The SuperCheats Newsletter: October 2010

So this month, I decided to interview one of our huge contributors of the site altogether. He is a nice guy once you get to know him, and sometimes very misread, or misguided. So to get to know him a little better, let's gather around and read our lovely biography of hatershateme!


So as per the tradition of Interviewing, how do we know you are the loversloveme of ForumCheats, the one who loves playing games, and possibly revived FG!?

Josh said:

Who would want to be me? Who loves spamming SC's first page with FG posts?

You?

Josh said:

Yes

Wow, I was just tricked into answering that question, very well played...

Ok, you have been on the site for two years now, what did you think of it when you first joined it?

Josh said:

Well, when I first joined. I joined for the Pokedex, then when I found a forum link, I clicked and I posted in that topic. I started to post them b/c it gave me something to do during the summer. Plus, the Pokedex was getting over ran by haters(hint my username) So, I wanted to experiencing

What makes you come back to SC daily?

Josh said:

Well, to be honest. I have no life outside of school, once I'm home, no one comes over. Because they don't know how to get outside either :/ Then, I either get on Xbox, or the computer. To have some fun.

Time to have some fun....

If you were to have control of the site, and there was one huge fight on the forums, and only two members could be saved. Who would you save, with the other members being forced to be my sex slaves?

Josh said:

The 2 people I would save would be...roadkillman and nightmare2 (Int. Note: Good, Filip is finally mine :D)

What's your favorite all time moment on SC?

Josh said:

Getting my TheDragonReaper account banned.

Hmmm, why that one?

Josh said:

It the only good moment in my SC history, other than getting Mod Spots.

I see

That makes me think all the way back to where your mod spots were taken away from you. Do you think that was justified?

Josh said:

Yes, they were justified. I was being mean to others which in the rules, says to have respect to other members/mods. I didn't follow, and that was my consequence.

Do you think you'll mod again? If so, where?

Josh said:

Not for a long time I was told, and I believe that. I would most likely mod FG! or Pokemon Battle

What do you do outside of SC?

Josh said:

Play Video Games on Xbox and PC. If a friend is over, we either walk around, or play more video games. Sounds Exciting right..?

If you had to change any one thing about the site, what would it be?

Josh said:

Bring back t&c in the forums. Everyone had fun, back then. That I know of.

We only wished :/

If you had to meet anybody from the site in real life, who would it be?

Josh said:

superbird5005. He seems like a cool guy in all. Have the same likes and dislikes. And had some great times on LIVE (Int. Note: AWWWWWWWWWWWW<3)

Alright, so enough of the site I suppose. I'm going to ask some personal questions, you have the option to pass answering them. We'll start off easy, and go from there.

What's your name?

Josh said:

Joshua Garrett

Where do you live?

Josh said:

West Jefferson, Ohio

We have seen on the site you are a brother now, any details?

Josh said:

His name is Jacob. 6lb's 2oz's

Any regrets in your life?

Josh said:

Putting a knife to one of my bestfriends throat. He understood what I was doing, but his sister told on me

Would you like to explain that situation?

Josh said:

Just playing a little army game, there was nothing to do. So we started that. His sister walks outside, we don't notice. His dad comes out, and he tells me to take him to my house to tell my mom. I got in trouble, and he didn't press charges.

Josh, have you found love lately, or are you riding solo out there in the world?

Josh said:

Riding solo ;--;

Sadly, same here :( Alright, I'm out of questions, so for this shall be the end. Is there anything you would like to say, whether it is completely random or not?

Josh said:

Well, now you know me....boring. And Not interesting

Alright, this shall be the end. I'm willing to take any suggestions, provide me an MSN to the person, or confront me yourself, I'm willing to listen to all suggestions and requests.


Article by superbird5005











So now I’m in a really bad mood. I’m a senior in high school being drowned in homework and college applications, I have to take the SAT soon and the ACT after that, AND I just missed the first time I would have ever had someone to put in every section.
Massive props to hatershateme though, he got not one, not two, but THREE separate achievements this month! That’s… actually pretty sad.

