Second verse same as the first?

So hey, Peter Moore is leaving Microsoft for Electronic Arts. When have we seen this before? Dreamcast gamers will remember when the chump left Sega in the days of the console’s waning to go to MS, and that he was influential in the canceling of Shenmue 2 in favor of an Xbox port.

I remember reading a very angry IGN forum post years ago, in which an avid Sega fan went over all the stupid things that Moore was responsible for. While I don’t remember any of it, I do remember it being convincing enough to give me a permanently sour taste for the man. During his time with MS friends would try to convince me that Moore was actually a pretty good industry power, but even as he slapped crazy tattoos on his arm he still bugged the shit out of me. →  Read the rest

A plea

Yes, a bit of a plea in this semi-E3 season, which will quickly lead into the pre-holiday hype season. To all internet dwelling gamers and game journalists:

1) Please do not use the term SKU anymore. You aren’t retail managers or inventory workers. Did the words “Model” and “version” go stale or something? Or are you just trying to sound smart about an area of the industry you don’t know?

2) Please stop analyzing teaser trailers of games. You’ll get them in your hands sooner or later. Weren’t you all telling me that GTA was great for its sandbox gameplay? And now you’re analyzing every bit and piece of the new one to find out about the story and characters? Have we all just become bipolar or something?

Stop bothering with this crap. →  Read the rest

Some more Gears to Grind

So despite my bickering about a page in a game manual, Gears of War ain’t too shabby. Not mind numbingly, ballistically good, but if that was a requirement for every game what would we play? I have a couple thoughts about it though; maybe you would like to hear them.

– Greg Kasavin of Gamespot said some video clip I watched about Resident Evil 4 that it was an experience he expected not to see until the next generation. Now the next gen is the current gen, and it seems that RE4 certainly set the tone for the experiences we would see. Gears of War is very much in the same vein as Resident Evil 4, and not simply because they share the same perspective. Both are finely tuned action games in which every scene is meticulously crafted and yet every fight has the potential to play out differently. →  Read the rest

What happened to competition? From arcades to gamerscores

Remember high scores. You don’t see them around very much, though they still pop up in some of my favorite new games. But why exactly did they begin to disappear? We generally hear explanations involving the rise of story based games and other such nonsense, but when three of the most popular games of the decade are Halo, Madden and World of Warcraft, it is tough to accept this as an era of Single Player. There must be another reason.

Before we look for that reason, we should start from the beginning and look at the nature of the high score. There were surely hacks and exploits available in some classic games (as any Street Fighter fan will know), but I would like to think they weren’t commonplace, and that more often than not the list of high scores in an arcade cabinet was the honest work of skilled players. →  Read the rest

What Call of Duty has taught me about the Wii

I’m just about willing to say that Call of Duty 3 is the most important game on the Wii right now. I couldn’t even finish it, yet it showed me a lot about the console that I never thought about before (or simply disregarded as false).

For instance, we’ve all heard the complaints from lazy gamers who are afraid of being active when playing the Wii, thinking they will get tired after only a few short minutes. Even before launch this was often mocked, and once people started playing, it seemed even sillier. But it isn’t silly at all. True, most games will not tire you out – even Wii Sports won’t unless you play it like a workout. In fact I’d say the Wii makes things much less tiring by allowing you to hold the controller in a variety of positions. →  Read the rest

Rwise fwum my gwave!

Hi folks, its me again. I know I’ve been absent for a little while (a week’s time on the ‘net is an eternity), but I’m posting to let you know I haven’t left. Last week I started an adventure that had me going to Maryland and looking for work.

Suffice to say it worked, and come 2-3 weeks from now I’ll have a place to stay and a full time job (the latter of which is already taken care of). Once that’s over, expect me to return with plenty of articles harassing the industry, myself, and you.

PS – I beat Gears of War. It got better as it went along!

Retail Woes

In this post, I must air some grievances I have with certain retail companies. Someone call me a waaaaambulance, because I might need it.

– Why does Blockbuster suck so much when it comes to game rentals? Every store I’ve encountered always seems to be cleaned out of its new, and even 2-3 month old releases. It took me a good month or more to find God of War 2, and at a trip to my brother’s home, we couldn’t find any Wii games aside from the absolute dregs of the licensed pit. We couldn’t even try Chicken Little out if we wanted to.

