Final Fantasy XIII-2

To say I’m having mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XIII-2 would be an understatement. It seems like they took the fans criticisms to heart, and brought back some of the staples that many people loved about Final Fantasy games in the past. Sounds good right?

I know I was in the minority when I said that I didn’t mind the corridors in Final Fantasy 13, the story was compelling enough to encourage me to push forward. My playthrough was 50 hours without the need to dilute the experience with aimless exploration. What appears to have happened is that they bring back exploring by way of hiding fragments within various sandboxes. You don’t explore a world at all, you explore small segments of a world and you can select which segment you want to explore via the ‘Historia Crux’. The Historia Crux feels like a Super Mario world map, as you get through areas you unlock new ones to explore. Here’s the thing, this is not the type of exploration that Final Fantasy is known for, it’s kind of a joke. I’m sure later in the game when it makes sense to revisit some of these areas because they have changed due to your actions it might be a little more engaging but as it stands now I feel this ‘addition’ has taken away my primary motivation in FF games, that is to say the story suffers.

While there is an over arching story that has Serah searching through time to find her sister, each of the areas in the Historia Crux feels like its own episode. Like any piece of episodic content, there will be good and bad parts, but in many cases you’re left with one piece of information to advance, or flesh out the over arching story. The problem with this in my mind is that the sub-plots here feels like most of these are insignificant or forgettable so far. I’m still early on so maybe this will improve with time but there isn’t a ton of motivation for me in this game.

There have been some neat changes to the paradigm combat system, first is the fact that you only have 2 characters to develop, to fill out the group however you get to add 3 monsters to your deck. Each monster has 1 of the classes assigned to them, so you get a little bit more control over which classes are available to you, provided that you have monsters of the type you’re looking for. Monsters are levelled up via the crystarium system just like the character, however instead of earning CP, they progress by using specific items that you can find or buy to level. The combat itself feels a little more reactive, or rather, you have less time to react, and it’s more about watching the opponents animations, it’s sort of neat but I’m not totally used to it yet.

I’m not going to talk about the Crystarium system at the moment because I don’t really feel like I understand it. Suffice to say it is different from the last game, in that you don’t seem to have separate crystals per class and it isn’t nearly as obvious what you’re getting when you spend your CP in the new system. I hope this makes more sense later but it just feels like clicking buttons at this point.

You know, despite all that, I’m still having some fun here, and I’m going to continue playing, I just unlocked the casino before turning in last night, and it’s just as tiresome as it was in FF7. I’m hopeful that some of this stuff evolves pretty soon though particularly the story.

At this point, I more or less spend all of my game time, live on twitch channel, the only exception is if I only have a few minutes, (which at this time I spend with Binding of Isaac, or a turn or two with Total War Shogun 2), and to be honest, I love it, we’ve had some awesome people coming through hanging out and chatting about games it really does provide me with a new vehicle to talk about the games I’m playing, and in most ways it is much better than the blog because it’s interactive, and spontaneous and that’s awesome, but it puts me in a bit of a hard spot when it comes to how I allocate my game time. Most of the time I feel compelled to play something through to completion before moving on to the next thing, and I think next month I may run into issues doing that because I tend to play new releases and this is really the first time since I started casting that I’m going to hit a game that is going to run me into a new release of a game that I’d really like to play where it’s not really possible to get through it.

I have high hopes for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, it seems like an action rpg that hits all the right notes with me, I’m expecting good story, good character development (in terms of ability), and skill based action combat, all in a (seldom used) colorful cartoony setting. It’s a direction I’d like to see some more RPGs go and so I really hope this game does well even if it’s not flawless.

Reckoning will be quick on the heels of a Final Fantasy XIII-2 release that I’ve been waiting for (talking about on my stream a lot). When I finished with FF13 I didn’t feel as though I was done with that world (even after finishing a second playthough of the game on the stream), and despite its well documented shortcomings I enjoyed. It sounds like some of that stuff has been addressed in a not so meaningful way, and they sort of threw some systems on top of it to sate the masses of FF fans who were offended by its last release, but to be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever hated a final fantasy game (I totally avoided 10-2, that might have been the one that breaks this statement), for me it’s always been the story that pushes me through the many hours of content, and I expect there to be a good story here, but with ‘sequel expectations’ I imagine it will be a little watered downed (this is total speculation on my part, I haven’t heard a thing that actually suggests that is the case).

I recently replayed FF13 on stream to get ready for this release, and there was quite a few viewers that were around for the most of it, I expect some of them will be back for 13-2, and if you’re not one of those people you should be! Come hang out and watch me get my ass kicked

In any case, the point is, I may be doing a little switching between Reckoning and FF13-2 depending on my mood, if it doesn’t work I’ll likely just stick with one and go back aftewards (and probably start over). With any luck I’ll have them both done by the time Mass Effect 3 releases and we won’t have any further issues. On that note, my Mass Effect 2 refresher run is in progress, and will continue tonight! Come on by my twitch channel and hang out!

Just wanted to pop and drop a note to let you guys know what’s been going on.

Since my last post, I’ve started and finished a Chrono Trigger (the PSN version) playthrough, which I streamed entirely on my twitch.tv channel. That game held up surprisingly well over the years and I had a great time playing (and casting) it. Though I will say this, the PSN version is less than ideal, there is some unexplainable delays when going into/out of combat that were quite annoying especially considering how often you go into and out of combat. Story is great, music is awesome, and the gameplay is classic.. it’s well worth your time if you’re into rpgs and you’ve skipped it or forgot it (like I did).

I started a Darksiders replay, that game is still pretty fun though, if I recall the first half is much better than the last half, so we’ll see if I get through it all again, I’ll likely consider this my ‘refresher run’ for Darksiders 2 which is due out in June.

I’m also continuing my Final Fantasy 13 refresher run, I’ll be pushing pretty hard on this one since 13-2 is out in NA on the 31st. I’m in Chapter 11 at the moment, so I don’t have all that much further to go but I’ve run into some pacing problems that come with skipping all of the sidequests so I spent most of the night last night struggling through encounters which ultimately lead to a serious amount of backtracking and grinding.

Tonight will be a bit special though! I’ve got a copy of Rayman Origins scheduled to arrive today so the gf and I may coop cast through some of that tonight assuming that I can get things setup in my living room which I haven’t done before so… Technology permitting, that is the plan. Follow my twitch channel (linked above) to get notified when we go live, I’d guess early this evening (eastern) we’ll get started. Here’s a bit of a preview, I’ve never been so frustrated with her as I was playing Super Mario Bros Wii coop. I assume there will be much face palming and much frustrated grunts and groans and some ‘hurry the eff up’s and some ‘COME ON!’. It should be fun

I’ve been running into more and more lockups in the PS3 version since the last patch. I’m hoping the next one will make it better but I’m doubtful based on some of the articles that were released the other day saying into a core platform problem for PS3.

I think this game more than any this season will be victim of its release date. The intro to this game, was so uninspiring compared to the ‘epicness’ that came with Skyrim, Uncharted, Batman, and Modern Warfare. I feel all of those games had appreciably stronger hooks at the start of the game than this did. To be honest it felt like I was just going through the motions. I didn’t care about the dude I was hunting at the start at all. Beyond that, it felt like more assassin’s creed, which is fine, and more or less what I was expecting, to be honest my motivation for getting into this one is to hear how the Desmond/Ezio story plays out, and if it had that and it was at least decent would have to conclude that the game had served it’s purpose in my eyes.

I did run into the tower defence portion of the game that I didn’t know it had. Man, what a terrible idea. I love tower defence games, I really do, but if I were to consider tower defence in an assassin’s creed game, I’d have to implement some of they game’s strengths, clearly the traversal. Maybe if they had waves coming from all angles and Ezio had to scurry all over the place to get the right defences in place it would make more sense here (maybe because it was the first one and tutorialized), but as is it feels like a completely different game in those moments, and not a very good game either.

I had a lot of expectations for this game, I thought brotherhood was the best in the series, and had continually got better since the first (which I hated). I’ll keep at it and see if any of those things get any better but this is shaping up to be my biggest disappoint of the year if the first couple hours are any indication. As I mentioned I’m in this for the story so with any luck that picks up and stops feeling disjointed.

I love the design of the world, they track you up this mountain, and as you climb the score gets more epic and as you reach the top the landscape creates a reveal and in that moment there is a sense of satisfaction that you don’t get very often in videogames. I’ll use the most recent example of Modern Warfare 3, that game is at 11 the whole time, so it becomes the new baseline. In the complete opposite way, Skyrim mixes up the peaks and valleys of action. Before reaching the top of the mountain I was literally walking amongst the critters, following rabbits and goats up the mountain side, as I climbed harsh weather rolled in around me. It was in these moments I was hooked to this game, it really creates some substance and some true dramatic moments.

I find the combat just sort of meh, I suppose it’s because I’m a caster, it seems to be by far the easiest way to deal with enemies at this point. I’m just scratching the surface here, I’ll have more to talk about later.

I did spend about an hour with the multiplayer, seems the same to me, I’m sure there are some very nuanced changes that fans of the franchise will appreciate more than me. I did find it extremely easy to get to level 10 though, seemed to level too quickly IMO, like, I don’t even think I’ve seen all the maps yet.

Batman Arkham City

2 years after Rocksteady did the unthinkable, create a comic book inspired video game that was not only worth playing, it was an outright game of the year contender in the eyes of many, myself included.

On the surface Arkham City may look like a sandbox style game, and in a way it is, you are free to explore the city turned prison called Arkham City, though plot areas are blocked off until you obtain the required gadgets to get by the obstructions. There are villains scattered through the City, each with their own agenda, which actually creates some scenarios where they are going after each other. It leads to a very compelling story, and I don’t mean in a ‘this is a comic book game’ compelling, I mean compelling by any standards. Honestly, the story here is great.

Perhaps the strongest element of Batman Arkham Asylum was the Free Flow combat system, which really brought the brawler type game play to a whole new level, gone are the button mashing days replaced by a timing/reaction system that is EASILY, by FAR, the most satisfying hand-to-hand combat I’ve seen. It basically amounts building up a combo, until you get a large enough combo to unlock the ability to unleash a special move. The move set in Arkham City has increased substantially, including quick access to various gadgets and new takedowns and other combo moves, so much so that it is hard to remember the buttons to do what you want to do sometimes. At least that was my experience in my first play through. I’m sure the more time you spend with it and the combat challenge modes this would become more natural. There are different enemies and weapons that change the way that you have to fight them, for example you can’t punch a guy with a shield, you have to vault over him and attack from the air, this helps strengthen the fact that you’re not button mashing here, it almost feels like a fast paced puzzle a lot of the time. The most important thing to note here, is that it makes you feel like a bad ass. You are the Batman.

The stealth rooms are back though not a lot has changed, though I did find them quite a bit harder, and the henchmen don’t always naturally path through ambush areas which makes it a little bit more difficult. They’re fun enough for variety, and as a change of pace from time to time.

There are a ton of Riddler collectibles and side missions, most of them are pretty fun, and they all have their own short side story, I loved the mad hatter one, I wish there was more of that. And I surprisingly had a lot of fun with the ‘AR Challenges’, which basically amounts to ring races through Arkham City using Batman’s traversal abilities, they were fun and challenging, just another way to make sure you know that you are batman. This also unlocks an ability that makes traversal much easier, don’t make the same mistake I did and do the first set of these as soon as possible.

I’ve finished the game but I don’t feel like I’m done with Arkham City, I’m hoping there is more DLC then the skins and challenge rooms coming, though the story does wrap up quite neatly, there appears to be lots of arcs that could be developed further. This is the best game I’ve played so far this year (at the time of this writing I have also finished uncharted 3), and a big congratulations and thank you to Rocksteady Games for their efforts on this title. If you like action games do not miss this.

It really does feel like more uncharted 2, which is good don’t get me wrong but even the animations are the same for the cover take downs, it’s very obvious from the level design when you are about to walk into an ambush… if you enter a room with cover nearby, you’re likely going to need it.

Here’s a playlist of my first few hours [sadly there appears to be something wrong with the first video, I'm looking into it]

I want to reiterate, I really like it, the story is fun and they do some neat stuff with the gameplay because of it. The puzzles are much better, it kind of sucks that the NPCs chime in so quickly with their hints. It makes me feel like I’m kind of cheating especially when I’m sure i would have figured it out without their help.

Session 3

http://www.twitch.tv/degenerategamer/b/297947226

Session 4

http://www.twitch.tv/degenerategamer/b/297966657

The review is on the way! suffice to say I really liked it.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I’m enjoying it so far, the side quests are engaging the combat is still stellar although it feels like there is a lot more too it and I’m sure it’ll be great once I get used to the controls but I’m not using half of the new moves yet, I think they were unlocked far too early.

Oh Pro Tip, do the AR missions first, the ability it unlocks helps greatly getting around the city… honestly do this as soon as they unlock.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Starting with RAGE I’ve been streaming my gaming via twitch.tv, and I think my setup is to the point now where I’m comfortable with the quality.

You can tune in at http://www.twitch.tv/degenerategamer to get notifications when I go live, and come hang out.

Now that I’m done RAGE, I don’t really have anything current to play so I’ve been running through Mass Effect 2 and I started a new character in Rift.

I do have some gear to stream console games as well but my setup isn’t really where I’d like it to be to be a little more feasible, but I hope to rectify that in the near future.

Box Art

As the box art so clearly announces, from the creators of Doom and Quake, this was a no-brainer for me to play. Nevermind the similarities drawn to Borderlands, and Fallout (they took more than they should have), both games that I enjoyed.

First mistake, getting this game on PC, knowing iD’s track record, I figured getting this game on PC was the safest thing in the world to do. I guess not, It’s shaky PC launch has been well documented, me being the new owner of an AMD 6970 was definitely a victim. By the time I beat the game, there were patches, and new drivers that resolved most of the problems, and so the game is certainly playable at this point, but, how often that games launch in a broken state at this point is quite disheartening.

After the patches the “texture pop-in” and “screen tearing” issues have been minimized, and the game does look and sound quite good.

Anyway, onto the game, one of the unfortunate traits this game took from borderlands was the lack of story, but it is even more apparent here, unlike borderlands the characters lack any sort of charm and don’t even bother trying to convince or motivate you to help them, you just have to in order to progress. Story has not be a strength of iD’s anyway, so I wasn’t totally shocked by this, but it terribly disappointing nonetheless. They do provide a little back story to explain that you are the worlds last barrier to extinction but to call it hollow would be an understatement. This game has a worse ending than even borderlands did, not just because the story conclusion was incredibly abrupt, and completely anticlimactic. In fact I kept saving my ammo for the BFG for a big bad guy who never came, this game had no big villain to speak of at all, at least you knew you were fighting the boss in borderlands…

On the other hand, iD’s strength has always been creating a satisfying shooter, and boy is that obvious here. There is definitely a fast paced shooter with a bunch of weapons and good shooting mechanics that is incredibly fun to play. In fact I’m comfortable saying that the shooting in this game has been the most fun I’ve played in a while. Lots of weapons to choose from, and to bolster those numbers, most weapons have alternate ammo that give different effects. For example, your shotgun has “pulse” ammo, and “pop rock”(?). The pulse ammo provides an electric shock and is particularly helpful against enemies with shields, while the pop ammo explodes and is just straight up fun. They did a great job at limited the amount of ammo you find, which sort of creates an artificial challenge since you may not have the right bullets to handle a particular scenario cleanly.

The world constucts itself much like an RPG, there is an open world where you can drive around and explore though besides a few ‘jump challenges’ where you have to launch your vehicle into some floating thing for the reward of an item, there isn’t much reason to go off the beaten path here. And quest hubs where you can meet the locals (but there isn’t much reason too, they lack charm). You get some quests and you can shop for ammo, and upgrades, participate in races, and minigames that are mostly around winning extra money, and a quite fun ‘collectable card game’, where you use cards that you find out in the world to build a small deck and play. The quests always lead you to dungeons where you actually get to fight things. Most of the dungeons are reused in job board side quests, but it’s handled in a way that it doesn’t feel so much like recycled content. Though they are quite linear, often times ‘things happen’ while you’re in there to change the landscape, or you run through the backwards and the enemies are different when you return. It doesn’t necessarily feel recycled like it does in say Dragons Age 2.

There is looting in this game, but you rarely find anything other than money or ammo on enemies. There is a crafting system, but most of the elements you need to craft things is found in the environment so exploring is encouraged and I found myself doing a lot of it, and it is rewarding when you’re in a ‘dungeon’ and you run out of EMP grenades or ammo that you can make as you need it. But it does feel like you are limited in what you can make but they often provide you with the things you need in an given dungeon if you’re looking.

Getting around the world of RAGE is easy and sort of fun thanks to some rather clean driving mechanics, which is reflected in the racing side quests, which ultimately reward you with upgrades for your cars, or in some cases new cars for required races for progression. Thought I didn’t play through all of the race challenges, I didn’t find the ones I did challenging at all, which is a shame because the vehicles and racing mechanics aren’t bad, in fact they are good despite the WASD controls for driving which felt archaic to me. If they were more challenging I think I may have been motivated to complete them.

This game definitely falls into the more fun than good category, the mechanics are great and it’s fun to play. I just wish that they had taken more care in fleshing out the world, and the characters to give the game some depth. I’d say if you can get this at budget pricing via steam sale or used bin or something, definitely do it, there is enough fun to be had here, but it is missing motivation here to pay full price in my opinion.

First the staples

Back on the World of Warcraft… nothing has changed but it’s still a pretty good time sink… 4/7 progression in firelands for the guild, having fun hangin’ out with the guildies.

Starcraft 2, I’ve been laddering more and I think I’ve gotten over my anxieties and I’ve been having a ton of fun with it… I’m a top half gold leaguer this season, I feel like this is a better place for me than that Platinum placement I got last season that I was scared as shit to play in for fear of demotion.

I played a bunch of Dead Island, it’s definitely more fun than it is good, a lot more fun actually. Dismembering zombies is quite rewarding, despite all of it’s flaws and stupid quests/story lines. If you’re the kind of person who can have fun with a game just because it’s fun then you’ll likely have a great time with this. If not check it out in the sale bin when it comes around, it’s definitely worth the budget price it will inevitably be dropped to. On consoles anyway, I wouldn’t want to play the thing without the analog controls.

