10.30.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants
at 6:01 pm
OK. Here’s the deal. Go here and fill out the survey. Preferably truthfully, but I would strongly recommend that you give your approval to Klonoa’s “classic” look. For those unfamiliar with the character, Klonoa wears a blue hat with Pac-Man on the side, and has very long floppy ears. I have no idea what the new version of the character (without hat and with sharper, upright, cat-like ears) is supposed to resemble, nor why Namco Bandai decided they needed to redesign him for North America. Klonoa’s identifying characteristic has always been his ears, and there’s tons of people who love the character just as he is. Put another way, when Sega decided to redesign Sonic the Hedgehog back in 1999, for Sonic Adventure, they kept what made him immediately identifiable as Sonic. If this change goes through, NB might as well bury the franchise right then and there because the sales will not meet expectations. Anyway. Please fill out the survey. For me?
But if they do keep the old design– which, in case I haven’t belabored the point enough, I think they should– who would I have to kill to get a Klonoa plushie?
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10.26.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing
at 8:12 pm
I realize that I’ve been, well, more than a little lax about getting stuff up onto the blog lately. When you look at it, though, October has seen more posts more frequently than this summer had probably led you all to believe, so I think that even given my sporadic update schedule, this is slowly sliding back into daily updates. Which I think we all could get used to once more, hrm?
Anyway, with regards to the titular plan, as most of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m heading into it with a full new outline for Harvesting Blueberries (which, incidentally, will probably get a new title). My time for gaming will be dramatically reduced, so I don’t expect to have much of anything in the way of Game Clear notices for the month. As it turns out, it might be that R-Type was the last game to be cleared in 2008 anyway– I don’t know if the writing will run long for “Blueberries 2.0″, and if it does how much of December it will take. Furthermore, even if I get done early, most of what’s left on the Backlog for ‘08 are long-form RPGs, and Mega Man 9 (which I’m increasingly convinced was done a grave disservice by my putting it on hold during October). Still, regardless of what game might get started in December, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be finished with it before New Year’s. So, it’s likely that thirty games will be the 2008 total… not bad, considering, but I do want to try to push that even further if I can.
As for what I am playing now, you might have noticed I made a little progress with Disgaea. I’d been holding off on advancing the plot any further than Chapter 2’s final mission, but gave that a run just to see what would happen and was pleasantly surprised. There were still some hiccups, yes, and Flonne came in just in the nick of time to (however temporarily) become the lowest-level member of the team. More grinding, fun wow. In all honesty, Disgaea is starting to feel like the “new” Super Robot Taisen: a game I like and enjoy, but that punishes me for playing it and therefore makes me turn to it only sporadically. I’m considering keeping it on just the “when I get to it” list and turning my active attention to something more recent and a bit easier… like Star Ocean, or a Tales game.
I’ve done some reflecting on the 2009 List, as well, and have decided to “de-prioritize” games from it so as to make it a bit more manageable. There’s 16 GBA games on the list, all of which I’m moving to the back-burner: most of those were picked up for the Reclamation Project, with only a couple of exceptions. (More to the point, three of them are Pokemon games (Ruby, Emerald, and FireRed), and I’m probably going to try either a speedrun or another Poketoberfest in ‘09.) There’s also a handful of games for other, older systems as well, plus a few Virtual Console titles I’ve picked up and set aside. The thing is, though, those are games I’ll be looking to play later on. Right now, I have a lot of very interesting current games that I want to try to get through. Ultimately, by relegating those older titles to the ‘later’ column, I’ve shifted my 2009 backlog from 71 titles down to 35 (this counts Luminous Arc 2, which isn’t out yet, but not Chrono Trigger DS, which isn’t changed sufficiently for me to count it as a “new” game). The ultimate goal is to have everything cleared out by the end of 2009, but 71 (or more!) games is a bit much. Assuming all goes well in the year ahead, I’ll be lucky to get through even 30.
That’s all mostly irrelevant to many of you. Much like, well, everything else on this blog, but eh.
We’ll see just how this month shapes up. Tomorrow, on the LJ, I’ll have the October gaming report, and Wednesday I’ll have the anime report. If I get anything for this side up, I’ll be surprised, but here’s hoping. Ciao.
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10.24.08
Posted in Game Cleared 2008, Gaming
at 8:04 pm
At 8:34p, I destroyed the Bydo Core, the final boss of R-Type Final on the Playstation 2. This is the thirtieth game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Mega Man 9 (Wii), followed by Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP) and Brave Story: New Traveler (PSP). Final clear time unavailable (I forgot to check).
