Growlanser: Legend of the Extras

Lately Atlus has been selling games stateside bundled with a ton of extras. Extras are nice and collectible…but don’t forget the standard editions for people who just want to play the game. Take the following example:

What would possess someone to try and fit so many things in one game box? Let’s see, it comes with: the game, 100 page artbook, multimedia CD with soundtrack and artwork, a keychain, 3 buttons (think political buttons), and 2 lenticular cards. Not to mention the box has no support for the corners or center. So how many people would actually use any of this stuff? The art book is paperback but contains pieces from all of the Growlanser series. It was pretty well made. The multimedia CD is alright I suppose. The lenticular cards… I suppose you could carry them around in your wallet to amuse children, but other than that they’re useless. The buttons are huge and poorly made. They remind me of political buttons you can get at any rally. Since next year is an election year, I can just collect a bunch of buttons and tape pictures over them. Pictures of things I actually want to see, not the Growlanser logo or little fairies. And finally we come to the keychain. This thing comes in its own box and seems to be a centerpiece in the package. However, it’s very heavy, bulky and inflexible. You’d have to be a big fan to carry that thing around in lieu of a smaller keychain.

The Definition of Console Taint

Console taint is a term that was coined to describe video game titles, that are released for both PC and video game consoles, that lack a certain degree of sophistication that PC gamers are used to. This could be anything from lack of standard features (e.g. quicksave), strange defaults (e.g. autoaim on by default in a FPS), minimal options, strange options for PC games, game mechanic simplifications, etc.

I’ll review games I thought were worthy of the dubious distinction of being tainted.

Stay tuned.