Banner Saga is out today. It’s certainly lovely, and any turn-based game should be proud to have artwork this nice. I remember Jean d’Arc on the PSP was pretty, but you can’t beat a big ol’ computer screen to bring to life this kind of animation, even if it’s not very animated. These are a lot of talking heads, with the bare minimum of drifting snowflakes, wafting Nordic braids, and fluttering capes, but they’re far prettier than the average talking heads.
Unfortunately, it seems like Banner Saga is a series of dull tactical combats with a whole lotta storyline between every battle and a character development system with broad simple strokes. And then a whole lot more storyline. At a time when I could be fighting richly detailed battles in Card Hunter or Fallen Enchantress, why am I poking around with this basic system, which turns into a bit of a mess thanks to the uncompromising 2D graphics and the not very good interface. Can you figure out what’s going on in the above screenshot? Do I have a dude behind those tall black robot guys? How do I rotate the camera? And why do I get to see the numbers, but not how they work? Since the artwork is so pretty, am I not supposed to care so much about the math?
It’s still early. I’m only three chapters in, with no telling how many to go. At this point in a tactical SRPG, I’d just be getting warmed up. So maybe there’s a lot more to reveal as Banner Saga goes on. But it’s not looking very promising. I didn’t know I was signing on for a pretty cartoon with a lot of dialogue about some burly Norse guys and some humans and some evil black robots and occasional primitive tactical battles. Personally, I was hoping for a tactical combat game first and foremost, with a strategic level where I managed varied interesting characters and made meaningful choices, with a bunch of historical flavor on top. Fortunately, I haven’t uninstalled Expeditions: Conquistador.
7 Days to Die is one of the better entries in the burgeoning ranks of open-world Early Access survival games. Unlike DayZ or Rust, 7 Days to Die features a decidedly abstract look and encourages cooperation by making the zombies a credible threat. There’s not much time to act like a dick to other players when the undead hordes are swarming around your boarded-up house. Was that a purposeful decision on the part of the developers, or was it just an accident? I was curious about the design of the game, so I asked producer Richard Huenink some questions, and he was kind enough to humor me by answering.
Do we shamble or sprint through some questions after the break?Continue reading →
In Martin Wallace’s excellently crafted empire building boardgame, Struggle of Empires, I experience something I don’t usually experience in a boardgame: regret. Not the kind of regret you get for buying a game and having it turn out terrible, but regret for taking part vicariously in imperialism. I’ve played many civilization builders. I’ve been part of countless virtual atrocities. But Struggle of Empires uses a few key pieces to really frame the historical context. It gives me pause as I consider the ethics, or lack thereof, of the rise of the European empires.
The Guardian raises the issue of breast physics based on the laughable sway in the above scene from Ryse, the Xbox One swords-and-sandals launch title. Dom Clubb, an UK artist for a free-to-play iOS game, suggests the bad physics might have been a factor of rushed development.
A character mesh is made up of thousands of vertices. When the physics system is applied, each vertex is given a value — lets say 0-1 — depending on how much the artist wants the particular vertex to be affected by physics. This will make the cloth vertices sway and the flesh vertices stay rigid. But because Ryse was probably rushed to make the Xbox One launch, I’m guessing the character was given a single physics system for the whole mesh rather than one for skin and a separate one for cloth. If you were to do the physics properly, there are lots of parameters to deal with, like stiffness, sway and stretch, and the cloth on the breasts would have to deform separately. That would have been a computational nightmare.
That’s pretty charitable. I’m sure the gore in Ryse was also a computational nightmare, but one the developer thought was worth calculating. Like pretty much everything else in videogame development, you do whatever you have time to do. I suspect developer Crytek doesn’t care much about its breasts, or it just assumes its playerbase wouldn’t know how a real breast moves.
What stands out, so to speak, is the state of undress of whoever that chick is, which makes that scene all about the breast physics. If you can’t do it right, Crytek, cover it up. The worst kind of cheesecake is bad cheesecake.
If there’s one thing to make the addition of Ashly Burch and her dad and her brother to Saints Row IV seem less like blatant pandering, it’s the addition of some beardyman from something called Yogcast to Sonic Racing Transformed All-Stars, or whatever that excellent Sega-themed kart racing game is called. At least the proceeds for this $5 DLC go to charity.
Tearaway, the Vita platformer from Little Big Planet developer Media Molecule, features some pretty silly gimmicks with the camera, the touchpad, and even the microphone. But as I got my lazy ass off the couch to go find the cat, I had to concede that silly doesn’t mean not effective.
