Miscellaneous summer musings…about games

I had a plan which completely nosedived the moment Valve unleashed its Steam summer sale on me. I find when I make some sort of schedule, or plan, involving playing a single game, it just doesn’t work out as well as I would have hoped. Back in April, I had picked up the highly praised Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii. I had spent a significant amount of time with it for the better part of April, but the moment I couldn’t handle a particular enemy, I shut it off thinking I would go back to it later. I never did.

The goal to complete Xenoblade Chronicles in as few sittings as possible was not realized, and I’m not sure when I’ll pick it up again. Instead, I focused my efforts on smaller games and THQ’s Darksiders, which is faster paced than Xenoblade, although it takes the combat mechanics of the God of War games and the exploration of The Legend of Zelda and puts it in front of biblical lore, so familiarity is the appeal. I managed to see that through to the end, and ended up mostly enjoying it, but I felt as it the team behind it tried their hardest to extend the game where it didn’t need extending. It was worth the $10 I paid for it, nevertheless.

I also tried to put some time in with Final Fantasy XIII-2, which I’d been anticipating for a while despite mixed opinions from a lot of people. I’m enjoying it enough, having played for close to 20 hours. It’s fun when it’s fun. I enjoy the combat most of the time, and sometimes I think it’s too much work to find the right strategy. I don’t always feel clued in to the next objective, since the game’s plot involves a lot of time travel and allows the player to manipulate and change events already experienced earlier. I intend to see it all through to the end, but I think it’s my anticipation for The Last Story, from XSEED Games, that puts me out of focus with it.

I think the lesson I’m learning is to simply play what I feel like. It sounds ridiculously obvious. I do enjoy trying to hammer through a game as quickly as possible, but not to a point where the fun stops. It’s a twisted game in and of itself. It’s why I also went back to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the best games from 2004 I’ve played through twice, and being on PC allows me to enjoy it in high resolution. I’ve also been readjusting to life in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, where my character is now the guildmaster of the Thieves’ Guild. Strangely, she still gets treated like a rookie by the others.

“Play what you feel like.” Did I mention I purchased three Shin Megami Tensei: Persona titles for PlayStation Vita? Oy vey.

PlayStation Notwork

Pardon the incredibly lame pun.

I am rather annoyed at the whole situation, annoyed at both sides of this ridiculous battle and the consumers who just wanted to enjoy their copies of some big titles that saw release. I bought Portal 2 after a rather hefty price slash across several retailers across the board, including Amazon; the same with the new Mortal Kombat (I ordered the Xbox 360 version). Hell, this should have been the time for SOCOM 4 to bring down the PlayStation Network servers, not a bunch of hackers who have it in their heads that they’re doing something right in the name of one of their own. When that affects consumers who wanted nothing to do with this argument, and can’t get the full service that they paid for with their console, all that goes out the window.

Of course, Sony has fumbled around, running like chickens with their heads cut off and not keeping anybody updated right away. I’m addressing this now as there is now rumor of yet another attack. Honestly, as an Xbox 360 owner the Sony issue didn’t affect me too much. I am in the camp that extensively purchases the Xbox 360 version of games with a co-op or competitive mode, but the whole Steam connect is what drew me to the PS3 copy of Portal 2. Now that I am technically now affected by this outage, the attacks, the nonsense on both sides, I just want to yell for everyone to get their act together. I have little sympathy for Sony, to be honest, but the hackers acted as if their actions weren’t going to have consequences in the end and negates their cries of “We never meant to hurt the users.” Yeah. Great ball-handling there and astuteness of seeing the big picture, you idiots.

Ridiculous. All of it.

E3 2010: Sony and Nintendo: ‘Hey! This isn’t Harry Potter…’

Time passes rather quickly. Already my writing an entry on E3 may already come off as ancient history, but while the event was taking place, two major events captured my attention: the madness of pre-ordering an iPhone 4, and the madness of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the vuvuzelas that come with it.

I say this time, let’s cut to the chase so we can get back to our soccer/football/futbol, shall we?

Nintendo’s approach to appease its ‘hardcore’ fan base, the folks who enjoy jumping on Koopa Troopas and launching fireballs as the company’s mascot plumber Mario over a shooting gallery at a virtual carnival starring their Mii characters, used to offend me. Their only answer to this ‘problem’ was to just throw another Mario game at them, but folks ate them up. Games developed by third-party developers that aim to a less casual audience tend to flop and appear dead on arrival (Sega’s The Conduit and MadWorld, and EA’s Dead Space: Extraction are two examples). This year, Nintendo brought in the big guns, and while I won’t be playing some of their future titles right away, it brings me a sense of relief that they will be there. We have a new Legend of Zelda game, titled Skyward Sword, for the Wii. I have yet to play Twilight Princess, released in 2006, and during that period I had considered myself “retired” from the franchise. In 2007, I had attempted to play the Phantom Hourglass game on the DS, but gave up on it for a number of reasons. Skyward Sword boasts a visual mixture of Twilight Princess, and the love-it-or-hate-it Wind Waker (Gamecube, 2003). It has an extra flavor of an oil painting/illustrated storybook look that drew me in despite series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s awkward demonstration of the game at the Nintendo presentation last week.

Nintendo spent a lot of the presentation discussing the capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS, and with games like a new Golden Sun (the first since The Lost Age, the second episode, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003). I had to actually look up the title of the second Golden Sun game. I hadn’t played it since 2004. In addition to the first-party games (a potential new Star Fox and a Kid Icarus game after all these years), there is a lot of third-party support from the big names, including a Resident Evil game from Capcom, a Splinter Cell game from Ubisoft, and a Metal Gear Solid title from Konami. Color me sold.

I regret that I don’t have a whole lot to express about Sony’s time on the stage because, as I remember it, I was physically tired having been awake for a lot of the previous night. Sony discussed their premium service, of which I have no interest in. They managed to show up the Kinect with Move, their take on motion control, by showing a demonstration of a wizard-ing game called Harry Pott– I mean Sorcery. It can be generically described as “interesting,” and absolutely nothing to get excited over. I will stick with my Wii, that I have even decided to touch for the first time in over a year (thanks, Super Mario Galaxy 2!). One of the stronger highlights was the appearance by Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, and his promotion of the much anticipated Portal 2. That wasn’t the big deal. We all knew that. The extra added punch came in the announcement of Steamworks, which allows Mac and Windows users to play multiplayer games on the same servers with one another, and its compatibility on the PlayStation 3. That about topped off the sundae, chock full of Kevin Butler and his motivational “We’re gamers!” speech that provided some genuine humor, with the cherry on top that was the development of a Twisted Metal game, the first since Twisted Metal: Black (PlayStation 2, 2001).

That about does it for this year’s E3, among other things. I need to dock points here, though, or maybe throw a yellow flag on the field.

Microsoft — 5-yard penalty for that creepy Kinectimals segment.

Nintendo — 5-yard penalty for the awkward Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword demonstration. An addition 10-yard penalty for the GoldenEye remake and failure to understand why it was the monster that it was in 1997. They announce the 3DS and its lineup. The penalty is declined. First down.

Sony — 10-yard penalty for an uninteresting presentation. Kevin Butler speech and PS3 Steamworks. That penalty is declined. There is an additional 5-yard penalty for the inability to sell me on a PSP after five years, as well as the failure to sell Move.

Next time: I talk about the iPhone 4.