The very first real game I ever touched was on a road trip to Florida. My dad had bought me a coloring book with crayons and my brother a brand new Game Boy with Mickey's Dangerous Chase and, what it came with, Tetris. My brother fiddled with the new toy for awhile, while I stared at him collecting items, jumping, and dodging on such a small screen. I was intrigued. Once he got sick of getting hit by brutish dogs, he passed it along to me. I tried out as Minnie, not having any more success than him, I'm sad to say. He handed me the other cartridge and I plugged it in. I was surprised to see blocks like the ones I played with back home. I was stuck on that game for quite awhile until my mother made me give Ken his system back. The gateway was opened. Â As accurate as this picture was at the time, I barely owned more than ten portable cartridges on all of the portable platforms I've owned up until the DS's arrival. I traveled less and didn't have many friends that gamed, or friends for that matter, so I mostly stayed at home throughout the duration of the non-DS segment of the portable gaming timeline. The lack of movement in combination of the small screens, lack of good lighting (on most portables), and short battery life ( Game Gear anyone?) amounted to little incentive to ever use a Game Boy or even Game Boy Advance, and while color, sound, graphics did become more sophisticated, the libraries never bore much fruit. Â Then the DS changed things. Developers took it seriously, giving full narrative games like those found in the Ace Attorney series, and games that would've been ludicrous to think about doing on previous platforms, such as Kirby's Canvas Curse, Drawn to Life, and Elite Beat Agents, were now possible. That's not to say that the system couldn't use improvement. With Sony's PSP, there's the ability to play movies, download games, and watch porn: all a gamer's delight. Â So, to get to the blood of the rock, a handheld gaming system today needs first and foremost, a good library. No games means to reason to buy it, and even porn is not enough of a reason (there's always the PC for that), and no good games is double the reason to avoid it (after all, a round of Wild Woody won't be compensated by porn, no matter what the quality). Also to consider are quality graphics and sounds, but this should go with a good library (to those of you now thinking that I'm excluding all 8-bit games, this isn't the case as a good game can still have good 8-bit graphics and stock sounds). To go with the way other gaming platforms have today, the following should be included as well:
Online marketplace
No funky currency methods: dollar amounts, please.
Achievements: I realize Nintendo, specifically Miyamoto, is reluctant to implement this, but the dangling carrot keeps players playing and interested in the game. It creates competition with friends and is foolish not to include.
No friend codes: just let me add my friend's profile, please.
More retro games: not necessarily even remakes, but just the ability to have and play more of the old games would be wonderful.
The ability to share pornography with ease: my friends have similar habits, too. I'd like to make it easier for them to cave into them.
My apologizes for not including more non-Nintendo platforms, but I'm not quite as informed in the others.  Would you pick up this console?
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For the stunning conclusion to the Day of a Ten Game Run, please see this blog! For the epic beginnings, see this other blog!
Continuing on with the final six of my glorious day yesterday, this is the better portion of play I had. I'm sure everyone will be able to agree on that.
Warning Forever
Eat lead, blinky!I can't quite remember where I heard of this title from (probably GameSpot when it was buzzing). In any case, Warning Forever caught my attention with how devious the continual onslaught of bosses are. Let me back up just a tad. For those not familiar, Warning Forever pits you, an aerial craft, against mechanical boss after mechanical boss until you are no more. Based upon how you take each of these giants down, the next boss adjusts not only what it's equipped with (lasers, rockets, the works), but how it uses them against you. It's very hard to get two of the same bosses to appear because of how customized this variety is. That next boss? I call him grandpa.To some, this might sound like a formula for frustration, and I hardly doubt it can be, but for me, Warning Forever is a challenge. Who's to let a robot defeat mankind? Not I, sir. Not I. I must've spent at least an hour on this game, desperately trying to think of new ways to infiltrate each beast while being served lasers to the face. My hard earned efforts got me to stage 14. That's not even close to where some pros have gotten. Take a guess at what I'll be playing when I'm done writing this entry though? Which game? That's right, Cloth Demo.
