IBNttT in 2010! [U]

About a week into January of 2010 Eric found and installed one of the best wordpress plugins I’ve ever seen, Wordpress.com Stats. Thanks to that, I’ve got some performance numbers for the site to share. Top Posts Remixed Objection, No Yakuza 3?, L4D2 (Again), and Pokémon Cosplay [Game Overview] (1,182) I know precisely why this link is top of the list. It features a stunning picture of Jessica Nigri very liberally cosplaying a Pikachu. It seems sex sells. Surprise! ...

January 2, 2011 · 2 min · el33tcapitan

Best Video Games of the Decade [Game Overview]

You may notice some games that are missing from this list and are on every other list. Well, I didn’t play everything because I didn’t have the time or the money, so that accounts for some of the big misses like Pyschonauts or Resident Evil 4. Other games are deliberately omitted :cough: HALO :cough: This list is also way long, but I didn’t want to limit myself to an arbitrary number like 10 or 20, so here it is: ...

December 30, 2009 · 13 min · el33tcapitan

The Villains of Final Fantasy Week 12 [Game Overview]

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...

April 3, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

The Villains of Final Fantasy Week 10-2 [Game Overview]

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...

March 13, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

M$: Lost Odyssey Review

SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain story spoilers. Read at your own risk! Sakaguchi’s new company Mistwalker has had its share of problems. For very perplexing reasons they chose to chiefly develop for the Xbox 360 with side development on the Nintendo DS. As a result, nothing they make for the home console, no matter how good, will ever sell all that well in their home country. His first 360 game, Blue Dragon, sold 200,000 copies in Japan, which may sound good at first, but when you look at Final Fantasy XII’s two million sales in Japan, a whole order of magnitude more, it suddenly doesn’t seem like Sakaguchi is getting a fair shake. In fact, both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are no better or worse than a typical Square Enix game, but their sales are typically much lower, with Lost Odyssey only selling around 100,000 in the Land of the Rising Sun. ...

July 10, 2008 · 7 min · el33tcapitan

Game Overview: Post 16-Bit, Pre-Current Gen Runner-Up: RPG Edition

Our continuing examination of the best games of the post 16-bit, pre-current gen, we will be looking at two PS2 RPGs that I particularly enjoyed. Our first game was a groundbreaking collaboration between two entirely unrelated, gigantic companies that were leaders in their industry. What resulted was a great game that wasn’t quite simple or clean, but was surprisingly interesting and fun despite its flaws. That’s right, the game is the multi-million-selling Squaresoft and Disney collaboration, Kingdom Hearts. ...

June 17, 2008 · 6 min · el33tcapitan

Game Overview: 16-Bit All-Stars

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Due to some poor life decisions, I find myself stranded for five weeks without any video games. What’s a guy to do, right? Well, rather than just giving you some of the headlines from the week’s video game news in lieu of what I was planning to be gameplay impressions, reviews, and the like, I’ve instead started a five week “All-Stars” feature. Each week we’re going to look at a video game era and spotlight my top three games from that era. Each of these games will also receive a place setting at the prestigious “Table of Honor” feature that I’m working on. Here’s the weekly plan: ...

June 6, 2008 · 22 min · el33tcapitan

Game Overview Editorial: Difficulty in Video Games

You’re playing through an RPG. You’ve gained five levels, found some sweet equipment drops, minimized the use of your precious items, and then it happens. You come up against a behemoth of a monster. Your party is decimated, your progress lost, your controller tossed through the screen. Does this even begin to sound familiar to anyone? It’s like modern gaming, in an effort to bring in an even broader audience, has started to dumb down our video game experience. Think back to the last four, at the very least, Final Fantasy games (not counting XI). Aside from side quest bosses who are geared to be a challenge, how often did you even find yourself remotely challenged in these games? I honestly don’t think I worried much about save points in any of these games (aside from when I was hunting the harder mobs in XII) at all. There was none of that between-save-point stress and worry that a game with any difficulty might throw at me. I just go on through the game, breezing through the fights and find myself at the final boss, sometimes taking more than one try to kill him, but, more often than not, just breezing through him too. ...

May 8, 2008 · 4 min · el33tcapitan