Spike TV’s American Diggers: The Curse Of The Dummy’s Boom…

Posted on February 26, 2012 by geelw

Yikes. So are we as a nation THAT hard up for cash that we’d ring up a company run by an ex-pro wrestler turned “artifact recovery expert” to carefully (allegedly) dig and scrape out our land for any historical relics that, even though they SHOULD go into a museum, we can pawn for much-needed cash? Minus whatever fee (and cut of the loot) the company gets and whatever rights we sign away to be on the show? Apparently so. Wait, what? They’ve been around since 2005 and even have a magazine as well? Who reads magazines about this stuff these days (and are there Goldline ads in them)?

My head hurts now. Of course, I’ll be doing what I usually do with “reality” TV – give it a wide berth and let those who want to dig it, do so. Nevertheless, I’d not be surprised at all to see an ad for the show that starts off with some rockin’ theme and a beefy voice saying “Where my Diggers at?!”

Feh, where’s Indiana Jones when you nee… No, wait… er, Where’s Lara Croft when y.. Um… er… aha! Where’s Arne Saknussemm when you need him? (I had to pick SOMEONE that you guys had to look up who hasn’t been turned into a pop culture icon yet… in this century, at least)…

Game Appreciation 101 (II): Learn To Love Ambiguity (Or Else)…

Posted on February 26, 2012 by geelw

Yes, this post contains spoilers (but not the ones you probably think).

Not every game is going to have a happy “Hollywood” ending, class. Get over it. Not every single story wraps up nicely and neatly at the climax with the heroes walking off into the sunset with evil burning to death in some car that just flew through a guardrail as the villain tried to make good his (or her, or its) escape.Sometimes it’s boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy never finds girl again. But that’s not always a bad thing if it’s done right and even better, YOU get why it was done in the first place.

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Game Appreciation 101: Don’t Be A Size King (Or Queen)…

Posted on February 25, 2012 by geelw

Remember folks: it’s not how long a game is, it’s what went into making the experience work so well that you HAD to blow through it in eight hours or so that’s key. Bad games don’t get finished all the time unless you paid full price and want to put in that time just to sate your curiosity before you trade it back (or sell it to an unsuspecting friend). Good games, no matter how short or long they are always have you get to the end and wanting to see more. That’s not disappointment to me – that’s just a developer doing its job…

Is the DLC Backlash A Permanent Thing, Or Just More Whining From The Back Seat?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by geelw

I’m getting a chuckle from all these complaints about paid DLC on day one of a game release as well as other bile-packed grumblings from folks who don’t like the “deal” that’s been forced on gamers during this console cycle in regards to digital content. I’ve been saying for years that even though the concept of additional content for a console game is a fantastic idea, you can’t MAKE people buy that content if they don’t have access to a broadband connection and you refuse to get it to them ON a disc (even in a re-release down the road). Sure, the amount of gamers with high speed connections has increased greatly over the past decade, but not everyone is able to make the move thanks to numerous factors. Game companies have been rushing too fast into digital without making sure they’re taking as many of the less fortunate consumers along with them.

Even worse, day one DLC hits this crowd the hardest, as even if they wanted to PAY for it (which would be good for both the publisher and developer bottom lines), they’re needlessly shut out unless someone decides to put out a Game of the Year or other retail version (way after the game’s release window has shut) that allows access to all that content they’ve missed out on. As for the whys of day one DLC, some of you complainers aren’t paying much attention to industry news, so let me defend the practice a little bit before poking a few holes in the ego balloon I’ve blown up…

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Asura’s Wrath: Wow. I Bet Jack Kirby Would Have LOVED This Game…

Posted on February 24, 2012 by geelw

As far as I know, the late, great comic art legend (and creator/co-creator of far too many important characters to count for Marvel, DC and a few other publishers) never did any video game design work. Nevertheless, a lot of game creators around the world have clearly been inspired by Kirby’s work and it’s always fun to play something that manages to nail certain elements in his art perfectly. It’s great to see a game like CyberConnect2’s latest on store shelves that pays homage to The King’s wilder Silver Age art along with his epic “Fourth World” saga, so go support Capcom and give the game a shot, I say.

Sure, it’s easy to think the game is ONLY anime-influenced if you ONLY follow anime and have no sense of comics history. On the other hand, as an ancient comics fan from the late 60’s and beyond playing the game, I’m seeing a bit of New Gods here, some of the Galactus saga there along with the massive scope and scale of the outrageous battles and characters that remind me of Jack’s work. Yup, I’m loving Asura’s Wrath so far – My full review will go up over the weekend.

