Keepalive: Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Mad Max, Earth Defense Force 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair

written by Blain Newport on Friday, 5 August 2016

I realized I should be putting more pictures with my posts.  They're good for context.

Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea (4 of 5)

Bioshock is art deco and dead bodies.   Like the System Shock games it's descended from, Bioshock is about misuse of technology.  System Shock is more about our systems destroying us where Bioshock is about us using technology to control each other.  There's also a bunch of homicidal maniacs and weapons thrown in to make it a video game.

The Burial at Sea DLC for Bioshock Infinite is much better storytelling than the main game because it doesn't have to pad itself out to justify a $60 price tag, (see also the Minerva's Den DLC for Bioshock 2).  I don't really want to spoil anything, so I'll just say it does a nice job of looping back around to tie a bow on the series.

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I've also been playing Mad Max. There are really good elements to that game.

Here we see Chumbucket, your mechanic more or less, repairing your car by the side of the road in the early morning hours.  The skies and dusty wasteland are very well done.

And here I am trying to get me and my dog to shelter before a huge dust storm hits.

The scale and sense of place are really good.  But the activities overstay their welcome and the game has bugs that go beyond standard open world jank.  Camps you liberate from bandits are supposed to provide income, but the amount changes seemingly at random.  My car's defense stat randomly resets itself to zero, turning my well armored death machine into a plywood joke.  And there are tons more problems and nuisances the really wore on me.  Like Yakuza: Dead Souls, I may not bother to finish this one.

I tried to rationalize the problems by saying that Avalanche also released Just Cause 3 the same year, so they didn't have time for patches, but the PC version of Just Cause 3 has been made more broken for many by subsequent patches, so it seems like Avalanche can't be trusted on PC as of late.

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By contrast I've already finished EDF three and a half times on PC.

Here we see Red Rooster lobbing slow moving Air Tortoise missiles at distant robots who are lobbing arcs of neon pink death back at us.  This shot was taken on July 21st.  We also ended up playing with player Yourgrandma last night. :P

And here's an example of the sense of scale EDF brings both in raw size as the head of one of those ants is bigger than the player and in sheer numbers as the sky fills with enemy flyers.

I don't think an official review is even necessary.  EDF is a 5 of 5 for me, and I look forward to playing it repeatedly with all the people who jump in when it periodically goes on sale.

It is the apotheosis of Big Dumb Fun.

Keepalive: Soma, Outlast, EDF 4.1, Yakuza: Dead Souls

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 31 July 2016

Soma (3 of 5)

DISCLAIMER: I cheated my way through Soma.  I used a mod that made the monsters blind.  They could still find me by sound and in certain scripted sequences could chase me, but that was it.  After Penumbra Overture, Penumbra Black Plague, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I've had enough of playing hide and seek.  It doesn't help that Metal Gear Solid V and Dishonored spoiled me by putting many more stealth tools in the tool chest.

That said, Soma was a good experience.  The setting is imaginative.  The puzzles are decent.  The production values are impressive.  Philosophically the game is at its best when it's putting the player in difficult situations and letting them decide for themselves what's ethical.  I don't think it actually makes any points other than people are dumb, which isn't news.

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I'm similarly cheating my way through Outlast, but thanks to many quick scripted sequences, I'm being forced to hustle a good bit more than in Soma.  Outlast doesn't seem to have any philosophical dilemmas, but it's a solid scare fest so far.

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I've been playing a fair amount of EDF.  I leveled my Ranger and spent some time working on my Air Raider and Wing Diver.  The Air Raider really needs co-op play to shine, and overall I've been happy with the players I've met online.

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I'm in part three of four (I think) in Yakuza: Dead Souls.  It replaces the good but not great brawling with okay shooting and replaces human enemies with zombies in a fanciful "what if" story.  Ultimately I kind of don't care about the story.  And the mechanics / enemies aren't particularly great either.  The tragic tone also takes some of the fun out of things.  I don't know if I'll finish it.

Looking on Wikipedia I saw that Dead Souls came out only a year after Yakuza 4 and a year before Yakuza 5.  I think it may have gotten squeezed in the middle, resource-wise.

Keepalive: Journey, Tales From The Borderlands

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 17 July 2016

I don't really know why I dropped Yakuza 4.  I suppose when a game has multiple acts the places between are natural stopping points.  And the last act of Yakuza 4 features Kazuma Kiryu, the most known quantity since he's the protagonist of the first three games.  Plus the Yakuza games all sort of drown in their own melodrama near the end.  I'll get back to it when I want to wander the Kamurocho again, but there's no rush.

Earth Defense Force 4.1 should be out tomorrow.  They're still not taking orders and the Steam page is so bare bones it doesn't even name the four classes...  please don't suck.

Journey (4 of 5)

Journey is an game for PS3 by thatgamecompany.  You are randomly paired with other people online as you explore ancient, somewhat alien ruins.  It's pretty and atmospheric.  There's not a huge amount to it, but it's a good experience.

Tales From The Borderlands (3 of 5)

TFTB is an adventure game from Telltale set in the world of Borderlands, a series of first person shooters from Gearbox.

It sucks being smarter than the characters in an adventure game.  Watching them keep secret or blurt out information you know they shouldn't (and knowing almost precisely what the consequences will be) is bad enough in other media, but games ostensibly give you control, so it's particularly galling.  That happened in Life Is Strange.  But it was worse in TFTB.  At some level it's not about being smarter as much as knowing story-telling tropes.  But it undercuts the experience regardless.

