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.

Review: Yakuza 4

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 24 July 2016

Yakuza 4 (3 of 5)

I enjoyed Yakuza 4.  The focus of the game was around having four different characters and telling their interwoven stories.  I liked the characters.  I liked learning their somewhat different fighting styles.  I played the game on easy because the engine's still pretty clunky and I don't want to bother retrying tough fights.  I just want to see what's next.

I don't really mean the story, though.  It was alright.  It tied into earlier games in nicely unexpected ways.  And it felt easier to follow than previous games which is an achievement for having multiple protagonists and timelines in the mix.  But women are treated poorly, and there's a tremendously bad plot twist.

I more wanted to see what random nonsense would pop up on the streets.  The street level crime wasn't as varied or interesting as previous games, but there was still random stuff that I did enjoy, like working at a dojo to train fighters or helping some homeless guys take care of some stray cats (though the actual game play parts of that line were mostly tedious).  I could go on, but that'd spoil the best stuff in the game.

It's got enough rough edges that it's hard to recommend (except to Japanophiles I suppose), but I enjoyed it.

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.

Review: Life Is Strange

written by Blain Newport on Friday, 15 July 2016

Life Is Strange (3 of 5)

Life Is Strange is an adventure game that lets you rewind time to change your decisions.  I really enjoyed some of the theatrics / drama, and the puzzles were mostly good.  The time mechanics allow crazy things to happen.  But ultimately the characters are a little forced / random, and the ending blows.  But there were parts of a great experience in there.

Reviews: Transformers: Devastation, Dead Rising 3

written by Blain Newport on Wednesday, 6 July 2016

Transformers: Devastation (4 of 5)

 
I'm old enough to have had Transformers as a kid.  I watched the original show back when it was new.  So I may get more out of pressing right bumper to transform and hear that iconic noise than other people.

But as much of a kick as I get out of the nostalgia, I get more of a kick out of the feeling of control Transformers: Devastation gives.  Multiple times I found myself giggling with joy as I realized how much power and mobility the game allowed for.

In some ways the game goes overboard with options, with random weapon drops, four weapon slots per character, a weapon combining system, a random perk system / money sink, and experience points and credits.  Plus you have six different characters with subtle differences (except for Grimlock, the dinosaur robot, who is more distinctive).  At some level I don't care because you don't need to mess with most of it to complete the game on normal difficulty.  But it still seems like a lot of busy work and time spent in menus for an action game.

I suppose it was intended to distract from the fact that the game isn't long on content.  There's a city map you spend a lot of time in, a high tech map you spend a lot of time in, and a handful of set pieces, but that's about it.  And while you do fight a fair amount of named enemies, you spend a lot of time battling generic enemies and the named enemies are all re-used.

I probably would have felt cheated if I'd paid full price, but as it is, I had a great time.

Dead Rising 3 (4 of 5)

The Dead Rising games are games about killing zombies.

In silly outfits.

And, since the second game, using bizarre cobbled together weapons like this car battery sledgehammer combo.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, wandering around an evacuated downtown full of zombies is pretty amazing.  There's a hunting shop.  Let's get some guns.  I need food and I don't see a restaurant... maybe the gas station?  I wandered into somebody's house and am now wearing the basketball jersey they had hanging in the closet.  It's like the child's dream of getting free run of a toy store, only more violent.

It's kind of a shame when the gamey elements take over, but I like the other game that's in here too.  At some level I know it's just FnF (fight and fetch), but it didn't really bother me.  Between the weapons, vehicles, secrets, and learning the town, there was always enough to keep me feeling like an explorer.  Plus zombies.

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.

Review: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

written by Blain Newport on Wednesday, 22 June 2016

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (3 of 5)

ACB is not a bad game.  But it mostly just adds busy work.

The traversal mechanics are the same.  They're just as boring when you're scaling the umpteenth tower.  And they're just as frustrating when the character does things that make no sense, wasting the player's time.

The combat is mostly the same.  It seems easier, but it's been long enough that maybe I just forgot.  They add a bunch of weapons and tools you don't really need.

The main addition to the combat is the ability to call in trainee assassins with a single button press.  I didn't need it much, so I didn't use it much.  But a couple times when I was trying to tail or chase down a target and just needed some guards out of the way, it was pretty cool to be able to have my recruits jump them and get back to the task at hand.  It was less cool when they wouldn't despawn and I had to revert to an earlier checkpoint, but open world games are always janky.