Disgaea 4… quirky turn based strategy game with enough strategic elements to make it fun and challenging, they don’t make games like this anymore. TBS has gone the way of walking up to the bad guy and killing it, then repeat. It’s nice to see that there is some planning required here. There are a ton of sub-systems to keep tinkerers super busy, and the level 9999 cap means there is lots to do! The story is as per usual for the Disgaea series, totally off the wall, but I’m kind of surprised to see some very obvious political statements in there… you can definitely ignore them and just take what they’re saying for face value, but I definitely had some ‘wow…’ moments.

In other news, It’s my birthday tomorrow and for my birthday I’m upgrading my gaming PC, I’m an intel guy so I’m going i7-2600k, ASUS board, 16gb ram, and likely some brand of crossfire graphics setup, likely to be put together in the next few weeks. Just in time for Rage, Battlefield 3, SW:TOR, and diablo 3. I’m pretty excited about all of these.

I’ll try to write y’all more!

Over the last few months I’ve been drowning in real life things, like deadlines, moving, and vacations… the good news is that’s over.

I did find some time for gaming, but not for writing about gaming… (when given a choice it’s quite obvious which I’d choose, I’m sure you’d choose the same). To catch you up, I’ve been playing a lot more Starcraft, played some Duke Nukem (didn’t like it), and L.A. Noire (loved it a lot). Next game I play will get the full treatment I promise!

Forgive me for neglecting you!
<3 Sean

I didn’t even finish the original portal in fact I was quite late to that game in general, and it did feel dated when I did get around to it. I loved the concept and the humor though in the parts I did see. Maybe I’ll hammer my way through it today before I get into the sequel.

I will be passing on Mortal Kombat as tempted as I am, fighting games just aren’t fun if you don’t have a rival and I really don’t have one at this point as I mentioned in my Tekken and Super Street Fighter IV articles.

First and foremost, holy crap this game has a story mode… or “Champion Mode” as they call it. Here’s the thing, the story is really good, and interesting. It’s told through cut scenes and by way of the play by play guys during the fights, and is chalk full of adversity. It’s done in such a way that creates variety of gameplay that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. For example, early on there is a match where you take a punch early on (unavoidable) that creates a cut. Through the course of the fight you need to protect that cut otherwise the ref calls the fight. Sure, that sounds like boxing, but for someone like me who hadn’t entirely figured out the best way to counter in this version of the game, it was really teaching me the mechanics, and forcing me down a road I likely wouldn’t have bothered with, without the incentive.  The Legacy Mode returns, and is pretty much unchanged, schedule your fights, become the champion, defend your title. I found the training games to be a little more fun this time around

The fighting in this game is much faster compared to round 4, and the increase in speed makes it significantly less counter punching focused. In round 4 I constantly found myself waiting for the counter punch, and that was effective. It also feels a little more balanced, when you hit with a counter, you still need to follow it up with at least a decent combo if you want to get anywhere, especially early on in a fight. This also means, players who choose to walk forward and throw you can win, if you want to play defensively you can win, very cool.

Everything about this game was a surprise to me, and it was all great.

Bulletstorm

From the coverage, Bulletstorm intrigued me, there haven’t been many new run and gun shooters in a while and I was really looking forward to a fast paced shooter that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Keep reading to see if Bulletstorm successfully scratches the itch.

The story isn’t bad, you’ve heard the revenge story before, the main character, “Gray” and his squad will go to any length seek revenge against a Gunnery Sergeant Hartman looking and sounding guy who had been manipulating them. They eventually find out and go rogue, which leads them to be stranded on some planet with a few factions of various level of crazy. The dialog is a mixed bag, I found some of the conversations to be just the right mix of some vulgarity and plot or background but more often it is just sophomoric, vulgar, and frankly stupid. There is a distinct difference in my eyes between cursing when a building you’re in is collapsing, and someone telling you they are going to “kill your dick” in passing. Yes, they are clearly aware of how absurd it is, and the characters react in such a way in some cases that let you know. Just because you’re aware of your stupidity, doesn’t make it ok… I really do wish it was better because I really was looking for something light hearted. The length and pacing of the campaign was really good, didn’t feel like it was dragging on at any point, and I think it ended when it needed to.

When it comes to gameplay, I pretty much love this game, the skill shots are fun and the reward of more points for being creative with your weapons really works. The environments actually help to drive you try other weapons from time to time, for example, in small corridors it makes more sense to use the screamer (sort of like a flare gun), than the flailgun (couple grenades attached by a chain), which has a wider shot and is less effective in tight places. In that sense the gameplay is varied, though when not presented with theses unique areas I always found myself reverting back to the same load out. There are a few annoying choke points where enemies spawn in waves in a very small space it can be hard to deal with, and not in a “this is challenging” way, in a “this is poor level design” sort of way. Between the spots where lots of bad guys come, there are some basic traversal stuff where some story, or not so witty dialog is delivered. It provides a break in the action, and it looks really good, but you are asked to climb over, or crawl/slide under things but it feels a little clumsy,  like you have to be in just the right spot for it to work. It’s not terrible but by the end of the game I found it quite annoying.

There is a nice selection of weapons, each with an alternative shot that does more damage, or is used for its own skillshot. This was one of the few games that I had to spend in game credits to buy ammo, I never felt like I was starved though and it did seem like I always had enough to buy what I needed even though I wasn’t all that varied in my skillshots. The weapon “upgrades” are pretty lame since all they do is increase your ammo capacity. it would have been nice to see maybe some extra properties added to them like, the weapon now ignites the target or near by baddies or something like that. More ammo is nice and all, but it doesn’t change the game.

In addition to the story mode there are “echo”s which are essentially one player time trials with leaderboards from what I’ve seen most of them are taken directly from segments in the campaign, and they do provide some replay value. There is also a coop multiplayer horde mode that I didn’t get into, but it’s there if you’re into that sort of thing.

It seems like I came down on Bulletstorm here, but I really did have a good time with the combat for the most part, it was a fun idea and if you can come into knowing they are going to say some stupid shit that makes you sort of angry (or maybe you’re into that sort of humor), I think you can have a lot of fun with this game. If you have some friends playing it I can see the echo leaderboards being a good distraction. I can definitely see me putting this back in down the road and giving it another romp. Nice job People Can Fly, really.

I had a great time with the Bulletstorm demo, it’s action packed, the weapons were fun, and the combo system sparks some creativity in your carnage which I can appreciate. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to take pride in a leaderboard simple because I don’t have the dedication to get into the top percentile of any game’s user base, so I hope there is more to the story than the demo leads me to believe because shooters with score screens at the end of the level historically don’t do very well in my eyes (example, vanquish).

I played like 5 minutes of the Killzone demo, it’s just multiplayer/bots so you know what you’re getting there, more of their warzone mode, in my limited play time I did see anything new really. I play games like that for the single player anyway so I didn’t really learn anything from the demo apart from that it looks pretty good.

Anyway, I’m kind of excited to have some games on the plate.

Already I’m loving the variety in the gameplay, for the love of god there is a cupcake launcher used to solve simple platform puzzles. It’s a nice touch to have so much in the game, especially early on.

I’ve already mentioned that i found the original LBP charming, and I would expand that further to say kooky, in it’s style and in it’s characters. They cranked this up in LBP2, I’d call it outright surreal, but I find it very believable for some reason, like it makes perfect sense for me to stop the dragon train… and have a cupcake launcher… I don’t think anything in the game will surprise me thematically at this point, it is all very strange and very fun, and most of all, welcome.

I have been having issues with the play online piece, it would appear that no one wants to play with me, which makes me sad. I only saw one prompt for someone to join my game, and I was literally steps away from the end so I declined. I’ve been declined several times, it feels sort of broken.

The one (and only) staple on this list that I would cement firmly in a #1 slot this year has to be Starcraft 2 (review). Simply put, SC2 transcended gaming for me, as much as I played the campaign, and countless vs bot matches, and coop and versus matches with friends and despite the fact that I was scared away by the online competition. I spent just as much if not more, time watching tournaments (GSL,MLG),  tutorials(day[9]), and various other matches. I had more fun with Starcraft 2 this year than any other game, and a profound thanks to the community for their contributions to my enjoyment. Can’t wait for the next installment

Limbo (review) at risk of sounding like an “artsy” gamer, Limbo was one of the most engrossing gaming experiences I had this year, subtle, charming, and although my enjoyment tapered off towards the end, it was just the right length. I still contend that this game should not be missed.

Mass Effect 2 (review) This is a great game, and a pretty epic experience, although the story felt much like a gateway like the second part of any trilogy and feels like it’s on it’s way to a much more epic conclusion on the horizon. The game play here is awesome, and they got rid of many of the standard RPG tropes, so much so that I personally have a hard time classifying this as an RPG like many of the outlets have. With it’s release on PS3 coming this month including a catchup on ME1 if you haven’t got into it yet, that would be the way to go, so that you get the full story at least, but this was truly one of the best games to come out this year and bolstered with some of the best DLC.

Other notables for me were Darksiders, widely underrated, and dismissed as a Zelda clone, which is retarded because people have been asking for a mature zelda game since the dawn of time, Skate 3 even though I think they can not make those for while, and the video upload stuff should have been more consistent. For Wii owners Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Kirby’s Epic Yarn, also Trauma Team didn’t get enough credit. Super Meatboy was really fun and contrary to everyone else I liked Final Fantasy XIII although I can understand their point of view on that as well. There weren’t really any racing or sports games that deserved to be sought after in my opinion.

I played a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, but not enough to get to the point where it’s good. and my G27 racing wheel has been neatly tucked away in my office for about a week now. I’ve come to the conclusion that everything not driving in GT5 feels like it was designed many many years ago, and wish that the shell of it was a lot closer to Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit in the community sense.

I’ll probably be low content until the new year where there are some exciting games coming up, I’ll also do a full round up on my Warcraftings and give my full impressions of the pre-end game portion of the expansion.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

I like everyone else on the planet have been playing Black Ops, I got through the single player quickly (it felt a little longer than MW2 thankfully), and while from a story perspective it was one of the most interesting of all of the COD games it’s not without it’s flaws. The issues with the barrel level went fairly well documented, but I too got stuck here, and the areas where you encounter non-stop enemies is just annoying. I played a lot of multiplayer the first couple weeks but that has tapered off for me now too. It’s pretty fun, I wouldn’t say it’s better than MW2, but it was fun because people hadn’t unlocked or figured out all the load out exploits yet (although it seems that they’ve started showing up).

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I’m not gonna lie, this is a Burnout game (this is not a bad thing at all), except you’re driving cars that feel like they actually have some weight which was my biggest complaint about the Burnout series. The result is a fast paced arcade racer, that requires a bit of finesse to really eke out every last millisecond on your time, and you want to because of Autolog, basically an internal social network feature that compares your times versus the times of your friends lists. Depending on the commitment of your friends, this can create some truly frustrating, and rewarding competition, meaning a lot of replayability and tons of value to this game. They were lucky to get this out before Gran Turismo 5 and the lack of a cockpit cam is disappointing, but I can honestly say that both of these games can coexist on your shelf. If you can get your friends to pick it up, you would be wise to get this game.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I haven’t played much of it, actually I did the first 4 objectives or so and they were so mundane that it made me want to turn it off, I haven’t turned it on since, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it. I don’t know why I keep buying these, I was not a fan of the last one despite it being one of the two games I’ve platinumed.

Donkey Kong Country

It looks and more importantly sounds like Donkey Kong Country, I haven’t played it yet, but I watched the gf play for a while, so I will defer to her for comment. “It’s cool! It’s like (punching motions) BOOM! BOOM! BANANAS!”… couldn’t have put it better myself. Looking forward to some quality time with it later.

World of Warcraft

This has been the biggest time sink for obvious reasons. I got back into it because the events and changes for Cataclysm have started and I wanted to give the “old” leveling experience another go so I can look at it comparatively post Cataclysm. I was able to get to level 71 in 7 days (real life time, not played), and I had a pretty good time doing it. The map changes go live today, so I can’t wait for the realms to get back online so I can check it out.

Dance Central

This is the only reason to own a Kinect, it’s still getting a lot of play around here, and it’s fun… moving up to medium routines and the extra challenges are making it more fun for sure. it would appear that it has legs and Harmonix spit out a new set of DLC today including Cameo’s “Word Up!”… oh yea, that’s gonna have to happen.

My apologies for the lack of content lately, but no wonder I haven’t had time to write my Blops and NFS reviews, that’s a lot of games to play. Also, Gran Turismo 5 is out tomorrow, and today the Wheel Stand for my logitech G27 arrived, I’m STOKED, I will be spending some time in the driver seat this evening and tomorrow.

Sadly, when I try to enter my code:

I know the image is blurry, it says “Unable to Process Online Pass Please try again later”…

For a game that is basically built around Autolog and online competition, this should work on launch day… I’m thoroughly disappointed by this.

UPDATE: In the interest of fairness it would appear that EA is working on it… and issued this notice http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/3834779.page

To our North American Playstation 3 customers: our apologies, but there is a delay in the activation of PSN Online Pass codes for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. We have been working with Sony to resolve this issue, and you should be able to enter your Online Pass codes shortly. In the meantime, you can still jump online immediately by activating the free two day trial.

I seeeee you...

I, like many people apparently picked up Kinect last week, along with it a handful of the launch titles just to see what the tech is all about and to see if they did anything gameplay-wise that might suggest that my reservations about the technology have been wrong.

My pre-launch impressions on this tech is that it could be fairly good at the things it can do, and be successful staying within those constraints. Things like fitness, and dancing games have a chance to excel because with the skeletal tracking functionality the software has the opportunity to correct things like over all form, something that has been missing from the fitness genre up until now, on top of adding a great deal of depth to the video game dancing formula.

I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Interfacing with the dashboard with your body is cumbersome, it’s not very precise and it’s pretty slow because you have to hover over a button for 2/3 seconds to confirm that this is what you’re trying to do. In canada there isn’t a ton of things of interest in the Kinect Hub of interest. The voice commands are kind of neat, but the only command I’ve really used is, “xbox play disc”, which is handy if the game you want to play is in there, but if it’s not it’s completely useless. I haven’t figured out how to eject the disc or power off the console with voice commands yet so I’m finding it very limited. I also don’t use Zune for anything… at all… so while I poked around I didn’t see anything interesting there either. To make matters worse, it would appear that there were no interface standards set out by MicroSoft and as such it seems like every game I’ve played has a different control scheme for navigating the in-game menus. For a system that is all about this get up and play methodology, spending time figuring out menus is fairly annoying, even when they are working. The only consistent piece is the gesture to pull up the guide, and even that is honestly a fraction of the guide you get from your controller. Why can’t I check my active downloads from there as I can with the controller. In my opinion it is only half ready.

Kinect promotes this jump in jump out recognition to automatically sign you into your profile, this appears to work great at the hub, however setting up KinectID in my living room was extremely challenging the 6 foot mark pretty much has my heels up against my couch so getting positioned where they wanted me to, I had to climb up on the arms of the couch and everything. Some games the recognition works a little better than others or doesn’t behave the way I might expect it to, for example, if i play a song in dance central, and then step out, and let the gf step in, it signs her in, but it seems as though it is still playing under my profile updating my scores and whatnot until I back out of the track list entirely and select the ‘active user’ in the interface. I suspect that is more to do with the design of the software than Kinect but I’d think some best practices would have been communicated.

As for the software, Dance Central is fun in small doses I guess, but i don’t think it’s going to have the longevity it’s going to need to be as successful as Harmonix wants it to be (and apparently needs to be), and it most certainly isn’t making me a better dancer.

I also picked up Your Shape Fitness Evolved mostly because my gamer life style has gotten the better of me and I’m out of shape, pretty badly. I figure I can use this to get me to a point where I can bridge the gap between where I am now to being able to do the warm up of an actual exercise program… and if it can do that then I’ll be happy with it. So far the tracking seems to be pretty good, and I’m only scratching the surface with my exercises since I can really only take it for 20 mins or so every other day… I am having some problems with the methods they use for correcting you if your form is wrong however. It simply tells you that you are out of rhythm, for example I was doing a side step exercise and I apparently wasn’t stepping wide enough, it did mention one time to widen my step, and I did, but not wide enough, but i was in rhythm for a couple steps then it didn’t give me the specific correction again. It was frustrating because I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing wrong and why it wasn’t counting my reps. Aside from that, it is kind of neat but I’ll need to get in better shape before I can actually get into this in more detail.

Kinectimals is cute and all but so far it’s been more of a throwing simulator then a pet type game. Also, I really feel like I need something in my hand to do the throwing parts… a key aspect to throwing something in real life is identifying the release point… since there is no way to tell kinect what the release point is, it doesn’t give me the sense that I’m in control, and the accuracy of these things feels off because of it. Luckily it’s pretty forgiving but I don’t think it’s “that kind of game”. I was sort of expecting the pet to just interact with me, I mean if we’re playing catch with a ball, and I ask him to do a trick, I’d expect him to do it. It would seem that you need to go into the toy box and select the whistle before you can do any of the “tricks”. To me it just seems like that stuff should always be on regardless of what else is happening in the game. I’m obviously not the target audience for this though…

Kinect Adventures is a typical pack-in tech demo… the stuff works, and it shows a few ways to interact with kinect, but it seems like it’s just an advertisement to developers who will endeavor to fill up the kinect library with shitty minigame collections. The games here are OK-ish… they work but it’s more or less just shuffling and jumping. It’s nice that they put some kind of progression around it beyond just a “here’s a bunch of mini games pick one”, but it’s pretty much a throw away, but if you’ve got kids I’m sure there is some fun to be had here.

DJ Hero 2

I liked the original DJ Hero, it was a serviceable first effort for an innovative step for the genre, but thought there wasn’t enough there to really motivate me to play much of it after writing my review. This will be a fairly short review since not a whole lot has changed so I do suggest giving that a once over if you know nothing about the DJ Hero franchise, otherwise read on to see if I thought the changes were significant enough to make this a worth while title.

The follow up to last year’s DJ Hero really seems to be the game that the developer freestyle games had in mind for DJ Hero when they finally settled on their peripheral. My biggest complaint with the original DJ Hero is that I was having trouble relating my actions to the music resultant, the gameplay changes I feel has resolved this and as a result the fun factor of this game increases ten fold if not more. Whether it is partially the fault of an excellent (no seriously, top notch) collection of mixes, or an improvement to the track mapping, or the handful of additions and improvements to the freestyle sections.

