Confessions/Obsessions

Everyone has done things they are ashamed of and stalking often seems like a reasonable pastime. We at videolamer tend to channel our sick obsessions through the outlet of gaming, leaving the stalking up to the professionals. In this column we will admit to things we’d be embarrassed if our parents read and tell you everything about our weird sex fetishes, all in the name of truth. And also to feed stereotypes about gamers being misogynistic hermits who can’t get dates. For your information, we actually could get dates if we’d stop stalking women.

The cost of gaming (or not gaming)

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This New Year’s, I’ll be in London. My vacation promises to be sweet, but something struck me earlier today. Does it count as regicide if the royal family is merely allowed to keep their castle for show? If you accidentally run down the Queen whilst driving the wrong way (which would be her fault in the first place for allowing people to drive on the left side of the street) does it count as vehicular regicide?

Also, if I didn’t go to England, I could afford a PS3. You must be saying, “What are you, a fucking idiot? The point of life is to experience new things, see new places, run over queens. It’ll do you good to get out of your bedroom and will give your forearm muscles some time to heal.” →  Read the rest

Laying this generation to rest: Gamecube

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The Gamecube is seen as the loser of this generation (apparently the Dreamcast lost so badly it’s not even worth remembering as the loser). I own as many Cube titles and Xbox, but going by (American) sales, there’s little room for debate. The Cube lost. But after all talk of winning and losing is over, it remains a fact that the Gamecube was host to a number of awesome games. Most of them were first party, since the console had barely any 3rd party support. Luckily for the Gamecube, Nintendo first party games are some of the best in the world.

It takes a certain dedication to the Mushroom Kingdom to play soccer with your crown on.

Pat —
Mario Strikers (Next Level Games/2005) – No single player worth mentioning, but with a houseful of competitive roommates willing to put social lives on hold for some arcade soccer action made this a system defining game for me. →  Read the rest

Laying this generation to rest: PS2

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The PS2 was the clear “winner” of its generation, and with good cause. Despite murdering my precious Dreamcast with mostly unfounded hype, it was home to a very wide range of games from huge and tiny developers alike. The PS2 embodied both the best of Western gaming and Japanese gaming and this balance is what, in my opinion, allowed it to so thoroughly whoop the competition.

Hey there, pretty lady.

Matt —
Ace Combat 4 (Namco/2001) – Flying through the skies never felt so fun. The dog fights were intense, but the presentation was even better. The way the story was played out (with a nice anime look) was genius. I was generally surprised at how much effort Namco put into the story, especially for an arcade flight game.

Shadow of the Colossus (SCE/2005) – Awesome music, amazing story, and epic gameplay. →  Read the rest

Laying this generation to rest: Dreamcast

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To celebrate the new generation of consoles, we will be honoring the last generation by listing our favorite games on each system. These aren’t Best of lists, or games you will die without, rather they are simply the titles we think made these systems special.

The first console of the past generation was the Sega Dreamcast. This proved to be Sega’s final console so while we remember it fondly, keep in mind that emotion partially clouds our view. Teary eyes aside, there is no denying the console had a number of excellent exclusives, most of which were made by Sega themselves. Anyone new to gaming and confused about why Sega exists at all only needs to look to the games they developed for the Dreamcast (and Saturn, and Genesis).

To quote Planet Dreamcast’s comically inaccurate, unbridled optimism:
At the end of the day it isn’t up to us to tell you whether or not you should buy a Dreamcast. →  Read the rest

Video Game Quarter-Life Crisis

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I may be talking out of my ass (hell, I am), but I read something on Penny Arcade the other day about FFXII that got me thinking. The quote, from Gabe, was in reference to the new battle system in FFXII. I haven’t bought FFXII yet–my only experience was messing around with it at the past two E3’s. So I can’t really weigh in. Anyway, his quote was:

“Kara and I started playing FF XII last night. Only got a few hours in but my initial impressions are actually positive. It’s interesting, Kara is the one playing it and she actually really likes the move away from random battles and turn based combat. Apparently those are not the things she likes about the FF series. She’s a WOW player and FFXII is essentially an MMO without the second M or the O. →  Read the rest

Chris loves Jesus part 2

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Continued from Part 1

The casual (or obsessive?) reader may ask, “How does one foster a personal relationship with Jesus?” The best way for me was to translate it.

Don’t look at it too long or your brain will melt.

Long, long ago in a mindset far, far away I decided to translate a Famicom game by the name of Jesus: Kyoufu no Bio Monster. Despite all the difficult aspects of both translation and ROM hacking, I managed to create a patch that (I hope) carries across much of the feeling of the game.

