This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the
main page.
More songs about old games and food
28 February 08 | 22:24
So the
new Retronauts went up today. It is, I hope, the only time we will ever, ever exceed two hours. Honestly, I'd prefer if the podcast were kept to about an hour, so it sort of weirds me out that most of the people listening to our shows feel the more the merrier. Me, I don't have that much free time. I'm surprised that this episode seems to have gone over so well, because in my mind it's a total trainwreck. It's one very focused and interesting new angle on a topic we've explored before surrounded by a lot of aimless talk that's only sort of tangentially retro, so I kind of feel like I've failed on some primal level. The kids seem to like it, though, so who knows.
Equally surprising: our relaunch of 1UP's underpinnings seems to have gone off with remarkably few hitches. The site's a little glitchy, but it's running much faster than before, and frankly given the enormity of what they did this week -- namely,
completely switched over to an entirely new technology platform for the site -- I'm amazed it's gone this well. And, mercifully, no more numeric grades. I'd be happier without the plus/minus increments, but it's still a welcome, reductivist step in the right direction.
My apologies to the cult of 8.5. But not really.
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East side story
28 February 08 | 08:52
So, ah, my guilt got the best of me. After wondering aloud whether I should have done the import portion of
New Game+ on 1UP instead of here, my soul started nagging me until I revisited it in a
somewhat more professional manner. The emphasis in this alternate version is more on slightly sincere write-ups and analyzing the games' prospects to make it stateside. The formatting is hideous, but that'll be sorted out in future weeks. I guess.
I actually learned a few things, though. For instance, I had assumed Sony's
My Stylist was simply a sort of pocket guide to grooming or how to tell if your skin tone is an autumn or whatever, but no. It's actually
so much more awesome. Instead, the game (well, "game") contains a camera attachment and works by making the player ("player") snap photos of items in his or her wardrobe. Then it tells you whether or not they match.
I think I made Sharkey's day when I asked him if he'd preview it.
Anyway, a new Retronauts is due in a few hours. I say this a lot, so people probably don't believe me anymore, but this one's really kind of a mess. I'm telling you now so you can take the Retronauts feed out of your RSS aggregator and keep yourself safe.
Also, a few days ago I linked to a site that had a big photo post on
Etrian Odyssey II's warm reception in Akihabara (and the game ended up moving nearly 70,000 copies in a week, which is kind of mind-blowing given what a hardcore niche kind of gamer it is designed for). That post was fine, but I would like to recommend that you never, ever go back there, because after further examination it appears that an innocent post about retro RPGs is sort of atypical for them. Based on their front page, it appears they're much more interested in moé hentai comics and posting images of plastic figurines depicting bound, naked, underaged girls crapping on themselves. Is it my imagination, or has Japanese nerd culture begun developing some really alarming little niches over the past couple of years?
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Fresh-baked links
26 February 08 | 22:02
I have been a previewing
machine lately. And by lately I mean "within the past 24 hours." See:
Etrian Odyssey II
Although this write-up ultimately degenerates into obligatory F! O! E! references, the path it takes to reach that point is fairly lengthy. Circuitous, even. I tried something a bit different from usual with this one and dared to insert some first-person pronouns into the preview. First-person
singular. None of this silly Royal We nonsense! I did a fair amount of fact-checking on some of the gameplay details that remain obscured by the language barrier, so I'm confident that the parts I state as fact are correct and the parts offered as speculation... may not be.
Anyway, sometimes you can tell when I'm in love with a game, and I'm pretty certain this is one of those tragic cases where my heart is on my sleeve.
Fez
Also, this is another one. I think I'm out of things to say about
Fez at this point, though, having blogged about twice, talked about it on the 1UP Show, on EGM Live, and in this preview. I mean, it's just a one-level demo. Let's have some perspective here, eh?
Bangai-O Spirits
Bangai-O remains my favorite Treasure game to this day. I think I just appreciate the fact that it's quirky and challenging without being all ridiculous about it, unlike, say,
Alien Soldier. It's also more leisurely than most of their stuff, since you can take your sweet time getting through the levels. Of course, once you get going it promptly kicks your hinder, but at least you can sort of go at your own pace. That's important to me, for some reason. I hate being rushed. Anyway, ah, the DS version does things no one ever knew were possible with the hardware, and apparently it's going to have about 150 levels and a level builder and a bizarre, impractical system that lets you transfer save info with friends through WAV files. Oh, Treasure.
