Obscured View

I’ve been derelict in my self-appointed duty to talk about games I’ve been playing lately.  This is a good thing however, as there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on at Jet Set, leaving me little time to write about games.

Of course, I’m still playing games.  Here’s a rundown of the recently finished games and a brief thought on each.

Ghostbusters

A fun game that nicely captures the spirit of the first two films and manages to tie a lot of the lore together in an interesting way.  I wish they’d stayed more mundane with some of the environments, as that was always the fun of Ghostbusters — the real mundane world mixed with the supernatural.  Once the game shifts into almost completely supernatural territory, it loses something (i.e. part of the charm).  Getting the original cast and music back went a long way towards making this a fun ride.

Dragon Age: Origins

DA is kinda fun in spite of itself.  I posted that on Facebook and got some good responses.  Here’s the best one from a friend of mine:

I really enjoyed some of the story telling, as simple as it was, it got to me a few times. The combat mechanics, pacing, itemization, etc. (anything that has anything to do with “game”) was a pretty big fail for me.

That’s dead-on.

I’ll only add that the being covered in blood from head to toe while having a nice polite chat with a king is fairly hilarious.  No one ever says “OH MY GOD YOU’RE COVERED IN BLOOD!” or even skips a beat.  People in fantasy times were just so polite.  Maybe they assume I just cut myself shaving?

Modern Warfare 2

Fun in parts, frustrating in others.  Great visuals with a story that just gets more and more out there as the game goes on.  Some interesting set pieces, and other not interesting ones.  The terrorist sequence was pointless by the end, especially when you think of the absurdity of events that happen because of it.

Without “clown-car spawning” that IW used to rely on, their design falters on some of the levels, making them throw cheap-shot enemies at you instead.  As far as solo-player goes, MW1 is a much better experience from beginning to end.

Fable 2

A “game” that gives you lots of choice that doesn’t impact the game’s story at all, except for one at the very end which kills the game if you make the wrong choice.  Hint: Choose Love.  Since Populous, Peter’s games have always been more of a simulation than an actual game, and this one leans in that direction.  There’s aspects of this game that are fun, but they never go past the level of moderate into full-blown epic.  There’s no bosses to fight, 8 enemy types total, a horribly implemented co-op mode, and a spell casting system that leaves a lot to be desired.

And if you happened to make the wrong choice at the end like I did, you can pay an additional $10 via DLC to remedy the problem.  Not.  Having the only real moral choice in the game be one that breaks any further play without paying more money is a horrible design decision.

Dead Space : Extraction

A great little shooter that’s good for about 5 to 6 hours of co-op play.  Puts you right back in the Dead Space universe without missing a beat.  Strong voice acting helps a lot.  The secondary weapon modes are useless except for a few puzzle sequences.  I wonder why they included them at all, really.

House of the Dead : Overkill

Remember when GTAIII came out, and suddenly there was this push of “extreme” games that were raunchy, foul-mouthed, and just downright bad?  Overkill goes back to that well… but it doesn’t drink so deeply that the game is bad.  Actually for a shooter on rails, it’s rather fun.  The team nailed the grindhouse atmosphere.  The story makes sense in a funky grindhouse kinda way, and gets more and more outrageous as it goes on.  Once you realize what the final boss is doing to spawn its minions, your jaw kinda drops.  No, really.

The director mode, which makes the levels longer by adding new sequences and tripling the number of enemies is the way to play.  IMO, this mode should have been the default.  The game is only about 4 hours long in non-director mode, and you’ll likely get through the entire thing without ever dying.  Director mode is much more challenging.

Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (Borderlands DLC)

Enjoyable, especially at mid-high levels when the creatures are tougher than you are.  I’m mixed on the next DLC release, so I’ll wait for reviews before picking that one up.  For the $10 Ned was a worthy purchase for a few nights of co-op with the wife.  Man, that sounds dirty.

Undead T.K. rules!

Upcoming

Currently on my gamefly queue, it’s Assassin’s Creed II, Saboteur, and Army of Two (for co-op!).  Gamefly tends to send you completely random games, ignoring your queue order, so I’m curious if I get any of those or something that’s like #18 on my list.

Playing through Borderlands for a second time, one thing becomes painfully clear:  Sniper rifles don’t scale appropriately to other weapons found in the game.

My wife is playing a siren that puts out hundreds of damage per second with a L18 flame SMG (L18! And she’s L43 now!) and her Siren’s abilities tweaked to assist that. My Hunter with maxxed sniper skills and a 500+ damage L40+ rifle? Not even close. Even with damage bonuses and such, the time it takes to aim at a target, get a headshot lined and fire completely invalidates the usefulness of that shot’s damage.  The loss of instant, constant DPS from a pistol / SMG can never be equalized by a sniper headshot… unless the headshot was always instantly fatal, and even then I have my doubts.

For the hunter, the pistol tree is infinitely more playable the second time around.  You get both pistols and magnums to play with, and if you find one with ammo regeneration, you’re made of epic win.  You don’t even need a scope at that point.

It’s a shame, really.  The game is still fun, but not having any way to make that tree enjoyable is disappointing.  Sniping is fun, but slows you down tremendously when things get harder.

I’m hoping the DLC will bring some game balance tweaks as well, since the weapon balance appears way skewed to fast-firing constant damage weapons.  Even the skills available to the classes push you in that direction.  I’m also curious how the DLC will scale level-wise.