The first task, naturally, was to figure out what in the hell was happening in the game. I could figure out the basics between context and the words I already knew. From there, I ended up using an electronic dictionary to figure out the rest. →  Read the rest

Chris loves Jesus part 1

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I’d like to tell you all a little story about me and my friend named Jesus. No, not that Jesus… This Jesus doesn’t save. It uses passwords instead.

I like women who match their bedrooms.

When it comes to obscure and unknown games, it takes a lot to get much less known than Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster. Although it came out on several systems in Japan, it saw no English release. Despite the – somewhat recognizable – name, the game bears no teachings, or indeed any characters somewhat resembling, the well-known founder of Christianity (in fact, the name refers to a space station in the game). There is a bio-monster, however, and it inspires dread.

Jesus is an adventure survival horror game developed by Enix and published by King Records. While most console adventure games have some element of action, Jesus more resembles a text-based adventure. →  Read the rest

A tale of E3, education and a fairy

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Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I worked with a magical 60 year old fairy. She saved me from the mundane tasks I was hired to perform and charged me with studying the field of video game education.

Suddenly, work became almost pleasant and thoughts of suicide (through suffocation by books) were pushed to the back of my subconscious. Little did I know, the Middle East was secretly and silently watching, waiting for a moment to pounce and destroy my happiness.

With the fairy behind me, I organized a presentation on video games and education for librarians across the country (or at least East Coast). Despite my inability to articulate my thoughts coherently during the question and answer sessions (though it may have been academics inability to ask questions that weren’t abstruse and pompous), the overall presentation was successful enough to secure me tickets to E3 in Los Angeles. →  Read the rest

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

Life as a Game Tester: Episode 3

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As of this writing, my time in the video game industry is dwindling. When I took this job, I was only guaranteed work until the end of October, which is rapidly approaching. That’s the life of a QA tester, I guess. If your company doesn’t have anything playable for you to test, there’s not much reason to go to work everyday. Already, my day consists of me playing my own games more than the game we’re making, which isn’t necessarily bad. I call it “research.”

Right now, we have the second game I’ve worked on being tested by NOA and NOE. You can check out what that entails by reading Episode 2.

Nintendo’s quality control is not infallible.

It’s great to get a game to submission, but in my experience, it’s been the worst thing that can happen to a game in development. →  Read the rest

The Tekken arcade stick praised; the Tekken games condemned

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A few weeks ago, while browsing my favorite gaming forum, one of the posters reported an unconfirmed clearance sale at Gamestop/EB. The item? The Tekken 5 anniversary box. The price? $30, down from its previous $60 price, which was down from the original $100 MSRP. The package of course includes Tekken 5, as well as a very nice DVD box for storing all 6 Tekken games. The crown jewel of the set however is a limited edition arcade stick.

Normally this isn’t a big deal; you can buy arcades sticks everywhere some for as low as ten dollars. Not to mention that other game-branded sticks have shown to be of rather horrid quality (such as the Street Fighter Anniversary stick from Nubytech). What makes this Tekken stick so special is that it is made with real Hori parts, the same Hori that makes the best arcade sticks for Japanese home consoles. →  Read the rest

Life as a Game Tester: Episode 2

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to the crazy, but always interesting world of video game development. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me, as we’ve delivered a few of our builds to Nintendo to be approved for manufacturing.

If you are developing anything for Nintendo, be it console or handheld, you need to submit your game to them when you believe it is completely finished (more on this later). They will then go through the game and see if they can find any problems with it. They have their own standards of what should and shouldn’t be in a game, and they even check stuff like how you reference the buttons on the controller.

If the A button onscreen didn’t look just like the A button on my controller, I’d be COMPLETELY lost.

 →  Read the rest

Life as a Game Tester: Episode 1

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Hello everyone! I’m here to introduce to you to a new segment on videolamer that delves into a part of the industry that is rather unknown: Quality Assurance. It’s no picnic, I can assure you, but I wanted to spill the beans on what it takes to be a game tester, seeing how I am one. Through these articles, I’m going to try to open your eyes to how the games industry operates, and maybe let you decide if it really is something to pursue as a career. Not many companies actually detail how they go about day-to-day business, so I’m here to help you out a little. I don’t know how long this will go for, as I’m not sure if it’s entirely legal to talk about some of this stuff, but I really don’t care. →  Read the rest

The greatest video game mascot hands down in the history of the universe

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Who is the best video game mascot? Mario some would answer, but they’d be stupid and wrong. Mario is overweight, and obesity is a large problem in America. If you enjoy Mario’s plump antics, you obviously don’t enjoy America or freedom.

