Category: Video Games

Blogs, David, Video Games2 Comments

Breaking Up with Video Games

David

Part three of “Getting Older Sucks”

What do most people do in their free time? Watch TV? Talk to friends? Cook? Clean? Play video games? For me, I used to play video games a lot in my spare time. I would find the newest sports title and just play it until I could win every game by calling the same play. Or I would get a new platform game, and obsessively play it through once til I beat it and found most of the hidden goodies.

Nowadays…they’re just not that important to me. Continue reading “Breaking Up with Video Games”

Blogs, Chris, Video Games2 Comments

DLC You Later

Chris

Mass Effect 3 is due out on March 6, and some recent news has gamers on edge. Specifically, that Bioware will release DLC on the game’s launch date.

DLC has become something of a running joke in the gaming industry. When executed right, it can be both effective and fun. Left 4 Dead added a couple of campaigns that were well worth the money. Rock Band has one of the most successful models around with a huge collection of music from a variety of artists. Red Dead Redemption added an entire new chapter to the game, bringing John Marston into a world of zombies.

But when companies put together a DLC plan with only their own interests in mind, that’s when the whole thing starts to go downhill. Continue reading “DLC You Later”

Blogs, Jason, Video GamesLeave a comment

NerdCrush: Rita Mordio

Jason

**Hello everyone and welcome to NerdCrush! A new series of Blogs dedicated to those characters out there that we have a serious NerdCrush on. You know which ones we’re talking about. Those characters who, from the moment they’re introduced, steal the show in our eyes and help carry their prospective plots along like no others could. The kind of characters who we aspire to be more like or perhaps someday meet in the real world through some form of eldritch magic. The kind of characters who, with a mere cameo appearance, can entice us to watch or play something we otherwise wouldn’t have given two shats about. These Blogs go out to those guys (and gals), our NerdCrushes.**

With Tales of Graces coming out on the 16th, I figured this was the perfect time to start my first NerdCrush piece as the character it revolves around, Rita Mordio, is not only a Tales character but the character that helped spark my interest in Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) in the first place.

First things first. I should start by saying that my experience with JRPGs as a child was pretty much limited to a certain Pocket Monster game with yellow, electric mice. I grew up on Sonic and Wolfenstein, not Mario or Final Fantasy. So when Tales of Vesperia rolled around a few years back, not only had I not heard of the game before, but I honestly had no interest in playing it. Of course at the time I lived with At The Buzzer’s own Chris Etling, a diehard Tales fan if I ever saw one, who was not only going to get the game, but was interested in having all of us in the house play it. Not being one to shy away from new video games, I figured I’d give the game a chance, even if I’d had no prior experience with games like it before.

As it turns out, Tales of Vesperia was exactly the kind of game that I needed to play in order to get me into JRPGs. Real time combat, voiced cut-scenes, a typical “save the world” story with non-typical JRPG characters… I could write a review of Tales of Vesperia, but I won’t. I’ll leave that up to Chris if he ever feels like it. For now we’re going to focus on my favorite part of Vesperia, Rita Mordio. Continue reading “NerdCrush: Rita Mordio”

Blogs, Jason, Video Games1 Comment

Review: Katawa Shoujo; or how I stopped worrying and learned to love disabled girls

Jason

**I’m gonna start this blog off by giving you all fair warning that the game I’m about to “review” most certainly crosses into NSFW territory. Although the content of this blog does not, Google searching this game and clicking some of the following links could very well be a trap.**

Katawa Shoujo, or Disability Girls, is a game/visual novel centered around a young man with a heart condition who finds himself at a school for the disabled that just so happens to be filled with cute, single girls. If that sounds like the setup for a bad porno or some kind of webcomic you’d find on 4chan, then you aren’t all that wrong.

Produced by 4 Leaf Studios, Katawa Shoujo does indeed find its origins on 4chan (/a/ in particular) where a thread popped up featuring the artwork of one RAITA. The piece featured all the building blocks for a dating game involving a private school for the disabled, and started quite a wave of interest in the subject. Of course, this kind of thing isn’t all that surprising to see on the Internet. Although surprisingly, from what I understand, this push for disabled and crippled girl content was actually urged on after a thread on /b/ featured the touching tale of a nurse at a nursing home doing his best to take care of a 7-year-old girl that had recently come under his care after having lost her family (and most of her limbs, plus an eye) in a terrible car accident. Kotaku posted a slightly more detailed history of all this on their site a little while back, for those interested in their article it’s here.

