I’ve spent the last week dabbling in the world of Sanctuary of  the Diablo universe to see what “improvements” might have come with Patch 1.08 which was released earlier this month (May 2013).

The changes that I’ve found most important to the gameplay are:

• Players can now identify all items in their inventory by speaking to Deckard Cain or by using the Book of Cain that can be found near the shared stash in all Acts
• Players now receive a 10% bonus to Magic Find, Gold Find, and Experience per additional player in a multiplayer game, up to a maximum of 30% in a four-player game
• A notification is now sent to all players in a multiplayer game whenever a party member engages an Elite monster or Treasure Goblin in combat, and their location will be shown on the mini-map
• In addition to this, an icon will also appear over player banners in town to indicate if they’re in combat with a monster, Elite monster, or Treasure Goblin
• Players can now queue up multiple items and gems at a time within the same tier to be crafted, so long as they possess the necessary materials
• Players can now craft items using materials located in the shared stash
• Players can now disable the confirmation dialog when salvaging items of Rare quality
• Templar Skill: Loyalty Now regenerates 310 life per second (up from 155)
• In multiplayer games, the increase in monster hit points per additional player has been reduced to 50% (down from 70%)
• Nekarat the Keywarden now has a chance to drop a random Key (of Destruction, Hate, or Terror) in addition to the Infernal Machine plans

I’m still at a loss when I ask myself why I play the game however. The whole gear-chase aspect that reminds me so much of pulling a slot machine bar over and over doesn’t really appeal to me anymore. I think completing the game through Inferno difficulty (which isn’t difficult since progression is only a function of the gear your character wears) is the only thing really left to entice me.

What I had hoped the game would be was a new adventure with a dark, haunting, adventure with group quests, group challenges, and better loot chance curves (emphasizing Quality over Quantity).

There is still hope that the new lead designer, (not Jay Wilson), can bring some changes to the game that gave players some sort of tangible activity/goal to keep players playing the game, but from this standpoint, the game is a year old and the sun has already set on the majority of would-be Sanctuary Heros.

[via Diablo3.com]

Sometimes when you break open the cocoon of nostalgia, instead of finding a beautiful butterfly, you find a shriveled up nasty little thing that would have best been left alone. Such is the case with Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, an SNES cart that I’ve kept on a pedestal for too many years, ever since first playing it during its prime.

Playing Wanderers is like coming back to your hometown after two long decades, expecting the bustling streets of your youth but finding dilapidated buildings and empty shops instead. To call it disappointing is not enough; it verges on shameful, knowing that at some point in time I regarded this game as a thing of joy and admiration.

To be fair, there wasn’t much stuff like Ys III floating around back then; any time an action RPG popped up, we’d jump on it like flies on, well, you know. Shit. As such, we were very much like flies ourselves – content to gorge ourselves on any excrement that drifted by, so long as it was fresh, even going so far as to prefer it. I don’t know where I was going with this. Hey, it’s got swords in it! Litmus passed.

Anyway, upon playing the game again, Ys III’s flaws become immediately apparent: It’s a mechanical mess – movement and hit detection being the most unforgivable of Ys‘s sins. Level design is bafflingly uninspired, consisting of bland hallways with enemies peppered in at long and predictable intervals. Swordplay is reduced to holding down the attack button as Adol swings wildly and repeatedly; oftentimes his reach is much shorter than the enemy’s, resulting in guaranteed hits as an inevitable consequence of engagement. The solution is a simple one, though: level up enough to trounce your way through. Finesse in Ys III is not rewarded nor recommended until the very end where it becomes necessity.

So, what’s left to love in Ys III, then? Surely, there must be some redeeming quality – something, anything, to lend it some legitimacy as a gem worth revisiting. There is, in fact. An aspect the series is well-known for, and has always held true for each entry: the bombast of its music.

So, as a parting gift, let me save you some time. Don’t play Ys III. Just listen to these songs instead. You’re welcome. Few soundtracks from the SNES era managed to get you as pumped as this one did.

Although revisting Ys III after twenty years did a bad job on my perception of it, it wasn’t a total loss. It reminded me that I should give the PSP remake of Ys III, Oath in Felghana, a dedicated shot. If it’s anything like Ys Seven or Ark of Napishtim, then I’ll be a happy Ys’er once more.

The original Castlevania on the NES: 6 stages, 5 subweapons, 11 music tracks, and one slayer of non-glittery vampires that laid the gothic groundwork for a series that has been resurrected into almost 40 incarnations — so far. The roots of all entries in this iconic series can be traced back to this one action-laden creep-fest, and for that we owe it a debt of homage.

Let’s be critical, though. What made Castlevania so great back in the early days of the NES? How does it hold up by today’s standards? Should it still be played, or is it better left in the timeless realm of our nostalgia?

