Top 10 things wrong with video game reviews

by

I know most of you came here for one thing, so I’ll just leave these here:

Replayability: 1/10
Challenge: 2/10
Controls: 6/10
Content: 2/10
Overall: 4/10

Feel free to check Metacritic to figure out how other people rated Video Game Reviews!

For the rest of you, I’ll go ahead and add a few more lines so you can tell all your friends about this great review of Video Game Reviews. This is a pretty awful game. I’m not going to tell you specifically how awful for a while because that might challenge you to decide what you like before I’ve told you.

Speaking of challenge, this game doesn’t have much. There are a dozen different difficulty settings (Gamespy, IGN, Gamespot, Metacritic, and so on) but they all seem to really mean the same thing challenge wise. →  Read the rest

Reports of the East’s death are greatly exaggerated

by

Joseph Goebbels said that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. I don’t say this to make some comparison to the Nazis, but because it often occurs outside the realm of propaganda. There are times when bad reporting and a lack of research can cause a false belief to become a truism in the eyes of society. As a general example, I am reminded of the various reports on the epidemic of sexual “rainbow parties” among teenagers, which were based on a handful of incidents which in no way suggested that such an event is a common occurrence anywhere. Sometimes this happens due to someone wanting to push an agenda, and other times it may simply be the result of people believing something that they want to be true. →  Read the rest

Art Can Never Be Games

by

Everyone loves discussing why games are or aren’t art. Even I can’t help it. The subject is just too hard to pass up. It exists just so intellectual jerkoffs can spill ink (do people even spill ink anymore?) over it and feel good. This is why I’m not going to write about it anymore. Instead, I’m going to write about “games can never be art.” And no, I didn’t quite contradict myself there. I’m not going to write about whether or not games can be art. I’m going to write about the literal sentence “games can never be art.”

I have a major problem with this statement. Not with the logical implications of what it’s trying to communicate, but rather the structure of the statement itself. Why not say “Art can never be games?” →  Read the rest

How The West Went Wrong

by

Let’s play a game that we’ll call, “Count The Genres”. Video games do a pretty good job of covering their bases in terms of the copious amount of scenarios and storylines they deal with. You have your run-of-the-mill sci-fi game, fantasy plots set in mystical realms, hospital simulations, farming sims, sports, you name it, there is probably a video game that touches on it in some way. There is one genre though that I am constantly amazed by the lack of coverage it receives and that is, the Western. How many Western themed games can you name?

I am curious as to why the Western genre gets as little love from electronic gaming as it does. This is especially true when you consider how romanticized the genre has been in books, radio, and film since the turn of the century. →  Read the rest

Late to the Party: Earthbound

by

It took me over half a decade to finally play through Earthbound. I tried numerous times over the years but each time I stalled at or before the town of Onett. Eventually I figured out the problem: I was trying to play the game on a PC emulator, in environments where I couldn’t get comfortable, or even put the sound on. My latest solution to this dilemma was to play it on my cell phone, with stereo headphones and a slide out keyboard with the d-pad on the right. Not quite the same as playing it on a genuine SNES, but you’d be amazed at how much better a game can be when you can curl up on the couch and let the soundtrack drown out the outside world. At the very least, it helped me get past Onett and all the way to the end credits. →  Read the rest

Review – Infinite Space

by

As a fan of the occasional science fiction novel, I’ve wanted to see a real sci-fi JRPG for a long time. The Star Ocean series occasionally tantalizes – then I’m reminded once again that the vast majority of each Star Ocean game ends up being the standard medieval fantasy-themed magic-filled claptrap anyway (or super-science with no explanation, which as we know is indistinguishable from the former). The Phantasy Star games have a science-y atmosphere, but they’re more post-apocalyptic in nature and there are only bits and pieces of the sci-fi around. Xenogears and Xenosaga probably come closest, but the former was more fantasy themed and the latter was too focused on inappropriate religious references to bother with much science, despite all the spaceships flying around and weapons research going on.

I ultimately expected Infinite Space to be the same sort of disappointment, and was pleasantly surprised. →  Read the rest

Little Big Planet, Huge Enormous Marketing Budget

by

Little Big Planet 2 is in production and the gaming sites want you to know it.

