Mailbag 6-04

Ivan goes off to gamble and Ed answers some sensitive questions.

Well folks... I'm off to Vegas to binge on Texas Hold 'Em, free bourbon, and expensive, unscrupulous strippers. I'll be back on Sunday night to ensure as normal a Monday publish as is possible, but I am ending this week with a big fat smile one my face.

I'm pretty damn happy with our publish over the last few days. We tried some new features and layouts, reviewed Front Mission exclusively, laughed at Transformers, Broke Modern Combat movies, blew out Third Age, broke news on the next Lord of the Rings game, and now we're topping it off with Jeremy's substantially awesome PS2 Kingdom: The RPGs of 2004 feature. Not too bad considering this is the slowest time of the year for the industry.

So please, please, please have some fun this weekend. If you don't have anything new on PS2 worth playing, check out Full Spectrum and Riddick on Xbox. Both games are solid. Also, there are plenty of cool DVDs to enjoy so long as you do not purchase Starship Troopers 2 under any circumstances. I bought mine the other day... Want a free copy of Starship Troopers 2? Send me an email (hopefully one that contains a good PS2 oriented question) and if I like yours enough, I'll mail you the movie free of charge, promise.

-- Ivan "Deez Nuts" Sulic

Copying Games for Reference
That new "trick" for the PS2 that can hold games. Isn't that pretty illegal? I mean, it wounds really awesome, but couldn't someone just rent a game, load it onto their hard drive, and then return it?

-- Jamie

Ivan Responds: If I'm not mistaken (which I could be because I rarely keep up with legal trends), copying media of any kind for archival / back-up purposes is still not illegal. Thus, this company can get away clean with their product. For men and women of honor, buying games or copying their existing games onto the system to achieve faster load times is a pretty awesome prospect, but we're obviously not all of honor.

We're trying to get this setup here. Hopefully we'll be able to offer a full review shortly.

Shockwave vs. Jetfire
I wonder, in the sidebar of the article, Transformers vs. Transformers, it says "which Megatron is king?" and shows a picture of Transformers Armada Megatron and Transformers G1 Shockwave. My brain says neither. But my past says Shockwave from the American Transformers comic books, the first series from Marvel Comics, not the pussy Shockwave from that dreadful television series (1984-1987) that I had to watch every damn day, even if I had seen it before, that horrid mess of a comercial disgused as a TV show.

Where's my G1 re-releases of Jetfire and Shockwave? (could you forward that to Hasbro?)

-- Dave

Ivan Responds: First, I put Shockwave in there because I just really, really like Shockwave, and his was also one of the few pieces of art I could find that was long enough and narrow enough to fit in that specific sidebar area.

And by the by, you are awesome. Few people remember the animosity between Shockwave, interim ruler of Cybertron, and Jetfire (who looked like a Robotech Veritech fighter). They were also two of the cooler Transformers around.

Hopefully Transformers 2 from Melbourne House will resurrect them. Melbourne House, give us old school Shockwave and Jetfire and give them to us now!

HDD Without Final Fantasy
I am not an RPG fan, nor will I EVER play Final Fantasy XI. I have seen it and I am unimpressed, but Resident Evil Outbreak looks nice...

So my question is: When you format the HDD, will it bne useable for game saves without installing the FFXI and all the other junk it comes with? Or do I have to fill it back up with that useless game?

Ivan Responds: It's totally useable without Final Fantasy, but there's one caveat to the hard drive game save system. It cannot actually load game saves from the hard drive for any title we've found so far.

Saving games to the hard drive just backs up data found on the memory card. It's pretty stupid right now, but we're praying more developers will soon make better use of the device. Unfortunately, virtually ever single developer we've spoken to currently has no interest in supporting the HDD add-on. They don't want to support it because not enough people have it to warrant implementing any hard drive specific functionality in their titles. Not enough people have it because there's no reason to get it since not enough games support it. It's the old life sucks conundrum and it's really starting to piss us off.

Till Next Time
From IGN: Our favorite PC editor, The Much Hated Dan Adams, comments on a profile of a lonely gamer-ette on MMO Dating.com:

"She looks like a potato."

We freaking love you, Dan.

-- Ivan "Deez Nuts" Sulic

And then Ivan ran off with Mike Wiley to catch a plane to Vegas. Four questions does not a Mailbag make and so here's where I jump in to finish this off before I can get back to getting more use out of my latest prize possession: the new Logitech wireless controller. It's sooooo cool.

