As much as I admire the lush graphics and puzzle design (i.e. how the character abilities interact with the world) in Trine, and as clearly as they’re carried over into Trine 2, complete with a new RPG system that lets you unlock new skills for each of the characters, I suspect this isn’t a game for me. Anytime I come upon a situation in which I have to try a jump more than five times, I’m pretty much done with a game. Life is too short to finesse the timing in a jumping sequence.
(Note that you can invoke the “life is too short” opt-out for nearly any skill based videogaming pursuit. That I choose to say this about jumping sequences is as arbitrary as someone else saying it about a build order in an RTS, a lap time in a driving game, or a high score on a pinball table. One man’s tedium is another man’s treasure.)
But one thing I love about Trine 2 is how the developers at Frozenbyte approach achievements. Every achievement is based on playing with their cool gameplay systems. For instance, there’s an achievement for firing three arrows into the air as the thief, and then swapping to the knight and catching all three arrows on your shield. Another achievement rewards you for using the wizard’s levitation power to make a stack of eight objects and then stand on top of the stack. There isn’t a single “beat a level”, “finish the game”, or “gather collectibles” achievement. You play the game for the game’s sake. You play the achievements for the achievement’s sake.
When you meet the big purple man at the end of the story mode in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, he summons silver versions of the game’s characters to help him. They look like T-1000s. I guess they’re “heralds”, because if you select the herald faction in the Heroes and Heralds DLC for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom, all your dudes will be silver. Since the two factions are otherwise identical, this automatically makes me want to play the other faction. Who wants to play as Spiderman and whatnot wearing a costume leached of all color?
After the jump, enough about the costumes already. What’s the deal with the game? Continue reading →
Atlus…announced plans to celebrate the holiday season with a Pure White World Tendency event for the award-winning hardcore multiplayer action RPG Demon’s Souls for PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system…Until January 2, 2012, the world of Boletaria will shift to Pure White World Tendency, easing the game’s difficulty and unlocking otherwise inaccessible areas and items. Following the recent news that Atlus would extend the Demon’s Souls’ online servers–responsible for the award-winning cooperative and competitive multiplayer roleplaying that has cemented the title’s place among gaming’s most celebrated classics–this holiday tendency event further demonstrates the publishers ongoing commitment to the game and its loyal community.
If you’re like me, you read that as Dark Souls. But this is, of course, the previous game, with the publisher intent on your knowing their iteration is still going for folks who don’t mind toting around fistfuls of that wheatgrass stuff you have to eat to heal yourself.
No one would release a new game on the same week as Christmas, right? Or maybe that’s just what EA wants you to think! This week is the official launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is great for folks who like business as usual in their MMOs. But, you know, with lightsabers.
Valve has opened the Defense of the Ancients 2 beta to some players. Such as yours truly. So what makes DOTA2 stand out?
1) DOTA2 has a lot of personality. Valve knows how to inject life into a game with dialog. During a round of DOTA2, the characters will have little conversations and will sometimes quip back and forth. When Windrunner dies, a red headed archer, she whispers in her dying breath “Why do you hate gingers… so?“. I smiled the first time I heard that.
2) Until I played DOTA2, I wasn’t a huge fan of the less cartoony graphics. I really liked League of Legends’ graphics for being colorful enough that it’s easy to distinguish what’s happening in team fights. But the effects in DOTA2 are unique and interesting enough that I can still distinguish what’s happening in team fights. In fact, the effects for the spells are really cool.
3) I’m a big fan of bots. I want to be able to practice an online game offline. For a few reasons, not the least of which is avoiding embarrassment, I want to try new characters in private. To that end, the DOTA2 bots are pretty good. Well, the enemy bots are pretty good. The bots on your team work together, but they basically ignore you and what you’re doing. In a way, this improved my play faster than it would have if they were supportive. Hell, it might as well be simulating a pub game, so it’s still a win.
Next up: The parts of Defense of the Ancients 2 that have me on the fence.
I love when that little red number appears on my iPhone’s App Store icon. It means updates! Sometimes these are just bug fixes. Sometimes these are new features. Sometimes they’re even new content. Best case scenario, these are the new expansion for Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, an amazingly thorough iPhone port of one of my favorite tabletop card games.
