New article at Robot Geek

This site was silent last week, but for once it wasn't just me being lazy. I've been busy at the recently relaunched Robot Geek, a fine gaming website that I recommend to all of you. If you're one of the threes of loyal Pointless Side Quest readers out there, fear not: this site is very much still a going concern as well.

My most recent Robot Geek posting was this article, inspired by the recent release of Homefront. It's gorged to bursting with:

• Actual, meant-to-be -taken seriously thoughts on suspension of disbelief in video games!
• The logistics of large-scale cross-Pacific invasions!
• Astonishing discoveries by revisionist historians on the role of wisecracking Japanese shape-shifters and giant nuclear-armed robots in 20th-Century Russia!
• Completely gratuitous abuse directed at Ben Affleck over a movie that came out nearly a decade ago!
• Hundreds and hundreds of words that weren't interesting enough to justify additional bullet points describing them!

So, check it out.

Still haven't gotten around to the first Dragon Age: New Releases for the Week of 03-06-11

Phantom Brave: Heroes of the Hermuda Triangle

(Sony PSP) Port of Nippon Ichi's 2004 strategy RPG for the PlayStation 2. This version will include all of the additional content added for the Nintendo Wii port released in 2009, as well as some new stuff specific to this version. I'm not sure what the “Hermuda Triangle" subtitle is all about; I guess whoever oversaw the localization at Nippon Ichi Software America thought the essence of the game was best captured by something that sounds like a really unimaginative name for a nautically-themed porno movie.

It's in the same vein as other Nippon Ichi games like Disgaea with lots of huge optional random dungeons, secret bosses powerful enough to swat the final boss of the main storyline like a fly, and the ability to level up both your characters and their equipment until they're all inflicting octovigenuple-digit  damage every turn, though this one is the oddball of that group in some ways. (At one point back when I was playing it, one of the most powerful weapons wielded by any of my characters was a flower pot.  That could fire lasers, for some reason.)

I had a lot of fun with Phantom Brave way back when, so if you like strategy RPGs and missed it the first time around I'd recommend checking it out.

Pokemon - Black Version and Pokemon - White Version

I know very little about Pokémon, so it wasn't until I read up on these games that I discovered how they work. Like Sith, they always come in pairs- that much I already knew. What I didn't know is that they're basically the same game, except that each has a few items, battles,  Pokémon- or Pokémons or Pokémen or Pokémonim or whatever the plural form is- and maybe a bonus area  not present in its counterpart.

Thus, in order to catch 'em all- which I understand is encouraged in Pokémon circles- you have to either know someone who also owns a Gameboy/Gameboy Advance/DS and the complementary version of your own game in order to trade via the multiplayer feature, or buy what is essentially the same game twice. I take my hat off to whichever diabolical marketing genius came up with this; it's not often I find myself switching back and forth so rapidly from being impressed and being appalled.

(There are things I could say about the unfortunate implications of an installment in the Pokémon game franchise in which some of the Pokémon are restricted to the Black or White version of the game instead of being allowed to freely intermingle, but it's probably better for the blog to gradually work its way up towards “jokes about systemic racism” levels of offensiveness instead of just rushing there headlong.)

On the Genealogy of Downloads: New Releases for the Week of 02-27-11

Beyond Good and Evil (Xbox Live Arcade)

Upgraded high-definition rerelease of the 2003 action-adventure game. The game will also be available for download on PlayStation Network at some point in the future.

Beyond Good and Evil was one of those games that had the sad fate of gaining an intensely enthusiastic cult following that still speaks fondly of the game almost a decade later while bombing with the general public. Though well-received by critics, the game was a commercial failure when it was released,  the victim of the limited appeal of the game's premise, poor marketing support by Ubisoft, and a faltering market for games named after books by Friedrich Nietzsche that had already been oversaturated by prior 2003 releases Xenosaga: Die Wille zur Macht and the critically acclaimed The Birth of Tragedy: A Barbie Horse Adventure.

Rift: Planes of Telara (PC)

New MMORPG. Honestly, the only reason I'm aware of this is that the developers, Trion, had a legal battle over trademarks with Kevin Siembieda, owner of Palladium Books and creator of the long-running tabletop RPG Rifts. Which Trion really should have seen coming, since Palladium has long been notorious for continuously emitting IP-related cease-and-desist notices in much the same way that you or I exhale carbon dioxide. (Though, to be fair, Palladium's complaint was actually a lot more reasonable than the sort of thing they're often known for.)

