The Return of the Video Games Thread

[Ian]

Yeah, I also forgot Mega Man Soccer. I consider(ed) both to be awkward spinoffs. Much like the Castlevania series, I like the 2d platforming more than the 3d adventure ones or the brand cash-in games (like that freaking Castlevania fighter game at E3...what is up with that?). I did a little bit of looking into it, though, and it seems like the series might be underrated. Assuming I can find the game and it's one of the ones my PS3 can play without crapping itself, maybe I'll give it a shot.

Good luck.  MML1 you should be able to find around $20, but you'll be lucky to spot MML2 for less than $50.  Both are really good games, but MML2 just improves upon 1 in so many ways that you don't really want to play 1 after playing 2.  MML2 is actually one of my top all-time games, along with WindWaker, Metroid Prime and a few others.

Heh, if you claim the original couldn't be played at a competitive level then you clearly are mistaken. I've played in SSB tournaments before (I generally come in middle of the pack), and I can tell you that there's some crazy stuff that you can pull off in that game.

A lot of that stuff you can pull off in SSB involves inescapable combos and spikes.  While those are fun, they're not always fair.  That's why Melee is best loved by hardcore Smash fans; the advanced tecniques are much more relient on quick reflexes (not that you don't need reflexes for SSB of course).  As for Brawl, it's an excellent party game, but I can't get into playing it by myself like I did with Melee.

[Vlad!]

Movie license video games are in the news a lot lately. First EA speaks out about crappy licensed games [1], a sentiment that I can agree with, and then Michael Pachter says that Warner Bros probably lost $30 million [2] for not contracting with a publisher to produce a Dark Knight game.

I think movie license games are generally crappy. They're unoriginal pretty much by definition and are not usually very well put together. But I don't think they hurt anything; some people buy them for some inexplicable reason, and the profits from these sales allow publishers to take risks on new and innovative games [3]. If Activision or Ubisoft or EA had come out with a game based on The Dark Knight, it wouldn't have cheapened the film for me.

So I don't know what to think. On one hand, I can applaud any company taking a stand against the crap that the market is flooded with, but on the other hand this is a capitalist economy and the market seems to be working itself out.

[1] Somebody should tell EA that their sports-license games probably qualify for this epithet as well.
[2] Yes, I realize the title of the article says $100 million. Buried deep in the article is the footnote that only 30% of that would actually have been seen by the license owner.
[3] I doubt this actually happens much in practice; developing a movie license game is probably a pretty big risk itself unless you're talking about a hot property like The Dark Knight, since the deadline is pretty tight, the information you have about the plot of the movie is minimal, and if the movie ends up sucking then the game won't do well even if it is done properly. I'd guess that the publishers that do movie games use the money from the successful ones to make up for the unsuccessful ones.

[spacebrat311]

Heh, if you claim the original couldn't be played at a competitive level then you clearly are mistaken. I've played in SSB tournaments before (I generally come in middle of the pack), and I can tell you that there's some crazy stuff that you can pull off in that game.

Honestly, I can't stand fighting games as a genre, and the part I like about SSB is how it took the tired formula and made it into something I enjoy playing with my friends. I am not at all interested in what makes hardcore gamers happy, only about what is fun when I play it with others.

I'm not saying it can't be played at that level per se, just that it doesn't seem to hold up nearly as well at that level as Melee does. I am not a hardcore gamer, nor are any of my friends, but that doesn't mean that I want an artificial roof placed over my head as far as skill advancement goes either.

[Vlad!]

As for Brawl, it's an excellent party game, but I can't get into playing it by myself like I did with Melee.

Heh, I can say the same thing about foosball, but I still love the game.

I'm not saying it can't be played at that level per se, just that it doesn't seem to hold up nearly as well at that level as Melee does. I am not a hardcore gamer, nor are any of my friends, but that doesn't mean that I want an artificial roof placed over my head as far as skill advancement goes either.

Hm, interesting. Personally, I have no problem with an artificial roof that I never plan on reaching. The level cap in Final Fantasy XII was 99 and the level cap in Disgaea was 9999. I beat the game around the low 70s in Disgaea and the high 70s in FF, so either way the artificial cap doesn't bother me.

