Super Smash Brothers Brawl

I missed the hay-day of fighting games with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. So my favorite fighting game is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Though some think of it as a party game, but there is enough depth in the fighting for it to be quite a skill based game. I can play as most of its characters; its easier to list the characters I am terrible as then list the ones I am passable as. But I am really good with 5 characters, to the point that I can beat about 80% of casual players. In list form:

Claw Machines

Lets go out on a limb here and talk about a really old form of games: Claw machines. These babies have been around in one form or another since the 40's. Nowadays they mostly populate arcades and grocery stores, trying to get parents to waste money on there kids in an attempt to win "that cute bear". I was one of those kids, but my mom was actually good at claw machines and managed to win me some good toys. She passed on her secrets to me and with my natural gamer skills, I soon became a beast at these machines, totally screwing up the whole economic model of the game ( you lose more money than the animal is worth).

wrong side, but grab some toys while you're there.

Communication

Quakecon is going on. I played a sort of demo version of the original Quake and was the proud owner of Quake 2. I even participated in online multiplayer back when you needed a carrier service like gamespy to play online. I didn't play all that seriously. I mostly derped around with god mode and no-clip cheat codes. But I did encounter one seriously aggravating problem: talking. This was way before voice chat was prevalent. The online way to talk was to type in the chat box. Now its pretty obvious what the problem with that is; on a computer the keyboard is your game pad. You can either move or type, not both. Nowadays, voice chat is more common, but by no means universal. And I would like to thank Valve for developing three different methods of streamlining communication for those who don't have voice chat.

First was Team Fortress 2. It includes text chat, but its not anymore convenient than on Quake 2. What was included was quick chat keys. There are three keys (z,x,c) that open up a menu of 9 convenient quick chats for your character. Some are silly like battle cry, but most are useful, like building requests and command calls. The best inclusion was the medic call button. By making the E button the button that draws the attention of healers was genius; its right next to the movement buttons. There is also a basic auto speak, where your character will say things independently of your control when it appropriate.

While it certainly works, its very basic. Left 4 Dead 2 includes these key commands but builds on the idea that characters auto talk. Its really clever. When a special zombie comes into view or sound they make is heard, characters will automatically say something about it, regardless of what you are doing. Same thing with health warnings and map navigation. But whats most useful is the way characters relate discoveries. If you walk close to weapons and items, your character will say what you found and usually refer to it by name. This takes a lot of the worry out of play but it stills requires voice chat for more nuanced communication.

Portal 2 included a multiplayer mode, and as a puzzle game it needed a nuanced communication system that didn't require voice chat. So Valve got creative and invented the ping tool. Its a sort of point and click flagging tool. You point at the spot and select the flag: portal, stand, or button. This will stand out to your partner and draw there attention. Another good addition was a way of seeing in a little window exactly what your partner see's in live movement. While all these wouldn't work in FPS's were time is more of a factor, the ping tool and auto speak should definitely be looked into by other developers. Not everyone has voice chat, and for the foreseeable future some people still won't.

Anomaly Warzone Earth

I said last post that I would go into more detail about the above indie game Anomaly Warzone Earth (said together, no colon), so here we go. This game takes the old formula of tower defense and reverses it. You attack the towers with a small convoy of tanks and support vehicles.

in this world, missile launchers have legs

The concept of this game is that aliens have crash landed in Baghad and Tokyo and erected huge energy fields as a defensive measure. Your team has been inserted to go in, do recon, and potentially stop the expansion of the field. The story is pretty light and not so well voiced by a cast of Australians, but thats OK because its really the gameplay that shines here. There aren't a lot of tower types or vehicle types, but its enough that you have to employ plenty of strategy. Most of your strategy comes from planning your route on the level map.

lots of choice. The red are the towers. 

The game gives you the choice of taking your time and slaughtering the towers for money, or blazing through to get out as soon as possible. The arrangement of your vehicles also makes a huge difference. Yes shield generators for all your tanks will increase your surviveability, but it lowers your offense so the towers can attack you for longer. As the commander, your main use is to deploy power ups to help your convoy. You can drop health fields, smoke screens and call in airstrikes.

