Tag: saints row

A Light In the Darkness

Happy Eclipse Day, everyone.  Just remember, this afternoon’s darkness is only temporary; the political and social climate of the country will remain darkened for (at least) the remainder of 45’s term.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I occasionally have trouble getting motivated to continue writing here.  Sometimes it’s just because I don’t have time; sometimes it’s because I don’t feel like I have anything important to say; most of the time it’s because I’m well aware that there are far more important things to be paying attention to than whatever I might write, especially since what I write here is about rather trivial stuff.  That being said, sometimes I find that I need to concentrate on the trivial stuff, if only because it’s a necessary reprieve from the crushing Sisyphean despair that comes from constantly refreshing Twitter to see if the world is still falling apart.  And, also, my mom is back in the hospital for the third time this year and while she’s in much better spirits this time around, it’s still emotionally draining and stressful to be worried about her, especially since there’s not much I can do beyond visiting.

So, then, allow me to indulge in some nonsense.

1. My glasses finally arrived!  A week and a half after they were supposed to arrive, but still!  New specs!  That’s the old look on the left, and the new look on the right.  (Yes, I’m wearing the same shirt.)  Similar-ish style, to be sure, but the new prescription is finally up-to-date and features lenses that are both progressive and transition[al].  I’m still getting used to them, but they’re already making a big difference.

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2.  Yes, I pre-ordered the super-special Project Scorpio edition of Xbox One X.  Don’t judge me.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but bear with me just in case I haven’t – ever since I went on my quest to break the 100K Achievement barrier late last year, I’ve more or less made the Xbox One my main console of choice, despite knowing that the PS4 is more powerful.  Yes, I’ve played the same games on both consoles; yes, I can see the difference.  Nevertheless, I like the Xbox One’s UI a lot more, and the Elite Controller is by far the best controller I’ve ever used, and since I knew I’d be getting this new Xbox anyway, I figured I’d be able to put up with some performance issues since they’d get patched down the road.  And I have, for the most part.  I don’t have a 4K TV, nor do I feel like I need one, but at least now I’ll be able to justify getting one in a year or two.

3.  I’ve rented and have played a few hours of Agents of Mayhem, the new Saints Row-adjacent 3rd person shooter from Volition, and I think I love the hell out of it?  It’s this weird hybrid that lies somewhere between a single-player Overwatch (in its multiple hero system), Crackdown (in its visual style, as well as its super-powerful characters who defy the laws of physics), and Saints Row (obviously).  But there’s also something…. I can’t find the right word for it, but I want to say that it feels sincere.  That’s a weird thing to feel for an over-the-top open world game where everything blows up all the time, but it’s also true – I get the sense from playing it that the developers were really excited to work on something new, even if Saints Row’s DNA is heavily embedded in it; instead of having to try and out-do the off-the-wall insanity of Saints Row 3 and 4, they just went in a completely different direction.  I don’t know if I’m going to finish it – my backlog is INSANE at the moment and there’s some new stuff arriving shortly that I’m eager to try out, but for the time being it’s a very pleasant diversion.

4.  Regarding that backlog – yeah, it’s rough.  To wit:

  • Sonic Mania (looks and feels so much like the original Genesis games that it’s almost scary)
  • Tacoma (I’ve only played the first 30 minutes, but I’m always down for a Gone Home-in-space thing)
  • Observer (bought this because of some very intriguing word-of-mouth recommendations; I’ve only played the first 30 minutes or so but I’m still very much intrigued)
  • Undertale (Vita)
  • Hellblade
  • Pyre
  • Superhot VR (need to get back to this now that there’s been a few patches; when I first tried it my hands were glitching out all over the place and the game was near-unplayable)
  • a replay of the new and improved No Man’s Sky (I don’t know how much time I’m going to sink into this but I’ve already visited a few planets in a brand-new playthrough and it might as well be a completely new game – if you bought this and gave up on it when it first came out, I’d suggest giving it a look now)
  • Vostok Inc. (I am, as noted, a weird sucker for idle clickers – this is an idle clicker hidden within a twin-stick shooter, which is a pretty interesting hybrid)
  • a replay of Headlander (strictly for Xbox ‘cheevos)
  • Halo Wars 2 (why did I even bother getting this in the first place, I’m allergic to RTS games)
  • FF15 and FF12 

Plus:  this week sees the release of the Uncharted thing, and then there’s also the Horizon Zero Dawn DLC shortly thereafter.

