You know how everyone has a vice? Like how some people are coffee addicts and some people are, well, heroin addicts? I’m a game addict. I want them all. I suppose part of this is my OCD, but there’s something deep and dark within me that makes me purchase these games and their collector’s editions with reckless abandon.
Point in case: I want Space Marine. However, I’m a big Gears of War fan and know I’ll be busy with Marcus and friends for quite some time. Luckily, the collector’s edition is only available from THQ and I hate waiting, so odds are I’ll just forget about it.
The lesson here, publishers, is to ship collector’s editions to stores so I can’t resist them. Or make two different ones, one I have to order from your site, the other I can get in stores. I’m looking directly at you, Dead Rising 2.
I’ve been told Hard Reset is a short game. I’ll have to take people’s word for it. It’s taking me quite a while to work through it, as I have to play many of the sections over a few times. I usually just need to work out which weapons are best for a given area, and then try a few times to get it right. On the normal difficulty level, this is turning out to be more challenging that I expected.
As a result, this isn’t a game I sit down to play for a few hours at a time, like Gears of War 3, which I powered through with nary a hitch, sometimes barely paying attention. Hard Reset is more like a short sharp dose of spectacular shootering, akin to a shot of espresso (to extend the metaphor, Gears of War 3 is a Big Gulp cup full of day-old 7-11 coffee). I partly blame/credit Hard Reset’s checkpoint system. This isn’t a “save anywhere then reload if you die” game. It’s a game about getting from checkpoint to checkpoint, which leaves the difficulty tuning up to the developers who made the game. I can respect this. They know the game far better than I do when I’m asked to choose easy, normal, or hard. Frankly, even those three choices are a bit much to trust to the average gamer.
If this is supposed to be a four hour game, a lot of my four hours are looping back over themselves, dancing circles around that line between challenge and frustration. Each section of Hard Reset is a challenge in making do with whatever resources I can grab, dealing with the weapon upgrade choices I’ve had to make, and testing my skill at old school Doom style shootering that laughs at the prospect of a reload or crouch button. Either that or I suck at shooters. Probably a little of both. But whatever the case, as soon as it gets to be too much, I can drop the difficulty level to casual. It’s tough, but fair, and the underlying gameplay is good enough to sustain it. The checkpoints that some PC gamers might bemoan as a console convention are sometimes actually game design.
I do wish Hard Reset did a better job encouraging replay by making the scoring clearer and more prominent. Most recently, Fear 3 is the best case example of how a clever scoring system can add a lot. Before that, The Club was unparalleled in this regard. Less successful attempts include Halo: Reach and ODST, Gears of War 3, Bulletstorm, and Bodycount. Without being at least as good as those games at scoring, I don’t see much of a future for Hard Reset. When I’m through with it, I’ll probably be through with it, which is a far more damning way of a game being short than by merely not taking very long to get to the end.
I’d like to think I’m above these little kiddie Kirby games. But then I actually play Canvas Curse, Epic Yarn, or now Mass Attack and I realize how wrong I am. The folks at HAL Laboratory, the division inside Nintendo that makes Kirby games, know how to make a fresh and exciting game featuring the same pale bloated character we’ve been playing all along. Unfortunately, no such thing is true about Epic Games, the folks who made Gears of War 3, which is also out this week.
Ah, what a relief! After a long summer of mostly junk, it’s nice to finally see something like Drive, which we all liked. A lot. Even those of us who weren’t already fans of Ryan Gosling and Nicholas Winding Refn. But first, a little impromptu Straw Dogs talk. Later, for our 3×3 this week, we discuss the most convincing movie scientists.
I’ve tried to stick by Netflix over the years, but they’re making it harder and harder. As if the regular price increases weren’t enough, now they’re implementing a bifurcated system to keep mailed DVDs separate from streaming movies by making them separate services with separate names: Qwikster for the mailed hard copies, and Netflix for the online streaming, each with its own separate website and queue.
