King of the Jungle

It’s 2 am.

We just held a party at this house. Pre-drinks included some sort of Wii Fit Plus championship. It was Ok. Obviously I didn’t take part because Wii Fit Plus is an uncool, casual, kiddy extravaganza, and any fun the party guests were having was just hollow, fake fun, compared to the hardcore gaming experiences they could be having. Their laughter, hollow, fake laughter. Obviously such shallow gameplay couldn’t hold them so we had to walk to the pub to continue the night. We arrived at the pub and they said they were closing, the bottleshop was still open so we bought a couple more cartons and walked home, knowing only the despair of Wuhu Island awaited us.

Upon returning, the unwashed masses returned to their Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, gleaming whatever hollow enjoyment they could out of the household’s two Wii boxes; the second Wii, purchased by my casual gaming housemate, symbolising the kind of callous opulence Australians lived in during the naive days of Emperor Rudd and his economic stimulus packages. The other hardcore gamers and I discussed hardcore subjects like international communism, capitalist-anachronism, and the scourge of democracy in holding back this society from ideological purity. But as the beer and goon ran dry, so too did the crowd thin out, the short lived thrills of Wii Basketball running thin. Desperate for companionship, and the cheeseburgers retrieved from the mainstream, 24 hour Mcdonalds, the hardcore gamers and I went back to the living room.

“What silly game are the bongo drums for?” asked the most beautiful girl in attendance. I glanced over at the gimmicky, novelty plastic drums and fished out the game so desperately attached to them, so obviously strangled at the design stage and shoehorned with ridiculous sound based controls.

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

There are so many ways you could demean this game.

Continue reading “King of the Jungle”

Humble Bundle #3

Two updates in a row! But I feel it’s important to get on these things. Humble Bundle 3 is out now! And this time it features a game I loved a lot; VVVVVV!

Also featured are And Yet it Moves, Cogs, Crayon Physics and Hammerfight. I can’t comment on the latter two but And Yet it Moves is surreal platforming brilliance while Cogs is an ok puzzler. Apparently VVVVVV includes a level editor this time around – and in any case you’re supporting indie developers and charity! So get over to humblebundle.com and name your price.

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Two ways to do a content subscription service

Those of you who’ve been paying careful attention to Electronic Arts, and really you have no excuse not to, would know they’re pretty interested in this whole internet thing and how it could be leveraged to provide a constant revenue stream from increasingly dependent consumers. They’ve been pulling their games from Steam and relaunched Origin, the developer of Ultima they purchased a decade ago, as a digital distribution client, the only place to buy new multi million dollar MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic. And then they ruined my birthday by announcing a subscription service to their sports games.

Now here’s what EA are planning to do.

  • The privilege of downloading their sports games a few days before EB Games put it on display and slap pre-owned stickers on last year’s edition.
  • Discounts on downloadable content, including on disc DLC.
  • Permission to use that purchased content on future roster updates.
  • Stats recorded on a webpage that you can browse with your internet communication gizmo.
  • A little badge so everyone knows you’re an idiot paying for the above.

I know right, some sort of joke. The very fact that EA’s offering, if I can indulge you and call it that, can be summarised down to five bulletpoints shows you everything wrong with their approach. You can’t summarise Xbox Live or Steam in 5 dot points and you shouldn’t be able to summarise EA’s either. If EA want to charge a subscription then they have to at least be on that level, offer a service of their own on the scale of Xbox Live. They’re a big company and their sport games cater to a big market – they can do it. God knows they want to do it but they’re too cowardly to try. The next few paragraphs I’m going to envision how they should run a subscription service that fosters the kind of sycophantic devotees, who’ll maintain their subscriptions indefinitely.

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Confirmed fact: Wii U can’t play anything

Pietriots can today exclusively reveal that not only will Wii U not support DVD movie playback, but it won’t support VHS video playback either.

You will no longer be able to watch that video of Mary Poppins you taped off the TV in 1994.

This news has delivered a devastating, possibly fatal blow to the Wii U’s hopes of mainstream appeal. Already the list of confirmed media not supported by the device includes 7″ vinyl, cassette tapes, HD DVD and Sony’s popular UMD format. Crucially, laserdisc support has not been ruled out yet and I would speculate that Nintendo are courting third parties to release a USB floppy disk drive for the much maligned machine.

Fred Dutton is AT IT AGAIN

Man I hate this guy!
Can you spot the error?

Well my old friend Fred Dutton, best known for making alarmist news reports about the supposed existence of a Zelda Online RPG that was actually a decade old flash game, can’t get anything right. The news story is simple; Luigi’s Mansion 2 is being developed by Next Level Games. But even Fred manages to stuff that up by insinuating that Pilotwing’s developer Monster Games is behind the title. This isn’t even a typo down the page, it’s in the bloody headline.

It’s hard to believe Fred Dutton gets paid and I don’t.

Update!
So I was being challenged by sycophants in the Eurogamer comments who find it perfectly acceptable for journalists to misreport the news and attribute work to the wrong people. GameAsylum, in their summary of Nintendo’s conference, followed Eurogamer and credited Pilotwings to Next Level Games too. Unlike Eurogamer though, they’ve quickly edited and rectified their article.

Update 2!
Eurogamer have rectified their mistake. I have not received a thank you card in the mail yet but I’ll keep checking.

