Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Part VII - What makes sports games so great?

Realism. Every new generation of sports games has an updated roster, better graphics, and a more realistic feel. Football coaches run simulated plays on Madden to see if they would work. Real hockey players can play as themselves on a TV on their tour bus. Even people who aren't professionals can now create themselves as a player in the games (of course, the most overpowered player in the league... why not?). Always wanted to be the star running back of the Minnesota Vikings? Now you can.

The realism boat took off with the first Madden game on the Sega Genesis. Madden (the man, not the game) insisted that both teams have to correct amount of players on the field. This changed the entire game. This changed the entire genre. There is now a demographic of gamers that buy no games other than sports games. They buy the latest version of Madden and NCAA and NBA Live, and little else. They may play the occasional Halo deathmatch, but they know what they like and they will not be swayed. They know all the stats of their favorite team and, for many gamers, this is as close as they will ever get to experiencing a Super Bowl as a key member of their fave team.

Now, if there are only a few members on a team (a la NBA Jam or NFL Blitz), the game is considered an arcade game. If there are the right number of people on each team, the game is a sports simulation. Like Gran Turismo, Madden is trying to be the Real Football Simulator. There have been many times when a person across the room would see a current-gen sports game on TV and confuse it with an actual, live broadcast. That's realism.

Unfortunately, with EA buying the exclusive rights to produce games for the NFL, other game developers have had to use creative methods of making money with football games. Going the arcade route is one way, or you can go the All-Pro Football route and use retired legends of the game who happen to not fall under the NFL's copyright, apparently. These games are all considered inferior to the "official" products, however, much like buying a third-party controller from Mad Catz instead of the real deal. Non-official games have had to use differing tactics than going head-to-head with Madden, such as excessive violence (Blitz: The League) or a roster of old-school fan favorites (All-Pro Football 2K8). Maybe someday there will be another contender for the throne like NFL 2K5, but, so far, it's not looking like it.

Gamers want the official, real deal. "Pure" sports games are all about the realism. That's why people play them. That's why people will continue to play them long into the future.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Feature Intermission

I have been cutting into my sleep to play some sorely missed games, and it's nice to know that Half-Life 2 is still just as cool as it was years ago. Next up, Shadow of the Colossus. Another game that was, is, and always will be amazingly terrific and magically delicious. But don't worry, I'll be back to writing genre essays tomorrow.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Part VI - What makes fighting games so great?

Fighting games are all about one-on-one competition. Having the skills to best somebody in a match, whether you're online or sitting next to them on a couch or at the national EVO Tournament, is a huge ego boost. Winning a fair fight against a peer gives you a great sense of accomplishment and power. Losing hurts, too, though, but it makes you want to try harder, to practice, to become better, to be the best.

There have been many fighting games over the years, from Street Fighter to Guilty Gear to Dead or Alive to Marvel Vs. Capcom to Tekken, and they've all shared one thing in common: two people enter, and one person leaves. There is a lot of testosterone flowing around the fighting field with all the one-upsmanship inherent in the battles. The well-balanced fighting games are never about button mashing - they about about counter attacks, blocking, canceling, and waiting for your chance to strike with a well-placed combo.

Super Smash Bros., while technically a fighter, is more of a party game that you pull out to play with a bunch of friends. "Pure" fighting games like SFIV won't allow you to win if you merely mash buttons. I think that's the appeal. To be good at fake fighting, just like real fighting, takes a lot of practice. There are strategies all over bookstands and the Internet about how to be and beat the best in the world (including this humorous but ultimately accurate Ken flowchart). The national champions know all about how to best utilize their distance from their opponent, their combos and special moves, and their blocks and counters and throws. Just the fact that people can devote hours a day to one game says there must be something important there. Many fighting games have the "easy to learn, difficult to master" appeal, and, hopefully, they won't go away.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Part V - What makes racing games so great?

Racing in a game is like racing in real life without the fear of getting dismembered. There is a remarkable sense of speed (especially when in first-person) and you can receive a large adrenaline rush just like if you drove a fast car in real life. Still, the difference, like I said, is that you won't get dismembered like you could (and probably would) if you were an illegal street racer or a NASCAR driver.

