Haze + You = out there in the cold
TomChick - News - 0 Comments - 05/20/08 - Link
Okay, it's after midnight so the embargo is lifted on the review copies of Haze that went out last week.
I've played through the whole thing and as much as it pains me to say this -- I've loved most everything these developers have been doing, and I wish them all the success in the world -- Haze is utter and complete tripe. If I can prevent just one of you from throwing away money on this underdone turd of a shooter, I will be happy.
I'll have a full review online somewhere in about a week, but I care enough about you guys, and I know that enough of you guys are Timesplitters fans like me, that I just had to warn you, before it was too late. Heck, get Dark Sector, or that cool Viking game, or that cool time travel one whose name I can never remember. But trust me: this is not the shooter you're looking for.
|
Where In The World Is Trevor Chan?
TomChick - News - 17 Comments - 05/12/08 - Link
I was looking forward to Seven Kingdoms: Conquest. I really dug what the original Seven Kingdoms games brought to real time strategy. The developer, Trevor Chan, was a renaissance kind of guy, making cool economic tycoon games by day and demon-slaying RTSs with diplomacy by night.
So, of course, you'd think the publisher could capture the magic again ten years later, right?
Oh what a goose I am.
|
Fo Crosswor Puzzl Lover Onl
TomChick - News - 29 Comments - 05/06/08 - Link
I've had a fair bit of down time lately what with all the cab rides out to Aldernay City and back, often through Algonquin's busy streets. I'm too cheap to pay extra for the quick trip. I didn't make a half a million dollars by throwing it at cabbies and hospitals! So as I listen to the radio and the cab noses through and sometimes directly into traffic, I've been playing Crosswor DS.
I'm not exactly a crossword puzzle god. I'm lucky to make it through Wednesday's New York Times puzzle. But I dig on words enough to know Will Shortz spells his name with a 'z'. I know where Taj Mahal is and the name of Nick and Nora's dog. If I've already lost you, then Crosswor DS is for you.
When you start Crosswor DS, there are two difficulty levels available: brain dead and retarded (they're misleadingly labeled "easy" and "medium"). There are also two greyed out difficulty levels. I want those. So I've been paying my game tax by doing the sorts of puzzles you'd find in TV Guide or USA Today. Here's an example of a clue from one of the most advanced medium puzzles I've unlocked:
"I must _ _ _ _ this" There are lots of amusing possibilities. I'll leave you to imagine them. But the solution – spoiler! – is "have". Eugene T. Maleska is _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in his grave.
There's also stuff like this:
"I ad_ _ _ you (expression of affection)" Note to the makers of Crosswor DS: That's not a word. It's a word fragment. What the heck kind of way is that to do a crossword puzzle? Maybe that's why you called your game "crosswor". But can I please play some of the grown-up puzzles now, or am I going to have to slog though all 220 greyed out medium [sic] puzzles to unlock them?
At least the anagram mode is a great way to ding up my Boggle skill. I like how I can move the tiles around to rearrange the letters, making it much easier to visualize the possible words. You know, I'm going to suggest to Kiki that we just stay in and play the anagram game in Crosswor DS instead of going bowling and watching me try in vain to get three strikes in a row for the Gobble Gobble achievement.
|
Grand Theft Auto: Sentenced
TomChick - News - 120 Comments - 05/06/08 - Link
After 50 hours and 22 minutes, 15,036 bullets (9,172 of which actually hit what I was aiming at), 857 murders, 206 pedestrians run over, 211 cars stolen, an average speed of 31mph, 9 exterminated pigeons, and a single soda, I've finally finished the story mode in Grand Theft Auto IV. And I'm only 71.25% done.
It was a leisurely 50 hours. I explored. I rode around. I did a lot of side activities. I raised all my relationships so I could use the buddy and dating bonuses. (By the way, Carmen Ortiz is a liar. Do not date her. She has what is arguably the most useful buddy bonus in the entire game, but it doesn't work. Health boost, my foot, Carmen! All those times I took you to Burger Shot and this is how you reward me?)
