The Save Spot

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Comfort food

 

 

 

Sometimes I’m in an adventurous mood, eager to zip out to an unproven restauraunt or willing to (gasp) try a new dish at a favorite spot.  Other times, I just want to sit at home with a beer and some salty snackage.  I was in the latter frame of mind on a recent family vacation (yes, I know I’m too old for a National Lampoons-style family vacation.  No, that didn’t stop me!)  Naturally, there was much beer and salty snacking involved but I also indulged in a different kind of comfort food, video game comfort food for my PSP in the form of Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

MUA is a fantastic game, a great example of a dungeon crawl that gets almost everything right and also leverages a genre-appropriate license quite well.  It is a lengthy game (30ish hours), a replayable game (there are many hero combinations you could play again with), a richly deep and customizable game (stats, powers, equipment, and hero teams can all be customized), and a game filled with interesting optional sidequests and colletion goals.  So, when I say this game is comfort food I certainly don’t mean to suggest that it isn’t deep or is not enrossing.  It’s a pleasant romp, a nice way to kill some time, a game that doesn’t require too much thinking, and a well-balanced game that is neither too easy nor too difficult or frustrating. 

For me, it’s a game that I’ve now played through substantial portions three times (the first three acts are well-traveled territory for me, most enjoyably as a core event of GAUGE VII).  It walks a fine line between button-mashing gameplay and a need to sometimes play with more strategy and on my recent trip it provided a pleasant escape that didn’t require too much mental overhead or engagement.  I even let Marvel make an important decision for me, and played as the Fantastic Four. 

MUA is one of those games that came out on almost every game system - you can purchase a copy for Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, or PSP.  If you enjoy Diablo-style gameplay and have even a passing interest in Marvel superheros, go get yourself a greatest-hits copy right away.  I recommend the 360 version since you’ll get access to exclusive playable characters including the Hulk and Dr. Doom, and because nerd points are fun.  Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has also been announced, and I’m expecting good things!

What’s your video game comfort food?

 

 

Flagship going under?

 

 

 

Well color me surprised.  The rumor on the internet says that Flagship went under this last week.  Which puts Hellgate: London in serious jeopardy.

Hellgate has had a very troubled history.  And the fact that they appeared to focus more on the pay model of the game than the actual development caused serious concerns.  So much so that I never bought the game, despite drooling over the fact that I might get my Diablo-esque fix.

As Bill Harris (Dubious Quality) said back in 2007, “Sometimes, you just get a good vibe about an upcoming game.  BioShock had a good vibe before it was released. Mass Effect has a good vibe.  Rock Band has a good vibe.

Then there’s Hellgate: London. Bad vibe.

What’s interesting about Hellgate is that the bad vibe doesn’t come from the game itself, necessarily, but it seems that the developers have spent more time thinking about the revenue models than the game”

Seems like he might have been on to something there.

This is one of my biggest “fears” of the MMO / online / downloadable content monster that’s been created. If the company goes under all your time and money is totally gone.  When you rely on a company’s servers to play the game, when those servers close that’s it.  No more game.

For me that risk isn’t worth it. I don’t want to waste my money (and more importantly my time) on something I can’t control.  There are better options out there.  And right now I’m very happy I didn’t buy Hellgate.

Old school for the win!

 

 

   

With lots of great games on shelves right now, it is both an exciting and difficult time to be a busy gamer.  Where should you best spend your limited gaming time?  GTA IV is still largely unplayed on my shelf, MGS4 has a meacritic score of 92.9, and I’m itching to see how the Civ experience translates to consoles in Civilization Revolution. 

And that doesn’t even include the great portable games out right now.  Just for DS, there’s an embarrasing number of good options right now if you enjoy RPGs or SRPGs: The World Ends With You, Etrian Odyssey II, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, and (coming soon) the remake of Final Fantasy IV.  There are literally hundreds of hours of gaming goodness right now, just in games you can fit in your pocket! 

So with all these great choices, what’s filling my gaming hours this week?  It’s the old school gameplay of the only game mentioned above that you probably didn’t recognize, Etrian Odyssey II (EO2), that wins my time for now.  This is a classic dungeon crawl with a bare-bones story that, much like Monster’s Den: Book of Dread, focuses on the basics of engaging gameplay for it’s success. 

EO2 is a throwback to games like Phantasy Star.  Like PS, you move around a 3D dungeon by moving your character (and the camera) in discrete ’steps’.  There are no curvy walls here - you’ve got rectangular rooms, walkways, and right angles everywhere.  Random battles are in, and show you facing off with one or more enemies on the top screen, with some very limited attack animations.  You want a dungeon map?  Make it yourself!  The bottom screen of the DS is presented with some simple map-making icons and tools so you can make your own map of each floor of the dungeon.  You both need to do this to find your way around (think of those days when you had to do this using graph paper) and will want to do this (it’s surprisingly satisfying, and really adds to the sense of exploration).

