Stadia's she goes

Hey! Guys, have you heard of Stadia? It's really neat!

Sure, it's not better than your next-gen console or your PC worth thousands... wait, you don't have one? Then read on! You can play next gen games without spending a penny on hardware! As long as you have a stable internet connection, that is.

You just buy the game (digitally, of course) and you can play it on any computer! Even an old Chromebook! You can use almost any old controller you have lying around, or keyboard+mouse for some games! The software is available immediately without downloads or updates.

They even have some free to play games right now that you can try, in case you're not sure your internet connection can handle it! All free!

Sure, they'll have you sign up for a free trial of the premium service, which enables 4K video for a handful of games, and unlimited access to a decent library of games... but you don't have to renew if you don't find any value in it! I didn't!

Additionally you can buy a controller that connects to the service via Wi-Fi so you can play on your TV with a Chromecast Ultra. It's like a console, but a lot cheaper!

I'm telling you, you can't afford not to try it. It's the future of gaming, if anything you should check it out just to be a part of history. I used it to play Cyberpunk 2077 on launch day without owning a gaming PC or current-gen console and I loved the experience. 

Here's a referral link, if you happen to sign up for pro I get a free month or pro too.

They have a bunch of neat features that they plan on sharing soon, too. Cloud gaming stuff that consoles or PC simply can't do.

There's only one problem. Google is absolutely screwing the pooch with this one. They are pulling a Wii U.

The Wii U failed because people failed to see its potential. People didn't understand it, therefore people didn't see a reason to try it. It didn't sell well, therefore the company had no incentive to invest in software, accessories, or updates, so they announced a discontinuation, and people started acting like their console will quite literally stop working immediately.

Google has made the launch of the service as confusing as possible. They tried to appeal to the audience that already owns a better system, and left those who could benefit from the system in the dark. To make things worse they recently announced they would close their first-party studio and the media saw this as a call to abandon ship.

Google needs to snap out of it and fire their marketing team before it's too late to break out of that cycle.  I seriously doubt Google will just pull the plug and move on because this is a paid service tied to paid digital and physical products.

Worst case scenario, they just stop investing in it until a reasonable time has passed and they can justify pulling the plug on paying users without much scandal. In the meantime all we can do is throw our support behind it, hoping Google resumes investing and we may soon see what it's really capable of. At any rate, the service is already good, and any software you buy there today will be available to you until you're done with it.

Whenever the games industry tries something new, the hardcore gamer hive mind decides they hate it and soon enough it dies from lack of support from the core audience. But I believe Stadia is a great option for the casual gamers who want to try out all the hot new games but don't want to invest in hardware. It's also a great option for anyone who wants to try one game in particular without committing to a piece of hardware that would just gather dust after they're done with it. The convenience of it all cannot be understated.

If you're the kind of nerd who wants physical copies of thousands of games on a shelf to show off in the background of your unboxing youtube videos, Stadia may not be for you. But if you have streamed more movies than you physically own, you should reconsider. Don't worry, you don't have to throw away your entire game collection for it to work.

If we want the technology to advance, and for games to catch up, we must at least participate in the process. If you've already invested in superior hardware, at least keep it in mind next time a friend or relative asks you whether they should get a PS5 or Xbox, because if they're asking, Stadia is probably a better fit for them. There's no excuse when the service is free to try. Unless you're a hater.

Mario Kart 8: The hype stops here.

I love Mario Kart 8. I come home from work to play it, and stay up night playing. It's great fun, and I'm very happy it's helping drive Wii U sales. Sure, they changed a few things but I see why. You can now only hold one item, which keeps the game more balanced. They practically took away battle mode, but I don't miss it.

Oh, and the graphics are amazing. The game is truly great.

It's also a great disappointment.

FIrst, I want to talk about the anti gravity gimmick. It's pretty cool, but poorly implemented. When I first heard about it, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities, but every second idea was for Rainbow Road. Here you have a race track suspended in the air above the atmosphere, just begging to be turned into a multicolored möbius strip of death. Instead? They took all the magic away and turned into a spaceship-themed track. Yuck.

They made only ONE möbius strip track, and it's a "circuit" track with trees and bushes on both sides. Seriously. Upside down trees. It's horrible. Almost every track that features anti gravity segments turns the scenery around as well, so you get no sense of defying gravity.

Also, very rarely is it used for running along walls, and even more rare is racing on the actual ceiling. Instead they tacked it on (in the last minute, it seems) to a few steep hills or sharp curves where normal karts would have done just right.

