Category: weekend recap

weekend recap: saying goodbye to 2012

1.  As promised, the wife and I finally finished The Walking Dead.  What a hell of a thing that was.  There’s a part of me that wants to nitpick a little bit, that sometimes a character will suddenly change their entire outlook in a matter of seconds, as if there was a transitional scene that was cut, or as if a different writer took over the scene without looking at the previous pages; or that, all things considered, the “game” part of it could’ve used a little work; or that, at least on the 360, there are a lot of weird graphical hiccups and frame-rate stutters that are somewhat jarring.  But all that aside, it tells one hell of a story, and we were fully invested from the very beginning.  And that ending!  Oh God.  Gred, my SFTC podcast co-host, said it’s his favorite ending since Red Dead Redemption, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

2.  I am also replaying Mass Effect 3, now that I’ve got the DLC installed and a renegade mindset.  Finished the Omega DLC last night, actually, and being a renegade was kinda awesome – Aria T’Loak very much appreciated it.  But, man… it’s hard to be a renegade all the time.  Granted, the choices I’ve had to make aren’t anywhere near as devastating and as ethically dubious as the ones in Walking Dead, but sometimes it’s just rough.  I have to remind myself that I already went through the game as a paragon, and part of the reason why I’m doing this again is to see all the stuff I didn’t see last time.  Still, though… it’s tough.  I’m very much enjoying the game, though, even if all the stuff on the Citadel bores me to death.  

3.  If any game developers are out there reading this, please make a true GTA in space for the next-gen consoles.  That is the game I want to play.  I’d do it myself except I can’t code, draw, or design.   (One of my new year’s resolutions that I’m coming up with right at this very moment is to teach myself Unity, but who knows if that will stick once the baby arrives.)

4.  The Steam Sale continues to torment me.  I’ve managed to be pretty good, for the most part, although I did pick up three things last night:  Little Inferno, Rochard, and Closure.  I haven’t yet tried the latter two, but Little Inferno is an interesting little puzzler that is threatening to get subversive.  And a few days ago I picked up Retro City Rampage and Mark of the Ninja, which looks absolutely gorgeous on my PC monitor.  I’ve been slowly going through it again; it’s even better than I remember it being.

5.  I was going to do a big “Predictions for 2013” post, but I’m not really feeling it.  Honestly, there’s not a hell of a lot to say about 2013 – there’s not very much coming out that’s all that exciting besides 2 or 3 big titles, and in any event, once the baby comes in April I’m sure that my gaming time will decrease dramatically.  Basically, I’m just hoping my 360 survives long enough to get me through GTA5, and then I’ll take it week-to-week until the new consoles come out.  I’m still toying with the idea of getting a 3DS; I’m also toying with the idea of upgrading my iPhone 4 to a 5, but also perhaps waiting until they announce the 6 (or the 5* or whatever).

In non-game news, I might do a Books post here later today (or later this week, depending on time).  I’m currently reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, which came highly recommended from a million different people.  I’m normally not very big on fantasy novels, but this one’s particularly good, and I might be checking out his earlier stuff – I’m not sure I’m prepared to dive into the Wheel of Time series, though.

I will not be doing a Music post, though.  I haven’t done a music post in a few years, actually, and this year I felt particularly out of touch with the music scene.  That being said, I have been keeping a Spotify playlist of my favorite 2012 songs, and while it’s not as thorough as I’d prefer it to be, it’s still pretty good:

weekend recap: the christmas splurge

It would figure that I’d need to make some serious additions and edits to my Games of 2012 post, because not 24 hours after that post went up, Steam had another sale.

Those fuckers.

I’ve gone and done foolish things.

  • Retro City Rampage
  • Mark of the Ninja (which I’ve already beaten on 360, but GODDAMN that game is amazing, and I’m happy to support the developer wherever possible)
  • Civ V – Gods and Kings
  • Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition
  • Solar 2
  • Unmechanical
  • FTL

I’ve managed to avoid buying both Borderlands 2 and Hitman: Absolution, even though they’ve both been 50% off several times over the course of this sale.  (Leaving aside that I’ve already beaten Borderlands 2 and bought its DLC Season Pass on the 360;  didn’t I already say that I wasn’t ever going to play Hitman, because that marketing campaign was so hideous and because I’m tired of gratuitous violence?  Why am I even still considering it?  Am I that much of a slave to sales?)

The only other thing I’d like to pick up is Little Inferno, which has been holding steady at 33%.  If that goes down to 50+, it’s mine.

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And in spite of all these new pickups, I’ve been playing a bunch of old stuff, actually.

On the PC, I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham City, which I’m enjoying possibly even more than I did the first time around.  I’m not really paying attention to every single Riddler challenge unless it’s something I remember the solution for and/or currently have the right equipment to solve, but I am doing all the side missions, which are fun and involving and interesting.  And GODDAMN, that game looks incredible.  I’d been playing Far Cry 3 at high resolution but with a somewhat shaky framerate; Batman:AC, on the other hand, is at a high resolution and is at a blazing 60+ FPS.  The difference is striking.