The reason I find their game shortages so odd is that I can always find the same games without trouble at Hollywood Video, and for a few dollars cheaper on the rental. →  Read the rest

Pollen Sonata

Pollen Sonata is an indie game project that one day hopes to get released on the Wii. For now, they simply have a gameplay trailer, background info and a tech demo (Half Life 2 and Steam required).

According to the website, the goal of Pollen Sonata is to “create a game that gives the player a unique experience that feels like a fresh breath of air from current games in the market. We are striving for innovation in gameplay and story. The feeling and mood of the game is [sic] poetic and serene, unfolding like a beautiful piece of music.” This seems to be the case when watching the trailer, which shows a charming background story, calming music and colorful visuals.

Problems arrive however when playing the tech demo. While the graphics would surely be polished for a retail release, the gameplay itself is like the jetpack level of Pilotwings. →  Read the rest

Twinkle Star Sprites

A random Gametap update hit this Tuesday. I hit the list to see what they could have possibly put out on a non-update day.

What’s this? Twinkle Star Sprites? Twinkle Star Sprites?

Twinkle Star Sprites? Hooray!!

Wait a minute, why is it that I’m so excited about Twinkle Star Sprites? I have absolutely no clue. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it being mentioned a million times on various game sites and forums whenever the Neo Geo comes up. Somehow the name became ingrained in my mind, as if it was done by a secret government project and I’m the next Manchurian Candidate. I’m afraid if I don’t play it (or maybe if I do play it), I’m going to start sleepwalking and find myself as a presidential candidate in four months. →  Read the rest

Is your ego satisfied?

I played DDR this weekend. My first DDR’ing in almost two years. My brother wanted to see me “in action”, the way I was in a darker part of my life, and I had to oblige.

The version was Supernova. New to me, but it all worked the same. Same Playstation-esque graphics. Same annoying announcer. Same high quality pad that still feels kind of innacurate at times.

And an absolute truckload of songs. A few I’ve seen before, many I haven’t. With just three songs at my disposal and an embarrassingly quiet arcade around me, I couldn’t cycle through them all. I don’t think I would have if I had the chance. It is one thing to have a lot of content. It is another to have content you may never actually get around to enjoying. →  Read the rest

Saturn is the sixth planet :)

Let’s do some Saturn speculation. The original Panzer Dragoon was just released on Gametap this week. After months of waiting to get my hands on this classic, I fired the baby up, only to watch as it ran at a cripplingly slow, unplayable framerate. Now my machine isn’t the beefiest thing on the block, but it can still run a good deal of modern games at above minimum specs. If it can do Half Life 2 at 1024, why the hell not Panzer Dragoon?

The basic answer is simple; the game’s recommended specs ask for 512 megs of RAM, 128 meg card, and a CPU better than 2.0 Ghz (My machine fulfills two of those three criteria). But why such ridiculous specs for such an old game? It was the first of many clues, and after putting the pieces together, I can safely say that Gametap is in fact emulating the Sega Saturn. →  Read the rest

Review – Metal Slug Anthology

Old games don’t stop aging, and when they get old enough anniversaries are certain to pop up. These are great opportunities for everyone in gaming. Publishers get a fantastic excuse for re-releasing old games from dead platforms, and despite what message board all-stars will tell you, gamers can also benefit from these “franchise-milking opportunities”. They give some a chance to play a classic they missed out on, or for an old fan to have an entire series on one neat little disc. Good times all around.

Except it is rarely the case where things work out so squeaky clean. Sometimes a company will take it too far, such as Nintendo’s audacity to charge twenty dollars a pop for NES games that had a 50% chance of being tucked away somewhere in Animal Crossing. →  Read the rest

Review – God of War 2

Here is a checklist of some of the highlights from the original God of War: challenge a god, escape from Hades after being killed, defeat numerous figures from Greek mythology, murder a soldier in order to solve a puzzle, travel to a variety of shiny temples, hunt down ancient treasures in order to face your foes, obtain mythical powers from the gods. Like it or not, the pieces came together to make a game that was more than merely successful.