Your palms will get sweaty. You will blink less. You will lean towards the screen, hoping to see around the next bend more effectively. You will learn to power slide and feel like you could pull it off in real life (it's not as easy there, though). Your blood will pump and you will scream at anyone that walks between you and the screen. Your split-second reflexes will be tested, and you might crash into a wall and die. But that's okay. Hit Start, then select "Restart Race." No prob.

Nothing can compare to the reality of cruising down a city street at 80. It's dangerous and irresponsible and scary and intense and fun for Type-A personalities. In video games, you are not shackled by society's morals or speed limit signs. You are free. Drive 120. It'll be fun, I promise.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Part IV - What makes action/adventure games so great?

Adventure games are the oldest genre that really mattered. Super Mario Bros. revitalized the game industry in 1985 after hundreds of awful games like E.T. on the Atari 2600 nearly destroyed it. The crap games were buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and turned into a parking lot. Mario, and other adventure games like it, live on.

First off, there is a difference between action and adventure games, but they tend to play similarly. There are usually more bad guys to fight in action games (think Donkey Kong or Sonic the Hedgehog) while adventure games tend to focus more on exploration (Metroid and Castlevania). However, the controls, demographic, and appeal of both action and adventure games are very similar. I will probably switch the terms action and adventure back and forth throughout. So sue me.

The things that separate action/adventure games from other genres are the fantastical settings, the memorable, often colorful characters, and the opportunity to explore the world and always be able to find something new right around the corner. Also, there's often some platforming, but it tends to feel like more of an afterthought nowadays. This wasn't always the case.

Platforming games that require the player to make precise jumps and perform specific actions to advance have fallen out of favor. On the 8- and 16-bit systems, nearly every side-scolling action game required at least some platforming: Mario, Donkey Kong Country, Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, however, all the platformers that are left really are kids' games (especially Disney games). Maybe this is because platforming is seen as simple and uncomplicated kids' stuff, but other games like Mirror's Edge have shown that with the right setting, running and jumping can be just as harrowing as old-school shooters like R-Type and Defender.

In adventure games, an interesting setting is required. Beyond Good and Evil, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider. You might be traipsing through a lush jungle, or you might be scaling over rooftops, or you could be on a freighter in Alaska, but you need to have a setting that sets your game apart. Even real-world-setting adventure games like Bully or Leisure Suit Larry have aspects of reality distorted or maimed to cater to the fact that this is a game. Unlike an FPS, you are not your character. You merely control them, and you listen to their story instead of being the star of your own.

The characters are really what sell the game though. If you have a generic main character like, say, Jet Brody from Fracture or whoever that guy with cornrows was in Haven: Call of the King, then people aren't going to buy or remember your game. If your main character is a bright orange bandicoot, people might pay attention. Until your games start to grow stale, then they'll quit caring. Sorry, Crash! The kind of traits that make a good main character will have to be another post, but let's just say that they need to be memorable to the players in order to make them want to buy a sequel. The game industry is a business, so you have to create cool characters to even have a chance of succeeding. Or you can make a plumber with a red hat and make millions... somehow. Hm.

Finally, the exploration aspect. My favorite level in Super Mario Bros. by far was Level 6-3. You know the one. The ice world. Nothing changed except the color palette but it made that one two minute level different from the entire rest of the game. That's memorable. If you have the first five hours of the game set in one huge city, then you break out of the walls a la Final Fantasy VII, you discover a whole huge other world. You aren't giving the player these experiences - he is discovering them for himself like they have always been there. You can always find something new, and that's why adventure games will never go out of style.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Part III - What makes music games so great?

This one's easy: music games let you party like a rock star. You invite a bunch of friends over for Guitar Hero or Rock Band and you can all be guitar legends or rock out on drums that go clack clack instead of boom boom or sing terribly off-key renditions of Alanis Morissette. Even if you are terrible at real music, set the game to easy or no-fail mode and you can feel like you are actually playing Free Bird in front of millions of screaming fans.

The games are the same basic formula as DDR - you match the notes flowing down (or up) the screen, and you rack up bigger and bigger combos as you play better. It's strange that by merely including a plastic guitar instead of a dance mat, the entire genre took off. Best Buy and Wal-Mart even have whole aisles now dedicated to the ever-increasing amount of hardware you need for these games. I don't think it was the peripherals that helped launch companies like harmonix into the stratosphere; I think it was the music.

