Upcoming reviews

I have two reviews to write.  The 1st is of Skyrim.  The second is of  Starwars: The Old Republic.  Both are hard to write for reasons that are quite opposite each other.

The Skyrim review is a little difficult, as a sandbox game is always difficult.  The level of experiences quite out weigh the time I have to spend on it.  The Starwars MMO review is difficult because my critique of it is rather harsh.  Overall it seems to be getting good marks, but for me it lost it's grandeur.

I'm giving myself a little bit of time to write these out, but I wanted to poke my head on here to say this:

I was quite disappointed with Starwars: The Old Republic.  From my experience with the beta to release, my concerns were left unaddressed, which is a shame.  The story-lines were great.  The voice acting superb.  The writing, brilliant.  Though that's nothing new from bioware.  The problems I had were things beyond that.  The gameplay was..well...grinding.  The quests were still what you find in any MMO.  Beyond the story-lines and dialog, your not left with much.  Really, if you re-textured all the meshes, it could be any generic upstart MMO.  I felt disenfranchised about the whole thing.  Like they had an opportunity to do something really unique and special, and, well, didn't.

Take for instance, the race choices.  Hard core Starwars fans argued with me about this, but they can't see beyond the names and titles to see meshes and textures, skins and rigs.  But what it boiled down too, was that everybody playes the same mesh.  The texture may have different colors, like blue skin, or red skin.  It might have some additional mesh components, like tiny horns or sunglasses or a couple of tentacles, but in the end of the day EVERYBODY IS  HUMAN.  Which is funny that they give around 8 or more names for the same human mesh.  Blue human, Red human, Spikey nub headed human, tattoo and piercings human,  Sunglasses man (The sunglasses show that he's a robot!  Apparently Starwars has never herd of "Oakley"), blindfold man, tentacle head man, and that's pretty much your options.

 One of the saddest "race" options I found was cyborg.   When you think "Cyborg" you think some melting face terminator crap.  Asymmetrical menagerie of flesh and metal.  Pieces of skin missing, shiny areas poking through the holes, pipes, tubing, and a kitchen sink tap all hanging out in various unseemly places.  In Starwars: The Old Republic, "Cyborg" means wearing sunglasses and a double microphone blue-tooth headset (You know, cause 2 microphones are better than one with the cell reception the empire gets theses days).

  I felt a little betrayed by it all.  Half the fun of Starwars is all the interesting aliens running about.  Here, they chose the most boring ones, the easy "Same mesh, just throw on a bunch of re-textures and call it good" route, and it shows...badly.  Even worse, they give some classes different racial companions that are far superior in detail and have unique and interesting meshes as if to say "Ha! look what you get to run around with, and never customize or "be".  Hell, at least galaxies tried to make bothans a playable race.  (As a side note: If Starwars: The Old Republic makes that trandoshan model a playable race, I will eat my words, and buy at least a month of subscription).

As for Skyrim: Fluttershy says "FUS RO DAH!"

Fuck'n Aye

You know, in a usual congressional season, I wouldn't even bat an eye at this type of unreasonable legislature.  But here in the U.S.A. some crazy bills have been passed recently, and the fact that this is getting no press coverage what so ever, scares me.  The crazy thing is, it "could" pass.  Not due to some "moral high-ground" but because of the HUGE amount of cash that's being pumped into it by Hollywood and affiliates.  Which is kind of ironic in a way.  That is, if this sort of thing (internet and this crap bill) was around when Hollywood got it's start in the 1900's, I doubt Hollywood could have survived Britain and other countries black-listing all their movies, and studios like W.B. would be cannibalize by other studios as they try to beat each other to block and black list themselves and struggling start ups.



So yeah.  total B.S. congress.Total B.S.

Sandvich hungers FOR BLOOD!

