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.

the Gears 3 campaign

Again, sorry with the lack of posts of late.  As the release calendar is finally showing signs of life again, I expect to be back here on a much more regular basis.

I’m not in any position to review Gears of War 3, as I haven’t touched any of the co-op or multiplayer features, of which there are seemingly dozens.  I’m not a multiplayer guy, and I suspect by this point – it’s been over a week since the game’s release – I wouldn’t last more than 30 seconds in any sort of competitive match.  I do intend to play some of the co-op stuff, though, someday.

I did finish the campaign, though, and so while that’s only maybe 1/3 of what’s on the disc, it’s the 1/3 that I knew I was going to play, no matter what.  And I’m of two minds about the experience.

On the one hand, it’s the tightest, most polished, and most evenly paced Gears experience yet.  I’d be hard-pressed to find an Unreal Engine game that looks better, too – Bulletstorm‘s color palette clearly influenced Gears 3, which is much appreciated, as the world is now no longer (only) brown and grey.   Most importantly, the combat is as satisfying as it’s ever been.

On the other hand, sweet Jesus, I am sick and tired of elevators that require 3 power sources to be turned on before they work.  The sound of Marcus Fenix whining “Revive me!” like a petulant toddler having a temper tantrum was only made worse by my companion AI who would often walk right past me without, in fact, reviving me.  I started the game with a Lancer, and I finished the game with a Lancer, and while I used a bunch of other weapons throughout the campaign, I never accessed anything truly new and exciting to use – and those giant catapult monster things, while new for the series, are not exactly “new”.  And while the game’s ending was refreshingly devoid of any stupid cliffhangers, it’s not as if the narrative really mattered.  These characters were not all that likable, and the world that I saved was pretty much on the verge of total collapse anyway; if there are any civilians left, their homes were most likely destroyed and they probably don’t have any jobs to go to and it didn’t look like there was any clean food or water around.  So, hooray.

Also, Cole Train’s bizarre hallucination in the football stadium?  What.  The.  Fuck.

———————

I’m still slowly plugging away in Resistance 3, but I suspect that a lot of my focus over the next few days will be on the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus collection, which just arrived via Gamefly.   I was one of the few Americans who didn’t own a PS2, and not being able to play those 2 specific games was my biggest regret of that console generation.  (I’d also include the God of War games and maybe Final Fantasy 10 in that category, which is why I gobbled up the GoW reissue and why I’m hoping that the rumors of an HD remake of FF10 are, in fact, true.)  Last night I played about 10 minutes of Ico, which is obviously nowhere near enough to garner any legitimate impressions, but I was quite taken with the little bit I’d seen.   So that’ll be nice.  Of course, Rage arrives next week, too, and my PC copy of The Witcher 2 apparently received a gigantic update today that is supposed to make it a lot easier to get into, so…

weekend recap: poor impulse control

I started playing a lot of games this weekend, and that’s not counting all the stupid shit I bought on Steam.  And the sad part is – I don’t know that I’m ever going to finish any of them, not with Gears 3 arriving tomorrow.

Anyway.  The bulk of the weekend was spent with my rental copy of Resistance 3.  I’d not been a fan of the first 2 games – indeed, I only played about 5 minutes of R2 before boredom set in – but the reviews of R3 were positively glowing, and so I figured why not.

I’m enjoying it, for the most part.  It generally looks really nice – not as jaw-dropping as Killzone 3 but it’s got great lighting and terrific art design.  People move nicely, although their faces (outside of cutscenes) are a little weird.  The weapons are probably my favorite part of the game – every gun is immensely satisfying to use, and I certainly enjoy leveling them up as I progress.  Hell, I like that I keep leveling up even if I die repeatedly (which has happened in a few sections, unfortunately – so much so that I ended up moving the difficult down to Easy just so that I could finish it quickly).  The biggest drawback, though, is the friendly AI, which is either stupid, non-helpful, or just plain broken.  They don’t hit anything, and indeed sometimes they don’t even fire their weapons, even as enemies pour into view.  What makes this even more frustrating is that the enemies seem to know this, also, which is why they only seem to target me.

I’m apparently at the end of Chapter 10 (of 20), so there you go.  As noted above, I’m definitely not going to have a chance to finish it before Gears 3 arrives, and frankly I’m not entirely sure I’m ever going to finish it.  But I’ll hold on to it in the meantime; maybe it’ll be something nice to switch back to if Gears 3 gets frustrating.

———————–

I also spent an hour or two with Dead Island, which I’m playing on my PC.  I’d been hemming and hawing about renting it for a while, and after listening to a bunch of podcasts I decided to forgo the console versions and just give it a download on Steam.  I’ve heard it compared to both Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising, but to be honest the game it most reminds me of is Fallout 3 – specifically in terms of the size of the world, the combat, and the questing.  I think this is a good thing.  It’s a bit clunky in spots, and the writing/voice acting is a bit off, but it also feels wildly ambitious and I feel compelled to give it a good effort.

