Month: April 2010

One More Try: Mirror’s Edge

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During a lapse in my gaming itinerary, I decided to pop Mirror’s Edge back into my 360. Last time I wrote about this game, the game tried really hard to make me not like it. The game succeeded at that. I still love the premise of a free-running first-person game, but I stopped at the end of the second level in frustration, after dying roughly 50 times.

After a few minutes in the training level, I thought I was ready to go. What the training mode didn’t prepare me for was encountering trial-and-error gameplay and crappy combat.

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Stranglehold: A Video Game B-Movie

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During a time of economic instability, relatively high prices for new games and a number of high-quality games to choose from all major platforms, the market doesn’t really show much love to decent or middle of the road games. You can be an avid gamer on any system and own 30 games; all of which are AAA titles. If a game is not on the level of a Modern Warfare 2 or Halo, gamers nowadays with discriminating wallets can easily leave your game to rot in the bargain bin.

Stranglehold was one of Midway’s last attempts at creating a AAA title. It featured fast-paced third-person shooting, was inspired by John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” and even starred Jet Li as the protagonist. However, in a market crowded with great shooting games, not even John Woo and Jet Li could save Stranglehold from being a mediocre game at best and a sales flop.

In spite of its shortcomings, my experience so far with Stranglehold gives me the impression that this is a pretty decent video game equivalent to a B-movie. It has its flaws, but for the right person at the right price it could still be a good time.

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The Colour of Fun

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Not that many games are fun anymore. No, I’m not talking about the ratio between good games and bad games. I’m talking about games whose sole existence is to be fun. Street Fighter is fun, but wrapped in a game where you get enjoyment out of beating the crap out of someone else. Grand Theft Auto is fun, but that fun comes from wreaking havoc on a city an its inhabitants. The Resident Evil series is arguably not fun at all, as the enjoyment is derived from the games scaring the crap out of you.

This is why de Blob smacks me like a breath of fresh air. Behind the colourful visuals (which haters may call kiddie) and cheery music is a game aiming to achieve fun in it’s purest sense. I’ll be quick to admit that I’ve only played the first level, but this Wii game had me grinning from ear-to-ear from the opening cinematic to the end of my initial playthrough.

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Looking Back: Berzerk

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Berzerk has a unique and weird place for itself in the pantheon of video games. In the arcade, it was one of the first video games with speech. It’s also believed to be the first (and I think only) video game to actually kill a person.

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Game Design Talk: The Money Play

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The first time I remember finding a “money play” was in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. After a few fights with Rocksteady, I figured out a cheap way to beat him without him ever touching me. If you’ve ever played this game, you probably figured this trick out, too. If you don’t, the image above shows how to do it. If you’re perched up on those boxes with Donatello and attack down, Rocksteady will just eat your attacks until he dies with no way to fight back. I was only six years old when I figured that out. Before I ever took the time to think about how video games worked, I had already figured out how to exploit the system.

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Daigo Vs. Justin At the Super Street Fighter IV Launch Party

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Last night, I was feeling a bit under the weather and I passed out the moment I got home. As a Street Fighter IV enthusiast, this kind of worked in my favour as I woke up just in time to catch the Super Street Fighter IV launch party taking place in the west coast.

The main event was a must-watch for those who follow the scene, as it featured two of the top Street Fighter IV players, whose rivalry has led to arguably the best Street Fighter matches of all-time. When they did battle last night, they went back and forth and finished with probably the craziest ending possible. Click through to watch the final round!
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Death of the Video Game Instruction Manual

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Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced that it will no longer make instruction manuals for it’s games, beginning as early as this fall. As someone who grew up in the 8-bit era, when instruction manuals were critical part of the experience, it kind of saddens me to know that this is probably the beginning of the end for paper instruction manuals. Back when I was younger, I used to love reading the instruction manuals on my brand new games as I was being driven home from the store. Some games were totally incomprehensible if you try and play them without reading the manual first. Also, as someone who used to trade in games a lot, keeping the original box and manual would always increase the value of your trade-in.

In the grand scheme of things though, the death of video game instruction manuals is probably well overdue.

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Video Game Guardian

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As the oldest child on my mom’s side of the family, I learned very quickly that I would have an influence on my younger siblings and relatives wheter I consciously tried to or not. Before my younger brother could ever get into playing toys, he got a hold of a Gameboy and a Super Nintendo controller and never looked back. At the time, I figured it was just the kid thing to do, but those early days of playing Super Mario World really did change his life.

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Hori EX 2 Was An Epic Fail

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I’m not new to this whole video game hardware failure thing. It’s frustrating every single time. Going into this, I knew I was getting an entry-level arcade joystick, but the relatively positive reviews and the trusted Hori brand name led me to believe that I was getting a “good enough” joystick to start with.

So much for that thought.

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Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll

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Although I haven’t stepped on an actual skateboard since I was 10 years old, I’ve had some good times with skateboarding video games. I started with the genre oddly enough on Tony Hawk 2 on the Gameboy Advance, which I thought was great. I then bought Tony Hawk 3 on the Gamecube and it was the pinnacle of video game skateboarding fun for me at the time. The last serious foray into skateboarding games for me was Tony Hawk: American Wasteland on the DS, which was alright, but I never played it for more than 30 minutes.