Level 2!

This blog... is moving. Oh no!

I received an email from Gamer Limit, one of the sweet video game blogs I follow, asking if I'd want to move my blog over there. Ba-DOOP level up! Now I can be read by more than five people.

It's still not paid or anything, but this will be an excellent first real step towards my eventual career as a video game journalist. Check out the site, and I would be pleased as punch (whatever that means) if my four fans would follow me to my new blog site:

http://thegamellama.gamerlimit.com.

Thanks for everything, but I have to move on to greener... uhh... pastures. Way to go out on a high note, me.

Bullseye.

There are a lot of websites that lead you to good deals on video games: Gamer Deals, Amazon's Outlet Area, and, of course, this place. And if those don't have what you're looking for, there's always eBay.

But I don't want to wait for a game to be sent to me. Sometimes, the thrill of the hunt is as exciting as finding a bargain. That's why I always stop at Target when I go to a new town.

Last week, Target, Southern Minnesota: LocoRoco 2: $4.98, Left 4 Dead: $12.48.

Another Target, Central Minnesota: MK Vs. DC Universe: $14.98, Prince of Persia (the new cel-shaded one): was $59.99, now $14.98.

These games will never be this cheap again brand new. Left 4 Dead in particular is currently going for $45 USED at GameStop.com. Target doesn't care. They have to make shelf space in their one 360 case (Wii and DS each have 2 cases) for L4D: Game of the Year Edition. I don't mind. I save all the money.

Sure, and unscrupulous type would buy these and bring them to another Target (or Wal-mart, or ShopKo, or wherever) with the "I got these for my birthday" excuse to rake in a cool $60 in store credit. Nothing like cheating the system. I wouldn't do that though... I just wanna play!

Every Target has a clearance games section. Sometimes, it's by the pharmacy. Sometimes, it's by the book section. But there's always one somewhere. I found PGR3 for $2 at one in North Dakota just as PGR4 was coming out. Sure, the games are a few months old, but you can't find these in questionable condition at pawn shops for these prices. And honestly, who doesn't like scavenger hunts?

Seriously now.

At my day job (bleh), a coworker was listening to sports talk radio. There are thousands upon thousands of people in the country that know every player on their favorite team and can rattle off seemingly unrelated stats at each other in deep, meaningful discussion. Sure, there is the occasional caller with his inane "Woo! Red Sox!" cheer, but many fans only call in because they have some important point to make. Today, for example, one caller had an idea to make the MLB All-Star game more competitive and fun to watch. And yes, it's true that MLB bigwigs probably won't base their entire business model on the ideas of one solitary fan, but the mere fact that topics such as the MLB All-Star Game can promote intelligent discussion amonst peers says something about the status of baseball. It's a serious business, with serious fans.

Baseball is a game. Why can't video games receive the same intellectual and social status?

If anything, video games should be more worthy of discussion. They are a beautiful conglomeration of many different art forms - writing, animation, visuals, music, and more - into a hot mess of splendor and wonder.

In baseball, there is an art to throwing a ball, and hitting a pitch, and the top athletes in the world may be seen as works of art, but the game of baseball itself is not really "art." It's a set of rules and equipment put together in an enjoyable, competitive way. Video games seem to be so much more.

But say they're not. Pretend that video games have the same cultural relevance as baseball today. Where are the gamer radio talk shows? On the Internet, being Podcasted around the world. That's not nearly as accessible to the general public as an AM radio station you can flip to in your car. Gamers have G4 (when they're not showing Cops re-runs); baseball has an entire cable package. Yes, baseball has been around longer. But it has not evolved like gaming has. Do you think anyone, seeing Space Invaders for the first time in the 1970's, would image it would morph into Gears of War 2 in just about 30 years? Where will we be in 30 more? Natal is just the beginning. Games have so many million$ invested in them, and half the country is made up of gamers, yet they are still denied the respect owed to them. This needs to change.

In the average mind: game = fun = not serious = laughable = throwaway. Baseball and Halo are both games! And while baseball is primarily an American tradition, video games have unified the world, both in the design, creation, and marketing of them, as well as the mere fact that you can play Uno and Left 4 Dead with a friend on the other side of the world. Isn't that cool? Doesn't that deserve a little fair, scrutinizing attention? Video games have long been a scapegoat for violent child outbursts and lack of social skills. Yet Obama has a Wii and he is arguably the most important, influential man in the world. Doesn't that say... anything?

No more new old games

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the Xbox Originals are no more. Remember? It's where you can download original Xbox games to your 360 for much more than you would pay at GameStop or a pawn shop. In honor of Max Payne 3's announcement, for example, they re-released the first two games at the standard Xbox Originals price of 1200 Microsoft points each ($15). You can buy both Max Payne and Max Payne 2 from Gamstop for $12 combined. But then you wouldn't get all the achievement points you can get only on 360! Oh wait... Xbox Originals don't offer those. Major Nelson said it was, "to preserve the integrity of the original gaming experience". And yet Galaga, Pac-Man, and Paperboy have achievements. That doesn't really seem fair, does it?

Another problem with the Originals is that most of them will steal about a gig of hard drive space. I only have a 20-gig hard drive on my 360 (big ones were too expensive!). That's a lot of wasted space. I would rather have the game take up space on my shelf. There's a lot more room, and then visitors can revel at my geek-tastic wall shrine!

The last issue is the same one facing Wii gamers with their Virtual Consoles - the good games that were re-released for download are already owned by the people that wanted them. People aren't going to pay another $15 to play an exact duplicate of an Xbox game they completed 6 years ago. That's three times the price of nostalgia of an NES game on Wii. For 400 Microsoft points, you might have yourself a deal. Triple that... probably not.

Still, it was nice seeing some underappreciated gems like Psychonauts and Dreamfall getting a little bit more attention a few years too late. Maybe it will get the three people that downloaded them to try something obscure and interesting in the future? We can only hope.

NEW BATMAN GAME!

I was really excited for the new Arkham Asylum game... until I saw a gameplay video on my Xbox. First off, it's an Eidos game. You know, the guys that ran the Tomb Raider franchise into the ground. Over, and over, and over. And then they got bought out by Square Enix. Because they suck.

Arkham Asylum is going to be a stealth game that just happens to have Batman in it. Sure, they got the voices from Batman: The Animated Series (Kevin Conroy and Mark "Skywalker" Hamill), but that's just not good enough. This will be a darker version of Hitman with cooler gadgets. Hitman was sloooooowwwww. I'm Batman. I don't want to hide in the shadows and sneak around all slowey! I want to kick some henchman butt with my funkey gadgets, then kick some Killer Croc and Joker butt, also with my funky gadgets, crazy intelligence, and millions of dollars. I know Batman sneaks around in the shadows and is one with the night... but I want to be the fun, exciting, cool parts of Batman. Maybe there is a small chance that the game will work; Eidos did create Desu Ex, after all. But B:AA isn't Deus Ex. It's Tomb Raider and Hitman. Bleh.

Ever seen a video for MadWorld on Wii? The game looks cool, and stylish, and gore-tastic, and fun. But you see the game in action, it's not that interesting. You run around, grab people, and toss them into sharp objects for five hours. Weeee...

XIII had style too. But the hit detection was shoddy and the graphics, while interesting, were actually kind of ugly. Also, the controls always felt a little... off. It had a sweet soundtrack and a huge amount of style, but that wouldn't save it. It won't save Batman either. Arkham Asylum will sell millions, and fanboys will love it, but it will not be a classic. It will be just another slow-paced Eidos disappointment. Oh well.

Zombie Rediscovery

So I recently rediscovered Left 4 Dead. I bought it a while back on sale at Target, and only played it for a few hours before it was relegated to the massive game collection lining my wall. But I liked it. And I felt like blowing away a few zombies again recently, and there is no better place to do that than in Left 4 Dead. It showcases Valve's commitment to excellence and feels just like one would imagine the zombie apocalypse to be like. They're everywhere! Yet there are still some problems.

First, there are only four "levels," and they're all "get from point A to point B" types. No deathmatch levels, no capture the flag, just survival. "But that's what the game is all about!" you say, and "Most people on Counterstrike only play three or four maps anyway, too!" Whatever. Four is a very small number, especially if you have no friends to play with online.

My least favorite part is the time commitment. Now, I have no problem with sinking dozens of hours into a game, but I don't want to set aside an hour-and-a-half chunk just to play a L4D campaign. There are checkpoints, but no saves. Even while playing a one-player game, you can't stop playing after hitting a checkpoint and come back to play later. You are in it the whole way, and there's no getting out alive! It's like a zombie apocalypse being spawned from your Xbox to suck away your free time, not with little casual gaming bites, but with movie-sized blocks that would feel better spent on something productive.

The problem is, I would probably play a whole campaign to completion most of the time anyway. But by forcing me to every single time, it removes any of the "quick gaming fix" potential. Left 4 Dead is a great game, and a lot of fun... if you have the time. Clear your schedule, and grab your shotgun.

My favorite game store

Since BragGameRights didn't really live up to my expectations, I thought I would describe what I really did like in the world's best game store: Game Doctor in Casper, Wyoming.

