Finished: Eternal Sonata & Cave Story
Eternal Sonata is a weird one, in some ways a very typical JRPG, but with a wonderful score and brilliant art direction. The gameplay was solidly okay: the combat system was entertaining, the lack of random battles a definite plus, but the dungeons weren’t particularly inspired (although beautiful), and without maps a couple of them would have been exercises in tedium.
One aspect of the game that has received relatively little mention is the co-op mode, a feature I’d love to see become an RPG standard. While the primary player still dictates the flow of encounters, movement within the overworld, and equipment setup, there is an option to hand control of any of the three primary party members over to a second (or third) controller during combat. The additional player then controls every aspect of that character (including their part during Harmony Chains) whenever battle is entered. The system works well, and is a nice bonus for those of you that game with friends or a significant other beside you. Aside from Super Mario Galaxy, this is the first game I’ve seen with an asymmetrical co-op mode. It’s a welcome innovation, and I hope to see more.
Eternal Sonata also had what was probably the preachiest ending ever, taking both the story and player in unexpected directions. Still, solid nonetheless, and I do suggest staying through the credits for the kōan-filled short, The Shape of Life. Or just watch it on Youtube.
Final Grade: B
I finished my playthrough of Cave Story on the PSP last week. The buzz on this game is justified, and it’s become my favorite 2D platformer to come out since the original Metroid. While I’m done with the game for now, there’s all sorts of secret bits for the completionists out there, including a hidden location, mystery items, and multiple endings (I received the standard ending). Play Cave Story!
Final Grade: A
Filed under homebrew, the play list, video games | Comments (2)
Again & Again.
Dennis Liu macs up “Again & Again,” by The Bird and the Bee.
Good stuff! [via local boy Josh Ellis over at TUAW]
Update: Here’s a followup interview with Dennis after the video kinda went nuts on the mac-centric parts of the internet.
Filed under MLP, music | Comment (1)I was not indecent with that car.
Hm, he’s probably a relative.
Filed under MLP, uncategorized | Comment (0)link love 05-07-08
A Cautionary Tale for the Young Games Writer
Simon Parkin has a beautiful site. His words are good, too.
The Classic Gaming Expo, one of my favorite local events, has been cancelled for the year. PAX, on the other hand, continues to grow.
Red Alert 3 Hell March trailer. Mmm, colory.
A complete Japanese Dreamcast collection, sealed, up for auction, and converted TRON cabinets make me weep.
Filed under MLP, video games | Comment (1)Interview: LiquidRain of rainwave.cc
Rainwave.cc is a video game soundtrack streaming site where the listeners get to steer. While the current song is playing, three future potentials are presented in a voting table. Then, based on votes from all current listeners, the next song is slotted for play. Additionally, songs can be rated, and these ratings then affect how frequently the song is subsequently queued.
Once a song has been played, it goes Off Air for a variable amount of time — determined by its overall rating — preventing repetition and giving more of the playlist an opportunity for exposure.
I spoke with LiquidRain, owner and developer of Rainwave, about the site, stats, and songs.
Who’s behind rainwave.cc? How did the site come to be?
I’m the sole programmer and designer behind Rainwave and did the majority (as of today) of the playlist. Going forward, Vyzov, a member of the community, is managing the playlist. The site came to be when I was looking at long-standing radio site GamingFM and saw their request feature. I was wondering why their requesting was so mysterious and didn’t spell out exactly how their system worked, and that’s when I got the idea of creating a radio site that had instant feedback. From there the ideas evolved. I kept it between friends, working on it until it evolved to Rainwave, when I considered it good enough for people to use.
The voting and statistics gathering are the calling cards of Rainwave. How did they evolve, and how does the system work?
Rainwave first started out as just the voting mechanism - the immediate feedback GamingFM lacked. The same three song selection system was in place from the very beginning. It was sloppy though, and forced you to make your vote 30 seconds before the song ended due to being generally dumb, and did a complete page re-load instead of the nice self-updating you get today. Slowly but surely I kept adding features: ratings, then ratings affecting song frequency, making the page update nicely, and using a tabbed interface for the playlist and song history. I kept evolving the site itself to function better; it became smarter and used the windowing system you see now, instead of tabs, and became a more cohesive and simplified UI while still retaining all the features. The last major feature was requests, after that I just kept adding layers of statistics to the site and made the site snappier and easier to use and read as time went on.
The whole system is dependant on a C++ backend custom-written from scratch by myself, a PHP-driven website, and a MySQL database (though I wish I went with PostgreSQL). The backend’s work is triggered each time a song changes, and the site is synchronized with that. The rest is all in the programming.
Why Ogg Vorbis for the stream?
Simple: More bang for your buck. An 80kbps Vorbis stream sounds better than a 128kbps MP3 stream.
Now that you’ve been tracking song ratings and stats over time, have any surprises or interesting trends appeared?
Yep. Ratings generally keep going down as more people come to the site. The average rating of all songs and albums has been falling as time has gone on. A few ratings for some albums surprised me: I thought for sure that Parappa would have been a hit with the audience, but I was wrong. It was averaging a 2.2 rating when I pulled it. Other experiments with music genres had expected results: both Quake games bombed in ratings, and so did Wipeout.
There are some interesting anomalies in people’s stats too: Very active users who’ve never cast a rating but vote frequently, people who vote a lot and never request, people who listen a ton and never vote or rate, everyone seems to use it differently.
Filed under interviews, music, video games | Comment (0)Hurray Divers 2000!
I won I won I won! No accessories, but I’ve no plans to teleconference and will make due with a spare keyboard for now. Now I need to keep an eye out for the standard aqua Dreamcast controllers that originally shipped with the model…
Faith and Konoko.
Gametrailers has posted an excellent analysis of the trailer for Mirror’s Edge, a title that’s quickly making its way to the top of my personal hypewagon.
Embedded version after the jump, but if you haven’t seen this yet, I recommend viewing from the link above.
Also new is On Mirror’s Edge, one of the cleanest looking fan sites I’ve seen in some time.
While you’re waiting for Mirror’s Edge, I suggest a playthrough of Oni, a 2001 action game from Bungie with a bit of the same flavor. Solid and underrated, Oni suffered in reviews after multiplayer was pulled shortly before launch. The game is available on Mac, PC, and PS2, and can be had these days for less than ten bucks.
Phoenix Mars Lander
The Phoenix Mars Lander has a twitter feed. [via DaringFireball]
The Phoenix Lander touches down on Mars’ northern polar ice map in just over ten days. Unlike the previous rovers, this fixed lander isn’t expected to last much longer than a few months; Martian winters are said to be pretty intense.
The music of Cave Story.
One of the highlights of Cave Story is the soundtrack. Written by Pixel using his own OrgMaker, the music is reminiscent of the best of the retro era while exuding its own originality and charm. As is usually the case, the soundtrack grows better once you’ve played the game and can associate tracks with specific events and scenes, but still, at least for me, this is one of those rare game OSTs that pulls you in on first listen.
Download the original Japanese mp3s. As an alternative, I’ve uploaded a translated version with the title screen as album art; grab it here.
Next, we have the Cave Story Remix Project.
The Cave Story Remix Project was a 2006 fan compilation, something along the lines of what you’d see from the OCReMix scene… think original 8-bit tunes with a nice helping of synth and guitar love. While there are highlights in the bunch, it’s a solid album altogether, and all 22 tracks deserve their place in the compilation.
The download links for the full album on the official site are dead, so I’ve gone ahead and mirrored it here. Who knows how long these files will stick around, we’ll see if my server stays happy with both versions of the soundtrack available for download.
Full story, after the jump »
