Video Games Live Review

Sorry I'm late with my personal take on the Video Games Live experience. It's been really busy at work.

First off, the hands down best part of this Video Games Live was Koji Kondo's appearance in person. Everything else at the concert paled in comparison. I would have loved it if he performed more than the Mario theme on piano, namely the Legend of Zelda theme.

This brings me to my biggest gripe about the VGL. While it's not VGL's fault and more fault of the audience (and American culture), I found it very difficult to hear the music itself due to the cheering throughout the pieces. Yeah, I'm sure you're totally stoked about hearing music from popular games but wouldn't it be nice (not to mention respectful to others in attendance) to keep quiet and hear the music that is to be enjoyed? It's not that hard really. Clapping and cheering after the piece is done is fine (though aren't you supposed to wait until the end of the entire concert to applaud?).

With that said, let's move on to the music itself. (I won't go piece by piece or in order of appearance, just the stuff that stood out.)

The VGL started off with two pieces that can be found on IGN Insider in HD quality (click on links for low quality versions), the classic games medley and the theme from Metal Gear Solid 2. They were both very nice, but it was nothing new to me thanks to seeing them on IGN Insider. The MGS piece stands out solely because of Tallarico creeping onto the stage in a box while the genome solider is on alert mode. Funny stuff.

Koji Kondo is invited on stage to introduce the VGL's rendition of the Mario Bros. theme.

Lucasarts' old audio team is formed on stage to play some of their classic themes.

Martin Leung, The Video Game Pianist, came out to play his Final Fantasy medley and various Mario music. This guy has talent. I think it'd be nice to see him play his own scores, if any, someday.

Another very talented musican, VertexGuy, comes out to play the Contra theme. His solo performance was one of the highlights of the night. (I was sitting next to the guy that made this recording.) Kudos.

A very well performed piece was that of the Civilization IV main theme. Another highlight of the evening.

Tallarico also exposed the audience to his work for Advent Rising. Apparently it was rewritten to be an opera. It was very well done, but the music itself was not very memorable. I only remember this piece because my friend said "what the fuck was that crap?"

The Legend of Zelda theme was played, but I would have much rather heard it being performed by Koji Kondo himself.

There were several pieces on SquareEnix titles, FF8's Liberti Fatali, the Kingdom Hearts theme, and FF7's One Winged Angel. For reasons unknown, SquareEnix didn't allow the VGL to show video from the games. For Kingdom Hearts, clips from Disney movies were shown. It's a scary day when Disney allows rights and when SquareEnix does not. It could have been a technical glitch or something, but the chorus could not be heard at all. This made the piece suck, as the chorus is the main focus of Liberti Fatali.

The concert ended with One Winged Angel. The group of guys in front of me were begging for this music piece to show up all night. Once it did, they were very into it. Now I don't know why One Winged Angel is so popular. Is it just because it's attached to the game that many people consider the best RPG of all time? (FF7 is not the best RPG of all time nor is it anywhere close, but that's for another post.) I personally think there's far better music to play to end the concert. Another problem with this piece was that Tallarico and VertexGuy both came out to play it. The problem isn't that they came out - it was that they couldn't be heard at all.

One Winged Angel ended the concert in a very unsatisfying way.

The last piece that I'd like to mention is the Halo theme. I believe that the VGL faked a bit on this one, as the chorus and synth music was being played off a synthesizer and not being performed live. (Some of the chorus didn't even look like they were singing.) I'm sure they'd dispute my claim, but I know what I heard, and it sounded too close to the original score to be performed live. I'd be disappointed but I'm one of those people that can't understand why Halo fans are, well, Halo fans.

Overall, I'd have to say that my VGL experience was enjoyable, but not worth the $77 priced I paid. Sure there's music that I would have preferred to hear, but that's my preference and they're just trying to appeal to the masses. It'd be nice to see the VGL perform pieces that are not main themes from popular games, but rather selective tracks from a game with good music.

(For another blogger's take on the VGL concert, read this article.)

Colossal Squid

Ever since I learned about their existence, I've been fascinated by giant and colossal squid. I'm not intrigued by the tales of the Kraken but just interested in learning more about how they grow to become that size and just what the hell they do their whole lives.

In fact, I remember i wanted to go for marine biology as my major because of my fascination over these squid. I guess my dislike of swimming overcame that real easy.

I still enjoy learning about these animals and I watch and read everything that I can. So when I read news about a complete colossal squid being caught, I just get totally re-energized about the animal all over again.

It's really cool stuff and makes one wonder what else lies in the depths of Earth's oceans.

