Table Salt Games

Games I Played in 2011: Portal 2

2012-01-06T16:39:00.001-05:00

What's this!? A post!? Isn't this blog dead and been dead for like 2 years? Yes, yes it was. Now I'm writing again. I don't know how often I'll be writing, hopefully often, though I don't imagine doing much on weekends as I stare a computer screen all week and try to get away from that on weekends. Either way, DEAL WITH IT. I'm writing now, so read on if you like.

Since the new year just ended, I'll be doing a brief post on each of the significant games I played in 2011. This doesn't necessarily mean games that released in 2011, but just games I played through out the year. Anyway, I'm starting off with Portal 2, a game that DID come out in 2011, and in my opinion, one of the best games of the year.

Writing andvoice acting is what separates this game from the pack, more so than anything else.I’m generally and old-school guy, who feels that text in games is superior tovoices, as text allows you to imagine the character’s voice and intonations,and voice acting drowns out the music. However, with Portal 2, the voice actingis what makes the game.

GLaDOS,voiced by Ellen McLain, was remarkable again but the two new characters,Wheatley (Stephen Merchant) and Cave Johnson (J.K. Simmons, the psychologistfrom Law & Order) completely stole the show. Instead of trying to explainhow hilarious their dialogue was throughout the game, I provided two videosbelow that really highlight their characters:

CaveJohnson:

Wheatley:

In case youdon’t already know, Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle game. Your gun has twoportals that you can shoot almost anywhere and you can walk through one portalto get to the other one. This mechanic is great, and once you add in turretstrying to kill you, gels that make you bounce or run faster, and light bridgesthat can be manipulated by portals, you get a game that keeps you thinking forhours.

The oneproblem I had with Portal 2 though was that it was over all too quick… again.The first Portal was more of an add-on side game to Valve’s Orange Box and itwas understandable that it was only a couple of hours long when you also hadall of Half-Life 2 on the same disc. Portal 2‘s single-player campaign takes about8 hours long, which I guess is now standard for first-person games. However, myproblem was not with the length but with the lack of how much they used andcombined all of their new ideas.

Each zone inPortal 2 focuses on a particular new feature, whether it is the light bridgesor the mid-air floating conveyor belt energy thingies. Once you’re done withthat section, Portal introduces a new cool idea and almost completely abandonsthe old mechanic. It was only until the final levels that I started to see acombination of these ideas and I thought “finally, now the game is reallygetting started.” And then, in a flash, you go face the final boss and that’sit. Yes, I know there are user levels that really combine all the new ideaswell. That’s great. But those levels never have new voice acting or are any wayweaved into the story. The user levels are nice but not a good enoughsubstitute for me.

Two-playersplit-screen co-op though. That was sweet. I can’t imagine playing the co-oplevels again with someone else as I’ll likely recall all the old solutions but,they were fun while it lasted. While there were some times where my partner andI might bark orders at each other because one of us figured out the solutionwhile the other didn’t, every now and then we had the eureka moment at the same time, which was a very rewarding experience.

All-in-all,Portal 2 was one of the most enjoyable games I played this year. And aside fromthe first Portal, there is no other experience like it on the market. Definitelyan improvement from the first game and I hope Valve continues this series withthe same great voice acting with more complexity in the level design.

Rebooting the series: Megaman

2009-07-30T22:22:00.002-04:00

Hey TSG! While this blog seems pretty quiet, I figured I'd drop in since I finally found some free time. I plan on documenting my experiences at Blizzard (for those who don't know, I got an internship with them this summer) when I find the time. For now, I just wanted to share with you a mini-article I wrote for a challenge.

Specifically, gamecareerguide has issued a challenging question for anyone wanting to take it: How would you reboot a series of your choice? Check out the link for the details. I figured I would share my idea - let me know what you think!

Series that needs a reboot: Megaman

Why? - Let's face it - the Megaman series has dilluded through the years into basic iterations on itself with little to no innovation. The series needs something new and fresh to attract more people than just die-hard Megaman fans.

How? - Take the basic mechanics of Megaman and apply modern game design ideas to it, with some innovations as well.

Proposal - The new Megaman is same as the old at face value - you still play as the Blue Bomber and he platforms through 2D levels with his Mega-Buster and gets upgrades along the way. Everything else is evolution from there:

-Megaman is extremely modular. In the beginning he can only move, jump and shoot. EVERYTHING else is an upgrade. His dashes, double jumps, weapons, health expansions, and so forth are all found as upgrades throughout the game. Similar to the mechanics of the Battle Network series, he collects upgrade chips to install onto his armor. Some will be story-based, some randomly dropped by enemies, some hidden away in alcoves. His armor systems have a memory limit which constrins how many upgrades he can have, though his armor will expand its memory at several points in the story. Players switch in and out abilities at specified upgrade stations.

-New abilities. The upgrade system allows for some cool new abilities as well. Hover boots, jetpacks, invisibility - there is tons of room for imagination here.

-Weapons and abilities all share a common energy supply, which replaces the concept of an energy bar per weapon. This can also be expanded, like health.

-Open world. Think Super Metroid. Lots of room for exploration, hiding upgrades, and having multiple paths to choose in the game. Combine with the upgrade system to have an intriguing "Maybe I can get to there with these abilities" approach that increases replay value. This allows there to be harder levels (to satisfy the Megaman hardcores) and more casual levels.

-Varied missions - It's not just a level with a boss in a garage at the end anymore. While some areas will have bosses, others will have objectives like searching for an object, defending a point, and running through an area fast. Not everything will be required, so again the developer can make tough challenges optional but with enticing rewards.

-Co-op - Why hasn't this been in a Megaman game yet? At any time outside of a mission a second player can join. His Megaman will have all maneuverability upgrades so he can keep up with the other player, but will have limited weapon selection. With a second player the game will automatically scale up enemies and bosses and unlock co-op based missions. Co-op will focus more on enemy blasting than platforming; as LittleBigPlanet has shown, extreme platforming and co-op can cause camera issues.

I think these changes will appeal to both new and old. Hope you like it! I encourage you to enter it as well if you have a cool idea.

Top 52: Legend of Zelda (#24)

2009-05-24T13:59:00.006-04:00

Whew. School is over so now I can finally get back to writing consistently. Junior year in NYU really at up a lot of time. I'm sorry for abandoning you, my faithful readers. Anywho, I'm continuing the Top 52 segment, with a classic that released before I was even born: the original Legend of Zelda for the NES.

Title: Legend of Zelda
Console: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 08/22/87
Genre: Action-Adventure
My Ranking: #24
-------------------------------------

I remember holding this golden cart in my hands when I was about four years old and my brother explaining to me that Zelda is the princess and that the main character's name is Link. I was then confused as to why the game was called The Legend of Zelda but I immediately didn't care once I actually started playing.

The NES Zelda for the first game I played that enabled me to wonder around and choose my own destination. Being four years old at the time, I was a bit overwhelmed but, I enjoyed going to different areas and whacking monsters with a brown 8-bit object that was supposed to resemble a sword. I was also fond of placing bombs and watching walls and enemies go poof.

I only really appreciated this game when I was older however. Hints as to where the next dungeon is were often cleverly cryptic and you would only be able to beat the game if you used all of the tools available to you. The game forced you to be on point with every item you got, from the boomerang, to bomb, to arrows. You also needed to have a strong ability in reading maps, trying to guess where the developers would hide a key or item.

Zelda, in 1987, was ahead of its time. Gone were the linear gameplay elements and replaced with a action-adventure, puzzle, RPG game. Even today it's hard to properly define what kind of game Zelda games are as they break the molds of traditional genre. It's also interesting to note that the Legend of Zelda was the first game game that allowed you to save your progress.

The Legend of Zelda, unlike other installments in the series, is really damn hard. Hearts are hard to come by and if you don't know where your going in a dungeon--which is always the case--chances are you are going to die. Bosses were challenging not only because you had to figure out the best way to beat them but also because if they hit you, you could lose multiple hearts.

Hundreds of games owe their success to the gameplay elements pioneered in the Legend of Zelda. Any open world environment game like Grand Theft Auto III, or the new Prince of Persia, have Zelda to thank for their gameplay style. If you haven't played this game, play in on Nintendo's VC; you won't be disappointed.

-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)
#28 --- F-Zero (SNES)
#27 --- Katamari Damacy (PS2)*
#26 --- Mario Kart 64 (N64)
#25 --- Tetris DS (DS)*
#24 --- Legend of Zelda (NES)

*- Denotes highest ranked game for that console

The Escapist: Review of Mirror's Edge

2009-04-24T17:19:00.003-04:00

Okay, so no one has updated in forever. However, I just found this on a recommendation from a friend and felt it necessary to share.

A superb review of the game Mirror's Edge for all to see. Basically encapsulates every feeling I had about the game, but does it in a way that is fifty bagillion times funnier than I ever could.

The website's other similar "Zero Punctuation" game reviews are highly recommended.

The St. Dead Space Massacre

2009-02-15T03:59:00.002-05:00

I hate Valentine’s Day. I mean I really hate it. I’ve only had one good one in my entire life. The rest have been mainly depressing and unpleasant as I get to look on as the happy couples around me get all love-y and there’s not a damned thing on TV that doesn’t involve love in some way. So I decided to vent all of that pent up anger and hostility. I’ve also meant to write a review of Dead Space but up until now I couldn’t really express how it made me feel. You've been warned.

Dead Space sucks. It’s a pathetic rip off of other horror games and not a very good one at that. Everything they did in Dead Space has been done before and has been done better by the games that did it. They took everything of value from System Shock 2, Resident Evil 4, and Doom 3, and then ditched any attempt at real creativity. They stole the setting straight out of Doom 3. The only difference was that Dead Space at least got the damned flashlight thing right. The combat’s straight out of Resident Evil 4 but not as smooth or user friendly, and you actually have less inventory space. Finally, the attempt at horror is a sad imitation of the work of art that System Shock 2 was. It’s like comparing H.P. Lovecraft to Dean Koontz. And frankly, the story and suspense is terribly predictable.

The suspense is completely ruined by badly timed music and poor game design. In a lot of suspenseful games, the designers will use the music as a way to build up tension and to scare the player. The music might rise suddenly as you open a door to reveal only emptiness beyond it, further building the suspense. In Dead Space the music track misses these subtle tricks completely. It sounds like they stripped the soundtrack from another game and didn’t change it up. The music doesn’t really feel attached to the events in the game unless you count cut scenes. You might find yourself wandering down a well lit hall when the music suddenly bursts forth in an aggressive series of notes. However nothing else in the game builds to this and nothing jumps out so all it really does is numb you to any successful use the music might be put to.

Similarly, the level design is piss poor. To move about the ship, the mutant zombies you’re fighting use the…wait for it…air vents. This would make some sense except there are 2 types of air vents. Vents with their covers intact, and vents with broken covers. The monsters will burst forth from the covered vents EVERY GOD DAMNED TIME, and never emerge from the empty vents. You can enter a room and instantly predict where every monster is about to emerge from and be 100% correct. Now the monsters you fight in Dead Space are zombies, but their weird parasite infested space zombies so head shots don’t work, so you have to cut off their limbs. Luckily the ship’s just packed to the brim with odd laser cutting guns that don’t seem to have any real use outside of dismembering space zombies. Now this might make you think that aiming these cutting lasers is really important as you have to slice off every one of the zombies’ limbs to take them down. Well if so then you have far too much faith in these developers. No, you can pretty much just point the guns at the monsters and fire until they fall to the ground. Aiming does damn near nothing. Another big aspect of the game is that the corpses of the crew laying about the ship might rise from the dead at any moment, and damn is this ship covered in corpses. However this too is thrown together with idiotic abandon. Normal corpses look like…well, corpses really, and the zombies look like multi-legged insect people zombies. Well say you walk down a hall and see two normal corpses. Well, to be careful you cut off their limbs and move on. If you come back later you will actually see a new corpse lying between the 2 old ones, but the fact that it’s a zombie isn’t even hidden as there are long scythe legs sticking up in the air. So the surprise is ruined and you can blow them away from a distance every time. In fact, as you play this game (assuming you ignore my advice and waste you money) if at any point you think “you know, I bet a monster would pop out here”, then guess what, a god damned monster’s about to pop out of there.

Even the god damned plot is ripped off of System Shock 2. There’re some parasites found on an alien planet and there’s an attempt by a group on the ship to take them back to Earth to infect it. Same damned plot, right down to the “twist” at the end. The only difference is that Shodan did it with more style. And if you are unlucky enough to have given the damned PC port a chance, then I pity your sad ass. Think back to the ungodly heinous PC ports of console games from the late 90s. Well this one is worse. The controls are crap and there’s no way for you to fix them. On the PC the HUD is torture and the graphics are crap. I have a PC that can run Left4Dead at very high quality graphics with no lagging, same for Bioshock and Fallout 3. I loaded up a borrowed copy of Dead Space for the PC and the graphics were crap. The anti-aliasing was broken, the bloom was hyperactive, and the motion blur was just off. And I’m not the only person to experience these problems. However, EA’s response to these problems was pretty much “Fuck You, you should have bought the console version.” Well, not literally, but clean it up PR-wise and that was their message.

So here’s my recommendation. Don’t buy this game. Don’t even rent it unless you can get your hands on a copy cheap. Hell, if you somehow know any of the people involved in its design, walk up to them and crack em upside the head with a bat. A good solid bat, none of this aluminum crap*. Instead go play System Shock 2. It’s a PC game, but it’s old and will run on practically any system that’s around these days. It’ll scare the shit out of you (Bioshock is the “pg-13” game by the same developers, while SS2 was as “R”) and you will be better for it. Then again Halo’s somehow become one of the “greatest games of all time” and if that trend in gamer taste continues you can all expect to see me one of these days, perched up in a clock tower with a high-powered hunting rifle and a CD player running J-Pop in a continuous loop. You’ve been warned.

*Please don’t actually commit assault based off of what I’ve said. Because if you do, then my ass’ll get sued or thrown in jail for suggesting it, and then I’ll have to come for you. And I’ll be piiiiiiiiiiised like you wouldn’t believe.

Flashy Friday: Squares 2

2009-02-13T18:07:00.008-05:00

In Flashy Friday segments, normally I just give the picture of the featured game, a brief description and then a link to go play it. This time Flashy Friday is a bit longer since I have a particularly cool story about this one.
--------------------------------------------------------

I remember playing Squares 2 a couple of years ago after stumbling upon it at ebaumsworld (remember that crazy site?). It was a simple flash game really. You control a black square via the mouse and your job is to collect other black squares and avoid red ones. The squares shoot from all sides of the screen so the game gets pretty intense with all the squares zipping back and forth. In addition, as you pick up black squares you get bigger in size, making it easier to pick up black squares and making yourself a pretty big target for red ones. There are also power-ups and power-downs you can collect, ranging from brief invincibility, to making your square even more gigantic.

Squares 2 wasn't easy by any means though. You need to have really quick reaction time in order to keep raising your score. On top of all this, Squares 2 has a pretty sick beat going on in the background that fits perfectly with all of the moving squares. The music is incredibly addictive and the coolest effect is when you get the slow motion power-up, causing the music to fade so only the percussion is audible, and then have the music come back in full when the slow motion wears off. Needless to say, I liked this game, and I know a lot of other gamers who have.

Fast forward to two days ago. I'm sitting at a table at one of PLAY's weekly game night meetings. This tall dude with a fro is sitting next to me with an Yngwie Malmsteen shirt on and I'm listening to Steve Vai on my headphones. He hears the music, asks me who it is, and we begin exchanging progressive metal artists that we both enjoy. (We both agreed that Yngwie is overrated).

We eventually ended up talking about out majors/concentration, and I tell him I'm in video game production. After hearing this, he tells me that he just started selling this flash game for iPhone, a flash game he made a long time ago. He needed some help marketing it, and I told him to get on various forums, get in touch with a couple of contacts I have, post the game on newgrounds, addictinggames, and kongregate, etc. All the meanwhile I realize we haven't even properly introduced ourselves or that I haven't even seen the game yet.

He tells me his name is Gavin Shapiro, and as I typed his name into facebook, my long-term memory twitched. Where the hell have I seen this name before? I think nothing of it and I ask him what the name of his game was. He says "you've probably never heard of it, but it called Squares 2."

I had this moment of sudden realization, kinda like the moment Edward Norton had in Fight Club when he finds out who Tyler Durden REALLY is. I had what some people would call a moment of clarity.

So I had a little geek out moment when I found out this guy made this game. I ended up telling this information to everyone in games club, and I'm pretty sure I made Gavin a little embarrassed. Little did he know that he was a mini-celebrity since a lot of people have played his flash game and really enjoyed it. So this blog entry is part normal flashy friday and a bit of a shout-out to Gavin.

Click here to play Squares 2 right now.

And if you happen to have an iPhone, look for Squares 2 in the app store. The game is only $0.99 and you'll be able to compare your scores on a global leaderboard. Not only will you enjoy the game, but the money will go to Gavin for developing this awesome flash game.

Presidential Flash Games

2009-01-24T16:24:00.000-05:00

If you check out the politics tag on Will and Beyond, you'll see that I have Obama fever. How can I work that into a post here on Table Salt Games? How about some Obama flash games. Kongregate links are given whenever possible. Be forewarned that none of these are as good as you'd find on Flashy Friday.

The Good:

Campaign: General Election: Fun strategy game where you have to win over all of the regions of the US using your candidate and staff. Staffmembers include the Spinmeister, Fundraiser, and the Operative. Slinging mud and launching negative campaign ads are two examples of fun attacks you have.

The Mediocre:

Polimon: Politics + Pokemon = Polimon. Walk around the country activating states while you run into random battles with evangelists, political conservatives, etc.

Super Obama World: A Super Mario World knockoff. Instead of mushrooms making you grow big, slices of pie (huh?) make you wear sunglasses. Don't collect coins, but rather American flags. Levels such as "The Real America" and "I Can See Russia from my House!". Unfortunately, I got to the end of one of the levels, and nothing happened...

Race for the White House: Very easy. At some point in the beginning I ran past McCain and never saw him again. Collect money, avoid campaign road blocks, and don't kill birds unless you want to lose the green vote.

The Bad:

Hilary vs. Obama: Do like clicking a lot? As long as you don't expect anything other than clicking, this could be the game for you!

Obama vs. Joe the Plumber: Punch with M, block with B. Yeah, that's it. As tired as I was of hearing about Joe the Plumber, this still isn't very satisfying.

American Chess 2008: Are all of these games just bad attempts at fighting games, 'Obama vs. [insert opponent's name here]'?

Barack Obama Race for the White House: Not a fighting game, but still. Looking for a bad Puzzle Bobble knockoff? Here you go.

And on a completely unrelated note, here's a inexplicably fun Monopoly knock-off.

Godspeed.

Flashy Friday: 99 Bricks

2009-01-16T23:51:00.004-05:00

This game came out a while ago on Kongregate but since I've been talking about Tetris recently, I figured I should put this game up as the Flashy Friday game as it's an interesting variant on Tetris.

Instead of focusing on making lines, 99 bricks is focused on making towers. The bricks you have are identical to tetraminoes but, gravity will affect the pieces. So as you build your tower you'll begin to realize that it is swaying, and suddenly leaving a thin column on the right of left sides for a line piece isn't a good strategy.

This game is very addictive and the challenges on Kongregate are just mean. Building a tower with a height of 600 is crazy hard as is, and using all 99 bricks in one tower is also insane. It's not impossible though; my friend Angela did manage to achieve both of those goals. And she STILL holds it over my head as one of her gaming achievements over me.

*sigh*

Click here to play 99 bricks right now.

Amazing Tetris Videos

2009-01-13T10:51:00.003-05:00

Most of the easter eggs I put in my posts are in my Top 52 segment. I didn't put any in the Tetris DS (#25) post because there are just too many great Tetris videos out there. So instead I'm just going to compile them here for you all to enjoy.

Note: If know of any other awesome Tetris videos, please tell me and I'll update this post with the video.

The Original Human TETRIS Performance by Guillaume Reymond

Human Tetris (2:05 is hilarious)

Stupid Tetris

Mega64: Tetris

Tetris Ninjas

Tetris: The Movie

Little Big Planet Tetris Completed Version

Tetris Japanese Player (my favorite, if you get bored watch from 4:00 on: your mind will get blown)

Tetris is awesome.

Top 52: Tetris DS (#25)

2009-01-13T08:41:00.005-05:00

I love Tetris. I knew Tetris had to be on my list and the DS version is the best one out yet. In fact, Tetris DS is the highest rated DS game on my Top 52. Read on to find out why.

Title: Tetris DS
Console: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 03/20/06
Genre: Puzzle
My Ranking: #25
-------------------------------------

Tetris is more than a game. Tetris has become so popular that it has become a cultural phenomenon. One man has been jailed for not turning off his game of Tetris on a flight in England. Tetris has been studied for it's effects on the brain. Some people even have suffered from the Tetris effect, where they either see delusions of blocks falling in their eyes, of look at everyday objects and cannot help but picturing how they form together to make lines.

I've never had delusions of Tetris blocks, but I still organize items into lines in my mind, mostly because of Tetris DS. I've played Tetris for the NES and of course for the Game Boy, but I believe that Tetris DS is the best iteration of the series.

The first thing you'll notice in Tetris DS is that there are classic NES characters running around on the top screen. When you complete lines, Mario will advance in Super Mario Bros., or maybe you'll see Link stabbing Octoroks, or possibly even the Balloon Fight guys flying around hitting balloons. The NES animations are a nice touch to the Tetris game, as both Tetris and the NES characters are nostalgic.

Tetris DS had everything that I think Tetris should have. Tetris DS has the hold feature, where you can store on piece on the side and swap it out for another. Tetris DS also has the "easy spin" feature, where the Tetrominoes don't automatically stick to the pieces upon touching them, allowing you to spin pieces to place them properly. Tetris DS also has six playing modes, most of which are good, and the game also has online play.