That aside, TFTB is about what I expect from a Telltale game: pretty good writing and characters, player decisions that I want to engage with but are mostly cosmetic, and mediocre QTEs.  I knew all that going in and got what I expected.

Attention! Earth Defense Force 4.1 for PC releases in FOUR DAYS!

written by Blain Newport on Thursday, 14 July 2016

Steam page

I will be buying the game (but not the DLC.  I want to earn my weapons) as soon as they let me.  I will report back if it's a good port or not.

I love EDF.

I love the spectacle.  EDF plays out on a gigantic scale.  Giant ants come swarming over buildings.  Streams of silver space fighters are released by mother ships.  Giant robots tower over the player.  Player weapons knock down sky scrapers and send giant spiders pinwheeling into the air.  Fights can level city blocks.

I love the weapons.  EDF has crazy weapons.  Some are inaccurate.  Some are dangerous to the user.  Some fire in high arcs that make it challenging to hit.  Some require laser guidance from another player to reach their full potential.  Learning the weapons and how to best used them is it's own game.  And different map and enemy types make those choices meaningful.  A down side of that is that sometimes you just don't have the right kit and have to start a mission over.  But it's a puzzle and finding a solution, especially when it's highly unorthodox, is uniquely rewarding.

I love the nonsense.  EDF knows it's a silly thing.  The friendly AI cannon fodder talk trash to the bugs, freak out, and say random stuff about getting steak when the battle is over.  Meanwhile news and military broadcasts play up the scale of the devastation and the importance of success.  It's a big goofy melodrama.


The controls are clunky.  The friendly AI repeat themselves too much.  Depending on what class you are there can be rough difficulty spikes.  And the game reuses maps like crazy.  But I still love it.


EDF!  EDF!


If the port is good I will be inflicting co-op on anyone who will let me.

Parade of Meh

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 10 July 2016

I decided to try a lot of older games I wasn't sure I'd like, looking for a diamond in the rough.  It was just rough, but I at least got a good feel for what they actually were, not just their reputations.

I'm also still playing Yakuza 4, but I'm doing a lot of side content and wandering around, so it's slow going.  I just started the last quarter of the game.

Fuse (3 of 5)

Fuse has good qualities.  The graphics engine is good for the time, with scenic vistas and some nice lighting.  But ultimately it's a cover shooter based around combo-ing team abilities, and when playing with the AI, it's not that great.

Dead Rising (didn't complete)

The original Dead Rising didn't have combo weapons.  And the enemies are more lethal.  And the survivors are less intelligent.  You can make yourself stronger and overcome these issues, but even when I was decked out with three pairs of never-break mini-chainsaws, I wasn't enjoying myself.  At some level I feel like the game has a good rep and became a franchise because 360 owners were starved for first year content and Dead Rising was the only game (apart from Geometry Wars) that wasn't better on PC.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider (didn't complete)

Beast Rider is to God of War as Tootsie Rolls are to quality chocolate.  Beast Rider is a bland, poorly paced character action game with control issues, and very few of the things you do in the game feel satisfying at all.

Too Human (didn't complete)

Too Human is a character action game that's actually kind of nice early on.  It's got a unique control scheme which uses the right stick for melee attacks, so you just tilt the stick and flow around the battlefield.  It's relaxing.  Sometimes it's a little too relaxing and puts secrets and upgrades behind lots of walking, killing the pace.

Then it gets more difficult and it turns out the hit detection on larger bosses is problematic, advanced moves are kind of fiddly in general, and the tougher enemies are not more interesting to fight.  Plus it gets stingier with upgrades pretty quickly, which made me feel less rewarded for dealing with much harder foes.

It's got an interesting take on a far future based around Norse mythology.

Flower (didn't complete)

You are a flower petal.  Fly past other flowers to add petals and become a trail of petals.  Open all the flowers and move on to the next area.  It's very pretty to start.  But wandering around for five minutes because you missed some flower somewhere and can't progress at all kind of kills it.  I think I'd have liked Flower more if it had been less of a game.

Keepalive: Dead Rising 3, Yakuza 4

written by Blain Newport on Friday, 1 July 2016

In the first major section of Yakuza 4 the player controls Akiyama, a money lender and business person.  Akiyama owns at least one hostess club, a place where you can pay a lot of money to drink and chat with pretty ladies.  You can play a mini-game to manage and mentor the hostesses.  I didn't bother because it's creepy.
In the third major section of the game the player controls Tanimura, a young pretty boy cop who gambles while on duty.  He seemed like the type of guy who would go to a hostess club so I had him go to a club owned by Akiyama.  It sucked.  All the women seemed the same and had no facility with small talk.

I think it sucked because I didn't train them, which is awesome.


I'm in the last chapter of Dead Rising 3.  I feel like the game has an identity crisis.  It's trying to come across as more grim and realistic than previous games, but it's still Dead Rising, so I'm still attaching car batteries to sledge hammers and duct taping assault rifles to shotguns.  I'm enjoying myself.  Open world Dead Rising is really neat.  But those first couple hours where I was just messing around and didn't know almost any combo weapons were way more atmospheric than what followed.  I've seen multiple complaints about the gritty tone compared to the older games, but I thought that was kind of the best part, even if it was the least like Dead Rising.