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Posted in Gaming, Rants
at 12:20 pm
I had a really, really insightful spiel written up about the whole LittleBigPlanet thing and how, regardless of the risks involved in making user-generated content the primary draw to a title oriented towards a younger (or, more accurately, all-ages) crowd, there would likely not be any problems within the mainstream media.
Then I saw this. Yeah, the blog that makes the phenomenally stupid blunder isn’t quite “mainstream”, but I give it about three days before Fox News plasters this all over the airwaves and “Flash” Thompson starts grinding his organ again.
If this is the world I have to deal with, then I’ll be damned if that’s enough motivation to save it from Evil Lord (Insert Big Bad Here). Maybe I should start playing more casual games… like LittleBigPlanet.
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10.20.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing
at 6:58 pm
If you were wondering how I’ve been keeping myself since ending my trip to Hyrule, let me warn you right now that this post contains graphic descriptions of me dancing. And not in the DDR “lol, arrow-stomping” sense that I’ve traditionally used, either. I mean it. This is not for the kiddies. Put ‘em to bed, ’cause it’s time to get down. Last warning, for srsly.
( I played We Cheer today (And Samba de Amigo)… » )
Anyway. The novel outline is progressing nicely; I’ve divvied up most of the plot pacing into scenes just about as long as this post, and I’m shooting for roughly 75,000 words this time. I’m sure I can handle it, given that I’ve got a far stronger sense of how I want to handle the story– I’ve taken an axe to great swatches of plot, and eliminated at least three useless characters while introducing several far more important ones. I will get this book written and published if it’s the last thing I do… which I kinda hope it isn’t.
Going to watch a little bit of Kanon now, and then off to bed. Later, folks. (I’m not making promises as to when the next blog post is gonna be, but let’s shoot for Wednesday again and see what happens.)
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10.19.08
Posted in Game Cleared 2008, Gaming
at 1:28 pm
At 1:54p, I defeated (spoiler– kind of– hover over to read), final boss of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. This is the twenty-ninth game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Mega Man 9 (Wii), followed by Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP) and Psychonauts (Xbox). Final clear time was 31:35 over nineteen days, successfully completing the Octorok challenge.
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10.13.08
Posted in Gaming
at 6:03 pm
Some of you folks might be aware of a little shindig we’re doing on the forums called Octorok. It’s a little bit of a deal. Anyway, for the event I’m swallowing my irrational dislike and playing through Zelda: Twilight Princess. The thing about it is that as much fun as it is, I still am not exactly thrilled with it.
Granted, I’m only about halfway through the game (nearing the end of the fourth dungeon, and I’m under the impression that there are nine), so it might do something really clever soon that will blow me away. But the basic tenets I’ve long disliked about the 3-D entries in the Zelda series– that the dungeons sometimes are needlessly obtuse with telling you what can be climbed and what can’t, for example– are still here and still as irritating as ever. I have to admit, though, that some of the puzzles are pretty clever (for the sake of those still going through it, I won’t say anything about the one that really made me smile once I figured it out).
With regards to the controls, I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have opted for the GC version. I like the Wiimote, don’t mistake me, but there are some ways it could have been better implemented, particularly during battle, which basically becomes “hold Z and spastically wave your other arm”. The Z-targeting is also somewhat frustrating in that it has the annoying tendency to lock on to the most inconvenient enemy possible. (Yes, by all means, lock on to the bird in the distance while this leech thing chews out my chest; being seven miles away, it is obviously the greater thrghrklgle.) I do like the Wiimote for using the bow, but I just wish that it was properly usable while wearing the Hawkeye mask. Still, too late to change now, and I do have to confess a certain satisfaction in flourishing the controllers after curb-stomping shield-bearing foes.
The story… wow. That’s all I should really say, but this is markedly different from any previous Zelda game (I think– maybe it got this dark in Wind Waker but I somehow doubt it). While I’m not exactly sold on the gameplay just yet, I do like what’s been going on, and Midna has grown on me from being a snotty little nuisance to being a character I can sort of almost care about. Any time that she curls up to Link and asks him in that “would you kindly?” kind of tone I alternate between sympathizing with her plight and wanting Link to give her the one-two with his sword. I can almost imagine the conversation, too: “I want you to go get (such and such magic item).” “B%$#@, NO! You’ve dragged me through literal Hell three times already, I’ve been bloodied, beaten, chewed on, and covered in scuzz, and to top it all off, two-thirds of the time that I’ve done that I’ve run the very real risk of getting fleas. YOU get the damn (magic thingy) yourself.”
Catch you guys on Wednesday.
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10.12.08
Posted in Rants, Site News
at 8:31 am
Just a few little things worth mentioning. I’ve dropped the Last.fm banner from the top of the blog page, because a) I can’t get it to capture tracks played on my iPhone and b) it turns iTunes into an inert unmoving non-functional waste of electricity anyway. Took me half an hour this morning to finally rip out all of the plug-ins that seemed to drag it down, but now I no longer dread syncing my phone. Woo hoo.
