Category: guessing at future games

Mass Effect 3: the ending, and what comes next

[I’m doing my damnedest to keep MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS to a minimum, but you know how these things go.]

I finished Mass Effect 3 very late last night.  It wasn’t my intention, necessarily, but I’d finished every other side quest I could find and there wasn’t an easy place to stop.

I’d been trying to live in a spoiler-free world regarding the game for the last 6 months or so, but I also spend a lot of time on the internet, and so it was impossible to ignore the controversy brewing about the game’s endings.  I didn’t know why they were upset, or how many of them were out there, or if it was even something to take all that seriously, being that there’s a riot goin’ on over the internet at pretty much any given time.

And anyway, I wanted to see the ending for myself.  (My “galactic readiness” was somewhere in the low-to-mid 60%, but my strength was in the mid 4000s, high enough to get the best endings.)

As it happens, I saw my chosen ending at around 2:00 in the morning, after a 6 hour marathon, and as such I’m probably not in the best shape to discuss why it’s a terrible ending or why Bioware needs to change it.  I’m not entirely sure they do need to change it, anyway.  I made my choice after what felt like 30 minutes of hemming and hawing, and when I finish this post I’m probably going to head back to my apartment and fire up my last save just to see the option I almost picked instead.

It was a tough choice, there’s no doubt about it.  It was absolutely the toughest choice I’d made in the entire series, especially since none of the three options were terribly appealing, and also since I was exhausted and forgot what the choices actually were for a little bit there.  But it would’ve been silly to hope for a “happy” ending – in a series where millions and millions of people/creatures died over the course of a years-long galactic war, having an Ewok dance party would’ve been stupid.

In any event, it wasn’t a cop-out, which (to me) is what’s most impressive.  Even in spite of the fact that it’s a literal deus ex machina.  I did what I did and the war ended, and it hurt a little bit, as it should’ve.

_______________

I’ve read in a few places that even though the trilogy is over, Bioware isn’t done with the Mass Effect franchise, which is good.  I don’t want to leave this world they’ve created.  They’ve created one of the most compelling sci-fi universes in any medium, and there’s a lot more to be seen and done.  But there are some game things that need to be addressed.

For one thing, is there any game franchise that would benefit more from L.A. Noire‘s amazing facial tech than Mass Effect?  As it stands right now, all of the otherwise excellent dialogue sequences are hampered by robotic facial expressions and the occasional strange, unconnected wandering around by a speaking character.  (This happens a lot in The Old Republic, come to think of it.  In fact, some of the wandering-around animations might be identical.)  Better facial tech would go a long way towards making these characters feel even more real than the script allows them to be.

I might also add that a lot of the optional crew conversations in ME3 – the ones where you finish your mission and then wander around the Normandy – were almost exclusively of the pep-talk variety.  Everybody’s feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders, sure, but I felt like I was having the same conversation with 12 different people.

The quest system was more than a little messed up – at least as far as the optional side stuff went.  For one thing, picking up side missions by overhearing conversations in the Citadel just felt lazy.  Secondly, the quest system never updated itself, so it was hard to know what you’d actually found and what was ready to turn in.  At one point, I’d kept a notebook on my coffee table so that I could keep track of what I was doing.  This seems insane, given that the game has a built-in quest log already.

One of the things I liked in ME2 was that not every side mission involved combat – sometimes it was just exploring an environment.  As far as I could tell, there was only one (1) mission like that in ME3, and it was a neat change of pace (even if it felt like a puzzle idea that only got half-baked), and I wished there was more.

__________________

My big dream for the next console generation is for a mega-hybrid RPG combining the sci-fi world and strong character development of Mass Effect, the wide-open expanse and the sense of discovery of Skyrim, and the true open-world freedom of GTA.  You put that together with a truly kick-ass graphics engine (idTech5? UnrealEngine 4?) and maybe a multiplayer component worth a damn and  you’ve got yourself a monumental work of art.  Make it so.

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

GTA5 speculation

I’ve been insanely busy this week and so I haven’t yet written up my thing about Batman: Arkham City (short version: it’s great), but I can’t NOT write about today’s announcement of next week’s reveal of Grand Theft Auto 5.

The reveal trailer comes out next week; in the meantime, we have this logo.

