I've gotten around to reposting a couple of old articles. The first is “RPGs don't know how to be hard,” which was written by my friend Benoit who is now a classy game designer. The second is a shitty rant I did about Mega Man 9.
Only one of these articles is really worth your time to read. Can you guess which one?
Conduit 2 Has An Introduction Now
The Conduit had exactly three things going for it: the controls, the voice acting and the tech it was built on. Everything else—story, level/character design, hacker-friendly multiplayer and no split-screen mode—made it a game that I played for exactly one week and then forgot about afterward. It seriously only took a week for the online multiplayer to become unplayable because of glitches and invincible hackers, and the single-player campaign was just barely worth completing.
This intro video for Conduit 2 shows that they have effectively destroyed one third of what made the first game playable. The trio of Mark Sheppard, Kevin Sorbo and William Morgan Sheppard as the voices of The Conduit's three main characters made those character likeable and are the sole reason why I sat through every line of dialogue in the game. The new guy playing Agent Ford sounds exactly like Cutter Slade from Outcast, and although Outcast is a good game, the comparison isn't a compliment. And hearing anybody but Kevin Sorbo give voice to Prometheus just makes me sad.
High Voltage has supposedly done a lot of work to fix the problems from the first game. More diverse settings, a reworked storyline and expanded multiplayer (including local 4-player and coop modes) are all supposed to make Conduit 2 more playable than their last game. But, so far, the game looks like shit anyway. The once apotheosized Quantum3 engine now looks dated compared to GoldenEye 007 and even Modern Warfare: Reflext Edition. And, despite efforts to the contrary, High Voltage's level and character designing skills don't seem to have improved any since The Conduit. They've also revealed very little of the story aside from that it will take place all over the globe with Atlantis serving as a hub.
I'm sure the controls will be as great as ever: The Conduit is the reason why first-person shooters on Wii finally have almost universally great controls. But without the original cast and because of High Voltage's now-ubiquitous bad level designs and the total lack of evidence that the writing has improved at all, Conduit 2 will probably be as much of a chore to play through as its predecessor.
Do yourselves a favour and just pick up GoldenEye now, play through it, enjoy it, get online and have fun while the servers are still active, and forget about Conduit 2. You don't need more disappointment in your lives.
The Year Was Two Thousand and Ten...
There is nothing else coming out this year that I have any interest in seeing, so I'm just going to call it: Predators is the best movie of 2010. I haven't enjoyed a single other thing directed or produced by Robert Rodriguez, including Planet Terror and Machette, so I was surprised that I enjoyed Predators so much. Even more than the original, I'd say.
The runners up are The Karate Kid—anyone who complained that it didn't have any karate in it was obviously too hung up to enjoy a really well done movie—and Let Me In. These are seriously the only three movies that were worth the money I spent to see them.
Alice in Wonderland was a typical Tim Burton mess—this guy hasn't made an original film since Beetlejuice; Scott Pilgrim vs. The World stars Michael Cera as Michael Cera; Iron Man 2 had all of the same problems as Spider-Man 2; and the only way Inception could be considered thought provoking is if the last movie you'd seen were Transformers 2. It was an incredibly disappointing year for movies, and Roger Ebert still thinks that he's critiquing art.
The runners up are The Karate Kid—anyone who complained that it didn't have any karate in it was obviously too hung up to enjoy a really well done movie—and Let Me In. These are seriously the only three movies that were worth the money I spent to see them.
Alice in Wonderland was a typical Tim Burton mess—this guy hasn't made an original film since Beetlejuice; Scott Pilgrim vs. The World stars Michael Cera as Michael Cera; Iron Man 2 had all of the same problems as Spider-Man 2; and the only way Inception could be considered thought provoking is if the last movie you'd seen were Transformers 2. It was an incredibly disappointing year for movies, and Roger Ebert still thinks that he's critiquing art.
One of These Things is Not Like The Other. One of These Things is Shit.
Activision published two first-person shooters for the Wii this month: GoldenEye 007 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. One is a well done remake of an N64 classic and one is a shitty port of a PS3/360 game with graphical errors and missing features.
The only thing absent from GoldenEye is voice chat for online play, but since Nintendo doesn't even want to support their WiiSpeak peripheral anymore you can't really blame Eurocom for leaving it out. GoldenEye still looks great and is a lot of fun to play both online and off. Meanwhile, Black Ops has clipping issues during cutscenes and enemies who get stuck in walls or can't be damaged until you've moved past a certain point to "activate" them.
I want to know how two high-profile games released by the same publisher in the same month can be so drastically different in quality. It was obvious from the media silence preceding its release that Black Ops would be bad, but Treyarch had done well porting three other Call of Duty games to the Wii. So what the fuck went wrong?
