PSP/Vita Passport Program Announced

Use your UMDs to get downloadable versions on your Vita?  I have to say I'm impressed, I guess they learned a valuable lesson from the PSP Go.

The Miracle on Lambert

So about 4 weeks back I sat down to play some HD Remix with my friend Nick, to discover that the mic jack and 2 buttons on my primary Tournament Ed. fight stick were not working. Due to collision between operating hours of the MadCatz support line and my normal work schedule, I couldn't do anything about it till yesterday when I took a day off to sit with Anna while she was home sick.

So I called up MadCatz, heard the recording that I needed the product serial number, and plugged in a stick to see which one was the bad one (both sitting on the shelf next to each other). First one worked fine, plugged in the second one. It worked fine too. Couldn't test the mic as I don't have an active gold sub right now, but that's not a big issue anyway.

For now, I'm back in business with two working fightsticks. Yay! Hope it doesn't go out for good later on. Looking forward to KOFXII and BlazBlue later this year.

New Year in Games Part III (or: Revenge of the Indies)

Yes, I know it's April, and I assure you this is the final "New Year in Games" post. This was meant to be the 'new years resolution' subject for this series, which was to have originally concluded in January. In truth I may have never even got around to it, had it not been for this week's episode of Co-Op (the totally awesome internet show about games by gamers that anyone who likes gaming as a whole should check out).

In short, over the years, I've made a habit out of ignoring indy game development. Which is odd given that whatever I'm into at a given time, I'm usually at least paying attention to independent artisans. In high school and college it was music, film, and comics. Post-marriage it's restaurants; truly, independent restaurants make up at least 90% of our dining out. But, for some reason I've always been carelessly ignorant of independent game design. Two of my favorite games published in 2008 were games from independent developers (Braid and World of Goo, for those wondering). This has finally made me sit up and take note.

Independent developers are a real treasure. Completely unhampered by the demands of bean counters and publishing house executives who crave another COD or Gears clone, talented game designers are creating new ways to play in the electronic medium. In recent years, online distribution channels for the sale of digital downloads has afforded these free-thinkers the ability to expose their work to us all, and not starve. I'm paying attention now, and if you care about games, you should to.

Check out the newest episode of Co-op, below. Some choice links do follow.

Tag: The Power of Paint - developed as a student project at Digi-pen
Cortex Command - not done yet, but buy now and you are entitled to all future updates
Zeit2 - Definitely a game I want to see make it to XBLA
Fez - not featured on this episode, but the creator is featured on this episode throughout.
TIGSource - independent gaming news

The New Year in Games Part II.b.

Indeed, the inevitable has happened. The previously mentioned BlazBlue has been announced for a summer release in North America. Kotaku posted a load of nice screens with their bit on it this morning, so check them out. KOFXII vs BlazBlue this summer for most beautiful 2-d game ever. FIGHT!!!

The New Year in Games part II (or ROUND 2... FIGHT!!!)

[take 2 because blogger for some reason time stamps something the day the post is made, not the day it is first published...O_o]

This post is late and having started the original version WEEKS ago, it has been completely rewritten. Initially it was a description of my on again off again love affair with fighting games, and in particular the role that Street Fighter II played in my youth. Now we take a slightly different, but related turn: the rebirth of the fighting game.

Ken and Ryu face off in Steet Fighter IV

As many know by now, Street Fighter IV has taken the world by storm. It has created an unprecedented level of demand for home arcade sticks, leading to sell outs of every stick of measurable quality currently available in the western market. Many have criticized MadCatz for a perceived intentional shortage of product with their Tournament Edition Fightsticks (my facebook friends can see all about my experience with that subject) in order to create demand. While that is an understandable position to take, it doesn't account for the sellouts and aftermarket price gouging also underway on places such as eBay and Amazon Marketplace for Hori's Real Arcade Pro line of sticks. Gamers have spoken and the message is clear: we still love two dimensional fighting games.

