You might call Dony Moore, a.k.a “wigglestick”, the official aesthetician of Quarter to Three. Or at least our WordPress guru. He pretty much built the page you’re looking at. This week, he’s also our guest on the podcast. We discuss which characters he’d be in a Coen brothers movie, the true meaning of urbex, whether Warwick is suited for Dominion, and the greatest open-world games of all time (that were on the Apple IIe). Also, listen closely for an exclusive Mass Effect 3 teaser!
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My monthly column on strategy games, From Civ to Starcraft, begins today on Gamepro. However, it feels like I’ve been at it for months. The title has a familiar ring. Weird, huh?
This month, I offer advice, freely and loudly over my headset, to people playing Gears of War 3’s new horde mode. That advice consists of nuggets of wisdom like the following:
Stay at the base, you dummies! You don’t need to venture out into the map to fight them over there so you don’t have to fight them over here. Bush league adventurism has no place in Gears’ horde mode. That’s what the campaign’s arcade mode is for.
Read the column here.
One of the things you have to know going in to the community levels of LBP is that sometimes you’re going to be used as a guinea pig. While I object to this–I have no more interest in beta testing a game than I have in seeing an unfinished preview of a movie–I’ve come to see it as the price of admission in experimenting with user-made levels. In certain cases I will make exceptions, however. If a friend needs to test out multiplayer for his review of an early build I’m happy to help out. If Wes Anderson wants to show a nearly finished print of his next film and then do a Q&A, I’ll go for that. But by and large, no thanks.
So I was annoyed as this week’s level, Boti-Boit, loaded and I realized it wasn’t a level at all, just a concept for a contest. I do not want to test out your contest concept. I finally got my kid to sleep and then had to spend half an hour futzing with my Internet connection because the latest PSN update knocked me offline. I’m bushed and I just want to play a little bit, not do your work for you. Except…
Boti-Boit is a really cool concept. The name is wholly inscrutable, to be sure, but the concept is simple and delightful. Your sackboy is on a huge rubber band ball, and you move him by bouncing the ball, poking in and out of platforms as you advance. That’s all there is to it. Hopefully the designer, someone named Kaumy, will eventually design a real level around it.
Click here for the previous Weekly Little Big Planet
Rage is due out next week and I’m looking forward to it. The Modern Warfare 2 style co-op has ratcheted up my interest level. However, I wonder how long the joy will last. I appreciate a standard FPS as much as the next guy, but in this world of weapon upgrades and RPG elements, how much fun will “just shooting dudes” be? Not that Rage is a plain-Jane kind of shooter. It has gadgets and dune buggies, but it appears to be missing all of the folderol that’s so popular in today’s games.
This could be the breath of fresh air I’ve been missing. I’ve had quite a long run of complex shooters that require upgrades and thought, so maybe this is just what the doctor ordered. Either way, I’ll be tearing it up in Rage starting next Tuesday.
For many games, the multiplayer and single player feel like separate products, connected thematically, but with very little in common when it comes to core gameplay. For instance, I play a lot of real time strategy games. There are almost no real time strategy games in which the single player campaign is even remotely like the multiplayer. The difference isn’t quite as pronounced in shooters, but it’s still there. For some shooters, multiplayer is farmed out to an entirely separate developer. For many primarily multiplayer shooters, the single player seems like barely an afterthought.
The beauty of Red Dead Redemption’s multiplayer is that it feels almost exactly like the single-player, even though it’s an entirely separate experience (contrast this to something like Dead Island, where the multiplayer stuff is the same as the single-player stuff, but with more players). Whether you’re playing the single player storyline, or whether you’re in the free roam online mode where all multiplayer begins, Red Dead Redemption is about being in a wide-open and richly evocative recreation of the Old West, with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to things to do. Several of which we did last night.
After the jump, it’s a hell of thing, killing a man Continue reading →
