I Bring Nothing to the Table

I tell ya, it’s been a good long while since I’ve had to write a post that’s not really about baseball and it’s got me rather at a loss of what to do. Instead of focusing on one topic today, instead let’s look at a variety of things going on that I care about:

Peter Molyneux has got a problem. You see, he’s one of the movers and shakers in video game design and his ideas have more or less shaped the industry as a whole. For example, while you can argue that Ultima or Fallout did it first, Peter and his boys at Lionhead popularized the whole good vs. evil aesthetic that so pervades the medium right now with his landmark title Black & White. You can’t really argue that his game made it cool for the visual look of a character to change dynamically with alignment that Bioware eventually used in their epics Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect.

The problem though, comes when you realize that Peter is more of an ideas man. Black & White sold tons of copies, but was generally tepidly received or remembered due to its feel as more of a sandbox game or a tech demo. Its unfocused nature. The idea was gold, the game wasn’t there. Fable was promised to be an epic story where things you did from day 1, like planting a tree, would radically change the future. It didn’t. The list of things promised for Fable that weren’t delivered was so long that it became a media point to say that what Peter says doesn’t necessarily get into the game, no matter how enthusiastic and brilliant he may sound saying it.

Today I’ll be picking up my pre-order of Fable 2. Will it satisfy or will it fall short of his promises? You can be sure that I’ll let you know here once I have a solid conclusion.

Also on the table for today: I tried adding some Just Bunches to my Honey Bunches of Oats and I’d have to say the result was stellar. The addition of more bunches really makes the cereal better without overpowering the other elements. A great idea, but not one I’ll be repeating by buying another box of Just Bunches in the future.

Little Big Planet, if you hadn’t already heard, was delayed until next week due to a controversial music track included in the game. The game had, I should say, a track in which passages of the Qur’an were recited in the background. Muslims claim that it is offensive to include passages in the Qur’an in art, so Sony decided to push back the game’s release date and Media Molecule, the game devs, removed the track from the discs. Some say that Muslims need to learn to chill out if they want to be respected in the global, free world, others say that they’re in the right to ask that their religious texts not be used. I agree more with the former, but I also understand why Sony did what they did and I do think that they at least made a good business decision, since they get pretty good sales in the Middle East.

Gonna take a short blogging break to play some MLB Power Pros and prepare for a wedding I have to go to this weekend. Catch you guys on the flip side.

It’s time for the moment many of you have been waiting for: my review of Hideo Kojima’s epic masterpiece: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain story spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Operating mostly on the basis of a promised beautiful, cinematic, amazing future of games, the PS3 launched back in November of 2006 with many of its purchasers anxiously awaiting the arrival of one specific game: Metal Gear Solid 4. Arriving quite some time later, is this the game to finally make the PS3 a worthwhile purchase? Let’s have a look.

The Story

One of the main questions on everyone’s mind when MGS4’s launch neared was whether or not the game would be able to wrap up the multitude of sometimes downright ridiculous plot points laid out by the six or so canonical games that have come out over the last twenty years. I’ll tell you outright that they definitely did manage to get it all figured out in a mostly satisfying way and with a pretty great premise that relates rather well to the previous games in the series. Unfortunately we lack some of the major themes of the typical MGS game, which is quite unfortunate, since the game is now more about Snake getting revenge and, to borrow a marketing blurb from Halo, finishing the fight.

The premise behind this new game is as complex as any other Metal Gear game. “War has changed,” as Snake tells us right from the get-go. The world economy revolves around war instead of oil with major private military corporations handling military operations in lieu of the more typical government-handled warfare of the 20th and 21st centuries. Snake’s major antagonist, Liquid Ocelot, happens to control the five major PMCs and is about to stage a revolt. Colonel Campbell will have none of that, so he’s sending in Snake to put an end to Liquid once and for all.

If you’ve ever seen a clip or footage of old Metal Gear Solid games, you’re no doubt wondering why Snake looks so old in this game. Simple answer, Snake, being a clone of the great Big Boss, is actually suffering from rapid cellular degeneration as a direct result of his cloned nature. So begins the tale of the living legend as he pursues Liquid across the globe. I’ll leave the synopsis at that, since the rest is best experienced in person.