Crisis Core
Oh, yeah, and
Crisis Core. If you've seen the latest EGM you already know that I really enjoyed Crisis Core despite myself. I'm as surprised as you are.
You might also have noticed that 1UP has undergone some changes, beginning with the scoring system and ending with vastly improved performance... or so I hope. Please to enjoy.
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Earl Grey unlimited
25 February 08 | 22:19
Another week, another batch of week things. You know the drill.
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Column
Hey kids, it's movie time. Don't forget that your clicking on the Amazon links is all the compensation our poor columnist gets for his work. You don't actually have to buy the movies in questions -- I believe Amazon links are session-based, so as long as you enter the checkout after hitting the site from one of these links, he gets a (presumably tiny) cut for everything you buy. Be kind!
New Game+: Weekly Games Column
So, a couple of weeks ago -- er, maybe last week? It all runs together in my feeble, aging mind -- we added downloadable content summaries. This week, I've pitched in with import game summaries. Part of me feels a little guilty, like I should be doing this for 1UP instead. But after re-reading what I've written here... I'm pretty sure that would be a bad idea. A
really bad idea.
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Return to the labyrinth of the world tree
24 February 08 | 16:23
Now that the dust has settled from GDC, I can pause and appreciate what landed on my desk Friday:
Yes, it's
Etrian Odyssey II. Well,
Sekaiju No Meikyuu II. Plus bonus booklet and CD, which is being offered up as a sacrifice to Atlus USA in the hopes it will convince them to localize it. Not that I'm
too worried -- Etrian, if you've tried buying a copy lately, is nowhere to be found. Which means Atlus sold through its entire print run. Which, I am led to understand, is a sign that the game was a profitable success for Atlus. Which means there's zero reason for them not to localize the sequel.
Especially when you have moderately high-profile idiots calling the original the
second best game published in what might in fact be the single strongest year for gaming ever.
Please note that this time around it's a radically different game, as you're
ascending into the branches of the Yggsdrasil rather than descending into its roots. Madness!
Anyway, Atlus seems to be announcing new releases about three months before they actually ship, which means I still have until May (at the absolute minimum) to wrap up the original and secure that all-important end-game password. I guess I know what I'll be taking with me on vacation next month. I'll be in good company, I think -- apparently the original was quite the sleeper in Japan, slowly building impressive enough sales through word-of-mouth that the sequel's arrival netted
a fair amount of enthusiasm in nerd-centric Akihabara.
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I survived GDC and all I got was this lousy cross-post
23 February 08 | 09:46
Probably the biggest thing I did this year at GDC was attend the "Technology of Final Fantasy" panel -- though it wasn't the panel itself that was so involving. About 1500 people lined up and packed a lecture hall to hear this talk, many hoping to get an exclusive look at
Final Fantasy XIII (of which, to date, alarmingly little has been seen). I think it may have been a general disappointment -- most media probably found it far too technical while nothing new was seen of the game, whereas the programmers and producers in the audience likely didn't gain much insight since the talk largely focused on how Square Enix (well, really just Square) is playing catch-up with western development philosophies. The Crystal Tools project (formerly the White Engine -- you know, the thing they used to build the
Final Fantasy VII on PS3 tech demo) is a big step for Square and shows that they realize their rigid, culturally-mandated approach to development has to adapt, but I suspect a lot of western devs were thinking, "Huh, we've been doing this for years."
But for me the panel was just a warm-up for the main event, an hour-long interview with the man behind the project, Taku Murata.
You can read the interview (and my panel summary) now -- although, again, if you're looking for new gameplay details, you can forget it. I've done enough of these interviews to know the unspoken ground rules: anything about FFXIII's gameplay, characters, story, budget or release date would be sniped on the launch pad. Ports to other systems? Info on that next-gen MMO? What the hell genre is
Versus XIII? All of that would be instantly stonewalled.
