I made the mistake of not knowing enough about Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine before playing it and therefore thinking it was just a game where you move dudes around levels to collect coins, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. I’d played one of those recently on Xbox Live. It was pretty awful. I don’t even remember the name of it. It had bank robbers. You could give them hats and costumes and whatnot. I figured Monaco might be like that, but hopefully not awful.
Little did I know Monaco is the game I had hoped Introversion was going to make before they cancelled Subversion, their ambitious heist game about characters with different abilities getting into levels and then getting out again. And now here it is, but not from Introversion. It’s like Hotline: Miami, but with more gameplay and nearly just as much style.
I love how differently Monaco’s characters play. You’ll probably think any given character is overpowered at some point. At first, it was The Cleaner who I thought was overpowered for how he can sneak up behind guards and bean them. Most of the other characters need to find a weapon. Now it’s The Hacker, who can get a swarm of viruses crackling along the level around him without even hacking computers. Just get him to the wall outlets and he’s good to go. He’s a pet class! Speaking of pet class, maybe The Collector is overpowered for how his monkey Hector will automatically collect coins in the area, which directly pumps up your score. The scoring system records the time it takes you to finish the heist, but it adds a time penalty for all the treasure you didn’t get. That’s where Hector takes up the slack. Yeah, I’m going to say The Collector and his monkey Hector are overpowered.
But what I think I love most is the sense of discovery with the various missions and levels. Introversion’s game was going to feature procedurally generated office buildings, which sounds like about the most boring heists you could ever have. But Monaco’s imaginative locations are so lovingly built, with so many affectionate touches, and their own sense of flow. Take a look at that oceanographic museum above, which is rendered as a drawn map when it’s not in your line of sight. You know you want to see what’s under those labels.
Monaco: What’s Your Is Mine is out today for the PC. The Xbox 360 release has been delayed for an unspecified reason.
Your overall progress in Victoria II is mostly your prestige. In 1839, as Sweden, I get a nice little prestige bump because of that chick up there.
After the jump, the best use of opera in a videogame since Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Continue reading →
The patch that Playstation 3 owners have been enjoying in Skullgirls since last November is finally impending for those of us whose fightsticks are for the Xbox 360. If you have any intention of playing Skullgirls in the next few weeks, don’t read these patch notes. It’s basically a list of “well, no point playing until this stuff is implemented” changes. Of particular interest to me are reworked character-specific tutorials with strategy advice. Of particular interest to anyone playing is the dramatically tweaked gameplay.
That said, I really wish Skullgirls had more single player oomph. As much as I love the characters — Peacock was my pick for favorite character design of 2012 — it’s going to be a tough transition jumping back into vanilla versus matches againt the AI after spending time with Injustice’s generous bag of single-player shenanigans.
The RPG/shooter E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy might be best summed up as “What if Deus Ex had an even worse interface, full co-op, a metaphysics-punk setting, and required twitch skillz?” It’s vast and weird and often inscrutable. The fact that it’s made in France might have something to do with it. There’s nothing quite like it.
It’s also nearly two years old and now getting DLC. Blood Games adds four new single-player/co-op areas and a capture-the-flag mode that, uh, looks a bit overwhelming. So basically you respawn a lot? Since the scoring is based on each team having a limited pool of resurrectors, that makes sense. You can apparently hack away some of the other team’s resurrectors. More capture-the-flag games need hacking. If only there were terminals on the bottom floor of the Facing Worlds towers! More info here.
Also, Blood Games is free.
Adrian Chmielarz is one of the founders of People Can Fly and the lead designer of Painkiller, one of the greatest shooters ever created because it’s also one of the smartest shooters ever created. He has since left People Can Fly, but he was involved in the early design process for Gears of War: Judgment. In a conversation with Eurogamer, he had this to say about what he would have done differently with Judgment’s star rating system for the level unlocks, which is a pretty smart thing to do to a Gears of War game:
They still changed a couple of things I do not agree with…I wouldn’t have any headshot bonuses counting towards the three-star ratings…The reward for the headshot was supposed to be intrinsic not extrinsic. The reward was supposed to be, because the ammo was scarce, [okay] I only used one bullet instead of three. That was your reward in my version.
