As I was taking a break from multiple hours of gaming (that’s what we do here) I got to thinking about the 3DS and how our eyes can use it to their advantage. After 5 or so hours I felt I needed a break, my eyes were feeling a bit weird and tired from looking at a screen for so long, nothing bad just completely normal fatigue. I needed to go outside and look at real things. As I looked at the sky I felt my eyes relax instantly, looking into the distance made me feel better. Then I realised the eye fatigue could have been just from focusing on the same point the entire time, the distance from my eye to the screen. Not the screen itself.
Category: Whatever
Uncategorized STUFF
Speed, FlatOut Videos
I get the feeling low-budget (that “b” word! please don’t panic) titles like Speed and FlatOut are genuine curiosities for a small number of people (all 5 of them?). They’re probably cautiously fascinated by a couple other Zoo Games titles or ANYTHING new under $20-25. They’re interested in “experiencing animals”, but only while the beasts are locked up in a cage; that sort of thing. At the same time, the regular gaming press tends to avoid budget games, leaving any [honest] coverage in the hands of YouTube users and Amazon customer reviews – brave, regular people.
Inspired by their courage, I’ve captured a few gameplay videos (60fps) of Speed and FlatOut to provide a more detailed look than what the Flash videos typically allow. Despite being “cheap” games, their core aspects are surprisingly solid, and hopefully some of it shows. Consider it a late follow-up to our Speed/FlatOut write-ups.
(video link at end of post)
THE INTERNET IS FULL
Post to mark this historic occasion. Pietriots dot com is officially part of the original internet, before it, quite literally, sold out.
Even casuals update firmware
A lot of people wet their pants when they heard the eShop (worst name ever) would not be ready for the 3DS launch in Japan or America. I know I wet my pants and it was super embarrassing because I was riding public transport when I found out. I’ve driven 300km to a small fishing community to do some soul searching on the whole issue. Last night I found myself at the local watering hole, and over a pint I told a local about the problem and why I had to escape the city. The 47 year old enstranged father of 3 tells me “Fucken who cares? The iPhone didn’t have an App Store at release in America either.” I nodded and we went our separate ways.
It’s all going to be ok. 🙂
Animal Crossing 3DS: A Thinly-Veiled Wish List of Never Happenings
Alright, quiz time! Can you name a franchise that was suddenly demoted to the status of “casual game” when Ninty started winning and the term “kiddy” started going out of style? I bet you can’t gu…Wait, where are you looking? HEY, STOP CHEATING!
Yes, the answer is Animal Crossing. The franchise no “hardcore gamer” ever had an issue with until the casual gaming plague hit the industry.
So those new to the franchise, or maybe gaming in general (don’t tell Mike if you are), Animal Crossing is one of Ninty’s top-selling franchises, introduced in Japan in 2001 for the Nintendo 64 under the title “Animal Forest.” The game wasn’t released outside Japan until it was ported the next year to the GameCube.
The premise is simple. You have moved to a village full of (SHOCK) animal villagers, and are set up in a home by the village’s thieving merchant, Tom Nook. You are forced to do odd jobs and sell garbage in order to pay back the loan on your house, and as you earn more money can increase the size of your home (which you have to pay even more money for), all while collecting furniture and items to fill it with and show off to your friends. There’s a little more to it than that, but if you care that much you can look it up yourself you lazy bums!
Due to the profitability of the franchise, it surprised exactly zero people that Ninty revealed Animal Crossing alongside the 3DS. It also didn’t exactly wow anyone either, due to franchise issues that delve much deeper than whether or not the franchise is casual or not. This, of course, being the fact that there have been minimal changes to the base game over the three released installments. So is there anything worthwhile about this new installment? Anything at ALL?
Continue reading “Animal Crossing 3DS: A Thinly-Veiled Wish List of Never Happenings”
Unboxing Complete
Pie Staff had been casually restoring content from the old flat and other odd bits, and today we should be totally moved-in now.
Here’s a recap of the crayon drawings and baby photos that Mike almost left behind:
- A Tribute To Funky Kong
- Trackmania Wii
- Reggie Kart Videos – E3 2010
- Sites I Like – Portable Mortal Kombat
- Reggie Kart Videos – E3 2009
- Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz FPS Videos
- Wave Race: Blue Storm, F-Zero GX Videos
- Bar Oasis
- Pietriots.com Exclusive! A Sneak Peek at the Nintendo E3 Conference
- Microsoft Media Conference Summary
- BIT.TRIP RUNNER
- Again: Eye of Providence
- DSi XL – Impressions
- Fragile Dreams – Impressions
- Pokemon Ranger
- You Must Excuse Mike
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- Monster Hunter Tri – Event Impressions
- Sega Touch Darts
- Ahahahaha
- Kart Racer
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
- A Night with Dunaway
- Disaster: Day of Crisis
- Don’t bother staying up for the Nintendo Press Conference
Holed In
With the east coast of Australia underwater, the North American continent buried under snow and the Korean peninsula on the brink of nuclear war, gamers across the world have even more reason to bunker down on the comfort of their couches and the warmths of their computer. The dangerous world outside does present a problem though; how to acquire more games? The leader in digital distribution has capitalised on this captive market and this year’s Steam sales have been destructive to gamer wallets. It’s been a storm of it’s own to weather, one in our mind, to restrain ourselves and avoid the perils of credit card debt.
