The Last Story – A New Page In Game Design

The Last Story is captivating. It tells the story of a group of honest mercenaries striving to be knights – not so they can dominate the world – but merely on the hope of a good night’s sleep without one eye open. The story that unfolds is wonderfully intriguing and engaging, and with fun gameplay and interactive environments; you’re not just watching or reading the story, you’re PLAYING it. It’s a fairy tale set in a living, breathing world that embraces the interactive nature of videogames. It’s such a different game in so many aspects and brings a lot of new things to the table in terms of how you approach things as a player. I could fill this entire paragraph with buzzwords and verbal wankery, and still fail to capture what the game is like. Everything has a magical, whimsical story-telling feel to it, like a long descriptive dream with talented British voice actors. It’s a love story because I’m in love with this game.

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3DS Wall Update

It’s time for another 3DS Wall update. As usual, games have their score from GameRankings, and all the games are scored together to give a general idea of the quality of the out put from these various publishers and developers. Scores are rounded up and they must have at least 5 reviews to curtail outliers. Games with no review score mean that the game has not been released yet or have not attained 5 reviews.

Without further ado, let’s have a look.

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3DS Wall Update

Hey, how have you guys been?

What?

Where have I been?

Mostly looking for work which is pretty hard to find where I am. I know I promised bimonthly updates to the Wall, but truth be told not a lot of movement in 3DS games happened initially after the first publication.

But enough about that, let’s get down to brass tacks. As usual, the only criteria is that a company has to have released a game or have finalized (or near such) boxart with a release date. Boxarts are followed by GameRankings Averages of each title and the company’s library as a whole.

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I am SICK of this CASUAL BULLSHIT

All I ever hear these days is “casual this” “casual that” and they’re always talking about the same thing; Nintendo. There is NO SUCH THING as casual and hardcore, there is no distinction, you guys should shut up because no one is listening to your nonsense. What like Mario Kart is casual now? Didn’t anyone inform the guys slaving away for the continental time trial charts? Halo is hardcore? Why do I find people who know nothing about games know about Halo? Your distinctions are fucked. RPGs are hardcore? My Grandmother, who is arthritic and 84 years old LOVES RPGS because they don’t require any dexterity from her and she can just enjoy a fantasy epic. She plays them on her PS2.

‘Casual’ is just the new word losers use to malign Nintendo. They used to use the word ‘kiddy’, remember that? “Oh Nintendo is just kiddy crap, get a PS2 for real mature games where you shoot guys.” Of course they can’t use kiddy anymore now that their aunt owns a DS the television is saturated with advertisements marketing Wii at adults. Not the so called ‘mature,’ 15 year old boys, but directly to gen X and baby boomers. ‘Casual’ is the new ‘kiddy’, just like ‘mature’ was superseded by ‘hardcore.’ But there is an actual word that all these clowns mean when they say hardcore or casual or mature; ‘Cool’ and ‘Uncool’. That’s what you mean. Wii Play is ‘uncool’.

The real question is; why dont the idiot legions of the internet, the soldiers in the trenches of the console wars use the words cool and uncool? Because deep down, they know they’re losers and there is nothing cool whatsoever about video games. The guy talking at a party about Fallout 3 isn’t the life of it. Guitar Hero champions aren’t going to be doing ads for Pepsi. And now they’re threatened because actual cool people are getting into games, casual games.

Four years of Gamecube: Disappointments

Since Microsoft seem intent on ending this generation a year early with their Xbox High Res™ I figure it’s a good time to look back on the Gamecube up to now. Sure there’s Zelda coming next year but we’ll all be far too elated in the months following its release to look at anything objectively. Not even Linkin Park could bring us down! Er what? Oh yeah Gamecube. Although I’ve had endless niggles, I have four (4) big let downs with this console and I’m going to cry about them here. They are: online, third parties, marketshare and incomplete games.

Online

Ok so, Dreamcast showed us it was possible. PC online gaming was becoming commonplace and Nintendo announced two online adaptors. It was all looking very promising. People on forums were creating Perfect Dark clans, F Zero racing leagues were discussed, MMORPG Pokemon was dreamed about. And what do we get? A crappy Dreamcast port hampered by exorbiant monthly fees and an almost concerted effort from Nintendo to destroy the chances of people obtaining the nessesary adaptors not to mention them maligning the entire concept of online gaming on monetary grounds. I was expecting a lot more and I’ve always been envious of Xbox Live.

Third Parties

These guys are fuckheads. Again it looked promising at first but it wasn’t long before games began to be announced for PS2, Xbox and PC. While we are partly to blame because we refuse to buy their appalling games that sell so well on rival consoles, but we also rewarded them with sales sales when they did put the effort in. And what do we get? Nothing. While PS2 and Xbox get to enjoy Burnout 3, or Pro Evolution Soccer or Soul Caliber 3. Ubi Soft, Acclaim and EA (to an extent) deserve the full fist for continuing supporting us and Nintendo.
Oh and while we laugh about it now, at the time losing Rare did hurt.

Marketshare

Shit we got demolished this time round. The Playstation juggernaught got stronger than we could possibly imagine. And while Microsoft may’ve lost billions of dollars on Xbox, they got what they wanted; our marketshare. Nintendo simply weren’t persistent enough and couldn’t drop the kiddy tag as fast as they would’ve liked. While even without cult game turned biggest franchise in gaming (GTA) the PS2 would’ve still won this generation, Halo carried Xbox far further than it should’ve even been able to. It’s hard to pin exactly where Xbox got the upper hand or all the factors involved but somehow we lost this.

Incomplete Games

I can forgive Luigi’s Mansion, it needed to be there for launch. But Eternal Darkness, Zelda: Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Star Fox Adventures… What was going on? This isn’t the Nintendo that polished and cherished it’s games! Eternal Darkness dropped all the really amazing aspects that were planned. Wind Waker dropped countless dungeons and resorted to an elaborate treasure hunt to lengthen the game. Mario Sunshine degenerated into a blue coin marathon. Star Fox just seemed to veer into a wall mid way through the game and never really recovered. The Gamecube library as a whole seems marred by rush jobs, half games and wasted potential.
Mind you, the games I mentioned all stomped weakness wherever it was found.

Ok I think I’ve wasted enough of your time now. Tell me what you were dissapointed with or any particular game that shamed it’s legacy. Or tell me I’m a wanker.