This conversation has been very instructive. Most of my friends who were and are strong Smash Bros. fans didn't like Melee as well, and I personally didn't much care for it either. OTOH, the extremely small amount of experience I have with Brawl suggests that it retains a lot more of the "pick up and play" of the original. I'm glad that hardcore gamers found more to like in Melee than I did, but I'm not going to like it more or Brawl less because a demographic that I don't identify with says that I should.

Good luck.  MML1 you should be able to find around $20, but you'll be lucky to spot MML2 for less than $50.  Both are really good games, but MML2 just improves upon 1 in so many ways that you don't really want to play 1 after playing 2.  MML2 is actually one of my top all-time games, along with WindWaker, Metroid Prime and a few others.

Hm, that's too bad. Maybe at some point it will be offered as PS3 downloadable content for ten bucks or something.

Also, it's interesting that all of the top all-time games you mentioned are for more modern console systems. A large chunk of my top 10 list consists of SNES and handheld games.

[spacebrat311]

It's not really about hardcore vs. non-hardcore gamers, since I don't really know too many of the latter. It's about the fact that when I and others I know pick up Brawl, we feel like we've had one hand tied behind our back, and while it doesn't change rankings typically since it ties everyone's hands equally (other than to compress them in a closer range) it still makes for a much less enjoyable play experience.

I find it interesting how different our group experience is though. I know exactly one person out of my Smash Bros playing friends who prefers the original to Melee, and he doesn't like Brawl either. None of them are at all the hardcore gamer type. Around half do not own a videogame system or any computer games themselves, and maybe another quarter own systems but don't play videogames more than an hour a week on average (my personal category). The only game almost any of them play for significant amounts of time is Smash Bros, as a maybe once every two weeks late night thing. This does not prove any kind of point about whether or not you should enjoy Melee, it's just interesting sociologically how different our groups' consensus' are.

[Ian]

The majority of people in my dorm prefer the original, although I think that may be because for some reason they never spent much time with Melee and weren't used to its speed.  They all seem to really enjoy Brawl though.

Also, it's interesting that all of the top all-time games you mentioned are for more modern console systems. A large chunk of my top 10 list consists of SNES and handheld games.

Some all-time favs:  MML2, WW, MP1, RE4, MMX, DKC2, SMW, SSB (as a series)...  There are others, too, most likely.

[Vlad!]

A side note to finish the Professor Layton and the Curious Village review:

I completed the game this week. My final time was 13:15, and I imagine that most peoples' times will be about the same. Standard deviation should be pretty low, since there are 120 puzzles in the game and about 85 of them are required to finish it. I had found and completed 111 of them.

One area I was most impressed with was the consistent quality of the puzzles. A few of them were stupid, but only two I can think of were outright bad, and there was only one time where I came up with an answer that was correct according to the rules of the puzzle but which was ruled as incorrect by the game. Out of 111 puzzles, this isn't bad. The plot is pretty basic and I saw pretty much all the plot points coming well before they arrived, but it tells a cute story that serves its purpose (that purpose, of course, being to move the player from one puzzle to the next).

Does the game provide $30 worth of amusement? I hate to be mercenary, but for many gamers, including myself, the games budget is far from unlimited and this is the question we have to ask ourselves. I personally have spent more money on less amusement in the past, but for me the replay value of this type of game is really low. I suggest renting it if you want to play it, since if you're like me, once it goes onto your shelf it won't come off again.

[Ian]

Speaking of puzzle games, I got Zack & Wiki, and it's excellent.  I'm only about 5 hours in and thepuzzles rae already getting pretty dificult, and there's a long ways to go.  It has a nice visual style, a sense of humor, and a merciless dificulty level.  Comes recomended.

[Vlad!]

Some all-time favs:  MML2, WW, MP1, RE4, MMX, DKC2, SMW, SSB (as a series)...  There are others, too, most likely.

I list some of my favorite games for each system on the about page to my defunct web site here. It would be really hard for me to formulate a top 5, but if I were forced it would probably look like
Bahamut Lagoon [SNES]
Final Fantasy VI [SNES]
Vanguard Bandits [PSX]
Fire Emblem [GBA]
Disgaea [PS2]

[spacebrat311]

Just because it seems to be the popular thing to do right now:

Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
Perfect Dark (N64)
Super Smash Bros (Series)
Starfox (SNES)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)
Halo (Xbox)
Freespace (Series) (PC)


Side note: I've noticed it's become extremely fashionable to hate Halo. While I think that it's a far from flawless game, and I agree with the general consensus that the sequels were disappointing, I still find the original to be a refreshingly simple shooter that does only a few things, but does them very, very well, and while I have my issues with the directions they took the story in later installments, the first one sets up an extremely intriguing sci-fi universe with a lot of very timely themes. And the first time the flood showed up was definitely one of the seminal videogame twists.