What a great point, Mr. Chmielarz. In a game like Gears of War, where the enemies are all huge honkin’ bullet sponges, headshots are already perfectly incentivized. They do more damage, and therefore save your ammo, and therefore keep you alive longer. In fact, they’re pretty much mandatory on the harder difficulty levels, where ammo management is arguably as important as aiming. The stars I earn should ideally be for things above and beyond the basic gameplay. Chmielarz also disagreed with stars for things like the executions, but I feel that’s a perfect system for earning stars. I see little need to do executions beyond the fact that they look cool. Why not attach a gameplay system? Which is exactly what Judgment did. I found myself actually trying to set up executions, which is something I’d never done in a Gears game. But headshots? I was already doing those, because I knew I needed to.
Besides, years of videogaming will train a guy to aim for the head. It’s such self-perpetuating gameplay that I almost always assume it’s what I’m supposed to do. I’ve come to expect some reward for headshots, whether it’s intrinsic, extrensic, achievement, or whatever. In Black Ops II, where the lethality is plenty high without worrying about the difference between three bullets and one bullet, I have to constantly remind myself to quit trying for headshots. Just put bullets on the target in the fastest and most consistently reliable way, Tom. Leave the headshots, quickscoping, and bellyflops to the power gamers who are already way better than me anyway.
But Infinity Ward smartly tied a completely independent reward system into headshots: weapon skins. You only earn the various camo schemes by racking up headshots with a weapon. Lucky for me, I don’t care one whit about weapon skins! Unlike the star scheme in Gears of War: Judgment, the developers at Infinity Ward didn’t just pile overlapping reward structures onto the same system.
The only reason I’m not amazed that SimCity is still so broken is because of how broken it was when it was released. The latest patch, optimistically dubbed 2.0 as if to herald a rebirth, addresses plenty of issues. For instance, it’s nice to see the results of interaction with other cities in the region, even if it just shows how pointless they are. An occasional measly 100 simoleons to give up two ambulances for my neighbor’s city? I think I’d rather have the ambulances on call locally. But I do appreciate knowing that I’m earning money when I sell electricity to my layabout neighbors who can’t be bothered to shell out the cash for their own power plants. It’s nice to see more things finally working like they’re supposed to work.
But not all is well, after the jump Continue reading →
The mondo update for SimCity has just gone live. Read the notes here.
I partly admire Starseed Pilgrim, a colorful languid creation that might be the game design equivalent of poetry that doesn’t rhyme, for how it plays its cards close to the vest. It took me quite a while to figure out the first few steps, and that’s something you don’t see much in this age of hand holding and spoonfeeding. Instead of instructions, I got a snippet of verse that didn’t make a lick of sense until after I’d figured out what to do. It’s a rare game this willing to elude me for this long. Pacing is not on the agenda.
But it’s also a rare game that puts this much trial and error between me and progress. This color does that, that color does this, but not always in the direction I want, and now that block went to the wrong place and I think this sortie is all for naught, but I’m waiting to see if the pink blocks can grow fast enough, and hey, I didn’t know I could float, so maybe I should try a few more times. You will have no idea what this means if you haven’t played Starseed Pilgrim. You might have no idea what this means if you have played Starseed Pilgrim. And for all I know, it’s all about to be meaningless because Starseed Pilgrim is on the verge of doing something else entirely. So do I hunt down spoilers about how it all works, or will that just defeat the purpose? I had hoped to explore a lovely spare universe, but I think I’m in a game about exploring a set of rules instead.
I, for one, am glad to have more Dead Island. So Dead Island: Riptide is hitting the sweet spot for me, especially since it’s pretty difficult early on. Yeah, sure, I’ve imported my high-level character from the original game but — surprise! — I got captured at the start and all my weapons got taken away. My captors also apparently took away all my memories of how to make homemade weapons to shock, fry, freeze, melt, fold, spindle, mutilate, and explode zombies. Which is fair enough. This is a sort of reboot in a new area of the same old tropical paradise gone wrong. I have no problem with a reboot. And this time I know to keep all the sticks of deodorant I find for when I remember how to made deodorant bombs.
Namco Bandai (Namco Bandai?) is publishing a Star Trek shooter made by Digital Extremes. I wouldn’t normally care (a Star Trek shooter?), but Digital Extremes’ last game was The Darkness II. Still, a Star Trek shooter? It doesn’t inspire confidence that the only name they could think up was Star Trek: The Video Game. Why couldn’t they take a cue from Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine, a game also out this week that looks like a combination of Pac-Man and a heist?
