April 20, 2010 by Steve
People generally sit down and playgames for fun and entertaining experiences. In contrast, theygenerally only learn math out of necessity or for financial desires. Rarely does "math" and "fun and entertainment"interact to any significant degree, as shown by the vast amount ofthe population who despises the various forms of math, if notoutright sucking at them. Certainly we can find math in somegameplay, given say a choice between various equippable items, butmodern games readily simplify the process, giving clear comparisonsif not outright displaying the superior choice. Games are certainlyrooted in math, down to the programming, but players are absolved ofsuch things, witnessing only the shiny results. However, a time andplace exists for such contradictions as math and fun, and NumberMunchers is just that contradiction.
April 19, 2010 by Greg Noe
It's easy to forget that Rockstar Games actually develops other series besides Grand Theft Auto. With nine studios making up the Rockstar empire, it's seeminglyunbelievable that the only games they've released since Grand TheftAuto IV two years ago is a new Midnight Club racing game, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Warson the DS and PSP, some music game called Beaterator, and a few GrandTheft Auto DLC's. So what are all the other studios working on? Well,Rockstar San Diego is almost done with Red Dead Redemption, the sequelto our first hour focus today, Red Dead Revolver.
April 16, 2010 by Mike in Omaha
When I first heard about Borderlands, I somehow just knew it was going to be a game that I would like. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. It reminds me of the days when I was 12 years old and shopped for video games by looking at the pictures on the back of the game box in the toy store so long ago. I don’t know how it worked, but I could look at those 2 or 3 screenshots and read that lonely paragraph and know with certainty if I would like the game or not. Just like shopping in the toy store years ago, I actually knew very little about the details of Borderlands. I knew it was an FPS, and I had heard it had RPG elements. I had read a story on Kotaku that discussed a drastic shift from “realistic” graphics to a more “cartoony” cell shaded design. There was little else I could tell you about the game. But somehow, I wanted it.
So, I added it to my mental list of games to play without too much thought. I wasn’t in a big hurry, simply because I’m generally pretty patient about getting games. This allows me to scoop up great deals from the Target clearance game shelf. As Greg, purveyor of First Hour, noted in a recent conversation on LIVE, I’m a person who often likes games that other people don’t. Well, I’m also a person who loves to get a bargain and both traits suit me well for the clearance shelf. If I wait that first month to buy a game and it’s a critical and commercial failure, there’s a good chance it will see 50% off on the Target clearance shelf. It wasn’t long before I realized that Borderlands would not be one of those games. Apparently, people were liking it. Good for the developers and bad for my wallet. This only fueled my desire to play the game sooner rather than later. I finally found a Sunday ad with the game on sale for $39.99 and decided it was fate. You’re about to read the first hour of what fate decided was a game I must play.
Read more
April 15, 2010 by Greg Noe
It was just a few years ago that I was a Japanese RPG freak. Injust one holiday, I asked for and received Persona 3 FES, ValkyrieProfile 2: Silmeria, and Rogue Galaxy. Three of the biggest JRPGs toland at the end of the PS2 lifespan. You know how much of those gamesI've played since? About 30 hours of Persona 3, the first hour of Rogue Galaxy, and I haven't even touchedValkyrie Profile 2; I blame it all on the games themselves.
If Iwere to make an exhaustive list of my all-time favorite games, it wouldundoubtedly be topped by Chrono Trigger, closely followed by SuikodenII and Final Fantasy VI, with Final Fantasy X somewhere up there too. All Japanese RPGs, and all very good games for varying reasons. Ispent my college years playing more from what used to be my favoritegenre, and watched my roommate play a ton of them including theoriginal Valkyrie Profile, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, my copy ofXenogears, and pretty much the entire Xenosaga trilogy.
Maybe Iwas already burned out on the genre when I heard about how greatPersona 3 was; how it was the ultimate JRPG and that a re-release ofthe game was going to put it into my budget again. By the time Istarted playing it, I even had Persona 4 in my possession already(which I also haven't touched). I knew without a doubt I was going tolove this game.
Note: This post evolved from a rant onPersona 3 into a rant review on Persona 3, so while it's designated asa full review, I have not beaten either Persona 3 FES or Odin Sphere. No final scores will be given for obvious reasons.
Read moreApril 14, 2010 by Steve
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter isa recent remake of the fps classic, Serious Sam, both developed byCroteam. While I own the original Serious Sam Second Encounter, Ireally never played it, being somewhat put-off by the seeminglycheesy nature and waves of ugly enemies. But I recently got theupdate fairly cheap and decided to give it another shot. Afterquickly running through the demo level, I start the actual game here,so here we go... and if you wish, you can follow along with theyoutube playlist.
