Anyway, Sonic games. Yeah yeah, I know. sonic has been REALLY bad lately. And it hurts me deep… but there are good ones. Lemme show yah what ones.

Starting with a newer game:

Sonic and the Black Knight

No, really. I’m not kidding. The concept for this game was HORRIBLE, but the execution is pretty damn good. Sonic is summoned to the land of King Arthur by a cute loli version of Merlin named (surprise!) Merlina and after some delicious chili dog eating, Sonic gets a magic talking sword named “Caliburn”. The action is fast, and the sword allows you to obliterate most enemies without a care in the world. Now, like Secret Rings, there are a few slowdowns. There are points where you have to give villagers rings and there are large enemies that don’t go down in one hit, but everything else in the game is a pretty damn good time. I don’t really recommend it for someone who doesn’t like Sonic, but it’s worth a try even if  you don’t.

Sonic Rush

This is the game where Blaze the Cat was introduced. The story for this game is something like Blaze comes from the negaverse and there are funky Chaos Emerald style gems there as well and Blaze is looking for them… It doesn’t matter much, it’s really not important. This game also introduced something I think all Sonic games need: A boost meter. You can use it to get to speed with a small burst or use it to destroy everything in your path for a short time. It’s filled by rings, doing mid-air tricks or defeating enemies. It’s awesome and EVERY SINGLE SONIC GAME SHOULD HAVE IT FOREVER.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE BEST

Sonic CD

Oh god, this is one of the best Sonic games in my opinion. It brings together some of the best parts of the first three Sonic games, but it adds in cool shit like time travel and some of the most fucking amazing music ever. The level design is amazing, the bosses are challenging and the time travel mechanic gives each level a wonderfully fresh feel. The game has good replayability and looks totally amazing. It’s for the Sega CD, PC and is an unlockable in the Sonic Mega Collection.

And, finally…

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

What happens if you take one of the most critically acclaimed Sonic games, then add the functionality to play as FUCKING KNUCKLES? You get one of the coolest things ever. Ever. This is seriously one of the best things that 16 bits has to offer. Climb shit, swim in the water, get around… You can do it all. You can do it with Sonic 2 as well.

That wraps up this stuff. Sorry about being gone so long, personal shit…

Anyway, I hope that soon I will be able to contribute regularly again!

Till next time!

Jumpluff~

Co-ordination and or timing – and mini-games.

Now I don’t know about you, but back in my day, we were lazy. Our ‘party’ games so to speak were the likes of Madden, Tecmo Bowl, NBA JAM, Blitz, You Don’t Know Jack, Pong and such. (Shh I’m leaving Track N Field out of this one.)

What I mean by this, is they were relatively sedentary games, learn a few button clicks, maybe a little bit of choice quick finger movements, but that was really it. We had buttons dedicated to juke around an opponent, or to dribble between their legs. Long gone are these games and their lazy ire for the lazy video game playing nerd. Now we have the six-axis to flick our controller in various directions to help angle his shot, a guitar with a gyro in it to detect when we are swishing our instrument into the air to ‘rock out’ harder, or a wii-mote to swish around in a graceful ark to do make a hook at a guy’s jaw.

Interactivity makes the game better I’m told. I thought it was pretty interactive when I pushed left and Little mac dodged to the left to enable me to dodge Mike Tyson’s (or Mr. Dream for those more politically correct or for our younger crowd) deathly uppercut and come back in with a few quick jabs of my own.

So then there are the Wii’s waggle games. Little co-ordination of timing, but lots of flipping your nun-chucks around in a pattern to achieve the goal of various mini events. Great concept, problem is the motions rarely seem to actually give a shit about what you’re doing, more that you’re just moving. I’ve played Mario Party 8 and when it told me to swish the wii-mote around in a circle to paddle a boat, simply just swinging it around in whatever direction I wanted worked just as well. I found that all kind of disappointing, as a system and series of games that tried to be the front man for the whole life-like motion concept – it felt rather half-assed.

