>Release Calendar: Recession-Proof Economy edition

>I don’t mean to scare you to death, but we’re in the middle of an economic shitstorm right now and the videogame release calendar just went from “zero” to “how will I eat?”

This is just the next 5 weeks, starting right now:

Week of 2/14

  • GTA 4: Lost and Damned DLC (which I can’t play b/c my 360 is busted! GAAAAH)
  • Street Fighter 4
  • Noby Noby Boy

Week of 2/22

  • Killzone 2
  • Star Ocean (360) – I’m intrigued, but I can wait
  • Dead Rising (Wii) – maybe I’ll get this version and actually finish the damned thing
  • Puzzle Quest Galactrix – or I could just play this for the next year

Week of 3/1

  • Halo Wars – I don’t think there’s any way my 360 comes back in time for this
  • MLB09: The Show – I’m not listing the 2K MLB game because it’s going to suck
  • HAWX – the demo was pretty awesome
  • Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) – any reason to dust off my PSP is noteworthy

Week of 3/8

  • Resident Evil 5

Week of 3/15

  • GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS)
  • Resistance (PSP)

After that, release dates become subject to rumor and speculation; still, though, this is enough to put a serious dent in anybody’s wallet. Good luck and godspeed.

>Well, that happened

>Fuck.

My 3rd 360 just died.

Not the dreaded 3 RROD; just 1, but none of the steps on xbox.com/support could help, and so I gotta send it back.

I guess this means I’ll be playing FF7 for a bit longer; it also means I have to avoid Lost and Damned spoilers like the plague.

Goddammit.

>EOiNA: FF7: golden shiny wires of hope

>I’ve logged roughly 10 hours in Final Fantasy VII; I finished Shinra HQ, made it out of Midgard and am now in the Inn at Kalm, about halfway through Cloud’s story of his experiences with Sephiroth.

With the release calendar suddenly starting to get interesting (especially with SF4 and GTA4 DLC hitting tomorrow) I wonder how much time I’m going to be able to invest in FF7… but even if I stopped now, I feel like I totally understand why this game is considered a classic. The story is remarkably sophisticated and, well, adult, far more than I expected, especially out of a JRPG released in 1997. I am especially impressed with how much personality there is in each crudely-rendered polygonal character; it’s impossible to make out anything beyond the most basic human forms, and yet they’re all expressive and animated with an unmistakable clarity. I have absolutely no idea where the story is going, but I feel pretty invested with these characters already (even though I’m pretty sure there’s no way anybody could get away with making a character like Barret anymore).

Here’s the thing: I’m pretty neurotic about hanging on to borrowed goods. This game belongs to a colleague at my office and I can’t just hold on to it indefinitely, and my understanding is that FF7 could easily take 100 hours to get through; with all the new games coming out, it’s pretty likely that I could be idle in this borrowed copy of FF7 for some time, and that would just drive me crazy. But buying my own copy of 7 looks to be a pretty expensive proposition; the cheapest it’s going for on Amazon is around $60-70, whereas I could get a new, unopened copy of FF8 or FF9 for under $20. If any FF veterans happen to be reading this: how are 8 and 9? (My PS3 will not play PS2 games, so FFX is out for the time being.)

>Twice a Widower

>The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. You wouldn’t know it by my total dearth of posts of late, but I am in fact alive and well. Which is more than I can say for my Xbox 360. Yup, my 360, born on July 7, 2007, has died at the ripe old age of one-and-a-half, the second such console to die in my service. So that kinda blows. Thankfully, Best Buy still has a 30-day return policy, so I’ll just pick up an Xbox 360 Arcade, pop in my hard drive, and use that until Microsoft sends me my refurbed unit. (This ingenious ploy is inspired by a buddy of mine who, back when Best Buy used to have a 90-day return policy, would buy a top-of-the-line air conditioner from them annually in early June only to return it in late August.)

So why have I been so quiet lately? Well, I don’t really have a great excuse, and certainly not an interesting one. You know, busy at work, no games coming out, blibbety blabbety bloo.

