>shootin’ stuff

>The floodgates are starting to open; good games are starting to trickle forth.  Let’s pick up where I left off.

1.  I finished Stacking.  I’m not 100% finished with it – I still have a bunch of hi-jinks to do and a few special dolls to collect – and I hope that if the release calendar dries up a bit, I’ll find the time to go back and do those things.  It was wonderful and charming and unique and clever and everything I’d hope it would be.

2.  We had company at one point over the 3-day weekend, and so we got in some 4-player You Don’t Know Jack, which is really the way that game should be played.  The game can be played with the buzzer controllers from Scene It! (another fine trivia game), so if you’re short on regular controllers (or if your buzzers are collecting dust), break ’em out.

3.  I’m starting to get very excited for Dragon Age 2, so I decided to dive back into my PC’s version of Dragon Age: Origins, which I hadn’t picked up in months.  I’d tried to play the first game on the 360, but the game was ugly and the controls were weird – it was as if the game wanted you to believe it was an action RPG, but it wasn’t at all an action RPG – and gave up.  And then, of course, Steam had the PC version on sale, which I quickly bought… and then didn’t play, either.  Anyway, whatever; I finally finished the prologue and now I recognize where I am from my first playthrough.  The game definitely feels better on the PC, but it’s still not quite what I want.

4.  What I want, really, is much closer to what the Dragon Age 2 demo appears to portend.  I played it last night, and, lo and behold – it actually is an action RPG, where button presses correspond to real-time actions, and it looks great and plays great and borrows just enough from the Mass Effect 2 playbook to pretty much guarantee that I’m going to love the hell out of it, assuming I have time to play it.

5.  I ordered both Bulletstorm and Killzone 3 from Amazon, because I am an idiot and figured that the $20 credits I’d get for ordering them would come in handy for all the must-have titles I’m going to be ordering later, conveniently forgetting that these two games were still full price.  Which to play first?  Well, the 360 was already warmed up from the DA2 demo, so I figured I’d give Bulletstorm a go.  And it went pretty well, until the game locked up on me in the second chapter.  So then I switched over to Killzone, which is jaw-droppingly beautiful – it can seem like you’re playing a first person Final Fantasy game, with guns – and that was fun, although the PS3 controller can feel like an alien artifact when it comes to shooters, for me.  And so I got up to a certain point where I kept dying, and I decided to switch back to Bulletstorm.  And as it turned out, the game had locked up for me at the exact moment before the game starts becoming… the game, with the scoring system and the craziness.  And once I started I couldn’t look back.  It took a few minutes to get used to the controls again – KZ3 and the PS3 controller had messed me up – but all I can say is, Wowee Zowee.  Fun as hell.

6.  Finally, because I am an addict, I bought Bejeweled Blitz for XBLA this morning before I left for work.  I’ve been playing Bejeweled in some form for at least 10 years now, maybe longer, and I’m pretty good at it.  Let me rephrase that:  I’m fucking awesome at it.  I’m an average gamer in most things, but when it comes to Bejeweled I am a genius.  I generally score in the 200K-300K without boosts without really trying, I generally end a week’s tournament in the mid-500Ks, and my all-time high is in the 900Ks.  So, please consider my expert opinion when I advise you to KEEP your 800 points in your virtual wallet and DON’T BUY BEJEWELED BLITZ FOR XBLA.  It SUCKS.  The control scheme is totally fucked up and unintuitive and there’s no option to change it back to the original, vanilla scheme that was featured in Bejeweled 2.  I understand that playing Bejeweled with a gamepad isn’t as elegant as it is with a mouse, and I further understand that Blitz places a special emphasis on speed, and as such I can at least conceptually appreciate that they were trying to make the control scheme quicker.  But it doesn’t make any intuitive sense, and as someone who has played more games and sunk more time into Bejeweled than probably every other game combined, ever, I shouldn’t have to feel like a goddamned novice when I’m playing a game I’ve already played a thousand times. 

>Quick Hits: Stacking, YDKJ

>Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  Also, sorry that every post I write these days leads off with an apology.  I’ve been super-busy lately, and haven’t had very much (if any) gaming time, besides playing with my iPod to and from work.  (Flick Golf is a fun, cheap time-waster, by the way.)

Last night, though, the planets aligned; 2 games arrived, and my wife was out of the house.  So I got to sit down and play a bit of both Stacking and You Don’t Know Jack.

Let’s start with YDKJ, because there’s not very much to say.  If you were a fan of the original games on the PC in the late 90s, then you will love the shit out of this new version.  It’s pretty much the exact same experience, which, when you think about it, is an amazing testament to how great the original games were.  I hope that more people on my friends list pick this up; I’d love to get some online play going.  Or, alternately, I’d have more people over to the house. 

Stacking is the latest downloadable title from Tim Schafer’s DoubleFine Productions, and as such, it is beautiful and charming and original and wonderful.  Not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, but that’s not really what the game is about; the game is about solving puzzles, and the puzzles are solved via Russian stacking dolls.  It’s hard to explain without actually having the game in your hands, so just go and download it and we’ll talk later.