[Vlad!]

Dude, the Descent: Freespace games for PC are freaking classic. I love those games.

I've never played Halo, though.

[spacebrat311]

Dude, the Descent: Freespace games for PC are freaking classic. I love those games.

Epic.

[dgp11776]

I finally got to play Rock Band last night at my sister's house.  'Twas a great time.

[valleycat]

I'm playing Myst 4: Revelation.  it's amazing, one of my favorite games ever.  i was playing one called "syberia" but it got boring and I couldn't finish it.  so I'm attempting myst 4 again which I had played far into previously, but my laptop died that it was installed on and I lost everything I had accomplished.

[dgp11776]

I bought Guitar Hero 3 recently, and have been making my way through it.  I beat "Through the Fire and Flames" on medium, but 25% is the best I've managed so far on hard (and a hilarious 2% on expert). 

I also just bought (as in 15 minutes ago) a Wii, 2 remotes w/nunchucks, Wii Sports, the nerf attachment kit, and 3 games (Zelda, Mario Galaxy, and Lego Indiana Jones) from a friend at work.  He sold it all to me for $200, so I couldn't pass it up.

[Vlad!]

I also just bought (as in 15 minutes ago) a Wii, 2 remotes w/nunchucks, Wii Sports, the nerf attachment kit, and 3 games (Zelda, Mario Galaxy, and Lego Indiana Jones) from a friend at work.  He sold it all to me for $200, so I couldn't pass it up.

Nice. I have enough other games on my plate that I'm waiting on a hardware refresh (and the ability to buy it in black) before I spring for a Wii. It does help that I have several friends with one and we have one at work, so I can get my Wii fix pretty easily anyway.

Also, I've never played Guitar Hero. It looks like the kind of game I would be ludicrously bad at.

[Vlad!]

I finished replaying Disgaea yesterday in preparation for starting Disgaea 2, all part of the festivities leading up to the launch of Disgaea 3 (on my birthday!).

[Vlad!]

Our theme for this evening is "platform-inappropriate games".

First, I gave Dungeon Explorer: Warrior of the Ancient Arts on the DS a spin. I had expected a stock roguelike cashing in on the success of similar games such as Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and Shiren the Wanderer. However, it appears that I was wrong: in the brief glimpse I got of it, Dungeon Explorer seems to feature a fairly large persistent world. Whether there is a randomly-generated element or not I don't know, since I never actually got to any of the eponymous dungeons.

Dungeon Explorer clearly borrows from Blizzard's Diablo series, but it somehow managed to miss the fun factor. Part of the problem is that, unlike Diablo, there are enemy generators that continually spawn enemies until they're destroyed. These enemies aren't in my experience particularly difficult, so they exist primarily to annoy you. The other part of the problem is that some basic enemies take a freakishly long time to kill. I was in the forest peppering a frog with arrows for seriously over a minute before the thing, er, croaked. Why does it take so long to kill a frog? Can't you just, you know, step on it?

The other big strike against Dungeon Explorer is that, as tonight's theme should suggest, it is not very platform-appropriate. The game just felt awkward on the DS, and despite the fact that it clearly could have used a touchscreen interface, the player's fingers stay firmly placed on the buttons at all times. Maybe this is so that the interface remains consistent with the PSP version; I dunno. In any case, it felt like it would be more at home on the PC. Of course, most PC gamers would laugh its terrible graphics right out of the store, so perhaps it was a budget move. One thing to its credit, though: it looks like you can save pretty much anywhere (I don't know if you can save in the dungeon or not, because as I mentioned I didn't even make it to the dungeon).

The second game I'm going to reamdiscuss is Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles, again for the DS. Now, I never played the original Assassin's Creed; I'm not much of a third-person platformer kind of guy. I will say that the game does not immediately prepossess me because the intro starts dropping frames almost immediately. Seems like they could have dialed down the texture detail rather than causing the DS's poor processors to pass a watermelon right there in the intro animation.

