Category: weekend recap

The Next Few Hours: Assassin’s Creed Unity

I can’t be the only one who’s having difficulty facing tomorrow’s very difficult decision of what to play first, right?

On the one hand, Dragon Age Inquisition sounds like it’s the Game of the Year; according to Rock Paper Shotgun you “could probably spend thirty hours on the first major region alone and it wouldn’t be time wasted”.  And when it comes to Bioware RPGs, I like to dive very deep.

On the other hand, I’m kind of in the mood for Far Cry 4 right now, given that I’m already playing Assassin’s Creed Unity and I’m already in the sort of accepting state of mind that requires dealing with Ubisoft’s open-world design strategy.

And on the other other hand, I really want to mess around with the GTA V first-person mode.  I don’t know that I need (or even want) to play the entire game again… but first-person mode looks amazing, and the game itself somehow looks even better than it did on the 360, and online heists are coming, and there’s enough new stuff for returning players (including that L.A. Noire-esque murder mystery mission) that makes me a lot more excited than I thought I’d be.

And yet… I’m also kinda sorta starting to have a good time in Assassin’s Creed Unity.  For real.  The game’s gotten at least 2 patches since I started playing, and despite some occasional frame-rate jankiness here and there and some ridiculously long loading times, I can’t honestly complain about the game’s performance.

I can still complain about the obtrusive UI, though.
I can still complain about the obtrusive UI, though.

The biggest problem I’m having with the game right now is that even though you technically don’t need to do all the side mission stuff that’s scattered literally everywhere you look, you more or less have to if you want to afford the gear and skills you need that make the game’s difficulty manageable.  That being said, the game does an incredibly poor job of articulating how you can earn the 4 different types of currency you need in order to buy all this stuff.  If you want to farm skill points… I don’t know the answer to that question, actually; I just know that every once in a while I’ll get a message in the middle of my screen telling me I have unused skill points that I should probably cash in.  If you want to farm hack points… again, I have no idea how or why, and I don’t know what the difference is between hacking an upgrade and purchasing an upgrade, except that I’m almost always short of both types of currency.

These side missions aren’t terribly interesting, nor are they much different from what the main story tasks me with doing, which is why I’ve been trying to avoid dealing with them.  And yet I’ll still run off the beaten path to unlock chests and find cockades and other such collectible doodads, because (again) they’re there, and they’re self-explanatory, and the rewards are generally worth the investment.

The main story is… eh?  I haven’t found it as bland and forgettable as other people have, though I’d be hard-pressed to remember anybody’s name.  It is weird to be surrounded by people speaking English in British accents in the middle of the French Revolution, but at least it’s more intelligible than French people trying to speak English.

Eh, I can nitpick here and there all day; even with the patches the game’s still got significant technical problems, the controls still have a tendency to do the opposite of what I’m trying to do, etc.  But I’m 6-7 hours into it now (I think I’m at the beginning of Sequence 7), and despite my better intentions (or perhaps because I was weakened by a pretty terrible headcold all weekend), I’ve become very much in sync with the game’s rhythms.  When Assassin’s Creed games are at their best, they are riveting and engrossing; and the simple truth is that Unity can, every once in a while, achieve that sort of state for me.  It looks gorgeous, the Cafe Theatre makes for a pretty terrific home base, and when I feel inclined to just head off in a particular direction and mess around, it’s remarkably easy to get pleasantly lost within the world.  And to be honest, there might be a part of me that’ll be reluctant to put it down tomorrow; I may very well end up hanging on to it.

Adventures in Excessive Hyperbole: Forza Horizon 2

Actually, before we get to Forza Horizon 2, there’s three things on my mind that I should get out of the way first:

1.  I’m currently at just under 7400 words for NaNoWriMo.  As I’d mentioned last week, the topic that I eventually wound my way towards is somewhat emotionally charged, and at this point I really don’t care about hitting 50,000 words; I’m mostly just heavily invested in figuring the thing out.  And it’s hard to carve out time to sit and write about stuff that keeps hitting me harder than I expect it to; it’s tough to come home from work and do that when I’m already exhausted, and it’s even more difficult to find time during the day to do it, when I’m expected to be professional and not, say, an emotional wreck (as was the case last Friday).

2.  I tried giving it the benefit of the doubt, but after wading through 2 1/2 missions of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, I realized I’d had enough.  Because I don’t care about, and totally suck at, the multiplayer side of things, I was only ever going to play their campaigns.  And the campaigns have always been a bit silly and convoluted and contrived (and I’m not even talking about “Press X to Pay Your Respects”, although that’s a perfect example of something silly and convoluted and contrived).  As far as CoD:AW goes, I appreciate that it’s going for this sci-fi not-quite-near-future vibe, giving me quasi-superpowers and such… but at the end of the day it still feels like it’s always felt, which is a very tightly scripted shoot-em-up gauntlet running through blandly pretty corridors.   I don’t play enough Call of Duty to have an already-intuitive grasp of the controls, which makes the campaign trickier than it should be; I try to melee someone and end up throwing a grenade.  There is clearly an audience for Call of Duty, and I might as well come to grips with the fact that I am clearly not it, and haven’t been it for quite a long time now.  (For the record: my 2014 shooter of the year is still Wolfenstein, and that means Far Cry 4 has a very high bar to meet.)

