It’s not really worth pointing out every time someone takes up a Wii on a TV show anymore. But when something happens like what happened on last night’s episode of Breaking Bad, it’s worth pointing out. To highlight the relative meaninglessness of a drug binge, the script decided to invoke videogames for at least two full pages of dialogue (the general rule is one page equals one minutes of screen time).
The Tarantino-esque meth-fueled conversation between two supporting characters considered the relative merits of gameplay and zombie lore in Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil 4, and Call of Duty: World at War’s Nazi zombie mode. The conversation might have gone on for as many as three pages if not for the interruption of a Roomba (pictured).
However, Resident Evil 4? What Resident Evil 4 fan wouldn’t be talking about Resident Evil 5 instead?
I hope From Dust is good. How can something with concept art like the above not be good? Otherwise, the only notable release this week is Catherine, and that’s not notable for the reasons you hope a release is notable.
At a recent press event for Warhammer: Space Marine, THQ brought out some fans of the Warhammer 40k miniatures game, along with their fantastic armies. In fact, I was surprised that one of THQ’s PR guys had brought along his own Tyranid army, coated with a glistening glossy finish meant to evoke slime. Who knew PR guys could also be such devoted nerds?
The most remarkable miniatures had been carefully pieced together from bits of other miniatures, and complemented with hand-sculpted custom bits. A Chaos Marine army built by a Ph.D. student in pharmacology was one of the most beautiful sets of miniatures I’ve ever seen. Just looking at all the detail and craft in those grotesque misshapen brutes was like falling into a microcosm.
But then there was the actual gameplay. We were treated to some demo games, and sent along with a hardbound copy of the basic rule set. As a boardgamer who loves mechanics, I don’t get the appeal of this tabletop system, which seems hopelessly dated, imprecise, and awkward. Having to prop up a die on a meticulously modeled vehicle to represent what type of damage it’s taken? Hovering over blast templates to read who got hit by what shot? Using a tape measure to keep squads together, calculate movement, and gauge firing range? And so much min-maxing, with so many different sets of rules, with so many six-sided dice, and so little information displayed on the table? Frankly, it all seems like an excuse to do something other than leave these exquisite pieces on a shelf to be admired. I remember when I was a kid and I used to make model airplanes. It took a while to realize that playing with them afterwards wasn’t the point. The point was the making.
But regardless of me not getting the appeal of the tabletop gameplay, I sure did enjoy the spectacle of so many lovingly painted creatures arrayed among so many dice on such wide expanses of table. It very nearly upstaged the actual videogame. Fortunately, developer Relic seems to have a solid idea for how to translate Warhammer 40k into an action game. Read about how a real time strategy developer* approaches a multiplayer shooter in my coverage on GamePro.
* To be fair, they deserve shooter credit for the underappreciated tactical shooter/RTS hyrbid, The Outfit.
The problem with Sins of a Solar Empire — and it’s a very real problem — is that I can’t get far with it. I start up a game, as depicted in the above screenshot where the Halcyon class carrier Merciless and a few Disciple Vessels are fighting a tiny independent faction that’s taken up residence around the ice planet Daedalus. We need that planet for its rich stores of crystal. And really, this is just the opening move of the game. It’s not the least bit spectacular in terms of the overall scheme of things. It’s like fighting one of those throwaway gnoll creeps in Warcraft III.
So why am I spending so much time slowing everything down to super slo-mo, flying the camera around, taking screenshots, and admiring the space opera of it all?
Sins of a Solar Empire is too gorgeous for its own good, and that invariably gets in the way when I just want to sit down and actually play the darn thing. Which is what I was trying to do today. Developer Ironclad just released a hefty update that reworks the diplomacy system. Read the details here. In brief, there’s a whole new system of what you get for being friends with other players and how you get it.
I don’t generally play many (any?) free-to-play games, mainly because I’m mostly playing pay-to-play games. But I get lots of press releases about them. I know how hard it is out there for any game going that route. I don’t envy anyone the task trying to muscle into that particular niche, where free-to-play often isn’t just a business model, but a statement of quality.
