30 Days of Gaming, #28 – Favorite game developer

Still struggling with these final few topics for the 30 Days of Gaming meme, this one in particular. Why? Well, I don’t really pay developers much attention, to be honest. Sure, they are the people behind the products that I either end up falling in love with (Suikoden II – Konami) or absolutely hate (Grand Theft Auto IV – Rockstar) or find confusing and hard to pick a solid stance on (Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Eidos Studios Montreal), but they’re the puppeteers, not the main show. Yes, it is their ideas and work and coding and crafting that make the product come alive and end up on retail shelves, but at that point, I’m eating up the product and not those that made it. I’m not leveling up and thanking XYZ for creating the leveling up aspect of the game. Let me try it this way: when you go out to a restaurant and eat a great meal, do you talk more about the meal or the specific chef that cooked it?

So, with that all laid out, I guess Konami is my favorite developer. Mostly because they developed a lot of games I love. Suikoden, Suikoden II, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, and Castlevania for NES and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to name a few. And they also worked on some other games from my collection, which I do not love per se, but did play (or watch Tara play) for a decent amount of time: Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times, X-Men Arcade, Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville, and Dance Dance Revolution.

However, I could not name a single person that works or worked at Konami. Not for a million bucks. But a lot of their games really hit home for me, and that’s more than enough reason to call them my favorite developer. And now I’m imagining a universe where this company made every game ever, including a proper new entry in the Suikoden series; this Genso Suikoden: The Woven Web of a Century for the PSP is no good. Simply no good, ya hear?

Right. Well, I know there’s not a whole lot of text here, but I can’t figure out what else to say about my purported favorite developer. Only two more topics to go, and then this meme is complete. I know you’re all excited for me to count up how many actually days it took me to round up thirty posts of content. While we wait, tell me a bit about your favorite developer and what makes them oh so special. Please. I need to comprehend this all better.

Crushing the White Legs never felt so easy

As y’all should know, I’m working on my fourth (but not final) playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, with the focus being to side with Mr. House all the way to the end, as well as complete some miscellaneous challenges and unlock the final few Achievements just begging to be released before the next two months of intense, Skyrim-heavy gaming begins. With the following now popped, I’m only ten away from getting ’em all:

O Daughter of Babylon (30G): Crushed the White Legs.

Yup, I stored some heavy stuff away in Lucky 37’s Penthouse Suite and then took Rhaegar all the way to Utah’s Zion National Park from the Honest Hearts DLC. Only took a loading screen or two. He’s probably rode a dragon for most of the trip. My first time through I wrapped up the add-on fairly quickly, with my then Courier helping to evacuate the locales instead of fighting back. I didn’t save beforehand, meaning I couldn’t reload and go after the second method, which involves a lot of river-walking and shooting. And most of it wasn’t even done by me; for choosing the “destroy them all” path, you gain Joshua Graham as a companion, and he’s pretty wicked with his unique .45 Auto pistol–awesomely called A Light Shining in Darkness–so I let him do most of the grunt work, still earning XP all the way.

It was not very difficult and only took a few hours to breeze through. This is the easiest of the four DLCs, and unfortunately also the most uninteresting. I still found no reason to go exploring all the numerous caves, but I did complete a quest that I missed my first time through, helping a lost bighorner calf back to its mother. Other than that, I played through Honest Hearts exactly the same way, shooting more or less the same animals and hostile White Legs; there was only one strange happening, which involved exiting a cave and coming face to face with a giant green gecko with the power to swipe once and knock poor Rhaegar’s head off. Otherwise, not much else to report.

I emptied all of the end DLC’s lootbox’s contents into Rhaegar’s pockets and now he’s over-encumbered and far from home, but I’m hoping to make it to a vendor soon as those new GRA weapons are freakin’ expensive. Then, when stocked up, lighter in the pants, and rich, I’ll pursue some more opportunities across the Mojave Wasteland for those tricky new challenges and then make sure that the house always win.