02.19.07
Posted in development, games, semantic web, technology, web at 12:29 am by wingerz
A few weeks ago I came across an article about the top-selling games of 2006. There’s some analysis, then a list of the top 100 games spread across 10 web pages (starting, of course, with games ranked 100 to 91). Unfortunately, there isn’t a great way to really take a close look at the data. For example, I really wanted to see some Nintendo-specific analysis.
The data was screaming to be let out, so I scraped it and put it into an Exhibit. It was not a quick and easy process. I am quite certain that the HTML was hand-coded – the quotes start with “, ", |, or nothing at all, and some of the other elements are mixed up.The game platforms are not very well specified so I may need to go through and clean it up later; for this reason the portable/homeconsole sections are not 100% accurate.
Anyhow, now I have a perl Data::Dumper file, tab-delimited text file, and a JSON representation. Will probably upload the text file to Many Eyes for kicks.
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02.11.07
Posted in games at 11:46 pm by wingerz
There are a lot of PS3 naysayers who revel in the fact that there are lots of unsold consoles sitting on store shelves, but I am not one of them. So far in our group (at work), there have been three PS3 purchases, with a fourth coming some time in the next few months. After seeing Matt’s hooked up to his 1080p television, I’ve decided that $600 is a pretty fair price for what you’re getting: a reasonably high-performance computer, a bargain Blu-Ray player, and a game console – as long as you have the home entertainment setup to take advantage of it. Movies look and sound quite amazing on it. At times I do find myself a bit jealous of the pretty pictures. While graphics aren’t everything, the beauty of RE4, Metroid Prime, and Zelda were greatly appreciated.
So far there haven’t been all that many good games for the PS3, which seems to be the main reason for the slow sales. I was flipping through the latest issue of EGM and saw that both Virtua Fighter 5 (9.2) and NBA Street Homecourt were rated very highly. It’s good to see some quality titles being released; all those pixels would be a terrible thing to waste.
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02.04.07
Posted in games at 11:51 pm by wingerz
Of course I love the Wii. Nearly everyone who has come to visit over the past two months has been treated to the joys of Mii creation and Wii Sports. The recently deployed News Channel is pretty cool – it collects AP stories to be viewed either by category or location. I think it’s a great tool for learning geography, especially for children: it’s just cool to spin the globe around to see what’s happening in Australia. But two things have been bugging me recently.
Lack of simultaneous multiplayer in Ware Ware. I’ve been tempted to pick this game up, but the lack of multiplayer just kills it for me. It’s got turn-based multiplayer but that doesn’t have quite the same intensity. I understand that previous incarnations of Wario Ware haven’t had strong multiplayer support, but they should have made an exception for the Wii, which is meant to be a more social machine. That, along with the fact that most people can unlock most of the content in two hours means that I’m not spending $50 on it.
Lack of network support. Apparently Nintendo has been pretty tight-lipped about the networking APIs with third parties, AND none of their games currently support network play. And I might actually decide to buy a Virtual Console game if they supported network multiplayer (All I’d need is Tetris Attack, SFII, and MK64). It took Nintendo about a year to get their act together with the DS; hopefully it’ll be faster this time around since they’ve got Nintendo Wi-Fi up and running.
Until something else comes along, I’ll be catching up on some old GameCube and PS2 games. Have been playing a bit of Katamari, which is delightful.
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01.24.07
Posted in games at 11:07 pm by wingerz
Last night I finished Zelda. It was a phenomenal experience, correcting some of the problems that plagued Wind Waker (not enough dungeons, clunky navigation in the overworld). In the end it took me about 41 hours, but I pretty much charged through the story, missing some of the upgrades, heart pieces, and treasure chests along the way. Sometimes when a game is this long I lose motivation to complete it, but this kept my interest all the way through.
