Ars Technica put up a LOT of articles yesterday. I can't trust a single one of them though, because April Fool's Day exists, as a holiday. Maybe Nintendo is making a wool Amiibo (technically, such a thing could exist), but very likely that was just a prank by Nintendo. Frankly the "creative" pranks from Blizzard just aren't enough to justify this holiday's existence. Now I'm spending my free time searching for the same news stories date marked for today, because that's the only way I can actually confirm any of these things.
This is going to be contentious, I'm putting it right out there.
The recent rash of "Swatting" (as well as general responses by police to situations around the nation) have really made me think about a few things. I think we all recall that 80's and 90's cop dramas showed how dangerous law enforcement is, and how criminals always have the advantage, and no one wants their loved ones getting that phone call. However, I think maybe it's time to consider a different side.
Many have already argued that police are using too much force and escalate their responses too quickly to reasonably determine a threat. The counter is, these days, that this is the ONLY way for police to stay safe, precisely because they can't possibly know who's going to be a threat to them.
I'm starting to think maybe the correct solution may just be, and I know this is terrible, that police should "suck it up" and accept that they may lose their life at any time. I intentionally put that in the worst way possible. To put it another way, the job of police officer, sheriff, what have you, has always been one that's dangerous, and probably a lot more dangerous in the past, and yet the basic protections citizens were promised FROM such officers were still put in place, knowing all of that. Everyone's so afraid of death these days, of an officer getting gunned down in the line of duty, that perhaps we've forgotten that the job of police officer is, um, "supposed" to be very dangerous. That's the price you pay when you decide to protect the innocent. I wonder if it's just irrational to be someone who wants to stay a police officer and also demand that they be able to escalate things in a way that could easily result in hurting those they've sworn to protect, basically making whether or not the person they kill in any one incident a complete unknown to them before they take it to that point. The only reason "Swatting" works at all is because police are taking what they feel is the necessary precaution of not tipping off the party in question one bit so they can stage their attack with the element of surprise. Maybe the ONLY way a police force can work well without endangering the citizens they're supposed to protect is if they are forced to not take these escalation precautions, to be forced to leave themselves open to attack again and again, night after night, for the sake of preventing oh so many wrongful deaths by police action.
Cold as it is, I think maybe this is the only way the police can work, have EVER worked, and if any officers aren't comfortable with these risks in the name of a safer pursuit of justice, they should turn in that badge and retire right then and there.
About a week ago, Nintendo announced a partnership with the Japanese cellphone software company DeNa. DeNa will make the service that apparently will replace Club Nintendo, and Nintendo is going to make... ugh... cellphone games. Naturally Nintendo's stock has gone up because of this, because investors like mobile. I'm not happy because if Nintendo eventually turns into another one of those evil cellphone/browser-game companies that make nothing but exploitative trash designed to suck up your money it would be a horrible tragedy, but hopefully they can balance things so as to make apps that encourage people to buy Nintendo platforms so that they can play real games. I hope it works, there should be a place for games beyond exploitative not-free-to-play garbage.
I'm curious to read what your favorite printed game guide is (online FAQs, for the purposes of this thread, don't count).
I've seen a number of game guides over the years. I'm not exactly a collector, but I've got a fair amount covering just about every era of gaming. With that in mind, I've gotta pick a guide not just on how useful, complete, or accurate it is (though those three things are of course major factors), but on factors that go way above and beyond those basics, making the guide, all by itself, a notable collector's item.
Prima makes hardcover guides for practically every major game release these days, so while I might have made a special note for that, it's so common now that it's basically expected of a collector's edition of any guide these days. So, I can't very well add this or that guide for that alone.
Here are a few notable ones. Most of these are earlier guides, back when the whole concept of a printed game guide was itself pretty new. Heck, Nintendo Power themselves didn't quite get the hang of it until they made "Mario Mania", the first of their dedicated guides aimed at one specific game, instead of a large handful of them as their previous guides had been. Mario Mania may have been focused on Mario World, but it added so much more beyond that. It included a history of Mario games up until that point, including game cameos, a preview of the then-upcoming movie, some concept art where Miyamoto explained he'd wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur for years before World came out, and even some extremely super nerdy comparison lists like running speeds across the main series and so on.
Though, technically Mario Mania wasn't their first dedicated guide to one game. Before "Player's Guides" Nintendo Power had "Strategy Guide" editions of Nintendo Power that were focused entirely on one game. I distinctly recall their Super Mario Bros 3 issue. It was very well done, and included all sorts of deep level secrets, like how the coin ships worked, the pseudo-random nature of the card flipping game (which you could use to always win, first time every time), and so on. The only mark against it would be the intentional exclusion of a full map and strategy for the final level. That was left in the dark to, I think, leave some things unspoiled for the player.