First, I'd like to comments on some of my earlier complaints. After maybe ten to fifteen hours, Liberty City is marvelously non-linear and wide open. There's a lot to do here. I'm baffled that Rockstar didn't give the game a better opening, as the slow start is going to confound a lot of people who weren't sequestered in hotel rooms for five days. It's pretty sad when a game this generous demands so much patience so early on.
The combat gets easier, but it's still clunky. Battles are speed bumps more often than thrills. In Crackdown, I looked forward to every battle. In Saints Row, every exchange of gunfire while speeding down a freeway was a joy ride. But in GTA4, I mostly just wanted to get past this stuff. Once you can afford to be free and easy with explosives, and once Packie warms up to you, there's a hint of the Crackdown thrill. Shooting while driving is terrible throughout.
As I mentioned before, there's a lot of driving. A lot. And this is a solid foundation for two reasons. First, the driving model is on par with some of my favorites: Carmageddon, Test Drive: Eve of Destruction, and the last Midnight Club, for instance. I adore the physics here, which are both serious and fun. As the game progresses and more vehicles unlock, getting from point A to point B is a choice, similar to which gun you're going to use in a shooter. Loud Freeway chopper, twitchy NRG 900, sloppy muscle car (preferably a SabreGT over yet another Dukes), high performance sports car, hearty SUV, or just a reliable sedan? Or maybe a relaxing cab ride? Or just skip it all for a minimal fee?
But the main reason I didn't mind all the driving is also the main reason I was so completely sucked into the game: Liberty City is an amazingly realized place. If any part of Grand Theft Auto IV lives up to the hyperbole, it's the city itself.
One of the greatest missed opportunities – sadly, there are many – is that there aren't more missions like the text message car hunts. These are the single best parts of the game for how they combine exploration and gameplay. A friend of Brucie's will send you crappy cell phone photos of specific cars, with clues as to their locations. If you want to ruin Grand Theft Auto IV, simply go to Google and look up the locations of these cars. Otherwise, you have to study the photograph for visual cues and then drive around the neighborhood, looking for the car. At this point, you can no longer regard Liberty City as someplace to traverse by following a GPS route on the way to a mission loading chevron. Instead, you're forced to examine Liberty City as the inventive, sly, funny, detailed, evocative, and atmosphere place that it is. There's a public pool in Steinway? There are towers in Meadows Park? There's a sugar refinery in BAOBO called Twitches? Hey, look at all the sweet cars in that auto showroom I've been speeding past! Sometimes it pays to stop and read the signs.
Also, I maintain that Rockstar's portrayal of and attitude towards women is juvenile at best, and deplorable at worst. A lot of the misogyny is well disguised as humor, most of which is actually funny, but seriously guys, grow up and get a wider perspective on the world. You've made enough money pandering to boys, so maybe now you can afford to elevate the industry a little.
Although I'm still disappointed there's no built-in way to listen to your own music via the 360's media player, the song list eventually grew on me. Although if you listen to anything long enough, you're liable to end up liking it. How else can you explain Wagner, The Doors, Bob Dylan, and Nine Inch Nails?
After fifty hours of GTA4, I've come to the conclusion that Rockstar sucks at UI. There's some good stuff here, such as the target tracking button, quick zooming the minimap, and checking the name of your current street, neighborhood, and car. It's great how much ingame functionality you get with the cell phone, particularly once it's got a backlit screen (protip: Release Gum wallpaper or the default Whiz theme makes the text pop). But there's also a lot of sloppy stuff here. The controls are as unintuitive as could be, which is going to make it easier for people who could enjoy this game to instead write it off as another ultraviolent hooker killing sim.
I hate that the music stops when you bring up the pause screen to set a waypoint. Anything that interrupts the flow of a game this immersive needs to be fixed (see also, "switching guns in Resident Evil 4"). I hate how much important map information is either on the ingame map or the included paper map, but not both. Why are you telling me the location of the nearest carwash (ingame map) or fire station (included paper map), but I have to grope blindly through these mean streets when I need the life-giving power of a hot dog?
