The title pretty much explains what this blog post is about, so fans of that particular game should not expect to be pleased with the following rant.

I had my birthday last month. Just like pretty much every birthday, it was nothing special. I can even say that there's been better Tuesdays than what my birthdays usually are.
Anyway, I got Genji: Days of the Blade for PS3 as a present.
My review: It sucks. There's nothing more I have to say, the game is a flop.
I honestly don't understand how anyone at Game Republic or Sony Computer Entertainment thought that this game could be a hit. You don't even have to take just my word for it, check the gamespot score. I know, GS rarely gives games the scores they really deserve so you can't trust that alone, but compare the GS score with the Critic score and User score. See? Even the user score is only 7.0, and the Critic score is 5.8. Everybody seems to think the game is awful.

But more important than scores other people gave it is what I thought about the game. I mean, this IS my blog after all.
First of all, like I've told people numerous times, I like beat em ups and hack'n'slash games. I really do, I even like 7 Blades which isn't anything spectacular, but Genji: DotB can't even be compared to 7 Blades since it does nothing right as a game. Only thing this Genji game has over most games is the graphics and amount of enemies on-screen at the same time. Unfortunately the controls are clunky as hell and the camera, which I guess is supposed to bring some movie-feel into the action, is one of, if not THE most awful in any game I've ever played or seen. Not only are the camera angles completely wrong for the intended epic-movie-samurai-action-feel, they also hide half of the enemies on screen. I got my ass handed to me by enemies I never even saw because they were "behind the camera". The radar is also pretty useless, as it's quite difficult to realize which direction is which.

So, you're crippled by bad controls and you're facing half-invisible armies, what else? The areas are boring as hell, and occasionally even feel just like a really big prison. I don't expect freeroaming from any other game other than GTA, that's not the problem, but hackin' boring enemies with boring moves in boring locations... 'scuse me for expecting the next-gen to actually evolve in terms of gameplay and add something in games.
If I recall correctly, Genji: DotB won some kind of award for outstanding graphics or something. Graphics aren't gameplay, you don't control graphics, you don't kill graphics, you can't do anything with the graphics. Games don't live off of graphics, graphics are for CGI movies. Good graphics in games only help if the rest of the game is good, but certainly don't make games good on their own. I'll also have to add that even if the graphics MIGHT be mindblowing on HD screens, on my crap-definition-TV the game looks nothing above the better looking PS2 games. Seriously, I wasn't impressed, and I'm NOT going to go out and buy a HDTV just to see what this game can look like. Maybe I'm just spoiled by my other PS3 games, Assassin's Creed and TES IV: Oblivion. Now those games really make me want to dive into the TV screen and start eating the objects and characters, surf on the waves of shades and shadows and slide down the magical rainbow of colours for an eternity, even if my TV is not HD.

So, bottomline is: Genji Days of the Blade is crap.

I had something else to say here too, but I forgot it all while bashing Genji and now I really have to go pee, so I can't stay here pondering what all the other stuff was. Maybe I'll write another blog soon.

I've almost written 2 blogs between this and the last one, but I didn't post them, so here's an update of what's happening in my life.

I got another PS3 game for Christmas. It's TESIV: Oblivion. Great game, I spent over 100 hours on it before I quit, and still didn't finish the main quest line.

One day I decided to download a Sega Megadrive/Genesis emulator when I saw some website mention it.
Now I can once again play all my favourite Sega games, like Toy Story, Rings of Power, Sonic 2 and Wonderboy in Monster World.

My video walkthrough "business" is going fine. In January I bought a Pinnacle Dazzle tuner, so now I'm a "professional" video game walkthrougher. My newest walkthrough is Spyro: Year of the Dragon, for PS1. I'm going to redo my old walkthroughs too now that I can have better quality.

I was referred to the leading paid-to-click program of this time, and made an account there. I've already earned 2 dollars and 83 cents. Too bad I can't withdraw my money yet, because there's a 10 dollar withdrawal minimum. Someday I'll have $216 and then I'll buy myself a website and a real domain name.

I recently bought 5 games.
Sonic Riders, Xena Warrior Princess, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider Legend and Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition.
Sonic Riders is just bad. Xena game is not just a really horrible game, but it also makes so much noise inside the PS2 that I don't dare to play it anymore, in case it breaks something.
Tomb Raider AoD is crap. The controls are so clunky that it makes you feel you're playing a really badly made horror game.
Devil May Cry 3 SE is ok, but a little too fast paced and has too many tight areas to appeal to me right now.
Tomb Raider Legend is great, though. I don't know why some people mock it, but the controls work just fine, the story's...ok I'd say, and Lara's hot. It's a good game and really invites new people to the series.

Last night I was reading through my e-mails, and I saw something funny.
MySpace had sent me an account confirmation message. Someone had created a MySpace account for me, with as close to my real info as possible. I thought it was nice so I confirmed it. So, now I got me a MySpace account. Sad.
I don't understand why anyone would actually need MySpace, and I'm not hurrying to set up my detailed profile there. I haven't even picked my url yet.
I guess the person who created the account is some fan of my Jak walkthroughs, at least that's the idea I got from the password the person picked.

Well, that's about it. Other things have happened too, but I don't want to talk about them here.

Isn't she a beauty?
A 40 gig PlayStation 3 I bought last Wednesday.
Assassin's Creed is the first of my (someday numerous) PS3 games.

I already beat Assassin's Creed today, with only some flags and Templars missing.

