Schmidt (Koji Igarashi jus…): My wallet needs this to n… Eusis (Koji Igarashi jus…): It's worth remembering th… Parish (GSQ4: We all go h…): They're still there. Not … NevznachaY (GSQ4: We all go h…): Jeremy, could we have the… Acosta02 (Koji Igarashi jus…): I don't know that people … Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): Heck, I'll take an SD ver… Ryonin (Koji Igarashi jus…): This kinda makes me want … Mudron (Koji Igarashi jus…): I would suspect that peop… Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): How is this game going to… SonicPanda (Koji Igarashi jus…): So, this is going to be m…
This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the main page.
Where the buffalo loam
30 September 08 | 08:53 | Posted by:
The title of this post has nothing to do with its contents, but dang if the notion of "loam" as a verb (especially one engaged in by the majestic buffalo!) amuses me to no end, possibly because it involves tilling the end of time. Also, because I am a simpleton. Eh, go listen to a podcast if you want to hear me trying to be smart. Smart-ish.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
I still can't believe how much I enjoyed Iron Man. I think it helped that the usher at the theatre I saw it at had this infection geek-out enthusiasm for the movie and insisted on making certain we stuck around for the Nick Fury cameo. Also, Robert Downey Jr. may be the first-ever actor typecast as his superhero counterpart: a wealthy, handsome, famous substance abuser.
New Game Plus | Weekly Game Releases
Well, it's about five, six weeks until the next awesome games come out (Mirror's Edge and Valkyria Chronicles), which means about a month and a half for savoring the delectable delicacy that is Mega Man 9. I guess the industry will continue releasing stuff until then, but of course we all know it's simply out of a sense of obligation to their shareholders.
...sounds like an uncompleted Mad Lib, awaiting your response when asked for an emotion. But the theme songs for the Marvel '60s cartoons were never that lyrically brilliant, catchiness aside. "He's got radioactive blood" really isn't a satisfactory response to the question of whether or not Spiderman is strong. In fact, it sort of casts doubt on the notion.
That was the very smooth introduction to my post about a special screening of Iron Man I attended just a few weeks ago. The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica invited John Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. (in a very fetching sweater from the Freddy Krueger collection) to come do a running commentary for a live screening. Which is cool enough, but it seems someone at Paramount/Marvel never bothered to record an actual commentary for the DVD, meaning I was lucky enough to be among the few who got to hear one. At least until they release a special edition correcting the omission. Someone in the crowd undoubtably recorded the thing, so a torrent must be floating around there somewhere, but for those of you too lazy to find it or are sure the sound quality's crap, here's some highlights just in time for the home video release.
The Difficulty of Difficulty
Making hard games is easy. Making good hard games...well, that's something else entirely. And clearly a bit too demanding for many people! This article looks at why it's so dang difficult to find difficult games that manage to be fun as well, mainly by calling out all the cheats and cheaps and shortcuts that developers usually fall back on. (For shame.)
Gradius III: From Legend to Myth
For instance, Gradius III -- at least in the arcade -- was a game that rather infamously failed to be both difficult and enjoyable, because its challenge mainly stemmed from level designers who utterly hated their customers. But hey, sand dragons, or something.
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
And joining Devil May Cry 3 and Gradius III as a third chapter that almost completely destroyed its respective franchises is Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Me, I'm bugged by the use of till rather than 'til as an abbreviation of until. Technically correct, sure, but it gives me visions of space farmers breaking up soil. Which admittedly would probably be more satisfying than what Tri-Ace did create.
Recently, a member of the forums going by the handle Fredly81 posited the theory that Mirror's Edge is the new Sonic the Hedgehog. Mirrors Edge is a unique upcoming game in which you are a messenger who free-runs (or performs parkour) across a sterile urban environment. Other than the fact that both games reward you for going as quickly as you can, I don't see a lot of connections between Sonic and Faith, the main character of Mirror's Edge. As part of my glamorous career in game's retail, I was able to play a demo of Mirror's Edge, and to me the experience of playing the game was much more reminiscent of the platforming in recent Tomb Raider games or Uncharted, but portrayed in the first person perspective. The pure visceral thrill you get in the aforementioned games when you can quickly and acrobatically traverse long platforming sections without slowing down or falling is taken to an extreme in Mirror's Edge. The first person perspective heightens the feelings of vertigo and the adrenaline rush of pure speed, and nailing a particularly tricky combination is a satisfying accomplishment.
I am a big believer in the game after having played it, but I am still very nervous about it's reception. When I was waiting to play it, it made me sad to see people play it for 60 seconds, fall three times, and walk away. This is a game that you need to invest in before it "clicks". I was lucky in that there was a guy there to walk me through the mechanics while I was playing, and I was soon scampering around the level like I was the star of a Luc Besson-produced French action movie. If the game can keep things fresh and interesting throughout it's entirety, then I think it has the potential to break out and jumpstart a new franchise, regardless of how confused some consumers might be with a game in first-person that doesn't revolve around guns and shooting people in the face.
As someone who gets almost as much enjoyment from discussing games as playing them, I think the dialogue surrounding the game is going to be very interesting. DICE and EA are taking a risk with this new creation, and while I know I've been aching for something unique and original on a home console, I can but hope that there are a lot of other people like me out there are as well -- people who aren't completely satisfied with sequel after sequel. I don't think I'll have too long to wait until the dialogue gets kick-started, as a Mirror's Edge demo is to arrive sooner or later...sooner rather than later, I suspect. My reasoning: preorder customers get a code to unlock an extra Time Trial mode in the demo; since the game store I manage already has these codes, it stands to reason that the demo should be available soon. One of the tough things about early access to games is there aren't very many people to talk about them with (I know, poor me), and I can't wait until a wide variety of gaming enthusiasts are flooding the internet with their own impressions. Just be sure to post your impressions on Talking Time first, since it's bound to be full of people discussing it.
As I mentioned previously, I spent a fair amount of time with Rock Band 2 this past weekend. It was as awesome as I’d expected it to be, and yet...I came away with slightly mixed feelings.
Harmonix pretty much fixed everything that needed fixing: the guitar now has a fair number of challenging songs -- that is to say, not totally boring to play, which is quite different from the Guitar Hero "make it so hard the player cries thinking about it" philosophy of note charts -- drum charts were more varied, Band World Tour was now online, and you can be the same character regardless of the instrument you're using. They've also added new features, like a drum trainer, a constantly-updated challenge mode to keep things interesting, and a no-fail mode for parents/kids/friends who hate plastic instruments. Oh, and 84 new songs to play didn’t hurt, either.
Really, all Rock Band 2 suffers from is a vague "more of the same" feeling I can’t seem to shake. It’s a victim of the ridiculously high bar the series' debut set last year. The presentation and gameplay are still definitely top-notch, but this year’s tweaks were just that: tweaks. I’m certainly glad Harmonix knows better than to mess with perfection, but in some ways it’s a little weird to get a new game and suddenly realize, "Ah, this is exactly what I was playing yesterday." Not being big into sports games, I’ve never really dealt with this whole incremental update thing before. It’s weird for me.
Don’t get me wrong; Rock Band 2 is definitely worth every penny. Hell, when we were paying about $2 a song for DLC tracks in the first game, $60 for 85 new songs is definitely a bargain. And yes, all the little tweaks, particularly the new song organization system, are a godsend. I whole-heartedly recommend the game. There’s no doubt in my mind that, like Rock Band last year, I’ll be playing this for a year straight, which has never happened before in my entire gaming career. Just, y’know...don’t expect anything wildly different if you do decide to get it. (And you should.) Baby steps and all that.
The rumors may actually be true: it looks like Nintendo will be releasing a new model of DS by year's end, at least in Japan. It will apparently feature camera and media player functions, which is all well and good. But as I already have a pretty freaking great camera (my girlfriend gave me her old Nikon D70 as a hand-me-down) and I'm up to my eyeballs in iPods, this has no use for me.
But the bigger screen...that's intriguing. But not as much as the possibly apocryphal SD card-based data-swapping with Wii. If Nintendo could somehow combine these two possible elements to create a portable extension to Virtual Console, allowing me to relocate Wii-purchased VC titles and play them in proper resolution on, say, a 320x240 screen...well. I'd really have no choice.
Luckily, Nintendo has no idea how to cater to my tastes anymore, so it looks like my wallet's safe. Whew.
The other day, Activision CEO Robert Kotick said in regard to licensing music for Guitar Hero, that when you look at the value appearing in these music games represents to an artist, maybe the music labels should be paying Activision to appear in the game rather than the other way around. His remark was likely spurred by Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s comments last month about how the music industry needed a bigger slice of the profit the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band were making off of “their” music.
Honestly, I think both companies are kind of missing the point. Yes, Guitar Hero is certainly helping drive the sales of various music groups, including Metallica’s newest album. It’s a bit of a catch-22, though; the music industry is profiting because of Guitar Hero and Rock Band’s hard work, but without the music, those products wouldn’t sell in the first place. Can’t these companies see it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement? The aforementioned download of Metallica’s newest album in Guitar Hero 3 is a great example of both mediums working together to sell their respective products, and I’m sure some of the more questionable Rock Band DLC tracks showed up in exchange for the rights to other songs the record labels hold.
I can’t tell if Kotick’s comments were serious, indicating the company feels it’s too big to ignore and their greed has gotten the best of them, or if it was a ploy to publicly say, “Hey, everyone’s winning right now, but if you rock this boat we’re all in, you might not like some of the waves.” Similarly, I don’t know if Warner Music is actually getting screwed by any of this, or if it’s, “Look, these guys are making some serious scratch, so let’s try to get as much of it as possible.” Something tells me, in both cases, greed is a pretty big factor.
Regardless, I am impressed by the fact that this argument can even happen -- that a video game company can push back like this. Remember when games were the little guys compared to film and music? Yeah, me neither.
While I have long considered Marvel and DC Comics to be one beast with two heads [Technically, Bi-Beast is strictly a Marvel thing. -- Parish], DC manages to stand a little taller in my eyes. They treat their creators better with both credit and royalties, and perhaps because of that they are occasionally able to publish some truly stellar work. While Marvel doesn't have a Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns it's easy to imagine they could -- while a more mature book like Neil Gaiman's Sandman seems completely out of their grasp.
So I was sad to read from Comic Book Resources that DC Comics is cancelling its Minx line, a series of original trade paperback sized comics intended to attract a younger female audience. I had a chance to read some of these books earlier this year when I found some preview copies at a convention. It's common in book publishing to send preliminary copies, called galley proofs, to retail stores as a means to promote a book. And I was stunned when I saw these galley proofs of the Minx line because I had never seen or heard of a comic company with this mission before. DC had a line of books that were actually appealing to girls -- although still mostly produced by men -- within a very earnest attempt to play by the book world's rules. What happened?
Sadly, Minx is just the latest in a long tradition of DC imprints that have died before their time. Helix was styled after Vertigo with a sci-fi bent and became home to Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan. Milestone Media was founded by a group of African-American creators and is best known for the superhero book Static. Paradox Press published Road to Perdition which was adapted to a feature film and Pirahnna Press published Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn and the excellent Big Book of... anthologies. All of these lines produced good work and all were cancelled before their time. The shame is that many of these books will never be reprinted, or at least no time soon -- just another drop in an overflowing bucket of disposable media.
It seems spiteful. The cynic in me thinks that all these imprints are just lip service, DC's way of throwing a bone to the poor misanthropes who think comics are more than just a delivery vehicle for male power fantasies. And it seems disingenuous to reach all the way back to the early 1970's when they cancelled Jack Kirby's line of Fourth World books because while they were outselling most of DC's other books they weren't bringing in Fantastic Four numbers. But I think the truth lies somewhere in between -- a genuine disdain for change coupled with astoundingly bad business decisions. How else could you explain why DC is too shortsighted to see the long tail?
Did you do it? Did you make the tragic, terrible mistake of buying the dreaded...Roll Head?
Far and wide, I've seen the Internet lamenting the folly of the Roll Head. "It was 200 bolts!" cries many a jilted gamer. "I figured something so expensive had to be good! I thought maybe it would let me play Mega Man 9 as Roll! But...all it does is change Roll's costume in the menu screens to give her a black jacket over her dress." Bitter tears have been spilled over this expensive mystery item in Auto's shop -- a useless, cosmetic piece of nonsense whose acquisition is quite possibly the biggest mistake you could possibly make while playing MM9.