Street Fighter IV is a beautiful and complex game that remains accessible to those without the time and inclination to devote themselves to mastery of every character. While Street Fighter III and its revisions incorporated a parry system which could only be utilized if the player knew exact timing and placement of opponents' combos, SFIV uses a focus attack which will block one attack while held and will retaliate with a strong attack when released. Somewhat controversial was the dev team's decision to relinquish the traditional 2D sprites, in favor of 3D character models with textures sporting a hand painted aesthetic complete with ink splashes thrown around when completing certain specials. The effect makes for a wonderfully modern take on the classic genre.

But the fun doesn't end there. Just announced this week are two more console releases which are sure to attract the attention of all fighting fans, both new and old. First in July (previously announced with the vague "summer 'o9" date), we'll be treated to the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the King of Fighters, the seminal team based fighter from SNK in the lovingly crafted King of Fighters XII.

The most beautiful King of Fighters ever

The developers entered into this project with the intention of recreating each character and presenting them in fully hand drawn traditional sprites in high definition. Many were astonished at the look, initially mistaking the sprites for 3D cell shaded models. This is a point of pride for the devs and the publishers here as well. 1up alum and New Business Development Director for Ingintion Entertainment is quoted on Kotaku as saying, "While other fighting games have abandoned the time-consuming process of creating beautiful 2D art, KOFXII fully embraces the refined aesthetic beauty that only human hands can produce." Glove thrown down, folks! Old school fans may be a bit disappointed at the relatively low number of characters on the roster (only twenty - half the number in the previous KOF) but all are sure to find favorites returning while the smaller roster makes for a group of fighters easier to manage for initiates.

BlazBlue - new from Ark System Works (click the pic for a very nice high res version)

And finally, there's BlazBlue. A completely new franchise from Ark Systems Works, the creators of Guilty Gear. Given the game's pedigree, it should surprise no one that the combat system is incredibly complex, perhaps even impenetrable for relative newcomers to the genre. This game will make a wonderful addition to the library of any hardcore fighting game fan, and could make a wonderful transition for newer players who have cut their teeth on SFIV and are seeking something with a little more tooth. For now BlazBlue is only confirmed for release to consoles in Japan, but in the current climate it would be very surprising to not make it's way to North America by the end of the year.

These are exciting times for fighting fans. Hopefully manufacturers will be able to continue filling demand for quality arcade sticks. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have opened consumers wallets to spending large sums for specialized controllers, and arcade sticks are just as important to full appreciation of fighting games as a plastic guitar is to the mock instrument genre.

Yes, I got a PS3

So yeah, I finally got a PS3, on Wal-mart's free $100 giftcard deal. Not quite as good a deal as the credit card deal when the 5 free blu-ray disc deal was going, but I'm not down with opening new credit cards just for a special deal

So no games yet, mainly got it for a blu-ray player. Now let's see those Supernatural and Battlestar Galactica seasons out on BD already.

If anyone has any games they'd like to play multiplayer online, I'm open to suggestions.

KOTOR II: Oh what could have been....

I've put off playing Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords for several years now. I finally purchased a copy about a month ago, almost exactly three years to the day after the game was released. This was no normal lazy delay. No, from the minute the game was released, it's been the target of complaints ranging from rampant bugs to incomplete content. And so I decided to bide my time and wait. I still hold the first Knights of the Old Republic to be one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and one of the most significant pieces of work in the entire Expanded Universe canon. At the time I was confident that bugs would be fixed, and content patches would eventually appear to correct the mistakes made by an overly-eager publisher (LucasArts) wanting to get their product on the store shelves in time for Christmas. I was willing to wait for a perfected experience in the follow-up to the game that renewed my love for Star Wars which had largely been killed by the Phantom Menace four years earlier.

Some bugs were fixed, many were not. LucasArts outright denied a request by the developer, Obsidian Entertainment, to reintroduce the deleted content. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth. However, there was some hope given in the form of a fan effort to restore the missing content. Unfortunately that project is still underway to this day and has yet to release anything (but I'm still cheering for them).

Why now? Mass Effect. BioWare's (BioWare developed the first KOTOR) latest epic lovingly caressed many of the KOTOR buttons in my brain, without ever pressing them - after Anna played Mass Effect and listening to my endless litany of comparisons between the two she decided it was time for her to play KOTOR for the first time as well. She played it first (and agreed that as good as Mass Effect is, KOTOR is far superior), then I replayed... for the tenth time.