I guess the title really says it all.  Take the vending machine’s advice.  Go for fast shooting weapons!

A while ago, I read an interview with a Japanese game developer (Kojima, I believe) that talked about the game design philosophy of the Japanese.  Kojima said that the Japanese liked making games around one core activity and allowing the game design to explore the furthest extremes of that activity.  Demon’s Souls is a shining example of that philosophy.  Fantasy melee combat, taken to extremes.  It’s also a great game, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

How can you tell if you’re not right for the game?

1. You think you need to grok a game (i.e. understand it completely) before you can play it.
2. You don’t enjoy having to focus on what you’re doing and what’s going on around you when playing a game.
3. You like to blame your in-game deaths on everything other than what you did to cause it.
4. You button mash in most games, especially when you get stressed in heated boss battles.
5. You don’t like the idea that 30+ hours into a game, you may want to restart because you finally “get it”.

I’m not listing this stuff to brag in any way, as if I’m more ub3r for having gotten through it.  It’s honestly just not a game that some people will be able to tolerate at all.  I have friends that will love this game, and I have ones that will hate it with every fiber in their body.

Why is it so polarizing? Demon’s Souls is like Animal Crossing in a way.  Both games force you to play in a way that most gamers aren’t accustomed to doing.  For the latter, you had no choice but to play casually, which drove me completely insane until I got it… promptly stopped playing.  For the former, it’s restraint and patience that you must have, young Jedi.  Without it, you’ll just die, die, die, and die some more.

That’s not to say that you won’t die anyway, because oh you will, you will.  I never got frustrated at my deaths in Demon’s Souls, unlike the end of that horrible Saving Private Ryan inspired level in Conker’s Bad Fur Day.  In the case of Conker, I wanted to destroy my console as every soul-crushing death stacked one atop the other.  I cursed the game, the developers and myself for not giving up on the damn thing.  To this day, I still remember how horrible that level was.  In Demon’s Souls, I didn’t even get close to rage when I died.  Typically my deaths were because I screwed up in some way.  I swung too early.  I was out of stamina.  I forgot to block.  I dodged off a cliff.  I did something dumb or hasty or uneducated and it cost me.

There’s a ton of reviews out there that talk about Demon’s Souls difficulty, but let me be clear – the game isn’t that difficult if you pay attention.  You have to listen, you have to look, you have to learn attack patterns, you have to learn level layouts.  The game is amazingly honest in everything it does.  You hear monsters breathing from around corners waiting to ambush you.  You see enemies assemble themselves from bones before they start charging you.  You hear the “twang!” of a bow as an arrow comes whistling your way.  Almost everything in the game announces itself in one way or another, giving you plenty of time to react… as long as you look and listen.

Level design is very well planned and populated.  Almost every level has shortcuts that can be mastered or unlocked as you progress, allowing you to quickly get back to the boss that’s currently turning you into a soul-splat on the floor.  Monsters are presented in interesting mixes with space to breathe inbetween.  The varied environments provoke all kinds of sense of dread in different ways, from ruined castles on cliffs to poisonous rainy swamps, horrific bogs and rotting jails full of insane prisoners, the game has you covered.  The only level type I would have loved to see included would be a misty forest full of shadowy menace.

One of my friends calls Demon’s Souls the best MMO that you can play alone.  This is a very apt description.  The levels feel like raid dungeons with you running them solo.  You can play with others when you want to (mostly) and within your defined boundaries of interaction.  Multiplayer is unique and interesting, especially with bloodstains and messages left behind for players that don’t know the levels or the monsters they may encounter.  World 3 (The Queen’s Tower) ups the multiplayer aspect to a whole new level of “oh, that’s cool” which I won’t spoil here.

UI-wise, the game could have used a few more iterations.  Reading messages and then recommending them is tedious.  The gesturing system is interesting, but esoteric to the extreme (hold X for an undefined amount of time, then tilt / shake controller in different ways).  From Software could have done with a look at a TiVo’s UI.  Equipment management is sometimes a hassle, and the message pop-ups and dismissal of them can get you killed during a heated fight.  This at first seems like it’s a bug.  Why the hell can’t I just pick things up instantly?  And yet, there’s the game design rearing its head again, reinforcing the idea that you need to focus on the combat.  In the middle of a heated swordfight, is it really the best idea to start rummaging through the pockets of an enemy’s corpse?

What also gets you killed in this game?  Bravado.  In a game like God of War, wading into 10 enemies at once is exciting, fun, and generally the way the game is designed to play.  In Demon’s Souls, it’s not the case. If you have 10 guys on you, you’re dead.  Three guys at once is scary enough, and with certain enemies, two at once is enough to make you soil your pants.

Let’s take a look at the second time you encounter Vanguard, the monster in the image above.  The first time you fight him, you die — you have to.  Now you’ve encountered him yet again, ready to dish out some payback for the previous death that started this whole mess in the first place.  Do you:

A. Rush in and start swinging wildly?
B. Patiently engage him in a melee battle?
C. Sneak around him and continue through the level?
D. Get to a safe vantage point and and fill his fat ass full of arrows?

Of course, the correct answer is D, but could also be C if allowed, which in many cases is.  A is immediate death, so that’s out.  Sure, you can do B, but considering that one or two mistakes = death, why risk it?  The game wants you to play intelligently, which in some areas flies against all the other training you’ve had as a console gamer for years and years.  You really want to just rush right in and start swinging — most 3rd person action games today encourage that kind of behavior.  If you stop to think about it though, it’s pretty clear what you should do instead — survive.  The time it takes to fill him with arrows is a lot less than the time it would take to fight him, potentially die, and then have to come back and do it (and all the enemies leading up to him) over again.

