Year: 2008

Review – Sam & Max: Night of the Raving Dead

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I’ll be honest with you. When I started writing this review, I was only doing it to get this game out of the way. I really wanted to review episodes 4 and 5, and it just didn’t seem right to skip this tale of the emo undead, no matter how mediocre I may have found it upon first playthrough. As I began writing, however, I realized that this game taught me something. It taught me why I play Sam and Max. Not a deep, meaningful life lesson by any means, but a lesson nonetheless.

To catch people up who haven’t played the game already, New York is invaded by hoards of zombies, and Sam and Max must travel to Stuttgart in order to stop them at their source: a castle-turned-goth-club called “The Zombie Factory.” →  Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Post

Memorial Day Post

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A couple of things on my mind that I decided to condense into a tidy post for you to ponder over the weekend.

-First of all, the biggest piece of gaming news on videolamer for 2008 – I bought Zak and Wiki. For $20 new! I know taking a risk and waiting for a price drop was suicide with this game, but everyone gets lucky sometimes. Now I am part of the club, and can smoke with all the cool kids in the bathroom.

I’ll be honest with you – I think part of the reason I did not jump for the game immediately was my own inability to read more on the subject. I had no idea the game used crazy wii-motions to help solve puzzles. →  Welcome to read.

News We Care About Wrap Up – 5.23.08

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Too early to declare a console victor
Ignore that Microsoft recently declared that history has shown us that the first system to 10 million historically wins the race, thus heavily implying their console is the winner as it’s sold a little over 10 million in the states. Their new PR line is that declaring a winner between the PS3, Wii and 360 will be impossible until one of them reaches 100 million in sales. By this logic the only systems to have ever “won” a generation are the PS1 (barely) and the PS2, and they did it after many years on the market, long after it became apparent to everyone who doesn’t work for Microsoft that Sony had won those generations. →  The happiest post on Earth.

Call of Duty 4 Update

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After several months of playing, I am still not done with Call of Duty 4. Chalk it up to its still solid gameplay, and a more “PC” feel – that is, the griefers and assholes exist in the same numbers as I have seen in the past in PC shooters, and there are still some decent folks that you will run into. This is opposed to Halo 3, which I quickly learned last winter has a very distinct community. Nowhere else have I played with so many assholes, who constantly complain about maps and weapons as if every single item placed in the game was done so as a cruel joke.

But we are here to talk about Call of Duty 4. →  To be this lame takes ages.

I’m so sick of Noble Deaths, I could sacrifice myself for the good of others! — Part Trois

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The only thing that frightens people as much as life without meaning is death without meaning. For some odd reason, we find it difficult to cope with the loss of a loved one to an open manhole. The fact that random, absurd turns of events can end life does not sit well with people because we do not want to think we are ultimately irrelevant. Our desire for purpose in death has pervaded art and culture as a whole.

Movies, books, and games – really any narrative-heavy medium – have fought this feeling of irrelevance by pitting heroes against their mortal enemies, giving the lowliest peasant a worthy cause to die for, and offering everyone in between the comfort of knowing the creator of the universe himself decides their fate (and unless they have some loser god, it just so happens that their fate is endless life). →  [send private information]

Review – LostWinds

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As I searched for the final area of LostWinds my entire family died in a flaming plane crash. I mean the game crashed as I was going from one area to another. The controller stopped responding and I was once again forced into physical activity by the Wii. I made my way to the system and shut it off, annoyed that I had stumbled upon one of the LostWinds glitches I’d read about but still psyched because I knew I’d finish the game in the next half hour. So I rebooted the console and loaded up the game again. All the save files were gone. Crashing and being turned off during the hang up removed all the progress I had made. →  Illiterates hate her! Click to read this one weird trick.

Ubisoft publishes crap on Wii, crap doesn’t sell, Ubisoft confused

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North American Ubisoft president Laurent Detoc recently showed concern over his company’s Wii titles. According to a recent Gamasutra article –

“He acknowledged the Wii in particular has been difficult for Ubisoft to find success with. Pointing to the console’s generous sales, he noted that games published for the Wii made up only 10 percent of Ubisoft’s sales last year, and added that the company will need to work harder to create games that will ‘sell as well as Nintendo’s own Wii titles.'”

Let us run through the list of games Ubisoft has published for the Wii as it may elucidate the company’s problems.

No More Heroes – A great game, by far Ubisoft’s best reviewed Wii title, also made by a talented developer (so obviously not Ubisoft). →  This post are sick.

Platinum Games – What should they make?

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Clover Studios is back – after one resurrection and two name changes, they now exist as Platinum Games, and have some actual games to show us (all being published by Sega).

The one getting the least attention is their DS RPG called Infinite Line, which we have the least amount of info on. The other two are causing mixed feelings, a response that I woefully anticipated. Mad World and Bayonetta both look to be new action games, and in traditional Clover style will likely be rather tough. They also seem a bit unoriginal, at least by their pitch; Mad World includes Sin City style visuals, a chainsaw arm, and loads of violence. It is also on the Wii, which makes the No More Heroes comparisons fly. →  It might come in handy if you, the master of reading, take it with you.

Tales From Behind The Counter – Lost Treasures, Trade-Ins, and Drugs

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I should preface this installment by saying that I am a pack rat. I always have been and probably always will be. When I die, my relatives will come to clean out my house and find stacks and stacks of old newspapers, every wrapper of the slices of Velveeta cheese I had eaten over the past twenty years, and journals of every major weather event from 2025 on with my hand drawn renditions of how things went down. I keep everything. Having said that, it baffles me that most people have no problem trading in all of their old video games and accessories, and for extremely pathetic prices at that.

The other day, two guys walked into the store and told me they had a couple of items that they only wanted cash for. →  Keep it warm.

Quick Impressions – The World Ends with You

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I’ve put around five hours into The World Ends with You and besides the “I cut myself to see if I can still feel pain” emo moniker I am very pleased. The battle system makes use of both DS screens simultaneously and though movement of your character via stylus is sort of spotty, everything ultimately works together nicely. The music is absurd Japanese pop that’s both infectious and terrible and the graphics are very stylized – this is one of the few DS games that has a AAA presentation and Squeenix deserves praise for actually trying. Of course the game flopped in Japan and will likely follow suit worldwide, so their effort will be entirely unrewarded and they will realize what a huge mistake taking a chance was. →  It’s not you, it’s me.