Thinking of Games This Thanksgiving Week: Day One

On 11/25/2013 at 11:30 PM by KnightDriver

I am presently at the North Carolina shore with my Mother and Sister’s family for Thanksgiving week. I’ve been playing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team before bed every night and so far, nothing else, but I still think about games a lot and my 8 and 9 year old niece and nephew play some video games. Here are some of my thoughts for this first full day of vacation.

I should mention on my 9 hours of travel the other day (should’ve been only 7 but I got lost) I caught up on the Vidjagame Apocalypse podcasts (they are guys who used to be at GamesRadar). One interesting thing they mentioned was the Kill Switch origins of the Gears of War cover system. To get that system in Gears they actually hired a designer who created the system in Kill Switch (I forget his name offhand). They mentioned this method of hiring away a developer in order to get his/her expertise was used by Valve in order to create DoTA 2 with the help of the DotA Warcraft III mod team. I mean, why not. You want the good aspects of a particular game in your game so why not just hire the guys who made the thing you want to emulate. Makes sense.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has stuff like Angry Birds such as pulling Luigi’s mustache to fling Mario around the 2D Dream World. Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus has stuff like Bioshock. Some environments are given character through a public address announcer that you hear as you move around some levels. It also has black-and-white 2D puzzle segments that remind me of indie games like Limbo. It’s neat to see triple A titles take some inspiration from other games. Why waste good ideas? Use them.

I’ve been thinking about the mineralogy of Minecraft this Thanksgiving week down at the North Carolina shore ‘cause my niece and nephew talk about it a lot and I listen because I’ve played it and like hearing about their experience in the game. By looking at some wiki pages, I found out the building materials in Minecraft aren’t exactly minerals but Ores which are rocks that contain both minerals and metals. Redstone in the game is a fictional Ore created, I guess, to give some electrical power to an otherwise Stone Age world. Obsidian has an interesting history in Stone Age cultures. Obsidian is Volcanic glass that makes the sharpest of tools and was traded great distances thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years ago.

My Nephew had me watch him play Mario Kart on DS. He wanted me to see his strategy on the Rainbow Road track. He’s got all the shortcuts down and every pickup. He beats Wario with Yoshi every time for first place. He also closes the DS to pause the game just as he’s getting or giving a hit in order to see a still of the explosion or opponent flying off the track. Neat trick!

I watched most of Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace again. The pod race made me realize how closely Lego Star Wars kept to the movie. The track in both game and movie looks identical and all the challenges Anakin had such as the Tuskan Raiders shooting at the racers and the blocked ramp that he takes near the end of the race to land just ahead of Sebulba are present in the game. I also realized that the knocking sound in the pod race comes specifically from Sebulba’s pod racer. I always thought it was the sound of all the pod racers.

My Nephew and I gushed over Skylanders Swap Force figurines in a department store. He told me his favorites and what abilities each figure had in the game. He doesn’t have the game yet, but I guess he’s played it at a friend’s house ‘cause his knowledge of the game was comprehensive. I love the figure designs and am fascinated by the ability to swap parts to create new multi skilled figures. There must be a chip in both top and bottom halves of all the 55 figures (I calculated that it would cost over $800 to collect them all). I had just heard on the One of Swords podcast that the two biggest money makers for Activision right now are Call of Duty and Skylanders. I thought it was funny to then see two adjacent end-caps in the department store featuring each of those. Makes sense.

And that’s all for day one. I’m off to play some more Mario & Luigi: Dream Team before bed. Hopefully I’ll have something more to say on day two. It’s going to be four full days here before I head back on Friday.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

11/26/2013 at 01:52 AM

I love the damn sound design in that pod race. I dunno about that movie, but the sound design was freakin amazing.

KnightDriver

11/26/2013 at 12:37 PM

There was a slight nod to that somewhere in Thor: The Dark World. My friend pointed it out, I forget where. He was dismissive of it but I always loved the sound design in Phantom Menace. The only thing Phantom Menace lacks is a strong story and characters. I kind of felt similarly about Thor: The Dark World. The fact that Natalie Portman is in both enhanced that feeling.

11/26/2013 at 03:12 PM

it's the notorious Natalie Portman effect!!

11/26/2013 at 03:36 PM

She was good in Your Highness, but then I love that film and can see no wrong there.

