Year: 2010

Cloud Gaming Paranoia!!!

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Call me paranoid but I have never been a fan of “cloud” computing. I like having all of my files stored on my computer. I like having my games on discs. I like knowing that if something goes haywire, I am the one responsible and I am the one that can fix it. It seems like the general trend for computing has been to have massive servers out there in the wilds of Oregon and Washington take care of all of the heavy lifting and maintenance of data while the computers we are using keep getting smaller and more portable. Gaming has followed these trends and I find it troubling for handful of reasons. I have always written off these worries as the product of my overactive imagination but recent events have given me reason to suspect I might be right to worry.

Take the recent issues with Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed 2 for instance. Here you have thousands of people locked out of a game they own because the serverside DRM took a huge dump. →  SNK Article Classics Vol. 1

Weekend in Review – March Edition of March

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Shepherd’s Crossing
An obscure game even by our standards, Shepherd’s Crossing was developed by Success, who have worked on a number of games with terrible Metacritic scores. This game only avoids joining that group by not being reviewed by any major publication (as far as I can tell).

Pat: With a few tweaks to the interface (I had serious trouble placing fences around my crops), and some way of alerting the player as to what is going on (a useful tutorial, some reference guide, status screens, anything!) this could have been a decent game. I managed to make some progress I think, but I never felt like I was running a successful farm; instead I felt like I was always one bad turn or decision from losing absolutely everything. There is a bare bones RPG battle system in the game also, which is fun enough.

Disclaimer – I have no experience with Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing or any game like that, so its possible there are far better options for this type of game out there, but as I said, I know nothing about them. →  Sid Meier’s Alpha Centarticle

Retrospective – Killer 7

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Killer 7 was one of, if not the most polarizing game of its generation.  I have seen debates in which people are asked to “step on one side of the line” in regards to what they think of a game, but only after Killer 7 popularized the idea.  You must either love or hate this one, with no chance of finding a middle ground.

What could cause such divisive opinions in the first place?  We can start by blaming ourselves.  Killer 7 was announced early in the Gamecube’s life, when users were scrambling for another violent, mature game that could legitimize Nintendo’s place in the console war.  Nintendo’s family first attitude was costing them users and goodwill, so fans of the company felt compelled to defend them, as well as their purchase. If Killer 7 were good – nay, great – then perhaps it could inspire other developers to focus more on the ‘Cube.  Instead, the game was released in 2005, the same year as the Xbox 360.  →  Sly 3: Honor Among Reads

Guess the Game by its Metacritic Excerpt

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Us game bloggers talk a lot about games and play a lot of games but rarely make games ourselves. Well here’s one I just thought of. Below are several portions of reviews excerpted by Metacritic. The goal is to correctly identify the game it’s about.

These are all critically and commercially successful games everyone’s familiar with, so if you know enough about games to be reading this blog then none of these should be unknown to you. Also, don’t restrict yourself to using a game only once. Have fun guessing!

Tutorial: Highlight the gray areas to get the name of the game linking to its Metacritic page.

To Waggle or Not To Waggle?

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That is actually the question. With the recent release of some concept shots for the PS Move inviting a glut of mixed internet people reactions from the logic failing PlayStation fundamentalists’ “this is all Nintendo’s fault” to the long suffering Wii forumite’s “how do you like them apples?”, motion controls seems to be the hot topic at the moment in the internet video game blogosphere. Which reminds me, we really need a catchier name to describe that paper thin veneer of people to whom proper discussions like this might make sense. Video Game Historians a la Art Historians sounds too formal and elitist although subjectively and endlessly explicating something we are passionate about instead of doing useful things for the greater benefit of mankind are common to both ‘occupations’. Hardcore gamer isn’t correct at all either. Anyway. Onto discussions of motion controlling.

In the valley we ain’t. Recently, at least one author I respect and one, deep, no-frills douche have tried to elucidate on motion controlling as the ‘Uncanny Valley’ of interaction. →  SNK Article Classics Vol. 1

Armored Princess Review: Part III

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When I initially conceived of the idea of writing episodic reviews I planned on concluding the series when I had also finished the game. Well I haven’t finished Armored Princess yet, but it’s also been almost two months since I posted part one of this review. I think the time has come to wrap this up. Actually it’s probably way past time. But better late than never I suppose.

