When Gameroni editor Jason Venter suggested I write an article about why Alpha Protocol wasn’t more widely appreciated, my first reaction was to sulk because I’d much rather write such an article about Lost Planet 2. But mine is not to reason why yadda yadda yadda. And after having a grand time working my way through Alpha Protocol again, I came to the conclusion that it has a lot in common with Shadow Watch.
You remember Shadow Watch, right? No? Kids these days…
Shadow Watch was an elegant turn-based tactical game in which a team of agents did agent-like things on discrete levels strung together along a shuffled storyline. It had an almost boardgame level of abstraction and streamlining, but it looked like an X-Com clone. So a common complaint about Shadow Watch was, “Hey, why can’t my dude go prone?” or “Hey, why can’t I go through a window?” Which completely missed the point.
For better and worse, Alpha Protocol has a lot of Shadow Watch going for it in terms of why it wasn’t more widely appreciated. But don’t worry, I promise I won’t drone on about ten-year-old strategy games. Read the Sins of Alpha Protocol here.
Need a new video card? Good at coming up with quests for your D&D campaign? Then you’re in luck! Stardock is giving out a fancy new ATI card to the winner of their “design a quest” contest for Elemental. The winning quest even goes into the game.
What’s notable about this contest is that all the submissions are public. Well, mostly. A horrible pop-up window tends to scroll the tops of the quests off the page, so I can’t read about the mysterious stranger offering a given quest.
Some of these are about as dull as you’d expect, but you can spot the aspiring DMs. Take, for instance, bootleg96 and his submission, “You Love Betrayal”, which will test your allegiance to an allied kingdom.
In exchange for POWER, you MUST declare war on your ally and sacrifice a bunch of his people for the dark magic, torture-sacrifice thing… the shaman can only use sacrifices from your ally’s people (‘coz they have a special mojo in them) so you can’t just kill at someone you already dislike. And the ritual is like… CRAZY cruel and WICKED bad so there’s NO WAI you’re ally will ever forgive you.
Is it a good quest? Who cares. That kid has spirit!
This week sees the release of Sony’s superhero-themed MMO, DC Universe. If you’re a comic book nerd, 1) ha ha, and 2) you can expect 100% more licensed superheroes than you got in City of Heroes. As for me, I normally wouldn’t care since I’m too way cool for comic books. Plus it’s an MMO that isn’t called Lord of the Rings Online. However, I have an ongoing assignment to cover it over the next four weeks, so I’ll be playing. Friend me or sidekick me or mentor me or Justice League me or whatever it is you do in this game and we can fight crime together. Excelsior! Snikt! Bamf!
The really intriguing release this week is Capcom’s Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, a Nintendo DS game from the creator of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Ghost Trick is a puzzle game in which you’re a ghost who has to possess objects to solve puzzles, and ultimately solve the mystery of who killed you. I played a bit of it at a press event and I really like its style and how it’s suited to the DS. Remember the DS? That folding thing Nintendo made?
Then there’s Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! for the PSP. I have made no embellishment to that title. All those words are actually in the game’s name. Now you may know what a Prinny is from the Disgaea games. You may have even married one in ZHP. I know I did and I don’t regret it. We had some great times, mostly involving meal deliveries. But if you haven’t played one of these Prinny games, I have to warn you that they aren’t to be approached lightly. Even though this sequel to the first game advertises itself as being easier, it’s still not a very friendly platformer. But then again, some people actually got more than three levels into Donkey Kong Country Returns without quitting in disgust, so I might not be the best judge of platformers.
Joe Hall, a.k.a. notatiger (not pictured), knows what it’s like to spend a Texas summer working the brickyards of Lubbock. He’s also facilitated some, uh, unlikely drug deals. Listen to this week’s podcast for details, along with some Team Fortress 2 talk that includes a couple of surprises for me.
“Hamlet is the first in a planned series of major Shakespearean content updates coming to the world of Mabinogi, Nexon America’s fantasy-themed MMORPG. Players will find all new areas to explore, new missions to undertake and new skills to acquire, along with much more.”
