A light-hearted look at our passion

A week or so ago, the May ‘08 edition of Paste magazine found its way into my mailbox. For those not in the know, Paste is a monthly magazine that covers music, film, and culture while generally hovering over the Indie interests in those areas. It’s all part of the necessities for one to keep their ear to the street and maintain their Indie cred. Now you’re probably asking yourself what does a magazine that is mostly about music have to do with video games. Well, besides an article about independent game developers making their way into the mainstream, there’s a piece entitled The Diary of a Video Game RPG Hero.

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Bioware’s Sonic RPG looking stunning, cements IP’s destiny as handheld.

It’s OK, Sonic. Not everyone’s cut out for the big screen. Like Castlevania, your hook just really works best at a smaller scale.

Bioware’s upcoming Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is really coming together nicely, at least from a visual standpoint. IGN’s got a wave of new screens and an interview with the title’s producer, Mark Darrah. The information in the interview is pretty limited beyond what’s revealed in the screenshots, but it’s clear from these images that Bioware’s really making the handheld sing.

Source: IGN

Mass Effect Accelerates Into the PC Market in May

Bioware has finally announced the inevitable today, officially saying that Mass Effect is coming to the PC in May 2008. Bioware has always been good about bringing their RPGs to the PC after they have spent some time on the console. Bioware is adding several features to the game for PC players, including higher resolutions, assignable hotkeys for biotics and skills, a new decryption mini-game and optimized controls for PC players. The game will also be published by Electronic Arts instead of Microsoft Games Studio. It make one wonder if that is the beginning of a change in regards to Mass Effect being locked to one platform.

While it is not strange for a Bioware RPG to go from the console world to the PC, it seems like Mass Effect is coming to the PC a lot sooner than past Bioware efforts. Could it have to do with the mixed reaction that the game got from the media and gamers, or maybe due to the lack of staying power at the cash register over a long period of time? It may be nothing, but I felt that it was worth noting.

The Press Release follows the jump, via Yahoo Business

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Suikoden VI coming to Wii?

It’s been rumored for a little bit that the next Suikoden game might be headed for Wii, but while listening to the most recent 1up Retronauts podcast today, I heard one of the editors ask another offhand whether he was excited about Suikoden VI on Wii, in the context of a discussion of the series. They didn’t spend any time talking about the game after that, and naturally it’s plausible they were joking about the recent rumors, but it didn’t seem to be presented as a joke. If it wasn’t a joke, it was most likely an accident.

Further lending to the idea is Nintendo Power’s recent claim that they are about to cover a major RPG announcement for Wii in their next issue. Any fans of Suikoden have any feelings about this one way or the other?

Anyone for Some Sonic, Bioware Style

For several months now, Bioware has been working on a Sonic RPG game for the Nintendo DS. Everyone looked at the initial announcement cock-eyed as it was such a 180 degree turn from what they had been working on. But then again, that is the Bioware motto. Always try something new and different. Well after all these months of secrecy, A forum poster at VGChartz was nice enough to get some screens from the latest Nintendo Power magazine which has a big write up on the whole deal.

For anyone that is interested, hit the jump and see some more of the pictures. There are more at the VGChartz forum post as well.

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Wii Shop Channel: Bubble Bobble, Light Crusader, and Top Hunter.

Flickerfest Bubble Bobble has arrived for Virtual Console. In my opinion, the Puzzle Bobble (Bust-A-Move) spinoff of the Bubble Bobble series is where the real quality landed… even if that quality has not been reached again since its origin. Bubble Bobble’s repetitive gameplay and the aforementioned constant flicker in the graphics because of all the action make Taito’s classic platformer pretty unpleasant for me.

I’m not familiar with Light Crusader, but it’s an action RPG, which is always a welcome addition. You people are going to have to let me know if that one’s any good. As to Top Hunter, it’s NeoGeo, which means nobody’s played it before. If the NeoGeo games weren’t so expensive, they’d be a good bet. Read on for the full release.

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Dengeki Online details Wii-specific Baroque features.

The Wiire has some new information on what the developers will be doing in bringing the PS2 RPG Baroque to Wii, and it’s a pretty impressive read. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Wii port get this much hands-on time to make it better suit the platform. It will be interesting to see how it turns out in the end.

Two controller options will be available: Wii Remote and Nunchuk with first-person mode and motion controls, or Classic Controller support. Widescreen support will also be added for this version.

First-person is an interesting choice. Nintendo’s Zelda team experimented with the idea of a first-person Zelda during the development of Twilight Princess and eventually canned the idea, but perhaps we’ll see that in the future. It seems like a good idea if you’re planning to use the motion or IR controls directly. It’s obviously more intuitive to hit something with an object by waving the controller in its direction.

Screenshots are also at the links, if you’d like to see some of that.

Source: Dengeki Online via The Wiire.

Atlus bringing RPG Baroque’s song to the west in 2008.

Hey, wasn’t I just whining about RPGs yesterday? The Wii could really use one already, it’s been, what, a year?

Atlus will be bringing developer Sting’s RPG Baroque (which came out in Japan this year) to the US for February 2008, which is shaping up to be a busy month with No More Heroes and Brawl already packed in there nicely.

You awaken to find the world in ruin, your heart beset with unexplained guilt. A cataclysm has destroyed the cities and empires of men and disfigured the spirit of humanity. In this nightmare, it falls to you to descend a mysterious tower in search of absolution. Battle merciless foes through treacherous dungeons, scour for new items to aid you in your travels, and unlock the secrets of a devastated land. You will find death in the depths, yet learn that death is not the end of the story; in the twisted world of Baroque, it is only the beginning.

One of the more interesting features of the “hardcore” RPG? Dying does not end the game, it only sends you to another world. That’s pretty unusual. View a movie that shows very little gameplay right here, at the official website. Most of the links on the site, such as those for screenshots, are inactive.

Source: Atlus

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Tales of Oh Yeah That’s Why I Hate These Games.

I like RPGs. Well, not all RPGs. Back when I had a Gamecube, RPGs were in short supply and as a result, I settled for a couple of real disappointments. One of them was Tales of Symphonia, a game which I gave up on when it took me 40 hours to get through half the game. I’m not saying an RPG can’t have 80 hours of gameplay without being good, I’m just saying that’s exactly what that one did. It had atrocious voice acting, impossibly clich√©d characters, a ludicrous plot that was impossible to follow simply because it was so stupid, and what was surprisingly the biggest issue, the most irritating battle system I’d encountered since Parasite Eve.

The real issue I have with Namco’s Tales games is this live battle system. You’ve got characters brawling on a 2D plane and everything’s just happening at the same time. There’s no time for strategy or planning, only hitting as hard as you can and constantly using healing abilities to try to stay alive. Terrible, terrible stuff.

Tales of the Tempest on DS suffered from this same battle system, and I stopped paying attention to it as soon as I found that out. It also didn’t look very good. Just saying.

So my point is that these games need to lose this battle system, and they won’t, because the Japanese keep eating this crap up like it’s Pocky. I’m serious, that Pocky stuff is great. I like Mens Pocky the best.

Stop the MMO Madness

Earlier this week, Auran Games laid off most of its staff that were assigned to the MMO game, Fury. In August, we had Auto Assault close up shop due to a lack of subscribers and poor initial sales. Tabula Rasa has also started with technical issues and less than expected subscriber numbers. Looking at the last few years, it seems that everybody has announced one or more MMO style games. Most have sat in development, for years, only to be released to lackluster sales and subscribers. I think it is time to call for a moratorium on MMO development and have developers take a hard, honest look at whether their product will really sell to consumers.

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