Marvel vs Capcom 2 was a big part of my life in high school. I grew up in a town with a vibrant arcade culture, and as a gaming and comic nerd, I’d followed Marvel’s versus series since X-men: Children of the Atom. So when the 3rd installment of the series was announced, I was understandably excited. But it’s been over 10 years since the last game came out, and probably 6 years since I last put away my Dreamcast and my well-worn copy of MvC2. So, I’m understandably a different person now. In that time, I graduated from college, got married, pursued careers in 2 different industries, and have a real, grown up job at a real, grown up company. So, I figured I’d pick it up for a little multi-player with friends for old time’s sake, and that it’d quickly settle down next to Rock Band in my pile of games that only get pulled out for company.
After the jump: Why does that match count say 792-1242? Continue reading →
Inversion developer Saber Interactive did a great job with a shooter called Timeshift. The formula was simple: take a regular ol’ shooter, add a cool gimmick, and let it roll down its designated corridors. Timeshift’s time powers tweaked the usual gunplay and gave it a sense of identity. It made what would have been an otherwise forgettable shooter memorable. See also the recent Darkness II and Fear 3. So what went wrong with Inversion?
Inversion’s gimmick is mostly that biotic power from Mass Effect. You remember the one, right? Bloop out a blue blop of power during a firefight, and bad guys float up in the air so you can more easily shoot them. Later Inversion gives you a shockwave attack and a gravity gun to pick up and throw stuff. Sometimes you pass through zero-G areas where you can float between grabbable ledges as the level designers see fit. But instead of letting the gimmicks drive the action, Inversion all too often lets the level designers drive the action. The concept of a world where gravity has gone rogue doesn’t work so well when going rogue only means carefully scripted pockets. And the blue anti-gravity blops are based on an ammo concept instead of a cooldown bar, which works wonders at making it feel only as useful as the blop ammo put on the map.
Otherwise, Inversion drinks deeply from the Gears of War well, including the same basic combat model, the same generic space marines, and the same overwrought investment in its own bad story. But there’s none of Gears’ heft or kick. Instead, Inversion has that lightweight feel usually reserved for the first level of a game before you get the useful weapons.
Inversion’s two-player co-op is online only. Do you even know anyone else who has this game? Probably not. So the two-player co-op means an indestructible computer player tags along, playing part of the game for you. The multiplayer, which includes a horde mode, is only multiplayer if you can find someone else playing. Prospects don’t look good when you can’t find a match the Saturday afternoon after the game’s release. Leaving you with just another cover-based, checkpoint-driven forgettable shooter with a thin gimmick.
1 star
Xbox 360
Good news! This week’s wallet threat level plummets with the release of Lollipop Chainsaw. I can’t post the review until midnight tonight, but suffice to say your wallet can sleep safe and sound. Wait a second! The red phone is ringing! Hold on.
Oh dear, it seems the wallet threat level has elevated substantially with the release of Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Since its release, this epic sci-fi RTS has gotten cool add-ons that fold in new bits of gameplay. But Rebellion remixes the entire experience for the better. One of the best RTSs you can play just got better.
Krater is an oddduck from Fatshark. Based on the beta, I’m not convinced it works as a direct competitor to Diablo III and Torchlight 2, the games it most closely resembles. But I’m intrigued by its touch of real time strategy, party-based RPGing, and characters who can actually die. It goes live tonight, so stand by for more detailed impressions this week.
Sony releases a new game for the PSP Veeta called Gravity Rush. I did my term of service with gravity rushing in last week’s stinker, Inversion. Which I didn’t have to play on a $300 handheld boondoggle. Furthermore, Konami ports a few old Metal Gear Solids to the Vida. Meanwhile, Atlus shows some love for the PSP Regular with a nifty tactical RPG called Gungnir. From playing a few levels, I can plainly see the same colorful charm and exhaustive detail of Jean d’Arc, Tactics Ogre, and Disgaea.
Finally, Dirt: Showdown is out. And by out, I mean it’s out on the platform of preference for those of us who take our arcade racing in the living room.
Ridley Scott’s eagerly awaited sci-fi saga, Prometheus, is here at last. Boy, is it here. It really showed up. It was released like you wouldn’t believe. And we saw the heck out of it and talk about it for exactly an hour. Then we do a 3×3 of awesome nighttime scenes in movies.
Next week: Snow White and the Huntsman, plus a side helping of John Carter
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Act of Valor is an offensive movie. But not for the reason you think. As a guy who has dutifully answered his annual Calls of Duty, I can dig on Act of Valor’s fetishistic loving lingering shots of men and their hardware. A submarine slipping sleekly underwater, or those adroitly scudding riverboats, or a wordless nighttime jungle creep, or the calculated way heavily armed men communicate by gently squeezing each other on the shoulder. Some of the procedural stuff is fascinating up until it gives way to its inner Michael Bay and breaks out into satisfyingly R-rated firefights. I could do without the blatant pandering to the videogame sensibility of it all with pointless FPS POV shots. Like I said, I’ve already answered to my Calls of Duty.
