Two New Parodies!

I've been making stupid parodies with my friends in school for two or three years, so I thought it would be easy doing parodies now, but I seem to be a bit rusty. I did manage to think up two songs, one on PAL neglection, and the other on microtransactions.

PAL (A Parody of "No Roads Left" by Linkin Park)

Living in Europe with neglect-ion
How did we fall so far behind?
Why am I searching for compensation
Knowing it's something I won't find?

In their twisted minds
They haven't done nothing wrong.
All because

We're PAL
And the prices split us open.
We're PAL
And we can't take the delays
And they don't do squat
Or give us what we want.

When did we earn this pricey increase?
Can we regain the cash that's lost?
Why can't you give us good releases?
Singstar alone won't change the cost.

In their twisted minds
They haven't done nothing wrong.
All because
They haven't done wrong.
In their twisted minds

Just PAL
And the prices split us open.
We're PAL
And we can't take the delays
And they don't do squat
Or give us what we want.

In their twisted minds
They haven't done nothing wrong.
All because

We're PAL
And the prices split us open.
We're PAL
And we can't take the delays
And they don't do squat
Or give us what we want.

...and the second one...

It's Not Okay [Microtransactions] (A Parody of "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance

Well you don't want no honesty
That's all I'm gonna say.
I never want to let you down so don't you go
It's better the first way!
For all the costume packs,
Those stupid $4.99 maps,
Remember the first demo I took from your freaking awesome online store?

It's not okay,
It's not okay,
It's not okay,
To tear us down.

What will it take to show you that these aren't the way to go?
(It's not okay)
I've told you time and time again, you say you'll stop
But what d'you have to show?
(It's not okay)
To be a joke and crook,
Another page inside the book,
I played games yesterday but it may be the last time,
Take a good hard look!

It's not okay,
It's not okay,
It's not okay,
To tear us down.

Forget about the costume packs,
Those stupid $4.99 maps,
You said you'd give us some content
But it costs us an arm and a leg!

It's okay...
It's okay!
It's okay, now.
(It's okay, now.)
But you really need to listen to me,
Because I'm telling you the truth
I mean this.
It's okay!
(Trust me)

It's not okay.
It's not okay.
Well, it's not okay,
It's not o-frigging-kay!
It's not okay,
It's not okay!

Download Watch: Calling All Cars is Finally Here!

This week may have packed the best content for the PAL users that they have ever received, with Calling All Cars and a few PSOne titles coming to the European Playstation Store. While PAL users get those downloadable games, the American Playstation Store has been updated to include the Time Trial for Motorstorm, which I have already reviewed, and a video.

Calling All Cars - 10/10
I haven't had a chance to play it, but I have been waiting for Calling All Cars to come out on the European Playstation Store for a very long time now, so that gives it a ten, at least for this update. Expect a review on it shortly.

Rampage World Tour - No Score Given
Unfortunately, I have no score to give this game, because I have no intention of playing, but I sense an opportunity. Have you played Rampage World Tour? Even if you haven't, do you want to join the A Gamer's Lament crew? If you do, send an email to neopet.jarred@mac.com telling me what consoles you have access to, and how you have access to them. Please make sure that you will be able to post regularly (about once every three or four days will do) before applying.

Crash Bandicoot - 10/10
This is another big update, as three PSOne titles are brought to the European Playstation Store. I haven't played Crash Bandicoot on PS3, but I did play it many times on the PSOne and it is one of my favorite series to date.

WipeOut and Jumping Flash - No Score Given
Yet again, I haven't played or intend to play these games, so the same applies as with Rampage World Tour.

The Heartbreak Kid Trailer - 7/10
One of the only updates apart from the Motorstorm Time Trial was the trailer for the remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller. The trailer was pretty funny, but with most comedy trailers, I feel like they threw everything that was funny into the trailer just to make a good impression.

Hot Shots Golf 5 Trailer - 10/10
I love this trailer for Hot Shots Golf 5. It showed mostly the same thing that you could play in the demo, but then at the end, it showed off some of the multiplayer online, and boy did it look nice. It seems as if everyone plays at the same time, but you can see everyone as "ghosts" so to speak. It looks really promising.

So that's about it for the downloads for this week. I'll hopefully have a review of Calling All Cars and Crash Bandicoot up later, and I'll try to put up a preview of DiRT as well.

Motorstorm Time Trial Review

After about a half a year of getting hosed by Sony, the Europeans finally get something before the US in the form of a Motorstorm update, complete with an updated multiplayer and the biggest feature, a time trial. Is this compensation for the late releases, higher prices, and crappier Playstation Store? Find out in my first A Gamer's Lament branded review of the Motorstorm time trial update.