So rather than waste my time asking questions I knew he wouldn't answer, I tried and find some interesting angles on the very dry and matter-of-fact topic of a companywide programming tool that just happens to be behind the company's three biggest games. (Well, three of the four --
Dragon Quest IX is potentially as big as all three of those put together.) And even then, there was some disappointing evasion at times; it doesn't come through in the text, but I could tell his response to the question about Crystal Tools' Yasumi Matsuno connection was incredibly circular -- apparently they still don't talk about him, even when you're not asking about
him directly. So please keep this in mind when you read the interview... it's more about technology and development philosophy. But hopefully you can read between the lines in a few places... I think he gave some interesting answers in his cautious, talking-around-the-obvious way. The confirmation that Crystal Tools-developed games are incredibly port-friendly should raise some eyebrows, and for my part I was happy to have my suspicions confirmed regarding the inherent cultural divide between Square Enix's two corporate components.
Meanwhile, looking at this screenshot of FFXIII yesterday I realized that its battle system is going to be incredibly similar to
Crisis Core's. This is not a bad thing at all, because in playing through Crisis Core (my review's in the EGM that should be hitting subscribers any day now) I discovered its battle system is much actually more substantial than it initially seems. How that'll work for a party-based game should be an interesting conundrum, but I wouldn't be surprised if they use an AI scripting system similar to
Final Fantasy XII's. There you go: I've just given you more concrete information on FFXIII's gameplay than Square has.
Bonus content! Exclusive to the gamespite.net port of this post!: Murata noticed
the Cactuar pin my sister made me for Christmas (which is permanently affixed to my laptop satchel) and said it was great. My sister's response to the news that the lead programmer of Final Fantasy XII admires her work? "I rock." And indeed she does.
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GDC crosspost 1
20 February 08 | 21:24
I need to have words with Mr. Matt Leone. I didn't get to sit in on
one GDC panel today -- and panels are the heart and soul of this event. I can talk to developers about specific games any time, but this is the only chance I have to sit and soak in the wisdom and experiences of the medium's most creative minds. Wasted! And all because he scheduled me for all these other things, tsk. But here's what I
did do today:
- Played flOw for PSP. Full preview forthcoming, but here's a spoiler: It's flOw for PSP.
- Demo of Mass Effect for PC. Again, full preview forthcoming, but: same great RPG taste, shinier graphics and interface. But the most interesting part of the demo, I think, actually had nothing to do with added content: BioWare showed the entirety of the Liara/male Shepard love scene -- basically, an effort to defuse the "porno sex simulator" misinformation that's spread about the game by showing how utterly bland and inoffensive the scene actually is. It was kinda weird since everyone in the room had played the game and presumably seen the sequence; mostly I just find it interesting that they felt pressured enough by bad publicity to tip their hand by showing a late-game story spoiler.
- Nintendo Treehouse Interview re: WiiFit. Apparently I had great balance on my right leg and can't balance for crap on my left. I'm gonna blame the cold medicine.
- Nintendo Treehouse interview re: WiiWare. Unfortunately, not very informative -- I think I learned about as much from the press release. Nintendo's quite good at being tight-lipped!
- Oh, and I played this one game called Fez. It was pretty okay, I guess. (And by that I mean I completely loved it.)
Of course, the real draw of GDC, besides the panels, is networking. I bumped into quite a few familiar faces as a matter of course throughout the day, and even met up with occasional 1UP freelancer Benj Edwards (who has been responsible for some excellent, in-depth retrospectives over the past year). If you're here and see me around -- I'm the short guy in a long black coat and burgundy scarf -- say hello. I probably won't be
too freaked out. Probably.
Tomorrow:
Bionic Commando Rearmed. It's gonna be a good day.
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Lost oddity
19 February 08 | 17:09
My copy of
Lost Odyssey finally arrived today, and the preorder bonus was... unusual.
Not that I really mind preorder swag that might actually be useful for once, but cereal? Really? I guess the message here is "Start your day with this healthy breakfast and you, too, can live to be 1,000 years old -- just like Kaim!"
(Someone at the office suggested it was merely an unrelated marketing promotion Amazon was running, but that's just silly.)
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Not about action figures
18 February 08 | 20:57
Ohhhh this cold just won't go away. I'm dying and I never even got to tell you I love you.
