Category: ramblings

maybe the last RE6 post for a while

As noted here and elsewhere, today marks the release of 2 probable GOTY contenders, XCOM Enemy Within and Dishonored, which means that any plans I might have made to finish Resident Evil 6 will most likely be put on hold for the foreseeable future.  I’m sure no one will mind/notice.

That being said, I played one more chapter of the Chris/Piers storyline last night, putting me at 2 chapters into each story.  I had to fight a boss that I’d already beaten (in Jake’s story), but even though I now had a much better idea of what the hell I was supposed to do, I still had a very difficult time doing it.

Part of the problem, as you’ve surely heard by now, is that each storyline has its own gameplay style/focus.  Leon’s story is classic Resident Evil – slow, methodical exploration of scary-looking buildings.  Jake’s story involves a lot of running, jumping and obstacle avoidance.  And the Chris/Piers story is mostly combat-focused – Chris is a machine-gunning heavy, and Piers is a sniper.  That each story has its own style is fine, I suppose, but why then is each story bogged down by the same contrivances?

Specifically, Chris/Piers start each mission with very little ammunition.  This is a classic staple of the Resident Evil experience, but in this particular case it is literally nonsensical.  Considering that Chris and Piers are military personnel, why the fuck are they chronically low on ammo?  How would they expect to win any battles or kill any monsters without bullets?  (I am reminded of a similar complaint during a pivotal scene in the movie Aliens – “What are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?”) 

Indeed, if Piers is the sniper, why does he almost never have any sniper ammunition, especially considering that his other weapon is a piece of shit machine gun that requires at least 5 headshots just to slow an enemy down?  This makes absolutely no sense, and consequently leads to extreme frustration; I spend most of my time running around kicking dudes to death just to save my ammunition (even though I have not yet sufficiently leveled up my sniping skills so that it would make much of a difference – Piers jerks his scope around as if he’d drank 8 cups of espresso before heading out into the field, making long-distance sniping comically impossible).  In a way, I suppose it actually helps that the J’Avo – the mutated insurgents in the Chris/Piers storyline – display some of the least impressive AI I’ve ever seen in a game this side of 1998; they either stand in place, oblivious, or they run right past me.  (However, their snipers are better than Oswald, those fucking assholes.)

So, to get back to the top of this post – I’d already beaten this boss as Jake, who doesn’t have that much ammunition to begin with.  But I figured Chris and Piers, being military dudes with powerful guns, would be able to take the B.O.W.s down with a little more finesse.  No such luck; I had to do the same exact shit in the exact same way, still receiving no apparent feedback as to how I was progressing – and this time, without being able to rely on my weapons.  What’s the point?  I didn’t learn anything in the 2nd encounter that I hadn’t already learned in the 1st, except that I had a better idea of who Chris and Piers were (though I didn’t need to replay the boss to learn that stuff).

I’m starting to wonder, now, why I’m so determined to see this game through to the end; the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

it gets better

1.  This weekend was insanely busy for me, and so I’ve advanced no further in Resident Evil 6 since Friday night’s session.   Here’s the weird part:  despite everything that annoys me about it, I must admit that I kinda want to keep playing it, even if I can’t really explain why.  I suppose it’s partially because I want to check out the 4th campaign, which only unlocks after you finish the first 3.  Finishing the first 3 campaigns, though, looks to be a rather sizable time investment, which may be a problem, because…

2.  …have you seen what’s coming out this week?  Between XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dishonored, both of which are getting superlative reviews, my plate is full.  Not to mention that Episode Four of The Walking Dead lands later this week, too.  I think my earlier pronouncement of 2012 being a huge disappointment is about to get kicked in the ass.  I’d kept an eye on Dishonored but only ever considered it a rental, something to check out in an idle hour.  From everything I’ve read, though, it looks like it might be my GOTY.  (So much for keeping my expectations in check.)

3.  I did play around an hour’s worth of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, thinking it might be fun to play with the wife.  I shall not be making that mistake again.  The solution to the tutorial mission’s crime – which is to say, the very first thing you play – is so convoluted and insane that I found the game impossible to take seriously.  The voice acting is stilted beyond belief – and it’s certainly not aided by some of the poorest lip-syncing in recent memory (seriously – if you can’t get it right, don’t even bother trying).  I’m sending it back ASAP.  I love a good adventure game, but this one’s flaws outshine whatever strengths it may have.

4.  On the mobile gaming front, I’ve been addicted to Super Monsters Ate My Condo, an updated release of  PikPok / Adult Swim’s strange yet endearing puzzle game.  It’s a vastly improved package over the original, with meta-missions and challenges and power-ups and boosts and the rest of it.  The only bummer is that you can’t listen to your own music while playing; otherwise I’d never put my phone/iPad down.

