The Save Spot

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. 

 

Energy Drink Reviews You Can Trust

 

 

 

 

Many of you may remember November of 2007, and those of you who don’t you should probably put down that poor saliva-crusted toad already.  One occasion from November 2007 that you probably don’t remember is in fact the topic of this post.  Right around Thanksgiving time last year Jeff Gerstmann, a longtime senior editor at Gamespot was fired from his job.  If you were a regular Gamespot visitor, you’d likely remember Jeff as a boisterous goofball, a funny guy to listen to on the Hotspot podcast, watch on the Gamespot video programming, or as a familiar editorial voice in game reviews. 

At the time Jeff was let go, there was much speculation that his departure was related to mollifying a publisher (Eidos), which had bought a significant advertising campaign on Gamespot, after Jeff provided a mediocre review (6 out of 10, metacritic scores were in the same ballpark).  “Gerstmanngate” received wider coverage in gaming industry press than many expected, and I recall hearing about this on several gaming podcasts as well as in online blogs.  Ok, so posting about this almost eight months later isn’t exactly a scoop! 

What’s interesting and perhaps surprising about this is that Gamespot has had significant editorial turnover since Jeff was fired.   Frank Provo, Alex Navarro, Ryan Davis, Vinny Caravella, and Brad Shoemaker have all left Gamespot since Jeff was fired, and some have given clear indications that editorial independence was indeed being supressed.  There had always been a base level of staff turnover at Gamespot, but this represented the departure en masse of many long time contributors. 

For the past few months, Jeff and Ryan have been running a video game blog, Giantbomb, that is worth checking out.  A staple of the site is an excellent podcast (the ‘bombcast’) in which the opening several minutes are usually spent sampling and discussiing various energy drinks.  What really caught my attention, though, is that about a week ago I was listening to the bombcast and learned that both Vinny and Brad have now also joined on to the editorial team at Giantbomb, which is launching in expanded form “this summer”. 

I doubt the departure of these senior editors has had a signifant impact on Gamespot traffic (although I have found that I’m just not interested to visit that site very often, and the Gamespot podcast isn’t nearly as interesting as the bombcast).  But I wonder if we’re heading into a future where smaller communities of gamers proliferate at the expense of the communities at larger sites?  In any case, I’ll be looking forward to more reviews and coverage from Giantbomb later this year and I’ve already found that since Gerstmanngate, IGN and Gamespot have received a lot fewer hits from yours truly.