DDR is techno music, house music, and trance music, with a few current pop hits sprinkled throughout. Guitar Hero is rock. Not only that, it's good rock. When the original Guitar Hero came out on PS2, nobody knew it would take off like it has. People would say, "Oh, another game that costs $90 because you have to get a fancy controller with it." Until they played it. The game had songs from everyone from Queen to Ozzy to Incubus to Pantera to the Stones. At first, every song on the game was a cover, but they were remarkably good covers. Harmonix really knew their stuff. Maybe their musical chops had been honed with Frequency and Amplitude, or maybe it helped that they were all musicians in real life. But they could tell the difference between a song that you'd want to listen to on the radio and a song that you'd like to play fake guitar to. When they found one that had both qualities, they would stick it in the game.

One thing not great about music games is the overlapping songs. There is 50 years of rock 'n' roll history to choose from, so why do we get a dozen songs that are the same on two games released barely month apart? I can understand band overlap - who doesn't want to be Kurt Cobain? - but making people pay almost 200 more dollars to play songs they've already played is almost criminal.

It's true: playing Guitar Hero is not the same as playing real guitar, and if people actually practiced real instruments as much as they played games there would be a lot more starving artists on the streets begging for your change with their guitar. However, the drums are very similar to real life. You have a bass pedal and you use real drum sticks to play real drum songs. Move the pads a little farther away from each other and you have a real drum set. How many drummers for bands in the future will have gotten their start on Rock Band? We'll see.

Even though it's not the same as the real thing, playing fake guitar can be just as challenging as real guitar. You can't fake your notes. You can't play power chords instead of full bar chords. you can't tune to Drop D to make songs simpler. You have to hit every not that comes at you without making mistakes if you want the top score. Play Through the Fire and Flames on expert then try to tell me that it doesn't take real practice and real skill to be good at fake guitar just like real guitar.

With the invention of the Internet, face-to-face interaction in games has been, shall we say, stifled. Music games are bringing that back. Sure, you can play on the 'net with people on the other side of the world, but there's nothing like having your own Rock Band rockin' out in your living room, spilling beer all over your mom's couch. It recalls the days of the Halo LAN parties for the original Xbox, before Live had really taken off. Face time with like-minded peers has been lacking recently, not only in the game industry, but in other aspects of life as well. Its nice that, even in this troubled economy, you can still have some friends over for a good time. Thanks, music games.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Part II - What makes FPS's so great?

The biggest appeal of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre is the sense of immersion. You are in the game. You are the character shooting Nazis, or zombies, or gangsters. You see the world through their eyes because their eyes are your eyes. You connect in a very real way with your avatar because you are the one saving the girl, or killing the bad guys, or, in some cases, killing the good guys.

You get to be someone without limits or morality if you choose. You can be the hero, or you can waste your time writing your name in the wall with bullet holes. Movies are passive; the violence in them is seen and not actually experienced. In games, especially FPS games, you on the couch are the one perpetrating all sorts of heinous acts by your own actions. This fact is one of the reasons legislators blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting... but socially normal people can tell the difference. No matter how immersive a game is, when you turn it off, you're back in the real world. Sure, you might be a little sweaty and your adrenaline will be pumping, but you can tell the difference. Games are the best (legal) form of escapism on the planet. Everybody wants to get out of their own skin sometimes... what better way then to get into someone else's space boots and mow down some aliens?

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Part I - What makes RPG's so great?

There are three things people expect, want, and need out of every role-playing game: a solid story, a good amount of playtime, and a sense of growth/progress through the game.

First, the story. Think of the most memorable storylines in video games. Think of the characters you connected with the most. Think of the time Aeris died. These are all in RPG's. When you spend eighty hours of your life in a fictional world, there had better be some people there that you can't live without. With the growth of technology, the power to tell stories with increasingly dramatic panache helps keep RPG nerds glued to their screens far into the early hours of the morning. We see things in the characters we wouldn't notice at first glance as we become better acquainted, like moving in with your girlfriend of three months. You notice little character quirks and flaws you wouldn't see at first, but instead of becoming disgusted, it makes your characters/girlfriends feel even more real and important to us. Gamers usually don't play RPG's for the battle system. They play to see and be in control of their own epic story. They finish the games to see what transpires between real, believeable characters. People don't care about the characters in Halo; if your sidekick dies, big deal. If you play FFVII and you have an integral part of your party snatched away after 30 hours of playtime, you get mad. That connection makes RPG's interesting, and they will continue to be long into the forseeable future.