On the 360, I bought some of the DLC for Trials Evolution, and was instantly reminded of 2 things:  (1) that game is really, really fun, and (2) that game can be really, really difficult.  But my main focus has been on doing a Renegade playthrough of Mass Effect 3.  I guess I’d been thinking about it lately, and I’d heard good things about the DLC, and since I hadn’t even thought about the game since I first beat it in March, I figured it’d be a (somewhat) fresh experience.  And it is, it really is.  That game is still excellent.  And porting over my completed save – where my FemShep was at level 58 – means I’ve got crazy powers right from the get-go.  I’m not quite yet at the part where I have full control over the Normandy and can go wherever I want to go, but I’m pretty close, I think, and I’m very much looking forward to checking out the new DLC.

And on iOS, I picked up Poker Knight and Gua-Le-Ni.  Poker Knight is a puzzle/RPG where your attacks are based on creating poker hands – it pushes a lot of very good buttons.  And Gua-Le-Ni is something I heard about earlier today from SlideDB – it’s a really unique puzzle game for the iPad with a fantastic art style and a very neat gameplay hook, somewhat akin to a set of children’s letter blocks.

Here’s hoping you all had a lovely holiday.  Did you get everything you wanted?

weekend recap – birthday boy makes good

I’m having a tough time getting words to come out of my brain today.  I started writing this post around 4 hours ago, and between constant work interruption and my utter inability to maintain any semblance of focus, I’ve made it no further than this introduction.

It’s not that I went all wild and crazy for my birthday this weekend; far from it, in fact.  But it is true that I’ve not been sleeping well lately, and when my alarm clock went off this morning I felt very much like I was dead.  I took one of those mindless 20 minute shower-trances where I would stare off into space and then suddenly wonder if I had already put shampoo in my hair, or if I was simply waiting the required 3-5 minutes before I could rinse.

Anyway, here I am, in a quiet moment at work, with my mind (when it’s working) far away in the land of Far Cry 3.

I suppose it’s good that I can’t really think right now, because even though I’m having an enormous amount of fun with FC3, it’s the sort of game where I’m afraid that over-analyzing it will ruin it.  It’s like, yes, it was enormously astute of some critics to point out how bizarre it was that eating years-old potato chips in Bioshock actually granted health bonuses instead of taking them away, but the game was still awesome; likewise, if I spend too much time thinking that even though the protagonist in FC3 goes from “I’m afraid of even looking at a gun” to “Holy shit this flamethrower is fucking amazing!” in a very short amount of time, killing human beings by the dozens along the way, he still says “Ewww…..” while skinning his hundredth animal.

I mean, look – there’s a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief that any gamer needs to have while playing a game with guns.  Leaving aside mechanical tropes like regenerating health and the ability to take more than one bullet hit and not immediately fall down dead, there’s lots of things that gamers need to ignore in order for a game’s narrative logic to not completely fall apart.  I’ve talked before about Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake and the dizzying amount of cognitive disassociation necessary for the gamer to accept that Drake isn’t a serial-murdering psychopath (who, according to my stats, murdered over 700 people in Uncharted 3) but rather a fun, charming ruffian who gets in and out of “scrapes.”   This is all to say that while I appreciate FC3’s writers trying to make the player character less of a mutant super-soldier and more of a normal dude, they either need to fully commit to the premise and have him get used to skinning animals, or just leave it alone altogether.

As for the game itself.

I’d finally gotten to the point where I’d done so much dicking around (exploring, ascending radio towers, reclaiming outposts, hunting and crafting, etc.) that I actually had too much XP – i.e., it seems that a lot of the skill tree is locked until you do more story missions.   And while screwing around is fun in and of itself, it turns out that you can have more fun if you have access to some of those locked skills.  So, I turned back to the story last night and decided to see what’s what.

Whaddya know, the story missions are also pretty awesome.  I escaped from a burning building and rescued my girlfriend, and now I’m on some sort of vision quest for the island’s high priestess, where I’ve made my way to a shanty village called “Badtown” and hooked up with some far-out CIA dude who’s having me run errands for him.

The narrative is still taking shape; there’s now apparently a super-villain that even the psychopathic Vaas must answer to, and I’m not quite sure where this high priestess / jungle mysticism thing is going, but as long as I get to continue running around and do the things I’m already doing, I’ll be happy.

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I also finished the story mode in Lego Lord of the Rings, which was a lot of fun (albeit with the same stupid platforming bullshit that has plagued the Lego games since the beginning), and I’m slowly going through the game again with the intent of getting 100%.  My wife is a huge LOTR fan, too, and she’s been having fun watching the strange incongruities that can happen in the post-completion phase of the game, like having Sauron and Frodo run around together solving puzzles.

weekend recap – hello goodbye

1.  I gave up on Assassin’s Creed 3 over the weekend; I went about as far as I could go before accepting that I just.  didn’t.  care.  And it’s a shame, too, I suppose, because even though the overall narrative was ridiculous, I was getting to a point in the story where there was some actual, insightful perspective on what the American Revolution was really about.  And certain relationships between characters – specifically, that of a father and son, newly reacquainted – had the potential to get quite interesting.  But the game itself is broken, undercooked, with a thousand extraneous things to do and none of them particularly interesting or designed.  The Homestead mechanic – a variant on the mechanic in AC2 / Brotherhood where Ezio built up his mansion and ancestral city / his band of assassins, and in which I spent a lot of time working on and developing in those games – is barely taught, its benefits utterly unexplained.  The hunting mechanic felt tedious and without any sort of tangible reward – yes, you can sell what you scavenge, but I never found myself hurting for money mostly because I never bought anything, because there was nothing of interest to buy.  You do precious little assassinating for an Assassin in a game called Assassin’s Creed, too, but you do find yourself getting chased by the British for no particular reason at all, in chase sequences that last anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes, and which GOD JUST MAKE IT STOP.  Ubisoft:  I implore you.  TAKE A YEAR OFF.  We know you won’t, as you like to be all over console launches, but WE DO NOT NEED A NEW ASSASSIN’S CREED GAME NEXT YEAR.

