The Save Spot

Console Wars

 

 

 

Final Fantasy is my favorite gaming franchise.  To me its bigger than Civilization, Half Life, Dragon Quest, and yes, even Diablo.  It’s also the only video game franchise that I would buy a console just to play.  (Actually that’s what I did with the PS2). 

So when it was announced that Final Fantasy would appear on the Xbox I think that’s pretty bad news for Sony.  This move takes away the one thing that made me think about buying a PS3.  Now the last card Sony has to play is the Blu-Ray angle.  Unfortunately for them, I watch very few regular movies at home, so the chances of me wanting to watch HD movies is slim to none.  

Which means I’m only buying a console to play video games.   

Both Microsoft and Sony are in trouble right now (even with Microsoft’s recent price cut).  As much as I hate to admit it, the Wii is dominating both of them.  But I’m a PC gamer first and foremost.  Which means that I’m not really in the market to buy more than one console.   That means I have a tough decision.  I haven’t wanted to buy the 360 because of it’s manufacturing issues.  The PS3 is just really expensive.  And the Wii doesn’t have many games I’m interested in playing.

Apparently my inability to choose sides in this console war makes me Switzerland. 

That’s why Sony losing an exclusive Final Fantasy game is bad for them, but good for me.  I’ll probably end up with a 360.  I’ll take that price cut, the better game library, a more robust online experience and my Final Fantasy.  But that means I’ll probably lose out on the Wii “experience”. 

Who knew staying neutral was such a pain?

 

DOg - Papercraft

 

 

 

I am hardly artistic.  I can barely draw a circle.  I hate making models or even painting.  And yet, I find myself continually facinated by papercraft.  I don’t know what it is about this medium.  Maybe it’s the fact that I have no shot at ever producing something like this.  Whatever it is, I’m drawn to it.

Now where is my papercraft gravity gun?

 

Can’t we all just get along?

 

 

 

Finally, some common sense from one of the console manufacturers- Sony this time.  As reported by the International Business Times, Sony has required that “everybody’s instruments must work with everybody’s games”.  Hooray for gamers everywhere, who no longer have to worry about where they will store their Guitar Hero World Tour drum set and their Rock Revolution drums along with their new Rock Band compatible MIDI drum set and their original Rock Band four-banger.  

 

One more for the backlist

 

 

 

The RPG, a favorite gaming genre, is stacking up recently as the bane of this busy gamer.  I haven’t had time to play through Oblivion, GTA IV, or Final Fantasy XII but I can’t stop myself from picking up each latest and greatest offering to the role playing gods.  These great games sit on my shelf and mock me with their dozens of hours of gameplay, sidequests, unlockable characters and gaming escape. 

The most recent game to insult me so is Final Fantasy IV DS, the latest in a long series of remakes of the game first released in the US as Final Fantasy II for the SNES.  I spent some time with the game yesterday, to get a feel for the remake and torture myself with guilt and frustration that I won’t be able to give this little gem the hours it deserves.  Here are some initial observations:

1)  The opening cinematics are excellent and well-matched with the Uematsu soundtrack.  Characters retain the look of the cinematics in the Playstation releases, and Cecil and Kain both look imposing in their armor.

2)  There are in-game cutscenes which do a nicer job of presenting the story than just dialog boxes did.  I really like an early scene where Cecil in a contemplative mood is shown with the moon framed through his tower window. 

3)  The 3D models look pretty good, almost PS1 quality, but obviously don’t compare favorably to non-portable final fantasy titles released in the last five years.  The effort at the armor for Cecil and Kain ends up looking cartoon-y, in contrast to the cutscenes where it looks intimidating.  Still, the game pulls a lot of horsepower out of the DS and it’s fun to see familiar sprite-based locations, characters, and enemies get the 3D treatment.

4)   It would be nice if battles moved more quickly.  You’ll want to go into the menus and turn up the battle speed dial as far as it will go.  They should have made it go to 11. 

I haven’t played far enough to get a feel for the difficulty or the amount of grinding that will be necessary to experience this re-telling of a great story.   I’d give even odds that I never will (or at least will have to push off the time when I can get to it until something like “retirement”) but if you’re a lucky gamer with more time than I, I’d certainly recommend giving this game a try.

 

 

 

 

 

I hate better graphics

 

 

 

Have you ever heard the argument that goes something like this, “I’m tired of better graphics, I want new game play. I don’t care about processing power, I want innovation.” But what happens when innovative game play requires processing power that simply isn’t there?

That’s the case with Dead Rising, a game originally released on the Xbox 360. The Wii simply lacks the ability to put the endless waves of zombies on the screen which makes an interesting game rather mundane. Part of the intensity of the game comes from the claustrophobia of being surrounded by masses of zombies.

This is completely lost in the Wii version, where it feels more like you’re surrounded by 10 annoying friends.

There’s no doubt that “better” graphics are a poor substitute for quality game play. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking that better graphics are somehow inferior to game play. Clearly the Wii, since it’s a weaker system, loses something with a port like Dead Rising.

Everything has it’s own place. Including graphics.

Choosing a band name

 

 

 

Anyone who followed our GAUGE exploits knows that one of our major goals was to play through Hard on Rock Band.  Well this was almost derailed by our inability to come up with a name for our band.  Naming things is NOT our strong suit.  After many weeks and approximately eleventy billion emails, we finally settled on The Wutai Clan. 

