The deck is stacked against Homefront: The Revolution from the outset. The forgettable first game; the license dumped into a fire sale; the project in progress passed around among publishers and developers like a too small T-shirt with a logo no one wants to wear; the eventual developers’ most recent credit for a full game is the half-baked Playstation 3 boondoggle Haze; the pile-ons about the silly story in a genre where almost all the stories are silly anyway, so I’m not sure why this is everyone’s new whipping boy; the Crytek engine at its level worst. Really, you don’t even have to play it to know Homefront: The Revolution is a stinker, right?
After the jump, what you find out when you actually play it. Continue reading →
Tom Chick and Brandon Cackowski-Schnell talk about the current crop of shooters. What works, what doesn’t, why are we playing what we’re playing, how is Doom like an Akira Kurosawa movie, why would someone not be playing Overwatch at this point, why would someone be playing Battleborn at this point, and are Key and Peele actually funny?
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The Do-Over is the latest in Adam Sandler’s too many pictures deal with Netflix. I don’t know why I watched it. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I still confuse Sandler with the guy from Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People. I shouldn’t be surprised that all I get is Sandler being Sandler. Which is to say a celebrity who has long since stopped giving a fuck, so now he’s just going to do movies in places where he wants to go on vacation. Seriously, check out the filming locations for Adam Sander movies. See a pattern?
If there’s any value to be gleaned from this dross, it’s David Spade’s bewildered “what happened to my career?” hangdog quality. It’s perfect for his character, who’s supposed to have a bewildered “what happened to my life?” hangdog quality. There’s an honesty to it. But unlike Sandler honestly not giving a fuck, unlike wearing flip flops on your multi-million dollar yacht in the Bahamas and half-assing your way through dialogue that doesn’t matter anyway, it has a very relatable human quality. It’s the stink of regret, the weight of middle age, the dread that you’ve lived a life not worth living. And what does The Do-Over do with it? Belittle it some of the time. But mostly ignore it because it decides Sandler is going to have a gunfight, or Paula Patton is going to push up her admirable cleavage, or Matt Walsh is going to attempt a funny accent. Okay, now it’s time for David Spade to lie underneath Luis Guzman’s sweaty balls until a drop of that sweat drips onto his glasses because haw haw.
It’s come to this? I’m as bewildered as Spade. There was so much heart in his interaction with Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. He was so willing to lend his smarminess to The Emperor’s New Groove. He had a solid sitcom career with Just Shoot Me. Now he’s meekly standing by as an Adam Sandler movie humiliates him with its throwaway fratboy antics, kicking him in the balls, making him grow a bad mustache, sticking sausages in his face because, haw haw, a sausage looks like a penis. I suppose there are worse fates than drawing a paycheck for being a co-lead in The Do-Over. Spade’s bit part in Jack and Jill, for instance. Oof.
There are two kinds of boardgamers in the world. When they play a card, one kind reads the name on a card before they read the card’s effects, and the other kind just reads the card’s effects. I have always been the first kind. Furthermore, I have always wanted my friends to be the first kind.
“Okay, so now my attack is +2,” one of my friend’s might announce as he slaps a card onto the table.
“What’s the card?” I’ll ask.
“It’s +2 to attack.”
“No, no, what’s it called?”
“Oh.” My friend looks down at the card, since it never occurred to him to read that part. He’ll tell me it’s called Heroic Attack, or Eldritch Blade, or Stimpak, or Unceasing Fury, or something. I realize it’s sometimes annoying that I ask this, but I believe games are better if you let them lead with as much theme as they want to provide. As I played Legends of the American Frontier, I first thought it was for people who read the names of cards. However, I’m not so sure anymore. They might actually be the ones it’s not for.