———————–

I’m still plugging away in Driver: San Fransisco, which I apparently haven’t written about here.  I like it!  It’s a bit frustrating here and there, but I love how completely batshit insane it is, and I especially love how the developers really took this lunatic premise and went all-out with it.  And I also appreciate just how much stuff there is to do, which goes a long way towards easing frustration with story missions or races or what-have-you.

———————–

As for Steam sales… god.  I’m such a whore.  Picked up Darksiders and Mirror’s Edge for 5 bucks apiece – both games I’ve already played before on the 360 – and then I did the Star Wars mega-pack, mostly because we also bought the Star Wars blu-ray set and so we had it on the brain.  (Which I’m sure wasn’t merely a happy coincidence on Valve’s part.)  I did the first 5 minutes of KOTOR and turned it off immediately – it felt very clunky with a mouse and keyboard, and I didn’t want my memories of that game sullied by reality.  Also – the Star Wars: Force Unleashed install was something like 24 gigs?  WTF?

———————-

I keep meaning to do another Subway Gamer piece, and I keep not having time.  So here’s a quick taste of what’s been keeping my iPhone busy of late:

Jetpack Joyride might be my frontrunner for most addicting game of the year.

Quarrel is a fantastic word game – anagrams mixed with Risk.  If it had online multiplayer I’d never turn it off.

Monsters Ate My Condo is… I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s a pretty insane little puzzler, good for quick 5 minute bursts.

Dragon Portals is something I downloaded for free the other day; it’s an intriguing take on the old match-3 formula.  Not sure I’d recommend it at full price, but for a free download it’s certainly worth checking out.

Deus Ex HR: the end

***SPOILERS AHEAD.  This post concerns, among other things, the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and while I’m mostly focused on the form of the ending as opposed to the content, you should probably stay away until you’ve finished the game.  Ordinarily I’d wait a few more weeks before posting, but I’m not sure I’ll remember what I have to say by then, so…***

I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution over the weekend.  In my last post I’d mentioned that I was stuck in a boss battle towards the end of the game and that, because of an action I’d inadvertently made 6 hours previous, I was more or less screwed.  As it turned out, I wasn’t as screwed as I’d thought; my Typhoon weapon was still active even though my HUD was messed up, and three quick Typhoon shots put a quick end to a tough bastard.

From there, it was really just a few more hours worth of hacking, sneaking, and ultimately giving up on the non-lethal path and just flat-out murdering dudes until I came to the ending(s), which I won’t spoil, except to say that from an objective standpoint there’s really not all that much to spoil.

There are 4 endings in all, and the game makes it more or less clear that you should probably save at a certain point if you want to see them all, and, well, that almost tells you everything you need to know.  It doesn’t matter how you’ve played the game for the previous 20-30 hours; after the final boss battle, you are presented with 4 buttons to press, and once you press one of them a short, vague montage is shown with some ponderous, monotone Adam Jensen monologue-ing, and then the credits roll, and then you can reload your save and try pressing a different button.  That’s it.

And you’re only given the proper context for what these button presses actually represent about 30-60 minutes before you get to the button-pressin’ room – although that context is only given if you’re actually looking for it.  (Before you reach the final boss area, 2 messages are played over the intercom – 2 major characters have barricaded themselves in rooms and require your assistance.  The locations of those characters are only mentioned once; they don’t appear on your map or in your mission log, and I very nearly missed both of those encounters.)

I was a bit underwhelmed.  My memory of the first Deus Ex is hazy at best, but I do seem to remember that in order to see one of the original game’s 3 endings, you had to commit to a course of action that was far more involved that merely pressing a button.  Sure, you could save your game right before the decision, but you still had some more work to do.

I’ll be honest – the only reason why I watched all 4 of DXHR’s endings is because I got 50 Achievement Points out of it, and those may have been the easiest 50 points I’d ever gotten (well, besides the Avatar achievements).  The movies themselves were simultaneously clumsy and pretentious, and didn’t really reflect on any of the 30 hours of work I’d put in.  Ultimately, I couldn’t really tell you what happened even if I wanted to; none of them made any discernible impact on me.  To be fair, I was at the end of a marathon gaming session and so maybe I wasn’t as awake and alert as I should’ve been, but still – I need more from an ending than a 3-minute student video from an “Intro to Montage” class, especially from a franchise that made its name on player choice.

At the end of the day, I suppose I’m a little down on the game.  I’ll admit that maybe the reason why I’d enjoyed it as much as I did was because it was far better than I expected, and also because it was the first genuinely good game that had been released in months.  When it comes time to compare it to the rest of the year’s best in December, though, I’m not sure it’ll fare all that well.  It’s a welcome return to a much-loved franchise, and certainly I’d like to see more Deus Ex games in the near future; I just hope that these future titles aren’t afraid to carry a bit more weight.

Labor Dabor: hitting the wall

Does this ever happen to you?  Where you’re playing a couple different games at the same time, and you find yourself stuck in a difficult section in each one?  This is how I’m currently living.  I’m stuck in a boss battle towards the end of Deus Ex Human Revolution, and I’m also stuck in a difficult “boss” battle in Rock of Ages, and the CPU refuses to let me sink anything, even 5-foot gimme putts, in Tiger Woods 12.