IE sucks

Apparently this blog isn't happy when you use IE. =\

I'm lazy and IE users should be using Firefox instead.

Go get Firefox.

Shadow of the Colossus Collectables

I recently purchased a box of ten Shadow of the Colossus One Coin Grande Figures. (click the link to see the pictures I took)

My first impression, other than the fact that these totally kick ass, was how detailed they were especially since they're 3" tall figures. My second thought is how well some of them capture the actual events of the game, especially the figure for Colossus 14 (as shown above). My other favorite is Colossus 1 where Wander is hanging on for dear life on the colossus' back.

Sadly, they only made 6 of the 16 colossi into figures. My friend and I hope that they'll eventually release the rest of the figures.

Now that I have these, I really want to start playing the game once again. I'm also wondering what the development team for SotC is making for the PS3.

Ashamed

I'm weak. I went and bought The Burning Crusade and have even reunited with my old guild. I don't know what's wrong with me - I just felt that I really had to see Outland and try out the two new races. I'm currently hoping to just get my priest to level 70 and level up a Draenei shaman and a Blood Elf warlock to whatever levels I can within 3 months.

Now that I've finished Twilight Princess, I can now move on to other games that I've had in the queue. I'm still about halfway through both Metal Gear Solid 3 and Okami, so I'm going to start with those first. I also have Final Fantasy XII to go through. But with WoW back in my gaming schedule, there's no telling what I'm going to actually play.

Stupid WoW.

Seriously Annoyed

Lucky me. I finally get a moment to play some Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 27 hours into the game, just about ready to go to the Sky Temple. But no, I run into a known glitch that leaves me no choice but to start over from the beginning.

The glitch goes like this:
Once you collect all 6 symbols to unlock the statue that blocks the cannon to the Sky Temple and enter the room if you save and exit the game after this, you cannot continue because an NPC that should be in the room isn't there when you load your save game. You have to talk to him in order to progress the story and advance to the Sky Temple. (See attached video below for an example.)

That just sucks.

On one hand, I don't mind because Twilight Princess is a really fun game. On the other hand, I'm really seriously annoyed that a simple glitch like this got past Nintendo QA.



Time to start my adventures in Hyrule once again... and delay playing FFXII and finishing Okami until much later. =(

Update: I'm glad that GameFAQs has save files for download. Huzzah for standardized data storage!

Tempted by Evil

I was once a rabid WoW addict. For almost two years I played WoW and only WoW for as many hours I could every single day. I played a priest, took her to level 60, raided with Avatars of Destruction in Molten Core over and over, perfected ZG and AQ20, and hell we even killed Nefarian in under 5 attempts. We kicked ass. My priest was tricked out PvP gear, 6/8 tier 1, and even had 4/8 tier 2.

Purples galore and in longest running and most revered Alliance guild on the Uldum Realm. It was the Azeroth version of heaven.

And then, I woke up.

I spent nearly $400 playing WoW for those 22 months. Not to mention the 60+ days worth of game time accrued amongst all my characters. The game literally became a new life for me. It was time to stop. And stopped I did...

I quit the guild, deleted all my lesser leveled characters and sharded all my shiny purples. Once the sharding was complete, the remaining characters were erased from WoW existence.

Knowing all the crap I put myself, friends and family through just to play this game, why, oh why, am I tempted to start anew in The Burning Crusade?

Damn you Blizzard, you evil, evil empire. Just give me Diablo 3 and/or StarCraft 2 already.

Wii louder than 360? o_O

I'm sure we all saw this article on Engadget stating that the Wii is the loudest console out of the big three.

I'm confused by this, being the owner of both a Wii and an Xbox 360. (No, no PS3... it's not worth it.) And in my time spent with both consoles it's very clear to me that the Xbox 360 is the loudest console by far.

A friend of mine believed the article until I took some videos of my consoles booting and then loading a game. You be the judge...





This is in no way scientific, obviously, and I don't have a fancy instrument that measures decibels. Some 360s may be in fact quieter than the one I have due to different DVD drives. But I still doubt that any current 360 on the market is more quiet than a Wii.

Symphony of the Night

Even though I have both the PS1 and Saturn (import) versions of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, I'm really looking forward to playing it again on the Xbox 360. Hopefully nothing will be lost from the move to the 360, but from what I have read I won't be disappointed.

In related news, I'm also looking forward to seeing Super Metroid 3 appearing on Wii Virtual Console.

