Happy Holidays, fellow Buttonmashers!
Archives for 2008
Good Advice
Say, the next time you want to try to win your daughter back, just get her a pony. The apocalypse just doesn’t cut it. – the Prince.
I deem Prince of Persia to be good. Above my expectations even–and they were high.
Auditorium
This has been traveling around the net on fire for the last couple of days. I spent almost all of last night enjoying it. Certainly the best music/game app on the web right now. Please come to the DS.
[2 Minute Review] Mirror’s Edge
A game on the edge of pure brilliance and utter frustration.
Mirror’s Edge is 90% exuberant fun and 10% controller-smashing annoyance.
DO: Run through a stylized metropolis, pull off incredible jumps and try to outrun bullets.
TYPE: First Person Parkour
PLATFORM: PS3 & 360 (360 Reviewed)
PRICE: $59.99
MEAT: Mirror’s Edge places you in the red sneakers of Faith, a Runner in a sterile city set somewhere in the near future. Due to surveillence of nearly every form of communication, Runners are used to courier sensitive information from point to point in the city. Sadly, this is about as good as the story gets in Mirror’s Edge. There is a murder, someone gets framed and Faith has to save some people, but what passes for storytelling in Mirror’s Edge is basically there to give you context for why you’re running from point to point. The cutscenes are also rather underwhelming. As a traditional 2D animation afficionado, I don’t have a problem with 2D cutscenes in my 3D games. However, the ones in Mirror’s Edge don’t look very good and seem like something done in Flash.
Enough about the story. The real meat of Mirror’s Edge is the first person jumping/running mechanic. This is where the game succeeds brilliantly. The signature Runner Vision effect, which causes an optimal
route through the level to change colour, is a big help in the early
levels but is much reduced by the end of the game. There are times
where the route highlighted by Runner Vision is not the fastest
or safest, which encourages the player to experiment and find safer and
faster routes than the one suggested by the game. Each level will have you trying to get as high as you can and then progressing in a series of jumps, leaps and wallruns to the end of the level. At certain times, you are put in a room where you need to figure out the best way to reach an air vent or catwalk, but most of the game is spent leaping from roof to roof, which never gets old.
What DOES get old is the combat, specifically the guns and the cops shooting at you. This is where the game took a 180 degree turn from brilliance to frustration and landed flat on its back. Faith is not a super soldier who can soak up 300 rounds. 2 shots will usually put her down and a couple swats with the butt of a rifle will result in a quick trip to Runner Heaven. Unfortunately, Faith’s fragility doesn’t help when you’re trying to subdue a gaggle of cops in riot gear. Further aggravating the situation is the fact that while Faith has a solid punch and a few neat disarm moves, you’ll find yourself fighting the game engine itself instead of the enemies. If you punch a cop, you have to wait for him to stand up and then start the ‘swing-the-gun-at-Faith’ animation before you can attempt a disarm. This leads to many instances of either throwing off your timing or having one of his buddies shoot you while you wait for him to stand up.
Thankfully, these instances are not in the game very often but when they do pop up, they’ll often throw up a roadblock to success that will take many, MANY attempts to overcome. This is particularly egregious from Chapter 7-9 when the game starts to focus more on these combat rooms and shifts away from the platforming. In the interests of full disclosure, I did get the “By Faith Alone” achievement which means that I did not fire a shot for the entire game. Looking back, I think that striving for this achievement is probably what made the areas where the game goes into combat mode so annoying. The game is a lot less frustrating and a lot more fun when the guns are used and upon reflection, the 80 points I got for the achievement were not worth the frustration felt while trying to get it.
For those who just want to run, there are a plethora of time trials and speed runs to go through which pit you against the clock (and the times of other players) in a bullet-free obstacle course based on the levels in the game.
PERKS: An exhilarating sense of speed; awesome visual design; some very cool first person cinematics
SCREAMS: For no guns in the sequel; more first person cinematics; a better melee combat engine; more compelling characters and backstory.
VERDICT: Rent. The core gameplay is a great take on first person gaming and the brilliant presentation shows is a welcome change to the greys and browns that pervade the majority of ‘next-gen’ games. Unfortunately, the momentum that Mirror’s Edge builds as you hop from rooftop to rooftop slams into a brick wall due to the pervasive and infuriating gun-toting cops and the broken melee combat engine.
As always, you can check my Gamercard to see that I have finished the game.
In [Nat’s] Hands: The Motherload
[2 Minute Review] A Kingdom For Keflings
How can a game that has absolutely zero conflict compete in today’s hyperviolent market?
Welcome to the most relaxing game of 2008.
DO: Take a scrubby patch of land and transform it into a thriving kingdom.
TYPE: Building/Resource Management
PLATFORM: XBLA
PRICE: 800 MS Points
MEAT: You are a giant in the land of the Keflings, strange little people who want nothing more than to do your bidding. The entire game consists of you ordering the Keflings to harvest resources which can be used to construct a staggering variety buildings. The ultimate goal of the game is to build a castle but getting there can take anywhere from 8-12 hours. It’s one of those games where you can pop in for a few minutes to build one building or spend hours just chilling while you watch your kingdom flourish. This game was so addictive that I’d find myself pulled away from AAA titles like Mirror’s Edge or Left 4 Dead to get back to my kingdom. It is a perfect tonic for those times when you get frustrated and need a break from the more hectic gameplay of straight-up action games.
PERKS: An amazing guitar soundtrack; using your avatar; being able to kick the Keflings around the map (and get an achievement for it).
SCREAMS: For a camera that can be rotated 360 degrees; for a camera that will stay where you put it instead of snapping back into the default isometric view; for a better way to keep track of what building components have been used in a given blueprint so that you don’t make 30 reading rooms by accident.
VERDICT: Buy. This game may be a little TOO relaxing for every gamer, but take the demo for a spin to see if it is for you. In this day of hyperviolence and gore dripping from every corner of the screen, it is nice to see a game pride itself on its lack of conflict. Just make sure you aren’t tired when you play the game as the soundtrack will lull you to sleep.
Out Of Time
Wednesday was a glorious day. Why?
Chrono Trigger DS just landed in my hands today and I’ve already sunk far too much time into it. For a 13 year old game, it still holds up amazingly well and the new tweaks are kind of nice.
There’s also the added bonus that I finally have a legitimate portable copy of what is probably my all-time favourite videogame, period. I have a top 10 list of favourite games and it’s often in flux, though many games tend to stay in it for a long time. Chrono Trigger is on a whole other level of adoration though. It’s the Mona Lisa of JRPGs as far as I’m concerned.
What am I doing typing this? I’m off to go romp through time with my band of merry adventurers!
Sony Marks Down Some Digital Bits
I just scored The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, and echochrome for $15 total on the PSN store. Prices are good for about a week. There’s more, but I’m being lazy. Here’s other things that may make other people happy.
May 8, 2009
Immersion
Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be.
Come back here and let me stab you!
Link.