The N-Europe Blog

I still remember my reaction to Pokémon more than 10 years ago. I saw a huge yellow rat on the cover of a japanese magazine, saw a whole lot of colourless pictures surrounded by japanese writing, and thought “that’s it! This is what I’ve been waiting for!”. Being a RPG lover since my early gaming days, I felt the combination of unique monsters and collection was the perfect mix.

I already had my GameBoy Colour by the time Pokémon Red and Blue were released here in Portugal, and it was in that same year, for Christmas, that I used all my money to buy the Red Version (the dragon sold me), a game I carried everywhere, everyday. I had the habit of showing off people how cool and much better were my monsters, regardless that back then we didn’t have all those attributes that make each and every pokémon now, unique (minus some rare occasions).

So now, 10 years after (we only got Red/Blue in 99) I’m still very addicted to the series, got to know so many monsters that now I heart, learnt well to use combinations, creating balanced teams. I’ve been a Pokémon TCG addict back in the Wizards of the Coast times and that returned with the release of the Diamond and Pearl editions. I’m now anxious to get my hand on Platinum and that Giratina Origin Forme figurine and I can’t wait for the release of the recently announced Heart Gold and Soul Silver. I know well perhaps I’m too addicted to Pokémon, but I don’t mind it, because I have an undeniable love for the series.

But this love comes with a cost: I snap when I read people complaining “it’s not deep enough” or “it’s not as good as the GameBoy games”, or even “it’s not a core game”. I honestly presume that comments like these can’t come from people who actually dedicate their time to explore the games at all!

Do you know what EV and IV are? And what’s so different about them? Do you know how the Natures can affect the evolution of each and every pokémon? Did you know that it was in the 3rd Gen that Pokémon got the attributes that made them so unique and diverse, breaking with the barrier that a player’s Lv 100 Mewtwo was exactly the same as another player across the world? Do you know what Pokérus is? And what does it do to your pokémon?
I see many people don’t really know these details, which are only little in what you can find in every game. I know this because everyday I see people calling “simple” or “not deep enough” just because Pokémon is well aimed for the younger ones. They feel this because they don’t even search or even pay attention to small details, like the berries atributes such as Spicy and Dry, or even why do Natures matter. Or even how the male and female pokémon, and their attacks, matter in the breeding section.
I’m not saying you should know every single aspect about the games. Today I was suprised to see if you have a female pokémon with an Everstone being held, the probability of having it’s nature pass to the offspring rises (50% they say). And that there is a good way to give your offspring good IVs by a chain of breeds.

And yet, people call it “simple” or “not deep”.

Another term I now find, something you couldn’t see being slapped everyday is “hardcore”. It came to the point people say it’s a casual game. Well, it is a casual game! You can play it on a bus ride to the school, you can play it at your lunch break or even play it in your bed before sleeping (hence giving you a good amount of Umbreons, if you care). This is all due to the simple thing that is being able to save anywhere, everywhere. It’s as casual as such “core” titles like Halo, Call of Duty (since everyday I read “It’s because of the online they have), because of the way you play such games. But people tend to associate casual with easy, simple, ignoring the amount of depth you can find in each and every game.

Also, there’s the old habit of saying “the older ones were better!”. I’m not one to point preferences, my favourite so far has been Diamond and Pearl, and right before it was Gold and Silver, despite the lack of details that appeared in the 3rd Gen. But some times I read complaints that don’t really add up. For example, I’ve been reading “Diamond is slower than Gold”. In what? You weren’t able to run inside buildings, the Bike you had wasn’t as fast as the current Mach Bikes, just as quick examples.