Tetris DS has the marathon mode where you can just play forever, and I've maxed out the lines completed counter at 999 multiple times. Within marathon mode though, they also have versus CPU and the CPU character on the highest level is pretty hard so that stays enjoyable. Seriously, if you make one mistake against a level 5 CPU, you lose. I like that. Tetris should appeal to the insane.

Tetris DS also had mission mode, where you have to complete different tasks in an allotted time. Tasks include easy tasks like "clear four lines at once" or ones that require a bit preparation like "clear 2 lines with [insert tetromino here]." All of this action happens with NES Link in the background and the timer is ten heart containers slowly draining if you don't complete the task.

One other mode I'll highlight is one that Lima really enjoyed. This mode was called Touch and required you to use the stylus. To start, tons of tetrominoes would be placed randomly together, forming a large tower. At the top of the tower would be a bunch of caged balloons. The goal is to use the stylus to turn the blocks, form lines that would disappear and then have the balloons reach the floor. I don't know why Lima enjoyed this mode so much, but at least it was creative, I think.

For all of Nintendo's problems with Wi-Fi, their online play for Tetris DS was awesome. I still find games very quickly and all of the games are really intense. When you complete a line, you send grey blocks to your opponent from the bottom up. However, the blocks you send are lined up perfectly, so if it's open, you'll give your opponent a free Tetris that he'll send back to you, and then you'll send back it back to him, and so forth. It's addictive and you need to be stupid fast.

I still play Tetris DS and I still play it online. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I still put this game on and watch lines (and my problems) disappear. I've always been a Tetris lover, and there's no question that Tetris DS is the best I've seen in classic Tetris iterations. Multiple modes, quirky but fitting NES graphics, and reliable and competitive online play. Tetris DS is one DS game I'll be playing for years to come.
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)
#28 --- F-Zero (SNES)
#27 --- Katamari Damacy (PS2)*
#26 --- Mario Kart 64 (N64)
#25 --- Tetris DS (DS)*

*- Denotes highest ranked game for that console

Scrabulous, is that you?

2009-01-12T19:47:00.001-05:00

Know that feeling of running into an old friend on the street, and having him call out your name You see the face, but you don't recognize it immediately. Then it hits you, friend! But wait, some things have changed. As you see one thing different him, you start to notice others...

This fits well with my relationship with Scrabulous. You may remember that my first post here was mourning the loss of my good friend. I moved on, made other friends, and now I find that Scrabulous has risen from the dead. Zombie Scrabulous? Enough with these ridiculous analogies, on to some content.

Apparently, about 3 months ago, Lexulous.com was born, and used the old Scrabulous data. It was until 2009 when it was reborn on Facebook, and we got a message from Rajat and Jayant that they had returned. I was amazed; all of my old games were still saved, and active.

I made my first move, and was filled with joy. A few plays later, I noticed something strange. The Z is worth 12 points??? As any serious Scrabble player can tell you, the Z is only worth 10 points. Maybe this was just in the new game I started. No, they went back and updated all of the tiles on the old games too. Did they update the scores? Maybe, but there's no way to really tell. Here's a list of the updated tiles, with their Scrabble values in parentheses:¹

B:4 (3)

C:4 (3)

F:5 (4)

H:5 (4)

K:6 (5)

M:4 (3)

P:4 (3)

Q: 12 (10)

T: 2 (1)

V: 5 (4)

W: 5 (4)

Y: 5 (4)

Z: 12 (10)

Sure, there's a different name², and a slightly different scoring system, but will I still play the game? Of course. I can't turn my back on a game I love, even if it's a slightly deformed version of it.

Has anyone else noticed any other changes? Also, challenge me to a game.

[1]: This is going off memory, so something might be wrong. But don't tell me if it is, I don't want to feel ashamed.

[2]: Today we debated whether or not it's a good name. I think it's fine (derived from lexicon, but still keeping the some resemblance to Scrabulous), but other people thought it sounded like ass (their words, not mine). Your thoughts?

Godspeed.

Cairo's Game Valley

2009-01-11T09:12:00.004-05:00

As most of my readers know, I've been in Cairo for 2 weeks. I leave for New York tomorrow, so writing on this blog will be a bit less sporatic soon.

Egypt isn't really a video gaming place but, my roommate did show me a video game store in Cairo called Game Valley. Click on their games tab and you'll notice that they don't show their Wii games, which they had in their store when I visited. Part of the reason why they probably don't show them is because their merchandise is clearly pirated.

First off, all of the Wii games were 80 L.E., which in American money, would work out to be about $14.50. You could argue that since the cost of living is less in Cairo, games would cost less. However, if the extremely low price wasn't a giveaway, then one of their "Wii" games is clearly pirated. They were selling a single Wii disc that had the "Wii" games of Star Fox Adventures, Beyond Good and Evil, and the Zelda promotional disc that had four Zelda games on it. I say these were Wii games because they had the Wii logo plastered on them for the box art. However, anyone who plays games knows that these games came out for the Gamecube, NOT the Wii.

Regardless, if the Wii was region-free, I was going to buy a whole bunch of games and sell them back in the States and make a pretty penny. However, all of these games were the PAL versions, so they wouldn't work on a United States Wii system unforunately.

Oddly enough, this store also had no Xbox360 games whatsoever. They had a crapton of PS2 games and Game Boy Advance games, but the Xbox360 was nowhere to be seen. They also had PS3 games but they were selling them at 675 L.E. a pop, which works out to be about $120 per game. Who could afford games at that insane price? And why was is so inflated compared to the Wii? I know Blu-ray is a more expensive disc but an over $80 difference? Makes no sense to me.

I can't wait to get back to the States though. The new Prince of Persia and Resistance 2 are calling me. That, and I miss my family and my girlfriend. They are kinda important too.

Top 52: Mario Kart 64 (#26)

2009-01-11T03:39:00.004-05:00

Having 4-players at once is pretty standard now but, the N64 was the first popular console to have four controller slots. Part of the reason why Mario Kart 64 was so successful was because it was the first really awesome game to be played with more than two people, and therefore really good to play at parties.

Title: Mario Kart 64
Console: Nintendo 64
Release Date: 02/10/97
Genre: Racing
My Ranking: #26
-------------------------------------

Following up on their success from Super Mario Kart for the SNES, Nintendo brought the Mario Kart series to 3D on the Nintendo 64. Sporting sixteen strange courses, a litany of items, and 4-player support, Mario Kart 64 become the ultimate muliplayer fantasy racing game. Why are Mario characters racing in Go-Karts through Bowser's castle and Moo Moo farm? No one knows really, but what I do know is that this game is insanely fun to play, even now.

Everyone knows how Mario Kart works. You do laps on a track and you can pick up items and shoot them at people. However, what makes Mario Kart 64 so great is that the game feels balanced. The person in last place gets better items than the person in first and therefore has an easier chance to catch-up. Sure, this may cause a rubber-band effect from time to time (meaning the person in last quickly bounces to first, and so on) but, in my experience with the game, the better driver/player wins the majority of the time.

Since Mario Kart 64 is balanced, the game works excellently for hardcore players like myself. It's a ton of fun to race against someone who is really good, while each of you are cutting corners and constantly getting boosts from power slides. However, even for non-hardcore players, Mario Kart 64 is an amazing game.

Since newer players tend to fall to the back of the pack, they get all of the cool items, like stars, golden mushrooms and blue shells. Since these items help propel them to the front without intense skill, newer players don't feel left out of the experience. It's especially rewarding to new players when they pick up a blue shell, use it, and hit the first-place player. The hardcore player who was in first will say something like "Oh @#$%," or something to that effect, and the new player will laugh and feel pride at effecting the outcome.

Somehow then, Mario Kart 64 is a game for hardcore gamers and casual gamers. It even works for non-gamers as well since they understand the basic premise: get to the finish line. And since the game is so colorful and there is tons of action happening with items, everyone will even enjoy the game on a purely visual level.

The game does have some faults though. The special shortcuts on Koopa Troopa Beach, Wario Stadium, and Rainbow Road cut so much of the track that if you do make them and someone else doesn't for a lap, there is no chance at the other player recovering. The track design wasn't as top notch as it could have been. Also, one glaring problem is that versus mode doesn't have music for the tracks, which makes the game feel a bit empty at times.

Still, Mario Kart 64 is the best racing game to play with a lot of people. The game moves relatively fast and you'll have a lot of people talking/swearing during gameplay. Course for course, F-Zero has better design (and better music) but Mario Kart 64 will give you one of the best multiplayer experiences in video gaming.
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)
#28 --- F-Zero (SNES)
#27 --- Katamari Damacy (PS2)*
#26 --- Mario Kart 64 (N64)

*- Denotes highest ranked game for that console

Flashy Friday: Interactive Buddy

2009-01-11T03:01:00.003-05:00

Did you ever get the urge to punch/explode/set fire to somebody? If so, Interactive Buddy is for you. Interactive buddy is not really a game; it's more of an interactive program.

Your "buddy" is the round grey dude shown above. By clicking different abilities from the menu, you are able to click anywhere on the screen and use that ability. For example, to start off, I would suggest clicking on grenades from the item menu and spray those across the screen. Your buddy will be confused for a moment and then BOOM; he's bounced around the screen in a fiery blaze. It's cute, really.

The more damage you do to your buddy, the more money you get to buy more things to hurt him with. To get money quickly, use grenades first and then buy missiles for $100. Use the missiles and money will rack up very quickly. From there, enjoy buying new skins for your buddy, more modes and of course, more weapons.

Click here to play Interactive Buddy right now.

Top 52: Katamari Damacy (#27)

2009-01-06T09:18:00.007-05:00

Katamari Damacy is by far the best game on the Playstation 2. If you have this system, you absolutely MUST own this game. Read on to find out why.

Title: Katamari Damacy
Console: Playstation 2
Release Date: 09/22/04
Genre: Puzzle Action?
My Ranking: #27
-------------------------------------

With so many games that have come and gone it is rare to find a game that is as unique as Katamari Damacy. In Katamari Damacy, you control a little green prince who pushes a ball called a katamari. This ball is able to pick up anything that is smaller than itself and upon picking that object up it gets progressively bigger in size. Basically, you playing a a game that revovles around the snowball effect.

Why are you rolling up objects on planet Earth? Well, the American version of Katamari omits this knowledge but the Japanese version gives an awesome backstory. The King of all Cosmos apprently got REALLY drunk one night and destroyed all of the stars in the universe. In order to cover up his mistake, he sent his son, the Prince of all Cosmos, to Earth to roll up objects with his katamari. Upon recieveing those objects, the King of all Cosmos shoots the ball into space and turns it into a star. Yes, our stars are made of thumbtacks, cats, legos, and volcanos.

Aside from the water, EVERYTHING in Katamari Damacy can be picked up with your ball. A dog early on may be able to push you around but once you gain enough objects you'll be able to pick up him. A level may start out inside of a house but, if you are fast enough and pick up enough stuff, you'll be able to then roll up the entire house. The camera slowly pans out further and further as you pick up more objects and before you know it, you're picking up entire islands, clouds, and even rainbows.

As if the premise wasn't good enough, the cel-shaded graphics add even more to the gameplay. Katamari Damacy looks and feels like Japanese mangas on crack. The world is vibrant with bright colors and the sheer cuteness of the people as they wiggle when you pick them up in your ball will make you smile. I don't understand why people are necessary in a katamari to make a star, but the King of all Cosmos never seems to mind.

The music and sounds are also top notch. Sure, some of it is whacky J-Pop, but the Japanese jazz pieces will absolutely blow your mind. All of the songs fit perfectly with the cutesy birght environment and they are all insanely catchy. Upon hearing the main theme, there is no doubt that it will stick in your head for days. Also, nothing beats rolling over a cow and here it go moo. That's just awesome.

Katamari Damacy does have competitive multiplayer, but I never really enjoyed it. I wished they would have had some sort of cooperative mode where you each get a ball to control, but the game can be enjoyed with multiple people in single player mode. Your friends will scream out where they think you're supposed to go and there is so much stuff happening on the screen at once that you'll even enjoy sitting back and watching the madness ensue.

By no means is Katamari Damacy easy either. There is a timer for each level and if you do not get your ball big enough in the alloted time, the King will be very angry with you. You'll fail some levels if you haven't played it before, but by the end of the game you should be good enough to complete the final stage where you roll up just about everything in the world. In addition, in order to unlock all of the comets, you'll need to get your ball big enough in an even shorter time, and some of the comet times will keep you playing for hours.

Katamari was really a complete and unique game. Whenever we bring this to PLAY events, people always want to play it or watch someone else run through the levels. So if you are a PS2 owner, do yourself a favor and pick this game up as anyone can enjoy this game. It made be one of the best game purchases you have ever made.
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)
#28 --- F-Zero (SNES)
#27 --- Katamari Damacy (PS2)*

*- Denotes highest ranked game for that console

A Football E-mail Conversation

2009-01-06T04:02:00.004-05:00

The only unfortunate thing about being in Cairo is that I am missing a good chunk of the NFL playoffs. My roommate's family is awesome enough to have AFN, the military network, so if I wanted to, I could watch all of the games. However, Cairo is seven hours ahead of New York, so those 8 E.T. games start at 3AM here. Ouch.

For those people who have been watching the playoffs though, you must be sratching your heads at the improbable outcomes. Eagles beat the Vikings at Minnesota; the Cardinals pulled out a victory over the Falcons, and the Chargers (the supposed BEST team in the AFC according to ESPN even when they started out 3-5) beat Peyton Manning and the Colts. Seriously, this season makes no sense.

However, despite not being able to watch the games, my brother has been giving me e-mail updates... well more like rants. He also missed the Chargers game, since he had to go to a wedding. Here's how the conversation went down. My brother is hilarious when it comes to football.
---------------

My Brother: Monday night:

"So, it turns out that all of our first round playoff picks were wrong, with the exception of the Ravens game! Eagles beat Vikings; Ravens beat Dolphins; Cardinals beat Falcons; and Chargers beat Colts.

So, next weekend, Giants play Eagles (ouch . . .); Panthers play Cardinals; Titans play Ravens; and Steelers play Chargers. Our conference & super bowl picks mostly remain (absent the Colts), but our wacky worst case scenario picks are all fucked. We could conceivably have an Eagles-Chargers super bowl for crying out loud."

My Response: Monday Morning:

"I've been keeping track of the scores here in Cairo. I think my brain exploded when I woke up to find out that the Cardinals and Chargers both won in the same day. I expected ONE upset though, not three with the Eagles also beating the Vikings.

I was really happy when the Cardinals beat the Falcons though. That win meant the Giants were guaranteed to play either the Cards or the Eagles, both of which will be an easy game. Now if the Cards somehow beat the Panthers, the NFC championship game will be LOL for the Giants.

The NFL playoffs is confusing. Single elimination blows."

My Brother's Response: Tuesday Morning:

"Yeah seriously on the brain explosion. I feel like this will be the weekend that the world rights itself again though. I think the Eagles game will be tougher than we think though, as the two teams know each other well. That said, an underreported aspect of the Eagles game was that Westbrook only had about 35 yards on the ground; his total yardage was overflated due to the ridiculous 72 yards he gained on a screen pass . . . A FUCKING SCREEN PASS. I mean look, if the Vikes aren't going to bother to contain a basic screen pass, the game's just not fair.

For the Ravens, I hope you got a chance to see some of the highlights. One in particular was a VICIOUS Bart Scott hit on Pennington a split-second after he released the ball in fear--Pennington was positively propelled backwards, as if he had been hit by a giant flat wall over his entire body rather than being tackled by another person. Reminded me of sci-fi movies where a guy gets hit by a concussion blast and his whole body flies straight backwards. Pennington crumpled to the floor like a broken man. And throws that led to those record 4 interceptions were epic. They were definitely the "bombs" we imagined, only they were bombed vertically instead of horizontally, and into double coverage at that.

Missed the Cards and Chargers' games for the most part. Ryan fell apart for the Falcons, and the Cards--for the first time all season--both ran the ball and stopped the run. The Chargers game was apparently the greatest game of the entire weekend, and I was at the fucking wedding for all of it. I got back to the hotel room in time to see Rivers being interviewed, and to hear the announcers do a recap--insane lead changes, great back and forth, and overtime--an overtime where the Colts defense just imploded in a way I haven't seen in a long time. Just retarded penalties (a crippling face mask, a holding call, a pass interference call, etc.) that let the Chargers march up the field.

And I'm not even talking about Darren Sproles. If you could have told me that the Colts would contain LDT (fuckin' nickname), knock him out of the game, and still lose, I would have laughed at you. And if you would have told me that Darren My-Name-Makes-Me-Sound-A-Little-Bit-Like-I-Should-Have-Been-A-Character-On-The-Jetsons Sproles would have 328 combined yards and would be the difference-maker, I would have left the room and sought help for you.

This last bit worries me. Could mean that the mighty Kurt Warner could have a 450-yard passing game this weekend. Could mean that David Tyree makes a catch with his jockstrap this time. Could mean that Vince Young makes a miraculous return in Tennessee as a middle linebacker, and has 7 sacks. In the immortal words of Kevin Garnett after the Celtics won the NBA championship last year, "ANYTHING IS POSSIBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"."
-----------------

Yeah, we're like this all time. Especially when it somes to sports.

I actually review a type of damn dice.

2009-01-04T02:03:00.007-05:00

For starters, yes, I am actually reviewing a type of die. Be in awe of my mighty geekitude! Though in light of certain discoveries, I feel no shame. I do wonder what the hell they were playing though.

Now there are times when my will is strong and I can be a very frugal and responsible man. However there are also times when I crumple like a pair of Kleenex underoos because of something shiny. This is one of those times.

I present*, the D-Total. Yep, a 24 sided die that does the job of at least 17 normal dice. Probably more if you play Hackmaster, one of the few games that actually calls for a D10,000,000. Now why did I buy this? Because it was cool and it was there.

This little baby was brought out at the 2008 GenCon by its developers, Lou Zocchi and Dr. A. F. Simkin. Zocchi is the same gentleman who brought us the 100 sided die, or Zocchihedron. Makes me pissed I missed the con last year and as a result I’m making arrangements to go to this year’s convention. So I’ve been hounding the Gamestation site since September waiting for this to go on sell. The moment it did I grabbed one and last time I checked there are only 3 left. So on with the review.

The die is big. Really big. Bigger than a ping pong ball. And it’s made of a lightweight but strong, bright white plastic. The lettering is a sharp black and is easily readable, and it appears to be etched into the plastic which means it probably won’t smudge anytime soon. The die has a total of 24 sides and it’s easy to read your results. Now the info on each side appears a bit complex at first, but after finding an explanation online it all made sense. Each side contains 4 shapes and a bunch of numbers. Each shape represents a common type of die and the shape corresponds to the shapes on that type of die.

For instance, when you look at a classic 6 sided die, it looks like a square. So on the D-Total, the square shape indicates the result for a d6. The same goes for a D4, D8, and D12. The other numbers/pips/roman numerals on the die represent other types of dices and from all of that you can come up with other die types. Want a D20? Just roll the die and if the result is a 21 to 24, reroll, for a D10, half that result, and so on. This sounds complex and it can be, but if you’ve gamed for any length of time you’ve figured out all sorts of short cuts like these that allow you to use one type of die for some other that you happen to be missing at the moment.

Cons:
This isn’t a solid die. The sucker’s hollow and it rolls a bit light as a result. It bounces too much and the roll has a hollow sound to it on a hard table, on paper, not really noticeable. Now I’ve rolled those giant 2 inch, solid dice before and I’ll admit they are too heavy and they make a hell of a lot of noise as they hit the table, but still a bit more weight on the D-Total would have been nice. Also the way they manufactured this die leaves a noticeable seam on it. This sucker was formed in 2 parts and then sealed with some sort of sonic device. On mine the seal is nice and strong, but there is a noticeable crack open where the seam meets on one side. It probably wont be a problem in the long run and this the first run of these they’ve made so there are bound to be a few bugs, but it does kinda hurt it aesthetically. I’m also afraid to try to fix it, because I might screw up the balance or break it in the process. It's also a bit pricy. At $26.99 it does cost more than a full set of normal dice. However that's still cheaper than a set of Zocchi dice, which are worth it as far as quality stands. But nothing says durable like metal.

Pros:
Its 17 bloody dice in 1. As a GM or gamer on the go it’s nice to only need one die and with this one you’ll be ready for any game you might happen across. And if you add it to your normal roster of dice, you’ll never be sort a die. Missing a D8 and don’t want to slow things down by digging around for one? Just grab the thing and roll. Also, because of its lightweight nature, it’s great for throwing. As a GM, sometimes you just want to pop a player upside the head with a die. But most of the time you risk injury as they are too small and will hurt too much, or they’re too heavy and you risk manslaughter. There is always the foam option, but then those suckers are a bit big and ungainly and you risk them seeing it coming.

Overall, I like it, and I'd recommend it. I can see myself using it a lot in my games and it’ll make my life as a GM a bit easier. Plus it looks cool and is bound to impress. I don’t like how it feels or sounds when it rolls and the seam along the edge is a bit of a turnoff. But on the other hand this is the first run of these dice they’ve done so far and I’m willing to bet that next time they will do better. Plus Zocchi is known for making some pretty fine quality dice and I’d own more if they weren’t so damned expensive. I’m still debating buying a copy of the glow-in-the-dark ones he sells.

Now let me leave you with a little bit of Zocchi at work. Enjoy ^_^

*That pic of the D-Total was borrowed from another review at Mataka.org. I wrote this at work and I forgot to bring the bloody thing with me. :p

Flashy Friday: Vector Runner

2009-01-02T11:59:00.001-05:00

I was surprised at myself for not showing this game earlier since I absolutely love this flash game. Vector runner is a racing game that uses vector graphics, which gives the game a unique feel. Be warned, this game is addictive.

The impossible achievement on Kongregate for this game is insane. You need to get 30,000 points without taking a single hit. Good luck trying to get that one. It took me hours of staring at the computer screen to get that badge.

Click here to play Vector Runner right now.

