posts by matt
matt

Eulogy for the GameCube

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What can I say, GameCube? You had a good run these last five years, but your last exclusive release was Baten Kaitos Origins, back in September. Not even Nintendo themselves stuck it out until the end, moving Super Paper Mario onto the Wii. I’m sorry GameCube, but it’s time to say goodbye.

But let’s not look at your failures too much. Let us remember you as you were: a console that was home to some truly great games. You deserve it. And don’t worry about all those haters on the Internet, calling you a failure. In time, they’ll begin to understand.

You were released on Nov. 18th 2001 to a somewhat muted launch. In a surprise attack, Microsoft’s Xbox and their Halo stole much of your spotlight. I remember watching the video review of Halo on GameSpot, where the reviewer couldn’t sleep at night because he was playing Halo too much. →  Read the rest

DIY PSP Car Stereo

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Here’s a tip for you do-it-yourselfers: turn your dust-infested PSP into your car stereo system. I was completely surprised (and annoyed at myself for not realizing sooner) that you can use an iPod tape-deck adapter with your PSP. Some of you have may already done this, but I went one step further. I applied velcro strips on the bottom of my PSP and a vacant lot on my car’s console, and viola! A fairly stylish car stereo system.

I’ve included a pic to give you an idea on how to set it up. Just make sure to get somewhat industrial-strength velcro strips to use, as pulling the PSP off the dashboard repeatedly will probably rip off weaker kinds. I went ahead and put the softer side of velcro on the actual system, and the spiky kind on the car. →  Read the rest

PS3 Needs a Little Support

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Next-Gen.biz has an interview with Capcom USA’s Charles Bellfield, where he asks for more positive coverage of the PS3 in the media. This actually got me thinkin’ for a bit. Is their too much negative publicity for the PS3, and is it justified? Sure, some may spit at the $600 price tag, but has anyone thought of the positive things that the PS3 will bring to the table? Well, I guess I’ll be the one to bite that bullet.

First, you have all those exclusive games that are coming out for it. Level 5’s White Knight, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4, and Capcom’s Devil May Cry 4 are just a few of the games that will probably blow our socks off, and they’re only for PS3.

Second, you have the next-generation of video game graphics. →  Read the rest

The Wii’s “horsepower”

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While rummaging through the ol’ Interweb tonight, I somehow got onto Wii’s official site and came across a whole slew of new videos that were posted yesterday. Most of them show people trying out the Wii for the first time, and they actually look like they’re having fun. Never mind the fact that they get paid to play with something we’re all dying for.

But what really interested me were some new videos for the Wii Channels. I’ll detail a few of them here:

The Internet Channel was finally unveiled, and I have to say it’s looking pretty snazzy. They pulled up Google and searched in a couple shots, and the browser, which is based on Opera by the way, ran fairly smoothly. They were using a widescreen TV, but the browser was formatted to a 4:3 ratio. →  Read the rest

Vista: Kodak Moment or Photoshopped?

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Surprising me in the mail last week was the DVD Install Kit for Microsoft’s Windows Vista RC1 Client. I signed up for their beta releases a few months ago, but I wasn’t aware that they keep sending you the subsequent releases. Needless to say I’m not that upset about it.

After testing RC1 out for a few days, I can easily say it’s much better than the Beta 2 release. It has way better driver support, and has much more functionality. I was on the fence about upgrading to something that looked only marginally better than XP, but after messing around with Vista, I’m eager to cross over to the “next-generation” of Windows.

The real gem in Vista is its Aero functionality. DirectX is now continually running in the background. The main thing you will notice is that each window actually blurs the picture that’s behind it, be it the desktop background or an image you’re viewing. →  Read the rest

Graphics over gameplay: is it really all that bad?

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Whether or not graphics really add all that much to video games has been heavily debated in the last few years. And once the Wii and PS3 come out to steal the 360’s spotlight, we’ll surely hear about it all over again.

Though it may not seem like it due to the clever use of lighting and camera angles, the colossus is actually only an inch taller than you.

But, if we think about it logically, is there really a difference between the two? Some would say, “Of course there is! What are you, high? You can’t play with pictures!” And yes, they’d be perfectly correct. But what people don’t think about is the complementary effect that graphics can have on gameplay.