I recently played a free-to-play shooter because I was writing a short piece for Gamespy. War Inc is a pretty typical entry in the niche that doesn’t have the benefit of Electronic Arts slapping a Battlefield brand on it. I was actually surprised War Inc wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Not that I necessarily recommend it to anyone who’s already digging on Killzone 3, or Bad Company 2, or Fear 3. But if you’d rather pay a few bucks at a time rather than $40+ up front, you could probably do far worse than War Inc, which comes with some weirdly suggestive quote marks when you check your overall time played:
I can talk at length about a game I like. But when asked whether I’d recommend a game, suddenly it’s 100% trickier. A recommendation has to take into account the recommendee, which is exactly twice as many people to manage as when I normally talk about a game. But then there is the occasional game I would recommend without hesitation. Bastion is one such game. There is no man, woman, or child* to whom I wouldn’t recommend Bastion, which is available this week on Xbox Live. Just consider your Microsoft spacebucks account 1200 points poorer.
I had hoped Battlegoat’s Supreme Ruler: Cold War would be a more manageable and theme-driven version of their overbusy Supreme Ruler 2010 games. Based on booting it up and messing around a bit with the tutorial, and then accidentally escalating the world to Defcon 1, I don’t think any such thing has happened. I don’t know who plays these things, but they’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Runespell: Overture is a card-based trifle with a mess of fantasy RPG connective tissue, but it’s an engaging trifle. The combination of poker and solitaire — How come no one thought of this before? — has a surprising amount of depth. It’s out on Steam this week.
Also out this week is Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which takes Techland’s cowboy games and brings them into modern times. I haven’t played it, but Techland did some nice things with the previous Calls of Juarez. More importantly, playing Techland’s Dead Island at E3 was a revelation that these guys seem to have moved on from just doing fancy graphics engines to actually doing good game design. Maybe we’ll see some of that in The Cartel.
Finally, some licensed Smurfs game and Captain America game (pictured) are coming out this week. I would make a crack about not being able to care less about both things, but I actually kind of like playing Captain America in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He’s the no-frills idiot-proof character anyone can play to learn the basics. Also, I liked Ryan Reynolds in Buried, so I’m happy to see him playing a famous superhero in the Captain America movie. It’s clobberin’ time!
* Kudos to developer Supergiant for not scrapping their innocuous enough liquor references and smoking pipe. Technically speaking, the E10+ rated Bastion features underage drinking and smoking!
That guy at 2K Games who said strategy games are “not contemporary” picked the wrong week to trash talk nerds like me who love our hexes and build queues. Because this is the week Of Hydralisks & Phalanxes goes live.
What is Of Hydralisks and Phalanxes? Glad you asked. It’s a monthly strategy gaming column I’ll be doing for Gamespy. And, yes, that’s the actual title. The first column is here and I hope that guy at 2K reads it, because I give him the what-for. I read him the riot act. I dress him down. I take him out back to the shed. I bend him over a barrel and show him the 50 states.
Actually, not really. Because I kind of understand what 2K president Christoph Hartman was getting at in his interview. It’s just that us strategy gamers don’t often get the opportunity to get mad without looking ridiculous for kvetching about a missing hotkey or bad AI or whether a phalanx could beat a battleship. which it totally could.
So I hope you enjoy my first column, Mr. Hartman! Because there more where that came from. One every month, in fact.
I think I may have just played one of my all-time favorite levels in a platformer. And not because it did anything necessarily spectacular. It was more about the way the gameplay, tone, and a specific song came together (the song isn’t listed in the credits, which is a really odd oversight). I didn’t want the level to end. I just sat there at the exit letting the music play with the wind blowing softly under it. Since when did platformers get so wistful? Actually, I know the answer to that. Trace a sad lovely line from Ico to Flower to Braid. Keep following that line and you’ll come to Bastion, the game I’m currently playing. The level is Prosper Bluff. You’ll know it when you get there.