RPGs in 2008

2009-01-01T22:25:00.003-05:00

It has not been the best of years for table-top gaming. 2008 saw the death of D&D creator Gary Gygax. It also saw the release of the 4th edition of that same game, as well as a rather pitiful scattering of decent releases. It’s a bit difficult to really analyze how the year’s been for most of the gaming community because you tend to focus more on those systems you play. As a result I don’t really know how RIFTs did this year, release-wise. However I did keep an eye on some of the big ones.

As I mentioned, this year saw the death of gaming great Gary Gygax. Now if you’ve ever played any sort of RPG, on the table or on your Nintendo/Playstation/Etc, then you’ve been influenced by this man’s work. He and Dave Arneson co-created Dungeons and Dragons from what was basically a modified version of H.G. Well’s “Little Wars”, a war game played in a sandbox or on a table using toy soldiers. The two then began to sue each other over royalties and other issues and eventually they went their separate ways, leaving the company after it fell into the hands of Lorraine Williams’ family, thanks to the trouble with Blume, and from there into the clutches of Hasbro. Gary continued to be involved in gaming and wrote many more books on the topic after he left TSR. With his death this last year, it was announced that the new 4th edition of D&D would be dedicated to him. A lame gesture as Gary was not happy with the direction they took the 3rd edition in and would have been pissed regarding what they did in 4th. There are a lot of bad jokes out there about his death, mostly pun quality D&D references, but then as a group, it’s not uncommon for gamers to dick around, waste time, and tell god awful jokes while at the table. So it’s probably ok.

Speaking of 4th edition D&D. It sucked. Good? Good, now as for other things going on…
...Oh fine, I’ll explain.

1st edition D&D can be said to be a bit harsh and limiting. Your character choices are based heavily on the stats you roll and the adventures were quite unforgiving. 2nd edition D&D was more structured and more varied. It was still harsh at times though. It was also a bit broken as it was put out under William’s reign over the company so there was more emphasis on putting out material than on keeping it consistent. 3rd edition had a similar problem as Hasbro had them pumping out book after book after book. 3rd ed. was a much more varied and wonder filled system. It was a lot more simplistic and the aim was to make it easier to learn. The downside to this was that they released books about everything imaginable, making the system a rules lawyer’s dream. And you again had the consistency problem considering how much material they were pumping out. Now D&D aside, the d20 system they used was great and before their buyout by Hasbro less than a year after they bought D&D from TSR, Wizards of the Coast set it up so the d20 system would be open source. Meaning if you want to use their rule system to produce a competing game, then go right ahead. Hasbro was not happy about that one, but it means that tons of small gaming companies could pop up and the system’s not half bad.

But then 4th edition was finally released this year and it looks nothing like its predecessors. The initial reactions from most of the game reviewers made me suspect that Hasbro was sending out hookers with the reviewer copies of the game. They hype was huge and 4th edition could do no wrong. It was the perfect, ultimate, super new version of D&D and if it didn’t add 3 inches onto your cock then you were a sad little troll. Needles to say, a month or two after its release many reviewers changed their tone.

4th edition is a board game that uses Hasbro brand miniatures and does its very best to imitate World of Warcraft. Everyone has magic spells now, and every character can heal himself magically a couple of times a day. It’s all about the combat, and nonweapon skills are pointless. The designers pretty much said that if you’re using a skill like Woodworking or Navigation in the game, then you’re playing it wrong. Thieves are a joke, and wizards were just ruined. Hasbro decided to throw away their core players in favor of getting some new ones. However they forgot that table-top gaming isn’t a money making industry. It’s a hobby, supported and carried by those that love it. Game designers struggle to get stuff published while working second jobs. Monopoly doesn’t even come fucking close. They are also setting up an online GM helper service on their website. The way they’re explaining it, in order to run a truly excellent game, both the GM and the players need to join this service and pay the monthly fee. Just like WoW really. Here’s hoping it fails miserably.

Similarly, one of the great up and coming game developers has fallen. Eden studios, publisher of the zombie survival RPG “All Flesh Must Be Eaten” has failed to do a damned thing all year. With AFMBE and the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” RPG they made some big waves in the community a few years back. But last year they lost the license for Buffy and that only left them with some great games to lean on. So they stopped publishing books. 2007 was a sad year for releases and 2008 didn’t see a damned thing come out. The company isn’t at risk of going out of business as far as we know, however they appear to be having a lot of trouble starting up again. It’s a shame as the company’s a great one, and their games are usually pretty clever.

This year also saw the end of both D&D magazines, Dungeon and Dragon. While this wasn’t a great loss as following the sell of TSR, both magazines had become little more than ad space for whatever Hasbro was pushing, it’s still a bit sad. We also saw layoffs over at Hasbro this year and there are rumors of another round of layoffs over at Wizards of the Coast.

Oh, and Wizkids, producer of those little HeroClix games, was shut down by their parent company Topps. So their gone now. However there’s currently legal action towards the company or Topps pending as they owned the IP for the Battletech series. Battletech is a miniature game, video game, RPG and book series about a future where armies fight using giant robots. It’s a classic series and a decent setting. Well they stole and screwed over one of their writers and are now liable for a couple of hundred thousand dollars in fines. The author has made it public that he’s intending to sue for ownership of the IP if possible. Here’s wishing him luck.

While alot more went on this year, these are some of the events that stood out. Many companies stayed afloat and one or two vanished, and not a whole lot went on that impressed me. D&D’s big release made the mightiest splash in the wake of Gygax’s death. But then they failed to deliver.

Here’s hoping 2009’s better.

Board Gaems Make U Smrt

2009-01-01T04:56:00.004-05:00

First off, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays and all that jazz. I hope everyone is having an awesome break from school and yadda yadda. I'm in Cairo right now so my posting will be lesser for a little while. Hopefully the other writers here will keep you entertained in my absence.
-----

Will sent me this link recently that talks about the positive effects of board games. Aside from learning negotiating tactics, board games bring families together and teach kids valuable social skills. The article is pretty short, so give it a look see.

Hm, I think I'll send this link out in a PLAY newsletter when we promote our weekly board game night events.

Click here to view the story.

2008: The Year of the Letdown

2008-12-31T19:17:00.006-05:00

Tonight is a good night to celebrate. Ending 2008, what I would call one of the most disappointing years in gaming that I can remember.

It started right off in January. Two of my favorite franchises, Burnout and Devil May Cry, were getting the next-gen treatemnt with Burnout Paradise and Devil May Cry 4. They both garnered a good amount of hype and were looking to start 2008 on the right foot. Burnout Paradise turned out to be a bit too experimental (though I applaud them for trying something new) with the open world concept. Forcing you to rely on your microscopic mini-map and arrow indicators during a high-octane race was a horrible idea; the game used to just be about blazing down a linear path and trashing all that's in your way. In Paradise I was too focused on optimizing my route to the goal to think about actually enjoying the game. Add in annoyances like a lack of a "restart race" button and the lack of the much-loved Crash mode, as well as same-screen multiplayer, and the result was a package that was original and pretty, but just not that great.

Devil May Cry 4 was also a terrible letdown. Coming off from the stellar 3rd installment that got me into the series, DMC4 had definitely had some expectations to fill. What came out was a lackluster and uninspired entry to the series. Simplified mechanics trashed the complex and customizable weapon swapping and combat style systems for a simple grabbing mechanic, where you can grapple enemies from afar and slice them up. The combos in general felt less technical and more button mashing. The simplified controles and downgraded difficulty leads to what I would call "casual-i-fying" the series.

My hope was renewed in the prospect of the extremely hyped Smash Brothers Brawl. Daily updates on its website was a great hype device, but began to slowly make clear a sad truth - there really isn't much new in Brawl. While Melee was a milestone upgrade from 64 (crisp graphics, a ton of new mechanics and moveset expansion, trophy collecting and a roster that over doubled in size), Brawl only offered a few upgrades, none of which were that interesting. The fleshed out adventure mode turned out to be nothing more than some shallow platforming stages and decent boss fights, along with nonsensical cinematics (YOU try crafting a story with 35 characters that can't speak a word, and keeping it somewhat sensical). The only game mechanic changes (other than more subtle ones like weaker gravity) is in the form of final smashes which were only handed out through an item. Instead of creating an overdrive bar that charges when the character hits / gets hit, they leave it to the random spawns / locations of items to determine when someone can get a game-breaking attack. They can be somewhat fun in casual matches but anyone decently competitive turns them off entirely. The only real upgrade was adding in some new characters, but their appeal wore off relatively quickly, even the surprise appearances from non-Nintendo Sonic and Snake. And don't get me started on the absolutely terrible online support.

The next victim was possibly the biggest letdown of 08 to me, which was GTA4. While it was certainly met with critical success, I just didn't see it personally. The graphics were amazing, the city felt alive, the story was well presented and the new aim / cover mechanics worked great most of the time. The problem was that none of those things are really what GTA is about. The reason I used to spend hours on end in the lands of Vice City and the other PS2 entries was the sheer amount of fun things there were to do. There were hospital and firefighting minigames with gameplay rewards if completed, properties I could buy with missions attached to them, jetpacking around, torching people with flamethrwers or beheading them with katanas, finding hidden packages that gave you awesome upgrades with every 10 collected, just to name a few. You can do none of that in GTA4. While they do still have vigilante missions and hidden packages (well, pigeons this time) they have no tangible reward other than some achievement points. The exciting minigames of GTA4 include activities like watching fake television, browsing their fake internet, and playing virtual pool or darts with one of your virtual friends. Sure, taking them out enough give you some perks, but the entire affair felt tedious and repetitive. The weapon selection was as bare bones as possible with nothing interesting or fun to use. The cars have a realistic feel to them which makes extreme maneuvering a much more difficult affair (and less fun) affair. Money was entirely useless past the first 5th of the game since you never lose your weapons (unless you're bad enough to actually get arrested), so there's no real risk in stocking up on expensive weapons anymore, as well as no property to buy. Pestering the cops isn't even that fun anymore; in past games you could play cat and mouse with them for a while before they really took you seriously, but in 4 by the time you're starting to really have fun you'll hit 6 stars and get trampled by army men soon after (don't expect tanks though, since they removed those too). It just felt like GTA plus realism, minus the soul of the franchise. It felt empty, cold, and uninteresting outside of the main plot.

The next big release was Rock Band 2 in the fall. Now here's a hard thing to screw up; the game got rave reviews last year and pretty much perfected plastic band gameplay already. Instead of keeping to that and upgrading some aspects, they managed to change nearly nothing and actually remove some aspects of the original. Namely I speak of the game keeping track of your star ratings in individual songs; the fact that it no longer does was a glaring and absurd oversight in my eyes. As I just said nothing was really added to the game (other than songs, obviously). The world tour mode was the same as last year's mode, with a few gimmicks like managers you can hire and some more clothes for your virtual rock star. The solo tours were completely removed. There's still no way to do band vs band online play, just 1 vs 1. The battle of the bands mode past the first couple of weeks is just a glorified ad to buy more songs so you can play their setlist challenges that you upload to leaderboards that are forgotten about a week later. Promised modes like jukebox mode and a special mode for a person playing vocals and an instrument simultanously never made the cut. Songs with no vocals can't be played unless you exit the game, take out the vocals player, and go back in the game, just to play that song. The instruments were upgraded but most people didn't need more plastic guitars or drums in the first place. A lot of this is nitpicking but I expect a sequel to have something new or interesting. The only saving grace is being able to transfer 55 of the original game's songs into this one. But overall, collosal letdown on the whole.

Guitar Hero: World Tour had a chance to innovate on Rock Band's formula but fell flat on its head. Their take on the RB interface was a jumbled mess and key components like saving other players and unison bonuses were completely absent. Vocals were horribly done with a painfully strict pitch window and nonsensical combo system. The shared star power system is horribly done and leads to people hogging SP and making SP activations only last for a few seconds at a time. The solo / band tour modes are extremely drab and linear "play pre-done setlists to advance" experiences that were not compelling at all. Their biggest chance to step-up from Rock Band, the music creator, was a flop as well. It gives you no creative expression in making the actual chart (notes are pre-deterined based on the sounds used, and SP placement is 100% random), vocals arn't allowed at all, and the guitar / bass / drums are just terrible sounding midi samples. The only songs worth looking into are random mario / zelda / final fantasy songs redone and insane random solos designed for those crazy people that can 5 star Dragonforce songs. No matter what the song, the result was always a bit jarring for the ears.

A few other letdowns rounded out the year. Fable II, like its predecessor, was supremely overhyped by Peter Molyneux and underwhelmed, with game-breaking glitches to top off the mediocre experience. GTA 4's downloadable expansion got delayed until '09. The blockbuster hits for the Wii this holiday season composed of Animal Crossing, which may as well be a port of the DS version with some new furniture and a couple of gimmicks, Mario Kart Wii, which turned out to be nothing new other than the trick system, gimmicky controls and a gimped battle mode, and Wii Fit, which I just have no words for. Nintendo still doesn't care about finding any solution to its storage problem on the Wii. Playstation 3's Home was a floundering mess and, while still in beta, is already widely considered a failure. And Xbox 360's are still Red Ringing (though less so these days).

I mean, 2008 wasn't a complete failure. Brawl and Rock Band 2, while not really innovating much, remained fun as hell to play. The 360 got an interface overhaul that sent it from having the weakest OS this generation, to the best one. Games like LittleBigPlanet and indie gem Braid gave me faith that original titles can still fare well in the giant pool of sequels that we see these days. Perhaps I'm jaded because all the titles that really did well this year were in the genre I despise most - 1st / 3rd person shooters. Resistence 2, Gears 2, Fallout 3 (please don't try to tell me that this game is an RPG, if anything it's a shooter with some light RPG aspects and an overhyped targeting system), Left 4 Dead, and MGS4 just off the top of my head. I really get worried that in a few years I'll be able to just use the [shooter series' name] [number] format for every popular game released.

Here's hoping that 2009 will have a few less shooters, a few more risks, and some truly worthy AAA titles. To all those that read (and write for) TSG, Happy New Years!

4k and Games and Passage

2008-12-26T16:41:00.007-05:00

The Java 4k competition is where people submit game entries that take up 4kb of space or less. You can read more about it on the site's about page, or the rules, but there's not much more to it.

It's pretty amazing what people can do, using such little space. Oftentimes, a full-sized game is emulated, and shrunk down to 4kb. An example of this is Left 4k Dead. It's pretty fun, but really hard. I can't speak for how true it is to Left 4 Dead, since I haven't yet had the pleasure of playing it.

The winner from 2008 is a game called Spiderball4k, and your goal is to get the ball into the circle. You control your 'arms' which you shoot out like Spiderman shoots out his webs. If you touch any walls or objects you die. Difficult, but fun.

Fkconflict is a fun version of Risk. Instead of choosing which countries to attack and move from, they are randomly selected. During a round, a random country is selected, and you can choose to attack from that country, move from that country or pass. Another random country is selected, and this continues until all countries have been selected. A pretty fun take on the game.

Another one that's not really worth a screen is Scr4mble. It's fun, mostly cause I love word games. It's a great example of how 4k or 4 is often cleverly inserted into the title. Left 4k Dead is one of the best in that regard.

Passage isn't a 4k game, but it's graphics/simplicity remind me of it. It is an artsy game which lasts 5 minutes. Before you read any further, I suggest you go play it, since it's impossible to discuss without spoilers.

Last warning before I start talking about it... I didn't get at first, which is to be expected, since it's on the weird/artsy side, but I liked it by the end of it. Given that the end is only 5 minutes away, it doesn't take long to warm up to. Your first choice, marriage or not? You get more points by being married, but that damned woman holds you back.

If you avoid marriage, and live the single life, you get less points, but you have more manuevarbility. You can go around hunting treasure in a maze, and don't have to worry about finding openings that you can both fit in. (Not meant to sound dirty...)

It got pretty big coverage, here's a few articles on it. I played through it twice, and don't feel like I've learned anything, (since I already knew to avoid women) but I feel a tear in my eye... (But not really, I'm too manly for that.)

Godspeed.

Top 52: F-Zero (#28)

2008-12-23T22:12:00.009-05:00

Racing games aren't my thing. This game is. Read on to find out why.

Title: F-Zero
Console: Super Nintendo
Release Date: 08/13/91
Genre: Racing
My Ranking: #28
-------------------------------------

F-Zero is a hyper-intense futuristic racing game. You control one of four really fast hover cars and you race on tracks with crazy turns, jumps and in some cases, lava. I love the story wikipedia gives for F-Zero, as if a racing game actually needs a story:

"F-Zero is set in the year 2560, when humanity's multiple encounters with alien life forms had resulted in the expansion of Earth's social framework. This led to commercial, technological and cultural interchanges between planets. The multi-billionaires who earned their wealth through intergalactic trade were mainly satisfied with their lifestyles, although most coveted more entertainment in their lives. This resulted in a new entertainment based on the Formula-1 races to be founded with vehicles that could hover one foot above the track. These Grand Prix races were soon named "F-Zero" after a rise in popularity of the races."

LOL.

The reason F-Zero is on my list is because of the awesome track design. F-Zero moves fast, REALLY fast. Yet, despite the speed, almost all of the stages feature 90 degree to 180 degree turns and in order to cut corners well, you need to have a solid feel for the controls. The best example of this is probably on the White Land maps which have 180 degree turns with ice to screw up your traction.

Not only do you need to be perfect in order just to make the turns, but the opposing cars on master difficulty will always be right behind you, making the game only barely beatable on the hardest difficulty. It took me weeks of grinding to be able to stand a chance on King league on master, and even now I can't get first place on all five stages in that league.

I can't talk about F-Zero without talking about the music. Every song in F-Zero is amazing, and all of them NEED to be replayed with live guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. I think my favorite song is the ending song, when you see your place and time for each stage. Then again, Silence has awesome music too. They're all good. Except for Death Wind. Screw Death Wind.

F-Zero did have some glaring flaws that prevented it from being the best racing game ever. For one, there's only 15 stages in the entire game, and while the difficulty and high-speed excitement keeps you coming back, the game feels a little too short. Just one more league would have solve this problem, I think. The other extreme flaw is that there is NO MULTIPLAYER. Seriously, who makes a racing game without multiplayer?

Yet, even with these problems, F-Zero is still fun to play, even today. I think that since you can enjoy this game without a multitude of tracks or cars and with no multiplayer shows how strong quality the tracks in this game are. F-Zero would be higher on my list with these minor additions, but even so, it's still one of the enjoyable racing games I've ever played.

-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)
#28 --- F-Zero (SNES)

Top 52: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (#29)

2008-12-22T18:19:00.005-05:00

I've already talked about the awesomeness that happens when Mario meets the role-playing genre. Super Mario RPG was so enjoyable to play that it seemed almost impossible for another Mario RPG to top it. Paper Mario for the N64 was good, but not as good as Super Mario RPG. Then came Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which still remains as one of my favorite RPGs ever. Read on to find out why.

Title: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Console: Nintendo Gamecube
Release Date: 10/11/04
Genre: Role-Playing Game
My Ranking: #29
-------------------------------------

It's rare that a single-player video game makes me laugh out loud. Paper Mario 2 is now always the game I think of when thinking of a legitimately funny game. There is an absurd amount of text in this game, even for an RPG but, you can see why there is. The dialogue is fantastically cute with Mario only making facial and body reactions to what characters say to him. I especially loved the bomb-omb town where the bomb-ombs have a pseudo-Tourette's syndrome, and randomly say BOOM when they speak. See the video below for an example.

The humor isn't the only aspect that makes this game great. The battle system was astounding and a huge improvement over the simplistic Super Mario RPG timed hit system. In addition to having to time your attacks correctly as the hit animation ensues, you also have to press A at certain times to gain stylish points. The more stylish moves you do, the faster your star gauge fills up, and your star powers are extremely powerful.

Even action you take in battle requires the player to do some correct input in order to get a good attack-including the star powers. For example, one star-ability called Sweet Treat puts you in a minigame where hearts, flowers and poison mushrooms fall from the sky. You have to aim and shoot properly to pick up health and flower bonus while avoiding the poison mushrooms that stun you. Instead of most traditional RPGs, Paper Mario 2 keeps you busy even during the attack animation.

The battle system doesn't stop being creative there either. With every battle you go into, you have an audience watching you. By doing the stylish moves I mentioned before you can impress your audience and they give you star power. They may also even throw items to help you out or throw blocks to try and hurt you. If you catch a bad guy trying to throw a rock at you, you can jump into the audience and beat him up, if you so wish.

On top of all this you have a badge system, which is just a glorified ability system. By collecting different badges and spending badge points to equip them you can have abilities that make you have a electrified shield around you, a multi-jump attack, a health point increase, etc. Depending on the boss fight or dungeon you are in, these badges can make or break the battle for you and require some strategic thinking to use them effectively.

I remember running through this game pretty quickly, but I don't remember it being incredibly easy or insanely difficult. The Pit of 100 trials was a bit crazy, as you had to go through endless amounts of battles getting no break to go an inn or save point, only to face a really hard boss after travelling 100 floors to get there. Albeit this was optional, but to have the opportunity to partake in this hardcore challenge was appreciated.

Lastly, what I really enjoyed about Paper Mario was that they made good use of the "paper" concept. Mario and all the characters are 2D living in a 3D world. And since Mario looks like he's made out of paper, he gets to use paper like abilities when not in battle. Mario can turn into a paper airplane to fly over large gaps or turn into a paper tube to fit into tiny tunnels. The first Paper Mario didn't make any use of the paper concept, but this one did.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an all-around solid RPG. If you like humorous storylines, engaging turn-based battle systems and creative abilities, you're guaranteed to enjoy this game. There's a lot of text and the story is very similar to Super Mario RPG, but trust me, you won't care about these minor flaws.
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)
#29 --- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GC)

Flashy Friday: Gamma Bros.

2008-12-20T20:35:00.004-05:00

Alright, so Flash Friday has turned into more like "Flashy Sometime Near Friday" or "Flashy When Rich Decides To Write It." Whatever though, I'm still sharing with you some awesome awesome games.

This week's game is Gamma Bros, an old-school space-themed shoot-em-up game. Gamma Bros has been around for a long time (since 2006) but I was only introduced to it this semester.

