Hell have no fury like a fanboy scorned! Region Locking = Piracy, Hacking and Modding

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GOD I AM PISSED! When I get angry at the game industry I usually get angry at JRPG publishers in the PAL region or about release date changes or Square-Enix but now Nintendo? That's weird of me considering I am the guy who tells people Nintendo is great! Nintendo will never let us down! Nintendo aren't evil! Well I guess now I have to retract that statement.

Talk to me before 2000 and all what I said above would be 100% true, but after then? Well in 2000 I was introduced to my first JRPG, Final Fantasy VIII. Why does this matter? Well I also live in Australia, the land that gaming neglects for intellectual gaming experienced that aren't on the DS. Sure this seems kinda full of holes but let me continue. After I played my first JRPG I gain a whole new love for video games that has been slowly becoming scorn for the industry as time progressed.

For those who don't know Australia only sees about 50-60% of all games released in the world and the JRPG genre is the most neglected. The thing is that it's not the market, it 3 major factors
1) Our games are determined by what the UK and Europe gets
2) There isn't enough information on the genre for people to know about it properly in Australia
3) Everyone thinks Final Fantasy and Square-Enix when they hear the term JRPG

Why does this have me angry at Nintendo? Well the Nintendo 3DS is region locked! I've had to import games in the past for the GBA, DS, PSP and PS3 and with the region locking on 3DS I can't buy an Australian 3DS and import JRPGs for it. Why should you care? Well I don't expect you to care unless you're in the PAL territory. We in the PAL territory have been screwed on game releases. Check a list of games released and compare the regions released. Guaranteed you'll see that Japan and the US get a lot more games released, count all the JRPGs alone and it's a small ratio. I bet you Americans can name 10 JRPGs on any console without really trying but here in Australia, we're lucky to have 10 on a console period from the PS One to today and anything before it is almost none existent. You know what was our first Final Fantasy? FFVII! Our first JRPG? You'd have to search Wikipedia for that information.

The region locking of the 3DS not just restricts PAL territories from JRPG but restricts a lot of games period. Just you wait, you'll see tons of games getting released in the US and Japan that isn't coming to PAL territories. Believe it or not a fair few Australian gamers are angry with the US because of getting games that we don't and while that is petty, it's because they don't know who to blame, nobody really does unfortunately. Now on top of Australia missing out on games and not being able to get them outside of piracy, modding or importing everything including consoles the US citizens who actually know Japanese will now be missing out on games thanks to the region locking because guess what people? The Japanese games won't work on the US 3DS! All you giant mecha fans are probably now screaming at the top of your lungs.

Now the reason why this has me pissed at Nintendo is because of the fact that the PAL region hardly gets JRPGs and Nintendo JRPGs especially. Oh sure we got Chrono Trigger(DS), Final Fantasy(GBA, DS, PS1/2/3), Kingdom Hearts(GBA, PS2,PSP,DS), Dragon Quest whatever the heck I don't care about(DS,PS2) and Golden Sun(GBA,DS) plus a few others nobody really knew about but what about the stuff we missed out on? I mean the Wii only got 2 JRPG releases out of how many? Did we get Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadows? Did the SNES get any JRPGs?

Also Nintendo are big complainers about piracy. You want to know why piracy exists? It's because of region locking, over pricing and thieves. You want to know why people chip console in Australia? It's so they can import! It's not because they want to pirate games, not because games are too expensive(which they are at AU$99.95-119.95 for a PS3 or 360 game) it's so we can play any game from any region! Let's look at Blu-ray and DVD players in Australia, you know which ones always sell? Region free players! In Australia we are NOT pirates! We just want a fair go with everything! You know why Australia loves the PS3? Because the console is region free for games! We like our portable consoles for the same reason!

Top Spin 4 Impressions

I am not a big tennis fan to be a honest. Football - soccer - and basketball are the ones that I really care and spend my time on. However, that does not mean I dislike tennis, I enjoy watching tennis tournaments and play it myself occasionally.

