wow gold

Woo with the GameSetLinks - headed by a new indie title that’s all kinds of Jeff Minter-esque - in only the best and silliest ways, naturellement.

Also in this set of link-out goodness, trawled from all over the place for your pleasure - some interesting discussion of how No More Heroes’ violence is changed for the Japanese version, affecting its impact, and a look at an awesome retro computer game book - hurrayzor.

Onward to the links:

the2bears.com - War Twat
The Minter movement in sweary psychedelic shooters gets another acolyte!

UK:RESISTANCE: LEXICON ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES IMMINENT SELF-DESTRUCTION OF VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY
More DS brain games? ‘Surely the games world can only take so much of this sort of horrendous onslaught before it mutates and starts eating its own babies?’

Xemu’s Long-Winded Game Industry Ramblings :: Reaper Creeper
Another industry dev recommends Square Enix’s ‘The World Ends With You’ - hearing it’s one of the most leftfield and interesting ‘mainstream’ releases in a good while.

Write the Game: Writing a Kick-Ass Script 3: The Meat and Potatoes
Fun series on making good game script.

You Are Lose!: Violence In ‘No More Heroes’ - Blood-Free Japan
About censorship in the Japanese SKU: ‘As the bosses and their deaths grow more outlandish and complex, the Japanese version remains uncertain and, well, a little awkward.’

Anonymity’s redeeming quality - schlaghund’s playground
‘While the diplomatic metagame is an ever-present reality in the analog world (at least among my circle of friends), the digital one possesses a saving grace - anonymity.’

Vintage Computing and Gaming | Archive - Polaroid Instant Video Games
‘What you’re seeing is not a hallucination. It is neither the result of partial head trauma, nor an accidental intrusion from an alternate dimension.’

mbf tod@y: Usborne Guide To Computer And Video Games
‘A glorious exercise in retrofuturism.’

Habitat Chronicles: Lucasfilm’s Habitat Promotional Video
‘In 1986, the following promotional video for Lucasfilm’s Habitat - the first graphical virtual world with the first avatars - was released.’

Phosphor Dot Fossils: The DVD now available | Armchair Arcade
‘Phosphor Dot Fossils is an audiovisual celebration of the evolution and innovation of arcade games, home video games and computer games.’

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As I searched for the final area of Lost Winds my entire family died in a flaming plane crash. I mean the game crashed as I was going from one area to another. The controller stopped responding and I was once again forced into physical activity by the Wii. I made my way to the system and shut it off, annoyed that I had stumbled upon one of the Lost Winds glitches I’d read about but still psyched because I knew I’d finish the game in the next half hour. So I rebooted the console and loaded up the game again. All the save files were gone. Crashing and being turned off during the hang up removed all the progress I had made. It’s safe to assume I am reviewing a game I did not finish.

Technical issues aside, will this game’s voice be heard or will it break like the wind?

Lost Winds is the new example of a game that’s more than the sum of its parts. If you enjoy lecturing others about video games (and more specifically why Shenmue is actually great and not boring or stupid) you need to play Lost Winds so you can better describe games that have average or good gameplay but still mop the floor with less creative titles. Lost Winds isn’t a blast to play. The puzzles it provides pale in comparison to any Zelda, the platforming has been done better in games 20 years older, and a good daydream provides more adventure.

While Lost Winds never offers gripping gameplay, the play mechanics are very inventive and make great use of the Wii’s unique abilities, and more importantly complements the rest of the game perfectly. Appropriately enough, Lost Winds puts the power of wind in the player’s hands, or at least the ability to control thin streams of wind in a video game. Throughout the short adventure you will gain new windy abilities that are necessary to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will mention that when you reach level 50 you become Storm from the X-Men and at level 75 you become the cause of cyclones and typhoons in Asia (too soon?).

It is really the combined efforts of the sound and graphical presentation with the laid back gameplay that makes Lost Winds great. The game is a visual and aural treat to all but the blind and deaf, and it manages to put me at peace like only watching the orchard trees gently sway to the sounds of acoustic guitar melodies in the economic missions of Stronghold could (that’s right, feel alienated because you aren’t part of my personal experience with this somewhat obscure game). The character models could be better quality but the background and environment art is beautiful and as many have observed, better looking than most Wii games though for love and passion, not number of polygons pushed. The way your gusts of wind ruffle trees and bushes, direct flames and guide streams of water is the jewel on Lost Winds crown of atmosphere.

