Mistwalker May! Episode I

Out of loyalty to the magestic Hironobu Sakaguchi, but out of time for playing RPGs, I have found myself purchasing every Mistwalker game, yet playing none of them.  I get the itch every so often to play a JRPG (right now I’m feeling it for Final Fantasy IX), but I feel guilty that my unopened copy of Lost Odyssey is sitting on my shelf.  In order to sedate this guilt, I have declared May 2010 Mistwalker May! I will play every one* of their games this month and report to you – the loving reader – about my ventures into Sakaguchi’s development career, post-Square Enix.
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Wondrous Independent Diversity

Cave Story is a freeware PC game that came out in 2004 by a developer who calls himself Pixel.  It’s a story-driven side-scroller that feels almost like a hybrid of Metroid, Mega Man and Final Fantasy.  The game was recently released on the Wii for $12 with revamped graphics and audio.

Back in early September, I took part in and won an event at PAX 2009 called “The Chatterbox Treasurebox” – a video game trivia contest run by the lovable Alon Waisman of Chatterbox Video Game Radio fame.  In my very large bag of bountiful winnings contained a little pink sheet of paper with a code on it.  The code was for the Wii version of Cave Story.  With download code in hand, I waited around and eventually forgot about the game.  A week before the game’s Wii release, however, I got an email letting me know that it would soon be available.

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the biggest nerd in gaming

Persona 3 is a unique hybrid of dungeon crawling, sim-dating, and Japanese Role-playing game. The game is also really long. The back of the box boasts 70 hours of gameplay as well as a 30 hour epilogue. Players play as an unnamed silent-protagonist as he shoots himself in the head to summon demons in order to fight the game’s enemies; the Shadows. In order to get stronger demons, players must create and develop relationships called social links with NPCs. Persona 3′s main character is probably one of the most emulative character in video games.
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An appropriately titled article about spoilers

There will not be any spoilers in this post because there is nothing to spoil in a game. Last month, a month that has probably one of the biggest gaming has seen in a long time, the internet was abuzz in discussions filled with spoilers about Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain. These games contain as much story as any game possibly could. Yet, the story isn’t supposed to be the apex of video game discussion.

Any gamer could tell you the story to The Legend of Zelda. It’s about an eleven year old boy traveling the world and collecting things to defeat Ganon and save the princess. The most important part of this narrative, however, is not defeating Ganon. Past experience will already tell you that Link saves Zelda. Knowing that Ganondorf gets stabbed in the head at the end of the game doesn’t make me stop playing. Continue reading…

Always better, always faster, always more addicting

If you’ve been following Golgotron for a while now, you know I love games that are relatively mundane, but eternally playable (I wrote about Persona 3 being awesome because of it). Strangely, I’m not a huge fan of MMOs though. Games that are similar to MMOs, but without the massive multiplayer, however, are some of my favorite titles. Pokemon Platinum has been my current time waster lately (you know, because it’s mundane and extremely playable). After playing through it and putting it down a year ago, I haven’t thought about the series aside from anticipating Heart Gold and Soul Silver (coming out in three weeks). But, I had nothing else to play and figuring there were some legendary Pokemon left so I picked it up planning to kill a day getting everything ready to trade-over into the next game. Then I figured I’d play Pokemon LeafGreen on GBA to prepare for the next game. Then I purchased Pokemon Emerald to prepare for the next game… Continue reading…

Game today, animu tomorrow.

Dante’s Inferno comes out today and, according to Rich, it may outsell God of War III. Regardless whether you agree with him or not, there is little to deny that there has been a huge marketing campaign in support or this game. From checks to press editors to the Super Bowl, there is no denying the massive advertisement pressure. While watching the Super Bowl commercial though, something caught my eye at the end. EA decided to make an anime based off of the video game. Dead Space also did this, but I didn’t see it -let alone even know about it. And I wonder if anyone cares about a Dante’s Inferno anime.

When playing Dead Space, I never thought to myself “you know, I would love to see an anime version of this.” and I’m going to go ahead and assume you didn’t either. As a consumer, I’ve never been interesting in much cross-media marketing (as I’m calling it, this may be a real business term).There is rarely a desire to read a novel based off of a game, and it seems risky to jump the gun and release it a the same time as the initial product. Continue reading…

Look at me, look at you

To preface this article, I’d like to refer to the latest issue of GamePro (#258); specifically, a section of an interview with Mafia II’s director of creative production, Jack Scalici. The article is worth reading, as is the rest of the magazine; buy it and support print journalism! Anyway, here’s the section of the interview that I want to talk about:

“GamePro: “Does the concept of Omertà , essentially the Mafia’s “Ten Commandments” affect the gameplay? If Vito looks at the wives of his friends, one of the no-nos of mob life, does he risk punishment from his mafia family?”
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