And the second half of this week’s update. It should have been done easier, but as often happens when I end up spending half an article rambling off-topic, I couldn’t seem to get it all to come together. I guess I suck!
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
A curious counterpart to Kishi’s Contra commentary, this look at the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV is about 20% about the game and 80% irrelevant navel-gazing that’s tangential at best to the topic at hand. But apparently that’s what people come to this site to read. So consider yourselves served. Oh, and spoilers abound, but it is an 18-year-old game.
Without having read it yet, your description makes it sound very NGJ.
Hooray?
I think you mean GUGJ. Anyway, no, it’s a focused editorial. The connection between subject and screed just wasn’t as clean as I’d hoped
It’s totally NGJ, and i love it. It’s good to see you practicing the art again, parish.
Only issue was that the preface was so long, I forgot it was about DQ4 by the time it finally got there. But yeah, awesome.
It wasn’t a preface.
nobody understands you but me :(
Jeremy, are you really that hard on yourself? It’s topical enough and tightly-written; if DQIV is still notably fun because of adherance to classic “fucntional” game design, what’s wrong with speaking towards that idea? The Psaro/Sephiroth connection was cool, and there can never be too many music references for me.
I feel like a total kiss-ass lately but it really seems like the “GameSpite love” topic has brought out the best in folks. Perhaps I’m just feeling the love too strongly… but I doubt it.
Thanks for the spoiler warning! I just picked up the game from Amazon (for $20) so I’ll have to bookmark this article until next year.
Your article read to me much like a piece of music that introduces bits and pieces of its main theme over a long stretch, then the main theme kicks in and you say “Ah, there it is.” Not as dewy-eyed as Kat’s and Kishi’s recent articles, perhaps, but still a good read.
It’s a mark of DQIV’s staff’s skill that it is the first even remotely NES-era game that I’ve ever finished.
If you write an article about Dragon Quest IV, and the first eight paragraphs are not about Dragon Quest IV in any capacity, then you are writing in New Games Journalism style.
Which is not to say that it’s bad. Quite the opposite, in fact! A good NGJ article can serve to entertain and inform the reader far more than a traditional review could. It’s too bad the movement has been associated with one particular author (whose works are usually the worst examples of the form).
Wow — awesome writing — wonderful analogy use of rock music to set up the context for how you approach the game. I always see long winded videogame articles and just scan over them — this really drew me in for the whole show.
Thanks.
Are you sure the DS has Z-Buffering? When I played Mario 64 on the DS, it seems to lack it, and it felt almost like a Playstation game. Blurry as they were, polygons in N64 games felt solid compared to PS1 and Saturn games, and I feel the DS lacks that. Not bashing the DS, it is awesome.
Maybe it does have Z-Buffering and I am thinking of it’s point-based texture filtering though. Anyways, people compare the DS to the N64, but I think of the N64-DS ports as looking like high quality N64-PS1 ports.
Can’t say as I see the Fripp comparison. Honestly, I think David Gilmour might be a better example – every one of that guy’s licks are simple and soulful. Fripp might be a disciplined student of music, but I don’t feel like his music itself is disciplined. And Onstad agrees with me: http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=10262004
Great article though. Did Lester Bangs have a more tightly focused counterpart anywhere Parish? Say, a Georges Braque to his Pablo Picasso? You may be the video game journalism equivalent – and I don’t see why anyone needs to keep looking for a Bangs.