Console gaming headsets are in a weird place. On one hand, they’re relatively cheap and plentiful. On the other hand, that low price point means the drivers inside aren’t great. Hardware manufacturers like to cover this up with bass response, the PX21 set is no exception.

Though I don’t think you can even find a headset for consoles that doesn’t color the output, it isn’t any excuse for making cheap junk.

The big downsides are often similar across manufactures and models, comfort for extended sessions and quality.

TurtleBeach’s PX21 headset looks fine on paper, it has a great mic that is super-flexible, and is the first headset from TurtleBeach to support the PS3. It also supports the 360 and PC gaming.

The immediate downside is simple.

There is a terrible hissing noise.

You can minimize it by swapping out the included red/white RCA bypass jacks for going straight to your TV or hi-fi tuner setup’s headphone audio out jack, and then adjusting that system’s volume up. Then you turn the volume down on the PX 21′s built-in amp.

But that still doesn’t eliminate the hiss, and it is extremely annoying during any part of a game that has quiet spots.

Games with quiet spots are why I own a PS3, I don’t play just shooters; I play games like Heavy Rain and I don’t want the quiet points in games to be marred by the ear-piercing whine these produce. Even the recent Red Dead Redemption sounds like crap and gives me a headache due to this headset’s hissing noise.

Of course to hook them up they need to be plugged into the PS3 (or other device) via USB for power. On the 360 you’ve got a special bypass cable to chat through the controller. On the PS3 the connection is simpler since the chat audio goes straight through the USB cable.

This means the headset is really mixing two inputs, the game connection over the RCA (or headphone jack)  input and the chat audio over the USB wire or the supplied 360 bypass cable.

This design of two mixed inputs is either brilliant or stupid. Brilliant because it works around every situation you might want to use it in, stupid because the hardware TurtleBeach has chosen is so cheap it can’t really give you a clean sound.

The PX21 headset is otherwise extremely lightweight & comfortable. It also covers the technical bases of supporting the PS3, 360, and PC gaming. I hope TurtleBeach will go back to the drawing board to design a headset that doesn’t hiss, even if it means raising the price slightly. Maybe in some magical laboratory somewhere these things don’t hiss, but other reviews corroborate my testimony. As it is I cannot recommend this headset unless you only play loud games that have little-to-no quiet points, like Modern Warfare 2.

Even then you should keep your receipt, I returned the PX21 headset to Best Buy after just 24 hours.

I recently obtained the magical and revolutionary video game, 3D Dot Game Heroes. In this RPG, you can build your own character model using the included editor. The game doesn’t really tell you where you can go to find character models created by other users, and most of the search results will get you gamefaqs or other fan operated sites that aren’t optimized for the distribution of these character models..

Atlus has us covered with their official Hall of Heroes along with instructions for importing them to your Playstation 3.

OFFICIAL 3D DOT GAME HEROES HALL OF HEROES WEBSITE.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to playing fighting games at home. You could go with the full Arcade experience and buy your own Street Fighter cabinet, or maybe you just want the joystick portion.

Maybe though you’re more like me; too cheap even for the MadCatz fighting sticks. Though most of the Street Fighter community seems to consider sticks to be the only option, I only play for fun. So that’s why I went with the FightPad.

You might be surprised to find that the fightpad is wireless since MadCatz goes out of their way to hide the USB wireless dongle in the bottom of the packaging. It doesn’t even use bluetooth, opting instead for the el cheapo 2.4 Ghz RF technology. More importantly, it is still extremely responsive despite all that.

Playing with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and Street Fighter 4; I didn’t notice any lag. So, maybe they are right to hide the dongle, I wouldn’t have bought it if I had known. The battery solution for the pad is a standard battery AA housing on the back like the MS 360 gamepads. However, this gamepad doesn’t include contacts for the 360′s rechargeable battery pack. So you are on your own for that.

The directional pad and saturn-esque button layout is a tremendous upgrade from the Dual Shock 3. Just like the original fightpads you can still swap the dpad’s toggle to control either the left or right analog sticks if you’re trying to work with a game that doesn’t support one or the other. The turbo functionality works just like it should, tap the turbo button once and then the button you want to repeat; then tap that button again and it’ll repeat.

