Schmidt (Koji Igarashi jus…): My wallet needs this to n… Eusis (Koji Igarashi jus…): It's worth remembering th… Parish (GSQ4: We all go h…): They're still there. Not … NevznachaY (GSQ4: We all go h…): Jeremy, could we have the… Acosta02 (Koji Igarashi jus…): I don't know that people … Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): Heck, I'll take an SD ver… Ryonin (Koji Igarashi jus…): This kinda makes me want … Mudron (Koji Igarashi jus…): I would suspect that peop… Refa (Koji Igarashi jus…): How is this game going to… SonicPanda (Koji Igarashi jus…): So, this is going to be m…
This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the main page.
Oh, Joe
31 January 09 | 17:46 | Posted by:
The first trailer for the upcoming Hollywood adaptation of G.I. Joe has hit the Internet, and it is...awful. Execrable. Embarrassing. A disgrace. This is, as it should be.
I suppose this is where a certain percentage of 30-something man-children revert to a feral state and begin snarling about how such-and-such a person/group/entity is sexually violating their childhood, but let's not be silly. Much as I enjoyed the Joe cartoon before growing old enough to know better, much as I loved Larry Hama's comic book adaptation before the ineffable hand of Hasbro demanded he do less intricate storytelling and more selling of their neon-colored missile-launching toys, the rumors (floating around even way back then) of a live-action adaptation made me roll my young (and too sheltered to be cynical yet) eyes. How could an adaptation of a toyline that featured such winners as Ice Cream Soldier, Skidmark and Raptor the Flying Accountant be cast with live humans and not be ridiculous? It can't. Of course, it's 20 years later, so instead of ugly cartoon-style costumes and bad bluescreen effects we'll be getting ugly X-Men-style costumes and bad CG effects. Plus ca change....
This whole thing is happening, of course, because of the equally abysmal Transformers, which stunned me and pretty much anyone with a fondness for quality entertainment by becoming a massive blockbuster. There's no way this one will fare equally well, of course -- even if the national zeitgeist hadn't turned away from war-as-policy in the past year or so, there's surely only so much poo you can pile on the public before it shakes its collective self and hits the shower. I feel kind of bad for everyone attached to this product, except maybe Dennis Quaid, who's old enough to know better. I'm sure the only one who'll come out of this disaster untarnished will be Ray Park, because (1) he's playing Snake-Eyes and gets to wear a mask the whole movie and (2) Hollywood always needs limber physical actors for its crappy blockbusters.
That being said, I'll definitely be going to see the movie. Maybe even opening weekend! I have no interest in actually watching it, but I figure I need to repay the girlfriend for her, er, kindness -- she's expressed her intent to take me to see Twilight despite my naked horror at the prospect. I figure taking her to see this year's worst movie seems a fair trade for being dragged to what is widely regarded as last year's worst.
The selection of downloadable titles on the consoles has been pretty mediocre over the past few weeks, though at least a few manage to look like interesting curiosities. But we are definitely in a holding pattern here. I understand we can't have a Mega Man 9 or Bionic Commando: Rearmed every week, but are these really the only alternative?
So! We've just launched a new blog at 1UP. My plan is to kick off a new one every other week until...well, probably until I keel over and die. I have high hopes for this one, though; while Retronauts is definitely my baby, I really like the concept of an all-inclusive RPG site that doesn't limit itself to just Japanese or MMO or PC or tabletop RPGs. The boundaries between all the different formats of RPGs have grown thinner through the years to the point where the better class of role-playing game incorporates the best of all styles. (Certainly that's what the team behind The Last Remnant was shooting for, even if they didn't quite pull it off.) My ultimate goal with The Grind is to bring all these different expressions of the RPG genre together and highlight their similarities and connections. A noble goal, eh? Here's hoping it works out.
Word has it that Raiden Fighters Aces, a compilation of the Raiden Fighters series of arcade shoot'em-ups, is coming to America (under the slightly less tongue-tied name of Raiden: Fighter Aces). Because shoot'em-ups represent one of the most intimidating niches in all of gaming, allow me to explain why this is exciting.
Even if you're not a fan of the genre, you've probably at least heard of the Raiden series, and maybe even seen its trademark Plasma Laser snaking its way across a screenshot or two. But if you ever got past the spectacle of the "toothpaste laser," you'd notice that the early games in the series are a bit simplistic, despite debuting several years after most of the other big names in the genre. Whereas Gradius has its unique power-up system, R-Type has the versatile Force pod, and Darius has branching paths leading to a variety of endings (and bizarre aquatic bosses), Raiden's early installments are slow-paced affairs in the mold of 1982's Xevious, with only a small selection of weapons to vary the gameplay. They're not badly made, though, and provided a solid base for their eventual evolution -- which came in the form of Raiden Fighters.
Fighters augments the Raiden formula with an unusually wide selection of the titular fighter jets (eight in the first game, over fifteen in the latter two), each with a different balance between manveuverability, power, and rapid fire. In addition, each ship has its own set of unique weapons, which can be charged up to greater effect. Raiden Fighters 2 introduces the Hybrid Attack, a unique incentive for cooperative play in which two players can combine their charged shots in invincible boss-killing unison.
In response to your added firepower, the enemy's bullet patterns are often lightning-fast, yet deceptively simple to weave through. While they're mostly too restrained to be called danmaku, they're true to the same ethos: the challenges imposed look harder than they actually are, allowing you, the player, to feel like freaking Superman when you survive. Finally, the fray is riddled with an abundance of Xevious-style secrets, which are uncovered when you fly or shoot (or don't shoot) in specific places. Even if you don't care about points, it's a reward in itself when "DISCOVERED THE FAIRY!" is gleefully announced in text across the top of the screen.
Besides collecting all three games, Aces is significant in that it's the first-ever success in bringing the series to home consoles at all, following a history of misfires over the years. And that shoot'em-up fans won't even have to import it is a rare pleasure in a niche that usually goes sadly underrepresented in the West.
Of course, what this means for me is that it's high time to buy a 360. Between this and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, you know you're falling behind the times when even the retro compilations are passing you by.
