Much of Dragon Age II's appeal had to do with its emotional impact. As protagonist Hawke's circle of friends grew, so did your connection to the ensemble cast--but it was a connection the game earned over the long haul. A two-hour add-on doesn't have the luxury of a long-form structure, so it must make an impact in other ways. Dragon Age II: Legacy makes a valiant attempt to strengthen your bond with Hawke, but ultimately it makes little impression. Not that there's anything wrong with a bit of fun combat and a nice new set of armor. But there are few standout runescape gold moments in Legacy, unless you count the glitches and other sloppy details you might encounter. This downloadable content is entertaining in its own mindless way, but without a forceful narrative arc to support it, Legacy is soulless. It just goes through the motions and nothing more.
Thankfully, some of these calculated motions address problems in the original game. You don't return to Dragon Age II's recycled environments but battle through brand new ones. Most of these are the typically narrow brown corridors similar to those through which you've already passed; they're officially new but too dingy and familiar to generate much excitement. A few, however, are larger and more atmospheric. A dusty desert arena in the early going is surrounded by rocky cliffs, and dwarven snipers inhabit walkways above the main combat area. Meanwhile, you can pull levers rs gold to activate traps that plunge spikes into unsuspecting thugs standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throw in a charging bronto or two, and you have an interesting combat scenario that keeps you on the move. Such moments are fun, but they're also fleeting. In time, Legacy's levels constrict, and you can rely on hammering the usual buttons without giving battle much thought. But at least combat remains entertaining to watch. If you play as a rogue, you somersault and pounce about the place. When you leap into Varric's shoes, you let loose a rain of arrows from his beloved bow Bianca.
On a few occasions, fleeing enemies lead you into an ambush, which doesn't inject any challenge into the combat, but it is nonetheless a nice authentic touch. Unfortunately, such minor delights are cheapened by bugs and slapdash execution. You might trigger a wave of enemies to appear, yet their arrival doesn't feel the least bit organic. A cluster of snipers doesn't swarm from doorways--it just teleports in. This poorly veiled trick is common enough to draw attention to itself. Bugs are all too common as well. You might whittle a creature's health bar down to nothing, yet the thing won't die, no matter how long you hammer on it. Eventually, you might be able to destroy it, but only after you kill some random archer hiding in the corner and pelting you with arrows. And this isn't an isolated glitch--it may crop up multiple times. There are also notable sound bugs. Party members deliver story-related dialogue without regard for any ongoing party rs power leveling banter. The result: multiple characters talking at once, and you missing out on the important stuff. And in several big battles, the din of battle suffers from major audio crackles and pops, as if the game were trying to push too much noise through your speakers.
The story that holds all this combat together is fine, but it has no singular moment to make it special. As it turns out, the Carta gang constantly dogging Hawke and company isn't just a bunch of hooligans seeking fun and profit. Hawke possesses something much more valuable: the blood of her (or his) father running through her veins. You soon learn what makes your blood so precious and what surprising role your father played in this world so many years ago. You meet a few new characters along the way, including a shuffling guide named Larius who appears from time to time just long enough to deliver some story exposition buy runescape gold before moving on. If you enjoy the Dragon Age series for the element of choice, then you'll be glad to know that you will take sides in a key conflict before the confrontation that brings your journey to its conclusion. That final boss could have been an epic battle, but instead, it's a glitchy headache. The nature of its attacks makes retaining fine control over your party's actions a necessity, yet your companions frequently refuse to adhere to your commands for them to stay put. And the same bug that infests other enemy encounters can intrude here as well, allowing you to batter this abomination endlessly without winning, and forcing you restart the battle from the beginning.
You return home after this battle for a brief but heartfelt moment of nostalgia. It's unfortunate that this gentle postlude is betrayed by the routine encounters and slipshod execution that preceded it. Because it doesn't combine its bits and pieces into a cohesive vision, Dragon Age II: Legacy shines a spotlight on the run-of-the-mill nature of its individual elements. This add-on is passing amusement, but not 800 Microsoft Points ($10) worth.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
From Dust review: It's hard out here for a god
"Why does God let bad things happen?" It's perhaps the toughest question for people of faith to answer. How is it that a loving deity, who cares runescape gold equally about all his creations, let some of them suffer so terribly?
For whatever strengths or faults it has, From Dust has allowed me to find the answer to this most vexing of issues. I would like to share that answer with you now.
God lets bad things happen because he honestly forgot he put the exploding tree there.
Of course, no one actually called me God. Players in From Dust are cast as "The Breath," a disembodied force that has the power to absorb elements rs gold like water, dirt and lava, and redistribute them. The Breath is charged with shepherding native peoples through a series of islands, each with their own environmental challenges.
As they manage to find footholds in this hazardous world, the people set up villages that can grant The Breath other powers like the ability to solidify water (think: parting the Red Sea) or putting out fires level-wide. Villages can defend themselves too by retrieving totems that protect from water or flame. This knowledge can be shared between communities, provided you keep a land path open between the two.
Seeing The Breath in action is practically worth the price of admission alone. It's of course visually impressive watching an amorphous ball of water transform a lava flow into a rock wall, but it's the scale that really sold me. Watching a tsunami runescape money sweeping towards your village as a native races to return a water-protection totem is awesome (and I mean that in the strictest definition of the word). Moments like this are perfectly scored by a dynamic, percussive soundtrack that almost seems to be generated by the island-dwellers.
From Dust looks and feels different from anything I've played before and, for a while, that was enough. But before long, I began to feel a sneaking kinship with Aladdin's genie, whose enjoyment of his phenomenal cosmic power was tempered only by his itty-bitty living space.
My confinement wasn't so much physical as it was a feeling of being hemmed in by the design choices that creator Eric Chahi and team have made, which seem dead set at every turn on ruining the fun of being a god.
A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the corporeal residents of From Dust. Pathing is often inexplicably bad and, a few times, my footsoldiers would just stop mid-journey and wait for death. Oh, and the sound they make when they erect a new village is indistinguishable from the one they make when said village is on fire. Thanks dudes, big help.
A village in peril is something players are going to become intimately, furiously acquainted with. You can lay out the perfect strategy, but if you leave one erstwhile exploding plant lying around it can blow the whole thing out of whack. That's a lot harder to swallow when later levels can take upwards of 30-60 minutes to complete. Plus, hazards often emerge with no warning, so being a few moments away from success can heartbreakingly morph into "Oh snap, everything is covered in lava."
There are so many moving parts here that it's almost impossible to know where it is you went wrong. Are you trying the wrong solution? Are you trying the right solution, but not well enough? Have you figured out the solution but are now 20 minutes too late to implement it? And should you do this stupid level again and just pray you don't leave any exploding trees laying around? If the actual Big Guy is more loving and patient than I am, it's only because he has all of eternity to clean up his messes, and I only have until the online press embargo.
The problem is remedied a bit by bite-sized challenge levels. They're gratifying, and the short length encourages experimentation. But even at its best, the play is defined by restrictions, and it seems curiously out of place in a game about omnipotence.
In the main campaign especially, the creativity that your powers inspire (the creativity, in fact, that the game's themes seemingly celebrate) is discouraged at every turn by difficulty, long levels, bad AI and random disasters. Like an overbearing parent, From Dust doesn't want you to play, it wants you to succeed, to progress.