After the jump, Poor At Farming, Failed At Business, And Bewildered By Life In General? Continue reading →
I ducked into Anno 2205 to check out today’s update. A few screens explain some of the changes in broad strokes: a global stock market, trading corporate shares, a new resource called influence, espionage, counter-espionage, disasters, monopolies, unique sector traits that modify your economies. Once I was past those screens, there were the familiar cities that I had spent so much time cultivating, shaping, renovating, tweaking. In a temperate archipelago, in a frozen waste, on the moon. Not in the tundra yet, since that’s a $12 add-on. But the tundra is there on the map when my $12 are ready for it.
Unfortunately, my economy was in a freefall given all the new additions to the game. Something about new administrative costs? This is what happens when you come back to a complex game after a major update. Things fall apart in entirely new ways. And this is definitely a major update. Entirely new systems, new gameplay dynamics, new challenges, new tools, new goals. Free. This is the sort of update that will draw a fellow back in.
Anno 2205 is a game with a hard failstate. If you run a negative balance for more than thirty minutes, then…well, frankly, I’m not sure what happens, but I suspect it isn’t good. Since this is a game without a save/reload option, I have no intention of finding out. Fortunately, when you apply the update, it makes a backup of your corporation. There’s a lot to process here. A lot to adjust in order to pull up out of an economic nosedive. Ubisoft rightly figured I might want a mulligan.
The Big Five Pack — it’s a reference to the five corporations competing on the stock market — is available today for free.
Shane Black follows his stint with Marvel Comics’ Iron Man by making another comic detective pulp neo-noir with an unlikely pair of lead actors. How does it hold up next to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? At the 59-minute mark, we hammer on the topic of hardware store scenes in movies.
Next week: Warcraft
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(The following article is reprinted without the permission of the site where it orginally appeared, because they never paid me, so I can do whatever I want with it. The article is relevant now because I’ve been playing weekly Age of Empires III matches against my good friend, Jason McMaster, and I’m hoping this will help him out of his 4-to-1 losing streak.)
There are different levels of playing RTSs. Like chess. In chess, the first step is knowing how the pieces move. Once you reach that point, you can theoretically play a game just fine. But then there’s a deeper level where you know things likewell, likeokay, I’ve never gotten further than learning how the pieces move in chess, because I’m too busy playing RTSs. But I know there’s a deeper level where you use phrases like “Sicilian opening” and “Queen’s gambit” and other stuff referenced in the titles of spy novels.
So maybe that’s where you’re at with real time strategy games. In which case you’re probably not reading this article. So send the link to this article to all your friends who suck at RTSs. Because I’m going to give them ten tips to make them better. Note that some of this applies to MOBAs, which are just RTSs for people who can’t handle the challenge of actual RTSs.
After the jump, A.B.V. Continue reading →
You mostly notice it in the Fallout series, which has always intended the freedom to be utterly immoral. In the original Fallout, you could kill anyone. Men, women, children. In fact, the developers at Interplay knew you might do it, so you got a unique title if you killed children. But that was the pre-Columbine apocalypse. In the post-Columbine apocalypse, when you go into Little Lamplight, Fallout 3 loads a separate section where you can’t use your weapons. If you want to kill adults in Fallout 3, that’s fine. Have at it. But not kids. This limitation isn’t unique to Fallout. How many hapless child pedestrians died while you figured out the driving controls in Grand Theft Auto V? None, because there aren’t any child pedestrians. You won’t find children in the streets of Saints Row, Assassin’s Creed, or Hitman, either. Because children aren’t allowed to die.
I don’t have a single opinion on the subject, because it depends on what type of game you’re making. I don’t mind that Snake has to use nonlethal tactics against the child soldiers trying to kill him in Metal Gear Solid V, because it’s a character choice. Snake wouldn’t kill a kid, pre- or post-Columbine. But I think it’s a bad call that there are no zombies under the age of 18 in Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, or State of Decay. Child zombies are a significant part of the mythology, as you’ll see in Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, and the Walking Dead. But in videogames, they’re a casualty of Columbine. The post-Columbine videogame sensibility delivered a headshot to child zombies.
