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Keeping us waiting with antici…

June 18, 2016 Deanna

…pation. For games from this year’s E3.

That’s right, folks, it’s that time of year. The time where we all gather ’round our computer screens and talk about what we saw at E3 that we actually liked. Of course there’s a handful of things that I couldn’t have guessed would be shown. Others I knew would be teased, and I’m even more excited for them now than I was last week. So: shall we?

This shouldn’t come as any surprise if you’ve read my author description on this site at all. (via ScreenRant)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Much like anyone who watched Nintendo’s Treehouse over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, I, too, really want to see the newest in The Legend of Zelda’s franchise. Breath of the Wild looks like it’s going to be huge, and I mean that literally. Nintendo teased us to only 2% of the game’s world, and I really hope that’s true. Since I got into the series I’ve wanted a game I could fully immerse myself in, and this seems like it’s a step in the right direction.

On top of that, it’s rumored that the story isn’t linear, per se, but that you’ll be able to go fight the final boss even at the beginning of the game. I think this is especially interesting for speedrunners, as it’ll make that sub-20 minute Ocarina of Time run look pretty damn mediocre. Of course, running a two-day treehouse at E3 wasn’t ideal, though it was nice to be able to tune in for a few minutes at a time for news. Good job, Nintendo!

Next up! Horizon Zero Dawn doing what it does best thus far: generating hype. (via GameSpot)

Horizon Zero Dawn

To say I’m excited for Horizon Zero Dawn may be a bit of an understatement. I like fantasy, archery games, and I like cyber, mechanical games. I also happen to enjoy games with a female protagonist. Call me politically correct, if you must, but playing as a dude 90% of the time in games is boring. Not that I won’t, but hey. Change is good. (Unless that change is 4k.)

It seems like it’s hard for developers to make a survival-action game and have it be colorful, but with Horizon, that’s not the case. The colors are striking and rich, and it’s going to stand out, especially when I play it in my drab-colored living room. The story seems expansive, the gameplay seems novel, and overall the game promises something that at least looks good.

Speaking of striking visuals, it’s time for my final most anticipated game of E3 2016. (via Playstation Lifestyle)

ABZU

Similarly to the other two games in this list, ABZU is richly colored, story-driven, and, well, anticipated. Like its predecessor Journey, it promises an immersive musical score with Austin Wintory returning for its composition. It should be noted, though, that ABZU is not a sequel or a successor to Journey. It’s different.

While some people may not like Journey or even think it’s a game, I probably won’t be able to get enough. If the game’s going to be pretty short, that’s fine. I liked Journey and Flower all the same. What I’m looking forward to the most about this game, though, is the fact that it’s coming to Steam. I can finally play a thatgamecompany game in the comfort of my own home. A PC’s all I got.

And now, for everything else. (via GameSpot)

Honorable Mentions of E3

That’s not all that got teased at E3, and that’s not all that I’m hype for. Now that I’ve heard more about games like Days Gone and Resident Evil VII, the future looks promising for gaming. I want to know more about Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, though, as I’m curious to know why Norman Reedus oil beach fetus was the first thing that he decided to make after leaving Konami. Then again, maybe some mysteries are better left unsolved.

That being said, I don’t think my wallet’s going to be able to keep up with the upcoming gaming binge. Regardless, almost everything shown off is something I want to get to at some point or another. Except for Resident Evil in VR, that just looks like it’ll make me afraid of the dark again.

Hitman Episode 3: Marrakesh Review

June 17, 2016 Adam

In the three episodes of Hitman we’ve gotten so far, they’ve all been set in very diverse locations. I don’t mean only setting wise, each of the three episodes gives us very different play styles that fit according to each location. In Paris, it was all about infiltrating a runway show. It had quiet outskirts and a very dense center, this allowed the player to do all of their dirty work on the outskirts and plan their way in. Sapienza was very sparse and had a lot of hidden entrances, this time the player could explore the vast setting of Italy and really plan how they got the job done. In Marrakesh, the area is as dense as it could be and it makes you react quickly and improvise frequently. Marrakesh provides the most unique experience while giving you plenty of options to dispense of your targets, making it the strongest episode of Hitman so far.

When you start your mission in Marrakesh, you immediately realize that this isn’t the traditional in-and-out hit. Both of your targets are in two heavily guarded areas on opposite sides of the map. You quickly realize that you won’t be able to get away with that much when the whole area is filled to the brim with witnesses.

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As you start exploring and plan your infiltration a lot of “opportunities” will arise. Opportunities are Hitman’s way of telling you that there might be a way in if you follow through with what’s going on around you. Opportunities are multistep processes that will eventually lead you to your target. This time around the opportunities let you do some incredibly fun things. One of them you get to pretend to be a masseuse and snap your targets neck while massaging him. While in another one you can pretend to be a cameraman a drop a giant moose on your target. However, my favorite of the opportunities involves shoving a toilet onto your targets head. I won’t ruin all of the fun for you but trust me, it’s pretty damn awesome.

Source: Namelessdreadx37x

In the other episodes of Hitman you don’t necessarily need to complete the opportunities because of the open nature of them but Marrakesh provides a much more tight and controlled experience, which I ended up liking a lot more than Paris, for example.

The opportunities also make replaying Marrakesh more fun than ever. In previous episodes the opportunities were often left to the side and it wasn’t that fun to see them through. This time around I ended up playing the mission multiple times just so I could see how each of them played out. Each of them have some bizarre and fun twist in them like the ones I mentioned earlier.

Exploring the areas of Marrakesh also end up being more interesting because of the nature of the mission. When going into places you’re never guaranteed to get away with anything. There’s always someone around to ruin your plan making your windows to get stuff done a lot smaller and a hell of a lot more satisfying when it all falls into place. This also makes it so you can’t necessarily brute force your way through the mission like you could in the other two episodes.

4k Gaming Extravaganza!

June 15, 2016 Deanna

Or, why we absolutely do not need 4k gaming any time soon.

Let me preface by saying that I have a background in tech. I’ve been up to snuff on computer hardware for a while, some legends estimate that it’s been exactly half my life at this point. (But I digress.) I’ve seen the transition from dial-up internet to DSL to whatever kick-in-the-pants speeds we have now. And that’s been great! I remember when standard definition capture cards were expensive. Point being, I’ve been through a lot of tech “revolutions”.

Yeah, I was even there for this bad boy. (Image from Brainless Tales)

For the most part, they were great. It was cool to suddenly see videos and movies in clearer resolutions. Movies were the first big thing to make the transition. And it was cool! Suddenly the big screen in the movie theater didn’t seem so big, and it didn’t seem as special. I could see whatever I saw there in my house, no problem.

Fast forward almost two decades and, full disclosure, I’m so sick and tired of having 4k gaming, 4k video, 4k vlogs of someone running errands at the supermarket pushed down my throat. We’re not even at the pinnacle of HD video yet. Phone video still, quite honestly, looks like shit in some cases.

And as a species, humans still have fixated on the best and newest thing. And that happens to be 4k. This frustration is no doubt brought on by Microsoft’s E3 conference this past Monday, where they announced Project Scorpio, slated for a holiday 2017 release. It’s all well and good that Microsoft wants to push the boundaries of what they think is possible.

The thing is, we can’t even get many games to run at a full 60 frames in 1080 HD. We’re not there yet. I’m going to pull examples from Playstation 4 releases here, but the difference in processing power between the current PS4 and the Xbox One consoles is negligible. Fight me.

Behold, your competitors. (Image from WCCF Tech)

For some of the biggest releases in gaming this past year, there have been frame rate issues. It’s not that a game can’t get up to 60fps regularly, it’s that they’re having trouble hitting 30, in some cases. The Witcher recently introduced a patch to improve sections of the game that were consistently running at 20 frames. Bloodborne, what I consider to be one of the best-looking games on the PS4, is locked at 30 frames and has trouble getting in that many when there are masses of enemies on-screen.

