Archive for December, 2011
The Ghost Rider table for Pinball FX 2, now available as part of the Marvel Vengeance and Virtue collection, features Tim Curry from Legend squatting in the middle of everything. It also features a plaque that reads “Lucifer’s stinkhole summons a villain when lit”. At least that’s what I keep reading when I see it out of the corner of my eye. It’s written in that unreadable gothic heavy metal font that usually says “black sabbath”, “dio”, or “schutzstaffel”.
What I like about this table is that it proves that you don’t need Nicolas Cage to make Ghost Rider ridiculous. He does that on his own just fine. He’s a flaming skull. Who rides a motorcycles. That’s about all I know. When I lose the ball and some woman tells me her grandfather would not be pleased, I have no idea what she’s going on about. Oh yeah, lady? Well why doesn’t he come down here and play the damn ball himself?
The press materials from Zen Studios claim that Ghost Rider is the ideal table for beginning players. I think that must be some kind of diabolical joke. On the left side of the table, Ghost Rider has not one, but two lanes that drain the ball. Sometimes Tim Curry actually picks up the ball, teases me with it, and the chucks it right down the middle. Furthermore, a big fat center ramp loves to make me think, “Hey, easy ramp shot!”, only to roll the ball back down the center of the table and right between my flippers. In fact, I like to call that ramp “Lucifer’s stinkhole”. Welcome to hell.
2 stars
Xbox 360
That’s the Hectic Scribe up there. I hate that guy. As per his flavor text:
They are nimble with the quill — fast enough to keep pace with history as it unfolds.
I’m going to talk about a different card every day for the next week. Wait, don’t go! Maybe you don’t play Ascension. That’s cool. I’ll try to make it interesting for you, too.
Ascension is a deck building game, where you and your opponent start with ten cards and gradually use them to buy more cards, which help you buy more cards. It’s all about making choices for what to buy for your deck, and then the luck of the draw for what cards show up in your hand every turn. It’s a bit mathy, but with oodles of atmosphere, thanks to designer Justin Gary and artist Eric Sabee. The folks at Incinerator Studios have done a superlative port to the iPhone, which just added the Return of the Fallen expansion as a $3 add-on.
After the jump, send the kids to bed, because things get sexy and I got the pics to prove it Continue reading →
Dogs playing poker is one thing. But this week’s guest, Jamie Madigan, apparently envisions dogs (pictured) assassinating Templars! Join us for a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, a bit of Star Wars: the Old Republic, a bit of Serious Sam 3, and even some non-derisive Tony Hawk talk. Plus a contest in which you could win a free game. Also, Ezio up there wants you to rate us on iTunes. Just look at him. How can you refuse a face like that?
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
Valve has opened the Defense of the Ancients 2 beta to some players. Such as yours truly. So what makes DOTA2 stand out?
1) DOTA2 has a lot of personality. Valve knows how to inject life into a game with dialog. During a round of DOTA2, the characters will have little conversations and will sometimes quip back and forth. When Windrunner dies, a red headed archer, she whispers in her dying breath “Why do you hate gingers… so?“. I smiled the first time I heard that.
2) Until I played DOTA2, I wasn’t a huge fan of the less cartoony graphics. I really liked League of Legends’ graphics for being colorful enough that it’s easy to distinguish what’s happening in team fights. But the effects in DOTA2 are unique and interesting enough that I can still distinguish what’s happening in team fights. In fact, the effects for the spells are really cool.
3) I’m a big fan of bots. I want to be able to practice an online game offline. For a few reasons, not the least of which is avoiding embarrassment, I want to try new characters in private. To that end, the DOTA2 bots are pretty good. Well, the enemy bots are pretty good. The bots on your team work together, but they basically ignore you and what you’re doing. In a way, this improved my play faster than it would have if they were supportive. Hell, it might as well be simulating a pub game, so it’s still a win.
Next up: The parts of Defense of the Ancients 2 that have me on the fence.
