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I just recently finished Resistance: Retribution on PSP. I’m not sure how I feel about it.  On one hand, I played through its campaign in three straight nights of gaming, which means it was least somewhat addictive.  On the other hand, I was so thoroughly finished with it by the end that I sent it back to Gamefly without exploring any of the extra content.  The entire experience can be summed up in this kind of love/hate duality.  For example, I admire how well developer Sony Bend managed to capture the scope and style of the setting on a more limited piece of hardware.  On the other hand, I couldn’t stand how many assets from their Syphon Filter PSP games were reused.  It isn’t just the control scheme they took — sounds effects, character animations, and even large chunks of the in game menus were reused in Retribution.  I can see that the time and money they saved were put to good work in realizing the franchise on PSP, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was trying to pull a fast one on me. →  Hey, hey, hey, it’s time to make some crazy reading!

This week, Sega announced that they plan to make few Mature Wii games.  Capcom followed with a similar statement (which they had to clarify with simple PR speak).  Some folks seem to be in a frenzy over the news, so let us slow down and parse it a bit.

Yes, their decision is a bit puzzling at first glance.  They claim that some of their M rated games, like Madworld and House of the Dead: Overkill, sold as well as they expected, yet the failure of games like EA’s Dead Space: Extraction scares them.  Why be scared of someone else’s failure when your own product is doing “well enough” by your own standards? Because while small companies like Atlus build their business model around games that can keep them afloat with modest sales, Sega is (or pretends to be) a bigger entity that wants and needs bigger numbers.  In other words, what I am reading from Sega is that they could be a charity case, and take some risks for the sake of Wii owners, but they’d rather not.  →  It’s not you, it’s me.

It is no secret any more that many of us at videolamer are huge fans of Demon’s Souls.  Those of us who have played it would easily consider it one of the best games of the year, if not the best game on the PS3.  But our tastes in gaming do not always line up with the mainstream press, so we could only wonder how well the game would fare in the end of the year awards.  Surely it would win a few “Best RPG” or “Best PS3 game” trophies, but did it stand a chance at becoming the overall Game of the Year?  Apparently so.

According to an Atlus newsletter email, Demon’s Souls won gamecritics.com’s GOTY, as well as Gamespot’s.  In addition, it won three other awards from Gamespot, and nominated for two more.  Add in those a few wins in the aforementioned “Best RPG/PS3 game” categories, and it it appears that the little game that could fared as well as the biggest releases of the year. →  Reading more, assemble!

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

Resident Evil (2002)

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (2003)

Killer 7 (2005)

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (2005)

Contact (2006)

Electroplankton (2006)

Fallout 3 (2008)

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

And this doesn’t really count as the game doesn’t even come in a box,
but Braid (2008)

Yesterday, Final Fantasy VIII was uploaded to the Playstation Store. For just ten bucks, you too can relive one of the most controversial and most poorly regarded games in the franchise. I know I intend to.

My history with FF8 is long. My brother bought it at launch as one of many people who were swayed by the graphics alone (no offense intended bro. I’ve probably done triple the number of stupid things in my gaming life). He eagerly tore into it, and I followed shortly after with my own save. We both slowly crawled through the game, amazed by the visuals but struggling with each new challenge. He quit somewhere around disc 2, and I puttered out around the third. Looking back, I consider this an insane achievement, because we both got that far using GF summons almost exclusively during battle. Our characters were so weak, so poorly constructed, that no other attacks could do any meaningful damage. Imagine having to watch a GF summon animation at least once every random battle. →  Fear the old posts.

You are in an excellent position as the market leader in the gaming industry. The PlayStation 2 went from strength to strength and, with few exceptions from the enemy, had some of the best games ever created. Nintendo have frankly just given up on the Gamecube and the Xbox is really heavy. With a huge installed base and the future looking bright what do you do next?

There’s only one thing for it! Make the PlayStation 3. Go to 1
We’ve only just seen the true power of the PlayStation 2 with, of all things a Gamecube port. Let’s stick with it for a while. Go to 2

1) A good idea but disaster! Microsoft have announced a successor to the Xbox and it looks like they will get it to market before you. Do you:

– Fuck it. Hype the shit out a machine we haven’t thought about yet. Ours has got 14 USB ports and can link to up to 13 controllers. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

A few days ago I lost about five hours of time to the notoriously buggy Age of Empires DS. I’d waged a long war of attrition against the Taira and it was roughly round 80 when mid combat the game just froze. Majesco did put a piece of printing paper in the game’s case that warned of bugs, so really it was my own fault.

Ten minutes ago I got permanently stuck in Grandia for the PS1. A river of poison was just too magnetic for my four member party to escape and so no matter what direction I pushed, they simultaneously ran in place.

We have written about bugs and glitches many times before, but this time I have a solution. Not a useful, working or well thought out solution, but a solution none the less. Someone, preferably not me, needs to create an archive of game breaking bugs. It can be Wikipedia style and allow gamers worldwide up upload pictures of games being broken and heartbreaking tales of time lost to sloppy coding. →  PaReader the Reader

My newest Gamefly mailing was Tomb Raider Underworld, one of the only games on my queue that isn’t new and low in availability. I figured that if the last two Crystal Dynamics led TR games were solid, that they’d follow it up with another winner. Boy was I wrong.

It isn’t that Underworld is terrible. Just incredibly mundane, and in some ways a step back from Legend. Whereas that game was much more linear and straightforward than Tomb Raider usually is, Underworld edges back toward the large, mazelike environments of the old games, where you aren’t always sure of where to go (especially when backtracking), and sometimes the next route pops up in a place you could have swore was blocked off earlier. It isn’t quite as bad as it used to be, but it was nice to play Legend and know you didn’t have to climb up several floors because you missed a jump. The game is also incredibly dark, which makes sense considering the setting, but it also makes it more difficult to determine areas you can access and where you should jump (again, just like the old days). →  NiGHTS into REaDS

This is a transcript of a presentation I gave at the Women’s Institute last week.

In the ongoing, victimless, and utterly pointless console wars Capcom is America. It’s selling arms to everyone. Ammunition for all the fanboys to use on each other. Sure the Wii can’t do Dead Rising but then Zack and Wiki just wouldn’t work on the Xbox 360. HD is the only way to play Resident Evil 5 but then is there any greater pleasure than being able to carry around the entire original Resident Evil around on the DS? Science says no. So as the fanboys shoot each other down in flames Capcom continues to produce a stream of the greatest games that ever existed. So here are the reasons why I love Capcom.

Sure, we may all have our Capcom favourites. A Street Fighter fan here. A Resident Evil fan there but it’s only when we step back and take a look at the full spectrum one realises the full extent of Capcom’s awesomeness. →  Rule of Read

I realize Metacritic is more than a little unpopular, but despite all of the problems produced by its aggregate scores it still functions well as a convenient index of professional reviews, which is my reason for referencing it in this post.

Gears of War 2 — I came late to the party on the Gears of War franchise, but it still had a fairly active and large fanbase that kept the hype alive and is also what eventually convinced me to play it. When I finally started playing my expectations were set especially high, and thus I was especially shocked when I discovered exactly how much I disliked everything about it. This game was such an unenjoyable experience for me that I went on to write a review of my own.

Every single one of the ninety reviews listed on Metacritic is outstandingly positive.

Chrono Trigger — There are a lot of things about games that I like just because I like them. →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.