61 Frames Per Second : sony

Mega64's Movie Adaptation of Shadow of the Colossus Possibly Better than Sony's

Bob Mackey — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:30:00 GMT

I hate to ruin your day, but Sony is making a Shadow of the Colossus movie--the news is a few weeks old, actually. So how, exactly, is Hollywood planning on handling such a beautiful, understated game? About as well as you would think. I'm pretty sure all I need to do is quote Variety's The Cut Scene blog to give you a full understanding of how the final product will most likely turn out:

I understand the folks working on the project are planning to have some of the characters who appear only momentarily in the game, such as those who try to track down and stop Wander, play bigger roles in the film. And despite the game's somewhat "artsy" cred, they're hoping "Shadow" will be a "Lord of the Rings"-style fantasy tentpole.

The silver lining to this ugly little cloud comes in the form of a video by gaming pranksters Mega64, who were undoubtedly inspired by Sony's unfortunate announcement. While I'm sure Sony will throw millions more dollars into their own adaptation, there's no denying that far more entertainment can be found in the group's 2-minute take on this PS2 classic.

Related Links:

Time For Me To Play Shadow of the Colossus
Super Secret Castle Discovered in Shadow of the Colossus
Team Ico’s Fumito Ueda at the Nordic Game 2008 Conference

Vandal Hearts Resurrected, Has Terrible Character Art

John Constantine — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

You’d never suspect that, once upon a time, strategy RPGs were a rare and beautiful beast. Twelve years ago, you wouldn’t open a magazine and think, “Ah, yes, I see. This month there are thirteen different Game Boy games coming out from Namco, Square, Inis, Nippon Icchi, and Atlus that will allow me to train tiny warriors to walk across a colorful grid to slaughter evil beasts. Oh, look, there’s six more on Sony’s Playstation and nine more on Sega’s Saturn. Can’t wait to see next month’s haul. I’ll be moving across those grids and having fun until the sun goes out, by gum!” It just didn’t work like that. There were only a few of them. There was Tactic’s Ogre, which was made by Yasumi Matsuno. Then there was Final Fantasy Tactics which was, um, made by Yasumi Matsuno. But then there was Vandal Hearts, a dead ringer for Matsuno’s SRPGs that was, in fact, not made by Matsuno. It was one of Konami’s early Playstation/Saturn RPGs that, like its cousin Suikoden, could have easily been mistaken for a Super Nintendo game. It had its fans, but after one sequel it disappeared into videogame history. That’s why Konami’s announcement of a Xbox Live Arcade/Playstation Network prequel, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, is such a surprise. They showed off some of the game at their Gamer’s Night 2009 event and Vandal Hearts is looking pretty different ten years after its last installment. First, the game’s entirely polygonal now, with a much darker color palette than it had back in the day. Its character art also looks less like this:

And more like this:

Bleh.

Word is Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment is out on XBLA in August and PSN shortly thereafter. More snide commentary on the art style as we see it.

(Link: Siliconera)

Related links:

The 61FPS Review: Suikoden Tierkreis
PSOne on PSN: Somehow, it’s Suikoden
Beating the Dead Horse Who Has It Coming: Playstation Releases on PSN

The Japanese PlayStation Store Gets Final Fantasy VII, Life Declared "Unfair"

Bob Mackey — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Let's face facts; the American PlayStation Store is...not so good. Just take a look at the number of original Playstation games you can download in Japan, compared to what's available here. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Surprised? Then you probably haven't been paying attention. No offense intended, of course, but if you've been following PlayStation Store release news since the PS3's launch, then you're probably familiar with the disappointment all PS3 owners feel when they see so many of their favorite games just out of arm's reach. Of course, it's always possible to go through the rigmarole of creating a Japanese account and "tricking" the PlayStation Store into thinking that you deserve access to its superior Japanese marketplace, but you shouldn't have to. Hell, if Sony got their act together and started pimping the PS3 as the place to get your affordable fix of their respectable and immense library (especially the PS2), I'd consider adding their new console to my rickety fire hazard of an entertainment center.

And to add insult to injury, one of the most beloved, sought-after games in Sony's history, Final Fantasy VII, has just popped up on the Japanese PSN store, causing Final Fantasy fanboys country-wide to start wailing in agony.

Despite being so successful and so reprinted, Final Fantasy VII inexplicably goes for unreasonable sums on sites like eBay. Its price in PlayStaion Store? 1500 yen (roughly 15 bucks), which isn't too shabby for a game approaching its twelfth birthday. So far, Square's released quite a few games for the PlayStation Store--including the ultra-rare Einhander--but they've entirely ignored their American fanbase. Making Final Fantasy VII available outside of Japan would basically be like printing money, though it's important to note that Sony seems to have taken a firm anti-money stance this generation. Whatever their justification, I hope they at least think about expanding their American PlayStation Store soon--if only to quiet those misguided fools who still regard Final Fantasy VII as the "best game ever."

Related Links:

PSOne on PSN: Somehow, it’s Suikoden
Beating the Dead Horse Who Has It Coming: Playstation Releases on PSN
Far Out, Man

The Art of Heavy Rain

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We have absolutely no clue what Heavy Rain is going to be. Well, we have some idea, sure. We know that Quantic Dream’s unsettling detailed three-dimensional characters and environments recall the world on its most, dreary rain-soaked day, shades of grey and brown and green. We know that the character’s have facial expressions that dip so low into the Uncanny Valley that they stop being repellant and become entrancing. We know that the game will be played predominantly through quick time events. We know that, if Indigo Prophecy and Omikron are anything to go by, Heavy Rain’s going to be, if not good, one hell of an interesting game. Truth is, we know so little because Quantic Dream hasn’t shown the actual game to anyone besides a small handful of journalists and employees of Sony Computer Entertainment. They’ve shown two demos as examples of the technology and style that will make up Heavy Rain. That’s it. No actual game. Quantic Dream are mysterious Frenchmen, so they are.

Today, we can add some new pieces to the Heavy Rain puzzle. This concept art may not tell us a whole lot about the game’s story or what it will actually be like to play, but they speak volumes about its tone. This game is going to be unsettling.

The three color environments are spooky enough. They’re dark, lonely places. Even the hotel room is ominous, inviting at first until you spot the cracks in its ceiling. The black and white drawings are flat out disturbing in their depictions of violence. Weary policemen standing around a rainy murder scene aren’t uncommon in games. Mid-coital stabbings, and possible rapes, however, are.

Sony’s classified Heavy Rain as a “Psychological Mystery/Dark Thriller”. Seems that’s an apt description.

Much love to NeoGAFfer Cyberia for finding these.

Related links:

Feeling It: Social Versus Primitive Emotion in Videogames
In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade
Less Than Perfect: Jak and Daxter and The Flawed Character
Crossing the Uncanny Valley

Less Than Perfect: Jak and Daxter and The Flawed Character

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

On last week’s GDC ListenUp special, the three amigos John Davison, Garnett Lee, David Ellis, chatted with God Of War creator David Jaffe about the dominance of empowered supermen/women as protagonists in videogames. Their discussion started around the difference between Western and Eastern tastes in protagonists. The American palette leans towards the militaristic hero archetype, the one man, muscle bound army who, plagued by existential angst or not, can solve every problem with brawn. The Japanese audience prefers youthful androgyny, characters either brimming with naïve confidence or crushed under the weight of responsibility for civilization. The ListenUP crew went on to lament that there is seemingly no place in either culture for the Peter Parker/Spider-man archetype, characters who are empowered, but deeply flawed, whether by insecurity or another humanizing debility.

They’re right of course. I can point to a selection of flawed, humanized characters in games; Oddworld’s Munch and Abe are iconic inhuman outsiders made relatable through fragility and Ico’s horned protagonist is so memorable because of his incompetence and weakness. Gaming’s more literary canon, the adventure genre, is also populated by relatable humanized leads like Farenheit’s Carla Valenti and Lucas Kane or Dreamfall’s Zoe. But these icons make up a significant minority in the world of character-based and narrative-driven videogames. If Peter Parker and his alter-ego are the most profitable fictional characters in contemporary media, why are characters like him so under-represented in videogames? Why are our game protagonists so rigidly defined by complete empowerment? Where are our emotional, and our actual, cripples?