Anyway, the game involves frolicking about on rooftops and killing people, two activities which frequently go hand-in-hand. The game plays a little bit like "my first platformer" since it gives you checkpoints about every fifteen meters. This is actually nice, though, because it gives you annoying deathtraps every ten meters, making just walking around hazardous. Death one was me leaping off a building and sending my pelvis through my brainpan four stories down. Death two was me walking into an extended spike. I can understand dying if I walk over a spike which then shoots out into my body, but if the spike is already extended, why does walking into it cause instant death? Death three was when the game asked me to take a leap of faith and my faith was strong but my leap wasn't, and once again pelvo-cranial contraction put Altair in traction.

For fans of running-jumping-murdering type games, I imagine that Altair's Chronicles is the metaphorical bomb, with one possible gripe that bothers me as well: this is not a game that's well-suited for the DS. Yes, it fits the criteria in that it saves your progress with almost idiotic frequency (I'm assuming that in later levels there are fewer checkpoints distributed further apart) and you can play just a little bit at a time, but the controls are awkward. I don't like switching between buttons and the stylus even if the little minigames you have to play to pickpocket and torture and whatnot are somewhat clever, and I absolutely don't like controlling a game like this with the d-pad. I think Altair's Chronicles would be much more at home on the console, where frames wouldn't be dropped and the player can use an analog stick or mouse.

Neither of these games felt like they would provide enough amusement to justify playing them further.

[Vlad!]

Anyone else see this?

A $200 360 is tempting. It's priced low enough that it fits into most enthusiasts' electronics budgets and does a lot of stuff. On the other hand, I can't really justify it--I don't like most of the games (and the ones I do are generally multi-platform) and I doubt it interoperates well with Linux.

On the other other hand, not being married means not having to justify purchases like this

[Ian]

Wow, nice.  I wonder if Nintendo will respond now that one of their biggest advantages has been lost.

[Vlad!]

Wow, nice.  I wonder if Nintendo will respond now that one of their biggest advantages has been lost.

I think that their biggest advantage is the fact that the Wii has a handful of incredibly fun and accessible games that are almost universally beloved. The console itself is honestly priced pretty high; when you compare the level of hardware you're getting with the Wii versus the 360, well, the 360 is pretty far ahead. That said, the demographics are so dissimilar that I doubt Nintendo will feel much pressure.

[Vlad!]

Um...wow

In other news, Namco released a patch to Pac-Man today to rebalance the number of points given by certain fruits. Nintendo is said to have a fix in early beta for a graphical corruption glitch in Donkey Kong.

[NinjaRob17]

Um...wow

In other news, Namco released a patch to Pac-Man today to rebalance the number of points given by certain fruits. Nintendo is said to have a fix in early beta for a graphical corruption glitch in Donkey Kong.

I guess the people waiting for Starcraft 2 have to do something while they wait...

[Vlad!]

I have one of my Big Reviews (tm) in the oven, but it's not done yet so I'll bust out a hodgepodge of smaller ones:

I downloaded the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo for the PS3 last week. That game makes third-person hack-n-slash look good. Star Wars always brings out my inner nerd, and I have historically played--and sometimes even liked--Star Wars branded games in genres that I otherwise rarely touch. The Force Unleashed is sort of the child of the Knights of the Old Republic games and the old Jedi Knight (formerly Dark Forces) series, both of which I remember fondly. You play an anti-hero with already-developed force powers whose job it is to be the shadow servant of none other than Darth Vader himself, running around and Tearing Stuff Up. I'm guessing (though I don't know for sure) that the game will, like most such games, allow the player to eventually choose to come over to the light side or stay on the fundark side and continue slaughtering everyone in sight. The basic premise of the game is explained in the title: using Force powers is really cool, and if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing. I doubt I'll be buying the full version, but the demo made a genre I normally get bored with very quickly actually fun.

In a complete and abrupt change of gears, I also played Shiren the Wanderer recently. Shiren is a roguelike in the vein of games such as, er, Rogue, and more recently Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. I historically have little patience for roguelikes, because while they typically have many RPG trappings such as gradually increasing in strength and finding better and better weapons with which to demolish your foes, they combine this with a generally minimal plot, a lot of grinding, and the frustration of frequently having your level, money, and inventory set back to the beginning. Shiren is no exception. It seems entertaining and isn't as hand-holdy as Izuna, but I have no patience for these things.

