If you haven’t gone to the hyped Bayonetta yet, then you’re off to a good start. Unlike Bayonetta – In Darksiders you play as War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Initially the plot takes place in nowadays americana downtown setting, demons are meteoring onto Earth to seize control and eradicate mankind from the face of the Earth.
For odd reasons, War gets summoned to Earth to save the mankind, but is then being schemed as no call was given for him to arrive on Earth. A sacred covenant of seven seals has to be broken for the brotherhood of horsemen to arrive on Earth, till then they’re residing where ever they’re residing in Hell. War battles on only to lose as all his powers gets stripped from him, right before a rather large stage climax, only to wake up about 100 years after the incident. As War, the player has to go over a dozen of puzzles including monsters and bosses to gain enough power to be able to defeat the Destroyer and clear his name.

The plot itself is rather giving itself, you’re playing the hero who has been accused of treason, then nearly begging to be put back into action to prove his innocense. After this the ‘missions’ gets extremely linear, someone tells you to go to A, kill That guy and bring something back only to do it all over again, but you get something in return for the favor just so you can get to the next guy.
We’ve all seen this plot before, as it happens in nearly every possible game, albeit Designer Joe Madureira claims Darksiders to be unlinear, unfortunately to him it’s not being backed up. You do have the opportunity to explore as much as you want for collectibles scattered throughout the game, and gain enhancement to slot onto your weaponry.
Unfortunately this means that you can’t really call Darksiders unlinear, the only unlinear here, is when you’ve finished the game and gets to freely roam the environments for missed collectibles. And there’s plenty of them.

I HAS HUEG KNIEF!

In the end the game is basicly a long Puzzle-Brawler-RPG, if you’ve ever played Zelda, you’d recognize Darksiders. Joe Madureira already gave out public reviews that Darksiders is a light combination of Legend of Zelda, God of War and Devil May Cry 4. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, Darksiders only took the good parts of the before mentioned games, and added extremely good looking visuals and scores to it, most of the time while trying to figure out how the hell I would manage it to the other side of the room, that I had to get up four floors and there wasn’t a direct elevator to it, I was baffled by the way the ambience and sound was putting me into the post apocalyptic mood. Visuals did a great job as well, with alot of gore, and a grunge apocalyptic look and feel to it, I really felt like I was in a world 100 years from now, overrun by demons and undead.

My final judgement for Darksiders;
+ Visuals and ambiences
+ Puzzles
+ Combat system
- Repetitive Gameplay
- Fatalities

9.1

I wouldn’t recommend you rent this game, it will generally take too long to complete and get all trophies/achievements. In the long run you’d rather own it for the goodness, ’cause Darksiders is a really good game, compared with Bayonetta I’d rather play Darksiders.
After getting Darksiders I only had a single item of disappointment, the Harvester weapon. Despite it being extremely weak and useless, the code needed for it was the same for every pre-order of the game. Which means that the code has been launched onto the internet, and it was already included in the game for a mere 1000 souls without the code. I suppose when you launch a preorder code, you only allow the people who paid for a preorder to get that reward? Apparently that idea went down the drain on this one, quite disappointing.

- That’s it from our game reviews for this time, next up will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – We do know it’s a looong time ago the game got released, and we’ve just attained it here on t3h Syndicate. Look forward to it!

- Got something to say about this review? Write it in the comment section below!

Facebook RSVP.

Welcome to 2010! Firing off the first event of 2010 for T3h Syndicate, we’ve lined up CosTrip #2 for ya!
Thoose living in Denmark are all invited, information are described on the facebook event till further translations are made.

Let’s do it wrong this time!

What frustrates the nutcase out of me, is when I have to wait x amount of months for a game release, when the japanese people gets it before everyone else. I’m not saying it’s racial discrimination, but we should sure be thinking about it at least.
There has been quite some handfull other releases that was global. Now which game am I talking about, and why does it frustrate the nutcase out of me? Final Fantasy XIII.

Yes, I’m one of Denmarks biggest Final Fantasy fans, nerds, gamers, know-it-all, whatever. I’ve played them all, done it all, any variations and serveral times in any game with just one single character being levelled up or at low levels. You say it, I’ve done 99% of it. What I haven’t, is played Final Fantasy XIII yet, yet the Japanese and probably some chinese people are enjoying their silly lives playing it. And that makes me a very angry person.