Noitu Love 2: Devolution (Demo)
Pirates sailing the land. When should I expect "Every Sperm is Sacred?"Being the cheap indie game lover that I am, I had to try out Noitu Love 2. Why do I say that? To be frank, it's the graphics. I'm a sucker for a bright, well-pixelated art style no matter what the context, which explains why I can still appreciate horrific images like this (click at your own risk. Watch at your own risk). Blame it on conditioning, childhood trauma, even unfulfilled desires. Facts are facts. Cheerful colors are awesome. Well, darn it all.Knowing this, I should also say I'm not a complete slave to the graphics style. I had a feeling that this game was going to be another instance of my many, many bad gaming experiences with cutesy graphics, so I braced myself. Lucky for me, my gut was wrong. I ran through the two stages, bashing everything in sight, grabbing as many combos as I could, going well past sixty at one point, while being the badass in green the game sets me out to be. The only bit that slightly jarred me was the story, but that has to be because I haven't played the first one. From what I gather, some Darns are back to destroy the world or whatnot, and there's some blonde dude that runs around being all side kicky off-screen with doctor red-head chick. If green lady is the heroine, shouldn't she be the one to get some mackin' action? I'm sure the actual scenario makes sense somewhere, just not in Jacki land. Might buy the full game just to rough up some more robots. That is a ton of fun, flying through the air consecutively. Still not firm on buying though, so just stick it up to a maybe for now.
Gravity Bone
This better not be a paddling from you, old man.If I had to choose a favorite from all the games I've played in this set, it has to Gravity Bone. Actually, it's probably the best title I've played in a few months. Problem is, I can't very well say much about it without spoiling what makes it so damn good because it's so damn short. Obviously, the story is a plus, starting you off at a party called The Saturday Club, which evidently means a lot of square-noggined (which is oddly aesthically please) people standing around in black masks, mimicking the teachers in Peanuts, while a bunch of butlers circle round and body guards stare you down. In the context of The Brave Little Toaster, I'm sure this makes sense.Small touches, such as the subtle tutorial signs scattered throughout the game explain what controls do, add a lot of class to Gravity Bone. It says, "Hey, we care that you know how to play the game, but we aren't going to jerk you out of the environment to teach you," and there's nothing quite as great as that in a game. The game has a classy atmosphere about it. The best bit are the requests, but since I'm not going to go into that, I'll just pretend I didn't say a word and go on about how jumping off ledges rocks. Blood and gravity, man. Blood and gravity. Splat. Ter. Bam. Download this now and play through it. It'll only steal maybe ten to fifteen minutes of your life away.
The Mirror Lied
Girl Should Have a Face season five, episode twenty-one: Paper bag edition.Where could I possibly start with this? The Mirror Lied...well, it's interesting and I did enjoy playing through it, but the biggest factors are a lack of sense, explanation, and of mirrors. I can understand the mirror part; the little girl's parents probably took them all down in fear of her noticing she doesn't have a face. No explanation for that either, naturally, though I theorize it has something to do with either a honey incident with a bear or a prank loving uncle who accidently filled his squirting flower with acid. Good for you, Mr. Newspaper. Where's the weather forecast?The uncle was a senile scientist, alright? The Mirror Lied revolves around exploring the house, interacting with practically every object, and answering the phone when this guy dubbed Birdie calls. The story leads me to believe that Birdie is a bird, but by the way he talks, and by the fact alone that he talks, I have my doubts that he actually is one, even when met. There's just too many things that do not make sense. Why is this girl stuck in the house by herself? What's up with that furnace? And what's up with that ending? The ending made even less sense than the story, if that's possible. I went looking on the Freebird Games' forum, hoping to find some sort of explanation for all of this. One person said something about World War II, another said the title probably has to do with the girl's lack of face, and the creator gave the best explanation of all: "It's pretty ambiguous...but it lies, you don't actually exist...rather [you are] just some figurative metaphor." Art talk. As my old music business teacher, Fat Bastard, taught me on the first day of class, art is really just missing one vital letter, and the way he explained this was incredibly classy. He wrote the word Art in huge letters on the chalkboard, proceeded to stared at the class, grinning all smug at us for nearly a full minute, and then chuckled maniacly as he placed a giant F in front of the word, completing the masterpiece. His word will stick with me for life, unlike this pile of confused game.