When Castlevania hit North America 26 years ago today, it was a journey into the macabre that was a welcome alternative to the mostly colorful, lighthearted games on the NES, such as Duck Hunt, Bomberman, and Burger Time. I’ll never forget wandering into the Aladdin’s Castle arcade at the mall and finding a curious machine titled PlayChoice-10, which offered ten different NES games that could be switched between at will, as long as you kept pumping in tokens to add another 300 seconds to the ever-running clock that would pull the plug on anything you were playing if your vigilance slipped and that timer hit zero. The PlayChoice-10 at this particular arcade had some familiar favorites, such as Contra, Excitebike, and Super Mario Bros, plus some great games that this excited young nerd had never beheld, including Goonies, Rygar, and — thankfully — Castlevania.

Love at first sight between people is a load of guano, but it can totally happen with games. Castlevania had me right from that first scene where Simon Belmont walks past rotting walls to the blood-rusted gates of Dracula’s domain, with the moon accenting the silhouette of the mammoth castle and bats flitting in the midground. The accompanying nine-second intro tune is etched into my mind.

Dark, decayed graphics and upbeat, catchy music are hallmarks of the series, and they nailed those aspects right from the start. The first Castlevania’s portrayal of the castle is of course extremely dated 26 years later, but still manages to be creepy. The tunes are legendary, and, to this day, can be enjoyed by any fan of video game soundtracks who can hear past the limited auditory aesthetics of the time and connect with the soul of Castlevania’s music.

Yet, the true measure of a game is how enjoyable it is to play, and Castlevania has not held up well in that regard. The unforgiving jump mechanic that disallows mid-air trajectory change is definitely more realistic, but also brutally difficult to manage. Combo that with Simon hitting terminal velocity instantly when walking off a ledge, and you’ve got an uphill battle just to get the game to do what you want.

When it comes to attacking, the connecting of whip-tip to the variety of horrific denizens wouldn’t be that bad — even with the two-direction limitation — if only you could control those jumps more easily. As it is, this title, while undeniably a classic, requires so much finesse that unless you’ve been playing it and/or its two NES sequels on a somewhat regular basis, returning to such rigid controls will quickly suck the life out of your nostalgic high.

Verdict

If you’ve never experienced the origin of one of the greatest series in gaming, I can’t really recommend it. Check out the music if you’re down with chiptunes, but leave it at that.

If you did play — and love — Castlevania back in the day, I still can’t recommend returning to it. Again, revisit the music, but leave the actual playthroughs in your past. They won’t live up to your nostalgia.

Rock it Out, Gothic Style

For Delta Attack’s very own Top 30 Castlevania Music selection, click here:

Back before Final Fantasy 9 came out, it was heralded as the return to epic greatness that the series had experienced with 4, 5, 6, and 7. It was — for the most part — but battle animations were slow and the story devolved into some bizarre nonsensery near the end. Early buzz around Final Fantasy 12 promised the same redemption, but the title was marred by the Gambit system, which may as well have been called “autopilot”, and a generally weak soundtrack.

Now, there’s not any indication that Final Fantasy 15 is going to be the moogle’s teats — hell, there’s not even any official word that it’s in development (the logo above is just a fan concept), but come on, of course it is — however, that doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize about what it would be like in a perfect world. I sometimes yearn to have an experience like I did the first time I played Final Fantasy 4, 5, 6, and 7, each of which gave me a unique and profound sensation. I can’t put a value on what it would be like to have such an experience again with a Final Fantasy game, and though I doubt 15 will provide me with that special sense of adventure, here’s my vision of what it might be like if it did.

Writer, Director, and Producer

Hironobu Sakaguchi. Oh Bahamut yes, THE GOOCH. Sakaguchi’s brilliant work in various combinations of these roles was no small factor behind the greatness of Final Fantasy 4, 5, 6, 7, and (partially) 9. The Gooch is top-notch in the RPG industry for creating original characters for whom you develop real attachments and for weaving engaging stories and scenarios with those characters.

If the Gooch were to lend his amazing creativity to Final Fantasy 15, it would have a significantly higher chance of earning a place amongst its revered ancestors. Sadly, he no longer works for Square Enix, and is unlikely to return.

Composer

Nobuo Uematsu. This is as much of a no-brainer as the Gooch. The Final Fantasy series has, hands-down, some of the best music in gaming, and Uematsu is responsible for most of it. He was the sole creator of every soundtrack offering in Final Fantasy 1 through 9, which easily comprise the most solid scores for the mainline series.

Uematsu would be an essential component to an awesome Final Fantasy 15. Since he’s currently freelance, it’s not impossible.

For samples of Uematsu’s work, see our posts on the best general Final Fantasy music and the best Final Fantasy battle music.

Character Development

Job Class system. Final Fantasy 5, though having merely a good story, is one of the most fun to actually play due to how you can change a character’s class at will and combine skills from different classes to fit the build you think will be most effective. However, I’m thinking more expansive than the system in 5; something more along the lines of Blue Dragon, which allowed the use of roughly a dozen class skills per character by the end of the game.

Materia was great in Final Fantasy 7, but it also made every character largely similar. I’d like to see a system akin to materia, but limited so that each character only has access to a partial set of all available materia, which would help maintain the feeling of character individuality in battle.

