Sadness

http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1183024p1.html

It's true, Mega Man Legends 3 has been cancelled. I'm beginning to lose faith in Capcom as of late.. Inafune was right from the start. The Japanese game industry (Specifically, Capcom) has some serious issues if it's cancelling two Mega Man projects in a single year. What the hell are they thinking? At least we'll get 3 more versions of Street Fighter IV...

Oh, and does anyone give a shit about the re-try of Dead Rising 2?

Storytelling and the edge of the coin

Amy Hennig's directing and script writing went a long way in the Legacy of Kain series before she moved to Naughty Dog to work on such successful titles like the Uncharted series. This is one of my personal favorite scenes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nccrYdsb4Gw

sneak

Meanwhile, against the rain slick, tiny particles of water reflected the glittering beams of light that where being emitted from the Father Star. Feeding its children with pure solar tenderness, the light crept through the damp alleyways of Goldensquare, the business capitol of the world: A modern Wall street. Fueling the radical fad of the DOOM generation, Father Star remained in status quo simply out of necessity. A guiding light, from which all young moderns are born and realized. A potential that is limited by what remains of his story: Mankind’s ill conceived marble statue, that which crumbles ever more frequently due to the corrosion of the indisputable powers that be.

Fight Crime in the 40's!

It’s not very often that I play a Rockstar published game that I thoroughly enjoy for more than 5 minutes. I know, it sounds like I’m not giving the games a proper chance, but for some reason I can’t get over the fact that I’m being thrown into a world that is, for all intents and purposes, just a sandbox filled with… sand. But wait! The genre itself by definition is supposed to just make you want to screw around in a city, right?

“I can kill that guy? Cool! I can drive that car!? Awesome! Wait… there’s a story here? There’s a goal? I’m supposed to want to finish the game? Why?”

This is generally my personal line of thought when playing games like the Grand Theft Auto series. The games pride themselves on expansive cities (In which only about a dozen buildings can be entered) filled with non-playable characters (whom only two dozen of which have something to say). There’s just nothing else there. Anti-heroes + stupid motives + cars + uncoupling plots = Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar’s flagship series.

This year, however, something strange happened.... Rockstar released a hugely hyped title developed by Team Bondi that actually felt like a video game and not a crime simulator!

It's called L.A. Noire.

Essentially, the title is a noire story. Most of us can predict that it’s going to involve damsels, cops, and crime scenes. And we would be absolutely correct.

L.A. Noire tells the story of LAPD detective Cole Phelps, a war vet who has recently been trying to put his noble heart to good use on the streets of Los Angeles. This may seem like your average noire tale, and that’s because it is.

The game-play itself revolves around gathering clues and interrogating suspects. In some ways, it feels a lot like Yu Suzuki’s famous/infamous creation from the late 90’s (Shenmue).

The story isn’t incredibly spectacular, but the delivery is, given the current situation of things. (There’s an extremely thin, fine line between storytelling in videogames and in films in the current generation.) This is no Red Dead Redemption folks. There’s no free roaming lasso swinging chaos at will here. This is essentially a story driven game. The technology used to capture facial expressions of the actors might as well be considered industry standard from this point on because, quite frankly, if you’re going to tell a story in an industry with standards as high as today’s, you better be prepared to deliver some A-list performances. If you’ve played the game, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t played the game, go play it. I still am. Oh, and the soundtrack is a brilliant mixture of music one would expect to hear in a Noire film.

Click here to listen to a sample.

The games seems to rack up quite a few hours of playtime. There are supposedly 21 main cases that are split up into different chapters of the game. In addition to the main storyline, there are 40 or so small “street crimes” to pick up. I’m about two thirds into the main cases, finished 16 street crimes and I still have a ways to go, which is a good thing. It’s been too long since I’ve actually enjoyed driving around a large city looking for things to do in this type of videogame.

Don't have negative thoughts. Remember your mantra.