As far I’ve been told and know, the game is 100% dubbed in english/american, which means there’s no extra time needed to translate the entire story, and get the voice-casting done for it, also the subtitles have already been made months prior to release in Japan. So what was the biggest problem of a simultaneous release, I can only contemplate why Square-Enix was unable to produce said type release. Newer games like Darksiders: Wrath of War, Bayonetta all have/had a global-release, so why not Final Fantasy XIII?
One of the reasons I can figure out would be that Square-Enix wanted to throw an ‘hype’ effect, that it was released in Japan first, then all the global game reviewing sites, and ‘Kipz Syndicates Game dept. best friend Kotaku would have reviews and much more about it. But how does that solve my problem, I’m still the person that has to wait three months for a game. And by then, more than 10.000/1.000.000 japanese people have already beaten it on the hardest difficulty possible, and other variations. By then, the webz is scourged by guides, hints & tricks pages for all new/old FFXIII players to read. The challenge will be gone, ofcourse I can refrain from using said sites. However all the excitement is gone, hyping games by producing a non-global release can also kill it in a certain way. We’ve even seen global-released games go down the drain an instant, like Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was near-instant killed by public reviewers.
Does that makes ‘hype’ a bad thing?

No, hype is just a way to get attention on the product, Final Fantasy gets their own hype for being, yes Final Fantasy. Everyone that has been exposed to it, knows how great an impact it is to anyone, just like Halo 3 is to any 10 year old, disposeable american kid, that yells into their Xbox 360 headset everytime they get their hiney raped by a lightsaber-sword-thingamajig. But all this still leaves me waiting 3 months for the bloody game, not to mention the pre-release waiting hours! Now don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have to spend alot of time waiting for the designers/developers to get the game made right, however waiting for the game to be released, while a bunch of people are playing it like mad in a different part of the world, is just not right to me.

Why don’t you just buy a japanese PS3?
A) I don’t have the money.
B) I can’t read/understand japanese.
C) Are you retarded – that was rhetorical, I know you are.
Why in the world would I want another console in my house of the same kind, just because it’s labeled with JAP instead of EU or US, while not saying those who do are jocks or nutcases, I personally don’t want that, which is why I think any game should be globally released on the same day, while timezones does differ, that’s a minor bloody detail!

What can I do, for globally released games?
The best anyone can do is probably issue the problem to the game publishers, however I doubt they pay any heed to it, as they’re only worried about one thing, money. (And/or their penis/vagina(and boobs) if they have any.) Despite RAEG tiem, the gaming generation has shifted, and simultaneous releases are still getting more widely accepted amongst the publishers, at least Electronics Art has their global releases set, if they actually makes anything besides sporting, Sims (Yuck!) games that are worth playing. (Army of Two: 40th Day PLEASE!) Till then, I guess I’ll have to settle with it and wait for it, hey the experience may actually improve, but I doubt it. It’s the same game no matter how much post-release time I have to wait for it. In the meanwhile anyone waiting for their games can use CollegeHumor or Something Awful to improve their life quality.

Have you ever gotten a similar message in the latest array of games?
I saw this first in ‘Metal Gear Solid 4‘, and then in some other MMO games like ‘EverQuest 2‘ and ‘Aion‘. For some reason the game companies think they know better than us. How long we should play? I vote no, except if you’re into the extremes like the japanese gamer that died from cardiac arrest, for sitting a week straight, only moving when he had to use the lavatory, eat or call for food. During the week, he didn’t do anything else but have a non-stop World of Warcraft game, and some random games on a console like PS3. He died, so that makes everyone else in the danger group for playing for an hour?

I’ve been sitting on my, not-very-comfy-chair for approx 12 hours straight, playing ‘Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2‘, and it didn’t cause me any harm, the game doesn’t even post any messages with “You’ve played x hours, take a break.’, I do believe this is on par with the annoying labels on cigarettes saying how dangerous it is to anyones health to smoke. Well it is dangerous to smoke, but is it really that dangerous to play a video game for 1 or 2 hours straight? I doubt it, actually if you’re playing an action game, your average heart rate would go up about 5-10% during any high-peaked action scenes, particularly if you’re either having a huge sound-system or using headset, particularly FPS games play good role for your heart, adding up heart rate from the hectic war game you’re participating in. Thus I wouldn’t say playing Aion for an hour is bad for anyones health, albeit it would be better if you spent 1 hour outside picking flowers, or beating someone up. The latter being worse than 1 hour of gaming I suppose.

