Gamer’s Hangover News Report – 07.26.04

New patch for Counter Strike and Counter Strike: Condition Zero. Fixes weapons animation issues, some gameplay fixes, the normal stuff. Yawn.

Atlus Bound And Determined To Give Itself Headaches
credit: Gamedaily.com

So Atlus wants to get into the MMORPG market. They tried once with Shin Megami Tensei but the online part of the game had to removed before finish. Now they’ve just unveiled Shin Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE over the weekend at the Tokyo Character Show.

The game will be set in a persistent world, which should be a given for an MMORPG. I mean, how much would it suck for somebody to leave and turn the lights out on everybody else who’s still online. It’d bring you back to the days of trying to play Diablo online with a dial-up connection.

Imagine there’s no online. It’s easy if you try. Imagine gamers who could “¦ keep themselves occupied. Imagine all the people, playing their own damn game. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you can play offline, and the world can KEEP TO THEIR OWN DAMN SELVES.

I’m 30. I’m allowed fits of bitterness.

Atlus is preparing to launch its Shin Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE MMORPG for the PC. Atlus has trodden this road before with their Shin Megami Tensei Nine for the Xbox. However, the game’s online components had to be removed part-way through development.

Shin Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE is set for a public unveiling at the July 24th and 25th Tokyo Character Show.

And More Driv3r Scandal Notes
credit: Spong.com

You probably already know the particulars: Someone from Future Publishing, makers of the gamer magazines “Xbox World” and “PSM2″, claimed that Future received the exclusive rights for advance reviews of the Atari game Driv3r, in exchange for a guaranteed 9 out of 10 rating.

New development: Future’s GamesRader online forums removed all mentions of the scandal over the weekend. Future had been using the forums to answer accusations but apparently felt that it wasn’t doing them any good. At any rate, boo to Future for forcibly removing debate on an issue; especially one that y’all are claiming innocence on.

Right. Innocent.

Now THIS Is News
credit: Spong.com
Between my tardiness and the location of this particular news, I take full responsibility if Misha covers this tomorrow.

Apparently UK-based Rare is seeing staff walk-outs on a WIDE scale following both the purchase of Rare by Microsquash and the subsequent departure of Microsoft Game Studios head Ed Fries. Fries was reportedly behind the purchase, but since his departure Rare hasn’t produced a hit and has produced a couple of high profile misses.

The Spong chaps (good chaps, they are) say that the Rare programmers are already being scooped up by other UK-based developers, such as Eidos and Codemasters. Hey, they need all they help they can get on Colin McRae 5.

(Sorry I couldn’t get that picture up again, Steven. I swear, I’m going to get that bad boy up one of these weeks. Genius.)

Pimp-Licious

Misha was on holiday last week.

Yeager went through last week what I’m going through this week “¦ except for the cold “¦ and the basement cleaning “¦ and the golf.

Bryan goes off. Grab some popcorn and settle in for this one.

A-Will brings us news of new DDR songs. If I could move my legs right now, I’d be happy.

Panky reviews ESPN NFL 2K5 and likes it almost as much as I do.

Murphy

Eric S., I swear, me and Murphy ARE going to come up and help you unpack. If you want I can bring Roni and her giant black “¦ marker (perv) to help label stuff.

The nice thing about being this late is that I can actually reference THIS WEEK’s Nute column.

Fernandez kicks ass, and I hadn’t had my head up mine last week I would have pimped my own appearance in his column.

Quasi-Random Thoughts

Why is this late? Several reasons. Golf being just one of them.

Seriously, those of you in Kansas, did you SEE this morning? I didn’t even go to work. I took a day of vacation, dropped The Boy and Roni off at day care, and headed for the course. 57 degrees at 8 in the morning, beautiful golden sunshine, calm winds, and a vacation day to boot; what did you expect me to do?

I know, sit around and play more Smackdown. Normally, I WOULD do that, but not THIS morning.