A few quick blurbs on what I have been playing:

  • Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts – This game was really a pleasant surprise. I can’t say I’m surprised it hasn’t sold given Rare’s recent track record (though I am a fan of Viva Pinata), but once you get past the kiddy look and general awfulness of the writing and characters — which I will grant you are pretty big obstacles — there is an extremely fun game here. My library just really needed a game with a high fun factor and low stress factor. This game is a great break from all the gritty shooting stuff, and I’ll be using it to cleanse my gaming palate for months to come.
  • Left 4 Dead – Still love it, especially now that I’ve recruited by three brothers to the fold and we have weekly Versus games going on. Can’t wait for the other two campaigns to be Versus-enabled when the (free!) DLC comes.
  • Half-Life 2 – Started it over for the 5th time or so. This time I’m gonna chug all the way through including Eps. 1 and 2. Great pacing, great fun.
  • MLB ’08: The Show – I’m now 85 games into my season, so I should have it all wrapped up by the time MLB ’37: Laser Baseball is released. I was happy to hear about the new feature in the upcoming ’09 version that lets you record your own heckles. You can bet I will be asking my four year old daughter to record “GO BACK TO BOSTON!”, which she dutifully shouts whenever we see the Sox live.
  • Call of Duty: World at War – It’s exactly what you’d expect, which is not a bad thing at all. Unless you’d expect it to suck just because Treyarch developed it, but it turns out that, given enough development time, they can create a roller coaster ride to rival most developers, if not quite Infinity Ward.
  • Fallout 3 – I’ve stalled. It seems like I’ve been waiting way too long to become a badass who has enough frackin’ ammo. I’m sure I’ll return and grind it out eventually, because I do want to get to all that great content eventually.
  • Fable 2 – Also stalled. Still waiting to fall in love with the game as much as anyone else. This’ll probably gather a fair bit of dust before I pick it up again, if at all.
  • Resident Evil 5 Demo – Haven’t played it yet, since I want to go it co-op and Jervo keeps standing me up.
  • Saints Row 2 – See Resident Evil 5 Demo above.

>Quick Impressions: Flower, Onechanbara

>Didn’t have a lot of TV time yesterday, but I ultimately did get to download and play through Flower, a PSN title that I’d been looking forward to for an absurdly long time.

There are certainly some comparisons that can be made between Flower and Flow, the previous PSN effort from ThatGameCompany; there’s no score, there aren’t any “lives”, there’s no time limit, and both games feature a motion-control scheme that’s intended to be as intuitive and unobtrusive as possible. More specifically, Flow and Flower seem to be aiming for a different pleasure center in your brain than what you may be accustomed to.

I seem to recall one of the developers describing the game as being “a flower’s dream”, and I must admit: the game reminded me very much of dreams I’ve had in which I’m flying. The motion-controls are a little bit touchy at times but they never got in my way – I was able to soar and loop at will. Each blade of grass appears to be individually rendered, and the sensation you get when you swoop into the ground and the grass is pushed back is just breathtaking.

If you have the means, I highly recommend it. I feel like $10 is just a tad too high, but it’s a remarkable experience – if you’re open to it.

————

On the other hand, I popped in my GameFlown copy of Onechanbara this morning; it is the exact opposite of Flower. Let’s just leave it at that.

>The Beatles Rock Band Set List: a considered guess

>Joystiq published a story today confirming (from Paul McCartney, no less) that there will be 45 songs in the upcoming Beatles Rock Band game out later this year, spanning “early days, Liverpool, then psychedelic, and on from there.” As a huge fan of both Rock Band and the Beatles, I have a pretty vested interest in how this game turns out.

