The End of Yet Another Era - iPlay Kanata to close it's doors at the end of the month.

A recent post on Facebook announced the imminent closing of iPlay's only remaining location in Ottawa.  As per the post, iPlay had been offering LAN gaming services for 11 years, with their original location being on Iber Rd in Stittsville.  The current location has been within the Kanata Sensplex for years.  The announcement by iPlay's owner/operator 'Dave' pretty much put the blame squarely on the universal shift to online gaming.

iPlay had a second location in Orleans which closed in 2009 due the issues with the original investor withdrawing their capital.  The closing of this location had a huge impact on the amount of group gaming done by my friends and associates at the time as we had been taking part in many of the tournaments being run by the owner Brian.  Ever since iPlay Orleans' closure it has been increasingly difficult to arrange any time of group gaming session, regardless if it's in person or online.  Now, I don't blame that entirely on the lack of an iPlay as people have families and careers to consider now, but at the same time, iPlay provided the computers and the space at a moment's notice.

In all honesty I'm surprised that the location in Kanata has stayed open as long as it has.  The last time I was there was about a year ago, and although it was a fun time, we were the only people there with about 60% of the computers vacant.  Speaking of the computers, it looked like quite a few of them with in various stages of disrepair, and the ones that did run were running so slowly it was a pain to get everybody loaded and playing at the same time.  It was like playing with the ghost of good times past and was kind of disappointing in itself.

For all of the shortcomings, iPlay was still a pretty awesome place.  I remember playing C&C Renegades and WarCraft 3 at the location on Iber Rd (hey Craz, remember how we were supposed to be allies?  I still hold that against you!).  I remember the smell of the rubber floors, Domino's pizza and the warm electronics in the Orleans location.  The decor itself put you in a mood to play, and the reasonably priced and seemingly endless supply of chips, pop and chocolate bars made sure you could keep going during an extended gaming session.

One memory that really stands out in my mind would have been the 2007 - 2008 New Year's Eve overnighter that Troglem, Taleth and I took part in.  Call of Duty 4 had only come out in November of 2007 and was revolutionary at the time.  I remember having to walk to a nearby gas station in the wee hours of the morning to get Advil and Tim Horton's coffee to keep going.  I remember Troglem searching for good servers at 7am while Taleth and I watched with bleary eyes from the nearby couch.  It was honestly one of the best New Year's I have ever had.

As Dave mentioned in his post, the general shift has been away from playing games in person to playing games at home, alone, while chatting over whatever chat service you and your friends favour.  This may not be true for the 30-somethings who seem to be turning back to board games for their social gaming fix, but it definitely seems to apply to the younger generations.

I guess the point of this wall of text was to say goodbye to yet another remnant of our youth.  As much as it is sad to see places like this fall off the map, realistically I was in no position to support a place like this any longer.  Support for something like this has to come from the masses, which would be the youths of today.  These youth don't have careers or family life to deal with, and generally have an abundance of 'down' time to use as they please.  Despite this, given the fact you need to physically attend a location, and given how easy it is to just play online from home, it's not surprising that the support just wasn't there.

In closing I'll say, 'So long iPlay.  It's been a good run, but it's time for us to say goodbye.'

The Starship Damrey (3DS eshop)

"This game contains no tutorials or explanations. Part of the experience is to discover things for yourself."
                                             ~bold words which may or may not, ring true in all the wrong ways.

The Starship Damrey starts out so well and does so many things right. I lay in bed with a smile on my face for the first 5 minutes of the game, genuinely excited to see what would happen.

Shortly after, I lost all interest.

There are simply too many inconsistencies in the game. Sound, or rather the lack of it,  is one such problem. The game asks you to wear earphones for greater immersion and then punishes you with monotonous and boring bleeps and bloops. Where is the atmosphere and unnerving ambiance this game begs for? All I could find was an empty silence, which fell flatly on my ears.

The graphics are decent but hampered by controls that feel clunky to the point of bordering on the annoying. Why the developers limited your movements to 90 degree increments during  first-person segments is beyond me. This stilted movement impedes your main objective, exploring a deserted spaceship.

The elephant in the room

There was a moment during my investigation of a darkened room where I could see the figure of a slumped crew member in the beam of my light. I decided to wait on investigating the body until I had searched the entire room first. I turned to my left to move away when suddenly I was given a very lame horror movie close-up of the same damned crew member I had just been looking at. This moment of anxiety was accompanied by the old '"dan daaaaaan!" soundbite classic. And just to as an add bonus on top of all this, the camera jerked me around so fiercely that for a moment I encountered real terror and confusion.

