posts by christian
christian

Condemned’s violence brutalizes its narrative

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It is a matter of fact that many of the games we play contain violence in some form. Rarely do we ever stop to think about this, since this violence usually comes with no strings attached. You kill people because they are the bad guys, and most games do not try to flip this notion upside down or bestow any great weight upon our actions (or maybe we are all just desensitized, take your pick). Every so often, I do find myself taken aback by something I witness in a game, which creates the potential for some rich discussion.

This time the scene came from Condemned: Criminal Origins. During the first chapter, as I wailed on doped-up vagrants with pipes and rebar, I noticed that something kept flashing in the corner of the heads up display, which hinted that there are special actions mapped to the D-Pad for use on disabled enemies. →  This post are sick.

2008 in Review Part 2

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Many folks are saying that 2008 was a bad year for games. I think this is true in the sense that almost no Triple-A release lived up to their hype or potential. However, if you embrace a wide range of consoles and genres, there was a lot to love this year. Here are some of the more remarkable games from this year. Note that I don’t like them all, but each left a mark on my mind.

Burnout Paradise

Don’t let the hate fool you – Burnout Paradise is the future of “open world racers,” or whatever the hell you want to call them. One reason is that it plays like a spiritual successor to Midtown Madness, a game that existed before “open world” and GTA3 were in our vocabulary. Midtown was striking in that it made its city the spotlight of the game. →  Read Theft Auto 4

Review – Street Fighter II HD

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The number of permutations of Street Fighter 2 is one of gaming’s oldest punchlines. Though the joke still has teeth due to plain old nostalgia, savvy gamers now realize that the arcade revisions of Street Fighter added important tweaks and upgrades (and the console versions were various attempts at porting them to limited hardware). This slow burn through the 90’s finally culminated with Super SF2 Turbo, the last major revision and a game still played today in the tournament scene thanks to its familiarity and balance. The fact that fighting game fans won’t let go of Street Fighter 2 is a testament to its quality, and is the justification for why Capcom chose to make yet another major revision after years of silence. SF2 HD Remix (the full name is much too long) is a landmark release in the series, made exactly the way it should be at this point in the series’ life. →  Romance of the Three Articles IV: Post of Fire

The next gen consoles then and now – Revisited

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I wrote this little ditty sometime last summer, analyzing all three consoles and how they had changed since launch. Since then the market has seen more major shifts, so I want to take yet another look at the Wii, 360 and PS3, and see what we might expect from them in 2009.

Microsoft
Then: I claimed before that Microsoft looked to be getting wishy washy, constantly tweaking the policies and features behind the 360, leaving early adopters in the cold and not focusing on the important issues that need fixing.

Now: Microsoft embarrassed my predictions through and through. The Red Rings of Death have waned, and whether or not it is a good thing, the community has mostly gotten used to dealing with them when they do occasionally pop up, much like we got used to replacing old PS2s. →  Fear the old posts.

Digital Distribution in a Not so Ideal World

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I don’t like getting into personal anecdotes, so I’ll make this part quick. I was a strong supporter of digital distribution when it started popping up as a legitimate method of buying games. I was a Steam apologist when it was new and buggy, and I used Sam and Max as staunch proof that episodic content could work.

Digital Distribution has so many strengths that seems hard to argue against it. Quick access to games as soon as you want them, with no trips to the store and less physical hardware to strain. Plus, its digital nature should theoretically reduce prices and put more money into the right pockets. This last part is not happening, as theory is not becoming reality.

As easy as it is to make digital games cheaper, the technology can also be used to nickel and dime us. →  I’m readin’ here!

Review – Gears of War 2

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When the first Gears of War was released, I wrote a little rant about Cliff Blezinski’s introduction to the game found in the instruction book. For a game about large meatheads shooting albino insect meatheads, the intro sounded far too pretentious and lofty. Commenters took me to task, and they convinced me that I was overreacting.

Thankfully, Gears 2 doesn’t put me in the same situation. This time, Cliff’s intro makes no bones about the fact that this game wants to emulate the feeling of “being in a summer blockbuster film” better than any other game out there. Shallow as it may be, knowing a developer’s intent can have a large impact on how I view a game. An over the top setpiece becomes more palatable when I know the creators aren’t presenting it as a work of gaming art. →  Now with fewer vowels.

Review – Call of Duty: World at War

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As expected, Activision has pimped the hell out of 2008’s yearly Call of Duty release, World at War. The savvier gamers out there have not been fooled, and have spent their energies trashing it before it even got a chance to prove itself. They know that WaW was developed not by series creator Infinity Ward, but by Treyarch, whose two game Call of Duty pedigree has been viewed as less than stellar.

I assert that this judgment was unfair. Big Red One was developed for last gen platforms, and managed to be very clever given its hardware limitations. As for CoD3, the snarky blog commenters betrayed their true lack of intelligence. It should have been obvious to anyone that the game was a stopgap, a way for Activision to “exploit” a favorite moneymaker with a yearly release. →  What is word? Baby don’t read me.

Dragon Questing

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Before they even released their next iteration, Square Enix has announced that Dragon Quest 10 will see the light of day on the Wii. The announcement comes as a surprise to no one (which is different than the angry genre fans that bet and lost on the PS3 carrying the jRPG torch). The question still remains as to what this will actually mean for the console.

While it is true that Dragon Quest has always appeared on the most popular console of the time, the reasons for this have always varied. For DQ 1-6, Nintendo was so dominant that there was no question as to where to put the series. For 7 and 8, Enix took a “wait and see” approach before choosing Sony, and released them many years after either Playstation had established their own dominance. →  Go ahead, read my day.

Review – Fallout 3

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Writer’s note: At the time of this writing, Fallout 3 is a bit buggy on all platforms, and extra buggy on the PS3. I do not wish to neglect these issues, but for the time being they are not featured in the review. If the first patch for the game does not fix many of these issues, I will bring them up in a future piece, but I wish to avoid talking about bugs at the moment as it takes away some of the timelessness of a review. Fallout 2 was broken in many ways upon release, and no one talks about that these days.

We here at videolamer strive to provide timely reviews for major releases. The bad news is that juggling real life responsibilities and funding our own gaming budgets makes this a challenge. →  Prince of Postia: Article Within

Black Friday from Home

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Who says you can’t score deals from your couch? Sony and Microsoft are giving you a chance to score some downloadable games for cheap. PS3 users can score some $10 games for half price, including Pixel Junk Eden and Echochrome. On the 360 side there is mostly junk, but the best picks are Catan and (fucking) Rez for five bucks each. Sony’s deals are until next Thursday, and MS’ are until Sunday, and for Gold users only.

Having saved on some travel costs, I picked up Eden and Rez. Two musically and graphically rich games are an absolute steal at that price, and I can’t wait to blast through them.

As for Nintendo sales, I suppose Reggie didn’t think we needed any. If he’s reading this, I’ll tell him that a Mega Man 1-3 combo pack or something would have been the bee’s knees.