Author: Jeremy Voss

Musician, wanna-be writer, suburban husband and father. I'll occasionally tweet from @couchshouts. You can find me on XBL, PSN and Steam as JervoNYC.

kickstart the jams

I’ve got things I want to say about Final Fantasy XIII-2, and also Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, and a few more words on Skyrim and the 1.4 patch.

But first I’ve gotta talk about Double Fine’s Kickstarter campaign, wherein Tim Schafer & Co. asked the community to help fund an old-school point-and-click adventure game.  That it’s raised its initial ask amount of $400,000 in 8 hours is amazing.  That it’s now almost a million dollars over its initial ask amount – in less than 3 days – is nothing short of extraordinary (indeed, it might break $1,400,000 by the time I finish this post – it’s a little over $50,000 away as of 12:34pm EST, 2/10/12).   I contributed $40, and I will play it on every platform it arrives on (especially since, with all this extra money, it appears likely that it’ll head to iOS devices), and I will devour the accompanying documentary.

I’d like to think that this experiment would radically change the current development system, which every small developer has repeatedly described as “fundamentally broken.”  Double Fine owns this project outright, and since they’re distributing it over Steam (and presumably other download services), they don’t have to pay retail costs – and consequently, they don’t really need a publisher, either.  It’s pure profit after they recoup their expenses, they retain complete creative control, and they’ll deliver a product that lots and lots of people apparently want.  Why can’t this work for other game developers?

Well, the answer to that question is very complicated, and I’m not going to pretend that I can answer it.  From my limited vantage point, the only real thing I can compare it to is Radiohead’s “pay-what-you-want” release of “In Rainbows”, which they released without a label behind them.  (Similarly, one could also bring up Louis CK’s recent “pay-what-you-want” release of a filmed comedy special.)

The worlds of game development, music and stand-up comedy are so different that to compare them is almost meaningless, but in this particular case these three entities (Double Fine, Radiohead, Louis CK) do share one rather important thing in common – they are adored by their fans, and they have many, many fans, and those fans very much want what these artists are providing.

This is important, I think.  These three entities are in unique positions within their respective industries – i.e., they are near-universally loved from both without and within – and they have a certain amount of clout that allows them to pull stuff like this off.  Tim Schafer’s past work has made him an adored cult figure, and yet none of his games have really sold in huge numbers.  They’ve sold well enough to make back their costs, and he’s retained an adoring fanbase, but he’s not pushing GTA or Call of Duty off the bestseller charts.  That he’s going back to his roots to make the sort of game that made him famous is, for many people (myself included), a dream come true.  That he knew that no publisher was ever going to give him the money to make this sort of game is, sadly, a reality of today’s marketplace.  New IP is very, very risky, and new IP in the shape of a point-and-click adventure title is basically asking to set your money on fire.

I’m not sure Tim Schafer expected this kind of success this quickly, though; I’m not sure anybody did.  And let’s also be clear here – at this point, he’s only raised the money; we haven’t actually seen the game yet.  The game could very well be terrible.  (Unlikely, but hey – Brutal Legend wasn’t nearly as good as I wanted it to be, either.)

Are there any other developers that could pull something like this off?  I’m not sure.  Rock Paper Shotgun is reporting that Obsidian is considering it.   You could see Jonathan Blow (of Braid) working in this way in the future, perhaps.  (My personal dream would be for Erik Wolpaw to break off from Valve to develop his own game.)  You’d need a developer with vision, is the thing.

The great irony to this whole thing is that not 48 hours before Double Fine’s Kickstarter kicked off, Minecraft’s “Notch” was offering to fund Psychonauts 2.   Tim Schafer’s said, though, that such a project would cost between $20-40M, and that kind of money isn’t going to come through Kickstarter, and I can’t imagine that Notch has that much money to kick around.

Anyway, this is a very exciting time, and it will be very interesting to see what happens next.  If Radiohead is any example, though, this sort of thing might not end up catching on beyond artists who are big enough to support such an endeavor in the first place; considering the prohibitive costs of game development, I have my doubts that lightning can strike twice.  Still, we can always hope.

FFXIII-2: the first hour

It occurs to me that there are quite a few reasons why I feel pathologically compelled to play as many new games as possible these days.  Certainly there’s a desire to be able to “take part in the conversation”, as it were.   It also gives me something to talk about here, and I’ve not kept it hidden that I’d like to turn my experience in blogging here into something more professional (although I recognize that (a) I’ve got a long way to go as far as that’s concerned, and (b) it’s not like professional gaming journalism is a hot racket).

But I think there’s a more fundamental reason at work here, and it’s that while I’ve always been a huge fan of videogames, I also had a rather gigantic gap in my playing resume.  I started with an Atari 2600, but never had any of the Nintendo machines of the 80s.  My little brother – 6.5 years younger than me – had a Sega Genesis, and we both played the hell out of that, but after that I was totally out of the loop.  I never owned a PS1 or a PS2, nor did I own an N64 or Gamecube.  After I graduated college, one of my best friends bought a PS1, and we spent a lot of time playing the Oddworld games and Crash Bandicoot, and I suppose it was at that point that I caught the bug again.  My girlfriend (at the time) bought me a Dreamcast, and after that I started turning into the man you see before you.

[I feel like I’ve said all this before.   I probably have.  I’m too lazy to search the archives.  I’m in a reflective mood today; indulge me.]

Anyway, I bring this up because I’m playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, and I feel bad about it.

You’ve gotta understand – I never played the early, “classic” FF games.   As I said the other day, I’ve downloaded FF7, 8,  and 9 on PSN out of obligation (and I’ll probably download 6 at some point, too), but with the exception of the 10-15 hours I put into FF7 for a blog feature that never quite went anywhere, I’ve not touched them.  I bought the PSP-only FF7: Crisis Core, but didn’t get more than a few hours in without putting it down.  And I think I put a few hours into the remakes of the early titles on the DS, but – again – I couldn’t really stick with it.

I came to FFXIII as a noob, ultimately.  But the point is:  I showed up for it.  I deliberately played the PS3 version, because I wanted the best experience.  I wanted something gigantic and epic for my PS3, too, since I hardly ever use it for gaming, and I’d figured that the first HD FF experience would be something special.