...nah, it's just another sad edition of

JohnnyFox's

NewsCast

13th of November, 2007

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Johnny's Site

I've been talking about my website a lot if anybody's been paying attention, and it's pretty obvious that I'm using Freewebs.com, which is the best free website hosting service ever. I don't know if it's the best paid service if you decide to get better tools and more web-space and bandwidth, but since I'm so poor, I've tried easily 20 different free hosts and all of them suck in one way or another compared to Freewebs. This isn't advertising, I'm just stating facts I've noticed.
Freewebs is easy to use, supports almost any file-extension you might think up and gives free members more web-space than most other services. It also doesn't automatically spam every single page in your folders with the annoying "You've won! Click here!" ads.

Now Freewebs has done something new to make the service even better: New, shorter web-address.
The old one was something like www.freewebs.com/yourwebsite, but the new one is yourwebsite.webs.com. A LOT better, isn't it?! Yes it is.
So, even though the old link still works (or has been working for the past couple of days) my website domain name is now officially johnnyfox.webs.com.

Another thing about my site.
If you have seen my website, you may have noticed the animations on the Videos page.
Well, I'm kind of worried now. You see, it takes a lot of time for users with slow connection to load all the images, and it can seriously hurt the traffic there if it takes several minutes for everyone to see the actual content there. That's why I've tried asking people whether they think the images take too long to load or not.
If enough people tell me that the images should be taken down, I'll just move them from the Videos page to the game video pages, so each page would only load up ONE image at a time. I think they look really nice, so I don't want to take them off completely.
Or what do you think?

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GameSpot Tweaks

I see that Freewebs isn't the only website making it easier for normal users to do...whatever they're doing, as GameSpot.com has also changed something that I'm personally happy about. While writing this I noticed 2 things that are different from how I remembered, not sure if they are new additions or not.
When previewing a blog post, it now shows the text how it actually looks like when it's done. It doesn't sound like a big deal since it's only about the width of the text area, but it actually is a great change, me thinks.
The other change is how the buttons under the text-box are shown. They're now in 2 lines, not one.
The guys behind GameSpot should make these kind of changes more often, it makes the website look like it's evolving somewhere.
I just wish they'd fix the Union Video pages too. It only shows the newest 10 additions, the link "All union videos" still doesn't work.

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I'm Sorry, Daniel and Leo

Manhunt 2 has been released in US already, most people should know that by now. It's still not sure if and when it comes to Europe, but since some people already play it I decided to say something about it here.

Some of you may have heard that I'm going to buy Manhunt 2, and no stupid kill-filter is going to stop me from doing that. I kept saying that all the time until the game was released in US. Well, now that I've seen videos of the game, especially after watching BonersGames' walkthrough of it on YouTube, I've changed my mind.
It doesn't look anything like I was hoping, it had nothing that really said "Come Kill, Johnny, KILL!". The original Manhunt wasn't what I expected it to be either when I first bought it, but I enjoyed it since it had an unbelievable world. Manhunt 2 just doesn't look like anything I would enjoy.
I don't care about blood and gore, so the censoring doesn't bother me. It's the lack of good gangs and characters, even Daniel looks pretty boring to me, the world looked pretty generic and what I've heard the game has a lot of glitches.
Also, because R* had to take out the styIe rating, I really don't see any reason why I would be excited about getting it. Some of the levels looked somewhat interesting, but that's it.

So, for the first (and hopefully the last) time ever, I have to say I am not excited about a Rockstar Games game. I'm probably going to buy it if I see it in a bargain bin someday anyway, but now I'm even more excited about Beaterator than Manhunt 2*.
(*Note that I don't own a PSP and I really don't see the point of Beaterator.)

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Reviews

A long time ago, in a blog post far, far away, I wrote about my first impressions of the PS2 port of GTA: Vice City Stories. now, just recently I re-read it, and I thought it was pretty good, and says everything I think about the game now. So, I've decided to "write" a review of GTA:VCS and just paste the old text there. So it's nothing new, but if some of you new people reading my blog (none of the old ones do, they don't get fooled twice), you can just read the up-and-coming review.

Also, yesterday I broke out the old Worms 4: Mayhem again, after 9 months of not playing it. I got really pissed at it once, and stopped playing it since I had other new games to play back then. Well, I noticed that I've been wrong about it all this time. It's a great game, I should've just kept on playing it.
Since I'm already going to "write" a review of VCS, I've decided to really write a review of Worms 4 and praise it to some extent.
Read it when it's done, IF it's ever done. I've got a bad habit of not doing things.

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Weather

There seems to be some snow on the ground already, not too much though. Mostly been raining lately, but tonight it was already -2 degrees Celsius when I checked.

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Well, that's it from this NewsCast again. I didn't speak of myself in 3rd person this time like I usually do, maybe next time.
Good night!

This NewsCast doesn't represent JohnnyFox's views on anything in public.
Nothing here can be used against JohnnyFox in any kind of a debate or other hassle that could compromise JohnnyFox's reputation as a wise, handsome and funny man.

BOO!

Happy Hall...wait, isn't it Halloween? I wouldn't want to be that last dork to yell out "happy Halloween" a day late. Today IS the last day of October, isn't it?

You know, here where I live, Halloween isn't a big deal really. Might have something to do with us NOT having ANY kind celtic heritage. But it's a different kind of time, and that's why I personally make it a special day. I don't dress in funny costumes or decorate my place with pumpkins, but on Halloween I always have a good mood, feels like it's a better day than tomorrow.

So Happy/Scary Halloween!...if it is Halloween. If it's not, then have a nice...whatever weekday it might be.

What do you think about my website? I've updated it a bit.
www.freewebs.com/johnnyfox

The only people I know have enough time to waste are the people who check my blog, that's why I always ask you.