Dan Conley

He's just zis guy, you know? Given an NES for Christmas in 1989, he's been a giant nerd ever since. Becoming a father has severely sapped his gaming time, but what he lacks in ability he attempts to make up for with gusto and pizazz. He's also far too into Coheed & Cambria.

Currently playing: Ancients of Ooga (XBLA), Red Dead Redemption (360)

Top 5 Games
1. Super Mario Bros World (SNES)
2. Pokemon (the franchise)
3. Chrono Trigger (SNES)
4. Halo 2 (Xbox)
5. Rock n Roll Racing (SNES)

Author Archive

Extra Tweets

By
Dan
 – September 3, 2010

Like reading our news, but think it’s not timely enough, and also significantly longer than 140 characters? Well, as a reminder, we have a twitter account. Anthony, David S and Bill are on location and I have it on good authority that they shall be tweeting it up!

Duke Nukem For… right now, actually

By
Dan
 – September 3, 2010

This just in: people are actually playing long-vaporware Duke Nukem Forever at PAX. Like, it exists.

Even though Anthony has been told he’d never be forgiven if he doesn’t get some hands-on time with it, he says the lines are insane. I can imagine. Hopefully he’ll be able to get to it, but if not that’s understandable.

Extra Guy’s PAX presence rages on!

World of Keflings trailer

By
Dan
 – September 1, 2010

Fresh from the presses: the first trailer for World of Keflings, NinjaBee’s sequel to 2008′s A Kingdom for Keflings. It seems… what’s the word… bananas.

It seems more sandboxy, which should give the game a nice lifespan. Local multiplayer is in, which is great news. The splitscreen changes from vertical to horizontal depending on your positions, and also disappears when you’re both on the screen. There’s also a frickin’ dragon, and it looks like you may have special powers? Keflings levitate, s’all I’m saying.

Anthony will be seeing the game in person at PAX, so more on this in a bit.

Sam and Max Episode 305: The City That Dares Not Sleep

By
Dan
 – August 30, 2010
Sam and Max Episode 305: The City That Dares Not SleepGenre: Adventure
Company: Telltale Games
Platform played: PC
Also available on: Mac, Playstation 3
Release date: 8/30/2010 (PC/Mac), 8/31/2010 (PS3)
Retail price: $9 (PS3), or $35 (PC) as part of Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse

A

There comes a point in every Telltale season that I dread: when my review essentially becomes ‘…yup, it’s like the others, and I liked it.’ I generally say as much, too.

You’ll notice I haven’t for The Devil’s Playhouse. That’s because it never happened.

There were similarities, of course, and Beyond the Alley of the Dolls more than the others was a ‘traditional’ Sam and Max game, but each episode has had something unique, even if it was just a sudden shift in venue. It kept the season fresh, and I’m sad it’s over.

The City That Dares Not Sleep itself, though: right. Well, the last episode ended with a giant half-Max-half-Lovecraftian-Elder-God running through the streets, so if you don’t think that’s awesome I think our tastes differ to the extent that my opinion will be useless to you. You’re trying to reverse the transformation, obviously, and you’ll be helped by nearly every character you’ve run across in the franchise (with certain notable exceptions).

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Max R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

The series’ main draw has been and will likely always be its humor. Yep, that’s still around. From the title sequence to Curtis’ smack talking, I was still chuckling and getting odd looks from my wife.I didn’t really struggle with any part of the episode, though I don’t think it was necessarily easy enough to be considered an interactive movie. At any rate, it was enjoyable and did a nice job of tying up some things while loosening others.

The ending, though? Watch… watch to the end, is all I’m going to say. Although they certainly seem to have their hands full with games in the future, a season four has certainly been left open, and I hope we get it sooner rather than later.

I enjoyed the first season of Sam and Max. I enjoyed the second. The third? It makes the others looks like the drawings your kid brings home from kindergarten. They took out the wax and polished this series. New gameplay mechanics, varied settings and tasks and some things you didn’t need to do three times! The bar has been raised.

