Just like actual critics, we’re split on Snow White and the Huntsman. But then the split is reversed when we compare it to John Carter. Join us for some high-falutin’ compare and contrast action. Then stick around for this week’s 3×3, which starts at the 54-minute mark. We talk about our favorite audience reactions.
Next week: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
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Trish has um, ample, uh, options at any given time. In the air, she has uh, plunging, er, attacks to strike from above, and due to her mobility and speed, she has, uh, generous timing on her combos.
Whew. I made it all the way to the jump without mentioning her breasts.
Damn it!
After the jump, speed kills Continue reading →
Babel Rising, an upgraded version of a tower defense game for the iPhone, is about using god powers to kill little dudes trying to build a tower of Babel. It was a pretty simple game on the iPhone that involved a lot of jabbing and swiping, so naturally this upgraded version features support for Move on the Playstation 3 and Kinect on the Xbox 360. I’ve been playing on the 360 with a gamepad, since I don’t live in a Kinect enabled household.
After the jump, what I’m missing Continue reading →
You don’t need a AAA budget to make a great action RPG, or even just a fascinating action RPG. Instead, you need an appreciation for what makes the genre tick: the hack, the slash, the loot, the character leveling, the variety, the exploration, the calculus of risk/reward, the sense of personal investment. There’s a reason so many of us are clicking so obsessively through Diablo III, and it’s not just because it’s a pretty game. The best action RPGs are carefully calculated to go directly from the lizard brain to the index finger. Krater, an action RPG from a small Swedish studio, instead meanders, gets lost, and ends up in a quiet cul de sac somewhere around the cerebellum.
After the jump, Brodo takes a turn Continue reading →
Kick it. Kick it. Kick it.
There isn’t any character more associated with the Street Fighter franchise, and by extension Capcom, than Ryu. In a way, he provides the baseline for how the game is played and discussed. The quarter-circle forward is referred to as the “fireball” motion. The forward, down, down-forward motion is usually shorthanded to “Dragon Punch”. Ryu is the archetypical Capcom character. Above, you can see him engaged in the archetypical Marvel vs Capcom 3 activity.
Kicking. For all that Marvel vs Capcom 3 appears to be a game about fireballs, laser beams, and world ending explosions, at its core it’s a game about low kicks.
After the jump: guessing games Continue reading →
There are some important differences between those of us who play videogames and normal people. For instance, when a normal person browses this gallery of breathtakingly beautiful photographs from Timothy O’Sullivan’s 19th century survey of the American West, he probably thinks of Westerns. Movies like, I dunno, Stagecoach, The Searchers, and Young Guns. I don’t know a lot of Westerns.
But when I browse these pictures, the more immediate touchstone for me is Red Dead Redemption. I look at the picture of that settlement and think of a particular area in New Austin. I don’t think of watching a movie. I think of running down there among those buildings. I think of climbing to the top of that building in the background, to the left, and getting a commanding view of the little town. I think of playing a videogame.
I’d normally think that’s a little pathetic, but in this case, I think it’s a testament to the amazing work done by Rockstar’s San Diego studio, which created one of the most vivid virtual places you will ever visit. Go ahead, browse those survey pictures (here’s the link again) and tell me you don’t think of Red Dead Redemption.
Any self-respecting fan of action RPGs knows that you don’t have to play the AAA titles to get an immensely satisfying action RPG fix. In fact, the games made by Steven Peeler’s Soldak Entertainment offer things you can’t get in Diablo, Sacred, or Torchlight. Depths of Peril features a cool political system and Din’s Curse features dungeons that fight back. Soldak’s upcoming Drox Operative will bring these sorts of elements to a dynamic, open-world, sci-fi, space-based action RPG.
According to the game’s website, Drox Operative will be released either in the first quarter of 2012 or “when it’s done”. You can see how that turned out. But now you can check out Drox Operative for yourself by pre-ordering, which will let you play the beta.
In a Gamesindusty.biz interview to talk about Epic Mickey 2, Warren Spector made a general observation about violence in games that will pretty much upstage everything he has to say about Epic Mickey 2. That’s why PR folks like to shepherd interviews. It keeps guys like me and Gamasutra from ignoring all the stuff Spector says about Epic Mickey 2 to instead focus on this comment:
The ultraviolence has to stop. We have to stop loving it. I just don’t believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste.
After the jump, how about that camera control in Epic Mickey 2? Continue reading →
One of the cool things about the replays in Dirt Showdown is that you can upload snippets to Youtube. That’s me banging up that black and red drag racer looking thing. It belches blue fire from the pipes when I hold down the boost button. Pretty nifty. But one of the coolest things about the replays in Dirt Showdown is that you don’t have to listen to the announcer.
“They just rammed them!” he bellows as I hit another car.
Let’s consider this for a moment. I can see into the cars. Each one has a driver inside. There’s no one in the passenger seats. Unless there’s someone under a blanket in the backseat, each car carries only a single person. Yet the announcer is using plural pronouns. They just rammed them. Dirt Showdown does this constantly. They crossed the finish line! They’re in first place! They’re in the lead! They’re catching up with them!