There's a level very late in the game where the shackles are taken off. You have a loose objective, but you're really encouraged to throw mountains where they suit you and have a tsunami wipe the whole thing out if you please. Suddenly, you're unconcerned about meticulously sprinkling out sand bridges and pouring out lava walls just so. A curious thing happens when From Dust stops getting in the way and tells you to just have fun. You have fun.
From Dust is finally able to dazzle, however briefly, by stripping away practically everything that makes it a "game" and leaving only its base mechanics behind. And you don't have to be all-knowing to realize that's a problem.
I'm not under the illusion than wanton chaos and creation would have held my interest long enough to make for a great game. But there's got to be something between that, and being shoved in a lamp and told to behave myself.
For whatever strengths or faults it has, From Dust has allowed me to find the answer to this most vexing of issues. I would like to share that answer with you now.
God lets bad things happen because he honestly forgot he put the exploding tree there.
Of course, no one actually called me God. Players in From Dust are cast as "The Breath," a disembodied force that has the power to absorb elements rs gold like water, dirt and lava, and redistribute them. The Breath is charged with shepherding native peoples through a series of islands, each with their own environmental challenges.
As they manage to find footholds in this hazardous world, the people set up villages that can grant The Breath other powers like the ability to solidify water (think: parting the Red Sea) or putting out fires level-wide. Villages can defend themselves too by retrieving totems that protect from water or flame. This knowledge can be shared between communities, provided you keep a land path open between the two.
Seeing The Breath in action is practically worth the price of admission alone. It's of course visually impressive watching an amorphous ball of water transform a lava flow into a rock wall, but it's the scale that really sold me. Watching a tsunami runescape money sweeping towards your village as a native races to return a water-protection totem is awesome (and I mean that in the strictest definition of the word). Moments like this are perfectly scored by a dynamic, percussive soundtrack that almost seems to be generated by the island-dwellers.
From Dust looks and feels different from anything I've played before and, for a while, that was enough. But before long, I began to feel a sneaking kinship with Aladdin's genie, whose enjoyment of his phenomenal cosmic power was tempered only by his itty-bitty living space.
My confinement wasn't so much physical as it was a feeling of being hemmed in by the design choices that creator Eric Chahi and team have made, which seem dead set at every turn on ruining the fun of being a god.
A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the corporeal residents of From Dust. Pathing is often inexplicably bad and, a few times, my footsoldiers would just stop mid-journey and wait for death. Oh, and the sound they make when they erect a new village is indistinguishable from the one they make when said village is on fire. Thanks dudes, big help.
A village in peril is something players are going to become intimately, furiously acquainted with. You can lay out the perfect strategy, but if you leave one erstwhile exploding plant lying around it can blow the whole thing out of whack. That's a lot harder to swallow when later levels can take upwards of 30-60 minutes to complete. Plus, hazards often emerge with no warning, so being a few moments away from success can heartbreakingly morph into "Oh snap, everything is covered in lava."
There are so many moving parts here that it's almost impossible to know where it is you went wrong. Are you trying the wrong solution? Are you trying the right solution, but not well enough? Have you figured out the solution but are now 20 minutes too late to implement it? And should you do this stupid level again and just pray you don't leave any exploding trees laying around? If the actual Big Guy is more loving and patient than I am, it's only because he has all of eternity to clean up his messes, and I only have until the online press embargo.
The problem is remedied a bit by bite-sized challenge levels. They're gratifying, and the short length encourages experimentation. But even at its best, the play is defined by restrictions, and it seems curiously out of place in a game about omnipotence.
In the main campaign especially, the creativity that your powers inspire (the creativity, in fact, that the game's themes seemingly celebrate) is discouraged at every turn by difficulty, long levels, bad AI and random disasters. Like an overbearing parent, From Dust doesn't want you to play, it wants you to succeed, to progress.
There's a level very late in the game where the shackles are taken off. You have a loose objective, but you're really encouraged to throw mountains where they suit you and have a tsunami wipe the whole thing out if you please. Suddenly, you're unconcerned about meticulously sprinkling out sand bridges and pouring out lava walls just so. A curious thing happens when From Dust stops getting in the way and tells you to just have fun. You have fun.
From Dust is finally able to dazzle, however briefly, by stripping away practically everything that makes it a "game" and leaving only its base mechanics behind. And you don't have to be all-knowing to realize that's a problem.
I'm not under the illusion than wanton chaos and creation would have held my interest long enough to make for a great game. But there's got to be something between that, and being shoved in a lamp and told to behave myself.
Monday, July 25, 2011
E3: Exclusive Details on Raiding, Tatooine, Mounts and More
All eyes are on Star Wars: The Old Republic. The massively multiplayer online game from Dragon Age and Mass Effect developer BioWare will attempt to offer a fully story-driven experience on a massively multiplayer scale, and at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, more details will be revealed than any other previous year. We sat down with writing director Daniel Erickson, lead flashpoint/raids/player-versus-player designer Gabe Amantangelo, and lead systems designer Damion Schubert to discuss what's planned for E3. We also discussed what's planned for after E3, including topics like high-level content, mounts, crafting, in-game economy, differences between player-versus-player and player-versus-environment conflicts, and space gameplay.
GameSpot: Give us an in-depth overview of what's planned for Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 2011. What new content will be shown?
Daniel Erickson: We have a ton of new content at E3. We will have stations on the show floor for the first time, giving everyone hands-on [time] with Tatooine, a planet we've never shown. We'll have a first look at some boss fights and will be taking the wraps off our end-game content. We are also going to be debuting the grand conclusion to Blur's amazing CG trilogy and will have a few more surprises thrown in as well. It's going to be a big show!
GS: So, Tatooine will be shown at E3. What will this planet have to offer players of either faction?
DE: We're just going to set players in front of the game on Tatooine, give them a speeder, and let them run around and see our take on Star Wars' most iconic world. All stations will be on the Imperial side, with all four classes available--Sith warrior, Sith inquisitor, bounty hunter, and Imperial agent.
GS: We also understand that high-level content is something we'll start to see revealed. Give us an overview of the kinds of things you expect high-level characters will be doing in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
DE: Everything you'd expect in a AAA MMO but all with the BioWare dedication to storytelling, context, and immersion. If you've seen how different our flashpoints are from a typical dungeon or [how different] our war zones are from a normal PVP area, you'll have a good idea of what we're going to bring to the elder game.
GS: One of the most popular activities for high-level players in online games these days is to go on high-end raids in search of powerful loot and other rewards. Tell us about the raiding game in Star Wars: The Old Republic. How will it improve on the kinds of raid gameplay we've seen in other games?
Gabe Amantangelo: What you'd know as raids in other MMOs, we're calling "operations" in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Operations will be epic, multi-group events with settings and immersive gameplay inspired by scenes in the Star Wars movies. For examples, players will have to navigate the environment as a powerful Force wielder brings down the room around them; they'll have to work together to solve a code and fend off enemies while they're cornered, and so on.
Additionally, players will be able to enjoy operations as soon as they hit level 50. There will be varying difficulty modes, much like what is found in other BioWare games. The challenge, mechanics, and rewards will vary with the modes. So both the casual and hardcore player will be able to enjoy epic content alongside multiple groups of friends.
GS: We also understand that the team is ready to talk about personal mounts. What kind of mounts will players be able to commission? Any iconic Star Wars animal mounts, such as tauntauns or banthas? Any iconic vehicles like the speeder bikes we've already seen used for fast travel? Give us some specific examples. What purpose will mounts serve other than looking cool and helping players travel more quickly? Will some mounts have combat applications or provide specific bonuses, for instance?
