That’s my character in DC Universe Online. She looks that way because I tailored her to look that way. Nice and normal and unassuming. But don’t be fooled. She’s decked out in fancy gear. Being in the endgame, I’m even grinding for specific bits of gear, which seem to come at the rate of about one piece every week or so if I log in to play a few instances every day or so.
(Psst, Sony, can you hurry up with the new content due this week?)
But every bit of gear you find belongs to a specific costume set and therefore has a specific look, usually outrageous. So what does a character look like when you don’t carefully monitor your style? What if you left your appearance up to the game?
After the jump, yikes. Continue reading →
Hey, look, it’s Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (pictured?). Which, yep, is another fighting game. What sets this one apart from other fighting games is that, uh, it’s more colorful? I’m actually not sure. I’m going to have to consult with an expert. Meanwhile, I intend to keep mashing buttons until I actually like it.
Also out this week are two (2) games that are fifteen (15) years old, but available for the first (1st) time on a handheld system. Dragon Quest VI: First Time in America is a reissue of a Dragon Quest game for the Nintendo DS. The twist in this Dragon Quest game is that it was only released in Japan. Tactics Ogre: Never Let Me Go is an updated remake of Tactics Ogre. I’m sure they’re both great, because a game’s got to be pretty good to convince a publisher it’s still worth selling fifteen years later.
It was no great surprise that a film composer like Hans Zimmer would do the soundtrack for a videogame, particularly a big bombastic Call of Duty. Zimmer’s scores for Dark Knight and Thin Red Line are bolder than the average movie score, but most of Zimmer’s soundtracks are exactly the sort of thing you’d think would go with a game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which you couldn’t turn the music off or even down. It was entirely fitting and forgettable, as befits a videogame like Modern Warfare 2. Jerry Bruckheimer would have been proud.
But Clint Mansell scoring a videogame? He’s done his share of forgettable stuff, but those are the exceptions to the rule. I know him best as the genius behind Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream, both of which have soundtracks as vivid, distinct, haunting, and memorable as the movies themselves (Mansell describes the structure of his Fountain soundrack as a “prog-rock album”). Mansell’s talent was recently buried under all the classic music rightly used in Black Swan. But left to his own devices, you can still hear his unmistakable stamp on an action movie like last year’s underrated Faster.
So for me, when he lets slip that he’s scoring Mass Effect 3, I consider it a hearty stride on videogaming’s road to respectability. I’ll know videogames have really made the big time when longtime Coen brothers composer Carter Burwell signs up. Imagine Portal 2 with a Carter Burwell soundtrack. /swoon
Mansell spills the beans in this interview. It’s a great read, and I love how he gives props to music as diverse as Public Enemy, Godspeed! You! Black! Emperor!, and John Carpenter soundtracks.
Well this was unexpected. The real world just got its chocolate in my peanut butter.
I’m buzzing along, dipping into community levels with a sense of anticipation now that I’ve found one I really like. Today has been a little frustrating, because I’m getting a lot of duds. Usually I’ll find something to like, however small, in any level. Today…oy. Still, which each new Lucky Dip I feel a sense of hope. Then, out of the blue, the real world intrudes with a commercial. What?
Without really paying attention to the name of the level I drop into something called Prius_Stay Green and I find myself playing an entry in a contest where folks create a Prius level for a chance to win–wait for it–not a Prius. You win a television or some Playstation sports junk. The level is okay. It’s clearly a green theme, as you can see above with my little sackbot standing in front of some windmills. I also get him to water some compost and raise a solar panel. Hopefully by doing these things I’ve earned enough carbon credits to offset the power I’m using to play this game today. Eventually I run into a white Prius, which I meaninglessly drive through a dark city. Or something. It was hard to tell. I know advertisements are part of games. In a racing game this doesn’t really phase me. I expect to see billboards when I’m in a car cruising through a city. Here, on this little big planet, it is jarring. So I purposely chose a non-product picture for the top of this post. Just to grief Toyota, I’ve put the product pic after the jump.
After the jump, I say nyah, nyah, nyah to a car company Continue reading →
I was just kind of goofing on Test Drive Unlimited 2’s technical snags earlier, because they seemed like the sort of teething problems you’d expect from any MMO on launch week. I was still having a grand time driving around, collecting, exploring, racing, and becoming a more and more famous jerk-off among the jetsetting high-life reality TV celebrities of Ibiza and Hawaii getting cosmetic surgery and collecting clothes and buying houses I never used.
But then today happened. On the Friday after your game is released, no one on the Xbox 360 can play because the servers are down? And there’s no message explaining this? The opening screen just hangs? And the forums are taken offline at the same time?