New Game +: Weekly Game Releases
Hey! It's a game of weeks. Er, a week of games. Yes. That's right. Sorry, my cognitive functions have been muddled by this amazing cold drug I'm taking. Anyway, the important thing this week is that I'm boycotting
Dragon Quest Swords because the localization team stole my "Slime Crisis" joke. Oh and I guess the fact that it's really slipshod for a DQ spin-off factors in there somewhere as well.
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Releases
So what's on tap for this week's DVD column? If you said "lots of celebratory glee that the HD format wars are finally over"... well, clearly you've been following this series. Please note the Amazon store links at the end -- I don't make money from this site, so I can't pay contributors for their fine work. But you can click the links and make sure the author gets a tiny cut of ''something'', at least.
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Same symptom, different disease
17 February 08 | 10:20
I posted a few months ago about my love for Hasbro's 25th Anniversary G.I. Joe toys, specifically because they actually did a mass-production run of the legendary
Pimp Daddy Destro. I realize this sort of thing doesn't make me much different than the Star Wars dudes who are going to buy
Yarna, of course, but I have to admit there's a certain pleasure in seeing newer, more detailed life being breathed into goofy things of my childhood.
Now it seems the company's upping the ante by making figure sets based on the G.I. Joe cartoons, and they are... wonderfully nerdy. I can't imagine this stuff is going to sell all that well, but I appreciate the fact that these will actually
exist.
I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be the Baroness in scuba gear, complete with a handy little storage case for collecting "heavy water."
Even better: animation-style Lady Jaye and Naughty Tentacle Roadblock. Take that, anime! We can do tentacles too.
And come up with a funky rhyming couplet in the process. But will he use "pentacle" or "ventricle" as the rhyming word? It is a mystery.
And finally, and best of all, Radioactive Snake-Eyes. I really hope this is a color-changing figure that goes back to normal in cold water, since this episode of the cartoon taught me that there's no dose of radiation poisoning so fatal that it can't be cured with a bath.
I've heard Hasbro's going to keep the anniversary line going until they start churning out figures to tie in with the inevitably horrible live action movie due next year, so there's plenty of further opportunity for this sort of thing. So if you happen to know anyone at the company, kindly pass along the following figure requests:
A question, answered
16 February 08 | 12:51
I loved Kenner's
Star Wars toys when I was a kid -- or at least until I discovered G.I. Joe, which was much more articulated and therefore much more interesting -- and I confess to maintaining a
highly specialized collection of their modern-day counterparts. For the most part, though, Star Wars toys are kinda like modern comic books, an unpleasant sort of pablum for feeding adults who aren't quite able to grow up. (I'm typing this as I sit about five feet from the shelf where my astromechs are displayed, so yes, that unfortunately includes me.)
They're definitely not for kids, and if you need proof look no further than the fact that Hasbro released a "Death Star conference room" collection last year; it consisted of half a dozen paunchy middle-aged white men in dress uniforms, which is, you know, not really the stuff of which childhood playtime is made. And since the line now sells exclusively to grown men with disposable income and a need to own
everything, the manufacturer is freed from worrying about whether or not specific figures will sell -- they basically have a built-in guarantee that anything they make will be snapped up by completists. This makes for an absolutely fascinating spectacle; I like to check on the line from time to time to see if in fact Hasbro really
will turn any character with more than three seconds of screen time into a tiny plastic toy.
I've long had a benchmark set of figures I absolutely never expected to see, and systematically each and every of them has been turned into a child's toy. Luke floating in a diaper?
Check. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?
Yup. The cantina bartender? Shockingly,
yes. But I've always assumed I had one last "no way" hole card, the one character who is both so minor and so visually unappealing that they'd never actually turn it into a figure: the fat six-breasted dancer from Jabba's Palace.
Well, Toy Fair 2008 just started, and...
Meet "Yarna," the final proof that Hasbro absolutely
will plumb any depth, and thousands of nerds will plummet right to the bottom with them. The really awful part is that she's one of thirty figures who will come with components to create half a dozen unique new astromechs. But I'm drawing the line here, you bastards. You're not taking me down with you.
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Massacre
14 February 08 | 22:14
So, I spent my Valentine's Day in physical agony from the flu. And my girlfriend spent it in physical agony from falling down the stairs.