Damion Schubert: Initially, we're just going with vehicles instead of animal mounts, although we definitely hope to get to the animals post-launch. We felt that, given a choice between the two, being on a vehicle felt more like Star Wars. The vehicles tend to be reminiscent of vehicles you've seen in the films, although it's a balancing act. As a designer, you want to be sure that the vehicles graduate in speed but also that the vehicles look appropriate for the speed at which they're travelling.
GS: BioWare has already experimented with "world arcs" in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, where the events that took place in one story affect the situation in the next. How will world arc stories come into play in Star Wars: The Old Republic? How will the game let players change the situations of key characters or worlds while still remaining a massively multiplayer game in which other players may choose differently? Will instancing play a significant role here, for instance, generating one version of the universe for a player who chooses to spare Alderaan and another version for a player who chooses to destroy it? Give us a specific example.
DE: World arc events and choices will absolutely be reflected in later stories as the player goes forward, and instancing helps us achieve those classic role-playing game moments. That said, it's important to us that we never disconnect the players from each other. So you'll never have a point where you're standing in the same place as your friend but can't see each other or discover you're seeing the world two radically different ways.
GS: More specifically, how will the changing world of Star Wars: The Old Republic accommodate players from both factions who just happen to end up in the same area? How will the game treat areas that are currently inhabited by players of both factions? Will players of the opposing faction get some sort of alert? Will they be prompted to initiate an optional player-versus-player battle? How will players of different factions otherwise interact with each other?
GA: Players of opposing factions can almost always fight each other out in the open world, so long as they toggle their PVP flag. This flag will automatically be toggled "on" in designated PVP areas on a PVE server and in most areas on a PVP server. Players of opposing factions can also always queue up and find each other inside of matched team-versus-team war zones.
GS: We've seen a glimpse of the game's crafting in action in our most recent play-through and have even had a chance to send companions off on low-level crafting missions. But we're even more interested in the longer-term impact of crafting on the game and its economy. It just so happens that many players of a certain other Star Wars-themed MMO game who enjoyed that game's original economy are also highly curious. How is crafting planned to affect the economy in the game? Will it primarily serve as a money sink to curb inflation? How will crafted armor, weapons, and consumable items compare with those that players purchase from vendors or find as loot from either player-versus-environment encounters or ranked items from battlegrounds? Is the plan to have the best items in the game be crafted?
DS: There are two ways to think about crafting: One is the delivery mechanism of the crafting system, and the second is the reward schedule. That is, how you do it, what you get from it, and for what cost. Much has been written about how you do it: Our crew skills system makes our companions the focal point of the crafting system--an area that we feel is pretty fun and unique. However, being sure that the rewards schedule is right is much more important to ensuring that crafting is a useful and important part of the economy.
Looking at this, we approached crafting as serving two audiences. One audience is the casual crafter--the guy who crafts for himself and who doesn't want to devote a lot of time or energy to crafting. This guy is going to find that for expending a reasonable amount of time and resources on doing so, he can generally get gear that is above par for his level. He can't make full sets of gear that are better--that would make every other way to get gear in the game obsolete--but he definitely has some "best in slot" gear throughout the leveling-up process and should be pleased by the results.
We wanted to give the dedicated crafter more than that. We have a lot of people who worked on crafting-centric MMO games and feel that dedicated crafters add a lot to the community as a whole. When looking at the problem, a good economy is about supply and demand, and therefore, for a dedicated crafter to have strong demand, he has to be able to supply schematics that are both rare and comparable or better in power than those provided by other item sources. We do this with a research system, where crafters can input a lot of time, energy, and resources in hopes of filling a hole in the market that they can service. In theory, it will drain a fair chunk of resources from the economy as a whole, but skilled social crafters should be able to turn a profit if they can generate that demand and set prices appropriately.
GS: While we know that space gameplay is currently planned to be a simple minigame at launch, we know that players will treat their individual ships as long-term housing and will likely be willing to sink large numbers of credits into sprucing up the insides (or outsides) of their ships. How much high-end customization of their ships will players be able to do? What kind of spaceship and space-related gameplay is planned for high-level characters?
DS: We have plans for ship customization, but we're not prepared to talk about it at this time.
GS: Finally, is there anything else you'd like to add about Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 or about the game in general?
DE: We're not just stuck behind closed doors; we're on the show floor for the first time at E3, so come by and play Tatooine! We'll also be releasing new videos each day of the show and will be doing a live demo on GameSpot on Tuesday, so stay tuned!
GS: Thank you for your time.
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GameSpot: Give us an in-depth overview of what's planned for Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 2011. What new content will be shown?
Daniel Erickson: We have a ton of new content at E3. We will have stations on the show floor for the first time, giving everyone hands-on [time] with Tatooine, a planet we've never shown. We'll have a first look at some boss fights and will be taking the wraps off our end-game content. We are also going to be debuting the grand conclusion to Blur's amazing CG trilogy and will have a few more surprises thrown in as well. It's going to be a big show!
GS: So, Tatooine will be shown at E3. What will this planet have to offer players of either faction?
DE: We're just going to set players in front of the game on Tatooine, give them a speeder, and let them run around and see our take on Star Wars' most iconic world. All stations will be on the Imperial side, with all four classes available--Sith warrior, Sith inquisitor, bounty hunter, and Imperial agent.
GS: We also understand that high-level content is something we'll start to see revealed. Give us an overview of the kinds of things you expect high-level characters will be doing in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
DE: Everything you'd expect in a AAA MMO but all with the BioWare dedication to storytelling, context, and immersion. If you've seen how different our flashpoints are from a typical dungeon or [how different] our war zones are from a normal PVP area, you'll have a good idea of what we're going to bring to the elder game.
GS: One of the most popular activities for high-level players in online games these days is to go on high-end raids in search of powerful loot and other rewards. Tell us about the raiding game in Star Wars: The Old Republic. How will it improve on the kinds of raid gameplay we've seen in other games?
Gabe Amantangelo: What you'd know as raids in other MMOs, we're calling "operations" in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Operations will be epic, multi-group events with settings and immersive gameplay inspired by scenes in the Star Wars movies. For examples, players will have to navigate the environment as a powerful Force wielder brings down the room around them; they'll have to work together to solve a code and fend off enemies while they're cornered, and so on.
Additionally, players will be able to enjoy operations as soon as they hit level 50. There will be varying difficulty modes, much like what is found in other BioWare games. The challenge, mechanics, and rewards will vary with the modes. So both the casual and hardcore player will be able to enjoy epic content alongside multiple groups of friends.
GS: We also understand that the team is ready to talk about personal mounts. What kind of mounts will players be able to commission? Any iconic Star Wars animal mounts, such as tauntauns or banthas? Any iconic vehicles like the speeder bikes we've already seen used for fast travel? Give us some specific examples. What purpose will mounts serve other than looking cool and helping players travel more quickly? Will some mounts have combat applications or provide specific bonuses, for instance?
Damion Schubert: Initially, we're just going with vehicles instead of animal mounts, although we definitely hope to get to the animals post-launch. We felt that, given a choice between the two, being on a vehicle felt more like Star Wars. The vehicles tend to be reminiscent of vehicles you've seen in the films, although it's a balancing act. As a designer, you want to be sure that the vehicles graduate in speed but also that the vehicles look appropriate for the speed at which they're travelling.
