Articles by Ryan Gay
MDoggie is a guest columnist, and a better Joust player than you.
From Talking Heads to Downloadable Endings: Modern Console RPG Trends
Although nostalgia will never let us fully admit this, many of the classic RPGs that graced that 8-bit era don’t hold up very well… there I said it. Try to play the original Final Fantasy without biting off most of your own digits in pure frustration, I dare you. It’s not that the stories weren’t worthy of praise, they simply couldn’t sufficiently be done on the technology of the day. Sure, games like Earthbound and Chrono Trigger during the 16-bit era still make for amazing gaming, but it was the technology of the console itself that allowed the game creators to tell their story without limitations; cartridge size allowed for a more complete story to be told, and console processing power allowed for graphics and sound to be more immersive.
These days, the power of our modern consoles has the ability to do amazing things never thought possible even ten years ago. Mass Effect has an amazing and sophisticated dialogue system where the decisions you make affect everything from the cutscenes to the way other characters interact with you. Hell, it even affects the gameplay of the sequel. We’ve come a long way from text boxes, kids. [Read the rest of this article]
Product Tie-in Video Games 101: A Lesson in Love and Paychecks
Good morning class. I’m your, like, instructor today in this important time in video gaming. Unlike your usual university fat cat professors, I’m gonna give you the REAL stuff, ‘cause I’ve been there, man. I’ve seen it all. You can just call me Ryan; I’m cool and informal like that. You can take your shoes off if you want and we’ll, like, rap about this learning thing. Seriously though, if I see you texting to your friends in class, I’m giving out detentions to ALL OF YOU. That’s rude, ya know?
Today we’re going to be discussing one of the biggest money makers for video game studios; Product Tie-ins. They are something that we’ve been accustomed to in video games, and all can form a general consensus when we hear their name said. From E.T. to Chronicles of Riddick, video games based on movies have been around for most of your brief gaming lives. When, though, did they start? Were they always bland and overpriced? We will also be looking at two of the newer movie tie-in games out right now, too, to see if these types of games have bettered themselves through the years – Danny, I’m serious, I will TAKE that phone away. Pay attention. Look at page 87 and we’ll discuss the most important theory in all of movie tie-in video gaming. [Read the rest of this article]
Put the Phone Away: A call to gamers still in the dark ages of handhelds (Part 2)
(Make sure to read Part 1 first!)
Although the PSP is selling wonderfully in many other parts of the world, it has struggled in the US market since its release. It would be hard to call it a failure with the many millions of systems sold stateside, but it definitely has struggled to find an identity in this country. The UMD video discs were a complete disaster for Sony, and the third-party market hasn’t embraced the system as much as it has its rival. With the PSP-Go on the horizon as a download-only system, what will happen to games released on UMD? Sony has announced that its entire back catalog of games will be available to download on the first day of the Go’s release, but it is unclear what third-party games will be ready then. It seems like Sony is setting up an unnecessary fight with itself for the soul of the PSP.
There are, however, enough people I know that have bought the system purely for the ease of playing emulators on it. A portable NES, SNES, and Genesis may be enough for you to buy it; it was for me. Still, emulators are on everything that has a processor these days. I can only play through Earthbound so many times (and it IS a lot of times) before I want to play something original on the machine I’ve bought. The PSP does have enough original games still to think about a purchase. [Read the rest of this article]
Put the Phone Away: A call to gamers still in the dark ages of handhelds (Part 1)
Portable gaming for too many of you out in video game land can be summed up like so: Have you held off on grocery shopping for too long, and only have that expired can of Spaghetti Rings left in the cupboard? (You couldn’t afford the name brand deliciousness of Spaghetti O’s). Bitch all you want about the lousiness of said meal, we both know you are going to eat it, man.
Gamers have a similar predicament when they are away from their home base: they have a gnawing hunger for escapist goodness without a good way of appeasing the hungry gaming monster in their bellies. Too many of you are resigning yourselves to badly-made clones of golden-era games on your tiny little cellphone screens. These games cost too much for what they are, and have thinly veiled titles such as “Bomb Man” to keep away the lawyers. Stop it. With perhaps the exception of Apple’s slutty phone line (it gets touched a LOT), these overpriced multi-taskers are a lousy outlet for gaming. There is no excuse to play java applets when there are such delicious full-course meals being doled out by Sony and Nintendo. Cellphones, call them smart phones if you want, aren’t really designed with a gaming-first mentality. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: "The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena" (Xbox 360)
We last found our hero, Space Vin Diesel, breaking out of a….
Yeah… I have no idea.
You see, I never watched any of the Riddick flicks nor did I ever play the Butcher Bay game from the last console cycle. Let’s be honest, most of you haven’t either. I guess I was too busy being disappointed by The Matrix sequels earlier this decade to have ever bothered with this sci-fi property. Still…
I was minding my own business the other day, see? I’m in my kitchen playing Retro Game Challenge for the DS (Micro-sized Review: BAAAWWWWEESOME!), and there at the door is a package for me. But wait: it gets better. In this package is a FREE VIDEO GAME inside of it… FOR ME!
I smell it a little bit to check for poisonous materials. I poke it to check if it’s some sort of secretly disguised explosive material. Surely this is the terrorists trying to win. Nope, just a video game with a note attached. Maybe someone I moderately care for has a ransom over their head? Wrong again. All they want me to do is give my opinion. A free game for a mere opinion?! You want the guy who, just the other day, was debating with friends which Cereal Mascot would be the best villain in a Mega Man game to sway minds? Buh-okay! I can clackety-clack out some read-a-ma-bobs for the price of a video game ($44.87 according to Wal-Mart’s always low-price guarantee!) [Read the rest of this article]
Review: "Street Fighter IV"
Street Fighter IV, the six-button-mashing cash cow for Capcom is here, and already it’s being hailed as a successful sequel to the franchise by videogame critics.
Growing up during the second “golden era” of videogames, Super Street Fighter II Turbo was one of the Super Nintendo cartridges that nearly every kid on the block had. Each of my friends had their favorite characters, and looking back on the game, it is not too bold to call it a masterpiece. I couldn’t articulate at the time the artful balance the programmers put into it, but it is still amazing how they doled out a fair amount of strength and speed to its over-the-top characters. And who could forget Zangief’s dance with Mikhail Gorbachev at the end? Yes, it even had biting social commentary… or something.
The series itself has become something like the classic rock station that your dad made you listen to while growing up: it’s formulaic, filled with flash, and there may be horrible grammar involved, but dammit, it’s good fun. Street Fighter IV is actually the ga-tillionth version of a Street Fighter game. This is not, as some might think, the first Capcom foray into the pseudo-3D universe of Ryu and Chun-Li. The Street Fighter EX series was produced near the end of last century. Capcom attempted to shore-up fans migrating to new games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. The polygons of the late 90′s had overtaken hand-painted 2D. These EX games were nominally successful, and offered some of the same gameplay features as Street Fighter IV. They, however, weren’t as pretty and finely-tuned as this new model is. [Read the rest of this article]
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