Do It Again!

This is a great video my good friend Nelson showed me on Friday.  It's a love letter to Apple, but that should be fine if you dig Macs.

Hopefully, I'll be back to regular postings soon.

Say It With the Power of Wind!

With Wii Ware finally launching in the US, it was only a matter of time before I sat down with one of my favorite games of this year's Game Developer's Conference: Lost Winds. To me it was the highlight of the Nintendo Wii presentation back at GDC and a reason to get excited about Wii Ware - the new risk averse way to digitally distribute games on Wii.

Not that Nintendo ever wants to excite me these days.

Nintendo has often worried me by overemphasizing on a different crowd of gamers - and I'm sick and tired of hearing the "Blue Ocean" analogy in every article I read these days (Oh, no! Wait!) At times it feels like nothing can be done to dissuade the once proud gaming giant from dumbing down another popular franchise for mainstream audiences. Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros Brawl have both been prime examples of this awkward shift, empowering a new batch of gamers and that's slowly beginning to bug me.

Luckily, I have Lost Winds can keep me busy a little longer before Nintendo's strategy makes my head implode.


It's not that Lost Winds is some epic hardcore game in disguise - it's not at all. In fact, Lost Winds feels more in line with the type of games I want to experience on the Wii - games that experiment with control and find creative ways to look fascinating despite being presented on aging hardware. Aesthetically, the game is rich and vibrant with lush, pastel colors that create a soft, yet serene atmosphere for little Toku to roam - and it terrific art design. And controlling Enril the wind spirit by holding the A button and drawing the direction of the gust feels accurate, without over complicating matters with rote design techniques.

I often wonder if this game could have been cooperative. It certainly makes sense as a core feature that follows Nintendo's social gaming credo these days - well that is except online. Co-op could bolster this Lost Wind's potential as a franchise, and help it grow significantly past this first game.


After i play a little more Lost Wnds, I think after this I'll start a Game Diary like Stephen Totillo over at MTV. I genuinely like the idea of writing about the games that I play daily (and then later sobbing slowly over the little time that I have to play games nowadays).

Yep, I'll start that diary tomorrow.

Para-75% Off?

When I was at Best Buy picking up Boom Blox yesterday, I noticed a small shelf as I was headed over to the register.  It had a sign over it that read "75% off selected titles" across the top.  I expected to find the usual batch of nothing when the Parappa the Rapper PSP game caught my eye.  I figured it was a mistake at first but I checked the rack and there were a number of copies.  

That's right, a new sealed copy of my favorite PS One game for a whopping $7.50.  What a deal!

Somewhere Masaya Matsura cries inside ...

Now Playing: Boom Blox

I think it was after E3 2006 that this picture of Shigeru Miyamoto and Steven Spielberg playing Wii Sports began quickly circulating the internet.  People enjoyed the idea of their these two powerhouses conceivably working together.

Now, fast forward two years, and here I am at a local Best Buy purchasing Boom Blox, for my Nintendo Wii.  

It helps to mention that buying this game is a huge departure of for me.  I've never supported any Hollywood talent's involvement in videogames. Period.  I'm not convinced they understand it as a media.  Hollywood creatives work in a passive art form without audience participation.  Naturally, they tell excellent stories and can unfurl expertly crafted narratives (well, maybe except Uwe), but I'd half expect their games to be cinematic than much anything more.

But then I saw Boom Blox at the Nintendo Gaming Summit in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and I became curious.  It was this serene, peaceful,... game?  How could this be?  I saw a concept that, to my surprise, worked.  There was no story, or overemphasis on presentation, just a ball and a stack of Blox... and it was somehow entertaining, a minimalist experience that appealed to my inner completist (especially my confounded ego that likes deftly solving puzzles and getting high scores).

Now, I'm still not sold that Hollywood talent can craft notable games, and it will take more than Boom Blox to convince me otherwise, but I am truly enjoying this game.  I'd definitely recommend it to anyone as a fun palette-cleanser, an excellent distraction when causing mayhem in Liberty City or crashing little mascot driven go-karts starts to wear thin.

Why I'll Never Get a Job as Someone's Escort.

My Patapon army marches forward single file towards the home of our rivals at Zigoton castle.  I already feel a sense of accomplishment because even if I am playing The World Ends with You, I want to finish Patapon - this game had me excited up until this year's Game Developers Conference (I still don't know why it fizzed out, but it did). 

 So in my head I'm thinking this will end in glory, with my army pimp slapping a number of Zigoton heads.  I mean, how could we lose.  It wasn't some huge crab or another creature like that, so this should be easy.

And then it didn't.  It was an escort mission where I had to guide  catapult up into their castle.

I hate escort missions.

I've always dreaded any game with this type of mechanic because I can never win.  I remember getting completely road blocked by them in Rogue Squadron (N64 or Gamecube, I think) because TIE fighters would swoop in and blow up all my rebel friends.   

I just don't think I have what it takes to be anyone's escort.  I get caught up in the moment, forget that I'm protecting someone, and before you know it, BLAM.  Game over.  

Maybe I'm not terrible at them.  Maybe they are just flawed experiences in each game I've played them in.  But whatever the case may be, I won't be escorting anyone anywhere anytime soon.  I just suck at it.

This World be Banging!

I'm still genuinely surprised by The World Ends with You, despite all the praise that I read about it beforehand.  It's interesting that a DS game would ambitiously try to split your attention between two screens, making you control two characters at the same time.  But besides mental anxiety at succumbing to the game, I'm more concerned I'll end up with carpal tunnel playing this game because of the DS's small frame, stylus, and buttons (maybe I need a DS Phat).

But there is one more thing that I never noticed until this Squenix RPG before: the very modern localization effort.  Granted, I know Square does a pretty decent job these days with translating their games, but this one took me a little by surprise.  

Apparently, its bangin'.  No really, it is.   Check the photo below, if you don't believe me.

 

Welcome to Liberty City!

I've been playing as much Grand Theft Auto IV as I possibly can this weekend, and I have to say I love it so far. If there is one thing that I regret, its that I've never finished a Rockstar game except Bully (another excellent game, in my opinion). However GTA IV ups the ante for me, providing some of the coolest I've ever experienced in games. Granted, the controls in fights are poorly executed (I'll reverse judgment till i unlock more moves, and the car handling is much more slippery than the last couple of GTA's. Despite this I'm still running all over the city, as I hunt for new missions.

I know I've never stayed with any GTA game until the end (I came close with the third one), but this will be the first game in the series that I plan to finish. Here's some quick things that happened to me in GTA IV that stood out:

• I was sent on a hit to a train station and the guy ran downstairs. He was headed straight for car, so he could take off.. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I pulled out my glock and shot him in the head through the back window on the left. The bullets went right through the side and struck him as he collapsed onto the wheel, activating the car horn. It was difficult to pull off, but equally satisfying to behold.
• 'Its funny how the details add up in this game. In one car chase on the highway, the guy I'm chasing (seems to be a common thing in the hitman business) clips a truck carrying a load of logs. He slams into the truck cab causing it to swerve wildly out of control, unloading the long tree logs right onto the narrow highway. Luckily, I swerve right out of the way, narrowly missing the deadly greenery, as the truck driver finally steadies the vehicle and i drive past in pursuit of my contract.

I'm planning to start playing "The World Ends With You" on the recommendation of Stephen Totilo's blog and the crew of the 1UP Yours podcast. Hopefully, I enjoy this game as much as the other handheld games that I've played this year.