Words On Wednesday

Physical video game media has been a hot topic lately, and while I agree with the intent of the discussion, I don't think it matters as much as people want to suggest. While I mourn the bygone days of a SNES cartridge working 30 years into the future, the gaming industry has evolved in a way that does not operate in the same way as it did in years past. For the past few years, physical games have mostly given way to increasingly digital sales and gaming hardware has shifted to match. There has been fairly vocal outcry with each step in that direction, but with very little long term consequence. Sony released a "Digital Edition" of the PlayStation 5 without an optical drive in 2020 as an option to save money and play exclusively downloaded games. When Nintendo released the Switch 2, they also started creating some physical cartridges as "Game-Key Cards" that don't have any game data, they're just a physical license to download and play the digital game. ...

Leaks are starting to come out about the Steam Deck 2, but there are also theories about a potential home console running SteamOS. As much as this was tried in a similar way in 2015 with the Steam Machines , I think now is a perfect time to give it another shot with the widespread adoption of SteamOS and the compatibility that Proton offers. I love my Steam Deck . I maintain that it is probably the best gaming-related purchase that I've ever made. It is the most powerful gaming hardware that I own, and I have played SO many games since I bought it. It's just an incredible device and an EASY recommend for anyone who wants to get into PC gaming. I bought the Steam Deck KNOWING that it was slightly outdated. When I bought my 512 GB Steam Deck LCD, it was already three years old. That's ancient in computing hardware. A lot of people recommended getting another PC handheld, either a Windows machine or another SteamOS device, with better specs and newer hardware. That was an opt...

“ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ” is a Metroidvania (or “Igavania”) released on the all major platforms in 2019. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi, Bloodstained originated as a Kickstarter project when IGA (as he prefers to be called) parted ways with Konami in 2014. The intellectual property of Castlevania stayed with Konami, but nothing was stopping IGA from creating a new IP in the same style of side-scrolling exploration platformer with gothic styling. Nothing, that is, except funding. The Kickstarter was WILDLY successful, meeting 11x the original goal of $500,000 with over $5.5 million. I didn’t personally back it , but I was very tuned into it as a long-time Castlevania fan. I wanted the project to succeed, but I didn’t have any console to play it on and I previously didn’t have much faith in Kickstarter after the OUYA fiasco . Instead, I just watched from afar. When “ Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ” was released after meeting the ...

I posted a review for “Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age” last month, but I didn’t mention how I got the platinum trophy, one that was an absurdly long time coming. My first exposure to Final Fantasy XII was actually the original release back on PS2. My roommate at the time had a copy and he really enjoyed the game, so he let me borrow it. I played for a while and got maybe a quarter through the main story. I liked the game, but I moved out before I managed to finish so I returned it to said roommate. Rest in peace to that save file that maybe still exists on some PS2 memory card somewhere; I haven’t played it since circa 2010. A console gap and almost a decade later in March 2019, I picked up Zodiac Age from my local library to play on PS4. Unfortunately, I did have to start over since saves from the original release aren’t compatible with Zodiac age, but it was a small price to pay for the improvements and availability on a current platform. I played for a while and got further than...

A new Ratchet & Clank game has been out for nearly a year, and I still haven’t played it. Anyone who knows of my gaming preferences can tell you that Ratchet & Clank is one of my favorite intellectual properties. I’m talking in the same echelon as Zelda, Metroid, and those kinds of classics. I LOVE Ratchet games. The graphics, the music, the shooting mechanics, it’s just all amazing. I’ll play them like a gosh dang addict until I’ve upgraded every weapon, found every secret, and satisfied every skill point. I even managed to get my wife on board with Ratchet: Deadlocked and we both had a really good time eking out everything that game had to offer. So, you’d expect that I would be on board with a new release on day one. And in some other scenario, maybe I would be. The problem is, I don’t have a Playstation 5 and I won’t, at least not for a long time. I can’t even blame it on console shortages and scalpers buying up the few that are made. I wouldn’t buy one if shelves were stoc...

I recently set out to get a secret weapon in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. The process convinced me to be much more critical of what information I consume, and to always listen carefully to all instructions. Zodiac Age, as I’ll call the game for brevity’s sake, has a number of powerful weapons not available in the original release of Final Fantasy XII. Fortunately, none of them are as ridiculous as the original way to get the  Zodiac Spear , which could be rendered unavailable if the player unknowingly opened any specific chests throughout the game, without any indication that they might play a part in obtaining what was the most powerful weapon available. The Zodiac Spear is still available in Zodiac Age, but they’ve generously removed that awful chest mechanic. Plus, there are actually several more powerful weapons available, so players might not even decide to procure the Zodiac Spear anyway. Many new weapons are upgrades to existing weapon classes, like the  Ku...

What does it mean to “complete” or “finish” a video game? What criteria are required to say that you beat a game? Obviously, this isn’t a simple question, and there are no definite right or wrong answers. Video games comprise a huge industry, and there is such an immense variety among them that what applies for one game or genre may not apply in the slightest to another. I might be able to “beat” a First-Person Shooter (FPS) in under 10 hours easily, but to say that you “beat” a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) typically implies hundreds if not thousands of hours of work, and frequently means continued play as developers release new content. Are there any hard and fast metrics you can judge this by? Main storyline is obviously a large component for completing a game. Can’t say you’ve beaten it if you’ve never seen the ending of the story. Usually that means you can see the credits, too. But what about games that have extra story content after the credits rol...