Archive for March 16th, 2011
I don’t watch movie previews and I don’t understand people who do. I like to be surprised. One of the great things about playing the community levels in LBP2 is that this sense of potential surprise is perpetual. I hate to invoke a ridiculous Academy Award winning picture about a lucky half-wit, but these levels are like a box of a certain kind of candy. A lot of the time this means you’ll be biting into some terrible orange-chocolate abomination. That’s okay though. Knowing you’re going to find the rare dark chocolate filled with caramel from time-to-time makes it worth it.
Today’s level is one of those. It totally surprised me. It started off rather snoringly, with the only slight bit of interest being jumping pads installed on a bed, which I thought was a cute development. Not terribly interesting, but cute. So I took a picture of me jumping on a bed as a safety. I went on autopilot as the level seemed a rather vanilla bubble-collection exercise.
Then I got to the water.
Surprise.
I’ve played only a small percentage of the story of LBP2 so far, so I have no idea how swimming works in the story levels, if it does at all. Today’s level was the first time I really got to explore how my sackboy would deal with prolonged submersion. I’ve got to tell you, after a few happy moments jumping on a bed, I wasn’t expecting that. Nor was I expecting to experience some of those jittery sweaty-palm moments operating the controller in a goofy community level. But I did here.
Surprise.
Killzone 3 (pictured) and Homefront are pretty different. I mean, yeah, they’re both shooters with inconsequential sleep-inducing singleplayer campaigns and robust multiplayer support. They both have a lot of leveling and unlocking, complete with gadgets and tricks and special abilities. I suppose they’re both fun, if you want to go there. Neither one has a needler, or a chainsaw-on-a-gun, or a power leash, so you could call them “realistique”.
But I’ve been playing multiplayer in both and it occurs to me that there are six important ways that Killzone 3 is better than Homefront.
After the jump, why I prefer Killzone 3’s multiplayer Continue reading →
Let’s talk about breasts, boobs, and women in video games for a brief moment, shall we? The old gaming message board memes about big breasts and anatomically incorrect armor have been playing out for years. Many people have treated the subject with far more wit and perversity than I am able to in a few paragraphs. My focus is narrow though — the lovely lasses of Dragon Age 2 — and this game is a godsend for you digital boob-watchers out there.
After the jump, she’s not really my sister. So it’s ok to look. Continue reading →
I did a podcast a while ago in which I asserted that you can’t really be a strategy game fan without having a console. As evidence, I brought up all these cool strategy games available only on console systems. Like Age of Booty, Greed Corp, Swords and Soldiers, Risk: Factions, and Hoard. As of yesterday, Hoard was the only one that hadn’t eventually migrated to the PC, making me look more foolish than usual.
Then today rolled around. At which point, Hoard developer Big Sandwich games announced their supercool dragon sim will be available for the PC and Mac on April 4th. And good news for all you hateable Steambabies who whine about waiting until a game is on Steam to get it: it’ll be on Steam.
What’s Hoard?
After the jump, I’m glad you asked. Continue reading →
Board wargaming is almost an aesthetic, and believe me it pains me to use that word as a noun. After all the counters are placed, reinforcement charts filled, turn record tracks assigned, but before the first move, the game is all possibilities — possibilities which play out on that same map that you laid out before you started. Berlin might end up with a “Soviet control” marker on it, but for now it is your ultimate sanctum, with your most valuable factory and headquarters units, and leader counters, all safe from immediate harm. In a different game, Hougoumont starts with stacks upon red stacks of Wellington’s finest, which later sharply outlines the moment when it is all clear except for the blue of Bauduin’s 6th Division. And in yet another, placing a single Confederate gray counter on Washington likely means you’re starting to pick up and sort all the other pieces for storage back in your counter trays, agonizing over that last battle die roll and arguing over the river bonus. In between, lots of cardboard infantry did a lot of marching.
After the jump, War in the East speaks its own language Continue reading →
Warthog’s many many pages of control settings partly explains the lack of mainstream acceptance of flight sims. The control systems for modern aircraft are enormously complex, thus the control systems for flight sims must be too. Also, pilots don’t use a keyboard and mouse to get around, so you need specialized equipment to meet the demands of flight sims. Warthog is more demanding than most in both respects, but it also has an interesting philosophy behind its control scheme. This makes setting up the controls both easier and harder than in most other flight sims.
After the jump, the lengths some simmers go for total control Continue reading →