The first character I played in Demon’s Souls I took to level 73 in about 40 hours played when I decided to start the game over.  I then took the new character and finished the game at level 95 in around 30 hours played.  I’m now level 110 with 39 hours played, and a good deal into the (much harder) second playthrough.  Why did I start over?  I learned what I was doing wrong.  Amazingly, I wasn’t pissed at all.  I was playing the game like just another 3rd person console game.  I was leveling in a way that wasn’t very focused.  I was randomly upgrading weapons here and there without concentrating on a few at a time.  In a nutshell, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the other aspects of the game besides hitting monsters, namely my character’s progression.

So yes, I started over, and had an amazingly smoother time the second time through.  Less death, more levels, better weapons, faster boss kills.  In every way the game got more enjoyable as progress came at a more steady pace.

So what’s not great?  For a game that has a lot of numerical detail to it behind the scenes, almost none of it is exposed to the player in a way that would let them develop strategies without consulting a source outside the game.  You can’t find out that skeletons are weak to fire and blunt weapons otherwise, unless through a lot of trial and error, and likely deaths.  This is flawed.  The game is challenging enough in combat and its manifestations that knowing that piercing does crap against hard scaly lizard creatures would be nice.  Sure it’s all fantasy-logical from the start (so again if you just think about your fantasy expectations…) but it’s also hidden from the player unless they experiment or read up on it.

The lock-on targeting system, essential in some places, is downright mystifying in its logic.  Sometimes it works great and immediately locks targets.  Other times you can’t lock on to anything even if it’s right in front of you.  To this day, I still don’t understand how it picks targets or why it won’t pick some from time to time.  I have a sneaking suspicion it’s designed like that and varies by weapon or by one of your stats.  Maybe high INT makes you lock on faster.  Who knows?

I picked up the collector’s edition, so I fortunately have the strategy guide to enlighten me on the location of ores, the trade-offs for using each spell to gain a weapon or magic, and other important pieces of game-altering knowledge, but even then it falls short on explaining some critical aspects of the game, like how stat bonuses work on weapons.  If you don’t have access to the strat guide, there’s two excellent wikis on-line (found here and here) that contain everything the strat book does and more.

So do I recommend the game?  Oh hell yes… but only if you’re up to the brutal humbling that’s initially in store for you.  I will say that although you may be beaten down at the start, you can walk away from this game with some serious bragging rights once it’s over.

Worth the $60 and then some.  I’d love to see a sequel.

Borderlands is a great excuse to get you and 3 other friends online and shoot stuff until it stops moving.

Here’s a few realities of the game:

1. This is a co-op game first and foremost.  Play split screen at the least, but for maximum insanity, play with 3 other players on-line.
2. Ignore the story completely.  It makes no sense.  Once you reach the end and know what’s going on, it makes even less.  I was genuinely hoping for an option to turn it off on second play-through.  That’s how meaningless it is.
3. You will use a sniper rifle, no matter what class you play.  Just accept that and have one on you.
4. The game’s last few levels are tedious.  The enemies you fight in those levels are also tedious.  Have an electric and an corrosive weapon with you to make it a bit easier.
5. The game title sequence and character intros are great, and then… they don’t do anything with them.
6. If you play the Tank or the Soldier, you’ll get tired of their dialogue really fast.  They’re both kinda annoying.
7. The comparison UI is about one iteration away from being incredibly useful.  As is, it’s annoying at times, especially when dealing with shops.
8. The decision to not have characters vacuum-up money is mystifying.  It’s shared with all players automatically, yet I have to hit a button to pick it up.  Why?  I can hear the argument that it’s inconsistent to the rest of the “hit X to pick up” UI standard, but it’s also inconvenient to the player to make them tediously pick up automatically shared funds.  Let players make decisions that impact the game, not ones that don’t.
9. Holding down X is the concession to the “hit X” UI, which allows batch-grabbing stuff in view around you (view though, not radial — again, why?) but can lead to some accidental weapon and outfit mishaps when you hold X down just a bit too long for the game’s taste.  Suddenly instead of wielding your auto-recharging room-killing explosive shooting shotgun, you’re firing a level 2 pistol at a level 30 monster.  Yeah, not fun.
10. I really wish there was more than 2 vehicles in the game, or at the least they became more powerful as you progressed.  My sniper rifle does more damage than the rocket launcher turret on the car.  WTF?
11. Not being able to bring a higher character into a lower character’s game is disappointing.  Does it really matter if you want to power-level a friend?

I liked Borderlands, but it suffers from the same thing that happened in Crackdown: you’re ultimately too powerful for the enemies you’re facing.  There’s only one enemy in Borderlands that can drop a turret like the soldier class can, but none of them can phasewalk, have some crazy pet they can throw at you, or go enraged and charge around punching things.  You’re too unique in this world, and that makes the later fights in the game boring.  They just throw more numbers of things with greater health at you rather than add new dynamics of enemy behavior.

I’m sure the game did well enough in sales to spawn more (DLC yep, sequel maybe?) adventures in that universe, so maybe next time around they’ll add more mission diversity (escorts, assassination, gauntlets, etc.) and more unique dynamics to the enemies… or at least some more interesting boss battles.  Most bosses are just normal enemy types with unique guns and/or lots of health.