Laziness

It's been a while since I've written regular updates. I really want to keep this blog active and I'm going to to write at least every Friday evening from now on. =)

Previously working for EA, I've seen a lot of bugs that get past QA for reasons known and unknown. Understandably, publishers have a deadline to meet and the developers will never have enough time to fix everything that QA would like fixed.

But some bugs just astound me. How can simple things like this get past QA? RITCHITER mode? That's almost as bad as "Bimmy and Jimmy" from Double Dragon III. (See the attached Angry Nintendo Nerd video at the end of this post.) I also remember that Alien Hominid for the GameCube had its button mapping instructions all screwed up. Whatever was listed in the game and in the manual wasn't even close to the actual controls. Amazing to say the least.

Now, I totally understand a game can't be 100% bug free even when the developer is given all the time in the world. However, leaving simple bugs such as the ones mentioned above do reflect the quality of the game and shows a lack of interest by the publisher to make the game the absolute best that it can be.

EA's company motto is ACTION. Each letter stands for something, but the only one I remember is "O" which stands for Ownership. No matter what industry you work in and what job you have, if you take ownership of your projects you will reflect your dedication into your product and make it all the better for the consumer.

The future

There's a lot that I want to say about the Wii but I just can't find the time to write. The summarized comments are that I love the new way of controlling video games, but I'm not all that pleased with the wiimotes' 20 hour battery life. I also really want to play both the Wii and GCN versions of Twilight Princess and compare the two. If I'm crazy enough, I'll pay another $50 for the GCN version that comes out this week.

First Wii Ad

"What's this? It's a new remote controller. Ninteno Wii remote controller."

I can't wait. I want a Wii now!

Get Over it Already!

I've been hearing and reading a lot of complaints about how crappy the Wii's graphics are. Sure, the Wii may not look any better than a GCN right now, but who cares? It's not like Nintendo lied to you about the graphics. They have specifically said that they're not in the raw graphics output race anymore. They have also said that if what you're looking to get out of a video game is just pure graphics enjoyment, the Wii is not for you.

The Wii isn't about pretty graphics. Nintendo is taking what they've done for the handheld console business and bringing that philosophy to the home consoles. The Nintendo DS and the Wii are both about new ways to experience and play games.

So I'm tired of hearing about Wii's graphical power. If you want to complain about it, keep it to yourself. If you want the best possible graphics in the world get yourself and Xbox 360 or a PS3. The Wii can't compete graphically with those other home consoles, so get over it already!

Happy Birthday Mario!

21 years ago from this day, Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo Famicom. Believe it or not, Super Mario Bros. is still the highest selling game of all time with roughly 40 million units sold worldwide. Happy Birthday Mario, now hurry up and tell us when Super Mario Galaxy is going to be released.

Dead Rising Scares Me

I've been wanting to play Dead Rising for about half a month now, but find myself unable to boot up my Xbox 360 and play that game. It's not that I'm bored by the game or have some other game to play, I'm scared of it. No, the game isn't that scary. What I mean is that I'm scared of the game breaking my $400 gaming investment. Ever since Dead Rising came out, there have been rumors of it literally causing Xbox 360s to die. At first I thought that it was just the initial batch of Xbox 360s sold last year that were failing and even then I assumed that people were just not treating their console with care. Then I started hearing about how some new Xbox 360s were dying as soon as Dead Rising was booted up. Now I find myself unable to play Dead Rising due to being afraid that it'll cause my Xbox 360 to die. (It costs $180 to have the console refurbished by Microsoft.)

I know, it's stupid to not play this game because of this phobia. There are millions of Xbox 360s in the world and a good portion of them playing Dead Rising I'd assume. The percentage of failure is relatively small, about 5% I think. Are these systems just poorly manufactured or were they the victim of a lack of T-L-C?

I really want to play Dead Rising, but I don't want my Xbox 360 to die. Hopefully I'll be able to just throw the phobia out the window and just enjoy this awesome game before the Wii launches.

Are Wii Ready?

Hopefully by Thursday of next week, we will know when the Wii is launching and at what price it will be launching for. Signs are pointing to the Wii having a nice and smooth world-wide launch this year. There doesn't seem to be any hardware shortages nor any problems with the manufacturing process. The only real worry we can have is that Nintendo will delay the Wii to next year cause the software isn't ready - something that they are well known for.

If you haven't noticed, the Wii is close to launch (from what I gather, expect a late October / early November 2006 launch) and we've barely seen any of the games! We don't even know the full capabilities of the Wii itself! And on top of that, we're still not informed of all the functionalities of the wiimote! Is Nintendo doing this purposely to keep the competition (read: Sony) from copying the ideas and technology?