I’m not here to discount console gaming, despite the fact that I’m not a console gamer myself. The truth of the matter is that consoles are not at the level of 4k gaming and they won’t be for a while. PCs, with their ever-improving arsenal of new graphics cards and DDR4 RAM, can’t do 4k gaming yet at a reasonable framerate. In my opinion, the so-called dream of 4k gaming is so far off that I just don’t think we should try for a while.

That being said, I don’t want a standstill of improvement. Make high definition gaming more crisp. Optimize games to run at 60 frames on consoles. We need to concentrate on bettering what we have rather than moving on to something that may give us a worse result if pushed too soon.

There’s a difference, but it’s a slight one. (Image from Digital Storm)

I admit that there is a difference between 4k and full HD. There’s also a difference between standard definition and HD, but it’s a bigger jump than this. The main difference I see between the two shots is the crispness. 4k looks real crisp. Conversely, the HD image just looks like it needs a boost in dynamic range to match.

All of this rambling is to say that, hey, maybe we don’t need 4k video. As humans, our eyes can’t tell the difference between 4k and 1080 when it’s in motion. A still image is one thing, but in some cases a film camera can produce a better image than a digital one, right? There’s a reason brands like Leica still make film cameras.

Another thing is, 4k video is still wicked fackin’ expensive dude. It’s expensive to develop for, expensive to own, and expensive to mass-produce consoles that will run 4k. The price point will not even be in the ball park of affordable for a very, very long time. I’d argue that video games just aren’t affordable, period, but that’s another article for another day.

Now, is this one article going to stop 4k from being pushed in video games? Absolutely not, I don’t think I have that much power or influence over anyone. Was it necessary? Nope. Then again, neither is 4k gaming.

Bravely Second Review: Go for the Gravy!

June 13, 2016 Greg

Bravely Default surprised fans and critics alike as this handheld experience was the best example of a quality JRPG in years. It prompted Square Enix to reevaluate their design philosophy and upcoming releases. So how does this Bravely Second stack up? Find out next week!

As this is my first review I’d like to explain how I analyse games. I primarily look at games from three major perspectives: Narrative, Gameplay and Aesthetic. Narrative representing the greater story told as well as the ways the story itself is presented. Gameplay representing the interactive elements the player takes part in. And Aesthetic representing the visuals, art style, sound design and soundtrack.

Story:

Your four heroes.

The story of Bravely Second follows Yew Geneolgia, heir to an influential religious family and his quest to live up to his family name. On the brink of a peace treaty between the Duchy of Eternia and the Crystal Orthodoxy an anarchist by the name Kaiser Oblivion kidnaps Agnes Oblige, the leader of the Orthodoxy. On his quest to save her, scared and alone Yew meets: Edea, daughter of the Leader of Eternia. Magnolia Arch, Ba’al Buster from the Moon. And Tiz Arrior, farm boy turned legendary hero after the events of the prior game in the series. Together Agnes’ Ba’al Busting Avengers face giant monsters known as Ba’al and the Kaiser Oblivion’s fearsome allies.

An adventure that will take them to the ends of Luxendarc! And Beyond!

Sounds pretty generic right?

The saving grace of this game’s narrative are the characters and how the game really doesn’t take itself all that serious even if when you think about it, some really awful things happen during the course of its 40 to 50 hour run. I wouldn’t say the characters are particularly well written, Magnolia constantly flops between complete badass super-spy, saucy seductress and naive teenager all throughout the story. But, at the end of the day the characters are written so earnestly that you can’t help but crack a smile and some of their antics. Their official group name is “Agnes’ Ba’al Busting Avengers” for Pete’s sake. A name they and many others refer to them as in earnest.

The best example is this silliness is in the line “Coup de Gravy.” Magnolia being from the Moon, speaks French. (Obviously) And when Yew hears this he combines the phrase “Coup de grace” with his love of food, notably gravy, into a term that would be repeated at even the most dire and serious of moments. “Coup de gravy.”

Speaking of food, the characters in this game talk about food alot. Like an insane amount, I’d say one-fourth of the game’s total dialogue is about food. And that has to be the best part of the writing in this game. Nothing humanizes a character better than knowing what they like to eat. Not only do they flesh out characters with these campfire chats they world build as well. The characters will comment about the local food or combining dishes of different regions.

It’s brilliant.

The precedent was set for strange meta story telling in the prequel and Bravely Second does not disappoint in that regard. I won’t go into too much detail, butitssick.

Overall if you can handle some of your standard anime cheese, like “MY FRIENDS ARE MY STRENGTH!” and “YOUR HUMANS AND YOUR LOVE MEANS NOTHING TO ME FUFU!” Then there is absolutely no reason to skip out on this one.

Gameplay:

Bravely Second’s gameplay is easily its strongest aspect with combat so engaging you won’t even mind grinding. Bravely Second is your standard turn based, 4 person party JRPG with a few unique twists, namely the Brave/Default system. First, whenever you take an action you can spend something known as a Brave Point(BP) to do that same or another combination of actions up to 4 times in a single turn. This is known as the “Brave” action. Secondly, instead of your defend or block action you have the “Default” action. This grants your player additional defense for that turn and grants you additional BP. If you start your turn with negative BP that turn is skipped and you gain 1 BP per turn until you are positive. So as the player you must manage knowing when to Brave and when to default. While seeming somewhat straightforward this is a very complex system that will probably take you a good amount of your time with the game to truly wrap your head around. But when you do you will discover that Bravely Second has the most well crafted and engaging combat system in JRPG history.

That’s right! I said it!

To help with the learning process here are a few examples of optimal use of the Brave/Default system:
– During exploration your may want all your units to Brave for the full amount to clear the battle quickly as there will be no consequence to having negative BP.
– Oh shit! Healer’s down and not only do you need to make sure he/shes’s both back up but you also need him/her to be able to survive the monsters next attack! So, you Brave and throw both a phoenix down and a hi-potion their way.
– You’re party is low and you’ve examined the boss and you see he’s at low health as well! You make your healer cast some spells to stabilize everyone to the point when you feel confident you won’t get wiped! You have your tank protect the healer while this is taking place cause if they go down your screwed! You have your two other units default so your healer doesn’t have to spend additional BP reviving them and so that they can potentially fully brave two turns in a row finishing off the boss. Woo! Get it?!

Next is the Class System. As you journey through Bravely Second you will unlock classes and these are not specific to any character so you’re free to mix and match as you please. As you gain levels within that class you gain new passive and active abilities. You can then equips two class sets of actives and you can equip passives from any class. Seems pretty straightforward but what makes this such an excellent system is the ludicrous amounts of synergy between the classes.

Each time you gain a new class you gain potential for new strategies and synergies!

For example lets look at the wizard class. The wizard’s specialty is known as “Spellcraft.” Spellcraft allows you to manipulate ANY spell in special ways such as: casting it at the start of a turn, casting that spell as an AOE, casting that spell to proc at the end of turns for several turns, and much more. Combine all that together and you get one of the most satisfying progression systems in any RPG.

Here’s what a pretty basic character build might look like.

Magnolia:
Main Class: Knight – Throws themself in front of enemies attacks with large defensive statistics.
Sub Class: Swordmaster – Abilities that increase aggro and retaliates after being hit.

Passives:
Counter:(Swordmaster Passive) Chance to retaliate when hit by a physical attack.
Stand Ground:(Freelancer Passive) Chance to live with 1 HP when dropped below 0.
Counter Amp:(Swordmaster Passive) Increase counter damage.

This build fits neatly into the “Tank” archetype having high defenses, actively defending allies, and benefiting from doing so. And on the off chance you do fall you’re using someone from a third class, Freelancer, to help you as well.

Here’s what the Core Gameplay Loop looks like:
– Plot directing you to a dungeon
– Traverse landscape to arrive at dungeon
– Solve Dungeon’s puzzles whilst handling the new combat encounters within.
– Encounter Boss which unlocks a new class
– Explore potential synergies between new classes and old.
– Reach new town and buy new gear.