Next is the length of the game. No other genre (excluding games you can play online ad nauseum) makes you expect sixty hours of playtime as almost the average. At $60 a pop, that's a whopping dollar per hour. In today's economy, gamers and people in general are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck. When Fable came out with its paltry 15-hour length, people actually got livid over its length. I know people that would not buy a fifteen-hour-long RPG because they expect more game. But Metal Gear Solid 2 was about that long including ten hours or so of dialogue, and people flipped over it and would gladly pop down fifty bones for it while Fable sat next to it on the shelf, a sad and neglected step-child that nobody loves. It took me 100 hours to complete Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with all 1250 achievement points (including the expansion). That one game took a year and a half.

A year and a half.

Name a game in another genre in which you can discover something new a year and a half after you started playing it. There aren't other games with this kind of longevity. Another reason RPG's are special.

Finally, the sense of growth. In nearly all RPG's, your characters level up, get stronger, and get all around better as the game goes on. You uncover new abilities, or you can jump higher and run faster, or you are merely more capable of exploring farther into the world. This aspect of RPG's harkens all the way back to games like Dragon Warrior on the original NES. There was one save point, and it was in the castle in which you started the game. In order to even venture into the wilderness very far, you had to build your strength fighting weak slimes and bats and rats until you could make it more than three steps from the castle without having to run back to the Inn. But you got stronger. After a few hours, you find that you can turn bosses that once gave you a hard time into jelly with one whack of your trust Iron Broadsword. You become able to heal yourself without retreating to a town. You find stronger weapons and armor on the corpses of fallen foes and you become increasingly more mighty. Eventually, your powers rival those of the gods. You feel cool in real life because your game avatar can beat the pants off any wandering monster with a simple push of the A button. That power makes RPG's great.

The growth aspect of RPG's is so influential that even games such as Call of Duty 4 use it in their online play. You use a gun long enough, you get better with it, and you get more powerful guns. Metroid and Castlevania have been using the power-up-then-go-to-a-previously-inaccessible-part-of-the-world formula for decades. Without growth, there is only stagnation. People know this. Game developers know this.

Even my blog has growth. I'm past 50 posts! Ba-DOOP! Level up. RPG's are awesome, and I just showed you why.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Note to self

Before I start my huge blogging extravaganza, I have to make a point. I have been writing in this thing basically every day for almost two months, and it takes all my non-working time. Since I started a video game blog, I haven't had time for video games. Sweet irony! I've played Fallout 3 once since I bought it back in November. ONCE! I miss my games and their sweet escapism. But I started this, and I have an obligation to continue. I'll just have to cut into my sleep schedule I guess. I can sleep when I'm dead. There's games in heaven, right? And up there I can even 5-star "Through the Fire and Flames" on expert. I rock!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Oooohhhh... a multi-part feature!

Tomorrow I will be starting, you guessed it, a multi-part feature. "Neat!" you say, or "What is this all about?" For the next however many days I choose, I will break down, "What makes genre X so interesting?" There are many new games blending genres into blockbuster games, but back in the day, there were pure RPG's, pure FPS's, and pure racing games. I'll examine the aspects of each that created a loyal following for particular gamers. Some people only buy Madden each year, while others only really enjoy JRPG's. Why? Hopefully, I'll explain it very eloquently while defining the aspects that need to be present in the Perfect Game. Not the perfect game of all time - people's tastes are far too divergent. But at least I can get close for the genre. I hope.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Sequelitis

Games keep getting better. Every new generation, graphical prowess increases. We now have something in games, apparently, called "physics." The ways in which we interact with games change, as does what we expect out of our software.

Sequels should take a great concept of a new IP and improve upon it while still retaining the soul of the original. It should be better and more fun than the original, or it will just be the Star Wars prequels. So I have a question: when sequels suck, does that make the original game less fun? My answer seems to be: maybe.

