The following was unceremoniously ripped from the RESET blog. Make sure to check out this week’s comic!
So I don’t know if it’s the drab and damp weather we’ve had for nearly a month or some dread disease that I’ve contracted, but I’ve been dead tired lately. Like, to the point that it’s often difficult to even stand up. The obvious solution, of course, is to simply not get up. Normally that would be a little tricky, since there are a variety of factors in my life that require me to get off my butt, not the least of which is my job. However, this time I have been stricken right at the beginning of a week-long vacation, and not just any vacation, but a vacation where my entire plan was to just sit around and do nothing. Score! This past Saturday marked the beginning of a whimsical journey where I sleep as long as I want, and when I finally do get up I just sit around playing videogames. Hopefully by next Sunday I’ll have finished Wario Land: Shake It!, Shining Force CD, the origianl Final Fantasy from the GBA Dawn of Souls collection, and F.E.A.R. 2., as well as snagged those irritating random drops I’ve been grinding for in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. Yes, friends, as much as I might rant and complain, sometimes life can be pretty sweet.
Speaking of Shining Force CD, when I was playing it last night a thought occurred to me. As regular readers may know, in the last year or so I’ve played through a number of titles for older CD-based platforms like the Sega CD and Turbo-Duo, and something that has struck me when playing many of these games is that the voice acting is actually quite good. Shining Force CD continues this trend. As someone who was introduced to voice acting in console games by the original Playstation, this seems very strange. The era of the Playstation and Sega Saturn was typified by, among other things, absolutely atrocious voice acting in games. Sure, there were exceptions such as Mega Man Legends or Brave Fencer Musashi, but overall voice actors from that era tended to deliver their lines with the same degree of enthusiasm as a deadbeat dad at a parent-teacher conference. I had always assumed this was simply because many of these game developers hadn’t dealt with voice acting in games before, and that as time went by and they became more familiar with the idea, things would inevitably get better. Sure enough that seems to be what happened. Nowadays most videogame voice acting is at least reasonably solid. It might not always rise to the level of that found in big-budget animated films, but at least it no longer makes playing games in the same room as your girlfriend or parents a horrible embarrassment. The funny thing is, though, there was clearly a fair amount of good voice acting in games before the Playstation era. Of the five pre-Playstation era CD games I’ve played, three have had good voice acting (Popful Mail, Ys, and Shining Force CD), and one (Snatcher) had absolutely phenomenal voice work. Granted, maybe I’ve just been playing the right games. Snatcher, being essentially a visual novel, was going to live or die by it’s voice acting, so maybe they just felt the need to really get things right in that instance. Popful Mail was localized by Working Designs who, love them or hate them, always put a lot of effort into their titles. And Shining Force CD doesn’t really have all that much voice work in it, so maybe they just got lucky. I don’t know. The only other thing all these games have in common is that they were unquestionably cult titles (with the possible exception of Ys) and released on less-successful platforms. Maybe knowing they were targeting a very niche and very picky audience made the developers/localizers want to go the extra mile to please them, while when gaming became more mainstream with the advent of the Playstation, knowing the boorish tastes of the average consumer, game makers just stopped caring. As my experience with pre-Playsation/Saturn CD games deepens, I’ll be curious to see if this trend continues.
Right now, though, I’m going to fold some laundry while I rock out to the tunes of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
…wait, seriously? Mario Clock? Is this even a game?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Not a deep game, not much in the way of story, and certainly not a lot of variation as far as gameplay is concerned, but there is stuff you can do, and coins you can collect, and power-ups to attain, so yeah, the 200-Nintendo-Point ($2) Mario Clock for DSiWare is, in fact, a game. Plus, it tells you the time!
I arrived home from work today to find a package sitting on my front porch, sent all the way from the other side of the country. The good folks in Redmond, Washington, had sent my latest Club Nintendo reward.
What did the box contain? (“What’s in the box, man?”) My very own Mario-cap-shaped DS game rack, a plastic bookend of sorts that allows you to display your DS games proudly and neatly, rather than having them strewn across various surfaces throughout the living room.
Since bringing its goodness to the US earlier this year, Club Nintendo has provided some cool bonuses for those willing to spend a few minutes taking surveys (well, the same survey over and over, really) about the Nintendo-published systems and games they’ve purchased (or downloaded, for WiiWare titles). They range from the cool (classic Game & Watch collection), to the practical (the aforementioned game rack and DS game cartridge cases), to the slightly less functional - but still collectible (Nintendo-themed playing cards).
