Year: 2009

Review – Shadow Hearts

by

Continuing my trend of catching up on PS2 RPGs, I picked up the Shadow Hearts series a few months ago. Since a recent spate of games (including Demon’s Souls, which seems to be a videolamer favorite) has kept me busy, I’m just now making my way through the series. The PS2 may have an impressive spread of RPGs – as I’ve discovered, still playing games I had barely heard about – but Shadow Hearts really stands apart, despite being an early game on the system that hasn’t really aged well.

By far the most impressive part of Shadow Hearts is the atmosphere. Set a little over a year before World War I and taking place in both East Asia and Western Europe, SH manages to portray a surprisingly realistic world, given its focus on demons both internal and external. Some of my favorite parts of the game involve direct interaction with Japan’s army – though a little research indicates the writers confused pre-WWI events with pre-WWII events. →  I got served!

Games With No Reviews I Agree With

by

I realize Metacritic is more than a little unpopular, but despite all of the problems produced by its aggregate scores it still functions well as a convenient index of professional reviews, which is my reason for referencing it in this post.

Gears of War 2 — I came late to the party on the Gears of War franchise, but it still had a fairly active and large fanbase that kept the hype alive and is also what eventually convinced me to play it. When I finally started playing my expectations were set especially high, and thus I was especially shocked when I discovered exactly how much I disliked everything about it. This game was such an unenjoyable experience for me that I went on to write a review of my own.

Every single one of the ninety reviews listed on Metacritic is outstandingly positive.

Chrono Trigger — There are a lot of things about games that I like just because I like them. →  May God smite me if I stop reading here!

Review – The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

by

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, was not simply good relative to other licensed games. It is one of the best games in its genre, both upon release and to this very day. People with no interest in the genre have picked it up and had a blast. Shooter fans were stunned that something that looked so derivative on the surface could be so engaging. While it might not have been quite the miracle that Goldeneye was, it was still a blessing, and hopes were high that developer Starbreeze Studios could take their formula and strike gold again with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.

Let this be another lesson on the importance of execution when it comes to making a good game. All of the elements that made Butcher Bay a classic are back, but arranged so that they have hardly any potency. It ends up playing more like a straight shooter, which is not only boring at this point, but completely betrays the character and setting. →  Sid Meier’s Alpha Centarticle

Review – League of Legends

by

League of Legends, the stand alone Defense Of The Ancients clone released by Riot Games, bills itself as better than DOTA. The good news: it lives up to its billing. Without a doubt, LoL is a superior product to DOTA. This should not be surprising. Being able to draw from established source material, recruit one of the recent caretakers of the map (Pendragon) and build a real, non-volunteer design team, made the first part of Riot Games’ job easy. But credit should be given where credit is due: these ingredients do not automatically make a good game, but Riot has ensured that they have taken the best of DOTA and added much more.

As one would expect, there is much to love about LoL. The evolution of the DOTA concept can be extended to two distinct aspects: the community interface, and the game itself. The community interface is something sorely needed, as any moron can tell you. Because the internet is full of morons, it becomes the task of the developer to reward good behavior and punish bad to attempt to make the online experience as pleasant as possible. →  Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘Game Over.’

iPhone to utterly destroy Nintendo and Sony

by

While searching the web for cats that look like Wilford Brimley, I stumbled upon an article on John Carmack’s view of the iPhone. He thinks it will pose a significant threat to handheld gaming devices. I think this is stupid. There are always the traditional reasons the iPhone won’t steal much thunder from handhelds: the battery life isn’t long enough and the lack of any actual tacticle buttons is a turn off for many and hampers control, but I am more fond of an analogy.

Proponents of the iPhone argue that developer freedom over content and cost will separate the platform from competitors. Let’s try this same argument to explain the death of game consoles:

Man of the Future: Did you hear about this new platform that nearly everyone in the country owns?
Hearer of Good News: What, a DS?
Man of the Future: No, it’s called a computer and it’s totally going to shake up the market!
Hearer of Good News: How so? →  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Read

“Screw you America” – Nintendo

by

Why doesn’t Nintendo release every game they create in every market? The traditional glib answer is some variant of “Nintendo is a business and not a charity.” This may be true, but some companies have found a way to both make money and pay tribute to their medium. For example, HBO is known for keeping shows afloat despite poor ratings. These “prestige shows” are too good to simply cancel and for the sake of television as an art, HBO keeps them on the air.

