Overview forgames

Time killah

This past weekend was an expensive one that’ll have my budget for this month covered in red ink. You see, I was at the car dealership this weekend because the little wrench indicator light lit up on my dashboard a few days prior reminding me it’s time for a maintenance check. I went to the service department hoping to just get an oil change but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

Last time I had my car serviced I passed on the suggested valve adjustment which would have had me paying over 600 dollars for the total service job. This time I decided to bite the bullet and go forward with it (curse my responsible ways). In the end, with an oil change, rotated tires, and a valve adjustment, I ended up paying nearly 400 dollars. Geez, let me tell you that having a personal vehicle is such a great symbol of freedom (and almost a necessity for Southern California living) as you can go anywhere, anytime but man is it an expensive symbol of freedom.

I didn’t know it at the time but apparently valve adjustments take a long time to service as the mechanic has to wait for the engine to cool down before servicing it, so I had a lot of time to burn through before my car was ready. When I’m in these situations where I have a lot of time to kill, I usually play a game on my phone. My game of choice: ChuChu Rocket! for the iPhone.

During short waits like at the barber shop or at the dentist office I usually play the arcade mode of Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night, but if anything is going to take longer than 30 minutes I bust out ChuChu Rocket! If you don’t know, it’s a puzzle game where you guide mice called “chuchus” to a rocket ship while trying to avoid these crazy-eyed space cats that’ll eat them if they cross paths. You can’t control them directly as they run in a straight line or they’ll turn right when they hit a wall, but you can guide them with a limited set of tiles that allow them to change their direction.

You’ll fly through levels relatively quickly through Normal mode as it is setup as a sort of warm up to how the game plays, but things will get really difficult after that. Some levels later on in the Hard and Special modes are real headscratchers that it will have you focusing so hard for a solution that you will become blissfully unaware that you are staring angrily at your phone and making all around you very uneasy because they believe you’re about to go ape crazy on them all. On the plus side, it’s a great way to have no one sit next to you.

I exclusively play this game while in waiting rooms and I’ve played over 70 levels thus far. At the pace I play, this game could be unlimited because there are over 500 levels crammed into it! I’ve played this game over the span of a couple of years and it’s good to know I’m nowhere near of completing it, making it my game of choice in the near future to be used at any car dealership’s service department I may be stuck in for a number of hours.

I need a poster of this

Really dig the box art for Skate or Die 2. A lot of rad is radiating from this pic.

Funding the next chapter

Look what I have gone and done. I already spent all of my free cash for the month by giving it to the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. Even though I was happy to see Yu Suzuki getting the opportunity to continue his epic story, I wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to assist with by contributing to his Kickstarter (since it was already funded just hours after it was announced). I thought about it for a long while before finally deciding to pull the trigger just shortly before the campaign ended -- and I was happy to do it.

I really respect Yu Suzuki for all of his contributions to video games. From his pseudo-3D sprite-scaling games from the ‘80s like Hang-On and Out Run where he added unique controllers to the arcade machines for players to experience, to the ‘90s where he introduced 3D polygonal based gaming with Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. But his most ambitious project was Shenmue, a game that incorporates a few different genres plus added a few new gaming elements to the mix. Originally planned as a grand 15 chapter story, it was left incomplete for many years where only two games were released.

I’ve always appreciated the series from a distance but never actually played the games myself. My brother bought the original game when it came out back in 2000, and I watched him play the majority of the game, but I never saw the ending. Similarly, I watched my cousin play through a huge chunk of the sequel when it came out for the Xbox, but I never saw the ending. I’m so glad I was able to get both games for myself before sellers on eBay decided the price for these games need to be doubled what they were following the announcement of Shenmue 3. I also have both the Dreamcast and Xbox connected to my TV ready to play.

Now with the third game beginning development and my added contribution to its funding, this seems like a good time and incentive to actually play the games. I’m planning to start playing the first game soon and am excited as ever to return to Yokosuka and experience the world of Shenmue firsthand.

E3 2015: Nintendo Digital Event

Their biggest new game announcement is for the latest entry in the Star Fox series, Star Fox Zero for the Wii U. A reimagining of the original, Zero will also be including elements from other Star Fox games such as the never released Star Fox 2. It looks beautiful and fun to play. I like the idea of having the TV with a third-person perspective of the ship while having an in cockpit view on the GamePad for accuracy in targeting enemies.

Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is a 3DS game that includes multiplayer gameplay that uses an interesting mechanic called totem that involves having players stack their Links on top of one another to solve puzzles and to attack enemies. The game will support both local and online multiplayer.

The absolute cutest thing shown during the digital event was seeing all of the Yarn Yoshi’s on display. For the soon to be released Yoshi's Woolly World, they are also introducing a new Amiibo that has Yoshi designed from actual yarn. It will be available in a few colors and are just adorable to look at.

This year seems like it’s the most I’ve seen Nintendo passing development duties to 3rd party studios. When it comes to physical items like Amiibo, Nintendo is teaming up with Activision’s Skylanders to include a few figurines that will work with both Skylanders and Nintendo devices. For the 3DS port of Hyrule Warriors called Hyrule Warriors Legends, it will still be Koei Tecmo’s project. And for Star Fox Zero, PlatinumGames will be assisting with the development.

My favorite game shown during this digital event was Super Mario Maker. It looks like they added a whole lot more to the game compared to when I saw it back during last year’s E3. It looks really polished, too. If I had a Wii U, I definitely get the edition of the game that comes with a booklet that shows a lot of sample courses. I’d also get the 8-bit Mario Amiibo as well.

