Just give it a new name

So while on my way home from working thinking about things that piss me off, the thing that sprung into my head today was how much I hate it when developers just slam a big established title name on something just go generate sales.

Once again I'm going to use Silent Hill: Book of Memories as my example, god I hate this game so much and I've not even played it.  Why does this have Silent Hill written on the cover?  What does it have to do with Silent Hill?  Throwing in some monsters from the series does not just make the game a Silent Hill, you need to follow certain themes and game play styles for it to qualify.

Origins and Shattered Memories were different, but at least they both retained something that fans of the series are familiar with.  This, is just a completely different game, and the only reason the Silent Hill title is there, is so you can try and dupe fans into buying your probably shitty dungeon crawl.

Silent Hill is not the only series guilty of pulling this shit though, Final Fantasy is another one.

Final Fantasy XII, despite being an RPG, barely qualifies as a Final Fantasy game.  Gone is all the exploration and levelling and the kind of battles that you expect with a Final Fantasy game.  It doesn't bare any resemblance to what were used to, and the only reason it's been labelled as "13" is so that fans of the previous 12 will go out and buy the fucking thing.  Lost Odyssey is more of a Final Fantasy game than Final Fantasy 13 is, hell, if you just changed the names round people would have been a lot less mad about 13 being a bunch of corridors strung together by a stupid plot.

I'm not saying don't make spin offs, I mean look at Crisis Core, that game is fucking great, but the reason it works is because even though the game play is drastically different, it still has strong links to Final Fantasy 7s plot and certain things that we got used to using, like Materia, have been adapted to work in interesting new ways. 

The point on a sequel is to improve and expand on what you've already got, if you're going to change everything up then just give it a new fucking name.  Remove Silent Hill from the Book of Memories title, and suddenly I'd want to play a horror themed dungeon crawl, but because you put that name on there you're just ruining things for no reason.

It'd be like me developing a new Mirrors Edge game, but making it an RTS.  That's not a sequel or a spin off, that's me putting a established name on something so that fans of the first will buy it, and all I'd really be doing is pissing people off.

So just call Book of Memories "Book of Memories", and just call the next Final Fantasy "Badly Written Idiot Adventure" because people will still buy it. I don't think companies realise we're not scared of new IP's, in fact I'd say the majority of people want more of them, so stop ruining good series, let them die and give us new shit.

ALF

I have no idea who this fucker is, I think he's from some 90s American sitcom that I have never seen, but I played the fuck out of his shitty Master System game recently, so lets talk about that for a bit!

I have no idea what the story of the TV show is, but the game is all about trying to find fuel for Alf's space scooter so you can go back home to your ship and see your girlfriend again or something, it's a load of crap.

ALF on the Master System is basically an adventure game where you must find items to solve puzzles and eventually get back home.  Adventure games are usually known for being pretty lengthy, but ALF is stupidly short.

However don't let that fool you into thinking that you're going to sit down and polish off this game during a work lunch break, because ALF also suffers from being stupid hard for all the wrong reasons.

Between finding items in order to get your ship working, you must play through 3 or 4 "action stages" each one more bullshit than the last.  The screen shot above is the first one, where you must navigate a cave while fending of bats with salami.  It doesn't sound too hard, but the hit boxes are really stupid and the jumping in this game is just broken.

Most sane people would just turn it off and never look back at that point, but because I'm a huge glutton for punishment I beat the damn thing, and you get nothing more than the usual 8-bit "well done" screen at the end so really all I did was prove how adept I am at wasting my own time.

I was going to go on for a bit longer but I realise I've probably wasted enough of YOUR time talking about this shit game, so I'll end by saying that if you're looking to go retro with some Master System games, don't play this.

Midweek Rayman Madness!

Well I had better luck with my recording this time round, and put in a good levels worth of platforming goodness!  So kick back and enjoy!

Red Dead Redemption

I was so wrong about this game, so damn wrong, and that doesn't happen very often.  Red Dead Redemption is a game that was sitting in my backlog for a long time, mostly ignored because anyone that I talked to about it just said "oh, it's like GTA with horses".  That to me meant it's probably pretty fuckin' good, but not THAT good, so it got shelved for other titles.