Amidst the game industry April Fool’s detritus, Sony quietly announced their first Jak and Daxter game in some years. Only a handful of screens were released, but they indicate a blend of aesthetics from the franchise’s history; the verdant greens of The Precursor Legacy coupled with the wizened, gun-toting hero of that game’s sequels. Chances are Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier on PSP won’t explore this emotional territory, but I’m fascinated by the potential of Jak as a character. Jak originated as a plucky silent protagonist, wide-eyed and young, looking for adventure and finding the opportunity to save the world. He was a distinctly Eastern sort of hero in a Western game. Jak 2 transformed him into an angry, violent anti-hero, given greater power through weaponry and a corrupting inner force to go along with a newfound voice. With his return on the PSP, developer High Impact Games has the opportunity to take the road less travelled. An older, wiser Jak, maybe even a weakened one, who has come to terms with a violent past catching up to him. They could inject what would otherwise be a typical flight of character fancy with true emotional heft. Let Jak understand weakness in addition to pain, and make the game something wholly original.

That won’t happen of course. There’s no profit in it. But the example should hold true for other game makers out there. The road to making affecting game characters and stories doesn’t end with making them look real. It ends with making them feel real.

Related links:

Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
Linearity is Not a Dirty Word
Finally, Some Info On Dreamfall Chapters

Getting Medieval (and Evil) on PSP: Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!

John Constantine — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Well, Sony, it’s about time. You publish two versions of Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida for PSP in as many years and you don’t release either outside Japan? Come on, man! What could it hurt? Patapon and LocoRoco are weird, original PSP games and they’ve done okay. American nerds love RPGs and retro style. Where’s the love? WHERE IS IT?!

Ah, there it is.

It’s understandable if you missed Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida (You’re Pretty Cheeky For a Hero, if you prefer) when it came out back in 2007. Even amongst import gamers, it was still pretty obscure. Here’s the score: you play as the evil, world-menacing bad-guy-demon-lord from Ye Olde JRPG. You build a large maze-dungeon on a 2D plain, fill it with monsters, and then hide in it. Eventually a hero will show up to try and kill you. You, naturally, aim to avoid him. Think Tecmo’s Deception meets Dragon Quest. Here’s a trailer to get your mind rolling.

Neat, no? SCEA has ignored its existence so far, but a new Sony trademark filing has the internet rumor mill thinking a Western release is on the way. The trademark in question is Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!. Who doesn’t love Adam West-related puns? Pretty cute, I must admit. This is a rumor at the moment, so the five of us getting excited should probably chill out.

(Link: Kotaku)

Related links:

Yuusha 30 and Wario’s Micro Game Legacy
Roundtable Discussion: The Relevance of Japanese RPGs
Let's Hitchike! - Another Weird Downloadable Game I Desire

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and the Second Chance

John Constantine — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

There’s just something about a re-release. Not a remake mind you, I mean a game being released a second time, possibly ported to another system, with a few ancillary new features thrown in to entice previous owners to cough up more cash. Sometimes they just get me angry. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Why?! You can buy perfectly good versions of those games for half the price and play ‘em the way they were supposed to be played! Grumble mumble whyioughta. That’s just the idiot inside, the natural born fanboy hungry to defend an allegiance, doesn’t matter to what or who. He’s easy to ignore, but hard to suppress. Most of the time, I love a good re-release. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Excellent! Those are great games that more people should play, glad they’re getting a new lease on life.

It is too much to ask that a game be better than it was the first time around. If a game is good enough to warrant a second try, the best you can hope for is that whatever was excellent in the original release is preserved, that anything added is un-intrusive icing on an already delicious cake. There are rare exceptions to this rule though. Devil May Cry 3’s Special Edition re-release on PS2 was unceremonious but significant. The original game, known for its sadistic difficulty, had been rebalanced in its entirety and you could now play the entire game as its villain. Persona 3: Fes, in its North American incarnation, added twenty hours to the original, made a supporting character into the lead at the climax, and rewrote the game’s ending. These don’t happen often, but they do happen.

Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden is a curious example, since it is both proof of and the exception to the rule. When it was re-released the first time as Ninja Gaiden: Black, it was improved upon greatly, featuring many of the same tweaks and additions that made Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition so, well, special. It’s second re-release, however, was less rosy. Ninja Gaiden Sigma on PS3 modernized the visuals and added a new playable character but it also demonstrated just how much the underlying game of Ninja Gaiden had aged. It preserved, certainly, but added nothing.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Tecmo’s impending re-release of the Microsoft-published Ninja Gaiden 2, is branded as a remake. We all know better though, don’t we? My sincere hope is that Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is one of the rare improvements because, unlike its predecessor, Ninja Gaiden 2 wasn’t a very good game. Its camera couldn’t follow the action, the combat lacked Gaiden’s precision, and the environments were cramped and ugly. It felt, as I said in my review, unfinished. The Itagaki-less Team Ninja has a second shot at living up to the first game’s legacy. Good luck to them.

Related links:

Fix It: Alone in the Dark, Tiger Woods, and the Death of the Glitch
The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES
Rock Star Designer Fallout: Team Ninja’s Post-Itagaki Future

Sony's Trailers Are Graphics Whores

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

We get it, Sony, the Playstation 3 is the most powerful of the three current-gen home consoles. You don't have to flaunt it over and over to make yourself feel better for being in last place in sales this generation. You seem to be treating this as a beauty pageant, and you're certainly not in the running for Miss Congeniality with these repeated boasts.

I'm referring, of course, to the recent trend of all of the PS3's exclusive AAA titles featuring trailers of all in-game footage. This would be fine, in fact commendable, if not for the fact that they have to tell us, heavily implying that other trailers rely on CGI cutscenes (they mostly do). The latest offender is this one for Sucker Punch's Infamous. It may be all in-game footage, but I'm pretty sure all that excessive blur and reverse time were added in post-production (the slow-down may very well be part of the game):

Others on the docket include God of War III and Uncharted 2, both of which look like intro cutscenes, but we're guaranteed they are at least in-engine of not direct gameplay:

You know what would help convince us this was in-game footage? A HUD. Some sort of graphical elements to convey "this is what's happening". You know your games have these. At least the occassional your-character-got-shot-so-now-the-screen-flashes-white-and-desaturates that every action game does nowadays. Showing what could very understandbly be rendered footage and telling us it's all in-game isn't as convincing as it used to be (remember what happened with Killzone 2?). There's no shame in third place these days. Nintendo was third last generation and look at them now. I love you, Sony, just stop being so cocky.

Related articles:
Sony Might Just Hate You
Facepalm: PS3 Hard To Program For "On Purpose"
Infamous: Unsung Contender of 2009
Screen Test - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Two truths. Today is March 13th. It will not be spring for another eight days. Also, the original soundtrack to Okami is not chiptune. At all. In fact, it is fully orchestrated and entrenched in traditional Japanese composition, a far cry from the heavy metal and pop roots of the blissed-out blip songs composed on the NES or similar consoles.

Have you gone outside though? It is freaking gorgeous out there. It may rain, it may be cloudy, but the bitter miasma of late winter has lifted, washed away as if by… a celestial brush! Given, it’s likely that the fine weather is a result of the Earth’s natural solar orbit and axial spin, but I like to think that there’s a sun goddess wolf out there making it nice outside. I’m going to find her. We’ll go to the park and play fetch. Beautiful women will be all, “Oh your dog is beautiful!” And I’ll be all, “Check dis.” Then Amaterasu will make a bushel of fragrant botanicals grow at our feet.

Here are three selections from the Okami soundtrack. Listen, be in bloom, and grab your DS or PSP. Go play outside today!

The Great Goddess Amaterasu’s Revival

We’ll Always Be Together!