Aesthetic:

Bravely Second sports nearly identical visuals and art style to its predecessor. In other words its one of the best looking games on the 3ds. The game combines chibi character models and beautiful backgrounds that resemble water color paintings. This perfectly represents the world of Luxendarc which is both charming and beautiful.

But forget all that ’cause this game’s soundtrack is fuckin’ bonkers.

This is the general boss theme. What? Who? Why is it so intense? Who is this for? Why does this cute ass game where we say shit like Coup De Gravy has such an intense boss theme? I don’t know and I don’t care, because I love this song.
The soundtrack isn’t all heavy guitar as the comment sections say, there does exist some variety. While I do agree with alot of the sentiment that the variety of instruments in the Default’s OST was preferable, all that matter in the end is, “Are these tracks fuckin’ tight?”

And the answer is a resounding yes.

But there is a serious amount of guitar, and depending on who you ask may or may not be the best thing ever.

The only problem with this soundtrack is sadly a lack of variety. While I love that first theme I linked you do end up fighting ALOT of bosses and there is such a thing as “Too much of a good thing.” If that boss theme was for one of the bosses I wouldn’t hesitate to call it one of my top 10 favorite tracks of all time. But the more bosses I fought the more it faded into the background and the more the magic slipped away. And this is true for a few of the themes. Especially since there are some tracks that are from the PREQUEL!

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Bravely Second is a fantastic game and one of the best on 3DS, particularly if you have no experience with its predecessor. But as a huge fan of the first game there are a lot of issues I cannot ignore. This game relies far too heavily on things established in Bravely Default. In Bravely Second you are exploring the same overworld, with a good 80% of the dungeons in the game being reused, and two members of your party are from the prior game in the series. Even a good chunk of the boss fights in the game are ripped straight out of the prequel. But at the end of the day I’m happy that I picked this one up, and I think you will too.

Now for my recommendations.

If you were a huge fan of Bravely Default, get this game
If you’ve never played Bravely Default and are a fan of RPG’s, get this game.
If you’re a fan turn based RPG’s in particular this is definitely worth checking out if only for it’s combat and progression systems.
If you were lukewarm or just liked Bravely Default, while this is a better game overall I’d say skip this one.

5 Games I’d Love to see Announced at E3 even though I Know I Won’t (or 5 Games that Deserve Sequels)

June 12, 2016 Kennedy

With E3 starting later today, everyone’s getting out their bingo charts and praying to the video game gods that their dream-game is finally confirmed or that they’ll see new footage of that super-cool game that was announced a while ago. (Including myself. C’mon, Mother 3!) Last year we received several amazing, unlikely announcements for such dream-games finally confirmed: Most notably the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Kingdom Hearts 3, and Shenmue 3. With those finally confirmed, gamers are finding more games to fantasize about announcements for, and I’m of no exception. Here are 5 games that I’d absolutely adore to see confirmed at E3, but as I’ll explain, I’m very aware how very unlikely it is. (Alternatively, think of this as a list of games that I think deserve sequels.)

The World Ends With You 2

Image courtesy of PopMatters

The World Ends With You is a very interesting case. It sold well and is generally considered to be one of the best games on the Nintendo DS. Without spoiling it, I’ll also say that the ending is very heavy sequel-bait because so much of the story is left unexplained or unclear. Moreover, it’s a Square Enix game that got to cross over with Kingdom Hearts 3D. You’d think it’s a no-brainer for a sequel, and yet here we are 9 years later and still no sequel. The closest we’ve had to a sequel (other than cameos for the main characters in Kingdom Hearts 3D) is an iOS and Android release of the game. Especially if the TWEWY characters are going to be important to the rest of the Kingdom Hearts story, there’s no reason to not make a sequel—especially since Square Enix seems to be really pushing the new Kingdom Hearts games, which is a blessing and a curse. The reason I don’t see this happening anytime soon is because Square Enix seems to really have its hands full between Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy VII. I’d love to be proved wrong and to hear this announced, but I certainly won’t get my hopes up until at least one of those projects are complete.

Silent Hills

Image courtesy of express.co.uk

There’s no suffering like the suffering of Silent Hill fans in recent years. It’s been a long time since Silent Hill has had a good game released, but Silent Hills (also known as P.T.) was ready to change that: Silent Hills was ready to bring life back into this dying cash cow of a franchise. Fans and new players alike were hopeful: I mean, why wouldn’t they be? Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima were going to be working on it. There in lied the problem, though. Months later, Hideo Kojima left Konami, and Silent Hills left with him a cancelled game with no word on what was going to happen to it. To add insult to injury it was removed from the PlayStation store as well. In its spirit, an indie game called Allison Road hoped to fill the void that Silent Hills left behind, but only last week was cancelled. As far as we know, Silent Hills, despite its large following, is a dead project right now. Of the games on this list, I’ll admit that this one, while still unlikely in the near future, is still the most probable game of being announced on this list because it’s so recent and still so talked about—even by developers. The largest problem here though is Konami, who doesn’t seem very willing to want to reboot Silent Hill at all—let alone the right way.

Image courtesy of YouTube and Konami not knowing how to reboot a well-loved series. Metal Gear fans learned this hard lesson recently, too.

Final Fantasy VI Remake

Image courtesy of Neoseeker

Now that VII has been confirmed for getting a remake, why not make the next fan favorite of the older Final Fantasy games? I played this game for the first time last year, and while I was thoroughly impressed enough to call it my second favorite Final Fantasy game, there was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking while I was playing it: This game would be absolutely astonishing in 3D. The environments, the characters, the combat, it’s all begging to see the light of beautiful HD graphics. I want to see Kefka’s face twist and writhe as he laughs maniacally, I want to see a more animated transformation for Terra, I want to see the opera scene as cinematically as possible—and I know I’m not the only one, as Final Fantasy VI is generally considered to be arguably the best 2D Final Fantasy game, as well as one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time. Kefka, in particular, is still usually called the best Final Fantasy villain since he’s the only villain to have actually succeeded in his evil plans. If Square Enix took a temporary break from making new Final Fantasy games after XV is complete to remake some of the older Final Fantasy games as they are with VII, I’d be perfectly fine with that.

A New .hack// Series (that will get an English release)

Image courtesy of lukalovesgames.blogspot.com

I will proclaim my overwhelming love of .hack until I die: The .hack games, particularly the G.U. Trilogy, are some of the finest JRPGs to have graced gamers. Despite this, we don’t really see much love for them here in the West. The last time a .hack game was released here were the G.U. games—not to say Japan got much more, they got .hack//Link (basically a spin-off game on the PSP, nothing horrendously important), a crossover campaign with a mobile Sword Art Online game, and a fighting game that wasn’t entirely well-received. Kite, BlackRose,and Haseo are all playable characters in the Project X Zone games, and that’s as close as the States have got in the last few years. Especially with G.U. Celebrating its 10^th birthday this year, I think it’s about time CyberConnect2 or Bandai Namco or someone—anyone—announced a new .hack series. Especially with the implications we received in the .hack//Quantum anime and the End of the World movie that came out a few years ago, there’s plenty of ways to write a new storyline for a new, main series set of .hack games to be released both in English and in Japanese. At the very least, I’ll settle for an HD edition of either .hack series—something to make them more accessible, not to mention cheaper. Please, it’s been so long, we’re starving for new .hack content.

Portal 3/Half Life 3

Image courtesy of halflife3confirmed.tumblr.com/

Do I honestly need to explain these?

When does an indie game become over-saturated?

June 11, 2016 Ricky

I love hidden gems. Small projects out of the public eye you feel happy that you were able to find. But when time goes on and you find out a lot of other people have found this hidden game, you’re ecstatic! A game that only a few people put so much time and effort into is finally getting the recognition that it deserves. However, when does it spiral out of control?

