I’ve Seen The Future, and It’s 2D

Power is king in this day and age. Our processors must be faster, our graphics cards must have more memory, and our consoles are about to become self aware. The quest for higher frame rates, more polygons on screen, and the most spectacular explosions is all-consuming in the gaming world. Why is it, then, that I get such a warm fuzzy feeling inside from 2D games?

It’s probably because I remember them the first time around, and at the risk of sounding really old, I long for that simpler time (I’m not that old, honest – I just started gaming early). I don’t always want my games to be massively multiplayer, to require peripherals costing more than the console itself, or to be so crushingly realistic that instead of just giving you a limp and slowing you down, a gunshot wound to the thigh causes you to bleed out in under three minutes, then have to wait an hour for the next round to start. Sure, if anyone asks, I’ll tell them that Fallout 3 was the best title released in the past couple of years, but if I’m honest I’ve probably gleaned far more enjoyment from New Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi’s Island on DS than I ever could from Fallout’s wasteland, in spite it being more than light years ahead in terms of, well, everything.

It brings joy to my heart and puts a spring in my step then, that on top of the fantastic looking A Boy and His Blob, we’re soon to be graced with the 2D games that we have all been waiting for – a new Mario, and a new Sonic, and I’m not sure which I’m most excited about! The Mario title (New Super Mario Bros. Wii, shown off at E3 last month) looks fantastic in that it’s essentially a ramped up version of the DS title (which was in itself a ramped up version of the old NES games). It looks slick, it looks pretty, it looks fun to play, and includes four-player-on-one-console action! Super Mario Galaxy 2 is due to be released at roughly the same time, and it’s going to cause some real internal conflict as to which I play more, as I already love both the ‘New’ and ‘Galaxy’ games immensely.

The Sonic title is a little more mysterious, however, with SEGA having only released a teaser promo video that doesn’t include any gameplay, or really, any concrete information at all. What it does allude to, though, is the important stuff: it’s Sonic, it’s 2D, it’s fast, and they’ve scrapped all their dreadful attempts at 3D and pseudo-3D in favour of an old school style. It’s also cleverly titled ‘Project Needlemouse’ (the SEGA codename for the original Sonic title in the days of pre-history) and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I have a sneaking suspicion that because they’re simplifying things and getting back to their roots this will just work in the way old Sonic titles used to (and new ones don’t). Deep down, I feel they’re going to absolutely nail this one.

Review – Dinosaur King (DS)

Educational games always feel that little bit… peculiar. They’re slightly strange and alien, and not always in a bad way, but there’s always something not quite right. It feels a little like your first kiss (and given most of the target age-group of educational games won’t have had one of those yet, allow me to qualify that analogy a little for you) – it feels nice, and everything seems to be working quite well, but deep, deep down is that innermost fear that whispers up from the butterfly-filled pit of your stomach – “you’re not doing it right, something must be about to go wrong”. You didn’t poke her in the eye with your nose, or get your tongue caught in her braces, or bash foreheads and knock her out cold, but that deep-seated paranoia is still eating away at you (and let me tell you, kids, it doesn’t get any better later in life, you just get better at repressing it). This is how educational gaming feels. You’re pretty sure you’re playing it right, and it looks like the developer has done a good job, but you’re learning at the same time as enjoying a game. At the same time! Not thirty minutes of fun, followed by a fifteen minute lecture to keep your studies up to date, but actual, simultaneous learning and fun. 

Review – Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (DS)

There used to be feeling among the hardcore Final Fantasy fans that you weren’t truly hardcore unless you had played Final Fantasy Tactics. The main Final Fantasy series was widely available and spin-offs such as Mystic Quest and the SaGa/Legend series were considered watered down. Tactics was just plain hard to get your hands on and so it became a badge of honour to have a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics for the PSOne on your shelf, especially in Europe – Final Fantasy Tactics was never released outside of Japan and the US, so ‘mod-chipping’ your PlayStation to play NTSC format and importing the title (or obtaining an illegal copy) were the extreme lengths that European gamers had to go to in order to get their next hardcore Final Fantasy fix. Was it that good? Was it worth breaking the law over? That remains to be seen, but such mystique and power over the fans is potent, so when Square-Enix agreed a licensing deal to bring games back to the Nintendo formats, it would have been an opportunity squandered not to bring Tactics to the party. This was an opportunity they did not miss, releasing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the Game Boy Advance in 2003, and now in 2008 its sequel (of sorts), Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift.

Review – Dragon Quest: The Chapters of the Chosen (DS)

Do you ever get the distinct feeling that you’ve been somewhere before, even though you know there’s no chance you ever could have been? It’s like a kind of déjà-vu, only a little more unsettling, because while it’s entirely plausible that the same black cat that crossed your path two minutes ago could have gone the long way around and crossed your path again (probably just to freak you out and give you déjà-vu on purpose), you know it’s physically not possible to remember the interior of someone’s house when you only just met them and have been invited over for the first time. Dragon Quest: The Chapters of the Chosen feels like a very familiar place to be; it’s a little unsettling at first but it’s not horrible, just a bit old fashioned. I never played the original on the NES way back in 1990 and I’m almost completely certain that nobody reading this has either (it was never released outside of Japan) but still, every minute of it feels like a stroll down memory lane, like the sum of every other RPG to emerge in the early Nineties.

Take Control Of Your Life…

No, I’ve not started writing self-help (although I hear there’s good money in that), I’m talking about HCI. That’s Human Computer Interaction, and to most of us, that broadly ranges from mice and keyboards to our favourite game controllers. We’ve come a long way from the blinking command prompt, and we’re now firmly entrenched in the realm of the GUI (quite wonderfully pronounced ‘gooey’, standing for Graphical User Interface) but where do we go from here?

Grand Theft Auto has a lot to answer for…

Well, actually, no it doesn’t. Or at least, not the things that we’re lead to believe.

Where it all began…

In the beginning, there was God. And God created man.  A short man with a moustache, a red boiler suit and blue overalls, but a man nevertheless. Not best pleased with this, a rival God created a hyperactive blue hedgehog, and one of the greatest battles of all time ensued.