>Dead Space 2

>I feel the need to apologize to Dead Space 2.  It’s supposed to be a scary game, but I was never, ever scared.  But I think that’s my fault, not the game’s.  I think.

See, I played it on the easiest difficulty setting.  As I never finished the first game, I was more concerned about making sure I actually finished the game and saw the end of the story than anything else; but I think that because I removed a great deal of the challenge, the stakes were never all that high.  I finished the game in a little over 8 hours and aside from a few jump-scares, I never really felt any dread. 

The thing is, now that I’ve finished the game, I suppose I could go back and play it again on a higher difficulty setting; but what’s the point?  I explored the hell out of the game on my first go-round, so it’s not like I would see anything different.  I’d simply have less ammo, less health, and tougher monsters; that elicits a big fat “meh” from me. 

Indeed, the more I think about it, the less impressed I am with the game than I was when I was actually playing it.  The game is atmospheric as hell, and is certainly a lot more colorful than the original – there were a few sections that reminded me a bit of Bioshock, actually, and I mean that as a compliment.  But when I think about it now, I realize that there’s a great deal of backtracking, and most of the city environments aren’t really all that interesting, and the story never really did anything for me. 

But, of course, I never finished the first game, so a lot of what DS2’s story beats focus on didn’t necessarily resonate with me.  It’s too soon in the game’s life to start dissecting the story without totally spoiling it, so I’ll just say that the main character’s frequent hallucinations (not a spoiler) and primary motivations didn’t really mean anything to me. 

Ultimately, though, regardless of the difficulty, a game needs more than just monsters spawning behind you in order to be scary.  DS2 does a lot of things right, but it’s missing something vital.

>getting it back

>So it’s been quiet here at SFTC, and for that I apologize.  Things have been pretty quiet on the gaming front since my last post.  There wasn’t anything new to play, and I wasn’t necessarily doing all that much on the backlog, Steam sales be damned. 

But then Little Big Planet 2 came out, and then Dead Space 2 came out, and now the 3DS and the PSP2/NGP have been formally announced/dated, and I find that I’ve got some things to say.

LBP2:  I finished the single-player campaign earlier this week, and started to dabble with some of the community-made levels.  The game is as charming as ever, and the single-player campaign certainly did its best to illustrate what the game is capable of.  And it should be noted that the game’s website, lbp.me, is perhaps the best game-related website ever made – the ability to look at community-made levels on the web, add them to a queue, and then have the game automatically have your queue waiting for you the next time you log in – it’s so elegant and well-made that it seems downright bizarre that it hasn’t been done before.  If I have a problem with the game, then, it’s that I don’t think I’ll ever have the time/patience/imagination to make my own levels, which makes me feel like my experience with the game will be artificially cut in half. 

Dead Space 2:  Finally got this via Gamefly yesterday, and I’m about an hour in.  I never finished the first game, though not for lack of trying, and so my first playthrough of DS2 is being done on the easiest mode, because I’d really like to make it all the way through and see where the story goes.  As the game is apparently very friendly in terms of incorporating previous playthroughs into new ones, I can see myself giving it another go on a higher difficulty level.  I’ll say this – I’m loving the hell out of it.  I do scare pretty easily, when it comes to movies, but games don’t really scare me – sure I’ll get startled (like when the dogs jump through the window in RE2), but there’s a big difference between being startled and actually being creeped out and scared.  So, then, no, I’ve not been scared.  And I wasn’t scared in the first one, either – I never finished it because there were sections that were just too hard, or I didn’t have enough ammunition, and I got frustrated and gave up.  The first hour of DS2 has been thrilling, however, and certainly startling, and there’s been a few times where I’ve said things out loud that I normally wouldn’t say.  I’m very much looking forward to diving back in.

As for the new handhelds…

I’m certainly intrigued by the 3DS, there’s no doubt about it.  But I’m not really all that excited about the games that have been announced, and ultimately that’s the most important factor.  Hell, right now I play my DS maybe once or twice a year, if a good puzzle game comes out, and I can’t justify spending $250 on a snazzy piece of tech that I’m never going to use, especially since I’ll be getting a Verizon iPhone 5 later this year.  And I really don’t want to spend $250 just to play up-rezzed ports of N64 games, no matter how snazzy the ports are. 

Similarly, I’m very intrigued by the new PSP – very snazzy tech, and a more hard-core lineup of titles (I’m especially interested in that new Uncharted title) – but I don’t know that there’s any one must-have title out there that can help me justify the purchase.  And I’m already wary of Sony’s ability to sustain a handheld – I was excited to buy a PSP, sure, but I got bored with it and sold it back within 8 months, and I haven’t missed it at all.  And if the plan is simply to port over 360 and PS3 titles, well, that’s not necessarily what I want out of my handheld experience.

I generally play handheld games either on the subway or in bed.  I never have the sound on, and I’m not really all that interested in narrative.  I want something to do for a few minutes here and there while I’m unable to do anything else.  My iPod Touch has been excellent at filling that void, and the $1 – $6 price point is very appealing.  So, again, it’s hard for me to justify $300 + $50-60 per game, when the games they’re offering are games I’d rather play on my HDTV. 

