Month: July 2007

Tale of the Tape

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This could be interesting. Lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic Games. Possible SNAFUs with the Unreal 3 engine. The perfect recipe for speculation, drama, and endless blogs and articles.

Its also the perfect opportunity for violence. Who here wouldn’t want to see a fight between Epic’s Mark Rein and SK’s Dennis Dyack? Both are loudmouths for their respective companies, fellas who won’t stop gushing about their own product, but rarely have anything nice to say about anything else. I think it would be the best way to settle this issue, especially if it means one of them gets knocked out for a couple of months.

But wait – we can make it better. Lets just do the whole thing WWF style. Out of nowhere Cliffy B. comes into the ring with a steel chair, knocking Dyack out and parading around the ring with Rein. →  Tokyo Xtreme Reader: Drift 2

Gaming Meccas of Japan Pt. 1 — Den Den Town, Osaka, Japan

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Being a geek and living in Japan is kind of like mixing Ecstasy with LSD – it’s one hell of a trip. There are four places in Japan that should be on the must-see list for anyone who calls himself a nerd. The big one is Akihabara in Tokyo and I will be covering that in September along with The Tokyo Game Show. The third spot goes to Nintendo’s world headquarters in Kyoto but there isn’t much to see there because no one is allowed into the facility and tours are never provided. The fourth spot and topic of today’s installment is Den Den Town in Osaka.

Den Den Town can best be described as the poor man’s Akihabara. It is smaller in size, about four or five square blocks instead of an entire section of Tokyo. →  I’ll read you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!

How do you play a non-game?

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Language is powerful, which is a shame since I’m not a very good writer. Instead of bringing “war” to Iraq we are bringing “freedom”, and instead of being “the worst American president in the last 300 years”, Bush has “a low approval rating”. Debating the merits of something specific may work for thoughtful people, but it’s much easier to simply change people’s minds by changing how we refer to things.

And so we have non-games. First, I must explain that I am not taking a stance on the quality of any game, non-game or partial-game. It’s a shame that this needs to be said but many people confuse the debate over language as a debate over what the language describes.

“I’m not sure the terrorists hate us because of our freedom.” →  Show me the reading!

Second verse same as the first?

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So hey, Peter Moore is leaving Microsoft for Electronic Arts. When have we seen this before? Dreamcast gamers will remember when the chump left Sega in the days of the console’s waning to go to MS, and that he was influential in the canceling of Shenmue 2 in favor of an Xbox port.

I remember reading a very angry IGN forum post years ago, in which an avid Sega fan went over all the stupid things that Moore was responsible for. While I don’t remember any of it, I do remember it being convincing enough to give me a permanently sour taste for the man. During his time with MS friends would try to convince me that Moore was actually a pretty good industry power, but even as he slapped crazy tattoos on his arm he still bugged the shit out of me. →  Article Kombat

Odin Sphere: not drinking the kool-aid

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Odin Sphere was released to a slew of rave reviews. Several called it the best PS2 RPG in years, and game forums everywhere were filled with topics full of praise.

A couple weeks ago I convinced myself I should try it out. And, in fact, for a while it was impressive. The graphics are quite nice, the voice options are great, and the story is enjoyable. The game is quite smooth, and controls pretty well.

You’ll notice I left out the actual system behind the game. It felt okay for the first couple hours. I figured I’d get used to it, and that soon enough I’d be planting Muggles and Napples in the heat of battle with the best of them.

Unfortunately, I am now another ten hours in and still don’t see the appeal of the system. →  [send private information]

Review – Brooktown High

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There are two things that shame me as a man:

First, I have a collection of Hello Kitty cell phone trinkets that would make a twelve year old Japanese schoolgirl beam with pride. There is a good reason I have amassed this wealth of dangly goodness but this is neither the time nor the place to defend my less- than-masculine obsession. Second, is Konami’s new PSP title, Brooktown High and the frequency with which I play it.

You are a new student at Brooktown High School. It is your senior year, you are single, and you must score with as many hotties as is humanly (or in this case, digitally) possible. This is as close to being a player as you are going to get without contracting the cold sores and awkward itching that comes with the title, Medium Pimpmaster Supreme, which is what I was known as in high school. →  Welcome to read zone!

Sony at E3 – slightly less terrible than the competition?

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Max has been kind enough to fill in for Jay on covering the Sony press conference. When not reading videolamer, he runs the excellent website GameLemon.

I’ve already bitched elsewhere on this fine site about Sony’s presentation skills, but that little rant was small and only mildly satisfying, so I am going to say it again: Sony, please, for chrissakes, hire some presenters that are at least remotely cool and entertaining, and forbid your executives from ever appearing in public. I am sure they are all fine people and very important to the business, but they couldn’t excite a crowd worth a crap even if their bonus depended it.

Next, fire the idiots who wrote the script for the presentation. Those dudes need to get out waaay more if they think this is the kind of stuff that excites the gaming demographic. →  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Read

Ruining A Beautiful and Complicated World: Simcity Societies and How It Will Take a Dump on a Perfectly Good Franchise

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When I was twelve, my life changed. I was a chubby little kid who was obsessed with the Super Nintendo and for my birthday party my parents let me rent a few games to keep all of my little friends occupied and from ruining their house. One of the games I picked that day was something of a strange choice. Instead of running around killing things, you built a city and watched it grow. That’s it.

No mass multiplying mushrooms to eat, no princess to save, no Triforce to assemble. You simply sat down, plopped some buildings in, some roads to connect them, and then watched the whole thing grow. The game never really ended and you could devote hours to one city. When you got sick of the city, you brought down the wrath of God on it and many Sims died in a fiery…or watery death. →  Double your reading, double your fun.

PSP 1.1 – Worst. Update. Ever.

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If there was one thing that I wanted to see at this year’s E3, it was the new PSP. I was dying to see what Sony had up their sleeves. I was especially looking forward to the much-requested hard-drive that was rumored to be included. But what did Sony do? Crushed my frail little dreams, that’s what. And they didn’t even apologize! Totally inconsiderate.

So, instead of an 8GB hard-drive, we get a faster UMD drive, a more efficient battery, a thinner and lighter casing, and a video-out connection. Yup, that’s it. And even worse, the damn thing looks exactly the same!

Now, I will say the ability to display the feed on a TV is a pretty cool feature, but when compared to how insignificant everything else is, having a video-out option isn’t a good enough reason to upgrade from the old PSP. →  Read more? No, I’ll read it all.

Nintendo’s E3 conference also sucks

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Nintendo’s E3 presentation was as bad as Microsoft. Had they not announced release dates of games I want, I’d probably say worse. Highlights:

– Bragging
– Charts
– Release dates
– Montages
– Charts
– Wii Zapper, which will come with a game (how about a game that comes with the zapper instead of a zapper that comes with a shitty after thought of a pack in?)
– Mario Kart coming early next year with online races and a stupid plastic steering wheel. Also with the new feature of “skill not mattering” that levels the playing field for all new gamers
– Charts
– Bad puns
– Montages
– High School Musical, the amazing game based off of the movie of the same name
– Wii Fit, complete with Wii Pad to Wii stand on

I thought Reggie was supposed to not suck. →  Europa Universalis IV: Articles of War