5.  I feel terrible for saying this, but I think I’m going to give up on Torchlight 2.  I squeezed in another hour or so over the weekend and I just don’t care about what I’m doing.  I may still be burned out from Diablo 3, or maybe I’m just turned off by how “cheap” T2 continues to feel.  Oh well.

It is entirely possible that a new Couchcast will arrive this week, depending on schedules.  I’m also hoping to line up some new guests for future episodes, too, just to keep the thing moving.  (I’m well aware that tiny podcasts for tiny blogs are not necessarily the most compelling content to seek out, but I’d like to get better at the format.)

do/do not: RE6

Do I?  Or don’t I?

My rental copy of Resident Evil 6 arrives either today or tomorrow, and I’m legitimately torn between sending it right back unopened, and actually giving it a go and seeing how far I can sit with it.

I have no great allegiance to the franchise.  I think I talked about this when I talked about the demo last week, but to recap:  I never owned a PS1, but I played a little bit of RE2 on my friend’s console – definitely jumped off the couch when the dog jumped through the window, but the controls never felt quite right in my hands.  I bought Code Veronica for the Dreamcast, and I remember sort of enjoying it, though I never finished it.  When I finally bought the Wii, RE4 was one of the first games I bought for it, and I hated it.  I fumbled around in the first chapter for 20-30 minutes, fighting the controls, and finally gave up.  RE5, on the other hand?  Loved the hell out of it.  It was goofy, silly, and not at all scary; but it was also gorgeous, and the controls made sense, and it did more to encourage multiple playthroughs than almost any other game I could think of – there were so many cool things to collect and unlock and upgrade.

To say that RE6‘s reviews have been mixed is to put it incredibly kindly.  Looking only at the scores and pull quotes, you would think that the reviewers were sent completely different sets of code, from completely different builds.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a discrepancy in scores in such a high-profile game.   I don’t know what to believe.  (Though the arguments I’ve heard against playing the game sound pretty goddamned persuasive.)

Here’s my deal:  I’m not really playing anything at the moment.  I’m sorta doing a second playthrough of Borderlands 2 in True Vault Hunter mode*, and at some point I want to give Torchlight 2 another try, and I’ll be devouring XCOM next week.  But if RE6 were to arrive today, it wouldn’t be displacing anything in my agenda.

And yet… I’m not in the mood to have my time wasted.   Like I’ve said before – RE4 was universally loved, but I hated it.  RE5 was met with relatively solid and respectful reviews, but I ended up loving the hell out of it.  The reviewers are all over the place on RE6, but the reviewers I generally trust all seem to be in agreement that it’s a massive disappointment… even though they also agree that the game has an astounding amount of content (which scratches that same itch that RE5 satisfied so thoroughly).  I’ve heard that it’s at least as long as one playthrough of Borderlands 2, which is, what, 40 hours?  Jesus.

So…

Like I said last week (or whenever it was) – I played the demo with no preconceptions and no expectations, and even though I only played one campaign (of the available 3) for around 10 minutes, I wasn’t really all that impressed with what I saw.  It was hard to know how much of that was due to the state of the code (the demo does say that it’s not based on a final build), and how much was due to it being actually shitty.  And I don’t know how much shittiness I’m willing to put up with, especially when it comes to a franchise that I have no real strong feelings towards.

A lot of my waffling here is partly because I had too much caffeine this morning and needed something to write about; I’m not, like, agonizing over this.  But it’s also because I’m torn between (1) wanting to be part of the conversation and (2) being aware that I’m not a professional game journalist and thus the conversation is really just a soliloquy.  You’re not going to be missing out on anything here if I don’t end up writing about it.

And yet… I’m just so goddamned curious.  RE6 appears to be one of the highest-profile flops of the last few years, perhaps even of this entire console generation.  But even with its control issues and weak story and everything else that’s wrong with it, there’s also a lot of stuff in it that sounds quite interesting (at least in theory).  That mode where you can jump into a stranger’s game as an enemy?  That sounds inspired.  (Even if it’s inspired by Dark Souls.)

As it happens, the rest of this week and the upcoming weekend is going to be incredibly busy for me anyway, so I’m not sure I’d get all that much time with it before XCOM starts pre-loading.  Which ultimately leads me to ask… why bother?