And I hate that I have to go to a screen clogged with stats and then click and scroll around to check my buddies and dates. That's a significant enough part of the gameplay that it deserves a clean dedicated screen rather than an entry at the bottom of a list of superfluous stats. Because I don't mind admitting that I got heavily invested in GTA4's social game. Didn't you? What? You didn't? Really? Okay, me either. I was just kidding about that one. Ha ha.
When it comes to the missions, a city this wondrous deserves better gameplay. Instead, it gets a lot of unimaginative retreads. If you've played a GTA, you've done most of this stuff before. And now you're going to do it again. And again. And again. And, in some cases, yet again. I did enjoy the variation on the "don't let your car take too much damage" mission. The Heat homage/rip-off was a hoot.
But I came to dread those mission chevrons, mostly because I knew this wonderful world was going to be put on hold while I plodded through whatever scripted hoo-ha Rockstar had in store. Anytime I passed through a doorway into some indoor environment, the fun factor plunged into single digits. And, lordy, some of those final missions are awful. The very last mission is yet another example of a developer who doesn't know any better than to end a great game on a sour note.
The writing gets progressively weaker as the game goes on. Niko's arrival and gradual introduction to Liberty City suggest a compelling immigrant's story, but Rockstar can't quite do it justice. Niko's background is a great throughline, and it has its payoff. An enormous amount of credit goes to the cast, and particularly Michael Hollick for his confident performance as Niko.
It's disappointing that the writers don't seem to appreciate how rich the McCreary storyline is, because it should have been the game's focal point. Instead, it's a sideline that turns into a loose end. There's nothing in Grand Theft Auto IV quite so memorable as Niko's relationship with – and his direct impact on – the McCreary family. The decision you're forced to make should have been just the beginning, and it leads to a few scenes that had me wondering whether Rockstar even understood the subtext. They do know that Niko just did what he just did, don't they? And they do know that we know, right? And this is going somewhere cool, isn't it?
Instead, Rockstar just moves on to some badda-bing badda-boom budget-level Sopranos stuff. The last third or so bogs down with their tired tropes about feuding Italian mafiosos, gay people being knee-slappingly funny, and random betrayals and revenges.
I've variously read that the GTA4 storyline is "Oscar worthy", "Oscar-caliber", and "our Citizen Kane", which makes me cringe. It just goes to show that the average games writer wouldn't know a good story if it played itself for him. I still think it was a great game – yes, great – in spite of significant shortcomings. But now that I'm done, I wish Rockstar had made a better game for Liberty City and I wish they had written a better story for Niko Bellic. Because these are two of the most memorable characters you'll meet in any videogame.
|
Matt Damon, you big fat jerk!
TomChick - News - 64 Comments - 04/30/08 - Link
You know telephone, right? Everyone stands in a line. The guy at one end whispers something to his neighbor, who passes it on. By the time it reaches the other end, the original comment is all but lost, replaced by some sort of gibberish.
Imagine the online media as one big sloppy game of telephone. Guess where you're sitting? At the far end of the line, like a chump. It's a problem with blogging in general, but videogame blogging/crosslinking/cut-and-pasting/incest seems particularly egregious about it.
For instance, I noticed yesterday that Blue's New says "Matt Damon [Is] OK With Movie Violence, Not OK With Game Violence." Hmm, interesting. I wonder where they got that idea. Let's click and find out.
Ah, Kotaku. Wouldn't you know it? Blue's was simply quoting a headline presumably penned by Brian Ashcraft, one of Kotaku's contributors. In the Kotaku entry, Ashcraft notes that "apparently" Damon had issues with violence in the upcoming Bourne game and he opted not to appear in it. Ashcraft then quotes Damon's mother – whoa, he actually brings the dude's mother into it! – who says that she and Damon have different ideas about movie violence, but that they both support regulations to keep violent games from being marketed to children. Ashcraft's editorial comment at the end of the whole shebang consists of the following three words, plus a comma that seems to have wandered in from another sentence: "Double standard, much?"