Bubble Bobble Double Shot is a reimagining of a classic. The dinosaurs many of us know and love from Puzzle Bobble (sometimes incongruously called Bust a Move in the US) debut in the original platformer style. It has nice features and is good and shiny, but it had trouble holding my attention long enough for me to get good at it.

Speaking of games that I historically have little patience with, Etrian Odyssey is a first-person dungeon crawler I tried out recently. I have a long tradition of disliking these games, starting with Phantasy Star, moving through Arcana and similar for the SNES, and going up through my more recent experimentation with the early Shin Megami Tensei games. The dungeons all look the same, they tend to be brutishly difficult, and you better have a sheet of graph paper handy if you don't want to get hopelessly lost within minutes. It may be a surprise, then, that I actually enjoyed Etrian Odyssey quite a bit. The biggest win, of course, is the use of the touchscreen as a map. Knowing where I am and where I've been is definitely a key in my book. However, hardcore fans need not despair: the automapping feature is rudimentary and can be turned off entirely. The big difference is that, instead of a sheet of graph paper, you're using the stylus to draw the map on the touch screen. I think this is quite frankly the killer app that the first-person dungeon-crawler genre needed, since the mapping aspect is maintained but the annoyance factor is greatly reduced. I have been slightly frustrated by the need to unlock various character classes, since I'm guessing that by the time I've unlocked (for example) the Ronin class, my party will be at such a high level that it will be difficult to bring a new member up to speed. Overall, I'm enjoying this game more than I expected to, though I'm wondering if I should maybe drop this one and jump to Etrian Odyssey 2: Heroes of Lagaard, since I'm guessing I won't have the patience to play through two such games and the second is likely to be better.

Coming up (hopefully) this weekend: a review of the second game in a series that is very near and dear to my heart (and no, it's not the Final Fantasy series). Stay tuned!

[Vlad!]

Over the past month or so, I played through Disgaea 2. I know I'm behind the times since Disgaea 3 came out last month, but I wanted to be able to play it at a point where I could dedicate long stretches at a time towards just having fun with the game.

Let's get the first things out of the way first: Disgaea 2 is every bit a successor to the original. If you liked the original, you will like D2. If you didn't like the original, there's probably not much for you here either. One of the game's biggest strengths is that it takes most of the good parts from Disgaea and presents them in an original package. I imagine it would be very tempting to ride on the success of the first Disgaea by continuing with the adventures of Laharl, Etna, and Flonne, but while the characters from the original do star in cameos, the focus is on an entirely new set of characters.  So while the gameplay is very similar and the game is clearly a successor in tone and feel, it is its own game.

This leads me to my biggest gripe about Disgaea 2: the game presents at best incremental improvements to the Disgaea formula. The new overhead camera angle is great, except that for some reason executing your tasks or ending your turn will take you out of it. The changes to the item world are fine, but I got kind of tired of 100+-level pirates showing up and forcing a retreat. The new class organization is acceptable, but the way they changed around the weapon proficiencies is a little perplexing, and there are too many unnecessary classes. I also found it incredibly frustrating that to unlock the next tier in class progression you need a member on the previous tier. In other words, if you have a class that goes Fighter -> Warrior -> Destroyer, to unlock Destroyer you have to transmogrify your fighter into a Warrior and *then* hit the target level. This just makes it unnecessarily difficult to progress up the different tiers, since you have to restart back to level 1 so many times. Fortunately, to balance this out, they added the Dark World that basically makes level grinding go pretty fast. I think I played the first level of the dark world about 20 times overall to keep leveling my troops.

So gameplaywise, it feels like Disgaea 2 took a step back for every step forward. Similarly, I had a bit more difficulty getting into the story. The news segments were a bit more annoying than Etna's nonsensical ramblings between each chapter, and I didn't find Axel/Aktare[1] as amusing a rival as Midboss. The endings were also less well-defined, and I think more players were shunted to the "good" ending (my first time through D1 I ended up with the bad "I'm a flower" ending). The voice acting in English and Japanese remains mediocre (I understand that English took a step down, actually, though I didn't play it in English so I can't verify), though I like it that now the voice samples in battle are all in the chosen language instead of being a hodgepodge of both available languages as they were in D1.