Speculating about the settings of future GTA games used to be a favorite pastime of mine, but GTA4 kinda destroyed that for me, insofar as that it was less about the setting and relevant cultural satire and more about Niko Bellic’s experience in Liberty City, which is something noone could’ve predicted.  I have learned to accept that the Brothers Houser are smarter and more culturally savvy than I will ever be, and I’d rather just be surprised than try to beat them to the punch.

THAT BEING SAID.  I can’t just sit here and not think about it.

The V/Five in the logo seems awfully significant, doesn’t it?  Clearly, that’s meant to evoke US currency.  There have been rumors (leaked casting notices, URL registrations) that this game will have something to do with the financial collapse, and so this logo would certainly bear that out.

Now, when you think of money, what do you think of?  3 places come to mind:

  • Wall Street
  • Hollywood
  • Washington, D.C.

Wall Street = NYC, and since GTA4 took place in Liberty City, it seems unlikely that Rockstar would revisit the same city so soon.  Hollywood is certainly a more plausible possibility, considering they’ve already been there in San Andreas.  It should be noted, however, that L.A. Noire covered the Hollywood locale pretty thoroughly (even if it was in the 40s, and even if Rockstar didn’t technically build it), and Rockstar’s already built a drivable LA in the latest Midnight Club game.  Which is why, if I had to guess, I’d guess this game would take place in Washington, D.C., right around now.  The GTA games have always been outspoken from a political point of view (even if things like Weasel News are less about commentary and more about parody).  The GTA games have been controversial and fodder for politicians for years (and it just so happens that today’s announcement is also the 3-year anniversary of Jack Thompson’s disbarment).  And considering that Max Payne 3, another Rockstar game, is slated for release in the Spring of 2012, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see GTA5 staying out of its way and arriving in or around Election Day.   (Indeed, I’ve been emailing back and forth all day today with a friend, who offered that if GTA5 was indeed set in DC, then GTA5’s version of GTA4’s pigeons would be to punch 100 senators in the face.)

As for the game?  Well, I have a far less nebulous list of demands:

  • Make the combat more like Red Dead
  • Make the penalty for death more forgiving (like Red Dead)
  • Let me save anywhere, instead of having to drive all the way back to a safe house (also like Red Dead)

Anyway, I’m most likely wrong about this, but it’s fun to guess.

EDIT:  Literally 5 minutes after posting this, I checked my RSS feed and saw that Kotaku is reporting that GTA5 will take place in Los Angeles.

Speaking of which.

L.A. Noire and what comes next

For a 3-day weekend, I didn’t get a tremendous amount of gaming happening.  I did finish Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, which is to say that I finished all the stages and unlocked a fair amount of extras.  And I did a bit more Dirt 3, including some of the amazingly fun multiplayer – the Zombie mode, or whatever it’s called, is incredibly fun.  But I ultimately spent the most time getting back into L.A. Noire.

I was emailing back and forth with a friend about it.  He had been asking when I was going to be online in Dirt 3, and I’d told him I was almost done with L.A. Noire and that I’d be all over Dirt 3 once I’d finished the last few cases.  And so then he asked:

So now that you are most of the way through [the game] and well into the development of the over-arching story, are you loving it?

And I responded:

I don’t know that I’m loving it.  I’m enjoying it, certainly, and I am appreciative of what it is and what it took to make it.  But for all it does to immerse you in the world, it does a thousand other small, subtle things that totally throw you out and reminds you that it is a game.  The interrogations, in particular, are so beholden to a particular, specific formula that you almost wonder why they bothered with the facial animation tech in the first place.  And there’s been lots of times where my own brain is ahead of Cole Phelps’ brain, and so he never asks the questions that I want to ask.  Part of this is because of those newspapers – I don’t know if you’ve been diligent in picking them up, but they’ve been telegraphing where the overall story is headed – so much so that it almost broke the game for me at several points.

I should also confess that I’ve been using a walkthrough for the last few missions, because I hate getting questions wrong.  Does that take all the challenge out of the game?  Yes, pretty much; I’d been doing great in terms of clue gathering, and I’ve been having my partner do all the driving since it’s impossible for me to not crash into a thousand cars and lampposts and pedestrians just going around the corner.  The sandbox element feels totally unnecessary and not particularly interesting, either – certainly not in the way that it worked for RDR and GTA.

