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Activision to Sponsor Consumer IQ Test This June

I generally prefer to write about games I’m excited over, but with the launch date approaching I couldn’t let this one slip by. Activision’s newest entry into the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero On Tour is set to ship in late June with its four fret adaptor for your Game Boy Advance slot and a guitar pick stylus that promises to separate fans of Rock Band versus Guitar Hero even further.

A helpful “How-To” video has surfaced to walk gamers through the intricacies of strapping the DS to their left hand while strumming the touch screen with their right. While the two player battle mode made sense and worked with the DS the entire concept still left me feeling like the protagonist in a Philip K. Dick story. You know, the one where the guy sees the dead body hanging in the street but everyone else ignores it? The Hanging Stranger! It’s seriously a great read. You could easily get through it on a bus ride while the guy next to you tries to play this game before his hand suffers a horrible hand cramp that leaves him a disfigured outcast.

Regardless of which camp you fall into, it’s impossible to ignore the idea that the entire concept for this genre was in creating a genuine rock experience via the instruments. So it’s hard to see this release as anything other than yet another publisher attempting to cash in on Nintendo’s hardware sales with software less designed around what the DS could achieve as much as cramming a popular franchise into a handheld already plagued by shovelware.

Posted in DS, Editorial | No Comments »

Potential Solutions for Wii Storage

Wii storage is a big issue for me. As I posted yesterday, I now have no more room on my Wii’s system memory. But storage can mean something else: Where do we actually put all the accessories the Wii demands us to have?

Not to get sidetracked, but I do have a lot of gaming accessories. These include a full complement of controllers for every system I have that’s hooked up to my television (and that is nine systems) plus a bunch of extra game-specific peripherals (like guitar controllers, the Rock Band drum kit, Wii Wheels, and Scene-It buzzers). But physical storage is a topic for a future post.

Today I want to discuss the options I have to remedy my problem of not having any more room on my Wii for Virtual Console games, WiiWare titles, and Wii Channels.

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Posted in Editorial, Virtual Console, Wii | 2 Comments »

My Wii is Now Full. My Heart, Empty.

I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but it has. I have no storage room left on my Wii. How did this happen? Well, like most people who’ve had this happen to them, it was all the fault of the Virtual Console.

Today’s WiiWare update, however, is what pushed me over the edge. After checking through the various titles available, I noticed that most of them were letting me know I didn’t have enough room on my Wii to download them.

I flipped through a couple of the titles before coming across Defend Your Castle, which honestly is a game I’ve got zero interest in. I pressed forward through the menus to see how much space, if any, I’d have left after downloading it.

Not a whole lot it seems. And now, I’ve gone ahead and accidentally selected to download the damn thing. So that’s what my Wii is doing right now – grabbing a game from a very slow server. Mario’s run across the screen a couple hundred times now, and he’s collecting no coins. I don’t know how much of it is downloaded so far, but I do know that since none of the three blocks have been hit up for coins by Mario, I’m at under 33 per cent downloaded.

Whoever decided that showing Mario running across the screen would be a good idea from a download status bar should be kicked in the nuts really hard. And if it was the same person who decided that the Wii wouldn’t have expandable memory, perhaps a second kick would also be warranted.

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Batman Wins… Fatality?

Sub-Zero vs. Batman - about 13 years after we first played X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

Last week, Midway announced a Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe title to mixed online opinions. I used the term “mixed” here very loosely because for the most part, the opinion shared across the gaming community was one of “OMG! WORST IDEA EVAR!!”

Of course, then came the follow-up that the game will include no fatalities, which then of course let to the whole “how can you have Mortal Kombat with no fatalities?” question.

I can answer that question very easily. Most of the time I play Mortal Kombat, there are no fatalities.

You know why? Because the key combinations required to do them are so convoluted, complicated, and unintuitive that they’re nigh-impossible to pull off. Add to that the fact that you’re given all of one second to pull off the move and fatalities become more of an easter egg than anything. And let’s not forget that the CPU players seldom perform them as well. One of the things I would look forward to upon defeat in Mortal Kombat 2 was the odd chance that I’d get finished. It was a cool way to see some of the fatalities for characters I never used.