+Dungeons: For me, the heart and soul of a Zelda game is the dungeon design, and in this respect Twilight Princess is extremely successful. At a few points in the game (that I remember very vividly), I was “stuck” for a few minutes on a puzzle, but managed to reason my way through it after looking around. I love a game that poses a decent challenge without driving me to GameFAQs every other night.
+Overworld navigation: Take the scenic route on your horse or warp there directly. Walking is an option as well, but not a very fast or exciting one.
+Swordfighting: Loved the new sword techniques (although you can get by without them) and one-on-one swordfights against bigger, uglier enemies. Can’t wait for the Zelda built from the ground up for the Wii.
+Lots of cats: They’re all over the place, and you can pick them up.
Controls: Aiming with the remote was great, especially for picking off faraway enemies. The motion sensing for swordfighting was a bit too sensitive – sometimes I’d trigger it by shaking my leg or moving the nunchuk around.
Creepy NPCs: Bug-collecting girl could have been in Resident Evil. And those clowns are definitely up to no good. And the birds with human heads are just freaky.
-Bosses: Beautifully modeled and cool in concept. Unfortunately, overall they were on the easy side. My fairy was with me from the time I scooped her up into a jar. This isn’t a horrible thing, but it definitely lessens how memorable the encounters are.
-Wallet management. I was trying to collect 598 rupees. I had 550 and found a treasure chest containing a 100-rupee coin. It wouldn’t let me pick it up because my 600-rupee wallet was full.
I’ll almost certainly go back and wander around the world. Hyrule is a beautiful place to explore, and I’m kind of sad about completing the story. Overall, it’s a spectacular game and one of the best I’ve played.
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01.07.07
Posted in games at 11:52 pm by wingerz
Over the past few weeks I haven’t had a lot of time to myself. Of course I cherish spending time with the people I love (and explaining to them how to create a Mii and play Wii Sports), but all of that in addition to preparing for the holidays and taking care of Jen during finals meant a month-long hiatus from Zelda. Since I’ve gotten back I’ve logged about 8 more hours (bringing the total to 22). The game is fantastic and the world is beautiful, especially around Lake Hylia. So far the only real complaint that I have is that the bosses are a bit on the easy side; I’d prefer it if they made me sweat a little more.
One thing that I am very thankful for: Traveling around the world is much easier than it was in Wind Waker. All that sailing was a little bit too much for me. The horse is much better.
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12.28.06
Posted in games at 12:39 pm by wingerz
Success at last! We finally convinced my dad to pick up a controller to give tennis a try. He played against some friends of ours who were over for Christmas Eve dinner.
My mom and dad teamed up and put up a great fight before losing 3-2. In other Wii news, Wilson got a hole-in-one on Hole 2 (par 3).
One thing that I find really amazing: people aren’t necessarily falling in love with the Wii – they’re falling for Wii Sports, a glorified tech demo. I get the impression that a lot of people are dropping $400 to play it, despite the fact that most of the in-game Miis only have a single sphere-shaped hand (with no arms). I’d guess that a lot of buyers have no idea of what’s in the release pipeline, but I suppose the Nintendo brand goes a long way. I wonder what future game(s) will have the universal appeal of the pack-in. Hopefully there will be a steady stream of great mainstream titles in addition to the more gamer-oriented stuff.
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12.21.06
Posted in games at 11:54 am by wingerz
Nintendo’s virtual console releases this week included Tennis for the NES. Yup, the old one, with the 8-bit graphics and non-motion-sensing controls (not to mention that you have to move your own character around). Honestly though, what’s the point of this? When someone asks you to play a game of tennis on the Wii, who in their right mind would think of the NES release over Wii Sports Tennis? I’m completely baffled and would love to see the rationale behind some of these releases.
Since it hasn’t materialized on the DS yet, here’s my dream for the Wii VC: Networked multiplayer Tetris Attack, with a Tetris DS-styled ranking system.