What was once a surprise horror ride became an agonzingly over-saturated internet fad. Image Source: Sub-cultured.com

It’s a lot like hearing a song from a band you’ve never heard from on the radio. The first time you really like it. It turns out it suddenly becomes big on the Billboard top 100 and you always try to catch it on any station. But times passes and the song is played again and again and AGAIN. At this point, you’re wishing the song was never made. That’s how I feel with a few indie games that have come out so far.

Take for instance Slender. It was a creepy and minimalist game that relied on jump-scares and the players’ own fears of being followed to be scary. While it is by no means warranting fifty spin-offs, I believe it still did very well with very little. But then more copies of it were made, more fan-films, and oh GOD the fanart and fanfiction.

I think its safe to say that this series may have gotten just a teeny bit out of hand. Image Source: Design and Tend.com

But I’m not going to knock anyone’s interpretation of a source. Thats one of the great opportunities of the internet, to share with everyone your view of the material. That being said however, it can still become a bit much.

I’m sure a lot of people are sick to death of hearing about Five Nights at Freddy’s, the indie horror game that has spawned so many sequels, a novelization, an rpg, an upcoming feature movie, and merchandise in almost any GameStop. The original game caught on fire with Youtube for its originality and atmosphere. But soon the novelty wore off and a lot of people became sick of it. Yet, at the same time, it still had a fanbase that was always itching to see what was to come next. One group is happy and another is fed up.

So what determines when one group’s want means more than the others?

I was surprised this indie game didn’t skyrocket as big as FNAF, but it still got just enough attention and praise without being over-hyped. Image Source: thegeekieawards.com

It’s a hard question to answer, but when there is a large dedicated fanbase, it’s hard to ignore. However, it’s easy to see that as time goes on those dedicated fans grow fewer and fewer. They oftentimes get sick what could be seen as the same thing over and over again. I think this can be seen as the FNAF series has gone on. Around the time of the second or third sequel, it was possibly one of the most popular things on the internet. Now? Another game was announced but a lot less is being talked about it. The fans have whittled down considerably.

When the game is distancing more people than its pleasing, then its time to stop. At that point, whats being made isn’t being made for quality, but only to pander. And with that, the fans need to convince themselves more and more that its worth their time and money. That series should stop where it is, and the creators, who were creative enough to make the original, should divert their attention into something new.

Despite the controversy with its designer Phil Fish, Fez was a beautiful and original indie-puzzle game that maybe doesn’t even need a sequel, and can inspire other creator’s to be original. Image Source: Polygon.com

In the beginning it may be hard for die-hard fans to accept the finality of a game series, but soon they can see what it helped to do: help other creators think even more outside the box. Keep looking, and you may be able to find something that got you just as excited as the old series.

The Most Expensive Games I Own

June 9, 2016 Kennedy

Being a huge fan of the Persona franchise, I got really excited a few days ago when Atlus gave us a more solid American release date for Persona 5 and opened preorders for the special edition called the Take Your Heart edition. Alone, Persona 5 will cost $60 on PS4, whereas the Take Your Heart Edition is $90. Given all the merchandise it comes with and how much I love Persona, an extra $30 seems like a good price to me. That’s why I decided to preorder the Take Your Heart edition. Telling a good friend of mine who’s not into gaming that I was planning on spending $90 on a video game (even if it comes with a lot of merchandise) was interesting though: She couldn’t seem to fathom why anyone would spend more than $30, let alone $90 on a video game. And that got me thinking: What’s the most expensive game I own?

I immediately thought of .hack//Quarantine. I absolutely love the .hack// games, and at Anime Boston this past year, I finally bought a copy for $150. That’s about the average price it goes for because it was released in such small quantities. Given how great its condition was, I’d say it was actually a really good price. Ones in condition this good that still have the DVD, manual, etc. generally go for closer to $200. In hindsight, what happened was like something out of a movie:

The face of bad decisions

It was Sunday, the last day of the con. I was with a group of friends (the same group of friends who write articles for this site, in fact) and the dealer’s room was only going to be open for another 15 minutes so we were doing a last minute sweep. There was a wheel-spinning game set up, and some of my friends wanted to try it. To do so, however, they had to wait in a line, and I noticed one of my favorite local game stores had a booth next door. It was taking my friends a bit longer than I thought to wait in line, so to pass the time, I decided to check out the gaming booth. Dead center of their booth when I got there was none other than .hack//Quarantine: Perhaps not quite my holy grail of rare games (that would be Earthbound) but probably the next best thing—the holy reliable water bottle that you bring everyday to school and/or work. I’d been saving up money for a year to finally buy this game at PAX a few months later, but here it was right in front of me now. Looking at me. Taunting me. I knew I wanted it, and the owners of the booth knew I wanted it, too.

“There was someone else eyeing it down earlier who said he was gonna’ come back for it once the dealer’s room started to close down,” one of the employees told me, “But he was being really rude and annoying so I really don’t want him to have it. If you wanted to buy it now, I’d let you.” The dealer’s room was closing in less than 10 minutes at this point: I had to make a decision and I had to make it fast, and in a fit of passion for wanting to complete my .hack// collection, I responded to her with the utmost joy and the utmost knowledge that I’d heavily regret what I was doing the minute it came time to go grocery shopping, “Fuck me up, fam.” And so for a mere $150 I took home .hack//Quarantine with less than 5 minutes to spare. To be honest, knowing that I own this game that I’ve wanted so much for so many years is still a little surreal.

In terms of money, .hack//Quarantine is easily the most expensive game I own. (The second and third most being .hack//G.U. Games, ironically enough.) But there are other ways in which a game can be expensive. Dictionary.com defines “expensive” as, “entailing great expense; very high-priced; costly.” Nothing is said about money. So what other games have been expensive for me? And how? What did they cost me? For my first example I’m going to take you to the very beginning of my gaming “career.”

My family got our first gaming console in 2001: The PS2. My Godparents got it for us for Christmas with a game called Okage Shadow King. I’d never touched a video game before this one, and playing it was one of the hardest things ever: A turn-based JRPG doesn’t make a good first video game for a 7-year-old like myself at the time. It was confusing. It was hard. Nothing made sense to me. I couldn’t even read some of the words—let alone understand them. I constantly asked my dad—who, at the time, had recently got his PhD—to help me and not even he knew what to do. It was a sign that this game had to go.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Being so inexperienced with video games (and a dumb 7-year-old) I started to think that maybe all video games were this way. Maybe video games were just much less fun than I thought they’d be. Maybe it’s just not my thing. When we finally got a few new games for the PS2—all of which were racing and BMX games—I was a little hesitant to play them because I thought they’d be like Okage again. After watching my dad play and have fun with it a few times though, I began to realize that these games were different: These games were fun.

Regardless, I got so angry with Okage Shadow King that it almost ruined video games as a whole for me. I was ready (or as ready as someone as young as I was can be) to never play video games again if it was going to be that irritating. (And look at me now: JRPGs are my favorite genre. If that’s not irony I don’t know what is.) Okage Shadow King was expensive in the sense that it almost cost me my love of gaming—which I would ultimately discover months later once we got Jak & Daxter.

Here’s another one: Time. Which game has been the most expensive in consuming the precious hours of my life? In one save file, Pokemon Ruby. It was the first GameBoy game that I had and more importantly, the first game I had that was mine. Not a game that I shared with my siblings and my dad on the PS2 but just mine. Like any other child in the early 2000’s, Pokemon consumed my life. Starting the video games only made it more apparent. I found it really hard to put it down—it was (it still is) an incredible game. And the graphics were so nice. And the new Pokemon were so great. I caught every Pokemon in the dex fair and square with no cheats whatsoever except for Feebas and Milotic which still haunt me to this day. Regardless, as of right now, my save file in Pokemon Ruby has 363 hours into it. That’s the longest continuous save file I have.