5.  At some point I’m going to write a thing about my fascination with / addiction to the idle clicker genre.  But I did want to at least mention that I have “finished” Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire, in that I’ve gotten every driver up to their maximum level and now there’s nothing else left to do.

 

GTA V wishlist

I’ve been getting a little weird about GTA V over the last few days; I’m in that super-hyped-up pre-release phase where it’s pretty much all I can think about.  Hell, I played an hour of Red Dead last night and ended up having non-stop dreams about GTA.

I say this all the time, that comparing new work to previous work can be awfully reductive in terms of analysis, but here’s the thing – most Rockstar games end up sharing a lot of DNA, and pretty much every game that they’ve put out since GTA IV has made remarkable strides in terms of the overall gameplay experience, and so there’s things in those games that I would like to see integrated into GTA V.  As I said above, I’ve spent a few hours this weekend playing Red Dead Redemption specifically so as to get re-acclimated to that game engine and the marvelous little touches that are sprinkled throughout, as well as a tiny little bit of Max Payne 3, which really refined the combat systems perfectly.

Anyway, since the reviews are coming tomorrow morning, I’m feeling compelled to get out in front of them and speak my mind as to what I hope to see.  I know nobody will read this between now and then, but for whatever reason I feel like I need to be on record about the stuff I want.

  • The penalties for failing a mission in previous GTAs were unbelievably harsh; if something went wrong, you were kicked out and had to manually trigger the mission again, minus whatever ammo you lost; if you died, you woke up at a hospital without a car and out a not-insubstantial percentage of cash.  Whereas in RDR, you just restarted at a mid-mission checkpoint.  Saints Row has been doing this for the last few iterations, too; it just makes sense.
  • RDR’s ambient events did so much to make that world feel alive; I know that an urban environment makes that a bit tougher to pull off, especially when the 3 characters are not exactly the sorts of good samaritans that would be inclined to help out strangers, but it’d be nice to see something along those lines.
  • Similarly, not that GTA games have ever needed help getting the player off the linear path, but the challenges in RDR opened up the world and the gameplay and encouraged exploration; for me, the treasure hunting and survivalist challenges are still absorbing and compelling, even all these years later.  If GTA V has something along those lines, I’ll be very, very happy.
  •   Max Payne 3’s combat took the cover system and controls of RDR and made it super-tight and focused; I always felt in total control over every bullet I fired.  Now, granted, MP3 is specifically focused on combat, and the bullet-time tactic is an integral part of the experience; I don’t expect GTA V to have that kind of thing.  But the tightness of MP3’s controls are tough to beat, and it would be really nice to see a GTA game with decent combat for once.
  • An improved navigation system; while RDR’s corner map with highlighted route worked just fine, I’ve grown very accustomed to Saints Row’s on-road arrow system.  I would never expect GTA to go that far in terms of change; they’d never alter the physical environment just to make it easier for you to see where you were going.  Still, though, I’d like to see something to make it a little easier to find my way around.
  • Would LOVE to be able to save anywhere I wanted.  I grew very tired of having to find a safehouse every time I need to save.  Now, I seem to recall there being sort of automatic save system after every completed mission in The Ballad of Gay Tony – but I’d still prefer the option to make a hard save whenever the urge strikes me.  (As a parent of a 5-month old baby, needing to save at a moment’s notice is very, very important.)

I think that should cover everything.  I’ll be posting impressions at every possible opportunity this week, though I fully expect nobody to be reading.  See you guys online in a few weeks!

Saints Row IV – the verdict

I was in daddy-day-care mode earlier this week, and so I ended up finishing Saints Row 4 on Tuesday afternoon, during the kid’s nap.  It took me a little over 20 hours to get to the end; after the credits rolled I jumped back in so as to finish finding all the collectibles which ended up only taking around 5 minutes, give or take; one of the perks you can unlock is that all the collectibles show up on your map, so it’s just a question of finding what you’re looking for, setting a waypoint, and then blasting over there.  I’ve also found probably 80% of the orbs – er, Data Clusters – around Steelport, and if I go back at all that’s probably what I’ll focus on doing, if for no other reason than because they’re there.  As for the activities – well, I’d done all the side missions during the playthrough, but didn’t feel particularly inclined to get gold medals in everything.

