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Nostalgia For Sale
After purchasing a few games on the GOG sale last week, Steam has started up its Summer Sale to entice me into buying a few more games that I probably won’t ever play past tonight. Buying games for me is an addiction and I might need help but, for now, I think I’m just happy that I can catch up with some old favorites and catch up on some games that I have never played before.
I ended up buying Crysis and Star Wars: Dark Forces last week during the GOG sale. Dark Forces got me nostalgic for old Quake engine games so this week I ended up buying Quake 1 and Quake 2 from Steam. I was never much of a PC gamer because my dad, a photographer, always bought Macs and they weren’t meant for gaming, or at least that is what he always told me. I also picked up Abzu and Half-Life 1 during the Steam sale.
I just played about an hour of Quake 1 and it is still fun to be in those old environments. The gameplay is pretty solid and it doesn’t look terrible on my gaming rig. I tried to bump up the frame rate but it didn’t work so I started searching around the Steam forums for tips and it surprised me that people are still really into Quake. People mod that game to make it look presentable on newer PCs, some even have taken to making old mods work on new machines, and I got stuck on one topic reading about how to make the official soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails work on modern machines that don’t use CD audio.
Suffice it to say, Quake is still very much loved by people and that makes me really happy as a person who loves games. I am heartened by the fact that so many people out there are doing the work to make games like this playable for chumps like me who have no desire to put in the leg work. I wish companies would set aside funds to keep their old projects alive or, at least, allow the community to do so without fear of litigious consequences.
Even if I don’t ever play my Steam version of Quake again, I’m happy that I was transported back to junior high once more. I’m happy that I found a copy of the soundtrack and put that in for 20 minutes. I’m glad that the internet is still open enough for me to be able to recreate my past for a few minutes. It seems like with the way things are going things might not always be this easy.
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I Don’t Really Need Any More Information
When it was announced that Masaya Matsuura, the creator of PaRappa the Rapper and Keiichi Yano who created Gitaroo Man were getting together for a new project titled Project Rap Rabbit I didn’t need to see anything more than the teaser trailer that accompanied the announcement.
After seeing this concept gameplay video that was released last week I am excited for this game to be made. I have never donated to a Kickstarter and I might just be part of the problem but I am also not someone who gets overly excited about games even though I consider myself a video game maniac. There is something about this game that just touches me in the right place.
I can remember playing the PaRappa the Rapper demo a thousand times when I first got my PlayStation because I didn’t have enough money to actually buy any games. I think NanaOn-Sha brings back those memories for me whenever I play one of their games. I really love Yano’s rapping in this video and I hope that they will stick with his voice for the finished product, or at least make it an unlockable.
Sadly it was announced on June 20th that Project Rap Rabbit did not make it’s campaign goal on Kickstarter but “I gotta believe!” that this game will get picked up in the future. I would love to see this game done right no matter on what console it calls home.
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The Future of Japanese Programming
Tokyo University had a children’s programming workshop Sunday, June 18 according to NHK. The event was meant to help encourage children’s interest in the IT field because starting in 2020 will usher in new curriculum set forth by the Education Ministry (MEXT) which includes changes that will allow students to take part in these kinds programming activities.
The event was coordinated by Tokyo University research staff and faculty. Around 100 elementary school students joined the event.
The students were tasked with programming a small robot with simple instructions like forward, back, left and right. The children had to avoid obstacles while making it to the goal. (Even though the video is in Japanese, you can easily see the course.) They worked with one another to get the robot to move in the right direction. Of course, you can see in the video that there was a lot of cheering each other on to make it to the goal.
One third grader said, “I thought about how I was going to make it move first and I was really happy that I figured it out on my own. I would really love to have this kind of class at my school.”
It has been announced that “The Duke,” one of the worst controllers ever made is making a comeback later this year. The news coincides with Microsoft’s announcement that they will be bringing original Xbox games to the Xbox One. (Fuck! Microsoft’s naming conventions are stupid.)