Mini Posters
1,000 – 4,999

- Craizen
- dnextreme88
- Guy117
- sphynxx


Small Posters
5,000 – 9,999

- Jirachi X
- steelersbrownsrock01 (WN: :P)


Medium Posters
10,000 – 14,999

- hatershateme


Large Posters
15,000 – 19,999

- v-gamer


Extra Large Posters
20,000 – 24,999

- Alexzander


Extra, EXTRA Large Posters
25,000+

- Vasc… OH WAIT, NEVERMIND. {Host’s Note: ONLY 40 POSTS AWAY, FFFFF-}

imaloony8.0 and the newsletter staff apologize if your achievement was not posted for whatever reason. If you did have an achievement and it was not posted, make sure to mention that so we can amend that, but you need to make sure you make those achievement topics, otherwise, I can’t be sure of if you get achievements or not!


Article by imaloony8.0







Welcome to this months edition of the anniversaries!...I can't think of a good intro other than telling that this is my
first time doing this, soooo....


1 year

- Nobody


2 years

- Nobody


3 years

- Nope


4 years

-Procrastinator


5 years


- Emptiness


6 years

- Why did I even put these in...


7 years

- Guess what? Nobody


Real birthdays

- 3rd of October; Volke (21)

-19th of October; Balthiersbit

-22nd of October;
- Superbird5005 (17)
- Glaceon (17)
- PBO

- 30th of October; Therapper

- At some point during the month: Procrastinator



So yeah, that's it for these.If I missed somebody, feel free to send a angry email to Vasco, he will {Host’s Note: NOT} be glad to have 'em.


Article by stormform









This month of October, two new members have joined the SuperCheats crew of members. Their names are;

-coltfan66: October 11th - 3 Posts
-AK GMAN14: October 18th - 23 Posts

There is 1 person over 10 posts. One is below 10 . Now, these members are new, so be nice.Also, Qwert, don’t stalk them like you would to your daughter in the shower. Also, welcome to SuperCheats. These are the people who made a topic and introduced
themselves, and possibly stayed in our Hell. Hopefully, you find the site fun, and you tell your friends, as we need more active people. Thanks for joining, and reading this article.


Article by hatershateme










I hear your cries. “But Dead Rising 2 just came out! Why aren’t you reviewing THAT?” Well, obviously, it’s because I don’t have it. I try to review stuff when it’s new, but considering I write one review a month and get only a handful of new games a year, that rarely happens. Next month will be something from this year, I promise, but I picked up this 2006 zombie classic recently, and I want to talk about it. So there.

Graphics:

For a 2006 game, I have to say that Dead Rising looks great. The animations are fluid, and, even when there are tons of zombies on the screen, the frame rate tends to stay pretty good. Blood splatters well, zombie’s ragdoll and slice well (which is 90 percent of why anyone is playing this game…), and little details like zombies being hit with pies are done brilliantly.
You’ll occasionally get some pop-in (you’ll be running through the mall and zombies will magically appear in the distance), but otherwise the game is pretty consistent in terms of graphics. I suppose there is sometimes an issue with clipping. In this game, Frank West, the main character, can dress up in a lot of costumes, but often his animations in the cut scenes will interfere with this. For example, if you’re wearing a hat, and Frank puts his hand against his head, his hand will move through the hat as if nothing is there and touch his head through the hat. But really, those are minor complains, and the graphics are nice otherwise.

Sound:

Sound was a bit off in this game. Firstly, the voice acting. While it isn’t as bad as something like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there’s something stiff about how most characters deliver their lines, mostly having to do with Frank. Luckily, a lot of the Psychopaths actually do a pretty good job, like Adam the Clown and Cliff, who’s voiced by my main man Steven Blum. A lot of other acts, however, like Jessie and Brad are pretty awful, to say the least. Still, there’s some talent here, and it’s not a total bomb.
The weapons sound nice, if nothing else. Each weapon has a fairly repetitive attack sound, but you won’t notice it a whole lot, and they all sound pretty good, if nothing else. Lead Pipes smash, Shotguns boom, and Chainsaws… chew. I guess.
There isn’t a whole lot in the way of music in this game. Each Psychopath tends to have their own musical number, which is generally pretty good, but often seems like the music is a little too heavy for my taste. Otherwise, the game is pretty quite, which is nice.
The zombie sounds are good, they hiss, they groan, they gurgle, exc. They don’t go much further than that, so I guess I’ll move on.