This was a pretty neat package of games Nintendo showed off during this year’s event. They did not mention anything regarding their next gen console codenamed Nintendo NX, but I’m glad to see Nintendo is still out there as a strong competitor for both Sony and Microsoft. As a side note, it’s sad to hear that Sega doesn’t have a booth at E3 this year :-(

E3 2015: Sony Press Conference

Holy moley.

Call Sony butterfingers because they were dropping the mic all throughout their press conference. Starting the show with a show stopper, the first game they showed for the evening was no other than The Last Guardian, aaaand with a release scheduled for 2016. Many bottles of Mountain Dew were accidently knocked over by nerds everywhere when this announcement occurred.

Another bomb drop was a ways of making good on a sour note that occurred during the PlayStation Experience back in December where Square mentioned they would be releasing Final Fantasy VII…as a port from the PC version. A roaring audience suddenly going silent was all that was needed to demonstrate the disgust everyone had when the word “port” was spoken. But now, at E3, they are giving what everyone wanted by making an actual remake of FFVII. Many nerds around the country chocked on their Doritos when the word “remake” appeared on the screen.

Continuing with pushing the fandom momentum forward, Sony hosted the Kickstarter launch for Shenmue 3! Yu Suzuki was there to countdown the timer for the launch, which by the way, had a goal of 2 million dollars that was already funded in less than 24 hours. I’ve never seen a Kickstarter campaign fill its most expensive pledges so quickly. I, for one, would have loved to have 10k of spare cash to blow to get the pledge that gets me the Ryo Hazuki leather jacket.

The new game that caught my attention was Horizon: Zero Dawn. While I don’t get why giant robotic dinosaurs are roaming the Earth, it was a cool looking game with some great combat. The trailer for Hitman was super stylized and looked impressive. And while I don’t really care for the franchise, the trailer for Hitman kept me glued to the monitor. Another game series I don’t care for but caught my attention was for the third or fourth installment (depending on who you ask) for it: Batman: Arkham Knight. The whole first-person perspective stuff was interesting and brings a new type of exploratory gameplay to the fast paced action the series is known for. Here’s hoping that wasn’t just a one-time gimmick.

Media Molecule’s Dreams sounds great, but it just made me think of LSD for the PS1. Man, Sony needs to release that on PSN US, or better, get the original creator, Osamu Sato, and have him remake the game with the power of the PS4. I’d preorder that game. Believe it. When it came to discussing the Morpheus VR headset, Sony was pretty coy with info. I guess they’re seeing if people are still interested in VR.

A big surprise was seeing a Call of Duty game being shown at Sony’s show. Now I understand why they were suspiciously absent from Microsoft’s show. For publisher Devolver Digital’s showcase, I was impressed with all the games they presented. My favorite game from theirs that I’m getting soon for PC is Ronin. Another cool looking game from them was Mother Russia Bleeds. I think it might be an old school brawler game, and if that’s true, then rad. There was a lot more to the show, but those were the biggest highlights for me.

In the end, I was really impressed with what Sony had to show at their press conference. There wasn’t a lot of first party stuff (and that could be a scary thing if you think about it), but if their job was to win the hearts of gamers, then: mission accomplished.

E3 2015: MS Press Conference

With every year that passes, Microsoft has been inching closer and closer to earning their reputation back for gaming prior to the 2013 “always on” PR disaster. With this year’s press conference, a lot of interesting things will be coming soon to the green box.

For starters, Microsoft seems to be finally acknowledging that its past is something worth of value and deserving of a second chance. With this, they are planning for 360 games to be playable on the Xbox One -- both downloadable and disc based games. I was impressed when they said 360 games would run natively on the console and would include access to Xbox One features like screenshots, DVR, etc. The one caveat to this is the game studios would need to approve a 360 game for to run on the Xbox One. So you’ll need to wait for a blessing from a publisher or developer before you can play them.

I love me some classic gaming compilations like Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection and Namco Museum, so it was cool to hear that Rare would be celebrating their 30th anniversary by stuffing 30 of their games onto one anthology called Rare Replay. Spanning across a magnitude of consoles like NES, N64, 360, it’ll include certain games such as Battletoads, R.C. Pro-Am, Perfect Dark, Viva Pinata, and Banjo-Kazooie. Personally, I would be interested in playing Blast Corps.

When it comes to hardware, the Elite controller seems interesting. With it, you can swap out the thumbsticks, insert what looks like paddle shifters at the back of the controller for racing games, trigger sensitivity settings, button remapping, and a funky looking d-pad (which appears can be swapped out for a more traditional d-pad). It will be available for both Xbox One and Windows 10.

Other hardware announcements included them saying they are partnering with Oculus so that their VR headsets will come packed with Xbox One controllers. In relation, Microsoft demonstrated their VR/augmented reality/whatever headset called Microsoft HoloLens by showing it working with Minecraft. With it, they had the person with the headset on logging into another player’s world that was using a Surface tablet. With the headset, you can view the world the Surface user created from a bunch of angles that can zoom in and out of buildings and above and underground, too. It was a really neat tech demo, but not much value other than that.

I didn’t see much for games that caught my interest during the stream with the exception for games like The Division and CupHead -- which I believe were games I mentioned during last year’s E3 press conference. Hopefully more interesting games will come out of the ID@Xbox program, but overall it was a show from Microsoft that demonstrated that Xbox is all about the gamers, and I’m glad to see that the press conference proves that notion.