Final Fantasy 9 had a cool system of learning abilities via equipment, which could be used even without the equipment once mastered. Yeah. Throw that in there as well.

In Final Fantasy 6, though the espers could make characters highly similar like materia did in 7, each character also had unique commands to use in combat. I think it would be reasonable to for each character in Final Fantasy 15 to have one battle command that was theirs alone.

This may seem like a lot to include in one game for customizing your characters, but Square Enix is really good at polishing systems (whether good or bad), so I’m sure they could make it all work together with great synergy and only a moderate learning curve.

Battle

I’m a huge fan of being able to see your enemies in the field before fighting them, but then doing the actual battle in a separate screen, like in Final Fantasy 13. Knowing you’re about to engage makes any grinding so much easier to stomach than being surprised by totally random battles.

Combat would be the player’s choice of traditional ATB (Active Time Battle) or full turn-based with a unit turn-order list like in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy 10. Regardless of the flow chosen, the player could change the speed of all battle animations to 1x, 2x, or 4x on the fly. Maybe even 0.5x.

Minigames

Final Fantasy 8 and 9 each had a fun card game that provided a nice diversion from the main quest. It would be great to see something similar in Final Fantasy XV, but with an additional mechanic, like perhaps being able to consume cards in battle. There could even be a job class dealing with cards, such as a Jester.

It would also be great to see a slew of minigames like in Final Fantasy 7, some of which have awesome tangible prizes, while others are for pure entertainment.

Graphics and Presentation

Square Enix loves to have realistic graphics for mainline FF games, so that’s a given. They always want to outdo themselves, and that’s fine. However, I’d love to see a return to the PlayStation era with pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles. There’s something special about extremely-detailed static backgrounds that just isn’t the same when the entire environment is created via polygons. The locales of Final Fantasy 7, such as Midgar and the Forgotten Capital, are visuals etched into my mind, whereas I’m hard-pressed to recall any specific environments from Final Fantasy 10, 12, or 13.

What about you?

Which of my ideas are good or bad, and why?

What do you think would make for an awesome Final Fantasy 15?

Legend of Dragoon was a pretty mediocre RPG. Like most first-gen polygonal RPGs, its battles were slow, and it had low-polygon-count models over pre-rendered backgrounds. (Those backgrounds actually looked great, but just made the ugly models look even worse by contrast.) The battle system also had a timed-hit system with an annoyingly small window for success, making the action stop-and-go as you waited for overly lengthy animations and then had to rapidly hit specific buttons for better attack damage. To make matters worse, the story was generic, and you didn’t get attached to the characters at all.

Amidst this sea of lukewarmness, one of the battle tunes stands out as something really enjoyable. It’s not amazing compared to the best music that gaming has to offer, but it’s certainly just about the only worthwhile thing in Legend of Dragoon.

BTW, the section from ~1:08 to ~1:16 is actually the victory fanfare.

Have you heard about Blizzard’s Collectable Card Game “Hearthstone”? It is a Free-to-play game that will be available on Windows/Mac and the iPad, with an Android tablet version in the works. People familiar with Blizzard Intellectual Properties will recognize from the title that it is set in the Warcraft universe. Check this out:

Of course, when I hear “Free to Play” and “Collectable Card Game” together, I instantly smell something amiss. The business model for traditional CCGs are all about buying packs of cards with the hopes of getting some better cards for your customizable deck. So what is the gimmick?

From their press release on 3/22:

In Hearthstone, players build card decks centered around one of nine iconic Warcraft^® character classes and duel each other for fun, glory, and the chance to win awesome new cards.

Ok, I get how I can acquire new cards to customize and build my deck, but what’s in it for Blizzard? To get that answer, I had to dig deep into the FAQ to get some semblance of an answer:

Clearer than mud, but not metamucil.

In the past, I’ve been pretty skeptical about playing any game for which a pre-requisite of advancement in a game is in incremental investments. World of Warcraft has been the only exception, given that the cost ratio is constant (1 month  = $15). But in CCGs, the cost of attaining a pack of cards guarantees nothing except a “rare” card – whatever that means. In my eyes, it is akin to gambling, or pay-to-level up schemes.

Of course, in order to argue against that perspective, they claim you can progress by playing matches and winning cards:

If you were a game designer who wanted to make money Bobby Kotick, you wouldn’t want to let players get all the cards they needed just by playing your free game would you? No, of course not. You would want them to spend money on the cards. Therefore, it stands to reason that there will be a “soft cap” to the progress you can make without buying cards.

I’m not against a company or an individual trying to make money. Actually, I’m all for it. But the problem I have with this model of business is that it exploits people’s sense of understanding about the value of what they are purchasing. Additionally, because it is so close to gambling, it tweaks a person’s unjustified superstition about risk/reward ratios. There is a reason why there is an age restriction in Casinos, and it doesn’t have to do with alcohol consumption: young people are more susceptible to errors of judgment involving luck than (educated) adults.

