http://videolamer.com Words from people you don't know on games you don't care about Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:25:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Five years ago, as a younger lad with a small budget and an unending hankering for good games, I would scour the internet searching for quality freeware. Generally my searches ended in failure; though such games existed, they often had no story and little depth. One of the ... http://videolamer.com/3776 The October Nintendo conference, held close to the Tokyo Games Show because Nintendo are jerks and won't go to the TGS, was received better by gamers than their last E3 show. Among the new titles shown off were Wii Punch Out, Mario & Luigi 3 for the DS, a Klonoa ... http://videolamer.com/3773 With Spore's flagrant copy protection causing a stir, DRM is once again the hot item of debate in the gaming world. I welcome any rigorous discussion of the topic, because while most of us will agree that DRM should not be used, it most certainly will be. The ... http://videolamer.com/3770 Etrian Odyssey (the first one) was an interesting RPG by independent developer Atlus. Rather than focus on traditional RPG elements such as story save X kingdom from Y evil wizard, Etrian was explicitly a dungeon crawler. A giant dungeon has appeared near a city, adventurers flock by the dozen to ... http://videolamer.com/3766 There are quite a few game series with planned trilogies in the works, but the modern Prince of Persia games are one of the first successful trilogies to wrap itself up in a few years time. Its successes and failures highlight several important points that these future sagas must ... http://videolamer.com/3760 While playing Professor Layton last Spring, I remember Jay asking me (before he had purchased the game himself) if it were true that the game was bad because 80% of the puzzles were simple, the kind of thing that you could solve in 30 seconds and with little thought. The ... http://videolamer.com/3756 If you still view Free Radical Design as "the guys who once did Perfect Dark and Goldeneye", then their game catalogue might seem fairly weak. Second Sight was a successful experiment, and with the Timesplitters games they carved themselves a nice niche in the shooter market with their blend ... http://videolamer.com/3752 Rock Band 2 came out this past weekend, with an odd Sunday launch to be precise. You’d have been hard pressed to learn this from Harmonix’s site, which was oddly devoid of fanfare about the release. Fortunately, the local Gamestop was plastered with signs indicating that Rock Band 2 was ... http://videolamer.com/3747 For reasons and in ways I need not delve into here, I made the sky open up and rain money down upon me. Lots and lots of money. Enough money to get me out of debt and leave me with almost a grand to disperse however I saw fit. I ... http://videolamer.com/3745 Sony’s PSP has proven that if there’s one thing that the Japanese love, its Monster Hunter Portable. Seeking to capitalize on the success of this absolute sensation, Sega’s finally ported a version of Phantasy Star over to the device. It’s funny, back when the PSP was announced; I felt that ... http://videolamer.com/3742 I am not sure how to introduce this review so I am going to start gently. If I were the kind of guy that was into fellating people to get what I want, there would be a short list of people that I would be willing to drop to my ... http://videolamer.com/3737 My last few weeks of gaming have been dominated by two downloadable games, Braid and Bionic Commando. While both playing each game and reading the discussions surrounding them, I came to a great personal revelation. Whenever I get into a state of severe crankiness, it isn't because of ... http://videolamer.com/3735 This weekend, Steam is having a half off sale on all id Software games. That means you can get classics like the Commander Keen series for less than the price of a Starbucks latte. If you really want to be thorough, the id Super Pack is also part ... http://videolamer.com/3733 So there I was, in Japan, wandering about in the gamer’s wonderland that is Akihabara. I had purchased a PS3 shortly before my trip, planning to make use of the device’s lack of region coding to return triumphantly with all manner of bizarre import games and blu-ray anime. Things did not ... http://videolamer.com/3727