I stopped at a Border's last night and made the tragic mistake of looking at the magazine racks. Specifically, the gaming section of the magazine racks. It was utterly and completely depressing.
I'd grown accustomed over the past few years to seeing fewer and fewer of Ziff Davis's publications on the newsstands, since the company did its Game Group bloodletting slowly -- a quarterly publication here, a monthly mag there -- but my former employer's issues were symptomatic of a larger ailment plaguing the U.S. publishing market. Last night I was distressed to discover that more than half of the gaming rags on the stands were British in origin; aside from a few last out-of-date copies of the final EGM, a couple of Plays and some officially-sanctioned Future publication, everything on sale was foreign. Somehow UK magazine imports have gone from being a boutique novelty to just about the only recourse for American gamers to find info in print. And with Future's U.S. operations looking grimmer by the month, I don't imagine that's going to change.
The only two gaming publications I even bother to keep track of these days are Retro Gamer from the UK and Continue, a Japanese quarterly concern that unfortunately has less and less to do with gaming with each passing issue due to Japan's otaku demographic slowly mutating into lolicon-anime-obsessed psychopaths who only like Monster Hunter. (Or so I hear.) Not to denigrate Future's U.S. magazines, all of which are just fine, but they don't really offer anything I can't find elsewhere. Which, I suppose, was everyone else's feeling about Ziff's magazines.
Retro Gamer and Continue are interesting because they both offer content I can't necessarily find online, and they present it in an interesting way. Admittedly my eyes do glaze when I read yet another article about how some dudes who made a couple of rubbery-looking Spectrum graphical adventures in a garage in some tiny village outside of Leeds back in the '80s are unsung geniuses of game design, and I do have to adjust my brain for the British press's endemic habit of reminding everyone that Yanks only love bloody explosions in their shallow stupid games wot wot; but so it goes. Scrape out the condescending nationalism and you have some damn fine articles splashed across pages laden with classic pixel art. What's not to love? And Continue makes me wish I read more Japanese, because it covers a wide array of offbeat topics and presents them in a structured but always unique format -- my favorite being a comparison of the respective histories of Square and Enix penned at the time of their merger, which ended up informing the layout of my own book to a degree. Its shift to anime coverage is especially disappointing, because the magazine used to champion titles way outside the Japanese mainstream -- I'm pretty sure it's the only Japanese magazine to have featured Grand Theft Auto on its cover twice. (And that's for a quarterly rather than weekly publication, which means far fewer cover opportunities.)
In the weeks since the Ziff-Davis diaspora, I've seen an enormous amount of support online for everyone left out of work by the layoffs and the shuttering of EGM. And I'm happy that so many of my former coworkers seem to be landing on their feet. Alas, there is one former 1UPper whose efforts the Internet has failed to laud, and I think it is up to you to put this right. I'm speaking, of course, of our good friend Mr. Nich Maragos, who admittedly landed on his feet quite some time ago doing localization work for Atlus, polishing the English scripts of some of their best games (most notably the Etrian Odyssey and Persona series).
HOWEVER: Nich is also an aspiring writer, and he and Erin Mehlos (the former art lady for the GIA) have put together a comic book called Dear Stabby, a heartwarming (heartwrenching?) tale of ill-advised romantic advice from a felonious psycho. The comic finally went up for sale yesterday, so please congratulate them. By ordering a copy.
Dear Stabby is good! I read it back when it was an embryonic script, and Erin's art is always exceptional, so despite the fact that my copy hasn't yet arrived I can say with confidence that it is one of the best things you could do with $2.99. I mean, seriously, does $2.99 even buy a coffee anymore? Probably not! And Dear Stabby will still be enjoyable even after it's been sitting for an hour, unlike a coffee, which gets all lukewarm and disgusting. And unlike coffee, Dear Stabby can be left on the counter for weeks without getting all moldy. Honestly, I don't know why I'm still trying to sell you on this. You should be clicking the appropriate link and laying down your hard-earned but steeply devalued money right now.
This concludes the "hard sell" portion of today's programming. Thank you.
The site seems not to have caught fire while I was away, and we haven't been kicked off the server. I'm so proud of you all.
But anyway, I made it back despite O'Hare International's best efforts to destroy my soul. My future father-in-law says that O'Hare is the worst airport in the country, and I'm inclined to believe him -- I was delayed on my layover in both directions, and Chicago wasn't even suffering from inclement weather. I can only imagine what the place is like in the thick of a winter storm. The last time I flew through O'Hare was about two months after 9/11/01, so I figured the general crappiness was just a side-effect of the overall aviation freakout that was crippling the world at the time. I mean, even Japanese airports were horrible to be in at that point, and that's saying something.
On the plus side, O'Hare does have delicious popcorn. Yup. Take the good, take the bad, etc. etc. facts of life.
The real plus side is that despite a weekend packed with irritating travel and mildly stressful family-to-be gatherings, I feel refreshed. My fiancée's family is great; I'm smitten with her adorable, Servbot-like nephew and niece; and I've even divorced myself of thinking of the lunar new year as "Chinese new year." (This is very important when you're marrying into a Vietnamese family, it turns out.) I think most of all it was good for me to get away from work for a few days, not even checking email, because now there's genuine distance between myself and the black events of January 6. This means I feel much more energized and compelled to write again, both for work and for fun -- i.e., here. In other words, I'm back. Did you miss me?
I like snooping around libraries. I wouldn't call it a hobby or anything, but put me in one I've never been in and I'll wander around aimlessly if you don't reign me in. I was at the older library on campus today to pick up Maus, and though I'd been there countless times before, I was feeling a bit adventurous. I thought I'd come across my find for the day when I found a two by three foot atlas of circa-1633 Japan but there was another little surprise in store for me.
Like I said, it's one of the older libraries on campus, so it has a little alcove for housing the card catalog. All the cards are gone of course and it's been turned into a lounge with a few computers for searching the catalog though the drawers are still there. I opened a few next to the computers to see if anything had been left, but no such luck. Surveying the room, I noticed the numbered drawers went up past 1400. Hmm, I wonder if...
