Random Crap

Stuff that doesn’t fit into one of the other categories goes here.

Where Have All the Villains Gone?

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Is it me, or is there a huge lack of crazy and demented villains running amok in our games? I mean, where have all the Sephiroths gone? Is the world filled with shiny, happy people now or something?

Seriously, there are no more fiendishly awesome villains anymore. Most villains nowadays only show up as bosses at the end of the game. A villain to me is someone that continually ravages the game’s universe throughout the entire adventure. He/she also has to be evil in every sense of the word. Some would even say that they are eeeeeevil. And you have to be scared of what they will do next. That’s where the real fear comes from. Sephiroth was completely insane. He was on a rampage for most of that game.

In my mind, there’s really only a few villains that fit that bill. →  Read the rest

The results of a gaming experiment

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Before the holiday season, I made a blog post about a little experiment I planned on undertaking over the break. I was going to be very choosy about which games I played, and the rules were something like this:

1. Nothing with too much story or too many cutscenes
2. Nothing with too much unlocking hell
3. Challenging is okay
4. Skill based is preferred

Essentially, I wanted a holiday break where the gaming was filled with old skool sensibility. It was quite a learning experience too, both about gaming in general and my own tastes.

Here are some of the titles I ended up playing, and what I thought about each.

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Twilight Princess: Zelda is the only game I pardoned from the first rule, not because it was the only story heavy game I was playing before the experiment, but because it was the only one I wanted to continue playing. →  Read the rest

Do Games Evoke an Emotional Response?

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Recently, my boss at work gave me a homework assignment. He wanted me to read Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design. It’s a great read for anyone looking to get into game design, and I highly recommend it.

But the reason I bring it up is to talk about the topic of art in games. Koster defines art as “entertainment where the communicative element is either novel or well-done.” I went a little further with the definition and included the fact that art must make you respond emotionally, in some sort of fashion. It doesn’t have to be a deeply emotional response always, but it does need you to respond thoughtfully from it. To even begin to communicate, you need something to say, something that you want the viewer to know and understand. →  Read the rest

I can’t shut up about Guitar Hero

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A slew of news about the franchise I can’t get off my mind. Come and get it!

– Rumors of a possible pedal accessory for future installments. A cool idea that could backfire. As Tycho at Penny Arcade mentioned, a peripheral for a peripheral is getting a bit crazy, and who knows if they would actually be a pack in or sold separately. Then there’s the question of whether they would have a direct effect on scoring. I would love to see it, but it would have to be done well for it to become an essential part of the game.

– I discovered that GH2 has a code for “hyper speed”, which is the same as a speed mod in a Bemani game. It basically makes the notes move faster, and thus become more spread out and easier to read (I know that might sound very confusing – it did to me at first. →  Read the rest

Suicidal Wii

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My Wii almost met with a tragic end this week when it decided to shut itself off for good. Apparently it couldn’t take the “Wii” jokes anymore.

Last night, as I walk in from a long day of doing nothing, my Wii’s little orangey-yellow light wasn’t on. I, sensing something wrong, did what all red-blooded Americans do: I hit it. I gave it good, hard slap in the self-loading disc drive. Nope, no good. I checked all the wires, all the outlets, and anything else related to the problem, but nothing worked.

Distraught over the loss of my one true friend, I decided to call up Nintendo and plan out a proper funeral for the little guy. With minimal wait time (props to Nintendo for the awesome background video game music while on hold, btw), I got connected with the proper authorities. →  Read the rest

The Ubi-Soft Effect

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Remember when Ubi-Soft was all gung-ho for the Wii? They jumped on the Wii like it was a free ticket to Pleasure Town.

For the uninformed, Ubi-Soft bet high on the Wii. They thought getting a head-start with the Wii would help them become the top publisher in gaming, besting the almighty EA. Since the launch of the Wii, Ubi-Soft has released 7 games in total, which is three more than Nintendo themselves(based on American release lists).

Interesting thing about this situation is the mentality behind making these games. You’d think after seeing Red Steel being showcased in Nintendo’s conference at this year’s E3 that Ubi-Soft wanted to bring gamers a more quality-centric release list, but has in fact done the complete opposite. After tallying up the average scores from Metacritic, Ubi-Soft’s titles have averaged a score of 54. →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun: Year end edition – The handhelds

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A few months ago I reported that the DS was an unstoppable juggernaut that had put quite some distance between itself and the PSP. Elsewhere on this site we have mentioned that PSP software sales have fallen off. After looking at some year end numbers on handheld sales, I hold to the argument that the DS will be (already is?) the victor in this generation of portable video games I think it may be a bit early to buy Sony’s product a headstone. Lets go to the proverbial video tape.