______________________

* In case you don’t know, True Vault Hunter Mode is basically New Game +.  You keep your current inventory, your level, and your badass perks, and then you start all over again with enemies that are also levelled up.  I’ve played it for around an hour or so, and have already looted an amazing shield, shotgun, and sniper rifle.  (Still looking for a better assault rifle, though; it’s my default weapon and I’ve been using the same one for the last 6 hours of playtime.)

good advice

Via Eurogamer:

How do you get a job in the game industry? According to Valve, all you have to do is give yourself one.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek delivered a talk this afternoon to a packed audience at Eurogamer Expo with one clear message to budding developers: “Create something.”

“There you go. And that’s it. It’s that easy,” he said.

“I’m being serious. There are no gatekeepers. There are no requirements. There is no prior experience that you need. Just make something.”

One question Valve is often asked, Chet said, is if I don’t have experience, how do I get experience when every job requires experience? “Here’s the deal on that. Life isn’t fair. It’s not their job to give you experience. It’s your job. The best resume you can do is make something. So do it.”

Chet recommended indie devs participate in indie game forums and get involved in online developer communities to get valuable feedback on their work. He also suggested uploading games to Valve’s own Steam Greenlight website and commenting on others.

“How do you get yourself a job in the games industry?” he continued. “This is the answer: you just give yourself one. It’s that simple. You’re in control of your own destiny. Make your resume and ship it to the world.

“At Valve we’ve been thinking about this a lot. We get asked this all the time. Our simple answer used to be: just go make something. But really you want to do more than that. You want to create something, then you want to release it, you want feedback on it and you want to keep getting better.”

“To be clear, we’re not the only place you can do it. Look up other places as well. I mean we’re working at it. We’re iterating on it. We released Steam Workshop. We released Steam Greenlight. Coming up soon we’ll release software on Steam. Let us know how we’re doing. Let us know what you guys would like to see. What would help you guys.

“And then today, when you get home, take what ever ideas you have and whatever computer you have, whatever software you have, scope it down to something you can ship. Start working on it. Every day you come home from work, work on it some more. Show it to your friends. Talk about it. Get feedback on it. Play test it. And when it’s ready, release it.

“There, you just gave yourself a job in the game industry.”

Chet said those who try to get jobs without having created something, “you’re coming from a point of weakness”. “Nobody knows you. You’re just a piece of paper. You’re really easy to dismiss.” Those who are hard to dismiss, he said, are those who have made something.

Chet stressed that games don’t have to be big to attract attention. In fact, he recommended being smart about the scope of projects.

“People have made some of the dumbest, stupidest things that have made us laugh, that we’ve passed around, then we started talking about them,” he said.

baby time

So, here’s the news:  I’m going to be a father.

The whys and wherefores and everything else is not necessarily appropriate for this particular blog; just know that it took a very long time, and science was ultimately involved, and we are very happy, and the baby’s due in April.

(This is also the previously alluded-to reason as to my current financial situation; with a baby on the way, I can’t be buying new games and consoles and stuff all the time.  Even if I really, really want to.)

I had a dream yesterday morning about impending fatherhood.  (Partially inspired by the floating city in Borderlands 2, actually, now that I think about it.)  In the dream, I was surrounded by everybody I’d ever met, beaming with pride for our future child, happy and full of love for everyone and everything.  At the same time, the island of Manhattan was suspended over a gaping sinkhole, thousands of feet deep, and any time I walked past a crack in the sidewalk I could peer into the abyss underneath, and I’d get a horrible sensation of vertigo.

This is, in fact, what having a baby actually feels like – tremendous excitement, yet colored with the slightest tinge of unfathomable dread of the unknown.  (Thank God for anti-anxiety medication, is all I’ll say.)

Certainly there are lots of big life things that I feel that I’ve got to start thinking about and getting serious about – career, money, etc.  (And, of course, lots of smaller things to think about, too, like:  maybe it’s time to get rid of my Rock Band equipment, since it’s taking up an awful lot of space that we’re going to need.)

I was hoping to have some profound statement to end this post with, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just really happy.  We shared the news with our friends yesterday, and so today I’m sharing it with you.  Thank you for reading and sharing this part of my life with me.

random ramblings

1.  As mentioned a few posts back, I’m in something of a spending freeze for the foreseeable future.  That being said, I must admit that I’ve started to notice a subtle but stubborn itch in my brain that’s making me want to maybe get a Nintendo 3DS.  There are a couple reasons for this.  For one thing, the software library isn’t totally terrible anymore, and there are a few games coming up that I really want to play (Paper Mario, Professor Layton, etc.).  For another, I’m finding that I’m having a hard time staying engrossed in my iOS games.  I’ve bought a few RPGs for my iPhone but I almost never play them, and I find that if a game doesn’t let me listen to my own music (or podcasts or Spotify or whatever), I tend to ignore them, too.  Whereas back when my DS was in regular rotation, I’d absolutely plug in my headphones and allow myself to be fully engaged in the whole experience.  (Obviously, puzzle games like Picross don’t really need sound, but you get my point.)  Of course, yesterday’s announcement of the iPhone 5, coupled with my eligibility for a free upgrade in December, means that given my budgetary restraints, I can only choose one, and I am MOST DEFINITELY getting that new iPhone.  (And I’m still not ever getting a Vita.)