3.  I finished Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Slow Regard of Silent Things“, a slim side-story to the Kingkiller Chronicles.  As Rothfuss himself says, it’s not the book you should start with if you’re new to his work.  I enjoyed it; it’s a bit of an experiment for him, which he fully acknowledges in his afterword, and I think he succeeded rather well.  The book features no dialogue, and only one character, and it does not explain itself – and yet, at the book’s end, you know this character incredibly well, and you’re given a very interesting, very specific slice of the world of the larger two books that you’d never see otherwise, and it gives him an opportunity to be more playful with language than he usually gets.  I’d recommend it – but, again, only if you’ve read the first two books, and only if you’re aware that you’re not reading a “traditional” story.  To say any more would ruin the book’s magical, ethereal quality; that’s something you should experience as nakedly as possible.

Long-time readers of this site (the number of which can probably be counted on one hand) will know that I am prone to excessive use of hyperbole.  I make no apologies for this tic; it is what it is.  When I feel inclined to write about something, it’s most likely because I’m already fired up about it.

So take this with a grain of salt, if you must, but I think I’m ready to say something ridiculous:  I’m starting to think that Forza Horizon 2 very well might be my favorite driving game of all time.*  The only real thing it’s missing is some sort of crash/stunt mode, which is a feature so closely associated with Burnout that it would be damn near impossible to implement without being charged with plagiarism.

Actually, here’s three more minor knocks that keep it from being a perfect game:  (1) the game looks absolutely gorgeous, but it also suffers from pop-in from time to time and it can be somewhat distracting at times, especially when trees are popping up along the suggested driving line.  (2) I don’t give a shit about car culture, and while I appreciate that the “Horizon Festival” is as good a justification as any for why you’re doing what you’re doing, I don’t really need a narrative justification for driving anywhere, especially if it involves something as contrived as the Horizon Festival – though at least the main guy isn’t that annoying.  (3) But if you are going to go through the trouble of having a narrative justification for doing all this stuff, then why not let me create my own character?  True, you’re behind the wheel of a car for 99% of the game, but I’m there in that other 1%, and while I might be a white guy with brown hair, not everybody who plays this game is also a white guy with brown hair.

Those three knocks aside, I’m loving the hell out of it.  It’s everything I loved about the first game, but better and larger and more beautiful, and I genuinely feel bad that my gaming schedule is about to get crowded, because I’d be happy to keep playing this and only this for the next few months.

More to the point:  it’s a fantastic showcase for the Xbox One, and the more time I spend with the Xbox One, the more I really, really like it.  I took a few minutes during the weekend to load up Ubisoft’s The Crew beta on the PS4, and the PS4’s interface is so bland and dumb.  (Also, The Crew is bland and dumb, and I’m glad I saw the beta if only so that I know to take it off of my GameFly queue.)

 

* I’ve been thinking about what my Top 10 list of driving games might look like, and the list is tricky because while there’s no shortage of driving games out there, there’s only a few franchises that really moved me in any specific way:

  • I’m certainly a big fan of the Forza series in general – and I like it more than I ever liked any of the Gran Turismo games I played – but to be honest, Forza 1-4 all kinda bleed together for me; there’s not one particular title that stands out in my memory.  (As I only just bought my Xbox One last week, I have not yet played Forza 5, though considering the scuttlebutt that surrounded it, I’m not sure I ever will.)
  • Certainly I’d put both Burnout 3 and Burnout Paradise near the very top of the list.
  • I’m a big fan of both DiRT and DiRT 2 – the latter is the better looking of the two, but the former had the best replay system (which was inexplicably changed) and had some of the best UI in any driving game, ever.
  • I loved the first two Rallisport Challenge games on the original Xbox.
  • It’s a bit of a lost gem, but does anybody else remember Midtown Madness 3 on the original Xbox?  That game was awesome.  That was the first real experience I had with online free-roam driving, and to this day I still remember all sorts of silly stuff we used to do – like trying to jump as many trucks as we could fit onto the roofs of various buildings.
  • I was also especially fond of both Project Gotham Racing 2 and 3 (4 was the one where they introduced motorcycles, I think, and that’s also where it fell off the rails for me).
  • Split/Second was terrific and criminally overlooked…
  • I will always have a soft spot for OutRun…
  • My loathing of The Offspring is the main reason why I try not to think about Crazy Taxi, even if the game itself is pretty great.
  • I always enjoyed the Midnight Club games, though I never stuck with them that long.
  • I’m conflicted about the Need for Speed franchise, because (a) the driving is fine, but the cutscenes and the “car culture” is just flat-out ridiculous, and (b) while I really enjoyed Criterion’s two Need for Speed titles, it also meant that we weren’t getting any more Burnout games, which is a supreme bummer.
  • Speaking of “flat-out”, I also have a weird soft spot for that first Flat-Out game, especially on PC, because the physics were completely insane.
  • Could I include Night Driver from the Atari 2600?
  • Or Pole Position?
  • Could I get away with not including any Mario Kart games, because I don’t give a shit about Mario Kart?  or Ridge Racer, for that matter?  or Wipeout, or F-Zero?  or F1 on the PC?

