March 27, 2013
Hands On with Nvidia’s Shield at PAX East

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PAX East happened last weekend in Boston, and while there I had the chance not only to hear a lot of interesting panel discussions, but also demo some new games and hardware.

When I first heard about the Nvidia Shield I was kind of dumbfounded. It looked like a handheld screen had been strapped to an old Xbox controller. It was and remains unclear who exactly will be creating software for the Shield. And its two big selling points made it feel too much like a piece of boutique gaming tech rather than an independent handheld like the 3DS or PS Vita.

The Nvidia rep’s explanation at the company’s PAX booth did nothing to alter that impression. He noted, as I already knew, that the device allows you to stream PC games to it as well as play them on an HDTV, but as Grant Hatchimonji writes,

“Yes, that’s a nice feature and all, but it needs to be connected to a PC to do so, and all of the work is handled by that machine before it’s spit out on Project Shield. At that point, it’s little more than a controller with which to play your PC games, and we all know those have existed for quite some time…and for far less money.”

Now we don’t know yet how much the Shield will cost. It could be as low as $99, which would make it an extremely interesting option. That’s also extremely unlikely though.

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Filed under: Nvidia Project Shield Sonic Handheld Video Games PAX East 2013 
March 8, 2013
Why Mindful XP is a Model Proving Ground for Video Games

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Three students at Carnegie Mellon University have been putting together a gaming anthology in which each title seeks to express a different thought, emotion, or experience.

As Emily Gera reports for Polygon Mindful XP,

“[B]egan as the collective effort of Felix Park, Dan Lin and Michael Lee, three students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center who worked together during their Spring semester at the school to complete 10 standalone games that would be as mechanically and stylistically diverse as they could make them. The idea, they say, was to use games as a medium for communication; to portray meaning through specific attributes that can only be found there.”

Unlike most video game developers, these students are working out something fundamental to the medium as a fledgling new form for art: how to communicate meaning.

Just looking at the the triple A games slated to release this March makes the merits of experimenting with the form in concise and discrete ways clear. The new Tomb Raider has already received a wealth of criticism for the dissonance between the character portrait Crystal Dynamics attempted to depict and the gamified violence and exploration around which the game is centered.

And despite the best efforts of those involved, I’m skeptical that the upcoming Gears of War: Judgement will be any more successful. Indeed, even Bioshock Infinite, a game pressumably built from the ground up around a central creator’s ambitious narrative vision, might not be able to blend its gameplay and narrative as well as it claims. In each case the core gameplay remains surprisingly similar, and in each case the creators are trying to force meaning through a pre-set system of conventions hoping to achieve something more.

Of course, it’s worthwhile that the developers behind these games are at least trying to overcome the problems which plague most games which want to be about something. I enjoy titles that have settled for just being fun, but there have been and continue to be so many games which satisfy that need that I’m more interested at this point in the ones that are trying to push for something weirder and stranger.

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(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Mindful XP Video Games Indie Development Carnegie Mellon University Polygon Gears of War: Judgment Bioshock Infinite Tomb Raider 
March 1, 2013
Hey Fire Emblem: Awakening, Why Does Everyone Like You so Much?

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Right now Fire Emblem: Awakening is sitting at 92 on Metacritic. That’s extremely good for any game a month out from release, but especially a JRPG that’s tactics-based and sports dragons, magic, and mystical prophesies.

But I don’t understand why. After playing the game for a solid 25 hours I was no more impressed with it then why I started (and in fact a lot less impressed by some aspects of the game I had initially found quite compelling).

Not so for Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton though. Kirk, whose work I admire and whose opinions I respect, recently wrote about how gripped he was by Awakening’s conclusion,

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Filed under: Fire Emblem: Awakening Nintendo 3DS Kotaku Kirk Hamilton Final Fantasy Tactics Video Games Tactics Strategy 
February 18, 2013

Final Fantasy Tactics in six images.

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Final Fantasy Tactics Yatsumi Matsuno JRPG Playstation Video Games 
February 18, 2013

Fire Emblem: Awakening in six images.

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Filed under: Fire Emblem: Awakening 3DS Nintendo JRPG Video Games 
February 1, 2013
I checked numerous other gaming outlets who ran the same piece of news, and none that I came across used a pic of a bikini-busting woman to do it.

I checked numerous other gaming outlets who ran the same piece of news, and none that I came across used a pic of a bikini-busting woman to do it.

