Xavi
As far as acronyms go "WIPLW" does not actually sound good or roll of the tongue, so lets make sure I never use it again. Also, these are not reviews in any sort of way, just my thoughts based on my experience, because you really owe it to yourself to try what looks good to YOU. Okay, moving on.

DEMON'S SOULS (PS3)
"oh shi~!" is the word you're looking for

So about a month ago I was getting geared up to buy Batman: Arkham Asylum and getting really pumped for Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend. Those are all games that we've heard about and, for all intents and purposes "matter", then while I was looking trough the weekly releases on NeoGAF I came about this PS3 exclusive game, and people seemed genuinely excited for it! Now, I keep in touch with like, every game ever. I definitely haven't played everything out there, but odds are that if its good, I've heard about it, so I was surprised when I caught myself thinking "wtf is this?"

The first thing Shelly and I did was watch the YouTube trailer and first thing we said was "OMFG that looks cool" followed by "I'll watch you play Xavi, this looks too scary for me" I loved seeing a next-gen action game in a "traditional" European setting, it felt to me what "A Song of Ice and Fire" might look like in videogame form, so we were definitely impressed by the look, but what else is there?

Demon's Souls is the spiritual successor to "King's Field" which was a First Person Dungeon Crawler RPG for the PS1/2. Both games offer a European Medieval fantasy setting and both are challenging and pretty loot oriented although Demon's Souls is an upgrade in every possible way. The name of the developer is FROM SOFTWARE and the game was first released in Japan a few months back (like in the good old days, haha). Demon's Soul is, if we were to compare, a Zelda game mixed with Diablo plus an innovative online component.

You play in 3rd person view and fight in real time, with extreme emphasis on your fighting style and choice of armor and weapons throughout the game. Its a single player game at its core, but you can see the ghosts of online players as they traverse the same areas that you do, you can leave hints on the level that other players can see AND you can see bloodstains on the floor which upon touching allow you to see how the player was killed (this is useful in many ways, to avoid traps, ambushes and holes on the ground) When you die in this game, you return to the game exactly as before but with a twist, you are in soul form and have certain penalties such as a much smaller health bar but also some bonuses, such as improved magical power and you make less noise. Obviously you want to be resurrected, but how do you do it? There are several ways: kill the boss in the area, use a special item or go online and play in other players worlds either by helping them beat the level or by hunting them down and killing them.

That last sentence is what I found really compelling in this game. Death is not the end but rather part of your journey trough this world. When you're alive, you can summon other players who are in soul form to help you out, but if you die the roles are reversed and it is you who can offer your services. This creates a fantastic dynamic between you and the community along with the ability to leave hints for the players. This all explains the games high difficulty level, because the developer leaves it up to the community to decide how easy or hard the game is going to be for you. In my limited playtime I can say with certainty that if it wasn't for hints left by other players throughout the levels, I would have died twice as much and missed half the treasures. Please note that this is a hard game, not a cheap game, but hard (you cant pause the game!)

The game also offers a morality system that steers from the norm set by BioWare RPG's. You can kill any NPC in the game, and you can, as I said previously, invade other players worlds in order to kill them and return to life. This affects your personal morality level (dark or light) as well as the current stage you're in. What this does is affect drop rates and spawn rates for enemies, some of which will only show up if the world is in a light or dark state, so there are benefits to doing both (although I don't recommend killing the NPC who stores all your items, then youre kinda screwed) Its pretty interesting since its affected by not just you, but every online player, so if a large number of people beat the 1-1 boss, for instance, the white purity level will go up, which is pretty neat and keeps gameplay organic.

So anyways, I'm just starting so there will be more developments concerning this game, but for now I couldn't recommend it more. Its gorgeous and has tremendous art direction, the story is interesting and moves quickly, the music sets the tone beautifully and the gameplay is responsive. One extra thing that I like is that it doesn't give you a lot of bs like so many games do nowadays; you start the game and within a minute you're there, nothing to download, no online menus, just straight into the game just like a good old SNES or Genesis game. You can find it on Amazon here.
 
