Damnit, Tycho!

Penny Arcade and Psychonauts fans might recall this. One of the finest and most under-appreciated of last generation's impressive achievements in gaming was skipped by one of the community's most influential outlets because the guy who does most of the writing is neurotic about collectibles in games... And then he neglects to even mention it for months because he is ashamed of that fact. I was disappointed, to say the least. Now, I'm not saying those guys must play and promote every game that I feel deserves such publicity, and I'm certainly not suggesting that neuroses are trivial; but I cannot hide my frustration...

...Especially now that it seems as though he's done it again. Today's post mentions Patapon for PSP. I've been playing around with this one myself, and while I've barely scratched the surface, I can already say that I disagree with Tycho's personal take on the game. Like his Psychonauts nod, he doesn't suggest that the game is bad, but he makes sure to note that his annoyances with the sound design affect his gameplay experience, and I can't help but regard his impressions of the game as a sort of bad review. Personally, I love the graphics, audio, rhythm, and creativity of Patapon. The only downside for me is the strategy slant of the gameplay; the very aspect that will draw many further into the experience.

Does Tycho truly realize what kind of power he wields? I can't help but wonder if Psychonauts would've done better at retail if he had endorsed it outright, and I'm curious to see how Patapon fares after this line: "It's only twenty dollars I suppose, a savings over most games on that platform, but you can save an additional twenty dollars if you don't buy it at all." I mean, this man may have single-handedly relegated the pinnacle of 3D platforming (Psychonauts easily rivals Mario 64 in my books) and the first major foray into the interesting new genre of rhythm-strategy games into relative unpopularity simply because he has a hard time collecting things and can't find a rhythm through the sound effects.

How allusive...

The vast majority of my time gaming over the past little while has been spent with NHL 08 and Adam Foster's two Half-Life mods, Someplace Else and MINERVA: Metastasis. While neither mod is particularly long, they are reasonably challenging and entertaining as they expand upon the Half-Life universe. Also, while I personally only fleetingly paid any mind to the unique level design, I later learned that both mods employ specifically efficient and unconventional (in such games) design philosophies. Definitely worth checking out. I've also just started working my way through City 7: Toronto Conflict V1... It's not as tight as Adam Foster's work, but then it is a decidedly different kind of mod project.

Anyway, I performed my first kernel upgrade in Slackware the other day... Went pretty smoothly; reconfiguring LILO and nVidia's drivers was the worst of it. I'm now looking at tackling Sabayon (huge download) or Gentoo (just plain intimidating) as my next project. Oh, and I've reverted back to 'stable' releases of Debian for my laptop after some tricky WiFi issues with the latest 'testing' releases.

Vista compatible, eh?

M-Audio recently released non-beta 32-bit Vista drivers for the FireWire Solo... My FireWire Solo still doesn't work properly when waking from S3 mode. I tried a different FireWire controller just to make sure that wasn't the problem. It wasn't. Avid/Digidesign has also recently released ProTools 7.4, which introduces 32-bit Vista compatibility to the product... Time to see what this ProTools thing is all about.

In other news, did you know that FileMaker Pro has an option to delete all records in a database? Did you know that it apparently can't be undone? Did you know that the delete all records option is immediately below the delete current record option in the drop-down menu? Rest assured, I didn't accidentally delete an entire database, but someone I know did... And I got asked to try and recover it from an unlabeled Excel export of the data... Wheee! :)

An adventure 65 million years in the making, eh?

I completed Jurassic Park on SEGA CD last night. The graphics have held up reasonably well since 1993, and the game is just long and challenging enough to keep an adventure gaming fan such as myself really engrossed in the experience. I particularly liked how collecting each dinosaur species' eggs required a realistic approach that is specific to each dinosaur's traits; how utahraptors require frenzied combat, dilophosaurs require speed, tricerataops require caution and timing, etc... It adds a decent bit of realism to the game. The acting isn't too cheesy either, and Dr. Bakker's informational videos are genuinely interesting and educational while providing crucial hints to help players solve many of the game's puzzles. While Jurassic Park would've been close to perfect with a quicksave or checkpoint feature, their absence led to a lot of wasted time travelling back to the points where the dinosaurs killed you; it's the only real strike against the game, as anything else would just be nitpicking.

Anyway, I've picked up Sonic CD (what a fantastic soundtrack!), Tomcat Alley, and Panic! for SEGA CD, Virtua Fighter Kids and Fighters Megamix for Saturn, Beyond Good And Evil for XBOX (it was $10, and I loved it on PC), and Rez HD since my last post. Panic! (a hand drawn cartoon game comprised entirely of arbitrarily pushing buttons and watching what happens as a result) and Fighters Megamix (Virtua Fighter vs. Fighting Vipers vs. random SEGA characters) are two in particular that I've been meaning to play for many years now, and they both live up to my expectations... They're both exceedingly weird and inexplicably fun to play :) Oh, and Rez HD is as amazing as ever. Buy it.