Huh.
Crappy cell-phone camera strikes again, but that's drawer "1337". Yeah. There's a phone number written on the Post-it note. Do I dare?
Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed more and more complaints cropping up about simply not having the time to play all the games we want to. The source of the “problem” is easy enough to identify: more and more high quality games are being produced, coupled with the NES generation finishing up college and going out into the real world. Maybe I’m simply more sensitive to these complaints because I find myself facing the same problem. My time now split between work and home, adjusting to not having that freedom to stay up until 2am playing games or having to forego playing something altogether so that I can spend time with friends was, frankly, annoying.
One consequence of my rapidly shrinking game time is that I find myself playing more games I can play with The Girlfriend. I haven’t (so far) compromised my tastes and won’t play games I would have otherwise skipped, nor is this another “Wii is bringing us together!” story; rather, it simply means things like Gears of War 2 are moved to the top of my heap because we can play them together. (Side note: regardless of your opinion of the game, Gears of War 2 deserves praise for how well balanced the story mode is when two people are playing on two different difficulties.) To this end, I dug into my backlog and restarted a game that fell by the wayside about a year ago - Trauma Center: New Blood (forcefully brought to you once again by our good friends at Atlus).
So, it turns out there is something that can kill my obsessive compulsion to keep up my personal blog: managing professional blogs as my full-time job. Shocking! But true. Well, I'm about to head off for a three-day weekend to celebrate the lunar new year with the fiancée's family, and that'll probably be stressful enough that I'll tumble gleefully back into GameSpite's welcoming arms upon my return Monday. Probably.
Also: books! People are finally (finally) starting to report having received their copies of GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1, and I've managed to get about a third of them in the mail with a few dozen packaged up and ready to be dropped off at the post office. Once again, I seriously underestimated the difficulty of mailing out several hundred pounds worth of books, but I'm working through my idiot burden as quickly as life will allow me. So that's good. Furthermore, the second printing should arrive in a few days, so I should be able to open up orders again after the first of February.
Now, behave while I'm away! Or I'll kill your face.
I'm a little behind on this (I've been a bit busy at work lately, what with holiday backlogs and a new boss and all), but as the officially designated GameSpite guy who likes to blog about Rock Band digital distribution, I'm obligated to discuss the news that the franchise will be taking a break. That means we won't see a Rock Band 3 in 2009. I, for one, am ecstatic about the news.
As gaming enthusiasts, we've all seen franchises hit it big only to be run into the ground by the publisher's mad rush to cash in while the money is good. It's almost impossible to hear names like Madden, Tony Hawk, and -- yes -- Guitar Hero without thinking about franchise fatigue. This is something that one would assume could be easily avoided now that digital distribution is picking up steam, since new content could easily and cheaply be piped to players to keep their game fresh, while giving developers more time to really flesh out a proper sequel. Frankly, I was pretty disappointed that Rock Band had a sequel out less than a year later (even if 85+ songs and lots of nice tweaks for $60 made for a damn good deal).
It's been a few weeks since my last New Games Plus, and with good reason; not a damn thing comes out between the second week of December and the second week of January. There's really no need for me to ramble every week about, "Ohh gawd there are no games," so I took a much-needed break. Now, I'm back! And ready for another year of great releases.
In this special edition of New Games Plus, I'm taking a look foward at what's expected for 2009 in no particular order, complete with some predictions on what else will release over the next twelve months.
The film starts and the lead character is drowning. Dubbed over those images is some of the most wretched pseudo-noir dialogue I've ever had the misfortune to hear. Chandler-esque noir is a tough thing to get right, and this movie barely makes the effort. Of course, they producers aren't going to kill the eponymous Max Payne mere moments after the opening credits roll. We soon find out that Payne is an ex-homicide detective who cracked after the murder of his wife and kid, and now has a desk job in the cold cases department. He's a loner who has alienated his former friends with his obsession over solving his wife's murder, and he spends his nights following junkies who thinks might know something about it, attacking them in a way that shows us, the audience, that Max is a Rogue Cop Who Can't Follow the Rules.
So, it's a pretty dumb movie. Not only that, but it has the gall to treat the audience like we're the dumb ones. The contrived and predictable plot points are endlessly rehashed, and they even re-air dialogue we've literally just heard as a voice-over while Payne is driving in the rain, looking all brooding and junk. Of course, Payne the character is even dumber. He fails to make connections between an evil corporation and a number of drug dealers despite the fact that said dealers and their users literally tattoo themselves with the corporation's logo.
The film has a few stylistically interesting moments. There's a brutal fight sequence featuring Payne, draped in heavy shadows, and with each impact the screen flashes red. I liked that. The heavily marketed images of dark angels are interesting to look at, if ludicrous from a plot perspective. The drug that acts as the plot's MacGuffin, Valkyr, apparently results in hallucinations, insanity, and death in 99 out of a 100 people who take it. So why are the bad guys manufacturing and dealing the drug? How can you profit from a drug with no repeat customers? Argh. Someday there'll be a good movie based on a video game, but that day is not today.
So they've just announced Super Robot Taisen K for the Nintendo DS. Why "K"? Well, I have no idea. It always meant something before. Even W somehow translated into "Double" for the Japanese. I think that this might be Banpresto's way of finally acknowledging my contributions as an American booster of the series. I've certainly given them enough money of late. Therefore, I hereby declare the newest installment of SRW to be "Super Robot Taisen Kat." Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, while I'm thrilled that SRW Kat will be on the Nintendo DS, I'm somewhat less thrilled about the series selection. For one thing, as someone who looks for the Gundam first, I couldn't help but notice that all of the Gundams that will be featuring in this installment have "SEED" somewhere in the title. It's not that I don't like SEED or anything. I even understand that Banpresto is trying to play to the Japanese kiddies who rate SEED as the best of them all. And god knows that the Universal Century trio (Zeta, ZZ and Char's Counterattack) got enough play, along with Endless Waltz. So I'll be dutifully using the Freedom once again, even as I secretly wish that Banpresto would do justice to the Gundam F91, Crossbone Gundam and Victory Gundam games. I really need to learn to say no.
