SO YOU THOUGHT I WAS GONE! Minecraft 1.8 and more

Yep, I'm here again. Not that anyone was reading in the first place, but I haven't posted anything in a while. I really don't know why, I just didn't feel like it.  Now, I have returned with stuff. Plenty of stuff. To start off:

The Adventure Update of Minecraft: 1.8 added new structures and landforms. Until 1.8, I had played on Peaceful all the time because I wanted to make stuff and mine without monsters in my face. The "Adventure" theme of the new set of updates (some unreleased) triggered my change in play. Exploration and combat are becoming more rewarding, thus my not disabling monsters.

The 1.9 prerelease is out as well, but I prefer to wait until the game breaking bugs are fixed.

Adventure Update's Advantages:
New landforms: Canyon's/ravines, rivers, swamps, mushroom biome
New structures: Villages (villagers coming in 1.9), Nether Fortress (coming 1.9) Abandoned Mine Shafts, Strongholds
New Features: Experience (actual experience bonuses aren't here until 1.9 or 1.10), Food meter

More specifically:
The Villagers are planned to converse with the player and give quests eventually, but as of the 1.9 prerelease (further referred to as 1.9pre), they meander without purpose (sometimes away from town to never return). You can kill them too if you want.
The food system was overhauled. Now, food replenishes the new food meter, and once it is filled it restores your health until it drops to a lower point (exact statistics on food are here.
The Swamp is a lot of flat land with plenty of water pools. As of 1.9pre it has a different grass texture. Vines grow on the trees. And the mushroom biome, a 1.9pre feature, features mushroom cows and a very different grass texture.

So while I was playing the crap out of that, I was also playing Civilization 5, which was only about 12 bucks on Steam. I saw it and automatically decided to buy it (I had wanted Civ 5 anyway, but the one time deal was what made me get it). Enjoyable; it was a definite buy for that price tag, and good for full price, currently at 29.99.

And at last, I returned to my 3DS with Dead or Alive Dimensions, a good fighting game. I got it because of the battle environments; all of them (except the general training one) have some sort of interaction, such as kicking your opponent through a glass pane to the hall below or down a snowy slope to an ice covered arena. And the ninja. The big boobs were just a bonus...


So that's it for my return post. See you again!

3DS: Preparing for the Vita Arrival

Well, this news comes out of nowhere, although the "nowhere" is probably related to the fact that I was away from all Internet stuff for five days. I return, and here we are with a price drop on the 3DS to 169.99. As you probably know, that is the same current price as the DSi XL. This is a lot of cash lost for Nintendo on 3DS related sales, as shown in the many pay cuts for Nintendo. This appears to be a move that would hopefully be for the greater good of the company, however. It appears to be to respond to the Playstation Vita release, at the same price the 3DS previously held (with a 3G upgrade for an extra 50 bucks). Hopefully for Nintendo, this will sell more 3DS systems to combat the more powerful Vita.

The price decrease is also a result of less than stellar sales for the 3DS, because of the small launch lineup. As you see in the previous article, soon that time will be over, but for now there are very few games to tide yourself over with on the newest console from Big N.

I think it will be a much more interesting battle this year between 3DS and Vita. DS vs PSP sure was anticlimactic.

The 3DS Lineup: Don't Worry About the Remakes

I've heard (well, seen, as in saw the text in posts and stuff) people complaining about all the remakes for the console. Well, that should soon be over. Here's some reasons why they made plenty of remakes, and why they'll be mostly replaced with new games soon.

1. Selling the system. If you can recognize a game that you would enjoy, it increases the value of the system to you, right? Well, all of these remakes are of good games, or great classics. Ocarina and StarFox: They are both fondly remembered games. And many people know of their legacy but have not played them yet (like me). I got Ocarina and was satisfied. Many others, I assume, have as well.

2. They're easier to make. You're seeing a lot of the new games coming out around the holiday season or later: that's because they need time to make them. Remakes near the beginning of the console cycle may be because the 3DS was in development before the products. So improving the graphics  and giving a few additions to one game is going to be a lot less work than making a new one from scratch. Deep down, Nintendo is a corporation that wants to make money, just like Sony and Microsoft, and what takes less for good worth is often a choice they might want to make.

3. Having a more robust lineup. I mentioned it is easier to make remakes; well, that means they can boost the amount of the lineup titles so consumers have more choice.

So the remake decision has reasoning; money reasoning. Remember, Nintendo is not an indie game designer that gives away their stuff for free; they need to make a living too, and the more they make, the better the living. You would probably do the same if in their shoes.

Of course, these reasons are for an action that ultimately failed so far with the underselling of the 3DS. But soon we'll be over that.

So tl;dr, the remakes are for a reason, and soon there will be less. So kick back with your copy of Ocarina of Time and wait, as that's how good things come.

Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower

You know about them. You want them. If you don't, you either don't have a Wii or have horrible taste. Xeno and LS are both amazing looking RPGs and Pandora's Tower looks to be a great action-adventure title.

