Publisher D3 announced some pre-order doo-dads for Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon today, along with new screenshots of the game to supposedly get you excited. However, none of the screenshots shows more than ten bugs onscreen at a time. What kind of Earth Defense Force fights fewer than a dozen bugs? That would hardly be worth their time. Your local mall security or neighborhood watch should be able to handle that just fine.
The above screenshot was the most crowded. Let’s take a closer look:
I count six. Maybe seven. At least the price of gas is suitably nightmarish. Remember the gas station in the original Deus Ex? In that version of dystopia, gas cost $4 a gallon!
Fortunately, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armaggedon doesn’t come out until July 5th. Hopefully, they’ll add more bugs by then.
I love Gratuitous Space Battles! I don’t love the Galactic Conquest add-on, which gives the game a campaign mode. Well, it’s technically a “campaign mode”. It might be more accurate to describe it as a “vicious beat down designed to make you never again want to play this stupid game”. Galactic Curb Stomp might have been a better name.
The single static map was the least of the add-on’s problems, so the four new maps added in today’s free patch are nice. But what’s really nice is this bit:
The new update (which brings the game to version 1.56) also changes the difficulty level down from ‘totally impossible’ to ‘playable’, so those of you who thought you might not be cut out for supreme galactic ruler-ship, may be able to re-consider it as a career now.
You can get the patch here.
As you’ll see below, today’s theme is stuff going wrong with console systems. I’ve been through the replacement process with Microsoft’s Xboxes more than 12 times. That’s right: more than 12 times. I’ve been through the process with Sony and Nintendo exactly zero times. Although I once replaced the little laser eye thingie in a Playstation 1 by cannibalizing another Playstation 1, but that didn’t involve several exasperating exchanges with a borderline incompetent customer service department.
However, I’m slightly terrified that something (pictured?) could go wrong with my PS3, which has been a little under the weather since I first got it. The HDMI connection has been broken from day one. Also, the system periodically forgets what kind of connection it’s using, so it reverts to 480p resolution, which requires slogging through the display set up process again (I can do it blindfolded by now). And as you’ll see in the next entry, now it’s having problems with Killzone 3. But for the most part, my PS3 is well behaved and does what it was built to do.
Which is good, because getting a Playstation 3 fixed can be an utter disaster for your saved games. There’s apparently no provision for removing the hard drive or guaranteeing that your saved games will be intact after the repair process. Even after all those Xbox 360 exchanges, and even a hard drive upgrade, I’ve still got my saved games for Kameo, Amped 3, and Perfect Dark Zero. In case I ever want to go back and play those. Because you never know.
Now Sony is offering a solution:
PlayStation Plus subscribers can store up to 150MB of PS3 game save data and a maximum of 1000 data files per PlayStation Network account. “Copy-prohibited save data” is also supported, and all previously backed-up save data may be restored once per 24-hour period. When the new feature launches, most PS3 titles will be compatible with online storage for game saves, and moving forward new titles will have the capability to offer the storage option.
Whew. But only for subscribers, huh? Like Xbox Live, Playstation Plus is basically $50 a year. Which is $50 more than Steam charges. I’m just sayin’.
The new feature goes live with tomorrow’s update.
Given all the problems I’ve had with Test Drive Unlimited 2 on the Xbox 360, I’ve been watching this page pretty closely. Now, nearly two weeks after finishing the patch, there’s some news! Namely, that they hope to have some news soon. Microsoft’s long approval process is not an excuse for the patch taking so long. Instead, it’s the reason console games have to get it right from the get-go.
In other non-news, Bethesda’s latest word on a Fallout: New Vegas update is that it’s “coming soon”. Well, it was coming soon on February 7th, so it must be coming even sooner now. Several patches and months later, and I still can’t play that game without it freezing up so hard that I have to hit the power button to reset my 360.
I would also gripe about Killzone 3 if I cared one whit about the single player campaign, which grinds to a halt as soon as I get to a cutscene after the jungle mission. It’s as if my PS3 is trying to load something that simply won’t load. I let it run for literally a half-hour, the cutscene stuttering and freezing the whole time, and no luck. I guess I won’t be finding out what happens after the jungle mission! But the multiplayer works just fine, so they can take as much time as they want with their patch.
Consoles, man. It’s enough to make a guy think about playing games only on a PC.