God. Damn.  I wish I played it at release and not listen to 5 word reviews from friends.  This game, is probably one of the best games I have had the joy of playing.  The gameplay is pretty much what you would expect from a Rockstar sandbox game, apart from the setting it's nothing all that different in terms of gameplay, but they really REALLY outdid themselves when it came to the story.

There might be spoilers from this point, so if you care about spoilers for a game released in 2010, I'd suggest you go fuckin' play it right now.

The game follows John Marston, wild west superhero on his quest to get his family back from the government by bringing members of his old outlaw gang to justice.  The core story is nice and simple, but you meet so many characters that will just throw spanners into the mix that it stops being as black and white as you might think pretty early on.

I could write for pages about why each individual character was so good, but I'll sum it up by saying that what Rockstar did here, better than any recent game I have played, is make me invested in the story.  I actually cared about John Marstons family about as much as he did. I mean he (and by he I mean me) was busting his ass so bad for them you couldn't help but sympathise. 

One of the best things this game does though is making the player hate the "bad guys".  The villains in this game are all really good but the ones that fuck you over, you REALLY want to get back at.  It feels so good when you're doing a mission and the objective says something like "kill that fucknut", you get hyped so damn hard.

The ending is also really fucking good, with the final scene having me shouting at the TV in disbelief.  I would describe it to you, but you really need to experience it as a whole for the full effect, but it's REALLY good.

There isn't enough space in one post for all my gushing, but mark my words you'll hear me gush about this again in the future.  Guess I didn't spoil anything after all, which is good, so now you can go play it if you haven't already! Get to it!

Path of Exile Open Beta

I have a rather limited experience with Diablo 3, and the game was fine really, I had fun with what I played but it didn't really feel like Diablo anymore.  Diablo 3 was no more Diablo to me than something like Torchlight is Diablo. 

Anyway, this thing is also not Diablo, but it bares a closer resemblance to it than Diablo 3 did.  This, is Path of Exile, a game that has just recently gone into open beta.  Path of Exile is a free to play MMORPG and to sum up the whole game in very simple terms, it's fucking Diablo.

It's a little bit more than that.  While there are a lot of things that players who enjoy the Diablo series will like with this game, it does do things to stand out on its own.  While the game is free to play, everything you need to enjoy the game and be efficient in combat and stuff can be found within the game.  Dropping money on this game will not give you an advantage, it will just get you cosmetic stuff and some boosts.

The gameplay itself is pretty simple.  You go through acts, with out without friends, beat bosses and get loot.  The endgame is made up of "maps" which are usable items that create portals to areas, so party up and get your clicking finger ready for those.  Right now there are 3 acts in the main game, with the third added just recently and I'd imagine more to come.

What really blows every ones mind when they think of this game though, is the passive skill tree.

This thing is fucking nuts.  It's a big grid of over 1000 passive buffs, and every time you level up you can move one step.  Fans of the Final Fantasy 10 sphere grid will know exactly how this shit works, and if you go on the website you can play around with it and make yourself a build.  It's pretty good but its sort of intimidating and really you just have to take it as you go.

Finally, the last thing I really like about this game is, no currency.  This may sound weird, as selling items nets you "orbs" and identify scrolls.  You can then use these to buy other items, or use them on your own equipment to improve them.  The only reason I really like this system so much is because the in game chat is completely devoid of gold selling bots spamming rates.

Anyway, give it a go, especially if you were unhappy with Diablo 3.  It's fuckin' free, what have you got to lose?

Friday Night Rayman!

Well, I'm pretty much hooked on Path of Exile at the moment, and I have a back log of episodes to get through of these, so here you go!  A load of shit went wrong when recording this one, I recant the tale during the video, so give it a gander

VIDEO!

Tomm Hulett Leaves Konami!

Look at him....look at that smug, bald face of his, god damnit I hate him so much.  But today we have good news!

Tomm Hulett has left Konami! Break out the champagne glasses and raise 'em high! This is a great day!  For those that haven't seen my previous posts describing how much I hate this man, he is the guy that basically ran Silent Hill into the ground. 