I'd like to start by saying: I'm not big on the first person shooter.  That is to say, I don't pick up a game to play solely because it's a first person game.  There's many reasons that go into my choices, but the genera isn't the only bet.  That's mainly why I don't pick up Medal of Call of Military blah blah blah title games.  That and military sims are not my favorite games (I need more....surrealistic game play to keep me entertained).  Multiplayer is fun, it's true, but I feel like games that support only multiplayer are sort of scamming gamers into buying less content for the same price as full fledged single player story lines.  Paying full price for a 5map multi-player game without story or anything substantial just doesn't add up to 70+ hours of involved lore and problem solving.  If these games had both, awesome, great game, but often times, they just simply...don't.  It's also a possible explanation on how they keep putting out new versions every handful of months to make you pay full price AGAIN for a couple new maps, which could easily be dlc updates.  It's an infection of "the bottom line syndrome  that all of the entire entertainment field is stuck in at the moment. If it doesn't make money, it doesn't fly, which is a shame as that way of publishing/producing closes the doors on a lot of innovation and fresh life the whole, not just gaming, entertainment industry desperately needs (again).

So, now that that is over with, here is where I eat my words.

Game: Team Fortress 2
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac
Developer: Valve Corp
Rating: 8 KABOOM! 

This is a game that I have been putting off playing for a very long time.  I've owned it in a package deal with Portal 1 and Half-life 2 with the Orange box, but after playing 1 map, having no tutorial, being confused, and dying in B.S. ways from spawn-campers, I put it down and never picked it up again.  That  is, not until they made it free to play via steam.  Now, I plug in every so often, wreak a little havoc for 15-30 min and then I'm spent until next time.

"Push the bomb" is a very common objective.

Team Fortress 2 is, for all sense and purposes, a First Person Shooter based on sort of a 1960's understanding of War fare.  You have various special forces that are all caricatures of said employments (I.E. the spy is french, explosives are Scottish, heavy weapons is Russian, engineer is American Mid-west/south, scout is New York, and you get the idea).  You have various simple objectives such as capture this, stand here, stand there, take object A move it to point B, guard this, destroy that, push, pull, jump, hop, skip, breath, eat, sleep, game.  Each class has "jobs" to do that are worked into their play style.  For instance, the spy destroys electronics, the pyro can find invisible spy's with fire, the scout is fast, the heavy lays waste but is very slow, medic....is medic, that sort of deal.  The steam version has a tutorial, all is right with the world.

Sandvich?

The thing that pulls me in and keeps me playing is the fact that there is a sort of A.I. in your character that is independent from you.  Your person's A.I.'s job..........is witty banter.  Your character spouts off things according to your situation to other characters.  Their A.I.'s then respond to yours in THEIR situation and it's absolutely hilarious.  The story I like to tell, is when I was a heavy.  Heavy weapon's guy has 3 weapons.  Big gun (Natasha), little gun, and fists.  You can have an option not to have little gun, and instead you have a health item named "Sandvich".  It is just what it sounds like, a sandwich.  Lettice, cheese, ham, bread, toothpick, olive, sandwich.  The medic's super power is that he can make himself and another invulnerable for a short time.  The classic combo is medic follows heavy and turns heavy invulnerable when surrounded by squishy enemies to kill.  So me (heavy) and medic are running down a hallway and we get into enemy base.  He pops invulnerability on me, and I, in turn, pull out sandvich and start having lunch in the enemy base.  Heavy starts eating (omm nom nom), medic player starts screaming and raging on the microphone, and enemy players are unloading clip after bullet clip into my invulnerable face trying in vein to kill me. And then it happens.  I nearly died of laughter.  My heavy starts yelling and taunting the other team "Me and Sandvich is coming for you!  SANDVICH THIRSTS FOR BLOOD!" and somebody's scout yells "No, NO! Anything but SANDVICH! AAAAAH!"  I lost it.  I couldn't continue playing I laughed so hard.  Me and medic both died there.  Medic rage quit out of the server, also funny, but wow, so funny.

Yup, Team Fortress 2, if your wondering why everyone dresses up in real life to cosplay as the players in it, download steam, play for free, it's pretty sweet.

Rating: 8 KABOOOOOM! 

Incoming Game!

It has been a short while since my last post, so time to blow the dust off the internet and get down to business! BOOSH!

