ODST(ough shit)

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Halo is as popular a game series as there is, yet I have always felt like it has suffered from a case of identity crisis.  First everyone derided the series as being a dumbed down FPS for jocks and kids.  Then a wave of revisionism swept through the land, and now even the snobbiest folks may consider the series a favorite of theirs.

With this week’s launch of Halo 3: ODST, the cycle may start anew.  The scores are pretty solid all around, but folks have found new ways to bring on the hate.  Among critics, there is far from universal love for ODST’s storytelling, both in regards to the hub world/flashback concept, or the Audio/Video logs scattered throughout.  From what I can tell, ODST is the closest Halo has gotten to the old Marathon style of narrative, but for some reviewers that has apparently become a bad thing, as it gets in the way of shooting things. →  One must imagine video games happy.

Are you HARDCORE ENOUGH?

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Writing about the hardcore/casual games divide was the new “Are Games Art” but now “There’s No Such Thing as Hardcore/Casual” is the new “There is a Hardcore/Casual Games and Gamers Divide”. This is a lie told to you by casual gamers. Casual gamers are limp-wristed liberals. HARDCORE gamers get chicks and drive huge cars and WILL FIGHT YOU TO THE DEATH defending the console that their Mom bought them.

But are you HARDCORE? Or are you a casual? Do you have armour piercing spermatozoa/ova or are you firing blanks? This is where the HARDCORE test comes in. If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you are NOT HARDCORE AT ALL. You are a casual homo. Don’t take this test if you don’t want the truth. →  Now bear my arctic post.

Cryptic’s Genius Relationship with Furries

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I have to give Cryptic Studios some credit: Realizing the current flood of MMOs on the market and the presence of another game that they helped develop in the exact same subgenre would hurt their sales, they created a business model for their newly released Champions Online that can thrive with as few as 10,000 subscribers. By catering to the niche of the niche and trying very hard not to even suggest that their new release is anything like the legendary and fabled World of Warcraft killer that fans have been waiting for for years now, Cryptic was able to explore cheesy silver age comics ideas to their fullest without having to live up to the lofty, unfulfilled expectations that are currently dooming Age of Conan and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. →  Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Post

Review – Silent Hill: Homecoming

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The last time I reviewed a Silent Hill game, I was playing through SH:Origins, a PSP original developed by an American team with a greater focus on combat than previous games in the series. At the time, I made two points which I thought encapsulated the nature of Silent Hill games. Firstly, I asserted that reliance on locked doors, constant map checking, and finicky combat are an easy way to make your game feel tedious, repetitive, and full of cheap parlor tricks. True they can help create a frightening and oppressive tone when used correctly, but I would argue that no one has been able to do that since the very first game. Secondly, I stated Silent Hill games benefit from their tendency to shape enemies and environments around the mental projections of their protagonist. →  They’re reading her… and then they’re going to read me!

Are you Smarter than 100 other Xbox Live douchebags?

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Reading even a few game sites is guaranteed to expose you to a certain amount of PR jizz: with machines like Microsoft, EA, Activision and others, it is inevitable you will be exposed to their products through the usual gaming channels. So it was with 1 vs 100 for me. By way of Penny Arcade, I was subjected to a face full of “OMG this game is awesome” jizz. But it was free, so I figured I’d check it out.

For those of you who have been held hostage in a shed for 18 years and were only recently freed, 1v100 is a gameshow that originated in the Netherlands and was hosted by Bob Sagat in the US. 1v100 pits the “one” against the “mob” in a series of trivia questions. →  And so it games…

Game Concepts – Great ideas of Genius

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There are those among us who feel games are becoming increasingly predictable – a marketing dominated creative process where developers simply take elements from other successful games, try to throw in some token new thing and call it a day. So I thought I’d just throw out some slightly different ideas, just for the hell of it. If a butterfly flapping its wings can truly destroy the universe (as my people believe) then maybe this article can, uh, take down some butterflies.

Ashes of Destiny: The Cricket Saga

Okay, so you take a sport that everybody loves (Cricket) and you combine it was a genre that everybody really ought to love (RPGs) and this is what you get. I may also be liberally borrowing from the film Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, but I can make it different enough to stop the lawyers from getting involved. →  Holy crap, show me more!

Review – Cursed Mountain

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Cursed Mountain is the latest game in the survival horror mountain climbing genre. It really wants to let everyone know that it’s scary, it has angry contorted faces all over the place, deep dramatic music, and lots of dark shadowy stuff everywhere. It also really wants to recreate the feeling of climbing up a mountain. You will have to literally climb every inch of this huge mountain. Except for a few parts where they jump you ahead a little, since only so much mountain can fit into a ten hour game.

This videogame is less “survival horror” (most noticeably absent from the game is the whole “survival” aspect) and more of a genre that I made up after playing Gears of War, which I like to call “on rails but not really.” →  Double your reading, double your fun.

Review – Digital Devil Saga

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Atlus has a reputation for releasing games that appreciate in value. They print a bunch of copies, but they sell slowly at first but eventually you’ll need to trade in a console or two to have enough credit to pick them up.

Recently, they have been trying to curb that reputation – partly by printing more copies of new titles, but also by reprinting old games. Shortly before the ultimate demise of the PS1, they reprinted Persona 2, for example. More recently, they reprinted three Shin Megami Tensei PS2 games: Nocturne and the two Digital Devil Saga games, each of which had been selling for more than $60 for a good while.

Being the dedicated RPG enthusiast I am, I completed my PS2 SMT collection with the two DDSes when I heard the news. →  Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘Game Over.’

Getting the Batcave Right

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Now that videolamer has become the haven for misfit and under appreciated games, a review of perhaps the year’s biggest release seems out of place and wrong. As such, no review of the excellent and entertaining Batman: Arkham Asylum will be drafted by me for inclusion on this website. Besides, the internet is already chock full of reviews and I really would have nothing to add to the conversation. But I will do a blog entry on a tiny detail that has almost no impact on the game whatsoever: How the Batcave was included, and what other video game makers will hopefully learn from this.

As Batman kicks ass and takes names all across the island that holds Arkham and its many criminals, he eventually reveals that he has a hidden Batcave just for such emergencies. →  Read Danger!

Review – Wanted: Weapons of Fate

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These days, it does not take much to get a 3rd person, cover based action game greenlighted for production. Do you have some sort of licensed property to link it to? Then you’re golden! But if you really want to spice it up, find a property that has some sort of silly gimmick for you to work with. That will help justify having the publisher spend millions (and the consumer $60) on a disposable six hour experience. This is exactly the kind of mentality behind Wanted: Weapons of Fate, the tie in game to 2008’s Angelina Jolie vehicle developed by recently defunct developer GriN. In such a crowded genre, Weapons of Fate likes to think of itself as being different and better from the rest, similarly to its source material, this is nothing more than a case of self delusion. →  Castle Readigami 2