| March 17, 2007... Dream
Delight |
What's that, Lassie? There are rumors that Saturn
games will be coming to the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console
service? And one of the first games available will
be NiGHTS? Timmy can stay in that well for another
hour... I've got to know more about this!
In all
seriousness, this is fantastic news... if it's true,
anyway. I've never been able to properly emulate
the Sega Saturn on anything short of a Cray
supercomputer, and Saturn games are going to fill up
the Wii's flash drive (all 512 megs of it!) pretty
quickly. Still, if Nintendo can wave its magic
remote-shaped wand and bring a little of that Saturn magic to
the Wii, I'm all for it.
| March 14, 2007... Turtle
Comeback! (TMNT on Xbox Live
Arcade) |
This morning, a little part of my childhood came back to
life with the release of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
arcade game for Xbox Live Arcade. Past attempts
have been made to bring the frantic beat 'em up into homes,
but they've been hobbled by system limitations (as was the
case with the NES game, which was great... for an NES game) or
licensing squabbles (one of the recent Xbox TMNT releases
had a hidden translation of the game with the heart-pounding
soundtrack taken out! Arrgh!).
I'm happy to say that neither issues raise their ugly heads
in the Turtles arcade game for the Xbox 360. There are a
few irritations, like the way the attract mode is squeezed
into a tiny porthole in the title screen, and the way the
introduction comes to an abrupt end the moment the words "Hang
on, April!" escape the lips of Splinter, the turtles'
sewer-dwelling sensai. There's also word that a four
player session is only an option with Xbox Live, but
that's a good sight better than being stuck with a single
friend in the NES game.
When you get past all that, Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles: The Arcade Game remains one of the best titles the
long-running license has to offer. The animation is
still smooth and dynamic, with the Turtles putting their
weight into every swing of their weapons, and members of the
Foot Clan giggling as they light sticks of dynamite. The
soundtrack is still so infectious that you'll risk blowing out
your speakers to listen to it at full volume. Finally,
the gameplay is still among the most satisfying and addictive
you'll find in a late 1980's beat 'em up. You'll reach a
special kind of nirvana when you're fighting alongside
three other rabble-rousing reptiles and the Foot Clan's
soldiers are flying around the screen like debris in a
hurricane. Thanks to you, Konami, for making one of the
best video games ever hatched from a cartoon, and thanks to
you Ubisoft, for bringing it into the 21st century!
| March 10, 2007... Is There an Ecko
in Here? |
Before I begin, I'd like to thank Doc Holiday from the
Penny Arcade forums for taking the time to untangle the
jumbled spaghetti code buried deep within the index
page. He informs me that the editor I'm using leaves a
lot of unfinished business in the HTML, opening tags without
ever shutting them. With this in mind, it's not hard to
understand why the site would look so ghastly in browsers like
Safari and Konquerer, but the revisions Doc made should
keep the site looking sharp no matter what you're using to
read it!
All right, now onto the good stuff! As you can see,
this is a copy of the Atari game Mark Ecko's Getting Up.
As you can also see, it's got a four dollar price tag stuck to
the front of the shrink wrap. I couldn't believe it when
I saw it. The cashier at K-Mart couldn't believe it
when she saw it either, but sure enough, it rang
up for exactly the amount shown on the sticker. If you
were wondering just how poor Getting Up's sales were, that
ought to answer your question!
I'd feel badly for Mark Ecko too, if he wasn't a spoiled
twat who called all gamers drama queens. I rented the
game just days before picking it up at K-Mart (it was free
with my rental of Crackdown for the Xbox 360) and it's
actually quite stylish and entertaining. The movement of
your hip-hoppin' hero Trane feels a little mechanical, but the
fighting's got heart and laying down graffiti in a video
game has never felt so realistic (sorry, Jet Set Radio
Future!). I dunno, maybe my brain's been scrambled after
playing that wretched 50 Cent game, but four dollars for
a title of Getting Up's caliber is a much better deal
than one of those throwaway Burger King
games.
| March 8, 2007... There's No
Playstation Like Home |
The man who said "Home is where the heart is" would have
changed his tune in a hurry if he ever saw the Playstation Home service in
action. What was rumored as a merger of the Miis on the
Nintendo Wii and the achievements in the Xbox 360 is in
reality a virtual world where Playstation 3 owners around the
globe can share their experiences. Sounds great,
right? Sure, until you witness the soulless
presentation. Rather than Nintendo's simple but
charming cartoon artwork, every resident of Playstation Home
is rendered for maximum realism... and minimum
personality. The service allows you to create a perfect
replica of yourself, but do you really want your online
friends to see you exactly as you are, with a five 'o clock
shadow and a sagging spare tire? Even in the
cutting-edge, detail-obsessed 21st century, some things are
best left to the imagination.
Playstation Home also suffers from the Google
factor. Five years ago, there were many online
search engines, but none of them were especially good at
their jobs, keeping the user from their results with
a cluttered page of irrelevant topics.
Then along came Google, which consisted of nothing more than a
text window, five links, and a little grey search
button. The only thing Google did was offer search
results... which coincidentially was exactly what users had
wanted in the first place! Fast-forward to 2007.