Ascension: Return of the Fallen, based on the expansion to the tabletop game, adds an entirely new set of cards, including some that introduce new rules. Cards eat other cards. Monsters invade your deck. You can reach into oblivion. Crazy fate rules mean you can get some action even when it isn’t your turn. Now when you play Ascension, you either decide to use the basic cards, use the new cards, or shuffle them both together into a crazy big new deck.
A new turn timer limits how long players can take for their turns in multiplayer games, which means unresponsive players will automatically forfeit after a while. Given that I flaked on several games a few months ago, I’m glad to see a mechanism that doesn’t force my friends to disconnect me. That can’t be easy. I say that as someone who has also had several friends flake on their Ascension games. It’s just the nature of asynchronous multiplayer. I’m scared to boot up UniWar these days, which isn’t so much a cool turn-based tactical game on my iPhone as it’s a repository of shame, guilt, and shattered dreams.
Speaking of shattered dreams, I’m glad to see Ascension now tracks my total games played, and wins and losses. It was apparently paying attention before the feature was even implemented, as I show 55 games with 28 wins and 27 losses. But why can’t I see that stuff on my friends? Let’s make this stuff public. Information wants to be free! Well, it does as soon as I get another victory and tip the balance from losses to wins.
Unfortunately, the expansion has also broken my copy of the game. I can only select the first and second cards in the row, and I can only select the second card by actually selecting the fourth card, which selects the second card instead. Cards three, four, five, and six are out of luck. As am I until the game is fixed.
Update: I just heard from Incinerator Studios that a fix for this issue, which seems to affect iPod Touch 2Gs, has been submitted to Apple.
Updated update: Fixed!
The Playstation Network is free, and it’s got ads. Fair enough. Xbox Live costs $60 a year. And as of last week’s update, it has more prominent advertising than the Playstation Network, without any commensurate price cut for the service. In other words, it brings additional revenue to Microsoft with no additional value to you. Don’t write it off as a simple piece of screen real estate you can ignore. There’s a principle at work here. Microsoft is selling your eyeballs and you don’t get a cut of that. As the internet and videogaming hash out various revenue models, I feel there should be a line between subscription-based and advertising-based services. One or the other, gentlemen. Make up your mind.
It takes a bit of work and a free OpenDNS accounts, but I recommend this Reddit poster’s suggestion for how to disable the ads. Which I will gladly endure on a service that doesn’t cost $60.
Now if only someone can figure out how to get rid of the ubiquitous tab for a search function I will never use. Anyone on Reddit know how to de-Bing my console system?
I never got into the Team Fortress 2 hat craze, but you can bet I’ll get behind my mask collection in Payday: the Heist. A recent patch added new Santa masks that look delightfully creepy. There’s also something about collectible Christmas presents that I don’t quite understand, but I was delighted to find one among the money in the bank heist. A brief snow flurry ensued.
The patch also offers some new features. For instance:
You can now join an ongoing game! You will no longer be locked out of games just because they have already started or because you dropped out during play. Just rejoin and continue collecting those precious dollars and gems!
A lot of the changes involve new animations. I was so surprised to round a corner and nearly trip over a SWAT officer in mid animation for a fancy slide that I almost forgot to shoot him with the shotgun I just unlocked. The patch also lists a whole lot of AI work that seems to come down to this point:
Combat will now be more mid ranged and not run-in gun battles
Fair enough. Fortunately, this is one of those Rainbox Six: Vegas style shotguns that works just fine as mid range. Perhaps my favorite change is this:
Slaughterhouse and Diamond Heist are now available in the Normal difficulty setting setting
These maps were previously available only as difficult missions for leveled up characters. Now it’s as if developer Overkill has unlocked two new maps. And what a boon, since I think Diamond Heist might be my new favorite map. It’s obviously based on Die Hard, featuring a big atrium plunging through the middle of multi-storied offices at the top of a skyscraper. It has you moving around the map a lot, which is a much more interesting space that the boxy crackhouse that plays similarly. It also starts with your gang hiding from guards, so like the bank heist, you can decide when to start hostilities. But unlike the bank heist, you can actually push through several of the objectives without alerting the guards. I’m guessing Diamond Heist could go for quite a while as a stealth mission, which would mean the silencer on the pistol is actually useful. I really like the objective progression as well. Nothing in Payday taps into the zeitgeist quite the grisly end the CFO meets in Diamond Heist!
The Bioware name has always meant “RPG” to me. However, I don’t mind that EA is moving the development of Command & Conquer 2 under that branding. It’s a name with plenty of room to grow. But that’s not all EA is doing. They’re folding their Victory Games studio into their Bioware label and calling it Bioware Victory, which has a really dopey ring to it.