Gamers are constantly crying for innovation in their games, yet millions of people buy crappy movie tie-ins every year. When Devil May Cry was first released, critics and consumers loved it. It was Resident Evil if your character wasn't a mook. When Devil May Cry 2 came out, it was almost universally hated. My favorite review quote for DMC2 was "...one of the most disappointing sequels in gaming history." (Find that particular review here.) When a sequel sucks that much, it definitely tarnishes the franchise and the developer's integrity, but does it make the first game seem worse just by being associated with it?

In movies, sequels are almost expected to be worse than the original (except Spider-Man 2). In games, if you're not pushing the franchise and the industry forward, you may as well have been vaporware for all anyone cares. Parappa the Rapper 2 is the first game, but easier and with worse songs. That's not OK with me. That's why number 2 isn't revered as a classic of the genre, or a must-buy for the system. The original Parappa is.

Still, Fallout 3 is a masterpiece. Tony Hawk 3 is sublime (let's just ignore all the ones that have came out since then). GTA IV is the best that the series will get before the formula becomes stale. Sequels are easier than creating full games, and need to be better than the originals to even be viable in today's tough economy. People don't have as much disposable money as they used to, and they don't want to waste it on games that aren't guaranteed to be great. Try your best, game developers. Please?

Friday, March 20, 2009

Another first time

I won my PlayStation in a bingo game.

The youth center in the place I grew up had weekly bingo. For $2 you could play ten cards in a row, with increasingly better prizes. They ranged from a bucket of candy to CD's to pogo sticks to the granddaddy of them all, a brand new Sony PlayStation. It was the final game and you had to blackout your card in less than 55 called numbers. The amount of numbers that could be called increased each week, guaranteeing that it would be won eventually. I won it. I jumped up and down yelling "BINGO!" and even had my picture taken and stapled to the wall. I was the envy of my school.

It came with one controller and a demo disc. Luckily, it was early December. Guess what I wanted for Christmas? That's right: Crash Bandicoot and Ridge Racer - the best early PlayStation games.

Now I have hundreds of PlayStation games and my interest has carried over into the new generations and will continue to grow for the rest of my life. My dad wished I would have gone outside or something instead of living in my fictional digital worlds... too bad I won a PlayStation. My life has never been the same since that fateful night.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

My first time

I went to visit my grandparent's house one time when I was about 4 years old, and they had gotten this new thing at a garage sale called a "Nintendo." It was plugged into the TV in the living room, and a little pixelated man would move and jump across the screen when you pushed buttons on the controller. Because it was so new and unique to everyone in the house, I only got to play for about 3 minutes before someone older and more experienced in the ways of the world wrenched the controller away from me, leaving me to look on while they enjoyed this 8-bit wonder. They weren't palying Mario Bros. They were playing Rygar.

When my parents brought me back to my house later, they had a surprise: Grandpa had given us the Nintendo! My dad plugged it in and I lost myself in the world that had always been there, waiting for me. Of course, I wasn't even able to get past the first boss. I blamed it on lack of skill and inexperience, but even today, I can't beat Rygar's last boss. I realize now just how far games have come. The original TMNT game on the NES wasn't hard, it was just poorly designed. Same with Rygar. Even with a strategy guide, you will only have one chance to defeat King Ligar at the end after three long, saveless hours. Games today are a lot more forgiving and ultimately enjoyable. Still, there's something about the first time you are the one controlling what happens on TV instead of being merely a passive observer. It's very empowering, even for a 4-year-old.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A limerick for a hassled day

There once was a game on 360
I thought that it might just be nifty
But it was a new MMO
So now it's a no-show
Guess I'll go play Final Fantasy...

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

360 = PS3

Back in the day, exclusives were what made the system. There weren't just a few first party titles separating on console from the next. The N64 had plenty of great games that you couldn't find anywhere else (maybe due to the cartridge format, maybe due to the fact that relatively few third-parties made stellar N64 games, with Rare being the most notable exception). Now, the Wii has the original games (mostly crap - games don't down-port well), while the big boy systems are virtually identical. PS3 has Blu-Ray, Killzone, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, and Metal Gear. Xbox 360 has Xbox Live, Achievements, Halo, Fable, and a lot of limited-time exclusives (Bioshock, Orange Box, GTA IV DLC, Rock Band). Besides this handful of games/features, the two systems are practically identical. Even the controllers are equal. (Although the innovation factor goes to Sony for popularizing the dual sticks with the first PlayStation back in the day... remember Ape Escape?)

