Crunching Numbers and Skulls ~ Fighting Game Theory #2 - Dantes 40+ Special Moves - 2 of 40+

This is the second installment of my little Dante move guide for Marvel vs Capcom 3, check out part one and a deeper introduction here.

Ok so this one is just plain disgusting. Second from the top we have Dantes Acid Rain attack.  The first of Dantes special move cancel specials.  Which sounds more awkward then it is.

So you preform the down, down-towards, towards + Light attack command that results in Multi-Lock, then you immediately do it again.  Multi-Lock has that slow start up I mentioned and you need to preform the second command, which is of course the same command again, while Dante lifts up the gauntlet but before he fires it off.  So a quick double fireball motion, nothing too tricky yet.

But you don't have to take my word for it -OR- Well that's convenient

Yeah so conveniently enough the kind folks at Gearbox actually went and posted some tasty tasty footage for Aliens: Colonial Marines.

It's 11 min and partially narrated by Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford and you can tell that the guy is a huge Aliens fanboy.  Hey me too though, some people like Star Wars or Harry Potter, but Aliens was always the franchise that spoke to me most growing up.

I've talked about how true art has to come from a place of passion, well Randy here clearly gets and loves what he's making, but to that end I'll just shut up and let the professionals speak for themselves.  Click start to continue on to the video but remember to stay frosty.

A Game I Don't -THEN- A Game I Do

So if you've stumbled upon this there's a decent enough chance you like videogames.  So allow me to give you my brief thoughts upon one of the biggest games coming out this year, where "big" in this instance means millions of people are going to buy it and if it's good millions more will as well.  This as opposed to a game that's not "big", which really just means those kind of sales figures aren't bankable quite yet. That one comes second.

I'm talking first about the latest rival to Call of Duties "shoot guys in the face while playing soldier" Throne, Battlefield 3. Here are my impressions based on the newly available Public Beta aka the multiplayer demo.

The New "Spielberg Show" Terra Nova -OR- DINOSAURS!!!!

So a new TV show has aired with the usual two hour opening shebang, only what's interesting to me about this one is that it has a rather unique premises compared to most of what we see on television.  To sum up?  The world is fucked, brought down by the thoughtless and mindless ecological and social practices the rule the very real, non-tv, world around us.  Basically Al Gore and Roland Emmerich were right.

Luckily, or so we're led to believe after the pilot, Science has saved us from ourselves by discovering a rip in the fabric of space and time allowing us to colonize our own world, 85 million years ago.  A second chance to live on Earth without ruining it for ourselves if you will.

Seth Killian interview OR a breath of air

I always enjoy Seth Killian in his role as Online & Community Strategic Marketing Director.  Considering some of the questions he gets lobed in his way from time to time it's probably not as perfect a job as it might seem on paper.

EGM interviewed Mr. Killian about the recent resurgence of the fighting game genre, his role in it, how online has positively effected it and so forth.  Nice read.  Now personally I believe that true art comes from a place of passion, you need to have a great idea and great care about it, this opposed to just mimicking several other successful things and trying to do them better, or worse, merely at the same time.

Crunching Numbers and Skulls ~ Fighting Game Theory #2 - Dantes 40+ Special Moves - 1 of 40+

So in the interest of keeping things different, plus I've a short attention span at times, this second edition of fighting game theory will actually be a multipart ongoing series.  The topic?  Find a use for all of Dante's Special Moves in Marvel vs Capcom 3.

Basically I took one look at Dante and realized that there was a guy you could play as for a long time and still not properly get the hang of, so I put him to the side thinking that MvC3 had years of shelf life ahead of it in which to learn the character.

But Capcom's tunrover on the next iteration of the franchise this time around was lightning quick, with Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 out this fall, so it seems like a good excuse to take this original version of the guy out of the box at least once before Ultimate Dante shows up.

There's always something else to buy OR Oh yeah, KoF 27 or something

So you know the bad habit that you keep telling yourself you should stop, the one you really mean to knock, until you actually get the opportunity to indulge in it and bombs away.  Well I've many of those, but the King of Fighters is the video game version of it.

Well... I did just quit smoking. What's one more game? Can't be worse then XII. A cheap shot but deservedly so. The commercial looks good at least...

The King of Fighters XIII wants you to buy it - GameTrailers.com

High Spots from Monday Night Raw, Sept 27 2011

Monday nights mean Monday Night Raw, where men toss each other around in order to become the World Heavyweight Champion. Ah professional wrestling, the guilty pleasure no one likes to admit they watch, but everyone knows of.

I've been a long time fan of pro wrestling, though I've gone through long periods of time where the product just hasn't been able to hold my interest.  I went seven years between tuning in not too long back and it's kind of sad that because of that I missed out on the best parts of the careers of guys like Chris Jericho and the late great Eddie Guerro.

But oh well, that's my tiny cross, point is that these days the WWE seems to be making great strides towards being, well, fun again.  I'm actually tuning in each week not because "I like wrestling" but because they've been doing a truly tremendous job of turning the stale WWE product of the last several years into a true ensemble television program that just happens to be about pro wresting.

In other words I'm fully  on board with all the direction changes they've implemented of late in  WWE programming and here's a few reason why care of tonights Monday Night Raw;

New Pach Attack with Michael Pachter

Michael Pachter

So what you might not realize about videogames is that plenty of intelligent, normal, functional adults like them as well. Go figure huh?  Which is why it's great to see something like The Pach-Attack on what is basically a commercial site, one GameTrailers.com.  It offers a different perspective on videogames as a business that is great to see on a website that has a very large percentage of "dumbass kid" traffic. No disrespect, I'm just a dumbass adult myself. Perhaps Pachter will inspire some young kid to become the Market Analyst of tomorrow?

A true testament to creativity, quick thinking and the will to succeed

Here's a great little story from over on Joystiq that tells of how some people at the game studio Twisted Pixel managed to turn an incredibly bad situation into the recently released Kinect game "The Gunslinger" in only a matter of minutes.

Goes to show that if you're clever and good at what you do you can overcome any obstacle. Plus its always nice to remember where things come from, that its just normal people like you or I behind stuff like this. I find that inspirational honestly.

The three minute Gunsliger - Joystiq

Crunching Numbers and Skulls ~ Fighting Game Theory #1 - Practical Application of Pandora's Box - Street Fighter x Tekken

So it's early yet for Street Fighter X Tekken but already you see some people, not all, being dismissive of the recently announced Pandora Mode.  This all or nothing gamble might be sparred the negative stigmatism of  the "comeback mechanic", but it pains me to see such a powerful tool dismissed out of hand as being useless.