PAX!!

Just a quick update. I just got home from the PAX AUS convention, here in sunny Melbourne! (That's a joke, by the way... it's pouring rain today...)

It was really cool, lots of fun gamey stuff to look at, and my poor 3DS almost had a meltdown with the hundreds of StreetPasses I collected today!

I sat in on a panel with Gabe and Tycho (creators of Penny Arcade, and by extension, PAX) as Gabe drew the newest comic. So cool to watch! It will be up on penny-arcade.com on Monday. Let's just say it features an Australian legend... the "drop bear." (For those of you who have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, it was once funny to tell tourists all these tall tales about dangerous animals we had in Australia. The drop bear is one of those legends.) It was hilarious when one of the guys asking a question at the mike made the point that koalas actually have two thumbs, and Gabe spent a good 5-10 minutes correcting the drop bear's hands, which he had originally drawn as simple teddy-bear hands. A redback spider and a hotdog fairy were also added in at the last minute.

I also got a chance to play some upcoming WiiU games, which was cool. Pikmin 3 was great, although from what I played, pretty much just an HD upgrade to the previous games. Which isn't a bad thing, certainly, but it's not going to set the world on fire with its originality. I'll definitely be grabbing it on its release next week though. My first WiiU game since launch! Huzzah! I played it with the Wiimote and nunckuk, which I found to be a really intuitive control setup in the Wiimakes of the first two games. I'll be interested to try it out with the gamepad as well. I think I'd miss the direct aiming too much.

I also played Super Mario 3D world. I got a chance to play every demo level available, and I played as Mario, Princess and Toad. It should be a lot of fun, but it did get a bit frustrating when one or more characters got left behind and fell off the screen. And to the poor saps who will inevitably play this game with a Wiimote, using the D-pad for this game SUCKS! I hope there is the option to use a classic controller, or at the very least a nunchuk. Think of how irritating the D-pad was in Metroid Other M and you'll get an idea. It just doesn't work for 3D gaming.

Wind Waker HD looks great. But it's Wind Waker. Nothing new here. I'm really looking forward to traversing the seas again later on in the year, but yeah, it's still just The Wind Waker.

So yeah. PAX was cool.

Oh, and how AMAZING was Nintendo, just quietly throwing Earthbound out there on the Virtual Console yesterday? It's only like, 18 years late, but Mother 2 has FINALLY been released in the PAL regions! Huzzah!! Even though I paid through the nose for my cartridge about a year or two ago, I don't mind forking out the extra $13 for the WiiU copy. For one, it has all of the bells-and-whistles, off-TV play, Miiverse, etc. But also, I'm happy to support Nintendo in releasing more obscure foreign titles on the Virtual Console. Seiken Densetsu 3, next Nintendo!!

EPISODE 43.5

Hooray, a new video! ^_^

Enjoy!

Any memories of these games to share?

During the past couple of weeks I played another game which could only be described as "retro" now: Spyro The Dragon. It was on special for about 3 bucks on PSN, so I thought "why not?"

On its initial release I'd only played the first couple of levels, figured out that it wasn't anywhere near as good as Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, and didn't bother with it after that. Now, all these years later, I can appreciate it on its own merits. It's such a calm, relaxed kind of game. There's no urgency, not really much challenge, just the pleasant experience of exploring the worlds and collecting treasures. I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I thought I would. I even played all the way through to the end! The last boss was a PIG, but I persevered and eventually beat the game.

Well done, Insomniac. I know I'm 15 years too late, but that was a good game... well, except for the HORRID camera system, but you know that that sucked, right?

STILL PLAYING...

Hi all. I haven't made the next video yet. (There will be 2 games in the next vid, and I'm halfway through playing the first one, so I'm afraid it won't be uploaded for a while...)

In the meanwhile, have you seen this guy yet? Dude is my HERO. (Love how tolerant his cat is too!) ^_^

I can legitimately walk through a video game store these days and say, "There's nothing here I want to buy." I still have, of course, the big pile-of-shame that needs to be systematically played through. There is a danger to all of this though... I pre-ordered something at EB yesterday... Something that threatens to suck away all available hours of my day...

I spent over 3 years as a citizen of FFXI's Vana'diel, and watching the trailers for the remake of FFXIV, I can't help but get really excited about it. I actually own the original P.C. version, but I honestly didn't get a chance to play it much. My computer is waaaay underpowered for modern-day graphics, even with all the bells and whistles switched off, so I only really tried it out of curiosity. What I played was okay, but not to the same level of enjoyment and immersion as FFXI.

From what I've been hearing, the last couple of years tweaking and redesigning have paid off and FFXIV is pretty darn cool to play now. Looking forward to the end of August! :-)

EPISODE 37.5

Episode 37-and-a-half-a-go-go, baby!

Any memories of these games to share? Here's what I thought of this week's games...

It's absolutely gob-smacking to see how much the Game Boy Mega Man games go for on eBay these days. Have a look at this, as of a-few-minutes-ago...

Don't you wish you had a time machine, so you could go back to the past and tell yourself how much these rare games would eventually become?

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've been playing another retro-ish Game Boy game over the past couple of weeks, Wario Land 2. The game is fantastic! I can't believe I never played it back-in-the-day. I love that there's no deaths, no Game Overs, Wario is actually invincible. That doesn't make the game easy though, some of the later levels are quite tricky. I love it when games developers think outside the box. I've got Wario Land 3 sitting there on my shelf waiting to be played as well. I might play a few more games before diving into that one.

I'm determined to finish up with these "catch-up" episodes in the next few months. I've got an idea for an entirely new blog in 2014, so I want to make sure this one is well-and-truly put to bed. But there's still more games to play! See you next time! :-D

EPISODE 33.5

Feels like it took forever, but here it is, folks!

While the vast majority of games that I've been playing catch-up on are "sitters" (which makes sense, since they were the games that just slipped under the radar first time around) occasionally there's a new gem that slips through, and this week it's Goof Troop. Sure, it's super-short and super-easy, but it's one that I'd be happy to play again, preferably with another player.

It's a shame, I had so much footage of the weird and wacky creatures I evolved into during E.V.O., but I just couldn't fit them all in the video. Oh well.

Even though I dissed Elizabeth and Luigi in the video, I have finished Bioshock Infinite and I'm about 3/4 through Luigi's Mansion 2. Both fantastic games in their own right. I found the over-reliance on shooting highly regrettable in Bioshock, in a very similar manner that I would get frustrated in the Uncharted games, when you're getting involved and immersed in the story and suddenly the game would say, "Stop the story. Now just shoot at people for a few minutes. Survived? Good. Back on with the story." I just feel it could have been so much bigger than it currently is, simply because they feel like they HAVE to make it a shooting game for it to sell well. Disappointing, but the experience of playing it is still worth it. Luigi's a lot of fun too, in a slow-paced, exploration kind of way.

So how about that counter, eh? Incredible!! Thanks for visiting. Feel free to leave a comment and say hi!

BEST DECADE??

Last night on the Good Game T.V. show they discussed three different decades of gaming: the 80s, the 90s and the 00s.

(Click here to view the episode)

Which decade would you give the prize to? While there were definitely classics in the 80s and 00s, my heart's with the 90s. (obviously) ;-p

New episode will hopefully be up in a number of days. Yay!

OH... EM... JEE...!!

This video... just makes me so happy! I haven't been so in love with Capcom than the time when they announced Mega Man 9. My most-wanted game for 2013? Yeah, I think so! :-D