Now, I couldn't find anything on the web about this place, so I think it might have gone out of business. And I'm also pretty positive that it is no relation to Gamer Doc, a new chain based on the East Coast. But I was taking a cross-country road trip with my family, and we stumbled across this place.

The store was probably about 1,000 square feet, and the whole place was filled with glass jewelry-style cases. These were PACKED with used games, organized alphabetically and by system. If you wanted you see one, you had to ask. If you wanted to try one, you asked the guy to boot it up on one of the many TV's set behind the counter. No charge, and you could try as many as you wanted. By keeping the actual games out of the hands of the customers they stayed nicer, and cleaner, and in a more valuable pristine condition. It may sound cold, but you would be in such awe of the sheer volume of classic games that you would not care at all. You and your friends would be darting around, looking in cases, and yelling, "Hey, come look what I found!" every time you stumbled upon a gem.

The prices were very reasonable, and they stocked games from pretty much every system you've ever heard of, including newer games. The really rare ones where held up on a pedestal behind the counter, eagerly awaiting someone with a big enough bankroll to drop $200 on a mint-in-box Legend of Zelda or a complete-with-map copy of Earthbound.

I don't know if the store is still around; I haven't been there for over ten years. But I do know that if I ever open my own game store, it's going to be a lot like this one. Try before you buy, a friendly and knowledgeable staff (one guy pointed out the differences between Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4 for me when I was torn between which to buy), and more games that you know what to do with. There is still a huge market for retro games; people will always be nostalgic for their younger days. Now if someone would just take advantage of that fact, and do it right this time, the world would be a richer place.

Store Review: BragGameRights

Good store name guys. I'm not sure exactly what it means... something about being the best at a game and trash-talking to everyone within earshot like it's your God-given right. No, it's not. Sore winner.

BragGameRights is a new game store that just opened in Duluth, Minnesota, right across the street from Best Buy. There is a GameStop-style wall of new games, food and drinks for the hungry gamer, and over a dozen individual gaming stations set around the wall like private viewing rooms at a sex shop. There is also a pitifully small retro gaming section in the back, with about 24 square feet of old games. I was expecting more... why would I come here instead of GameStop?

You see, BGR's gimmick is that if you see a game you like, you can try it for 30 minutes at one of their private HDTV's for $2.50. If you like it, you can buy the game and have your $2.50 taken off the price like a down payment. If not, then you only wasted $2.50 instead of $60. Also, there are in-store tournaments every Monday through Thursday. Most are $5 to enter, and the winner get $40 store credit or $25 cash. It'd be kind of fun to go there every night and take home a cool $80 a week. Still, at 2 hours a tourney, that's only $10 an hour. Not exactly a pro gamer living wage, but it's still cool that this is even an option. Before, you'd have to wait for GameStop to hold one of their tournaments, and those are, at the maximum, once a month.

The biggest problem with BGR is the lighting. Because of all the TV's lining the walls, the entire store has to be kept in a perpetual twilight to reduce glare. Whereas GameStop is comparable to Wal-Mart fluorescent bright, BragGameRights is lit a lot more like a church - subdued, quiet, and oppressive. Also, their old game stock is lacking and their new/used game stock is not very extensive either.

Maybe I just don't get the gamer lifestyle of Jolt Cola, Fritos, and all-night Halo 3 sessions. Maybe I just didn't show up there on tournament night. Maybe I'm too old to care about game stores. Or maybe BGR is just doing it wrong. You can check out their decent website and decide for yourself, or make a road trip to Duluth. Still, there's always room in the world for a GameStop competitor. But you HAVE to do some things better than them, or you won't survive. And that's sad.

Ta daa!

My first Club Nintendo purchase... it's so shiny and promptly delivered! Good job, Nintendo! You don't suck all the time after all. And there's reflection in my picture, I know, but that's because the game is still all sealed and beautiful! There's even a "Not for Resale" label on the back... I feel like I'm in a cool members-only club that has dues and things. And all I had to do was buy $800 worth of Nintendo stuff! What a deal.

Why should WiiCare?

WiiWare - a land of opportunity, where small indie developers can stand toe-to-toe with the big boys like Square Enix and EA. This is where weird, interesting games should go to live. The Wii has a controller unlike any other in the industry, and games like Lost Winds and World of Goo show how to utilize it very well. Unfortunately, there are a few things holding WiiWare (and the Virtual Console, as well) back from competing with the "real" next-gen systems:

- No demos
- No standard pricing structure on WiiWare
- Lack of consistent release schedule

First, no demos. Now that Nintendo (finally) did something about the Wii's lack of storage (Yay for SD!), there is room on gamers' consoles for game demos. On 360, the demo is the same size as the full game, but purchasing the whole game "unlocks" the rest of the content. Wii doesn't need to do it that way. A shorter download time for a first level would be fine for A.D.D. types that still play Wii. If I want the full game, yes, I would wait to download again. It's not a big deal.

Without free trial demos, countless interesting games are getting lost in the shuffle while people buy tripe like Major League Eating: The Game. A demo will allow gamers to try something they normally wouldn't, because there's no risk. "Want to try Swords & Soldiers for ten minutes before you buy it? That'll be ten dollars. Hope you like it. No refunds."

The pricing on WiiWare is also all over the place, ranging from $5 (Texas hold'em Tournament), to $6 (Bubble Bobble Plus), to $8 (Final Fantasy IV: The After Years), to $10 (Let's Catch - What the crap?), to $15 (World of Goo). The prices don't seem to be based on anything besides what the developers hope people will pay. That, and probably development costs. But gamers don't care about that. They just want a good deal for their dollar.

Lastly, the release schedule. New XBLA games come out every Tuesday. New WiiWare games come out... whenever. There are new games released every week, but there is no guarantees that they are WiiWare games. It could be DSiWare, or a Virtual Console title, or WiiWare, or maybe, if you're lucky, a good WiiWare game. It's probably just another calculator or clock for your DSi, and no matter how cool it may be, it is not delivering on the potential of the technology. Pick up the slack, Nintendo! If Sony can do it with the slumping PS3, you can do it too. You have enough money. Use it for something that doesn't suck, for once!

Useless game tie-ins, part I

So there is this soda out now (you may have heard of it) called Mountain Dew. Apparently, it's very popular among the young folks. So is World of Warcraft. Hey, marketing people got a brilliant idea:



And why not. They did it with Halo 3:



Because gamers like to stay up all night, incredibly caffinated, playing Halo 3 and WoW. It's true. This collaboration makes sense.

But how about this one:



Apparently, since most gamers are hairy man-beasts, they have a different skin type than people who actually go outside and see the sun occasionally. It's hard to see this connection.

But it gets better:

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=GameMuseum.Detail&id=40

Gunstar Heroes on the Genesis came packaged with a Fruit Roll-Up. Wonder if there are still sealed copies sitting around somewhere, waiting for a hungry gamer to break the seal and eat the hard sugary treat from decades past before partaking in one of the finest shooters of the generation?

There might even be weirder tie-ins, but it's going to be hard to top a Fruit Roll-Up. Just have to wait and see!

More neat stuff from the future

At E3, Natal was the big hit of the show. But there was also some surprising technology going on over in the DS section. I'm talking about Scribblenauts, a new action puzzle game with a twist. When you reach an obstacle, you write a word on the DS screen, any word, and the thing you wrote manifests itself in the game world, as usuable in the game as it would be in real life. Check it out:

Video Game - E3 2009 - Videogames

The guy said no copyrighted or vulgar words, but you can be sure that everyone will try to get it to draw a wang right off the bat. But once that novelty wears off, you will discover the thousands upon thousands of words that materialize, whether they have a purpose in your particular puzzle or not. With 220 levels, it will be interesting to see the creative YouTube videos that come out of solving puzzles in incredibly weird ways. In the video, the hero encountered two different dinosaurs. One, he fed a salad. The other, he hit with a crowbar. I want to hit it with "evolution" and make it turn into a man so it can be my sidekick. That would be super awesome.

A few game sites noticed Scribblenauts, but not nearly as many as it looks to deserve. If it works, (Big if? Maybe a medium if.) it will be the coolest game/thing to ever hit the DS. Its simplistic nature combined with an incredible amount of replay value will have many gamers hitting the dictionary in an attempt to stump it. It even has "plumbob." Hope I can go Kiss-style and equip the guy with a guitar and huge amp and slay dinosaurs with the power of rock! I'm giddy already. Please do everything you promise, Scribblenauts!

Braid.

I was three puzzle pieces short before I hung it up for the night, frustrated as all get out. So I exited the game to the Xbox Arcade menu and powered off for the evening. Came back the next day, all the pieces were gone. Apparently, when I clicked on "Play game" my Xbox decided to boot up my Braid demo version, ignoring all the progress from before. Even when I select "Download again" I can only start from the beginning. AHHHHH!

Since I sent in my 360 to get it repaired, they sent me a new one, ensuring that my old downloaded games can never be played on my new system without being signed onto Xbox Live. I was. It didn't matter.

Maybe I'll never beat it... Until a few more months from now when I'll have another Braid marathon and get just a little bit closer. I don't care about the save file. I just want the story's ending and the achievement points. Why must you be such a harsh mistress, Tim? Why?

