Editorials
So Long, Sera
Oct 23rd
I didn’t really want an Xbox 360 at first. Or at least, that’s the story I used to tell myself.
I’m one of the idiots who actually made a point of tuning in to MTV’s sophomoric unveiling of Microsoft’s sophomore console in the fall of 2004, and the embarrassing spectacle left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. And to be clear, at that point my Xbox was my primary gaming machine. I kept my Gamecube and PlayStation 2 at the ready for the few wonderful games that were still trickling in (GTA: San Andreas, Resident Evil 4 and Shadow of the Colossus…what a great period for gaming) but with Halo 2 burning up the University Housing intranet, nothing in my dorm room got more play than my Xbox.*
But with a weak launch lineup and a massive price tag, the Xbox 360 didn’t sway me right away. No surprises there. I held off until 2003 to get an original Xbox, after all. But the Xbox 360? No thanks – I’ll stick to my standard-def consoles for now.
That was my mandate, and it served me well. Then it was late 2006, and my buddy Dan invited me over to play Gears of War.
The next day, I bought an Xbox 360.
The Long Break, or Doug’s hiatus from console gaming
Oct 8th
Welcome to the Japanese countryside! There are video games here, you just have to squint really hard to find them.
Whenever I’ve moved, one of the last things to get packed up has been my gaming console. Of course, my console has also often been the first thing unpacked once I’ve gotten moved in. Funny how that works. But this time, after moving to Japan in early August, all I’ve played since are iPhone games – until last weekend, I hadn’t picked up a real controller since arriving in the land of Nintendo and Sony.
What the hell happened? Well, a perfect storm of things for me, at least.
First: I didn’t want to bring my Xbox 360 with me to Japan. It’s old, is bound to break (again), and is region-locked. Most importantly, though, I would either have to pack it into my slim luggage allowance or ship it over separately, and neither are worth the trouble. Sometimes you have to be an adult and bring clothing, especially when there’s little chance to buy new threads. Okay, I did bring my Nintendo DS, but it’s now gathering Japanese dust instead of gathering American dust. I’ve got the itch to play games; what to do?
But I can wait. Maybe. I’ve gone two months without playing a game – and longer without playing anything new, frankly – and can afford to wait because real life and the gaming release schedule have allowed me to. I’m too busy getting out of the house and visiting my new friends to spend too much time playing games at the moment, which is good, because there haven’t been a ton of AAA titles coming out this summer. I bemoaned the lack of a year-round release schedule earlier in the year, but I’m quite glad for the break at the moment.
Soon the weather will turn nasty and, as a friend here in Japan said, people will begin to “hide under their kotatsu.” Unlike the U.S., most places in Japan aren’t centrally heated and have very poor insulation, which means you wear lots of sweaters indoors and a kotatsu, a table with a heated blanket. In short, people don’t want to head out and be social; perfect time to catch up on video games, then!
Postscript to the story? Last weekend was my birthday. With enough money and free time on the weekend to go buy a PS3, I broke down and picked one up — a 320 gb model, which now sits happily next to my TV and wireless router. It’s now set up to stream media from my computer, access my U.S. Netflix account, and make use of the Silicon Sasquatch staff PSN share. And I bought a pretty kick-ass game to go along with the system, too, one that I’m excited to write about soon.
After the long break, it’s good to be back.
Catherine’s Eccentricities
Aug 14th
I still don’t get Catherine. Even after a few solid hours spent learning the ropes of Atlus’ bizarre hodgepodge puzzle and dating-sim gameplay (think Q*Bert meets Tokimeki Memorial), I’m still unsure if this is a game I like. I’m compelled to keep playing, though, and that’s a success as far as I’m concerned.
But it’s not the puzzle-game aspects that have me hooked. The block-moving, tower-climbing action sequences that define the “game” part of Catherine are perfectly fine — controls are tight, difficulty ramps up at a good clip, pacing is appropriate — but to me, they’re just filler. The real fun of Catherine comes from the story that unfolds as you delve deeper into protagonist Vincent’s sordid love life. The choices you make through him are surprisingly revealing — not about Vincent, of course, but about you and everyone else who plays.
Sorry
Jul 24th
I don’t mean to speak out of turn here, but things are kind of dead at Silicon Sasquatch. The why of it might not matter to you, but in an effort to be transparent, here’s where we’re at:
- Aaron’s working and living his life in Portland. I’m not sure what he’s been up to, actually, which bums me out.
- Doug’s leaving to go teach in Japan in a matter of days.
- Tyler’s back home in the States for a brief visit, but he’ll also be going back to Japan.
- Spencer is, presumably, doing the Seattle thing.
- My work and social lives are both great, but when combined, they’re all-consuming.
That’s all well and good. I’d argue that we’re all in better places right now than we were a year or two ago, and ultimately, that’s probably what matters most.
There’s just one problem: I miss this blog like hell.