I hear there’s an attachment coming out eventually that will actually make the wii-mote’s motion more life-like and less sporadic. I’m on the edge of my seat. (/sarcasm)

But then came Dokapon – It’s Mario Party without the mini-games with the addition of an adorably charming RPG in the mix. Yes! Finally! A game I can play with friends and don’t have to worry about scratching up my touch-screen when we’re spazzing out to flick soccer balls in a goal, or something equally as obnoxious.

What I mean is – You have a Kingdom (coincidentally Dokapon Kingdom on the Wii,) ruled by a silly little king who has a daughter. He wants to marry his daughter off to the bravest adventurer in the land – so here come you and some friends (or AI, up to 4 players/AI max.) There are 8 classes to chose from that all have their own stat-gains and abilities and carrying loads or spells available. At it’s core it actually has a pretty acceptable RPG. There are shops to upgrade your gear, monsters to kill to gain experience and get gold. Minimalistic PVP, quests and boss monsters.

Charmingly cartoony graphics give this game a unique feel compared to the seriousness of most current RPG’s

All the players move around on a giant game board map similar to Mario Party’s, with a ‘rolling’ system to move your spaces each turn. Items that enable you to move a specific amount of spaces, or get additional rolls. Spells can be cast against one another to screw with each other’s progress or hamper your health before a big fight.

Generally whoever is richest at the end of the allotted amount of time (Or all the quests have been finished) is the winner.  There are a few quests along the way to help you earn more money (One quest has you retrieving an elixir to cure a town’s poisoned well, another has you rescuing the King’s daughter who wandered off on her own to go on a shopping spree) and rescuing towns from evil monsters adds to your net worth and earns you tax-revenue.

All in all it plays like a Mario Party, but it’s adorable and doesn’t have aggravating mini-games that newcomers would have no idea how to play – thus making it easy for anyone to jump in and play.

Oh, right I knew I forgot something – 4player Wireless one-card support. One of my favorite features about this game is that nobody else needs to have it to play. You can stream it out to 3 of your friends and then can join you for a dumbed-down version of the game (8 weeks long, starting zone and about 12 towns only.) But its nice to see multi-player games that still support this feature on the DS (and just solid multi player games in general) – one of the main reasons I got one in the first place.

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I generally play a game the first time through on Normal, to get a feel of what the developers wanted the average player to see, when I find that it is in fact incredibly easy – I’ll replay it on a harder difficulty (especially when this results in a different ending or extra levels/bonus-dungeons.) Most of my reviews are on a game’s native, default, normal, medium settings of difficulty – because that’s what I expect the developers wanted the average person to play on and it generally seems to be what the average person starts out on (whether or not they finish up on harder ones is another issue all together.) (Such as this preview/review for Fire Emblem)

Along comes Dark Spire, the new DS dungeon-crawler roguelike. Now you may wonder, ‘Leighton – what the hell does that mean?’ Let me inform you — You are gonna get punched in the face and humiliated, potentially your mom will be insulted, as will your gaming honor. Lets take a quick trip down memory lane from the last time we had games like this (Yes I am a huge fan of Etrian Odyssey, yes it is similar, but it’s leagues away from the traditional feel that Dark Spire brings.) Might and Magic 5, Wizardry 3, Bard’s Tale (not that bastard child that was on the PS2,) Eye of the Beholder, Shining in the Darkness and if any of you guys remembered, or played them – pretty much half the games that SSI (Strategic Simulations Inc) did on the Amiga/Commodore/NES/PC.  I’ve probably put 300+ hours into Dungeons and Dragons : Pool of Radiance on the NES, and I’m still nowhere close to being done all the quests.

What does all that have in common? That’s all the 16bit era and prior.

Well along comes Dark Spire and it is here to tell you it is no cartoony joke that’s going to bring modern-day mechanics into an old genre. No, it is going to be that genre. It infarct has an option to PLAY it in 8-bit mode with vector line art – ‘Screw your graphics,’ it says.

I digress, I haven’t even explained what this roguelike dungeon-crawler is. Dark Spire is an RPG, except there is no giant vast scaling world, no cities to explore, no oceans to sail, no convoluted plot lines of love-interests between party members. You are a very forgettable group of adventurers, one of many bands of adventurers, in a bland city that offers the most basic commodities.