Before the C&C studio was folded into Bioware, general manager Jon Van Caneghem commented on the name in this interview:
The initial idea came from the obvious parallel of winning in a strategy game, where the word “Victory” often ends up on your screen. The reason I think it fits so well is when you look at how to be successful in strategy games: it’s the ability to anticipate, plan, and react. This is no different when it comes to the gaming industry — you must anticipate the direction of the genre and marketplace, plan for what the consumers are looking for, and stay nimble enough to react to environmental changes.
In other words, marketing guys came up with the name. By that rationale, Bioware Pwn would work just as well. As a word, “victory” is too on-the-nose to be used unironically, unless you’re making serious wargames or selling to people in Wisconsin.
But what’s in a name, beyond the opportunity to take cheap shots on the internet? The Command & Conquer: Generals 2 announcement is a cause for celebration because Bioware Victory seems to be nee EALA, and those guys have been doing mostly great work, and even taking some risks. I’m glad to see the Frostbite 2 engine pressed into service. It served Need for Speed: The Run quite well. But mostly, I’m glad to see Generals picked up again. I’ve been playing a fair bit of the original Generals lately, and it has a lot to teach the genre. So long as EA, er EALA, uh, I mean Bioware Victory appreciates the basics* of C&C Generals, I expect a grand real time strategy game in 2013.
* Stayed tuned for more on that later this week!
Having trouble with Zelda: Skyward Sword? Here’s a foolproof shortcut to get to one of the game’s unintended endings.
1. At the beginning of the quest, go to Lanayru Desert to retrieve the song of the Thunder Dragon.
2. In the Lanayru Mine, speak with Golo the Goron.
3. Complete the Thunder Dragon’s event, and receive his song.
4. Before heading to the forest or volcano regions, speak with Golo in the mine again.
5. At this point, the forest and volcano events will no longer occur, making it impossible to continue.
The above instructions come from the email reply Nintendo sends to players who contact customer support looking for help after having done exactly those steps. Zelda Informer has reprinted the entire email here. I haven’t played Skyward Sword, so I have no idea how easy it is to stumble through those step and kill your game. But it’s a sad day when a Nintendo game can stop you in your tracks as cold as a Bethesda game.
You’d think Mario-themed games would be out in time for the all-important Thanksgiving shopping weekend. You’d be wrong. This week sees two arguably tardy releases for Nintendo systems. Mario Kart 7 for the Nintendo 3DS adds a new dimension to the same old game and nothing else. Fortune Street for the Wii may very well be one of the weirdest surprises I’ve had all year. What I thought was a Nintendo themed Monopoly game is instead an oddly hardcore boardgame. Stand by for full reviews of both games.
A reader sent along pictures from Justin Bieber’s latest music video, in which he ravenously purchases Nintendo 3DSs. According to the reader:
All He Wants for Christmas – is Nintendo 3DS! In the newly debuted video for his holiday song, “All I Want for Christmas” Justin Bieber and his friends go on a holiday shopping spree and fill their carts up with this season’s must have gifts – including Nintendo 3DS!
The video also stars Mariah Carey, who demonstrates a complete lack of interest in videogaming. According to examiner.com:
The uniqueness of the All I Want For Christmas is You video has fans from both artist checking out the video. Shot in the middle of the night at the iconic Macy’s Department Store, both entertainers shared their parts with the song quite differently. Justin Bieber was seen singing in the middle of the store while Mariah Carey was dressed in a mini Santa skirt close to a decorated wall.
(Thanks Nintendo PR!)
I fully expected that the Legends expansion for Distant Worlds would mainly be cool for adding characters who level up (pictured). I was wrong.
After the jump, what a difference a chart makes Continue reading →
In the last episode of Walking Dead, one of the characters explains his cavalier attitude about being lowered into a well to try to extract a zombie from the drinking water. He says he approached it as if he was playing Portal. “It’s a videogame,” he explains.
I appreciate the product placement, but I don’t really get a Portal vibe from that scene. It does vaguely recall a certain Valve game, but not Portal. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe Team Fortress 2.
The wallet threat level isn’t high due to any new releases. There aren’t any, of course. Instead, the threat to your wallet is due to any holiday sales that may or may not be going on. But if you made it through Steam over the weekend — that front page of deals was deadly — you’re probably past the worst of it.