In a way, Bastion is “just” a platformer with RPG elements. But like Ico and Flower and Braid, it’s more than its genre. Bastion knits familiar gameplay into a neatly playable package, with the design acumen of something like Darksiders or some umteenth Ratchet & Clank; it makes the familiar feel fresh. The graphics are cheerfully colorful and tastefully lively, but there’s a sullen mood underneath it all, expressed mainly through writer Greg Kasavin’s story and actor Logan Cunningham’s gravelly basso narration. It has the economy of a children’s book and the poignancy of poetry. And I wish to heck I knew what song plays at Prosper Bluff, because it’s going to be floating in my head for at least several days. Probably longer.
Bastion is the creation of a teensy indie developer called Supergiant Games, but it’s published by Warner Brother Interactive. It’ll be out next week on Xbox Live, at which point I’ll have quite a bit more to say.
Panzer Corps comes out on Monday. You might think Panzer Corps is some serious hardcore wargame from Matrix Games. You’d be partly right. It is from Matrix Games. But it’s not serious, hardcore, or a wargame. It’s just an appropriately breezy remake of a 1994 beer-and-pretzels strategy/puzzle game called Panzer General. Which, yeah, was a classic back in the day. But now?
After the jump, why would you ever want to play a remake of a game from 1994? Continue reading →
Whew. For a while there, I was worried that Sims: Medieval was just going to be a one-off. Fortunately, Electronic Arts hasn’t forgotten about their wonderful fantasy-themed gameplay-infused iteration of The Sims.
…new exhilarating quests expand upon the original adventures like finding the fountain of youth or protecting the kingdom from an evil sorcerer. The war between Tredony and Aarbyville creates a new ambition and opportunity for players to suit up their kingdoms. Players can choose to be anyone from a king or queen to a knight or blacksmith, and with that, prepare for voyage accordingly. Treasure hunting is an exciting new gameplay feature in the pack with maps, shovels, rare treasures and surprising dangers, while challenging players to find hidden objects and search for desirable rewards that will benefit their Hero Sims. Other new items include birds that you can name and train, and interrogation chairs.
The Sims Medieval: Pirates and Nobles has a range of pirate and nobility-themed items that players can use to revamp their creation of legendary swords or embellish their customized royal weddings with new fashion pieces. Bold new signature items can be used as rewards or punishments. As a treat, Hero Sims can now be accompanied by companions such as pet falcons or parrots. If Sims have been more naughty than nice, players can subject them to extreme punishments such as the interrogation chair.
After the jump, a few screenshots and useless observations. Continue reading →
That picture up there isn’t just a screenshot from Catherine, an upcoming Japanese import to be published by Atlus. It’s also my reaction upon seeing what kind of game Catherine is. I’d been hearing snippets of conversations about the game, and I’d seen a trippy video, and I knew it was from the creators of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games, and somewhere along the way I had picked up that it was a mature psycho-sexual thriller. Wait, maybe I’m confusing it with Black Swan. But I had no idea what Catherine actually was. Today I found out it’s just a puzzle game!
After the jump, have I been misled? Continue reading →
One of the tough things about jumping back into an MMO after being away for a while is re-acquainting yourself with those rows and rows of icons. Every time I try to get back into Lord of the Rings Online, it’s a whole learning curve all over again. What a fantastically tedious chore it is to piece dozens of spells, skills, and abilities with their tiny and often inscrutable icons.
When I visited ArenaNet yesterday, they showed us some early game content, which was manageable enough. Then they threatened to jump us ahead to level 30 content, which would includ some underwater adventuring and a dungeon stocked with the equivalent of elite creatures in Lord of the Rings Online. Who wants to be fast-forwarded and dropped into something like that?
