Click Here to watch the conference so you can follow along:

Introduced to the song “One Vision” by Queen (Better than Beatles, in my not-so-humble opinion)

Jack Tretton: Making some ackward jokes about the PSP Go! being leaked early. WHOOPSIE! Not really that great of an announcement anyways…
“We are industry leaders at Playstation and press leaks are no exception”
I actually like Jack Tretton, he’s more humble and self-aware than any other Sony spokesman like Kaz.

“Why Playstation will continue to be the mainstay of this industry… behind Nintendo.”

“Only provider with three successful consoles at once.” Funny, I see the PS2, but why the PS3 and PSP? ZING!

Rehashing the fact that PS3 is getting a lot of the same big titles that Xbox is getting.
Kind of feels like they’re playing the role of the annoying younger sibling that always goes “I want to come too!”

Charts and graphs and successful techniques used by Nintendo at their conferences.

Naughty Dog and Uncharted 2: Wow… I honestly can’t knock this. This looks pretty rad- no, even MORE rad than the first. (yes, I’m so excited over it I’m using 1990’s slang).
I love how Uncharted is ‘self-aware’ of itself:
Chick: “Are we going to have to climb?”
Nate: “Yeah, that’s usually what happens…”
HOLY SHIT, ATTACK CHOPPA!! GO! GET AWAY FROM DA CHOPPA!!
TEH BUILDING ARE FALLING! OMG!
Crowd goes wild. Read the rest of this entry »

Click Here to watch the conference so you can follow along:

The Beatles Anime! Nothing says plastic toy guitars like The Beatles in a Japanese cartoon. I was, however, waiting to hear Eleanor Rigby … no luck, just an acid trip of marching flamingos, rhino-phants and drums.

Alex and Van = Cosmo Cramer’s gay Dago cousin and, just a Dago.

Commence Beatles history channel special. Top it all off with grown men playing with plastic instruments and singing badly. “He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. He said ‘yeah yeah yeah’. She said ‘yeah yeah yeah’…”

Sorry, I’m an Elvis man.

Jesus Christ, the singer on the left is the Bill Gates clone they grew in a test tube from a sample they found in one of his tube socks!

I wonder if they will include Mark David Chapman as the last level of The Beatles Rockband game? (I’m already going to Hell, so I can say it.)

“I am the walrus. Ku ku kachu.” – That honestly freaked me out… scary acid-trip shit.

AH! Kim Jong Il!!!… Oh wait… Yoko Ono… AAAHHHHHH!!!!

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr walk out. Sweet! They’re walking out…
“Game looks good, mate. Good graphics.”
“Don’t know why we’re here, really.”
“We love your money.”
…And walking off… Such inspirational words to future plastic-toy musicians… fuck.

John Schappert. “We’re not going to show you charts and graphs about sales figures… REGGIE!” I hate this guy’s voice. So nasal and snooty, like those parodies of rich snobby people. Read the rest of this entry »

Click Here to watch the conference so you can follow along:

Conference begins

Am I the only person in the world who HATES Cammy Dunaway? Goddamn, nothing says ‘Nintendo’ than and old broad blabbing on and on about Nintendo’s achievements and goals. Sweet bitter fuck I feel like I’m back in Junior High history class, being forced to listen to something I could care less about by a woman who is old enough that she probably witnessed it all first hand.

Mario on the Wii: “Miyamoto wanted to find a way to play Mario like never before.” So presenting Mario on the Wii (again), WITH 4 PLAYER! Fucking whoop. Super Mario Bros 1 with 4 players: Mario, Luigi, Toad and…. Toad. And of course Cammy-saurus Rex is faking fun on the game like a goddamned orgasm.

“Nintendo: Your mom will love it!”

“Players will be lining up to play Miyamoto’s latest masterpiece.”

‘Masterpiece?!’ It’s not a goddamn masterpiece when you REHASH an original. It would be like baking an award winning cake, then letting four people actually eat it. Fuck that.

Damn, this bitch can lie with a straight face… though I have yet to see any more emotion out of her than a sea sponge. She’s like the opposite of Hiliary Clinton’s Botox-enduced rigor-mortis smile. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone seems to be giving me kudos on this particular part of my Devil May Cry 2 review:

Dante has become a stoic, silent hero like Clint Eastwood’s ‘Blondie’ from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” instead of a wise-cracking, rebellious figure more along the lines of Eddie Murphy in “Beverly Hills Cop”. It is a complete character reversal, and it’s so abrupt that you can’t shake the feeling that this Dante is some kind of evil impostor. What happened after the events of Devil May Cry to make Dante act so completely different? Did Trish dump him, and he took it too hard? That would explain Trish’s absence from the sequel.