I'm a sad panda. Going to go play Feeding Frenzy now. Delete my save, will you?! I'll teach you.

Always use protection.

I downloaded some games onto my Wii, and my family has one too, so I stuck the games onto my SD card and brought it over. SD to Wii memory... copy... "Cannot copy to this Wii console."

PUNK'D BY COPYRIGHT PROTECTION.

Forgot that Nintendo likes to keep all the money. I'm sure there are ways to hack it, but that's so illegal and naughty naughty. Stealing games isn't like stealing music! The difference is that games are harder to "share." There's no such thing as Game Napster! Except Bit Torrent. And everything like it. Hm.

A baby seal walks into a club...

Since the early days of the NES, there has been some form of the current Club Nintendo. The Super Mario Fun Club, My Nintendo, Nintendo Power Club, I'm sure there's more. Today, they offer special gifts to people who join the club and earn a certain number of points. The catch: you can only get points from official Nintendo products. First party games only. With the Wii, that's not so bad. Who's buys third party Wii games anyway? You get 30 points for registering a DS game and 50 points for a Wii game. At 300, you achieve "gold" status and at 600 you are "platinum." Also, with more points, you can cash them in for Nintendo cards or DS game cases or, the motherload, a Club Nintendo-exclusive Game & Watch Collection game for DS.

A number of months ago, a Tingle (the fruity elf guy from Zelda) game was made available to Japanese Cllub Nintendo members. Since then, the value of the game has basically skyrocketed. Hopefully, this game will do the same, because I have nearly enough points to order it. Still, it takes an awful lot of loyalty to afford it. 800 points = $800 spent on Nintendo products. And, since the Nintendo fiscal year ends on June 30th, I am fairly sure that Nintendo will mix up their rewards at that time. And then G&W will be gone forever! And that makes me a sad panda. But I do already have 720 points, and I'm sure there are some more Wii games sitting around this house. If only I cared about my Wii, I would know where the games are! I must have the shiny golden game. I don't even want to unwrap it or play it, however. I want to sell it when I'm 60 and buy a Ferrari with the profit.

Collect 'em all!

"Collector's Editions" of games have become more and more prevalent within the last couple of years. Is it just a way to squeeze another ten, twenty, or sixty bucks out of consumers, or are gamers actually getting a deal? If you keep the game shrinkwrapped, then yes, it will eventually be worth more money than the mas-produced standard edition. But if you open it, you will find... what? A bobblehead? A "Making of" DVD? A Master Chief helmet that will fit your cat? Fable II's Limited Edition included a "Making of Fable II" DVD and a few extra in-game items. For ten extra bucks. Couldn't these things just be downloaded? Sell them on XBL Marketplace for $5, and eliminate the need to promote and package two different versions of the same product. Oh, and the LE Fable 2's were originally supposed to include a miniature Hobbe figurine and some fate cards that should have been pretty cool... but if you preordered it on GameStop you got this message a few weeks before the shipping date:

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing in regards to your Fable II Collector's Edition preorder. Microsoft has recently informed us that due to supply chain issues, the contents of the Collector's Edition have been revised. As a result, the price has been lowered from $79.99 to $69.99.

The original advertised contents: premium box, five printed fate cards and Hobbe figure will NOT be included as part of the Collector's Edition. It will now include:

*Fable II game disc
*Bonus DVD with new "Making-Of" Feature
*Bonus in-game content (requires Xbox LIVE)
- "The Hall of the Dead" Dungeon
- "The Wreckager" Legendary Cutlass Weapon
- Spartan armor and energy sword

To show their commitment to you the faithful fan, a special Fable album has been created for free download for a limited time. This includes a wonderful selection of music from the original Fable game and three brand new tracks from the upcoming Fable II soundtrack.


Weaksauce. Another ten bucks for some wimpy DLC that would sell for five on Oblivion.

Don't get me wrong, I love when companies go all-out with fan service. Working Designs' Lunar and Arc the Lad collections were behemoths with beautiful instruction manuals, cardboard standups, jewelry, soundtracks, the works. And their games were usually only about $10 more than the standard MSRP's of other games at the time too. Then they went out of business. Sad story. Today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a sealed copy of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for the PS1 for less than $150 (except this one signed edition on Amazon for $145... how cool would that be?).

Since Working Designs has gone belly up, limited/collector's editions of games have been less and less impressive and have offered nowhere near the quantity and quality they offered. Yes, there are a few rare exceptions (here, here, here, and here), but they are big-budget games from companies with deep pockets, not little companies that love their fans.

And then there are the movie-style limited editions, like when a new DVD comes out for $25 at Wal-Mart because it has special features. Special features don't make a DVD "limited" or "collectible." They make it a DVD. Certain things are expected out of the format; it's not a VHS tape. Despite the fact that I never watch the making of documentaries on movies, if they're not on my disc, I feel cheated. Weird that we can expect so much more out of something that comes in the same-sized box.

How hard is it to write a cover letter?!

Stayed up all night writing a beautiful, eloquent cover letter full of quips and witty insights to please the Penny Arcade gods so they would hire me for the most satisfying job in the history of time.

Hit "Apply."

"Your cover letter is over the maximum character count. The maximum allowed is 2,000 and you have 3,428."

*&(^**$%^%@@%!@#

So I took out a third of my personality and sent it in anyway. Kind of like a homemade lobotomy, except more painful because it was self-inflicted. I'm sure I removed some unnecessary embellishments and a few overly florid phrases, but there wasn't that much to edit off.

I hope I still sound awesome. :(

I feel awesome. Except that it's 7:30 in the a.m. and I woke up yesterday at 10:00 then worked 15 hours then got home and cranked out a beautiful cover letter then was told it was too long so I fixed it after another hour of preening and now here I am.

Sleepy.

Good night for now.

But I'll be back.

GL out. ;)

Hopefully, this will be my next job:

W00t.

*fingers crossed*

Remembering the past

On a whim, I fired up Braid today for the first time in many months. I had never been able to beat the game, and I am trying by bestest to never have to resort to YouTube to find solutions to the puzzles. Unfortuately, there was no save file left on my Xbox (weak) so I got to experience the whole game for the first time all over again.

Braid is beautiful.

It is a masterpiece of aesthetics, and music, and interesting, simple, clever gameplay. The story is told in snippets of books between levels, and the wording is such that it evokes an incredible emotional response in just a few lines of text. You connect with the hero, Tim, even though he doesn't say a single word. The game is only a few hours long, but there are so many "A-ha!" moments when you solve a puzzle all by yourself after 30 minutes of struggling. You actually feel proud of yourself for outsmarting this simple, sophisticated game - no - this experience.

On my first playthrough, there were always a few puzzle pieces I could never seem to reach. This second time, I felt much more self-assured. I already understood the mechanics of the game; I just needed to master it, to complete it. This time, I got closer. I completed level 4 and earned a nice, shiny, new achievement. But there are still a few puzzle pieces left... I am still stumped. I can't earn the beautiful Ico-esque ending I've read about in so many magazines, and heard about all over the Internet. I want so badly to know what happens myself, without reading spoilers, and without having to resort to finding solutions to the game on the Internet. Will this be another of life's great mysteries? Or will my searching mind stumble upon a solution in my sleep? I hope the latter. Maybe I just need to take a break from it for a few months again... but I can't. I'm hooked in its beautiful claws, and I don't want to be free again until I learn the truth.

One more funny for the day...

Ode to PopCap Games

You jerks. Why are you making games that are so addictive? They seem harmless, at first. But just as I was researching your site for nice things to say about you, I stumbled onto a free trial of Bookworm. Zap. There goes an hour of my life that I will never get back. "Yods" doesn't even sound like a word, but it won me 600 points.

You made Bejeweled, and moms all over the world have been in your grasp ever since. Sequels, and pseudo-sequels, and everyone still loves you. On their computer at work, on iPhone... your reach is limitless.

You just released Plants Vs. Zombies, and everyone loves it. A tower defense game, and it won numerous Game of the Month awards, despite the fact that that tired genre was originally created roughly twenty years ago. Your best selling game ever.

Feeding Frenzy, Zuma, Astropop, you can do no wrong... and I hate you. Now that you're on 360, the quest for achievements makes your games even more time-consuming. And Peggle is on WoW... what's next? Feeding Frenzy in the shower, on the fogged mirror on the wall, with your soapy finger? Perhaps.

That is all the attention you get. I must get back to Bookworm.

Thanks for nothing, PopCap. You addictive jerks. Why can't I quit you?

InferNO?

At E3, people were outside protesting Dante's Inferno, a game based on the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy. With pithy slogans like, "Trade in your PlayStation for a PrayStation" and "EA = Electronic Anti-Christ," these picketers seemed a little too clever to be actually picketing. And, lo and behold, it was a fake campaign to drum up interest for an otherwise uninteresting game. Oh well. In the age of MySpace and iPhones, sometimes companies have to resort to old-school hate mongering to garner attention. Even the fact that it was a fake publicity stunt is getting EA more publicity! Media is fun.

Not better than the original

A sequel should keep the good parts of the first game, throw out the bad, and add new features, making the core experience even more enjoyable. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years does not do this.