If there was ever a game that lives up to the idea that it’s not the goal that’s important, it’s the journey to get there, it’s this game.  Borderlands lives and thrives in the moments of fun you have with friends along the way, not about the credit roll at the end.

It’s worth the $60 if you have at least one other friend to play with.

In waiting for the deluge of good titles that are coming out later this month, I picked up a $13 game from Amazon because everyone told me how horrible it was.  Lavish descriptions of the horribleness of the experience flowed from those that had played it.  Tales of  bad physics, terrible collision issues, horrible dialogue, early 90′s era graphic techniques, poor animations, silly enemies — it was an endless stream of bad… yet these were all recommendations for the game.

And you know what?  Everything they said is true… and more.  Earth Defense Force 2017 is likely the worst best game I’ve ever spent $13 on.

“Let’s hurry back and get a bite to eat!”

-Every soldier

I think what makes the game so amusing is that everything you’ve learned in how a player interacts in 3D games over the years — expectations of collision, physics, weapon function, gravity — it’s all thrown completely out the window in EDF: 2017.  Collision is almost non-existent, physics are comically exaggerated, falling damage is… what falling damage?

“Nests have appeared all over the world.  The bugs are moving around… and attacking!”

-The Reporter, who dies at least twice

The game takes place on Earth in the year 2017, when an alien force invades.  The aliens must have a sense of humor, because their primary invasion force is giant bugs.  Giant ants and spiders, more specifically.  They crawl all over the geometry, up buildings, under bridges, on ceilings, get stuck on things, have zero mass once killed, shoot web and acid at you, and are sufficiently creepy.  To this we add over the course of 53 missions two variants of a giant robot, a huge dino-bot, a big AT-AT-like walker, an air attack “ufo” and some drop ships.  Mostly it’s just ants and spiders though.

“Damn you, Mothership!!!  Did we wake you up?!”

-The Commander

Environment wise, there’s not much to it.  Buildings,  ground, a few trees, and maybe a bridge or so.  There’s only really four maps you play on — city, rural, shoreline, and underground.  Each map is cut up differently so you don’t see the same stuff that often, but it’s really just there for you to shoot stuff while standing on.  And boy do you shoot a lot of stuff.  There’s levels that drop the frame rate to a slide show with the amount of monsters they throw at you.

You can blow up just about everything man-made in the game, and oh do you take advantage of that.  Any explosive can drop any building.  40 story skyscraper?  One hand grenade and it’s down.  Shopping mall?  One grenade.  Playground?  One grenade.  Car?  Nope.  Cars don’t blow up, silly!  They just fly off into the atmosphere!

“Don’t you die until you’ve shot all your bullets!”

“YES SIR!!!”

-A commander and soldiers

What’s useful about blowing everything up is that you can then see the enemies coming, since they tend to swarm rather quickly, and you can keep them from spazzing out on the buildings.  Typically the first thing you do in a city map is just start chucking explosives around and leveling the entire city while the AI controlled soldiers make all kinds of silly comments.

Obviously there was a budget issue when this game was being developed, because there’s only three voice actors for the entire army, typically around 10 to 20 guys on a map.  This is amusing in many ways, not only because you hear the same guy talking as if he’s multiple guys, but there’s a dynamic dialogue system in place so that solders will answer each other as they talk… all in the same voice.

“The robots’ heads hide in their bodies!”

“That’s funny.  They don’t seem like the shy types.”

-On seeing the robots for the first time

The character animates poorly.  You can almost hear his spine breaking when you turn.  You move faster by diving in a direction over and over rather than running.  You have only one hit / death animation when you fly into the air either when you die or when an explosive lands near you.  It’s all bad, in a completely good way.

“I’ll see you on the other side… in HELL!”

“You bet!”

-Typical soldier chatter

I can’t really glean any lessons from this game because there’s almost no level design to mention because there’s no way to use the level to your advantage.  All the monsters just walk over things or shoot them down to get at you, so really you’ve got nothing but a flat plane, with the tunnel levels being the only exception.  If I could take the game seriously, I’d bitch about how bad the tunnel level is constructed — no landmarks, similar textures, lack of map, confusing layout — but I can’t so I won’t.  The monsters have (almost) enough sense to always come to you, so there’s not a lot of hunting you have to do unless one glitches and runs away from you instead.  It happens enough to mention.

What the game does gloriously in sacrificing everything else for it is give a great sense of scale to the enemies.  Bosses are not big, they’re friggin’ HUGE.  That mutated thing at the end of Gears 2 that you had to helicopter around?  Fighting things like that in EDF:2017, you’re on the ground right in front of them… and they’re not immobile.  The sense of epic (albeit cheesy) scale is awesome.  You ever want to fight an AT-AT from the ground?  One that’s also a carrier that’s constantly spitting out more enemies and armed with guns and shields?  EDF:2017 has you covered.

Weapons (171 of them!) vary from weaksauce piddly things to city-leveling epicness.  Some of them are grin-inducing.  A 30 round simultaneous grenade launcher with a 40m blast radius per grenade sent giant spiders flying in all directions including the stratosphere.  Very satisfying.  There’s a few rare weapons that some people have spent days of play time grinding for, while others (like me, fortunately) got them in just an hour or so (Lysander Z, baby!).  Ah, random chance.  In 4 years plus of playing WoW, I never had one random world purple drop for any of my characters.  Thankfully, EDF:2017 had my back.

