Articles

A manifesto on Manifesto Games with a review of The Shivah for added value

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Greg Costikyan’s name comes up a lot when it comes to indie game development. Apparently, the man has worked on a few games and written some fiction in his life, and somehow he has become a major voice on independent games. He seems to believe that indie games can and will crush largescale publishers and end their greedy and bullying practices. To help do this, he has created Manifesto Games, a place where indie developers and fans can join together to buy, discuss and promote the best in indie gaming.

I have a lot of respect for Costikyan’s ideal, but every time I read anything written by him, I can’t help but feel that he’s batshit insane. Maybe that is too strong of a phrase, but he certainly reminds me of college students who worship indie anything like a religion and still think that communism can actually work (after all, his site is called Manifesto, and its splashed all over with red). →  Oops, I did it again.

The Circle is Now Complete: Wii News Channel Released

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After being MIA since launch, Nintendo finally released the News Channel for the Wii last Friday. Using the Associated Press as its information provider, the Wii News Channel lets you read regional, national and even international news stories, all at the click of your Wii-mote.

Nintendo, in all their wisdom, even included the Globe feature from the recently released Forecast Channel. If users want, they can rotate a realistic-looking 3D globe (complete with topographical data from NASA), looking for news stories from any region on Earth, as well as brush up on their geography. It still amazes me that the Sahara Desert is really that big. The damn thing covers almost half of the African continent.

Anyway, after using the News Channel for almost a week now, I’ve gone from not caring about any news to feverishly wanting to fire up the channel every night after work. →  Screw Jesus, this article’s the real deal

Never Say Never: Next-Gen N-Gage in the Works

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In a startling revelation, PocketGamer is reporting that Nokia is set to unveil a next-gen version of their ill-fated N-Gage hybrid cellphone/handheld gaming system in the next coming months. A conference was recently held in Santa Monica that had attendees from Disney, Sega of America, Sony Online Entertainment, Universal, Square Enix, Capcom, THQ Wireless, Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate, EA Mobile, Tecmo, Namco and Vivendi Game checking out the capabilities of the new system.

No, April Fools didn’t come early this year. Nokia has said in the past that the N-Gage platform was never going away, that it was always going to be integrated into a broad range of their handheld devices. They even had games at their E3 booth last year.

I’m guessing that the N-Gage as we know it is merely going to be a suite of services that many of their phones will provide, which may help it gain a larger install base compared to the original’s weak showing. →  It might come in handy if you, the master of reading, take it with you.

Too Human Will Be Too Great

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I’ve had just about enough of this Too Human bashing on the Internet. Everywhere I go, I read the same thing: because of last year’s horrid E3 showing, the game is going to flop harder than Granny’s flap jacks.

Need I remind you who is making Too Human? The ever-powerful and intelligent-sounding Silicon Knights. Yes, the same Silicon Knights that brought you the gift to gamers Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, my favorite GameCube game of all time.

Trying to figure out why these “journalists” say such harsh things is taking all my energy. Yes, the camera angles were weird, the frame-rate was all over the place, and the load times were long. But that was in May of 2006. The game isn’t due to be released until July of 2007. That’s more than a year to get everything in shape. →  The Read Star

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 1.26.07

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Wii games channel coming…some time
Nintendo has confirmed that they will offer new games for download on the Wii, no doubt inspired by Microsoft’s Live Arcade. Since the Wii is already being positioned as the console to develop for if you have a small budget, it should be interesting to see what kind of games are distributed through the games channel (not the official name). Will it be home to crappy Flash games or is this the beginning of the 2D renaissance on home systems? I’m hoping for the latter but won’t be surprised if it’s the former.

Gears of War sells well in Japan
Well enough to break the top 10 list, in fact. Now American developers know breaking into the Japanese market is possible; all they have to do is make one of the best games of the year. →  Imagine all the gamers playing for today

Where Have All the Villains Gone?

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Is it me, or is there a huge lack of crazy and demented villains running amok in our games? I mean, where have all the Sephiroths gone? Is the world filled with shiny, happy people now or something?

Seriously, there are no more fiendishly awesome villains anymore. Most villains nowadays only show up as bosses at the end of the game. A villain to me is someone that continually ravages the game’s universe throughout the entire adventure. He/she also has to be evil in every sense of the word. Some would even say that they are eeeeeevil. And you have to be scared of what they will do next. That’s where the real fear comes from. Sephiroth was completely insane. He was on a rampage for most of that game.

In my mind, there’s really only a few villains that fit that bill. →  Do the math.

The results of a gaming experiment

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Before the holiday season, I made a blog post about a little experiment I planned on undertaking over the break. I was going to be very choosy about which games I played, and the rules were something like this:

1. Nothing with too much story or too many cutscenes
2. Nothing with too much unlocking hell
3. Challenging is okay
4. Skill based is preferred

Essentially, I wanted a holiday break where the gaming was filled with old skool sensibility. It was quite a learning experience too, both about gaming in general and my own tastes.

Here are some of the titles I ended up playing, and what I thought about each.

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Twilight Princess: Zelda is the only game I pardoned from the first rule, not because it was the only story heavy game I was playing before the experiment, but because it was the only one I wanted to continue playing. →  There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is games.

Do Games Evoke an Emotional Response?

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Recently, my boss at work gave me a homework assignment. He wanted me to read Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design. It’s a great read for anyone looking to get into game design, and I highly recommend it.

But the reason I bring it up is to talk about the topic of art in games. Koster defines art as “entertainment where the communicative element is either novel or well-done.” I went a little further with the definition and included the fact that art must make you respond emotionally, in some sort of fashion. It doesn’t have to be a deeply emotional response always, but it does need you to respond thoughtfully from it. To even begin to communicate, you need something to say, something that you want the viewer to know and understand. →  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this post!

I can’t shut up about Guitar Hero

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A slew of news about the franchise I can’t get off my mind. Come and get it!

– Rumors of a possible pedal accessory for future installments. A cool idea that could backfire. As Tycho at Penny Arcade mentioned, a peripheral for a peripheral is getting a bit crazy, and who knows if they would actually be a pack in or sold separately. Then there’s the question of whether they would have a direct effect on scoring. I would love to see it, but it would have to be done well for it to become an essential part of the game.

– I discovered that GH2 has a code for “hyper speed”, which is the same as a speed mod in a Bemani game. It basically makes the notes move faster, and thus become more spread out and easier to read (I know that might sound very confusing – it did to me at first. →  A reader is you.

Let Us Cling Together: The joy of playing games cooperatively

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Imagine you’re delving into a dark labyrinth. You’re exploring the endless hallways, looking for a path leading deeper into the ruin when you’re ambushed by a dozen demons both ahead and behind. You’re certain this is the end… but then you realize your partner was trailing a ways behind you, and by now she should blasting her way through the enemies attacking from the rear. Thus assured, you unsheath your sword and charge on ahead… This is the magic of cooperative gaming.

I find it hard to get into any competitive game (with the exception of Smash Bros). The idea of playing against other people just isn’t as fun as playing alongside them. I tend to find cooperative games much more enjoyable, but it’s a much under-appreciated genre. Before the release of Half-Life, Valve promised cooperative play in the game but never delivered, instead creating only an online deathmatch mode. →  God of War: Readnarok