2.  Besides giving up on AC3, I didn’t really do all that much gaming this weekend, as I was busy with some music stuff I’m working on.  But when I did get my game on, I found myself getting pulled back into Batman: Arkham City, which I bought during the Thanksgiving Steam Sale.  The similarities between Batman and Assassin’s Creed are many, as it turns out, but Batman does everything so much better.  Even though I’ve already beaten it, I’m still enjoying it just as much this second time around.

Do you guys do this, too?  Do you ever find yourself replaying old games?  I do this every once in a while, especially if an old game kinda keeps popping up in my memory – for me, it’s almost the same feeling as re-reading a favorite book; I get to live in that world again, and often times it’s just as good (if not better) the second time around, because you get to pay attention to details that you missed the first time, and you can skim over the parts you don’t like.  

I think I mentioned the other day that I’ve already started work on my “BEST GAMES OF THIS CONSOLE GENERATION” post, and as such I’ve had a jones to play a bunch of old favorites again – Uncharted 2 (and maybe even 3), Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption.  (For whatever it’s worth, Portal 1/2 will be on my list, but I’ve played both of those games too many times for me to feel nostalgic about them right now.)  This even though I still need to finish XCOM, and even though I’m now suddenly looking forward to Far Cry 3, what with all the amazing reviews it’s been getting…

3.  I turn 37 on Saturday, and I’ve been toying with the idea of getting myself a 3DS (or the XL version) as a birthday present.  I don’t really know why, though – it’s not like the game library has suddenly, dramatically improved.  And while I’ve heard amazing things about Pushmo, and while I’d certainly like to check out OoT and the new Professor Layton, that’s not really enough to sink $250 on, especially with a baby on the way in April.   And especially since my iPhone 4’s home button is becoming very unreliable, and I’m eligible to upgrade to the 5 in a few weeks anyway.  Still, it’s something I’m thinking about.

That’s it, and that’s all.

weekend recap – conquering fears, one drive at at time

Here’s hoping all of you (whoever you are) had a wonderful holiday break.  I can’t necessarily say that my break was relaxing, but I can say that I’ve come through the other side feeling almost like a changed man.

See, Thanksgiving is simultaneously the holiday I look forward to the most (since I get to see all of my family), and also the holiday I end up getting the most stressed out over.  There’s lots of travelling (which can stress me out), lots of food I can’t eat very much of (as I’ve got some annoying food allergies and a pretty sensitive GI system, generally speaking), the requisite family drama (which I’m sure everyone else has, too), and my day-to-day schedule is usually so busy that there’s hardly any time to chill out and relax and digest.   (I’ve got 3 different family units to visit, is the thing.)

This year’s edition was doubly stressful because I was also picking up my first car, a process that had already been stressing me out for the last 2 weeks as I dealt with epic DMV hassles and endless forms and insurance companies and such, and this car-acquiring process was going to end with me driving this car back to my apartment in Brooklyn, a process that necessarily involves driving through New York City.  I have lived in NYC since 1993, and the prospect of driving here has never ceased to freak me out.  (I have, in fact, driven in the city a few times, and even had a shitty moving van stall out and die – three times! – on a crowded, uphill onramp to the Queensborough Bridge, and I am still alive.)

And yet, even though the holiday was busy (as predicted) and there was drama (unfortunate), the food I did eat was quite delicious and didn’t kill me, and in general my stomach was quite cooperative, and it was wonderful to see everyone, and the drive back to the city on Saturday night was shockingly easy and stress-free, and we even had time to build a bureau for the baby’s room on Sunday AND go bowling in the afternoon with friends AND watch the first half of the Giants game before totally passing out from exhaustion.  This was a good weekend.

Conquering the drive, though; that was big.   That was the thing that was stressing me out more than anything else, and it turned out to be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.   I’m already dealing with general anxiety disorder, which has made me somewhat of a recluse in recent years.*   Medications have helped drag me out of my apartment, but sometimes you just have to face your fears head-on if you’re ever going to conquer them.  And let me tell you, when I finally pulled into our parking space, a part of me really wanted to hear the Achievement Unlocked! sound.

In any event, I’m back in town.

Not a lot of gaming stuff to report.  I’ve been more or less successful in avoiding the Steam sale, though I did buy a few things last night on steep discount (including Hotline Miami).  (And, as I write this, I see that there’s a Flash Sale where Tropico 4 is 80% off.  I suck at strategy games, and yet I’m close to pulling the trigger on this.)

One other bit of non-gaming news to report:  the Kindle Paperwhite is fantastic.  My previous Kindle was old and losing its charge pretty quickly, and the Kindle iPad app can be hard on the eyes at night (and is also too full of distractions to be truly useful as a reading device).  The Paperwhite, though, is super-easy on the eyes, rests very easy in the hands, and has gotten me back into a heavy reading rotation.  (I may end up doing a little Books of 2012 post here, as a matter of fact; my personal blog, where I usually post stuff like this, is more or less defunct these days, and I’ve been thinking about expanding this blog’s topical range anyway.  Hope that’s OK with you!)