The point that I’m late in arriving to is that I wanted to write about the game right after I’d finished it, but life (as it does) got in the way, and so here we are on Friday morning – just 3 days later – and I find that I have no idea what to talk about.  I have not thought about the game at all since the last time I played it.  While I still have the residue of Gone Home and Brother lingering in my brain – games that are much shorter and that I’d finished long before I’d started SR4, I’m having trouble remembering anything that’s worth talking about.

This is probably important; this is probably a bad thing.  

Here are some comments I’d made last weekend, when I’d originally intended writing an impressions post:

  • 10 hours in (as of 8/24, 11:00 am).  feels like i’ve eaten 20 pounds of candy, and i still have 80 more pounds to go
  • i appreciate how completely committed to being batshit insane the game is; but on the other hand, being insane the entire time becomes exhausting.  each mission you do is really just a series of activities that can get very repetitive; the game is aware of this and even comments on it; but just because it’s self-aware doesn’t make it any less repetitive.
  • the city of steelport is just as faceless and devoid of personality as it was in the last game, except you’re zooming by at ridiculous speeds, so it actually feels a lot smaller.

This month’s question for Critical Distance’s “Blogs of the Round Table” is about story in games.  Do games need stories?  Do games have the capacity to tell stories more effectively than other media?  Is ludonarrative dissonance a real problem, or is it just pretentious navel-gazing?*

* I’m kind of kidding with that last bit, though it certainly plays a role in all this.

This post doesn’t necessarily aim to answer that question, but it’s certainly a lens with which to view SR4.  The game more or less makes that leap for you, in fact, doing everything it can to remind you that all these activities you’re doing are pointless and repetitive and without any sort of narrative purpose.  Case in point:  there’s one mission late in the game called “Talkie Talkie” where you have to talk to a character on the ship.  The mission description on the pause screen literally says:  “We’re stretching out gameplay.  Come see me!”

sr4-talkieDoes self-awareness of a flaw excuse that flaw?  Because the game does this all the fucking time.  Every loyalty mission you do is the same general idea of 5 actions you need to perform; clear out an area of bad guys; do an activity; hack a store; steal a car and drive it to some random location; clear out another area of bad guys.  If you’ve already done one of those activities in the simple course of screwing around, then those actions are greyed out and struck through.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Over and over and over again.

The actual story missions do change things up a bit, and by that I mean that they will, on occasion, arbitrarily strip you of the superpowers you’ve laboriously worked to build up.  The justification for doing so is, to put it kindly, weak; and the game admits as much.  These missions are also, on occasion, straight-up parody of other games; there’s a stealth mission that’s straight out of Metal Gear Solid (with a great line asking “why should I use two bullets to shoot out two lights when I can just use one bullet to kill that guy?”); there’s a text adventure; my favorite of all is a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up.

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The game is fun; there’s no denying that.  The game only wants to entertain; there’s nothing wrong with that.  But the game also feels empty and hollow, and the characters are mere caricatures, and there’s nothing particularly memorable about the experience as a whole.  I saved the planet and had a few laughs and killed thousands of monsters; I’ve done this before, though, and the only thing different in this game was that there’s a lot of casual profanity and nudity and occasionally the game turns itself inside out and goes even more fucking insane.

The difference between satire and parody is quite large, actually, at least in terms of videogames.  In my last post, I talked about how it’s sort of impossible to talk about Saints Row without talking about Grand Theft Auto, and how SR4 literally makes this comparison for you in the second line of dialogue in the game’s opening cutscene.   The two franchises have clearly moved in wildly different directions, and I sincerely applaud Saints Row for emerging under GTA’s shadow and becoming its own thing.   It has become a franchise worth looking forward to; not only has it made significant innovations to the open-world genre, but it’s done it in style.

But it’s also now a victim of its own success, I think.  SR3 really upped the ante and surprised everyone by being a genuinely great game that gleefully went off the rails; SR4 somehow managed to outdo SR3, which seems impossible.  But now this franchise seems to be purely about outdoing itself, and I fear that eventually – quite soon, actually – they’ll hit a wall, and have nowhere to go.

And if they decide to simply go down the path where the next game is pure parody, filled only with ironic self-awareness about, say, stupid mission design while doing nothing to change the stupid mission design, then I’m not really sure that’s something to look forward to.

the first two hours: Saints Row IV

Before I get into Saints Row IV, I should explain why I’ve been quiet here this week.  It’s certainly not for lack of things to talk about.