I think it's likely that the Roll Head might even trump the infamous Chrip-Chrip Shoes from Board Game: Top Shop as the single biggest unexpected screw you in the history of games with commerce. (The occasional boneheaded shenanigans of MMO publishers notwithstanding.) For those who didn't play Top Shop -- that is, most of you -- it was, as the title suggests, a board game similar to Monopoly, and earnings could be used to buy goodies in the shop. Most of them had obvious benefits, but one of the pricier items was the mysterious "Chrip-Chrip Shoes." What could they be? Bedeviled with curiosity as we played the game, Jess finally decided to buy them, hoping for some sort of competitive advantage. What he got was...a pair of shoes that made his character emit tiny bird-sounds as he walked around the board. And nothing else. They were Chirp-Chirp shoes, mangled by the translation difficulties that plague a $10 video game. Yes, all that effort wasted on a tragically mistranslated bit of useless footware.
As far as I can tell, everyone who has ever played Top Shop has experienced the horror of discovering the true nature of Chrip-Chrip Shoes for themselves. And I figure the number of people who will heart-wrenchingly discover the truth behind the Roll Head has got to be a few orders of magnitude larger than the paltry handful who have even heard of Top Shop, meaning Capcom has created far more pervasive and widespread suffering. And that is awesome.
Although I suppose I might feel differently if I were the one buying the damn things myself. Thanks for sparing me the pain, suckers.
Another dose of fan service unleaded hit store shelves here in Japan yesterday. No doubt Super Robot Taisen Z will sell a couple hundred thousand copies, elicit squeals of joy from fans of implausibly huge robots (including myself), and bring out the grumbling about fanservice. Yeah, nothing brings out the rants about rampant fanservice in games quite like Super Robot Taisen. Unless, of course, you're talking about Super Smash Brothers.
Fanservice seems to have gotten a bit of a bad rap in gaming circles. The epiphet "pure fanservice" brings with it the automatic assumption that there's nothing to the game but pandering. Fans walk in, check their brains at the door, and happily settle into what amounts to gaming comfort food. Substance is optional, or so say the critics. But maybe there's a little more to the "fanservice" experience then that. Fans can smell when a game with a lot of style but no substance tries to play that card. It's what happens when latter day Simpsons episodes trot out Arty Ziff or Frank Grimes Jr. for the umpteenth time. Fans roll their eyes and move on because there really is nothing to see there.
Super Smash Brothers succeeds because it managed to graft a phenomenal tribute to Nintendo onto a highly entertaining party game. But even taking into consideration how stupidly entertaining Smash Brothers tends to be in large groups, it would have faded into obscurity if not for the incredible love and attention to detail given to every last stage, character and encylopedia entry.
It's that attention to detail that drives successful fanservice and torpedoes others. For every SRW that brings a loving eye for detail to every frame of animation, we get a game like Namco x Capcom that not only whiffs on the gameplay, but completely omits more than a few beloved characters. Playing it, you can't help but get the feeling that it was thrown together not because the designer particularly cared, but because people would buy it.
But when a designer's interests align with the fans, and that fan service becomes a true labor of love, then you know that you're in for something special. It's what separates the Mega Man 9s of the world from the Gradius ReBirths. When you get a look at those Mega Man 9 press kits, or you hear about SRW producer Takanobu Terada gleefully inserting his childhood favorite Space Emperor God Sigma into Z's series lineup, you realize that those games aren't for you anymore. You're just along for the ride as the design team takes ownership of their favorite property and lavishes on it all the attention it deserves.
That really is pure fanservice for you. We should be so lucky to play games crafted with that much heart.
I spent the weekend visiting friends in Southern California, and as usual, we ended up playing a lot of games. Highlights included Castle Crashers, Rock Band 2 (much more on this later, I’m sure), and a game called Pure. Haven’t heard of that last one? Neither had I. To bring you up to speed, Pure is an ATV racing game developed by Disney Interactive. It’s also totally awesome. (If you’re planning to stop reading now, please, let me assure you I don’t intend to gush about a racing game.)
To set the record straight, I’m not a big racing fan. I rarely buy racing games outside of Mario Kart and can really only get into arcade racers -- which Pure definitely is. Even then, they almost always fall into the "rental" category for me. With that being said, in my limited experience with both, Pure is every bit as good as Motorstorm is. So why hadn’t I heard of Pure, but knew all about Motorstorm? Marketing, of course.
Call me naïve, but I like to think a great game’s quality will shine through, and magically by word of mouth, it will be a sleeper hit. Just look at how BioShock went from "a potentially cool FPS" to "not to be missed, regardless of genre". Even Atlus games like Persona 3 or Etrian Odyssey developed their own cult followings. Maybe the problem is two-fold, and the genre is to blame, too? Are we just more predisposed to look for "hidden gems" within certain types of games, but not others?
Either way, Pure’s performance this year compared to the next Motorstorm’s should make for an interesting experiment -- create two (nearly) identical product, market the hell out of one franchise and say nothing about the other, and see what the public perception on the two ends up being. I’m skeptical of developers like Jonathan Blow shooting their mouths off before their game even comes out, but now I’m seeing that’s just another form of increasing public awareness. As much as I hate the hype train, it seems to be a necessary evil. Meanwhile, here I am, sitting down to jot out a quick post about the power of marketing, and now I’m seriously wondering what else I’ve been missing. Maybe I should watch those "Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it" posts more closely.
Hide the woman and children (but mostly the children)
25 September 08 | 21:22 | Posted by:
Sure, the ECNIRP-mobile was charming in an "only in San Francisco" kind of way, but it seems not all the passenger vehicles in these here parts are quite so innocuous. I passed the car below the other day as I was walking to the convenience store and had to do a double-take to confirm that it was, indeed, emblazoned with a bumper sticker of Pedobear eerily on the lookout for childflesh upon which to prey.
Alarming! I just wish I'd been alert enough to write down the address where I saw this car. I'd love to check it against the sex offender database.
25 September 08 | 10:46 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
Resident Evil 2 was one of the most popular games of its time, and like millions of other gamers, I played it! Unlike most of them, though, I only went about five minutes before I was ready to hang it up. The aimless progression and clunky controls, along with the fact that I was completely new to survival horror, quickly convinced me that I was better off sticking to safer territory like Final Fantasy Tactics.
After that, I wrote off the series as one of those things I found interesting but would never be able to fully appreciate, like giant novelty Hamburgers, or curling. It eventually bucked that status with Resident Evil 4 and its accessible, streamlined gameplay, but now, while I'm as stoked as anyone else for RE5, I feel a niggling urge to go back and account for the origins of the series. My only impediment has been...well, they still don't look like a very good time.
Some hold out hope to see the old games completely remade in the image of RE4, but even I can see that would detract too much from their original atmosphere. A good middle ground might be the addition of motion controls for things like aiming weapons, which defined Wii Edition as the best version of RE4 -- and, indeed, are now planned to augment a port of 2002's remake of RE1. Unfortunately, we might not get a chance to test out the theory: Resident Evil Zero, also ported to the Wii earlier this year, never made it out of Japan, and RE1 could easily follow suit.
There's some cause for optimism, though. Regarding passing on localizing the RE0 port, Capcom's Christian Svensson specifically cited the fact that the game simply wasn't very well-liked in the first place; essentially, it's damaged goods. The RE1 remake, on the other hand, sold well over a million copies and was praised almost unanimously. Rereleasing a six-year-old GameCube game might reflect poorly on the Wii, but RE4 all but proved that the addition of motion alone can justify a port of an aging title. I do hope it comes out here, just on the chance I could have a renowned game in a format I could finally tolerate.
We missed our regularly-scheduled Retronauts podcast last week, but for a good reason: I was holding out until we could get Dragon Quest maniac and all-around rad guy Alex "Toaster Thief" Fraioli on the show. And we did! Although he is muted and fuzzy as he was on the phone from Japan. The result, though, is a fine example of the show...just in time for it to mutate radically for the next showing. Gracious, lordy, etc.
As noted in the show, this really is a shockingly good week for fans of all things old. Besides the obvious choices (Mega Man 9, Kirby Super Star Ultra) you have the less-hyped (Duke Nukem 3D, Vectorman, something else on Virtual Console that I'm forgetting) as well. And then there's word of 7th Dragon, an old-school RPG created by three masters of the form (Reiko Kodama, Kazuya Niinou and Yuzo Koshiro). Joy and bliss, my friends. The only black mark is Wario Land Shake It!, and even that isn't bad -- just a bit short of its potential, and tragically overshadowed by a much older game for a much less powerful system.
But just what makes Wario Land 4 better than its glossy successor? Several things, which I intend to lay out over the next few days (if I can be bothered to shoot for consistency, of course). But let's start with the most obvious element, the music.
Wario Land Shake It!'s music is, in a word, really bad. Well, as music it's not terrible; some of it is pretty catchy, in fact. But as music for a Wario game, it's not so good. Especially after WL4's tunes, which were created by a group of people who really and truly love music. They later went on to make the WarioWare titles (all of which have mind-blowing music) and the Rhythm Heaven series (which has music so good it's the entire point of the games). WL4 gave them their first shot at showing off their genius; as happened with a lot of early GBA titles, they went kind of crazy with the newfound power of the hardware and crammed a ton of (for the time) high-quality sound elements into their creation. The result was trippy, unconventional tunes like "Palm Tree Paradise" (sampled briefly here), a cheerfully lilting ballad with an extended instrumental bridge and a sense of relentless happiness that made a fantastic counterpoint to the hero's sullen, disgusting personality.
But even that could be subverted through the gameplay: when Wario suffered status effects in WL4, the music became distorted -- "wobbly" would be a good description -- and was interrupted by bizarre sound effects. "Palm Tree Paradise" was no exception! I wondered when I first heard the vocal theme if it would suffer from distortion effects, and was incredibly happy when it did.
Furthermore, you could collect CDs throughout WL4 that would allow you to unlock options in a hidden sound room -- which, unlike most games' "sound rooms," wasn't simply a jukebox. It was literally a sound room, a chamber in which you could play random samplings of bizarre and inexplicable audio samples accompanied by equally strange Game Boy Camera-style animations. WL4 constantly teetered at the brink between genius and insanity, and the game's music absolutely embodied that fever-dream sensibility. It's an edge that's been sanded smooth in Shake It!, literally; psychedelia has been replaced with smooth jazz. Of all its myriad disappointments, this was the one that perhaps struck me most.
Man, why I even got to describe a thing? Achewood is a webcomic that has been on the internet since 2001, and primarily focuses on the relationship between two cats, Ray and Roast Beef. There are many other supporting characters, including a naive young otter, lying robots, and a serial murderer, but Ray and Roast Beef are the main characters. The comic itself separates itself from the overabundance of crappy webcomics through its intense originality and the scope of its universe. The characters in the webcomic maintain blogs, write zines, novels, and cookbooks, and run an in-universe forum. The comic's humor does turn some people off by ignoring standard concepts (like punchlines) and by crossing the line into complete surreality more than a few times.
The comic has seen its share of long-running storylines which have become legendary among fans. There's a menu bar on the comic's main page where you can jump to the start of sequential comics such as "The Volvo of Dispair" or "Magical Realism", but one of the most popular and talked about storylines in the comic's history is "The Great Outdoor Fight", which is now collected in a hardbound volume by Dark House books. In the Achewood universe, The Great Outdoor Fight is an annual event where 3000 people get together to fight it out over three days until only one remains. Ray learns his absent father won the GOF (as it's frequently referred to in the strip) under a psuedonym and decides that as "BOC" (blood-of-champion) it's his duty to enter the fight, despite being not at all fit for that kind of thing. His friend Roast Beef, a longtime fan and expert in GOF lore, tags along with him to check out the fight and mastermind Ray's strategy.
Of course, all of the strips in the storyline are available to read for free on the internet, so why would you want to buy something that takes something from the internet era and repurposes in an obsolete format like this was the 1990s or something? For a fan like me, it's because I want to support the comic, because I want to have something physical to hold from one of the touchstones of my life, and because of the extra content. The Great Outdoor Fight collection includes a "deleted scene" and tons of contextual backstory. Onstad wrote short biographies for all the notable previous winners of the Great Outdoor Fight, includes a glossary of GOF slang, and the requisite recipes.
Even if you don't grab the book, I highly encourage everyone to check out the website and read the story line there. I apologize in advance for the hours you'll then lose catching up on the seven years of strips archived within.
24 September 08 | 08:28 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
So, Mega Man 9 is out! That's nice. Parish will tell you exactly how nice it is, in fact, if you give him half a chance. Sadly, I don't have access to an online-capable console at the moment, so I can't take part in this joyous event. Fortunately, I still have Dragon Quest IV to sustain me.
Believe it or not, this is the first proper Dragon Quest game I've played! The series' reputation for willfully archaic design had always given me enough pause to pass it over before, but DQIV is the one installment I've never seen receive anything but adoration. So I took the plunge on the DS version, and sure enough, I wasn't misled. The chapter-based structure is as gripping as promised, and the DS version in particular has smoothed out any stodgy interface issues that could have kept me from enjoying the original.