So can I recommend the game?  Sure.  As a complete time-waster that’s got some insane difficulty to it, I certainly think it fits the bill.  Split-screen co-op (no on-line) keeps things interesting, so grab a friend and you’ll have a city-leveling blast for the 8+ hours it’ll take you to get through it… and that’s only on one difficulty!

And an amusing mentions on achievements — there’s only 6 of them total.  Beat the game on easy, normal, harder, hardest, and inferno for one each (no, you don’t get the easy one for beating it on normal!), and collect all 171 weapons.  That’s it.  It’s 99 Nights in its old-school achievement philosophy.

Here’s the trailer.

I see on Amazon that it’s up to 24 bucks now.  Apparently there was a recent list of the “hardest Xbox achievements” and EDF:2017 was on it, hence the price rising with demand.  It’s still a great deal — just keep your expectations of tone in check and you’ll have a blast with it.

It’s not worth $60 unless you play a lot of multiplayer.

If you’re a solo/co-op player like me, it’s worth around $30 at best.  You can get it for that price through some crazy discount stacking, but maybe it’s just better as a rental.  It just doesn’t deliver enough new stuff to warrant the full-blown price-tag.

Here’s the highlights:

• One new gun, a silenced SMG, which even when used zoomed and stealthily, the silencer never actually stopped enemies from knowing where I fired from.
• Mods to the pistol and the plasma rifle, but mostly just minor.
• One new enemy… that you don’t actually fight during normal play.
• A large semi-open world city to explore, which is mostly really annoying to explore, because unless you hunt down the side-story audio logs and unlock weapon caches (and a mongoose or two), you’re on foot the entire time.
• A well voiced but short campaign, which doesn’t have any really incredible set piece battles that you’ll remember a week from now as being any different than the blur of all the Halo combats you’ve likely already experienced from the first 3 games.
• A new game mode Firefight, which pits up to 4 co-op players against waves of enemies with only a handful of lives between them all.  It’s really fun, rewards combos and other chains of kills / attacks, and you’ll need a competent group of 4 to really get anywhere.  The achievements you can get in the mode are nigh-impossible for a solo player.
• New multiplayer maps, that if you are a Halo fan, you likely already have.  Only 3 are new and unique.

ODST does play just like Halo: the same great balance of weapons, melee, and grenades survived intact… except your health doesn’t recharge and you don’t have a useful radar.

My peeves with the product are:

• Microsoft is likely using this as a test — just like they used Braid as a LIVE test — to see how much gamers will pay for a “hot” title, even if the experience doesn’t really warrant the price.
• The audio logs you hunt down pull a nasty trick on you.  All of them are found in the city, not in any of the flashback sequences… oh, wait, all except one.  You can only get 29/30 of them in the city itself, and IF and only IF you already have all 29 from the city can you get the 30th while doing the “Data Core” level near the end of the game.  This is horribly annoying design.  You’re led to believe they’re all in the city.  If you played through “Data Core” without having 29 yet, you’ll never even get a hint that the 30th is down there.  The pathway to the 30th is triggered by an NPC that just happens to die if you have less than 29/30, but suddenly lives and opens a door for you further into the level if you do.  There’s no way you could know this beforehand.  Only through the power of teh Interwebz would you figure this out.
• The map of the city sucks.  It doesn’t have a small HUD version, which is sorely missed, and the geometry of the buildings and overhangs block your view of some parts of the map.  It’s hard to believe even in the fiction that these bad-ass ODST marines wouldn’t have software that would strip out blocking height elements when they’re checking a tactical map of the city.  A civilian wouldn’t even find it useful.  It’s like the tourism board of the city farmed out the map software to a contractor and never bothered to give them a spec that the map needs to be useful to someone.
• The two main characters are facially modeled after the voice actors, and… wow.  They don’t look good at all.  When you make Tricia Helfer from BSG look creepy and mannish, you may want to re-assess your art, eh?
• The city has no life in it whatsoever.  Every single person either evacuated or was killed with no bodies left behind?  And not one family of hold outs? No city police holed up anywhere?  Incredible.
• Locked doors and doors you can open look exactly the same.  There’s no consistent color coding to let you know a door can be opened.  This makes exploration while chasing down the audio logs even more frustrating, especially when you have 29/30 and don’t know that the 30th isn’t to be found in the city.

Rent it for a fun co-op weekend with friends, but don’t buy it unless Halo is all you play.

A simple combat system with some evolving depth, great environments, (mostly) fun and challenging boss battles, an easy to use control scheme, a lot of exploration and secrets to find, a challenge mode, solid UI, heaps of back-story via an in-game encyclopedia on Batman’s villains, and a good batman-centric story with great voice performances.

What the hell?  Aren’t licensed games supposed to suck?  I always thought that’s part of the standard contract for a licensed comic / TV / movie property.

Clause XIII: Being a franchised title, and in keeping with the long-adhered to standard of said franchised titles, said title discussed herein must actually suck at least donkey-class balls as per the General Game Suck guidelines (appendix A-2), score less than a 60 on metacritic, and only exist for quick-grab bucks with a film tie-in or be a viable title that grand-parents can purchase for grand-kids because they think they like those “comic books stories” and don’t know any better.