Nintendo has made billions of dollars selling video games and has some of the most dedicated fans in the industry; it seems like they should not only be a producer of games but also part of the video game vanguard by protecting and honoring interactive entertainment. Unfortunately, Nintendo and Nintendo of America more specifically simply do not agree with this philosophy. They are clearly a corporation looking out for number one and nothing else.

The following is a list of the more recent titles Nintendo of America has deemed unworthy of release in the United States. →  Game is dead. Game remains dead. And we have killed it.

Review – Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon

by

After a few minutes of playing Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon I realized that this was a game that I’ve always wanted to play but never knew existed until recently. I was quite late to the party since the game came out in the early 90s, back when point and click adventures were cool and “interactive movie” sounded like something futuristic and not something cheesy. It was also a time when technology didn’t quite know what to do with itself; for some reason Access Software couldn’t quite figure out how to use a keyboard and mouse to make someone move around a 2.5D world in a way that makes sense, and there are specific instances where the smooth gameplay suddenly breaks into jagged fragments.

Nonetheless, it’s fascinating to be able to load Tex Murphey in DOSBOX and travel back in time to the past’s virtual imagining of the future. I wish I had played this when it was first released, but not everything about the game has aged poorly. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read

Numbers Are Fun – Back by Popular Demand

by

After a long hiatus I have once again been induced to write an update on the financial state of the video game industry. My plan is to divide this write up into two main “chapters.” This first one will cover the “hard” numbers: hardware unit sales and earnings reports. The second will cover the “soft” topic of average player profiles, including online connectivity, hours per day, tie ratio, etc. This section promises to be densely packed with numbers, but it should not require an MBA or a degree in statistics (at least it shouldn’t, since I have neither). Please note, I will cover software sales with the “soft” numbers, since it is not easy (possible?) to get reliable software numbers.

Most people who follow games closely, whether or not they specifically check sales numbers, probably have a rough idea of how each of the three consoles has sold so far this generation, but putting some actual numbers next to these impressions should be helpful. →  The fuck does Cuno care about reading?

Review – Ninja Blade

by

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but don’t tell that to us gamers. We love to find copycats and string them up. Whether it is this year’s triple-A game taking ideas from last year’s, or some media darling that stole its innovations from an ancient and obscure release, we will find the progenitor game, and we will make disparaging remarks.

Of course, we seldom practice what we preach. Kill.Switch may have dabbled with cover long before Gears of War, but we know which is the better game. On the other hand, most gamers shunned From Software’s game Ninja Blade as soon as the early screenshots showed us what looked to be a shameless clone of Ninja Gaiden. Even when the reviews rolled in, the same sentiments were common, despite the fact that Ninja Blade has quite a different purpose. Unfortunately, said purpose has little use in today’s world of action games.

Like Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu Hayabusa, Ninja Blade’s Ken Ogawa is able to run along walls and use potent ninja magic (manifested here as elemental shuriken attacks), all while wearing a heavy and ornate headguard. →  50 Cent: Readproof

Review – 100 Classic Book Collection

by

100 Classic Book Collection for the DS is awesomesauce. That’s the gist of this whole review for those of you unwilling or unable to read further. However, for those with some staying power I will qualify why it is such an amazing condiment after I clarify that it isn’t a game.

100 Classic Book Collection is not a game. Don’t be confused by the packaging, the little box and the little game shaped cartridge. When you pop the cart into the DS and open it up you will not find a game. Instead you will find an assortment of 100 classic books to read. It could have been that simple. Here’s 100 books. Read them all. Cheevos for reading all of them. But much like an exotic alcoholic cocktail so many extra bits have been squeezed in to make it all the more worthwhile.

There is Background Music. Oh yes there is. This feature blows my mind. You can choose between a whole range of background music so although you may be sitting on a train or in bed reading the wordies from a screen you can choose a range of background music to make you feel like some kind of arthouse cunt deliberately reading classic books in a number of settings you might hope to pick up a girl in because she digs your goatee, your pink tinted glasses and your choice of literature. →  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this post!