ESRB Adding Something New to Labels

    Hello everyone, just a quick news post here. While this is a retro game blog, I can't help but keep tabs on what's going on in the world of gaming as a whole. One such thing is the massive beast that has become micro transactions. These things are everywhere in modern gaming. The most newsworthy of these as of late have been loot boxes and the fiasco that is EA's Star Wars Battlefront II. For those of you who don't know what the whole loot box craze is let me quickly fill you in. Many games such as Blizzard's Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm offer loot boxes as a reward for progression. In the case of Heroes, each time you level up a hero you get a loot chest that can contain a variety of cosmetic items, mounts, and even new heroes. If you don't like what you got you can use in game currency to re-roll the box.

    These progression type boxes are certainly rewarding and using in game currency that you earn by playing to re-roll the boxes most do not take issue with. The problem is that these boxes can also be purchased with real money. Some games offer intensives to spending money. To use Heroes of the Storm again as an example. If you buy any loot boxes with real money, you get a guaranteed rare item. For Heroes this is not a big deal as again, the majority of the stuff you can get is cosmetic. While purchasing loot boxes in Heroes may not effect the game, it still runs into the same problem as this model... Purchasing loot chests that may or may not contain upgraded weapons or heroes. This was a major problem upon the release of  EA's Star Wars Battlefront II. The best heroes were locked behind loot chests. You can get chests by playing, but it will take an incredible amount of time to get what you want, so the company really wanted you to gamble to try and get the best heroes.

    The controversy over these loot boxes has gone on for months now. Nobody really seems to know exactly what to do about it. Many people say that it is straight up gambling. I can see the argument. You are buying something without knowing if you will get what you want and it's up to some computer randomly generating your winnings. If you don't like what you get you might be able to pull the level on the slot machine and try again. Like I said, I can see that argument big time.So in response to all of this and games potentially having more purchases than the game itself (DLC), the ESRB will be adding "In Game Purchases" on the label of games that have to option to spend money once the game is purchased. In today's gaming market that means that you will be seeing this label more often than not.

    It makes sense to have it in my opinion. I've heard so many stories of parents not paying attention to what their kid is doing, having them blow a bunch of money on DLC or loot boxes, and then seeing it on their bills. Well yeah, parents should be paying closer attention and I think that's a big part of why ESRB is adding this to the labels. It gives parents that heads up that the game has the option of in game purchases. Overall, I think this is a good thing. The loot box debate is one that continues to exist and grow as to whether or not it should be officially labeled as gambling and fall into gambling laws and what not. Is it? Hard to say, but it certainly is something all gamers should at least keep one eye on as it is quite an interesting debate.

Rampage Finale

    Hello everyone and welcome to third and final blog looking at games in Rampage series. To this point we've looked at the series entertaining arcade debut along with it's remake, Rampage World Tour, and Rampage 2: Universal Tour. While I find all three games to be good mindless fun, they are by no means without it's flaws. Critically, the games all pretty much reviewed as average games. Nothing special, but not bad either. After Rampage 2 attempted to breathe some new life and features into the series, there were two more games that did things their own way.

****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

    Rampage through time was published by Midway Games and released on the Sony Playstation in North America on June 9th, 2000. The story of the game picks up soon after the events of Rampage 2: Universal Tour. With the mutants effectively stranded on the moon, Scumlabs develops a time machine to help with the cleanup effort. When they use it though, the mutants manage to get back to Earth and are joined by yet another mutant, Harley the warthog. The mutants manage to enter the time machine and well.... travel through time destroying the past, present, and future. Eventually the monsters are again defeated, but not after an entire timeline has been destroyed. 

    Gameplay wise, there really is not much new here. You're still going around eating people and smashing pretty much anything else in sight for a time.... Okay so I lied. There is a major gameplay change and it is something that I feel kills this game outright. After destroying a few cities you are forced to do a minigame. Now this is not something new as the previous installment also had minigames but here is the difference. If you are playing single player, the AI will actually control two other mutants. So in each level there are three mutants on the screen. You would think the AI would work with you to help bring destruction through time, but no, they mostly go after you and each other. To make matters all the more frustrating is that you have to beat them in the minigames. If you do not place first in a mini game, it is game over. The minigames themselves have changed too. In Rampage 2 you may need to eat more people or destroy a building faster than you opponent. This actually had some strategy behind it as the mutants all had their different stats. If you were playing single player the minigames were basically a way to net health, powerups, or lives. In Rampage through time though, the minigames are basically old arcade games with Rampage characters. I mean literally you compete in a game of Pacman with Rampage character heads. I don't even know what else to type about that. On the plus side they did add some more moves to the mutants. On the downside, none of them accomplish anything that a basic punch or kick can't do.

    The problems continue in the sound department. By that I mean not much has changed. Honestly this time. It's basically the same tired sound effects from the previous two games. The music isn't anything special either for what that's worth. By the third console installment in the series you would think we'd have more sound effects than the same woman screaming, the same man screaming, and the same explosion noises. Lastly, the graphics department became stagnant as well. The game does not improve upon the graphics of Universal Tour. In fact, they may have even taken a small step back. No improvements have been made on any backgrounds, foregrounds, etc. Personally, this doesn't hurt the game much for me, but I understand where the frustration comes from.

