Dirty Little Secret

Finally, An EB Gamestop Speaks the Truth!

I still remember when I was little and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble was just being released. My self made videogame money collecting envelope was burning a hole in my pocket as I waited patiently to pick up my reserved copy at the local Toys R’ Us. Putting ten bucks down on a game was all I had to do in order to guarantee myself a copy the day it came out… well the day after it came out, considering the release date is actually the shipping date, but nonetheless I was one ecstatic nine year old. Now fast forward about 13 years and I am now the man behind the counter at a Gamestop, attempting to afford college, and asking people if they want to reserve anything. Five dollars is all you need now to reserve the latest alien versus human space epic shooter. In fact, you do not even need your receipt anymore, for your local EB Gamestop has all your information saved on their respective computers, everything about you, even your birthday.

At around 11:55 pm toward the end of a delightful September’s day a local Commerce Bank employee came into our store looking to reserve yet another one of these alien vs. human space epic shooters, which I believe goes by the name of Halo 3. The game was going to be released in about five minutes, but paying for the full thing, all 63 dollars and 49 cents of it guaranteed him a quick pick-up after the clocked ticked to the next day. In order to take his reserve, and his money, I first needed to bring up his information. I asked for his phone number and received it. As a regular customer his name came up as did any game he had reserved and has yet to pick up. At that moment I noticed something special, for him anyway, which was the fact that he had a fully paid off copy of another alien versus human epic shooter, I believe called Gears of War, and I could simply transfer the balance to Halo 3 giving him what would now seem like a free game. He was overjoyed at the prospect of not having to shell out any of his hard earned cash and gladly accepted the balance transfer. After the transaction was complete my manager took me aside and what she said changed my whole outlook on EB Gamestop forever.

EB Gamestop is a multimillion dollar corporation owned by Barnes and Noble, but I always assumed that they were one of those good monopolies… you know like… Febreeze. She brings me to the other computer and types in a couple of secret manager passwords which brings up a screen of released games with a number next to each one. She immediately scrolls down to Madden 08 and points at the number. “How many people have this game reserved?” she asked. And then I realized that the number next to the game represents the people who still have the game reserved. “42”, I respond completely flabbergasted. She then said, “People often forget where they reserved a game, pick it up somewhere else, or just do not care. Now while corporate does not just come out and say it, they really do not like us to remind people they have things reserved that already passed because at the year anniversary of that game’s release date, the reserve sku and the money magically disappear.” Not knowing what to say next I got extremely curious and asked her to scroll down to Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube and to my astonishment there was still a shocking 99 reserves in our system, which on December 3^rd would disappear forever. The reason why so many people never picked up this title was because it kept getting delayed until it finally switched systems to the Wii and then no one picked up there reserved copy of the GCN version. EB Gamestop must hold a happy dance dance party whenever a game gets delayed (I’m looking at you Grand Theft Auto IV). If we are to assume that each person only put five bucks down on Twilight Princess GCN, it would amass to approximately 495 dollars, or as I like to think of it: the price of an 80 gig Playstation 3, of free money for EB Gamestop. And that is just our store; there is an EB and a Gamestop in this mall, not to mention three more within a 15 mile radius around the mall. She then tells me “Since he had a fully paid off copy of Gears of War in our computers, what most likely happened is he picked up the game and paid for it in full but the cashier never properly cashed out the order”. So in this case I accidentally just screwed over EB Gamestop, which at that moment I had no remorse for whatsoever. So here is EB Gamestop’s dirty little secret out and all over the internet. And this comes with a warning for all of you out there, for the next time you reserve your copy of the next epic alien versus big guy in suit videogame, take precaution and make sure you not only remember you have the game reserved, but also which of the 10,000 EB Gamestop locations you reserved it at!

WiiCoffin

Dreaming of a time without shovelware...

So, in case you missed it, Ubisoft held their press conference this week and Beyond Good and Evil 2 was not only officially confirmed, but we got a teaser trailer complete with Uncle Pey’j, the snorting of insects, and our fearless, female protagonist hidden behind a parasol. But in case you missed it, you can find it here and here… and here. The biggest surprise was perhaps the fact that many in the gaming community felt the game would be confirmed for the Wii, especially with the picture taking and Zelda fighting aspects behind the game. But alas that was just one of the many wildest dreams from Nintendo fanboys. (That and Magic Kingdom Hearts… please god please!) And while the platforming genre is forcing its head out from the depths of gaming obscurity, one question must remain: has the choice of placing BG&E2 on the PS360 put the final nail in the coffin in 3^rd party Nintendo “hardcore…iness”?