SEEDiness aside though, I'm pretty interested in the non-Gundam stuff too. A quick check on Gun X Sword, for instance, yields a trailer featuring some robots, cowboys, and what look like guards with killer mustaches. No wonder everybody is so excited. The others will just have to wait until I get the game. Well, except for Virtual On, which bored me to tears when it debuted in Alpha 3. I don't know, I liked it well enough on the Dreamcast, but it just didn't translate to SRW for some reason. The complete lack of a storyline might have had something to do with it.
I'm excited though. Really, any SRW that has my name on it can't be bad. And it's for the Nintendo DS, which also hosts my current favorite game in the series - W. Banpresto seems to do a good job with the DS, not the least because they can't really recycle animations. On that count at least, even Gundam SEED stuff will probably look at least a little different.
So now I've got pretty much a definitive time limit on how long I can take to beat Chrono Trigger DS. SRW Kat is coming in March. I'd better get to work.
I have an item hoarding problem. It’s getting a little better, but no matter how much trouble I’m having, I often just can’t get myself to use anything that I can’t easily replace. This problem is entirely my own fault, and it usually leads to generally imbalanced difficulty and an anticlimactic endgame. No matter how well adjusted to provide the perfect challenge a final boss might be, they tend to go down like chumps when faced with parties lugging around comically large inventories of untouched rare goods. And it’s for this very reason that I love the limited inventory systems in games like the first Suikoden and Odin Sphere.
This may sound crazy, but I always thought that managing inventory in Suikoden was one of the most fun aspects of the game. There is so much equipment scattered throughout Suikoden that, even if you constantly switch between all 108 of the game’s characters, it’s easy to keep a well-maintained party without ever visiting an armor shop. If anything, buying extra defensive goods is a hassle, since the amount of items any one character can carry is so limited that you will constantly be throwing things out to free up space even if you limit yourself to what can be found in treasure chests and occasional random drops. Since the difficulty in the actual battles in Suikoden is fairly low, the biggest challenge in it for me is struggling with the dated inventory system. I hear that this should irritate me, but for some sick reason I enjoy organizing imaginary equipment. Suikoden is so relaxing and player friendly that dealing with this design flaw is the time I feel most like I’m actively playing the game.
If you've been paying attention, you probably realize that I'm a huge Star Wars nerd. So why should I care about the upcoming Star Trek film? After all, I've never even seen a Trek movie. Like most people my age, I did watch a lot of The Next Generation, mostly in syndication, as it aired every weekday around the time I was getting home from school. I enjoyed the show, but didn't bother watching any of its successors, whether they be Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise. I'm just not a Trek kind of guy.
That being said, I'm pretty excited about the upcoming, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a reboot of sort -- so as a relative Trek noob I won't be punished for not knowing very much about the franchise. Of course, if it were simply a reboot, I probably wouldn't be so intrigued, but the creative team on the film is a massive attraction. Director JJ Abrams is mostly famous for his television work, although he did get his start writing and producing feature films, and helped create the television series Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe. As a big fan of his TV work, I also felt his direction on Mission: Impossible III was solid and resulted in the most entertaining entry in that underwhelming franchise.
One reason I'm looking forward to Abrams' take on Trek is because he's made no secret of the fact that he's a Star Wars fan. The writers on the project are also fans of Star Wars, with co-writer Roberto Orci telling Wired, "It's controversial to even mention Star Wars and Star Trek in the same sentence, but [co-writer] Alex [Kurtzman] said, 'We have to bring more Star Wars into Star Trek.' Original Star Wars. I want to feel the space, I want to feel speed, and I want to feel all the things that can become a little bit lost when Star Trek becomes very stately -- which I love about it , but.... "
The special effects on Trek are being created by Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company started by George Lucas to provide effects for the first Star Wars film and worked on all the subsequent films as well. [Little does Mr. "Not-A-Trek-Fan" Tinney realize that ILM did the visuals on Star Trek VI, including the ridiculous zero-G purple Klingon blood effects. -- Parish] That's not even the most exciting Trek/Wars connection in this new film: audio design genius Ben Burtt has been brought in to provide the sound effects for the new film as well.
You may have heard of Ben Burtt. He was responsible for the sound design on Pixar's Wall-E, even "voicing" Wall-E himself, along with many of the other robot characters. He's won Academy Awards for his sound work on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Oh, and he's responsible for R2-D2's voice, Darth Vader's breathing, the hum of lightsabers, and pretty much all of other iconic, indispensable sounds of both Star Wars trilogies. As much as John Williams and almost as much George Lucas, he is one of the guys who makes Star Wars what it is, and having him involved in your space-adventure movie can only be a good thing.
So, while it might grate diehard Trekkers, turns out the biggest reason I want to see the new Star Trek movie is Star Wars. Who knew?
I really want to support Atlus' upcoming Steal Princess, because (1) it's Atlus, (2) it's an interesting-looking puzzle platformer for DS, and (3) it has a distinct Landstalker/Ladystalker vibe about it, given that it's an isometric action game from Climax starring a heroine and her tiny faerie companion. On the other hand, I'm kind of cranky about the game because the head of Climax, Kan Naito, gave me the single worst interview of my career at TGS. Well, second worst -- I doubt anything will top the one with Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama where he suddenly stood up and left without a word, entourage in tow. I will never understand the logic behind agreeing to an interview with the press when you clearly despise the press and have no interest in talking to them. Why not just tell them to shove off and save everyone some time and trouble?
On the other hand, that's some pretty danged nice artwork. I'm such an easy mark.
So you might have heard that an upcoming Wii game will be omitting friend codes. Or perhaps you haven't, because who would bother reporting on Nintendo's online platform?
From the sound of it, it appears the game won't be a first-party title -- meaning this news would be a natural, though refreshing, extension of Nintendo's laissez-faire attitude towards publishers on the Wii. You can get away with releasing any crap game on the system, and apparently now you can choose to forego Nintendo's intentionally obtuse friend-matching system. I'm willing to guess Nintendo has simply stopped caring. They've built up enough good will as the family-friendly console to be a little more cavalier about the possibility of predators stealing peoples' kids via Dragon Quest Monsters. Good news for us though! That is, if they ever actually release any Wii games with online capability that we're interested in.