Nintendo E3 2011 Press Conference Premonition

People will call me a hippy when I say this but I’ve always felt a resonance with Nintendo consoles. They speak to me through channels I can’t describe. This isn’t some delusional fanboy shit – this is real hippy waves of energy that you just gotta feel, man. When Project Dolphin was announced I was living on a tropical island in the Pacific; when Project Revolution was announced I was a political activist; and for the past year or so I’ve worked as a barista.
Project Café.

Today I was working and thinking a lot about E3 and how it was going to change my life and give me new meaning and direction, man. I looked down at the latte I was making and there I saw it: everything I needed to know about Project Cafe. I was just like Agent Morgan from Deadly Premonition, ciphering messages from the milk and coffee. I stared at it in a trance and it all came to me. This is how it will take place at E3…

Agent Morgan
F.K in the coffee. it never fails.

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Mortal Kombat

After decades of a romantic courtship, the relationship between shock fighter Mortal Kombat and the censorship prone Australian Classification board ended in a messy breakup earlier this year, resulting in the refusal to classify the game, effectively banning it. While rumours were abound that customs would seize any copies imported from overseas, my housemate James courageously decided that he was going to import the game. While I suspect he had little to no interest in the game before it was banned he is the kind of person who thought that Mortal Kombat Annhilation was a good movie. Anyway I’ve taken to recording James’ comments while he plays the game because I think he has a lot of good stuff to share. Continue reading “Mortal Kombat”

Kyle Hyde, a Real Man

I love you Rachel
Those lips...

So I just finished up Last Window: The Secret of Cape West last night instead of studying. I think (or at least like to think) that I’m a lot like Kyle Hyde. Suave, handsome, intelligent, fixing the problems of others while letting his own life fall into complete disrepair. Definitely the last part. On one hand I wouldn’t want my life to end up like Kyle’s, bachelor at 34 performing a job beneath him, but on the other I can’t think of a video game character more worthy of being looked up to as a role model. He’s a true everyman sort of bloke, a video game hero we can relate to. Sure it’s fun being Commander Shepard and saving the galaxy but Kyle’s more earthly pursuits and achievements are admirable yet not out of reach. And I’m pretty sure Rachel will sleep with him at some point. Can anyone direct me to some slash fanfic/art please?

Oh and regarding Last Window, since now is as good a time to comment on it as ever. It’s a good game, it even won Grubdog’s prestigious ‘Game of the Minute’ award last year, but I have a few issues with it’s manner of storytelling that I might talk about in a future post comparing it to other adventure games on the DS and PC.

When Old Speculation is Frontpage News

UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM!:

Stepping up to the plate today is Eurogamer’s Fred Dutton, perhaps best known for breaking the Earth shattering news that Dead or Alive: Dimensions made the Japanese sales charts, coughed up some extremely exciting news an hour ago. Fred Dutton revealed, through his sources of typing in a search on the ESRB website, the existence of a mysterious title known as ‘Zelda Universe’.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-26-what-is-zelda-universe

Holy shit! I immediately ran to Adium to tell Pro all about this incredible discovery. Pro was much more level headed and said it was just a website. I didn’t want to beleive him though and went back to my trusted Fred Dutton for clues to Zelda’s Universe

Given its title and that small collection of facts, an online Zelda MMO is the obvious guess, but that seems highly unlikely given Nintendo’s attitude to both online play and developing games for platforms other than its own.

Guarded speculation! He makes a bold claim but then quickly backs away saying it’s unlikely. Fred goes on:

Zelda Universe is the name of the franchise’s official website, but then the ESRB doesn’t rate web content. Some kind of game embedded in the site then? Again, that doesn’t really some like something Nintendo would do.

And then it all came flooding back to me. Ten years ago I played a game on the Zelda website.

Zelda.com2001
I'll join you Link!

Look there’s the little ESRB rating and everything! E: VIOLENCE! Everyone can be violent! Does anyone else remember this? This game? Here’s a reminder.

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PSN Addendum

Dad rang me today, he’s never played a video game in his life despite owning an iPhone since launch. I didn’t even bring up the subject but even he had a laugh about Sony and the PSN. I think his exact quote was “they are so fucked.”

Anyway this was just a quick update to promise future updates. I’ve got a review of Mortal Kombat for PS3 to post but I feel I should test out online play first…

Easter, PSN and Public Radio News

This Easter all I wanted to do was try out the PSN. This is no joke either, I’ve had a PSP for years but using that for internet related shenanigans is a nightmare. My new housemate has a PS3 though and this Easter he and his missus (my other housemate) were going down south for the long weekend. I was planning to charge up his PS3 and get some Battlefield 1943 action going. Maybe see how it’s movie purchases compared to iTunes, my current digital store of choice.

You can imagine my disappointment at the mysterious error code I received. The ever reliable Penny Arcade confirmed that the PSN network was down. I did however, strangely, successfully manage to download an update to my housemate’s copy of Super Street Fighter II HD Remix. Surprised he owned it really. So with my weekend fun cancelled I had to settle down and read All Quiet on the Western Front instead. I also got to eat a lot of chocolate and play online games on all the other systems in the house so the weekend was alright in the end.

All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front; better than Heavy Rain and available despite the PSN.

Continue reading “Easter, PSN and Public Radio News”

WiiHD

Just a real quick update to say that I heard that Nintendo’s new plumbing simulator, tentatively titled WiiHD, will have 17 cores in it’s gigaflops. The same noise making device that told me that also mentioned it would get a new Mario Kart game.