As they always say, there are multiple nails that are smashed into a coffin before it is finally buried. The first nail I can think of in the 3^rd party coffin was the complete and utter failure of Red Steel. The game did not only fail commercially, it failed in the hearts of every gamer around the world. And by that I mean… THE GAME SUCKED. It was rushed, poorly executed, and just overall bad. There was so much promise with the game; after all it was the first Wii game we saw in pictures. As the first big “hardcore” third party game we saw, the game was set to make or break the Wii. Other companies, including Ubisoft who published it, watched how it sold and based how well hardcore games sell on the Wii.

The game sold just sort of a million copies which surprisingly is not that bad. But the companies still gambled all their moneys on prettier graphics and boring play control. Beyond Good and Evil and Psychonauts have always been intertwined as two highly received games that sold like the opposite of hot cakes (cold cakes?). And now both their sequel, BG&E2 and spiritual sequel, Brutal Legend are coming out exclusively for the PS360, there seems to be final nail in the Wii 3^rd party hardcore coffin. Other nails include No More Heroes, shovelware and a lack of hard drive support.

So will the Wii ever have hardcore games? Will The Conduit save us all? Will the only games on the Wii be Nintendo made, ports of PS2/GCN games, and shovelware? The world may never know. Oh and that trailer for BG&E2 can also be found here!

A Piece of Cake.

Awesome box, far surpasses the GCN version's boxart,
yet we are left without the king of the jungle.

Alcoholism is a disease, and according to the late comedian Mitch Hedberg it is the only disease you can get yelled at for having. Obviously Mr. Hedberg has never grasped his palm around a Nintendo controller to gear up and play Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii is the third iteration in the fighting series. The game takes every major Nintendo character from the past 25 year of Nintendo history pits them together in arguably the most epic game Nintendo has ever made.

Not much has changed to the Smash formula which premiered in Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Gamers pick a character, a stage, and they duke it out with two buttons, one for specials and one for smash attacks, a jump button, and a shield. The main goal is to knock up the opponent’s life meter to a high enough percentage where they will become weak and easier to “smash” off the board.

The character count now comes in at a staggering 37 characters, up from the 26 characters in its predecessor (Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube), and far surpassing the measly 12 from the original. Every character from Melee is included with the exception of Young Link, Mewtwo, Pichu, and Dr. Mario who were more or less “fill-in” characters. Everyone ranging from Mario to Diddy Kong, to even Sega’s mascot the blue blur, Sonic and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid fame have decided to “join the brawl”.

Creator Masahiro Sakurai, who also created Kirby, beefed up and trimmed different ingredients of Smash in order to make a better rounded game, perhaps his greatest addition is the new adventure mode, The Subspace Emissary. One or two players are aloud to take part in an epic fight between good and evil in a mixture of platforming, fighting, and even RPG elements. These are all baked to perfection to create an outstanding side-scrolling experience, something that has been missing from the gaming scene for the last ten years.

The icing on this deliciously addicting cake are the graphics, music and computer generated cut-scenes that tie The Subspace Emissary together. Sakurai collaborated with 36 different composers from all around the gaming industry to bring forth a soundtrack that is not like anything else. Everything from the Mario Theme (from 1985) to the Metal Gear Solid 4 Love Theme graces this game with ease. Finally Nintendo and Sakurai have decided to take full responsibility and overhaul the soundtrack with epic chorus and full piece orchestra.

Nintendo finally made a smart decision with their online strategy and put an online mode into Brawl. The only way to play a friend though is to manually swap 12 digit friend codes. Gamers will then have to wait for Nintendo to approve the two codes over the next couple days. The lack of easily playing a friend online and the inability to voice communication are two things Nintendo have decided to do in order to protect children. Obviously this makes no sense on a gaming device that can search any website on the internet. But biggest complaint that can be found with this game is that it is more of the same thing. If Sakurai even attempts in creating another Super Smash Bros. then he will most likely have to rehaul the entire game, or keeping up with the cake analogies, find a new recipe.

Basically the game has everything, tight controls, evened out characters, an amazing character roster, one of the best videogame soundtracks ever, a full on ten hours single player adventure, thousands of things to collect, beautiful character and level design, an online mode, and something enjoyable and just fun to look at. This is the game that eight friends from all over the world will play until wee hours of the morning with sweaty palms and Doritos, or Dr. Pepper ridden breath. I give this game 9.5 cakes out of 10.

Cookie-cutter adaptation remake - The fall of originality?

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

It is quite amazing to compare how many movies during the summer blockbuster season are original titles. Adaptations, sequels, cookie-cutters and remakes are all the rage nowadays since they promise the studios money. In videogames the same holds true. Sequels have always been an assumed prospect in the videogame world. When a game lacks a sequel it normally means the game was not commercially successful (Psychonauts). But a movie like Titanic for instance is highly commercially successful and it seems poposterous to even consider a Titanic 2: From the Bottom of the Ocean. Mario has saved the princess about 12 times in the past 20 years in the same time span John McClane only saved the world four. In gaming we just expect it. “New system, new Mario” is a pretty solid assumption. But these franchises all come from the same thing, one idea… one game.