Google is the undisputed champion of online indexes, while
those other guys... wait, are they even still around?
That's what Microsoft brings to the table with its
achievement system. While Playstation 3 owners will have
to dig through their virtual house for trinkets representing
their accomplishments, that information is available to Xbox
360 fans with the touch of a button. Microsoft learned
some important lessons when Google crushed its MSN search
engine like a tin can back in 2002. It finally
understands that it's best to give their customers
exactly what they want, when they want it, without letting
white noise get in the way. Judging from the extraneous
interface of Playstation Home, Sony's going to have to take a
few hard lumps of its own before it learns these lessons for
itself.
| March 4, 2007... The Web 2.0
Look. Hey, All the Other Sites Are Doing
It! |
Another year, another new look for The Gameroom
Blitz. I have a funny feeling that this one will be
sticking around for a while, though... it's simple yet
elegant, without the rough edges present in many of the site's
past designs. It also makes better use of high screen
resolutions, with native support for 1084x768 monitors.
Any resolutions higher than that will letterbox the
screen with black vertical bars... and anything lower is
probably going to look pretty awful. Sorry,
luddites!
If you notice any kinks in the new design, feel free to
drop me a note on the forum. I haven't tested this with
Camino, or whatever browsers the cool Mac kids are using these
days, but I understand that the Crazy Climber motif wasn't
quite up to building code standards on computers running Apple
or Unix operating systems. Hopefully GRB '07 will be
more Jobs and Torvalds compliant, but I won't know for sure
until someone tells me!
Just a couple of gaming-related notes before I get back to
polishing up the site. After getting smacked around by
the Nintendo DS for the past two years, it looks like the
PSP will be taking Round 2 of the handheld wars a lot more
seriously. God of War, one of the Playstation's most
popular first-party franchises, will hack and slash its
way to Sony's potent portable by the end of the year.
There's no word on how a game that used nearly
every button on the Dual Shock controller will be ported
to the less accommodating PSP. However, a
simplified control scheme could actually do wonders for a
series that in all honesty is a little less user-friendly than
it should be.
On the Nintendo side of the fence, SNK's American president
Ben Herman has some depressing news for Neo-Geo fans eagerly
awaiting the arrival of the system's games on
Nintendo's Virtual Console service. Not only will there
be no online support for these titles, but Herman claims that
gamers won't see online ANYTHING for the Wii for at least
another year. If that weren't enough, the Neo-Geo titles
that will make it to the Wii aren't likely to be the ones
fans actually want. The secret word from "Pee-Wii"
Herman is that "There'd be a lot of money involved in
releasing a version of a game that has limited or niche
appeal." In other words, don't be surprised if
you excitedly leap out of bed and power on your system one
sunny Monday morning, only to find a long-forgotten dud like
Andro Dunos or Mutation Nation waiting for you there.
| March 2, 2007... Total
Immersion |
After five years of fighting tooth and nail with Immersion
Technologies, Sony has finally laid down its arms and come to
an understanding with the company that brought the world
force-feedback game controllers. In the agreement,
Immersion gets the $100 million dollars originally awarded to
them by the United States courts... and in return, Sony gets
the rumble technology that was conspicuously absent from their
first run of Playstation 3 controllers.
Let's forget for a minute that Sony told us rumble was a
thing of the past, and that it would be impractical to include
in the SIXAXIS with its (largely unnecessary) motion
sensor. This is an important step forward for a company
which had considered its leadership of the video game industry
to be an unalienable right, rather than a privilege that must
be earned through fierce competition and customer
satisfaction. Instead of telling gamers what they
want (or what they'll learn to live with), Sony
is finally listening to its user base and addressing
their concerns.
It's starting
to sink in, folks. If this news comes with a
contrite press release from Sony (an announcement that
doesn't make the reader want to strangle Jack Tretton
or Phil Harrison), there may be some hope left for the
Playstation 3. And if there isn't, hey, there's always
the Xbox 360 and the Wii!
| February 26, 2007... Not So
Bulletproof After All,
Eh? |
It's been so long since I've
written a review for the site that I've forgotten what it was
like! Anyway, here it is, an appropriately scathing
commentary on one of the worst games of last
year... or the year before that... or the year
before that! Heck, I dare say that 50 Cent:
Bulletproof ranks near the top of the crappiest third-person
shooters ever designed. When you find yourself
wishing you were playing Advent Rising instead, you
know the game's got serious
problems.
Before I go, I've
been hearing rumors that Konami is planning to release the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game for Xbox Live
Arcade. They actually tried this once before, including
an emulated version of the game with one of their more recent
Turtles beat 'em ups... but it was badly butchered, replacing
the driving score from the original with some trash from the
FoxBox cartoon. Hopefully they won't make the same
mistake twice with this translation. I'm also crossing
my fingers for online play, because let's face it, it's just
not as fun playing as a Ninja Turtle without at least one
other hero in the half shell guarding your back!
| February 23, 2007... The Case of
the Missing Update |
Uh
oh... I think I lost this update. Either it was really
good and I should be kicking myself, or it was really
embarrassing and I should be glad it's
vanished.
| February 18, 2007... Hot Coffee,
Red Steel, and Ridge
Racing |
Good news,
everybody! Well, good news for ME, anyway. A
recreation center and coffee house just opened inside the
residential hall at the local college. Although I don't
live on campus, I've still been able to put the
center and its extensive collection of next-gen game
systems to use.