FAXANADU - NES

I might be a little neurotic, when it comes to video games, but who can blame me? I don’t think I was fully conscious until my parents bought me a Nintendo. If you were to pass by my car in the night, and break in seeking to find some thing of value, you may, or may not, be surprised to find in the center console- a grey plastic cartridge. The decal reads “Faxanadu – Daggers and wingboots, Mantras and monsters await you.” The game was developed and released in Japan by Hudson Soft in 1987 and later was released in the US in 1989. The fact that the art style is based upon the art of Hans Rudolf Giger- the artist who designed the alien from the Alien series of movies directed by Ridley Scott, is perhaps enough to make you begin to see why I carry this around like some kind token of individuality. The musical score, composed and programmed by June Chiki Chikuma is in my opinion by far one of the best musical scores ever written for a game, partly due to it matching so perfectly with the eerie art style as well as inspiring the feeling of an endless world of fantasy and adventure.


The game begins with a nameless hero returning from a long journey in which he saw much hardship to find that his home country of Eolis is in a desperate state. The wells have almost run dry, and the walls are crumbling. Upon entering the city you learn from the Church’s Guru that the King would like to speak with anyone who can perhaps remedy the common hardships. The Guru gives you a ring that is proof of your elfish heritage. Elves in this game are visually just humans- no pointy ears, immortality, or funny languages. Upon talking to the local population you learn of monsters appearing soon before the water started to be scarce. The dwarves, one of the races of people who live in the tree have disappeared. You go to see the king and he tells you that they have sent their best men into the roots of the enormous tree from which the water usually flows, but none have returned. He gives you 1500 gold pieces for supplies, and wishes you good luck on your journey.

The game sports some incredibly detailed backgrounds.

The game is a 2d side scrolling adventure similar to an amazing game called The Battle of Olympus or Zelda II, the Adventure of Link. Unlike these games though, the world unfolds entirely in two dimensions from start to finish. The game allows the player to purchase weapons, shields, and armor which visibly appear on the character as you equipped them. Better armor gives the character better protection from direct collisions with monsters, better shields give better protection from projectile attacks, and better weapons allow for further reach as well as more damage done to enemies. This is the first time that I know of that game makers had ever implemented gear appearing on the character. The character has a red life meter and a green magic meter. The player can buy magic spells from various shop keepers throughout the game. Magic is simply the ability to shoot projectiles that have different shapes, travel speeds, directions, and amount of damage done to enemies. There is also an experience level feature in this game in which the player can level up the character’s rank. The ranking is what determines the amount of gold that the character starts with upon loading a game via the password interface. The game calls the passwords “mantras” which the guru in every town gives you after telling you to “Remember your mantra.” If you receive enough damage in this game to die you turn to dust and the game infuriatingly intones “Do not have negative thoughts, remember your mantra.”

If you decide to give this game a play through, you are going to have to be patient at first to get used to the character’s tricky inertia and shifty jumping. Often the game feels a little too challenging when it comes to getting the character to higher elevations as you climb the tree, but this can be made easier if you save enough money to stock up on winged boots which allow you to fly for 30 seconds. Also most bosses and monsters can be easily defeated with the use of a flurry of magic projectiles.
Without giving too much more of the story away, for those who would like to experience it first hand- the adventure leads you from the base of the tree- Eolis, to the roots of the tree where you learn of the reason behind the drying up of the water supplies, in to the trunk where a horrible mist has spread driving the dwarves mad, higher even in to the branches where a meteorite previously struck and the monsters are worse.
This game is a reminder not only of my distant youth, skipping school to play Nintendo, but also of the possibility that a game can provide an emotional experience like no other medium regardless of the amount of money that is spent in its production or the amount of zeros and ones used or in its ability to cause seizures. It is simply put worthy of being carried around everywhere I go.

If you aren't fortunate enough to own that old hunk of a system, the game is available on the Wii's virtual console.

-J. Oscar

PUCK WHOMEVER YOU WANT BUT GO EASY ON THE ICING!

Nintendo Ice Hockey
1988
An extremely belated review by Kris Hartrum

Out in the sticks, in the quiet suburbs of Tokyo (among the mikan and
plums), you (the searcher) can find it all-- a magical smorgasbord of vintage treasures of which you cannot imagine. Sometimes you find it and sometimes you don’t, but you power through the nonsense to reach the dynamic world of video game antiquing: a winding path of forgotten mystery and classicism from 20th century electronics!

Recently, a dear friend, having purchased an old Famicom Disk System (a floppy disk using peripheral to the original FAMICOM) with a large assortment of
games, had been incessantly reminding me make the trek from the big, bad
city in order to test his newly discovered cove of re-writable games on
floppy disk. Plenty of wicked-good titles including the usual standbys:
Mario Bros, Nintendo Soccer, Pro Wrestling, Zelda, Double Dragon, and Doki Doki Panic (Original FDS game that later became Mario Bros 2, or in Japan; Mario Bros. USA).

