Just As I Thought. Super Famous.

It’s been a while since we’ve flaunted our famousness (and ability to make up words), particularly in the realm of Joystiq connections, so let’s get this ball rolling again. Previous Joystiq encounters include (but not limited to): Mark’s April Fool’s Day when he was “hired” by Joystiq, Mark’s shout-outs for sending .wav files to the Joystiq podcast, and Tyler handing out T-shirts and forcing Joystiqers to tweet from his iPhone.

I like to keep my shits on the DL with the “J Crew”, with only occasional correspondence in the form of stalker tweets to Ludwig. He’s a busy guy, and a foreigner, so it’s okay if he never writes back. Instead he just nonchalantly mentions me and showers me with praise for the whole internet to hear. Exhibits below.

What you see above is some friendly banter ‘twix two best friends. L-Dogg didn’t write back, which is fine, because he was probably saving it up for the most recent Joystiq podcast, as snippeted below:

Um, didn’t a Joystiqer just call me “pretty amazing” in a roundabout way? You bet your hairy ass he did. And by the way, I beat Tales of Vesperia in 42 hours. Pretty amazing, indeed.

Compare and Contrast

I’m sure most of you have already seen Joystiq’s Game of the Year list, but I just wanted to put up a side-by-side for comparison’s sake. We did a Top 5, as opposed to their Top 10, so I’m only going to put up their last five. Here they are, Joystiq on the left, Threevue on the right:

5: Braid                                             5: Dead Space

4: Fallout 3                                       4: Rock Band 2/Left 4 Dead

3: Left 4 Dead                                  3: GTAIV

2: Metal Gear Solid 4                     2: Fallout 3

1: Fable 2                                         1: Braid

So there you have it. The two greatest surprises for me are the absense of GTAIV in Joystiq entire Top 10, and that Fable 2 was their numero uno. That’s the beauty of modern games, though, there is so much variety that one man’s GOTY can be another man’s No-TY.

Threevue Classics: Joystiq Reader Meet-Up: Tyler’s Night Out

We’re one year old this week! To celebrate, every day this week each of us will re-post one of our favorite articles from this past year, just in case you missed it.

This was one of the coolest nights of my life, and it was a lot of fun to go to. Got some good swag, met some real life freelancers and played Bock Band 2, like, way before anyone else.

Just getting back from the Joystiq reader meet-up in Santa Monica tonight and it was a place where a good time (and free swag) was had by all. The event was hosted by Mahalo.com and held in their spacious offices situated achingly close to the beach (how does any work get done?). All of the guys from the ‘Stiq were there along with the likes of Cheapy D from Cheap Ass Gamer and my new Rock Band-mate, Lawrence Young from All Games Interactive.

As you can see from the pics, this gathering was a bit bigger than the Kotaku roundup from last Thursday. The Threevue Street Team and I arrived late (fashionably) to the event by about an hour and yet there were still people streaming in before me. There were at least 250 fans in the place by the time we left at half past 9. So yeah, bunches of folks made the trip out.

Namedropped: The Joystiq T-Shirt Saga Comes To A Close

So Tyler happens to live in L.A., and there happened to be a Joystiq reader meet-up in L.A. last week, and Tyler happened to go. Tyler also happened to bring along some Threevue t-shirts and happened to meet Joystiq’s own Justin McElroy, and gave him a t-shirt. And Joystiq happened to mention this in their latest podcast; here are our twenty seconds of fame:

They also made their obligatory poke at Mark and his .wav file fetish, but alas I received no mention. It’s okay – someday they’re bound to realize that THREEvue means that there are three of us.

The Swag Bag: What Got Gotten at the Joystiq Meet-Up

There was some choice stuff for the taking at the event last night. A Kane bobble head from Command and Conquer: Red Alert, some autographed shirts from Naughty Dog, a bunch of cheesy Nyko guitars  and even a bare-assed gnome (from Bare-Assed Gnome: The Reckoning possibly?). The giveaway was first come first served, so the people who lined up at 6pm had first pick. Unfortunately, I was 150th in line to get my hands on some collectibles. Readers were allowed one item and one game. I had my eye on one of the bottles of Nuka Cola from the beginning, but was scooped at around guest number 100.

As it stands, I got a copy of Jenga for the Wii and a DS coffee mug. Kimbro pulled Blue Ocean and a Brain Training snow globe. The real winner was Mike (8bitmagic) who made out with My Horse and Me and a Fallout 3 view finder with custom made optical disk.

Check out the goodness from both the Kotaku and Joystiq events by clicking on the T.

Threevue

Joystiq Reader Meet-Up: Tyler’s Night Out

Just getting back from the Joystiq reader meet-up in Santa Monica tonight, a place where a good time (and free swag) was had by all. The event was hosted by Mahalo.com and held in their spacious offices, achingly close to the beach (how does any work get done?). All of the guys from the ‘Stiq were there along with the likes of Cheapy D from Cheap Ass Gamer and my new Rock Band-mate, Lawrence Young from All Games Interactive.

As you can see from the pics, this gathering was a bit bigger than the Kotaku roundup from last Thursday. The Threevue Street Team and I arrived late (as usual) to the event by about an hour: I was the 151st person to show up. There were at least 250 fans in the place by the time we left at half past 9. So yeah, bunches of folks made the trip out.

Beyond Good And Evil

Man, I’m just a supreme hater as of late. First I dog on the MGS series, and now I want to take a moment and knock Beyond Good and Evil down a rung or two from the high horse it’s been sitting on for the past few years. And with the sequel’s announcement yesterday and even Joystiq doing a piece on how to get a copy of it, I felt the need to chime in.