How was your Valentine's? I bet you had a pretty
awesome day seeing as we
posted a new Retronauts today. You jerk. Think about those of us who are suffering for once, why don't you?
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Etria ends with you
13 February 08 | 19:37
Square Enix is out to sabotage my efforts to finish
Etrian Odyssey. There's no other way to explain it. I've been meaning to wrap up the game for months and finally earn that congratulatory password to import into the sequel, but every time I've resumed the quest in the past few weeks another SE review build arrives. First there was
Ring of Fates, then
Crisis Core. I wrapped up the latter this afternoon, but before I could sink my teeth into the next leg of the yggsdrasil labyrinth
The World Ends With You arrived. It's about as far to the opposite extreme from Etrian Odyssey as you can get without stepping entirely out of the medium.
I first took this one for a spin back at TGS 2006, at which point I promptly decided that it makes no damn sense whatsoever. Maybe I will feel differently once I can understand what precisely is happening and how I'm supposed to control characters on two different screens at once... but I'm not counting on it. Wish me luck.
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I wish you wouldn't say that
12 February 08 | 20:14
Dear guys who make "Oatios" cereal:
Congratulations on a clever name for your off-brand Cheeri-Os rip-off, but
is that really the message you want to be sending with something you're marketing as health food?
Also, I have
reviewed Professor Layton and the Curious Village. (If 1UP's acting weird, try again later -- they're doing some server upgrade testing, which is great news for what should be obvious reasons.) Please ignore the number on the review, it's just one of those formalities we have to do; in fact, I didn't even give it a number. I put a
letter on it, but we're in a weird interim period during which we're doing the (so very welcome) transition to letters for EGM and GFW, but as their new issues haven't arrived we're temporarily sticking with numbers on the site. The point of the review is this: Professor Layton is a game that everyone should play.
Unlike its upcoming Adults Only-rated sequel,
Professor Layton and the Bi-Curious Village.
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Local listings
11 February 08 | 22:27
New Game + | Weekly Games Releases
Gasp with shock: another fine week of video gaming is upon us. I don't always agree with the kids' weekly must-have selections, but after slamming through
Professor Layton over the past few days (my review will be up tomorrow; spoiler, I like it) I can't argue. Although now I'm at the point where I'm just slamming my head against a wall on the bonus puzzles.
Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
I've only seen one of this week's DVD releases... and, unfortunately, it was the chick flick,
No Reservations. Well, it's not
that unfortunate -- Catherine Zeta-Jones is always classy, and Abigail Breslin is pretty much pure childhood sincerity embodied. They should shellac her or something, to keep her from becoming old and cynical.
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And when you're dead I will be....
10 February 08 | 19:55
Yes, I've survived the weekend. The doctor says I should regain normal use of my arm in a few months!
In the meantime, I'm taking away a valuable lesson in the social protocols and relationships of Vietnamese families. The kind of lesson that sticks with you, because it is earned on the fly as you systematically commit one faux pas after the other. Rock on.
And now to
scream through
Professor Layton and write a review before I sleep. Ahahahahahasigh.
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Flushing the Backlog: Orcs & Elves
09 February 08 | 12:42
As you're reading this, I am probably being flayed alive. I leave this timed post as my final legacy.
My quest to flush my gaming backlog has been somewhat derailed by the game group reorg -- now
everyone is on the hook for magazine deadlines, and four reviewables fell into my lap at the last moment. But I did manage to squeeze a quick playthrough of
Orcs & Elves in. What I
really wanted to do was finish up
Etrian Odyssey, but I figured I'd go with a game that can be completed in less time than it takes to map a single stratum of the Yggsdrasil Labyrinth.
Orcs & Elves
id | DS | RPG | 2007
Happily, Orcs & Elves was precisely what I wanted: a lightweight substitute. It's every bit as old-school as Etrian, but in a very different way. Where Atlus' RPG is an attempt to recreate the pacing and mechanics of a
Wizardry title with pretty modern graphics, Orcs & Elves is a fast-paced streamlining of the genre with graphics that appear to have been plucked from a Macintosh game circa 1991. It's charmingly ugly, and brings to mind early Bungie games like
Pathways Into Darkness -- not just for its chunky visuals, but also for its FPS/RPG hybrid gameplay.
