Vita

Don't Lose the Beat

HIGH When everything comes together, it's transcendent.

LOW Struggling to find the beat in Stage 10's godawful boss track.

WTF An experimental game like this should cost less...

The guys at Extra Credits discuss mechanics as a metaphor or "mechanics with meaning" and for a visual aid, they use an interesting game or non-game called Loneliness. A description wouldn't really do the game justice, but it is well worth your time to try it for yourself considering the game is free.

One of the more interesting things brought up in this two-part series though is the lack of trust game creators show the player. Modern game creators simply do not trust the player to fail, experiment or uncover any meaning (assuming the creators intend for there to be any) while playing. After playing Loneliness you might understand why. It is a pretty gutsy thing to attempt in a free game, imagine how it would be received should you require payment for a similar experience.

If you knew me back in 2005, I was a lot different. I was genuinely excited about console gaming, as I had been for decades before. I was still a big Sony guy, as I had been since the original PlayStation launched and won me over. I was also getting into the original Xbox, though late. A new generation of consoles was coming, and I was looking forward to it while also enjoying what was currently available. I was alternating my time between the Internet and reading video game magazines to stay as current as I could.

A Year in the Life of Horny, Magical Teenagers

HIGH The Mystery Gang mocking their own corny "Persona!" cries while plastered.

LOW Cut-and-paste dungeons.

WTF Marie's "poetry."

How to Lose with a Straight Flush

HIGH The gameplay is solid for a portable FPS.

LOW Finishing the single-player modes in less than an hour.

WTF This could have been good, had everything not gone horribly wrong

GameFly sent me Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale the other day, and while I haven't had a whole lotta time to get into it, I did play a few multiplayer sessions with my youngest son. The time we spent on it basically amounts to me standing still while he beats on me with a variety of different characters, but he enjoys it and that's good enough for us.

Recently, European courts ruled that digital property is the same as physical property. Extra Credits does a brief breakdown of what that could mean for games should such a ruling be held up on appeal and duplicated here in the United States.

Often Imitated, Never Duplicated

HIGH Starts off very Monster Hunter-ish.

LOW Quickly succumbs to shallow design and tedium.

WTF Who thought locking the player in ambush killboxes was good design?

The guys at Extra Credits look into incorporating imbalance in a game. Ironically, imbalance is just the thing that when worked into character classes, weapons, tools and gameplay rules can wind up giving both the wet-behind-the-ears newbie and grizzled veteran new strategies as each plays and progresses through a game.

Survival horror games aren't what they used to be. Once upon a time, they were about survival and horror. It makes sense. It's what the genre is called, after all. These titles would encompass qualities of mystery and exploration as the player fought to stay alive with every step. Over the years, they've increasingly become about action, gunfights, and an overload of cheap jump scares. I prefer the former, despite a plethora of the latter.