Game Rentals

The advantages of game rentals are obvious: games often cost $60 a piece for consoles, but they don't always back that up with $60 of playability. Some titles will demand much more than a standard rental period, but it's a great way to experience a lot of games for a lesser amount of money. There are more options than before, which just complicates the matter of finding the right way to go about it. There are four main choices, each offering their own advantages.

The Video Game Blog Shakedown Shake up

I reached a disappointing conclusion while trying to objectively evaluate various popular gaming blogs. Well, blog is a vague term for what they are, which is really news based multi-featured sites. The evaluation was based on my own reservations about whether such sites were responsible or in the least, uninfluenced by other larger forces. The more I tried to dig at this to find the best site, the more I found the comparative worth of the sites incalculable.

I wish I had come up with more of an answer than that, but the answer is still the same. I think in trying to analyze them I saw the strings that made them dance, and became disenfranchised with all of it. Not necessarily the sites themselves, but the greater overall market and they way people interacted with it. I feel it's no different than the mass commercialism and capitalism that is seen everywhere else. There weren't many games of interest for me at the time either. The industry in general is in a strange place where the next step isn't so obvious, the next console more vague than ever. As Nintendo showed, it's not just about who can make the best graphics, as the summit of that mountain is ever nearing. It's about who will continue to innovate, and how they will manage to improve the experience to keep gaming engaging, relevant, and worthwhile.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the gaming websites that are dependent on the industry. A lot of these sites are involved in creating commentary and criticism, which puts them in the tough spot of trying to validate the efforts of the industry, which can prove themselves fruitless. Trying to collectively commentate on the collective commentary was also proven fruitless.

Conjecture: Best Buy

They are looking to take down Gamestop, and honestly, I'm glad. This isn't about some lingering hatred for Gamestop. I think Gamestop does what it does very well, and has enough going for it that it rolls mostly like a snowball down hill. But Best Buy is starting some bonfires on that hill.

Microsoft Farts in your General Direction

 "Microsoft spent the better part of the last decade in a legal battle against the continent of Europe. At the same time they were mired in that international legal dispute, they were fighting a case brought against them by the United States of America. Basically, western civilization itself was battling against Microsoft in the courts for the better part of a decade and Bill Gates is still toweling himself off each night with the silky hides of endangered baby seals. Threatening Microsoft with legal action as a single human being is like trying to attack a hive of Africanized murder bees with a piece of gum you found in a urinal. That's not to say one person couldn't conceivably rout Microsoft in a legal dispute; after all it was a single, well-placed torpedo that brought down the entire Death Star. But the difference is the Death Star was fiction and Luke wasn't demonstrably guilty of severe violations of XBL's terms of service."  -- Seth, "The Village of the Banned", 1up.com

This article talked about the Xbox Live banned forum, which is essentially to Xbox Live as the cornfield is to Kotaku, except people don't end up there on a whim.   

Used Price Shakedown

I was looking at Destructiod's Buy and sell games powered by Glyde, and I occurred to me that I could buy a lot more games for my dollar. I prefer brick and mortar stores, but we have all known for a long time that GameStop tries to squeeze every last ounce of profit from their used games. Here's a quick Shakedown for a randomly selected group of games:


GameStop:
Black Ops: 54.99
Portal 2: 34.99 (sale price)
Crysis 2: 34.99 (sale price)
Total: $124.97 or 89.98 B2G1 (with edge card, $112.47 or $80.98)

That's actually a little better than GameStop's average, but only because two of the randomly selected games were on sale. $90 looks like a good deal until you check at Destructiod and Amazon:

"Aww" Gaming Moment of the Year

This is just precious.

I Disagree

I don't know how to extract the video, but here is the link :
Step one: LA Step two: Rethink game collection.
It's not the article that I disagree with, but the video. Something seems excessively extreme about it, yes? For a while I have only been reading Kotaku when there is news, so maybe this is what they do when there is no news. Now that E3 is winding down, maybe this will be the type of thing they do. I hope it isn't, because this story was so strange to me, and so out of place, because the premise itself seemed... false.

Kotaku Backlash

What's nice about this is that you can still find these comments on Kotaku, under the cornfield hash tag. I edited out the profanity, but the point rings clear. 