Still there are a few things that could be improved upon. The characters are not particularly interesting, despite their quirky visual design. They generally have very little to say to the point that most townsfolk repeat a single line of dialog the entire game. The setting, while beautiful, could stand be to fleshed out more. I want to know more about the enchanting world I am blowing. These shortcomings are likely due to Lost Winds being designed as a short and relatively cheap title. Success was uncertain and crafting deep backstory and rich characters conflicted with the goal of getting a nice looking, fun game out as soon as and as cheaply as possible. Just think about old games if you doubt plot and characterization aren’t the last things on most designers list.

Developer Frontier has already announced a sequel is in the works and this leaves me with mixed feelings. It is a clear chance to make the improvements I just suggested, but it is also a chance to fail (the lesson is never try). By making a three hour game that rewards the player with a new mechanic every thirty minutes or so Frontier has essentially removed the filler that bloats most games. If the sequel does not follow suit by constantly offering interesting twists on wind, which will be very difficult to do, it may be three hours of filler excised from a better game. I’m sorry, but the princess is in another castle.

Finally there is WiiWare itself. Nintendo will have to step up their quality control if they want WiiWare games to be seen as worthwhile titles in smaller packages instead of cheap underdeveloped crap. If Lost Winds weren’t as good as it is I’d be much more likely to dismiss WiiWare as a whole after running into that time erasing bug. Gamers may be stupid enough to continuously buy broken PC games then wait for patches, and stupid enough to buy broken console games that are never patched and then rave about them online, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to abuse us.

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Filed under: Nintendo Wii

Here we are in the third week of WiiWare and we still feel like we aren’t able to equip you guys and gals properly for your buying decisions. We feel pretty confident about Dr. Mario, if you aren’t burnt out on it, but we have literally no clue about Family Table Tennis. Let us know in the comments if you give either one a spin.

• Dr. Mario Online Rx (Nintendo, 1-4 players, 1,000 Wii Points): It’s the classic Dr. Mario that you have played a thousand times love, wherein an Italian plumber tosses more pills then Amy Winehouse to practice medicine completely without a license. But Nintendo has added new multiplayer modes, including a Friend Battle Demo that you can play with someone who doesn’t own the game.

• Family Table Tennis (Aksys Games, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): You can probably figure out what to expect here. It’s table tennis (though we don’t know if it uses the Wiimote’s motion sensing). What we’d like to bring up is this line from the press release: “Just like a real family, choose your character from a cast of four, which includes Daddy, Mommy, Sarah and Billy.” What sort of Cold War-era ethics are you trying to impose on our families, Nintendo? Even more sinister is the release’s insistence that the game includes “four table tennis-tastic stages.” Table tennis-tastic? We don’t care what anyone tells you, that collection of words and punctuation means nothing.

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Motorherp is organizing what will be a series of Rapid Prototype Sessions over at Shmup-Dev. These will be informal “contests” lasting about 2 weeks. I expect some very good and interesting stuff from these, as Motorherp says: “The aim here is not to create polished titles put rather to explore new ideas.”

General rules can be found here. Session 1 starts today, and the theme is a good one:

Create a shmup with meaningful gameplay in which the player is not allowed to fire their own projectiles.

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Come on. Who doesn’t love Boys II Men? [Remember them?]

 

Tags: A Song for Mama, Boys II Men, Sims 2 Music Video, Sims 2 video

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TSL 0.9

There’s honestly not a lot to say about this release. It isn’t very polished and the new features aren’t really useful yet - I’m posting mostly to let people know I’m still alive and at least some of the flaws exposed in 0.8 have been fixed.

Warlocks Mountain 0.3.2

As it would happen I was looking at my old source files and came across an old binary for WM. I was stunned that this was a previously unreleased version with a few new features that I had forgotten about.

MageGuild v0.6

Hey, all. Another small step for MageGuild: v0.6.

Zomband 7DRL Merge

I have spent some extra time combining the classic Zomband with the 7DRL expansion, creating one mostly-polished game.

