Freeware Review: Slash the building

Every once in while, when I'm burnt out after playing some huge, 70 hour long game or if I am in a rut between games, I'll cruise the internets for freeware.  Looking in my modest freeware game folder today, I found an old favorite, Slash the building.

The premise is simple:  Buildings are falling on top of you, and you have to slash them with your sword before your crushed to death.  You can jump up the falling buildings, block, and execute as special attack that will clear the screen of the current buidling.  The game is deceptivley fun, and very simple.   Jump, slash, block, repeat.  But what really makes it worth it is the second level, were you must fight off giant statues, lighting bolts, volcanoes, and finally the moon instelf.  It makes for a crazy, energetic struggle for survival that took my months to finally overcome.  Now it's not that hard, and there are those of you our there who have beatn I Wanna Be The Guy, but if you want to impress your friends with a crazy over the top freeware game, or looking for a quick ten minutes of fun, check it out.

On the next generation of consoles.

This came up the other day when, after having booted up the old Dreamcast for fun, a friend of mine commented something to effect of "There is really no need for better graphics than these."  This got me thinkin'.  With the launch of the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 now well behind, in a year or two we will inevitably start yearing talk about the PS4, Wii 2, or whatever.  But where do we have to go?  Most of the steps in consoles to this point in time made sense:  We moved to machines that could support larger and larger game worlds, jumper from 2D to 3D gaming, gained online capabilites, cinematic cutscenes, and now pretty life like graphics.  So what's going to be the point of the next console?  It seems to me that at this point, better graphics is the only real thing to add on to it, and this won't lead to any new innovation's in gaming.  Before 3D graphics greated many new genres of games, internet let us play in different ways, but now better graphics will just make developing games that much more expensive and lead to no new fun ways to play.  The Wii came out and went with a gameplay-not-graphics approach, and going in that direction of new creative ways to play games could lead to innovation and some new gaming experiences, but if Sony and Microsoft are simply going to make a console with more power and more media playign crap the next time around, then maybe we should just keep what we have as consumers and tell the video game industry that we will upgrade when there is good reason too, not just automaticlly every 3-4 years.  Will this happen?  The answer is of coure "super-duper unlikely".  It be nice to break free of the almost mandatory console cycle, but I suppose we must watch and see what happens.

Psi-ops vs Chrono Chross? (as if that makes any sense)

Recently I downloaded Psi-ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy for the PC since it is now free (free!) to get at Filefront.  I've been a big fan of this game since I bought it out of the bargin bin for the PS2.  I don't think it ever got the attention it deserved.  Sure, it's story was as good as Spiderman 3, but for a PS2 game it's cutscences looked pretty good and the moddeling was also near Metal Gear level.  But Psi-ops is all about the gamplay.  It was perhaps the first game I played with physics in it, and let me tell ya, making up enemies and throwing them into furnaces, explosives, walls, off cliffs, other enemies, or glass is immensley fun.  Realy the only bad part of the game is it's terrible storyline.  I mean the main plot twist involved an evil twin sister, but that can be easily forgiven for the ability mind control a sniper, have him pick off his friends, then forcing him to jump off the roof.

I bring this up because recently I gave up on playing Chrono Cross, a criticlly claimed JRPG for it's good characters, story, and presentation.  I tried to get into the game, I really did, but after getting through maybe 15 hours of the game I stopped, and I'm the kind of guy who hates not finishing a game I started.  What got me off the game was the extreme lineality of the not only the story but the combat as well.  I just did not feel part of the game at all, but rather I was wheeling around the protagonist from point to point, watching as they, not I, progressed the story.  This is the sort of thing I can forgive, but the battle system wasn't interesting enough to allow it.  Sure, you have lots of different elements (hint: Materia) that you equip and use for magic, and some different items, but it comes down to plasting the opponets with the appropiate color magic and praying your normal attacks hit to build back up magic to cast.  This is every battle pretty much, and it too is repetitive and boring.

This is interesting because a renowned, amazingly crafted game like Chrono Cross, has, essentially, been betten out by Psi-ops, in my mind.  Crazy!  Maybe.  I think it is because Psi-ops is so much more interactive.  Chrono Cross is art in a way;  gorgeous background, amazing music, but I don't feel like I'm really playing much when I put up that old disc.  In Psi-ops I actually interact with the game world, I'm pushing the buttons and moving the protagonist myself to do everything he needs to do.  No I don't really drive the story, but in between the cutscences I control the show.  In Chrono Chross, I don't know if I ever really did.

Street Fighter 2, 2 (a.k.a IV)

Like most, when I first saw the teaser trailer for Street Fighter IV I was all like "that looks pretty tight! A cool, new, updated look for one of my old favorites!  Woo!".  Then they showed us gameplay footage like this.

I have been a Street Fighter fan since I first played Street Fighter 2 for the SNES in my friend's Zack's basement.  Street Fighter 2 was really fun, had a lot of cool moves characters, and fast paced.  The next game I played was Street Fighter Alpha 3, which was a great addition to the series.   Tons of new characters, the different "isms" offered a variety to gameplay, though still at it's core very similar.  Then Street Fighter 3 came out and the community sort of split in half; some loved the new gamplay mechinics (parrying) and some were pissed because Guile wasn't in it.  I love it.  They actually changed things up, changed the the style of the game, and had more new characters than old, making it more interesting than watching Dhalsim using Yoga flame for the millonth time.  

The terrible thing about 2d fighters now a days is there is very little room for innovation.  Between the Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and other series the 2d fighter was beaten to death long ago.  Sure, games like Guilty Gear brough some spice back and mixed it up, but ultimatley I feel as if there is no where for the genre to move to. There is only so much you can do with super moves, blocking, combos, and a 2d plane.  

So what we find here is that the newest game in the beloved series is a step backwards.  The developers went back to the memories of Street Fighter 2, using the same costumes, the same characters, and what looks like the same movesets as well.  How can people really look foward to this game?  What happened to innovation?  This horse has been beaten and shoryuken'd to death!  I know however, there are a large chunk of fans out there that want this.  They want to sit down and have characters they know, and QCF,QCF,P better be a Shin Hadouken, god damnit!  Capcom is clearly appealing to their fanbase, which I suppose is economicly wise.  I just wish they wouldn't.

An experiment begins

Hello, Constant Reader, it seems I've started a blog.  Part therapy, part fun, this space will be used to both practice writing a little something every now and then (maybe learn to talk about things interestingly?) but to also put down my thoughts on video games of various sorts and the gaming industry.  Gaming has always been a means of identity and favorite past time of mine, and something I spend a good amount of my life persuing and enjoying, so I extend that to here.  This makes it basiclly like a Xanga I had back in high school, but because this is clearly labeled as a blog I feel slightly better about it.  Look foward to gaming insights, more or less insightful, in the future!

LOL

My first post to test out this crazy blogging interface.  Have I gone viral yet?