Category Archives: Video Games

Final Fantasy XIII: Commentary

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I’ve started commenting on Final Fantasy XIII on Tumblr under igamer. Keep up, if you’d like, but think of them as random notes for a series of blog posts that I really should get around to writing. I did the same with a few games previously, like Heavy Rain, but with a text file.

It’s kinda how My Tumblr (Tumblog is the right word, right? I don’t think I can get used it…) is kind of a wasteland of randomness, usually things that I’ve stopped myself from posting on Twitter.

That’s all I got for now. See ya later.

Capcom: Hardcore Gamers Have Disowned The Wii

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“Development on Wii [is] very difficult, with an oversupply [of games] and a gamer market that has radically changed,” states Seux. “[Hardcore games] are selling less and less on the console, [be it] MadWorld or Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop or House of the Dead: Overkill. Two years ago, there were still [hardcore] gamers on Wii, [but these have been] diverted from this console in favor of the new generation.”

Capcom France Antoine Seux, via Destructoid

The funny thing is that I bought a Wii to play many “hardcore” games, including Capcom’s amazing Resident Evil 4. For a second time. I played it first via a friend’s Wii, then I had to play through it again because I loved it so much.

Then, after I was done with the library of games available to me at the time, I sold it off, and moved onto the Xbox 360. The rest is history.

I’m not sure if I’d call myself a hardcore gamer, but maybe the terminology of “core gamer” would do. I’ve felt snubbed by Nintendo and their entire line of first party titles. Apart from Mario Galaxy, I have yet to play a first party game that I thought would move systems.

There are some really interesting third party titles that have caught my eye, but I have an enormous list of games I would want to play on the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

It’s a vicious cycle. I choose not to buy a Wii because the Wii doesn’t have any games for me. The game devs don’t make games for the Wii because people like me won’t buy the Wii.

UPDATE:

“Further to comments made in a recent article on French website Gamekult, Capcom would like to confirm its commitment as a multi-platform developer and publisher of interactive software,” the statement read.”

Capcom, via Eurogamer

Backtracking. Fun.

Comparisons Between Dante’s Inferno Demo, God Of War

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Since I have recently acquired a PS3, might as well make use of the exclusivity that it brings, starting with the demo for Dante’s Inferno. Xbox 360 owners won’t get it until the 24th.

A couple of notes while playing through the demo.

It could be that because I’m playing through the God of War: Collection, but this game feels amazingly similar to God of War.

The hack-and-slash combat, quick time events, lightning fast combat, the cinematic-style fixed camera angles, the button tips that pop up from time to time… all eerily similar to God of War.

Some of the button placements are 1 to 1.

  • Square = Light Attack
  • Triangle = Heavy Attack
  • X = Jump
  • Left Stick = Movement
  • Right Stick = Evade
  • Left Buttons = Flipped around
    • God of War was L1 for Block, L2 for Magic
Dante's Inferno - Controls

The meters, while similar, show a bit of evolution in the button mashing gameplay of God of War.

Dante's Inferno - The EXP Status

There are two trees of abilities, Unholy and Holy, that you can climb. As you reach a certain level, you unlock abilities by spending the souls (number shown in the center of the screen).

Dante's Inferno - Unholy and Holy Trees

And this is where it gets annoying. After grabbing an unfortunate or fortunate entity via R2, you either can tap Square to Punish or rapidly hit Circle to Absolve to gain EXP in either the Holy or Unholy tree, respectively. I know, the note actually doesn’t tell you that you have to do this, but there’s a distinction between Punishing and Absolving. Maybe it’s actually harder to absolve souls in RL? ;-)

Dante's Inferno - Punish and Absolve

I feel like this is a poor game mechanic. Rather than making the focus of the combat “killing stuff”, now you have to grab and punish/absolve over and over again. Isn’t the point of a hack-and-slash to get that exciting emotion as you plow through a massive number of enemies or take down a behemoth? Blah.

One random comment on Blocking: I like how blocking preempts all actions in Dante’s Inferno. It makes the game feel different, if not a bit easier at the beginning, because rather than thinking about how an enemy’s attack will affect the timing of your moves to react and block, you can just slam on the R2 when you see it coming. With God of War, I would get hit much more often because I was in the middle of a chain combo.

Verdict? I probably won’t go out of my way to play this game. It doesn’t seem like it’s offering anything that new, and I just played through both God of War I and II… I’m pretty much Kratos’d out. I guess there’s always God of War III…

IndieGamer.org

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So Begins: Indie Gamer

Until recently, I was sure that I would blog only here on joshkim.org. After all, why split up the small population of readers who frequent this lovely establishment?

But then again, I realized that I’ve thrown away video games as a plaything for far too long. I think finishing Braid at the tail end of summer last year started this “indie gamer” mindset within me. Finishing Psychonauts tonight really helped me make this decision to go through with starting the Indie Gamer blog.

To begin, who is an indie gamer? I’d like to think whoever games and thinks critically of a game is an indie gamer. I know it seems a bit hazy and pretentious at face value, but I intend to flesh this out fully as I keep blogging.