Keepalive: Long Form Games, Dying Light: The Following

written by Blain Newport on Tuesday, 28 June 2016

I've been switching between a number of longer games lately.  Switching keeps things fresh, but drastically lengthens the time between write ups.  Currently I'm mostly playing Dead Rising 2: Off The Record with some Yakuza 4 thrown in.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that Off The Record is basically still Dead Rising 2, but I played Dead Rising 2 multiple times and this gives me an excuse to play it again.  I actually miss Chuck Greene and his daughter.  Replacing them with unattached Frank West lowers the stakes considerably.  Plus his camera mechanic makes Frank kind of a vulture.  On the plus side there's some new content.  Also, the game runs really well.  And the Steam integration even includes the ability to import your Games For Windows Live save file.  They got a lot of technical bits right.  I'm sad they didn't have the resources to do the same for Dead Rising 3, which by many accounts has performance issues.  I picked it up anyway to see how it behaves.  It'll go in my new PC hope chest if it chugs.

I started to play Yakuza 4 yesterday.  My character has just had a tearful reunion, and I was eager to see what came next.  But then some random guy in a yellow gi asked me to help his struggling dojo, so I took two young fighters (one trying to impress a girl and one trying to get some self confidence after losing his job) and trained them up to the point where they won local championships.  This was a fully fleshed out mini-game where you choose training activities for your fighters, upgrade your dojo with the prize money they win, and even go out drinking with them to learn what motivates them and build trust.  I'm guessing it shares underpinnings with the hostess management mini-game, but not knowing it was there still made it a ridiculous surprise.  The surprises are what keep me coming back to the Yakuza games.

Dying Light: The Following (3 of 5)

This is a random glamour shot at a scenic park.  You can see the tour buses parked below, the countryside, and Harran, the city from the original game.  The scale is awesome, even if I had to turn down the settings so much that everything looks all scratchy.

I enjoyed Dying Light a lot.  First person parkouring is still pretty great and makes many other FPS games feel stuck in the mud.  I'd forgotten how much I missed that freedom until I was stuck in a room with too many zombies and suddenly realized that windows, purely for looking / shooting through in most games, could be climbed through.  Oh yeah.  Like in real life.

Okay, so I still appreciate the core of Dying Light.  Unfortunately they added a buggy.  I'm not against the idea, but it didn't work for me.  The buggy sucks initially.  There are tons of obstacles on the roads so there's no feeling of freedom.  It's like they wanted the buggy to follow the same trajectory as the parkour.  It starts weak, but as you add abilities and learn the lines of the map, you gain satisfaction from mastery.  But starting from zero again was a drag when I already had maxed out parkour abilities.  The new abilities gained for the car didn't change the lines I could take through the map in interesting ways.  And, most importantly, I wanted the buggy to be a change of pace, and it wasn't.  It felt like the parkour but not as good.

I enjoyed The Following.  And even though the buggy wasn't great.  I'm glad Techland didn't just play it safe.

Keepalive: Steam Summer Sale, Retro Game Crunch

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 26 June 2016

The Steam Summer Sale is on until July 4.  Since they don't do daily deals anymore, you can browse sale items at your leisure.  My method of choice is going to Steam DB and looking at the deepest discounts with user reviews of 70% favorable or higher.  I didn't look at anything less than 70% off because that was still well over a thousand games to browse.  This is a good problem to have, although I would absolutely love the ability to build a filter list to never show certain games after I've viewed them and decided they're not for me.

Retro Game Challenge (3 of 5)

This is Shuten, one of the seven NES style games in Retro Game Challenge, and the only one I finished.  That's odd because I'm not much of a shmup guy, but Shuten does a couple nice things.  Firstly, you keep the gold you grab regardless of whether you finish the mission, so you're always making progress towards upgrades.  And second, you have a sword that reflects enemy bullets, so if it gets too bullet helly, just lay on the sword button and let the enemies eat their own spam.

Most of the other games were okay, but either wore out their welcome or just weren't my cup of tea to start with.  But for $2 I got five hours of fun puttering around with them.

Keepdead: God of War 3, Clive Barker's Jericho

written by Blain Newport on Monday, 20 June 2016

My first full Monday of not going to work... I breathe as a free man.

A free man who forgot to take the recycling out. :P

God of War 3 (3 of 5)

It was a bunch of big, dumb, bloody spectacle with the occasional boob for no reason.  It was okay.

I do enjoy their reimagining of Greek mythology and the ways the gods relate and behave.  They showed gameplay at E3 from the new game which will be Norse, so their treatment of that pantheon will hopefully be as interesting.

Clive Barker's Jericho (I gave it a 4 of 5 in 2008 and stand by that)

Jericho has a 63 on Metacritic.  I have a hard time reconciling that.  Yes.  It's a simple corridor shooter.  Yes.  It's a supernatural action movie, not a horror game.  Yes.  It's not Undying.  Yes.  It's only six hours.  Yes.  There aren't that many enemy types.  Yes.  It's mostly gray and brown.  Yes.  It has some QTEs.  Yes.  I got sick of Delgado sarcastically saying "That was easy" to the point where I wondered if the game was co-sponsored by Staples.