DJ Hero 2 introduces an “Empire Mode”, which plays out not unlike other campaigns in the Hero franchise, you play through each of the songs collecting stars, unlocking characters and accessories, to pimp your dude with things you never get to see anyway. Regrettably they dug a little too deep into the Hero’s playbook, or garbage bin however you look at it, they’ve scattered “DJ Battles” that play out like the guitar battles that was in some of the older Guitar Hero games, more or less a vs mode against the AI. Like in the GH games I didn’t find it all that fun because the music felt like it they sacrificed good music to making something difficult, and although going back and forth, makes more sense in the DJ context it’s still feels like the computer is cheating some times. As you progress, you unlock new venues, and most (if not all) open up with a megamix figuring one of the guest DJs. The mega mixes are 3-5 song non-stop setlist that are pretty great and are a pretty good way to pass the time. Now if they figured out how to do this with custom playlists they’d seriously be onto something.

So while I think the “DJ Battles” in “Empire Mode” are a bit of a failing playing these competitive modes with a friend is actually pretty fun. It just feels a little less cheaty that way. It only took a few seconds for the match maker to do it’s work, and it had most of the options you’d want, set the length of the setlist, your opponents level (which is based off an experience point type system djp associated with your profile). The one setting missing that disappointed me, was the difficulty setting, I was playing on Hard, and kept getting put up against opponents on Medium and in some of the modes there are some competitive imbalances that you’d hope to be playing someone on the same difficulty or at least have an option for it.

Really the key improvements here are in the freestyle gameplay elements. First, they updated the freestyle samples to use appropriate samples at various points of the song, this is so much better than last years which you basically picked a sample set and used it for all songs, most of the time it sounded terrible. Second, free style scratches, these are awesome, it’s basically a short loop they let you play with, you can start and stop your scratch and get a little sample in there and pick your scratch up again. Finally, freestyle cross fades where you can switch between tracks on your own,  though they do leave some markers on the highway that gives you some clues where key parts of the tracks are to make it a little more intuitive. The trick here is that a lot of the time, with very little effort, these freestyle sections sound good! and because they sound good they make you feel good! And, coincidentally feeling good makes games more fun!

Needless to say, I still doubt that this game is for everyone, but I can say, if you feel a little curious about it, and/or it seems a little interesting to you I can whole heartedly suggest picking it up, there is a lot of fun gameplay in here both on and offline, and a really good, really well rounded soundtrack to play with. If they continue to support DJ Hero 2 with DLC in a way that is superior to how Guitar Hero has done it, I’ll be a pretty happy guy.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

In anticipation of the release of this game, I recently went back to finish 2008′s Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, which was an incredibly flawed to the point of tedium, primarily a fighting game, mashed with a sandbox type hub world, with far too many collectiables, and unlockables. The fighting was fun but beyond that, the non-fighting quests activities were terrible. Assuming that the team would keep an eye on the feedback, and from all of the epic battles that occurred in the Shippuden series, UNS2 had all kinds of potential to be an excellent game, and not just for fans of the franchise.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 picks up roughly 3 years after the events of the first in the series (this is inline with the break in episodes in the anime as well). Starting with reformed Team 7′s search for former comrade Sasuke, who abandoned the village at the end of the first on a mission of vengeance. Sadly, I don’t think this was really communicated well to people who didn’t play the original. That is pretty much the case throughout the game in that it really isn’t fleshed out like it is in the anime and manga, which as a fan is ok because knowing that story it’s easy to piece it together because they do follow the story closely with the exception of some minor details that I’m sure were changed for game purposes. One problem though with the story telling in the game is that the objective of your mission is primarily going to be ‘win a match’, which on it’s own isn’t a problem  but sometimes you are controlling the losing side of the battle, and your objective is to win. When you win under these circumstances it isn’t explained. Again, if you’re familiar with the series this isn’t a big deal but in my opinion it makes it hard for me to recommend this game to non-fans. Therefore, if you are interested in this story at all, I’d say go ahead and watch the anime or read the manga instead.

The core of this game is the fighting, which makes up the “Free play”, “online battle”, and most of the story mode. On the surface it sounds rudimentary, you have 1 melee attack that you can spam for combos, insert some thumb stick directions to vary the attacks, and more importantly the timing of said attacks (more on that in a minute)  and a ranged attack, and a jutsu button.

Support Attack

The key to the battle is managing your chakra, for those not familiar with the term this basically amounts to energy used to perform special moves, things like jutsu (read special moves), special ranged attacks, and chakra dashes (an easy way to close the gap or create some distance from your opponent) all take various amounts of chakra. You also have the ability to spend some chakra on a ‘substitution’ with a well timed block, meaning hitting block exactly when your opponent makes contact. This is where the strategy of the varied combos come in to play; in a lot of cases your ability to pull off these substitutions determines the outcome of the battle. Chakra can be regenerated but you can not block or move while doing so leaving you very vulnerable. To compensate for that, you often (depending on where you are in the story) have support characters you can call in that may help buy you some time. You also have items bound to the d-pad that will do things like clutter the environment with explosives that can buy you some time as well, but you can do things like increase your speed or attack power, or restore some chakra. Going further, if you use your support characters enough during the course of the battle you will enable “support drive” with means for a limited time your team members can jump in and out automatically, also, sometimes you can power up your chakra beyond the end of the meter to enable “awakening” which effectively changes everything about your character, they’ve got different jutsu’s they’re faster and stronger. The penalty to this is that when it expires, you become weakened and take more damage. Now all that said, it’s not impossible to get through the story mode without using a lot of that stuff, but as I’ll get into in a few, you are doing yourself a disservice if you do because it is honestly a treat to watch, the animation and camera work really create some cinematic experiences.

On top of all that subtlety, there is a very nice collection of characters to use, 42 of them actually once you’ve actually unlocked them all, which after my 30hrs in the game to this point I’ve yet to do entirely (3 left, Minato, Killer Bee and Lars from Tekken). That aside, these characters fall into different categories, there are those who like to get in close and punch it out, while other like to stay at range, and even odder, those who use puppets, yes puppets… these characters are particularly strange to use since you can move the puppets indepentantly of the character itself, which has proven to be pretty challenging for me to get a hang of. The difference is very obvious when you’re playing

Now I’m not trying to say that this is a fighting game that can share a stage with Street Fighter or any other fighter with a strong competitive following, it obviously doesn’t have that same sense of mastery and balance, but what this is, is a very fun, very accessible fighting game, that looks like it was ripped straight from the anime. Each match plays out with animation and style that I could not describe as anything less than complete fidelity. Fans will recognize the combos and jutsus and with all the little things like churning chakra and exploding tags and kunai scattered across the battle field. Unfortunately the battle field is always a very empty area, it would have been neat had they included things in the environment that could be used to hide behind or as protection, it really could have added some neat mechanics like using Neji or Hinata’s bakugan (special eyes that can find chakra) to hunt down the opponent in these scenarios, but I digress.

As great as I think the fighting in this game is, it is the story mode itself that falls completely flat on it’s face. Without going to much into the old game, they removed everything I thought was neat about the hub world from UNS (namingly direct action to the missions from the menu, and the ability to explore konaha as a sandbox). Replacing those features with, very linear classic JRPG-esque rooms with quest giving NPCs. Once you get a quest you generally have to go on some very long walk through areas you’ve already been for the most part, initiate a battle, win, then walk all the way back. If that weren’t tedious enough, along the way there are countless of respawning loot items that you need to stop and collect which are used to fulfill “order deliveries” at the Konaha shops which will unlock items that you can then purchase and use in battle. There are also collection quests and some hide and seek quests, but not nearly as bad as some of the variety quests from the original. There is however a payoff for sticking with it at the end of each chapter you encounter an epic multi-phased boss fight that is taken straight from the series. Sometimes they introduce some new mechanic that is only used for that section of the encounter, or some series of quick time events that results in some really fun to watch animations.  These fights are easily the highlight of the game, and it is a shame that it is surrounded by so many poor design decisions. On the plus side, you do get to play through the story as a variety of characters which really does help mix it up. There are also points where you can select who fights based on who is currently in your team, which can also be selected (this is how you play through the end game after the final confrontation).

Sasori Boss Fight: oh yes, you're in control here

Ultimately I’d have a hard time recommending this to anyone short of the hardest of fans. Those who have the ‘stick-to-it-ness’ to play through the story will rewarded with a handful of epic boss battles, and a nice full roster (I wasn’t even able to find a cheat code, not that I condone that sort of behavior) to play a very pretty, fast paced, fun, and accessible fighter. As a fan, I had a fair amount of fun with this, though I’m not convinced the reward is worth the effort.

DJ Hero 2

I enjoyed the first DJ Hero game, but not enough to really consider buying the sequel. My main complaint was that I struggled to relate to my role in the experience, and there were some questionable decisions on the track list. The idea of including the freestyle scratches, and crossfade sections really brought me back around when I tried the demo for DJ Hero 2.

The freestyle scratches and especially the crossfades definitely helped to connect me to the experience, in a way that I felt was missing from DJ Hero, they’re fun, and they really give you an opportunity in small doses to make the mix your own, and gives a chance to relate the actions you’re taking to what is happening in the music. It is definitely rewarding when you throw something together that sounds pretty good.

My other complaint from the first being the soundtrack, is also resolved here, or at least it seems like it is (so far). There are definitely songs on there that I don’t like, Lady Gaga for instance, but, it makes perfect sense in this context and it’s definitely playable (especially when paired with DeadMau5 who I do like quite a bit). And for the most part (at least what I’ve heard so far), the mixes are really really good, and don’t feel like they were made for the game at all. Kudos here…

I’m not a fan of the DJ Battles in ‘Empire Mode’ (the game’s story mode effectively), to me they’re not all that fun, and on top of that they cut the screen in half to show the other DJ even if it’s the CPU, I guess I get why they put it in there just to add some variety, and some interaction with the celebrities they acquired for the game.

This is easily the best DJ Hero game yet, there are a couple DLC packs coming but they might have a real winner here if they support it the way harmonix is supporting Rock Band, but I find that pretty unlikely. I think the changes are significant enough that you owe it to yourself to at least find a way to give it a try if you didn’t like the first one, it’s honestly a good time.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

I’ve brought up in the past that I’m a fan of the Naruto anime and manga, and I even enjoyed many of the other video games in the series. After playing the demo for Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 I was actually really excited to pick it up, it seemed like they made some subtle changes to the combat that would really change the way it’s played in the context of story fights anyway, not really free play or online, mostly because of the fight in the demo involved a lot of moving to avoid jutsu and that was really fun.

All that said, my biggest concern for the game was going to be how they handled the story mode, lets be honest here, no one on my friends list is going to be picking this game up and I don’t blame them. So to me, the big draw is the story mode. As I mentioned it is a story I’m intimately familiar with and quite frankly very invested in, the series is at episode 400 or so between the original series and shippuden and the manga is beyond chapter 500. And here is one of my biggest problems with the game so far, it doesn’t do a good job in telling that story to players who may not be familiar with the content. I’ve played through the end of chapter 1, which is the end of the Save the Kazekage story arc, and it did include all the key points and moments but there is a lot of subtlety that I found important that were left out. Admittedly catching a player up on 200+ episodes is not really an option, and they do try to do back-story pieces during the battles by way of a reward for doing well in the quick time events in certain story moments. I did notice a few issues with some of these flashbacks though, one example is when they show a moment between Sasuke and Itachi after Itachi killed their entire family. Itachi was wearing his Akatsuki robes, he wasn’t when that happened in the story that wasn’t the case. I can certainly understand why that would be an appropriate thing to do to help relate the characters to people not familiar with the story because Itachi ~is~ wearing the robes for the duration of the story told in UNS2. So while I can understand why they would do it, it would appear that they are trying to cater to both side, and you know what, I’m fine with that, but I think by making some of the important back stories a reward you are potentially taking that content away from a player who may not know it and to me, that’s a mistake. There is a TON of content here though, I think I’m almost 5 hours in, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the story if the game truly goes out to the end of the Pain Saga, a lot to see.

Now, on top of the story telling itself, and I’d imagine in response to the outcry about how terrible the hub world aspect of the original Ultimate Ninja Storm game, here’s what they did… they changed the sandbox style Konaha with a JRPG LINEAR, SMALL ROOM, Final Fantasy XII style, you know what everyone’s complaint about FFXIII was? yea, exactly… Here’s a note to cyberconnect2, the problem with Ultimate Ninja Storm wasn’t the sandbox mode itself in fact running around Konaha was actually fairly fun, it was all the stupid shit that you had to do in the sandbox mode, the millions of collectibles, the order lists where you had to find combinations of items to unlock certain things. Guess what, most of that stupid shit is still here. So, while it did give them an opportunity to expand the environment beyond the Konaha walls, which I think is important, you get to see the sand village and the route to the sand village etc, but it’s not fun traversal at all. Your team walks slowly, they don’t use the ninja tree travel at all “we’re in a hurry!”, then proceed to walk slowly doesn’t make much sense.

In any case, the combat is mostly the same, I haven’t run into too much of fancy jutsu stuff that I was looking forward too from the demo since, but it’s still pretty early so I’m not going to make a judgement on that yet. Still a lot of fast paced good looking action though with some quick time events mixed in at the end. It’s still really fun to play when you’re actually in combat, I just wish they had some sense when it came to the story mode. I’ll likely finish this one, and I’d probably still recommend it to fans, it’s really an opportunity to revisit the story without watching all the episodes again, especially since the fan can likely fill in the blanks on their own.

Kirby's Epic Yarn

I already posted about this, but because Nintendo is weird and likes to do things on Sundays, this is already out but I’m still counting it this week. In a nut shell, it’s incredibly cute, and quite fun even though it is very clear that I’m not the intended audience for that game. This my friends is the power of Nintendo.

Vanquish

DJ Hero 2

I admit this as a guilty pleasure, I had some fun with the original but not enough to invest anymore time in it. That is until I played the demo for Dj Hero 2. The additional of freestyle crossfades and scratches created a situation that can be really rewarding when you pull something off that actually sounds good. I fluked it a couple times in the demo but I can imagine if you get really familiar with the songs you can do some really neat stuff.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

I recently finished the original Ultimate Ninja Storm, and I really enjoyed the combat later in game when the opponents actually fought back, people aren’t really talking much about the adventure mode in UNS2 and I think that’s going to be the key to me getting through it in less time than it took the last one. This would appear to be good solid fun for Naruto fans.

Fallout New Vegas

And finally, and honestly least interesting to me, Fallout New Vegas, I won’t be picking this up tomorrow, it was weird, it seemed like the more information that trickled out about it the less interested I was in it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Fallout 3, but there is something about this one that doesn’t smell right. I’m going to wait for the dust to settle, and most likely wait for a decent steam sale on this one.

That sums on this week though, a pretty good haul I must say… sadly, next week we’ve got Rock Band 3, and the week after I believe in Kinect, and Dance Central (oh come on, it’ll be hoot). Call of Duty shortly after that. And sadly, that’s it for these season folks. I’d still say this was a good year for gaming it just happened in March instead. Oh well I guess this is just going to help fun all the Rock Band pro mode gear I’m going to need to buy.

The least adorable thing about this game is the box art

I had my eye on Kirby’s Epic Yarn since it was announced at E3 this year, I like Kirby as a character, hell I even liked Kirby’s Dream Course, correction I really liked it. Anyway, the reveal trailer was very charming, you knew it was skewing young based on the graphic style, and music, well, see below.

Getting into the game, we’re given a brief intro about how Kirby ends up in the stringy situation and presented as a narrated story book, which to me, fits the patchwork popup book aesthetic and what I assume to be the target audience very very well.

The gameplay is that of a left to right 2D platform game, it features some familiar mechanics, Kirby can run, and float jump that allows you to clear gaps, you can swim, you can pick up your enemies and throw them into other enemies, all things seen in platform games before but the way that they are executed here is pretty unique. To dash Kirby transforms into a car, to swim he transforms into a submarine of course. And sure it’s a simple cosmetic on top of these tried and tested mechanics, but it makes it feel new, and it’s cute as hell… Using your whip to tear down patches to find treasures is adorable. And using the patches found in previous levels to open the next level always results in some sort of cute animation to unlock the next door. The girlfriend and I were playing multiplayer and she was giggling nearly the whole time… and whether it was the game itself or if I was just glad she was having such a good time with it I too was grinning ear to ear. It is unbelievably charming but not challenging, but fun looking around for the hidden treasures and fighting the bosses, especially with the coop.

The game looks really good, especially for a Wii game, it just goes to show that if a developer acknowledges the limitations and agrees to work within them they can create some noteworthy graphics. Also the music is gosh darn adorable.

Early thoughts are that if you have a Wii, you probably wouldn’t regret picking this up, but we played through 4 worlds last night and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a very long game.

The Move

I couldn’t explain to you why, but I felt compelled this weekend to pick up the Playstation Move. I was pretty content to just wait for the software to come out that makes this a must have accessory. I think I tricked myself by saying “I’m going to want them for Little Big Planet 2 anyway, no reason to wait until then to pick it up”. I have to say though, the precision and it’s application in the titles I’ve tried thus far is really impressive. The comparison to the Wii is inevitable, but I can tell you as a Wii owner, and someone who thinks the Wii had all kinds potential and has fallen victim to it’s on self imposed short comings, this isn’t even close, not even with Wii Motion Plus.

The first and most important difference I’ve noticed between the Wii and Sony’s Move, is that unlike Wii, Move doesn’t rely entirely on gesture controls. Gesture controls for the move do exist when it makes sense, for example, flicking your wrist to toss the ball up in volleyball or table tennis, but when it comes to hitting the ball your position when you are performing the actions are very important. Compared to Wii where you can stand completely still and just time the flick of your wrist, Move had me scampering all over my living room trying to get good angles for my returns.

Also, the form factor on these controls is infinitely better than the virtual brick that is a wiimote, wielding 2 Move controllers, or a Move controller and a navigator, felt good, no risk of soreness from serious sessions which is good! because with the gaming that could conceivably be backed by the power of a PS3 there are going to be experiences that you WANT to play for hours (Red Steel 2 port please, remove doors thank you), including perhaps Heavy Rain which has added move support. I started my second play through of that and the controls were fairly intuitive, though very much a gesture control system. I’m not sure I’ll have the stick-to-it-ness that would be required to get through the game again, as much as I did like, and appreciate it the first time around, there are an awful lot of slow moments, but I’d still highly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves a gamer, as it is truly a unique experience, and even more-so now that it supports move controls. Or perhaps a couple rounds of golf with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 which has also added Move support post release and does a very good job at illustrating my hook.

