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Silent Hill, Killer 7 and Not Having Fun With Great Games

I am less than taken with Bit.Trip Beat. Subsequent playings have not improved my opinion of the game. As I’ve gotten further into it, the fundamental flaws in its design I spotted at the beginning have been born out later in the game. Some people love it. I don’t. They think it’s fun. I don’t. C’est la vie.

As I mentioned in my article about Bit.Trip, though, I don’t think that games need to be fun in order for them to be good. I was pretty vague in making my point though. 61FPS reader Kit wrote me an email last week to ask just what the hell I was talking about. How can a game be good if it isn’t fun to play? Isn’t fun implicit in the very act of playing?

When’s a game good but not much fun?

Posted Apr 06 2009, 10:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, super mario bros 3, silent hill, nes, konami, playstation 2, gamecube, super mario bros, wiiware, quantic dream, david cage, suda 51, silent hill 2, gaijin games, BIT.TRIP BEAT, silent hill shattered memories

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality

A strange thing happened to me between downloading Bit.Trip Beat and beating its first boss. While delighting in its vivid color, laughing at its signature character leaving rainbows in his wake across digital space, and letting its infectious chiptune beats colonize my brain, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. That’s fine — I’m a firm believer in the fact that a game doesn’t need to be fun to be good — but I was expecting to have fun. I wanted to have fun. I was engaged by it, but not in a good way. I found the game to be overbearing and stressful. Then it hit me: Bit.Trip Beat is a bad game.

Posted Mar 27 2009, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 5 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, space invaders extreme, gradius, wiiware, mega man 9, edge, wiimote, pong, bit.trip, gaijin games, BIT.TRIP BEAT, arkanoid

Up All Night: X-Blades and the D-List Preservation Society

“We need new pornos!” – “Spaghetti Western” by Primus

Les Claypool was right. We do need new pornos. We need new trashy entertainment that borders on the pornographic. It’s essential. No, seriously. Come back. For all my highfalutin talk about the creative potency of games, I relish those games that might be a little base. A little crass. Sometimes, those games are terrible. That’s a good thing.

I’ve been suffering a weird fascination with Gaijin Games’ X-Blades ever since it first popped up on Kotaku way back in November 2007, when it went by the name Oniblade. Its origins got me curious. There are hundreds of games out there that, even if you’re a rabid fanboy or a member of the press, you’ll never hear about. Korean MMOs, unlicensed Brazilian Genesis games, and, yes, weird action games from the Eastern Block; it’s impossible to follow everything. There’s just too much. So when something like X-Blades, some Russian paean to Japanese action games, pops its head far enough out of the ground you take notice. Especially when it’s coming out for consoles notorious for exorbitant development costs and marketing budgets.

Posted Feb 24 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments

Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, up all night, xbox 360, PC, sega, ds, golden axe, simple 2000, x-blades, gaijin games, southpeak interactive, onechanbara, transformers, ninjabread man, transmorphers, golden axe beast rider

Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat

I already posted this song last week, but my enthusiasm for BIT.TRIP BEAT compounds each and every day and I can simply no longer contain it, so here's another burst of retro rhythm awesome:

Much, much more after the break...

Posted Jan 23 2009, 08:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: derrick sanskrit, chiptune friday, wiiware, bit shifter, nullsleep, blip festival, bit.trip, gaijin games, bubblyfish, BIT.TRIP BEAT

The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited

I'm going to skip past the whole aspect of the cryptic viral campaign hyping Gaijin Games' first-ever release and its subsequent press leak last week and cut straight to why I'm super-excited for it.

If, for some reason, you're still enjoying the CommanderVideo viral stuff and would rather stay in the dark (assuming they bother keeping that going at this point, the viral site even posted the revealed game's logo), stop reading here, because the rest of this post will discuss the few details about said project.

Posted Jan 12 2009, 04:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments

Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wiiware, rez, bitgenerations, art style, bit.trip, gaijin games, cho-aniki, viral, BIT.TRIP BEAT

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.