Image courtesy of expertshop

Overall, I’ve probably put more time into Jak & Daxter, though. As I just mentioned, it was the game that got me into gaming. After we got it, my sister and I would do nothing but play it all day every day for months. We’d restart it, do all of our favorites tasks over, and we’d do this day in and day out starting more save files than we could count because we got through them so quickly. To this day, Jak & Daxter still remains a permanent fixture in my PS2 library which I still replay every so often. I can still 100% it no problem—in fact, these days I can beat it faster than I ever could’ve before. There’s no way for me to know how much time I’ve put into this game total, but seeing as how I’ve been playing it continuously for more than 10 years, I’m pretty confident that I’ve put more time into it overall than in my Pokemon Ruby save file.

Here’s one final (and more recent) example of another way a game has been expensive for me: There’s a game that cost me my Wii. Here’s the story: I’ve been a huge fan of One Piece for 11 years now. Back in my early One Piece fan days, its North American rights were owned by 4Kids. Some will recall it was a mess of censorship. When they got the rights to the show, they had no idea how dark it would eventually get. They omitted the entire Whiskey Peak arc, which made it really hard for them to transition into Alabasta, which was also heavily censored. It was a mess of continuity errors, contradictions, and of course, rubber knives.

This only made it a bigger deal when Funimation took the rights to One Piece out of 4Kids dying hands in 2007. Fans everywhere rejoiced—myself included. Around the same time they started showing trailers for the dub, they announced that they were bringing One Piece: Unlimited Adventure for the Wii to the United States to celebrate. This would be not only the first One Piece game to come out in the U.S. in 2 years, but honestly, the first really good One Piece to come out in the United States in general. (Although admittedly, I did sink a lot of time into Grand Adventure.) This would be the first real exposure to the Funimation dub most of us would have since the DVDs were coming out around the same time. This was a huge deal. My sister and I got a Wii for Christmas in 2007 (note: Unlimited Adventure came out January 2008) so I was beyond thrilled. Finally, a One Piece game with good voice acting and more adventure. And you know what? It lived up to the hype. I absolutely love Unlimited Adventure. I played it day in, day out. My sister didn’t really stop me since the only other game we had on it was Wii Sports and by the time I got Unlimited Adventure, we’d already got our time out of it. I got to a point where I wouldn’t even bother taking it out of the Wii when I finished playing it because I knew I’d be back to it soon. Being only a recent Wii-owner, I didn’t realize that was a problem.

Image courtesy of covershut

One day, I believe it would’ve been in March or April of that year, I tried to take the disc out. It wouldn’t come out. Maybe I didn’t push the button hard enough? I kept trying and trying, but the disc wouldn’t come out. I asked my parents for help, but nobody could get the disc out. As I learned the hard way, this was just a thing that happens to Wiis that you forget to remove your game from for more than a few days: They just won’t come out anymore. The ejector stops working. To repair it would cost more than the game itself. To get a new console was out of the question. Unlimited Adventure was stuck in there. Our Wii had just turned into an Unlimited Adventure machine. Being the only One Piece fan in my house, that didn’t sit too well with anybody else—especially my sister who never got a chance to play any good games on the Wii. It’s still there to this day, though I haven’t booted it up in years. It recently came to my attention that because it didn’t sell horribly well, Unlimited Adventure is a semi-rare game, which only makes this more disappointing. Even now, to repair my Wii would cost me more than it would for me to go out and buy a used Wii at most retailers.

After this happened I seemed to notice more and more Wii games I wanted to play: Okami, Muramasa, No More Heroes, Mad World, Punch Out, etc. I still haven’t played any of them on the Wii (though I did get to play the PS2 version of Okami and the PS3 port of No More Heroes.) Muramasa in particular mocks me to this day. All these games that I could never play all because I thought it’d save time leaving Unlimited Adventure in the Wii. Unlimited Adventure cost me my Wii and in turn, the opportunity to play other great games on the Wii. I’m sure I was grounded when this happened, too, if that counts for anything.

End Point: The Beginner’s Guide

June 8, 2016 Deanna

The Beginner’s Guide came out on Steam last October as a much-anticipated follow up to Davey Wreden’s first game, The Stanley Parable. It’s not a sequel, so rest easy. The Stanley Parable was a great little game in and of itself; however The Beginner’s Guide felt like it had more weight to it.

A segment of The Beginner’s Guide, placed in space. (Image from AVClub)

The big similarity between the two games is that they’re both made in the Source engine, so the gameplay, look and feel, and sense of progression are the same. I really have nothing to say in this regard, they’re both pretty standard on this front.

Where they differ is the content of the story. They’re both narrative-driven. In The Stanley Parable, you play as Stanley. For the most part, it’s linear. There are multiple endings and it’s all very whimsical. It’s some good fun!

The Beginner’s Guide gets a bit more serious than I would have expected. It details the friendship of Davey and someone nicknamed Coda. Coda turns out to be Davey’s inspiration for making games, and through the game we learn the extent of their friendship.

All the humanoid figures that appear in the game take on this shape, more or less. (Image from The Jimquisition.)

Early on, Davey presents players with snippets of Coda’s games. They’re mostly short playthroughs, going through a specific point in each of Coda’s games. Each beginning is designated by Davey giving players a short description of what the circumstances were surrounding each game. Whether he or Coda was going through hardship, or whether they weren’t. He assumes that what Coda put into his games was a reflection of his emotions at the time.

The rest of this post contains spoilers for The Beginner’s Guide.

As the game progresses, we learn more and more about Coda through Davey’s monologues. The deeper we get, though, the more of an enigma Coda becomes. He’s this person who creates these weird, seemingly random games with no solution. He puts lampposts at the end of them as a signature. And the whole time, why? Why does he do the things he do, and why is Davey so obsessed?

This isn’t even the final level in the game. (Image from BoingBoing)

The final level takes place in a tower that Coda developed and sent to Davey. As you walk through the various pitfalls and traps that this tower has to offer, Davey monologues about how Coda has suddenly become closed off, reclusive, and seems like he doesn’t want to share anything with Davey. In previous levels, Davey remarks about how private of a person Coda was initially. After all, they met at a game jam. Coda made games, and that was pretty much all he did. Davey thought he was incredible… and by the looks of the game, he still does.

Coda didn’t share his work with anyone. He may have been reluctant to even share it with Davey, and when he did, Davey may have been the only person he showed, period. Sensing this greatness, Davey shows other people.

After what I assume would be the point where Coda finds out about Davey’s sharing his games, everything starts getting weirder. The games don’t make sense. They’re unsolvable puzzles, and Davey is perplexed by it all.

Going back to the final level, Davey tells us, pretty plainly, that Coda has cut contact with him. And rightly so, he even says himself. Davey had developed a sick obsession, and during the game’s final moments, Davey reads Coda’s final email aloud. It’s plastered on the walls, and there’s no way Davey can deny that he ended up hurting Coda more than he could have thought. But it’s all for the good of giving him recognition, right? Surely it was righteous.

This is one of the more disturbing levels in the game, and what I think is Coda’s most direct description of how Davey’s actions have affected him. (Image from BoingBoing)

No. It wasn’t.

Coda states that pretty clearly. In his levels, in his strongly-worded email, in the way that Davey feels about him after he cut contact.

And so we’re left with Davey’s guiltiness in ruining their friendship, and yet begging for Coda to at least talk to him again.

We’re left with a man who wants a resolution.

If you’re musically minded, the term “coda” might call up a definition, which would be: “a term used in music primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece (or a movement) to an end” (thank you Wikipedia). We know that Davey never learned Coda’s real name. Each level ends at a lamppost, and we learn that it was Davey’s doing, not Coda’s. Coda never intended to be a be-all, end-all for Davey, it just turned out to be that way, and I can’t help but think Coda planned that from the start.

Overall, though, The Beginner’s Guide gave me more of a plot twist than any other game has. Period. I was honestly expecting Davey to reveal himself as Coda, not reveal that he destroyed a friendship by being too proud of his friend and betraying his trust in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game, but it made me feel awful for rooting for Davey the whole time. He played the victim too well, and I hate that I fell into that.