NBA 2K10 (PS3, 360, PC)

hey thats the face I make when playing online!

So this series does not need a whole lot of introduction. Its the leading basketball sim out there that beats the crap out of NBA Live on a yearly basis, although I give props to EA for this years version, its daring and excellent. 2K has put together a package that works and are shameless in the way they milk it.

However, this was the first 2K ball game I purchased it since NBA 2K2 on the Dreamcast, and even then I didn't actually buy that one (if you owned a DC you probably know what I mean, lol)

What I found was a game that when it works, its an almost exact representation of basketball, the players move like their real life counterparts, the crowds and audio are immersing, the gameplay is easy enough to pick up and as a whole, when people look at it at a first glance, they do a double take to make sure its a video game.

However, this game shipped 2 months early. The good people at 2K clearly do not have a big enough team or a big enough budget to implement the new features AND fix bugs. CPU players by default shoot a ridiculously high percentage, online works 20 percent of the time, there are bugs in several places, some being game crashing and some balance breaking (such as overall stats DROPPING after successful drill practice) so overall it would be easy to qualify this as a rushed, unpolished product.

So its a shame that the game is so good. I cant stop playing it. Yes there are many issues but they can all be fixed with a patch, and the underlying game is tremendous. Here are the highlights for me:

My Player mode: You create your own player and play as him troughout his NBA career. You start by working out for teams to see if you get drafted, after that its summer league and you try to not get dropped by the team that drafted you, after that you go straight to the NBA team or get sent to the D-League. In my particular case, I made a 6'3" PG from Spain, got drafted by the Blazers and then I got cut in Summer Camp since they had plenty of Guards better than me. My agent got me signed by the Detroit Mad Ants, a D-League team where I was a bench player, after earning my starting spot and putting up good numbers, the Jazz gave me a 10 day contract. I kicked ass and they signed me for the rest of the season. I am now the 6th man on the Jazz putting up 15 ppg and 4 assists. The game evaluates you during each game, deducting points for bad passes and taking bad shots, but will reward you if you pick good shots, set screens and have good positioning, etc, then at the end of the game you get EXP points which you can use on your skills.

The mode is ADDICTIVE! I cant wait until my first season is done and see if I get traded or earn a starting spot with the team.

Crew mode: Yo make your own team, recruit other player and play online against other teams. In this mode you play as one player, so in theory its you and 4 of your buddies against another team with 5 human players. You can use NBA players or your own "My Player" from the last section. Getting to play this mode right now is hard since the 2k servers are in a sorry state. We usually have to wait about 20 minutes to get a game working, but when it works ...oh man. Its hard to beat playing with 4 friends online, all with microphones talking shit. Good times, too bad that they're so hard to come by.

The good news is that a HUGE patch will be relased in the next few weeks, fixing most of my complaints so my recommendation would be to buy this game yes, but not today. I think that if you buy it around mid-November you will be safe. Great game with amazing animations, the engine is old and needs a revamp, but that aint gonna happen until next-gen comes around, I think. Live is a good option and next year I think it will be a hard decision, but as of today, 2k still offers a better product.
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Xavi
19 April 2009 @ 11:25 pm
A year ago Shelly and I got Gods approval (lol) and got married, it was amazing before that and its even better now. We disagree like all couples do on stuff to be sure, but she is incredible from top to bottom, I just hope I can keep up with her :)

To celebrate we went to Takashi's for the first time, which is renowned as the best sushi in the state of Utah. Now you may think thats not a big deal since Utah = Mormons and wtf do they know but SLC actually hosted refugee/internment camps for Japanese people back in the war, so a great number of Japanese-Americans stayed and they community here is pretty large, there are even flights from SLC that go straight to Tokyo. As far as the restaurant, we had never gone because we thought that hey, this palce has won best restaurant in SLC before, its probably prohibitely expensive ... yeah, we were dead wrong on that one.