Then there’s the dungeon. The dungeon is this massive living thing. That’s what these old dungeon-crawlers are about, a kajillion floors, up, down, around, trap doors, treasure chests, pits, elevators, bands of briggands living on various floors, evil artifacts and ghosts and sorcerers. You are going to get lost more than once.

That’s half the fun and challenge with these games, wandering around, getting lost running low on potions and available spells and praying to the everliving gods that you can find your way out back to town to restock and sleep and get to the training hall to level up.

The other half of that is frustration, stepping on a trap-door, or pitfall or a revolving door or a one-wall secret wall and getting lost while trying to escape the floor you were on. Lost, with a bare minimum map (that does not show your location) hoping you remember which set of twists and turns you took, attempting to flee from battles…and..was that the door we came in through? Battle after battle as you attempt to reach freedom.

That is a dungeon crawler. They are all about number crunching and feeling brave to adventure further than you had before, without knowing what’s up ahead. Dark Spire brings you all this but does it very prettily.

The soundtrack is fantastic – well orchestrated, fitting the mood very well, in fact my copy came with a bonus CD full of the game’s music. I’m listening to it at my desk as we speak, that’s how good it is. Not only that but the graphics are fantastic too – in a style of game that we’ve come to expect to not have graphics at all (See above about the vector-line-art option.)

Which brings me to my original point (and finishes up my point about the art.)

This is your training master. The tutorial level if you will. First thing you do in the game is navigate a mini-dungeon and fight this guy. He hits really really really hard. My first time through he nuked my main tank in one hit on the first round. Training is learning how to die? Yes, it’s preparing you for the realization you will get demolished from time to time (I’m not joking.)

Nostalgia aside, there are two quick things to point out – the downside.

The menu is pretty clunky and a bit of a chore to navigate around at first – the quest screen is for some reason in the same menu as save/load/options. That seems a little ridiculous to me, in my mind it would fit better in with the equipment/spells/stats menu.

Second note – the learning curve. If you are not familiar with having your ass handed to you and figuring out a VERY simple class system (There are only 4 classes and equipment disables abilities of classes it does not agree with – ie: plate mail on a priest or multi-classed priest prevents casting,) as well as general unfamiliarity of not having blatant stat points on weapons (there are no +20 to attack on a sword vs +23 attack on an axe or anything like that,) you might have a bit of a rough start to this game.

Oh right – and saving often. I cannot stress this enough. I played for about 40 minutes my first time, hadn’t thought about saving, got murdered by a wandering group of bandits and had to start all over again, tutorial and all.

If you’re an older gamer like myself, you’ll probably feel right at home with Dark Spire, for people new to the genre – you might glance at it’s odd style of game play and think it’s not for you – give it a shot, you will fall in love with it’s quirky charm and the tension you get from delving too deep into the dungeon…unprepared.

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‘What is this game,’ I hear you ask (through the mysteries of the Internet) out loud? It’s one of the strangest mix-ups of genres I’ve seen to date – Part WarioWare, part Elite Beat Agents, all frustration on your Nintendo DS. Rhythm Heaven brings to the plate over 30 mini-games that are all rhythm based, everything from helping a little cartoon monkey clap along with the beat to a cutesy j-pop (’Japanese Pop’, for those who are unaware) singer to a platoon of dancing ducks following the orders of their ducky drill sergeant. Not that all the games are dancing based, one game has you filling up robots on a factory line who will fly off to do who-knows-what (attack John Conner I assume) and another has you flipping dumplings into a monk’s mouth.

Yeah, I had the same puzzled look on my face too.

However, strange as they may be, they are also incredibly endearing and fun.

To help you through, each level comes with a tutorial teaching you the basic mechanics and whats expected of you for each stage, which have 3 grade levels. Failing a song will get you a little snappy comment about how you did and you’ll be told to try-over. Doing alright will award you a silver-mark for passing (’Just OK’ as they put it) which enables you to move on to the next game and lastly a ‘Superb’ rating on a track gets you a gold-mark and a medal. The number of medals you have unlock additional mini-games inside the in-game ‘cafe’, where you can hang out between levels. Inside you can chat with the waitress (who will compliment you on your perfects) or listen to music you’ve unlocked from the main stages.

