Age of Empires II is probably the height that the RTS genre will ever reach. I know there's an argument in there for Blizzard's RTS games and there's probably a couple people that would fight for Command and Conquer, but they are wrong, it's Age of Empires II.
I spent hours setting up LAN parties between my brothers and I, and we would have epic three hour long battles against the A.I. I'd hold the line with Teutonic knights, keeping their annoying small groups away from our early civilizations, while my brothers constructed siege equipment before laying waste to our enemies one by one.
The Vita is my darling. Even though the world didn't accept her, I love her.
She gave me access to dozens of PS1 games that I earn to play on the go, some of my favorite PSP games digitally, and introduced me to missed gems like Persona 4. Despite what most message boards say, the Vita also has a quality library of exclusives.
I'm locked in a hotel room for the next two months. I'll admit, the Wii-U took a lot of my couch playing time away from the Vita, but bringing the Wii-U with me wasn't an option. So I'm back to my old girlfriend.
Here's some of the more recent games I've been playing.
Nintendo recently announced that the Zelda Wii-U game that they kept promising would be Wii-U exclusive that was still coming... is now going to be cross platform. This essentially means we're going to get a Twilight Princess situation where the NX version isn't as good as it could be and the Wii-U version is going to be missing whatever gimmick the NX version has.
I have a Wii-U and a Vita. Both are probably the most depressed of fan bases in the mid-2010s. It's interesting to see how each handles it.
Vita
The Vita fanbase started getting really salty the first E3 that Sony didn't mention the Vita. I can't remember the exact year, but I think it was 2014.
I think Sony's marketing has long been the issue with the fans of the Vita.
The PSP fans were generally people that liked weird or Japanese games, were into home brewed systems, or wanted console experiences on a handheld. All three of these groups were very happy with what they got.
Well, Sony said the Vita would be almost as powerful as the PS3 and promised AAA console games on the run. Their first big marketing campaign backed Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified. The commercial had a bunch of teenager / 20 somethings dudes jumping around and fighting.
Generally the more sub-titles in a game title, the larger the dumpster fire it will be. And it was. This game was critically and commercially panned.
Another AAA third party title came in Assassin's Creed, but it was an incredibly boring adventure. They took the worst parts of Assassin's Creed, slowed the combat down a ton, and soon people weren't sure they ever wanted these games in the first place.
Well, it was too late to pull the plug. Killzone and Uncharted were already coming, so Sony doubled down on the "this is a console in your hands."
And a significant percentage of Vita owners bought the handheld on the promise that we would be seeing Drake's adventures, Helghast being assassinated, perhaps even a new Infamous or Grand Turismo.
Well, things went from bad to worse. We learned that Bioshock Vita was never going to happen. There wouldn't be a new Infamous. Hell, there wouldn't even be a second Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.
Soon indie developers were put to the forefront of the Vita marketing. Some Japanese games like Freedom Wars filled AAA gaps. But the one thing we weren't getting was the AAA console games we dreamed of.
It was impossible to go to the internet forums and not see people throwing so much hate toward Sony. They felt abandoned, ripped off, swindled.
These are the same people however that spoke of how they put 100 hours into Persona 4, played through Uncharted 2-3 times, loved Gravity Rush, could not wait for Tearaway to be another bullet point on why the Vita is so great.
But they hated Sony.
I feel like an outlier. Maybe I'm just part of the silent and happy. Until I got my Wii-U, I sat on the couch almost nightly embraced by the warm glow of my Vita. I'd play through PS1 JRPGS while watching TV. I spent several hospital stays with Uncharted, Killzone, and Persona 4. I was happy with what I got out of my Vita.
I wish the handheld wasn't dying because it truly is one of the greatest devices I've ever used, but sometimes you have to let things go.
Sony made several missteps. The marketing being the obvious one, but they created what was supposed to be a "console" experience with two touch screens but no bottom triggers. This has recently filled the Vita releases with phone ports. And don't even get me started on the memory cards.
Wii-U
The Wii-U crowd reacted a little differently.
I think because they were one of the "three major consoles" this generation, they've been beat down by every non-Wii-U user for years telling them how much their console is inferior and how it's sales are the worst.
People that bought a Wii-U after launch knew that they would have to stay out of general gaming forums because it would just be punishment.
But the other thing Wii-U owners felt was that Nintendo would never abandon them. Until the news of Zelda being ported to the NX, the forums were still filled with people saying, "Nintendo promised us that if we just waited this would be a Wii-U only Zelda." Fans took the countless delays with grace.
