Beyond Good and Evil: Color coordination and camera angles

Just a girl, a camera, and a deep love for the color green.

Beyond Good and Evil may have come out a console generation ago, but as is often the case with games from the past, its still available to play through the magic of Xbox Live.  Hailed as one of those “very good but under appreciated” games that people can’t seem to EVER shut up about (except me, of course.  I NEVER do that), I picked up this one to see what it’s deal is.  While Beyond Good and Evil is a unique story with a very different way of approaching a problem, you can unfortunately easily peg it as a game of yesteryear.  Namely, through the way that the REAL villain of the game, against whom you will struggle endlessly and futilely, is the dreaded camera angle.  But we’ll get to that in a moment.

Slender

Being scared is fun.  I wrote recently in an article about E3 that I was concerned that legitimate scares are going the way of the dodo in gaming.  Resident Evil has co-op and is more action, Dead Space 3 looks like it’s following that trend more and more every time I read something new about it……where are the scares?  Where is the game that you want to play at night, with the lights off, alone?  What will take you back to that first time you played Resident Evil or Silent Hill and even though the graphics were lame and controls were wonky, you felt like you were THERE and not just sitting in your living room?  Oh, that game is called Slender?  And it’s free, right here on the internet?  Yes.

Dear E3

Dear Electronic Entertainment Expo:

Hey, it’s Elrood, your faithful follower.  I always get excited for you, ever year!  New games, new consoles, industry trends, giant enemy crabs, the list goes on.  I’m with you on this year too, excited.  But I have some concerns.  I see things…happening that YOU are all excited about, but it’s leaving the rest of us kind of worried.  There’s so much to like, so I’m writing to you in hopes that we can discuss a few things.  But don’t fret E3!  Positives and negatives.  I just want you to have a good show and really knock our socks off this year.

Artemis: Let’s go be spaceships now

Captain, long range scanners are detecting yo momma.

A shorter post for this fine Wednesday, as I don’t have much to review.  Turns out May has been a bit rough for the three of us at Faceplant, what with Elrood moving to a new city in order to escape his mob connections and Enosh coming down with a regrettable case of narcolepsy.  Me?  I was recently diagnosed with a terminal case of the awesomes.  Incurable.  Damn.  Nothing left to do now but be goddamn incredible for the next sixty years.

Anyway, a short review for a short game.  I picked up Artemis Spaceship Simulator off of the interwebs the other day, which has provided quite a few challenges for a small group of friends that I have conscripted into my spaceship crew.  Challenges vary from finding a way to distribute the game to my loyal crew to nuking some damn space whales right out of orbit.  I…  thought they’d drop space oil to light our ship’s space lanterns during space night.

Final Fantasy XIII-2: Just roll with this

One has magical powers and can summon a horse god swordsman. The other has a moogle that is also a bow.

The review for Final Fantasy XIII was one of the first reviews I ever wrote for Faceplant.  It was a story of redemption, of rebellion and of hopelessness.  It was a story that br0ught six hapless people together in order to stop the destruction of all they know and love by first running down a hallway for 50 hours.  And then they made a sequel, because hey, why not?

I finally had the chance to play Final Fantasty XIII-2 this past month, wherein I learned a few things.  1) Video game plots do not actually have to make sense, 2) flans wearing hats is the best thing of all time, and 3) there actually is a limit to how many times I can hear the word “kupo” without wanting to strangle something.

I am Risen from the Dead! And so has Diablo!

Hi there Faceplanters, it’s me, Elrood.  NOT, as Tophat would want you to believe, Elrood 2.  I did miss last weeks article due to a combination of things, namely I’m about to move across the country and that the Prime Evil has unleashed demonic hordes upon the world of Sanctuary.  I can see arguments from both sides as to which of these events is more important to me personally.  As I’m still extremely busy I won’t going be going over Diablo 3 with a fine tooth comb here, but it’s a massive release from the biggest developer on the planet, so let’s hit some key points shall we?

League of Legends: D cups full of Justice

What do you get when you start with a real-time strategy game, automate the armies, and give the player control of a single champion on a team of five champions in a tower defense map? A nice little free to play game called League of Legends. Tophat and Elrood and myself have been sticking to our “gaming on a budget” plan with few exceptions as of late so a little LoL was right up our alley. Funny thing about League of Legends though, it seems that the character’s strength is based largely on their cup size.

Elrood is dead. Quick, help me loot his corpse for crafting materials

I WILL AVENGE MY BROTHERS, DIABLO 1 AND DIABLO 2

I’m not sure what happened to Elrood today, though I’m fairly sure it has 100 percent to do with the fact that Diablo 3 dropped this week.  Elrood has obviously been actually consumed by this horrific, ancient evil in his never ending quest to upgrade his loot I mean destroy evil forever.  Actually, the probability of something like this happening was pretty high from the start of the week.  Look, man, when a hideous demon lord starts chucking fireballs at small village hamlets, sometimes you just have to man up and totally forget about posting articles about video games on the internet.

There is such a thing as a Free Lunch

It’s FREEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! (Remember this guy from those commercials? I took three years of French and can’t say a word, I remembered this dudes name was Matthew Lesko so I could google image search him, go figure)

It feels strange to speak of “the olden days” of gaming and be talking about 2004.  That’s when Blizzard released World of Warcraft and basically changed how people thought about games with a monthly subscription.  A niche Everquest audience was suddenly ten million people strong, all handing over cash on a monthly basis.  On some level almost all the major players have been chasing that same thing since, be it Call of Duty with its Elite service (which for the record, according to an IGN article posted earlier this week, has about 10 million subscribers, go figure) or Bioware’s banking that the Star Wars license will make The Old Republic into the next behemoth of the mmo space.  Sadly for them, it’s not.  It’s not that the game is bad but that the market has changed.  The future is free.

What’s up with Japanese RPG’s?

I'll tell you what's NOT wrong with JRPG's. Lightning. <3

Japanese RPG’s made me the gaming nerd I am today.  I can remember the exact moment that gaming TRULY hooked me.  I went over to my friend Patrick’s house one afternoon.  His step brother was visiting from out of town and had brought with him a game called Final Fantasy 2 for the Super Nintendo.  Pat and I sat, enthralled, as Palom burned through the ice blocking the entrance to Mt. Ordeals.  Then in battle, I soon saw Fire TWO.  Never mind that I had no concept of Fire One, Fire two was damn impressive.  More than anything though, what struck me about FF4 (Final Fantasy numbering makes no sense, thanks AMERCIA!) was the story.  As in, it was telling one.  I dove in head first to the world of Cecil, Kain, Golbez, Rydia, and all the rest.  Games that tell amazing stories have been my favorite ever since.  So why did the JPRG’s of my youth give way to a general feeling of “meh” now?  What happened?