Hyperkin, an accessory maker, has announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring an updated version of “The Duke” to the Xbox One. The new controller will feature the required additional buttons needed for the Xbox One, a recharge cable (which means it will be wireless), and a logo display screen…I have no idea what this is. Is it just going to be like the PS4’s touch-pad but even more useless?
I never actually owned “The Duke.” I purchased my original Xbox after Microsoft started putting the smaller Controller S into their American retail boxes. I definitely used one of the bulky controllers and never really liked it even then, which makes me wonder why they are doing this. Are that many people going to buy a crappy controller based on nostalgia?
Microsoft have a lot going for them I am interested in their new console and they seem to be the only console maker that is making a concerted effort to collect their back-catalog in one place, which I very much support. I don’t really think putting out a controller that everyone hated 20 years ago is the best move, which might be why they are partnering with another company to do so instead of wasting their own money putting out the thing themselves.
The Power Glove was much more of a beloved controller that was ten times more useless than “The Duke” but even it has never had a reissue. We might be witnessing the downfall of western civilization before our eyes. John Wayne is probably rolling in his grave right now.
As Promised! https://t.co/tOVQEg3IqR
— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) June 12, 2017
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Steam Free Weekend: SpeedRunners
I really like the Steam Free Weekend. It gives me a chance to play some games that I probably would never have tried if I had to pay for them. This weeks entry in the Steam Free Weekend is SpeedRunners.
SpeedRunners is a 4 player competitive platforming game developed by DoubleDutch Games and published by Tiny Build. DoubleDutch is based out of the Netherlands (it’s not just a cute name). DoubleDutch also has a free mobile game called 321Tap that looks like it might be pretty fun as well.
SpeedRunners is a couch co-op game for most modern consoles: Xbox One, Playstation 4, Linux, Mac, and Windows. The object of the game is to make your way around circular stages fast enough to eliminate the other players while not getting eliminated yourself. The way you get eliminated is to get caught offscreen, so keep up. The game boasts a co-op mode where you can play 2-v-2 online and thousands of user created levels to keep the game fresh.
I had some fun playing the single player campaign and I tried a few multiplayer matches online. As you can assume, for a game that came out on Steam in 2013, I got my ass handed to me online.
SpeedRunners has a healthy online community and is also an ESL-supported e-sport, which probably helped lead to me getting decimated online. Tiny Build had this to say about their player-base on their homepage for SpeedRunners:
What was a humble platformer is now an ESL-supported e-sport with over a million players!
It sounds like SpeedRunners has taken hold of a whole lot of people and I am glad that Steam’s Free Weekend allowed me to have some time with this game. I’m not sure if I would buy this game, it all depends on if I can get a regular game group set up in my new town. For now, I’ll stick to Nidhogg as my go-to couch co-op game but SpeedRunners definitely gave me a peek at a fun 4 person competitive platforming game that is easy to pick up and deep enough to spend countless hours perfecting.
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Phil Spencer and Xbox One: Put Up or Shut Up
Xbox head Phil Spencer has spent a lot of time trying to silence Xbox’s detractors but with Xbox One’s third month on top of Sony in NPD console sales it looks like Spencer’s approach is panning out for Redmond.
Xbox One outsold the PS4 again in September. @XboxP3 is doing a fantastic job with the shape of the XB1 platform.
— Zach (@officialzachj) October 14, 2016
@officialzachj Thanks, team effort, XB1S, 1P games on XB1 and Win10, XBL features getting good use, really thankful for all your support..
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) October 14, 2016
When Spencer entered the doors at Xbox’s headquarters in Redmond, WA he was putting out a lot of fires and he needed to change consumer perceptions about Microsoft’s Xbox One platform which didn’t debut well compared to the Playstation 4. He has done a lot for consumers since he started at Microsoft, but what he has done to internal Xbox team perceptions might prove to be his biggest coup. From the outside, at least, it looks like Spencer’s reign at Xbox has done wonders since the turbulent launch of the system.