Another thing I see people complaining about is “there are so many ugly pokémons, it’s as if they are running out of ideas”… Those started in 2nd generation, the one so many people speak os their favourite. Sure, Miltank is one amazing and adorable pokémon, and Dunsparce is so cool looking. Don’t forget about Sunkern and Sunflora! And that amazing evolution that is the weird fish Remoraid turning into an Octilery, that really make sense. Among them we still have that color fashion sheep, which completly changes it’s colours whenever it evolves, one of the characteristics of 2nd Gen Pokémon. I highly agree that the 3rd gen, altho introducing some really great aspects, that the world was unispiring due to all the surfing involved, and I also thought “I prefered Gold over this”, but Diamond turned everything into the right place, and it’s no wonder that it’s my favourite generation so far. The thing is that so many people prefer staying in the “previous game statement”, and only in the next generation will think “4th Gen was so much better! It was the best!”, this happens in other series, so no surprise there.

I’m not saying Gold, Silver and even Crystal were bad. Like I mentioned, it’s my 2nd favourite generation. It gave us improvements such as dual elements, Night and Day systems (one of the reasons the 3rd gen fell behind), a yet basic Battle Tower, happyness, breeds, genders, the Pokérus and assorted pokéballs focused on different pokémons. But those aspects evolved on Gen 3 and 4, as well new aspects such as Physical and Special Attacks, Natures, IV and EVs, among other things that changed the game completly, without you even noticing (try playing Emerald — and I’m not even saying Gold/Silver/Crystal — and go see that the Physical and Special aspects changed not by attack but by element, and it will surely give you a headache).

And the Kanto in 2nd Gen was great, but also really locked up, giving us little to explore. The gym battles weren’t that hard and it didn’t really consume much time. Battle Island in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum or even the Sevii Islands in FireRed/LeafGreen took more time, even tho they weren’t that huge. And the whole new content you find by re-exploring Sinnoh adds up, something you lacked in the first 2 generations.

Ah yes, fashion contests? Those are 3rd Gen stuff, not “those contests that showed up on Diamond Pearl” like many seem to say. And they will surely appear in Heart Gold/Soul Silver! You’re not really forced on doing them, but people seem to complain as if they had to lose 3 hours with it.

In February 2007, something wonderful happened in the games industry. Clover Studio’s development of Okami for the PlayStation 2 was over and Capcom released it to worldwide critical acclaim. Sadly I (and so many others) didn’t get the chance to play the retail version of the game; I’d bought my beloved X360 by then and had never heard of Okami before that. Shame on me, I know…

Anyway, the good news is that Okami is out on the Wii on 13 June (or out now if you’re lucky enough to own a Japanese or US console or live in one of those regions). Having borrowed a friend’s demo of the game and playing a short amount of it I know I like the game a lot, which is why I’ll be striding down to a game retailer in a few monthsto pick it up along with a Wii of my own. However, while I’m looking forward to that, I find it hard to imagine the guys who worked at the now defunct Clover Studio are pleased. Did I hear somebody ask why (yes I did – please play along!)? The answer’s not as clear as you may think!

Several days ago Capcom confirmed that due to legal constraints it had to remove Clover from Okami’s credits entirely. There’s no denying the ex-Clover employees are extremely proud of what they created – after all, it’s one of the only games to support the whole age-old ‘games are art’ debate – and to have their association from the game wiped out is bound to have caused a great deal of upset and anger.

Of course, Capcom was quick to back away and make it look as though Ready At Dawn (the God Of War developer handling Okami’s Wii port) tied its hands, with Community Manager Seth Killian saying, “The credits were removed because they were a pre-rendered movie that contained the Clover logo. We have no legal right to use the Clover logo in a game they were not involved with directly”. Hold on a second… Clover wasn’t involved with Okami for the Wii? Granted, Capcom said the developer wasn’t “directly” associated with the Wii version, but that doesn’t necessarily make it okay. When it comes down to the crunch, it was Clover Studio that put in the hours of developing work for the PS2 original. It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure the once-CEO of Clover wouldn’t have objected to having the studio’s name in the credits, still trading or otherwise. “I wonder who could have possibly been pleased with Okami’s staff roll being cut?” said former game director Hideki Kamiya. Clearly someone agrees with me. Ready At Dawn also had something to say on the matter, but I won’t even waste my time typing out the quote. Here’s a quick translation instead… “We didn’t want to give Clover Studio credit for Okami because it did a great job, and by listing it as the previous developer it stops us from looking like the ones who did all the hard work”.

