Discs based gaming and you – Luddites and grognards

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I have something to admit. It will sound strange in this day and age, but I still get a bit weirded out playing games on optical media.

It really makes no sense, considering just how long I have been popping discs into trays to get my game on. My reasons are a combination of upbringing and perception, and if you’re bored or curious, I’d like to share them with you.

Reason One – Music

Very early on, when CD’s were becoming mainstream, I was young enough to make the false assumption that they were like cassettes and vinyl before them, intended only for playing music. Of course, young Christian had never played with a computer using a tape drive, so I was wrong on two accounts. In any case, thinking of a CD as a storage medium rather than as a vessel for music took a little while, but I came around eventually.

Reason Two – I’m a computer guy

The one place that I have never felt weird about using CD’s for non musical purposes was the PC. →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.

PS1 games you may have missed: The RPGs

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As you all may be aware, Sony is finally picking up the software side of backwards compatibility for its shiny new system.

Since the PS3 doesn’t have any good RPGs or strategy games of its own yet, I would like to take this opportunity to recommend a few rare games that may actually be compatible with the PS3 by now.

I won’t lie; some of these games are inordinately expensive by used-game standards. But even the most expensive doesn’t cost twice as much as a new PS3 game.

My intent with this is to show you all that the PSX was, in some ways, an incredible system; it may not have had the sturdy character of the N64, but even though I am fascinated with obscurity, I hadn’t heard of several of these games a few years ago – well after the PS2 had taken over.

Revelations: Persona and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Since Persona 3 came out (I have been playing it much of the last month), it seems appropriate that the two predecessors that made it to North America be on this list. →  SaGa 3: Shadow or Write

SDF-1: Sony Defense Force was obviously a joke

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Let’s talk about Sony Defense Force. The site has been a constant source of humor for myself and other Lamer staff for a few weeks now. Apparently the site PS3Tag did some “detective work” that amounted to looking at the properties of a “whois”, and now the site has been “found”. Kotaku commenters are chiming in about how they “thought it was a hoax” or “they should lose readership because of this”, as well as complimenting for the work PS3tag did.

I am going to borrow a line from my god Ken Levine, and ask you all to kill yourselves.

I can understand if you were uncertain about the meaning of SDF when it originally launched. I can barely accept your puzzled looks when they launched a forum that had almost no PS3 discussion whatsoever, and even talked about the 360 with excitement.

But when they’ve had a link to Major Nelson for several days now, how the hell does it not click? →  To be this lame takes ages.

Dreamcast Mania! – Overrated games

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What better way to wrap up our celebration of the Dreamcast than by killing it off? In my final entry in this series, I’m going to do what I do best – slaughter some sacred cows. Not all of them are at the top of many Dreamcast gamer’s lists (and some certainly are), but at the very least these were well respected games that I found to be severely lacking.

Grandia 2 – I absolutely loved Grandia 2 when I first played it. But I’m an older and wiser gamer, and I don’t think you could ever get me to touch this one again. When people so vigorously defend Grandia 2, I wonder if they remember just what it was they were playing. It is practically the encyclopedia of anime/jRPG cliches. Angsty loner hero who has a tiff with his brother. Demure and gentle female lead. Sexpot second female lead. Spunky kid, big tough guy. And by the end of it all, you end up killing god. →  Sid Meier’s Alpha Centarticle

Dreamcast Mania! – Great games you can’t get anywhere else

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Videolamer noticed that in our attempts to keep Dreamcast Mania! alive, so very many of our articles were about the things we missed out on, rather than a celebration of what we had. That changes now. Today we will be going over some of the absolute best games the DC (and only the DC) has to offer. These are not only the reasons why we loved it, but while we still do. These are the games that make it a system still worth owning and playing (meaning you won’t find games like Third Strike, which has a superior PS2 port).

Oh, and I only have a paragraph to describe each game. Prepare for distilled glory.

Soul Calibur – As far as I am concerned, the only game in the Soul series that you can argue was better than this one (and have me actually listen to you) is Soul Blade. For my money and time, this is still the pinnacle of the series. →  You think about everything.