I just got done playing a VR demo for Q-Games’ Dead Hungry. Dead Hungry is a VR cooking game experience a la Cooking Mama. The object is to feed the approaching zombies from your burger shack. Most of the objects in the burger shack can be handled and thrown at the zombies to turn them human again, but only the tastiest treats will do. There are a lot of interesting options that are available to the player, but some combinations will make the zombies vomit; putting pizzas on the burgers, throwing buisness cards at the zombies, pulling the light bulb out of the ceiling and making a burger out of it, etc.
Being that this was my first VR experience, I had a lot of fun (it helps that there was an audience behind me that I could help entertain). I was one of the now shrinking mass of people who didn’t find VR very interesting, but then I tried it myself and now I can say that I am a convert. I don’t think that every VR experience will be a great one but I thought this experience, at this time and place, was really fun and interesting.
The game was developed by Q-Games. My friend Chris Nimmo, developer of A Mini Falafel Adventure, went to 58 Diner last year based on Dylan Cuthbert’s recommendation. He said the food was really good so we had it again this year but we didn’t go to their shop. This year 58 Diner has a food stand at the back end of the convention hall to help feed all of the walking dead attending BitSummit. I thought the food was really good but the size was lacking for a fat American guy who walked 3 miles around the convention hall.
The game will probably bring a lot of buisness to 58 Diner because of the cross promotion at the convention. I am not sure how feasible it will be to have that promotion in the actual game when it releases but we’ll find out when it releases.
Unlike before I actually tired to play a VR game, I am excited for the correct VR experience for me. My favorite Japanese phrase is 十人十色. It means “to each his own.” There is a bit lost to translation but it tends to help me remember that we are all different but we all have a place in this world and now I finally realize that I have a place in the VR world too.
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Gran Turismo Sport has Balloons!
The Gran Turismo franchise has always been on the cutting edge of technology and Gran Turismo Sport, the newest addition to the franchise is no different. In the past Gran Turismo was usually the centerpiece in the Playstation lineup, a product that showed the rest of the Playstation development community the possibility of eking out jaw-dropping visuals on each respective console generation.
The PR video above Polyphony Digital released for Gran Turismo Sport at this year’s E3 was more of a promotional piece for Gran Turismo as a cultural touchtone than it was a tech demo for the Playstation 4 as a piece of hardware. This could be because of the similarities in hardware between Sony and Microsoft or it could be because Polyphony Digital wants to position itself differently this generation compared to other generations.
Gran Turismo Sport looks great from the videos that are out there and I don’t think there should be any question in fans minds that it will once again be a classic example of driving beauty. Since the architecture of the Playstation 4 is so similar to that of the Xbox One, I wonder if this game will be that far ahead of Forza in the looks department. I can’t do any side-by-side comparisons to gauge which game has better this or better that, all I can do is play each game and critically figure out which one aligns with my own tastes.
Last generation, GT5 and GT6 were like two sides of a coin. GT5 was a good game but because of development issues it lagged behind in more areas than it excelled at. GT6 seemed like Polyphony’s desire to show the world that they could make a great game in under a century that was packed with a lot of the stuff that was missing from the first Playstation 3 developed GT game. GT6, in my mind, was the ultimate racing experience of last generation; it was such a tighter product than GT5 or any of the Forza games.
GT Sport looks like it will be the follow up to GT6 that Sony fans want from Polyphony. It looks like they are getting into live streaming and the development team is focusing on online features that will bring the all corners of world together to play this one game. In this way, GT Sport looks like it has a chance to be a worldwide phenomenon; the kind of phenomenon that Gran Turismo games have always strived towards. I’m looking forward to being able to play the game with my own Playstation 4 controller when it comes out November 18th 2016.