There’s more though! The cover for copies of the game where it’s released bears the IGN logo watermark. I find it rather fitting that a game which has such a beautiful artistic style made it to the printers with a logo from a popular games site on it. I can only imagine the team of designers were half asleep or high that night; what else could lead them to copy the cover art from IGN rather than using the original one they created. They did create boxart, right? Tell me they created some! It’s unproffesonalism at its best! Either way, Capcom has set up a special website where US and Canadian residents are able to get a brand new cover (there’s a choice of two, don’t you know?).

Overall, it’s sad to see Clover isn’t getting the credit it deserves, and don’t get me started on the whole watermark thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to freeze myself until Capcom’s European release…

… Most likely the closest I’ll ever get to meeting a big name in the games industry, by meeting someone who met someone.

So I was sent down to Cork on the evening of January 21st 2008 for work to attend a training conference and as I know N-E features editor Mark Cullinane is living down there we arranged a small meet up since I was staying over night.

Regular readers of N-E might remember the recent interview with Suda51, which was done by Mark. (Hence the title)

I’ve met Mark a few times now, he’s actually only 1 of 2 N-E staffers that I have met in real life, the first time being back in November 2006 when we attended the Toys For Big Boys Show in Dublin to play the Wii before it was released. My work also has me visit Cork quite a few times so it would just be rude of me not to say hello.

This was the first time however that I got to stay overnight and since I didn’t want to be a loner and go straight to my hotel after the conference I checked if Mark was free and up to give me a little tour of the Cork nightlife. We had a good laugh, of course being the nerds that we are gaming took up the bulk of our conversations, which I think had a couple of Marks mates a bit confused at the end of the night. The first bar we went to (”An Bróg”, Irish for “The Shoe”) had a quiz night going on. Coincidently one of Marks college classmates was there with a friend of his that he was showing around so the 4 us teamed up and entered. We were doing alright until the 4th round which was a picture round… we weren’t too versed on our celebrity faces scoring a shameful 3 or 10 in that round. But we had a laugh anyway.

The quizmaster was also in a bit of a mood and had one guy kicked out who was heckling him, which was kinda funny.

After that we went to another bar to meet up with some more of Marks mates who were out on the town, I can’t remember the name of the bar…. nor could Mark remember where it was and he was meant to be my “tour guide”. We were actually walking towards it, then Mark thought we were going the wrong way and we walked round in a big circle. I only realized this when we left and went back to the main street and noticed we were walking down the street Mark thought was the wrong one.

Was a cool night though, had a good laugh and met some interesting new people. Cheers to Mark for “tour”.

A new game related video up on my Youtube channel to share with you today.

This time, Guitar Hero 3, the final boss on Hard mode. I’ve been bloody stuck on this song for 3 weeks (maybe more), I’ve even moved onto Expert mode and made it all the way to the 2nd last gig so far, yet I still can’t beat Lou on Hard mode.

I thought I’d try setting up my camera in hopes I might capture the very first time I beat this song on Hard mode, did I do it? Click Play to find out…

So that’s another year finished. I don’t know why but the older I get the faster the year just shoots by. I use to wish when I was smaller that time would hurry up; now I wish it would just slow down a bit. I want to play all these great games, especially a year like this which has had some many good games that I think I spent hundreds trying to buy them all, and still didn’t manage to get all I want.

If you remember I was doing a challenge to see if I could finish off 50 games before the year came to an end and well I guess I kind of did and didn’t make it in some sense. I know I certainly should have spent more time on single games. I just couldn’t help it though when I got a brand new game in the post that was suppose to be awesome. Don’t worry though; Assassin’s Creed didn’t spend long in my 360, god I nearly fall asleep playing that game. It likes to repeat over and over again, kind of like when an RPG changes the colour of the baddies to make them “different”. Assassin’s Creed just changes the people you are suppose to kill, but does the same stuff following up to that. Ah well, maybe the sequel will learn from that mistake.

