Wednesday, April 30, 2008

GameSpite - Golden Axe Warrior Review

Woohoo! Another review! I can't help but get excited whenever something I put a lot of work into sees the light of day, and this Golden Axe Warrior (GAW) piece pretty much personifies this feeling. Jeremy Parish decided to switch over to a weekly digest format after I submitted this piece; making it sit all alone for almost a month. This was actually a blessing in disguise, as the initial draft I wrote up was extremely rough and needed a good amount of polish to get to the stage it's in today. Jeremy did a good amount of edits, but most everything stayed true to my original words and visions.

I thought GAW was a really neat, if unoriginal, game that deserves more attention than it seems to get, so go and read the darn thing and find out for yourself! I promise you'll giggle at least once at the screenshots.

Read: Golden Axe Warrior Review

P.S. I have a preview for Summon Night: Twin Age DS coming up at RPGamer soon. The game
just got pushed back, so I couldn't have picked a better time to do a preview! Woohoo!

Daily Nexus - "The Makings of a Classic"

Last week my mind came to a screeching halt when I finally sat down to start writing something for the Daily Nexus, and for some reason my mind was suddenly inundated with plumbers. Super Mario Bros. is arguably the game that changed videogaming into the industry it is today, with the whole "bringing videogames back from their premature 1983 death) thing, and I felt it was due time to talk about the importance of that monumental game. In the article I give a brief history of what games looked like in the early 80s, how things have changed, and the innovations that SMB brought to the table. I could have written twice as much in my sleep about this subject, but I think it worked well in its slightly truncated form.

See for yourself.

Read: "The Makings of a Classic"

Daily Nexus - "The Makings of a Classic"

My Wii News Update

I haven't had the time to update this thingamablogger for a while, so here is a list of my recently published articles over at My Wii News. I was 90% done with an exclusive feature I was working on before my laptop harddrive crashed, and as soon as I can find a way to get my files off of my Mac's harddrive I'll post it on the site. It should be a goodie, but entertain yourself with these stories until that time comes.

Read:

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Daily Nexus - "Hyperreality Challenges Gaming Future"

Wow, haven't updated this in a while. I'll have to do some mass posts for everything I've done and had published in the past few weeks, as it's a lot more than just a few blurbs here and there. To start with, here's my penultimate gaming column posted by the Daily Nexus, which actually found its way into the actual newspaper.

That's right! This article was actually published in the Daily Nexus, but I had no way of knowing until today when my friend told me that he enjoyed reading my article. After a bit of sleuthing, I found out that it was published in the physical Nexus newspaper on April 11th, with pictures and everything. Wow! I just wish my editor would have told me so I could have had someone pick up the article when I was out of town.

Even though it's the same as last time, you get to see the cool pictures drawn specially for the article. Either way, it makes for a good read. See for yourself.

Read: Daily Nexus - "Hyperreality Challenges Gaming Future"

Friday, April 4, 2008

MyWiiNews - Opoona Review

After a week of plodding through Opoona, my review has finally gone live on MyWiiNews. It's a bit of a monster, but I feel like I could have written well over 2000 words without much repetition. I also saw some ways I could have cut it almost in half, but considering the extreme dearth of information about the game currently on the 'net, I felt a pinch of verbosity was required. Opoona is a rather niche title, and I've had at least 3 or 4 people keep in constant contact with me about the game, trying to get a feel for it because so little information was really out there. I don't know how people will feel about it, but I'm hoping it will be useful for at least a few prospective gamers.

On another exciting note, I've recently been promoted to "Editor" of MyWiiNews. Up until now, there was one person who edited and published everything ("Bucky"). Since I've initiated a few cool changes and been generally reliable for my time there, he asked me to help out and work alongside him. I must say that it will be nice to get more experience editing for the future, even though I don't know where I'll be working 3 months from now. I will be in the Bay Area, though, so if you need a staff writer, I'd love to know.

Blabbering aside, the review is worth a peek.

Read: Opoona Review

Daily Nexus - Exploring the Uncanny Valley

This was something a little different. I actually wrote this almost a month ago, but due to finals week and spring break, my piece was postponed until Monday of this week. It's nice to see it finally go up, as I tried to put a little extra into it, discussing important questions about the future of videogame graphics and presentation.

I don't think we'll have to worry about being scared to death by the uncanny valley in all our videogames anytime soon, but it's a reasonable thought in the next 5-10 years. It's crazy to think how much of our lives has changed in just ten years, and how much it possibly could in ten more. Just look at this crazy mock-up of what ComputerWorld thinks our computers will be like in 15 years, and think about what people thought life would be like now, 70 years ago. Technology is some crazy stuff, and really hard to pinpoint what will be reasonably coming next. A terabyte of storage? I had 4 GB ten years ago when I got my first computer. Crazy how things change.

Anywhoo, onto the reading.

Read: Daily Nexus - Exploring the Uncanny Valley

MyWiiNews – More Updates on the Zelda Homebrew Hack

It's amazing to see chipless modifications do so much in so little time. After a little more than a few months, we've already got homebrew programs and applications running on the Wii. I don't see small-scale emulation far off, which will be monumental (and possibly catastrophic) for homebrewers everywhere. Obviously Nintendo doesn't want Wii owners having a free solution for emulation when they would prefer for consumers to buy games on the VC, so this may turn into quite the storm if things get out of hand. After all, if a down-grader or workaround is released a la the PSP, Nintendo could have a monster on their hands.

Times, they are a changin'.

Read: MyWiiNews – More Info on the Zelda Homebrew Hack