That’s right it’s time for another installment of LocoRoco, one of the most insane games on a hand held since, well I’m not quite sure. I for one, am incredibly excited.

In LocoRoco you take the roll of an incredibly happy go lucky…well blob, for lack of a better term. Via some very innovative controls, (using the L an R keys on your PSP you ’tilt’ the screen to enable yourself to roll around, across and over obstacles.) By chowing down on food scattered through the levels you grow in size and accumulate a form of points.

It’s puzzle platforming done right, though I use the term platforming loosely.

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The soundtrack to a video game is the liver in the body of gaming. And by that I mean when it’s screwed, so is everything else. Perhaps it’s my +10 nostalgia goggles doing their thing, but I remember a day when combat themes didn’t sound exactly like one another, and accomplishment wasn’t signified by the reward, it was the little jingle you heard at the end of battle that let you breathe the long sigh of relief.

Perhaps times have changed, for better or for worse. Audio no longer seems to have a significant place in the majority of games, EA Trax is more hip and appropriate for todays generation. Who needs soft, recognisable melodies when you have hard hitting rock riffs from whatever underground rock music those hipsters appear to be listening to nowadays..

Allow me to jog your memory with something everyone will remember.
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Anyone who regards games as casual or hardcore doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s just about drawing the line with each game. Sure we have lots of babyish games and childish games, but they are just that. Games. Games for different types of people. Let’s take Pokemon as an example. Childish game with adults playing it, fine. However is it casual? No. Is it hardcore? No. What is it? A video game. A video game that can be played casually or on a hardcore level. Any game can be played casually or on a hardcore level. People often don’t understand the true meaning of casual.

From Dictionary.com
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Until the latter part of 2008, one of the biggest gripes with the PS3, aside from its price, was the fact that its game library pailed in comparison to that of the Wii or Xbox 360. With 2008 nearing a close and the fatigued masses finally emerging from beneath a pile of games both exclusive and multiplatform, it is time to look into the future and examine some of the heavy hitting games likely to grace the PS3 in 2009. While this list is by no means all encompassing, it does seek to point out the PS3 exclusives in 2009 that will undoubtedly have you begging for more. It also serves to show the breadth of genre across exclusives.

Heavy Rain – Adventure/Mystery
While the adventure games of old like Carmen Sandiego have seemingly passed into obscurity, The creators of Fahrenheit are looking to bring back the adventure/detective genre into its once fine form. Among this game’s impressive qualities are 60 10-20 minute scenes of dialogue, the ability for the main character to die and keep progressing in the main story line, as well as the pain-staking detail that has gone into creating the game, whether it be in faithful real world creations of city terminals or using random french people as mo-capped facial extra’s in the game. Maybe if we are lucky, Quantic will add a sex scene that isn’t painful to look at either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBlWTd3puAk&feature=related – The Casting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwZ9eCRm1SM&feature=related – Gameplay Footage
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If you weren’t aware, most of the games available on Steam are now on sale. I just picked up Bioshock for $5, Audiosurf for $5, and Everyday Shooter for $9.

Sale ends on January 2nd, so go buy stuff.

There is a popular Dutch gaming magazine I like to read. The reason why I like the magazine so much is because the articles and reviews always feel like they were written with passion, a passion for gaming that is. Some game journalists don’t have a passion for gaming, but for journalism. While their form may be good, their reviews are worthless.

The game magazine I’m talking about gave Super Mario Galaxy a 100. A perfect score. Of course, you don’t hand out a perfect score every day, so the reviewer felt like he had to give his view on the matter.
Here is the (translated) transcript:

“My admiration for this game is based on both objective as subjective grounds. For me the mark 100 is the best mark that can express everything that Galaxy has to offer. I don’t care for crap about perfect games existing or not existing, because you have to assume for this that there is an objective method to measure one’s fun while playing a game, and I don’t, because I’m a practical person. Besides, Super Mario Galaxy is just a perfect game.”

This got me thinking, maybe we are looking at reviews in the wrong way. Too many reviewers look at games as a summation of different factors: graphics, sound, story, etc. But that isn’t what games are about. Games can have an awful story, but still be a lot of fun. The same goes for graphics. Could Super Mario Galaxy have been improved? Yeah, maybe it could’ve had a better story, or maybe the final boss could’ve been better, or maybe less of the music could’ve been MIDIs. But would these improvements make the game more fun? No, they wouldn’t. While an RPG may benefit from a better story, SMG wouldn’t have been more fun to play, and that is what really matters.

Last issue, the magazine gave LittleBigPlanet a perfect 100. The reviewer wrote the following:

“You might be wondering after reading this review why the hell we gave this score of 100 points, but it is exceptionally hard to explain how hard it is to explain this game. The amount of fun we had is hard to put on paper.”

