Facts / Opinions / Debate
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• 21Dec 09

  Award Season - Internet social dysfunction

  I didn't want to talk about the releases, but if you see this blog before you saw that feel free to check my previous blog.
  
  There are a few things that have peaked my interest though that I think would be fun to talk about.
  
  

  Subject One

  
  
  The "Award Season" is that special time of year when humans draw a line in the sand and then try to analyze what the best of the best (or worst of the worst) games, movies, magazines, etc out there since the last time they drew a line in the sand. This allows a tighter debate on what was new and different from the last time everyone thought it would be fun to talk about all of these.
  
  It even gets better because then you can compare the best of the best of every year against each other and then claim 2009 or 2008, or whatever year was better than this one or the last one...
  
  This clearly paints a picture of the state of said industry and lets everyone know that things are getting better or worse based on the comparisons.
  
  The whole world then gets wrapped up around releasing close to these special lines that are going to be drawn so things are fresh on peoples minds and make it easier to get noticed and get awards that are clearly very important.
  
  Where would the world be if we didn't declare a movie of the year or game of the year? Mass chaos I think.
  
  I also think it is extremely important that these lines be drawn at the end of the calendar year. This makes it easier to clearly point out that this whole award system is not a ruse, but a meaningful way we define ourselves and what we do with our time.
  
  It is also a lot more interesting to make up some categories and put in the top 4 or 5 games that we felt like did the best of the category and ignore the other aspects of the subject material. I can tell you right now, no category can be measured in a vacuum. Games that have great graphics will affect how a music score hits a person. Also if you are frustrated with the gameplay it will affect how you view the storyline, etc.
  
  As such I don't see how breaking things out works very well. This is why the awards usually see the same 10 games repeated over and over. The sum of their parts worked well enough to feel good about certain categories.
  
  If you haven't noticed yet, there is a lot of sarcasm up there. To be honest, I can't think of a reason we care about these awards, but it serves its purpose. How else could we generate discussion if not for controversy of the picks and how our own opinions differ from each other?
  
  I thought about making a list then I quickly realized, I played all sorts of games this year, I also skipped TONS of games this year. If I told you the best game I have played this year is it might be a game released 5 years ago... as such my best games of 2009 would include games I finally got around to playing.
  
  It also be completely pointless because off all those games I didn't bother playing that might have been better anyhow. Look at the GS award list and where the votes are going. I bet there is a HUGE correlation to what people actually played to how many votes it got. And I bet there are a lot of people that have only played 50% or less of each of the lists.
  
  So, where am I getting with this? Who knows. I just know that the boundaries are bull, the categories are bull, and I enjoyed quite a few games that obviously no one else did. Cool.
  
  

  Subject Two

  
  
  This comes partly from a friends blog post from this morning and also from some talks with my wife regard the 'Twilight' series. How does the hype, popularity, and the internet affect what we watch, play, and enjoy?
  
  I can name quite a few HUGE names that fit into this topic. What do you instantly think of when you hear: Halo? Avatar? Twilight Movies? Star Trek? Mario? Final Fantasy?
  
  The internet has caused a huge opportunity to find out all sorts of information, for or against what we currently think and enjoy. But the internet makes it very easy to attack a group anonymously, or pick a side and just read those views.
  
  It makes being in a 'social click' so easy... and absolutely huge. Back in the days of high school (well for me) the internet was just barely breaking out. I remember 'blogging' before blogging was cool and interesting. I remember getting mocked for blogging by people in my computer courses... there were one of me and 4 against me.
  
  Enter the web. There are 1000's of me and 4 against me... Because clearly I can see all the rest of the world that blogs, and I don't bother going to the sites that complain about bloggers. Instantly, I now know I'm cool and everyone else either: A) doesn't matter, or B) is dumb because they don't believe the same thing I do...
  
  So apply this to the recent movie Avatar. I haven't scene it, but I have already started drawing my conclusions from what I have read from my internet circles. If I want to hate it I can now make sure to only go to the sites that bash it. And as a internet community member I can now decide to go to the sites the like it and troll around.
  