One thing that bothers me too is bikes, they look so weird in anti-gravity that I always use karts.

Here's a few more missed opportunities:

• Turning a few SNES tracks into möbius strips, or fold the entire track so half of it is now the ceiling.
• Anti gravity mayhem in the Wii's half-pipes. Turn a few of them into actual pipes.
• Steep climbs when weaker vehicles slow down, followed by steep drops where you speed up uncontrollably. Shy guy falls does this, but it needs to happen more often.
• More straight tracks. In MK7 there were several tracks, including Rainbow Road, where there were no laps. In MK8 there is only one that I can remember. How cool would it be for a track to start in a series of underground water-filled tunnels, then climb along a gigantic beanstalk beyond the clouds? 
• Loop-de-loops! Not a single one!
• A three-sided möbius track where each side is one lap. Technically, it's only one side but you get my drift.

Online play is still a bit of a pain. You still have to open "rooms" and hope your friends show up. What if your friends are offline or playing with random players? Not my problem!

The entire experience until you get to race is pretty bad too. The navigating through menus is insufferable, especially if more than player is present.

Finally, the game is pretty hostile towards the gamepad. Why force the game into split-screen mode for a two-player race when there's two screens? How about a spectator mode where the player uses the gamepad screen and others can watch from a third-person perspective on the big screen?

Hopefully the last few concerns can be patched, and even though the unimaginative track design is inexcusable, I would gladly pay for a couple extra DLC "cups". I know the game will get patched for Amiibo support, so get to it Nintendo! Make it perfect!

Outdated Review: The "Denpa" Men: They Came By Wave

OK. There's a free demo out there for this game, so I won't waste my time telling you why you should get this game. Just play the demo.

I, however, want to tell you why you should get the demo. Denpa men is a JRPG in the classical sense, a dungeon-crawler if you will. But at the same time it's a very interesting experiment.

[insert flashback sound effect here]

Back in the day, when games were about gaming and not about story, RPG's (now known a JRPG's, before the gaijin ruined the genre) were the exception. These games were meant to be more of an interesting interactive story, inspired by classic western table-top RPG's (circle closed). Somehow one of the tropes of the genre was that battles had to be strategic, and turn based. Whenever a game broke away from the formula and added action, it was demoted to an "adventure" game.

The thing was, that the general impression was that if you wanted a really good story, you wanted an RPG, and usually that meant muscling through hours of tedious grind. You had to work HARD for your story (or you could just buy a book). Anyway, my point is, the 16-bit era was tough. WE had it tough. Kids nowadays get all kinds of cool stories even with the dumbest of first person shooters.

Curious thing, though, is that many of us eventually got used to the grind, and learned to appreciate it. Denpa Men is all about this. The turn-based combat. The strategic building of a team. The dungeon crawling. The story? Meh. You won't be buying this game for the story, sorry. But bear with me.

They took all the fun things about JRPG combat and streamlined it all the way. For example, when an enemy hits all your guys, you're just told how much damage they received in average (their individual gauges in the lower screen show HP in detail, still). When you set all your guys to attack, the animation shows them just rushing and ganging up on the enemy, then you're told the total damage made. Your party is made of 8 guys, so imagine having to wait for all of them to attack! If you've ever played a JRPG, you know most of the time you just set all of your party to attack! But you know what they did? They made an "everybody just attack" button! Oh, sweet, glorious grind! Sure, sometimes you need to do other stuff, and those get their own animations, but it's still pretty smooth. All commands are given at the beginning of the turn, Dragon Quest style, so you can use your touchscreen to give the specific orders, then when you're done, hit the "all attack" button to set everybody else on attack mode.

They even threw in an auto mode, so everybody attacks unless their "Antenna Power" is useful. You gotta approach this one with caution. It may make things a bit too easy. The AI for the auto is pretty meta, this means anybody with an attack or debuff power will use it unless the enemy is impervious to it and, healers will only heal when necessary. So it makes exploiting the enemies' weaknesses a bit to easy. Unless you do what I do and spend your day fine-tuning your powers and equipment into a deadly, fail-proof, auto-mode machine.

