Damned doomsayers and mobile evangelists on industry sites aside, it’s hard to argue against Nintendo’s massive successes in reinvigorating the video games industry on a few key occasions. I’d even go as far to say that EVERY mobile games success wouldn’t even be possible if it weren’t for the company’s proven track record with handheld dominance throughout the late 80’s to today. Granted, the company has made some bone-headed mistakes every so often, but they’ve always recovered and have forged on in terms of innovation and getting their fan base some of the most purely fun game experiences.
With the Wii U shipping out this week along with a healthy lineup of what’s looking like mostly strong titles, that long chart on the left from the eternally smart and busy folks over at MBA Online (you click it, it gets bigger! Whee!) shows that despite its ups and downs, Nintendo is going to be here for quite some time.
I haven’t done a horror games article in a while, but it’s probably because of late I’m in the wrong mindset to dip into something that’s going to have me playing halfway under the couch and sleeping with a baseball bat propped against the bed. That said, when I dug up my copy of Clock Tower while looking for another game, something made me pop it in and see if the game still had the power to scare me silly after all these years. It most certainly does, and even though I only sunk about two or so hours in (getting one of the not so good ending in the process), it made me think about how many of the more recent (and so-called) horror games in the genre pale in comparison when it comes to being actually scary…
Hey, no offense here – I’m just asking that Q because I can’t think of anyone I know who’s a big Danica Patrick fan. That, or they aren’t watching her race or whatever she does when she’s not on the track. Ah well, I guess she needs to keep her “celebrity” sports gal thing going until that next GoDaddy ad. Then again, better to see her in a racing game than say, Brooke Burke, who was in that awfully goofy Burger King kart racer from a few years back. Well, at least THIS game looks as if it’s going to be a hell of a lot more fun…
Well, THAT took a while, but it’s finally done, Undead Nightmare expansion (which I actually completed before the main game’s story)and all. Hey, I did say I like to take my time with games, so here’s a good example of this procrastination. Part of this was due to having so many open world games to go through, me going through them in order of least impressive to most (RDD is still stellar visually and highly replayable) and the fact that yup, I’m pretty awful at poker and there’s a LOT of it to play throughout the game. RDD’s poker games were giving me trouble because I hated to do the save/reload thing and wanted to always try and win fair and square without any cheating. Fortunately, I wised up (hey, it’s a game about the Old West – who the heck was a 100% honest poker player back then? Even the oldest Western films have poker cheats!) and decided to seek a bit of help from a few helpful sources from a friend who’s a pretty decent player to a nice and helpful site that showed me a few tricks I was too stubborn to pull off…
Whether you’re a gamer or not you probably know someone who’s a Legend of Zelda fan. Trust me, even if you don’t THINK you do, all you need to do is ask around and in under five minutes, it’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (And yeah, I have a weird connection to Mr. B as well – live in NYC long enough and that sort of thing happens). Anyway, if that person or person just so happens to be someone you like enough to want to gently drop a holiday or other occasion day present into their hot little hands, one (or more) STL Ocarinas should make them smile for years to come and then some…
As soon as I saw the first video for this Wii U port of the popular Japanese Namco Bandai arcade game, I thought about Atari’s classic pack-in that became an instant hit remembered by anyone who picked up a joystick back in the day. Of course, with the Wii U bringing a new controller into things, this simple-looking blast-fest could be the one game that has similar impact should the console take off into the stratosphere (as Nintendo hopes). As always, we shall see, but I think no matter how the system does, this is one of those games that will get a LOT of play long into the system’s life cycle. That said, fun games really don’t need silly-ass trailers like this. Just show the gameplay and I’m all in.
So yeah, 360 owners are first on the block to brag about getting Dragonborn before everyone else, but I’d bet PC fans of Bethsoft’s RPG are going to be smiling even more broadly because they get to mod that content even more. As for poor PS3 users, wellllll… I’m one of them, so all I can do is hope to hell SOMEONE fixes that version up right so it can actually get new content instead of being a bit too buggy to play after a ton of hours are sunk into the otherwise excellent experience. It’s the one thing that kept me from going through the game a second time (and many from getting through it once). Ah well… in a perfect world, I suppose. Or a spiffy Game of the Year Edition that SHOULD come out with all the DLC on a disc (right? Right.)…
Yeah, yeah – I’ll get back to updates after the election is final. I still don’t know why this stupid country can’t postpone it for a short while so people who’ve been displaced by the crazy weather can go vote and come home to a place with lights and food, but ah well. Anyway, a few other things are going down around here, but we’ll see where they lead, bot good, not so hot, and interesting. Back in a bit. If Deadpool wins, I’ll probably jump out a window or something. But probably not – I’ve got WAY too many games to catch up on!
Even though the RPG Maker software has evolved over time, many XP, VX and VX Ace games I play leave me cold when it comes to the stock RTP visuals. Sure, the character line art and sprites are much more slick and detailed than the ones found in RPG Maker 2000 and 2003, but there’s often a really generic, SUPER clean look to these games that makes me want to skip them in favor of something a bit more… classic. On the other hand, a bit of custom fiddling and good writing has made many XP and above games truly wonderful, memorable games to play (Garden, Aetherion, Manifest, Exit Fate, Last Scenario and so forth and so on), which brings me to The Cartographer. Here’s a game that works wonderfully thanks to blending a great story, excellent use of music and some fine mapping work by developer Avedan that altogether make for a short but sweet RPG worth your time.
The game tells the tale of a young innkeeper named Rueben who finds himself thrust into the role of hero as he takes on his late father’s former position as Dragon Slayer. Toss in a Alina, a beautiful black mage (introduced in a musically flawless manner) Rueben falls head over heels for and Arcturus, an adventurer who needs the assistance of a Dragon Slayer (not an innkeeper) to complete a certain task, and it’s off to the races. While the game can be beaten in about five or so hours, it’s definitely something you’ll remember and probably go back to for the scriptwriting, humor and very likable characters. As for the mapping here, if you play a lot of RPG Maker games, you know that straight RTP maps tend to look very much alike game to game. Avedan has literally done some corner-cutting here, making maps that are far less blocky and almost organic in some spots. Of course, new players won’t notice this at all, but folks who play or make games using the software will find a lot to like here.
One cool thing about the game is all the work can be taken apart to see how it was done, enabling other users of VX to perhaps make maps just like (or better than) the ones here. Anyway, go check this one out and get ready to do a lot of smiling as soon as you start playing as there’s a lot here to love. There’s supposed to be a sequel in the works, but I’ll report more on that in the future once I get through the pile of games I have here…
Bah. What with all this MAJOR bandwidth chugginess from everyone in the area basically hogging more time online thanks to all sorts of Sandy-related issues (hell, at least we have power up here!), updates are going to be a bit slow (well, slower than usual) in coming on some stuff. That’s good news in that I can take time to complete a few more games I’d started, but bad news for my post count, Which I wanted to keep going daily with a certain number of posts per day.
Hmm. Well, I guess THIS counts as one of those posts, huh? Oh well. Off to take a nap, as I just cam back from the airport a little while ago and am WIPED out. I’ll probably dream of some games I need to finish, most likely…
Damned doomsayers and mobile evangelists on industry sites aside, it’s hard to argue against Nintendo’s massive successes in reinvigorating the video games industry on a few key occasions. I’d even go as far to say that EVERY mobile games success wouldn’t even be possible if it weren’t for the company’s proven track record with handheld dominance throughout the late 80’s to today. Granted, the company has made some bone-headed mistakes every so often, but they’ve always recovered and have forged on in terms of innovation and getting their fan base some of the most purely fun game experiences.
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 