My experience with the tennis games was limited with the Virtual Tennis series. I enjoyed them most of the time but it took only a small amount of time that I stopped playing them as they start to get boring quite easily.

Top Spin is a bit different. I only played the demo version of Top Spin 3 before the 4th title and even though I enjoyed the demo I did not buy it considering the experience with Virtual Tennis.

After reading much about Top Spin 4, I was quite amazed by how people reacted to it hence I decided to purchase it a week ago. As the topic suggests it , it is way better than I expected, definitely.

What impressed me the most ?

1- Technical aspects of the game. Graphics, animations are amazing. Nadal looks real, Federer looks real, Agassi looks real, Djokovic looks real, all of them looks real !!! And it's not only how they look like, it is also how they move on the court. The animations, 2K Sports' incredible job on signature moves made me feel the game as it was just as realistic as in real life. The physics, the way the ball moves, the way the players move... just impressive. Game mechanic is superb.

2- Career mode. It is not short and it's FUN ! It's easy to develop a tennis player, you never get confused, the tutorials are incredibly good and the menus are quite accessible.

3- Not just the menus, the game is quite accessible. Even if you know little to none about tennis, the game teaches you everything you need to know and make you execute them easily and quickly.

4- Just like every great game, the game is easy to learn but hard to master. This formula always work. Once you learn about the game, you would like to master it. Then you'd start spending time on improving yourself and you'll feel the improvement with the time you put on it. The game simply pushes you more

I am not reviewing the game or anything. I am not telling any stories either. Based on my experience with the game and the article that I am writing at the moment, I am sure people will have some ideas about the game - even if they had some before - . I just emphasized the strongest points of the game and it's up to you to give it a try or not.

Lastly, even if you like watching or playing tennis even a little percent, you will have a great time playing this game I am pretty sure about that. The game attracts you immediately and never lets you go. Congrats 2K Sports for the best Top Spin game so far - and probably the best tennis game -

Screw You, Anonymous, Screw You Very Much

Your recent attack on PSN isn't justice. It isn't some honorable cause that you have hearkened to. It is pure and utter malice. It undermines everything you have ever stood for. It undermines those that would support you. It undermines everything you have set out to accomplish.

Before you jump to conclusions, understand something: I, along with millions of PS3 owners support Anonymous in many of Anonymous' undertakings. Many Anonymous members are PS3 owners themselves.

We supported and joined you when you protested the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

We support and join you in your protest of scientology.

We support you and join you in protest of the Westborough Baptist Church.

We sent money to defend Julian Assange. Helped with the DDOS on Visa (and others.)

We support your unerring efforts to bring about global change on many, many fronts.

Some of us have even supported George Hotz.

In short, we are the very people that join those protests and help your numbers swell, help the monetary needs of those who fight the good fight.

Attacking PSN was not the good fight. If you have a problem with SONY, then go after SONY. Though PSN is their property, what you have done is nothing short of anger the very gamers, professionals, and individuals who would go to bat for you. Sure, it may mean a little inconvenience. We can't play our multiplayer games or download DLC or updates, it is true. But the one thing that you have affected, and the one thing you would be the least likely to criticize was Folding@Home. Thousands of PS3s were shut off from the Folding@Home project.

From the University of Stanford: "Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases
You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software."

Simply by running the app on my PS3 I am helping to fight these diseases. Now, you, Anonymous have interrupted the mission. You feel strongly about what happens in the world. We do to. And to better the world, we allow Stanford to use our PS3s through the PSN to help understand these diseases and fight them. We are just as passionate about this as you are in your fights to right the wrongs of this world. To impart your own justice.

Curing disease is justice. How many lives have you affected? How many people may die because you had to disrupt the computing power of thousands? Just to get your revenge? Too dramatic? Remember that this attack has sent a ripple through the efforts to fight cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell, and many other diseases. It has disrupted efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

So, from those of us who have supported you for nigh on 2 decades and are helping to fight debilitating diseases, Screw you. Screw you, very much.

