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• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 3

  And now, the bad... Metroid: Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance) Is Metroid: Zero Mission a terrible game? By no means. On its own terms, it's rather good. But as a reconception of one of the greatest, most influential games ever made, it's a disaster, taking everything that made Metroid spooky and replacing it with a thick layer of corn. Metroid was heavily influenced by Alien. Remember the petrified extraterrestrial skeleton in Alien? What if that bastard had gotten up and started bombarding Sigourney Weaver with some hack's idea of ancient wisdom? Wouldn't that have pretty much thrown the movie's chilly austerity out the window? Like so many latter-day games, Zero Mission thinks comic-book jibber-jabber is cooler than eerie silence. This lack of subtlety is echoed in the gameplay itself, which, while it controls a lot better than Metroid, is chock-full of egregious hand-holding and advice-giving — pretty much the exact opposite of the original's sprawling openendedness. Metroid is practically Lovecraftian in the way it makes you feel tiny and alone in a vast and hostile universe. Don't look for that feeling in Zero Mission. Oh, and it also mangles the most immortal climax in videogame history — the truly unsettling slaughter of a shrieking brain in a jar, followed by a hair-raising escape sequence — by tacking on a (sigh) stealth section. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:02 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2

  Final Fantasy (WonderSwan Color) The first in a vast battalion of Final Fantasy rereleases, the Wonderswan remake actually gets it righter than any that were to come. Sure, the Playstation version has FMV intros (whoo-hoo?), the GBA version has some mostly extraneous new dungeons, and the PSP version has sharper graphics. But the Wonderswan version gave the NES original a beautiful visual makeover that later ports would simply poach, and more importantly, it corrected some of the original game's antiquated design quirks in a totally optional fashion. In the NES game, if two characters attack one enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will be ineffective. This is annoying, but it also forces you to plan; it adds some strategy to the essentially one-dimensional battle system. You could really argue for or against the feature, and the Wonderswan port gives you a choice. The same goes for a number of other idiosyncracies we cranky old-timers like to keep in our enhanced remakes; subsequent rereleases dumbed the game down until you could grind through it with a rubber band around the A button. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:01 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1

  Well, having burned through our annual pants-replacement fund on the announcement of Chrono Trigger DS, we here at 61FPS now find ourselves surprisingly ambivalent about this remake (or is it just a rerelease?) of the greatest game Square ever made. Sure, it could be handsome and polished. But it could be sloppy and buggy, too. It could add new gameplay elements, or it could dumb down those that were already there. Chrono Trigger's a delicate thing! Be careful with that priceless art item, you sausage-fingered renovators! And here to guide you on a righteous path are five enhanced remakes that got it right — and five that didn't. — Peter Smith FIVE GREAT REMAKES Tomb Raider Anniversary (PlayStation 2) Most games simply do not need to be remade. As beautiful and ambitious as Square's impending Final Fantasy IV DS is, its voiced dialogue, new script, and three-dimensional overhaul are icing on a cake that was already delicious despite its simplicity. The original Tomb Raider, however, is a once-revolutionary title ravaged by the passage of time and the growth of technology. Forget how Lara's 1996 debut looks. Just think about trying to play a fully-3D game that requires precision platforming using only a d-pad. Crystal Dynamics' full remake of Tomb Raider put the engine from Lara's rebirth, the decent Tomb Raider: Legend, to great use, re-introducing the world to the game and, most importantly, preserving it in a way so people can actually play it in the years to come. Plus, grappling hooks are awesome. — John Constantine Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:00 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa

• Game Designers: Rockstars, Auteurs, Dweebs?

  One crummy thing about living here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. is that we don’t get issues of Britain’s Edge Magazine for a full month after they hit stands in Britain. Yes, I know, it’s a hard life. We’ve been at war with two separate nations for close to a decade, the economy is disintegrating, and our health care system is an atrocity but all that pales in comparison to not getting pretty videogame rags in a timely manner. But I digress. Yesterday, while flipping through their July issue, something stuck out about their Platinum Games cover story: the photo spread of Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, Shigenori Nishikawa, Hifumi Kouno, and Tatsuya Minami made them look like a god damn boy band. Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, platinum games, valve, shigeru miyamoto, cliffy b, edge, david jaffe, gabe newell

