Hey guys, it’s been tough to write. Is my life uninspiring? YES!! Doing your last semester is about the hardest thing ever. Interviewing for jobs also sucks. ANGSSSST.

There were no good games for a long while, but now that games are coming out, I have no money. Same complaint as ever. (i bought snazzy clothes to get a job with, because the real world is all superficial like that.) I’m still relishing Okami, though I only get a few hours a week to it. I’ve been playing Contact at work and when I should be studying at school. Contact has me hooked, except I just ran through the military base with a full stomach and 1 HP and found a bed to save in because my battery was dying. I’m going to start from there and promptly die unless I can find a bathtub.

Death is no big deal though. Not to the professor, anyway. It doesn’t affect my stats, does it? I can’t figure out the stats anyway, except that they get better whilst I fight.

Game Club dudes, I’m afraid that Contact will be our last game ever. No one’s showing up for the GC, and I don’t blame you after it being inactive for most of the summer. It was a lovely experiment, and I really enjoyed doing it. It’s just too hard to organize and keep up for me, since I forget about things very easily. It started out during a time when I did have the mental space to do it right, but as soon as things took off, my job got the best of me. I really wanted to do more with it, but I lacked the time. It was really cool of everyone to go along with my idea though, so thanks guys. Go play Contact, I think it’s the most interesting modern game we’ve done. If you can’t, then play Earthbound and sort of imagine what it would be like if it were also part Lost in Blue and part Shining Soul (II, since that’s the only one I played).

Contact discussion is going on now, and the site will stay up and active until it abates!

I’m going to a Halloween party at my local Japanese-themed geekery parlour tonight. It will be fun, oh yes. ^^

I’m going to get all livejournal up in here because it’s like 4:50 on a suddenly cold sleepless night.

Current music: Ugly Casanova
Current mood: Ugly Casanova

Since I’m lucky enough to have a job that always has a little downtime and an internet connection, I love playing Orisinal games at work. They’re short and arcadey and cute. Most of them use only the mouse, which is a key point. The Wii’s browser will have Flash support, and that makes me rather pleased. If it offered any sort of controller mapping or USB keyboard functionality (c’mon consoles, let’s use those USB ports for good and not evil), that would be great. But for now, I’m keeping tabs on mouse-controlled Flash games.

The Orisinal games never fail to get someone stopped by my desk going “What the heck.” And I have to explaing that I’m blowing bubbles to catch bees and this is serious business.

The games are all soft and organic in appearance. One of the benefits of Flash is superior animation made easier, though it can be a cheap-looking effect when misused. It’s never here. The games are almost all based in nature too, featuring idyllic landscapes and animals. There’s a few exceptions that are awfully weird, but they’re earlier works. They hold up pretty well too.

There is a progression of talent, as the newer games are toward the top. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a game added for almost a year, but you know how things can go (i have heard, through a friend, that the author is a student at UT-Austin). I’m grateful that the site’s there though, not banished due to neglect.

Check these games out if you haven’t. They’re what haiku would be in videogame form.

personal favorites: Panda Run, What Comes Around, A Daily Cup of Tea.
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I’m starting to get some serious job prospects now, I got a call today from a paper in San Angelo. The job there sounds exactly like what I’m doing now: copy editing, light design duties, midnight deadline. Not bad. It’s starting to look like I’ll actually have a job when 2007 rolls around. The idea of moving is exciting too, since I’ve lived here in the urban decay of Arlington for 16 years. Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to come back to get any pho. T.T At least there’s decent Mexican food pretty much anywhere you go in Texas.
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This post was totally brought to you by me accidentally finding a friend-of-a-friend’s livejournal and the trouble it caused me. XD

I recently acquired The Adventures of Cookie & Cream for PS2 which, in addition to having a title and box that will probably make cashiers snort under their breath, is the best co-op gaming available on the PS2. It has fun times written all over it, and it’s from the happy pre-9/11 world (2000).*

I’m writing about this prematurely, since I have yet to experience the full-on awesomeness. It’s a co-op game in the purest sense. You don’t even need two controllers, you can just snuggle up close to someone and grab half a Dual Shock. Of course, this isn’t for everyone, so 2 controllers is also an option.

One person controls the character on the left, one controls the character on the right. Either side can affect the other with various devices, so they have to cooperate to get through the level. Usually, this involves communication and anticipation skills. It’s kind of like Lost Vikings, except in real time with other people. And you can’t stop for long, since the whole thing is timed.