GS: BioWare has already experimented with "world arcs" in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, where the events that took place in one story affect the situation in the next. How will world arc stories come into play in Star Wars: The Old Republic? How will the game let players change the situations of key characters or worlds while still remaining a massively multiplayer game in which other players may choose differently? Will instancing play a significant role here, for instance, generating one version of the universe for a player who chooses to spare Alderaan and another version for a player who chooses to destroy it? Give us a specific example.
DE: World arc events and choices will absolutely be reflected in later stories as the player goes forward, and instancing helps us achieve those classic role-playing game moments. That said, it's important to us that we never disconnect the players from each other. So you'll never have a point where you're standing in the same place as your friend but can't see each other or discover you're seeing the world two radically different ways.
GS: More specifically, how will the changing world of Star Wars: The Old Republic accommodate players from both factions who just happen to end up in the same area? How will the game treat areas that are currently inhabited by players of both factions? Will players of the opposing faction get some sort of alert? Will they be prompted to initiate an optional player-versus-player battle? How will players of different factions otherwise interact with each other?
GA: Players of opposing factions can almost always fight each other out in the open world, so long as they toggle their PVP flag. This flag will automatically be toggled "on" in designated PVP areas on a PVE server and in most areas on a PVP server. Players of opposing factions can also always queue up and find each other inside of matched team-versus-team war zones.
GS: We've seen a glimpse of the game's crafting in action in our most recent play-through and have even had a chance to send companions off on low-level crafting missions. But we're even more interested in the longer-term impact of crafting on the game and its economy. It just so happens that many players of a certain other Star Wars-themed MMO game who enjoyed that game's original economy are also highly curious. How is crafting planned to affect the economy in the game? Will it primarily serve as a money sink to curb inflation? How will crafted armor, weapons, and consumable items compare with those that players purchase from vendors or find as loot from either player-versus-environment encounters or ranked items from battlegrounds? Is the plan to have the best items in the game be crafted?
DS: There are two ways to think about crafting: One is the delivery mechanism of the crafting system, and the second is the reward schedule. That is, how you do it, what you get from it, and for what cost. Much has been written about how you do it: Our crew skills system makes our companions the focal point of the crafting system--an area that we feel is pretty fun and unique. However, being sure that the rewards schedule is right is much more important to ensuring that crafting is a useful and important part of the economy.
Looking at this, we approached crafting as serving two audiences. One audience is the casual crafter--the guy who crafts for himself and who doesn't want to devote a lot of time or energy to crafting. This guy is going to find that for expending a reasonable amount of time and resources on doing so, he can generally get gear that is above par for his level. He can't make full sets of gear that are better--that would make every other way to get gear in the game obsolete--but he definitely has some "best in slot" gear throughout the leveling-up process and should be pleased by the results.
We wanted to give the dedicated crafter more than that. We have a lot of people who worked on crafting-centric MMO games and feel that dedicated crafters add a lot to the community as a whole. When looking at the problem, a good economy is about supply and demand, and therefore, for a dedicated crafter to have strong demand, he has to be able to supply schematics that are both rare and comparable or better in power than those provided by other item sources. We do this with a research system, where crafters can input a lot of time, energy, and resources in hopes of filling a hole in the market that they can service. In theory, it will drain a fair chunk of resources from the economy as a whole, but skilled social crafters should be able to turn a profit if they can generate that demand and set prices appropriately.
GS: While we know that space gameplay is currently planned to be a simple minigame at launch, we know that players will treat their individual ships as long-term housing and will likely be willing to sink large numbers of credits into sprucing up the insides (or outsides) of their ships. How much high-end customization of their ships will players be able to do? What kind of spaceship and space-related gameplay is planned for high-level characters?
DS: We have plans for ship customization, but we're not prepared to talk about it at this time.
GS: Finally, is there anything else you'd like to add about Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 or about the game in general?
DE: We're not just stuck behind closed doors; we're on the show floor for the first time at E3, so come by and play Tatooine! We'll also be releasing new videos each day of the show and will be doing a live demo on GameSpot on Tuesday, so stay tuned!
GS: Thank you for your time.
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Sunday, July 24, 2011
Venetica review: Venice on 20 souls a day
You might expect the sudden revelation of being Death's daughter -- as befalls the protagonist of Venetica -- to conjure some deep, introspective questions. What secrets from the beyond should you reveal to others? Is killing someone such a terrible option now that you know there is another plane of existence? Was having someone die at every dance recital really bad luck, or was daddy just doing his best to balance work and family?
Perhaps that last question isn't so poignant, but Venetica, while possessing such an intriguing concept, seems unwilling to run very far with it. Instead, the afterlife flavors a rather straightforward and unpolished action-RPG.
The plot is essentially a standard one-by-one takedown of an evil group bent on total domination. They have made themselves nearly immortal by exploiting a loophole in the laws of necromancy but Scarlett, above-mentioned daughter of Death, is a bit of a loophole herself and thus has the power to snuff them out. How's that for a legal battle?
The abilities Scarlett develops through the course of the game allow her to briefly transcend and interact with the "Twilight World," an afterlife dimension of the environment. It can be used to sneak up on enemies, discover portals to hidden rooms and eventually converse with the dead, but its most important benefit is providing additional chances. Having enough energy stored up will automatically send Scarlett into the Twilight World upon death, allowing an opportunity to re-equip and reposition before daddy slaps "Return to Sender" on her soul. It's a devious, satisfying way to help turn the tables when overwhelmed, suddenly slashing back into existence after the enemies sheath their weapons and start walking away, but by the end of the game I was able to resurrect up to six times in a row. Even Jesus would find that a bit excessive.
The trans-dimensional aspect of Venetica is its most shining feature, but suffers from trite decisions made in other elements of gameplay. The city of Venice and surrounding countryside are provided for exploration during the quest, with plenty of locks to pick and portals to discover. Unfortunately, the skimpy rewards for doing so are a motivation killer. There are extremely few weapons, items or secrets to discover this way; most chests provide only money, things to fence for money, or healing items.
The sidequests that bloat the game function similarly. Most quests are of the "fetch this" or "kill that" variety, and the reward is often nothing more than experience points. Very little, if anything, appeared to have an effect on the main storyline, although you have a choice of three guilds that will change with whom you interact. There are choices to be made throughout, but the same plot-pushing conclusions always seem to be reached and the only real consequence appears to be whether your ending will be virtuous or villainous.
The scarcity of satisfying loot and secrets is especially disappointing given the design of Venice itself. Although Venetica's graphics feel somewhat dated, the composition and sheer scope of the city is impressive. The individual districts feel alive with personality and nooks and back alleys beg to be scoured. There just isn't much to find.
Another nail in Venetica's coffin comes in the form of bugs and design flaws, perhaps arising from its port over from PC. Some can actually be quite amusing -- a sword will occasionally be suspended, motionless, in the middle of an empty path, characters will sit on benches and miss, squatting in mid-air instead. Other flaws can be extremely annoying, such as the camera losing sight of you while you're getting pounded, or the map plotting your next destination incorrectly, forcing you to play lost tourist.
The biggest and most damning lie the game tells, however, is that there's an auto-save. A text box in the manual says so, but even if someone didn't read it, the "don't mess around while this symbol is spinning" message whenever you start the game is equally misleading. You can manually save anywhere, gratefully, but remember to do so frequently. If you run out of resurrections -- or the game freezes, as it once did to me -- you may be forced to relive hours or, heck, even the entire game up to that point.
