8-bit hacks

Why Tetris actually is therapy

It's been a rough week, and I've been beaten down with stress lately. During a bout of said stress last night, I dove right into the WiiWare remake of Dr. Mario while checking out some relatively new stuff. The intent was to check it out for a couple minutes and move onto something else after clearing it out of my fridge and getting back some precious blocks. However, as so often happens with me and these games, a couple minutes became a couple hours, and after I re-emerged, I noticed that my stress was completely gone. In fact, the feeling of relaxation that I'd gotten was oddly reminiscient of the feeling I used to get from another stimulus: nicotine.

Bionic Commando done right

I'll admit it; I wasn't originally drawn to Capcom's Bionic Commando Rearmed. While I'm sure a lot of old-school BC fans were all about the remake from the get-go, not me. Back in the old days, I didn't like BC very much. And by didn't like very much, I mean I would've rather played 8-Eyes. To me, the game just didn't work. I could (and I will) go into what exactly didn't work for me, but the short version is that it was just plain no fun. So, I had rather low expectations for the remake. However, I will say that I enjoy BCR a lot. What's changed? Well, the graphics, first of all, but I'm not even going to go there. I'm not going to talk about how the game looks, I'm going to talk about how it plays. Of course, game design, too, has changed immensely, but it's that very touch of modernity mixed in with good old fashioned fun that makes BCR shine.

Why I don't enjoy scoring games

The significance of review scores presents a more pressing talking point than ever in the video game community. Their shortcomings as a quantitative index of a game's quality were underscored by the embarrassing heap of hyperbole critics dumped on "Grand Theft Auto IV." Yet scores' weighty role in game journalism was highlighted by GameSpot's ousting of Jeff Gerstmann following his "Kane & Lynch" review and the disturbing revelation that some developers' earnings hinge on the Metacritic aggregate scores their games receive.

For all the malignant qualities of these arbitrarily selected numbers - or letters or stars or whatever - scores continue to wield tremendous power over readers of game journalism. Many swear by scores, and often swear at others because of them. I thought I'd share my perspective on scoring games from my tiny pocket of the game journalism landscape.

Wipeout HD and the dangers of hype porn

One of my goals here is to only write about games that are out, because so often in the gaming community there's such an absurd emphasis on what's coming next that it's easy to grow weary of constantly talking about games you're not even going to play for six months. I can't help but recall a comparison Shawn Elliott made on the now-defunct Brodeo back during the GTA4 review debacle where he compared the gaming community's hype train to porn. As immature as this comparison is on the surface, it's actually quite apt. So much of the gaming community is so hungry to see every inch of upcoming games exposed, they will pour over screenshots, read extensive previews, and watch long segments of gameplay footage that satisfying the desire to see becomes its own reward and it's no longer about getting ready to play. The symbiotic and sometimes parasitic relationship the commercial gaming press has with the game industry at large makes very clear how the current state of things could have evolved, so I don't want to turn this into a broad judgment on previews and hype. For now, I want to talk about the effects of one particular instance of the hype train.

Why Mega Man 9 is important and I'm not just old

I'm not going to lie, I'm an old school Nintendo guy dating all the way back to the launch of the NES, like many in my generation. As children of the 80s, we grew up on the 8-bit goodness that dominated the day and a lot of us still think that some of the games from those archaic ages are among the best games ever created, even when held up against their technologically towering successors. So, like anyone does as they get older in an era of rapidly growing technology, we're forced to ask ourselves why we continue to hold onto the past. Is it out of nostalgia and the longing for days gone by? Is it because old dogs can't learn new tricks and we quickly retreat back into that comfort zone? I don't think so, and it's good that Mega Man 9 came around, because it represents a validation of all the things people of my generation have known for 20 years, whether or not we knew that we knew them.

I find your lack of fun disturbing (but not deadly)

Steve already ran down many of the flaws of "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed." Rather than recite the ones I agree with - which is pretty much all of them - I'd like to discuss how those flaws didn't completely sink the game for me.

After I played "The Force Unleashed" demo, I lamented the franchise's loss of the power to sucker me in with geek-out game play concepts like flying TIE Fighters for the Empire or pitting Darth Vader against Chewbacca in a fist fight. "The Force Unleashed" appealed to that geek sensibility hard, with videos of protagonist Starkiller pulling a whole Star Destroyer out of the sky high among the selling points.

No You Can't Play Games On It

Back in the 80s, life was pretty good for the electronic gamer. Emerging technology was making the games better and better, the hot arcade games of the day were being ported to home systems, and, above all, there were lots of options. The Commodore 64, the Amiga, the Atari ST... and so on. Of course, if you didn't want to play games on a computer, there was the good ol' NES, along with several also-rans. One machine that was not exactly a great game machine is that one over there, the venerable IBM PC. Seriously, it was gigantic, expensive, and the graphics and sound capabilities were paleolithic.

Nowadays, of course, the Commodores and Ataris are long gone, and IBM's framework continues to exist, at least in spirit. The "gaming PC" is also a pretty hot commodity. So, why does it often seem it's still the red-headed stepchild of electronic gaming?

Sexy Samus

Good old wholesome Nintendo, right? In this growing era of ever-increasing amounts of violence, sex, bad language, worse conduct, and all around filth pervading our video games, Nintendo comes to the rescue by continuing to release plenty of "E for Everyone" games. Oh, sure, they've at least lightened up and allowed other people to release some of these nasty games on their consoles, but they keep making Mario and Zelda games, and people eat them up. They tried the bloody fighter thing, but Killer Instinct was so blatantly a "see, we can make a hardcore fighter too!" one couldn't help but want to pat them on the head and send them on their way with a Werther's Original.

Nintendo has a secret, though. Sure, they're not going to fill their games with jiggle physics or overt cheesecake or anything like that, but they don't need to. They can be a lot more sneaky about it, thanks to their top heroine, Samus Aran.

High definition = high division?

I enjoyed "Metal Gear Solid 4" even more the second time I played it.

It wasn't because could I tie together the more disparate threads of Hideo Kojima's massive story. Granted, that helped. But the real reason for the pleasurable upswing in play quality was my upgrade to an HDTV.

The fall blockbuster unleashed

When it comes to movies, we're all familiar with the manufactured summer blockbuster. This is a movie that was clearly hacked, rehacked, and manufactured to have all the qualities of everyone's favorite movies. The IP is familiar, the female lead is hot, the explosions are flashy, and the product placement is secured. The whole thing feels so pieced together and the seams are so apparent that the whole movie suffers as a result. These movies are something akin to the Frankenstein's monster of film.

The monster, at least as portrayed in the movies, is made of all the right parts on the outside, but once brought to life, he's still not quite human. However, unlike Victor Frankenstein, these movie makers have found great success from such and approach, and if it hasn't paid off in stars, it definitely has paid off at the box office. I suppose it's a testament to the state of the games industry where we can now say the same thing about a video game.