posts by jackson
jackson

IGN Hits A New Low

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IGN recently launched a new site called Music Hub. Great idea, music games are popular so why not make a site dedicated to them? Let’s see what games they cover: Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 3, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Van Halen, GH Encore: Rocks the 80s, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Guitar Hero On Tour, GH On Tour: Decades, GH On Tour: Modern Hits, Guitar Hero Mobile Games, DJ Hero, Band Hero, and… and… that seems to be it. That sure is a lot of games, the guys at IGN were very diligent in ensuring that every relevant game is included. Nothing seems to be missing that I can see, nope.

Yes, I’m joking. The “Music Hub” is a joke. It’s an advertisement for Activation’s games masquerading as just another section of IGN. It does everything it can to shove Guitar Hero down your throat while avoiding at all costs directly saying that it’s a marketing tool. →  Hell is other gamers.

Review – Muramasa: The Demon Blade

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“An ancient pond. A frog jumps in. The splash of water. Hmm… Not a bad haiku.” -Old Man living in Sagami

Muramasa is like a haiku. It’s simple and concise. It comes from an ancient era where a direction pad and a button or two were all anyone needed to escape into virtual reality. Its three metric phrases are its combat, its art and music, and its role playing. Games like this are rare these days in the retail world, having been mostly contained into digital distribution and indie divisions. I don’t know how this one managed to make it onto store shelves, but I commend whoever was responsible.

Muramasa is set in mythological Japan, where mortal life rides upon the outcome of conflicts between the gods and demons, and human civilization sprawls across the countryside. Some hamlets have sprouted within the forests and the fields and are filled with good natured country folk who love the company of traveling strangers. →  Read like G did.

Review – Cursed Mountain

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Cursed Mountain is the latest game in the survival horror mountain climbing genre. It really wants to let everyone know that it’s scary, it has angry contorted faces all over the place, deep dramatic music, and lots of dark shadowy stuff everywhere. It also really wants to recreate the feeling of climbing up a mountain. You will have to literally climb every inch of this huge mountain. Except for a few parts where they jump you ahead a little, since only so much mountain can fit into a ten hour game.

This videogame is less “survival horror” (most noticeably absent from the game is the whole “survival” aspect) and more of a genre that I made up after playing Gears of War, which I like to call “on rails but not really.” It’s extremely linear and extremely scripted without actually being set on rails. Just to make everything clear, I don’t believe rails and scripts are bad things. A lot of history’s best games have consisted of pushing a forward button and a jump or attack button. →  Imagine all the gamers playing for today

Review – Personal Nightmare

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There once was a time where games were designed to ease the player into the gameplay, get him addicted, and then proceed to murder him. This was naturally because the games could only be sustained through a diet of quarters, and demanding a constant flow of money from addicted players was the most effective way to separate a gamer from his cash. Games today have the liberty to come in a lot of forms and sustain themselves in many different ways, so that cliché difficulty curve isn’t used so often anymore. Personal Nightmare, for example, simply murders the player right off the bat.

Personal Nightmare was made by Horrorsoft, creators of Waxworks (which I reviewed previously). Both inhabit the very specific niche genre commonly called “survival horror,” although they existed before that term was coined. In my review, I berated Waxworks for its poorly implemented and frustrating systems. Personal Nightmare anachronistically continues that tradition (Waxworks was made after Personal Nightmare) but through different means. →  You fool. Don’t you understand? No one wishes to read on…

Graphics: When more is less

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What makes books so compelling? Lots of things, but one important facet is the ability of words, mere signifiers, to incite incredible images inside a reader’s brain. Few games encourage this, with their fancy polygons and all, but the same principle exists in them, whether it’s intentional or not.

When I first loaded Pokemon Red Version it was immediately obvious that the graphics were limited, or, to put it in nicer terms, pixelated representations of reality. Translating the sprites into concrete objects was something my brain had to acquire a taste for. I clearly remember not being able to find the exit of Ash’s home, and eventually learning that a certain rectangle on the floor represented the welcome mat and the door was off-screen from that. This sort of thing seems elementary now. Considering Pokemon’s limited environments are it makes sense that the series was never renown for them, but rather the adorable monsters themselves and their many fights. The battles were amazing. →  Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Post

Are you a bad enough dude to save Eegra?