So what went right?  Well, just about everything.  It’s like they took Metroid Prime, Chronicles of Riddick, and some Bioshock, blended it up with Batman as a centerpiece… and actually produced a good game.  Combat is fun, upgrading is fun, exploring is fun, bosses are fun, there’s a ton of extras and secrets to find, and you totally feel like Batman when playing, and you know what?  He’s a fucking bad-ass.  If anything, this game should turn non-batman fans into fans.  This guy gets beaten on over and over throughout the course of a hellish night against some epic enemies and he just keeps fighting.

This is one of those rare occasions where you don’t feel like the game got cut down, a mechanic removed, or some entire section of the design removed because of time or budget constraints.  The game feels complete.  As a game designer, I’ve always hit places in projects where something didn’t fit, had to be cut, had to be radically changed, or had to be postponed for an expansion or a patch… or never got added at all.  I’m not saying that the Rocksteady guys didn’t have their challenges in making this game, since every project does… but holy hell if they didn’t pull off a well-rounded game at the end of it all.

Sure, 360 owners may complain about the lack of Joker as a playable in challenge mode (I’m betting this will be a timed exclusive to the PS3), but if that’s all you really have to complain about… uh, yeah.

And props have to go to securing the animated series’ cast for the voices.  Hamill’s Joker is classic joker with some dynamite lines, Batman is right on the money, and all the supporting parts are voiced appropriately.  The dialogue has dramatic progression to it as the stakes are raised, the story makes >gasp!< sense for a Batman universe story, and the little touches as batman gets more and more beat down over the course of the game are great.  Torn armor and cowl, 5 o’clock shadow, cape ripped to shreds on the side… it all adds to the overall feel of progression in a great way.  Talk about something that they didn’t have to do, but they did because it made it just that much better.

My biggest complaints of the title are the camera in a few boss battles, and the fact that “detective mode” is just too damn useful.  Instead of being something you’d switch into from time to time, it’s so important that you stay in it almost 100% of the time, rather than enjoying the environments as the artists depicted them.

If I had to nitpick further, I’d say at least one of the boss battles isn’t as creative as I’d hoped, but given the others that knock it completely out of the park, it’s still not enough to detract.  The only other annoyance is that the stealth challenge levels have some very obtuse hints for how you’re supposed to get the rankings (bat symbols, whatever) as you complete them.  It would have been nice if the game had been a little more explanatory here, given how good it is at doing so at every other turn.

I had no idea this game would be this good.  I’ve always liked Batman, but my only video game purchase on his behalf up to now was Lego Batman.  That should be saying something.

Maybe part of the reason for Batman : AA’s high ratings is that it’s a licensed game that finally didn’t suck, and that caught the press and gamers completely by surprise… but maybe it’s because it’s just a damn good game by any standard.

Highly recommended.

I don’t think I’ve ever accidentally won a game before.  This was a first.  I was just running around, and bam — a boss battle that in no way did I think was the end of the game… but lo, when it was said and done: credits.  Uh… OK.  This is either a testament to my prowess as an ub3r gamer, or a sign that the developers at Chair didn’t really communicate the build up to the final battle.  I’m opting for the latter in this case.

Shadow complex is a great update of Super Metroid.  It isn’t a great update of any of the Castlevania games that have come since, including the stellar Symphony of the Night (SoTN) and all the DS versions that have followed.  While SC sticks very close to the original Metroid formula, it doesn’t embrace any of the cool new stuff the CV games brought to the genre.  This is a shame.

The story in SC is completely random.  I understand that it’s part of Orson Scott Card’s new series / universe, but the game doesn’t stand on its own.  You obviously need more back-story to understand how this evil organization built an entire super-fortress in the Washington woods (easily reachable by day hikers), how they got funding for the massive super high-tech stuff they have, what exactly it is they stand for, and why liberating San Francisco (wouldn’t Seattle be much closer?) and killing the vice-president have anything to do with each other.  The connection is never explained.  Considering the entire opening centers on the VP getting axed, you’d think that would… play in… maybe?  No?  Ok, moving on.

Let me throw a positive note in here and say the game looks absolutely stellar and the Unreal engine does a great job of handling a 2D platformer.

OK, back to criticism.

There’s a few things missing from making this game great, namely: enemy variety, weapon selection, themed locations, and compelling boss battles.  Hmm… that’s really not just a few, is it?

There’s 5 or 6 humanoid enemies in the game, 3 robot types, and a few mechs / walkers.  They all shoot bullets or rockets or grenades or foam.  You shoot back bullets and rockets and grenades and foam.  It gets old pretty fast.  The gun upgrades are pleasing, but the combat isn’t that interesting.  There’s not a lot of unique patterns to enemy behavior, which would at least give you something to think about in combat.

You’d think in some massive underground fortress (built for a game) you’d have areas that would be clearly defined, like a reactor area, dormitories, weapons bays, command & control, research labs, etc.  You’d think that navigating each area would take that theme into account, with unique enemies and level layouts to match the themes.  This generally isn’t the case.  Aside from a few connected rooms with one theme, the entire complex is very homogeneous.  Perhaps that’s a good thing from a realistic logistical stand-point.  Decentralized control means that you can’t cripple the base easily if you attacked it.  Unfortunately for the gamer, this just means a complete lack of memorable landmarks in all but a few places (the lake & cottage, the mine claw, mine-cart ride shortcut) means the rest blurs together very quickly, making calling up the map the only way you’ll find your way around the massive base.  It’s a color coded map, but that doesn’t really help much.