*Cthulhu’s phone ringing*

Cthulhu: “Cthulhu, fhtagn?”

Dante: “…”

Cthulhu: “Who is this? Is this Dante?”

Dante: “…”

Cthulhu: “Christ, I played the first game, I know you can fucking talk. Why the hell don’t you talk anymore?”

Dante: “… Dunno.”

Cthulhu: “It’s Trish, huh?”

Dante: “…”

Cthulhu: “Shiiiiit, I told you that hoe wasn’t nothin’ but trouble for ya, man. She crashes at your place, strokes Alastor a few times, and then she leaves ya. You’re better off without that crazy bitch.”

Dante: “…”

Cthulhu: “Trish didn’t cut your balls off and hide them in a shoe box, did she?”

Dante: “… No.”

Cthulhu: “Then quit acting like a little emo fag and get on with your life. Hell let’s get together like old times.” Read the rest of this entry »

Devil May Cry was a smash hit. The reception of Dante’s first adventure was overwhelmingly positive, though not without a few complaints. Common complaints ranged from ‘the game was too hard’ to ‘the camera was horrible (I agree)’ to ‘Trish wasn’t playable’. Regardless, Devil May Cry was a critical and commercial success, and Dante had gone from a gaming nobody to the most extreme video game character during the first few years of the 21st century. As I mentioned in the Devil May Cry 1 review, Dante’s adventure was the adrenaline jolt that shook the gaming industry.

A sequel was not only imminent, it was DEMANDED by gamers and critics alike.

The original Devil May Cry was developed by director Hideki Kamiya and Capcom Production Studio 4, however neither director nor studio were given notice that a sequel would be in the works until, surprisingly, Devil May Cry was being localized for European and North American markets. Hideki Kamiya and Studio 4 were not brought back to develop Devil May Cry 2, and the project was instead handed to director Hideaki Itsuno and Capcom Production Studio 1, whose past achievements include Capcom vs. SNK 2.

Producer Tsuyoshi Tanaka wanted Itsuno and Studio 1 to make the sequel naturally superior to the original. Tanaka emphasized larger environments (approximately 9-times larger than the original game). Puzzles were also to be downplayed (a good move in my opinion), and the camera system was to be revamped to allow better action scenes. Overall, not a bad list of fixes that would have obviously improved the original game. In addition to the logical evolution of the series, additional changes from the first game were influenced by public surveys distributed by the development team in an effort to appease fans. Based on the infamous outcome of Devil May Cry 2, I often wonder: “Who the fuck did they survey?”

Capcom (in their infinite wisdom) went all out in the marketing campaign for Devil May Cry 2. An official video game soundtrack was released in Japan. In addition, due to the focus of Devil May Cry 2′s action on style, Capcom partnered with the Diesel clothing company, which has a history of working with game developers. Dante and Lucia were modeled with specially designed costumes featuring the Diesel brand name and were featured in promotional material in Diesel stores across Japan.

As it was with Playstation Home, Devil May Cry 2 is proof that Diesel clothing destroys video games as well as sexual identity.

The infamous outcome of Devil May Cry 2 was an overwhelming lackluster response. A lot of people have their own opinions of the game, which range only between “It’s okay” to “It was a steaming pile of rat shit that killed off more brain cells than huffing a can of aerosol paint.”

I’m not going to tell you how to think about this game, but I am going to share with you my personal experiences. Read the rest of this entry »

Full review at http://www.cheshirecatstudios.com/reviews/devil-may-cry/

Controls

Everyone is going to hate me for saying this, but as awesome as Devil May Cry is to play, the control scheme feels ASS BACKWARDS. Square shoots and Circle attacks with the Devil Arm, which is good, but then you have Triangle jump and X open doors? What the hell is up with that? The Triangle button isn’t a fucking Up Arrow, and even if there was an ‘Up’ button, games that require you to push ‘Up’ to jump suck. And having X open doors but do nothing else? X is the second most commonly used button on a Playstation controller, so why the hell was it demoted to just opening fucking doors?