When you can play the same games on either system, you have to buy a console for the one game you really really want to play, or you get the one your friends have so you can play online with them, or you pick the one that's cheaper (360), or you pick the one with Blu-Ray (PS3), or you pick the one with achievements. Achievements are in every 360 game and are probably the biggest reason multi-platform games sell better on Microsoft's system every single time. Try to ignore them, if you can. But who would have thought something as simple as a Ba-DOOP could help Microsoft pull far, far ahead in the console wars?

Monday, March 16, 2009

Dork for Zork

So GameTap has a bunch of free games until June... and since they're free, I've been trying some games that I've known about but have never had the chance to actually try.

And I found Zork. A text-based adventure game from the Apple II days. The entire game is 100 kilobytes and it is awesome. There's no graphics; you get to use your mind! It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book but you get to type what you want to do besides just turn the pages!

Sorry if I'm two decades late to the Zork party. I'm still at the point where you type dirty things into it like the first time ANYONE used the PictoChat function on their DS (remember the April Fool's game Wangdoodler in the Game Informer a few years back?). It's funny seeing your computer respond to you "Suicide is not the answer" or "I do not recognize the word 'masturbate.'" Ahhh, childhood.

Once you get the interface down (look, go, take, jump), there seem to be no limits to what you can do. The game makes you feel that you could do anything as long as you can figure out the right configuration of words. I managaed to jump into the Grand Canyon within 5 minutes. Awesome. Just like real life.

GameTap also has a few other text-based imitators, including a sci-fi game called Suspended which is way less user-friendly, and there are a handful of Zork sequels also for free play until June. Anyway, I gotta go back into my imagination now. Bioshock is cool but there's just something incredibly addictive about the possibility of doing anything in a game, even if you can't figure out how to at first.

"Punch door." "You broke your hand. Good job whiz kid."

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Watchmen - book/movie/game loved/liked/hated

The Watchmen graphic novel is a beautiful piece of American literature, loved universally for its dark, parallel reality of what could have been. The movie has scores ranging from 20 out of 100 to 100 out of 100 on MetaCritic. Critics loved the atmosphere, and the story wasn't completely butchered in the medium transition, but they didn't like that it was an action film with slow motion figth scenes and whatnot. The comic was not an action comic; it was a philosophy comic. The movie's praise was not nearly as universal as the comic, but at least it was still loved by some people. The Watchmen game on XBLA takes the lore and universe of Watchmen and simplifies it into a very beautiful (by Live Arcade standards) but shallow brawler. What's worse, it's episodic, so you don't even feel like you get a whole game. What's even worse, it's $20. The same price as the sublime GTA IV DLC, which is about 6 times the length and 10 times the value and fun.

Of course they were going to release a Watchmen game to go along with the movie. And I for one am glad that they made it a prequel instead of trying to craft something playable out of the ridiculously layered and complex narrative of the graphic novel. Still, what could they do with it instead of making it a pretty, graphic brawler? I don't know. Maybe tried to make it into a pretty, graphic, fun brawler? A hard concept to swallow, I know. But the Watchmen deserve some respect.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

45... 37... 21... Price Hike!

For the first time in the history of video games, the price of a system may actually go up, at least in England. Citing exchange rate fluctuations, Nintendo will raise the wholesale price by about £19‭. So far, nobody is really sure if the price increase will simply be absorbed by retailers or if consumers will take the economy-sized bite in the form of an MSRP increase. Even if the price doesn't increase, the Wii will become the first console to maintain its launch price for two whole years. Not too bad for the most powerful, weakest system of this generation.

In related news, numbers of online users for the three systems are in, and the 360 was the clear winner. In second place was the Wii, with PS3 bringing up the rear. That's right, Wii beat PS3. I don't know if its because of the sheer numbers of Wii's versus PS3's, or if the Wii just has a more satisfying online component. HA! It's probably because Virtual Console games are, in general, more interesting to video game geeks than PSN games (except Echochrome and Pain... sweet). It's impressive though, considering what a hassle it is to get the Wii online. You have to buy an ethernet adaptor! For 30 bucks! Weak.