Another of these Strategy Guide issues would come out with the release of Final Fantasy. In terms of information, it was exceedingly well done. However, the guide made a fatal error in deciding to locally source the artwork. It seems that they were so afraid of using Amano's weird and ethereal artwork (possibly afraid it would turn people off to the game) that they hired your uncle to draw the same artwork he drew for all his friend's D&D characters. The result looked pretty terrible, like your uncle after a weekend alone. (I meant no offense, Your uncle is the legal name of a relative of mine. A cousin I think.) (No it isn't.) Great guide, terrible art. Moving on.
I must give credit to the Earthbound player's guide. That guide was one of the best pack-ins a game ever got, as any fan will tell you. Mind, everyone can see that glory for themselves, as Nintendo has posted it, in it's entirety, online.
Check it out for yourself. It's the only one I can directly link to this way. From cover to cover, the whole thing has the conceit of being a clip book, with news articles, travel brochures, and so on. It's as though Ness grew up and and put clippings and photos of his whole journey in a book to keep the precious memories. The only problem, if I had to pick one, is that cover. Well, mostly the cover is fine. It too fits the theme, covered in photos of Ness' journey. It's also covered in vomit. Yeah, again this was part of Nintendo's "gross out" phase of advertising. Had they just skipped out on that, I couldn't find a fault to be had here. One thing to add. Unless you have some sort of smell add-on installed on your PC, you won't be able to smell the scratch & sniff. They were pretty neat, and the guide itself was written with notes to scratch each of them at various parts of the story, to add to the experience. Silly, a gimic, but heck I did it. Meeeemoriiiies....
Secret of Mana had not one but two very notable guides. One was a full, if basic, walkthrough included across 3 issues of Nintendo Power. Again they did some of their own artwork, but this time the artwork was actually pretty good, so I gotta give credit there. The whole style of that guide was a first person account, like a journal the hero is keeping during the journey. Very nice, and the backstory behind each of the weapon's forms were also nice touches. The second guide was ALSO done in the form of a journal, but this time in the third person instead of first person. This one was made by Prima, and is very exceptionally done (contrary to most of Prima's guides at the time). I'd recommend both of them. Two great guides for one great game.
We can't ignore the PC here. There were plenty of guides for PC games, but oddly there was a different culture around how such guides should be made. Most guides for PC games were almost exclusively text. This may have gotten it's start with the early text adventure games, but it stuck around long after "graphics" were invented through the power of white boards and 80's computer engineer mustaches. Most of these read a lot like modern GameFAQs style guides, but a few really stand apart from the rest, and those few are the King's Quest Companions.
Ah, I've got a special place in my heart for these ones. The King's Quest Companion guides were something else. Again, like most PC guides, they were almost entirely text with only a few sparse illustrations where words failed the author. However, it's what they did with that text that mattered. The author of these guides decided to make these guides in the style of a news report, like an interview with someone retelling the story as they heard it. It reads like a modern "alternate reality" game. A writer stumbled across a bizarre BBS connection on his computer where he contacted someone claiming to live in the fictional world of Daventry, retelling the story through a bizarre "skull" in a wizard's basement (a "square skull with a single black eye, and a strange lower jaw full of movable teeth with letters carved into them"). This third hand account then guides the player through all the puzzles of each game, going for the full point scores. The writer even goes on to explain some of the odd workings of the game, such as the wrap-around mechanic in the early games (a spell of warped space used as a defense against invasions), and even explain some of the bizarre moon logic employed in a few of the series' more obtuse puzzles. It was a novel approach, to say the least, and it makes the guides themselves a real joy to read even without playing the games.
Along these lines comes a much later guide, the Conker's Bad Fur Day guide. Whatever your feelings on this game are, know that the guide is just as hard to find and expensive as the game itself. In fact, I only have this guide now due to a stroke of luck. I ran into a library sale about a month ago. Normally the guide would go for a pretty penny, but in this case, the people selling these library books didn't seem to know what they had. I snatched it up for a ridiculously cheap price, and don't regret it a bit. I only recently read it, but it's definitely on my top 10 list already. Nintendo Power was by this point pumping out their guides in a very "by the numbers" way. Not to say they were bad, or incomplete, but they had gone a bit more bland, losing a bit of that old charm and unique flavor that set some of their old guides apart. With this guide, Nintendo Power's editors got a rare chance to really cut loose, and wow did they ever. The thing is filled with humor throughout, taking every possible chance to make all the jokes Rare didn't make in the game itself. They made the whole thing read like a seedy magazine you found in a truck stop bathroom. Heck, even the pages look dirty, with fingerprints on the edge and a general "grime" throughout. At first, since it was a library book, I thought it actually WAS this dirty until I looked closer and realized only the cover had been scuffed up (and considering the general look, that "lived in" cover only ADDS to the aesthetic). It's got weird fake ads and bizarre diatribes taking up whole pages and still manages to be a complete guide to the game. I love it already.