You control a spaceship that can move up, down, left and right. However, instead of only being able to shoot upwards (or sideways) like most shoot-em-ups, you can shoot in all four directions in this game. The choice of shooting four directions but only one at a time makes Gamma Bros really dynamic and fun to play.

Good luck trying to stop playing this game once you've started. It's addictive.

Click here to play Gamma Bros right now.

The Other Election -- the new VGSA Presidential administration

2008-12-15T18:49:00.011-05:00

With Barack Obama’s administration taking power in January 2009, the United States of America has its new leaders. However, though the story was overshadowed during the election season, the future leaders of the Video Game States of America (“VGSA”) were also recently elected (er . . . chosen unilaterally by me).

Often overlooked by the media and others who solely (and foolishly) concern themselves only with matters relevant to the tangible or “real” world, the VGSA—a large nation comprising an aggregate of all video game worlds—is in trouble. It is a highly diverse nation with many problems, including multiple wars, economic troubles, systematic glitches, monsters, and evil robots. It is a nation that needs leadership. But who among the VGSA is qualified to lead it through these troubles and the unforeseen troubles that lie ahead?

Well, the voters (er . . . me) have decided. Here are the members of the new administration voted to lead the VGSA through these trying times.

-------------------------------------

Mario – President

A leader in dozens of video games, Mario has proven himself to be able to adapt to the changing world and its many conflicts, rendering him a flexible champion of the people. Building on his defeat of Donkey Kong at a young age, Mario has repeatedly defeated such adversaries as Bowser, Bowser Jr., Magikoopa, and Count Bleck. He has proven his mettle as a platform-jumper, a water-squirting town cleaner, a coin-collector, a multi-sport athlete, and as a pipe-diver. Additionally, his roots as a plumber (albeit one not named Joe) clearly mean that he represents a symbol of the common man, and small business.

However, as some of his critics claimed during the campaign season, Mario’s alleged ties to communism may render him a risky choice to lead the VGSA. Similarly, his use of magic whistles and raccoon-costumes may demonstrate a lapse in judgment that lead some to question his readiness to lead. Others may take issue with him on moral grounds, due to his documented frequent use of mushrooms.

Finally, Mario’s lack of communication skills may harm him in foreign policy. His extremely limited vocabulary may limit his ability to effectively persuade his adversaries, leaving only jumping or attacking them with Fire Flowers as an alternative. However, Mario may mitigate this weakness through the use of varied fonts and text boxes.

-------------------------------------

Cloud – Vice President

As part of Mario’s Team of Rivals, Mario chose to incorporate his chief opponent as his Vice President, recognizing Cloud’s diverse strengths. This former Soldier carries with him the experience of having saved the world from complete annihilation. His leadership in the Jenova conflicts was brave, and his defeat of the dreaded Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon, and Diamond Weapon threats solidified his status as a military leader. His prowess in Chocobo raising demonstrates his patience, and his connection to the domestic homeland. He is a true military hero, with Chocobo farm values.

Furthermore, Cloud’s steadiness and persistence in acquiring gil demonstrate an economic conservatism that should help the Mario administration to make the VGSA economy grow and prosper. While it is true that much of Cloud’s gil was applied to weapon purchases in the past, his prudent investment in Chocobo farming, local inns, and various healing items show that he is capable of leading the VGSA into a balanced economic future.

Finally, Cloud has demonstrated an ability to unify and lead a diverse group of VGSAicans. He has demonstrated a history of reaching across the aisle to join with men, women, African-Americans, dogs, cats (or rather, cats-riding-mogs), and even the previously marginalized cape-wearing gun-wielding mechanical-claw-hand-having sort-of-vampire guys. This demonstrates that he may be the unifying presence that VGSA needs in these trying times.

However, it is worth noting that Cloud’s willingness to reach out to all has raised serious questions about him, and his readiness to lead the VGSA, during the campaign season. For example, it is without question that Cloud has relied upon numerous foreign deities to aid him, including Shiva, Ifrit, Odin, and Ramuh, just to name a few. This polytheism hurt him among religious voters. While Cloud argued that his long-held faith in Aerith and traditional Lifestream values demonstrated his true values, voters decided in the end that they were less comfortable with a leader who relies on foreign deities and things like Kjata during a conflict.

Furthermore, Cloud’s associations with known cape-wearing gun-wielding mechanical-claw-hand-having sort-of-vampire guys led some voters to question his judgment, and his forthrightness. The people of VGSA proved unwilling to support a president who pals around with cape-wearing gun-wielding mechanical-claw-hand-having sort-of-vampire guys. The significance of his ties to Soldier and Sephiroth, not to mention his curious relationship with the mysterious “Zack” remained unclear to many voters. Voters felt that they simply needed to know more about Cloud before casting their imaginary ballot for him. In short, voters asked, “Who is the real Cloud Strife?”

Similarly, Cloud’s history of mental illness raised insurmountable concerns for the majority of VGSA voters. Without warning, Cloud has succumbed to paralyzing flashbacks, and has even succumbed to the psychic control of Sephiroth. All of VGSA no doubt remembers the tragedy of the Black Materia Transfer scandal, where Cloud gave the Black Materia to Sephiroth (albeit once when it looked really cool), claiming to be a victim of some sort of mind control. This scandal, as we all know, contributed to Weapon proliferation and to the dreaded Meteor threat. Voters proved unwilling to trust someone who we know has given dangerous materials to megalomaniacal leaders in the past with the future of VGSA.

An ongoing concern however for the VGSA still remains with regard to Cloud’s defense credentials. As the Mario campaign reiterated, Cloud could not save us from Meteor alone. Rather, after he heroically defeated Sephiroth, it was only the magic of Aerith and the magical white-materia dealie that prevented Meteor from destroying the world. VGSAicans will have to wait and see if their future security will depend on the hope that Aerith and her magical white-materia lifestream spell thingy will show up in a crisis.

-------------------------------------

Squall Leonhart – Chief of Staff

Who better to manage the flow of information, negotiate with Congress, and uphold the interests of the President than a guy with a gigantic gunblade? Though he's not the most talkative character, Squall will definitely be more than capable of keeping order in the Mario administration.

-------------------------------------

Wario – Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Wario won this appointment because of his unique power to single-handedly clean up at least 85% of the entire VGSA environment, simply by agreeing to dietary changes to help prevent the further release of poison gas.

-------------------------------------

Merlon - Director of the Office of Management and Budget

As a psychic, Merlon from the Paper Mario series is best equipped to give expert advice to the Mario administration on any policy, management, legislative, regulatory, or budgetary matter.

-------------------------------------

Bowser - Director of the National Drug Control Policy

Bowser's hostility toward mushrooms makes him a perfect choice to continue the war on drugs.

-------------------------------------

Agitha - VGSA Trade Representative

While admittedly a little young for the job, Agitha did an excellent job of coordinating the golden bug trade in Twilight Princess, and has pledged to institute a similarly lucrative trading system for the VGSA.

-------------------------------------

Dr. Light – Chief Technology Officer

A position newly established by the Obama administration, Dr. Light’s extensive experience in creating complex robots should benefit future VGSA technological goals. Additionally, his close relationship with Mega Man, who will serve as Secretary of Energy, should create a beneficial synergy for the administration.

-------------------------------------

Crono – Secretary of State

As the VGSA’s chief foreign policy negotiator and adviser, Crono offers the unique ability to meet with not only present-day heads of state, but also past and future ones. This ability to transcend time should be an invaluable aid to present and future VGSA foreign policy. Additionally, his ability to bring frogs, robots, and Fiendlord wizards together for a common purpose should indicate that he will be uniquely situated to bring about peaceful relations throughout the VGSA.

-------------------------------------

Sonic the Hedgehog – Secretary of Treasury

Sonic's sound investment strategy, focused primarily on gold rings and emeralds, will provide a solid economic backbone for the future, while also providing a strong example for all VGSA citizens.

-------------------------------------

Link – Secretary of Defense

While undoubtedly qualified for several cabinet-level positions, Link’s command of swords, bows, boomerangs, bombs, bombchus, and hookshots, among other weapons, renders him best qualified to establish and maintain a broad-based national security strategy. He has also graciously agreed to provide the Treasury Secretary with access to his Giant Wallet to aid the troubled economy. (And, on an unrelated note, he makes an adorable cat.)

-------------------------------------

Phoenix Wright – Attorney General

A consensus pick to be the VGSA’s chief law enforcement officer, as he is one of the only characters who actually has a law degree.

-------------------------------------

Toad – Secretary of the Interior

Toad is an appropriate appointee for this position dealing with land management because he looks like a mushroom. He can identify with stuff that grows in the ground, which is a good thing.

-------------------------------------

Kirby – Secretary of Agriculture

Kirby’s voracious appetite should singlehandedly increase food demand throughout the VGSA, while his Cook ability should increase supply.

-------------------------------------

Edea – Secretary of Commerce

The formerly-possessed sorceress Edea will fulfill her duties to foster domestic and international business with a tried and true two-step method: magic and hotness. Granted however, that she and Squall, the Chief of Staff, can get along after this little tiff.

-------------------------------------

Hammer Bros. – Secretary of Labor

Hammer Bros. support for the United Hammer Workers’ Union and United Hammer Throwers Association signals clear support for an increase in infrastructure development, which should produce a much needed boost in jobs.

-------------------------------------

White Mage/White Wizard – Secretary of Health and Human Services

An obvious choice. Additionally, the white mage/white wizard’s unclear gender may signal a turn toward greater rights for VGSA LGBTs.

-------------------------------------

King of Coneria – Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

The unnamed King of Coneria from Final Fantasy I is the perfect choice to promote urban development. Just look at how quickly he got that bridge to the north built.

-------------------------------------

Star Fox – Secretary of Transportation

Narrowly edging out Captain Falcon for this position, Star Fox’s interstellar travel experience and ability to do a barrel roll should help the Mario administration plot a modern course for the future of VGSA transportation.

-------------------------------------

Mega Man – Secretary of Energy

While slighted by not being chosen for Secretary of Defense, Mega Man’s commitment to transform the VGSA to a megabuster-and-E-tank-based energy plan, could greatly increase energy efficiency, thereby enhancing President Mario’s green initiatives.

-------------------------------------

Mother Brain – Secretary of Education

Why? ‘Cause she’s a giant brain, that’s why.

-------------------------------------

Barrett – Secretary of Veterans Affairs

With a massive gun for an arm, few will doubt his dedication to alleviating the plight of the VGSA’s brave returning troops and Soldiers.

-------------------------------------

Thwomp – Secretary of Homeland Security

After careful debate, Thwomp’s “Open for a Few Seconds, then Smashie Smashie” border control policies, while considered extreme by many, were determined by President Mario to be more prudent than the “Shoot Straight in a Slow, Rhythmic Fashion” policies of Bullet Bill. To quiet naysayers, Thwomp also demonstrated his superior technique against Bullet Bill directly. Case closed on that one.

Fallout update

2008-12-14T23:58:00.003-05:00

This is just a followup to my review of Fallout 3 a few weeks ago.
Around the end of November, Bethesda announced the upcoming DLC for their game Fallout 3. Among other things this included the release of a construction toolset for the game. Well last week they released the toolset and the trickle of mods for the game has turned into a torrent of user created material.

The construction set is available for download at the Fallout 3 website as well as on Fallout3Nexus. They've even put up a wiki to explain how it works along with a tutorial to get you started.
So far the best site for mods seems to be Fallout3Nexus.

While the mods out so far vary from nude mods to new weapons to replacement companions for your character, it's only a matter of time until we start seeing some pretty amazing work.

For now though I'm comfortable in saying that Fallout 3 is now a game worth buying. That is, as long as you're buying the PC version. While there will be DLC for the X-Box 360, the mods are only on the PC version and there are alot of bugs in the game that will only be fixed by the fans.

PC wins again console junkies. Bwahahahahahahahaha!!! ^^

Top 52: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice for All (#30)

2008-12-14T04:24:00.004-05:00

This pick is more of a shout out to the entire Phoenix Wright series for the Nintendo DS. It's hard just to pick one game in the series without talking about the others since they are so woven together but, it would also be silly for this series to take up four slots on my Top 52 list as well. Regardless, the Phoenix Wright series owned my life for a semester and all I could think about was playing this game.

Title: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All
Console: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 01/16/07
Genre: Adventure/Visual Novel
My Ranking: #30
-------------------------------------

In the Phoenix Wright series, you play as Phoenix Wright, a up and coming lawyer. Yes, Phoenix Wright is a lawyer game. In each case, which is always a murder case of some kind, you are playing as the defense attorney for someone who has been wrongfully accused. It is your job to find the contradictions in the witness' statements and find holes in the prosecutor's arguments.

Sounds boring at first, trust me; I know. However, once you start playing the Phoenix Wright games, your hooked for a couple of reasons. For one, the cases you deal with are astounding and finding the contradictions is a surprisingly difficult task if you're not accustomed to thinking outside the box. I would love to give an example here of what I'm talking about, but I do not want to spoil anything about the crazy twists that are in every case of every Phoenix Wright games. Seriously, you can NEVER foresee how a case will end. Sure, you'll end up winning the case, but how you win will blow your mind.

Calling the Phoenix Wright series a visual novel is surprisingly accurate. The connection you'll gain to Phoenix Wright will become so strong by the end of the fourth game because the writing is by far the best I have ever seen in any video game. When you catch a tricky contradiction in a witness statement, you'll share your excitement with Phoenix. When you see Phoenix lose a battle, you'll emphasize with his feelings. Anyone who enjoys character development in video games has to play this game.

This game should have failed miserably since the gameplay is minimal. When investigating a crime, Phoenix Wright is a point and click adventure. When finding contradictions, all you are doing is reading text, searching through your evidence and pressing the "Press" button for more information out of the witness. However, since the story is so engaging and the music is fantastically composed (and fits the environment of the game), the minimalist gameplay doesn't even matter.

Though Phoenix Wright is a lawyer game, you can see from the videos and photos that the game looks very anime. This works to Phoenix Wright's advantage as whenever you counter an argument the screen shakes, the background moves really fast, and the animations are highly exaggerated, making the pleasure of finding a contradiction that much more exciting. Sometimes you'll just laugh from the animation alone (e.g. a prosecutor throws coffee at Phoenix... multiple times, lolz).

I highlight Justice for All (the second of four games in the series) in this post since it features my favorite case in the entire series. The wikipedia article on this game gives an excellent description of the case without giving away the major twists. "Phoenix defends Matt Engarde, an actor charged with the murder of his television rival Juan Corrida. This case ends up becoming a personal matter after Maya [your assistant] gets kidnapped by an assassin hired by the real perpetrator." Ah! I want to say so much but I have to respect the spoilers! Lame.

The Phoenix Wright series has gained a huge following of deeply devoted fans. On Newgrounds I discovered a long series of flash animations and spinoffs called Phoenix Wrong. The Phoenix Wrong animation series takes the animations from the Phoenix Wright series, as crazy as they are, and re-appropriates them with sound bytes from movies, songs, pop culture, etc. It sounds silly as first, but some people are REALLY creative with the combinations of sound bytes and Phoenix animations. (Howard Dean's famous exclamation + Von Karma's scream animation = ROFLMAO). A good example is shown below.

The Phoenix Wright games are probably the best sleeper hits in video games right now. Even after four games in the series being released, and a fifth one being announced, this series isn't at the forefront of video gamer's minds, and it should be. Sure, there are many ways you can attack Phoenix Wright's style, the main one being the gameplay is minimal. However, regardless of how bad it looks from the outside, once you play it, you'll be captivated in fantastically fun experience.

>.>

OBJECTION!
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
#30 --- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)

Reflections on a Gaming Semester

2008-12-14T00:37:00.001-05:00

I'm a Video Game Production major at NYU. I'm sure that confuses some people, since NYU just announced they will have video game majors starting NEXT year. At my school in Gallatin we get to create our own concentrations, and mine is in Video Game Production. I guess that means I'm slightly ahead of the curve? What's nice though is that NYU is starting a masters program in gaming in Fall 2010, which is the semester right after I graduate. If I pull the right strings I might have a way into that, unless, of course, I find an good-paying job out of undergrad. Eh, whatevs.

Being that I'm a junior, my academic career is flying full throttle. I took four classes this semester. Digital New Media, Game Production, Culture as Communication and Hackers: Culture and Politics. All four of these classes blended together extremely well, and I felt that each discussion in these classes were extensions of a previous conversation I had in different class but with a different spin on it.

The first example of this happening was when I talked about Jorge Luis Borges and the Garden of Forking Paths. I had to read that short story for both my Digital New Media class and my Game Production class. In game production we looked specifically at the labyrinth the main character walks through in order to find the person he needed to kill. We took that winding labyrinth idea and made our own 3D models of of a labyrinth. Hence the Lego Labyrinth post I made earlier.

In Digital New Media, we took Borges' story and analyzed it terms of hypertext. By killing a prominent person who was also the name of a city, Borges showed a hidden meaning embedded with his the actions of his character. The idea of hypertext also blended into other topics in Digital New Media, the obvious one being how we use hyperlinks to continue a line of thought or a narrative.

I thought it was neat that my classes complimented each other in little bits early in the semester. By the end of the semester though, everything I was doing was becoming part of one big wheel, and content was getting recycled with different lenses in different classes. I remember watching McLuhan's Wake in Digital New Media while reading McLuhan's Understanding Media in my Culture as Communication class. McLuhan's Wake was a film produced by Marshall McLuhan's son that took McLuhan's ideas of the "medium is the message" and "hot and cold media," along with many others and used them in a film format.

For those who don't know, McLuhan is one of the pioneers of new media studies. I recently wrote a paper on how McLuhan would probably look at the interpersonal relationships between people while they play video games. You can read that paper through this link.

I also read Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture and I took one his ideas--Trans-Media Storytelling--and decided to do a final project for my Digital New Media class with Jenkins in mind. The concept behind Trans-Media Storytelling is that current media have the ability to take one storyline and extend it over different mediums. For example, The Matrix is a three part movie series. However, the story is also extended in the Animatrix anime series and in the Matrix Online game.

For my take on his theory I made a Little Big Planet level that focused more on a narrative, while still having quite a bit of gameplay. I recorded the level with voice acting and made it into a video on YouTube. The video is also posted on this site, right before this post. The Little Big Planet level is just one step in a trans-media storytelling format. By making a video, I move the game into another medium, and since I made the level copyable, someone could take my design, improve upon it, or even continue the story.

The Little Big Planet level isn't the only project I was working on this semester as well. For my Game Production class, I had to create a game using programs such as Autodesk Maya and Virtools, which both focus on making 3D environments. After much deliberation and tons of time spent learning the software, I was able to create (fairly) working demo and a level design document that lays out the goals of the game, the inspiration and a timeline of various models. I have a screenshot of what the game looks like below (called Clockwork), and you may notice that the level design was inspired by the Lego Labyrinth.

I do plan on finishing the game, at least just the first level. I plan on having it out before the end of December and it will posted on this site first. Shawn was awesome enough to record some music for the game, and he linked to you it in his most recent, and first, post on this blog.

The story for Clockwork is pretty straight forward. You're a worker inside of a gigantic clock constantly being watched over by what looks to be drones. Your character decides that he can't take it anymore and decides to leave his post working on the gears. In order to escape from the clock, you need to solve a series of puzzles to unlock the path to the exit. And being that you're in a place filled with gears, many of the walls and floors turn, which add to the puzzle frenzy.

This whole story is explained without words, mostly because gamers playing a puzzle-action game probably don't want to read story. Instead, the above passage is explained just through animation. A video game narrative doesn't need words to be effective, at least, in my opinion. Why is this the case? Sherry Turkle, a writer I mentioned in a previous post gives her view on the subject. Turkle suggests that gamers care less about narrative in games because the interactivity of a game already allows them to create their own story, even if they are trapped in a highly rule-based world.Even though Turkle made those observations in the 1980's, some of her perceptions still hold true today.

I actually learned a lot about video game history this semester, though that knowledge surprisingly came from my Hackers: Culture and Politics course. I didn't know that the makers of the Atari 2600 were a bunch of hackers, and I also found out where the 2600 came from. I wrote a whole history about the 2600 on Will and Beyond, so check it out if you want to find out more.

I think the most important thing I learned this semester relating to video game production is that in order to create something successful, you have to look at it from an interdisciplinary point of view. Gameplay isn't the most important thing, as I always have said in the past. The look and feel of a game, the story, the music, the entire development team; they all need to work together.

Games aren't all about the content either. McLuhan taught me to look at the interactions outside of the content and Jenkins showed me that video games aren't a closed medium; they seep into almost all of the other media that we have. And while games should be focused on making gamers happy, games are so integrated into our culture that they affect the growth of business, music, film, and ourselves. To ignore the appeal of games to any person would be taking a very narrow mindset.

Next semester will be interesting as well. I'm taking a class on game art, another in advanced photoshop, a class about evil characters in stories, a class on reading and theorizing film and my internship with Illclan, an animation company that produces Machinima.

Little Big Planet- The Owl Collector

2008-12-13T20:02:00.005-05:00

One of my many final projects was to create a Little Big Planet level/film. I learned a lot about how different mediums combine together in my various classes at NYU this year. Whether is was McLuhan's theories on hot and cold media, or Jenkins' idea of convergence culture, each of them suggested a melding of mediums. So, I decided to take their ideas into practice and create a little big planet level with some basic story elements and voice acting. The result is shown below.

Alright, so it's not THAT funny, but I thought it was pretty cute for what Little Big Planet is. Making the level took about 4-5 days of work; most of it being spent on testing and re-testing gameplay elements (the falling blocks part was a bitch).

The gameplay and script was created by me and the characters used are characters Media Molecule had in the story mode. The fantastic voice-acting was all performed by my roommate, Garrett.

Yeah, I know. The quality sucks. Eventually I may have a (working) adapter that allows me to plug my PS3 into my computer. If and when that happens I'll recorded this video with better quality. Even with this quality though, my professor and classmates seemed to love it when I presented it. I think I also blew their minds when I showed how the gameplay mechanics work.