Scathing.
So let's check out Ashcraft's source for the Kotaku story, shall we? An unattributed link takes us to an entry on MTV's gaming blog, where Patrick Klepek provides a quote from the PR rep for the Bourne game's developer. This PR fellow says Damon pulled out because he took issue with the game's violence. Klepek then provides the quote from Matt Damon's mother, sourcing an online chat conducted by the Boston Globe.
Okay, let's head to the online chat. It's a pretty straightforward series of question for Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an author and educator whose area of specialty is the effect of the media on childhood development. Oh, she also happens to have a famous son. So included in the chat is a confrontational question about her son starring in violent movies and therefore being a part of the problem. Carlsson-Paige politely deflects the issue by saying that she and her son differ on movies, but they both believe in preventing the marketing of violent content to children.
So here's the bottom line: nowhere in this train wreck of a telephone game does Matt Damon ever say he's not OK with game violence! Furthermore, he doesn't even say he's okay with movie violence. You'll note that Jason Bourne kills relatively few people, and he certainly doesn't shoot them. In fact, he takes pains to disarm his opponents and throw away their guns.
If you take the hearsay at face value, then Damon simply took issue with the level of violence in one specific game and he decided not to participate. But consider that the PR rep may very well be glossing over some private business matter like being unable to afford Damon, or perhaps a scheduling conflict, or perhaps a AAA celebrity uninterested in lending his name, likeness, and voice to what seems barely a single A game.
But for the most part, gamers are young, stupid, and gullible, more than happy to embrace any ignorant Internet-propogated misinterpretation about the suppression of violent games. It's especially sexy when you can call it government censorship, and when you can attach names like Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Leland Yee, all of whom want to ban violent games along with Jack Thompson. If those guys have their way, all we'll have are My Little Pony games and edutainment! Gamers love a siege, because it means they're the center of attention.
Given Kotaku's popularity and lack of accountability, I fully expect this to work its way into a meme about Damon wanting to ban games. I'll file it right there with Wal-Mart refusing to sell M-rated games, which still rears its head from time to time.
|
Grand Theft Auto: Arrested
TomChick - News - 850 Comments - 04/30/08 - Link
I am driver. I go left, I go right, I go straight ahead. That's it.
--Eastern Promises
So far, Grand Theft Auto IV reminds me of Viggo Mortensen's taciturn character in Easter Promises: fascinating, hard to read, a bit too slow for my taste, and leaving me wondering whether there's any point.
Okay, maybe that’s pushing it, but I really wanted to work in that quote from Eastern Promises, particularly since it was culturally relevant to GTA4's immigrant angle. But so far – it's been eight hours, thirty odd missions, a few dozen mission failures, a dozen deaths, and three coituses – I'm a bit disappointed in Grand Theft Auto 4.
I've spent too much of my time fumbling with combat. I've died by missed jumps, by ladder, by getting stuck in cover, by getting punched after jostling someone on the way into the Cluckin' Bell because I was a few pixels away from death and needed a burger to heal myself. I've failed by timer, by bad driving physics, and by not being able to figure out where I was supposed to go. I've failed because I couldn't keep up with the AI that can suddenly violate the internal rules of traffic and physics because it's scripted to do something that must be done. I've failed because I got too close to the guy I was supposed to follow.
But mostly – and here's where the Russian-accented Eastern Promise line keeps ringing in my head – I've done a lot of driving. A lot. I've had to cross a lot of distance, mostly by following a GPS line on the minimap. It's handy, sure, but I'd trade that GPS line in for a better map. I'd like to know where subway stations are. I'd like to be able to identify landmarks without having to fold and reference the included map. I'd like some easy way to figure out different activities I can do, which I'm not even sure are in the game.
Because right now, I feel like GTA4 is about driving from point R to point L to point V. Rockstar has made tremendous strides with their technology, but have they made so little progress when it comes to the gameplay? Did they not play Saints Row? And have they made so little progress with combat? Did they not play Crackdown?