Even with its deficiencies, Venetica is not unplayable. Combat itself is solid, with simple yet useful skill trees and combos for four different weapons types. Each weapon type can also be outfitted with its own quick-select arrangement and switched between in the midst of battle. The game, despite its repetitive nature, doesn't force a droning narrative upon the player. I reached the credits in just under 14 hours with plenty of sidequests left to complete, had I wished, and the story does pick up toward the end.
Venetica contains hints of a compelling quest but feels like its development life was cut short. The end result is a potentially grand concept that just can't flourish within its forced, generic confines. Functional yet capable of so much more, death's daughter just doesn't die up to her full potential.
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Perhaps that last question isn't so poignant, but Venetica, while possessing such an intriguing concept, seems unwilling to run very far with it. Instead, the afterlife flavors a rather straightforward and unpolished action-RPG.
The plot is essentially a standard one-by-one takedown of an evil group bent on total domination. They have made themselves nearly immortal by exploiting a loophole in the laws of necromancy but Scarlett, above-mentioned daughter of Death, is a bit of a loophole herself and thus has the power to snuff them out. How's that for a legal battle?
The abilities Scarlett develops through the course of the game allow her to briefly transcend and interact with the "Twilight World," an afterlife dimension of the environment. It can be used to sneak up on enemies, discover portals to hidden rooms and eventually converse with the dead, but its most important benefit is providing additional chances. Having enough energy stored up will automatically send Scarlett into the Twilight World upon death, allowing an opportunity to re-equip and reposition before daddy slaps "Return to Sender" on her soul. It's a devious, satisfying way to help turn the tables when overwhelmed, suddenly slashing back into existence after the enemies sheath their weapons and start walking away, but by the end of the game I was able to resurrect up to six times in a row. Even Jesus would find that a bit excessive.
The trans-dimensional aspect of Venetica is its most shining feature, but suffers from trite decisions made in other elements of gameplay. The city of Venice and surrounding countryside are provided for exploration during the quest, with plenty of locks to pick and portals to discover. Unfortunately, the skimpy rewards for doing so are a motivation killer. There are extremely few weapons, items or secrets to discover this way; most chests provide only money, things to fence for money, or healing items.
The sidequests that bloat the game function similarly. Most quests are of the "fetch this" or "kill that" variety, and the reward is often nothing more than experience points. Very little, if anything, appeared to have an effect on the main storyline, although you have a choice of three guilds that will change with whom you interact. There are choices to be made throughout, but the same plot-pushing conclusions always seem to be reached and the only real consequence appears to be whether your ending will be virtuous or villainous.
The scarcity of satisfying loot and secrets is especially disappointing given the design of Venice itself. Although Venetica's graphics feel somewhat dated, the composition and sheer scope of the city is impressive. The individual districts feel alive with personality and nooks and back alleys beg to be scoured. There just isn't much to find.
Another nail in Venetica's coffin comes in the form of bugs and design flaws, perhaps arising from its port over from PC. Some can actually be quite amusing -- a sword will occasionally be suspended, motionless, in the middle of an empty path, characters will sit on benches and miss, squatting in mid-air instead. Other flaws can be extremely annoying, such as the camera losing sight of you while you're getting pounded, or the map plotting your next destination incorrectly, forcing you to play lost tourist.
The biggest and most damning lie the game tells, however, is that there's an auto-save. A text box in the manual says so, but even if someone didn't read it, the "don't mess around while this symbol is spinning" message whenever you start the game is equally misleading. You can manually save anywhere, gratefully, but remember to do so frequently. If you run out of resurrections -- or the game freezes, as it once did to me -- you may be forced to relive hours or, heck, even the entire game up to that point.
Even with its deficiencies, Venetica is not unplayable. Combat itself is solid, with simple yet useful skill trees and combos for four different weapons types. Each weapon type can also be outfitted with its own quick-select arrangement and switched between in the midst of battle. The game, despite its repetitive nature, doesn't force a droning narrative upon the player. I reached the credits in just under 14 hours with plenty of sidequests left to complete, had I wished, and the story does pick up toward the end.
Venetica contains hints of a compelling quest but feels like its development life was cut short. The end result is a potentially grand concept that just can't flourish within its forced, generic confines. Functional yet capable of so much more, death's daughter just doesn't die up to her full potential.
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Friday, July 22, 2011
Captain America: Super Soldier review: Rank and Files
Like baseball and apple pie, the wholesome beatdown of Nazis has been adopted as a symbol of American pride. Captain America has long delivered such blows on the comic pages, shield clanging off the craniums of bad guys like a gong sounding an end to tyranny. As it turns out, blunt force trauma can be pretty darn patriotic.
Captain America: Super Soldier puts players in the red shoes of the titular hero and offers a chance to acrobatically smash an army of evil. And while this third-person adventure has a good share of thrills, there are flaws that keep the experience from living up to the Captain's exacting standards.
Next Level Games managed to construct an interesting atmosphere within the WWII-era castle and secret facilities of the power-hungry Baron Zemo. The movie-based design of Cap's uniform, variety of technologically enhanced enemies and the looming mechanical horror sleeping in the mountainside provide a slightly ridiculous but fun undercurrent of old-time radio dramas and sci-fi serials. Solid voice acting strengthens the mood, including film counterpart Chris Evans as the stalwart and straight-laced Captain himself. Some of the boss's German accents could be argued as being over-the-top, though even that fits the game's style swimmingly.
Combat is by far Super Soldier's strongest feature, offering a surprising number of options for a dude who brought a shield to a gunfight. Long range shield throws are an obvious go-to maneuver, and close-quarters combat can link combos from one enemy to another -- much like that in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Counters and defensive moves require proper timing and more attention be paid to enemy movements, making button-mashing far less effective. Friendly fire is also on, and timing a dodge just right so that sniper fire hits a soldier behind you is supremely satisfying.
Also adding to the strategic side is a meter that builds up with successful fighting and allows different special attacks. These range from Crippling Blows -- cinematic attacks which are unique against each enemy type -- to strong-arming a soldier to forcefully borrow their armament. These moves are fun and can get you out of a jam, but their use is also the only thing that will restore Cap's health on higher difficulties. A wise balancing of the meter can be essential in getting through some heavily populated areas and boss fights.
As in any bureaucracy, though, not all of the Captain's duties are so exciting. Some sections are composed of poles, ledges and other obstacles to be navigated with timed button presses. It's amusing to watch Cap fly about the first few times, but these sections are too linear and begin to feel like filler later on.
A number of decoding machines also block the way, requiring the regular completion of puzzles that boil down to finding a letter or number that matches in two fields and joining them together. The setup isn't something you see every day, but is still weak and will have you begging for something new by the end. Oh, and every machine ever made can be sabotaged by pulling the same panel and touching the same two wires together. Who knew?
The massive amount of pickups and collectible items scattered throughout the world offer a more rewarding quest. Dossier files, briefcase and other pieces of intel are waiting to be stolen from the castle when the Captain isn't busy blowing pieces of it up. Sure, a lot of it is inexplicably strewn about roads and floors like confetti at a WikiLeaks party, but it all adds to a point total that opens combat upgrades. Additional treasures help fill in the backstory, provide short slideshows on enemies or grant bonuses when fighting certain types.