Despite, all this, I am actually going to play this, and I might just get a tablet in order to do it. There are some really kick-ass features about the game that are going to make it worth trying out:

• A crafting system, to break down duplicate cards and craft them into new cards
• Games are only 15 minutes
• Unlike real-life CCGs, the computer manages all the calculation and application of rules
• It’s in the Warcraft Universe and  play as a Warcraft Hero

Of course, being Blizzard, there is no release date, and even the Beta (which you can sign up for) doesn’t have a start date.Here is the FAQ.

Will you try out Hearthstone? Will you buy card packs for the game? What do you think about this type of business model?

The worst thing about Ridiculous Fishing: A Tale of Redemption is the name. Of course it’s about fishing; we get that. But “ridiculous”? A work of art (yeah, I just called Ridiculous Fishing art) isn’t ridiculous just because it says so right there on the can.

This game could have also been called Radical Fishing, or LOL-out-loud Fishing. An even better title would have been The Three (3) Habits of Highly Effective Fishermen.

The Three (3) Habits of Highly Effective Fishermen

(01: Height phase.) Cast your rod, or descend your lure, or whatever it’s called. It will descend DOWN into the water, and continue to sink until it hooks a fish.

(02: Motion phase.) At this happy time, the lure will begin to rise UP. During this phase, you may hook as many fish as possible. There is no catch limit.

(03: Gravity phase.) When the lure breaches UP from the water’s surface, your many, many fishes will also spurt UP into the sky. You will tap, press, and grub at the screen to SHOOT THE BEJEEZUS out of the fish before Newton’s harsh mistress brings them back DOWN.

How to Succeed in Fishing Without Really Trying

You will avoid the fish on the way DOWN, catch them on the way UP, and then commence the SHOOT THE ETC. phase. Fish are worth dollars. Dollars can be traded for goods (armament, attire, accessories) at the Ship Shoppe. Local fauna will mock you on Byrdr, the best in-game fake twitter this side of Pocket Planes. You will read up on the species you’ve SHOT THE ETC. out of in the Fishopedia. You will fish in increasingly more bizarre locales and at impenetrable depths. You will get a screen-clearing chainsaw lure to use on the way DOWN, and a bazooka, orbital ray, or blunderbuss to use on the way UP.

Making Fish And Influencing People

Just when you think you understand the game, it will become truly ridiculous. The LOL-out-loud moment I promised will manifest.The next day, you will wonder if that really happened. Then you’ll revisit the in-game mementos which will remind you that, yes, it did. Next, you’ll pick a fishing hole, and get to work…

Ridiculous: The Power of Fishing Without Fishing

…or maybe you’ll just goof off inside the game for a while. Listen to the soundtrack (pretty good), read Byrdr and Fishopedia (pretty funny) or look at the visuals. Whole darn game is rendered in these chunky triangular atoms. I don’t even know how to describe it, so I’ll defer to this screenshot (filename: nipples.png) of the fisherman in his emperor’s raiment:

Feel The Fish And Do It Anyway

This game can be yours for a lousy three (3) bucks on the App Store. It contains no in-app-purchases, multilevel marketing scams, push notifications, or timer mechanics. You pay some cash, you get a game.

While it’s not this author’s place to comment on the “value” of entertainment, to pass judgement, or to rate the game upon merits relative or absolute, it must be asked:

Q: How many actual, real-world fish could you buy and then SHOOT THE ETC. out of for $3?
A: Hardly any!

ATLUS’s upcoming 4th entry in the Etrian Odyssey series has a demo available now on the 3DS’s eShop. The brilliant aspect to this demo is that your progress will carry over to the full game, which comes out on 2/26.

So how does the demo measure up? Is it worth your time? If you’ve never played the series, should you give it a shot? If you’re thinking of returning to relive past glory, is it fresh enough to once again invest dozens of hours? Let’s explore.

For the first-timers: What is Etrian Odyssey? This series takes us back to the days of first-person, grid-based dungeon crawling, working in a mapping aspect that fans of old games and graphing paper will take to heart, but that is so easy to use it won’t turn off newcomers.

Even more importantly, the RPG elements have a strong core of party customization. Each character class has multiple abilities to be learned and upgraded, but limited skill points force you to scrutinize each ability and plan out a development path that will make not only an effective character, but a five-person party with excellent synergy. One of the biggest rewards in any Etrian Odyssey game is seeing your party grow into a cohesive unit that can survive the increasing challenge of the highly varied enemies and brutal bosses (FOEs).

Etrian Odyssey has traditionally been a very hard series, but IV marks an alternate, lower barrier to entry: Casual Mode. Perfect for beginners or those with less time on their hands to grind out levels, Casual makes battle easier and, should your party get wiped out, sends you back to town and lets you keep your progress instead of making you start from your last save.

Etrian Odyssey is a series that I highly recommend to any RPG fan willing to patiently invest time up front for a satisfying payoff in the long run.

