Mobile Games Are Games Too

Last week was....ugh, yeah. Staying up to late to try and watch New Japan Pro Wrestling's Invasion PPV (bad PPV and what could have been a possible MOTY, Ibushi kinda dropped the ball against AJ Styles) and then throw in a disastrous holiday. On a positive, no cops were called which means my family is getting really damn old.

It was a quiet week for the most part which I'm okay with as Daredevil came out which in retrospect wasn't exactly a great idea burning through in about a day or so (late Saturday night I finished) as it's a definition of a mixed bag. Though we've seen this acting from him before in The Cell, Vincent D'Onofrio was really good as Kingpin. Charlie Cox was bad as a one note Murdock. They did good setting up Iron Fist and The Hand. Foggy and Karen were completely worthless. And so on.

I like they gave a wink for Stilt-Man though. And after watching it, they could totally nail a Moon Knight series if Marvel had any decency.

Sony corning a market that still has not produced a profit as they bought Onlive and subsequently shutdown the service. If anyone knew that Onlive was still around after they fired everyone about 4-5 years ago, raise your hand. It's all about the patents for Sony which is actually a decent asset for them though I haven't seen anything about how much they paid for them. A question to ask is that barring the Japanese Government propping up Sony's corpse, will they be around for this to make the patents worth the money they've spent on this.

This is where gaming tech is heading for better or worse.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of fully streaming the game, at least in the current climate. It's pretty hard to beat the speed of light to give you the responsiveness needed for a lot of games. I've always been more fond of companies using the MMO setup where you have a game specific client on your device that pumps the game while the backend sends you smaller data back and forth between the server and device. Gives you a ton more leeway to hide the lag and you don't have to worry about any video artifacts or general weirdness cropping up.

• Level 5 is trying to inject some life into two properties of theirs with some mobile games. Though it has bombed on the 3DS, Fantasy Life is going to live on with a sequel for iOS and Android. Jumping from one crowded platform to an even more crowded platform doesn't make business sense but they're going to try it.

The series has seen better days as Professor Layton is very much on the downswing of it's sales trajectory. It's a series that would easily find a home on mobile with carving a niche that isn't really being filled. That's if it was coming to mobile as it is instead of what looks like a card game. Gashapon collect-a-thon maybe the mobile du jour but I don't see how this fits the property.

• Eh, an RPG version of Monster Hunter with a cell shaded art style? Even though it will be let down by the resolution on the 3DS, I'm okay with this

• Read this. Eric Yockey's take on the state of arcades.

• And then read this, Arcade Hero's take on the state of arcades.

• Microsoft showing off the Conker's skin pack for Project Spark. Still feels like something that has had it's time come and pass

• Because the genre isn't already crowded, LEGO throwing their hat into the toy & video game. And it's LEGO so you know you're going to be paying out the ass on the playsets

• On one hand, a corporation not buying a website domain far in advance of announcing a product is always a pet peeve of mine. On the other, if you're a journalist, don't do this.

• After Mattrick started laying the groundwork in turning Zynga around, Mark Pincus has decided to kill off the company for good by booting him out.

• Well, it's not the long rumored MMO which actually would have been kinda cool but Square announced the new Deus Ex.

• Mortal Kombat X (PC, PS3, PS4, 360 & XBO) - Of all the series that makes me scratch my head on how it's survived while much much better games in the genre have gone the way of the dodo, Mortal Kombat is that to me. Sure, I flirted with the first two games in the arcade but the games are so BAD. They're not good competitively and the game mechanics don't lend itself to the masses. I'd rather play Samurai Showdown V again while someone rubs a cheese grater on my nuts.

• Titan Souls (PC, PS4 & Vita) - Bottle up all of the catchphrases that indie games like to say that their game is like and this is what you get. If Devolver changed the game's name to Kickstarter: The Kickstarter Funded Indie Game, no one would notice. IT HAS PIXEL ART!!! OOOHHHHH!!! IT PLAYS LIKE DARK SOULS!!! FFFFFFF YEAH!!!! YOU FIGHT GIANT MONSTERS!!!!! YEAH BABY, SUCK IT!!! That being said, even with it's generic as all hell name, it does kinda look good.

Gratuitous Space Battles 2 (PC) - Game is pretty simple: build ships and hit play and let the AI duke it out between each other. The first game was pretty hard with a huge cliff of difficulty. Can't say I was able to get into the first game as I found the ship building a little too limited and there were a few too many times that the AI really lets you down. It should make for decent fodder in an indie game bundle though.

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posted by Gang of Gaming Morons! at 03:25 PM

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