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Tales From Behind The Counter – The Long Joystick of the Law

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Last night I achieved a sales goal that I don’t think will ever be topped by another mortal.

It was a quiet evening and my boss, Jason, and I were being good little worker bees. Alphabetizing and sorting titles, rearranging aisles, trying to restructure the layout of my store so that it may actually generate a couple of bucks profit. One of our big tasks of the night had been to weed the crappy and older games from the shelves and make a bargain bin of marked down titles that was placed prominently in front of the door so would-be customers had to walk right past it. Both of us were sitting on the floor of our empty and serene establishment when the front door burst open and two police officers rushed into the building, hands on guns and tasers. →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Add to the pile

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My old college friend is coming to visit this weekend. What does this have to do with videolamer you ask?

He’s bringing his copy of Mass Effect for me to borrow for an indefinite amount of time. That means yet another person gets to weight in his opinion about this RPG.

I warn you; I haven’t been a fan of most of Bioware’s work, save for the games that also had Black Isle stamped on it. That includes Knights of the Old Republic. I’m wary about how much I will enjoy Mass Effect, but I will give it a fair shake, as I’m always up for being proven wrong. If I still don’t like it, I won’t go saber rattling about it. I still will discuss it, which could lead to a massive, 61 comment debate that will be the first true entry in the Hall of Lame. →  Postgaea 2: Cursed Memories

You have to Burn the Rope

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By now you might have heard of You Have to Burn the Rope, the flash game which will become a new phenomenon for some time to come (though likely nowhere near the likes of Portal). I’m not sure how this sits with me, because I’m not sure people understand the game. Or perhaps I don’t understand it.

What I mean is that there is really nothing to understand about it. It is an incredibly simple, completely straightforward 30 second boss fight. Why are there video walkthroughs and FAQs and speedruns? Because every game, no matter how big or small, seems to attract this kind of attention and scrutiny. Is it stupid? Hell yes, as stupid as it is that so many other games are treated as such. Sure we could do without the creators and their friends trying to be so cute and clever, but the fact that we will likely see 50 or so similar guides from people who also wish to be cute and clever is even sadder. →  50 Cent: Readproof

Metal Gear Solid: The Settle Collection

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As the PS2 winds down, it has become quite popular to release cheap three game collections for it. Until now, the best one out there was the Devil May Cry pack, but now it has been usurped by Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection. With the first three MGS games for $30, this is the perfect way for MGS newbies to experience the series before it signs off with its fourth and final entry. Whether it is worth it for long time fans is a tougher question to answer, as this package is shy from perfect.

The content is the toughest question. Metal Gear Solid comes in a nice DVD case, but is the original Playstation pressing, meaning you will need a PS1 memory card. Annoying, but you can’t really ask them to recode a budget release. →  Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatarticle

Tales From Behind The Counter – Come One, Come all! Hear my tales of Mystery and Excitement!

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Welcome to the inaugural release of my new and (hopefully) weekly column. Since returning to America, I have found myself short on cash and pretty much willing to do anything for a buck or two. Yes, I have even tried to sell my body but for some reason or another, most prospective customers frown upon my “by the pound, by the hour” pricing scheme. This lack of cash and abundance of free time meant that I spent a lot of time hanging out with my friend who works at a small video game shop close to my house. Well lets be real honest, it isn’t my house, it’s my parents’ house and I live in the basement.

One night my friend and I were talking while there was a lull in customers tooling around the shop and it came up that if I was going to hang out with her at the video game shop, I may as well be getting paid for it. →  To be this lame takes ages.

Online play – the kids aren’t alright

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Gamasutra recently posted an article about how annoying people in online play may very well be hurting sales. Regardless of whether this is a stretch, any discussion from developers about the problem of griefers is welcome. Like it or not, multiplayer features are becoming critical to the success of a game, so it is important to see those making them look at the issues that surround providing a good online experience. Otherwise all those Gamespot reviews that call for multiplayer everything start to look even sillier.

The more I play Call of Duty 4, the more I notice the trends among idiotic players. Among your older players, the supposed majority of the gaming world, you get your typical racists, wanna be gangsters, and so on. The most annoying of the bunch, the people who frequently teamkill, spam the voice channel, and use foul language and racial slurs until the words lose all meaning, seem to be in the 18 and under crowd. →  Silent Post 2

Banjo Kazooie – Does Anyone Care?

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The answer to the title is “no” – no one cares about the new Banjo Kazooie that is likely to be released. Let us break down the modern history of Rare.

Star Fox Adventures – stuck so close to the Zelda formula I’m not sure why they bothered.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies – I almost forgot this one.

Kameo – Less memorable than the PS2 launch titles

Perfect Dark Zero – The biggest joke so far this generation.

Viva Pinata – I did forget about this one. Let’s just say it launched with a cartoon from 4kids Entertainment. They knew what they were doing all along.

Rare has not been relevant in years, and I think has been a good thing for gaming. It means we have not been subjugated to insane amounts of item collecting and character names based on bad puns and stereotypes. →  Some say the world will end in fire, some say in read more

Something old, new, recycled and blue

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I’ve decided to condense two potential blog posts into one topic, as they are both somewhat similar in nature. I should do this more often, as it seems to force me to take my almost article length ramblings and cut them down into something readable. A win for all.

Some time ago Jay wrote a discussion on Mario and how he is anything but a throwaway character. Interesting then that a “games editor” at Softpedia (a site which I have only known before as a place where I failed to get working drivers) has claimed that mascots like Mario and Sonic should be locked up in a museum and never put into another game, starting right this minute. His reasoning is that they are old and stale, and offer nothing new to the gaming table, hurting the industry more than helping. →  Final Post VII

Random Old Game – Drakkhen

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There are few games that can inspire a sense of true exploration – a feeling of awe at how large or detailed they are. Fewer still are the games that can bring out that feeling even after you’ve beaten them. For some reason, despite being only a so-so game in nearly every other respect, Drakkhen (of a few systems, though most notably the SNES) still holds uncounted mysteries in my mind.
Seems fair.

The most likely source of this awe is simply that the game is so abominably random. I never owned the instruction book, and the introduction only gives vagaries as to the plot (blah blah, 4 elements, 2 poles of power). Fact is, you create a party and start in the middle of the Earth area with little direction. →  Densha de Read! Shinkansen

Echochrome Demo impressions

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Thanks to their simple file format, getting Japan only PSP demos is a snap. Thank goodness, because that means you can play the three level demo of Echochrome without hassle.

EXCITING!

The experience is quite interesting, but I am not completely sold. The stylings are nice and simple – an absolute bare minimal interface, simple levels and constantly looping string music make this the closest thing to therapeutic gaming. Despite the Japanese text, the controls are easy to learn; you can make your stick figure avatar either move faster along the terrain, or stop to “think”, giving you time to do the same. The D-pad of course allows you to rotate the world, which is the mechanic used to solve all the puzzles.

How well does said mechanic fare? It isn’t easy to say from the demo. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.