Supposedly China have made time restraint for how many hours you can play online MMORPG games, max hour a day is 6 or 8 as far I can investigate, I find that – relatively absurd, average chinese gamers play MMORPG for 6-12 hours, the more hardcore does it 24 hours a day, and the REALLY hardcore extreme individuals does stretch it alot, pumping up with caffeine drinks, like Red Bull, Monster and more, thus their eating habits are screwed as well, which leads to poor blood circulation, and that leads to a higher risk of death if you strain your personal endurance, sitting for +24 hours playing an MMORPG!

So! Why do we that plays video games for approx 5-12 hours on an everyday, due to work, personal life etc. have to read this bullock line everytime we’ve played for x amount of hours? Most would ignore the messages, most wouldn’t, it does appeal to parents as well, trying to control the amount of hours their children spend behind the screen/television, however isn’t that what “Parental Control” is for? ‘World of Warcraft‘ does have a great parental control, which the parents can actually control whichs hours of the day the children can play on their account, supposedly Xbox 360 will have an update containing a such control panel, Playstation 3 already have it!

In the end, it won’t help against people dying from themselves being utterly stupid, or having absolutely no life, why not waste it then if you don’t have a life? I myself ignores it, or finds a way to bypass it, I found out that by a simple file search a few presses on the ‘Delete’ key, I could remove the messages from any MMORPG for the PC containing such messages, they’re extremely easy to find, and there’s more than enough sites on the web, posting how to find and delete it.
Also for that jackass of an lawyer trying to put taxes, and shit on gaming, and actually banning the shit out of it. He lost the game, there’s nothing he can do since video games is a gazillion dollar industry that won’t ever go away.
Accept the fact that there will be jerkoffs out in the world trying to put limiters on our freedom to play as much and what we want, all we can do, is show our dis-appreciation towards any of those suggestions, and pray they get their dicks out of their own assholes and look at how it really is.

From Wikipedia:

Bayonetta​ (ベヨネッタ, Beyonetta?) is an action game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, directed by Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe series creator Hideki Kamiya at Platinum Games in cooperation with publisher Sega. Set in a fictional city in Europe, the game centers on its title character Bayonetta, who can wield four handguns—among other weapons—and perform magical attacks to defeat various enemies. The game has five difficulty settings; its two easiest ones contain a game mode playable with only one button, similar to a mode Kamiya used in Devil May Cry. Its developers designed its characters with modern style and fashion in mind, and composed for it a largely upbeat and feminine soundtrack.

Development of the game started around January 2007, and it was released in Japan in late October 2009. It has been promoted through a television commercial with music by Japanese pop singer MiChi, look-alike searches, a theme for the Google Chrome Web browser, and an upcoming photo book and soundtracks. Critical reviews of pre-release versions have praised its easily learned moves, fast pace, boss battles, “Witch Time” slowdown mechanic, and character and stage designs. However, they lamented inconsistent frame rates, duller graphics, and technical issues in its PS3 port, as well as its use of camera angles in both versions.

This micro-review is based off the Bayonetta – First Climax Demo for the PS3 port.

Loved;
Fast-paced Combat:
Combat scenes in Bayonetta are extremely fast, way faster than the directors previous title ‘Devil May Cry 4‘, fighting off large quanitities of small enemies, or a mid quantity of larger enemies with the four(!) guns the main character is able to wield. Bayonetta is also supposedly able to wield a, two-handed Katana Sword, a snake headed whip, and pictures have been posted Bayonetta wielding various shotguns, rocket-launchers and more. Apart from her own standard weapons she is also able to pick up defeated enemies weapon, ever wanted to use that boss’ huge axe? Go ahead and pick it up. Boss combat are huge as well, they got makeshift combat stages, crumbling areas and alot of action to boot. Mid-battle action commands have been used as well, posing more opportunities for varied combat, stages may be moved by the largest enemies or smashed by environmental collapses.

Huge easy-to-learn movesets and combos:
Bayonetta features an enormous moveset and combo set for each weapon, to make them easy to learn all weapons have the exact same combo-combination, making it easy to master than the previously mentioned Devil May Cry 4. The lists are enormous, more than 50 combos for each weapon, press releases stated she has four weapons total, her guns, sword, whip and one more unreleased weapon.

Hated;
Music, Graphics, Devil May Cry(?):
The music features some more feminine music than I’ve ever encountered in a video game before, except maybe for when I actually bothered to play ‘Final Fantasy X-2‘, apart from the music that makes you think you’re in a church, the game features this very… I don’t know what to call it. ‘Annoying high-toned female approached music that makes my head go “ERRRGH!”‘. It’s a gamble to use this genre of music for an action games, I’m mostly used to high-pumped rock/metal styled combat music with ambience sounds when not in combat, I’ve played thousands of action games, and this one – apart from the previously mentioned Final Fantasy game, is the only one to feature this music. And I DU NUT WANT!