Vagrant Story (PlayStation Network)

(PlayStation Network) Square Enix continues to mercilessly taunt me with reminders  of why Square used to be my favorite developer with this classic action RPG from the original PlayStation, released as a downloadable game. Check it out if you missed it the first time around.

Chuck E Cheese's Sport Games (Nintendo Wii)

I don't really have anything to say about this game, since any joke I could make about it is less amusing to me than the simple fact of its existence.

Now, I suspect that this will tempt some people  to sneer that a Wii game based on the animatronic mascot of a chain of children's restaurants/entertainment centers is an example of how far Nintendo has fallen from its once-glorious heights in pursuit of the casual gamer market. So allow me to point out that, back in the halcyon era of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, when men were men and games were games and your mom didn't understand that the NES couldn't play Colecovision cartridges, the NES had games about McDonald's, the Noid  from Domino's Pizza commercials, and even a game starring the red dot on bottles of 7-Up. (Though, tragically, Fido Dido's moment in the sun would be forever denied him.) We had everything short of Procter and Gamble's Adventures in Brand Management Land, so it's a little late in the day to complain about this sort of thing.

Buy me Bonestorm, or go to Hell: New Releases for the Week of 2-20-11

Xenogears (PlayStation Network)

The classic Square RPG, now available for download. This is one of my favorite games of all time, and if you like RPGs I can't recommend it strongly enough. If you play only one game about badass martial artists, giant battling mecha, sci-fi Euhemerism, flying cities, reincarnation, love that spans millennia, lost ancient civilizations, dissociative identity disorder, and harvesting people to use as spare parts in a giant interstellar biotechnological superweapon this year, make it this one.

Bulletstorm (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)

Gleefully over-the-top first-person shooter. I'm looking forward to this one; I enjoyed the demo so much that I preordered it, something I almost never do.

(Though it also helped that I was able to get a $20 rebate on a future purchase for my preorder, effectively making it cost only $40. Also, after repeated exposures to the demo, I'm sort of afraid that Steven Blum will find out where I live, hunt me down, and bludgeon me to death with my own sundered limbs if I don't buy the game as soon as possible.)

Like my beloved Vanquish, it has something that I hope will become more common: a score. I like the idea of a game that pushes me as a player to play levels again and again so I can become quantifiably more badass each time, instead of just treating its main campaign as something to push through to see all of the game's content or as a glorified tutorial for multiplayer mode. I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer gaming, so it's nice to see games that will have to live or die according to the quality of their campaign.

Killzone 3 (PlayStation 3)

Continuation of the first-person shooter series. I played the demo for Killzone 2 and didn't much care for it. I haven't played the demo for this one yet, so maybe that will change my mind, but as things stand now I'm not really interested.

Also, while I'm aware that a “kill zone” is an actual concept in military tactics*, that doesn't change the fact that “Killzone” is probably the dullest, most generic-sounding name of any popular video game franchise. It's just barely a step up from calling it Game Where You Shoot People.

*(Albeit one that doesn't appear to have any particular relevance to Killzone's story or gameplay; the series seems like it could just as easily have been named Encirclement or Bounding Overwatch or Guys Standing in a Square Formation and Stabbing People With Huge Fucking Spears.)

I know that a lot of people really loved the last one, though, so your mileage may vary.

Dreamcast Collection (Xbox 360 and PC)

At long last, you can once again experience the magic of Sega's beloved but ill-fated Dreamcast with... 5 games that were already available as separate downloads, or soon will be. One of which is a game about fishing. Lucky for Sega that I just can't stay angry at the company that released Vanquish.

Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS)

RPG from Atlus, with a story based on time travel and the ability to change history.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and actually buy a Nintendo DS soon. Atlus has made some of my favorite games of the past five or six years, and there's a finite number of times the words “Another  Atlus RPG I can't play” can echo through my neocortex before a fuse blows and I wake up one morning with a bunch of inexplicable gaps in my memory and the words YENRUOJ EGNARTS IESNET IMAGEM NIHS written in blood on the ceiling.

Its Hour Come Round at Last: New Releases for the Week of 02-13-11

As foretold in cryptic and ancient texts- given the speed at which the media moves nowadays, I think a blog post from two days ago more or less counts as ancient, and my grotesquely Baroque clauses-upon-clauses-upon-parenthetical-asides-upon-semicolons-upon-still-more-clauses writing certainly counts as cryptic- the time has come for Pointless Side Quest's first weekly round-up of new releases.