It just felt.. incredibly disappointing, and it is right about here where I stopped playing.

The Starship Damrey could have been amazing but instead feels unfinished. What should have been a fantastic experience, ended up as something which feels like it wants to be Snatcher or Policenauts-like. Perhaps that is just me wanting it to be more than it is.

I will still finish it one day simply to see where the story goes, but right now I'm in the mood for fun, not irritation.

Attack of The Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale (3DS eshop)

If you are looking for action or hundreds of hours gaming, then please look elsewhere because you will not find them here. What you will find is an utterly charming tale, eloquently wrapped in a mood most similar to the feel of a Studio Ghibli film.

Attack of The Friday Monsters! is the story of a boy called Sohta who moves to a rural Tokyo village in the Japanese Summer of the 1970s, an era when tokusatsu shows like Ultraman were all the rage.
It is a quiet and charming love letter, written to a time when we were socially unaware enough to stare at the TV with our mouths open, completely immersed in the adventures of our favourite heroes. The story captures those moments in our youth when the worlds and characters found on television bled into our every day lives. Moments that all too briefly, seemed more real than the physical world around us.

Attack of The Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale, is that long forgotten Summer where we lay on the grass of our secret hideouts and talked to our friends about the TV shows we loved.

I encourage everyone to check out Kaz Ayabe and Level-5's tiny slice of nostalgia. It has instantly become one of my favourite games of 2013.

Gods Will Be Watching (Browser)

'Gods Will Be Watching' puts you in the position of a Captain trying to hold together the remnants of his crew, stranded on a virus infected planet, inhabited by hostile aliens. You have to ration your time and attention to keep everyone sane, warm and fed while also trying to save some action points to also fix a radio (your only way off this cankerous rock).

Resource management in gaming is nothing new, but GWBW uses it in a new way.

One of the other indie developers that I follow on Facebook posted a plea to help these guys with their indiegogo project, knowing their good taste and seeing what I think can be considered good graphics, I checked out the page and was happy to find their Lundum Dare 26 entry (which by the way got 2nd at the contest).

What I particularity like about it is it mood, claustrophobic and depressing, they only use this one frame and through the dialogues that you engage in, slowly a more story seeps out and it's everything I love about subtle sci-fi (as I like to call it).

I will definately be trying to work at this one - though it is pretty hard. I put it up there with 'Capsule' if you want to have a real good "Lost in Space Game Weekend"

You can play it here.
And support them on Indiegogo!

The Pinball Arcade (iOS, Android, PlayStation3, PS Vita, Xbox 360, and Mac)

Going to the arcade as a kid, I was never a big pinball person myself.  Although the tables looked cool, I found them kind of arcane with their magical 'specials' and 'lit' ramps and such.  Plus, I was never a good enough player to make my quarter last more than a few minutes.  For that reason I tended to gravitate towards more familiar games such as air hockey, Die Hard Arcade and the Terminator 2 shooter.

However, as arcades have come and gone (and hopefully are coming back again, albeit more sparsely), my interest in pinball has been renewed.  It would seem that pinball and its associated community is still relatively strong, despite the downfall of arcades.  In fact, it is much easier to find a pinball table in a bowling alley than it is to find an older style arcade cabinet.  There seems to be something about pinball that keeps fans dedicated to its upkeep.

I have never been all that impressed with digital pinball games.  Although my wife swears by Epic Pinball (Epic Megagames - DOS), I could never really get in to pinball games in general.  Manipulating the flippers by using buttons on a keyboard just didn't feel right, and the physics always seemed very artificial.  That has all changed though with my discovery of The Pinball Arcade.

I can't remember where I found out about this game.  It could have been a mention on Reddit, or maybe an advertisement in RetroGamer magazine.  Either way it doesn't matter.  This game is the cats meow.

You only have 20 minutes to kill?  Fire up your favourite table and practice hitting the left ramp a few times.  Your schedule suddenly clears up a bit and that twenty minutes becomes an hour of downtime?  Perfect!  Now you can put your practice to good use and go for the jackpot.