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* That being said, being a semi-agoraphobe has also meant that I play a lot of videogames, and is a large reason why this blog even exists in the first place.

weekend recap: so many bullets

[This recap is a day late, and edited to reflect yesterday evening; my entire Monday was spent at the DMV, which was about as awesome as you might expect.  I’m just going to leave it at that, because I really don’t want to think about it any more.  It’s not like you need to hear about how miserable the DMV is, anyway; we’ve all been there, we’ve all experienced purgatory on earth.]

Here are some stray observations from a dissatisfied weekend:

  • I was a bit reluctant to get back into Assassin’s Creed 3 until that mega-patch landed (I think it lands today [Tuesday], as a matter of fact).  But when I got back from the hellish experience that was the DMV, I decided to give it a go and see what else was in store.  As it turns out, this may have been a bad decision.  I’d written the other day about how underwhelming the Boston Tea Party mission was; well, you also get to experience Paul Revere’s Ride, which very well might win my 2012 award for the Most Poorly Conceived and Poorly Executed Mission Of The Year.  Instead of a lengthy chase sequence on horseback, which is what I was expecting, Paul Revere sat behind me on a horse and yelled out directions in which I should turn, and we had to do this quite slowly so as not to attract attention (even though Paul Revere was still shouting “I THINK IT’S THIS WAY!” every 20 seconds), and we only ended up knocking on 3 or 4 houses (in which the same NPC answered the door).  I’m not really sure why I’m continuing to bother, to be honest.  This franchise started losing its way last year, when it started to confuse ambition for enjoyment.

 

  • I haven’t necessarily forgiven Halo 4 for its teleportation sins, but I’m still slowly forging through the campaign.  I’m impressed with the graphics – this is easily the best looking Halo game in the franchise – and I certainly appreciate 343’s attempts to mix up the action and pacing with vehicle and turret segments.  (Also, flying a pelican is pretty neat.)  Still, I think my biggest problem with the game now is that none of my objectives are particularly interesting; I’m clearing landing zones, I’m shutting down 2 or 3 towers to open up a new thing or whatever.  It’s grunt work, basically.  And a lot of the enemies are bullet sponges (or, at least, they are when I’m shooting), and that can get dull.  

 

  • I forgot to mention that I’m also playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  Totally forgot I’d put it on the rental queue.  Shooter fatigue notwithstanding, it’s actually pretty fun, even if I don’t really care about these characters.  I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a huge difference in feel between Halo 4 and CODBLOPS2.  In Halo 4, enemies take lots of damage before going down; whereas in COD, everything is more or less a one-hit kill, and so you feel like you’re moving through the game a lot faster.  Similarly, in Halo 4 you run out of ammo pretty quick, so you’re constantly picking up and experimenting with new weapons.  In COD, your first gun will pretty much get you through the whole mission, and as such there’s no real need to experiment with found weaponry (unless it’s clearly given to you because you’re going to need it.)

CODBLOPS 2 is pretty fun, I guess, although I’m currently up to my first Strike Force mission, which is a weird not-quite-tower-defense / real time strategy sort of mission, where I’m defending 3 different points on a base, alternating between an eye-in-the-sky, a weird mech-tank-dog, and individual soldiers.  I have no idea what this has to do with the story; nor do I know why the designers thought that radically changing the action would be a good idea, especially since the friendly AI is incredibly stupid and useless, and the only way to really accomplish anything is simply to make yourself one of the soldiers and kill everyone, the way you’d normallyplay.   Still haven’t finished that mission, either; I was getting my ass kicked quite thoroughly and had retreated all the way so that I was defending the last point on the map, whereupon I got killed, and then the game crashed.   Haven’t felt compelled to give it another go since.

As much as I’d like to finish these three big games before the end of the year, I’m not sure I’m going to; all of them are driving me a bit crazy, and I can’t say I’m truly enjoying myself in any of them.  Nor am I sure there’s anything else coming out before the end of the year that I really need to get my hands on – I don’t care about Far Cry 3, and I’ve never been good at previous Hitman games, so Absolution doesn’t really sound all that appealing.  I do want to finish the last 2 episodes in The Walking Dead, and I must confess to wanting to give Lego Lord of the Rings a try, since the wife might enjoy playing that with me in co-op.  The second bit of DLC for Borderlands 2 came out today as well, although it’s getting somewhat weak reviews.  I suppose I could always go back and play some more XCOM…

Still, expect a GOTY post sometime in December.

weekend recap – AC3, Halo 4, and an iOS GOTY contender

1.  I’ve found a possible contender for iOS game of the year, and it is called CHIP CHAIN (itunes, free).  It’s a fiendishly addictive combination of Triple Town and Drop 7; if either of those games mean anything to you, you will get sucked into Chip Chain immediately.   For the rest of you, here’s the developer’s description:

Place and match 3 or more identical poker chips to earn a more valuable chip, then chain together matches for huge bonuses! Play power-up cards to make combos, extend chains, and maximize your score. The dealer tosses chips to get in your way, but if you play smart and think ahead, you can turn the tables and use them to your advantage. Earn gems to spend on better chips, more powerful cards, bigger hands, gem multipliers, and more!