Two People Gazing At Each Other

Related links:

Chiptune Friday: Ethernet’s “Theme For the Water Shrine” Makes Me Want to Adventure and Possibly Defeat an Ancient Evil
Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Best NES End Credits Music in the History of NES End Credits Music
Chiptune Friday: Shut Up and Jam!
Chiptune Friday: Blaze a Blaze in the Mushroom Kingdom

Trailer Review: Infamous

John Constantine — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

The media blackout on Suckerpunch’s Infamous is finally lifting. Some very positive, extensive previews of the game have started popping up. Edge’s recent cover story got me particularly pumped. This new trailer is light on play but heavy on ambiance. Still very cool.

Now that Killzone 2 is out, Sony really needs to turn their attention to pushing this game. More than that, they need to start emphasizing the game’s branching good/evil narrative and deeper combat. I keep reading about the meatier powers you get as you progress through the game and how much more interesting they are than the point-and-zap stuff they've shown in trailers, but why haven’t we seen any of it? Why is Sony so reticent to push a game that’s shipping in just three months? And why aren’t they taking pains to demonstrate how different it is from Prototype, a game that shares more than a few characteristics with Infamous? The media blackout may be ending, but its high time the hype train gets rolling.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

The 61FPS Review: Killzone 2

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

NOTE: The following review and the grade attached to it are based entirely on Killzone 2’s single player campaign. Stay tuned to 61FPS for a follow-up, post-release examination of the game’s considerable multiplayer component.

Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg covers games from his secret lair in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, typing, reading and playing the days away as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

There may be hundreds of them, but first-person shooters can really be broken down into two categories. The first type of FPS is marked by a strong balance between play, narrative, difficulty and pacing. If that balance is good enough, the game warrants a full playthrough. The other type is competent and even entertaining, but it’s just one more game with a gun. For one reason or another, maybe the challenge isn’t engaging enough to keep me going, maybe it’s the story, this type loses my interest long before the credits roll. Guerilla Games’ Killzone 2 almost falls into the latter camp for me. Had it not been for the demands of this review, I never would have finished the game.

I’m glad I stuck it out though. Killzone 2 stumbles in its first half. Unwieldy controls, awkward combat dynamics and an unfocused, impersonal narrative are a lethal combination. But during the game’s back half, everything gels. It just takes some time to get there.

While most of it falls under the generic, game-with-a-gun banner, the aforementioned unwieldy controls set Killzone 2 apart from its peers. Like its predecessor, Killzone 2 is a cover-based FPS. Unlike every other post-Gears of War, cover-heavy shooter (first- or third-person), a single button press does not lock you in to a “safe” location. In Killzone 2, you have to hold down the Dualshock’s L2 trigger to take and remain under cover. This is piled on top of button presses for iron sights aiming and firing, leaning with the left analog stick and the occasional D-pad press for sniper scope zooms. I know that’s a lot of busy language, but it’s even harder on your hands. You’re left with a lot of busy fingers stretched into uncomfortable positions. I’ll admit, a big part of why the game’s first half felt so uneven to me had to do with my own failings. I had to spend time unlearning modern FPS controls to adapt to Killzone 2. The game’s unorthodox combat scenarios and aggressive AI only steepen the learning curve.

Consider Call of Duty or even Gears of War. In those, players find cover, fire across a “No Man’s Land” at the enemy and push ever-forward in the process. This is traditional war simulation, fighting for inches. The emphasis in Killzone 2 is instead placed on surviving within a dynamic battlefield. Your Helghast enemies are smart, always on the move, and terribly efficient even in the game’s default, “Normal” difficulty setting. They’ll chuck grenades, fire blind to keep your squad suppressed, support one another with intersecting arcs of fire; they move and act like trained soldiers. Fortunately, Killzone 2’s battlefields are massive. There are typically multiple routes to any destination, including one or two which lead to prime flanking opportunities and tackling these opportunities forces acclimating to the controls. If you’ve got an uncomfortable grip on the controller, then you’ve probably been hunkered down in one place for too long. Some fudging of the rules under Killzone 2’s hood unbalances what would be an otherwise absorbing challenge. Helghast soldiers tend to blind fire with pinpoint accuracy from behind cover. They also seem to have a sixth sense for knowing when a sniper rifle’s crosshairs have drawn a bead. Their ammo supplies are apparently limitless as well; there are no wars of attrition in this game. You simply choose a tactic, push forward and hope like hell that things work out. Even the weapon selection feels unbalanced in the early going. Killzone 2’s assault rifles are inaccurate and underpowered. Short bursts are the order of the day, but for medium- and long-range engagements, players will find that their pistol — with its unlimited ammo — is the best bet. Like everything else in the game, variety comes later on. Sniper rifles pop up along with shotguns, two variations of LMG, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and the boltgun, a shottie/’nade launcher crossbreed. Good times, for those who stick it out.

The incentives to stick it out beyond play, namely story and visual thrills, are mixed but rewarding. Narrative is often an afterthought in militaristic shooters, and Killzone impersonal tale certainly doesn’t do it any favors. Too much time is spent on the big picture of the ongoing conflict between the ISA (Space America) and the Helghast (Space Nazis), with little time spent on developing character beyond archetype. Dramatic incident can’t inject personality into a story when the incidents are so predictable. For half the game, players will be running through the standard battery of military missions: take out this turret or armor, capture this point, blow up this structure, etc. Graphically, Killzone 2 is stunning. Many of the indoor environments feel same-y and bland, but every outdoor battlefield in the game is a powerful spectacle. From the epic-scale backgrounds to the hordes of soldiers fighting the war around you, Killzone 2 lives up to its burden of proving the Playstation 3’s technical heft. Once again, the late game is considerably tighter in this regard, particularly a pitched battle on a moving train and a desperate last stand aboard a friendly cruiser stationed above Helghan.

It’s Killzone 2’s decidedly against-the-grain FPS experience that elevates it above the game-with-a-gun hordes. Considering the gobs of hype preceding it, I’m impressed by Guerilla’s willingness to separate itself from the pack with such demanding play. It’s rare to see game that favors repetition and constant spatial awareness over the measured, strategic play of its most popular competitors. But this is both the game’s most valuable asset and its greatest failing. In focusing so intently on making only certain aspects of Killzone unique — its strange control, its war play, its AI — Guerilla failed to make something solid throughout. Does it live up to the hype? How could it? Is it good? Absolutely.

Rating: B

Past Reviews:

Noby Noby Boy - part 1 & part 2
Big Bang Mini
Retro Game Challenge
Edge
Game & Watch Collection
Valkyria Chronicles part 1 & part 2
Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2
Prince of Persia
LittleBigPlanet part 1, part 2
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Romanticizing the pre-internet age of games criticism is common amongst those of us born before 1990. With the presses stopped on Electronic Gaming Monthly, the last survivors of gaming print’s heyday are Gamepro and Nintendo Power. Those magazines still cater to the adolescent audience they always have, but they’ve lost all of their old schlocky appeal. It’s a good thing. Gaming print isn’t dead, and games criticism is slowly but surely emerging from its fandom-based larval form. Yeah the internet’s glutted with drivel, but there’s a lot of substantive, well-written study of the medium happening. *cough*

One thing certainly hasn’t changed. Gamefan may be long dead at this point, but Dave Halverson is still publishing monthly volumes of unabashed fandom in Play. Play, like Gamefan and Gamer’s Republic before it, isn’t really criticism. The magazine doesn’t engage in heady intellectualism like Edge, but it also doesn’t fall into Consumer Reports-style, reviews-and-previews tradition of Gamepro. Halverson’s publications are professionally made ‘zines, literal love letters to the industry they cover. The furor surrounding Halverson’s praise for Golden Axe: Beast Rider a few months back was surprising. The man isn’t a critic. He’s a lover. He publishes The Girls of Gaming, for crying out loud. Despite his flighty editorial mandate, Halverson’s pubs have had a surprisingly lasting impact on North American gaming culture. Today, Treasure is an iconic development studio beloved the world over. Gunstar Heroes wasn’t responsible for that notoriety. It was Gamefan’s constant lionization of the company that birthed the cult of Treasure.

