I don’t make games; I just play them. Which is too bad for you, because if I made games, I would make the perfect real time strategy game. Not that I have anything against turn-based games, but the perfect one of those has already been made. Several times, in fact. Brian Reynold’s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Imperialism II, and Civilization IV, for instance.
Fortunately, most of the hard work for the perfect real-time strategy game has already been done. It just hasn’t been done in the same game. All I have to do is clump together bits from other games, do some quick testing to make sure it doesn’t crash, and, voila! The perfect RTS!
Read Of Hydralisks and Phalanxes here.
At QuakeCon, during one of the panels, Matt Hooper from id mentioned the Kinect. A very vocal young fellow seated behind me barked, “Lag!” This guy in the audience had been saying things very loudly and very inappropriately, so for a brief moment, I thought he’d called Hooper “fag”. I think — no joke — he might have had Tourrette’s Syndrome. When someone mentioned Zelda, he declared, “Navi!” as if it were the answer to an unspoken quiz show challenge (i.e. “name the sidekick in the following videogame franchises…”). At a reference to Half-Life, he hollered, “Oh yeah!”, almost exactly matching the intonation of the Kool-Aid pitcher busting in through a brick wall.
But when the Kinect was mentioned, he announced, “Lag!”. That one word, that one syllable, is the chief characteristic of the Kinect for many of us. And now, this week, here is the Kinect resorting to a port of the iPhone game Fruit Ninja. Here it is, hoping to insinuate itself among better games in XBLA’s Summer of Arcade series, like NBC sticking episodes of The Michael Richards Show between Frasier and Friends. But the truth of the matter is that no matter how responsive Kinect becomes, the greater issue is that it’s solving problems that don’t exist. If I want to play a casual colorful finger slider like Fruit Ninja — I don’t, actually, but if I did — I’ll play it on the iPhone instead of waving my entire arms around in the living room.
So, anyway, not much of a wallet threat this week.
Violet Sundown is a goofy mishmash of a community level. It’s good. It works well and is sufficiently challenging. The music is nifty. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It just feels like a mishmash of styles and gameplay. Which is fine, especially when it delivers one particularly fine element.
Epiphany.
This may be an incidental benefit, but while playing Violet Sundown I became aware of how well I’m getting to know this game. It was a simple moment when I couldn’t quite make a jump and realized that I needed a grappling hook. Duh. Somehow in hurrying my sackboy along I’d missed picking up a grappling hook. Not an easy thing to miss. I ran back and there it was. I’d missed it. The simple realization that I was so quickly aware that I’d missed it pleased me. I know this game. This is pleasing.
As it turns out, not knowing is pleasing too…
After the jump, the best thing I played this week Continue reading →
Jason McMaster recounts his ongoing series of vacations on Dead Island, each cut short after an hour. And Tom Chick gets in the wayback machine and parties like it’s 1999. Then — spoiler! — a Wii exercise game makes a surprise appearance.
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OK, so, Star Wars: The Old Republic is on its way this year and I’m trying to work myself into a MMO frenzy by starving myself of social interaction. For instance, before our podcasts, I only speak to Tom through grunts and clicks. My wife, Sarah, and I communicate through a psychic link. (The psychic channel we use is the one I usually reserve for REALLY wanting Doritos, which has reduced my nacho cheese intake to close to zilch.) The idea being that I’m so starved for human contact that playing a new MMO will be a “rad social experience.” The downside is that now I have to wait for it to come out.
Or do I? Find out after the jump… Continue reading →
Uday Hussein would not approve of our take on Devil’s Double. Neither would his double Latif Yahia, whose life is the subject of the movie. Dominic Cooper, who plays him, might not even approve. If you don’t want Devil’s Double spoiled, fast forward to this week’s 3×3 at the 52-minute mark. We have a catch-up session in which we plug this year’s movies into earlier 3x3s.
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From Dust does an admirable job with a seemingly simple task that has confounded videogames for a long time. Namely, the physics of dirt and water. Some would consider this a god game. I consider it SimArmy Corps of Engineers. Lots of rerouting rivers at which point you realize, oops, that’s not what you should have done because now your city is being flooded. Or building walls to protect your city from a flood only to screw up and realize you didn’t build it high enough or in the right place. Or failing to appreciate how much the volcano is going to erupt or how the plants are going to react or where the trees are going to grow. You’re not quite a god so much as a civil servant undergoing on-the-job training. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a game.
