Archive for March, 2011

If you’ve ever wondered what the raft escape from the crashing plane in Temple of Doom would be like, Snowboarding Down Mount Everest may be the level for you.

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I haven’t been terribly fond of Creative Assembly’s recent games, such as Empire: Total War or Napoleon: Total War. All that is changing with Shogun 2 (read my 1up review here).

And technically, this is just the first ten times, but I figured listing 15 would seem borderline creepy and going all the way up to, say, 20 or more would just get tedious. So here are ten times I fell in love with Shogun 2.

After the jump, is historotaku a word? Continue reading →

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The biggest obstacle to playing a wargame for people who haven’t played wargames is understanding what the game expects of you. Yeah, you need to capture Moscow or whatever, but the whole in-between part is so opaque I think people just don’t even bother. Part of the appeal of games is being given tasks which you can accomplish and then figuring out how to do that. I’m convinced that is the appeal of the otherwise-unfathomable-to-me RTS campaign paradigm, where some guy talks for a while and then you have to figure out the puzzle of how to defeat the space orcs.

But when the event is a more recent historical one, you kind of bring your own preconceived notions to the table. For example, it initially really bothered me that routed units in War in the East could just relocate to a new hex every time I moved adjacent to them. In my mind, I thought that routed units should just be eliminated when they engaged in combat. On one Three Moves Ahead podcast I think I called War in the East’s system “ping pong” or “kick the can” warfare. I’m pretty clever and smart. And I obviously know everything about invading Russia in the 1940s. So when I say I have all the answers, you can pretty much take that to the bank.

After the jump, it turns out I was wrong. Continue reading →

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…football fans across the country will have the opportunity to select the next cover athlete for the award-winning Madden NFL franchise. Beginning today and continuing through April 27, fans can participate in a bracket-style voting campaign and choose among 32 candidates (one representative from every NFL team) to appear on the cover of Madden NFL 12. Fans’ votes will determine which NFL players advance through the seeded bracket, culminating in the reveal of the Madden NFL 12 cover athlete on ESPN’s “SportsNation” on April 27.

It seems to me that you’d put Jean Madden on the cover of the game named after him, but I guess Electronic Arts figured it was someone else’s turn for a change. So they’re going to have a vote so you can pick which football player (pictured) will be featured on the cover of the next Madden. I’m going to vote for Pele.

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Let’s face it: an unavoidable fact of life when you play RPGs is that you are going to be spending an inordinate amount of time in dungeons. They may not all be dark, dank, moss covered caves or yawning caverns. They take the form of the interior of castles, the basement of suspicious taverns, or a cursed church. Regardless of how they are skinned, they are all dungeons: corridors separated by doors and puzzles, with enemies around every corner and usually a boss at the end of the road. Dungeons can be the best part of an RPG or a nagging problem in an otherwise good game. Despite the traumatically awful experience of the Fade, Dragon Age: Origins featured varied, interesting dungeon design, enough to keep me coming back through an expansion and seven downloadable adventures. Surely Dragon Age II wouldn’t disappoint.

After the jump: No honey, I didn’t make a wrong turn. Continue reading →

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Boondock Saints director Troy Duffy seems to think there might one day be a videogame based on his movies. That’s cute. Personally, I’m holding out for Tommy Wiseau to greenlight a videogame based on The Room.

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Call in the intervention squad. I’m starting to get hooked.

Actually, maybe ‘hooked’ is too strong a word. I can’t say I am going to keep playing this game the way I’ve kept playing, say, League of Legends. Since wrapping up that joint game diary with Kelly and Tom I have to say I’ve played that game fairly regularly. Or as regularly as possible. I cannot imagine that is going to happen with this game unless my kid somehow gets interested in it. We will see about that in the next few days. If I’m just considering myself alone, I don’t see it happening. It’s ugly and the learning curve looks too weird. Easy easy, la la la. Followed by, “That’s your team? Suck it!” From here it looks too much like the rocket ramp from When Worlds Collide.

Right now, though, the learning curve feels good. Right now, I’m picking up speed. I’m kicking serious Pokemon a–

After the jump, spamageddon Continue reading →

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It’s a big week for EA with the release of Crysis 2 and The Sims: Medieval. I’m afraid I have no idea whether either is any good. Stay tuned for this week’s game diaries for both.

Even though I was pleasantly surprised by the Lego Harry Potter, I can’t really muster any enthusiasm for Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I’m feeling a little Lego fatigue, not to mention a little Star Wars fatigue, and a lot of prequel antipathy.

I quite liked Dissidia, an open arena brawling game with an appropriately flashy anime style (pictured), given that it was supposed to be based on Final Fantasy. Not that I knew who any of the characters were. But it was a solid fighting RPG for the PSP, and I’m glad to see it’s getting a sequel, which is also out this week. Wrap your head around this title: Dissidia 012 Duodecim Final Fantasy. Good luck getting some hapless Gamestop employee to look that one up.