I was wrong.

FFXIII had a fun combat system and gorgeous visuals, absolutely.  It was also relentlessly linear – which I didn’t necessarily mind, because I was overwhelmed by the incredibly annoying cast of characters and the utterly nonsensical story, a story that could generously be called “convoluted”.   I finished the game, eventually, because I wanted to be able to say that I finished a Final Fantasy game, but it certainly wasn’t a pleasurable experience.  At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d finally fallen out of love with JRPGs, or if it was simply that FFXIII was just a shitty one.  But the general consensus from FF fans was that FFXIII was a shitty game, and that made me feel a bit better.   [I still sometimes feel like if I’ve had a bad time with a game, it’s somehow my fault.  I genuinely thought that I was somehow to blame for not understanding how to play the infamously awful “E.T.” on the 2600.]

Point being, SquareEnix knew that FFXIII was a disappointment, and supposedly FFXIII-2 is a direct response to what everybody hated about the original; it’s more open-ended, it refines an already great combat system into something even  better, it adds dialogue trees (sort of) – it’s catering to what it thinks the West wants.  The problem is that these characters are still annoying, and this story is still stupid.

An hour isn’t enough time to form a valid opinion – I know that.   It took me 40 hours of FFXIII before I started having “fun”, and your guess is as good as mine as to why I felt compelled to spend 40 hours playing something that wasn’t (besides the aforementioned compulsion to finish a Final Fantasy game).  But an hour is enough time for the developer to introduce the story and the characters and get the player acclimated to what’s about to happen, and HOLY SHIT I don’t care.  The dialogue is awful, and I genuinely feel bad for the voice actors, most of whom do a really good job with truly terrible lines.  The characters are ridiculous.  There’s really no other way to put it.  I don’t like any of them, and it’s certainly not because they’re emoting at every single moment.  (Seriously – do they need to insert every grunt and gasp and voiced utterance?  It’s bizarre.  Not even movies include that much sonic detail; it’s terribly distracting.)

And yet, after all this, I’m sure I’m going to keep playing through the weekend (except for the Superbowl, of course – go Giants!), and probably right up until next week’s Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, which I am legitimately looking forward to.  I am a whore.

winter doldrums

These are lean times for a non-profit game blogger; there’s not a tremendous amount to discuss.

I’ve mostly been playing Old Republic, because what else is there.  I finished Act 1 last Thursday, and was going to write up a post here about it, but work got in the way.  At the time I was going to write it, I’d power-leveled from 32 to 35, but after this weekend my dude is up to level 37.   I’m itching to get the hell off of the planet Taris, which is dreary and dank and not all that much fun to romp around in.  The game hasn’t changed all that much since I finished Act 1’s story; it should feel a bit more open-ended from a story perspective, but I’m still basically staying on one planet until I’m powerful enough to handle my class quest without too much trouble, and then moving on – which is, more or less, what I’d been doing previously.  I am enjoying it as a time-filler, and I’m appreciative that there’s tons of content that I can access without having to rely on strangers, but I must admit that I’m not terribly engrossed in it any more.

Also: lots and lots of new iPhone content.  Most recently, I’ve come under the hypnotic spell of TripleTown (iOS), which is basically a reverse match-3 game crossed with Grow.  You are presented with an 8×8 grid filled with bushes and rocks and such, and your objective is to turn all that stuff into a city:  3 grass squares = 1 bush; 3 bushes = 1 tree; 3 trees = 1 house, etc.  It gets tricky because you need to plan ahead in terms of where your combination will take place; if you put 3 bushes together, you’ll get a tree but only on the square that you touched.  It’s very easy to build the wrong way, in other words.  There are other complications but it’s easier to explain if you just download it for yourself – it’s a free download, actually, although it only comes with around 1500 “turns”.  You’ll quickly get hooked, though, and you won’t have much choice in forking over $4 for unlimited play.  The whole thing is very charming and quirky and ferociously addictive.

My rental copy of Final Fantasy XIII-2 should arrive by Thursday, and I guess I’m looking forward to it inasmuch as it’s something new.  I was of mixed opinions regarding FF13.  (To date it’s still the only FF game I’ve played from beginning to end, and I know that’s kind of a blasphemous thing to admit.  If it makes you feel any better, I’ve downloaded FF7, FF8, and FF9 from PSN, and I’ll probably download FF6 at some point, too – and maybe, if you can play PS1 games on a Vita, maybe I’ll end up with a Vita.)  The battle system in FF13 was pretty great, and it certainly looked nice, but it was also completely nonsensical, and while there’s a certain amount of utter nonsense I’m willing to put up with (i.e., MGS4), FF13 required a time investment that was a bit ridiculous.  All the reviews seem to indicate that FF13-2 is a massive apology that fixes everything that was wrong with the first game, plus it’s a bit shorter and maybe not as graphically impressive, and, well, yeah.  As noted above, I’m playing it because it’ll be something new, although I won’t feel guilty if I don’t finish it.

Finally – there will really, honestly, truly be some SFTC podcasts happening up in here soon-ish.  I’ve got theme music picked out and everything, and as soon as I tweak the things that need tweaking and get some schedules squared away, there will be some SFTC in your ears as well as your eyes.  All in time for the apocalypse.

hacked!

I haven’t been doing very much gaming lately – no, not even in Old Republic – so it took me a while to notice that my Gamerscore looked a little off.  I did a little poking around and, lo and behold, my Xbox Live account got hacked, and someone bought almost 3000 Points worth of FIFA12 DLC.  Spoke with customer service this morning, and the short version is that my account will be suspended for around 2 weeks while Microsoft conducts an investigation; when that’s over, my account will be reinstated and I’ll hopefully get my Points refunded.

Kind of a bummer, right?  Not that I’ve been doing a lot of online gaming ever, but still – that’s kind of messed up.