In later iterations of the game (when it moved to the 3D realm), the CPU fatality is something I’ve never seen.

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Posted in Editorial | 4 Comments »

Free Games in Cereal

I decide which cereal to buy based on what free junk is included in the box. Two years ago I ate nothing but Oatmeal Crisp because it came with various CD-ROM games for the computer. Though four different games were available, I kept getting the ones with the Atari collection (Atari: 80 Classic Games in One) in it.

I knew it was the Atari collection because of the die-cut hole in the front of the box which showed the title you were getting. This was done by the cereal company presumably to cut down on the piss-off factor for a kid opening up yet another box only to find that yet again, he had received Trivial Pursuit. But I had obviously abused this gift of foresight to amass a stack of Atari compilation discs.

Yesterday I went shopping for some groceries and couldn’t decide which cereal to buy. None of them had anything good as a bonus. So I just bought a giant bag of some super healthy flaked stuff. I don’t even eat cereal, really. Maybe only one weekends, come to think of it. And I hardly ever have breakfast.

But thinking of the fact that I got 80 games for free (several times) with a box of cereal has me thinking: What makes these games any less awesome than the ones we pay full retail price for? The fact that they’re old? The fact that some of them aren’t that great? That’s funny to me, because there are many games on store shelves right now that are either old, not good, or both!

And they don’t even come with free cereal.

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The State of PC Gaming

Will future generations of gamers know the significance of these keys?

As usual, I seem to be writing about the PC again. That’s not to say I don’t love consoles, too: The ‘Hottest Party’ is every night at my house (bad DDR joke [you’re tellin’ me – ED.]). But as a diehard PC Gamer hearing all the recent talk about the future of the PC platform, I feel the need to address a few things.

This isn’t so much my opinion on the future of the PC, but rather a review of the current popular ideas that are floating around. The waters have gotten a bit murky as of late and are in need of some clearing up.

First are the detractors. Those that subscribe to the quite common belief that the PC Games platform is dying, if not already dead. Recently we have seen some high-profile developers call into question the validity of the PC. There was Cliffy B. of Epic games saying that the PC is in a state of “disarray,” which isn’t too surprising considering that his main focus is on the console. However, even Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (his last game being Supreme Commander, a big PC title) believes people are going to stop making big investments on the PC “when it just doesn’t work” and instead take their investments more console-centric, so that games will only be “ported back over to the PC.”

Quite probably the most popular sound bite comes from another person at Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, who was famously quoted as saying “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”

All this talk inevitably causes many people to shout “The PC is dying.”

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Posted in Editorial, PC | 9 Comments »

UNDERRATED: Game Boy Micro

With the Game Boy now ending its reign as the portable system champion, I find myself looking back on its career with a great fondness as a parent would recall a child’s academic success. The Game Boy has been a part of my life for just about 19 years now and to be honest it freaks me out a little that it has already been that long.

My first Game Boy was the original grey brick with the yellow-green screen and I loved that thing like it was part of my family. I took it with me on family trips, to friend’s houses, and on days when I was feeling more adventurous, to school.

The monochromatic graphics never bothered me. How else could I play Tetris? I didn’t have an NES and even if I did, taking it to play in the car wouldn’t have been realistic. I also had the Nuby Game Boy light so I could game in the dark, which made the Game Boy trump my then-loved Sega Master System as my favourite gaming device.

Today my original Game Boy sits housed in a Rubbermaid container underneath my living room sofa with all its games and its sleeker cousin, the Game Boy Color (which I bought in 1999 when my obsession with Pokémon caused me to go through AA batteries too quickly for my budget). It still works.

I skipped over the Game Boy Advance entirely and instead picked up its successor, the Game Boy Advance SP and enjoyed many hours with it. The first game I bought for it was the excellent Phantasy Star Collection and I was immediately blown away by the idea that a system as tiny as the SP could basically take the power of the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo and put it into my hands.

But little did I know it would get even smaller.