Am I missing any?  Feel free to call me an idiot in the comments.

Weekend Recap: Words, Words, Words

1.  I am around 1700 words into my NaNoWriMo project.  I started with a blank page, put on some ambient drones to keep focused, and let my mind wander a bit until it found the story it wanted to tell.  The story is a bit of a surprise, actually, being that it’s decided it wants to be somewhat non-fictional.  For that reason alone, I’m pretty sure I’m never letting this thing see the light of day unless I change all the names and fudge some of the historical record, but I have to admit that it does feel good to talk about some of this stuff.  I’m not sure I’m going to get 50,000 words out of it – and honestly, most of the words I have written aren’t particularly good – but that’s neither here nor there at this point.  The primary reason that I’m doing this at all is to get in the habit of writing every day, without fear of an audience’s reaction, and I’ll worry about the end result when it’s finished.  To that end, I’m probably not going to write about my progress here, beyond word counts, which is just a way of keeping myself honest.  (And is there anything more insufferable than hearing someone talk about working on their novel?)

2.  I finished the Southern Reach trilogy at around 3am this morning, due to some Daylight Savings-related insomnia, plus a headcold.  I’m not sure that I enjoyed the latter two books as much as I did the first one; one gets the feeling that the first book came all at once, and then the next two were meant to fill in the backstory and to answer some of the first book’s many questions.  Still, they’re all quick, fun reads.  Now I’m re-reading The Stand, which is starting off very strong (and which I apparently remembered in more vivid detail than I’d thought).  Even though I don’t have any Ebola panic, it’s not hard to get sucked into the idea of an apocalyptic plague these days.

3.  I did it, I pulled the trigger; I bought an Xbox One.  And it might even be arriving today!  I was able to get the Sunset Overdrive bundle at the reduced price after all, which was a bit of a relief, and so now I hope my long-lost 360 friends can forgive my prolonged absence.

4.  I don’t know how I feel about Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare getting such positive reviews.  The last CoD game I played was (I think) Black Ops, of which the campaign remains unfinished and the multiplayer remains untouched.  That said, if my XBO friends are playing it, I might give it a quick look after all.

Weekend Recap: foliage

1.  We were away for a wedding this weekend, and so there isn’t much going on in the way of SFTC-relevant posting.  But I must reiterate how wonderful it is to be away from the internet these days.  No hashtags, no doxxing, no bullshit; just a few beautiful autumn days with good friends, free of day job worries and parental responsibilities.

2.  I’ve been down on the Xbox One a lot on this blog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want one; even though I’m really happy with my PS4, I’m still an Xbox fanboy at heart, and I’ve been hoping for something to push me over the edge (and being able to import all of my Pinball FX2 tables from the 360, while much appreciated, wasn’t quite enough.)  As it happens, Microsoft’s finally delivered the one-two punch I needed:  both Sunset Overdrive and Forza Horizon 2 have been getting good-to-great reviews, and now Microsoft has announced a temporary $50 price cut starting this weekend.  Would it surprise you to learn, then, that all of my dreams last night were about buying an Xbox One?

3.  So last week I said I’d been debating putting Alien Isolation down, and last night I finally made the decision to pull the plug.  I think I’m about halfway through it; I’m currently in the level where I’m trying to access the APOLLO core, and I had to turn in all my weaponry, and all the Working Joes are immune to EMP mines.  The “turn in all your weapons” trope felt a little contrived, frankly, and progressing through the level was becoming more frustrating than anything else, and I don’t particularly care about the game’s fiction to keep butting my head against the wall.  I’ve kept my save file just in case I get the itch to finish it down the road, but I sent the disc back to GameFly and, for the moment, I’m considering myself done with it.