Poor Sony. Their egos have put them in a pretty deep hole. First they screw up the PSP (where are the good games at?). Then they have a rootkit fiasco in their CDs. Then announce the scary price of $500/600 for the PS3 at E3. On top of the scary price, Sony also managed to show nothing note worthy at E3... yawn. And no Kaz Ridge Racer, sorry... Riiiiiiiiidge Racer!, didn't help. And recently Sony has to decrease their estimations on the shipments of the PS3 by 75%. Let's not forget to mention that Europe now has to wait until Spring '07 to get a PS3. (At least they may have a chance to avoid the initial BSOD'ing and DDoD'ing PS3 batch.)

So to that news, I say: "Thanks Sony!"

Thanks for opening the door for either the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii to kick your ass.
Thanks for making me a millionare when I sell my pre-ordered PS3 on eBay.
And thanks for screwing the developers, forcing them to make/port their games to another console.

Hype will only get you so far. Where are the good games at Sony? You can't ride the Metal Gear Solid cash cow forever. You still lack an icon like Mario, Link, or hell... even Master Chief. Kratos maybe cool, but he's still on the PS2.

Sony, you obviously need history lessons. See Wikipedia for NeoGeo, 3D0, TurboExpress, Atari Jaguar, and PSP. You fail to learn, you fail to win.

Wii!!

Odd Similarity

Check out this video from the upcoming Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2, which shows off the new Marine Race mode. (If that link didn't work, go here and watch the video titled 'Marine Race'.) Now watch this video from the Nintendo 64 game, Wave Race 64. Is it just me or is the track that Tecmo chose to show off their Marine Race mode very oddly similar to the Southern Island track in Wave Race 64?

First I'll give props to Tecmo for at least (seemingly) basing their new mode after one of the best jetski racing games ever made. Wave Race 64 is one of the N64's best games and, in my opinion, is the only game thus far to accurately simulate water physics (I'm sure plenty of you would disagree with me on that). Props aside, I have to wonder how well the racing game would play. Juding from the previous game's "volleyball" and the fact that the "volleyball" hasn't changed at all in the sequel, I would have to say that the Marine Racing mode is also mediocre.

No one will know how the game plays until it is nearly released to the public. Tecmo seems to do that a lot with their games. To me, that just says that they know their games are all graphics and no gameplay. Shiny oversized gravity defying bouncy graphics... with realistic tan lines...

Since my buddy Eron didn't like the Shadow of the Colossus video I posted last month, here's another video. This one actually uses music from the game and shows off some really cool moves in the process. Enjoy.

Super Smash Bros. Online!

When Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo64 was announced, I was skeptical about the idea of Nintendo characters fighting each other. To me, it was a weird concept that I felt would never sell. Oh boy, was I wrong. Super Smash Bros. turned out to be one of my favorite multiplayer games for both the Nintendo64 and the GameCube. My friends and I played both games to death (we played the N64 version significantly more though - I'll go into that later).

Now that I'm in SoCal, I want to play Super Smash Bros. online with my friends back in San Francisco. Yeah, I know that Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii is coming out with online gameplay, but SSB:B won't be released until sometime in 2007 and I want to play online now. Thankfully, there are now ways to play both Super Smash Bros. Melee and the original Super Smash Bros. online.

Super Smash Bros. Melee can be played online via the infamous PSO Loader hack. I would try this method to play online, but not all of my friends have the GCN broadband adapter. However, I would say that the biggest downside would be that players 2, 3, and 4 lag by up to a second while playing. Lag == death, especially for fighting games. The lag also causes weird, yet entertaining, errors as you'll see in this video. A valiant effort to get SSB online, but the lag kills the experience.

Oddly enough, you can play Nintendo64 games online and it turns out to be a more enjoyable online experience than SSB:M online too! Playing SSB online resulted in no lag. Simply amazing! Yeah, there are less characters/stages in the Nintendo64 version but SSB is so much fun, I'm willing to "settle" for the N64 online until Brawl comes out. If you want to see an online fighting game done right, try SSB. (Just ignore the graphical glitches - those are the emulator's fault.)

It's funny really. Using the latest hardware, Xbox Live Arcade's Street Fighter II' Hyperfighting suffers from terrible lag (1+ second delay from input to screen? No thanks.) yet a N64 emulator suffers nearly zero lag. What's up with that? It is the way Xbox Live's network structure is set up that is causing the lag? Or is it buggy network code? Or could SFII be doing the same thing as the SSB:M online hack where player 1 is the host and player 2 has to wait for his own data to come back from player 1? Either way, it's really funny and only helps me enjoy SSB even more.