It’s free, and while there are in-app purchases, they’re certainly not necessary – you earn in-game currency at a pretty steady pace anyway.  The only negative criticism I can offer is that it tends to suck battery life rather quickly; my morning-commute iPhone gaming usually drains from fully charged to around 80%; this morning’s commute drained me all the way down to the low 70s.  Hopefully that will be addressed in a patch.  That aside, I give this my highest recommendation.

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2.  I have given up on Need For Speed Most Wanted.  I tried playing a bit more on Friday night, and found myself cursing and ranting and saying things that I really ought to not say out loud, even if I’m in an empty room, yelling at the television.   Understand that it breaks my heart to do this.  Understand that underneath all the frustration and the bullshit and the cheap shots and the magnetized traffic and everything else that makes me seethe with white-hot fury, this is still a Criterion driving game, and as such there are still moments of breath-taking exhilaration to be found.   But there’s SO MUCH BULLSHIT you must endure before you get to those fleeting moments of glory, and I don’t have the time any more to put up with a game that makes me angry.

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3.  I don’t know if I’m giving up on Halo 4.  I did the first 2 missions and then put it down, and I haven’t really thought about it much since.   It looks gorgeous, and it still feels like Halo, which is what it’s supposed to do, I guess.  But the truth of the matter is that it only took about 5 minutes before my ongoing issues with shooter fatigue kicked in.   I’m really, really tired of shooting things, especially the Covenant.  I’d still like to try the co-op stuff, I suppose, but even that isn’t all that appealing.  I will say this, though – I tried the SmartGlass app on my iPad, and Halo 4 takes advantage of it in some pretty neat ways.   I suppose if I were really into multiplayer, I’d really get into all its stat-tracking and everything.   It’s certainly not essential, but it’s a nice feature to have if you’re into that sort of thing.

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4.   I did finally receive my Gamefly copy of Assassin’s Creed 3, which, as it turns out,  is very much the kind of game I’d rather be playing than shooters and frustrating driving games.  It’s a shame, then, that so much of it is broken.

My relationship with the Assassin’s Creed franchise is, for lack of a better word, weird.  I’m a devoted fan almost in spite of myself, because there’s just too damned much of it.

I really liked AC1, even if it was ultimately repetitive and shallow.  I genuinely loved AC2, which fleshed out the main story with a number of fun (and relevant) side missions.  And I still adore AC2: Brotherhood, which may very well end up in my top 5 games of this console generation.  The thing is, I never needed these games to come out every year.  Frankly, I suppose one of the reasons why I like Brotherhood so much is that I was legitimately afraid that it was going to suck – I worried that they were adding too much, too quickly, without giving the game enough time to properly cook (and without giving its audience enough time to achieve the proper level of excitement).

This is probably why I gave up on AC2: Revelations so quickly; my fear of diminishing returns finally came true.  AssRev was overly complicated, throwing far too many new ideas at the player – many of which were half-baked to begin with, and none of which felt particularly necessary.  I’d sunk over 100 hours into the first 3 games without ever once feeling like I needed to use smoke grenades, let alone a complex grenade crafting system.  I’d barely learned how to properly use the grappling hook in AssRev before I was being thrust into a ridiculous, nonsensical tower defense minigame.  And to top it all off, the controls were utterly fucked up; it felt like I needed to hold 4 buttons down just to run up a wall – something I’d already done at least a thousand times in the earlier games – and yet more often than not, I’d end up jumping into a ravine instead of climbing onto a platform.

And so, prior to AC3’s release, I must admit that I was a little worried.  I wasn’t sure I was ready for yet another Assassin’s Creed game, especially coming on the heels of the incredible disappointment of AssRev.  And I wasn’t sure how Ubisoft was going to fix all the things that needed fixing, while adding all the things they would inevitably add, in such a short span of time.

Indeed, I’m now 10 or so hours into AC3, and I’m still a little worried about it.  I am happy to say that I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot more than AssRev, but I’m also a little bummed out about how rough around the edges it seems to be.

The game is flat-out broken in a number of alarming ways.  And I don’t just mean that the player can get stuck in level geometry on a consistent basis, although that’s happened far too many times for an AAA title.  There’s one example I can point early on in the game where literally nothing makes sense.  

**SLIGHT STORY SPOILERS AHEAD**  

There’s a mission where Samuel Adams is ostensibly going to to show young Connor how to use the Fast Travel System.  The two characters walk towards the indicated waypoint, but the road is barred by soldiers.  Connor says, “How about I just take the rooftops and meet you there?”  Sam then says, “No, not that way.  You need to learn how to do this.  Follow me.”  Except he doesn’t move; he expects me to take him.    I don’t know where I’m supposed to go!

Here’s the catch:  I actually do, since I’d already explored this area during a previous visit and unlocked a few Fast Travel locations (before I actually knew what they were).  The problem is, when I try to take Sam to one of the other Fast Travel locations I’ve already discovered, the game tells me I’m about to fail the mission for leaving the mission area.

?!

I had to look at a walkthrough, which revealed that I actually did have to go to the place that was guarded by soldiers, and that the only way in was to climb over the rooftops and sneak in behind, which, as you’ll recall above, was specifically what Sam asked me not to do.

**END SLIGHT STORY SPOILERS**

At least I was able to complete this mission; the mission I had to do 2 missions before this one caused me to, for no reason at all, suddenly become attacked by dozens of soldiers.  Restart checkpoint – same thing happens.  There was no way to fix this other than to kill everyone.  And then Connor and Sam had a leisurely conversation, as if nothing had just happened.