4.  This means that, barring a spontaneous Xbox One purchase this weekend, I’ve got a little bit of time to try and get back into Shadow of Mordor before this year’s final 3 AAA GOTY contenders arrive in November (i.e., Assassin’s Creed Unity (or “AssUnit”), Far Cry 4, and Dragon Age Inquisition).  It’s been so long since I last tried playing it that I might as well start over from scratch – I don’t think I was that far into it, and hopefully I’ll now have an easier time figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do.

5.  I didn’t quite know what to read after getting turned upside down by The Bone Clocks last week; I’d started reading John Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy but that’s not exactly a palate cleanser.  So, instead, I started Annihilation, the first book in the “Southern Reach trilogy” by Jeff VanderMeer.  And that was, in fact, the correct choice.  Each book in the trilogy is incredibly short (at least when compared to everything else I’ve been reading lately); I think it only took me 2 days to finish that first book (and I had a busy weekend).  I’m now 3 chapters into the 2nd book, Authority, and I’m hooked.

Weekend Recap: Dreams Achieved, Dreams Dashed

1.  My essay for Videodame was featured in the most recent Critical Distance round-up, which has been a wish/dream/goal of mine for the last two years or so.  So that’s pretty great.

2.  What’s not great is that, well, it would seem that being a professional games journalist sucks.  Gamespot broke my heart for the second time last week by laying off a bunch of really talented writers, one of whom I consider a good friend.  My Twitter feed is full of immensely talented freelancers who are far more talented and experienced than me, and almost all of whom are broke.  There’s hardly any full-time openings, and the few available openings tend to go only to people who have extensive experience (and are young, white and male) (even though the job listings always make it sound like anybody has a realistic chance), and even if you do manage to land a full-time gig, there’s not much money and even less stability.

Even more terrifying is the apparent reality that video is replacing the written word as far as game journalism is concerned.  This makes literally no sense to me, because I primarily consume my game writing at work, and I can’t watch hours and hours of YouTube videos at work.  When given the choice, I’d choose the written version every single time, which is why when I see that video is the way of the future, I feel like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

It’s hard enough finding the time to write for this site, where I have a minuscule audience and which generates absolutely no revenue.  Making videos that I wouldn’t even be able to watch seems ridiculous.

This is a long way of saying that this article by Peter Skerritt is sobering, harrowing stuff.

3.  Speaking of harrowing and sobering experiences, I rented The Last of Us Remastered last week but didn’t get a chance to put it through its paces until last night.  I’d already beaten the original game, so I decided to jump right in to the Left Behind single-player DLC that had been written about so positively upon its release.

I’m maybe an hour or so into it.  (If you’ve already played it, I’m in a solo Ellie chapter, trying to get to a medical helicopter, right after the Ellie/Riley chapter where they turn the power on at the mall; Ellie, alone, has also just turned the power on and now she’s in her first real sneaking gauntlet.)

My opinions of the game haven’t changed.  It’s gorgeous, the writing is wonderful, and the atmosphere is relentlessly tense, and I’m not really all that sure that I’m having any fun.

Horror movies are fun, in their own way, and clearly there’s an audience and appeal in this sort of apocalyptic undead nightmare scenario, being that there are tons of games and movies and books in this particular vein.  I do not find these things enjoyable, and I acknowledge that it could just be me.  I acknowledge that “having fun” is maybe not the point of TLOU, or The Walking Dead, or etc.  So let me restate it:  as much as I appreciate the artistry on display, and as much as the PS4 version is clearly the way to experience this game for the first time, I can’t say that I’m looking forward to going back and finishing it.

 

Weekend Recap: Destiny, Sword & Poker

Firstly, some housekeeping:  I wrote an essay for the most recent issue of Unwinnable Weekly.  I’m a big fan of Unwinnable, and I helped to fund their Kickstarter, and to be featured in their pages is kind of a dream come true.  It’s not available for free, so I can’t pass out any links, but it’s a great magazine and worth your $$ if you’re into terrific writing about games and comics and such.

Secondly, today’s Gamemoir column is about something I’ve talked about at great length here – about hoping that games will find a way to evolve past the act of shooting things.  And I say all this as someone who played the hell out of the Destiny beta this weekend, too.

Speaking of which: my understanding is that the Destiny beta is temporarily offline for the next few days while they clean up some stuff and get it ready for the Xbox side of things.  This is fine; I could probably use a break.  (Especially since Oddworld: New & Tasty comes out on Tuesday!)

I got my lady Titan to level 8, and got a dude Warlock up to level 3.  Dabbled a little bit in the Crucible (aka the multiplayer), but I am profoundly terrible at online shooting; all I’m really good for is to help neutralize/capture control points and maybe wheedle off someone’s health a little bit before getting destroyed.