I played through the Gamecube version about a year and a half ago. I initially bought the PC version in 2004 but never got around to playing it and then totally forgot I owned it. I then bought the PS2 version in 2006 but I heard it wasn’t as good as the Gamecube version. I paid a lot for the GC version on half.com, probably about $25 or so. The other two probably cost me about $10 each. So really, I’ve paid $45 for the game so far, and I don’t really think it was worth it.

BGAE is an action-adventure game with some light platforming and driving. Sound like the Jak series? It should, because this game is very similar to Jak 2 (never played 3 so I can’t compare). It has some photography elements that give it some depth, and a fairly good storyline that always seems to be resting firmly in the background. The whole game is short, it could be played through in a day or two.

It’s not a bad game; I just don’t think it’s worth all this nostalgic hype. I would give it a 80 out of 100. Let me know if you want to borrow it.

Joystuck (again)

Welcome to what is becoming a regular feature, where we point out when Mark is mentioned on the Joystiq podcast.

This latest entry is a reference to his first appearance, when he sent in an audio email in .wav format instead of an .mp3 file. You know, .mp3, those files we’ve been using since, um, the nineties. Anyway, I guess they regularly make fun of his .waviness, and he sent in an email asking that this archaic audio file be stricken from his online record. Unfortunately, the association lives on, but we did get a nice shout-out:

So, if you’re visiting as a result of that Joystiq love, welcome and have a look around. You’ll definitely be disappointed.

Starstruck

So, not only did Mark kick it with a member of LOST the other night, but he got a shout-out on the latest Joystiq podcast for his April Fool’s shenanigans (really it was just one shenanigan, but it sounds so much better plural!). You might not consider them to be stars, but we do:

If you’re visiting via Joystiq, welcome, and have a look around. Might I suggest some cosplay? Or maybe you want to dig in to a little my faves or my gripes?

Oh, and I just taught Mark how to convert .wav files to .mp3s, so he’s now entered the 21st century.

the greatest prank i’ve ever pulled off

Ahh, yes. The elated rush of victory. Even though it wasn’t very long-lasting, I know I had a few people going for at least a little bit. I know I could have dragged Tyler along for a while longer, but sometimes he can be quite cunning, and he tricked Russ into revealing the truth (see the post below). Usually, I’m the target of pranks like this, and I normally don’t feel the need to trick people, but this idea came to me like a flash of lightning this morning and I found it too good to pass up on.

The truth is, I am most certainly not going to write for Joystiq (not yet, anyway), but those are in fact the actual, real life, no foolin’ writers for that great site that left comments on the post. After I wrote it this morning, I figured I would take a shot in the dark and try to get one the Joystiqers in on the gag by asking Ludwig Kietzmann if he would drop a comment saying, “welcome to the team,” or something like that on Threevue. To my extreme surprise, not only did he comment, but so did Justin McElroy, Scott Jon Siegel, and Ross Miller – all great Joystiq bloggers.

So thanks to the Joystiq crew for playing along. I hope everyone had a great April Fool’s Day. I know I did.

We’ve Been Had

So, the joke’s out of the bag, and though I caught on to Mark’s prank post immediately, I was inadvertently tricked by Tyler into revealing that it wasn’t real. The conversation went as follows:

Russ: Hey, what are you doing?
Tyler: Kicking myself…
Russ: Why is that?
Tyler: For believing Mark…
Russ: What do you mean?
Tyler: For believing his fake post…
Russ: (silence)…so how did you figure out it was fake?
Tyler: BECAUSE YOU JUST TOLD ME!!

So there it is, our first April Fool’s Day. I was actually planning on boycotting the whole thing because blog sites get a little annoying with all the jokes. But a big thanks to the Joystiq guys for actually playing along and posting on our site (at Mark’s request, I have to admit that was pretty sly). Now if we can just get Joystiq to visit our site on any other day…

finally someone recognizes my talent

I didn’t want to say anything to anybody until I got word back, but a few weeks ago I sent in an application to Joystiq with the hopes of becoming one of their writers. Well, I got a call from Chris Grant this morning saying that they really liked the sample posts I sent in, and would like me to become a full-time blogger. We didn’t go into a lot of the job details, it was just more of an offer, but of course I accepted. So, starting soon I’m going to be on the Joystiq team. I’m probably going to have to quit my job so I can focus most of my time on writing, and we even briefly talked about me relocating to San Francisco.

Thanks everybody, especially Russ and Tyler, for helping this long time dream come true. Of course I’ll still be posting on Threevue.com,  but I don’t know how much. I’ll keep you updated on what happens, and I’ll see you on the internets.

Xbox360Fanboy.com duped by April Fool’s Joke, probably won’t be a joke for long.

Gaming magazine EGM likes to do an April Fool’s Joke feature every…uh, April issue. They’ve been doing it for forever, and I’m hesitant to admit that I remember the 1992 Sheng Long “trick” back in the day.

This year, scans of the latest EGM issue showed a Lego Halo game in production by Bungie Studios. We’ve already had several Lego Star Wars games (which were pretty fun), and Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman are en-route. Strangely enough, reputable and Joystiq-owned blog site Xbox 360 Fanboy fell for it (but later admitted their mistake). Okay, let’s all point our fingers and laugh. Done?

Crazy thing is, it’s not that crazy of an idea, and I could see the game popping up next year. I’d rent it.