Some of this can be excused, as Orcs began life as a mobile game, where the screen is small enough that you can't tell just how garish the visual design really is. But only excused a little -- really, they're charging full price for this puppy, and apparently coding genius John Carmack programmed the entire engine while he was bored one weekend, so showing a
little effort would have been nice.
But, hey, whatever; while the spriting may be a bit eye-gouging, the technology is pretty good. Orcs runs on a really solid 3D engine, showing once again that a quick side project for John Carmack is miles better than many developers can create with a team of several and a few months to muck about. And, thankfully, it keeps the touchscreen silliness to a bare minimum; the bottom screen toggles between a map (auto-generated -- sorry, Etrian fanatics) and a goofily symbolic inventory system that, again, looks to have been pulled from an old-school Mac game. The only purpose for which the stylus is absolutely required is casting magic, which has to be done sparingly anyway since a single spell or two is enough to drain away your entire mana pool. A fair trade-off, since magic is
insanely powerful.
In fact, the default difficulty is really easy. There is, of course, the Nightmare mode, but a quick survey of the Internet saw gamers strategizing to get beyond the
first room of the game, so that's more like "abuse" than "entertainment." Of course, some people find abuse entertaining. It takes all kinds, really. In this case, I didn't mind the breezy challenge level, since I just wanted a quick filler between work assignments, and that's exactly what Orcs offered: five speedy hours of hacking and slashing and, in true
Doom style, pressing against the walls to find secrets. (Fortunately, after a while I noticed that you can see seams in the walls where secret rooms appear -- a welcome tip of the hat to non-abusive game design. How far we've come in 15 years!)
That brevity is probably the game's biggest sticking point. I didn't mind it terribly under the circumstances as I had other things to be doing the instant I finished, but $30 for five hours of entertainment is even less of a value than that posh new Sundance movie theatre here in San Francisco where they force you to pay an extra $3 for your ticket during peak times "for our own good." Admittedly, you can tackle the game at a higher difficulty level, but it's still the same game; the quest feels awfully short, ending right as it starts to pick up steam. By then I had amassed a decent arsenal of weapons and a hilariously epic stockpile of potions -- and just when the truly challenging battles kicked in and I finally needed to start quaffing them, the credits rolled.
Still, Orcs & Elves did what I needed to do: stand in as a lightweight substitute. Etrian Odyssey is a dense, epic novel; Orcs is a three-issue comic book miniseries. But games like that have their place, too -- spackle to fill in the gaps.
Hmmm. In retrospect, this is kind of a crappy legacy for me.
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Good night and good luck (to me)
07 February 08 | 21:31
Looks like I'll be heading offline for a few days. I'm going on a weekend trip during which I will be meeting my girlfriend's parents for the first time. If I don't update again by Monday, it is because I'm dead.
Meeting potential future in-laws isn't a particularly daunting task in and of itself, and I've always figured the parents of the last person I dated inured me to the worst I could ever expect -- it would be difficult for them to have been less civil to me without somehow bringing waterboarding into play, I think. But these are no ordinary parents! My girlfriend's father, legend has it, once engaged in a shouting match with Donald Trump...
and won. Me, I write about video games. Yeah.
At least I get a nice suit out of this whole affair! Of course, I had to buy it myself. And since the girlfriend aspires to be a fashion photographer, there was no way she'd let me get away with a
reasonably-priced suit. So, basically, in exchange for much money and a weekend, I have the opportunity to go under the microscope for a man who, by reputation, makes deNiro's character from
Meet the Parents look like a snuggly kitten. Growing up is
awesome.
Speaking of me writing about video games, I'm not sure if I've actually published anything at work all year. Allow me to make up for this lack with a
preview of Rondo of Swords. You probably have not heard of this game, due to Atlus' low-key approach to PR, but it's the first tactical RPG I've played in a while that has really piqued my interest. Instead of trying to be
Final Fantasy Tactics or
Fire Emblem, it sort of does its own thing. I've played about two hours between tutorials and campaign and am having a difficult time expressing just how
differently this game plays from all the other SRPGs out there -- it's the anti-
Luminous Arc, basically. This is another review from which I will be excusing myself to avoid untoward appearances of positive bias, but I don't feel any particular compunctions about saying that it is a game worth looking forward to. Unless you have a deep distrust of good things, of course.