Sonic is another obvious choice, but he is bright blue and for children. Have you ever seen his cartoon show? Not the over serious ABC piece of crap, but the one with terrible drawings and life lessons at the end of each episode. While it’s respectable that his ultimate goal is to beat up a fat guy, he saves too many animals and cares too much about the planet on his journey. Sonic is a good choice for a six year old vegan, but not men like us.

Lara Croft is another popular pick. →  Read the rest

Another gamer is claimed by World of Warcraft

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So. World of Warcraft. A game I’ve been putting off playing since inception.

Nice graphics…for 1997! Ahahahahaha!

Diablo has always been one of my favorite games but I always found it a little limited. Added to that, I was one of those people who pre-ordered Ultima Online in the special collectors edition that came with the cool little cloth map and three months of subscription. I almost made it through the first month and a friends prodding left me spending three hours a day fletching arrows for a bit of the second. By the third month I was busy trying to unclog the toilet that I’d flushed that damn cloth map in.

Not that a lot of people didn’t love UO, it just wasn’t the game that I expected.

World of Warcraft is exactly that game that anyone who has ever flushed a cloth map was expecting. →  Read the rest

Market research is stupid

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A few days ago I got a call from a friend looking for “hardcore gamers” who were willing to be part of a focus group. This friend has a friend who works for a research group, so through a friend of a friend, I ended up taking part in a video game focus group. The important part was I’d be getting paid.

Hmmm... I wonder

It would be wrong of me to tell you what company the commercials were for, so I’ll just give you a hint.

I was a little disappointed that the group was just to get feedback on some commercials; I’d hoped to get to influence the design of a game (“more explosions, bigger breasts, less reading!”). I’d penned a few crazy sounding comments with Pat before the meeting, but sadly didn’t get to recite them. →  Read the rest

Guilds and You

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How do you know when you’re in a bad guild? Well, I am going to tell you a few things that you may want to consider before joining any guild and help you etch out in your mind if the one you are in currently is right for you. First a little background; I am not a big MMO player, nor do I play many FPS style games. When I do, I usually just go with random folks on random servers. I do, however, play World of Warcraft, and I assume that guilds on WoW are no different in theory than guilds on other MMO’s. And that is what we are dealing with here, MMO and RPG guilds as opposed to FPS game Clans/Guilds.

I have been in over 10 separate guilds in my travels in Azeroth. →  Read the rest

World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part V

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

Endgame Analysis

Hardcore instance running is essentially the “endgame” of endgames. As a result, it is subject to a few annoying things. First off, whatever the “toughest” 40 man instance is starts out at a near impossible level to complete. This is because Blizzard doesn’t want you to be able to “beat the game,” so to speak.

Molten Core’s first pull, for example, initially required battling three very tough “trash” monsters that were harder than all of the other trash up to the first few bosses: thus effectively cockblocking the instance for most guilds. After a few months, this pull was broken into two pulls: and Blizzard announced this as a “bug.” This “bug” fix allowed dozens of guilds previously stopped to pour into MC as a whole. →  Read the rest

World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part IV

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

Hardcore Instance Running

Ok, you’re a l33t powergamer. What is there for you when you hit 60 th level? Find 39 other friends and you’re ready to form a raid group for the baddest of the bad:

Red
This lovely lavafront property can be had for a cool $499,999. Dragon not included

Molten Core
The “original” hardcore dungeon, Molten Core was the first 40 man dungeon available. However, because it has been around for so long, it has been successively “nerfed” (made easier) in difficulty as new content has become available. As a result, at this point in time, the hardest part of Molten Core is finding 35-40 other people to get together at the same time and go raid it. The encounters, compared to the other 20 and 40 man instances, are fairly trivial (although still a challenge for someone who hasn’t worked in a 40 man team before). →  Read the rest

World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part III

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

Casual Instance Running

Thousands of gold in epic gear… and I’d trade it all for a can of raid.

For those not inclined to PvP (or to augment their PvP activities), the bulk of their end game is spent in casual instances. These instances are capped at 5-15 players (about to be reduced to 5-10 depending on the instance in the upcoming 1.10 patch of World of Warcraft). One thing to point out about World of Warcraft, is that initially, dungeons can take quite long to clear out, especially if the group is not competent. An adventuring group needs to learn how to the “trash monsters” (non boss monsters in a dungeon) as well as the bosses. Due to the age of the game, the process to beating most encounters and dungeons in the game are already well known. →  Read the rest