MAGFest 12 Is a Thing That Happened

Once a year, somewhere in the Mid Atlantic, thousands of people gather to completely geek out over video games.  Games of from all types and eras. Listen to chiptunes recreated with live instruments and live instruments recreated as chiptunes. Possibly, these people might drop some cash on gaming related swag that they wouldn’t buy normally. To be honest the hardest battle fought this particular weekend was with a snowstorm.

The National Harbor in Maryland is just outside of Washington DC and is a pretty upscale convention area with expensive restaurants and hotels that fill several blocks. I don’t know who green lit a giant nerd fest in the area; I guess moist money is as good as any other money. To be fair, there is a giant anime convention that happens in the same space. So a space that normally holds investor meetings, college graduations, and political meetings, gets run over by throngs of people in costume, the socially awkward, and YouTube celebrities.

On Thursday I had an eight hour drive to get to my destination. My brother and his friends were to meet me at the hotel across the street from the Gaylord Convention Center (seriously, it’s cheaper and they include breakfast) while my other friends would attend on later days. The worst of the drive were the multiple snowstorms encountered on the way. This was not the best weekend for weather. While I tried to avoid a car either stopped or in a ditch every few miles, I made the eight hour drive in just under ten and a half. At least that part was over.

Thursday night was spent finding out where everything was, scoping out the vendors to see if there were any actual deals, and figuring out when everyone else wouldn’t be eating so we wouldn’t have to wait for a table. You know, the regular convention stuff.

Friday morning my brother and I attended the Jon Tron panel. Say whatever you like about his material, he’s a legitimately funny guy. Jon offered some funny stories and seemed to answer fans’ questions with sincerity. I’ve got nothing bad to say about that guy. On the bottom floor of the venue, in an area the size of a plane hangar; was a giant arcade and vender area. Arcade machines from every era loosely arranged by genre litter the floor and sound as obnoxious as you remember. It’s really too bad that arcades have declined over the years, it’s still a blast to play pinball and shoot guys with a light gun.

Saturday we went to the Continue? Show panel and it was great. The guys that run that show are really awesome film makers and comedians. I’ve followed their show for a few years now and still laugh at all of the Billy Joel jokes they make. The band On Being Human is extremely awesome and the RetrowareTV panel was excellent. I really like “The Video Game Years” web show they produce, it’s like VH1’s “I Love the 80’s” but with games. I met some really cool people and saw some really talented musicians melt faces with 8-Bit melodies. I picked up some reproduction carts of some games I may have emulated 15 years ago and a Sega CDX for well under eBay prices. You can still find a deal here and there. Saturday night I went to the Jon St John panel. I played Duke Nukem 3D when I was kid and would love to hear him say he’s got balls of steel. Jon St John is an extremely talented voice actor, but he’s a raging asshole. The self proclaimed “King of Magfest” is known for crashing hotel parties, drinking the liquor, and then leaving; at one point a he had a guy wear a candy man thong while another guy from the audience ate  some of it while shouting “Only at my panel!!” Eh, he can just voice my games thanks.

It was a good weekend. Everyone I know who came had a good time. I’d recommend checking it out for a day if you happen to be around the Beltway while it’s going on. 

It's Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone. We had a good one this year. It was a good Christmas, but not the best Christmas. That was in the 90's and I opened a SEGA Genesis with a Sonic 2 pack in! I hope there were more memories like that made today. Maybe a kid got an XBOX One, or a 29 year old got a 12 pack and Call of Duty. Whatever they were. Don't forget em. Merry Christmas.

Goatee: A Game Good Enough to Savor

Every year around the holiday season people chime in to declare what the best game of the year is. Journalists clawing and scratching at each other to try and get a box quote. Many high profile releases from the year come back into relevance and may get a bump in sales from the extra publicity. I’m going to do my part and tell you Rogue Legacy from Cellar Door Games is the best of the year!

The masses of you that have been following my generic video game blog have probably heard of my love for pixels and may not be surprised that Rogue Legacy is my favorite. Was it the game that I spent the most time on? No. Was it the most emotional story told? No. Was it a marvel of current technology’s capabilities? No. Was it the most fun I’ve had this year? YES!  A Metroid based side scroller with the flavorings of Castlevania and Rogue? Sign me the hell up, I haven’t had this much fun since Symphony of the Night.