The reason I said this is my first "proper" DQ excursion is that I did indulge in one of the brand's off-beat spin-offs, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, last year; a decision I will never, ever regret. And since I've done this all backwards, one thing I'm loving about DQIV is retroactively spotting all the sights, sounds, and creatures Rocket Slime lifted from the main series. Really, the fact that I found these little guys infinitely endearing even when I had no nostalgia for them -- and, indeed, no prior exposure at all -- only speaks to the strength of Toriyama's talent as a designer. To that end, if none other, I can easily understand the series' lasting popularity.
Today, I conquered the front page of 1UP with new old stuff: namely, Wario Land: Shake It! and Gradius ReBirth. And that one Mega-something game that people keep talking about, the Krion Conquest rip-off.
Anyway, I figure all the gushing I've done about Mega Man 9 is karmically balanced by these two pieces, both of which are fairly positive but mitigated with a noticeable tinge of disappointment. I've already seen some angry responses to the Wario Land review, but I am a mere messenger here. I can definitely respect anyone who is willing to embrace the game, because it is wrapped up and presented in an opulent, gorgeous visual style that truly deserves to be seen in motion. But, on the other hand, I just can't give it an unqualified endorsement, because it's a console title whose level designs and mechanics represent a step down from a seven-year-old portable game. That's seriously backward.
I think there's also a temptation among people like us (that is, myself, and anyone who is prone to read this site) to give Wario Land a better score just because it's so pretty. But that is fatal in its irony: we are the same people who snarl in irritation when people write off games like this because they're not in 3D. Graphics whores, we call 'em. But graphic whoredom works in both directions, and I kind of feel that giving Wario a free pass just because it's so lovely would be terribly irresponsible for those of us who have ever fumed to see good old-fashioned games dismissed for their lack of polygons.
Wario Land's failings are a real letdown, because I was absolutely in love with the game after finishing the first world. I compared it to Yoshi's Island DS in my review for a reason, though: about halfway through, you realize it imitates a great game from a few years back a little too closely and doesn't add anything worthwhile to the mix. So, if you've just reached the second world and are thinking, "Man, Parish, you idiot, you blew it again!" do me a favor and finish the game. There's a reason reviewers are supposed to complete their assignments before writing anything, and this game is a fine example. My feelings after an hour were very different from my feelings a few hours later. An hour into the game, I had the better part of a sweeping editorial chastising those who shriek with shrill complaints that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fans planned out in my head; a few hours later, I was the one shrieking. Alas!
There's a certain poetry in Wario Land being released in such close proximity to Mega Man 9. The former has a vivid, modern look yet suffers a stultifying lack of creativity; the latter looks dated and primitive but is bursting with clever design and fresh new takes on an old standard. They are like yin and yang, except less likely to be co-opted as a logo by a surf company. Anyway, that's where my score is coming from. But hey, if you still like it once you've finished, congratulations: you're not yet a cynical husk of a human, and I envy you.
Oh great, is it already the end of September? I guess it's about time to get serious, huh? Not only is there plenty to write, but I have to start spending at least an hour a day studying for the level three Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The same one that I said I would pass last year.
Yeah, three isn't all that high on the totem pole (one level above the lowest, if you have to know), but the gulf between levels three and two is a wide one, and I'm not quite ready to traverse it. No, not even in the name of being able to understand whatever Kou is talking about in Gundam 0083 (at a guess: "I'm not strong enough yet!")
But even so, I really kind of want to pick up my certificate this time round. It might be hard to believe, but it's actually harder to keep Japanese in your head when you're not living in Japan. And I'm planning on heading back to America in February. So this is it. Now that I'm done relaxing in Nikko, I've got to put everything aside and...
I'll show them I can pull the biggest bonus of all
23 September 08 | 09:31 | Posted by:
I, uh, meant to post this the other night, but stupidly forgot to set the entry live. Whoops! Anyway, it's taken much longer than I intended or expected, but I've finally finished the text for the bonus mini-zines. Sorry these are running so late; I made a terrible mistake in choosing to fill its back half with fiction. Do you know how long it's been since I've written fiction? Like, forever. I got off to a painfully rusty start and spent forever building up a good head of steam. But the short story -- 4,000 words counts as short, right? -- is done, and now I just need to print and paste it on the pages. Meanwhile, my button-maker seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. I find this turn of events distressing.
New Game Plus | Weekly Game Releases
Can you guess what the game of the week is? I recommend fighting temptation and not playing through the whole of Mega Man 9 in one sitting -- savor it. After all, game like this only happens once every 20 years or so. I'm still bummed I blew through Mega Man 3 the day I got it, 'cause nothing else ever quite stacked up. P.S., this was the tamest Splash Woman fanart I could find. Oh, Internet.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
To say I'm looking forward to the Blu-Ray release of The Godfather would be an understatement! OK, not really. It would be a perfectly accurate and fair assessment of the situation. I mean, fantastic movies, quality format, Marlon Brandon wheezing in uncompressed digital audio. Should be great! But I haven't been losing any sleep over it or anything.
Hello, Spiteful Ones. It used to be that you only saw my byline if you accidentally clicked on the link to my DVD column that shows up here on GameSpite every week. After a year of writing "Add to Queue", GameSpite's Blu-ray and DVD new release round-up, I've been promoted to the big leagues! Yes, my snarky, self-satisfied and most of all spiteful writing about film will now be on the front page as well. I might even be allowed to write about a wider scope of topics as well! In the unlikely event you haven't been clicking refresh on the blog every week waiting for my new column to be posted or hanging on every word I've posted to my Twitter feed, I thought it might be smart to write a quick introduction.
My "internet name" is VsRobot, but you can call me Levi. I've worked on the retail end of the entertainment industry for nearly a decade, and I've run bookstores, video stores, and currently manage a store devoted to video gaming . I grew up on a healthy diet of bad '80s cartoons, Star Wars, and Nintendo games, and I look forward to filling your eye-holes with a wide range of nerdy content. Please look forward to it.
You know, there's a common misperception about our little site here among certain corners of the Internet -- namely, the sort of slow-witted corner that doesn't have much going on in the way of reading comprehension. That gross misinterpretation of the site shakes its fist at the way the writing here is so hateful toward games, because look! It's called "game spite"! It must be full of contempt by people who don't even like the medium, right?
Well, no. Actually, the majority of the articles published here are full of effusive love for the medium and the specific titles called out. But hey, those portions of the Internet aren't known for getting facts straight or welcoming corrections, so I figure why fight it? Thus Issue 10 is official The Spite Issue, full of venom and criticism for games.
Mega Man 9
Of course, into every life a little exception must fall, and we begin this issue of vituperation with a tiny parcel of love for Capcom's freshly-released return to Mega Man's roots. My advice would be to come back to this article once you start feeling heartburn from the acidity of the rest.
The Games of Nippon Ichi
The spite begins in earnest, though, with Bob Mackey's calling out of the emperor's lack of clothing. Nippon Ichi's games are darlings among a certain set of gamers, but the fact is that the company has been riding the good grace's of Atlus' fortuitous work with Disgaea for years now. And that just ain't right.
Suikoden IV
Then Kirin continues his journey through the Suikoden series by looking at the worst game ever to bear the name. I suppose it's possible that the card game or Suikogaiden graphical adventures were worse, but those had the decency not to pass themselves off as full chapters of the series. Not Suikoden IV, though!
I think I've come to a conclusion. Or rather, I think I've become more justified in in a certain theory than I was previously. The theory is this: It is really, really hard to make good movies because it's already hard enough to make them proficient.
I mean, I know there's tens of thousands of people who professionally light, operate cameras, dress sets, blow stuff up, etc., but seriously -- getting movies to even make coherent sense is enough to convince you that last take was okay and that the script is fine as it is.
So yeah, 11-hour shooting session last night ending at 5am. 'Course, I didn't have anything else to do. At least I wasn't in makeup the whole time like the Grimlaks.
I bought a Zune because it came in brown. That's what it boils down to. Plus, I was averse to getting an iPod because of the iTunes interface it forces you to use, but it turns out the Zune's isn't any better. If anything, its software is frustrating in entirely new and exciting ways -- at least with an iPod you stand a better chance at finding accessories.
But the gap between the portable music players has grown a tiny bit smaller. While Steve Jobs was getting his black turtleneck pressed in preparation for the recent "Let's Rock" press conference, Microsoft feebly attempted to give them the end run-around by announcing a new 120 GB Zune along with some updated firmware features. I was so excited by this that it took me over a week to calm down enough to give it a try...and another four days to write about it. And what did I find?
The Zune has games! I had completely forgotten about this after it was announced at this year's Game Developers Conference, but there it is, tucked right in with the new Zune player firmware update. Included are Hexic (sponsored by Lips!) and Texas Hold 'Em. To be upfront, I have zero interest in poker; the very sight of playing cards makes my eyes glaze over. So the only insight I can offer about Texas Hold 'Em is that it plays by holding the Zune vertically, which is much more comfortable to play than Hexic's horizontally-orientated screen. As for Hexic, you may not have played it, but if you own an Xbox 360 you already own a copy. The hex-based puzzle game is a good fit for a music device. Match groups of three or more colors by rotating pieces around a fixed point. Earn more points by linking colors in a sunflower pattern and you get a star shaped piece that will rotate more pieces. The gameplay gets more complex from there, but it was too difficult for me to advance further. There is no game over, though, and you're free to pick up where you left off. I liked that it lets you go at your own pace, but there's no motivation to finish or even get better at it.
There doesn't seem to be any plan in place to sell more games on Zune's marketplace. I did find one more game on Microsoft's XNA creator's club website, a port of an XNA demo called Alien Game. It's free, like most of XNA's development tools, and it installs to a Zune using a beta version of XNA Game Studio 3.0. Alien Game is a simple Space Invaders clone. It's colorful and controls well using the Zune's D-pad. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you browse music easily and I was only able to play one song at a time. The tradeoff for free games is you can only play stuff that people are putting together in their spare time. I like that, and it was the reason I joined the creator's club in the first place, but I can see how people might be turned off by the selection. The Game Studio beta also promises that current Windows and 360 user-created games can be easily ported for Zune. I happen to be collaborating on such a game, and I anticipate trying it on the small screen.
I have Commando: Steel Disaster to thank for one of the best impulse purchases that I've made in a long time. And hey, if Parish is right, it may indirectly be the best thing that game has ever done. Mission complete?
Anyway, it was a mixture of Commando's obvious comparison to Metal Slug, the praise that I had heard for the new DS iteration of SNK's series at the last Tokyo Game Show and Kishi's comment about the game's badly resized sprites that had me thinking about Metal Slug 7 when I spotted it at a Book-Off a couple weeks ago. I ended up picking it up despite the rumblings I had heard on TTT because I realized that I really wasn't all that familiar with Metal Slug. I had played and enjoyed it a couple times in the arcades, but I had kind of missed out on the franchise's heyday. The things you miss when you can't drop $650 on a Neo-Geo. (Yeah, I know it was around on the PS2 and GBA too, but....)
But suffering from SRPG fatigue as I was, the time seemed ripe to rescue the Peregrine Falcons from that pile of discount DS games and do the series justice. Imagine my surprise when I was hooked after the first five minutes. Turns out that I really like over-the-top animation, lots of explosions, and Eri. Who knew? I count myself a Contra fan, but Metal Slug separates itself in a way that I also appreciate about Gunstar Heroes -- you don't die or take damage unless the enemy actually takes a swipe at you. I've said before that one thing that I look for in games, especially action games, is a feeling of power. And when you're ripping through dozens of enemy soldiers at a time with nothing but a dagger, you've got that feeling. You've got it a lot.
Oh, and those gigantic bosses are pretty damned cool too.
Yeah, I can see that Metal Slug 7 has some sprite issues, and that SNK could have really made better use of the touchscreen. I'm also disappointed that there's no co-op play, and that SNK's only real solution for adding replay value to the core seven missions was to introduce a Contra 4-style mission mode. But hey, I like Metal Slug 7 in the same way that I like Gundam SEED. They both served as my gateway into two great franchises. And now that I've finished Metal Slug 7, the real fun can begin. The best part about discovering a great old franchise on your own terms is the realization that there's more than what you've seen to be discovered and enjoyed. It won't be long before I pick up a PSP, and I've still got a whole Metal Slug anniversary collection to play.