The reviewer then proceeded to try and explain just how much fun they had playing the game. And that’s what games are about, aren’t they? Fun.

And that’s what we should care about in games. Not graphics. Not sound. Not whether it’s bugfree. It’s whether it’s fun or not. If a game has terrible graphics, it can still be fun. If it has some crazy bugs, it can still be fun. If your guns make odd and wacky sounds, the game can still be fun. And fun is what’s important in a hobby.

PC Gamers don’t often take lightly to the idea of any kind of closed platform, naturally, this is what Microsoft appear to be proposing. Games for Windows LIVE, something like STEAM but with a hell of a lot more money behind it.

The idea was first brought to the public’s attention at the same time as the hyped, but ultimately disappointing, DirectX 10. Messenger in and out of game with voice chat, a platform to buy games and downloadable content, topped off with the ability to play cross-platform with Xbox 360 users. We could even keep our fantastic mods if we wanted!

Wait, where have I heard this before?

Oh right, Steam. Been there, done that, and still doing it very well. Perhaps Microsoft saw the success that Valve had accomplished and wanted a piece of the pie, with the stealth update (read: much needed) to the UI of LIVE on the PC and the promise of a standalone client supporting all games coming in weeks time, MS seem to have kicked their idea into overdrive after a long period of stasis. The question now is: will PC Gamers bite?

The main issue is downloadable content. What can be gotten for points (read: money) on the Xbox is usually issued in a patch on PC for free. When it isn’t, it divides the community as most aren’t willing to pay simply for downloadable content, expansion packs are how the PC platform has learned to operate; micro-transactions may be wildly successful in the Asian MMO market, but Western gamers tend to like a more solid approach, and just the mere mention of a micro-transaction will often have gamers spinning their heads in anger.

At the same time, this could bring even more new gamers into the fold; the cost of a gaming PC is rapidly approaching that of a console leaving fewer and fewer reasons not to get a PC, especially for those who want a more complex but more rewarding experience. Perhaps applications like Games for Windows LIVE and Steam are the halfway house between a console and a PC.

Hardcore and casual games. Hardcore and casual gamers. I’ve spent to much time on the Internet to be surprised when I hear it, but almost once in every argument, it get’s dropped.

“It’s a CASUAL game”

A casual game. A game, that is casual in it’s design? In it’s use? In it’s plot or art? What does that mean? What do you THINK you’re saying?

Video games are NOT casual. Nor are they Hardcore. Video games are video games. There is no such thing as a hardcore game and a casual game. There are obscure games, there are popular games, there are simple games, there are complex games, there are pretty games and there are ugly games. But there is no hardcore game, and not a single casual game. They don’t exist. A game cannot be hardcore or casual. A video game can have a target audience, an art style, a plot, no plot, it can have complex controls, it could use a motion sensor, it might even require you to type words to progress, as opposed to ever controlling anything, but none of these choices will ever make it casual or hardcore.

Katamari Damacy is obscure. It’s also colourful, and it’s simple. It’s kooky and straightforward in design. It’s intention is not to appeal any one demographic. It’s intention is to take a risk in game design. Would Katamari Damacy be a hardcore game or a casual game? Both, and neither. It qualifies for either. So how can we even begin to categorize it with a straight face, knowing full well that it would hypocritical and idiotic to do so?

The same goes for all video games. Another example? Grand Theft Auto. Difficult, traditional, risk taking, and immensely popular. How could this seemingly hardcore game still be hardcore if non-gamers play it casually everyday? GTAIV received endless criticism due to it’s popularity, calling it casual and mainstream when in fact it was ONLY mainstream. I am an avid gamer. I own a slew of consoles, I play them all. I own 2 copies of GTAIV, and will be getting the PC version in December. Now, I do not play it that often. I never play it for more then an hour. I play it, casually, you could say. BUT, it is not a casual game and I am not a casual gamer. It is also not a hardcore game. It is an action adventure open world sandbox game. I am a hardcore gamer, or as I like to say, “gaming enthusiast”. My brother is a casual gamer, he doesn’t spend long on a game, except for GTAIV. He plays the game hardcore, because he payed for it and read into it, and invested himself into it.

Catz and Dogz and Horsez are not casual, they are not hardcore, they are shovelware. Katamari is a puzzle game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a party game and Halo is a first person shooter. I own and play all these (with the exception of the shovelware). Famously, on the internet at least, Halo is casual, Katamari is hardcore and casual and Smash Bros. is the epitome of casual. But I’ve played SSBB for at least 100 hours now. How could that be casual playing?