Don't die, don't die, don't die, don't dieeeee

This big switch on the tower defense format is really fresh and doesn't get old too fast. The game is fun and legitimately hard; haven't made anywhere on the higher difficulties. It has full online leaderboards; they don't list any names but they give you your relative position. Again I repeat to any readers, this game is a steal for 10 dollars on steam. Pick it up.

Indie games

Indie games, for those who don't know, are games not made by major developers but instead made by smaller companies with only a few small title to their name. When the video game industry was young, just about every game was made by small developers. Then when consoles gained there footing with the NES, Nintendo drastically cut back on indie games by only allowing games they approved of to be published for their system. Other developers also had a certain level of propriety, but the main disadvantage to indie publishers was the shear cost of producing games and distributing them to gamers.

While not really a bad thing, the lack of indie developers did put a bit of a block on creativity. Games are expensive to make so developers tended to focus on well established formulas and genres. Indie developers don't have the money or skills to compete in the established categories, so they must focus on concepts and ideas that aren't being addressed by the major companies.

Of late, indie game makers have gotten some avenues for distribution. Xbox live Arcade and the Steam game download service allow gamers to pay money for games without having to buy a physical disk. This works well for developers since it allows them to focus there capital towards game development and not have to worry so much about distribution.

This was a very long way to say that I have some indie games that I would like to suggest for any readers. The first two are traditional RPG's called "Breath of Death 7" and "Cthulhu Saves the World" by the same publisher. For $3 dollars on steam, these games are steal for the level of fun they give. They sort of parody the whole RPG genre, which is always fun. The other game I would like to suggest is "Anamoly Warzone Earth" on Steam. This is in interesting game that I will go into more next time, but its essentially tower defense, except you attack the towers. Give it a look.

this is you leading tanks.

Women of Games

This is the signature image I recently commissioned, credit goes to Katsumeragi of the freefrag forums. The featured women is an artists interpretation of what Team Fortress's pyro looks like. It has never been confirmed what the Pyro's gender is, but Valve has dropped hints and references that go both ways. I believe (and hope) that the Pyro actually is a women. I mean, that would make the Pyro the only women in a team with 8 men. She goes around in a suit that completely conceals any shape to her body and her preferred method of attack are lighting people on fire and hitting them with an axe. That would just be to awesome for words. IF the Pyro is a girl, she definitely qualifies as the second greatest woman of gaming.

Of course, the greatest woman of gaming is and forever will be Samus Aran. She has been kicking alien butt since 1986, and we have loved her for it. Unlike most of the women in games, she doesn't flaunt her hotness to get our attention. Most of the time she is encased in a big suit of body armor that pretty conceals any indication of her gender.

and sometimes it was the graphics

The fact of the matter is, most video game women sport enormous...... assets for gamers to drool over. Now I am a red blooded man, I like boobs. But its all pixels, so there really isn't much value added by huge chests and asses on video game characters. I won't ever like a woman in a game unless she has character substance. Funnily enough, very little is known about Samus, but the way she stoically handles herself through all her games says volumes about her ability.

and she does look nice, so thats a plus

The thing is, we can't relate to bimbos. I've never met one, and if I did I think they would annoy me. Gamers want our women to have substance. And the mysterious clothing certainly sets our brains a spinning.

Shmups

For those who don't know, shmups is short for Shoot 'Em Ups. Its a type of game that used to be very popular back in the 8 and 16 bit era. The games usually featured planes or spaceships blasting the crap out of other planes and spaceships. There defining features were lots of power ups and one hit lives. I haven't played a lot of shmups mostly because of when I was born, but I encountered a few in arcades. I do have a ROM of a shmup from the NES that I am rather fond of. The game is called Metal Storm, and it hails from the twilight years of the NES.

pretty standard Japanese robots

The game boasted rather advanced graphics for the NES. The screen shot doesn't really show it, but the background moved with you in a layered effect in this game, which was pretty advanced for the time. Not a lot of powerups in this game, but the gameplay is very clever, the levels are varied as are the enemies. But what really set this game apart was the gravity switching. Pressing up or down while jumping would reverse the direction of gravity for you and some enemies.

like this

This mechanic is most intriguing and should really be included in more games. You almost feel sorry for poor Mario being stuck with only one gravity. I have never gotten past level six in this game because of the sparse supply of lives. I could save state, but that feels like cheating. So good luck to any readers who give this game a whirl.