But, hey, at least Netflix — er, “Qwikster” — is getting a new feature:
One improvement we will make at [the launch of Qwikster] is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done.
In case you’re not hip to Netflix, “upgrade” is another word for “price increase”.
I’ve spent the last week or so playing Dead Island for a review over at GameShark. I’ve enjoyed my time with Dead Island, but as a reviewer, you have to move on. I’m currently playing Dead Rising 2: Off the Record for a preview and it’s throwing me off. For most games, I have a specific routine I follow based on the game and situation. I’ll be back in the swing of things shortly, but for now, I’m stuck in my Dead Island groove. To illustrate my point, I’ve written out my basic objectives when playing both games.
Dead Island Groove: Look around. Are there zombies? Probably. Are there a lot of zombies? If so, then I should run, if not I can choose to run or fight my way through. After the fight, check the dead for items and cash. Keep eyes open for vendor to sell to and a repair station for my weapons. Have thoughts about dieing alone. Die alone.
Dead Rising 2 Groove: Look around. Are there zombies? Probably. Are there a lot of zombies? Duh. Change into spandex shorts and a dress. Look for a bonnet. Laugh constantly during cut-scenes. Look for orange juice. Grab orange juice. Look for flashlights and gems. Take upskirt pictures for extra PP (Prestige Points). Take pictures of people being murdered for extra PP. Keep looking for orange juice, flashlights and gems. Kill every stinking zombie bastard you see. Be a douche.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to escort a gold-filled train through treacherous territory. Along the way I would have to knock out gigantic sticks of dynamite obstructing the track, take down a few tanks, sink a destroyer coming down the river, and blow up a few UFOs. All with my sackboy in a little toy helicopter.
One other thing. The characters driving the train are Buzz Lightyear and Woody.
This week I got to try out the Toy Story DLC for Little Big Planet 2. A friend of mine suggested I should give it a shot. For some reason he thinks I like the game. “But it’s probably just a bunch of goofy costumes and stickers,” he said. “So don’t get your hopes up.” I didn’t. I don’t really care for costumes (sorry Ken). It’s not that I’m not a collector, I’ve just come to be fond of the way I’ve kitted out my sackboy, so turning him into Slinky Dog doesn’t interest me. I gave the DLC a spin anyway.
The following comment from this interview with Gears of War 3 writer Karen Traviss explains a lot.
I don’t read novels. I’m a novelist, but I don’t read. I don’t like reading. I love comics. I love reading comics. I can still read comics and write, just about… But I come from a TV background.
The single most important thing anyone can do to be a better writer is to read, and specifically to read lots of different kinds of things. But if you want to write truly atrocious stuff like Gears of War 3, by all means stick to comic books and television.
It’s going to happen sooner or later, on every system you own. You’re going to want to download something, or install something, or save a game, and you’re going to discover you’re out of storage space. So you’ll have to wade into the data management option in search of stuff to delete. And you’ll discover things you’d long since forgotten.
For instance, to make room to download a Wii Ware title, today I discovered that I played Manhunt 2 on the Wii. I did? There even was a Manhunt 2? And it was on the Wii? Also I apparently played something on the Wii called Boogie. I’d rather you didn’t let that get around.
There’s something simultaneously familiar and daunting about the Treasure logo appearing when I fire up Radiant Silvergun, a classic bullet hell shmup that thinks a lot more of me than I do. I love Treasure games, but you have to “get” what Treasure is trying to do in any given game before you “get” what they’re trying to do.
Does that make sense? If not, you’ll have to forgive me. I’ve applied more brain power to Radiant Silvergun than I intended, so I’m running on a mental deficit right now.
Lots of competing interests come into play this week. We consider Kirby vs. Commander Shepherd, Diablo III vs. the free market, Nintendo vs. their shareholders, Syndicate fans vs. Electronic Arts, and the brain of our special guest Joel “djscman” Dehn vs. the manual for Battleship: Galaxies. Also, the embargo for Gears of War 3 is lifted and Tom Chick is unimpressed.
