Month: April 2006

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.28.06

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Nintendo renames the Revolution
Nintendo is the US after September 11th. They built up a great deal of good will, especially after developers revealed they’re making real games for the system. But like Bush II, Nintendo has squandered the world’s interest by pursuing a terrible PR campaign and bombing Iraq. So the analogy isn’t perfect. My point is Nintendo had everyone listening and now they have everyone laughing. Image has long been one of their main problems and they seem to revel in not fixing it.

I will stop being friends with anyone who actually calls it the Wiimote.

With that, I present to you the Nintendo Wii, pronounced “we.” In case the pun wasn’t painful enough, Nintendo has named the Revolution controller the “wiimote.” In order to stress how stupid their marketing people are, Nintendo’s press conference consisted of terrible puns. →  Eh, I’ve got nothing better to do.

Review – Ninja Gaiden

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I wanted to like Ninja Gaiden. I really did. Despite my disinterest in Namco’s Team Ninja and their “style over substance” approach to game design, I always hoped that this new Ninja Gaiden would live up to the high standards set by the 2d originals. It turns out that the final product is much like I expected. Team Ninja has a history of being able to do one thing incredibly well, be it the graphics of Dead or Alive or the … models in Extreme Beach Volleyball. Meanwhile pretty much everything else in the game ends up being mediocre at best.

The good news is that Ninja Gaiden’s combat happens to be the one thing that is done right. The bad news is that once again everything else is rather crummy.

 →  Zone of the Readers: The 2nd Reader

Naming the Revolution

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The Nintendo Revolution still lacks an official name. Nintendo will likely rename the console in May at E3, but chances are they’ll come up with a less than stellar moniker. Luckily, I am here to suggest names that are sure to be winners in the court of public opinion. Of course I’ll expect royalties.

Gamecube 2 – The most obvious and worst choice. Similar to Sony renaming the Blu Ray discs BETA Max 2.

Nintendo 540 – The new Xbox thinks it’s xtreme and in your face, but a 360 is a pretty easy move in most new extreme sports other than freestyle walking. Besides, a 360 leaves you facing the exact same direction you were prior to the move, which explains why the new Xbox is also tanking in Japan. →  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this post!

A multiplayer world

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Raph may want to think about updating his pic on his website.

The other day I was listening to the Penny Arcade podcast, specifically The Zone of Breakfast. First off, a quick shameless fanboy plug: although our glorious cult leader (may he always provide for us Kool-Aid), Jay, dislikes these guys, I’ve always been a huge PA fan. In particular, I enjoy their new podcasts because I get to listen to a lot of video game news I ordinarily would not. Rather than do research and reading, I can just listen to the voices from the computer, which is more comfortable to me, because I am illiterate and hear voices in my head. Anyhow, they were discussing a comment that Raph Koster, a designer for both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies made at a E3 several years ago. →  How many games must a gamer play before you call him a gamer?

Review – Kingdom Hearts 2

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Sora picks up a new, more badass outfit in KHII. Donald still uses his sailor outfit left over from his porn star days.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (let’s call it Japan), a man from SquareEnix and a man from Disney were getting drunk in a karaoke bar when, somewhere between sake and bad renditions of Michael Jackson songs, one of them stumbled upon a most wonderful idea: why not take all the best aspects of the Disney universe, throw them together with all the best parts of the Final Fantasy series, and from this soup of uberness draw the most amazing game ever conceived by man? The two set off to do just this, and on September 16th 2002, if Jesus himself had come down from heaven to bring rapture to the world, no one would have noticed because they’d have been too busy picking up their reserved copies of Kingdom Hearts from Gamestop. →  Do a barrel read!

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.21.06

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It’s not vandalism if it’s illegible.

Getting Up game mediocre enough to inspire Hollywood movie
This makes perfect sense to me. The game wasn’t very good and was style over substance. Why wouldn’t they make a movie out of it and say… seven sequels to the game? When has quality ever been something consumers cared about?


Guitar Hero 2 is coming
Awesome to the max. More songs than the first one and more importantly, new modes. Bass guitar I could take or leave, but two player mode with one doing rhythm and the other doing lead sounds like a lot of fun. Now I wish I’d invested in that cherry red second guitar. It’s a tad keyboard heavy, but I really hope Rainbow in the Dark is in this game.

Scratch that, just give us some Hammerfall. →  Jesus: Readful Bio Monster

Review – Star Trek: Shattered Universe

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Developed by Stasphere Interactive
Published by TDK Mediactive
Released 1.13.04

No … this game was not made in 1990. Why would you say that?

This Trek game was developed by Starsphere Interactive whos last game seems to have been You Don’t Know Jack for the PS1. They should have stopped there. Just take a look at their impressive list of games and I believe you will already know where this review is going.

Being an enormous fan of the Trek universe, I really want the franchise to do well. Movies, books, new shows, video games; I just want them to make enough money to keep the universe alive. That’s why games like Shattered Universe bother me so much. I think this game was made in two months … by monkeys … monkeys who were somewhat slow. →  The only thing we have to read is read itself.

Bad Design 3

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It’s been a while since the last entry in this series. Last time, and the time before that, I promised Gladius, Second Sight and Kingdom Hearts, so here they are in all their poorly designed glory.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Gladius: Irrelevant Plot — We always hurt the ones we love, but I cannot ignore that the setup of this game made any plot unnecessary. I have a friend who believes plot in all strategy RPGs is unnecessary. I disagree, but not in Gladius’ case. There are two major problems with the game’s plot, neither of which is that it’s poorly written. Nearly all of the dialog is based in the history of the regions and of the arenas. Back story in a game can be very enriching, but not when there is hardly any active story. →  Eh, I’ve got nothing better to do.

Review – Morning’s Wrath

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Hey, where’s the doll I put my equipment on? What kind of second rate Diablo clone is this?

Morning’s Wrath is an RGP put out by Ethereal Darkness Interactive, a tiny independent game studio, which I am willing to bet is less of a company and more of a dedicated group of friends who collectively thought, “What the hell, lets do it” and made a videogame. Let me make it clear off the bat; making a video game is HARD. Anyone who has managed to do it deserves a tremendous amount of respect, especially when they don’t have the resources like other mega-gaming studios have. Even if they have the resources, making a good video is still hard, as EA demonstrates every single day.

After that all too easy dig against EA, I have to say this: Morning’s Wrath is just another mediocre videogame that should have come out a couple of years ago. →  Who is that standing behind you?

A rant about fanboys

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He shaves his head because he's mostly bald

Microsoft’s J Allard is paid to be a fanboy. For no extra cost, he is also a tool.

Fanboys remind me of the villain from the Serenity movie. He was sharp and eloquent but also utterly and completely blind. His faith was clearly proven wrong by the reality before his eyes, but rather than rethink his faith, he simply changed his perception of reality. Intelligent people who believe weird or extreme things are very dangerous because they’re able to make their faith sound rational. Thus, a fanboy is a force to be reckoned with. A forum of onlookers is often persuaded by a fanboy’s arguments, much like an intelligent design proponent can easily confuse and place doubt in the heads of smart, rational people.

One of the sure signs you’re speaking to a fanboy is that he refuses to allow reviews to influence him. →  The King of Articles 2002: Unlimited Match