I should point out, though, that my intense love of the Beatles is really only focused on their post-Rubber Soul material. Paul, however, says that the setlist will run the gamut. I’m gonna say 15 of the 45 songs will be pre-Rubber Soul:

  1. She Loves You
  2. I Wanna Hold Your Hand
  3. Love Me Do
  4. Help!
  5. I Saw Her Standing There
  6. Please Please Me
  7. A Hard Day’s Night
  8. Can’t Buy Me Love
  9. Eight Days a Week
  10. Ticket To Ride
  11. Yesterday
  12. I Feel Fine
  13. Paperback Writer
  14. Rain
  15. We Can Work It Out

Those last few songs aren’t exactly pre-Rubber Soul, but I was having trouble being generous with the early stuff. In any event, that selection seems reasonable, and as far as I can tell there’s no need for keyboards. Which makes the remaining 30 songs a bit trickier to parse out; once they stopped touring and stayed in the studio, they started writing and recording songs that probably could not be performed by only the four of them – “Eleanor Rigby”, for example, is done entirely with strings, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” was recorded in outer space, in the future. And unless this game introduces a keyboard peripheral, there’s going to be quite a few classic songs that are going to be very difficult to play without one. (“Hey Jude” and “Let it Be” spring to mind.) But they can’t outright ignore those songs, either; they have as much to do with the Beatles’ enduring influence and legacy on popular music as their earlier, more conventional stuff. So they’re gonna have to split the difference somehow.

Here’s my best guesses as to the remaining 30 songs, which I’m picking based on a combination of historical importance, instrumental arrangement (with an emphasis on keyboard-less tracks and songs with riffs as opposed to chord strumming), Paul’s being alive and John’s being dead, and personal taste. I’m leaving out a lot of favorites (how can I possibly leave off “I Am The Walrus”?), but here goes:

  1. Revolution
  2. Get Back
  3. Drive My Car
  4. The Word
  5. In My Life
  6. Taxman
  7. She Said, She Said
  8. And Your Bird Can Sing
  9. Doctor Robert
  10. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
  11. Getting Better
  12. Good Morning Good Morning
  13. A Day In the Life (I have no idea how, but it has to be in there)
  14. Hello Goodbye
  15. Strawberry Fields Forever
  16. All You Need Is Love (guitar plays the string parts?)
  17. Back in the U.S.S.R.
  18. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
  19. Birthday
  20. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey (not an obvious choice, but every instrument is doing something interesting, and there’s gotta be at least one unexpected song)
  21. Helter Skelter
  22. Come Together
  23. Something
  24. Octopus’s Garden
  25. Here Comes The Sun
  26. Mean Mr. Mustard -> Polythene Pam -> She Came In Through The Bathroom Window -> Golden Slumbers -> Carry That Weight -> The End
  27. Get Back
  28. Dig a Pony
  29. I’ve Got A Feeling
  30. The Ballad of John and Yoko

Obviously there are some major omissions; I opted to cut out anything piano-based, and I generally chose upbeat songs as opposed to softer acoustic songs, which leaves out quite a lot (including quite a few of my favorite Beatles songs). And my entry at #26 is assuming that Harmonix will be lumping the famous medley that closes out Abbey Road as one track; none of those songs really stand out on their own (except maybe “Bathroom Window”) but they would make for an epic “final boss”, with a long drum solo and those 3 rotating guitar solos.

That’s my guess. What’s yours?

>EOiNA: FF7 initial impressions

>Before I get started, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the statute of limitations on Final Fantasy 7 spoilers expired at least 10 years ago; the game came out in 1997 on the PS1, which was two generations ago. That said, the whole point of this feature is that I’m playing this game for the very first time, and so I certainly wouldn’t want anything spoiled for me. So, then: I’m not going to put any spoiler alerts in my posts, but I would also ask that nobody puts any spoilers in the comments.

Here’s my current status: I was able to play for about 30 minutes or so last night. I blew up the first tower (out of 8, I presume) and am currently at the first save point after getting off the train.

My initial impressions are, to be honest, much better than I’d anticipated. I’m not even really sure what I was anticipating, actually, but I was thinking it would be a bit more stereotypically JRPG-esque – something a bit more anime and cutesy and twee, like a young boy on a farm, hoping to see the world, golly gee.

Instead, the game starts with a literal bang, without really telling you who you are except that some of the people on your team think you’re a bad ass, but the large sassy black man on your team doesn’t trust you at all and thinks you might be a traitor, but in any event you and your crack squad are hell-bent on destroying this energy tower which is somehow evil.

