Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A two-pronged Hump Day assault

It is apparently the law that all games bloggers must link to Zero Punctuation, so let me say how much I enjoyed this week's review of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Yahtzee certainly has the courage of his convictions. I was gratified that he shared many of my sentiments about the game -- except his jokes were much, much better.

After I watched the episode, I revisited my own review to see where we'd overlapped, and found that a helpful reader had commented:
the writer of this article obviously has no knowledge of video games. if you are thinking about getting this game get it, it is a contender for game of the year. hopefully this joke of a review doesn't count on metacritic. PS. i suggest you find another career, seeing as you clearly suck at this one.

Sadly, it's true: My reviews don't count on Metacritic.

Also, via Andrew Sullivan: Move over, Power Glove! Emotiv Systems has introduced a mind-reading game controller. This page is woefully short on specifics, but I, for one, welcome the ability to remove my stupid, stubby thumbs from the play-control equation.

I wonder how heightened emotions would affect your digital mind waves? I get angry pretty quickly when I'm losing. If I were to try to use this to play something like Unreal Tournament, my character would soon start committing suicide upon respawning, just to save time.

8 comments:

High Power Rocketry said...

: )

Anonymous said...

My name is Abigail. When I'm losing, I just give up altogether. lol.

Anonymous said...

hmmm mind control, the ultimate goal of the nerd. cut down the lag time between deciding on their move and its enactment.
just a shame it cant be applied to PE class:P
TWT

Anonymous said...

It's too bad that I can't get the registration page on thephoenix.com to work, or I'd reply to that boneheaded comment on your Smash Bros review.

You were right on the money with it - even as a long time Nintendo fanboy, I find that I can't get that excited about Brawl. Multiplayer is fun, but as an adult man-child getting 3 friends to come over and fight Marios is somewhat difficult, and the online play is lagluster at best.

I trust your insight on gaming more than most other writers in the enthusiast press, so keep up the good work.

Mitch Krpata said...

Thanks, anon. I appreciate it.

Fully agree that part of the reaction to this game might just be a clash of lifestyles. I have fond memories of all-night Mario Kart 64 sessions when I was in high school, for example, but it's hard to imagine how I'll be able to re-create those multiplayer memories with Mario Kart Wii.

Anonymous said...

If there were actual mind reading controllers that weren't just a gimmick based on skin temperature/pulse readings there could be some interesting stuff done in games. Give characters in FPS deathmatch things a "Fury Bomb" suicide attack if they're angry enough to activate it near an opponent. Speed up pretentious and longwinder RPG cutscenes depending on the player's level of "oh fuck this noise". But who am I kidding, we can't even reliably get the DS to recognize people saying "blue", we're decades away from being able to while away the hours in Dead or Alive simply by willing boob punches and grabs.

Anonymous said...

Your fucking sick, man!

Rodneylives said...

I like Smash Bros. Brawl to a large extent, but really, to rail against Yahtzee because he didn't like a game is useless. It's his job to call it how he sees it, to shout about that is either an argument for him to lie or in favor of some kind of mind control.

He didn't like it. His opinion does matter. And he didn't even rip into the game all that hard really, not compared to how he's tackled some others.

While I disagree with him about whether the game is worth playing, he DID come up, as always, with accurate observations. And it was funny, too.