I’m doing my best to enjoy DXHR, in spite of this boss battle bullshit.  I’m still trying to stay non-lethal – I’m not sure of the exact amount but I’ve spent at least 20 hours in the game and I still  haven’t fired an actual gun at any non-boss enemy yet – but I’ve got no problem whatsoever in hacking turrets to slay my pursuers while hiding safely nearby, because that’s awesome.

I’m also feeling a bit cynical and wondering if my enjoyment of DXHR is due to it being the first non-shitty game to be released in what feels like months.  Because let’s be honest here – it’s got some problems.  The boss battles are horrendous, both in conception and execution; if you’re playing non-lethally, like me, you’re pretty much screwed because you’ve spent your Praxis points on stuff like hacking and cloaking instead of damage resistance and recoil dampening.  Even though the game does more or less put you next to an ammo dump right before a boss battle, I still never feel prepared.  I only beat the 1st boss because a walkthrough told me that there were weapons scattered about the room – before I read that, I was just ducking in cover and popping off shots that weren’t doing anything and getting killed if I ran away.  And I ultimately ended up beating the 2nd boss only because of an animation glitch that left that boss stuck in place.  I’m doubly screwed in this 3rd boss; I inadvertently did something about 6 hours prior to the boss fight that renders my HUD totally useless in this fight, which means I’ve got no radar and no access to the Typhoon weapon.  That sucks.

And I suppose I could gripe about the shitty guard AI, although let’s face it – every guard in every game has shitty AI.  They all do the same thing in every game – if they spot you, they’ll run to the last place they saw you, look for you, and then, if they can’t find you, they’ll make some sort of comment like “Oh well” and then return to their regular patrol route.  I have to assume that there are legitimate game design reasons and limitations on why this is a common AI practice; otherwise, the player would feel like they were being excessively punished for making a mistake that they didn’t even know they’d made (i.e., getting spotted by a guard outside of the player’s field of vision).

I was listening to this week’s excellent Gamers With Jobs podcast, and they made a lot of really interesting points about other DX issues – how the locations don’t really feel all that distinctive (especially when compared to the first game), how clumsily some of the side quests are implemented, the strange realization that nobody in this world has finished moving in to their same, sterile apartment, etc.  I’d also disagree with them on the quality of the voice acting – I happen to think that DXHR’s voice acting is, by and large, pretty bad.

But ultimately, in spite of its faults, I suppose I think it’s a remarkably well-made game.  I don’t know that it necessarily feels like a “Deus Ex” game – let’s face it, game design has changed radically in the 10 years since the first game, and gamers have grown accustomed to certain modern conventions that simply didn’t exist back then, and frankly my memory of the first game is hazy at best – but it feels like a good game, and it’s a welcome return to the series.  The things that it does well, it does really well, and I could certainly see myself playing a few more of these.

TANGENT

The above-referenced SWJ podcast also had a mini-discussion about how DXHR disproves the “myth of the simple gamer” – the myth that today’s modern gamer doesn’t care for slower-paced, thought-provoking, nuanced gameplay.  I’m not entirely sure that I agree with that statement, but part of the problem is that they don’t really provide any examples of the “simple games” that today’s “simple gamer” enjoys.  If they’re referring to the empty narratives of big blockbuster shooters like Call of Duty and Halo, well, you can’t judge those games on their single-player campaigns – those games have staying power and enjoy massive popularity because of their multiplayer, which is a completely different animal altogether.   I’d argue that making thoughtful, slower-paced gaming experiences are HUGE commercial risks for developers – I mean, sales numbers don’t lie, and I’ll guarantee right now that Modern Warfare 3 outsells Bioshock Infinite by at least 3:1 – and I’d further argue that making thoughtful, slower-paced gaming experiences is generally more difficult, which is why not many developers take that challenge on in the first place, especially given that those titles won’t necessarily sell well.   Look at the big, AAA titles coming out this fall:

  • Rage
  • Batman: Arkham City
  • Uncharted 3
  • Skyrim
  • Gears of War 3
  • Battlefield 3
  • Modern Warfare 3
  • Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

With the notable exception of Rage, all of those games are sequels to existing franchises.  What does that tell you?  And look – I’m guilty of personally looking forward to playing most of those games on that list, and I’m sure that at least 3 of those games will wind up in my Top 10 GOTY list.  I’m also going to go out on a limb here and say that of those titles, Rage will probably move the least amount of units, even though it’s being made by one of the biggest names in the industry (and presumably with a lot of marketing power behind it).  The vast majority of gamers want something familiar.   (Hell, just look at how many Counter Strike players are still playing 1.6 after all these years.)

END TANGENT

Anyway, my original point at the beginning of this thing was that I’d hit a wall in all the games I’m currently playing.  And being that this is a long weekend AND that my wife is out of town for the next 5 days, this couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Have a great weekend, everybody.  I’m hoping to be back next week with some Subway Gamer columns on two new iPhone games that have been kicking my ass lately.