Plot:

The plot is a little awkward. You play as Frank West, a photo journalist who has gone to the town of Willamette, Colorado to find out why there has been no contact from the city, and potentially getting the scoop of his career. Frank gets dropped off by a helicopter pilot and, surprise, surprise, the town is overrun by zombies. An incident lets the zombies into the mall, and Frank finds himself locked in the mall for 72 hours before his helicopter returns stuck with two Department of Homeland Security agents and a mall employee. From there, it’s a battle to survive, stop a terrorist named Carlito from spreading the zombie virus and killing the only man with answers.
At first, the plot doesn’t do a whole lot, but it soon opens up after learning about a research facility in a place called Satan Cabeza, the connection to a man named Barnaby, and, in Overtime Mode, how Carlito plans to get his revenge against those who wronged him. It is actually a pretty good plot and effective at drawing you in.
But I said it is awkward. How so? Well, I’ll go into greater detail about this later, but a lot of cut scenes require you to be at a certain place in the mall at a certain time, and missing those deadlines will result in the game ending. One part in particular can be a trap that takes longer than you would think to complete, and often outright ends the game since you won’t have enough time to win.
There are several endings to the game (E through A), and getting A will launch you into Overtime Mode where to sort of fills in the blanks and shows the true ending of the story. This is an interesting mechanic, but is annoying, since if you accidentally get ending B or C, you have to go through the entire game again to get ending A.

Controls:

Dead Rising goes for a fairly unusual control system that works quite well due to its control scheme.
Upon watching game play for this game, I was a little concerned about switching through 4-12 items and how that would work. Luckily, it’s mapped to the bumpers, which is incredibly fluid and makes switching items a breeze (despite one of my controllers having a broken RB button), which is very helpful, as you’ll need to switch between guns, melee weapons, and healing items more times than I can count.
The triggers actually have fairly unique roles themselves. The left trigger is used to go into a first person “Camera Mode”. In this mode, Frank can still walk and look around like normal, just from first person. However, now X takes pictures, and A and B zoom in and out respectively. For what it needs to do, it works well, although A being zoom in and B being zoom out takes a little time getting used to, since when you want to zoom in, you’ll reflexively hit the button closest to the screen, which in this case will zoom you out instead. A minor complaint, but it would have been nice to be able to switch this.
The right trigger gets Frank in a position to throw and item or shoot a gun (Or spit, if he has no weapon equipped, which is quite amusing). This results in what I like to call “Resident Evil Syndrome”. While aiming, it becomes impossible to move and aim at the same time. Because this mode uses X to fire and switches camera control to the left stick, it works better than the aforementioned counterpart, especially since you have to option to fire without aiming for mowing down zombies on a whim.
The D-Pad sees more use than you’d think, with up switching to Frank’s bare hands, down dropping the currently held item, and right answering your walkie-talkie.
Most of the other stuff is fairly standard. Menu buttons, A to jump, X to attack, B to interact, exc. However, what are really weird are the special moves. As Frank levels up, he gets access to a variety of moves, such as the Jump Kick, the Football Tackle, and a nice disembowelment. However, a lot of these moves require time to get used to, as they require button combinations you don’t normally use, like clicking the left stick in and hitting A at the same time for the football tackle, hitting A and X at the same time while pushing forward into the front of a zombie for Disembowel, and hitting X just as you hit the ground from a jump for a Roundhouse kick (Chuck Norris would be so proud…). This makes a lot of moves impractical to use, especially since hitting X and A simultaneously often doesn’t work, making Frank attack or jump instead.
Still, these are minor complaints, and for what it’s trying to do, Dead Rising does a fantastic job at making the controls responsive and extremely useful.