Pew Pew Pew

Ok, first up is an interesting game that has a little bit of a back story.  It starts with a little release back in 2002 of one of my favorite games of all time, REZ.  It was for Dreamcast (another reason I feel that the Dreamcast was probably one of the best consoles ever made for it's time) and the Playstation 2.  It was visually stunning, not for the epileptic, had thumping rave music mixed by several pretty bad ass DJ's, level progression was sweet, it was just all around a good game.  It only had one real minor problem, it was a little short for my tastes.  One or two more levels would have done me just fine.  The game wasn't widely released, it was mostly pumped out in Japan and only pushed out here in the states in spots.  It wasn't until about 2008 or so that it was put out on the Xbox 360 arcade with an HD version.  The plot was simple.  Your trapped/lost in the 1980s style internet (think of the movie "Hackers" meets the movie "Tron"), and it's trying to kill you.  So...GTFO.  That's basically it.  The boss battles were nicely staged and gimmicky, the levels were long, hidden levels were fun, just everything was awesome.  Even better, it was a sort of rhythm game that played according to how well you do.  And the game punishes you for doing better by increasing the difficulty.  Overall, lots of fun.  (As a fun gaming history side note, there was a time in Japan (only) where if you bought the PS2 version of REZ, you could also buy something called a "Trance Vibrator".  It was a little plastic USB rumble pack that would buzz and vibrate with the music of Rez.  It's suposed to help you feel the rhythm...but there's other uses that it was being put to as well.  So yeah, there's that.)

Ok, that's the back story.

Now for the Review (cue lightning and dramatic background music)!

GAME: Child of Eden
DEVELOPER: Q Entertainment
CONSOLE: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
RATING: 7 Tainted with Internets

The colors, man, the colors!

De-worming space, shooting one box at a time.

Visually, wow.  Just wow.  Lights, color, sound, everywhere.  Everything interacts.  The background, the foreground, from the cursor right in your face to the little floating gears and particles in the far distance.  Everything you do, save for moving the reticle about, has noise attached to it.  Shooting, hitting, targeting, locking, tracing, switching outputs, everything.  There's bright lights, dark darks, it's quite a lot to take in.  It takes a few play throughs to really figure out what to do and where to go.  Like the previous game Rez, it's still a rail shooter, but it's not as "rigid" as Rez was.  There was a good 110 degree arc in Rez that your camera could swivel in.  Not too far to any edge of the screen, so they locked your head in place saying "here is where you are going, here's where you will shoot stuff".  In Eden, it's a little more like a 180 degree.  The constant worry of "missing something behind me" always seems to creep up, not knowing if something I can't see will shoot me.

Even Moby Dick is digital these days.

Music is the driving force of both of these games.  And sadly for Eden, it's the one part that I have a little bit of an issue with.  In Rez, there was a small swath of D.J.'s that lent a hand to the development.  Each D.J. had a level that personified their music, accenting them in fitting imagery and progression, ending with a remix of the level BGM in a boss fight.  It was seamlessly done, sounded wonderful, and looked good.  For Eden, they use only the music of one composing group Genki Rockets, which is fine.  My problem lies in the fact that there is no real differentiation between the levels such of the likes of Rez.  All the levels sound pretty much the same.  It's a little "poppy" and grinds on you a little near the end.  Then again, I used to be a raver way back when I was in High-school.  If the bass doesn't rattle the sheet-rock, your not playing it loud enough.  Where Rez came with some heavy onts onts onts, Child of Eden was more...party soft.  A sort of "rounded edges" feel to the music selection.  I understand that they would sort of want this to display the evolution of how the internet used to be, and how the internet is "now" as a more sophisticated entity instead of fat middle-age guys in light up 80's tron pajamas, but they really should have used several composers along with Genki Rockets to greater diversify the level areas and give each sector it's own unique feel.  It's own stand alone groove to shoot computer viruses with.

What rail shooter is complete without a cylinder hallway?

Overall, however, the game is still well worth playing.  It's a visual experience that I feel really needs to be "experienced".  If for anything, they did a really good job matching what music they did have with the world they made around it and how the player interacts with it.  Some minor issues, the Kinect is a little slow to react and too particular with placement when playing such a high paced game.  Most of the game is played with your hand in front of you, which the Kinect can some times confuse with you not having hands.  Just minor Kinect issues that are more issues to deal with the hardware than the software.  So yeah, If you get a chance to pick up a copy, go for it.  It's a bit of a trip, but a trip well worth it.