Currently the front page of Edge has four LBP2 related stories running, including the top article:
An announcement of the game
A news piece on how it is not just an expansion
An article detailing the newest Edge issue, featuring a LBP2 cover story
A story on the new features

1Up is also a little LBP2 crazy, with five stories on the game including the top article:
An announcement of the game
A news piece on how it is not just an expansion
“Six Levels I’d Love To Create Using Little Big Planet 2’s New Features and Themes”
A LBP2 music announcements piece
And the LBP2 debut trailer

IGN has LBP2 as their top story but only sports two other related stories:
LBP2 preview
LBP2 supports Move
LBP2 reveal trailer

Finally, Gamespot follows suit and has a LBP2 top story:
LBP2 preview
LBP2 interview
LBP2 announcement

Gamespot and IGN are behind in terms of Little Big Planet coverage. →  Read the rest

Review – Pixeljunk Shooter

by

Q Games’ Pixeljunk project is something that, as a gamer, I have to admire, but as a critic leaves me frustrated.  They exist as a series of small downloadables on the Playstation Network, with their 2d perspective being the only common theme among them (Wikipedia states that a “Pixeljunk Series 2” may explore early 3d visuals).  This loose sense of organization gives Q Games the freedom to be as experimental or traditional as they want to be, which in turn gives the series the potential for interesting developments.  On the other hand, the lack of consistency and predictability is tricky at a time when many of us make up our opinion on a game solely based on our experiences with its predecessors.  A careless gamer could go from loving Pixeljunk to swearing it off in the span of a single game, and might ultimately miss out on something great. →  Read the rest

Review – SaGa 2 DS

by

Akitoshi Kawazu has sort of a shaky reputation among RPG fanatics.  He gets the occasional hit – if you can indeed call them that – with games like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.  More often he makes games that have only a niche following at best.  He’s best known for his work on the SaGa series, which hasn’t had a great game in a long time.  I suppose you might be able to find a few people who liked SaGa Frontier or Unlimited SaGa, but then some people like pain and insurmountable learning curves.

There’s one game, however, for which I have to really give him credit.  Among the first creations that were wholly Kawazu’s was SaGa2 on Game Boy, which we saw as Final Fantasy Legend 2.  Its huge variety of settings, equipment, and character types appeal to me just as much as a solid, well told plot and more than magnificent graphics.  →  Read the rest

Games are Fingerpaintings

by

I told myself I wasn’t going to write about this, but the silly debate between Roger Ebert and the gaming community has got to stop.  Before, I was able to ignore these near seasonal exchanges between the respected film critic and every Tom, Dick and Harry who has ever picked up a controller, but this time around, even the most well respected writers are doing their part to raise our hobby’s embarrassment levels to critical mass.

The commentary over at Penny Arcade is either supremely honest, or stiflingly elitist.  Tycho’s post does its best to rip into Ebert, to the point of calling him a “creature”.  Meanwhile, in the comic, there is an admission that one day, we too will get old and hate young people. Either he’s blaming Ebert for acting in a way that can’t be helped, or he believes that the film critic actually can change his views, at which point the strip itself is a hollow attempt at softening the blow in a situation which does not call for fighting fire with fire.  →  Read the rest

Someday we’ll all look back at this and laugh

by

If you’re reading this blog then there’s a fairly decent chance that you’ve heard about Roger Ebert, his loud and controversial opinion about videogames, and its latest iteration which was posted last Friday. I told myself that I’m above falling into that cyclical argument, but the bait is too tempting for me to resist any longer. In case you actually had a life over the weekend, allow me to catch you up on the crux of his argument: videogames can never be art.

If you find that above statement infuriating and wish to express that rage via typing words in a box on a website, then the recommended course of action is for you to click your way over to Ebert’s blog and do exactly that. Ebert personally reads every single comment that gets posted and delights in watching the comment count tick upwards. →  Read the rest

Review – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

by

As my friend drove us out to eat the other night I kept envisioning our car crashing into the one in front of it and that one following suit so that we had three aligned cars that could presumably then cross some screen gap threshold in order to attack some other cars. This phenomenon is usually discussed in terms of seeing giant Tetris blocks everywhere you look but I have also experienced it in the desire to continuously roll up objects. That Clash of Heroes has begun to project itself into my real life is a sign of something – this is the best damn DS game America has ever made. So much so that it was made in Canada.

Clash of Heroes is a variant of the match three puzzle game on the surface, but deeper down it doesn’t kind of suck like Puzzle Quest. →  Read the rest

Review – Dragon Age: Origins

by

The machine slowly comes to life, the sound of whirring fans and arcane instruments powering up to a deafening howl. Then a blinding flash of incandescence, a painful sense of sudden detachment from where and when you were. Also all your clothes are apparently gone, unfortunately burnt away by the paradox. Uh-oh.