Getting into the software, I’ll just sort of touch on what I’ve tried here, and focus on the move implementation. I’ll save the more in depth review of the games I’ve purchased for their own posts. Luckily the Move came with a demo disc with pretty much every move title available now.

Start the Party

As you might guess by the title, this is a mini-game collection, the hook here is augmented reality. For those not certain of what I mean by this, Start the Party uses the PlayStation Eye to project the player on the screen, the augmented reality bit is how the game will put some sort of ‘end’ on the Move controller, which you use to play the minigames. For example, there is a mini game where you have to paint templated shapes on the screen, and the move controller effectively turns into a paintbrush on the screen. Similarly, there is a game where you have to swat flies, and the controller is projected on the screen as a swatter. I don’t think there are enough variety in the games to make this game something that you need to have, but it is silly and fun in small doses when people are over, and probably more fun that for or with a younger crowd.

Sports Champion

I struggle to not call this “Wii Sports Champion” often, but I’m having a lot of fun with it. Specifically with the Table Tennis and Archery games. This game really demonstrates the precision of the Move controller. As I mentioned above, when I’m playing table tennis I often have to move around my living room to keep the ball on my forehand so I can better manage the center of the table. The way you hold the controller effects the way the paddle is held, putting authentic spin on the ball. It’s not perfect, there are often places on the table where I don’t feel I have a legitimate chance to return it, but it is very rare that I feel I had been cheated by it. The percision carries through all of the games here, and they are all fairly fun, even bocce… One short coming here, and I’m not certain whether or not this a function of the size of my livingroom, which I believe may be a little small for the Move experience, but I find when we’re playing mulitplayer sports games, the system wants us to be standing fairly close to each other and people have been whacked as a result.

Heavy Rain

They added move support in a post release patch, I played the first chapter again just to get a sense of how they implemented Move, and it’s pretty much as you would expect, you use the navigator control to move the character, and instead of button presses, you use gesture controls to perform your actions. I don’t think this makes Heavy Rain a better game since for the most part, the problems lay in the slow story telling segments as opposed to the controls, but it does make it a little more immersive from what I can tell in my short re-sampling.

I have also tried, Eyepet, Tiger Woods 11, and Tumble, but I’ll save those for a subsequent post.

I mentioned a while back that I think Playstation Move has the potential to be very successful with some support from the 3rd party developers, as long as they don’t fall into this same trap Nintendo did of companies simply trying to cash in on the fact that something is new and interesting. Fact of the matter is I like to believe that the PS3 user base is significantly more educated/aware than the Wii user base. It’s no secret that Nintendo marketed to families, and casual gamers, and was very successful in doing so. Sony however, is ~now~ marketing to that same audience (right or wrong strategy, remains to be seen), but they already have a huge user base in the core gamer. The thing is that it is also appealing to these existing users, and perhaps specifically ~their~ families and the casual gamers there in. Hardcore gaming fathers buying move setups for their kids for example (same logic may apply to Kinect as well, but for the sake of this article I will stick with Move).

Now the reason I wanted to write this article is because today there has been a steady stream of Little Big Planet 2 videos released as the result of the non-disclosure agreement for the beta expiring. Huh?… what does LBP2 have to do with this?… good question. LBP2 has the potential to replace any and all mini game collections by way of it’s user content creator. As long as the “educated” ps3 user base does well at informing their Move motivated families… What I saw in these videos is a collection of self-motivated game designers creating what look to be fun little distractions, that will be freely available in the play-create-share model that LBP is known for. Since LBP2 supports Move, there is absolutely no reason that any number of simple little mini games using motion controls will be infinitely, and freely available to the entire Move user base presuming they are well enough informed to buy LBP2.  I see no reason for since even on it’s own it’s an incredibly charming platform game with an adorable leading character and a great reputation.

While the launch titles for PS Move did not appeal to me at all, and I don’t have the device, I’m really hopeful that this will act a deterrent from would be minigame compilation creators and allow for Sony to build a strong relationship with 3rd party developers that will perpetuate to it’s users by way of some truly amazing, and unique experiences that integrate motion controls that Wii has been unable to deliver thus far (Honestly if Ubi were to port Red Steel 2 and get rid of half of the doors we’d be talkin’) .

Good luck Sony

Sony has themselves in a very weird position in having to wait for a piece of software to release to sell the hardware. That gets exponentially more difficult when they missed the boat on the impulse buyers like myself.

I don’t know how much of this game I’m going to play but my inclination is to say not much at all. I gave up pretty quickly on NHL 10 for the same reason cited above.

Anyway, not much gaming going on in my life until next week, I’ll be traveling to Toronto for a few days, feel free to check out my general space http://www.seanon.net, if you want to keep tabs, though @seanonstuff will probably be more active.

I also played the demo for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, I mentioned a ways back that I was into the anime, and that’s still the case now. This game feels like it’s going to be a huge improvement over the original Ninja Storm, the way the demo fight carried out was great, you’re dodging jutsus and counter attacking, picking your spots for regenerating chakra. The animation in the game is awesome, and the way the camera swings around as the fight shifts was all very very tight. everything looks like it should really. I was only sort of looking forward to this but I can’t wait to get my hands on more of it.

I’ve also been playing shank, but I’ll wait and do a full initial impressions post on that, or save it for full review.

StarCraft 2

A little more Madden, and a lot more Starcraft… after a lot of matches against the AI today I decided to skip the remaining 43 practice league games, and jump right into my placement matches. It was a good thing to do… though my placement matches went sort of funny. I mentioned in my previous post that I had some reservations about taking my game online. I think I have a closet fear of losing, I know I don’t really care if I win or lose these things, I just want to be competitive, and have fun thats why the stress and anxiousness of playing these matches sort of surprised me, and made me really uncomfortable. Anyway, I’m really glad I played these games for a couple reasons that I’ll get to into in a bit.

First match I got roflstomped by a Protoss Cannon rush by a platinum player… nothing quite like a series of pylons and cannons creeping in from the fog of war outside your nexus. Game was over in 5 minutes, I felt shame. And was anxious, I was getting into it. Like really worked up. I’m generally a pretty tranquil guy, I don’t really like getting worked up like that. But, the lesson learned was pylon spread, and scouting, including my own starting area.

Second match was a win for me! I did everything I wanted to do in the match, I was working with a scout, something I had been struggling with, and neglecting, I stuck to my plan, and even worked in a little trickery of my own by planting a pylon inside my opponent’s wall-in that went undetected. I still got anxious and worked up, but this felt good.

My third match was literally 8 seconds long, I had just long enough to get my probes mining before my opponent quit. It appears from his profile that, this was his first and only 1v1 though, he has played a few 2v2′s.

The forth match was also sort of weird, because I thought I was going to lose, I was still sticking to my plan, but I was playing a zerg opponent, and the game I was playing was mostly neglecting using stalkers at all. It occurs to me now that this was a terrible idea to begin with because I clearly need ~something~ to shoot down overlords scouting my base, anyway… the player sent in a 6 zergling rush that I really didn’t have much defense for I managed to get a couple zealots out to start hitting them back and I sent my probes after him but the minute that first attack was defeated he quit. I was in bad shape too, I was down to 8 probes total at 5minute mark. I’m not sure why he quit but I lucked out thats for sure. The funny part though is that at this point, I was pretty calm, even in a very bad situation.

My final placement match was on a map I had never played, never liked the look of scrap station, against the first polite player I played in the lot. I lost, but it was pretty easy to identify why that was. I dropped my second pylon way early. My opponent didn’t, and instead got his second gateway well before I did. 6 zealot rush in my front door when I only had 2 out, probes couldn’t save me, and so it was game over. Checking the profile the opponent was a gold level player, with 24 matches under his belt, and I reckon they learned the same lesson I did in their early matches. Best part about this match, is my placement was done, and all that anxiety that I was experiencing was gone and I was able to focus on what was going on in the matches.

Feeling pretty good about myself with a 3-2 record (despite the fact that 2 of those wins were against people quitting inexplicably) I hopped into my first match in the Silver league (rated a lowly 82) (not at the bottom yay!), it was against a gold level zerg. Learning my lesson from the last match with the zerg that I needed something in the air, I decided to do a little something involving a star gate and some void rays, it was on a larger map, so I ended up doing my scouting like I’ve been trying to train myself to do even though it was effecting my macro some, including allowing myself to get supply blocked which meant I ended up having to do some probe defense on a couple zergling harass before I had any units out. I had setup my star gate at a proxy pylon closer to the opponent base with my original scout probe, something I had seen in some of the videos I had been watching while I was too nervous to be playing my own matches. this worked out really well for me, because it was never scouted. I fended off a subsequent push with a handful of zealots, and began my counter attack just in time for my void ray to be coming out. My opponent had no air defenses at all, so I was able to simply leave the ray in there after taking out the queen, and fall back to defend against the forthcoming base swap attempt. I WON! And again, I was pretty calm throughout the match.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that if you’re nervous about taking your Starcraft game online, the best advice I can give is get over it. It’s not worth all the thought you’re putting into it if you’re anything like me. Don’t get me wrong, be prepared, play some matches with the AI watch some videos online for some guidance. But seriously, you’ll be glad you did, I had a great day with StarCraft 2 today, and I’ll probably get some in again tomorrow.

Currently: 6-2 Silver League (rank: 46)

There just hasn’t been much to talk about gamewise lately. I’m still playing madden 11, it’s still ok, I imagine it’ll get a lot of play once the football season gets going (fly Eagles!). I’m still playing Starcraft 2, I’m going through looking for achievements, and being too scared to take my game online with strangers even though I’m sure there is a home for me somewhere on that ladder where I can be competitive.

I played a bit of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and it seems like fun in small doses, though I wish the controls were a little snappier.

I’ve also gone back for some Dragon Age: Origins, and I’m still not ~really~ understanding the combat in a way that makes me effective at it which is disappointing because I really want to like it.

I think the next game on the radar is Shank, there’s been a ton of seriously playable DLC lately, and that’s a good thing, but it’s just not the same as getting full budget game. After that I think NHL 11, which I have no real expectations for, I imagine a slightly improved version of NHL 10… I have no reason to expect anything more. I’m also really looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV… there has been a void in my life since I stopped playing WoW due to lack of interest.

Slow times, I haven’t really got sucked into a gaming session since my madden-a-thon before I put up the initial impressions post on it. I almost didn’t really know what to do with myself at all this week. Sort of troublesome.

Anyway, when you get to the main menu, you are punched in the face with ads… Ads as menu items themselves, in fact the default menu items when the game finishes loading are ads. There is also an ad ticker at the bottom of the screen talking about EA DLC for other games (EA’s MMA in this case). I find it disheartening that a game that sells millions of copies annually, feels the need to bolster their revenue by this degree of advertising. I fully understand some product placement, particularly the in game stat stuff that does make things a little closer to the broadcasts, but there is just so much invasive advertising in this game it makes me a little angry.

Take it to the field! I played a few games with the GameFlow turned on, fully understanding that it’s more or less the Ask Madden system with a few out of game functions to give it some customization. This is not as big an innovation as people are making it out to be, in my limited experience thus far, it does seem like it would work well for the people who aren’t well versed in football strategy, or are playing as an unfamiliar playbook. However, when I say go for it on 4th and goal on the 2, I don’t want to see the wildcat formation, ever, worst part is in that scenario you can’t even audible out of the play because you don’t have the right personal on the field. And as an Eagles fan (a team that makes no qualms about being a very pass heavy team), I could tell that the default settings for my team were wrong. GameFlow had me running primarily, and 20 or so plays out of the wildcat, for the course of both games.

I think that leads well into my biggest complaint about the game, it lacks polish. Sure, there are lots of production values, and things going on in the course of the game that are good, when I think of polish, I’m talking about the extra effort that goes into the game to make each and every one of those things works flawlessly, that doesn’t exist here. There are obvious problems with the audio stitching in all areas of the game (ingame, pregame, postgame), which is understandable to a degree because of the volume dialog that exists but the frequency of it is nearly unacceptable. Also, hearing Cris Colinsworth goin on about the importance the first preseason game, and the experience of the 2 quarterbacks despite the fact that one of them is going into his first season as a starter and simply doesn’t have the experience he’s talking about. I don’t think this was nearly as bad in seasons past.

Also, the game crashed twice on me last night requiring a hard restart of the playstation. It happened once trying to load a Madden Moment (returning from last year, basically some game scenarios from last season that you try to recreate, or overturn, in the time remaining), they are decent if you don’t have time to play a whole game. And once while I was playing in the ‘be a superstar’ mode, which you basically play as a rookie and try run the plays that are called and win games. Because your player isn’t on the field at all times, you have the ability to simulate the game until the next time your player is on the field, that’s when the game crashed on me. It’s disappointing too because I was into my second game, and I forgot to save between them, so I may have to start over entirely, can I get an auto-save system please? Playing this mode was really fun though, I even liked running routes as a receiver, and even blocking on sweeps is fun.

I really think all of these could be resolved with the polish I mentioned above, I truly believe that this game is a victim of an annual, ridged release schedule, and will never ever be the perfect game it has had the potential to be as they continue to add features or outright change functionally. Because once you get into the games, most of those complaints are nullified by an excellent game of football. I’ve been loving the offense in this year’s offering. The line-aware receivers is incredible, I’ve yet to see a receiver take it out of bounds (I’m sure it will happen occasionally though), and the running game without the turbo button is great, i’m really liking the light tilts on the analog while the blocks set up, it really does feel like a burst when you push it down all the way to change direction, or hit the hole… this is easily the most fun I’ve had with the madden running game.  Defense feels the same as always, but they added a defense assist, while, holding ‘X’ your player will execute the play like he should until you let go, I find it handy when I’m playing off the line, so the player stays on him man when he makes cuts in man-to-man or gets to his zone in zone coverage, hopefully it’ll have me controlling something other than a lineman or a blitzer every play.

They changed the pre-snap controls, so it’s taking a while to adjust to the new system, but it appears to work, however it feels like there is less time to use it before the snap than in previous years.

It’s sort of annoying though when they say, we’re trying to make it a faster experience and have the games take less time, but there is all these “broadcast-like” things before during and after the game, that take more time than anything else. Anyway, its’ still fun, and I’ll be playing the hell out of it, and you shouldn’t let all these gripes effect your decision, since the football part of the football game really is excellent.

Kudos to me! and thank yous to you.

We’ve got the hardware battle to think about, the girlfriend has been sold on Kinect, and specifically Dance Central, so that’ll be around, but to be honest, I may not be able to play that game due to pride constraints. I think move is interesting, I could play some of that, however… I have no interest in the launch titles at this point, on top of that, like all new tech, it’s going to take a while (I’d say almost a year), for developers to be able to deal with the hardware, while Move has an advantage here because one could assume that Wii developers have some experience here and would be able to get a head start on the learning curve, the disheartening part is that most of the good games on the Wii were made by Nintendo, I think the only exception is going to be Red Steel, a game I felt was limited only by the technical short comings of the Wii hardware. When this team makes a game for the Move I’ll pay attention, and perhaps some credit to Team Ninja for the upcoming work with “The Other M”.

Consoles

We’ve got the EA sports 11 line up, Football and Hockey are going to be bought for certain, that’s great because the franchise modes there can be a huge time sink if I can get into them. A few no brainers, Gran Turismo 5, Fallout: New Vegas, RockBand 3 (I still play RockBand or Guitar Hero a couple times a week). Vanquish won me over with the media bust about a month ago, and while I assumed I was going to pass on the upcoming Call of Duty offering, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist when the time comes. The upcoming Spiderman game has some potential, but I’ve got major concerns, that I’ll share in a focused post in the near future. Little Big Planet 2 will make an appearance. Maybe Max Payne 3 if it does actually make it out this year (I assume this one will be the next to be pushed into next year).

A couple Wii games worth thinking about, but it’s hard for me to get excited for a Wii game at this point, Metroid: The Other M, and Kirby Epic Yarn are on that list.

PC

Civ 5 should be a good time, and I’ll try Final Fantasy XIV when it comes out. Truthfully I’ll probably end up with fallout for PC in the end.

It sounds like a lot of games to play, but when I think of last year’s holiday season, there were games every week starting in September that were must buys, and then a couple more in the months that were compelling enough to consider buying. This is going to be a slow holiday for the hobbyist gamer like me. The kind of gamer who really gets into the single player of an experience and then moves on.

StarCraft 2

My history with Starcraft 1 was limited, I played most, if not all of the campaign, I played some multi-player with friends, but not really on battle.net. So my excitement for this title was really nostalgia based, and as such I came in with the same fears I had about fighting games in general, which is, that it was fun because playing games like this with friends is fun… I’ve played many of the action-RTS games that have come out of over the years, and they’re all fine an good, but I was really looking forward to a traditional RTS game like a Starcraft game commited to be true to its pedigree.

The story picks up 4 years after the events of brood wars, with the redneck Jim Raynor commanding his group of revolutionaries, the terribly named “Raynor’s Raiders”. Who are pitting their forces against the evil dictator Mensk, and the Dominion. The Tarren on Tarren (humans in the lore of Starcraft) action doesn’t last long before the Zerg and the Queen of Blades (formerly Kerrigan), show up, and not long after that before the protoss make an appearance and the love triangle from my youth continues, with a touch of internal struggle. We’re presented with Blizzard quality (that is to say very well done) cut scenes between every mission, and as a huge surprise to me to me, also between every mission you’re also given the opportunity to navigate a hub world of sorts where you can interact with the members of Raynor’s crew, upgrade your units/structures, purchase mercenaries to bolster your team in the missions (more on that later). It’s played out like a point and click adventure game, where you’re given some insight to the characters motivations as well as the situation that they find themselves in. I wasn’t expecting this at all, and while it’s not exactly brilliance, it did give the story some substance that is generally lacking in the RTS genre. That said however, I wasn’t totally sucked into the story, and I didn’t really get attached to the characters in any sense despite Blizzard’s strong efforts. There are some choices that effect the missions you end up going on and your crew structure, but to me they felt mostly insignificant. So again, an okay story in general, but excellent for the genre.