If you want to talk about the last generation of games and the most successful IPs then the words Halo and Grand Theft Auto will come up almost instantaneously. But before last generation GTA was a fledging overhead running and gunning series while Halo was just a twinkle in some eye. The original GTA appeared on DOS, Windows, and most notably the Playstation. Released in 1997/8 no one ever predicted that this game would play catalyst to the most controversial game publisher in the business, Rockstar/Take-Two. The game spawned two direct expansions as well as two sequels, the latter being the Playstation2’s true breadwinner, GTA III. Before the PS2 though, GTA was nothing, in fact the entire sandbox game idea has already been done before. Driver 2 introduced gamers to a more open ended world where they had the freedom to steal cars and drive around for a large city back all the way back in 2000, two years before GTA III. But III for some reason garnered more attention then either its predecessors or the Driver series. It became a critical and financial hit and spawned about 500 sequels and copycats.

Halo’s story is even more interesting, and goes down in the record books as one of the greatest “what-if’s” in the history of gaming. Halo, developed by Bungie, was originally intended to be released on the Playstation2. But in the year 2000 Microsoft swept up Bungie with their money laden fingers and turned Halo: Combat Evolved into an exclusive. When the game released with the Xbox in November 2001 it turned into more than just Microsoft’s main system seller. The game sold millions, became a cultural phenomenon and spawned two sequels. But the name Halo was never known as a “killer IP” before the game came out. Microsoft took a chance and scored big time. It would still be interesting to see what it would be like if the big M would have passed on the buyout and the game came out for the PS2. Would it have been as highly well received? Would the Xbox even have lasted? Would I still get my butt kicked by a six year old online? These are all wonderful questions but ultimately something we shall never know.

Games have to start somewhere. Remember there used to be a time before a man in red overalls was affiliated with digital technology. But every franchise has to start somewhere. The entire industry basis their yearly profits off of mostly sequels. They cannot afford to take a chance. If someone even attempts to be creative with an original IP that is not a sequel then they will fail… or become incredibly successful. The fall of Clover Studios was the testament to the sequel/franchise business that we are all obsessed with. But the future still looks bright. The newly formed Platinum Games, Gamecock Publishing Studio, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 (which has been quietly confirmed) are all great signs of amazing things to come.

Box of Art

IGN blemishes the cover of a game that is ironically enough all about art


Again, this was written back in September of 2007. Box art actually took off as an internet entity not to long after I wrote this. Soon MTV Games started a weekly article that addressed new games and their box art, 1UP actually made a few editorials about some of the worst box art to ever see the a store shelf, and even Okami has had its fair share of giggles with the IGN watermark gracing, or should I say ruining, its cover. So here is my proof that I was ahead of the game at one point even though I am now posting it eight months to late. Oh well. Anyway here is the editorial I promised you on Nintendo box art, enjoy:


Box of Art

Arguably the most important aspect of pushing a game to an unknown crowd is the boxart. A lot has been said in the past couple months about crappy, false, and fixed art for boxes. The most recent addition has been the fixed Super Mario Galaxy boxart and a new Brawl placeholder/boxart that pops up every couple weeks. The Metroid Prime 3: Corruption boxart caused quite a stir because of its lack of parallel with the quality of the game. I believe within the past couple years Nintendo has felt boxart is not as important as it used to be. Where there was once only one way to buy a game, in a box, there are now multiple ways. This may also explain the lack of boxart on the virtual console, which is one thing I find particularly disturbing.

It seems that album art is a million times more important in the acquisition of CDs and records than boxart for games and DVDs. The actual band spends time and treats the album cover with respect and allows it to live up to the proper name that is art. The album cover for The Beatles’ Revolver will always go down as a work of art alongside the cover for Banjo-Kazooie, but more current covers like Super Mario Sunshine from last generation makes me want to paint the wall with already digested chicken soup. Even the cover to Banjo-Tooie was just the three main characters’ from the neck up, no wonder why the game sold so poorly. BK sold approximately 2 million copies worldwide since release while N-Sider.com shows BT at only 892,136. Could this positive correlation between good boxart and good sales have anything to do with each other?

Great boxart has been harder to find within these past two generations. Games like Resident Evil 4: GCN Edition and Super Smash Bros. Melee both had sub par boxes as compared to the quality game found from within, but they still sold well anyway. Very recently Nintendo has not been letting down boxart fanatics. The new Super Mario Galaxy box is very reminiscent of Super Mario 64 while the Twilight Princess box is probably the coolest thing on the earth. And there has been a wonderful continuity with all of the Legend of Zelda art from the NES game all the way up to TP as you can see here:

Every boxart has a nice diligent Legend of Zelda and its respective subtitle and background. They all are fairly simple except perhaps for the TP box which has plenty of subtle Hyrulean detail. I think Nintendo is starting to get it. They need the game to look pretty in order to capture that casual gamer they are going for. Because is it true; people do judge a book by its cover and a game by its boxart.