  You can see where this is going. You will always find a lot of people that agree with you. You can also find a lot of people that will disagree with you. However, finding a group of people that are open enough to listen to both sides of the debate are hard to come by... near impossible, because once enough people agree with a post creator or something, you soon get people showing up only to disagree... and you have both sides of the subject with little more than single sentence blanket statements of the nature "For" or "Against".
  
  Also in the internet world, it seems impossible for a debate to not eventually break down into black and white. Love or Hate. Agree of disagree. Gray area people will get mocked... or worse not bother posting their views because what is the point of structuring an argument that will probably go ignored in favor of the simpleton response anyhow?
  
  Anyhow, Please leave comments.
  • Posted Dec 21, 2009 1:58 pm PT
  • Category: Opinion
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• 21Dec 09

  The Plunger! This week in releases... Dec 20-26

  Lets take a look at this weeks releases:
  
  

  X360

  
  - Guitar Hero: Van Halen
  
  

  X360: XBLA

  
  - 0 Day Attack on Earth
  
  

  Wii

  
  - GH: Van Halen
  - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
  
  

  Wii: VC

  
  - Super Smash Bros (N64)
  - Ninja Gaiden (Arcade)
  
  

  Wii: WiiWare

  
  - Eco Shooter: Plant 530
  - TV Show King 2
  - Pallurikio
  - Happy Holidays Christmas
  
  

  DS

  
  Nothing.
  
  

  PC

  
  Nothing.
  
  

  Thoughts:

  
  
  First up, here is the GH edition that was given away with GH5. If you didn't get the free version not only are you a sucker, but you are once again supporting mediocrity in every shape and form. But the game... personally I lost interest when they said it would only be old school 'Roth' Halen... Without their stuff all the way up to the Balance Album this is clearly a money grab and can just slip off my radar.
  
  0 Day Attack on Earth - The most interesting release of the week. It is basically Geometry wars, with graphics this time... and aliens. It actually has real city landscapes for the backdrops though so as you try to fend off the invasion you do it over real 'scans' of real cities. I'll add this to the list of demos to try out.
  
  Final Fantasy CC, I never got into these. I only plan on playing one new FF game in the near future and that is XIII and that is still a maybe. This drops right off the bottom of the list easy.
  
  Super Smash Bros! - N64 people rejoice. I didn't think Brawl was worth it and have no nostalgia toward this edition. But hey, at least it came out for the other people.
  
  Ninja Gaiden - Not to be confused with the NES edition already out on the VC. No, this is the same name, completely different arcade brawler edition...
  
  Eco Shooter - A FPS aimed at saving the planet one garbage can at a time. I already know where to put this one.
  
  TV Show King 2 wifi enabled trivia game.
  
  Pallurikio wins the, I can't even say this award, once again proving if you are going to make a game, make it so people can actually say it and spread the word that the game is awesome. If I can't even do that I have a feeling there is nothing here to look at. Oh, it is an action platformer... There already are a bunch of these out, this one stands out by having 'weird settings' (their description).
  
  HHC - No. Just no. This little app lets you make Christmas cards and send them to your friends consoles.
  
  That is ok, Nothing needed to come out this week. It is Christmas week and we all have something good under the tree anyhow. I am going to demo the 0 Day game, but I doubt I would buy it.
  
  ---------------------------------------------------
  
  Over the last week I tried out a bunch of demos on XBLA. I played Defense Grid: The Awakening. The game is a simple tower defense game. Lock's Quest beats it in every shape, way, form. This one is as tedious as building turrets in the 10 different predefined locations and then watching it play out. I can't figure out who thought this game would be a good idea.
  
  I played Military Madness, XBLA moon edition. It was like playing a TBS where you have set pieces and start locations and try to win from there. It was boring and pointless.
  
  I did put back in Shattered Union, xbox game, and play a map or two. I forgot how important it is to have air defense to start out the game. I didn't lose a map, but I didn't really win either as my losses were just as bad as my gains... I'm going to play this again though.
  
  I didn't play Alien Breed evolution yet, my kids were around when I was playing all the demos. I'll get to this eventually too.
  