This War of Mine got its share of attention when it was released a few years ago because it claimed to be an authentic recreation of the experience of civilians in a war zone. Yeah, whatever, This War of Mine. You’re a survival game — a decent one, to be sure — trying to stand out in a glutted genre. You’re not the politically conscientious arthouse game you’re pretending to be. You’re another furniture crafting game, but with stealth platformer sequences. That you’re so serious about it doesn’t make you special.
But today, the developers at 11 Bit Studios raise the stakes with DLC called The Little Ones. It adds kids. Who can die. Now, as you’re crafting furniture, you might have a waif running around the house. Her portrait blinks in the lower right hand corner of the screen. Her current state is “sad”. She’s going to be hungry tonight. It obviously depends on how much of a paternal instinct you have, but for me, this is the kind of pull a game lacks when it lets the violence at Columbine sanitize content. And while I think This War of Mine taking itself so seriously isn’t half as meaningful as its press would have you think — good lord, this video — the DLC makes a difference. Furthermore, 11 Bit Studios deserves credit for supporting War Child, a charity based on helping children displaced by war. They’re donating a dollar to War Child for each copy of the DLC sold.
The Little Ones is available for $10.
The Grand Canyon State. The land that refuses to fall back or spring forward. Joe Arpaio country. Arizona. American Truck Simulator, which is pretty much Californian Truck Simulator with big plans, now has an early version of Arizona available for your driving and delivering pleasure. Just enable the beta in Steam, download version 1.3, and explore an in-progress build of some brand new desert real estate. It’s as if the American West was a wild frontier all over again!
The beta also lets you simulate having sex in various parts of your truck. From the list of features:
Physically simulated truck and trailer coupling
So far, that’s the series’ second most hardcore nod to realism, after being able to not use your blinkers when you change lanes.
(Photography courtesy of Ginger Yellow.)
CORRECTION: I have apparently misread the feature list. According to an entry on the developer’s web site:
The standard trailer coupling allowed for quite some room in the relative positions of the kingpin and the fifth-wheel. You could also “cheat” it by approaching the trailer from an angle. The new trailer coupling option uses full physical collision simulation for the kingpin and fifth-wheel – you will be faced with the same challenge as a real truck driver. Expecting this precision from a newbie player may be too intimidating, so we are keeping the standard simple coupling as a default…
When a new map comes out for a shooter, I’m usually all, yeah, whatever, wake me when you’ve got some single-player content. So you’d think Electronic Arts releasing a new map for Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 wouldn’t be of any interest to me. But remember there’s nothing in Garden Warfare 2 that isn’t both single-player and multiplayer, offline against bots or splitscreen with my friend, all going into the same character progression, loot grind, and quest system. Garden Warfare 2 won’t judge, limit, or segregate how I play. It’s all good. So when EA boast a big new city map, it’s not just a new place for online matches. It’s a new place for pretty much everything Garden Warfare 2 does.
The map is part of today’s free update, which includes a balance overhaul leaving no plant or zombie untouched (read the specifics here) and 1200 (!) new customization items. Because everyone’s plants and zombies weren’t already gaudy enough.
You know it’s summer when there are this many comic book movies in a row. This week’s 3×3 begins in the middle of next week’s podcast, so tune in then to hear our favorite scenes in hardware stores.
Next week: The Nice Guys
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I just tried to play Cinders, a visual novel with intricate artwork, distinct characters, and moderately intriguing worldbuilding based on self-aware fairy tale tropes. “Tried” is the operative word. I wanted to stick with it, but oh my! That JRPG-esque stream of line-by-line dialogue, finely chopped and rolled out one thin slice at a time, a slo-mo machinegun patter of staccato verbal filler. I made it three days into a seven-day storyline. Apparently, you’re supposed to play the storyline repeatedly to vary the outcome. To see what happens differently this time. I just don’t have it in me to read a novel, visual or otherwise, written by a game designer instead of an author. I had the same issue trying to make progress in Life is Strange, which at least had the presence of mind to include gameplay stuff. These are stories written by people who might know how to make adventure games or write visual novels, but they don’t understand very well how to tell stories.
