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Save the Arcades 2!

27th May 2010

Originally linked to me from Wil Wheaton’s twitter, I followed the path to Ground Kontrol’s blog to find a challenge of gaming high score proportions.  Set yourself up an account and donate your high scores to the classic arcade of your choice.  Ideally all of us in Portland, OR would hope that it goes towards Ground Kontrol, but the ultimate choice is yours.

For those of us whom grew up in the arcade era, it has been a tear at the childhood heartstrings every time we saw one close.  Now they are a rare endangered species, being fiercely guarded by video arcade conversationalists.  If you enjoy local nickel arcades, being a pinball wizard, or fantasize about putting your quarters up on the screen for the next turn at the cabinet, please do your part and play the Stride sponsored game above.  This will give at least one arcade the strength to continue the good fight.

–ben

UPDATE 6/18/2010: Ground Kontrol won the challenge, with almost double the points of the other two arcades combined for a prize of $25k!  While this makes me happy for Ground Kontrol, it is also bittersweet, knowing that two other arcades didn’t get the funds to do something exciting to keep themselves alive.  Cheers to Stride for this awesome contest.  Support your local arcade, it is indeed an endangered species!

Happy 30th Pac Man!

21st May 2010

Well it certainly boggles the mind, the classic game of Pac Man turns 30 today.  Being one who grew up playing Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, etc in the arcades I can’t believe we are already at this point.  I want to start singing “Who knows…where the time goes…” but I digress.  Amazingly, I am also wearing my Atari shirt today.  Wrong brand, but at least right era.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary today our good friends at Google have changed their logo to a modified version of Pac Man.  The epicness of this is that the logo is actually playable after you press “Insert Coin” under the search bar.  There goes the rest of my day…

Happy birthday Pac Man!  You have been a good friend over the years.

Love,

– ben
UPDATE:  You can still play the logo, forevermore: http://www.google.com/pacman/

It’s been years.  I have put off buying a Wii for years.  However it appears that I strung the family on long enough with the Gamecube and Xbox 360.  It finally happened, we bought a Wii over spring break.  Best Buy had a good deal that weekend, and I was able to get the Wii system with a free copy of Wii Sports Resort that game with the Motion Plus adapter in it (two months later, this is now the standard bundle, but at least I didn’t over-pay). Then of course I picked up Wii Play as the second controller.  We quickly realized that this console is a hardware buying nightmare, in comparison to others I had bought in the past.  With a family of 5, having the maximum amount of controllers is key.  After limping along for several weeks I was able to snag two more wiimotes and three nunchucks off the local Craigslist, and some non-branded Motion Plus adapters off DealExtreme.

But really, the focus is the games.  Now we all know the Wii isn’t any kind of modern technical marvel.  In fact, the core system is hardly more powerful than the Gamecube that came before it.  Where the Wii shines is gameplay.  Getting a crowd of people together all waggling towards a common goal or duking it out against each other is what makes this console interactive and fun.  Let’s get to the games, and more specifically, the ones I feel are worth a play.

Many of the games that come out for the Wii are trash.  A hasty flash game port or another random collection of mini games, they feel tired, unoriginal, lame and a waste of money.  Overall, the first party games from Nintendo are usually a safe bet, but even these are often just upgrades from a Gamecube version, which is often an upgrade from an N64 version.  It takes time to find the jewels in the pile of waste.  Below is my quick list and a summary of each game that I have found reasonably entertaining.

Wii Play – I don’t recommend this for the games it includes at the full retail price.  Even my kids lost interest in them after a while, but it’s a great way to get a second controller and add a few extra mini games to your collection.  You are going to buy that controller anyway.  Cow racing only goes so far.

Animal Crossing City Folk – My kids have always gone crazy for this series.  Granted, the core game has hardly changed since it came out on the N64, however it is a very engaging game for children.  The kids have spent countless hours doing little tasks around their town, decorating their home, sending messages between each other.  I’d recommend it for 12 and under.

Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility – This game has some elements that are similar to Animal Crossing, but with much more depth.  You can choose to farm, go mining, enter contests at the local fair, do tasks around your town and even foster a relationship and get married.  This is the game that took over for my kids after Animal Crossing waned for their attention.

Boom Blox/Boom Blox Bash Party – Personally, I love this game.  It is very accessible to all ages.  For the most part, you are throwing things at Jenga like blocks or trying to pull pieces out of stacks without toppling the whole bunch.  It is a very creative game and secretly teaches you physics while you play it.  Great for hours of fun, I even play it with my wife.