I do still love it though, because I don’t think that any other medium would have been able to get the point across so damn well. The thing about video games is that a developer will create a world with complete control over how much you know about it. They literally build the narrative up right before your eyes, and to have it taken away and marred in just a few sentences is one I’ll never forget.

It goes to show that video games don’t have to be based in fiction, either. Often times we forget that creative nonfiction is a genre of storytelling, and I appreciate that this game is part of that realm.

Gaming’s Undervalued Treasures: 1080 Avalanche

June 8, 2016 colin

Image courtesy of Giant Bomb user velior.

1080 Avalanche, a great GameCube exclusive
1080 Avalanche is the lesser known sequel to the critically acclaimed N64 game 1080 Snowboarding.

1080 Avalanche manages to maintain the lightning speed of the first game and contains some cutting edge graphics for the GameCube. To top it off, it has a unique trick system and a wide variety of modes to play and creative tracks to ride on.

Why would a sequel with this much polish be overshadowed? SSX 3 was released the same year for all three consoles at the time, the PlayStation 2, original Xbox and, of course, the GameCube. 1080 Avalanche’s comparisons to SSX 3 were inevitable, but odd, since both games are completely different.

SSX 3 may have a slightly easier control scheme and more of a broad appeal. 1080 Avalanche just happens to be more of a difficult game, but when the player sticks to it, 1080 Avalanche is incredibly rewarding and a blast to play.

About to head down the mountain! Image courtesy of GameFAQs.

About to head down the mountain! Image courtesy of Giant Bomb user rabidweasel91.

1080 Snowboarding’s impact
The first time gamers played 1080 Snowboarding, there was no other action sports game like it. A snowboarding game that had a focus on tricks and racing. Somehow, Left Field Productions, the second party developer at Nintendo, emulated the speed of F-Zero. 1080 Snowboarding was a massive hit for Nintendo and is fondly remembered as being one of the best titles on the N64.

A sequel was unavoidable and in 2003, Nintendo Software Technology (NST) developed 1080 Avalanche after Left Field Productions dropped out. The game was previously going to be titled 1080: White Storm in reference to Wave Race: Blue Storm, another underappreciated GameCube exclusive.

Blistering speed makes up most of 1080 Avalanche
If there is one phrase to describe 1080 Avalanche, it’s from the classic 80s masterpiece, Top Gun.

Shredding down the mountains of 1080 Avalanche will urge the player to keep going and marvel at the speed and snow effects. The snow crashing towards the player camera and the wind affecting the character’s clothing on the mountain certainly give the player rushing adrenaline, as if they are on the mountain themselves. With a focus on racing as opposed to tricks, this is a good feature of 1080 Avalanche which brings the player into it’s crazy, snowboarding world.

These screenshots don't show off the speed of the game well. Image courtesy of GameFAQs.

These screenshots don’t do the insane speed of the game justice. Image courtesy of GameFAQs.

The control set up does not hinder the great gameplay of 1080 Avalanche
The original 1080 Snowboarding is a game that perfected controls on the bizarre looking, and rather unintuitive, N64 controller. 1080 Avalanche is able to replicate the success its predecessor had. However, there is a rather steep control curve for first time players.

1080 Avalanche’s controls have a strange layout. The main face buttons on the GameCube controller, A, B, etc. will do the jumping and speed boosts. To do tricks and to grind properly, the player will have to incorporate the shoulder buttons and Z button. The player will have to hold down the A button to get the jump they want, which is similar to how professional snowboarders will have to find the right momentum to get the air they want. In addition to this scheme, players will be incorporating the control stick, if the player wants to perform spin and flip tricks along with their grabs.

Tricks can be complicated or simple. Image courtesy of Euro Gamer.net.

The player’s hands will be all over the controller to perform a trick, making strange claw like hand formations. Whereas SSX 3 had a far easier control set up. This may come as daunting to first time players, but spending more time in the freestyle trick parks of the game will be great practice.

Once a player can master the controls, they will find 1080 Avalanche to be a fulfilling experience as the game is consistently challenging.

1080 Avalanche features a good amount of single players modes, as well as split screen multiplayer. The main mode, Match Race, will have the player select a circuit, with the difficulty of each circuit represented the three levels of difficulty skiiers are used to. Green, Blue and Black Diamond. Completing these will also unlock the Expert level. Other modes are trick attack, which can take place in a park or a slope, time attack, which is great for building stats and gate challenge. They are all fun in their own way and can manage to keep the player busy enough.

Image courtesy of Giant Bomb user pixelrevolt.

Each part of the mountain the snowboarders will populating has a unique feel to it and no track feels the same as the other. There are some basic ones, but 1080 Avalanche has tracks that take place in abandoned saw mills, a posh resort area with a gigantic Mario ice sculpture and shiny ice caves. Of course, all this pales in comparison to the nail biting final level, where you are trying to outrun the growing threat of an avalanche. It’s a truly gripping finale, and one of the few games to capture the dangerous nature of snowboarding in an avalanche.

The GameCube’s graphics present the tracks with enough life in them and manages to capture the snow and ice perfectly. The rest of 1080 Avalanche has a great stylized look to it, as each of the snowboarders have their own unique look.

Similar to the first game, 1080 Avalanche only has five characters to choose from. Returning is Ricky Winterborn, Akari Hayami and Rob Haywood. The two new characters are the Brazilian Kemen Vazquez and “hip-hop diva” Tara Strong (who is not played by the famous voice actress of the same name). The five characters have alternate costumes which exemplify their personality and have their own boards.

The game also has a ton of unlockable snowboards that are unusual, but reflect the nature of the game. There is an NES controller and a live penguin the player can have Ricky Winterborn and the rest of the crew to ride on.

The NES controller even makes 8-bit sounds when jumping. It’s great! Image courtesy of Giant Bomb user rabidweasel91.

1080 Avalanche had a special edition, which included a DVD titled “Snow Sessions.” It is stock footage from various Warren Miller movies set to the soundtrack of the game. It’s not much, but for fans of Miller’s ski/snowboard movies, it’s worth checking out. Strangely enough, the DVD is the same size as a GameCube disc.

One of Gaming’s Undervalued Treasures
Peel away the incredibly dated mid-2000s radio rock (Finger Eleven? Yay.) and steep learning curve of the controls and 1080 Avalanche is a worthy sequel to an immensely popular game. 1080 Avalanche’s gameplay is immensely entertaining and the races are sure to rip through a player’s cornea with its breakneck speed. It’s a fantastic snowboarding game that remains satisfying throughout the time spent on the mountain.

Games Gone By: Jak and Daxter

June 6, 2016 Ricky

Time passes. Franchises come, Franchises go. Some end when they could have gone longer. No where else is this as apparent than with Jak and Daxter.

With the success the game had both commercially and critically, its easy to see why the game got re-released under the Playstation’s “Greatest Hits Banner”. Image Source: Amazon.com

Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy was developed by Naughty Dog and released in 2001. The game was originally meant to be Naughty Dog’s first foray into deeper and more character centered story telling. The game focused on the young mute protagonist Jak and his snarky human-turned ottsel (yes Ottsel, a combination of weasel and an otter) companion. Together they try and change Daxter back into a human by finding the sage of Dark Eco, the material that turned Daxter into an ottsel to begin with. Along the way, the pair need to traverse the huge world made up of different hubs. Each hub is centered around a different colored eco that each has a different property (i.e. Green for health, Blue for Speed, Yellow for Energy blasts, etc.).

The first hub in the game is the village centered around Green Eco. Though not very smooth, the setting is still a fantastic marvel to look at. Image source: PlaystationPalo.wordpress.com

To get from place to place, the player needed to find “power cells”. These could be gained by going through a temple, doing a side mission, or performing some very skillful platforming. It was a fun and charming title. Having come out after Naughty Dog’s hit series Crash bandicoot, the game still held up and show’d their talent for more charcter focused games. For the sequel, the story became even more prevelant, but got MUCH darker. And in my opinion, even better.

