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Whatcha Playing: Persona, Fallout, and the Trans-Pacific RPG Ideal

Somewhere, probably not too far from Hawaii, the perfect role-playing game is waiting to be discovered. A volatile, volcanic outcropping boiling over with an expert blend of relatable, colorful characters, deep, directed narrative, and open, exploration-rich adventuring, alongside intimidatingly deep avatar customization. Its game world is both fantastic and hyper-real, vast yet structured enough to inexplicitly guide the player along scaling challenges.

Alright, I’m kidding. I know this game isn’t real. Of course it isn’t. But after the past couple of weeks, I sincerely wish it was.

Posted Jan 05 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, star wars, fallout 3, bioware, peter molyneux, mass effect, fable, jrpg, quest for glory ii, persona 4, wrpg, knights of the old republic, fable ii, quest for glory III

Populous: Text Based Tutorials Need to Die In A Fire

Like every other Peter Molyneux game outside of Fable and its sequel, Populous escaped my attention the first time around. I remember sitting in my buddy Mike McBride’s house in the early ‘90s watching his brother play the game for hours and thinking, “I have absolutely no freaking idea what is going on! Why is nothing jumping or shooting?” XSEED, being the swell cats they are, sent us a copy of the new DS version of Molyneux’s classic, so I’m finally spending some time with the man’s much loved debut.

I have absolutely no freaking idea what is going on.

This is because Populous DS is frontloaded with that most dreaded of barriers between player and actual play: the text-based tutorial.

Posted Nov 25 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, fable 2, peter molyneux, fable, xseed, populous

Molyneux's Redemption?

If you asked me a few years ago, I never would've believed Fable 2 would be so highly-reviewed--or that I'd be having so much fun playing it. Even the ruthless gang over at 1UP Yours likes Fable 2; in their latest podcast, they go so far as to recommend that you play it before the highly-anticipated Fallout 3--and that's saying something. So, after a series of disappointments this decade, is Molyneux finally back in our good graces?

Maybe; it's possible that he never left them. Games like the original Black and White may be mocked and derided in the Disappointment Hall of Fame, but, if you do a simple Metacritic search, you'll notice that nearly all of Molyneux's 21st century games were highly regarded upon their release. Hell, as of this writing, Fable 2 is pulling in the same Metacritic score as Black and White. Metacritic isn't the best tool for judging the quality of a game, but something fishy's going on here.

Posted Oct 27 2008, 10:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: xbox 360, fable 2, peter molyneux, fable, bob mackey, black and white

Impressions: Fable 2

So far, I've managed to avoid riding Peter Molyneux's 21st century disappointment train, as popular opinion alone has kept me away from his post-Bullfrog work. I was a big fan of his PC games throughout the 90s--and I'm still hoping for some sort of Dungeon Keeper revival--but his self-aggrandizing nature and the vicarious pain of others didn't exactly motivate me to check out anything from Lionhead Studios. But I'm a weak man, and the years of hype for Fable 2 eventually got to me; would it be a good game? Would Molyneux actually be able to live up to his promises?

Color me surprised, because Fable 2 actually held my attention for nearly four hours last night--and my busy life makes it hard to fit in long periods of prolonged motionlessness. Fable 2 may not be quite as stellar as Peter Molyneux would have you think, but it is a surprising mix of Zelda and The Sims. You heard right.

Posted Oct 23 2008, 01:15 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: xbox 360, fable 2, peter molyneux, fable, bob mackey, impressions, lionhead studio

Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz

October brought its true fury and grandeur to New York today. It took three days, but the nattering leftovers of summer finally drifted out to sea like so many dead leaves and left behind the lowlight and intent wind so particular to the month. Walking down the street, I could smell it, looming like bonfire smoke and Halloween parades: game season.

I hold no love for the business structure that sees some ninety-percent of the year’s most ballyhooed games releasing all within a tight ten week window. It leads to sensory overload and, for the devoted gamer, it adds to already-big backlogs. But I’d be lying if I said it isn’t always exciting. All of the hype, all of the previews, leaked screens, developer showcases, and high, high hopes all lead here and it always begins in October. Holiday 2008, as it were, is going to be a particularly interesting season considering that it is gaming’s first to witness true third-party agnosticism. Nigh on every publisher from East and West is releasing their biggest games on any and all platforms available. (There are rare exceptions. See Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles, Valve’s Left4Dead, and a number of Wii titles.) This brings even closer scrutiny to the console holders' offerings; more than ever, first-party games need to be system sellers. They have to act as ambassadors, convincing casual and hardcore gamers alike that if they put money into such and such a system, there will be more where that came from.