The singleplayer, though, is fantastic.  Narrative quibbles and Peter Dinklage’s lackluster performance aside, I am totally, utterly hooked.  And running through difficult gauntlets with strangers is surprisingly easy and fun, and those massive player events (where an overpowered enemy suddenly appears in an open-access area) can be exhilarating to pull off; it makes me wish there was an option for giving high-fives.  (As of now, you can dance, point and wave.)

I don’t know that they’re going to be adding any more single-player content to the beta; I wish they would, but I understand why they wouldn’t.  I suspect most people will be playing the Crucible stuff long after they finish the game (or, rather, before they even start it), and making sure the Crucible works is more than likely the beta’s primary reason for existing, so… I may take the opportunity to get all three classes fully leveled, because it’s still fun to go through that stuff, and I think that there’ll be some tangible benefit in doing so when the final retail version is available in September.

In other news, Sword & Poker is back in a big way on iOS.  On the one hand, this is terrific news; I was (and still am) a huge fan of the first two games.  And why not?  An RPG where the combat mechanic is to make the best 5-card poker hand?  Absolutely.  Those first two games have been in and out of the iTunes store over the last few years, leading some of us to wonder if they’d ever return with a sequel; now our wishes have been granted.  Retina graphics, all new weapons and enemies and a customizable magic system!  This is all great, right?

Except… it’s a free-to-play model, and the in-game purchases are gross, and grossly overpriced, and the customizable magic system is a sham, and the whole thing is depressing as hell.  I’m still addicted to it, and I even paid to get rid of the energy timer (because OF COURSE there’s an energy timer, because when I get going with S&P I can’t put it down), and so I feel tremendous shame.  It’s hard to recommend unless you are a true and depraved addict like me.

This week:  Oddworld on Tuesday!  Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

The Summer Doldrums Continue

At the end of my last post (has it really been 8 days since the last one?) I’d said that I was going away for the long weekend, and that I didn’t know how much gaming I’d be doing.  As it turns out, I’ve played almost nothing.

(I’ve been reading a lot, though!  I think I’m finally at that stage of parenting where I’m not totally exhausted all of the time, and so I’ve been plowing through books lately.  Finished the first 2 books of Carsten Stroud’s Niceville trilogy (pretty good), and am currently about halfway through Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box which is freaking me the fuck out.  He is very much an apple that has not fallen far from the tree, and that is one fucked-up tree.)  

I had hoped to finish A Story About My Uncle before leaving, but I got stuck in a particularly tricky section towards the end.  I tried picking it back up when we got back, though, and I made literally no progress, and instead just got more and more frustrated, and now I think I’m done with it.  Looking at certain Steam comment threads, I’m clearly not the only one who got stuck in this particular area, and so while there is obviously a light at the end of this tunnel, I’m not at all inclined to find my way out.  I’m stuck because this particular puzzle represents a rather sharp difficulty spike requiring mastery of a skill I’ve just been introduced to (i.e., swinging from falling stalagmites), and the incredibly dark lighting makes it very difficult to pick up targets – plus there’s a feeling of inconsistency in terms of how far away a target is.  The short version is that this particular platforming gauntlet is frustrating for all the wrong reasons, and that’s annoying, and now I don’t care if I finish the game or not.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at my backlog and feeling wholly unmotivated to go through it.  And there’s a bunch of stuff that I really ought to get back into, considering the current release drought we’re in – Transistor and Valiant Hearts immediately come to mind as PS4 titles I’ve picked up and put down.  Given that Oddworld: New & Tasty comes out in 2 weeks, I really ought to finish at least one of those before getting wrapped back up in Abe’s Oddysee.  As for my Steam Sale purchases, I may give the Ada chapter of Resident Evil 6 a look.

In other news, I’ve been going back and forth about getting an Xbox One.  I keep turning on my 360 every morning hoping to see this message about receiving a $75 credit if I upgrade, because I almost certainly would upgrade with that kind of incentive.  And yet it must be noted that I – a loyal, happy original Xbox and Xbox 360 customer – shouldn’t need to be so blatantly bribed in order to upgrade; and even if I went out and bought one today, I’m still not sure what I’d play on it (besides maybe Forza Horizon 2, Sunset Overdrive and the Halo Collection, none of which are available right this very minute).

And that’s basically that, folks.  I’ll have a new Gamemoir column up on Monday, and I need to get cracking on my piece for Videodame that got put on the shelf back in May.  I’ll also have an essay in an upcoming issue of Unwinnable Weekly that I’m pretty happy about; more details on that as they emerge.

Weekend Recap: Legos, Steam, Valiant Hearts

Between the craziness of my day job, the baby, and the World Cup, I’m somewhat surprised I was able to fit in any game time at all last week.  As it is, I didn’t do all that much, and what I did wasn’t particularly fulfilling.