I decided it was finally time to stop waiting on KOTORII. Fresh off the original, I ordered the sequel and dove right in. And it was buggy, oh yes it was buggy. Pathing errors, problematic scene changes, equipped items disappearing in the middle of cut scenes (only once, but that was enough), poorly implemented transparencies, buggy cameras in cut scenes... and I stopped counting the number of times it locked up - both in the game, and while loading an old save.

Even with all that though the game was playable. And it was an entirely serviceable sequel to the original. What hurts so much is how obvious it is that the game was gutted. Plotlines removed, endings excised, a whole planet no longer playable, and on and on. The worst part of it all is that after reading about exactly what was removed... I think KOTORII could have been a much deeper experience than what was offered in the original which, as I said, I hold in very high regard.

I can also say that it leaves me wanting a KOTORIII more than I would have thought possible, and that's a real accomplishment. Perhaps we'll get one eventually. Maybe even developed by BioWare. I can only hope, it would be a shame to leave it where it stands.

Star Wars: The Force Undone?

I've been looking forward to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for quite some time, but with reservations. In certain respects the game appears to be more fanboy circle jerk than an earnest attempt at expanding the Star Wars universe in a manner consistent with what has come before. Witness the character features to the side wielding Lightsaber tonfa. Let that sit in for a second. Lightsaber tonfa. Placing a three foot glowing blade that will cut through pretty much anything severely hampers the versatility for which a tonfa is usually appreciated.

Lately these doubts in the games worth have been contributed to by the unending discussion coming out of the developers about all their efforts to make the physics and AI technologies work together. Most of the promo material we've seen has droned on and on about Havok this, DMM that, and Euphoria the other. I have no real issues with promoting the software technology behind the game. But with such an emphasis being given to the technology I'm starting to wonder if we are getting a game, or a glorified tech demo.

However cautious my enthusiasm for this game is it would be nothing but deception on my part to imply that it isn't enthusiasm which drives my concern. The game does look great, there's no arguing that. And I certainly look forward to playing it. But I haven't played a truly great Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic; and the potential is there for Force Unleashed to be the action RPG equivalent to KOTOR. That's what I WANT it to be. But the doubts continue to mount.

Laugh along @ Jack Thompson

Yeah, I screwed with the embed code so it would fit my blog column size, and it messes with the buttons. But it still plays, so please enjoy.

Playing Catchup

It's been about a month since I've posted, but I'm pretty sure Alan is the only person reading anyway. Regardless, lots of stuff to catch up on.

When last I posted I'd started going back to the gym. Gym has been replaced by physical therapy sessions for the last three weeks. The ankle joint is feeling largely fine but aches are persisting in my Achilles tendon. Only 38 days from our trip to Disney World now, so I really need to get this cleared up. It's making me quite nervous. Some progress has been made, but not as much as I would have liked. I still have another week of PT, and then it's back into the orthopedists office on 11/5 for what will likely be my final check up with him since the ankle joint itself is pretty much healed up.

The last month has seen a dirth of game purchases. I went a little crazy on Xbox Live Arcade; having added four or five games easily. The biggest surprise for us has been Puzzle Quest. I'd resisted the game on handhelds for quite some time, knowing that it was coming to XBLA in beautiful high definition. Plus, the DS game didn't support multicard play so Anna and I would both need a copy, and we only have one PSP. Clearly XBLA was the only choice for a satisfying multiplayer experience, and this assumption has proven correct.


I'd been under the impression that Puzzle Quest was merely a puzzle game with a thin veneer of RPG elements taped over the interface to provide a new dynamic to the proven Bejewelled style puzzle mechanic. Oh how mistaken I was! The RPG elements are far more robust than I would have expected. You move your character from location to location over a simple Final Fantasy Tactics-styled map. Along the way you fight orcs, trolls, undead, and various mythical beasts. You recruit companions to aid in your fight, capture enemies, and lay siege to neighboring cities. You must invest in the construction of your private citadel by building a dungeon to keep prisoners, a mage tower to research spells, a forge to fashion new items, and much more. And everything is accomplished by completion of puzzles and in competition with NPCs. Puzzle Quest is so much more robust than I could have hoped, and it's proven a real surprise hit with the both of us.