Another thing that tends to get under the skin is the wildly uneven pacing.  I don’t mean in terms of the story – while a lot of critics have opined that the game starts far too slowly, I actually appreciate that the game has taken its time to set up where it’s going.  Instead, I’m talking more specifically about the errors of pacing where it’s clear that there wasn’t enough time to properly polish and edit each scene.  There are times when the game makes you walk 10 feet before a new cutscene starts; there are other times right next to them where you have to walk 500 yards to get to the next cutscene; there are times when you’ll start a mission and instantly jump to where you need to be; there are other times where you’ll start a mission and, as before, have to walk for 10 minutes before the mission starts.  I can’t say I know anything about game development, but I’d guess that if the game had even just a few more months of polish, these sorts of inconsistencies would be smoothed over and the overall experience would be much improved.  Instead, Ubisoft rushed it out the door in order to meet its quarterly earnings projections, and we ended up with something that isn’t nearly as good as it should be.

I can’t speak for all AC fans, but I can’t imagine anybody wants one of these games every year; I think they’d prefer to have these games to come out when they’re good and ready.  Because when these games work the way they’re supposed to, they are incredibly fun and engaging and immersive.  There’s really nothing like them, and that’s why they’re so special.

Nor would I contend that the thing that keeps people attracted to this franchise is all the crazy, random shit that has nothing to do with the business of assassinating.  Brotherhood remains the best game in the franchise for me because all the random stuff it added made sense, and added to the overall experience of being the head of an Assassin Guild, and most importantly – it was fun.

AC3, on the other hand, has a bizarre, overly complicated hunting system – which is fine, I suppose, except it doesn’t work all that well and it doesn’t do anything to enhance the experience, even though it’s incessantly shoving itself into your way.  (By way of contrast, look at Red Dead Redemption‘s hunting system – it was simple, easy to understand, yielded tangible rewards, and didn’t constantly remind you of its existence; it was there if you wanted to engage with it, and remained quietly in the background if you wanted to do something else.)

Similarly, I completed my first naval battle last night.  Let’s leave aside the highly questionable narrative decision wherein a seasoned British naval officer allows a Native American teenager to captain a fucking ship and engage in warfare on the open seas, and ask ourselves if this is something that ever needed to exist in this franchise.  Because even though the minigame itself was surprisingly well executed and even impressive, cinematically, it’s still totally unnecessary.

I’m not ready to give up on it, though; despite its brokenness and its near-desperate need to impress you with SOMETHING NEW at every turn, it’s a lot more fundamentally sound than AssRev.  I like these new characters; I like the shift in location and era; I like that the overall narrative seems to have gained some of the forward momentum it seemed to be lacking.  And, frankly, I miss this franchise.  Like I said above – when it’s good, there’s nothing quite like it.  And being that we’re in the middle of shooter season, this is a very refreshing change of pace.

weekend recap: honorable intentions

[I had grand visions for this post, but then (of course) work got in the way, and so I have no idea if what follows is coherent or interesting or what.  Many apologies.]

Lots to talk about, and some of it has nothing to do with gaming.  In fact, I might as well dive in and get this shameless plug out of the way right now:  I’ve finally, FINALLY built a website for all my music-doings.  Please feel free to visit vosslandiamusic.com and check it out; there will be more content coming soon, but for now it’s, well, what it is.

Back to the subject at hand, now.  This was another in a series of inadvertent three-day weekends; I’d been somewhat successfully battling a cold last week but I woke up on Friday having lost the cold war, as it were, and so I stayed home and sneezed and coughed and decided to get caught up on gaming stuff, since the living room was all mine.

Last week I wrote about my Dishonored glitch:

…I completed Slackjaw’s quest, and was on my way to head back to his distillery to turn it in, when the game suddenly told me I’d failed the quest, and even though none of his men were trying to kill me, he certainly was.  I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.  Tried re-loading several times, tried entering stealthily as opposed to waltzing right in – but no matter how I entered the zone, as soon as I’d crossed some invisible barrier, the game decided I’d failed.  This was very, very frustrating (as you might imagine), and since I didn’t see any solution (beyond waiting for a patch), I decided to take it out of the 360′s tray and leave it alone for a little while.  Some quick googling revealed that a lot of people are having the same problem – not everyone, but enough for me to feel like it’s not just my own peculiar problem.  That being said, since I don’t know when the patch is coming (if indeed it’s coming at all), I might just take the opportunity to start over from scratch, now that I actually know what I’m doing.

As it turned out, there was a patch ready for me to download Friday morning, but when I loaded my last save, the quest was still glitched out.  So I did end up restarting from the beginning, which also made it much easier, since I already knew what I was doing (and had a much better idea of how to do it better).  Took no time at all to get caught up to where I’d been glitched, and everything seemed to be working fine at that point.  Made much progress, then; I happened to glance at a walkthrough online just to see how far into it I was, and it would appear that if the game has three Acts, my next mission would be the end of Act 2/beginning of Act 3.

Here’s the thing; I kinda don’t know if I care enough about the game to bother finishing it.

And yet the game matters enough to me that I would really like to know why I’m feeling so apathetic about it.