In the meantime, yeah – not a lot of gaming happening.  I’m stuck on a boss in TOR and haven’t felt inclined to grind my way past it.  I’ve mostly been playing the shit out of two iPhone games:  Muffin Knight and Run Roo Run, and if I had the time I’d devote some Subway Gamer columns to them.   They’re both fun, though, is the thing.

I’ve also been continuing to build the hell out of my Tiny Tower; I’m up to 126 floors and the other day I went a little OCD-insane and renamed each business to include the floor number and its number of happy employees.  I did this because, well, when you have 126 floors, finding things is very tedious, and I’ve basically removed the endless searching from the equation.  Now, whenever I move a new bitizen into the building, I can immediately tell if their dream job is available.  I can also tell if I’m able to complete a mission just from seeing the names of the necessary companies.  Again, this is kind of insane, and I’m well aware of that, but, I mean, if you’re similarly addicted to Tiny Tower you would definitely appreciate this kind of insanity.

further adventures on Tattooine

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I was hoping to increase my writing output this year (on this blog, at least).  The problem with that, of course, is that January is generally a dead zone when it comes to new games that need to be talked about.  And it should also be noted that, for whatever reason, I don’t really have a backlog right now.  I suppose I could keep pushing on in Assassin’s Creed Revelations, but I don’t hate myself.

Still, though, I have continued to play the hell out of The Old Republic.  I hit level 28 last night, right before I logged off.  And that’s without doing any of the Heroic quests or the Flashpoints; I’ve just been cruising along on all the stuff I can solo.  I’ve developed a series of battle strategies that work for me, more or less – the only times I’ve run into trouble have been against Elite bosses with 10K+ health, because my companion stops healing me after a while and then it’s pretty much a race to see who dies first.

It’s funny – now that the game’s been out for a few weeks, the gaming podcast circuit is starting to talk about it.  And for the most part, everyone seems to be of two minds about it – they’re playing it a lot, but they hate it.   The space combat is stupid (although it’s gorgeous, and it really ought to be an iPad game).  The environments are pretty but also ugly and barren.  The conversations are engaging and well-written and acted but they’re also repetitive, and pressing “1” or “2” isn’t quite the same thing as actively participating in a discussion.  There’s So.  Much.  Running.*

I don’t hate it.  I’m generally pretty wary of MMOs (after having lost around 6 months to WoW), but I find that I’m able to log out of TOR without immediately going through withdrawal.   I go in, I kill some dudes, I craft while I wait for dudes to respawn, I advance my questlines a bit further, and then I log out.  It’s much like any other long-form Bioware RPG, and since Bioware makes great RPGs, that’s good enough for me.  I suppose I could stand for some fat-trimming; I don’t know that this story is so compelling that I need to play it for 100 hours, but that’s what an MMO is, and that’s how it sustains itself, and I’m having a reasonably good enough time (and there’s absolutely nothing else out right now that I’d rather play).

I don’t even mind the space combat stuff.  The thing that everyone seems to forget is that Bioware’s games always have stupid mini-games.  Remember the pod races in the original KoTOR?  Or the planet mining in Mass Effect 1/2?  (I can’t remember if there was one in Jade Empire or not, but I might be the only person on the planet who still likes that game.)  Anyway, the space combat stuff here is a pleasant diversion – it certainly looks amazing on my setup, and it’s an easy way to grind out some quick XP, and it’s only a few minutes long.

If I had one complaint about the game, it’s that there’s not all that much to do.  The entire game is basically 4 steps, repeated infinitely:

  1. Talk to quest-giver, who gives an objective
  2. Go to objective’s location
  3. Kill enemies, achieve objective
  4. Return to quest-giver

Sure, there’s the aforementioned space missions, and there’s also crafting and stuff, but you don’t even need to do that – you send your companions out for that.  And in a way, that’s unfortunate, because those mission descriptions usually involve heists and deceptions and explosive action, which is way more exciting-sounding that the 4 steps listed above; all you do is press a button, and then 5-10 minutes later your minion returns with some loot.  THE END.

I suppose I’d like TOR to have, well, other Star Wars-y stuff to do.  Stuff that doesn’t involve the same sort of combat over and over again – even though the combat is fun in its own rhythmic way.  There’s no sneaking around; there’s no explosive chase sequences; hell, there’s no pod racing.  There’s none of the card or casino games that KOTOR or Mass Effect have, which seems like a missed opportunity.  There’s no real way to interact with other game players except through joining in combat – and I’m not sure that the PvP side of things changes that.  Whether you’re a bounty hunter or a Jedi knight, you are still ultimately doing the same shit – just with different weapons.

In any event, it’s what I’m playing, and it’s what I expect will take up most of my time for the next few weeks.  I’m mildly interested in Final Fantasy XIII-2, and I’m curious about Kingdoms of Amalur, and I’m very hopeful for SSX, but I’m not planning on taking any vacation days until Mass Effect 3 arrives, which isn’t until March.

Bear with me, then, in the meantime, and I’ll do my best to keep things interesting.  Certainly there’s some iPhone stuff to talk about…

 

 

* Justin McElroy (formerly of Joystiq) had some interesting comments about this.   He’d been talking about Saints Row the Third, and how that game’s designers appear to respect the gamer’s time by not making you wait to get fun stuff to play with, and contrasting that with TOR, which (a) makes you run everywhere;  (b)  gives you a “sprint” boost at level 10; and (c) ultimately gives you a mount in your early 20s, which is essentially the game’s designers telling you that they know that walking sucks, but tough shit.

Happy New Year, etc.

I don’t mean to start 2012 on a down note, but here we are.

The main thing on my plate these days is The Old Republic.  My Bounty Hunter/Mercenary is now level 18; I’ve got a bitchin’ spaceship and I’m doling out death and destruction all across the galaxy.  I’m really enjoying my time with it.  As noted the other day, though, my wife is also a full-blown TOR addict; she, in fact, pulled an 11-hour marathon yesterday, which is something that even I haven’t ever done.  She’s having somewhat of a more frustrating time than I am, though, even though she claims she’s still having fun with it.  (I’m definitely going to do a podcast with her in the near future.)