I still think I’ll end up with a 3DS, eventually.  I think I can wait for the inevitable redesign and price drop, though.  The PSP2, on the other hand… I don’t know.  The PSP2 is the machine I’d rather have, frankly, but I need to know that Sony can maintain a healthy game library for more than 6 months.  Otherwise, I’m just going to stick with the iPhone.

>The 2011 Lust List

>If, after reading this list, you still need further proof that 2011 will be one of the best years in gaming history, then, well, I don’t know what to tell you.  Get a new hobby.  2011 is going to be ridiculous.

The GOTY Front-Runners.  If that’s not a murderer’s row of kick-ass, I don’t know what is.  That’s five (5) highly anticipated sequels with impeccable pedigrees, and if these games follow the pattern of their previous installments – i.e., the sequels are leaps and bounds ahead of the original, already-incredible games – then we’re all having nervous breakdowns by the end of the year. 

  • Uncharted 3
  • Portal 2
  • Elder Scrolls 5
  • Mass Effect 3
  • Batman: Arkham City

The Must-Plays.  Look, something’s got to miss the top 5, and I had a hard time putting any of these games on this list and not the list above.  I fully expect all of these games to be amazing, and I’ll most likely start pre-ordering them after I’m done with this post.

  • Gears of War 3
  • Dead Space 2
  • Rage
  • Forza 4
  • Little Big Planet 2
  • Deus Ex: HR
  • Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD 
  • The Last Guardian

The Definite Rentals: I’m curious, and I want to know more.  I’m a little wary of the SSX title, as I’m hearing rumors that it will incorporate similar thumbstick controls to “Skate”, which is the exact opposite of what I want an SSX title to be

  • Bulletstorm
  • Killzone 3
  • Crysis 2
  • SSX: Deadly Descents
  • Test Drive Unlimited 2
  • You Don’t Know Jack
  • Brink
  • L.A. Noire

 The Great Excuses to Fire Up The PC:

  • Torchlight 2
  • Dragon Age 2

The Game I Am Very Much Afraid Of:

  • Star Wars: The Old Republic

If These Games Make Their 2011 Release Dates, I Will Be Impressed:

  • Max Payne 3
  • Duke Nukem Forever
  • Diablo 3
  • L.A. Noire

>2010 VGAs: why they invented DVR

>I got conned into watching the VGAs, again, but at least I didn’t have to watch them live.  No, I waited until after they were over, and then fast-forwarded my way through announcement after announcement after unnecessary band performance after announcement, until I realized that there weren’t any awards given out.

I don’t know why I keep allowing myself to believe that this year, it’ll be different.  For shits and giggles, I went back and read my 2008 recap, and I might as well just cut-and-paste my main point into this year’s model.  Like so:

I really wish I didn’t have to be embarrassed about watching this show. It’s clear that Spike is really trying to make this award mean something, and I’ll admit that having all these major announcements during the show is a pretty convincing incentive for me to stick it out. But the writing is terrible and the emphasis is everywhere but on the actual game designers, which is unfortunate.

That’s the thing that’s so annoying about it; Mr. Geoff Keighley goes out of his way to promote the VGAs as something important and valid and authentic, and instead it’s a series of commercials for next year’s games, sandwiched around lame skits and pseudo-celebrities who’ve clearly never played a game in their lives, and I think they only give out 3 or 4 awards on TV, out of 20 or so categories.  It’s dishonest and misleading, at best. 

Which is not to say that the announcements aren’t awfully exciting.  2011 is already looking like the best year we’ve had in a long time, and that was before the announcements of Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, Forza 4 (!!!), SSX, and Elder Scrolls V.  My 2011 Lust List will require at least a bib upon reading.  I admit it:  the announcements were enticement enough for me to tune in.  I am a whore.  This is not news.

Look, Spike, I know I’m not the target demo for this show.  I’m not 15 years old, I’m not a My Chemical Romance fan, I don’t like Dane Cook nor would I ever think of Dane Cook if I were thinking about or playing a videogame.  But humor me just once.  Please.

  1. Let us know who’s on the voting panel.  If you want us to think of these awards as meaningful and authentic – and we’ll get to what the plural form of the word “award” should mean in a bit – you can at least let us know who’s choosing.  Considering that every inch of this show looks bought and paid for by PR and advertising, it would help give some credence of authenticity.  I would wager that most of the audience for this show is not the stereotypical Madden buyer – we are aware of the game journalism industry; we read magazines and the internet.  If you have game journos on your panel, let us know.  Maybe we’ll go to their websites!  Maybe we can have some synergy!
  2. Stop giving stage time to Television Personalities.  I don’t give a flying fuck about Denise Richards or whoever the fuck that was on stage, and all the people you put up there look uncomfortable and out of their element.  Here’s an idea – let the game designers present the awards.  Let us, the game-buying public, put faces to names.  
  3. SHOW SOME FUCKING AWARDS ALREADY.  There were 20+ categories and we saw, like 5.  And nobody gives a fuck about Best Performances by a Human Female.  We all know you’re going to be like Monty Python’s Summarize Proust competition and give it to the girl with the biggest tits anyway.  
  4. Stop with the skits, the bands, the montages.  I get that the product placement and the trailers need to be in there; somebody’s got to pay for this madness, and we all like the trailers.  But anything that’s not actually related to the literal handing out of awards grinds the show to a halt.  I’ve been saying this for years, and nobody listens.  So at least hire a decent fucking writing staff already.