Thanks to this man, and a bunch of people who must have masters degrees in missing the point, Silent Hill went from being one of the greatest Survival Horror series into a chain of shitty not scary action games that even the most brain dead gamer wouldn't find entertaining.  Hell, his latest abomination was a fucking Silent Hill themed dungeon crawl type thing that I've not played yet because I refuse to give Konami money for that.  It might actually be quite good as a game, but the fact that you had the nerve to slap Silent Hill's name all over it just to generate sales really gets under my skin.

Still, not content with just ruining Silent Hill, he's moved on to WayFoward to probably go and ruin something else.  He's gonna have to make something pretty fuckin' spectacular to turn my, and many other fans of Silent Hill, opinions around.  Good luck to you Tomm, maybe now that you're not focused on destroying gaming history, you might be able to produce something worth playing.

Right now, I hate you so much I wrote a Haiku about it

Fuck off Tomm Hulett
You are bad at making games
I hate you so much

The McDonalds 60 second seems a bit dodgy...

Sometimes I enjoy a bit of fast food.  Despite knowing it's quite possibly the most unhealthy thing I could possibly ingest, it tastes good and it's quick and easy.  When I went to visit my buddy in Kawagoe a few weeks back, I noticed this thing had started, where if your order doesn't arrive to you within 60 seconds, you get a coupon for a free burger or coffee or something.

Well, I've already heard horror stories about this shit causing problems, see this link for that info

http://kotaku.com/5973663/a-gallery-of-hamburger-horrors/gallery/1

but I've not had this problem.  But today I noticed something when I was grabbing a burger to kill time before work.  I'm pretty sure that the staff in McDonald's are starting to purposely go over the 60 second limit, to give you a free coupon in the hopes of getting you back in to order something else on top of your free shit, thus making more money.

Today I saw a woman order a coffee, and nothing else.  Pretty much as soon as the timer ticked out, it arrived, and it's not like this McDonald's was particularly busy.  Maybe when they realised that they are fucking up orders, they changed it to try and make people come back for a second run with that coupon.

I've either hit the nail on the head or I'm just a nut writing about burgers on a gaming blog while under the influence of yet ANOTHER fucking cold.  Still, fast food is good sometimes since you can reduce the amount of time spent not playing games, so it all sort of makes sense in my head.

Also I'm pretty sure McDonald's offers downloadable quests for Dragon Quest 7, which is pretty fuckin' good.

Embarrassing Portable Games

I've been playing quite a lot of Hatsune Miku Project Diva F recently, especially on trains and buses since the Vita is a good system for killing time with, but then I had a thought.

There is a mode in Miku called the Diva Room, this mode basically involves staring at the girls (or one of the two guys) go about their business, then give them presents to watch them do cute shit.  To make this iteration of Project Diva fit in with the capabilities of the Vita, there is an option to zoom in on the vocaloid and give them a friendly head rub.

If you want to get absolutely everything in this game, then you HAVE to do this stuff, and while I don't give that much of a damn if people know I'm doing this, I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of doing this shit in public.

So that got me thinking, Hatsune Miku isn't so bad, at least it's a well recognised character but there are certain games that would be better off not released on a portable system.  The big one that comes to my mind is Dead or Alive Paradise

Now I used to own the Xbox360 version of Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball, and I don't give a shit who KNOWS that I used to play that crap, but fuck me if I'd ever want to be caught playing that shit on a train. 

Why release a game for a portable system if you know that it's just gotta set the user up for some embarrassing shit.  Oh well, I've seen people reading porn on the trains round here, so I suppose there are worse things you could be doing.

All Aboard the Hype Train!

I don't usually get hyped up for games anymore, I find that everything that I expect to be good, is usually disappointing, but this has got my hype levels to go through the roof!

Killer Is Dead is a new game from Suda51, which is enough to get me at least interested, but the reason I am so hyped about it is because it seems to have that strange Killer7 vibe and in case you didn't see the post, I REALLY fucking like Killer7.

I'll post the trailer below but it seems to be the same kind of plot as pretty much every Suda51 one game, which involves assassins of some description, and absolute craziness.  Luckily for us too, the whole trailer isn't just cutscenes and we get to see some of the actual game, which looks like Killer7 and No More Heroes had a baby.  Slamming those two games together with a good narrative could mean something truly special.

But don't just take my word for it, watch the damn trailer!

Can't wait!

Back to Back Rayman! Sunday Edition!