• Game Center CX is Charming as Hell

  61 Frames Per Second took a field trip to the IFC Center yesterday morning to catch the New York Asian Film Festival’s final screening of a localized Game Center CX. For anyone not up on the Japanese pop-culture, Game Center CX, renamed Retro Game Master for us yanks, is a strange mix of Jackass, classic Iron Chef, and videogames. Comedian Shinya Arino is “The Kacho” (midde-manager) and each episode finds him marathon playing (sometimes for well over eight hours straight) classic games from the 8 and 16-bit eras. Sitting in an all but empty theater at 11:30am and watching a middle-aged Japanese funnyman lose at Ghosts 'n Goblins for six hours might sound like a strange way to have a good time, but, let me tell you, it’s a blast. Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ghosts 'n goblins, jackass, retro game master, iron chef, game center cx, shinya arino, new york asian film festival

• OST: Chrono Cross

  Many weeks back, when 61 Frames Per Second was still being molded into what you’re reading now, the OST feature was conceived (at least by me) as nothing more than a venue for talking about Yasunori Mitsuda. Music was the source of my first real emotional engagement with videogames; the frenetic excitement of early Mega Man soundtracks and the somber coda of Mega Man 2’s ending, the desperate minor key of stage 5 in Bionic Commando. These melodies sparked my imagination, created a foothold for my experience with these works beyond the visceral rush of successfully playing them. But it was Mitsuda’s work in Chrono Trigger that made me, for the first time, physically put down the controller just to listen. It was "Guardia Castle", a booming march whose synthesized horns implied fading grandeur more than patriotism. I sat on the floor of my bedroom, eyes closed, and let the song loop for close to twenty minutes. Mitsuda gravitates towards the same styles in his game soundtracks, specifically jazz fusion (Chrono Trigger), punctuated baroque symphony orchestration (Chrono Trigger, Xenosaga), and celtic (Xenogears, Tsugunai). But my personal favorite Mitsuda work, the soundtrack to Trigger’s divisive sequel Chrono Cross, is his most adventurous and strange. Read More... Posted Jul 02 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ost, chrono trigger, xenosaga, chrono cross, xenogears, yasunori mitsuda

• Bringing Sexy Back: Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!

  Yes, this slinky black number that can be unlocked for Chun Li in the imminent and fine looking Street Fighter 4 is an ample slice of cheesecake. It is not, in itself, bringing sexy back in any way, shape, or form. Cheesecake, as our good friend Patrick Alexander over at Eegra so deftly illustrated, is nothing new in fighting games. Nor are alternate costumes for the exaggerated characters that populate them. What is bringing sexy back is the thought that, ultimately, we’re going to be able to play dress-up with our Street Fighter characters as new content is released in both arcade iterations and home versions of the game. Here’s my thinking: that slinky black dress on Blanka. That will strike fear into all opponents! Read More... Posted Jul 01 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, street fighter, bringing sexy back, eegra

• Looks Are Everything

  There are no gameplay screenshots for Tri-Ace’s Star Ocean 4 yet, but as you can see from the image above, the Xbox 360 game’s cinematics are already quite lovely. The series has never been A-list, but it’s been a persistent presence in the gaming world since 1996, a trail of breadcrumbs marking technology’s path over the years. Star Ocean games have always been gorgeous, from the lush hand-drawn original through its polygonal, but not less colorful, descendants. They have, however, always played like hell. Read More... Posted Jul 01 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, silent hill, star ocean

• Progress Quest: Playstation 3 Growing Up and The General Beauty of Firmware Updates

  The much discussed 2.40 firmware update for the Playstation 3 was officially announced today. It will be available for download this coming Wednesday, July 2nd. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you know what a firmware update is, but for anyone out there not familiar with the language, it’s no different than updating your computer, iPod, or Blackberry’s operating system. It cleans up any bugs, improves digital security, and adds new features to whatever device you happen to be updating. The PS3’s firmware update brings a host of new stuff to the system that users have been clamoring for since the system’s launch in November 2006. The improved feature list includes access to the cross-media bar, or XMB, while playing a game. The XMB is the system’s handy row-and-column interface, organized into multimedia (stored video or audio), game saves, and community stuff like a friends list, etc. The update also ups the number of friends you can have on the Playstation Network to one-hundred. The other new feature is Trophies, Sony’s answer to Xbox 360’s Achievements. These are preset goals in games that signify play milestones for a user’s profile (Score a million points? Get a trophy.) The 2.40 update is a big moment for the PS3, yet another olive branch from the once haughty corporation to a slowly growing user base; Sony’s saying they’re listening and delivering. Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, xbox 360, nes, sony, firmware

• Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 2

  In the second part of my journey, I discover the joy of making small animals kick the crap out of birds for me and I meet my very best friend in the world. 2:05 – Interestingly enough, Pokémon let’s me name not only myself, but also my best friend. My best friend is TheHoff. Complete strangers in the game know me and TheHoff “are tight”. He just invited me to the lake. His theme song is rad. 2:09 – No balls. No monsters. No monsters in balls. I would like to do something. 2:10 – We’re going to Lake Verity: The Lake of Emotions. This is getting awful racy. 2:12 – This is definitely more of an RPG than I remember Blue being. Is there more of an emphasis on story here? 2:13 – BIRDS! 2:14 – I found an old man’s briefcase and it happened to be filled with balls containing beasts so now I’m fending off birds with a flaming monkey. One of my available commands is “Leer” which is really kind of creepy. The battle system doesn’t give any indication as to what an attack might do, though. Is that part of strategy, not knowing what the hell you’re doing? Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, nintendo ds, pokemon

• Going Back in There: My Very First Hour With Pokemon, part 1

  My relationship with Pokémon has always been focused on the phenomenon, not the game. Watching the cartoon, cards, games, and films descend on Western culture between September of 1998 and December of 1999 was not unlike witnessing a natural disaster from a reinforced safe-house; I was scared but secure in other games, fascinated but not brave enough to go outside to try and document the event. I was sixteen when Pokémon Blue and Red came out, slightly too old to be caught in the flood. I got around to trying out Blue in July ’99, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was horrible. Too slow, too simple, too oblique. I put it down and never went back. Over the past decade, Pokémon has refused to die, maintaining a stranglehold on gamers of all ages, and I’ve started to wonder, yet again, if I’m missing out on something. There has to be a reason people return to these games. The brand is strong enough to survive without proper handheld entries from Nintendo, why do people keep going back for more. At twenty-six, now a bold videogame journalist, and it’s time for me to weather the storm. Join me, dear reader, as I plunge into the world of Pokémon Diamond searching for unholy knowledge of gaming’s darkest secrets. Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, nintendo ds, pokemon

• The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 3

  Shadow Man As Pete said, Mega Man III started to strain the series' robot-masters-as-industrial-tool conceit. Silly as Top Man is, I have even more trouble getting my head around Shadow Man and his lair sitting at the bottom of a waterfall of lava. What was the civic-planning meeting like for this one? "Finally, we have used the remaining funds in 200X's robot-master budget to build a crazy-sweet ninja robot who lives in a rad fortress at the bottom of a lava flow. He will be protected by robot frogs and parachuting heads." "Madness! Why would you do such a thing?" "Because, sir. It is awesome." Know what? He's right. — JC Read More... Posted Jun 27 2008, 01:32 PM by Peter Smith with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, street fighter, capcom, top ten, commando 3, bionic commando, list, mega man, keiji inafune, mega man 9, 1942 joint strike, top man, flame man, shadow man, toad man, elec man, metal man, mega man iii, mega man vi, gemini man, spark man, bubble man, crystal man, dr wily, street fighter iv, mega man iv, street fighter hd remix, mega man ii, tomahawk man, mega man v, the ten greatest classic mega man levels

• The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 2

  Metal Man More than your average Mega Man stage, Metal Man's feels collosal. Who knows why — maybe it's the giant screws and gears in the foreground, or the dense, heavily animated background (technically quite impressive) of pistons and cogs. Or maybe it's that Metal Man's stage actually has somewhat less variety than most of Mega Man II's stages, thereby suggesting a larger size. Whatever the reason, the scope seems massive. The stage itself is relatively short, but it feels like just a small part of a vast, rusted-out fortress of industry. — PS Read More... Posted Jun 27 2008, 01:31 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, street fighter, capcom, top ten, commando 3, bionic commando, list, mega man, keiji inafune, mega man 9, 1942 joint strike, top man, flame man, shadow man, toad man, elec man, metal man, mega man iii, mega man vi, gemini man, spark man, bubble man, crystal man, dr wily, street fighter iv, mega man iv, street fighter hd remix, mega man ii, tomahawk man, mega man v, the ten greatest classic mega man levels