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Posted in Editorial, Game Boy, Nintendo | 7 Comments »

Rock Band Needs Electric Six

Dick Valentine, frontman of Electric Six. Photo by pieter van hattem, courtesy electricsix.com.

Any band that sings about disco, dancing, nuclear war, fire, sex, and the Devil is all right with me. But Electric Six not only does all that, but they also absolutely rock. Their latest album, “I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master,” is nothing short of amazing - if you’re into fist-pumping, dance-worthy rock, that is. And it’s an album that continues the tradition of dance rock grooves established with their 2003 debut, “Fire” and followed through with on subsequent discs “Señor Smoke” and “Switzerland.”

But that’s not to say they’re all dance. The group displays a great range of influences that they wear on their sleeves, whether they’re aware of it or not. For the most part, one can’t deny the influence 80s music has had on Electric Six. However unlike many bands that strictly seek to imitate music of that era (let’s call them electroclash bands, as that terms already exists), Electric Six really brings a certain element of uniqueness to their music. Rather than imitate, they evoke they display the sensibilities of previous bands through short riffs, flourishes, and bass grooves.

And then there’s the big guitar sound. Unlike most bands that have one lead and one rhythm guitarist, Electric Six has two lead guitarists: Johnny Na$hinal and The Colonel. Dick Valentine seems to be one of the band’s biggest fans himself because in many songs, he announces a song’s guitar solo with a raspy and gravelly uttered, “solo!” prior to the actual solo kicking in.

I can’t stop listening to this band and each time I hear them, I think two things. The first is, “These guys rock!” and the second is “They need to be in Rock Band!” But don’t take my word for how great a band they are. Check them out for yourself here.

Posted in Editorial, Music | 6 Comments »

HOW TO: Know You Have a True Gaming Friend

Real-life friends would let you shoot the zombies you called for. True gaming friends will kill your zombies after killing theirs.

Ever wonder if you’ve got a True Gaming Friend (aka TGF) or not? Well, wonder no more. Here’s how you can tell you’ve got a true gaming friend who will always be there for you no matter what.

Game:
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

How to tell you’ve got a TGF:

When playing in multiplayer mode, and you and your friend* decide it’s best to divide the screen into left and right halves to determine what side of the screen each other is responsible for taking care of, your TGF will often cross over onto your side of the screen to kill the zombies you call out for and also steal your weapons and ammo upgrades.

You’ll know you really have TGF if this person shoots a zombie’s knees out, causing him to fall just before your well-aimed and timed headshot could connect. Thanks, TGF! Now it’s going to take eight more bullets to kill this zombie when he could have already been dead.

Sometimes your TGF will tell you he had to shoot the zombie because it was getting “too close” or “was about to hit us.”

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Posted in Editorial, How To, Humour, True Gaming Friends, Wii | 6 Comments »

The Way We “Play”

Do we love the idea of new games more than the games themselves?

There’s no denying that we live in a very consumer-focused society. In fact, the way in which we play and consume games has changed since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Now that we as consumers have to choose between many systems and games for those systems, it becomes easy to get confused and sidetracked when trying to decide which game or system would best suit our gaming wants.

But these wants are also being manipulated. Enter marketing. Enter buzz. A lot of the times, it’s hard to cut through these things to see whether or not a game is enjoyable – not to the mass market, but to you. Unfortunately there are times when truly great games don’t get the marketing attention they deserve, and thus they suffer from poor sales. The games become gems to those who’ve played them. Everyone else misses out entirely.

In the end, all the reviews and commercials in the world can’t tell you how you’re going to feel about a particular game. Checking out footage online and reading reviews can only get you so far. It’s really up to you to decide whether you like a game or not. The best way to do that is to play the game yourself. Borrow it from a friend or rent before you buy. You can even try it out in store.

Don’t buy a game on blind faith that you’ll like it. Sure, spending a few bucks for a rental before you buy each game can add up – especially if you end up buying most of the games. So look at it the other way! Think of how much you’ll save by not buying games you don’t like.

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Posted in Editorial | 1 Comment »