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I would like to diverge from videogame discussion for a moment to bring attention to a disturbing reality: the very cool website Eegra is facing some serious financial problems. On their front page you can see some posts explaining the situation and how it can possibly be resolved. It makes me sad to no longer see their daily articles in my feed reader, and I hope they manage to work everything out soon. I decided to help in the only way I know how, blogging about it.

If you don’t know what Eegra is, it’s a quirky blog-thingy about videogames. It’s full of humor, indie/obscure games, and is run by some awesome and intelligent people. It helped inspire me to write about games and made me enthusiastic for gaming blogs.

Since they’re not updating very much anymore, here are a few highlights for you to read:

Who Is Kevin VanOrd, and Why Is His Jaw Tired?

Chris Buffa and GameDaily – the saviours of games journalism? →  I regret learning to read.

Review – Gears of War 2

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Gears of War 2 takes place in a grim future where humanity is at war against an unstoppable force of monsters called the Locust. The endless fighting has torn down cities, painted the Earth’s surface a consistent shade of gray and brown, nearly killed off the human race, and made the survivors intolerable douchebags. If the people in Gears of War 2 are the ones who are going to save Earth and restore society, then it honestly might be better if the Locust just win. The game’s writers were apparently content with cookie-cutter characters who are easier to laugh at than sympathize with, at least until a few hours in when their simple personalities simply become annoying. And like too many games of this type, the bad guys are way cooler than than the good guys anyway.

But now on to the actual gameplay, the stuff that’s supposedly the most important part of any videogame. Cliff Bleszinski claims that his goal with Gears 2 was to make the player feel like he’s constantly in the center of a blockbuster action movie. →  Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Authors, Nine Articles

Renaming video games – I propose “vidcon”

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Video Games. What ideas or images flashed into your head when you read that phrase? Were they memories of yourself spending quarters at an arcade machine? Or maybe spending hours behind of a Guitar Hero drum set. Maybe you’re a typical parent who thinks of an evil device that erodes your children’s brains and turns them into head-shooting Nintendo-worshiping zombies. Or maybe you are one of those zombies and that phrase brought back all the great times you spent killing virtual people.

Okay let’s get serious, video games deserve the same respect any other entertainment medium has. They may have not had their Citizen Kane yet, but we’re all sure that point is not too far away, maybe in the year 2016 or so. If video games are one of mankind’s greatest creative and technological achievements, why does their very name carry so much negative baggage? It just might be time for us gamers to think of a new name for our hobby. →  SNK Article Classics Vol. 1

Review – BIT.TRIP BEAT

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It’s been 37 years now since Pong became the first commercially successful videogame. 37 years isn’t very long in the grand scheme of things, so with gaming still so young it’s not surprising that only recently there has been a popular interest in its history. Although the medium owes its existence to computer technology, games are unlike most computer software in the sense that the latest versions aren’t always the “best.” Every game offers its own unique experience.

Unfortunately most games don’t manage to transcend time completely, and large aspects of them are trapped as artifacts of their era. Essentially no one today could enjoy Pong the way its first audience did in 1972. This is why remakes are not just popular, but essential for most games. And sometimes someone will make a completely new game that borrows the best qualities from games of the past, and integrates them with the best qualities of today. That’s the kind of game BIT.TRIP →  Four out of five dentists recommend reading more.

Review – Orbient

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I love puzzle games. I don’t mean that I love most puzzle games, but that I love the puzzle genre. This actually leads me to hate most puzzle games because of the unreasonably high expectations I set for them. But when I do find one that I like, I really like it. Orbient is one of those games.

The gameplay is simple. You are a planet wandering through a two dimensional universe filled with other planets. Most planets just follow their orbit patterns, but for some unexplained reason you have the ability to control gravity’s effect on you. There’s a button to activate regular gravity, and a button to activate anti-gravity. As you wander you’ll have to use these strategically to control your movement. Unlike most games, there are no buttons for moving an exact direction. The gravity physics are completely dependent on how large and far away your neighbors are. The game would be stupidly easy if you could just walk over to the goal, so this challenging mode of travel is what really makes the game. →  All I want for Christmas is my PSP.