I could go on, but I can’t waste any more of my life thinking about this nonsense.  Get it right or stop doing it.

The Year In Games – 2010

On a scale of 1-10, I give 2010 a 7.  There were 2 genuine classics, and the rest of my top 5 feels very solid.  But I’ll be the first to admit that my 6-10 is all over the place.  The high points probably felt a bit higher than they normally would, if only because the rest of the year felt a bit lackluster.  (But I feel much the same way about the year in music, so maybe I’m just old and grumpy.)  I really tried to play everything that mattered – there’s only 3 “big” games that I didn’t play, and that was by choice.  So who knows.  That being said, I have a good feeling about 2011.

I played 110 games this year, in some fashion.  That number is a little misleading, though – most of the games on PC were short sessions with stuff I bought because of massive Steam sales.  And I can’t really explain the iPhone stuff.  I bought the thing and went into a weeks-long frenzy, which I’m only now sorta getting out of.  So, yes, I’ve downloaded 47 games on my iPhone – I’ve really only cared about 5 or 6.  (Also – in the interest of brevity, I’m calling it an iPhone, when in reality I only own an iPod Touch.)

  • DS – 3
  • Wii – 4
  • PS3 – 6
  • PC – 9
  • 360 – 42
  • iPhone – 47

Achievement Progress:  I started 2010 at a little over 50K; as of 12/6, I’m almost at 64,200, which is far higher than I thought I’d be.  My hunger for Achievements is not what it once was, and since I didn’t have high hopes for this year’s releases I assumed I’d end up at around 57K.  But a lot of that is because, for whatever reason, I finished a lot of games this year.

Games I Finished:  According to my GoogleDoc, I “finished” 32 games this year – by which I mean to say, I played a single-player campaign through its conclusion.  This is absurdly high, for me – I “finished” 32 games in 2008 and 2009 combined.  You’ll notice that this list includes Pinball FX2, which probably shouldn’t count (since you can’t really “beat” a pinball table), but I’ve played every table you can get for it, many many times, and this is my year-end list, so whatever.  If it helps, just know that I can’t get back the 40 hours of my life I spent with Crackdown 2 and Dark Star One, and that’s far more time than either of those games deserved.

  1. Afterburner
  2. Alan Wake
  3. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
  4. Bioshock 2
  5. Civilization V
  6. Costume Quest
  7. Darksiders
  8. DeathSpank 1
  9. DeathSpank 2
  10. Enslaved
  11. Fable 3
  12. Final Fantasy XIII
  13. Game Dev Story (iPhone)
  14. God of War 3
  15. Halo Reach
  16. Helsing’s Fire (iPhone)
  17. Lara Croft & Guardian of Light
  18. Lego Harry Potter
  19. Limbo
  20. Madden 11 (1 full season, including Superbowl)
  21. Mafia 2
  22. Mass Effect 2 (still sort of in the middle of my 2nd playthrough)
  23. Picross 3D
  24. Pinball FX2
  25. Prince of Persia
  26. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
  27. Puzzle Quest 2
  28. Red Dead Redemption
  29. Splinter Cell Conviction
  30. Split/Second
  31. Star Wars: Force Unleashed (2009 – didn’t play this year’s sequel)
  32. Sword & Poker 2 (iPhone)

Games I Finished That I’d Been Looking Forward To, But Were Disappointing

  • Final Fantasy 13
  • Alan Wake
  • Fable 3
  • BioShock 2
  • Mafia 2
  • Professor Layton & Unwound Future
  • Splinter Cell: Conviction
  • Puzzle Quest 2

Games I Finished, But Can Barely Remember

  • God of War 3
  • Prince of Persia
  • Splinter Cell: Conviction

Was Sort of Enjoying at First, But For A Variety of Reasons Couldn’t Bother to Finish

  • Heavy Rain
  • Singularity
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Kirby’s Big Yarn

Games That I Haven’t Finished, But I’m Working On It

  • Pac Man
  • Shank
  • Gran Turismo 5
  • Super Meat Boy

Never Even Touched

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops [or, as I will now call it forever, CODBLOPS]
  • Medal of Honor
  • Fallout: New Vegas

The 2010 “10 minutes or less” All Stars, because I have no patience anymore:

  • Just Cause 2
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes
  • Dead Rising 2

Best New IP – Obvious Franchise Starter: Was there any new IP this year?  I’m looking at what I played this year and it seems that pretty much everything in it either has a 2 or 3 after the title, or is a reboot of an existing franchise.  To that end, I’d have to give it up for Split/Second, which came out of nowhere and ended up being one of my favorite summer releases – even if it’s not exactly an original title.

Best New IP – Hopeful Franchise Starter:  This is a tie between Enslaved (which felt a lot like Uncharted) and Darksiders (which felt a lot like Zelda).