That includes the
Playstation 3, which might actually be a pretty good system if
it weren't for that blood-curdling price tag.
Resistance: Fall of Man is, as countless reviewers have
already mentioned, extremely impressive. It's as good a
first-person shooter as any I've played, with razor-sharp
graphics that bridge the gap between science-fiction horror
and mid-20th century military combat. Ridge Racer 7
isn't so hot, but to its credit, it's no WORSE than its
store-brand generic predecessor on the Xbox 360.
I've also taken the
opportunity to catch up with those Xbox 360 and Wii games
which I either can't afford or just have no interest in
buying. The less said about Gears of War, the better...
I realize that the game has a fiercely loyal following,
but after stumbling through the tutorial I can't imagine
why. The control couldn't be any more player-hostile if
the designers glued poison-tipped tacks to the
thumbsticks and buttons!
On the Wii side of
things, there's Red Steel and Elebits. In my less than
humble opinion, Konami's lighthearted action title is the
quintessential Wii game, making the most of the system's
unique controller while bringing fresh ideas to an industry in
dire need of them. You're a junior
exterminator, blasting brightly colored bugs with a
stream of electricity that can also hold and throw
objects. The gameplay's got the same cumulative
effect as Katamari Damacy... the more Elebits you catch, the
more powerful your beam becomes, eventually giving you the
strength to tear houses from their foundations and toss cars
around like toys. What could be more fun than
that?
Definitely not Red
Steel! Everything you've heard about this game is true,
as long as it's negative. I'm not sure what offends me
more about this first-person shooter from Ubisoft... is it the
artificially flavored Japanese atmosphere? The smeared,
ugly wall textures and boxy weapons highlighted with garish
gold trim? The gimped control which makes something
as simple as picking up a gun a labor even Hercules
would dare not accept? The cramped level design which
gives you all the freedom of a Tiger handheld from the late
1980's? Hey, why settle for just one? I'm picking
"all of the above."
| February 18, 2007... I'm Itching
for a Fight |
After a
disappointing experience with Capcom's Godhand,
I was determined to find a 3D brawler as
entertaining as the arcade favorites I so fondly remember from
my youth. Here's what my extensive research
revealed...
FINAL FIGHT STREETWISE:
Sure, it's not fantastic by any stretch of the imagination,
but if you've ever played Capcom 8's last "gem" Final Fight
Revenge, you'll realize just how good you have it with this
sequel. You're Kyle Travers, brother of everybody's
least favorite playable character from the original Final
Fight. When Cody is kidnapped by gang members, it's up
to you to search the down and dirty streets of
Metro City for clues to his location. It's like
Shenmue with more swearing, fewer sailors, and less appealing
mini-games. Also included in the package is a heinous
conversion of the Final Fight arcade game that'll leave you
scrambling for that copy of Capcom Classic Collection in the
closet.
THE WARRIORS: Feeling
nostalgic for the 1970's? Then you're really, really old
and probably shouldn't be playing video games. But if
the onset of wrinkles and liver spots doesn't deter you from
indulging in some gaming goodness, you'll want to set a copy
of The Warriors next to your favorite lava lamp. The
Warriors has such a deep fighting system that you'll wonder
why Rockstar threw in all the extraneous nonsense.
You'll be sneaking past cops and stealing car radios
as often as you'll be sinking your fists in the faces of rival
gang members; thugs dressed as everything
from mimes to baseball stars. Fortunately,
there's an option to get right to the fighting, and you'll be
amazed by all you can do. Why just punch and kick when
you can drag that goon's face across a chain link
fence?
URBAN REIGN: Now that's
more like it! Namco's Tekken spin-off has all the
satisfying action of The Warriors without all the
distractions. There are no mission objectives standing
between you and your opponents, so you'll have all the time in
the world to experiment with a brilliant fighting system
packed with attacks. Like True Crime: Streets of L.A.,
you can target specific areas of your opponents' bodies.
However, this has a more profound effect on the gameplay in
Urban Reign... if you soften up the legs of your foe, they'll
drop like a ton of bricks the next time you land a blow
there. Slick, easily performed counters and some of
the most astonishing attacks you've seen outside a wrestling
ring make Urban Reign the most exciting beat 'em up
released in the past ten years.
| February 14, 2007... Sowing
the SEEDS of
Love |
I've never
been a huge fan of Valentine's Day, but if they're all going
to bring us this many juicy gaming announcements, I might
have to view the holiday in a more flattering
light. First up is news of an Xbox Live Arcade
conversion of Ikaruga,
Treasure's parting gift to the Dreamcast. It's no
Radiant Silvergun (then again, what is?), but it's
still a big step up from the crusty arcade games
available on the online service.
Speaking of online features,
the Nintendo Wii's got a new channel called Everybody
Votes. It's like those online polls you see on most
internet message boards, except Nintendo chooses the daily
topic, and there are only two available options. Yeah, I
don't get it either. I wonder what Nintendo has up its
sleeve for next week... maybe a Magic 8-Ball where you shake
the Wiimote like mad until a little purple cube floats to the
top of your television set, dispensing cryptic advice.