• The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 1

  Capcom, I don't really know how to say this. It's a little awkward, but damn it, it's the truth. We've known each other a long time, and you've always been a good friend to me, but this year, things have gotten more serious. With Street Fighter IV, HD Remix, Commando 3, 1942: Joint Strike and two versions of Bionic Commando, it's like you've gone out of your way lately to show me what I mean to you, and now that you've announced Mega Man 9, it's time for me to return the favor. Capcom, I. . . I love you. Jesus, I don't know what came over me there. But with Mega Man 9 just unveiled in all its eight-bit glory, my old-school-gaming glands are all swollen and red, and I think it's squeezing out the blood flow to my brain. The early Mega Man games are masterpieces of their era, and they feature some of the most unforgettable stages on the NES — a series of giant constructions that, high-tech though they may be, maintain a playground-like innocence. World-building obsessives that we are, we couldn't let this glorious day go by without commemorating the ten greatest classic Mega Man levels of all time. — Peter Smith Elec Man Keiji Inafune's first attempt at Mega Man was promising but ultimately half-baked. The play was there but the world itself was still confused, its six core stages shuffling back and forth between "gamey" abstraction and eerie pastoral. Elec Man's tower was one of the series' first real successes, an ascent that felt like a true structure and not a background for a sprite to jump about, a dangerous place pulsing with energy that could obliterate our diminutive hero using the very power that fueled his mechanical innards. — John Constantine Read More... Posted Jun 27 2008, 01:30 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, street fighter, capcom, top ten, commando 3, bionic commando, list, mega man, keiji inafune, mega man 9, 1942 joint strike, top man, flame man, shadow man, toad man, elec man, metal man, mega man iii, mega man vi, gemini man, spark man, bubble man, crystal man, dr wily, street fighter iv, mega man iv, street fighter hd remix, mega man ii, tomahawk man, mega man v, the ten greatest classic mega man levels

• Trailer Review: Densetsu no Stafi 5

  Alright, fine, these two videos are not trailers. They are Japanese commercials and are understandably, given their place of origin, weird as hell. But just being Japanese does not justify these levels of batshit crazy. A squeaking, smiling, boiling pile of celestial mass is under water, touches a thought bubble (thought bubbles are corporeal in Japan) and is then sticking its horrific grin out of the whale’s mouth. Then it’s in a dragon’s stomach, setting a giant, orange clam on fire while a mermaid, old-man-crab, and what I can only assume is a female pile of celestial mass giggle in delight. WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE GAMES! Read More... Posted Jun 26 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, trailer review

• Whatcha Playing: Fallout (Metaphorically Speaking)

  Truth to tell, I’ve never played a Fallout game. The vast majority of my gaming career has been spent in front of a television, not a monitor, my hands clutching a controller instead of hovering over a keyboard. It’s not a point of pride, let me tell you. Not gaming on a PC throughout the ‘90s meant you were perpetually on the outside of the cutting edge, waiting for advancements to come to Nintendo, Sony, or whoever else’s systems sometimes years later. Deus Ex, Half-Life, Diablo, even Sierra’s King’s Quest V, all games I’ve gotten to try my hand at, eventually, when they were ported to a console, shadows of their former selves. It’s even kept me from really experiencing whole genres; I’ve never played a real-time strategy game for more than a few minutes and my aging laptop could barely run World of Warcraft when I tried it out in 2005. Since that year, though, consoles have started gaining on PCs as the place where developers make their greatest strides. It’s not too surprising. Consoles have turned into high-end computers themselves. Read More... Posted Jun 26 2008, 03:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, whatcha playing, wii fit, rock band, mega man, grand theft auto, final fantast vii, metal gear, diablo, deus ex

