posts by golden jew
golden jew

Review – Chrono Trigger

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Chrono Trigger is an embarrassment for the gaming industry. Straight up embarrassment. It’s embarrassing that a game that is over ten years old can be so well made as to put many current games to shame. It’s like the Roman Empire, without all of the strange pedophiliac tendencies but all of the impressive works of art.

Chrono Trigger is the latest in a series of Square-Enix remakes designed to milk old titles for every last dollar and yen. Like Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger is a game that I somehow missed (though I did play the under appreciated Chrono Cross at some point).

Chrono Trigger is, simply put, a pleasure to play. The casual gaming experience (by which I mean, the fights, going from A to B, etc) completely trumps a game like Dragon Quest. →  Oreshika: Tainted Postlines

Golden Jew’s Nuggets of Wisdom #4

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What happened to resource management/economic games?

Being a Jew, and a dork (as we have established by my contributing to this site), I love resource management games. Railroad Tycoon and Tropico bring back fond memories: games where you gather A, process A into B, and then sell B for C(ash). Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one, because no one has made a good resource management game in ages. It seems that Firaxis is the only company capable of “making” (and I use the term loosely, since Firaxis has yet to make a game in years in my book) these games.

Their most recent two efforts were half-baked bug-ridden crap: Sid Meier’s Railroads (which I loved for the concept before getting infuriated with the execution after writing a glowing review) and Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 Ultimate Colonization North American Challenge 2008, also known as Colonization II: We’re Using the Civ 4 Engine and Name for Sales. →  Readbot Chronicles

Review – Dragon Quest IV

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For many, the Dragon Warrior/Quest franchise has a great deal of meaning, nostalgia and history. I remember playing Dragon Warrior on the NES when I was a young whippersnapper. I also remember that when faced with a choice at the end of joining the last boss or killing him, I decided to join him. The screen acquired an orange glow and my Nintendo froze. Was that what was supposed to happen? After my orange experience, I never touched a Dragon Warrior game again.

Dragon Quest IV, a Square Enix port of the original to the DS, presented an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the franchise. Having just run through the remake of Final Fantasy IV, I had high hopes that Square Enix would have scrubbed through the original and done away with any lingering issues to create a superior RPG experience, as they had in FFIV. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read

Golden Jew’s Nuggets of Wisdom #3

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Am I getting pickier, are developers getting suckier, or am I a fanboy?

I’m definitely gaming less, largely due to an increase in non-gaming activities eating my free time. As a result I’m finding myself particularly discriminating when it comes to what I actually buy and play. Video games aren’t my primary outlet these days, I’d say they consume 25% of my free time whereas in the past it might have been as high as 75%.

This has worked out well for me, because if I were a bored Golden Jew, I’d have trouble taking a strong stance on developers who have either pissed me off, or not managed to beat out the competition. Etrian Odyssey 2, for example, has turned me off to future installments of the game because of Atlus’ crass laziness in developing a sequel. →  Ask not what this post can do for you - ask what you can do for this post.

Golden Jew’s Nuggets of Wisdom #2

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Cooking Games

This is a slippery slope I’m about to embark upon, but what do I care, you clicked this link, so you’re stuck with me. I can’t be any worse than doing your job, right?

I get video game escapism. I was a nerdy kid before blooming into my awesome alpha male self, so I understand the appeal of being a wizard, or space marine fighting space aliens, or a pirate ninja. Even though sports games don’t appeal to me, I understand why someone wants to play football and play like Tom Brady, or manage a college football team like the UF Gators, or rape a girl and get away with it like Kobe.

But where I get really fucking confused is when games like Cooking Mama become popular. I understand that there is this genre of “casual” games for people, where instead of trying to decide the proper build order for Protoss to rush Zerg, they want to just hit a tennis ball around with the Wii controller. →  In all ages, hypocrites, called producers, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called publishers.

