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When my good friend Bobby let me borrow this originally, let me think... *flash back to 2005* I had an Afro, an was wearing plaid... no wait different flash back. Anyway when he first let me borrow it, I only played about 5 minutes of it before I got involved in something else, and I soon forgot all about it. Last week he again let me borrow it, under the condition that I actually play it this time lol.

Well now that I've been playing it, I have no idea why I wasn't so keen on playing it before. Sure some of it's game play is dated at best, like the turn based system of the old RPG's. however, they do mix things up a bit with some other fun elements:

Our main account has run out of bandwidth.

I have created a sub account for such an occasion! BEHOLD!-- On the left hand side there is a link to the 6th, episode, get it there.



Thanks!

Den

New Super Mario Bros. Woo Hooo!

To keep with the Multiplayer theme of the New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Den and I have decided to both post our thoughts on Nintendo's newest Mario game. We spent an entire weekend playing the game non-stop and it was most excellent. We get into more detail in our podcast so check it out here at Who Burned My Toast Episode 5.

Den - It was fun. K thnx.

The Butcher - I stole Den's power ups and he cried. If you want have fun being a ass to your friends, play this game. Good times.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

If you have a PS3, you should own at least one of the Uncharted games. Honestly there isn't a whole lot of exclusives floating around nowadays. I've recently played through the first Uncharted and just wrapped up Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and walked away without feeling tired of the series. Naughty Dog started a good franchise and has managed to improve it with the second installment. If your having trouble choosing one, I would suggest Uncharted 2.

As most of you may already know Uncharted stars Nathan Drake, a treasure hunting mans man who has luck on his side. In essence take Indian Jones, mix him up with some Tomb Raider and in a very thin nutshell lies Uncharted. The story for Among Thieves I found to basically follow the same formula as the first game with the addition of a few new characters in the mix. Drake is asked from a old acquaintance to help find some hidden Marco Polo treasure, he meets a British lady friend name Chloe, they uncover a more valuable treasure, and race the bad guy to get to it first. Betrayal, the supernatural and adventure ensues. I would rather leave it at that. For me the story and presentation is what I enjoy most about these games and should be experienced untainted by my butchering of its narrative. Trust me it's entertaining.

A Boy and his Blob

Just going to say this right off the bat: I really enjoyed this game.



It starts out with a little kid at his tree house who sees a meteor, and goes to the landing sight. He finds a little, white blob on scene and shortly thereafter, he befriends the creature. This little blob has a voracious appetite for jelly beans, which can transform him into a variety of things—including but not limited to: a ladder, a ball, a jack, a rocket, and many more. You must then use these jelly beans and the blob to pioneer your way across a platform-like, puzzle-type 40 levels and 40 mini levels.

Monster Hunter Tri University Special Event Podcast: Butcher is hot for Lagiacrus

I recently got the opportunity to go to the Monster Hunter University event hosted by Capcom in San Francisco. I played the North American version of the upcoming Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii. It was a great opportunity to get hands on with the game and meet some of the people who work for Capcom USA and also mingle with the gaming press. Free booze, food, and games. It was a blast. There was so much to talk about that we recorded this special podcast just for you!

Download the Podcast or face real consequences.

Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Fail

I've spent over 2 weeks with the PS3 version of Operation Flashpoint 2 trying to really get into the game. By the end of that 2 weeks I was toasted. The game developer Codemasters is offering a different take on the completely flooded market of First Person Shooters that have come to dominate the industry. Seriously, next time you go to GameStop take a look at the XBOX 360 or PS3 game racks and count how many dudes with guns you see. Honestly there hasn't been a whole lot to get excited about lately. OPF2 is intended to be a combat simulator and this fact alone is what gained my attention as soon as I heard about it. Finally, somebody is trying to do something a little different with an FPS. It sounded too good to be true. No longer shall you be a hero taking countless bullets, wading through ridiculous plot lines and playing yet another stereotypical bad ass character. This was my chance to experience the real deal of combat. Move over Private Ryan and you suck Matt Damon.

Do you want to play Monster Hunter Tri early?

Like most of us who don't have the cash or time to import a Japanese version of the game, there is still a chance you can play the North American version of the game early before it's release next year.

Capcom-Unity is offering the chance to do so, only if enough people get interested in going down to Capcom's San Mateo, CA offices to have a pizza party. If your interested check out the link below, join the forum and post that you want to go. Help us out here and do it, do it now!

http://www.capcom-unity.com/monster_hunter/go/thread/view/7451/20079169/Possible_Monster_Hunter__Pizza_in_San_Mateo_CA

Additional info here as well http://www.capcom-unity.com/snow_infernus/blog/2009/09/10/play_monster_hunter_tri_and_re_darkside_chronicles_early

Curse you Demon's Souls!

This game is infuriatingly difficult, and good. The first thing this game does is make you change the brightness settings. That being said, it's a dark game. Not just in your brightness settings, but also the world itself. It has so much atmosphere, from the first level that you play, to the last Arch Demon's you encounter.

Goodbye SELECT START! Rise of TOAST MASTERS!

It's time to say goodbye to Select Start and say Hello to our new name "Who Burned My Toast?". We're announcing that the Select Start name will be terminated and we will be moving the blog to a new URL. We know that Select Start was short lived but we feel that in the end the name just didn't represent us well enough and frankly everyone else and their mom was using it. It's still going to be a blog about Video Games and the crap that pisses us off about them. The blogs look and feel may change as time progresses but we'll let you know when that is ready to go as well.