That’s why I was glad to see this xkcd comic.  It’s nice to know we aren’t the only ones to struggle with this…

 

 

Collectively speaking

 

 

 

Video games are generally a lousy investment.  Now, before you start writing me angry letters, games can have a tremendously high return as measured in hours of enjoyment per dollar spent on entertainment.  There are many games in my collection which have ended up costing far less than $1/hour of entertainment.   But I’m not talking about the somewhat intangible return of personal enjoyment - I’m talking about cold hard cash!

By a dollars and cents measure of return on investment, most games are quite poor as investments.  I often pay $40 - $60 for a cool new game, that just a few months later can be had in a budget release (or used) for half as much.  As the years go by, only a precious few games hold their resale value - and most never sell for more than orignial MSRP. 

Even so, I find it enjoyable to collect some of my favorite games from over the years and rather than trade them in when I’m “done” with them, I tend to keep new releases on my shelf.  And I’ve enjoyed picking up classic NES and Genesis games from eBay, too.   Remember how expensive the original Phantasy Star was for the Sega Master System, and how revolutionary and expansive the game seemed?  You can pick up a nice, complete copy for $20-30 if you’re so inclined.

As with all collectables, price is a function of supply and demand - and the supply of most games is quite high.  If you start building up a collection of classic games over the past couple of decades, some of the more expensive games are consequently for some of the less successful platforms.  The Sega Saturn, for example, has several classic titles for which you will have to pay $50, $100, $200, or more if you would like to include a nice copy in your collection.  The RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga, for one, typically retails in the $150-$200 range.  It’s an early 3D multi-disc RPG that had an unusually small production.  A classic shmup, Radiant Silvergun, will set you back even more - plus you’ll need to figure out how to play Japanese import games (you’ll need a Japanese Saturn or a special memory card based region-unlocker).  

Limited editions are an interesting step towards adding interest in treating new games as collectables - but it is terribly ineffective unless the limited editions are actually limited in suply (I bet you’re kicking yourself if you paid full MSRP for the Halo 3 Legendary Edition!)  In this regard, I think game publishers could take a page from comics publishers and publish (say) 1 out of 25 copies of a game with variant box art. 

Do you have a game collection?  Do you keep everything or trade in your used games?  Are there any gems in your collection that you keep as an investment?   Let us know in the comments. 

 

Rock Band 2 drum kit

 

 

 

Where we last left our entirely fictional wife she was slowly coming around to the idea of a new drum set for Rock Band 2. 

Well never let anyone say that we at The Save Spot aren’t willing to provide answers to life’s difficult challenges!  Because our (also entirely fictional husband) may have some new arguments in his arsenal - namely this drum kit sitting conveniently to the left. 

These aren’t just plastic toy drums, these are a real set of electronic drums, completely capable of being used outside of Rock Band 2.  If that’s not justification for a new game, then I don’t know what is!

 

 

The Save Spot Comic #3

 

The Save Spot Comic is published semi-occasionally and is widely perceived to be semi-humorous.

Civilized differences

 

 

 

Over the weekend I spent a few hours with a good friend and a fresh copy of Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 - an activity I can strongly recommend.  Last night, my copy of Civ Rev for the DS arrived, and I stayed up late enough to be both victorious and quite tired this morning.  Alas, sometimes sleep must be sacrificed at the altar of the busy gamer! 

As a long-time fan of the series, I have fond memories of hours spent in front of my IBM 286 PC, running a copy of Civilization (the first one, before there were numbers!) off of a 1.4 MB floppy disk.   The game was so much fun, much of which shared with aformentioned friend, that as late as 1998 I still had an old 16MhZ 286 PC and a copy of Civ to play in my dorm room at college.  Just writing about it makes me want to go dig up a copy and find a way to play it on an XP or Vista machine.  Of course, since then there have been several successful sequels and I’ve also spent quite a bit of time with those.

 

 

So it’s with this background that I picked up a controller over the weekend, and my DS last night, to experience the latest iteration of Civilization.  Overall, the game on the console and handheld are remarkably similar (graphics not included, but then graphics isn’t really what Civ is all about) and also quite fun.  There are some key differences in gameplay, however, that make Civ Rev different from it’s PC predecessors, including:

1)  You no longer direct the engineering of land and resources directly with settlers or workers.   Roads are built instantly with cash, and land improvements are now made possible by certain city buildings or technologies.

2)  Military units and city buildings no longer have a financial or resource support cost.  Once you spend the resources to build them, there are no ongoing costs.

3)  Many of the techs, city buildings, and wonders have different effects than in the PC series - if you’re a Civ veteran, pay close attention to these as you’re making your choices.

4)  You don’t have tax / science / luxury rates to control in the same way.  Each city can be set to specialize in producing food, gold, science, production, or a balance of each.  But you can’t micromanage here and choose exactly which resource tiles are used by each city.

5)  In my two games on Warlord, there were no unhappy citizens.  Instead of keeping citizens happy, temples and other related city improvements add to your “culture”.

6)  Maps are smaller, overall, and games move quicker. 

There are other changes, as well, of course - many of which are noteworthy, but I won’t cover them all here.  Because of these changes, I’d say that the game is more tilted towards military conflict.  The fact that military units don’t have an ongoing support cost makes it much easier to build up an army and support a war effort.  You can certainly still work towards a technology, cultural, or economic victory though.  My first victory was economic, so I’ll be looking for a more satisfying military victory soon!

While I don’t see Civilization Revolution as Civ 5, it’s certainly been a fun game to enjoy so far - and I’m already strategizing about my next game.  If you’re looking to scratch that ‘just one more turn’ itch, it’s definitely worth a purchase.