And now they feel hurt. It's much less anger. Much more depression. It's like when dad goes out on a cigarette run and never comes home.
If you look at the Wii-U library, there are some insanely good games. New Mario Wii-U, Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, Zombie-U, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze... but half the library is filled with ports of Nintendo's Gamecube games.
I've killed the battery on the gamepad a dozen times playing Twilight Princess, Mario World, and Mario Maker on the couch.
I do wish the console had another year of life. I felt like I was just hitting a great stride, but at the same time, I've gotten many hours out of the Wii-U and I haven't touched large portions of the library like Pikmin 3, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, New Mario Wii-U, Wonderful 101, and Smash Brothers.
There's a part of me that wishes the internet was more widely used in the 90s. I'd love to see how the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast fans dealt with the quick death of their consoles. Or the couple hundred people that bought into the Virtual Boy learning that they would never see more than the 30 or so games they got.
It's a weird situation we have nowadays. We're more than happy to shell out more than a console for a new phone every two years, a tablet, a TV. But we have this expectation that our game consoles should be around for 7-8 years. Do we need to shift expectations or is the list of traditional consoles so close to be over that we just complain for the next couple years and get on with our lives?
Played on: Wii-U Release date: March 4, 2016 (Original November 19, 2006)
Many people don't like Twilight Princess because it's very vanilla. It rehashes a lot of stuff from Ocarina of Time. And they changed Link's sword hand. But we got this because everyone complained about Toon Link when Wind Waker came out.
All of those things mean nothing to me because:
I never had a Nintendo 64, so I never played Ocarina of Time.
I'm not a man baby when it comes to Toon Link, sword hands, or all the other things Zelda fans complain about.
I actually really enjoyed my time with Twilight Princess on the Wii in 2006. I have a Wii-U, so when the HD version of Twilight Princess was announced, it was a no-brainer, I was going to pad my Wii-U collection with this.
Played on: PlayStation 4 Release date: March 8, 2016
When Ubisoft showed The Division at E3 the first time, it was when I realized, "Wow, the new consoles really are coming." It was the first game I wanted for my PlayStation 4.
Ubisoft has my number. If they slap Tom Clancy's name on a box, I'm probably going to buy it because dammit, I love my shooters to be based in a more realistic world. The Division is probably the most non-Clancy game Ubisoft has released under the name. Honestly, I think the game suffers from trying to shoe-horn some Clacy-ness into it.
I've been putting off writing this review as like most MMO type games, this one is constantly evolving and unlocking additional content. I've gotten to a point where I feel comfortable in knowing what the current version of The Division is.
With the Kickstarter launching for a new Fear Effect, I decided it was time to dust off the double jewel case and see if I still enjoyed the original, almost 20 years later.
It was a weird time in gaming. Japanese games still largely ruled and anime was incredibly popular on Cartoon Network. At the same time, to appeal to American's, a lot of games sort of had this injection of "attitude." It's something you can see in the top walk through on GameFaqs. The author really told that mom off. Many games felt like a Mountain Dew commercial with samurai.
I remember drooling over the advertisements in previews in the Official PlayStation Magazine as far back as when it was still called "Fear Factor." (Before the metal band, Fear Factory, threatened a lawsuit)
Played on: Windows Release Date: March 22, 2016 (June 25, 1993 original)
Warning: There are a couple of puzzle spoilers throughout.
In 1995, I spent most of my time in our dark, partially finished basement playing first person shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein.
I was also a giant Star Wars fan, so naturally I coveted Dark Forces. I wanted it so badly, but I was 11 and my paltry $2.50 a week allowance wasn't enough to cover the Dark Forces price tag.
Then one fateful day, I was taking in the giant wall of Sam's Club computer software, and I saw The LucasArts Archives Vol. 1. Ignoring most the games in the package, I saw Dark Forces included. My parents granted me a loan. I covered $30 of the package and forfeited my allowance over the next several weeks/months.
Dark Forces ended up being a three mission demo that came on it's own disk, but I couldn't see the text that said, "Demo" through the clear plastic window on the packaging. I was taken like a chump. I can forgive the prequels, but this is the real reason I dislike George Lucas. (Just kidding, George seems like a really nice and cool guy)
It took me so long to figure out how to beat that terrible maze of a sewer level on Dark Forces, that the refund policy expired and I couldn't return this box of games.
Not wanting to feel like I lost money on the deal, I went ahead and installed Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle and what happened was magic.
I was immediately pulled into one of the toughest, funniest, and most rewarding adventure games I've ever played.
