Gamesugar

April 13, 2010

Cave Story – A Single Man Makes A Memorable Game

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , — Michael Tucker @ 6:32 pm

Cave Story

Title Image by Rey Ortega

A lone developer once sat in his home in Japan and committed himself to making the most hauntingly fantastic independent videogame ever. Five years later, he emerged with Cave Story.

A lot of eloquent praise has been given to Cave Story over the years and there’s not much that I can add to what’s already been said, but there are a few things that struck me during my most recent play through of the title in its new WiiWare form and I can’t help wanting to write a love letter of my own.

The nigh-perfection of this simple title made by a single man (Pixel is Daisuke Amaya’s self-appointed handle) was and is far-and-away a greater achievement than anything I’ve experienced from the professional industry in many years – if nowhere else than on a tasteful, emotional level.
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April 6, 2010

Catching Up With Lunar: Silver Star Harmony

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 12:55 pm

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony
Lunar sets the stage by opening with a bit of classic RPG drama, pitting archetypal heroes against a formidable evil – the game seemingly beginning where most others would end. The ensuing battle, which players cannot lose, offers a taste of the combat system and some understanding toward the world awaiting an expanded narrative.

And when the heroes have proved victorious, the player discovers that these events are being recounted for two children, Alex and Luna, living in a cozy home on a hill – two characters who quickly emerge as young adults, ready to have the player assume responsibility for them as they set off on their own adventures, greatly inspired by the heroic tales they grew up listening to.

The sequence represents a clever approach to establishing the world of Lunar, putting some ground beneath the player’s feet about where they are starting out from, as well as foreshadowing the challenges that wait ahead. It’s a beautiful way to open a game, offering some instant justification as to why the title has seen so many revisits over the years, revisits that cause the world nostalgia to easily attach itself to this PSP remake.

And while that word fits for anyone familiar with earlier versions, nostalgic leanings don’t keep Silver Star Harmony from proving as competitive and compelling as any other on-the-go RPG in recent memory.

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April 4, 2010

Lazy Sunday – Shooting Gallery

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , — Jamie Love @ 8:45 am

Shooting Gallery
Seeing as the shmup is the genre I obsessed over the most during my childhood, I still waste a good amount of time thinking about it today. Most recently I’ve been obsessing over the simple diamond design of Star Fox’s Arwing, which while technically not a shmup, does deserve consideration in the halls of classic ship design.

I’m certain there’s something really clever to be said about the evolution of ships within these games, and how each of the truly great releases owes its success to the design of the ship over all other concerns. Within a really good shmup, the ship is the protagonist. And as such, each has something important to say about the games they inhabit, serving as a reflection of the worlds within those games.

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March 30, 2010

Farewell My Love, and Tomorrow We Shall Meet Again

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:06 am

Fragile Dreams
When Muramasa released last year, I understood why some criticized the game for not offering more to collect, find, and simply “do” while running through the crafted backdrops Vanillaware paints with a level of detail and skill worthy of history’s artistic masters. I didn’t agree with any of those people, but I grasped the complaints of those that weren’t drawn into the real depth of that living-breathing world just beneath the digital brush strokes of painted splendor those same people saw as the game’s central draw.

When it comes to Fragile, I can already hear a similar chorus not so thoroughly impressed with the way the furnishings of the apocalypse are offered on the Wii. Part of me enjoys a ruined world full of junk to collect and strange personalities to catalog – the world of Fallout does make for good stories from the road.

And yet, Fragile is carving a path that allows me to justifiably use the word unique for once, exploring a neglected aspect attached to the end of civilization – the immense and chilling isolation that leaves stray animals to inherit the earth.

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March 28, 2010

Lazy Sunday – Katsup

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 8:51 am

Vanquish
It seems I missed a lazy Sunday post or two. I’m half certain that isn’t a very big deal because I don’t know why anyone would read them, but rather than self-loathing over that fact, the absence owes simply to the fact that we’ve happened to be busy with weekend events this month.

Luckily I found time to scowl at a few things while drinking my coffee this morning, and we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming – wherein my first question of the day is “What’s the deal with Vanquish?”

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’d like to think a screenshot could merit at least half that many – but when it comes to images for Vanquish lately, I’ve tried my best and only come up with seven.

I really, really want to believe that this isn’t a generic “me too cause we can do it better but probably won’t” kinda thing – I’ll be sincerely shocked if that’s what releases in the end, but Platinum, you gotta give me more to work with here.

And yet there are games of more immediate concern.

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March 25, 2010

The Word, Gaming’s Second-Class Citizen

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Jamie Love @ 7:08 pm

The Word
That damn Michael Tucker has derailed my entire day by posting a link to that very fine read, Less Talk, More Rock. I’ve read it eight times now while consuming coffee and having a short twitter back-and-forth with @the1console about it.

At this point I’ve emerged with a few thoughts, aside from a small bout of jealously over not having written it myself.

So let’s talk about the role of words and language within videogames, because that’s what reading the post so many times got me thinking about. And before I start, I’ll stress that I don’t feel the article implies that designers should abandon language within gaming, it simply got me thinking about the way language has been treated within gaming – which to date is very poorly and owing almost entirely to the way the industry has treated language as a tool rather than an additional artistic form of expression.

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March 23, 2010

Revisiting Perfect Dark

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 4:33 pm

Perfect Dark
I’ve been pretty wrapped up in the nostalgia of revisiting Perfect Dark since it’s revamped release on XBLA, one which gives the series enough relevance that those inclined can wax on about their attachment to Joanna and why the continuation of the franchise should be a top priority for Microsoft – such as myself.

If you only took one element of this release away with you in deciding whether it was worth 800 MSPoints, it’s hard to ignore just how much “game” Rare managed to wedge into that N64 cartridge so many years ago. If the narrative solo missions and visits to the Carrington Institute aren’t enough to keep you occupied, the multiplayer options provide an experience that scream for life on LIVE. And of course Perfect Dark offers up co-op mission play, but more importantly offers the counter-op alternative that is probably one of my favorite multiplayer experiences to date.

Setting my obvious enthusiasm aside however, there are plenty on the flipside of the positive, for whom the game is simply too dated, with a design approach to the genre too far out of line with modern FPS releases. Naturally I don’t agree, but rather than simply telling those people to suck a lemon, it seems worthwhile to revisit an element of Perfect Dark that elevates it’s old school status beyond the age of its release to show that it still has energy enough to teach us something about what the console FPS is capable of.

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