Today’s level is called The Burning Wheel. You bounce on bounce pads in a wheel as the wheel gets faster and the pads turn to hot flaming coals and it’s really fun and–
Oh poop. I’m totally annoyed. Nothing against The Burning Wheel. It’s fine. Neat. Nifty. Bouncy. Fine. Thing is, I didn’t want to feature it today. I wanted to feature this sweet little twin-stick shooter I discovered today. It is so cool. I played it over and over again because it’s got this great mix of Asteroids and something that reminds me of Boom Blox. What’s more, I had a slightly obscure quote from a certain space opera I was going to use as the headline. I was so excited to share it with all of you. The level, not the quote. Okay, both.
But something nagged at me. These visuals…they looked familiar. So, I went looking through previous dailies and found that Tom had already posted about this level weeks ago. Crap monkeys. I’m such a dork. Oh well. I learned two things.
1. Pay attention to your friend when he recommends something.
2. All those times Tom made me play Geometry Wars really paid off.
Sigh. You’re okay Burning Wheel, but you’re no Blast Radius.
Now that’s an elf! For far too long, the beauty of elven ears has been minimized in Western RPGs like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. Not so in Rift, where elf ears are long and pointy and proudly displayed at dramatic angles.
By the way, do any of you have, like, a safety pin you can loan my elf?
I’m not gonna lie to you. My reasons for posting this level for today are wholly superficial. First off, I love the title, which is Animal Kingdom. I love this title for reasons which have nothing to do with LPB2, but I couldn’t help jumping in just for title recognition. So I’m confessing that. Next, I got to ride Tyrannosaurus rex (pictured) and shoot a paint gun at Spinosaurus. Having a little boy has reacquainted me with dinosaurs to the point that I know far more about them than I ever knew when I was growing up, so getting to ride one in this game was pretty special. Add to that the fact that a platypus makes an appearance, and you have to avoid crocodiles and feed elephants…well, there’s a lot here.
Unfortunately the “a lot here” is in the service of basically nonexistent gameplay. The level designer tries to bribe you with a mess of community keys at the end–like I know what the hell to do with those–but by then it’s too late.
Still, I like the concept and that the designer is reaching for this epic theme park idea. Like a safari across time. Because one of the coolest things about LPB2 is that it creates a place for designers to swing for the fences. I really appreciate that.
Next time, please just give me more to do. You’ve given me the opportunity to ride my beloved Triceratops. Now…let me rock.
I’m sitting at the far end of a long table with four dudes who make strategy games, waiting to moderate a panel in front of about a thousand or so people at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Folks are milling around finding seats.
“You gave us a 75,” says Dustin Browder, sitting directly to my right. He’s the lead designer of Starcraft II.
After the jump, I try to think of something to say. Continue reading →
My favorite talks at this year’s GDC were from the creators of two games I didn’t like. David Cage gave a talk on Heavy Rain. Hidetaka Suehiro (known as “Swery”) gave a talk on Deadly Premonition. I didn’t care for either game.
But I can’t stress enough how important it is to listen to people with whom you disagree. Too often those of us who write about games — and that includes people just posting on a forum or in a comments section — base the value of an opinion on whether or not they agree with it. And there’s no faster path to stupidity and deafness than the inside an echo chamber.
After the jump, games without Colin Firth Continue reading →
Sometimes at GDC, I end up going places where I shouldn’t be. It’s like the intellectual equivalent of an MMO where I decide to see what’s over that hill and OMG EVERYTHING IS 20 LEVELS HIGHER THAN ME AND I AM GETTING TEH ONE-SHOTTED!
After the jump, talks that con red Continue reading →
Most of the games out this week are RPGs that require significant commitments. Dragon Age II (pictured above, sporting the two Bs that are apparently crucial to a Dragon Age game) focuses the action on a smaller geographic space, but over a wider timeline. Expect to spend a lot of time in a city called Kirkwall. A lot of time.
Pokemon Black and Pokemon White for the Nintendo DS and a PSP port of Phantom Brave are no trifling matters either. Phantom Brave is now saddled with the subtitle “The Hermuda Triangle”. Get it?* It’s a good SRPG grindfest, but it’s no Z.H.P. or even Disgaea. The twist in Phantom Brave is that your characters are phantoms temporarily summoned into inanimate objects during battles. After a number of turns, the summoning wears off, leaving you with an inanimate object again. I always thought it was an odd design decision to restrict how long each of your characters can stay in a battle. Whee, my awesome mage is kicking ass and taking names and — oh, now she has to leave. It’s downright rude, like walking out of a movie or leaving dinner before dessert is served.
Also, now that baseball season is starting up, you can hit the courts in 2K’s Major League Baseball 2K11 and Sony’s MLB 11: The Show. If Sony and 2K can do it, I don’t understand why other sports videogames can’t share a franchise. It’s downright rude, like not sharing your toys.