I guess I've also done some dating in GTA4, which has included various man dates. Awkward! I have yet to see a dating minigame I'd care to play a second time. The darts and bowling were barely worth a shrug. The billiards game with Roman was interminable. And I hope to never again have to sit through another show like that cabaret abomination. Ugh. What was that?
Then there's the strip club. I don't know if I'm out of touch or Rockstar is out of touch, but isn't it conspicuous when women are all portrayed as strippers, prostitutes, or speed bumps on the way to sex? Eight hours in and I just met my first female character who wasn't portrayed as little more than an easy lay. So far, the dating stuff is just silly, and it's a shame it seems to culminate in nothing more than fucking without effect. Heck, even the fucking minigames in the last God of War filled your health bar. What do I get out of this beyond Rockstar making a joke about a woman orgasming to the power of conversation? I guess I need to date more women. Maybe one of them unlocks better weapons or a better map.
That said…if you're going to represent women as sex objects, what's the deal with being all coy about it? Hey, GTA4, you're M-rated. You just showed me a close-up of a guy getting shot through the face. But there's nary a nipple to be seen? The trashy cheesecake is embarrassing enough as it is, so why not take a lesson from God of War, a nippled game that has the courage of its convictions?
The music is also disappointing, partly because the song list is so…so…I don't know, full of stuff I don't know or don't care about. But it's mostly disappointing for how it's clogged with so much of Rockstar's funny radio station stuff. Which, granted, is indeed funny, but Rockstar seems not to know what it's like to drive these days. Who doesn't drive listening to his own music instead of a radio station? Saints Row got it right. I'm actually astonished – yes, astonished! – that Grand Theft Auto IV doesn't have a built in media player to let me listen to my own music through the Xbox 360. Last night, before I got the game, I specifically sat down and made a Cruise playlist and a Chase playlist, expecting to be able to use them in GTA4.
Finally, Rockstar continues to think they're making movies. At least they're better at it than 90% of other game developers. I like the characters for the most part, but I'm a bit worried about what they're going to do with the story. The first major plot point (it involves Vlad and you'll know it when you see it) seems awfully sudden and out of character. But Rockstar deserves kudos for Nikko and his cousin (who I'll bet you dollars to donuts gets killed for shock value). I also like that the gradual reveal about their ethnicity. Was this announced before the game shipped? I haven't followed the preview coverage, so I assumed everyone thought they were Russian. Furthermore, I like that they didn't once again play "spot the celebrity" with their voice casting. I'll take these talented unknowns over a Burt Reynolds cameo any day of the week.
And, yes, the city is absolutely gorgeous.
But Rockstar is still making Grand Theft Auto 3 after people like Volition and Realtime Worlds have taken Rockstar's own formula and dramatically improved it. Where are the awesomely chaotic street battles, the dizzying vistas, the thrill of exploration, the streamlined RPG progression, the car collection subgame, and the personal customization? And where is my dang media players so I can listen to my own music?
I don't mean to be harsh to Grand Theft Auto IV. I'm enjoying it, and I'm looking forward to exploring the city further. I'm looking forward to trying multiplayer. But I fully expected a game that would suck me in for days on end, a game I'd have a hard time not playing, a world I didn't want to switch off. Given the number of obstacles I've run into, and given how little it seems to have learned from its competition, I'm in danger of losing interest. Hopefully, I'm on the verge of discovering in GTA4 whatever game got all those overwhelmingly positive reviews, because that's the game I want to play.
As it is, when it comes to moving through an open and detailed world, I find my thoughts straying back to The World Ends With You, and wandering forward to Mercenaries 2 and Saints Row 2.
|
Midnight Run
TomChick - News - 04/29/08 - Link
I live out in the sticks, north of Los Angeles, in the foothills behind the hills above Burbank. There's a small gaming store called "Play N' Trade" (hey, at least they're honest about their angle) down the street from me. For the GTA4 lauch, I figured there might be four or five people there, especially since they hadn't announced a midnight sale. Earlier in the day, they weren't even sure if they were getting their shipment in time.