For me and Aaron, and for Doug too, this site symbolized our post-collegiate aspirations. The story’s old-hat by now and way too commonplace in our generation to have any significance to a third party, but you can imagine our situation: we were all broke, depressed and — more often than not — stuck living in our parents’ proverbial basements. (Very few houses have basements these days.) Like kids, we wanted to pretend that we could fulfill our dreams. It’s probably not coincidental that those dreams revolved around a product whose core appeal is escapism.
If I were a pessimist, I’d say we had been incredibly naïve over the last few years. But that’s not true. We’ve gained so much from building a product together, from the countless meetings and hundreds of hours spent writing and editing, from both the close calls and the landmark achievements.
As a person grows older, they realize that wisdom can be defined as an increased awareness of how little a person is capable of knowing. We had high hopes for this blog — dreams of wish-fulfillment, of self-made success, of a career founded in idealism and passion.
Looking back on what we’ve done with this blog in less than three years, I’m shocked at just how big an accomplishment it is. If we hadn’t had Silicon Sasquatch, Aaron and I would have probably just kept playing World of Warcraft. We wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about entrepreneurship, journalistic integrity and creative problem-solving. Without our self-imposed editing standards, we’d be a lot more attached to our writing, and the writing we’d produce would be so much shittier. We wouldn’t have a real, tangible, hard-copy book with our names on it. We wouldn’t be published authors. I can confidently say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for the hard work we all put in on this project.
So why am I writing this? Why here, and why now?
I feel like I just came home after decades abroad and discovered some old, forgotten car caked in dust and cobwebs in a dank garage. It used to be something, and what it used to be still resonates with me today. And I bet if I learned to appreciate that, I’d find the direction and willpower to fix it up and make it better than ever.
So, guys — what do you think?
It’d have to be different this time around. We’d have to embrace some big changes and accept that we won’t be able to do things the old way. But when I think about what this blog represents for me, and all the hope that it inspired in me through some of the roughest years of my life — I mean, come on.
Why the fuck not?
Summertime Blues: Should Gaming Embrace Summer Blockbusters?
Jun 2nd
Iron Man 2 was one of the top-grossing movies of the 2010 summer blockbuster season. If it's good for movies, why can't it work for games?
It’s just past Memorial Day weekend in the United States, the traditional harbinger of summertime. In recent years, it’s also brought in the beginning of the summer movie season, where studios push their big-budget releases and all sorts of associated goods and tie-ins. You can’t swing a major tent-pole movie without hitting Movie: The Action Figure, Movie: The Fast-Food Deal, Movie: The Sports Advertising Tie-In, and, yes, Movie: The Video Game. It’s marketing gone mad, sure, but it creates a ton of money for all involved.
However, it begs the question: where’s the summer blockbuster period for gaming? If it’s proved such a big hit with movie crowds, why not with gamers?
It’s an interesting thought.
Three’s Company: How Pigsy stumbled in and totally ruined a great thing in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
May 31st
Monkey and Trip traverse the feral, post-apocalyptic United States in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
A good game tells the story of a lone protagonist, an archetypal hero the player relates to and guides toward success. Thanks to the immersive nature of video games, an experience doesn’t need to be perfectly refined to draw the player in. After all, many player characters are essentially faceless empty shells — digital vessels just waiting for the player to dump a few dozen hours and countless arbitrary achievements into.
And that’s fine; a good game is a good game. But it’s not a great game.
A great game channels something deeper, elusive, and much more delicate than simply bringing a handful of characters to life. Anybody can make a game about a person or even multiple people, but a game that empowers the player to give life to meaningful relationships between its characters — that’s the biggest creative risk you can take. That’s the mark of greatness.
What Happens When the Curtains Close? Xbox Live, PSN, and the Next Generation
May 13th
At some point in the not-too-distant future, there will be successors to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii. Okay, so I’m hardly a psychic making a statement like that, but such is the march of progress that new consoles will inevitably replace the old. We know Nintendo will show something off at E3, and the rumors are starting to rumble that Microsoft may have something up its sleeve this year, too.
But one question that has never faced gamers before will be an issue when looking at upgrading from one console to the next this go-around: What is going to happen to all the content I have on my current system?
This is the digital era. I have 85 gb of content stored to my Xbox 360′s hard drive and, while much of that is game installs, the rest is made up of the “arcade” games available on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, downloadable add-on content for games, and digital downloads of full retail games. Some of the downloaded games also have their own DLC, which strikes me as a real through-the-looking-glass sort of moment.
Full copies of games you'd otherwise purchase at retail are available both on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. What happens with the next generation of systems, though?
These are games I’ve bought and, in the case of the digital versions of games also sold at retail, are indistinguishable from hard copies. Yet I’m worried. I’m worried that these games could be completely worthless or, at the least, feature-handicapped in the future should Microsoft (or Sony for PSN) decide to flip a switch and shut off some servers. In the case of the Xbox 360, though the detachable hard drive means it’s possible to take your content on the go, you can only make use of DLC and full versions of games if they’re authenticated by Xbox Live; if I want to take my hard drive to a friend’s and make use of my Rock Band library, their 360 must be plugged in.