I am a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos that was created by writer H.P. Lovecraft. I am especially interested in it’s history in the realm of video games. I have been playing through Alone in the Dark recently and like the eldritch themes that are present in that game. I have always wanted to play the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a game that came out for the “original” Xbox and PC. I have never gotten around to it but I have heard good things about the game. There are countless other games that have taken themes from Lovecraft’s works, most recently the Amnesia games have been extremely popular with the worshippers of Cthulhu.
During E3 this year, Cyanide Studio announced that it would be making a new Cthulhu game called Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. There was only a small teaser but contained in those few moments were some lush visuals that look like they could drum up some pretty horrific feelings of terror in the player.
I found that the main title screen for the trailer is reminiscent of the Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare cover art. Both characters walking through a gate to the unknown. The Alone in the Dark 1 cover art has the character much more centered but it is difficult to see the gate in that picture.
The trailer looks fantastic. The setting is a creepy island called Darkwater Island. (I’m not sure that a more ominous name for a place has ever existed in the history of mankind.) The trailer has a couple glimpses at the evil creatures that reside on the island, the creatures look pretty horrific.
The camera pans around different areas inside a house or mansion, there seems to be a definite Amnesia or Soma vibe to the game – the former being another title in the Cthulhu video game mythos.
I didn’t know anything about Cyanide Studio so I checked out some of their past titles. The studio was founded by seven former Ubisoft employees. The studio has been in business since 2000, so it seems like there is some pedigree there but most of the games that the studio has developed don’t really appeal to me until now. As I scrolled through their game catalog it seems like they have mainly worked on sports simulation games – a healthy number being cycling games. They do have Styx: Master of Shadows in their catalog, which was a Games with Gold game on the Xbox One platform, and I did hear some pretty good things about that game but, once again, I haven’t played it so I can’t really comment on it.
The trailer for Call of Cthulhu looks really good but I am concerned with the studio’s catalog as a whole not being a good representation of what is needed for a good Cthulhu game. Of course, being just a teaser, we can’t take too much out of the short video as a representation of the final product. Fans of Cthulhu games will just have to hope that this game turns out as good as it looks.
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Titanfall 2 is Gonna Stomp Your Face
I am incredibly excited for Titanfall 2. I was not one of the masses who bought the first game, bought an Xbox One, and expected that game and that console to change their entire lives. I did get the game quite a bit after the fact and all the DLC for a steal. I played the game with the legions of people who still hold it down on a nightly basis in that game. I leveled my stuff up a lot and I had a great time getting to know the game at my own pace.
I am glad that I play games in this fashion. I don’t really want to be part of the “conversation” because then the conversation gets infested with yes-men who only know what to say critically, concerning games because they listened to the latest episode of the coolest podcast on iTunes or Youtube show. I am glad that I generally wait for the price of games to go down. I am glad that I wait for server issues to get worked out. I am especially glad that I play the game with people who like the game and have learned to figure out the game’s systems and will teach those systems to you as a new player because it can only strengthen the community.
Because I wasn’t one of those people that had serious issues with this game, because I didn’t hang all my hopes on this one game to hold my attention for the first few months of my console’s life, I was able to find a great game that was fun to play. I wasn’t invested in the back-story because it was apparent that the developer wasn’t very concerned about the story. I am sure that there is some lore master at Respawn that believes they told a great story in the first game but I would point that person to the internet and to this reviewer – the story was nonexistent, or at very least forgettable.
It is because I played this game as a multiplayer game only that I can say I didn’t need a story mode in Titanfall 2. I am glad it is there. It looks like it could be a big dumb action movie of a story mode, which I can definitely get behind. I just hope that Respawn didn’t add this new story mode into the game to appease all of those people who didn’t play the game the first time around – those people who never came back to the game, even after all the content that was added to the game. I hope that the story mode brings in the people who didn’t enjoy the first game or didn’t try it at all and I hope it appeases fans too.