One Mr. Tom W. Chick has been known to say “Fuck Star Wars” as his reaction to the new films, games or, well, anything. I don’t even think it has to be Star Wars related any more. While I don’t hate Star Wars as much as Tom (though I do hate it quite a bit now), I discovered that, after playing Dead Island, I’m done with sewers.
This quote from Adaptation sums up my feelings nicely:
John Laroche: Look, I’ll tell you a story, all right? I once fell deeply, you know, profoundly in love with tropical fish. Had 60 goddamn fish tanks in my house. I skin dived to find just the right ones. Anisotremus virginicus, Holdacanthus ciliaris, Chaetodon capistratus. You name it. Then one day I say, “fuck fish”. I renounce fish. I vow never to set foot in that ocean again. That’s how much “fuck fish”. That was 17 years ago and I have never stuck so much as a toe in that ocean. And I love the ocean. Susan Orlean: But why? John Laroche: Done with fish.
While reading the manual for Sengoku, Paradox’s latest strategy game, I came across some good news and some bad news. First the bad news. In the section on a character’s age statistic:
Death becomes more likely every year after age 40.
Way to cheer up your older demographic, Sengoku. Now the good news. Under the section on relationships and spouses:
In feudal Japan, men were not limited to one wife, so it is possible for your character to marry up to four women.
Sweet! Although that might explain the shorter life span. Also, way to pander to male gamers, Sengoku. History is so dude-based.
In Sengoku, a primary resource is your character’s honor, which is sort of like his mana, except that instead of casting fireballs, he spends it to do history stuff. Honor isn’t easy to come by. You can buy it by giving gifts to the Emperor in the form of your hard-earned cash, or you can buy it by handing out land to your vassals. Also, you can play as a devout Shintoist, which earns your character an honor income. Shintoists get honor, Buddhists get warrior monk reinforcements, and Christians get guns. Even feudal Japan had red states.
However, there is one more way to earn honor. Each province can build various types of manufactories for special bonuses. If you build a pottery manufactory, you earn honor. I have no idea what this is modeling, since my frame of reference for pottery manufactories is 1) that time my girlfriend dragged me to Color Me Mine, and 2) that canoodling scene in Ghost with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. Probably not what the creators of Sengoku had in mind.
The above trailer for Kirby Mass Attack starts out innocently enough. At about the thirty second mark, I started to feel uneasy. A minute in, I was pretty sure I was watching something without quite understanding that it was dirty, like when you see a video of two people in animal costumes prancing around and then it gets a little weird, and before you know it, you’re dragged into an unwelcome new awareness of a fetish you didn’t even know existed. That’s how I’d describe the psychological journey I took watching so many little Kirby’s doing things I didn’t understand. Part of it is that Kirby himself is so weird. Ten Kirbys are ten times as weird. Ten Kirbys doing indeterminate things to various objects and creatures is exponentially weirder.
Double Fine’s lively, charming, and polished tower defense/action game, Trenched, should be every bit as good as Signal Studio’s lively, charming, and polished tower defense/action game, Toy Soldiers: Cold War. But it’s not. And the simple reason is that there are too few ways to play Trenched. There is no survival mode. There is no head-to-head option. There are no minigames. There are no set-ups for different types of games. There are no challenges. All the great things that give Toy Soldiers: Cold War such incredibly long legs should be in Trenched, but they aren’t. It’s no longer enough to just make a good game. You have to give us different cool ways to experience that game.
Fortunately, Trenched is getting a survival mode at some point in the future. It’s only one map, but at least it’s one step closer to making Trenched as good as it should have been.
Oh, also, it’s not going to be called Trenched any more because of a legal brouhaha with some Europeans who have something called Trench. So later this month, Trenched will forever after be known as Iron Brigade, which sounds like something turn-based and with hexes.
