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Clueless Gaijin – Phantasy Star Portable

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Sony’s PSP has proven that if there’s one thing that the Japanese love, its Monster Hunter Portable. Seeking to capitalize on the success of this absolute sensation, Sega’s finally ported a version of Phantasy Star over to the device. It’s funny, back when the PSP was announced; I felt that Phantasy Star Online, a game that at the time was dominating my free time without a shred of mercy, would have been a perfect fit for the newly conceived handheld.

Years later I get a mildly skewed version of my wish in the form of what amounts to Phantasy Star Universe on a handheld. For those keeping score, Phantasy Star Universe was a largely uninspired sequel to PSO featuring a forgettable story mode, needlessly complicated coop play, cumbersome equipment creation system, and a criminally bad theme song. →  Are you ready for some readball?

id Super Pack

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This weekend, Steam is having a half off sale on all id Software games. That means you can get classics like the Commander Keen series for less than the price of a Starbucks latte. If you really want to be thorough, the id Super Pack is also part of the sale, meaning for 35 bucks you can get every Doom, Quake 1-3, Wolfenstein, Heretic and Hexen. Its a ton of games for a sweet price, and no matter how little or lot I have played some of these games, I realized I haven’t paid much for the id games I have played. It was time to salute this fine company, as well as get a huge chunk of FPS history in one convenient location. →  Tony Hawk’s Posting Ground

Clueless Gaijin – Kenzan

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So there I was, in Japan, wandering about in the gamer’s wonderland that is Akihabara. I had purchased a PS3 shortly before my trip, planning to make use of the device’s lack of region coding to return triumphantly with all manner of bizarre import games and blu-ray anime.

Things did not go as planned.

It seems that anime on blu-ray will set you back well over $80 per disk and the PS3 has yet to receive the influx of “oh, that shit is so crazy that it’s NEVER coming out in the US” titles.

But they did have Kenzan.

Kenzan is a pseudo-sequel (maybe prequel?) to Sega’s critically acclaimed, albeit not tremendously successful Yakuza series. This time taking place in the 1600s and putting you in the shoes of an identical-looking ancestor (Sega laughs in the face of basic genetics!) →  God of War: Readnarok

To the music folder!

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I am a big fan of game music, specifically old chip tunes. Anyone who only hears bleeps and bloops is willfully ignoring melody, harmony and rhythm and stupidly focusing only on timbre. Games with “real” soundtracks don’t excite me the same way old game tunes do. I already have access to real music.

More importantly, I have this theory that old game music is very close to metal (the music, not material that readily loses electrons in order to form positive ions). Game music was predominately a force compelling you onward and thus was often fast, driving and even possibly relentless. And like my favorite metal, my favorite game tunes are often display virtuosity (check out Medusa’s Phantasy Star track).

As games became more complicated and technology improved, we were offered scores with wider variety and this led to less metal influence as well as a loss off something intangible. →  You fool. Don’t you understand? No one wishes to read on…

Rearmed and Ready – Are you?

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Bionic Commando: Rearmed is now out in all intended formats. If you have one of these formats, and you love the challenge and the feel of classic 2d games, I hope you have it already. If you don’t, might I suggest you give it a download? Until Mega Man 9 hopefully rocks our socks, this is the best thing to come around this year for retro enthusiasts, except for maybe Space Invaders Extreme or Bangai-O Spirits. I don’t want to go too far into discussion (save that for the review!), but suffice it to say that this is a remake that gets it. It feels right, both old and new, careful and bold. Its the kind of game where just seeing it in action makes me happy. →  I regret learning to read.

Big Tuesday Blog Post

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Initially this post was going to be about one topic, but several other things have come up that warrant discussion. Let us begin!

– Yahoo! Music is closing its doors. You probably never used Yahoo music, but it was big enough to warrant some sponsorships with Pepsi in the past, and worked as both an iTunes style store and a Rhapsody style subscription service. Strangely enough, the remains of the service will be merged with Rhapsody.

Meanwhile the DRM keys used to play music purchased from Yahoo will be going away, forcing Yahoo to give refunds – though the details are flaky as hell for subscribers.

The lesson here? These same dangers are a threat to gaming. Digital downloads are getting more and more popular, and for good reason. →  Disaster Readport

E3 games you may have missed

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We’ve all been beaten over the head with Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5, Resistance 2, and the like for days now, but here are a few gems waiting just below the surface that really got my attention this past E3.

Dead Space
At first, Dead Space may look like a paint by numbers imitation of games like System Shock 2, but after taking a closer look, I’m really enjoying the direction this game is taking. Dead Space adopts a HUDless over the shoulder camera, and outfits its protagonist, the lone survivor on a derelict spacecraft now inhabited by malevolent creatures, with weapons improvised from the ship’s mining equipment.

The trailer brings to mind films like Event Horizon, which, while not being a particularly good example of film (OK, it sucked), certainly had its share of intense and disturbing imagery. →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

Riding the FAQ train

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While they’re called “walkthroughs,” I’ve always been under the impression that very few gamers actually “walk through,” point by point, every single bit of advice and strategy that exists in these documents. Since I have a profound belief in the desire of humans to be lazy and cheat their way through life, I of course realize that there are some people who do just that; getting every magical item and NPC not through the joyous act of discovery, but the ponderous reading of, and then reacting to, an online how-to guide.

However, I never thought I’d see what I noticed today. A man, adorned in a marginally ridiculous dark suit & bright orange tee-shirt, reading (actually, more like studying) his printed-out f.a.q →  We have the best words.

I fought the law and the law won – Tactics A2

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I picked up Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift the other day and was initially very pleased to be playing it. I missed out on Tactics Advance on the GBA, but I am a longtime fan of the original. With about a hojillion classes, and the weapon-based learning system of FF9 (my personal favorite) I was immediately hooked.

But those details can wait for the full review. What I want to talk about is the law system. For those of you who haven’t yet played a portable Tactics, the law system is a mechanic that assigns a “law” to every battle. The laws aren’t your usual “no killing your neighbor” or “no raping your neighbor’s dog.” Instead they’re more Ivalice-relevant “no use of fire spells” or “no magic restoration items.” →  Readius III and IV

Revolution… in reviewing?

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Civilization Revolution is about to hit US game store shelves. What separates this game from the horde of other games coming out on consoles is the record amount of bugs in a console game. I kid, I kid. What it does bring to the table is an adaption of the incredibly deep PC-based Civilization series, and from initial reviews and demo play Civ Rev is sleek enough for consoles without sacrificing the Civilization flavor.

It’s rare that a developer makes a platform jump like this, and even more so when they alter an existing franchise successfully. Naturally, Civ Rev is far from perfect, but it seems (at least based on initial reviews) that this jump was successful and it’s a fun game with reasonable single player appeal and a strong multiplayer mode. →  Jesus: Readful Bio Monster