1a.  As I was writing the paragraph you just read, Lifehacker came out with a relevant article titled “How To Get Off The Upgrade Treadmill.”  So, there’s that.  (Still getting an iPhone 5, though, so there.)

2.  Speaking of Nintendo (and upgrading technology), I do not give a FUCK about the WiiU.

3.  My wife goes out of town next weekend, and I think I’m going to take that opportunity to move my PC tower into the living room, hook it up to my 40″ HDTV, and give Steam’s Big Picture Mode a workout.  I’m kind of afraid that I’m going to love the shit out of it, because there’s no way I can keep my PC in the living room without making my wife and my dogs very unhappy.

4.  Mark of the Ninja continues to impress.  Last night I figured out whatever the hell it was I was doing wrong and got past the figurative wall I’d run up against, getting a new ability in the process that will MOST DEFINITELY come in handy when I go back and try to ace the previous levels.  Goddamn, that game is great.

5.  Speaking of stealth games, I have a question:  do people actually enjoy the cutscenes in Metal Gear games, or do they enjoy them ironically, like they would with, say, The Room?  I bring this up because the Giant Bomb crew talked about the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes on last week’s Bombcast and they all seemed to acknowledge that the franchise as a whole is fucking insane, but enjoyably so, but the key phrase is still:  “fucking insane.”  Which it is.  (Feel free to read my posts about MGS4 which break down that game’s specific insanity in much greater detail.)   And yet I’ve come across plenty of people – fans, journalists, etc. – who take that franchise very seriously, and who get very, very defensive when people point out how ridiculous it is.   Ultimately, I found myself enjoying the gameplay of MGS 4 quite a lot, and was genuinely awed at the graphics and presentation, but I was also in utter disbelief that anybody could take that game’s narrative even remotely seriously.  Kojima is an enigma to me – I have no idea if he has any self-awareness, which is why I don’t know if I’m supposed to enjoy his stories as the camp that they clearly are, or if he’s actually sincere about this craziness.

a few words on Mark of the Ninja and Big Picture Mode

Goddammit.

I was around 600 words into a post yesterday afternoon about the excellent Mark of the Ninja, and about stealth games in general and why they seem to scratch a particularly satisfying itch, but work got in the way and I never had a chance to sit down and polish it and make my point.  And then, by the time I got home, I saw that Kotaku had already beaten me to the punch.  Very stealthy and ninja-like, in fact.

Their article more or less says exactly what I was trying to say, so much so that trying to polish up my own piece feels futile and empty.  Anyway, if you haven’t read it already, go check it out.  And then, when you’re done, download and play the hell out of Mark of the Ninja, because it is excellent.  Top 10 in GOTY for sure, even though I’m near the end and have hit a massive difficulty spike – which is just as well, because instead of beating my head against the wall, I’m going back and playing all the earlier levels better than I did the first time, which is just as satisfying.

In other news,  I tried Steam’s Big Picture Mode last night, although only on my widescreen monitor – but even in my brief time with it, I can confidently say that it’s the best console interface I’ve ever seen.  Beats the living shit out of the 360 and PS3 dashboards.  Fast and responsive, elegantly designed, super-easy to find the things you’re looking for.   I am very much wanting to figure out an easy way of moving my PC tower into the living room to try it out on my HDTV.   I kinda can’t believe I’m saying this, but if Valve were to actually make a living room console, I very well might forgo the next Xbox and Playstation altogether.

 

The Year So Far

My desire to one day be a professional game journalist is tempered by the fact that, well, sometimes there just ain’t very much to write about.  And I’m trying to figure out how to maintain a semi-regular content stream here without it simply being a diary of what I’ve been playing.  (And let me tell you, this current release lull that we’re in – the cocktease of Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders 2 coming out on the same day, followed by a month of nothingness until Borderlands 2 – is not helping.  Indeed, I finished Sleeping Dogs over Labor Day weekend and now I find myself doing a New Game+ of Darksiders 2, because why the hell not.)

