Archive for September, 2009
The Backlog: Staring Into the Abyss edition
Sep 25th
Halo 3: ODST has taken its hold on the Silicon Sasquatch staff.
Hoo boy. Time flies when you’re having fu…errr, no…more like time flies when you’ve got real life creeping in. Creeping in just like the clouds do now that it’s officially fall in the Pacific Northwest and the last gasps of summer have gone. Fall also means we’re seeing the beginning of the fall gaming season, and that means a deluge of new titles.
We’ve all been busy this week — and fortunately that’s included time for some gaming. Nick’s been busy with family commitments but has already acquired quite the backlog of games; Aaron’s been playing host for a friend, which entails plenty of rocking out; and Doug has been able to put some time into a few games while staring down the beginning of grad school.
So enough of that waffle; here’s what we’ve been playing.
Demo Impressions: Brütal Legend
Sep 23rd
Tim Schafer (left) watches as Jack Black does something with a ridiculous expression on his face. Jack Black is a funny man.
What’s in a name? In the case of Brütal Legend, a whole hell of a lot.
- Jack Black stars as Eddie Riggs, the world’s best roadie who’s transported to a dimension of awesome metal-inspired brutality.
- Rob Halford, Lita Ford, Lemmy Kilmister, Ozzy Osbourne and…Tim Curry all have been tapped to lend their voice talents to the game. From what’s been shown so far, each looks to be perfectly at home in his or her element.
- Tim Schafer is the game’s creator; his previous credits include Full Throttle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts.
Schafer’s games all have an expected pedigree of quality when it comes to establishing setting, story and characters — in that regard, Brütal Legend won’t disappoint. But what about the game’s design? How well is it implemented?
After romping through the demo four times, there’s little doubt that the game itself does an admirable job of wrapping all this larger-than-life, metal-soaked goodness into a tasty little love burrito.
The PAX ’09 Wrapup Show or: How Not To Record a Podcast
Sep 18th
In this episode, Aaron, Doug, Nick and Tyler discuss the sights, the sounds, and — unfortunately — the smells of the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo.
I’d like to apologize for the long delay between episodes. Ever since losing most of one of our stems on the third show, we’ve become wary of technical difficulties in podcasting. On this latest episode, however, there are a number of problems throughout. My microphone apparently didn’t fare too well in the bring-your-own-computer section at the Penny Arcade Expo this year, resulting in uneven recording levels. As if that wasn’t bad enough, our discussion grew very long-winded and wasn’t exactly up to the standards I set for myself when I set out to produce podcasts for Silicon Sasquatch.
It was only after a great deal of deliberation with the rest of the crew that I decided to post this episode, primarily for two reasons:
- It’s better that we make our mistakes public and acknowledge that we’re learning from them, and
- There’s actually some good discussion to be found within this episode
Thanks for listening, and please check back soon for a new — and much more digestible — episode.
The Backlog: Scribbling Sporty Beatles edition
Sep 18th
This, metaphorically, is what the release calendar looks like for the next few months
It’s been a busy week for all of us here at Silicon Sasquatch. Doug’s been camping in the cold-yet-wait-it’s-hot-again Oregon weather, and enjoying the rebirth of his broken Xbox 360; Nick’s been playing through five or so games at once while writing, writing and more writing; I’ve been composing an extremely long review of Batman: Arkham Asylum in addition to enjoying a social life and trying to forge videogame industry public relations contacts.
Oh, and that feeling creeping down the back of your spine and into your pocket to make your wallet tingle with fear? Well, that’s the start of the Great Game Goldrush of 2009 — this previous week had quite the prodigious release schedule. Among the horde of games were NHL 10, NHL2k10, WET, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, Scribblenauts, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and Need for Speed Shift.
Next week, Halo 3: ODST releases. You can discuss (your praise for or condemnation of) that fact in our comments section.
See what we’ve been up to, game-wise, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
Sep 17th
It’s hard to believe that, at one time, Adam West in his campy 1960s Batman television show was the best portraiture of Batman creative minds had to offer.
Even then, when “Biff! Pow! Zing!” became a clever way to spice up awkwardly choreographed fight scenes, the tragedy of Bruce Wayne was a much darker affair than fluorescent purple and cheese-ball dialogue. A boy witnessed his parents’ cold-blooded murder and, once grown, pledged to annihilate the evil in his city. The Batman rose from the ashes of a once-spoiled life to be the protector of a seedy metropolis called Gotham.
