High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks 
Sunday Comics: Dead Island When Seth Hay arrived at the “Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy” concert last weekend in Toronto, he was met with a lovely surprise. His girlfriend, Cheryl Murray, had bought him tickets to a meet-and-greet with legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and conductor Arnie Roth. After the show, they would get to hang out with the duo, a prospect that Hay said had him “very geeked out”.
One of the most iconic figures in modern role-playing, Final Fantasy‘s Cloud Strife cuts a very distinctive figure, largely due to a combination of spiky blonde hair and his ridiculously huge Buster sword. These features set him apart. They also make him ridiculously easy to twist into whatever form the fan artist so desires.
Microsoft’s Brian Prince has told a panel at GDC China “you will be seeing things in the Xbox platform that’s cloud-specific. I’m already doing it, it’s really exciting, but I can’t tell you about it or else I’ll get fired.” [Gamasutra]
Sony gives PlayStation Plus subscribers the ability to store game saves online via the PlayStation Network with tomorrow’s 3.60 system software update, allowing up to 1000 data files to be stored on 150MB of space as long as the money keeps coming in. Check out the PlayStation Blog for more details.
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The latest episode of GameTrailers’ Mythbusters-esque Pop Fiction series adds a few more nails in the coffin of Final Fantasy VII’s flower girl.
A streaming games service—”cloud gaming”, as the buzzphrase has it—is on Microsoft’s horizon but, for the near-term, it’s not something that can be reasonably delivered to a local-machine user, said the Europe boss for Xbox Live.
Thrilling non-scientific poll time! Online research site Oricon polled 1000 men and women about their favourite video game character. The results?
10. Squall Final Fantasy VIII 10. Yuna Final Fantasy X 10. Professor Layton Professor Layton series 8. Toad Mario Kart 8. Doraemon Doraemon series 7. Chocobo Final Fantasy series
Huh. I’d think of Doraemon as being more an anime character than a video game character, but whatever. There are Doraemon video games. (Trains, too, it seems.) Hit the jump for the rest!
4. Slime Dragon Quest series 4. Solid Snake MGS series 4. Pikachu Pokémon 3. Yoshi Mario series 2. Cloud Final Fantasy VII 1. Mario Mario series
The top three breakdown for men and women is rather interesting. For men, it was 1). Mario 2). Cloud and 3). Solid Snake. For women, it was 1). Mario, 2). Yoshi and 3). Cloud. Everyone loves Mario and Cloud!
好きなテレビゲームのキャラクター、1位は”マリオ” [Oricon Life via Alafista][Pic]
When I checked my Kotaku email this morning I was nearly buried under the dearth that three weeks away brings. But ,one that seemed to keep coming in repeatedly over the last several hours were reports of an extended FF XIII trailer that was unceremoniously ripped from a DVD that was included in a Japanese Final Fantasy “Cloud” book. Much of this footage was seen at E3 and TGs, but there is some new footage in there as well. As an added bonus, there’s an extended FF Versus XIII extended trailer after the jump. The quality on these isn’t the best, but I’m sure with a little searching you can dig up some higher quality footage.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in ]
Tis the season for lots of stress – the holidays and end of semester hysteria usually leave me wanting to crawl under a rock and hibernate for a few weeks – so Ian Bogost’s latest Persuasive Games column for Gamasutra was a welcome read through. The topic this time is on what makes a truly relaxing game. fl0w and Cloud, for all their appearances of being ‘meditative’ and relaxing games, are what Bogost terms “lean forward games”. That is, they’re twitchy and responsive and don’t exactly lend themselves to a truly relaxing experience, no matter how soothing the visuals may be. He also gives a nod to my favourite series of relaxation-through-repetitive-task games:
… the most Zen gardening in a video game by far is in Harvest Moon. The daily reaping, milking, chicken lifting, and related chores require precision, duty, and calm. The crop watering is my pick for the most calming, especially on the Game Boy or DS where the tile-based graphics more explicitly frame which square is which.
Harvest Moon emphasises the repetition of simple tasks as much as, if not more than, their outcomes. Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon are games that invite the player to complete these tasks independent of the long-term goals they facilitate. Both are games one might boot up late at night, before bed, to wind down.
Nothing like infinitely repeating tasks that includes flinging chickens around the barnyard to make for a soothing play experience. It’s a nice little article and a shift from the usual Bogost fare, and he makes some interesting points on the nature of relaxing games.
Persuasive Games: Video Game Zen [Gamasutra]