The mini-games are lumped into groups of four, where at the end of the four levels you are presented with the ‘Rhythm League’, a mini-game that is a bit of each of the past four you have completed. These levels are a bit harder and really get you on your toes – switching back and forth between the mini-games you’ve just played through in about a 2 minute span gets kind of confusing unless you’re very alert.

A whimsical game for any age as long as you aren’t the type to jam your stylus through your DS, Rhythm Heaven will definitely give you hours of entertainment (at least if you’re the perfectionist type who wants a medal on each song.) If you could care less about the medals (and extra mini-game unlockables,) you’ll blow through this in six hours, maybe seven tops.

A word of warning though, you will want to jam your stylus through the screen on the frog-level.

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• RPGs
• SRPGs
• Fighting games with ludicrous combos
• Badassery(Badassitude?)

(This is not a full and comprehensive list of all things The Reverend Lei loves dearly in life but can be taken as the context of such for this article.)

That said, tri-Ace has come through with another brilliant installment of Valkyrie Profile (Covenant of the Plume,) it’s brilliant and just like..wait a minute no it’s not – It’s an SRPG? That’s right VP-CotP (here on known as Valk – Plume) is an SRPG, with a twist, combo-combat. What I mean by this is that when you initiate combat, it goes into a semi-action based combat, where your characters are no longer bound by turns but can freely attack at their own discretion, (well, your discretion,) assuming you have enough attacks left for that character, or the monster is still in range of their next attack – similar to the prior games.

Now what makes this different over the previous games, your characters do not share one unilateral action bar, each character can make a move on their turn, but assist as many times as possible as long as they are still in range when someone else attacks (whats that? 16 attacks in a turn? Why yes! Thank you), the down side is that the monsters will in fact get a counter attack on each attack your party initiates (keep those tanks alive) and will also be able to do the same to you.

Minor spoiler alert, honestly this is all found in the first fifteen minutes.

In Valk – Plume, you play the..well no not really heroic… role of Wylfred who’s father tragically died on the battlefield and who’s soul was whisked away by the Valkyrie, the Battlemaiden, leaving Wyl’s family to fend for itself – leading to your mother’s madness and your sister’s death. Pretty heavy for the first five minutes I thought. This all leads Wyl down a path of vengeance to seek justice against the Battlemaiden for destroying his home and family. With the aid of the underworld you seek out on your quest for blood and must fuel your blood rage by committing grievous sin, (which you must gain a certain amount of each battle,) that is acquired by two means – Overkill (Remember that?) which is basically doing more damage than your opponent has health, or, sacrificing your teammates.

Now you may think, why in gods green earth would I want to give up my allies? Reason – When you sacrifice them to your Plume (ah, the title makes sense now) they become rampaging murderous monsters with 1000% to all stats for the rest of the battle, then die a soul-sucking death. This can pull you through in a pinch and really save your ass in a boss battle.

Depending on how many of your teammates you decide to sacrifice to your rampage, effects the plot line you recieve, the characters you encounter and the general events of the world around you. With 3 major story endings and 6 mid-game endings, there is plenty of reason to play through over and over. With the combat staying fresh with a variety of character and class types, there’s little reason NOT to do so anyways (I felt bad ignoring some of my characters.)

Will you stop the madness and grief around you? Or will you reap vengeance and slay the Valkyrie. Your choice, at about 12-14 hours for my first play through and about 9-11 for each sequential one, this game will definitely give you your money’s worth.

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Keep up to date with games I’m checking out, import or otherwise and learn about whats new.

This is another game in the series of the Yu-Gi-Oh: World Championship series. I own both 2006 and 2008, having gotten all cards on 2008 and having played a lot of 2006. And again, this game is fun, because I love the Yugioh card game. There’s so much variety, and because every release includes a whole bunch of new cards, it’s worth playing them every year.