Regardless of its origins, though, the most important thing to remember about Katawa Shoujo is that it’s a game that would never have seen the light of day had it not been for the Internet. Now I don’t mean that in a “the web helped them put it together” kinda way that almost any project could claim these days. I mean it in the sort of “this game was developed and put together by people from many different locations all around the world without ever getting together in the fashion an typical game studio would” kinda way. This game is a shining example of the kind of quality projects that can only just now be made in this day and age. Continue reading “Review: Katawa Shoujo; or how I stopped worrying and learned to love disabled girls”

Blogs, Shaun, Video GamesLeave a comment

Gaming’s worst conventions

Shaun

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were going over things that we hated and wished would burn in a terrible fire. I threw out frivolous things that bother me, like “Michael Bay movies” or “Fortunetellers who try to get you to believe they know you by saying things like ‘Sometimes things happen in life that don’t quite meet your expectations.’” He said things decidedly less frivolous, like “my parents” and “people who disagree with me.” I realized at this moment we were not playing the same game and became very uncomfortable.

Anyway, considering this “hate list” got me thinking about different aspects in the video game industry that need to take a permanent hiatus. They don’t have to go home, but they gots to get the hell out of here!

…Sorry, I just always wanted to say that, and I never had a party where people had to leave quickly. Or any kind of party, really.

Continue reading “Gaming’s worst conventions”

Blogs, Chris, Video Games2 Comments

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Chris

During some of the buzz leading up to last week’s release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a few gaming outlets dared to wonder the impossible: Could Skyward Sword be better than Ocarina of Time?

At first, I’m sure a few people found that idea to be outlandish. OoT is held up as the gold standard in gaming, after all; it received a litany of awards and perfect 10s when it came out more than a decade ago, and introduced the Z-targeting system found in hundreds of games today. And now this upstart game on a dying console was supposed to supplant what some would call the best game ever?

Well, believe the hype, folks. Skyward Sword is the best Zelda game ever made. Continue reading “Review: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword”

Blogs, Chris, Video Games1 Comment

Review: Saints Row The Third

Chris

One of the problems with having this Monday blog spot is that it’s nigh impossible to do a quick turnaround on a review, what with everything releasing on Tuesdays (except movies, but the hell with those). The flip side is that it gives me a chance to dig deep into a new title and give it more than just a cursory look.

Saints Row: The Third is no exception.

In the last six days, I’ve put in somewhere around 25-30 hours into SR3, which allowed me to get through the game and also finish nearly all of the activities and other side missions. As such, I can tell you this much: If you enjoy games that don’t take themselves too seriously and are fun to play, you’ll enjoy Saints Row: The Third. Continue reading “Review: Saints Row The Third”

Blogs, Chris, Video Games2 Comments

Goodbye Forever

Chris

Well, the week that I saw coming in an earlier blog post (my first one on the site, actually) has finally arrived. I just wanted to take this time to say goodbye to the majority of my friends and family, because gaming companies have once again conspired to put out pretty much all their good titles in the month of November.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I understand that it’s all an effort from retailers to get in on the big holiday sales season, rather than releasing the next big Zelda game in July when no one cares. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.)

Starting tonight with the midnight release of Saints Row the Third, I might not be going outside for a couple weeks. While that would be an awful strategy in the long run, I’m actually a little bit excited about the prospect for the time being. Continue reading “Goodbye Forever”

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Going the Distance

Chris

We’ve been posting four days a week consistently for the better part of two months, and as I look through the stats and such for that period (being the webmaster and all), I can’t help but notice one thing: Nothing posts on Tuesdays.

We’ve got M-W-F covered with our blogs, and every other Thursday is a new episode of the show, but … Tuesday is a barren wasteland.

Not anymore.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll introduce a new feature to the At the Buzzer website called “Going the Distance.” GtD was a concept started a few years ago when our college paper was in need of a filler comic strip to replace someone who had abruptly left. At some point I had seen a similar idea on the interwebs, so a friend and I formatted it for strip purposes and a star was born. Continue reading “Going the Distance”