So, I'm listening to Led Zeppelin for the first time tonight. Well, not really the first time, but it might as well be -- like I said, the last time I owned anything by the band was a very long time ago and involved tape cassettes and those flimsy, lightweight headphones with the fluffy foam pads that leaked as much sound to everyone nearby as was actually directed into the intended listener's ear canal. Now I have the pleasure of some very nice high-end open-soundstage Sennheisers and digital audio. Yeah, fine, so digital isn't as good as a virgin vinyl pressing played on a top-dollar turntable, but given that I don't own either I'm content to settle for high-bitrate AAC files. Certainly there's no comparison to those old cassettes. I'm hearing nuances and depth in the music that are pretty much only describable as "frickin' awesome." I randomly started with Houses of the Holy, and the first two songs alone ("The Song Remains the Same" and "The Rain Song") were easily worth the price of the box set.
Happily, the Zeppelin box I picked up is a mid-'90s release, which means it sounds good. I'm not sure precisely when the music industry began mastering CDs for force and loudness instead of dynamism and subtlety, but the current trend of completely destroying the integrity of music during the engineering process is a major reason I'm reluctant to buy any CD published this decade. Apparently Metallica's new album is the latest victim of this nonsense -- not that I give a fat crap about Metallica, but it's pretty depressing to see that even a band with such a huge name and, one would assume based on their reputation, such anal-retentive involvement in the recording process is powerless to keep their label from turning their work into a homogenous wall of sound.
Right, so now "Over the Hills and Far Away" is playing, and I'm trying to imagine what it would sound like with a completely flat histogram like that. The notion kind of makes me want to throw up a little bit! Instead, it looks like this:
See, music industry? That is what music looks like! Yeah, I get it. You're selling to kids who use those terrible earbuds that Apple packs in with iPods, and you're trying to get radio air time on stations where the music is forced to compete with commercials that are tweaked to play 10 dB louder than the songs themselves, so you're up against rough odds and subtlety doesn't always cut it. But could you maybe compromise a little? Maybe you could offer non-horrible editions of albums for those who actually want to enjoy what they're listening to, kind of like how anime used to come in different VHS editions who people who thought it was less important to have English language audio than it was to avoid vocal performances by whoever happened to be sitting around the studio, actors or not. You can sell them to us in secret! No one has to know. Please, just stop turning interesting music into a deadening wall of sound.
Edit: Actually, after reading Ian Shepherd's musings on this topic, it looks like the issues with Metallica's new album are the fault of the band itself. So maybe the secret is to listen to music mastered by people who haven't gone deaf from 25 years of standing in front of speaker stacks capable of filling a coliseum.
I took home a copy of Mega Man 9 and a debug Xbox 360 last night so I could savor the game over a long weekend...and when I booted it up this afternoon, I saw the Red Ring of Death. I think this confirms the theory that the RROD only appears at the absolute moment you least want it to.
But it all worked out, because I ended up returning to the office to grab a replacement system and found that UPS had made a delivery while I was away: the complete Led Zeppelin studio recordings box set. I'm trying not to spend money at the moment, but Amazon had this set as its random super-cheap item of the day and I figured there is no way I will ever again find the band's complete works for $6 an album. Even if I disregard the existence of In Through the Out Door and Presence (like any sentient being should), that's still only eight bucks per. And best of all, it's strictly studio, which means no interminable drum solos. There are no down sides, really.
I was sort of surprised to realize when I ordered the set that I don't actually have a single Zeppelin tune in my 60GB music library. Not a one! Then I remembered that my brother and I owned the band's old "best of" box set, back in the days when box sets were new and awesome...and music came on cassettes. (It's been a while, see, because I'm old.) I guess once we phased out our tape collection, I never quite got around to replacing the box set with individual albums. But hey, it's been 15 years. I suppose it's time.
I really do miss box sets, though. Back in the days before music was a commodity to be swapped for free on the Internet, those sets were dense treasure boxes full of music by bands I sometimes didn't really even know -- an opportunity to discover something new and amazing through total immersion. But they were pricey enough that they had to be enjoyed sparingly. I realize this makes me sound like a stupid old fart, but I really think the ease of filing sharing does a disservice to music appreciation. It has nothing to do with legal or moral issues, though; what I'm talking about is the sense of commitment that investing in an album or compilation was for me when I in high school. Music was relatively expensive in those days, so I had to pick and choose my selections carefully. Sometimes I didn't really get my money's worth -- but when I did, when I bought an album unheard based on an intriguing title or artwork or a desire to learn more about a given band and discovered something unexpectedly phenomenal, that music stuck with me forever.
Someone, please tell me that this sense of risk and reward still exists in the realm of music appreciation, or I will be forced to recognize what a fossilized old fart I am and be sad.
Having been a proud Xbox 360 owner for only a couple months now, I’ve been trying to juggle the recent flood of great downloadable games (both on 360 and the PS3) while simultaneously trying to clear out that backlog. Luckily there’s a big lull for me in September before the big holiday games hit -- except Rock Band 2, arguably the biggest release this year...but since all my Rock Band peripherals are PS3 I have another month to wait -- so I decided to take the opportunity to tackle the game I’ve been wanting to play the most: BioShock.
I still have quite a bit of the game left, but so far I’ve been most impressed with the game’s aesthetics and presentation. I deliberately avoided reading too much about the game before its release knowing I wouldn't be able to play it for a long time; all I really knew was that it's quite good regardless of whether or not you like first-person shooters, that it's set in a city under the sea, and that there's something involving huge robots that protect little girls. Imagine my surprise, then, to find that Rapture is a dystopia absolutely drenched in 1950’s art deco. Even more surprising is how creepy the game has been so far; I hadn’t expected BioShock to focus quite this much on, well, mood.
My new iPod nano showed up today and, as expected, it's quite a rad little machine. It's tiny and lightweight, has a huge (well, relatively huge) screen and has enough capacity that I can actually put all the music I really want to listen to on it in a go. That's good! It's also a garish shade of metallic orange. That's good, too, in a tacky sort of way.
But it also has some issues, all which stem from Apple's continuing mission to disregard its own well-established user interface rules in favor of neat-o features. For starters: turning the device sideways causes it to switch into "cover flow" mode, which lets you thumb through album covers. It's very slick-looking, but it's also completely useless, because it prevents you from adjusting the music's volume. So, unless the iPod is in an upright position, trying to change the volume will cause you to jump to another album. Great! And then there's the pervasive album-shuffle flaw they introduced with the iPhone/iPod Touch, wherein it's becoming increasingly difficult to shuffle music by album. The new nano lets you set the system to shuffle by album, keeping music together...but when you actually do shuffle, either with the menu or the silly new "shake to shuffle" accelerometer gimmick, it ignores your preferences and mixes songs without regard to album connections. Every time I mix music, I have to go in and reset that preference manually.
These are, of course, minor issues. But that's the problem! Apple used to be good at getting the little things right. Sometimes it was all they did right. Yeah, maybe the hardware was overpriced and the operating system was a crashy piece of crap, but at least when everything worked it always worked exactly what you wanted. There was profound consistency within Apple's design so that everything worked reliably and uniformly. It was great. Now they're all successful and popular and have grown lazy and complacent and fail at their former specialties. Shameful.
So, uh, I guess the solution is that everyone needs to buy Zunes for a few years to knock Apple down a peg so they have to try harder. Like Avis!
Anyway, enough crankiness. The last big batch of games I'm trying to offload is up on eBay now. Very exciting! I'm really looking forward to being done with this grand sell-off process. The folks at the post office, I think, are getting tired of seeing my face.
More like Shadows of the... Force Unleashed... Empire
18 September 08 | 15:14 | Posted by: Kat
If Darth Vader were here, he would say that the circle is now complete. Except that LucasArts isn't the master of anything these days, unless you count mediocrity as a skill. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed almost had me believing things would be different this time, but the first reviews are coming in, and so far they've been, to put it kindly, mixed.
Sort of reminds me of that other multimedia project that was meant to bridge the gap between the films.
Yet another reasonably cool idea that was ultimately flawed in its execution.
Sure, LucasArts was in a very different place when Shadows of the Empire came around, but it also gave us a bit of a glimpse into the future of the company and the franchise. At that time, every LucasArts Star Wars games was seen as a can't-miss classic, and even dreck like Rebel Assault got accolades from the industry.
But Dash Rendar was the first ding to LucasArt's previously sterling reputation; twelve years later, we have Bounty Hunter, Empires at War, Obi-Wan, Force Commander and pretty much every one of the prequel film tie-in games vying for a spot atop the totem pole of terrible (or mediocre). Not Rebellion though! Don't ever disrespect Rebellion. And Republic Commando was pretty good too. The rest, though....
Now, to some extent, we're back to where we've been with Force Unleashed, and we're further than ever from years like 1995 -- the year that LucasArts released The Dig, Full Throttle, Dark Forces and TIE Fighter: Collector's CD-Rom (and Rebel Assault 2, but let's forget about that one, shall we?). These days, the Star Wars games are afforded about as much respect as Star Trek games (read: not a lot), and now LucasArts seems primed to give up internal development entirely.
But, if I may co-opt another Star Wars quote, it might not be over yet. There is another. Help us, Bioware. You are our only hope.
My brother’s birthday was a couple days ago. I haven’t picked up a present for him yet, but that’s ok as I won't to see him for another week anyway. Generally, I’m expected -- and love! -- to get him a video game for the occasion. Being the foremost expert on the medium in the family, I generally like to get him hidden gems he wouldn’t have played otherwise; in the past, he’s had me to thank for things like Beyond Good and Evil, Drill Dozer, and Trauma Center: Under the Knife.
One of my biggest "complaints" about the industry these days is the flood of good games; I realize how ridiculous it sounds to complain about too much of a good thing, but trying to keep up with all the big releases in a given year these days can quickly suck away all the free time I’d otherwise have -- nevermind even trying to put a dent in the niche titles I know I’m missing out on. Nothing throws this fact into relief more than trying to pick out a videogame for someone else. The options are staggering, even considering I’ll avoid what he’d likely be able to pick up on his own and what he’d quickly lose interest in. (Sorry, Zack and Wiki. Maybe next time.)
This year’s challenge came with a twist: he’d used most of his birthday money to purchase an Xbox 360. Great! Having recently purchased one myself, I was pretty versed on the games he should be playing catch-up with. I figured he’d get Halo 3 and Gears of War on his own (and, having spoken with him yesterday, I was right), but the more I thought about it, the less obvious the answer was. Do I get him The Orange Box, so we can play together? How about Call of Duty 4, which I’m terrible at, but seems like something he’d like? And what about downloadable games? We could play Castle Crashers together, or he could try Braid or Rez HD or Bionic Commando: Rearmed. See what I mean? It’s great to have options, but that certainly doesn’t make my task any easier. If only I could pinpoint the reason I thought the 360 was worth owning....
...ah, yes. Well, that was an easier choice than I thought it would be.
White-knuckle journey blackened my eye and cut my lip
17 September 08 | 21:46 | Posted by:
I've blogged a few times about the band Marillion and the fact that -- even though the world regards them as irrelevant dinosaurs! -- they've long been at the cutting edge of the Internet so far as the music business is concerned. They realized years ago that they have a small but loyal and technologically savvy fanbase that could be rallied through the web, and have parlayed that reality into wriggling their way out of suffocating studio contracts in order to record the music they want to create, funded by thousands of fans who pay for their albums a year or more in advance. In return, the fans get deluxe limited edition releases and, more importantly, good albums created without A&R men breathing down their necks for a hit single. Whether or not you like it is beside the point; we (the fans) do, and it's great that the band has been able to innovate and survive.
Anyway, they've gone the next mile for their upcoming album Happiness is the Road. In addition to doing the usual presale thing (including a fancy, alternate, two-disc version for us loyalists), they've also done something that eludes almost every other band in the world and recognized the existence of file-sharing. Rather than pretending that torrents of Happiness won't appear online within minutes of its arrival in the hands of reviewers, they decided to beat the seeders to the punch and uploaded their own specially-prepared torrent of the album last week. Rather than scream and kick and curse and posture and threaten lawsuits, they've accepted reality and bowed to the scalawags of the Internet.
This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad idea -- but in fact, it was sort of brilliant. Their torrent isn't top-quality, and it includes files encouraging listeners to buy a legit copy (Radiohead-style, for whatever you think it's worth), and by pushing it out in advance of the album they ensure that their version will propagate across P2P networks as thoroughly as the eventual high-quality rips. A lot of fans feel slighted by the fact that the band appears to be giving special privileges to people who steal their work rather than support it in advance. I can understand their irritation, though; what baffles me are the people who are complaining that their first exposure to the music will be a low-quality rip...because apparently it's difficult to refrain from downloading and listening to crappy versions of music, or something. Self-control, man, who wants to be bothered with that?
It could simply be I haven't had TV for a number of years and anything that shows up on hulu is just that much more appealing, but I've found myself oddly drawn to Kitchen Nightmares on Fox.
