Let me just start by saying, “I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan.” Not to the point where I get into philosophical debates about where each game falls in the “timeline” or anything like that, but I love playing these games. I have fond memories of skipping another Super Bowl featuring the Buffalo Bills to play the first game in the series; and staying up way past when I should have. The sense of adventure from these games is unlike anything else I’ve ever played.
The worlds always seemed so huge and vast. You could spend hours and hours, or weeks of your life exploring every nook and cranny only to realize you’d barely scratched the surface. It’s always about finding that next hidden secret and using some newly acquired item in ways you didn’t think were possible to discover all the things Miyamoto and the development team had tucked away in some far corner of the world.
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Xenoblade Chronicles is more than I ever could have expected. When the game was first announced I knew going in that it was going to be a grand RPG experience. I knew there might be a chance the game wouldn’t come to North America, but in reality it was the game highlighted by Operation Rainfall that I was least interested in. I don’t really know what it was that failed to draw me in, but I wanted the other two games (Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story) more. One reminded me of a God of War style action game and the other was from the creator of Final Fantasy, both things that appealed to me more than this seemingly unknown game with a weird title. When the game was announced for North America I took a look at some coverage from Japan and Europe and had my mind changed. I was unprepared for what I was going to experience. As of the time of writing this I’m about 17 hours into the game and I have been blown away by everything I’ve experienced.
From the very beginning of the game you’re told it’s going to be something very different. Most Japanese-role-playing games tend to start out very slowly with a long introduction sequence that is unplayable. Many of these moments are unforgettable gaming moments, but they’re just something you watch. I can remember the first time I booted up Final Fantasy IV and watched those airships fly over the rotating ocean below then get attacked as the characters ran around to defend themselves. It was a truly epic beginning to one of my favorite games of all time. It’s nothing, though, compared to what I experienced with Xenoblade Chronicles. From the second the game opens up you are thrust into the thick of fighting. You get a quick introduction to the characters through their battle planning, but within just a couple of minutes you’re in control of the action. It was absolutely a great way to learn the basics of the game. You’re given all of the information you need to survive; how to attack, and how to use arts. Once the opening battle is over you get a moment to collect yourself and relax while the story truly begins and you meet the characters you’ll be playing with in a more relaxed setting. Read more…
Nintendo has gotten a reputation over the last six years of being a peripheral heavy company. The company has released a number of add-ons for their devices that they designed as a way to enhance a players gaming experience. Many of them are nothing more than a piece of plastic that you strap the Wii Remote into, or attach to the 3DS. Not only Nintendo themselves, but a number of third party companies have also created peripherals for not only the Wii and the 3DS, but the Xbox 360, the PS3, the iPhone and any other gaming device out there. Despite the fact that many people say that it’s a new thing peripherals have been around since the beginning of the era of video games.
These devices are designed because companies, like Nintendo or Mad Catz, think that there is a need or a desire for these devices. The Wii Remote is used as a steering wheel in a number of games and many people actually play the game that way. I’ve tried using the Wii Remote by itself to play Mario Kart Wii and it doesn’t work. The controller is not actually designed to be held in that manner to play the game and many of the buttons are hard or uncomfortable to reach. However, if you strap that controller into one of the plastic wheel shells it becomes immediately intuitive and easy to use. The peripheral did its job. Read more…
If you went out on the street and asked people if they knew what Kid Icarus was I think you would get one of three responses. The first and probably most popular answer would be a blank stare. The second would be, “Oh that kid who flew too close to the sun.” The last would be that new game starring the character from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The point being that not many people really know what the Kid Icarus franchise is, or even who Pit, the main character is.
Nintendo is set to release Kid Icarus: Uprising on March 23rd. Based on all of the coverage that the game is getting you’d think it is the biggest game of the year, and for some people it might be. I, for one, am very excited about the virtual re-launch of this long forgotten Nintendo character. He seemed like a very odd inclusion for Smash Bros. and I thought then that it might be the signal of something new for the franchise, but at the time I didn’t really know what it was going to be.