The only thing absent from GoldenEye is voice chat for online play, but since Nintendo doesn't even want to support their WiiSpeak peripheral anymore you can't really blame Eurocom for leaving it out. GoldenEye still looks great and is a lot of fun to play both online and off. Meanwhile, Black Ops has clipping issues during cutscenes and enemies who get stuck in walls or can't be damaged until you've moved past a certain point to "activate" them.
I want to know how two high-profile games released by the same publisher in the same month can be so drastically different in quality. It was obvious from the media silence preceding its release that Black Ops would be bad, but Treyarch had done well porting three other Call of Duty games to the Wii. So what the fuck went wrong?
To Kill a Metroid
I already wrote about this, but now Kotaku has an interview with Reggie Fils-Aime where he says that Nintendo is trying to figure out why Metroid: Other M hasn't met sales expectations. He was reluctant to admit that the criticism of Samus's character, which is mentioned in almost every single article on and review of the game, is the reason—probably to avoid hurting Yoshio Sakamoto's feelings, since he's admitted to being a big cry baby.
It couldn't have helped that the Wii is Nintendo's least popular console ever among traditional players. But even Metroid Prime 3 has sold within 700,000 copies of the original Prime game (2 million and 1.3 million, respectively)1 and almost doubled sales of Metroid Prime 2 (800,000); whereas Other M has sold only 560,000 copies so far2. Sure, the three Prime games have had years to accrue sales while Other M has only been available for a few of months, but Metroid Prime reached half of Other M's total sales in just one week.
I was getting sick of the Metroid Prime series after four games and a pinball spinoff, and can easily say that Other M is a much better game than Corruption; but what I think doesn't make back the millions that Nintendo spent on development and marketing. Reggie may not acknowledge the vadility of fan complaints in public, but I can guarantee that Nintendo is taking a serious look at Sakamoto and Team Ninja's development process right now.
1. Wikipedia - Metroid Prime: Trilogy (Overview)
2. VGChartz - Metroid: Other M (Sales)
It couldn't have helped that the Wii is Nintendo's least popular console ever among traditional players. But even Metroid Prime 3 has sold within 700,000 copies of the original Prime game (2 million and 1.3 million, respectively)1 and almost doubled sales of Metroid Prime 2 (800,000); whereas Other M has sold only 560,000 copies so far2. Sure, the three Prime games have had years to accrue sales while Other M has only been available for a few of months, but Metroid Prime reached half of Other M's total sales in just one week.
I was getting sick of the Metroid Prime series after four games and a pinball spinoff, and can easily say that Other M is a much better game than Corruption; but what I think doesn't make back the millions that Nintendo spent on development and marketing. Reggie may not acknowledge the vadility of fan complaints in public, but I can guarantee that Nintendo is taking a serious look at Sakamoto and Team Ninja's development process right now.
1. Wikipedia - Metroid Prime: Trilogy (Overview)
2. VGChartz - Metroid: Other M (Sales)
A Short Message to Game Publishers
If you want people to stop buying used games, stop producing games that people will trade in right away.
Valve Has UK Retailers "Steamed"
Do you see what I did there? Do you fucking see it!? I believe I have become a god.
I found this story via Destructoid: a couple of UK game shops are threatening to stop selling PC games that support Steam because it's counterintuitive to their own forthcoming download services. Because this isn't a news blog, I'll leave the synopsis at that and get straight to admiring my own words.
I'm not a fan of Steam, or even Valve for that matter. Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is just a fancy way of saying “Good luck playing your games in ten years when support for the authentication service is discontinued”; and Valve has been so goddamn keen on itself ever since Half-Life, I'm sure that Gabe Newell genuinely believes himself to be some sort of prophet. He's here to spread word of the third coming of the messiah, Gordon Freeman—which, if Christianity is anything to go by, is never going to happen.
But “brick and mortar” retailers, as they've stupidly come to be called, have reason to feel threatened. Assuming people continue to ignore the looming issues of net neutrality and bandwidth caps, digital distribution is going to completely replace physical media within the next couple of videogame generations. It doesn't matter if you want it to or not: it's cheaper and gives publishers unprecedented control over their media and its profits.
So, if retail companies like GameStop want to stay relevant, they need to get in on the racket Valve has going with Steam. But with Steam already offering a highly desirable means of digital distribution, these companies may have to actually *gasp* innovate *shock* if they want to compete, rather than phone it in and complain when things don't go their way, which is the way they have traditionally handled things.
Clearly I'm torn. I hate Valve and Steam, but I also hate companies that refuse to think creatively in order to stay in business. The RIAA is the perfect example: when music became digital they had no idea how to market it anymore. Instead of evaluating their own business models to figure out what needed to change, they automatically blamed consumers and began tossing around lawsuits. Meanwhile, iTunes quietly snuck in and began commanding the new market.