Unfortunately, From Dust is not a very good game that happens to be even less good on a console system.
After the jump, the didgeridoo that From Dust does Continue reading →
Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. The designer of Missile Works asks right there before the level even loads, “Can you work out how to use the grappling hook to your advantage in this steampunk-inspired factory? This is a grapple heavy level.” I barely paid it a moment’s thought. I don’t think even a “pshaw” flitted through my mind as I waited for the level to load. Can I work out how to use the grappling hook to my advantage? Please. Dude. I was born to grapple hook.
Can I verb that?
That image above is my little sackboy trying to figure out how to use the grappling hook to his advantage by grabbing a missile and swinging it around and under the platform upon which he is standing. I’ll ballpark this and say that what is pictured above is something on the order of his 25th try at doing this. Finally getting it was sweet but I almost gave up. I was so close to giving up. Sometimes you just don’t get it.
Speaking of not getting it…
After the jump, the horror…the horror Continue reading →
You may not play Frozen Synapse, but plenty of folks on Quarter to Three do. Dave Perkins drops by to tell us how they’re faring and what they stand to win. And then Dave leaves and everything goes to hell.
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Well now, that’s a little bit different, isn’t it? See, when I started this playthrough of Jagged Alliance 2, one of the options I left checked in the game settings was “Sci-Fi Mode.” This adds exactly one thing to the game: the Crepitus. They being giant, nasty bugs that feed on human flesh.
Fortunately, to fight them, I have a robot that was given to me by a mad scientist.
After the jump: Hey there, have you heard about my robot friend? Continue reading →
I keep getting licked — literally — by a giant butt with a tongue coming out of a toothy maw where the genitals should be.
This is Catherine’s main claim to gameplay. Not specifically the be-tongued butt, but this timed puzzle sequence in which I have to climb a wall of sliding cubes. It’s a clever enough concept, but you have to play it for a while to wrap your head around it. Unfortunately, Catherine affords me no such opportunity. It gives me tutorial tips and occasional videos suggesting strategies for pushing, pulling, and re-arranging blocks. Think of Catherine as an exponentially complicated crate puzzle, dropped infrequently into a drawn-out series of JRPG dialogues. If you just play normally, like a game that’s telling a story, you might find that you haven’t quite wrapped your head around these puzzles. At which point a butt tongue has just licked you for the tenth time.
I could practice. But I don’t like the game enough to practice it. There are very few games I’ll practice. Personally, if I’m going play something over and over to get better at it, it’s got to offer…well, more than what Catherine offers.
After the jump, how I beat the butt Continue reading →
While on the hunt for ice cream, the Dispensables passed through San Mona. While most towns in Arulco are initially held by Queen Deidranna, San Mona is a mob-run town, led by a man named Kingpin.
The Dispensables’ first stop upon entering town was the local watering hole, run by one of Kingpin’s henchmen, named Darren. He asks if I’m there for the extreme fighting competition. Why yes, I do happen to have a mercenary trained in hand-to-hand combat.
After the jump: Mantis gets made Continue reading →
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?
If you haven’t finished Bastion, you can listen up to the 37-minute mark, at which point we’ll warn you that we’re about to talk spoilers. Then you should bail and finish playing it. If you have finished Bastion, you can safely listen to this entire podcast in which Bastion writer Greg Kasavin goes into detail about how one of this year’s finest games came to be.
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See that map up above? That’s how much of the map I uncover before I finally find Hamous and his ice cream truck. Have a seat, children, and I’ll tell you a tale.
Leaving from Cambria, the Dispensables follow the road north to San Mona. Unique among the towns in Arulco, San Mona isn’t held by Deidranna’s troops. Instead, it’s run by crime boss named Kingpin and his mob. Instead of just passing through, the Dispensables have themselves a grand old time in San Mona.
That’s an entry of its own, though, and one that I’ll deal with tomorrow. Right now, we’re still jonesing for some neopolitan.
After the jump: road trip! Continue reading →