The most recent guide of real note to me has to be the fan-made Mother 3 guide. Again, this entire guide is available online for free. http://handbook.fangamer.com/page...
But it's worth noting how well made the printed version is. It even has a hardcover version. I know I know, those are a dime a dozen now, but I'll give this one some note for being an entirely fan-made project without major backing. Never fear, there's nothing illegal about this. All the art assets are fan made, and the practice of making "unofficial" game guides is well established at this point (I've got a few "unofficial" guides for Street Fighter and Donkey Kong Country, for example, which use the "unofficial" label they had to put on there as "edgy" and "not controlled by The Man" style street cred, complete with backwards baseball cap 90's kid. I'm not kidding, look at it!
Back on topic, that fan-made guide was lovingly crafted to resemble the Earthbound guide, with all sorts of additional clips and photos and pictures of clay models of characters throughout it, to really add to it. It's an amazing guide and deserves special note.
All that, to get to what is still my favorite player's guide. It was really a close call. By all rights, I'm REALLY tempted to put one of the two Mother series guides at the top, but if I had to pick, which I do, it would come down to the Link to the Past Player's Guide. This guide really set the standard for what I expect from any guide that goes beyond the bare essentials. Mario Mania was a nerdy festival of Mario in general, but the Link to the Past guide got all that nerdy detail and focused it specifically on the game it was supposed to be a guide for, and it was the first to do so. It really went all out. The first few pages catch you up to speed with the story of the first two Zelda games (including some really nice artwork), and then it jumps right into the thick of it. There are actually two different walkthroughs in it. The first is more loose hints and a general guide on where to go, and the second is the far more detailed and full explanation of every secret in the game. Both are done in the style of a historical account of the game's story (which makes sense, since Link to the Past was always intended as a prequel to the first two games). The guide covers secrets as you can get them, and then again reveals a full list of collectables at the end of the guide (standard now, but this one was the first to establish this). The guide is filled with some amazing artwork. It's not the same style as the game's own artist, but still very well done. All the items get their own new artwork and even some little tidbits. As I said, it reads like a historical documentary, so the details are actually explanations of the culture and items of the past. It even explains some backstory behind key locations. To be clear, this is actually a translation of the Japanese version of this guide (the author credits establish this), so all of this is basically cannon. From cover to cover, it's just a pleasure to read, and it established so many "firsts" in the art of guide making that many guide makers still can't keep up with. For all these reasons, seasoned with not a small amount of nostalgia, this is my favorite Player's Guide.
So, what do you think? What's your favorite game guide?
It started a few years ago, when Nintendo made Wii Fit and Brain Age. The results are in, and both of those products have been pretty well panned as "basically useless". Neither one can actually accomplish what they claim. Namely, "brain training" exercises have been shown to increase blood flow, but not actual long term skill. There is no actual "brain age", and it seems that particular doctor responsible for this recent fad might have gone the Dr. Oz route.
Wii Fit isn't much better. The exercises themselves are all well and good, just as any exersise is, but nothing about that scale can figure out exactly what your body mass index is, and the recommendations the game makes are, well, just nothing, really. The whole notion of "balance" being so very key to weight loss (with the claim that "restoring" your balance will make you just so much better) and health is a rather outdated yoga concept at that. In fact, Nintendo's official position on the actual health merits of these is that they are "for entertainment use". This is the sort of thing a company says when they want to legally get away with a claim, but look at the boxes and ads for these things. They're CLEARLY trying to market them as products that work.
Basically, Nintendo's "health products" are snake oil, though harmless snake oil (heck it's not like they're offering an alternative to vaccines). So fine, they've done worse (there was an ESP training game for the Famicom, using those cards from Ghost Busters), but they're back to making games, right? Not so fast, because it seems Nintendo is going all-in on this due to this ONE tiny detail: Wii Fit is the best selling game Nintendo has ever had, and perhaps even the best selling game in the world. Only League of Legends beats it, and that's a game that's FREE (so free it can regularly be found on your local library's computer, in spite of their rules for computer use). Nintendo has announced that their "Lifestyle" line will continue as a MAJOR peg of their whole business strategy moving forward. There's a 3DS Brain Age, a Wii U Fitness game, and "more" to come. No clue what that means, but maybe we can expect some sort of "Mario's Chakra Balancer" or "Kirby's Bodily Humours".