"What is this ( ) doing on Kotaku? What ( ) justification do you still have to call yourself a gaming blog?
Pathetic click-(seekers) just like the rest of Gawker. A disgrace to what Kotaku used to be.
And before I get flamed by a thousand new(bies): You're just as bad. You come here acting all high and mighty and have been posting here for a few weeks. Go ( ) yourselves, you probably don't even know how deliciously puke-green coloured Kotaku used to be back in 2006.
If you're wondering if I wanna get banned or something, the answer is crushingly simple: I don't (care) anymore. This site has turned to the absolute worst on the Internet and I would gladly sacrifice my account with 200+ followers. It means nothing. Kotaku is dead and the Gawker CEO is ( ) its dead corpse like the ( ) he is." --Momohime


That's a bit strong obviously, but is there a valid point hiding in there? Is Kotaku slipping?

Finished Wall Curtain

I ran into a few problems with this one, the biggest one being I don't have a workspace the size of a wall. But I have completed it! It now hangs proudly in my gaming loft.

 

Its hard to believe that it's just a shower curtain.

Hit the jump to see more pictures and find out what's behind this curtain.

Unfinished Business

I stopped writing about Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep because I lost my charger and stopped playing it. That means I played through the story twice, saving the most interesting character for last only to not play him at all. So, I intend to get back to that as part of the calling of my games. I might start a series called "Unfinished Business" where I go back to complete games I never completed. There are a few I can think of, including some racing games and (embarrassingly) both deBlobs

I can hear them calling

All those games I haven't been playing... when I walk by them, when my mind wanders, I hear them calling. I suppose like any addiction, you can kick it out of sheer will for a while but your motivations wanes and you can't help your thoughts drifting back...

I still have the feeling that game playing will not breed productivity, but I also have the feeling that the first feeling is not so important. I spied a good number of games on my shelf that I never really got the chance to play. I always wanted to play back through some game series, such as Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. I've written about those very goals on this blog more than once. Work and life always got in the way. I finally have the time to indulge in such things but I feel guilty for indulging. Certainly there is something more worthwhile I could be doing with my time. And all the same, I can hear them calling.

The 3DS eShop

You know, I kind of like it. The organization is sort of mediocre, even though the groupings are nice. I like that excite bike is free, but excite bike is also rather boring. Why this couldn't have been available on day one, I'm not sure. Why they didn't wait until this summer to release the entire thing... I'm not sure about that either. But! The shop is up, and it's decent enough. I have made a wish list as well, which is a helpful way of keeping up with worthwhile titles. I just wish they had a few more app like things, like lists and notebooks, money trackers, etc, since the system lends itself to it. You know, maybe I don't really care for it. I guess I'm still undecided.

Stereoscopic 3D

I am not enthused by 3D. I think my disinterest stems from the type of 3D found in theaters. Often using polarization, these techniques first boomed in the 1950s, and obviously haven't maintained their popularity. My issue is that it never looks truly real. Instead, it looks like a paper pop up book of moving images. The benefit to this, however, is wide angle viewing, provided that everyone has glasses.

Now that 3D is growing in persistence as a sign of our evolved technological achievements, it is getting harder to ignore. There are many 3d televisions for private homes and 3D games, moves, and sporting events to enjoy. For the most part, this is still by polarization. And it is still a pricey endeavor.

Despite my reluctance for 3D, I did by a 3DS. Instead of polarization, it employs stereoscopic 3D. Unlike movie 3D, which attempts to pop out at you, stereoscopic 3D delivers depth of an image to create 3D. Before you see it, you would think that the basic nature of a camera and pictures allow you to understand the dimensions therein, so while you watch something or look at something you can tell the depth of that on screen. The same is true for games, where they take place in a 3D world, and you may not feel that depth will be that different from how you interpret images already.

You would be wrong.

I missed E3

It was a liberating experience, but also a little frightening. Just the feeling of missing out, when I absolutely could have watched everything as it happened for the first time since I cared about E3 was sort of shocking. But, I was doing a very worthwhile gaming free thing, and I don't regret that. I do have a passion for it, and I have pretty much every worthwhile current gaming thing. I will probably go the Gamefly route from now on, but I am slowing slipping back into the gaming world.

My departure was aided by the new Gawker sites... they work better now, but they were rather broken. It seemed irresponsible to be for them to have a mediocre site that they were pushing over one that, despite its shortcomings, worked just fine. I stuck on past more deserters, but when I could not get any RSS reader to stream it to my phone, well, it was the last straw for me. I left it on my phone screen, with it's sad "no recent updates" message for a couple months.