And as far as graphics, backgrounds are horrible for looking like they spent 5 minutes painting a scenario, then editing it into a 3D model in approximately 45 minutes. I’d dare saying it’s far worse than any other 4th generation game I’ve seen so far! Overall character design could use more works. As being a female oriented game — Hey ‘ey wait’a'damn’minit! A female game? THIS?! WHAT?! How in the world could the character designers make a game that is geared toward females, and have the main characters clothes be made out of her own hair?! Even when you perform a ‘Climax Attack‘, which is the most powerful finishing move for bosses, she gets 90% naked except for the ‘sensitive regions’ will be covered in remnants of hair! I am definately not a masoschist, but I do claim this game to be more male oriented rather than female at this build.
However I will have to ask for a genuine female opinion from another ‘Kipz member before bashing this to hell.

Last nail in the coffin, aside from the game director having directed Devil May Cry 4, but does Bayonetta have to be an offspring of it? Anyone who played DMC4 would instantly notice about 90% of the mechanics and gameplay are stolen/ripped straight out the ass of DMC4. This just makes it repetitive from a previous game and makes it lose alot of capabilities to be played over and over.
This also struck the nail in the coffin for me, I will not buy the game unless I can get it for 0.50$ or as a gift from anyone in regards of donating it to me, or giving it as a gift.

Bayonetta is a good looking game, when you don’t look at the environments, character designs are off concering the target group for the game, I doubt females need any confirmation that they’re below 1.90 metres tall, or have a perfectly shaped body and supremely long legs. This is more a male game rather than female, albeit females may play it or may not. To get a better point of view, I’ll ask a female ‘Kipz member to test the game for me, and come up with their opinion of it.
Making it an offspring of Devil May Cry 4, not a good idea either, Devil May Cry 4 wasn’t exactly the greatest game of the series, but this may or may not save Hideki Kamiyas hiney from flames, however I doubt this beyond the borders.

I recommend you rent the game before buying it 8th of January, try before buy is the tip of choice for this game.

I know we’ve changed once of late from the original layout to the current layout, however I’d like to see some changes to user accessibility, and also design as well.
Anyone regularily visiting the site, also the members as well, would kindly post a reply to this article on what you’d like to see, and if I should rework the design or find something else ?

Any other comments are welcome as well!

~ T3h Administer.

Changelog:
- Changed Permalinks, will now display as kipzsyndicate.dk/name-of-the-article, rather than kipzsyndicate.dk/php?id=xx.

- Changed settings for expirations of which comment fields would be open, was formerly ’14 days’, changed to ‘never’.
(Comment fields were never supposed to expire, this flaw was recently discovered and fixed now.)

Woo~! Finally another review of another game recently released!
If you happen to live under a rock, and doesn’t know what Borderlands is, go check the .wiki page it’s linked to.

But what is Borderlands ?
Borderlands is basicly a brand spanking new innovative combination of my personal favorite game styles, First-Person-Shooter (FPS), and Role-Playing-Game (RPG). Generating a completely never before seen gameplay style, Role Play Shooter (RPS) makes Borderlands stand out from the crowd. Lately the games market has been overflown with single-/multiplayer editions of RPG or Shooter games for the consoles and also for PC.
This review will be focused on the Playstation 3, version of the game. So take that in consideration if you’re reading this review for consideration wether you’re about to get the game.
If you happen to be one of them losers who haven’t already gotten it!

You have the ability to choose a character, each character have their own special skill, the Hunter (Sniper) has a pet Bloodwing, he can summon to hunt down his prey, by adding skill points in the skills trees you can have the pet do various things, like drop more items, attack multiple enemies, or you can boost your sniper rifle damage.
The Siren (Scout/Hit ‘n’ Runner) is an support type with Phasewalking skill, it lets you shift into another dimension creating a dimensional blast when you enter, allows you to run very fast while in Phasewalk, and when you leave the dimension you create another blast, combine it with an melee attack for extra damage.
The Soldier, can spawn a Scorpio Turret, a small selfcontrolled automated gun turret that’ll shoot on it’s front field-of-view enemies, can be upgraded and powered in skill trees.
The Berserker, well the name speaks for itself, basicly a huge piece of meat with near-superhuman strength whose skill is to go Berserking and beat up your target with added damage.