There's the added gimmick of HOW you find the Denpa Men. Somehow the game reads radio waves around you and generates Denpa men from them. The game's backstory is that Denpa (literally "radio waves" in Japanese) reside in radio waves, so basically they reside in actual locations. You will find specific Denpa men on your living room whenever you scan it, then some more at work. They each have a name, color, face,  personality and are attached to a real-life location, so you will find yourself recognizing them, even if you don't catch them. These personalities would be more amusing if they spoke throughout the game, but they only speak when you chose to talk to them. Yes, they totally acknowledge you as the player, and their strategist.

Anyways, the game is an interesting experiment in which they made a JRPG that's all about the grind and not really about the story. And it works. The monsters are adorable, dungeons are pretty neat, and music is super catchy, so you find yourself grinding for fun.  Buy it, it's only ten bucks. Get the demo if you don't believe me.

Haters Gonna Hate

Hey kids! Today I’m going to cover a subject I have mentioned before, so to avoid repetition, please peruse the following links for context.

• Softcore
• Revenge of the (hardcore) Nerds
• My lawn, and why you should get off it

Based on recent events, and the links provided, if you have been following this blog (and by “you” I mean “nobody”) you might have seen this coming. I want to talk about the WiiU announcement on the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Regarding the other brands, I saw many of the other presentations, and only a handful of games caught my eye, but in the end it’s all just sequels and software with very few innovations. Sure, the games look sweet, but that’s the standard nowadays. Oh and a handful of WiiU Gamepad imitations.

As an out-of-the closet Nintendo fanboy, I watched the pre-E3 presentation on Nintendo Direct and watched the actual presentation live on TV. What I saw blew my mind. I immediately went on to the Interwebs to discuss this with my peers. What I found made me not want to live in this planet anymore.

I tried to show the videos to my friends and most just flat out refused to watch. That’s right; many just rejected the concept before even knowing what it was. Kids on various social networks kept bitching that Nintendo stole Microsoft’s XBOX 360 controller design. Do you seriously think Microsoft made that from scratch?

Many criticized the Wii’s lack of third party support, probably the only true argument on the hater’s side. And while, sure, it’s a known fact that Nintendo did not play well with others, at the same time, no big budget game developer is going to waste time re-designing a game to make it playable on a system that is so different. With the new classic pro controller, developing games for the WiiU is going to be the same as the other systems, and you can tell because many developers have already brought their franchises to the WiiU. You see? They just wanted it easy, and it looks like this time around Nintendo is making it easy.

I’ve defended as well as criticized Nintendo’s decisions before, but you know what? I’ve decided I don’t need to anyway. Nintendo is a corporation, and what corporations do is make money. It is wiser to sell affordable entertainment to the masses than to sell expensive toys to a loud minority. That’s right, the “hardcore gamer” demographic is a puny, pathetic little niche in the market, just look at the sales figures.

As the meme goes, “Haters gonna hate”. I’m done defending Nintendo. The only way the “hardcore” crowd would have approved the WiiU is if Iwata had stood on the stage, pointed at a picture of a piece of hardware and said “It allows you to play Call of Duty on your Xbox360 while your mom gets you more pizza rolls”.

I know the WiiU will be successful and I will buy one as soon as I can. I know the gamepad will bring much innovation to game design, as well as practical ways to use the console on a daily basis. In know high sales figures paired with more familiar controls will bring more third party games. I know the MiiVerse will be the ultimate gaming social network. I know that by the time Sony and Microsoft announce new hardware, WiiU will already have dominated the market, and I now that developers will still continue to develop for the WiiU, 360 and PS3 long after this next generation launches (Did you know game stores still stock Playstation2 software?) It’s going to be an awesome experience, and it’s sad that I’ll have to share it with strangers
instead of my friends. But, oh well, haters gonna hate!

Hey! Listen! Leave Navi alone!

"Fly, Navi, fly! The fate of the forest, nay, the world, depends upon thee!" - The Deku Tree

When I first saw The Legend of Zelda, one of the things that most impressed me was Navi. You see, I believed they had changed the way games would be made that day. They had figured a way to make a "living, breathing" cursor that helped you navigate a 3D world. It wasn't a dumb arrow, a blinking highlight or such. It wouldn't beep, or even halt the game with a text message to catch your attention; instead you'd get a cheerful "HEY!"

