It’s been a slice, England.
Though I’ve been back in Canada now for a few hours, and some of the specifics of our trip are starting fade from my mind, I’ll never forget how amazing every minute of that trip felt for Steff and I.
It’s going to take a bit more time for me to settle in, but I do have some post-trip posts lined up. Stay tuned!
By the time this post goes live, my girlfriend and I will have stepped foot in London, England. With little to no access to the internet for the next week or so, you won’t be seeing me writing any up-to-the-minute news or anything of that nature.
However, there will still be stuff to read on In Third Person. Before getting into some new posts, I thought now would be a great time go back through the archives and spotlight some great posts from the past that you may have missed. If you’re thinking that I’m taking the easy way out on this one because I’m out of the country, you would also be correct, but I swear these posts are worth going back for!
Hey Friends,
Sorry for the lack of posts these last few days. I’ve spent most of the last four days enjoying the spoils of Fan Expo 2011 in Toronto. I haven’t even been at my house to sleep most nights, as it’s been more convenient for us to have me crash at Steff’s place.
If you were there, I hope you enjoyed it as thoroughly as Steff, Michelle and I did. It was once again a great event, and moving the location to a larger venue helped make things run so much smoother. I will try my best to document as much of my experiences as I can in the next few days, though my fleeting memory will also be challenged by a looming vacation to London.
I may not be as thorough with my posts as last year, but I’ll be sure to scribe something before I hop on that plane! Take care everyone!
Having recently completed Vanquish, the game got me thinking about the context behind any given video game. What I mean by context in this sense, is the context behind your actions within a game. For instance, the story of a Super Mario game might be paper thin, but the context for actions is clear: you’re trying to save Princess Peach. Oftentimes, people will use the word ‘story’ in place of ‘context’, but I think context is a better fitting word in this sense.
The context behind Vanquish is awful for a number of reasons, yet I really enjoyed playing that game strictly because I loved the gameplay mechanics that drove the experience. I simply chose to tune out the convoluted story, poor dialogue and bad voice acting.
Though I’ve sort of talked about this topic in the past, I wanted to open this up for discussion. Do you need context in your video games in order to enjoy them?
Catherine is a really hard game to judge at face value. Unless you’ve tried the game for yourself, it’s very easy to misinterpret Catherine as some sort of perverse porno game. Even by watching the recently-released Catherine gameplay trailer, it may only confuse you further. You might then be asking yourself even more questions, such as:
“Is this a puzzle game?”
“Is this a dating simulator?”
“How does this all even work?”
“How do you play out the sex parts?”
Before I continue with this review, I’ll answer the last question for you: No, you do not play out the sex parts. This is not a porno game and the act of sex itself is not as big of a factor to the game as you may have been lead to expect. What it is though, is likely a gaming experience you’ve never had before.
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Normally, I don’t like to use In Third Person as a means of perpetuating a company’s PR cycle. Not to say that I’m anti-establishment or anything like that, but every professional or amateur video games enthusiast writer is going to write the same stories about the same press releases. Adding my own spin to a public relations piece that has been spun a million times before generally doesn’t excite me one bit.
However, this one is a bit different. The Catherine demo won me over in a big way, and I’m really loving the final product. Expect to see a review for Catherine tomorrow. I had some concerns that this game would fall on deaf ears for looking like a perverse Japanese porno game (which the game is not). Had it flopped and discouraged Atlus or others from releasing more unique products, I would have been a very sad panda. Thank goodness then for the announcement from Atlus that Catherine set an Atlus sales record, having shipped more units at launch than any other Atlus game in the publisher’s 20-year history.
Even prior to yesterday’s announcement of a massive price drop, it was fairly safe to say that the Nintendo 3DS isn’t doing so hot right now. The system hasn’t sold very well anywhere, the games haven’t sold well, the game library as a whole sucks, and a number of upcoming games have either been delayed or cancelled due to the system’s poor sales. I bought one at launch and I’ve been pretty disappointed in it. The software lineup has been very weak, the 3D effect is nothing more than a gimmick and the hardware itself takes some weird steps backwards from the DS Lite. While my website metrics aren’t the most accurate means of judging the interest level in a console, all of my Nintendo 3DS posts have tanked hard, which I blame mainly on lack of interest in the platform.
So the news of a Nintendo 3DS price drop isn’t exactly a shock. What is a shock, however, is how big the drop was. Nintendo is slashing over 30% off the $250 asking price to bring the new Nintendo 3DS price to $170.
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Shortly after writing my previous post on my time with the Catherine demo, I decided that I was going to purchase the game. Normally, when I’ve made the decision to buy a game before its release, I patiently wait until launch day and buy said game at a store. I like the experience of going into a store and getting the game immediately, rather than having the release date pass by while my game is in transit at the mercy of the postal service.
This time, I pre-ordered it online. I grabbed the PlayStation 3 version so that my girlfriend can play my copy too. I’ve never pre-ordered any games online before, and this is only the second time I’ve ever purchased a game online. No, I didn’t go out of my way to pre-order it so that I could get the bonus soundtrack and art book (though it’s a nice bonus, I guess). I pre-ordered it to save myself from any potential embarrassment.
When this game was first announced, I immediately wrote it off as simply one of those erotic Japanese games that never make their way to my country. There’s a market for those types of games, but they’re not for me. However, the more I read about Catherine and its premise, the more I was intrigued to learn more.
With the demo out now on XBOX Live and PlayStation Network, I gave it a shot.
It is unfortunately, a fairly well-known fact that the online video game community is not the most pleasant place in the world. Especially in the competitive gaming space, where there are no shortage of people spewing hateful epithets from their mouths, or sending over colourfully-worded text messages to others about others’ in-game behaviour.
During the last few weeks of playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I’ve received an abnormally large amount of hate messages; way more than I ever did playing Street Fighter. I don’t play Marvel to infuriate others, but for whatever reason, the player base seems to either really hate me, or are just a talkative bunch.
I thought I’d share some of the messages I’ve received with you just for kicks (and to expose some of these jerks who really should behave themselves). As much as I’d like to expose their gamertags, I have censored those (and any coarse language) out of respect to the message senders and to my readers. Anyway, here’s a taste of some of the worst messages I’ve received through XBOX Live of late.
In Third Person 