Within a Deep Forest
And here's where daddy worked while mommy and Mr. Sanderson went on vacation.I'm not quite sure why I downloaded this one. I knew I wasn't going to like Within a Deep Forest because it revolves around playing as a small, bouncing ball. Not that I don't like balls, far from it. As a kid, I did nothing but play with big, rubbery balls, until my damn neighbor kicked my favorite ball, a pink one with a large, goofy face on it, over this incredibly high fence bordering my other neighbor, the pond. Although my father forced the girl to pay for a replacement, the damage was done, and I forced myself into seculsion. That, folks, is how I got into video games. Lady, look at me. I'm stuck talking to you on my head. Screw flying.Seriously though, games like Marble Madness, Super Monkey Ball, Kirby's Dream Course, and pretty much any golf game, they not only bore me, but they frustrate me as well. Although Within a Deep Forest is a game that I find boring, it, surprising, is not frustrating at all. The game readily makes you feel like a bouncy ball, giving the appropriate sproingy sounds and look for bouncing. At first, it's a little difficult to control the ball, which, according to the story, was originally suppose to be a bomb (go science!), but the practice stage gives plenty of room and tasks to get the moving thing down. You can even return to that stage after obtaining other ball skins, skins that provide other abilities such as being able to bounce higher. Each of these balls can be switched mid-level at any of one the many check points found throughout the stages in order to get past obstacles. Unfortunately for you (not me, I'm ball trauma lady), I haven't played past getting the first skin out of sheer lack of enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, the game executes everything quite nicely, but I just found myself saying, "Eh. I'm a bouncing ball, bouncing all over the place. Big whoop," and cut it from there. There is a story about saving the world from freezing, but being a ball and all, I don't care. Moving on with my life.
Little Wheel
Beer: the downfall of robots.Within a Deep Forest was going to be my last game of the day, but considering the experience I had, I decided to end my day with a flash game instead. Little Wheel is a very short point and click adventure about a land of robots that suddenly lost power one day, leaving the city desolate, until one fateful day, a robot mysteriously rises from the grave to save them all. Subtler advertising can not be found.It's very straight forward, highlighting every single interactive item available with a gigantic circle, as if to say, "You'd have to be blind not to click me!" The game does have some puzzles in them, but they're all simplistic, and even without the circles, a senile puppy could probably just click around randomly and get through it all without a single hitch. Still, Little Wheel does have a certain appeal to it. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I believe the adoration stems from a combination of the artwork and the little robot's persistence to fix what little is wrong with the world. Because of how easy it is, I'd rather call it a slightly more complex interactive story than a game. It's all about how he brings back the robots, not the difficulty of the puzzles. ...but damn it, I still want to see an indie game with both good art, good puzzles, and a worthwhile storyline. And a version of Gravity Bone that lasts at least an hour long. 10 Comments
Alright, folks, here's what went down. I've been meaning to get to a few dozen indie titles I've downloaded, but have been so wrapped in my Japanese studies that I have not gotten to them. Today, I blocked out some time and went through ten of them. What you are about to witness is my experience with the first four titles. Names have been changed to protect identities, except my own. That one stuck, unfortunatley.
Cloth Demo
"The most thrilling ride of the summer!" -JINX! Powered Issue #69This little ditty is what my session started with, and I was very curious as to what the title meant. Well, take a look at that screen to the left, there. That's what it meant. It's a physics demo of a piece of cloth. Oh, my heart could hardly contain the excitement I garnered from it. For what it's worth, it's a decent piece of cloth. It flows rather nicely in the fake wind. And it's grabbable! And swingable! And I swung that thing soooo hard that it...it flew off the screen. And that's was that. Now I have to squeeze entertainment from a wall. Thanks, Cloth Demo!It was a five star experience. What made it even more of a five star experience? Not knowing where the hell I got it, especially since I had to have gotten this within the last few days. Biz. Czar.
It's like a party for my gun!Surprise! This is an actual GAME! Quite an improvement from Cloth Demo, to say the least. I nearly wet myself. Veck is a top-down directional shooter, with the directional bit being optional. Never actually having played a directional shooter, I slapped that flavor on and made haste with the shooting. Before I get into that though, I just need to share the first line of what the readme file described the game as, "You're in space. Get use to it. You'll be here for awhile." I love it when games don't spout out bullcrap that really has nothing to do with what the game does. There's no elaborate space war going on between the struggling, righteous mankind and the hateful alien world. This is a shooter. It's in space. Get wasted. Fin. I wish more games started out like this.As far as I'm aware, Veck doesn't stray far from the directional shooter formula. Enemies coming from all directions, flashy colors, and weapon upgrades. For ever minute that goes by, the gun get extra firepower and the enemy swarms get tougher. Nothing stands out besides the words and pretty colors. If Veck had a disco ball shooting the designer's witty words out instead of the regular old ship shooting bullets, then I'd be sold in an instant. I barely got past the second level, but that probably has to do with my lack of experience in this genre. Still, I'd gladly get myself blown to rainbow bits again. Good experience.