Hey, that's actually a pretty cool idea... who do I talk to so
I can get my cut of the royalties?
What next? Well,
there's news from Kotaku that the founders of Clover have
taken up root elsewhere, starting the
development team SEEDS. There's no news on what their premiere
game will be like, but evidently they'll have a lot of money
to invest in their first project, courtesy of an unknown but
very wealthy benefactor. With talented designers like
SEEDS' Shinji Mikami and Game Republic's Yoshiki Okamoto
abandoning Capcom in droves, I'm starting to wonder if there will be anything
left of the company in another five
years!
Valentine's Day has
one more gift for gamers, and it ain't flowers or candy!
Nope, this present comes in the form of the long-awaited,
continually-delayed Chulip. This kiss-centric
adventure
has been finished and ready for launch for over three years,
but developer Natsume kept getting cold feet about its
release. Did Sony halt Chulip's
debut because of its lackluster
graphics (no doubt inspired by Nintendo's own Animal
Crossing), or was Natsume worried that a game starring a
serial kisser would be considered too creepy for a
prudish Western audience?
Whatever may be the case, it
seems they've finally worked through those issues and are
ready to speak the language of love. Expect Chulip at
your local Gamestop or EB Games tomorrow afternoon... unless
the damn thing gets delayed again at the last
minute.
EDIT: And wouldn't you
know it, it WAS! Oh good grief. All right, in that
case, expect the game at your local
Gamestop next Tuesday afternoon. Just don't
hold your breath for it.
| February 12, 2007... Factor Five
and Its High-Def
Jive |
There's been a lot of talk about display
resolutions lately, especially from feisty German development
team Factor 5. In a recent interview with Game Informer,
Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht reveals the reason his
company left Nintendo and refused to work with
Microsoft. The last straw (actually, the only straw) for
Julian was that neither company was willing to embrace
1080p, that holy grail of resolutions.
Of course, there are
perfectly logical reasons for Microsoft and Nintendo's
hesitation... high-definition televisions are still in their
infancy, and pushing over two million pixels sixty times a
second is a tall order for even the most powerful game
consoles. Nevertheless, Factor 5 is convinced that 1080p
is the way to go, and they're dead set on taking everyone else
along for the ride... even if they
have to drag them kicking and
screaming.
Some gamers feel that
Factor 5 is on the right track. They too feel that 1080p
is the defining characteristic of a next-generation game
console, and that outstanding graphics are impossible to
achieve without it. As a recent owner of a
high-definition television set, I have to wonder if these
individuals can honestly tell the difference between 1080p and
lesser resolutions, or if they're just in love with another
trendy buzzword from the industry that brought us blast
processing and bump-mapping. After being dazzled by The
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with a "humble" 1080i
component connection, I suspect the
latter applies.
I'm also not entirely
convinced that game developers have pushed previous HD
resolutions past their limits... yes, even the 480p which
has made the Nintendo Wii a laughingstock among tech
snobs. There are still critical areas in basic visual
presentation that the video game industry has long
ignored; things that could and should be improved
even on older consoles. Even in high-budget titles by
Electronic Arts and other industry titans, the animation is
so stiff and lifeless that if you squint, you
can see the strings holding the characters in
place. How is 1080p going to improve the look of
games that seem like they were executive produced by Jim
Henson? Not a bit.
In addition to
addressing these nagging flaws, developers need to
be encouraged to stray from the well-worn path of
photo-realism and experiment with new, dynamic art
styles. Okami's clever mimicry of medievel Japanese
paintings was a great start, but you can't finish a thousand
mile journey with a single step. When designers can
finally express themselves through the artwork in
their games... when cel-shaded characters become
indistinguishable from their hand-drawn counterparts... when
every release is a unique and memorable visual
experience, then and only then will it
be time for the industry to step up to
1080p.
| February 8, 2007... An Offer You
Can't Refuse (but a game system you
can) |
Looking for an easy six hundred dollars?
Well, Sony's got a deal for you! Just listen to this
quote from SCEA president Jack Tretton, taken from the latest
issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly...
"If you can find a PS3
anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than
five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for
it."
It's right here in black and
white (and yellow), folks! All you need to do is
get solid evidence of the stacks and stacks of
Playstation 3s currently in
stores, then send 'ol Jack one of them.
It's money in the bank, baby!
| February 4, 2007... Time Pilot,
How High Can You
Fly? |
Whoo, Konami's been busy! They're cranking
out over a dozen games, and thankfully, none of them have the
words "Metal" or "Gear" in the title. There's a good
mixture of the unexpected and familiar in the release
schedule... along with the usual pile of Dance Dance
Revolution games, there's a collection of arcade favorites for
the Nintendo DS and another oddball Wii title from the makers
of Elebits.
The most surprising
announcement was Time Ace for the Nintendo DS. It took
'em twenty years, but Konami's finally making a sequel to one
of its earliest arcade hits. Information about the game
is scarce at the moment, but what's known is that it will
feature eighteen stages, with the player bringing down
aircraft from eight distinct time periods. Time Ace will
also be in 3D, so it's probably safe to expect
dogfights like the ones in Crimson Skies, or rail-based
gameplay similar to Nintendo's Starfox series.