Searching among them, I was immediately struck by the metaphorical diamond that was and remains the perfect illustration of simplicity and playability:
NINTENDO ICE HOCKEY.



Released
in 1988, Nintendo ICE HOCKEY is one of the original mutliplayer aces
from the Famicom Disk System. It was then later released onto the
western NES, and then again on Nintendo Wii.

THE GAME
2 people, each using four hockey players, go head to head for 3 periods
until one is crowned master of the ice. Teams include countries, which
(as far as I can tell) are exactly the same. ICE HOCKEY’S greatest
attribute lies in it’s approachability. You control your players and
your goalie at the same time. It can get confusing when your playing
serious defense, but it’s part of the fun. I suggest keeping a close eye
on your goal tender when the opposing side has pressure on your net. If
you focus too heavily on defense past center ice, then they’re sure to
score.

Each player has the ability to customize their team, with a choice of a fat guy, a skinny guy and a normal guy. Traditional video game physics apply: Fat guy is powerful and slow, the skinny guy is fast and weak, and the normal guy’s abilities lie somewhere in between.



1988 was the same year another hockey game was released: BLADES OF STEEL
(port form the 1987 arcade). Now some people try and boast BOS’s
slightly more complex system as superior to Nintendo’s ICE HOCKEY. Do
not listen. They whisper secret lies to you. ICE HOCKEY is far more
addictive and is the gospel truth, forever and ever.

In truth, ICE HOCKEY is easily one of the top VS multi-player games for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of another sports game, outside of
PUNCH-OUT, that remains so damn playable after 23 years.

The music will boil your blood hot as your glide through the cool, digital ice.
Your skinny guy, juggling the puck with ease, passes over to your
Normal, who then fakes and shoots it to the much feared heavy-hitter.
His stick raises, holding it there for an artificial eternity... SMACK!
The puck is smashed into a blur, the black thing breaking through the
forces of opposition and into the pixel-ed net! Sweetness! Glory!
Victory!

ICE HOCKEY!

PUCK IT.

Kris uses team Japan on the Famicom Disk System and the U.S.A on the NES. His favorite mix is the default of two normals, a skinny and a fat guy.

K.

Nostalgia: Resurgence

WARNING: EXTREME RANTS TO FOLLOW:

Human beings. There is a constant urge to feel something familiar, something safe. Often I wonder if it's something inherent, or some thing that is developed over a span of time. For example, there something sacred, at least to me, about sliding a quarter dollar into that slot on the front of cabinet. Don't make any quick judgments, please. I'm the 3rd born of a group of dudes raised in the 80's. As such, I realize that I'll be sucker for nostalgic video games for the rest of my life. But is that something to be ashamed of? Should I feel guilty for not feeling the call of the Call of Duty? I say nay . And yet a plethora of my companions look at me as if I'm some sort of artifact... a fossil if you will. What is it about the pixel perfect graphics that make me tingle? Something sacred, something special, something hidden but something obvious. There's no answer.. there can't be. Such is the law of modern progression. But I propose.... Something! ( What do I call it? No idea. After all, this is a relatively new form of art/expression..) Nevertheless! I believe that there is something coming..

In the future, cynics like Roger Ebert will realize the folly of their ways, and embrace this new form of expression as something as important as the film. After all, the film does nothing more than incorporate a complex narrative with visuals and audible aids, right? How is the video game different? There is the obvious inclusion of human interaction... Which is negligible? I think not.

Hear me out, laugh at me..

You must do what you feel is right, of course.

MOTHER - No crying until the end.

Welcome to the world of Mother.

Here, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the cutesy graphics, quirky soundtracks and amazing characters in a way you've most likely never experienced before.

Enter Shigesato Itoi, famous Japanese copywriter, and creator of the MOTHER series of video games.

In July of 1989, Itoi, with the assistance of Ape Inc and Nintendo Tokyo R&D products released a strange new kind of role-playing game that strayed from the usual formula of knights and dragons, princesses and dark lords and the rest of the ingredients we video game fans of generation Y have become so familiar with.