I was pleased to recognize this opening level as something I’d played in FF7:Crisis Core on the PSP, and I figured out the battle system almost as quickly, as something I’d played in both Chrono Trigger on the DS and the Penny Arcade Adventures on XBLA; it’s quasi-turn-based, except you have to wait between actions. (This initially confused me to no end in both PAA and CT, but I figured it out almost immediately here.)

There’s no question that graphics have come a long way since 1997, and yet the game’s art direction and sense of style do a fantastic job of obscuring how primitive it looks; I can only imagine how impressive it must have looked in its proper context. And the FMV cut-scenes – my God, even though they look horrifically compressed now, they still fill you with awe and wonder. Which is what cut-scenes are supposed to do, really. Back in the late 90s, cut-scenes felt like rewards for finishing a level; they featured incredible production values and were something to look forward to. Whereas now, everything’s done in the same engine, so it’s more like you’re taking a quick break and you’re more often than not inclined to skip ahead; this is why we praise games like Portal and Left 4 Dead where there are no cutscenes and the story is told contextually. Up until FF7, I was convinced that the original Oddworld games did this cut-scene-as-tasty-carrot-on-a-stick better than anybody – and yet after only 30 minutes, I’m already fully appreciative of FF7’s staggering FMV prowess.

That said, the game is definitely antiquated in certain respects. The game uses the d-pad to control movement, which is crazy because there’s 2 perfectly good analog sticks sitting right there not being used, and you need to press the X button in order to run – and because the default movement speed is ridiciulously slow, I found myself running all over the place, and you should never have to push more than one button in order to move at a satisfactory speed. And maybe it’s because the PS3’s emulation isn’t perfect, but I found some strange glitches here and there, specifically in battle – selecting an enemy to attack felt a little clunky, and the arrow that points to your target didn’t always show up. I think the biggest thing for me to get used to, though, is that the game uses the O button as the default action/confirm button, as opposed to the X button. (Of course, everything about the PS controller still confuses me, as I’m used to the Xbox’s color-coded ABXY.)

I am totally on board, though, and I’m definitely looking forward to diving back in. I do indeed see what the fuss is all about.

And I should also confess that I’ve already come up with more game ideas for this EOiNA feature, and that I’m maybe a little embarassed about it because there’s quite a lot. I’m gonna lose all my street cred!

>Everything Old is New Again, Part 1: FFVII

>Again, sorry for the lack of posts lately; I’ve been pretty busy with some music stuff over the last week or so, and there hasn’t been much to play.

That will soon change, however. Today I’m announcing a new, hopefully recurring feature called EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN, wherein I (and Gred, if he so chooses) play classic games for the first time. This feature is especially timely because when I get home from work today I’m charging up my long-dead PS3 controller to play a borrowed copy of Final Fantasy VII, which (as you may have guessed) I’ve never played.

I’m doing this because I’m starting to get excited about next year’s FFXIII for reasons I’m not sure I can explain – especially since my experience with FF games is strictly limited to a few hours with III and IV on the DS. For one thing, I’ve been getting a little burnt out on turn-based RPGs, especially since so many of them end up being quite similar. I haven’t even necessarily played that many,* but I’ve played enough to spot an annoying cliche from a mile away. I would imagine that my experience playing FFVII for the first time, in 2009, is going to be quite different than everyone else’s, especially with regard to annoying cliches, but since everyone insists the story is one of the greatest of all time, I’ll do my best to keep everything in the right context.