    Rampage through time is the low point in this series for me. I was able to enjoy the previous three games, but just could not get into this one. I blame the vast majority of that on the single player problems. Having two AI controlled mutants that exist largely to mess with you is just frustrating. There is nothing fun about it. Yes knocking your friends off buildings and beating them up is fun. Getting knocked off of buildings and getting beaten up by your friends is fun. Having that happen by a computer, not so much. There's a charm to couch multiplayer. You can trash talk and have fun with it. Against a computer, you just get frustrated. That frustration peaks when a minigame loss equals game over. Imagine playing a 50 turn game in Mario Party, getting to turn 49, losing your first minigame and getting a game over. That's Rampage Through Time. The game had potential, but a series of blunders and I'd say a lack of common sense doomed the game to be the worst in the series.

    The last game in the Rampage series before it took the leap into more modern gaming consoles was Rampage Puzzle Attack. The game is similar to other Drop Mania games that came out around that time. It was published by Midway Games and released in North America on November 29th, 2001. The gameplay is simple, drop two colored blocks at a time. As like colors join together they form a larger block. Eventually you'll get a detonate block of that color that will remove the big block. What do the Rampage characters have to do with any of this? Nothing. You pick one and it hangs out on the side of your screen and will punch the puzzle board when you detonate something. It's a fun puzzle game, but can and does exist without the random Rampage mutants.

    It is funny to me that this game is sometimes looked upon as the best of the Rampage series considering it's not a true Rampage game at all. All in all it is a fun puzzle game, but that's about all to say about it.

    So with that we have reached the end of our journey through the Rampage games. The series would not end with Puzzle Attack as Rampage Total Destruction would come out on the Wii, Gamecube, and PS2 in 2006. That game would see mixed reviews, as is the case with pretty much all of them. Again, the lack of things to do outside of just smashing buildings and stuff led to many complaints about the game. Now in 2018. Silence. No new Rampage games have come out since 2006. Will that change with the Rampage movie just over the horizon? Who knows. For now though Rampage will live on in arcades featuring games from a time not forgotten at all. It will live on on both the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation. It will kind of live on on the Game Boy Advance as well. At the end of the day though, no matter what game you look at, it lives in the past. Perhaps it is best kept there. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a remake with updated graphics and sound, but by no means do I find it needed. 

Final Thoughts: Rampage as a whole is a lot of fun for a while. It is good mind numbing experience that allows you to just destroy everything. It is best experienced with friends. As a series it has alright highs and low lows. All that said, Rampage is a series that I will continue to revisit as it always has that fun classic arcade feel without needing to dedicate too many quarters or practice to really enjoy. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this trip through the Rampage series! 

      

Switching Gears for 2018

    Welcome back everyone. Sorry about my absence as of late. Things just keep popping up and since the holidays I've been pretty much running nonstop. That being said, I've still been able to get some games in so I still have loads that I'd like to talk about, or type about on here. The title of this blog is Switching Gears. It's named so because I am going to be slightly altering the content of this blog. For the longest time this blog has been a retro only blog that covered games from the Atari through the Sony Playstation libraries. For a short time there was a sprinkling of Heroes of the Storm thrown in, but that didn't last long as that game keeps on changing so looking back at those build blogs, they're extremely outdated. For Christmas, my wonderful wife got me a Nintendo Switch. My interest in the system peaked not because of the great new games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the incredible amount of retro inspired games. Blaster Master Zero and Aces of the Luftwaffe are just two examples of games that caught my attention long before I got the console, and have been a blast to play.

    That being said, I am going to expand the coverage of this blog to include retro inspired games as well. I do not own a PS4 or an Xbox One so my coverage on those games will be limited to the Switch and PC. In addition of these retro inspired games, I'll be doing a sort of personal comparison with some of the new games to other entries in the series. For example, I may compare Super Mario Odyssey to Super Mario 64 or in Breath of the Wild's case, I may compare it to the Nintendo 64 duo and even the original NES game. These are just ideas I'm toying around with. I know the new games have been reviewed to death on any website and honestly, I don't want to review them. What I want to do is look at them and see where there may possibly be some inspiration or parallels from past games.

    Another thing I'll be picking back up this year is the Kirby Series. Since the series has continued to grow and expand I am going to put a cap on it upon reaching Kirby and the Amazing Mirror for Game Boy Advance. As much as I do love the Kirby series, I have not played many of the recent entries in the series. In fact I haven't played a single one on the 3DS or the one on the Wii U and I have very limited experience in some of the DS games. I think ending it at the Game Boy Advance games is a good way to go. Kirby got his start on the Game Boy, so I find it fitting to end the review series with the last Game Boy.

    So getting back on track. Expect to see the final installment in the Rampage series I was working on before my absence soon. There are two games remaining that I will cover in that series. One is on the Sony Playstation and the other is actually on the Game Boy Advance. After that look for a few blogs a month to come out. My ideal goal would be one a week, but we'll see how close I can get to that. For now though I hope all is well and I look forward to bringing you more content soon!