This time, it’s not about the Yugioh GX like 08 was, but about Yugioh 5D’s, the new series. The game has a whole lot of new cards, including synchros (which were recently added to the game, it’s an entirely new game mechanic) and they even included something else.

Dueling on a motorbike. That’s right. In Yugioh 5D’s, they duel on motorbikes. It takes a while before you can finally do them (almost the end of the game), but they’re great. They solve one of the big problems in the Yugioh game: Powerful spells that can turn around the entire game. In Turbo duels, both players gain Speed counters every turn, and all spells either require a cost speed counters or simply have a requirement of having a number of them. This means that you can have very powerful spells that are not even overpowered. Remember Raigeki? In Turbo duels, it costs 12 speed counters to use them. That means you have to wait for at least 6 turns without using any other spells.

But actually, this is not what I wanted to make this blog about. Sure, the game is great, but they made some really, really terrible design decisions.

One of the problems is that your starter deck sucks, as usual. The problem this time is that it actually contains some really good cards, but it’s just a mess. There’s no strategy to be found anywhere. So while it’s possible to win with it, it will be hard.

Especially considering your opponents. Random opponents you can find on the streets in the story mode have really, really good decks compared to your starter deck. I don’t mind the challenge as a veteran, but any newcomer will hate it.

Another problem is that they introduced racing. That’s right, racing in a card game. There are times when you have to complete a lap in a certain amount of time, or escape from the cops. The racing is easy, but it’s so easy  to screw up. And if you want to improve your bike? You’ll have to pass up on getting new cards and pay for new parts.

But the worst of all? They included a stealth segment. A stealth segment where the guards have a huge line of sight and a huge radius around them that you can’t enter or you’re caught. And the worst part? It’s timed.

This part alone is so extremely frustrating that it’s unbelievable. You have to avoid guards that you cannot even see. Because their line of sight is as big as your entire screen.

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's match commentator

The game has some really bad design decisions, but also some good ones. Ever wanted to have a yugioh match where this guy was providing comments? Hell yeah! It’s great!

You see, I wouldn’t consider myself a sadist, and it’s not even that I don’t like replaying games– I love to, especially with a “New Game+” option. I just don’t like the idea that all the strategies and plans and skills I’ve devised and employed could soon become redundant just by replaying the game on harder. This is why FE shocked me so much.

I’m sure if you’ve found this blog you’re aware Nintendo currently is wearing it’s casual gaming hat. Easy games aimed at your mother and your sister are being developed faster than Fanfiction can be written which is much to the chagrin of us more hardcore gamers. I’m sure you’re wondering whether I’ll get to the point by now, so here it is.

Do you see this on the left? This is the menu I was presented with. After choosing hard mode. That’s right kids, FIVE variations of Hard mode. Now, I want the full experience first time, so I chose Merciless (which will here-on out be referred to as h5). Little did I know, Nintendo are actually capable of making a difficult game. I begun playing it like Advance Wars. Moving the archer behind the meatshield etc ready for them to hit the meatshield so I could strike with him and the archer back. This was my first mistake.

This game, is not Advance Wars. This game, on h5 is the mother of all hardcore SRPGs. The first soldier came, and SWAM AROUND my meatshield, and double attacked my archer. He was dead. I was on a IRC network at the time, and I had asked if I just suck or this really is that hard, I was informed that I did not suck, and my archer would be dead. Permanently. After the battle, he was not going to be magically revived. He was dead forever because of a mistake I made. I was also informed that this happens even on NORMAL difficulty.

At first, I was shocked and confused that such a thing could take place. I was angry at myself for not knowing that Gordin had met his fate so soon. I pressed the suspend button and restarted the battle. Clearly, Nintendo knew that if you choose Hard, you’re going to lose. As a result, all cutscenes can be skipped by pressing start making the time from quitting the FIRST battle to restarting it about 5 seconds long. Over a period of 24 battles, I devised strategies, formations, tactics all of which after every loss only made me more formidable. Soon I knew exactly what the AI would do if I moved Shiida into a certain square and lured them into the southern sea. I knew exactly who to rotate onto the fort and when to minimise downtime and maximise healing potential. Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, these strategies only cover the first 10 or so moves of the first battle. But I didn’t care. Onward I proceeded losing time and time again until it was me and the boss. Thankfully the Boss is incapable of movement (probably because if he did I could capture the throne and win the map.) and can only attack directly above, below and to the left and right. I set everyone who could hold a ranged weapon to hold one and after about 20 turns of misses and hits and regeneration, I got him to the point where Marth could run in and take the final slash, deciding the battle.

