Review – The Sims 3

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The Sims 3 was released to the masses today (note: it is no longer today) and being the good little Sims whore that I am, I went to my local pixel merchant and picked up my copy. I am slightly surprised with myself because I have played through both sequels and every lame Stuff and Expansion pack they have crammed down my eager gullet, yet here I am, all hot and bothered to play the third iteration of this game. Having not played the game a great deal since I picked it up a few hours ago, I can’t say this article is a complete review of The Sims 3, more so a summary of my initial impressions of the game.

Slow install times for computer games are the bane of my existence. →  Read the rest

Metroidvanias and Me

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This past Sunday was spent almost entirely playing Symphony of the Night on my PSP.  It is rare these days for a game to grip me so much that I not only desire to spend my gaming time with it, but put aside other duties in order to make more gaming time.  Symphony was one of those experiences, and while I cannot afford to have them all of the time, it is nice to know they still exist.

That being said, I was surprised to see myself become so engaged with the game. On one hand, this statement is silly.   SOTN is one of the few modern classics where the gaming community’s opinion hasn’t greatly diminished after years of constant play and retrospective.  People still enjoy it a hell of a lot.  →  Read the rest

Thoughts on League of Legends

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For various reasons, many social, others masochistic, Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), the Warcraft 3 custom map, remains something I play frequently. All is not well in DOTA land, however, and I’m not talking about the fact that my friend Jimmy who I play with is a KSing coward. No, the bigger issue is that half of the DOTA managing community (functionally one guy) has split from the other half (another guy who does most of the programming) over a new game called League of Legends. I don’t really care about their breakup but it made for a catchy introduction to my League of Legends first thoughts.

League of Legends is the latest attempt by a stale gaming industry to build upon someone else’s idea, rather than come up with their own. →  Read the rest

A Brief Synopsis of How Playing EVE and Gangbanging in South Central L.A. Are Somewhat Similar….But Not Really

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Being from the largest city in Idaho, I have had a lot of experience with gangs. Most of this experience comes from playing GTA: San Andreas and living vicariously through the O.G.s from Wyoming that ride through Boise throwing up signs and representing the “Equality State”. Man, I wish my 2005 Toyota Matrix was half the ride that the 1979 Ford F250 is, but I digress. Other than gangs, my passion of the month has been EVE Online. Strangely, EVE and gangbanging have several things in common and knowing about how my bros in Cali do their “thang“ has actually helped me weather the steep learning curve that EVE presents to newcomers.

When a young blood starts out on the streets of L.A…or Cheyenne, he sees po po and 5-O everywhere. →  Read the rest

Unlocking Okami

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After owning it for two months, I finally started playing Okami in earnest. After six or so hours, I still feel the urge to continue, but I feel as if I already know the game all too well, and if I keep going it will only mean me abandoning the game later down the line. I always wondered why a game billed as a “Zelda clone” would end up being Clover’s most talked about release, but now it makes quite a bit of sense. I’ve got this one’s number.

First, Okami is easy. Now some may argue this point, especially if the game gets harder later on (I have heard that it does). But between dodging, blocking, recovery items and stat upgrades, I have all the tools I need to stay alive in battle, especially considering how small in scope the battles are. →  Read the rest

E3 to the Grave: Forgetting Good Old Games

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E3 has started. Some gamers are excited. Some gamers are jaded with it all. Either way, the lifecycle of many games will start this week. Almost. Well most of them were revealed, hinted at or leaked already. So this is games at their birth. First comes hype, then months of reveals, then reviews then bam! Japan gets the game. Then America. Then Australia. Then most of Europe. Then the UK. This is the beginning of a lifecycle for a game. But what happens at the end? When the game has been played by millions? Bizarrely it appears they dissapear from sight, only resurfacing on the second hand market. Don’t believe me? Check the official sites for Nintendo, Capcom, Microsoft games, Sony, Ubisoft. Mostly filler sites at best with the rare piece of news before Kotaku gets it. →  Read the rest

Review: UFC 2009 Undisputed

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For the past few days at my house there has been a severe outbreak of Black-on-Black crime. I am not proud of this. I worry about my future, about everyone’s future. It is already getting worse. The violence once contained to just certain groups is already spreading. Asian-on-Black. White-on-Hispanic. Brazilian-on-Canadian. It is a rainbow of sadistic beatings spanning all ages and continents. The fights do not stop. The battles grow with each passing day.