Happy Surfing.

RATING: 7 Tainted with Internets

Pork Chop Sandwiches

It's time to type a blog, and chew bubble gum....and I'm all out of gum.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time mentioning the updates, as they are pretty much self explanatory this time around.  Instead, I'm going to get right down to business of kicking some ass, and business, is booming.

This time: It's personal... *cough* What I mean is, this time I'm reviewing a game 12+ years in the making.  The titanic of the game industry resurrected from the dead sinking ship of the development company 3D Realms only to be rescued  into the light of 2011 by Gearbox Studios.

Title:

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Developer: 3d Realms

Triptych Games

Piranha Games

Gearbox Software 

It's so hard not to draw something...obscene every time you get a pen...Sorry, kid.

I was very excited to get my claws on this game.  For me, as for many other gamers, the Duke is a shining mushroom cloud staple of video game character portraits.  In today's gaming, memorable characters are, sadly, far and few between, as they start to mesh and melt into each other.  It's really hard to point at a console or generation of games outside of the confines of Nintendo and sega and pick out highly memorable protagonists.  That is not to say that they don't exist entirely, but in the 2000's, the protagonist is usually "impersonal military commando" or "bleak monotone anti-hero".   The return of the Duke brings back what it really takes to be a "character" and not just a controller juxtaposition into a game.  It takes a boardgame playing piece and adds much needed personality into the otherwise too often inanimate object.  This swath of personality is indeed brought easily to life by the voice actor Jon St. John who has been the voice of Duke since the beginning, which is always a nice touch of continuity.

Boom, right in the bean bag!

Speaking of continuity, if there has been one thing that the entire Duke Nukem series has done, it's been pushing the envelope in the next direction for games of it's time.  In the past, it was about getting gamers involved, mixing shooters with platforms, and mixing a great deal of comedy and player interaction into a sometimes boring and monotone release schedule.  Like anon on 4chan.org, DUKE DELIVERS.   The plot is rather simple, it is one of those things that really doesn't need something entirely complicated.  Aliens are on earth, aliens baaaaaad, kill the aliens. In this game, Duke Nukem Forever, the envelope isn't just pushed, it's shoved into some horrible places and hung out to dry in the unforgiving sun.  If you are easily offended, have a weak stomach, have a strong religious moral code, are bland, have stomach or liver problems, easily swayed into right wing propaganda, are at risk for heart attacks, or are pregnant, use of this product is not advised.  Duke Nukem Forever is not for everyone.  Side effects include but are not limited to fever, malaise, eczema, dysentery, morbidity, lack of impotence, neurotic tendencies, sudden couch potato syndrome, dizziness, diarrhea, loose bowel disease, a foul mouth, lack of soap,  hand cleaning OCD, Alien feinting sickness, sudden urges for streaking and public nudity, the overall feeling of being sticky or just plain filthy and need a hot shower followed by a cold shower, and the desire to just be a bad ass.  

To be honest, I loved every moment of this game.  It is another prime example of how video games are just meant to be "fun".  That not all games have to follow the same line in the sand.  Even though it was a shooter, it wasn't the stereotypical military shooter, and I ate it up like candy...delicious, delicious candy.  It brought back the "shooter problem platformer" that was all the rage in the late 90's.  Most of the criticism on this game is that it's sexist, foul, and dated.  The first two are correct.  It is VERY sexist, it is ENTIRELY foul.  But to be brutally truthful, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!  It's not Duke Nukem if it isn't shocking, if it isn't for the squeamish. I have not seen a game come so close to being rated "AO" since one of my all time favorite games "Conker's Bad Fur Day".  It was actually delightful.  It shows that video games don't all have to be made for 12 year olds, but in fact, can have adult themes and comedy that is really pushed passed the usual hum-drum that comes down the tubes.  The fact that it does all of this but in such a way that made me laugh and sit there, holding my controller in disbelief, is what makes a Duke Nukem game.  As far as dated, I will get to that in a short while.

Sequel like a pig!