Friday, March 13, 2009

WiiWare's next hit?

There is a "new" game coming soon for WiiWare called Bit.Trip Beat. It looks like Pong with Geometry Wars music. You can see a video here. It seems neat, for about 2 minutes. I was incredibly interested at first, "Oh hey, a Wii game that's trying something different! Maybe this game can be as good as World of Goo was. Maybe people will even pay for this one." (Apparently about 90% of the World of Goo downloads were stolen for free by Wii hackers) But, sadly, no... it's all style and no substance. I shouldn't get tired of playing a game before the preview trailer was over.

Maybe this is one of the reasons there aren't free demos on the Wii like on Xbox Live. Maybe it's because the Wii has a hard drive capacity that rivals and Apple II. Maybe they could come up with some kind of rental program where you can play the complete game for a day or two for a few bucks. Then you don't have to risk your $15 on some Wii Crap.

You know that the original Xbox Live Arcade games cost $2?! What happened to that? I miss that. But I never had Xbox Live on the original Xbox. I was like everyone else. I had a PS2.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Dreamcast is almost as powerful as a Super Nintendo

So my friend (that's right, I have one) Nate introduced me to this Super Nintendo emulator on the Dreamcast called DeamSNES.  It has a lot of the good ol' games (EARTHBOUND!) but the only problem is... I don't think the Dreamcast 128-bit GPU can handle the strain of  Super Nintendo graphics.  Mario is choppy and the sounds is midi-fied.  Sad.  Chrono Trigger and FF3 sounded so pretty from my other old dusty gray console...

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Things that make you go vroom

Game engines are a necessary evil. Still, they're a lot like the Associated Press. When all papers have the same news stories, every newspaper is the same and it doesn't matter where you live. The journalistic integrity is unanimous. When all first-person-shooters share the Unreal engine, all first-person-shooters feel the same. No game company, not even EA, can afford to create every single new game entirely from scratch. The development tools are the same. The graphics are all created from the same basic polygons. Physics are physics. Game conventions exist and become cliche because people in general are afraid to try something new, something unique. Mirror's Edge bombed. Okami single-handedly destroyed Clover Studios. Every Tim Schafer game is critical gold and commercial dookie. RPG's still employ the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system (strength, perception, endurance, intellect, agaility, luck) 20 years after it was created, with relatively few tweaks. People still play RPG's. They cry for a new, original game (Viewtiful Joe) but then nobody buys it when it's released. Consumers are destroying video game ideas like they destroyed American pop music. Thanks, movie licenses.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Quake 3.1

So the Quake Live Beta has been up for awhile now, and it's fun. However, it's not impressive. It is merely a free Quake 3.

You spawn. You find armor and a rocket launcher. You try to kill others while not dying. Sure, there are assorted game variants like Capture the Flag and Deathmatch, but nothing that hasn't been done before just as well. The graphics are about PS2 quality, a far cry from other PC shooters like, well, Far Cry 2.

It's not new, but it's still fun, and it's free. But a lot of older, similar games are just about as free. You can download the original Half-Life off Steam for $4.99 (or free on BitTorrent LOL). It's not a $60 next-gen game. But it does remind you why you play Quake 3 so much back in the good ol' days. Nostalgia is neat. But Street Fighter IV shows that it can be even neater than just a re-hash. Well, for $60.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

OMG!

The team that made Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is finally getting ready to release their next game and they're going to announce it at E3 2009! Yay! First the first time in years, people will care about E3. The new game still won't sell... but it will be awesome.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Best Metagame Ever!

Even though I don't know any other metagames.

The reason 360 games consistently sell better than PS3 games that are exactly the same is simple: achievements. This fact is not lost on gamers, retailers, or game developers. There was even a new metagame created with the sole purpose of finding achievements (a self-aware game about games). Instead of having the goals of the game rewarded with achievements, the achievements are the goal, unashamedly. You can find the game here, and there's hints if you have problems finding all the achievements. And you know you want to find them all... they're achievements. They're important...

...for some reason. Nobody's figured out why yet but you gotta catch 'em all! It's maddening.

Also, check out all the pop culture references, from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Frank Miller's 300 to the Konami code... do you get all the in-jokes? If you do you can be in my in-crowd - my ultra-geeky in-crowd of lonely dudes that have never been in-girls.

