August 2010 – Obsolete Gamer

Villian Spotlight: Kefka Palazzo

It hurts to hear this kind of criticism about the One Winged Angel but I’m about to open your eyes to a true villain. Someone who’s appearance was comical but their lust for destruction was their only drive in life. There wasn’t a waking moment where this monster didn’t think about the end of the world. Many villains feel this way but he isn’t a Cobra Commander or Doctor Claw replica. Where many villains fail and constantly try again, Kefka succeeds. Here’s a look into the devilish antics performed by the supernatural sociopath known as Kefka Palazzo.

Sega Master System

TheForgotton

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars review

Let’s be frank. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars is a very weird and very frustrating platformer from the early ages of the 8-bit era. It was one of my first Sega Master System games, and one of the only ones that I could manage to beat. The levels were colorful, the enemies bizarre, and to this day, I’m still not really sure what the hell the story was about.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Harry Miller : Devolver Digital

I didn’t realize that I liked it that much and don’t understand how my first time playing got so out of hand. I starting the game for the first time at around 5pm one day, when I finally looked up and it was 8am. Where did the time go? Wow!

The Music Hall

J.A. Laraque

Halo OST

Reach is almost in our reach and to celebrate the pending release Obsolete Gamer wanted to take you back to the original Halo soundtrack. Composed and produced by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori it was released in the summer of 2002. It is an awesome soundtrack that featured a wise range of musical styles and really gets you into the game.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Mafia 2

The graphics looked really nice, especially the character models. I was surprised by one of the hookers that had actual real looking breasts rather than cookie-cutter breasts like a character in a super-hero comic book. Kudos for that realism. Graphics I give a score of 8 out of 10. As far as performance goes, with my typical 1024×768 on my 2007 Windows XP gaming PC the game ran fine except when I needed it to, which was when I was trying to drive fast or complete some fast maneuvers in a car (like when they are chasing you drilling you with tommy guns). I guess I can’t expect my PC to last forever but I have played other new games on higher settings that run faster. I give performance a score of 6 out of 10.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Martin Brouard: Frima Studio

Ultima IV was a revolution for me because it had such an epic scope for an RPG at the time. I remember spending a whole summer building up my party and travelling through Britannia’s many cities and dungeons to attain perfection in all 8 virtues. The music was just so awesome that I still find myself humming it from time to time almost 25 years later…

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Kevin Saffel: Heatwave Interactive

Fantastic RPG with a great party system. In fact I love the entire Ultima series, including Ultima Online

The Music Hall

J.A. Laraque

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night OST

Today in the music hall I’d like to share with you one of my favorite soundtracks. Castlevainia has always had good music even back to the Nintendo days. I remember many of the memorable tunes from Super Castlevania, but when SOTN was released on the Playstation I was hooked. Not only was it such a great game, but it has incredibly well composed music that I still listen to today.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

POD: DC Online Universe

Todays Picture of the Day comes from the highly antispasmodic MMO DC Online universe. I have been watching this game developed for a long time now and when I got a chance to try it hands on at E3 I knew it would be a winner for me.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

The Obsolete Gamer Show: Episode 7

We started off with a recap of last week’s show which featured MMO’s and then moved into our Facebook fanpage question of the week which asked which our fans preferred to play PVE or PVP type games. From there we talked about our Insider Discussion question of the week which asked our panel which had a bigger impact on PC gaming RTS or FPS games.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Chris Tremmel

The process has become more complicated, usually requiring a large number of people to make something significant. The money involved in some of the triple A games is staggering with some budgets now reaching 100 million dollars. That naturally changes everything in terms of peoples priorities, and agendas. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Jonathan Sabella: Ninth Dimension Studios

I just can’t get enough of the fast paced hockey action from the classic NES system, I still love the dynamic of winning fights giving your team an advantage and worked hard to bring influences from classic games like Blades of Steel and Ice Hockey to my design work on The Hockey Experiment.

Blog

Honorabili

Free Stuff: DOSBox

If you are a fan of classic PC gaming (pre-windows era) then you need to have and use DOSBox, especially since it’s free and there’s hundreds of DOS games legally free all over the internet.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Alex Kutsenok: Dreamspike Studios

I got into Everquest as a sophomore in high school. It was my first MMORPG, and the level of immersion was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I alsoappreciated that there was a real consequence to death. It meant you lost a ton of experience and had to track across the world to retrieve your stuff. That kind of consequence made the adventure more real and exciting because you knew that there was always something at stake. Finally, I liked the freedom that came from choosing where you wanted to hunt. You didn’t need to worry about compeleting repetitive quests and could level in any number of zones.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

POD: Homefront

Join the Resistance, stand united and fight for freedom against an overwhelming military force in Homefront’s gripping single player campaign penned by John Milius (Apocalypse Now, Red Dawn). Stand alongside a cast of memorable characters as an emotional plot unfolds in this terrifyingly plausible near-future world. Experience visceral, cinematic first-person shooter action as you fight your way across Occupied USA using guerrilla tactics, and commandeer military vehicles and advanced drone technology to defeat the enemy.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

POD: Mortal Kombat 9

The newest chapter of the iconic fight franchise marks a triumphant return to the series’ mature presentation and a reinvention of its classic 2D fighting mechanic. Driven by an all new graphics engine, the fan favorite Fatality is back and presented in more gory detail than ever before. In addition, Mortal Kombat introduces a number of new game-play features including tag team and the deepest story mode of any fighting game

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

Which genre had a bigger impact to PC gaming RTS or FPS games?

When I went to my first LAN party here in Florida it was the guys from Red-Eye that showed me how to use mouse look in order to properly use the hook in Lithium Quake 2. Now don’t get me wrong, StarCraft, Warcraft, Total Annihilation were also a big part of our LAN gaming, but it was games like Tribes, Duke Nukem, Shogo and Doom 2 that ruled our playtime.