Most Addictive:  Sword & Poker 2.  As mentioned above, I downloaded a ton of games when I finally got my iPod Touch, and this one more than any other turned me into a puddle of mush.  This is certainly saying something, as Angry Birds is pretty goddamned addicting, too.

Worst Game of the Year / Biggest Disappointment of the Year: Crackdown 2.  I was such a huge fan of the first game – I didn’t care about the Halo 3 beta, I wanted the game itself.  And C2 was half-assed in every sense of the word.  Graphics were somehow worse, the city didn’t really feel all that different (and certainly wasn’t as much fun to explore), and even the Orb Chase wasn’t as fun as it used to be.

Game I Did Not Finish Even Though I was Really Looking Forward To It, and Do Not Feel Bad About Not Finishing:  Heavy Rain.  The title reminds me a little too much of “Chubby Rain”, from Steve Martin’s overlooked Bowfinger.  Also, it was more than a little ridiculous.  And I did everything I could to keep an open mind; I was looking forward to this game and could not have been a more supportive player, at least at the start.  That being said:

Best Game Command:  Heavy Rain, “Press X to Jason.”

Best Game(s) That I Didn’t Finish, Even Though I Wanted To:  This goes to pretty much everything on the Wii, but specifically Super Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong and Disney Epic Mickey.  Two reasons for this.  I’ve developed a carpal tunnel issue in my right wrist, and it makes the “shake the controller up and down” motion very painful.  And, also, I’m not 8 years old.  Which reminds me:

Clearest Example that I Am No Longer A Target Demographic:  This has to go to the Kinect, a remarkable piece of technology that was clearly not meant for a 35-year-old male, no matter how many fitness programs they throw at it.  To be fair, Microsoft was pretty up front about that; the Kinect is meant to be something for the non-gamer to get excited about, and to that end it succeeded – my wife is not a gamer and she loves it… when she gets around to using it, which is not very much.  (At the time of this writing, she has not yet tried Dance Central.)  I would love to try the Video Chat, except I don’t know who else on my friends list has it, and in any event, once the novelty of saying hello in person to an internet friend wears off, there’s not much else to do.  If the recent youtube videos of Kinect hacks are any indication, there’s tremendous potential for the device; that stuff just needs to make it into the retail space.

Best Game I Couldn’t Get Into No Matter How Hard I Tried: Starcraft 2.  I tried, I really did.  A friend hooked me up with the 7-day trial, and I gave it my best shot.  But it only took maybe 1 or 2 hours of the very beginning of the single-player campaign before I became overwhelmed; I forget exactly what it was I was having trouble with, but it was something incredibly basic like being able to select a certain group of dudes.  Anyway, once that started happening, it was pretty much downhill from there.  It is clearly a well-made labor of love, and people clearly love the hell out of it.  I wish them good luck and godspeed.

Favorite Game That Everyone Else Seemed To Dislike: Deathspank.  Only the first one, though.  The second game arrived too quickly on the heels of the first and offered nothing substantially different, and I could certainly see why people didn’t like the first one based on the problems of the second.  I loved the first one, though.  I thought it was exquisitely well-written, from the dialog all the way down to the names of items.  Great voice acting as well.  And I adored the art design; I loved how the world rolled around – certainly reminiscent of Animal Crossing, but with its own visual flair.  I got all 200 Achievements for it and had a ball in the process.

Best Game That I Didn’t Play Enough Of: Rock Band 3.  I’ve been trying to rectify this in recent days, but unless my wife decides to get into it again – or we have another RB party – it is unlikely that I’ll get any substantial time with this any time soon.  Which is a shame, as it’s clearly the game with plastic instruments that money can buy, and considering the state of the industry, possibly the last.  And I still haven’t even tried the keyboards yet!  Gah!

Biggest Discrepancy Between Enjoyment of Demo and Enjoyment of Actual Retail Release: Blur.  And this came as a huge shock, especially since the reverse ended up being equally true – I didn’t like the demo for Split/Second, but I loved the final version.  Both games were coming out at around the same time, and I felt like I had to pick sides since I couldn’t very well own both.  The Blur demo felt like a grown man’s Mario Kart, which appealed to me greatly; the retail release was certainly true to that vision, but it just felt kinda… blah.  On the flip side, the driving in the S/S demo felt sluggish, and I don’t recall the demo providing any of the jaw-dropping course deformations that the final game had.  (One can’t necessarily blame the developers from pulling this particular punch, but still.)

Biggest Discrepancy Between Anticipation For Rerelease of A Beloved Older Title and Actual Time Spent Playing Said Title:  NBA JAM HD.   The game isn’t bad; it’s just meant to be played with a friend on the couch, and the only person I knew who would play this with me is my younger brother, who lives hundreds of miles away.  We played it together a few weeks ago for about 20 minutes, late at night, and we loved the hell out of it.  And then he left, and I had no reason to keep it, and so back to Gamefly it went.