DXHR: the first few hours

Here’s how low I sunk during this summer’s release drought; I started playing World of Warcraft again.  Thankfully, I didn’t get terribly far into it – it’s free-to-play up until level 20, and I think I burned out at around level 16 or so.  This is good, because I used to have a serious WoW problem, to the point where I was taking sick days from work just to stay home and grind.  And I wasn’t even that good at it, to be honest – I took my first character up to level 46 or so, got sick of him, then re-rolled a hunter and got him up to the 20s, so it’s not like I ever came close to seeing all the end-game stuff.  Playing it now, it feels archaic and weird and repetitive and boring, frankly, and most of all it’s lonely.  NOBODY is in the low-level areas, which means you have to solo like crazy to get anywhere, and there’s only so many “kill 7 beasts” quests I can do before I’m shaking my head and asking myself why I got so hooked on this in the first place.

Also, I re-rented Tiger 12, and somehow I leveled up my dude to the point where he wasn’t totally terrible.  Putting still feels unfair (like it did when I first started out), but I suppose that’s what makes it “realistic.”  I still feel that Tiger 12 is a half-baked game compared to earlier iterations – by and large, the career mode is simply 18 holes at a time, which is a substantial time commitment.  Yes, for each “event” there are 2 smaller, less time-intensive events, but I don’t give a shit about Bingo-Bango-Bongo or Skins and the XP rewards aren’t all that substantial either.  I was pretty much just playing it to fill in the hours and pick up Achievements, which is sad.

The point being, I have not been enjoying my summer gaming time all that much, which is why this week’s release of Deus Ex: Human Resources – er, Human Revolution is so welcome.  Especially since it’s actually quite good!  I didn’t have that great a feeling about it leading up to the release; I kinda just figured it was a late summer toss-off, and thus destined to be disappointing.  Not so!  It’s the real deal.

It’s been so long since I played either of the first 2 games that comparisons between this new title and the originals are more or less irrelevant.  My memories of the first game (which I liked) are limited to a few scenarios, some ugly graphics and endings so convoluted that I needed a walkthrough just to make sense of what the hell I was doing; my memories of the second game (which I didn’t like) are limited to ridiculous load times and a bad quicksave on my part towards the end of the game that made progress more or less impossible.  My gut feeling is that DXHR is being respectful of the first game’s innovations, while still feeling modern and approachable.

I’m not that far into the game just yet – I’ve played for about 5 hours or so, and my current save is right before the first real boss.  The problem I’m having at this particular moment is that I’ve elected to go non-lethal, and as such I have no real weaponry to attack this boss character – he’s impervious to my tranq darts, and I can’t get close enough with my stun gun without being killed.  Furthermore, it would seem that I’ve invested my XP into all the wrong things for this particular encounter – I’ve got no armor, no invisibility, and all my hacking prowess is useless.

I was going non-lethal specifically to chase an achievement, but I’m reading that this non-lethal achievement also extends to the tutorial mission, which is unfortunate, since I did kill dudes with guns.  The lethal/non-lethal thing makes almost no difference in terms of gameplay, as it turns out – you’re still making dudes horizontal, but if you’re doing it non-lethally you run out of ammo much quicker.  Here’s how Rock Paper Shotgun puts it:

It seems reasonable to argue that the finest achievement of the Deus Ex games is to offer some choice about how you handle combat situations. They are combat games, really, but since they are based around infiltration, rather than direct confrontation, there’s considerable scope for activities other than shooting men to death. Getting them to lie down and have a nap, via a range of persuasive implements, also becomes an option. The role-playing ramifications of that are pretty profound, especially when set against the backdrop of most of the games we play. You get to be the guy who doesn’t murder hapless goons (thus neatly sidestepping the “think of the Goon’s family” guilt-joke from Austin Powers) and instead drags their unconscious forms into airducts, traumatising them forever.

I enjoy being stealthy in this game; it works, for the most part.  The cover system works, and the switch from first-person to third-person is never jarring.  Sometimes I’ve been spotted by dudes who can’t possibly see me, which seems unfair, but that’s been something that’s been in games for years and years and isn’t really a new problem.   Sneaking into vents and hacking people’s computers is thrilling, though – indeed, the hacking system here is riveting and genuinely stressful, which it should be.  And there are enough nooks and crannies throughout the world to make exploration genuinely rewarding.

That’s the news from SFTC HQ.  Look for a site redesign shortly; I’m getting bored of what we’ve got going on right now.

2011 in review (so far)

Well, it only took about 7 years, but I finally accomplished something this weekend that’s been very subtly driving me crazy – my Xbox Gamerscore finally ends in a ‘5’.  There was a 6-point achievement in Rock Band 3 for linking my band (“The Vosstones”) to the Harmonix website, and for some reason it finally worked today – I’d tried hooking it up a long time ago, but for some reason it never took.  (Indeed, it took a while to get working today – not entirely sure what changed, but whatever.)

