Over the past decade or so, I’ve tried to play every SNES RPG I can find, even if I don’t beat them all. I played most of them at some point via rentals, and I have fond memories of many of them (even Lagoon). Over the years, I have built my collection to include as many as I can reasonably justify (ex: I might pick up Brain Lord, but I’m probably not getting Dragon View). Even the most mediocre of these games has had some redeeming quality, but I’m here today to tell you about one that really doesn’t. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Volume 1, which should probably have been named “Volume 1 of 1” in retrospect, really doesn’t have that much going for it. → Game. James Game.
Year: 2022
To Play or Not to Play Diablo 2
I have played a lot of Diablo 2 but for unknown reasons, I can’t stop thinking about the rerelease. In an effort to convince myself not to get it I have outlined a list of arguments and then, in completely self-defeating fashion, counter arguments, aka reasons why I should just get the damn game.
Why I shouldn’t play Diablo 2: It’s old
Diablo 3 is a better game and makes its predecessor feel dated and less awesome.
Why that argument doesn’t hold up: I didn’t like 3
Pretending for a minute I don’t routinely enjoy older games, I can entertain this position specifically aimed at Diablo style click-heavy ARPGs. OK, I am done entertaining. I played Diablo 3 close to launch and did not have a great time. → Xenoblade Articles X
Not Finishing: Forza, Hitman, and TMNT
I’m still taking advantage of Game Pass here and there, playing bits and bobs of various titles when the mood strikes.
No, seriously, I’ve started and stopped a whole bunch of different games. And it feels …. great?
It’s been happening a lot to me over the last year or so. I’ve gotten so much better at putting down a game once I’m no longer enjoying it, or when I feel like I’ve seen enough.
It’s not necessarily something I do consciously. Sometimes I stop playing a game for a week or so, and rather than add it to the mental checklist of “games you need to go back to and finish,” I eventually realize that I’m just done with it, and proceed to uninstall. → Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing memory cards.
Please Finish Your Games Before Dying
Due to one part being bad with money and one part psychosis, I have over 100 Switch games. Many are smaller (and were thankfully cheaper) indie games that are probably shorter than a dozen hours, but the catalog still adds up to a huge time investment. At the rate I play, maybe a decade’s worth of games. Perhaps I should stop playing, “browse the eShop deals section and buy random shit,” and focus on something with better game mechanics, like this Live-A-Live demo with huge sections of nothing but listening to people speak at me.
If games stopped coming out, would you have enough to last the rest of your life? There are a few factors at play – how old you currently are, how long you’ll live, your ability to get your hands on old games, and your willingness to play old stuff. → When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a game.
Tux and Fanny – A Review
Listen. You think you’re cool enough to be into Tux and Fanny? You’re probably not. Me neither.
But I will tell you all about it. This shit is wacky af. It starts with a soft spot for me, these two pixelated bamas want to kick around a soccer ball in their front yard.
Where do they think they are? PG County? I love it.
I easily (and purposely) get distracted by a million other side quests. Just to give you a spoiler alert, I loved this game. It made little sense, but rarely disappointed.
To set the scene, you are a weird Gumbo-like ?alien? living in a house with your bestie/alien brethren.
Sweet side note of this game, you can alternate between playing Tux OR Fanny, I know! → How many games must a gamer play before you call him a gamer?
Retro Games, Presentation, and Gatekeeping
For those of you who are white collar workers, imagine the following scenario. It’s happened to me more than once in real life, and perhaps it’s happened to you too …
A new bit of jargon recently crept into your industry. For now, let’s just make up a word, like … “scropely.”
Everyone starts to use it, slowly at first, but it quickly builds momentum. At first you think you understand what scropely means, but then a few people use it in a new and seemingly contradictory way. Now you’re back to square one.
At some point you’re in a large meeting. The new jargon is being tossed around freely – everyone is talking about how something is or isn’t scropely. → Game is dead. Game remains dead. And we have killed it.
“Revived” Franchises and Kickstarters
It’s no secret that I like Suikoden a lot. Even the bad ones. The series’ spiritual successor the Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes got yet another trailer recently. The creators are mostly saying the right things, indicating they’re focusing on things that Suikoden did differently from most games – having a large cast, involving that cast in the story (appropriately), and a relatively realistic and political scenario.
I’m a little worried, though, because past crowdfunded games that focused too much on recapturing an existing series’ magic lost sight of being their own thing, and end up being known as inferior copies. Mighty No. 9 is probably the most notorious, but it’s definitely not alone in this. Been there, got the t-shirt, still wear it ironically (probably), but honestly haven’t played the game. → Max Post 2: The Fall of Max Post
Nier Automata is No Nier Gestalt
Folks, I tried to play Nier: Automata. I really did. But I don’t think I have it in me to finish it.
As someone who counts the original Nier as one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, I’m as disappointed as anyone that the sequel to that experience fell short, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Here now are some of the problems I had with the game:
The Intro is BS
The introduction to the game can take up to 40 minutes to get through. At no point during those 40 minutes are you allowed to save the game. If you die, you start all over again.
The saving grace is that you can adjust the difficulty at any time, so there’s nothing stopping you from dropping to easy mode just to breeze through it all (easy mode lets you “auto battle,” where the game will automatically dodge and pick the best attacks for you). → Theme Postital
The Future of Games I Care About: A Brief Overview of Crowdfunding
In early 2012, Double Fine launched a Kickstarter campaign for a then unnamed point and click adventure game meant to be reminiscent of studio founder Tim Schafer’s work on LucasArts classics Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. Kickstarter had been used to fund video game projects before the Double Fine Adventure campaign, but they were mostly smaller projects offered by developers with less of a reputation.
In the intervening decade the template of high profile Kickstarter campaigns from well known developers has become familiar to onlookers. Often a team or individual who built a reputation making games in a specific genre that has trouble getting funded by publishers in the current market (point and click adventure, shmup, isometric RPG) revisits that genre by turning to Kickstarter for initial funding and potentially to prove to deeper pocketed publishers that there is sufficient enthusiasm among fans to make the concept viable. → Holy crap, show me more!
Waiting for Arc the Lad – PlayStation RPG Memories
In the early months of 1995 my friends and I poured over every drop of PlayStation information we came across, whether it be a magazine ad with Polygon Man telling us the system was more powerful than god, Sony suggesting we were UR NOT E, or the giant cardboard cutout of whip wielding Sofia at the local Palmer Video that still managed to be half an hour away. The older consoles were looking less appealing by the day (thanks, Vectorman), especially when compared to generation-defining beauty such as the widely advertised Battle Arena Toshinden (Sofia wore leather, you see, which really pops when rendered in cardboard).
By the midpoint of the 90s my friends and I were all 13 and desired a higher caliber of digital entertainment regardless of platform – the RPG. → This better not be as bad as everything else here.