30 Days of Video Games Day 28

My Favorite Developer:

It's a tie, it's gotta be a tie.  I like these two developers for different reasons, so let's hash this out.

First is Valve.  I pretty much told you why I love Valve a couple of days ago when I wrote about the best voice acting I have seen in a game.  But I didn't touch on the polish that Valve gives each game before it is released into the wild.You can watch any video of a game released by Valve to get an idea of just how polished their stuff is.  Of course, this comes with a cost.  Click the link to be taken to a chart of Valve Time.  A little-known fact: Valve works in a temporal vortex which results in their time-stream fluctuating rapidly.  In short: they rarely live up to a release date, even when it's "...any minute now."

We could've had Half-Life 2 in January 2003 if they didn't put so much time into that sweet goatee.

Despite all of this, Valve makes games that tend to amaze players and critics alike, and it makes the wait worth it.  Maybe when I'm 30 we might actually see Half-Life 3 (or to be more realistic, Half-Life 2: Episode 3).

The second developer I would have buttsecks with if that was a thing you could do with developers is Grasshopper Manufacture, headed by Suda 51.  They are the madmen (and ladies, I must remember to not be sexist) responsible for Killer 7, No More Heroes 1 and 2, and most recently, Shadows of the Damned.  I've said a lot about Killer 7, so there is little need for me to go on with that track.  But added to the games I wish I could play are the other three I've listed.  It's amazing when you can get Yahtzee to like a game, and he  sums up the appeal like this: there's nothing like Killer 7 or No More Heroes.  Flawed as the games may be, get them anyway! (he says.)

Travis Touchdown (yes, that's his name) recharging his lightsaber.  Note that he is shaking it up and down near a certain nefarious region on his body.  Very subtle, Grasshopper.

And I agree on that note.  Shadows of the Damned was the game that critics had been waiting for, giving Suda 51 a little bit of leeway with his weirdness in a gameplay setting that makes the game appealing to more than just weirdos like me.  For an example, watch this video.  Great gameplay combined with an 8-year-old's sense of humor?  Sign me up!

30 Days of Video Games Day 23

Game I think had the best graphics or art style:

Zelda: Wind Waker.

The most-posted picture from this game gets another post.

Firstly, this game is very underplayed.  The graphics were a turn-off for most of the people who chose not to play this game, which is a huge disappointment.  This is a definite stand-out game in the Zelda franchise, and I love every minute of it.    It does a great job of continuing the universe of Ocarina of Time, something that a lot of Zelda fans drool over.

And you even got to chase pigs around and catch them!

I really liked the art style, though.  The cartoon art gave the characters a great range of emotion, which was pretty awesome compared to the basically-still faces of OoT and Majora's Mask.  It also gave the game its own identity; it wasn't trying to be OoT.  This new world was not Hyrule.  No Hyrule Field.  No Death Mountain.  The overworld was a massive ocean.  All of that made the King of Red Lions's (the talking ship) secret even more of a surprise.

Wind Waker still, I think, sets the standard for cel-shading.  Part of the reason I'm a fan of the art style is that it's a cure for what I once read as "BROWNANBLOOM," like you see in Gears of War and Call of Duty.  I'm not saying it works for every game, but I really liked it in Wind Waker.

Also Killer 7.

Any excuse to post another picture from this game.

30 Days of Video Games Day 21

Game with the Best Story:

This one's tough.  One of my gut reactions is Portal 2, because it expanded on a world that we knew so little about but wanted so much more from.  And yet I still feel like I can choose a better one.  Amnesia gives me the same reaction, but I haven't played it enough to declare that one the winner.

I think I'm going to have to go with Killer 7 on this one, too.  I loved the characters, and the twisted sense of the world in this game.  The story really kept up with the idea of twisted, too, because that plot is all mixed up.  The world is so convoluted that they released an entire book explaining what the hell happened.

This is your brain on Killer7.

But the game had a kind of flow to it that really fit the atmosphere.  You get the idea that even the Killer 7, probably the greatest team of assassins in that universe, is nothing but a pawn in the face of global politics and Illuminati   The idea of good and evil gets lost in this whirlwind of activity between the US and Japan.  It kind of speaks to the idea that no matter how much you think you know about the world, there's so much that you can decipher through a hundred different lenses that everything has to become new again.

30 Days of Video Games Day 3

Day 3 - A game that is underrated.

I can't think of an underrated game without thinking of Killer 7.  It's a weird game by just about every definition: the story is very off-beat, the main characters (or character?) are strange, the supporting cast is just as odd and the gameplay isn't what anyone expected to happen on a Gamecube.

Are there 8 people in this picture? 2? 1? Twenty? I can't answer wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, that last part is what gave Killer 7 its shaky ratings.  It's an on-rails shooter, like House of the Dead with the ability to turn around and choose routes, but little else in the way of exploration.  One of the most 'apologetic' reviews I read said that Killer 7 would have made an amazing anime, but not as good of a video game.  Half of the points he gave (I think he gave it about a 6 out of 10) were for style.  And that's pretty damn accurate: the game oozes style in all of the right ways.  In the interest of keeping this short, I have this to say about Killer 7: good characters in an offbeat but interesting story can make up for some *airquotes* bad gameplay.

I never found the gameplay bad; I thought it was kind of captivating.  Plus, you get to play as a Luchador in a suit with twin grenade launchers.