Gamefan was, for me, a message in a bottle. Every single month, I would open an issue and be overwhelmed by bizarre foreign games I would never have a chance to play. And at the back of every issue waited the most cryptic and vexing passages of all: the advertisements for Halverson’s import games shop Game Cave. The ads were four-pages long and littered with miniscule pictures of games accompanied by nothing more than a title. That was where I saw this:

“Arc the Lad – PSX”. What in the hell was Arc the Lad? It had that JRPG look about it, but other than the stumpy characters and the vivid color, there was no way of figuring out what the game even was. It fascinated me. I always kept an eye out for Arc after that. It wasn’t until a few years later, as the JRPG boom took hold in the States that I learned that Arc the Lad was indeed a role-playing series. Since it was a first-party Sony game, and Sony refused to publish most 2D games outside of Japan, I had more than a language barrier standing between me and Arc.

Arc the Lad did eventually come here in 2002. When it did, it represented both the end of the Playstation era and the beginning of Working Designs downfall. It was a lavishly packaged set; cloth map, hard-bound instruction manual, the whole Working Designs shebang. It included the entire Playstation Arc trilogy and a side-game called Arc Arena. I couldn’t have cared less. In 2002, the PS2 library was finally heating up, the Xbox was proving its mettle, and the Gamecube was promising glossy, traditional Nintendo goodness. Sucks to the weird JRPG from 1995! Have you seen this game Maximo? That looks crazy! Eventually the Arc the Lad Collection disappeared from shelves and finding it in decent condition used proved problematic. Over the past seven years, I’ve regretted not picking it up. Arc the Lad, the one that got away.

I finally sat down with Arc in January. As tends to happen with the ones that get away, Arc turned out to not be what I imagined. I expected a traditional JRPG, the usual morass of clichés coated in a typical Working Designs translation (a mix of pop-culture references, glib humor, and stoicism.) What I got was a simple, brief tactical RPG, sort of Duplo blocks to Tactics Ogre’s Lego. The colorful world implied by that night time screenshot wasn’t there. There’s no exploration whatsoever in Arc actually. The world spanning adventure takes place almost entirely on a map as you’re shuffled between single-screen locales for dialogue and dungeons. (The dungeons, in fairness, do have multiple levels.)

I haven’t delved into Arc 2 or 3, yet. My understanding is that they’re far deeper, more interesting games than their progenitor. I may try them out at some point. If nothing else, my long lasting saga with Arc the Lad exemplifies the biggest difference between following videogames during the print and internet eras. Today, Googling a game title will get you billions of words detailing just how the game plays, how long it is, and how it stacks up to every other game ever made. Back when I saw that screen, a whole lot was left to the imagination. It’s a strange thing, following videogames. Sometimes, you like them even more when you don’t play them.

Next time, I’ll close out the White Whale/One That Got Away triptych with The Second Chance: Vagrant Story. See you then, y’all.

Related links:

The White Whale: Terranigma and Ahab Gaming
Where is Victor Ireland?
FMV Hell: Lunar, The Silver Star
Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going

Where Is SSX?

John Constantine — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Let me ask you a question, EA Canada: must it all be so gosh darned realistic these days? I’ve played Skate and Skate 2. Cool games. Cool games that helpfully reinforce, digitally, that my brain is not ready to take up skateboarding. The sheer amount of things I need to take into consideration whilst performing a simple trick in Skate terrifies me. If I tried to do this in real life, and I had to think about all the different things I was asking of my body, a plank of wood, some wheels, and gravity, I would experience complete ego disintegration right before rupturing my testicles on a railing in some public park. Why oh why can’t you take me back to the good ol’ days of extreme-with-a-capital-TREME sports, EA Canada. Why can we not head back to the mountain for some good times with a new SSX, the awesomest fake snowboarding game of all time?

SSX 4 showed up on a few release lists back at the end of 2006, right around the time that the Xbox 360 was ending its first year and just before the release of the Playstation 3. These were the systems said to be home for such a wonderful sequel. Alas, that game was never ever officially announced and has failed to materialize since. A sort of remix of SSX 3, SSX: Blur, came out for Wii in March 2007 and it remains the single most frustrating game I have played in my entire life. They added some new cel-shaded graphics and motion controls that give a shockingly real simulation of a crippled nervous system. You move following onscreen prompts and then NOTHING HAPPENS. Playing it is demoralizing and makes you hate things. Even your pets. After trying to play SSX: Blur for an hour, I ended up yelling at my cat and blaming her for the hantavirus.

DJ Atomika, the chipper voice of SSX Radio throughout the game, re-emerged in Criterion’s Burnout Paradise and hinted at some fresh snow on the mountain. Please don’t lie to me, Atomika. My heart couldn’t take it. I long for sweet, sweet fake snowboarding on 360 and PS3. Grant me this simple desire.

(Much love to NeoGAFfer Wario 64 for asking this very same question. Props.)

Where Is?

The PSP
Hydrophobia
Prototype
Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden
Yasunori Mitsuda

10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

John Constantine — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Silent Hill (released February 24th, 1999) did not mark a pivotal moment in the original Playstation’s lifecycle. Technologically speaking, Silent Hill was a solid effort, but nothing unusual for the time. Foregoing the pre-rendered backgrounds that were horror games’ stock-in-trade, Silent Hill’s full-3D environments weren’t as pristinely rendered as Konami’s own, year-old Metal Gear Solid. The CGI cutscenes, another requisite of the era, were competent but by no means up to the Squaresoft gold standard. Its control was wonky, its camera unwieldy, and the voice-acting was stiff even for a Playstation game. Of course, none of that matters. Silent Hill was a pivotal moment in game’s maturation as an affecting, expressive medium. Forget technology; its technical failings made it a stronger work. Forget genre; Silent Hill is not survival horror. It’s just horror.

The game’s premise and story are simple enough: widower Harry Mason travels to scenic Silent Hill with his adopted daughter Cheryl. On the drive there, during some of the game’s plastic-doll-CG, Harry almost hits someone standing in the road and crashes. When he comes to, he’s alone on the foggy streets of Silent Hill and the game has shifted to its playable state. Snow falls around Harry but doesn’t collect on the ground. From here, you, as Harry, follow what might be your daughter down a series of alleyways. As you go further down the alley, the camera shifts abruptly to successively stranger angles, mundane brick walls shift to rusting corrugated metal and rotting chain link fences, and silence gives way to buzzing dissonance. By the time you get to the end of the alley and find an eviscerated, inhuman body hanging from the wall, the gory imagery isn’t nearly as unsettling as the walk has been.

This opening sequence defines both Silent Hill as a series and its enduring legacy. The game that follows constantly shifts perspective in pushing you through the town’s locales, and there is no real safe haven. The game in Silent Hill is traditional exploration-puzzle-progress play made fresh by an unpredictable light-dark world dynamic. It’s not that one is good and one is bad; they’re both aggressive places. The duality is meant to unsettle and disorient both you and, in the hazy story, Harry. Every aspect of the design fuels that disorientation, too. Throughout Silent Hill, your field of vision is constantly obstructed, either by fog or darkness, a clever work around of the Playstation’s limitations, but essential to the game’s tone and goals. Akira Yamaoka’s sound design and its spectacular stereo mixing also aim to disturb. The game’s gurgling and grunting enemies are typically out of site until they’re right on top of you, and the only thing that signals their proximity is the static squall of the pocket radio you find early on. The awkwardness of the game’s acting, both the voice work, the script, and the animation of the characters, also serves the game’s atmosphere. While I’m not convinced it was intentional in the original Silent Hill, this sort of stilted drama has become a mainstay in the series, to great effect. It enhances the impressionistic tone, and lets the game’s unreality take root instead of constantly forcing linear plot on the player.

Horror games in 2009 are still made in the mold of the Playstation era: the dog-through-the-window scares of early Resident Evil, ominous-Gothic-setting of Tecmo’s Deception, and monster-escape of Sunsoft’s Clock Tower are still largely the types we see today. Sony’s Siren and Tecmo’s Fatal Frame series take atmospheric cues from Silent Hill, but are more tangible, less abrasively psychological games in subject matter. Even Team Silent took the franchise in a more digestible direction. After following up with Silent Hill 2 – a game that realizes every one of its predecessor’s ambitions – the team went on to make two more sequels that bear more tonal/structural resemblance to Resident Evil than their source material. The closest thing to a spiritual successor has been Punchline and Shuji Ishikawa’s Rule of Rose; Rule of Rose relies even more heavily on visual metaphor to convey its story than Silent Hill. (Unfortunately, it’s almost completely unplayable.)