But one of the many nifty things ArenaNet is doing in Guild Wars 2 is arranging skills into “packages”, for lack of a better word. Half of your skills are dependent on your choice of weapons. When you go underwater, it gives you a whole new set of skills. When you’re reduced to a downed state (known as incapacitated or “incapped” in shooters), you have a different set of skills. Elementalists have different skills based on their choice of element. Engineers have skills based on their choice of kits. As a thief, I could steal a skill from an opponent and use it immediately against him. The slot for hotkey 6 is always your healing skill. Slots 7-9 are your choice of three class skills. Slot 0 is your ultimate. Actually, I think ArenaNet calls it your legendary, but I couldn’t help but think of League of Legends as I considered the relative elegance of Guild Wars 2 in comparison to other MMOs. This is a game where the developers help you choose and arrange skills into sets rather than ringing the screen with a hundred tiny icons. Jumping ahead to a level 30 character was only slightly more daunting than jumping into a level 1 character.
For other reasons I want to play Guild Wars 2, check out my coverage on GamePro.
The game I was looking forward to this week is the game I’m not playing. I have no idea whether Shadows of the Damned is any good. Instead, the game I’m playing is one I fully expected would be a chore. But so far, that’s not the case. In fact, I’m about to write something I never thought I’d write:
It looks as if Fear 3 is very good.
I try to be careful with the word “very”. It’s usually verbal filler. But I’m going to leave it in that line up there. I’m five chapters into the campaign, and I’ve just dinked around with the multiplayer options. But it looks like the guys at Day 1 Studios have done a heck of a job tidying up the ways the Fear games have been dopey, focusing the design on the gunplay, and making one fine corridor shooter in the process. I’ve previously been dismissive about Fear 3 because the other Fears were so uneven. And Day 1’s last title, a dirt-based shooter called Fracture published by LucasArts, didn’t inspire much confidence that their next title would be any good. But I couldn’t be happier to eat my words! I’ll have a full review next week, but in the meantime, consider Fear 3 a clear and present danger to your wallet.
Dungeon Siege III, however, poses no such threat. Expect a full review later this week.
Bioshock Infinite apparently made quite an impression at E3. I’ve heard people talking about Songbird and Elizabeth and Columbia. Someone showed me a picture of a giant robot crow sticking its head through a hole at the 2K booth. I don’t know what any of that is. And I don’t really care to know.
After the jump, Bioshock Infinite fails to impress me Continue reading →
The Rise of Isengard add-on for Lord of the Rings Online comes out on September 27, raising the level cap and adding a new region and 24-man raid against a dragon that I’ll never see until I knuckle down and get through Moria. Which is awesome, to be sure. But it sure is hard jumping back into an MMO after you’ve been away for a while.
When you pre-order Rise of Isengard, you immediately get a few doo-dads, most of which are borderline useless. The actually useful one is Derudh’s Stone, which a character can equip in his pocket slot for a 25% xp boost. Handy for leveling alts, if you’re into that sort of thing. The stone’s name is taken from the Welsh word for druid. Turbine is drawing from Welsh mythology for Dunland, a poor tribal area that Saruman is recruiting in the upcoming war against Rohan. See how I know this stuff? Do I sound like the Tolkien dork I wish I was?
So when I got my pre-order code today, I figured I’d take a quick look at the cosmetic stuff. Not that I care about any of that. I mean, really, who cares what kind of horse your dude rides or what kind of cloak she wears, right? Not me. Pish.
Hey, these are whole new cosmetic armor sets. I wonder how they look if I just try them on. Ooh, look at the cool circlet thingies, which are very fetching on my elf. Whoa, my willowy elf suddenly looks kind of bulky and bad-ass in that cloak. Wow, the armor looks all, I dunno, rangery. Hey, these new mounts are supposed to be Rohirrim mounts. Surely they’re just horses, right? Whoa, they’ve got some kind of, like, bad ass horse tabards and headplate dealies! Here’s me riding around Bree in my bitchin’ armor of the Edelhorn, or whatever, with my Rohirrim mount. Level 75, here I come!