Friday, March 6, 2009

GameTap's New Pricing System = More Money.

Right now, there are a bunch of free games on GameTap, and you can play the rest of them for $10 a month or $60 a year. Starting March 18, you can play them all for $10 a month or $80 a year, or you can get their "Classic Pack" which includes 500 classic arcade games you can play right in your browser for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Luckily, if you sign up for GameTap before then, you're grandfathered into their classic pricing system for life. Quick! Pay monthly to play games on your computer that you got bored of years ago when they were on consoles! Or not. Only shooters and strategy games work on PC...

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Out with the old, part 2

Toys 'R' Us is starting to buy used games. Amazon is starting to buy used games. Who else buys used games? Not me. Apparently, both places are only offering credit for old games, and not as much as you can get at GameStop. Still, you can use the Amazon credit for anything on their website. But the only thing I bought there was video games and the occasional board game anyway, so the advantages would be lost on me. Oh well. I'll stick to buying my used games at pawn shops, where creepy old shopkeepers don't know anything about the real value of games. But I'll still hang out with the nerds at GameStop!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Go. Outside.

Halo 3 just broke the record for most wasted time. There have been over 1 billion online matches, equal to 64,000 years of life wasted online. Say a person today lives 100 years (not too hard to imagine, considering the rate science is progressing). That would be the entire lifetimes of 640 people. That's about six times the size of my graduating class. That's a lot of time that could have been spent better. Still, most of my graduating class is wasting their lives anyway (including me), so who am I to judge? Oh wait, I remember... I'm on the Internet. Judging is what we do here!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Out with the old

I have never traded in a game to GameStop, or sold a game at a pawn shop or a garage sale. I know if I ever got rid of a game, even one that I haven't played in years, I would immediately miss it. I have an old copy of Pokemon Yellow somewhere, and if I dug it out of the closet and put it on eBay I know I'd have a hankering to get my hands on some Pokeballs right after I pack it up and ship it out. When I moved out of my parent's house, I would find myself going back there just to pick up random, obscure game that I couldn't get out of my head for some reason or another. Road Rash for the Soundgarden soundtrack. Skullmonkeys for that one movie where Klaymen eats a whole can of beans... with his eye socket. Seaman for the Leonard Nimoy greeting when you boot up your Dreamcast. It's the little details in the games that stick in your head, just like the little details in life. The smell of a girl's hairspray. A sunset over an abandoned parking lot. A smile from the driver in the car next to you. Details are important. They might even be all that's important.

If I got rid of an old game, I would be giving up on it. I'd be saying, "I will never enjoy you again." That's a much bigger commitment than simply leaving it on my shelf to gather dust, making it wait until one day when I am bored or lonely enough to come back to it and treat it like it once more has that virginal "new game smell." Gamers are fickle. I am fickle. What's new and great one second is all but forgotten the next. But maybe, if we wait long enough, things don't have to be forgotten forever.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Wii-makes

Instead of creating new IP's, Nintendo has decided to remake old games. Yay. Pikmin, Mario Tennis, and (soon) Metroid Prime - three GameCube classics - are being remade using Wii's motion controls for $30 each. Apparently, the games control really well using the new controllers, but the qestion is, will anyone care? With so many new and exciting games in the market today, will people really want to play ten-year-old games on the least next-gen system of all next-gen systems? There're a lot of Wiis out there... I'm sure someone will buy them. And good games are good no matter how old they are. Also, the potential of the Wii's controls is still mostly unrealized by almost every game on the system; maybe gamers will take whatever neat games they can find?

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Loading... Loading... Loading...

So here I am, waiting. Downloading demos on Steam. Downloading free games on GameTap because I haven't decided if it's worth paying for a membership yet (although I could just waste hundreds of My Coke Rewards points). And waiting in line for the Quake Live Beta. I'm number 5017 in the queue. It's not as bad as it sounds. At the start of this post I was #6005. And Quake is worth waiting for, especially when it's free.

Also considering playing one of the dozens of games I bought but haven't had a chance to pop in yet. Left 4 Dead, Blue Dragon, The World Ends With You, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, GTA: San Andreas. Quite a collection. Wish I had the time. Oh wait, I do. Gotta go now.