Much as Silent Hill was informed by other games and media – the horrible “other world” and enemy designs recall Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder and the metaphor-heavy psychosexual narrative shares many of David Lynch’s more recognizable tics – it has managed to stand on its own artistic merits ten years on. Sadly, it just isn’t very easy (or fun) to play any more. Its technological failings certainly helped it to be a creative triumph. But those failings don’t do it any favors as a game today. It doesn’t help that the game has never been re-released outside of its inclusion in the Japan-only Silent Hill Ultimate Box in 2006. With the Team Silent disassembled and the series now in capable, albeit not very creative, hands, it’s unlikely that Silent Hill will ever have the same impact it did a decade ago.

Previously on Ten Years Ago This Week:

Syphon Filter
Alpha Centauri

Related links:

Silent Hill: Homecoming is, Thankfully, Both Silent and Hilly
Screen Test: Silent Hill Homecoming
OST: Rule of Rose

The White Whale: Terranigma and Ahab Gaming

John Constantine — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

I sympathized with Nadia’s post last week about the pants wetting nature of Terranigma’s “Desert” theme. That eerie swath of SNES atmospherics by Miyoko Kobayashi and Masanori Hikichi is still fresh in my memory, and not just from following the link in Madame Oxford’s piece. Three weeks ago, after some ten years of hunting, I finally sat down and played Terranigma in one day-long marathon session. This was both the realization of a long-standing desire to play Quintet’s final Super Nintendo entry in their Heaven and Earth saga and also part of a grand gaming journey I’ve undertaken here in 2009. The quest, as it were, is to track down three games from the past two decades that represent significant gaps in my experience: The One That Got Away, The Second Chance, and The White Whale. My goal is to finally see, after building up each game that fits these descriptions for me in my brain, how they live up long after their respective primes.

Given my inexplicable aversion to emulation, the English version of Terranigma has always been my white whale, the cartridge I’ve hunted for and that I’ve constantly sought for an actual way to play. An Australian copy of the game isn’t terribly rare, but it tends to fetch a high price, and then there’s the hurdle of getting it to run on a non-PAL Super Nintendo. That hurdle’s especially high since Terranigma, being one of the last Super Nintendo games, is fitted with a particularly finicky region-lockout chip. Even a Fami-clone that can play PAL carts like the Retro Duo won’t boot Terranigma. There are only two options for intrepid (and legitimately insane) gamers like myself. First, you can mod your SNES with 50/60 Hz region lockout switches. Fearing that I’d end up soldering my hand to the console, I opted out of this. The only other option is to find an incredibly rare version of the Pro Action Replay cheat device. Only three models will work, Mk2.P, 2.T, and 3, all of which only released in Europe in limited quantities. After trolling the net since last summer, I finally found one at the beginning of January. So, in spite of these barriers, in spite of my psychoses, I finally played and finished my white whale.

Was it worth the wait? Did Terranigma live up to a decade of expectation? It did and, unlike Ahab, I lived through the hunt. Terranigma is a lovingly crafted game and is, in many ways, the fullest expression of Quintet’s ambitions with the Heaven and Earth trilogy. It expands on Soul Blazer’s world building, goes far beyond Illusion of Gaia’s narrative and environmental scope, and perfects the metered combat they’d developed in both. It is a grand game, but somewhat schizophrenic as a result. In 2009, Terranigma stumbles in its storytelling, shuffling back and forth between explicit, driven plot and more subtle impressionism. Terranigma aims to be a Jack of all trades and ends up a master of none. But that doesn’t diminish the impact of its physical adventure, nor does it impeach its flawless presentation. If nothing else, I’m glad I played it.

That’s one step of three out of the way. Next up? The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad. See you next time, after I’ve abused my brain with Working Designs’ undoubtedly witty translation of Sony’s very first Playstation RPG.

Related links:

Time For Terranigma! Right?
Unsolicited Scares: Terranigma and the Desert
OST: Soul Blazer

Ghostbusters: There Are No Words For How Good Bustin' Makes Me Feel

John Constantine — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where he slaves away daily as a contributing editor for UGO’s Gamesblog as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

I haven’t seen shit that will turn you white. The shit I have seen, namely a fresh build of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360 and PS3, will make you green. With slime. And envy.

Last summer, a preview build featuring a portion of the widely seen New York Public Library level made the gaming press rounds. The unfinished code appeared out of thin air, its sender listed only as “Evil PR Monkey”. The demo was raw. Very raw. But not so raw as to diminish Ghostbusters’s promise. There were Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddmore (noVenkman in the demo), fully voiced by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Aykroyd and Ramis’ script, even just that tiny chunk, was characterized by the same wit that made the original films such classics. Then a few weeks later, Activision announced that, following their merger with Vivendi, they would not be hanging onto the Ghostbusters license.

News on the game since, even following Atari’s confirmation that they would be publishing Ghostbusters in June 2009, has been disturbingly light. No more of the actual game has been shown since that messy preview code. Until last week. While I didn’t actually get to go hands-on with it, I did get an eyes-on playthrough of the remainder of that library level. And now… well… I ain’t afraid of no Ghostbusters.

The presentation — third-person perspective, story, voice actor/likeness participation, core ghost-wranglin’ mechanics — are unchanged. What’s fresh is a new sprint button and a multi-directional quick dodge. Both significantly tighten up the gameplay. If you haven’t gotten a look at any video of play, there are two types of spooks and specters to combat.

First are capturable Ghosts, boss and mini-boss-style baddies. You wear them down with the Proton Beam — Or another weapon. More on those in a sec. — and then snare them in a Capture Beam. The captured ghost has to be slammed into walls until it is weak enough to be pulled into a trap. Then there are the more common Entities, supernatural conglomerations of physical objects, such as books, papers, lamps, and the like. These spirits can be flat-out destroyed (or is that neutronized?). They typically have shields that must be stripped away before they can be taken down. Still others manifest as hulking beasts; these must be worn down with sustained attacks until their head – glowing lamps, during the library demo – can be ripped away with the Capture Beam.

That’s the talent, so what about the tools? Weapons stem from the Proton Pack which, along with a dangling PKE Meter, serves as your HUD. The pack itself changes appearance depending on the beam type in use, and each beam now features primary and alternate modes of fire. The vanilla Proton beam is supplemented by the Boson Dart, a concentrated burst shot which works like a rocket launcher. The newly introduced Dark Matter Beam fires either a damaging shotgun-like spread or a sustained stasis beam which has the effect of slowing down targeted enemies. There’s also a Slime Blower, which is used to clear away dark, red-tinged slime. No “Higher and Higher” to accompany it though. Throughout the game, you can upgrade the ‘busters’ equipment with money earned from capturing ghosts and collateral damage. The bill for the latter goes to one Walter Peck, by the way. It’s true what you’ve heard about his genitalia. Just saying. The demo ends with a knockdown boss fight against a familiar supernatural librarian. Cornered in a cavernous space tucked away in a distant corner of the NYPL’s sub-basements, the librarian ghost mounts a final offensive from behind her shield of floating books and candelabras. After finishing her off, the team moves to investigate a trans-dimensional portal which has appeared in the center of the room. The walls peel away to reveal a hellish landscape and… the pause menu pops up. Demo over. A good portion of the game will send the Ghostbusters hurtling into these Otherworlds, though the “what” and the “why” of them remain a mystery for now.

It’s clear that Atari is giving Ghostbusters: The Video Game the triple-A attention it deserves. The publisher switch has resulted in remastered FMVs, newly written and recorded lines of dialogue, additional mo-cap work, and an apparent tightening of the gameplay. Plus, even though it wasn’t shown, I was told off-duty Ghostbusters will be able to explore the team’s iconic firehouse. No concrete details were shared, but I was promised that “rewards” await those who take the time to explore. As long as we can use the pole, all is good. The mid-June release date is creeping ever-closer, and I have to it’s very exciting to see this polish applied to Ray, Egon, Peter, Winston and Nameless New Guy’s (i.e. You) HD-console adventure.

