wii

Early Impressions of Donkey Kong Country Returns

JettLeave a comment

 The Donkey Kong Country series used to be a staple of Christmas cheer in my household. I received all three Donkey Kong Country games from Santa on the years they came out. Though I have extra-fond memories of the first one, all three games were pretty good. However, ever since Donkey Kong 64 in the late 90s, DK hasn’t really starred in his own platformer. Instead, he’s spent over a decade starring in spin-off titles and making regular guest appearances in games like Mario Party.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a welcome return to form. Besides being a return to Christmas tradition for me, this game goes back to the series 2D platforming roots. As of writing, I’ve just beaten world 2, but I wanted to share a few thoughts on what I’ve experienced so far.

Continue reading →

Girlfriend Gaming – Hands-On With Kirby’s Epic Yarn

JettLeave a comment

 

I fell in love with Kirby’s Epic Yarn from the moment I saw the debut trailer at E3. The art style and creative gameplay I saw in that trailer really wowed me. The moment after I saw that trailer, I sent pictures and videos over to my girlfriend, who I thought would love it just as much as I did. Turns out, I was wrong.

She had some concerns about how the art style would translate into gameplay. In particular, she thought that the fabric aesthetic might be gimmicky at best and detrimental at worst, especially since you can see through Kirby and many of the other characters. It’s been out for a while now, but we finally got a chance to play it for ourselves.

Continue reading →

Just Dance 2 Review

JettLeave a comment

When Just Dance first came out, I did not expect it to be the smash-hit that it ended up becoming. It won millions of people over with its great concept, song list and it was fun to play. Even though I had some problems with the game’s design as far as how it reads inputs, most people were too busy doing the MC Hammer dance.

Though I didn’t purchase the first game, I played enough of it with my girlfriend to know that I would probably have fun with the sequel. On launch day, we both went to her local Best Buy and bought our own copies. Does Just Dance 2 serve up the goods, or does it just get served?

Continue reading →

The ESRB and My Video Game Collection

JettLeave a comment

Last year, my 7 year-old cousin at the time discovered Modern Warfare 2 through my 12 year-old cousin. Ever since that day, my now 8 year-old cousin has become enamored with the Mature-rated Call of Duty series. For him, Modern Warfare 2 was his Mortal Kombat; it was his gateway drug to Mature-rated games. As of now, he owns Conflict: Denied Ops and Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which he brags about being M-rated all the time.

I didn’t bring this anecdote up to talk about parenting. I don’t approve of him playing content I would deem inappropriate for him and I do what I can to keep that stuff away. The reason I bring this up though, is because my 8 year-old cousin now views that M rating as a symbol of cool. He loves the fact that he owns games that he knows he’s too young to be playing. They’re his forbidden fruit and he’ll take anything he can get at this point.

All of this made me think about my video game collection and how it relates to the ESRB. Once upon a time, the Mortal Kombat series was my forbidden fruit. Did my catalogue of games evolve in relation to the ESRB guidelines or did I overdose on forbidden fruit? I do the math to answer these questions and highlight any insights regarding gaming as I grew up.

Continue reading →

Trade Away Post: September 2010 Edition

JettLeave a comment

Trading games in is not a practice I regularly take part in. I generally like to keep my stuff and would like to think that I only buy games worth owning forever. However, sometimes I roll the dice on certain titles and it doesn’t always work out for any number of reasons.

I recently went to my local video game store to trade in a bunch of games. Here are the games I got rid of and the reasoning behind letting them go.

Continue reading →

Super Mario Collection Announced For Japan

JettLeave a comment

To celebrate Super Mario’s 25th anniversary in Japan, Nintendo is releasing Super Mario Collection, which includes a port of Super Mario All-Stars, a book about the history of Mario and a CD with classic and new Mario music. It’s set to come out on October 21 in Japan for the equivalent of $30 US.

Continue reading →

Using ‘Cost Per Hour’ to Determine the Value of a Game

Jett4 Comments

cost-per-hour

Over the past few years of following podcasts, message boards and reviews, there seems to be this weird metric that creeps into discussions in one way or another. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to it as ‘cost per hour’. It’s a metric that people directly or indirectly use to judge a game’s value based on how much it costs and how long the experience is. I will express it with the following formula:

Value = Cost of Game/Number of Hours Played

In a perfect world, where money directly translates into valuable experiences, these types of metrics could work as a means of judging a game’s value. However, this logic is flawed, because neither cost or value variables are consistent. You can’t make a blanket statement saying that Limbo is too expensive at $15 dollars because it’s only a 3-hour experience, because it might go on sale, someone may take longer/shorter to beat it, and subjective opinion may say that their time with it was totally worth that price.

The price you pay for that experience and the length of that experience are viable factors in determining a game’s value, but not the whole picture. However, what if we did take away all of the other factors? Is it possible to come up with a consensus cost per hour rate to determine whether or not a game is worth it? I take a few examples from my collection and crunch the numbers to find out.

Continue reading →

In Third Person Passes 200 Posts: Here’s 5 You May Have Missed

JettLeave a comment

200 posts is a fairly big milestone for a blog. I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I’m pretty sure the majority of blogs get abandoned after a handful of posts. I love In Third Person, and I think creating 200 posts by myself in just over 13 months says a lot about my love of games and my commitment to this site.

During that time though, I also switched platforms from Blogger to WordPress. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that the majority of my Blogger readership didn’t make the jump to WordPress and that my WordPress following never dug into the older Blogger posts. If you don’t fit into either use-case, then 200 blog posts is a lot of content to catch up on.

If you’re looking to go back through the In Third Person catalogue, this 201st post highlights 5 posts you may have missed.

Continue reading →

These Might Be the 25 Least-Loved Wii Games

JettLeave a comment

Kotaku’s Nintendo Channel stat-tracking articles are some of my favourite pieces of gaming enthusiast press content. I applaud Stephen Totilo for going through the effort of digging through the Nintendo Channel stats every month to gather insights on what Wii players are playing.

In this particular case, what they’re not playing. Most recently, Kotaku posted an article called “The 25 Least-Loved Wii Games, Maybe“, which lists off the Wii games with the lowest average time played. There are a number of qualifiers and disclaimers you should know to give you context to this data, so I recommend you check out the original story on Kotaku if you haven’t already. If you have (or don’t want to heed to my warning) hit the jump to see the least-loved Wii games and my analysis of these unfortunate games.
Continue reading →

Closing Thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy

JettLeave a comment

Last time I wrote about Super Mario Galaxy, I gushed over how it was a technical and creative masterpiece, yet I found myself not having that much fun with it. At the time, I wasn’t completely sure whether or not there was something wrong with the game or something wrong with me. I was hoping that the final stretch of the game would bring it all together and I would have a blast with it. Though after completing the game with the bare-minimum number of stars, it’s failed to hook me in and I don’t know why.

Continue reading →