Gameplay

The Metal Gear Solid series has always suffered from rather obscure control decisions, resulting in a finger-twisting control scheme that was definitely frustrating. For the last game of Snake’s career, Kojima teamed up with Ryan Payton to try and “Westernize” the controls of MGS to streamline the obscure decisions that have been a hallmark of the past ten years of Metal Gear. By making these controls work better in the post-discovery, action-oriented parts of MGS4, Kojima also inadvertently made it much easier to NOT play MGS as “Tactical Stealth Espionage” game. Really, what is Metal Gear without the stealth? The game was punishing when you messed up because you weren’t supposed to get caught. Your gameplay should be much more deliberate, slow and controlled than a straight-up action game because this is NOT an action game. That disappointment aside, the reworked controls do make the experience that much smoother and help to bring modern game design to the classic series.

Extra Spoiler Alert

Also new to the mix is the way that the levels are laid out. The first zone, the Middle East, has you more or less in the middle of a battle between the PMCs and militia insurgents. While these two factions are battling it out, you can choose to sneak, stealthily, around the fighting, help the militia take out the PMCs, gaining their trust and making them allies on the battlefield, or kill/stun both PMC and militia alike, making enemies of both. This first section on the game also hapens to be one of the best done sections, with the interesting dynamic of warring factions, tension resulting from battlefield sneaking, and a overall cool locale.

Act two takes place in South America, in a throwback type situation to MGS3. It doesn’t quite take place in the jungle, but its got a similar aesthetic to it and is the second most fun zone in the game. There is one area of complaint, the part where you have to “track” Naomi’s footprints to get to where she’s being kept in S. America. it’s just not as fun as the game thinks it is to look for footprints. This section also features some of the militia/PMC fighting of the desert.

The third act is the weakest of the bunch, taking place in Europe, you mainly follow a member of the resistance in an attempt to locate the headquarters of said resistance and “Big Mama.” It’s just plain not as fn as other parts of the game, even if it forces a bit more the stealth aspect of MGS that I love so much.

Act IV has the third best section of the game, as you return to Shadow Moses Island hunting Liquid Ocelot. The act starts with a dream sequence that pops you back to the PSX Metal Gear Solid making you play the approach into the Shadow Moses Island base. after that bit of nostalgia, you bust into the base itself, hearing bits of nostalgic moments that took place int he island as you pass through familiar locations. The enemies in this section are far less interesting, as they are mostly robotic. and not as fun to sneak by. This act does also contain a very sweet section where you pilot the Metal Gear REX, the model you fought in Metal Gear Solid and a Metal Gear on Metal Gear battle as you spar with the Metal Gear RAY model from Metal Gear Solid 2.

The final act brings you face to face with the Outer Heaven, Liquid’s main battleship and the location he intends to launch his revolution from. The shortest section in the game, it does feature a great boss battle against a foe similar to Psycho Mantis as well as one of the best cinematic and nostalgic gameplay sections as the final boss battle.

No real review can get away without mentioning Metal Gear Solid Online. This game, I feel, suffers from the fact that stealth is not rewarded as it is in the main game. Why would you want to play MGO like any other third-person shooter? I mainly have my fun by refusing to kill any other players, but when I do manage to stun another player, one of my teammates inevitably comes around and shoots him in the head on the floor. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Graphics

Meet the best looking PS3 game currently on the market. Every ounce of processing power available to Konami and Kojima Productions was expertly utilized to create a beautiful experience that will wow most any naysayer of the PS3’s graphical capabilities. The desert makes you thirsty, jungle makes you sweaty from humidity, Europe feels cool, Shadow Moses Island is appropriately haunted-seeming, and Outer Heaven’s cinematic beauty makes for a great end to a fine game.

Sound

What can I say? The guns sound good, voice acting is as superb as ever (boo to losing the British and Chinese accents of Naomni and Mei Ling, respectively), and the score by Harry Gregson-Williams and company evokes the properly patriotic and legendary aesthetic of Metal Gear.