Full Rock Band 3 setlist

By
Dan
 – August 25, 2010

And… meh? I dunno. I’ve been psyched about quite a lot of songs in past Rock Band games, but this one just doesn’t grab me. I mean, Bohemian Rhapsody, hell yeah! But… well, see for yourself. Maybe we disagree! (asterisks mean that it’s also available on the DS version)

They try to make me play this song but I say no, no, no

2000s:

  • Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
  • At the Drive-In, “One Armed Scissor”
  • Avenged Sevenfold, “The Beast & the Harlot”
  • Dover, “King George”
  • The Bronx, “False Alarm”
  • The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1”
  • HIM (His Infernal Majesty), “Killing Loneliness”
  • Hypernova, “Viva La Resistance”
  • Ida Maria, “Oh My God”*
  • Juanes, “Me Enamora”
  • Metric, “Combat Baby”*
  • Paramore, “Misery Business”*
  • Phoenix, “Lasso”*
  • Poni Hoax, “Antibodies”
  • Pretty Girls Make Graves, “Something Bigger, Something Brighter”
  • Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”
  • The Ravonettes, “Last Dance”
  • Rilo Kiley, “Portions for Foxes”*
  • Riverboat Gamblers, “Don’t Bury Me…I’m Still Not Dead”
  • Slipknot, “Before I Forget”
  • The Sounds, “Living in America”
  • Tegan & Sara, “The Con”
  • Them Crooked Vultures, “Dead End Friends”
  • Tokio Hotel, “Humanoid”*
  • The Vines, “Get Free”*
  • The White Stripes, “The Hardest Button to Button”*

I like how super confused he looks.

1990s:

  • Faith No More, “Midlife Crisis”*
  • Filter, “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
  • Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealing”*
  • Maná, “Oye Mi Amor”
  • Marilyn Manson, “The Beautiful People”
  • The Muffs, “Outer Space”
  • Phish, “Llama”
  • Primus, “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver”
  • Rammstein, “Du Hast”
  • Smash Mouth, “Walkin’ On The Sun”*
  • Spacehog, “In the Meantime”
  • Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”
  • Swingin’ Utters, “This Bastard’s Life”

Also looking slightly confused, but that's understandable, with the hats.

1980s:

  • Anthrax, “Caught in a Mosh”
  • Big Country, “In a Big Country”
  • The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”*
  • Def Leppard, “Foolin’”
  • Devo, “Whip It”
  • Dio, “Rainbow in the Dark”
  • Dire Straits, “Walk of Life”
  • Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”
  • Huey Lewis and the News, “The Power of Love”
  • INXS, “Need You Tonight”*
  • J. Geils Band, “Centerfold”
  • Joan Jett, “I Love Rock N’ Roll”*
  • Night Ranger, “Sister Christian”*
  • Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train”*
  • The Police, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
  • Roxette, “The Look”*
  • The Smiths, “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
  • Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
  • Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”*

Needs no explanation.

1970s:

  • The B-52’s, “Rock Lobster”*
  • Blondie, “Heart of Glass”
  • Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up”
  • Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”
  • Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”
  • Doobie Brothers, “China Grove”*
  • Elton John, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
  • Foreigner, “Cold As Ice”*
  • Golden Earring, “Radar Love”
  • John Lennon, “Imagine”
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”
  • Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”*
  • Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”
  • Steve Miller Band, “Fly Like an Eagle”
  • T. Rex, “20th Century Boy”
  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “I Need to Know”
  • War, “Low Rider”
  • Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
  • Yes, “Roundabout”*

Hey look, it's the guy from Labyrinth!

1960s:

  • Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations (Live)”
  • David Bowie, “Space Oddity”
  • The Doors, “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”*
  • James Brown, “I Got You” (I Feel Good) – Alternate Studio Version*
  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Crosstown Traffic”*
  • The Who, “I Can See for Miles”

Looking at the list again, there are some gems. Of course I’m happy about The Who and Tom Petty, but I already have most of the songs I want thanks to DLC. Free Bird and the aforementioned Queen pretty much make up for everything else though, huh? (but seriously: Rehab??)