Wandering around a bit to pick up extra collectibles is worth it, but hunting everything down may feel more of a chore than it's worth. The world is open, to its credit, yet has a guiding linearity and flow that makes all the chapters feel like one big adventure. On the few times you're asked to backtrack, however, odds are pretty good you'll get lost. Having to switch back and forth between the clunky and complex map screen (sorry, there's no HUD) can only serve to compound your confusion.
Captain America: Super Soldier clearly could have used a bit more polish on its shield. Some of its one-note elements cry out for variety and it can't hold a torch to the senses of immersion and depth that make a game like Arkham Asylum stand out so brilliantly. But as far as movie-based games go there are plenty worse -- and just like a popcorn flick, there is enough fight and flash in the Captain that you may end up having fun in spite of yourself.
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Captain America: Super Soldier puts players in the red shoes of the titular hero and offers a chance to acrobatically smash an army of evil. And while this third-person adventure has a good share of thrills, there are flaws that keep the experience from living up to the Captain's exacting standards.
Next Level Games managed to construct an interesting atmosphere within the WWII-era castle and secret facilities of the power-hungry Baron Zemo. The movie-based design of Cap's uniform, variety of technologically enhanced enemies and the looming mechanical horror sleeping in the mountainside provide a slightly ridiculous but fun undercurrent of old-time radio dramas and sci-fi serials. Solid voice acting strengthens the mood, including film counterpart Chris Evans as the stalwart and straight-laced Captain himself. Some of the boss's German accents could be argued as being over-the-top, though even that fits the game's style swimmingly.
Combat is by far Super Soldier's strongest feature, offering a surprising number of options for a dude who brought a shield to a gunfight. Long range shield throws are an obvious go-to maneuver, and close-quarters combat can link combos from one enemy to another -- much like that in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Counters and defensive moves require proper timing and more attention be paid to enemy movements, making button-mashing far less effective. Friendly fire is also on, and timing a dodge just right so that sniper fire hits a soldier behind you is supremely satisfying.
Also adding to the strategic side is a meter that builds up with successful fighting and allows different special attacks. These range from Crippling Blows -- cinematic attacks which are unique against each enemy type -- to strong-arming a soldier to forcefully borrow their armament. These moves are fun and can get you out of a jam, but their use is also the only thing that will restore Cap's health on higher difficulties. A wise balancing of the meter can be essential in getting through some heavily populated areas and boss fights.
As in any bureaucracy, though, not all of the Captain's duties are so exciting. Some sections are composed of poles, ledges and other obstacles to be navigated with timed button presses. It's amusing to watch Cap fly about the first few times, but these sections are too linear and begin to feel like filler later on.
A number of decoding machines also block the way, requiring the regular completion of puzzles that boil down to finding a letter or number that matches in two fields and joining them together. The setup isn't something you see every day, but is still weak and will have you begging for something new by the end. Oh, and every machine ever made can be sabotaged by pulling the same panel and touching the same two wires together. Who knew?
The massive amount of pickups and collectible items scattered throughout the world offer a more rewarding quest. Dossier files, briefcase and other pieces of intel are waiting to be stolen from the castle when the Captain isn't busy blowing pieces of it up. Sure, a lot of it is inexplicably strewn about roads and floors like confetti at a WikiLeaks party, but it all adds to a point total that opens combat upgrades. Additional treasures help fill in the backstory, provide short slideshows on enemies or grant bonuses when fighting certain types.
Wandering around a bit to pick up extra collectibles is worth it, but hunting everything down may feel more of a chore than it's worth. The world is open, to its credit, yet has a guiding linearity and flow that makes all the chapters feel like one big adventure. On the few times you're asked to backtrack, however, odds are pretty good you'll get lost. Having to switch back and forth between the clunky and complex map screen (sorry, there's no HUD) can only serve to compound your confusion.
Captain America: Super Soldier clearly could have used a bit more polish on its shield. Some of its one-note elements cry out for variety and it can't hold a torch to the senses of immersion and depth that make a game like Arkham Asylum stand out so brilliantly. But as far as movie-based games go there are plenty worse -- and just like a popcorn flick, there is enough fight and flash in the Captain that you may end up having fun in spite of yourself.
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Thursday, July 21, 2011
Call of Juarez The Cartel review: Bound in bluh
Woe to the franchise that starts on the wrong footing. When a debut is shaky, it's rare that a follow-up ferrets out the faulty strands of its progenitor's DNA and highlights the worthwhile ones.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is one of those rare exceptions that managed to pull it off. The Western FPS refined the shooting mechanics of its predecessor while layering on a mature, well-told story of two brothers at odds and some neat gameplay tricks. So with the series' third iteration, you'd hope for something even closer to perfection, something that masterfully realizes the full potential of the world, mechanics and characters.
And if it weren't a cheap, sloppy, misguided failure on practically every level, Call of Juarez: The Cartel just might have pulled it off. Trading the Old West for the modern era, The Cartel puts you in the shoes of either Ben McCall, a police officer and distant relation to the McCalls of previous Juarez games, Eddie Guerra, a charmless Latin Lothario stereotype, and Kim Evans, a Harvard-educated FBI agent who talks like a member of Kreayshawn's crew.
You attempt to take down the titular drug cartel as any one of the agents, and have online friends or the AI control the other two. The three agents are working together but also competing, with each being assigned secret objectives in each level (usually snatching a small object or talking to an NPC). To get the reward (experience and accompanying increased assortment of weapons), you have to complete them without your partners seeing. This is interesting in online co-op but beyond simple in single-player, where you just have to wait for your partners to get hung up on level geometry.
Also, while you can earn points for catching partners in co-op, your AI buddies will never try to complete their objectives, which just seems lazy. While poorly executed, it's the one good idea in the entirety of the 12-to-15-hour single-player mode, so I'm highlighting it before I move on to the bad parts of the campaign, which is to say "the rest of the parts."
I don't like how The Cartel moves away from the West -- to say the industry has a "glut" of modern urban shooters would be generous -- but I'd look past it, especially if Techland was taking an interesting approach to this crowded field. But not only does this iteration do away with the series' unique setting, it forgoes the gameplay trappings that have helped set it apart.
Levels are boring, nondescript collections of cover; weapons are utterly uninteresting; the AI of both your partners and your enemies is beyond stupid. The period you need to hide to regenerate health is far too long, which ruins the pace of combat.
The one attempt Techland makes to spice up the gunplay is "Concentration Mode," a callback to Juarez games of old. Only now, instead of satisfyingly fanning the right thumbstick like a pistol hammer as in Bound in Blood, you trigger a dull few seconds of slow-motion that don't last long enough to be truly helpful. McCall has abandoned the holy cloth of the other McCalls, but nods to his priest forbearers by spending the slow-mo quoting scripture peppered with profanity (which improbably manages to be both predictable and offensive).
Breaking up the dull shooting are some really unenjoyable driving sequences that are plagued by crashes and deaths you can neither predict nor avoid and a nigh-unusable dashboard viewing angle.
It's all generated by Techland's proprietary Chrome Engine 5, which shows plenty of rust here in its debut. Trees in the game's opening wooded level were rendered so slowly and with such egregious pop-in that the effect was a little like watching Bob Ross methodically create a picturesque forest landscape. (Ironically, The Joy of Painting had better shooting mechanics and driving controls.)