Now, look – I’ll be the first person to acknowledge that using walkthroughs, especially in a game like L.A. Noire, essentially defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place, even if the walkthrough in question doesn’t actually spoil the story, but rather simply gives you all the right answers to the interrogations.  I’ve been saying ever since the beginning that the interrogations are the most problematic part of L.A. Noire, and judging from all the podcasts I’ve listened to, I know I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Like I said above, the essential problem with the interrogations is that once you get past the astoundingly good facial animation, you are left with a very basic template that never, ever changes or deviates, and so whatever immersion you might have had in the animation is ripped out from under you as soon as it’s time to react.  Let’s say that you ask the Person of Interest a question.  The POI will say something in response to your question, and then immediately start acting, usually betraying everything that they just said.  They’ll forcefully say “There’s absolutely no goddamned way that I could’ve murdered that person,” and then as soon as they stop talking they’ll immediately start twitching and grinding their teeth, and if you think they’re lying they’ll suddenly get brazen and say “Well why don’t you prove it, flatfoot!”   Let’s leave aside the obvious observation that real conversations never work like this, and let’s also leave side the weird disconnect in the player character’s attitudes when confronting a lie (gently) and being doubtful (flying off the handle).  The main problem that I’ve been having is that I never seem to be able to ask the questions that I want to ask.  Either my own personal brain is ahead of the game, or else I’m on a path that’s utterly disconnected from the correct line of questioning.  And when I’m actually asking the right questions, I’m still generally 50/50 when it comes to confronting a lie with what I believe is the right piece of corroborating evidence.

That’s mostly my problem, I suppose.  But the fact that lots of other people are having problems with it leads me to believe that maybe it isn’t just my fault.

The last thing in my email, though, is part of the larger problem I have with the game – that the sandbox element feels unnecessary.  I totally get that having a real post-war L.A. is an incredible achievement, and I really truly wish that I could spend more time exploring it.  Problem is, there’s really no incentive to do so; the side missions feel obligatory (most of them are 20 second shoot-outs) and the hidden collectibles are so well hidden that I wouldn’t even know about them if I hadn’t been told they were there.  The one side thing that I’ve been diligent about collecting is the newspapers, and even then, they’ve revealed so much of the backstory that I almost feel like I know too much – for example, the events that mark the transition from Ad Vice to Arson were more or less telegraphed in one particular newspaper that was almost impossible to ignore, which more or less ruined the surprise.

But there’s a solution to this problem.  In fact, there’s a solution to most of the problems I have with L.A. Noire, and it’s a solution that would make L.A. Noire 2 better for everybody.  And it’s a solution that seems kinda obvious, so much so that I have to wonder if the developers knew it also, but had spent so long working on what they’d already come up with that to switch gears would cause more problems than it would solve.

The solution:  your player character in L.A. Noire 2 is a private detective.  Here’s 4 quick reasons why that works:

1.  Suddenly, the sandbox makes sense.  A private detective can run around L.A. and do things – he can go to the fights, he can gamble at the tracks, he can explore – he’s not beholden to the law in the same way a police officer is, especially a golden boy like Cole Phelps.

2.  Similarly, the side missions could be more varied.  The photography missions alone would be more interesting than the shoot-outs we’re currently working with.

3.  A private eye fits the noir mold a thousand times more than a police officer.  He can be darker, he can be mysterious, he can be drunk, he can wear his regret on his sleeves.  Cole Phelps is more of an automaton than a living, breathing person – and while there might be a good, as yet unrevealed reason why that is, a private eye is more interesting right from the get-go.

4.  I’m guessing that a private eye’s interrogations wouldn’t be as formalized as a police officer’s interrogations, but that would certainly make them a hell of a lot more interesting and varied.

I appreciate that L.A. Noire’s current set-up works, in a certain way – the progression of Cole’s career is broken into desks, which also vary up the cases and put him in different situations.  It’s just that it never feels as gritty or as dirty as it could.  I’m not saying that a future L.A. Noire game has to be like GTA – it’s just that it has the potential to be so much more than it already is.

some ramblings about Portal 2

(I’m kinda working on a Portal 2 review, but in the meantime I’m just rambling.  There will be spoilers at the bottom, mostly consisting of guesses about Portal 3.  You’ll be warned.)

Portal 2 is a big deal.  That it has become a big deal is kind of awesome, when you think about it; Portal began as a student project (Narbacular Drop), and now it is the first full-length, single-player first-person game Valve has released since Half Life 2.  It also features no blood, (almost) no violence, and no other living characters.  You don’t have an inventory – indeed, you don’t even have a voice.  You have a gun, but you don’t kill anything with it – at least not directly, and the things you indirectly kill are robotic turrets.  Indeed, for the most part you aren’t killing anything – you’re solving puzzles.

