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Archives for March 2010

Are you L33t?

I mentioned Corvus’ project a little while ago, so while we’re talking about OPP (Other People’s Projects) I would also like to mention Jason Preston’s (another FotB) Project, L33tsauce:

Well, l33tsauce is what you make of it — it’s a searchable encyclopedia of video game knowledge, it’s a treasure trove of cheat codes, it’s a repository of walkthroughs, it’s a collection of awesome game videos, or maybe it’s a place to catch the latest about upcoming new releases.

So head over to to L33tsauce, sign up for an account, create some dojo’s and rake in the profits!

Command and ConqueRED!

I have always been a huge fan of the C&C games. Command and Conquer 4 came out this week. I was contemplating purchasing it on Steam. At the bottom of the page, I saw this:

PERSISTENT INTERNET CONNECTION, EA ACCOUNT, REGISTRATION WITH ENCLOSED SERIAL CODE AND ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY. SOFTWARE REGISTRATION IS LIMITED TO ONE EA ACCOUNT PER SERIAL CODE AND IS NON-TRANSFERABLE.

Thank you EA. The first three words helped me save $50. We’re reading about people raping Ubisoft all over the Internet about this. Why have we not heard anything about EA?

I’m going to be alarmist and state that PC gaming is going to look really different in the near future. It’ll be more niche, indie, and cheaper. I, for one, welcome it.

This makes me red.

Puzzle Quest 2? Sign Me Up!

Giantbomb has the new trailer posted for Puzzle Quest 2. As long as they don’t make it like Galactrix, I’ll be thrilled. Interesting take on the adventuring this time around.

If you are using a feed reader and don’t see video, you’ll need to make a visit.

Weekend Gaming

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was too caught up in college basketball to notice anything else.

That being said, what will you be playing this weekend? I’ve been alternating my time between Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2. Like I mentioned when I first got Bioshock 2, I played through a a large portion of the original Bioshock before leaving it for greener pastures. I’m planning on not making the same mistake twice, so I’m going to play a little bit of both so I don’t forget what’s going on in either game.

I’m also going to play a little Modern Warfare 2 tonight, so if anyone is in the mood, drop me a note on Live and we’ll hook up.

What’s everyone else playing?

Trimming the Fat

As I mentioned before and I promise to go into detail later, I am no fan of Japanese RPG’s. Yet I am not alien to the format. Two of my favorite JRPG’s are MS Saga and Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. The first game is essentially Final Fantasy: Gundam. The second game might leave you scratching your head. “That’s not a JRPG!” you might claim. Well, actually, it’s about as JRPG as you can get without the weird anime character designs. Lord of the Rings: The Third Age was essentially a Lord of the Rings game made on the same engine as Final Fantasy X.

Oddly, the Third Age and FFXIII have something in common. They cut out a lot of crap. See, the Lord of the Rings game was widely criticized for the features it cut. Town visits in particular. This is also a common complaint about Final Fantasy XIII. My recent foray into Lost Odyssey reminds me of why I hate town visits in JRPG’s so very much. They are pointless and annoying. The towns are spread out amongst multiple maps, and there will be no more than three things to do on any one of them. When I say “to do”, that could a combination of an alleyway with some minor item in it, some citizen with pointless game minutia to share with you, or a shop of some sort. Often a part of a town will have nothing to do. These sections exist as transitions between parts of the town that do have something to do.

This pointless padding just frustrates me, especially since these games rarely have maps and so I find myself wandering lost as I try to find that one person who will give me the information I need to progress the plot. Heaven forbid I actually need to find that shop again. Hopefully the next monster I fight will drop some healing potions because I’ve spent all the time in this town I want to!

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age was story, battle, cut scene. Those were your three options. So far, Final Fantasy XIII is the same way. Is it linear? Almost ridiculously so. You start the game fighting on an elevated highway with two options, forward or back. Really, forward is the only option for obvious reasons. The concern was that in making FFXIII appeal more to western audiences they might have focused on the wrong things. Westerners like our freedom, we like our choices. Don’t take away overland maps or town visits!

Actually, I think that’s a mistake. While westerners do like our freedom and we do like our choices, we also have a very low frustration threshold and a very easy irritation trigger. I don’t want to wander aimlessly and lost through a town were I have to traverse five screens just to buy a handful of healing potions. Actually, I wouldn’t mind if I could at least tell where I was at and which way is the quickest exit? Dragon Age has a fairly large town in it, but it features it’s own map for quick travel between sections. You know what? Thanks for that. Don’t force me to wander around and spend precious gaming time doing nothing.