This WiiWare exclusive takes all the old graphics, charm, and mechanics, and adds MORE random battles. I spent the entire first hour of playtime on the first dungeon (which was only two floors) because I had to fight a random monster every four steps. Just to be sure that it wasn't like this before, I popped in my old copy of Final Fantasy II (the American title for IV) on SNES, my newer copy of FF4 on the PlayStation, and I even tried my copy of FF4 on Game Boy Advance, and, sure enough, there were a LOT more battles in this Wii one. Battles aren't intrinsically uninteresting, but these particular battles have been the same for fifteen years. They're stale. The one new feature in battles, Band Attacks, has already been used in numerous other games, most recently in Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Two or more characters team up for one attack, making a stronger attack, but depriving both characters of the necessary MP. Woo.

This game would be great on a cell phone, where it was originally released, as long as there was a quicksave option. As it is... The After Years takes great characters from one of history's most beloved series and gives them one more adventure. But that's all. Square is treading a long-beaten path, and their storytelling had better be nothing less than sublime for them to expect anyone to complete this game and invest in the downloadable content. There's a difference between pure, brutal nostalgia (Mega Man 9) and a shamless cash-in like this, despite Square bringing back the cast that worked on the original game to make this pseudo-sequel. Their love of the past cannot be denied. This game can be.


...Of course this is all just based on the first hour of playtime. If I ever find myself going back to it, I'll be sure to let you know if there is any change in how I feel about it.

Llama out.

Guess who's back... back again... Dreamcast's back... tell a friend

First ThinkGeek was selling them (and it looks like they just got another shipment! $100!). Now Amazon is. Brand new Sega Dreamcast. $120 with free shipping. Sure, it could have benefited from waiting to hit the market a few months (at least) but now it's gone. Yet people are still making Dreamcast games, and there are still servers running for four different games, including Quake III: Arena. Hope you have a land line and a 56k connection! Nothing like a stroll down retro lane to muster up some sympathy for the little company Sony killed.

Also, if you get one, make sure you get copies of Seaman and Jet Grind Radio. Two classics that deserved a better fate than they received. I'm still waiting for the localized PS2 version of Seaman 2... Come on Japan! And don't forget Leonard Nimoy!

Wow.

This is the first year that I've actually followed E3 as it was happening, and, compared to what I've read in magazines after the fact from other years (Wii Music... Yay.), this may have been the coolest year ever.

Why? Project Natal.

Video Games | Project Natal | E3 09: Project Natal Intro

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Incredible. I hope it works as promised.

And this is my first video embed, and I'm not an HTML tag expert yet... so sorry it covers up the other stuff on the side. But this must be seen by everyone. It's the future. You know, if M$ can make it work.

Do games NEED multiplayer?

If you want to be able to play one game and one game only for the next year of two of your life, then yes, multiplayer is a necessity. Sure, there are single-person experiences that seem limitless (Spore, The Sims, Tetris) but eventually you need something more. Why do you think the Sims have had expansion after expansion after expansion? In today's A.D.D. world of YouTube and an MTV that has lost it's "M," people need constant, updated stimulation. Online multiplayer is one easy way to accomplish this.

Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Call of Duty: World at War - the top three online games on 360. They will remain this way for the forseeable future. CoD 4's single player was great - the scripted action was intense, the characters were believable, and the sense of immersion in the battles was unparalleled. Yet, there is no reason to play it more than once. The experience will always be the same, no matter the difficulty level you select. But online, you can meet new people, and shoot new people. The experience will never be scripted; the experience will never be the same. Online multiplayer has helped WoW become a pop culture phenomenon, and one that's doesn't show any sign of letting up. A game can be fun, but without online multiplayer, there is no reason to keep getting better and better indefinitely. If you invested 200 hours into Final Fantasy XII to get yourself the sweetest, toughest party in RPG history, who will know? Who will care? I sunk 120 hours into Oblivion, and now it just sits on the shelf, collecting dust. At least I got all 1,250 achievement points!

A distant cousin to online multiplayer is the increasing availability of online leaderboards. Rock Band, Mirror's Edge, Mega Man 9, N+, basically every other XBLA game... by getting people to compete with each other to shave half a second off a speed run, single player games are given incredible long term vitality. Mega Man 9 came out months ago, and people are still competing for the top spot on the leaderboards. How many full-budget games can make that claim? Not as many as would like to, that's for sure.

"Give me more money!" - Nintendo

So I downloaded Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare today, and I was pretty pumped. Until I found out that to get the whole game, you have to download $3/each episodes that will come out at the rate of about 3 a month for the next 3 months or so... turning my $8 game (great deal) into a $30 game (not as great). Still, it's Final Fantasy 4 for the next generation, so I won't complain too much. But couldn't I have just paid the World of Goo price of $15 and gotten the whole game at once? Nintendo is doing this online thing all wrong. They're taking all the bad parts of online play (nickel and diming the gamers to death) and ignoring all the good stuff (why doesn't Punch-Out!! have online mulitplayer?).

Still, it's a cell phone game ported to the Wii that will eventually cost me about $30 if I want the complete experience. I'm buying... guess I'm a fanboy. Oh well.

Riding the Zelda short bus

Third-person action/adventure games - the most derivative of all game genres. No matter how good/unique your game is, critics and the public will all declare it "like Zelda." It seems like the only way to escape the Zelda stigma is to include guns in your game (Ratchet & Clank).

Example: Okami. PS2's answer to Zelda. You got to be a wolf, there was a silent protagonist, you ran errands for villagers, you explored dungeons. Sounds like Zelda. Sure, there was a painting mechanic, and a cool art-style, but nobody cared except the critics. This game single-handedly closed Clover Studios.

Example: Beyond Good and Evil. Third-person adventure, hit bad guys with a stick, similar controls, pretty female protagonist (HA take that, Link!). The setting was unique, and the story was interesting, and the characters had... character. But the game felt like Zelda, even though there were no dungeons to explore or princesses to rescue. The photography aspect was cool too. Nobody played this game either.

More examples: Malice, Haven: Call of the King, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Psychonauts, Fable. All of these games have aspects that help separate themselves from Zelda's shadow, but many feel like that's all they do. Zelda with a hammer, Zelda with psychic powers, Zelda with experience points, Zelda with farts. Zelda wasn't the first, but it did it the best. I don't know if it will ever be topped by cookie-cutter games.

One thing's for sure, however: when (if?) a unique game comes along that turns the Zelda gameplay on its ear, I'll be the first in line to pick it up. With so many "me too" games flooding the market, I could really go for a breath of fresh air.

Guess who won the Punch-Out!! tournament?

This guy.

Here are my prizes: the poster announcing the tourney, a sweet bumper sticker I'll stick on my car after I finally wash it, and a Little Mac T-shirt, black, size XL. Which I will never take out of the bag because someday it'll be worth all money. Then I can sell it and buy a Ferrari! Aw, dreams.

So what if nobody else showed up? That doesn't mean I didn't train until 3 a.m. this morning! I was ready to use those gimmicky (yet still kinda cool) motion controls to lay down a whoopin' on any 10-year-olds in my way.

+2 experience for being in the right place at the right time.

Unappreciated Fantasy

Final Fantasy VIII - the most unappreciated Final Fantasy. But why? After the juggernaut of FFVII, it seemed like nothing short of the second coming of Jesus could compare to the masterpiece that preceded VIII. It had the same futuristic setting, but the characters were made to look more realistic. The graphics were much better overall, and the characters had similarly charming personalities and flaws.

The biggest polarizing aspect for fans was undoubtedly the Draw system. Instead of MP, you would Draw your magic from enemies. Harder enemies = stronger spells. You could then fuse your magic to your stats, making you resistant to fire, for example. If you wanted mega-stats, you would simply draw magic from enemies, over and over and over and over. Some people dug the customizable potential it afforded, most people hated the repetitiveness.

My favorite part (and biggest time suck) was the Triple Triad card game. You could play cards with pretty much everyone in the game, winning cards when you win, and losing cards when you lose. It was supremely addictive, and it was one of the main reasons I never actually finished the game. I was too obsessed with getting every card... way more fun than Pokemon. They tried to recreate the card mini-game experience in FFIX, but it just didn't have the same soul. It became too random, and felt more like Risk than a card game, where a lucky roll of the dice could mean a small army destroys a much bigger army 300 style. You can still play the Triple Triad card game online here.

Final Fantasy VIII was also one of the very, very few U.S. games that was PocketStation compatible. Remember that thing? Sony's first foray into the handheld market was this Tamagotchi-esqe monochrome VMU. It never came out stateside, but I imported one just to play it with FFVII. (I thought it would work with Street Fighter Alpha 3, too, but they took that compatibility out in the localization... jerks.) You plug the PocketStation into your memory card slot and download the game onto it. You could play this mini-game, called Chocobo World, I think, to level up your Chocobo summon to god-like status. It was pretty simple. You'd cruise your chocobo around a giant square world map to certain points where you'd battle a cactuar by pushing the buttons really fast, leveling up as you did. At level 50, you see a cutscene and your summon would become stronger. At level 100, my PocketStation glitched and I didn't get the 2nd cutscene. But you can't level up any higher... so I stopped playing my PocketStation. Thanks, Japan.