But it's fun to shoot monsters.  It's fun to use powers (most of them anyway).  I mostly like the characters, broad action movie stereotypes as they are.  And it's only six hours.  It's nice to be able to play a story beginning to end in a day.

Also, I feel sorry for a lot of the reviewers who never realized how great Jones can be.  Legionary enemies must have sucked for them.

(I had to download legacy PhysX drivers to get the game to work.)

Uncharted 3 (0 of 5)

The disc wouldn't read.  Apparently this is a very common problem.  Oh well.  I heard 2 was the best one anyway.

Keepdead: Uncharted 2, Infamous 2, Resistance 3

written by Blain Newport on Friday, 17 June 2016

I quit my job, so I started digging in on the old PS3 games I bought and never got around to playing.

Uncharted 2 (4 of 5)

Nathan Drake goes off in search of ancient treasure again. I got bored and stopped part way through Uncharted 1 because it just didn't move. Uncharted 2 moves pretty well, with traversal, puzzles, combat, and talky / atmospheric bits to maintain variety.

The set piece I've heard podcasters mention multiple times is the train sequence. There are actually multiple train bits, but the main one has you fighting your way from back to front of a train moving from a jungle up into mountains. You fight on top and inside as the train is winding its way to its destination. The gamer's natural enemy (helicopters) attack. There are a lot of games with train levels. Hell, Blood had a train level. But Uncharted 2's goes the extra mile. It's an impressive technical achievement that almost sunk the game.

My favorite bit in the game was the village wander. Nathan is following a man who doesn't speak a language Drake knows through the man's village. You can make Nathan try to talk to people to see if maybe someone else speaks English. You can pet bulls. And when you see kids playing you can make a funny face at them. I think the first bit is done through proximity and the others through button presses but with no prompts. The lack of UI makes these interactions seem more natural and spontaneous.

I petted two bulls. One of them was a little out of the way, and I wondered if I should back track and make sure I got them all. There might be an achievement. But that started ruining the magic, so I let the thought evaporate and pressed on.

Infamous 2 (3 of 5)

Infamous is an open world super hero game where you can complete the story as a good or evil character. Much as with Uncharted, I just couldn't push myself to finish the first game in the series, but the sequel was entertaining enough that I saw it through. Part of that was the way they parceled out new abilities. By the time I completed the first game's first zone (of three, if I remember correctly) I felt like I'd seen all the powers and didn't feel like just clearing a bunch of new territory of jerks was going to be much fun. The second game has you unlocking new powers or new variations on current powers throughout. It still drags a bit, and that's with me skipping tons of rinse and repeat side content. They even added a mission builder for players to make their own rinse and repeat side content. Not helping.

Infamous 2 also has train bits. You have to rescue some people from circus cage train cars.

Resistance 3 (3 of 5)

Resistance 3 is an alternate history game where the Tunguska meteor of 1908 carried a virus that turned people into high tech alien monsters. As the name implies, things don't go well for the humans, so you're a grizzled resistance fighter striking back at our alien overlords. (Breaking the pattern, Resistance 2 was the entry I couldn't finish in this series.) Resistance 3 is not a bad game, but it feels like a throwback. The visuals are good for the time, but the basic design feels like a PS2 shooter, mostly because there's no regenerating health. You have to find green canisters which sometimes drop from enemies. For being the most important item in the game, they're small and easy to miss, often being obscured by the corpse of the enemy who dropped them.

Resistance 3's train bit involves fighting off a bunch of jerks in jeeps and trucks (way too many to be remotely believable) while you try to escape on a train. I stopped shooting for a bit and realized that many of the enemies chasing us would just crash and die all by themselves. It was weird.

Keepalive: Brütal Legend, Remember Me, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Cubetractor, The Walking Dead: Season 2

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 21 September 2014

Brütal Legend (4 of 5)

A roadie gets transported to a land made of heavy metal album covers and has to fight the evils oppressing its people.

It's a passable action game and a passable RTS with nice trappings. I turned the difficulty down to easy because the game parts, especially the RTS parts, just weren't very fun. And this is from a guy who finished Sacrifice (which also wasn't very fun). But driving around the crazy setting, listening to the licensed soundtrack was a unique and pleasant experience.

Remember Me (3 of 5)

Um. Yeah. Remember Me has a lot of craft put into it.

That's the Arc De Triomphe surrounded by run down housing and canals. It kind of sums up the game for me. The craft is very good, but none of it makes any sense. Paris will never build non-luxury housing around the Arc or let it become a slum. I don't want to get into spoilers, but the story has the same level of logical consistency. Someone had what they felt was a cool idea but didn't think it through. The combat system is a case in point. You build combos yourself, but after a certain point, there is one uber combo and you just go into the menu to tweak it's properties from time to time. At points in the game you alter people's memories. You have to find the right combination of alterations to make to get a desired outcome, but it's mostly guess and check. Also it's terrible when other people alter memories, but when you do it, it has no negative consequences. :P

Injustice: Gods Among Us (4 of 5)

a DC Comics fighting game from the makers of Mortal Kombat

That's Solomon Grundy pummeling Bane. I'm just enough of a DC nerd (Timm and Dini DCAU nerd, really) that that's a pretty good fight. Thankfully the mechanical foundation of the game is also pretty sound. The guys at work had been playing the game for months, and I'd played enough that when it went on sale I felt obliged to pick it up. I played through the story mode, which is just okay, but it's still fun to open up practice mode and mess with combos.