The zombie apocalypse isn’t all bad. It’s mostly bad. But it’s not all bad. State of Decay, a brilliant rendition of the zombie apocalypse, encompasses both the good and bad.
After the jump, the real triumph and tragedy of the dead walking the earth.Continue reading →
There’s this game about collecting and driving vehicles. In this game, you start with a low-end slower ride and graduate to faster, more capable, vehicles by completing missions or racing, getting paid, and buying new movers. Now imagine that game gives you the option to skip the grind and just buy the faster vehicles with real money. How much would you be willing to pay?
The Breakdown DLC is an alternative way to play State of Decay stripped of all its scripted story beats. Here the characters are all randomly generated, arranged in survivor enclaves for you to recruit, exploit, or ignore as you choose. Your only objective is your score, which is a factor of missions accomplished, zombies killed, upgrades researched, and so forth. At a certain point, your resources will get scarce. That’s when you load up the RV and start a new map with harder zombies and a higher score multiplier. The only story beats are the ones you make.
Okay, that’s not entirely true.
After the jump, meet Lyanna Carter, one of the exceptions.Continue reading →
My first game with the Breakdown DLC for State of Decay ended in the above zombie buffet, with my last survivor as the featured guest. My score was 151. You won’t know how bad that is until you try it yourself when Breakdown comes out next week. Fortunately, the leaderboards don’t seem to be enabled yet, so no one will ever know I did that poorly. I mean, seriously, 151 points?
Four heroes are engaged in a struggle against unfathomable evil spanning the continent of Europe. Three of the hunters sweep into East Germany, having found what seems to be Dracula’s trail. The fourth hunter, Mina Harker, is traveling from Spain where she’s been following another lead. When she steps off the train, she is face to face with Dracula himself.
“Don’t worry,” I say to Mina’s player. “We’ll be able to surround him and get him in a few turns. Just do as much damage as you can before he knocks you out.”
Drive on Moscow (pronounced “Moss-COW”, right?) is the follow-up to Shenandoah Studio’s Battle of the Bulge, which put the strategy game back in wargaming. It’s out tonight, but don’t expect much help from the folks who made the game if you want to talk out loud about the places where you’ll be fighting. Prepare for the battles of bat urine and fatties!
Paradox, a company that does things with strategy games no other developer would even dream of doing, has apparently put some classic 70s horror into the Sons of Abraham add-on for Crusader Kings II. According to an after-action report from Galloglasses on the Paradox forums, certain children might attract certain mysterious caretakers who put on certain dramatic shows of devotion:
Out for a picnic, my king looked up, saw the nun on top of an old watchtower in her habit (or some other black robes)…she shouted down to my daughter Sebdan, proclaiming her love for her. And then jumped. My daughter clapping all the way to her bloody smushy death.
That bit was probably just a text event, but the real cleverness comes from how Paradox codes the narrative arc of The Omen into Crusader Kings II’s gameplay system. And how it further escalates into a uniquely Medieval version of the story. Read the rest here.
Days of Wonder is selling sculpted figures of four of the races from the Small World games. I can’t imagine who would ever buy them, considering they’re $100 each. There’s no telling what they’re made of. They’re each a bit over 20cm tall. I have no idea how tall that is in American. But they sure do look nice. Get a closer look here. But Days of Wonder cautions:
Note that the Amazon figure is mildly NSFW. If you, or your family, are offended by partial nudity, you should not view or purchase the Amazon.
It’s an odd choice of races. Isn’t the halfling the signature Small World race? The spiderine is from Underworld, so you won’t recognize her if you only know Small World from the excellent iPad version. But the wizard instead of the sorcerer? And what is the wizard doing to that sheep? No kobolds? And more to the point, what kind of skeleton, spiderine, wizard, and amazon are these? Flying? Heroic? Swamp? Dragon master? Flocking?
Based on spending a little time with Enemy Within, the new add-on to XCOM, I can totally see through 2K’s evil scheme. They must think they’re pretty clever. By adding mech suits, cybernetic implants, new upgrades, medals with selectable perks, and scads more options for customization, the goal here seems to be giving you more ways to upgrade and therefore care about your soldiers. But by tying a lot of this stuff to a new resource that expires if you don’t rush headlong into battle to claim it, the other goal here seems to be giving you more opportunities to get your soldiers killed. In other words, more risk for more rewards. Pretty sneaky, 2K. Pretty sneaky.
Enemy Within is available today either as a full-priced standalone release for console systems or a relatively pricey add-on for the PC version.
