So, while I hate some of the things that those guys say in the land of anonymous forum postings, I still have to respect them and listen because they have some serious science to share.

Yeah, on street level people giving other people crap about how they play videogames is pretty silly, but you guys aren’t telling the whole story either. People gotta know why the whole rift exists to begin with. The problems began when arcade ports were being made in the 32-bit era and these games would be reviewed as if the Continue function is a necessary play mechanic instead of a cheat. With everybody in the journalism scene hitting continue, they get to the end without requiring any effort on the player. Because reviewers were not playing by the rules of the video game, they also weren’t learning the nuances and necessary details to compare the game to others. This led to a universal review of any shoot-em-up videogame besides Ikaruga to get abysmal scores. All the reviewer would say is “30 minutes of content that isn’t difficult” since they didn’t have to try to “win”. When you open a board game, on your first turn do you just place your game piece on the finish line and say “I won?” and then rip the game apart that it sucks even though you didn’t bother playing it? That’s what everybody in mainstream game industry was doing and that was giving the genre a completely unfair treatment in press that remains to this day.

On the other side, there were players who were still into shmups that would talk shit about how good they were or submit crazy high scores with “9″ in the ones digit, when all they were doing is the equivalent of setting up a mechanical drinking bird to press the start button for them, which would work just as good. This practice completely trivialized the impressive efforts of players who would put hundreds of hours in to 1CC the most difficult games. Having any segment of the internet champion the top leaderboard XBLA Metal Slug 3 player who died 300 times instead of the guy who could beat the game in under three lives is completely ridiculous. Twin Galaxies reporting in Guinness Book of World Records that players who used 9 continues were better than those who used zero to complete a title pissed people way the fuck off for a good reason.

Then there’s all’y'all us caught in the middle. The difference is you guys here know about the 1 Credit Clear objective and have practiced it alongside credit feeding for the quick and dirty experience. Doing both with every game adds depth to the title and at least lets you see both sides of the coin to select the experience you want to go with next to being able to talk about a game and know what the hell you’re talking about. I credit feed everything to learn it too. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s when people with an audience open their mouths; start trash talking how good they are, submitting Continue’d scores for official scoreboards, or publications swaying public opinion because they didn’t bother to play by the game’s rules is when people are allowed to get their panties in a bunch within reason.

(example: Gruel credit-feeding Triggerheart to win a bet with his friend on On-Tap about beating the most games, homeboy shoulda called that shit out. Just sayin’.)

Too long for mailbag. I’ll post here.

On the other topic you raised, Arvandor, that is exactly what irritates me about some of the more “hardcore” folks; the whole “you’re playing it wrong”, bullshit. To most of those elitist cocks, I would be playing shmups wrong, because I turn it on to have a good time. Sure, in some circumstances (like Batsugun), I try my hand at the skill-based, 1CC method, but I’m not a skill-based gamer. I’m an enjoyment/escapism player. And you nailed it right on the head: if you’re not having fun, THAT’S when you’re doing it wrong. Nicely said.

And folks who want longer battery life will be the ones who wait it out and get version 2.0. That’s usually where those things get addressed.

There was something else in the shooter segment I was going to comment on, but I forgot.

As for the iphone/touch/pad vs kindle/nook thing. There are two things about the Kindle that make it vastly superior for me. Firstly, it’s not backlit, it’s exactly like reading a sheet of paper, and is far easier on the eyes, particularly when reading for long periods of time. Secondly? The battery life is ridiculously long.

So for reading, I still prefer my kindle. If I wanted to do all the other junk, I’d get an iphone or something, but… I don’t care, so I haven’t yet bothered.

I don’t really listen to too many gaming podcasts anymore. My breaking point came during the holiday season last year when I got sick of hearing about the same games over and over, and I realized it was kind of silly to spend more time listening about games rather than playing them. But I still like Retronauts, and of course DGR.

As for No More Heroes 2, the first is my favorite Wii game, so I had very high expectations. Overall, I enjoyed NMH2 a lot, but not quite as much as the original. I think it’s because NMH1 was so bizarre and unexpected to me (I’d never played a Suda51 game before) and the sequel seems to be on auto-pilot for much of its’ running time.

The 8-bit style mini-games work for the most part — I like the meat-cooking one where you get people telling you “tastes like shit!” in badly-digitized voice samples — but the training games are fucking horrible to the point hat I basically gave up on them halfway through. The levels with Shinobu are pretty awful also, because of very poor jumping and camera controls.

Overall, though, it’s a very fun game, and it’s nice to see a third-party Wii game that looks and plays like something not meant for the bargain bin.

And John’s comic point on the iPad really opened my eyes to the potential this device has. Really it is all about the content available. As a student, this thing could be a godsend. If it had good deals with textbook publishers, so that I could buy e-books of my course texts; I would be all over this thing. It would also work great with the amount of .pdf files that are used as supplemental reading.

At the same time, Moe is right as well. I love the interface for the iPhone/iPod Touch but I also want to have a functional computer. Not being able to multitask or have easily usable external ports kills the deal for me. I’ll likely have to wait for the 2nd or 3rd iteration of the iPad before I jump on board.