P.S.: This is where we theorize about the Pokémon MMO that will cripple Japan's workforce productivity and destroy scholarship among the world's young.
The DLC spread this week is a downright decent one, I must say. Even the WiiWare offerings look fair to good, and on Virtual Console we have a bona fide classic on offer in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.
I haven't seen any word on new games for the Xbox Live Arcade this week -- if I missed one I'm sure someone will point it out. But if you own Fable II and/or Castle Crashers, there's downloadable content coming your way this week for both. Fable II's Knothole Island pack looks particularly interesting.
I used to find it a bit gauche to complain about the 100-friend limit on Xbox Live. It seems that video game industry professionals are the people who normally have this complaint, apparently unaware that for most of their audience 100 friends is more than enough. After all, not everyone works professionally as an avid gamer followed closely by an audience of people who would love to play online games with them.
Certainly, my initial experience with Xbox Live was much different. Without many friends in my daily life who were gamers, I had to resort to public games to try out the free 30-day gold account trial that came with the console. It didn't take me long to decide that playing against the XBL community wasn't something I wanted to pay for. After all, I can hear racial epithets and homophobic slurs for free in my (red) neck of the woods.
I felt a little alien, preferring the online on the PS3. After all, seemingly the entire game press was telling me that the online experience was much better on Xbox Live. Of course, they weren't playing many public games. On the PS3, hardly anyone bothers to connect a headset to the machine, despite the fact that you can use almost any bluetooth or USB headset. Because of this quirk of the PS3 community, you can actually play hours of Call of Duty 4 without hearing a single preteen curse at you!
I’ve been playing an odd combination of games the last week or so: Gears of War 2 (whenever my girlfriend wanted to) and Persona 4 (at every other possible moment). Constantly jumping back and forth between them can be slightly jarring, let me tell you.
I’ll admit it: Gears is fun. I had to eat my words a couple years ago when I took every opportunity to make fun of the “brotoculture” of the first game, only to try it with a friend and like it so much we beat it in a weekend. Despite everything else, it is a very well designed game. Just as the setting and feel of BioShock helped me overlook the fact that it was in a genre I generally don’t care for, so, too, did Gears’ fun, tight gameplay help me overlook an aesthetic I could do without.
Playing these two particular games in tandem, though, made me realize that I’m far less willing to give an RPG this same chance, and as far as I can tell, the required amount of time to put into an RPG is the root cause. Gears and BioShock both didn’t require more than 10 or 15 hours from me; most RPGs are going to cost me a bare minimum of 30. Given that time is my most precious resource these days, it’s essential that I like what I’m seeing, which is why something like Dragon Quest VIII (in all its Miyazaki-aping glory) was a pleasure to play, but the sheer number of zippers in The World Ends With You left me unable to push myself into finishing it.
I’m not advocating for short games only, of course. Sometimes a nice, meaty experience is just what the doctor ordered, especially if developers take the length into account. Take EarthBound or Mother 3, for example – having a battle theme specific to each enemy meant I was never tired of hearing any of them. Unfortunately, tweaks can only go so far, which is why I’ll be purchasing DQIX on Day 1 but will probably be skipping over Final Fantasy XIII. (Though it’s nice that one company is putting out content for everybody, I suppose.)
Now, if somebody could explain to me why – despite this whole rant, and the type of anime aesthetic that leaves me cold – I bought into and loved Persona 3 immediately, I’d be grateful.
Directed by Ed Harris and based on a novel by Robert Parker, Appaloosa is the latest attempt to breathe some life into the sadly moribund western genre. There have been notable westerns over the past decade, but by and large the genre seems unlikely to ever again obtain the hold on American film audiences they once had. I count many classic westerns among my favorite films of all time, including Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly among others, and I'm always willing to give a modern take on the genre a shot. In recent years, I've liked the Australian "western", The Proposition, as well as The Assassination of Jesse James... and 3:10 to Yuma. So it's understandable that I've high hopes for Appaloosa, a film that I haven't seen yet. I'll rectify that very soon and post any additional thoughts in the comments.
Dear GameSpite, I'm sorry for neglecting you so much the past couple of weeks. It's just that with all the madness of our buyout at work and the disappearance of our magazine and most of my coworkers, combined with trying to get books out in a timely fashion, I've not had much time for you.
Well, there's that, I guess. But to be entirely honest, I've...been with another blog. I won't deny it, I've spent a lot of time with you in the past year or so because 1UP wasn't giving me what I needed. But now there's an entire section begging to be developed by me and anyone I can draw into the process, and I have essentially free to make it the best I can. And you know me; I can't resist that sort of opportunity. This week, we're working to turn the Retronauts blog into something amazing with an extended look at the career of one of gaming's unsung heroes. And in the coming weeks, we'll be starting up blogs on movies, RPGs, Japanese gaming culture and -- well, I don't know what all, really. Having a fully-supported venue to shape into my dream site is awfully fulfilling, you know? I even have a part-time writing staff. It's crazy.
But don't feel bad. I'll never leave you, GameSpite. Distractions may come and distractions may go, but you're the only place I can write scathing screeds about nerd culture without having to worry about alienating advertisers or publishers. There's comfort in obscurity, and I know you'll always be here for me. Just bear with me while I sow my blogging oats, OK? It's not that I don't love you. I'm just weak-willed, is all.
Looking back, I could make the case that the holidays were a hassle. I had to move from an apartment into a new house, drive for hours in sub-freezing temperatures with the the windows down on account of a carbon monoxide leak, meet my future in-laws, navigate a newly two-household family, travel a cumulative 31 hours, and wrestle with three different wireless networks. That would be stupid though, since my girlfriend got me the following for Christmas:
Yep, it's one of those Rock Band"Bandmates" figurine things. My Rock Band character's resemblance to myself is stunning (most prefer to use the term "creepy") right down to body language. I own that shirt and everything. So I basically have a custom made action figure of myself. Do you have one of those? Yeah, that's what I thought.