Allow me to sum up every single episode on the show: Local restaurant's in the red. They request, EBA-style (or Ouendan-style, if you prefer) the services of international cooking superstar Gordon Ramsay. He shows up, orders a meal, and tells them how awful it all is. Owner/manager/chef takes umbrage, they get in a shouting matching with Ramsay. This is a bad idea. Ramsay is really good at shouting. He yells at them for a while, and they sulk off.
Then comes everyone's favorite: the unsanitary kitchen sequence! Ramsay rummages through the fridge and kitchen and uncovers all the mold and rotten meat and flies. There are even cooks throwing chicken wings they found on the ground into the fryer. Look at what goes on inside the kitchens of America, unsuspecting consumer! Restaurants like the ones you go to each day! There are probably rat droppings in your turkey club right this second!
So, they clean the kitchen, Ramsay comes up with a new menu, they futz with the decor, and they relaunch. The the crowds are huge, things get chaotic, at least one staff member storms out, but then they turn things around and everyone learns an important lesson about humility/hygiene/teamwork/leadership/frugality/hard work/using fresh produce. Ramsay finally stops swearing at people to tell them how much they've improved, and the whole staff rhapsodizes about how Gordon's the coolest dude ever. Dee Snider showed up one time too.
I can't quite articulate why I find the whole thing compelling. There's a few insights into good restaurant practices (keep the menu small to focus on quality and to lessen the strain on the fridge and kitchen, find a signature dish that fills a niche in your community) and even one or two cooking tips, though far less than the BBC version of the show apparently. Really though, I think the actual reason is because in the back of my mind I think owning a restaurant would be pretty cool. Everybody thinks this. This is why every single sports player opens up a bar and grill when they go pro and have more money than they know what to do with. But even though I imagine myself owning my own place, I unconsciously yearn for a loud British guy to yell at me about how hard it is and that I shouldn't try. But wait, maybe if I have enough passion, I could succeed too! You're right, Gordon, I should live my dream of opening my own okonomiyaki place!
17 September 08 | 10:43 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
That sounds great, John, but then where are we going to lift our bestiaries from?
The Shin Megami Tensei series of RPGs has been gradually making headway in the West ever since Nocturne marked its local debut in 2004. (What? "Revelations"? Never heard of it.) Nocturne was only the second direct sequel in the series, but the brand's various spin-offs outnumber the "real" games something like twenty to one. Amazingly, Atlus USA has seen those translated, too; albeit in notoriously scarce print runs, every offshoot from Devil Summoner to Avatar Tuner has been made available to a small audience appreciative of deep demonological gameplay and sterling localization.
Which is why it's so weird that Megami Tensei Online: Imagine, one of the few exceptions, is being brought over not by Atlus but "Aeria Games & Entertainment," a small-time MMO publisher that seems to get around Blizzard's genre dominance by pushing a dozen of the things at a time. And while it's cool that they're bringing more Megaten out of Japan, their sense of syntactic grace compared to Atlus is, uh...somewhat lacking.
To a fan of the series, the text is especially catastrophic in its interpretation of standard terms like the Cathedral of Shadows (here spun out to the painfully literal "Heresy Mansion House"). For a more popular example, just picture a Final Fantasy game featuring "Shido" instead of Cid and "Magic Law Rock" instead of Magicite.
Aeria is apparently based in California, making their tenuous grasp on English even curiouser, but at least they posted a public plea for help shortly following the announcement. Even if they end up with zealous otaku working out of dictionaries, I don't see how it could make things much worse.
The Blink-And-You'll-Miss-It Files #2: Mazes of Fate
16 September 08 | 20:54 | Posted by:
Hey guys, can you believe it? Mazes of Fate DS actually arrived. I had plenty of skepticism as to whether or not it would, to be honest; its publisher is the absolute epitome of "fly by night" operation. I've tried contacting Graffiti Entertainment several times to arrange coverage of their games for 1UP, and in every case have met with failure. Their emails bounce, their web-based feedback forms time out and fail, their phone numbers are disconnected. Shady doesn't begin to describe it.
But they clearly do exist, even if they have no interest in making themselves accessible to media who might actually be interested in spreading word of their products, because here's the game. I've been looking forward to this release since I first heard about it, although I rather doubt that more than a handful of gamers have shared my anticipation. It's very much an under-the-radar release.
In fact, it's a remake of a game from two years ago, a 3D update of a Game Boy Advance RPG that was sold almost exclusively via eBay. It's a shame that it received so little exposure, because it's not a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely decent. It was also quite flawed in its original incarnation, though. I intended to review it for 1UP, but encountered a game-halting bug that prevented me from completing the quest. Hopefully, that won't be an issue this time around. Certainly this is no straight port -- developer Sabarasa has gone and fitted its clunky GBA game with a decent 3D engine. They've also expanded the playable roster of characters; I think you could pick from 3 or custom-build a warrior in the original, but now there's something like seven characters. Each, of course, has various strengths and weaknesses. I'm going with a lady named Katja for my playthrough, as I tend to prefer weak but dextrous characters... and I learned in the GBA game that you can save a lot of money and trouble with a thief-type character as they tend not to go through expensive lock-picks as quickly as the bruisers.
So what's the big deal about Mazes of Fate? Well, for one, it's the first Argentinean-developed game that's ever reached the U.S., so far as I know. But more importantly (well, for me -- maybe not so much for the nation of Argentina) is that its first-person exploration whetted my appetite for more portable RPGs of the kind. When a preview ROM of Etrian Odyssey showed up at the office a couple of months later, I was better poised to appreciate its subtleties.
I'd describe Mazes of Fate as the mid-point between Etrian Odyssey and Orcs & Elves -- nothing fantastic, but certainly worth an RPG fan's time. Naturally, Graffiti would go and ship the same week that Dragon Quest IV, the biggest DS RPG in ages, arrives. I'm pretty sure they want that game to fail, because given a choice between the two I definitely have to recommend DQIV. Honestly, though, I feel almost guilty bringing their game to your attention. After all, this post might actually encourage you to buy it, and then the publisher might actually make a little money for their efforts, which is clearly not part of their business plan.
I was searching for a Game Boy Advance link cable when the manager of my local [LARGE RETAIL GAMES CONCERN] informed me that used Game Boy/Game Boy Color games were buy two, get one free. The deal included accessories, and since I already had my cable (as well as a totally rad Jurassic Park III branded worm light) I thought "why not?" She pulled out two unassuming plastic trays that were filled with treasure.
Not a bad haul. Between the special and my discount card these came to just under $4 a piece. Thrifty! I have to carefully budget my gaming dollars these days, and finds like this go a long way. Coupled with a Game Boy Player, it approaches my ideal gaming experience -- finish playing on the couch, pull the cart out of the console and take it with you. I was excited when Sony revealed a hardware update to the Playstation Portable that would let you output games to an HD television. Not because I have an HD set (I don't) or because it works especially well (or at all on an SD set), but because it's a step in the right direction. Future revisions could improve the video options, maybe let you use an external controller or two, Nomad-style. That would hinge on Sony making a successor to the PSP, of course; given the system's poor software sales outside Japan coupled with Sony's general console woes and the evergreen success of the Nintendo in the handheld market, it could be 2010 or beyond before anything along those lines is announced. My 2003 Gamecube peripheral does the trick in the meantime -- even if I do occasionally catch myself unconsciously blowing dust out of the carts, NES style.
So I picked up Donkey Kong for the Gameboy recently, and I was going to blog about that…but then I realized no one here has blogged about Braid, and since that’s what inspired me to give DK a try in the first place, I figured I should write about that first.
Don’t worry; I’m not going to get into that whole "is Jonathan Blow full of himself" thing. The way I see it, he’s just the next in the long line of Dennis Dyacks/Peter Molyneuxs/David Jaffes -- creative guys who probably talk too much -- so it’s best to focus on the game and ignore the guy behind it. Nor am I going to talk about the game’s plot; it’s not for everyone, but even if you don’t like it, it’s nice to see someone trying something different from standard video game fare.
I was really bummed out to hear today that Richard Wright has died. Celebrities come and go, and it seems like quite a few have been on the "going" list this past year, but their passing generally has no impact on me. I mean, yes, it's always a shame when someone dies, but for the most part famous people are just people whom I've never met and who have had no impact on my life. Wright, on the other hand...well, I never met him, but he definitely affected me. I used to obsess over Pink Floyd, back when I cared a little too much about music and felt compelled to thrust my obnoxious tastes on everyone; during my freshman year of college my dorm roommate and I woke up every day to The Dark Side of the Moon. You know, since it has a nice gentle intro that slowly builds in force and volume -- and, if that fails to do the trick, there's eventually a bunch of alarm clocks. This was stuff that had a profound influence on my malleable young mind. And I didn't even do drugs! I just really loved the music.
Wright, I've always felt, was the most underappreciated member of the band. Seems like every classic quartet had one; see also Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. You always had your two dynamic forces (Waters/Gilmour, Plant/Page, Lennon/McCartney). Your had your guy who was just along for the ride (Nick Mason, Ringo Starr, and...er, well, okay, not John Bonham). And then there was the quiet one who left his indelible mark on the music in ways that weren't really appreciated until he parted ways with the rest (Wright, Jones, Harrison).
Wright's atmospheric keyboards were an integral part of Pink Floyd's sound, from the stark piano of "Echoes" to the spacey textures of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I - Whatever." But no one really recognized what he brought to the band, I think, until he dropped out in all but name due to, ah, personal problems. Namely, he was making up for my lack of recreational drug use with his own vigorous inhalations, something Roger Waters supposedly memorialized in "Nobody Home" (specifically, the lines "I've got a silver spoon on a chain/Got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains"). Wright was credited for The Final Cut and A Momentary Lapse of Reason, but didn't really contribute to them. My belief is that the fact that those are the band's two most soulless and unsatisfying albums is not a coincidence. He cleaned up and played a major role in the band's final album, The Division Bell, and it made a huge difference. I'll forgive him the one track he sang himself, although it's actually not very good at all. But hey, everyone should be allowed an indulgence every now and then.
Anyway, it's very disheartening to hear. Ah, but life goes on as usual for the rest of us:
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
I guess it's a sign that I'm getting old when not a single one of the big releases during the brisk introduction to the holiday release rush interests me. Or, on the other hand, it could be a sign that the film industry produces an awful lot of complete crap, like the latest Mike Meyers travesty. Ah, So I Married An Axe Murderer, how we pine for your relative intelligence.
New Game Plus | Weekly Game Releases
Meanwhile, over in game land, LucasArts is releasing yet another complete turd of a Star Wars game that's going to sell millions despite the only amusement to be derived from it is watching YouTube videos of the ridiculous character physics. Meanwhile, I bet the excellent Dragon Quest IV will struggle to clear 50,000. Shine on, you crazy Americans.
Wii clones aren't just for China anymore! A mail-order company called Firststreet, which describes itself as the "leading direct marketer of innovative products for Boomers and Beyond" brings us the Swinger Video Sports system and no, I can not link to it because Gamespite has a unique filter called a shamewall that prevents me from doing so. For $70 you get a console -- inexplicably shaped like a fire alarm with a comically large power button -- and two sets of wireless controllers and "nunchakus". Five games are included: baseball, bowling, boxing, golf and tennis. Sound familiar?
"Maybe you've tried a similar game at a friend's house..." the promotional website urges. I imagine whoever wrote this was blushing at the time -- take this striking testimonial from customer "Darlene W":
"This is a GREAT buy..five games and a whole system for $69! I’ve been trying to get another system that’s priced a lot higher, but the Swinger is such a deal, I’m giving these for holiday gifts."
Ouch. My heart goes out to the poor kids who asked for a Wii and get this instead. They will most likely not be taking advantage of the system's "portability." You see, bootleg consoles have to run on AA batteries because otherwise you could only sell them to people who have running electricity. And that would be restricting their market share. It also means one less cord to stuff in a closet and never look at again. Who buys this stuff anyway?
I've had the running theory for a while now that the impending release of Order of Ecclesia and Castlevania Judgement will mean the chance to spend more space bucks on killing Dracula for pleasure and profit. Yeah, these are the straws I cling to for dear life in the hope that Rondo of Blood will eventually make it to the North American VC. (Now why didn't I buy a Japanese Wii, again?)
My theory may well hold up, but Dracula's Curse will probably be the one getting the nod over Rondo of Blood. If that happens, I promise that I won't complain too much. Richter gets a lot of love, but plenty of fans will tell you that Trevor and company star in the secret best Castlevania adventure ever. I've personally never had the chance to partake, but I saw the legends inscribed in Ultimate Unauthorized Nintendo Game Strategies many years ago. I'm told that it has a wall-climbing pirate. Sold.