Mario Party 8 – The next iteration of a long line of Mario Party games.  It’s basically going to be the same collection of mini games with new faces on them and lots more motion control than previous generations.  If you don’t have a Gamecube copy laying around to play, this is always a good game to pick up for group festivities.  Playing this game by yourself wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Mario Kart – Though it really isn’t that much different from the prior version on the Gamecube, it does have motion control.  You remember back in the day when you would turn the controller while playing a driving game, though it didn’t help you?  Now it will.  Fun party action with 4 players, and a grand opportunity for smack talk.

eXcite Truck – Like eXcite Bike and other eXciting games previously, this game pits you in a truck for all kinds of wild racing, truck jumping and other such trials.  A nice break from the endless mini game collections.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii – For those of us who grew up in the NES era, this might feel like old hat.  However, this is a fairly good remake of the original SMB side scroller from the 80′s.  Extending the game that was remade for the DS, this variation now adds 4 player co-op for better or worse.  Sometimes your partners can be a help, but often they can be in your way and push you into that pit of lava or steal your mushrooms.  Hard feelings or not, it is still a blast now that it is no longer just a single player experience.

Wii Fit – Yes, sometimes we need to stay a bit more active.  I was actually surprised to work up a light sweat the first night I played this with my wife.  Though a lot of the activities are centered around keeping your balance, they do try and keep the fun in making you stay active.  Wii Fit Plus adds the one thing that the original lacks, the ability to create a playlist of activities that you can string in a row.  One of the pet peeves of the first one is you spend a lot of time in menus before doing an activity that only lasts 1-3 minutes.

Wii Sports Resort – Usually a great way to pick up a motion plus adapter (much better accuracy, why didn’t they build them this way from the beginning?), this set of games can easily stand on its own.  As an upgrade to the Wii Sports that comes with the console, the mini games within this package are varied and multi leveled.  From disc golf to bicycling to kayaking, it has kept us entertained for many many many hours.  The downside for multiplayer is that every player MUST have a motion plus adapter to play, otherwise it won’t let you join.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 – Also usually bundled with a motion plus adapter, this game with the improved accuracy of motion plus, makes you feel like you are really playing the game.  As much as a wiimote in your hand can feel like the real thing at least.  Character customization is great, and the gameplay has a lot of longevity in it.  The bonus feature on the Wii version of this game is that it includes multiple disc golf courses on it.  Bring a disc golf player myself, this is added draw, though there have been complaints that the disc golf in Wii Sports Resort runs with a better feeling of weight in the physics of the game.

Lego (anything) – Very popular on almost all platforms, the Lego series provides hours of adventure and exploration in the various licensed worlds (Indiana Jones, Batman, Star Wars).  If you have someone interested in any of the licensed worlds that Lego brings to their games, the fun is sure to follow.

So there you have it, my pick of games that we have enjoyed or will soon enjoy once I trade for them on Goozex or some such.  Feel free to leave your personal favorite in the comments section.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

borderlands-box-artIn the past, I never would have picked up an RPG (Role Playing Game for those not in the know, and if so, why are you reading this?).  The mere mention of them gave me impressions of turn based action sequences, painful management of inventory, and killing spiders for 20 hours to level up.  Recently, publishers and game designers have switched it up a bit, making RPGs less of a painful grind and bringing back the fun.  Mass Effect was the game that got me interested in RPGs again.  The inventory management was pretty easy, the action felt more like a shooter with squad based strategy elements, and the storyline kept you captivated.  From there I went a little more hardcore, and blew untold hours on crafting a paradise in the wasteland of Fallout 3.  Then, from out of nowhere came a game I had heard about in passing several times but never gave it any thought.  A new IP called Borderlands.  Suddenly, days after it came out I was working out a plan to acquire it.

Borderlands for me had all the elements I was looking for in an RPG.  The art direction was cell shaded, which I enjoyed in Crackdown and Robotech Battlecry.  This artistic style gave it a unique look that was easily recognizable whenever you saw a screen shot up.  Battles were action based and didn’t require a lot of setup beforehand.  Inventory management was fairly minimal.  All of these elements were only made better for me given the fact that online co-op was also available, though limited to a 4 player raid.  More on all of these points below.