The site will officially be converted to whoburnedmytoast.blogspot.com on Friday, November 6th when we get around to it. We have days jobs so things take time in the real world to get done dammit. Our new email will be whoburnedmytoast@gmail.com and our Twitter is going to be wbmt_blog. When your toast gets burned by a game we'll be there scrap off the burnt bits with a machete.

Dead Space Extraction: Dismemberment = Good Times

Dead Space Extraction for the Wii is actually a good game, honest. It's unfortunate that many people may have written this game off because of it being an on-rails shooter and not a third person shooter like it's older brother Dead Space. I've tried out other on-rail shooter such as Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (not fun), House of the Dead Overkill (fun) on Wii and I can safely say that Extraction (awesome) is the best on-rails shooter I've played in a long long time. When you play the game you get the feeling that EA and Visceral games did not rush this game out the door like a lot of other Wii games. Visceral Games took an old genre and expanded upon it in a good way in Extraction. Here's why.

Story and Presentation: Extraction tells the story of the events that lead up to the first Dead Space. The basic outline here is that humans in the future are mining planets with giant spaceships for resources. Before that can happen they establish large colonies on these planets to prep them for mining years in advance. On this particular planet the colony finds an artifact that is called "The Marker". No one knows the Markers origin but one similar Marker had been found hundreds of years earlier on Earth and a religion called "Unitology" was formed around worshiping these artifacts. The colony on this mining planet is ordered by the Unitologist to remove the marker and get it ready for a epic spaceship ride back to Earth. The game begins with you as one of engineers who is front and center when The Marker is being extracted right out of the ground. When the engineers try moving it something goes wrong and people start turning into psychopathic  murdering monsters that are called "Necromorphs". From this point on your along for the ride.

Scribblenauts, I wanted to love you...

but after a week with the game the love has faded for me. Scribblenauts is a game that has a fantastic concept not seen in any other game. It gives you the ability to write on the DS touch screen, conjure up any objects you can think of and use them to solve the games puzzles. It's a brilliant idea and I must give credit to 5th Cell where it's due. They seem to have a knack for coming up with unique games. Much like 5th Cells Drawn to Life for DS, it oozes creativity but the gameplay isn't executed 100%.

Your goal in Scirbblenauts is to take control of the games main Character Maxwell and capture Starites. In order to obtain these Starites you could do anything from conjuring up the correct item or trying to reach the Startite that is stuck high up in a tree for example. There is a good amount of variety in the levels and you'll find yourself in some very interesting situations depending on what you choose to conjure into the level. At one point I was riding a killer whale, wearing a brazier and holding a turkey baster. Why? Because I could and I don't need to explain my motivations to you people! This is the magical part of the game and it rewards you the more creative you are in solving the puzzles. In the beginning when the levels are simple the game really does work well. But as you advance and the levels get a little more complicated, the faults of the game start to bubble up. It led me down a long path of frustration.

Monster Hunter PSP

Monster Hunter



First of all, what genius came up with that name? Seriously no one in the whole damn department could have thought of a more creative name than "Monster Hunter"?! I have personally overlooked this game for years, I've heard the name but I didn't want to play it because for some reason I thought it was a part of the "Monster Rancher" series. My mistake, my big bad festering mistake!

Good 'ol butcher there was the one to clue me in on this franchise. He had stumbled into some screen shots of this game called "Monster Hunter Tri" that will be coming out for Wii sometime soon. My jaw dropped upon seeing these screens, and I had to know: if this was Tri(3) then there must be others! Sure 'nuff, there were quite a bit more, including some for PSP.

Hello and welcome to SELECT_START. A place for reckless gaming opinions.

SELECT_START is going to be a place where we talk and vent about video games. We were born from our own dissatisfaction of over hyped games that has grown in the past 2 decades. It has run rampant through our TVs, beloved websites and our favorite magazines. Our goal is to help shed some light where there is only darkness.

Haven't we all had this experience? You hear about this game and it sounds kinda cool. It's got zombies, explosions... wait umm... and cute teddy bears? You know, the things we all love. You read about it in magazines and scour websites for bits of info. Sometimes the hype starts years in advance and during the period in which one must wait, the secret forces of the gaming industry begin to shovel barrels and barrels of coal into their "Hype Train". Throughout this period they begin to tell us what we want and what we need. Most of us climb aboard this train and ride it like no ones business. Some of us will ride the train so long that we actually end up wanting those damn cute teddy bears they said were the next big leap in gaming. And when the deed is done, and the game hits the markets, they reap the rewards from their marketing firestorm. Then your left feeling like a sucker who's only going to get 10 bucks for a trade in at GameStop. We need to break free of these bonds, and learn to make decisions for ourselves. SELECT_START is here with gunz blazin'.

We would like to help you, and everyone out there dodge this epic train of failure. Our goal is to protect you from the suffering we all felt during our first online match against Ken in Street Fighter IV. Or after beating Resident Evil 5 that left you with that feeling of; "This fucking game got a 9.5/10?" We too have felt that sting, and we're sick of it!

Bask in the glory that is SELECT_START! Where you may now begin to learn of true greatness. We are your infallible source of joy. Amen (we're not Religious... really).

Your Opinionated Hosts,
Den and The Butcher