I finished Gone Home last Thursday.  And I’ve been wanting to talk about it, all the time, here; but instead I ended up writing a 1000-word review of it for the NY Videogames Critics Circle, which will hopefully be going up Thursday or Friday.  (If for some reason it doesn’t run there, it will most assuredly run here.)  The short version is that it is a wonderful, heartbreaking, astonishing experience, and anyone who’s reading this who somehow hasn’t played it yet should get on that shit immediately.  And then, after you’ve finished it, you should dive in to the many wonderful pieces that have been written about it.

And along those lines, fuck it:  this is the postscript to my review, which may or may not end up staying in, being that it’s just links to those wonderful pieces referenced above:

I’ve been playing games since 1982, and I’ve been writing about games since 2008 or so; in all that time, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many heartfelt responses to a game before.  These are very spoiler-heavy, but well worth your time if you’ve finished the game and want to keep falling down the rabbit hole:

*     *     *

It is profoundly strange to be writing about Saints Row IV after the week or two I’ve spent ruminating intensely on the profound, emotional experiences I’ve had playing both Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and then Gone Home, games which feel like they’re using a completely different vocabulary from everything else.   Because after playing those soft, quiet masterpieces, Saints Row IV is a bit like having a pie filled with fireworks thrown into your face at a thousand miles per hour.

I know I’ve complained about how lazy it is for critics to compare one thing to another.  But it’s nearly impossible (for me) to talk about Saints Row without comparing it to GTA.  In my defense, though, Saints Row more or less explicitly demands this comparison.  Here are the very first lines of dialogue in SR4‘s opening cutscene:

“…When the Saints made their presence known to the world in 2006, they were decried for being pretenders to the throne.  The people were confused: were the Saints sociopathic killing machines hellbent on destruction, or puckish rogues living a life of mirth and whimsy?  The Saints needed clarity of purpose, and so the course was set:  More fun, less mercy killing.  This simple  choice revitalized the Saints; transforming them from a degenerate street gang into beloved pop culture icons…”

This paragraph more or less details the design history and development process of the Saints Row franchise, from the first game through the present.  While the first game was a competent but uninspired GTA clone that simply beat GTA4 to the punch to be the first big open-world action game on the current generation of consoles, the second game was where the developers started to work on achieving that “clarity of purpose” – to be over-the-top ridiculous, in stark contrast to GTA4‘s gritty, nihilistic realism.  And the third game was, to put it bluntly, fucking insane.  Ironically, this fully-committed, all-in approach to full-bore insanity is what made the third game such a resounding success; it had finally come into its own, allowed to run free as full, pure id.

To be honest, I had low expectations for SR4.  My understanding is that this game was originally intended to be an expansion pack for SR3, which didn’t necessarily bode all that well since the original expansions for SR3 were a bit lacking.  And then, of course, THQ (the publisher) famously collapsed and died, and so Volition (the developer) was in a bit of limbo for a while.

That SR4 somehow manages to out-do SR3 at every conceivable turn is nothing short of remarkable.

I’m only 2 hours in.  (I stopped playing last night shortly after the narrator told me that I’d finished Act 1.)  And yet I’m already leaping tall buildings in a single bound, zooming and jumping and soaring through the city, destroying cars just by bumping into them.  There is no reason to jack cars anymore; when my stamina is out and I’m forced to walk, like a normal person, I feel like a goddamned snail.

SR4 is no longer a gang-land simulator; it is a superhero simulator.  And where GTA remains firmly on the side of satire, Saints Row has now become a grand parody of this generation’s biggest AAA titles – the videogame equivalent of Weird Al Yankovic on a 48-hour bender of Mountain Dew and LSD.  The opening sequences felt like they were ripped straight out of a warped vision of Call of Duty;  30 minutes later it’s become, among other things, a grand homage to Crackdown‘s orb hunting (which still remains one of my favorite gameplay activities of the last 10 years).  If you needed any further hints as to how self-aware SR4 is, well, not only is there a “Nolan North” option in the voice customization menu, but Keith David plays himself.  As the Vice President of the United States.

The game is utterly ridiculous and incredibly fun.  Not to diminish the amazing achievements of Brothers and Gone Home, of course; those games are fun, too, albeit in a very different way.  SR4, though, is not about subtlety, or emotion, or self-discovery; it is about cramming as much fun per second as humanly possible.  It does not want to enlighten; it wants to entertain.  This, too, is noble.

belt tightening

Last night, the wife and I had a tough conversation about money.