Probably the best sushi Ive had outside of Japan, and at a very good price range (definitely cheaper than some othe rplaces in town)

As far as gifts, Shelly got me The Phoneix Wright Artbook, she knows Im a sucker for them :)\


 
And I reciprocated with a Tokidoki jacket, shes a big fan


 
Definitely a good weekend, looking forward to keeping up with this LJ a bit more, but Im pretty busy after work lately... well see.

 

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Xavi
22 February 2009 @ 11:54 pm
lol finally got my living room clean, so I figured Id take a pic of my setup :)



(not pictured: the chair that I put in the middle of the carpet for me to sit and play, haha)
 
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Xavi
17 February 2009 @ 03:30 pm



So yeah, if youre getting the 360 version, please do me a favor and buy the Collectors Edition of the game ;) (thats where this piece I did shows up, there were 5 other winners)

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Xavi
15 February 2009 @ 12:16 am
Amazing series, not very long and one of the best anime storylines I've watched in a very long time, good characters too.

Definitely check it out if you have the chance.
 
 
Xavi
I could show you a bunch of videos, but this one (Click on it to go to the youtube page and watch in high res!) Really nails it. Presentation, animation, characters, graphics ... damn
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Xavi
31 December 2008 @ 07:13 pm
there, done

:)
 
 
Xavi
14 December 2008 @ 04:16 pm
Games are cool, lets talk about them.

HEAVENLY SWORD



So as part of the whole Black Friday thing (which is a horrible tradition that needs to disappear really, people avalanches in Walmart and yearly deaths is not something that is acceptable) we bought this on Amazon for $20, which honestly is about right, given the length.

Now the first time me Shelly and I played this was on its first showing at E3 in 2006. It was the Colosseum level and came away impressed. The game looked amazing, the animation fluid, the art phenomenal ... yeah, this shit was next-gen alright. Later after the show we heard the rumor that there was nothing else to the game, what we saw at E3 was all they had made. After beating the game now that makes perfect sense.

Now you can think about this in two ways. One, Heavenly Sword is a focused game that knows what it wants and gives it to you without game design fluff. Two, these developers fell in love with their tech and then one day realized that shit, they had to make a game out of it. The answer is probably somewhere down the middle and its something we've seen in many other games this generation (Motorstorm, Assassins Creed, Little Big Planet)



The game is spread into three sections: Beat'em up combat, Long Range combat sequences and two or three puzzles (literally) The combat itself is fine, flashy and encourages experimentation until later stages, were you realize that if you want to make it trough you need to spam just one combo (helloo, last boss! watch me press square, triangle, triangle, triangle, triangle, triangle, triangle en masse) The long range stuff is usually shooting arrows in slow-mo bullet time mode, and that's fun at all, but it gets old, the puzzles are usually hitting a switch that's far away by throwing an item from far away in the slow-mo bullet time mode I just talked about. The game tries to make itself feel longer by adding these puzzles and shooting segments, and somehow it succeeds but it really makes me notice how theres nothing else to speak of, no level complexity or exploration like God of War, if anything the whole experience makes me wish the game had stayed in dev time for a bout a year longer.

The art stays awesome though, save from some noticeable framerate skips the audiovisual experience is superb. Sweeping vistas, interesting designs, good characterization, excellent facial animation ... truly the saving grace of the game, and that's ok, at least its pretty to look at, you know? The game does try to make you care way too much about the characters, and its hard to when the experience is so short and it tries to focus on so many characters. Games like Portal are shorter and provide better characterization because they know what they're going for, 5 hours of gameplay and 1 or 2 characters to develop is plenty of time ratio wise. In Heavenly Sword they want you to care not just about Nariko, but about her friend, her dad, her antagonist, the son of the antagonist and the antagonists henchmen, oh oh oh! Also her people, lets not forget to remind the player what her people have gone trough, jaysus christ. Long load times are also frequent, so when you die its kind of frustrating, but he, theres been worse, still annoying though.

