Category Archives: Blog

We won: On The Last Story and American release

Written by Tom Auxier on February 22, 2012 at 11:17 am

A scant two days before its European release, us Western RPG players got the best news we could hope for: The Last Story is getting an American release. The forces of good have prevailed.

We’ve now gone full circle on the saga of Xenoblade and The Last Story, having moved from full on depression at the idea that Nintendo of America would throw away the most critically acclaimed JRPGs of this generation to cautious, restrained optimism at the idea that Xenoblade would release as a Gamestop exclusive to now, finally, acceptance thanks to Nintendo and XSeed coming together to bring The Last Story to America.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the JRPG has been at best mediocre across the board, at worst utterly decrepit on modern consoles. Sure, it’s experienced a renaissance on handhelds, with brilliant, top five JRPG of all time caliber games like Radiant Historia, but these games did nothing but reinforce the trope that the JRPG was a relic of the past. The “best” console JRPG of the generation, Mistwalker’s Lost Odyssey, felt like a good title lost at sea trying to find relevance in a market that didn’t desire it. By …

Could multiplayer be Mass Effect 3′s saving grace?

Written by Tom Auxier on February 21, 2012 at 9:38 am

I hate multiplayer. Unreal Tournament 2004 with my college buddies was the most recently I’ve enjoyed playing with other people. I tried games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead and didn’t particularly enjoy them. Borderlands was fun, but I preferred playing by myself—it was sad and depressing, but I hated having to deal with other people.

Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer, though, is different. To use a sad, tired cliché, I had to force myself to stop playing it to write this up.

I complained quite a bit about the demo’s single player portion. And sure, the plot felt old and tired, but what surprised me was how differently the game played. It felt more like a corridor shooter than one of Mass Effect 2′s firefights, where you had a number of options at how to take out the opponent. I was worried that Bioware had forgotten that because we had all these exciting powers we didn’t want the game to become a run and shoot. Rather than guns and conversation, we should call it “Hit target with 1200 newtons of force and send him scuttling off a balcony” and conversation. That’s where the game is fun: when we’re pulling absolutely …

Obligatory: Mass Effect 3 Ex Machina, Michael Bay, a demo

Written by Tom Auxier on February 16, 2012 at 11:46 am

I’ll preface this post immediately: I am not Aram, writer of our many lists about things wrong with Mass Effect 2. Of the forty five items on those lists, I probably disagree with about thirty five of them.

That being said, and I’m sure the full game will change my opinion, but ugh. This demo.

Here’s the thing: both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 felt like they were games designed for specific audiences. Sci-fi RPG fans loved Mass Effect because it was complicated, crunchy, and had enough Star Trek epicness to be one of the greatest RPGs ever. Mass Effect 2 flipped the script and alienated a lot of fans, sure, but it was trying, unrepentantly, to be guns and conversation. It wasn’t trying to be an RPG except in conversation.

Mass Effect 3 is trying to be both games. It’s trying to make love to the world, and (to lean on an old standby) it feels like it has syphilis.

Has Double Fine resurrected the adventure genre?

Written by Tom Auxier on February 9, 2012 at 10:52 am

Not twenty four hours ago the adventure game was as dead as its been for ten plus years. It was a Romero zombie, shambling but ineffably moving. Telltale’s Jurassic Park series has been a bullet in the leg, but that doesn’t stop a zombie. Even so, it’s slow, the adventure game. You could walk around it. You could steal its lunch money.

Then Double Fine happened. Over ten thousand people in less than twelve hours donated $400,000 to make a traditional adventure game happen.

So the question has to be asked: is there a market for this? Will we see more adventure games?

The adventure genre hasn’t come very far since its inception. The best modern series, the Blackwell games, could very easily have been made in 1990 except for their subject matter (which involves, you know, the internet existing). Experiments within the genre like Heavy Rain and the aforementioned Jurassic Park have led to scorn and distrust.

Fans know what they like, and they like nostalgia.

Because here’s the thing: those of us who grew up with these classic adventure games are in their late twenties, early thirties now. Most of them are professionals. They have a fair amount of cash (not speaking for …

“Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning”: Demo Impressions

Written by Chris Booker on January 25, 2012 at 2:29 pm

I’ve been looking forward to the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoA:R) since I first heard about it, not least of all because of the names associated with it’s production. There’s Ken Rolston, lead designer on two of the Elder Scrolls series; R.A. Salvatore, a prolific fantasty writer, perhaps best known for creating Drizzt Do’Urden; and Todd McFarlane, famous for the Spawn series of comics. Even before I had seen any sort of gameplay, I couldn’t imagine KoA:R being anything less than a stellar title. With the recent release of the demo, I took the opportunity to take it for a spin.

I’d forgive someone for drawing comparisons to the Fable series, but not as an excuse for passing it up. While it draws things like flashy combat moves, skill trees and townsfolk with exclamation marks above their heads from other action RPG’s, it blends them in a way that offers something distinct.