So why didn't people care about VIII? Squall was a cool character, a lot less whiny than Cloud and a snazzier dresser. There was a love story, and it worked well and kept you playing. Sure, the way you made money was kind of weird... You pass all the tests at the beginning of the game, then you never have to worry about money again. You just get it automatically every few minutes just for having a high "rank." They were multiple choice tests, and you had to get them all right, but simple memorization and persistent test re-taking eventually led you to the top rank. Or you could find the answers in PSM. Either way works. But Final Fantasy VIII is not seen as a masterpiece by many, even though it improved on VII in nearly every way. Was it the release date? The same day as the doomed Dreamcast? Maybe Sega should have been more worried about that... the graphics were pretty much the same quality as the 32-bit PlayStation at the time. Oh well. Who knows?

An analogy to describe my first impressions of Punch-Out!! on Wii

You know when you listen to a CD, and you learn all the words, and you fall in love with the band, and then you go see them in concert, and it's just incredible?

Alright. You also know how when you listen to a comedy CD, then you learn all the jokes, and you fall in love with the comedian, and then you go see him in concert, and it SUCKS because you know every punchline?

That's how it is with Punch-Out!! on Wii. You played the original Punch-Out! and Super Punch-Out! to death, and this is the same game with prettier graphics. You know every jab, and every boxer's tell-tale signs, and all you need is the quick reflexes you honed back in the late 80's and early 90's.

It doesn't suck. It's fun. But it's the exact same fun you had 15 years ago. Is that a long enough wait for you to have forgotten the "punch"lines?

Tipping the Scale

Scale has always been a strange technical issue in video games. You're limited by the size of the character, and the camera angle, and the hardware. In old NES games like Zelda 2, Link was the same size on the world map as an entire village. Once he was actually in the village, the buildings were bigger, yet the inside dimensions never seemed to match the outside, like that magical car from Harry Potter that could seat seven comfortably in the back seat while appearing to be a standard size from the outside. Later (much later), Final Fantasy VIII graced the PS1, and towns were finally getting a sense of scale. Sure, Squall still appeared to be as tall as the buildings while outside the city limits, but at least they weren't the same dimensions anymore. I just think it was the hardware. The one game I can think of in that entire console generation that had an entire world set to scale was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. If you wanted to walk somewhere, it took you as long as it would in real life. It was improved even farther in Oblivion, and we now had a living, breathing world that resembled our own, if our own world had goblins lurking behind the registers at Wal-Mart.

Come to think of it, first-person-perspecitve games were always in scale. But the scope of the levels was always so constrained. Remember the first TimeSplitters that debuted with the PS2? The one where you didn't even have to look up or down, a la Doom? The levels, especially compared to sprawling RPG's like anything Square produced, were miniscule. Luckily, technology and game budgets nowadays are so out of control that even low-impact games can have a sense of scale and verisimilitude. Unless its Nintendo, then you're still doomed to be stuck with the kawaii big head, little feet, Pep Boys look. Hope you sprites have been working out your neck muscles! You're going to need them.

Vital Stats

TheGameLlama

Level: 4
HP: 82/100
Experience to next level: 1,337 points

Strength: 40
Perception: 21 (needs glasses)
Endurance: 25
Charisma: 68
Intelligence: 88
Agility: 35
Luck: 50

Inventory:
- 360 games - 40 (3 unopened)
- PS2 games - over 100
- Wii games - 18
- Wii games being enjoyed currently - 0
- 6 plastic guitars
- 2 real guitars
- 4 gaming microphones
- Mountain Dew and Cheetohs (a.k.a. dinner)
- Dive-bombing cockatiel
- Geriatric cat of self-licking
- Ceramic lawn gnome
- $3 Salvation Army thrift store wall art
- 5-foot-tall cardboard Tiki man

Quest:
- Success - Find it. Slay a dragon, perhaps? They guard that, right? Next to the gold?

Secondary Quest:
- Go to work, bring home the bacon.
- Blog.
- Teach self web design.

Those ******* Aussies.

I've scoured the whole Internet, from Wikipedia to Yahoo! to the Australian Ratings board, and I am finding incredibly wide gaps in the consistency of Australian censorship. Apparently, it's OK to broadcast The Osbournes uncensored and have full frontal nudity in their SOAP OPERAS as long as you don't show someone's head exploding in a video game. Their music industry has three different "obscene" ratings, yet F-bombs are just fine on TV, as long as it's after 8:30 p.m.?! Ridiculous. And it's alright to have porn, as long as you import it. It's illegal to buy it in the country. Plenty of games are banned, too, then later reinstated after a particular bit is removed or edited (see: any GTA game). But they don't remove all the offensive stuff, just enough to make it a M15+ game. Like in GTA IV, you can pick up a hooker, but you can't swing the camera around and look in the windshield to see what she's doing. But it's still completely fine to chase her with a baseball bat and beat your money out of her afterwards.

There are so many weird things to get censored for in Australia. Fallout 3 was banned because it blurred the line between sci-fi drugs and real drugs. Bethesda took out the word "morphine" (it's called Med-X in the game) and removed the shooting-up animation and Fallout 3 was reinstated. It was also edited for Japan (they don't like atom bombs much over there) and it was not released in India at all (there are two-headed cows).

The average gamer in Australia is 30 years old. If they are going to censor TV, video games, movies, books, music, and all other art forms, both passive and immersive, the Aussies need to find a more consistent method of going about it. If you don't want boobies on TV destroying their child's innocence, fine. Get rid of them from everywhere. Picking and choosing where it's OK to see them just confuses children, grown-ups, and foreigners like me. I'm getting mixed messages, Australia! Can I swear and see violence/nudity or not? It seems that I can, as long as I stick to the appropriate format. Network TV, here I come!

Time out!

Time travel in games has always been a tricky subject, yet that hasn't stopped numerous companies from trying it out (see: Shadow of Destiny, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Braid, Chrono Trigger, Ocarina of Time, Prince of Persia, and plenty of others). The big paradox with time travel, though, is that if you go back in the past and affect something, you present will not change. It's in the past. Chronologically, you've already changed the past, and your present should be exactly the same. It's destiny. It's complicated, what with all the parallel universes that "could" be created by dabbling in the affairs of history. Games tend to ignore the idea that you can't affect the future. I mean, come on, the whole idea of playing a game is reliant on the idea that you can affect the game's/world's outcome. But did you ever see/read The Time Machine? He made a time machine to save his girlfriend's life, went back in time and saved her, and then she just found a different way to die. If she hadn't died, the time machine would not have been created, so the mere existence of the time machine ensured that she would eventually have to die to necessitate its creation. It's circular and very, very fate-based.

If I was Bill Gates and had a time machine, I'd go back in time and make the PS3 have the Red Ring of Death instead of my precious 360. But the world would already be like that if he did indeed have a time machine... so maybe Shigeru Miyamoto is the one with the time machine? He did invent Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Despite the Nintendo president's recent assertion, he may, in fact, actually be God. Or at least own a time machine.

Denied!

Wal-Mart recently told Green Day that, unless they offer a censored version of their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, they would not stock it at all. Green Day said, "Fine, but we're not going to censor our music. Don't stock our album then." Wal-Mart is the biggest music retailer in the country (and maybe the world... not sure on that). Green Day debuted at #1. Hmm.

There are no "edited versions" of games... yet. Will there be? I don't think so. Game companies won't make games that would receive an AO rating because major retailers refuse to sell them. However, the M rating is being stretched further and further, much like the MA rating on TV. Ever since South Park used "the S word," it has seeped into other networks like FX (see: Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me). Nip/Tuck is also practically softcore porn! It seems like nowadays the only thing you can't say on cable TV is the F-bomb and you can show most of the butt, just no nipples or full frontal. But that will change eventually. Our society is degrading at a rapid pace, and it's taking us all down with it. I think South Park would love to be the first show to use the F word - it'd be like receiving an Emmy for them.

Games have swear words, yet it doesn't make them more "adult." It just makes them more vulgar. Remember GTA III? Not a single F-word. GTA: Chinatown Wars? F this, F that... it's the only word these pixelated gangsters seem to recognize. And then there's House of the Dead: Overkill... sigh. Without Wal-Mart editing our art, who's going to save us from our fragile, vile selves? Our parents? Nah, they had their chance. Maybe the government should step in! Weeee!

Catalog THIS in your Dewey Decimal System.

Now that video games are becoming more recognized as "art," there is a growing movement amongst some of the geek elite to preserve their legacy for future generations to enjoy. And why not? Gutenberg Bibles are worth millions. Old Disney VHS tapes are worth hundreds of dollars each. The Beatles' White Album can't be found at a used record store for less than $50. Games start off being pretty expensive, and the price has never really changed much. Final Fantasy III (or VI, whatever you call it) was $80 when it first came out on Super Nintendo. Today, Fallout 3 is $60. But games decrease in value after a time, and a select few eventually become more valuable. Especially RPG's - Dragon Warrior IV, Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Final Fantasies, etc. But why does the enjoyment of old games have to be confined to the few people that can actually afford to drop a Benjamin on an original NES cartridge?