Cubetractor (3 of 5)

an adorable game where you play a robot that pulls cubes together to make structures and is powered by enthusiasm

The art's great and the gameplay doesn't get in the way. I don't really want a sequel though, because the puzzles that were challenging didn't make me feel smart or brave or otherwise good about solving them. I'm just not a puzzle game guy. If I'm solving hard puzzles, I'd rather be paid for it.

The Walking Dead: Season 2 (3 of 5)

I'd put a picture, but almost everything would be a spoiler. The Walking Dead games are more story than game. Your decisions don't really change anything. People die and betray and make terrible plans and blame everyone else for their mistakes. And even with the frustration of occasionally lousy combat sequences and not being given the choices I'd want because the plot needs things to go wrong, these games still do a better job of character building and storytelling than most of what's on the market. I suppose if that's really all I was interested in I'd go play text games, which never went away and have been having a renaissance since Twine came about. But the few I've tried, some of which were creative and well written, still just sort of lie there compared to the urgency of The Walking Dead.

Keepalive: Dark Scavenger, Jazzpunk, Marlow Briggs, Rochard

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 17 August 2014

Dark Scavenger (4 of 5)

Dark Scavenger is basically somebody's really weird D&D module / Fighting Fantasy book. Observe the character designs below and the choice offered.

Your choices may involve combat. They may not. They may earn you loot. They may not. At the same time as I've gotten used to the drip feeding of rewards in most games, I like feeling like my brain is at least semi-relevant to the proceedings.

The loot has it's own weird subsystem where you can choose to turn most pieces of loot into weapons, items, or companion characters. You have to make many of the choices without much information, but I always seemed to find ways to make it work and occasionally felt clever for finding ways to combine items and attacks.

For me the game succeeds on it's strangeness. It tries at world building and does okay. It tries at character building and does okay. It tries at a creative combat system and does okay. It tries to walk a line between seriousness and humor and does okay. But stuff like making a companion out of a toaster kept me wanting to see what craziness was next. And starting the game over with overpowered loot will let me see different choices and make for a fun "tourist mode" romp.

Jazzpunk (2 of 5)

Jazzpunk doesn't try to walk a line between seriousness and humor. It's mostly humor with as weird of undertones as they can manage.

Yeah. Humor. The ads for Jazzpunk are better than the content of Jazzpunk. They try, and there are some fun ideas in there. But it felt very plodding. Every gag was a discrete event that just sort of sat there. I suspect it's a combination of limited technical chops, limited resources, and partly the surreal vibe the game is shooting for.

I appreciate the effort and hope the dev learns and improves, but I just didn't feel this one was ready for prime time.

Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death (3 of 5)

Marlow Briggs was on sale for 99 cents during the last Steam sale. A God of War style game for 99 cents? I had to give it a shot.

Yep. That's a God of War style game all right. There are even some enemies that the player can beat into submission and ride around on. It's a direct lift, minus the gore and breasts, which I didn't miss at all.

And it's got some spectacle. They didn't have enough money to animate all the cut scenes so they do a sort of bullet time camera flyby. Those parts don't quite work, but for the price the production values are still ridiculous.

While it is just another character action game, and some of the death trap bits near the end kill the pace a bit, I loved seeing a positively portrayed minority as the hero. Marlow Briggs' character doesn't really get developed, but he still comes across as a likeable everyman hero who just happens to be black.

Rochard (3 of 5)

Rochard is the name of the main character, who is a miner. The game's writing is a bit better than that pun, mostly. And it's gameplay is a bit better than its writing.

I suppose I should have said space miner instead of just miner, but I don't know of any games about normal miners. There's certainly enough to learn in terms of the engineering, tools, and dangers to make a compelling game about normal mining, but to my knowledge no one's been willing to commit to it yet.

This game is a somewhat actiony / somewhat puzzley platformer that never really made me feel clever or excited, but introduced mechanics frequently enough and had enough of a story to keep me going. It also didn't hurt that I started catching up on Patrick Klepek's wonderful Giant Bomb's Interview Dump Truck podcasts during the puzzle sections, so your mileage may vary.

Keepalive: Xenoblade Chronicles, Stacking, Thief, Dark Scavenger, The Last Remnant

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 10 August 2014

Considering it's been three weeks, I haven't really played much. I had a lot of work and an internet outage. I still have a lot of work.

Xenoblade Chronicles (4 of 5)

I finally finished Xenoblade at a little over a hundred hours. The creatures and landscapes were great. The story and characters were above average. And the combat was decent. I wish the female characters had been stronger and had more respectable looking armor. Overall, the game was a really nice vacation. I still suspect I will eventually pick up a Wii U largely to play the sequel.

Stacking (3 of 5)

The art and aesthetic was great. A fair amount of the game itself felt too leisurely for its own good especially when there was backtracking.

Thief (3 of 5)

I didn't mind Thief, which I half expected to considering the reviews. The game let me feel sneaky, which was fun. But the lengthy animations which slowed down the action and the uninteresting characters which left me indifferent to the story tried to detract from that simple joy. It's a good thing I'm so simple.