The catalog hasn’t been updated really since the merchandise was first unleashed on our shores, but with the Club Nintendo point redemption year ending later this month, we can only hope that some new goodies will be on the horizon for our next point-gathering ventures. Hey, if you’re a fanboy for the Big N, you’re probably going to buy the games required for points anyway, right? Why not get some goodies for all your hard-earned cash?
One of the most anticipated Wii games of the year, The Conduit, has gone gold, meaning thousands of disc drives are burning copies of the game at this very moment. On Tuesday, June 23, the game will be shipped to stores, awaiting your hard-earned moneys to be set free onto the world and loaded into your shiny white trapezoids. As the Sega/High Voltage press release says, “Soon you will be able to arm yourself with an arsenal of sci-fi gadgets and high-powered weapons as you fight against aliens, rogue agents and other enemy forces.”
But what about the hype? What’s your take? Sure, the game looks pretty good (and not just “for a Wii game”). It won awards at E3 and other game conferences, and it’s been talked about around the gaming community since it was first revealed over a year ago. But are we looking to a third-party answer to Metroid Prime 3, or will we be stuck with another Red Steel?
I’m seriously hoping that The Conduit turns out to be a good game. Original IPs have it rough from the get-go these days (see No More Heroes, Mirror’s Edge, etc.), but if the game is good enough, it’ll break through those bounds and make its way up the sales charts and into your home.
So, fellow Lemony gamers, are you looking forward to The Conduit? Will you be buying, renting, or passing? Let us know!
Now that E3 has come and gone, and the gaming buzz is starting to settle back down to its usual levels, it’s time to grab a cup of coffee and do some even-tempered analytical thinking about the show’s biggest announcements: Microsoft’s Natal and Sony’s Motion Controller. (Just in case you spent the beginning of June under a rock, Microsoft and Sony both announced new game control technologies based on full body video capture.) What can these technologies really do? Who will they benefit? How will they change the face of gaming? What are the two companies really after? Let’s take a closer look at these seemingly simple questions and see if we can’t glean some truths that lay not on top, but rather below the surface.
So a couple of weeks ago I did something a little unusual (for me) and, at the behest of a friend, went to check out a local indie game developer gathering here in a New York. The event (Demo Night of the local chapter of the IGDA) took place in a small college auditorium on a Thursday night, and, to my complete surprise gathered upwards of 100 people. Believe me when I tell you that in a city like New York, on a party night, that is no small accomplishment.
There were some cute games demo-ed, but the most interesting experience of the night was a social one (this is completely shocking for a gamer, I know!), when we striked up a conversation with two guys sitting next to us, Austin and Brian. Austin and Brian work for a small game startup called Muse Games, working in the budding field of 3D web browser games. Thanks to some new technology (the Unity game engine), it is apparently now possible to do some pretty decent 3D in a browser window, and of course games are a prime target.
Good conversation breeds good karma, so today I thought I’d introduce you guys to Muse and their new 3D game called Elementia. Elementia is a single and multi-player strategy game where you harness the elements of fire, water, land, wind, and ether to do battle. Check it out, and support these guys if you can. They are the only real life game developers I know, and - more importantly - incredibly nice people.
The following was unceremoniously ripped from the RESET blog. Make sure to check out this week’s comic!
So, E3 last week, huh? Being a semi-professional game-talking-about-guy, I figure it’s my job to discuss all of the exciting announcements made at the show.
…
Well, that didn’t take too long! Seriously, though, out of the coverage I’ve seen, nothing really leapt out at me as particularly surprising or exciting. The new third-person Metroid being developed by Team Ninja was a bit unexpected, but it’s also important to remember that the current Team Ninja isn’t really the one that worked on the various Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive games. When Itagaki left Tecmo he eventually ended up taking most of the top Team Ninja talent with him, meaning whatever Team Ninja is now, it’s relatively untested as a game developing group. So while the current Team Ninja could be great, we really have no frame of reference to make that claim. Still, a 3-D, third-person Metroid is at the very least an intriguing prospect. Just, y’know, don’t get all excited thinking that the new Metroid has Ninja Gaiden pedigree. It really doesn’t.