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Shiren song
05 February 08 | 20:56
Shiren the Wanderer arrived today. I'm pretty happy about that! A good roguelike is always fun, and Shiren is the roguelike-iest thing you're ever going to see on a console. I feel like I should extend Sega my compliments for actually localizing it.
They also win the Suikoden-Harlequin Award for Achievements in Inappropriate Packaging Localization with this amazing conversion from the Ghibli-meets-Tidus character art on the left to what appears to be an attempt to recreate a 1992-vintage Terry Wolfinger
Gamefan cover. Could someone let Sega of America know what year it is? I mean, I know roguelikes are sort of a throwback, but damn. Why go to the trouble of translating a niche game only to wrap it in a cover guaranteed to cause the target audience's gaze to slide right past, like it was riding a teflon banana peel?
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The usual weak week pun
04 February 08 | 21:03
Hey doodz, it's time for more frivolous stuff!
Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Release Column
Once again, another week in which I have failed to see a single movie being released to home video. One thing our dear columnist missed, however, is the
re-release of the 10th collection of
Mystery Science Theatre, as the original issue included a
Godzilla flick which fell victim to rights issues and was immediately discontinued. The original release is worth a stupid amount of money. Oh, nerds.
New Game+: Weekly Game Release Column
Disappointingly, our columnists did not select
Culcept Saga as this week's hot selection. Man, our indie cred woulda been through the
roof. No, my friends, this is what it sounds like when devils cry.
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Prints of Persia
03 February 08 | 11:24
Persepolis finally opened in San Francisco this weekend, which actually managed to rouse me from my general apathy toward all things cinematic -- I've seen a fair number of movies in the past couple of months, but mainly as an excuse to get out and do something. Sure,
Juno is enjoyable as a clever bit of writing, and
Cloverfield was an interesting gimmick, but this was a movie I genuinely couldn't wait to see. Happily, it did not disappoint.
Of course, I am a sucker for good animation, and
Persepolis is a beautifully-realized adaptation of the original graphics novel -- which, of unfortunately, I've only read scattered fragments. But in terms of visual style alone, I'd say it's probably the most faithful page-to-screen conversion since MTV aired Sam Keith's
The Maxx. Unlike
The Maxx, which was brilliant but achieved a lot of its fidelity with low budget cheating,
Persepolis moves fluidly and manages to imbue Marjane Satrapi's clean, simple line illustrations with expressive motion and effective emotion. Color is used sparingly as a framing device, lending the whole thing a sort of historical documentary quality. Which, in a sense, it is.
Anyway, this ended up being a full review that is way too long for a blog entry, so
it is continued here. Please to read.
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Last exit before purgatory
02 February 08 | 19:37
Excuse me, miss. Which way to the nearest worthwhile Final Fantasy game?
Yeah, so a reviewable copy of
Crisis Core landed on my desk yesterday. I find myself torn on this one just a bit -- as much as I've
dumped on Final Fantasy VII, I still feel like the kernel of a really good RPG is buried in there, under a few tons of crusty residue left by gaming's awkward transition to 32-bit 3D. But a decent remake
still isn't in the cards (gotta focus on making the original Final Fantasy the
single most remade game ever, don't you know) and the spin-offs to date have been... well,
less than inspiring, shall we say.
So this is it. This is Final Fantasy VII's last chance to redeem itself. If Crisis Core succeeds, it will rise to the heavens. If it fails, it will sink to hell. Or something like that.
Wow, suddenly I had the weirdest urge to play a DS port of FFVII. What's that about?
Oddly enough, this means I am currently working reviews of
two games in which the developers have attempted to spice up a generally shallow combat engine by adding in a totally random slot machine roulette element that affects battle conditions. (The other being
No More Heroes.) Since I'm doing small "second opinion" write-ups, it also means that I'm going to be sinking 30-40 hours into these two games for a grand total of 180 words. I like the breadth of opinion that the EGM three-review format offers, but sometimes I wish the ratio of time invested to results here were weighted a bit more in my favor.
posted by: | category: games | forums |
twelve comments |
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