Biggest Discrepancy Between Pre-Release Hype and Post-Release Reality:  I was tempted to give this to Gran Turismo 5, but the truth is that any and all hype for GT5 was coming from Sony fanboys, and the pre-release discussion around GT5 was mostly about why the hell it was taking so long.  But along those lines, I’d have to give this to Alan Wake, a game that also spent a hell of a long time in development.  There’s a lot to admire about Alan Wake, certainly from a technical standpoint; it looks fantastic and it can be creepy as hell.  And it’s also fiercely devoted to telling a story, which is somewhat admirable.  It’s a shame, then, that the story is so incredibly convoluted and incomprehensible.  You can tell that the ending was meant to be this big, stomach-punching reveal/cliffhanger, but it didn’t make any sense.  At all.  I ended up trading it in before I tried any of the DLC, but I’m not sure it would’ve made much of a difference.

Favorite Achievement: Lego Harry Potter, Get All Gold Bricks – 70 points.  I have a soft spot for the Lego games, and I enjoyed the hell out of this one.  This was the closest I’ve ever been to getting 100%, and I suppose that if I really wanted to, I could go back and get everything pretty quickly.  But getting the gold bricks was the main thing – first time I ever even came close.  I suppose that means it’s pretty easy to do, but whatever.

Best Trend:  Smart leaderboard integration.   Even for misanthropes like me who don’t really play online all that much, it’s nice to feel connected to your friends, and it’s really nice that developers have figured this out and started to do cool things with it.  At this point, it sticks out when it’s done poorly, like in the new Pac Man game.  Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is taking this to a completely new level.

Most Forgettable:  It usually takes me around 5 minutes to remember what the hell Singularity was, and then I remember – oh yeah, it was that weird game about Russia, and it looked an awful lot like Bioshock – and then I forget.

Most Overlooked:  Sword & Poker 2, if only because everyone else with an iPhone was playing Angry Birds.  Also:  Pinball FX2.

Most Overrated:  This is a stretch, because I certainly enjoyed my time with it.  But Limbo was not the world-changing, paradigm-shifting classic that it was made out to be at the time.  People were in such a rush to find the next Braid, and this seemed to fit the bill – nothing else looked like it, and it had a unique spin on the 2D platformer, and it had great atmosphere and was unexpectedly graphic.  It’s certainly very good, but it’s not an instant classic.  Runner-up:  God of War 3.

I Have No Skillz:  Super Meat Boy.  But everyone finds this game incredibly difficult, so at least I’m not alone.  I definitely need to get back into this, when I’m ready to start hating myself again.

Most Time Spent Playing a Game that I Actively Disliked:  Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which for some reason I felt compelled to finish, but didn’t actually feel like playing, so I ended up finishing with a walkthrough, which completely ruins the purpose.  I know.  I’m an idiot.  Runner-up:  Fable 3.

The Best Argument Both For/Against Using Heavy Drugs During The Creative Process / The Japanese Are Weird:  Bayonetta.  I do regret only being able to get through Chapter 5, but there’s only so much craziness/unintentional racism/vertigo I can take.  By far the most batshit insane experience I had this year, for better or worse.

The Forgotten Reboot:  Prince of Persia.  According to my notes, I actually kinda liked this one; it had the best combat the franchise has ever seen, which is a big deal considering it’s the one area of the franchise that’s most troublesome.  Graphics were great, especially the finale.  But it also appeared to be uninspired and lacking any vitality.  It was most likely trying to capitalize on the success of the movie, when it should’ve been the other way around.  Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted have more or less taken up the parkour mantle now, and I wonder if we’ll ever see this franchise again.

Best Graphics:  For the first time in a long time, there’s no obvious answer here.  2009’s Uncharted 2 still reigns supreme, and I’m not entirely sure that anything in 2010 even came close.  I could certainly make a case for Red Dead, Mass Effect 2, and Split/Second; I could also make a valid case for Limbo, and I could make a similar case for DeathSpank, both titles working with not a lot of horsepower but an incredible eye for design; I could also argue for the iPhone’s Rage HD, which really needs to be seen to be believed.  I can’t give it to Heavy Rain, because the uncanny valley factor is off the charts.  I didn’t think God of War 3 was as jaw-dropping as everybody else.  I’m tempted to give it to Super Meat Boy because why the hell not.  Ultimately, I think this has to go to Red Dead Redemption.  As long as you were outdoors, everything you saw was beyond gorgeous.

OK, I guess it’s time to start getting into it.

Honorable Mentions:

  • Darksiders
  • Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4
  • Lara Croft: Guardian of Light
  • Pinball FX2
  • Rock Band 3
  • Game Dev Story
  • Helsing’s Fire
  • Angry Birds

Top 10:

10.  Deathspank.  As noted above – great writing, great art direction, great fun.

9.  Enslaved.  See, Heavy Rain, this is how facial animation should be done.  Hell, this is how storytelling should be done.  There’s more said in a character’s face here than in 20 overwritten lines of dialog.  The relationship between the two lead characters was thoroughly believable and authentic.


8.  Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.  This was originally going to be Split/Second, but the more I think about it, S/S is somewhat of a one-trick pony – it’s an exceptionally well-done trick, but there’s only so much you can do with it.  NFS is just as exciting, but it feels a little deeper – and the Autolog is now an essential leaderboard feature for all racing games going forward.  If nothing else, this is as close to a new Burnout game as we’re going to get.


