Now that I’m a bit further into Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, I think I understand what Capcom is doing. This is an alternate Dead Rising 2 timeline, in which Frank West shows up where Chuck Green was originally. I didn’t quite understand this until I met Chuck, which is one of the highlights of Off the Record. And while I appreciate this sort of narrative shuffle in a game where the narrative is so unimportant that you can entirely ignore it if you want, is it enough for a standalone product? Certainly not, which explains the new sci-fi-themed area of Fortune City and the (slightly disappointing) sandbox mode. Overall, I can’t help but shake the feeling that this should have been downloadable content.
Consider Rockstar. The Undead Nightmare add-on for Red Dead Redemption, the South Central add-on for Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and the Ballad of Gay Tony add-on for Grand Theft Auto IV were about the same amount of new content and re-used content as what you’re getting in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. And while it’s not my place to guess how readily you’ll spend $10 instead of $40, I can’t help but notice the dramatically different asking prices.
Not to mention that I had to deal with Gamestop to get Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. The store had three disks, but none of the salesfolk could find a box. They offered to sell me just the disk.
“I’m not paying full price for the game without the box or manual,” I had told them.
“Sometimes the boxes get stolen,” one of them confided. As if Dead Rising 2: Off the Record boxes were so in demand among shoplifters that three of them had been filched within a week of the game’s release.
“Sir, I can give you 15% off,” another salesperson said in a hushed tone, as if he didn’t want the guy in line behind me to hear. I ended up going elsewhere to buy my copy. If Off the Record had been DLC, it would have saved me both trips.
Of course, the separate DLC for Off the Record was announced today. Next week, for $2, Frank West can don a Terminator skin and do extra lightning damage when he attacks. While I really appreicate what Capcom has been doing creatively, I hate how they’ve been packaging it. And I hate even more that I just spent $40 to support their business practices.
Bobbi Sue Luther should have been the typical acting-challenged slasher heroine/victim, but Laid to Rest does something cute with the usual amnesia gimmick. After Luther makes a 911 call, it’s kind of adorable the way she wants to take shelter at the “police lady’s house”, because she can’t remember the name of a police station. Sometimes you forget more than just your name. Kudos to writer/director/husband Robert Hall for giving her something to do in addition to running away, looking scared, and filling out a tank top.
Also, she’s not alone. For much of the movie, Kevin Gage and Sean Whalen are along for the ride. Laid to Rest imagines an ensemble cast where the final survivor is instead a group of three people who mostly do what you’d expect actual people to do. Gage is immensely appealing as a gruff good-old-boy who knows enough to get his gun and cares enough to be affected by the deaths around him. Whalen is the more traditional comic relief geek whose solution to contacting the police when the phones are out is to email them. Unlike most movies where the phones don’t work, Laid to Rest is well aware of how dumb this sounds.
And what a lovely Lena Headey appearance. Headey is probably best known for 300 and Game of Thrones, but she should be known for a road movie called Aberdeen with Stellan Skarsgard. Road movies tend to be uniquely American. But Aberdeen considers what a road movie would be like in Europe. I’m not sure what Headey is doing slumming it in a low-budget old-school gore-fest about a killer who wears a ridiculous chrome skull mask, but she and Kevin Gage lend the whole thing a touch of class. As much as that’s possible with all this latex and fake blood.
Laid to Rest is available on Netflix here. Warning: don’t bother with the sequel, which is enitrely missing the clever touches that make the first one worth watching.
After nine months, one $40 follow-up, and DLC for the $40 follow-up, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will get something Mortal Kombat had the instant it was released. The downloadable Heroes and Heralds add-on, which will supposedly be available when Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is released in November, is a mode where you can earn special abilities for your team as you fight your way through a series of battles. In other words, a series of battles with nifty tweaks and modifiers to vary the challenge level. Capcom takes their sweet time, and when they finally get around to it, they come with their hand outstretched and asking for a few ducats more.
On a related note and against my better judgment, I bought a copy of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record over the weekend. I understood that it would recycle Fortune City, but I had no idea it would also recycle the missions, the bosses, and the survivors. As near as I can tell, I’m replaying Dead Rising 2 a fourth time, but with a $40 Frank West skin that can take pictures to earn xp. It takes real chutzpah to make Electronic Arts’ business practices look charitable, but Capcom manages.
Holy cats, this turned out so much better than I expected!
Driver: San Francisco is a perfect example of how far personality can get you in a videogame. This open-world driving game is nowhere near as technically proficient as, say, Midnight Club: Los Angeles. I never thought I’d see the day when San Francisco seemed so washed out and bland compared to Los Angeles. But that’s more a testament to Rockstar world-building prowess than a criticism of Driver developer Reflections. Because as a game, Driver: San Francisco has personality to spare, with a fantastic funk, soul, and 70s soundtrack; a unique car-shifting mechanic that has you jumping from car to car, complete with a tenuous but effective story rationale; and an open world with plenty of opportunity for exploration and general faffing about. The variety of activities dovetails neatly into the variety of cars, with just enough physics lite to keep this from being a game about steering a rocket, a la Criterion’s Burnout games.