  I've been playing Chrono Trigger. Yep, lots of Chrono Trigger.
  • Posted Dec 21, 2009 12:07 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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• 18Dec 09

  Chrono, Lock, GOTY, and previews...

  OK, This week has been fun. I put games on hold for the majority of the week and have been building my basement (Framing and such). I'm only able to run the saws, nail guns, etc while the kids are awake (for obvious reasons) so I still get in an hour or two of gaming after the work.
  
  This week I got Lock's Quest (DS) and Chrono Trigger (DS). I was thinking of keeping them sealed for Christmas... that lasted 10 minutes while I looked at the case work. Lock's Quest was the first to open up.
  
  First off, I'm not too big into tower defense games. In fact I haven't even played them much, so I was hoping this would be a good intro to them for me. It started out quick enough and got right to the point.
  
  The first few levels have you constantly winning, and yet, retreating. I don't like it when games force you to retreat without a reason. FF2 (SNES) is one of my peave games when it comes to this during the Fabul castle defense. You can wipe the floor and the game forces you to fall back.
  
  Back to Lock's Quest. This is what the first few levels do. You are constantly running around repairing and fighting and even if you hold without losing a wall - "there's no hope, we have to leave".
  
  The game soon takes a turn though and puts in in another defense mode for a round or two and then lets you go on offense. I can't say I'm a big fan of this. You still have the enemy attacking you, and now you have to go out and do the fighting to win the map. The knights don't come help, they just stand in the same spot... so I was a bit disappointed in that. Hopefully in later levels they let me put in Knight defense paths or something like that.
  
  There is also another mode I ran into where you man a turret and enemies just spawn out of the ground or the edge of the level. It is a 2D side view mode. It lasts a few days and you upgrade your weapons and such as each day takes place. The last day has a really difficult 'Red' boss that shows up.
  
  All in all, the game is fun. I find making winding areas isn't very effective though, usually just finding a place you can put up 3 sides of a wall with some turrets on it is the easiest way to win. It is a fun game, hard to put down when you are in the middle of a round of battles and such.
  
  As for the other game, Chrono Trigger.
  
  I went into this game thinking old school RPG. As such every area I went to I tried to get everything I could out of it. I wasn't sure I would ever come back, so I talked to everyone, tried both sides of every question, and played every mini-game I could, etc
  
  A cool 'back to the future' event takes place and you make it right. That's when the game threw me for a loop and made me face every decision I made in the first part of the game. I thought it was great! I'm now playing the game not to get everything out of it I can the first time, but rather only making the choices that I think I should make, in case they pull that event on me again.
  
  I like the combat, simple enough turn based stuff, but you can also avoid a lot of the encounters if you want. And there isn't any random encounters from what I have seen so far. You still need to fight though because levels matter once you hit the bosses. No complaints here though, that is just standard RPG stuff.
  
  The other big thing that surprised me is the artwork doesn't match the personality of the characters IMO. For example, the angry chick Marle
  
  is anything but an angry chick. In fact all the character personalities are great so far.
  
  It has been a fun play so far. I haven't got very far, I'm running around the future at the moment. I'm looking forward to the rest of the game.
  
  That's pretty much all I have played this week. I started wasting time reading a lot of the news and such again. I have come to the conclusion I can't look at previews of Mass Effect 2 anymore. It has enough hype going for it, and despite I think they have taken a lot of the characters and such and flushed them in the toilet, I still will play this game and see how it turns out.
  
  The GS GOTY awards showed up. I found a lot of them humorous and I realized I didn't play a lot of the games on the list. I'm clearly not playing the "cream of the crop" games anymore. I'm not worried, the games everyone talked about that I have played turned out to be mediocre at best.
  
  I liked how they had to have a category for games that they wanted the most but got pushed to Q1 2010... I'm pretty sure this showed up because they looked at all the nominations and said, "Man, this sucks... Hurry throw in a category for the games we wanted to play but got pushed. Then lets claim it is based on 'hits' instead..."
  
  Ah, good times. Every year I think, Next year I'm going to track what I played so I can have my own awards... I'm glad to say this year is no different. Maybe next year.
  • Posted Dec 18, 2009 11:33 am PT
  • Category: Games
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