Gameplay:

You kill zombies. A lot of zombies. Okay, I’m done here.

Oh, fine.
This game uses a very unique style of gameplay. It’s a third person action/horror/shooter game (very mild on horror, however…) where you use a wide variety of weapons to kill zombies, from machine guns to machetes to fish, almost everything in the mall can be used as some sort of weapon, effective or not. This can make mowing through a giant horde of zombies more of a mad science experiment than a means to get from point A to point B. Will you hack your way through with a chainsaw? How about take a large umbrella and plowing down the horde with it? Or maybe you’d rather pick up a queen bee and smash it to explode the heads of all zombies close by? Maybe toss a Molotov Cocktail into the fray? A horde of zombies isn’t an obstacle in this game, it’s the means for hours of entertainment! And that’s what this game really gets right. Never before has killing zombies been so fun, and this game just loves to watch zombies die. In fact, it keeps a little counter at the bottom of the screen to tell you exactly how many zombies you’ve killed, leading up to the mother of all zombie killing achievements: Zombie Genocide (Kill 53,594 zombies!). Sadly, the “72-Hour Mode” has one feature that too heavily distracts from the zombie killing.
This game has a time system implemented that does nothing but annoy you. I’m not talking about something like Fallout 3 that has a clock in it to let you know when certain events happen daily. In Dead Rising, everything is on a timer. The beginning of a scoop. The end of a scoop. When a survivor will spawn and disappear. When a psychopath will appear and disappear. When the bloody mall will EXPLODE. Because this timer is so strict, it can be easy to miss a scoop because you’re hunting books, survivors, psychopaths, or just killing zombies. Doing everything in one game is nearly impossible because of it. Unless you plan the 3 days very carefully, you’ll miss a lot of survivors, a few scoops, a handful of psychopaths, and chances for powerful weapons. To its credit, it does a good job of driving the story along, and it keeps things tense. Overall, however, it just gets in the way of zombie and psychopath killing.
In addition to “72-Hour Mode”, there are also two additional modes to add play time to the game. “Overtime Mode” is unlocked when you get the best ending in 72-Hour Mode, and is sort of like an epilogue, without any of the DLC hassle of today. It takes place in the 24 hours following the game and show Frank’s final part of the adventure. It’s fun, to be sure, but it’s full of annoying Special Operative soldiers that take tons of damage and can kill you very quickly. “Infinity Mode” is unlocked after completing Overtime Mode and is just that, Infinite. Well, not exactly infinite. In this mode, all infinite healing item spawns are disabled, all survivors are hostile, and you must survive for as long as possible as your health slowly drains over time. It’s fun, but not something you’d sink hours into at once, which is odd, considering that there’s an achievement related to this mode that requires you to play for 14 hours straight without turning your console off. I mean, yeah, the game’s fun, but it’s not something that you should put that much time in to just for an achievement and a new item.
It’s not the camera, however, that can kill the experience. It’s the balancing of the game. When you start the game, you’re a level 1 Frank West. What does this mean? It means you’re slow, you deal crap damage, you can barley throw objects, you can only take a few hits before dying, you have no special moves, and you can only carry a few items. Basically, it means you’re screwed. You’re so weak, that the first time through the game, you’ll only get to level 10-15 before hitting a wall at a boss that you can’t beat because they simply shred you to bits (COUGHAdamandCletusCOUGH). And what does THAT mean when you can’t proceed? Well, you either need to find a way around the fight, or you need to start again from the beginning. When you restart the game, you retain all your XP and levels, but none of your in-game progress or items. This can actually be okay your first time around, but when you need to restart the game over and over for achievements or whatever, it can ware on your nerves fast. Once you hit level 50 though, man, you’re on top of the friggin’ world.
Speaking of balance, now’s as good of a time to bring up the bosses. There are only about 12 of them, and, for the most part, they’re stupidly frustrating. We have bosses that attack you close up with unavoidable grabs and at range with powerful, hard to avoid attacks (Cletus). We have bosses that can drain a good potion of your attack with deceptive attacks (Adam). We have bosses that can blow you out of the area and make them disappear so you won’t get their special item drop (Steven J. B- I mean, Cliff). And let’s not forget simply stupidly annoying bosses (The Convicts). For the most part, these boss battles are optional, which is nice, but avoiding them makes you feel really dumb. Only when you come back as a leveled Frank with the best weapons in the game to tear them up will you finally feel triumphant, which, I must admit, is a very good feeling.
Lastly, I suppose I should mention some novelty things. Firstly, you can play dress up with Frank, dressing him in a variety of hats, glasses, suits, dresses (Yes, dresses), vests, shoes, wrestling outfits, military uniforms, and video game characters. It feels slightly silly, but seeing your customized Frank in a cutscene is rather satisfying, and it’s something to do, if nothing else.
We also have the photo taking system. With this system, you can have Frank pull out his camera and take pictures of anything in the environment. The game will then score your picture (giving you XP in the process) and give it a genre, such as Horror, Brutality, or Outtakes. Photo Taking is mostly just for the novelty of things, and while you can get a lot of XP doing it, you won’t find yourself taking tons of pictures unless achievements call for it.