The script is riddled with clumsy dialogue and stereotyped characters that talk like ... well, like Polish guys guessing what Hispanic toughs in L.A. and Mexico might say. It doesn't quite edge into Racistland, but it has built a comfortable home in Unintentionally Offensiville and it's right on the border.
(Note: The captions of the dialogue bear only a passing resemblance to what is spoken. I almost didn't mention it to make room for other more egregious failings, but then I wouldn't have been able to relate one notable example in which "dark as hell" is replaced in on-screen text with "dark as cow's guts.")
I don't normally talk much about the user interface, but since The Cartel will forever stand as history's most unattractive UI, I thought I should record a taste for posterity. Behold: The opening menu.
If you happen to receive The Cartel as a gift from a particularly vindictive loved one, you'll be pleased to know that you might squeeze some moderate fun from the multiplayer. The mode is built around a partner system that provides bonuses for sticking close to a certain teammate, which keeps deathmatches from being completely chaotic. Another neat idea: You get a bonus for spotting an enemy that a teammate later kills, which provides concrete incentive for doing recon.
Sadly, too many of the single-player problems carry over to make it worthwhile, and besides, if there's a loving deity in heaven above, too few people will buy the game to sustain it. But it's worth checking out for a few minutes before you put the wrapping paper back on the game and regift it to the cousin who accidentally backed over a beloved family pet in his RAV4 last Easter.
I think The Cartel stings more because I was a staunch supporter of Bound in Blood despite the franchise's tarnished reputation, even going so far as to name it one of my favorite games of 2009. The Cartel heartbreakingly not only fails to build upon Bound in Blood's momentum, it spits in the face of everything that made it worthwhile. It doesn't feel like a misstep for the series, it feels like an epitaph.
But who knows, maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe a fourth game will fix The Cartel's problems, rebound like Bound in Blood. But if that day comes, Techland and Ubisoft will have to find some other sap to convince people to care about their efforts. Much like the McCall family themselves, I'm done evangelizing.
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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is one of those rare exceptions that managed to pull it off. The Western FPS refined the shooting mechanics of its predecessor while layering on a mature, well-told story of two brothers at odds and some neat gameplay tricks. So with the series' third iteration, you'd hope for something even closer to perfection, something that masterfully realizes the full potential of the world, mechanics and characters.
And if it weren't a cheap, sloppy, misguided failure on practically every level, Call of Juarez: The Cartel just might have pulled it off. Trading the Old West for the modern era, The Cartel puts you in the shoes of either Ben McCall, a police officer and distant relation to the McCalls of previous Juarez games, Eddie Guerra, a charmless Latin Lothario stereotype, and Kim Evans, a Harvard-educated FBI agent who talks like a member of Kreayshawn's crew.
You attempt to take down the titular drug cartel as any one of the agents, and have online friends or the AI control the other two. The three agents are working together but also competing, with each being assigned secret objectives in each level (usually snatching a small object or talking to an NPC). To get the reward (experience and accompanying increased assortment of weapons), you have to complete them without your partners seeing. This is interesting in online co-op but beyond simple in single-player, where you just have to wait for your partners to get hung up on level geometry.
Also, while you can earn points for catching partners in co-op, your AI buddies will never try to complete their objectives, which just seems lazy. While poorly executed, it's the one good idea in the entirety of the 12-to-15-hour single-player mode, so I'm highlighting it before I move on to the bad parts of the campaign, which is to say "the rest of the parts."
I don't like how The Cartel moves away from the West -- to say the industry has a "glut" of modern urban shooters would be generous -- but I'd look past it, especially if Techland was taking an interesting approach to this crowded field. But not only does this iteration do away with the series' unique setting, it forgoes the gameplay trappings that have helped set it apart.
Levels are boring, nondescript collections of cover; weapons are utterly uninteresting; the AI of both your partners and your enemies is beyond stupid. The period you need to hide to regenerate health is far too long, which ruins the pace of combat.
The one attempt Techland makes to spice up the gunplay is "Concentration Mode," a callback to Juarez games of old. Only now, instead of satisfyingly fanning the right thumbstick like a pistol hammer as in Bound in Blood, you trigger a dull few seconds of slow-motion that don't last long enough to be truly helpful. McCall has abandoned the holy cloth of the other McCalls, but nods to his priest forbearers by spending the slow-mo quoting scripture peppered with profanity (which improbably manages to be both predictable and offensive).
Breaking up the dull shooting are some really unenjoyable driving sequences that are plagued by crashes and deaths you can neither predict nor avoid and a nigh-unusable dashboard viewing angle.
It's all generated by Techland's proprietary Chrome Engine 5, which shows plenty of rust here in its debut. Trees in the game's opening wooded level were rendered so slowly and with such egregious pop-in that the effect was a little like watching Bob Ross methodically create a picturesque forest landscape. (Ironically, The Joy of Painting had better shooting mechanics and driving controls.)
The script is riddled with clumsy dialogue and stereotyped characters that talk like ... well, like Polish guys guessing what Hispanic toughs in L.A. and Mexico might say. It doesn't quite edge into Racistland, but it has built a comfortable home in Unintentionally Offensiville and it's right on the border.
(Note: The captions of the dialogue bear only a passing resemblance to what is spoken. I almost didn't mention it to make room for other more egregious failings, but then I wouldn't have been able to relate one notable example in which "dark as hell" is replaced in on-screen text with "dark as cow's guts.")
I don't normally talk much about the user interface, but since The Cartel will forever stand as history's most unattractive UI, I thought I should record a taste for posterity. Behold: The opening menu.
If you happen to receive The Cartel as a gift from a particularly vindictive loved one, you'll be pleased to know that you might squeeze some moderate fun from the multiplayer. The mode is built around a partner system that provides bonuses for sticking close to a certain teammate, which keeps deathmatches from being completely chaotic. Another neat idea: You get a bonus for spotting an enemy that a teammate later kills, which provides concrete incentive for doing recon.
Sadly, too many of the single-player problems carry over to make it worthwhile, and besides, if there's a loving deity in heaven above, too few people will buy the game to sustain it. But it's worth checking out for a few minutes before you put the wrapping paper back on the game and regift it to the cousin who accidentally backed over a beloved family pet in his RAV4 last Easter.
I think The Cartel stings more because I was a staunch supporter of Bound in Blood despite the franchise's tarnished reputation, even going so far as to name it one of my favorite games of 2009. The Cartel heartbreakingly not only fails to build upon Bound in Blood's momentum, it spits in the face of everything that made it worthwhile. It doesn't feel like a misstep for the series, it feels like an epitaph.
But who knows, maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe a fourth game will fix The Cartel's problems, rebound like Bound in Blood. But if that day comes, Techland and Ubisoft will have to find some other sap to convince people to care about their efforts. Much like the McCall family themselves, I'm done evangelizing.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Review: Awesome Summer Minis Bundle (PSN)
Buying games in bulk might not appeal to those without Sam's Club memberships, but Canadian indie developer Frima Studio proposes an enticing deal with its "AWESOME [their caps, not mine] Summer Minis Bundle," which includes five games for five dollars. Bundles this cheap are more in line with Steam sales than the PlayStation Mini store, and that allure might be what Frima is after -- the deal-savvy among us jumping at the chance to save money. At the risk of tipping my hand too early, though, I'll say that in this case, you're getting what you pay for.
