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My Life as a Hermitic King

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Around day 100 or so it starts to become painfully clear that playing My Life as a King consists of little more than assigning spreadsheet characters to spreadsheet dungeons. As this understanding of the game mechanics slowly dawned on me, I began to go to bed earlier each day (virtual king me, not real me).

Calling Chime in every morning to put me back to sleep after I had finished running to the sign post and assigning every adventurer to the open behest I was met with the question, “Are you tired already, sire?” At first I felt like an emperor who had come down with mononucleosis.

This gave way to my recitation of the few lines of Macbeth’s soliloquy I still recall. →  It’s not you, it’s me.

Bad Company, good reviews for EA?

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Recently I played the single player demo of Battlefield: Bad Company. While opinions on the single player may be worthless for a game that everyone is anticipating for its multiplayer, such excuses don’t fly here at vl.

The fact is that Bad Company’s SP is the worst kind of worthless. It is a squad based military shooter with a four man group of cliches, and finicky aiming that comes nowhere near replicating Call of Duty 4’s smooth controls. It touts destructible environments, but my mortar rounds were never able to put a dent in any buildings, though running over a fence with a cargo truck makes it break apart in the most unrealistic, tech demo way.

Worse yet, in the demo level your squad won’t leave the truck you drive until you get to a destination marker, which places you in the middle of a town where every enemy can open fire on you. →  I’d rather die than not read this article!

Playing catch up – River City Ransom

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In my attempt to rectify my mostly Nintendo-less childhood I have been purchasing Virtual Console games at an unhealthy rate. Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World both lived up to their legendary reputations so I was excited to finally try River City Ransom (ignore that it’s slightly less popular and on a different console from the other two).

River City Ransom’s similarities to Double Dragon are obvious and I am proud to say it took about a second for me to figure out how to jump kick. (A and B at the same time for all you losers who haven’t played the exact same games as I have). The move set does seem somewhat pared down, though – is it actually possible to headbutt or elbow in River City Ransom? →  May God smite me if I stop reading here!

Tales From Behind The Counter – A Time of Loathing

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When working in retail there is one time of year you dread above all others: the holidays. It means angry customers with no time and no money, pissed off that they have to brave ice covered roads and bumper car parking lots instead of being gleeful and warm in the comfort of their own homes. In video game retail land, there is one other time that I have come to regard in the same way I would a diagnosis of colon cancer: EA Sports Game Release season. Also called, the Unholidays, with a long e sound on that i.

During this time, Electronic Arts decides to rain shit from the sky in the form of a new NCAA everything, new Madden, new baseball whatever, and [shudder] Nascar 09. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

Peripheral Disdain

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Hate Goes HERE

My girlfriend is pretty solid into Mario Kart. This was made clear to me when we started dating, that any attempt to usurp her Mario Kart dominance would be met with pure and unfettered force; the kind you would expect from the core of an exploding sun.

Not one to back down to that sort of challenge, I wrapped up my attempt at her throne in a pretty bow and gave it to her, a shit eating grin slapped on, for her birthday along with Mario Kart Wii and an additional wheel. This additional wheel, it was for me. For me to use to kick her ass.

Before you lose your dork-load trying to tell me how amazing the GC controller is and how lame we are to be using the wheel it should be mentioned that her golden path of pwnership was swathed wide with a wavebird, and that these wheels we got – we got them for fun. →  Read me now, believe me later.

….Metal Gear?

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Folks, it’s that time of the month. No not that; the monthly blockbuster is out. Hot off the heels of GTA IV, Metal Gear Solid 4 gives PS3 users a reason to rejoice. It also makes a hell of an excuse for me to finally pick up a PS3. I’m not going to get into the story, but suffice to say it was a bit of a trial to save for and obtain the console, culminating in a fairly easy pickup at the local Walmart early Thursday morning.

It feels good to welcome a new console into the house, and it will mean vl can get more PS3 reviews on the site. Perhaps I will write a bit about the console’s user experience, though I doubt anyone cares. →  Final Fantasy Mystic Post

Translate your damn sites

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Ever been to your favorite developer’s website only to find out you can’t read it (assuming your favorite developers are exactly the same as mine), not because of the onset of Sudden Illiteracy Syndrome (SIS) but because it’s in an entirely incomprehensible-scribble-based language?

Head over to Camelot’s official site and be in awe of how much cool content they have – little bios on each of the Takahashi brothers, a map to their office (or perhaps buried treasure), in-depth pages on the entire Shining series. Now realize it’s all in accursed Japanese and you will never, ever be able to read it (EVER). Staff interviews, questions and answers, and Golden Sun pages are all hidden behind abstruse kanji and katakana, hiding their secrets from us like a ninja with a secret…and a sword! →  Knock knock. Who’s there? This article.

Apple and Agents (of the Elite Beat variety)

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The Apple/Nintendo rumor mill has existed for a few years now, usually popping up quarterly or biannually with either a rumor about the two companies, or simple posturing about them. This leads to armies of geeks believing a merger is imminent, even though there is no proof or even any grumblings from either company about it. People simply look at how similar the two companies are, and somehow put two and two together (even if there is nothing to put together).

But maybe we are getting smarter about this inane trend. This time around, Forbes looks at how the iPhone might kill the Nintendo DS. The article cites the iPhone’s touch screen and accelerometer abilities as combining the features of the Wii and the DS. →  Shadow of Read

My First Import

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As much as I love this hobby, the truth is I have never bought import games before. I’ve been given one (as seen in picture), and played quite a few, but never did I lay out my own cash. The main problem was finding a way to play them. I just didn’t want to spend extra money for a Japanese console/fliptop/Freeloader disc in addition to premium price for the game itself. As for the Dreamcast, I didn’t realize its import friendliness until it was too late. It hasn’t been much of a hindrance, as localizations for worthy games have become more common (even for fighters).

This weekend I finally brought home my first import game, Salamander Portable. It was a nice and easy choice. →  Ratchet & Read

Another design mechanic that should die – Remaining lives

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This one has been on my mind lately after finishing the New Super Mario Bros. game on the DS. The little icon reminding you how many Marios remain with which to complete the rest of the game remains ever present. I guess it’s there because, well, it’s always been there, and this is a game about pulling some strings of nostalgia.

What happens when you run out of Marios? You get a screen that asks if you want to continue playing from your last save point. If the ‘penalty’ for running out of lives is the exact same thing that would happen if the user just turns the machine off perhaps you should rethink why, exactly, you are going to the trouble and expense of putting it there in the first place. →  You think about everything.