I'm still impressed at the amount of tools Little Big Planet has for the level editor. I was even able to affect the camera angle at the end so you could see the catapult activating. Crazy stuff. If you have LBP and you would like to play this level, search for "The Owl Collector" in LBP. And if you like it, please heart it! I need 5 hearts in order to get a trophy.

Expect a Little Big Planet review in the upcoming week.

Video Gaming with McLuhan

2008-12-13T19:33:00.002-05:00

I wrote this paper for my Culture as Communication class. The essay looks at McLuhan's theories on media, and sees how well his theories would apply to video games. Since McLuhan always pushed the "medium is the message" idea, I analyze the interactions between people as they play video games, while under a McLuhan lens. Being that the paper is academic, read only if you're looking for something fairly intelligent sounding.
--------------

Video Gaming with McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan introduced a revolutionary idea to media studies. Instead of examining the new content in the media, McLuhan looked at the interpersonal relationships forming because of the new medium. He was more concerned with the human interaction than with the subject itself. I only wish that McLuhan would have been alive to study and remark on the environments that current video games create. There have been hundreds of studies that look at the effects of violent video games, but few have looked at the interpersonal relationships that form around this new medium.

A common misconception of video gamers is that they become glued to the action on the screen and do not interact with the players around them. Yet, whenever I host a video game club event in NYU, the room is loud not because of the television, but because of the people interacting (more like yelling) with one another. As play occurs, the people become more in tune with their characters or avatars and as their characters win or lose, they mimic the feeling of joy or despair in the real world.

Mocking, cheering, gloating, cursing and anger are just some of the emotions expressed in the multiplayer experience that exists out of the gaming world. For “play,” whether in life or in a wheel, implies interplay. There must be give and take, or dialogue, as between two or more persons or groups” (McLuhan, 240-241). The discussions outside of the game are particularly odd because a game allows the parties involved to be cruder. Calling someone a loser or a n00b is mean but, a gamer has no choice but to accept the insult, and retort with an even better insult. In addition, the better your rhetoric is, the more you will impress your opponent and you will bond closer together both inside and outside the gaming environment.

Why does this happen? Multiplayer gaming is a forced competitive environment and since you are battling in a virtual world, it only seems natural to extrapolate the virtual competition into the real world, and have a competition in rhetoric. And when you eventually win a battle—especially in something like a fighting game where there is a clear cut winner—the jubilation of the character animation and the player may often times be one of the same. “Games, like institutions, are extensions of social man” (McLuhan, 235). Though we may not be battling with swords in the real world unlike our virtual counterparts, we find other ways to compete.

The need for competition in both the virtual and real world may be brought further to light by McLuhan’s theories about hot and cold media. Simply put, hot media is any medium that is high in data but low in participation, while cold media is low in the amount of information but high in participation (McLuhan, 23). Video games seem to break from this mold as they are both high in participation and in data. The user playing a video game is being inundated with visuals and sound while inputting commands on a controller and potentially conversing with his or her neighbor. Participation, in this case is both mental and physical.

The visual and sound power of a movie, on the other hand, is such an overload of data that the watcher is forced to be quiet and process all that is happening within the screen, making it clearly a hot medium. Video games have a similar level of focus since each player looks closely at how the character is interacting with the environment when he or she inputs commands. However, since the inputting of commands forces us to participate in order to enjoy the medium, we naturally participate in the real world as well.

Another reason why we might be more prone to talking in real life while playing video games is that we have a closer tie with the character than that of movie characters. We control the movements and actions of the avatar but the technology is not advanced enough yet that we can control their speech and make it our own. It is possible that since we control the character in some elements, we feel the urge to speak so that we can further complete our connection to the avatar and make the gaming experience a closer match for the extensions of ourselves.

Video games force the user to multitask since there is interaction with a visual object. Since we have the senses of sight and touch covered, the hot media environment we live in may force us to connect with the gaming experience orally as well. Instead of cutting our minds off from an oral interaction, we may feel compelled to discuss while gaming so that we do not overload one of our stimuli. This idea slightly differs from McLuhan who suggests that our bodies self-amputate in hot media situations. “The function of the body, as a group of sustaining and protective organs for the central nervous system, is to act as buffers against sudden variations of stimulus in the physical and social environment” (McLuhan, 43).

It’s hard to argue that we, living in New York City, do not live a hot media society. The internet is loaded with information that we can access at any time now, thanks to the availability of cell phones and laptops. However, instead of blocking ourselves off from the stimulus, we engage with it. The want to know information is very much a gaming quality since it is akin to exploration. The fact that we can handle all the information and play with it might show that we are attempting to cool down our environment in order to make use of all of our senses.

With video games the environment seems to protect its users from self-amputation. You are aware that the player sitting next to you is engaged in the same competition experiencing similar emotions to you while participating in the content. The urge to share your feelings is strong, just as it is when watching a movie with a friend. However, the difference is that since you are changing the content, you feel more ownership to the experience and have no qualms discussing the experience mid-gameplay.

Gamers are a social bunch when partaking in a multiplayer experience. The interactions may be a product of the “warm” medium that it is, since video games are filled with data and participation. Regardless, McLuhan may have made some changes to his theories based on the relationships that form with video gaming. Hot and cold media might have to be re-evaluated and the self-amputation concept might have to be entirely remodeled since video gamers seem to counteract that belief. Since McLuhan never witnessed digital play on something of this magnitude, I am sure our society would influence the development of his theories.
-----------

The book referenced in this essay is McLuhan's Understanding Media.

Feel free to debate my ideas expressed in this paper. I'm sure there are some holes in my argument that people can address.

Princess Peach's Comeuppance

2008-12-13T09:37:00.011-05:00

Hey hey all, Shawn here. I've been a silent "contributor" for a while (er . . . read, lurked, and commented, but never actually contributed anything other than my two cents on other people's posts . . .) and thought I would post a quick introduction, and one of the most hilarious videos I've ever seen. Hopefully, this will make everyone forgive my lurkness . . . which coincidentally rhymes with jerkness. Moving on.

Stuff about me: I'm a 28 year old law student (graduating in May 2009), and the older brother of the founder of this site. I've been a guitarist and composer since late 1991. (Some of my music is posted, albeit not terribly frequently, at my Newgrounds.com audio page for all to listen to and rate for free.)

I intend to at least sometimes post about video game music and related issues, but also to post more generally about random stuff. My posts will probably be less frequent than the other contributors, but hopefully will be just as awesome. You be the judge.

Stuff about something awesome: Came across this video by Seth MacFarlane, of Family Guy and American Dad fame, in which Mario and Princess Peach are voiced by Family Guy actors. Let's just say the video offers an alternative ending to the old-school Super Mario Bros.

Dwarves in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!!!

2008-12-12T15:37:00.005-05:00

There’s a slight problem that comes up whenever you decide to do a review of a gaming system or a setting therein. When you read a book, you might end up taking something from it that another reader might not. However for the most part what you take from it is what others have taken from it as well. There’s some variability from reader to reader, due to whatever each brings to their interpretation of the book, but that’s really it.

Now the problem with reviewing a RPG system or a setting for a game is that it’s entirely dependent on your experiences playing that system or setting. The material is presented not only in the way that the author intended but filtered through not only the game master’s vision of the setting but through your own. As a result one person’s experience playing in a game will be completely different from another’s. I was introduced to the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade by a group that was very, very into the role-playing aspect of the game. This meant that a player would spend 30 minutes in game (in character) explaining to another player what’s been going on and what the story is up to now because his character hadn’t been there. Now this would go on despite the fact that the other player had, despite his character’s absence, been in the fucking room the whole time and already knew what was going on!! As a result the 2 of them could have just said “ok, when his character gets here, my character tells him everything that happened while he was gone.” I’d never fallen asleep during a RPG before then. So for me Vampire will always be a very role-play heavy game system.

Just something to keep in mind for the time being.

I would like to introduce you to the SpellJammer setting. What is SpellJammer you ask? Well, back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, during Lorraine Williams’ (She who must not be named, Bitch Queen, “That bitch”, etc…) rule over TSR (the guys who made D&D), the main goal she set for the company was to churn out product in an effort to make a profit without worrying about possible inconsistencies or conflicts within the rules themselves. This is what happens when you hand your gaming company over to a woman who says outright that she detests gaming and that gamers are, as a group, beneath her. Now this was both good and bad for gaming in general and D&D in particular because on the one hand, they were churning out a lot of crap (see the Ravenloft setting). But at the same time, this gave their writers a certain amount of freedom to be creative. One example of this is the SpellJammer setting.

Now let me start by saying this setting is broken. Oh god is it broken. You get the feeling that someone at TSR got a memo one day saying “Sci-Fi RPGs are selling right now. Make one. We print next quarter.” In short, SpellJammer is D&D in space, and there’s just something deliciously twisted about that.

The setting is heavily based on old romanticized novels about space travel from back before we actually knew anything about astronomy. Space is fairly warm just like it is on Earth and air pockets stick to objects out there. Why? Well, if it sticks to planets it should stick to anything right? And if something planet sized can hold onto enough air to last us for all of human history, then something as small as a boat should be able to hold onto enough air to last a couple of weeks right? I won’t even go into what they do to gravity, but I’ve seen physics majors whimper while trying to understand it. In game terms, it works out like this. There’s this race of blue giants called the Arcane and they are the biggest group of unscrupulous merchants in existence. So they go around selling off these magical artifacts that convert magical energy into motive force. You bolt one of these suckers onto the deck of a boat and toss a mage in the seat, and he can make that mother fly. And once you get outside of the gravity well created by a planet it can go really fast (from Earth to Mars in about a day). Better yet, if you ever saw the Disney movie “Treasure Planet” it’s like that except you replace all the technology with magic, and swap the comical sidekick for a group of brain-eating slavers.

So what you get is a crazy fucking setting. A mix of pirates and colonial European themes. Small colonies farm out a living on drifting asteroids. Great and mighty empires of evil creatures. Space pirates, merchants, militant hippos, and the great elvish armada. Basically elves, being the magically inclined, ancients that they are have been traveling for quite a while and are little more than a parody of the British Empire, right down to the snootiness and belief that they are justified in anything they do. Oh, and gnomes…oh ye gods the gnomes. Take the craziest, most out there concepts from every D&D setting and mix them together. Now you’d think that was the broken part, but it isn’t. Somehow all of these influences blended together into a fantastic setting. You can be ruthless pirates, a scourge upon the trade between the spheres; elvish agents trying to stop the next great inhuman war; explorers mapping out new and undiscovered worlds; or any other sci-fi concept you’d like. It’s a blending of traditional sci-fi concepts with the magical fantasy of traditional D&D. It was steampunk before Eberron was released as a setting.

The question then, is how exactly was this setting broken? Well it was designed as a high level setting. Nasty, powerful monsters and high adventure. And to keep the ships rare, they priced the cheapest magical engine at about 150,000 gold. For that cost, in a D&D game, a player could build a castle. A good castle. Which means that unless it’s a high level game, or the GM wants specifically run a SpellJammer game, the setting wouldn’t mess up any preexisting games. This was an issue as SpellJammer was one of those settings that tried to tie all of the other D&D settings together. You could travel through space from Greyhawk to the Forgotten Realms. However that price tag meant that all a group of pirates had to do was take a single ship and then they could retire happily off the sale of the engine.

This kind of problem plagued the setting. While one of the most creative settings they worked on, the writers for TSR seem to have been a bit rushed as there are a score of conflicting rules and systems that just don’t work. The parody setting released by the guys who made Hack Master, HackJammer, did a lot to fix these but for many it was too little too late. It’s a great and exciting setting, but it must be run the right way and it requires a GM who can abandon the rules as given and instead run a game that feels whole. There was also a rather crappy PC game based on the setting. I managed to track it down online a few years ago and it was a great dissapointment.

I’ll close with a few comments on my favorite race from the setting, Tinker Gnomes.
Originally a race taken from the DragonLance setting, these little buggers found a home in the SpellJammer setting and became one of its most memorable races. They are gnomes obsessed with invention and cursed with the kind of irrefutable logic you only find in a better class of British comedy. They invented a steam engine and a way to get into space and it’s gone downhill ever since. Few would see the mass transit opportunities in a catapult, instead of just taking the stairs, but not Tinker Gnomes. Few would see the military applications (as well as the hair styling/animal feed/and dentistry applications) in the electricity generating properties of potatoes, copper and zinc. Along the same lines, few ethnic groups list “laboratory mishaps” as the leading cause of death for their entire race. Combine it all with a misplaced optimism in the world and you have one of the most unbalanced, destructive and generally entertaining races in the history of RPGs.

They also raise grizzly bear sized hamsters.
What’s not to love?

Flashy Friday: Dolphin Olympics 2

2008-12-12T13:29:00.003-05:00

WARNING: ADDICTIVE GAME ALERT! RUN AWAY NOW TO SAVE YOURSELF!!!

Alright, you were warned.

I was introduced to Dolphin Olympics 2 yesterday and now I'm completely hooked. I can now safely say that I hate my friends Pei and Josh for telling me about this awesome game.

Dolphin Olympics 2 is a "see how high you can get" game. Using the arrow keys, you can move your dolphin in the water and when you jump out of the water you can rotate and spin to gain points, a la Tony Hawk style. The spin on this game though is that with every trick and nice entry you make into the water, you gain more speed. Then, if you jump out of the water again fast enough to continue your chain, you'll gain even more speed.

But the game doesn't stop there. While deep in the sky and space, you can ride on different starslides and use their arcs to bounce yourself even higher into space, past the moon, mars, and all the way to friggin' Pluto (and beyond that even >.<). The game seems simple enough, and it is. At least, to learn how to play.

To make it to the different planets will require hours of fine-tuning your jumps and entries, and damnit, this thing is massively addictive. It's quite possibly one of the most fun and simple flash games I've ever played. If all casual games had this amount of hidden depth (that also require insane skill), I would support them more.

Click here to play Dolphin Olympics 2 now. And sorry if I just ruined your work schedule.

Digital New Media Timeline (#40 - #54)

2008-12-12T12:01:00.005-05:00

These timelines are the last few in the New Media Reader. They cover all of the major technological and cultural advancements in New Media between 1986 and 1994. New Media has blossomed since then, of course, but the New Media Reader gives an excellent history of all what came before it.

#40- Mythinformation
Langdon Winner, 1986
-- Mythinformation is the belief that the adoption of computers and technology into our culture will create a better world for all of humanity.
-- Winner believes that information is knowledge and that have clear access to that information will enhance democracy and social power.

#41- From Plans and Situated Actions
Lucy A. Suchman
-- Suchman made advances in artificial intelligence by suggesting a different method as to how the human mind makes decisions. By saying that people don't create abstract plans of thought, engineers are able to look at intelligence differently and therefore create better AI overall.
-- Suchman's work goes hand-and-hand with Seymour Papert, Alan Turing and Ben Shneiderman, all who have been mentioned in the New Media Reader before.

#42- Siren Shapes: Exploratory and Constuctive Hypertexts
Michael Joyce, 1988
-- Joyce provides definitions for different types of hypertext and hyperlinks. Constructive hypertexts are links created by the author. Exploratory hypertexts are links to another author's work.
-- It rare that we see constructive hypertext formats. Is this because there is just so a wealth of information on the web that we do not need to create our own hypertexts?

#43- The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems
Bill Nichols, 1988
-- Nichols discusses the shift in culture with the birth of video games and other simulation media. He argues that video games can be liberating as they provide freedom of movement.
-- He also argues that the liberating freedom of video games is not a huge leap in computer interaction because video games function in a highly rule-based environment.

#44- The fantasy Beyond Control
Lynn Hershman, 1990
-- Hershman's Lorna is the considered to be the first interactive video art installation.
-- People who witnessed this project were able to make choices with what they see from the piece, making Hershman's project an interesting blend of video games and high art.

#45- Cardboard Computers
Pelle Ehn and Morten King, 1991
-- Ehn and King were dedicated to working with computer users, both experts and new, in order to create new media tools. This constant sharing and giving back is common thoroughout computer history; capitalist style software only gained momentum when Bill Gates made BASIC proprietary.
-- This method of working is still very popular in Internet communities today and were heavily influenced by Ehn and King's Utopia project.

#46- The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat
Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, 1991
-- Lucasfilm's Habitat project was one of the first to create large-scale, commercial, graphical virtual environment. That means that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft were somewhat influenced by Lucasfilm's design.
-- Using a two-and-a-half dimensional view, Habitat wasn't exactly popular but, it laid the foundations for many games after its inception.

#47- Seeing and Writing
J. David Bolter, 1991
-- Bolter discusses the effects computer text programs have on how we perceive writing. He argues that the movement of writing on a computer screen relates very similar to traditional writing and that is doesn't need to be that way.
-- Bolter reminds us that technology, whether that is simply just writing, or a typing program, can influence how we communicate.

#48- You Say You Want a Revolution?
Stuart Moulthrop, 1991
-- Moulthrop argues that hypertext on the Internet is not a replacement of a traditional book, but rather a replacement for television.
-- Moulthrop suggests that a when a medium reaches its limit of influence, it will reverse, become more participatory and homogeneous.

#49- The End of Books
Robert Coover, 1992
-- Coover expresses a fear that has come along with almost every new technology. Will the Internet be the dagger that ends the book era? No. Tradition shows that books stay as a medium, no matter how powerful the influence of the new technology is.
-- There have been many successful authors who have used new media ideas in their stories, two prominent examples being Joyce to Borges.

#50- Time Frames
Scott McCloud, 1993
--McCloud is a famous and clever comic artist. His comic is a comic inside of comic and views his work as sequential art.
-- His commentary of what happens within a comic looks and feels like a comic twist on the principles of hypertext.

#51- Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy
Philip E. Agre, 1994
-- Agre expresses a fear that the private information we place on the internet will eventually allow authorities to capture our information and have more control over and live and experiences.
-- Agre makes references to Foucault's panopticon and while he believes surveillance will become more widespread, Agre thinks the Web provides a medium so open to sharing that we will give up our information too easily.

#52- Nonlinearity and Literary Theory
Espen J. Aarseth, 1994
-- Aarseth wrote an excellent essay as to how literature has changed with the birth of the internet. He tells us that stories are becoming more nonlinear in nature, jumping from thought to thought and place to place.
-- Nonlinearity was popular among bards as storytellign technique before the explosion of writing. McLuhan would probably argue that since the internet brews stories that harken to back to oral cultures, the internet is therefore then cooling down our hot media society.

#53- Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance
Critical Art Ensemble, 1994
-- The critical art ensemble feared that the open nature of the internet did not give power back to the individual but made the "power elite" more powerful.
-- With cyberspace, organizations have less physical space from which people can resist, and therfore the only way to effectively resist the power of an organization you disagree with, is to create cultural rsistance on the Web.

#54- The World-Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Ari Luotonen, Henrik Frystyk Bielsen, and Arthur Secret, 1994
-- The World-Wide Web seems to be the cumilnation of hypertext in its finest from, but it falls short in some areas.
-- The Web is a great source from almostall of human knowledge, that is, if people are willing to unbiasly transport the data gained in books of past generations to the web.
-- The cost of the internet does make it difficult for the poor to be connected, but at least in America, Barack Obama is dedicated to getting every child online.
-- Even in 2008, we are still unsure about the internet's effects on how culture and language. Online privacy is also an unresolved issue that may have major ramications on how gain or loss some of our freedoms.

Note: Hyperlinks and reactions are to be added later in an update of this post.

6 Reasons Why I Sold My Wii

2008-12-11T03:17:00.003-05:00

Enough is enough, Nintendo. After the sub-par performance of the Gamecube I was really hoping you would deliver something to make me believe in you again. At first it seemed like you pulled it off - the Wii looked like an amazing innovative package full of quality games and groundbreaking motion sensitivity. Well, after bringing you to my dorm this year only to turn you on about 1 or 2 times for the semester, I sold you. And I couldn't be happier. Here's a list of reasons why the Wii has failed, in my eyes.

1) Nintendo has abandoned the seasoned gamer

I refuse to stereotype myself as a "hardcore gamer," but I've played enough games to be pretty well versed in them. Back when the Wii came out we were promised plenty of challenging games from established franchises. Out of all of them the only ones worth playing to me were Mario Galaxy and Brawl. Metroid Prime 3, while equipped with the best implementation of the Wii controller I've ever seen, completely Halo-fied itself and lost what it was originally about, exploring an open world as a lone bounty hunter. Zelda was a complete joke difficulty-wise, both for combat and puzzles. Mario Kart is pretty much like every other Mario Kart, but with bike / stunts / wiimote gimmicks.

This would all be forgivable if Nintendo started to up the quality. It's understandable to make mostly subpar games with new hardware. Alas, there is nothing. Nintendo promised a new big hit for veteran gamers at E3 this year, and what did we get?

A new...Animal Crossing...seriously? Not only is this game aimed for non-gamers, but it's virtually a port of the DS version, with a few new furniture items, and a "city" section which is just a bunch of shops lined up for you. And there's just nothing else, take a look at the upcoming releases for the Wii if you don't believe me. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/wii/releases.html

So if that's true, how the hell is Nintendo rocking this generation in terms of sales? Well, to my next point...

2) Nintendo now caters exclusively to children and soccer moms

Remember their other big announcement for E3? Wii Fit. Not a game, a fitness application. Nintendo went from having a sub-division for the non-gamer to being their exclusive market. They stopped making technically brilliant games and stepped down to shallow experiences like Wii Sports and Wii Play. Sure, these excursions were fun for a little while with the right crowd, but they got stale fast. I went to the Nintendo store a while back to get some kirby plushies with my girlfriend; we saw that they were holding a massive event for a new game. A few years ago this would undoubtedly be for the next big Zelda or Mario or Pokemon game. Instead we found...Wii Carnival Games. Seriously?