This is a big improvement for Final Fantasy XIII. Get rid of everything the game doesn’t need. Don’t try to add features to “westernize” a game. Do that later when you understand the culture and can do it in a way that hopefully won’t alienate your home audience. Instead, trim the fat and focus on the game and story itself. I bought this game for a reason, so focus on what it does well as the first step in improving your franchise. Take a page from American game designers on how not to improve your game. More sequels have been ruined by adding features that nobody wanted instead of focusing on the areas that nobody liked or were done poorly compared to the rest of the game.

Crap, I can’t believe with my hardcore anti-JRPG stance in general and strong distaste of Final Fantasy in particular that I’m having to admit they got something very right with this game.

Final Fantasy XIII and the platform philosophy

I could simply do an “In my hands” post like we usually do, but purchasing Final Fantasy XIII is a special milestone for me. You see, I hate Japanese RPG’s. I hate them with a passion. The why’s and wherefore’s are worthy of their own topic and I won’t belabor them here, but the end result is I don’t play JRPG’s. I attempted to play Lost Odyssey late last year. I bought the game for my Dad, which he loved immensely and played through it twice. With his passing I felt like it was an easy way to connect with him. I essentially inherited a game that I bought for him as a gift. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to get into the game but it feels too much like a JRPG in all the wrong ways.

I am, for the first time, buying a JRPG for the story. Stories are important, don’t get me wrong. However, I want to play a game, not watch a game. I get plenty of stories from movies and books already and I don’t need games for their stories. When a game has a good story that’s just a bonus for me. Even Mass Effect 2, which you largely play for its story, is still primarily a game-based purchase, if such a term exists. However, everything I see in Final Fantasy XIII is just gorgeous. I am hoping against hope that they’ll resist to do the usual anime tropes. You know what I mean. The evil corporation, the needlessly convoluted storyline, the betrayal in the third act you saw coming from the first, etc. I’m sure they will, they can’t help themselves. JRPG’s and anime are addicted to a very predictable plot cycle that has made one much like the other in the past decade. Still, this game is brimming with so much potential that I have abandoned my strict “No JRPG” stance. I am hoping this is a game that will transcend it’s genre, like Dawn of War or Borderlands.

All that said, I bought this on the PS3. I like my PS3, but it’s a massive pain in the butt. The ridiculous installation process and the ponderous and intrusive updates actually make the infamously unreliable XBox 360 hardware look good by comparison. That’s an interesting accomplishment considering Microsoft effectively went into overdrive to deliver the most unreliable console of all time. Yet the 360 dominates because, when it works, it is simply a better game delivery platform. Yet there are games, even multi-platform games, that just feel right on a particular system. I loved Fallout 3 on the XBox 360, but the PC is definitely a better platform if you have the hardware. The 360 is my favorite, but I would lie if I didn’t admit Batman: Arkham Asylum just “felt right” on the PS3. If you don’t own a PS3 I’m sure Final Fantasy XIII will stand well on its own merits regardless. Don’t feel bad playing it on the 360. When someone asks me which version I’m getting though, it’s one of the few times I would answer snobbishly “The Playstation 3, of course.” This is a game that demands it look the best, and I’m going to play it on the platform that is best suited for it. Don’t get mad at me, I wouldn’t dream of playing Modern Warfare 2 without XBox Live and I switched Borderlands from the PS3 to the XBox 360 because I realized I had chosen poorly. I’m not a PS3 snob. All I know is that I want to play a game on the platform that will maximize my experience. Alas, like anyone, I often have to make do with the best I have on hand, not necessarily the best there is.

Blur Impressions [beta]

The Blur beta started today on the 360, and yours truly was able to score a code. Let me say this: Think Burnout Paradise + licensed cars + Mario Kart – annoying powerup randomness + the leveling mechanic of Call of Duty = the best online racing experience I’ve ever had. I knew this just fifteen minutes in. Each race is about 5 minutes long and is intense, pretty, and wonderful throughout the entire course. If they make no major changes in the negative, this is a must buy. Now to get it on PS3 or 360?

When It Rains, It Pours [Heavy Rain Review]

Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3 is a title that tends to have a polarizing effect on gamers. Love it or hate it, it has generated a lot of discussion. Some deride it as a waste of time–a game that holds your hands with a long cutscene advanced by button presses. Others consider it to be an experience–a game that holds you in its hands through gripping interaction experienced through button presses.

It is the latter view that this gamer holds.

To me, there seems to be at least eight reasons good and bad why this game goes beyond a choose-your-own adventure, beyond the mindless action of popular selling games, and beyond just an interactive movie. Many of these reasons may overlap, but I think, to many, they stand on their own.

First, Heavy Rain is not a game but an experience. The deeper I got into the title, I began to realize that I was not playing the game. I was getting wrapped up in the four protagonists lives, making decisions on not what I think they would make, but more on what I would make if I were them. If you look at the title as a traditional game, you’ll be sorely disappointed. A better approach would be to ask, “What is Quantic Dream trying to get me to do?” Of course, a big question the game asks is, “How far would you go to save someone you love?”