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Nintendo is releasing a new platform this year. You might have heard that news. It’s going to be more powerful than the Wii, and according to all sources the Xbox 360 and potentially the PS3. It’s going to launch in a part of the year when the current HD consoles are getting some of the biggest games of the year, like the newly announced Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Subtitle Here and more. That also means that many of these games could come to the Wii U.
One of the things I keep seeing around the internet is that it’s going to be a dumbed down or a rushed port to get the game on Wii U. Can we please stop with this talk now? It got old with the Wii and it’s already worn out it’s welcome for Wii U. As the internet says, “haters gonna hate,” but it’s just stupid. Do people really say that a game that was announced for the 360 is a rushed or dumbed down port when they bring it over to the PS3? No, they say that PS3 owners will get to play that game as well and console owners will have choice in the system that they want to play it on. However, when it comes to Nintendo’s platforms it’s always a bad thing.
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We got our copy of Tekken 3D: Prime Edition in the mail today and Micah will be handling that review. As the fighting game “expert” at Nintendo Okie he’s the most in the know about what’s going on in the world of fighting games. I took the opportunity to take a look at Tekken: Blood Vengeance before passing on the game to him and I have to say, “Please sir, may I have another?”
Now, let me say this right now. The movie wasn’t bad. I’m about as far away from a Tekken expert as you can possibly get. My knowledge of Tekken can be summed up in the following phrase. There’s a panda, a dude with a jaguar head, some guy has wings for hair and one of them gets thrown off a cliff……a lot.” Outside of that I know nothing about the series so I’m looking at the movie as someone who likes animated action movies and wanted to see how 3D movies on the 3DS would work.
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This is the first week of a new year. Every time the calendar changes from one year to another it’s a perfect opportunity to not only look back, but it’s also the perfect opportunity to look ahead. 2011 was a great year for games and for Nintendo Okie. I played a lot of great games. Met a lot of great people and lost way more Mario Kart games than I should have. We had our best year ever at Nintendo Okie and there are definitely quite a few people to thank for that.
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I don’t think anyone is going to argue that 2011 was a great year for video games. It started off strong in the early year with games like Portal 2 and was capped off by a huge lineup of games including the latest game in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Overall I played 98 games this year, most of them to completion, but not all. I think pared that down to a list that actually only included 13 games that I considered to be the best of the best for this year. Then I removed three of those games and were left with my top 10 games of 2011.
It actually ended up being very difficult to rank the games this year, because I think all 10 of these games are solid experiences that I enjoyed immensely. I debated long and hard about the top two games on my list and which one I thought deserved the top billing. It wasn’t easy at all, but here are my 10 favorite games of 2011.
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I’m just going to come right out and say it. “My name is Tony and I like the Wii Zapper.” There, I said it. It’s off my chest. Really, though. I know the Zapper is just a piece of plastic that you place the Wii Remote in to pretend like you’re holding a gun, but I like the way it feels. I like the way it adds just a touch of immersiveness to games and I’m going to tell you why.
This past weekend I took my church’s youth group on a trip to a local bowling alley. After we finished our hour of bowling we spent some time in the arcade there since we couldn’t drive the go-karts in the building. This arcade is one of the better ones in town. It’s fairly sizeable and it’s got a good selection of stuff to play. Most of it ticket based games that you use to buy stupid prizes and Tootsie Rolls, but some of their arcade games are pretty good. The one I want to talk about, and got me realizing why I like peripherals like the Zapper and the Top Shot Elite, was Terminator Salvation.
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The Nintendo 3DS brought the advent of QR Codes to my attention. Before I had a 3DS I had not really noticed those little black and white pictures that are used in Sunday circulars, pizza advertisements and many other things. Now that I’ve had some experience with them I’m noticing them everywhere. I can’t do anything with them, most of the time, because I don’t have a smart phone that can read them. I do, however, have a 3DS that can read QR codes and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.
For those of you that don’t know, QR codes (aka Quick Response Codes) are little images, similar to bar codes, which contain data that can be read by devices with a camera and appropriate software. They were created back in the mid 90’s by a subsidiary of the Toyota company as a way to track the position of cars on the assembly line. They can store more than 7,000 characters worth of data in a small space that can be used to link to websites that give you more information about a product, or in the case of the 3DS download new content to your system in a very short period of time.
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The Great Friend Code Exchange