For the returners: What’s new this time? I’ve played the 2nd and 3rd games (Heroes of Laagard and The Drowned City) quite extensively, and here’s a rundown of the improvements I’ve noticed so far in Legends of the Titan:

• Squads: You can save up to three party configurations that can be restored at the Explorer’s Guild. This is perfect for when you need to take a certain party on a particular adventure and then switch back to your standard characters.
• Skill Trees: The skills for each class are now configured into trees, making it far easier to tell the requirements for any given skill at a glance. You can use the d-pad to move between skills and the circle pad to pan the camera over the whole tree.
• Dungeon Circle Pad: While exploring, you can use the circle pad to look over other areas of your map. Equally as useful, and a nice touch, you can use it as a limited free-look to get a better view of the dungeon itself.
• FOE Info: The game gives a brief intro to FOEs, which is a nice refresher about their color-coding. They’ve also added auras, which show how much of a threat any given FOE is compared to the current strength of your party.
• Battle Reference: When selecting actions for your party during battle, you have the option to pull up the Reference. This is essentially a bestiary that shows known info on the enemies you’re fighting, provided you’ve defeated an enemy of that type before.
• Rare Breeds: Some enemies will look like their counterparts, but have a sparkly glow. These monsters are tougher, but worth extra experience, and have special drops.
• Stay and Save: When you pay to heal up at the inn, they give you the option of saving at the same time instead of selecting it separately afterward. A minor improvement, but definitely nice.
• Graphics: While the series has never pushed any boundaries for aesthetics, it certainly looks better on the 3DS. Enemies are fully 3D while still maintaining a mildly cartoony look, and the environments are an even better version of the dreamlike visuals you’ve come to expect.
• Music: The 3Ds’s increased power and cartridge storage allows for better musical quality, and the effect is really pleasing, unless you were hoping for the synthesized sounds of prior Etrian Odyssey games.

Legends of the Titan is shaping up to be a worthy torchbearer in this great series. This is one fan that’s eagerly awaiting the release of the full game.

On a whim, I recently took a trip in the wayback machine to finally finish the DOS game that dominated a sizable chunk of my childhood. I’m speaking, of course, of Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World.

Unsurprisingly, the game has aged rather hard (as most IBM compatible games from the late 80s tend to do), but the one thing that stands out as pretty awesome, even by today’s standards, is the game’s map; a beautiful work of art that captures the imagination just as much now as it did then.

A physical copy of The Map of the World of Cron was packaged with every game sold. When folded out in all its magnificent splendor, it was really a sight to behold. As a kid, I would spend a lot of time just staring at it, observing, and parading my adventurers around to each location in search of loot and adventure. I would try so hard to recreate the artwork with my own hand, and while my attempts must have been pretty laughable, my father would humor me and compliment my cartography skills.

Hold on, where are my manners? Here, see the map for yourself:

Go ahead, click the map and get yourself some.

Pretty spiffy, eh? What’s more is that those fancy little illustrations like the pegasus, the shipwreck, and other various critters – those weren’t just there to please the eye. Those things were actually there in the world, at those coordinates, just waiting to be defeated or discovered. If you carelessly wandered into the elemental plane of air, then that big cloud feller and his entourage of air elementals would be there to set your ass straight.

There are other, less obvious things in the map to pick up on, too. Things like the three swords hidden near A2, C1, and D4. The world map is a perfect blend of structure, aesthetic, and wonder. It’s the kind of thing you don’t see too often in modern games; the kind of thing that reminds us how well the games of yesteryear could ignite the imagination in lieu of sophisticated technology.

Yes, I finally did beat the game this time around. The part that stumped me as a ten year old would still have stumped me as a thirty something were it not for the internet – getting the elemental orb out of Dawn’s Mist Cavern. See, once you have the orb, you can’t get out of the damn cave. The orb forbids exit. The solution is almost comical and very much feels like a strange exploit: You had to give the orb to a hireling and dismiss them from your party. When you returned to the inn you hired them from, they’d be there waiting with the orb in inventory. As far as I could tell, there were no hints indicating how to go about this, so only the most clever would have figured it out back then.

They don’t make end screens like that anymore, do they?

When I first spotted Halfbrick’s Jetpack Joyride on the PSN Store, I couldn’t help but grimace a bit. “Hmmm,” I thought, “Free-to-play on my PlayStation 3. The invasion has begun.” So I ignored it. I ignored the shit out of it. After all, I already had the game on my iPod Touch and I was reasonably certain the PS3 port would be inferior. Also, I’d already played the game from here to hell and back again. I figured that, for me, there was no more fun to be rung from this rag.

When I finally cracked down and downloaded it at the behest of my five year old, I discovered I was only half right. Yeah, the PS3 version feels somewhat goofy compared to its mobile counterpart. But it was every bit as fun. I was getting sucked back into this thing once more, this time on the big screen.

There are immediately noticeable differences between the mobile and console versions of Jetpack Joyride, most notable among them are the buttons. Playing Jetpack Joyride with a controller is odd at first – my first instinct was to try guiding Barry around with the D-pad, resulting in some pretty hilarious missteps. But I quickly got used to it. And after some extensive play with the controller, I really began to appreciate the tactile spring of the X button, particularly when piloting the tap-happy Profit Bird.

