Year: 2008

2008 Game Predictions part 1

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2008 promises to be an excellent year for gaming. The 360’s software lineup should remain strong and the Wii and PS3 are coming into their own. From Spore to Metal Gear Solid 4, there will be some huge titles coming out soon, but will they actually live up to the hype?

Based on released information, knowledge of development history and gut feeling, we have chosen some of the games we most look forward to this year and predicted how they will turn out. These should be about as likely to be accurate as any analysts predictions and we charge less.

Golden Jew’s predictions

Civilization Revolution
I’ve written about this already, so this feels cheap and easy (like your… sister?). I stand by my prediction that this will be a good, if not great game. →  Professor Layton and the Diabolical Post

Article idea – shmups anyone?

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You may or may not have noticed, but over the last three months or so I have found my articles and blogs to be increasingly cranky. I have been hoping to get away from this attitude in order to bring more insight and entertainment, and I have the perfect solution. My biggest problem has been an attempt to comment on and tackle every big issue in gaming, especially when my views don’t coincide with the rest of the fandom. Simply put, you cannot change the world, and with the way internet fandom works, it seems an especially useless tasks. So while I won’t stop looking at the important issues, perhaps the best form of anger management is to find a happy place. →  Nobody puts article in a corner.

All you ever need to know about Japan

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After spending 10 nights in Japan I am now qualified to make sweeping statements about the Japanese culture. The following are immutable truths (told in a convenient pros and cons style) about this wonderful and bizarre country:

Pro
Suntory Boss is the boss of them all since 1992.

There’s no use denying it.

Con
Japanese people seem as pro-Japan as Americans are pro-America. I was asked by one of my gracious host’s fathers why we came to Japan. He was an awesome guy but really pushed hard for an answer he found satisfactory. I think the question was probably just mistranslated and he actually asked, “How awesome is Japan?” The same day, a man on the street approached us and told us in English that “Japan is number 1.” →  Call me game-shmael.

Street Fighter 4 Backlash

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Capcom is taking the usual approach when it comes to hyping up Street Fighter 4. They slowly release videos and screenshots, while allowing all sorts of previews and interviews to try and assure fans that they know what they are doing.

Of course, in this day and age such a method of hype is the wrong way. I have not done much to check out how the hardcore fighting game community feels about SF4, but among mainstream gamers and the non fighter “hardcore” crowd, the reactions are less than stellar. Bad words are flying about the stages, the new character, the way the fighting itself seems to work. It all seems baffling considering the game is still in an incredibly early stage (not even alpha yet), and the only confirmed platform is Japanese arcades (which was a guarantee when the game was announced). →  Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatarticle

EA: Level 10 alchemists, Level 1 Tech Support

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So unfortunately, like many Rock Band players, our guitar broke about a month ago. No problem, we have Guitar Hero 3 backups, so we’ll send it off for repair. Additionally, rumor is that you get a free EA game, so sure, we’ll take free stuff. So my roommate packaged up the guitar in a box (opting to not pay for immediate gratification, which was an option), and sent it off. We waited a few weeks, nothing happened, although the repair status on the website changed, so we anticipated that some sort of witchcraft was occurring deep in the EA support labs.

And boy were we right, at least about the witchcraft. Yesterday, a small box shows up for my roommate. He wasn’t expecting any porn (or so he claimed), so he was mystified what it could be. →  You reading at me?

Review — Eternal Sonata

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I dislike bullet point reviews almost as much as I dislike people who smile too much and eat pasta salad. And yet, there are so many different aspects of Eternal Sonata that bear commenting on that I find myself gravitating towards the wretched format. So, instead of cleverly disguising a bullet point review with the absence of bullets, let me simply reassure myself that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me” and dive into the shallow depths of sound bite commentary.

Quick review: Eternal Sonata is a truly beautiful but ultimately flawed game that delivers barely enough substance to warrant my recommendation.

If only all mothers of 8 year old girls were 16.

ES got largely positive reviews both on major US review sites and in the international community. →  Read Band 2

Is this the beginning of the end? Looking back at the past two years

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Two years ago, I was a fairly one dimensional gamer. I enjoyed 4X games on the side, enjoyed PC FPS and RTS… but my heart and soul belonged to MMOs. From punching the wall when dying one too many times in Everquest as an emotional 17 year old, to dumping a girl over World of Warcraft at 24, I was dedicating–easily–30 hours a week to MMO games. Yikes. A second job. That didn’t pay.

Then I burned out. And suddenly, I had free time again. I filled it with other video games, of course, but also structured my personal life better. It was no longer a rush to get home, shovel food in and get raiding. I had thought that perhaps I had finally grown up. →  Disaster Readport

A Portrait of the Guitar Hero as a Young Man in a Rock Band

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I started playing my mom’s beat up guitar when I was about nine or ten. At the time I thought it was fun solely because a friend taught me to strum and sing the Oscar Mayer wiener song, and I did so – often publicly. In middle school, I found a few others who for various reasons could play an instrument mildly well, and we did so — publicly. Our first time out was the school’s talent show. We were probably there for the sole reason of showing the assholes who beat us up in the locker room that we could do something better than they could. We chose to perform, despite my lobbying for the wiener song, Sweet Child O’ Mine. →  All this can be yours, if the read is right.

Mario Galaxy Non-Review

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Not long into Super Mario Galaxy, the player will become quite accustomed to, maybe even fond of, seeing Mario enter each level with his arms spread as he flies around and lands on a safe spot, shouting “yes!” on his success. About 20 stars in, it dawned on me; the next time I entered a level, I really wanted to see Mario scream “yes!” as he performed a greased landing, hitting the ground running at top speed, not stopping until he got to the end (or came up to some tricky group of hazards).

This might sound like I am really looking for Sonic the Hedgehog Galaxy, and I suppose that is the point. Back in the day, it was always Sonic who was considered cool and edgy, while Mario was the gentle goofball. →  I got served!

Two years down, too many to go

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In the past two years I have learned, among other things, how much more there is to learn.

First, from meeting and talking with Jay and co. here at videolamer, I learned about all the great RPG, strategy, action and adventure games on the various Sega systems I missed out on. I even tried out Phantasy Star 1 (a mistake, as I have grown soft and weak with puffball RPGs) at Jay’s suggestion, and bought a Sega Saturn, a mod chip, and a few games as well. In fact, don’t tell him, but with a bit more nudging I might start looking for a Dreamcast soon. Due to similarly sinister influences, I have found the “new old Sega console” – the underdog of the last generation, the Gamecube, and will be working on remedying the last 4 years of missing out on an entire system’s worth of good games. →  Monster Reader 4