This time around I was properly caffinated and lubricated to join in on the discussion. I’m still fearful of listening to my own voice on this one, so all my impressions of the podcast are from memory. I briefly discuss being addicted to NHL 09–an addiction I broke almost immediately thereafter. All in all, I rather enjoyed this shorter episode even though I could only contribute as an armchair observer to the Tokyo Game Show rather than an in-person participant.
A momentous, yet entirely and shamefully pathetic, event happened to me yesterday. I received my first Sega console. Ever. In the entire history of myself that is over three decades long now.
Yes, I know. How can I call myself a gamer? How have I not owned a Dreamcast?
My dear plebs, it is because during the entire time Sega was manufacturing consoles, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Nin-tard. I have purchased every single Nintendo console since my parents brought home a NES in the 80s. Little did I know what I was missing out on all these years.
Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.
I have rectified my youthful oversights and I now yearn for a Dreamcast for various, yet excellent reasons not the least of which is eventually acquiring a copy of Segagaga. But I cannot just buy a Dreamcast, I must earn it, or so I’ve been told in the alleyways. Therefore, as a result of some shady and potentially lethal back-room negotiations which involved answering for my crimes–that is to say the purchasing of a Nintendo 64 and aGamecube–against Sega, a mysterious package arrived in the mail. It was not a severed head, thankfully. It was a Sega Saturn (model MK-80000A), sans A/V cable… but that can be rectified easily.
So now I turn to you my dear 47 readers…
What are some games for the Saturn I absolutely should not live without?
(The first person who says Panzer Dragoon Saga owes me the $200+ so I can afford it.)
Gamasutra’s regular column, The Divnich Tapes, has often provided interesting analysis of videogame industry data from the expected (NPD sales data analysis) to the interesting, yet unusual (analysis of a reward system like Achievements and Trophies) from Jesse Divnich, who currently serves as the Director of Analyst Services at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). Just yesterday, an article was posted in which Jesse uses his aggregate games data–which is quite impressive since EEDAR tracks “over 15,000 features for each game”–to dissect which games allow for a player-controlled female protagonist, broken down by genre and console.
Today it got even more interesting, as he broke down which games, by genre, only feature a male protagonist and which feature only a female protagonist. Not surprisingly video games as a whole are hands-down dominated by male protagonists in games. My job falls into the guilty party for not ensuring gender parity in the action genre since Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune prominently featured a male protagonist in Nathan Drake, but at least he wasn’t hypersexualized right?
The only exceptions to these lopsided set of statistics are that music and rhythm games have achieved parity and, perhaps unfortunate and stereotypical, “social & economic sim” games feature more female-only protagonists than male-protagonists.
Actually, now I’m extremely curious to see how this data breaks down by console by genre…
Posted in Games | CommentsGamasutra+-+Male-Only+vs.+Female-Only+Protagonists%3F2008-10-23+23%3A13%3A51arne
A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Halo 3 I met up with DMoTsunami online again to continue our co-op campaign. We completed The Ark, Floodgate and part of The Covenant. Why part? That dreaded disconnect thing again. It’s gotten a little frustrating especially since neither of us has terrible connections or have had problems in other games.
Oh god, why more Flood? I knew this was gonna happen but I wasn’t looking forward to it. This also means that somehow, in the past year, I’ve managed to avoid any and all spoilers about the game. Ignorance is bliss.
NHL 09
I took on Denogginizer OS on a game fraught with tri-state area rivalry as he took the New Jersey Devils against my New York Rangers in an online match. He beat me 4 - 1 in a pretty good game where I drew first blood and then he just kept putting them in the net including a beautiful wrap-around goal. DenogginizerOS is pretty agressive and tenacious on the ice–I’d watch out for him.
Here are the game stats, courtesy of the functionality EA implemented where you can receive stats for your games via e-mail:
Stats Away Home
==========================================================
Team New York Rangers® New Jersey Devils®
Score 1 4
Shots 12 29
Hits 20 34
Penalty Minutes 02:00 06:00
Power Play Goals 0 0
Power Play Opport. 2 1
Faceoffs Won 5 18
Breakaways 0/0 0/1
One Timers 0/3 0/8
Passing 80/100 84/113
Penalty Shots 0/0 0/0
Blocked Shots 3 3
*****
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
NHL 09 After I grabbed some slider settings from OperationSports, I hit up “Be a Pro” mode. I was warned that this was digital crack of MMO proportions, but I couldn’t stay away anyway. Of course I picked to be a NY Ranger, so I am now on the Hartford Wolfpack, their AHL affiliate team.
I scored my first rookie goal in my debut game against the Iowa Chops. What kind of team name is that? If it isn’t obvious, I’m totally clueless about AHL teams.
Four games later, it was 2:00 AM and I realized I was addicted already. “Just one more game…” was the death of me.