I am more than a little ashamed to admit that my descent into an anarchic world of ultraviolence has brought me so much joy. All of these things, you see, are not happening in my head this time. Instead, they are happening on my television screen. They are happening inside of a game. A game clumsily titled UFC 2009 Undisputed. →  Read the rest

The Four Things I Would Like to See at E3 But Won’t

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In the small world of my mind there are essentially three things that put my imagination into overdrive. First and foremost, any kind of holocaust involving zombies or nukes. Second, any kind of holocaust involving me winning stupid amounts of money. And third, video game conventions/trade shows. Twice a year I get to dream of what wondrous gaming splendors await me when E3 and TGS roll around and twice a year I get to be disappointed by 95% of what gets announced. I have already concluded that this year will be no different but I can still dream of what would make me extremely happy if it were announced.

1. EA Announces That The 2010 Series of Sports Games Will Be The Last and Any Future Updates Will Come in the Form of Downloadable Content

Like most people reading this, I am not the biggest sports fan in the world. →  Read the rest

Renaming video games – I propose “vidcon”

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Video Games. What ideas or images flashed into your head when you read that phrase? Were they memories of yourself spending quarters at an arcade machine? Or maybe spending hours behind of a Guitar Hero drum set. Maybe you’re a typical parent who thinks of an evil device that erodes your children’s brains and turns them into head-shooting Nintendo-worshiping zombies. Or maybe you are one of those zombies and that phrase brought back all the great times you spent killing virtual people.

Okay let’s get serious, video games deserve the same respect any other entertainment medium has. They may have not had their Citizen Kane yet, but we’re all sure that point is not too far away, maybe in the year 2016 or so. If video games are one of mankind’s greatest creative and technological achievements, why does their very name carry so much negative baggage? →  Read the rest

Review – Earth Defense Force 2017

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Japanese firm Sandalot’s third person shooter, published in the West by D3 in 2007, Earth Defense Force 2017 is a 50s style sci-fi, seen through an 80s lens, set in 2017.

When they came to Earth in 2017 with their flying saucers and their spherical mother ship, we were not sure what to expect. We hoped they would be peaceful and friendly. We named them the Ravagers and then… hold on, hold on – we named them Ravagers before they attacked? Yes, yes we did. It’s almost like we were spoiling for a fight.

So the saucers dropped giant ants and spiders on our cities and the battle began in earnest. The Earth Defense Force is tasked with taking on the most ridiculous and inexplicable hordes of invaders imaginable. Along with the giant insects and the saucers and the mothership, there are small aerial fighters, a giant mechanical dinosaur and large robotic walkers. →  Read the rest

Review – Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars – The Director’s Cut

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The Knights Templar were an order of Christian soldiers from western Europe who gathered substantial influence and wealth during the Crusades. Many were tortured and/or executed in France in the early 14th century, primarily because King Philip of France owed them money and felt it was more expedient to kill them and disband the order than it was to pay. Of course, he did this under the pretense that they were not in fact true Catholics but rather practitioners of any number of bizarre rituals. As a result of these probably false accusations, their previous military prowess and influence, and the massive fortune they acquired through donations and the early bank-like system they developed, the story of the Knights took on mythic proportions.
Just like in real life.

Unfortunately, they are also an overused trope in movies and pop literature, either as grand puppeteers that actually rule the world from behind the scenes, or as the source of some treasure beyond all of our wildest dreams. →  Read the rest

The Greatest Story Ever Told

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Books. They are good at stories right? But books are cheating because the imagination does half the work. The written word allows for a great number of freedoms that other media have yet to gain (parenthetical comments only work in writing). Films? Not so hot. In fact quite rubbish. Even the greatest films are totally inept at dealing with the big issues or telling good stories without the overuse of coincidence or predictability (take for example the new ‘Crash’, ohhhh I didd no dat racism was so complex them shits is deep).