They were also one of the sources of busy work as they needed to be sent on missions every ten minutes or so to get enough XP to level up.  As idle / incremental games go, it was pretty bare bones.  But I still became kind of attached, trying to make sure I didn't give my first two assassins (Paulo AKA Grape Face and Carlotta AKA Blondie) too many babysitting missions and being happy to see them kicking butt when called into to main game.

The other main source of busy work was the economy.  Buy businesses to get an income to buy more businesses.  Invest in businesses you already own to potentially make money but also to earn trade goods which you otherwise only get out of chests and off of one enemy type and are required to complete "merchant quests" to get some of the best gear, which you don't really need because the game isn't that hard.  Blah.

And don't take my statement that the game isn't hard to mean I want it harder.  My character often didn't respond as he should in combat, so harder combat would only add frustration.

To sum up, recruits were kind of cool.  The rest of the game was a dish twice reheated with a side of busy work.

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.

Review: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

written by Blain Newport on Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Black Flag (4 of 5)

I feel a little guilty giving Black Flag a 4 of 5, so let me just say I'm very glad Ubisoft was willing to take such a big risk making a pirate game with such a large budget. I'm sure the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies made this game possible, but it was still bold. Age of sail gaming is such a niche genre I haven't touched it since the remake of Sid Meier's Pirates!, which came out ten years ago. And the sailing was my favorite part of Black Flag.

For one thing, it's gorgeous.

I mean really gorgeous. They have light coming through the sails with the other sails casting shadows. My video card was working hard. I could hear the fans revving up. But it was for a good cause.

Here we see some of the tall ships of England and Spain in conflict. I loved big fights like these because I could usually pick off weakened ships at the edges.

And here is the craziest thing that happened during my play-through. I attacked an island fortress (I think I may have been chased there by enemy ships.) in the middle of a giant storm with multiple waterspouts. Trying to keep speed so the fortress couldn't get a bead on me while avoiding the waterspouts and firing volleys as I rolled up and down the huge swells was wonderful madness.

I did find the story missions (especially the instant fail stealth parts) the weakest part of the game, but I didn't dislike them as much as others. I haven't played an AC game since AC2, so I'm probably less annoyed with the persistent problems (scripts that don't fire, forcing reloads and deaths due to bugs) than people who've been enduring them all along.

My review scores are largely based on whether I think the experience was worth my time, with the highest score reserved for games I'd love to play again. Ubisoft games have so many collectibles that staring over from scratch is usually too daunting for me to be enthusiastic about it. But with AC4, I'd consider it.

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.

Catching Up

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 20 April 2014

I continue to play games. I just haven't felt the urge to write about them in a good while.

Diablo 3 (3 of 5)

Game not pictured because it doesn't really look like much.

Since they fixed the loot system and reduced the cost, I figured it was finally time to try the premiere action RPG.

It's okay.

I can only imagine what a disappointment it would have been with the auction house where instead of finding great loot you just find stuff to sell then have to spend every trip back to town scrolling through auction listings. Bleh.

As it is the game still isn't really grabbing me. As a melee class the biggest threat was groups of elite enemies with lava or toxic abilities that made it hurt to get close to them. Difficulty spikes determined by a random number generator leave me pretty cold.

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EDF 2025 (4 of 5)

Game not pictured because I don't have an HDMI capture setup.

EDF 2017 was a budget game. EDF 2025 doesn't actually add or change a huge amount and was priced at $50.

For me, it was worth every penny.

In case I haven't properly introduced it before, Earth Defense Force is a campy game about defending the earth from hordes of enemies. Dead Rising, with it's oceans of zombies is the only game I can think of that puts as many enemies on screen as EDF. But the enemies of EDF are giant ants and spiders and robots and space ships, giving it a bit of the feel of a 50s monster movie. The hammy histrionics of the voice acting confirm that none of this is to be taken too seriously.

Beneath the silly trappings is a simple loot chase. Shoot bugs. Grab armor crates to increase health and weapon crates to get random weapons. More difficult levels give better weapons. The weapons themselves can be pretty wacky. Grenades that don't travel far enough for you to get out of the blast radius, close range weapons with reload times guaranteed to get you killed if you don't take out all of your opposition in one magazine, weapons that fire in two directions, neither of which is straight; etc. Working around these limitations (throwing the grenade from higher ground so it travels farther, carrying a more practical backup weapon to switch to after unloading the first one, and maneuvering opponents into the fire pattern of a multi-directional gun) makes the player feel very clever.

I could go on, but I'd rather just go play some more.

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Goat Simulator (3 of 5)

Here I am licking a bucket.


Here I am getting hit by a car, still with my bucket.


Here I am, struggling internally with whether to trash this party, still with my bucket.