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A small town lawyer learns to live and love by coaching a wrestling team? Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well, it’s the opposite of awful, as we assert on this week’s podcast. Our 3×3, which starts at the 47-minute mark, is our favorite flashbacks in movies.

Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download

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Getting a decent screenshot in today’s level, Eternal Abyss Platformer, was difficult. It’s a study in browns and dark textures, which is part of what I love about it, but also what makes it tough to capture in a picture. One of my favorite moments in the level, a timed jumping puzzle, ends up looking like a bunch of darkish rectangles. This is perfect for the sense I get from the level that my sackboy is working his way through the rotting wood of an old galleon, but not so good for making colorful post images.

I’m not really complaining. I like the design, in particular the sound design, and I’m never going to be able to capture that in a screenshot.

Sound design. I’m talking about sound design in a community level of a silly little puzzle platformer. It’s tough to convey how grateful I am for this fact. I can imagine, if I think about my experience in the story levels, how playing community levels might seem tedious to an aficionado of this genre. For folks with heretofore little more than a passing interest and scant experience, these levels serve as a welcome gateway drug.

Once again…grateful might seem a weird word choice. But there it is.

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Someone named Reala (not his/her real name?) runs a blog focused on Holy priest healing in World of Warcraft. His latest entry includes a badge (pictured) you can stick on your blog to show solidarity with his cause. The cause in question?

For fun (but also I mean it) I’ve made a little badge you can put on your blog to certify it a RIFT Free Zone, as seen above. I know there are a few bloggers getting pretty frustrated with the amount of Rift talk on WoW blogs lately…WoW may be the lumbering behemoth of the MMORPG sphere but we bloggers are not, damnit. Many of us are experiencing tough times in WoW, we have lost friends, guildies, entire guilds have crumbed and fallen. I don’t begrudge Rift the shelf-space, but when there are more Rift posts on a WoW blog than WoW posts… well… I don’t like it.

I love his sense of frustration. The “but I also mean it” is great, but you really can’t top the apocalyptic devastation conveyed in “we have lost friends, guildies, entire guilds have crumbed and fallen”. It’s like the End of Days!

FYI, don’t be alarmed by the image of the badge. Quarter to Three is not a Rift free zone.

(Thanks Katie Uhlman!)

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I have another confession: I’m a goodie two shoes when I play RPG’s. The first time I run through an RPG, I feel compelled to be the world’s biggest ass-kisser, suck up, do gooder, and holier-than-thou moralist. I don’t know where the habit started. Possibly as far back as the original Baldur’s Gate, though I don’t recall a morality system beyond influencing your party members. But it has stuck with me. It has so permeated my playing style that even when I try to play RPGs a second time as an evil take-no-prisoners jerk, I usually end up choosing at least a few good options to ease my conscious. This would likely make for the world’s most boring game diary though, so I decided that I was going to pick every bit of dialogue based on how I thought it fit with the game world. No reloading, no second thoughts. The first thing that came to my head was the right choice.

After the jump, that’s not what I meant to say Continue reading →

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Turns out the bad guys are Russians and Ukrainians. There’s some fluff about how Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the US state) joins NATO and Russia decides to invade and such. Which is a bit odd, because Eagle Dyanmics is a Russian company, but I guess if you’re making a combat sim about an American aircraft you can’t make the Americans the enemy. Whatever, it’s the cold war gone hot twenty years too late, and that’s fine by me. Newly confident after having successfully completed the tutorials, it’s time for me to dive into a combat sortie.

After the jump, I pick out the first campaign mission, and away we go. Continue reading →

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I really can’t get over how much Pokemon White does not want me to play it.

I’m trying to get past my early frustration with how much this game is about reading and hand-holding. I really am. I’ve never played a game like this, and my nature is getting in the way as I navigate this world. Wow. Look at that sentence. It’s only been a couple of days and already the game is starting to dictate the way I construct sentences. Conspiracy alert.

Here’s the thing. I had a moment a few game-hours ago when it seemed like Pokemon White was going to force me to think. A moment when I literally sat up in my chair and focused on my DS fully. My feet came down off my desk and everything. This moment came when I finally found my first gym leader. It took me forever to find that guy, and when I finally did he dismissed me by saying, basically, that I had chosen the wrong Pokemon as my first Pokemon. I had chosen a fire-type Pokemon, and that was going to mean trouble for me in matching up with him in the gym. Match-ups? Whoa. It’s bracket-time, ladies and gentlemen. You start me thinking about match-ups and you’ve got my attention. The possibility of having to strategize quickly wiped away my earlier frustration.

Now the game is going to challenge me. I smile, thinking to myself, It’s on. It’s on like Donk–

After the jump, it’s off Continue reading →

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Simplicity. Sometimes a dopey arcade game homage is just the ticket. Especially when it reminds me to go and watch one of my favorite cartoons ever. Double bonus.

I look forward to the fiddler crab version of this level.

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