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When I read this post on QJ.NET, I coldn’t stop laughing for a while. And it’s a good thing, since when I consider gaming prices I usually turn green and start shattering things.

According to the post, a blogger, probably the smarter in the galaxy, or probably the only one bar me not paid by a huge corporate driven gaming blog community, discovered that the price structure of Playstation Store is not the same on every country. To be more precise, he discovered that South Africans pay more for the same game.

Now I will share a secret with all of you: there’s a continent that is paying a lot more for games and gaming hardware since decades and it’s called Europe. Actually gaming manufacturers are selling their goods here at a beefy +50% markup, compared to US and Japanese prices!

The movie came out today in Italy, so me and my girlfriend went to see it. Not bad at all, the shaky camera effects and the continuous subjective, limited FOV vision were a nice touch to keep the audience on its toe (or make it vomit, take your pick). Since you can’t see anything clear, the movie has an easy job to scare you: the creature remains mostly a product of your own imagination even when it’s partially revealed and that’s the most disturbing trait of the movie. Surprisingly the most tense scenes are those where the film remembers us that we aren’t the pinnacle of the food chain anymore and those where people are acting like mad rodents, escaping a predator or just fumbling out in panic. Real panic, not the usual mass hysteria you can expect from a monster movie.

After seeing the movie, the question appeared on many gaming site about the ability of a modern console to deliver such shaky-camera effects seemed just another movie-driven marketing gimnick than a real question.

The movie instantly remembered me the last Call of Chtulhu hybrid FPS-adventure and the frequent sequences where you have to run, scared, from Lovercraftian horrors. That game really delivers a similar experience, limiting you in the usual narrow 90° FOV with almost no peripheral vision (just like watching through a camera!), blurred sight due to motion\pain\panic and the usual disorientation that running hysterically in real-sized spaces with an FPS engine usually delivers.

I’d have some concerns about the effectiveness of the technique for a whole game. In the movie, you have no control on the camera and it adds to confusion, in a game, you are supposed to be in control and a compelled shaky-camera mode may be an overshot if not balanced correctly.

Cthulhu got it right because the visual confusion during chases is the result of your own actions combined with the visual limitations, two factors that build up a great claustrophobic effect.

Yes!

Today the list was closed with the last 10 spots. There are a lot of foreseeable games, even if the seventh spot for Halo 3, with all those heavy (but true) critics, is a bit unexplainable (I would have placed it in the 20-30 leg).

Mass Effect was another so and so game that made in the top 10. Not really up to par with their past titles, especially for the countless glitches, with or without the huge marketing efforts from Microsoft. I guess that Mass Effect and Halo 3 really showed the true power of X360: lower than promised.

Thank God Crackdown made 4! That was a really good, original and fun game.

Portal at number 1 is not a surprise, it’s a tribute to emo-gamers that overrated too much a nice tech demo. It would’ve been in the top 5 in my list. A clever idea based on something that even the first 3D portal engines in the 90s could do. But not in the first position. Not unless the 2 hours I spent on it came free.

Please take note on the seemengly casual statements that assert that games don’t have to be longeve. Of course, they don’t have to be too long for their pace (Doom 3, Quake 4, Half Life 2, any Halo, just to remain in shooters), longevity is another matter. It’s months that these generic assumptions are made by GI professionals. Prepare to see a lot of “masterpieces” compressed on less than 5 hours for €60. Prepare to see lots of paid add-ons to reach and ensure that “overrated” longevity (or just for economic justice, I guess it depends if you pay or not the game you play).

I’m waiting to see how many games unable to deliver a story because they are too short to provide both narration and gameplay will be defended by gamers as pure works of genius.

Massively and its hunger for readers is like their editorial staff unfamiliarity with MMOs. Today’s try to breaking news is the huge dilemma any MMO player felt almost once in his career: “It’s ok to kill animals for money and experience?“. The post is one of the most prominent problem with the blog: it lets you wonder why they don’t simply relay MMOG news since most of the time they didn’t have a clue about what they are writing…

After years of waiting, the fan translation of Tales of Phantasia PS1 is ready! I tested it for good and can assure you that the patch not only works but it is completely compatible with the PSP, so look for a Japanese version of the game (I suppose it won’t come out cheap for a while, but several store owners are still selling it for its real value that is pretty low since there are tons of copies still around), grab your favourite PSX converter and start playing on the go!

The project took an insane amount of time and a huge hacking effort but in the end the quality is simply unmatched by anything else in the realm of fan translations.

Let it be just another monument against years of region locks and stupid product placement policies that deprived (and still ocasionally deprive) lots of gamers of their favourite titles.