2011 turned out really well. And in some entirely unexpected places! Bodycount had some of the year’s best straight-up no-nonsense gunplay, but in terms of the overall package, Fear 3 was a real stand-out. For multiplayer gunplay, three other threes deserve mention: Battlefield 3, Killzone 3, and Modern Warfare 3 all shine online. Payday: The Heist deserves recognition for its shrewd variation on the Left 4 Dead theme. Virtua Tennis 4 comfortably fit classic Virtua Tennis into a turn-based boardgame campaign. Distant Worlds with its two expansions is a fantastic strategy game in a year with too few strategy games. The Sims: Medieval breathed as much new life into the Sims series as Sims 2 and Sims 3. Little Big Planet 2 managed to be more than just a kit for user-generated content and instead shipped with a great platformer in the box. In a year with some great platformers, deBlob 2 was one of the best. Ascension: Chronicles of the Godslayer and Tiny Wings on the iPhone deserve special mention.
But let’s talk top ten. Toy Soldiers: Cold War, Dungeon Defenders, Driver: San Francisco, Renegade Ops, and Skyrim very nearly made the list. If this had been a top 15, I would have just counted us down to number ten!
After the jump, on to the top ten of 2011 Continue reading →
I used to think Colin Farrell was mainly good at playing dopes like his characters in Cassandra’s Dream and In Brugge. But after this year’s Fright Night remake and his role as a repentant gangster just out of prison (yeah, I rolled my eyes at that, too) in London Boulevard, I’m coming around to appreciating him as a badass.
For the most part, London Boulevard is a typical British gangster movie, complete with dialects incomprehensible to some of us who actually speak English. It was directed by American screenwriter William Monahan, whose main claim to fame is the script for Scorcese’s remake of Infernal Affairs, The Departed. The less said about that, the better. But in London Boulevard, Monahan does an intriguing job of putting Hollywood into a movie that’s thousands of miles from Hollywood.
As a director, he’s sometimes too “stylish” for his own good, but at least Monahan has a screenwriter’s attention to characters. When Farrell produces a formidable looking revolver and asks David Thewlis, who plays a burned-out actor, how he feels about guns, savor the perfection of this response as Thewlis gingerly but confidently takes up the gun:
My dear boy, I am a trained actor. I can feel anything about anything.
Thewlis snaps it open, takes out the bullets, and stands them on the table like a row of soldiers.
You took it from a passing philosopher, I imagine?
Whatever London Boulevard’s failings, it’s a cast of solid actors playing memorable characters with smart dialogue, including Thewlis, Ray Winstone, and Keira Knightly doing what they do best: basically, their usual roles. Props to Kiera Knightly for playing herself here, as a wigged out celebrity trying to retreat from her own celebrity. She has a scene in which she talks about how awful women’s parts are in movies, and you can’t help but suspect that’s what she’s doing here. Or is it? Ben Chaplin, who normally plays buttoned up English types, is deliciously unkempt and unctuous. And it takes a great cast to leave next to nothing for Eddie Marsan and Stephen Graham to do.
Also, what a fabulous soundtrack, including vintage Brit-rock and a retro/Radiohead hybrid group called Kasabian that I’ve since fallen in love with. The Kasabian song that plays over the conclusion of London Boulevard makes it one of my favorite movie endings of the year.
London Boulevard is currently available for VOD on Amazon and iTunes.
At the end of Mario Kart 7 — well, when you’ve finished all of the grand prix events for the first time, which is hardly the “end” — the credits roll. Fair enough. I liked the game enough that I’ll let them roll for a few names. But not the entire thing. I will watch your credits in proportion to how much I liked your game. I’ll sit through the entirety of the credits for an Arkham City, Bioshock, Far Cry 2, Brutal Legend, or Bastion. I’ll check out the first few names after a Fear 3, Red Dead Redemption, Splatterhouse, or Brink. I’m out of there as soon as an Uncharted 3, Gears 3, or Modern Warfare 3 is over.