RMT

I recently made a somewhat monetary trade with regards to Team Fortress 2. I am  a member of a forum associated with my favorite TF2 servers. One of the members offered to design post signatures for people in exchange for some hats. Hats are rare items in TF2 (used to be rarer) and it seemed like a fair trade since I have no skills for photo shop. I traded one hat and a set of shoes for the design, which I should have tomorrow. It was a beneficial trade for me, but it got me thinking about how other people trade things in games.

I haven't played a lot MMORPGs, but I know how the Real Money Trading thing works. High level players have so much money and so many rare items that they trade them for actual dollars. The idea is that the value of fun you get from these items is so much that they are worth roughly the value of some games, in the range of 50-60 dollars. I can only chalk this up to laziness on the part of some players.

Of course, I could be wrong. Purchasing that rare Bone spear may bring just as much enjoyment as spending the same money on Halo3. I just can't understand how that works. Its a sweet deal for the people who get the money, I just kind of wish they wouldn't. It reflects poorly on the human condition in general.

Horror

I love a good horror flick. The feeling of my blood racing and my adrenaline flowing is such a great high. Its sorta like spicy food; you love it but it hurts. And thank god game makers have found a way to make video games legitimately scary.

The first scary game I played was Silent Hill, which is to this day considered one of the scariest games ever made. Unfortunately, I was only 9 and couldn't finish the game (I regret that now). I have heard people swear that the isolation of the first Portal game was so unnerving they couldn't play it. But I want real horror. So I got Dementium for the DS. 

Now I know what your thinking. How can a hand held game be scary? Well, you have a point, but damn, with the lights off and the headphones on, this game can scare your pants off. Its pretty standard survival horror where the monsters are creepy and bullets are scarce. But it pulls all the right tension strings and builds the atmosphere just right. Plenty of torment, and a healthy dose of gore. They even made a sequel that I sadly haven't played.

A lot of games are called scary, but what they really are is nerve racking with good atmosphere. Take Bioshock: the games plenty creepy and the atmosphere is spot on and well developed. But at its base, Bioshock is a shooter. The fun of the game is mixing and matching your weapons and powerups to make you into a killing machine. So here is a real horror game.

by Frictional Games

This game almost turns the concept of gaming on its head. You cannot fight. It seriously tells you not to fight back in the intro. You have no choice but to flee and find cover. This is a wonderfully immersive element. It takes away all feeling of control in the game; you aren't some fighter who can stand and resist the monsters, they are all stronger than you. This helplessness greatly increases the terror and when combined with the very intuitive controls, it makes you feel like you are in that castle. Summing it up, this game is very hard to play with the lights off. 

Facebook and Google Plus

I was never a huge facebooker. I have always strived to keep my friends list below 100 people and at the height of my use never posted more than 5 times a day. One of the things that always turned me off to facebook was the way games will nag at you to play, join, or follow them.

Farmville is a great example. I have never played it, but as I understand it takes at least a few days for some of your crops to grow. I'm sorry, but I don't like to measure any one task in gaming in terms of days. Its one thing if its a long achievement because you opt into that challenge. Don't make a necessary game activity take that long. They should have made it more like Harvest Moon, where plants take days in the game to grow, not real life days.

All these games on facebook have led to it being waaaay too crowded in its design. I recently got an invite to google plus and am making the transition. Its really quite refreshing, its like walking into a recently built office; all clean looking as though it were a blank canvas waiting for you to get started. hopefully the transition will be smooth. I have some invites if any readers want in. Just leave your email.

Legend of Zelda 2

Sorry about the long delay. I was away on a family trip and there wasn't really a good time to post. Also, you lose the habit of posting if you don't keep it up. So, in celebration of over 100 blog views (queue muted clapping) a quick look back at The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

Yeah, I played it.

This game is considered the funny cousin of the Zelda series, even more so than the wind waker branch. The game was also on the NES, just like the original, but was a departure from the action/adventure dungeon crawling of the rest of the series. It instead had a much greater emphasis on platforming and combat, but it still had puzzles. The overworld map had enemies running along it that you had to fight. 