Even more fascinating – at least to me – is that while it’s true that you can only really “solve” the puzzles once (and thus only generate that genuine, exhilarating “a-ha!” moment once as well), the game never stops being entertaining upon multiple playthroughs.  I’ve played the original Portal maybe a dozen times, and I’ve already beaten Portal 2 twice after only owning the game for 3 days.  Some of the puzzle solutions are just awesome.  They are fulfilling to solve, absolutely, but they’re also incredibly fulfilling just in the pure act of execution, and as you get better at the game you find more efficient ways of solving each puzzle, which is also fulfilling.

For example, there’s a puzzle in Portal 2 (I believe it’s the first puzzle in Chapter 3, the one that begins with repeated aerial faith plate malfunctions) that I solved without much difficultly on my first run, although I’d found it somewhat tedious to keep walking back and forth between portal openings.  On my second playthrough, I suddenly realized that I could simply jump into one of the portals I’d just created, thus making everything move a lot quicker.  So it’s not just the thrill of the initial solution to a problem; it’s the subsequent discovery of more efficient solutions that’s just as thrilling.

I think for me, though, the main reasons why I keep coming back to Portal and Portal 2 are:

      • The world.  Every game that’s out these days is either set in some post-apocalyptic wasteland or some variation on the standard platformer themes – forest, desert, lava, ice.  The original Portal had a very simple and very distinctive look to it, and it was all the more thrilling when the curtain was pulled back in the final act.  Portal 2’s environments are even more varied and diverse, as well as still being incredibly unique, and the fact that so much of it takes place “behind the scenes” makes it all the more special.  Portal already has somewhat of a “meta” vibe in the first place but this notion of being off the beaten path is thrilling, especially when the settings are so epic in scope.
    • The attention to detail.  It’s easy to fly past a lot of the little things in Portal 2, and for the most part it’s not at all necessary to stop and inspect every single piece of litter you come across.  And yet there’s actual writing on each coffee can and fuse box; it goes an incredibly long way towards making the world believable, even while you’re doing unbelievable things.  Everything is in its right place, even when it’s out of place.  The best games generally get this – Bioshock, GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption certainly get it.
    • The quality of the storytelling.   They’re paced incredibly well, and Portal 2’s pace is among the best of all time.  Puzzle concepts are introduced gradually, and eventually you’ll be doing some completely insane things in order to solve them, and as a reward there’ll be an exhilarating chase sequence or an extended, slow exploration sequence when you get to a new area.  And it’s not just the Portal games are hilarious – it’s also that they’re smart enough to both tell you what’s happening, and also let you infer what’s happening indirectly.  (And there’s quite a lot happening, and we’ll get to that in a bit. )
  • The love.  I know that’s a ridiculous thing to say.  But you can tell when a development team genuinely cares about the game they make, and it’s very, very clear that Valve cares.  The original Portal is a game that people adore, and as such the expectations for a sequel were astronomically high – even though it would be impossible to guess just what, if anything, the sequel would look like.  There’s not a single bum note in either of the two games, and that’s not because of luck – that’s because an enormous amount of time went into polishing everything, from the graphics to the dialogue to the puzzles themselves.  In a recent interview with Gamespot, writer Erik Wolpaw (one of my personal heroes) said that it doesn’t matter to him whether games can exist as art – games need to be entertaining, first and foremost, or else what’s the point?

OK: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Portal 3 speculation:

    • We now know about Aperture’s origins, and somewhat about how GlaDOS came to be.  But what of Chell?  Where did she come from?  Was she someone’s daughter in “Bring Your Daughter To Work” day?  [EDIT:  Yes, she is.] Was she Cave Johnson’s illegitimate daughter with Caroline?  (Would that even make sense, time-line wise?  Is it ever specified when the first game take place?  Considering that Aperture was already messing around with pretty high-tech stuff in the 50s, the original Portal could conceivably take place in the 60s, right?  They do have some old computers and rotary phones in the original Portal.)  (Also – I never looked at the “Lab Rat” comic, and it’s possible this was explained there.  I should probably look at it first before speculating any more.)
    • OK, I’ve read the Lab Rat comic.  Notes:  Page 8 – Chell’s last name is redacted.  Page 9 – Chell refuses to answer if “anyone would file a police report if [she] went missing.”  Beyond that… the comic is somewhat vague.
    • At the end of the game, when Chell is standing in the field – does she have the Portal gun with her?  I don’t think so – you see both of her hands grabbing on to Wheatley after your final portal hits home.  By the same token, Chell didn’t have the Portal gun at the end  of the first one, either.  In any event – the Lab Rat comic’s final panel says that Chell has remarkable tenacity and stubbornness.  We don’t know why, though.  The point is:  at the end of P2, she is free.  The question remains:  would she go back?  And if so, why?
    • Wheatley has to return, doesn’t he?  You can’t make a character that wonderful and have it be lost forever, right?