And yes, I play bass on Rock Band. Sue me.
Edit: People (or at least Bergasa down there) want a comparison pic. Fine: I'll overcome my crippling phobia of putting pictures of myself online.
It's no accident that so much of my writing at GameSpite has been focused on issues related to home theaters. I've grown to prefer the home theater experience to actual theaters, and I'm certainly not alone in that.
This is probably a side effect of the fact that my local movie theater is shockingly bad. When I saw 300 there, the film was badly out-of-focus. Everything was so fuzzy that I felt like I was going blind. This is the same theater where I saw Anchorman, during which the projectionist badly misframed the movie. The cinematographer of Anchorman apparently decided not to block off the unused vertical areas of the frame, and consequently objects like boom microphones were visible on the print itself yet shouldn't have been visible to audiences when projected properly. When I saw it, though, the boom mikes were frequently visible. Having not seen the film before, I thought it was some kind of bad joke. It wasn't until close the end of the film, when only the barest top of the subtitles could be seen, that I realized what was wrong. Those are only two examples, as I could go on and on; the most recent travesty being when I took my wife to see Twilight a few days after the film's release and the print they were showing was already badly damaged.
It's funny, but I haven't played many games lately. While I was in Japan and still employed full-time, I usually used my one or two free hours a night to work on whatever game I happened to be playing at that time. I figured that when I got back to the States and had way more time on my hands, I would be able to wrap up Super Robot Taisen Z, get into Persona 3 and even have a bit of time for BioShock.
That hasn't worked out so well. I mainly owe my failure to time spent visiting friends combined with a certain amount of stress that stems from being in a transitional period. I'm sure that it's different for some people, but I have a hard time concentrating on RPGs when I'm worried about this or that. I can't focus properly on the story, or I just don't have the patience to grind through battles and build up my characters.
The games that I do play in periods like these are sort of like comfort food for me. Not altogether nutritious, but certainly sweet, fluffy and delicious. Games like Super Stardust Portable, for instance, which merely requires that I pulverize asteroids and other space junk for points. Trust me, when I'm feeling stressed out about something, I'm more than capable of blowing things up for a few hours. It's cathartic to pummel the debris into space dust and watch it fly off into the void. That and people. People tend to get a dose of wrath as well.
Not real people, of course -- just the ones in the magical world of multiplayer. Part of the reason that I tend to defend Warcraft III from its detractors is that it went a long way together anesthetizing me from the troubles of reality back in the summer of 2002, which probably went a long way toward keeping me sane. For a few hours at least, engaging humans in mortal video combat could help me forget about my worries.
I wouldn't say that it's always healthy to use games to ignore real-life problems. For the most part, I tend to think it's better to tackle them head-on so that they cease being problems and you can move on with your life. So, in that at least, I can at least thank Super Stardust Portable and Warcraft III for saving me a few wrinkles. And later, I can curse them for giving my advanced arthritis.
Oh man, Amazon brought me a parcel of shame. I'm actually quite the fan of the author of the Gears prequel novel, Karen Traviss, and I'm convinced that if anyone can make a tie-in novel to a video game with the thinnest excuse of a story this side of Ms. Pac-Man interesting, she can. After all, her last video game tie-in novel was Star Wars: Republic Commando, an original Xbox game, which was followed by three sequels and will soon morph into a new series entitled Imperial Commando. Her books are to my mind among the very best the Star Wars expanded universe has to offer. I don't think I'll ever care about the Gears of War universe in that same way, but since Traviss' strength is military sci-fi from the grunt's point-of-view, I'm actually looking forward to reading this. I'll report back when I'm done; wish me luck!
I'm finishing up the processing work for the the latest episode of Retronauts, so that should be online in about an hour. It's good to have a little continuity with the way things were before -- in fact, this episode really does represent the way things were before, having been recorded the afternoon before the buyout. Shane even contemplates the possibility of working at GameStop if things go south, job-wise. Sigh.
On a totally different note, my sister has expanded her repertoire of video game Shrinky-Dinks to span well beyond the Katamari cousins, Cactuar and Nekopan she's given me over the past few years. Apparently she's converting the entire Final Fantasy XII bestiary into pin form and chronicling it on her site. I keep telling her she could become filthy rich making these things, but I guess she's just too dang noble for such mercenary behavior.
To say that this has been a difficult week would be an understatement. I've seen some tough times during my relatively brief time in the American workforce; I was laid off in 2003 from a lame newspaper ad design job (voluntarily, but laid off nevertheless), and I've watched as close friends were slowly shed from the Ziff-Davis roster over the course of my tenure there, beginning with none other than the close friend who helped land me at 1UP in the first place. There are black days I remember well: learning that GMR and XBN were being axed via message board scuttlebutt; seeing Games for Windows slowly suffocated by the licensed albatross around its neck and a hypocritical audience who demanded better quality PC games journalism and then promptly ignored the best around; watching my employer go into bankruptcy with no real reason to be confident in its survival.
But this week tops them all, because it's combined the worst of everything. Dear friends were let go. A publication -- the publication, really -- was closed down. And all so unexpectedly and anti-climactically.
There's a good side to this: our new owners intend to let 1UP be 1UP, and they're far more financially sound than our previous company. For the first time in...well, ever, I actually feel confident that 1UP has a long-term future. But the collateral losses have been devastating, and my ability to write goes out the window when I'm depressed. I've been staring at a blank word processor document for the past two days...but I think I managed to churn out a little catharsis. It doesn't solve anything besides offering a little emotional resolution, but I think I can at least start working toward getting back on track now.
And, should anyone in a hiring-type position be reading this, drop me a line if you'd like some recommendations for incredibly talented writers, artists, video editors and podcast producers. I can put you into contact with some great people....
So yeah, I took last week off. But now you get a double-batch of DLC goodness! And not-so-goodness, as judged by me! I have qualifications. No, you may not see them.
I don't know what Nintendo's New Year's resolution was, but I can tell you what it wasn't: Releasing good games on WiiWare! At least so far — this week's Sandy Beach is, uh. Well, make with the clicky and I'll tell you.