Another day, another part of Rayman.  I make some awful puns and beat the Band Lands boss!  That was pretty tough and depressingly, it's only going to get harder.

VIDEO!

Back to Back Rayman! Saturday Edition!

Well, I've got another busy weekend, but this time I planned ahead and had some parts of Rayman ready.  Today is part 4 with the first bit of proper video editing (lol) since I got a really stupid game over.

It's true that Rayman is tough, but we shall soldier through!

VIDEO!

Japan, you freak me out sometimes

Well I was happily on my way home from work today, thinking about what kind of game related thing I was going to write for my blog, and while I was nearing my apartment, an area that gets really dark at night, I heard something off in the distance.

What I heard, was chanting, what I think was Buddhist chanting.  Now this is fairly normal right?  I mean, the two major religions in Japan are Shinto and Buddhism, but upon hearing the chanting in the distance, I started to freak out a little bit.  Now at this point, you're probably thinking I'm just a big baby, but it wasn't so much the darkness, or the chanting itself that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, it was because it reminded me of something.

Listen to the first 3 seconds of that.  That is the opening sequence from Silent Hill 3, and the chanting, I swear to god, sounded almost exactly like that.  While I was heading up the stairs to my place, my bag rubbed against the stone wall and the sound nearly made me jump out of my damn skin, I thought Valtiel was coming for me or some shit.

But that's the sign of a good horror game right? Silent Hill 3 came out in 2003 and having memories of it forced into my head via distant Buddhist chanting STILL freaks me out.  Most modern horror games can't even get me to be slightly concerned at the time, let alone 10 years later.

So quit making action games with monsters that go "boo", because that's all we seem to have.  I'm sure with all the tech we have, you can make something as long lasting as Silent Hill 3, so get to it!

Please Don't Make a Shadow of the Colossus Movie

So while I was digging around the internet for gaming related things, I came across at article on Gamespot that said "Shadow of the Colossus movie gets Hanna writer" here is the original article

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/shadow-of-the-colossus-movie-gets-hanna-writer-6402101

Now I've never seen Hanna or anything else written by the guy but the fact that this game is getting a movie upsets me, and it upsets me greatly, so let me tell you why.

This will not work as a movie, it just wont.  Think about the game itself, it's a dude running around, not saying anything, killing huge things to resurrect a dead girl.  How the fuck do you turn THAT into a movie that lasts at least an hour twenty?  If anything OTHER than that, is the plot of your movie, you are going to piss people off.

But games of movies are almost always awful, right?  On top of that, games of movies are also pretty shitty for the most part, so why is this?  Well for the answer lets look to Wagner!

This is a guy who would write music and opera and shit like that, and he basically came up with an idea known as Gesamkunstwerk, which is German for "Complete work of art".  Now I'm not super clued up on this whole thing, but the way I understand it is with something like Opera, if the music, sets, actors etc. etc. all come together in harmony, then it makes something really fuckin' good.

So that idea can be applied to this!  The reason game movies suck so bad is because you're talking away the whole GAME bit, and you're ruining the experience as a result.  The same goes the other way round, you have to change bits of a movie to make it a game, so you piss off fans of the movie, and gamers don't like it either because usually the game sucks ass.

The reason Shadow of the Colossus is so damn good, is because all the elements of that game make it so.  You take away the whole gameplay bit, the whole bit that makes you sympathise with just how hard this guys fuckin' job is, then you're taking away from the experience, and you're going to be left with a steaming piece of shit most likely.

So please, for the love of God, if you really are planning to make a movie of this game, FUCKING DON'T!

DmC: Devil May Cry Impressions

So I've not bought this game yet, nor have I played it, so everything I'm about to say is based on stuff I've seen so far, and it ain't good.

Let me start out by saying, no, it's not the redesign of Dante and it's not his goddamn hair colour.  I hate that whenever someone brings up some legitimate problems with this game, the first thing people start shouting is "well you just don't like his new hair!"  This is bullshit, and I'm pretty sure the people who spent hours upon hours learning combos in Devil May Cry 3 and 4 don't give all that much of a fuck about the way he looks.