A Tribute to "Shadow of the Colossus"

It wasn't Mario or Sonic or any of the classics that got me serious about gaming.

No, it was particularly two titles in the past decade for PlayStation 2 that made me realize that video games are as legit and weighty as any other medium of expression.

Sure, the percentage of games that hold up as "art" or have the ability to change someone, their outlook on things or how they question or view the world are few and far between, given that the market is flooded with FPS after FPS in the vein of Call of Duty and its legion of ripoffs.

But in particular, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, to this day, stand up to the test of time.

They are two examples that make me proud to be a gamer.

They are two of the many games that confirm my views on why the PS2 is my all-time favorite system. I mean hell, the console holds 5 of the 7 favorite games I can think of:

-Persona 4
-Resident Evil 4 (originally released on GameCube)
-Final Fantasy X
-Shadow of the Colossus
-Ico

As you can tell, I'm huge on Japanese games, and with good reason. With the exception of a few games and companies like BioWare and Valve, Western game companies often follow the mantra, "Shoot first, ask questions later."

In regards to the games listed above, all of which have come within only the last generation of consoles, I will of course, always hold SNES games like Tetris Attack and Super Mario World dear to my heart, or Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Mortal Kombat II for the Genesis. But there's a difference between fun factor and nostalgia to the likes of games that impacted me long after I set down my controller.

In honor of the recent release of the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD re-release on PlayStation 3, I've decided to reexplore my love for Shadow of the Colossus in particular.

When I played SotC for the first time, I was immediately struck by its beauty. The far reaching landscapes, the desolate ruins, the sparse scenery. The light rays that shined through the temple.

It all built up to an otherworldly atmosphere that left me in awe and wonder.

It's funny because Fumito Ueda, creator of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, really knew how to work the system's limitations into his favor.

Coming out of the gate the earliest, the PS2 was by far the weakest in terms of power of the three consoles (fellow rivals, Xbox and GameCube) of last generation.

So Ueda couldn't afford to build a world dense in details that he probably wanted to employ to immerse the player in terms of realism.

Thus, he went the opposite route.

Let's make a sparse and desolate world. Not sparse in terms of laziness and inattention to detail.

No, it was quite the opposite.

Ueda and his team took to apply the use of space in their games, to strategically place vegetation, building structures, ruins, and a camera perspective that would not only keep the player immersed in the world, but to engender feelings of loneliness, even a sense of helplessness, to a protagonist that is no super hero by any means - but is nevertheless on a journey to save the woman he loves.

But the enemy and the tasks necessary for him to accomplish this aren't so clear cut - he is to slay giant, mythical beasts known as Colossi in order to fulfill the temple spirits' wishes, but at the same time, he doesn't know the purpose or reasons as to why these Colossi are to be killed. What is the end goal of all of this?

The protagonist is so desperate to find a way to save the woman that he has no other choice.

The game opens up with shots of him riding his horse through far off regions. The intro then ends with him traversing a bridge that stretches far into the distance, as if never-ending, but ultimately leading to the temple.

I've actually traversed this entire bridge in the game and you can bet, it's long as fuck. I can't remember exactly but it literally took me 10 or more minutes to ride across the damn thing on my horse.

But these design choices were made on purpose.

The entire game's design was made for certain purposes.

When I traversed these long stretches of scenery and the world, uninterrupted, I felt a greater sense of wonder and amazement; at the same time, I started questioning myself and the protagonist's journey. I was in doubt of myself. Would I be able to conquer the next Colossus? Would killing another one bring me that much closer to saving the woman? Where would the next task take me?

The fact that there are absolutely no lesser enemies or minions to deal with in between each Colossus battle only elevates the gravitas of each struggle's outcome.

Go Home Dinosaurs! Interview, Part Two

Interviewing Eitan Glinert, Fire Hose Games’ Fire Chief, isn’t really about asking questions so much as it is staying out of the way of his train of thought. He’s just cool like that.