Xbox Live Demo Roundup 2

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Another week, another batch of new and slightly stale demos to read about….

    Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground

– It probably isn’t coincidence that this one lands the week that SKATE comes out. It looks like in typical fashion, gamers are drawing the line in the sand before releases even occur. The SKATE demo was so good that people are getting hours of entertainment from it, which bodes quite well for the full retail product. Because of this, some already declare Tony dead. THPS loyalists say they are unimpressed by SKATE’s controls and are more comfortable with their failsafe. Personally, I think anyone who doesn’t like the SKATE approach is either simply bad at it, or can’t really appreciate the essence of the sport as much as they can million point combos. But being an long time THPS’er I had to give this one a shot.

It sure looks nicer than the PS2 iterations. Beyond that however its the same damn game I played in American Wasteland. →  I’ll read you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!

Dreamcast Mania! – Canceled games: Forever Denied

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Over the last few weeks I wrote about two categories of canceled Dreamcast games, those that were PC ports trying to eke out a living on Sega’s machine and those that quickly found a new home on a competing console. In the final installment of this series I take a look at the most tragic of canceled games – games that gamers never got a chance to play.

Castlevania Resurrection

What was it?
This game was slated to be the third 3D Castlevania and star Sonia and Victor Belmont. The plot line was the standard Dracula-has-returned nonsense; if you’re one of the 36 people on earth who care about the story arcs in Castlevania, please let me know, it would be an honor to meet you. More importantly, Sonia was set to sport a very short skirt and wield a whip.

Would it have been good?
Some people are big fans of the 3D Castlevania games. I am not one of them and thus find it difficult to even pretend to objectively answer this question. →  [send private information]

EA Tiburon shows us why Madden sucks

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Apparently EA Tiburon, the house in charge of Madden, has a history of pulling pranks on each other. As funny as some of the stories are, we as gamers should be a little disappointed in this kind of shit. On one hand, its hard to say that spending thousands to fill a room with plastic balls is a waste when you’re EA and you make Madden (actually its still a waste). But this is the same company that wants to flood your favorite games with in game ads and reap the profits, rather than using ad revenue to cut us players a break. I’m glad to know that this is what they’re using their money on rather than coke and hookers whenever they ream you for the newest lazy Battlefield expansion.

Second, the only thing I could think of when reading this article was “get back to work”. And I’m being dead serious – these guys have all the time to pull elaborate pranks, and yet they couldn’t get a competent version of Madden ready for the release of the 360. →  Speak softly and carry a big post.

Do bad games get better as they drop in price?

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Game Revolution gave Excite Truck a C, partly because it wasn’t worth 50 bucks. Does this mean that when the game sells for $20 they will change the review score to a B?

Factoring cost into a game’s review has always been something I try to avoid. It is very difficult to do. As much as I pretend games should be considered as stand-alone pieces of art and should not be compared to other things you could do with the money, this is at least partially idealistic bullshit. If a crappy $10 downloadable game is a waste of time, maybe it wouldn’t be at $1, and part of the reason it’s a waste of time is because an episode of Sam & Max is only $8. Clearly, on at least some level, it makes sense to consider the cost of a game when deciding whether you should recommend it to potential buyers.

Excite Truck will be so awesome when it costs $7.

 →  An article approaches.
- Read
- Run

Xbox Live Brings it On

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While everyone has been hoping and waiting for an announcement regarding Sin and Punishment on the Virtual Console, Microsoft has gone ahead and demanded you give them money. Xbox Live Arcade is going to get not only Ikaruga, but an updated, HD ready version of Rez.

That’s right. Two of the darlings of the gaming underground are getting another chance, and for reasonable prices! The only way not to be excited about this announcement is if your a smarmy collector who realizes their first print copies of these games are going to be worth a lot less.

Small price to pay to get a new version Rez for modern televisions. And I haven’t even played the damn game yet!

Many links for the news, so I’ll send you to everyone’s favorite videolamer troll to spill the beans.