You can usually tell when developers have run out of time and/or ideas by the time you reach the endgame. Heavenly Sword is no exception. In a well developed and thought out game (ie: any Zelda) the last challenge of the game will require a collection of the skills you've collected throughout the game in order to become victorious. It makes sense right? Well in this here game you get the impression you need to do that, use the combos you've gained or vary your attack patterns from long range to close range, maybe even throw an item or two at the fucker right? Nah, I tried that for like, 5 times and by then I got annoyed, said "fuck it" and dialed the combo I knew would work for the entire fight. I kept 80 percent of my health and killed the asshole. Sorry guys, but that's not the best game design Ive ever seen, consider me spoiled.

All in all, it was an enjoyable game and I'm glad I bought it, but I'm also happy I didn't spent $60 on it when it first came out. Now that the devs have this tech in place I'm excited about what they can do in the future. If anything Heavenly Sword is a good demo reel of what these guys are capable of.
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Xavi
04 December 2008 @ 09:20 am


So Ive had my 1st gen nano since it came out (my dad got it trough work, didnt want it, I got it instead) Its not bad, but the only mac product I have is a laptop and I absolutely hate itunes (its a processor hog, I dislike the look and I really dislike how hard it makes it to customize or organize my music the way I want to)

So as a music player I used winamp and, after getting tired of its crap, switched to foobar, which is awesomesauce but requires a lot of upkeep.

Anyways, since Im frivolous and like to spend money on crap I dot need I figured it was time to upgrade the mp3 player. Now, do I buy an iphone and just kill two birds with one stone? problem is that phone would mean another 70 extra dollars a month, f that! So then I looked at the other ipods and almost settled on a new nano .. till I actually used my head for a minute.

Ive been had! How come I instantly associated mp3 players with ipods? Honestly wtf do they do that theyre so great? If I get an ipod that means I have to deal with itunes, meaning I dont get to have my music organized the way i want to, theyre also the most expensive brand since its such a brand name and yeah, what do they do thats so special?

So, I took Apples advice, I thought outside the box and looked at what MSoft is offering. Now Zune is two, maybe three things: an .mp3 player, a computer program and a social tool, like XBox Live with music.

So I look at the downsides that ae associated with zunes: nobody owns them. Thats about it! MSoft is literally bending over for people to own one. The mp3 players are cheaper than ipods, offer just as many options and the look is equal if not greater. The next step was to download the music player for the PC and see if I liked it better than foobar, that was the critical part.

That was yesterday, by the end of today Zune was my default music player on my PC. The look is fantastic. The presentation is VERY slick, its open enough so its easy to mess with (no hidden file like with itunes), performance is good and its easy to organize and to add album art. Best part is I know for a fact that in the mp3 player everything will translate exactly as its on my PC.

Other pluses is the online functionality. I can set up an online persona and my friends can see what Im listening to and share (not unlike last.fm) plus the mp3 player has an FM tuner, so I can listen to the radio as well. To double check again I asked around work and a bunch of people have one too, no problems with performance or anything.

So yeah, just wanted to talk about that. Its funny cause usually I like to think that I think outside the box, but I had been completely brainwashed by ipods, but if youre a PC centric guy like me, a Zune just makes a lot moe sense

Alright, nerd rant over. Back to pretending Im too cool for school, etc
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Xavi
07 November 2008 @ 09:16 am


Just ordered these online, thank God its payday!

 
 
Xavi
04 November 2008 @ 09:24 pm
:D  
THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD IS BARACK OBAMA.

TAKE THAT, INTOLERANCE!

Also, lets hope Palin can now disappear already. Tough luck to McCain, I like him.
 
 
Xavi
13 October 2008 @ 11:59 pm
Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign

Glad I'm not an American and I dont have to relate to those sorts of people (not that we dont have our fair share of dumbasses in Spain, but damn.)

 
 
Xavi
13 October 2008 @ 09:06 pm
Taken from Gamespite, I share these thoughts pretty much 100%



This Tuesday sees the home video release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an unfairly maligned entry in the greatest adventure series ever put to celluloid. While many were content to write it off as George Lucas (who wrote the story) having somehow lost his movie-making touch, I personally found the movie to be incredibly entertaining. Indiana Jones has always been about paying homage to the classic pulp adventures that Lucas and Spielberg grew up on. When your influences include the Republic Pictures serials of the '30s and '40s, and the B movies of the '50s, it would be wrong not to include outlandish, over-the-top action sequences.

