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7 Games You Might Miss This Fall
Games Radar has up a piece trying to point out the top seven games you're likely to miss thanks to the many high-profile launches coming this fall. How can a quirky title like Eternal Sonata hope to survive opposite Mass Effect and Blue Dragon? Likewise, will cult status be enough to save NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams when it goes up against the likes of Mario Galaxy on the Wii platform? A list of titles to come back to early next year, or something to help if none of the big names are turning your head.
Don't get too down, pal.
The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes. Sega has fallen painfully, but that's what it takes sometimes to get some kid in there with some good ideas and a soul to make some new content. They have the brands, all they need are the ideas.
Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii. You take risks when you have nothing to lose. EA will never release that awesome ground breaking game - the most they can hope for is frames per second on the 2 point conversion. Is EA going to take manpower off of Nascar 2009 to make the next Katamari? It's profits per quarter might suffer!
But Sega... Sega has nothing to lose and might just take a low budget risk that adds something to the industry. It's only a matter of time.
I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry.
It's like Olivia. She had no body, but she gave me all she had. What she was, actually. And if you ask Seth Able to sing, your bank account might double. Those with less produce more. The zen is the dao is the buddha buddie (holy shit, I'm drunk).
Quirky? Eternal Sonata is awesome. Awesome music, awesome visuals, awesome setting, and for what I could see, awesome gameplay. On the other hand, the Blue Dragon demo confirmed why I'm not so interested in the game: nothing's really bad about it, but it doesn't fascinate me like Eternal Sonata does. The later looks and feels like a mix between a fairy tale and a Thomas Kinkade painting, and few settings can be more interesting than the dreams of a genius. The Chopin theme works wonderfully, and the 4 CD soundtrack is one of the best I've ever seen or heard. The visuals are beyond comparison, at least if you like this style, and the gameplay is simple, fast and addictive, so how could this game be considered "quirky"? It's a damn blessing they even decided to release it in Europe; games this good tend to be Japan-exclusive, who knows or dares to guess why.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
RPGs never used to turn up in Europe because companies like Sony had a rule that the game had to be localised into French and German at least, and often Italian and Spanish as well. For your bog-standard shooter or similar that is not a major hurdle, but for a text-heavy RPG that's a huge (and expensive) undertaking. Additionally RPGs have traditionally not done as well here (though I think this is a bit of a catch-22).