Yes, playing Dragon Age is like taking a trip back in time. Not back to the pseudo-historical-yet-entirely-fictional fantasy universe it is set in, because it never happened! I’m telling you, all that conspiracy theory stuff about William the Conqueror using dragons at Hastings is completely bogus. I was there, it never happened, no chance.

No, the time it takes you back to is around 2004, when the game was first announced. It was an extended development process, and as is often the case, elements of the game feel dated as a result. →  Read the rest

Review- John Woo’s Stranglehold

by

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For most of gaming’s history, licensed games have tended to be substandard releases, made on the cheap in order to cash in on the latest hot properties. This rule was so typical, for so many generations, that you could almost set it in stone. But the current generation has done a lot to improve the situation. Licensed games are often quite playable, and in some cases can be exemplary of their genre. This trend is due to several factors. Perhaps the most important are the tremendous costs of making a high definition game. This has forced publishers to rely more and more on safe, traditional IP, rather than gambling on something new and original. While most gamers lament this, the flip side to such a decision is that licensed games must now be approached with greater care. →  Read the rest

Cloud Gaming Paranoia!!!

by

Call me paranoid but I have never been a fan of “cloud” computing. I like having all of my files stored on my computer. I like having my games on discs. I like knowing that if something goes haywire, I am the one responsible and I am the one that can fix it. It seems like the general trend for computing has been to have massive servers out there in the wilds of Oregon and Washington take care of all of the heavy lifting and maintenance of data while the computers we are using keep getting smaller and more portable. Gaming has followed these trends and I find it troubling for handful of reasons. I have always written off these worries as the product of my overactive imagination but recent events have given me reason to suspect I might be right to worry. →  Read the rest

Weekend in Review – March Edition of March

by

Shepherd’s Crossing
An obscure game even by our standards, Shepherd’s Crossing was developed by Success, who have worked on a number of games with terrible Metacritic scores. This game only avoids joining that group by not being reviewed by any major publication (as far as I can tell).

Pat: With a few tweaks to the interface (I had serious trouble placing fences around my crops), and some way of alerting the player as to what is going on (a useful tutorial, some reference guide, status screens, anything!) this could have been a decent game. I managed to make some progress I think, but I never felt like I was running a successful farm; instead I felt like I was always one bad turn or decision from losing absolutely everything. There is a bare bones RPG battle system in the game also, which is fun enough. →  Read the rest

Retrospective – Killer 7

by

Killer 7 was one of, if not the most polarizing game of its generation.  I have seen debates in which people are asked to “step on one side of the line” in regards to what they think of a game, but only after Killer 7 popularized the idea.  You must either love or hate this one, with no chance of finding a middle ground.

What could cause such divisive opinions in the first place?  We can start by blaming ourselves.  Killer 7 was announced early in the Gamecube’s life, when users were scrambling for another violent, mature game that could legitimize Nintendo’s place in the console war.  Nintendo’s family first attitude was costing them users and goodwill, so fans of the company felt compelled to defend them, as well as their purchase. →  Read the rest

Guess the Game by its Metacritic Excerpt

by

Us game bloggers talk a lot about games and play a lot of games but rarely make games ourselves. Well here’s one I just thought of. Below are several portions of reviews excerpted by Metacritic. The goal is to correctly identify the game it’s about.

These are all critically and commercially successful games everyone’s familiar with, so if you know enough about games to be reading this blog then none of these should be unknown to you. Also, don’t restrict yourself to using a game only once. Have fun guessing!

Tutorial: Highlight the gray areas to get the name of the game linking to its Metacritic page.

To Waggle or Not To Waggle?

by

That is actually the question. With the recent release of some concept shots for the PS Move inviting a glut of mixed internet people reactions from the logic failing PlayStation fundamentalists’ “this is all Nintendo’s fault” to the long suffering Wii forumite’s “how do you like them apples?”, motion controls seems to be the hot topic at the moment in the internet video game blogosphere. Which reminds me, we really need a catchier name to describe that paper thin veneer of people to whom proper discussions like this might make sense. Video Game Historians a la Art Historians sounds too formal and elitist although subjectively and endlessly explicating something we are passionate about instead of doing useful things for the greater benefit of mankind are common to both ‘occupations’. Hardcore gamer isn’t correct at all either. →  Read the rest