Okami picture special thanks to: The Globe and Mail
Revolver picture special thanks to: Home.Att

Heroes of a Different Generation

Just one of the many Kill Bill moments in No More Heroes



It may have come out in January but I just made this site, so I'm posting the review for it now. This review was published in my college newspaper, and I think it works on defining every aspect of the game in the 800 word limit they gave me. One thing I did not get a chance to say in the review is that this game is a throwback to past generations of video game heroes, hence the name. You will never be able to play a game that feels like a Nintendo64 or PSone game again, but this game tries to change that. Johnny Touchdown wants to be retroactively put into the heroes of video game canon. He never will due to the poor sales of this game. As of right now No More Heroes is only 30 dead presidents at your local EB Gamestop new. So support the developers and buy the game new... oh and support me and read this wonderful review of No More Heroes!

Pop culture author Chuck Klosterman once claimed video games as the rock n’ roll of our generation. Suda 51, the creator of No More Heroes, has stated that he wants to be the punk rocker of video games. And from the moment when you throw in No More Heroes and turn on your Wii, he makes his argument perfectly clear when his development team’s logo appears and says “Grasshopper Manufacture: Punk’s Not Dead”. Suda 51 managed to pack so much creativity and retro-goodness in order to create this highly stylized Wii exclusive, it would be a shame not to pick a copy up.

Right when the game begins it throws the gamer into the boots of Travis Touchdown, the 11^th best assassin in Santa Destroy, a fictional California city. In order to be number one Travis must kill through the top ten assassins. Suda decided to go after an over-the-top, retro style. The story is simple and lends itself well to the incredible manner and flair presented throughout the game. Some of the graphics and sound effects seem to come straight out of a game from the 1980s. The leader board that shows the gamer’s assassin rank, screams Space Invaders while Travis’ life is represented as a pixilated heart.

Throughout the game Travis wields his trusty lightsaber (here called a beam katana). Even though gamers may catch themselves button mashing multiple times throughout the game, the controls work surprisingly well. The motion controls, which are what the Wii is known for, are saved for slow motion decapitation, splitting someone in half with Travis’ trusty beam katana, or performing certain wrestling moves. The controls are polished and are one of the better qualities of the game.

Santa Destroy is an open world city, like Grand Theft Auto, and gives any gamer the ability to drive around and pick up simple missions like “Kill the CEO of the new fast food chain Pizza Butt”. Unlike GTA there is no stealing cars, instead Travis has one form of transportation, a highly stylized motorcycle. In the open world Travis can take on menial tasks like mow a lawn or collect coconuts in order to gain money or missions that require him to murder. Ironically enough, collecting garbage acquires Travis more cash than assassinating someone and both are strangely equal in fun. The gamer can also upgrade Travis with new shirts, bigger muscles or even a more powerful beam katana.

The game loads when gamers go in or out of a building or start a mission. This would be annoying but Suda allowed for the gamer to move the little loading symbol up and down the screen to give even the most ADD gamer something to do. The heart of the game lies in the ten assassination missions. Throughout these levels gamers will see over glamorized murder and gratuitous sexual themes in the bucket load, but they are all there to give the game its own very good edge. The blood and amount of bad guys Travis fight seem very Kill Bill.

The sexual imagery comes in all forms from talking to Travis’ fellow co-worker on the phone while she puts on her clothes, to the save-points being located in bathrooms. That’s right, when you go to save Travis walks into a bathroom, unzips, and toilet paper appears covering his exposed parts asking if you want to save. Probably the best use of the gratuitousness, along with the Wii motion controls, is how the gamer must reactivate the beam katana’s battery power, which… I’ll just let your imagination do the work for you.

There are a couple of small problems with the game. For instance the textures throughout Santa Destroy are very bland and suffer from pop-up, which is when things just appear on the screen from far away. And for the simple missions there is no retry option, gamers actually have to drive all the way back to the middle of the map, activate the mission, and then drive back to where the mission takes place. This is especially annoying when a gamer is in a mission where one must defeat every bad guy without being hit.

But overall this game is wonderful; everything from the mix of Tarantino violence to Suda 51’s professed love of lucha libre wrestling. This game reaches into the bowels of masculine desire and rips them out for everyone to see. This is the first must own title for the Wii in 2008 and any hardcore gamers fantasy. Please do not miss this game. I give it a solid 8.5 out of 10.

Picture from: www.omgnintendo.com