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.