Related links:

NYCC 2009 - Ghostbusters Wii
Screen Test: Ghostbusters
Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.

Trailer Review: Demon’s Souls

John Constantine — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

From Software, you guys got some weird in your blood. Who in the hell makes console exclusives these days? Not only that, who in the hell makes exclusives for every console on the market? And who in the hell makes console exclusives that are spiritual successors to cult hits that were console exclusives in the previous generation? You guys, whew, you guys are nutty. You’re nutty nut bars and I love it.

It’s a big month for From Software. Just last week in Japan, they released Ninja Blade on Xbox 360. Ninja Blade is a third-person action game that is a modernization, in both tone and technology, of their Xbox-only franchise Otogi. Today, they released Demon’s Souls in the land of the rising sun. Demon’s Souls is the Playstation 3 version of From’s PS2 oddity King’s Field, a series of distinctly western RPGs full of the dungeon crawling and character customization Elder Scrolls fans go ga-ga over.

As you can see from this trailer, Demon’s Souls is a real odd duck.

The presentation is polished but by no means mindblowing and the same can be said of its art direction. It really doesn’t look like a product of the east or west, its RPG-tropes coming across as just… neutral. I have no idea what to make of it. There’s still no word on whether or not this one’s coming to the States. The Asia version of the game, though, has both full English voice acting and all English menus. I don’t know about y’all, but this one’s so strange I might just have to import it.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Cross-Atlantic Buzz!

John Constantine — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Facepalm: PS3 Hard to Program for "On Purpose"

Bob Mackey — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Kaz Hirai: "We meant to do that."

Apparently, console business sense dictates that you show utter contempt for any programmer with the hubris to program for your hardware--according to Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Kaz Hirai, anyway. It seems that the PS3 was intentionally made difficult to program for so that the software won't really "wow" us until Sony's newest console reaches its final days. Hey, it worked for the PS2; right, guys? Guys? Guys!?

Hirai's quote on the subject from a recent Official Playstation Magazine interview (via Eurogamer) is actually much more damaging than my personal attempts to insult him:

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?"

I ask that you answer Hirai's rhetorical question in the comments below. Thanks for your time.

(Example: YOU MAKE GAMES EASILY WITHOUT ARTIFICIAL CONSTRAINTS YOU MORON)

Related Links:

New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 1
New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 2
Sign of the Times: Current Gen to Stick Around a Little Longer

Sign of the Times: Current Gen to Stick Around a Little Longer

Bob Mackey — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

It wasn't too long ago when Sony produced a commercial for the fictional Playstation 9 during their initial Playstation 2 campaign; that's right--the company was once so successful, it had the funds to advertise things that didn't even exist. But these were far different times, before the dot-com bubble completely burst; back in those days, you simply had to log onto the Internet and wait for padded envelopes full of money to arrive at your house (who knows where they came from). But in our modern times of economic disparity and joblessness, the evolution of entertainment technology is not one of our biggest priorities. And, according to a San Jose Mercury News report from yesterday, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, recognizes the current problem with the standard five-year hardware cycle:

"Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient. The life cycle for this generation of consoles — and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PS3 as well — is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations."

If you've ever been around casual Wii gamers, then you probably realized that the one factor nearly every console war has been fought over is now completely irrelevant: graphics don't matter. And if they somehow do matter, the Wii's lack of horsepower certainly isn't holding it back. The PS3, technically the most powerful of the main three consoles, has been hurting from the very beginning by inducing sticker shock in those who may still be interested in the Playstation brand; and the drop in price from $600 to $400 still isn't low enough. Americans have recently become budget-conscious, and the fact that a new generation of hardware will undoubtedly require a TV upgrade certainly isn't helping us move to the next generation of hardware any faster.

Personally, when it comes to waiting for the latest round console, I wouldn't mind waiting until 2013--or at least until someone out there shows the common decency of giving me a full-time writing job.

Related Links:

How does the Game Industry compare to the Auto Industry?
The High Cost of Gaming: Free Radical, Creators of GoldenEye, Close Doors
Game Designers: Rockstars, Auteurs, Dweebs?

Life Without Playstation

Bob Mackey — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The future is a funny thing. If you had told me back in the fall of 2005 (what I regard as the height of the PS2) that Sony would be a money-bleeding mess three short years later, I probably would have slapped you out of pure contempt. It wasn't that I was a Sony fanboy, you see; it's just that the thought of a powerful company taking such a fall from grace was something once regarded as sheer lunacy--hell, even when Nintendo was sucking with the N64, they at least had the Pokemon brand to pump billions of dollars into their coffers. Sony? ...Not so much.

Things have gotten so bad that a London Times article from a few days ago slyly pointed to some major changes in the Playstation brand as a possible solution for Sony's problems. Changes in this case meaning massive upheavals:

Despite the promise of reform inherent in the appointment of Sony's first non-Japanese head, sources close to Sir Howard describe three years of frustration as the company's British-born chief has tried to impose changes on an unwilling entrenched management. Those frustrations - and a clear internal cultural clash between Japanese Sony and its US and European operations - have finally begun to be noticed by Japanese analysts. Several have started to call for Sir Howard to be free to take a “gloves-off” approach to running Sony, even if that means that the axe falls most heavily on the group's Japanese operations.

This wouldn't be the first time a cultural clash between East and West led to the death of a console; the Sega Saturn died mainly because of the miscommunication, separatism, and, at times, antagonism between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Sonic X-treme, what would have been the system's killer ap, wasn't really helped by the fact that legendary dickhead Yuji Naka threw a hissy fit when he learned the team had co-opted some of his NiGHTS code for their own purposes. And really, the little petty East v. West problems with the Saturn are endless--though they are fascinating. But interesting stories don't exactly make for a profitable business; Sony's sleek little overpriced panther of a console is looking more and more like a Jaguar as the days roll on.

Related Links:

Sony’s New Year’s Resolution
New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 1
New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 2

Sony’s New Year’s Resolution

John Constantine — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

For all intents and purposes, 2008 was an excellent year for Sony and the Playstations. Was it the salad days of 2001, when the Playstation 2 was coming into its own and Sony was crushing every proverbial ass in the world? Certainly not. But the Playstation 3 managed to finally get itself a stable of quality exclusives that weren’t completely ignored by the public and panned by the media. The Playstation Portable, despite receiving only a scant few notable games, had a banner year in Japan and continued to grow its install base in the rest of the world. The Playstation Network worked out a few of its kinks, and even if it’s the ugliest baby since Sloth, at least Home launched. And the good ol’ Playstation 2 continued, eight years after its birth, to both sell and play host to great new games. The end of the year, however, did not look so hot. The Playstation 3 got trounced by its competitors leading up to Christmas. You see, it didn’t matter how damn good Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rim, or Valkyria Chronicles were. What mattered is that the average person in every country where the system is sold does not have $400 for a videogame console right now. Money, as you may have heard, is something of a concern for everyone right now. They don’t have much of it, and there isn’t a whole lot of work for them to make more of it, so it’s no wonder they aren’t paying for your box which costs just about twice what everybody else’s box does.

Sony? Resolve to make the damn Playstation 3 cheaper in 2009. Making the console profitable should not be the priority right now. Getting it into as many homes as possible needs to be priority one. Your first and third party line-up for 2009 is a traditional gamers’ dream. Rely on it. And if the box is cheap enough, you just might grab back a piece of that casual pie. March price drop, no new SKU. Done.

Oh, and also, software backwards compatibility. You shouldn’t have taken it out in the first place.

Related links:

Microsoft’s New Year’s Resolution
Virtual Console New Year's Resolutions
Nintendo’s New Year’s Resolution

Canada Plays PSP

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:07:00 GMT

Unlike the rest of the world, apparently. Ssssssnap!

Sony's pretty good at making me hate their PSP commercials through sheer overexposure. While waiting in the theatre for Revenge of the Sith to start—shut up—the venue played commercial after commercial to give the bouncing audience something to focus on besides throwing popcorn and fencing with rolled-up Tribute magazines. Sony had obviously bought out Mama Multiplex's Advertising Hour because every third commercial was that PSP advertisement that made you want to slay Franz Fernandez.