You could maybe play it by yourself if you had your corpus callosum severed. I tried. However, I proved to be no split-brain patient.

It’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had in co-op, based on a preliminary run of about 12 levels with my girlfriend. I’m just waiting until I have a whole evening clear to get through this. It’ll be great.

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Completely unrelated sidenote: Project Pwiiorder was a success. I camped out in front of a GameStop for an hour and a half to be number 7 in line. Good times.
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* Read everything else, then come back to this footnote. I made an almost-sarcastic 9/11 reference at the top. It was fully intentional! I mean, where have games like this gone to? Fun, cute, really light on plot, engaging… Sorta reminds me of Pocky and Rocky. I mean, if game makers are going to abandon this style completely because they are over with it, I wanna go find another hobby.

Tanuki challenge time: name a game, published after 2001, that fits this mold. The key words are straightforward, cute and fun. Genre and platform are not important. Sky Gunner would be a good example, except it was published in 2000 in Japan, therefore it was developed pre-9/11.

Launch games have an otherworldy atmosphere to them that isn’t often continued in later, more developed titles. The promise and mystique of a new system is fully exploited to make the game more enticing, and once the novelty is gone, developers go straight to doing things how ever they want to.

Here, I’m talking about Fantavision, an early PS2 game that has the player blowing up colored fireworks systematically. It’s a decent action-puzzle game, and at the price of $2.99, I didn’t bat an eye. Once you get the hang of it, it’s fun as anything that costs ten times that.

The little touches in it are weird. First of all, all the menu options are spelled out phonetically, using the full range of phonetic symbolage. It adds a little foreign-language mystique.

Second, there’s cute 1950s-style cutscenes between levels. It looks like a kid calling up his friend to brag about his score. Then both kids slam down the phones and pick up their controllers and get back to business. The game also opens with a similar cutscene of a family sitting down to play. The kids look very clueless with their Dual Shocks. It’s still amazingly cute.

It reminds me of Wipeout. Sony’s systems have always had such a technical edge, and Sony plays this up in the beginning. Wipeout followed suit by being a lot like F-Zero but with more realistic physics and full 3-D. Also, futuristic emblems for the racers and stuff like that. That’s the stuff Sony launch titles are made of.

It seems that launch titles really reflect the personality of the system. At least the personality that the manufacturer wants it to have. Mario 64 for the N64. Lumines for the PSP. Feel the Magic for the DS. Panzer Dragoon for the Saturn. Momma, Can I Mow the Lawn? for the Gizmondo. (lol)

Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your own interpretation of the system’s aesthetic and experience with its marketing. But there is always a game that defines a system early on.

At a certain point, the library gets saturated and no one clear vision really emerges. But the early days have a certain charm of vague promises and expectation that doesn’t continue, and is therefore special.
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I was ranting again to a friend about how dumb game review scores are.

We happened to be at a Barnes & Noble, which is where we hang out to read all the magazines that we can’t afford. Good, imported magazines like Retro Gamer have a sticker price of $15.99. Some are more.

So I picked up an issue of Play, which I think is one of the more fabulous game magazines thanks to its awesome design and fairly deep coverage. I find the Okami review. They gave it a 10. They said it was their third perfect score in 5 years.

Now, Okami is not perfect. It’s not really groundbreaking in the gameplay department, and the voices are annoying. The character Issun is particularly unnecessary, but he’s ever-present and kind of irksome. The game is a little too easy. These are not game-breaking matters, they’re just quibbles. But they tarnish an otherwise perfect game, and it doesn’t deserve a ten.

But, maybe the game is so great that these things are insignifigant in the wake of its greatness. I can understand that. Okami is a complete blast to play. So, maybe it’s okay. However, as a service to its readers, Play also features a little pro/con box with the score. It helps to give more insight on the score.

But.

The pro side says this game is great and perfect. The con side says that you’d be brain-dead to find fault in this perfect game. Apparently I’m a philistine.

That’s the reviewer’s opinion, of course.

Scores are intended as a quick way for a reader to judge the value of a game. But, one could miss a lot of good gaming if one only bought 9’s. Likewise, the market can’t have just a few games be successful. They’d be franchised and reproduced endlessly, and their vision would become more and more narrow. A lot like what actually is happening these days.

I blame magazines partially. And the people who swear by them.
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