Plus, my 3DS isn’t plugged in, so I’m on borrowed time here and I’d like to run a few more races. So I press A to skip the credits. No? B? No. Y? No. X? No. Start? No. Select? No. Left shoulder button or right shoulder button? No. Left shoulder button and right shoulder button? No. Some combination of two buttons? No. Four buttons? Whoa, wait, isn’t there some four-button combo that formats the cart?
As near as I can tell after my rigorous scientific inquiry, there is no way to skip the credits in Mario Kart 7. Which I can kind of understand. These people made the game and they demand recognition. But that should be my prerogative.
Wait, what does this have to do with Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One?
Afer the jump, glad you asked! Continue reading →
I couldn’t begin to tell you which are the worst games of 2011. Hopefully, I didn’t play them. But I can tell you which games most disappointed me. Note that some of these aren’t necessarily bad. I just felt they should be better.
After the jump, the most disappointing games of 2011 Continue reading →
I love when that little red number appears on my iPhone’s App Store icon. It means updates! Sometimes these are just bug fixes. Sometimes these are new features. Sometimes they’re even new content. Best case scenario, these are the new expansion for Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, an amazingly thorough iPhone port of one of my favorite tabletop card games.
Ascension: Return of the Fallen, based on the expansion to the tabletop game, adds an entirely new set of cards, including some that introduce new rules. Cards eat other cards. Monsters invade your deck. You can reach into oblivion. Crazy fate rules mean you can get some action even when it isn’t your turn. Now when you play Ascension, you either decide to use the basic cards, use the new cards, or shuffle them both together into a crazy big new deck.
A new turn timer limits how long players can take for their turns in multiplayer games, which means unresponsive players will automatically forfeit after a while. Given that I flaked on several games a few months ago, I’m glad to see a mechanism that doesn’t force my friends to disconnect me. That can’t be easy. I say that as someone who has also had several friends flake on their Ascension games. It’s just the nature of asynchronous multiplayer. I’m scared to boot up UniWar these days, which isn’t so much a cool turn-based tactical game on my iPhone as it’s a repository of shame, guilt, and shattered dreams.
Speaking of shattered dreams, I’m glad to see Ascension now tracks my total games played, and wins and losses. It was apparently paying attention before the feature was even implemented, as I show 55 games with 28 wins and 27 losses. But why can’t I see that stuff on my friends? Let’s make this stuff public. Information wants to be free! Well, it does as soon as I get another victory and tip the balance from losses to wins.
Unfortunately, the expansion has also broken my copy of the game. I can only select the first and second cards in the row, and I can only select the second card by actually selecting the fourth card, which selects the second card instead. Cards three, four, five, and six are out of luck. As am I until the game is fixed.
Update: I just heard from Incinerator Studios that a fix for this issue, which seems to affect iPod Touch 2Gs, has been submitted to Apple.
Updated update: Fixed!
I continually forget what I am doing every time I reload my game so I have half a million quests going at the same time. It’s gotten so bad that I end up in a town talking to a random NPC who has a quest for me that hey, I’ve already done, so here is this thing you wanted. Clairvoyance ain’t got nothing on me!
After the jump, magiclessness, butterfly mangling, and a new friend Continue reading →
The Playstation Network is free, and it’s got ads. Fair enough. Xbox Live costs $60 a year. And as of last week’s update, it has more prominent advertising than the Playstation Network, without any commensurate price cut for the service. In other words, it brings additional revenue to Microsoft with no additional value to you. Don’t write it off as a simple piece of screen real estate you can ignore. There’s a principle at work here. Microsoft is selling your eyeballs and you don’t get a cut of that. As the internet and videogaming hash out various revenue models, I feel there should be a line between subscription-based and advertising-based services. One or the other, gentlemen. Make up your mind.
It takes a bit of work and a free OpenDNS accounts, but I recommend this Reddit poster’s suggestion for how to disable the ads. Which I will gladly endure on a service that doesn’t cost $60.
Now if only someone can figure out how to get rid of the ubiquitous tab for a search function I will never use. Anyone on Reddit know how to de-Bing my console system?