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Posted in games at 11:28 am by wingerz
I started gaming in the late 80s. Over the past two decades, the only time my mom ever picked up a controller is while cleaning up after me. After hearing about Wii family success stories, I figured I had a pretty good shot at getting my mom to give it a try.
I made my sister create a Mii first so that Mom could see how easy it was. Then she created her own, giggling as she clicked on some of the sillier noses and mouths. We started out with a few rounds of tennis. Mom played the way she used to play real tennis – by swinging with a big upwards component, which translated into lobs on-screen. Her timing was a little off, but she hit most of the balls that came her way and we won a few matches against my sister and Wilson.
Then we played three holes of golf. Egged on by my sister, I went for the small island of green on Hole 3 and quickly hit the 15-stroke maximum. It was pretty disheartening, but meanwhile Mom beat all of us (check out the intense look of concentration). Hoping to get my dad to give it a try later; he was off napping somewhere.
In related news, Wii Sports was named Gamasutra’s most important game of 2006. I can’t argue with the award, since I’ve seen it capture the attention of people who traditionally don’t play video games, including our upstairs neighbors, our VP, and Mom.
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Posted in games at 10:49 am by wingerz
Two days ago, Nintendo made the Wii Weather Channel available. It’s a pretty nifty little application that lets you explore weather all around the globe, letting you rotate and zoom in and out. Sure, data-wise it’s not anything that you can’t do on weather.com, but it’s a lot more fun to rotate all the way over to the South Pole (it’s pretty cold down there) than to visit a website.
A few minor issues:
No custom locations. Figuring out your latitude and longitude is pretty easy nowadays. Let users enter custom locations. Better yet, do a geo-lookup based on a Wii’s IP address, and show registered friends on the map. As a complete aside, use the geo-lookup in games so that you’ll know you’re playing with people all around the world (right now the only time I think I might be playing someone not from the US is when they have a kanji-filled handle).
Panning/rotating with the ‘A’ button. In the other channels, usually you hold down ‘B’ to pan the view. Switching it to ‘A’ for the weather channel is a bit disconcerting. Overall, I wish the channels had a more consistent look and feel.
No lookup by name. Would love to be able to enter a zip code or place name to get weather reports. This has the added benefit of making me not look stupid when someone asks me for the weather in a particular city and I have no idea of what continent it’s on.
In any case, it’s fun to play around with and didn’t cost anything. Hopefully Nintendo will release other map-related channels, since everyone loves them.
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12.17.06
Posted in games at 12:20 am by wingerz
When I first got my DS, I was itching to buy games that utilized the touch screen. There weren’t a lot of games before the Mario Kart, Tetris, Animal Crossing, and Metroid onslaught. In acts of desperation, I got Feel the Magic, Yoshi Touch and Go, and Zoo Keeper. They were all reasonably amusing, but they weren’t really substantial gaming experiences. Their gameplay elements made them feel like tech demos.
I’m trying not to make the same mistake again with the Wii, even though there are a few games that I’m sure I would enjoy (maybe I’ll pick them up later). Time and money constraints make it a bit easier to convince myself not to buy anything just yet. Next year is when a lot of the big titles start getting released, starting with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves.
Meanwhile, Lee and I have carried out our PS2 for GameCube exchange since our new systems are backwards compatible. While I love Nintendo and wouldn’t trade Mario, Zelda, and Metroid for anything, there’s no doubt that the PS2’s library has more AAA titles. I’m definitely looking forward to playing God of War, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damacy. Oh, and FFX. Unfortunately, I have no idea of where all of these extra hours are coming from.
In other Wii news, 1) Jen’s Mom called us to tell us to be careful with the Wii after reading about injuries and damage it in the newspaper and 2) when I was talking to the upstairs neighbors about it, they had already played it at a friend’s house. I’m sort of wondering what the scene will be like tomorrow morning, with more units becoming available. With Christmas right around the corner, I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty crazy no matter how many units retailers have been hoarding for the last two weeks.
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