Bottom Line:

Dead Rising is easily one of the best zombie games I’ve ever played. It doesn’t have the cooperative experience of Left 4 Dead, the horror factor of Resident Evil, or even the sheer randomness of Zombies Took my Daughter (don’t ask), but it does have zombies. And lots of them. And we love Dead Rising for it. With its current price tag of about $20, I’d highly recommend it. It has a ton of lastability, and you’ll have tons of fun mowing down the zombie mobs. Just remember that when the dead start rising, Frank West will be there to shove them right back down.

Final Score: 4/5



Article by imaloony8.0








Hello and welcome to the October edition of the Graphics & Artwork Replay, hosted by your friendly neighborhood PBO!

Graphics & Artwork News:

- Jam Jar, in all his glory, returned.

- HyperFox_ changed his “Zak” character for the third time.

- Layne created a “smudging” tutorial. (Josh was apparently “smudge” retarded.)

- roadkillman997 slow…ly … left… the… Graphics Forum for no apparent reason. DX

- A lot of people tried out different styles than what they were originally used to. What can I say? It was a subconscious Graphics semi-fad. Or something…

- Dagron continued getting hype for her “Trickster” fanfic drawings. ( Link
much? )

- One more thing. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, I AM BEGGING YOU. COME TO THE SUPERCHEATS GRAPHICS AWARDS 2010 AND VOTE!

-srsly.

-I mean it.

- We have ninja monkeys in space wearing cowboy hats and panda suits.

Signature of the Week Winners:

Nic21 - Symmetry

COWINNER: Craizen - Vertical

COWINNER: Trainer_Saphire - Vertical

Craizen - Freestyle

Creation of the Month:

This month’s CnotM belongs to: v-gamer!!



Wow.

This amazing piece of artwork got the most positive comments and earned the highest acclaim. Congratulations Vee!!


Creator of the Month:

This month’s CrotM award belongs to: Dagron!!

With her simply AMAZING “Trickster” fanfic artwork that is HAND-DRAWN, Dagron most certainly deserves this award. GREAT job, Dagron!!


Welp! Looks like this is it for October’s Replay! See you later to replay the ominous NOVEMBER. Duh-duh-duhhhhh…


Bye! ( And seriously, vote in the SuperCheats Graphics Awards 2010, hosted by your friendly neighborhood PBO!)

Article by peanut butter ownage





[center][b]Disclaimer[/center][/b]



This review was not intended to offend anyone and elaboration was used necessarily for enjoyable reading. Any attempt to re-create/rip this review will cause TestVirus, Volke and Loony to go after you with razor sharp words and, knowing them, quite possibly a baseball bat as well.


NOTE: What I’ve learned from all this time running the Newsletter? No Post-Preview sucks. SUCKS.