Goat Simulator is basically a silly physics toy where you can knock stuff about and jump around and then push a button to make a goat noise. There's a bit more to it than that, but just a bit.

Keepalive - Metro: Last Light, The Swapper, Saints Row 4, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, The Walking Dead

written by Blain Newport on Thursday, 12 September 2013

I have recovered from post-PAX depression and been playing some games. :)

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Metro: Last Light (3 of 5)

I feel like there's no going back from Stalker.  There's nothing quite like exploring those worlds.  The Metro games feel like the amusement park versions.  I respect that a huge amount of polish and art goes into them.

But those type of worlds feel so much more amazing when I'm exploring them for myself.  The linear story is never going to be as good for me personally.  I'm the guy who stopped playing Fallout 3 when the big climactic end battle started.

I think I'd play Stalker: Call of Pripyat over any open world FPS at this point.  Well, maybe Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon if I felt like something light.

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The Swapper (3 of 5)

I don't know why I keep playing puzzle games.  I don't care about puzzle games.  I'd heard very good things about the trappings of the game, it's premise and atmosphere.  I didn't care.  There's no investment in any of it.  Again, I admire the craft, but there's nothing enduring there.

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Saints Row 4 (4 of 5)

I don't really feel like reviewing Saints Row 4.  But I guess I can't avoid it.  It's fan service to the Nth degree.  Some of it was pandering to the point that it made no sense, but I appreciated most of it.

Saints Row 2 will always have the best stories.

The super hero aspect works.  It's silly fun.  The most unique element is the ability to run through a GTA style world at absurd speeds.  I recommend never buying the Tornado upgrade, as it makes weaving through traffic less fun (and you can't turn it off).

Prototype is probably my favorite open world super hero game, which is sad because Hulk: Ultimate Destruction with an upgraded engine would probably instantly take back the crown.  Open world super hero games haven't come very far considering how big super heroes have been in pop culture.

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Other Stuff

I got bored enough with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow that I'm not going to bother playing through it.  The boss battles so far have been awful Shadow of the Colossus rip-offs, total wastes of time.  And the premise of killing the evil masters to gain their powers just reminds me how much better Soul Reaver is than this game, hell how much better Mega-Man 2 and 3 are than this game. :P

I can't seem to find my old save game for The Walking Dead, so I'm playing through it again, repeating my decisions.  It's interesting to pick up some different conversations that I never heard the first time.  I find myself seeing other characters in a different light more than I expected to.  I intend to stick to the decisions I made the first time through, but we'll see how I feel when the times come.

Review: Saints Row: The Third

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 20 Rowvember, 2011

I don't really do reviews anymore, but I felt this was worth coming out of retirement for.

Saints Row: The Third

Developer: Volition
Platform: PC
US Release: Rowvember 2011
Genre: Third Person Action
Price Paid: $50 (pre-ordered July 15th, 2011)
My Score: 4 of 5

Saints Row 2 was a great game. While GTA was going serious, Saints Row was going crazy. It had missions where you drive around a septic truck and spray poop everywhere and make huge insurance claims by getting flung hundreds of feet by freeway traffic. But it somehow matched that craziness to a brutal story of murder and revenge that played things surprisingly straight. That game had a lot of issues, especially the PC port. But what it accomplished was amazing.

Saints Row: The Third does not fill those shoes, but it's a very fun game. For me the reason it does not measure up boils down to one word: mythology. The Saints are larger than life. But SR3 takes some of them out of the picture in unsatisfying ways and changes the personalities of others to make them unrecognizable.

That might have been okay if there had been colorful, dastardly villains to focus on, but there aren't. The best major villain in SR3 doesn't stack up to the weakest major villain in SR2. There are wonderful new homies in the game, but considering how quickly the old ones were discarded, it's hard to get attached.

So with all this complaining, why is it still a 4 out of 5? Because there's still a bunch of crazy, fun stuff to do. The shooting's better than GTA's will ever be. There are some ridiculously overpowered and entertaining weapons to use. The driving is fast and fun. Some of the scenarios are hilariously absurd. And you can experience it all with a buddy in co-op. And while there are still tech issues on PC, the game runs very well (until it crashes so badly I have to reboot :P).



Heavily armed strippers are by no means the craziest opponents you will fight in SR3.

Quick Takes

written by Blain Newport on Wednesday, 22 September, 2010

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (3 of 5) is by Frictional Games. You might remember me mentioning the Penumbra games a while back. I appreciate that they're an independent studio with limited resources, but when I played Amnesia, I couldn't help but feel it's the same game they've made twice already. If you haven't played any of them, the first time's pretty exciting. They combine simple puzzles with insanity effects and monsters you can't possibly beat. It's tense. But I've seen it before, and the monster encounters became far too predictable.