Nintendo is not dumb. They are in fact brilliant. They discovered just how untapped the 4-10 and 40+ demographic is with video games. They figured out that by producing tons of low quality games and hyping them to death with motion gimmicks, people will buy them in troves. They no longer need massive development teams to put together masterpieces like Ocarina of Time or Mario Galaxy - they just need to find the next real-life activity to simulate with Wiimote gestures, whether it be golf, cooking, or raising babies.

2a) Third parties figured out the same thing

Third parties, almost absent entirely in the Gamecube era, came rushing back to Nintendo when they realized they can do cheap cash ins with awesome games like Dogz and Catz. Barely any developer wants to make a serious port to the Wii due to inferior hardware and the lack of their demographic. Why would they, when they can put in half as much money on a cash-in and make twice the profit?

3) The Wiimote does NOT work as promised

When the Wii remote was announced everyone touted it as the revolutionary control device to change games as we know it. Hell, even I did. Wii Sports did a good job of creating the illusion that it actually follows your arm movements as they said, but as games came out it became more and more obvious how off the controller is from their original vision.

First, the movement is NOT one to one, not even close. Besides the gyroscope / accelerometer (which can only detect relative movement) the main way for the remote to work is to position itself with the Wii's sensor bar. What this means is, your pointing is always limited by how your orientation works relative to the bar. The result is that you're very rarely ever projecting your cursor the way you point it. Everything is relative to the sensor bar. Countless times I had to flail the remote around to re-orient the sensor and get a bearing of where it is. Slight movements of the remote shot my cursor across the screen in a flash. One of my original dreams of the Wii, to have an entire genre of awesome light gun games, cannot happen due to this. All attempts at a light gun game are forced to show a cursor on screen, since the player cannot actually aim, fire, and hit accurately. They can only move their remote relative to where their cursor already is on screen.

The other gestures are just as inaccurate. Some of the best Wiimote interactions were the ones that didn't try too hard to be 1 to 1 - like flicking the remote in Metroid as a grapple beam or shaking the remote for a spin attack in Zelda. They don't actually care how hard you flick or fast you turn, just the fact that you did it. In essence, it's a button press remapped to a gesture. And it really feels like a gimmick more often than not. Relying too much on how the remote moves, like in Red Steel's sword fighting, result in a control nightmare.

(A note on the Motion Plus add-on - it shows promise. But I'm sure it'll be wasted on more casual games anyway)

4) The online experience is abysmal

This doesn't really need much explanation. The best thing Nintendo has done here is make it free (though future games may have fees attached to them for online play). The rest is just terrible. Instead of having one uniform ID that you choose, you're forced to have a different 12-16 digit code randomly assigned to you for each online game you know. You can't send friend requests either - both sides have to tediously enter those numbers to play that specific game. If you don't like friend codes, then enjoy the completely paltry random matchups, which include no names, no communication, no way to friend a person after a match, and nearly no options for customizing a match (Brawl is always a 2 minute 4 player fight on a random map with medium items), as well as no real ranking system. There is no community to speak of other than drab ideas like the "Everybody Votes" channel and a Mii fashion show. After giving up on Brawl's online I only used it for occasional firmware updates.

5) The market is ripe for selling

The Wii continues into another Christmas season with completely absurd levels of demand and Nintendo failing to produce enough, resulting in shortages everywhere. The result? People will give an arm and a leg for a Wii. I got rid of my Wii in a trade for a person's PS3 with a controller and game - that's right, I gave him nothing but a Wii and what it shipped with, and I got a system worth $150 more AND a game. Maybe he was dumb, but that's just an example of the demand this system mongers. If you're like me and haven't touched your Wii in months, now's the best time to sell.

And finally..

6) The Wii is a threat to the future of the video games industry

Okay, I'm going a bit out on a limb here, but hear me through. Nintendo is shunning seasoned gamers while obtaining a massive following from the casual audience. Game quality is rapidly dropping while sales continue to improve. Microsoft and Sony, while initially reluctant, feel obliged to compete with Nintendo's dominance over the casual market. Microsoft recently released avatars for their system, which are really just Miis in higher resolution. They have a storm of casual games coming out as well.

While it would be a different article for me to write, it is also my opinion that 2008 was a disappointing year for games. One thing in particular that bothered me is how easy / casual games are becoming. Games like Fable 2 and Prince of Persia no longer even punish you for dying; they are instead like a continuous movie that never ends in a game over. While this can be argued as video games evolving to a greater level of visceral entertainment, I really believe they are just becoming movies where you occasionally press buttons.

Put these two together, and I come up with two very scary outcomes for the future:

1 - The death of hardcore video games. It's simple math really. "Hardcore" games are getting easier and easier, while casual games are becoming larger and larger. The inevitable intersect is video games becoming, more often than not, simple interactive experiences. They are no longer about gaining skills and dexterity and knowledge in the context of the game world,but linear experiences that unfold the same way every time, and just need simple user interaction to move them along. The only exceptions would be more and more "applications" like Wii Fit, which barely even qualify as a game in the first place.

2 - The next video game crash. To those who think the casual gamers of today will be the hardcores of tomorrow: I disagree. A 40 year old playing Wii Tennis will be content playing Wii Tennis; I can't see him popping in a disc of Gears of War or Mass Effect. What this means is the market will continue to inflate with casual games and people will continue to buy into them. But one magical day they will wake up and grow tired of flinging the remote around like a baseball bat or tennis racket. They'll want to *gasp* do the real activity instead. The Wii carnival games were cool for a while, but they can never replace a real carnival's atmosphere. Wii Fit was nifty, but going to the gym is really the more effective way to go. The hype will die, and casual gaming will fall apart in a flash. Nintendo will scramble to meet sales expectations and fail, and Microsoft / Sony will abandon their casual ventures back to what's left of the softened "hardcore" games, which will satisfy fewer and fewer of the seasoned gamers. We'd much stick to the old school NES through PS2 days of quality games anyway. In short ,the industry would collapse.

By selling my Wii, I am completing my statement that I refuse to support Nintendo's endeavor into the casual market. I only have my DS left which has a flash card anyway, so they won't get a penny more out of me. I gave them one last chance, and they have failed even more miserably than last time in my eyes.

Digital New Media Timeline (#25 - #39)

2008-12-09T14:17:00.001-05:00

As I'm drawing near the end of the semester, I have finished more of the New Media Reader for my Digital New Media class. Featuring articles from the late 70's and early 80's, these selections show how perceptions of the computer constantly changed and we also see the birth of video game technologies, how they were percieved and how they affected the growth of new media.

#25- Responsive Environments
Myron W. Krueger, 1977
-- Kreuger is often placed as "the father of virtual reality" and his ideas on how a computer can interact with humans may have influenced, on a long-term scale, the makings of the game Second Life.
-- Krueger argues that the "response is the medium," unlike McLuhan's assertion that "the medium is the message."

#26- Personal Dynamic Media
Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, 1977
-- Kay and Goldberg were the first to see the computer as an all-purpose moveable machine (a.k.a. laptops) for anyone to use.
-- Kay was part of Atari's short-lived research lab that was dismantled after the first video game industry crash.

#27- From A Thousand Plateaus
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1980
-- As philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari raised issues in metaphysics and epistemology, and hinted that computers could create unstable identities for humans.
-- They introduced the idea of rhizomatic writing which, simply put, is how one writes to exude hypertext (think Borges).

#28- From Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas
Seymour Papert, 1980
-- Papert made a programming language called LOGO that was designed to teach children an easier programming language.
-- Though the beginnings of video games were slowly bringing a younger audience to computers and technology, Papert was dedicated to bringing the creative powers of a computer to children.

#29- "Put-That-There"
Richard A. Bolt, 1980
-- Put that there is an interface that combines speech and gestures to have interaction a computer. Voice-activated technology is still being improved today, and Bolt pioneered in in 1980.
-- Bolt's "Put-That-There" was an attempt at making the computer a more intuitive human-like technology.

#30- Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive
Theodor H. Nelson, 1981
-- The title of this chapter says it all. Nelson was not only suggesting a digital library system (i.e. the web) but, also his ideas influenced the concepts of Weblogs, or just blogs.
-- While the ideas of hyperlinks are understood now, Nelson how to lay out, piece-by-piece, how hyperlinks would work and help computer users.

#31- Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?
Bill Viola, 1982
-- Bill viola is a famous early video artist who has been featured at big museums like Whitney museum.
-- Viola makes an argument that the video is an improved extension of the human memory.

#32- The Endless Chain
Ben Bagdikian, 1983
-- Bagdika argues that all media is part of chain that eventually become connected through one form or another.
-- Compatibility is important for old media to survive. In order for radio and television to stay alive in our new media environment, Bardikian argues that they need to adapt to the culture and find a way to seep into new mediums.

#33- Direct Manipulation
Ben Shneiderman, 1983
-- A Direct Manipulation system suggests that what happens on screen will mimic what the user is doing. For example, if you shoot a gun in a video, a direct manipulation tactic would be to have the button be trigger, like the Z-button on the N64.
--Shneiderman argues that computer should move towards a direct manipulation system so to make it easier for new users to use the computer.

#34- Video Games and Computer Holding Power
Sherry Turkle, 1984
-- Turkle studied how people act when they play games. She noticed that when people play a pinball machine, they move their bodies to emulate the ball. However, when people play something like Pac-man, they hardly move at all even though that they are the big yellow mouth. One theory on why there is less movement is because the lack of a physical space for the game forces people to become immersed with the visual experience and therefor exude no kinetic experience.
-- Turkle also suggests that gamers care less about narrative in games because the interactivity of a game already allows them to create their own story, even if they are trapped in a highly rule-based world.

#35- A Cyborg Manifesto
Donna Haraway, 1985
-- Haraway argues that a cyborg would be a better image for women to pursue than a goddess since cyborgs deal with the "here and now."
-- Haraway also argues that computers and technology can be liberating for women and that if used properly, can help drive a socialist-feminist movement with their communicative powers.

#36- The GNU Manifesto
Richard Stallman, 1985
-- Stallman is probably the most famous free software hacker ever. His GNU project attempted to create a operating system that would rival UNIX and be completely free and open source.
-- Stallman is also famous for helping drive the "copyleft" movement, which is essentially a culture full of sharing information and no intellectual property. In essence, it's the opposite of copyright laws.

#37- Using Computers: A Direction for Design
Terry Winograd and Fernado Flores, 1986
-- These two authors argue that computers should not try to emulate artificial intelligence and focus more on using the computer as tools to help people with tasks and design.
-- Their plea made programmers reconsider the effects of computers and some people began to see the computer as just a powerful machine, not a human-like machine.

#38- Two Selections by Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel, 1986, 1991
-- Laurel helps layout the differences between different dramatic elements in drama and human-computer activity. The overall difference human-computer activity is more interactive and that human-computer activity uses more graphical "language" for pleasure.
-- Plot, especially in video games becomes very blurred. Laurel argues that new media technologies will alter how we view drama.

#39- Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services
Jan L. Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam, 1986
-- These authors look at the social role of media, and foresaw a change in language and how people converse. IRC channels and even conversations in various MMORPGs are predicted in this essay, years before their conception.
-- Their ideas on how information travels formed the foundations for new media studies.

Note: Hyperlinks and reactions are to be added later in an update of this post.

5 Minutes/5 Games: Volume 3

2008-12-03T03:46:00.000-05:00

Will started this segment a while back, and I really liked the idea. Take 5 random games from your collection, play them for 5 minutes and then report. It's similar to the Games for Lunch segment by Crispy Gamer, but with more focus on a variety of games rather than one focus.

1. The Battle of Olympus
This game moves, feels and looks like Zelda II. In fact, I'm pretty sure it runs on the same engine. I didn't like Zelda II, nor did I like this game that much. The combat is somewhat interesting as you need to time jumps correctly and strike and the right time, but it's been done before with Zelda II, and done better.

Will I play this again? No. Did I mention that this game plays like Zelda II?

2. Bible Adventures
Oh Bible Adventures. I've played you before. Bible Adventures is a platforming game revolved around Bible stories. I played the David and Goliath set, which involves collecting sheep. David was a sheep herder; I think. The premise is hysterical and the game kinda sucks, but it's all in good fun. "Good work, but you forgot Baby Moses." Priceless.

Will I play this again? Definitely. Just for the humor factor.

3. Tecmo Bowl
Wow. The random number generator favors me big time. Tecmo Bowl is only one of the best football games ever made. Yes, it schools Madden hardcore. You have a choice between two run plays and two passing plays and if the defense picks the same one, you're going to lose yardage. If not, you have a chance to make big gains. It's simple, yet tactical and fun. Ready! Down. Hut!Hut!Hut!

Will I play this again? Super definitely. Two-player Tecmo Bowl is INTENSE.

4. Flight of the Intruder
A flight simulator on the NES? Cool. It doesn't play particularly well and the flying is pretty choppy, but it does capture the feel of a first-person flight simulator pretty well. Aiming is hard, and dodges missiles is disorientating but I kinda enjoyed this game. Maybe I'm just in desperate need of good flight sim besides Warhawk.

Will I play this again? Probably not. But I'm glad I tried it.

5. A Nightmare on Elm Street
This is just confusing. You're a dude in an orange jumpsuit and you punch bats and rats. And occasionally Freddy comes out and you have a random pseudo-boss fight with him. Dude, it's TOTALLY like the movie. I mean, did you see the title screen for this game? Scary stuff.

Will I play this again? No way. I'd rather be stabbed in the toe.

Winner: Tecmo Bowl
Loser: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Top 52: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (#31)

2008-12-02T00:04:00.004-05:00

Super Mario RPG was the first Mario RPG and it certainly was not the last. The success of this game influenced the development of other great Mario RPG games from Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, to the Paper Mario series. This isn't just some shovelware Nintendo put out with Mario's name on it to make a quick buck. It's a fantastic game.

Title: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Console: Super Nintendo
Release Date: 05/13/96
Genre: Role-Playing Game
My Ranking: #31
-------------------------------------

Squaresoft and Nintendo? What an odd combination. One company focuses on JRPG's and fancy stories while the other features a plumber with a red hat who never actually does any plumbing. This game was destined to fail miserably but I decided to give in a shot anyway. What I ended up playing was one of best RPG's ever made.

Super Mario RPG starts off like any other Mario game. Princess Toadstool got kidnapped by Bowser again and you got to rescue her sexy ass. However, upon reaching the princess, a gigantic sword appears on top the castle and blocks off the entrance, while sending the princess, Bowser and Mario to separate sides of the world.

Since Mario doesn't speak in the game, he has to explain things with his actions. To describe a bridge being destroyed, he stands on top of table, walks off it, notices there is no ground and jumps back to the table and shakes his head. Or, when being questioned as to whether he is the real Mario, he just jumps really high, which tends to impress a lot of people. The cute and humor factor here is priceless.

The battle system was also top notch. Featuring a turn-based system, Mario and his team can attack, use items, and do Mario-style special attacks, like any standard RPG. What sets this game apart though, is the "timed hits" mechanic. For every attack, including every special move, the player must press the attack button at the right time or hold it for the right amount of time in order to deal more damage. The RPG system in Super Mario RPG was more dynamic in this regard and involved more input than just selecting commands.

The music in Super Mario RPG was also superb. Some of the songs referenced older Mario games, but most of them were original tracks that seemed to fit the Mario universe. The game felt like a Mario game from every angle, except for the fact that it was a RPG.

Mario didn't just jump on people too. He used shells and hammers as weapons and one special attack had fireballs. His teammates did feature Mario characters like the Princess and even Bowser, but the new Squaresoft additions of Geno and Mallow were also interesting. Mallow is a cloud who thinks he's a tadpole and Geno is a warrior from the Star World sent to help recover the lost stars in Mario's world.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Super Mario RPG. It really was a solid RPG in its own right, even without being set in a Mario universe. Having the Mario characters was a big plus and it helped push the story and make cute references to the series. The game was fairly long, difficult enough to be entertaining but not frustrating (@#$% that optional Culex battle though), and I never remember there being a dull moment in the action or story. Seriously, if you like RPGs, or even Mario games, you'll find something in Super Mario RPG that will make you love it and keep on playing.

-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
#31 --- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)

5 Minutes/5 Games: Volume 2

2008-12-01T18:54:00.006-05:00

As I said last time, on 5 minutes with 5 games, I shall randomly choose 5 games from my gigantic collection of old games, and give you my 5 minute impression of these games. Hopefully this will give both of us a chance to see games that we never have before.

1. 1943
Wikipedia tells me that this was the sequel to 1942. It's your basic top down scrolling shooter. There's really nothing special about this, or so I could tell from 5 minutes with it.

Will I play this again? Doubtful.

2. Athena
I'm not sure why it's called Athena; maybe I am Athena, or I'm trying to save her? I'm a girl who runs around and hits monsters. Sometimes they drop weapons or armor, which I can pick up and use to hit other monsters. That's about all I gathered, but I'm inexplicably drawn to it.

Will I play this again? For some reason, yes.

3. Championship Pool
The usual site doesn't have a link for you to play it, but here's some captivating gameplay captured on YouTube. I don't have much to say; it's a pool game. A shitty pool game. I regret randomly arriving at this.

Will I play this again? Very much not.

4. Dragon Fighter
It reminds me of Mega Man, if he had a sword, and was in the arctic. I wasn't fighting dragons, but instead they were more like green yetis. If I spent more than 5 minutes with it I might get to a dragon eventually.

Will I play this again? Absolutely.

5. Ghostbusters 2
Enjoy being frustrated by difficult yet not that fun games? Sounds likes Ghostbusters 2 is the game for you! There are many worse games for the NES, and in fact two of them are discussed here in this post.

Will I play this again? Maybe if I was feeling really nostalgic for Ghostbusters.

Winner: Dragon Fighter
Loser: Championship Pool

Godspeed.

Intro to RPGs (editorial warning)

2008-12-01T04:54:00.004-05:00

Up until now, I've limited myself to writing about video games and the like. But in doing so I have avoided a great and mighty area of my own personal knowledge. I speak of course of traditional tabletop RPGs. I plan on writing about specific topics in this area but first I thought I'd explain some things.

Now for those of you who don't quite grasp what I'm talking about, prior to video game RPGs, people would get together around a table with books, paper and dice and partake of a more rudimentary version of what you know of as Role Playing Games. And believe it or not they did so without computers. Their imaginations were the Graphics cards, their dice the CPU, and bits of paper and reference books the hard drive or the program (I don't really care, pick your own computer analogy here). In fact, video game RPGs were actually a rather clumsy attempt at recreating this experience. It was a truly wonderful social experience that tapped into the creative genius of all involved.
Now were surrounded by assholes who only think of Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft when you mention RPGs. *eye twitch*

Here's a quick lesson for all of you, my faithful (and few) readers. Video games aren't RPGs, though Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Games come at least a little close. "But why" you ask? "Why isn't _______ an RPG? It's got experience points and characters leveling up. Doesn't that count?"

No.

The point of a RPG (or Role Playing Game) is that you take on a role of the character you are playing. You decide what choices and actions that character makes. You become involved in their imaginary life and as a result become very interested in what goes on in it. You also have a CHOICE as to what to do. Why isn't Final Fantasy 7 a real RPG? Can you decide halfway through the game to ditch Aeris and instead pursue a more meaningful relationship with Tifa (who seems to actually be interested in you)? Nope? Hmmm. Ok, can you use a phoenix down to bring back someone lost in a cutscene? No again huh? Can you tell both girls to screw off, ditch the party and seek out that strange yaoi relationship that fills so many god damned fangirls' perverted dreams? Not a chance.

Video game RPGs aren't really RPGs because they rarely give you any real choice in the outcome of the story and for the most part they direct you along a very linear plotline. There are the few gems that give you different endings based on what you did, but for the most part all you get to do is customize the characters you use to do what the developer's want you to do.Now there's a good reason for this. It's not realistic or even sane to ask otherwise of a video game designer because he's trying to cram an entire game into a single (usually) CD/DVD/cartridge. Sometimes you have to pick you battles.

Now the big online RPGs like World of Warcraft and Everquest come close because they allow the players to create somewhat unique characters and then do whatever the hell they want to do with them. You want to quit killing things and devote your undead warlock's unlife to selling fine merchandise at low, low prices? There ya go, enjoy. These games only come close to being real RPGs because you really can't do anything you want. You have choice, but it's limited to what they programed into the game. For instance, in WoW, can you decapitate the head of your neighbors and place them on spikes around your own personal bordello? How about this, can you come up with a plan to destabilize the economy of the region allowing you to buy up the cheap real estate and then broker that power in an attempt to overthrow the king? My point exactly. The one RPG that actually came even close was Second Life. But then it relied on its users to design and program it, and well, the great sea of lazy on the net far outshines the tepid pool of competent and willing programers.

That being said, table top RPGs are still around and kicking. They are a popular little sub culture of gaming and doing quite well in general. They are not however, a massive money making concept waiting to be tapped. A fact that has caused much worry in the gaming community as corporation after corporation fails to learn this lesson. More on that some other time.
These games come in all sizes and styles, from the simple to the insanely complex. There are detective games, horror games, Sci-fi games (take your pick, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who, etc...), fantasy games, and on and on and on. There's a Final Fantasy game where you can do all of those things I mentioned earlier and more. All you need is a copy of the rules, some friends, and a place where you can hang out and play. Maybe some dice, but depending on the game it might not be required. At their core these are social games. Your experience is enriched by interacting with other people and bouncing ideas off them. By your decisions you create the game and drive the story.

Sadly it is not as shiny and happy a hobby as one would expect. I both regret and am thankful that there are many new gamers these days who know nothing of the darker times. The political bitching brought about by the likes of Grand Theft Auto, pales in comparison to what faced gaming all those years ago. There was a time when priests would give sermons denouncing the evils of such RPGs as Dungeons and Dragons (which became a generalized term for any RPG at the time). D&D was the first real RPG and it was the biggest too, which made it the biggest target. In comparison, imagine if a major news agency started going on and on about there being a baby raping scene in Halo 2, and despite the fact that it's a blatant lie with no backing at all, churches, schools and police begin believing it and start acting upon that belief.