Punishingly difficult at times, EO2 can randomly spawn a high-level FOE into battle or while you’re gathering items.  Will there be level grinding?  You bet!  But the difficulty keeps you on your toes: you won’t venture deep into the labyrinth without carefully outfitting your characters, keeping an eye on your stats, and optimizing your party and battle choices.  Forming the best party to tackle a job is part of the fun too, and in EO2 you can hire and train a score of adventurers to choose from.

This kind of gameplay isn’t for everyone (there’s almost no story) but if you’re old enough to remember Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy (the first one - before they had numbers!), and Phantasy Star you’ll know what you’re getting yourself into.  Etrian Odyssey 2 is a pleasurable throwback, a game that focuses on the basics, and that will have you thinking about your party build and strategy even when you’re not playing. 

 

Wishful thinking, volume 1

Ok, I’d really like to write a column about video games focusing on all the fun times I’m having with the games I’m playing.  Problem is, I’m just too busy right now to have any more fun.  So, instead of writing about the games I am playing I’ve decided to write about some of the games I wish I had time to play! 

1.  GTA IV  Without a doubt, this is the game I wish I had more time to play right now.  Metacritic scores are off the charts, Crayfish has already blown through the game (utilizing a busy gamer trick of taking vacation days to stay home and play video games all day, I should add), and the few minutes I’ve spent in Liberty City so far have been highly enjoyable.  That said, given the hour of game time I’ve enjoyed compared to the $90 outlay for the special edition (hands off my lockbox!) this has been a poor value ratio for me so far. 

2.  PS3.  I really like the PS3 hardware, ever since I picked one up shortly after launch.  We’ve consistently enjoyed blu-ray movies from netflix, resistance was fun, and the hardware is super flexible: upgradeable hard drive, media ports, bluetooth, video and audio file support…Problem is, I just haven’t done anything cool with my PS3 recently.  So, I’m daydreaming about a PS3 project.  I wish the video support was better so I didn’t have to watch anime on my PC.  Seems like about one in three video files I try to stream or copy over will actually work.  So I’m daydreaming about installing Linux and playing around with a better media player.  Has anyone done this?  Any recommendations? 

3.  The World Ends With You.  This looks like a great, unique JRPG and it’s on one of my favorite little systems too.  I’ll have to get to this one after I finish off Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

 

 

GAUGE VII Performance Report

 

 

Our gaming and entertainment extravaganza GAUGE VII is now in the books.  A fantastic five days in Seattle, we have all now returned to our ‘normal’ work and lives as busy gamers.  We wrote about our gaming goals previously, and since performance measurement and tracking is very important an update is warranted!  As you can see from this performance report, the overall success of the event can hardly be questioned.  We had base goals and stretch goals for each of our achievements, and scored ourselves up to 100% for accomplishing a goal and up to 150% for a strech goal.  Based on this scoring methodology, our GAUGE VII performance was 110.8% - in other words on average we accomplished all our goals and over 20% of our strech goals!  Considering the large quantity of goals we set for this year, we consider this a major success.  Some key performance highlights are noted below.

Rock Band:  Our band The Wutai Clan (guitar, bass, and drums) was formed and performing for just five days and achieved over 1.5 Million fans.  This met our stretch goal of beating the world tour mode on ‘hard’ difficulty.  You can bet we’ll be reuniting the band at GAUGE VII to play more on ‘expert’ difficulty.   

Futurama:  We successfully decoded the alien language in futurama over the first half-dozen episodes of the first season.  We overcame several obstacles in this project.  The first in-episode alien alphabet symbols, five of them forming one word, appeared on an advertisement for the beverage “Slurm“.  As a reasonable working hypothesis we tried to decypher other signs by assuming the alien word was also Slurm.  Several episodes in, however, this started to appear less likely.  A second obstacle, we watched several episodes with no alien alphabet appearing at all!  Finally, we caught a break when a sign on a shop door had the word “Open” in english and four alien alphabet characters below it.  Using these four characters as a key, we were able to puzzle out several other signs including “Venusians Go Home”, “Tasty Human Burgers”, and “Don’t Drink The Emperor”.  Looking back to that first sign, we see that the alien word was “drink” and not “Slurm” - doh!  With these signs translated, we feel confident that further signs in the game will be decypherable - we’ve got all the vowels and most of the common letters.  We’ll put it to the test in GAUGE VIII, no doubt!

A few points where we came up short are worth noting as well.