Before I start the review, I have to say that I had pretty much shelved Motorstorm at this time. After the first couple of weeks, the novelty of the utter destruction had worn off, and it was replaced with Resistance, Madden, MLB 2K7, and demos from the Playstation Store (the American one, mind you). I had thought that all hope was lost for Motorstorm until this update came back, but it did, and it saved the game in my eyes, at least for a little while.

Motorstorm was filled with both fun and frustration, among other 'f' words, and the time trial update brought even more. Flying through the level in a rally car brings the extra fun into the game, while struggling to hit everything perfectly brings the frustration, and plenty of it. If you crash, then you'll probably want to restart, since you'll never get a respectable time if you crash. If you do hit the perfect mark and get that nice time, however, there is a great sense of accomplishment when you see your name high up on the leaderboard.

Another great addition to the time trial mode is the ability to race against ghosts. You can pick from 21 ghosts, seven from your own times, seven which are entitled 'Motorstorm's best' are from the testers with the top times, and seven are free to download from the top 250 times recorded. The seven times in each category are one from each vehicle, so it's a pretty cool feature. You can race seven at one time, or race against three of the same vehicle to find out the best routes.

The only con to the update is that the leaderboard only lets you download the top 250 times, and not a one lower. What I'd like to see is being able to download times from people on your friends list, no matter what, but I haven't been able to check that out because all of my friends are in the US, where the update arrives tomorrow. It would also be nice to download multiple ghosts from the same vehicles.

I'm always happy when the PAL region gets something before the US that isn't Singstar, but this one would be acceptable even if PAL would've gotten it late. The time trial breathes new life into Motorstorm, and now I'm anxiously awaiting the next update, hoping that it might carry split-screen multiplayer (I can dream, can't I?). Is this enough compensation for all of the bad things that Sony is doing to the PAL region? Not really, but it is awfully nice of them to finally give PAL something first. 9/10

Mission Accomplished

I finally did it! With the racing truck on the Tenderizer, I have obtained 181st place in the time trials, letting people download a ghost. It took me about 30 races with the racing truck on that track to get it done, so I feel really accomplished after that. Below are some pictures to prove that I did it. If anyone wants to download my ghost or friend me on the PSN, my handle is pherstothelee.

D'OH! - OPM UK: Been There, Done That

Today marks the first edition of D'OH!, the segment that marks the biggest screw-up in video gaming every week. I had trouble finding stories to cover this week apart from the Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable episodes being exclusive to 360 and that Blu-Ray may grab the rights to the Halo movie, but I don't really care or look into Grand Theft Auto or Halo too much, so I had to pick a different one. I didn't know what to choose until my newest issue of Playstation Magazine UK with the first ever demo Blu-Ray disc. I was incredibly excited until I opened the disc and popped it into my PS3.

After I loaded the disc, I found that there were only four demos and nothing else. They have a 50GB disc and the most they put on it is 4GB!? It got worse. I found that the four demos were Resistance, F1 Championship Edition, Virtua Tennis 3, and Genji. All of these demos are available on the Playstation Store. I would have let this slide if it were just on the American store, but no. These are all available on the EUROPEAN Playstation Store, meaning that everyone who even touches this magazine, at least all of those who aren't incredibly dense, would have already downloaded these demos when they were released THREE MONTHS AGO.

I've already seen the preview for the next disc, and the big title on there is Ninja Gaiden Sigma, so I can already see where this is going. I really hope that OPM can get their stuff straight and release a disc with demos that no one has played, or at least some videos. Sorry for the yelling, but I was really looking forward to this disc, and the content, or lack of, on it was just a kick in the nads for me. I'm really hoping the next one has some new stuff on it.

Half the World Squeals With Delight: New Dissidia Trailer with GAMEPLAY!

Today was a pretty slow day for news, so I'll just make a short post about the new Dissidia trailer. This trailer was supposed to be for members of the Japanese Playstation site only but thanks to Jeux-France, we can all see this. I'm sure that you're thinking, "Why should I just watch another Final Fantasy trailer?" and I have the answer for that. This one has gameplay. That's right. Actual gameplay from the newest Final Fantasy spin off to the PSP.

The first thing that the trailer delivered was a cinematic, probably rendered in real time, which made me marvel at the fact that graphics this crisp are being displayed on a handheld. I haven't been so impressed by graphics on a handheld since I first saw Killzone: Liberation, but it wasn't the cinematic that everyone was focusing on. It was the gameplay.

I'm not sure how many details were leaked on Dissidia as I have to admit that I wasn't really keeping tabs on it too much, so I don't know what part of this is new or not. Basically, it's an action RPG, somewhat like Kingdom Hearts. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Kingdom Hearts. I couldn't see much else since the action was so fast paced. I did see, however, that during the battle, there were tiny cutscenes between the action, and by tiny, I mean five seconds or less. It looks as if it would add a bit of story during the battles, and in my opinion, the battle cutscenes are always the best.

