Seriously, Like, C'mon

Sometimes I get something annoying stuck in the back of my mind and it periodically returns to the forefront to annoy me further.  That something has lately (a while ago now) been the situation with Mighty Number 9's new community manager. For those that do not know,  basically,  Comcept (or whoever is in  charge of this part of the Mighty Number 9 project)  hired a community manager,  Dina Abou Karam, and after it was announced to the community,  the community discovered that she(!) was possibly a feminist(!!) that might not be a huge Mega Man fan(!!!).  For those that can't tell,  those are sarcastic exclamation points (sarcasclamation points?)  because,  seriously,  why does anyone care.  So, let me explain exclamation point by exclamation point why it is that I don't care.

The Call of Duty Dog and You

With the recent reveal of Call of Duty: Ghosts, people have been very excited about the inclusion of a tactical dog partner. The reasons are obvious, the dog is cute and the footage of a real dog being motion captured was even more cute. I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but this can only end in one of a few ways, especially with the writer talking about how he expects you to be forming all these deep, personal bonds with the characters.

The Horrible World of Smartphone Bootleggery

When I was a kid my family would annually go on vacation to Florida to see family and do vacation stuff. We would often go to flea markets and outlet malls and stuff like that to find weird stuff for whatever reason was not in the flea markets and outlet malls of Michigan. At one point I got a wall scroll of Iori from The King of Fighters, and another I got an amazing bootleg toy of Zero from Mega Man X. It was clearly based off of the mold for the old Bandai model kits, but it was already assembled and the colors were all wrong. All his armor was metallic silver and his hair was blue. Sure it was janky, but it also looked cool and it was very cheap. Also, the paint was so thick, though probably also poisonous, that the joints would actually stay together, unlike a certain X model. My point is that bootlegs are awful, but entertaining, and on occasion might accidentally do something right.

Yo Dawg...

The fervor has died down now that the show has ended, but Pimp My Ride was a rather popular show for a while there. I remember hearing other people talk about it and I dismissed it as a stupid concept, but after actually watching the show I had to admit it is pretty entertaining. The host, Xzibit, comes off as a likable guy that just likes to help people out and do retarded things to cars. Near the end of the show's lifespan, in 2006, a video game developed by by Eutechnyx was released for the Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, and Wii. Eutechnyx is most known for their various racing games such as Big Mutha Truckers, so it is surprising that they resisted the urge to put racing into a game about cars.

Perfect Dark: Flawed Color

I'm a big fan of Perfect Dark, a fact found in the couple of hundred hours I put into the game on the N64, because it just does a lot of stuff that I like. It has a near-future science fiction setting, a strong female lead, objective-based level design, a bunch of crazy weapons, and some great multiplayer maps. Sadly, I am not here to illuminate the game I love, or even the embarrassing prequel everyone tries to forget that is Perfect Dark Zero, but the embarrassing prequel that most people have had the good sense to forget, Perfect Dark for the Game Boy Color. Also developed by Rare, though presumably by a different internal team, and released a couple of months after the original game in 2000, it is a game that offers very little justification for its own existence.

A Fate Worse Than Game Over

One feature of video games I like that I don't seem to see as much as I'd like lately is the ability to fail without a simple game over or restart. I just think that is really entertaining to make a bad choice or just generally screw up in a game and be rewarded with the game changing in some way that is meant to make me feel guilty. It sort of bothers me when I see the lazier side of this, like in the first Assassin's Creed didn't do anything to discourage the player from wanting to kill civilians, so attacking them just drains the player's health. I find it way more interesting when a game predicts the bad behavior of its players and responds to it in a unique way. A good example of this is getting swarmed by angry cuckoos in Zelda games.

Poverty Haul 12/15/2011

Today I was out shopping for the holidays, and I figured that, since I was out, I should hit up some of the usual spots in search of poverty games. I was in the same plaza as a Game Stop, so I went there first, but it was a waste of time as usual. There was some Friends trivia game for PS2 for a couple of bucks, and I probably could have been talked into purchasing it if I were out with friends, but since I was alone I walked away from it. Maybe another day. Next, I went to my preferred local used game store, Game On, which generally has games in pretty good condition for a reasonable price. They hadn't had a new influx of SNES or NES game in a while, so I was pleased to see that they had restocked a bit. I picked up Pit Fighter for the former because it is awful and StarTropics for the latter because I know people that like it.

Mega Man & Bass: Not A Fishing Spinoff

I've written about Mega Man quite a bit here on the site, probably because with the sheer amount of games in the series there is bound to be some overlooked gems and some bad games. I am quite fond of the series, so that is probably why I have mostly focused on the stuff that I like, so I guess that makes this article something of a turning point. Now, Mega Man & Bass isn't really a bad Mega Man game, but it isn't a great one either. Don't be surprised if I ever write about another game in the franchise that I like, considering I haven't written about Maverick Hunter X or the Zero series yet, but with this game it feels like things are probably trending down into the inevitability of things like Mega Man X7, Mega Man Network Transmission, and Mega Man Soccer.

The Disappointment of APB

Very few games have disappointed me as much APB: All Points Bulletin. I was initially sold on the concept alone: a GTA-style MMO based around cops and robbers. It seems like such a great idea, and since it was being developed by Realtime Worlds, the company formed from ex-GTA staff that made the excellent Crackdown, I had a lot of faith that it would be pulled off. Add on to that a really complex system of character customization, and I was really excited for the game. When I finally played the game I was massively disappointed because it just isn't fun. The concept is still great, and I don't think the game itself isn't salvageable, but it will never be the game I wanted it to be.