The game was also wicked hard. In general the combat was tough but what would really get you was some of the platforming. If you've played Castlevania, it was like that; the jumps were challenging in themselves, but trying to make those jumps while dodging enemies is just unreasonably brutal. I wouldn't recommend this game for everyone, but I would say it is an interesting chapter of the Zelda franchise that is worth a look. At least it isn't the monstrosity below.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Starting to lose interest, but I will stick with it for a while longer. Got the lunar surface rug from Sahara. Saw the Kings Crown in the Able sister's shop. Cost was 1,200,000 bells for a hat...... 2/3 of the way to the next piece of my house. Its summer, so there is a bigger variety of bugs and fish.

Crystallis

I wonder how many readers now this oldy. Crystallis is a adventure game for the NES. It had no sequels, except a port to the gameboy. The game was hard in the old fashion sense. Figuring out what to do with very few hints, but fortunately with fairly balanced leveling. It sort of a trip down gaming memory lane. The game is almost entirely composed of abandoned game mechanics, but it executes them with such care and pinache that its still fun.

This first thing you realize in this game is that despite awakening from a high tech cryo chamber you enter on old world town to find a sword and buy a shield. And the sword is magic. Oh, and to find that sword, you have to talk to people in the town because if you don't you are totally lost. That is one game standby that I am glad was abandoned. I know the makers wrote dialogue for those guys and would like us to read them, but don't arbitrarily force us by hiding the necessary info in the dialogue of one NPC out of 50. Give us a reason to read those snippets. Have bonus items offered up, make the dialogue hilarious, but don't hide necessary info please. Anyhow, I would suggest any readers give this game a shot. Its fun, if old. It did give this one girl who saw me playing it conniptions because the graphics were so dated.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World.
Payed off my loan today. Cost was 527,642 bells. That really cleaned out my bank account. Got to get back to saving.

Lost to the ages

Some games stand the test of time and carry on. They get sequels and a rabid fan base. Then some games have a brief flash of brilliance and then vanish into obscurity. Some get lucky and achieve cult status, but still these games will be forever ignored by the developers, leaving fans to pine for their beloved games. Pitt from Kid Icarus recently escaped this fate, with his introduction in Smash Brothers Brawl and a release for the 3DS. Other characters have not been so lucky.

Great example: Battletoads. The first game was critically acclaimed and is still well followed. It had two sequels, but they were just kinda "meh". And that was it for the frogs. No modern sequels, no developer willing to take up the challenge. Fans are left with the butt burningly hard original. What is the difference between a hit and a cult hit. Metroid was revolutionary, but it didn't scream hit until the third installment. The second game was a hard to play version on the Gameboy, so what was it that compelled the developers to push for that one more game that helped solidify it as a classic. Same thing with Legend of Zelda and Mario (console): First was good, second was iffy, the third was amazing.
There must be something different in the minds of developers from gamers. Kirby has never had a blow people out of the water classic, but he is still trucking along and Nintendo keeps making the games. Rare hasn't made a Killer Instinct game in over a decade. What about Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star, Jet Grind Radio, or the Mother series? All these are great games, but have not experienced nearly enough console time for gamers. I think it comes down to laziness. Game developers know how to make FPS, Sandbox and adventure games, so they do. There is a clearly defined formula for these games, so they don't feel like trying out any game style that pushes the boundaries, for fear of losing money. At E3, Nintendo did not announce a single new character, only oldies that we already love. Though I don't mind that, lets branch out a little people.

This game was FUN!!!

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Redd visited today. He sold me another forged painting. That's 5 in a row. I am seriously starting to get pissed at him.

Platforming

3D platforming is all based off of Super Mario 64. That game came out in 1996. Since then, there has been a lot of good platformers that followed it. Spyro had fewer moves but varied game play. Crash Bandicoot had a really quirky sense of humor. Sly Cooper was a solid platformer with a good atmosphere. Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank were some of the best platforming gamings on the PS2. But since mid 2000's, there has been a dearth of new platformers. Not counting Mario, the only platformer that still has any legs is Ratchet and Clank, and a lot of that game is about the wacky weapons.

My personal favorite

Now, I realize that platformers have a bit of a kiddy image to shake. On the PS3, the only platformer is Little Big Planet. Its a good game, but its 2D. And no matter how popular First person shooters are, jumping puzzles in FPS fail. You can't see your freaking feet in FPS, so forget about jumping accurately. I think the industry is pinning for a platformer with a more mature bent that can match up to Mario.

