The times, they are a-changin’

Thanks again to everyone who participated in my “emotions and video games” post. And sorry to those (moku mainly) who never got a chance to post their own stories before I finished writing up the post. It was a lot of fun, and I do enjoy you guys sharing your interesting stories with me. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the post as well, and I hope what I included from everyone was sufficient enough.

Anyway, time for some news. As of now, thanks to colorninja in particular, I am apart of Snackbar Games. It’s a small, but more official gaming site for news, reviews, and features. My first feature, the “emotions and games” piece, is up on the site and hopefully will grab some attention there as well. I’ll be doing reviews as well as continuing to write features for the site.

What does that mean for this blog? Well, daily updates are no longer going to happen, but I do plan on continuing to post here. Most of my posts, particularly game impressions, reviews, and topics of discussion, will most likely end up over on Snackbar now. So I’m not completely abandoning this blog, but it’s definitely going to stay open for a post every now and again. I’d love to keep daily updates going (which I did plan on starting back up next month), but writing for Snackbar and this blog, especially once classes start back up, will be too much for me.

So I suggest everyone go check out Snackbar Games. It’s a bit slow right now, but hopefully soon it’ll have a lot more activity. And thanks to everyone who supported this blog by continuing to read it and leave comments, it means a lot to me.

Emotions and video games

Here’s a post I’ve been planning on writing for the longest time, something that I feel is very important as a gamer. Many people may think of this as silly, or a waste of time, but I think that video games, like any other forms of media, can emotionally involve the players just as much (if not more so). I really appreciate all of the comments I received on the previous post. I reference all of them here, and if you want to read their full comments, check this post. For a lot of comments, I had to cut a lot out, but I left the main point of the comment in tact. It was also to avoid spoilers, for those reading this and haven’t played those particular games. Anyway, after the jump is the actual post, so read and enjoy.

A simple poll: What games are you attached to?

Are there any games out there that you will always call a favorite because of some kind of emotional response? Something in the game that just can’t help but cheer you up, or even make you cry. Be it a specific level in a platformer, a scene from an RPG, or even a piece of music you remember that triggers the emotional response. What game is it that for you?

I’m interested in seeing what gamers would pick. This is leading into a blog post I’ve been wanting to write for a while now, so maybe some extra inspiration from any readers would be helpful. Pick a game you love, a game you feel some kind of emotional attachment to; it doesn’t have to be your favorite game. Give a specific moment in the game that made you say “wow” or evoked some kind of emotional response from you that you had never felt from a game before. As I said before, it could be a little catchy tune on a classic NES game that you could never get out of your head, or even a scene from a game that may have made you shed a tear or two. Even something that made you feel angry is acceptable. Perhaps a game’s story that went in a completely different direction and possibly ruined the entire experience for you? And I’m not talking being frustrated because of a game, I’m talking a real emotion, something you maybe never thought you could experience from playing a game.

Find any one game, and a specific moment from that game, and tell me about it. You don’t have to go into grand detail and write an essay, but a little detail would be nice. I guess I can’t say I’m expecting a lot of responses to this, but a good few to give me a general idea of the variety of games people will name. And if you can’t honestly pinpoint one game or one part of a game, name a few that stick out in your mind.

If anybody is confused by what exactly I am saying here, feel free to ask! Hopefully if I do get a few good responses, I plan on using them (or a sampling of them) for this upcoming blog post. It should be fun! And hey, it’s always nice to take a trip down memory lane.

Also, please mark any comments for spoilers, if you feel they are necessary.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition – Bringing us back to a simple time

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition was released this past Wednesday for the PC and Xbox Live Arcade for a very good price of $10. It’s basically a remake of the original game, updated with new control options, a new art style, and voice acting. Other than that, it’s still the very same game people remember from its original release around 19 years ago. I got into the games myself a lot more recently, but it still helped fuel my love for the kind of humor the series presents, and other point and click adventure titles like it. How does this remake hold up today?

Independent games fuel our gaming futures

I really and truly love to support independent game developers. Without them, where would we get such classics like Braid or World of Goo? Those are two examples of indie games released just last year, with many more still to come in the months and even years ahead. Most gamers at some point in their lives wanted to get into the industry; I was one of them! I considered so many career options, but thought to myself “why not just do something that involves what I love?” Now? I’m an English major who wants to simply write about games instead of designing them. But there are plenty of young developers out there, some of whom could have the next big idea.

Juarez calls ahead (and a quick note on Battlefield 1943)

I went against my better judgment recently and bought Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Keep in mind, I hated the original. The game just felt clunky, had unnecessary stealth sections, and it all just looked kind of ugly. The story was the best part, but it fell flat near the end, and overall never felt like a true western experience. To me, while flawed, a game like Gun was the best game to capture the look and feel of that time in history. Red Dead Revolver did a decent job of it as well. But with all of the positive reviews, is Bound in Blood a superior game?

Summer: The annual gaming drought PART TWO

Oh my! A second part to a post that went absolutely nowhere! Yeah, so this month is still looking like we won’t be seeing much of anything in terms of video game news and game releases, aside from a select few games. But I do have stuff planned for this month, including new posts that I will probably have finished over the weekend! But first, some sad news.