So I show up at fifteen minutes before midnight and there are about twenty people there. Twenty stereotypical gamer people. I don't need to paint a picture, do I? As I hung around the front door – it wasn't a line so much as a cluster – my main thought was, 'Lord, I hope I look out of place.'
There was also one hot chick in sweatpants engaging in banter about how she was there to pick up the game for her husband. "I can't believe how much time he spends on these games," she remarked.
"You should be glad he doesn't play World of Warcraft," someone helpfully told her. She wasn't quite sure what that was.
"You know that GTA4 is supposed to be like 40-hours long? Well, World of Warcraft is even longer."
|
Lies, damn lies, and press releases
TomChick - News - 04/28/08 - Link
The following is from Atari's press release for their new Alone in the Dark game, suitably unnumbered because, well, sometimes it's better to reboot than to remind people how old your franchise is:
Bursting with innovative technology, including unprecedented environmental interaction, revolutionary physics, stunning visuals, uniquely immersive user interface, and DVD style chapter select, Alone in the Dark breaks gaming clichés to fulfil the next-gen promise and change what players expect from action games. Okay, I'll give them innovative tech, stunning visuals, and especially DVD style chapter select. That last one in particularly is pretty difficult to dispute. But otherwise, I'm calling bull on every single adjective in there, as well as many of the verbs. I doubt Alone in the Dark is "bursting", or that clichés will be broken and expectations will be changed.
To be fair, everyone's doing it, so why am I picking on Atari, who could really use a successful game? But what can I say? It's a slow day, what with waiting for GTA4 to go on sale at midnight.
|
Happy Birthday, Dear LOTRO! Happy Birthday To You!
TomChick - News - 04/25/08 - Link
It's the one-year anniversary of Lord of the Rings Online and the developers at Turbine are handing out presents! Throughout Middle Earth, for characters of every level, players can find special birthday tokens. Turn these in to vendors in exchange for free goodies.
And if that's not enough to again make me desperately want to jump back into LOTRO, Book 13 just went live, adding a whole new area called Forochel with a new quest line, a new race, and region-specific pets, armor rewards, and mounts. I believe the area is supposed to make it easier to solo levels 40 through 50, just as Evendim made it easier to solo levels 30 through 40. Since my main has been parked at level 45 for a while, this is just what I've been waiting for. Book 13 also reworks an existing area in Evendim, similar to the facelift Angmar recently received. Which is coincidentally where my main alt is parked at level 35. I think Turbine is stalking me.
Also new is a revised "looking for group" interface, with Mustering Horns to make it easier for groups (technically, Fellowships) to assemble. I'm not sure what this does to the acorns Guardians could make to let their friends summon them, but I guess Turbine felt easier travel was preferable to class-specific gimmicks. The trophies that monsters dropped, which were sold to NPC vendors for cash or saved for specific crafting recipes, have been steamlined. This will make them easy to stack in your inventory, but it will also make more common a lot of the advanced crafting recipes. I guess I can clean out of the bank all those spider eyes and barrow treasures I've been saving.
But the real reason to jump back into LOTRO is much more prosaic than all of that fancy adventuring and fighting evil and whatnot. The real reason to revisit LOTRO is this fishing added in Book 13. As someone who really liked the laid-back vibe of LOTRO's farming -- many were the afternoons and evenings spent outside Bree planting pipeweed, harvesting it, and threshing for seeds -- I'm looking forward to squandering some quality time on the Brandywine. Turbine sets fishing in a class by itself, calling it a "hobby" instead of lumping it in with crafting skills. I'm not really sure what that means, other than that fishing is in a class by itself.
The complete release notes are here.
|
| Recent Updates
Features
Quarterlies 2007
The Things I Don`t Like about BioShock
:60 Reviews
Supreme Commander
Features
Quarterlies 2006
Columns
Shoot Club: Sanity Check
Support QT3
Purchase through these links
Go Gamer!Amazon.com
EB Games
Crucial Ram
Dell
Game Fly
Overstock.com
Sharper Image
ThinkGeek
Vanns Electronics
Web Hosting |