Now, just to make sure we're clear, I need to point out that Disgaea is one of my all-time favorite games. When I say that D2 is not an improvement over the original, I mean that a 95% game is remaining at 95% rather than chipping away at that remaining 5%. The gameplay is still solid, and I think some balance issues in the original were worked out (in my original party I had a Galaxy Mage who could pretty much destroy any enemy on at least half the map without even moving a step; mages are still powerful when leveled properly, but are no longer giggling schoolgirl juggernauts of death). It's just that, in general, if I want to play Disgaea again, then I'll go and play Disgaea again. I enjoyed my run through Disgaea 2, but I would really have liked to see NIS put in the extra effort to make the game that much better.

I actually own Disgaea 3, but it may be a while before I find the time to play it properly. I'm definitely looking forward to a graphics refresh; I'm not usually one to complain about graphics so long as they're decent, and Disgaea's aren't bad, but when stretched 2x by the PS3 and displayed in HD, well, let's just say that the low-res interlaced sprites don't exactly look all that fantastic.

A hearty thumbs-up to NIS for their good work, and a slap on the back of the head for the work that could have been better. Overall, though, I feel like the series is improving, if only incrementally, and it's definitely on my list of favorite franchises[2].

[1] One interesting tidbit for those playing the game with the Japanese voice acting on: Axel's Japanese name was Aktare, while that's what his band is called in the English version.

[2] I am aware that it came out for the DS, but I already bought the game once for the PS2, where I can play it again and again with the New Game + functionality that NIS so awesomely provided. Why would I start all over again just for the privilege of buying the game for a new platform? And yes, I realize the irony of that statement coming from a guy who owns Final Fantasy IV for three different platforms

[Ian]

I'm thinking about picking up Disgaea DS this week if it gets good reviews, and then just going to 2 from there.

[Vlad!]

As I understand it, the DS version is a straight-up port of the PSP version, probably minus some voice acting that won't fit on the cart. I don't know if they've enhanced it any to use the touchscreen or how they plan on using the dual-screen functionality, but as I said, I love the game but don't really need to own it twice.

[Vlad!]

I took Code Lyoko for a spin last weekend. It looks to be part adventure game and part 3d platformer, and unfortunately neither of those parts are particularly well-done. I wanted to get further than I did, but I got incredibly lost during one of the boring walking-around-talking-to-people adventure segments, so I figured I had wasted enough of my life on that particular game.

I also stuck Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard in the ol' DS. It looks like they spruced it up a bit; my gripe about having to unlock character classes seems to have been addressed, and in addition I noticed a couple classes I hadn't seen before (warmage and gunner). Also interesting is that it appears the first Etrian Odyssey will give you a password once you beat it, and that password can be entered at the start of the second one for funtimes. I don't know what exactly you get--maybe you can carry your whole party over, or maybe you just get some bonus XP or get to skip the training mission. Anyway, I'm liking the first one enough that I'll keep playing it for right now, and we'll see whether I have the patience to finish it and get that password

Side rant: It's a little too bad that the DS lacks internal or persistent storage so that passwords are the only way to carry data over between games. I realize that when the DS originally came out flash memory was expensive, but now they give away 1gb uSD cards in cereal boxes. Having a micro SD slot on the side for storing game data would have been a very nice touch (I don't even know if uSD was available in 2004 when the DS was first introduced, but I'm sure that at least regular SD was).

[Ian]

Well, there are rumors of a new DS model coming next year.  Maybe they could include that as a new feature.

I'm not too sure that the rumors are true though.

[Vlad!]

Well, there are rumors of a new DS model coming next year.  Maybe they could include that as a new feature.

I'm not too sure that the rumors are true though.

I've heard those rumors too. However, I believe many of them are just speculation, given that they contain technical or design flaws of some sort. Features such as a top touch screen or a uSD slot for onboard memory would be incompatible with existing games. It's possible that the designs floating around represent a successor to the DS, but I don't know if Nintendo is all that interested in designing a new handheld console right now. The DS is still practically printing money for them. It is certainly the case that the time between the release of the GBA and the DS was a bit less than the time between the DS and today, so I'm definitely not ruling it out.

[Ian]

I think the DS has at least another two years before we see the successor.  Kinda hard to believe, but it's been out 4 years and is still on of the two best selling system on a month to month basis.

[Vlad!]

First the actual worthwhile content of this post: check out the Dark Horizon trailer. Now, the rest of this post contains me in full-on "old man rant" mode. You have been warned.