So the games I finished with recently are:

Halo 3
Jackass: The Game (Didn’t buy it, was a review copy)
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Bone: Out from Boneville
Tekken: Dark Resurrection/Online (Finished it with all characters!)

So that makes 37 games finished for the year. That’s pretty far off really. I needed to finish off 13 more to make the 50 mark. I was just sitting here thinking about something. What if I added the games that I finished on the 360, but didn’t get 700 or more achievement points, would that make up to 50? So I sat down and through about all the 360 games I’d done. This is what I came up with.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (Wasn’t half bad in co-op!)
Stranglehold
The Darkness
Earth Defense Force 2017
Virtua Tennis 3
GRAW 2
Bullet Witch
Crackdown
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
Rainbow Six: Vegas

So yep, the final count is 47 games. I’ve just missed the target by three games! Oh so close! To be honest through I think I’ve learnt something about myself from this little challenge, that I have a very bad habit of buying too many games and playing between them all, rather than focusing at one of a time. I never use to be like that, I guess that is what money does to you when you’ve got it in front of you to buy all the games you want.
I guess these leads to my New Year Revolution, which is to try and focus on a smaller amount of games at once. It be interesting to see how many I actually complete in 2008 when I try to stick to this. There’s not going to be a challenge this year, but I’m still going to match it up to 2007 and see if the results are a lot different or not.

Well have a good 2008 and remember to play lots of games! Oh and if you want to know what my top five games of 2007 were then here they are.

Super Mario Galaxy
Persona 3
Uncharted
Call of Duty 4
Orange Box

Well, Now I’ve owned an Xbox 360 for a few months I have a fresh perspective on the Wii.

“Waggle”/Tilt: The waggle so far only enhances simple games like Wii sports and various mini game compilations. The tilt has been a bit more successful, enhancing games like Excite Truck and the item manipulation in Eledees and tilting the levels in Kororinpa (Super Monkey Ball used it poorly). Still, these functions have hardly been used to their full potential. The nunchuck could be a much more versatile replacement for an “Action Button” and allow you to have extra control for simple stuff like opening a door (i.e. controlling the speed of opening it). Developers really need a bit more effort in this area.

Pointer: This has been used very well in FPS games, as well as controlling your plane in Heatseeker. It does make FPS games feel a lot better than they should…just imagine a good (I’m excluding Metroid for now, as that’s hardly a “normal” FPS game) FPS, as in the game would still be good on an Xbox 360 or PC, with Wii controls (obviously, the graphics won’t be as good as a 360 game). The Wii is perfect for FPS games and yet we have yet to have a killer one. The Wii’s pointer (and having the controller in two parts) should also make GTA-style games a lot better. The Wii’s controls should make it easy to accelerate, steer, aim and shoot all at the same time. Scarface on the Wii was fun, but didn’t implement this part very well.

Games in general: While the 360 doesn’t have games as good as Metroid Prime 3, Twilight Princess or Mario Galaxy; it has a lot of games that are almost as good as them - with the Wii you have the top games but then there’s quite a gap between them and the best of the rest. This is mainly due to third parties not putting much effort into their Wii games.

While the Wii has the best games, it doesn’t have anywhere as many fantastic games. Hopefully next year will start fixing this problem. The Wii can do much better - but only if the developers try.

As I write this the date is December 6th 2007. That’s only 19 days to Christmas and only 25 days till the end of the year. I guess my challenge looks like it’s going to win over me. I’m not going to give in though! I’m going to fight to the end! I shall try and get 50 done before the year is over. I’ve gotten so many games over the past month though it is unreal. One week I got 8 games in the post at once. I’ve just been overwhelmed with them that I never know which one to play, kind of an evil position to be in. It’s probably one of the reasons why I’m behind in my list, that and I’ve got some weird feeling about 360 games. I’ve got to get 700 or more points in the game if I’ve finished it already and didn’t reach 700. Don’t know why; just want to have some points from the game! I’d probably be pretty near the target or past it by now if I didn’t have that to do.