Final Verdict

Metal Gear Solid 4 is an amazing game, but I found myself just a wee bit disappointed with the epic. While the game does everything really well, I just found the story and, specifically, the acting of some of the characters (Naomi and Sunny) to be rather irritating. Compared to the sublime perfection of Metal Gear Solid 3, this game just needed a little more editing and a little less of the Japanese overacted melodrama. That being said, MGS4 is still one of the best PS3 games out there, gameplay-wise and should not be missed. A definite must-play.

Yoshinori Kitase has huge shoes to fill. As the producer of Final Fantasy XIII he’s looking at doing a job last held by Horonobu Sakaguchi in Final Fantasy X. Ok, Sakachuchi was technically the executive producer of that game, but with no other producers announced for XIII, I’m gonna come out and call him the EP.

Kitase had this to say (in this IGN article) about the new game and directions they’re taking:

Kitase spoke about carrying the Final Fantasy torch and commented on how this game will be unique, yet familiar. “In the grand scheme of things, Final Fantasy XIII is probably very different and new from anything you’ve seen in the series before. But, everybody on the team has played XII and the previous titles and there is an unseen connection there among the series.” He then went on to tell a story about a conversation with Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series. In it he asked Sakaguchi about what makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game. Jokingly, Sakaguchi told him that as long as you have white text on a blue background, you should be fine. Final Fantasy XIII doesn’t have that, but Kitase says it’s still a continuation.

As funny as it is to mention the blue background thing, I think that a new direction is not a bad idea. FF games have, quite frankly, been getting a little stale for me of late. I worry a bit about XIII since its director is the same one from X-2 (Motomu Toriyama), but I’d like to see them stray.

One of the other cool things about the game was the mention of a different cast take with the character code-named Lightning. She supposedly is going to resist forming a party and try to be a loner. Hopefully she’s not a female version of one of those emo Squeenix protagonists, but it’s good to see that they won’t be partying from the get-go.

It’s one of the most anticipated trailers of the year, the Japanese trailer of FF XIII. Note that the blog category is Sony and doesn’t include M$, but this is because this is the Japanese trailer, a region where FF XIII will not see a 360 release.

Behold the trailer of the game Square Enix is calling flashier than than the Final Fantasy games that preceded it. It starts out in typical Final Fantasy fashion, but definitely flashes it up when the combat starts to show up. I’m definitely excited about the new direction and new protagonist.

Enjoy the trailer!

If you read my 8-bit All-Stars feature you know I love me some Mega Man 2. There was just something sublimely perfect about that game with its polished level design and great boss battles.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a real sequel to a Mega Man game. The last canonical MM game was MM 8 for the PSX in 1997, with the X series taking over with about eight installments that have also stopped coming out.

Imagine the world’s surprise when Mega Man 9 all of a sudden showed up on an ESRB classification website. Could the beloved franchise be making a return in all of the splendor of the current generation’s technological advances? And then we saw the first screenshots and trailer…

Cue some controversy. I’d say that a large number of dedicated MM fanatics were happy with this new direction, but many were perplexed by Capcom’s choice to go way old school with this new installment. Personally, I’m a fan of the new direction. When you look at the disappointments that have been the more recent MM games, it seems clear that a conscious effort to get back to the roots is just what the series NEEDS. Not to mention the fact that old school, 8-bit Mega Man music is great.

It’s not exactly a straight NES-style game though, it does have some technological advances. If you look closely you’ll see that the game does have some fancy-pants effects that weren’t possible on the NES. Personally, I’ll be happy if the game manages to not drop framerate when a bunch of enemies appear onscreen.

Another neat little change in the Mega Man conventions is that MM 9 will feature the first female robot. Splash Woman is the first non Man robot in series history. Some purists are very anti-Splash Woman, but I’m pro-female evil robot rights.

If I’m not mistaken, Mega Man 9 is slated for a Fall release on WiiWare, Xbox Live, and PSN.

Here we are at the last of the 16-bit era’s all-stars that couldn’t quite crack the top three.