Posted Oct 03 2008, 05:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments

Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, playstation 3, motorstorm, resistance, nintendo, microsoft, xbox 360, wii, sony, gran turismo, gears of war, animal crossing, halo, fable, wii music, lips, banjo kazooie, ridge racer

Screen Test: Fable 2

For all of the hate the original Fable got for not living up to Peter Molyneux’s wild claims about how the game’s role-playing would provide a nigh on life changing level of depth and complexity, I adored it. It was a perfectly paced little nugget of fun, about fifteen hours of content, satisfying combat, and some neat (for its time) character customization. Even if it didn’t quite let you live the full hero’s life it originally promised to, it still offered some impressive opportunity for moral choice in a game world, choices whose consequences are far more interesting than the ones found in similar games five years later. I’m still not too sure what to expect from Fable 2. I feel as though its been flying under the press radar since it was announced. Even though its all but done right now, no preview or interview has given a sense of what the full game experience is going to be like. Right now, it just sounds like Fable but bigger. These screens certainly bear that out. As always, Lionhead bangs out some pleasantly exaggerated human caricatures, homey looking fantasy villages and forests, and some nice and spooky enemies. Maybe that’s why Fable 2 is still flying under the radar. Instead of being billed as a paradigm-altering juggernaut, it’s being sold as what it looks like: videogame comfort food.

Catch the rest after the jump.

Posted Sep 15 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, microsoft, xbox 360, screen test, peter molyneux, fable

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 3

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

We cite Punch-Out!! here not for starring Mike Tyson (a controversial figure, even before his rape conviction), but for the degree to which it epitomizes a trend that would dominate gaming in the late-'80s and early-'90s: the "beat up stereotypes from around the world" gameplay model. Granted, most of Punch-Out!!'s characters are too ludicrous to really offend; it's hard to imagine Pacific Islanders getting all up in arms about King Hippo being kind of a jackass. That said, the sight of cross-eyed Piston Honda babbling "Sushi, Kamikaze, Fujiyama, Nipponichi!" as a mid-match battle cry is a little unsettling. — PS

Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:13 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid, nintendo, derrick sanskrit, xbox 360, final fantasy, top ten, call of duty, pokemon, Playstation, tomb raider, punch out, mcdonalds, heavenly sword, fable, mike Tyson, narc, dead or alive, persona

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4 is a game obsessed with realism, its depiction of combat situations and the tools of war meticulous to an almost terrifying degree. Early in the game, you are placed in the gunner’s seat of an AC-130 Spectre over a Ukrainian field, the night vision view of an aerial assault looking no different than an Iraq war newscast, the radio confirmation of kills unsettlingly casual; a game so realistic that it mimics a soldier’s detachment from killing. It’s strange then that the game, for all its incessant specificity, sends the player to kill Arab soldiers in “the Middle East”, and not an actual nation. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold over seven million copies in a war-weary United States in under a year. Am I the only one who finds this sort of depersonalization unsettling? — JC

Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:12 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s)

The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 1

Games have been raising hackles since their inception. Howell Ivy kick-started gaming and controversy’s relationship when he designed Death Race in 1976, a simple black and white game that was, well, about running people over for points. That was enough to get America riled up, prompting 60 Minutes to run the first of many, many televised news stories about the psychological effects of gaming. But public outrage is unpredictable. Politicians and parent groups have been shocked by d-list titles like Manhunt and Night Trap while more popular, widely played games with far more inflammatory content have passed by unnoted. Today, 61 Frames Per Second presents The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial. A number of these are games that we are surprised did not cause uproar in a number of communities. The rest are games that we ourselves find seriously questionable in content. How do you feel about these videogames? Indifferent? Appalled? Leave a comment and let us know. — John Constantine

NARC

I don't know about you, but I have at least a couple of friends who have occasionally sold drugs. They're pretty lucky they grew up in the relatively permissive '90s, and not in the merciless, Reaganite '80s presented in NARC. Sure, NARC gives you bonus points for arresting dealers instead of killing them, but that's because it's almost impossible to do. Far easier is just perforating them on the spot. As my fellow blogger Cole notes, "I guess dismembering hundreds is okay if they're pushin'." In fact, there was some parental outrage over NARC's unprecedented level of gore, but its moral assumptions went pretty much unchallenged. — Peter Smith

Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:11 PM by John Constantine with | with 7 comment(s)

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.