So it turns out the game I thought would be a sloppy, cash-grabby port was actually pretty darn respectable. And in the end, immensely enjoyable.

If you somehow missed the Jetpack Joyride boat, either because you don’t own a mobile device or you’ve been living in the woods the past year or so, then it’s not too late. Download it from the PSN and give it a go (the price is free!) – you might just get sucked in like I did. The game supports trophies, too, which is sure to please trophy mongers with penniless pockets.

With Jetpack Joyride busting it’s way onto the PSN, though, one has to wonder: Is this the calm before the storm? Is this the first smattering of water on the windshield – the drop that heralds a looming free-to-play downpour in the pavilion of traditional gaming? Much has been said about free-to-play gaming and its role in the future of the industry. It will be interesting to see if the freemium model can gain a solid foothold in hostile territory.

Nope, it’s even worse than what you can read above, due to the fine print. Here’s the full monstrosity:

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist Paladin Multi-mission Aircraft Edition

It’s not quite as bad as the Charles Barkley Gaiden games, but then, those are intentionally ludicrous:

Tales of Game’s Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa

and

The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa

When I am playing a PC game with my buds online (like Starcraft 2, Diablo III,  Team Fortress 2, Torchlight II, or *cough* World of Warcraft) it is always easier to coordinate your games and more fun if you have these two things:

• Online Voice Chat Software
• Beer

While I don’t know of too many free alternatives to beer, there are several good free alternatives to the traditional VoiP for Games software which is Ventrilo.

Before Ventrilo, there was Teamspeak, which my first MMORPG group used to chat while we slayed 1 million boars in the forest. The free version of Teamspeak was a bit weird to get set up, the sound quality not great, the lag was noticeable, and it seemed to lack some of the features that its hot cousin, Ventrilo, had out of the box.

So even though we had a moderate solution, and moderate beer. We still didn’t have a great solution for our gaming.

Ventrilo on its own is a great tool, the feature set large, and it doesn’t get in the way of game playing and isn’t a memory hog. The problem with Ventrilo though is that if you are only using a free version then you can’t have an experience that is good for everybody equally. Someone has to run the “server” software on their computer as well as the “client” software, and usually that person doesn’t have enough cpu and/or bandwidth to support more than 1 other person. Spending money on a hosted Ventrilo server in the cloud solves the problems, but it is a monthly recurring fee (and a somewhat pricey one if you only need it one night of the week).

My buds and I tried Ventrilo, and aside from the lag of the free version, it would have been fine. But it had lag, so it wasn’t. But we did have beer. And that was worth the money. Ventrilo wasn’t.

Skype was the next thing we used, and while it did allow each of us to connect with each other and have a free and mostly lag-free experience, the convoluted user-interface and its constant auto-tabbing of us from the game when someone else tried to “join the call” made it less than ideal for gaming.

Four to Five of us used Skype for many months, dealing with trying to add people to existing calls, splitting groups, and all that non-sense. This kept us sustained, but only it still felt like a sub-par gaming experience. At least we still had our beer.

Then I found Dolby Axon – which was is a lot like Skype without the Skype – so it is actually nothing like Skype, and that was a big plus with me. In fact, it is like the penultimate mix of TeamSpeak and Ventrilo – it is free (a paid version is available), it has persistent voice chat rooms so you don’t have to tab-out of your game to add people to the game (unlike Skype which tabs you out without warning), it has ad hoc chat rooms for when you want to split your group for 2v2 Starcraft matches, it has good sound quality and the lag is on par with Teamspeak. In fact, the worst thing that I can say about this tool is that the UI does take a little getting used to for the beginner. Ventrilo vets will have no problem with this, however.

“Beers we have! Virtual Pub we have! Let the debauchery begin!” – Midnight Ike

There are of course a handful of other solutions, and Mumble is one of them. I haven’t yet reviewed it because I found what we needed in Dolby Axon, but really, any of these solutions are solid if you are willing to pay. If I were to pay for a server however, I would probably go back to using Ventrilo, as hosting is as little as $2/month with some internet vendors.

if(needpaidsolution)

    {solution = “ventrilo”}

else

    {solution=”dolby axon”}

I have a friend (we’ll call him I. Cube; no, Ike C.) that recently mentioned that he might play his first turn-based strategy RPG this year, and is considering Final Fantasy Tactics. Being a fan of both FFT and of Vandal Hearts, the latter of which gets very little love from the general strategy gaming populace as opposed to Tactics, I created a comparison for him. Then I figured I may as well try to drum up some interest in Vandal Hearts from others that haven’t played it or have a vague impression that it’s not as good as Tactics, so here we go.

Levels
FFT: Small. No interactive elements.
VH: Medium to large. Boulders can be rolled at enemies, boxes can be pushed to block enemy paths or grant player access to new areas, and switches raise/lower platforms or open/close doors. Treasure chests and oddly marked ground contain equipment and items.