• Don’t Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection

  As 61 Frames Per Second’s newest team member Nadia pointed out earlier today, Mega Man 9 is a reality. Revitalizations of long-dormant franchises have been a mainstay in the gaming business since the Playstation 1-era, trading on nostalgia and brand recognition to push new designs. But the past few years have seen a growing trend of proper numerical sequels releasing a decade or more after their predecessors. Games like WayForward and Konami’s Contra 4 and Taito’s Legend of Kage 2 are not only sequels in name; play in these games is built on the same archaic fundamentals as their ancestors. Both Kage 2 and Contra 4’s only real advancements are slight visual upgrades and mechanical tweaks (both games, being designed for the Nintendo DS, introduce skills that necessitate play on both the system’s screens.) Mega Man 9, however, is unique. It is being made using the exact same tools and in the same style as it was twenty years ago. The decision to build Mega Man 9 as an NES game is not mere retro pandering. Series creator Keiji Inafune has said numerous times that he’s kept making (and remaking) 2D Mega Man games (alongside teams like Inticreates, the team helming 9’s development) because it’s important to continue refining and rediscovering what made a simple design successful in the first place. With the freedom offered by digital distribution venues like WiiWare, creators like Inafune no longer need to ensure their games will be modern enough to succeed on store shelves. They can also utilize outmoded hardware, like the NES, to make their games. Read More... Posted Jun 26 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, capcom, nes, mega man, contra, genesis, keiji inafune, mega man 9, turbo-grafx, legend of kage

• Missing the Point: New York Senate Passes Mandatory Game Ratings Bill

  A bill proposed by Senator Andrew Lanza was passed yesterday by a vote of 61-1. The bill requires that all videogames sold in New York State be rated by the ESRB. If signed by Governor David Patterson, the bill will become law by 2010. Lanza’s bill is not dissimilar to others passed and then overturned in Michigan, Oklahoma, and California after being deemed unconstitutional, in violation of the first amendment. GamePolitics.com printed this excerpt of Lanza’s closing argument for the bill: If you look closely at this bill, [concerns expressed by Sen. Duane] are not valid. Let's start with speech. There's all kinds of speech. If we take an old-fashioned pinball machine and plunked it down here in the middle of the chamber, no one would call it speech. But when we put that up on a video screen, it does become speech and I acknowledge that. And it deserves protection under the Constitution... There is some confusion with respect to what this bill actually accomplishes... The word prohibition was talked about. I want to be clear. This bill does not prohibit the sale of any video to anyone... This simply says that every video game sold in the state of New York simply should have a rating consistent with what the ESRB does presently in a voluntary way... it does work. But the problem with "voluntary" is that tomorrow someone can change their mind. Someone could decide tomorrow to no longer place ratings on these games. So this is not about prohibiting the sale, this is simply about providing information to parents... Last year's version... that included a provision that would have made it an E-felony to sell these games, we all thought it was wrong. And we took that out. We worked with the [video game] industry. We worked with the Assembly and we do have an agreement here on a piece of legislation that I think will go a long way in allowing parents to make good decisions in regard to what is and what isn't appropriate for their chidlren... As Illinois District Court judge Mathew Kennelly said, after knocking out a similar bill in Illinois, "In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener's or observer's thoughts and attitudes.” Whether Senator Lanza likes it or not, his bill is in clear violation of the constitution. Read More... Posted Jun 25 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, new york, game legislation

• Feeling It: Social Versus Primitive Emotion in Videogames

  In a recent talk at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in France, Quantic Dream’s David Cage discussed emotion’s role in videogames. Quantic Dream have claimed their new game, still known after two years by its codename Heavy Rain, has conquered the Uncanny Valley, creating human characters so lifelike that players can’t resist identifying with them. In his talk, Cage discussed mixing motion captured performances with hand-drawn animation in Heavy Rain to achieve such natural expression in an interactive setting. Performance is only the beginning of Rain’s ambition, though, as Cage turned the topic to utilizing finer, more social human emotions as love, jealousy, and shame to create a game’s foundation for immersion versus the more primal emotions traditional to games, such as anxiety and aggression. Read More... Posted Jun 25 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, uncanny valley, fumito ueda, indigo prophecy, heavy rain, farenheit, quantic dream, omikron, david cage

• Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Champion

  Get into a conversation with a gamer about feminist icons in their medium of choice and they’ll probably give you one answer: Samus Aran. Miss Aran is the take-no-prisoners bounty hunter star of Nintendo’s twenty year-old Metroid series. She’s capable, powerful, athletic, a natural blonde, and she takes no-guff from space pirates, space jellyfish, or giant brains perched atop tyrannosaurus-rex bodies. There’s a huge problem though. In almost every Metroid, a better performance in the game is rewarded with images of a de-robed, tarted-up Samus. Hit the jump for a look at what I'm talking about. Read More... Posted Jun 24 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, metroid, feminism, ms pac man

