December 2007
4 posts
Old-School Gaming Review: Super Metroid
The Metroid series is known for having the first major franchise to have a female protagonist. Today, I’m going to discuss what many people say is the best of the series: Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Only in recent years have the storylines of the series achieved any significant depth. Mostly, a story was an excuse for the player to be on the mission rather than...
I'm going to have a very fun Winter Break.
Hopefully, my Winter Break will spent, among other things, having fun with two new Wii games: Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, both well-recieved games. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the main man of video games for a spin, and I feel Galaxy will fit the bill nicely. I’ve seen videos of Metroid Prime 3 gameplay, and I’m quite excited to try it out....
Wii is still selling like hotcakes.
Once again, the Nintendo Wii is apparently THE hot gift for the holiday season, and the PS3 and XBox 360 fanboys are still scratching their heads. My thought on this is thus: the age of casual gaming has truly begun. It was alluded to in the decreasing difficulty in newer games, but now with the coming of the Wii and its motion sensor controls, we have entered a new age. Long live the party...
Square Enix mostly sticks with portable in early... →
It looks like Square Enix is sticking with portable consoles in early 2008, and as always, it looks like a solid lineup. But I can’t help but wonder when Square/Enix will cease releasing new Final Fantasy VII related games and just give the people what they want: a remake of the classic. “The World Ends With You” does sound like an interesting game, though.
November 2007
4 posts
Game Design Brief
Title: Super Intern Short Description: Super Intern: College students always look for an edge to “get their foot in the door.” To get their name out there as quickly as possible to have a career when they graduate. One way to do this: get an internship. However, that may not always be enough. There could be times when one is asked to do something they do not. On one hand it’s risky but it could...
DEWmocracy
Sounds like a bad rip-off of Blade Runner and Final Fantasy games. *rolls eyes*
Machinima
http://vimeo.com/377260 This was a pretty easy scene to act out, as it required very little movement and only two people. Half-Life Team Fortress 2 provided lip movements and facial expressions for the characters, so all we had to do is look for the phrases that worked best. The only significant problem (which we eventually got around) was the fact that the black guy only had a beer bottle and a...
Machinima Audio Source
Audio source This is the famous “English motherf**ker, do you speak it?!” scene.
October 2007
2 posts
Review: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, is considered by those disappointed with the 3D games today, to be the last great system. And one of the last games to appear on that system is also one of its best: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. In terms of chronology, this game is the first in the timeline. In this game, you do not play as either of the famous Mario brothers. Rather,...
The blame game once again...
Will it ever end? Once again, people are pointing fingers at video games for causing violent crime. It’s really making me sick. What the heck is giving people the idea that video games make us want to go out and blow people’s heads off? In almost every instance of something like this, the cause has been something different. In this case, it’s police officers being plain...
September 2007
6 posts
Kingdom Hearts Goes Portable Three Ways!
Kingdom Hearts, the game that fused the RPG mastery of Square-Enix and the magical characters of the Walt Disney Co., is headed for portables! At its press conference in this year’s Tokyo Game Show, Square-Enix revealed that THREE new games in the beloved series are headed for portable systems: for the Nintendo DS, Sony Playstation Portable and mobile phones. All games are currently slated...
Some people just can't be satisfied.
Well, it’s official. Super Smash Brothers Brawl is going online. And I’m as giddy as a young schoolgirl over that fact. But that’s not what I’m going to talk about. It’s the problem that people just can’t be satisfied with something so awesome. In the case of Brawl’s Wi-Fi mode, there are people complaining about a few aspects that are missing. In one...
Bloxorz: Easy to Learn, Hard to Master
Bloxorz, by DX Interactive, is a deceptively simple puzzle game, where your task is to get a rectangular block into a square hole. Of course, a player will find that it’s not an easy task when if even half the block is over the void, the block falls in. The first few levels are simple enough, but I got frustrated on Stage 6. I am one of those people, unfortunately, who has to be guided by...
Wii Sports 2 Will Have to Wait →
Wii Sports is probably the biggest reason Nintendo’s Wii system has sold so well: it is one of the few games non-gamers can learn to play. Since non-gamers are the Wii’s target market, it shows that the Wii is successful. But apparently Nintendo has opted not to go with the quick cash-in, preferring to wait for greater improvements in programming before making the sequel, if at all....
Banhammered for almost 8,000 years →
This little article seriously made me chuckle. It’s not so much that this kid got his XBox Live account suspended for sneaking into the Halo 3 beta, it’s the length of the suspension. Cutting someone’s access for a length of time that may very well be longer than humanity will last is really going overboard on Microsoft’s part. Besides, there’s an easy (and...
This blog is mostly for my Concepts in Game Studies class. I’ll be posting various entries for the class, and some work I’m doing. Nothing up for now. More to come. -Janus P.S. It’s named after the two-faced Roman god, not the part used to clear your bowels, in case any of you got that idea.