Emotions are conveyed through button presses. This is the convention that sells the title. If your character is expected to do something difficult expect difficult controls. It’s a beautiful thing. Finding the controls frustrating conveys that emotion to you, the player. You feel what that character is feeling. Many critics of the game express that this is horrible controls hurting the gameplay. I don’t agree. This is for the simple reason, that it’s very easy to do the mundane things. Open a fridge door? One simple analog swipe. Climbing through a narrow window while someone is chasing you? Get ready for a lot of button presses.

Sixaxis controls are finally justified. I don’t believe that any other game comes close to the level of playability that Quantic Dream has introduced through the game using motion. Lifting, pulling, and shaking off are wonderfully executed motions. In many instances, these motions happen during a fight or during an intense situation. I caught myself many times grunting at actions and moving the control as if it had weight behind it. It was a weird immersion, but it was immersion.

Character movement is brutal. The game is not totally immerse, however. While many of the actions of the characters are lifelike, walking is disjointed. The control scheme of holding a button to walk is not bad, but the characters tend to move around stiff and erect occasionally turning their heads to look at something. In a lot of cases, their head turning is not humanly possible. Chins going past shoulders when turning and walking up steps is weird.

The narrative is full of cliches, but it is engrossing. There is nothing new here. It’s all been done before. I really cannot say much about this topic without giving anything away. However, Quantic Dream is able to use a mundane beginning that ramps up almost straight up at hour two or three into the title. I “finished” (more on that later) this game in three sittings roughly over ten hours. I think I’ve discussed and thought about it more. This works on a level of fiction that I’ve never experienced before. I felt like I was a part of the game. I was an overseer that lived four different lives.

On another note, I found that I lived my morality through many of the characters. When put in a situation where there were a lot of choices for a character to make I would take the moral high ground. This cost me in some areas in the game, but upon discussing with some other gamers, maybe it didn’t. The game really shines where there is no clear cut area of selection. What do I pick? Which option? If you wait to long to decide, the game picks an option for you or, better yet, you face a difference consequence for not deciding. This forces you to make snap judgments like a real person would. This hurt me in one part of the game because a character did something I did not want them to do. Did I go back and load a previous save?

The save system is for preserving the experience not the gameplay. The answer to my previous question is no. Not ever. There is something about Heavy Rain that causes you to play the title and “damn the consequences.” How many times in real life do we get to go back and remove the bullet (uh…), rewind and say something different, or choose a totally different response to something we decided? I think the same should be true here as well. In the particular instance I accidentally killed a person. I was devastated that I had done that with one of my favorite protagonists. However, it was neat to see that character deal with the guilt. It was more amazing to realize that I empathized with him. In discussing this with many friends who have played the title, not a single one went back when making a mistake. Just as an aside, it was easy for me to make that mistake because all the options where floating around on the screen, they were shaking (to convey the character’s fear) and the option that stuck out was the one big negative choice. This just didn’t happen once in that situation. It happened three times.

Intensity is done right. I’ve played a lot of action and racing games. Although they can be intense, I’ve never had a game get me on the edge of my seat like Heavy Rain. Literally. In two instances, I was standing and my wife had to notify me of it. The visual action, quick time events, music (really superb), sound design (like rain in your house), and narrative combine to make this explosive adrenaline rush.  This happens quite often and in situations that you would not expect.  Many times, I caught myself holding my breath (a big “heh” for those you have played it) or sitting back in my chair feeling my heart race.

Finally, every game is (almost) different. As of this writing, I have five close friends who have completed the game. Each and every experience was different. Each person connected to a different character. Being a father, I felt like I had a strong connection to Ethan, the character who’s son is kidnapped. I also felt a strong bond to the FBI agent. I wish I could explain what I felt about their respective endings in my gameplay, but I wouldn’t want to spoil anything. There are many different endings to this title and many different ways to get there. Even with just five people, I don’t think we’ve done them all. I would venture to play the game again and make different choices and actions, but I’m afraid that the second run through would be marred because of the emotions, joys, and pitfalls I have associated with the characters now.

Is Heavy Rain a revolutionary game? I don’t know. To me it is. However, it’s not a game but an experience to behold. Time will tell if the world catches on. The first round of DLC certainly kept things going. I’ll continue to follow the rest of the new experiences the game has to offer.

I’ve asked myself and discussed with my wife, how far would I go to save someone I love? The prospects are frightening and I hope I’m never put in that situation, but this game was able to get me to think about it a little deeper. Quantic Dream succeeded in making the title compelling all the way through.

Verdict: Buy.