Adventure games figured out a gameplay formula that worked and pretty much stuck with it. As gamers became accustomed to faster and more engaging games, many from genres that repurposed adventure game attributes for their own means, the genre failed to adapt and instead died. Well, not entirely. Some came out once in a while, then Telltale started to make the genre popular again, and now with indie titles and Double Fine’s Kickstarter experiment, they’re finally entering the mainstream once more. So it’s more like adventure games were in a coma. READ MORE
It’s finally happening once again. PAX East is upon us as it comes every year, and yet each is always more exciting than the last. My buddy Tom, some members of my sketch group and I will all be skulking around the floor looking for deals on games and screwing around and maybe meeting you! I want to get to know each and every one of you who’s coming to PAX East this week. I mean it, if you’ve ever spent any time on Snackbar I owe you at the very least a hearty handshake or a big manly hug. So be sure to tweet at me and let me know you’re on the floor. READ MORE
I use the Internet, but I don’t have all day to be surfin’ around looking for news and things on different websites. Reddit serves as a great aggregator for everything related to my interests. I just tell it I like things like ‘board games’ and it will give me all the Internets about board games.
So naturally, most of my feed is dominated by video game posts as I subscribe to several gaming-related subreddits like /r/Games, /r/RetroGameSwap and /r/GameCollecting. But by virtue of the sheer bulk of information posted to Reddit, patterns will emerge. Eventually you start to see the same old crap again and again and again. Here are a few I’m particularly tired of. READ MORE
PAX East is finally rearing its head once again, and I could not be more excited. Some members of my sketch group and I will be tooling around on the con floor shooting goofy stuff while I’m not covering the show for Snackbar. But even with all that screwing about and mischief-making, I’ll be setting aside time to see as many panels as I can. The panel schedule has been released, and we can all start laying out our plans for maximum con enjoyment, but there are so many! So I thought I’d let you know about a few of the panels you absolutely should check out at the show. READ MORE
Some series just have bad luck. Even though there were three fantastic releases in the Ys series over the past couple years, people will always remember the poorly-translated version of one of the worst games in the series on the SNES when they think of the title keeping them from picking up a new one. Few third-party companies supported the Dreamcast because of Sega’s irresponsible treatment of their audience with the Genesis’s unnecessary add-ons and pulling support of their own console, the Saturn. But at least they got a chance. READ MORE
Despite being one of the most popular franchises of this generation, Mass Effect had managed to completely elude me until recently. My cultural blindspots have always been staggering. I’ve yet to play more than two hours of the Assassin’s Creed series, I never saw Citizen Kane and I have no idea who Skrillex is. But this one just made no sense. I love Star Trek and, for that matter, any sci-fi/fantasy property with an expansive and lively universe, so Mass Effect should be a no-brainer for me. And once I got into Mass Effect 2 a few weeks ago, it was. I absolutely loved the game. READ MORE
Advertising can make or break a product. A bad commercial can kill a new game release. Namco’s recent debacle of an ad campaign for Soul Calibur V has managed to alienate and make a large part of their fanbase uncomfortable. This is piled onto criticism that their characters have been oversexed more and more with each iteration in the SC franchise. Or you may remember PSP’s “cheese you can listen to outside” era in advertising. Or the racist billboards they put up in Europe. Or that annoying kid from Role Models. On the contrary, a good ad can really excite prospective players and encourage them to plop down their hard-earned cash on a title. READ MORE
There are many ways in which my brain and personality resemble that of a child, but moreso than any is the way I love the things I love. If something manages to capture the attention of my cold and cynical heart for more than a second, there must be something special about it. This happens so rarely that when I truly enjoy something, I just go whole hog. I’ll snatch up the merchandise, play all the games in its canon and wear my love for it proudly on a t-shirt for the world to see. No franchise in history has been more able to engulf my life in this way than Pokemon. READ MORE
Video game nostalgia is an odd phenomenon. It makes us hang on to outdated technology, spend hours upon hours sewing scarves and hats adorned with the heroes of our youth and get into heated arguments about which entry in a series is better (rather than agree that they’re both pretty great). But rarely does it lead to anything productive. READ MORE
Time for another edition of Why haven’t you played this?, the portion of Jay Button where I make you feel guilty for no reason. When games successfully made the jump from 16 to 32-bit era with the PlayStation many new ideas were thrown out of the nest before they were ready to fly, while a few were allowed to stick around a bit past their time. One relic of a bygone era was cute mascot platformers. READ MORE