Sonic sucks dick and other thoughtful considerations

By
Dan
 – August 21, 2010

We recently did a survey of the top articles, traffic-wise, on the site. Of the top 10, I had one. One. Dave and Anthony traipse around like they own the goddamn place, garnering attention here and links from Joystiq there. Well you know what? I’m sick of it. Now, Lord, now’s gonna be my time. Here’s the synopses of the next few editorials I’ll be writing.

Pistols are for losers: Why Halo 2 is much better than Halo 1

pew pew pew

Twice the number of guns firing is twice as awesome. That’s just math.

Besides that, you have much better graphics, and finally get to hear what the Elites are saying! You can even play as one too, and turn invisible. I’m also not sure how the first game got to be loved for its multiplayer when you can’t even play online.

WASDumb

Let me get this straight: instead of a few hundred dollars every 5-10 years, I have to pretty much constantly dump money into a computer that may have issues because of the specific brand of video card or some crap that I use? And the manuals are longer than my high school algebra textbook. Go ahead and call console games dumbed down, but I’d prefer to spend my first hour with a game playing it instead of installing it and then studying.

The Legend of Zelda: The sleeping gamer

I’ve only beaten one Zelda game, and that was the second one. I’ve tried to finish a bunch of other ones but I think they’re supposed to be historical strategy simulators or something because they bore the crap out of me. A boomerang? That’s what passes for a weapon? You know that Gears of War has chainsaws, right?

NOT HELPING

The Wii is the worst console of all time

The graphics suck. The controls suck. Half the time I have to act like I’m giving the air a handjob. Well at least I can play online with my friends, right? Oh wait, no. I think there’s less security required to get into CIA headquarters than it is to play Farmville: City Folk.

‘But it’s the best selling console of this generation!’ some sniveling fanboy will inevitably whine. Yeah, it’s awesome that grandmas have shoved so much cash into Nintendo’s bank account that they no longer need to give a crap about the people who supported them for their first 20 years.

Oh, does this game have too many buttons?

I guess that I don’t understand how color coded controls in watered down games with five year old graphics are superior. Wow, a whole 16 people in multiplayer!! You realize that PC gamers get to play online for free, right? But okay, there are no achievements or anything like that. It is pretty cool that what you do in a game can be redeemed for downloa- wait, what? It’s just a number? Oh, okay. That’s… great for you. Let’s play a FPS head to head sometime, you with your joypad and me with a real control setup.

Legends and Killers trailer

By
Dan
 – August 6, 2010

…well that sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

The trailer for the Red Dead Redemption DLC, not the murder convention down at the Holiday Inn, is now available for your viewing pleasure.

It will be available on Tuesday for $10/800 MS points.

Junk food gaming

By
Dan
 – July 31, 2010

I saw Hot Tub Time Machine last night. It was good, but that’s irrelevant. Well, more accurately I suppose, the fact that it was good is irrelevant but the way in which it was good isn’t.

You see, Hot Tub Time Machine is not a good movie. I understand that you might be confused at this point. My wife sympathizes, I assure you.

Isn't this guy supposed to be writing about video games?

It’s a good movie in that it scratches an itch, a need I have to forget that I’m a parent and staff at a university and supposed to be an adult, and it lets me listen to people say the f word a lot. No, like, a lot. I’m pretty sure Rob Corddry was just handed a slip of paper that said ‘swear, and improvise.’

But I needed that. Sometimes I want to watch a movie where the only purpose of the plot is to take us from joke to joke. ‘A taxidermist is stuffing my mom’ was a particularly good line. This movie, and Eurotrip, Super Troopers, particularly Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, they’re not art. They’re junk food, the cinematic equivalent of the nachos I want whenever I’m drunk. And they’re damn good at what they do.

Video games can be similar (see? I get around to it eventually). Castle Crashers was a ton of fun, when it wasn’t crashing or deleting my saves (I never reviewed it, because I couldn’t give it above a D because of how broken it was, and it took them four months to patch it). Beat em ups are an obvious example of mindless fun, but they’re far from the only example.

Rock Band is the ultimate, for me. The alpha and the omega. For at least six months, when anyone came over — gamer or not — we broke out the plastic guitar. About a month ago I was having a really bad day. I pulled it out of storage and half an hour later was sweaty — oh so sweaty — and feeling much better. It was like flipping a switch with ‘Hate to Say I Told You So.’