The single player campaign was crafted with extreme care. Every mission seems to introduce a different type of challenge, be it strategy, or environmentally based. For example, there was a mission where all of the minerals on the map are at a lower altitude, the trick is every few minutes those low areas are flooded with lava, so while gathering your minerals and applying pressure to your enemy you need to be aware of the timer. It’s really an exercise in managing your troops, making sure you get everything to high ground. I don’t want to go too spoiler on this since it’s most of the fun, suffice to say that this sort of variety persists through the twenty-some-odd missions. You do get some choice as to which mission you take when, there are often 2 available at any one time, and because of the rewards it has some impact on how the subsequent missions can be played out. Blizzard also opted to remove the bulk of the base building from most missions, by dropping you into a pretty established starting point. I can see how that would read as a positive to a lot of people, but that, plus the fact that new units are constantly being introduced it really takes a lot of the trial and error strategy out of the missions. Sadly you can tell what you have to do by the new units you have and the structures you’re provided. This is where the achievements add quite a bit of depth and replayability to the experience, even for a guy (namingly me) who doesn’t normally buy into the achievement thing. I think it was different in this case because reading the achievements makes you think “hmm… I wonder how I’d pull that off”, which introduces a whole bit of strategy and problem solving that I love. The down side of not being involved in the strategic elements of building your base, is that it really leaves you  ill-equipped to deal with the competition you’ll be facing on Battle.net. They added some RPG-like elements in the campaign by being able to  earn points by completing objectives that you can use to research zerg or protoss technology. Every five points you get to pick one of two new skills or units (choosing one locks out the other) that you can use through the campaign. Unfortunately you’ll be leaving these upgrades and units (and even some that aren’t upgrades) behind when you go online.

Thankfully, to help bridge the gap you also get 9 “challenges” that are intended to teach you some of the finer points. “Walling in” to fend off a rush, unit counters (which units are most effective against which), micromanaging your units, and using your hot keys and so on. They’re fairly effective at their purpose, but really to get ready to go online, you’ll need to spend some time in matches versus the AI getting used to establishing a base. To be completely frank, the matches against the AI is where the game has been most fun for me so far (despite the fact that my strategy, and ability fall apart at the 10-12 minute mark).

The best screenshot I could muster from my online experience so far

The Battle.net UI here is great, all the information you want is at your finger tips it’s super easy to group up with friends and getting into matches has been quick and easy. I haven’t spent a ton of time in online matches, but I did play a few, against players who apparently didn’t spend as much time battling with the AI or doing the challenges, so I haven’t really felt challenged in the practice league yet, but it’s still be fun and you do get a bit of a rush when you do get into an encounter even if you do feel like you have the stronger army, despite being able to identify flaws in my attack, and my execution. I don’t know if thats a credit to my research skills, or if the game has taught me more than I’m giving it credit for.

When it’s all said and done though, I’ve been playing this game with almost every minute of spare time I’ve had since it came out. Gamers looking for a traditional realtime strategy game, especially those looking to get online are going to find A LOT to love about this game, the quality of this title, the attention detail and the glossy shine of typical Blizzard polish is on full display. Some may be disappointed by the lack of innovation, but I think it provides enough newness to usher Starcraft into a new generation of player, and satisfy the seasoned veterans at the same time. If you’re looking for purely a one player experience, or for something ‘new’ I don’t think this game is the one for you, but if you’re the kind of person who can get into completing every objective in the game, this could keep you busy for a while.

StarCraft 2

I’ve been playing StarCraft the last couple nights, mostly the single player campaign because I’m definitely not a competent player in the versus arena (I didn’t play the beta, and I didn’t play that much of the original SC, pretty much through the campaign and some vs with friends) so the amount of time I spend in there will definitely be limited, but I did try a couple 1v1 against the AI, learning that hard is too hard for me at the moment… my ‘newbness’ aside…

The Campaign has been excellent so far, and I was pleasantly surprised by the depth. I don’t think I’ve played a mission yet that was a simple beat the opponent yet. There is some of that, but they always seem to add a bit of flare with things like lava overflows of low altitude areas of that map, so you have to make sure that you have your units on high ground, it’s never overwhelming because they give you a timer telling you when it’s coming, as well as notification as the cycle approaches. They also used a day/night cycle in which you switched from offense to defense, but they always included optional objectives that encouraged you to explore past those simple boundaries, and they are always tied to some sort of reward, be it points to go towards your research trees, credits to upgrade your units, or collection of mercs available, and always some kind of ‘achievement’. All of this really encourages you to go the extra mile, and explore the maps, and gives a strong sense of variety that I honestly wasn’t expecting. There is also hero based missions that start you out against the odds, and you have to use the abilities of the hero to strategically get through the enemies lines.

You get some choice in which missions you do, and each has unlocked a new unit so far, each mission catering to that unit’s strengths, it makes it sort of obvious what you have to do to win, but to be fair I’ve been playing on ‘normal’ difficulty, so I expect that it wouldn’t be so simple if you had the cahones to play like a man… I think there has been a cut scene after each mission so far, and they have definitely been up to Blizzard’s standards.

I’ve spent some time with the challenges and they’re pretty fun, more or less have been like rock paper scissors in the ones that I’ve tried but that will likely change too.

Megalodon

They need more profile pictures unlocked at the start though… pretty limited customization up front and everyone looks the same on the forums which falls into blizzard’s model, it sort of sucks now though.

I’ve also had some issues with my megalodon headset however, it took some tinkering to get output working at all which is annoying because the beauty of the USB headset is that it’s just plug’em in and go. It’s also annoying that I had to set it to be prologic output instead of 7.1 which is supported by the headset, and works outside of StarCraft, and then I couldn’t get the mic to work… it’s all working now but it was troublesome, and annoying, and when I switch from desktop speakers to headset I have to go back into the settings to re-optimize, or continue to play with “lesser” settings.

[Update: 2010-07-31]

Just got back from a mini road trip, overnighter, and was getting ready to fire up starcraft. Looks like a patch went out while I was gone… notably!

Fixed an issue with sound not playing on some 7.1 systems.

If Blizz fixed my only complaint about the game already I am going to be thoroughly impressed. haven’t got to try it yet, but I’m pretty excited

In any case! for those of you interested in something mildly on-but-mostly off topic… take a peak over at my more personal space, http://seanon.net/2010/07/temperature-is-important/ this particular exercise features Cardboard Tube Samurai, and Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio

Limbo

It would appear that I pulled the ‘chute a little too early the other day before I put my last post up, since I was literally 3 puzzles away from the end of the game when I quit, and fell just short of finishing it in one sitting. So my opinion won’t have changed that much from that post.

I’m a firm believer that if you have any interest in this game at all, that you should completely avoid any and all of the major media outlets… ESPECIALLY any with videos… it is a shame when any of the experience is spoiled by such things. For instance I caught an episode of “Reviews on the Run” yesterday and in the video clips they showed with their review they showed solutions for several of the puzzles. From my personal experience only 1 puzzle was spoiled before hand and I felt genuine disappoint when I got that point. That may be the first time something like that has happened to me, which should speak volumes about the level of enjoyment I had with every minute of this game, and the quality of the experience.

LIMBO is a platform puzzler, it contains no dialog, no color, and very very few characters. But that is not to say the game isn’t beautiful, and the story isn’t compelling, in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. The game starts with a boy waking up in the middle of the woods, no preface, or pretext of any kind. Years of video game training has taught me the only thing to do in these sorts of side scrolling situations… go right young man… The media says somewhere I should have known that I was playing the part of a boy looking for his sister… I don’t know where they got that from… and i don’t care… I likened the experience to having woken up with amnesia, which helped me to related to whats going on a little better maybe.

There are 4 or 5 different types of areas that blend together seamlessly as you play, and although they were all fairly charming my favorite moments in the game were early on when the puzzles seemed to be more closely tied to the people and things found in the environment that were clearly carefully set up, but somehow felt naturally there. It made me feel like I just stumbled upon these things and that I’m coming up with my own solution even though I know thats not the case. As the game moves on I found the puzzles to look and feel more like puzzles when I approached them, and instead of using the things found in the environment to solve then, there are switches that do different things, blades, and gravity, to deal with. The puzzles are still fun and clever, but not nearly as satisfying as it was early on. Failing to solve these puzzles often ends in some gruesome greyscale murder scenes that quite literally made me cringe. That is a testament to how engrossed you get in the boy and his adventure. As a weathered gamer I’ve seen all sorts of video game murder… in all sorts of colors and context, very few if any get this sort of reaction out of me, it really was a joy to be a part of this world while I was playing.

The controls are awesome, the physics, and the weight of your character as he’s running, climbing, jumping and sliding, all feel consistent, and (for lack of a better word) ‘right’. Any time I didn’t clear a gap it felt like my fault for poor timing, not the controls.

A lot has been made of the game being short, I found it was a good length, considering the 1p in modern warfare 2 only took me 7 hours (I’m primarily a single player gamer), the fact that this game was in the 6 hour ball park, all of which was very enjoyable, and a fraction of the price. I think this game is an incredible value and completely deserves to be talked about as one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had this year. In fact I believe if the game had of carried on for another hour or 2  it would have began to feel a little stale, and the fact that their is no story based motivation for you to keep pressing on, I think it very well could have lost some people. Like most parts of this game, I found the time perfect for the genre. As it stands it left me wanting more, and that’s a good thing.

xbox 360 owners have no excuse in my eyes for not owning this game. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s immersive, it’s rewarding. Anyone who doesn’t have a 360 should be hassling PlayDead, begging them to get this to the platform most convenient. It’s not worth buying a console for, but this is something that no gamer should miss, and certainly not because of console exclusivity.

Limbo

The first rule of Limbo is to not talk about Limbo… I almost regret watching the previews and reviews of this title because it becomes a mild disappointment when I recognize a section. I will say this though, this game is going to be in the Game of the Year discussions, and if it’s not something is terribly wrong with the people who are involved in such things… There have been more clever moments in the first hour of this game than every other game I’ve played this year (I’ve played a lot of games this year).

This thing is the definition of polished, it looks amazing with the lighting effects and the shades of grey, there were not real instances where I wasn’t certain what was in the foreground/background. There are different environments but the creep factor sort of wears off when you get beyond the woods, which is too bad. The controls are simple and feel (for the lack of a better word) right. From the gamer’s perspective (re:mine), the gameplay was incredibly intuitive, challenging, but never frustrating. I’ve never had a game make me feel so accomplished, smart and/or stupid and any combination thereof from one minute to the next like this one has. The girlfriend was watching me play for a bit at the start, and there was a whole lot of  her saying “Ewwww!” immediately followed by me saying “AHHH!!” in a true “eureka!” moments. I like a good puzzle game, but I don’t recall one that has had this sort of effect on me.

You would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not buying this game immediately if you have a 360, and the developer would be doing themselves and everyone else a disservice by not bringing it to other platforms. Everyone who doesn’t have nightmares (or at least can’t recover gracefully from them) should want to, and be able to play this game. It’s twisted, and gruesome without the gore, and because of this, even the parts where nothing is happening keep you on the edge of your seat.

I should probably save something for the review…

Mass Effect 2

You know a game is successful in what it’s trying to do, that it very quickly tells you, indirectly, that you should go back and play the previous title in the series. That’s what happened to me here… I tried to play Mass Effect over the holidays after picking it up during a steam sales. I played Mass Effect 2 for an hour or so the cinematic value of that introductory chapter was incredible, but it was the nature of the very dramatic intro made it clear that I should have a connection with these characters that I didn’t have. I mentioned a few posts back that I really liked Mass Effect, now that the dust has settled on that, and I have now played through Mass Effect 2, I’d say that the original was ok, but in retrospect, it’s a fraction of the sequel is.

It’s very easy to throw Mass Effect 2 into the traditional BioWare RPG bucket, but more than that it is a third-person “stop and pop” action game, with squad mechanics. It just so happens to be class based, and includes some character skill development based on experience points. It also contains an epic story that can be molded based on the decisions that is made by the player. In my opinion, this is the perfect blend action RPG. The controls on PC were tight, much better than in the original, and it felt like I could either use their pause/command functionality or play it as a straight up action game depending on the situation I was in. The execution here in my mind was flawless, I often found myself getting into some trouble, in those cases I’d pause the battle, scan the field to see whats going on, direct my team in such a way that would get me out of situation my running and gunning had got myself into. I played on the ‘normal’ difficulty, and I found that might have been a bit too easy. I didn’t die much through the course of the journey, and if I did it really was my fault for doing something stupid. I think it felt easier because the ally AI was competent for the most part. They didn’t often run out into the open into a swarm of enemies, sure it happened occasionally, but to the point of being a problem. The weapons and abilities all felt good to use, I played through as an adept, I REALLY enjoyed aiming my biotics so that they’d curve around enemy cover and the ability to control the battle field. I also started with some of the other classes and they all felt unique and powerful in their own way. I’m certain I will be playing through this again taking a different approach, with a different class, and maybe try to not get my crew killed this time…

BioWare did a great job of more or less hiding many of the ‘rpg’ elements from the player. You don’t have complicated decisions to make about ability points that need to be distributed, sure there is still some choice, but the options are simplified. You don’t need to spend points in charm or intimidate, though the functionality is still in the game and still used to open up dialog options. You also don’t have to manage your bag, and equipment, this is instead a loadout and upgrade system that applies to both weapons and armor. You purchase upgrades from stores or find them on missions, and you can develop them by using resources gathered by scanning planets, and dropping probes to collect them. It’s a simple system, after trying to get all the upgrades I did kind of wear out on the process, but by scanning the many planets in the many systems, you may also detect an anomaly which will give you a side quest you can do. It provides a little reward for exploring, and gives a little extra incentive when you’re farming materials for that expensive upgrade. But again, it all felt pretty optional to me.. and if I had my fill of scanning there was always something else I could do to take a break.

The story is one of, if not the best story in a game that I’ve played so far, I really got into it. I think thats because Shepard and the world that I’d created felt like my own. Unlike Mass Effect, which to me really made me feel like a small piece of this giant universe, Mass Effect 2 suppresses this by the rest of the universe refusing to acknowledge the threat leaving Shepard and crew to deal with the threat themselves. Although this is similar to ME1, the reason this feels smaller is because instead of trying to deal with the powers that be, finding evidence to support your claims etc to enlist their help, you are forced into a partnership with Cerberus, a terrorist organization (by reputation) with humanities best interest in mind (or so you’re told… I for one am not buying it). This relationship creates some interesting dialog moments and some difficult judgement calls along the way. I’ve got to say knowing that your decisions in this game will have consequences in the forthcoming sequel, and having seen those same sort of decisions carry forward from the original Mass Effect play their part here really makes you think carefully about the tough ones.

The bulk of the game is spent assembling your crew and doing loyalty missions (these will unlock an additional ability, and character outfit once completed, and I believe has some story repercussion as well), in doing these you really end up developing an emotional attachment to these people, as each provides some insight as to why Cerberus choose them to be on Shepard’s crew, and how they got into the position they’re in. There are some really interesting characters here and they were all a joy to get to know. But this sort of development and detail extends well beyond your immediate crew, the encounters you have on the various missions with people and situations are all incredibly fleshed out, and complete. You run into some genuinely creepy scenarios (not the least of which being the overlord DLC), all superbly written and all really fun to play.  The cinematics in this game are great, and similar to in Mass Effect, the soundtrack compliments each and every scene, it was very easy to get worked up and get on with your mission.

This is easily on my short list of games to play this year, even if you haven’t or don’t go back to play Mass Effect, though if you have the time I would strongly recommend it. It really makes you feel that the universe here is yours to mold.. It’s a truly amazing accomplishment for BioWare and I’m not at all surprised that it sounds like they’re trying to move the Dragon Age franchise in a similar direction (not that I agree with it). There isn’t much more I can say about this other than do yourself a favor and play it… and if you’ve only got a ps3, you should be hammering the bioware forums begging for a port because it’s that good…

Dragon Quest IX Sentinels of the Starry Skies

As a long time fan of the franchise, and the developer, I picked up Dragon Quest IX this week. I think this game has a lot going for it, starting with the timing. There really aren’t any games out, or coming out in the near future which really gives me a chance to actually stick with the game. I feel like I should qualify that statement because it comes with some implications, so I will. First and foremost these games are long, and the story is historically not enough of a draw on its own to keep me playing the game. On top of that games in this series don’t tend to evolve to the point where thats the key driver for me. What DQ is to me, is a simplistic approach to a tried and true formula of RPG gameplay that I loved and grew up with. One that doesn’t need to be cluttered with things like ATB, street fighter button press sequences or any other time sensitive, or non-menu based gameplay elements in combat… TO HELL WITH THAT, I love me some menu combat, and going to get a sandwich mid boss battle. I love the humor, and how the art style has evolved along the way. I find the experience often forgettable when I eventually finish it or simply move on to something else, I ALWAYS remember that I had a lot of fun with it while I was playing, and to me, thats all that matters.

I’ll probably approach this similar to how I tackled FFXIII only with less commitment to cause. This is mostly because of the DS, I really can’t get into long sessions with the device… I don’t have particularly big hands, but I do have fairly long fingers (at least I think thats the problem), I have trouble finding a comfortable way to hold the DS for extended periods of time so I often don’t. I also tend to be doing something else while I play DS, like watch TV, so I’ll end up looking away for 10-15 minutes at a time since I’m easily distracted.

Anyway, with all that aside, the game started out well, I especially liked the cut scene at the typical spot at the end of the introductory chapter where the plot is setup. It may have been the most interesting and effective cut scene I’ve seen on the DS so far, it really got me pumped to see what I’m going to see next. The humor is still fully intact, as is evident from the first foe I encountered when my journey began, the dreaded cruelcumber, which was a happy looking cucumber with a pike who’s motives are clearly to impale you… bringing a smile to my face already.

I started out doing a few simple quests, the gameplay was even more simplistic than simple since starting out the only skill I have is ‘attack’, and frankly even now that I have more skills all I ever really seem to need at the moment is attack. I’m at about level 10 with my hero, and I’ve only just gotten by the point where I could choose to fill out my party, so I’ve been grinding a little to catch the new party members up since they started at level 1. I’ve encountered 1 ‘boss’ character I guess at this point, and he did kill me the first time around because I wasn’t prepared for him, I was out of mana when the encounter started and I had also just moved all my healing items into the ‘bag’ so I couldn’t use them to heal. He was pretty easy once I had the ability to heal myself. I’m only a couple hours in at this point but I figured it was a good time to get things rolling over here.

Naruto Rise of a Ninja

I am a closet fan of the anime, haven’t missed an episode… and it’s been so good lately that I considered going back to the beginning and watching again, in fact I started and then realized that there were a couple games that I passed on the xbox due to those same confidence issues that I skipped all those other 360 games for. On top of that, it’s available via games on demand so I didn’t even have to try to hunt down a copy (the same can’t be said for the sequel, which I have also acquired…).