I don't mind so much that some poor unfortunate souls don't care for this film, but when they argue that it's not an Indiana Jones movie at its core, I just have to shake my head. Is it just nostalgia that tints people's perceptions to think an adventure movie about finding a supernaturally powerful MacGuffin is a complete turnaround from a series where archeological artifacts are discovered that can, you know, melt people's faces off, allow you to perform psychic surgery, or let you live forever?

At its core, Crystal Skull is an Indiana Jones movie. It may not be as good as as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it fits comfortably into the series and puts to shame imitators like National Treasure or The Da Vinci Code. If you haven't seen it, go in with an open mind, and I think you'll have a good time. I was worried before I saw the film that Harrison Ford was too old to be an adventure hero; now I really hope they make another sequel.
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Xavi
07 September 2008 @ 10:59 pm

So I was trading some of my old yearly games and found this for the cheap. Now, I always meant to pick this game up and specially now that the sequel is finally in the US, so this worked out perfectly.
 

So far, Im about 5 hours in (Got done with Purgatory) and everything is EXTREMELY impressive so far:

-Battle system is ace. Starts off simple and adds a good deal of layers of complexity. Not on the God Hand level of awesome, but quite nice. Also there are TONS of usable items in the environment, pretty impressive considering this is before Dead Rising.

-Graphics are VERY detailed, the environments are packed with stuff and the fake shader stuff they pull off reflection wise is impressive.


This shot of the item shop I really like, its has great detail and looks really authentic
 

-Characters, while cliched, are likable and not annoying
- The dialog is great, sometimes hilarious since somebody is being called a motherfucker every 5 seconds but hey, I'm enjoying it. So far the story is developing as it should, no great plot twists or anything yet, but I'm very intrigued.

-NPC's will text message you and call your cellphone to hang out, which unlocks side missions. I recall some Grand Theft something or other pulling the same stuff in a much more annoying way and getting all the credit for it. You can also find girls and flirt with them, make them your friends, have them call you, etc, etc

Of course there are some negatives, the UI work is so-so, the pre-loading of the camera switches is annoying as shit and there's some overall clunkiness .. which instead of annoying me makes me really look forward to the polishing of the formula in Yakuza 2 and Yakuza PS3. Its kind of nice to see a Japanese twist on the free roaming genre, I like GTA and all, but I find this pretty refreshing.

Its kind of hard to find good images online, but the game is definitely a looker. My wife kept looking at the environment detail, noticing new things here and there (and now shes playing Infinite Undiscovery, thus blocking further Yakuza progress ...). Another nice aspect is just how much this looks like a Japanese city. Having been in Tokyo recently I got some insta-nostalgia thing going on. The level of fidelity is noteworthy.

There are definite issues with the game, as noted above, but so far the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, lets hope that's the case till the end.
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Xavi
30 August 2008 @ 12:43 pm
Michelle is spending some much due quality time with her firends in Florida, I would have loved to go but the money situation didnt work out (plus, I still have no vacation time left from the honeymoon).

In any case, its good to have some time to oneself once in a while, gives you a chance to get some stuff done and at your own pace, which is neat!

Things are going alright right now, were starting development on a LOT of new games over at work, so its exciting since I get to do a lot of different stuff for a lot of outlets. Right now money is a concern though since Andrew no longe rlives with us, and that alright in a sense since thats what we planned but at the same time, we need Michelle to go full time over at EA and for me to get a promotion in order for us tolive at the pace we want, right now were scrapping a little bit.