Let's get games into public libraries. Books are in libraries and people still go to bookstores. A lot of newer movies are free in libraries and yet people still rent movies. Old games, for some reason or another, have no forum in which they can be rented or played without actually owning them. Blockbuster and Movie Gallery have the entire center section of their stores dedicated to older movies, all the way back to the silent film era. Why can't there be a place we can go to enjoy classic games for $1 a week? Is this more viable than getting games into libraries, there's a profit to be made now! Sure, it can be hard to get many old NES carts to work... but that definitely doesn't mean that they're broken. Blow in it, slide it into the system so it barely makes it past the edge, pop the cart halfway up, turn your NES upside down, there are all manner of getting these old classics to boot up. If there was a mom and pop retro game rental store in my neighborhood, you can be sure that I'd be one of those kids hanging out there after class, waxing nostalgic with other gamers who also recall the good old days when "graphics" were a luxury and a "soundtrack" was synthesized MIDI beeps and boops. Sweet memories... would someone please get on this?

Tournament Time, Part II

Saturday, May 30th. The next GameStop tournament is coming to a town near you... Punch-Out!! That's right, Nintendo's newest and oldest fighter has a weak multiplayer mode that is apparently fun enough to make a tournament out of. You have to use the not-so-precise Wii Sports Boxing-esque motion controls and the only prize is a t-shirt for the winner. Who cares? Being the best in your city at something and winning a sure-to-be-amazing Punch-Out!! T-shirt is more than many average people could ask for. Sure, it might not be able to compete with the pink hoodie given out at the Nintendo World Store in NYC, but it would still fetch a pretty penny on eBay in a few months... or at least make all your retro-geek friends uber-jealous.

Who are the Gamers?

Video games have changed over the last 30 years from simple PONG and Space Invaders clones into a multi-billion dollar industry where games are on par with the relentless Hollywood machine that has been churning out pop culture for nearly three times as long. The people that play them have changed, as well. No longer are video games relegated to the basements of pimply nerds that have never seen a boob and spend their nights debating long and hard over the merits of D&D 4th Edition versus 3rd. Now, moms are gamers. Grandmas are gamers. Nerds are... still gamers. My cat is a gamer. Vin Diesel is a gamer. Spielberg is a gamer. Obama has a Wii. A recent study claims that American adults today have a 50/50 chance of being a gamer. So what is a "gamer" now, anyway? It doesn't seem like it should be a stigma on your popularity anymore, does it? If so, then half the country is unpopular. And Obama would have to be uncool, too. The only reason he got elected is because he's so cool! What is a gamer today, then?

MTV thinks they know. They had an episode of True Life profiling professional gamers, including one guy who works the "underground" circuit... the dank, seedy underbelly of the digital world that Miyamoto pretends doesn't exist. The real pros (at least at Halo) were teenage gangsta wannabe types that dropped out of school to play games for a living. Sounds like a pipe dream for the average American that has to hold down a full-time job.

Spike TV thinks they have the answer, too. The Spike Video Game Awards bring movie and TV celebrities (Lindsey Lohan? Really?) to the stage to give awards to games and people they've probably never heard of. Sure, the average celebrity probably looks a whole lot better on a poster than the average gamer does, but the commercialization of video game award shows may have the same effect on "real" award ceremonies (like the Interactive Achievement Awards) that the Wii's influence has had on the term "gamer."

Maybe Lionsgate knows the answer. Gamer, a movie about - gamers - is coming out this fall and will star Gerard Butler. Nothing like a little more press for our favorite pastime, eh?

Wikipedia has a fun little article on gamers, labeling the different groups, segregating people who play games into neat little social circles... but isn't the new "everybody can play" Wii mentality supposed to destroy these labels? It won't happen, but we can hope, can't we? However, many "hardcore" and "pro" gamers would hate to be included in the same group with people that just want to play a quick game of Peggle or Mob Wars before bed, and many "casual" gamers don't even consider the few stolen moments of their lives to be actual "gaming."

If you read this blog, you are probably a gamer. If you are an American, you are probably a gamer. If you have the kind of expendable income that could feed an entire third-world village for weeks at a time, you probably waste that money on selfish things... like games. You pay for an experience, an escape. An escape from what? That's what makes us all different. But in the Halo or Call of Duty lobby, we can all be friends sharing similar experiences, as gamers. Awww, sweet togetherness.

English Beat

Why does England get all the cool video game magazines? Retro Gamer, Games TM, X360, PowerStation... sure, they have American counterparts (Game Informer, Play, GamePro, Nintendo Power, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, Tips & Tricks), but have you even looked in an issue of Retro Gamer? BAM POW SLAM fan love e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. It harkens back to a day when homebrewers could release the next big, cool thing from a Tandy sitting in their mom's basement. There was no Madden franchise, or Tony Hawk re-hash, or Guitar Hero: Aly and AJ Edition. Gaming was pure, and the entire magazine makes me feel that the gaming landscape across the seas is so much more unpolluted than over here.

I'd buy a subscription, but it's £80.00 for a year. That's about $126, and I could subscribe to practically every U.S. game magazine for that price, even the ones that come with "free" demo discs. Bleh.

Auto-pilot

When you crash your car, the airbags deploy. There are even some new Mercedes Benzes that sense the crash and roll up the windows, adjust the seat for impact, tighten the seat belts, and close the sunroof. (Imagine if your seat adjusted, your seat belt locked, and your windows rolled up when you were just driving down the road, minding your own business! That'd freak me out, for sure.) When will the same safety features be implemented into online games? Oh no, you're down by 50,000 points on Rock Band! Auto-disconnect! Punk'd! Now who wins? Yeah, it might crush your reputation, but whatever. Now if we could only find a way to keep it from decreasing your TrueSkill rank... the cheating would be complete. We might be branded and lose all our Gamerscore, but that's a risk we'd have to take to win in life. Or win in games. Or whatever's important. I don't know.

Wii(Shovel)Ware

There are WiiWare minimum sales requirements. In North America, if a game is over 16 mb, it has to sell 6,000 for the developers to see a profit. Under 16 mb, they only need to sell 4,000. Considering that there are over 20,000,000 Wiis in the world, that doesn't seem like too many, even considering how few people connect their systems to the internet. The idea is that it will prevent developers from constantly releasing crap shovelware titles, clogging the WiiWare catalog with sub-par games. If only retail Wii games would abide by the same methodology... maybe we wouldn't have "games" like Imagine: Party Babiez clogging the shelf space while lesser-known gems like Klonoa and Zack & Wiki are relegated to the bargain bins.

Remember the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality, a symbol (and a new way of thinking) that helped revitalize the video game industry after E.T. destroyed it? Nintendo should bring that back, and make quality matter again. Nintendo's first-party offerings continue to be terrific, but one great new game a year won't keep your system going. Third parties need to step up, and Nintendo needs to reach down a hand a give them a boost.

The good old days are back again

Look.

ThinkGeek has released a portable NES game player that looks a bit like a Game Gear, only gray and with a giant NES cartridge sticking out of the top. It's a lot like a Nomad, only 8-bit. Also, it's only $50! The Escapist didn't like it... but I would totally load up on batteries and hit the town. If only I took the bus! I'd never see the other riders again, what do I care if they think I'm a dork? Maybe it'd even be a good conversation starter, "Oh, you're playing Mega Man 2? Awesome! Can I have next?" No. No you can't.

It comes with AV cables that let you plug it into your TV, but there doesn't appear to even be an option for an AC adaptor. The only way I played Game Gear was with it plugged into the wall. I didn't want to buy 6 more double-A's every two hours to play Sonic. This one isn't that bad, with 4 AA's giving you about 8 hours of playtime... but still. Would it have been so hard to let you use the AC adaptor that comes with the DS, or even the old-school original NES power brick? Yeah, it's hefty, but it would just add to the 1337 geek factor.

The Interwebs

The Wii has one thing on the 360 and the PS3... a web browser. Why oh why is the family-friendly Wii allowed access to all the inappropriateness of the internet while far more advanced systems are left in the cold? A web browser was rumored to be included with the New Xbox Experience (NXE), but those rumors were proven false. As it stands now, the Wii, the system least-connected yet with the greatest market saturation, is the only system that can get on the web without having to be hacked. Oh, the PSP works too... but there's no keyboard for that! Maybe if they released a peripheral like the 360 controller/keyboard that comes with the messenger kit then it would discover some viability as a "connected" platform.

Eugh. There is no real good reason that the 360 and PS3 continue to refuse to release a web browser. Aren't game systems of the future trying to become more like multimedia extravaganzas? With Blu-Ray, HDDVD, media centers, CD burning, and movie downloading/watching, these systems do it all... except let you check your MySpace. Sure, there are viruses on the 'Net. But it will be at least a few days before a hacker creates a virus just to infect your Xbox save files and steal your GamerTag. The Mac has just recently been introduced to the wonderful world of computer viruses, and it's been around for 20 years. I'm sure your MGS4 snapshots will remain safe.

