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The Nintendo DS was a landmark handheld console. In hindsight Nintendo looks prophetic with its adoption of a touchscreen in the years just before the idea of the smartphone takes hold in the public consciousness. This touchscreen allowed many gameplay ideas that were once slow and clunky to become much smoother. Point and click adventure games are mostly known from the PC market, but there have been some ports and original point and clicks on older consoles and handhelds. The DS with its touchscreen allowed point and click adventure games to be played in the palm of everybody's hand, and there was an explosion of them. One of the early prominent developers of DS point and click adventures was the Japanese developer Cing. In 2005 they released Another Code: Two Memories, which was renamed Trace Memory for North America. In 2007 the company released Hotel Dusk: Room 215, both of these titles did quite well for the small developer. However, Cing was not able to keep this momentum rolling and went defunct in 2010.
Hotel Dusk was the first of a two part series, with its sequel being Last Window: The Secret of Cape West. Both games released on the DS, and Last Window was also Cing's final game before going bankrupt. Nintendo published all these DS titles, but part of Cing's problems may have been the seemingly random release regions of their games. Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk released in Japan, North America, and Europe and achieved some success. Last Window and Trace Memory's sequel, Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories for the Wii, only released in Japan and Europe. Last Window released too late in Cing's life to likely come to North America, they were already dying when the game was releasing. What was strange about Hotel Dusk was that its first release region was in North America. So what made Hotel Dusk so special that many adventure game fans had to have it and play it? What gave it the crossover appeal to give it that little extra push?
Continue reading Hotel Dusk: Room 215
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In the world of gaming there is a phenomenon known as the annual release. In the Western world the annual release is almost synonymous with the sports genre. In Japan, they have annualized role playing games. Its not as ubiquitous as the wide world of sports but there are a few examples, the Atelier series likely being the most prominent. Atelier is a long running series developed by GUST, the first releases being all the way back on the first Playstation with 1997's Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg. The series went international starting with the localization of the Atelier Iris trilogy for the Playstation 2. The series was an immediate hit for GUST, who just kept pumping more games in the series out. By the time of the series' 20th anniversary in 2017 there were 19 games released in the series. This is not a direct series with sequels, prequels, spin offs, and side projects. Instead the Atelier series is one that features common gameplay elements and mechanical design. Atelier is more of a series of series, with the large library broken down into duologies and mostly trilogies. Today's game, Atelier Ayesha is the first game in the Dusk trilogy, the 2nd overall trilogy that was fully released on the Playstation 3.
Continue reading Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk
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The Yakuza series has been a long running saga starting on the PlayStation 2. It actually started fairly late in the console's lifecycle, and a lack of marketing made the first two games go overlooked by most of the Western gaming public at the time. On the other hand this was one of Sega's biggest hits within Japan since the Saturn, so they mostly focused on the home market. Western interest in the series was recently kicked into overdrive with the release of Yakuza 0 and the remakes of the first two games, and a remaster of this third game has already released in Japan. I had played the first Yakuza a couple years before the release of its modern PlayStation 4 remake, Yakuza Kiwami, so I saw firsthand what the improvements were, and the only downgrade in my opinion was the remixed soundtrack. The first Yakuza game I had ever played was Yakuza 4, which seems to be the first game in the series that received a decent amount of attention from Western audiences, but still a shadow of what Yakuza 0 and the Kiwami remakes have enjoyed.
Continue reading Yakuza 3
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The Playstation and Nintendo 64 rarely had games that competed directly. Nintendo has long been going their own way, and that was no different than during this generation. One area where the two consoles did compete was in the realm of 3D platformers. The debate about which console has the best 3D platformers of this era still flares up from time to time, in a way similar to the much more fun 16-bit war between Sega and Nintendo.
Continue reading Spyro the Dragon
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Gothic is an action role playing game developed by Piranha Bytes, a German company. The game released in 2001 to most of the Western world, with a variety of different publishers getting the game on shelves in different regions. Egmont Interactive published the game for the German market, THQ was the publisher for the larger European market, while Xicat Interactive was the North American publisher.