Both handheld companies entered 2006 with approximately 3.7 million units of hardware sold (DS had slightly more, PSP slightly less, but DS also had a three month head start). In the US the DS then outpaced the PSP by selling 5.3 million units (combined DS and DS Lite) while PSP managed a very respectable 3 million. →  Read the rest

This Week’s Releases: Megaton Edition

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Now that the holiday season has officially ended, video game releases are becoming pretty scarce. For this week, there are only eight new releases for all platforms, but you should only be paying attention to three of them.

First, we get the sequel to my favorite DS game of all time, Phoenix Wright: Justice for All. In this edition, we are introduced to a new mechanic called “Psych-Lock,” which is an ability that reveals the truth in your witness’s mind. Unfortunately, this is still just a port of a GBA game, Gyakuten Saiban 2. Even worse is that there isn’t any extra mission that takes advantage of the DS’s innovative hardware like the original DS outing. But with all those missed opportunities, I am still frothing at the mouth for this game. →  Read the rest

Dev Community Sips on Haterade, Trashes Sony

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Hopping on the “I hate Sony” bandwagon this week, Valve’s head-honcho Gabe Newell went on a tirade against the PS3 in a GameInformer interview. And I quote:

“The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted… I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ‘do over’. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.'”

Whew, those are some harsh words, Newell. There is just no more Playstation love these days. And this hasn’t been the first time this has happened, either. Last week, id’s John Carmack told GameInformer that he has disliked Sony’s subpar dev tools since the PS2. →  Read the rest

The Guitar Hero Wireless Controller

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A benevolent benefactor bequeathed to me a fantastic gift; the official Guitar Hero Wireless Controller. Now I come to report on it.

Its been a long time coming. There have been several unofficial wireless controllers on the market since the release of GH1, and people have found ways to modify their wired controllers, but it took until after the arrival of GH2 for Red Octane to launch their own wireless attempt. This is crucial because while third party wireless devices are still hit or miss with their responsiveness, official wireless stuff has proven to be quite reliable across all consoles. Second, most DDR players will tell you that Red Octane builds some quality stuff for the price, while their knockoffs usually suffer.
 

Both points prove to be true in the case of Guitar Hero controllers. →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun: Year end edition

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Heading into the holidays the question on the collective mind of the industry was which seventh generation system would emerge with the lead. For Xbox 360 this meant continuing to sell some units despite the fact that Nintendo and Sony were releasing their competitors in the market. For Nintendo and Sony, success meant shipping as many consoles to store shelves as possible and then selling all of them. So, now that the dust has settled, who has accomplished their goals, and who may be in trouble? It’s obviously too early to call the generation for one system or another, but the numbers do tell an interesting story. For our purposes, all the numbers below (unless otherwise noted) are US sales.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 had a year head start on both of the other consoles. →  Read the rest

Microsoft to Buy Capcom: Tssyeah, Right!

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Rumors were running rampant this week with the prospect that Microsoft (i.e., evil-incarnate) was going to buy Capcom, developer of the Resident Evil series and this week’s big 360 release, Lost Planet. This rumor is, in fact, not new. It was first started almost three years ago when Msoft was looking to get a better foothold in the Japanese market. They still need the foothold over there, but Capcom has been out its sights for sometime now. So once again, no, Microsoft is not buying Capcom.

But let’s think about that for a second.

Obviously, Msoft would get a huge surge in the popularity rankings by having Capcom in its portfolio. They’d get the rights to Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Dead Rising, Phoenix Wright, Megaman, Devil May Cry, and one of my personal favorites, UN Squadron. →  Read the rest

HD-DVD is the Bob-omb!

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A few weeks ago, Joystiq ran an article that linked to an in-store flyer with an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive priced for only $99. The actual price is $200. That’s a steal if I ever saw one. In my warped little mind, I couldn’t afford not to buy it.

So, with a little underhanded deviousness, I lied my way into getting the HD-DVD drive for half the MSRP. Obviously I giggled like a little school girl the moment I walked out of the store. But was it still worth it?

First off, the drive is very easy to setup. You just connect it to the 360 through a USB cable. You then update the 360 with the driver that comes with it. To then access the drive, the 360 will break the DVD Tray option into two different categories, letting you chose the DVD tray or the HD-DVD one. →  Read the rest

To Rumble or Not To Rumble?