This particular problem is made thornier in that after I took my leave from Dishonored on Friday, I also spent a great deal of time with the first bit of DLC for Borderlands 2, which is absolutely fantastic; and also that my weekend eventually got pretty busy with things wholly unrelated to gaming (see first paragraph above).  Also: my rental copy of Forza Horizon should be arriving later this week, which I’m very anxious to get my hands on; and next week comes Criterion’s Need For Speed Most Wanted, which is looking every bit like the spiritual successor to Burnout Paradise that I’ve been craving for years.  (And meanwhile my XCOM campaign lurks on in the background.)  Basically, I’m very much aware that I’ve got a very limited amount of time in which to give the rest of Dishonored the attention it probably deserves, so there’s a weird sort of pressure there.  I fully acknowledge that this isn’t Dishonored’s fault.

HOWEVA.  There are some things that are Dishonored’s fault.

Before I get around to killing it, though, let me first sing the praises of the art direction, which are absolutely wonderful.  Let me also say that my favorite parts of the game are, basically, everything I do before I have to dispose of my target.  I love Blink-ing around* – it’s fun and useful and arguably even more satisfying to pull off than Batman’s quick-evade.**  I love exploring every nook and cranny of the environment, which is very much designed to reward such exploration – every open apartment window on a non-ground-level floor holds at least one goodie (and, also, tells some wordless, sad story in its tableau).  I love doing reconnaissance, basically, and the game’s tools for performing such recon work are exquisitely designed and endlessly rewarding.

But, yeah, then I have to actually go about my business.   And that’s where I run into problems.

The game tells you that it’s better to not kill.  But it also gives you lots of ways to kill.  And sometimes you run into a situation where there’s nothing you can do but kill, unless you decide to reload your last save, and that can be tedious.  Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the game only tells you of the benefits of acting non-lethally during loading screens – nobody in the game actually tells you to not kill anyone.  Indeed, your handlers at the Hounds Pit are asking you to kill people in order to advance their cause.  Your sidequests generally offer you a way to achieve the same result without killing, and after each mission I’ve gotten a rather handsome reward waiting for me in my room, but I’ve also had to kill a number of guards in order to get where I need to go, too, and nobody gives me much grief about that.  It’s not like I’ve gone on a murder spree or anything – my overall chaos meter still reads “Low” at the end of each mission – but I’m certainly not getting the Achievements for mercy, and in any event, that kind of meta-challenge ends up changing the reason why I’m playing in the first place.

**SLIGHT STORY SPOILERS AHEAD, ALTHOUGH THE KEY WORD IS SLIGHT** The story isn’t terribly interesting, either; it’s not bad, but neither is it the sort of tale where I’m wondering what happens next.  The supernatural business seems a little hokey.  Hell, the assassins who appear in the beginning of the game are very much Blink-ing their way around, which leads me to believe that the Outsider isn’t necessarily laying all his cards on the table, and that’s not terribly surprising.  And in looking at that walkthrough I mentioned, I couldn’t help but notice that I’m about to be betrayed, but let’s be honest – that sort of “twist” is something you can see a mile away.  **END SPOILERS**

I suppose it was the end of the mission I’d just finished that really soured my attitude.  The mission required me to attend a masked ball being hosted by 3 sisters, one of whom I needed to kill/abduct.  The recon work in determining which sister to nab was enormously fun, and the mansion itself was a wonder to explore and examine.  But then I actually had to do the deed, and it must be noted that the manner in which I knocked out the sister and carried her to her waiting boatman/captor resulted in one of the most unintentionally hilarious chase sequences I’ve ever had the misfortune of participating in.  Here’s the point, ultimately: while the poor execution in the woman’s abduction was undoubtedly my fault, it was the game’s reaction to what I did that made me wonder why I’d bothered being so careful and stealthy in the first place.   It’s actually a bit difficult to describe just what happened, except to say that in a game that at that point had been remarkably graceful and poised, the game suddenly became very artless and charmless and basically just turned into very obvious AI routines that ultimately were defeated with comically swift decapitations of startled guards.  I’m doing a terrible job describing what happened, I know.  The result, though, is the important thing – all the grace and skill I performed in my stealthy preparation were rendered moot; once everything went to shit I bulldozed my way to the ending and achieved the exact same result, since my mark was never killed.  So why even bother being stealthy?  Why bother performing well?  Suddenly the rich, detailed world of Dunwall instantly transformed into a clunky collection of polygons and AI scripts.

Now, granted, the game’s artifice had already been made glaringly obvious by the aforementioned glitch.  Still, as a regular player of games, you take that stuff as part of the deal; code breaks all the time, the world’s an imperfect place.   It’s only when I’d surrendered to the game’s fiction and then had it clumsily torn from my hands that I started wondering just what the hell I was doing with my time.

_________________________
* Indeed, I was weirdly disappointed when I jumped over to Borderlands 2 and found that I had to walk everywhere, like a chump.

** I’m blanking on the name of this technique – it’s how you traverse long distances in Arkham City, swinging around, vaguely Spiderman-ish.

weekend recap: the sneeze and the fury

[Note:  this post may be a bit rambly and incoherent; I’ve got a bad head cold and I’m working under maybe an hour of unrestful sleep (though I also did eventually have one of the most hilariously frustrating dreams I’ve ever had).  I did make it into work for some reason, though, so if this post does get rambly, it may also get distracted.]

Things to talk about today:

  1. Had to put Dishonored down due to a weird, game-breaking bug.  May take the opportunity to start over from scratch.
  2. Gave up on Resident Evil 6.
  3. Spent some quality time with XCOM Enemy Unknown.
  4. The difference between bad video games and bad movies.