Marth ran in, sword in hand with the hopes of the entire company resting upon his caped shoulders. He swung and nay- it was not to be. The pirate leader evaded the attack and proceeded to kill Marth. Ending the mission. Six hours of effort and planning and failure, only to result in more failure. But I could feel the game overtaking me. It was a good pain. Eight battles later I had made it to the boss yet again, with only one loss (I’m sorry Shiida, I miss you and your winged horse but you were not strong enough for my army.) And finally..

Gazzak was slain, by no less than the brave warrior Cain.

The battle was over and I had felt a sense of accomplishment akin to that of finishing an entire game. When I realised that was the OPENING battle of the game. I smiled to myself, saved the game and went to bed.

Get it, and get it now.

To basically get the Pokémon all you have to do is:

1. Go to your local Toys R Us
2. Whip out your Nintendo DS around the video game section
3. Boot up Pokémon Diamond/Pearl
4. At the main menu there should be an option for “Mystery Gift”
5. Go into the Mystery Gift section and select “Receive Gift” via Wireless
6. At this point you should get a gift/card with Regigigas and choose to accept it. You might not be able to accept it if you already have too many cards so just throw one away as I’m sure already claimed that gift.
7. After all that, load up it up and go to any Pokémart and you’ll see a man next to the register who will give you your Regigigas and that’s it.

Don’t worry if you forgot all these hard instructions as there usually a poster in the video game section of the store that explains how to get it. Since it’s all wireless, you can avoid contact with all the kiddies, or you can beat them with your elite team of perfect EV trained Pokémon if you really want to.

So Pokémon fans venture out into the Sun to collect your Regigigas, after all, a little breath of fresh air never killed anyone.

source

N is an indie computer game developed by Metanet Software. It’s 100% free, and for a free game, it packs a hell of a lot of content. The levels are each unique and challenging and what I truley love about this title is that it’s just pure platforming. No storyline, no background story, no cutscenes, no bullshit. Just pure running and jumping.

So you play a ninja, or ninja shaped man-person, and your goal is to get to the exit door. Sounds easy enough right? Well now throw in some switches and buttons and some frustrating enemies, and hey, you have N. The enemies are very well designed, and well suited for each level, and the challenge each enemy offers is unique and often times frustrating. You have: Automated Robots, Lock-on Robots, Lock-on Missiles, Targeting Lasers, Snipers, Steel Thwomps, and Sliding Rocks. All of these can kill you, and you can’t do a damn thing about it except dodge and run. That’s what makes N unique from other platforming games, in most games you have the option to eliminate enemies, in N you must run to survive. Oh yeah, don’t forget the landmines, sit there waiting for you to fall or jump into them.

The levels range from a piece of pie, to a walk through the bowels of hell, and I wish I was kidding, some of the levels are so timed that it may take you 100 or more times to beat that single stage. Despite the complexity of some parts, each level is well designed in the way that it’s completely beatable, and it’s open to be beaten as you like. You wanna be that risky mofo that runs toward danger? That’s fine, you’ll still find a way to beat the level. You wanna be the cautious kid that takes it slow and logically? That’s fine too, you’ll probably do better than the risky mofo.

Top off all this platforming with some user-based content, and you’ve got yourself an A+ game. That’s right, you can access other people’s levels and play extra levels just for sheer fun. There is a huge range of levels to play, and level types range from ridiculously difficult, to do nothing to win, to even art created with blocks.

If you want to take N a bit farther, or you want more platforming goodness, there is also N+, available for the PSP, DS, and the XBL marketplace. With N+ you get portability to platform in the game, while you platform in real life, and more original content. Though N+ is not free, the game completely deserves it’s price. Either way, if you enjoy platforming, N or N+ should definitely be one of the titles you check out.