After seeing this trailer, I've decided that Dissidia might actually be that one flagship title to the PSP. I would love to play this, possibly as a demo, but it looks very nice. Now all we need is a release date. The trailer is embedded below, courtesy of Jeux-France.

An Undeniable Truth

I would like to announce that the Nintendo Wii has taken my grandfather, a man who's closest ties to video games is Solitaire on his computer, and has drug him into Wii Sports. It's a small step, but he's on his way. He didn't use to do anything on the computer but play Solitaire, but now he's started to surf the web as well. This console has opened my grandfather's eyes to the world of the internets.

The Nintendo Wii is officially a success. There, I said it.

Dressed to Impress: Eternal Sonata and Beautiful Katamari

So, today marks the first edition of "Dressed to Impress", the new weekly feature where I highlight the videos or screenshots that caught my attention because they were, well, impressive. This week, unfortunately, was a very slow one for videos and screenshots, so I didn't have much to choose from, but I still managed to pick two games that were impressive in different ways than the normal games would be.

The first impressive video that I stumbled upon was the prologue from Eternal Sonata. This game has nothing on today's games in terms of graphics. In fact, this could probably work on the PS2, but it's not the realism that would make this game impressive anyways. Instead, it's the different approach to graphics, portraying this title as more of an art than a simulation. The cel shading looks beautiful in its own way, and I'm always happy to see that some games are trying to go elsewhere with video games.



The second impressive video also does not rely on photorealistic graphics to hold its ground, but rather the incredible scale that some of the levels are versus the small amount of space that the game will be using. As most of you know by now, Beautiful Katamari will not be released as a retail game, but rather as an XBOX Live Arcade (and hopefully and Playstation Network) title.

It's easy to see that the game looks just as good if not better than its predecessors on the PS2, but the really impressive part of the title is around the middle of the clip, where the katamari is about 5,000 kilometers long and it starts to pick up entire countries. That's right, countries! While this may not seem like a large accomplishment to most, I certainly think that this is a wonderful sight, especially when I think of the possibility of a level where you start with a 5 centimeter katamari and roll it until it reaches the 10,000 kilometer katamari, the goal at the end of the country-swallowing level. Put this all together with the fact that this game will most likely be under 1 gigabyte and the game proves to be very impressive.

Giving Christianity a Bad Name

Most of you have already heard about the controversy surrounding Insomniac's use of a war torn Manchester Cathedral in their latest title, Resistance: Fall of Man, and now we have more information on the topic. Apparently, Sony has officially apologized not for the use of the Cathedral in the game, but just as a formality if they had offended anyone, which is exactly what they should have done. Now, the Church of England has written back, and their demands are steep.

First, the letter Sony sent to the Church of England clearly stated that Resistance is a work of science fiction. They also stated that this is in an alternate time line and the battle in the level is protecting the Cathedral against the aliens that are invading it. The church was no longer used for services due to the Chimera invasion, and the building is deserted except for the occasional military occupation during this war. They offered to meet and show the Church of England the level in question to confirm these claims. Finally, they said that as with all other things that they release, Sony claimed that they obtained all needed permissions.

The letter back to Sony was very short and to the point. They thanked Sony for acknowledging that they used the Manchester Cathedral in their game and also thanked them for apologizing, but they did not feel that that was enough. They stand by their views about the gun violence portrayed in the Cathedral during that level. They have set a time to meet with Sony in Manchester for them to demo the level in question to show them that the gun violence is with science fiction weapons against science fiction enemies in a science fiction time frame. They said that in this meeting they will discuss their "outstanding demands", which will include taking the game off of store shelves and a "generous donation".

To start, this really shouldn't be as bad as it really is since most of the claims by the Church are wrong. First off, like I said above, the "gun violence" was committed by outrageously science fiction weapons against outrageously science fiction enemies in an outrageously science fiction time frame. Also, the Manchester Cathedral is old enough to be considered a national landmark, making it owned by the government, and it can be used in the media in any way, so any legal action should fall through. Finally, even if the Church of England is concerned about their so called gun crime, they should know that the person that the player is portraying is fighting off the aliens from invading the Cathedral, so the Cathedral is not shown in a negative manner anyways.

Now, the latest letter from the Church of England really made me angry, because the demands are way too steep for an 'offense' as small as this. They not only want the game to be taken off of shelves, but also a "generous donation", which pretty much means that they want Sony to pay them off to avoid legal action; legal action that would fall through anyways. If I were the Church of England, I would have just accepted the apology and stopped there, keeping the entire Christian community from looking like idiots.

Hang in there Sony. Don't give in to their demands. We're counting on you.