Category Archives: Gaming

Currently Playing

I was trying to make a post every Monday about what I was playing, but that kind of faded away. I don’t know if I’ll keep up with one a week, but here’s what I’ve been playing lately:
I started and finished Brooktown High (PSP) recently. It’s a dating sim in which you talk to girls, go on dates, study, attend classes, and equip various clothing. Most dating sims I’ve played were only dialog choice games, while this one had a lot of other things to manage as well. It might have been because it was a western game.
I got back into Spore on the day before yesterday as well. The space phase is pretty interesting, but I’m not sure what to do when enemy empires demand money.
Bioshock’s been on my shelf and unplayed for almost a year now. I’m still only a few hours into the game, but I’m enjoying it. It does really stress me out though so I can’t play it for long. I guess that’s good because it draws me into the game. I think I’m too out of shape for video games.
Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars took some of my time. I don’t know if I’ll ever get an A rank. I also played GTA a bit. I think GTA was my favorite game in the series.
Lately I started playing Kirby Super Star Ultra. Funny how such a simple game can please me for so many years. I know it’s not terribly long, but I’m really enjoying it.
Samba de Amigo came out yesterday, and I tried it a little. I haven’t had time to really sit down with it, but it’s pretty cool so far.

UBeat

Today (9/9) I played a new Bemani game by Konami called UBeat. It’s being location tested here in Irvine, CA at a Boomers. According to Wikipedia, it was released last month in Japan. Irvine gets the only two UBeat cabinets outside of Asia!



Ubeat, originally uploaded by theuser.


The first thing I noticed about it was, of course, the aesthetics of the unit. Being a music game, it had to have a light of glowing parts and lights, but it really did look pretty cool. It had a crisp, nice quality LCD screen to show your score and other information, and it had 16 LCD buttons arranged in a grid. As songs play, the LCD buttons play little ~1 second animations to the rhythm. You have to press the button at a particular point in the animation. You can choose from a few animations. I chose fireworks; When the firework reached the top of the button, you press it to see the firework explode. It’s a lot like DDR meets Whac-A-Mole, and it was a lot of fun!
The song list was pretty interesting. It had a good mix of songs that were already known in America and Japanese songs that I assume were from the Japanese version of the game. I played “Take on Me” by a-ha, “Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)” by Scatman John, and “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People (because what heterosexual guy playing a Bemani game with his girlfriend watching can resist the Village People?). I was surprised and pleased to find Scatman John in the game; He’s an artist I really like.
The game displayed the name of the arcade and a player name although it was set to defaults. It looked like there was a way to store accounts or something similar but that the feature was not implemented. Like other Bemani games, each song had a different difficulty rating between one and ten, and the difficulty could be raised. In more complex songs, multiple panels lit up at the same time, requiring players to press multiple buttons with a single hand, often in rapid succession. The machine itself was very narrow and elegant looking. This is a plus because it means arcades can fit them in easier. From the interface, I think it supports up to four cabinets in local play. The small form factor means it’s more likely to see arcades actually buy four cabinets.
There were two cabinets here so multiplayer was an option although I didn’t try it. It looked like the cabinets were plugged into a router/hub, and when I checked online, I found out that you can play online as well. I’m not sure how that works though. Boomers was also location testing Dance Dance Revolution X, which I haven’t had a chance to try yet. I’m definitely going back this week to play UBeat some more and possibly try the new DDR. Here’s hoping UBeat catches on here in the states!

Happy Birthday Dreamcast

The Dreamcast is nine years old today! Don’t worry little buddy; I’ll always treasure you, and 9/9/99 will always be a special date. I promise there will be a big (okay, probably small) party for you at my place on 9/9/9!

Epic Krabys



Epic Krabys, originally uploaded by theuser.

My Epic Krabys coming to attack gem’s trexi and company. He killed them! 🙁
Look how cute her trexi is too there in the center with the pom-pom!