Call of Duty: World at War beta
I found myself back playing the beta, but I’ve been sticking to only playing Team Deathmatch. I’ll have to give the War mode a shot at some point because it sounds like an interesting mechanic. I’m still having difficulty doing well on the dark map in the seaside village. It’s almost too dark and I’m practically relying almost entirely on my radar, which doesn’t help if there’s an adversary sneaking around. While I’m sure my overall kill-death ratio is in the negative, this map is definitely one where my deaths vastly outnumber my kills.
I’ve also hit level 5 during this sessions, so I’ve unlocked and made progress into the Challenges for each weapon type. So I’m definitely getting somewhere now since having a flash suppressor would come in handy on the above map. I’ve been feeling vastly outmatched by folks who are level 11 already, not only because of their skill, but because of some of the attachments such as the flash suppressor or a scope. Thankfully the Call of Duty progression system doesn’t make it feel like that being more evenly matched is out of reach–you just have to a little time and effort into it and I’m fine with that.
*****
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Halo 3 DMoTsunami and I are replaying The Ark and The Covenant because our unfortunate disconnects during the game meant we restarted during rally points within each chapter. That was no good, because even though it unlocked the chapter for me, it didn’t record me as finishing the chapter on Legendary nor did it give me the achievement for completing the chapter. Very un-fun. This time we can breeze through it a bit quicker since I also know what we’re up against.
NHL 09 Like I junkie, I keep coming back to NHL 09 for my fix of “Be a Pro” mode. I only played two games, fiddled with the sliders a bit more and it’s starting to feel more natural and realistic. The shifts (especially when I’m resting) are still a little too long, but that is because I’m still only at five minute periods. I’ll increase this up to ten for the next game and on until I’m done with the mode or the game. Most of the games have been generally been close and it’s gotten me genuinely excited whether I win or lose.
I noticed that a lot of my gaming information has been incorrect when reported over on EA Sports World. According to my profile page I’m playing for the Grand Rapids Griffins when I’m on the Wolfpack and my opponent is inaccurate, although the scores are correct as best as I can tell. For some reason my updates section is also empty, when it should be reflecting all of my games and milestones within the game. It would be nice, given how EA is trying to implement tight integration between their games and the Web site, but it’s not that big a deal.
I’m a pretty shameful gamer in some respects–I haven’t ever played Cave Story or Final Fantasy VII, just for starters. Another game that has escaped me for the longest time was Earthbound. Granted, my SNES years were very limited in terms of game purchases–I only own nine cartridges. There are some good gems in there like Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, Super Castlevania IV and Super R-Type. This means I did not fully understand the gravity of the situation leading up to the 2006 release of Mother 3 nor the fan anger at the lack of localization plans on the part of Nintendo. It was only thanks to the constant chatter about this game that got me looking into it. It sounds just like the type of game I would like to play and think about.
Where was I? Oh yes. Thanks to the untiring dedication of a team of Mother 3 fans over nearly two years, there is hope for us deficient in the Japanese language skills. This week, the Mother 3 fan translation has been released and, through some voodoo trickery (to me at least), you can now play through the game in English. The download and instructions on ways to play can be found on the Mother 3 Fan Translation site.
This is absolutely motivating me to learn how to do fancy things to carts and ROMs and such that I never imagined tackling so I can play this on my Nintendo DS (or my Game Boy Advance SP).
Not to be overlooked, Starmen.net has compiled and will publish a high quality companion to Mother 3. You can pre-order now, but the book won’t be ship until around early January they say.
A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Mega Man 9
Oh man, why don’t I set aside enough time to play this? I know it’s going to take more than 45 minutes or so, but I keep conning myself that I can do something worthwhile in a short period of time. Upon advice of others, I took on the Splash Woman stage on. I got a bit farther in the same amount of time and I basically only stopped because I was asked to play Halo 3. I can say this though, the part at the very beginning of the stage where you have finished progressing horizontally and you have to take your first jump down–only to pretty much be guaranteed to land on some sweet spiky death is almost unfair. But I kind of love it at the same time.
Halo 3 DMoTsunami and I tackled our next chapter and completed going through The Crow’s Nest pretty quickly. Next up was Tsavo Highway, of which I have heard muttered under people’s breath and I don’t know why. Now I know why and I think it’s mostly that little sequence when you’re making a last stand kind of fight in two bunkers and you’re being hit by multiple waves of Brutes and just when you think you’re all clear, a Wraith shows up just to make things interesting. We both died a lot here but we got through it. We scavenged for weapons of our choice and made for the two brand new Warthogs waiting for us to wreck havoc… and then the game froze.
A wonderful Internet hiccup left the game thinking that one of us had either quit the game or was disconnected, when neither was true. Regardless, we were both dumped back out into the lobby.
Unfortunately, this ill-timed issue meant we had to start before our land stand and redo that all over again. Instead, DMoTsunami and I called it a night.
*****
Monday, October 6, 2008
LittleBigPlanet beta In last week’s gaming log I forgot to mention that I had played LittleBigPlanet for about ten minutes or so–just enough to complete the first two levels of the The King’s Garden. That left Skipping the Tie and the last main level remaining. I completed those tonight along with a couple replays to try to get closer to 100% in the last two full levels.