The closest thing was Jak II. It was a big step from its first game; it took a much more Grand Theft Auto route in the second game. The game had a lot of shooting sections, but the first thing you learn in the opening tutorial is jumping and rolling. It also only had four basic and practical weapons, so you never felt like a death machine. Some of the best platforming was in Jak and Daxter, and it carried over pretty much untouched to Jak II. So its not like developers don't know how to make a good 3D platformer, they just need the guts to actually make it. Sadly, Naughty Dog has abandoned Jak because they pretty much ran the story line into the ground. So lets go game developers, don't let Nintendo hog this market. I grew up on platformers, so give me something new to chew on.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World

I'm about a hundred thousand bells away from paying my mortgage. Shot Pete out of the air today so we could chat. Apparently Pelly is the one who sometimes posts on the bulletin board as "Talking to Myself". The other day she wrote" Bird Bird Bird. Bird is the word."

Gaming Green Zone

Online play offers a degree of challenge that solo campaigns just can't match. No matter how good AI gets, humans will always be more, shall we say, creative. Side Note: the X-Box and the PS3 are very bad for programming AI, because the step by step style they use for game making is great for rendering textures, but pretty poor at handling AI; PC gaming has much better AI. I have several games with online components or dedicated online gaming. TF2 is a constant favorite and I recently purchased Left 4 Dead 2. I also have a couple of MMO's that I got for free. I tried to log onto "Global Agenda" the other day, and it told me the global server was full. Now that was a little surprising, but it was free so its not really all that odd that there is limited space. But it got me thinking about the global implications of server space.
Obviously with larger games there will be more than one server, but you may still have trouble getting in. I spend about 90% of my time on only one TF2 server, and its rather popular and hard to get in. Sometimes the people on the server get to chatting about there respective time zones. So in thinking with that, I came up with what I consider the main period of online play. 4 PM to 4 AM. 4 PM is when students on the East coast get out and can realistically log on to servers. Then you have more and more people logging on until 8 when the West coast catches up. Then from 8 to 12 AM (Eastern, where I live) is the absolute busiest time for online gaming because its when all time zones of the US are able to freely log on. If you are playing a game with limited server space, this may not be a good time to log on because its gonna be busy. After midnight, the East coast starts to go to sleep. This well spread west until 4 AM when its midnight in the West. At this point, no one in the East should be awake and the other time zones are going to sleep as well. So the best times to play, for server space, are 4 PM to 8 PM and 12 AM to 4 AM. Early morning may sound tempting, but you actually don't get many people then, and only the truly obsessed play that early. This doesn't apply so much in the summer, but don't forget working adults play games too.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Yesterday was the bug catching contest. I won with a 214 mm Birdwing butterfly. They sent me the trophy today. Today in the sky I saw a UFO and shot it down with my golden slingshot. It was a pelican, and he gave me a piece of rare furniture for fixing his ship (that I broke, heh).

Trophy and Birdwing

Role Playing Games

I am not a big fan of the RPG genre. They can be fun, but usually the level grind gets to me and I do not have the patience to optimize my items. Now, I have got some friends who are huge RPG fans, so I know what they find fun about these games. They love the stories and characters and they find great joy in optimization. I just don't follow the line of reasoning behind optimization. As a result, I have never finished, or really gotten very far, in a Final Fantasy game. That isn't to say I have completely neglected the RPG library, I have just been selective.....OK, I only like somewhat odd RPGs. My personal favorite? Earthbound. 

Yeah Earthbound, the game Ness came from. Most people only know him from Smash Brothers. I also only knew him from Smash Brothers, but I decided to give his game a shot. Well, it was a very non-standard RPG I'll say that. First of all, the angle of the camera was pretty unique, for me the best factor for me was the lack of random encounters, a staple of most RPGs. The enemies had sprites so you could see them coming; you usually couldn't avoid them, but you could try and I liked that. It was a joy to play, so I figured I would try the other games in the series. For those who don't know. Earthbound is actually the sequel to a game called Mother. And it has a sequel called Mother 3. Both games were only released in Japan, where Earthbound was known as Mother 2. Mother 3 was spectacular in the same vein as Earthbound, with a better story. Mother is unfortunately more similar to traditional RPGs but it was still quirky and I forced myself to finish it. 