Seriously, here’s the dilly-yo. Roni and I spent the entire weekend basically inventorying our life by cleaning our basement. Two full days of that sort of joy will make anybody appreciate the silence of the morning. Of course, I didn’t get a chance to work on this, other than in my head, for the entire weekend. We had both taken Monday off because it’s one of the few days Roni could get vacation cleared for. She decided to spend her morning with The Boy at his school, and I got the official O.K. to clear out to someplace green for the morning, and with the weather the way it turned out, I’d have been a fool to let it go.

Oh, but that’s not all. I discover, quite conveniently AFTER I’ve walked around five miles, that I’m coming down with the cold The Boy has had. I know this because colonies are forming in my sinus cavities and one of them has almost built the Pyramid wonder (any other old school gamers catch that reference on Fark yesterday? I almost spewed my Diet Rite onto the monitor). Of course, I have to help Roni finish up the basement cleaning, while fighting off the cold’s assault. Anyway, this is late, but I feel like crap and if I don’t finish this soon the Benadryl will kick in and I won’t be able to tell you how many toes I have let alone type, so I’m receiving my punishment, thank you.

However, I did have this little thing written up beforehand. Hope it tides you over until next week. Did I mention that Wednesday “¦ two days from now “¦ 48 hours and counting down “¦ is the start of Chiefs training camp?

– Driving around at lunch, I sat through an interview with Matt Damon on The Jim Rome Show. He didn’t talk about Manny Ramirez’s beautifully hilarious cut-off of Johnny Damon’s throw from Center two days ago. Priceless. Definitely worth the $20.4 MILLION a year.

– For Manny Ramirez’s 2004 salary ($20,409,542), here’s a list of Chiefs offensive players who could’ve had their entire 2003 payroll; base salary, performance, and signing bonuses; paid.

— QB Trent Green ($659,300)
— TE Tony Gonzalez ($4,950,000)
— RB Priest Holmes ($2,250,000)
— WR Dante Hall ($1,953,000)
— RB Tony Richardson ($2,150,000)
— WR Eddie Kennison ($705,000)
— OL Will Shields ($3,004,800)
— OL Willie Roaf ($2,250,000)
— OL Casey Wiegmann ($1,700,000)
— WR Marc Boerighter ($304,800)
— TE Billy Baber ($393,800)
And we still have $88,842 to buy supper with. (And if it weren’t for the $4M signing bonus to Tony G., we could tidy up the offensive line as well, even WITH that schmuck John Tait.

Or, how about we look at the defensive side of the ball, and since a few new players last year got big signing bonuses, let’s just look at base salaries this time. For fun.

— LB Shawn Barber ($655,000)
— CB William Bartee ($450,000)
— LB Monty Beisel ($389,000)
— DL John Browning ($1,000,000)
— DL Eddie Freeman ($300,000)
— LB Scott Fujita ($300,000)
— DL Eric Hicks ($950,000)
— DL Vonnie Holliday ($1,250,000)
— LB Mike Maslowski ($530,000)
— CB Dexter McCleon ($655,000)
— LB Kawika Mitchell ($225,000)
— DL Ryan Sims ($300,000)
— DL R-Kal Truluck ($300,000)
— CB Eric Warfield ($1,500,000)
— SS Greg Wesley ($1,318,000)
— FS Jerome Woods ($2,600,000)
That’s every defensive player that got significant playing time last season (and a few that didn’t) and we still have $7,687,542 to spend. We could pay for all of the bonuses too, save for the monster $6.875 MILLION signing bonus for Ryan Sims.

In fact, the total payroll for the Chiefs last year was $77,394,073. For that you can get Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds ($18,000,000), Alex Rodriguez ($21,726,881), and 92.783% of Derek Jeter ($18,600,000).

By the way, the Royals payroll checks in at $47.6 million, but I bet they could beat the $78M+ team I just listed (and it wouldn’t even have to be Jeter’s day off).

This is why I hate baseball.

Until next time, get some sleep

-Cory