The other day I finished reading Miyabe Miyuki’s novelization of Ico, the game everyone loves to use as a basis for poorly defined arguments about whether or not their hobby can be considered art. It was difficult to mentally justify wasting the amount of time it would take to read a 500-plus-page pulp novel based on a videogame about a boy pulling levers, but I somehow managed to do it for a couple reasons. First, I’ve had friends sincerely recommend Miyabe books to me. Granted, these particular friends are not people I would usually go to for literary advice, but nonetheless I thought it would be worthwhile to check out whys she’s so popular. Second, I’d never read anything this deliciously trashy in Japanese before outside of games and manga, and I thought it would be a worthwhile cultural experience to read a junk novel. Third, and most importantly, I freaking love Ico.
While the book did not convert me into a raging Miyabe Miyuki fan, I must admit that it was, for the most part, not as terrible as I expected it to be. Miyabe used the game as the basis for an inoffensive and occasionally even enjoyable fantasy novel based on the setting of Ico. At the very least, it is clear that Miyabe sincerely likes the game. In the Afterward she notes that the book is more or less fan fiction, her own personal variation on the story of Ico. Knowing that it’s not official cannon makes the story easier to digest, and it is interesting to see an author flesh out her own imagined history of Ico’s fascinating game world. Part of the beauty of the game Ico is the minimalistic way it suggests a larger story, leaving it up to individual players to fill in the details, and this book is best read as one gamer’s taken on that story.
For those who have asked, though, I'm still with 1UP. Thanks for your concern, but I'd rather you wish the best for everyone who wasn't so fortunate instead. Go consume some hard liquor for us.
It's a new year, but I'm afraid that I have to be the harbringer of bad news to all those console loyalists lurking about the margins. If you're hoping for a major turnaround, you're probably going to have to wait until next generation.
I hit upon this realization while I was writing this article. The news itself isn't much more than guesswork, but I do think it's at least reasonable to assume that an unholy number of Wiis were sold this past holiday season. After that there's the Nintendo DS and pretty much everything else. Last year was the year that the trends had a chance to shift, and Sony and Microsoft seemed to know it. They went all in with price cuts, fancy redesigns and innovative first-party software. And what did they have to show for it? Microsoft moved up a couple percentage points, and Sony seems to be losing more ground all the time.
As a stubborn GameCube owner during the last generation, I can certainly empathize with the frustration of the roving PlayStation and Xbox fanboy mob. I was in pretty much the same position in 2003, watching as Nintendo slashed prices and started offering Legend of Zelda pack-in bundles, wondering why attitudes and sales numbers weren't getting any better.
Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #72 | January 6, 2009 Featured Title: Pineapple Express
Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, the pair behind Superbad, wrote The Pineapple Express; additionally, the movie was produced by America's current comedy it-guy, Judd Apatow. It's no secret than I'm an Apatow fan (even if I don't love everything he's put his name on), and while I didn't think Pineapple Express was quite as good as Superbad, I still enjoyed it. It was a treat for a long-time Apatow fan like me to see James Franco, so effective in Apatow's seminal comedy television series Freaks and Geeks, returning to a comedic role. Overall, though, this movie didn't resonate with me as much as Superbad did -- while I can relate to the awkward teens in the earlier film, I don't have much in common with the lovable stoners in this movie. You might like it more than I did, especially if you're not a teetotaler like me, but either way it's still a fine film that's well worth the time it takes to watch it.
The holidays are over, and I suppose it's back to slaving over a gaggle of websites every waking moment for me. To demonstrate how I've accepted my grim fate, please accept this, the first GameSpite update of 2009. Continuing Issue 12 is a weirdly Nintendo-focused update. I say weirdly because there's not even a hint of NES or Super NES about this update. Bizarre! What other freakish new phenomena does the new year hold for us?
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
You know, if I'd posted this in a more timely fashion, it would have made a pretty decent 10th anniversary commemoration of the first 3D Legend of Zelda outing. But alas! You'll have to settle for it a few months late. Don't worry, though; my tardiness doesn't diminish the author's gushing fanboyism for the game.
Wave Race: Blue Storm
And at the other extreme, we have a look back at the third Wave Race title that's...also full of gushing fanboyism. Ah, but the thing about Blue Storm is that this is the only positive article that's ever been written about the game, whereas everybody's all "Oh Ocarina of Time is just so special." Revel in the iconoclasm!
And the first customized hardcover copy of GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1 is complete and ready to hit the mail for one Kurt Adam, who was the first to plop down his filthy blood money to transform webpages into physical printed matter. By request: a very literal Retronaut, and one with very little fear of explosive decompression. This one should be bounding its way slowly through 1/6 earth-standard gravity to the post office tomorrow morning. Only 30-something to go.
Covering Macworld Expo is going to make a mess of my week, but I should be sending out quite a few of these in the coming days. Oh, and the Internet-based, new-content-providing aspect of GameSpite will be resuming its normal routine very soon.
It's 2009, but I'm not done with this 2008 thing yet. Because apparently my new modus operandi in life is to run behind with all the things I schedule for myself. Although I suppose it's not always my fault -- for instance, I was planning to mail out the first batch of GameSpite Vol. 1 yesterday, but the fact that it was pissing rain put a crimp in that plan (since said plan involved toting open boxes of books in paper envelopes five blocks to the post office). And so I run slow, as ever, with reviewing my reviews...or non-reviews, as in this case.
Grand Theft Auto IV | Rockstar North/Take 2 | PC/PS3/XB360 | Criminal sandbox I gave it:(Didn't review it) | In retrospect, I would have given it: C+, maybe B-
I started writing this entry while I was at my sister's house watching my brother-in-law play Crackdown. This made me sad for two reasons. One, because he was the one playing Crackdown, not me, and Crackdown is the sort of game that's far more entertaining when you're the one at the controller. And two, because I was writing about Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest in a series that was far more entertaining before its creator split off to go create Crackdown.