Anyway, I spent part one and part two talking about different individual aspects of the game, so I’ll finish this by summarizing my feelings of the game as a whole.

THE REVIEW OF THE ARMORED PRINCESS
– Part III: The End is Another Beginning –

This is the kind of game that I enjoy playing for reasons completely unrelated to any of the gameplay or presentation that I’ve mentioned so far. I’m always the most satisfied with a game that completely takes advantage of the hardware it’s made for, and the King’s Bounty games fully utilize the PC. →  Xenosaga 2: Jenseits von Gut und Pöst

Nuggets of Wisdom – Slime that Designer!

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As a gamer, I’m often puzzled by decisions game designers make. This most often occurs with MMOs, where the eternal question of “poor decision or lack of resources?” seems to apply, but many console games come to mind, like the Gears of War magic chainsaw. Of course, as a gaming consumer, I am simply the target of disdain, condescension, and of course greed of the gaming industry. I sat pondering my frustration with the lack of two-way communication about design decisions in an era where second guessing the experts is the norm: we can go on WebMD and diagnose ourselves, yet I can’t get a straight answer out of a game designer. I’ve often wondered what it’d be like to sit down with a game designer and get the real scoop on why they did something in their game that makes absolutely no sense.

And then it hit me. The answer is, of course, a game show. The concept is simple: envision a game show, likely on Spike, where famous game designers are put on the stand. →  Just read it.

Review – Sands of Destruction

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How is it that nobody can make a good JRPG for the DS? Some remakes have been all right, and a strategy RPG or two have been good. But every original RPG for the system seems somehow tainted by the platform. Black Sigil, Nostalgia, Beyond the Yellow Brick Road – hell, even a Suikoden spin-off was barely up to par on the system. Sands of Destruction is sadly no exception.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad game. Sands of Destruction’s problem isn’t that it’s actually bad – it’s just that it’s never good. It manages to be almost entirely middle-of-the-road throughout, with no particularly exciting moments and only a few terribly boring ones. Its plot has an interesting premise, but gets dragged down by bland characters and predictable twists. Combat has the potential to be interesting, but is so easily broken that it ceases to be fun after the 8-hour point. Finally, despite compositions by Yasunori Mitsuda, none of the music is really memorable. →  Lords of the Read 2

Review – Torchlight

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Torchlight should be branded with a warning. The game is pornographic, it’s number porn and clicking porn with a Tolkienesque fantasy fetish thrown into the mix. After loading the game there is a brief introduction to set the scene, and immediately the player begins clicking madly on everything moving.

With each click the characters moan, scream, and produce other sounds juicy with stimulation. Of course it’s not the meaning of the sound they make, it’s the fact that each of these noises is calculated to be so brief and repetitious, fading in and out instantly and producing a peak at just the right tone. It elicits pleasure in the player’s brain, and without thinking he or she understands that another such buzz is only a click away. When the clicking is finished, the number action begins. The screen fills itself with numbers. They sprawl across each other, mixing together, interacting to produce more numbers. They grow bigger and bigger, until they climax and the game returns to the clicking. →  [send private information]

Valve Be Trippin’

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I think of Valve as both the most interesting and depressing developer we have.  Interesting because they are a shining example of what can happen when you give time, money, and freedom to developers.  Depressing because they are an increasingly obvious outlier.  If armchair analysis of the industry were a fighting game, Valve would be the character banned from tournament play.   It just wouldn’t be fair.

That being said, we can still admire their most recent bout of antics.  Earlier this week, the company released a series of parody images that inserted Valve characters into classic Apple advertisements.  That might not sound entirely clever, but this is Valve we’re talking about.  They always have tricks up their sleeve.  Each of the fake ads was sent to just one news site, and the one that has actual text in it is an incredible homage to the rambling copy Apple used in the 80’s (90’s too?).   While we don’t know the details, there is little doubt that the company is preparing to announce Mac compatibility with Steam, or at the very least the Steam client with just Source Engine games.  →  Read Dead Redemption