If you’ve played any of the MetroidVania type games, the bosses in SC should be complete push-overs.  Most of them die very quickly to just the normal gunfire you can put out at the time, making the challenge of learning a boss’ pattern non-existent.  You just constantly shoot, jump a bit, and they die.  This is a shame, as you’d think that the bosses in this would be high-tech, epic and have some pretty amazing patterns to overcome, but alas.  They’re very rudimentary.  I was hoping for a boss I’d have to use the foam to slow, grapple to get an angle, then rockets to blow off armor, maybe using the grenades to lob into it and finally hit its core.  There’s only one boss that comes close to having any kind of layered strategy like this, and although I’ve played through the game twice now, and even reading exactly what the game tells you you can do to it, for the life of me I can’t defeat it the supposedly “easy” way.

If you like these kinds of games, it’s easily worth the $15.  The first time I completed it was in 6 hours with 99% map and 99% items.  Why only 99%?  Because Chair committed one cardinal sin of exploration games — they lock you out of a part of the game that has a critical item.  If you miss it, you can’t go back if you hit a save room once you’re past it.  Sucks to be you.

Let’s hope that for the next one (or DLC), the crew at Chair sits down and plays Symphony of the Night or most of the CV DS games that followed.  Maybe then we’ll finally see a 2D MetroidVania type game that will de-throne SoTN as the best of all time.

BTW, the 3D aspects in SC are fantastic to look at, but a gimmick in every other way.  All it did was add another complication to the shooting controls, which IMO, it could have done without.  Unless you play with your middle finger on the triggers (who does that?), aiming, moving, and using specials at the same time you’re holding the controller becomes rather… irritating.

OK, one last peeve — the map display in Shadow Complex is deceptive in that a “room” is actually larger than one screen’s worth of vertical and horizontal space, which all other games of this type adhered rigidly to.  This makes it rather challenging to figure out how to get to some of the hidden pickups, especially when you know they’re there.  You’d swear you’ve looked in every connected room for the way in, only to find that there’s an access hidden behind geometry (grenade room, I’m looking at you!) that you can’t possibly see behind or illuminate with your trusty secret-finding flashlight (a nice version of the x-ray visor).  You are still technically in the “same” space in the map when really you should be in another map grid.  My bad for assuming they’d follow that convention, I guess.

…and what’s with the almost complete lack of music?  The music being prominent during the drowned barracks sequence was a nice touch though.

Overall Shadow Complex is a fun ride while it lasts, with a few achievements that merit at least one or two additional replays.  There’s also a few extreme achievements that’ll require some dedicated play (and the use of at least one hidden secret!) to obtain.  I’d certainly recommend it to people who love 2D Metroid / CV type games.

…and if you like these kinds of games, pick up Castlevania: SoTN on LIVE or PSN as well.  An amazing game for only what?  $10?  A steal.  Sure the graphics aren’t nearly as spiffy, but you’ll find a ton to like in that title as well.

Yuck.

No other phrase fits appropriately when dealing with the hygiene issues that can assault one upon entering most of the men’s bathrooms in any game development establishment.  The level of foul things or just simply unhygienic things I’ve been a hapless victim of or passive witness to is fairly staggering over the course of 16 years.

Walking into a washroom in a large development studio is a game.  Not a fun one, really.  It’s kinda like a lottery you DON’T want to win.  It’s that consolation prize that’s worse than winning anything at all.  It’s that image you’re not going to be able to get out of your head for hours afterward.  It’s that display of bodily function that I don’t need to be reminded that all my co-workers partake in… some with a lot more zeal and obvious enthusiasm than others.

It’s the artifact of an act that makes you wonder if you should ever shake anyone’s hand ever again… and if you do, sanitize yourself immediately following it.

There appear to be a few categories of players in this tragic tale.  Let’s break ‘em down, but be aware that you can combo / stack categories for any one person, which some unfortunately do.