In the interests of getting a full idea for the game, I played through it twice. The first time, playing a wizard/rogue hybrid who sought to helpfully complete side quests and respect the tranquility of typical NPC life, and the second time playing an armored melee …

Fixing Reviews: The Lying Score

Written by Fernando Cordeiro on January 3, 2012 at 1:07 pm

Review scores are tricky; they are not for everybody. For a scoring system to have any worth, it must have consistency. Not everybody is ready for that. You can’t call a game a master-piece only to call it a disappointment at the end of the year. Review scores must also be honest and, believe it or not, even less people are ready for that. Here, I’m not talking about the flawed notion some outlets have that the average between 0 and 10 is 8. That’s just being mathematically deprived. Instead, I’m talking about Metacritic, Amazon, App Stores and whatever other place that aggregates scores from users in order to present a single information: that the cosmos has voted and decided that game X is a 8.6 out of 10.

Guess what? They are all lying.

They are lying because they encourage users to lie in their reviews. Yes, that means the liar is ultimately you, Mr. User.

Killing Mario for coins in Super Mario 3D Land

Written by Chris Sommer on December 19, 2011 at 4:17 pm

I have a problem, an addiction really, and I hear admitting it is the first step to recovery. It wasn’t always a problem; back before Yoshi’s Island I was a hale and healthy chap without this crippling hunger. The real damage was when Mario 64 came around and gave me my first star. It was delicious, easy to get, and oh so satisfying. The more stars I got, the more levels I could open, but I soon realized I was only opening them so I could get more stars. I was hooked.

The games have changed over time. Sometimes I was after stars, other times coins that were larger then the other ones; basically whatever the games were pushing I was after. Now we have Super Mario 3D Land and its three coins per level. I won’t leave a level without them. I can’t leave a level without them. If I miss one and can’t go back I will immediately hurl Mario to his death. This has caused a bit of a delay for this review.

Look, the logo has a tail!

That introduction is brought to you by my need for a support group and a sponsor, but also to lend …

Faith in Final Fantasy

Written by Tom Auxier on December 15, 2011 at 1:25 pm

Let me tell you why the recently released soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIII-2, featuring an incredibly awkward not quite death metal cover of the Chocobo song and an even more awkward rap song than Iwatodai Station from Persona 3, worse than the Will Smith classic “Parents Just Don’t Understand”, gives me faith in the game.

Yes, I didn’t get lost in that sentence.

Final Fantasy XIII had, conservatively, a boatload of problems (editor’s note: stay tuned next month as this very editor gives it another chance!). There were two biggest problems, though. The first was that it took itself way too seriously. The second was that it was a game made for both the Japanese stereotype of “Western fans” and Final Fantasy traditionalists, two groups who couldn’t be more opposed, and did enough to alienate all of them.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 seems like it corrects these two egregious flaws. And the music told me this. No, I’m not listening to different songs than you have, perhaps, listened to. I’m just listening differently. What they’re telling me is this is a game that isn’t being made by focus groups, like the original seemed to be at times, but …

World Of Warcraft Turns Seven: A Hit In More Ways Than One

Written by Chris Booker on November 23, 2011 at 9:21 am

Blizzard is kicking off it’s seventh year celebrations by offering players who log in between the 20th of November and the 3rd of December a feat of strength and an item granting bonus to XP and reputations gains. There’s more! You also get a visual-only tabard, and it even shoots off fireworks!

There seems to be a bit of a mixed reception on the forums, ranging from appreciation and praise for World of Warcraft (WOW) having such a great run, to the almost obligatory anger and frustration that Blizzard isn’t giving out a new pet like it has done in the past.

There is a very good reason for Blizzard choosing this form of anniversary reward. Recently, subscription numbers sank, indicating that people are starting to have their fill of the WOW universe, and this reward is a clever way to rope in some more. It doesn’t make them bad people, it makes them a good business.

For every player, the level cap is a defining moment. For some gamers, it’s the end. Apart from perhaps the occasional 5-man, it’s time to roll another alt or cancel the subscription. For others, it’s just the beginning. Levelling was the hard yards, now on to …

I ain’t afraid of no Phantasmaburbia

Written by Tom Auxier on November 8, 2011 at 11:04 am

It’s long been my opinion that indie developers should latch onto an obscure but happily received classic and run with its ideas. The indie platformer community has done this with Super Mario Brothers 2 (or Doki Doki Panic) and I’ve long held that the indie RPG community should do the same with Earthbound. Unfortunately, Earthbound is an easy mark to miss. There’s a combination of wistful and wonderful that make it ever so tricky to emulate; the closest anyone’s come in recent years has been Space Funeral, which was wonderful and weird.

And now we have (or we will soon have) Phantasmaburbia, a game about suburban ghosts where two clicks on the “Don’t Care” button in character creation lets you name yourself Venkman. It’s being developed by the man behind both indie RPG hit Dubloon and the highly appreciated by me Assassin Blue, and it hits that Earthbound spirit perfectly.

Available now in demo form only, the game follows a teenager whose town is attacked by ghosts. Tasked by his ancestor to defend his family, his friends, and his world from ghosts, he goes busting with a samurai sword. It’s delightfully absurd, and it hits all the right notes: it’s absurd, it’s …

Archives

Category Archives: Blog

Meta

Blogroll

Tags

Archives