So while she was Jedi-ing yesterday, I was left with my 360.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, except that I’m not really into anything at the moment.  As I said last week, I’ve started to sour on Skyrim, which is a bummer.  I finished the Civil War side-quest yesterday – or, at least, I think I did.  Maybe I didn’t.*    The whole thing was unclear, and in any event it was incredibly anti-climactic, riddled with bugs and strangely staged in-game cutscenes where the music was (a) louder than the dialogue, and (b) on an endless loop, which tended to decrease the tension with every subsequent replay.     Now that I’ve beaten the main story, and I’ve discovered most of the stuff that there is to discover, there’s really not a lot pulling me back to the world – it’s certainly not the narrative, which feels positively clunky and dead next to The Old Republic.

I also put some time into the Stranger’s Wrath HD remake on PSN.  The best thing about HD remakes – when they’re done well – is that they don’t diminish your memories of how those games used to look.**  The Oddworld games were always quite pretty, but they were running on primitive hardware (compared to today), and one only needs to look at the PC port that appeared on Steam last year to see how far graphics have come in only 5 or 6 years (or however long it’s been).  The PSN HD remake looks absolutely fantastic – they’ve re-skinned and re-textured pretty much everything, down to the last pixel.  The gameplay is still refreshing and inventive – the live ammo thing is still pretty clever – although the level design feels a bit archaic, with lots of canyons funneling you into small clearings, where the action is.

Finally, I continued to dabble in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which remains profoundly disappointing.  I feel terrible about saying this, but I think I’m gonna trade AssRev in.   I’ve played – and loved – each of the three previous games to death, and yet this game feels totally foreign to me.  The controls are far too complicated – there are two different buttons you need to press just to run – and it’s ridiculous that I’m fighting the controls at this point, being that I’ve already sunk probably 100 hours in the franchise already.  Does that make sense?   I used to know how to kick ass and run around and could stealthily eliminate an entire town square, and now I can’t even figure out how to climb a wall.  It should feel familiar, and instead it feels clunky and overly complicated and – most depressingly – uninspired.  I sincerely hope that the inevitable Assassin’s Creed 3 is more of a re-boot – this franchise needs a kick in the ass.

________________

*I got the “Hero of Skyrim” achievement for capturing Solitude?  I have a feeling that there’s yet one more piece to that puzzle, involving the Thalmor.

**  Microsoft might not have been wrong when they made the 360 not-totally backwards-compatible – some of those previous-gen games look kinda terrible running on today’s demanding resolution standards.  Just look at the recent iOS port of GTA3 – yeah, it’s great that it’s running on my iPhone, but it also looks kinda old.

weekend recap: holiday 2011

Here’s hoping you all had a wonderful, loot-filled holiday season.  I certainly did.

Lots to cover today, so let’s get to it:

1.  I finished the main story in Skyrim – almost by accident, similar to what happened at the end of Fallout 3 –  and I think I need a little time away from it.  Certainly I need to wait until a new patch comes out, because a whole slew of my side quests are bugged, and the problems they’re causing are rather serious.  For example:

  • There’s a civil war-related quest where one of the Jarls gave me an axe to give to another Jarl.  Problem is, there’s no dialogue option when I talk to that other Jarl to give him the axe; furthermore, the axe is heavy, and because it’s a quest item I can’t drop it.
  • There’s another quest where I need to retrieve a Forsworn heart in order to concoct some sort of recipe, and I need to kill a specific Forsworn dude in order to get it.  I killed the dude.  I looted him.  I didn’t get the heart.  His corpse is now listed as “empty.”  There’s a gaping hole in his chest, implying that I’ve already taken it.

As much as I’ve enjoyed my time with the game, there’s a reason why I couldn’t put it at #1 in my GOTY post.  Bugged quests are a pretty serious offense – especially since they’re still there, after 2 significant patches have already come out.

2.  I’ve hardly touched The Old Republic since I bought it, but that’s not the game’s fault – it’s my wife’s, as she is a full-blown addict.  She’s gotten her Jedi to (at least) level 10 – she crafted a light saber, acquired a companion and made it off the first planet, if that means anything.  It’s gotten to the point where it’s useless for her to ask me any questions, because at this point she knows more about how the game works than I do.  I’m thinking about running an interview with her, actually, since she’s a prime example of the audience that Bioware was hoping to reach – that of the hard-core Star Wars nerd who doesn’t play games.  This is my wife’s first real game-playing experience, actually – I mean, she’s played DS puzzle games on airplanes and she’s played Rock Band and You Don’t Know Jack, but she’s never actually said “I’m going to play my game now – see you in a few hours” and then strapped in and just straight-up disappeared for an entire afternoon/evening.  She’s never binged, I guess you could say.  But she played 2 or 3 marathon sessions this weekend, and last night she had some Star Wars dreams, which means the addiction is in full effect.  It’s a shame that her laptop doesn’t have a graphics card, too; there’s only one computer in the house that can run it, and it’s mine, and so we can’t play together.

3.  My wife got me a really nice pair of wireless, 7.1 surround headphones for Christmas.  This is great for everyone involved – it means I’m not keeping the house up late at night, and it also means that I get to truly experience the audio side of games for the first time.  As such, I kinda raided my library, wanting to hear the ambient soundscapes in Red Dead Redemption, the ferocious engine roars of Forza 4, and Cave Johnson’s cantankerous baritone in Portal 2.  But ultimately, I spent the most amount of time playing Rayman Origins (which my dad got me for Christmas).  I’d rented it previously and loved it, but I was so focused on Skyrim that I never really gave it proper attention.  And honestly, that game’s got one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard, and the headphones truly give it justice.  (This Kotaku feature is an excellent primer – correctly noting the brilliance of the Sea of Serendipity music, and “Lum’s Dream” in particular – and it should be noted I found and downloaded the official soundtrack this morning – for free, no less.  Do a google search and you’ll turn something up.)