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Recettear (3 of 5) is a simple dungeon delve combined with running a shop. It's a nice idea. Balance hack and slash with buy low / sell high. Neither side of the game has much depth to it. And the two sides also don't relate in any interesting ways. But it's a cute grind that I can use to keep my hands busy while I listen to a podcast. It's digital knitting.

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Star Wars Battlefront II (3 of 5) was on sale for $5 on Steam. That's probably about the right price. It's not up to Battlefield 1942 standards. But the scope of the campaign was pretty impressive. From Geonosis to Hoth you fight with the 501st clone division. The campaign gets way too hard. The feel, feedback, and sound is third rate. But I paid $5 and shot some battle droids, so it was good enough.

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I still should finish Cryostasis, but I know it's going to be another 3 of 5, so I'm not too motivated.

Wii-valanche

written by Blain Newport on Thursday, 26 August, 2010

For no good reason, I got caught up on some "core games" on the Wii recently. Time for some mini-reviews!

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No More Heroes 2

3 of 5

Let's look at my thoughts on the first game...

Hmm. No plot to speak of. Amusing mini-games that quickly become a waste of time. A fun ride, but not worth the grind.

I'd say that also pretty much sums of the sequel as well. It has a tiny bit more plot, but not so you'd notice / care. The mini-games are a bit better, but still get old, largely because the first one you open is the most effective way to get cash. Luckily you don't need to grind unless you're committed to buying every new piece of clothing available in each chapter. I actually did buy all the clothes for a few levels, trying to be true to Travis' superficial character, before I got bored.

While No More Heroes 2 improved a bit, it isn't enough. The combat is still mediocre, often ineffectively communicating what it wants from the player. The mini-games don't hold up. The story, even as a metaphor for gaming culture, made its point in the first game. It's still fun to see some of the crazy stuff, but I feel pretty done with No More Heroes as a franchise.

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Mad World

4 of 5

I'd heard horrible things about Mad World being repetitive. And it can be. The game tells you up front that if you want to get the most points from killing a guy you should trap him (usually in a spare tire or garbage can), impale him with a street sign, and kill him at one of the many environmental killamajigs in the level. While all this is true, the game isn't about points per kill. It's about points within a certain amount of time, so as long as your mindful of opportunities to get more points by hurling a guy into a passing train or stuffing him into a burning barrel, you'll do fine.

The plot is a waste of time, and the mini-games / driving segments are pretty weak, but the combat was just enough to keep me entertained and punched up a notch with the occasional waggle fest. Mad World is my favorite action game on the Wii.

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Red Steel 2

3 of 5

I had to buy a Wii Motion Plus for this? Even if sword strikes didn't simply fail to work occasionally, the combat would be pretty lackluster. Most fights boiled down to block, counter; finishing move. They moves feel and look okay, but outside from learning a new finisher once in a while, there wasn't enough variety to keep the game interesting. NecroVision's combo mechanic puts this game to shame.

The story and other activities in the game are so worthless that by the time this sentence is over I'll have spent too much effort talking about them.

Reviews: BioShock 2, NecroVision

written by Blain Newport on Wednesday, 30 June, 2010

BioShock 2

Developer: 2K Marin
Platform: PC
US Release: February 2010
Genre: First Person Shooter
Price Paid: $15
My Score: 3 of 5

It's more BioShock. I would say it dilutes the wonder of the first game, but the first game already did that by overstaying it's welcome and having a pretty weak ending. It's still a decent progression of getting and using new weapons and powers. But that's its own problem.

BioShock 2 suffers from an abundance of inventory. A lot of games streamline inventory by limiting what the character can carry, but BioShock still lets you carry eight weapons (with three different ammo types each) and eight special powers at once. Also the powers reorder themselves when you upgrade them or get new ones. In the later stages I felt like I spent more time managing my arsenal than playing the game. And having a tough fight because you forgot you left a certain gun loaded with the wrong ammo is no fun.

And the interface to organize and buy things wasn't the best. I tried using the scroll wheel on a menu and it scrolled the menu out of view. This is definitely a rough around the edges port.

The collectivist take on the first game's theme did nothing for me. I think that's largely because I never felt included. For someone who thinks the common good and larger family is all, the idea that the villain never tries to offer you a place in the organization feels weird. I think they missed an opportunity there.

SPOILER SECTION (highlight to read)
The bits near the end where you get to fight alongside your daughter are cool, not so much for the fact that the AI is good but because it feels like my decision to be nice to the little sisters and judge some opponents as redeemable and some not shaped her personality. I will never play the game again because that's probably a really easy illusion to tear down, and I like it in place.