After that game I expected game creators to resort to more in-game resources to point the player in the right direction so the storytelling could flow. I daydreamed about the day one of the members in your party in a JRPG would point and say "maybe we should check that out". Instead we got stuck looking at cursors, arrows, HUDs, life gauges…

I'm pretty sure Miyamoto and his team were also enamored with the whole Navi concept. For the first five minutes of the game you'd think she was the protagonist! The scene in which she zips through the forest with her own catchy theme playing in the background, dodging kokiris here and there, only to bump into a fence! The way she shakes it off and continues on her quest to save the world. She HAD to find the boy… the boy with no fairy. I guess it missed its mark with the rest of mankind, but to me she was established as an important character for the remainder of the game. Not just a cursor.

Whenever she went "hey!" I knew there was something I should watch out for, and eventually she became white noise just like every other sound effect in the game, just like the gazillion footsteps, Link's fierce war cry every time he swings his sword or rolls (HHYYYYAAAAAAHHH!!!!!) or the horrible warning you get when running low on hearts (on every single Zelda game). But still, a human voice is always a thousand times more pleasing to the ear than a random chime.

Why is it, then, that Navi gets so much hate? Nobody ever bashes Link's overacting. The answer is simple; it's just another internet meme that refuses to die. I'm pretty sure someone thought it'd be funny to post a video of her repeating her famous line over and over, then some idiot who had never played the game listened to it, reached the conclusion that Navi is annoying, and decided to forward it to his friends, who in turn started remixing the sound. Before you know it everybody hates Navy out of peer pressure. Do you even remember what the game is like? She never goes off on a loop like that! Lies, all lies!

If you're going to let the internet brainwash you, let Downcast do it. I'd never steer your wrong! Now fly! Buy yourself a Nintendo 3DS and a copy of Ocarina of Time 3D! Then come back in a week or two when I will have an in-depth review of the game, even though everybody knows it's awesome already! Go!

Seriously?

This is some serious bullshit! Why didn't Downcast get a pre-launch 3DS? Pretty much every other gaming site got one! Even Tiny Cartridge got one!

Here at Downcast we are SERIOUS about video game journalism. We have committed countless minutes to seriously hyping the 3DS and being total absolute fanboys about it. And by we I mean I.

I can guarantee at least one sale has come from our hyping (mine is already preordered).

So, Reggie, if you're reading this, drop me a line so I can send you my address and your models can come over (might want to send dudes because the wife will probably be here) with that nifty box and all that software and stuff and we can all just forget about this huge misunderstanding.

私には、3DSをしたいと私は、今すぐ欲しい！

'Nuff said!

Hype: Chocobo's Crystal Tower

Ever since my computer broke and I'm forced to browse the web using either the DSi or Wii browsers I've been pruning my daily online routine. At one point I seriously considered quitting Facebook altogether, until I found out that Square-Enix is bringing their most popular franchise, Final Fantasy, into the world of social gaming. Chocobo's Crystal Tower (CCT) and Knights of the Crystals (KotC) are now open for Beta testing.

I know I've bashed FB gaming before, but this is different! We're talking Square-Enix here! I'm not going to go into a full review, since these games are still in beta testing, but the word needs to get out as soon as possible.

Both games are terribly simple and don't stray too far of the classic social game formula. Some even compare KotC with Mafia Wars and CCT with Farmville… meets Mafia wars. The only difference between these and the millions of FB games out there is the use of the popular franchise and an obvious increase in production value in terms of graphics and music. I expect there will be better customer service and less glitches.

I tried KotC and I didn't really dig it, but if you like Mafia Wars and its clones the upgrade in graphics might make you want to switch. It's just not my cup of tea.

I did, however, fall in love with CCT. The chocobos are so freaking adorable! In this game you are in charge of your own chocobo ranch. You raise chocobos from eggs and are in charge of keeping them well fed and clear of dust bunnies (no chocobo poo!) Once they reach adulthood you equip them and send them on dungeon raids, if successful they come back with a reward. You use these rewards to get better food, equipment and decorations for your ranch.

The social aspect comes in when you start breeding. You need to keep new chocobos coming because old chocobos won't go on raids, and to avoid in-breeding you always have to mate one of your chocobos with someone else's. The "Farmville" part is when you're encouraged to visit your friends' farms and tend to their chocobos. You get paid and gain experience just as if it were your own farm. But that’s where the similarities end. I believe you actually get to see the farms as the owner left them whereas in FV your friends' farms always are always in an embarrassing crisis situation. You are also encouraged to leave (some of your precious) lucky feathers on your friends' (or even a strangers') chocobos to boost their "luck" stat, hoping that a true friend will return the favor.

The only things that I didn't like were that there was no auto-save and that the different screens aren't too intuitive to navigate.