You definately have a wide choice of gameplay, and you’re definately not restricted to use the weapons each character specials in, my Hunter does fine with an SMG (Submachinegun) and using a wide variety of Sniper Rifles whenever appropriate, and with the latest expansion you got about 8 ‘Bazillion’ (!!) weapons to choose from provided they drop first-hand.

The Review! OMG!?
Yours truly absolutely loved the game, I’m completely hooked on the game style, and do add !!!!!!!!! to hooked. It definately caught me first-hand as I’m a huge, HUEG! RPG player and I really love FPS games, having played serveral years of Counter-Strike, Quake series, for RPG I’ve been playing alot of the Final Fantasy series, Legend of Zelda and much much ! MUCH! More of the like.
Merging the FPS and RPG gameplay really got me hooked on the game at an almost instant, first character I played was Mordecai (The Hunter/Sniper). I got immediatley tossed into the action and was quickly introduced to the game, as always I’m a shitty gamer that reads the manual before starting new games, however with this it just wasn’t that neccessary, the manual doesn’t even state much except the purpose of the game, the HUD items, weapons, proficiency and basic stats.
I’d wager that a person with absolutely no RPG or FPS experience would be able to turn on the game, pick up the controller (or grasp the mouse and keyboard for PC version) and play this game very efficiently.
With 8 Bazillion weapons to choose from provided at their own droprate dependent on your own level and your targets levels, you can get anything from crude/raw weapons (White), Uncommon (Green), Rare (Blue), Epics (Purple) Legendary (Yellow/Orange).

Hey wait’a'minnit!?!? White, Blue, Purple, Orange… Where do I know that from … HHHHHNNNNGGGGG!!! … World of Warcraft maybe ?
Picking out an already working system from a world-class MMORPG ? Wow, that’s really bold and very well functioning! At first it really wondered my head, why would they take the item level color system already present in World of Warcraft, and add it to a supposedly ‘Completely new and innovative game?’. I’d think that the philosophy of keeping it simple and using systems that already exists and works like a charm is a very good idea.
And it does, I was immediatley able to because of my World of Warcraft experience able to grasp the item levels pretty instant, I knew that my starting crude/raw weapons had to be swapped for a green/blue weapon off the get-go, mind you that weapons/items have level restrictions. I’ve experienced with my Mordecai character, after I grabbed an purple SMG at level 24, SMG being a level 24 restricted weapon would last me to level 50, why ? It had some amazing stats, and it seems that the color codes have something to do with the amounts of item stats your weapon/item can have.

The basic stats of every weapon in the game are Damage, Accuracy and Fire rate, these stats are constantly adjusted by the level of the item and also certain skill trees have skills that will boost up stats like fire rate by x pr. skill point, and so on. Also certain weapons as the one shown on the right, have an elemental property, “Chance to light enemies on fire”, this weapon would at a certain multiplier be able to literally light the enemy that’s been shot at on fire, causing a burning damage on the enemy, there are other elemental properties like “Chance for explosion” or the like, also lightning elemental property works very well against shields, it just rips them apart with a single shot.

Enough about weapons and the gameplay, graphics, music?!
ALLRIGHT DAMMIT ! Take it easy !

I don’t have any complaints as far as the graphics goes, it does have a cellshading feel however without the cartoonish look to it. Take a look at some screenshots;

The graphics really made the game far more interesting by using a different cellshading technique than we’ve seen in earlier game, and it also goes very well with the “Marvel superhero” like theme the characters have, speaking of the music theme/ambient sound.
Apart from being rather a action game, it’s a shooter dammit! we’re thrown some of the best matching soundtracks ever, for example this title; “No Heaven” performed by DJ Champion which got featured in the Trailer videos before launch, it is also the credits tune used in the game.
The most familiar tune in the game is probably the introduction film music; “Ain’t no rest for the wicked” performed by Cage The Elephant. The music really tunes into the hillbilly theme, and it matches up with the game theme very well for my taste, I got immediatley hooked to the music. However to my dissappointment, during the game you will be faced with listening to very quiet ambient sounds matching the area you’re in, the first area “Arid Badlands” is an open-scaled desert, and you’re faced with some very low and deep tune, the tune just makes you feel you’re completely into the desert and you’re alone or if you’re on a multiplayer game, that you’re still in the desert. The ambient tunes changes if you move into an enclosed location, for example a dungeon where you have to get from the entrance, to the end for a boss fight. While you’re running/idling in the dungeon, you get the eerie tunes, while in combat you’ll get a faster tuned ambient rather than the other, I really have to say that it dissappoints me, the game itself is pretty repetitive, and then the tunes get very repetitive too, and I found myself going to the options, turning the volume for music/ambient to zero, and hooking up my iPod for some other music, I mostly chose to listen to Megadeth or Disturbed, which completely off topics the game. So don’t go hoping for good ambient tunes, but you’ll get satisfaction from the soundtracks.