* Me either.
No. Wait! Let me just–
I can see those bubbles up there. Every time I play this level I see them up there. Every time I play this level I miss them because I choose my downward route too soon and there’s no way to get back up to them. They know this of course, as they sit up there on that ledge remaining intact. I’ll get them eventually. They task me, and I shall have them.
There’s so much to collect in this world. I don’t even know why I care. I don’t decorate anything. Not my world. Or my moon. Or whatever. I haven’t even explored what there is to decorate other than my sackboy. And now that I’ve got him suited up with a nifty warm cap and a smart hula skirt and sensible hiking boots, I’m not really interested in redecorating him either. Other than decorating, I’m not really sure what the point of all this collecting is. Nor do I care. I love collecting these stupid little bubbles and objects. What’s cool about the best of these levels is that you can see the objects you’re missing, and you get the sense that with just one more try you’ll get those bubbles you missed in that drop this time. In this way the levels echo some of what’s nifty about the story levels. So much replayability.
Today’s level, For Vanished Heights, had a fair amount of this going on and that kept me coming back. I found this one in the Highest Rated section for the month. The writing in the level’s messages was weird, as indicated by the level details:
Shrill on the wind, a maiden’s voice calls… The ephemeral world twists and shatters. The voyage begins…
That’s okay. A little clunky writing can’t hurt a level like this.
I just wish I could figure out why collecting these little bubbles–which remind me of recently uncovered ancient piranha eggs–is so addicting.
I went away from Mm Picks today after a Pac Man clone tried to lull me to sleep. You know you’re in trouble while playing a level when the little ding that indicates you earned an extra life causes you to go, “Crap!” As an alternative today, I jumped into the Highest Rated category of the community levels for the first time. This immediately paid off with Shadow of the Colossus.
What can I say, really? It’s an exciting, beautiful level. You start out riding a horse and shooting bubbles. Seems rather tame. Then…a colossus. I think I just like typing the word colossus. Colossus. See? I did it again.
Oh, you also use your grappling hook to hitch a ride with a bird. This worked very nicely. It’s a pity the hobbits didn’t have one of these things.
Reach rhymes with?
In the PBS documentary, Digital Media–New Learners Of The 21st Century, ASU professor Dr. James Paul Gee discusses how much more beneficial playing video games is for the development of the brains of our kids than is the current educational system that forces teachers to teach to the test.
Speaking of the theory of learning behind video games, Dr. Gee has this to say about the RTS:
Take Real Time Strategy games, which are the most complex video games. A game like Rise of Nations has over 350 commands. Essentially hundreds of variables interacting…you play it for hours, you run civilizations…I mean it’s more complex than what any kid would see in school. We have evolved an almost perfect way to teach these incredibly complex games.
He casts the way kids learn–and master–video games like RoN and Civilization against the way current assessment-driven education teaches kids. The latter comes up wanting. He goes on to ask why we don’t give kids a Halo test, but do insist on algebra tests.
Tina Barseghian writes about this in a recent column:
The current assessment system forces teachers to teach to the test. Video games hold out a different way of thinking about assessments: namely, that we don’t need it. Compare a student who’s taken 12 weeks of algebra classes to one who’s played the video game Halo on the most challenging setting. The algebra student must take a test to assess what he knows on the day of the test. The Halo player has mastered the skills needed to get to the final level–and that’s his ultimate goal. No need for a test in that context.
Both the video interview and the column above are worth a look. And not just because it’s cool to see Tom Noonan acting in a PBS video.
The daily levels this week, selected mainly using the Mm Picks–the picks that the Media Molecule folks find stimulating–have been interesting in how they call to mind other games. The first level made me want to buy Plants vs. Zombies. Yesterday’s level made me nostalgic for moon landing simulators, which are among the first PC games I remember playing. Today’s level made me consider my PS3 controller, drowsily, and then look over at my Xbox, which has been quiet for the last couple of weeks and is clearly in need of some attention. And deserving of it too.
It’s not that the level is bad. Not at all. Monster Pinball 2 looks great and a lot of people love it. It’s fine. I guess. If no other pinball games existed, I might keep tinkering with it. But it’s just…so…lagggggggggg–I can’t even finish that. For me it runs incredibly slow. As do the other couple of LBP2 community pinball games I tried. At some point, as I was playing them, I suddenly snapped out of it. Why mess around with substitutes, when you’ve got the real thing?
As much as I’m loving these community levels, you’ll have to excuse me for a bit. Secrets of the Deep is calling my name.