So the games I’ve finished since the last time I posted are:

Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 1: Ice Station Santa
Call of Duty 4
Unreal Tournament 3 (Single Player Campaign)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations
Crysis
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

That makes it 32… 18 to go, erk, oh dear oh dear!

November 15th, the day before Mario Galaxy was released in Europe, I like many others, was trying to waste some time in hope that it might seem to flow faster.

At one point I started thinking of when I first played previous Mario games, oddly some of the few really vivid memories I have of my youth. And so I proceed to put my very first gaming memory into a video.

The last month has seen Super Smash Brothers Brawl announcements coming left, right and center. But recently these new game features have really started to become so much better…

First it all started off with the announcement that Sonic is to appear in the game. It really didn’t come as much of a surprise to be honest with this seemingly Nintendo’s part in the deal that has seen the sports based waggle fest that is Sonic and Mario at the Olympics. But it finally allows for the flash movies that have existed for years and to finally watch the two 90’s gaming rivals thrash it out.

Despite this massive announcement there have been a much much bigger set of new features that are simply setting this game above the rest. User generated/edited content is the next big thing in gaming. Halo 3 has Forge and it’s save movies (which has been happening on PC’s for year, don’t let any Master Chief wannabe tell you otherwise) and Little Big Planet looks to be basing it’s entire premise around users creating their own levels.

Smash Brothers has stepped in and popped in both of these features and it looks set to be on the greatest online experiences ever to grace a Nintendo console. As important for a Wii title as the in-depth huge single player is, this pales into insignificance when compared to the online modes.

Games against both friends and random opponents but more interesting is the ability to record movies and send them to friends but also a fully featured level editor. You’ll be able to show off your level editing skills to the rest of the world along with the best levels getting sent to every owner’s Wii. Letting user feel like they are actually shaping others gaming experiences is the future, letting them mould and incorporate a part of themselves into a rich and thriving community.
Nintendo please don’t let this be a one off, please continue with allowing such great online titles and why not at least consider getting rid of those damn Friend Codes.

Hello all you beautiful people! It’s my first post in the blog! Rejoice!

Following Dom’s post about finishing games, my backlog is really starting to become huge. Right now, I’m playing Luminous Arc, which I’ll be reviewing for the main site, Phantom Hourglass and Metroid Prime 3. I just had to give priority to these games, but the lovely Persona 3 box is always whispering to me in my sleep: “Play me! You already have 70 hours! You can’t stop now!”, then I wake up only to see my Lord of the Rings Online special edition reminding me that I’m loving my first (official) foray in MMORPGS and that I’m paying a monthly fee for it! But I don’t have time for everything!

Now that Okami was announced for Wii, at least I can rest easy and forget the PS2 version. But wait! God Hand! God of War 2! Xenosaga II! Children of Mana! Pikmin 2! Baten Kaitos! Chibi Robo! The list goes on and on! I can’t help but think of Miyamoto and Iwata talking about growing up and having less time to play games. Damn them, they’re right! Small games now take me months to finish, games that I wanted at launch ended up on my to buy list and games that I actually bought end up gathering dust until I have time to play them.

But you know what? This actually makes me enjoy games more. Issues like lack of longevity no longer bother me, when I play, it feels more meaningful and fun and even with all the “AAA” games out there I can’t stop myself from relaxing a little with Wii Sports, Wii Play, Tiger Woods 08 and other games that can provide me with short bursts of fun.

Growing up and not having time to play actually gave me a fresh perspective about games, you can even call it an epiphany. Who would have guessed? Now excuse me, I have to ignore schoolwork and decide which game to play.