Recap the damn review !
If you’re another RPG-junkie, and/or FPS-junkie, you’ll definately get your fix in this game, you get over 20-40 playtime hours just from the basic game, the game just got expanded with an expansion “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”, a review of the expansion will follow later on in a separate post.
You can connect up to 3 Xbox Live/Playstation Network buddies for multiplayer gameplay, which works really well as well, except you may want to get a DSL boost, since it’ll use your console as an host, and pull your own broadband. Be prepared for alot of time spent on this game, the achievements/trophies are extremely easy to get, within my own first 6 hours of gameplay I’ve acquired at least 50% of the alotted trophies for now, Gearbox does claim that there will be more expansions with their own separate trophies. I will be looking forward to them.

If you’re interested in a different styled and fast paced role playing shooter, then get Borderlands, it does live up to my personal expectations, and my friends are asking me why I’ve left them for Borderlands, they literally does, and calls me a Borderlands-junkie, which is true.
Faced with over 8 bazillion weapon, great surroundings, great variety of enemies, tunes, soundtracks and much more, this game will linger for quite a while, with the expansions to follow it’ll linger more, also with a sequel on the drawing board, I bet we’ll see another Borderlands by the end of next year or in 2011.

So what’re you waiting for numbnut ?! GO GET THE GAME NOW!

Anyway, I’ll leave the bad sides to another article about J-Popcon, which will also be posted here.

Admittedly it was my first time as an organizer, the former 3 years I’ve been there as an gopher, so this was the first time I actually expected to have to work and get some ‘off-duty’ time to enjoy the convention, but to my disavail, that didn’t happen. I had the greatest of time doing my events friday with Jankip, best of time ever at a convention, and also the time when we didn’t have to do any events. Nonetheless, friday itself was a little bit stress’ish for me, not too much to be unbearable, but it was there anyway. Another organizer obviously had a thorn in my side for doing as I almost pleased, and the fact that he threw a print assignment into my face, because HE had to do something else, and that while there was absolutely no printer available. Nice going, dickface!

During friday, I had to host ‘Hardcore Otaku Quiz’ and ‘Pose-off’, the first being co-hosted by the one and only Jankip, it went great despite me speaking danish when the questions was in english, big bad whoops for me ! And Pose-off, J-Popcon haven’t had that great event for 4 years, and I brought it back to life, or at least I tried to and it think it worked. Never got any response but I definately had fun doing it and I think everyone else did too.
So after doing the events I was pretty much off duty, so hanging out with Jankip became my top priority, had alot of fun and bought her some presents too. Spent some time in the photoroom with Cosplay Denmark taking pictures of random cosplaying people. Untill about 21.00 where Jankips health issues started to make her have to go home, I was a bit sad about her going, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t get any room at all for some resting, despite the fact that I during saturday heard that they managed to fix up a sleep room for the organizers and gophers (RAEG!). Anyway, I sent her home by a train, and went back.

I went back to Cosplay Denmarks photoroom, taking pictures of random cosplaying people, which was totally awesome. Managed to borrow two external flashes for my Canon EOS 450D, only used one of them at the same time, despite having a wireless trigger. Which seemed to work the best that way too, notice to those having taken pictures off. I will get them uploaded to the flickr site as soon as possible. I was up till about 01.00 at the photoroom, before I decided to close down, switch off the light, pull out my sleeping bag and pillow and sleep on the floor near a radiator. Wow that was cosy ?
(At least I slept pretty well, concerning that I had to get up at 07.00 in the morning!)