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Between May 27 and June 31, you can buy a shrimp burger at a McDonald’s in Japan and learn about the nutrition facts on your DS. During this period Nintendo and the house of the McPork value sandwich will test the Nintendo Spot service in 21 locations. With the Nintendo Spot DS owners can download a compact version of the Nintendo Browser, which connects to a page of McDonald’s news. The top page has links to current McDonald’s promotions and nutritional information.

 

In an effort to lure gamers into a McDonald’s, Nintendo will offer DS demos and a special present for Pikachu during May 30 and June 19. This isn’t the first time Nintendo made a deal with McDonald’s. The two companies made an agreement to allow DS owners to use their US Wi-Fi service free of charge in 2005.

 

This may sound strange, but in some regions McDonald’s is actually kind of nice. Some of the McDonald’s stores in Hong Kong have Wi-Fi, flat screen TVs with news and chandeliers.

 

Images courtesy of McDonalds.

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Cabal Online is finally in open beta in the Philippines, thanks to the efforts of IP e-Games (although I’ll be the first one to point out that other games of the local online games publisher are starting to suffer).

I failed to make it to the first day of the open beta because I was still downloading the client at the time. If you’ve been following my rants on MMOtaku, then you already know about the shabby service I’ve been getting from a local Internet service provider (I shouldn’t have upgraded my account from 384 kbps to 768 kbps. My previous connection, although a bit slow for online games, had been stable).

Anyway, this post is not about the crappy Internet service, but Cabal Online. Despite my travails, I still managed to cram in a few hours of playing the game.

Guess what I did during my first five minutes in Cabal Online Philippines? Take a gander at these screenies:

Yeah, I (rather, my character, JadziaDax) danced … and danced … and danced (mostly because I was AFK [that’s away from keyboard]). Well, it’s a cool function for those who want to while away the time in town (if you’re not vending, that is).

More Cabal Online in a later post. Stay tuned!

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Sky Kid (NES)

From this week onwards, we can get info for both WiiWare and Virtual Console games. For the VC, Sky Kid (NES), a side-scrolling shooter, is the first Namco game that allows 2 players to play simultaneously. This is a game which you get to shoot planes and complete missions. 500 Wii Points for download.

How about the WiiWare?

Konami’s Critter Round-Up and Hudson’s Star Soldier R on your way.

Critter Round-Up (Konami, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone - Comic Mischief, 1,000 Wii Points): The critters have escaped, and the barnyard is in chaos! It’s up to you to quickly corral the animals in this puzzle-action challenge. You’ll have to mend fences in a hurry to keep all the critters safe and satisfied. But the fun doesn’t stop with the farmland; more than 50 challenging levels take you to several exotic locations, including the outback, the icy Arctic and more. There’s even a series of minigames for when the critters get you down: Snowball Soccer, Predator Rampage, Chicken Catch and Fence Trap. Up to four players can compete or cooperate as the critters run wild. So roll up those sleeves and grab a friend-those critters won’t catch themselves.

Star Soldier R (Hudson Entertainment, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone - Fantasy Violence, 800 Wii Points): Star Soldier R is a new kind of shooter where players aim for the best scores within a two- or five-minute time limit. Develop various scoring strategies, and pump out those points within the breakneck time frame. Assembled in record time to counter the advance of a powerful enemy, the mysterious Brain Forces, the “Caesar” starfighter takes off to fight for the very future of mankind. Shoot down countless enemies, upgrade your ship to the max with power-ups hidden throughout the levels and wage an all-out assault against the core of the enemy fortress. Combining the excitement of shoot-’em-ups with in-depth scoring strategies, this state-of-the-art competitive shooter will keep you coming back for more. Upload your best scores with Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection, and pit your skills against the world’s best fighter pilots from the comfort of your living room. Hone your skills and show the world who’s boss.

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Filed under: Business

Showing the man has a little bit of confidence in his company, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has bought 20,000 shares of stock at $48.37 apiece, totaling approximately $967,400. According to Barron’s Online (subscription required), this is the second purchase he’s made since becoming chief in March 2007. He now owns 47,294 shares and about 75,000 exercisable options.

Said a spokesperson, “John believes that senior executives should be invested in the company.” The stock was as high as 54.57 on May 13, the day they reported a $454 million loss in Fiscal 2008. Of course, if he’s still confident in the inevitability of the Take-Two takeover, those shares will probably rise a good bit. Speaking of which, the third extension for the Take-Two offer now puts the deadline at June 16.

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