Figure it out already, Atari.
Look at him. Look at how happy he is. He’s beaming! I’m pretty happy too. I could sing some Gilbert and Sullivan, I’m so happy. I’m not going to. I don’t sing Gilbert and Sullivan because I find that stuff annoying, but since this level made me feel like the monarch of the sea, I could
Artifact Hunter. That’s today’s level. Excuse me while I sigh contendedly and say, it’s beautiful. Beautiful. It’s a simple platformer puzzle level. It’s all about triggering hidden chambers and finding treasures. Actually, no…that’s incorrect. The gameplay is about that, I suppose. For me this level is about texture and music. It just feels right to me. It’s not overly challenging, but it is evocative. Not in a profound way, but in a comforting way. Especially after some of the levels I’ve dipped into recently. Levels like this make me want to try out more of the story mode of the game (of which I have played little), and I find that a happy development.
There is one problem, though. Sadly it is significant. Happily, it’s probably me, and not the level. I can’t figure out the very end puzzle. The level, bless its heart, is doing its best to lead me in the proper direction, giving me those obvious camera hints that say, “Hey goofball! See this? You’re supposed to jump on this!” But I can’t figure it out. Maybe if I was conversant in platformer-ese I would get it instantly. But I keep getting stuck just before the very end, and having to do that little self-destruct thing. Thankfully there’s no awful sound associated with that action, like that horrific electrocution sound. Ugh.
I’ll keep trying. I like this little world.
One of the great gameplay innovations in Sins of a Solar Empire, a grand sci-fi RTS, is space pirates. These dudes have their own starbase off to one side while you and the other players are trying to conquer the galaxy. But every so often, they’ll take bids to determine which player they’ll raid. This leads to a great war-by-proxy auction. But it can actually backfire. A prepared player can farm pirate attacks for experience, leveling up his capital ships. Furthermore, some games can be decided by pirates, who get more powerful as more money is funneled into their coffers.
In a beta patch just released, Sins developer Ironclad is taking a new approach to pirates.
The Pirates system has been completely overhauled with this update. Rather than relying on random upgrades which could result in a huge power curve, the Pirates will now scale gradually in abilities, fleet size and power as a game progresses.
Among the changes, pirate attacks will vary based on the amount of money you pay them, which is now based on specific sums of money instead of the guesswork and gradual increments that used to drive pirate auctions.
The beta patch also includes some balance and interface changes. Read the full notes here. To get the beta patch, enable “pre-release versions” in Impulse via the options button in the upper left of the screen.
I just recorded an episode of Three Moves Ahead with Rob Zacny and Chris Remo in which we discussed player communities, mainly in real time strategy games called Starcraft II. What makes for a thriving community? Can games do a better job encouraging sportsmanship? Should they even bother?
Listen to it here.
This happened quite by accident. I hesitate to post about it because, well, I didn’t actually play the level. At all. I just landed in the middle of the action and watched it happen. And it was weird and disturbing and somehow touching. Poignant. I see myself returning to it. For now, however, I’m just letting this weird little experience sit.
In playing these daily levels, I’m using a selection called Lucky Dip, which basically throws me into a random community level. At the top of the Lucky Dip screen is something called “Dive In”. I didn’t know what that was, and I accidentally clicked it the other day. I was thrown into a multiplayer level in the world above. A place called sauvez willy!!. With no warning I found myself a spectator in a sackbot drama. The hapless sackbot above, with the terrified expression, was just dodging falling bits of household junk. Exploding appliances and other weird stuff. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t do anything but watch.
It was such a weird experience. I felt helpless, but completely drawn in. It’s weird how compelling these little creatures are. The expression on this little dude’s face, as he dodged for his life…it touched me. No, I didn’t play this level. It happened to me.
There’s some grand collecting going on in Test Drive Unlimited 2, which gets open-world caRPGing better than any other game. That’s not much of a compliment, since the only other contender is Fuel (the exquisite Midnight Club LA never did much to encourage open-world exploration and collecting; it was more of a grand playground than an open-world game).
But Test Drive Unlimited 2 is making the kind of funny noises that a car makes before you drop it off at the mechanic’s. The main page has a Twitter feed on the right side of the screen. It paints a dire picture:
@RECK1N @N0fun12 Thanks guys we are looking into the server connection issues that people are reporting. Will update when we have more info.