The only other RPG that I truly enjoyed was "The World Ends With You". It was ironically made by Square Enix, who I do not have a good relationship with, for the DS.

The game is played on both screens simultaneously. So the battles are really fast paced and fun. Story is good. Also, I didn't feel the need to optimize. The way the weapon system worked it was more conducive to variation of weapons rather than combining the best ones into a set. But mainly, it was the lack of random encounters. The way the system worked was that you didn't even have to fight outside of the story line if you didn't want to, though that would result in serious under leveling. So I think what would best benefit the RPG genre would be doing away with random encounters. These games are based around making choices, so let us chose when to fight.  

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World. 

Making lots of money. Nuff said.

Free

Free is a powerful word. Amazon once offered bonus free shipping on products in all countries but France, because the French branch thought 1 penny sounded better. They were noticeably lagging in sales until the main branch forced them to offer free shipping. The sales instantly picked up; that's the power of the word "free". I have played several free games in my time. I got Portal for free when it was on Steam special. I have played free online MMOs Runescape, Flyff, and Corum(no longer available). I downloaded Alien Swarm on Steam only because it was free (and there was a bonus hat for Team Fortress 2). Today, I downloaded Spiral Knights, a free MMO made by Sega. The game is surprisingly fun and well paced, as well as team dependent. After playing for a while, I started to ponder. How does the free business model work for games?

spiral knights knight

Obviously, some of these games are not truly free. Runescape has much more content for its member users, who pay $5 a month. Spiral Knights has a store were users can buy premium items and Flyff has a similar system. But Runescape still has plenty of free content, which they do update. The item stores are totally optional. No player need spend a dime to get plenty of hours of enjoyment. I don't quite follow how these business models can survive. Its not like maintaining these games is free, and they are still regularly updated. Alien Swarm is completely free. There is no way to pay money into it, you would be donating money. I really appreciate all the content available to players free of charge. Thank you.

Difficulty

Video game difficulty used to be very easy to measure. A thing was either hard to do, or easy to do. If you couldn't figure out what to do, it was usually because of unclear or absent instructions. This is why most of what are considered the "Hardest Games" are from the 1980's; game mechanics were simple so they had to crank up the performance difficulty in order to create a challenge. This created two flavors of difficulty: challenging and punishing. I will use GT countdowns second and first hardest games as examples. Ghosts and Goblins (2nd) is punishing. Battletoads (1st) is challenging (mostly). I have played both and I will tell you, G&G is sooooo hard that I have never gotten to the first boss. Its not harder than Battletoads(which I have beaten), its just not fun to play. To defeat the enemies in G&G requires a degree of precision that simply isn't worth the feeling of reward that comes from succeeding. The game simply isn't fun to play, even if you succeed. Battletoads level design is clever and the game rarely feels punishing. Sure the vehicle levels are nasty, but once you have the pattern, performance isn't prohibitively hard, and some levels are skip-able. So when you beat a level, you get the "I am awesome" feeling that makes the whole thing worth it. NOTE: for anyone who wants to try Battletoads, some of the later levels start to fall into the punishing category, so I don't suggest you try to beat it unless you absolutely must have the bragging rights.

So lets move to today. Nowadays, games have improved their depth, so now there are two ways to make a game difficult. Difficult to Decipher and Difficult to Perform. Almost all first person shooters are difficult to perform. What you have to do is simple: shoot the bad guy. So to make it hard you make the bad guy have armor, hide behind cover or have numerical advantage. All these things make it harder to shoot the guy, but the objective remains easy to understand. Other games, the method of completing your objective is not so clear. Yes you need to reactivate the generator, but how do you go about doing that? Portal is an excellent example. Most of the puzzles where pretty easy to complete, but only after you had figured out what you needed to do. This lowers the replay value, since once you figure it out, it isn't nearly so difficult. Legend of Zelda and other adventure games are a combination of the two. You have to figure out what to do, but once you know what to do, doing it isn't necessarily easy.
So when some people complain that games nowadays are too easy, a lot of their complaint comes from a skewed perspective. While it is true that some games are made easier so they appeal to more people, a lot of it comes from the games they grew up on. I grew up on adventure platformers, where the difficulty is always a combination of decipher and perform. The complainers grew up on Pac-man, where the difficulty is all in the performance.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Nothing big to report. It rained a lot today. I met Sahara and got a wallpaper. Got into a fishing contest with the dog in my town. It was a contest to see who could get the rarest fish. I got a blue fish, he got a damn shark.