This game is distinctly famous for Shigeru Miyamoto claiming that this game “proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good,” which he later apologized for claiming that he was expressing some frustration at Nintendo pressuring him to make changes to Yoshi’s Island to make it look more like this game. Another, more obvious clue, is that I talked about this game in my instruction manual editorial. Our last runner-up is Donkey Kong Country.

Runner-up: Donkey Kong Country

This will be one of the few times that you hear me say this, but Shigeru Miyamoto is wrong. Donkey Kong Country was the much lauded return of Donkey Kong to the video game spotlight and what a job it did. They looked at the aesthetic of the original Donkey Kong and they absolutely brought most of that to this new game. The most obvious transition from original to SNES was the strong use of the barrel. Donkey Kong’s chief weapon in the first level makes a return as one of the most prolific items in the game. You save progress in them, fly around the world map in them, rocket through the levels in them, regain party members from them, and have a projectile attack a la the original game. The mortality of the player characters were even brought over from the arcade game with both Donkey and Diddy dying after one hit, much like Mario (Jumpman) did back in the day.

I love Donkey Kong Country because it took the conventions for how a platformer is done, pulled from Mario 3 and Mario World, and took it to brand new heights. Sure, it didn’t have the branching paths of SMW or the innovative power-up management system of SMB3, but it had pets done way better than Yoshi, tight, almost simultaneous two-player action, secrets hidden around every corner, and that trademark Rare humor (or should I say humour?) that’s long since left the company (probably left when the Stamper brothers left).

DKC was and still remains one of the coolest Christmas presents I ever got. I still have the t-shirt that came with the game as a pre-order bonus (thanks Mom!). If you’ve never played it, you should go back and try it out.

A great Sega-bashing commecial:

The kid in this commercial is wearing the t-shirt I got as a pre-order bonus:

One of my favorite video game intros:

Wow, what a journey the 16-bit era was. My most formative gaming years spanned this generation, setting up my future video game habits and tastes, most notably, my voracious love for RPGs. This era’s a real tough one to follow, I mean a good chunk of my top games of all time came out of this period. Tune in tomorrow to see which console games make my top three in the post-16, pre-current gen time period. I can tell you right now, regular readers of my blog won’t be surprised by the number one game, but can you even come close to guessing what else will be covered in the week to come? Go ahead and leave a comment with your guesses.

I hope you all remember that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots launches today! Go and buy it. If you don’t have a PS3, go get an 80GB model (backwards compatibility for the win!) and a Dual Shock 3 and then buy MGS4. What are you waiting for?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled sports updates to bring you trailers of three Square Enix announced RPGs for the Xbox 360:

The first is The Last Remnant:

Next we have Star Ocean 4 (AKA Star Ocean: The Last Hope):

And last we have Infinite Undiscovery:

Of the three, The Last Remnant impresses and attracts me the most. Star Ocean has never really been a franchise that calls to me, but it also looks kind of neat. Infinite Undiscovery, on top of being an Action RPG (confirmed by IGN), seems to have pretty weak production values compared to the other two. Granted, Star Ocean didn’t really show any in-game footage, but its pre-rendered stuff looked better too. Maybe Infinite Undiscovery is always running in-engine?

All of these games are being released “For the Xbox,” but Square Enix has been relatively dodgy on the question of exclusivity with some games and I think they’ve even confirmed that PS3 versions would hit at some point with others (I’d have to go check and, well, I don’t care that much. The implications are clear though: Square Enix wants a greater market share. There could even be some Sakaguchi animosity hidden beneath their decision, since he’s more or less enjoyed a monopoly on the Xbox 360 JRPG market.

In other gaming news, Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out tomorrow! Two new MG Retrospectives have come out since I last wrote about them:

Part 4:

Part 5:

And last, some sports news:

Hanley Ramirez has finally been swinging that bat and knocking the ball over the fence. The past few games have seen his homerun count put him in the top 25, last I checked. Keep it up buddy.

This current series with the Phillies will be a vital test for the Marlins. With the Phils in 1st place, each game we lose will push us further away from the coveted top spot. We started out strong last night with a 5-4 win. Let’s keep it up for the next two.