Striptease
And for my next trick, I shall make a doctorate appear out of thin air.I don't think I need to say what Striptease revolves around, or rather, I do. This, this beauty, is a very simple tile slider puzzle where you slide the pieces of a young stripper's body around to get her to strip bits of clothing. What makes it better is the fact that you don't choose which bits come off first. Instead, the clothed picture next to the mangled woman flashes boxes around the part that needs to be removed next, so if you put her foot back together, her shoe comes off. The ultimate prize? Pixelated titties. You and me both, chicka.Oddly enough, this game isn't all about showing off the goods for the guys in the audience at the expense of a player's pride. Oh no, there's a story behind this treasure. What sort of story? Girl goes to strip club, girl works at strip club, girl continues to work at strip club, girl goes for cigarette break, and shit goes down. If I said any more, I'd have told the entire story, and what fun would that be? None, that's what. Now, deal with that tease, or go read the summary at Play This Thing! If fifteen minutes or less is all you need for a nudie game, then check it out. If not, put your pants back on and move on with your life.
Ore No Ryomi 2: The Restaurant
There's a lot of this...The last game I'll cover today is Ore No Ryomi 2: The Restaurant, a restaurant simulator where you pick your own menu, make your own order, clean your own dishes, put out your own fires (DDR style), catch your own robbers, and appease health inspectors all at the same time. No kidding. Often, when I actually got customers, it was always at the same time I needed to do dishes or catch a robber, and no one, and I mean no one, was understanding. They'd get impatient and leave, being all, "Well geez, I didn't get my beer immediately. What's wrong with this owner, anyhow? Running after masked men like that. Is he that dude from Heroes with the ability to heal instantaneously? "...Where's my beer?" That's about the time when cusomers leave, and I blame it entirely on not being able to hire any extra help. It's frustrating since every person that comes in brings in maybe five or ten bucks revenue alone, and upgrade costs are in the thousands. Customers are few and far between, leaving large gaps of time to do nothing, and then BAM! Rush hour. My experience became tedious, fast. ...and a lot of this.With all the effort I had to put into making money to hardly get any in return, and getting jipped by ungreatful customers for slightly charring their chicken or getting their beer desire off by just a smidge, it became long days of making only a few hundred a day. I couldn't have fun with it. Reminded me much too much of my last job. And hell, where do customers get the right to not pay full price on food anyhow? And what about employee respect? Since when did it become alright to snap your fingers at your server and expect demands at the drop of my pride? Am I not human? If I am cut, do I not bleed? If I do not get my raise, do I not bicker? I deserve better than this, man. I quit. I QUIT!
Stay tuned for the remainder aka better part of my trials tomorrow. If anyone has any indie suggestions, throw them my way. And please, no more cloth demos or restaurant simulators. Thank you. 5 Comments
Now that Nintendo no longer holds the market in motion gaming, how do you believe this will effect the gaming industry?
It is my belief that, like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will take on a much more casual audience like they are probably anticipating. Does that mean a giant slew of multi-platform shovel-ware titles with the core audience forever being pushed aside? I do not think so. What I do think will happen is that Nintendo will have a significant decrease in sales once these other peripherals are out, leaving Nintendo in the dust, and either forcing Nintendo to change it's incredibly kid and mom oriented market for a more creative outlet like the company originally had, find a way to or even develop higher quality software geared towards a general audience (yes, I'm talking about the ridiculous dress-up games and pet games), or, the least likely, will stay stubbron and turn into Sega.
I am very curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
So guess what? Tracy Fullerton is filling this void with Walden: The Game, based on Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, a story documenting the portion of his life where he attempts to isolate himself from society in order to become more objective about it. That's a hard core philosopher for you. It's a concept I have a hard time seeing as anything beyond an interactive story, but perhaps there's just something I'm not seeing here.
In any case, I'm getting a copy of the book from my library to get the details down so I know what horrific things get altered when it's released. I suggest all other not-so-well-read cynics do the same.
On a side note, what is up with this guy's beard? Did he super-glue a bunch of used Brillo pads to his chin and call it a day? I think so.
See this? No more. Boys and girls, one of the oldest gaming companies has made some more changes to itself. For starters, Infogrames, the dudes who bought out Atari back in March '08, is now known purely as Atari, so no more Infogrames labels. The second more interesting bit of news is Phil Harrison moving from President to "Non-executive Director of the Group" and Jeff Lapin moving in as Chief Operating Officer.