Speaking of fucks, the thing I really don't like about this game is the writing and cutscenes.  If you want an example of what I'm talking about, go on Youtube and look up something called the "Secret Ingredient boss cutscene"  This scene literally has Dante and the boss exchange a few "Fuck you"s before the battle starts.  Who approved this kind of writing?  I mean the whole story seems bad enough with "corrupt government/corporations erh mah gerd" but adding excessive amounts of swearing just makes matters worse.  Game writing should be getting better, not regressing into the same kind of lines that teenage boys spout in a schoolyard argument.

Then there is the combat itself, which seems a damn sight less involved than the earlier games.  It looks functional, hell, even fun, but it seems way too easy to get those SSS combat ranks which you had to previously be really good to get.  Take a look at what I mean

Granted this is from some demo play I think, but if it's not been changed then....what the hell?.  If you look up combo videos for Devil May Cry 3 or 4, people do this crazy impressive shit, and even then the SSS isn't a guarantee.  But here it's done with one attack, on one weapon....not good.

Despite all my bitching, I still have yet to actually sit down and play the damn thing.  I'll pick it up one day, when I can find it pre owned because I'm sure as hell not giving Capcom any money for this ruination of Devil May Cry.  But you know what? I'll probably have fun with it, I'll probably even enjoy it despite all it's glaring flaws and crap writing.  One thing I can say in it's favour is that it looks like a very well made game in a general sense, and people would have probably been less annoyed about it if you just didn't slap Devil May Cry's name all over the damn thing.

I really wish companies would stop abusing a big name title just for sales, you could have made this a new IP and it would have sold just fine, you didn't have to spit into the DMC fan bases face on this one.

Dead Island: Are You Serious?

Two posts in one day isn't usually my thing, I'm too lazy for that, but this just took the biscuit.

What you are looking at in the above image is the Dead Island Special Edition package, which comes with a model of a bikini-clad dead woman's fucking torso.  I mean seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the people who produced this, and is there seriously people who look at that and go "yeah, I want THAT on my desk"?

You know, I'm not getting on this things case because I'm offended or anything like that, it takes way more than a dead woman's torso to offend me, but this is just stupid.  I mean, what do you usually think of when you get cool models in special editions?  A character, a monster, an iconic item from the game or SOMETHING like that.  I mean hell, if you wanted to go for sex appeal you could have had a sexy bikini woman smashing a zombies face in or something, but you went for THIS?!

With this, not only are you loading the gun of every anti-game person on the face of the earth right now, but in the future, when there's another bit of gaming controversy, people are going to point to shit like this to "prove" the fact that people who play video games are "disturbed" or some shit.  Plus if people see shit like this, and then you tell them later that you enjoy a bit of video games now and again, they are going to feel something negative towards you because THIS is the kind of shit you're associated with, and it doesn't matter if you even like Dead Island or not.

There is drumming up controversy for publicity, and then there is just retardation, guess which this one is?

Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures

The same friend that told me to try and beat Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back told me to hop on this one straight after, and really I wished he'd told me about this one first.

Indiana Jones: Greatest Adventures is a platformer for the Super Nintendo, but unlike the Super Star Wars games, where the three movies were split into separate titles, Indiana Jones just has 3 movies worth of games on one cart.

The game itself is sort of boring, but I'll tell you right now that it's a damn sight better than Super Star Wars despite being made by the same people.  The controls are a lot tighter, and it's easier to see whats hitting you, so you don't get the same level of bullshit rando-deaths that you did with ESB.  On the flip side, the game is WAYYYY too easy and all the bosses are, for lack of a better word, crap.

Still, if you like Indiana Jones and you don't want to rip your hair out I'd say its worth emulating or hunting down in a used book store whatever.  In terms of movie games you could do way worse than this.  Unlike a lot of movie franchises, Indy got some love and playing out some of the scenes from the movie was pretty fun.

There isn't really much else to say really, the game is just so "standard" and nothing really sticks out.  Not shit enough to get riled about and not good enough to get excited. 

The Techpocolypse

I'm having one of those moments I like to call a techpocolypse.  I don't know about everyone else, but for me, I never have just one thing break or malfunction.  It's like everything that I own syncs up and just fails me all at the same time.

Granted, the thing in my picture was my fault, as I forgot that I was resting the headset on the back of my chair when I sat down, but that's not the only problem.  My Camera has decided that it doesn't want to close the lens properly any more when I shut it off AND my computer has a greater tendency to just start sulking when I try to game on it for too long.