The first two hours of playing this game with this controller layout was just PAIN… pure and unrelenting torture that made you think that the fucking control schema was some bastard child of Satan Himself. Devil May Cry my fucking ass, The Devil is crying because he’s laughing so hard, bringing misery to the masses WHILE BEING PAID BY THE PEOPLE HE’S TORTURING. Does the word “sadomasocapitalism” even exist? If not, I am putting dibs on it, patenting it, and getting paid a quarter for every time someone buys a game that brings only misery and pain. Shit, I could retire off of the Angry Video Game Nerd.

“HA HA! Benjamins!”

Even worse is the infamously ackward ‘Rail Shooter’ segments at the end of the game. You finally get the hang of the hack-and-slash controls to the point where you can defeat the later bosses with relative ease, but then, like running into a bad ex-girlfriend by mistake, you are reminded of the painful memories of yore. The rail shooter involves Dante turning into his ‘True Demon Form’ and fighting Mundus in the skies. Not only does Mundus throw everything at you except for the kitchen sink, but up is down, and down is up on the control stick. You are FORCED to replay that segment over and over again until you familiarize yourself with the ‘new’ controller layout, AND IT BLOWS.

Graphics

While the graphics are definately not up to par by today’s standards, back during the turn of the century the graphics in Devil May Cry were… good.

That’s it, just ‘good’. They were not horribly abysmal like some of the early PS2 titles, but they were definately not up to snuff with the smooth presentation of games like Final Fantasy X.

The textures were pretty rough in areas, but were very intricate in others. Prime example being a contrast between the sewer level and the library: The sewer was very bland, with nothing especially noteworthy in the wall textures of the rigidly square rooms, where as the Library had not only rows of books, but also curvature in its archetecture and layout, as well as more organic elements, like trees and roots breaking through the corner of the room. And when a library is more ‘organic’ than a sewer, you know you have problems. Also, the characters were rendered pretty roughly, and their textures (save for their faces) were pretty low-res. As sexy as Trish was supposed to appear, her figure was as curvy as a stop sign. However, the bosses like the Phantom were well done for the time period, and some of the effects were certainly impressive.

It’s pretty rough, but what do you expect on a 166MHz PS2 processor?

…I actually expect more impressive graphics like this:

Sound

When it comes to Devil May Cry’s sound, one thing pops into mind: Resident Evil? Yes, the music in Devil May Cry is very ‘Resident Evil-like’. I fucking wonder why… The music is very dark and brooding while you are castle exploring. Not exactly like Silent Hill, but it’s extremely moody with its deep droning melodies. However, during fights the music picks up into one of the many electronica battle arrangements. While unique depending on the type of fight, the music retains its ‘gothic’ overtone with the use of organ music and deep bass but is accompanied by frantic guitars and an impressive rhythm. But regardless of how it sounds, it is both epic and adrenaline pumping at the same time.

Voice acting is an obviously noticeable aspect to point out. A lot of people have a problem with the dialogue in the game, but that doesn’t have any bearing on the VOICES. I can’t believe how many people don’t realize that there is a difference. Regardless, the voice acting is pretty good in my opinion. The demons like Phantom have reverberating, deep, raspy voices, but the voices of Trish and Dante sounds wooden and relatively uninterested in their roles. Of course, if I had to read dialogue like below I wouldn’t be too anxious about any of it, either.

Story and Dialogue

I rarely give Story or Dialogue its own category but I feel like it will be warranted for this particular series, mostly because of the whole “LLLIIIIIIIIIGGGHHTT!!!” thing mentioned above.

Needless to say, in some spots the dialogue is not just ‘rough’, it’s a goddamn TRAIN WRECK. Some dialogue is sly and witty, while other times it is just down-right cheesy. Prime example being the “Devils Never Cry” speech that Dante gives Trish at the end of the game:

*Dante and Trish are trapped in the sewers with no way out as the castle is caving in. Trish begins to cry.*
Dante: “Trish… Devils never cry. These tears… Tears are a gift only humans have.
Trish: “Dante… it’s too late.”
Dante: “No Trish, It’s never too late. For we humans never give up.”
*A goddamn airplane falls into the sewer*
Dante: “Are you ready?”
Trish: “Yes!”
*Running to the airplane to escape*

… CAN YOU NOT PICTURE THIS AS THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO KIDS ‘ACTING’ IN AN 8TH GRADE DRAMA CLASS? THE DIALOGUE WRITING IS JUST ABYSMAL. IT’S TOTAL B-MOVIE MATERIAL.