I did finish The Lego Movie Game.  I’d have liked to keep playing it and try to get 100%, but there are some near-game-breaking bugs that make it a lot more difficult (and a lot less enjoyable).  The game came out early this year alongside the movie, if I recall correctly, and I must say that I’m awfully surprised that some of these bugs haven’t been addressed in the meantime.  No game is ever bug free, of course, but some of these are pretty hard to miss.  Case in point:  the very first hub world, Bricksburg?  If one of my characters got in a car, they were stuck inside there forever.  Another case in point – the bonus level that unlocks after you finish the game?  In order to get the 10th golden brick, you must get 1,000,000 studs without any multipliers.  I got more than 1,000,000 studs without any multipliers and the golden brick never appeared.  So.  Whatever.  I had fun with it, as I tend to do with all Lego games, but it’s also in rather shoddy shape.

I suppose the stress from work ended up influencing my Steam Sale binging.  I’d laid out some easy to follow ground rules before it started; I’d only get stuff from my wishlist, and only if it was at least 50% off.  Still, I didn’t mean to get as much as I did, and although I’m still pretty sure I never spent more than $10 on any one thing, I still ended up with more than I expected.

The grand haul (I think I mentioned the first 4 pickups last week):

  1. Baldur’s Gate II (Enhanced Edition)
  2. Jade Empire
  3. Sudeki
  4. Vertiginous Golf
  5. The Banner Saga
  6. Resident Evil 4 HD
  7. Resident Evil 6
  8. Goat Simulator
  9. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (Complete)
  10. Memoria
  11. Typing of the Dead (Deluxe)
  12. Spacebase DF-9
  13. A Story About My Uncle
  14. Escape Goat 2

Of the last 10, I dabbled in a few.

The Banner Saga is a turn-based strategy RPG, reminding me of Fire Emblem but subtracting the cute anime and replacing it with downtrodden misery.  I’d read really interesting things about it when it came out earlier this year, which is why I picked it up; I’m just really terrible at those sorts of games, though.  And now it looks like it’s coming to iPad?  Shit.

I picked up Resident Evil 6 primarily because I wanted to play the Ada Wong chapter, which had still been locked away when I’d tried playing the game on the 360; shortly after I sent the game back to Gamefly, Capcom announced they were patching the game and unlocking all chapters from the get-go.  I’m not sure that patching the game will fix what was wrong with it, but I’d heard that the Ada chapter was by far the best one, so I’ll get around to it when I can.

Goat Simulator is delightfully silly and goofy and stupid and exactly what I needed when I picked it up.

I’d already played the hell out of Kingdoms of Amalur, and there were still hundreds of side quests I’d never gotten around to.  Obviously I can’t import my 360 save file, but I still remember liking it quite a bit.  It runs a little janky on my PC, though; might have to tinker with some settings.

Typing of the Dead is probably my big winner of the haul.  I’d played the Wii version with my wife a million years ago, and while we didn’t get that far we did appreciate the over-the-top grindhouse/schlock-horror insanity.  This tone is multiplied exponentially for the better when you replace shooting with typing.  And I am a very good typist.

Finally, I played the first few levels of Escape Goat 2, and it’s a really smart and interesting puzzle platformer, and I have a rather nice appetite for those sorts of experiences.

This week I’m hoping to take a look at A Story About My Uncle.  Patrick Klepek put up a video essay on it last week that more or less sold me in 5 minutes.

Also this week – I hope to spend some more time with Valiant Hearts, which I picked up for the PS4.  It’s using that gorgeous UbiArt engine (the one that the recent 2D Rayman games and Child of Light use), and it’s set in WW1 and is very, very dark in tone; but the gameplay is also a little goofy?  Or silly?  It feels somewhat at odds with the story they’re trying to tell.

I’m pretty sure I’ve played more Ubisoft games this year than I can count.  And I’m sure I’ll be picking up ACU in the fall.

Weekend Recap: a kick in the balls

Goddamn, that USA/Portugal game was rough.

As for video games:

I rented Lego Movie: The Videogame because we finally saw the movie last week, and the movie is as awesome as I’d heard, and I figured the game would be more of the same.  It is, though it’s also very padded (as Lego games generally are), and it’s also a bit tiresome in that regard.  It’s one thing if a Lego game is covering 3-4 movies at once, like LOTR or Star Wars or Harry Potter; it’s quite another if the source material in question is less than 2 hours long.  The game feels, at times, like an extended cut of the movie with all the deleted scenes thrown in, and then the outtakes of those deleted scenes, and etc.  The PSN Trophy list says there are 15 levels; I’ve finished 9.  It’s fine as far as Lego games go; occasional glitches and platforming frustration, but still fun.  I’m tempted to go back once I’m finished to try and 100% it, which is more than I can say for Lego Marvel.