Going back to what I said earlier, my friends and I spent countless hours playing SSB on the N64 yet in comparison we barely played SSB:M on the GCN. Why is that? SSB:M is a better game overall. It's more balanced, offers more characters and stages, and has tighter controls. I noticed this trend for most, if not all, of the GameCube's multiplayer games. We played the N64 versions significantly more than the GCN versions. Are the GCN versions actualy inferior or are they just more of the same that we've already played too much of? I'm betting it's the latter.

I find that Nintendo has a habit of evolving the gaming industry every ten years. The NES jump started the current industry after the crash, the N64 evolved the industry into the 3D era with analog controls, and the Wii is going to evolve the industry again with spacial controls. To me, both the SNES and GameCube are just more powerful versions of the NES and N64, respectively. I'm not saying that the SNES and GameCube are bad consoles, they each have their games that are contenders for the best game(s) of all time. I just think that these two consoles took the ideas of the NES and N64 and refined them into near perfection. If this history holds true, what can we expect of the Wii's successor? (Also note that Nintendo evolves the industry with controls, not graphics.)

The Greatest Game of its Time

The one game that I will remember the PlayStation 2 for is, of course, Shadow of the Colossus. I don't think that there's any game on the PS2, Xbox, or GameCube that can top SotC for pure enjoyment.

A couple of my friends don't see what's so great about Shadow of the Colossus. They say that the controls are too simple, that the graphics aren't as good as people say, and that the gameplay itself is just boring. On the plus side, none of my friends have said anything negative about the game's soundtrack. Do yourself a favor and buy it. =D

All I'll say about their opinion on the graphics is: How can the graphics not be as beautiful as we say?

I feel these friends of mine have missed the whole point of the game. It's not about just killing the bosses. The developers have left much of the story up to speculation for a purpose, just like they did for ICO. They wanted us to put our own emotions into the game. This way, we would be more connected with the Wanderer and his adventure. They leave it up to us to decide who the girl is. And ultimately, it is left up to us to imagine the lives of the game's characters after the credits have rolled past.

You just don't get that kind of immersion from games that straight up tell you what the characters are feeling.

The personalized emotional investment that SCEI allows to have for the characters in Shadow of Colossus is reason enough for me to claim that it is the best game of the PS2/Xbox/GCN era. It doesn't hurt that the game is also a lot of fun to play.

Dead Rising

The end of the current generation of video game consoles has brought a huge resurrection of "classic" titles. We've seen Nintendo re-release the core Mario games for the GBA and Nintendo DS. Square is in the process of re-releasing as many Final Fantasy games as they can for the GBA. And Atari, Midway, and Capcom are releasing a ton of their old arcade games for various platforms.

Probably the biggest of the re-releases is Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting for Xbox Live Arcade. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the Street Fighter series but I'm not totally happy with the Xbox Live Arcade's version. My gripe is that the game is stupidly difficult. I don't know if it's just because I've lost all the skill I once had over the years, if it's because the Xbox 360's directional pad just plain sucks ass, or if it's because Capcom went and decided to make the game more difficult just for the hell of it. Either way, it's not very much fun to get your ass kicked by the cheap AI of the 3rd fighter (of 12) on the default difficulty. (I blame the 360's controller for sucking... I never had difficulty problems with Street Fighter II Anniversary Collection.)

Sadly, I don't have an active Xbox Live Gold account, so I can't test the online portion of the game. But, from what I hear, it is hard to find someone to fight a ranked match against.

Bringing back retro titles for new gamers is good, in my opinion. I'd personally love to see the newer gamers get a greater understanding of gaming history, but I doubt most of today's gamers would understand the significance of why some of these games are classics. (Most aren't, but that's for another blog.) However, knowing companies for being companies and following capitalism, they're only re-releasing their older games because it's an easy and cheap way to make money.

It may just be me, but these re-releases never play the same as they used to. I don't remember Mega Man being so damn difficult, nor was Mega Man X for that matter. Again, is it just my getting old and forgetting how to play or is it because of the controller? Mega Man Anniversary Collection for GameCube sucked because some genius at Capcom decided to switch the shoot and jump buttons around. It's just not the way I'm used to playing Mega Man. For me at least, changing the feel of the controller for a given game seems to really screw up my timing. =(

Well, since this blog post is titled Dead Rising, here's a music video for Capcom's amazingly fun game Dead Rising.