X-Men Legends II:  We had high hopes of finishing Act 5 of this game, which we started playing in GAUGE VI.  Unfortunately, we kept running into disk read errors on the Xbox I’ve had since launch in 2001!  We were almost able to cleverly circumvent the problem by booting up to the Xbox Media Center and loading the game to the hard drive, but unfortunately we couldn’t get the Media Center to boot again afterwards!  We had to pass on this goal after making it about 25% of the way through Act 5.

Gauntlet:  With so many other good games to play, we just didn’t sit down with this classic.  A failure of gaming or goal-setting?  Either way, we had to score ourselves 0% for this one.

You can expect more coverage of GAUGE VII in the days to come, and a facelift for the site as well.

 

GAUGE goals

 

 

 

 

In previous posts we’ve talked about our (roughly) annual gaming binge and mini-reunion we call GAUGE.  With the start of GAUGE VII just two days away, we have finally locked down our gaming, entertainment, and food and beverage consumption goals for the event.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Starting with GAUGE VI we took our nerd factor up by an order of magnitude by establishing a set of specific, measurable goals around the major GAUGE activities. 

Why?  Mostly because it’s been a fun way to plan together, and to build excitement for the event.  Also, though, we are busy gamers and we don’t have this kind of chance regularly to set aside large blocks of time for tackling challenging gaming goals like these.  Plus, we have performance metrics and stretch goals in our mundane, real-world lives at work - why shouldn’t we treat our recreation with as much respect! 

Some of our goals are straightforward, for example to beat X-Men Legends II (a game we started playing last year), others are a little more unique (like making it to level 30 in Gauntlet, while enjoying a beverage whenever “Warrior needs food badly!”).  We’ll share our full suite of GAUGE goals in a future post, but a few of our other goals for this year are:

1. Succeed in Rock Band world tour, Hard
2. Decypher the alien language in Futurama
3. Beat the final boss in Final Fantasy Ring of Fates DS on the first try
4. Dominate the food chain in a single meal by feasting on beef, pork, chicken, fish, and shellfish.

 If you’ve set interesting gaming or entertainment goals with your friends, let us know in the comments.

 

 

 

The Origins of GAUGE

As we explained in a brief introduction, The Save Spot came about as a fun way for three college roommates to keep in touch and find time for gaming in our busy lives.  It’s been years since our shared experience at Gettysburg College, a small school in Pennsylvania, and we now live far apart – one of us in the East, one in the Midwest, and one on the West coast of the US.  Remarkably, we’ve kept in touch over the intervening years and had a lot of fun in the process.  Recently, we’ve made it a priority to get together for an extended weekend once or twice a year for a concentrated dose of video games, movies, great food, and adult beverages.  As this extended-weekend get-together became a tradition, we gave it a name – GAUGE. 

 

Our Gettysburg Alumni Ultimate Gaming and Entertainment events (Nerdy acronym?  Check!) are a way that we make time for friends and for games.  A typical day in GAUGE involves video games interrupted only for food and movies (and, grudgingly, sleep!)  Since we’re all way too busy to enjoy gaming binges like this in our ‘regular’ lives, GAUGE gives us something fun to look forward to.  It’s also a lot of fun to plan for and to look back on afterwards (What games should we play?  Old-school, portable, shooter, rpg?  What movies and food?  Remember how we skillfully utilized three televisions last year to meet as many of our gaming goals as possible?)  Basically, it’s just a whole lot of fun!

 

In our case, GAUGE has always meant travel for two of us and recently it has meant long plane trips (we used to live closer together).  There are a lot of ways we could make time for online gaming together, but being all in the same place really opens up a lot of possibilities: co-op games or retro games that you can’t play online, the shared experience that includes the movies, food and drink, and a chance to catch up in person.  If you can make time to get together in person with your gaming buddies, we highly recommend it!

 

We’re in the process of preparing for GAUGE VII right now, actually, having set aside a five-day weekend around Memorial Day for this year’s event.  So, expect to be seeing more details about our plans in the coming weeks!  First, we’ll offer some more details on past events: what has made for a successful GAUGE event, and some of the innovations in recent events that have been especially fun.  So, keep an eye on The Save Spot for more information to follow.  Do you have a gaming tradition with your friends?  If so, tell us about it in the comments!

 

 

A Busy Gamer’s Entreaty

An important but not insurmountable roadblock to carving out some time for video games has been on my mind recently.  Namely, the added difficulty of enjoying longer, story-driven games where save spots can be infrequent.  As a busy gamer, my gaming time is likely to be interrupted by phone calls, family commitments, and other responsibilities.  Nothing is quite as frustrating as telemarketers, but a close second is making significant progress in a game but being stuck in an extended cut-scene, firefight, or strategic battle and urgently needing a save spot. 

