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Archives for October 2006

Video Games in “The Office”

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Did you catch last night’s episode of “The Office“? If so, what did you think about using Call of Duty as a prop?

I thought they did a good job. It looked like they actually used the real game (though I’m not sure, since I don’t play CoD) and they recreated the noob (Jim Halpert) perfectly. The shot of Jim’s guy running hopelessy into a corner while another player watched was perfect. Then when he turned around he was lined up perfectly for a head shot. Classic.

They even tweaked the geek psyche even more when they used a cute girl as one of the players. One of the better players.

Well done, NBC.

360 Demo Thursdays (Need for Speed: Carbon)

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EA is not making many good games right now. More specifically, EA Sports. NCAA 2006 had a game-stopper of an error for the PSP version. Madden had issues with fatigue and their Hall of Fame mode. At first they were ignored but eventually corrected (even if they were a bit of a pain to fix). The Xbox 360 version of FIFA 07 was horribly gimped compared to its last-generation brethren. And most recently, NBA Live has come under fire for some pretty spectacular gaffes on EA’s part (you can see my favorites in this video). Then, when things couldn’t get worse, they announced that they’d be releasing “strategy guides” and “Classic Stadiums” on Xbox Live Marketplace. For Microsoft points. As in points you paid real money for. EA isn’t doing a very good jump of winning over gamers.

So I decided to see if EA could at least get a next-gen racing game right. I played a lot of Need for Speed: Underground and I love Burnout 3, both under the EA Games umbrella. So how would Need for Speed: Carbon stack up?

What exactly is the premise behind Carbon? As far as I can tell, it’s a street racing game where you a part of a “crew.” You race with your crew against rival crews for control of neighborhoods. Based on your performance in the different races and drift competitions, you can challenge a rival in a race through the canyon (one of these being named “Carbon Canyon”). You win the race, you take control of that neighborhood. Makes sense, right? Honestly, do you need a reason to race really fast cars?

The demo is pretty straightforward. You have three cars to choose from: a tuner, a muscle car, and an exotic car. The cars are customizable, but with a different manner of customization that I don’t really like. Instead of using off-the-shelf, real life parts, you can adjust how different components of the car looks using a bunch of sliders. You can adjust the look of your rims, the bumbers, the hood, things like that. I prefer the garage where you buy actual parts and customize your car that way. I’m sure they didn’t provide all the customization tools with the demo, but the ones they did include didn’t woo me at all.

Once you pick your car and customize it to your liking, you then can compete in three events, a race with your crew, a drift competition (those familiar with the Underground series will recognize that) and finally a challenge through the canyon. The race with your crew is pretty straight-forward. You can use your crew to either race ahead and try to finish first or fall behind and block cars as you race ahead. I wasn’t sure how the mechanics of using your crew worked, so I just raced ahead and won the race. Nothing too exciting. Same for the drift race. Same old, same old.

The canyon race was actually fun. You start off trailing your opponent and you rack up points the closer you stay to him. Halfway through the race, you switch places and he’s behind you, chipping away at the points you just earned. Finish the race with points and you win. Pretty easy, right? Well, the race through the canyon is tricky. Instead of using walls and railing as your own personal gutter bumpers, keeping you on the road, if you hit them too hard, you’ll crash through, plummetting to your death. It adds an extra dimension to the race, which frustrated the heck out of me but I came to appreciate it.

I started out the demo using the “muscle” car. I’d recommend against that. It handles like a dump truck. In fact, the collisions you cause in the game are poorly modeled. I’d hit a wall and lose control, but not in the direction or with the force I was expecting. It didn’t feel like I smashed into a wall. It felt more like I was bounced off the wall with a random amount of force. I didn’t care for how the collisions felt. The controls overall felt pretty good but not great.

The demo looked great (I’ve never seen such detailed asphalt in a game) and had the usual crap soundtrack that EA is famous for. It was easy to get the hang of things but overall didn’t impress me. At least not enough to buy Need for Speed: Carbon. Certainly worth a rental, as the canyon races were fun, but not enough to warrant a purchase for me.

Carnival of Gamers #18

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… is now on display at Man Bytes Blog, presented by Corvus. In grand fashion, I might add.

Since we took a break from the monthly Carnival, there were quite a few submissions. Glad to see the Carnival still going strong. The next stop will be at Unfettered Blather in November. The next few hosts after that are being reshuffled again, but I should be able to straighten those out soon enough. A couple more volunteers have also come forward to help with the Carnival, which is great to see.

As always, you can Digg the Carnival here.

Dead Rising is dead to me.

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Okay, maybe the title is a little over-the-top. Dead Risingis a great game, but right now I just don’t see myself playing it much anymore.

Dead Rising

(This post may reveal some minor spoilers, for those that care.)

I earned the “D” ending the first time through Dead Rising. I had no idea what to do at the end until it was too late. “D” is the poor man’s ending, not resolving much. I approached the end a second time and instead of getting caught by the SWAT guys, I hid like a little girl on the roof for 12 hours. Then, I forgot to actually be on the helipad and the helicopter left without me. Crap! I got the “C” ending. I decided I’d try my luck with a stronger Frank the third time through and found the SWAT guys go down pretty easy when I hack their limbs with the mini chainsaw. So I managed to unlock the “Overtime Mode” and eventually I earned the “A” ending (or “ture” ending, as the misspelling in the Achievements calls it) and I unlocked the “Infinity Mode” which is basically a non-stop zombie bash. How long can you survive while your health slowly slips away? I played the inifinity mode a few times, hoping to earn the “5-day” and “7-day Survivor” achievements. What a joke that turned out to be.

I managed to survive almost 24 hours when I decided I’d save and continue at a later time. I went to the security room but couldn’t save. Fine, maybe it wasn’t “safe” there anymore, so I went down to a bathroom and tried to save there. Again, no save. WTH? So I did a quick Google which brought me to the IGN FAQ for surviving Dead Rising’s Infinity Mode, earning those elusive achievements. (You can read the FAQ here)

Turns out, there is no save in the Infinity Mode. That is insane. And disappointing. Sure, it’s not the main game, but I was looking forward to racking up some serious zombie kills over a few days of gaming. It takes about 2 hours, real-time, to survive 24 hours, game time. That means 14 hours to earn the “7-day Survivor.” No one in the right mind is going to do that! (Actually, the longest anyone on Live has survived is 16 days. That’s THIRTY-TWO FRICKEN HOURS of Dead Rising, straight, people!)

I can’t fathom what the person was thinking when he decided this was a good design idea. Let’s make them play our 14 hours with no saving! That’s a great idea! No, it’s not. That’s insanity. It’s not even hardcore. It’s just not doable for 99% of the people playing the game.

Sure, the IGN FAQ tells you this is, “one of the toughest achievements in the game.” The FAQ also gives you hints on how to keep your Xbox from over-heating while you play for FOURTEEN HOURS straight. Toughest achievement? I’d rather not catch my entertainment center on fire, thank you very much.

In the end, this doesn’t detract from Dead Rising as a whole. The game is a great game. But I thought it would have a lot of replayability, but now I just don’t see it happening. In fact, I had started the game over, trying to earn some of the other achievements I never earned but now I don’t even feel like playing that anymore, knowing that the Survivor achievements will always mock me and my limited gaming time.

So for now, Dead Rising is dead to me.