G-pinions

Yeah, it's been a while. We recorded two damn good shows in the interim, but a tiny unicorn got inside our server and started poking holes in the ceiling. Regardless, we're back. We decided to crap out an extra delicious amount of Zelda and Viva Pinata chatter, stopping to cover a couple of things we missed over the last month. We also almost go an entire show without talking about the PS3, completely accidentally. And Scott!

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Lucky people have all the fun. As everyone should know, Monday is the official start of the Halo 3 hype season. Monday Night Football is finally going to bring in an audience other than diehard football fans (sarcasm lost on people who didn't have to suffer through a thirty minute Jamie Foxx interview) when the first Halo 3 commercial airs in homes across the country. Also on Monday, people can start signing up for the Halo 3 Beta due for release sometime this spring.

I may be a naive, overly optimistic man-child, but I just assumed anyone with an X360 would be able to play the Halo 3 Beta in a few months. My Beta ignorance is startling, isn't it? PC gamers have to put up with this crap all the time. Every Blizzard release is tested on lucky consumer's computers via a Beta. You'll have to forgive me if this slipped my mind. I don't sully my hands with PC games very often. But us console gamers will have to feel some pain next year. Some of us will play test Halo 3 for the eager people at Bungie. Others will just wish they were chosen. I'm going to start making up a defense now. I won't want people to see my tears when I'm not selected. If irony is truly my god, Super Castlevania will come out the same day Nick downloads his fancy Halo 3 Beta.

I really feel like playing Super Castlevania right now. I know the next Nintendo DS, Metroid-style Castlevania game is coming out sometime in December, but that doesn't interest me nearly as much. I crave some straightforward, whip-toting action right now. But I can't play it. Sure, I could check out eBay or my friendly neighborhood pawn shop. I could take my chances on a battered copy with a battery that ran out of juice seven years ago. I'm sure I could find a cart with a healthy yellow stain on the cover if I really wanted to. I admit that I'm lazy. I don't really want to search for a copy of the original, I don't want to pirate a copy, and I'm not even sure where all the parts to my SNES currently reside. You know what would be really cool? If Nintendo released a console that could play all these old hits. Think about the possibilities! Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog on one system; being able to flick between The Lost Vikings and Bubble Bobble with the push of one button; using the same controller the whole time. It sounds like a magical, candy-filled world where unicorns do my laundry and the lunch lady tastes like Peeps. Alas, this world could exist now if Nintendo wasn't a dirty bastard.

Fancy controller aside, the most compelling aspect of the Wii is the Virtual Console. I love old school gaming. I have never played Actraiser or Devil's Crush. I want to buy these games, I want to give my hard-earned money for the right to play twenty-year-old games, but Nintendo is holding back the goods. The Wii launched 10 days ago with just a piddly amount of classic titles available for download. Crap like the original Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong were going for $5 a pop. They were selling Altered Beast, a game Sega struggled to give away free of charge 17 years ago, for $8. They had the nerve to offer Pinball for $5 as well. And Soccer! What the hell are these games? They did not give us a real Mario platformer. Japan got Super Castlevania, Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. The only two worthwhile games we got were The Legend of Zelda and Solomon's Key. These games are great, but come on!

Nintendo has a library of thousands of games. They have the complete catalog of the NES, SNES and N64 at their disposal. Sega is giving us Genesis games and Hudson is throwing in TG-16 classics as well. I'm sure we'll even see something from Sega CD, 32X (Kolibri!) and Saturn. I know I'm not the only person who would download NiGHTS in a heartbeat. Heck, I would spend $12 to see why people are willing to spend $100 on Panzer Dragoon Saga. Instead of capitalizing on this free money, Nintendo is just sitting and waiting while I pull my hair out. Since launch, we've seen four new games released - Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe, Bonk's Adventure and Super Star Soldier. Decent games, but why release so few at a time? At this rate, the Wii won't be a legitimate Virtual Console until 2015. Nintendo has 80 of the 100 best games of all time at their disposal, not to mention several hundred fun games to complement those ultra classics, but is perfectly content dangling these gems above our hungry mouths. I can understand holding back super Mario Kart. You need to implement leaderboards and online play. But there is no excuse releasing the original Mario Bros. as the closest thing to a Mario platformer. That doesn't even count as a platformer! It doesn't even scroll!

Even with just Solomon's Key and The Legend of Zelda, the Wii Virtual Console is already far beyond the XBLA's collect of retro hits. I am just extremely frustrated with how Nintendo is treating us eager gamers. They have a HUGE advantage over Sony and Microsoft. They have more classic games in their back catalog than MS has total games spread across two platforms. And when that well finally dries up, Nintendo will have made a billion dollars they can invest in future development. They can work on a new 2D Mario and a new 2D Kid Icarus to be released straight to the VC. Nintendo can print money with the VC but they are not capitalizing. It is so frustrating having money to spend and a need that can be easily filled while you watch a fat company sit on their butt.