Here's the deal. Nintendo has every opportunity to actually produce a scientifically sound set of health products, ones which keep their claims reasonable. A few slight tweaks and Wii Fit could be a worthwhile exercise game. Heck, all they'd need to do is drop basically any claims about the mystical powers of "good balance" and the faulty measuring of BMS, and it's a perfectly fine guide to decent exercise. (I'll say this though. Nintendo's trainers are a LOT nicer than the incredibly loud and obnoxious XBox fitness trainers. When exactly did we as a nation decide the only people interested in our self improvement are the ones belittling us at every step like friggin' sociopaths?) However, a few things stand in the way. For one, once they ditch the BMS thing and the "balance" nonsense, the only thing that scale does is measure your weight (well that's really the only thing it ever did), and thus there's basically no point to it in terms of the "gameplay". So, that's tossed out, and all that's left is a very albino version of those old fitness VHS tapes your parents eventually threw out. What could replace it? Well, they COULD make a tool that actually feeds back real time data about how you are moving, and one that does it WELL unlike that board. But, and here's the rub, that'd be very expensive to both develop and buy. Heck, just making sure the science is sound means hiring science advisors (which, if Pikmin's anything to go by, is something Nintendo has never once done). Nintendo is known, above all else, for making their products affordable. Heck, it's because of them that we just automatically assume portable games cost less (and everyone else has to play BY that standard). The only other option would be MS's solution, an all-seeing body tracking eye. Not only is that STILL a very expensive little toy compared to a weight scale, but Nintendo isn't ignorant to just how well MS's camera was accepted by their loving fans. They won't be repeating that.
So that leaves us here. I hate to say it, but it looks like everything about Nintendo is pushing it towards selling lovable entertainment, and also products that actively MAKE THE WORLD WORSE. They now have a sustainable branch of their company that James Randi would very likely "challenge" if his foundation still did that, and I am not sure I like that.
Not gonna lie, I searched for "Silent Hill" to see if you'd given your opinion on that. Awesome! Even though that game isn't to your liking, I still think it's a big touchstone in gaming. Silent Hill 1 is the first one I played and still my favorite of the series.
Quote:As in most survival horror games, Silent Hill has slow tank controls
I think you're right that RE paved the way for this. The controls are necessary because of the style of gameplay: you enter arenas that have different camera vantage points. Silent Hill especially uses this in its opening scenes, where you're running through a dark alley. Since you're not a horror aficionado, I can see how this didn't do anything for you. I think the game does a fantastic job of terrorizing the player, though.
But in any case, these controls are necessary, because you would get whiplash trying to keep up with a traditional analog stick. From a practical sense, you have to consistently keep one thumb down to be able to continue running straight, as demons chase you through dark hallways and foggy alleys. One thing SH did better than RE was, instead of having pre-rendered backgrounds everywhere, there were many areas where you could run in all eight directions and look at things.
IMO, the pixelated graphics actually sort of enhance the game. They make it feel vague (which adds to the mystique) but undeniably sinister. Sort of like finding a VHS tape somewhere, having no idea of its origins, but looking at it and seeing something terrifying. It's like Lovecraft said, "The most compelling emotion is fear, and the greatest fear is that of the unknown". I never really made the Lovecraftian connection to the game until now (I know, doi, underground cult that wishes to summon a demi-god into reality, me big dummy, and isn't there a street named after Lovecraft?).
Quote: and nowhere near enough ammunition to actually shoot all of the enemies.
This is a central plank in survival horror. The game forces you to flee enemies, which means you must be on your guard. Seeing your bullet and health counts drop is part of what adds to the terror. I played through the school recently (I began another playthrough this past fall, had to keep with the halloween spirit!). I found it easier to avoid them in places where I reliably could (like corridors) and don't bother clearing them out until you've explored everything.
The advantage is two-fold: a better knowledge of the area, and more opportunities to find/stow health and ammo.
Quote:You do get a few melee weapons, but I found actually trying to hit anything with them impossible, so that's not much help.
Ya, it's all about the timing. I've played the game for years and even I still have trouble with this. The demon babies have varying walking speeds so it's tricky to get them down right. I favor holding down X to deliver a slow but firm blow to knock them back. Those dead babies are still horrifying, oof. You'd think the effect would wear off all these years.
Quote:As an aside, Silent Hill apparently is supposedly in Maine, but I live in Maine. I can say this right now, there's no town or city that looks remotely like this here. But is there any town anywhere with crosswalks this absurdly wide, among other things?
This is very interesting to me too. I've only been in New England to visit Providence, RI and Vermont, neither of which would be what this game is trying to capture. Even so, I figured that the designers nailed that small town look. If there aren't any places like that in Maine I could see them perhaps in Baltimore. I figured they'd at least get the architecture and small shops right. It felt very touristy but spooky. The amount of details are impressive, Kojima and the Silent Team are a true gift to gaming.