After the jump, the things Oxenfree understands. Continue reading →
One of the strengths of Renowned Explorers, a game I liked so much that it was the third best game of 2015, is its score chase. Sure, it tells a great story. Sure, it’s full of memorable characters, treasures, and encounters. Sure, it forces you into difficult but gratifying choices as you decide which three adventurers to bring along this time. Sure, its combat is unique in a genre that can’t stop chasing X-com. But in the end, it all comes down to your renown. Your score. How famous did you get? How did you rank on the list of world’s most renowned explorers? And how did you rank on the list of other players? Did you beat my score of 1,917 renown? The six of you on my friends list with higher scores aren’t invited to answer that question.
But the score chase is about to get a whole new leaderboard when developer Abbey Games releases the generically titled More to Explore DLC. Which does indeed offer more to explore. Two new expeditions, to be precise.
The Andean Adventure: A 3-star expedition into ancient Incan mountain territory. Find extremely valuable treasure by helping the different cities rise against the oppressive Emperor. Pay for the Llama Express to jump between areas of the map quickly.
The Lost Island: in this new end-game expedition the secrets of the Anti-Explorers will finally be revealed…if your crew is capable enough to make it through. Go above and beyond, and you might just find the prehistoric and dangerous secrets hidden in the mysterious pink mist that covers this island.
That’s good and well, but I still haven’t beat Shangri-La, so whatever is behind the pink mist on Lost Island is well beyond my reach for the time being. But where the More to Explore DLC is really going to be my downfall is with the innocuously named campfires.
After the jump, grab a marshmallow on a stick and have a seat. Continue reading →
The new Automated Competitors DLC for Gremlins Inc, a great example of a videogame boardgame, gives each of the tokens a special ability. Imagine Monopoly — I know, I know, eww! — where the little dog gets extra movement, the battleship can attack other pieces to drive back a space, and the top hat, uh… Never mind the top hat. Let’s say the iron gets the ability to, uh… Okay, never mind the iron. The thimble gets to, well, uh… Look, I’m sure you get my point. Quit badgering me about stupid Monopoly.
In Gremlins, Inc, these abilities add a nice bit of flavor and gameplay. For instance, in my game with Kelly Wand (you can watch it here), my devil guy would have gotten victory points for mucking around in hell and he could have chosen among misfortunes instead of just taking whatever he draws. Kelly Wand’s garbageman would have gotten less money and would have been better at digging around in the dump. Our AI opponent, the prosecutor, would have gotten the best deal. With the new DLC, a prosecutor can steal votes to be elected governor, he pays reduced bribes to the police, and he can extort money from the other players. I call dibbs on the prosecutor in my next game! As part of the game’s thorough iconography — Gremlins Inc understands what it takes to make a videogame boardgame — any events associated with the new abilities are indicated by a light bulb.
Automated Competitors is the second DLC for Gremlins, Inc. It’s available today for five dollars. The first DLC, Uninvited Guests, was just cosmetic stuff. It was released last month, also for five dollars. A new patch, free to everyone, is also available today. It adds some new interface stuff and new cards. One of the cards is called Astral Elevator. It builds a permanent bridge between the bank and the astral plane, but only for the person who played the card. How is that fair? Unless, of course, I play it.
Correction: The character abilities are part of the free update and they’re completely independent of the paid DLC. This latest DLC, like the previous paid DLC, only adds cosmetic options such as character portraits, new music, and ingame emoticons. Everyone gets the new character abilities and furthermore, the developers have said they’re committed to making gameplay updates available to everyone free of charge. Thanks to Mysterio for the correction!
Only two out of three podcasters like this movie. But we overcome the dissonance at the 1:02 mark by having Britney Spears play us over to this week’s 3×3 of some of our favorite tracks by some of our favorite composers. Huge thanks to listener sinnick for assembling everyone’s picks into a Youtube playlist! And be sure to check out his latest movie posters.
Next week: X-Men: Apocalypse
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