Co-op and Multiplayer

When I was younger, gaming was a very social activity. My friends would come over and spend all weekend (and all summer) sitting with my playing video games. Sometimes we would take turns, and sometimes we’d play against one another. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of playing co-op Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 on SNES with my friend Adi, taking turns playing Super Mario Kart (and later Mario Kart 64), playing Clue on SNES, and playing a shit ton of Kirby’s Dream Course. This has become more and more rare. Hell, now multiplayer primarily means shooting each other online. Sure, it’s fun. But I miss the other stuff. Multiplayer used to mean multiple players. Now it implies a deathmatch style competitive game. Playing together through a story mode is now called co-op. Both co-op and multiplayer games are now online and rarely local. Local play is where the real fun is.
Besides online FPSs like Call of Duty 2 and 4 and Team Fortress 2 and MMOs, I haven’t done a lot of multiplayer. When I’ve played those even, it was with random Internet folk not people I actually knew or set up a game with in advance. Since I started college, my co-op and multiplayer experiences have been pretty limited. I used to play a lot of Mario Kart Double Dash with Will and Patrick during freshman year, and that was great fun. I really had a blast. Later I played Gears of War with my brother and again with Collin. Gears of War is a terrific first person shooter, and I really like the co-op campaign. I’m looking forward to the sequel. I also played through Contra 3 in co-op with both Edward and Jon. Back in freshman year, I beat Secret of Mana for the first time with gem. That was the last RPG I beat on a console! That year I also played Diablo 2 with Andy and Antonio.
When Smash Bros. Brawl first came out, I played it all night with Collin and Duncan. However, after that first night, I’m not sure I ever played against anyone again. Mario Kart Wii got quite a bit of play with gem, Jackie, Jo, Ed, Hannah, Justina, and Laryssa. I also played a night of Kirby’s Dream Course with Collin as well as some co-op N+ obsessively for leaderboard positions.
A few years ago, my friends and I played quite a bit of Wario Ware Inc., Mega Party Game$ for a short while. We played Wario Ware Smooth Moves when it came out, but it definitely wasn’t the same. We did have some good times with Rayman Raving Rabbids and Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 though. gem and I also went through LEGO Star Wars 1 and 2 as well as the co-op Guitar Hero 3 campaign. Tetris DS also got a lot of play, especially at AX 2008.
Of course, gem and I played a lot of Guild Wars. We made the guild Divine Alliance. I played a bit with Antonio, Jon, Gabby, and James a bit too but not very much. I also played Hellgate: London with gem and a bit with Antonio, making the same guild. I PVPed a lot in World of Warcraft with gem and William. I also ran instances with them and Antonio, Tri, and Andy. We actually ran 10 different instances (counting SM as 4). Our guild is called Playground Justice, and I do enjoy playing World of Warcraft with them.
This week I’ve been playing a lot of Castle Crashers co-op, but I’ll write about that in its own post. I know I mentioned a lot of games here, but this spans over four years. I’d really like to play more multiplayer, preferably local co-op. In those four years, it looks like I’ve played 24 games with other people. I might be missing a few, but that’s just 6 per year. Only 11 of those were co-op, counting the MMOs.
I’m not intending to make this post just to rant. I enjoy multiplayer and co-op especially. Rather than wish, I’m going to try to seek out co-op and local multiplayer games more often and will post my experiences here. Hopefully I find some good games out there!

Game Mods

William pointed me to an article at The Hottest Gadgets that shows 25 really awesome video game related mods. My favorites are the SNES in a Wii case and the Rainbow Six Vegas cityscape with a PS3 as one of the buildings. It’s gorgeous!

Samba de Amigo

It’s no secret that I’m totally looking forward to Samba de Amigo. I really enjoy rhythm games, this has a bunch of cool songs I haven’t seen in other games, and I also really like Sega mascot characters. It’s nice to see this game coming out! Joystiq has some information about the maracas, which are gorgeous, and a full song list. Looks good!