Games aren’t that hard anymore, that’s an argument often thrown around these days by many gamers. “Well that’s why they put difficulty settings in!” – is often the retort.

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) (continue reading…)

Here we are again with What Music Means number 2, in which I remix a song, and you pretend to listen.

Seiken Densetsu, or Final Fantasy Adventure, was the first Gameboy game I owned, given to me by a friend of my brother.  I cherished that game, and now it’s gone, lost in one of my many, many moves ’round the continent.  Everything about it was beautiful: The frantic combat, the surprisingly deep story, the lovable characters,  the gorgeous four-colour graphics, but most of all, the music.

Hearing the music on the title screen was even enough tomake my mother hate video games less.  Any time I played my big grey brick, she’d say ‘Arcy, play the one with the turkish music.’

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A game is supposed to be enjoyable. When I play a game, I play it for fun. Even when I go to a tournament and play for money I’m still playing for fun. If playing a game isn’t fun, then you should really put the controller down and pick up what does turn your crank.

That being said,  something that doesn’t always make a game enjoyable is the graphics. Sure, graphics can be nice, especially in a game where it serves a purpose. However, in my time, I have heard far too many people tell me that they wouldn’t play a game simpily because it wasn’t top notch graphics or it didn’t push the hardware of the machine to the max. Why would you wanna do that to your machine?

If a game is fun and has good graphics, that’s great, but what if it’s not the best image capture top notch stuff? Some games look amazing even without the magic of the third dimension. Ever take a look at Cave Story? The game would pass for a SNES game, the gameplay is something that’s involving and fun, and the story, while confusing at first, will have you in tears.  Ever take a look at Sonic the Hedgehog on the PS3 and 360? I’m a huge Sonic fan and this game, while very pretty, was a nightmare to play. Sonic clips through curbs, jumps make him slow to a near stop and a personal killer for me: I can see his feet the entire time. I never ever wanna see Sonic’s feet when he’s running. Ever.
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It is 2006. Several years of inconsistent announcements, numerous delays and a growing association with Duke Nukem Forever indicates that an actual release of Team Fortress 2 is extremely unlikely. Then from out of the blue Gabe Newell (managing director of Valve) thrusts a teaser trailer into our faces confirming that TF2 is indeed on its way. Sporting a venturesome art style with what appeared to be innovative game play, the new look TF2 quickly soared to the top of many “most anticipated” lists. Launching in October of 2007, it became an instant favourite among reviewers, achieving a plethora of awards alongside its partner in success The Orange Box.

As an avid PC gamer, the desire for a new class based multiplayer game was immense. I desperately needed to escape the grenade spamming insta-prone aids festivity that was Battlefield 2. To my delight, and many other likeminded gamers, TF2 delivered just that. Besides the attractive stylized graphics and often comical game play, it shipped with a secret weapon, one which would inevitably be the key to TF2’s ongoing success and development.

Steam, the popular content delivery service functions as the core of TF2, supplying speedy updates and flawless content delivery. Gamer profiles and statistic pages are accessible through a simple yet faultless social network. Hell, you can even browse the web in-game using the Steam overlay. It is undoubtable TF2 would not be as popular as it is on PC today, if it was not for Steam. This is clear when we examine the unfortunate situation our console brethren currently face, which I’ll touch on a little later.

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It is no secret that both gamers and companies like remakes. While gamers like them because of the nostalgia, companies like remakes because of one thing: THEY PRINT MONEY! Cheap to develop, easy to sell, makes gamers happy, and it seems like a perfect plan, right? Wrong.

Pick a game that you want a remake, got it? Now think, you’ve already completed the game at least twice, you defeated the bosses, saved the world, the princess, etc., so why would you want to do it again? There are new games out there waiting for you, new tales, new battles, you see? A remake is never going to be as good as the original, mostly because that it’s not a full remake. (continue reading…)