>Bioshock 2 – final thoughts

>More apologies. I finished Bioshock 2 over the weekend and have been meaning to write a quick thing about it, but time has gotten away from me. But let’s be honest here – the game itself isn’t all that inspiring to write about.

It’s not necessarily a bad game; it’s just unnecessary. And yet, ironically enough, I would love to keep exploring the world of Rapture. My favorite moments in Bio2 – as they were in Bio1 – were the moments in between battles, when I could take in the architecture and explore all the nooks and crannies of such a meticulously designed world. Make no mistake – Bio2 may be uninspired as a game, but its vision of Rapture is just as sumptuous to take in as in the original.

Let’s just say this – Bio2 does work better as a game. The combat mechanics are a lot more solid and satisfying, and the clunkiness of the first game’s interface has been replaced by a much more efficient design. (And this must be said – it’s awfully nice to not have to hear “Welcome to the Circus of Values!” constantly, unceasingly.)

But there’s also a great deal of Bio2 that feels awfully contrived; the constant babysitting of Little Sisters (of which I struggled with at first and eventually got better at) is the worst offender, but pretty much all of the game’s forward momentum is clearly scripted and inelegantly presented. And I am really, really tired of the game’s strict adherence to plot development via tape recorder and offscreen narration; after a while I just tuned it out, and as a result I’m still not quite sure what the hell I was doing or why I was doing it. It feels lazy, and the voice acting and dialogue is too stylized to feel urgent. My own personal motivation for finishing the game at all was that in spite of all the aggravations that the game foisted upon me, I just wanted to see more of Rapture.

So let me say this, then. If there must be another Bioshock game, let it be something different. Get away from the Big Daddies and the Adam and the plasmids and the combat and all that shit. Give me more of Rapture. Give me characters that actually talk to me, face to face. I would ABSOLUTELY play a Bioshock Zero prequel if it meant seeing Rapture in its heyday, before all the badness happened. Fuck, let me play it as Andrew Ryan, SimCity style. I’ll even settle for a 3D point-and-click adventure game, if it came to that. I want to walk around and see shit that I’ve never seen before. Rapture is one of the most atmospheric worlds ever created – let me soak it in, rather than making me run through it and kill things for no apparent reason, other than that I have to.

At the end of the day, Rapture is the star of the show, and the fiction is what gives it weight. The combat is certainly OK, and I guess you need it in order to sell millions of copies, but it’s not nearly as interesting as the world itself. There are lots of stories that can be told in the city at the bottom of the sea; I would much rather see one of those, than having to go through the same motions as before.

>Assassin’s Creed 2: postscript

>**MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD**

My previous AC2 post was cut short, but in retrospect that’s probably a good thing. I was still at least a good 5-6 hours away from finishing it, and yet my original intention with that post was to try and guess where/when/what the sequel was going to be. Now that I’ve finished it (as well as being finished with it), I can honestly say that I have absolutely no idea – and that’s also a good thing.

First things first, though – the game itself. At the end of the day, there’s really only 2 things that really bothered me about the experience – the freerunning controls tend to get screwed up at the worst possible times, and the final boss is one of those bosses that refuses to die, no matter how many times you kill him. I hate that. It’s absolutely my #1 pet peeve in game design. And in this particular case, it’s not like the guy is a wizard, or has particularly strong armor, or superpowers – he is, in fact, a fat fuck. And the fact that the game forced me to whittle this asshole’s health down to zero 5 times and he still didn’t die… GAAAAHHHHHHH.

That aside, AC2 is a lock for my #3 position for Game of the Year, which is remarkable considering that as recently as a month ago I wasn’t even sure I was looking forward to playing it. Everything in it is refined and polished, from the combat to the graphics to the storytelling. I was perhaps a little underwhelmed by the end result of the glyph hunt (especially since I was hoping to assemble the pieces myself), and I ended up getting the super-badass armor a bit earlier than I was expecting – I almost thought I’d done something wrong – but it’s a remarkable experience through and through, and if the improvements from AC1 to AC2 are any indication of Ubisoft’s dedication to getting it right, then AC3 is going to blow us all away.