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a rise of 3D open world RPGs, these varied in quality as there were no standards for design at this point, making each game quite unique. What makes Gothic stand out the most is its setting and world design. The prison colony guarded by a magic barrier was a world design decision meant to make the game world's dimensions feel a bit more realistic. Instead of being an entire world like Ultima IX, or a large, expansive landmass like Morrowind, Gothic's developers realized that the actual size of a handbuilt map would be much smaller than an entire world would feel. In this way the magic barrier serves two purposes, make the world feel much larger than it is presented in game, and also give the player a narrative incentive to beat the game.
Continue reading Gothic
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Sakura Wars is a long running series of tactical role playing games that was created by Red Entertainment, who has shared most development credit with Sega. Its first release was in 1996 on Sega's Saturn, however this series would remain in Japan. Sega would release four games on its own consoles, two each on the Saturn and Dreamcast. Its fifth entry would release on Sony's PlayStation 2 in 2005, long after Sega finally called it quits on their own hardware. This would be the first game in the series to release outside of Japan, with its original PS2 release localized by NIS America for North America in 2010. The game's later Wii port would be released in North America and Europe at the same time as the PS2 localization. Its design history and mixed reception seemed to have lead Red and Sega to both give up on the series, until a recent announcement of a game called Shin Sakura Taisen in 2018, or New Sakura Wars in English.
Continue reading Sakura Wars: So Long My Love
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In 1997, Squaresoft was starting to toy around with developing games that were not role playing games. For the first time since the 8-bit era, they were looking to expand their portfolio beyond a single genre. They had published and released two vastly different fighting games in 1997, Tobal No. 1 and Bushido Blade. Outside of fighting games, Square had created a subsidiary called Aques (only missing an 'R' to be an anagram of Square), who primarily published sports and mahjong games. Most of these forays were in the realm of publishing, but internally Square was developing their own game that broke their traditional RPG mold. A team was using the technology Square had bought and developed for Final Fantasy VII to create a 2D arcade style scrolling shooter with 3D elements. Final Fantasy VII was released in Japan in January 1997, while a shooter called Einhander, released in November. Einhander was released in North America in 1998. The title of the game is German and translates to English as 'one-handed sword.' Despite the German influence, the game never saw a European release.
Continue reading Einhander
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The World of Darkness is a trio of settings for supernatural and horror tabletop role playing games. It was originally developed as the background setting for the original 1991 release of Vampire: The Masquerade. The series gained some popularity in tabletop circles as an alternative to a rather scant selection between an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu and the Ravenloft setting of Dungeons and Dragons. While Ravenloft is medieval and Call of Cthulhu is set in the 1920's, the World of Darkness is mostly our own modern world with plenty of supernatural details added into the recipe, with some spinoffs set in various historical eras.
Vampire: The Masquerade is the most popular game set in the World of Darkness, but some other popular releases include Hunter: The Reckoning, Mage: The Ascension, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The naming convention becomes easy to identify quite quickly. Multiple video games have been released in the World of Darkness, including three focused on Vampire: The Masquerade. The first one was an action RPG developed by Nihilistic Software and released in 2000 called Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. This game was a modest success, enough to greenlight a sequel. Troika Games developed this sequel, called Bloodlines, with Activision publishing both Redemption and Bloodlines, both exclusive to PC.
Continue reading Spooky Plays: Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
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In 2005, Capcom released Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. Capcom made their entry into the world of High Definition gaming a memorable one, as Dead Rising was like no other game before it. There were a few years around and following the release of Dead Rising where zombies would rule the roost, as games from both large developers like Capcom themselves, Valve, and Activision, had games or popular game modes that had a heavy emphasis on zombies. This popularity also coincided with the rise of indie games on the PC market, and zombie games thrived there for a few years until fatigue inevitably set in. Most of the biggest zombie games and modes were first person shooters, whether it was Nazi Zombies from Treyarch's Call of Duty games, Left 4 Dead, or Killing Floor, running around and shooting zombies made quite a bit of sense.
Capcom is not known for first person shooters, and instead designed Dead Rising in a completely different manner based around what it did know and had recently experimented with. Dead Rising has a third person perspective where combat is more focused around melee weapons. Guns do exist, but they are clumsy to aim and not particularly powerful until the player has completed one of the most difficult challenges in the game, which unlocks the most powerful gun, and overall weapon, in Dead Rising.
Continue reading Spooky Plays: Dead Rising
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2B holding 9S with a 3rd character you don't need to know about yet.