When I was a kid, one of the first games I got was Descent, by Interplay and Parallax. The first Descent was really a Doom clone, with the twist that you're in a spaceship so you have six degrees of freedom, by which it means you can move up or down on all three different axes. The primary contribution that Descent made to my evolution as a gamer was that I bought my first joystick, a Gravis Thunderbird (before that I played using a mouse and keyboard). The game established the series tradition of being brutishly hard without much reward, so I never played through the entire thing.

Not too long afterwards, I got the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games from the Star Wars space flight sim series. This was back when LucasArts actually made decent and well-respected games and the Star Wars franchise still meant something (but I digress). These opened up new horizons for me: no longer was I stuck in a mine shaft; I was in space, and I could actually use those six degrees of freedom. I spent far more time than I would like to admit blasting apart TIE Fighters and X-Wings, and I beat both of those games multiple times.

When I was in late middle school/early high school, two games made an impression on me. The first was X-Wing: Alliance. XWA was the next space flight sim I played (I hadn't played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter because I rarely had enough money to buy a game, let alone one that felt like games I'd already played before repackaged), and it was a great experience. Because of it I got my second joystick, one with a twist axis (prior to that if I wanted to spin my craft I had to hold down the Ctrl key and waggle the stick along the x axis). But the real significant game for me was one I borrowed from a friend--Descent: Freespace,

Freespace (sub-subtitled The Great War) was really not related to the Descent series at all except in that the developer, Volition, was the same (yes, I know I said Interplay and Parallax above. It gets involved). As the name suggests, Freespace involves flying around freely in space. It clearly took its cues from the aforementioned LucasArts games and the similar Wing Commander games. The space combat mechanics were fairly standard, if excellent in their execution, but the real draw was the story. XWA borrowed from the Star Wars universe, but Freespace wove its own narrative that to this day remains a pinnacle of excellence in game storytelling. The ending is in-freaking-credible and played my adolescent emotions like a hammer dulcimer.

Freespace definitely took the gaming world by storm, and in light of its incredible popularity a sequel was inevitable. A scant year later, Volition produced Freespace 2 (no subtitle, and the Descent reference is conspicuously absent as well). In addition to a slight graphics refresh and improvements to the already laudable gameplay mechanics[1], the story continues from the end of Freespace and honestly remains legendary among those who played the game back in its heyday. The ambiance was also notably altered: there were some missions which were downright creepy. I think the writers knew that they had to work hard to top the poignant ending of Freespace, and to be honest I'm not sure whether they pulled it off. The ending is very solid, and when I beat it I had to immediately reload my save and beat it again just so I could figure out what the crap happened, but it would be hard to end on a stronger note than the first one.

Naturally, I waited in anticipation for Freespace 3. And waited. In the meantime, I continued to enjoy FS2, playing through the campaign again and again, engaging in frustrating multiplayer sessions online hampered by my parents' 56k dialup line, and even downloading new add-on packs from other lovers of the game who made their own missions and campaigns for others to play. But Freespace 3 never came.

It could be argued that the game was never released because of politics or economics or even just bad business, and it certainly could be argued that the Space Flight Simulator genre was a diminishing niche, but personally I think the apparent death of the Freespace series is the reason that the genre became moribund for so long[2] and indeed is still in the doldrums.

Unlike Paul, I cannot claim that I have put away all the childish things I once enjoyed, but flight simulators and especially space flight simulators are one of the things that fell to the wayside[3]. This might change if Volition pulls a Fallout 3 and actually releases another installment in the Freespace series, but it might not--it's hard to regain the magic once it's been lost. When I look back on the things I had to leave behind when I became a functioning member of our so-called adult society, it's games like Freespace that make me the most nostalgic.

[1] The most memorable being the addition of beam cannons to the starships. These served the practical purpose of making capital ship battles take much less time, but the reason it's memorable is because I had a surround-sound system and the sound of an anti-fighter beam coming from behind me will still to this day make me reflexively try and take evasive maneuvers. You really have to play it to believe it.

[2] Yeah, I played X2, one of the X games by Egosoft. It was great, minus the awkwardly-named enemy race, but the controls were terrible. It wasn't a space flight simulator, it was an empire-building game where you happened to be flying around and occasionally shooting things.

[3] Actually, computer games in general pretty much have fallen by the wayside for me.