7 minutes ago
@SmackithTheDown Clubs are down for the moment to solve a cheat issue. I’ll check on the race servers issue.
about 2 hours ago
@mjosephh That is a known issue that we are working to resolve ASAP.
about 3 hours ago
@Glassjaw13 Thanks. We are looking into it now. Please keep at it and update me if the situation changes (also restart the game)
about 4 hours ago
@cros1625 Engineers are looking into the matter. Is this for all offline play or just clubs?
about 4 hours ago
I was going to tell you to join the club I’ve started, Quarter to Three, since I paid fifty grand for the darn thing. So much for that. Furthermore, I’ve been unable to get anything multiplayer going, which already makes Test Drive Unlimited 2 a suitable follow-up to Test Drive Unlimited 1. The good news is that I received the following message from Test Drive Unlimited 2 (ingame, not via Twitter):
Discovered hairdresser!
Despised Lightning Storm
All I do is burn and die
Again and again
Rather than just being crass and busting out with a statement about hating my latest level, lightning bolt storm, I’ve channeled my emotional response into a Haiku. I feel a little guilty about quitting this level without completing it, or even coming close. I never do that. I’ll stick with a wretched movie to the bitter end, usually staying through the end credits. I can think of only three books I was too annoyed to complete. I like to complete things. One of the great things about these community levels is they’re bite-sized. Even if a level is annoying, it probably won’t take long to complete. Even if its tricky, it won’t require too much of a time investment to work it out.
A quick look at my profile page on the Little Big Planet website reveals that I played this level twenty times. I’m shocked to see that, no pun intended, because I can’t imagine I played the thing for longer than five minutes in total. The level is made up of huge chunks of electrified metal falling from the sky. As far as I know, that’s all there is to the level. I never got more than three jumps in without dying. Here’s the thing. When my little sackbot dies by electrocution, ugh, the sound is horrible. And horrifying. Please note that I’m not using words like “irritating” or “annoying” or “irksome”. I chose those words deliberately. I’ve come to like my little sack dude. A lot. It’s hard not to. The little guy is adorable. His electrocution screams get under my skin. In a level where this happens intermittently this is bad enough. On this level it was constant. I’m befuddled by the life limit on these community levels. I usually wonder, in frustration, why an amateur designer would do that. Here, at last, I became grateful for it.
As I said, I’m usually driven to complete these things. This time I just felt that life’s too short to hear that awful screaming of my sackbot any longer.
[Ed. note: Our man in the war with the Cylons, Wendelius, has jumped into the Battlestar Galactica Online beta. It’s a free-to-play, browser-based MMO. Ew, right? Maybe not. Read on.]
See the Undock button…? Once you are in a space station, you will be eager to press it. BGO is like an ugly duckling: all ungainly and clumsy in space stations, but quite graceful and much more fun to watch in space.
The stations do serve a purpose though. That’s where you get to sell the scraps you have collected in space and to buy and equip additional ship parts, weapons and ammo. It’s also where Adama Jr will give you daily missions to complete for more XP and rewards.
Read the initial impressions here and try the game yourself here.
The caption for that Dungeon Siege III screenshot, which was just released today, is “Uhh, stuff happens”.
That’s pretty much what you get when you tap the screenshot button at some random moment in an effects-heavy action game. If you look closely at that screenshot, you’ll see, like, gnomes or goblins among whatever spell is popping off. Summon Orange, I think it’s called.
I’m really looking forward to Dungeon Siege III, which will be out on May 31. Certainly not because of these screens or this trailer. In fact, in spite of them. The appeal of Dungeon Siege III for me is that I want to find out what’s next from the developer of Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas. Where do you go from there?
After the jump, a few more glimpses at where you go from there Continue reading →
Hoo-ah!
Eco-Thecno factory’s inside run race. Or as I like to call it, the Chatty Cathy Level. The little characters in this level have plenty to say to me, warning me of danger and being surprised I got so far. I’m pressing the circle button like crazy and still the danger guy won’t shut up, repeating his warning in another language. One of the characters eventually tells her little friend to shut up. Thanks. But don’t bother. You’re just adding to the text noise and reaction time is a factor here. You’d think that these little dudes would chill now that I’ve reached double-digits in replaying. But no. They chatter on uselessly every time. They get on my nerves so. Or they did. Until I found…
Flame hat. Oh flame hat, how I love thee. I didn’t even know what you were at first. You just glommed onto my head at a save point. Took me several deaths to figure you out. But now, oh now how I wish I could take you out into the world. Because sometimes I need to set something on fire over there, but I’m way too far away to get the job done.
Oh well, I’ll just have to be content with our time together here in Eco-Thecno blah blah blah. Don’t worry. I’ll return. Since you helped me off one of those Chatty Cathies with a sliding electified platform–it was an accident, I swear–I’m forever in your debt. Plus, now that my zero first-place score has been knocked off, you can bet I’ll be back.
I heart you, flame hat.