It probably wouldn’t be too surprising if I told you that the build quality isn’t great. I’m not even sure it suits the $40 price tag at most retailers. The buttons feel loose, and the noise they make while the pad is in motion isn’t  reassuring. Though that probably doesn’t impact their accuracy,  the quality is going to impact the controller’s lifespan. Moreover it makes it me wish for a “tournament edition” of the fightpad with higher-quality parts. I don’t like wasting space in landfills. You can tell already that this pad is going to end up broken and sent to one within a few months of dedicated playing.

This FightPad isn’t limited to fighting either, it also works really well with emulated games. Though the dpad shows up as a joystick hat, which is kind of strange. I tried out Sunset Riders with it, and can say that this is perhaps the ultimate way to play Sunset Riders.

Overall it is easy to recommend the pad to folks like me, casual players who are too cheap or don’t have the room for the larger arcade-style fighting sticks. Dedicated players will wear it out in time, but even they should enjoy it while it lasts. My understanding is that the 360 version is similar, but wired.

First off, when you boot the game you’re welcomed by Capybara’s “mascot” (so to speak) for the game: Biggs. The loveable little “critter” smiles and winks at you. Beckoning you to press start to continue into the game, or wait for the demo reel to start to show you gameplay footage. On the first boot-up, you are locked out from most of the game modes, besides “adventure mode,” for single-player.

Local and Online co-op and versus play, however, are unlocked from the get-go…

To continue on, the singleplayer “adventure” mode is your standard story mode for puzzle games. Upon starting it up, you are welcomed to a wonderfully hand-drawn 2D art cutscene explaining a few things about what the Biggsliocaucus, or “Biggs” for short, creatures do “every Spring. The male Biggs going out to eat the Crittacocephalus, or “Critters” as they are known. Their sons accompanying them to see how they’re fathers are efficient to the Critter’s eco-system while bringing food home to his family on the other side of the island.”

After that cutscene, you are on a map letting you choose (as you unlock more of them) spots to go to to find more puzzles. Starting off with the tutorial and going from there.

Gameplay-wise, the game is a basic “match three” puzzler, with a twist. You feed “two smaller critters to one bigger critter” to “make them pop.” It’s an interesting mechanic and as you ‘pop more critters” you start to fill up a “hunger gauge.” Your goal, at least in this mode is to fill up the Hunger Bar to beat the level.

Sounds easy, right? Well the game’s tutorial level even explains the challenge. You must do this while the game continues to bring more critters into the lines of the gameplay table. If a critter reaches Biggs/passes the line… like Tetris, the game will be over.

The gameplay mechanics are easy enough that even kids should be able to pick-up and enjoy Critter Crunch on the first go, with maybe with a little explanation/help from the parents for kids the age of five to eight.

There is a “food chain” mechanic where popping a critter near similar other critters will also make them pop. This seems to be a strategic advantage in having the board clear without the player being overwhelmed.

“Food chains” seem to also happen when you feed one smaller critter to a bigger critter and have that “full” bigger critter be fed to an even bigger critter. Good for speedy clearing of the board.

Like Tetris and other puzzle games, there is a “quick drop” option for Critter Crunch. Unlike those games, this “speeds the next line up” in dropping so you can pop more critters. This is achieved with the D-pad down button.

Also, funny enough your “Son, Smalls” will show up when you chain an 8-Critter pop-combo (for lack of better words). You then have the ability to “feed” your son by “barfing into his mouth” with rainbow barf. Yes, you read that right. You feed your child with rainbow barf. Unfortunately, you have to be quick about doing this, as “Smalls is impatient, so be quick about it” as the aptly named “Barfing Tutorial” mentions. Thankfully, so long as Biggs mouth is empty of Critters, you can simply go over to Smalls and press the circle button on your Dual-Shock 3 to barf/feed your son.

The twist to feeding your son is that if you do it quickly enough and “fill him up on his first visit” you will max your points out. The catch is, that by feeding your son, the critters will also drop faster as they are “attracted to the barf.”

Feeding Smalls on his first visit also means that you don’t need to have him appear again to feed him (to reach his max) again. You won’t have to feed him again for that level once he reaches his max. If he doesn’t reach his max, you can simply call him back out by gaining another 8-pop-chain.