Dark Scavenger

Dark Scavenger is a strange, comical, sci-fi, fantasy, point & click adventure RPG. The strangest part of the game is the loot system. Most loot you find can be "crafted" into a weapon, tool, or companion. And there are certain combats and hazards you can bypass if you have the right weapon, tool, or companion for them. It's novel.

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Novelty is fleeting. But it's necessary to keep everything from feeling worn out. I spent some more time with The Last Remnant, and the only thing that made me smile was the fact that one of the characters had a ridiculous stat increase.

Keepalive: A Bunch of Stuff I Don't Care About, Naruto, Stacking, Xenoblade Chronicles

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 20 July 2014

A Bunch of Stuff I Don't Care About

That's a bit harsh, but it's basically true. I finished Lifeless Planet, a game where you were supposed to be colonizing a planet full of life, but when you arrive it's a wasteland, and there are vintage Russian buildings there for some reason. It was fine but never really grabbed me.

Darkout and Windforge I played for a bit and immediately put down. I've played Terraria. I've played Minecraft. Starting at the bottom of a tech tree, mining copper and coal... no thanks. Plus both games have pretty bad visibility, Darkout because dark and Windforge because of it's attempt to give it's blocks some isometric perspective. I only ever died from falling in both.

Abyss Odyssey is a new 2D brawler by Ace Team, who did the bizarre 3D fighter Zeno Clash. The fighting in Zeno Clash was never perfect, but I remember it being better than Abyss Odyssey, where certain attacks seem to come from nowhere and the whole thing just doesn't feel like it has any weight to it.

I probably spent the most time with Reign Maker, a match 3 fantasy game. But that's mostly because it's easy to play while listening to podcasts. I'm not really a fan of match 3 games. I think the last one I was into was Wario's Woods for the NES, and that's mostly just because it's the closest Toad's been to the badass he was in Super Mario 2.

I think part of the reason I'm not being particularly patient with these games is because I finally organized my Steam list to show "backlog" games at the top. I had a little over thirty, and now I'm a bit under thirty. Some of these are games I had laying around for years and was just never in the mood for. So now they'll get played for maybe half an hour and summarily dismissed because they don't have a great feel right away. :P

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 Full Burst

I'm never writing that out again.

But speaking of great feel...

Nothing is even happening in this picture. Naruto and Sasuke are just flipping around the environment for no reason. But it makes simple maneuvering for position look flashy and delightfully absurd.

Sort of like throwing exploding clones of yourself at someone.

Or being rewarded for doing well with a golden pig statue.

Yeah. It's my kind of nonsense.

I won't give the cut scenes as high of marks. Pacing is often weak. And so far the female characters are mostly sex objects or hopelessly devoted to a male character. :\

And the lack of any tutorial also put me off initially. I had to go into practice mode and look at the poorly implemented (two moves per page) command list to figure things out.

But it's made by CyberConnect2 (who also developed Asura's Wrath) so the fighting is serviceable and the set piece battles are suitably huge and ridiculous. I'll keep playing it.

Stacking

It's a cute puzzle game where you play a nesting doll that gets inside of other nesting dolls and uses their special abilities to solve puzzles.

And it's very pretty.

Xenoblade Chronicles

It's still there in the background and nice when I'm in the mood for something fairly low key.

Keepalive: Redshirt, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Garry's Mod, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 6 July 2014

Redshirt

I thought there would be more creative writing to come out of Redshirt. I certainly enjoyed writing that previous post. Trying to explain the actions of a character I was playing as though she was a real person and not just me pressing buttons was surprisingly rewarding. But the truth was that after that first session, I pretty much gave up on romance. I still had some friends to hang out with. But they died on away missions and were replaced with friends in higher positions who could help me get promoted.

In the end I had my tray table up and my seat back in the full upright position.

Generally speaking I can't recommend the game. I got messages from characters who had died on away missions. The scroll wheel didn't work except in weird sections of some windows which made navigating the interface a pain. I seemed to get random stat bonuses and penalties for no reason at times. But it gave me one good creative writing project.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Here we see a picture of the most important character in The Bureau.

Here is a close up.

I bought The Bureau to wear a fedora and shoot aliens. I think the designers knew that at some level because the last thing the main character does before the player takes control is put on that hat.

There are even mechanics for the hat getting blown off your head by nearby explosions. And you can go recover said hat. No hat left behind!

Unfortunately there comes a point, fairly early on, where you switch to a special forces sweater and can't wear the hat any more, even though it's still sitting in your office, taunting you.

Sadistic.

As for the rest of the game, it's middling. I turned it down to easy because I got tired of having to go revive my idiotic AI companions. There's a decent twist near the end and a decision that you don't know the ramifications of until it's too late. But I won't miss this one if there's no sequel.

Garry's Mod

Chris and I decided to muck about with Garry's Mod a tiny bit. Here we see Chris, who bolted a seat to the inside of a bath tub, taking a ride as I carry him around with my physics gun.

We later attached rockets to tubs and skidded hither and yon. The craziest part was Chris building a basket and flying us around by lifting it with the physics gun while we were standing inside it.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

That used to be a hatchback. But using Revengeance's slicing physics, it is now rubble. Basically Revengeance is a stylish action game with slicing. It's delightful so far and makes me wish Bayonetta (which I suspect uses the same engine) would also make it to PC. I tried to play Bayonetta on the 360, but after playing DMC4 and the DMC reboot at 1080 and 60fps, Bayonetta felt blurry and clunky.