First off, the presentation of the game is ridiculously charming. The graphical resolution is exaggerated to show you all of the pixels and scale in Super Nintendo style. There are only a handful of areas to the ever changing castle that easily identify with enemy sets that differ between them. It all looks and controls like it should. It’s Rogue Legacy and you should be okay with that.

The story is incredibly thin, but it’s the gameplay that shines through here. You begin with a pretty simple tutorial that makes sure you understand basic platforming and then dumps you in the middle with hardly any direction. When you enter the castle there’s a large door with an emblem for each area boss and a rough map on the wall. You have a sword to hit enemies and candle sticks. Last as long as you can and amass a big a fortune as you can. You’re terrible weak in the beginning and will die. That’s the point of a game that changes every time you restart. The money you earn will be used to make your children more likely to succeed where you have failed by upgrading the family manor that provides permanent hereditary stat boosts. Make sure you use all of your money before you jump back because you have to forfeit your fortune.

The dying mechanic is pretty novel. Whenever you fail to finish the game, your descendants pick up right where you left off. They keep your stat boosts, equipment, and rune powers that affect mobility and life leech. This is great idea, but gets even better when each generation has its own quirks along with random semi-standard job classes. You may have a character that suffers from vertigo (the entire game is upside down), Alzheimer’s (large map is unavailable), and Dextrocardia (HP and MP values are switched); or positives like Peripheral Artery Disease (no foot pulse, spikes not triggered), Eidetic Memory (everything you’ve seen is marked on the map), or even ADHD (move faster). They even through in a few traits that don’t affect gameplay like baldness, sexuality, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Rogue Legacy isn’t a good pick for a novice gamer or anyone who rarely steps outside of the Call of Duty/Madden Camp. It’s just like anything else; you suck at first but might get better if you stick with it. Don’t worry though, if you get too good the game gets exponentially harder on multiple playthroughs. The difficulty is part of the appeal and really gives you a sense of accomplishment. Besides the difficulty spike, I can’t criticize Rogue Legacy. It’s new every time, there’s a sense of progression, and you laugh while you play.

This is the most fun I’ve had with a video game this year. That’s the ultimate measure while gaming. There’s still room for games that try to make statements like Gone Home, The Last of Us, and Spec Ops: The Line, but the games I come back to are the ones I felt joy playing. It goes to show that my runner up is Saint’s Row IV (yes, more fun than Grand Theft Auto V), that game was funny and has completely transformed from the open world rip off it started as. While you’re looking at what’s on the Steam sale this Christmas give my GOTY Rogue Legacy a try, it’s worth more than the $15 they regularly charge. 

Reverse Sequelitis

Triple A games have become a kind overblown derogatory item. Back in the day before games had street dates we would read about the carts that could hit stores any day. The hype machine wasn’t as well oiled and we wanted anything that has to do with gaming. Huge titles occasionally hit the sweet spot and rarely receive acclaim from everyone. Today we fight on the largest scale!

Assassin’s Creed has become one of our beloved yearly franchises that try to pump as much money out of our pockets with little innovation. There was a time when AC was a new and interesting intellectual property, and it was amazing. We had never seen parkour that flowed so smoothly and time periods that traditionally weren’t represented because they had nothing to do with World War II. The idea of a non wargame taking place during the Crusades or Revolutionary War is an inventive place to begin brainstorming. Even better is the idea of game during the Italian Renaissance, now there’s something we weren’t expecting.

If the proper care is taken in crafting a sequel it can be a shining example of progression. Elements from the previous games need to be enhanced or cut for the best experience. The first Assassin’s Creed had a main character that was a jerk, repetitive gameplay objectives, and a framing story no one cares about (or remembers). Assassin’s Creed II took everything from the first game and made it much better. Ezio is a loveable jerk of a lady’s man, objectives are varied, and they did something with the framing story that made it bearable.  To take the story further they somehow made me care more about the jerk face Altair character, talk about pulling a rabbit out of hat.