4.  I should remember to start my 2012 GOTY post with a category called “The Best Reason to Wait Until January Before Starting a GOTY Post.”  For one thing, I’d be able to talk about The Old Republic at least a little bit, and I’d also be able to correct a glaring hole – that of Battlefield 3.  One of my oldest and best friends bought an Xbox360 last week, and he’d asked me what to get – he thought about picking up Modern Warfare 3, and I said “no no no, if you want to play that sort of game online, you should get BF3.”  And then I felt like a hypocrite, since I hadn’t yet bought it (and hadn’t yet planned on playing it, actually).  Anyway, I bought it, but none of my BF3-playing buddies were online, so I didn’t end up playing very much.  I gave the single-player a whirl, mostly just to learn the control scheme, but I don’t plan on sinking too much time into it – the general consensus is that the single-player campaign is pretty bad, whereas the multiplayer is the best thing going right now.  As I’m not really an online-shooter kind of guy, I’m not expecting to have that great a time, but certainly playing co-op with friends is always fun for a little while, at least.

5.  Finally, I decided to clean up some side missions in Saints Row the Third.  That game’s post-story world isn’t really all that compelling, but it’s still fun in limited doses, and some of the side stuff is fun in and of itself.  I’m not sure I’m ever going to 100% it, as I hate the Snatch missions (and some of the Mayhem missions are fucking impossible), but I’m certainly down for leveling up my dude and making him impervious to everything.

The Old Republic – the first hour

I had a plan.  And like most of my plans, it fell apart.

The plan was that I wasn’t going to even think about Star Wars: The Old Republic until at least a month had passed after launch.  That would accomplish several things at once:

  • It would let me finish Skyrim
  • It would give Bioware time to work out the launch bugs, since MMOs almost never launch in a working state
  • It would also give Bioware enough time to add more servers and reduce the queue hassles
  • A month would be enough time for the community to form a general consensus as to whether it was a worthwhile experience

Etc.

Well, wouldn’t you know – a whole bunch of podcasts came out on Tuesday talking about TOR, and the general critical consensus was that it was actually pretty good, even according to people who were not big Star Wars fans.  And it’s pretty obvious at this point that I am a consumer whore, and so guess what.

The installation was around 10gb, so while I bought the thing on Tuesday evening, I didn’t get a chance to play until last night (Wednesday).

I only played for about an hour or so.  I’m still not entirely sure how I’m ultimately going to roll, so I figured I’d roll a bunch of different characters and see what sticks.   Because my general inclination when playing a morally-guided RPG is to at least start out as a nice melee fighter, I started as a Jedi Knight.  But I’m also really interested in checking out the Smuggler class… and of course I’m interested in seeing what the Sith side is like.

Anyway.  As I said above, I am currently a level 3 Jedi Knight (named Hermano) on the Whitebeam Run server.  The server was lightly populated and I had absolutely no problem at all logging on and getting down to business.

First impression:  it felt very familiar.  Definitely takes a lot of cues from World of Warcraft, and why not.  It looks quite good – my PC is somewhat powerful and I’m running it on generally high settings, and I must say I’m impressed.  Didn’t run into any lag, and for the most part it plays quite smoothly.  I did get stuck in level geometry a few times, but there is a “Stuck?” button and that did help – although the first time I got stuck, it warped me into an area that was filled with level 10 enemies, and I was barely level 2 at the time, and it was all I could do to run like hell back to the starting area.  Good news, though: I learned what the death penalty is like!  And the death penalty isn’t all that bad.  Quite forgiving actually; instead of endless corpse runs, like in WoW, you can choose to respawn after a few seconds at the nearest safe point, or wait around 15-20 seconds and respawn exactly where you died.

I’m hearing from the critics that the game is very solo-friendly, which in my case is great.  I’m very much a solo kind of guy in general, and that certainly made my first days in WoW a pretty difficult slog – especially since I, as an MMO noob, had no idea what being a “tank” meant except that everyone told me I was doing it wrong.  I’ve nothing against groups, and hopefully, when I settle on the character I want to stay with, I’ll eventually find some cool people to play with.

Are you playing it?  What do you think?

The Year In Games – 2011

I know I’m prone to excessive hyperbole on occasion, but I really did think that 2011 would go down as one of the best years of all time.  Last December, I did my usual Lust List and my predicted top 5 looked like a Murderer’s Row of kick-ass:

  • Uncharted 3
  • Portal 2
  • Skyrim
  • Batman
  • Mass Effect 3

Now, as it happens, that Top 5 isn’t totally off the mark.  While it’s true that Mass Effect 3 ended up moving to 2012, those other 4 wound up in my Top 10.  That being said, when I look over the year now, I think it’s clear that this was not the mega-fantastic year that I thought it’d be.  Truth is, we’re near the end of this console cycle, and so developers are reluctant to do anything terribly risky.  (Exhibit A – 8 of my Top 10 games are sequels.)  Graphics have improved, certainly, but there’s only so much more that developers can do in that regard.   Frankly, I spent far more time whining this year about how nothing was coming out than I did praising all the good stuff that I was enjoying.  And I developed shooter fatigue in a big, big way.  Still, all things being equal, this was a pretty solid year.  The big blockbusters delivered, more or less, and pretty much everything I played this year had something worth experiencing.

As for the nitty gritty:

I used to start these year-end recaps with a count of all the games I played.   Last year that count went a bit askew, because I’d included iPhone games in the total.  Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that despite my OCD tendencies when it comes to keeping track of this stuff, I kinda went a little bananas with iPhone games this year.  And I should also say that Steam killed me this year; I bought way too many games for my PC because of rampant Steam sales, and I hardly played any of them.  (Furthermore, a lot of those Steam games were games I’d already played on consoles.  I am a whore.)

So I think it’s more accurate to look at the games that I actually sat down and played, like, for real.  This isn’t to discount the iPhone as a platform, though.  In fact, fuck it – let’s just get to the iPhone section.

The biggest thing I came away with, when reviewing 2011, is that I clearly do not have any need for a 3DS or a Vita.  I am done with Mario and Zelda, for one thing, and there’s no indication that Nintendo is interested in moving beyond their core IP, ever.  And anyone who bought a 3DS in its current form is a sucker, regardless of the insane price cut Nintendo was forced to apply; everyone knows that v.2 is coming next year with a 2nd analog stick.  (Is there any compelling software yet, though?  That doesn’t have Zelda or Mario in the title, I mean?  No?  OK.)  The Vita is a bit more intriguing, certainly, but since it isn’t a phone or a tablet, it’s 100% dependent on killer software, and I just don’t know if the killer software will ever show up – it certainly didn’t for the PSP.