After being all but forced into high-end cars in Forza 4’s online games where no one seems interested in anything street legal, I’m delighted with how the multiplayer in Driver: San Francisco effortlessly and quickly moves through various modes. Tired of a given race? Just wait a few minutes! In one half-hour session, you might drift imports, bounce buggies down a dirt road, dodge traffic in wildly swaying American muscle cars, jostle other players to follow an AI leader, and astrally leap-frog your way to the head of a race (although first you’ll have to figure out how to get past Ubisoft’s screwed up Uplay prerequisite, which means downloading DLC instead of using the broken code that ships with the game). Pay attention, Electronic Arts. This is the sort of wheelsport the Need for Speed arcade racers should have been providing all along.
Most horror movies aren’t too concerned with character development or acting. They just shoot for the lowest common denominator of gore and pacing. A Horrible Way to Die, from a startlingly talented young director out of Alabama named Adam Wingard, is the exact opposite. The trappings are straight-up genre stuff about a serial killer, but the format is a languid character study that lets three very good actors breathe as their relationships develop, coalesce, and finally do what they’re going to do.
The subject at hand is the worst kind of relationship PTSD, with Amy Seimetz’ frail performance as the emotional core of the movie. AJ Bowen, who is unforgettable in an indie horror triptych called The Signal, is the movie’s id, once again balancing a fine line between funny and gruesome. But the real star of this movie is Wingard’s bold camerawork. The handheld camera sways and struggles to find focus, like someone waking up from a dream, trying to find her bearings. If you want your camera on sticks for 90 minutes, with maybe the occasionally dolly shot and a crane shot right before the credits, you will hate A Horrible Way to Die. But if you accept that a camera is just as much a part of telling a story as a script or a performance, then A Horrible Way to Die is a provocative horror movie about three characters and how the director shoots them.
A Horrible Way to Die is available on Netflix here. I heartily recommend the gorgeous Blu-ray version.
(In case you’re wondering what this is, it’s my opportunity to recommend obscure horror films that you otherwise might have missed. I consider this a year-round job, but what better time to do it daily than the two weeks leading up to Halloween?)
Like Trenched before it, Orcs Must Die does a good job with the moment-to-moment tower defense gameplay. It looks great, it’s got charm, and there are plenty of toys to help you bring about the eponymous imperative. But also like Trenched, it fumbles the crucial bigger picture.
I suspect this will be known as the week Batman: Arkham City came out. But don’t forget that it’s also the week the surprisingly good Dungeon Defenders came out. Not since Renegade Ops has such a great game with such excellent multiplayer support and such long legs at such a low price had such a terrible name. That’s a lot to parse, so suffice to say Dungeon Defenders is easily one of the best tower defense games you can play.
Speaking of Renegade Ops, Sega promises that it’s finally coming out for the PC this week. Sony also promises that Payday: The Heist will finally come out this week. Sony also hopes to release Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One this week. Ubisoft hopes you’d rather learn to play a real guitar instead of playing Rock Band, hence this week’s Rocksmith.
Finally, there’s a new Professor Layton game out for the Nintendo DS, but how can there be any puzzles left after the previous Professor Laytons? Seriously, how many variations can you come up with on getting a chicken and a bag of grain across the river with one boat? From here on out, it’s got to be all mazes and sliding tile puzzles, right?
In this podcast, at least one of us correctly pronounces the names of Matthijs van Heijningen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the director and one of the actors in the 2011 version of The Thing. Then we recall fondly how good movies called The Thing were back in 1982. At the 57-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 covers our favorite accidental deaths in movies that don’t have the words Final Destination in the title.
Oh, the things we do for the games we love: playing multiplayer horde mode, fiddling with emulators, updating our iPhone’s operating systems, dragging steering wheels into the living room, buying the Kinect, draping sheets over our heads. All that and more on this week’s Quarter to Three games podcast, featuring very special guest Rob “Bringing Da” Funk, a.k.a. Xaroc on the Qt3 forums.
Choosing a featured community level this week was tough. Nothing bowled me over, but I did find a couple of cool things. My dilemma: do I feature the challenging level that is far from perfect but has good elements? Or do I go with the goofy level that has no game play, but which made me laugh? Gaming has me grumpy this week, so I should probably go with the latter. Something light and amusing.
I’m not going to do that, though. You shouldn’t be shortchanged because of my mood.
Act 1-3: Feeding Frenzy. The designer describes it as a survival/horror platformer. While I like the sound of that, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to label it as such. Your sackboy does have to survive a horrific situation in the icy caves of Mt. Kalan, but I wouldn’t put this up there with a Resident Evil game or Fatal Frame, which I haven’t played but once tried to watch a buddy play. I had to leave the room. There’s nothing in Feeding Frenzy that comes close to–hold up a second. My phone’s buzzing. Let me just…crap. Another stupid notification. I’m sorry. This’ll only take a second.