If you’re up for some serious strategy — I’m not real keen on the moniker 4X, but it fits here — Masters of the Broken World is this week’s fantasy flavor and StarDrive is this week’s sci-fi flavor. Lego City Undercover for the Nintendo DS is a miserably shrunken version of the excellent Wii game that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Dragon’s Dogma gets some DLC. Finally, the third and final installment of Assassin’s Creed III’s Tyranny of King Washington DLC is out this week.
It’s a spirited two-to-one split on Oblivion, which is why the 3×3 doesn’t start until the 1 hour and 17-minute mark. Speaking of marks, this week’s 3×3 is tattoos!
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In Soul Sacrifice, a superlative action RPG out on April 30th for the Vita but with a demo currently available, I have to fight some orcs. This should be easy. If there’s one thing I know, it’s fighting orcs. I’ve been doing it since sixth grade. Wait, those (pictured) are orcs? What? How do they figure those things are orcs? Soul Sacrifice has a lore entry for every creature. I didn’t intend to read any of these. But it can’t hurt to check just one.
It turns out that rats fed on magic back in ancient times to prevail against cats. This turned some of them into cat-killing goblins. So cats began to calculate the best way to absorb magic themselves. They discovered that the source of magic is human sorcerers, and that by eating humans, they could become powerful. Furthermore, by eating the humans who love them most, they could become even more powerful. This is how orcs are made. An orc is a corrupted cat who has devoured the master who loved him.
I don’t remember that part of Lord of the Rings, in which Peter Jackson established that orcs are basically people in demon/zombie make-up. But as I fling poisoned thorns at these sluggish vaguely caterpillar shaped beasts with huge misshapen vomiting mouths full of human skulls, I can see the cat influence. In fact, they’re downright Cheshire! I’m also reminded of the orcs in Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of Tolkien. Those orcs had vaguely feline features and huge mouths. It’s nice to see — and read! — a different take on orcs again. And it’s also nice that when you kill these guys, their souls escape in the form of liberated cats that scurry away happily. In that regard, the end of a level in Soul Sacrifice isn’t unlike the end of a level in Sonic the Hedgehog.
“Well is it better than Marvel vs Capcom?” my friend eventually asked. He had started off asking me, “So how is Injustice?” But until I’ve played enough to write a review, I never know how to answer so open a question. So I just stammered noncommittally. But with his more pointed question, I was suddenly floored. I’d certainly thought a lot about Marvel vs Capcom while learning and playing Injustice, and obviously the developers at NetherRealm have thought about it as well. But I hadn’t yet considered the simple matter of which is the better game.
I have a strange complex relationship with the Marvel vs Capcom series. Marvel vs Capcom 3 was both one of my favorite and most disappointing games of 2011, mostly because I liked it as much as I did and Capcom Capcommed it as much as they did. It taught me a lot about fighting games, including how to actually play them. After all these years, that was the game that truly introduced me to the genre.
But given the choice, would I rather play Injustice: Gods Among Us or Marvel vs Capcom 3? And why?
After the jump, who wins in a fight between The Avengers and Batman? Continue reading →
Today’s update for God of War Ascension, a surprisingly good multiplayer game, just raised the level cap from 30 to 40. To really appreciate what this means, you have to understand that any given character actually has four levels, one for each of the gods, who are the functional equivalent of character classes. So whereas you used to have 120 levels to earn, now you have 160. Furthermore, these levels also unlock new rewards for each of the four gods, including a new item (i.e. four new items), two new relics that give you passive powers (i.e. eight new relics), and an “ultimate magic” (i.e. four “ultimate magics”). With Ascension, Sony did a great job keeping God of War relevant, and this is exactly the sort of post-release support that keeps on keeping it relevant.
Also, double xp weekend in effect, y’all!
We’ll find out more about Evil Within as Bethesda carefully doles out information starting next week, but five things struck me about the live action teaser.
After the jump, could this be an actual horror game instead of a shooter? Continue reading →
Season two for Path of Exile starts tomorrow morning at 10am Pacific with a two hour and fifteen minute solo race. Start a new character and see how far you can get before 12:15.
In season two, you don’t have to amass a certain number of hard-to-earn reward points to quality for prizes. Every point counts as a raffle ticket for random prizes. If you just get to level 12 tomorrow and earn a single reward point — surely you can get to level 12 in two hours? — you qualify for one of 20 unique Karui wards, 5 unique Shiversting bastard swords, or 2 unique Quill Rain bows. Alternatively, you can win any of the race’s various goals for an assured prize, or you can cash in all your points at the end of the season.
Check the schedule here for details on events and prizes. Why can’t Diablo III do cool things like this?