And speaking of AC3, let me get back to my opening paragraph. A lot of people were pissed off about AC1’s ending, which was less of a cliffhanger and more of a dull thud. (I kinda liked it, actually, since it was abstract and vague, but I understand the criticisms.) AC2’s ending could technically be called a cliffhanger, since nothing is resolved, but it’s a bit more satisfying in that you still feel like you accomplished something, even if it’s mind-bogglingly enigmatic. It doesn’t feel like a setup for the final part of a trilogy – it feels wide open, like they could go anywhere.

I could see AC3 taking place all over the place, actually. My knowledge of history certainly has quite a few holes, but considering that the game ends in the very late 1600s, and the codex map that you eventually unlock in AC2 is ultimately a map of the world, with certain locations marked on each continent, it’s entirely possible that you could go all over the globe. I think the most logical place to go would be the colonial US in the 1770s – lots of political intrigue, Freemasons, and different cities to visit. Plus, one gets the feeling that the events of the near-future are taking place in the US, so since Desmond is already on the run, you could see him following the literal footsteps of his ancestor. But I could also see the game taking place in WW2 Europe, too. The glyphs talked a lot about Rasputin, too, so I could foresee some time in Russia. And if the game requires some globetrotting, there’s lots of Mayan ruins to run around in. Considering how strange AC2’s ending is, I could even see Atlantis showing up.

Anyway: Bravo, Ubisoft.

U2 Rock Band Setlist Guesses

Cheap traffic-generating stunt, or legitimate blog post? You decide. In any event, it looks like Bono reads SFTC because I fucking called this 2 weeks ago. Via Kotaku:

With the music business falling apart, musicians are hoping to get their cut of the music game pie — even The Beatles have their own Rock Band title! Now, it looks like Irish rockers U2 want in, too.U2 hasn’t lent their likeness to games, and from what bassist Adam Clayton tells USA Today, it sounds like the group has turned down offers. Here’s Clayton on the odds of U2 in a music game:

We definitely would like to be in there, but we felt some of the compromises weren’t what we wanted. That could change. I love the idea that that’s where people are getting music, and we’d love to be in that world. We’ll figure something out. What The Beatles have done, where the animation is much more representative of them, is what we’re interested in, rather than the one-size-fits-all animation. We didn’t want to be caricatured.

So, then. A U2 Rock Band game, inspired by the Beatles mold. DELICIOUS. This is totally doable. Over a dozen solid albums, numerous hit singles, distinct sonic eras, legendary visual designs, 4 distinct personalities, and challenging instrument tracks. The only thing missing is an intimidating mythology, but even the Beatles Rock Band game didn’t really delve into all the squabbling, so there’s no real story that needs to be told aside from the political/social eras that U2 inserted themselves into. (Rattle and Hum wasn’t necessarily a narrative masterpiece, either.)

And if we’re going to follow the Beatles mold, then it stands to reason that 40 songs is a nice round number to work with, giving each album its moment in the sun and getting a bit deeper into the catalog beyond the singles. I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume that the game would concentrate on album tracks and not obscure B-sides; one notable exception could be the live version of “Bad” from the Wide Awake In America EP, which is one of my personal favorites; the version of “Sweetest Thing” that appeared on the Best Of compilation might also be up for consideration.

So, then, here’s my best guess for a setlist for a game that does not yet actually exist. And let it be known that I’m intentionally omitting some of my favorites – “All I Want Is You,” “Ultraviolet,” “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World,” “Acrobat,” “Daddy’s Going to Pay For Your Crashed Car”, etc. – because, well, you can’t throw ’em all in. Along those lines, I’m throwing in a few songs from Pop because, well, every album’s gotta be represented. (Can I also admit that I haven’t listened to the new album, even though I’ve owned it for months?)