One last thing before
I go. It sounds like the Dan Hibiki of attorneys might
not be practicing law for long, if the Florida Bar
Association has their way. They've disciplined him
in the past, but since he's never gotten the message, it's
likely that the bar will deal with him more harshly to drive
their point home. It's a hollow victory, since the
mainstream media's spotlight has already shifted from Jackie T
to the next freak of the week, but
I'll take what I can get!
| January 31, 2007... Now THAT'S
Progressive! |
Unlike some finicky gamers, I don't
demand eye-popping, cutting-edge, high-definition,
hyphen-abusing graphics from all of my software.
However, I do want to make the games in my
collection look as good as they can be, which is why I'm
glad I bought a component cable for my Nintendo Wii. It
not only vastly improves the look of native games like
Wii Sports, but brings many of my dusty old GameCube titles
back to life!
You wouldn't believe
how many of these last-gen releases support progressive
scan! Nearly every one of the games I tested, from Soul
Calibur II to Alien Hominid, took full
advantage of the component cable's ability to produce nearly
pixel-perfect graphics. It was a thrill to come
back to True Crime: Streets of L.A. after a six month long
absence... and as it turns out, it's even more satisfying to
blow away thugs and muggers in glorious
high-resolution!
In other "personal
victory" news, I'm finally starting to get the hang of the Wii
interface and controller. I really dig the weather and
news channels, and I'm getting better at the games in Wii
Sports. Thanks to a little practice, Bowling and Golf
now feel a lot more like their real-life counterparts.
To top it all off, I whipped up a Mii
who looks so much like me it's scary! Either that or
he's so scary he looks like me. I haven't decided
which.
| January 28, 2007... Nintendo
Wii: News and Weather on the
Hour |
The irony of the Nintendo
Wii is that I find myself doing everything BUT playing games
on it. Wii Sports quickly lost its appeal and
Zelda: Twilight Princess is too blurry to
play with a composite video connection, but the
system's news and weather channels keep me coming back on a
daily basis.
I was skeptical about
these features at first, but it's clear now that Nintendo knew
exactly what it was doing when it included them in the
Wii. It's thrilling
to literally scour the globe for information, even if
it's data you don't really need. Is it important to know
the current temperature in Athens, or the latest headlines in
Manila? Not at all, but as long as that news is at your
fingertips, why not take advantage of it?
Speaking of news, here's the latest
report from special
Pac-Land correspondent Josh
Lesnick...
| January 24, 2007... Hey, It's My
Brother's Birthday! (also, brief game
reviews) |
Here's another batch of micro-reviews to hold
you over until the next major GRB update...
ADVENT
RISING: This high-budget Majesco
release got a lot of grief from the mainstream press...
and indeed, it deserved some of that criticism. The
frame rate dips faster than George W. Bush's approval ratings
during intense moments, and the gameplay borrows heavily
from that king of sci-fi shooters on the Xbox, Halo
2. Fortunately, there's an engrossing storyline to
carry you through those rough moments, as well as generous
checkpoints and an automatic save function that keep the
frustration to a minimum during those times when you're up to
your elbows in bloodthirsty aliens. They just keep
comin' and comin'!
NEED FOR SPEED
CARBON: I'm going to split this review evenly
between the Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS versions of the latest
Need for Speed. It's no big surprise that the Xbox 360
release is the better of the two games, but what blew my mind
is that the Nintendo DS serves up some sweet night racing
action too. Rather than chimping their rides like they
did with the DS ports of Burnout Legends and Need For
Speed: Most Wanted, Electronic Arts put a lot of effort into
this conversion. Even with its sleek graphics, licensed
soundtrack, and tight control, Carbon on the DS lags far
behind its Xbox 360 counterpart. I was blown away by the
online demo... it's everything I loved about Need for Speed
Underground 2, with five times the visual splendor
and none of the disc-snapping frustration!
A BARD'S
TALE: I've said it once (in a decade-old
review of the Sega Saturn dud Shining Wisdom) and I'll
say it again... if you're going to make fun of
lackluster RPGs, you'd better make sure your own game
doesn't fall into that category! In A Bard's Tale,
you play a man of questionable morals and sour disposition,
whose sole joy in life is to mock the tired conventions of
traditional adventure games. He treats demanding
non-player characters with the rudeness they deserve! He
skips cut scenes with a gruff, dismissive "Heard
it!" He... runs around slaying hundreds of monsters and
springing open treasure chests from an overhead
viewpoint. Oh crap, the game's become the very thing it
was trying to mock!
HEAVY
WEAPON: Take Moon Patrol, then take out the
craters and most of the challenge, and you've got PopCap's
Heavy Weapon. Sure, it looks fantastic, but when you can
beat the first three stages with your eyes closed (and that's
honestly not much of an exaggeration), what's the point?
Similarly, the seemingly overwhelming onscreen pyrotechnics
aren't much of a threat when you can gun down all those
stray bombs with a sweep of your cannon, or a tap of the
nuke button. Oh well... Heavy Weapon might be
a letdown, but at least it's comforting to know that the
announcer from Killer Instinct is still getting
work!
| January 20, 2007... Brief Reviews,
Just Cause I Can |
Time to play a
little catch-up! Here's what I've been playing in the
last week...