And (More) Miles To Go Before I Sleep (But I’ve Got Toys To Dream About)…

Status

Yikes. I’ve a LOT of Toy Fair 2012 stuff to write up, but it’ll get done over the next week. I got a nice laugh earlier because I’d initially planned to do about five big articles that covered everything I saw that I liked. Of course, those plans got steamrolled once I started going through my note, then sorting out catalogs and contact info. Anyway, there will be at least one huge article and a bunch of smaller ones coming, so just watch your inboxes if you’ve subscribed for updates. Anyone else (meaning new folks I ran into at Toy Fair), you’ll be hearing from me directly. That is all – I’m going to sleep, as I’m over my word count for the day…

Double Fine Breaks Kickstarter Record, Gamers Get Even More Wild Ideas…

Posted on February 10, 2012 by geelw

Wow. I figured Tim Schafer and the team at Double Fine Studios would come out ahead in the end with their awesome Kickstarter project, but this is ridiculous (in the best possible way). With 32 still days left toward what was initially a $400,000 goal, they’ve broken $1 MILLION DOLLARS (actually, they’re getting close to 1.2 million as I write this) with no end in sight to the love (and money) being offered up by the gamers out there. Of course, this wild success has led to a ton of message board activity about getting game publishers large and small such as Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Capcom, Xseed, Akysys and many (many) others to start using Kickstarter to fund all sorts of canceled projects from Shenmue 3 to Starcraft: Ghost to collections of out of production RPGs to new IP that was never released anywhere but Japan.

Unfortunately, for those folks rubbing their hands together over the thought of playing that unreleased game of their dreams, all that wishful thinking isn’t going to do much good. The process of getting a game made, particularly something out of production or a new IP that involves a lot more than a small to medium-sized dev team isn’t exactly as simple matter of setting up a Kickstarter page, getting the word out and raking in the cash. Check out this really interesting post on Wired that goes into some nice detail on just what things need to be aligned in order for the process to happen. Hey, even I thought it would be a simple thing too, but a nice reality check helps in slapping the delusions away…

Torchlight II Website Relaunched (Diablo III Feels A Slight Chill)…

Posted on February 9, 2012 by geelw

Nice new look? Check! Awesome new screens and wallpapers? Check! Updates about some pretty cool happenings in the busy community? Check! All I need now is a copy of the game and I’m all set to not be heard from for a while as I delve into those dungeons. Hopefully, we’ll see a console release at some point as well, as a ton of gamers got to play the first game when it appeared on consoles and got hooked in. I still go back to the first game from time to time, but I need to set an alarm so I can be jolted into getting away from those dungeons. After an hour or so, it’s impossible to stop playing!

Why is I Am Alive NOT On A Retail Disc?*

Posted on February 8, 2012 by geelw

*Or: Hey, Ubisoft, Here’s How To Market A Game To EVERYONE Who Wants To Play It…

Sure, I Am Alive looks amazing and yes, the idea of a realistic survival adventure set in a destroyed city has garnered tons of praise everywhere anyone has seen or played it. But Ubisoft is doing themselves no favors by only releasing this on Xbox Live Arcade in March and perhaps later on PSN,… oops SEN (sorry, Sony! Give me another week or so to get used to that change). Memo from the front: despite your current successful digital business model, there are STILL a large amount of gamers who can’t get that content dying for something different that’s NOT another FPS, zombie game, franchise update or yes, I’ll say it, ANOTHER damn digital-ONLY release that should have been disc-based.

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Another Reason The Industry Needs To Stop The War On Used Game Sales: Think Of The Children!

Posted on February 7, 2012 by geelw

Crap. I can’t sleep (I never can before big press events), so you get another boring, opinionated article to pore over. With all the overly dramatic (and highly annoying to folks like me with large game libraries) fuss over used games and how developers and publishers aren’t making a dime off sales of pre-owned games (or consoles, for that matter), I figure I may as well add some opinions about a few things here. First of all, it’s the industry itself to blame for NOT capitalizing on the used market sooner, which helped breed the concept of used game retail in the first place. Had the big publishers figured out (say, back in the 90’s) that buying into a retail chain or setting up an online shop where their games could be fed back into profit, we probably wouldn’t be seeing this narrow-minded view of all used sales as the crime of the century (next to the piracy issue that the industry is even more toothless against despite some recent “victories”)…