Though, perhaps regrettably, with less LSD

It really boils down to individual tastes. Another ‘junk food game’ for me is Rainbow Six Vegas 2, because I only play the terrorist hunt mode, and only with my two friends from high school. We swear, insult and are generally giant pricks to each other. The game glitches occasionally, and sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. It doesn’t matter though, because I get to make fun of my bald ass friend who can’t remember the words to ‘Enter Sandman.’ I understand that some people play R6V2 competitively, or at least wanted to. I’m not one of those people.

Writing for a game site means giving up some of the fun of games. I play a game until I’m done, think critically about it, write about what I thought (and, in my case, any other crap that comes to mind, whether or not it’s game related) and move on. I rarely come back to games I’ve reviewed, even if I like them. For me, putting in a game that I’ll probably never play extensively enough to review (except for RB2, which is coming, um, oh look behind you) lets me forget about everything else and just relax.

On books and covers

By
Dan
 – July 22, 2010

Let me begin this post about video games by not talking about video games.

I like beer. I like it a lot. I drink it, brew it (soon commercially) and write about it. And while it’d be nice to believe that I would never let the packaging of a beer sway my purchasing habits, I’m also honest enough with myself to know that’s not the case. It doesn’t have to be flashy or colorful, necessarily (though Ralph Steadman does have a way of catching the eye), but it has to appeal to me. I have bought — and not bought — beer based solely on my whims and the design on the six pack holder.

Now back to games. I do not, and have never, bought games based on the design on the box.

I like the art, and bought the game, but the two aren't related

It’s okay if you took a minute to let that sink in. It’s really not contradictory at all, though. A third thing to know about me, in addition to the love of beer and willingness to buy it based on packaging, is that I’m cheap. Oh so goddamned cheap. You could call me ‘frugal,’ and I wouldn’t stop you, but while very nice it would also be a lie. A combination of obsessive ‘price per pound’ comparisons and a wife less willing to be okay with the costs associated with my hobbies* means that it takes plenty of careful consideration before I pull the trigger on a game. If you only knew how much I went back and forth on Blur vs Red Dead (I went with the latter and, so far, am regretting my choice).

So then, the difference: I can buy six kinds of beer (assuming $10 for a six pack, growler or 22oz bottle**) for the cost of a game. We can debate actual vs perceived worth, and I’m all for it in the comments because I’d like to get the kind of traffic Dave got for his Onlive article, or how it’s easier to spend smaller amounts of money more often, and yeah, sure: that’s true. But the why doesn’t matter so much as the end result, which is that I am infinitely more likely to walk into the Village Beer Merchant unsure of what I’m walking out with than I am Gamestop.

The difference is infinite because I will not buy a game, ever, without having done research. It may not be enough to guarantee I’ll love the game (goddamn Scribblenauts), but I am going to know about the game, what kind of game it is, and quite probably who made it and what the media they’ve released leading up to its release are. Games aren’t impulse purchases for me, and the only time they have been was in the days of the Game Gear, where I can clearly recall wandering around Zappers with my grandfather, trying to choose a game for myself for Christmas (it being a Game Gear game, I sadly was in a no-win situation).

It may be expensive, and French Canadian, but damn it's tasty

So while game boxes can certainly be nice to look at — we’re in discussions here about some way to display the ones we use in our reviews on the site — and I appreciate them when they’re done well, no. Cover art does not influence my opinion at all. Even if Trois Pistoles looks like it could be promo art for Darksiders.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part of this, please email him for details. Other takes:

Silvercublogger: Don’t Cover The Art, Unless…

The Average Gamer: Cover Art

Aim for the Head: Browsing the Aisles

SnipingMizzy: In the eye of the beholder

Extra Guy: On Books and Covers

Zath: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

carocat.co.uk: Cover art? No, thanks!