I had been aiming to write something like this but found some of the key points I’d touch on already addressed in Alex’s “A Second Video Game Crash?” I suppose I’ve got enough to say that makes it worthy of its own article so without further ado; here is my take on what’s happening in the game industry…TODAY.

While I may not be some sort of untouchable, game industry guru, I, like many of you, carry within me a passion for video games that burns so strongly we believe it can guide us through the stagnant and uncertain time our hobby faces.

The Wii is plagued with shovelware so abundant that some would try and use it to define the system. Microsoft and Sony have been practically offering the same thing they have been for the past few years and while this may not sound like a bad thing to some people, those that have developed the insight to think ahead will see the problem with this sort of planning.

I’m going to focus on matter of the Wii before I address the potential folly of Microsoft and Sony. The Wii has been a ridiculous success. With the least amount of graphical prowess it has become the best selling console, like the PS2 was last generation, and sold so well that Nintendo can even boast that Wii Sports has sold even more than the original Super Mario Bros. On this silver cloud of new exciting things is a dark lining of reluctant publishers and confused developers that are not only unsure how to approach the Wii but don’t seem to understand the audience that have carried it to victory.

I’m talking about the casual market. Casual games are designed to be simple, enjoyable and easy to pick up and put down. A casual gamer isn’t likely to be parked somewhere for hours at a time playing a game. That is not casually gaming. As Nintendo hacked away at the brambles and lay down the ground work of a road that seem to pave itself with money developers misinterpreted “casual” as “childish” or “mini games”. They made the mistake of trying to copy something they did not understand. Brain Age is not marketed as a childrens’ game (yes, it’s on the DS but it’s part of the Touch Generation) but we’ve got plenty of Brain Age knock offs because developers think that by picking and choosing the features and ideas that seem to work they can put it all together in an easy to sell package.

This idea has slowly choked our industry and cursed us to sequels. For years, game companies have gone back and forth, taking ideas from each other, improving them incrementally and combining other ideas just to edge out the other. This habit of heavy “recycling” has become common practice for the game industry now. To better understand the situation you can think of this as a doctor treating symptoms, or identifying characteristics of profitable games, when he or she hasn’t made the effort to diagnose the illness, or what really makes the profitable games good. Publishers impeded by fear of risk or driven by greed, rape ideas that work until the beauty and wonder has vanished and all that is left is a shallow experience. Look no further then Activision’s Guitar Hero series to see what I mean. I’d go in detail about Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but that’s probably an article of its own for another time. Make no mistake about it though, Gentle Reader, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are casual games.

With everyone eager to get a piece of that casual pie, buggy shovelware games that are much smaller, cheaper and easier to program (I’ve seen some that were literally made in Flash) than your standard epic adventure are congesting stores and making plenty because there are now MORE uninformed people buying games. The Wii has been saddled with the burden of the most popular console and carries on its back an even larger stock of shovelware fueled by an even bigger and more profitable game industry than the PS2 had seen. Game publishers holding the purse strings might see Wii Sports or Brain Age clones going out by the truck full, as easy money only a fool (or an altruistic gamer) would turn down.

Amongst the shameful pile of ill conceived games that litter the Wii shelves are jewels we must mine and spread word of if we hope to see things change for the little white box. We can hope that developers will eventually do more but if you must do more than hope (And you should) speak with your money. If you feel your purchases aren’t speaking loud enough, then you can carry it farther and inform those that walk into game aisles confused and lost. Even if it’s as little as telling someone that not all developers put out great titles, it is a step in the right direction.

It is my opinion that there is three ways this surge in casual gamers is going to end. They are going to forget and stop playing (as a casual it’s not that big a deal to them), they might keep playing and inject a steady flow of money into the industry that outlives us but eventually dissipates or they will become deeper invested in video games. In the third scenario, they become us. They may find joy in playing video games and adapt the ability to think resourcefully and manipulate their controls to learn more complex skills. I have a hard time seeing the second scenario coming to be and believe it will either be the first or second.

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