GTA is one of those series that used to strike me as self-consciously crass, a naked attempt to gather attention through juvenile shock value and amateurish parody. Which it is! But once I actually triedGTA III, I realized that all of those things are a distraction from GTA's real point, which is freedom. DMA Designs' created in GTA a giant, city-shaped playground with lots of fun toys for creating mayhem, encouraging violence so over-the-top and unrealistic that it ceased to be objectionable and became simply fun. And though GTA III did offer a definite story-driven progression through the game, no one really cared: the only thing the plotline really accomplished was to unlock new areas and new toys. GTA's brilliance lay in the fact that it was entertaining no matter how you played it -- even if you went about it completely wrong, in fact.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way that original vision was lost, and with GTA IV the entire series' purpose has been inverted. Now freedom is a secondary consideration, and the amateurish plotline and heavy-handed parody/homage/rip-off are the point. That's a shame, because those have never been the series' strengths...much as its creators would like to think so.
I never owned a PS2, so when I picked up a backwards-compatible PS3 I initially started collecting all the well-known RPG games I missed. I had a shelf full of games that included Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Final Fantasy XII, Rogue Galaxy, Dragon Quest VIII, et al. As more and more next gen games were released I found myself never getting around to playing my "backlog," as it were. When my gaming time is limited, devoting dozens of hours to a single RPG just wasn't as appealing as knocking out four or five titles in other genres within the same timeframe. Also, with action or puzzle or sports games I can multitask, and listen to audio books or podcasts while I play. Since so many RPGs are filled with text and/or voiced narrative it's impossible to do that same thing.
Eventually, I just gave up and sold all the games that made me feel bad for not playing them. What's the use of having a shelf full of games if you're never going to get to them?
I think my main problem was that I am something of a gaming dilettante. I like a wide variety of games and I like to play everything that's current. For me, part of the fun of this hobby is the community, and much of the discussion in the community hinges on being familiar with what's "hot". There are, of course, niches you can insert yourself into. For example, on this very website is a forum full of people who are perfectly happy discussing old RPGs from the previous era. So if I really wanted, I could give up my addiction to the new and shiny and focus on old games. There are plenty of places online where I could find a supportive group of people to discuss those games with. So why don't I?
The image above is what I see when I look out the window. A nice, snowy Minneapolis street. It's where I'll be spending the next month or so, acclimating myself to the States before I pick up and move to San Francisco. Good old Minnesota.
With me are a stack of games to play and several packages of Sour Patch Kids, both of which should go a long way toward keeping me busy for a while. I've got Chrono Trigger on my DS, Bleach: Soul Carnival and Super Stardust Portable on my PSP, Persona 3: FES on my PS2 and Far Cry 2 and BioShock on my PC -- two shooters that are making their to their computer. You might be surprised to know that they are joined by Half-Life 2. This is my attempt at pretending that I'm a well-rounded gamer. Also, actually being able to access certain content (like, you know, BioShock) has a way of loosening your purse strings a bit.
It's for that reason, at least, that I'm happy to be back in America. When you don't have access to something for a few years, it tends to get elevated to the status of myth in your head. Thus, good Mexican, certain items on Steam, root beer and timely new movies (see my tragically belated reviews of Iron Man and Wall-E) are all making a welcome return to my life. Of course, I'm also bidding goodbye to friends, decent sushi, and a population of nerds who rank the original Mobile Suit Gundam next to the likes of Star Wars (that is, the good Star Wars). I'll be feeling the pain whenever I get a craving for okonomiyaki.
Somehow I ended up kicking off the new year by playing Super Mario Bros. 2. After watching everyone else flail around for half an hour trying to get past world 1-2, I jumped in and powered through a few stages, building up a healthy stock of lives before handing the controller back. They burned through all those 1UPs in five minutes and it was game over. Man, I hope this isn't how the rest of the year goes.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve liked listening to metal. It isn’t the only genre of music I listen to, but it’s definitely one of my favorites. Imagine my surprise, then, when my best friend shot me a link to 8-bit Metallica songs:
...I suddenly feel like I understand a lot more about myself as a person, thanks to this. You have no idea how happy this makes me.
The only two gaming publications I even bother to keep track of these days are Retro Gamer from the UK and Continue, a Japanese quarterly concern that unfortunately has less and less to do with gaming with each passing issue due to Japan's otaku demographic slowly mutating into lolicon-anime-obsessed psychopaths who only like Monster Hunter. (Or so I hear.) Not to denigrate Future's U.S. magazines, all of which are just fine, but they don't really offer anything I can't find elsewhere. Which, I suppose, was everyone else's feeling about Ziff's magazines. 
In the weeks since the Ziff-Davis diaspora, I've seen an enormous amount of support online for everyone left out of work by the layoffs and the shuttering of EGM. And I'm happy that 
The film starts and the lead character is drowning. Dubbed over those images is some of the most wretched pseudo-noir dialogue I've ever had the misfortune to hear. Chandler-esque noir is a tough thing to get right, and this movie barely makes the effort. Of course, they producers aren't going to kill the eponymous Max Payne mere moments after the opening credits roll. We soon find out that Payne is an ex-homicide detective who cracked after the murder of his wife and kid, and now has a desk job in the cold cases department. He's a loner who has alienated his former friends with his obsession over solving his wife's murder, and he spends his nights following junkies who thinks might know something about it, attacking them in a way that shows us, the audience, that Max is a Rogue Cop Who Can't Follow the Rules.
So you might have heard that an upcoming Wii game will be 
Directed by Ed Harris and based on a novel by Robert Parker, Appaloosa is the latest attempt to breathe some life into the sadly moribund western genre. There have been notable westerns over the past decade, but by and large the genre seems unlikely to ever again obtain the hold on American film audiences they once had. I count many classic westerns among my favorite films of all time, including Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly among others, and I'm always willing to give a modern take on the genre a shot. In recent years, I've liked the Australian "western", The Proposition, as well as The Assassination of Jesse James... and 3:10 to Yuma. So it's understandable that I've high hopes for Appaloosa, a film that I haven't seen yet. I'll rectify that very soon and post any additional thoughts in the comments.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Wave Race: Blue Storm