THE GRIM
ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY: On his blog,
Maxwell Atoms stated that he was proud to
have played a part in the development of the video game
based on his Cartoon Network television series. The
twisted touch that Max brings to every episode of the show
is the most important ingredient in this otherwise
ordinary Power Stone clone. You just can't find a game
more faithful to its source material than this one... the
kooky cast of characters taunt and bicker with each other as
they battle, and there's even the disembodied voice
of Weird Al Yankovic reminding players that they "need
ham badly." There are serious balance issues judging
from what little I played... Grim cleans up the
competition with his scythe, while the Steve Urkel-esque Irwin
lags far behind in both speed and power. However, even
the dated graphics (it honestly doesn't look any better
than the near decade old Power Stone) can't stop me from
considering a purchase... Billy and Mandy is one of those rare
games that can transcend its shortcomings based on its charm
and the strength of its license alone.
SNEAK KING AND POCKETBIKE
RACER: It's amazing what you'll put up with for
just four dollars. As its title suggests, Sneak King is
a stealth action title, placing it squarely into my all-time
least favorite genre of games. And as you may have
already gathered from the name, Pocketbike Racer is yet
another in a long procession of Mario Kart clones, following
close behind licensed blunders like Shrek Speedway and
(shudder) Crazy Frog Racer. Still, when you're offered a
next-gen game for less than five bucks, how can you possibly
resist? In the case of Pocketbike Racer, you'll want to
try... this is by a wide margin the worst racing game on the
Xbox 360, bringing back nightmarish memories of South
Park Racing with its convoluted tracks and the most bugs this
side of the film Creepshow. Luckily, Sneak King will
make you forget all about its retarded cousin, and will even
distract you from the better games in your collection with
stealth action that's refreshingly laid back and
relaxing. If you're spotted, you won't automatically
lose the mission or be swarmed by angry soldiers... your point
multiplier simply drops back to one as the burger-flipping
baron shrugs his shoulders and attempts another fast-food
delivery. Now THAT'S what I call having it my
way!
JUST
CAUSE: Man, oh man... I so want to love this
game. Just Cause is the first Grand Theft
Auto derivitive since the original True Crime that
dares to inject some excitement into the flabby thighs
of the increasingly dull sandbox genre. You're
a tech-savvy guerrilla fighter in Central America; the Latin
love child of James Bond and Che Guevera. It's up to you
to lead your people to freedom, gunning down corrupt
cops, taking the wheel of top-secret vehicles, and
picking off military leaders along the way. The action
pushes you to your limits and the scenery is beautiful beyond
description (parrots and palm trees and ponds, oh my!), but
there's just one thing missing... intuitive control.
There's an action assigned to every button, and some keys
swap functions when you hop into a helicopter or a jeep,
making it frustratingly easy to fumble in the middle
of a tough mission and giving you
just cause for throwing your wireless controller into the
nearest wall.
ZELDA:
TWILIGHT PRINCESS: Last but not least, there's
Twilight Princess. Other critics will warn you that this
one starts off slowly, and they're totally right...
you'll spend nearly an hour fishing and herding goats before
you wrap your hands around a sword and battle your first
Moblin. By the time you get that far, you'll wonder why
you bought a whole new system for a game that clearly doesn't
need it. Twilight Princess has sharply
rendered characters but decidedly substandard
backgrounds, and the Wii's remote controller doesn't bring
anything new to the table aside from unnecessary
confusion. Sure, pointing a slingshot is a little easier
with the Wiimote, but fighting and adjusting the camera-
which I can guarantee you'll do a lot more
often- is more awkward than simply tapping a button or tilting
a camera stick. Twilight Princess lives up to the
pedigree of past 3D Zelda games, but with a GameCube version
readily available (and almost exactly the same), there's
no logical reason to drop an extra two hundred and fifty
dollars on a Wii. Wait for a true
exclusive that'll make you proud of the
purchase.
| January 17, 2007... How I Stopped
Worrying and Learned to Love
High-Def |
In 2004, I bought a Sanyo television at a pawn
shop. It was larger than my last set, with ports which
brought out the color and detail in my favorite video
games. Although I was happy with my purchase, I wasn't
entirely satisfied. I knew that I could do even better,
and would probably be forced to by the end of the
decade. When the time came, I
vowed that my next television would be in glorious
high-definition!
Two months ago, that time
came. The Sanyo fizzled out on me, the victim of a
broken vertical deflector. It took a while before I
could afford to replace the set, but once that money came, I
went all out, picking up the best television money can
buy. Well, as much money as I had, anyway! The
Sanyo, all one hundred pounds of it, went out the door,
replaced by a 32" flatscreen LCD TV with nearly every video
port you could imagine.
One of those ports was put
to the test shortly after setting up my Olevia. I took
the woefully underused VGA cable I purchased for my Xbox
360 last summer and plugged it into the back of the set.
I crossed my fingers, hoping for the best... and boy did I
ever get it! The already stunning Oblivion looked even
more gorgeous in high-definition, with every
lapping wave of water, every stray blade of grass, and
every stone cast to the side of the road looking almost
real enough to touch.