I thought I had been sent to a particularly musical part of hell. When Revenge of the Sith began, I knew for sure. Sssssn--(*gunshot*)

I thought I had recovered from my previous bout of PSP ad poisoning. Even the shakes nearly stopped. Tragically, Sony's marketing department recently began a Canada-exclusive ad campaign that's meant to push our health care system to the brinks by breaking our minds and pushing us into long-term hospital stays. Sony's latest plea for someone, anyone to recognise the PSP isn't badly put-together. It's pretty cool, actually. But when it's every other commercial on the tube, it starts to rasp at your brain and ears. Nothing against Passion Pit, I'm always happy to see small Canadian bands get exposure, but...yow. Irradiation through over-exposure makes me a sad moose-tender.

There, I've given you a reason to avoid Canada. You had reason enough with all this white stuff on the ground that isn't icing sugar, cocaine or anything useful.

You know what, it could be worse. I could have to deal with "USA Plays PSP" over and over:

Sidenote: I love how, er, white the "Canada Plays PSP" commercial is. The PSP was launched as a sleek, grown-up alternative to the Nintendo DS, and now it's ascended to lofty, mug-me white. Sound like another console we know? Another console named the Wii?

Related Links:

Where Is The PSP?
Where Is Landstalker PSP?
Facepalm: Gaming While Driving

Playstation Home: All Your Worst Fears Realized To Hilarious Results

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

As previously noted, Home is upon us, and yea, it is utterly pointless. Right now, Playstation Home is Second Life with more load time, more frequent advertisements, and fewer people to interact with. Oh, there is the promise that someday there will be content and it will be a glowing interactive testament to our lives as gamers, and even that doesn't sound particularly attractive, but for now it's pretty much a waste of digital space and real time.

Well, actually, I take that back. Home so far has been good for one thing: painting an accurate portrait of its users. I, apparently, have been lucky my whole life to have had the social grace and fortune to talk to and befriend girls. All the jokes about gamers being Dungeon Master mouthbreathers who'd never seen a real live girl before seemed like wild charicatures of fictional persons to me. I would like to thank Playstation Home for finally showing me what kind of imbeciles I'd been ignoring this whole time. More specifically, I would like to thank Joystiq weekend editor Griffin McElroy for demonstrating to us all the apparently timeless art of the Quincy, as seen below. I implore you, watch this video straight through:

Wow.

There's so much to say, but none of it really does the topic justice. The other users are all really into it when they see an attractive female avatar dancing, but observe how rapidly the entire group disbands once they've been "Quincyed"!

Astounding.

Thank you, Playstation Home. I learned something, and now I never need to use you again... though I am tempted to watch one of these happen in real-time... maybe I'll just log in to Home real-quick...

Ah, that's how they get ya...

Related Articles:
Getting Started With Home: A Diary
Heading Home: Revisiting the Curious Case of Playstation Home
The Curious Case of Playstation Home

Question of the Day: Your Ideal Controller?

John Constantine — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:30:00 GMT

These days, the console exclusive is a cagey beast rarely spotted in the wild. You tend to find them in specialized reserves for endangered species, which is to say, coming directly from console manufacturers rather than third-party publishers. There are a stray handful of third-party exclusives, many of them living in the untamed wilds of the Wii, but if you’re an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 owner, you can almost always get the exact same game on both systems (give or take a handful of features.) DLC tends not to sway me one or another when deciding what system to get a game for. It’s all about the controller. After eleven years of using the damn thing more often than any controller, I’ve gotten all too comfortable with Sony’s Dualshock, so I tend to gravitate towards Playstation 3 versions of games. But I don’t think I’d say the Dualshock is my perfect controller by any stretch of the imagination. That honor will always stay with the Super Nintendo controller. It’s ergonomic, has just the right number of buttons, and is so light, you sometimes forget it’s even there. (These days though, the SNES controller’s is almost distracting. After playing with rumble-ready controllers for a decade, you expect a little heft.)

Carnegie Mellon’s Damien Lopez put together a visual history of controllers (pictured above) that got me thinking about just what the perfect game controller would be. How do you make a controller that would accommodate all fifteen of the disparate consoles listed in this chronology that was simultaneously comfortable and versatile? Could the perfect controller be both Wii mote and Dualshock? And most importantly, dear reader, what’s your ideal controller?

Related links:

Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?
Question of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh! And Card-Based Videogames?
Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?

Getting Started With Home: A Diary

Joe Keiser — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:10:00 GMT

Home is here! After waiting for countless months with fairly few details on what exactly Home is, it’s finally here! To build up my expectations, I’m going to pick a screenshot at random and base all of my presumptions on that:

Okay, so…nothing is happening. No, wait! I see one lady doing a crotch thrust at another lady. At a party that’s only ladies. Except for that one guy, who I think is about to do a cartwheel up the stairs. How illuminating!

4:41 – Alright, Home Home Home. Where is it…ah, Sony put an icon for it right on the XMB, no asking, no explanation. That’s kind of presumptuous of it. At least it’s only 77MB, and it asks to be installed.

4:45 – Wait, I spoke too soon, the first thing Home does when you start it up is ask to reserve 3077MB. You 20GB PS3 users might want to make note of that. I’ll give it the space, for now. I’ll even accept the End User License Agreement without reading it, a habit that I’m sure will result in having my kidneys forcibly removed one day.

4: 48 – Okay, now Home is playing a fun minigame with me. It’s called “count the connection errors.” So far I’ve gotten two, the plain vanilla “connection error” and the uncommon “request timed out”. It’s like an MMO launch, except I'm not 100% sure I even want to connect at all.

4:54 – Read error! That’s three. I’m totally winning at Home.

5:12 – Response parse error. That’s four. This is probably a good time to remind everyone that when a company releases free software as a “public beta,” that’s code for “don’t be surprised if we bone the launch.”

5:29 – Things to do while waiting for Home to start working:

Find and clean up the Bluetooth headset that fell behind the printer six months ago. Ugh, I don't think I want to put this in my ear.
Check out Echochrome’s newly updated trophy support.
Dream of having something better to do on a Thurday night than reading the words “request timed out” over and over.

5:49 – Wow, I’m actually connected to Home. Only took 68 minutes! Time to create a character. I’m choosing “Preset 4,” because I love fauxhawks and wife beaters.

5:51 – Got rid of the fauxhawk and wife beater. There’s really not very many clothing options, but otherwise avatar creation is kind of ridiculously detailed.

5:55 – I just found out that Home has four sliders just for types of wrinkles. Creepy old man, here we come!

6:00 – I think I’ve done a pretty good job of making an incredibly scary man no one in Home will want to hang out with:

So let’s go in, shall we!

6:02 – I’m dumped in an apartment with nicer furniture than my actual furniture and a killer view of the coast. I am told I have to dance. Home revels in my humiliation.

6:05 – More boring tutorial stuff. Home makes you download each environment individually. I go to the Central Plaza (rated EC for early childhood) and dance like no-one’s watching.

6:07 – Someone insults my mother. Early childhood, indeed. I go to the mall.

6:10 – Cowboy hats are 50 cents. Ottomans are a dollar. That’s real money, mind you. Summer houses are $4.99. There’s video playing on the wall advertising Qore. I try to play chess, but all three tables are taken. This is not my favorite mall.

6:15 – The Home Theater is really crowded. A guy on a Bluetooth headset is wondering aloud why he can’t punch people in the face. I watch a trailer for Twilight. This is certainly…something.

6:20 – Time to go to the bowling alley. There’s an open pool table! I play pool with some guy.

6:27 – I get murdered at pool. I think the other guy is using some kind of pool-bot. Yeah, that must be it.

6:29 – The bowling alley has an arcade. I play a curious single-screen version of Echochrome where all you do is put down holes and jump pads to avoid enemies. There're other games, but I can’t get at them because they’re occupied.

6:36 – I suck at bowling.

6:47 – I spend a few minutes in the Uncharted and Far Cry 2 sections of Home. There are some interactive games and such in the Uncharted section, but they’re all being used. There’s as far as I can tell nothing to do in the Far Cry area besides look at a map and some character bios. A bunch of twelve year olds talk about beer and pot. 50% of the text boxes are asterisked out as the kiddies try to beat the profanity filter.