After the jump, so what’s the big deal? Continue reading →
Since Monday’s coverage, highly placed sources inside both 38 Studios and Big Huge Games have come forward with clarifications and new information in the ongoing story of 38 Studios’ demise. A previously fuzzy picture of an unbelievably swift collapse has come into sharper focus as a tale of two studios: one a group of hardy survivors, the other doomed by its own ambition.
After the jump, the best of times, the worst of times Continue reading →
E3 loves screenshots. But is it really safe to trust screenshots from games you don’t know? So here are some screenshots from a game I do know. The Rebellion add-on for Sins of a Solar Empire, which will be out next week, is full of white-hot space porn.
But since you might be browsing from work, the above picture is an unassuming Vasari colony ship on its way to settle a planet somewhere past the blue sun of Quirari. This is nothing you won’t see in the basic Sins of a Solar Empire game. Everything after the jump is stuff unique to Rebellion and potentially NSFW. Depending on where you work.
After the jump, don’t let your boss see you looking at these pictures Continue reading →
Before I make a sheepish confession about Defender Chronicles II, let me show you the new map added in yesterday’s update. That’s Sanctuary up there. Brightly lit, lots of room for your halflings to poison monsters as they wend their way to the top, plenty of chokepoints for your warriors and berserkers to pin down enemies while archers and mages rain down arrows and lightning. Defender Chronicles II is never really about the map, but it’s nice to have a pretty backdrop.
The update also rejiggered the economy. The most conspicuous change is that you get more than a token or two for selling your useless reward loot. You can also jump more quickly to the harder difficulty level if you want to push the risk/reward equation a little harder to make more tokens. Still, barring a microbuy with real-world money, it’s still going to take for-frikin’-ever before you can unlock the new archer or cleric hero.
After the jump, how I unlocked the cleric hero in five minutes Continue reading →
E3 has always been about the people who make videogames controlling the message. Which is probably as it should be, given the financial stakes. It takes a special kind of irrelevance to ignore E3. This noisy concentrated blast of messages sprayed over a willing audience like chunks of watermelon at a Gallagher show is an important tool publishers use to sell their games. But since I’m not really in that line of work, and since my boss (i.e. me) isn’t paying me to pass along the controlled messages this year, I’m going to talk about what I did today instead of going to E3.
Because, frankly, I’d rather talk about a great ten year old game than a potentially great negative one year old game.
After the jump, I exercise my own special kind of irrelevance Continue reading →
If you’ve played Pandemic, you’re going to get a powerful sense of deja vu from Plague Inc. The basic design of these iPhone games is identical. You control an insidiously morphing disease in an effort jump it from country to country, infecting as many people as you can. Once it’s gone global, you make it deadly in a bid to wipe out humanity.
The difference is that Plague Inc, which borrows the raw power of Pandemic’s enormously effective formula, tries to apply more gameplay finesse. Because it’s mostly successful, it’s a better game than Pandemic, but it still makes its share of rookie mistakes.
After the jump, how to tell a Plague from a Pandemic Continue reading →
(Editor’s note: The sudden dramatic collapse of 38 Studios over the last few weeks has been the subject of a lot of speculation and recrimination. Chris Hornbostel lays out the facts as we know them, gives them some important context, and then draws a few conclusions.)
In October 2006, Curt Schilling begins 38 Studios as Green Monster Games in Maynard, Massachusetts. Fantasy author R. A. Salvatore is announced as creative director, and artist Todd McFarlane is art director. On this site’s message board, you can read Schilling’s comments at the time, including this telling million dollar quote: “I am not sure where revenues and subscription bases will be in a few years, but based on todays economy in the game space it’s safe to say both are going to grow exponentially right?”
After the jump, how it actually turned out Continue reading →
Katy Perry’s Sweet Treats* excepted, this is no time to actually buy or play games. What’s the matter with you? This is the week to try to pick out bits of information from all the noise of E3. Stay tuned to Qt3 for exclusive coverage of E3 2012, starting tomorrow!
* That’s the name of an actual Sims 3 add-on.
Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is in limited release right now. We all totally think you should see it when it comes to a theater near you. Until then, fast forward to the 55-minute mark, at which point we submit our 3×3 of favorite courtroom scenes.
Next week: Prometheus
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It’s 4:00 AM. I’m not yet asleep because I have a bit of a cold and slept too much during the afternoon. I take a swig of some NyQuil and check out the Rockstar Social Club, my mind turning to bed. Then the phone rings. Like most people, when I get a late night phone call, I expect bad news.
After the jump, I answer the phone. Continue reading →