The other video inputs
yielded less spectacular results. I was satisfied with
the Wii's composite cables back when I was playing Wii
Sports, but the more ornate detail of Zelda: Twilight Princess
demands better. Too bad finding a component cable for
the Wii is almost as tough as tracking down the system
itself! Next, there's S-Video... although
still noticably blurry, it's
good enough to get the job done for the Playstation 2 and
Dreamcast.
You definitely don't want to
go any lower than that on a high-def set, though. If
you're planning on scratching that old-school gaming itch,
you're better off getting it through emulators or classic game
collections. Most early game consoles only offer RF
output, and few things look worse than a lowly RF
connection on a high-def TV!
All right, enough HD
snobbery out of me. Next time, I'll talk about The
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess... I just started playing
it, but once I dig a little deeper, I'll be able to offer a
more thorough analysis than "You herd goats." Stay
tuned, folks!
| January 15, 2007... Early
Impressions of the Nintendo
Wii |
It's an exciting time
to be a Nintendo fan. The company which once ruled the video
game industry fell on hard times in the past decade thanks to
missteps like the Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64. Throughout much
of the 2000's, the once mighty console manufacturer became the
whipping boy for a new generation of gamers, which dismissed
it as "kiddie" and out of touch. Now, after what seems like a
lifetime of scorn, Nintendo is finally gaining back its lost
relevance with hardware that injects new ideas into an
industry which has become complacent and stubbornly resistant
to change.
As a long-time fan of
the company (and a vocal critic of its competitors), I would
very much like to see Nintendo beat the odds and reclaim its
throne as the world's most popular and influential game
developer. Unfortunately, I'm more in love with the
thought of Nintendo making this miracle comeback than I am the
system they're using to achieve those means.
Yes, that's right...
I'm not impressed with the Nintendo Wii. Not just
yet, anyway. The irony is that it was a lot more fun to
hunt down the incredibly elusive system than it was to
actually PLAY it. I wouldn't have gotten a Wii at all
had it not been for the efforts of a kindly GameStop clerk,
who had a unit tucked in the dark recesses of the store's
mysterious merchandise closet. He told me to come in
early the next morning to pick it up. With every other
store picked clean of consoles, I eagerly complied, and the
next afternoon, a Wii was perched proudly in the middle of my
entertainment system, where a GameCube once had
been.
Before I fired up the
included game, Wii Sports, I decided to play around with the
system's interface. The first move I made was switching
on the built-in wireless receiver. It was a move I would
quickly regret. The system asked for a firmware
update... not such a big deal, since this kind of thing
usually takes just a couple of minutes, right? On
another system, sure, but the Wii dragged the process out to
over an hour, only to demand another update immediately
afterward. In a hobby where first impressions are
killers, this was a shotgun to the face!
Two hours later, the
Wii has finally had its fill of updates (heaven
knows I've gotten sick of them). I took this
opportunity to become familiar with the system's
BIOS. Unlike the colorful user interface of the Xbox
360, or the dark yet stylish GUI of the Playstation 3, the
Wii's operating system is blindingly bright, with a plain
white background holding a neatly arranged cluster of
rectangular icons. Selecting one of these onscreen
options is as simple as aiming at it with the remote and
pressing the A button... but enduring the background music is
considerably more difficult.
Some of the features
offered on the Wii include a web browser based on Opera, a
picture slide show, and perhaps most intriguingly, a
weather network that allows you to check out a five day
forecast for both your hometown and anywhere else you could
imagine. It's information you could just as
easily find on the Internet, but only the Wii lets you
grab the edge of a virtual globe and give it a good, hard
spin!
The web browser isn't
nearly as endearing, with a difficult to use interface
and a dearth of available options.
There's no apparent way to adjust the size of the text without
resizing the entire page. If you choose to zoom in on
the page you're visiting, you'll miss a lot of onscreen
detail, but if you leave it at the standard size, much of the
text is reduced to a blurry, unreadable mess
(especially if you're stuck with the composite cables
packed with the Wii). If that weren't enough, you also
have to put up with the dreadfully slow access times that make
downloading updates and other software almost
unbearable.
Finally, there's the
slide show. It's not as impressive as the photo album
offered by the Playstation 3, where a series of life-like
Polaroid pictures are dropped one by one onto a scrapbook
marked with handwritten dates. Nevertheless, the
presentation of each picture is effective, in a cheesy
mid-80's sitcom kind of way. You get a lot of
camera pans of every snapshot, coupled with
heartstring-tugging music which you can thankfully swap out
for the MP3s copied to your SD card.
Speaking of which,
there's no Wii channel devoted exclusively to music, and you
can't pop in your favorite music CDs... a glaring oversight
when you consider that nearly every
other home console from the past decade had
these capabilities. You know there's a problem when your
latest system's multimedia functions are lagging behind even
the lowly 3DO!
However, if it's
games you've come for... well, the Wii doesn't seem to
offer much in this department either, if Wii Sports is
any indication. It quickly becomes obvious why
the game was included with the system, because
there's just not enough meat on its bones to justify a
stand-alone purchase.