     Now if you follow any game news whatsoever, you've heard about the fact that Nintendo of America has appeared to decide that they aren't worth localizing in the US.

      Now wait a minute. All three are being released in the UK, right? O noes, it's a lot of work to change "colour" to "color", ain't it? With all the Wii fans psyched about them, they should sell well enough, so why aren't they bringing them overseas the other direction? Just maybe, we have a rumor to look at that follows.

     If you check out the Operation Rainfall blog, you'll see on the latest post a juicy rumor. According to this, Xenoblade AND Last Story are being sent to US, Xeno already localized and LS in the process. Joy! It's still unconfirmed. But it's hope, right? And Operation Rainfall's team seems to think it's true.

So we could have a lucky break and get at least 2 of those wanted titles. Good news, of course.

Pokemon: What the hell is with all these annoying spinoff things?

     Lately, all the game news for Pokemon has one thing in common: it's all useless. Of course I'm not expecting anything on Grey or the remade Ruby and Sapphire yet, but at least SOMETHING interesting would be nice.
Culprit #1 is Pokemon Rumble Blast (Scramble in Japan). I didn't think we'd see more of Pokemon Rumble, a game released on WiiWare a few years ago, but here it is in full price form for the 3DS. I never played the first game, for it didn't seem all that interesting. The demo put me against it even more, didn't have much fun playing that. Although it does have a good deal of new content according to the news (http://www.serebii.net/rumble2/), it doesn't seem enough to win me over. I suppose that isn't too bad, but I'd prefer the time of the spinoff developers (Ambrella in this case) to be put to use on more compelling games.

     Which leads us to Pokemon Typing DS, which is, judging by the gameplay (typing the English romanizations of the Japanese Pokemon names), to be a Japan-only release. Now that also wouldn't be a letdown other than being annnoying, until I find out that Genius Sonority is putting their staff to work on it, when they could be working on something way more awesome. By this I mean something like Pokemon Colosseum, XD: Gale of Darkness, or Battle Revolution, all developed by the Genius Sonority. God, an XD sequel would be amazing to have, and instead they're working on this crapload. I WANTS MOAR GAMES I'D PLAY!

     We also have this random free rythm game app for mobile platforms and a TCG demo game. Not sure who's wasting their time (translate to "making money without pleasing fans", which I understand, but wish wasn't the case)  on those games, but everything on the horizon is nothing, simply nothing, I'm interested in. Yeah, the world doesn't revolve around me, and I'm sure there are reasons for making those games. I'm just saying that I'm not really satisfied with what's coming out.

     Here's what they need: Mystery Dungeon 3 (NO, Explorers of Sky is NOT Mystery Dungeon 3, it's STILL Mystery Dungeon 2, but a 1-generation sequel like Platinum or "Grey"). MD is the best of the spinoffs in the opinions of me and others, but its in the dark now. I'm still pretty sure it will be released sometime, but no leaks or announcements or ANYTHING have come about.

So what do we need? More of the good stuff. The 3DS, being about the same in graphics capacity as the Cube, would do well with a new game from the Colosseum series. Mystery Dungeon 3 could well be a DS or   3DS release, either one is fine with me. Just no weirdo character models (see Pokemon Ranch or Rumble if you don't know what I mean) if it's on 3DS.

So there you go. But do you love Rumble or hate Mystery Dungeon (screw IGN on that review)? Or are Pokemon spinoffs in general horrible in themselves? COMMENTS, PEOPLE, COMMENTS!

Terraria: Copying?

So I began playing Terraria recently, and it's as good or better than the oft-compared Minecraft. But how original is it when you look at it and Minecraft?

I think the answer lies in other gaming realms, with the many genres they contain. Both games use a unique concept of being able to edit and control as much of the environment as you wish, and are capable of doing. So when you look at two WWII first-person shooters, they can be very similar, but people aren't eager to call them "copies." If they were copies, or copies of copies, etc., so would Terraria be to Minecraft. And hell, Minecraft is basically an improvement upon another game, titled Infiniminer.  But nobody considers (WWII themed) Call of Duty games copies of other WWII games. This applies to other game concepts too. Influencing does not equal copying.

With that, Terraria obviously has roots in Minecraft, and would not be what it is, or maybe even exist, without that which influenced it. Furthermore, the games that Minecraft and Terraria are could be even a new genre, title unspecified.

Disagree? Is Terraria a complete copy of Minecraft to you? Is Terraria completely original? Well, what's the comments for? Sound off there. Skydra out.

Ocarina is mine

So I did end up getting Ocarina of Time a day after the release, and so far it's pretty addicting. I hardly noticed it becoming 11:30 last night while I was playing (then continuing to 11:40), but the surprising thing about that isn't staying up until then but not checking the clock at all.

Some thoughts on it? Some things are a little archaic, as it's an old game that wasn't really changed, such as starting with only 3 hearts after a death or only being able to climb up or sideways, not both at the same time. It's still aged well, however. The graphics weren't improved as much as I expected, but still better than the screenshots I've seen of the original.