Now things did get better, but it took awhile and there are still people out there who think D&D is a Satanist tool designed to attract young minds. This really wasn't made any easier when the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG (play as Anne Rice inspired vampires) started up a LARP. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play, which is basically where people dress up and play act as their ingame characters while using a dumbed down rule system. If you ever see people running around a park dressed like wizards, knights, jedi, whatever, and hitting each other with soft foam swords, now you know what they're doing. However the Vampire LARP, really started attracting the goth crowd and...well, it just got bad. Really bad. How bad you ask? You ever see those people who go goth, get their teeth altered to look like vampire fangs, and start insisting that they be called by names taken from "Interview with a Vampire"? That's how bad it got.

With that in mind I'll end by explaining that when you play a tabletop RPG, you do not have to act out what your character says or does. Sometimes a little of that where dialog in concerned makes the game a little more fun, but for the most part it just weirds the other players out. Most of time, the dialog in these games sounds a bit like this (so to speak).
GM (guy running the game): Ok, Bilbo is about to drop the ring in the volcano, but then he suddenly gets this strange look in his ey...
PLAYER 1: I shoot him.
GM: What?
PLAYER 1: My elf shoots him with an arrow. The little bastard finally went evil and I'm not giving him a chance to put the ring on.
(Player rolls some dice to see if he actually hits the hobbit. He rolls high enough and succeeds)
GM: Um...you just killed Bilbo.
PLAYER 1: And now I kick him over the side into the lava.
PLAYER 2: Wait! Get that magic shirt off him first. That stuff was pretty cool.
GM: Ok, well your elf feels horrible about killing his good friend like that.
PLAYER 1: Yeah, ok, fine. Though he still thinks it was for the good of all mankind. He'll go donate something to some orphans to appease his conscience later if that helps.

And let me leave you with this. While there is still an air of nerdishness and strangeness about games such as D&D, don't judge or let it sway you from giving these games a try. Hell, even Vin Diesel used to play.

(If any readers feel offended or angry over the content of this article, please bear in mind that the author is suffering from sleep depravation and neither his comments nor his stated religious, political, or moral positions should be taken seriously or really read at all. Doing so only encourages him.)

US Video Game System Quiz

2008-12-01T03:04:00.005-05:00

Can you name the Video Game Systems (released in the U.S.)? That statement burned in my mind for 12 minutes. This game, which I was linked through Kotaku, asks you to name all of the video game systems released in the US. They are missing some, like the Sega 32X, which confused me because I was SURE it was system. Thankfully, by not having the Sega 32X, it focused my mind on the "32," which reminded me of the Amiga CD32. (There, that was a freebie!)

I'm sure they are missing some others, but whatever, it was still fun to take the quiz. I managed to get a very high 46 out of 68, two of which were accidental. That makes up for two easy ones I should have got, which are the 3DO and CD-i. Damnit. Anywho, you can see my results below. The red are systems I missed, while the black are ones I got. I blurred the image so it doesn't give away answers either. Mwa ha ha ha.

I was only able to get so high because of my video game history class taken last semester and seeing a video on the top ten worst video game consoles recently. Go take the quiz.

Random fact: Coleco, the company that made the ColecoVision, is named Coleco because their abbreviation stands for Connecticut Leather Company. Yes, a leather company made a video game system. Hilarious.

Top 52: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (#32)

2008-11-27T21:35:00.006-05:00

This pick is an odd one for me. Despite being on my list, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was a disappointing game in my eyes. After such great success with the first two in the Super Smash series, how could Brawl be worse? Even though Brawl didn't live up to my expectations, it's still a great fighter to play with friends.

Title: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Console: Nintendo Wii
Release Date: 03/09/08
Genre: Fighting
My Ranking: #32
------------

Super Smash Bros. isn't a traditional fighter. Instead of getting hit points down to zero, your health starts at zero and the more you get hit, the higher your percentage goes up. The higher your percentage, the farther you get hit off the stage. If you fall too far from the stage, you lose a life. The original Super Smash Bros. was the first to use this system, and was completely innovative for its time.

Brawl stays in the says format but the real draw of Brawl is the sheer amount of playable characters. Brawl is the first commercial fighter to allow you to play with 35 characters from all different Nintendo and third-party universes. Brawl has scratched that itch that every gamer has had. Who would win in a fight between X and Y?

Notable new characters in Brawl were of course Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog. I thought the inclusion of Sonic was especially awesome since every gamer who was alive during the Nintendo vs. Sega war wanted to see these two duke it out. However, I was a little frustrated when I finally got Brawl (it was delayed for about four months) that I had to go through the entire one-player mode to unlock Sonic.

The inclusion of a one-player mode called the Subspace Emissary was necessary since previous versions of the game had lackluster one-player modes. This story-adventure mode pitted (almost) all of the characters against a new enemy and had players going through platforming and boss levels to complete it. It took a couple hours to complete and was kind of fun, but the platforming levels seemed sort of thrown in at the last moment and just weren't that fun. It also was annoying that the fastest way to unlock characters was using this mode, making it seem forced.

You don't buy Brawl for the one-player mode though. You buy it for the multiplayer experience, which is where the game truly shines. The controls for Brawl are simple and smooth. You have two attack buttons, and a direction chooses a different attack. No crazy quarter-circle punch, half-circle, back flip and stand on your controller madness. Simple, efficient and fun.

This isn't new for the smash series though and everything that's great about Brawl was already done well in Melee. Brawl had some interesting new additions, like the smash ball which gives a character a limit break move which looks awesome and does massive damage. However, the final smashes are unbalanced and ruins the game's balance as a result. The other problem with Brawl is tripping, which just seems to randomly happen, causing your character to lose all momentum and fall helplessly to the ground completely open for attack.

Despite these new flaws though, Brawl is great game to play with friends. Unfortunately, the game only seems to be fun with items off as most of the items are just annoying or uninteresting. Brawl is definitely the worst in the series, but it never gets old to beat the crap out of Sonic.

-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)
#32 --- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
------

Oh and sorry for the lack of updates recently. Final projects in NYU are hitting hard now, so the posts will be less frequent for a little while as I really need to focus on schoolwork. I'll put up small stuff though as the days go along to keep you guys entertained.

Review: Fable 2

2008-11-22T16:45:00.004-05:00

(Note: I realized I write really, really long reviews. I'm going to try to include a one paragraph "summary" under the quick fix so you can get the gist of what I'm saying without reading the whole review. In this case it's just copy-pasting the last paragraph)

Review: Fable 2

Score: 7.7

Quick Fix:

++ Great art direction and good musical score
++ Most of the role playing aspects are well done, as are choices with consequence
+ Combat is enjoyable, even if it's easy
+ Great and intuitive control scheme
+ Some of the moral dilemmas in the game are actually pretty good

-- Glitches galore! Some of which can be game breaking
-- The endgame does not feel balanced at all and becomes pretty meaningless
- Load screens are somewhat frequent and very long
- Most of the optional quests are rudimentary, easy, and not very interesting
- The game is extremely easy, do not play if you're looking for a challenge
- Spell selection system is a mess
- Economy system is terrible, gold feels worthless
- Abrupt ending is a bit unsatisfying

Summary: I really wanted to love Fable 2. I wanted to give it a high 8 or low 9, praise it for its fantastic theme and role playing elements, as well as combat that proves that games don't have to be difficult to be fun. If the game ended at the mid-way point it very well could have been that way. Not to say that the game is too long; it's more that it felt like everything became unbalanced, broken and meaningless toward the end. I went from being engaged in the story and my character to just wanting to get to the end as fast as I could. The final line is the game needed some more time in testing - to both fix the myriad of bugs and make sure the second half of the game plays as well as the first half did. Here's hoping that Fable 3 will patch up the mistakes of 2, as 2 has done for 1.
--------------

I finally finished Fable 2 last night, so I figure it's a good time to post a review. Fable 2 is marketed as Microsoft's big action RPG, its Zelda of sorts. While the first Fable was relatively disappointing and did not fulfill the big promises it made, Fable 2 is said to have atoned for the mistakes of the first while expanding the experience as a whole. Does it deliver?

Well, yes and no. It makes up for a lot of the mistakes of the first by filling in a lot of the gaps where the original failed, but at the same time, has a lot of problems of its own. Let's start with the good: Fable 2 is gorgeous. I don't mean cutting-edge graphics gorgeous, but art direction gorgeous. The towns have a life of their own, day and night and the seasons all work well. Everything sounds great too, from the musical score to the excellent voice acting all around. Fable 2 feels and looks like a high budget from all angles. The pre-rendered cutscenes, which are few and far between, are usually brief but beautiful and do a great job of fleshing out key moments in your hero's tale.

What I really, really like about Fable 2 (as well as the original, but less so) is it puts the "RP" back in RPG. A lot of RPGs today seem to only be called RPGs because it involves hit point meters and alternating between swordplay and magic attacks. They rarely feel like you're playing any active role in the plot other than advancing the linear story by talking to key characters and blowing up the occasional boss.

Throughout Fable 2 I really felt like a part of the game world. A lot of games give you options like clothing choices, but it never means anything in the scope of the actual game. Fable 2 often succeeds in the idea of consequences. If you wear attractive clothing, women in the game will remark on how handsome you look, while if you don't take care of yourself and become fat, people will turn heads. If you eat meat vegetarians will look down on you. If you rent out some houses and raise the rent, people will think of you as a miser and react accordingly.

It works on the larger scale too. There are several key decisions you can make in the game that affect the game world as a whole. A simple good-or-evil decision you make during the childhood portion of a game affects the entire town's well-being when you come back as an adult. If you were good the economy prospers and the shop keepers give you a discount, but if you were evil the town becomes run down with bandits and you can get offers to assassinate key gang leaders for cash. Some of the decisions even break the fourth wall: One of the toughest decisions I had to make was between sparing the life of a friend you made (netting you a ton of positive alignment points) or losing some valuable experience points you worked hard to get throughout the game.

All the standard things are here too: customizable clothes, tattoos, hair, getting married and having kids, fat / slim appearance. Clothes and hair can be dyed as well which is a nice touch. I got a pretty sweet black mage gig going down by the end of the game (hat included). If you missed out on the concept of "morphing" in Fable 1, then I'll mention it's in this game too and it's pretty neat. Your character basically morphs based on key decisions you make in the game. If you put a lot of points into your physique (primarily to increase melee damage) you become buff, while increasing your shooting abilities makes you taller. Investing into a lot of spells gives you these cool glowing blue veins at your neck. Being good gives you a halo, being evil gives you dark eyes and even some horns. It's a neat thing to see how different heroes turn out by the end of the game. The end of the game even shows you a brief retrospect of how your hero looked at different points in the game, which is cool to actually see him grow like that.

The RP part is definitely the strength of Fable 2. The weakness, unfortunately, is in the third letter of the acronym, G for game. There are a lot of little and big annoyances here. The load screens, while not too frequent, are very long and almost unacceptable for a game this generation (this is a lot better if you have the HDD space to install it). While the main quests were pretty good in general, the optional quests felt extremely straightforward, usually kill-those-dudes or collect-x-of-item-y affairs ,sometimes with minor moral choices attached. The world was touted to be massive and free roaming, but generally felt very linear, with only the occasional slight detour to find a treasure or key. Your dog makes this even easier, as getting anywhere near a treasure prompts him to bark and guide you the rest of the way, taking a lot out of the exploration element.

A major show-stopper here is the absurd amount of glitches in the game. To get an idea of the amount of glitches, just check the Fable 2 forums at GameFAQs - the main sticky in the forum is one outlining the major game breaking glitches and how to avoid them. If you need more of an example than simply search "glitch" in the forum and see how many pages come up (I got 26, and that's at 50 topics a page!). I experienced a couple of glitches myself; for some reason, they all seemed centered around my wife. For one, there just seems no way for the "have sex" option to appear when I want to have a baby with her. She even tells me how much she wants it, but I follow the prompts exactly and it only gives me the normal "sleep" option. The other glitch is with my second wife, who at some random point in time apparently went mute on me. She doesn't talk to me besides the occasional comment, doesn't react to my gestures, won't sleep with me, or really do much of anything. I do everything to make her happy and give her a good share of money, but she is pretty much a vegetable that walks around. It's really appalling to me that a game with this kind of budget gets out with so many bugs.

The best part of the gameplay, thankfully, is the combat, which turns out to be very enjoyable. While having only one button for shooting, one for melee and one for magic may sound limiting, the game manages to do a lot with it. With your sword you can button mash if you want, but can also block, time your swings to increase speed, hold the button down to charge a flourish attack, and even counter your enemy. With shooting you can either fire a quick shot, zoom in to increase damage, or sub-target enemy body parts to slow them down or kill them outright. Magic has 8 spells that get stronger as you invest more points in them. The cool part is besides basic swinging and gunning, all aspects of melee and ranged are unlocked by investing experience into the right abilities. It really feels like your character is growing because of this, and you'll have some difficult decisions in how to spend experience. Being able to quickly shift between the three combat styles and the lack of ammo or mana gives the player a ton of freedom in how to fight.

A minor downside about combat is the spell selection system is pretty bad. There are 5 levels of strength with magic, and you can put a different spell into each level. When you charge magic the spell you cast depends on what level you release the button at. So if you charge all the way to 5 you'll use whatever spell you put in the 5 slot, but if you release at 4 you use the spell in the 4 slot. This falls apart when you want to quickly change what spell to use. The only way to change a spell is to hold down a different trigger entirely and then use the dpad to select the correct level and spell to use, all in the middle of combat. You can also pause the game and re-organize spells but this really breaks up the action. Why they couldn't just map an active spell to the dpad and then charge that with B is beyond me.

Just don't go in expecting combat with Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden levels of difficulty. Not only is the game pretty easy from start to finish, but it is actually impossible to really die. When you run out of health instead of re-doing the fight scene or getting pushed out of your game, your character simply jumps back to life in 5 seconds. The only losses are uncollected experience orbs and the gain of a scar on your body, which never goes away. I thought the lack of death bothering you would be a bad thing since it removed any threat of combat.

I was actually wrong. I still found myself fighting for my life, for my character's scar-less look. If you're the kind of gamer that wants to be punished more harshly for failing in combat, this probably isn't the game for you. It also turns out the death system never bothered me because I never actually died. Anywhere after early in the game you'll have a ridiculous amount of potions (both from buying them cheap and finding them) and they all restore a ton of health instantly, with no restrictions. Anytime I got near death in combat I simply tapped the potion button and everything was okay.

This brings me to what I think is my biggest problem with Fable 2. The game starts off great, and it continues to be great for about the first half. Things feel balanced; my character's funds were limited so I couldn't buy great equipment and health potions, the combat was pretty challenging with said limitations, and my character was steadily growing in skill set. After the midway point, things started to spiral out of control.

For one thing, the economy system blows. When you're poor in the beginning the best way to make money is to take up a part-time job, which of course involves a minigame. Whether it's chopping wood or serving beers, it's always a timing minigame that gets extremely boring after about a minute. It's really the only decent way to make money - questing and stealing both result in tiny amounts of money that could be made in minutes of a doing a job. Rank up in the minigame a couple of times and you'll have enough money to last you most of the game right there. Everything in the game is dirt cheap except for some of the higher level melee and ranged weapons.

The real way to invest your money is buying shops or renting out houses. These are large up-front investments that seem to pay for themselves over time - balanced enough. But by the end of the game I was raking in thousands of gold every 5 minutes. The payout continues even while the game is off - I came back after a few days once and my bank account doubled and then some. High class weapons became pocket change and the only thing worth buying was even more property, which of course perpetuated the cycle further. So to summarize, tedious in the beginning, broken at the end.

The combat also falls apart toward the end. In particular if you choose to invest in spells, the later level damage spells are simply ridiculous. Here's my late-game four step guide to every battle:
1 - Cast Slow Time spell as enemies appear
2 - Move to a safe location as enemies stumble to you in slow-mo
3 - Charge and cast level 5 Shock (enemies still in slow-mo)
4 - Anything that isn't flat out killed can be swept up with some sword strikes

Honestly, after I had those two spells I could not find one group of enemies that could even put more than a dent in me. I ended up avoiding the combination to keep combat from being a complete snore-fest.

After a while the game just felt didn't feel as interesting. My character was already pimped out the way I wanted and my abilities were mostly developed; late-game experience mostly goes toward simple tweaks in the damage you deal instead of interesting additions to your moveset. Combat became a drag and money became a joke. The final quests were barely interesting and the ending felt abrupt. It pretty much throws a plot twist in your face, and goes right to the credits. It felt like an entire arc of the story was left out, which makes me wonder if we'll be nickel-and-dimed for expansion DLC content that continues where the story leaves you stranded. The only interesting part is a really tough final choice you have to make.

I really wanted to love Fable 2. I wanted to give it a high 8 or low 9, praise it for its fantastic theme, role playing elements, and combat that proves that games don't have to be difficult to be fun. If the game ended at the mid-way point it very well could have been that way. Not to say that the game is too long; it's more that it felt like everything became unbalanced, broken and meaningless toward the end. I went from being engaged in the story and my character to just wanting to get to the end as fast as I could. The final line is the game needed some more time in testing - to both fix the myriad of bugs and make sure the second half of the game plays as well as the first half did. Here's hoping that Fable 3 will patch up the mistakes of 2, as 2 has done for 1.

Overall Score - 7.7

(PS - sorry for the lack of images. I'm lazy. Game screens / videos are pretty abundant on the web if you want to see the game in action)

Flashy Friday: Hanna in a Choppa

2008-11-21T00:01:00.005-05:00

Hanna in a Choppa is a fairly new Flash game (it released this month). You play as an Orange helicopter and your goal is to just reach the flag at the end of the stage. The movement is surprisingly smooth but what you'll really like about this game is the catchy music and the overall cuteness in the minimalist orange and black setting.

The game isn't that hard really, or that long even. You can successfully complete this game in about an hour sitting at your computer, but good luck trying to get all of the in-game achievements. Those are pretty hardcore. Two achievements involve you speed running every level and doing no-hit runs respectively.

Click here to play Hanna in a Choppa now.

Top 52: Mischief Makers (#33)

2008-11-20T21:00:00.008-05:00

I know what you're thinking. What the hell is Mischief Makers? And why is it ranked #33? Mischief Makers is only one of the best 2D platformers ever and is one of the hidden gems for the Nintendo 64. Read the review and you'll find out why I love this game so hard. Note that this isn't the only obscure game on my list, my list of favorite games isn't like most people.
------------------------------------

Title: Mischief Makers
Console: Nintendo 64
Release Date: 10/01/97
Genre: Platformer
My Ranking: #33

In Mischief Makers, you play as Ultra-Intergalactic-Cybot G Marina Liteyears, or just a cyborg named Marina (she's hot) for short. There's a story in this platformer too, but trust me, you really won't care. A professor dude got kidnapped on the planet Clancer and you gotta save him. See? Told you didn't care.

What you will care about is the gameplay, which is honestly unlike anything you have ever seen before in a 2D platformer. Mario games have you kill enemies by jumping on them or hitting blocks under them. Mischief Makers has you grab enemies and throw them to their death. Hell, you can even shake them if you want and healing crystals might pop out of them.

The grab function in Mischief Makers is not only unique, but it's smooth and utilized extremely well. In one boss fight, you are riding on top of a tiny white cat who is running away from a mechanical motorcycle. (Yes, the cat is running at the same speed as the motorcycle, don't let logic bother you.) While on the cat, you need to jump on top of missiles the boss is shooting at you and catch other missiles, which you can shake to make stronger, so that you could fire back at the boss. Timing is essential for the grab, and a timing error will result in damage. All the meanwhile you need avoid other attacks that you can't grab, a laser beam being one of them.

The grab function is also used extremely well in the general platforming levels. By grabbing and shaking different balls (stop laughing!), the balls will activate switches or maybe the balls will follow a track in which you'll need to jump off at the right time and jump on another track. There is no simple running and jumping in mischief makers. Sometimes you'll need to air dash correctly to make it over large gaps and other times you'll need to rely on timed grabs to get across tricky parts.

Beating Mischief Makers wasn't that difficult either. Some of the bosses were difficult to figure out how to beat, but eventually I was able find out what I needed to do in order to win. What was insanely difficult though was getting 100% completion and seeing the main ending and surprise ending.

In order to get the complete ending, you need to collect the cleverly hidden golden crystals that were in each stage. Some crystals forced you to think outside the box to press the right switches, some were just in obscure parts of the map and others made you tempt fate over treacherous areas. The most hardcore crystals though, were the golden crystals for bosses, which you could only get by not taking any damage throughout the whole battle. Trust me, getting those crystals was RIDICULOUS. And insanely fun.

I felt so satisfied after getting all the golden crystals since I knew I had completed something very difficult and was rewarded with an awesome complete ending. The effort I had to put into this game was so intense and I remember playing some bosses dozens of times before doing a successful no-hit run. I'm not sure what compelled me to go for 100% completion in Mischief Makers; the game was just addictive.

Why should you play this game? Outstanding level design, controls and some of the most memorable boss fights you'll ever experience, especially if you're going for a no-hit run. The crazy awesome boss fights are no surprise either, since this game was made by the same development team that worked on Gunstar Heroes and Contra. Yeah, the music is kinda lame, and you may not like the cartoony graphics, but most importantly, you'll have fun. If you have an N64, get this game. Amazon has copies of it for less than five bucks.

-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)
#33 --- Mischief Makers (N64)

Initial Impressions of the NXE

2008-11-19T23:36:00.006-05:00

The NXE, the New Xbox Experience. This was Microsoft's fall update to the Xbox 360 dashboard. The old dashboard did it's job, but it was slow, clunky, and had much wasted space and inefficiencies.

This is by no means a complete review; Kevin or I will do one of those later, but for now, here are some brief thoughts.

Overall Layout
Much faster, much sleeker, and much better organized. The old 'blades' were slow loading, and poorly organized. These are quick and efficient. Bravo Microsoft.

Additionally, the menu which appears when you hit the Xbox button the controller has also been updated, and appears much faster, as everything else does. It's been updated with much more useful information.