1-borderlands3-fullThe premise of the game is that you have landed on the world of Pandora, to search for alien treasures hidden somewhere on the planet’s surface (no, this isn’t Avatar).  The planet itself looks like you’ve landed somewhere in New Mexico, with nothing but scrub and junkyard towns scattered about the dusty plains.  The junkyard towns are usually where you get your quests and have the supply depots in them, where sharky businessmen make their living off the fortune seeking quest followers.  Cell shading lends to thicker outlines around objects, while textures insides of the cells are still reasonable.  If you have played Crackdown you are familiar with the style.  At first it feels almost cartoony, however once the action starts you will feel it is anything but.  Textures themselves are of a industry standard detail, nothing over the top.  Occasionally when you warp into a new part of the world, the textures can take a while to pop in, though it isn’t usually that distracting as you are already rushing to replenish your stores at the closest vending machine.

Action in Borderlands is often intense and keeps your interest.  The intensity increases when you co-op up to three other friends, as both the levels and the quantities of the enemies you are fighting explode to manic proportions.  Even exploring the world and grinding I still found exciting enough to keep playing it on and on.  As you progress through the game, the enemies level up with you.  Each enemy you destroy will give you experience points, that ultimately help you become more powerful.  They also often drop items, such as ammo, weapons, health vials, etc.  Lot more on weapons later.  The interesting item in regards to the level of enemies is when you go back to an earlier area you can literally mow everyone down with little resistance.  The caveat of going back to lower levels, though it does make you feel god-like, is you get almost no experience for anything you take down.

Borderlands Weapon StatsWhen leveling up, you find yourself with access to new skills and abilities.  There are 4 classes you can play as:  tank, sniper, soldier and assassin.  Each one has it’s own set of three major branches of a skill tree that unlock unique abilities for that class.  As you gain levels, you are given points to deposit into skills in the tree, leaving your character customization options fairly open.  I chose to take the assassin route, and by the end of the main quest line had quite a stealthy bad-ass whom could take on her fair share of enemy raiders.

Which brings us to weapons.  Some have described Borderlands as a gun nut’s orgy.  There are an almost unlimited amount of gun combination available in the game.  You have your basic classes such as SMG, machine gun, sniper, rocket, etc.  However, for each one of those classes you have level of weapon and a series of modifiers available for each one.  These modifiers can be something simple like a 2x reload rate, or more extreme like 4x fire damage for a certain amount of seconds after the target is hit.  Though inventory management isn’t that difficult in this game, you can spend a bit of time after a battle looting what the dead left behind, always searching for the perfect gun.  Ammo slots can be upgraded as well, and once you are half way though the quest line running out of ammo really wasn’t a big deal.  A nice feature is you can collect everything off the battlefield, then take it into a local town or vending machine and cash it all out.

BorderlandsCrewThe quests given to you in towns and people you meet out in the wasteland are varied.  It can be something simple like collecting and item and bringing it back, or the more extreme of finding pieces of an ancient artifact to help the storyline along.  All quests can be done solo or with your friends.  Once completed, everyone in the party gets the experience from the quest.  Vehicles are available within the first hour of the game, which further facilitates exploring and movement on the very large map.  Their armaments and speed mix it up a bit in what would be a boring quest or a lot of walking.

Borderlands shines the most when played co-op.  Gearbox did include 2 player split screen, though it is hard to see the menus in each half of the screen when you are trying to do inventory management and the like.  The ultimate best way to play this game is online with three other people.  Nothing beats the experience of trying to flank a horde of baddies with your party, communicating to each other over voice chat, and completing a quest together.  For best results, everyone in the party should try and be a different class, but even when there are duplicates the game gracefully takes it in stride and sends just the right amount of challenge your way.

borderlands_fireThe developers at Gearbox really knew how to breathe extended life into this game.  Not only can you do a second playthrough with your same character, but the amount of DLC they have release has been substantial.  They have released several major DLC packs for Borderlands to date, and they are still planning more.  The latest iteration, General Knox, adds a whole new realm to the universe, with fresh weapons, vehicles and enemies.  The last game in the recent past I have seen that provided such a steady flow of DLC for a game has been Burnout Paradise.  It is great to see that some developers are finally extending a game with added content, verses just popping out another sequel once a year (I’m looking at YOU EA).

Overall this game has been a great experience.  It took about 30-35 hours for me to do the first play through.  I still have plans to play it a lot more as soon as I can finally make it through Mass Effect 2.  The constant approachability of Borderlands and the amazing fun of playing it online has been keeping it off my Goozex queue, even though I have already finished it once.   I’ll see you in the Borderlands.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

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