So make this happen, Nintendo and Konami, and I'll pretend that I'm not bitter about the whole Rondo of Blood thing. But hurry! You may not find me nearly so forgiving when Castlevania Judgement arrives.
[And as usual, poor Bloodlines gets the shaft. (No, not that Shaft.) -- Parish]
15 September 08 | 09:37 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
Another pitfall of chronic anticipation, aside from mistaking the mundane for the fascinating, is confusing a magical cloud of pixie dust with anything real at all.
Take the matter of "Threeco," the next installment in the venerable lineage of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It's been the subject of aimless speculation going back to last January, when Sony posted a cattle call for artists and designers specifically for Team Ico's next project. Not even a proper announcement, the skeletal text and single cropped screenshot still managed to prod fans into an elated uproar. And it's been pegged beyond a doubt (by completely baseless rumors) that the game will finally be revealed in some form at TGS '08, drawing ever nearer.
It's once again with giddy expectation that we fall total suckers to misdirection. Case in point: The image you see above, and the Flash animation from which it derives, however authentic they may seem, are totally fake. There are a couple minor signs that give it away, but they're easily overlooked when our brains are so ready to receive the good news. However, this supposedly wasn't intended to foster false hope; a Flickr caption claims it was innocently mocked up for Team ICO Games Magazine, an obsessively enthusiastic fan blog, out of the same eagerness we all feel for the upcoming sequel.
While I'm willing to give the creator the benefit of the doubt, he or she really should have considered the fallout of producing such a convincing fake -- right down to using the same navigation menu seen on actual PlayStation.com software pages. Flattery's one thing, but that's just duplicitous. Literally!
I had an interesting blog post in mind for today, but then we decided to go see Burn After Reading this evening and now it's too late for me to post anything but stupidity. Stupidity inspired by a commercial I saw the other day for a drug called "Abilify," a treatment for schizophrenia or something of the sort. Noble goal, dumb moniker. The girlfriend's dismissive comment: "What kind of stupid name is that? Clearly, they're running out of names for drugs."
My own revelation: "Clearly, they're letting the president name drugs now."
Also, I spent a portion of the day working on the bonus mini-magazine, which is now about halfway done. I've enjoyed writing the Young Person's Guide to Mega Man in my 1UP blog so much that I decided to do one for Mario, too. Here is a truncated sample of the entry for "A":
The second half will be a short story called "ToastyFrog: The Early Years." I really have no idea what it's going to be about! I'm going to start writing and see where it goes. Wish me luck.
Oh, also, the movie was pretty good. I think the Coen brothers may have just invented the screwball political thriller. Or at least revived the legacy of Dr. Strangelove, anyway.
14 September 08 | 15:12 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
The weeks surrounding big trade shows are always exciting for gamers, especially those of us who don't have industry contacts to whisper big announcements our way in advance. It's these times when it pays off to monitor the news and video sites closely for even the smallest teases of information, and that's especially true right now. With PAX just behind us and TGS now less than a month away, there are bound to be some surprises overlooked in the wake of the former and quietly leaked ahead of the latter.
But chronic anticipation can be a dangerous thing, as I found first-hand when I was made entirely too excited by a link to something called "Ikariam." As you can see by the trailer, Ikariam is a free browser-based Greco-Roman RTS. Which is fine, I suppose, but about the furthest thing from my area on interest. (Or maybe that's Touch Grind.)
What got me so enthralled was the title, which to my old-school sensibilities could have implied nothing but a renewal of SNK's ancient Ikari Warriors franchise. Not that Ikari is as fondly-remembered a brand as your Mega Men or even your Kid Icari, but it would make enough sense considering Capcom's recent Commando revival. And as is becoming increasingly evident, retro revivals in any form are receiving more love now than ever before -- to the point that even atrocious fare like The Legend of Kage can swing a sequel or two.
Even if Ikari is dead for good, its heroes, Ralf and Clark, have survived via assimilation into SNK's The King of Fighters -- and later, Metal Slug. Which, in the end, might be preferable to returning to the limelight, only for everyone to remember that their own games were never that good in the first place.
What does it say about my experience with PC gaming that some of my more vivid memories involve the first-person-shooter-cum-advertisement Chex Quest? Probably more than I should admit to on this blog! But as kid whose Gateway ran the pack-in flight simulators at an insanely sluggish rate, a video game that came free with a box of cereal was a welcome diversion. Plus, it was free of all that video game violence that was destroying youth at the time. Instead you were a Buzz Lightyear encased in breakfast food and zapped mucous. Which is more reasonable.
Apparently I'm not too alone in my fond memories of the game, as it seems someone liked it enough to create their own sequel. Seriously. I mean, I know the modding community is big, but Chex Quest? And this is from a board of Chex Quest enthusiasts? I don't even know what to say.
You'd better believe this is getting downloaded on the double. Impressions might be forthcoming. You're all on the edge of your seat, I'm sure.
Another month, another frivolous squandering of cash moneys: I have purchased the follow-up to that G.I. Joe DVD "battle pack" set I bought last month. While I doubt any toy in the future history of mankind will ever hit the same sweet spot of '80s nerd nostalgia and quality as the previous pack I do have to say this one ain't too shabby, taken on its own merits.
The second set is based on the cartoon's second introductory mini-series, "The Revenge of Cobra." A very original title, befitting the show's very original premise of Cobra creating some sort of terrible device for world conquest (in this case, a weather-control machine called the Weather Dominator) only to have its vital components flung across the globe, thus instigating a race against America's daring, highly-trained special missions force to collect them first. In other words, it's exactly the same plot as the first mini-series. But then, it was aimed directly at 8-year-olds, and as a former 8-year-old I can speak to its effectiveness in convincing me to buy new toys. Heck, it's still working, as you can see.
This set consists almost entirely of "animation style" repaints of existing figures. "Animation style" basically means "bolder colors and less painted detail." In other words, they've finally managed to justify cheaping out on rehashed sets. Although, yeah, OK, the repaints are pretty decent; Roadblock is a bit garish, but Destro with his vivid red collar and chromed head looks almost (almost) as iconic as his pimp daddy iteration.
And the next thing I knew, I was buying more Pokemons
13 September 08 | 16:39 | Posted by: Kat
I'm a recovering junkie living in a nation of committed junkies. Your average addict will say, "Golly officer, I don't know how it happened. It was just, all the sudden I was shooting up." That was me this morning as I took my place in line at the Amusement Center Geos store to pick up my copy of Pokémon Platinum. Just another junkie.
Yeah, I just can't quit the Pokémons, but hey -- I believe in small victories. This time around, 1UP is subsidizing my habit, so I don't mind forking over 3500 yen + Nintendo tax over to the local game retailers. As long as I'm not the one subsidizing Satoshi Tajiri's third house, I don't mind beating Pokémon again. It's fun and easy, and it plays to the deep-seated human fear of change. Small wonder people will buy the third edition of Final Fantasy IV, but not, say, Okami.
So if you're wondering why Nintendo keeps releasing those "definitive editions," here's your final answer below, on the left:
And while you're pondering that, I'll also leave you to ponder what the hell is wrong with the picture on the right. Maybe it'll clue us in to the reason for the slow motion demise of the Japanese games industry as we know it.
If you need me, I'll be playing Pokémon. I'll be playing it so hard.
Since everyone else was using their real names, I felt like the odd man out. So from now I’m signing my posts as “Anthony” rather than "Calorie Mate." Boring, I know, but at least I’ll not be including my last name up here; it's both boring and too closely associated with New Games Journalism. [And cardigans. -- editor]
But let’s talk about Microsoft’s new Windows Vista ad campaign. Nich, official friend of GameSpite, recently brought it to my attention, though I guess they’ve been running for awhile now. The idea behind them is to team up Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates and set them loose on the world to experience the mundane activities most of us do. Here’s a longer one -- incidentally my favorite -- for reference:
The world seems pretty divided on them; some people like them, while others hate them because they’re unfocused and don’t even say “Vista” at all. Most people fall into the middle category of entertained, but confused. I happen to be in the camp that thinks they’re absolutely brilliant.
This is what I want a commercial to be. It's fun to watch, to the point that I enjoyed it more than most of what regular television offers these days (though admittedly, that isn’t terribly difficult to do). Everyone already knows Vista exists, so Microsoft doesn’t need to beat me over the head with it; much like Coca-Cola, they simply advertise because they need to keep brand awareness alive. As a result, I get a weird commercial that’s something I’d actively watch more of if they offered it to me. Personally, I think that shows some respect for the consumer. This is a very good thing.
Now, I don’t know how I’d feel about watching it each and every day, but the same could be said of most things, including television shows themselves. I mean, I love Venture Bros., for example, but if I watched the same clip once a day, I’d grow sick of it. Similarly, I’m sure I’d hate these ads if they were everywhere. They're probably best restricted to a couple airings per "episode". Whether or not that means this fails as an ad I’m not sure, but I do know that my appreciation for Microsoft is raised ever-so-slightly by this... and something tells me that’s the point.
12 September 08 | 19:31 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
For life-long gamers, there were times in our youth when we were hopeless but to enlist the help of others, whether we ever wanted to get past the Hammer Bros. in World 1-3 or simply wanted to see Mega Man leap around a utopian landscape without having to press the buttons that made him go. In time, most of us probably grew away from this notion, but the inherent appeal never diminished. That is: it can be quite fun, too, to watch someone else play.
Fortunately, we'll never need another reminder, thanks to Let's Plays, a fan-made phenomenon from out of the boards at SomethingAwful.com -- and a welcome contribution to gaming culture.
The anatomy is simple: one person plays a game, taking screenshots along the way, and then presents them with witty running commentary. It's so simple, in fact, it was being done long before it was standardized; Slow Beef's "strategy guide" for Metal Gear 2, written mostly in 2004, remains one of the best examples of the format. But one significant advantage of the modern LP is the message board setting, where its audience can offer feedback and even steer the course of the game.
In many cases, it's long-form MSTing at its finest; thanks to the efforts of Leovinus, for example, I'll never have to suffer Final Fantasy VIII in non-annotated form again. Some are more affectionate, educating the populace on lost gems dear to their hearts. Others even take games with no narrative to speak of and give them one.
Since LPs have gained visibility outside of SA, other communities have continued to nurture them. Even our own Talking Time has an ever-expanding forum dedicated to the things. So if you're still oblivious, let's play, already!
And by "fixed" I mean "undid the disastrous firmware upgrade from a couple of months back that made iPhones almost completely unusable." "They" being Apple, obviously.
Now actually usable (again)
Those of you who jumped on the iPhone bandwagon before the 3G version arrived know exactly what I mean; the old (well, "old") phone was a slick and generally pretty great phone-slash-Internet-device with a few notable shortcomings but a nice enough interface (and seamless enough Mac compatibility, for those whom it concerns) that the little annoyances like EDGE transmission speeds and a lack of SMS weren't critical. But then the revision 2.0 firmware arrived alongside the 3G phones and suddenly the old phones became, well, broken. As in, it often took ten seconds or more to pull up a text message or contact list, and once you looked them up you were likely as not to crash. My initial thought was that it was some asinine Apple scheme to nudge existing iPhone owners into upgrading to a 3G by making the old model suddenly worthless, but then I learned that the 3G phones were just as broken. So, it wasn't a conspiracy, merely all-around incompetence. So that made things easier to swallow, perhaps because eight years of the Bush administration has acclimated me to accepting "incompetence, not conspiracy" as an explanation for most large-scale foul-ups.
Surprisingly, today's upgrade actually does what is advertised, which is to say it makes the phone functional again. The list of improvements in the Read Me for firmware 2.1 was pretty lengthy, and I feel like Apple could have saved itself some time by simply writing, "Makes your phone stop sucking." The interface is back to being as fast as it used to be, and the data download speeds have actually improved, somehow. The Internet generally speculated that the "improved reception" simply meant that the phone would show more bars available but not actually improve reception, but shockingly I found I was able to get online in the dead zone by UCSF Pacific Medical Center, a five-block gauntlet of cellular silence on my ride to and from work. No phone I have owned in the past three and a half years has been capable of piercing the veil of silence around UCSF, but lo! The new firmware actually works where no other phone has worked before. I'm impressed.
Of course, I'd be even more impressed if this functional upgrade had come without a drop into utter awfulness. This seems to be Apple's new approach, the Paula Abdul Method of two steps forward, two steps back. So I would like to offer the company a catchy new corporate slogan. "Apple: we're awesome...eventually." Mr. Jobs, I give you this motto free of charge.