Take, for example, Shadow of the Colossus. Not exactly the prettiest title in some respects, but one cannot say it isn’t graphically intensive. →  Read the rest

Weekend Spotlight

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After reading about the 10 anniversary of the Nintendo 64 over there at Infendo, I decided to play… my SNES. My urge for nostalgia went a little farther, I guess.

Anyway, after dusting the ol’ SNES off and finally figuring out which controller worked completely, I popped in one the greats: Final Fantasy VI. One of the best, if not THE best, RPG of all time.

Incidentally, I’ve never actually beaten the game before, and this is after I bought the thing for like $50 on eBay last year. The game is great, but it’s hard to find time to play all these 40+ hour fantasies, now that real life has reared its ugly head. The last time I left off, I just completed the famous Opera scene. I will say that that scene was truly amazing. →  Read the rest

Place Yer Bets!

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I know the format wars issue is beyond played out, but I’ve come to a startling realization: Sony will win.

How, do you ask? Look at it from this perspective. Has anyone seen the commercials for movies that are available for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? No doubt you have, but has anyone really thought twice about it? No, and they shouldn’t. And that’s how Sony will win.

People are going to buy PS3’s, there’s no doubt there, but I can’t see many people buying an HD-DVD player anytime soon. Only the early adopter crowd will even bother, and even some of them are questioning switching over so soon. No normal consumer is going to understand or even care about the differences these new devices will bring to viewing movies when compared to regular DVD’s. →  Read the rest

Review – Ico

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Barely noticed when it was first released, Ico has now become the #1 game to reference when bringing up the issue of art in games. But is it really all that and a bag of potato chips?

Developed by SCEI (Parappa the Rapper, Shadow of the Colossus) and directed by Fumito Ueda, Ico is a third-person adventure game, set in a derelict castle that is situated on top of an island just a few hundred yards off the coast of some unknown continent. Cut-off by ocean on each of its sides, the castle becomes the player’s prison, so to speak.

Ico is a young boy (his name is never referenced, so I’m only guessing it’s his name) that has been shunned by his village and sent to an empty castle to distance himself from society. →  Read the rest

Weekend Spotlight

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This week, while hoping to pickup Cooking Mama for the venerable DS, I came across a deal at Wal-Mart that I just couldn’t pass up. In the discount bin, with a pretty tattered box was Donkey Konga 2 with the Conga drums. After checking the prices on Bestbuy and Gamestop’s sites, I don’t think it’s that much of a deal, though. Jungle Beat can be found for only $15. But still, Donkey Konga 2 is rather enjoyable, especially if you go at it in multiplayer.

One thing I want to stress about the game is that the songs are not the original songs. They’re redone by a few cover bands. This is probably because of memory contrainsts with the GC’s disc medium, but there are like 30 of them, so quantity outweighs quality on this one. →  Read the rest

The Big Scene

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Well, I finally understand how Nick Callaway felt when attending a party over at the late, great Jay Gatsby’s house on Long Island. On Friday morning, I traveled down to the Nintendo World Store to attend the Q&A session that a few of the IGN editors were going to have there, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I got to the store at around 10:45 a.m., completely exhausted from the anxiousness I had the night before. This would be the first time I’d ever met anyone from the journalism side of the video game industry, and I have to say I was nervous. These people are my celebrities; I’ve read their articles every day for the last 6 years. I know these guys probably think of themselves as regular people, so my enthusiasm may seem a bit unwarranted, but I can’t help it. →  Read the rest

Wii Sports: Bundle or Stand-Alone?

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This question has plagued my brain for the last few days. Should Nintendo bundle Wii Sports with the actual system, or sell it as a stand-alone product?

You can come up with several reasons for both sides of the argument, but the real crux of the argument is what Nintendo will do. Bundling the game would essentially define the Wii as Wii Sports. If people think they will get it in the bundle, then their immediate experience of the Wii will be formed around the experience they have with Wii Sports.

This is exactly what Nintendo needs to do if they want to justify their route they took with the Wii and its controller. This will show the public that the controller is indeed a worthy way of handling gameplay for video games. →  Read the rest

Weekend Spotlight

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What will I be playing this weekend, you ask? Why, only the great Indigo Prophecy, of course. I do thank you for asking.

I played the demo on the PC around the time of the game’s release, and simply loved how the game unfolded. I never purchased it, due to constraining circumstances (no money), but a friend at work let me borrow his Xbox edition.