I have no idea who this is aimed at — Shakespeare themed expansions? — but it got my attention. Just as I gladly play a Dune mod for Civ IV and a Star Wars mod for Sins of a Solar Empire, I could be enticed to play a Shakespeare mod for a free-to-play Korean MMO.
Electronic Arts has posted the names of the games whose online functionality will be cut off this year. The page is called “Online Service Updates”, which is one hell of a euphemism. That’s like listing the casualties in a war and calling them “Order of Battle Updates”. As I read up the list of impending demises, it’s mostly sports games, so I couldn’t care less. Besides, don’t they keep cycling in new sports games? I mean, it’s understandable that they’d cut off support for Tiger Woods Football ’08 so that you’d buy Tiger Woods Football ’09. Lame, but understandable. But then I come to something not unlike a punch to the stomach.
I’ve watched my share of Starcraft II replay commentaries. It’s the closest I’ve come to actually enjoying a sporting event. But I find the above commentary, co-narrated by a dude and his four-year-old daughter, really encouraging for a couple of reasons.
First, because it teaches good scouting habits. “I see something!” is the hallmark of an observant player. I was in a game the other day with the sound turned down, and I had one of those War of the Worlds walker things rampaging through my base without me even noticing. Lame, huh? I could have used this girl’s scouting acumen.
Also, she and I have the exact same reaction when Mutalisks show up. I also make that noise you hear at the 7:41 mark.
Finally, what a great lesson on the mid-game, which is where I tend to fall apart: “I have a secret for you. There’s more and more and more and more and more.” Now there’s a mantra for good macro. Four-years-old and she’s already got a better handle on the game than I do.
What’s really encouraging about this video — aside from it being so darn cute — is that this girl is going to grow up with Starcraft II. In 20 years, there might actually be women playing RTSs.
I’m on my second playthrough of Alpha Protocol, opting for the role of jerkwad with a lot of points in his shotgun skill. It seems that no matter what you do in the game, the plot calls for you to take Madison Saint James (pictured, right) into your safehouse in Rome, where I presume she eats your food, reads your magazines, watches your TV, and lolls about on your couch. Since I’m a jerkwad in this playthrough, she doesn’t like me. So when I initiate a conversation, it goes like this.
Madison Saint James: “Asshole.”
Mike Thornton: “Bitch.”
My favorite thing about the conversation is how the characters speak under their breath. I’m going to miss her when — spoiler! — she’s gone.
In The Hive, some dudes suit up (pictured) and shoot a blue laser gun at killer ants from outer space attacking a Third World country where it’s really cheap to shoot a low budget movie. During an early scene, as the dudes sally forth to zap ants, someone proclaims, “Okay people, let’s liquify some endoskeletons!”
Now I’m no ant-ologist, but I did take two years of Latin in high school. So I know that an endoskeleton is something on the inside, like people have. Ants, on the other hand, are bugs and therefore have skeletons on the outside. Exoskeletons. It probably takes about a hundred people to make a movie like this, yet none of them knew the difference between endo- and exo-? “Okay people, let’s liquify some endoskeletons!” made it all the way through production, and then all the way through post-production where someone could have dubbed in the correct syllable?
But that’s not the best line in the movie. That comes during the scene when an exposition man is explaining the situation. People are being massacred by ants! “Ants killing humans in large numbers is almost unheard of,” one of the ant killing dudes observes sagely.
Almost unheard of. Because we’ve all heard of the Great Ant Massacre of Borneo back in 1984, when ants did kill humans in large numbers. I believe upwards of 1,000 humans were killed by the ants. But other than that, the guy in the movie is right. Ants killing humans in large numbers is almost unheard of.
Good lord, that looks exhausting. I don’t see anything up there I wouldn’t rather do with a gamepad. Well, a mouse if I had my druthers. But barring that, a gamepad. It’s bad enough having to hover your right hand in front of your body. Ruse involves a whole lot of moving the map around, and I don’t want to have work my delts to do it.