In part two of our interview at PAX he talks to me about their upcoming tower defense title Go Home Dinosaurs!, game plagiarism, dynamic wave generation, calls Zynga evil bastards - plus hot dogs, forties and homeless people.

Cat: What about leveling up towers?
EG: Well, we had that in an earlier version, and I suspect that’s out. I don’t know... I’m still on the fence. We don’t know yet, I’m guessing it’s out, 30% chance of being in the game. We had an early version that did exactly that and people liked it, but it’s really hard as a designer. You show something to people and they say they like it and you have to figure out , “OK, but do you like it more than this? Or would you like it more if we did something else?”, and I’ll tell you that between the two responses, and how people played, I’m kind of on the side that this is probably better without. We just got rid of upgrading altogether, no upgrading, and I think that might be better for this. If we just stick upgrading with the card trading, with the tech tree stuff, that might be a lot more fun.

Cat: There were definitely moments playing where I though, “Should I be upgrading something?”
EG: I think that this game feels better without it, and it’s a really standard thing in tower defense but that doesn’t mean it has to be there. I think that in this case it’s probably stronger without it. Don’t hold me to that, maybe in six months I’ll send you a build that’ll actually have it there, but I don’t think it’ll make it into the final build of the game.

You know what’s neat, we have dynamic wave generation in this game, where the waves aren’t set. There’s an algorithm running that’s guessing how well you’re doing, and giving you dinosaurs that will match your level. That’s why you can have these different skill levels playing the same thing and it works for them. That’s gonna be in the game and we’re gonna have a lot of fun with that because it makes the game really challenging sometimes - we’ve seen five year olds that can play this and hardcore gamers and they have roughly the same difficulty, which is really nice. That took us awhile to figure out. It’s cool, too, because it makes it fast for us to throw in levels without having to worry about balancing waves - we do have to check, of course, but it gets us 80% there!

Cat: Will you have enough testers, are you going to be bringing in homeless people from the streets of Boston to test the massive multiplayer out on?
EG: Homeless people aren’t the problem, they’re always trying to break into our office and steal our hot dogs and forties. We should probably not advertise that we have those.

Cat: Mouse controls?
EG: We’re trying to get this cross-platform, and, I think I mentioned to you, iPad we want to hit up -

Cat: - So iOS?
EG: iOS definitely, Android we think we want to do, too, and then console.

Cat: Can be pretty hard to make money on the Android, can’t it?
EG: Piracy is rampant, it’s a real mess. With iPhone it’s the early adopters with money to burn so they don’t mind spending money, but with Android it’s, “I want my free thing, if it’s not free I’m not buying it.” The biggest thing beyond that is that on the iPhone, buying an app is so easy and straightforward. You want to buy something on the Android you have to go hit your head against the wall.

I mean, something we’re actually very worried about is plagiarism. So we’re showing this off here, are we going to be screwed in three months when somebody else comes out with this? The iPhone and stuff like that, it’s all plagiarism, people just steal stuff all the time. The thing is, we have to take that risk, we can’t afford to be quiet about it because death by obscurity is much easier than death by plagiarism.

So, people see this, and we’re doing a lot of new stuff that has not been done before, that’s why we’re trying to keep a lot of our cards close to our chest. We’re showing off a lot of the core gameplay stuff, but even some of the multiplayer stuff - we have some stuff that’s half working that we could show and have it be really impressive, but I’m just too nervous about that.

Cat: So without showing it off here, is there anything that makes it really different that you could just talk about...
EG: Well, the multiplayer stuff, stuff like with the cards. Zynga is a bunch of evil bastards, right? But the truth of the matter is that they do a couple things that are smart and do make games better, and so we’re trying to lift elements of that and basically bring it so it’s not this tower defense that’s “Play level” and that’s it, where we could do more interesting, I’m calling it “metagame” stuff that could be a lot of fun and let friends play together - stuff that just doesn’t happen in tower defense. There’s a formula and everyone sticks to it, and we’re trying to go above and beyond that.