Classes
FFT: Many classes with multiple skills to learn and use cross-class. Unlocking advanced classes will require leveling up one character in all classes or using a FAQ.
VH: Only a small set of classes, but at level 10, each class offers a choice of two paths to follow. Level 20 sees a class upgrade in the chosen path.

Battle
FFT: Turn order is based on the agility of all player characters and enemies. No counterattacking unless the skill has been learned and equipped. No paper-rock-scissors mechanic. Death must be reversed within 3 of the unit’s turns or they’re out of the game.
VH: All player units take a turn, then all enemy units, etc., allowing for better strategic formations. All units counterattack if able. If allies help to even partially surround an enemy being attacked, Support is gained, making the chance of hitting and damage done higher. Every unit is strong/weak vs. certain others (ex: knight > archer > flyer > knight). Death means the unit is out until the next battle.

Characters
FFT: One main playable character and other guest characters. The rest are created by you, so take no direct part in the story.
VH: Every character is unique. Character development is pretty decent throughout.

Story
FFT: Convoluted.
VH: Straightforward.

Music
FFT: One of the best soundtracks in video game history.
VH: Still great in its own regard. Some very catchy tunes.

Even after my fallout of love with Blizzard over the reeking mass of moldy liquefied excrement  that is Diablo III, I still find myself checking the community website to see if there is any salvation for the game. It is like I am in denial about how far Blizzard has fallen since its wedding with Activision. I just don’t want to believe that Blizzard could have made such a bad game, or maybe secretly I just don’t want to believe that I’ve outgrown shallow games like Diablo. I don’t know which, but since this is my opinion article, I’m laying the blame on Blizzard.

Last night I must have had a relapse moment, because I yet again went to check if anything on Diablo III’s website was new, fresh, and might pull me back into a game world that I once threw a Christmas-fit over as a young teenager. I was surprised to find that news about patch 1.07 had just been published. Hurrah! A New Hope!

The exciting thing about this patch is the PvP implementation for Diablo, and as awesome as that sounds, it is nothing like what was previewed at Blizzcon years before the games release. In Blizzcon videos, you can see team PvP in arenas that imply balanced matchmaking and gameplay. What we have with patch 1.07 is just an opt-in Free-for-all gameplay experience that seems like nothing more than a lazy man’s implementation of World of Warcraft arena matches. They call it “Dueling” to differentiate it, of course, but here is how Blizzard says it will work:

• To duel another player, you’ll need to speak with Nek the Brawler at the inn in New Tristram
• Speaking with Nek will take you and your party to the Scorched Chapel, a new zone designed specifically for player combat
• This zone has custom geometry and features four different areas: the church, the graveyard, the river, and the lake
• Dueling currently supports up to four players in a Free-For-All format, which means you can battle your friends either one-on-one, three-player FFA, or a full four-player FFA

Now, to Blizzard’s credit, they say that they won’t be balancing PvP because it will adversely affect the balancing of the primary game progression. Smart on them. But this certainly isn’t enough of a draw for me to pick up the game as my primary go-to game anytime in the conceivable future, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

There are lots of other changes in this patch, but they all serve the existing player-base and only affect people who are really enjoying the game as it is. Check them out here.

Are you still playing Diablo III? Are you excited about PvP? Let us know in the comments.

The Ouya developer units are shipping out right now and, with the console just a few months away, I thought it was time to take a look at OUYA.

For the sake of anyone unfamiliar, OUYA is an Android-based platform that started life as a Kickstarter campaign. OUYA hit the one million dollar mark in just 8 hours and 22 minutes, making it the quickest project to reach that milestone, and went on to raise $8,596,474 over the course of the month. Their promise is to be the most-open development platform console.

There’s a lot of potential in OUYA, but there’s also the potential of failure. Let’s look at what OUYA gets right and what it gets wrong.

While there will always be a market for large-scale console titles, the advent of mobile gaming has changed the landscape. Digital download is not the way of the future; it is the necessity of the present. Going to brick-and-mortar stores are now a one-time inconvenience. Games sit mere seconds away from your impulsive fingertips. While Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store have embraced this concept, the current and next-generation of consoles aren’t quite there.

OUYA represents the leap forward. The potential to disrupt the console gaming market, much the same way the iPhone and other mobile devices have disrupted the portable gaming market, is here in this tiny little cube. It is hard to ignore the plausibility of such a change, regardless of the power of the OUYA compared to the current high-definition consoles.

By the way, here are the system specs for anyone curious:

• Tegra3 quad-core processor (up to 1.6 GHz quad-core)
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB of internal flash storage
• HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth LE 4.0
• USB 2.0 (one)
• Wireless controller with a touch pad
• Android 4.0
• Ethernet

For the most part, that puts it in line with the Google Nexus 7, which is a powerful little tablet. Unlike the Nexus 7, the OUYA has an internal fan that would allow for a higher clock speed than the Nexus 7′s 1.3 GHz quad-core setting. While that may sound like something to scoff at, I dare you to watch Horn in motion on the Tegra3-powered device and still cast doubt.