As for the beta testing, yes, the games are still glitchy and go offline occasionally. If you're not familiar with the process I suggest you wait for the final release. Otherwise, by all means, give them a try! The games are free and better that what FB currently has to offer! Even if you don't enjoy them as much, please play for a while and try to get as many friends as possible to become hopelessly addicted. Consider this: every player that you manage to "turn" is a player that you take away from Zynga and a player that may be experiencing the world of Final Fantasy for the very first time (and subject to banner ads for the latest Square-Enix games!). What could possibly go wrong? So, check 'em out and be sure to come post a comment to tell us how it went.

Hype: The Last Story

Hey, guys, have you heard about Mistwalker Studios' The Last Story? Well, I'll tell you about it anyway!

The other day I was browsing through my RSS reader and found a story about The Last Story. The writer advised the readers to keep an eye out for this game. I quickly realized why; this was the next great Final Fantasy.

If you're anything like me (or most hardcore Final Fantasy fans) you may feel like the last great FF game was IX. The recent ones, though more technologically advanced, never really reach that epicness that once characterized the series. This is because IX was the last FF game in which Hironobu Sakaguchi was directly involved. He assumed the role of executive producer for following iterations and eventually just quit Square-Enix altogether.

Square-Enix has been milking the franchise ever since Sakaguchi went to establish Mistwalker in 2004 and the result is just not the same. Chocobos and moogles alone do not make a Final Fantasy. While I was inanely hyped over Final Fantasy XIII (wow, 13 already?) the more I learned about it, the more I lost interest. Today it's all the way down to 0. I really don't care about it anymore. I felt I was destined to play pointless casual games for the rest of my life.

This announcement, however, fills me with joy. The prodigal son is back. The REAL Final Fantasy will rise from the ashes like it just used a Phoenix Down. Let me tell you why. Mistwalker has made it very obvious their intention is to write a proverbial love letter to the players who made them famous and felt like they had been abandoned.

The first sign is the title; a direct synonym of the former. Final = Last. Story = Fantasy. Even the title logo uses an art stile very similar to titles of the FF series. Every true fan knows the tale of a desperate video-game company that after a series of unsuccessful games decided to blow its entire (remaining) budget in one (ironically titled) final attempt before they closed their doors for good, and how it not only saved them from bankruptcy but set a standard for the genre. Sakaguchi has made various statements that he is treating this game "as if it were his last" even though all signs point to this game being a huge success.

The second sign is that the game is a Wii exclusive. Back in the day all FF games were Nintendo exclusives on the NES, Game Boy and SNES (Later they jumped to the Playstation apparently because of a perceived need for CD-ROM technology). Even though the Wii has limited graphics the trailers already look amazing, and many critics hail it as the best-looking game for the console.

The third sign was recently revealed. Mistwalker has confirmed that Nobuo Uematsu is composing the music for this game. For those of you who only play FPS games; Uematsu is the musical genius behind all final fantasy games up until IX and a collaborator in most later entries (even as a freelancer after he quit Square-Enix on 2004… hmmm).

The only missing component is the character design. It appears neither Yoshitaka Amano nor Tetsuya Nomura are involved in this project. This worries me because I'm not particularly crazy about the characters I've seen in the trailer. To me they just look like a squad of generic anime characters; the one thing that discourages me from playing other JRPGs (this could be in part due to the original Japanese dialogue). I hope these characters turn out to be as interesting as their predecessors.

Now that we've settled that this game is indeed the Final Fantasy Messiah, let's move on to what's new. The game will feature both online cooperative and competitive play, a first in the "series". Some say this will be a lot like Monster Hunter's online play, which is awesome except for the matchmaking. The combat appears to be very tactical, with everything happening in real-time and players ducking for cover or hiding from large foes.

Besides that, there's no telling what else will change until I see it in action, but I would rather they weren't that obvious with the similarities. I'm afraid that one problem with the excessive subliminal links to the FF series is that this could bring forth the curse of the sequel. Besides, players may be constantly bewildered by any new item, job/class and spell naming conventions (and a serious lack of chocobos).

I haven't been this exited about a video game since the Dreamcast days. I'm very glad some of the minds behind the some of the greatest videogames ever are stepping away from an old, beat-up franchise and starting anew, knowing that if they stick to the original "recipe" the fans will respond, and I certainly hope the success of this game makes more great artists realize this before it's too late.