Jamie Alston Staff Writer

11/26/2013 at 07:49 AM

The sad thing is that I had just purchased Lego Star Wars on the Xbox 360 when my console decided to Red Ring on me. Never bother to get the LSW games on the PS3. I'd sure like to play that pod race though.

leeradical42

11/26/2013 at 11:11 AM

Do you have a warranty or did it expire cause if it did I know how to fix the e72 error if you need help.

11/26/2013 at 12:57 PM

The warranty expired years ago.

11/26/2013 at 02:11 PM

Theres a easy xbox fix first take the cover off and take oyt the mother board and either a hair drier or preferably a heat gun and heat up the solder on the back side if that doesnt work look up xclamp repairs for the 360 on YouTube which shows an easy way to repair the clamps heat sync and cpu chip.

11/26/2013 at 12:41 PM

I played the Lego Star War Complete Saga this year and it was awesome. I got all 1000 achievements points in about sixty hours of gameplay and never got bored. I noticed how closely the lego games followed the properties they copied with Lego LOTRs, but this is apparently their standard approach to all their games. It's pretty cool.

Homelessrook

11/26/2013 at 08:14 AM

We will be at the Shore in Wilmington next month, we go around Christmas/New years time to see my wife’s grandparents.

11/26/2013 at 12:48 PM

Neat. I'm at the northern part of the state really close to the Virginia border. I actually drove up the beach once and crossed over when I had my four-wheel drive vehicle. I wish I could do that again. Economy cars just can't cut it off road.

transmet2033

11/26/2013 at 08:56 AM

Those kids and their Minecraft. My wife teaches second grade and Minecraft is all that the boys talk about. What ever happened to Mario?

11/26/2013 at 11:09 AM

Mario is out and minecraft is in Mario just isnt with this generation of youngsters I should know I have 2 of themlol!!!

11/26/2013 at 12:54 PM

They also have the Mario games. They have Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros. for the DS, but the talk is all about Minecraft and some Angry Birds. They all seem to play in creative mode and make up their own worlds and gameplay with their friends. This seems sort of ungamer-like to me because there's very little challenge involved. It's all just sandbox messing around. It's like a virtual playground.

I played the Xbox 360 version until I had all the basic achievements and then got bored with just creating stuff. I need some goals on top of messing around in an open world to keep my interest.

goaztecs

11/26/2013 at 11:57 AM

Oh that Lego Podrace level...I've had some hate for it..then really enjoyed it (second and third playthroughs can do that).

$800 for all Skylanders? This is why I don't want to get into them. I tried Skylanders light aka Disney Infinity but lost interest because of the limited characters, but Skylanders would be fun but dang $800 bucks.

11/26/2013 at 01:15 PM

I'm seeing now only 16 new Swap Force figures. I'm not sure what I read on the back of the starter pack about 55 plus figures. Maybe that includes the figures for the previous games. So that means it's only $235 for the starter pack with 3 figures on Wii and the 13 other figures sold individually (add $30 for the 360 or PS3 starter pack). There seems to be like 221 figures total from all the games combined. Now that would be thousands of dollars.

Aboboisdaman

11/26/2013 at 12:12 PM

I was watching the Super Mario 3D World stream yesterday (that game looks amazing!), and couldn't help but notice all of the references to older Mario games. I've noticed that sort of thing in a lot of Indie titles too. I'm always for innovation in games, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

11/26/2013 at 01:17 PM

It would be foolish to let a good idea go just for originality sake.

BrokenH

11/26/2013 at 04:07 PM

I'd hire the guy from Killswitch too. I've played many 3rd person shooters and overall Gears Of War 2 did have the best cover system. I really wish RE5 & RE6 had simply copied it. lol.

However, when it comes to characters and aesthetics GOW left much to be desired. I think I would have been more invested into GOW 2 if I had played GOW 1 though.

11/26/2013 at 08:31 PM

If RE had the smooth feel of Gears, I would love that series. But it's a clumsy experience and I cannot abide an awkward control scheme no matter how good the story is.

NSonic79

11/27/2013 at 04:15 PM

I wish I had that kind of gaming collection with a member of my family. The only person that comes close is my "Little One" but she's not quite into gaming as much as me. Plus she's also not here with me right now *sniff, sniff* cherish those moments mate.

11/27/2013 at 05:49 PM

I was hoping my other sister would be here with her four kids. They all play console games like crazy. One of them got video capture software for his birthday so he could do Let's Play videos. That would've been even more interesting.

PixlBit