In this week's installment of Speak-Up on Kotaku, Pykestein, Jimmuhpage, Sazzrah, and WhiteM?ge is in fact a boy take on packaging woes, PS2 availability, cheat devices, and Jo Frost.
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About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every Wednesday we'll pull the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight them here.
The Importance Of Packaging
Pykestein is a little miffed about tape ruining his precious Divine Edition of Dante's Inferno. How important is packaging to you?
I love EA, but man. Just got home with my Dante's Inferno Divine Edition. I pre-ordered from GameStop for the first time ever. I am one of the old school douches who still values packaging and will go to extremes to preserve it. I'm PISSED because the adhesive on the plastic tabs used to hold the sleeve in place pulled the foil off the cover. I have 2 perfect semi-circles and 2 other places where chunks are missing. Petty, I know. But EA, come on. Come onnnn......... I shouldn't have to steam the game above a boiling pot of water for 5 minutes just to open the damn thing without ruining the package!
Where Did All The PS2s Go?
Is GameStop hording all the PlayStation 2 consoles? Inquiring minds want to know. Jimmuhpage wants to know.
So I've been searching around (don't ask me why), and it seems that most retailers (except for GameStop) have stopped selling PS2 consoles. Best Buy, Target, Amazon, all sold out, even if you check for in-store availability. GameStop on the other hand seem to have plenty both on their website and in-store.
Did GameStop make a deal and get all the unsold PS2's from the other retailers? Did a significant amount of people simply decide to buy a PS2 but not from GameStop? Have all retailers simply forgotten to update their stock on the web? Or is it just a shipping error where they decided to pass on the savings to themselves? (Price is still $99.99)
I can't come up with a reasonable explanation. Any guesses/inside info?
The Death Of The Cheat Device
WhiteM?ge is in fact a boy mourns the death of the cheat device. Yes, yes, we know none of you has ever used one.
Console online gaming becoming a staple of consoles, as opposed to a one-game-out-of-every-thousand kind of thing, available and pushed on any player, has killed the cheat device. As has achievements.
Why? I'm not quite sure. Developers are 100% capable of blocking the devices out during online play and detecting their presence during single play, and the devices are 100% capable of blocking online modes and achievements out. So I have no idea why they went away, but I do know that online gaming and achievements are the cause.
I probably wouldn't feel the same if I was big on online console gaming(Or maybe I would, considering that last paragraph), but I find it so damn frustrating.
Using an Action Replay or Codebreaker is a fantastic way of getting more life out of a game. I remember getting hundreds of user-made cheats for GTA3. one made it so any car you touched would launch at high speeds in a random direction, flying like mad and bouncing off of anything it hit. Couple this with a cheat to make cars indestructible except by water and you have a game to see who can keep their car in the air the longest.
Extreme Television Stupidity
Sazzrah questions the scientific methods employed by a British show called "Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance." I do too.
Anyone else in the UK watching Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance? Jo Frost is the "Super nanny" the British woman who has made a name for herself in the UK and the US by being a tough no nonsense child care expert.
Well, her new series started tonight where she set out to see if violent video games desensitise kids to real life violence and whether or not playing these violent games affects the child's behaviour.
They sat 20 kids playing a violent war game and then another 20 kids playing a football game. They checked their heart rates during this and took an average. Then they showed them 20mins of violent news footage and checked their heart rates again. Apparently the kids who played the war game (on average) have unchanged heart rates while the kids who played football have a stronger reaction with higher heart rates.
This supposedly proves the kids had become desensitised.