Spandex doesn’t sound like a good idea under those circumstances.
Yet over the last few years the concept of what and who Batman is to a mainstream audience has experienced a revolution in reassessment thanks mostly to director Christopher Nolan’s two movies, 2005′s Batman Begins and 2008′s The Dark Knight. Both films washed away a decade of popular culture nay-saying after the franchise hit a lull in the mid-1990s because of two awful movies by Joel Schumacher et al. Thanks to Nolan, Batman’s been given a clean slate for a new generation of consumers.
Unfortunately, the Caped Crusader’s forays into videogames haven’t assisted in improving his image. A plethora of developers and publishers have been handed the property over the last few decades to produce titles vacillating from mediocre to awful. It’s easy to think there would never be a quality Batman game available, especially after seeing the most recent films and realizing how great a Batman project can turn out.
Well gamers can officially chill and count their blessings in batarangs, as Rocksteady Studio‘s Batman: Arkham Asylum is not just the unequivocally best Batman videogame to ever sit on store shelves — it’s also one of the most engaging titles released in a very long time, let alone 2009. Arkham Asylum treats its source material with the utmost respect, and successfully blends the comics with a cinematic atmosphere to create an exciting and near-perfect interactive experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Review: The Sims 3 (iPhone)
Sep 15th
The Sims is unlike any other game brand in existence. While most find success by focusing on delivering a fun, exciting experience, The Sims excels not by being fun — which it typically isn’t — but from its uncanny ability to be fascinating on a humanistic level.
Like most of Will Wright’s games (SimCity, Spore, etc.), The Sims eschews the traditional need for linear progression through a series of tasks in a static game world. Instead, players are given an impressive set of tools to create characters, objects and environments and watch as life unfolds. It’s a formula for resounding commercial and critical success, and it still works as well as it did twenty years ago. But almost all of Wright’s games were built for computers, which carry with them the expectation of a greater commitment of time and effort on the part of the player.
Adapting The Sims to the iPhone, then, was no easy feat from a technological or a design standpoint. On iPhone, The Sims 3 is an impressive example of shrinking a massive game down to phone-size proportions without losing most of the elements that gave the series its clout: the requisite customizable characters, charming set pieces and robust decision-making aspects are all retained from its flagship PC release. But it is the very fact that so much from the original release was crammed into such a minuscule and difficult interface that makes The Sims 3 almost impossible to recommend.
The Backlog: Within You Without You edition
Sep 11th
Let’s all breathe easy for a moment. After all, things are about to get crazy this fall: Scribblenauts hits North American shelves next week, soon to be followed by big names like Brütal Legend, Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed and Modern Warfare.
And if you just dropped a hundo on a big ol’ replica Gretsch Duo Jet guitar — like I may or may not have just done — well, you’re already in full-tilt panic mode.
Guard your wallet carefully this holiday season, dear reader! We’re in for a doozy.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The 10th Anniversary of Final Fantasy VIII
Sep 9th
Editor’s Note: In recognition of the tenth anniversary of one of the most controversial — and possibly misunderstood — entries in one of the most significant video game series in history, Silicon Sasquatch will spend the next month examining Final Fantasy VIII and its legacy. Frequent podcast guest Tyler Martin starts us off with a foreword:
How do you produce a follow-up to the biggest RPG of the 20th century? Square had barely any time to answer this question. Development on the seventh sequel to a series that wasn’t expected to outlast its initial outing began shortly after the American localization of Final Fantasy VII, a game that radically altered the perception of the franchise as well as the entire genre.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Backlog: Pre-PAX lovefest
Sep 4th
The funk of 40,000 nerds awaits Nick at this year's Penny Arcade Expo. Expect the show floor to look much like this, a scene from the exhibit hall at the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo.
Here we are. The beginning of a three-day holiday weekend, the first day of the Penny Arcade Expo up in Seattle, and time for another week’s worth of gaming recounted in our Backlog. It’s been the calm ahead of the storm here, with Nick preparing for a feast of gaming at PAX, Aaron enjoying some comfort gaming, and Doug preparing to dig into some modern classics.