This will likely sound like some sort of rant about how these games have made such an impact on me as a human being. "Ridiculous!", you might say, but no. I honestly can say with 100% honesty that MOTHER has done something to me. It has truly reignited a spark of innocence and adventure, reminding me that the Japanese video game will not go under like so many of us are led to believe. Folks, only Japanese developers could have made MOTHER.

Here in the states, gamers might know MOTHER as the Japanese title of the praised Earthbound, a Super Nintendo title that went under the radar, but still managed to garner praise from critics, and for good reason.

Earthbound tells the story of young boy living in Onett, a fictional town within a highly fictionalized vision of American culture.

The quirky visual style and parodies of American pop culture both work together to make this game a unique experience. While the standard rules of RPG apply, (random encounters, grinding.) there is enough here to make it feel like different branch of the genre altogether.

Accompanying the colorful sprites and backgrounds is an eclectic soundtrack by Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka, of Metroid (NES) fame. Purists may believe that the music simply feels out of place in the genre, but that's part of what makes it so charming. It still manages to get the job done. The soundtrack effectively stages the mood and tension of each scene and battle.

Aesthetics aside, there is something about this game that brings back that feeling of being a child. You will crave adventure and rely on the assistance of your dear friends, and at the climax of the tale, you'll feel as helpless and frightened as a child. I won't go into details. You'll just have to experience this first hand to understand what I'm talking about. Though I will warn you, nightmares involving the universal cosmic destroyer may become frequent.

I guess this is more of a review/rant.. but whatever. I can't write anything that would do this game justice. If you enjoy videogames, you should play MOTHER.

End of Line.

Unique Visual Design: Gambles

Case in point.. Games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, or Okami.
In the last two decades or so, certain developers have decided not to follow the traveled path and have ventured into uncharted, albeit risky, territory. The question that most people seem to ask in editorials, forums, or what have you, seems to be "is it worth it?"

It seems to me that, throughout the course of video game history, people have associated progression with graphical capabilities. (I'm talking about PC and consoles.)
"Oh hey dad! Can I get the Sega Genesis!? It has 16-bit graphics!"
"What does that mean? Oh.. I don't know.. it's better.. right?"

For a while, especially in the 90's, this was the common argument of any game player, and it was somewhat merited, yeah? Video games as an entertainment and art medium are still relatively young, so it's natural for people to make such assumptions. (In fact, some people still refuse to
believe that video games could ever be considered art.)

So now we find ourselves in the age of fancy super duper 3d graphics. The more realistic looking, the better. I'm sure everyone remembers when The Wind Waker was first presented at that video game conference.... Everyone gasped at the sight of the super deformed cartoonish graphics.. but why? Should the quality of a game be dependent on how closely one can associate it's aesthetic value with reality? I miss the days when people actually had to use their imagination when playing games..
But alas, as a passionate gamer I must move with the times and be accepting. After all, Okami sucked because it looked fake.. right?

I rant and I rant.. I guess my point is, Graphics don't make the game. That's why the PS1, SNES, and almost every other console is more enjoyable than the xbox 360.

And not just because they don't fucking break every 3 months.

-A

Fallout: New Vegas

• A Really Big Expansion Pack

Just recently, Obsidian released what is sure to be later known as 'Game of the Year' or something. With as much due praise as it has received, Fallout: New Vegas also deserves an equal amount of criticism and for equally good reason.
Back when evidence of New Vegas was first turning up, I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, wow. A cool looking expansion for Fallout 3." But apparently I mislabeled the sneaky thing, as it eventually turned out to be a completely "new" game, developed by Obsidian Entertainment (Taking the reigns from Bethesda Softworks.) What is interesting about New Vegas, is that it shares so much in common with its predecessor; so much so in fact, that at first glance, one may not even be able to tell one game from the other.
If you don't believe me, take a look at this side-by-side comparison.


Taken from the PC versions of both games.


To me, paying 60 dollars for a game that is essentially the same experience seems a little unfair.
But hey, that's just me.

I know that sequels are supposed to be kind of similar to their predecessors, but it just feels a little cheap in today's market to call a game like Fallout: New Vegas a standalone title.

I will admit that I have never completed the first two Fallout games, and might be missing the fact that those are extremely similar to each other as well but alas.. I digress.
Don't get me wrong, New Vegas is a very fun game. I just wish I could have played something 'new' and not recycled.

What are your thoughts?