In 1995, there was a lovely little system called the Sega Genesis. As kids we huddled around it and our television screens to delve into the fantasy worlds of Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat. One of the stand out games turned out to be a too often forgotten Comix Zone.
Sure the gameplay is ridiculously dated by our standards. Sure the game came out after most of the consoles user base was angry enough to move onto something else. But the game was built on the double whammy of geek, it was a video game about a comic artist stuck in a comic book which functioned kind of like Kung Fu.
The game was sort of short, but you only got one life to make it through the panels. The concept was more interesting than the gameplay itself, but if you are a fan of single button linear games it is not too bad. Personally, I just like to get to the one villain who says “Your kung fu is good.” The story centered around comic artist Sketch Turner who was sucked into his own creation during a lightning storm. Unfortunately for Sketch, the villian in his book was granted partial access to the real world by the incident.
Video of gameplay:
In case you missed it, the game is available on the Wii via the Virtual Console.
A while back in a move to extend their user base, social networking site, Mixi, changed minimum user age from 18 to 15. Naturally this move put them in a bit of a legal pickle. Under-aged users tends to lead to some drama, no matter where the site is based. To counter the threat of predators and to stay within the “Dating Site Regulation Act”, they have decided to ban dating altogether.
It seems like an odd move to ban dating on a social site, but it is a good move to try and avoid lawsuits. The big gaping whole in the plan comes from the fact that the ban techncally only applies to opposite sex dating. Same sex relationships (likely no matter the age of the participants) have a loophole.
Normally this would be funny but slightly discriminatory at the same time, instead it is just stupid. With the low birth rates of the user base, it would be a great idea to encourage dating. But going through the social service and deleting any dating groups is not helping the situation. It is great that they do not want to end up like Myspace, but this is probably not the right way to go about it.
Since most of the folks that signed up for Quake Live in the beginning were more seasoned FPS gamers, there was no way I was going to join up and get slaughtered every time I tried to play. Even though Quake Live is fitted with a matching system to help out the less apt players, we were not in full force in the beginning. It is not that we do not love playing these games, just some of us are not that great at them.
Fast forward two weeks after Quake Live became an open beta, I figured it was safe to hop in and get a little bit of fragging done. Being more of a console gamer, I still have a PS2 Quake III Arena around somewhere. It is just a shame that I lack skills no matter whether I play it or its free QLB counterpart. Thanks to the aforementioned skill matching system, this has not been an issue since I started playing.
After completing the standard fill out this form and confirmation number setup process, the user is invited to download a small bit of software and reload the browser (IE7,8 or Firefox 2,3 Windows XP or Vista only right now). Once this is done, the player can select an avatar from the list of familiar Quake characters and change some settings like the crosshair and railgun color schemes.
The aspect of setup which I find most appealing is your first match is with an AI dubbed Crash who is designed to assess your skill level in a match you play while the bulk of the game is downloaded. Crash appeared to have done a good job of finding my skill level since the couple of matches I have played have not been completely one-sided. When you login to QLB after that inital match, you have an option to practice or to just jump into matches currently happening. The matches are setup to load the ones best suited to you first, with green checkmarks notifying you that its right up your alley and arrows up or down
The one downside I have experienced playing the game was that there was occasional lag, but since I am using somewhat dated equipment it may be just me. It looked a bit better than the Q3A I played on my PS2 and there are lots of people waiting to play Team Deathmatch 24/7.
Here is a user made video of the training mode with Crash:
