krono tigur

Chrono Trigger is out on Steam!

And it's another terrible mobile phone port that they made look gross and plays bad!


Even though nobody liked that when they did it to FFV and VI, and this company clearly has the means and resources to just port over Chrono Trigger in a form that's not unplayable garbage!

This is how piracy wins: when you offer a worse experience and product than you'd get by stealing the damn thing. I get trying to save costs, but there's no way this is going to be more profitable after the bad word-of-mouth. It would probably be less expensive and do less damage to the company's reputation to just sell people a rom. It's like they went out of their way to be actively spiteful to their audience.


This is like if the first Star Wars was put up on iTunes, but when you're finished downloading it you only see the holiday special.


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~A.H.

Like Rogue

I like the idea of proceduraly-generated content in games. Especially where that's the main focus the game is built around. Every room being completely different and having different monsters and items and such every time. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Each experience a little different from the last? So why are so many people who try to pay homage to those games so bad at it?

What I'm seeing in the games that say they're inspired by "Roguelike" games is unflattering and sloppy. Without fail, games like Spelunky and Binding of Isaac mistake giving the player nothing to work with as "challenge", or "difficulty". It's not challenging in BoI when there are dozens of treasure chests and treasure rooms I could use to upgrade my character to stand a better chance... but the game doesn't give me any keys to unlock them. It's not "difficult" when Spelunky makes it so I need bombs to progress when I don't have any. Or making you find treasure to get money to buy items, and then not putting in any shops, anywhere.

That's not challenge or difficulty. That's being a lazy, cheap-ass game designer.

I only got this far because the game was suddenly very generous with its' powerups early on. Luck should be a factor in a roguelike game, but it sucks the fun out of it when it's all about luck, and nothing I do to improve will have any say in what happens.

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Impulse

So a whole bunch of Valve games are coming to Gamestop's "Impulse" online service. But here's what it says at the bottom of the page announcing this:

"All Valve titles require the Steam Client to install and play."

...What?

"Steam" is the online service thingy that Valve uses. There is no point in buying this on Impulse and giving Gamestop money if I have to open up Steam to use these games anyway. I can just buy those things on Steam.

Are ALL decisions in video games made today by a man freebasing moon dust and slamming his dick against a Speak-And-Spell, and then obeying whatever monotone commands it issues?

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~A.H.

Origin, Dragon Age

Okay. This one's going to require a bit of a history lesson. There are 3 major players in this story:

EA, Bioware and Valve.