What does the later mean for the company and Harrison? Not sure, but I can't help but be remotely reminded of Atari's early days when Kee Games was fake rivaling Atari, and then Joe Keenan ended up heading both companies at their merge. Not that I think Atari went and started up Infogrames as a competitor several decades ago to just be merged with it again, far from it. I don't see that as fiscally reasonable for a company to do. Then again, companies have been known to do some crazy stuff.
More discussion. Who do you think would win in a fight: Nolan Bushnell or Phil Harrison?
Just finished listening to this relatively new podcast called A Life Well Wasted, though this particular episode is not canon due to it being an slow paced, unedited interview. The interviewee happens to be a gaming curator over at Stanford named Henry Lowood. In simpler terms, he helps preserve the history of games.
All this didn't really interest me until Lowood drew a picture.
"There's a famous article that was written in Scientific America over 10 years ago and the guy who wrote it talked about leaving a CD-ROM behind that had all the information about bank assets, money that he was going to leave his great-grandchildren. 75 years later, whatever the terms are, they find the CD-ROM and they know that all their money is basically in there, but they don't have any CD-ROM players; they don't even know what a CD-ROM is. He talks about an envelope that he would leave with written instructions--on paper--telling them what a CD-ROM is how to basically put the system together...that's kind of the Holy Grail version of where we would want to get [with] this."
It's very hard to imagine no oneknowing what a CD-ROM is at all, but thinking back, I bet there are plenty of people that have no idea what an 8-track is either nor have the means to listen to one.
This, oddly enough, reminded me of an article I read a few months ago about notifying online community friends about your own passing. Ultimately, if you haven't updated your 8-track will, get with the times.
If none of this interests you--and shame on you if it doesn't--then check out this 'how to' video on fighting bears. 11 Comments
There's a very interesting article up on Kotaku about the creation of 360's avatar system. All those heart wrenching, gut turning details are included, such as the fact that, although Miis came out first, Rare had been hard at work on the system prior to Nintendo's revolutionary revelation. Such as the Lee Musgrave, the basic head for avatar design, states:
"We kicked the idea about internally, did some very scant groundwork on the kind of technical work that would be required to get something like this to work, flung a few emails about our thoughts across the Atlantic [to Microsoft's head offices in Redmond, Washington]...and then Nintendo announced Miis".
Naturally, Nintendo's product intensified Rare's drive, and today, we have NXE avatars. Sweet.
It was this little piece caught my attention.
As for what the Avatars wear, Musgrave says that, rather than attempt to dress the Avatars themselves, Rare enlisted the services of a number of fashion consultants. These fashionistas helped Rare "put together hundreds of pieces of visual reference from all kinds of fashion styles and genres", which Rare then modeled and modified to fit the Avatar's art style.
Really explains why every avatar looks straight out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Not that I'm complaining, no. Could've been based off something much worse.
Oddly enough, I was just listening to a podcast discussing the bizarre history of Barbie, which, if you're not familiar, apparently stems from miniature, German sex dolls. That little piece can be checked that out here, with an article all about such a joy, here.
So the big question is this: do you believe that the NXE avatars should've been based on blow-up dolls instead? 10 Comments
Just played the incredibly short "interactive piece of art" called The Gutter created by Jan Nijham and Robin Rodriguez. In it, you play an old, drunk man that needs to find someplace to sleep for the night. The game features walking, vomiting, sleeping, and, if you donate $5, death.
It's worth to glance at it, and it won't take a terrible amount of your time. If you're like me, you'll wonder why the credits have rolled by and then restart it again, realizing the arrow keys that are functional. Also, spoiler here! There's a cat in the game somewhere.
So have a go at it and get back to me at how much you love/hate indie titles. 9 Comments
These puppies are adorable. Nauseatingly adorable. Seriously, staring at my main pooch as she was frolicking with a blue bird hovering over her head playfully in Snow White style? I was getting physically ill. Really. The object of the game (thus far) is getting medicine for a sick sibling. I'll be stealing it for myself, thanks.
Also, could there have been more sniffing? Leveling by discovering smells. Seeing as I do not have a sense of smell, I'd epically fail at life if this was how things really worked. Thanks for pointing that out to me The Dog Island, or should I say, THE DOG Island like every island likes to shout?
And please don't let the rest of the game be more scratch and sniff adventures. Seriously, sniffing for dirt and pawing at it to clean it up on a ship shouldn't be how you clean the deck. Almost clever. Almost.
I'm going to keep on trucking on this one. I'm letting my five dollars go to complete waste. I'd love to hear more classic phrases like "On the other paw..." and "Hiya! Have you ever touched a fish?" and such classicly named places such as Treely Woods.
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