7.  Sword & Poker 2.  I said my piece above, but it bears repeating – this is a must-own if you’ve got an iPhone.  An ingenious poker puzzle mechanic that’s easy to learn and which is addictive as hell.


6.  Picross 3D.  And while we’re on the topic of handheld puzzle games, this is maybe the best title on the DS.  It uses the DS in a novel and intuitive way, and it eventually felt less like puzzle solving and more like sculpture.


5.  Halo Reach.  Even though I dropped out of the multiplayer scene a little bit too quickly, I can’t deny that this is a complete package.  I’m not a die-hard Halo fan, but I had a blast with the campaign, and what I played of the multiplayer was fantastic.


4.  Civilization V.  I didn’t play much on the PC this year, but this game made me glad to own a PC powerful enough to run it at close-to-top specs.  It strikes the perfect balance between the hard-core Civ IV and the dummy-proof Civ Rev. I haven’t played this enough, but that’s because I like going to sleep at reasonable hours.


3.  Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.  I had low expectations for this.  I didn’t think they’d come out with a quality title so soon after the last game, and I definitely had no desire for a multiplayer side.  That this turned into the best title in the franchise is a huge, wonderful surprise.


2.  Mass Effect 2.  Bioware has made huge leaps with this RPG, the most important being that this actually feels like a literal role-playing game – I feel like I have a visceral connection to this universe based on the decisions I’ve made and the personal relationships I’ve chosen to cultivate (or destroy).  I truly feel like the commander of the most kick-ass spaceship in the universe, and I absolutely cannot wait to continue the adventure.


1.  Red Dead Redemption.  Here’s what other awards this game would’ve won, had I decided to make this post twice as long as it already is:

  • Best voice acting.
  • Best script.
  • Best ending, maybe of all time.
  • Best sequence (riding into Mexico).
  • Best thunderstorms.
  • Best horses.
  • Best GTA clone that’s arguably better than any GTA game.

And then there’s surprisingly good multiplayer.  And the quality DLC that they keep putting out.  And, of course, the ambient challenges, which sucked me so thoroughly into the world that I had trouble getting out.  This game has raised the open-world bar so high that even GTA5 must take notice.  An absolute masterpiece.

>Best of 2010 – prologue

>Any day now, I’ll start working on my favorite post of the year – the 2010 Year in Games.  I’ve got spreadsheets and word documents and maybe I’ll get some powerpoint up in this business, who knows. 

The only reason why I haven’t started is because I’m waiting to play the new Donkey Kong game on the Wii – my first Gamefly copy got lost in the mail during the Thanksgiving break, and the second copy still hasn’t arrived.  Enough people have raved about it so that I feel compelled to give it at least a compulsory glance before I make my lists official.

That being said, I’m a little concerned that even if it does show up, I won’t be able to play it.  And that’s because of my carpal tunnel issues, which have started to flare up in the last few weeks.  My carpal tunnel issues caused me to regretfully send back Disney Epic Mickey after only an hour of playtime – the sudden snap-back move you have to make with your wrist during combat hurt like crazy, and there really wasn’t even all that much combat to begin with. 

And I’ve seen a few Donkey Kong commercials now that feature that same sort of wrist movement, and I must admit that I’m a little concerned that I won’t be able to play that much of it without having to wear a brace.

Oh well.  I am old, and the Wii is for kids, anyway.

In the meantime, I’m more or less over my little whiny rant about Gran Turismo 5 the other day; I will just have to come back to the events in the beginner tier when I have enough money to buy competitive cars for those particular events without screwing me over towards the cars I actually want to buy.  I think my biggest problem with GT5 is getting used to the PS3 controller; I’m so used to the way the 360 controller feels in my hands, and how the triggers feel with respect to acceleration and braking, and the PS3 controller feels alien and strange.  The actual driving in GT5 is fun as hell; it’s everything else about the package that’s ridiculous.

>GT5: the other shoe drops

>I didn’t necessarily come right out and say it in yesterday’s post, but at the time I wrote it I was still feeling optimistic about Gran Turismo 5.  I had legitimate issues with how the game was letting me progress, and how inadequate I felt about picking an appropriate vehicle, but I also knew that I hadn’t really given the game a truly fair shake – I knew what I did not know, so to speak. 

And so last night I spent another hour with it.  I did some of the Special Events; I raced some go-karts, some NASCARs, and did some time trials on the Nurburgring with an old BMW.  I raised my level from 2 to 7, and raised my bank account from $6000 to over $100,000. 

And you know what?  For all of its positive qualities, GT5 is downright aggravating.  It’s obnoxious and arrogant.  It’s emasculating and frustrating.  I turned the game off because I didn’t want to break my controller in half, and because I didn’t want to go to bed angry.  A driving game should not make you angry. 