Steam Sale:  Haven’t done that much damage, fortunately.  I already own so much stuff as it is, so almost none of the daily deals mean anything to me.  This year I also instituted a rule for myself – I’m only buying something if (a) it’s already on my wishlist, and (b) it’s over 50% off.  As it happens, I did buy a few things already that met that criteria – Baldur’s Gate 2 (which I’ve never played; thought about the iPad version, but figured I’d rather eventually experience it on the PC); Jade Empire (which I loved on the Xbox and missed dearly and have been thinking about a lot lately, and also which is totally fucked on PC; need to figure out how to get it to work); Sudeki (which is kind of a shitty Xbox action RPG that I have a weird fondness for; it’s super-janky and dated by today’s standards); and Vertiginous Golf (an early access steampunk mini-golf game; need to figure out why I can’t use my 360 controller).  At this point, I’m really only hoping for big discounts on Goat Simulator, NaissanceE, Story about my Uncle, Escape Goat 2, and Banner Saga.

Side note:  I’ve reached that point in my PC’s life where it’s not the best place to play new games, which is why I’m mainly focused on older/indie titles that it can still run well.

Vita:  I’m really getting into Tearaway, finally, which I picked up in this current PS+ sale.  I’d rented it earlier this year when my first Vita showed up; when that Vita broke, I returned Tearaway, not knowing if I’d ever pick it up again.  Anyway.  I can’t think of a better showcase for what the Vita is capable of; it’s charming as hell and while I’m not terribly big on customization (mostly because I can’t draw), it’s lovely to see my hastily scribbled snowflakes and pumpkins and decorations actually in the world.  And I can’t help but make funny faces every time I see myself as the sun, which is why I’m not playing it on the subway.

Also:  tell me which of these I should play.  I’ve only played the first 10 hours of 7 (which I wrote about earlier) before getting stuck, and I did maybe the first 2 of 10 earlier this year before not being sure if I cared or not.  Haven’t touched the rest; I bought them a year or two ago on PS3 during a weird retail therapy splurge, but never touched ’em.

Vita_FF

 

Weekend Recap: Dogs and Wolves

I’m maybe 8 hours into Watch Dogs, even though I only finished Act 1 (of 5) last night.

The reason why I’m 8 hours into the game but am barely 20% into the story is because the game is constantly interrupting me with other things to do besides the main story, and since playing the main story means having to listen to shitty dialogue made worse by shittier voice acting, I’m more than content to indulge those side missions.  I check into hotspots; I hack the shit out of ATM accounts (even though I’m not spending any of the money); I hack into buildings and spy on weird people; I unlock ctOS towers (WD’s version of the radio towers in Far Cry 3 and/or synchronizing viewpoints in Assassin’s Creed).  Anything that involves not having Aiden Pierce speak (whether to a person or simply as part of an internal monologue) is something I’m more than happy to indulge in.

Actually, say what you will about the narrative and the characters and the numerous plot holes and nonsensical premise and the rest of it – and I’ll get to all of that – but Watch Dogs is, for all intents and purposes, the modern-day Assassin’s Creed that I wondered if we’d ever see.  My wife watched me play it for a few minutes and thought it was Grand Theft Auto – and certainly you can make that case.  But the DNA between Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed is so similar, in fact, that it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see that this future-Chicago is, in fact, part of the Animus.  Even the digital glitches seem familiar.  (This Eurogamer article all but confirms that the two franchises take place in the same universe, even if the bottom quote of that article calls these references mere “Easter eggs”.)

I can’t seem to talk about Watch Dogs without getting totally scatterbrained, so I’m going to do the rest of this in bullet-points:

  • Comparisons to GTA being unavoidable, I’d have loved it if Watch Dogs had stolen GTA’s driving model, if nothing else.  It is fucking impossible to keep a car moving at any speed on the road without spinning out, hitting a dozen cars, or killing civilians who are all too eager to get in the way.  (Perhaps those civilians feel guilty in that their complacency in letting a private corporation like the one that makes ctOS completely take over Chicago.)
  • To that last point – the reason why the NSA’s surveillance tactics are as thorough and as voluminous as they are is because they are (or were) collected IN SECRET.  There is only a certain amount of disbelief I can willingly suspend, and the idea that a private corporation could do what the one in Watch Dogs has done is completely in-fucking-sane.  In a major, heavily liberal city like Chicago, no less!  Certainly there’d have been some angry op-eds in the local papers, at the very least, because I’m not sure that the general populace would be content letting a group of anonymous hackers be their voice, either.
  • The game’s protagonist, Aiden Pierce, is one of the more difficult protagonists in modern games to empathize with.  And this particular problem with empathy is totally different than what you might expect with the three men of GTA V, who you at least understand right from the get go are monsters.  Aiden is (at least I think) meant to be someone you root for, someone you understand, someone who can guide you through this city and show you how messed up it is.Alas, Aiden is poorly introduced.  The opening cutscenes establish that he’s some sort of hacker, in the middle of the digital robbery of an upscale building.  Something goes wrong and he bails, and then, some time later, he is shot at by gangsters while driving his car, resulting in the death of his niece.  Now, the way this opening sequence is laid out, one gathers that we are meant to feel bad for Aiden, and that this scene helps us understand his rage and his quest for revenge.  They killed a child, after all!  But: he’s also a criminal, right?  Even if he’s only robbing the rich (and who even knows if that’s the case), he’s engaged in illegal activity as a full-time profession, and he got caught, and the bad(der) guys tried to take him out.