Our 3-month old son (that’s him in the site’s header image, by the way) had his first “transition” daycare visit this morning, and he starts going in earnest in 2 weeks.  And for us to be able to afford daycare – and keep ourselves in baby supplies, and pay the rent and the rest of our bills, and also eat – well, we’re already cutting it pretty close, and there’s not a hell of a lot of wiggle room.  I’ve also got some rather sizable debt to pay off, too, and while I’ve made considerable progress on that front I’ve still got a ways to go, which makes this all the more anxiety-inducing.

Something’s got to give, basically.

And after some online banking and some soul-searching (and a little bit of drinking), I came to the realization that the only thing I really spend any extra money on these days is games.

This kinda sucks, as you might imagine – I am a self-professed consumer whore – but the more I think about it, this is not the worst time to be a broke gamer.   If I’m truly honest with myself, there’s really only one game coming out this year that I need in any sort of non-negotiable way.  Steam will have having its Summer Sale any minute now, too, and I could probably see myself picking up one or two things on my wishlist if they’re discounted enough – but let’s be honest here, after all the previous Steam Sales, there’s really not all that much that’s left for me to buy.  And I can certainly pare down my Gamefly account to one game at a time, as opposed to three, to be able to handle the rest of the to-do list.

Hell, let’s look at that to-do list (aka my GameQ) while we’re here, and I’ll take this opportunity to debut a new feature I’m calling Keep or Cut:

  • Shin Megami Tensei IV (3DS) – I don’t even know what this is, to be honest – I’d just heard some positive word of mouth, and I wanted any excuse to keep my 3DS busy.  Will most likely CUT.
  • Mario & Luigi Dream Team (3DS) – if I can finish The Last of Us quickly enough, I should be able to rent this close to its release date.  Since Mario Golf: World Tour got pushed to 2014, this is the only must-have 3DS game I can see for the rest of 2013.  KEEP.
  • Saints Row 4 – I’m a big Saints Row fan, but I’ve had my doubts about this ever since they first announced it.  I do not expect high review scores, though I’d love to be pleasantly surprised.  KEEP, but with reservations.
  • Splinter Cell: Blacklist – this was always only going to be a rental.  Chaos Theory was the high watermark for the series, and everything since then has been pretty disappointing.  Haven’t seen any indication that I should revise my expectations.  CUT.
  • Rayman Legends – Assuming this is as delightful as Origins was, this is an automatic KEEP.  Though I really ought to go back and finish Origins first.
  • GTA V – I’m not sure why this is still on my rental queue, as I’m probably going to pre-order it as soon as I finish this post.  (Still hoping for a PC release, though.)  KEEP.
  • Beyond: Two Souls – Is this the PS3’s final swan song?  More to the point – do I care?  While I remain in awe of David Cage’s wild ambition, I never finished Heavy Rain and didn’t really enjoy what I’d played, either.  Still, I’m cautiously optimistic, so this gets a KEEP.
  • Batman: Arkham Origins – as far as I can tell, this is the last “big” release of 2013 for current-gen consoles that I have any real interest in, since I don’t care about Call of Duty and I’ve lost all my faith in Assassin’s Creed.   But we all know this isn’t a Rocksteady joint, and this game is starting to smell like a cash-in.  CUT.

Now, you’ll notice that there’s no next-gen titles on this list.  That’s because I probably can’t afford a next-gen console this year; but even if I could, I still haven’t yet decided between the PS4 and the Xbox One.  I’m obviously leaning towards the PS4, but if Microsoft continues its backtracking ways and decides to play ball with indie developers by putting a less-restrictive self-publishing policy in place, well, that might keep the pendulum swinging the other way.  In any event, the only real “next-gen” game that speaks to me in any meaningful way is Watch Dogs, and that’s also coming to PC – which is a platform that already speaks to my current gaming habits anyway.

And speaking of the PC, the other clear upside to being on an austerity budget for the foreseeable future is that there’s really no excuse anymore for me to not finally tackle the GIGANTIC backlog of unfinished games I have in my Steam library.  Hell, even if I only stuck to seeing all the stuff in Skyrim that I never saw on the 360, that would be plenty.  (Now I just need to get over my seething Skyrim rage, which I’ve never quite managed to quell.)

I kinda don’t feel so terrible about this anymore.  I’ll call that a win.