For now, I want to mention a few other things that I really enjoyed with this game.  Among many things, it flowed very nicely.  The levels were well planned out, there were so many things to interact with and just simply "do".  The themes were well put together, the game was very nicely polished, and well, after so long in development and developer hand changing, it should be.  The one liners were well written and well timed.  The boss fights were challenging, it was a very nice progression of difficulty.  Enemy types were well used and well dispersed throughout the game.  There were quite a few times where I was sitting in disbelief yelling out "Oh Shi-! I can't believe I just saw that!!".  The quick time events were very well timed and not jammed down your throat.  The platforming element of the game was well planned, well timed, and were not the bane of my existence (What I mean by that, is in a lot of games these days, it seems that the enemies and bosses can't hurt you, but a 3 foot gap will ruin your entire day.  To me, that seems ridiculous.  The jump puzzles should be just as challenging as the level itself, and it really takes some skilled programming to make it juuuust right.  And Duke Nukem Forever, was just that).  Although there were not that many different types of weapons, they were designed in such a way that they didn't step on each other's toes.  I had a tough time trying to decide which weapon to take and which ones to just "leave" there.  They all had their place throughout each level, the shear implementation of great thought of the placement of where things are was incredibly nice to see.  It was fun to see the tell tale touches of Gearbox here and there with the many many references, themes, and jokes, that touch base on today's popular culture and recent video games.

Come on, Duke, show us your "Big Gun"!

Now believe it or not, I don't have much bad things to really put down for Duke Nukem Forever.  It boils down to a few small details.  The biggest of which is the physics engine.  That is where the game is dated.  That's the only place where the game is dated.  "But N00basaurus Rex, what about the graphics?" you ask.  Ah, but the graphics are so polished and rendered just so, it's very HD and cell shaded.  The graphics, fit with the game, and believe it or not, the effect is overwhelmingly positive (In fact, it would be easy to argue that the graphics are probably better than a few games that have come out in the past couple of years, if not at least on par).  But the physics engine is a little clunky, not enough to be game breaking, but enough to be noticeable.   Collision detection is a little slow for reactions of objects when impacted by other objects, but once again, not too slow, just ever so slightly noticeable.  Mainly because we all have been a little spoiled in technology as of recent in the past 5 years.  The fallacies of the physics engine is passable, because it works.  It may not be perfect, but at least you don't have to worry about being killed by a stationary bridge.  The other major thing, was loading.  Every section of every level had to be individually loaded.  It reminded me of the playstation 1, to be honest, where you had to start a game, get up, go for a snack, come back, and wait another 30min for things to get started.  Now, it wasn't really that bad, but it did take forever here and there.  Other then those couple of qualms, some of the "get to pont b from point a" portions became a little cumbersome, some of the "grab a turret" battles took a little longer that it should have, and a few more execution animations would be nice (specific ones for specific enemies would be nice, other than the standard boot kick or uppercut).  And that's pretty much it, believe it or not!  This game, was epic.  The mini-games were enjoyable and fun.  Air-hockey was a blast!  And how can you NOT like a whack-a-mole style game named "Alien Abortion"?

FIRE ZE MISSILES!

Rating: 8 As Duke Says, "My Balls, Your Face!"

Tap, Destroy Target Atifact

Hey digital warriors, it's been a short while since my last post.  Lots of things going on that's been keeping me from my usual gaming rituals (including travel, a con, money, new job, new apartment, and lots of other life changes).  Along with that, more changes to the blog as you might notice (such as text update, a mascot drawing that's very near completion, and even a mobile version of the blog.  Open the page via smart phone, TAKE A LOOK, it's spiffy!) , everything is and still will be changing. But enough small talk, ON TO BUSINESS!

I'm usually not the type of person who gets wrapped into anything with the word "collectible" in the name.  Granted, I played a couple card games in highschool and earlier, but mostly only socially.  One of those "all the cool nerds are doing it" moments that flared up and quickly ended.  It hasn't been until recently when a good friend of mine has moved into my local vicinity, all afire with one of these games in toe.  So I chiseled my old deck block out of the granite tomb where I buried my highschool, and brought it and it's out-datedness to the light.  That is, only till I found out that there was a new Xbox 360 Arcade Game Magic 2012.