I’ve known about this game for about a month or so already, but this is the official IBNttT Persona 4 exists (!) post.

Details are still a bit light stateside, but here’s a breakdown on what I do know:

The Persona 3 engine is being recycled for use in this new game (this will be very obvious once you see the embedded videos), which also means that the latest Persona game will be on the PS2.

Persona 4 does not take place in the same city as Persona 3. In fact, it takes place in rural Japan instead and might not even be related to Persona 3 at all. This wouldn’t be the first unrelated Persona game, as Persona 3 (correct me if I’m wrong) is entirely unrelated to the previous three games (yes, that’s an accurate count). There are no evokers (the guns that the students use to blast the Persona out of their psyche), but I’ve noticed from the trailers that the students all seem to be wearing glasses when in the shadow world. Whether or not these are needed to summon Persona or even what their purpose is, I have no clue.

The Wikipedia page for P4 states that the story is a murder mystery with the victims of a killing spree appearing on a mysterious midnight TV show that you can enter (maybe using the glasses?). There also appears to be a school day aesthetic, rather like P3 and, if the trailers are any indication, an equally cool soundtrack to P3.

I look forward to the day later on this month that I will once again be able to hold a video game controller within my hands, as I will finally be able to finish P3: FES (not to mention MGS4). It’s good to know that I’ll have something brewing in Japan, waiting for me when I finish. Well…it’ll probably be a while before it’s localized, but still. I can’t wait.

Enjoy the embedded opening and trailer of Persona 4!

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

WiiWare

In a move that is still very confounding to me, Nintendo launched the WiiWare service this week with not even as much as a message in our collective Wii inboxes to tell us about the new game service. Of course, most game enthusiasts knew about it right away, but you’ve got to wonder if maybe publicizing the event a bit might have increased sales, right? Anyway, the WiiWare launch brought a bunch of games in the Xbox Live! Arcade and PSN fashion to the system including Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

That being the only WiiWare game I’ve downloaded so far (where’s Dr. Mario Online Rx?), it’s gonna be the only one I talk about. I’m about 75% of the way through the game, having played about 115 days of the kingdom simulator and I’d probably give it a thumbs-up to anyone who enjoys sims and enjoys the Final Fantasy universe. From the get go, understand that My Life as a King is not your typical FF game at all. You don’t actually fight monsters or control your adventurers. Instead, you build up your kingdom’s infrastructure and commission adventurers to go out and conquer the realm’s dungeons and monsters. At the end of each day you’ll receive a budget report and a report of everything that your adventurers did so that you can live the good, adventuring life vicariously. It definitely works as a game, but is a bit shallow as a sim. Then again, it’s a $15 game (with a whopping $25 in add-on DLC available) and looks quite nice on the system, albeit with a few framerate hitches. Unfortunately, you can’t preview WiiWare games, so be sure to read up on the game before you make a purchase.

MLB Power Pros 2008

So I’ve gone on and on about the new edition of MLB PP, but that’s not gonna stop me from talking about it a bit more today. IGN Wii posted about a hundred screenshots of the game in action, so we’re gonna take a look at a few.

New to this year’s edition of the MLB PP series is MyLife mode. Last year we had only the success mode, where you brought a college player through three seasons hoping to be drafted at some point. MyLife mode instead makes you a professional player as you go through his 20 year major league career. You’re not just limited to baseball, as you can see below:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

I suppose you also have to manage your player’s moods to stay in high spirits as well as train your player to keep him fit and improving in stats and abilities.

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

You can even conduct interviews with sports reporters:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Season mode appears to be back with a VERY similar interface to last year’s game:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

But it also seems to include a very neat “Expansion Team” mode that allows you to create two new teams to insert into the MLB lineup which seems really cool:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Success mode is back with a AA team instead of a college team. I assume the goal is still to reach the Majors while wooing the ladies among other goals.

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Hopefully we’ll be able to transfer old created players from last year’s game, but if not I’ll at least get a chance to make my created Dan not suck quite so much this time.

July can’t come soon enough, I honestly cannot wait

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com