I would love a story mode in Titanfall 2 that is reminiscent of the story mode in Mortal Kombat 9. I hope that it is just big dumb action with an equally dumb story. I hope that it makes everybody laugh and have a great time with somebody sitting on the couch next to them. But, most of all, I hope the single player campaign is short so people will get online and take advantage of the game that Respawn always wanted to make – a great multiplayer game with fun mechanics.
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Nintendo at E3
Nintendo has been digging in and shrinking their footprint on the home console front. They first announced earlier this year that their E3 live-stream would focus on the upcoming Zelda game for the Wii U. A disappointment to those of us who have been spending a lot of time on our Wii U recently; games like Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, and a solid amount of indie games to keep us satiated until Zelda descends upon us. Like an abused dog, we sunk our heads and understood that something is better than nothing.
Nintendo is focusing on their plans for mobile phone games, as well as the impending launch of the NX so I can understand their desire to stay quiet this year. It was announced today that they will show off a few other games during their E3 “presence” which can only help their image as a game publisher but, as a fan, I can’t help but want more.
Last year Nintendo had a great showing at E3. It seemed like nearly every company should have followed suit; pack-up, quit paying the ESA’s exorbitant fees, and just do a live-stream. (It looks like this year many companies have done just that – once again proving Nintendo’s position as the leader in the industry.)
I am quiveringly excited for the new Zelda game and I respect Nintendo’s move to mobile; it shows that they aren’t the doddering old company that they once were. Nintendo is moving with the trends of the industry while keeping with their roots, which can’t be an easy thing to do in this industry. Nintendo is sitting on a knife’s edge looking into the abyss. On one side, they are trying to stay with their old markets hand-held console games, console games, with a smattering of handfuda cards and playing cards to pay for the toilet paper in the offices. On the other side, they are moving more towards mobile, which is where the rest of the world has already moved; there is a reason why Puzzle & Dragon was ported to Nintendo 3DS. I believe that Nintendo knows what they are doing but as an old-school gamer I am a bit saddened by the lack of console games.
Zelda could be a powerhouse hit for Nintendo this year but I hope that they have some cards hiding in their back-pocket for the Wii U. I don’t think that I am ready to say goodbye to that console, it’s such a great machine.
This is the second part to my Reviewcast from last Friday. I played some of the browser only Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir and a little more Pac-Man for the Neo-Geo Pocket Color. Take a look and enjoy!
Here is my Reviewcast for Revenge of the ‘Gator and the Neo-Geo Pocket Color version on Pac-Man. Enjoy!
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Things to Do in Omaha When You’re…a Gamer
I have been thinking of ways to inject myself into the Omaha gaming community which has been difficult because being a gamer means that I like spending time alone playing games. I have been going to Catalyst: A Weekly Social Gaming Meet-up at Portal LAN Arcade on 84th Street. Nerdtron, a local gaming group, is behind organizing Catalyst. Nerdtron is run by my buddy Cay who is forever working tirelessly to make nerd-dom more bearable in Omaha.
The event aims to get people together and do what they love – game. There is some emphasis on eSports at the event, which appealed to me, because I play Dota 2, while most of the other gamers were playing League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm I did find a couple of Dota compatriots.
The coolest thing about the event is that Portal LAN Arcade really just feels like a Japanese Manga cafe. I loved going to Manga cafe’s in Japan. I always felt like I was at home. I didn’t need to try and be someone else. The biggest asset of playing games, for many people, is by playing a character you can be a different version of yourself – you can be the person you want to be instead of who you are.
Playing at Portal Lan Arcade is a welcoming experience with a bunch of networked PCs in one section of the building and console game in a separate section. They have a small selection of drinks and snacks at the front counter. The prices for admission are pretty fair in my opinion.
Since winter is coming around the corner, I really need a weekly event to keep me from going stir crazy during these awful winter months in Omaha. I think going to Portal LAN Arcade will keep me from becoming too much of a hermit. Come out of the darkness and join me at Portal LAN Arcade next Friday!