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After getting into a small discussion over at 10-hit Combo on the lack of a rumble in the PS3 controller, I started to wonder if rumble is really all that useful. Does having your controller vibrate at certain points in a game make the game better, or are we lying to ourselves, making it seem more interesting than it really is?

After much mental and spiritual discovery, I came to the realization that it probably depends on the game. For FPS’s, I really need a rumble. If I don’t feel the controller shake when I pull that trigger, I cannot connect emotionally with a game. The rumble for me is the closest thing I can get to actually “feeling” a game. I can attain a higher level of immersion in a game with a rumble feature than I could if it didn’t include it. →  Read the rest

Digging our own grave

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This Friday, videolamer accomplished something it’s been striving to achieve for the past few months – an article of ours made it to the front page of digg.com. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a chance for a much wider audience to read our work turned into a minor debacle. Ah, the cost of success.

You may have noticed the 40 hours or so where the site was completely down. Turns out Host Gator, our not so competent host, suspended the videolamer account after the digg traffic crashed their server and took out other non-gaming sites with it. Why their server couldn’t handle the thousand or so page views is beyond me, but we have been forced to upgrade our plan to a semi-dedicated server.

This means you can feel free to sit at home and reload the front page 46 times a second, eagerly awaiting our wit and wisdom. →  Read the rest

N’Gai Croal to Phil Harrison: What’s Up With Rare?

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Following yesterday’s big news story about Rare’s departing co-founding brothers, Chris and Tim Stamper, N’Gai Croal of Newsweek interviewed Sony’s Phil Harrison and asked him what he thought of Rare’s recent decline in fame.

Can someone explain to me why he asked Sony this question? Did he willingly pick the most irrelevant person to ask, or was it, “Damn, I have this huge hole in my Q&A sheet. Hmmmm. Oh, I know what to fill it in with!”

Phil tries admirably to dodge the issue a bit, and tries to assume logically what happened.

“… I think that they became quite insular and quite inward-facing, and they missed some of the trends that were going on in the business generally. Now also, if you sell your company to Microsoft and get hundreds of millions of whatevers, currency in the bank, it does tend to defocus management a little bit.” →  Read the rest

The Madden Cycle

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Guess what the best selling game of 2006 was (or probably was)? Why am I even giving you guys a guess; its Madden 07 of course!

Like a lot of gamers, I guess you could say that Madden is wearing a little thin on me. I understand why it sells so well; the NFL has such a huge fanbase that even if a few disgruntled gamers decide to stop buying it, there’s an army’s worth to fill in the gap. I also understand the desire to play a good simulation of America’s most popular sport (I’m a diehard football fan myself). Despite this, I have no desire to play the game, and a lot of that has to do with what I call the “Madden Cycle”. Here’s how it goes:

1) EB/Gamestop employees remind me that Madden is coming out. →  Read the rest

Wii Virtual Console: Nostalgia Driven?

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With many obscure and unknown titles being released for Nintendo’s Virtual Console, many pundits are saying the service is merely driven by nostalgia; older gamers trying to relive their pasts by purchasing any game they grew up with, even if those games are horrible in nature. Many also think games from back then are too basic when compared to current games, and are not worth the time.

Personally, if you look at most of the NES titles, then yes, most games are a little too basic and will only be bought for nostalgia’s sake. Games like Mario Bros. (Arcade) and Ice Hockey do prove most critics’ points. But that’s only one console out of the possible five. You can’t deem something worthless when you’re accounting for only 20% of the situation. →  Read the rest

2007 Predictions With Some Sugar on Top

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2006 has come and gone, and it was one hell of a year. Nintendo raked in the dough like never before with the Wii and DS, Sony released the PS3 to somewhat lukewarm reviews, and the 360 started to come into its own with some stellar software. So what about 2007? What major stories are we going to be reporting this time?

For Nintendo, 2007 is going to be a hugely defining year. If the Wii can keep the momentum going, then it can truly be a comeback story. Wii Sports has done a great job at making the Wii an amazing experience, and it will probably keep the Wii’s popularity up for awhile.

Come this summer, however, and gamers are going to be asking for more. By then Nintendo will have probably revealed Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, as well as a few other titles to showcase the wii-mote with non-gamers in mind. →  Read the rest

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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From the gang at videolamer.

Here’s hoping 2007 bring you awesome video games, the money to buy them with, and the significant other to give you head while you play them (works for boys and girls!).