Boy

  1. I Will Follow
  2. Out of Control
  3. Electric Co.

October

  1. Gloria
  2. I Fall Down

War

  1. Sunday Bloody Sunday
  2. Seconds
  3. New Year’s Day
  4. Two Hearts Beat As One
  5. 40

Under A Blood Red Sky

  1. Party Girl
  2. 11 O’Clock Tick Tock

Unforgettable Fire

  1. A Sort of Homecoming
  2. Pride (In the Name of Love)
  3. Bad

Joshua Tree

  1. Where the Streets Have No Name
  2. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
  3. With Or Without You
  4. In God’s Country

Rattle And Hum

  1. Desire
  2. Angel of Harlem
  3. Bullet the Blue Sky (live)

Achtung Baby

  1. One
  2. Until The End of the World
  3. The Fly
  4. Mysterious Ways

Zooropa

  1. Zooropa
  2. Numb
  3. Lemon

Pop

  1. Discothèque
  2. Staring At The Sun

All That You Can’t Leave Behind

  1. Beautiful Day
  2. Elevation
  3. Walk On

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

  1. Vertigo
  2. City of Blinding Lights
  3. All Because of You

No Line on the Horizon

  1. No Line on the Horizon
  2. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
  3. Get On Your Boots

>Disappointing Sequels, and a Rock Band Wishlist

>I’ve done just about everything I can do in Beatles: Rock Band without losing my friggin’ mind, which is good, because there’s other stuff out there that needs to be played.

The good:

DiRT 2

The first DiRT is still one of my favorite driving games, ever. As a confessed graphics whore, it was (and still is) jaw-dropping; it’s the game I was playing both before and after I bought my 40″ HDTV, and for a long time was the game I put in when I wanted to show off the TV. But that aside, the game was a complete package, oozing with polish; the career mode was well designed, the driving model was fun and accessible, the course design was varied and plentiful… even the menus were interactive and fun to play around with. And the replays… wow.

DiRT 2 has some mighty big shoes to fill, then, as far as I’m concerned. And so even though I’ve played quite a bit of it over the last few days and I’ve enjoyed my time with it a great deal, I’m not entirely sure that it fills them. It’s not a bad game, by any means; it’s still incredibly polished, the graphics are even better, the driving model is still fun…. but the package itself feels a bit… small. I haven’t done a count, but it certainly feels like there’s a significantly fewer amount of tracks to race on than in the first game, which is a bit of a bummer. With a graphics engine that gorgeous, I want to see more than the same tracks over and over again. The addition of an in-game rewind – in order to correct mistakes that would otherwise cost you the race – is really the biggest change to the game, and it does come in handy although most of the time I still end up just restarting the whole race if something catastrophic happens. The game has an achievement tracker and also keeps track of other statistics that can reward you with extra XP, and that’s certainly much appreciated. I’m just… I don’t know. Perhaps my expectations were a bit too unreasonable.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

Speaking of sequels with high expectations, I played M:UA2 last night for about 20 minutes and got thoroughly depressed with how shitty it was. I suppose I could’ve soldiered on, but my gaming time is at a premium these days and I’d rather have a good time instead of slogging through something that ought to be much better. The camera is frequently pulled out way too far, making it hard to see what I’m doing (or even what character I’m playing), and there are certain glitches in the special powers that drove me crazy – there’s an Iron Man/Wolverine combo move that I tried using, and each time Wolverine automatically faced the wrong way, resulting in a waste of accumulated power. Right now this is in the running – along with Puzzle Quest: Galactrix – as my biggest disappointment of 2009. Sometimes you only need a few minutes with something before you realize that you’re wasting your time.

—————————

Was on a forum the other day and the topic du jour was guessing the next band to receive the full deluxe Rock Band treatment. It seemed pretty obvious to everybody that the answer to that question is Led Zeppelin. Having seen now how both Rock Band and Guitar Hero treat their special packages, one would hope that the surviving members of Zep would steer towards Rock Band, but I’m sure it’ll ultimately come down to the franchise that pays them more up front. But it got me thinking about what other packages I’d pay money for:

  • U2.
    U2 is the reason why I decided to teach myself how to play guitar in the first place. But leaving my personal preference aside, U2 is still one of the biggest bands in the world, they have a recognizable mythos, they have a vivid and memorable visual style, and they have an incredibly solid catalog of work; I’d easily be able to find 45 U2 songs worth playing.
  • Pink Floyd.
    Another mythic band with beloved albums and distinct visual flair. That said, there’s a few things standing in the way – for one thing, I’m not sure that David Gilmour and Roger Waters will ever agree on anything ever again, and for another, a lot of their music is on the mellow side; it might be hard to stand up and play Pink Floyd songs for a few hours, even if you’re on the right drugs.
  • The Smiths / The Cure.
    Johnny Marr is one of the most criminally overlooked guitarists of the 20th century, and I would kill to be able to pretend to play his guitar parts, mostly because they’re so difficult to play on a real guitar. Morrissey sings out of tune all the time, though, so I’m guessing it might be difficult to score. But whatever – they’re the Smiths, they fucking rule. And as long as the 30+ crowd is looking to get nostalgic and depressed via plastic instruments, they might as well go all the way and throw in a bunch of Cure songs as well, to keep both sides of the Atlantic satisfied. I suppose I could be satisfied with a gigantic 20-song DLC package with all the great late 80’s / early 90’s “college” music, though, so let’s just leave it at that.