…It occurs to me that I might not be able to play tonight after all, being that Lost is on (and then my wife will want to watch Top Chef). Hmm…

*JRPGs (and other turn-based non-strategy RPGs) I have played (that I can remember off the top of my head):

  • Skies of Arcadia, Dreamcast (adored it)
  • LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth, Xbox (hated it – the computer cheated all the goddamned time)
  • Blue Dragon, 360 (didn’t finish it, meh)
  • Lost Odyssey, 360 (finished it, was quite impressed)
  • Eternal Sonata, 360 (liked it, but didn’t finish)
  • Eternal Arms, 360 (wanted to like it, but lost interest)
  • Final Fantasy III, DS (didn’t finish… got the general idea and got bored)
  • Final Fantasy IV, DS (see FFIII)
  • Chrono Trigger, DS (still technically playing, although I’m stuck)
  • Star Ocean something, PSP (got insanely bored in about 10 minutes, which probably isn’t fair)

>Weekend Recap: Superbowl edition

>I apologize for the lack of posts lately; the post-holiday doldrums have settled in, apparently, and I haven’t found that much blog-worthy news of late.

I’ve polished off the Anchorage DLC in Fallout 3, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to play any more Fallout until the level cap patch hits; I hit level 20 even before I started the DLC and the way I figure, I might as well get rewarded for killing things. It’s odd – for the entire course of the game, I was always struggling with money, but now I’m suddenly rolling in cash.

Finished The Maw; it’s a cute, fun, better-than-expected XBLA title, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to touch it again. I think I mentioned this the other day – I like my XBLA titles to be the sorts of things that I can continually play over and over again, be it something arcade-y like Geometry Wars or something puzzle-y like Puzzle Quest or Bejeweled 2.

Speaking of which, there’s a Bejeweled mini-app on Facebook that I’d been getting obsessed with during my less-busy hours at work, and so I fired up my XBLA version over the weekend. Is there any other game in the 360’s library with tougher Achievements? My God.

Finally, I had a friend over yesterday before the Superbowl who’d never played Left 4 Dead before, so we sat down and did the airport level from top to bottom. I think I’m still buzzing from the experience; it was absolutely thrilling and we could not stop high-fiving each other for the rest of the day. I keep forgetting how absolutely incredible that game is; I need to be playing it more often, especially in this dry release period. Maybe we’ll put a SFTC L4D night together or something.

>Weekend Recap: Fallout 3, The Maw, RE5 demo

>So I accidentally finished Fallout 3 over the weekend. That’s a problem, of course, because when you finish the last quest, the game is over; the credits roll, and that’s it, and I still had a bunch of stuff I never finished doing, as well as a bunch of other stuff I never saw. I (fortunately) had a save point right before the last mission, and so I’ve taken advantage of this rip in the space-time continuum in order to keep playing and exploring. This also means that I can start messing around with the DLC and still be super-powered.

Fallout 3 is a very impressive game, on many levels, but it’s also problematic. After all the hours I’ve put into it, the combat still hasn’t ever really felt totally satisfying – come to think of it, I had the same problem with Mass Effect. My favorite thing in the game, ultimately, is simply exploring and finding new points on the map, and yet this is also a little bit of a bummer because everything kinda looks the same. Still – the amount of content and the level of detail is absolutely staggering, and Bethesda did a really great job revitalizing this franchise. I’m going to be keeping this game in my rotation for quite some time to come; I’ve got a few more Achievements to score, of course, but really there’s just so much more in the world that I’ve yet to see.

Played a bit of The Maw, which is one of the better XBLA titles to hit in some time. It’s pretty simple but very enjoyable, although I’m not sure there’s a lot of replay value. (I tend to prefer my XBLA games – as well as my handhelds – to be either puzzles or just straight-up arcade titles, as they don’t get too repetitive.)

Speaking of which, I actually fired up my PSP this weekend and tried to play the latest Star Ocean title. Unfortunately, I stopped giving a shit about 10 minutes in; endless, unskippable cutscenes plagued the pacing and I’m a little tired of cookie-cutter JRPGs. I would regret buying a PSP more if I remembered I still had it. I came very close to trading it (and all my games for it) towards Wii Fit this weekend, except (of course) Wii Fit was sold out everywhere.

Finally, I fired up the Resident Evil 5 demo this morning before I left for work. Not ideal circumstances for trying highly anticipated titles, but whatever. I saw what I needed to see, and what I saw is that it’s basically a hi-def RE4 with slightly less clumsy controls. I’m hoping to try it tonight via online co-op; maybe that’ll make the experience less disappointing.