I suppose fighting a Revengeance boss that uses a spear made out of robot arms will have to be crazy enough... for now.

This is mostly a game for fans of the genre (me) and Metal Gear completionists (absolutely not me). The game doesn't mind killing the player early on and doesn't explain as much of the mechanics as it probably should, so I suspect many people wouldn't enjoy it. At some level it's trial and error, but there's enough awesome stuff so far that I'm willing to forgive.

Keepalive: Summer Sales, Papers Please, Old Stuff

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 22 June 2014

Summer Sales

GOG.com and Steam are having their summer sales. So far I have bought 13 games for less than the price of a single new console game. I even played one of them!

Papers, Please

This woman claims to be a diplomat, entering Arstotzka for an official meeting. After taking her documents I switched over to my rule book to double check that the seal on her Diplomatic Authorization is legit. Switching back to the DA, I see that it is legitimate.

Having checked that the name and ID# on the DA matches her passport, I'll need to ask her why the picture on the passport isn't a very good match. I'll probably need to fingerprint her, but she's a diplomat, so she'll probably raise a stink. Plus I also need to shuffle her DA higher onto the screen because I don't see Arstotzka listed.

If she doesn't want to give up her fingerprints or Arstotzka is not on her DA, I'm going to have to decide to deny or accept her passport, either of which may get me in huge trouble. The former because she might be legit, the latter because she might be a smuggler or terrorist. A good day is when nothing I do makes the next day's newspaper.

Oh, and my entire family except for my uncle is dead because I haven't been fast enough at my job or corrupt enough to take the bribes which would have let me afford the food, medicine, and heating that could have kept them alive.

And my uncle's very sick.

I played the game for two hours, got one of the bad endings, and happily accepted that as my fate because that let me stop playing.

Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade feels more and more like a single player MMO as I move forward. I spent most of this morning on gem crafting. I spent the afternoon earning faction rep. Admittedly, earning faction rep in Xenoblade is better than World of Warcraft because the missions are unique and I get a fuller picture of the relationships between everyone in the colony as I progress. But it still feels repetitive.

But I'm still doing it.

I mean, I could just go back to fighting the biggest monsters around and progressing the story, but tons and tons of work have obviously gone into these ancillary systems: gem crafting, faction rep, colony rebuilding, party relationship building.

Gem crafting feels fairly rewarding. If I do it right I get upgrades above my level that let me heal every time I use a special ability or deal more damage with a particular element. Then I remember that in the time I spent browsing to find the crystals with the abilities I wanted, deciding which characters to use, and stepping through the six or so menu clicks it takes to engage the process, then holding down the button to fast forward through the step by step process of firing the gems and stepping through the five or so clicks it takes to finish a single iteration of the process... Leveling probably would have been a better use of my time.

I'm getting the feeling that Xenoblade is most fully enjoyed if you're interested in a virtual vacation with a game on the side. And the worst part is, I kind of like it. The low fidelity of the Wii graphics make it a fuzzy vacation, but it's still pretty amazing. Part of me (a small part, but still) is considering buying a Wii U just for the HD sequel to this game. I watch these thirty seconds and am pretty psyched. Plus, if it's as long as the original, the console plus the game will amortize out to $3 an hour. :P

But I also have 12 other games to play just from these summer sales, not counting my existing backlog.

After playing Papers, Please, I can't find it in me to think of a lack of free time to play games as a "problem".

Keepalive: Orcs Must Die 2, Sniper Elite V2, Wolfenstein (2009), Xenoblade Chronicles

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 15 June 2014

Orcs Must Die 2

Chris and I killed more orcs. How many?

Lots.

The point was to try and experiment with traps and weapons we almost never use, but you know what? Other traps and weapons stink. There are more than a few pretty useless traps and weapons in Orcs Must Die 2.

This particular one is not useless. The orcs attack the one on the right, thinking it's the one on the left. It both slows them down and blows them up. Personally, I don't see the resemblance, but maybe orcs don't like Travolta.

Sniper Elite V2

During the week I was sick Rebellion made Sniper Elite V2 free for a day to try and drum up extra interest in Sniper Elite 3. V2 isn't bad. You mark guys with your binoculars and try to take them out stealthily so they don't mob you. You can also lay explosive traps, shoot during loud noises so enemies can't tell where the shot came from, and slow your breathing for super accurate long distance shots. Those long distance shots treat you to a slow motion bullet cam where you see your enemy's internal organs get violated.

Here's a Nazi officer taking one in the lung, I think. It's probably equal parts gratifying and gruesome, depending on the shot difficulty. I think there's an option to turn the bullet cam off, but I'm hoping there's an option to skip it with a key press, so I can enjoy the ones I worked hard for and skip the mundane ones.

Wolfenstein

I actually don't have much more to say about Wolfenstein. I'm trying to use the more exotic weapons. I'm such a pack rat that they don't see much use. Regardless, it's a bad time to be a Nazi around these (virtual) parts.

Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade still hasn't really grabbed me. I'm trying to avoid side quests to keep the momentum going. I pick them all up so that if I accidentally do one in the course of advancing the plot, I get free stuff out of it. The game has enough of a plot that it feels worth advancing. So that's something.