Game forums will be the end of us all

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The internet has brought us many wonderful things. Most notably, a lot of easily accessible niche porn, but also wonderful things like online bill paying, instant messenger, downloadable games, online games, MMORPG… really, the list is endless. Frankly, it is amazing white collar workers are productive at all anymore. Unfortunately, the internet has also brought us some very terrible things. J-Date ranks high on that list (along with the rest of online dating), but by far the worst of all is internet forums.

Why internet forums, you ask eagerly? Your puppy dog eyes betray a depth of hurt: after all, you undoubtedly spend your time trolling gamefaqs.com, or perhaps like me you pick a flavor and hit up the Rock Band forums or Civfanatics. But no matter what forum you read, you’re going to get the same things… over…and over… and over…

Circular Arguments

Perhaps the most time consuming of the forum phenomena. →  READ3R

The games begin to drag me down

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Apple Corps (Not to be confused with Pretentious Hipster Apple Computers) and MTV, announced today they are teaming up to create an all new music game featuring the Beatles. The Beatles have long been viewed as a gold standard of music, both because their music is awesome, and because their licensing situation is complicated, therefore making awesome music more desirable due to lack of availability.

Unfortunately, by creating a whole new game to accommodate a single band, the announcement has a sellout tinge to me. The whole point of building a phenomenally successful platform like Rock Band is to bring content to it and sell the hell out of it, while leveraging the core platform, guaranteeing huge margins – a model that has worked phenomenally well for Harmonix to date.

But when it comes to a band like the Beatles, selling even 20 million tracks at $2 per is far outshadowed by selling 2 million games at $60 per, especially after licensing fees. →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.

Review – Lock’s Quest

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My quest for time killing DS games that aren’t infantile and minimize the use of the stylus came to an abrupt end when I purchased Lock’s Quest. Lock’s Quest does use the stylus, but in a manner which doesn’t offend my manly lifestyle of sex with supermodels and drinking rye whiskey (when drawing rainbows in Kirby, I pick up a hankering for an appletini) but feels familiar, in a very mouse-like style.

This is helpful, because Lock’s Quest is a tower defense game – you construct defenses in an RTS-style world against unintelligent, persistent, and most importantly plentiful, clockwork monsters – a genre that would be unplayable without a touch screen (or a mouse).

I was unaware that tower defense was a game genre that extended beyond Warcraft 3 custom maps, but seeing as I enjoy those, I decided to see if THQ could turn them into a meaningful DS experience. →  What is word? Baby don’t read me.

Golden Jew’s Nuggets of Wisdom #1

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It recently occurred to me that I have a great deal of pithy wisdom to pass out, but often cannot express such wisdom in a detailed format as would traditionally befit this site. As a result, this knowledge is lost, much like many of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the QA department of Firaxis. To staunch the hemorrhaging of this critical knowledge, I bring you my irregular Nuggets of Wisdom, where I will give quick shout-outs to games, concepts, society–whatever I feel like. You are to take these nuggets and to cling to them like the final acorn a squirrel devours in a harsh winter, not knowing when the next meal will come. You will get extra points for contradicting me, and even more points for worshiping my mighty e-peen.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

A good friend of mine (actually several) have gotten back into WoW in preparation for the release of the next expansion. →  Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 5: Golden Post

Review – Civilization 4: Colonization?

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I can’t even figure out exactly what the name of the Colonization remake is, so we’ll just call it Colonization 2. In an attempt to drive sales, it has Civ 4 mixed in the title, since the game leverages the Civ 4 engine (and more importantly the Civilization brand name), but you don’t actually need Civ 4 to play. Despite the confusing title, the game itself is not confusing.

Like every Firaxis effort for the past two years or so, it’s a game with a great deal of promise and terrible QA testing that is largely carried by a talented and extremely forgiving community that does Firaxis’ work for them. Interestingly, this might be why Civ Revs is currently covered in “This game sucks” threads; the community cannot mod an Xbox 360 game. →  The only thing we have to read is read itself.