One of the few times adding guns to a franchise doesn’t seem like its desperately trying to be edgy. Image Source: Amazon.com

Jak II came out on the Playstation 2 in 2004, upping the anti in a LOT of ways.First off: the story. Jak and Daxter, as well as a few side characters, find themselves being sucked into the future by a mysterious and enormous beast, who calls out Jak ominously. They soon find themselves in a dystopian future in the fascist Haven City, which is currently under the rule of the tyrannical Baron Praxis. Jak becomes a prisoner and is experimented on for two years until Daxter comes and frees him (What he was doing is shown in the PSP spinoff Daxter). Jak and Daxter then set out to get revenge on the Baron and free Haven City. Oh and Jak can talk now. Not a huge difference but hey, adds to character development and moves the plot along. The game has you talking to freedom fighters, criminals, and other interesting characters around Haven City, making it feel really alive.

The new Dark Jak form has a lot of uses, and can be made even stronger as the game goes on, giving a lot of room to grow. Image Source: Fanpop.com

The gameplay also is ramped up. Instead of focusing on different color eco for fighting, you now have an assortment of guns to deal with enemies. Also, Jak can now collect dark eco to turn into “Dark Jak”, a powerful and nearly unstoppable force, if only for a short while. The inclusion of more car based gameplay is also fantastic, as you can often take whatever ride you may want from the drivers of Haven City. Take from the wrong person however, and you may find yourself being the target of the city guards’ fury.

The sequel added so much and expanded so greatly on what made Jak and Daxter fun. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Jak III.

You’d think a match up of Jak and Daxter and Mad Max would be amazing right? One would think, but one would be wrong. Image Source: Amazon.com

Jak 3 comes out on the Ps2 only a year after the first, and it really shows. There was a three year difference between the first two games. Time to sit and time to innovate. With Jak 3, it felt slightly rushed. Am I saying it’s a bad game? God no. This game still looks great, plays great, and has a somewhat decent story. However, compared to Jak 2, not much has changed. The gun and fighting system is copy and paste, the story doesn’t break much new ground, here’s a “light” form for Jak now, and more focus on vehicles. Although they don’t hover this time. Woo hoo.

It suffers from resting on what works instead of trying anything new. I can’t entirely blame them because Jak 2 was a fantastic game that took a gamble and won. I just wish they took more time to think of something better and a little bit more creative.

What could have been a great game came out with too little WAY too late. Image Source Amazon.com

Thats not to say time work miracles, as Jak and Daxter The Lost Frontier would eventually surface after a racing game and the Daxter spin-off . They had a good idea of adding ariel combat and bigger stage story, however it came out too late in the Playstation 2’s lifecycle and got very little exposure. And this game came out in 2009! Three years after the Playstation 3 had come out. If they wanted this series to still stand chance they should have shifted focus to putting it on the next-gen console. Although its possible Sucker Punch wasn’t enthusiastic for the series to continue, as they were more focused on the Uncharted series, they gave the Lost Frontier over to High Impact Games. A few people in Sucker Punch wished they gave Jak a better send-off than he got, and I don’t blame them. The game felt like a half effort with minimal stakes in the story and not enough interesting in the gameplay to keep the dusty formula relevant again.

However, I have hope that one day we may see Jak and his snarky side-kick once again.

Image Source: Tumblr.com

Rare Games that Don’t Suck: GameCube Edition

June 4, 2016 dan

Many things can make a game rare, but it’s usually something along the lines of limited quantities, exclusivity, a specific print of a game, or simply being so well-loved that anytime one comes on the market, there’s a few dozen people who want to own a physical copy of one of their favorite games. Despite that, reasons like limited quantities and exclusivity tend to be the bigger things that make a game rare, and because of that, a lot of rare games don’t tend to not actually be too good for their price. The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak on NES, for instance, isn’t anything special. In fact, for the time it came out, it’s painfully average. And yet, because it was just such an exclusively released game, it’s slipped through the grasps of many collectors, and is now worth around $1000 if it’s in good enough condition. This game, though, is only one of many examples of games all across systems that are just not worth the price their rarity is asking for. This got me to thinking about which games are actually worth that rare price that people might actually enjoy as a game rather than just as a collector’s item. Today, we’re going to be talking about the games on one of my personal favorite systems of all time, the Nintendo GameCube.

The first game we’re gonna’ be talking about is the fantastic Skies of Arcadia: Legends, a remake of Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast. Chances are you’ve heard of this one, because it’s received very high critical acclaim all around the board (32/40 from Famitsu, 9.2/10 from GameSpot, 9/10 from GameInformer), and consistently mentioned when people talk about the GameCube. Skies of Arcadia: Legends is a simple story about a group of sky pirates. Yes, sky pirates, and it’s just as awesome as you think it is. Sadly, neither the original Dreamcast version nor the Gamecube version sold well, and have become very hard to find because of it. I lucked out and found mine for $15 at a Gamestop, only to find out a few years later that this game is going for $75 on average for a good copy.

Image courtesy of GameTDB

The story is fairly simple, but not in a bad way. It’s the standard “evil group of people are trying to collect magic items to rule the world and our heroes must stop them” storyline, but what it lacks in how unique its concept is, it makes up for with good, engaging writing, characters who are loveable from the moment you meet them, and just the right amount of self-awareness. It has a lot of fun with itself and it encourages the player to have just as much fun as its having, if that makes any sense. You’re going to get your standard RPG gameplay here with random encounters, shops everywhere, elemental alignments, and all of that good stuff. While none of it brings anything new to the table mechanically, it’s done incredibly well. What it does bring that’s super cool, though, are airship battles. Keep in mind when I say airship, I mean that they are literally pirate ships that are flying instead of on water. You can build up your ship’s weaponry to fight other ships in a style that has you plan out your actions before hand, and then watch them happen. It leaves the standard RPG formula for these battles and instead goes into some weird turn-based strategy game. And these breaks from regular gameplay aren’t jarring in the least; they fit very well in the game. On top of this, you have a lot of sidequests, the bounty system, and new discoveries, most of which is not found in the Dreamcast version. Couple this with great graphics for its time and a pretty good soundtrack, and you’ve got yourself a game that shows that you don’t have to do anything out of the ordinary to be impressive. It doesn’t try to be unique, it takes what it has and makes it the best it can be.

Up next, we have Gotcha Force, from none other than Capcom themselves. This game is rare for a similar reason to Skies of Arcadia: Legends, but with one thing making it even more rare and expensive. See, instead of being a critically acclaimed game that didn’t sell well, Gotcha Force is a game that got a lot of mixed reviews that sold pretty badly, but retains a devoted cult following, one of them being me (though again, I lucked out and found this for like $30 at a Gamestop). The average reviews for this game were between 5-7/10, but when asking its following, they’ll say it’s one of the best games on the GameCube. For a complete used copy of Gotcha Force, you’re looking at a staggering $150 – $170 price tag.

Image courtesy of GameTDB

Gotcha Force is an action game focused around collecting toys to do battle. You’re put into an arena, which is normally just a regular park or a kid’s room, to fight other small toys with swords and laser beams in a style somewhat similar to the Armored Core games. You can compose a team of toys, called Gotcha Borgs. The Gotcha Borgs are pretty much if the Transformers in the show were the size of their real-life toys. Gotcha Borgs are separated into different types, and each have different stats, and having good team synergy is key to beating this game, because it’s hard. Very hard. Half because of its awful camera, half because of the actual difficulty. Content wise, this game is pretty long, with a story that will last around 10 hours, probably more of you’re as bad as I am, and if you want to complete everything in this game, you’re gonna need to dump in at least twice that. There are so many Gotcha Borgs to collect that just trying to find them all is going to run you a few more hours, and you may have to look for more just to complete the story if you see yourself getting beaten by a particular enemy a lot. It’s got some of the most fun multiplayer you’ll ever play, just because of how fast-paced and crazy the screen gets with four people going all over the place trying to kill each other. This game is great for parties. You know, if you don’t mind leaving your $150 game out for people to constantly play. Graphically, it’s a pretty nice-looking game. The Gotcha Borgs are well designed, and for a game with so many, they do a really good job at making sure they look unique from one another. Musically… Ehhhh. Not good, not bad. Gotcha Force is a game that’s really good if you just want to sit down for a few hours and have some fun, fast-paced shooting action while still looking at cute things and cool robots.