“Tears are a gift only humans have”? MOVE OVER SHAKESPEARE…

“It’s never too late. For we humans never give up”? I’VE HEARD BETTER MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES IN PORNOS. AND SINCE WHEN IS DANTE ‘HUMAN’? ISN’T HE HALF-DEMON? DOES THAT MEAN HE ONLY CRIES OUT OF ONLY ONE EYE? WHAT THE HELL?

“HA HA! Half-people!”

Full review at http://www.cheshirecatstudios.com/reviews/devil-may-cry/

I’ve been doing some reworking on the Cheshirecatstudios.com forum ever since we were recently SPAMMED (thanks, Russia…).

I have made some headway on preventing SPAM from getting through, and now I have done some reworking of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the forum.

To keep it simple, META TAGS (tags more or less used by search engines to determine content) have been reworked to DYNAMICALLY update themselves with info relevant to each separate post, rather than using a “one size fits all” set of tags. So here’s hoping for an influx from the Search Engines.

Devil May Cry.

The game that almost single-handedly created the Extreme Action game. Devil May Cry is the father of other games (*COUGH* KNOCKOFFS *COUGH *) that include the popular and well created franchises Ninja Gaiden and God of War, decent games like Heavenly Sword and Van Helsing, and as some really shitty ripoffs like Conan and X-Blades.

If you think that Devil May Cry did not pave the way for Ninja Gaiden and God of War, then open your fucking eyes. Seriously. Besides one being Greek Mythology and the other being Ninjas and Tits, the gameplay is nearly identical. The weapon selection system is laid out almost identically, and all the games follow a ‘Go to Point A, Get Item X, Return to Point B’ mission-based play-style. God of War even directly ripped off the “Red Orbs = Cash in for Power ups” and “Green Orbs = Life” system.

In contrast, Ninja Gaiden and God of War have, in turn, effected Devil May Cry. For example, Ninja Gaiden was much more stylized than the early DMC games, and the effect can be seen in Devil May Cry 3. God of War nearly PERFECTED the Extreme Action game with its innovative use of button timed events and a more grand scale. Example: The final boss in Devil May Cry 4 almost completely ripped off the Statue battle in God of War 2.

But while the later franchises refined the new genre, it was Devil May Cry that was the genre’s pioneer and establisher. DMC is the Grand-Poobah of action video games.

Click Here for the latest in this Series Review

No, I’m not talking about the big blue guy in the Watchmen movie.

Actually, I’m referring to the website’s latest Google analytics. Apparently during the last few days this site has made quite a splash in the Southern United States, as well as in SOUTH AMERICA (Brazil, Chile, etc). The page stats are well above normal (ranging between 11-20 pages per visitor and clocking in at about a half-hour TO A FULL HOUR in the site). Wow! And I don’t speak a bit of Spanish or Portuguese, so I just have to say I’m impressed.

Also, I’ve made my initial splash in DeviantArt.com with my art of The Joker and The Cheshire Cat. I haven’t seen any traffic from DeviantArt.com to this site yet, but I have received a lot of ‘Favorites’ and positive PM comments on those two pieces in particular.

My final word, and probably the biggest announcement, is that I started posting a blog on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com where I am posting copies of my Game Reviews. In one day I’ve raked in 100 views, so I’m stoked. It’s definitely urging me to continue work at CheshireCatStudios.com.

Thanks for taking an interest everyone!

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK potato FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!

My PS3 was running a few minutes ago, and while I was in the kitchen I heard three loud beeps. I go to my PS3 and I see that the power button is flashing red.

“That’s odd…” I think to myself, including the ellipses. So I try to turn it on again. The power light turns green, then yellow, then it beeps three times and starts flashing red. This happens over, and over, and over.

So I do a little research on the ‘internets’ and see what might have caused the problem.

Google basically says: “DUDE YOU’RE FUCKED”

So now I’m out $140 and I have to wait about 2-3 weeks to get a new system. However, that isn’t the problem, THIS IS:

I HAVE THE PS2 BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE PS3!!! (60Gigger)

I HAVE A SHITLOAD OF PS2 GAMES I STILL PLAY. IF SONY SENDS ME BACK A NON-PS2 COMPATIBLE SYSTEM, I’LL BE IN A CLOCKTOWER, NAKED, WITH A HIGH-POWERED RIFLE!!

… But I’m trying to stay optimistic.