The blogcast, something I have been planning for a while now, is pretty much dead at this point. I’ve tried a lot of different things, but nothing that really works the way I want it to. It doesn’t help that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I do have to thank StingX2 for the help, because he gave me some pretty nice pointers and some ideas of how to continue it. But I’m no expert, and I’ve got too much going on right now to worry about a silly podcast that nobody will really listen to anyway. The first one is still available, but just know it’s probably going to be the only one.

As for what’s planned this month? I have a nice post planned that will discuss the future of game controls. It’s kind of stealing a little from Gametrailers’ online show, Bonus Round, but I feel like I should throw my own opinion into it as well. It was mainly inspired by a podcast I listen to every week, Invisible Walls (also presented by Gametrailers). They had a question about the future of motion control in games, and it did spark my interest to write about it.

What else is there? I will probably have a few posts planned on game impressions and game demo impressions. First, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and the demo of Battlefield 1943. Soon I’ll be talking about the Monkey Island updates (both the remake of the original, and the new series by Telltale). And of course, Little King’s Story will most likely be getting a post as well. I also plan on getting Point Lookout, the fourth Fallout 3 expansion, so lookout for impressions of that as well.

That’s about it really, I’ll have a good few posts for the month, but daily updates will most likely just resume in August. And thanks again to everyone who helped out with the blogcast, and to those who did listen to the first episode and put up with all the bullshit problems I was having. It wasn’t perfect, but I did have fun with it. There’s always another chance, but for now, I’ll focus on writing.

Summer: The annual gaming drought

Summer is both a great and terrible time to be a gamer. Great because most people are off from school and have more time to enjoy games, but terrible because the game releases are so few and far between, it’s hard to even care. So let me first start off by saying: daily updates are pretty much going to be nonexistant until August. I’ll have a post here and there about certain games, and the blogcast will continue as usual, but nothing new will be coming from me this month. August may turn out the same, so don’t be surprised if things don’t really pick back up until September.

And yeah, blogcast #2 is going to be recorded on Monday, and will hopefully be up for everyone by Tuesday the latest. I’ll be using the Podomatic website again. It’s easy to listen right from the blog post itself, and they even offer a direct download option. Hopefully I can keep the sound quality decent enough so people can hear me better the second time around. Note to those who want to listen easily from the blog post they are attached to and have Firefox: try out the Foxytunes extension. See the blogcast page for more details.

Other than that, there isn’t much more to say. I’ll try to update when I can, but I’m really struggling to find things to discuss in such a strange time in the gaming world. All I can say is stay cool and keep checking back, I’ll have new posts sporadically throughout the month.

A Look Back #14: The Sega Channel

PS3 troubles!

There really is nothing going on in the world of gaming right now. Sure, we had a couple of cool mergers, but news has been pretty much dry in terms of any big stories. And game releases? We won’t be seeing anything big for the next couple of months. I do plan on getting Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood because I hear it is much improved over the first, and then BlazBlue looks like a fun game as well, but there really aren’t many big games coming out. The next huge release is Arkham Asylum, but we have to wait until the end of August to get that one. So onto some pointless post!

I rarely, if ever, hear about any PS3 problems. I’ve already had to send my Wii back, and I’m on my third Xbox 360, but the PS3 is the system I thought would be the most reliable. I had some freezing problems when playing Uncharted back in December, but aside from that, it’s been doing great! I played Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Valkyria Chronicles, Street Fighter IV, and plenty of Killzone 2 on it without a single hitch. And then I buy inFamous, and it freezes within the first hour.

After the game locked up on me for the tenth or so time, I realized that there may be something wrong with my system. I play Killzone 2 online for a bit without a problem, and then go back to inFamous before the same thing happens. I manage to get through the game though (and I would have finished it twice in the same amount of time if not for my PS3), and I do so playing two hours straight without a problem. Hooray, maybe my system is okay after all. Pop in Killzone 2, it begins to freeze within the first five or ten minutes of me playing.

Now I can’t even play anything without it freezing after ten minutes of play. I still hear audio, but the actual gameplay is frozen completely, and I can’t access the PS3 XMB to exit the game. So I try every possible “solution” on Sony’s site, but then come to the realization that I will have to send it back, since nothing is working. But hey, the warranty is good for a year, so I can send it back and get it repaired for free! Then I look at the date: June 12th, 2009. Exactly one year after I purchases my PS3 (the MGS4 bundle). Now what do I have to pay? Oh, only $150.

So yeah, my PS3 is now collecting dust while I try to gather up the money. I’m really in no hurry to fix it, like I would be if it were my Xbox 360 (since I pretty much get every multiplatform title for it), but it’s still fucking stupid. This both puts a complete hold on my Insomniac Games marathon, once I get around to the first Resistance that is. Luckily, there isn’t a PS3 game I want to play until Uncharted 2, so I have time.

In short: My PS3 is having problems, need to get it repaired, I’m pissed but not as pissed as I thought I would be. Now I’m really out of things to rant about. We’ll see what I come up with tomorrow!