[b][u]The Newsletter Team[/b][/u]

Vasco – Host and Article Writer

Superbird5005 - Interviewer

Imaloony8.0 – Article Writer

hatershateme – Article Writer

TestVirus101 – Editor

If you’d like to help, please send your application at the e-mail bellow. Also, regarding the Special Article, we accept the Special from ANYONE. You can just make an article you think it’s pretty interesting, and send it to us. If it’s good enough, it will be posted, and of course you’ll get credit for it.



For the above mentioned, or for further questions, e-mail me at:



vasco_gamer @ hotmail. com [remove the spaces]

« Last edited by Vasco on Nov 8th 2010 »

Nice, but no of the months...
And who's gonna start hosting? Shawn?

If he wants to. From now on, it's up to you guys to decide.

I'm more than willing to host, but I'll let you guys decide. Vote on it I suppose.

Seemed a bit short this time around, but nice nonetheless.

Vasco. </3 T_T

Nice newsletter seemed very short though... and I miss the Best of the Month... D:

Awesome interview too, glad Josh got to do it.

I vote Shawn to be the host.

Youre not leaving us Vasco? You cant! Who will I stalk then?

inb4 during shift from newsletter thread to melodramatic "onoz vas is leevin DDD="

If you ran this thing for two years straight, or to any other point where it began feeling more like a chore than something to enjoy, you'd want to call it quits too.

It was a good run, Vas. And from past experiences I couldn't agree more about the no post preview thing.

^Evil boy, you have 666 posts!

It is a chore though. Maybe the host job should be rotated between 3-4 members, each hosting for a few months at a time.
I dont know, it is alot for one member to do especially seeing as most here have school.

Aw Vasco, it was nice having you with this thing!

And on a second note, pbo... Why did you say that was the creation of the month? ;o

The interview wasn't that good compared to the other ones

^Better than what one with me would've been!.

Oi, what happened to MoTM, or were we all so sadly pathetic none of us qualified? lol

Vas said:

this is my resignation as Chief and Host of the Newsletter

End of an era, snm. </3

After a brief discussion on msn (“lol, let’s do it”)

lolyeah ;)

My time on SuperCheats is quickly approaching its end

End of a bigger era. :(

I’d like to give a special shout-out to Lukie (who started this thing with me),

My pleasure, Vas. <3


All I can say is that the newsletter won't be the same without you mate. :(

Also, Shawn? I think so.

v-gamer said:

And on a second note, pbo... Why did you say that was the creation of the month? ;o

Cause it was hot?
and I really liked it?
;P

Two years is a mighty fine commitment Vas, and I'm positive all of us appreciated it(:

Overall good newsletter, not amazing but good. Looney nice review, I approve.

The artwork, Dagron and Vee, was amazing I have to admit. The both of you need to take credit where it's due!

So another switch huh Vas? Heh, I totally get why to. You're in the same position as me from what I can see, dropping responsibilities and chores that are unnecessary in favor of a better life. We do have newbies who still actually like doing these things, so thank god for Derek, stormform, sphynxx and the like huh? Like you said, I remember every single part of the NL's history. The times we've had, mmm. Well here's to the great run that you, Vas, and all of us, have had so far. Thanks for the kind words by the way, and the same applies to you. =)

Well, I can't say I'll be taking on any new responsibilities through this shuffle, but I'll talk with Shawn and some others about the Interview position and new possible hosts. Anyone that wants to host please say so in this thread, it makes getting everyone together easier.

Again, well done all.

qwertyuio said:

The artwork, Dagron and Vee, was amazing I have to admit. The both of you need to take credit where it's due!

I will when it's actually due. :P

v-gamer said:

qwertyuio said:

The artwork, Dagron and Vee, was amazing I have to admit. The both of you need to take credit where it's due!

I will when it's actually due. :P

Oh quit making things difficult Vee. You deserve the credit So take it like a man =D

You guys should tell that to Layne, he's actually really good and thinks he sucks.

Or at least he used to. He doesn't really express his opinion on his tags, any more.

I don't feel right being credited in something I wasn't asked to edit =3

Also I feel kind of bad for the anniversary article now. Coulda had my 6 year one in there but I didn't make a topic for it.

« Last edited by TestVirus101 on Nov 7th 2010 »