Maybe Japanese RPGs are just boring. I did finish Contact a couple weeks ago. Though it was the only NDS game in my collection I had not finished, I was still quite pleased when the ending credits rolled. This was just a bland, uninspired entry in a genre that really should be dead. Is there a point to Japanese RPGs anymore? These are games that rely on strong characters and a compelling story but rarely deliver the goods. I would venture that no story, including the entirety of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, require more than 40 hours to tell. No characters are so deep that you can't reveal all of their thoughts and desires in just a few hours. And yet, the genre is still thriving as people flock to slowly read a tale that has been told a thousand times before. I used to dig the genre, and I'm sure Chrono Trigger would still make me titter with delight, but companies are killing RPGs by reusing the same ideas over and over again until I just want to kill every spiky-haired kid on a mission to save the world.

Contact is about a scientist's quest for some stolen elements. For some reason, he cannot recover them himself. So he comes in "Contact" with the player and uses the unfortunate person to manipulate the actions of some ignorant little child. It sounds like a pretty cool idea, but in practice it plays just like every other game. The boy you control is not resistant to your input methods nor does he appear to have a mind of his own. You control him like you would control the main character in any other bland RPG. Though the scientist talks to you from time to time, and there is a dramatic scene late in the game when the child realizes he is being manipulated, the premise is ignored for the most part.

The biggest hook of the game is this ability to wear different clothes that grant you special abilities. Guess what, this isn't particularly fun either. First of all, you can only change clothes when you are in your home base. When out in the world, trying to find a fragment of the stolen gem, you are stuck with the same clothes and the same abilities for the whole time. What is the point of having these different abilities if you can't even use them? Worse, in order to actually use the suits well, you have to reach a very high level. For instance, in order to cook interesting dishes as the chef, you have to be higher than level 50. That would take hours and hours to achieve. To catch higher-level fish you have to be level 70. Who is going to take the time to level up their fishing abilities? A decent concept is wasted because of ridiculous requirements and a dressing room that is usually an hour behind where you currently reside.

It's been about two weeks since I beat the game and I hardly remember anything from my journey. If you want a JRPG for your NDS, you're much better off picking up Mario and Luigi 2. If you're really intense you could get that Final Fantasy 3 game everyone is talking about. You won't catch me playing one of these tired games for quite awhile, though. It's hard to commit time and energy playing a stagnant genre when there are developers out there offering new gameplay ideas or at least an interesting twist to an old classic. I cannot believe the developer of Killer 7 made a game so utterly devoid of life as Contact.

Nick and I talked about Viva Pinata quite a bit before it came out. It's a new Rare game. I was brimming with delight just thinking about it. But I had one major concern that I thought, no matter how good the game turned out, Viva would never be able to overcome. It was a casual, simulation experience on a console. I don't play sims on a console. It's so restrictive. Consoles are meant for real video games. First person shooter and adventure games. Epic adventures that can suck you in for five hours at a time. These are the type of games I expect to play on my consoles. I figured a sim like Viva Pinata would never be engaging enough to draw my attention to a TV for more than a half hour at a time. It should have been the first Rare game on the Nintendo DS. It should have been something I could play while traveling or when watching sports. Obviously, things didn't work out that way.

I am still playing Viva Pinata over Zelda. I can't explain it. Every second I spend with Zelda is incredible. The pacing is as good as I have ever seen in a game. Every half hour you are doing something completely different. From herding goats to fishing to playing as a wolf to sumo wrestling, every aspect of this epic adventure is broken down into bite-sized chunks. There is never a dull moment because you are constantly doing something completely new. If Nintendo can keep this up throughout the entire adventure, and keep the quality of the puzzles and combat equally as high, this really may be the best game ever made. But I am still spending most of my free time in my garden.

You can doubt my words because I am an admitted Rare fanboy, but Viva Pinata is the best game on the X360. It is also the best thing Rare has made since the original Perfect Dark. It is the most fun and the most engrossing experience on the system by quite a wide margin. I have hardly thought of Gears of War since I opened Viva Pinata. How can I worry about a sub par matchmaking system when I'm trying to lure another stubborn pinata into my garden? Honestly, GoW is merely a good game. A damn fun game in an established genre. Viva Pinata is unlike anything I have ever played. Whereas Sim City and Animal Crossing act as passive rest stops in a hobby that sometimes requires more energy and dexterity than I can willingly muster, VP is both intense and serene. You can spend time just watching your residents interact. You can casually try to feed various foods to the trusting beasts in the hopes of trying to produce a new variant. Or you can actively shape and mold your garden to the exact specifications that are demanded of you. The game constantly introduces both long-term and short term goals for you, and it is up to you whether you want to tax yourself to attract that extra fussy little guy, or if you want to just relax and hang out in your garden for a bit. Rare has found a perfect mix between a casual experience and one that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

If you are a new X360 owner and want something fun to show off your fancy new system, you cannot do better than Viva Pinata. It is far more fun and in-depth than Gears of War and Dead Rising. It is more focused and rewarding than Oblivion. Simply put, this is one of the best games I have played in a long time. You know I'll be back in a few days with even more to say about this gem. Whereas Bully and Okami were able to offer amazing, though singular gaming experiences, VP is the game that just keeps on giving. This is probably the first time Nintendo has kicked themselves since selling Rare four years ago. I'm sure every company wishes they could have created something this engaging and unique.