Farsight Studios obviously loves pinball and obviously cares about their product.  You can feel it in the fit and finish of the game.  I'm not talking about genius menus trees, or amazing intro cinematics because it has neither of these.  I'm talking about the game play itself.  It. Is. Awesome.  It easily is the closest thing to playing pinball you can experience without having a table in your house.

Tables run for about $4.99 for two (usually), or you can buy the season pack for either $30 or $40 depending on season.  Yes, that seems expensive, but the tables have been beautifully recreated from original, authentic pinball tables.  Plus, the pinball table at the local bowling alley near me costs a dollar per ball, or three balls for two dollars.  It doesn't take a genius to see how fast you can eat through real money, especially when you're new to a table.  This game also includes instructions for every table so that you can unravel those previously mentioned 'arcane' strategies and put them to use racking up points!

Having mentioned the fact that the tables are based off of real tables, I want to speak to this for a moment.  Being a nostalgia junky, I think it is absolutely amazing that a company is taking the time to digitally archive electro-mechanical devices, and that they're doing it properly right from the beginning.  Yes, you can emulate old consoles and arcade cabinets but it's never truly the same.  Somehow, Farsight has done it in such a way that it 'feels' right. It'll never be exactly the same as playing a real table - you can't feel the life of the table through you hands nor can you smell the warm bulbs, but it's pretty freakin' close.  I'm not sure what they've put in their secret sauce, but I hope they never change it!

I highly recommend that anyone with any device (sorry Blackberry!) at least give it a shot.  There is a free table of the month available for play, and you can try any table up to the minimum high score.

Who knows, maybe you'll get hooked as well.  The more pinball fanatics, the better for the community!

|http://www.pinballarcade.com/

Muramasa Rebirth (PS Vita)

The two main playable characters from Muramasa Rebirth

When Muramasa was released for the Wii back in 2009 I cursed myself for not being able to play it. I didn't have a Wii and I didn't even live in a country that sold games at the time. It was yet another game by Vanillaware that I would not get to play. The years passed, pain and jealousy towards others receding into a dull petulent sulking.

A few months back I managed to snag a used Vita from a Chinese student in Oslo that no one trusted enough to buy from. All he wanted was a bit more scratch to somehow survive in this monetary black hole of a city and all I wanted was to play Persona 4 Golden. I thank him now for selling me this system because Muramasa Rebirth has been released for the Vita and it is very, very awesome.

The graphics are so stylish that I sat staring at the screen with my mouth open like an idiot. That is I did, until my girlfriend smacked me in the head for ignoring her. I blinked at her a few times, slightly confused, then simply turned the Vita's screen in her direction. I watched as she was slowly sucked into the colourful little scene, her eyes darting around to take in all the little details. She was especially charmed by how eating dishes in Muramasa is portrayed. Every click of the action button causes a piece of the meal to disappear. Every so often a 'bite' from the dish is accompanied by a voiced line like "I wish I had some sake" from the main character. In another area the wind blows through a field, in a background layer you can only see when you jump. There is motion in these little moments and it is this movement which breathes life into Muramasa Rebirth's 2D world.

Of course the graphics would mean nothing without some substance to the actual gameplay. There's a lot of slashing accompanied by the shattering of swords as you get to grips with how the game controls. It took me a little time to adjust to but soon enough I was flinging my character around the screen with reckless abandon, pointing my blade at anything that even remotely looked like it wanted some.

This isn't supposed to be a detailed review so I'll stop before I go on for hours, and I could. I realise that half of my joyous freak-out is because I've never played the original Muramasa, or even any other Vanillaware games. There are no doubt issues that I haven't seen or grown tired of yet, issues that fans of the original will point out. There will likely be accusations of repetition and a degree of shallowness to something or other.

All I can say is that Muramasa Rebirth is a beautiful game with fluid action that's a hell of a lot of fun to play. You will find something that is without a doubt well worth your time if you allow yourself to be drawn in by its stunning world.

Everyday I'm Working (PC - Freeware)

I love these little experimental contest games, it gives the programmers a chance to try out new ways of expression and storytelling usually bringing the controls and the overall goal down to a bare minimum. I have my own opinion what this game was about, but I don't want to project my interpretation onto anyone willing to try it. It only takes a few minutes to play, chopped into three parts, needs no real skill to "beat" but maybe its worth playing through a few times to try to understand what the artist is trying to say to the gamer. 

You can download it for free here.

Is it a game? It is interactive media? Is it art?