Luckily, I can solve all these problems but it really is a pain in the ass when just everything breaks at the same time.  Anyway, this bit of whining is a way for me to say that there may be a little tiny drop in audio quality on the Rayman playthrough for a while since I now have to use my laptops in built microphone.

Luckily, if you watch the Die Hard showcase or the Three Dirty Dwarfs playthrough on my Youtube channel, the sound quality isn't so bad, it was just way better with that headset.

Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope to god that nothing else fucks up.  Please also note that I will never use this blog to beg readers for free stuff.  If you want to send money somewhere, send it to the Alzheimer's Society.

Speed Running

With the end of the great Speed Demos Archive charity marathon, I thought I'd take a brief moment to talk about Speed Running.

Even though this sort of thing seems like basic knowledge to me, I know a staggering amount of people who don't really know what speed running is all about.  Speed Running, as you can probably tell from the name, is the art of beating a game as quickly as possible.  Some people have asked me "how can it possibly be fun to play a game like that?" Well, it's not exactly the kind of thing you can do the first time round, so you still get to experience the game as is on your first go.  The fun comes from trying to figure out tricks to shave that time down.  It might be something as simple as finding the most efficient way to move the character, or something really awesome like going out of the game boundaries.

The most awesome thing I saw on the stream was a guy who beat Ocarina of Time in 22 minutes by fooling the game into placing him in the final encounter after the first dungeon.  It required an immense amount of technical knowledge and it was super impressive to see pulled off right before my eyes.

My Speed Running experience however, is rather limited.  I tried to put one together for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, but gave up due to my move to Japan.  That said, I've been thinking about putting a run together on Biohazard with a friend just for the funsies, so maybe one day you'll get to see how that turns out.

In short, speed running is awesome, look up some videos!

More Rayman for the masses!

So I convinced myself before I started playing that this game wasn't so tough, but I'm starting to discover how wrong I was.  This is only the second world and every level puts me on edge, and the worst part is, it's only going to get worse from here.

Have a video!

Pokemon might just need to stop

Pokemon is a hugely popular series.  There are toys, games, TV shows, movies, all sorts of shit to be sold so that someone, somewhere can get rich and fat.  This is fine but I think we've finally hit a point where the games should really just stop.

Pokemon X and Y is the upcoming Pokemon title for the 3DS and marks the first time the game gets rid of the overhead 2D camera for a proper 3D game.  From what I have seen of the screen shots on a quick google image search, it looks like something that could have easily been done on the regular DS, so why the fuck did it take so long?

But that graphics aren't what people care about, it's the new Pokemon right?  But the problem there is that every Pokemon made after the whole Gold/Silver games have just been a bit shit really.  One monster that sticks out in my mind is something called Gurdurr

Anyway look at this fucking thing, its literally just a clown with a girder, talk about phoning it in.  I've heard that the total number of Pokemon has reached something insanely high like 700 or something, so no wonder it' has all started to go a bit shitty.

But what made me laugh the most was the name of these games, X and Y, really?  They have used up all their creative talent so now they are naming their games like Microsoft Excel spreadsheet cells.  I've had people tell me "oh, it's supposed to me chromosomes!" or some bullshit, but this is a load of crap and you KNOW it is.  Think about Pokemon, there has pretty much ALWAYS been a 3rd game with changes from the initial two (e.g. Yellow, Platinum or whatever).  So when Pokemon Z comes out you can stuff that chromosome shit up your arse, Pokemon isn't, and never will be that clever.

Still, despite my ranting I'm sure the Pokemon fans will eat that shit up, and it's fine, I don't have a problem with people enjoying Pokemon, it's just not for me.

(If you asked me I could probably name about 10 different monster breeding games better than Pokemon, go look up Shin Megami Tensei if you want a REAL monster breeding experience)

Rayman Part 2!

Another day off work, another session on Rayman.  Suddenly the difficulty that people were telling me about is starting up, but I didn't die enough times during this session to warrant any real editing.  I said it in the video, but I'll leave the hunting for missed Electoons for off camera sessions, since it would be boring just to watch me retrace old steps. 

Here's the next video! Enjoy!