Greetings! My name is Michael Nicolai, and I'm the curator of Gamespite's woefully underdeveloped community comics page and weekly regurgitator of Virtual Console press releases. I am an aspiring graphic novelist and some of my interests include plumbing, mathematics and skipping cutscenes. Did you know there are many intersections between comic books and video games? Two young mediums designed to separate children from their quarters, both looked down upon in disdain for being violent escape fantasies capable of corrupting young minds. And they both have fans that are almost as bad as their detractors -- an exclusively catered niche that perceives any change to the status quo as a personal affront. Both mediums also share an untapped potential, stymied by a deficit of critical thought and plain stubborness.
By coincidence there are also many intersections between the gaming interests (and sometimes the names) of my fellow co-bloggers and my own, but there is one thing that distinguishes myself -- I was created by Rita Repulsa to destroy them. But enough talk! I came here to introduce myself and blog about games.
A wooly, Woolsey nerd-rage situation in the making
11 September 08 | 14:19 | Posted by:
Hey, look, Square's finally released Chrono Trigger DS videos. How kind of them to show us a game that looks almost exactly like the one we've played to death over the past decade or more. But wait. Something seems...off.
Such as, say, the dialogue. Hmm. Yeah, it's subtle, but the text in this trailer doesn't match up to the Super NES game. In fact, I feel confident in, uh, speculating that the game's entire script has been completely revamped to make use of the additional space available on a DS ROM. Yeah, speculating. That's the ticket.
This is bound to be entertaining, if you find schadenfreude-flavored joy in nerd rage. The original localization of the SNES version of Chrono Trigger, like that of Final Fantasy III (née VI), is the subject of a tremendous amount of debate by people who probably spend a bit too much time thinking about pragmatic changes made to very old video games by a guy working on a tight deadline and very little data space to fit complex, compressed Japanese-language concepts into. That Chrono Trigger was at all coherent is a small miracle; that it was actually pretty witty, too, seems a nigh-impossible feat. And yet! People still kvetch about it to this day. The war between weeaboos and people who use the word "animu" because they can't get away with saying "Jap" anymore rages on through tiny, insignificant battlefields like this one.
And, no doubt, once people get their hands on the new version of the game, we'll be hearing endless line-item vetoes from overly obsessive fanatics who hate the new localization...or else hate the people who hate the new localization. Either way, be forewarned! Gaming forums are gonna turn ugly in a couple of months.
So I guess all the new contributors are supposed to introduce themselves or something? I suppose I could do that. I'm known on the forums here as Lumber Baron, although now I suddenly feel weird about actually "publishing" something using a handle. Screw it, you can call me Johnny Driggs. I'm going to change my byline on my articles even. I mean, "Lumber Baron"? What is this, GamePro?
I must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere, because contrary to what Kat said, I’m not seeing any levers or even a single astromech. All that's here is an empty room, save for a dusty Casio keyboard on the floor. That's symbolic of something, I'm sure. My gut reaction was to make some terrible joke about what it’s like to try and type on a keyboard, but then I realized, oh hey, you do type on keyboards, just not...yeah. Bear with me, I’m new at this.
Anyway, anyone that’s been to Talking Time (really, why would you read this site and not post there? What’s your problem, pal?) has seen me post. I practically live there. I briefly considered really introducing myself, but "Calorie Mate" is a much more fun name than "Anthony", so I guess I'm cursed to keep it indefinitely. Ah, well. Being stuck in a cubicle at USGOVERMENT all day, I really have nothing better to do...which is why I’m hoping writing here on the front page will be a nice fit. I always had an inkling my inane ranting was front page material; somehow, I convinced Parish to see things my way, and you guys are stuck with me. Sorry 'bout that.
I can’t really begin to guess what I’ll post about, but you can be sure I’ll be balancing out the robot animes and classying the place up now and then with posts about those music games the kids love so much. Case in point, my first article written for Gamespite (which happens to be the first Gamespite user article, not that I’m boasting) was about Guitar Hero. (I also wrote a darling little piece about Zack and Wiki, because, hey, that game deserves lots of love).
I know it’s scary to see someone other than JP posting up here, but don’t worry guys. Parish is taking the internet to new and exciting places, so get on the trolley. (Editor's note: I think he is exaggerating for effect here.)
10 September 08 | 17:17 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali
That's right, my friends: the Blogpocalypse is upon us. Parish has dispersed his authorial powers through a select group of chosen ones, and together we shall raise GameSpite up to the sky and rid the Internet of all creatures young and old.
When the heavens fall to sweep aside the earth, we only ask that you keep your wits -- and manners -- about you. I don't care how reality looks when it's refracting through chasms of nothingness, guys; it's still rude to point. If you must express your despair, clenching your jaw with teeth fully bared is considerably more welcome decorum.
But you won't be reduced to an oil of pure cosmic abstraction just yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, I'm Nicola Nomali, alias Kishi (if you must). I like Spread Guns, Mallomars, and blue oceans. If you've been around here for a while, you may have already read some articles I've written. If not, please do so! I made them just for you, and now here I am blogging, as well. Between these two duties, I hope to keep you amply entertained until the time comes for the end of all things.
So, you might have noticed that the post beneath this one was written by someone named Kat, who isn't me. (And who also isn't my girlfriend, whose name is Cat with a C.) Yes, the unthinkable has happened and I've let someone else begin blogging here. Several someones, actually. The rest will be making their debut once they work past their shyness, no doubt.
Actually, "unthinkable" is really the wrong word, because I've been thinking about doing something like this for years. Now seemed the right time, because GameSpite has grown well beyond the dumb little personal Geocities page it started out as (when it was called ToastyFrog, don't you know), and much of what makes the site interesting these days has nothing to do with me. The reader-contributed articles are the star of the site, and the forums get way more traffic than the blog part on a day-to-day basis. Opening up the front page to other writers wasn't so much a whim as a necessity. It's gotta grow beyond being merely my personal bully pulpit.
But don't worry. I'll still be posting daily to bully you. It's just that now I'm the leader of a gang, so it'll be easier to rough you up and take your lunch.
Ah, so this is what GameSpite's nerve center looks like. It's full of levers and little astromech models, and it's all been entrusted to me. Yes, even the astromechs. And you know what I'm going to do with these levers and R2 units of power? I'm going to write about Pokémons and giant robots.
Aggressively.
I haven't been here very long, but hopefully you've all seen me trolling the Talking Time forums in the lonely hours of the night by now. And now that we're all friends, just go ahead and call me Kat. It's easier that way. Then I don't have to remember all the different variations on "Valkyrie" that I've used as my nick over the years.
So now that my excuse to stalk Parish across the Internets has morphed into an actual position writing for him, you're probably wondering what I've done for this site lately. Or you don't care, and you're still reading this post out of sheer, morbid curiosity. Well let's see, here's the article that motivated somebody to start a whole thread devoted to what a wimp I am (my very first fan on Gamespite, aww). And here's the time that I called out everybody who thought that The World Ends With You is emo. And, oh yeah, here's where I discovered that there are people in the world who like Mr. Mime. Okay, that last wasn't GameSpite, but it still bemuses me no end.
Now I'm taking my act on the road, and straight to the front page of GameSpite. You know, aggressively. But first I'm going to play with this neat R4-P17 figure. I'm sure that Parish will only kill me a little bit.
Wow, I feel pretty bad. Last week I said, "Hey Internet! Check out Commando: Steel Disaster! I haven't played it, but maybe it's good!" And then both Nadia and Simon and I think a few other people pointed to it and said, hey, if Parish says it might be good, it's probably pretty good!
It isn't very good.
Commando isn't precisely terrible, mind you. It is a shameless, guileless clone of Metal Slug, precisely as it appears to be. You are a guy who runs and shoots and kills very animated bad guys. Sometimes you drive a vehicle. You can power up your peashooter with temporary ammo upgrades (like, say, heavy machine guns and rocket "lawn-chairs"), and you have grenades, and when you attack an enemy standing within arm's reach you go all stabby with your pocketknife instead of shooting. Sound familiar?
Honestly, if it played exactly like Metal Slug, that would be just peachy. But it's not a one-hit-kill kind of game like Metal Slug in the arcade; it plays more like the series' NGPC titles (1st and 2nd Mission) wherein you have a lifebar. Those were fantastic games! But Commando makes a crucial mistake that SNK never did: its levels are endless. They seriously go on and on, and you have a single life to make it through them before you can continue. I tried several times and couldn't even make it through the first mission. I think maybe I was close to the end, but there's no way to tell. You die, you're booted back to the title screen. No checkpoints, no second chances, just ten minutes of marathon shooting -- all lost to a couple of unlucky hits.
I mentioned last week that I have an endless wellspring of patience for tough games whose mechanics were drilled into my skull (and my fast-twitch muscle tissue) years ago, so maybe that's why I just don't feel motivated to slog through the same levels over and over again until I finally squeeze through. I think, though, that quality of design is also a factor. When I played through part of Mega Man 9 last week, I was impressed by how measured the challenges were; it's a difficult game and death comes frequently, but for the most part the major obstacles are arranged craftily around checkpoints. When you die, you lose maybe two or three minutes of effort, and you understand why you died and what can be done to avoid it the second time. For instance, I fell prey to a trap in Galaxy Man's stage that resulted in an instant death -- but a very avoidable death once I knew it was coming. And that instant death sent me back all of two screens, so I didn't have any reservations about jumping back in and taking another stab at it. Next life, I cleared the challenge with no trouble and finished up the stage.
Compare that to (I think) Ghouls 'N Ghosts on Genesis, which I very randomly played a bit of on Virtual Console last week (at a Nyko event, of all places). I breezed through the first level on my first attempt, making it all the way to what seemed to be very nearly the end of the stage. Then a giant wave crashed against the foreground, washing out the ground without warning -- ground I was standing on. Oops: instant, untelegraphed death. No problem, I thought. It was a cheap way to go, but I'll have another try. But no; the game sent me alllll the way back to the start, which crossed over the line between "challenging" and "demoralizing."
Anyway, I guess I'm just old and cranky and impatient. I'm sure people who relish dashing their minds out against a brick wall will love Steel Disaster, but for me it stands on the wrong side of that all-important divide. Alas!
Now that I'm out of the dark financial cloud of the past half-year, I don't have to pinch pennies quite so tightly. My girlfriend and I went out for dinner the other night. It was a very nostalgic reminder of less stressful days! We ate tasty food and had a pleasant time, which was a nice change from buying something on the cheap and feeling guilty for not having settled for ramen.
I also decided to jump on the new iPods Apple announced today, a decision which was only partially self-indulgent. My current iPod nano (the second-generation one from two years ago) still works without any trouble, but I've kind of outgrown it. People are making much ado about wow voice memos in the new nanos! as if that's something that hasn't been in place since the original nano. The fact is, I use my iPod (combined Voltron-style with a Micro Memo recorder by the terribly-named XTreme Mac) as an audio recorder for all my interviews, and it's single the best recorder I've ever used. When employed in a quiet room, its sound quality is good enough to use in a pinch as a podcast source. Unfortunately, 8GB isn't that much space, as I learned in the middle of my Goichi Suda interview. D'oh! So: upgrade time.
I also need the ability to play iPod games for some upcoming projects, a feature not included in my current system, and thanks to modern Apple not understanding the importance of ease-of-use (whoops) iPod games don't actually work on an iPhone. Clever girl.
Of course, my real impetus is that I've just sold off my Spice Orange GameCube and don't feel complete without a garish orange piece of home electronics in my life.
Edit: I'm not sure why the forums are down, as I haven't done anything to change them and the server is anything but overloaded. Sorry, I'm in contact with my host at the moment to get it sorted out.
Edit 2: And it looks like I spoke too soon about being out of the woods. Wow, today is awesome. I think I'll go kill myself now.
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I know contributor Mr. Robot digs the Blu-ray, but I'm pretty certain the format is stillborn. You see, this week the world is graced with a tenth-anniversary edition of The Big Lebowski on DVD. But not Blu-ray! Who wants to own a media format for which The Big Lebowski is unavailable? No one. I tells ya, it's doomed.
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So pretty much all anyone can say about this week's Virtual Console release is, "Holy crap, they released Cho Aniki in the U.S.?" And, uh, I find it hard to disagree. Holy crap indeed. I'm honestly amazed, given the obvious homoerotic overtones of the game -- I mean, this is America. My advice would be: download it now before Focus on the Family makes Nintendo take it offline.
Ah, now that summer event madness is over -- and seriously, I don't remember any previous year being quite so jam-packed with events -- I can finally get back to extracurricular projects. We should have put the wraps on this issue, what, two weeks ago? Yeah. Well, so it goes. Next week: something completely different.
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice
Kolbe once again rages against the machine in which he is inexorably trapped. As usual, he praises a Capcom game while cursing the company with gritted teeth and muttered imprecations. We are all tiny seeds trapped in a giant wheel designed to grind us into a thin paste from which money may be extracted; prey to corporate predation. Victimhood binds us together, like the Force.