 

In some games, obviously, this is not a problem.  Many longer games have adopted a “save anywhere” or “save almost anywhere” mechanic that make a busy gamer’s life much easier.  A good recent example for me was Mass Effect, an RPG I very much enjoyed and which I knew I could pick up for 15 minutes or 3 hours and be able to put it back down quickly if necessary.  A good example of a difficult game for a busy gamer is any of the PS2 Xenosaga games.  I recently started playing through Xenosaga III, a traditional JRPG, and both extended cut-scenes and save spots which can be 30 minutes apart leave me anxious when interruptions inevitably arise.    

 

Now, I’m not suggesting that “save anywhere” is the solution here (and my 12th grade English teacher would rightly chastise me for not communicating my thesis prior to the third paragraph!)  There are many gaming genre’s where a sense of excitement, urgency, and vulnerability is present during the periods of the game in-between save spots.  Some shooters, traditional RPGs, and adventure games for example would be much less interesting if you could just save at any time.  But there’s another solution - one that has profitably been applied in some games for years, and which solves this busy gamer’s dilemma without removing any excitement: the quick save! 

 

Quick saves, you’ll recall, have been available in portable games for years (see, for example, any of the Final Fantasy games for the GBA) and are now (basically) available in any DS or PSP game by way of the ’sleep mode’ of each handheld.  When you quick save, you can pick up where you left off - but only once!  If you “Game Over” before reaching a ‘real’ save spot in the game, you can’t start again from your quick save location but have to go back to your last real save.  If quick saves were standard for games, you would be able to quit at any time and resume later without worry, but without removing the urgency of getting to that next real save spot the next time you pick it up.  In fact, in games where this mechanic is used I find myself more likely to want to get right back into the game: I’ve left my character(s) vulnerable, in limbo! 

 

Now, you could argue that this functionality is available in most all games through the process of pausing the game and leaving the console on.  If you’re my age (ahem, let’s not go into details on that one just yet!) you probably remember leaving your NES on for days at a time, with gaming time interrupted only by trips to the local institutional learning center (ok, “school.”)  I’m loathe, however, to leave my PS3 on for days (and what if I want to watch a blu-ray?) and my Xbox 360 would surely survive only hours before offering a red ring retort.

 

So, this busy gamer makes his entreaty to game and hardware developers: please, let’s make the quick save a standard feature!  Let’s build it in to the hardware!  Let’s help to embrace legions of older gamers and make the video gaming world better for busy gamers everywhere!

 

Finding Time for Games

 

 

 

As a busy gamer who also has a full time job, a wife, and lots of responsibilities, finding time for playing games can be a challenge.  Carving out several hours to get together with friends on Xbox Live, or to work through the new RPG is one kind of problem (and one that I’ll deal with in a different post).  But what if you’re looking for a mid-week gaming fix, a mid-day pick-me-up?   With a little planning and ingenuity you’ll find there are opportunities to fit gaming into the little spaces in life as well.  Here are some of my top strategies for getting in some gaming time during the week.  

1. Going Nowhere Fast: If your idea of exercise is preparing for an Iron Man triathalon (no, I’m not talking about your plan to attend three showings of Iron Man on May 2nd) then this one won’t work for you.  If you’re more my speed, get yourself a comfortable exercise bike or other stable, stationary workout equipment.  Haul that old CRT TV out of the garage, and hook up one of your current gen or older gaming systems and sit yourself down for 30-60 minutes of exergaming!  I find my workouts tend to be less intense when gaming (I’m distracted?) but also longer (I’m distracted!)  My favorite genres for exergaming are strategy games, which are especially good at taking your mind off of the job at hand.  Recommended game: Age of Empires: Age of Kings, DS.
2.  I’m not tired yet:  If you’re a married gamer you’re probably already familiar with this one, in which you stay up late after your wife goes to bed in order to game for a little while.  Pitfalls to watch out for include:  a.  You’ll need to keep it down (Rock Band may be out.)   b.  You still need to get some sleep (WoW is probably out, as are those favorite “just one more turn” games.  I’m looking at you Civilization. )   c.  You probably can’t do this every day or you’ll risk an unhappy spouse.
3. Going Nowhere Fast (Redux):  Yeah, I’m going there.  Grab your DS, PSP, or GBA and head to the bathroom (the Virtual Boy is not recommended, for more than one reason).  You’re going to be in there for a while anyways, so why waste your time with Sports Illustrated?  Just don’t let your legs fall asleep (your grandpa’s padded toilet seat isn’t sounding so silly now, is it?) and stay away from portable games with poor save spot distributions.

So, these are some of my top ways to get a mid-week gaming fix - what are yours?