It can’t be, and it’s not. I am a hardcore gamer. People who own Wii’s and play for 40 minutes at most in a day are casual gamers. My friend is a casual gamer, he owns an Xbox 360. My other friend is a hardcore gamer, he only owns a Wii. My brother is a casual gamer, he owns a $1200 gaming PC. How a game could be casual boggles me. Games are not designed like that. Games cannot be casual. It is the GAMER that is casual or hardcore. The gamer plays it their way, invests in it their way, spends as much time in it as they like. There has never been a casual or hardcore game. Only a casual and hardcore gamer. It’s really that simple.

A lot of people who own a Nintendo Wii know the problem. When you first get your Wii, you’re excited. You play the games, you think everything is awesome. You’ll never need another console. The controls are so good, the gameplay is so much fun, you’ll enjoy your Wii forever. Fast-forward to the present, and it’ll probably be collecting dust. Maybe you used it for a couple of hours to play a recent release, like Disaster: Day of Crisis, but then you went back to doing other things. Why is it so hard to keep enjoying your Wii?

The answer is that there are no games on the Wii that you can put a lot of time in. As an example, let us take a look at Metacritic.com’s top 20 list for Wii games. There are 8 games that are strictly single-player, and all of them are quite short. 6 of them are Wiiware (which is quite shaming for big developers, honestly), and the remaining games include Guitar hero, Brawl and Wario ware.

Wario ware? Yes, it’s a fun game if you’ve got some friends over. But will you ever play it for more than an hour? No, you won’t. The same goes for Guitar hero. The only game in the 20 best games that you can put a lot of time in is Brawl. And one game does not make a console.

So what does the Wii need? It needs three things:

Long single-player games

It needs those games that you can just play on your own for hours. Things like long RPGs that take over 80 hours to complete. Things like strategic games that you can just play over and over again. Most games on the Wii take less than 10 hours to complete, and have very little replay value. Games like Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy take a bit longer to complete, but they still aren’t fantastic: And you’re basically done once you’ve collected everything, which shouldn’t take too long either.

Multiplayer

One of the most confusing things is how there are hardly any good multi player games on the Wii. Sure, there’s Wii sports and Wario ware, but I’m talking about those games where you can sit down with your friend and play a co-op campaign, or spend a long time playing against each other. The only game I can even think of that has co-op campaign is Brawl, and the Subspace Emissary is not one of its best modes.

On-line multi player

The way to spend most of your time is, of course, on-line multi player. For some reason, there are only two games with decent on-line play: Again, Brawl, and Pokemon Battle Revolution. However, Brawl is hurt by lag issues, and the settings for random battles are far from optimal. Battle revolution is a lot of fun, but it’s not very addictive.

Luckily, there are some games coming out that will help remedy this. For example, Monster Hunter Tri will have extensive on-line (without friend-codes), and Animal Crossing: City Folk will give you a lot of fun while chopping down trees in your friend’s town.

I think that as long as these wishes are fulfilled, the Wii will stop collecting dust and will instead become a great console. While it’s currently lacking in the games department, it has great potential. Especially if you look at the amazing lineup the Wii has for the next year, it will definitely get better.

"Cost your mother $250 to buy that for you so you can practice your entrance exam (to prison)." Bill Cosby at a gathering on Thursday.

Bill Cosby went on record recently as saying “Grand Theft Auto is an entrance exam for prison.” He said this in Greenwood, Mississippi at a community gathering.  He additionally said “The drug dealer is not in your culture, nor is the prostitute, nor is the glorified pimp if you teach black pride. They have no pride. They don’t know their culture.” That is the long and short of what he said. However, I have been watching some reactions to this, mainly on Game Politics.com (who provided the picture and story). This one irked me quite a bit.

“The people who make ridiculous statements like this have no idea what they are talking about. They just want to find a scapegoat and a catchy statement in order to gain some notoriety. Some have good intentions, but for most, it’s just about the ‘attention’.”

Or, how Kotaku handled the story.

“Cosby was not in fact flacking some new collector’s edition, he was flogging everyone’s favorite scapegoat for everything that troubles society. To be fair, he got off on an angry-old-man rant about hair extensions, sagging pants and lots of other things, too.”

I think we may be reacting the wrong way towards Mr. Cosby’s remarks. It seems that gamers are reacting like NRA members, fearing that whenever anyone makes a criticism towards games or some outspoken individual is making a case against them, we act like they are gonna take them away. But that is far from the issue. If you look at it, Bill Cosby isn’t slamming the game, he’s slamming the parents who are irresponsible enough to allow their children to play this. There are a great number of children who play games not intended for them, and there needs to be more responsibility by parents.

Gamers, too, need to participate. Kotaku is still central figure in game journalism, and they need to use their platform for something other then dismissing critics as crazy old men.  You too, Gamer Blag contributors! This is an enormous opportunity to make our voices heard, so that when there are real crazy old people trying to say games kill children, we can point it out. But at the same time, we need to give validation to those voices who do make real criticisms of games, and the people who play them.

~Zetto