This game is fan-service… relentless fan-service… the game takes you through the end of approximately episode 80 of the original series. The story is told mostly through cut scenes from the actual episodes which sadly, looks grainy and dated at this point. They (thankfully) trimmed a lot of the filler and added some of there own to make more of a game out of it. There are a few different mission types that have you gathering collectibles, races, and retrieving items which inevitable has you fighting some bandits. Which makes sense considering that Naruto is facing weaker opponents since this is all supposed to be taking place before the ‘Chunin Exam’.

The plot missions usually has Naruto in combat, mostly with his peers, keeping with the story line of the show at the time (there are obvious exceptions that fans will already know). The combat itself is fairly simple, mostly 2 attack buttons with a handful of combos and aerial attacks, throw in a kunai attack every now and then. The idea is to use one of your combos to knock the opponent down and buy time so that you can perform a jutsu. I think the implementation here was brilliant; to perform a jutsu you hold down the left trigger, then use both analog sticks in pre-determined directions to emulate forming hand seals as they do in the show, afterwards it takes a second or two to charge the attack, during the time the jutsu can be interupted, when fully leveled you can ‘charge’ them longer for more harmful attacks. It’s not the most amazing fighting system in a video game or anything, but it was fun enough, and felt believable if not authentic to the experience. I’ve got to say, if you’re a fan of the franchise it’s pretty hard to not get $20 worth out of it.

Mass Effect

I also finished off Mass Effect (PC), I tried this one a while back and really didn’t care for it at first. I had heard Mass Effect 2 corrected a lot of the problems I had with the original, and when it came up during the steam sales I figured I’d give that one a try. The reviews were right, Mass Effect 2 is a much better game, but the further I got the more it felt like I was missing by not playing the first one. It was motivation enough for me to try this one again. I’m pretty glad I did, I had a much better time with it this go around, despite the game not running well on my machine at all (oddly ME2 runs far better than ME1… very strange). The story was great, and it really did give me the impression that was making a difference in this huge galaxy, most of which was unexplored by me. I’m half tempted to go back and continue exploring just to see what I missed.

It was a really really satisfying experience, and I need to give all sorts of kudos to everyone involved in the sound in this game, everything from weapons sounds, to the score, to the voice acting, all very very well done, and had my computer behaved a little better, or I had picked this up for console, I’m certain I would have been totally consumed by this experience.

So much so that I almost immediately loaded up Mass Effect 2, imported my Shepard and was ready to continue my adventure. Anyone late to the game on this one would be wise to play this one before playing 2. I’m sure you could play 2 all the way through without all the background but I liken the experience to jumping into say the 3rd season of some TV show, where all the big exciting moments were people who were supposed to be gone from the previous seasons come back, and you are just sort of left with a “who’s this supposed to be” feeling ostracized.

Actually, to add to that, I also put in Naruto Broken Bond almost immediately too, so it’s safe to say that these games were good enough that I didn’t want to stop playing them when I finished.

Anyway, I just wanted to post to introduce the “in the news” widget in the sidebar, since it’s kind of slow these days for games themselves, I probably won’t be doing full posts as much… instead… I will be commenting on the news, if I don’t have a lot to say I’ll continue to put some quick notes in the “In the News” feed.

I’m only displaying 5 at the moment, and I’m sure I comment on more than that so you should check back for that if nothing else.

Cheers

Trauma Team

I have never played a Trauma Center game coming into this and I had a bit of a guilty interest, I was almost ashamed that I wanted to pick up this game and play it. I’m glad to say that this is game was everything i expected it to be and more.

The story is told from the perspective of 6 doctors of different specializations. This is interesting because you really get the full story of the patients in some cases from the first responders through surgery. Each doctor has their own game play type, some more fun than others but I’ll get into that in a bit. The game is broken up into episodes for each doctor, and you can play them in any order. Well, that’s not exactly true… you can play any doctor’s story line but the next episode in that story line unlocks as you complete the previous. So, you can for example, play through all the paramedic missions before doing any of the other missions and create a sort of pulp fiction-esque style of story, or you can play through them as they would in the timeline of the events. I chose to play closer to the timeline just to keep the mission variety fresh, I didn’t really want to get stuck with a bunch of the less interesting game types at the end. The story is pretty well flushed out, and told in a manga style still frame, with the occasional simple animation. The voice acting was much better than I was expecting. The characters themselves all show some form of development, and each have their own personality and charm even though they are all very familiar.

Now I think it would make the most sense to break each of these doctors down individually and talk about their game play.

CR-S01 (yes that’s his name) [Surgery]: This character is a quiet kid, who was apparently involved in some sort of criminal event and he is released into custody of resurgence hospital to perform surgery, it seems he is on the path of redemption, definitely a familiar character. This game play will be very familiar to fans of the franchise, you are removing everything from tumors, to steel beams, monitoring vitals and stitching holes… Probably the funnest of the game modes.

Maria Torres [First Response]: Here you play the role of a first responder who thinks she is better than everyone else and feels the need to take control of everything at the scene. This makes for some interesting game play, you basically get a trimmed down version of surgery when you patch wounds, set bones with braces, stop bleeding with tourniquets. The trick is you often have 3 or 4 patients to deal with, and monitor the vital signs of each. It makes for some very challenging, fast paced action, and probably my favorite game mode. (coop)

Hank Freebird [Orthopedics]: The manual describes Hank as a “gentle giant”, it’s a fitting description but quite cliché. I didn’t care for this game mode all that much, mostly because it requires a steady hand, and that is something I simply don’t have. You’re basically tracing lines that are on the screen for the most part. There are also drilling, screwing and hammering type activities. I’m not sure if the precision issues I was having was a me problem or a game problem, but it was tricky for me to keep on the line, and to rotate the wiimote a the right angle and what not.

Tomoe Tachibana [Endoscopy]: The heiress of a ninja clan who is trying to make it on her own! Honor!  very stereotypical, but she is a very likable character and her butler, Hanzou actually provided a bit of comic relief for me. The endoscopy game play wasn’t all that fun, but was good for adding variety. you basically end up pushing this camera through the patient looking for hemorrhaging and other strange growths. you have a set of tools for dealing with those, all the while not touching the walls. It’s not bad, but it’s a pretty slow pace.

Gabriel Cunningham [Diagnosis]: This guy is pretty much House, well, not quite as evil, but definitely “rules be damned” mentality. I think this game play is pretty much how you might expect. You have conversations with your patient, and you do physical exams by click on areas of the person that exhibit symptoms like for instance their eyes may be yellow indicating jaundice, or there may be blood coming from their noses or on their hands after the cough. After you identify a bunch of symptoms you take it to your office and compare your symptoms with a list of potential causes, which usually determines what you look for in the forthcoming x-ray CT or MRI scans at which time you play a game of what is different between 2 images type game. I wouldn’t want to do these one after another as they’re not all that fun, and they are quite time consuming, but it was an interesting change in pace in small doses.

Naomi Kimishima [Forensics]: This one has a bit of an x-files feel too it, since she… well… receives phone calls from the dead. They actually did something really neat with the wiimote here that I don’t want to spoil, but it was one of the most immersive experiences I’ve ever had with the wiimote so far. clever… anyway, this plays sort of similar to the diagnostics game play in that you find clues on the body, and belongings, and at the scene using typical CSI tools. Once you have all the clues you start putting them together to create “solid evidence” until you have enough to solve the case. These often take forever to ‘solve’ sometimes up to an hour, they’re not particularly fun and can get frustrating if there is 1 clue that you missed somewhere and trying to figure out where that is is frustrating. I’d be a little happier with these if they took half the time.

Each doctor has (give or take) 6 episodes, in the main story, and then 1 more of each doctor in a follow up story. My first play through took me about 20 hours or so. Half of the game modes have coop portions that you can play with a friend, making it a bit more interesting and gives you an excuse to yell at each other. Despite the slower/less fun game play modes, I had a really good time with the game… in fact I couldn’t put it down all weekend. I really appreciated the freedom of progression, if I didn’t feel like doing an endoscopy mission, I could choose to play some other game, which created some interesting reveals in the plot. I really don’t know ~who~ this game is for exactly but I can highly recommend the rental. If you’re familiar with the franchise, there likely isn’t enough good parts to warrant the purchase but its definitely worth checking out, and I’m definitely glad I picked it up.

As it stands today, there is really only 5 or 6 games on the home console (I add this because Star Craft 2, and Dragon Quest IX are on the immediate future agenda) I REALLY want to play before February. [Crysis 2, The Last Guardian (hasn't been pushed back yet... I expect it will be since there was no news at e3 about it..), Fallout: New Vegas, Rockband 3, the others are escaping me at the moment)]

Harkening back to afore mentioned post, I have played most everything on that list that I still intend to at this point apart from Trauma Team (shush already, I want to play it), and Alan Wake, both are actually en route via amazon as I type… so the question is, what am I going to do for the next 8 months or so before we get another hectic stretch like that. I’ve been finding shallow comfort in xbox DLC that I’ve missed during my time away from the console. ‘splosion man, shadow complex, and trials hd (I LOVE TRIALS GAMES!), but once those are gone what am I going to do for games? suggestions? Best case scenario I find an MMO to sink 1000 hours into but seeing as I’ve had my fill of World of Warcraft it seems, and I’ve tried pretty much every other major MMO that came out as they came out and they weren’t that interesting ergo I think it’s unlikely. Thanks to EA and Steam sales last week, I have decided to give Mass Effect, and Dragon Age another chance. Maybe in a less cluttered release schedule, I will be able to devote enough time for the games to ‘take off’ in a way that I find compelling enough to see through…

So yea… I’m not at all comfortable with the lack of games coming how am I going to spend my free time… trophy hunting?

Red Dead Demption

I was going to pass on this title, I had had my fill of sandbox games after Assassin’s Creed 2, and Just Cause 2, but after reading a lot of reviews that put this in the 5 star and high 90 scores I figured I would be doing myself a disservice to pass up a game that is so highly regarded. Was I fooled by the media? or is this game really that good?

The story is told in much the same way as in Grand Theft Auto, through dialog while enroute to some form of blood bath, with the occasional cut scene (more so early on while they set the stage). Rockstar is truly the master of story telling in sandbox games… the atmosphere in this game is extraordinarily convincing the characters feel authentic even the most ridiculous of them (more on that in a bit), are believable in their design, mannerisms and voice work (mostly). In this sense, and as the reviews scores from the major outlets suggest, this game should be a benchmark for those who follow them. They also do some interesting things towards the end… honestly, I felt like I was at the end 3 distinct times, only to be presented with more quest markers which sort of frustrated me at the time, but I do understand why they did it this way, it was pretty well executed at the end too… (hard to talk about without spoiling so I won’t, suffice to say it’s worth playing it out if you’re like me and were thinking of quiting there).

You travel between US and Mexico but not a whole lot changes environmentally between the two, aside from one little snow area at the top of the map. I was definitely tired of the scenery by the time I was finished. It was sort of neat seeing the technology creeping into the world as would have been the case in that era, it was a subtle but nice touch. I still could have done with a lot more variety given the size of the map.

There are some crazy folk in Rockstar’s interpretation of the old west… the delusional, cannibals, necrophiliacs, as well as run of the mill swindlers, all make an appearance here (amongst others)… It clearly adds some color to the drab dull palatte of the western setting. Over the top is a bit of an understatement, but each of the people you meet are clearly unique and everyone seems to have some dirt on them, if not the kind that comes off with soap then some other brand of filth. The odd part is that the ‘hero’ is compelled to help these folks regardless…what is interesting about helping these folks who can be considered little more than fiends is that Marston’s patience for them does eventually grow thin and it’s evident in the voice work and dialog. The people you meet are also served with a thick thick helping of cliché for instance, a drunk named Irish, and a poor fella (perhaps feller would be more appropriate here?) with tourettes called shaky, I won’t spoil them all but even with the cliché they are still charming in their own way, and you actually build the semblance of a relationship with them in a sense. In my eyes this is the greatest strength of this game, big kudos to Rockstar in this regard. The unfortunate part is that it really feels like you’re introduced to people and you help them along their own little sub-plot, while they entice you with their carrot on a stick to progress your own story, which inevitably leads too someone new and a new sub-plot. Again it doesn’t suit Marston’s character to play around with these folks who are clearly leading him on when he is so swift to plug a random guy for putting the beat down on a hooker. I’m reminded of a Rev Rant (this one specifically) when playing this game.

There is always something going on, someone who needs help, for instance, someones wagon, horse, or wife has been stolen, or perhaps it’s just a whore (literally) trying to steal your horse that requires some immediate and swift retribution. I am an easily distracted player, so the amount of spontaneous quests that come up is a bit overwhelming, and my tendency to react to any blip on the map, or critter crossing my path, is getting to me and the animations to go through the motions of getting on and off the horse, skinning and looting kills and hogtying folks is all starting to feel too slow and tedious. I learned in the end that most of these blips should be ignored entirely, it pains me to do it… it’s just less painful than actually doing the task.

There are “Ambient Challenges” in Sharpshooting, Hunting, Survivalist (finding herbs), and treasure hunting. All of which are pretty self explanatory, the highlight for me was treasure hunting… with genuine treasure maps that gives you clues as to where the shallow pile of rocks that has some sweet loot hiding within. This made me laugh, you literally move 2 rocks and there is treasure inside. Its actually challenging and kind of neat. It’s the first time I ever whipped out the map that came with a game to try to figure some stuff out (PS it worked!). The rest of it felt more like make busy work because I was actively seeking them out as opposed to getting them passively as their title suggests… my bad I guess.

Combat feels good with snap targeting (your cross-hairs lock to targets chest when you pull up your weapon, from there it is a simple nudge to get a head shot), and dead-eye (bullet-time meets mark & execute) mechanics work well, and you need them when you’re being swarmed with baddies. The only thing that I’d probably change is that the dead-eye meter refills so quickly, that it almost feels infinite. I might have died 5 times in the 30 or so hours I spent with the game. The horse riding is tedious at first (rhythmically pressing ‘x’ to spur your horse to move forward), but then it gets to be second nature, and you don’t notice it so much. You also have fast travel from a camp you can build from your inventory nearly anywhere on the map, odd that you can’t do that from safe houses but whatever.

All you really need to know about this game I guess is that if you can get into a sandbox game like GTA, and that formula works for you then there is a lot to enjoy here. Personally I was hoping this game had been some kind of departure from the traditional sandbox formula, and it simply doesn’t, and overall was disappointed with it because of it. Apart from that however, this is a very, very good game and certainly something for the folks at Rockstar to build on, and something for competitors to try to copy.

Enjoy!

I really liked the new 360 hardware though, if it were “whisper quiet” like they say it is, I’d strongly consider it. And the combat in Metal Gear Solid Rising looked amazing, Raiden’s sword was cutting through pillars causing balconies to drop on baddies heads… you could chose the orientation of his swing using a circular reticle on the screen which was used to create some incredibly impressive dismemberment, and some watermelon slices… I’m all of a sudden looking forward to that game.

EA was spewing more 3D at us than I would have liked, but Crysis 2 gameplay looked cool. I had my doubts about Bulletstorm, but it seemed to be as advertised “fast paced action with a wink and a smile”. I can really get behind an over the top action game that doesn’t take itself so seriously (ala duke nukem/serious sam)… Need for Speed Hot Pursuit courtesy of Criterion (of Burnout fame), sounds like a great pairing to me, I’ll be looking forward to more info on that one. They showed people playing Medal of Honor, but there was so much footage of peoples thumbs that I didn’t really get to see what was going on in the game. I mean, does anyone ever actually glean any insight from looking at someones thumbs while they’re playing video games? it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen especially because they kept going back to thumb shots as if 1 wasn’t enough “yes! these people really ARE playing video games!”… com’on guys…

Ubisoft was disappointing, they introduced laser tag… and some heart sensor thing (Nintendo is going to be maaaaaaad). They showed some Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood but I’ve been burned by that franchise before so I’m quite skeptical at this point. They re-demonstrated the Kinect fitness game that looked like it might be ok if you’re into that thing. The also demo’d a new Driver but they were talking about shifting in and out of the car you’re in, to other cars, and mildly hinted on some sci-fi type in a comma story line shit… I dunno, it’d be interesting to check out a demo at least.

Nintendo and Sony keynotes today, I’m hoping for better or this e3 could be pretty disappointing.

Kinect
… nuff said…

Metal Gear Solid Rising
sword play looks rad, dismemberment and world destruction cool…

Gears of War 3
Gears segment featured Cliffy B wearing a shirt of a wookie wrestling a unicorn.. if I had 4 friends the co-op story would be cool, otherwise it just looks like more Gears. I like the mutating bad guys thing… did I just see a steel door stop a laser from the sky.

Fable 3
Not buying any more fable hype…

Partnership with Crytek
meh… didn’t show me anything

Halo Reach
I can’t get into Halo games… something about the controls I think… your halo news and opinions are better found elsewhere, I’m clearly in the minority. showing Halo after Gears was a mistake… the pace even seems slower and less action packed, and wide open spaces. it just doesn’t show as well I don’t think… the melee combo kill looked cool…

XBOX Live / Dashboard
demonstrating Kinect UI on the dashboard, step 1, wave at your tv… not going to happen… oh wave again… still no… I can get behind the verbal crap maybe… on the other hand, I bypass all those voice recognition crap when I call my service providers too… maybe it works better than my service provider, you’d hope with MS supporting it.

ESPN on live is sort of neat I guess, probably won’t be available in Canada though…

Kinectimals
Followed by a kitty tickling demonstration… cause teaching kids to play with tigers is a good thing to do… worse than anything GTA ever did thats for sure.

Kinect Sports
dumb…

Kinect Joy Ride
wheres the brakes?

Kinect Adventures!
the first “WTF” caught on air! if there is enough variety here it could be fun… actually….

Your Shape Fitness Evolved
I guess they needed something to combat wii fit… it looks like it might be fun enough… if this ends up in my house it will be my girlfriends doing not mine though…

Dance Central
well.. it looks like it works well enough for whitey no-rhythm… again this decision will fall to the gf…

Star Wars
I want to wield a light saber as much as the next guy…

Forza
still don’t know where the brakes are… and walking around a car using Kinect… is just not something I want to do…

New 360s
looks slick enough… shipping a lot sooner than expected…

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

The last couple Prince of Persia games had left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, I had finished 3, and abandoned the “artsy” reboot that came out last year near the end. The media was saying all the right things about this game to me, not the least being that it had returned to the formula that made 1 and 2 so good. If this turns out to be true then I think I’m going to love this game.