My Inspiration

This is going to be quite a short post since I've already missed enough of this event, but today I'll be telling you a little bit about my initial inspiration for this blog.

Basically, Awesome Games Done Quick is an event done by a bunch of Speed Runners.  For those that may not know, "Speed Running" is the art of beating a game in the shortest possible time, and while I've never done a speed run myself, watching them is actually rather fun.

These guys raised so much money last year for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, that in inspired me to start this blog, and try and focus my hobby into something that could benefit someone, so check out the stream and maybe donate something to them since they only do it once a year.

It's a fun event, there are incentives to donate, and you will see some truly impressive shit go down over the next few days.

LINK TO THE STREAM!
http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/new

Coil

Coil is a game that was part of The Basement Collection, but I don't know if calling it a "game" is the right word for it.

I find this game extremely hard to write about because the whole thing is so abstract.  Basically, it is a puzzle game where you must follow the growth of this weird alien creature.  Each tasks you with moving a thing or collecting pellets or something, but never actually tells you what it is exactly you have to do or how to control it.  This may seem like awful design, but it's all really simple stuff that you can figure out in about 30 seconds if you have a working brain.

Between each level you get a little text screen that tells some kind of story that may or may not be related to what is happening on screen depending on how you read into it.  Coil is an "art" game through and through, something that you could sit around and discuss the meaning of if you were wearing a striped turtle neck and a beret.

As a game, it's not all that fun.  It's short and you don't actually DO all that much, but if you're into artsy games then you'll get a kick out of it.  Me on the other hand, I prefer my artsy games to have some actual substance to them.

Rayman Playthrough Part 1!

So I have been tasked to complete this game, so here we are!

I have to get all the Electoons and see the ending or whatever, so this may take a while.  There is only one part and right now I only did the first stage twice because I was under the impression that I didn't need anything additional to get all of the fuzzy pink balls aside from the punch.

Anyway, enjoy the new playthrough!

VIDEO!

Misadventures in Kawagoe

Once again posts on the blog have been a little bit thin on the ground, but that's not because I've lost interest or anything like that, this time I've been off adventuring in a place called Kawagoe, which is near Tokyo.

There isn't that many stories to tell as the last few days have consisted completely of walking around town with my buddy, drinking heavily and chatting shit about video games.  All this was interspersed with a trip to an old style bit of town called Koedo and many a 100 yen coin being put into various arcade machines.

There has been a problem though.  While I was on the bus, my camera decided to go walk about.  What I'm hoping is that somewhere during the ride it simply fell out of the seat pouch I was keeping it in, or better yet I just forgot it and it's sitting in a lost and found, either way it went missing on the bus.  That said, it doesn't look like I'll be able to pick it up until Monday at the earliest, so if I do get it back you can expect some blog posts about awesome shit I saw while I was there, if not, then it'll be all video games, all the time.

Still, it was a very nice place and I recommend people go see it, watch this space for updates!

My Personal Best Game of 2012

Well it's finally happened, we have stepped in to the new year.

I was hoping to maybe put together a list of the best 5 or so games that I played this year, but I found this to be way more hassle than I thought it would be.  Not really because I'm lazy, and not because games this year were bad or anything like that.  The problem is that everything that came out this year was just pretty forgettable. 

I was talking this over with a friend of mine and when I said "best game of 2012? GO!", it was followed by a long pause and then a "I dunno".  When we sat and thought about it for a while, we couldn't think of a game that either of us had played, released this year, that blew our minds or really stood out.

Still, that doesn't mean I don't have a pick for my personal favourite of the year, it means I just don't have a list.  So, my personal favourite game of the year is........

The Legend of Grimrock for PC!  I found it to be extremely enjoyable and got a kick out of playing an old school dungeon crawl again.  Sure, it wasn't as obnoxiously designed or as difficult as classics in the genre (stuff I like by the way), but it was still a lot of fun and probably the only game from this year that really sticks out in my head.  Also the dungeon editor was a nice feature though I haven't bothered to do anything big in it.

If I had to name a runner up it would be Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition but that technically came out 2011, so I don't really know if it counts or not.  But who cares, PC gamers got to enjoy it and the new content was just swell.

Hopefully 2013 will be a little more memorable