I understand that not many people will use their 360's or PS3's to surf the web, but wouldn't you at least like the option? When my PC went on the fritz, my Wii actually saw some use - it became my only connection to the wide outside web world. It's nice to have a back-up plan. When my 360 red-ringed, I still had a launch-day PS2 that continues to work just fine. Same concept. But with the Internet! See?

100th Post! Woo! Woo... Whew...

100 posts in about as many days. I had roughly one day a month where I didn't have access to a computer and I missed a post, but all in all, I'd say I've done pretty well. I didn't take weekends off, or holidays, or sick days. Pretty consistent for some n00b that's never had a blog before. I only have, like, 7 readers, but I still feel that I have an obligation, if not to them, then to myself, to continue. One day in January 2009, I simply said to myself, "You know, I really want to write about video games for a living." I did some research, and found out that the best way to start doing that was to write about games without getting paid, just for the love of the game! So here I am.

Sure, some days, it's hard to come up with a topic, and I have to scour the day's game news for something interesting. Some days, I have to choose to blog during my one free hour between my two jobs instead of eating lunch. But it's my blog, and I can write about anything I want. True, Blogger isn't the most powerful, feature-filled blogging tool in the universe, but it's free, and I can use it to share some of my thoughts and insights with the world, whether the world actually listens or not. The world will hear, eventually. I haven't given up yet.

I've sunk many, many hours into this. Is it worth it? It will be.

Puzzle Quest - The Hidden Addiction

When Puzzle Quest came out on DS, PSP, PC, Wii, PS2, PSN, and XBLA, I picked it up for $20. Yeah, it looked to be basically a Bejeweled clone, but it was a Bejeweled clone in which you could level up and cast spells and slay goblins! Awesome. I would play it on the toilet, where nobody would bother me, and I would often sit there until my legs fell asleep. "Just one more game," I would say to myself, "I wouldn't be able to stand up right now anyway, my feet are numb." Within days, I had already reached the last boss. It is not a short game. I was addicted. To a puzzle game. To a DS game! No way! But when I completed it, I put it away. Because it had an end point to the storyline, there was a time when it was eventually over. This is unlike other Tetris, or Lumines, or other puzzlers you can play ad nauseum. Does that hurt it as a brilliant game? I don't know...

When the year was up and I was looking over various Game of the Year awards in magazines and on the Internet, Puzzle Quest kept popping up as a final contender. I had played it (a lot) and yet had never considered it one of the greatest games of the year. This was pretty weird, because I don't want to play a bad game, no one does. Yet even though I sunk more time into it than just about any other game that year besides Oblivion, I discounted it subconsciously because of its simplicity and "casual" nature. A simple puzzle game can't be Game of the Year! But what makes Game of the Year? Is it addictiveness, a willingness to play it over all other games of its time? Because Puzzle Quest ensnared me completely, even with a simple, cliched fantasy plot and colorful yet unimpressive graphics that did their job and little else. Also, the music was just awful, and the loop was far too short for the amount of time an average person could sink into it. But I loved it. And I am hereby declaring it one of my favorite games of all time. Maybe Puzzle Kingdoms is good too...?

Mom's Day

It's Mother's Day... did you get her a card? Did you get her a Mother's Day version DS with Personal Trainer: Cooking? No? I hope not, that would probably just insult her. Cookbooks are bad ideas - they imply that you don't like her cooking. $150 cookbooks are very expensive bad ideas. Not to mention that the green DS Lite that you can get with the bundle is the only place you can find it, making it sure to be a collector's item someday, and also making sure that everyone knows that you got it from a son that really doesn't like your cooking. Yay for public embarrassment!

Not saying that moms don't like to play video games. I got my own mom Bejeweled Twist just this last Christmas, and I'm sure she loves it. It's true that they probably won't play the next iteration of Wolfenstein or Fallout, but there is enough room in the world for "casual gamers" that only like to play a quick game of Peggle before bed or to unwind after a long day at work. What's more, today's casual gamers could be tomorrow's hardcore gamers. Just because you're friends are excited about Lego Rock Band and you have no desire to even see it take up store shelves doesn't mean it won't give you two someething to talk about when he grows up to playing the real Rock Band. Come on, can't we all just get along? Moms, nerds, little brothers, and dogs? Yes, dogs too... don't be racist (humanist?). Just put some kibbles on your Wii-mote and let Fido go to town on it. I guarantee he'll win at least one match in Super Smash Brothers.

Minimum-Wage Games = Fun?

Minimum-wage work is the bane of a teenager's existence, yet it is a necessary evil to for him to afford gas, booze, and freedom from being forced to survive under his parents' constant observation and oppression. It's not fun. It's work. How can a game company make a game out of it? They can, apparently, and they do. Here's a partial list I came up with of entirely un-fun jobs that have been converted to game form:

- Order Up! - fast food
- Diner Dash - waitressing
- Cooking Mama - cook
- Harvest Moon - farmer
- Courier Crisis - bike messenger
- Crazy Taxi - cabbie

How do game companies pick their games' subjects? "Hey, working the register at a gas station is accessible enough to be done by a trained monkey... Let's make that into a WiiWare game!" Strangely, even the games that don't over-emphasize the danger and excitement of these menial jobs (like Crazy Taxi's over-the-top presentation and gameplay) still have a large element of fun to them. Harvest Moon is a great example. In it, you are a farmer. You grow crops, trade with townspeople, till your soil... standard farm stuff. Still, thousands of gamers buy the newest installment each time it's released and sink dozens upon dozens of hours into their virtual farm. For what? They are left with no real, tangible carrots to eat, and they don't have the satisfaction of actually cleaning the horse manure out of a stall with a shovel. Is Harvest Moon better than real farming because there's no poop smell? Is it because the virtual progression of crops is so much faster than in reality? Is it because gamers don't get sweaty using a virtual hoe? Maybe.

Today's game market is so over-saturated by "me-too" titles that game developers will look to exploit any untapped subject in an effort to appear innovative. When Wii Fit was released, it was a huge success. It was the type of "game" that hadn't really been tried seriously before, and Nintendo's risky move paid off in a huge way - Wii Fit is now one of the best-selling games of all time, and it's still incredibly difficult to find the game on store shelves. Sure, Order Up is a fast food simulator, but how many times have you seen one of those before? It even embraced it's demographic by including a paper hat and a $20 price tag. It will not be a best seller, ever. But there still exist so many untapped game subjects and gameplay innovations that I, for one, would try anything once. You don't want the only new games in the future to be Madden 2021 and Tony Hawk 19, do you? You'd better not.

Another Shadow of the Colossus post...

Sometimes, creative decisions regarding a game's content are based on the platform's technological limitations. Mario had red clothes on a blue background because the colors looked best on the limited palette of the NES. He wore a hat so Miyamoto wouldn't have to animate his hair. He had a mustache to hide his facial features because it was far easier than creating expressions on his tiny, pixelated head.

Fast forward twenty years, and graphics are infinitely better, but there are still limits. Shadow of the Colossus was critically revered as a masterpiece of modern gaming. The biggest complaint: the PS2 holds down the game from reaching its full potential. Graphics! No way. Can a beautiful game really be faulted with living on a system that is not powerful enough to support its weight? Well, of course it can. There was draw-in in the distance. Textures were grainy. Every creature in the grain had sharp edges that should have been smooth. The scale was terrific, but the game could have been better (read: more beautiful) if it had even waited for one more generation before being released.

For a PS2 game, SotC was pretty. However, when it was released, the 360 was set to come out the next month, and that was much, much prettier. If Colossus had been released 2 years earlier, right in the middle of the PS2's life cycle, it would have been much more appreciated. Comments on its non-beauty would be non-existent. Imagine if it was a lauch title! It would've blown TimeSplitters, Evergrace, and Summoner out of the water. Still, with technological advancements, you need to evolve and innovate. Even graphics. Yes, a game can be good without stellar imagery to stare at while you slice and dice enemies, but the fact of the matter is that you are going to be spending a good amount of hours in this digital world you just purchased, and graphics are the only thing you can see. Taking too long to develop a game (*cough*Too Human*cough*) makes its eventaul release unimportant, unimpressive, and unnecessary. It's a thin line to tread between getting a game on the market quickly and making sure it is bug-free. Gamers don't care about that. They want both.

R.I.P. 3D Realms

3D Realms is gone... and Duke Nukem Forever may actually never be released now instead of just probably never being released. 3D Realms, along with iD Software (John Carmack and the other guys who made DOOM) invented shareware and pretty much single-handedly crafted the PC game market as we know it. Also, they made Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Prey, and one of my personal favorites as a kid, Blake Stone, a.k.a. Wolfenstein in space. Is this another case of the "recession-proof" video game industry being impacted by the recession? Or was 3d Realms merely demolished by its own practical joke-like existence? "When's this new game coming out, it seems like it's been delayed for years." "Probably right after Duke Nukem Forever HAHAHAHA!" Jerks.

The sad part is that 3D Realms was still planning on bringing DNF out... If you got all 200 achievement points in the recently revitalized Duke Nukem 3D game that was released on XBLA, you unlocked two screenshots for the game, proving that it was still in production after first being announced about 12 years ago. DNF is going to be the coolest vaporware since that hamster game that was announced for the Sega 32X. Remember that? No? Do you even remember the system? It had DOOM and Virtua Fighter on it, and it was cool. So was Duke Nukem. Sigh...

