| It's a questions meme |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|08:58 pm] |
MEME ALGORITHM:
Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity. (until I get bored)
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
The following questions originate from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bluefall
1. Your house is on fire. What do you save?
I'll list items in priority; the plan is to retrieve as much of the list as possible before the flames prohibit further retrieval. First up is my closed headphones. I put them on to save my ears from the shrill keening that issues from the fire alarm. (Closed headphones are earmuffs with speakers in them). Next is my external USB hard drive, then my OS install DVDs. Computer itself is too bulky to remove. Fourth priority is recovering my bowler hat. Then the wii - wiring and controllers are expendable but the console itself has data (I have one star to go before I complete Mario Galaxy. LUIGI'S PURPLE COINS WILL BE MINE. Eventually.). Finally, the old SNES I got from a friend and the all of two games I have for it. If I can get all that out before it's too dangerous, I'll grab whatever seems lightweight and expensive until it is too dangerous.
2. What's the most awesome video game of all time?
Speaking of "all time" when the greater part of time hasn't happened yet seems rather presumptuous. Well at any rate I can only speak to the relatively minuscule subset of games that I have actually played, which naturally excludes the future.
But enough of pedantic philosophizing! It's Super Metroid. I'm normally a believer in progress, not nostalgia - I think Dragon Age is a marked improvement over Bioware's previous output, I like Mario Galaxy more than 64, and if you ask me everything about World of Warcraft is better than it was at launch.
But I put Super Metroid over Zero Mission, despite the latter having tighter controls, fewer bugs, and smoother sprites. I can identify two reasons why:
1. I like a little complication. Super Metroid has a few extra widgets, you can turn abilities on or off in the pause menu, and there's the tricks you can do with power bombs.
2. The story. It's not the first thing people think of when they think about Metroid but for my money it's a much bigger deal than they realize. Super Metroid was radically mimetic 4 years before Half-Life, and it never locked you in a room to let someone exposit at you. Zero Mission largely follows Super Metroid's example, but it occasionally resorts to cutscenes. Plus, what happens in Zero Mission is pretty much exclusively violence between Samus and Space Pirates, whereas Super Metroid has The Twist. (Zero Mission does have a nod to Samus' origin story, but that's backstory.)
Honorable Mentions:- Chrono Trigger (for being Chrono Trigger)
- Final Fantasy XII (for Balthier, letting a woman have the story all to herself, defying the romance subplot obligation, and immortal spirits who speak in iambic meter.)
- World of Warcraft (it's that popular for a reason.)
3. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Single-Player RTS campaigns. They generally devolve into "build token static defense to fend off token AI offensives, grind down the enormous AI base through attrition or a supply capped blob." It's tedious and takes forever. Supreme Commander is especially egregious in this respect, as it actively punishes you for achieving objectives as soon as you are able by expanding the play area to reveal a massive enemy attack, which once destroyed leaves a constant trickle of far less fearsome attacks until you complete the next objective. I will give credit to the three missions in Forged Alliance where you have to build up a base from scratch while under fire - on hard, getting to tier 2 before the AI decides to start sending t2 units at you is an actual challenge. Still, they never move on to t3 or experimentals and given the initial enemy base they could be swarming you with t3 assault bots as soon as you gate in!
The Red Alert 3 campaigns, by contrast, were pretty good about doing at least one of putting you under reasonable time pressure, consistently attacking with a challenging degree of force, or giving you a gimmick objective with fixed forces at any given moment.
4. What are you most proud of?
I've got a knack for math and coding. It's saved me from and perpetuated my terrible procrastination habit for basically my entire academic career.
5. If you had a character class in real life, what would it be?
Expert. |
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| Battlecake |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|10:01 pm] |
These guys are really good.
I've been waiting years to hear a half-decent cover of the Terran Theme and here these guys are with one that is really good. I guess I wasn't the only one; it's got something like 5 thousand views, where most of their other videos have 200 at the most.
This isn't really fair, because all of their stuff is good. They've covered the obligatory classics and fan favourites, but also a lot of unconventional choices, like Wii Shop Channel.
You really should just go listen to everything they have. |
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| Itagaki |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|02:33 pm] |
So Team Ninja is working with Nintendo on the new Metroid. The obvious reason is Ninja Gaiden, and that's okay by me as from what I've heard NG is held up as an example of legitimate difficulty in a game.
Team Ninja is also responsible for DOA and DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball. Wherever I see this dread spectre raised in conversation, the reassuring reply is invariably "Itagaki left the studio, so no worries." The implication is that that dude was basically the driving force between making DOA(:EBV) ... well, DOA and DOA:EBV and with him gone Team Ninja is obviously going to take a mature and appropriate approach to Samus as a character.
Is laying all that at Itagaki's feet really fair? As I recall the big breakup was due to either A. Itagaki not getting paid or B. Itagaki misbehaving somehow. The upper management or rank and file being dissatisfied with jiggle-physics based game design was not a thing I heard of.
But then again I didn't follow it too closely. |
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| I thought E3 was dead? |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|03:23 pm] |
Apparently nobody told Nintendo, 'cos they thought it'd be a good place to announce
- Mario Galaxy 2
- Sin & Punishment 2
- Metroid Gaiden1
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- Golden Sun DS
YAY OHMYGOD.
I'm a bit anxious that having actual dialogue (MP3 had expository monologues, which in principle weren't any different from the expository scan data, but generally the spoken stuff wasn't as interesting as the written logs) is going to lead to a plot that's unavoidably bad, rather than sufficiently minimalist that you can project whatever awesome you like into the gaps. Also if you've played Metroid 4 you'll know who The Other M is, and why that's a reason for concern re:genderfail.
I wonder if Ridley is going to talk? He was quite the jabbermouth in the Manga but his characterization was hilariously flat.
From a gameplay/aesthetic perspective, it's clear that they're pushing combat and Samus Aran: Space Badass moreso than Zelda-like exploration and "One Girl In All The World." Either is a valid take on the 2D games and Retro has already explored the latter take pretty thoroughly, so for now this is a neutral observation.
1. The actual subtitle is "The other M" but the nickname is more informative. |
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