My diary informs me that I’ve come to Atom-city to face my fears and then return. It never goes into what those fears might be, but presumably they involve the natural fear anyone would have about staying in the company of a city of high-energy physics zombies. That kind of living situation presents various problems that you don’t have to deal with outside of it, so anyone would have some fears about whether or not they’re up to whatever they turn out to be. There is a certain amount of inference and interpretation in appreciating Clutch’s story.
Like any game, Clutch presents the player with a variety of problems and teaches them the tools and approaches to solve them through a combination of handholding and player exploration. One of the smaller problems and its solution is presented in the picture up above. Problem: there’s a zombie in front of your car. Solution: run over it. Problem: how do you get the maximum benefit out of hitting a zombie head-on? Solution: have the front guard grill option equipped on your vehicle, so that not only does the zombie get killed, it also gets sucked into the engine to be converted into turbo boost. You can see how this ties rather elegantly into further problems such as, how do I go faster to win this race?
After the jump, hunting problems and solutions Continue reading →
Brink and Section 8: Prejudice are both new; they’re both team-based; they’re both very multiplayer but with excellent bots; and they’re both all about objectives and loadouts and special abilities and delicious asymmetry. So it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, right? Not quite. They provide different experiences in some very important ways. So should you play Brink or Section 8: Prejudice?
The short answer is “definitely”.
After the jump, the longer answer Continue reading →
I’m kind of a board game fan. That photo above is my happy little cabinet of games, and I love it, even though I wish it was about five times bigger. When you live in a dinky overpriced San Francisco one-bedroom with your girlfriend and don’t have room for a proper game table, your options are limited. Fortunately, the iPhone and iPad are fantastic devices for scratching that board game itch. The App Store is chock full of stuff every board gamer should know about, with more piling up all the time.
After the jump: Reiner Knizia has too many apps Continue reading →
The best and most obvious way to get a head start on ingratiating yourself with a particular faction is to start there. Warband lets you begin the game in one of the six faction capitals, where you get to experience a short set of tutorial quests. These are optional beyond killing the first bandit that attacks you, but they offer an opportunity for a little bit of coin and reputation with minimal risk. After being set upon by a bandit in the streets of Jelkala, the fief of King Graveth of the Rhodoks, we are taken in by a merchant who explains that these same bandits have been plaguing the town. Furthermore, they have kidnapped this man’s brother and are holding him in an unknown location. The merchant offers some gold for me to recruit a small militia, hunt down the bandits and free his brother.
I accept.
After the jump: what’s a warband without cannon fodder? Continue reading →
That’s me in the corner of the screenshot. That’s a sad, empty, starting grid in the rest of the screenshot.
Jerry put it well Monday on Penny-Arcade: “Even as a satirist, there’s no savor in the [PlayStation Network] story anymore.” There’s nothing new to say. The PlayStation Network has been offline for almost three weeks. The jokes have been made, the questions were raised, answered, then the answers were questioned. If you look hard enough, there’s probably still some fascinating coverage. If you don’t, there’s a lot of anger. Anger at the hackers that took down Sony’s multiplayer service, anger at Sony’s mishandling of the situation (perceived and otherwise), anger at each other for being too angry or not angry enough. So I don’t have any gag headline for you (“more like PlayStation NOTwork!”), it’s just a sad situation. Not pathetic-sad, just regular sad. It’s not Motorstorm’s fault, it’s just the hand they were dealt. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, because the best shot this game had for holding my attention isn’t available to me. Everyone loses.
After the break, I give the multiplayer my best shot anyway Continue reading →