Cave Story
This article has been in the works for much too long. Of course, I've only gotten around to finishing it now that Actionbutton.net has recently published its own hagiography. I haven't read that one yet, so I have no idea if the two pieces cover much of the same territory. However, I can say with absolute confidence that this one is a damn sight shorter than theirs.
Ah, so anyway...I sat down last night to start sorting out the bonus goods for people who have been supporting the site's costs and writers and discovered a grim and unexpected fact. Well, no, actually, it's a very good fact: I had no idea how many people had enrolled in this thing. It's a lot more than I'd really stopped to consider. Which is good! The one drawback is that you guys have exceeded my on-hand button-making supplies.
So instead of three buttons, I guess everyone's going to have to settle for just one button and a GameSpite mini-zine instead. Tragically, the zine will be roughly 12 pages of entirely new content. Even more unfortunately, I will probably mail it out in a week or so. Just a heads-up so's you know.
I'm working on wrapping up Issue 9 today. In the meantime, why not check out the Dragon Quest gameography that went up at 1UP the other day? I decided to try channeling the spirit of those Japanese "all game guides" like Famicomplete and the Dorimaga Dreamcast "aspect mook" we were using as a reference for the most recent Retronauts -- brief, informative, opinionated when possible, but strictly limited in length. My original layout concept was watered down a bit as a matter of necessity to fit 1UP's style, but it still ended up being something fairly unique on the web, and honestly all the better for it: an online article abiding by the rules of a print piece.
I miss print. (Which is why I'm taking it back for myself, I guess...12 pages at a time.)
There's been some talk lately that Chrono Trigger for DS is being pushed back until next year. Anything's possible, but I think this speculation is incorrect. So far people seem to be going off an email and the Amazon.com listing -- but Amazon has been saying "next year" since Square officially announced the November date, so I wouldn't take that as gospel, exactly. Also, there's the small fact that I asked Sonia and Klee from Square's PR division about it when they were showing us The Last Remnant yesterday, and they didn't know anything about it. This wasn't that coy PR, "We can't talk about that right now," sort of "not knowing anything" -- it was the surprised, "two people doing a double take at one another in confusion" sort of actually not knowing anything. So...I would not put much stock in said rumors.
This has been a rare public-service post here at GameSpite. Henceforth: the usual nonsense.
Please, please, please send me copies of these amazing, brand new Genesis/Mega Drive games that TecToy is releasing. I need to cover these in a desperate way. I will give you cash moneys in return! Granted, I only have American dollars, which are kind of crappy these days, but we can work out an equivalent exchange of some sort.
This is not a joke. For serious.
In other news, I am posting a bunch of complete and minty GBA games on my perpetual eBay pile. My stacks of things to get rid of are growing smaller and smaller -- but happily, so are my debts from our financial crisis earlier this year. If I can get all these GBA and PS1 I have sitting next to me posted, I should be debt-free again before TGS. Just in time to build up fresh debt at Mandarake Galaxy! Ah, if only. Actually, once my own finances are clear we start working on The Girlfriend's. She's been having a lot of good luck lately finding jobs, so hopefully it won't take too long. This is a very happy turnaround from the utter desperation of a few months back, so thanks to all of you nerds who have been buying my unwanted stuff. I am glad we can share this mutually beneficial ecosystem with one another.
In other other news, I finally had a chance to play The Last Remnant today. It was for print, so I can't actually discuss anything of substance due to games journalism being a very silly and frustrating occupation; but I will say that I'll no longer confuse this RPG with Infinite Undiscovery. The two are very different creatures, which is clear now that I've seen the battle system in action -- a pleasant surprise, given that the main gimmick they've used to sell both games has been large-scale battles combining multiple parties. It has been a really, really long time since Square has developed a brand-new RPG franchise internally (The World Ends With You not really being an RPG to speak of, and Drakengard being an abomination by Cavia), but it's nice to see they can still turn out interesting, creative products that don't hover within the grim domain of the Nomuraverse. I probably won't be allowed to articulate my thoughts on the game with any detail until TGS, but it's definitely been added to my short list of games to give a crap about this fall. Maybe not quite up there with Valkyria Chronicle and Mirror's Edge and Dragon Quest IV...but then, what is?
Actually, what was the last original Square RPG? Oh, I guess Song Summoner. But that kinda...doesn't count. I'm thinking Vagrant Story. So really, it's about time.
Oh, hey, our review copy of Mega Man 9 arrived today. Oh, hey, it's for print only. Oh. Hey. Our reviews editor poached it. Curse my empty life.
Well, I did manage to swipe it long enough to take it for a spin through one level I'd never played before, and...you know, it's funny. The Internet is convinced that I'm utterly inept at video games because I've panned crummy titles like Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins and Yoshi's Island DS, incapable of making the connection that I don't dislike them because they're hard but rather because they're badly made and their challenge stems largely from poor design. It's a significant difference! But I loved Bionic Commando Rearmed, and I see myself going after far too many Mega Man 9 achievements for my own good. I played through Galaxy Man's stage (simply because he had the weirdest-looking portrait and I believe that those are different from us should be destroyed) and aside from a single trick trap that will almost certainly kill everyone their first time through, I breezed through the level and took down the man (well, Man) himself on my first attempt.
Based on this I think it's safe to say that I'm only capable of excelling at twitch games whose patterns and strategies were burned into my neurons twenty years ago. I may be too old a dog to master new tricks, but I'm quite good at the old ones, it seems.
Also, in case you missed the Retronauts that went up earlier, you really should give it a listen. While I'm the first to be critical of the show, this episode came out incredibly well -- doubly surprising given its patchwork, improvisational assembly and preposterous length. But the quality of the guests helps, and so too does the fact that each of the four segments has a markedly different tone from the rest; despite talking about Dreamcast matters with two different groups for nearly two hours, there's very little of the same ground covered between the two segments. I take no credit for its quality myself; I simply gave good things an excuse to coalesce into audible form.
Another good reason not to record epic length podcasts: I've just now finished up editing and processing tomorrow's Retronauts. I began at noon. Granted, I lost an hour in there to GarageBand barfing on me, and I devoted some time to exercising and dinner and riding the train home and all, but still. Nearly twelve hours start to finish. That's a lot! So it's safe to say that at more than two and a half hours long, this new episode is the longest episode of Retronauts that will ever happen.
Personally, I'd recommend listening to it in 40-minute chunks. It breaks up pretty cleanly along those lines.
I'll post a link when it goes live tomorrow. In the meantime, stare at this image of the Dreamcast and see if you can resist the temptation to dig yours up and start playing Chu-Chu Rocket or whatever. Also, be baffled by the crazy British-ness of it. Why is the logo blue!?, your brain will demand. And you will be powerless to answer.
Edit: The episode is live. You may want to clear out your weekend...it's kinda long.
The Blink-and-you'll-miss-it Files #1: Commando - Steel Disaster
02 September 08 | 21:51 | Posted by:
The tragic bellyflopping of great Game Boy-family titles like Shantae and Ninja Five-O made me realize that portable gaming consoles have a tendency to play host to some of the finest under-the-radar creations the industry has ever seen. The combination of low development overhead and the general public's habit of thinking of handhelds as the domain of kiddies means that plucky little gems can often go unnoticed. So I've taken to watching for random, what on earth is this releases. This week, XS's Commando: Steel Disaster for DS seems poised to slip between the cracks. Next week, it'll apparently be Mazes of Fate DS. The fall rush: a magical time when everyone releases their games, even games that stand zero chance of being noticed amidst the big-name titles published by companies who can actually afford to have an ad budget. Le sigh.
But what is Commando: Steel Disaster? So far as I can tell, it's pretty much a complete Metal Slug rip-off. As a matter of fact, I believe this debuted a while back under the title 07 Commando, upon which debut it was soundly excoriated for shamelessly swiping from SNK's side-scrolling masterpiece. And from what I'm seeing here, there's not much reason to doubt that it is, in fact, an off-brand knock-off.
Still, sometimes an uninspired knock-off can be perfectly fun! If you're going to plunder someone else's hard work, you might as well scavenge from the best. The question is whether or not Steel Disaster steals well, or if it simply embarrasses everyone involved: us the gamers, SNK the creators, XS the, uh, borrowers.
I decided to grab a copy while I can, because this strikes me as the sort of thing that will be published in dangerously low quantities, ship to a handful of retailers and promptly disappear. And, also, because I am a hopeless sucker for big, colorful, hand-drawn sprites.
Unfortunately, I can't test its Metal Slug-ness myself at the moment, because I'm totally swamped with stuff to review. Away: Shuffle Dungeon and Chrono Trigger and Wario Land aren't going to play themselves, I fear. So, if anyone out there has the courage to be a hero and take this bullet, please do let me know how it turns out.
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Releases
Is it coincidence that the two most highly-reviewed films arriving on home video the week of the Republican National Convention revolve around gay and gender issues? No doubt another attempt by Hollywood to spite the administration...which is of course entirely too busy grinding the Constitution under its jackboot heel to notice. This is precisely why it's so silly for Hollywood to be political.
New Game Plus: Weekly Game Releases
Rather lurid prose on display this week! Our intrepid columnist goes so far as to call Spore the best PC game ever, despite presumably not having really played it all the way through yet. I think he's feelin' his oats a bit after guesting on this week's upcoming Retronauts. I leave it to you, the forum-goers of Talking Time, to put him in his place.
This week's regular contents might run a wee bit late. Having the best seat in the house for the PAX Omegathon finale is very tiring work, you know. Well, that and the fact that the show was so huge and so many things demanded my time that I'm only now able to write them up. I wrote some previews last night and you can see them becoming progressively loopier as I struggled harder to stay awake:
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The Difficulty of Difficulty
Gradius III: From Legend to Myth
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
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Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
Mega Man 9
The Games of Nippon Ichi
Suikoden IV
The Zune has games! I had completely forgotten about this after it was announced at this year's Game Developers Conference, but there it is, tucked right in with the new Zune player firmware update. Included are Hexic (sponsored by Lips!) and Texas Hold 'Em. To be upfront, I have zero interest in poker; the very sight of playing cards makes my eyes glaze over. So the only insight I can offer about Texas Hold 'Em is that it plays by holding the Zune vertically, which is much more comfortable to play than Hexic's horizontally-orientated screen. As for Hexic, you may not have played it, but if you own an Xbox 360 you already own a copy. The hex-based puzzle game is a good fit for a music device. Match groups of three or more colors by rotating pieces around a fixed point. Earn more points by linking colors in a sunflower pattern and you get a star shaped piece that will rotate more pieces. The gameplay gets more complex from there, but it was too difficult for me to advance further. There is no game over, though, and you're free to pick up where you left off. I liked that it lets you go at your own pace, but there's no motivation to finish or even get better at it. 
Wherein "art" equals "compromise."
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"Maybe you've tried a similar game at a friend's house..." the promotional website urges. I imagine whoever wrote this was blushing at the time -- take this striking testimonial from customer "Darlene W":
The anatomy is simple: one person plays a game, taking screenshots along the way, and then presents them with witty running commentary. It's so simple, in fact, it was being done long before it was standardized; Slow Beef's "
So I guess all the new contributors are supposed to introduce themselves or something? I suppose I could do that. I'm known on the forums here as Lumber Baron, although now I suddenly feel weird about actually "publishing" something using a handle. Screw it, you can call me Johnny Driggs. I'm going to change my byline on my articles even. I mean, "Lumber Baron"? What is this, GamePro?
That's right, my friends: the Blogpocalypse is upon us. Parish has dispersed his authorial powers through a select group of chosen ones, and together we shall raise GameSpite up to the sky and rid the Internet of all creatures young and old.
Now that I'm out of the dark financial cloud of the past half-year, I don't have to pinch pennies quite so tightly. My girlfriend and I went out for dinner the other night. It was a very nostalgic reminder of less stressful days! We ate tasty food and had a pleasant time, which was a nice change from buying something on the cheap and feeling guilty for not having settled for ramen. 
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
New Game + | Weekly Game Releases
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice
Cave Story
The tragic bellyflopping of great Game Boy-family titles like Shantae and Ninja Five-O made me realize that portable gaming consoles have a tendency to play host to some of the finest under-the-radar creations the industry has ever seen. The combination of low development overhead and the general public's habit of thinking of handhelds as the domain of kiddies means that plucky little gems can often go unnoticed. So I've taken to watching for random, what on earth is this releases. This week, XS's Commando: Steel Disaster for DS seems poised to slip between the cracks. Next week, it'll apparently be Mazes of Fate DS. The fall rush: a magical time when everyone releases their games, even games that stand zero chance of being noticed amidst the big-name titles published by companies who can actually afford to have an ad budget. Le sigh.
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Releases
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