IndieGamer.org is specifically my views on games, as well as other people’s views if they choose to join in on the fun and submit posts. While IndieGamer.org is a blog for now, I have some plans to make a service for gamers.

Now, I picked IndieGamer.org and not IndieGames.org for a reason. While I have a huge craving for indie games ever since Braid hit me in the face with the awesome (and I’ve got a whole list of indie games and mods just waiting to be written on), I want to emphasize that any game is up for criticism (for example, Psychonauts, a game which I’d call pseudo-”indie”). Also, I don’t necessarily want to write on a per game basis only, but also write about general trends in games as well as in the gaming industry. (I have a doozy on Valve’s Steam cooking… I <3 puns.)

I’ll be posting all my game related posts on IndieGamer.org from now on. And a better definition of what I think an indie gamer is.

So welcome, yet another project. The important thing here is that I’ve started another project, and that now there’s an outlet for all this criticism I have towards games.

Psychonauts: A Random Picture

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In an effort to not ruin the experience as little as possible, and to kick off this blog, I’ve decided to put up this image from the game Psychonauts, a game I finished today.

READ.

That is indeed a “Read” poster. Remember those? And yes, that’s one of the camp counselors holding up a brain.

So much attention to detail… such a unique variety of style, and yet a very coherent theme that runs throughout the game.

4/4. Amazing. Go but it on Good Old Games or Steam. I bought it on Steam two days before GOG acquired the Majesco library.

The problem with the Steam version is that you’re going to need Steam to play (I tried launching the .exe, and it complained about the lack of Steam). But then again, I wonder if I would have bought it on GOG since most of my PC games are being bought on Steam anyway… this is another post for another day.

Dreamcast: The Introduction

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I bought a Dreamcast at a garage sale yesterday for $10. I also bought Space Channel 5 and Skies of Arcadia for $1 each.

A couple of factors went into this purchase. First of all, it was freaking cheap. A system and two games for $12 bucks? Secondly, I’ve been wanting to go back and do some “retro” gaming, and what better system to get started with other than the one that, to this day, has quite the following on the Internetz. I also would like to think that since September 9th has passed recently, there were a lot of links on the Internet commemorating the 10th anniversary of the launch date of the Dreamcast (9.9.99), and that probably made me think about all the great content I missed out on.

I guess there’s a fairly vibrant pirating community out there also, seeing as how ridiculously easy it was to perform those shenanigans on the Dreamcast. This wasn’t really one of the reasons that motivated me into purchasing it, but I’m sure I’ll tinker with it at a certain point. I’m actually thinking about buying a couple of more games as a collectible more than anything. Ikaruga comes to my mind…

Here’s a great episode of Icons on the Dreamcast, back when G4TV was actually not all that bad.

The DVD. PS2 could play it, Dreamcast could not. We say that software moves hardware, but I never thought about DVDs actually being a part of the software. The funny thing is that Blu-Ray, even after it won the high definition optical media fight versus HD-DVD, didn’t push PS3 to dizzying heights. I have my thoughts on this, but let’s wait until… I buy a PS3. Ahem.

I went ahead and bought a Dreamcast VGA Cable over at racketboy.com. Funny thing is that… it actually cost me more to get this than the system itself. I do have a random LCD screen lying around, and so I’m going to make a nice corner of my desk for the Dreamcast funs.

When the heck am I going to have time for this? I have no clue. But I’m very happy with owning this piece of gaming history.

9/9/9

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Here’s a list of things that are happening tomorrow. I’m almost certain there are more things, but I can’t recall them right now.

The Beatles: Rock Band

Never was a true Beatles fan, but I like Rock Band lots… I’ve been practicing the singing and the guitaring, together, this past weekend (not specifically for this, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy).

And no, not this. This is happening next year. 10/10/010. [shudder]

9, The Movie

Looks interesting, but probably will wait until the DVD. Trailer here.

Apple’s “Rock and Roll” Event

Whatever happens, happens.

Nothing From HanMeta

I’ve been working a lot on the startup I’m working for, and so things haven’t been going so well with my projects. It might be like this for a while… but hopefully, I’ll find some time off to tinker.

Nostalgia's Curse

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The concepts of difficulty today and difficulty of yesterday are completely different things. Where today we measure difficulty as how intelligent the A.I. is or how quickly the difficulty curve rises, the games of yesteryear were about how many times you died. Difficulty was about the number of times you would die until you had the patterns of enemies and stages memorized. After all, there was no abstract A.I. constructs like there are for games today, so they had to rely on the “pattern” to throw people off their game. This also factors into today’s games, the whole memorization concept, but it’s intertwined with all that modern technology offers. That’s why we revisit these nostalgic games and find ourselves being trounced; we’ve become used to how modern games conceive their difficulty and have forgotten the old method of “Die until you get it.”

Destructoid – I suck at games: Nostalgia’s curse.

Both old school and recent titles can provide challenges, and it’s interesting how hardware limits (like for A.I.) has caused developers in the past to structure difficulty in a different way.