There is some sort of addictive quality to cheap games. I’ve bought games I previously had no interest in like Mass Effect. I heard the second one won a few awards this year so I got that and then though I might as well get the first so I know what’s going on. Then there’s other games, like Assassin’s Creed that I thought I bought, but in the long line of transactions I guess I haven’t. There are other games that I’ve decided for one reason or another to just wait and buy at the last moment of the sale, like Eufloria. There’s other games like the Tomb Raider spinoff thing but I didn’t get that, despite it going on sale twice. There’s also SimCity 4. It’s on sale right now, I’ve already bought this game twice but my brain is telling me if I get it on steam, I wont need the CD!
And of course, in typical steam sale tradition, the only games I’ve played while hiding from the jellyfish that infest this retirement village my parents call home are SimCity 4 and Osmos, which I picked up from the Humble Bundle. Might post some Osmos impressions tomorrow or tonight, it’s an absorbing (lol puns) game.
Merry Fistmas
NOA REGGIE is busy tonight, flying thru the skies, proudly thrusting his Nintendo DS to light the way (DQ9 is paused for the moment). Reindeer don’t pull his sleigh; Reggie pulls them. He’s visiting homes, crashing thru rooftops (“I don’t need your weak chimney – if you don’t have one, you’ll get one“), making a list, taking names. If you’re not on his list…
How do you know when you buy too many games?
How I know I’m not the only person who has the problem of buying games and never getting around to playing them. Well today in JB Hi-Fi I developed a simple method to determine if you buy too many games.
If you are shopping for games, and you see a game that you want but you hesitate and the reason you hesitated is because you’re not sure if you already own the game or not, then you own too many games.
Today I bought Fragile Dreams, I still had another $50 of JB Hi-Fi vouchers to spend to I nearly bought Zack and Wiki ($20), Guilty Gear XX ($20) and Little King’s Story (also $20). Not only that but I had to note them down on my iPhone just so I would remember them and on the phone I found an open note containing a list of MORE games that I was double checking I owned or not.
Turns out I did already own Zack and Wiki. What’s it like?
From Chat: 90 minutes in Tethe’alla
So I have recently been playing some Tales of Symphonia as inspiration for SimCity 4. You read that right. Also I swear the game wasn’t this blurry when I played it before but whatever. We were in chat, not updating Pietriots, when Bill brought up the topic of the Tales games. For those unfamiliar, Tales is Namco’s unpopular, increasingly Japan-exclusive, role-playing game. I started rambling.
RABicle: Bloody, forgot how big Symphonia is, shit just keeps happening.
RABicle: At no point does the game calm down.
RABicle: At one point it was sorta calm, I had just stolen the Rhieards and landed outside the Earth Temple, Raine suggested we go in, I didn’t have to but I did anyway.
Grubdog: It’s crazy
RABicle: And after that regal mentioned the ice temple near Flanoir, so that bit was kinda quiet.
Grubdog: See, Square-Enix are smart, they have nice tempo changes in their games when you have to grind for 4 hours. Great way to mix things up.
RABicle: but as soon as I get Celsius in the ice dungeon Ozette is on fire
Grubdog: lol
Bill Aurion: It’s how RPGS should be.
Bill Aurion: gotta keep my interest or I’m binning you.
Game of the Year awards thoughts
I feel like these are counter productive to a gamers mind. Trying to summarise a years worth of content, all I think about are the games I left out, not the games that make it. How do you decide what was best anyway? On a given Friday night, Fragile Dreams was the greatest game of all time. Then on Sunday morning, Wario Ware DIY was. How do we compare that? What about the experiences that you didn’t have, that could’ve happened. The games of 2010 that you’ll play in 2011? I’m trying to find a way of doing this and feeling good about it but I can’t do it. I’m living in today. I never took pictures of these moments. I’ll always look at a great game and smile at the enjoyment it brought me, but it lives inside itself, free from comparisons. That’s a big reason I enjoy games, they take me into their own world. Gutting them and sending them to a battlefield only ends up with all of them getting shot with the blood on my hands. I feel the same about review scores, I can’t get my head around doing them either.
The only thing I can say for sure is what I want to play right now, so i’m declaring Last Window the GOTM (Game of the Minute) and going to bed.
Donkey Kong Control Rectology
The game is fine. Many “vocal” gamers are simply ape-shit awful players who’ve lost their quick-learning intellectual gamer edge over years of “soft” action games holding their hands thru non-challenges and waterfalls of rewards that celebrate their mediocrity. You have the displeasure of identifying them cuz they still go to the forums and blogs you go to and whine about “moving the controller” being something inexplicably difficult. “I just don’t get it,” one might say right before his 2,000 word essay (a waggle complaint; rather, his failure to waggle) used to exert the might of his lifelong gamer cred, the same cred that crumbled with his preceding statement.
Diabolical cloning, a grim look into the future
Dan Aykroyd is Mega Man
Hollywood was left shocked and delighted today, as Dan Aykroyd (star of the Ghost Busteroo’s) today announced he was Mega Man. “It’s true”, he said. “I am Mega Man”.
Last Window
Sometimes I purposefully get the game over scenes just to see what happens. Real gamers care more about experiencing the game than their stats. Plus, if I never die in a game, it’d be just like real life. The only way to really lose is to not explore, to not experience.
Pietriots 