• The Unsanitary
  Typically these types of restroom users simply don’t wash their hands after doing anything.  They relieve themselves, and walk out, likely directly to a client meeting, back to typing away at their keyboard, or picking things up in your office and playing with them.  I guess it’s just too much of a hassle to wash.  Besides, they showered this morning, right?  Well, maybe.  That’s for another entry.
• The Moistener
  These are the folks that think running water over their hands for 3 to 5 seconds somehow certifies their hands as free and clear of any and all residuals.  Sometimes they use paper to dry afterward, and sometimes they don’t.  These are like the people that really believe that the dry-wash car wash foam is just as good as water and car wash liquid.  Yeah, keep dreaming.
• Badgers
  Some places (like EA) have badges with the employee’s picture and name squarely on them.  These are usually clipped to the pants, which of course go down below stall wall level when people are doing their business.  There you are, seeing the goofy, smiling face of a co-worker staring at you from next door while you hear the sounds of their colon explosively expelling that macho double-del beef burrito they had earlier.  Ah, bliss.  Later, when you see them in the hall, try really hard not to replay those sounds in your head.  It doesn’t work.  Fortunately, unsanitary badgers make it easy to know who’s hand you should avoid shaking.
• The Conversationalist
  Seriously, how anyone got into the habit of doing this is beyond me.  Who tries to have conversations while someone is taking a shit?  It’s kinda hard to discuss scheduling, projects, philosophy, or anything at all while you’re hearing things being expelled.  Libraries and bathrooms have a certain understood and unspoken rule: talk as little as possible.
• The Gift-giver
  It’s like they’re leaving you something they’re proud of and want to share with the world.  Who knows, maybe mom took pictures of their “accomplishments” when they were toilet training and put it on the fridge (next to that picture of summer in Cancun, oh, wasn’t he just adorable?), but it’s really not what I or anyone else need to see… EVER.  I don’t want to know that you had a taco salad for lunch (with corn!), nor what made your sh*t green (green?! seriously!).  I don’t need to see corn, or peanuts, lettuce, how explosive it was up the sidewalls, nor if it’s floating or not, but oh boy you left it anyway, and now I have to enjoy it.  Thanks, fucker.  Does your wife / girlfriend have to deal with this at home?  Likely not, because you probably don’t have one after a few of these left around.
• The Footloose (and fancy-free)
  Here’s one that I just don’t get.  Barefoot… at a urinal.  Barefoot?!  Have you ever looked down at the random spills and misses around any urinal in any public place?  It’s typically a nice mix of liquids from at least two orifices, plus the glorious occasional pube that finds its way into the broth.  Now step barefoot in that.  Wiggle your toes around in it.  Feel the coolness of it all, the mingling of discarded wastes and abandoned follicles.  Yeah, that’s nice, isn’t it?  What’s worse is that just like walking through a house with wet feet, you can track the perpetrator back out of the bathroom for a bit… not that you want to.  At least it tells you which area of the building you’re going to need to have sterilized.
• The Cellphoner
  This is kinda like the talker, but since they’re on a cell phone, they’re usually LOUDER and MORE ANNOYING.  I can’t imagine what’s keeping the person on the other end of the phone on the line.  After hearing the echoing or any other sounds coming from my phone’s speaker, I’d hang up.  Since this is also a game company we’re talking about, there are rarely any conversations that are worth listening to.  At least with a quality fight with a girlfriend or an argument with a partner in a deal going south you can get some drama out of it — screaming, irrational dialogue, bizarre swearing chains, threats — but with gamers, not really.  Most of them are mundane, the kind of conversations that you had as a teenager when neither you or the person you’re talking to had any idea that you could have an idea.  Just tweet the fucking thing and shut the hell up, OK?
• The Commentator
  Sometimes amusing, sometimes not.  Depends on your mood, I have to admit.  These types comment on their progress through the crap-taking or pissing process.  They encourage their “little buddy” while pissing or give you a blast-by-blast account of their last meal’s explosive exit from their colon.  When it’s funny, it’s like an audio recreation of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, but instead of a bronco it’s a guy who’s having explosive diarrhea… and loving every minute of it.
• The Exploder
  I don’t think I have to explain this one, nor will I try.  If you’ve seen this, you know that words simply fail.  The horror.
• The Deodorizer
  Now you must be thinking that this entry is about someone that’s the complete opposite of the types mentioned before.  Nope.  These are not the ones that deodorize… these are the ones that need deodorizing.  In every office of more than about 50 game developers, there’s usually at least one that falls into this category.  They just reek.  They don’t shower often and they rarely use deodorant of any kind.  These types are not fun to be next to, be it in a stall or a row of urinals, because your gag reflex tends to constrict the muscles you need in order to expel things from your body in the proper manner.  They do however rapidly facilitate things coming out of other orifices that are usually reserved for when you’re really drunk or food poisoned.  The plus with deodorizers is that they’re also usually unsanitaries and sometimes footloose as well.  A 3-hit combo at least.
• The Elvis
  They go in to take a crap and end up falling asleep, sometimes snoring.  All hail the king!

So that’s my list so far.  It’s not fair to say that this kind of stuff is limited to just the game developer environment.  You see a lot of this no matter where you are, but it just so happens that the type of people that work in game development seem to forget basic things like hygiene.

You could say that developers in bathrooms brings out the worst in them… usually while they’re bringing out the worst of their lunch.

Har-har!

I read this great review from a British reviewer regarding Transformers 2:

“…and nothing happens very loudly about a hundred times.”

This is exactly how I feel about Killzone 2.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more indifferent to a game than this one.  It’s got a really nice (although mostly brown) visual style, decently responsive controls, the always required dramatic and expensive intro movie… and the only thing I could think while playing it is…

meh.

It’s like they’re trying really, really hard to make this an involving game, and just missed the mark.  I really just didn’t care at all about the plight of the troop your character is in.  There’s the typical assortment of bad-ass marines, the retired marine that’s now a commander, a grumpy sergeant, a sci-branch woman who feeds you info… sound familiar?

I think the lack of intriguing mission setups hurts KZ2 a lot.  You’re just dropped into things with very little view into the big picture of the war.  It feels like I’m doing very mundane things rather than amazingly epic ones, but a lot of that is because of the lead-in cinematics, which just try way too hard to be cool and edgy.  I mean 90% of FPS games these days have missions like KZ2 has — escort the convoy, take out the AA gun, destroy the comm link, etc.  This game has all the right components, but it’s just so…

meh.

Now that said, the game does pick up the pace as it goes along.  Combats get more interesting, with more enemies, better combat environments, and more interesting new weapons to play with.  There’s also one really good moment involving a ship falling out of orbit.  It’s the only cut-scene of the game I didn’t at least once consider skipping outright.

But in a $60 game that’s supposed to offer a lot of value, it comes up short if you’re the co-op and single player type gamer.