The story here isn’t a big departure from the rest of the series, I don’t want to say it’s serviceable because I don’t think that is doing it enough justice but it’s not outstanding thats for sure. It suits the game very well I found and does give you enough motivation to keep going. The prince himself is his usual “witty” or rather sarcastic self… I said to myself more than a couple times, “this guy is an idiot” but if you can comes to terms with that early enough you can get a chuckle out of a few of his one-liners.

“Prince of Parkour” is at the most basic of levels a platform puzzle game, yhe platforming is 3 fold; you will often walk into a big room where you will get a pan of the pathway to get to door usually several floors up. There isn’t much thinking about where to go in these rooms. It usually means finding the pillar or platform you can reach, and move the only way you can from there, rinse and repeat. The challenge here comes from your abilities coming into play. For example, you’ve probably seen the water freezing stuff from the promos or videos elsewhere, it comes down to timing, sometimes the next spout isn’t on when you froze the first one, so as you jump for spout 1, you need to release the freeze button wait for the next spout to start pumping and freeze it again before you get there. This all happens in a fraction of a second. There are several ways that they use the water to get in the way.

how to swing on water...

The second way they use platforming is through narrow trap laden corridors that depend purely on timing, you run, jump, and climb your way around saw blades, swinging axes, spikes on the floor, swinging spiked beams. and spinning rotating poles with blades on them… none of this is new to the franchise but they do throw some tricky ones at you, and if you don’t have rewinds available you may actually die here… luckily you’re never really far from a check point.

The final is by way of switch and lever puzzles to open doors. Luckily they are few and far between, I think there was maybe 5 or 6 of them through the entire course of the game, none overly challenging, and I think I only found one or two of them to be tedious.

Between platforming you spend your time in “Prince of Pottery-rage” busting any (what may be priceless) vase you cross trying collect red and blue floaty orbs, to refill your health and ability meters, if the orbs float and go right towards you anyway… whats the point of destroying the priceless artifact?.. no manners thats why… the prince is just another “entitled” rich kid I guess…

Fully leveled whirlwind ability... potent

There is also some combat in “Prince of Push-Square”, it’s not a fantastic fighting system, you get a sword and a kick button, and there is some variety in the baddies that change how you should fight them. To help you can learn abilities when you collect enough yellow orbs to level up… to be honest I only ever used the whirlwind, once that was maxed out it was pretty effective at controlling the room. It’s like a built in Dynasty Warriors mini-game that you used to replenish your health and abilities meters and give you some sense of character progression. It was definitely fun in the small doses it’s given to you in. I even enjoyed the challenge mini-games that unlock when you complete the game. I think it can get by with this minimal combat system because it’s not the whole game, it doesn’t need a stellar combat system like say, Arkham Asylum did.

When it’s all said and done, I had a GREAT time with this game, it’s so rare that I can say a game delivered exactly what I wanted it too, especially since it was so far removed from the last version of the game that used that formula. I’ve got to say, if you played the original Prince of Persia on the last gen consoles and enjoyed it, you are going to love this game. Conversely, if you didn’t like the early PoPs, this probably isn’t for you. If you missed those games, and only played the last couple, I think this is a great one to get on board with. There really aren’t any other games that quite compare to PoP, and I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice for passing on it.

I arrived home late last night, and it occurred to me that Rockband: Green Day was coming out today. Having been a Green Day fan back in the day (I’m pretty sure they were the ones that inspired me to learn to play guitar), and to a lesser degree still love the older stuff I knew I would be getting this… and I did… spent some time on it today, it’s pretty good, and challenging. I play guitar and drums on expert usually, and I knew Tre is a great drummer for the genre, but I under estimated how hard it was going to be. I have the feeling I’m going to have the same problem with this game as I did with the Beattles RockBand game. Playing a band-centric rockband game just gets pretty repetitive when it remains in the same genre let alone the same band, you end up doing a lot of the same patterns. However, it’s still good so far.

I also picked up Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands today… I was convinced somewhere over the Atlantic, listening to a couple gaming podcasts talk about it. I mean, I read the reviews, “neat platform puzzles”,”shady combat”. But I heard on these podcasts something that I was really hoping to hear, “I loved the first couple PoP games, and this one feels a lot like those”. I got about 3 hours in today, and so far I agree. This is exactly what I wanted from Prince of Persia, it’s all about timing, and using your abilities to traverse the map… you get a little combat in there to mix it up.. it’s not terrible, it’s not overly simple due to the volume baddies around. I’m really enjoying it.

I also put in Super Mario Galaxy 2 for a bit.. not enough to really get a feel of it yet, but it feels like the last one and thats not a bad thing. I played it just long enough to learn that the rechargable battery pack that is currently attached to the controller is on its last leg, taken from the charger it only lasted 30 mins or so… I couldn’t be bothered to get the other one heh.

It also pained me a bit to take Skate 3 out of the console to put in PoP, I wanted to play it a bit, but I wanted to try out my new stuff first… and never got around to getting in a session. Gotta start getting more clips together for my next montage. And I’m in the final stretch of Red Dead Redemption… might as well get that out of the way.

Too many games to play right now, tempted to buy more…

I’m about 20 hours in, I am an easily distracted player, so the amount of spontaneous quests that come up is a bit overwhelming, and my tendency to react to any blip on the map, or critter crossing my path, is getting to me and the animations to go through the motions of getting on and off the horse, skinning and looting kills and hogtying folks is all starting to feel too slow and tedious. I’m learning that most of these blips should be ignored entirely but it pains me to do it… it’s just less painful than actually doing the task.

I’ve got to say though, the atmosphere created through the audio and visuals is amazing, it really feels like the old west to a degree, I don’t think that there were as many fiends as there is in this game though. It really feels like you’re introduced to people and you help them along their own little sub-plot, while they entice you with their carrot on a stick to progress your own story… If John Marston is as bad ass as he is constantly made out to be through out the game, he would have murdered these folks long ago for their shenanigans, but alas, you must play along.

Its a pretty good game so far, but I’m not fully understanding the near perfect scores it is getting in the major outlets. Apart from the setting and story (again, you can make a case for perfect scores in those categories alone), nothing sets this game apart from a game play perspective. It’s really hanging its hat on the ‘Dead-Eye’ functionality for duels and combat in general, it is little more than the ‘bullet-time’ functionality we’ve seen in many games since Max Payne did it (I don’t think it was the first game to use the feature, but it was the first one that had a big audience I believe). It does go through a bit of an evolution, from manually pulling the trigger in standard bullet time, to auto-marking the targets as you hover over them, to manually marking the targets while in bullet time, and that was kinda of nice since it’s really the bit of character evolution in the game at all. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I don’t find this game nearly as good as everyone is making it out to be. What you do in the game really doesn’t change at all, you’re either going to kill or capture any bad guys you run into and thats about it. There are some gambling type mini-games, texas hold’em, black jack, liar’s dice, horse shoes… but frankly they all take too long to play in my opinion, and they’re not all that fun.

I think a lot of the scores were the result of a gut reaction to a setting that has not been over tapped yet, and sure it’s a good game, if you’re a fan of the open world sandbox model of game, you’re going to love this, everything else beyond that aspect is truly fantastic. If you can’t get into this type of game to begin with, this game isn’t going to change your mind, it suffers from the same problems other games of this ilk do. I’ll elaborate more on all this in my review when I return.

Skate 3

(well sort of..)
I don’t think it’s fair for me to review this game because to me it’s clear that I think the game is definitely much better than it actually is, but I will give it a go.

The story provided is the one of the returning “legend” as you are often referred to in the game as a result of your exploits from the previous Skate games, where, after a brief tutorial from Coach Frank (Jason Lee) you and Reda (who was your filmer from the previous games), start a brand of your own. The objective is simple, promote your brand and sell as many skateboards as possible. The milestone counter stops at a million but you can continue to accrue sales after this mark. With the exception of Lee (because I think he’s supposed to sound as campy and over the top as he does), the voice acting is terrible, but that is to be expected considering that the voices are not provided by actors, not the least of which is your new filmer… which is unfortunate because he is the one constant voice through out the game. I’m not going to put too much weight on this though since it would sound equally ridiculous if the voice acting was top notch too I think.

There are a variety of challenges to participate in, Street and Vert competitions, Own the Spot, Hall of Meat, and Death Race, Film, Photo and Pro challenges all making their return in addition to 1up, that replaces the old SKATE mode, which is a score based game over a short time, beat the opponent 3 times to win, and a new ‘Own the Lot’ challenge that basically has you performing a combination of 10 or so of the afore mentioned modes in the same vicinity. It’s a nice variety, and some of the challenges can be quite difficult. In addition, most challenges have two levels of completion, you can ‘own’ a challenge, by performing the objective, for example clearing a large gap or making a transfer, or you can ‘kill it’ by performing a specific trick while doing it, like doing a 360 grab over the same gap or transfer. This is a nice touch since you get the bulk of your boards sales by simply owning the challenge, killing them provides a minor bonus, and similarly you can get additional bonuses by doing the same challenges online. This new approach means you never have to perform a very specific trick on your first try to progress (which is ultimately why I stopped playing challenges in Skate 2).

For the way I play the game, I use the challenges as a distraction when I can’t find a good spot for a trick or the line I’m trying to complete isn’t quite working and I need a break. That statement on it’s own says a lot about why it is somewhat unfair for me to review this game… I enjoy the mechanics of the game so much, that I consider roaming around and NOT participating in the challenges that the developers provided the fun part. They’ve provided excellent in game filming tools including 4 cameras, +3 more “Advanced” variations which work with key framing (these cameras were a $10 DLC in Skate 2) so that you can make some authentic looking skate reels. In this iteration of the $10 ‘Filmer Pack’ you unlock additional storage space on the EA servers for your footage (minor gripe about that specifically here), as well as the ability to upload in HD (720p), and remove the watermark from your clips.

BlackBox has also provided the players with the Park Creator, and the object dropper as a way to customize the environments you’re in. I’ve made some use of the object dropper in my travels, but I’ve yet to create my own park (I don’t think I’m that creative). The tools are pretty intuitive though, and it seems like it wouldn’t be a huge challenge to create something playable. The object dropper is disabled while you’re in a challenge so it can’t be used to tweak the environment to give you the edge in said challenge (thats not to say that there are no objects in some of the challenges that can’t be moved to help you). That in addition to the other creative tools, the ability to import your graphics created in the online graphic creator into the game and display proudly on your character (my degenerate gamer logo below), really gives it a personal touch.

Graphic created with the Web Based Graphic Creator

From my perspective this game is the only one that really extends beyond the game, while you can access community clips and rate photos and graphics and whatever else while in game, you can also do all of this from the http://skate.ea.com website, it truly is video game integration with the web 2.0 philosophy, it really adds to the experience to me. On top of that, when your clips get views, and ratings you are rewarded with board sales that contribute to your in game progress… very neat indeed, I wonder what it would take to get a million sales via the web alone…

Much has been made of the ‘Team Focused’ approach to this game but that didn’t really effect me. As i mentioned, most of my time with the game is spent looking for spots and creating some footage, so I don’t get into the online challenges much, so perhaps the greatest addition to this franchise was lost on me. The downside of this is that it very much feels like Skate 2 in a new environment. An environment that feels over-tuned and less authentic. Your stairs usually come in sets of 3 with fairly large landings between them, theres usually always a slope before a big gap and the manny pads are always long enough for you to get your tricks set up. It makes finding interesting and unique spots a bit of a challenge for me. The environment is divided into 3 distinct districts all with their own style, the only way to get from one to the other is by using the fast travel in the menu. I found this took away from the continuity of the environment, but since I only really look at the game from the mentality of 30 second clip, moving from zone to zone wouldn’t really happen anyway.

It’s worth mentioning too that this game included EA’s ‘Online Pass’ which has been introduced as a means to deter used game sales. In the end it means if you want to participate in the Online functions of the game, you need to enter a code to do so. Obviously one code comes with the game, however if you’re like me and play on a couple profiles it means it’s going to cost you another $10 to do so… very unfortunate, or if you’re in a house hold with several people who play games your 70$ game is going to end up costing you $100 so that everyone has the same experience… I wonder if EA has a solution for that.

I guess what this all boils down too for me is that this is simply more skate 2, in a new environment, one that is good in clip sized segments but not great over all. I absolutely love the game, but I can certainly see it being less than fantastic if you aren’t simply enjoying the mechanics as I do. If you haven’t played a Skate game to this point, this is a great place to start, but I’d suggest a rental before a purchase. If you play the game like I do, you’re going to love it.

I’m playing on Normal difficulty on all these clips; for my first I think I just wanted to get something out there, the next set will probably be on hardcore for grins. The song is Milk Lizard by The Dillinger Escape Plan, and that short sample on the title treatment is from Luv (sic) by Nujabes (RIP) & Shing02

Game Credits to Black Box and EA

I unwillingly threw it up on youtube because it seems like my provider has the traffic throttled pretty low, so it was painful to watch. I was thinking about Vimeo but it seems like they wanted more money for an HD account than I pay for my hosting so that didn’t make much sense to me.

Angry Birds

It’s been a while since my last post, I was travelling this past weekend so not much gaming done then, apart from a fair amount of time with “Angry Birds“. What a great little package that is for the price of $1, on top of that they added more levels for free with an update. I really try to get perspective from 3 different angles when looking at iPhone games. First and most importantly, my own, the game from a gamer’s perspective. I saw an addictive little slingshot puzzler game where you have to beat down enemies using various types of ammo (birds), that have different abilities, while navigating or using obstacles to crush your foe. Since each round only takes 20 seconds at most, it fits the iPhone game formula of pick up and play when you’re standing in line, in-transit, or whatever else (not that it stopped me from spending an hour on the couch with it). All of this tells me that this is a great game. Then I usually like to see what my girl friend thinks of it. She’s not a novice when it comes to gaming, she’ll play as much Mario as she can get her hands on, but her tastes don’t go much beyond that, aside from the occasional iPhone game, Topple, Diner Dash, that sort of thing. She also owns an iPhone, so it takes some of the ‘non-intuitiveness’ of iPhone gaming out of the equation. She agrees that it’s fun… Finally I like to put it into the hands of someone who doesn’t own an iPhone with no instructions just to see how it goes. In this case it was a good 10 minutes before I got my phone back. Needless to say, it’s worth your dollar, and I’d still say it would have been a good game at the $5 price point.

Skate 3

The remaining gaming time I had has been mostly spent waiting for HD Skate 3 clips to render and transfer to EA servers, or almost transfer, then have to render all over again… That could have been handled way better… If a clip is rendered, why not save it in a rendered state before uploading… that way if the upload fails you don’t have to sit there for 15 minutes while it renders again… (all my uploads were in HD, and they take FOREVER) I finished my first go at a compilation reel which I have attached below. I’ve learned that it takes A LOT of clips to fill a 4 minute song, and despite upgrading to the $10 “Filmer Pack” DLC which boosted 5 minutes of storage, they clearly were offering 5 minutes of standard definition recording because I had to clear my profile a couple times to get the footage I needed for the 4 minute sample which I guess is understandable, but still disappointing, for $10 there isn’t much value there.

Montage moved here

This has been a crazy week for games, but sadly, one I’m not really able to participate in. The reason being I’m going on vacation next week, and traveling overseas for two weeks. It’d be sort of silly spend that money on video games I won’t be able to play until I get back anyway so I’m holding off in case those funds are needed elsewhere. I had all but talked myself out of Red Dead Redemption until I started reading the reviews, it is getting some really really high praise so I may have been convinced to pick that up when I get back. I was kind of surprised by the Split/Second scores though, I thought it looked interesting but I thought it was going to come with some kind of major flaw, that doesn’t appear to be the case… so I guess it is up to Blur to determine which of those I grab since I’ve already decided I’m only getting one (if any). And I’m really excited for Prince of Persia regardless of how mediocre the review scores look, the common theme in those reviews are that fan of the franchise (namingly me) are going to enjoy the ‘return to form’ of the best in the franchise (in my opinion).

In any case this will likely be my last post until the middle of June since I won’t be doing any gaming while I’m over there I don’t think, certainly not the console variety, I’d imagine some iPhone, and some DS though (still have bowsers inside story to finish up). Over the next few days I’ll likely be playing Skate though, you’ll likely find some new clips on my skate profile if you’re really interested in keeping tabs on me.

With a 30 second replay timer, it kinda sucks when your line goes a little too far outside of that time limit since the environment is prime for infinite lines and you end up clipping the start of your line which might be your favorite part.

Now the way I play this game, is to find sweet little spots, and make neat little videos… I prefer the realistic ones but I’m not opposed to over the top megaramp type stuff too as you’d see if you were to check out my profile at the moment, in anycase, I was excited to see they included HD video output from the replays. So I wasted no time investing in the “Filmer Pack” which increases your online video storage to 5 minutes, apparently this translates in about 5 HD videos, which is too bad, but it does let me get high res sources for my compilation videos which is alright, but it sucks that you can’t really leave them up there if you do a lot of filming like I do.

Aaaanyway, “Part” in progress, enjoy… for now..

This would come together a lot faster but my connection keeps dropping when I try to upload vids, it’s really annoying considering how long they take to render in HD… but I digress

With Skate 3 out today, I figure why not start there, I’m not sure what time exactly, but if you follow me on twitter, or subscribe to the RSS here, you will be notified.

This will be my first “crack” at it, I wouldn’t expect it to be perfect, and I do have some concerns about my limited upstream, we’ll have to see how it goes.

Skate 3

I’ve talked enough about this… I don’t think I need to go into detail…

Lost Planet 2

I liked the first Lost Planet quite a bit, if the timing was better on this release I probably would have been all over it, my complaint about the last Lost Planet was that it didn’t flow very well to me, and it was pretty much a deal breaker.

3D Dot Game Heroes

I was so excited for this game… but I think the marketing has fatigued me completely on the idea. There are a million reasons for me to love everything about this game, but I’m just not feeling it at the moment, I’ll probably hold off on picking this up for now… I don’t think it will have the charm required to get me off skate 3 this week at least, and I’ll be travelling quite a bit over the next few weeks so maybe I’ll look into grabbing it in the next release lull, but I really blame the marketing on this… it was just too much too early and I’m not nearly as excited for it as I was a month ago when the first set of reviews started coming out.