[bloop]

I'm playing through the DS Dragon Quest IV remake.  So far, I think it flies or sinks based entirely on what a person thinks of very traditional turn-based RPGs.  I'm really liking it a lot.

[Vlad!]

I'm playing through the DS Dragon Quest IV remake.  So far, I think it flies or sinks based entirely on what a person thinks of very traditional turn-based RPGs.  I'm really liking it a lot.

That series has always been about oldschool RPGaming. You know, I've never actually beaten a mainline Dragon Quest game. My brother and I played the first one (released as Dragon Warrior in the US) and I lost interest (but I think he finished it). I played Dragon Quest IV (the SFC version) when I was in college, but I didn't get very far before I again lost interest (my lack of Japanese prowess may have been related to this). I played DQV (again on the SFC) in college and enjoyed it--given that its graphics are circa 1996, I was very pleased to find its game mechanics refreshingly modern. I got to the very end and then finals came so I never beat it and never got back to it afterwards (this happened to me a lot in college). I played DQVII for the PSX and absolutely hated it--I played for about an hour and a half, never got out of that freaking fishing town, and never even got into a battle. I'm sick of these modern games and their really long and boring opening parts before you get to the game proper.

Anyway, my roommate played DQVIII when we were in grad school, and he loved it. It certainly seemed far more than an incremental improvement over DQVII. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to play it (I do own the game, though; it's on my to-play list). When I was on the interview circuit I got a DS and some games to make the plane rides easier. I played Dragon Quest Monsters: Rocket Slime while flying to California and absolutely loved it. I beat that game. I also played Dragon Quest Heroes: joker a while back and enjoyed it as well, Pokemon clone though it may have been. I beat that one too.

I intend to play DQIV at some point (DS games get played a lot faster than console games for me, so I may get to it *before* DQVIII), and I'll be sure to post my (long-winded) thoughts about it here.

[bloop]

"Dragon Quest VIII" was actually my first DQ game I played through, and it's quite a way to start.  I was late to the party for DQ I-IV, and while I wouldn't consider myself any kind of graphics whore, I can't really get into the originals because they are just so dated (I don't think I deal well with graphics predating the SNES-era), or because they are in Japanese or poorly-translated fan treatments.  The DS remakes might be just the remedy for this.

[Vlad!]

Regarding our previous discussion: new DS model?

That feature list sounds plausible. I still maintain that Nintendo in this case would not be making a new DS but rather the DS+1 (the distinction blurs, I realize, but with those improvements a new handheld would be like the GameBoy Color was to the original GameBoy: fully backwards-compatible, but with significant new features that only games released specifically for the new system could take advantage of).

[Ian]

The timing for this article is right, what with the Nintendo conference next week, and TGS two weeks from now.  I don't know that I like the idea of forcing people to upgrade without providing the improvements you'd expect from a new generation of systems (namely graphics), but we'll see how it looks if and when Nintendo reveals it.

[Vlad!]

http://www.ds-x2.com/index.php?id=11892
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54965

I imagine large corporations hate these rumor and speculation sites. All something has to do is be "leaked" from an unknown source, and then someone asks the company about it and they have to respond somehow. Anyway, guess it's been confirmed.

I'm not a big fan of releasing tech that renders games non-backwards-compatible (some games will only be playable on the "camera" DS, for instance) without releasing it as a new product entirely, but for whatever reason they didn't ask me

[bloop]

Nintendo DSi

No biggie, really.

[Vlad!]

Nintendo DSi

No biggie, really.

Hm, that's kind of disappointing. If they're going to release hardware that breaks backwards-compatibility (some games will only work with DSi), they should go the full distance and release a completely new platform.

It's worth noting that the news article linked is pretty weak in terms of features. The DSi has:
* Slightly bigger screens (by a quarter of an inch).
* Two cameras: a decent one on the outside cover and a very low-res one on the inside.
* Improved speakers (I'm not sure *how* they're improved).
* SD card slot.
* No GBA slot.
* Internal storage.
* Built-in web browser (about time the firmware contained something more useful than freaking Pictochat).
* Slightly slimmer than DS Lite.

Speaking as a developer, this really is a poor move. Game devs now have to make the call of "do I support the new features and restrict my market to the few who have this new DS, or do I restrict my feature set and broaden my market to the nearly 80 million people who have bought a DS to date". Many devs will choose the latter, causing the extra features to go unused, further limiting sales of the new model.