I never got into the Team Fortress 2 hat craze, but you can bet I’ll get behind my mask collection in Payday: the Heist. A recent patch added new Santa masks that look delightfully creepy. There’s also something about collectible Christmas presents that I don’t quite understand, but I was delighted to find one among the money in the bank heist. A brief snow flurry ensued.
The patch also offers some new features. For instance:
You can now join an ongoing game! You will no longer be locked out of games just because they have already started or because you dropped out during play. Just rejoin and continue collecting those precious dollars and gems!
A lot of the changes involve new animations. I was so surprised to round a corner and nearly trip over a SWAT officer in mid animation for a fancy slide that I almost forgot to shoot him with the shotgun I just unlocked. The patch also lists a whole lot of AI work that seems to come down to this point:
Combat will now be more mid ranged and not run-in gun battles
Fair enough. Fortunately, this is one of those Rainbox Six: Vegas style shotguns that works just fine as mid range. Perhaps my favorite change is this:
Slaughterhouse and Diamond Heist are now available in the Normal difficulty setting setting
These maps were previously available only as difficult missions for leveled up characters. Now it’s as if developer Overkill has unlocked two new maps. And what a boon, since I think Diamond Heist might be my new favorite map. It’s obviously based on Die Hard, featuring a big atrium plunging through the middle of multi-storied offices at the top of a skyscraper. It has you moving around the map a lot, which is a much more interesting space that the boxy crackhouse that plays similarly. It also starts with your gang hiding from guards, so like the bank heist, you can decide when to start hostilities. But unlike the bank heist, you can actually push through several of the objectives without alerting the guards. I’m guessing Diamond Heist could go for quite a while as a stealth mission, which would mean the silencer on the pistol is actually useful. I really like the objective progression as well. Nothing in Payday taps into the zeitgeist quite the grisly end the CFO meets in Diamond Heist!
Join us for secrets, betrayal, suspicion, and hidden identities. And that’s just the podcast! We also discuss Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which two of us loved and one of us was all “meh” about. This results in a discussion so, uh, in-depth that the 3×3 doesn’t start until the 1:37 mark. At which point we figuratively jump into the pool and talk about our favorite swimming pool scene, as well as some other swimming pool scenes.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
Every year I try to explain that this list isn’t necessarily about games that are bad. It is instead about games that I’m surprised weren’t received more critically. So again, let me point out that I actually like and continue to play some of these games.
After the jump, the most overrated games of 2011 Continue reading →
The Bioware name has always meant “RPG” to me. However, I don’t mind that EA is moving the development of Command & Conquer 2 under that branding. It’s a name with plenty of room to grow. But that’s not all EA is doing. They’re folding their Victory Games studio into their Bioware label and calling it Bioware Victory, which has a really dopey ring to it.
Before the C&C studio was folded into Bioware, general manager Jon Van Caneghem commented on the name in this interview:
The initial idea came from the obvious parallel of winning in a strategy game, where the word “Victory” often ends up on your screen. The reason I think it fits so well is when you look at how to be successful in strategy games: it’s the ability to anticipate, plan, and react. This is no different when it comes to the gaming industry — you must anticipate the direction of the genre and marketplace, plan for what the consumers are looking for, and stay nimble enough to react to environmental changes.
In other words, marketing guys came up with the name. By that rationale, Bioware Pwn would work just as well. As a word, “victory” is too on-the-nose to be used unironically, unless you’re making serious wargames or selling to people in Wisconsin.
But what’s in a name, beyond the opportunity to take cheap shots on the internet? The Command & Conquer: Generals 2 announcement is a cause for celebration because Bioware Victory seems to be nee EALA, and those guys have been doing mostly great work, and even taking some risks. I’m glad to see the Frostbite 2 engine pressed into service. It served Need for Speed: The Run quite well. But mostly, I’m glad to see Generals picked up again. I’ve been playing a fair bit of the original Generals lately, and it has a lot to teach the genre. So long as EA, er EALA, uh, I mean Bioware Victory appreciates the basics* of C&C Generals, I expect a grand real time strategy game in 2013.
* Stayed tuned for more on that later this week!