Pioneer Project: The game box’s big moment

Man Fat: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

* The exception to this is my Xbox Live Gold account, which she insists we keep because while we can watch Netflix on the PS3, Wii or Boxee PC hooked up to the TV, the user interface and speed  on the 360 really is second to none

** ‘Buy PBR lol’ is not an acceptable response, and only makes you look like a hipster douche

Ancients of Ooga

By
Dan
 – July 21, 2010
Ancients of OogaGenre: Platformer
Companies: J. Kenworthy, NinjaBee
Platform: Xbox 360
Release date: 6/30/2010
Retail price: 800 Microsoft points ($10)

C+

NinjaBee are hard to predict. Epic? It’s a good bet that they’ll make games with guns, and dudes to point the guns at. Bioware? Experience points will be involved. NinjaBee, though, has given us an RTS-like game, a grid-based tactics one, an economic strategy game in space… they’re full of surprises. Ancients of Ooga could just as easily been a medieval blacksmithing RPG as a kart racer. You just don’t know.

It turns out, though — and this should have been evident in our coverage of the game — that Ancients of Ooga is a 2.5D platformer, in the vein of Cloning Clyde. You play as a god of sorts, inhabiting the bodies of the Oogani and making them do your bidding to help them get rid of the Boolis, the group of thugs who got them high on slugs and convinced them their chiefs were really unnecessary. Once you free an Oogani from captivity you can bounce back and forth, having one open a gate for another or run on a wheel to power a lift.

Sacrificing items and people plays a big role

The vast majority of the game is spent ferrying items from one location to another. You need to bring a shiny rock to an Oogani, or collect the items necessary to revive a tribe’s chief. In practice this means running around a level from A to B, picking up C and depositing it back at A before going to D to get E. That might sound monotonous, and it can be. This is broken up by the seven tribes, each of which having seven levels. As you progress through a tribe’s section you’ll gain new powers: the fire tribe will be able to run over hot coals and breathe fire, while the stone tribe can bounce around a level like a pinball and do a ground pound. Generally, just as I’d be growing tired of the trappings of a realm (more swimming for the water tribe, obviously) I’d resurrect their chief, have a level of him raising hell, then be off to a new area.

Before you gain powers, though, you’re at the mercy of the Booli. There’s a reason they’ve imprisoned the Oogani: they can kick their asses. Get too close to one and in an instant you’re dead; even after I could breathe fire, getting close enough to use it would sometimes trigger their ire. The same went for falling in water (fish eat you), or touching brambles or coals if you’re not the right tribe. This game is unforgiving with its deaths. You won’t necessarily die often, but when you do it’s mere moments after you misstep.

This could get frustrating, sure, but while I’m not going to defend the controller-flexing (never throwing; mine is a quiet rage) nature of the game, it is indicative of a collection of intangibles that led me, very soon after I started playing it, to come to the conclusion that there is something decidedly old school about the game. It feels like an update of something you would have played on the NES. Maybe it was the multiple horizontal areas in a level, or that there was a fire chapter, a water chapter, etc. You can swallow items that you pick up. Why? It gets you points. What do the points do? Nothing, besides give you an easter egg at the end if your score is high enough. You collect spices, floating around a level. What do they do? Let you swallow things, giving you points. Most levels have 1-4 hidden bones, floating somewhere for you to collect. Why would you do this? Because they are hidden and you collect hidden things in a video game, dammit.

Geysers: an effective mode of vertical transportation

I eventually realized what kind of games NinjaBee makes: laid back ones. With the exception of the relatively few interactions with the Booli, you’re free to run around the levels however you’d like. Take your time! Bring me that headdress when it suits you. Hell, even the hidden bones aren’t really hidden, since at any time you can press a bumper to pop into ‘switch Oogani’ mode and move the camera around the entire level. Is this bad? There are no quick reflexes required, and sometimes that’s what you want out of a game, I agree. But if you just want to relax and eat some squawken, this game will do you well.

Ancients of Ooga is by no means perfect. Repetition is an issue, and at times the controls were frustrating. Even so, I enjoyed my time with it: it never punished me for inaction, or required quick reflexes. If I were craving tweak-based adrenaline games then I wouldn’t even think about loading it up, sure, but the point is that sometimes — hell, as a dad of a newly mobile seven month old, most of the time — I’m not. And as a game with a vaguely retro ethos, appearing only in the corner of your eye if you’re not quite paying attention, it could be quite enjoyable.

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