Video Games

There's a freeware Civilization clone by the name of C-Evo that I've never been particularly interested in, but I recently chanced across their design philosophy. As a bullet point under how the game should focus itself on strategy, they note:

"The fun you'll have playing the game without reading the manual is comparable to the fun it is to move pieces on a chessboard without knowing the rules of chess."

I'm going to have to point out that, in my opinion, this is a pretty lousy paradigm. I learned how to play chess by actually playing the game with my father. "This is the goal of the game. These are how your pieces move. This is what you should be thinking about at this stage." I learned as I went. I didn't read any books on the subject until after I learned how to play, and I did so in order to understand and develop my knowledge of the game's strategy, not to learn how to move pieces around the board.

A game should already know how to "play itself" and should be designed to help the player along in getting their feet wet, if the player so desires. I like have a nice thick manual at hand as much as the next person, but I shouldn't have to read a textbook just to play a video game.

This afternoon I plan to give Super Smash Bros. Melee a much-deserved retirement of sorts. It's not that it will never be played again, I just know it will never get the kind of playtime it once boasted come the morrow with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Thus each character will get one last free-for-all, a "final KO" I suppose, before the disc is ceremonially removed.

Yes, I am too attached to my video game collection, why do you ask? XD

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Nintendo's Fire Emblem strategy game series. When the newest entry, Radiant Dawn for the Wii came out this past Monday, I picked it up as soon as it was availible. Only, there's a problem with it. You're supposed to be able to carry over your completed save data from Path of Radiance for the GameCube for the full Fire Emblem experience. Unfortunantly, if there's any "easy mode" difficulty saves on your save card, then the game crashes, locks up, and causes the Wii to freeze when trying to carry over. Go figure that ALL my completed saves are in easy mode. -_-

Hey, if I would have known you could do this a year ago, I would have saved my normal mode completions! Still waiting on a fix...

Frustrated, I sketched a doodle or two last week to sum up how I feel about the issue:




The two characters are Ike and Sothe from the Fire Emblem games. Ike will be in the next Super Smash Bros. game.

So I'm playing Tales of Legendia, going through the character menu setting everything up for the next leg of the journey when suddenly the game exits out of the menu and Jay starts running around wildly, opening and closing the menu like a madman. "Well, that's got to be the strangest bug I've seen in a long time..." Only, how would a kink in the code cause all that? I continued on as usual only to notice that the battle controls seemed a little sluggish all of a sudden and Jay had this odd desire to jump every now and then even when I wasn't tapping up on the control pad. This was followed by another spasm after a few battles and, finally, in the middle of a battle Jay simply stopped altogether and refused to move. Looking down I noticed that the red "analog" light on the controller was out. It would blink every now and then, but otherwise it appeared to be dead.

I eventually got it to work long enough to finish up what I was doing and then find a save point, but I can't say the news is good. As far as I'm concerned I no longer have a working PS2 controller, thus making my PS2 an expensive paperweight until I can replace it...

In a hurry to finish a page that should have been done yesterday, I tripped over my entire PS1 collection which, ironically enough, I had specifically put there so that it would be out of the way. Suddenly, I could feel and hear the horrible sound of crunching plastic. Oh no!

I quickly set about tallying the damage. (My initial fear was that my brand new PS2 games I got here recently had been the one ruined.) Everything was okay... Except for my copy of Final Fantasy VII! While far from my favorite game in the whole world (or in the series, for that matter), it was (before today) in mint condition and the only PS1 game I ever bought new. The case had been shattered. The discs? Not of them were cracked and they're only a little scratched, but disc two took the worst of it. I'm not sure disc two is going to make it... Later I'll have to see if the PlayStation can even read it. A pity since PS1 games are scarce now days except on EBay. Why couldn't I have stepped on my PS1 Chrono Trigger port instead?

The morale of this story? Meet your deadlines, or your video game collection will get stepped on. -_-

So, I've been playing quite a bit of Advance Wars DS lately. Heh, talk about a game that I've gotten my money's worth out of. Picked it up for $19.95 about a year ago and so far I've racked up about 120 hours of playtime on the thing and I still pick it up reguarly. What can I say? I must be a sucker for anime kids leading modern armies. Awesome strategy game for killing a half hour with. Wish Nintendo would get around to announcing the next game in the series...