I’m trying to remember what got my Gamerscore off in the first place – I’m thinking it was one of the early Ghost Recon games, or possibly Cloning Clyde, a long-forgotten XBLA title.  Whatever it was, having those strange numbers in my score was always a little irritating (and that’s probably why they don’t really crop up all that often these days); I couldn’t ever have a nice round number.   And so now, since most ‘cheevos end in either ‘5’ or ‘0’, I can finally get to an aesthetically pleasing plateau.

Speaking of which, my Gamerscore is currently at 72615.  I can’t recall exactly where I was at the beginning of the year – my 2010 year in review (which I wrote in early December) put me at around 64,200 – but in any event, I’ve climbed up quite a bit.  I knew this year was going to be good, and that I’d be playing a lot, but goddamn – that’s almost 9000 points in about 8 months, and we still haven’t hit the peak of the release season just yet.

And in keeping with that, I figured this would be a good time to do a year-so-far recap, since, well, why not.

The Game of the Year (so far):

  • Portal 2 – current front-runner for GOTY, and while I’m very much looking forward to seeing how Skyrim, Uncharted 3 and Batman try to usurp the throne, I don’t want to make it sound like Portal 2 is just a placeholder for the top of the list.  I’ve played this game on every platform it’s currently available for, multiple times, and even writing about it now makes me want to go back and hang out with Wheatley.  I’m also looking forward to playing this again when it’s time to refresh my memory for the real GOTY post; hopefully I’ll have forgotten some of the puzzle solutions by then.
The Very, Very Good:
  • Dead Space 2 – I’m glad I finished this one; it was a very enjoyable experience (although not particularly scary, or even all that creepy, aside from that eyeball sequence).  And believe me, I’m a huge sissybaby when it comes to scary movies and books and stuff.  The very first time a dog jumped through the window in RE2, I think I literally jumped 3 feet out of my chair.
  • Bulletstorm – I kinda miss this game, to be honest – once I finished the story and did some of the extra bonus stuff, I traded it back to Amazon towards something, and whenever I hear people talk about it I remember how much fun I had with it.  It is everything that Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t.
  • You Don’t Know Jack  – I can’t let this one get lost in the shuffle.  I’ve had a BLAST with this game every time it’s come out, whether I’m alone or with a group of friends.
  • Bastion – I finally finished this earlier this week, when I was home sick from work.  It’s a lovely, charming, exceedingly well-crafted experience, and a ton of fun to boot.  Had a great time exploring the world.
The Very Good:
  • Little Big Planet 2  – even though I was ultimately a little disappointed with this game, at least compared to the first one, I still think it’s a pretty remarkable experience.  I just wish I wasn’t so reluctant to try the level creation stuff.
  • Mortal Kombat – even though I’m not really a fighting game enthusiast, I must tip my hat to MK – it’s probably the most complete fighting game experience ever made.
  • L.A. Noire  – the more time I spent away from this game, the better I think of it.  It’s got a number of flaws that seem particularly glaring when you’re actually dealing with them – the open world is totally unnecessary, frankly, and the interrogations seem a bit broken and not particularly well-written enough – but the things that it does right are truly incredible.  And the applications for the facial tech seem pretty exciting, frankly – I’d even accept a delay to Mass Effect 3 if it meant they could get that tech in there.
  • Dragon Age 2  – it’s true that this got really repetitive after a while, but I still liked it enough to finish it.  it’s to Bioware’s credit that even an acknowledged misstep can still be a pretty good time.
  • Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet  – not quite as deep or engaging as, say, Shadow Complex, but still a pretty fun little game.
  • Stacking  – DoubleFine’s mini-titles have been a really nice direction for the company, and while I finished this game pretty quickly, I could easily see myself going back for a sequel.  Charming as all hell.
  • Trenched – I feel terrible that I haven’t finished this one – I had an absolute blast with friends when it first came out.  One of the best online co-op experiences I’ve ever had, actually.

The Subway Gamer: Tiny Tower

I might be in trouble.  Tiny Tower is scratching an itch that I’d thought I’d gotten rid of.

Tiny Tower came out a week or two ago, to much acclaim from some of the gaming press.  A free-to-play title, filled with pixelated charm, capable of devastating addiction if not watched carefully.  I downloaded it (of course), but the tutorial was a bit confusing and I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do.  So I put it away and forgot about it.

But people kept talking.  That’s the curse of today’s social media – if you’re plugged in, you can’t escape it.  I was bombarded with too many tweets and forum posts about Tiny Tower’s addictive qualities, and then somebody referred to it as a vertical Farmville, and suddenly I understood what the game was about.

And now I’m hooked.

I used to have a Farmville problem.  In fact, now that I think about it, it’s been just over a year since I pulled the plug.  Lots of people hate Farmville, and I suppose I understand where they’re coming from, even if most of the hate is simply based against Zynga’s horrendous business practices and/or “casual” gaming in general.  For me, though, there was something about it that was tremendously compelling.  In fact, now that I think of it, I realize that the appeal of Farmville (and other similar titles) was very similar to what I wanted to like about the Civilization games – it’s resource gathering, but without enemies or antagonists.  There’s no pressure.  You build, you reap, you sow, you earn, lather, rinse, repeat.  The Keflings games on XBLA scratch this itch for me too, although in both of those games I ended up screwing myself by running out of builders.