There are still plenty of flaws in the Assassin’s Creed formula. It’s understood that collectathons are around to lengthen game time with little effort or creativity. The item hunts are still around but not quite as obnoxious. The addition of small puzzles hidden in the environment was awesome, and the best part was there were only 20 of them to find. There’s nothing I really hate to see more than hundreds of collectable items thrown all over the place; look at Batman: Arkham Asylum versus Batman: Arkham City’s Riddler trophies. I prefer Asylum to City and one of the main reasons was I felt compelled to find all the Riddler collectables because there were fewer well thought out items as opposed to what felt like a sloppy selection of underwhelming widgets. It goes without saying that the 100 feather hunt in ACII is something I didn’t participate in. You obtain a villa to upgrade a few hours in, and it’s a take it or leave it experience. It’s nice to have what seems to be a Suikoden castle but it’s more of a diversion towards affording the best equipment in the game.

In a time when Assassin’s Creed was a new and exciting venture there were some neat combinations thrown together. Now we just expect another title every year. When I look at the “greater” games of a generation, they seem to have multi-year development cycles. Grand Theft Auto 5 took years and delivered an awesome single player experience, The Last of Us had been in development for years, and Assassin’s Creed II came out a few after after the first with a lot of thought behind it. It’s too bad that video games are no longer dominated by artists and are geared more toward making investors happy, but America has proven that the Michael Bay larger than life style has a place in our collective wallets. This is why the games press is so obsessed with smaller studios because this is where the innovation is coming from; support your local game makers.

Top 10 Reasons Internet People Do Top 10 Lists

Well, what do you know? I’ve reached an impressive 500 hits since I started! And only 497 of them are me obsessively hitting refresh! Everyone on the internet does top ten lists because they can and now I will do the same. Today we fight with convention!

10.  It’s the internet, the place where things are organized in the order of importance all the time. You know, like High School.

9.  “My friends told me I was funny; let’s see if I can throw 10 witty comments together!”

8.  Some people decided they needed to do hours of “research” to rank the top busts of the stars.

6.  Dammit Letterman.

5.  To drum up discussion! Please tell me how much you hate my opinion in the comments below so I won’t read them to prove once and for all I am literally above you!

4.  “I know no one knows what this is but I think the world needs to know all about it.”

3.  “I’ve got writer’s block and can’t think of anything relevant to paper. I know, I’ll make as specific a top ten as I can!”

2.  Adding a “controversial” item in the top five. I’m a unique snowflake that has had different experiences than you and love this because I grew up with it!

1.  Because they get more views than anything else. Youtube is a prime example, click on any personality’s profile and check what consistently gets the most views. These top ten’s make a person’s rent. And Chrono Trigger.

I hope you enjoyed the top ten garbage I threw up there! I really care about what you think about the blog where I post my opinions! That was actually kinda fun…

*Undercooked Content Should Be Consumed At One’s Own Risk

I seem to want to talk about money quite often. Well, I love money and so does everyone else. We do what we can to create and store cash like energy and like energy it seems like money is always transferred but destroyed if there is a fire. Today we’ll fight premature holes burning in our pockets.

The last couple of years have yielded some amazing video game related projects from some interesting funding methods. The best examples of this are Minecraft and several high profile Kickstarter projects. Crowd sourcing and selling Alpha/Beta access is a dream come true for smaller studios with niche projects that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day. This is great, but there is no guarantee that a final product will be delivered. It’s kind of fun to imagine the gamer population as some sort of confederacy of venture capitalists that can shape the horizon. A bunch of people assume it functions as a pre order service and forget about the risk involved, you may get a bad game or no game at all. Pulling together and funding something you believe in is a great feeling and everyone should feel what it’s like to get a better than expected investment return.

If you’ve logged into Steam in the last six months you’ve probably noticed a ton of Early Access programs that have peppered the new release list. These games aren’t finished and some don’t even resemble the final product. This can be an awesome experience for some, akin to seeing a car built from the ground up and witnessing every change as it is made. The historical value here is great and will interest those who are into game design theory but can rub others the wrong way because the games may not be “fun” yet. The most successful example of this has been Minecraft, it was available for purchase in its early stages. Sorry kids, I played some early builds and there wasn’t even any mining to be done. Being in on the podcast conversations and seeing the newest games can be a huge bump in your nerd cred but you have to remember you paid to beta test. People usually volunteer their free time or even get paid to make sure code is up to scratch, wouldn’t it be awesome is someone would come over to your house and pay you to clean it? Do your research and make sure you’re throwing your money at something you believe in, there are plenty of developers that figured out how to siphon money out of the big name publishers and there are people in this world who will steal your milkshake.

