Year: 2008

Gaming Community Rant

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My last few weeks of gaming have been dominated by two downloadable games, Braid and Bionic Commando. While both playing each game and reading the discussions surrounding them, I came to a great personal revelation. Whenever I get into a state of severe crankiness, it isn’t because of the games I am playing. In fact, I like playing them quite a lot. My bouts of frustration and anger stem almost entirely from the gaming community.

Folks, games really are still good, even if there is a lot of crap to tread through. But the “industry” as a whole, from the companies to the press to the fans, is in a miserable state. Here are a few observations as to why this may be the case. →  One must imagine video games happy.

id Super Pack

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This weekend, Steam is having a half off sale on all id Software games. That means you can get classics like the Commander Keen series for less than the price of a Starbucks latte. If you really want to be thorough, the id Super Pack is also part of the sale, meaning for 35 bucks you can get every Doom, Quake 1-3, Wolfenstein, Heretic and Hexen. Its a ton of games for a sweet price, and no matter how little or lot I have played some of these games, I realized I haven’t paid much for the id games I have played. It was time to salute this fine company, as well as get a huge chunk of FPS history in one convenient location. →  Postgaea 2: Cursed Memories

Clueless Gaijin – Kenzan

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So there I was, in Japan, wandering about in the gamer’s wonderland that is Akihabara. I had purchased a PS3 shortly before my trip, planning to make use of the device’s lack of region coding to return triumphantly with all manner of bizarre import games and blu-ray anime.

Things did not go as planned.

It seems that anime on blu-ray will set you back well over $80 per disk and the PS3 has yet to receive the influx of “oh, that shit is so crazy that it’s NEVER coming out in the US” titles.

But they did have Kenzan.

Kenzan is a pseudo-sequel (maybe prequel?) to Sega’s critically acclaimed, albeit not tremendously successful Yakuza series. This time taking place in the 1600s and putting you in the shoes of an identical-looking ancestor (Sega laughs in the face of basic genetics!) →  All your posts are belong to us.

Review – Silent Hill Origins

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Over the years Silent Hill has gone from being a cult classic that all the cool kids preferred, to a media darling that the cool kids still preferred, to a struggling franchise that no one seems happy with. This is because no one can agree on what Silent Hill is all about. The basic idea has been that it offers a deeper, “psychological” style of horror that the proles playing Resident Evil may not understand.

As the series has gotten older, the people making it seem to believe the games are defined by increasing amounts of gooey penis and vagina monsters. Diehard fans often pin the spirit of the series to the original Team Silent. If you ask me, the meaning of Silent Hill is apparent. →  Knock knock. Who’s there? This article.

To the music folder!

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I am a big fan of game music, specifically old chip tunes. Anyone who only hears bleeps and bloops is willfully ignoring melody, harmony and rhythm and stupidly focusing only on timbre. Games with “real” soundtracks don’t excite me the same way old game tunes do. I already have access to real music.

More importantly, I have this theory that old game music is very close to metal (the music, not material that readily loses electrons in order to form positive ions). Game music was predominately a force compelling you onward and thus was often fast, driving and even possibly relentless. And like my favorite metal, my favorite game tunes are often display virtuosity (check out Medusa’s Phantasy Star track).

As games became more complicated and technology improved, we were offered scores with wider variety and this led to less metal influence as well as a loss off something intangible. →  Imagine all the gamers playing for today

Review – Final Fantasy IV

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Let’s be honest kids, it’s not a real Final Fantasy game until I review it here on your favoritest ever videogame site videolamer (tell your friends). Of course, as it turns out, Final Fantasy IV actually already was a real videogame, like, a billion years ago back on the SNES when we Americans called it Final Fantasy II because we didn’t know any better.

Now, full disclosure, back on the SNES, Final Fantasy IV/II was the first RPG I ever beat; I was in Kindergarten, my older brother beat it first, and to this day I lord over him the fact that I found the crystal sword (best sword in the game, now retranslated as Ragnarok) before he did.

I also beat it on its PS1 rerelease, and again as the GBA game, Final Fantasy IV Advance. →  We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we play.

Review – Soul Calibur IV

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Ever since Soul Calibur 2, it has been clear that Namco decided that their once experimental, more serious fighting game series could be another cash cow, if only they made a few tweaks. Thus we have been getting sequels that continuously emphasize style over substance, chock full of nerd bait for people on both shores.

True, the classic combat engine has always been there, but without any real dedication to the arcade scene it has become increasingly useless to the veteran fighting game fan. By the time Soul Calibur 4 was coming ’round the bend, the series was facing bugs, confused single player modes, and balance issues. When the early screenshots indicated an increasing focus on titillation, I was ready to write off the series. →  18 Wheeler American Pro Reader

Best Game Ever – Seven Kingdoms II

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Playing the disappointment that was Seven Kingdoms: Conquest got me nostalgic for Seven Kingdoms 2.

I’m not going to talk about the plot, because there is no plot. There are 12 (increased from seven) nationalities, existing alongside a half-dozen or so Fryhtans. No past or future given. The campaign is a set of randomly-generated scenarios, with the ability to carry over your king (and up to five selected “royal units”) to each successive scenario.

The heart of Seven Kingdoms 2 is in its great complexity. Simply put, no other RTS has the depth of SK2. This is somewhat hidden – after all, each nation only has three units, and one of these is the villager type, identical for all human nations. →  Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing memory cards.

Review – Braid

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We can spend a lot of time talking about Braid, trying to interpret it and stamp out a definitive idea on what it is and what it says. There isn’t much of a point in it though. Braid, for all its flaws, is literature, something that has meaning. Anything I say about its message or its power may be quite different from what you would see on a playthrough. What we can do is look at it as a game.

Braid is a puzzle platformer. Some have called it “just a puzzle game with platforming elements.” We saw it with Portal, where people called it a puzzle game and forgot is was also in the first person. I’m not sure why that happened; Portal’s puzzles often thrive on how the player moves and positions himself, so the perspective (and the controls inherited from it) cannot be ignored. →  Silent Post 2