Last Friday I picked up WarTech: Senko no Ronde for 360. It's a fairly niche Japanese title that combines shmup with 1-0n-1 fighter. I was shocked when Ubisoft brought it here. Even MORE shocked that they debuted it at full retail. These niche Japanese games have typically been brought over at a modest $40. I wasn't having it for $60, especially with the busted americanized cover art and horrible new moniker of WarTech (the original title was simply Senko no Ronde, at least they had the decency to leave it as a subtitle). It was reduced to $30 eventually, but I still couldn't part with the cash. Last week saw EB/Gamestop reduce the game to $10, so it became a no brainer.

In the TRU B2G1 sale last weekend, I also picked up skate., Eternal Sonata, and Halo 3. Even though I've never cared much for Halo, I realize this is something people will be playing for the next 5 years easily, so I might as well get some play time in with friends online. I'll get to them when I get finished with Blue Dragon, which I've returned to and managed to finish the first disc, finally. The rest of the game should go faster, I'm giving up on inspecting every last bread box and shrub in the hopes of gaining a tiny fraction of increase in abilities and resources.

That's about all I can stomach wrestling with blogger's poor interface. More updates on the last month tomorrow, perhaps.

$400 PS3?

From Ars Techinica.

This is exactly the direction that Sony SHOULD be headed in. Which could be it's bogus.

If it's real, it could be the move which finally results in a PS3 in my living room. Anna gave the thumbs up to the Sony Credit Card deal if I wanted to do it, but I wasn't really comfortable with that. I don't like the idea of opening a credit card just for a purchase discount... especially when it's not so much a discount, it's a credit issued to your card sometime after the purchase. Maybe it wasn't so bad... I'm just uncomfortable with it.

But $400 retail? We'll likely have a 10% off card for Target floating around, bringing it to only $360, plus a free copy of Spider-man 3 on Blu Ray. Good enough for me.

I know, if the report is correct, it'll only be a 40GB HD. I'm not much fussed over that. I've barely used the 20 gigs on my 360 after 4-5 months, and by all accounts it's very easy to switch out a drive on the PS3. And yeah, it'll be an emotion engine-less unit, but again it matters very little to me.

The Inevitable

VGChartz announces the Wii has finally surpassed the Xbox 360 in total sales.

After next year I fear a drought of epic games. Why should anyone bother but for the love? If casual gaming pulls in these kinds of numbers for such ridiculously low development costs, where's the benefit to the company? *shrug* I love the Wii but in some ways I fear for the future.

Chibi Block Dropping Salvation: SPFIITHDR Dated

Thanks to my friend Nick for pointing out Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has finally been dated. And it's coming next Wednesday! For what will most assuredly be the best XBLA release ever. I really can't wait.

2k, really?

What do you do when you have one of the hottest selling games of the year?

First, allow direct2drive downloads with a preloader from IGN, then start threatening to sue customers who discover you put the authentication server up early.

Second, implement widescreen incorrectly, making it show LESS than the 4:3 mode.

Third, implement draconian DRM requiring an internet connection to register and play, and only allowing 2 installs of the game, ever.

Fourth, explain to all your customers why they are wrong, and widescreen really shouldn't give them more picture.

O_o

skate.

The demo finally was released yesterday and it's great. Really everything I wanted it to be. It's such a pleasant departure from the Tony Hawk trick chain fest bs. It was awesome to grind on telephone wires at first. But really, telephone lines? Ridiculous. EA's skate. feels like skating, and I couldn't be happier.

XBL Download Assortment

• Bioshock Demo - Thankfully it completed over night, I had my doubts for a while. It's an impressive effort in world design but it plays much like a dozen other FPS games played over the last ten years. It looks to be worth a play through, but not the hype being built around it in fan circles, both amature and professional, across the internet. A pretty game, a moody game, but a game I've played a hundred times over without any real new mechanics.