SmackDown! 2 Knows My Roll

I've said before that there are only two wrestling games worth playing: WWF No Mercy for the N64 and WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role for the PS1. While the former is technically a better game, the latter has always been my favorite. It was made by Yuke's, whom make most all the wresting games since 2000, as well as UFC games, Berserk games, and the strange Evil Zone. SmackDown! 2 is fast paced, has a lot of wacky shit, and also happens to come from the era in which I watched the stuff. My opinion is no doubt clouded by nostalgia, but I contest that it is a fun game, with lots of entertaining things to do. At the very least, it is the only game I can think of that let me create a horrific effigy of Mega Man.

D(imension) Force

It has occurred to me that I haven't posted much about SNES games. This is mostly a product of my small SNES collection, so to help rectify this I've decided to write about some random SNES roms. After landing on a few Japanese-only RPGs, which I don't feel qualified enough to get into, I ended up with Dimension Force, which I had never heard of. There doesn't appear to be much of a difference between it and the North American, D-Force. This 1991 shooter was made by Asmik Ace Entertainment, a company that has been around since the NES era, and is still active today, but has never made much of importance. The most notable of their releases to me is the terrible The Ring: Terror's Realm for the Dreamcast.

Spider-Man vs. NYC

I grew up playing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin for the Genesis, and it is one of the earliest games for the system that my family owned. Maybe it was because of that, or because it was at the height of the comics boom, when everyone loved Spider-Man, but my brother and I loved this game. It's really not a very good game, but all that mattered was that it is a game that a kid can play as Spider-Man. It was the first game developed by Technopop, a company that only lasted through the nineties, whose only other notable game was the early console FPS Zero Tolerance, also for the Genesis.

A Defense of Tank Controls

It has always bothered me that some people completely dismiss a game based on the way it controls. The goal of controls is to give the player a way to interact with the game, and, to me, a game has good controls if they facilitate logical interaction with a game. Basically, if the controls allow the player to do what needs to be done in the game, then they are good controls. Most complaints that a game has “bad controls” seem to boil down to a player that wants one game to control like another instead of attempting to understand why the other control scheme may be more suited the that particular game.

Brown Before It Was Cool: Desert Strike

It's strange how much things stay the same. Back in 1992 EA's biggest success was a military shooter based around real world weaponry and a fictionalized version of a modern conflict in the Middle East. Some people were saying that it was in bad taste. It was a whole big thing. On the other hand, much of the success of Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf was based on the way it was different from the other shooters at the time. It isn't about just blowing up everything on screen and never getting hit by a single bullet, but about going around, completing objectives, and tactically dealing with any opposition there might be.

Deadly Premonition

This is video game blog Poverty Game Night. You can call it PGN. Everybody calls it that. For those that can't tell just by that reference, this post is about Deadly Premonition. I can't remember the last time I've had such a difficult time articulating what is so great about a game. Even though the game is flawed in most every way, it is more than the sum of its parts. It is a game that is utterly bizarre and strangely fascinating.

The Legend of Moneypenny: James Bond 007

Released amid the furor around Goldeneye for the N64, James Bond 007 for the Game Boy didn't get attention. There are quite a few reasons for this. For one, it was released in 1997, very late into the life-span of monochrome Game Boy games and not long before the release of the Game Boy Color, so it wasn't really a time in which any game for the system got a whole lot of attention. Secondly, the game could not be more different from the game that popularized first-person shooters on consoles. It is not surprising that the game goes overlooked considering the situation, but it is quite interesting. It is the first game from Saffire, a small developer formed out of Sculptured Software that didn't make anything particularly noteworthy before going out of business in 2004.

Off on a Tangent: Piracy

I don't think publishers these days understand how good they've got it. They love to complain about piracy and used game sales, and are intent on redefining the concept of software ownership in order to “protect” their works. Compared to how things have been, publishers have the most control over their games than ever before. Consumers no longer own software, they own a license to software, and this license allows the publisher to basically make any restrictions they want on the product. It just annoys me that publishers completely ignore the negative effects on the honest consumer out of fear of theoretically losing money.

Final Fantasy Adventure and Sword of Mana

I picked up Sword of Mana because I heard it was a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, the first Game Boy game I ever bought and a game that I am quite fond of. See, Adventure for the Game Boy is actually the first game in the Mana series, which was followed up by the great Secret of Mana for SNES, but has more recently been known for some pretty mediocre games. A remake of an early Game Boy game updated for GBA that brings it more in line with the SNES graphics and systems of later games sounds great on paper, but something just feels wrong about the whole thing.

Wario Land 3: Yay Torture!

The first Game Boy I ever owned was a Game Boy Color, but I didn't have too many games for it and so I didn't play it very much. I didn't really get into portable games until the Game Boy Advance, so I missed out on quite a few good games. For example, I never played any Wario games with the exception of WarioWare titles, so I missed out on the critically acclaimed Wario Land series. When I saw a beat up copy of 2000's Wario Land 3 for the Game Boy Color in the bargain bin at my local used game store for three dollars, it seemed like as good a place to start as any.

Breath of Death VII: A Parody, Not a Sequel

I don't usually play Xbox Live Indie Games, and I guess technically I still haven't, because it is difficult to determine what is actually worth the time or money. I picked up the Breath of Death VII/Cthulhu Saves the World pack on sale on Steam for two dollars, as opposed the usual three, because I was already buying a bunch of other stuff, so it was hard to find a reason not to purchase it. They were made by Zeboyd Games, a three person team that started making Xbox Live Indie Games in 2009, first with a couple of interactive novels and then with these two parody RPGs.