Gaming

I’ll admit that nothing draws me to a game more than the ability to tell my own story. As much as I love watching movies my real fantasy is to be in the movie as the hero. Open-world games are often the portal that allows me to craft a unique story. I’ve felt this way long before we started coining terms like “emergent gameplay” or “sandbox worlds”. My interest in Alpha Protocol is largely to do with what appears the developers understanding this concept. While it appears to stick pretty solidly to its own story, the protagonist, Michael Thorton, can be custom tailored to the player’s style. From what I’ve seen so far, they’re not messing around. Michael’s appearance, equipment, skills, and weapons are all customizable. I watched a preview that showed how weapon customization was done and it was everything I’ve been wanting in shooters for years. Yet this isn’t a shooter but a “modern day spy RPG”, which is probably one of the few one line descriptions that could get the reply “Day One purchase!” out of me.

Alpha Protocol Safehouse “Walkthrough”

The only thing could derail me is another bug ridden mess like Fallout 3. While Fallout 3 remains my best game of 2008, it unfortunately lowered my tolerance for game crippling bugs. You can only tolerate so many games in a short span of time with the same flaw before it simply becomes untenable. Until then, I’m maintaining high hopes.

Overview: What would happen if someone did a mash-up of Final Fantasy with a space combat simulator?

Pricing: This one is all over the map, but a good average is probably just under $20 used or new.

Rip-Off Warning: Actually, I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone still trying to sell if for more than $30.

Platform: X-Box 360

Is it worth it?: Space combat simulators are a sub-genre that has been slowly dying off over the past decade and getting anything at this point is not unlike finding a puddle of water while you’re dying of thirst in the desert. As much as I am tempted to take a “beggars can’t be choosers” stance on the game, it is not really a hard “sim” and is more of a 3D shooter much like other games we’ve seen released on consoles.

Combat is an impersonal affair, with most of your time spent acquiring lock-ons at extreme distance and firing volleys of missiles. This looks really cool, but it will soon become your standard tactic for all 16 missions. Even the final mission, which is essentially an anime retelling of the Death Star sequence from Return of the Jedi, can be beaten this way. You can attempt to dogfight, but the game is pretty clear that your fighter is not designed for agile maneuvers, but is instead more suited to hit-and-run attacks where you charge in at high speed, deliver a quick volley, and then fly away. This is perhaps inspired by the tactics of American P-38 pilots in WWII against Japanese Zeroes. Unfortunately, that makes for less than thrilling combat at times.

Perhaps the combat was done this way to fit the control scheme. I played the game entirely with the basic controls because the standard control was literally “push the stick lightly to turn and hard to roll”. In a dogfight, players in a hurry to shake someone on their tail are not going to be “pushing gently” to execute a turn. There are three different control schemes and none of them are very well done.

All that said, the battles are often impressive affairs, with huge fleets or warships and dozens of fighters all battling it out simultaneously. The larger ships are actually a real threat to each other, which is a bit of a change from many space combat sims where they expect the player to single-handedly take on enemy battleships despite having a support fleet at their back. This is good and bad though, as allied ships can be destroyed quite readily and the player will often have to keep an eye on the health bar of friendly ships. I did appreciate this aspect of combat as it made it seem like an actual battle was happening around me rather than the usual game of “Hey, let’s everybody gang up on the player’s fighter”.

With Project Sylpheed being made by Square Enix there are tons of cutscenes and most of them are pretty watchable. However, if you’ve ever played any Final Fantasy game since VII you should be pretty familiar with the archetypes and plot. No surprises here. Really, the story is generic anime and if you don’t see the moral ambiguity, atrocities, and inevitable alliances coming from a mile away then you’ve obviously never watched any science fiction based anime EVER. On the other hand the fanboys should love this games portrayal of women in the military and their outlandishly inappropriate military attire standing side-by-side with their male counterparts who actually understand what “uniform” means outside of ridiculous haircuts and facial tattoos. I’m not kidding on the last one. Your original squadron commander is apparently none other than Mike Tyson.

Final Judgement: Despite my many criticisms of the game, this has actually been a solid purchase. If I had paid the full $60 at release I would be filled with buyer’s remorse, but my copy was a mere $10 and for an entertaining, if somewhat generic and derivative, story and incredibly epic space battles it was worth every penny.

Just so I don’t step on the “Weekend Gaming” posts, I’m moving these to Thursday.

Overview: What if someone made God of War into a sandbox game?

Pricing: $10 to $15 used and $15 to $20 new. Although I can easily find it for $10 used about twice as often as I see it for $15, so save your pennies!

Rip-Off Warning: While not common, you can still find this game for $40 or $50 new.

Platform: XBox 360 (Reviewed), Playstation 3

Is it worth it?: The biggest problem Viking faces is that it is a game with an identity crisis. It promises epic battles, but there are zero real-time strategy elements. It has an “open world”, but you get the feeling there is a certain order of events and the game resents you for not playing along. In fact, some scripted lines still get played even though you may have already accomplished the quest they are talking about. The combat has a definite God of War vibe but with a terrible camera and Skarin, our protagonist, really has trouble tackling more than a couple of enemies at a time. Also, just for grins, there are stealth sections as well. As a badass hyper-muscled viking barbarian beserker he is exactly as good at stealth as you would expect.

Despite the identity crisis, or maybe because of it, there is actually a lot to keep a player amused and the first stage of the game is actually a lot of fun once you realize you can’t charge a hoard of twenty enemies. There is a definite change in pace keeping the protagonist from being a one man army and relying on raising his own forces for the larger battles. Taking control of dragons for the magical equivalent of airstrikes is a nice touch as well, but used way too sparingly. Unfortunately, in the larger battles for control of a territory, the player is often tasked to take on many enemies at once, which the combat system is just not well suited for.

The graphics are well done and incredibly visceral. Despite the ease at which Skarin can get overwhelmed, he can perform fatalities through a one button no penalty quick-time event which he brutally dismembers and/or decapitates his target. Surprisingly, this never gets old.

Unfortunately, this game wants to be like God of War so bad that they incorporate quick-time events into fighting enemy champions, which provides a more cinematic battle but turns it from an exercise in skill and timing into a frenetic version of “Simon”.

Final Judgement: Pass or purchase? I’m going with “Purchase” on this one. I frequently passed on it because neither the game box, the advertisements, marketing materials, or even other gamers seem to be able to describe what the game was about or even how it played. Viking is certainly trying to accomplish too much and does nothing well, but it does very little poorly either. This game is hours of amusement for very little money and while I finally began to tire of it on the second region (of three) the first third of the game was certainly worth playing.