Achievement wise: The game has two online achievements (Play and win a versus mode match, and reach level 5 in versus mode), with the rest being singleplayer. The achievements seem easy to do, in theory but in practice some of them (like “World Greatest Dad”) will be hard to master.

To move into the multiplayer: The ranked multiplayer matches are like Tetris. You match Critters to pop them to gain power-ups to screw over your opponents. Simple, but the game becomes fast and furious between both players to fill the other players play field to the point of winning. (Though, there is a hunger meter in the two player mode, maybe another way to win is by filling that up quickly. I can’t say at the time of writing.)

Graphically, the game is very pretty with hand-drawn art. I would wager to say that I think Capybara’s art-department needs a pay-raise. At 1080p (though an HDMI cable is required to reach this resolution) the game is gorgeous with the hand-drawn art. Biggs is charming in animation and the game reeks of cuteness.

Overall, the game is a nice addition to the PSN library and if you enjoy puzzle games it is easily worth the $7USD (at the time of writing) to buy. Unfortunately, I have to mention there is no color-blind option (though talking to Capybara, they are “thinking about patching it into the PS3 version”), so if you are color-blind you may have a little trouble with the game (since there are some Critters that are similar in color to other Critters).

If you aren’t completely satisfied with just the game, they are also offering some cute T-shirts at this link. Very cute T-shirts with a catchy “hey, what’s the game your advertising?” twist.

I want to thank Capybara Games for giving me the opportunity to review their game.

Let me start by saying I loved playing Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords/Revenge of the Plague Lord. With problems and all that on the PSP, the XBLA release was alright and fixed a majority of the bugs. The PS3 version is fine as well minus the infamous (for this version only) music bug. There was a Nintendo DS version that had a battle bug (the first turn had the same layout of gems no matter the battle). I’m not knowledgeable about the Mac/PC versions but I hear they’re okay if somewhat buggy as well.

So, it comes as a complete shock to me that Infinite Interactive went into the boardroom and said “gee, how can we totally alienate players in our sci-fi RPG/puzzle sequel?”

The answer: Leap gates. THOUSANDS OF THEM (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still). The most annoying mini-game in the game is the one you will play constantly to move across the galaxy of Galactrix.

For this reason alone, a lot of players stopped playing the sequel to Puzzle Quest. I can’t fault them. What with the challenge of having to match 20-25 matches in a sequence and hope to god the timer doesn’t continue to tick down if you get an unnecessary cascade of matches going. (and yes, if you get all the required matches and your cascade goes on after that and the timer hits zero, guess what? YOU FAIL THE HACK DESPITE YOU WINNING IT!)

Besides that, Galactrix adds in some new mini-games, noteable addition number one: Haggling. Now if you go to a store (and have the party member that does haggling) you can haggle for lower prices (during that menu visit) through a “get most of the gems off the board” mini-game. It’s a nice addition and if you do well you can get a 2.00-17.00% discount in the store during your visit. (If you leave and come back, you have to rehaggle)

Crafting has changed to the hex-based (that this version uses for all puzzles) mini-game and… thankfully, doesn’t require you to get ONLY anvil/hammers like Challenge of the Warlords. It does throw obstacles at you, meanwhile. Overall though, it is less luck-based and can mostly get you out of crap positions to finish crafting items.

Mining is yet another mini-game (one that you’ll probably do more than the others with the exception of leapgates) that’ll give you materials that you can use to craft items or sell to stores to improve your faction rating.

To move away from the mini-games, the stats system of Challenge of the Warlords has been simplified to where on level-up instead of having 6 stats and only 4 skill points to help you improve them, you now have 5 skill points and 4 skills to level up. The main upgrade to this is after high-level play you can have nearly all even stats with a few stand-out skills/stats for your character. No need to buy a citadel and use gold to get the rest of the skill points you need to improve your character more.

Item wise, the game has its share of game breaking items (and this is just for multiplayer!) that Challenge of the Warlord was famous for. The most exciting is the “Time Warp” items, which based on a certain stat means your enemy will not get a certain amount of turns in. Freeing you up to set them up for bombs and novas.

