Has it been three months?
This is a quick post to let those four readers of my blog know that I am – infact – not dead.
The gaming industry has been essentially dead for the past few months and most of my purchases have been PSN games that I haven’t completed, so I saw no point in reviewing them. The gaming news has also been pretty much dead, but for those loyal readers, I can safely say that the blog activity will be picking up.
Right off the bat, to celebrate – I will soon be posting a opinion piece on the new direction of CastleVania. What I like and don’t like about the reboot of the series and my thoughts about Hideo Kojima having his name tagged onto the game.
The purchase of the game, which will be on Oct. 6 [a day after the release] will start what is going to be a very busy and expensive next four months. There is no doubt that there are a lot of games coming out this fall, but the ones in particular that I’m interested in are: CastleVania, Assassin’s Creed, Medal of Honor and quite a few in 2011, like Killzone 3 and – of course – Twisted Metal.
So, stay tuned! Summer vacation is over!
Scheduled Postings
Nothing big to note except for the fact that I am now planning on scheduled postings. Like a lot of online comics, I am choosing to run a Monday, Wednesday and Friday posting schedule – starting with this Monday. Topics may be a bit outdated when posted, but that’s because I will try to actually build up a queue of topics to talk about and have them scheduled for an automatic posting. That is all.
Jobs: iPhone is the best handheld
At its seasonal hardware unveiling today Apple showed off expected new models for its agenda-setting music hardware the iPod – but it was games, not audio, which CEO Steve Jobs pushed to the forefront.
Jobs revealed that 100m applications have been downloaded from the AppStore, the area of iTunes which distributes software. There are 3,000 apps on the story – 600 of which are games titles, many of them free.
But “some of [the games] are getting pretty fantastic. There is something here for everyone”.
To prove it, he called Apple’s senior VP of product marketing to demonstrate three new iPod Touch/iPhone games, the Gameloft’s Real Soccer 2009 and the recently released Spore Origins and upcoming Need for Speed Undercover by EA.
The former ad the latter showed off almost cutting edge use of the touchscreen interface of the iPhone. Gameloft has programmed an on-screen d-pad into its game and has included gesture controls, while EA has transposed traditional racing game controls to the interface for its car racer.
Jobs summed up, claiming that Apple’s iPod Touch is no longer great for just music and video, but now games too.
“Now you can make a pretty good argument that it is the best portable device for playing games on – and a whole new class of games,” he said.
Jobs said that in a wider sense Apple had the best hardware line-up it has ever offered, which included also announced smaller iPod Nanos and higher capacity iPod Classics.
He also revealed details on the might of Apple’s place in the market as a digital distributor. iTunes was described as the “largest online content store in the world”, offering also 8.5m songs and 30,000 TV episodes for download. And there are 65m user accounts with registered credit cards on the service. All of this has “enabled us to slowly climb up to become the number one music distibutor in any format in the US,” ahead of traditional retailers like WalMart and Best Buy, said Jobs.
It seems as if when Steve Jobs isn’t telling people that giving an autograph would be rude, telling people that his health is no ones business, or forcing people to buy new products to support the new iTunes feature he’s telling people that the iPhone is the best portable gaming system – better than the Nintendo DS and better than the Sony PSP.
Behind “Invader Gamer”
And it all starts here, Invader Gamer. Before I actually start posting game-related content, I should probably give a back story on all this. I’m a 26-year old male currently living in North Carolina. My son has been diagnosed with a rare metabolic disorder that can only be treated at two places in the country. During this tough time, I have taken a renewed interest in video games. I have since bought a PSP (mainly because it had a CastleVania game on it) and have found myself wanting to game more.