Too much nostalgia

There is a new Punch-Out game coming for Wii. It let's you use the classic controller, nearly all of the characters are re-hashed from old Punch-Outs, and the only thing that looks to be updated is the graphics. And the jump from SNES sprites to Wii graphics is not that huge of a jump, honestly. Next month, millions of people will pay $50 for a game they already have. There won't be an online component to school middle-aged Wii players across the country. There probably won't even be a multiplayer component aside from a few party/mini-games. You will memorize patterns and use your reflexes to defeat boxers you've already defeted while moving up through ranks you've already attained 20 years ago.

Nostalgia is nice. Street Fighter IV took the best of the old, polished it to perfection, and added new, improved features. Punch-Out is taking the best of the old, and polishing it to perfection... and that's it. There are supposedly only two new fighters in the whole game, and the only one revealed so far is the incredibly boring-looking Disco Kid. He flashes white before he punches. Oooohhh innovative! Not.

Nintendo fans are so starved for "hardcore" games that they will gobble up any game that even appears to allude to the company's former glory in the 8- and 16-bit days, even when the games bring absolutely nothing new to the table. I understand the mentality of remaking a game. It's a guaranteed seller in a market in which financial risks are increasingly hard to justify. Okami's poor sales single-handedly shut down an entire studio. Still, while Nintendo fans may not always crave something completely different from what they've played before (who wouldn't want to play the next Metroid or Mario?), they do want something better than what we've already seen. Without progress there is only stagnation, and the Wii is starting to stink.

Irritabiltiy

Penny Arcade isn't the only nerdy webcomic on the 'Net. My other favorite is Irritability. It used to be in a Texas university newspaper, but now the author only makes a new one when he feels like it (he's only done three this year). Not as consistent as PA's 3-per-week, but still welcome when one shows up out of nowhere, although he claims to update "most Mondays." If you haven't seen it before, it stars a Dragonball Z-like character named Chappy Chappy and other adventurer-types that have wild, often incredibly geeky, antics. There are over 700 comics in the archives here, but they don't start getting really funny until a few months in. Some are just lame puns, some are classic video game or D&D references, some are just off-the-wall weird. It interested the world to the term "ho-bag" and was the first place I ever saw head legs, long before Futurama ever used them as sewer mutants. Check it out if you have a few hours to kill on a lonely, rainy afternoon.

Here are a few of my favorites:
Server Down!
Petroid Arrives
There's more... but I can't find them now. You do it!

My New Idea

I'm going to start my own video game review website. But it's going to be different. I don't know if you would call it a gimmick, or just a unique way of looking at the games. Unfortunately, I'll be reviewing games in a way that won't get my reviews on GameRankings.com or MetaCritic. Oh well. Also, I don't want to give away too many ideas here, because the domain name I want to use is still available, and, on the Internet, anyone can steal your ideas. But I got a Creating Web Pages for Dummies book, and I have game knowledge, and I have a great idea. I don't see it becoming as popular as Penny Acade, or anything, but that would be nice. I'll be sure to keep my 5 or so readers updated with its progress... and hopefully it'll turn out to be just dandy. Wish me luck!

"Department" Stores

Florida has a Department of Citrus. It seems random and obscure, but the truth is that oranges and other citrus-y things are so important to the economy of Florida that it needs an entire governmental angency to make sure the input and output stay consistent enough that the state's economy keeps going. That's some powerful fruit. According to the stats I could find right on the suprisingly easy-to-navigate site, Florida made over $3.6 billion during the 2007-08 season on orange juice alone. In 2005, video games made over $10.5 billion, and that number has grown every year since then. Where are the government agencies protecting/regulating video games?

Certainly there's enough business generated by games to justify one. Seattle has Nintendo creating jobs and aiding the economy. And Silicon Valley has been the geek center of the universe for decades. We have, what, the ESRB? Woo. Instead of a group trying to help increase visibility, sales, and acceptability as an art form, gamers are left with nothing more than a glorified censoring agency. Instead of helping the world recognize the kind of innovative games we should be playing, we have a group pointing out all the things that are wrong with our favorite pastime. This self-regulation is not even good enough to prevent government interference, because every once in a while a Hot Coffee scandal makes every parent in the world fear for their children's innocence. Here's an idea, moms and dads... play the games your kids are playing first, or play them with them, to understand exactly what it is you are condemning. A game won't teach morality any more than a TV show will, and it's true - both of those things have some degree of power over the impressionable minds of children (otherwise, why would there even be Biblical programming attempting to teach morality lessons?). Don't use PlayStations and TV's as babysitters. There's nothing protecting games from people that would misuse them besides the parents. Scanning the buyer's driver's license barcode (Target) only goes so far. Jack Thompson is lurking in the shadows! He's disbarred, but he's not declawed, and neither is the rest of the world.

Turtle Power!

TMNT IV: Turtles in Time is going to be released on Xbox Live, and maybe also on WiiWare and PlayStation Network. It's based on the original arcade version (not the SNES one), and has updated 3D graphics. I own the original on SNES (I paid $20 for it too, that's a lot for a non-RPG Super Nintendo game!), and even though I could beat it in half an hour, it was still awesome! I try not to buy games that I already own... but I may have to make an exception for this like I did for Final Fantasy VI when it was re-released on Game Boy Advance. Woe is me!



...Heroes in a half-shell - turtle power! Sorry couldn't help myself. Everyone watched the Ninja Turtles show as a kid, but I got a bit of it on DVD on sale a while back and it doesn't really do it for me anymore. Puns are stupid, and that's all they spouted! Ugh, I used to be a dumb little kid too. Batman: The Animated Series is just as amazing and beautiful as I remember, however. And I just got the old animated X-Men series today too... hope it doesn't suck! I don't know how they determine which shows will stand up over time and still be at least palatable as an adult viewer. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was a bad as Turtles, yet Sonic is still not bad, despite being voiced by Jaleel "Erkel" White. Now that there just don't make a lick'a sense!

Cheaper... cheaper... not?

Games depreciate faster than cars. You drive a brand new car off the lot, and it loses half of its value. You open a game, and then it's just not worth much anymore. That's why you can get an open copy of Chrono Trigger on the SNES for $50-100, but a sealed one will net you over a grand, easy. I just got Far Cry 2 on 360 for $10 on a clearance at Target. I can go on Xbox Live and get N+ for $10. Both are quality games. But Far Cry 2 started at $60 then lost 83% of its retail value. N+ was released before Far Cry 2 and maintains its original $10 price tag, all whyile not offering the benefits of tangibility. You can't bring it over and show your friends. You can't read the instruction manual in the bathroom. You can't pass it down to your children someday like I hope to do with my NES and Atari 2600 games, proving to them just how far we've come and just how lucky they are to live in a world with more than 8 colors. Why are downloadable games able to maintain their value so much longer while not even being real? They are real in the fact that you pay for an experience, and you control it like a normal game, but you can't hold it. You don't get to rush home, break the seal, and take a huge whiff of that "new game smell" (you know the one). I've wanted to download Cloning Clyde since I first played the demo on my new 360 a few Christmases ago, but it was ten bucks. It's still ten bucks. Games that were available at retail at that time have prices that have completely plummeted. It's not fair. It makes it really hard to want to download games when full, expansive retail games are available for the same price.

Also, I seem to be blogging about game prices a lot. With the economy in shambles, it's easy to get hung up on how much things cost. I don't want to sacrifice quality, however. A $20 year-old 360 game is almost always better than $20 Wii shovelware. But downloadable titles... they're almost all the same price, regardless of quality or age. Money is harder to come by nowadays, and I could use that $10 on rent, or to eat, or to fix my car. Even in America, our expendable income isn't as expendable as it used to be.

Ha.

I want to play a funny game. When things are humorous in real life, it's because I made light of whatever bad/normal/good situation I was in. I enjoy watching Comedy Central Presents, and comedy movies are fun once a year or so, so you have time to forget the gags and punchlines. There have been a few attempts at funny games in recent memory (Penny Arcade, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Armed & Dangerous), but it was always humor, then gameplay, then more humor, then more gameplay. I want comedy and good gameplay to be entwined in a way that one would not succeed without the aid of the other. Sure, it would be tough because not everyone has the same sense of humor, but no art has ever been created with the intent of pleasing every last person in the world. Grand Theft Auto caters to mature gamers exclusively, and it sells reasonably well (except on the DS, apparently). I want funny people to write funny things for funny games. The Daily Show: Stewart's Revenge, now on Xbox Live! Something like that. There are lighthearted games (Mario, anything on Wii), and there are serious games (GTA, Call of Duty, anything on 360 or PS3). In the middle, there are games that try to be funny. Even if they are clever, I have rarely, in my entire life as a gamer, laughed aloud at something that happened in a game. Movies and TV... all the time. Why? The Harvey Birdman game was just like the show, only without the need to laugh, ever. I enjoyed it, despite it's obvious flaws as a game, but I didn't laugh. And that's sad. Why is it so hard?