Emulation

I have emulators for a lot of old video game systems. Having no older siblings or gaming parents, the first game system I got was a gameboy and my first console was a playstation, which I got when I was 9. I am not like my friends who owned SNES or maybe inherited an NES. So for me, the emulators are a way of experiencing what many consider the golden age of games. I had not played Metroid, or Super Mario World, or Zelda, or Punch-Out. Now I have and feel much better as a gamer. Sure my friends who actually have the systems will sneer (one hates the fact that I beat Battletoads), but its really the only reasonable option left to me (screw ebay).

But emulators lead to a interesting problem. If you only use emulators for old games like me, its really kinda weird to have your games tied to your computer. Sure, in its day Harvest Moon was new technology, but now its not even half the power of a DS. So I often find myself wishing I could take my emulators on the go in a more portable format. For reference, my main computer is a 9 pound laptop which is a bit of a pain to drag around, but a lot of people use desktops that don't move. So, this product recently came to my attention.

This little baby is an emulator player. You download your emulator games on it and take them with you. Offered by thinkgeek.com. http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/retro-gaming/bd6f/
But this leads into an interesting question. This wonderful little gizmo will set you back $120. Emulators are basically free programs and games. Is it really worth any money to take them with you when you can already play them for free? And since I have a laptop, my emulators already somewhat portable. So between this and a 3DS, I will probably get the 3DS.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
The cat Kit, moved out, which kinda bummed me. I have looked up some FAQ, so I am ready for some serious Animal Crossing now. Wendal visited and I gave him a red turnip and he gave me a country guitar; turn that in this evening to get the K.K. Slider picture. The online guides are actually really helpful for a game like this. There is this Chrome app called "Read Later Fast" which saves web pages in some storage. Its actually quite nice for FAQs and anything else really since it can be accessed offline.

Pyromancer

Its time for some of that self indulgence I mentioned early.

I love playing as the pyro is Team Fortress. I have logged 75 hours as pyro since resetting my stats (that was a bad idea). I have EVERY SINGLE PYRO ACHIEVEMENT!!!! Yes, even Pyromancer, the one where you have to inflict 1 million points of fire damage. Its probably the hardest achievement to get because even if you cheat and use an achievement server it could still take you a few days(I did it legitimately over several months). I have every Pyros weapon, including the full polycount set, and I can safely say that I am an excellent pyro. Not the best, but I would enter that contest in a heart beat.

The pyro unfortunately doesn't get a lot of respect as a class. This is mostly due to the fact that beginner pyros can still kill and annoy skilled players occasionally. The pyro isn't like the spy, where newbies aren't going to get many kills, or like soldiers and demos, whose skilled players have a decidedly different play style than noobs. This causes people to treat all pyros has a cheap, no skill class which is not fair. The pyro requires lots of skill and a good one can actually reverse the flow of a battle.

Thankfully, pyros have one ability that requires skill to be useful with: the airblast. Using a puff of air, the pyro can reflect any non-bullet projectiles, extinguish flaming team mates, and push enemy players around. Even noobs can reflect long distance rockets, but it takes a lot more skill to surprise a soldier around a corner, light him on fire, and reflect his first rocket back into his face for a quick kill. I have, in my time, intentionally reflected every single reflectable projectile, most for a kill. I am most proud of the two times that I killed a demo with his own stickies. I am also very proud of this kill below.

Thats right, I reflected his arrow back into him, killed him and stuck him to the wall BY HIS FOOT!!!! LOL!!

*UPDATE*
From the TF2 Saxxy Awards comes a video showcasing a truly great pyro. I am not this good. All props go to the player.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Today was a good day. I caught a lot of rare bugs and fish today, including two Hammerhead sharks and three Goliath Beetles. Made lots of money. Also, today I found the golden slingshot in the sky and collected it. Nice day.