    And he’s not charming or witty or even likable, as with, say, the Ocean’s 11 crew.  He’s poorly acted, as he’s basically been a one-note grumble so far, and it doesn’t help that his dialogue is so stupid.

  • Also:  he’s continually recognized by passers-by as “the vigilante in the news”, which makes literally no sense as his face and body are digitally obscured by all the cameras you hack – plus, at least as of yet, he’s done nothing newsworthy to grant him that title.  And while I appreciate all this extra stuff to do, I don’t understand why he’s so interested in doing it when he’s written as being single-minded of purpose.  Why should he care about random crimes?  Why should he care about random people, for that matter?  For all intents and purposes he is a broken man out to right a grievous wrong – why the fuck is the game interrupting me literally every 30 seconds with gang hideouts to break up and criminal convoys to derail?

As I haven’t seen nearly enough of the game’s story to comment on it in any detail, I won’t.  But I will absolutely pass along Cameron Kunzelman’s pretty definitive look at some of the game’s larger issues.  That article alone is enough to keep me stalling, let alone all the other ridiculousness detailed above.

And it’s a shame, too, because there actually is some interesting stuff here.  Underneath all the narrative stupidity and the horrendous, horrendous driving (and the average third-person shooting), the game offers unique ways of handling enemies that have nothing to do with guns.  One of my favorite moments thus far was how I was able to unlock a ctOS station – different than unlocking one of the radio towers – purely through hacking cameras.  I found a hidden vantage point, hacked a surveillance camera, found the guard with the access codes and hacked him, then found another guard wearing a hidden camera, distracted him with a ringing cell phone which put him in the same room as the [cable box?], hacked that; mission accomplished.  I could have just as easily gone in, guns blazing, mowing all the guards down and doing everything directly.  But this was a far more satisfying way of dealing with the situation, and I didn’t have to kill anybody.  Didn’t even have to sneak around!  I just stood out of anyone’s line of sight and my phone did the rest.

This is how the game generally encourages you to play, for whatever it’s worth.  And it’s a really interesting concept, and for the most part it’s satisfying to pull off.  But it’s not foolproof, and it’s not always successful, and you can’t take too much direct fire before getting killed, and the checkpoint system is somewhat inconsistent; a mid-mission death can either mean replaying 5 minutes, or 20.

I’m going to keep playing it, because there’s more than enough to do to keep me busy for the rest of the summer, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy it.

On the other hand, I can’t say enough positive things about Wolfenstein: The New Order.  Indeed, I very well might put Watch Dogs back on the shelf if it gets too infuriating just so that I can go back to Wolfy and find all the collectibles I missed the first time around.

Unfortunately, it’s now been almost a week since I finished it, and so the words aren’t coming as quickly as I’d like them to.  I did write a whole bunch while I was in the middle of it; I’d really only add that it’s remarkable and refreshing to see a single-player-only FPS so lovingly crafted and cared for in this day and age.  With every ensuing Call of Duty I find myself getting more and more cynical, wondering if the FPS genre has passed me by; even the more interesting shooters, like Far Cry 3, still have moments of tedium (as well as troubling, tone-deaf overtones of tribalism and racism).

Wolfenstein is, at heart, an old-school shooter, and it’s not necessarily reinventing the wheel here.  What it gets right, though, is so tough to do these days; it has astonishingly good pacing, objectives that are clear and understandable, a supporting cast of characters that are as three-dimensional as you could hope for (given their relative lack of screen time), and a diverse and satisfying arsenal and thousands of Nazis to kill.  There are a few tough spikes in difficulty, and towards the very end (maybe the last 30 minutes of the game) I turned the difficulty down just because the hour was getting late and I wanted to see at least the first 20 minutes of Watch Dogs before going to sleep, and because I’m a grown-ass man and I don’t have to feel bad about that sort of thing.  Even with the difficulty lowered, the game was still fun; I don’t feel like I diminished my experience at all.

I’m not sure what the rest of the year’s release calendar is looking like – E3 is just around the corner, but I also expect a lot of games to get delayed until next year – but I’d be very surprised if Wolfenstein wasn’t in the running for my Game of the Year.  Highly recommended.