Microsoft’s Natal is another thing that sounds kind of interesting, but with which we have no real frame of reference to judge. I mean, I guess full-body motion controls are neat, but until we see them in action I don’t know if we should go around claiming that it’s going to revolutionize gaming as we know it. It’s really easy to set up tech demos with optimum conditions where everything functions flawlessly, but it’s another thing entirely to translate that into widely distributed, affordable consumer hardware. As I’m sure you’re all aware, Microsoft doesn’t have the best track record on the hardware dependability front. And motion controls are still pretty new tech. Have you used a Wii lately? I wouldn’t exactly call those motion controls perfect. So another project that certainly has potential but definitely belongs in the “we’ll see” column.
Other than that there were a couple of new Mario games announced, a few other big name sequels getting some more press and, well, that was pretty much it. Looking over the list of titles present at E3, I find the ones that I’m the most excited about are the ones that have been hanging around for a while now: Muramasa, Final Fantasy: Dissidia, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the new Mario & Luigi RPG, Sin & Punishment 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and so forth. While I’m sure there are some other smaller projects that I’d find fascinating, I’m guessing I’ll probably have to wait until Jeremy Parish and his Retronauts decide to discuss them over at 1up or Gamespite, because none of the big press outlets seem to have anything to say on the matter. My guess is that, despite the claim that this year’s E3 would be a return to the glory of years past, the “recession proof” game industry is having a hard time justifying spending an exorbitant amount of money promoting projects that aren’t a sure thing, or even creating trailers and compiling footage for new sure-thing projects when they’ve got the old ones that they’ve already invested in still kicking around. Oh well.
Why didn’t anybody tell me Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, was being released for Wii Ware last Monday? Talk about anticipated! While I always have my doubts about direct Final Fantasy sequels, IV is such a beloved title for me that I knew I was downloading that one even if it was garbage. After playing through a chunk of it, I have to say I’m still kind of on the fence. On the one hand, some of the redone character sprites are nice, and the plot, though goofy, actually feels pretty at home in the Final Fantasy IV universe. On the other hand, all the enemy sprites are recycled, as are pretty much all the environments, which the characters end up revisiting for the exact same reasons they went there the first time in Final Fantasy IV. This ends up making it feel like both a low-budget cell phone game (which it technically is) and one of those SNL franchise skits where the same characters are trotted out in slightly different situations just so the audience can crack up at them spouting the same irritating catch phrases and doing the same stupid physical comedy gags they did the last time they were on the show. But I still have hope. The game is episodic, with new chapters being introduced whenever the hell Square Enix feels like it. The initial chapter left me fairly ambivalent until right around the end when things started to get interesting. The second one, Rydia’s chapter, was much more engaging right from the start. Unlike the first, which primarily used recycled, or just plain dull, playable characters, Rydia starts out with three all new and fairly interesting companions. If the proceeding chapters are more like that I could see this being quite an enjoyable, if not particularly original, little RPG. My secret, RPG-nerd wish is that all the assorted parties will be united in the final chapter, at which point they’ll have to assail a multi-party dungeon just like at the end of Final Fantasy VI, once again giving me the opportunity to indulge my dark desire to try and craft Final Fantasy dream-teams.
On one final note, Henry Hatsworth is pretty sweet. If you like old-school platformers a la Mario, Mega Man, Castlevania, etc., this is definitely a game you should look into.
A week ago I decided to start a brand new game of Fable 2 with one goal in mind: keeping my female character hot. I know it’s shallow, but I’m starting to get really sick of RPGs that mangle my characters into looking like some sort of deformed muffin. I understand the whole “your decisions affect what you look like” shtick, but can’t your choices at least try to make you look decent?
It may be cruel, but I’m forcing a low-calorie, no-magic, middle of the road diet on my Fable 2 character to prevent her from turning into the freak show I managed to create before. Even with Fable 2’s “good” look, the character you play still has a ridiculous looking halo floating atop their head. And the evil look? Lame looking horns. If you play somewhere in between, you may be graced with zombie or Dracula face (yay?). If you are a heavy magic user (who isn’t?) then forget about perfect, smooth video game skin. You get a body covered in horrible neon blue veins, as if you had just inhaled a few blue highlighters. Oh, and don’t even dare eat so much as an apple or you’ll turn into Heffer from Rocko’s Modern Life.
Yikes
And while I’m on the topic, what’s up with character creations that start ugly and just stay that way? Oblivion is the worst offender, no matter what I try to do with the female character she still looks like my grandma.
What say you out there? Do you care about how your characters look in RPGs?