There are a lot of choices regarding gear and abilities in the game that I can see how min-maxers would fine a lot of stuff to experiment with. Do I have Shulk stick to sneaky DPS and have Reyn tank, or do I jack up Shulks agility so he can dodge tank and let Reyn try his hand at DPS?

I think the designs (scenery, characters, and creatures) are the best part of the game. For being on the Wii, the game manages to convey an amazing sense of scale. A sequel was announced for the WiiU, and it'll be beautiful.

Keepalive: EDF 2025, Orcs Must Die 2, The Last Story, Wolfenstein (2009)

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 25 May 2014

EDF 2025

The game is still fun enough to experiment with that I keep firing it up. There are still weapons I haven't tried, which is fairly insane.

Orcs Must Die 2

Chris and I finished the main campaign. I may have gone a little trap happy at times.

The Last Story

Listening to Garnett talk about it on the latest John and Garnett: First for Gamers Podcast, I decided to pick up The Last Story, a Japanese RPG for the Wii. Here's a bit of video to give you the gist.

It's sort of an RPG and sort of a third person action game. I haven't really kept up with RPGs at all. They take too long. But I'm enjoying this enough that I've already picked up The Last Remnant and am leaning toward trying out Dragon Age at some point. The fact that the second Dragon Age didn't pick up the story from the first, and was widely reviled for being a tarted up budget game in full price clothing kept me away from the series.

Also the demo for DA2 was kind of a slog. I'm liking the combat in The Last Story much more.

Wolfenstein (2009)

Since I'm not playing the new Wolfenstein, I thought I'd go play the next most recent one again. I really like that game. The DooM 3 engine had issues, but the physics made for some delightfully hectic explosions.

There's well over two dozen bits of debris bouncing around that room. It's pretty great.

And while I know Conan answered the question "what is best in life" differently, I suspect it's because kiping Nazi gold wasn't a thing yet.

I may occasionally be heard to exclaim Nazi Gooooold, like a Spanish soccer announcer as I loot. Part of my fondness may also come from this web comic.

Unfortunately, there was some sort of rights snafu with the game and no one can buy a new copy any more. I know a lot of people didn't like the 2009 game because it didn't provide multiplayer remotely on par with Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but I think it's a fine romp.

Also, while I do think there were some kind of shenanigans going on with the Steam reviews for the new Wolfenstein game, I will eventually play it. I'll just wait for a deeper discount than I would have otherwise. Call it the bad PR penalty.

Keepalive: (Hammerwatch, The Real Texas, The Usual Suspects)

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 18 May 2014

Hammerwatch

Aw. Isn't it cute? Look at duh widdle bats!

I just wish there was more to it. Hammerwatch was pretty dull, even on my first play where I accidentally warped three levels ahead and didn't know it.

The Real Texas

The Real Texas is a charming adventure / action game with a silly, blocky style.

I like the idea of it, but the traversal gets fairly tedious and some of the puzzles are a bit opaque. If there'd been a walkthrough I probably would have finished it.

The Usual Suspects

I haven't been playing much EDF 2025. Terraria's safe, for now. I've also finally reached the point where I lose a fair amount. It's usually just a matter of picking the right tools for the job at hand.

I found a Ranger weapon that's pretty fabulous and look forward to finding a use for it. I'm also using one of the Air Raider's robot suits to good effect lately, so they're not all crap. :)

Chris and I continued on with Orcs Must Die 2. I found out that I don't like the blade staff, but am pretty fond of the flame bracers. Also we got an award for one of the levels that was pretty amusing.

Dawwww. So sweet!

Keepalive: (Hearthstone, EDF 2025, Orcs Must Die 2)

written by Blain Newport on Monday, 12 May 2014

Current Gaming

I haven't been playing a lot this week. I tried playing some more Hearthstone on Saturday. It seemed like a good low impact thing to do while listening to podcasts. But I got stung again by the computer stomping me just when I'd gotten some hope by drawing and immediately playing a card I'd never seen before. I uninstalled. I I'll try Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 for my digital knitting this week.

I maybe averaged one level of EDF 2025 a day over the week. The unlocks slowed down, which cooled my interest, which made the unlocks slow down more. I may wait until co-op to pick it back up again. I'm torn whether to try co-op on normal or hard difficulty. Normal is probably more sensible, but there are some great weapons you don't see until hard.

Chris and I played some more Orcs Must Die 2 on Wednesday. We tried our hand at Endless Mode, and while we only survived fourteen waves I think we each got eight or nine skulls, which probably makes it the most efficient use of ones time for upgrading. Also the trinket that summons bone golems is pretty boss (at least until the armored ogres start showing up at which point only kiting is boss).

I took a quick peek at Awesomenauts, since it came in the Humble Co-op Bundle. Meh. Damage spongey 2D combat may be more tactical, but it's also less exciting.

Upcoming Gaming

I think I'll be taking it easy this week. I might go back to Dungeon Keeper 1 for a bit, or take a look at a couple of side scrollers from the co-op bundle (Aces Wild and Rocketbirds).

Gaming News

Epic Games has been undergoing big changes. First they drastically lowered the price of Unreal Engine 4 licensing to compete with Unity. Now they've announced that Unreal Tournament 4 will be released as a free game, where users can build and sell content. Epic will take a cut of those sales, which ideally will pay for their development efforts. I wish them luck. Finding the balance between providing enough content to get people hooked on the game, but not so much that they aren't interested in buying more is a fine line to walk.