And all that is just this week… The following week is a big one as well…

Red Dead Demption

I wasn’t interested in this at all, I’ve had my fill of open world for while I think, but the western theme is always interesting to me because its seldom explored. I liked the previous Red Dead game, but quit when I had to play the indian… not because I’m anti-indian, I just got tired of the bow and arrow pretty quickly. In any case, this will also be on my list of rainy day hopefuls.

Alan Wake

This title screams interesting… I watched the quick look on giant bomb, and it seems pretty great based on that.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

’nuff said right? I loved the first game, this seems like the sequel that brings in some of the features that didn’t quite make it into the previous version. Even if it was just more of the same I’d be all over it. Besides, there is no way this game doesn’t make it into my house… I’m sure the girl friend went ahead and pre-ordered it weeks ago…

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

This game looks really good, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more hype around it. The last Prince of Persia game was disappointing to me, the no fail mentality sort of made the game feel like it might as well have been on rails. This one appears to be getting back to the platforming puzzles that I loved about the original, that sadly and slowly left the series, this has the potential to be a great great game.

Split/Second

Arcade racers clearly have a place in my life, I love the pick up and play aspect of them, you don’t have to be great at racing to be successful so you can jump in after months away from the title and still compete, that doesn’t happen in your Gran Turismos or your Forzas. I doubt I’ll be buying both this and Blur (more on that later) though, so I’m probably going to wait for the reviews and see if they mention the deal breakers for me. My problem with this one before I get all the details is that once you learn all the track variations it would remove a lot of the challenge/excitement I think.

Trauma Team

ok ok, I know what you’re thinking, but whatever. I haven’t played a Trauma game at all to this point, and to me they look fun in general, I’d considered picking one up on a couple different occasions so there is no better time than now with a new release. I think the multiplayer will be a hit with the girlfriend, and any time I can put video games and quality time with her together its a win situation for me. I’m really looking forward to this one.

There you have it… 6 releases in 1 week that I’d consider very buy-able, 9 in total… but wait… theres another week…

ModNation Racers

The next game really selling the play, create, share mentality, I think this really lends well to a kart racer, if the power ups are awesome this game will be awesome… all that customization, and infinite number of tracks to play, this game will never get old as long as the power ups are great. I’d like a demo first I think…

Blur

Hard not to look forward to this one, Project Gotham by the guys who made Project Gotham, with kart racer-esque power ups… I liked the PGR series a lot, they always felt somewhere between arcade and sim to me, and I appreciated that about it. It’s going to be really interesting to check this one out.

11 games in one month? This is a heavy heavy release cycle leading into summer with some really compelling titles, and a good mix of sequels and new IPs. It’s going to be really interested to see what the numbers for these games look like without the spending power Christmas provides. If you wanted to get creative, you could include the last week of april and get Splinter Cell: Conviction and Super Street Fighter IV

for the record I’m playing on hardcore difficulty, and I’m still trying to get my barrings for distances and dialing in the tricks.

So, as I mentioned, I foresee this type of content getting drastically better as I get more proficient with the tools to producing them, I do envision audio commentary as well, it just wasn’t in the cards for this session. You’ll just have to trust me that I’m working some of these things out…

I’ve put some time into Super Street Fighter IV, enough to know that I’m terrible at it… no seriously, I lose fights against the AI on easy… My thumbs are sore from a couple hours on the D-Pad, I don’t recall a game related thumb injury like this since the NES days, it’s really quite tender… In any case, it’s abundantly clear how precise this game is in terms of hit boxes, and timing, it’s very easy to see how the people who invest the time in this game can really stand above the rest. And I can understand why they would, this is a fun game, and it looks great. Loads of Character choice, certainly something to suit most play styles.

However…

When I think about playing Street Fighter though, it gets pretty nostalgic… I definitely recall long nights of winner stays, pass the controller and some serious animosity towards the friend who was just too good, and the phenomenon of the losers banding together and routing for the underdog every time the controller changes hands, and the roar of a crowd when someone managed to crumble the king’s 30+ win streak.  I’m sure any gamer growing up in that era would have similar memories… good times for sure. I don’t play games like that anymore… not that I wouldn’t like to, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve moved away from most of my gamer friends, and the guys on the couch “playin’ vids” simply doesn’t happen anymore.  Although it didn’t occur to me at the time I think I was so excited for this game partially because I thought some way, some how, I’d get some of that back. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

So play with friends online you say, legitimate argument, but one of the beauty of the pass the controller model is that you only need one copy of the game and you can play with all of your friends. This is the first Street Fighter game I’ve owned, not one of my friends picked this up, I’m not surprised by this, perhaps they realized what I am now realizing sooner… There is next to no interest in playing this game alone, and even less interest in playing random matches with strangers, definitely not to the point of getting good enough to ‘dethrone’ one of them, let alone good enough to make a noteworthy effort on the leaderboards.

I had pretty much the same feeling about Tekken, although I was much more objective in that post than I have been in this one. I think what this ultimately boils down to is that I may never play another fighting game, I most certainly won’t be buying one.

In a totally unrelated note, I’ve been thinking about getting into producing some video content for this site, and as such I’ve been toying with some title treatments for intros to such productions, it’s not really ‘gaming related’, so I’v been posting them elsewhere, feel pretty to hop over and take a peak if you’re interested. Feedback is most certainly welcome.

Box Art

I’ve always been a fan of the Splinter Cell series and the potential that the media coverage demonstrated more or less, single handedly convinced me I should get back into xbox 360 gaming. Coming into a game with this level of expectation is almost always a precursor to disappointment.

The story begins with Sam receiving some information from a familiar voice that his daughter who was supposed to have been killed in a car crash several years prior my not be as dead as he thought. The approach they took to telling this story was interesting, in the sense that they bounce around the time line to sort of plant the idea of betrayal that you would expect in a spy thriller in an effort to create some drama and tension that it doesn’t seem to me would have been capable in the rest of the story without it. Unfortunately I don’t think it was developed well enough and as such didn’t really have the impact it was supposed to. The single player campaign is very short, and if there weren’t some bottle necks for me I’m sure I would have been really disappointed, but there is a lot of replay value here that I will touch on later.

The score and effects were pretty spot on, but I found a lot of the voice acting was lackluster and not up to my expectations for a title of this size. This sadly Includes some shaky work by Sam himself on a number of occasions. Grim’s voice actor deserve a lot of credit for keeping the whole story grounded, the voice work done for her is easily on par with the best in the industry, and I think without it, it would have made the rest of dodgy voice work stand out that much more. The hands down biggest annoyance of this game, is that the goons Sam is stalking are, well, annoying… They repeat the same lines over and over again, non-stop, it’s really really bad (i remember this scene). “I was at <Insert name of last level here> Fisher! You’re Dead!”, it actually made me turn the game off on a couple of occasions it was so bad.

The game looks very good, and the projected text that they introduced did work fairly well for the objective based messages, I found the video clips they projected passable most of the time, since the picture wasn’t clear enough to watch most of the time. As Sam is in the safety of shadows, the world goes black and white which serves well to let you know you are hidden, however it makes seeing the environment somewhat more challenging, especially if you haven’t had an opportunity to mark anything yet. I had the same problem with The Saboteur, I’m not a huge fan of black and white in games in general I don’t think, especially one as graphically complex as splinter cell.

In their marketing of this title Ubisoft boasted Splinter Cell Conviction’s ability to keep the player as immersed to the experience during the story telling elements by keeping them in control, or by use of the camera to sort of flow in and out. While it’s obvious that this is certainly what they were shooting for, it didn’t come off as at all special, certainly not to the point of being a bullet point for marketing. They also spent some marketing effort pitching these “Interactive Interrogations”, this is flat out a sham, they might as well have put up a little text box with “press “B” to continue”, oh wait, thats pretty much what they did… Instead the video auto-pauses, and you get to hit the button to make it continue again. Sure, you get a little control over what animation plays next by navigating around a very small, closed in by an invisible wall area. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun enough, and the animations can be satisfying, but don’t sell it to me as some crazy inventive thing you’ve done, you’re not nearly as free to torture you subject as you’re lead to believe you would be. Though it does clearly serve as a means to deliver story while the player is still in control, and it is effective in that sense, just another over hyped feature that I probably would have found excellent had they not made a bullet point out of it. Another example of how they leave the player in control while story is delivered is with the old, directional microphone, point the camera at the targets as they move around the map game! … I hate that game… its not fun, just show me the cut scene next time please…

I must say though, once you get through all of that nonsense, and you get down to playing Sam Fisher, the ex-3rd Echelon operative (not the camera man), this game can be fun! Getting a clean sweep on a room full of bad guys with some clever use of environment, and gadgets it is overwhelmingly satisfying. The unfortunate part for me is that as the game progressed and the rooms became more full, I found myself reacting more than planning and because things are going so quickly you don’t always get a chance to scope out the room for places to set up an assault. Unlike every other Splinter Cell game, this one is pretty well lit so hiding spots are sparse, and you may not know there is a pipe for climbing on the other side of the room. “Mark and Execute” is not a win button, it can be difficult to pull off in certain circumstances when you’re dealing with cluttered room where you lose range or line of sight on patrols and miss a kill, the pace of the combat is quick, and I bet some really good players have some really good methods to clearing out a room. On more than a couple occasions however, I found the best way to clear the way was to mark everyone, charge in and meat shield the nearest guy and use the execute on the rest. Because of this however, I think playing this game again and again would get more and more fun as you learn the environments, so it would be more satisfying sweeps like I mentioned above and less generic hectic sweeps that I frequently saw.

There are weapon crates scattered throughout the game which will allow you to customize Sam’s load out, and upgrade the weapons that are available. But.. alas I don’t know why you would since Sam cannot survive a gun fight, you really rely on your silenced pistol 95% of the time, and apart from the range modification I didn’t notice any real impact of the others. A nice touch I guess, but it was mostly useless.

In addition to the single player mode, there are “deniable ops” which are simply additional scenarios you can drop into, they are kind of neat in that if you get spotted, they call in more reinforcements, thereby prolonging the mission creating a nice little diversion and some more playtime.

So while I wasn’t disappointed by my excessively over-hyped expectations of this game, I wasn’t thoroughly impressed by it either. It seemed like they made sacrifices to make way for their innovations, and left the game lacking in what I would generally call important areas to a game of this ilk. By all means, if the idea of a new take on the action/stealth genre, this is a very good place to start.

So I’ve taken in the Skate 3 demo 3 or 4 times on its 30 minute timer, and every time I do I get more and more excited for the full game. The demo takes place in a sectioned off area of the University district and has a lot of benches, stairs, other gaps to play on. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a little pool or something to play in, but it is a demo after all. My session tonight was mostly about getting the hang of underflips and darkslides, 2 of the new trick (I suppose trick-sets would be more appropriate), they make sense control-wise which I appreciate. I’m not a huge fan of the animations coming out of the darkslides, it seems like the animation itself is too quick, and you can’t really see what is happening as well as you can other tricks.

Below is a video I took of a fun little gap I found with the help of the object dropper to bring in a little ramp.

Forgive the camera work, the “Advanced” cameras were locked out in the demo so I didn’t get to give it the white glove treatment which is too bad because that tree is really in the way, If I had the cameras I probably could have worked around them. Oh well, will remember this spot for release day.

Edit: And this is why I love this game…

I felt the need to develop this line a little more… so here is the improved version:

I just stuck with the follow cam because I wasn’t totally happy with the tricks, the darkslide should have been earlier… I wanted to throw in a flat land underflip of some kind before heading into the bank, and maybe a manuel out or something. I will no doubt be perfecting this tonight.

Edit 2: Alright maybe not perfect..

Yea, not perfect at all, but I did get a little bit of bullshit..

And a neat little grind

sneaky

I played quite a bit of the game so far, and from what I understand the single player campaign isn’t that long so I think I’m getting close to the end. Its been pretty challenging by time laying out the room for your mark and execute, and doing so quickly so that the marks don’t patrol out of the area or away from the kill spot you had planned. I can see this game being several times more fun the second time through when you are more comfortable

The story isn’t any to talk about at this point, they’re mixing in flashbacks (meh) and flashforwards, which I’m finding don’t work very well, or aren’t creating the drama/tension they intended to in my opinion..

The goons need more lines of dialog, they keep saying the same stuff all the time and its already getting annoying. And I’m finding most of the voice acting really rough, especially Sam’s during a scene with his young daughter, he’s still talking to her with that tough guy voice of his (although it is much better than Kratos’). The silver-lining however is Grim. Her voice actor is easily the most convincing in the game so far, and is on par with some the best in the industry. She is probably my favorite as a character as well, The imperfections on her face and, and the natural looking physique, really makes her believable, something that is usually pretty rare for females in video games.

It seems like they keep repeating the context around the first mission over and over again, that is to say, I’m chasing down a lot of EMPs, really no other objectives. And they keep mixing in these other missions for variety I’m sure, but they simply aren’t fun. For example there is 1 mission in Iraq that was unnecessary, you basically get a simpler version of Sam, in broad day light, with some of the moves missing and you just have to go through the level, it feels like a very generic third person shooter, not what I signed up for. There is also there is a mission where you play camera man, and video tape a meeting for like 10 minutes… also not really fun, although I admire the attempt to try something new to deliver story elements while the player is still in control, although I’m pretty sure this approach has been done somewhere before but I’m forgetting where exactly I’m recalling it from. I’m also not really buying into this interactive interrogation thing… They made it out to be like it’s this great innovation in gameplay that you are taking control of what would normally be a cinematic, but you’ve only got 1 button to play with, and a few objects scatters around the environment that you can smash with your victims face.. it’s pretty limited really.

All that aside, I am having a lot of fun with the game when Sam is being Sam, and it only seems to be getting more fun the more comfortable I get with the controls. I really do see me playing through this a couple times at least just to see how things play out when I’m in better control of the scenario, when you get that perfect multi-kill it is truly satisfying, and find different solutions while avoiding detection is really fun gameplay.

Here we go again

So after spotting the price tag on the spring xbox elite bundle, and noticing it included Halo 3: ODST and Forza 3, 2 games I would have picked up anyway had I had any confidence in my 3rd cycle xbox 360 refurb lasting through the course of an entire game, I decided that 300$ was reasonable, especially since Splinter Cell: Conviction is around the corner… This also means I get to catch up on all the awesome XBLA DLC I passed on, like Shadow Complex, Trials HD (I absolutely love the trials games…) and there were a few more that I remember wanting to play but the names are escaping me at the moment. But that means some of my upcoming posts are likely going to contain some dated information while I get caught up. Heres some early impressions so far:

Forza 3

Forza 3

So I’ve put a bit of time into this, I’ve finished my first season and they’ve given me a much of cars to use so far. I like the ‘quick upgrade’ system, but it almost feels too easy and I’m not really making any decisions about my upgrades because of it. I’m sure that was the idea though… I seem to be approaching it the same way I did previous Forza games, if you can get out in front quickly, its very easy to win the race… that probably has a lot to do with the difficulty I’m playing on but it doesn’t feel all that challenging at the moment. So the MO is get a car that over powers the rest of the competition and then win… I probably won’t play this one all that much more, but it should hold me over until Gran Turismo releases.

Halo 3: ODST

Halo 3 ODST

sure does feel like a halo game… they don’t really work for me; I find the controls floaty, and the journey not all that compelling. Halo 2 was the last one I finished, and that was most likely because I was playing coop with a friend. I want to like them, I just dont apparently.

Fable II [on deck]

Fable 2

I saw this on games on demand and I couldn’t resist, I really liked the first one despite being disappointed that it didn’t live up to the hype.  So, since I’ve got realistic expectations for the sequel, I think I’m really going to like it… but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

Euro Box Art! Cause it's way more appropriate

I tweeted earlier this week about picking up The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, I did so on a whim cause I was looking for a little distraction… why I picked this game up out of all the games I could have grabbed I’ll never know, I didn’t play the previous iterations nor had I even heard of them leading up to this one. I do know this much though, It has now consumed 14 or 15 hours of my life, and when I’m not playing I’m thinking about how I can be better at it…

It’s an RTS game, that much is clear, but in every way that the modern RTS games are going, I’m looking at you Dawn of War II, Demigod, and C&C4, The Settlers has gone in the complete opposite direction. The majority of your time is spent developing an economically strong kingdom, and while that includes military this is not where the strategy in this game comes into play. The strategy comes from collecting resources… (I know… sounds kind of lame…) but there are so many resources that have so many different uses that it is challenging to use the limited space, and limited resources you have access too in the area you start in and use them to expand your kingdom to begin production of different resources.

The game has the notion of Victory Points, you need X number of victory points to win a match, and these can be obtained a number of different ways. For example, you can gain a point by having more territories than your competitors, by owning specifically designated zones, or by completing  map based quests.

An example of a map based quest may be delivering 80 shirts to the quest giver, so it becomes a race to see who can get 80 shirts the fastest… this may mean establishing a trade route so that you can trade for the shirts, set up your own production line for tailoring, which involves having a series of different constructs in place… in this case, a shepherd, a weaver, and a tailor… The nuts and bolts of it is you can collect any X of the many victory points defined for the match, and you can use any means available to do so.

You also have to consider upgrade points gained by ‘prestige’ (which is also a victory point, having a high prestige level than you opponent). It may be in your best interest to advance your Export houses if your focus will be in the trade game, or into the Church if you opt for the Technology side of things… There are other options available to improve your fortifications in the choke points on the maps.

Overview Map, Identify and protect those choke points and important natural resources!

Ultimately you’re going to need some combination of these things to be successful, but doing things in an order that is effective for your strategy, and in a way that suits your playstyle is challenging, and rewarding. I’ve got to say this is hands down this is some of the most fun I’ve had in a strategy game in a really long time. It brings me back to the nights playing Warcraft II when the matched would last for hours.. matches seem to be lasting me an hour, hour and a half on average in the campaign and in multiplayer.

I don’t think I could justify this game by trying to explain how deep the economy system is in this game, there is a lot of stuff you need to consider, and I’m not even to the point of the campaign where I have all the units unlocked, if you’re into strategy games at all, and can live without the ‘action’ part of it, I’d strongly recommend grabbing the demo. This game certainly won’t be for everyone, but this has been the surprise of the year for me so far, it wasn’t even close to my radar and I’m having a lot of fun with it.

It’s caught my interest that’s for sure.