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Category Archives: Word on the street

Cartoon sports videogames… eh.

Sometimes writing about cartoon sports videogames can be about as fun as taknig a strong dose of herbal acne treatment; it’s not enjoyable and convinces no one. You either like cartoonish sports titles or you’re over the age of six.

The one exception is the Hot Shots Golf franchise, which seems to have found just the right mix of serious golf sim and cartoon antics to remain interesting to older gamers who love real sports, not “kiddie stuff.”

I recently reviewed Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds for PS3 and really enjoyed the game; it’s a keeper. Now, after over two years of playing Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee on PSP to death and back again, the sequel is out: Open Tee 2 has a good mix of old familiar coarses updated since their last appearance, as well as plenty of new courses.

Look for a full review soon.

Before you begin Crisis Core

Before you begin Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, be sure to look into some term life insurance quotes. The PSP game is far more of an action RPG than the traditional turn-based affair that made the Final Fantasy VII universe so universally appealing, to be prepared for the change.

That said, the game is everything one could hope for on a gameplay standpoint, except that it’s a bit short on the main quest. A lot of hours can be added via optional missions, but the main quest is complete in only a handful of hours of gameplay, rather than the 50-plus hours the original Final Fantasy VII game delivered on.

I’ll be doing a full-on review soon, but I’m enjoying what I’ve played thus far.

Waiting for Final Fantasy XIII

One game I don’t need trade show displays of to create excitement in me toward playing, once it’s released, is Final Fantasy XIII. From every bit of video footage I’ve seen, the game looks gorgeous and truly deserving to be on the PS3 platform.

While I’m not one to condemn most RPGs for not being on the cutting edge of graphics … after all, one of my favorite publishers of RPGs is NIS America … I can certainly get excitied when a title like this comes along and is on that cutting edge. While I am not sure if it will be released in 2008 or not, I can say that it is already one of my most enthusiastically anticipated games of the year.

Some gamers left behind

I’ve never used Cisco routers or dongles; I’ve found that one can get by quite well, usually, with a less prestigious name brand just fine. For example, I run my PC off an Encore dongle and get completely acceptable download speeds, especially now that I’m using Windows Vista and have a stable driver for it.

However, I remember not long ago, when I was living in Wisconsin and only had dial-up at an affordable price, just how annoyed I was at the rush toward broadband. I didn’t want to be left behind, just because I lived in the sticks.

Now, I live in a major metro area and broadband is both readily available and affordable; it greatly enhances the online game experience and it’s hard to imagine going back to dial-up. But sometimes I still wonder if we’re not being a bit unkind leaving folks in low-population areas behind, technologically.

I love my PS3 and my wife and I hope to have an HDTV by the end of this summer. But with the digital switchover less than a year away, I still have concerns about the people being left behind technologically, even though I’m no longer one of them.

Blu-Ray outsells HD-DVD 2 to 1!

Those wondering about the outcome of the high-def format war between Sony’s Blu-Ray Disc format and Toshiba/Microsoft’s HD-DVD format need look no further than the news coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show. With Holiday 2007 now history, the votes that matter most have been cast: consumer spending dollars.

In that battle, it is Sony’s Blu-Ray Disc format that is emerging as the winner. For the 2007 holiday season, Blu-Ray Disc outsold HD-DVD by a two-to-one margin. At the CES, Sony’s reps and movie studio partners were saying that the war is pretty much over; it’s just a matter of time now.

By contrast, the Toshiba reps were saying, “It’s too early to cast HD-DVD aside.”

Considering the sales figures, however, and the fact that a Blu-Ray Disc holds 20 GB more information than the largest-capacity HD-DVD, whose reps sound more desperate? Hands down, Blu-Ray Disc is going to be the high-def format winner, thanks in large part to PlayStation 3 sales.

These aren’t your grandparents’ air purifiers wars, kids! This is for keeps!

Mass Effect and Blue Dragon are 360 home runs

If ever a couple of videogames were, by themselves, reasons to re-outfit your entertainment room with an HDTV and a plasma TV lift, as well as all the other accoutrements of of the new generation of videogame goodness, Microsoft and their Xbox 360 partners have come up with it this holiday season.

I’m speaking, of course, about Mass Effect, developed by BioWare, and Blue Dragon, developed by Mistwalker Studios and – basically – created by the same minds that brought us the first nine editions of Final Fantasy. I have recently spend time with both and am completely re-devoted to my Xbox 360, which only a couple months ago was gathering dust as I had run out of new things to discover in Oblivion.

Like Oblivion, Mass Effect and Blue Dragon are also RPGs; none of these games, however, are very much lick each other. Everyone by now should know what Oblivion is like. Mass Effect is an sci-fi RPG that is more completely cinematic, photorealistic and deep than any game you’ve ever played.

Now, that’s not to say Mass Effect can’t be beaten quickly. I know one killjoy who bragged about “beating” the game in 30 hours. Personally, I like to take my time in good games and really explore and enjoy every nook and cranny, every encounter, every bit of dialog. And that’s where Mass Effect excels; with the quality of the animated actors, combined with the voice acting and an all-new, more complex than anyone’s ever seen before in a videogame dialog system, Mass Effect is a complete winner and probably the new winner of “a real next-gen RPG experience” award type of game. That honor previously rested with Oblivion.

Blue Dragon is completely engaging as well, but in completely different ways and for different reasons. Blue Dragon makes no pretenses of being photorealistic or completely immersive. Instead, it is quite simply chock full o’ action and never stops dishing up the thrills.

Of course, unlike Oblivion and Mass Effect, Blue Dragon is turn-based, but the system is do fun and fast, you might not notice.

Anyone who says the 360 is allowing PS3 to catch up hasn’t played Mass Effect or Blue Dragon.

A perfect marriage: PSP Slim and Final Fantasy Tactics!

It took a while, but Sony finally has it right in the handheld market; a combination of the perfect game and the perfect piece of hardware to play it on. The hardware? The new PSP Slim. The game? Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions.

Much like last winter’s redesign of the previously-bulky Nintendo DS, Sony’s original PlayStation Portable was in dire need of of an attention-grabbing redesign. While the DS Lite went in an standard Nintendo direction, with a trim but boxy design than a wide palette of colors from which to choose, Sony chose a slightly different route.

The PSP Slim is noticably lighter and thinner, but still boasts the spirit of the original PSP design. And instead of making a load of new colors commonplace, Sony celebrated the PSP relaunch with a couple collectible, limited edition designs, while the rest of the forthcoming PSP Slims will remain in standard black. The Daxter version of PSP Slim is a sharp, slick metallic silver, while the Star Wars Edition is pearly white with an image of an adult Darth Vader silkscreened on the back of the unit.

They’re sharp-looking and they won’t be available forever, making them fun to own, and of course, increasing their eBay value in the process for the capitalists among us.

But a redesigned PSP would be nothing without some all-new killer apps to play on ‘em, and one of the big guns just launched: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions finally makes its way to PSP sporting a complete graphical makeover, new cinematics, new characters, new jobs and lots of other new goodies, while retaining the spirit of the original story that made the PS One classic so damn addictive.

I could go on and on, but I’d rather get back to PSP gaming heaven… you’ll hear more from me later, though. Soon as the PSP Slim has to go on the recharger.