1.  I was finally starting to get into Dishonored‘s groove.  At first I was incredibly intimidated by it (as I sort of am with most stealth games), as I wanted to try to be as stealthy as possible and not kill anyone, but I kept accidentally screwing up and suddenly finding myself in sword fights (that I often lost).  After a while, though, I decided that if the object of the game is to have fun, and if the game does in fact give you options for killing people in spectacular ways in addition to making it easier to sneak around, then, dammit, I was going to play it however the hell I wanted to.  To wit: mostly stealthy, but if push came to shove, then dudes were getting shivved.  No muss, no fuss.  And so everything was going great.  I was around 45 minutes into the third mission, doing a sidequest for Slackjaw who was going to help me gain entry into the Cat Parlor (or whatever it’s called).  I completed Slackjaw’s quest, and was on my way to head back to his distillery to turn it in, when the game suddenly told me I’d failed the quest, and even though none of his men were trying to kill me, he certainly was.  I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.  Tried re-loading several times, tried entering stealthily as opposed to waltzing right in – but no matter how I entered the zone, as soon as I’d crossed some invisible barrier, the game decided I’d failed.  This was very, very frustrating (as you might imagine), and since I didn’t see any solution (beyond waiting for a patch), I decided to take it out of the 360’s tray and leave it alone for a little while.  Some quick googling revealed that a lot of people are having the same problem – not everyone, but enough for me to feel like it’s not just my own peculiar problem.  That being said, since I don’t know when the patch is coming (if indeed it’s coming at all), I might just take the opportunity to start over from scratch, now that I actually know what I’m doing.   (I’m still terrible at the melee combat, but I’m much better now at stealth.)

2.  In my annoyance at having to put Dishonored to the side, I decided to give Resident Evil 6 one last concerted push before sending it back.  To that end, I played a little bit more of Jake’s questline – his is the most action-oriented, he runs quickly, and it’s not so methodical as the other two.  Started running into weird problems early on, though, where Jake would only pick up certain objects.  In a game like RE6 where ammo is always scarce, it is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING when you’re completely out of ammunition and there’s 3 boxes RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU that for whatever reason the game won’t let you pick up.  (And not just that it wouldn’t register a button press – it seemed to imply that I couldn’t carry any more, which was the exact opposite of my problem.)  Now, between the Dishonored bug and this apparent bug, and the fact that my 360’s been making some loud noises when I start it up, I started wondering if there was a larger issue at work, even though I don’t know how a hardware issue would affect lines of code on a disc.  Still, though, I continued to push on until HOLY SHIT THE SAME ENEMY THAT I’VE BEEN FIGHTING FOR THE ENTIRE GAME SHOWED UP AGAIN.  When even your poorly-written characters are incredulous about the shit that’s happening to them, to the point where they actually say out loud how goddamned ridiculous it is that they have to keep fighting the same monster over and over again, MAYBE IT’S TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE.

3.  So, what with Dishonored’s unfortunate glitch, and RE6’s bullshit, and the aforementioned loud noises that my 360’s been making lately, I decided to go back to my PC and spend some time with XCOM Enemy Unknown, which had been getting short shrift of late.  I am very pleased to report that unlike some games I could mention, XCOM actually works as advertised.  And even on the easiest difficulty setting, it is still challenging – there’s nothing more terrifying than moving your guys into what you think is appropriate cover, only to have a bunch of thin men show up and move to your un-covered flank, blasting you into smithereens.  I lost one of my best soldiers in such a manner, as it happens, and while I exacted a swift and merciless revenge on his killers, I’m still a little bummed about it.  That this feeling is the game’s intention is what makes the game special, and that it’s executed so well is what makes it remarkable.

4.  The wife and I re-watched Prometheus this weekend.  We’d seen it in the theater, and I can’t speak for my wife but I found it to be one of the most disappointing movie experiences I’d ever had.  Part of this is certainly because my own expectations were sky-high – those trailers looked absolutely amazing, and I was very much looking forward to what was appearing to be a well-made, hard science fiction / horror movie.  Instead, what I got was an exquisitely photographed piece of shit, with plot holes larger than the actual movie, stock characters that were loathsome when they weren’t being mind-bogglingly stupid, and Guy Pearce in some of the worst old-man makeup in cinema history.   I am not surprised (but still disappointed) to report that it’s even worse upon a second viewing.  Frankly, it was the sort of terrible that is normally associated with video game storytelling – indeed, one might make an apt comparison here to Resident Evil 6, another highly-anticipated game that ended up being a piece of shit in part because of its awful approach to narrative.  At least with Prometheus, the movie ends, eventually, thankfully, and I never felt like it was my fault that it was so terrible; it’s not like I could ever get better at watching it.  Whereas with RE6, I’m sure I could get better at shooting enemies, even if the game is maddeningly inconsistent at telling me if I’m doing any damage; I could also scour every nook and cranny of every level in order to find hidden skill point packages, and then replay every level over and over again to find those same skill point packages, and then eventually have enough points so that I can level up my characters with more powerful weaponry, higher ammunition counts, better defensive skills, etc.  This, in turn, might make the combat a little less dreary (if only because I could get through it a lot faster).  The game’s narrative problems, though; that’s not something I can improve with skill points.

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.)