The internet has changed our lives and how business is done. The record and movie industries have had their fights and seen independent ventures eat a little more into the profit margins by mainlining straight into the audience. Well, that topic sounded a lot more interesting in my head. Join me next time I update, but you have to bring your own snacks.

It Slices, It Dices…

The PS4 is coming. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads and are eating stupid amounts of Taco Bell to get one before release, please don’t do that to yourself. Interconnectivity between devices is one of the major themes Sony is rolling with this time and it’s as good a time as any to look at what seems to be the number one accessory to pair with your shiny new black box; the tablet, music player, web browser, 3G surfing, two analog sticked, picture taking, AR card using, app device, which also plays games. Today we fight against all odds (really, taking on Nintendo in the handheld market?).

I recently purchased a Playstation Vita. Recent news about the next model of the handheld have alluded to Sony downgrading the OLED screen they use in the device and I saw one bundled with The Walking Dead adventure game I hadn’t played, so why not buy it. It’s shaped like the PSP with smaller buttons, a second analog stick, and many more slots to put things in. This is definitely an attractive system with much more sleek look than other clamshell offerings. Holding it isn’t a chore with divots on the back side to rest your fingers with good button spacing make cramps a non issue if played for an hour or more because the battery will actually last long enough. The Vita is a well designed contraption; there are even TWO eyelets on the bottom to poke a lanyard through!

Let’s start with the good. That screen, oh that screen. It’s gorgeous, HD gaming in the palm of your hand is truly here. 3D games like Wipeout 2048 and Killzone: Mercenary move smoothly and look close to what you would expect on a PS3, while 2D games a la Rayman: Origins and Spelunky look exactly as the developers intended. You can also play the PSP and PSone titles bound to your Playstation Network account; they got rid of the UMD drive so you still can’t play your physical PSP games but it’s great to see some sort of backward compatibility attempted. I’ve beat the fact that there are two analog sticks into the ground, but this is the first handheld we’ve had with them out of the box and it does wonders for the feel of control. Before you had to arrange you hand into a cramping claw shape or use the face buttons to look around in a shooter and neither one of those is satisfying. Sony switched out the cross media bar that was present on the PSP and PS3 for an icon based touch screen interface that gets the job done. You’ve got control and good looking games on a pretty powerful platform, sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

Here we go; the Vita tries to do too much. I’m not too sure the back panel touch screen was the greatest innovation. Sure, it can be used as a gimmick or help with quick time events but when it all boils down to are gimmicks and game features no one likes. The proprietary memory cards show their ugly heads again, and this time they can cost quite a bit. On a system where they’re trying to push digital downloads (the physical games don’t even have paper manuals or inserts) you’d think they’d try to reduce the entrance cost to make it more appealing to the average consumer. 3G through AT&T sounds like maybe a good idea, but in reality there are enough WiFi hotspots around where you can connect if you need to. Adding a SIM card to a device that isn’t my phone is pretty useless, the phone goes with me everywhere and I’m not into paying extra for adding a gaming device that primarily uses my home wireless. The majority of gripes I have are non gaming centric, I bought this thing to play games and it does that well.

If you plan on drinking the Sony Kool-Aid it makes the most sense to register for a PSN Plus account. Pay $50 a year and you get access to premium content and it’s likely to play a similar role to XBOX Live Gold in the next generation. The bright side to this is that you get full games to play on all of your connected systems, it pays for itself really quickly with titles for your PS3, PSP, Vita, and soon to be PS4. You spent $60 on Grand Theft Auto V already, take the plunge. The full programs and reduced prices on software rotate out every week to keep it fresh.

If you couldn’t tell I’m pretty happy with my Playstation Vita and I recommend a purchase for anyone interested. I know there’s no Pokemon to be had here, but there is a gravity shifting girl with a cat. I seriously hope the Vita catches on just so I have more games to play on it.