I’ve toyed with the idea of updating this blog more frequently with links to other articles I find interesting, but Patrick Klepek already does that quite well with his weekly “Worth Reading” column, and in any event reblogging is a lot easier on Tumblr than it is on WordPress.

I’ve similarly toyed with the idea of a “What I Would Have Said” column, wherein I respond to certain topics of interest in various game-focused podcasts.  (Indeed, I still might do that – this week’s Giant Bombcast features a brief digression from Jeff (who never, ever, ever goes off on tangents) (j/k) about game reviews and their relevance/purpose in today’s game media, and I (as a consumer) have certain things I’d like to say about that.)

[I’m also very much wanting to talk about the new Xbox360 dashboard, which I received access to a few weeks ago (along with half the world, probably), but I don’t know if talking about it here violates an NDA.  I will say this, though – even before the update, everything moves so.  goddamned.  slow.  And they’ve made it too hard to find the stuff I want.]

Here’s the thing, though.  Most of the time, I do this blog in my down time at work; this down time is infrequently spaced and full of constant interruption – I started this post around 3 hours ago – so it’s hard to really buckle down and focus and write something engaging and interesting.

So,  since my time to blog here is so limited anyway, and since I’m wanting to talk about something even though my brain is whirring in a million different directions which makes talking about something of actual substance an exercise in futility, I’m going to take the easy way out and simply do a preemptive Best Games of 2012: So Far column.  Because, well, let’s face it – the rest of the year looks pretty bleak, and it’s highly probable that there will be few substantive changes between the list I make today and the list I make in December.  Seriously – check out my Fall Preview column from July – as far as this console generation goes, this holiday season has got to be one of the saddest.   (Like I said there – I have high hopes for Borderlands 2 and for Burnout Paradise 2  Need for Speed Most Wanted, I expect the Firaxis XCOM game to be great (and I expect that I’ll play it exactly once, on the easiest difficulty setting, before being too intimidated by it), and I’d like to think that Dishonored will live up to its hype.   I don’t really know what to expect out of Resident Evil 6 – I’m one of the few people I know who will admit to liking Resident Evil 5, and I’m definitely one of the only people on the planet who thought that RE4 was incredibly overrated, so I’m clearly not the target demographic.  I have less than high hopes for Assassin’s Creed 3, though I’ll play it; I don’t really care about Halo 4, though I’ll most likely play that as well; CODBLOPS 2 and Far Cry 3 are things I’ll rent if I’m bored.)

So, then.  My Top 10 of 2012 so far- not counting iOS stuff, although iOS has been more miss than hit lately, too – looks something like this:

  1.  Mass Effect 3
  2.  Darksiders 2
  3.  Journey
  4.  Fez
  5.  Trials Evolution
  6.  The Walking Dead
  7.  Max Payne 3
  8.  Diablo 3
  9.  Sleeping Dogs
  10.  Spec Ops: The Line

First off – I’d be surprised to see Sleeping Dogs and Spec Ops still on this list at the end of the year, frankly.  I enjoyed those games quite a bit, and was pleased to see that they had ambition and effort and weren’t just cookie-cutter experiences, but I don’t know that I’d call them capital-G Great.

Secondly – I’m also not entirely sure that ME3 will stay in the top spot; I just don’t know what I’d put there.  I didn’t hate the ending the way other people did, but my problems with that game weren’t really about the ending anyway.  I don’t know if Darksiders 2 will remain that high, either; right now it’s up there because I’m still enjoying the hell out of it after playing the hell out of it for 30 hours or so.  I don’t know that I can put Journey in the top spot, because while I found it exhilarating and intoxicating during my time with it, it didn’t really stay in my bloodstream for very long after I finished it (though that sand surfing sequence is something special).  Honestly, the game I spent the most time with in terms of raw hours is probably Diablo 3, and I’m at the point right now where I don’t even want to think about that game anymore.

If anything, I might move Max Payne 3 up a few slots.  I’ve been replaying it on the PC during this lull period, and there’s a certain quality about it that I find really intoxicating.  I’ve been finding that I’m playing it better on the PC (even though I’m still using a 360 controller) – I’m using the slow-mo and the jump dodge a lot more, and killing dudes in that spectacular way still feels fucking incredible.   Max 3 got a bit of a bad rap, and I guess I can understand why, but it’s struck a chord in me – similar to the way L.A. Noire did, in spite of all its flaws.  (Maybe I’m too much of a Rockstar fanboy to be truly objective, though.)

What about you guys?  What am I missing?  What did I forget?  What else should I play before the year runs out?