Now, we’re going to talk about the rarest and most expensive game on here, and one that has a very fun story to go with it as well: Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest. Cubivore was originally released in Japan as Animal Leader, and upon receiving mixed reception and bad sales, Nintendo decided to not bring it over to the west. Then, after hearing that, Atlus came along and decided to give it a North American release. A very limited North American release. Combine that with the fact that even in comparison to the limited release, this game didn’t sell very well over here and still had mixed reception, and you’ve got a recipe for a rarity. A complete used copy of Cubivore will run you between $175 – $220 depending on the condition. Yes, you read that right. $175 – $220. For a game about cubes eating each other.

Image courtesy of GameTDB

Funny story about how I got my copy of Cubivore. Back when I was in middle school, my friend needed to sell some games for some money, and just didn’t know what he had. Granted, I didn’t either because I was like 12, but point is, I bought this $175 game for $10 because neither of us knew about it.

Either way, Cubivore is… Weird. Is it an adventure game? Survival? RPG? You can’t really tell. You’re a cube who eats other cubes to evolve into a bigger and stronger cube in order to eventually become the biggest, baddest cube in all the land. You’re trying to become this better cube not just live better and longer, but to overthrow the Killer Cubivore, who reigns over the top of the food chain and who has eaten the essence of the land along with his allies, causing the land to dry up. If you can overthrow the Killer Cubivore and become king, you can restore the land to what it once was. You evolve by literally eating other cubes and absorbing their forms. But not in a cute Kirby kind of way where he sucks ’em up and then poof, new form. No, this is actually quite violent. You bite into the other cube, shake them around, and then literally rip their limbs off with your teeth. You then get a new limb, or a different limb. Each set of bodies/limbs functions differently, which means you have to change your approach when hunting. You progress by eating enemies and bugs, which bring color back to the land. And, well, yeah. That’s it. The main story takes about 12 hours to complete, but the game takes a lot of getting used to, since it’s so weird. So it’ll probably take you a bit longer. Cubivore is slow, but pretty fun. And it’s definitely one of the most unique experiences on the gamecube. All for the low, low price of $175. Oh, and one more thing. This game was developed by Intelligent Systems. You know, the team behind every Fire Emblem game.

SPEAKING OF FIRE EMBLEM!

Image courtesy of GameTDB

I’m not going to go into too much detail on this one, because so many people already know how great it is and how rare it is, but it’s something that has to be talked about. Path of Radiance is the other fan-favorite Fire Emblem game after Awakening, and it goes for around $100 used. Its incredible story (that is continued in Radiant Dawn which is an equally rare and expensive game on the Wii) and loveable characters make its more-dialogue-than-gameplay style very enjoyable, and the gameplay itself is very good. Path of Radiance is one of the harder Fire Emblem games, and it shows. It forces you to be very tactful in your decisions, and is not a game that you can brute force your way through. Great looks, great soundtrack, great everything, really. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a strategy game that you’re gonna want to pay the money to play.

Just remember, if you have some extra cash, don’t do the smart thing and buy something that will help you in the long run, spend it on a stupidly expensive video game, because that’s what money is for.

Let’s Talk – What’s the Difference?

June 4, 2016 Deanna

Most people don’t play video games specifically for the violence. Or, if they do, I haven’t met them… nor do I want to. Growing up, I heard the authority figures in my life talk about how video games are making kids violent, and that every time there was a news story about a kid going rogue, it was because he played video games.

Much to my parents’ dismay, I took a liking to ’em. I discovered that while there are always rumors about video games making kids violent, and at this point I’m convinced there always will be. And for the most part, that’s what they are– rumors. A vast majority of gamers I’ve met are, without falling in to cliché here, nice people. While the majority of gamers are fine, you always run into those that like to spite people for fun. You know, like people who unabashedly support Donald Trump because of his stances on non-white Americans and women.

This is where a game called Hatred comes in. (Image from Wikipedia)

Right at the beginning of the summer last year, Destructive Creations released Hatred, and it was instantly disapproved of as a whole. I mean, the backlash was wild. Twitch.TV banned anyone from streaming the game in a matter of days, and it even caused them to rework the guidelines on what users can broadcast on their site.

Basically, the game boils down to the fact that you, as The Antagonist, need to kill people. The Antagonist is even quoted as saying this in the announcement trailer for the game, which was released in October of the previous year:

My name is not important… What is important is what I’m going to do. I just fucking hate this world and the human worms feasting on its carcass. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred… and I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving. And I will put in the grave as many as I can. It’s time for me to kill… and it’s time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here.

(via Polygon)

First of all, The Antagonist doesn’t care for his life or the life of anyone else. He’s got a death wish and his main goal is to fulfill it, no matter the cost. This leads to a rampage across New York City, in which he decimates innocents and criminals alike.

If you’re like anyone else with a conscience, this is irritating. Some developer decided to give gamers a game they really wanted, where the main character is just as violent as they want to be, or that’s what it seems. It seems like Hatred is a game based on rumors that got too out of hand, and maybe now they actually have some claim. Of course, there’s always gonna be that kid who wants to steal a car because that’s what they saw in GTA. Then again, they’re kids and their parents should really have better discretion about their media consumption, but I digress.

Here’s an example of violence in a game done so, so right. (Image via Youtube)

Here’s where DOOM comes in. The fourth installment in Bethesda’s Doom series, I can’t say it’s ponies and rainbows compared to other games, but it is indeed a violent game. And I can’t help but feel that it takes the violence angle and does it right. You, as Doom Guy, have a mission to protect your home, which happens to be Hell. It’s been used for energy and gain by the human race, and you’re a demon who’s gonna put an end to that.

But really, what’s the difference between DOOM and Hatred? They’re both games where the main character rampages across the setting. You have a clear mission in both games. But when you pull back from the oversimplified facts, the difference really lies in the message behind the games.

Hatred is a game that was made in response to all the “political correctness” that many gamers feel has infiltrated the market. Simply put, people want to see themselves in games, as diverse and expansive as they are. There’s nothing wrong with that. What I’d assume that the devs of Hatred took that to mean was that every so-called special snowflake wanted their specific self in a game, and thought that slaughtering the masses in a fictional New York City was an appropriate response.

What’s up with that? (Image via MediaMath.com)

DOOM is a game that has rage and anger at its center, but because humans on Mars have ravaged hell for its energy and thus, provoked the wrath of hell itself. It’s your typical video game plot about a bunch of bad guys stealing artifacts from the good guys and using them to their own personal gain.

When you look at it objectively, both games are about shooting something in the face until it’s really dead. But the fact that Bethesda took the time to at least continue their franchise and put some other meaning behind the whole thing rather than just taking their frustrations out on people wanting to see more faces than white guy with brown hair and stubble in games means that there’s a lot to be said about the culture that allowed Hatred to become a fully-realized game.

A studio, who had experience with the industry in the past, allowed some of their devs, designers, and marketing people to sit down at a formal, professional meeting and listen to someone pitch this idea. This idea was then approved, and actual real life money was put into making it. It went through the normal steps of getting published through Steam, and albeit without a big publisher, this game made it to the public eye. And for what? Is this really the impression of gamers that Destructive Creations wants to give off: violent, homicidal dudes with a death wish?