Category: random

I want to see more games like TWEWY

Silly name, good game

I finished The World Ends With You (TWEWY) last Friday. The game was an enjoyable romp. The story didn’t make a lot of sense and the character (and costume) design was atrocious but the gameplay was solid and more important scalable. Why is scalable bolded like that? Because it is the single greatest thing it has going for it and the single greatest thing I wish started showing up in more games!

TWEWY doesn’t punish a player for not learning the minutiae of its various game play mechanics. It doesn’t penalize you for not being able to sink in the hours and hours to master controlling characters on two screens simultaneously, or learning the intricacies of its mini games (like tin pin slammer and fashions.) TWEWY is only as difficult as you want it to be. You can set the difficulty level at any time, you can set how your secondary characters works at any time and you can safely ignore all the mini-games, sub-plots, and interesting game design elements if you want, and still see the ending of the game.

More difficult than it looks.

Why is this so important? Well, I’m not six or sixteen anymore. I have a fucking life now and I no longer have the luxury of six or seven spare hours in a day to immerse myself in my favorite pastime. If I did I’m sure I could master all the nuances of tin pin slammer, or figure out just what types of experience go into making my pins evolve. Seven-year-old-me loved that shit and ate it up. Seven-year-old-me had the free time to memorize enemy stats and talk endlessly about the differences in the magic systems in various JRPG gaming franchises and how that compared with said systems in western game franchises (oh, the misspent hours of my youth…) I do not.

I don’t want to hear anyone down in the comments say something like “Maybe you just suck at gaming,” or “If you can’t commit to a game don’t play it.” The answer to my lack of time isn’t to give up my most cherished pastime. And you should slam your head against a wall for thinking I, or anyone else, should. The average age of a gamer today is 34. In general 34 year-olds have full-time jobs, family commitments, social commitments, community commitments, etc. What they don’t have is a lot of free time to sink into games that demand they ‘master’ them in order to enjoy them.

God, these kids look stupid.

I just wish more designers did things like this. The difficulty in video games has been declining for years, but as implemented in TWEWY it allows the player to decide, on the fly, how difficult they want things to be. So, when the player is looking for something more challenging or has the time to sink into it they are rewarded for it. At the same time I can play and enjoy the game as well.

Here is a case where gamers can have their cake and eat it too. So why aren’t designers catching on?

Next time I’ll do it myself!

Five lions are always better than one

I was going to write about some of the books I found at my parent’s house today but I have all sorts of books and I’m getting more and more all the time. So a blogpost about books didn’t seem to be that interesting. Then I was going to blog about the state of education in California and how the Legislature intends to deal with the problems in the upcoming year but, that takes a lot of research I haven’t quote done yet (I might do it someday.) So, I was kinda at a loss as to what to make today’s post about… I could do another picture diary of Ninja Turtles or video game manuals or some other random thing I have in my closet but I wasn’t feeling that either.

So what is a blogger with writer’s block to do? Oh it’s February and my Let’s Play of King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne starts!  I can write about that… Except I haven’t started it yet. Hrmm. Hrmm. I got my W-2s and I can do my taxes now and get a fat tax return! No, that is boring… I know!  I’ll talk about how I was ripped off last night by Dimple (They bought out part of Tower Records.)

Dimple is a one-stop music/movie/video game store that also sells vinyl and objects usually found in a Hot Topic. I’ve never shopped at the store all I knew is that they bought used Movies, CDs, and Video games. I recently needed to make some money and after putting numerous items on eBay was slightly burned out making auctions and wanted something simple. So I forego the internet and head over to Dimple with the entire American Voltron cartoon collection, the kind that came in these nice fancy tins. Now prices for these thing seem to be all over the place on-line. Amazon has volume four for just over five dollars, volume one for sixteen, and volume two for over thirty… Ebay’s prices are just as erratic with brand new copies costing $9.99 and used ones in good condition for over thirty. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding and some of these are in the tins and others are not. I don’t know. I do know though that all Dimple gave me was $16.  Yup, if I had wanted to buy a CD (and who does that anymore) I could have received $20 in store credit. It doesn’t matter how cheap these things are now I would have made more money if I hadn’t saved myself the minor trouble and sold the things myself.

Dimple isn’t the only store that does this. Gamestop is notorious for its used game policy. Gamestop will give you less than half of what a game is worth in store credit, even less for cash and then put it back on the shelves for just under the price of a brand new copy. The margins they have on used games are criminal. This is why I always sell my games on-line.  Even if I don’t get much I’m guaranteed to get more than I would from Gamestop and the person buying from me is likely to get the game cheaper as well!

Laziness is expensive I guess.  Here are some more cool pictures of Voltron:

JPRart
lastscionz
Mborkowski

Things I found at my parents house: Sega Dreamcast!

 

It's still thinking?

 

 

Ninja Turtles, computer game manuals, and books aren’t the only things I found boxed up in the spare room at my parent’s house. I also found video games! My original PSX which I decided not to keep (PS2s do a fine job at that) and my trusty ol’ used Sega Dreamcast.

I only have one controller but, I have this nifty adaptor that lets me use PS2 controllers on the console!  I also have one of those generic mega saved game cards, which still has my saves on it after eight or nine odd years! Everyone knows the tragic story of the Dreamcast and how its failure ended Sega’s console making days. The system is sturdy and the games for it are a blast. This almost went up for sale a few weeks back but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I haven’t played it yet since bringing it up but I need to because I have some pretty good games for it:

 

Web browser, PSO, Powerstone, Rayman 2, Soul Caliber, Skies of Arcadia, Starlancer, and Virtua Tennis

I could have sworn I had crazy taxi or the Simpson’s variant. I can’t find it anywhere though so I guess not.  I wonder if I can get it cheap? Out of all of those games I enjoy Powerstone and Virtua Tennis the most.  Powerstone is simply mindless fun and Virtua Tennis is the best sequel to Pong I’ve ever seen!

 

Buy Something Will Ya?

This year started off with a bang!  My truck needing a new fuel pump.  I’m trying to mitigate the costs so why don’t you take a gander at this list and maybe purchase something off of it?  You’d be doing me a solid!

Thanks

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