I know this is a widely accepted way to wuss out of having to commit to a gender specific pronoun. Saying “he just rammed him” would imply that the drivers of both cars are male. That might alienate the women who play Dirt Showdown. And based on the list of nicknames you can choose for your driver, Codemasters clearly wants women to play. Sweetie. Muffin. Honey. Kitten. Stuff like that is in there. Grammar Nazi or Uptight Writer aren’t in there. Codemasters’ priority is clear.
I’ve tried turning down the announcer’s voice. But whereas all the other volume sliders range from 0% to 100%, the voice slider only goes down to 50%. It’s like being in the backseat of a car with windows that only go halfway down so unruly children can’t leap from the car while it’s moving.
This week, Chris Hornbostel joins us to talk about the latest developments in the 38 Studios story, as well as Neal Stephenson’s swordfighting game, and how some people hate that Tom Chick hates Lollipop Chainsaw. Then we get into The Witcher 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Dragon’s Dogma. Finally, I’d like to personally apologize for how rude everyone is during the closing music. What a bunch of jerks.
(Artwork by Mr. Ripper Blackstaff)
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“After you land, immediately down, down special, cancel with special and — boom! — You’re nine frames up.”
My friend Mike is sitting on the couch beside me while I kill some time in training mode. On “boom”, he slaps the back of his hand into his palm, for emphasis. Mike’s generally quite a bit better than I am at fighting games. He knows the jargon and has a group of dedicated players he talks shop with. He has a big honking arcade stick, and will bring it with him when he knows he’s going to be playing. I always enjoy discussing games with him, but I usually understand, on average, about 60% of what he’s saying.
“If you finish her air combo with her butt splash, you can hit special right when you hit them on the ground. You’ll whiff her tag-out attack just as you hit the ground, so you’ll get the recovery frames and can combo into her super.”
After the jump, maybe you can Continue reading →
Command and Conquer: Generals was a grand action RTS. Then the Zero Hour add-on split each faction into distinct sub-factions. It took an already over-the-top action RTS that gloried in asymmetry and gave it more over-the-top and more asymmetry. Similarly, Rebellion splits Sins of a Solar Empire’s factions into subfactions. It takes an already nuanced strategic RTS that glories in asymmetry and gives it more nuance and more asymmetry.
After the jump, the titans aren’t even the best part Continue reading →
The fantastic thing about Marvel vs Capcom 3 is that it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Well, that can be said about a lot of fighting games, but Marvel vs Capcom isn’t supposed to. For example, above we can see a dog, who is also the Goddess of the Sun, fighting a giant mutant-killing robot using a rope made of flowers.
I’ll just let that sink in.
After the jump: origin stories Continue reading →
Oh E3, you get me every year. Something always happens that makes the experience less enjoyable than it should be. The first year I brought a hundred pounds of equipment and schlepped it over hell and back, just for my footage that was never even used. Other years have been ruined by scheduling. But this year?
After the jump, this year was a doozy Continue reading →
There are precious few moments of inspiration in Lollipop Chainsaw. Such as running zombies down with a combine while You Spin Me Right Round plays. The combine handles like a zamboni. The unspectacular zombie splatter is one of the many casualties of this plasticky personality-less use of the Unreal engine. It’s certainly not inspired for the gameplay. But the value is in the idea, which is funny enough to sustain itself both times it happens. Lollipop Chainsaw needs about ten more ideas this good.
Instead, it has zombie basketball, zombie baseball, chainsaw dash courses, rote boss battles, a whole level of tedious retro games, and a lot of pointless twirling combat amid plasticky gore, rainbows, and pink hearts. Lollipop Chainsaw isn’t much of a game. It is a collection of poorly executed gimmicks and a heroine who occasionally chirps “What the dick?”.
I expect more from writer James Gunn and producer Goichi Suda after the wonderfully subversive Super and Killer 7. But Lollipop Chainsaw delivers on the same level as Scooby Doo and No More Heroes: lowbrow jokes, crass pandering, and a blithe disregard for meaningful characters or gameplay. One of the survivors you rescue has to go get another tampon. Another one has shit his pants. If you got your britches in a twist over the bad guys calling Catwoman a bitch in Arkham City, this game will send you into paroxysms of indignation over the insults hurled at the heroine. Levels are named after George Romero, Dan O’Bannon, and Lucio Fulci. Get it? Ten percent of the banter between the heroine and her boyfriend is really funny. Ninety percent of it isn’t.
If you want to play a shallow fighting game that combines bad humor, cheesecake, and gore, Splatterhouse would be delighted to get a little of your attention. It knows what it is and it delivers. But the gravest insult in Lollipop Chainsaw is that it’s such an obvious and vapid attempt at Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bayonetta. You, ma’am, are no Bayonetta.
1 star
Xbox 360