Saturday, oh saturday that was probably the most dramatic day of the entire convention. Morning starts off with no big deal, managed to get up at 06.45, get a very quick shower, brush teeths, get my hair straight and clothes on before 07.30, after that I packed my photo equipment into my photobag, packed my other gear into my bigger bags and left it inside that room, knowing it would be open for me again later on that day. I had some quick setups to do before the ‘Softcore Otaku Quiz’ that morning, which sadly was only hosted by me, no Jankip there to have a bodyguard dog. It went super that event, everyone was happy, it was fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it! So that made my morning a good morning!
What destroyed my saturday ? Well, later on that day I managed to do a major wrong in the gameroom, it’s a long story and I’d like to keep the drama out of it, which made me think twice about the convention and the younger people attending. Which also lead me to say that I’m no longer Organizer, what happened ? I’d love to tell but then no, it’s too dramatic to reveal all out. Nonetheless, I only had minor duties till 16.00 when the ‘Cosplay Show’ started, I rustled myself and my photogear over to Marketenderiet, and finds myself into a situation where I get a shitty spot, and then comes to women from a danish show called ‘Troldspejlet‘, to film the entire show. I don’t mind them filming at all, I do mind that their big fat asses was constantlly in front of my own camera lens, which means I can’t take pictures. Again, I was supposed to be an official photographer for J-Popcon and they stick with a shit for a spot to take pictures from. Infuriated with anger, stress and a near breakdown I decided to leave after the 2nd act, people who looked at my face would see that I was definately not happy about it. Despite that, I rushed back to the main location of J-Popcon, told the lead staff I was going home before a serious nervous breakdown, packed my gear and went home by train, the time was just about 16.40 or so by that time.

So that’s what happened to me at J-Popcon, many people did ask why I left and what happened, but here it is. To leave out any dramatic equation to a nonetheless quiet article, I’ll leave the bad sides to my other article.
Admittedly, I have very little good points about it, despite the hours spent there with Jankip. I absolutely loved every minute of it, and was very sad she had to leave early, but I understand why and I understand her health issues, and have no trouble with it at all.

This is probably the end for me being at J-Popcon, unless I have a special reason to go there, this year just sorta ended too horrible for me, and I’ve got an inside look on how they work and operate, and let me tell you. It ain’t pretty at all.

Dun dun duuuuuuuun!

Only 5 more days till J-Popcon goes off the stable!
Multiple ‘Kipz Syndicate members will be present! Both Founders will of course be present there, Madkip being a part of the staff team, and Jankip as a “forced” to attend as a staff as well as Madkip seemed to have wanted a co-host for some events!
Unfortunately our foreign members will not be able to attend, for their behalf we’re sorry, and can only entertain them with photos from throughout the weekend.

Are you guys as excited as we are ? I bet you are, we’re very excited to meet everyone that we’ve not seen, talked with or been interactive with for a long looong time. We hope that our fans will pay us a visit and say ‘O HAI!’ or something in that regard.
By our information even some of our members are attending the Cosplay Show, we’ll have photos up as Madkip is bringing his big ass photo rig with him, expect ‘Kipzness, Mana/Health Potions and awesomeness!

Attending ‘Kipzers:

Madkip

(List is to be updated.)

As we say here!

C U TH-AR!

However, how far will it go ? Let’s take some simple games like Gears of War 2, which is the grand game for Xbox 360, almost on par with Halo 3/Halo 3 ODST.
Well the concept was probably not evolved or developed to be used with theese games, as they require 8-way movement on the map, and how would you aim your weaponry ?

But, I’ll try to be open-minded here and view at it from the interactive point-of-view. Microsoft states they’ll develope interactive games specificly to be used with the Natal sensor, basicly it’s a 3D Wii Motion Detector, it detects any movement of your body, face recognition, voice recognition are the high features.
However who would buy this device ? I think it’s primarily geared towards the families and people with more interest in interactive gaming over, controller-required gaming.
As far as I’ve been able to see from the press info and material release by Microsoft, the Natals job is to attempt at removing the controller from the consumer, it seems to be working. However there’s gonna be some limit to how much controller-requirement it’ll be able to remove, I would probably never be able to play Halo 3 ODST or Gears of War 2 with this, besides being able to try and move my character by ‘running-on-spot’ I would still have to deal with dodging, crouching, proning and more stances.

So how do we deal with that ? We take back the controller in hand and plays the game, which renders the Natal useless on point.
Nonetheless, I do believe most Xbox 360 consumers will take the Natal in with open arms and at least try it, it may not be a Wii, and it may not be able to play Gears of War 2, but it may add some excitement or changes to your everyday by adding some interactive motion into your life, the Natal is actually a camera, which makes it possible to keep video calls over Xbox Live, this seems like a great idea, and voice recognition is on par with 400$ microphones for your computer or sound-station.
But why add the addition to an 4-5 year old console that’s already having trouble keeping up with Blu-Ray against the PS3 ? After 4-5 years Microsoft has got to have another Xbox console in design-phase.