The battles in the game are still as addictive (and seems to be slightly less random/ZOMG AI IS CHEATING!) as Challenges. If you can wrap your head around the “no-gravity” system that Infinite Interactive added, you can get some good cascades going and roll into your opponent depending on how the gems fall.

Online wise: The game is dead, deader than doornail dead. Irony being, the game has only been out for a couple weeks on PSN alone. It was stupid of D3/II for including online achievements/trophies in the game, esp. after the amount of backlash about the DS/PC versions being really buggy scared away potential buyers of this version (as did the leapgate hacks). It’s even more damning when you consider the XBLA version of Challenge requires you to win only ONE online game (which is easy if you have a friend able to throw the game), but Galactrix wants you to win 50 in it’s barren online mode.

Still, if you can weather most of the annoyances, the game is a gem and brings some neat ideas to the table. But for $20, and after loving the hell out Challenge it’s disappointing that I can’t recommend this to everyone but the most hardcore/masochists that want a Puzzle Quest sequel.

Despite the Music Bug in the PS3 version and the unbalances in the DS/PSP versions of it, Challenge of the Warlords (and it’s expansion: Revenge of the Plague Lord) is still the superior outing for this series. Grab that if you’re looking to find out what everyone back in 2006 was going on about.

Buy/Don’t Buy: Don’t buy. Play the one trick pony flash demo that is more fun that the PC/XBLA demo that is the full game itself. The flash demo is just a random battle that should show you why the original was loved (since that was where the focus of Challenge of the Warlords stayed).

Sadly, we have to wait until the summer. Still, very nice.

Can I get a “FUCK YEAH” from my non-existent audience?

The short gist is, this is a wide-screen tailored online-code-base-like-Super Street 2: Turbo HD Remix (not sure if want on that front, esp. for the PS3 version. It’s not bad, though), and is based on the Dreamcast version (nearly Arcade perfect AND HAD ONLINE THROUGH 56K/BROADBAND ON THE JAPANESE COPY FOR SEGA.NET)

Also, for the PS3 users:

This Thursday, April 30, PlayStation Network users will enjoy a free, exclusive MVC2 demo! No need to purchase another game, just download it straight to your PS3 and get ready for some triple tag team action (A big thank you goes out to Rommel Hernandez who helped make this exclusive demo possible).

Here are the details of the demo:

* Two-player local matches
* Six available characters – Ryu, Chun-Li, Strider, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Wolverine
* Seven selectable environments
* Upscaled 1080p graphics
* Widescreen or 4:3 aspect ratio
* Two graphic filter options for character sprites
* And other cool options to check out

While it isn’t online, it should whet your appetite for taking people for a ride.

Annoyment: Hey Treyach, 007 mode? Pin-point accuracy from the enemies? Yeah, that’s not “hard” that’s “annoying”

“Oh, hey. I’ll slowly or too fast aim at the enemies head.” (BLAM BLAM BLAM! DUN-DUN-DUN-DAH-DUN-DUN! *Bond theme and death*)

Another annoyment: Left Bumper for weapon switch, really Treyarch? Do it Halo style and put it on Y-button for the 360 or something.

I will say that while it takes some liberties from the two Craig films (this is noticeable from the start if you watched Casino Royal to ending and the start of Quantum of Solace) I am enjoying the game otherwise (which is funny since I couldn’t stand most other Bond FPS, with the exception of Goldeneye and I didn’t touch that much since I had no N64).

I dig the SHOW THEM ONLINE! (Achievement/Trophies) are named after the Bond films (well, most of them), which is a fitting theme. As is the kill/damage system. Take too much damage and you have the “Bond gunshot through lens” effect on yourself. Irony.

The game also does a stylized opening after the first level, while it isn’t one of the big-budget movie intro-title-sequences it is refreshing to see one in a game.

A quick peek at the multiplayer menus seems to have a mixture of CoD4/5′s custom “class”/loadouts and Counter-Strikes money-for-kills-to-buy-new-guns system. I didn’t get into the multiplayer yet, but some people are complaining about it. Who knows.

Pretty good $10 spent on the sale at Best Buy. Bonus: The SKU that is $10 includes an XL 007 T-shirt. SCORE!