• Everyone Should Be Able to Rock

  When Konami announced Rock Revolution back in May, their re-entry into the rock and roll videogame arena, you could practically hear the gaming world’s exasperation, eyes rolling, sighs exhaled in unison. No one wants stagnation, obviously. Guitar Hero’s fresh approach to music games revolutionized the industry three years ago, a feat Konami’s GuitarFreaks hadn’t managed in the better part of a decade. But no one wants clutter. Yet another band game hitting the public means yet another set of proprietary instrument controllers. Problematic, considering the precedent set by Activision last fall. They made it abundantly clear that they’re not interested in having their instruments completely compatible with another publisher’s software, a point they’ve reiterated by developing brand new drum, guitar, and microphone peripherals (with different functions than those made by MTV Games for Rock Band) for the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour. It seems that Konami’s chosen a more reasonable approach. Konami associate producer Keith Matejka told MTV News’ Patrick Klepek, "Compatibility is a big issue for music games. Peripherals are expensive for the user and they are expensive to produce. The existing peripherals all deliver only a slightly different gameplay experience. Different teams have varying perspectives on what should be compatible with each game. I think all guitar- and drum-based games need to be compatible with each other to some level." He’s absolutely right, and not just from a consumer friendliness perspective. Read More... Posted Jun 24 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, konami, guitar hero, rock band, mtv games, activision, rock revolution

• The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4 Part 2

  As I mentioned in the first part of this review, Guns of the Patriots is the Metal Gear that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, for the series and game type, passive viewing is every bit as much a part of the play experience as actual player control. It’s misleading, though, to think that Metal Gear Solid 4’s greatest achievement is its presentation. Since its debut on the MSX in 1986, the actual game under Metal Gear’s graphics and story has been about using a limited, often suffocating interface to explore multiple solutions to a problem. A classic scenario: Solid Snake enters a room filled with obstacles (packing crates, trees, stationary vehicles) and a handful of hostile artificial intelligences (soldiers, security cameras, dogs) moving along set paths. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater The goal is to guide Snake passed hostile elements without alerting them to his presence. The environment and tools acquired in its boundaries (anything from firearms to camouflage) create options; you could crawl under cars to avoid detection or tranquilize a soldier to distract the others as you move on. Snake is difficult to manage though; move too fast and you risk accidentally walking into an enemy’s line of sight, fire a gun and you risk being heard. You could make the argument that the finicky and imprecise control of Snake is immersive, simulating the stress and precision of actual stealth, but the truth is that it superficially increases difficulty, masking the rudimentary artificial intelligence’s faults. In Guns of the Patriots, not only has the environment and multiple-solution approach been expanded upon in both scope and realism, but the control has been streamlined to a point where agency is truly in the player’s hands, no longer at the mercy of a stilted interface. Read More... Posted Jun 24 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, 61fps review, metal gear, mgs4

• Up All Night: Dark Sector

  Dark Sector was one of the very first games for “next-gen” consoles ever seen by the public. When it was revealed in 2004, everyone was saying, “Oh, man. Look at those hot, hot graphics.” They were also saying, “What’s up with all the idiotic Guyver rejects hanging out in space?” Yes, despite its bleeding edge technology, Dark Sector was looking generic from the start. It’s cool though. Digital Extremes spent the next few years playing a ton of Resident Evil 4 and made some important changes to Dark Sector’s look and play before it came out this past March. First on the list of changes, dark-and-tortured protagonist Hayden only looks like the Guyver for half the game. Instead, he looks, controls, and moves exactly like Leon from Resident Evil 4 (he’s got darker hair and no leather jacket. Big differences!) Second, Dark Sector would no longer take place in space but in an evil future Russia overrun with some techno-plague that makes regular dudes into zombies (making it Easter Europe instead of Western Europe is hugely innovative. Hugely.) Finally, they added a smear of kill.switch’s duck and cover mechanics that are all the rage these days to compliment the Resident Evil controls. The final result of all these changes? Dark Sector came out as what it looked like: a silly generic mess of a game. But what a silly generic mess it is! Read More... Posted Jun 23 2008, 06:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, up all night, resident evil, dark sector, kill.switch, krull