But Tiny Towers scratches this itch like crazy.  You, as a building developer, are continually adding floors to your tower.  A floor may be residential, or one of 5 different kinds of store.  You move people into your building and give them jobs in the stores.  Each person (or “Bitizen”) has certain preferences for where they want to work, and it’s up to you to manage their happiness – the happier the employees are, the easier (and cheaper) it is to restock their stores’ inventory.  That’s it.  When you’re done with all that stuff, your main task (besides watching the money roll in) is to work the elevator that lets visitors go to different floors.

The addiction sets in when you realize that need to build another floor because your tower has a need for a certain type of store, and then you realize that the floor you just built doesn’t have enough Bitizens to properly staff it, and so you then need to build another floor because you need to house all the Bitizens in order to staff that store, and then you need to build another floor because you have too many Bitizens without jobs, etc.

And the dangerous part is that each task in the game takes time.  But if you need instant gratification, you can spend “Bux” to speed the process up immediately, or you can transmute your “Bux” into in-game currency which can then be used to buy new floors.  And “Bux” cost real U.S. Dollars.  As the game is free on the iTunes store, I did succumb to temptation once and bought some “Bux”, but I rationalized it by saying it was a thank-you to the developer.  I am hopeful that it was just a momentary lapse of weakness.  I can’t get sucked in again.

Thankfully, this isn’t really something you can play for more than a minute at a time (unless you’re endlessly buying things, which you can only do with real money).  My commute to work is around 40 minutes or so, and there’s only so much elevator-ferrying I can do before I start getting restless.  But it is something I check in on every hour or so when work gets slow, and since the game is constantly running in the background, every time I log in I’m greeted with a large amount of cash that’s accumulated since my last check-in.  So that’s nice.

Name:  Tiny Tower

Price:  Free, with endless opportunities for micro-transactions.

Description:  Some sort of tower-building sim thing.

Can it play background music?:  Yes.

Can you play one-handed?:  Yes

Do you look like an idiot when you play it?:  No.

The Final Word:  I’m giving this a 4 out of 5.  It’s relentlessly charming, and fiendishly addictive.  Your mileage may vary depending on your taste for this particular sort of gameplay; it’s not necessarily for everyone.  But it’s certainly for me.  Goddammit.

Introducing: The Subway Gamer

[This is the first of what will hopefully be a regularly recurring feature here at SFTC:  The Subway Gamer, wherein I talk about what I’m playing on my iPhone on my way into and from work, as well as what I see other people playing.]

[EDIT:  Can’t believe I posted this without the incredibly obvious scoring mechanism that I’ve now inserted at the bottom.]

Regular NYC commuters generally understand, whether they like it or not, that if they read a book, people will look at what they’re reading, make subjective assumptions based upon what you’re reading, and, more often than not, end up reading over their shoulder (especially if they’re reading a newspaper).

The same thing holds true for handheld gaming, more or less.  I’m constantly playing games on my iPhone when I’m on the subway, and from time to time I see people glancing at what I’m doing.  (This is mostly when the game I’m playing requires lots of hand movements, and I look like an idiot.)  Likewise, if I see someone else playing something on their iPhone, I’ll take a gander and see if it’s something worth playing for myself.  (I’ve discovered quite a few awesome games in this manner – Grim Joggers, Train Conductor and Cover Orange, for starters.)

There are a number of important criteria that I take into consideration when it comes to subway gaming.  The first, and possibly important, is whether or not I can listen to my own music while playing.  This has actually been somewhat of a deal breaker for me, to be honest – I’ve got a ton of supposedly really good RPGs on my iPhone, but I’ll never get around to playing them because I’m stuck listening to their music – music that doesn’t necessarily enhance the gaming experience.  By and large, the games that I tend to play are more puzzle-based rather than story-based, and so generally this isn’t that big a deal – my commute isn’t long enough to really get sucked into a story, anyway – but it’s a big enough deal that it bears mentioning.

Another issue is whether the game can be played with one hand or not.  (Don’t get any ideas.)  The general unspoken rule (actually, sometimes it is spoken – this is New York, after all) is that able-bodied, 30-something males are the lowest on the priority list if an empty seat is available on the train.  This means that I’m standing up 99.99% of the time, and I’ll need something to hold on to.  If I’m playing a game that requires 2 hands to play and I’m on a bumpy stretch of track, well, that affects the gameplay experience.  (It doesn’t mean the game itself is bad, of course; I’m speaking purely about my own personal experience on the subway.)

There’s other things like loading times and restart times, whether the game is fairly priced, whether the game needs to have wi-fi access, if the iPhone needs to be tilted or manhandled or needs the aforementioned crazy hand movements or requires you to do anything that makes you feel self-conscious and awkward.  And, of course, the game needs to be fun, and worth playing more than once.