I’ve now unlocked the create mode and being able to see other people’s level creations. I hearted two levels, one to play later and one to play immediately, if only because of the fact that the level was named LittleBigUncharted. I’ll be going to try the level creator the next time I fire LittleBigPlanet up.
*****
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Secret Game D
Yep. I played it and it was the only thing I played tonight. That’s all I can say.
*****
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Halo 3 DMoTsunami and I were joined by a third for tonight’s Legendary co-op campaign as MrJared came to help us newbs out (check out his +20 K/D ratio on this Team Slayer match). We ripped through Tsavo Highway and The Storm at a pretty decent clip. If you’re ever playing with MrJared, I must warn you that he tends to be a little overzealous with his driving–often with, er, explosive results.
This was pretty fun, I’m glad that more games are starting to allow for co-op beyond two people, although I can start to see how that could be problematic from a game design side. Even though we died a few times during our game tonight, it somewhat felt that with three user-controlled characters, the number of enemies and level of difficulty didn’t ramp up as much as I expected it to. It almost felt too easy based on the previous sessions.
Or we’re just THAT good.
Call of Duty: World at War beta Got an early beta key and hopped into a fairly uncrowded lobby for Team Deathmatch. I think we started with just three on one team and four on the other. By the time I left it was a full or nearly full lobby and the games were fast, furious and lethal. I really liked the Castle map look and layout.
So far, so good, Treyarch!
*****
Friday, October 10, 2008
NHL 09 Set up my Be a Pro character and jumped into a quick five minute game with the NY Rangers vs LA Kings — kind of an preview of a game I’m going to in mid-December. Took a look at the instant replay feature, which reminds me of Skate.reel and that means a lot of good things.
Like editing highlight clips of games. OH. MY. GOD. That is going to be awesome… if I get around to it! Which in reality I won’t, but it was fun thinking about it.
The Kings won this game, although it was a tie game throughout all of regulation and it went down to the shootout. Which was scoreless for a pretty long time too. The Kings drew blood first and I couldn’t respond, letting them win. Total shame.
*****
Saturday, October 11, 2008
NHL 09 Came back for another quick game–against the Canadiens this time around. I had to quite before I finished the game off, but it looked quite certain to be headed into another overtime session as, after I scored, the Canadiens drew even and then we were deadlocked for the remaining two periods. I really need to find someone who has tweaked the settings to bring it more in line with reality. I had someone a couple years ago provide me with their settings for NHL 07 and it felt much better than the default settings. I don’t have the time on my own to fiddle around with them to figure out what feels better, so I hope someone has done the hard work for me!
I also played a bit more around with the video clip editor and the uploading feature. Pretty cool but it doesn’t seem quite a full featured as the Skate.reel, which is a little frustrating. My biggest gripe is that it doesn’t seem to give you the option of applying different camera angles within a particular clip, so you’re stuck with finding the best one for the up to 25 second video clip. Not a big deal if you’re going to edit them together offline since you’ll want a full clip for each angle you plan on using, but not so great for putting something quick together. It also seems that the feature set is pretty much eliminated after you’ve saved it locally and come back to the video clip at a later time. You can’t view the clip and either edit it further or take a screenshot from within the clip, you can only watch it again as saved. I guess I was spoiled by Skate.
Even though the news is not yet up on the XSEED Web site, the press release is out and it confirms some happy news for me. That is that Fire, Sun and Rain, Suda 51’s Nintendo DS remake of a PlayStation 2 title, is coming to the United States in 2009. Hopefully that means early 2009 rather than later in the year.
Regardless, that’s still some time after it makes it to Europe, ostensibly with an English language version, but I can wait given the exceptionally crowded holiday season for gaming.
Here's the disclosure: I work for Naughty Dog, a video game developer and wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment America. While I do not and cannot represent Naughty Dog and Sony Computer Entertainment in any capacity and do not work on their behalf on this blog, you should be aware of the connection.
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A momentous, yet entirely and shamefully pathetic, event happened to me yesterday. I received my first Sega console. Ever. In the entire history of myself that is over three decades long now.
I’m a pretty shameful gamer in some respects–I haven’t ever played 
DMoTsunami and I tackled our next chapter and completed going through The Crow’s Nest pretty quickly. Next up was Tsavo Highway, of which I have heard muttered under people’s breath and I don’t know why. Now I know why and I think it’s mostly that little sequence when you’re making a last stand kind of fight in two bunkers and you’re being hit by multiple waves of Brutes and just when you think you’re all clear, a Wraith shows up just to make things interesting. We both died a lot here but we got through it. We scavenged for weapons of our choice and made for the two brand new Warthogs waiting for us to wreck havoc… and then the game froze. 
In last week’s gaming log I forgot to mention that I had played 
Set up my Be a Pro character and jumped into a quick five minute game with the NY Rangers vs LA Kings — kind of an preview of a game I’m going to in mid-December. Took a look at the instant replay feature, which reminds me of Skate.reel and that means a lot of good things. 
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