Game:  Magic 2012

Platform: Xbox 360 Arcade

Developer: Wizard of the Coast
Rating: 7 Stacked

This is one of those games that dole out exactly what it promises.  That promise is simply this: There will be cards, there will be a game, it follows the rules of the physical game, you can play by yourself or others.  It's you or yous vs another or anothers.  The game is spiced up with little animations here and there, a semi-interactive hud.  There was a previous game, that had a lot of the same, however this is that game + a little more.  Nerd Alert:  Here's where we get to the grit and sticky.  Decks as strategy themselves.  Now, I'm not going to list any deck specifically, as that would take out a lot of what that game is all about.  On a personal note, speaking more about Magic The Gathering the physical activity, the people are what draw me away from it.  Much like Halo, much like Call of Duty, much like old World of Warcraft, much like Risk, people, as a group entity, have a bad habit of becoming too immersed in these things and start to "know too much".  I just don't like to play with people that know every card, that manipulate every bullet pixel, that have walked everywhere on every map, know every stat, every combination, blah blah blah blah blah blah.  For me, most of these kinds of games (not as much the FPS's) is discovery.  Especially World of Warcraft, most of that game, I don't care if I win the PVP relm, I don't care if the party wipes, I just want to "see" everything.  In Magic The Gathering, I enjoy the creativity of decks and the little tricks of the trade people come up with.  But when it just gets to the point of unbalanced stompyness, I frown.  And by "unbalanced stompyness, I mean the "oops, your dead on turn 2".  If I play a game, I want to PLAY the game.  That is, I have enough turns to let you experience my stuff, and I have enough turns to experience your stuff.  Simple as that.

This game suffers from a little bit of a lack of muchness, a problem that plagues quite a large number of games in recent times, but really, it's not by far.  This game needs a few more decks, one or a couple more randomly changing "map/level" lay outs (since it's just a table, some table-graphic changes would be nice), maybe some BGM options other than just 1 (I'm not sure if you can turn it off or not, as the one song isn't "bad" per say, just gets tiresome after a couple hours of it).  And a few more graphics and particle effects would be great.  A suggestion I shared with a friend when playing Co-op, which I highly recommend, is that since there are a few "Legendary" cards, some animations pertaining special to each one, like waving tentacles, or avatar like effigies climbing out of the card or something.  However, these are all trivial matters as the game can more than stand on it's own legs, and everything else would just be nice.

I think what really surprised me, was that they brought strategy back to the card games, albeit through a virtual platform.  My general experience was that I hold cards in my hand, then loose in confusingly strange and poorly explained manners.  I have found myself a little ruthless with a few games (some vs computers, and one astounding victory over a person....my bad, holms).  I have crashed my xbox by doing 1025 damage ending the game putting the opponent at -1015 in one turn).  The funny thing, is that the game crashed, AFTER the damage was done, not during.  As soon as the "you won!" page faded, it just couldn't load the next zone, oops.  I'll give you a hint on how I did it, the Deck was multi-colored.  Co-op is delightful with another human being.  Leaning over the couch to discuss how to royally screw over who your going against reminds me of conspiracy theorists who are excited about their next plan of attack on the veil that covers the people's eyes on the sinister purpose those little plastic tips on the end of shoe laces are actually for.  Co-op with AI....is mostly good.  Every once and a while there are little hiccups where it will target the wrong card with an ability, or it will not realize that you want to double up on blocking one creature and instead pull back or switch targets (computer A.I. likes to "chump", which is just throwing canon fodder to block and not kill).

For an 800 point Arcade game that can provide hours of strategery and conspiracy theorist like fun, I'm very delighted with this game.

Rating: 7 Stacked

Flap Your Arms To Start

As I wrap up my run through the Kinect Adventures "adventure mode", I just want to run through some short, but final thoughts on the game.   The review stays the same, however.  This is more of a minor insight on the inner-mini-games that comprise Kinect Adventures.

1) I rather like rally-ball, I'm fairly decent at it.
2) I never have felt so doughy than from the obstacle course on wheels.
3) A raft is really meant for 2 people, not 1....nor is it meant to float on clouds...
4) The bubbles man, the bubbles!
And finally:
5) Those fish are truly assholes...

Thank you.

--The N00basaurus