The addition of a controller, though, is what really piques my interest. I cannot count how many times I was playing a game on iPhone and Android with awful touch-screen controls. I can literally name fifty games off the top of my head that would be better with an actual controller rather than shoddy touch-controls. It’s not a coincidence that many of these games, such as Marvel vs. Capcom 2, NBA Jam, and Chrono Trigger, all started life on consoles with tactile controls.

There’s a market out there for classic games. Nintendo proved it with the success of the Wii’s Virtual Console. Think how many publishers wish there was a market outside of consoles for these games that wasn’t tied to the standards of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. While OUYA has great potential for new games, the prospect of re-living my gaming memories excites me.

It’s a win-win for everyone involved, as OUYA takes their share, publishers get a second-life for games that stopped profiting long ago, and gamers get the games.

Additionally, indie developers have another outlet without the constraints of the console makers. While I love indie games, I’m hardly the only person to ignore the Xbox Live Indie Channel when compared to Xbox Live Arcade. What OUYA brings is even footing for indie developers. Who wouldn’t want a fresh start?

Finally, there’s the size and price. You cannot mention the OUYA without stating how small and cheap it is. It’s not that difficult to part with $99 if you believe in the potential success of OUYA. Think of this as Yves Behar’s One Console for Every Nerd.

Of course, when looking at the potential for success, it’s only fair that we look at OUYA’s potential failures.

The elephant in the room when it comes to Android gaming is piracy. It’s simply too easy to find and sideload an Android APK file. OUYA does nothing to mitigate this problem. In fact, one of the selling points in their Kickstarter is how easy the OUYA is to root. You don’t invite vampires in if you want to survive, but that’s what OUYA does. I give it mere hours before users, hackers or not, have the OUYA running commercial APKs and homebrew.

UPDATE: While not verifying that it will run APKs, this video by Android developer code_zombie shows that his game, Deadly Dungeons RPG, already works with the OUYA devkit out of box.

code_zombie’s: “I was just showing that existing Android games run on OUYA. More for developers. I’ll throw some graphics demos up later.”

By the way, this is exactly why I will be getting an OUYA. The Google Play store already has tons of emulators readily available, from the Atari 2600 all the way up to Sony’s PSP. Hell, three out of my top five gaming systems have excellent emulators in SuperGNES (SNES Emulator), My Boy! (GBA Emulator), and ePSXe for Android (Playstation Emulator) already. As I said before, re-living these gaming memories excites me.

Another large problem is the fragmentation on Android. Again, OUYA does nothing to alleviate the problem. It’s just one more Android device, one more set of specs, and a couple more screen resolutions to consider. Having played Need for Speed: Most Wanted on both iOS and Android, I can see where this is a problem.

Too many games on my Nexus 7 look awful because they aren’t optimized for the system. A game that looks decidedly current generation on my iPhone and others iPads looks like a game from last generation with jagged polygons and programming that doesn’t utilize the full power of my tablet. With millions of Nexus 7 tablets out there that aren’t getting special treatment, what makes you think this device with tens of thousands will?

While the controller will undoubtedly improve many mobile games out there, there’s also a segment of games that will not work well or at all. Android staples like Cut the Rope and HOMERUN BATTLE 3D, which use touchscreen and gyroscope controls respectively, just won’t work on OUYA.

Then, of course, there’s the nature of the beast. How long before OUYA needs to be replaced? Will it have life cycles in line with the Android mobile market? While it’s currently top of the line, how long do you think OUYA has before it becomes obsolete? Three years tops? While mobile gamers are already accustomed to this obsolescence, console gamers aren’t. That just isn’t going to cut it, especially as the Xbox 360 lumbers into its eighth year of existence.

Are gamers, particularly console gamers, really concerned with the OUYA’s “something must be free” element? This mandate, for many games, just means more work for developers. It’s an unnecessary hoop that seems like more trouble than its worth. I fear it will just lead us further down the freemium rabbit hole. Free-to-play and developers like Supercell and Zynga that profit off this model are a cancer on gaming as a whole. Why would you try to further this awful trend?

Finally, who is going to develop for OUYA? While there are nearly twenty games announced, including Final Fantasy III by Square Enix at launch, are developers going to test out an unproven market? Yes, I said it was even footing, but when that footing is directly over jagged rocks and a raging ravine, you might want to think twice about it. Aside from the users who backed the Kickstarter, who exactly is going to buy the OUYA? I fear a number of developers will experience something akin to Rubicon’s experience with Great Big War on Microsoft Surface and have a successful game fail in a new format.

I have no doubt that there’s a lot to love about the OUYA. But it is highly improbable that it makes a dent in the next generation of consoles. I think it’s a great idea, something that I’d love to see the more robust Apple App Store replicate, but there’s just too many questions. Things I haven’t even addressed, such as payment methods, Netflix compatibility, and storage expansion are other things to consider. Even if it does succeed, what’s to stop other HTC, Samsung, and Google themselves from doing the exact same thing?