But what happens when the sequel does the exact same thing? The story, gameplay, pacing and visual style of God of War 2 is almost identical, as if they took the old checklist from the drawer, rearranged a few things, and got right to work on making enough behind the scenes features to span their own disc, which I suppose proves how much more work they did compared to the first time. →  Read the rest

TV in and Out

While waiting at home to hear back from employers, I’ve been spending time fiddling with the electronics in my room. I finally attempted to put the S-video out on my video card to use, and got my TV set hooked up to the PC. It has become something of a revolution for me, being able to play the multitude of arcade classics on Gametap on a big display with decent sound instead of from my computer stool. I’m trying out all sorts of games that I never gave a chance before now that I have an opportunity to play them from a more comfortable position. Perhaps I’ll utilize this to do more reviews of old school games!

More importantly, I’ve discovered that there is some use for this old TV after all. →  Read the rest

Weekend post 5.26.06

Random thoughts to occupy you after Memorial Day weekend (none of you are reading this during the weekend, I can assure you).

– I’m finding it harder and harder to dispute that Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is not the greatest fighting game ever made. I’ll still give that to SF2 for now, but no matter how much I suck at Third Strike (and I do), I never load up the game without having fun, and I honestly feel like I play it smarter than most other fighters (prob. because it forces me too). I’m even starting to warm up to its poorer backgrounds. Who else wants to give this one some love?

– Jay has the staff working on a super secret project that, get this, no one is actually working on! →  Read the rest

Professional Gaming – Keep Reaching for that Rainbow!

I’m pretty sure there are others like me who look at professional gaming and shake their heads. Not in a “lol golf is not a sport!” way, but in a “you kids have no idea how sports work, do you?” way. Looking at some of the drama behind the World Cyber Games and their woes with Command and Conquer 3, I still haven’t changed my opinion on the matter.

The article is long, but here’s the synopsis: The Cyber Games (or rather EA) are picking the best CnC players through invites to the highest ranked players. Some feel this is a problem because some of the players are ranked artificially high due to disconnecting from a bad match, and many of the most effective strategies won’t be usable in the Cyber Games when the new patch hits. →  Read the rest

You down with DLC (Yeah you kno’ me!)

Some rumblings from Valve promising that they won’t charge for extra content in their future games. I’m still trying to figure out what this means, or rather, what importance this has. New maps were provided for Team Fortress Classic by Valve in the past, and Half Life Deathmatch was a gift as well. All this announcement does is confirm they’re the same thing as always.

Or is it? Many gamers have mocked the announcement as being a bunch of baloney, pointing out that Epic said the same thing about Gears of War before Microsoft twisted their arm to twist our arms. Maybe Valve is afraid the same will occur to them. I’m also skeptical about whether this will actually hold true simply because of Valve’s practices over the years. →  Read the rest

Gears of Warrghh

I spent this past weekend post graduation at my friend’s house waiting for a Monday job interview. This of course means that Sunday night was a rare chance for me to play some 360, and this time there was only one choice as to what I was pulling off his his bookshelf; Gears of War.

What I played of the game was pretty fun – I think – but that’s not what I’m here to discuss. The thing on my mind is page one of the instruction manual. You probably don’t know what I’m talking about, even if you own the game (no one reads manuals but me right?), but it contains an introduction to the game by Cliffy B. He goes on about how it has great AI and physics and graphics, but mostly discusses what he did to create a truly “next-generation” game. →  Read the rest

There’s a bug in your review

There’s a bit of a controversy about a certain Spiderman 3 review that may or may not have been based on demo impressions instead of the retail game. I don’t care much about uncovering the truth. Instead, I’d like to discuss a problem this fiasco brings up about our modern review system.

A lot of people commenting on this news piece claim that if the reviewer actually had retail copies, then they should have mentioned some of the crippling technical flaws that many sites seem to be mentioning. Having not played the game(s) myself, I can’t say just how bad these glitches are. Putting Spiderman aside, though, imagine if the review were for that game that had some definite glitches in it, but the reviewer never actually encountered them in their play through. →  Read the rest

Mass Fatigue

Mass Effect may have close to a 400,000 words in its script.

Hoo boy.

I’m probably the only person who looks at this game and says “what fucking waste”. There is absolutely no reason for that much wordiness in a game. Did they think I came to their game to read four – five novels worth of text? This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts, because people always seem to encourage them. I could deal with the dialogue in Planescape: Torment, because it was good and I read it at my own pace. Then Knights of the Old Republic came around, and Bioware wasted thousands of words, because I didn’t listen to a word of the excruciatingly slow spoken dialogue. I can only see Mass Effect getting even worse than that. →  Read the rest