It's not
just that the games are simplistic... the
control never feels as natural as
advertised. Maybe playing twenty years of games with a
joystick has trained me to be resistant to other forms of
input, but nevertheless, I can't help but think that
something's not quite right here. In Bowling, I feel
like I'm mimicing the movements of the onscreen character,
rather than hurling a ball at a crowd of pins. When I
step outside that field of movement, I'm given an error
message and dragged behind the red line to do it all over
again. Baseball and Tennis are even worse, leaving me
frantically flailing at a ball I can never strike.
I'm going to reserve
my final judgment on the Wii until after I play Zelda:
Twilight Princess. It's in my collection right now, but
I'm saving it for later... I still haven't finished the very
similar Okami, and I don't want to switch games in
midstream and risk forgetting about it. However, when I
do finally fire up Twilight Princess, it had better blow
my frickin' mind... my future opinion of the Nintendo Wii
depends on it!
| January 6, 2007... Little Robot,
Big
Review |
Crazy people walkin' 'round with blood in their eyes,
and all I wanna do is... put Playstation games on my
PSP! It's even more addictive now that there's a program
which shrinks the typically gigantic Playstation ISO files
down to a more reasonable size. A one gigabyte memory
stick that once had barely enough room for two games is now
capable of carrying four or five, without the hassle of
lugging around a stack of CDs. Oh, and did I mention
that many Playstation classics run just as well on the PSP as
they had Sony's first game system? Well, if I did
already, it's worth mentioning again!
When I'm not
reliving fond memories of the late 1990's on my PSP, I'm
playing Chibi-Robo for the GameCube. I've been
interested in this one since I played the demo at GameStop
last fall... just not fifty dollars interested! However,
after the price dropped to a miserly fifteen dollars, I just
couldn't resist the purchase. Five solid hours with
Chibi-Robo has made me very glad indeed that I waited for a
price drop. There's certainly nothing wrong with the
game, but if you're expecting action-packed platforming
action... well, you're not going to get any of it here!
Chibi-Robo is
as laid back as a dead fly, playing like a more tightly
focused Animal Crossing. Instead of doing chores simply
to pass the time, you'll pick up scraps of paper and scrub
away dirty pawprints in an effort to win the hearts of your
adoptive family and befriend the toys that come to life each
night. As you proceed through the game, you'll be
rewarded with weapons and items which further illustrate your
tiny size... baby spoons become shovels, and unused
toothbrushes double as floor mops. Using any of them
will drain your already dwindling supply of energy, forcing
you to recharge frequently at one of the power outlets
scattered throughout each room.
As you perform
your duties as the Sandersons' micro-maid, you'll learn more
about the increasingly dysfunctional family and its financial
difficulties. Will the shapely Mrs. Sanderson finally be
able to convince her husband to get a job, even if it's as
Captain Lou Albano's stunt double? Will the mystery of
little Jenny's unhealthy obsession with frogs ever be
revealed? And are there any toys in the house that
aren't completely obnoxious? Because you can't
skip through the lines of dialogue (accompanied by the most
irritating gibberish this side of Okami), you'll discover the
answers to all these questions whether you're interested or
not!
Next to the
drawn-out dialogue, the feeling of helplessness the player
must face while playing Chibi-Robo is probably the game's
greatest shortcoming. Your chrome-plated custodian can't
jump, and his laser cannon can only vaporize stickers and the
occasional mechanical spider. New locations are dangled
just out of your reach, and will remain there until you
collect the right items. While the pint-sized
perspective will remind you of Katamari Damacy at first,
you'll feel like your progress is a slow, uphill climb because
you never get any larger, and your surroundings never become
any less intimidating.
On the plus
side, the game's got more purpose than its inspiration Animal
Crossing... not to mention better graphics! There are no
flat expanses littered with sprite-based trees and houses...
the Sanderson home is far more detailed, with plenty of nooks
and crannies to explore. Rooms have blinds over the
windows, desks with pens and paper strewn on top of them, and
wastepaper baskets tucked in each corner, making each
environment seem more tangible and organic. On the other
hand, the sound is a bit too whimsical for its own good, with
different tones punctuating your robot's every step over
tiles, wood, cement, and grass.
Chibi-Robo isn't what
you'd call an exhilirating experience, and I sure as hell
wouldn't have recommended it for its original retail
price. However, you can rarely go wrong with a fifteen
dollar game... and you certainly won't regret this
one!
| January 2, 2007... Early
Rare-tirement |
Crap, only thirty minutes
'till the end of my birthday! Gotta think of something
to say, and quick!
All right, how's this?
It appears that Rare's founding members, the brotherly team of
Chris and Tim Stamper, are leaving the company for greener
(and presumably piņata-free) pastures. It's a pretty
momentous occasion... or it would be, if Rare hadn't lost much
of the luster it had during the 1980's.
I'm also hearing rumors of a
Radiant Silvergun sequel on the Xbox 360, news that's as good
a birthday gift as anything else the video game industry could
offer me. Let's hope that the third installment of the
series will be more like the outstanding Saturn game than
Ikaruga, the merciless Dreamcast spin-off which greatly
limited the number of available weapons along
with the player's freedom of
movement. |
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