If was was in the Microsoft financial department, I would’ve strongly adviced to get a new Xbox on the market, and release the Natal with it, why ? It’ll give more publicity, and the developement team more time to get the Natal features done and maybe completely remove the controller from before controller-required games. But alas, I’m not that high on the food chain, nor do I have the education for it, apparently I would guess it’s a rather rash attempt for Microsoft to get some fame back into the Xbox 360 as the sales have dropped serverely over the last couple of years, with the recently released ‘Elite’ edition, it didn’t get much better either.
Microsoft is not the only company suffering from this, Sony Entertainment is having problems getting their PS3 Slims off the shelves as well.

Does Microsoft have potential lying here, or will it be another flop ? Time will show, I personally believe mostly in the last point, a flop as usual. Not that I would rather bet on Sony Entertainments ‘Wand Controller’ project for the PS3, but I just prefer controller gaming, since it gives me enough control, and if a simple controller with more than enough buttons to map in your head, doesn’t cut it. Add driver-software to insert simple USB mouse and keyboards, PS3 already has mouse/keyboard support in Unreal Tournament 3, and is the only console on the market that has this opportunity, why not use it more. Lately I’ve actually been thinking that I’d rather play games on a steady console over a computer, that I would have to buy new hardware for every 2-6 months hence games developement in requirements and so on. Press releases states that Final Fantasy XIII is to-date, the most requiring game for the Playstation 3, but it only managed to use 40%…. FORTY-FUCKING-PERCERNT! of the PS3 processor! Xbox 360 gets clocked out by that since even the almost launch released Gears of War pulled nearly 95% of the processor power from it.
I’m sorry here, there’s alot of favors in the PS3 for this one, I really gotta say that I’m one of them that had owned an Xbox 360 for a year and a half, but even at the day I bought it and after I’ve had it for like an month. I didn’t really feel any thrill about it, I could play Gears of War constantly, I bought alot of other pretty good games. But now with this Natal, despite adding a certain level of interactiveness, and social interactiveness, I just don’t get the ‘Wow factor‘.
Why is the wow factor important, with no wow factor there’s no impressions over a new item/project, which means it’ll just go by unnoticed, and I’m not stating it will go unnoticed, just that PS3 owners and Wii owners, will say ‘ZzzzzzzZzzzz‘, rather than be ubër excited.

Wonder why ? Nintendo just did a press release stating they’re working on new sensors with cameras, HD cameras even, motion detection, face recognition and voice recognition, exactly the same that Sony Entertainment have been working on. Sony had the EyeToy out for years, and the PS3 version got even better, remember The Eye of Judgement ? The PS3 EyeToy could recognize patterns on a card to ‘summon’ monsters on the game field, just like when you’re watching Yu-Gi-Oh! On the TV. That game was revolutionary for its being, if you’ve tried it, you’ll love it!

All in all, Project Natal seems like a rash move from Microsoft to boast their Xbox 360, and also to try and follow on the interactive scale that the Wii is and have always been reigning since it’s release. The Playstation 3 just wins at its sheer power that’s still not being used, and all the extra equipment you can add, and that it’s a Blu-Ray console. Sorry Microsoft, I love your Operating Systems *cough*FuckVista*cough*, but, going all out on the Xbox 360 like this and not trying to develop your equipment for a new console is just not financially consistent, releasing a new Xbox 360 right now may be a bad idea in terms of game programming, but there’s the chance to shine since the game developement for Xbox 360 and programming is by far easier for Xbox 360 than PS3, no wonder there’s not a single company, by the excepton of Final Fantasy XIII which was originally intended as a PS3 exclusive, gets ported to a multiple disc version, and when I say multiple. I mean fucking multiple due to your stupid drive bays.
(Please try to fix the ‘DISC KILLER MECHANISM OF DOOM’! It really is the cause of alot of games death, it’s a minor fix for 5 bucks!) Ahem! Anyhow, Natal is promising, but nothing I would think as groundbreaking. The Xbox 360 sure can stand up to having a greater social interactive meaning, I don’t want to wish the Natal Project luck, since I hate any Xbox 360 project coming ever since I sold my Xbox 360 in rage over it’s suckiness. Besides, the best games for me personally, is released on the PS3, I don’t care about Gears of War or any other exclusive you may get, PS3 is proven to get way more exclusives, and they already have a perfect grasp on serveral companies like Namco, Square, Tecmo and more.

Sorry Natal, fuck you.