Middle Earth Warriors
I said it before The Two Towers game from EA even came out. I want the Dynasty Warriors 4 engine adapted to the LOTR world. I want every battle chronicled in the Silmarillion, all the way through the War of the Ring. I want hundreds of historical Tolkien warriors to unlock. I want all the mythology and all the eras, all the artifacts and all the weapons. I want to create my own Middle Earth warrior, and hack down dozens of Orcs in Dynasty Warriors 4 style. I want to face off against the Witch King on a riotous field of combat. Use the the vastness of the WETA assets to texture it all. That's what I want. That's what I've always wanted. As good as the LOTR games from EA are, the sense of being in a vast battle was (you must admit) severely impaired by the rails-like environments and rigid camera system.

Give me a LOTR title based on a licensed Dynasty Warriors 4 (or 5?) engine. Make it big. Make it vast. That is all I've ever wanted.

The thing is, we don't NEED the story. We've already got that. Just give us the world to battle within. Let us rewrite the history of Middle Earth. The stories that we come up with as we play together in split-screen (or online) are what will truly make a LOTR game great.

-- James

Ed responds: It's funny that you say that, James. It's mainly funny that you think we heard you say that the first time, whenever the hell that was, but also funny because that was my second idea for a Lord of the Rings game. I enjoy the Dynasty Warriors games, but the whole thing about dynasties never really got me all that excited, to be honest. If there were some characters that I could identify with, or identify from a good movie, then that would make it so much better.

Since EA has a relationship now with KOEI with their distribution of Samurai Warriors, maybe this idea is more likely. Still, if this kind of a game was going to be made, I'd rather wait until the next generation of consoles. As fun as these games are, there's still that pernicious fog of war (ie. fog of computational power) that drags down the overall feeling of being in a gigantic battle.

.hacked to Pieces
Aughhh...
.hack was kinda fun when I rented it, but...
Well, I'm too @$$lazy to buy all four separately
Can you say "box set"?
Any plans you know of, Ivan/Ed?

-- Gerukah

Ed responds: We've spoken to Bandai several times about this very thing. For a while, the idea was being tossed around, but it never happened and the window of opportunity has pretty much passed. Sad to say, the games will forever be sold separately. The first game is available for $19.99 and the others are currently selling for $29.99, but expect those to drop down to $19.99 later on as well.

Missing Hits
I would like to know if IGN has a list of all of the PS2 Greatest Hits Games. I would like to review them for purchasing guidance. thanks.

-- Master Sergeant Stephan

Ed responds: Our most current list is here, but there are a few more that aren't on there either. Two notable games are Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank, both of which are excellent and really cheap. Now that we're aware of this glaring error, we'll be updatng the list next week

Are You Jeelous?
hi, id just like to point out on your WRC3 playtest page ( http://ps2.ign.com/articles/520/520553p1.html ), there is an error with the spelling of New Zealand as you can see its Zea , not Zee.

I'm from New Zealand myself and enjoy your site, thanks for all your hard work that has made my game purchasing much much easier.

Ed responds: Interesting that someone in the office wrote the article and left it unsigned. Hmmm.. they must have had little faith in their own writing. Either way, it's been fixed and we've posted the error internally so that whoever responsible will cower with shame and have a knot of guilt in his stomach for all eternity. Unless it was Craig Harris. He's already wound up with so much tension he could power a city.

Expense This!
Hi Ed - Can you please tell me who approves your expense report...it was just noticed today that there is no signature from a supervisor on your expense report. Going forward please make sure your expense report is signed before sending it to accounting so that it does not get kicked back which will cause delays in getting processed.

-- Julie

Ed responds: What the? Who in the? For the love of! That was signed! Man, I go to E3 and lay my credit on the line for this company and this is the thanks I get. That was signed, sealed, and delivered and this is another weekend of ramen that I'm getting from the company. Remember kids, when someone tells you you'll get your expense checks right away, laugh in their face. It's not true.

Ah well, time to go and enjoy the weekend anyway. Ivan's already in Vegas and Jeremy's on the hunt for Malice in stores so we can get a review done. Some companies like to slide their games out to stores without telling us reviewers about it. Something smells fishy.

As for myself, it's all about making some sweet music with MTV Music Generator 3. Sweet music with my wireless Logitech controller and MTV 3 that is! All right, forget this verbiage stuff. It's time to make some beats.