Music of Games

Really, how could games ever set atmosphere without the music. Yeah Silent Hill is creepy, but it wouldn't be nearly as creepy without the bone grating music at every corner. The best games use music to set the tone like a Hollywood block buster. Square Enix is pretty famous for this, in and out of Final Fantasy. Some of the more recent Final Fantasy games included some J-pop, which really doesn't sync with the FF setting. I wonder if any readers know the game "The World Ends With You" Square made for the DS? That was an RPG set in the fashion district of downtown Tokyo. That whole games sound track was J-pop, pop, and Rap. I'm not really a fan of any of those genres, but man did it ever fit the setting.

Then you have the game music that transcends atmosphere and becomes an icon in of itself. Green Hill Zone, Mario theme, Legend of Zelda, Tetris (my favorite was theme C, but no one remembers that one). Still Alive from Portal almost topped them all to become a pop culture phenomenon.

So the point of that whole lead up is that the Turret Opera at the end of Portal 2 is the most amazing piece of gaming music. Ellen McClain, the voice actress for Glados and the turrets, is a professionally trained opera singer and really got to show her stuff for this piece. The following video doesn't contain any major spoilers, but it does come at the end of the game so watching it may sully some of the impact of a first play through. All I can say is it almost made me cry.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
Well, I got the next house upgrade and now have three floors. My next mortgage costs 598,000 Bells (!!!!). My palm trees are growing (phew) so I should start catching some rarer bugs soon. Still working on getting the golden watering can. Redd visited town today and sold me a counterfeit painting. I have insurance, but thats also a scam. Oh well.

Internet game graveyard

In reference to yesterdays post, the key binding works, but it looks like you have to redo the binding each time you log on, so not really worth it.

Internet games are often fun, but some are just gems of game creation. But then you have the odd case of internet games not always being maintained. Addicting Games is good since they don't ever seem to delete anything. Cartoon Network on the other hand is terrible about this. Most of their games suck, but back when they had good cartoon they actually made some good internet games for their site. Unfortunately, their servers must have gotten full or something, because they deleted a lot of them.

ENTER THE SAVIOR!!!!! This website provides ripped copies of old Toonami games. It doesn't have all of them and doesn't carry any none Toonami games, but these are some good games. http://lostdata.comuv.com/ My personal favorite was Lockdown. It's a pretty good rpg, if simple.

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World
I caught a DORADO today!!! Thats worth like 15,000 bells. Then I caught two red snappers and a Barred Knife Jaw. Final price at the store: 28,040 bells.

Key Binding

One of the games I have logged tons of hours on is Team Fortress 2. Normally not a huge fan of FPS, but this one is soooo nice. Online gaming is always a blast and the re-spawn system takes a lot of the stress out of the game. Logged at least 72 hours as a pyro (favorite class, more on that another day), but today I bound some key commands.

I don't play as an engineer all that often, but in a good solid match the thrill of building a forward sentry position is hard to beat. So today I bound the build commands for all the engineers buildings to the directional arrows [up teleporter exit; down tele entrance; left sentry; right dispenser]. Took me a little while to get the syntax right; online guides are infinitely helpful. I was just testing it, so I logged onto a server for a quick jaunt. I didn't have my mouse handy and had to use the track pad. Not the first time I've tried a real game with a track pad and I don't think I will every try it seriously. Still, I could tell that the time it took to build the structures was greatly shortened from using the PDA. I will see how it works with the mouse later this evening.

CURRENT OBSESSIVE GAME (COG): Animal Crossing: Wild World

Today was the flea market, so I didn't do much because you can't go into your own house for long during the flea market. Found the T-Rex skull in one of the fossils. Bought the forged painting insurance from Lyle; probably a scam, but I like to try everything. KK Slider comes this evening, wonder what song it will be? 

Getting Started

Well, I am making a blog. It will be the standard fare of internet self indulgence. Subject will be the video games I play. I don't really have anyone to discuss my games with during the day, so I hope this blog can become a nice substitute.

In reference to the title. I don't really play a lot of recently released games. My usual games are emulator games and games released several years ago. I have almost every gameboy ever made, a Wii, emulators for Genesis, SNES, NES and Gameboy Advance, and a Steam account.