Also: For those that are curious about the title of this post:

< sek> Oh, hell. What the fuck were they thinking when they allowed two handguns but one primary weapon? I can keep my SMG or switch to this shotgun. But I can’t give up my default pistol to have both. That’s stupid.
<+DoctahTime> it is james bond
<+DoctahTime> he isn’t a 10-guns-in-his-backpack guy
< sek> I still find it odd that Bond wouldn’t pack of an SMG and Shotgun.
<+DoctahTime> when has he ever carrried more than one or two guns, one of which is always a pistol, in a movie
< sek> DoctahTime: Just now, two handguns and a primary.
<+DoctahTime> yeah
<+DoctahTime> that is what i mean
<+DoctahTime> two handguns isn’t much
< Etch-a-Sketch> it’s hard to seduce women when you’re carrying around a shotgun
< sekoku> Etch-a-Sketch: Winner.

Well, it freezes your PS3 if you try to load an auto-save after updating.

Nice, right?

Two ways to fix it:

1) Delete your save (don’t do this)
2) Sign out of Playstation Network (if you already are signed in), go start Wipeout HD. After it loads (!!!) sign into PSN. Then go to your options and change something really quick. Save the setting. V-TEC Auto-save will JUST kickED in.,YO!

Then you can re-adjust the setting and your problem should be fixed.

Now if they could fix the screw-up with the signing into the online servers (which still WILL NOT LET ME SIGN INTO THE SERVERS) since 1.20, we’d be in business. Sadly, they probably won’t.

The fix for that is plugging your PS3 in via Ethernet cable, but I’m lazy to get the “proper” (while I agree that wire > wireless…) connection going. So it’s back to the bottom of my games for Wipeout HD.
—

In non-cock up news: Valkyria Chronicles‘s DLC is finally dated. DAMN IT, SEGA, DAMN–Oh, wait. Good job Sega! ONLY IT’S BEEN HALF A YEAR AND YOUR COCK TEASING WASN’T NICE. But still, sure, I’ll take the DLC.

Playstation Home news: Resident Evil 5‘s space is finally updating with content Europe has had since at least Game launch. Whoopie!

Oh, and Poker is coming to Home through the EA Godfather 2 ad space. Cool and all, but watch it be hella busy like all the other Warioware: Mega micro games (besides that six-axis/Total Tilt(?) mini game in the Alpha 1 XI zone) to where when you REALLY want to play it you can’t.

To fix this cock-up: Sony needs to give Home users the ability to buy those Poker/Chess/Mankala *Far Cry 2* spaces and let them play with friends in their home space. Or… you know… stop with the stupid limits and let everyone play if they’re in the limited number of “instances” there is a max number for those and the amount of people in them, you know that, Sony, you made us hit those limits for Warhawk and Socom (which I won). Why can’t you just let games not have a limit?

And that’s the update for today (unless something major comes up), in Playstation Land.

X-box Live has gotten Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. And while I loved the shit out of the first Puzzle Quest and it’s expansion (Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords/Revenge of the Plague Lord, respectively) this outing is mired with very annoying things. A quick Google of would give you the most common complaints so I won’t air them here.

Buy/Don’t Buy: Try the demo, if you can get around the annoying things, buy it. It’s solid Puzzle Questing. Otherwise don’t buy and buy the first (which is even more solid).

Flock also came out today, and it’s coming out for PSN tomorrow. So yeah… XBL will probably be the only one with a demo since Sony doesn’t mandate those (STUPID ON SONYS PART, MAY I ADD?). So if you have both consoles, try the XBL Flock demo and see if you want to buy it. Then choose on controller/online preferences or whatever.

Buy/Don’t Buy: I dunno, I may not get back to you on that if I can give a damn to turn my 360 on for you.

Also, while I’m ranting like Dennis Miller on a bender: X-box Live Marketplace integration into the internet space is cooler than Sony’s stupid download (PC ONLY!) store. Note to Sony: Let Mac/THIS IS A UNIX system I KNOW THIS! into your little buying parade and then maybe I can link your stuff?
Good job, Microsoft. You haven’t made me hate you on this yet.