• 14May 09

  What The Hell Am I Doing?

  I don't know how this happened, but the game I am currently playing to beat is Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (The GBA original). Actually, now I think about it, I know why I am playing it. I found out that it was made by the same team that made The World Ends With You (that topped many players GOTY lists last year).

  The game is essentially a dungeon-crawl game with card-based battles that mashes the Disney and Final Fantasy character Worlds together. I have no affinity for the subject matter, I admire Squeenix as a developer, but I am not a FF adherent, and as for Disney I ignored them up until The Little Mermaid and went back to ignoring them after Pocahontas (hey it was the '90's give me a break).

  In any case, this game has a LOT of complexity, a lot of battles, great art, great sound and I have no idea WTF I'm supposed to be doing from one second to the other. I'm essentially button mashing my way through battles and guessing the rest. I feel a little guilty, because it's clear that the game is awesome, or at least some effort has been put in, and I'm essentially suceeding by pressing the A button - a lot.

  Have you ever coasted your way through a complex game like this?

  • Posted May 14, 2009 12:17 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 20Apr 09

  Backward Compatibilty -- Remember That?

  The Sony Playstation 3, a console I hold in high regard, has five different SKU'sonly 3 of which (all discontinued) have very good backward compatibility (BC) with PS1 and PS2 titles. The last time the 360 updated their BC list was in 2007. As for Nintendo, this is their first BC generation and they have carried it off flawlessly.

  I happen to keep my original systems hooked up, so this shouldn't annoy me, but it drives me ****ing crazy that MS and Sony don't value this feature in a system, and that their intransigence will most likely carry over to the next generation of gaming.

  Why is that? I think for the most part the problem I have with it is that we are stuck with gaming platforms that are proprietary -- there is no single standard format -- and that this format does not even hold over from one 5 year gaming cycle to the next adds to the devaluing of what investment a gamer has made in their collection.

  On top of that, the lack of BC is a slap in the face for gamers who have been loyal to a manufacturer generation to generation. This perhaps is the deepest cut.

  Maybe I'm out on a limb here? How do you value BC? Big deal or not?

  • Posted Apr 20, 2009 2:01 am PT
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• 28Mar 09

  What $60 price point?

  Here we are deep into the 7th generation of gaming and I've probably posted at least 20-30 threads about the $60 price point and how it is crippling gaming (which it is). But, to contradict myself, here is my haul from March, and I did not pay more than $40 for a single game:

  1. Mirror's Edge, PS3 $37.99
  2. Wild Arms XF, PSP $14.99
  3. Avalon Code, DS $34.99
  4. Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii, $29.98
  5. Mad World, Wii, $39.97
  6. Condemned 2, PS3, $13.99
  7. Texas Hold 'em, DS, $3.66
  8. GTA Chinatown Wars, DS, $34
  9. Lock's Quest, DS, $19.99
  10. Dissidia Potion, Free,Courtesy of trigames.net
  11. Valkyrie Profile: Conenant of the Plume, DS, $37
  12. Suikoden Tierkreis (with soundtrack), DS, $34.97
  13. Tomb Raider: Underworld, PS3, $29.98
  14. Just Cause, XB, $9.99
  15. Art of Fighting Anthology, PS2, $12.99
  16. Singstar Pop, PS2, $14.99

  In my experience what has been different about this generation is the tendency for publishers and/ or retailers to drop the MSRP pretty rapidly, which for me has meant waiting for the price drop for pretty much every game.

  Another trend you may not have noticed is that there are no 360 pick-ups this month. That's because there were no 360 exclusives this month -- which is where I am at with the 360 these days due to the hardware failure rate.

  • Posted Mar 28, 2009 8:38 pm PT
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