The year is 2003. The PlayStation 2 is lighting up sales charts the likes of which no console had ever seen before. It was now a few years into the console's lifecycle, so games were starting to really flood the market. Square Enix released a game called Drakengard, the first game directed by a now well known eccentric, Yoko Taro. One of the design elements of the game included multiple endings, one of which seems rather nonsensical at first. (The following will include heavy spoilers to one of Drakengard's endings, and the reason for this detailed description will follow soon after.)
Continue reading NieR: Automata
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Ion Storm was an interesting company. Its active presence on the market was relatively short, being founded in late 1996 and going belly up in early 2005. For being around nearly a decade there are only two games that most people think of when they hear the company's name. The overhyped and woefully underwhelming Daikatana from Ion Storm Dallas, including one of the most legendary and tasteless advertisements any game has ever had. On the flip side Ion Storm Austin produced the critically acclaimed instant classic Deus Ex. The company later produced a sequel to Deus Ex in 2003 and the third game in the Thief series in 2004, months before closure. Sandwiched between all of these was a game called Anachronox, releasing in 2001.
Continue reading Anachronox
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This snapshot was taken on 24/05/2018
For years I have found myself moving away from the mainstream gaming press, and even reaching the point of outright ignoring it. I could not mention the last time I went to any of the mainstream gaming press sites just to browse and see what news is coming out. The only time I end up there is seemingly by accident, browsing a forum, board, or group dedicated to an individual game or series that then links to a news release pertaining to the topic. Upon reflection of my own browsing habits and years of history I found that this relative ignorance of what the mainstream gaming press is actually saying pre-dates plenty of the recent major controversies. I was already years deep into this willful ignorance when Gamer Gate started to blow up. The exact reasons I started these habits are long forgotten, but with some time passing and new developments of the day, as well as the effect it had on everybody's browsing habits, then there might be more reasons than ever to justify the abandonment of the mainstream critic.
Continue reading The Gaming Press Is Obsolete
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In the middle of the 1970s, there were small game development studios popping up all over the world. In Melbourne, Australia; in 1977, one of those companies was Beam Software. Their initial games were developed for the home computers of the early 1980s, and they scored a whopper of an early hit in 1982's The Hobbit. At the tail end of the 80s, they finally made the move into home console development for the NES. A couple early stinkers in the two Back to the Future games did not slow the company down, and they started to get contracts to port arcade games to the console. In the early 1990s, there was a shift in the company's audio staff which saw Gavan Anderson and Tania Smith working on music and audio, but Tania ended up leaving to go on a world tour, and she asked Marshall Parker to be her replacement. Marshall was already 38 years old when he joined Beam Software in 1990, making him one of the older composers even at that time.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Marshall Parker
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Source is CyberEagleWarrior on DeviantArt
One of the most beautiful aspects of gaming is the sheer magnitude of ideas that have been tried. At this point it would be rather difficult to find ideas for games that have not been at least attempted. The PC market is especially rich in these ideas, given its long history and how many games can be made that just do not work too well on consoles. Simulators are ones that are especially deep in this regard. Everything from goats to the insanity of dwarves in various styles of fortresses has been tried. Few of these simulators have the raw humor and character that the Tropico series has. Tropico is more of a hybrid type of game, where the bulk of the gameplay involves the city building aspect. There are plenty of tools for a more sadistic player to keep control of their communist island paradise. Management of a banana republic has, and maybe never will be, as fun as the Tropico series has made it.
Continue reading A Weekend Holiday in Beautiful Tropico
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Freelancer is considered one of the last classic, open spacefaring games before the genre went dormant for roughly a decade. It was released in 2003 to critical fanfare and lackluster sales, which essentially killed any hopes for a sequel. It was developed as the sequel to Starlancer, but takes place far enough in the future that playing its predecessor is optional, since both stories are self-contained. The game's main features include a single-player story-based campaign, as well as a completely open multiplayer environment, thus staying true to the game's title.
One way the game broke from genre conventions was that it focused on mouse-based movement and combat, instead of the joystick design that had been a staple of PC gaming until the mouse essentially replaced it. During the golden age of open space simulators, a joystick was basically a requirement, and part of the reason was that a mouse was not yet a completely standard piece of equipment. By the time Freelancer was released, the roles had reversed, with the joystick becoming an accessory, and every computer essentially requiring a mouse to operate the base user interface.
Continue reading Freelancer
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