What’s that iPhone? My sunflowers are ready for harvest? Unbelievable. I told you not to bother me about that while I’m working. What? My crops will spoil if I don’t log in right now? Damn it! You know what? Shut up iPhone. I’m not talking to you.
According to the old saying, sex is like pizza; even when it’s bad, it’s good. I disagree. On both counts. But the old saying does make me think of some tables in FX Pinball 2. Such as Sorcerer’s Lair, the latest addition. Sure, I’ll play it. But of all the tables available, I’ll play it out of a sense of obligation to the fine folks at Zen Pinball and my superscore. Not necessarily in that order.
When I first played Sorcerer’s Lair on the Playstation 3, it was the ugliest Zen Pinball table yet. Fortunately for Sorcerer’s Lair on the Xbox 360, Miss Splosion Man makes the lesser tables feel like so much more. The theme of Sorcerer’s Lair is two meddling kids, a cranky old sorcerer, a friendly ghost named Whisper, and the color purple. A hut rotates. A creaky old tree leans out. A pentagram spins. I kind of dread finding myself on a couple of inscrutable side tables. I wonder why I’m not just playing Haunted Mansion instead.
But at least this latest table isn’t a bunch of fruity comic book superheroes. We’ve got a lot more of those coming in the new Marvel Virtue and Vengeance pack of four tables. I look forward to a day in the distant future when more than half of my tables aren’t about people in capes. Which reminds me, you’ll be getting a very special treat in Pinball FX 2 this month, which includes Zen Studios trying a little something different. More on that later.
I’ve got a half million Forza 4 credits and nothing to do with them. I rarely have to pay for upgrades to my cars, since I’ve easily raced my affinites to a 100% discount on upgrades to the cars I drive (by the way, Forza, there’s a better and shorter word for “100% discount”). And since Forza 4 never pressures me to drive a particular car, and since I therefore have so many cars that I’ll never drive, and since I keep getting new cars just for leveling up, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with these half million credits. Bid on a car in the auction house? Why? I already have more cars than I know what to do with. Buy paint jobs? Considering how little I want the most expensive paint jobs, that’s not much of a money sink.
For all its improvements, Forza 4 is like the Forzas before it in that it has no meaningful economy and almost no meaningful caRPG progression. It doesn’t even care whether I win or lose a race. After any given event, it flashes a congratulatory “race completed” message. Not “race won“. “Race completed“. 1st place, 3rd place, 12th place. It doesn’t matter. The race was completed.
Is Forza worried that I might get discouraged if I had to reach the podium to progress? If so, it needen’t worry. I constantly win, despite doing everything I can to make the game challenging. All the races feel rigged for me to win. I’ve been playing with all the assists and players advantages off (except for the color-coded braking line, something for which I’ll always be grateful to Forza). I haven’t been doing any tuning, and the only upgrades I’ve gotten for my cars are the automatic upgrades the game recommends before a race. Yet nearly every race feels like the old Wipeout games, where I start in the back and the only challenge is passing each of the other cars before the designated number of laps are over. I usually nose past them with almost no effort within a lap or two. And consider that I’m not using the rewind function, which is turned on by default, that allows any mistake to be erased with impunity. When is Forza 4 supposed to get challenging? Why isn’t there a separate difficulty setting for the other cars’ racing prowess? Or is the whole point that Forza 4 isn’t supposed to get challenging? Because right now, nearly half way to the level cap and well into the middle part of the career mode, the other cars are never a challenge. The only challenge is the course itself.
Forza 4 is a safe, visually bland, and thoroughly competent racing game. When I listen to the news on the radio while playing Forza, I can actually remember what I heard. The prime minister of Ukraine is in jail. The Republicans shot down Obama’s jobs bill. The underwear bomber is throwing in the towel. Kim Kardashian takes a whole week to get married. But when I listen to the news on the radio while playing Need for Speed: Shift 2, I have no idea what’s going on in the world. The world consists of nothing more than what I see out the windshield. I am invested, challenged, absorbed, 110% present, and sometimes wrestling with my own car as much as the other drivers’ cars. But Forza 4, a serviceable game in which I won the first time I took a Dodge Viper out onto a track I’d never driven, is about as engaging as a morning commute.
Rift is free this weekend, starting right…about…now through 9am Monday morning (California time). If you’re an erstwhile player interested in seeing what’s new (for instance, this mondo update just went live), there’s no time like the next few days. I won’t be there, as I have other grinding engagements at present, but I post this in the hopes of being able to vicariously enjoy Rift through you.
I’m one of those people who avoids information about the games I want to play. Rage was one of those titles. Despite seeing it at two different E3s, I had paid so little attention that I had no idea how the story even began.