• Beautiful Katamari Demo - It's three minutes of the game you've already played on PS2. Fun, and prettier, but the same game. And only three minutes. Not that it was a masterwork of coherent story telling, but I doubt someone unfamiliar with previous versions would walk away with any clue as to what was going on.

• Guitar Hero II download packs - I've said before I'd never buy one of their download packs. This conviction was built upon a strong foundation of pathetic and random groupings of songs, and the exorbitant pricing of 500 points per three-song pack. The new pack is a My Chemical Romance song, and I do like the MCR. It's still over priced at 500 points, but I have a feeling this is a concern that will never be addressed, so I might as well enjoy the result of one adjustment to the norm. (And yeah I know blah blah blah emo sucks... tell it to someone who buys into the emo-hate bs).
  

Stranglehold Demo

After an excruciating 1.3 GB download last night, I spent the scant few minutes before needing to be in bed, having past the "should be in bed" point by nearly an hour, with the John Woo 'presented' Third Person Shooter, Stranglehold, based on the continuing adventures of the lead character in the modern classic, Hard Boiled.

I've said before that a console shooter really has to work hard to make me care. The diversity of control on a PC makes the basically simple premise of a first or third person shooter feel a little too shallow and clumsy on a console. Proponents argue that reliance on the console controller introduces a higher degree of challenge and strategy to the mechanic. There is a boon, they suggest, to the inability of the opponent to simply whirl around double jump off a wall and pop you down instantly with a rail gun shot to the face, denigrating the game play as "twitchy." In this argument all I hear is "waah waah my reaction time sucks and I get owned!"

Not that all FPS games should be lightening fast frag fests but let's not pretend that slowing the competition down creates a superior environment. A different environment, yes, but that's it. It's just something different. Nor does it necessarily make it more strategic. There's something to be said for strategy in an FPS, but Halo isn't it.

I'm rambling. Where was I? Console FPS games, right. Generally I have no interest. It takes a special play mechanic to get me interested.

Stranglehold delivers. It's not an FPS game, and really doesn't even feel like much of a shooter in general due to the emphasis being placed less on the shooting and more on the movement of the player. Certainly the gunplay is an important part of the dynamic, but it is far from the whole. As important as your ability to aim and shoot is the players ability to negotiate the various urban environment obstacles that clutter the game's landscape. Sliding across table tops, diving through the air from around corners, sliding down banisters and riding on dining carts kicks you automatically into a bullet-time (called Tequila Time after the protagonist) slow down transforming difficult to impossible kills into manageable shots, while simultaneously creating around the player the feel of a Hong Kong action flick. This game has a style all it's own.

Now I may be biased on console shooters, I'll give you that. I once turned to my friend in college in the middle of a round of Quake II mod LMCTF and said that what I really needed was a girl who appreciated the aesthetic value of a quad damage rocket gib (luckily for me six years later I found one, and life is now quite perfect). But it's not that I find no value in console shooters, it's that historically, I've found them ill-suited to the control and wanted something a little different that took advantage of the differences in setting and interface. Gears of War did, though it was sort of on the cusp. Stranglehold does it in spades. It doesn't feel like a PC game trying to sell itself to the console market. It feels like a console game. And for a shooter, I can't give it any higher praise than that.

Nintendo finally learns: match making w/o friend codes

News out of the Nintendo Media Conference this last week seems to have slipped under the radar a bit, but a spot on this week's 1up Show discusses Nintendo's implementation of matchmaking in Mario Strikers Charged, Pokemon Battle Revolution, and Big Brain Academy Wii Degree.

Still need codes for a friends list though. Maybe they will come around to unique player IDs eventually. But this is at least a positive sign.

R-Type... Tactics?

It would be unsightly for me to adeqautely make us of explitives to emphasize the confusion that this creates in my tiny mortal brain.

R-Type Tactics Site Opens (story from Kotaku)

Starcraft 2: Told ya so

Ok, maybe I didn't tell ya so HERE, because I got kinda busy and just didn't have the time to make any entries. But those of you I've spoken to individually know what I'm talking about.

Anyone who thought Blizzard would actually invest in a SECOND MMO, doubling their overhead and splitting their audience into two, was completely fooling themselves.

Starcraft II