I am still in the beginning areas of the career mode, and I will apparently remain unable to participate in at least half the races available to me because I have no idea what kind of car I should be driving – and, indeed, there are a few events in this beginner tier that require cars that I don’t even have access to.  This makes no sense.  The information that the game gives out on each car might as well be copied and pasted from the sales brochure; it doesn’t actually tell me anything objectively.  The used car market does not offer any information as to what cars are available for a given event, and the process of backing out from the market to the event itself is laborious because it takes between 5-10 seconds to load each menu.  One could argue that I could alleviate this problem by going to the desired event and writing down the necessary requirements with a pen on a piece of paper, but I would counter-argue by saying that I’m playing a fucking driving game and writing shit down should not enter into the equation.  It’s one thing to write something down if I’m playing an adventure game and I need to solve a puzzle or remember where something is.  But when I put in GT5, it should be obvious that all I want to do is get in a car and drive. 

This could be a long winter.

>Weekend Recap: the holiday that wasn’t

>If all had gone according to plan, this post wouldn’t exist.  The plan was to leave Thursday morning to go up to my dad’s house for Thanksgiving, and to eventually return to the apartment on Saturday night, and Sunday would be a day of holiday decorating and football.  Instead, my wife had the flu and I had a nagging head cold, and we stayed home.  And so I played a lot of video games. 

In list form, in descending order of time played:

  • finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
  • got a few hours into Gran Turismo 5
  • kept dabbling in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
  • went and bought Burnout Paradise on the PC thanks to yet another ridiculous Steam sale and got back into it very, very quickly
  • Train Conductor 1/2 on the iPhone is insanely addictive
  • played 2 games of NBA JAM HD with my brother, for old time’s sake
  • and some Pinball FX2 with the wife.

I will give AssBro a more thorough examination later, once I’ve had a bit more coffee.  But I can say, now, that I think it’s the best game in the franchise, and it will most likely wind up at #3 in my Top 10 of 2010. 

As for GT5; I’ll be the first person to admit that what I know about cars could be inscribed on the rim of a shot glass with a dull Sharpie.  But I really love driving games, strangely enough, and while I tend to prefer crazy, insanely fast stuff like Burnout, I have been known to get sucked into a Forza game for hours and hours.  (I do have an aversion to NASCAR, though, which is probably similar to my aversion to country music and the tea party movement.)  I needed to see what GT5 was all about for several reasons:

  1. I haven’t played a game on my PS3 since I finished FF13;
  2. The last time I played a GT game was on my friend’s PS1;
  3. I am a graphics whore (which reminds me, at some point I need to talk about this fascinating article, which I got from the lovely and talented Caro), and if there’s one thing that the GT franchise is famous for, it’s graphics; 
  4. I loved the hell out of Forza 3, and felt obligated to see if GT5 was better; and
  5. After 5 years of development and endless delays, the curiosity was killing me.

After 2 hours of playtime, here’s what I can say about GT5.

  1. It’s prettier than Forza 3, generally.  I’ve read lots of people who have been complaining about how horrible some of the cars look; to my eyes, it looks great.  It’s worth finishing a race in last place just so that you can watch the pretty, pretty replays, which are utterly convincing and gorgeous.  Some people complain that it’s bland; I’ve only been on a few tracks, and driven a handful of cars, so I can’t quite speak to that.  One could maybe argue that it’s a little sterile, or perhaps a little too pristine.  
  2. Is it as fun as Forza 3, though?  Not sure.  It’s certainly more accessible than I was expecting it to be, but that’s relative – when you’re buying a new (or used) car, the game doesn’t tell you what the car’s Top Speed is.  When you’re like me and know nothing of horsepower and weight and acceleration, not giving out a car’s Top Speed is basically a slap in the dick, and I ended up losing a ton of races because I had unwittingly bought the wrong car.
  3. Further to that last point, the game doesn’t really dole out new cars and rewards the way Forza does.  I’m still only in the beginner tier of races in the career and at least half of the events I’m looking at require vehicles that I don’t have, and I’ll have to retry events I’ve already won just to earn enough coin to afford an applicable vehicle – a vehicle that I’ll probably only drive once or twice until I get something better.  Seems odd.
  4. I haven’t raced online, but the fact that the game’s single-player campaign was so horribly fucked up because too many people were crushing the game’s servers is absolutely unforgivable, especially for a game of this magnitude.  And if the game’s developer is telling you to pull your PS3 offline so that you can play single-player without running into problems, that’s just absurd.  PlayStation fanboys love talking shit about Xbox Live and how you have to pay for it when PSN is free, but file this under “You Get What You Pay For” as Exhibit 375. 

I remain intrigued, though, and there’s so much content that it’s sure to get me through the winter.  Although I may pull out Forza 3 again, just to compare/contrast.  My gut reaction right now, though, is that Forza feels more generous and accessible; GT5 feels more authoritative and legitimate. 

I was really looking forward to NBA JAM HD, and when my brother came over we finally got to try it out.  My brother had a Sega Genesis as a kid and we played NBA JAM endlessly.  The new game basically feels like the old game, which is great.  The problem is that it’s really meant to be played with someone sitting next to you on the couch, and my brother lives in DC (and doesn’t own an Xbox).  So, while it’s tremendous fun in the right conditions, it seems pointless on its own.  I felt a little sad sending it back to Gamefly, but it is what it is.

AssBro final thoughts will go up either later today or tomorrow.