Meanwhile, the iPhone continues to be the coolest gadget I’ve ever owned, and I am totally OK with it being my handheld gaming device.  I’ve grown accustomed to being able to listen to music or podcasts while I mess around with a game.  And I’ve gotten really accustomed to paying $1-3 for an engrossing experience, and splurging for Infinity Blade 2 at, like, $7 is worth it.  The fact that I’ve currently got a nice-looking, playable port of GTA3 in my pocket is awesome.

So, yeah, OK, let’s do my iPhone GAME OF THE YEAR:  I am still obsessed with Tiny Tower, as it is a remarkable outlet for my aforementioned OCD tendencies, but the game that I enjoyed the most is probably Jetpack Joyride, the best iteration of the popular “non-stop runner genre” on the iOS platform.   (Surely there’s a better name for it than that?)  The objective is still, generally, to keep moving while avoiding obstacles, but there are also numerous sub-objectives that constantly shift how you play – whether it’s high-fiving scientists, or rubbing your head on the ceiling, or reaching a certain distance without picking up any coins.  It’s got a great sense of humor and whimsy, and Halfbrick has been great about providing a steady stream of updates to keep the game fresh.

Honorable Mention:

  • Sword & Sworcery
  • Quarrel
  • Slam Dunk King
  • Tiny Tower
  • Infinity Blade 2

OK, as for the consoles.  I played around 55 games or so, spread around the Xbox360, PS3 and PC.   (As noted above, I bought a lot of games through Steam’s numerous sales, but I’d either (a) already played them on consoles, or (b) didn’t really spend more than 30 seconds with them, and so I’m not really counting those.)

I “finished” 22 games this year, although this list is in no particular order:

  1. ICO
  2. Portal 2
  3. L.A. Noire
  4. Batman Arkham City
  5. Deus Ex: HR
  6. Mortal Kombat
  7. Stacking
  8. Bastion
  9. Dead Space 2
  10. Bulletstorm
  11. Dragon Age 2
  12. Gears of War 3
  13. Uncharted 3
  14. Modern Warfare 3
  15. Little Big Planet 2
  16. LEGO Pirates of the Carribbean
  17. Resistance 3
  18. Rage
  19. Killzone 3
  20. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
  21. Infamous 2
  22. LOTR: War in the North

GAMERSCORE:  I started 2011 at 64607.  I will most likely finish it at around 77200, depending on how Achievement-hungry I get in Skyrim.   Speaking of Achievements:

FAVORITE ACHIEVEMENT:  This is silly, but I have to give this to Rock Band 3, “Well Connected.”  All I did was link my virtual band to the Harmonix website, which netted me 6 points; more importantly, it got my total Achievement score back to 0s and 5s.  This had been driving me crazy for years, people.  I’ve stopped being so insane about chasing Achievements, but it’s very, very nice to have round numbers in my life again.  And speaking of numbers:

BEST GAME WITH A 3 IN THE TITLE:  (Apologies to Tim Rogers and this Kotaku feature.)  Certainly didn’t think this is the way it would go down at the beginning of the year, but I have to give it to Saints Row the Third, and it’s not even all that close, surprisingly enough.  I’ll have more to say about Saints Row a little later on, but for now it’s fair to say that this franchise should be Exhibit A when it comes to the right way to develop sequels.  Each game has been markedly better than the last, while still keeping the series’ roots intact.  And considering what the “roots” of this series are – i.e., being as completely insane as possible – it’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment.

Honorable Mention:

  • Uncharted 3
  • Dirt 3
  • Gears of War 3
  • Modern Warfare 3
  • Killzone 3
  • Resistance 3
  • Serious Sam 3

RANDOM OBSESSION:  I got fiercely addicted to Plants v. Zombies over the summer, and I played it on pretty much every platform it’s available for.  No idea why, actually – that game is (1) old, and (2) stresses me out.

DID NOT FINISH, WOULD LIKE TO FINISH SOMEDAY:  There’s no excuse for me not having finished Trenched / Iron Brigade.  I was having a blast with that when it came out – some of the most fun co-op I’ve ever had.

Honorable Mention:

  • Driver: SF
  • Yakuza 4
  • Serious Sam 3

DID NOT FINISH, COULDN’T GET INTO (BUT STILL RESPECT):   Quite a few of these, actually, but the winner is The Witcher 2.  Enough people gushed about this to make me feel guilty for giving up on it.  I tried it both pre- and post-patch, and while I appreciated the patch’s new tutorial, I still had a hard time getting sucked in.  It’s absolutely gorgeous and I can see why people love it, though.)   I also really feel bad about not getting into Dark Souls, and every time Amazon’s had it on sale lately (which is a lot), I keep thinking about splurging for it.

Honorable Mention:

  • Dead Island
  • Dark Souls
  • Shadows of the Damned

DID NOT FINISH, DO NOT WANT TO FINISH:  The winner of this category immediately follows the runners-up.

  • Crysis 2
  • Alice: Madness Returns
  • Burnout: Crash

WORST GAME / MOST DISAPPOINTING GAME:   I feel bad just admitting that I bought it, frankly.  But I was home, sick, and Duke Nukem Forever had finally launched on Steam, and in my delirious state I went against my better judgment (and all the advance reviews).   I had been a huge Duke 3D fan back in the day, and ultimately that won out.  What a huge piece of shit this turned out to be.  Let’s move on.

THE 5-MINUTES-OR-LESS ALL-STARS:  You know how you can just tell that a game isn’t for you, right from the beginning?  Yeah, there were a few of those.

  • Shift 2 Unleashed
  • Dungeon Siege 3
  • Metal Gear Solid HD.  I’m just not sure I’m ever going to get what’s so great about this franchise.