I’m also thinking of dropping the XFire banner as well, as I haven’t used my PC for gaming in months, but that would leave a pretty big void up there. I very rarely update the “now playing” things, which I should have done by the time you guys read this, but that’s just a matter of training and remembering to do it. Are there any other tools you guys think I should put up there?
This week is going to be chaotic, for a number of reasons (most of which I can’t talk about until they’re, y’know, not chaos anymore), but I’m going to try to get posts here on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I need to get back into the whole “regular posting” thing soon, and there’s no better time than now. Hopefully this will mean a return to daily posts at some point in the future, but don’t bet too much on it. Ciao for now.
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10.08.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants
at 11:35 am
I might be one of the few people who was following it before its release this morning, but if you have an Xbox 360, I’d ask you to spare an eighth of a gig for the Beat’n Groovy demo. Just the demo right now. I have some serious complaints about the game itself, complaints I’ll stash behind the cut, but I want to talk a little bit about the way the game was presented to us, the public.
First off: far be it from me to feel ungrateful about finally getting an English-language release of a Pop’n Music game (even if Konami’s doing everything they can to prevent people from making the connection). Pop’n is, as I’ve always said, a great game, and one that can be enjoyed by a great many people. It’s just that North America had no warning whatsoever that the game was coming. I only knew of the game’s existence back in early August, shortly before the whole Summer of Arcade thing happened, and even that was just based on a rumor report from Bemanistyle. There was no publicity, no fanfare, no nothing. Hell, there wasn’t even an announcement prior to the release– I only found out that it landed today when I saw the report on Major Nelson’s feed. To say I woke up in a hurry would be an understatement.
That’s the big issue here. The game that MN (and by extension, Microsoft) announced on Monday was MLB Stickball. Granted, baseball is slightly bigger than a silly little music game, but you would think that there would be at least SOME prior warning. (The only reason I haven’t picked up the full version yet is because I’m short on points– I spent a little on some Rock Band tracks on Monday, putting me just under the $10 price.) This game is one that Bemani fans, myself among them, have been fervently awaiting since long before it was even a rumor of a rumor. And now it’s here and only maybe three dozen people know. Way to scuttle the series before it gains any kind of NA traction, Konami.
This isn’t the first time Konami’s shown abject antipathy towards the foreign factions of Bemaniacs. The US release of Beatmania was done under what appeared to be extreme duress, was higher-priced, and enjoyed no advertising or even acknowledgement that it existed. (The fact that it was released after Guitar Hero didn’t help matters much either.) DDR games are rapidly becoming unavailable as standalones, as Konami prefers to release only the expensive bundles with the pads; the disc-only releases comes months later, if at all. Arcades are dying, and rather than continue to breathe new life into them with popular machines, it was a knock-down drag-out fight to get DDR SuperNova, and another year until the eAmuse system (which has a lot of potential to revive arcades, but required a little bit of effort on the part of arcade owners) made it over to the US. (Of course, Konami could hardly be blamed for the reason why arcades are doomed over here– that’s another long post, the short answer being location– but withholding new machines certainly isn’t helping matters much.)
It sounds almost crazy to say it, but the company that once thanked the legions of English-speaking DDR fans in the manuals of its games is no longer the Konami we have now. I’m (arguably) not naive enough to think for a second that Konami “cares” about its fans, but it should at least have the common sense to know that releasing a half-assed product is not going to generate nearly as much revenue as doing it right by the people practically begging for its release. There is something else to consider– Konami of America’s target audience might not be the people who have been importing the games and so forth. I can understand that– after all, I’m as guilty as the next guy of importing the games. But if the NA release is a soulless, hollow shedding of the original, you’re not going to win any new fans and run the risk of alienating the people who do like your product.
The bottom line, really, is that Konami tends to be their own worst enemy when releasing anything that’s not Castlevania or Metal Gear. Come to think of it, they really don’t have much else in the way of US releases beyond those two, do they? GH and Rock Band have stolen most of the music-game thunder from DDR and Karaoke Revolution. Silent Hill has a dedicated following, but that’s still a very, very narrow niche. When was the last really good Suikoden game? What about new properties? I think, really, that we have a new gaming axiom, along the lines of “Acclaim releases crap”, “Duke Nukem Forever isn’t coming out”, and “Madden is the same game each year”: “Nobody self-destructs a franchise quite like Konami”.
Anyway. That’s all peripheral to the game itself, most of the details of which are relevant to, like, none of my regular readers. ( So, if you’re interested… » )
Catch you folks soon.
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