward with a clan system packed full of features: ladders, leaderboards, clan uniforms, tournaments, etc… Socom: Confrontation will be an online-only title, much like Warhawk (PS3) or Shadowrun (XBOX 360), and I couldn’t be happier to hear they will not waste time and resources on a single player campaign, sacrificing the potential for a cutting edge multiplayer experience. I’m also glad to hear they’ve included what sounds like a very elaborate character customization feature, so you’ll be able to build more of a personal identity this time around. The graphics look remarkable at first glance, and I’m quite certain they will impress when the game hits the market.

I can’t wait, and I hope you’re as excited as I am. Could this be one of the top selling shooters this year? Watch out COD4, you’re about to get sniped.

Sounds like release could be in September, fingers crossed. Check out the E3 review at IGN for more info.

If you’ve ever ordered a t-shirt from us you’ve heard the tale of our Japanese Packing Specialist. He keeps a pretty low profile, which is suggested for any Ninja who has recently migrated to North America. Western society isn’t very accepting of assassins, and tend to treat them more like sex offenders. We don’t really agree with that, so we’ve brought ol’ JPS on, given him a place to rest his head, and a full-time job. Well… it was supposed to be a full-time job, somehow he manages to pull, pack, wrap, and ship 3 days of orders in the amount of time it takes your heart to beat once, but who’s got a stop watch, not me.

We are damn proud to have JPS on our team, he does a remarkable job. We decided to give him more of a voice this year, so if you’re not a schmuck, and actually give a shit about the ever-depleting population of ancient Ninjas, then show JPS some love. Maybe he can even teach you trick or two.

I didn’t have a chance to talk about this on the recent podcast as we both ran out of time and I also felt it a little early to discuss considering I had only completed a level or two. But now that I’m thoroughly annoyed, the tirade can begin! I speak of the oddly late (when did the last movie come out?) The Bourne Conspiracy game. It takes place almost entirely within the confines of the plot that runs through the first movie (Bourne Identity), a mix of replaying actual scenes that took place in the movie and additional fill-in scenarios new to the mythos. A good example of this when you are charged with slogging your way through a mission involving the assassination of Wombosi, which fans of the first movie will know was never actually played out.

Being a huge fan of the series, I would have normally given this game a healthy heaping pile of praise considering it met my expectations in the areas of story-telling, gameplay, control scheme, combat and the other usual suspects a game is judged on such as graphics, audio and presentation. My only gripe of-course is that none of the actor likeness’ were used nor were any of their actual voices lent to the game. That aside, this would have been a mostly positive outburst, but then I ran into the character Clive Owen so lovingly portrays in the first movie. Again, fans of the series will know that he plays one of the Treadstone assassins and is at one point charged with killing Jason Bourne and presumably his girlfriend Marie. In the game, he appears as a mission boss on the second to last mission.

This is a boss fight that would have been immensely enjoyable where it not for the genius that decided it would be a good idea to stage it in a burning barn which apparently will fall down on your head in exactly two minutes unless you defeat this boss in under that time. Now, before you fire up your favorite email program or make a comment on this blog telling me that I’m a n00b and I suck at video games, just stop right there. I’ve been playing video games for a long time. I’ve had my share of frustrating boss battles and I would say that without a doubt I’ve gotten through most of them eventually. This boss fight however belongs in it’s own special category of pants-on-head retarded. It’s one of those fights that will not only have you throwing your controller in despair over and over again, it will genuinely ruin all that fun you had in the previous nine levels once your frustration level has boiled over to where mine currently resides.

Games that go from being easy, to mildly challenging, to FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE in the span of one level are growing in number and frequency it would seem. I’m not sure if this is an industry trend, but I’m starting to suspect that conversations like this at far too many developers are starting to occur:

Bob: Listen Jim. We’ve got a problem. As a result of our constant nose picking and incessant mid-day naps, we only have six hours of gameplay right now and the release date is just around the corner!

Jim: Yeah we’re pretty screwed.

Bob: Not to worry Jim, I’ve thought of a solution! All we have to do is crank the shit out of the difficulty on this boss fight. That will add at least four more hours of gamers smashing their heads on the wall until some magical combination of superhuman button fingering allows them to beat the boss. Their hands might be forever crippled but at least we is gonna get paid!

I really wanted to love this game, it had me at “go kill this dude”, but after having failed this boss fight at least 30 times and my hands now more closely resembling raisins rather than hands, I’m basically going to give up on it for a while. There may be a time I give it another shot, but for now, and at least to me it will remain the Bourne Impossibility.

The long awaited series 2 Halo 3 figures have now arrived at SplitReason HQ. These things are beyond awesome, you won’t be disappointed if you pick one of these up:

Another episode of Paused, the official SplitReason.com podcast is now upon us! Here’s what you should expect to hear:

Aside from pants, which naturally should go on your head, we now have three new other things for you to adorn your globe with, check ‘em out:

More goodness flows from the machines that lay ink on top of cloth and stuff, here you go, we know your cotton quotient is low, enjoy!!

All of us charismatic stallions here at the SplitReason lair of shits and giggles are currently sporting raging boners about the fact that we’re now in the business of taking your money as a result of your Zero Punctuation addiction. The good folks at The Escapist have decided that they wanted to sell some merchandise and we gladly obliged them. If you’ve been living under your fat uncle Bob for the last year or so and don’t know what Zero Punctuation is you should probably check it out and learn all about the best video review series on the Interweebs.

In the meantime, take a look at these stonking great t-shirts and others at the official The Escapist and Zero Punctuation store.