The same thing is happening here. Video game publishers and retailers have been complaining about piracy for decades, and Valve has recently created a clever solution that publishers have been quick to adopt. But traditional retailers are acting like unathletic kids in gym class who are always picked last because they're too fat to be good at dodgeball. Rather than take the initiative to lose weight and practice, they've chosen to complain to their moms and threaten to not invite the publishers to any more birthday parties. Is that a good analogy? I think it's a good analogy.
I begrudgingly have to side with Valve on this one, but it doesn't matter to me anyway because I haven't bought a new PC game since Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I can wait ten years to play Modern Warfare 2, when it'll be available on GOG for $9.99.
- Via MCV
I found this story via Destructoid: a couple of UK game shops are threatening to stop selling PC games that support Steam because it's counterintuitive to their own forthcoming download services. Because this isn't a news blog, I'll leave the synopsis at that and get straight to admiring my own words.
I'm not a fan of Steam, or even Valve for that matter. Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is just a fancy way of saying “Good luck playing your games in ten years when support for the authentication service is discontinued”; and Valve has been so goddamn keen on itself ever since Half-Life, I'm sure that Gabe Newell genuinely believes himself to be some sort of prophet. He's here to spread word of the third coming of the messiah, Gordon Freeman—which, if Christianity is anything to go by, is never going to happen.
But “brick and mortar” retailers, as they've stupidly come to be called, have reason to feel threatened. Assuming people continue to ignore the looming issues of net neutrality and bandwidth caps, digital distribution is going to completely replace physical media within the next couple of videogame generations. It doesn't matter if you want it to or not: it's cheaper and gives publishers unprecedented control over their media and its profits.
So, if retail companies like GameStop want to stay relevant, they need to get in on the racket Valve has going with Steam. But with Steam already offering a highly desirable means of digital distribution, these companies may have to actually *gasp* innovate *shock* if they want to compete, rather than phone it in and complain when things don't go their way, which is the way they have traditionally handled things.
Clearly I'm torn. I hate Valve and Steam, but I also hate companies that refuse to think creatively in order to stay in business. The RIAA is the perfect example: when music became digital they had no idea how to market it anymore. Instead of evaluating their own business models to figure out what needed to change, they automatically blamed consumers and began tossing around lawsuits. Meanwhile, iTunes quietly snuck in and began commanding the new market.
The same thing is happening here. Video game publishers and retailers have been complaining about piracy for decades, and Valve has recently created a clever solution that publishers have been quick to adopt. But traditional retailers are acting like unathletic kids in gym class who are always picked last because they're too fat to be good at dodgeball. Rather than take the initiative to lose weight and practice, they've chosen to complain to their moms and threaten to not invite the publishers to any more birthday parties. Is that a good analogy? I think it's a good analogy.
I begrudgingly have to side with Valve on this one, but it doesn't matter to me anyway because I haven't bought a new PC game since Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I can wait ten years to play Modern Warfare 2, when it'll be available on GOG for $9.99.
- Via MCV
Simba Remembuhs
While we're on the topic of YouTube, here is an older-yet-more-recently-uploaded video that also started out on YTMND. Back in college I used to think that it would've been a really cool assignment for everyone to create their own YTMNDs and submit them, but now I realize that nobody over the age of 40 would want to view—let alone grade—thirty-something versions of animated dildos dancing to "Land Down Under."
If you haven't played or payed attention to the new Metroid game, the joke in this will be lost on you.
If you haven't played or payed attention to the new Metroid game, the joke in this will be lost on you.
Egon's Wonderful Time
Update: I think I've solved the copyright problem. I filed a dispute claiming that the video is a parody of the song “Living In The Sunlight, Loving In The Moonlight” by Tiny Tim. And it is, really. It's also a parody of “The REAL Ghostbusters,” both of the Ghostbusters films, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” cosplayers, Bob Ross, and trumpet-playing penises (peni?). Hopefully this means that the video will be available worldwide from now on, because God knows the world could benefit from my specific brand of artistic expression.
This is a YTMND that I worked on last night. Because YTMND has been down for most of the day I decided to upload it to YouTube. This can be considered the "official" version since it's the only one where the sound and animation are guaranteed to sync up in every browser across every operating system.
It's a complete waste of your time, but go ahead and watch it anyway. I doubt you have anything better to do. (You are visiting this blog, after all.)
This is just great: now I have an active YouTube channel that I need to skin as well. Is it considered uncouth for an unemployed blogger to complain about having too much work to do? It is uncouth, isn't it?
This is a YTMND that I worked on last night. Because YTMND has been down for most of the day I decided to upload it to YouTube. This can be considered the "official" version since it's the only one where the sound and animation are guaranteed to sync up in every browser across every operating system.
It's a complete waste of your time, but go ahead and watch it anyway. I doubt you have anything better to do. (You are visiting this blog, after all.)
This is just great: now I have an active YouTube channel that I need to skin as well. Is it considered uncouth for an unemployed blogger to complain about having too much work to do? It is uncouth, isn't it?