That’s about all the Home I can take. After playing it for an hour, I still don’t really know what it’s about. In its defense, if Sony continuously changes up the free casual game content it offers at the arcade in the bowling alley, I would consider going back in. But I would have to fight my instincts to do so, as the whole experience feels like entering into a Sony-controlled future dystopia where everyone wears the same baseball tee. I hope the community does something with it, because as is it’s not really a place I want to go.

Heading Home: Revisiting the Curious Case of Playstation Home

John Constantine — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sony said it was coming before 2008 breathed its last and, hey, here it is. Playstation Home will finally be open to the public as of tomorrow, close to two years after it was announced and a full year after its original release window. But even though PS3 owners across the world will finally be able to download Home 1.0, it still isn’t abundantly clear what they’re going to be able to do in Home once they get there. Here are the things I am one-hundred percent certain you will be able to do in Home on Thursday:

- Make yourself an avatar. You will have proportions far more human than those of your Mii or Xbox Experience caricature, but your new digital proxy will be all the more terrifying, its face fresh from Uncanny Valley Farms. You will also be able to dress in the simple attire of a Diesel Jeans catalog model.

- You will, apparently, be able to drink Red Bull. Digital Red Bull. You will drink it on Red Bull Island where you can fly a Red Bull plane. Or something.

- You can hang out in a Far Cry 2 lounge. As to whether or not you can ruthlessly exploit the diamond trade or dig bullets out of your fashionable avatar while hanging out in said lounge, I cannot say. None of the other announced lounges will be available for digital chillin’ and/or illin’.

- You can open a club if you like. For money. How do you customize said club? Who knows. How much will it cost? Couldn’t say. What can you do there? Dance. Walk around. Stuff.

- You can play billiards and bowl with people, which is nice. Twenty years ago, you used to pay fifty dollars for videogame pool. As long as these games play better than they do in Grand Theft Auto IV, they will be nice diversions.

- You and a friend can meet up at a fake movie theater and watch a new trailer for Watchmen. Yay.

- Talk to people via text. I have no idea if it has voice support.

These are the things you can do in Home. Beyond the billiards and bowling, none of this sounds particularly fun or essential. In fact, since Playstation Home isn’t the default place you go to when you turn on the PS3, I’m skeptical as to whether or not people will even use it.

For the Playstation owners reading, are you going to download Home? What are your expectations?

Here’s hoping that, by the end of the day tomorrow, we actually know what the point of all this is.

Related links:

The Curious Case of Playstation Home
SCEE Playstation Day 2K8 Roundup: Killzone 2, Home, Little Big Planet Dated
This Week's Releases: Too Many Damned Games!

If Sales Numbers Mattered, LittleBigPlanet's Commercial Would Be Appealing

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:40:00 GMT

The Playstation 3's killer app, LittleBigPlanet, didn't sell a hojillion copies and save the pandas like it was supposed to. Quick! Everybody blame something!

The target that shall recieve my baleful glare is LittleBigPlanet's irrelevant commercial. "Oh shit you guys, you're going to have so much fun with this goddamn game. Fun! Yeah! Fuck yes, fun."

What, precisely, makes LittleBigPlanet a vacation on Free Cotton Candy and Sex Island? "Oh," says the commercial, "We're sure you'll figure it out."

Guess what! I didn't figure it out.

Obviously, I have gazed into my crystal ball and learned that LittleBigPlanet, despite meh sales numbers, is a fantastic game, perhaps even system-purchase worthy. But my mom doesn't read game sites or magazines and this commercial isn't going to sell her on Sony's "accessible" opus. The on-screen action, though colourful and gorgeous, looks busy and intimidating. Man, there are clowns and shit and it still looks intimidating! And there's never any indication about what you're supposed to do with the game, other than have fun. Somehow.

If I were old and crotchety, I'd ignore this jumble of technicolour noise. "One of them video game things," I'd say. "It doesn't concern me. Oh God, this isn't my heart medication, it's Tic-Tacs!" (Dead)

Even if I were a young kid and I saw this commercial, I don't think I'd jump up from the television and run into the kitchen screaming "MOMMY MOMMY BUY ME BIGPLANETLITTLE I MEAN PLANETBIGLITTLE I MEAN--"

Here, Sony: "Build awesome things and share awesome things with your friends!" There! Now at least I have some idea of what's going on.

Related Links:

The 61FPS Review: LittleBigPlanet Part 1
Five Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
Create Unholy Life With the LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Generator

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Announced, Most Likely Awesome

John Constantine — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:15:00 GMT

Let’s just get this out of the way right now. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is freaking great. It is the best game that Naughty Dog has ever made and it is an absolute delight to play. The stories in games like Gears of War 2 are often forgiven for being like “b-movies”, but Uncharted actually is a b-movie, a bitchin’ pulp adventure full of likable stereotypes, absurd feats of physical prowess, physics defying escapes from death, and more one-liners than you can shake a number of different sticks at. Its character animation is astounding, its shooting tight, and its environments are linear but convincingly natural. It is awesome. So awesome. Bionic Commando awesome.

It didn’t sell that great though. It sold well, but not nearly what it deserved and there has been some question as to whether it would receive a sequel or go the way of Sony’s other first-party titles from 2007. (Rest in peace Lair and Heavenly Sword. May your makers learn their lessons. Particularly you, Ninja Theory. Next time you make a game that has Andy Serkis yelling about his “holy genitals”, you can expect a very stern phone call from the proper authorities.)

But, lo, Nathan Drake has returned. Behold the trailer delights.

Word is Nate’s chasing some Marco Polo-related treasure this time out. Among Thieves will also sport free climbing as opposed to the rigid, set platforming of the original (totally rad) and stealth sections (not rad, but I will give Naughty Dog the benefit of the doubt.)

It’s a rare day that non-gameplay trailers get me all aflutter. Much like Beyond Good and Evil 2, Uncharted 2 fits the bill. It will be awesome.

Much love to NeoGAFfer Jtyettis for dropping all the knowledge.

Related links:

The Curious Case of Playstation Home
BREAKING: Beyond Good & Evil 2 Debut!

Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We here in the United States celebrate our nation's Thanksgiving tomorrow, one of the great national holidays where just about every office is closed as we gather with family and friends to eat, drink, be merry, and prepare ourselves for the brutal holiday shopping season that starts the very next day. Sony, who usually update their Playstation Store on Thursdays, saw fit to treat us to this week's updates a couple of days early to save us the trouble of fighting tryptophan-induced grogginess, and oh the treats they have in store!

First, of course, is the weekly free costume for LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy, a turkeyface. Hilarious, yes? No? Hmm, well maybe these next few items will give you something to be thankful for...

First, of course, is the long-awaited release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. And to celebrate the momentous fighter's release, a slew of commemorative mp3s in the form of the Street Fighter Underground Remix Soundtrack are up for free download, including original tracks by Hieroglyphics, Redman, and Oh No. Again, the mp3s are all free and a PSN exclusive, so that's one thing the Playstation version has over the XBox 360 version, along with a generally favorable d-pad on the controller.

Most interesting, though, is the announcement of the PSN Fall Sale with five downloadable games marked down to only $4.99 until next Thursday, including three of my four favorite Playstation games of 2008: echochrome, PixelJunk Eden and The Last Guy. All three are PSN exclusives and are truly unique genre-defying and beautiful games. If you're still not ready to commit five dollars to any of them just yet, there are free demos of all three on the Playstation Store as well, but I think a quick playthrough of each will convince you that five dollars is a steal for such original and engaging play experiences.

I'm certain that my Wii will be getting a family workout tomorrow with Wii Sports and Boom Blox heading the pack, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some turkey-headed Sackboys and a few rounds of echochrome steal the spotlight for a while too.

Related Articles:
Sony Just Might Hate You
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy
Finally: Playing Super Street Fighter II HD Remix with Seth Killian
Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out
Trailer Review: The Last Guy
Far Out, Man
Whatcha (Wish You Were) Playing: How Does Your Garden Grow?