• The Magical Mystery Tour is Coming to Take You Away

  Finally. The Beatles’ slow arrival to digital media has been pretty torturous for us fans. I mean, my CD of Revolver will barely play thanks to all the scratches earned through years of travel and love, and it’s not like I can listen to vinyl on the go. Why go out and buy another disc? It’s 2008, I should be able to legally download the damn thing by now. My newfound love of Rock Band has made things even worse. It seems downright perverse that I can sit down with friends and play Paramore’s “CrushCrushCrush” but I can’t belt out my scintillating rendition of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. While I doubt that the “talks” EMI and Apple Corps are having with Activision and MTV Games are going to end in time for Abbey Road to hit Guitar Hero 4 and Rock Band 2 this fall, it’s still reassuring to know they’re happening. Even beyond The Beatles, I’m anxious for Activison and MTV’s games to have iTunes-like access to music. Is it possible to build the software so it procedurally generates the game interface instead of having to hand craft it for each song? Read More... Posted Jun 23 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, guitar hero, rock band, mtv games, activision, the beatles

• The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 3

  Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! We cite Punch-Out!! here not for starring Mike Tyson (a controversial figure, even before his rape conviction), but for the degree to which it epitomizes a trend that would dominate gaming in the late-'80s and early-'90s: the "beat up stereotypes from around the world" gameplay model. Granted, most of Punch-Out!!'s characters are too ludicrous to really offend; it's hard to imagine Pacific Islanders getting all up in arms about King Hippo being kind of a jackass. That said, the sight of cross-eyed Piston Honda babbling "Sushi, Kamikaze, Fujiyama, Nipponichi!" as a mid-match battle cry is a little unsettling. — PS Read More... Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:13 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid, nintendo, derrick sanskrit, xbox 360, final fantasy, top ten, call of duty, pokemon, Playstation, tomb raider, punch out, mcdonalds, heavenly sword, fable, mike Tyson, narc, dead or alive, persona

• The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 2

  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Call of Duty 4 is a game obsessed with realism, its depiction of combat situations and the tools of war meticulous to an almost terrifying degree. Early in the game, you are placed in the gunner’s seat of an AC-130 Spectre over a Ukrainian field, the night vision view of an aerial assault looking no different than an Iraq war newscast, the radio confirmation of kills unsettlingly casual; a game so realistic that it mimics a soldier’s detachment from killing. It’s strange then that the game, for all its incessant specificity, sends the player to kill Arab soldiers in “the Middle East”, and not an actual nation. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold over seven million copies in a war-weary United States in under a year. Am I the only one who finds this sort of depersonalization unsettling? — JC Read More... Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:12 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid, nintendo, derrick sanskrit, xbox 360, final fantasy, top ten, call of duty, pokemon, Playstation, tomb raider, punch out, mcdonalds, heavenly sword, fable, mike Tyson, narc, dead or alive, persona

• The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 1

  Games have been raising hackles since their inception. Howell Ivy kick-started gaming and controversy’s relationship when he designed Death Race in 1976, a simple black and white game that was, well, about running people over for points. That was enough to get America riled up, prompting 60 Minutes to run the first of many, many televised news stories about the psychological effects of gaming. But public outrage is unpredictable. Politicians and parent groups have been shocked by d-list titles like Manhunt and Night Trap while more popular, widely played games with far more inflammatory content have passed by unnoted. Today, 61 Frames Per Second presents The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial. A number of these are games that we are surprised did not cause uproar in a number of communities. The rest are games that we ourselves find seriously questionable in content. How do you feel about these videogames? Indifferent? Appalled? Leave a comment and let us know. — John Constantine NARC I don't know about you, but I have at least a couple of friends who have occasionally sold drugs. They're pretty lucky they grew up in the relatively permissive '90s, and not in the merciless, Reaganite '80s presented in NARC. Sure, NARC gives you bonus points for arresting dealers instead of killing them, but that's because it's almost impossible to do. Far easier is just perforating them on the spot. As my fellow blogger Cole notes, "I guess dismembering hundreds is okay if they're pushin'." In fact, there was some parental outrage over NARC's unprecedented level of gore, but its moral assumptions went pretty much unchallenged. — Peter Smith Read More... Posted Jun 20 2008, 01:11 PM by John Constantine with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid, nintendo, derrick sanskrit, xbox 360, final fantasy, top ten, call of duty, pokemon, Playstation, tomb raider, punch out, mcdonalds, heavenly sword, fable, mike Tyson, narc, dead or alive, persona

• Screen Test: Final Fantasy Versus XIII

  Fine, Square-Enix. Your CG cinemas are gorgeous. After eleven years, I think you’ve proved your point. High-five. And