DID NOT PLAY:

  • NBA2K12
  • Need for Speed: The Run
  • Battlefield 3
  • Zelda
  • Minecraft
  • Catherine
  • Halo Anniversary
  • Once Upon a Monster
  • Nintendo 3DS

OK, let’s move on to the good stuff.

BEST NEW IP:  There really wasn’t much to choose from, actually, which is sad.  That being said, while it had its fair share of problems, I really enjoyed L.A. Noire.  That facial tech is pretty extraordinary, and Team Bondi did a pretty spectacular job at recreating post-war Los Angeles.  (It’s a shame that there wasn’t all that much to do in it, but it was really nice to explore just the same.)  I think Rockstar could clean it up a bit and put out one hell of a sequel, the way they did with Red Dead Redemption.

Honorable Mention:

  • Bastion
  • Bulletstorm
  • Rage
  • Dead Island

BEST SOUNDTRACK:  I don’t know if it’s because I’m a composer and am therefore inherently snobby, but I generally don’t really pay that much attention to soundtracks – be it game or movie or what-have-you.  There’s only been two times where I’ve seen a movie and needed the soundtrack as soon as I walked out of the theater (Rushmore and Ocean’s 11), and it’s never happened for a game.  That is, until this year.  Surprisingly enough, the game in question is an iPhone game.  I never did end up finishing Sword & Sworcery, but I fell in love with the soundtrack immediately, and bought it on iTunes (where it actually costs more than the game, I think – and it’s worth every penny).

Honorable Mention:

  • Rayman Origins
  • L.A. Noire

BEST TREND:  This isn’t necessarily a 2012 thing, but we saw lots of HD remakes of classic games, and I’m all for it.

BEST HD REMAKE:  Alternately, this is the Most Anticipated HD Remake:  Ico/Shadow of the Colossus.  And I haven’t even finished Shadow yet!  That said, it was really nice to finally experience some of the most talked-about games ever made.  Definitely on board for The Last Guardian now.

Honorable Mention:

  • Beyond Good & Evil HD
  • Metal Gear Solid HD

GAMES I’D LIKE TO SEE GET THE HD REMAKE TREATMENT:  I know this isn’t strictly a 2011 category, but while we’re on the topic, a boy can dream:

  • Skies of Arcadia
  • Grim Fandango
  • Rayman 2
  • Crash Bandicoot 1-3 / Crash Team Racing

GAMES THAT ARE GETTING THE HD REMAKE TREATMENT IN 2012 (that I’m aware of, and that I’m totally psyched about):

  • Tony Hawk Pro Skater (sort of)
  • Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee / Exoddus  (judging from the Stranger’s Wrath screenshots, these games should look fantastic)
  • Rayman 3
  • Final Fantasy X

MOST-PLAYED 2010 GAME:  Pinball FX2, whose steady stream of quality DLC kept it in my rotation for pretty much the whole year.

MOST FORGETTABLE:  This was a pretty dismal year in terms of quality driving games, and so I give this out to both  Motorstorm Apocalypse and Test Drive Unlimited 2, both of which were also quite terrible.

MOST OVERLOOKED:  I’d never played the first two Resistance games, but I ended up trying Resistance 3, and it was really, really good.  Certainly one of the best weapon arsenals I’ve ever messed around with, and the leveling up system was smart and well-implemented – it encouraged you to play with everything.  (Unlike Gears of War 3, where I used the Lancer from start to finish.)

MOST OVERRATED:  I’m not sure there’s a game that came out this year that was truly “overrated”, as I tended to agree with the general critical reception of any particular game.  If I had to award this to anything, I’d probably give it to Crysis 2, which got so incredibly stupid towards the end that I started getting angry.  It featured some of the worst  dialogue I’ve ever heard, and in service of a nonsensical story.  It looked great, sure, but there’s only so much stupid I can take.  I know that creating an engaging narrative is not necessarily priority #1 in today’s games, but this was just ridiculous.

THE “SACRED 2” AWARD FOR MOST TIME SPENT PLAYING A GAME THAT I ACTIVELY DISLIKED:  I didn’t hate it the way I hated Sacred 2, but I only played Lord of the Rings: War In the North to completion because I was home sick for two days with nothing to do.  And boy, that’s a lot of time that I’m never going to get back.

THE BEST ARGUMENT BOTH FOR / AGAINST USING HEAVY DRUGS DURING THE CREATIVE PROCESS:  The Japanese are weird.  And Shadows of the Damned is fucking weird.  And I don’t do drugs anymore, and so I’m not sure I’m ever going to understand what all the fuss was about.  Still, it’s hard to deny that there was a pretty fierce vision behind this one.

BEST IMPLEMENTATION OF A “SEASON PASS”:  The Season Pass is a somewhat controversial topic these days, but when it’s done right, it’s a thing of beauty.  The Season Pass attached to L.A. Noire was worth every penny; it kept me engaged in that game for months after its release.  Sure, it felt like the cases were “deleted scenes” from the game proper, but it was still fun to play.

BEST SYNERGY BETWEEN WRITER, PERFORMER AND ANIMATOR:  This is a complicated way of saying that while Stephen Merchant’s performance as Wheatley in Portal 2 was perhaps the greatest voice performance I’ve ever heard in a game, credit must also go to the incredible dialogue and the remarkably humanizing animation, considering that Wheatley is a talking sphere.  Apologies to the cast and crew of Uncharted 3, but holy shit.

BEST GRAPHICS:  If I’m being honest, there was a lot more to Rage than a killer graphics engine; it did fall apart in the end, but for the most part it was a really enjoyable experience.  But WOWEE ZOWEE, I didn’t know my Xbox could look that good.   (As noted above, I didn’t play Battlefield 3, so, you know.)

Honorable Mention:

  • Uncharted 3
  • Skyrim (kinda)
  • Rayman Origins

I WISH I DIDN’T SUCK AT FIGHTING GAMES:  I did eventually finish Mortal Kombat, but only on the lowest difficulty setting.  Clearly, that’s one of the most complete packages ever released, and if you’re a fan of the franchise, you probably already know that.

DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR:  You know how happy it makes me to give this award to DoubleFine?  So happy.  It looks like they’ve finally found their niche, with these delightful downloadable titles.  2010’s Costume Quest, Stacking and Trenched – er, Iron Brigade – were all wildly different from each other, and all had a ton of charm and were fun as hell to play.  All were memorable, distinctive, and unique.  And I would’ve played the Sesame Street game if I had a kid.  (Still might, eventually.)

OK, let’s do this.

GAME OF THE YEAR, Honorable Mentions.

  • You Don’t Know Jack
  • Dragon Age 2
  • Resistance 3
  • Killzone 3
  • Little Big Planet 2
  • Dead Space 2

10.  Bulletstorm.  I said before that I experienced some serious shooter fatigue this year.  That certainly wasn’t Bulletstorm’s fault, which did every goddamned thing it could do to stay interesting and distinctive.  And colorful!  Who knew that it was still possible to have colors other than brown and gray in a shooter!

9.  Gears of War 3.  It’s the best Gears game yet, despite that ridiculous football fantasy sequence.  I didn’t spend enough time with the online stuff as I suppose I should’ve, but the end of the year sorta got away with me.

8.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  I had such low expectations for this, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to see that this wasn’t a total piece of shit.  Indeed, it totally wiped away the sour taste that was still lingering after all this time from Deus Ex 2.  Even though the bosses were kinda shitty, and even though the ending was only rivaled by Rage in terms of least amount of effort applied, this was a great game, and I do plan on playing it again eventually.

7.  Uncharted 3.  OK, the combat grew tedious and tiresome.  OK, the “story” was just something they patched up after they came up with their setpieces.  OK, the spiders didn’t make any sense.   Still, the things that this game does right, it does better than anyone else.  I still prefer Uncharted 2, but this was not too shabby.

6.  Bastion.  Seems like every year there’s an XBLA darling that makes an appearance on my list, and Bastion is a worthy entrant.  Remarkable music, gorgeous art direction, simple and intuitive gameplay, and a compelling story.

5.  L.A. Noire.  Everything I said earlier applies here.  But I was also pleased to see that they implemented Red Dead’s combat system (to the extent they could), which means that it’ll most likely appear in GTA5, which is good news for everybody.

4. Batman: Arkham City.  What was nice about the first game was that it left me wanting more.  Arkham City gave me so much more that I felt a little overstuffed, frankly.  But that’s hardly enough reason to complain.  It’s still the best melee combat system in the business.  The side missions were a great diversion.  And I was totally hooked by the story – and that ending!

3.  Saints Row The Third.  You can’t talk about Saints Row without talking about GTA, but it’s really nice to see that Saints Row has truly embraced its own thing.  The game is completely insane, and it’s also really well made.  I wouldn’t mind seeing GTA borrow some of its innovations – like the new GPS system, which keeps my eyes focused ahead instead of in the corner, trying to make sense of a tiny map.  It’s not an open world – it’s a sandbox, through and through, and they give you so many toys to play with that they’re almost daring you to get bored.

2.  Skyrim.  According to my profile at raptr.com, I’m 55 hours in.  Some of that is from extended pauses, but still – that’s definitely the most I’ve spent with any game this year.  And I only hit level 30 last night.  There is SO MUCH MORE TO DO.  I could see this game taking me straight through to February.

1.  Portal 2.  This is my friend (and sometime SFTC contributor) Gred, who says it better than I ever could:

When I think about the “best” games of the generation, the thing about Portal (and Portal 2) that I keep coming back to is that I cannot honestly think of a way the games could be better, that they could execute better on what they are trying to do.  Furthermore, they are doing plenty of new and ambitious stuff.  So it’s not simply a matter of executing a genre game perfectly, it’s a matter of inventing a genre, and then executing it perfectly.

Skyrim is excellent.  But ultimately I feel like its existence was inevitable.  It is the living D&D video game you pictured as a kid in the far-off future.  It is a bigger and better Oblivion.  It is still unique, because no one has dared to try this on anything approaching the scale Bethesda has tackled here.  But Bethesda or not, there would have been a Skyrimish game eventually.  Maybe not this generation, maybe not this good, but its newness derives mostly from its insane scope (including its wonderfully deep ecosystem and all its component moving parts).  True, that lends itself to insanely varied and complex gameplay experiences, while Portal will play much the same for everyone.  But the existence of Portal, to me, is a gift in a way that the existence of Skyrim, while very, very welcome, was a matter of time.

Thanks for reading, everybody.

The 2012 Lust List

I’m slowly plugging away on my own GOTY list, which I’d like to think will be out by the end of this week.  In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with looking ahead to what 2012 will bring.  

I came into 2011 with high hopes that it might be one of the greatest years in gaming history.  I’m not entirely sure that ended up being the case (and we’ll get to that later), but 2011 certainly offered up a lot of top-shelf quality.

2012, on the other hand, doesn’t quite seem to be as chock-full of jaw-droppers as 2011 did.  I can’t help thinking that this is because the publishers and developers are reluctant to throw out new IP this close to the beginning of a new console cycle (as all rumors currently have the new Xbox (and presumably the new PlayStation) coming out in 2013-14).  That being said, the good stuff looks awfully good.

The GOTY Front-Runners.  This assumes, of course, that Diablo 3 and GTA5 actually come out in 2012; no release dates have been given, or even hinted at.

  • Mass Effect 3
  • Diablo 3
  • Bioshock Infinite
  • GTA 5

The Must-Plays.  

  • Torchlight 2
  • The Last Guardian
  • SSX
  • Darksiders 2
  • Max Payne 3
  • Kingdoms of Amalur
  • Tomb Raider
  • Prey 2
  • Borderlands 2
  • the Tony Hawk HD thing

The Definite Rentals:

  • Dragon’s Dogma
  • Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2
  • Twisted Metal
  • Darkness 2
  • Asura’s Wrath
  • Ninja Gaiden 3
  • Metro: Last Light
  • Witcher 2 (360)
  • Far Cry 3
  • South Park RPG

Keeping Fingers Crossed:

  • XCOM
  • Half Life 3

UPDATE:  Can’t believe I forgot my 2 downloadable darlings:

  • Fez
  • Journey