Oh yea, Im getting Infinite Undiscovery on Tuesday! Reviews so far sem alright, but its definitely a game that I want to try for myself and make my own decisions, it looks pretty damn gorgeous though:


 

Oh also, did any see the new Final Fantasy XII shots? They look AMAZING. Heres the best one I think

 
 
Xavi
Michelle asked me to pimp her out, so thats what Im doing (yay supportive husband!) My apologies if you have Shelly on your FL and youve already seen it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



 
I will be doing a small run of these, so get 'em while they're hot! If there's enough demand I'll definitely be getting more printed. :)

However, I do need a certain number of preorders in order to do this--so PLEASE pass this post around to those you think would be interested!

Preorders will be OPEN until Wednesday, August 27th. After that these guys are goin' to the shop!

Topsy and Turvy are my two new monster characters, and they are best friends even though they have different ideas about everything. For instance, Topsy thinks vanilla ice cream is delicious, but Turvy adores Avocado & Chocolate flavor!

These are printed on 100% pre-shrunk cotton, chocolate brown tees, with a three color process.

$25 in the US ($20 + $5 shipping). Please contact me if you're outside of the US and need a shipping quote before you commit.

My Paypal is etherrawen@gmail.com--please EMAIL me with your sizing info, which email you use for paypal (if different from your normal email), if you wants a women's or men's cut, and of course your shipping address. :)

Comment here if you have any questions--I'll try to reply ASAP. :)
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Xavi
19 August 2008 @ 11:09 am
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xgarcia_art/profile  (copy and paste)

Over at my blog I added an RSS feed. If you go to the link above you can add it to your Livejournal Friends page. Otherwise you can just put this feed on whatever reader you like to use:

http://xgarcia.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

That being said, here's some of the stuff I've posted there lately:

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Xavi
18 August 2008 @ 08:28 pm
meh

And you know what sucks, nothing Star Wars should ever be "meh" Maybe the movies, but hey at least so far a lot of the offshoots were great.

Still fun enough to watch, but by the time you get to "Zero the Hutt" AKA, "Cartman in Space" AKA "Was I designed by some asshole in MySpace or what the fuck is going on why the fuck am I even here OMG Star Wars has finally, officially and without doubt really REALLY jumped the shark this time worst character ever made and I happen to be on a Star Wars movie OMG ghey"

Here, Ill just save you the trouble. On my cue, once THIS motherfucker shows up, trust me theres nothing redeeming left in the movie.



Bigger, for emphasis

 
 
Xavi
10 August 2008 @ 04:43 pm


Canon Pixma 9000

Michelle and I are trying to get into promoting our art a bit more, and this is the right start.

Print size is up to 11 x 14 and from what the reviews are saying, this will be perfect for color printing which is what we need most (not so great for Black and White, but since were not photographers, its not a big deal) The usual price is $500 but trough Newegg we got a good deal and will be paying barely above $300 after the rebates :)
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Xavi
08 August 2008 @ 09:40 pm
So that fucking game is finally almost done. Its been a whooole lot of blood, sweat and tears for everybody involved, but hopefully really pretty soon I'll get to show some of the stuff I've been working on lately.

Technically, I'm pretty much off the project since all the stuff I can do for concept/illustration is done so I've moved on to the next thing (and the next thing, lolz) but I am still pretty proud of what the team has done in the last few months, and its really cool seeing EA marketing behing excited about how the game is going to perform, and what they're gonna do to make sure it sells.

With some luck, you'll be able to see my stuff firsthand and recognize it :)

Ah btw, my website is going to go down soon since im letting my current contract die, then buying the domain again with a new company (I thought about changing the site name too, but I get plenty of hits as it is, and nothing with my name is available that I dont hate). Michelle is going to help me out with the coding (ie: its all hers) and were gonna redo it all from scratch. Rahul did a pretty sweet job on this back in the day, but its time to move forward with something else :) Granted a lot of the old stuff is gonna go, going for a full sweep .. or at least as far as I can make it (yes Chrono Trigger drawing, youre gone :\ )

So yeah, OH BTW, Im getting my wisdom teeth pulled opn Monday (all 4!), and so is Michelle actually, so wish us luck please!

WERE GONNA GET SO HIGH
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