Hyperdimension Neptunia (PlayStation 3)

Fantasy RPG published by Nippon Ichi. Apparently, the plot is based on the game industry itself, set in a world divided between between rival goddesses who are allegorical representations of this generation's competing consoles and inhabited by characters who are stand-ins for different developers.

I've been know to stretch the truth on this blog occasionally, so I can't really blame you if you think I'm just making that up. That arguably rivals Kingdom Hearts for the title of Game Premise Most Likely to Have Been Originally Conceived at 3:00 AM By People Sitting In a Huge Cloud of Marijuana Smoke. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, by any means. And Nippon Ichi usually doesn't disappoint, so this has piqued my interest.



Marvel Vs. Capcom: Fate of Two Worlds (PlayStation 3 and Xbox360)

The long-awaited continuation of the popular crossover fighting game series. Finally, a way to answer the question of who would win in a fight between Mike Haggar, Galactus, and Tron Bonne. (Though it leaves unresolved the far greater mystery of why a game with two characters from the Mega Man series doesn't  include Mega Man but apparently did have enough space for Tron Bonne.)

Hard Corps: Uprising (PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade)

Konami's new shooter, inspired by classic run-and-gun games like Contra. Has what is arguably the most unintentionally dirty-sounding title for a video game since the 1995 Sega CD classic Wild Woody.


LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (PlayStation 3, Xbox360, and Nintendo Wii)

 

The newest entry in the popular series of Lego-inspired action games. Insert joke about the relative acting abilities displayed by Hayden Christensen in the prequels versus those of an  inanimate plastic block here.

 Gears of War Triple Pack (Xbox360)


Collection that includes Gears of War, Gears of War 2, and the Gears of War 2: All Fronts expansion. Not bad for $30, especially if you're a newcomer to the series and wan to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the Gears of War universe without the commitment and expense of the more hardcore “injecting massive amounts of anabolic steroids directly into your eyeballs until your head connects directly to your torso” method.

Coming soon

Hey, all. My apologies for my recent dearth of posts; I've had business elsewhere tying me up lately. I've recently become a writer at the gaming site Robot Geek, which I heartily recommend to you. I've also been getting my other site, science fiction review blog Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic, up and running again after its hiatus.

Fortunately, this blog is about to pick up its pace again, so if you've been suffering from nausea, tremors,  hallucinations, impaired memory formation, or any other withdrawal symptoms, relief is at hand. Among other things, I'll shortly be starting a weekly feature looking at some of the games coming out each week. The purpose of this is twofold:

1. It gives me a chance to throw together lots of jokes and topics that aren't long enough or funny enough to justify a full post themselves. (Thus freeing me from my previous constraints , which limited me to only those that weren't funny enough.)

2. It provides an excuse to link to lots of games, now that the commission money I made when some guy bought Batman: Arkham Asylum through an Amazon affiliate link last year has almost run out and I find myself facing the prospect of having to give up the luxurious lifestyle those funds have made possible.

 

So, don't go anywhere. I mean that literally; just remain at your computer until the next post appears. There's probably some condensation on the nearest window if you get thirsty.

The laurels of victory

Whether it's a Pinewood Derby “Participant” trophy, an oversized novelty check, or a  towering  gem-studded throne wrought from the very bones of your slaughtered enemies, everyone enjoys having something to commemorate their achievements and successes. I myself take great pride – or would if I could figure out where I've gort it stored- in the mug I won in a Star Trek trivia contest because I AND I ALONE knew the names of both of Worf's brothers.

(Nobody ever remembers Nikolai Rozhenko, poor Next Generation 7th season filler episode bastard. He's the Marlon Jackson of the 24th century.)

However, in the aftermath of the recent cracking and exposure of the Playstation 3's root key, there are now reports that someone has created a program allowing the user to claim the PlayStation Trophies for some PS3 games without actually playing them. This is a very small problem in the greater scheme of things, but it still irritates me. I earned my Battlefield: Bad Company trophy for shooting down an enemy helicopter with the JDAM laser designator, dammit. Earned it with my own blood and sweat and freakish good luck when I'd run out of rockets to fire at the damn thing and had decided to just screw around while I waited for it to kill me. I'd hate to see that cheapened.

Still, if you've always longed for a taste of the sort of glory and admiration that has been hitherto enjoyed only by the elite few who actually have the skill and dedication to seize Army of Two: The 40th Day's coveted “win three consecutive rounds of rock-paper-scissors” trophy, I suppose this is your chance.