April 13, 2010 by Greg Noe
The iPhone App Store is flooded with games, some of them very good, most of them bad, but there's just an oversaturation of everything. Only the lowest common denominator crap rises to the top (unless it's Plants vs. Zombies, that game is awesome) and tons of gems are drowned by a sea of Sally Spa clones.
One of my close friends, Rory Johnson, is an iPhone game developer, and he just released his second game: Bad Cube. Early last year he released Circle Challenge, more of a personal challenge than anything else, and I finally got the chance to talk about it at the end of last year. It's a fun, free time waster where the object is to just draw circles. A simple concept, but it helped Rory learn the ropes of Objective C and the App Store.
Bad Cube is definitely a game, and a fun, challenging one at that. It's in 3D, features the shooting of hexahedron objects, and kicked my butt many times. I had the pleasure of watching the game mature from the "look! a 3D cube!" stage to the "look! a 3D cube that I can shoot!" stage, and it was entertaining to say the least.
Read moreApril 12, 2010 by Greg Noe
I've been delaying writing my review for Mass Effect 2for a while now. It was my most anticipated game in years, and Ibought it the day it came out and finished it a few long nights later. I pored over 40 hours into my first playthrough of the game, longerthan even my first run of the original. This was going to be mydefining game of 2010, my Game of the Year. It's two months later now and I've played it more since I beat it, butI still haven't compiled all my thoughts on it. Half of me wants towrite the best review possible for one of the best games ever, and theother half of me wants to make sure it really was one of the best gamesever.
I'll start with my conclusion though: I loved it. It's abeyond excellent game that takes the series and the genre into newterritories. Mass Effect 2 tries something new at every bend andseemingly succeeds at them all. I had built up an incredible amount ofhype for the game, and I can honestly say it surpassed myexpectations. BioWare, my hat goes off to you.
A little moreintroduction though: Mass Effect 2 was released in late January of 2010for the Xbox 360 and Windows. It's the direct sequel to Mass Effectwhich was released in late 2007. The game was published by EA and isits flagship product for its downloadable content scheme. Thefree-with-a-new-purchase Cerberus Network has provided us with plentyof free and paid for DLC since the game was released, and more is onthe way. It's BioWare's second big AAA title in about as many monthswith Dragon Age: Origins coming last November. Everything seems to be going right for them.
So you can tell I enjoyed the game already, but read on to see exactly why. Here's my full review of Mass Effect 2.
April 09, 2010 by Steve
This Psychonauts Audio-Visual (half) Experience contains and displays some of the vibrant, shiny, brilliant, and clever content that exists throughout the game. Unfortunately, due to a variety of bugs that caused me crashes, missing graphical layers, strange periodic muted dialogue, control irregularities, memory leaks, and crippling fps drops, I did not have the heart to continue or even play the game for significant time each session. But there is no question that the game itself has heart and some clever, varied visual design, thus here we are...
April 08, 2010 by Paul Eastwood
Those of us who play a lot of video games know the power that music brings to them. We all have our favorite classic tunes, and we know the feeling of hearing a great piece of music while playing a game. Personally I am a huge fan of game music, listening to soundtracks and remixes of soundtracks in my everyday life.
Video Games Live is a show designed to bring the joys of video game music to the greater public. The show consists of an orchestra playing music from games while footage from the game plays on big screens, accompanied by a light show and sometimes stage antics.
Last week I had the privilege of attending this show. For those of you who are stalking me online, let's just get this out of the way. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the show was just outside the city April 1st.
Now for those of you who listen to the podcast, you will know that myself and one of our other writers, Michael T, were planning on attending the show in February but it was canceled. Although we're still not completely sure why, they rescheduled it at a different venue about six weeks later.
April 07, 2010 by Greg Noe
This is a first for us, but this is our second full review of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the First Hour. Paul first reviewed the game in early February and praised it for its stellar action and improved controls over Phantom Hourglass. He did note some issues with the train in the game, and while most of my opinions will echo his, I would like to get my thoughts down before I move on to other games.
This is Nintendo's second attempt at going for an entirely stylus-driven Zelda experience. I'm actually still a bit shocked that this works. It's not perfect, but it is definitely not substantially worse than playing a console Zelda game, and in some ways works better than the old 2D games. Paul said he noticed improvements in the control, but either it's been so long since I played Phantom Hourglass that I didn't notice, or... they didn't make any improvements. I'm guessing the former as I was rarely frustrated with the game control-wise.
Just like to quickly mention how awesome it is that we got two Legend of Zelda games on the Nintendo DS, especially considering it was nearly three years after the system debuted that Phantom Hourglass finally landed. It'd be great to see a third, but I imagine Nintendo will be refocusing their efforts on the DSi or 3DS at this point. Hey, you can always hire Capcom to make more portable iterations.