At some point in the near future I’ll be putting up some Favorite iPhone Games lists so that you know where I’m coming from, but for now I just want to get started with a belated review of Flick Golf Extreme!, the sequel to Full Fat Productions’ excellent Flick Golf!

Name:  Flick Golf Extreme!

Price:  $2.99

Description:  A sequel/expansion pack to the original, outstanding Flick Golf!, a touchscreen-based bulls-eye golf game.  The new game is 2 dollars more expensive, and yet features less content than the original.

Can it play background music?:  Yes.

Can you play one-handed?:  Yes, although your scores probably won’t be as good.

Do you look like an idiot when you play it?:  If you’re really into finessing your shots with spin, you might have some arm flailing.

The idea behind the Flick Golf games is simple; simply flick the ball, and get as close to the hole as possible.  The closer you get, the more points you score.  You can adjust your ball’s trajectory mid-flight by swiping your finger across the screen, and you can also make adjustments to the ball’s spin once it hits the ground.  At higher levels, wind becomes a factor.  Very simple, very self-explanatory.

There are several different modes – one is simply a straight-up score competition, another tasks you with reaching a certain score in a certain amount of time (and great shots reward you with extra time), and yet another starts you out with only 5 balls (although you can earn more shots by getting holes-in-one).

This Extreme! sequel features only 5 courses, and they’re a little bit harder than in the original – you have much less surface area to work with.  This isn’t much of a problem if you’re a veteran of the first game and have a general idea of what you’re doing, but for the newcomer I would expect this game to be pretty difficult when starting out.  (The newcomer really ought to play the original game first, anyway, as it’s cheaper, contains more courses, and has been made a bit easier to get through in terms of scoring benchmarks, via recent updates.)

The game certainly looks beautiful.  The retina display is used to great effect here; colors pop off the screen, backgrounds are nicely detailed, and the game runs very smoothly.  Each level does take between 12-15 seconds to load up, which can get somewhat annoying, but once you’re in a level you can restart it instantly (which is very much appreciated – at later levels your score requirements get pretty high, and if you miss early you’re doomed).

I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with this one, but I can’t necessarily recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played the original.  The original game is only 99 cents, has a lot more content, and is a bit easier to get into.  As noted above, this game is $2.99, features less content, and is a bit more difficult.  $2.99 is right around the threshold for me, in terms of how easily I’ll succumb to my consumer desires; considering how little is here, I’m a little bummed.  Still, though, it’s certainly fun for what it is, and if you enjoy the first game you’ll probably enjoy this one, too, and maybe you’ll justify the extra cost as a thank-you to the developers who packed in so much content in the original.

The Final Word:  out of 5.  This could go up, though, if they release more (free) content in future updates.

Going back to New Austin; going back to Civ

So I guess I’m playing Red Dead Redemption again, for real.  The brief foray back into the multiplayer side reminded me just how much I enjoyed the single-player, and since there’s nothing else going on, I figured I might as well dive back in.  It feels like I’m rereading one of my favorite books; there’s no surprises anymore, but I’m already comfortable with the lay of the land, and I can better appreciate some of the subtler aspects at work.  For example, the relationship between John Marston and Bonnie MacFarlane at the beginning of the game is so incredibly well written and performed; there’s a tenderness between the two that’s genuinely touching, even though nothing will ever happen.

And I still maintain that it’s one of the most gorgeous games I’ve ever played.  Riding into the sunset is thrilling.  The environment really does feel dry and dusty, and yet the thunderstorms are earth-shatteringly intense.  I suppose the illusion falls apart every once in a while – I got sidetracked last night doing the 3rd Treasure Hunter mission, where the treasure is hidden away in the middle of a cliff, and so it became obvious that the rock face was just a texture map and not really as layered as it appeared from far off.  That’s nit-picking to the nth degree, and I kinda felt guilty for noticing it, to be honest.

I don’t know that I need to liveblog every RDR session from here on out, unless something truly blog-worthy occurs.

———

Let me save you the worry – Wipeout: In the Zone is a piece of shit.  My wife and I are fans of the TV show, much in the same way that we’re fans of America’s Funniest Home Videos – we’re not proud of it, but watching people fall down is always funny.  And so it’s not like we had high hopes for the videogame, as licensed products are almost always terrible and it’s not like Wipeout is some bastion of high quality.  Still, though, it’s even worse than you’d expect.  The Kinect controls are horrendously unresponsive, which belies the whole point of the experience.  If you jump in real life, you expect your avatar to jump as well; if you crouch, your avatar crouches.  This is the 1:1 experience that Kinect is supposed to offer.  I’m not sure that the development budget for this Wipeout game was more than $75, though, and it’s clear that none of it was spent on getting the thing to work.

If you absolutely need an avatar-based obstacle course game to play, I would heartily recommend Doritos Crash Course, which (a) has working controls and (b) is actually kinda fun.  And I think it’s free?