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Filed under: Sexism Video Games Grand Theft Auot V 
February 1, 2013
There’s no Way Around it, Shooting People is Violent

Penny Arcade Report has published quite a few stories about the upcoming FPS for PC: ShootMania Storm. Using their most recent preview of the game as am example, I try to make the distinction between gore, violence, and less-violence,

“Calling a game non-violent doesn’t make it so, which makes it dissapointing that Prell doesn’t really take the time to spell out what she think’s violence is, and thus why this game is so much less so that it might even qualify as “virtuous.” I understand that the developer PAR is talking to wants consumers to think that, and has gone to great lenghts to take out the “objectional content,” like blood and gore, in order to make them feel like ShootMania Storm really isn’t violent.

There are plenty of violent games that I love, and some of them that I love precisely because they are violent. We just need to be clear-minded when we talk about these things though, and not get trapped by our rhetoric, or get lored into contradictions simply because a game’s marketing and branding tells us otherwise.”

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Filed under: Video Games Violence Shooters FPS ShootMania Storm PAR Penny Arcade Penny Arcade Report 
January 29, 2013
Why is Video Game Violence Less Harmful Than Video Game Sexism?

I recently read Michelle Ealey’s “Blaming [INSERT CHOICE OF ENTERTAINMENT HERE] Solves Nothing.”

It was at once a somewhat refreshing defense of violence in video games and still representative of most other people’s sentiments inside the gaming community. It also puts forth an argument that could just as easily (with some caveats) be applied to sexism in video games, leaving me to wonder why so many people address the topics so differently.

To make the rhetorical parallel (and conceptual juxtaposition) clear, I took several excerpts from Ealey’s piece and inserted sexism/sexist for violence/violent.

You can see the results here.

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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Sexism Violence Video Games The Border House 
January 28, 2013
When it Comes to Video Game Companies and Consumers, Fairness Never Enters Into it

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At IGN, Audrey Drake lays out five reasons why having to rebuy virtual console games to get full Wii U functionality is entirely fair,

“Look, I know all about being a petulant gamer who just wants all gaming companies to give me exactly what I want the moment I want it and totally free of charge. Having those thoughts is inevitable, especially for people who devote a large part of their free time to a singular hobby. But don’t confuse what you want with what you’re entitled to. Nintendo has the right to charge for the goods and services it offers. It’s called the free market, and it’s a beautiful thing. As a company (read: a business out to make money, not a magical, game-making fairy machine only out to give you free happiness) Nintendo has every right to charge consumers for a new service they’ve conceived. And consumers have every right to elect to buy into that service, or to make the personal call that the cost isn’t worth the return. It’s all really simple. And all very fair.”

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On the one hand I’m not that concerned with throwing a few more bucks in order to get Wii U functionality. Should I desire to, I could still play all my virtual console games from my Wii on the Wii U using a special mode (I just wouldn’t be able to play them on the GamePad or interact with the Miiverse).

On the other, however, I think Drake commits a common mistake

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(Notes: 18)
  
Filed under: Video Games Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console IGN Free Market Gamer Entitlement 
January 25, 2013
Putting Final Fantasy’s Recent Struggles in Perspective

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Last week, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier proceeded to morn the once prestigious JRPG franchise’s continued demise. Specifically, Schreier condemed the latest game to carry the Final Fantasy name, All The Bravest for iOS, and the growing trend of mediocre and heartless JRPG titles coming out of Square he feels it exemplifies,

“But Final Fantasy All The Bravest is not an anomaly. This betrayal is nothing new. Square has spent the past half-decade picking away at our passion for their ubiquitous, once-beloved series. All The Bravest is just another limb rotting off the bloated, mangled corpse that was once Final Fantasy.

As someone who grew up with the adventures of Cecil and Terra, I find it depressing to even write, but here we are. It’s 2013, and Final Fantasy is on its last legs. The 25-year-old RPG series is a shell of its former self. When we see a new Final Fantasy game, our first reaction is no longer “awesome!”—it is “shit, how are they going to ruin my childhood next?” I’ve written before about some of the problems facing Final Fantasy, and even drawn up wish lists of things I’d like to see Square Enix try to do, but All The Bravest is yet another piece of disturbing evidence that this company no longer cares about its fans.”

All the Bravest is by all accounts a train-wreck (though some have rightly pointed out that their are potentially creative ideas seemingly lingering ever so faintly at its core). The App Store cash-grab demonstrates a near total lack of understanding when it comes to: bite-sized gameplay, simplistic touchscreen controls, positive and satisfying feedback loops. The fact that this abomination of game design is skinned in Final Fantasy sprites makes the tortuous enterprise sting all the more.

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But I’m less convinced that this particular instance, and even some of the company’s controversial decisions this console generation, are in any way indicative of the franchise’s overall decline. In a piece at Gaming Vulture proper, I make the case in full,

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Filed under: Final Fantasy Amano Kitase Toriyama Kotaku RPG JRPG Video Games FPS 
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