Also the good ending involves you dying and living on, literally, inside your daughter, seeing through her eyes. It was probably supposed to be heart warming, but the thought occurred to me that she's entering sexual maturity. That's messed up.
END SPOILER SECTION

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NecroVision

Developer: The Farm 51
Platform: PC
US Release: February 2009
Genre: First Person Shooter
Price Paid: $4
My Score: 4 of 5

The demo of NecroVision was pretty bad. The combination of mediocre performance, punishing load times, and punishing gameplay was not promising. But the combo based, melee heavy combat system intrigued me, so I was willing to risk the four dollar purchase. Initially I was very pleased. The performance was great (especially when I turned the resolution down a bit). The load times were still a bit long, but bearable. And the gameplay was so much easier I wondered if the developers hadn't released a baby version for Americans. I still wonder about that.

So the bad stuff was gone and the good stuff was still in. I could still charge across a room, stab a guy with my bayonet and kick him away, knock another guy down with my rifle then shoot him, then switch to my knife to kill a guy with an end over end circus throw, all while getting powered up with combo energy for doing it. When it's going well, NecroVision is the game Bulletstorm wants to be when it grows up.

If it wasn't for some pacing problems, save game bugs that lost me hours of progress, map bugs that forced me to reload a few times, some tedious flying sequences, and a final area with lousy visibility and enemies that aren't fun to fight, I would have given it a five and told you to go buy it already. As it is, I'll probably play the fun levels a few more times and jump into the sequel.

Review: Mass Effect 2

written by Blain Newport on Friday, March 19, 2010

Developer: BioWare
Platform: PC
US Release: January 2010
Genre: Third Person Action
Price Paid: $30
My Score: 4 of 5

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The Short Version

Mass Effect 2 is much more consistent, streamlined experience than its predecessor. Interesting stuff happens all the way through it. Whereas the first game was mediocre with an ending I loved, Mass Effect 2 is good throughout.

Obligatory Pretties

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The Long Version

Theatrics

I came to Mass Effect 2 with some preconceptions based on marketing and podcast discussions of the game. It was supposed to be like The Empire Strikes Back, the dark middle chapter to the series. You were going to go on a crazy suicide mission where anyone could die. These turned out to be exaggerations, but they improved my experience.

The stakes were always higher for me in Mass Effect 2. This was partly because I knew my team could die, and I didn't know how that would work. I also knew that as a Paragon, I was going to make sure my team made it back. As if that wasn't enough, I knew my decisions would matter in Mass Effect 3. I wasn't just going on a suicide mission determined to not lose a single person. I was secretly preparing the entire galaxy for war.

The characterization is mostly well acted and directed and the dialog is often witty and memorable, but technical decisions blunt the effect. The overall structure of the game is stilted. Plot point. Recruit quests. Plot point. Loyalty quests. Plot point. Game over. It turns life changing events into items on a checklist. Additionally, the choice between Renegade or Paragon isn't much of a choice at all. Going back and forth never seems like the right thing to do. And the inclusion of a neutral choice is usually pointless. It often felt like they could have just had you pick a path in the opening menu and been done with it.

Mechanics

Mass Effect 2 is largely simplified. Instead of sorting through a huge list of duplicate guns, you buy upgrades for your existing guns. You scan planets from orbit instead of driving around on them. Scanning is less interesting than driving, but negotiating rough terrain was a pain and I think scanning takes less time. Then again, I was playing as an engineer who could buy research for less minerals, so I didn't have to gather as much as someone playing another class. The interface is also more streamlined, but there are still weird quirks (inconsistent menu navigation, being told not to rebind keys because upcoming DLC won't be able to handle it, teammates switching to new guns even if they're less effective, and having to manually import save games because the game won't bother looking in the default Mass Effect 1 save directory) that make it feel like sub-par design / PC porting.

Combat is somewhat improved. Your AI buddies will still occasionally stand in the open until the enemy kills them. But they won't shoot you in the back as much while they do it. And finally, there's locational damage when you shoot people. It didn't mean much for my engineer, but I think my soldier will get some use out of it. I'm still not huge on the pace of combat in these games. I'm more of an action guy and the encouragement to pause and general pace of the game rarely pushes my buttons. But when the galaxy is at stake, I'll tolerate it. :)


Addendum

I would like to nominate Mass Effect 2 for "Worst Use of Tricia Helfer in an Entertainment Product". The character she plays has virtually no emotional range. Her voice is processed to the point of being unrecognizable. Why cast a capable actress for such a generic role?