Right from the moment you start the game, you’ll notice that Indigo Prophecy is heavily story-based. Think Metal Gear Solid. Actually, Konami’s spy game actually has more “game” to it than Indigo Prophecy does, if that’s hard to believe. You seriously are just watching this game with a few bits of gameplay thrown in for variety.

But don’t get me wrong, the game is great to play. →  Read the rest

Next-gen.biz apparently reads videolamer

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Is it me, or does Next-gen.biz report on everything that I’ve said, only later?

Exhibit A

This is an interview of Raph Koster of Star Wars Galaxies fame at the Austin Game Conference where he talks about how much better life in PC development would be without publishers. He apparently read my second episode on game testing where I said the same thing. He’s definitely right, though.

Exhibit B

This second article was an interview with Charles Deenen at the same conference where he talks about how powerful sound and music are to a video game and the pursuit of emotional response. I think I read something like that on videolamer somewhere. Oh wait, it’s here! We’ve got some eerie similarities in our arguments, too.

Exhibit C

This last article delves into our inner psyche and asks: “What is the deal with video games?” →  Read the rest

Games that shed a tear

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The issue of whether or not a video game can make us cry has been tackled several times in the past, but the issue has still not been given its due. Can video games truly impact a player with a fury of emotion, causing them to cry? Depending on the game, I say yes.

Many people say that games are wholly incapable of causing emotion in people, as seen in Margaret Robertson’s speech at this year’s Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival. She cites games that made her feel a lot of emotion, but states that video games as a whole are not emotional. They’re just ones and zeroes. The players are the source of the emotion, and that you have to tap into their emotion to get a response. She seems to paint a picture that designers are not adept at doing this just yet. →  Read the rest

Review – Phoenix Wright

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Phoenix Wright has turned into somewhat of a cult classic in the past few months. I remember hearing about Phoenix Wright in Japan (named the Gyakuten Saiban series) for the GBA back in the day. The games (there are three in total) were immensely popular, going straight to the top of the charts. I really didn’t understand why, though. I just thought it was a Japanese thing, like those pachinko and horse betting games they have there. I mean, how fun can it be to play as a lawyer? Apparently, pretty damn fun.

On the outset, Phoenix Wright is merely a point-and-click text adventure. It’s heavily based on its storyline, well, because pointing and clicking is as fun as milking a cow (not to make fun of Harvest Moon fans). If the story wasn’t solid, the game would fall flat on its face, and thankfully, Phoenix Wright doesn’t disappoint. →  Read the rest

The Power of Music

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Music is the one power that the majority of developers never seem to grasp and implement correctly. Music in a game can enhance every aspect, be it story, setting, mood, or even gameplay, but for some reason, it always takes a back seat to everything else in a game, especially the graphics.

Kondo: the Japanese French Stewart?

Let me give you an example of how music, implemented to its fullest, can be beneficial to a game’s overall feeling. Shadow of the Colossus. How epic and strong did you feel when that music kicked in, when you finally started climbing the back of one of those monstrous Colossi? You felt something, didn’t you? It wasn’t visual feedback that created that feeling, or the fact that you overcame a puzzle. It was the pounding musical score that drove adrenaline through you. →  Read the rest

Review – Ikaruga

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Is the game really about black and white or red and blue? It really makes you think.

Old-school shooters are a dying genre. There are only a handful of franchises left today, but there used to be countless shooters at your local arcade. Were they too hard for the masses? Did the arcades take something with them when they were given the final blow? It’s probably a combination of a lot of things, but at least one thing is for sure: Treasure knows shooters and Ikaruga is testament to that. Filled with excruciatingly difficult gameplay, Ikaruga makes you work for your fun.

If you’ve ever played Gradius or Galaga, you essentially know how to play Ikaruga. It’s an old-school shooter that pits you against an entire army of ships wanting to decimate you. →  Read the rest

Polarity

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Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

If you ever asked yourself why video games were invented, you probably answered that the original creators just wanted to have fun. And, in fact, you’d be correct. The very first video game was created in 1958 by a scientist named William Higinbotham to let people have a little bit of fun at a science fair in Long Island, NY. The fair was mostly centered on nuclear theories and revelations, but Higinbotham thought it made the exhibit a bit scary for the general public, so he made what is now known to be the very first video game: Tennis for Two.

Suffice to say, it was a hit at the show. People were amazed that they could control something on a screen (which was actually a 3-inch radar screen). →  Read the rest

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