Blogcast Episode 5

At last we've reached the fifth episode of the Good or Blog Amazing Fantastic Audio Program. As Batman can attest to, it's quite shocking.

What are you even doing here, Batman?

So let's jump right into the segments, shall we? As always we accept all forms of criticism and maybe a few complaints if we're feeling amicable.

Segment 1 - We briefly celebrate a diminutive 5 episodes then discuss bad games we love while Sean attempts to fondle his headset to death!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FANHD9U4

Segment 2 - We grapple with issues like Kim Jong-il's latest betrayal, why Japan sucks, racial slurs, and underage drinking. Every now and then we talk about movies that would be great games too.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SORUND6I

Segment 3 - Taylor proposes his guest secret topic and we all become a little rant-y. Also watch (I mean listen, of course) as my patience succumbs to Sean's further bullshit! Finally, stay tuned for that outro, it's a killer.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SLR6FQ49

Segment 4 - The long awaited (by me) music segment finally comes to fruition. We got pianos, rap, imaginary guitar solos, and something that sounds a little bit like intelligent discourse. Be sure to listen after the credits for the podcast's first stinger!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7CIFZB4A

Ace Attorney Investigations Review

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth for the Nintendo DS

My life, much like this site, is pretty binary. It seems like everything I encounter, parodixically enough, is either the best or worst in whatever category it belongs. I love this. I hate that. This thing is excellent. That thing is terrible. Part of why I started this site is because I wanted to see whether any game I played could be put into one of only two categories: good or blog, errr... bad.

And as if on queue, along comes Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth with not only one of the most cumbersome titles of almost any game ever (I mean, shorthandedly you could refer to others in the series as Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice, Miles Edgeworth is just a clunky name to say out loud (go ahead try it, I won't mind) (or I guess you could just call it Ace Attorney Investigations, except that's even worse! (Also please excuse my excessive parenthesis, I guess you could say... I need parenthetical supervision))) but also by challenging this site simply by being average. Not just average but exceedingly average. I would even go so far as to call it the MOST average.

Where does the title even START!?

Heavy Rain Review - 1/1

Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3

Who could this possibly be marketed towards?

Alright Heavy Rain! This has been a long time coming, so let’s drive straight into this bit- Oh wait, before we begin why don’t you go here. Just to set the mood a bit.

Alright! Heavy Rain! The ‘Interactive Entertainment’ setting to break new ground in the world of video games. And it’s actually pretty- Oh! Wait, while we’re setting the mood, go ahead and open up this while you’re at it.

 
Alright! Everyone settled in? Well Heavy Rain, huh? Believe it or not, it’s a video game. I swear! A whole bunch of angry people on the internet will try to tell you otherwise, but then you have other angry people (not nearly as angry) trying to tell you that it’s just a video game, and this is pretty true too. Everyone knew going in that this wasn’t going to change everything about this medium overnight. In fact, I would make the argument that it pushes things away from what we want them to be. But that doesn’t make it any less great. The game is still fun and irresistibly interesting. 

 
Spanning across five characters, Heavy Rain tells the story of the Origami Killer and his latest victim Shaun Mars, the son of Ethan Mars, a man who has lost a son before. In the pursuit of the killer and the still-living Shaun, the characters encounter situations that could possibly kill them and reactively change the story. YADDA YADDA YADDA. By now, the basics of the game are pretty well known. Dying in this game doesn’t throw you back to a checkpoint or quick save, the game just keeps rolling and the plot changes accordingly. What’s is that the game really is like no other in terms of tone. No other video game has been able to replicate such a melodramatic and serious atmosphere. So, it’s a huge hit to the experience as a whole when it falls short in this regard, and it does this quite a bit.

Link's Awakening

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

 

Come away, O, human child!

To the woods and waters wild

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping  

than you can understand.

- W.B. Yeats

       What I miss the most with this new generation of hand-held gaming tech is the originality. Before the GBA hit the market with its flagship Super Mario Advance titles which were direct ports of the SNES counterparts, or the release of the DS with its total conversion of titles such as Resident Evil and Super Mario 64, developers had to get really creative due to technological limitations. Rather than Super Mario World getting a straight port, we received the Super Mario Land games - Six Golden Coins in particular took Mario straight out of any familiar element any ‘hardcore’ Nintendo fan today would recognize and placed him in a land where what Mario still did was jump; boy did those jumps get complex and fun as hell...they are lost now, drowned out by the familiar cult of Bowser and the Koopa troop - please don’t bring up New Super Mario Bros DS whose sole focus was the cutesy Mario atmosphere rather than the meat which makes the game run.

       Link’s Awakening is possibly the best 2D Zelda game and second best Zelda game (best is Majora’s Mask you see; I’ll cover it one day when you’re older). Due to handheld limitations of the time, everything clicks, everything must absolutely work. There is no dungeon consisting of point-a-to-point-b-just-keep-on-clawshotting ‘puzzles’ and there are no items as isolated to a single dungeon as the top-thingamajig from Twilight Princess. Everything in the game needed to fulfill multiple roles and be used throughout the game to optimize space on the cart - what you get is a game in which every item has a purpose on almost every screen, every screen is filled with interesting little details and secrets, and every piece of information must work towards the overall flow of the game; there is no excess, there is no fat.