Avatars
Whoopidy-doo. Xbox decided they wanted their own Miis. They did a decent job, but who cares. I haven't done anything other than make mine (couldn't find an image, but my tag is Will and Beyond). This could develop into something cool, but I have my doubts.

Streaming Netflix
Watching Netflix movies on the 360 is an excellent addition, and a step closer to making this a more complete media center. I used to have Netflix, but I unsubscribed once I had built up a big backlog of movies to watch. (Not that I was somehow archiving them outside of the strict confines of the law...) Today I resubscribed, because their Watch Instantly feature allows unlimited streaming of movies (a more limited selection, and temporarily even more so) when you have their $8.99/month plan or higher.

The setup is super simple. Download the small program, then you'll need to connect to your Netflix account. That entails logging into your Netflix account on the computer, and inputting a code which the Netflix program will display. Very simple. You then setup an 'Instant Queue' (which is separate from your regular queue, though it works the same way).

Once your queue is setup, you just open the program on the 360, and you have a very sleek interface (common theme with this dashboard upgrade) which allows you to browse through your queue and see info, etc. I watched the first half of L.A. Confidential (then something went wrong...) and then all of Empire Records. No complaints at all. There was an interruption once when my internet slowed down, but it resumed just fine.

Game Installation

One of the problems on the 360 is that the disc drive is very loud, and if my volume's not up loud enough to drown it out, I get worried it's going to burn out, or eat my disc. Installing a game on the hard disk eliminates this problem.

It doesn't reduce load times noticably, and you still have to have the disc in the drive (to verify ownership), but it's nice and silent. The installations take around 6GB, so unless you have an Elite (60GB) you can probably only keep one game installed at once (on the 20GB Pro drives), so this won't be as great for you polygamous gamers.

Overall: Many thumbs up. Kotaku and Gizmodo agree.

Photo: X3F

Photo: Netflix

Photo: EatOurBrains

Godspeed.

Top 40 Most Memorable Games #35

2008-11-17T17:27:00.001-05:00

Lima's Top 40 Most Memorable Games!
this week, RATCHET & CLANK FUTURE: TOOLS OF DESTRUCTION

I've been told I'm more funny when I'm angry. Sadly, I just can't find anything to rant about this week. Tools of Destruction was a solid game. My roommate (TheNightgaunt) rented it and it had been a while since I'd had the time/interest to get into a game. The previous Ratchet and Clank titles had been decent if not highly remarkable. I've always had a soft spot for platform games and at the time I'd experienced enough bargain bin action/adventure to make me crave something with a joke or two. (A LITTLE sense of humor, I don't ask for much! Even the new Devil May Cry had dick jokes!) Two months later, I had finished the game twice and finally let my poor roommate exchange it for another game.

Playing Tools of Destruction was like stepping out into summer rain. How long had it been since I played a game that was FUN. You know fun, that thing you forget about when you're fighting slimes over and over again for the XP or randomly named currency? I forgot the beauty of mindlessly wailing on things with a pleasant variety of weapons. And yes, that's what Grand Theft Auto is, but there was always a bit of guilt there for me. Call me sensitive (I still beat the money out of hookers like anyone else) but there was always that edge of sarcasm (and frustrating chase missions) to remind me that my character and the city he lived in were mean and corrupt. Cynicism can be a great source of humor, but it's really just the shinier side of a depressed coin. Besides, I can't beat the chase scenes

Ratchet an Clank are saving worlds from a tiny dictator whose head is too small for his hat. There's no guilt in beating up monsterous patsies or robot pirates. (They hit me first!) And If you you don't want to kill them, you can make them dance. Or turn them into penguins. or turn them into DANCING PENGUINS!!!

I could go on and on about the great gameplay and replay value, Pirate costume, beautifully titled skill points (Saucy Wrench = Destroy all 4 campfire Cauldrons with the wrench.), and blatant ripping off the Pirates of the Caribbean's theme song....But I think I made my point with the dancing penguins. dancing penguins! How AWESOME is that?

This game kicks ass.

Doooooooood. This game rocks.

2008-11-15T04:43:00.005-05:00

So I've put away my copy of Fallout 3 for the moment. At least until the developer's get up off of their asses and release a Construction Set for the game like they've done for their last 2 major titles.
Long story short, the reason why Oblivion continues to sell on the PC is mainly thanks to the developers releasing a modified version of the editor tools they used to make the game. As a result, Oblivion (and it's predecessor Morrowind) have one of the largest modding communities in the history of gaming, with the number of mods out there numbering in the thousands. link to planet elder scrolls

So until that happens, I find myself drawn back to a game that I was playing obsessively prior to the release of Fallout 3. I speak of Disgaea 3.

This game is addictive. How addictive you may ask? Well, I was playing it prior to the release of Silent Hill: Homecoming, and then once I beat that I went back to Disgaea 3. Then Spore came out, and after I beat it I went back to Disgaea 3. And now that Fallout 3 has come and gone, I find myself once again drawn back to it like a junkie to a dealer who also happens to be a cheap whore.

Let me explain.

The Disgaea series (now available on every god damned system except the Wii) is a tactical J-RPG. Think Final Fantasy; Tactics, where you do turn based combat, maneuvering characters around a grid like a perverted version of chess, but with chocobos and fireballs. Disgaea replaces that with an inane and truly twisted, but disturbingly funny storyline. And instead of moogles you get peglegged, knife wielding penguins who talk with surfer accents and say "Duuuuuude" way too much. They also happen to serve as the unappreciated slave/servant in the underworld.
...The moogles don't stand a chance in hell.
In Disgaea 1 (Hour of darkness) the main character is a demon prince named Laharl who awakens from a 2 year long nap to find that his invincible father, the overlord of the netherworld, has choked to death on a pretzel. Laharl decides to fill the power vacuum left by his dear old dad by the traditional demonic methods of murder, destruction and outright lying.
He's joined by a cute demoness who constantly threatens to take him down if he fails to live up to his father in her eyes, and a ditzy angel sent to assassinate him (but stops short of knifing him in the back when she finally realizes that killing is wrong). Oh, and knife wielding penguins that explode when thrown.

The plot has twists, turns, and numerous bad and god awful jokes that leave you coming back for more. The sequels only add to this and build upon the previous titles.

The game mechanics are sound and you can return to old levels to play them again, over and over to your hearts content. Oh, and you can enter any item in the game and explore a random dungeon hidden in each. The farther you descend into the item's +100 levels, the more powerful the item grows. Your items actually level in this game. And I don't just mean the weapons and armor. The healing items, the odd status effect items, etc. They all level. Not only that but they contain random towns, pirate raids, and collectable NPCs you can transfer from item to item, altering their effects. And finally, there are dozens of playable classes, you can create characters based on any monster in the game, each of which has at least 5 variations and can all level to somewhere around 9000. Now you can probably beat the game with the main characters at level 80 or so. The rest is just icing. There are unlockable bosses, arenas and all sorts of fun stuff. Oh and multiple endings. There's a special ending if you die on the very first level. And in all of the sequels, you can unlock as playable characters, the main characters from the previous games.

There is also a senate in the game where you can try to get various bills passed. These vary from allowing you to unlock strange new side quests, to being able to buy shoes in the store. And while there are a lot of little factors that decide if one of the many random senators vote for or against your bills, the best way to be assured of victory is to bribe them (they are demons). And if all else fails, you can always try to kill those who vote against you.

As I said, I'm currently obsessed with Disgaea 3, which only adds more complexity and insanity to the series. Now you can pass on experience from one character to another, enter your own characters in a weird variation of the "Item world" concept I mentioned before. So within each character there are hundreds of random dungeons occupied by clones of the character and at the end of this gauntlet you gain the ability to boost the skills and abilities of said character, or simple teach him/her some very powerful new attacks. I find myself obsessed with a strategy I found online that will allow me to level up the main character to level 9999. The idea of becoming insanely strong and dealing millions of points of damage in a single hit appeals to me somehow.

The story centers around Mao, the resident of an underworld that consists entirely of one giant university of evil. His dad just happens to the the overlord of this little University of damnation and Mao seeks his death. Why? Because his dad accidentally stepped on his video game console, killing the memory cards and with them over 13 million hours of saved games (demons live a long time).

In my opinion, Disgaea is one of those series that wins any competition hands down. Well not "best sports game of '07" or something idiotic like that, but they're great games nonetheless.

And yes, this is a scene from the game, and yes that is a tower of characters all doing a wrestling move on 1 enemy. It's that kind of game.

5 Minutes/5 Games: Volume 1

2008-11-12T15:15:00.001-05:00

On 5 minutes/5 games, I shall randomly choose 5 games that I've never played before from my emulators gigantic collection of old games, and give you my 5 minute impression of these games. Hopefully this will give both of us a chance to see games that we never have before.

1. Captain Planet and the Planeteers
The game starts off as a side-scrolling shooter, like Defender. Wikipedia says that this one of two types of levels in the game. It was actually difficult, I died about 5 times during the course of my 5 minute playing session. The controls weren't smooth, and it was more frustrating than anything else.

Will I play this again? Nope.

2. Castelian
Here's a game I had never heard of before. This is actually really fun. My goal seems to be to climb up this tower, and not die in the process. There are passageways through the tower, falling blocks, elevators, bad guys, and I can shoot. It took a minute of getting used to it, but it's pretty intuitive. There's also a time limit, so you have to act fast. This has been released on the Wii VC as Nebulus. I recommend it.

Will I play this again? Absolutely.

3. Deja Vu
A point and click adventure/mystery game. I wake up in a bathroom not knowing who or where I am, nor where the blood on my hand came from. The controls feel a little clunky, but that's to be expected when you're controlling a cursor with the d-pad. Seems pretty fun, straightforward enough so far.

Will I play this again? Maybe. I wouldn't go out of my way to, but if I came across it again, sure.

4. Genghis Khan
A strategy game where you control the Mongolian armies. It starts off RPG-like, where I'm rolling for my stats, choosing names, etc. I now have the option to give orders, like train, tax, war, etc. I train once, which entails nothing other than being told my skill has gone up. Not very exciting. What is exciting? War! How many troops would I like to send to attack my neighboring country? All of them! Exterminated... me, not them. Next up is an incoming attack from a neighbor. I lose, since I have no troops. This has potential, but it would require understanding the strategy.

Will I play this again? Probably not.

5. Ikari Warriors
It turns out Captain Planet isn't the worst game of the five, Ikari Warriors is. The idea is basic, I'm a commando whose plane crashes, and I have to fight a bunch of bad guys (including ninjas) who shoot at me. How could you go wrong? Awkward controls. It's an NES, so I'm not expecting super smooth controls, but these are just too difficult to play with.

Will I play this again? Certainly not.

Winner: Castelian
Loser: Ikari Warriors

Godspeed.

Top 52: Super Mario Kart (#34)

2008-11-11T18:32:00.005-05:00

Super Mario Kart proved that Mario spinoffs, if made well-enough could be highly successful. This game alone, according to Wikipedia, sold eight million copies worldwide. Not to mention that Super Mario Kart laid the foundation for all other Mario Kart games and Mario spinoffs outside the platforming genre.

Title: Super Mario Kart
Console: Super Nintendo
Release Date: 09/01/92
Genre: Racing
My Ranking: #34
-------------------------------------

When I first heard about this game I was confused. Mario in a racing game? Doesn't Mario usually involve jumping on goombas and going into pipes? Mario is awesome though, I thought, so I asked for this game for my birthday.

I then discovered that this racing game was INTENSE. Crazy tracks with pipes in the middle of the road and bowser levels filled with thwomps and lava. Tight turns, weird animations and items like shells and mushrooms? The Nintendo crew stayed true to the essence of Mario and made a somehow made a fun and competitive racing game.

Super Mario Kart, in my opinion, is also the hardest in the entire series. Try playing Special Cup on 150cc and you'll most likely end up crying. If you somehow make it to Rainbow Road, you'll be lucky if you place in the top 4 to pass because you'll keep getting knocked off by every other racer in the game bombarding you with items. Rainbow Road was evil in Super Mario Kart because there were some crazy turns and absolutely no borders on any parts of the stage.

Super Mario Kart- Rainbow Road in 1

Playing the Grand Prix mode with a friend though is more dynamic than you would think. Since the game is so incredibly difficult to get a gold on 150cc, you end up having to work cooperatively with your friend in order to stay ahead of the pack. However, towards the final lap, I also betray my friends right before the finish line (if I'm not in first), and steal the win right under their noses. Mwa ha ha ha.

Super Mario Kart is also the only game in the series to have five laps in every level. Five laps would seem crazy for other games in the series since the boards are very long. In Super Mario Kart, the courses are very compact and the game forces you to master the few tricky turns in under five laps in order to get first place.

I think the best part about Super Mario Kart, however, is the balance of items. No annoying blue shells or broken Bullet Bills like in other installments in the Mario Kart series. Red shells wouldn't even follow the course to their target, so you had to be able to see your opponent in order to hit them. So while the items were fun and helpful, they didn't exactly make or break the game. A better skilled driver would most likely win a contest. A racing game should reward you for skill, not for luck.

The battle mode was also a lot of fun. The only problem with the balloon-style battle mode however, is that Super Mario Kart only supported two players at once. Facing one-on-one in a battle area felt a little bland since you only need to focus on one person. Mario Kart 64's battle mode was much more dynamic with four players; you never felt safe knowing three targets could be potentially targeting you.

I initially bought (well, asked my mom) Super Mario Kart for the brand name of "Mario." Needless to say, Super Mario Kart exceeded my expectations. Whenever friends came over, they wanted to play Super Mario Kart. The popularity of this game lasted among my friends for at least four years, simply because it was so much fun. If you like racing games, especially Mario Kart games, and you haven't played this one, I highly suggest you pick this one up; it's one of the best in the entire series.
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)
#34 --- Super Mario Kart (SNES)

Machinima Filmfest 2008

2008-11-09T18:10:00.001-05:00

I went to the Machinima Filmfest 2008 award ceremony last weekend and my mind was blown. For those who don't know what Machinima is and ignored the wikipedia link, Machinima is essentially video game movies. Not like the awesome awesome (that's not a typo, it deserves two awesomes) Super Mario Brothers movie with Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper. Machinima takes in-game video game characters and sprites and reapproiates them to make video game movies. Some of the movies stay within the world of the game, others take the characters and make a whole new storyline unrelated to that game's universe. Needless to say, Machinima appeals to gamers and off-center film directors.

Why use Machinima for animation? ILL clan animation studios puts it best: "Simply put? Machinima Animation can provide you with high-quality animation produced three times faster than traditional 3D CGI animation at 20% of the cost."

Before the awards ceremony, there were a series of panels that talked about machinima. One panel discussion featured young high-school students who used environments they created in Second Life to raise some global issue. By using the game's mechinics, they made a successful film that asked questions and discussed problems within Second Life.

Another panel talked about copyright issues with machinima and the business behind it. One machinima filmmaker got his film on HBO and was able to retain all of the rights to the characters within his film because the avatar he used was created by himself in Second Life, making it intellectual property. However, since he was making revenue off this film, random avatars that came into his set while filming might have needed contracts in order to be recorded. Considering very few films have been made and marketed in virtual worlds, copyright issues are fuzzy.

The most exciting part of the day though, was clearly seeing all of the movies. In one room, they had a huge projector which just streamed the films all day long until the awards ceremony came up.

Instead of going through and talking about each film, I'll just put a whole bunch of them up in this post that I really liked. You can make your own distinctions and conclusions about the films.

Tiny Nation:

Beast:

Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator

Ignis Solus

Portal: A Day in the Life of a Turret

If you want a list of all of the nominated films for Machinima filmfest 2008 check out this list here.

Flashy Friday: Meatboy

2008-11-07T16:24:00.005-05:00

I love platformers. My buddy Josh showed me this crazy addictive platformer called Meatboy. You play as a slab of meat. Your girlfriend has been kidnpped and you must try and save her by going on a perilous platforming journey that will pit you against meat grinders, salt, lava, and conveyer belts.

This game isn't for the faint of heart. This game is actually really damn hard. You will consistently just barely make jumps and you will die a lot. Josh and I beat this game yesterday, taking turns on levels that were making us tear our hair out. I got so crazed that I yelled at my computer. Hence, I love this game.

Click here to play Meatboy now.

Top 52: Doom (#35)

2008-11-07T16:04:00.001-05:00

Doom. Such a fitting name. The popularity of this game nearly spelled out the death of the video game industry since politicians freaked out at the violence within this game. However, the popularity of this game also may have saved the industry as tons of gamers and gaming companies fought against the government hovering over them, claiming free speech in their products. Oh, and the game totally rocks, which is why it's on my list.

Title: Doom
Console: PC
Release Date: 12/10/93
Genre: First-Person Shooter
My Ranking: #35
-------------------------------------

I remember playing Doom for Windows 95 sometime around 1995 or 1996, when I was far too young to be playing a game that had so much blood and violence (psst, I was born in 1988). I had to play this game in secret because I didn't want my parents seeing me turn imps and soldiers into a pixelated bloody mush.

Violence controversy aside, Doom was an amazing game. At the time, the idea of first-person shooter was so new and fresh that the game felt and played unlike any other. My character is just a floating gun that doesn't really need to aim that much in order to do damage to enemies. The numbers on my keyboard change weapons as I get them, and boy, getting a new weapon in doom was equivalent to the feeling you get when you get a present on your birthday.

I remember when I first got the shotgun and suddenly I could take out imps with one shot at near-point blank range. I remember getting the rocket launcher and when you kill enemies with that gun, they are indistinguishable for any other enemy, since they turn into a bloody goo. And, who could forget the BFG 9000? That gun would obliterate anything in its path, and you only needed 4 shots with it to take down the final boss.

Doom was not addictive just for it's crazy awesome guns or for its blood and gore. Doom had excellent level design for one of the first first-person shooters. Switches changed the layout of the floor or would possibly unleash more enemies at you. You really did not know which. Every switch caused you to look around and say "hm, how can the developers screw me here?" Color-coded keys and doors also forced you to look in every corner, facing more tough enemies and possibly find some secret doors that you didn't even know existed.

Doom was incredibly hard as I remember as well. Maybe I was young and just inexperienced with shooters (as was everybody at the time) but bosses often ate up entire clips of multiple guns while if I was hit three or four times, I would die. It was happily challenging as I always felt that the bosses were difficult because of my lack of skill, not because they are cheap.

I think I've only beaten the original Doom once, since the game was pretty long and I was playing tons of games at a time as a child. Doom had to be on my list though since I remember playing the first couple of levels over and over again, just because I loved them so much.

Doom was the shooter that gave birth to all of the modern day shooters. If Doom was not as awesome and failed in the market, it is quite possible that Quake, Call of Duty, Halo, Medal of Honor, Gears of War, Team Fortress, or any other shooter would not exist as we know them today. If you have not played Doom, get on that right now. Not only was this game revolutionary for the genre but it also was the one of the primary causes for people to be worried about violence in video games. Doom is a historic game for the video game industry and for the culture around it. If you have an Xbox360, Doom is on Xbox Live. Go play it!
-------------------------------------
My Top 52:
#52 --- Star Fox 64 (N64)
#51 --- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
#50 --- Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
#49 --- Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)
#48 --- Metroid Prime (GC)
#47 --- Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
#46 --- Bomberman 64 (N64)
#45 --- Guitar Hero II (PS2)
#44 --- Super Street Fighter II (GEN)
#43 --- Pokemon Puzzle League (N64)
#42 --- Soul Calibur II (GC)
#41 --- Gears of War (Xbox 360)*
#40 --- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
#39 --- Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
#38 --- Super Metroid (SNES)
#37 --- The Orange Box (PS3)*
#36 --- Metal Gear Solid (PS)
#35 --- Doom (PC)

Top 40 Most Memorable Games #36

2008-11-07T02:20:00.003-05:00

Again! Again!

Lima's Top 40 Most Memorable Games!
this week, AREA 51!
Would you believe that this is the only light-gun game that I've ever played? My dad bought Area 51 for the playstation one thinking it'd have zombies in it (a bit of a family obsession) and got two playstation guns so we could play co-operatively.Not to be confused with the playstation 2 Area 51, this game is a straight copy of the arcade game. Hence,10-15 minutes of gameplay from start to finish, three lines of dialog ("we need evac! we need evac!") AWFUL GRAPHICS, and the ability to shoot shoot good guys at the cost of a health point per kill. Needless to say, my family fought over the privilege.

I love this game like you love and old stuffed animal. the kind that has aged so that all the fur has worn off and the eyes are scratched and vacant in an undead sort of way. Your mother consistently tried to trick you into letting her throw it out and now that you're 20, it lives in the closet, covered in dust. sad, lonely, and possibly plotting your doom.

But when you notice it every once in a while, digging through the closet for a missing shoe, there's that old warmth that brings back the locations of each hidden hand grenade, and the whack-a-mole pleasure of shooting aliens in pipes. Ah, sweet childhood.

Top 40 Most Memorable Games #37

2008-11-06T18:39:00.002-05:00

Most late post ever! It's official, I'm doing the lame thing and combining this week and last week's post. Game 36 will follow. Between Halloween and midterms (you can guess which one took up more time) and blah blah blah...

Lima's Top 40 Most Memorable Games!
this week, SUPER MONKEY BALL : BANANA BLITZ

Ah, monkeys in bubbles. Good times. I'm gonna be honest here and let everyone know that as of yet, I've only played Super Monkey Ball for the Wii once. After an anniversary dinner with Rich. The game was my idea of a romantic present. He loved it.

I lost maybe 9 out of every 10 mini games and the bulk of them varied from retardedly difficult to Simon Says. I had a lot of trouble getting the fishing net/catapult/explosive banana to move where I wanted it to; my controller's batteries might have been running low. Luckily in this case, annoyance made the heart grow fonder. Again and again We threw horse shoes, missing to the whimpers of disheartened primates. Rock Paper Scissors proved to be hideously complicated, but fun.

All in all, the game was an energetic end to a marvelous evening. Long term, I have no doubt it would drive me up the wall. But with a belly full of peking duck, and the giddiness of day and company it came with, we could have been playing Madden and I'd still remember it for years.