I do think that gaming is in a lull in general. It's been years since a major console release, and we are just coasting along. The games are all packed into fall, and then spring is inevitably boring, and in summer they just tell you what you can't have till the holidays. If there is anytime to lose interest in gaming, this is it. E3 is a well placed and now well publicized event that helps renew an interest and faith in a cyclical, money hungry industry. I think that the challenge of Apple and Android have allowed for some needed new competitors. The shenanigans that have earned Nintendo a lot of money have also proven to stretch the idea of who a gamer is and what a gamer plays. Nintendo's success has disallowed other companies from ignoring that oil field. And Apple, surprisingly, is beginning to challenge Nintendo's long rein in the realm of handheld gaming. . All of this is making the news from E3 (that I am now catching up on) a little more interesting.

Fable 3 Spoilers

It's in the title. I'm about to talk about the end here. I want to give you fair warning. Just... avert your eyes if you care to. I'll put the spoilers after the jump.

Bulleted List: JRPS and America

After seeing a Nintendo roundtable discussion, Kotaku posed the decade old question, "Why doesn't America like JRPS? This is an old discussion, but now Japan is actually thinking about trying to care. Just like Japan culture at large, they were making things for themselves and that was enough. Making games solely for the interests of Japan was successful. Now it's not as profitable, and Japan's gamers are starting to like western rpgs. So what's the problem?

How Not to Suck At Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep

If you've been playing Kingdom Hearts since 2003 this post is not for you. If you picked up Birth By Sleep on a whim for your PSP and you're finding it tough, here are a few tips:

1. Meld. Meld again. And then meld again.
It may not seem important as you play, but when it comes to boss time, you'll be sorry if you didn't. The meld list is very long too. You may want to buy a strategy guide or looks online, like here so you know what makes what. That way you won't waste a bunch of leveled up spells.

2. Backtrack.
If you seem stuck at a certain point, backtrack to the places you've already been. It can feel like a waste of time, but you will find things you missed and level up as you go.

3. Command board.
It's weird. There's no reason to have a board game in the middle of an rpg. They could have made everything easier to get in the main game and not had a command board, but they didn't. So use it. It's an alright distraction from the regular game play and can help you level up.

4. Stay in touch with the story.
You can mostly go where you want and do what you want in this game. For this reason, it can be hard to keep up with what is happening. Notice the battle levels on the different worlds as they open. You don't have to do them in difficulty order, but it's not a bad idea. The fights will gradually get harder, and the storyline will more logically progress.

5. Take notes.

There's enough spells, abilities, and items to keep up with that you may want to take notes. I had a group of pages for each character as I played, and my organization got a little better with each play-through. I used a steno notebook because it's already formatted for columns. Some may feel that taking notes for a game is too much like work, but its quicker, in my opinion, than having to constantly refer to the guide book or in-game menus.

The inherent flaw/advantage in Birth by Sleep is that you will play the game three times. Each time you play, it's gets a bit easier, but also a little more boring.

Some Projects

As my previous (or next, depending on how you read these) post indicated, I've got a lot of things planned for this year. Some of them involve gaming and my gaming lounge, some don't. Because it is mostly for my benefit, the list can be found after the jump.

Inspiring

I believe it was Pablo Picasso that said " good artists copy; great artists steal." I am but a good artist, because I will only be copying an idea of this guy. He (she? I don't really know) has created a fun series of minimalist images to go with some popular movies and games. Because a lot of current cover art tries to throw the kitchen sink in, these simple, iconic versions gave me an idea. The visual clutter that is my gaming shelf has always been a problem. Even when it's clean, it looks sort of messy because of all the random colors. If I were to use covers like lbo's, I could get a nice uniform look, and swap mine so I could see the originals when I open the cases. The only problem? That is easily 100 cases that need iconic designs and a lot of ink to print them...

I have a bad habit of creating too many projects at once. And they all feel necessary.

I liked DeBlob

Rather, I like it, as I have yet to beat it. It is another fun and upbeat game, predictably on Nintendo Wii, but made by THQ and soon arriving with a sequel that will be on a few different systems. It's sort of a cheesy re-hashing of a classic plot, but there's something catchy about it.

The use of sound in the game may be the reason I enjoy it so much. It starts silent, then as you add color, the music goes from simple beats to a crazy jamming party. I haven't heard much about deBlob 2 but I'm interested to see if the game has the same feel when played with an average controller. And by the way, blob is green on the 360 cover, red on the PS3 cover and blue on the Wii cover. Colors are fun!