>The Beatles: Rock Band – set list guess, reconsidered

>Here’s my original guess at the Beatles: Rock Band set list, from February.

  1. She Loves You
  2. I Wanna Hold Your Hand
  3. Love Me Do
  4. Help!
  5. I Saw Her Standing There
  6. Please Please Me
  7. A Hard Day’s Night
  8. Can’t Buy Me Love
  9. Eight Days a Week
  10. Ticket To Ride
  11. Yesterday
  12. I Feel Fine
  13. Paperback Writer
  14. Rain
  15. We Can Work It Out
  16. Revolution
  17. Get Back
  18. Drive My Car
  19. The Word
  20. In My Life
  21. Taxman
  22. She Said, She Said
  23. And Your Bird Can Sing
  24. Doctor Robert
  25. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
  26. Getting Better
  27. Good Morning Good Morning
  28. A Day In the Life
  29. Hello Goodbye
  30. Strawberry Fields Forever
  31. All You Need Is Love
  32. Back in the U.S.S.R.
  33. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
  34. Birthday
  35. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey
  36. Helter Skelter
  37. Come Together
  38. Something
  39. Octopus’s Garden
  40. Here Comes The Sun
  41. Mean Mr. Mustard -> Polythene Pam -> She Came In Through The Bathroom Window -> Golden Slumbers -> Carry That Weight -> The End
  42. Get Back
  43. Dig a Pony
  44. I’ve Got A Feeling
  45. The Ballad of John and Yoko

It was noted in the comments to that post that I’d included “Get Back” twice, so that was dumb. And I knew, at the time, that “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey” was never going to get in – I don’t even necessarily like that song. But I had my iPod with me when I was making this list, and I was scrolling through my Beatles albums, and it occurred to me that the instrumental tracks for that song would be pretty fun to play – each instrument is doing something interesting.

Anyway, I bring this up because 25 of the game’s 45 songs have been confirmed by EA. As Kotaku reported this morning, those songs (with appropriate “nailed it” / “missed it” commentary) are:

  1. “Back in the U.S.S.R.” [yes]
  2. “Can’t Buy Me Love” [yes]
  3. “Day Tripper” [how did I miss this?]
  4. “Eight Days a Week” [yes]
  5. “Get Back” [yes, twice]
  6. “Here Comes the Sun” yes
  7. “I Am the Walrus” [I left this out on purpose, b/c I had no idea how they’d do it. this is one of my favorite Beatles songs!]
  8. “I Feel Fine” [yes]
  9. “I Saw Her Standing There” [yes]
  10. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” [yes]
  11. “Octopus’s Garden” [yes]
  12. “Paperback Writer” [yes]
  13. “Revolution” [yes]
  14. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” [yes]
  15. “Taxman” [yes]
  16. “Twist and Shout” [didn’t guess this, for some reason – but I’m not crazy about their early, pre-Rubber Soul stuff]
  17. “Within You Without You” [didn’t think this would make it since it’s so unconventional, but they are using the drumbeat from Tomorrow Never Knows, which is awesome
  18. “Yellow Submarine” i’d guessed there’d only be one Ringo song]
  19. “With A Little Help From My Friends” [so i definitely didn’t think there’d be 3 Ringo songs]
  20. “Birthday” [yes]
  21. “I Got a Feeling” [yes]
  22. “Dig a Pony” [yes]
  23. “Do You Want To Know A Secret” [not even sure I’ve heard this song before]
  24. “I Wanna Be Your Man” [see #23]
  25. “And Your Bird Can Sing” [yes]

I’m already off by 6, but I’ll take it. If they can include “I Am The Walrus”, they can do anything. In any event, this is moot – at E3, Harmonix revealed that the entire catalog would eventually be available to download, starting with all of “Abbey Road.”

Can’t. Fucking. Wait.