The authentication and access to games isn’t just a worry in cases like that, but for more practical reasons as well. The 360 has proven itself to be a bit fragile; my current 360 is my fifth, and I’m hardly an edge case. If you suffer a Red Ring of Death or any other kind of 360-killing malady, you have to migrate your account from the old console to the new one’s serial number. While it’s an annoyance during the 360′s life span, what happens in another five years? If your old NES or Genesis or even PlayStation 2 died, you just buy a new one; the games were kept within a physical medium and plug right in without a problem. But what happens in five or 10 years when my 360 inevitably dies again and I have to track down a replacement? Will Xbox Live still allow me to do what it does now in 2011?
While content on the current console is a question, what about taking content on to the next generation? Though few games had DLC on the original Xbox, you could previously download it on the 360; now, though, since the original Xbox’s Xbox Live servers have gone offline, it’s left you high and dry. While I doubt people will want to buy new content, even for Xbox 360 games in the far-flung future, what about retrieving what you’ve already purchased? Plus, as established, content delivery digitally is a much bigger deal this generation; that will be important to keep in mind, but it’s still Microsoft or Sony’s ball to take and go home with.
I’ll admit it’s all speculation and worry at this point, but admit it: a best-case scenario where everything still works, like in PC gaming, is probably a pipe dream. This is the point where I shake my fists at PC gamers sitting up in the cloud on Steam at this moment. But this is an issue that will be wider than gaming within the next 10 years; seeing the gaming industry’s reaction is going to be fascinating and, potentially, vital to digital rights beyond our favorite little corner of the entertainment world.
Me and My Addiction: Pro Evo Soccer and Style
May 6th
When I started the Retrospective Overdrive program, it was to break up tedium and see how things have changed. I wanted to go a good period of time without just doing what I’ve done the past few years — nothing but playing Pro Evo Soccer.
But, why? It’s just a game; hell, it’s just a sports game, and I’m sure many who read the site look down on us who kick and throw balls virtually as if we’re some sort of cro-magnon anomaly, cavemen who have miraculously found fire and Xbox Live. It keeps coming back to style, though, for me. Very few other games have allowed me to express creativity as well as Konami’s Pro Evo/Winning Eleven series and, in particular, Pro Evo Soccer 2010.
Freshman year of college I picked up a PlayStation 2 after seeing how white-hot Gran Turismo 4 looked. Of course, I’d also heard about how good Konami’s soccer games were and since that wasn’t great on the Xbox, I bought it. I wasn’t a newcomer to soccer games — strong addictions to FIFA 2004 and 2005 prove otherwise — but Winning Eleven 8 was a good replacement, if a bit ugly at times.
Baseless Speculation: An educated guess on the next iteration of game consoles
Apr 26th
Microsoft's Video Kinect feature allows Kinect owners to communicate on a much more personal level than voice or text chat previously allowed, but it's removed from the actual gaming experience
We’re well past the five-year mark on the current generation of game consoles, and with details of an imminent Wii successor starting to percolate, now is the time to consider what the next generation of hardware will entail.
Traditionally, competing game console manufacturers have fought clear-cut battles over hardware, software, and add-ons. But with this last generation, things changed: Nintendo rose to the front of the pack by tapping into latent audiences, and Microsoft and Sony have fought hard to win exclusive games and add-on content and to develop competing online infrastructures. The shape of the market has changed dramatically with games on new platforms like Zynga’s Facebook-based FarmVille and Rovio’s Angry Birds, arguably the single most-successful phone-based game ever made.
There’s no question that the next console war will be won by whoever is able to connect to and engage with the most people, but nobody seems to be discussing how that’s going to happen. And that’s what led to this article.
From my point of view, there are three major paradigm shifts that occurred during this most recent console generation:
- Alternative control methods (Wii Remote, Kinect, PlayStation Move, music game controllers, etc.)
- High-definition video
- Robust and integrated networks for interaction and content distribution
The biggest challenge facing the next generation of consoles isn’t how to up the ante on the audiovisual front, although that’ll be critical to Microsoft and Sony in particular. In fact, a good barometer for when we’ll see a PlayStation 4 is once it’s possible to build a system capable of pumping out 1080p graphics at 60 frames per second in 3D, with all the anti-aliasing, shaders and other visual mysticism we’re used to, for under $600. But Sony’s already touting the PlayStation 3 as a capable 3D gaming machine, and many current first- and third-party games support 3D televisions.
It’s also unlikely that the next round of consoles will introduce any groundbreaking new interfaces. Kinect and PlayStation Move are here to stay for the next generation, as is Nintendo’s suite of motion controllers. We’ll undoubtedly see some improvements, but I expect they’ll be evolutionary — think high-definition Kinect video chat, updated Move controllers, and so on. Those improvements will be well-received by consumers, but they’re merely evolutionary, not disruptive.
The next consoles need to deliver a major game-changer in how we interact with our entertainment, and I think the only logical conclusion is that it’s going to be social.