———-

I’ve been trying to get into Civ World, the much-anticipated Civ title for Facebook.  Let me rephrase that – I did finally literally get into it (as the servers were melting when the beta finally opened up), but I’m having trouble figuring out just what I’m supposed to be doing.

That’s probably true of all the Civ games I’ve played, if I’m being honest.  I really enjoyed Civilization Revolution, and bought it for both XBLA and my DS (and I’ll admit to having the free version on my iPhone), even though I never played above the easiest difficult setting, and the one time I played multiplayer I got trounced in about 10 minutes – I was still sending out lone warrior units meant to conquer barbarians, and I think my opponent was already working with tanks.  Still, though, I really enjoyed the general idea of the thing, and so, because I’m a man easily obsessed and with little to no control over impulse purchases, I bought and played exactly one (1) game of Civ 4 on my PC, which I enjoyed, even though it’s rare that I have 8 uninterrupted hours to play with.  I also bought and played a few games of Civ V on my PC (and Mac – it’s one of the first things I installed when I got Steam up and running on the new MacBook); I was able to appreciate the differences between Civ 4 and 5, and certainly appreciated the few things it took from Civ Rev.

I still can’t get beyond the easiest difficulty level, though.  I work slowly.  To tell you the truth, one of the reasons why I got so addicted to Farmville was that I could take my time doing the things that needed to get done, with little to no resistance from the world at large.  My thing with the Civ games is that I get really into building up my little towns, and then before I know it it’s the 1900s and the other countries have submarines and bomber jets.

Anyway, so the thing with Civ World is that I’m kinda just making my little town, and my main issue is that I don’t seem to be getting enough Production out of my city.  I build houses but they’re not immediately settled, and I don’t know if they’ll ever be settled; the server is a bit wonky and unreliable.   Meanwhile, people are leveling up all over the place and doing all sorts of things that I’m nowhere near ready to do.  I’m still somewhat enjoying my little town, to be sure, but I know that I’m not necessarily playing the game the way it was intended to be played, which means that I’m doing it wrong.  And whatever enjoyment I might be getting out of doing whatever it is I do is tempered with the knowledge that the hard-core Civ players would laugh at me and tell me to go back to Farmville.

Oh well.

I’m not sure what’s on tap for the weekend; probably more Red Dead, and perhaps a little more of the Uncharted 3 beta, even though I’m still terrible at it.

Weekend Recap: fireworks and saddle sores

Back in the early 00’s, the AV Club used to have a somewhat regular feature called “Justify Your Existence” where they asked musicians one simple question:  “Why should anybody buy your record?”  I’m assuming they retired it because the vast majority of responses went something like this – “Oh, jeez, um… I’ve never had anybody ask me that.  I have no idea.”

To that end, I’m officially taking back anything nice that I may have said in last week’s thing about Alice: The Madness Returns, the sequel that nobody asked for to a game that a lot of people didn’t like.  Somewhere towards the end of Chapter 3 (out of 6!!!) I ran out of steam and patience.  Endless combat sequences stacked within endless platforming sequences, no rhyme or reason to any of it, and anything that may have been fun in the first few hours quickly grew tiresome.  To borrow a quote from Hannibal Lecter:  “Tedious.  Very tedious.”   I forget what exactly it was that got me to give up; it was either one of the incredibly stupid music sequences (similar in every way to the lute playing in Fable 3, except with very poor timing controls), or yet another combat sequence featuring not one but two frustratingly difficult enemies.  If someone were to ask the developers why anybody should play the game, they’d probably say “we’ve got a lot of great art!”  That’s only somewhat true.  There is a lot of great art, yes, but there’s even more dumb art that surrounds it, and it’s all too much.

It’s not that the game is bad; it’s just that it was never edited down, and as a result it’s hard to separate what’s necessary from what’s filler, and ultimately it all blends together.  For every truly imaginative location – and there are a few – there are at least a dozen more that aren’t all that imaginative – or they’re simply repetitive.  The player is continually bludgeoned with awe at every turn until the senses are dulled.

—————————–

I got back into Red Dead Redemption, of all things.  Rockstar was having a 4x XP weekend, and I needed something to cleanse the palate after sealing up my copy of Alice.  I’m still terrible at competitive multiplayer, but I still love exploring that world, and it was very easy to level up 4 or 5 times simply running Pike’s Basin over and over again.  I did a little bit of the Undead Horde mode, or whatever it’s called – it’s RDR’s answer to Gears’ Horde mode, and it’s a lot of fun (provided you have enough people – it’s very difficult with just 2).   I’m still amazed that there’s no PC version – I would love to see it on my monster machine.  Oh well.  The summer release schedule is looking pretty slow right now, and I can see myself losing many hours to running the single-player campaign again.

—————————–

I’ve managed to avoid doing too much damage in this year’s Steam Summer Sale.  They run sales so often that I more or less already own everything I’d want to buy.  I played a few minutes of Back To the Future Episode 1; it feels a little clunky, at least in terms of the controls.  I like those movies but I don’t adore them, which may contribute to my general feeling of “meh”.