These days, it does not take much to get a 3rd person, cover based action game greenlighted for production. Do you have some sort of licensed property to link it to? Then you’re golden! But if you really want to spice it up, find a property that has some sort of silly gimmick for you to work with. That will help justify having the publisher spend millions (and the consumer $60) on a disposable six hour experience. This is exactly the kind of mentality behind Wanted: Weapons of Fate, the tie in game to 2008’s Angelina Jolie vehicle developed by recently defunct developer GriN. In such a crowded genre, Weapons of Fate likes to think of itself as being different and better from the rest, similarly to its source material, this is nothing more than a case of self delusion. → Fear the old posts.
Golden Jew’s Nuggets of Wisdom #5
My initial thoughts of the DS, complete with its Nintendo Gimmick Stylus, was that it was a Junior Pokemon Power Ranger Machine (my affectionate nickname for the Wii that drives Jay up the wall). I had no desire to draw rainbows (for fear of pissing off these people) or successfully masturbate a virtual cat into ejaculation with a stylus, so the DS didn’t seem right for me. Of course, with a $200-ish pricetag and no games I like I didn’t seem like a PSP person either. I thought that my next generation future was the same as my high school prom future: bathroom abortion baby. Or more accurately, being date-less.
Then I started finding good RPG games on the DS. → A delayed article is eventually good, a rushed article is all we post.
Review – Personal Nightmare
There once was a time where games were designed to ease the player into the gameplay, get him addicted, and then proceed to murder him. This was naturally because the games could only be sustained through a diet of quarters, and demanding a constant flow of money from addicted players was the most effective way to separate a gamer from his cash. Games today have the liberty to come in a lot of forms and sustain themselves in many different ways, so that cliché difficulty curve isn’t used so often anymore. Personal Nightmare, for example, simply murders the player right off the bat.
Personal Nightmare was made by Horrorsoft, creators of Waxworks (which I reviewed previously). Both inhabit the very specific niche genre commonly called “survival horror,” although they existed before that term was coined. → All the lonely gamers, where do they all belong?
The Six Hour Rule
Great game, great graphics, good story, co-op mode, online play but only 10 hours long. Or words to that effect. I’ve seen a number of reviews that say something about the relatively short length of a game being negative despite the fact that the game, considered too short by the reviewer, would probably take me months if not years to actually play through.
How long is too long? What do we mean by length? How much weight should reviewers put on the price-point/length-of-game ratio in deciding whether or not a game should be recommended? The Ram Raider has a nice article about price point considerations which is what prompted me to think about how long a game takes and about getting old. → Postsona 3 FES
A Farewell to (Wild) Arms
One of the first RPGs to land on the Playstation in 1997 was an unassuming, Old West-inspired game by the name of Wild Arms. Though it never managed to compete with more mainstream series, it has a greatness all its own; with a solid difficulty balance, a variety of puzzles, and a plot that dwells more on loneliness and a decaying world than on long-haired villains or a large but irrelevant main cast, I consider it one of the best RPGs on the system.
In the past couple weeks, the news got out that Akifumi Kaneko, the lead designer and scenario writer for the entire Wild Arms series, left Media.Vision in 2008. This came a couple years after Michiko Naruke, who had been the primary composer for the first four games, had stopped working on the series due to illness. → Welcome to read.
Breaking: Old news and images from canceled Suda game
Being a game journalist is hard. From thinking of sensational headlines to figuring out how to post rumors as truth, the pressure to deliver stories whether they exist or not can be crushing. Luckily there is a web forum called NeoGAF that any reputable journalist can use as a primary source without that pesky “old man journalist” idea of citing sources.
A poster on NeoGAF believed he found new information about an old Suda51 project for the PS3 that Edge magazine profiled years ago. Other forum members, being significantly more discerning than game journalists, realized this was old news, mocked the poster and then moderators locked the thread.
Instead of ending there, as a simple mistake by an excited fan on a web forum, the news was picked up by multiple outlets. → Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.
Review – Hearts of Iron III
Paradox Interactive is becoming known in the innermost of hardcore gaming circles as “the only grand strategy gaming company left on earth,” a level of praise earned by their constant desire to take giant swaths of history and make games out of it. Instead of reading this, you could in fact be playing what we insiders call the “unnecessary gauntlet” of grand strategy gaming: repeating all of human history from 200 BC to 1956, the last moment in history that needs to be covered because Eisenhower’s presidency is the absolute pinnacle of mankind’s achievement. Year by year, hour by hour. No, Paradox Interactive doesn’t cheat like Firaxis, doesn’t do things like assigning one turn of gameplay a five year value in world time. → Games are the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
Graphics: When more is less
What makes books so compelling? Lots of things, but one important facet is the ability of words, mere signifiers, to incite incredible images inside a reader’s brain. Few games encourage this, with their fancy polygons and all, but the same principle exists in them, whether it’s intentional or not.
 |
|
|
When I first loaded Pokemon Red Version it was immediately obvious that the graphics were limited, or, to put it in nicer terms, pixelated representations of reality. Translating the sprites into concrete objects was something my brain had to acquire a taste for. I clearly remember not being able to find the exit of Ash’s home, and eventually learning that a certain rectangle on the floor represented the welcome mat and the door was off-screen from that. → Welcome to the Fantasy Zone.
Review – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a strong candidate for the title of “most beloved exclusive in the early days of the PS3”. While this can, in part, be attributed to the lack of competition, there were also plenty of good words said about its quality. I believed them, but any number of screenshots suggested that the game hemmed close to the Tomb Raider mold of exploration and action. Not a bad comparison per se, but the best I can say about Tomb Raider: Legend and Anniversary were that they were worth playing through, though they were certainly not the best releases on any console. Uncharted would have to do more to earn its title.
The reality of the game is that it doesn’t stray from the above description. → Virtua Poster 4: Evolution
Review – Animal Crossing Wild World
Animal Crossing isn’t a game. It’s a career. A vocation, a mini alternative life. You could educate a child with it and it would turn out OK. It teaches you everything you need to know about the real world. It teaches you the importance of money, shows you the true value of patience, punishes you for lying, and when characters move out of your town it’s an important lesson about the harsh realities of bereavement in adult life. Freckles is gone, Timothy, she’s gone to another town very far away and she’s never coming back.
 |
|
|
It’s not a game, it’s a job. You HAVE to collect your fruit to begin with, else you can’t afford the cool furniture. You HAVE to keep fishing, else you might miss a rare fish. → Snap! Crackle! Read!