Books and movies are over. Done. A new form of storytelling is here and it is a game. Not games in general, you understand, because games couldn’t tell a story if the whole industry depended on it. RPGs get over this by telling stories that are so long that your mind condenses all the bullshit bits – like talking to dogs or statues or boring cutscenes – into a story that seems to make sense. →  Read the rest

Review – Patapon

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I bought Patapon at launch, played for a week straight, and got to the third boss, a giant sandworm. After countless failed attempts, I put the game away for over a year, until Patapon 2 was released in 2009. Naturally, I could have just skipped to the sequel, especially considering the attractiveness of its new difficulty settings, until I learned that you can import some materials from the original. I finally learned just how to “play” Patapon, and suffice to say that the game is not only original, but highly deceptive.

If you are to succeed at this game, and by succeed I mean “win at all costs” rather than “handily”, you will need the following:

– A sense of rhythm that doesn’t falter under pressure. This is necessary not only to execute any commands, but also to keep your troops in Fever mode, in which their effectiveness increases dramatically. →  Read the rest

If we all work together, we might just get out of this thing alive

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Things have changed. Co-Op is now a big deal in the world of games, and, as ever, there is an exact moment at which a well-informed observer such as myself can point and say “this, this is where the trend started.” Imagine there’s a timeline projected on the wall, and I’m probably wearing a suit, and with a laser pointer I confidently direct your attention to Halo: Combat Evolved, way back in 2001.

That’s right, before Halo there was literally no such thing as Co-Operative campaign mode.

Okay, fine, so that’s not strictly true. Or true in any sense. But Halo arguably marks the start of Co-Op gaming moving into the mainstream so that today, as we stand here in 2009, you literally can’t walk over a pile of games without tripping over one that has a Co-Operative mode. →  Read the rest

Review – Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland

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Tingle is a range of stylized sexual enhancements from Durex, defined by creating a tingling sensation during coitus. The tingling sensation is derived from mint extract. It comes in two distinct forms: condoms and an water-based lube. The sexual enhancer lube has received some criticism as the tingling sensation has received negative reviews when used internally.

You see what I did there? I made a joke. You see, I am reviewing a DS game called “Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland” which of course features the unwelcome addition to the Zelda series, Tingle. But, and this is the crux of the joke, Durex (www.durex.com) also have a brand called “Tingle”. Oh, the hilarity.

Right, so, this “game” starts with Tingle’s journey to becoming Tingle, and his quest to get into “Rupeeland” where, and get this, women will touch him. →  Read the rest

Review – Rise of the Argonauts

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I’m not really sure what I think of Rise of the Argonauts. On one hand, the game suffers from some poor design choices that can really slow the pace to an insufferable crawl and frustrate the player immensely … so I wouldn’t recommend it. On the other hand, the exciting combat sequences, engrossing story, fine voice acting and art direction made the game quite enjoyable … so I’d totally recommend it.

On another hand, the developer calls this game an RPG, which it totally isn’t. Yeah, you can choose new abilities and change your outfits, but both aspects are so limited that you can’t really call it a full-blown RPG … so we’re back to not recommending it again (for RPG players). And on the final hand, that limiting of options actually works in the game’s favor, because coupling intricate inventory management with sometimes slow story progression would kill this thing outright … so is that a plus? →  Read the rest

Review – Killzone 2

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When I was first thinking about how to approach my review of Killzone 2’s campaign, I thought I could write up a sizable spreadsheet detailing all the cliches and tropes stolen from other games and films. Thankfully, I realized the errors of such an idea. The problem with the game wasn’t that it was using cliches and silly names. Plenty of other shooters do the same and are forgiven. No, the problem was that Killzone 2 was breaking one of my primary sins of game design – it made me feel like I was wasting my time. I began thinking not of the action at hand, but what else I could be doing during my time after work. I soldiered on simply for the purpose of review, which in turn led to my putting a magnifying glass on every little piece of creative laziness, even if it technically got the job done. →  Read the rest