After spending some time with all five games in the bundle, it began to feel as though I was profiling Frima Studio as much as I was reviewing a product, because quite a few consistent themes crop up throughout all five games in the bundle. That's to be expected when playing multiple games from a single developer, especially a smaller one with fewer resources to work with per game. Still, the common themes stand out.
Aside from the metal plate bearing Frima's logo dropping before each game, the most noticeable gameplay hook is repetition. Young Thor forces you to go through the same four levels multiple times to grind through and unlock the final stage; both Widgets Odyssey games have you running back and forth across levels to solve their puzzles; each of Zombie Tycoon's levels has you running a similar course around a neighborhood, destroying buildings along the way. Doing things over and over again is a staple of game design (heck, it might be game design), but here it's egregious and boring.
In that regard, it's worth pointing out that the Widgets Odyssey franchise does try for some variety; between the aforementioned adventuring sequences, you play some kind of mini-game, including a rhythm game, a space shooter, and a more action-oriented platforming section. None of these concepts are executed particularly well, but the "variety show" feel of these games is at the very least novel.
Also worth pointing out is that, with the exception of A Space Shooter for Two Bucks! (the standout title among the group), fighting enemies is a thing to look forward to in any of these games. You'd think that, as a God of War clone, Young Thor might be the exception, but even it can't manage to make killing monsters anything other than a chore. And for all of their attempts at variety, the one thing the Widgets Odyssey games should not have done is mix combat with old-school adventuring.
Only one of Frima's consistencies is a positive one: color. The stories of each of these games are generally intrusive, but the character portraits used to tell them at least convey some sort of personality, if a little hamstrung. The exchanges in A Space Shooter in particular are funny in the cheesiest sense, and the fully animated cutscenes in the Widgets Odysseys look like they used up most of those games' budgets.
That's the keyword here: budget. When used poorly, it confines these games to their poor execution, and to their middling offerings in both content and value. The one game worth buying -- A Space Shooter -- is available for cheaper than the bundle (and soon to be free on the iOS App Store), and even then, games like Super Stardust and Gravity Crash outclass it as long as you're willing to spend a little more or wait for a deal. It's a low blow to a value-centric developer, but unlike the bulk products you get at Sam's Club, this bundle proves that games aren't a commodity, and shouldn't be treated as such, bundled or not.
PROS: Lots of content for cheap; A Space Shooter For Two Bucks! provides quite a few hours of fun; well-animated and produced.
CONS: The only game worth buying is available by itself for cheaper; combat is bland almost universally; boring and repetitive.
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After spending some time with all five games in the bundle, it began to feel as though I was profiling Frima Studio as much as I was reviewing a product, because quite a few consistent themes crop up throughout all five games in the bundle. That's to be expected when playing multiple games from a single developer, especially a smaller one with fewer resources to work with per game. Still, the common themes stand out.
Aside from the metal plate bearing Frima's logo dropping before each game, the most noticeable gameplay hook is repetition. Young Thor forces you to go through the same four levels multiple times to grind through and unlock the final stage; both Widgets Odyssey games have you running back and forth across levels to solve their puzzles; each of Zombie Tycoon's levels has you running a similar course around a neighborhood, destroying buildings along the way. Doing things over and over again is a staple of game design (heck, it might be game design), but here it's egregious and boring.
In that regard, it's worth pointing out that the Widgets Odyssey franchise does try for some variety; between the aforementioned adventuring sequences, you play some kind of mini-game, including a rhythm game, a space shooter, and a more action-oriented platforming section. None of these concepts are executed particularly well, but the "variety show" feel of these games is at the very least novel.
Also worth pointing out is that, with the exception of A Space Shooter for Two Bucks! (the standout title among the group), fighting enemies is a thing to look forward to in any of these games. You'd think that, as a God of War clone, Young Thor might be the exception, but even it can't manage to make killing monsters anything other than a chore. And for all of their attempts at variety, the one thing the Widgets Odyssey games should not have done is mix combat with old-school adventuring.
Only one of Frima's consistencies is a positive one: color. The stories of each of these games are generally intrusive, but the character portraits used to tell them at least convey some sort of personality, if a little hamstrung. The exchanges in A Space Shooter in particular are funny in the cheesiest sense, and the fully animated cutscenes in the Widgets Odysseys look like they used up most of those games' budgets.
That's the keyword here: budget. When used poorly, it confines these games to their poor execution, and to their middling offerings in both content and value. The one game worth buying -- A Space Shooter -- is available for cheaper than the bundle (and soon to be free on the iOS App Store), and even then, games like Super Stardust and Gravity Crash outclass it as long as you're willing to spend a little more or wait for a deal. It's a low blow to a value-centric developer, but unlike the bulk products you get at Sam's Club, this bundle proves that games aren't a commodity, and shouldn't be treated as such, bundled or not.
PROS: Lots of content for cheap; A Space Shooter For Two Bucks! provides quite a few hours of fun; well-animated and produced.
CONS: The only game worth buying is available by itself for cheaper; combat is bland almost universally; boring and repetitive.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Dead Block
Have we reached zombie burnout yet? I really want to know, because how else does one explain “Dead Block.” Trotting out the zombie genre yet again, Candygun Games’ attempt to add their own spin on the genre is a frustrating mixture of innovation hampered by poor production values and a distinct lack of depth. Set in a world of 50s rock music, cartoonish character archetypes, and an overcooked b-movie presentation, “Dead Block” offers the guise of third-person zombie defense slapped over a basic, repetitive quest concept.
GAME PLAY
“Dead Block” truly redefines shallow game play; too make a long story short if you play one level of "Dead Block," you've played practically every level of "Dead Block" and only one or two additions await. The basic premise persists throughout the game’s meager selection of levels with an increasingly grating attempt at b-movie humor. You play as one of three characters: Jack Foster a construction worker who excels at destroying furniture for barricade parts, Mike Bacon a portly Boy Scout, whose skill lies in searching items for parts to devise various traps, and lastly Foxy Jones a traffic cop with a penchant for combat. Each level is little more than a somewhat fresh coat of paint on a basic fetch quest: find your guitar, amp, and speaker, make it to the designated meeting area and harness the power of rock (through a mediocre button pressing, Guitar Hero minigame) and proceed to the next level.
The variety comes in how you choose to deal with zombies. If barricades are your forte, you can block up doors and windows slowing the zombies down while you search for musical glory, or you can choose to employ traps that range from freezers letting your character shatter zombies in one hit or sprays of toxic goo that spreads like a virus as the zombies bump into each other. If you’re truly a brave soul, you can meet the horde head on and duke it out in combat. While the attempt at variety is welcome, “Dead Block” just falls short in depth. Construction of traps and barricades are sped up through a “time your button press” minigame, and scavenging for spare parts goes as quick as you can mash “B” or rhythmically tap the “L” and “R” triggers. Combat is the most laughable with one single attack and one single attack animation per characters with the only strategy coming from how you move back and forth or strafe incoming attacks.
“Dead Block’s” idea of difficulty is throwing more waves of zombies and allowing them to do greater damage. Some levels try to spice things up by letting you control multiple characters on the fly, picking the one that best suits your style of game play. However, once the short single player campaign is finished, there’s nothing to do except wrap up the various achievements, should that strike your fancy or play the co-op multiplayer campaign. The snag here, and it’s a big one, multiplayer is offline. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in 2011, a shallow zombie defense game asking you to plunk down $10 for sub par graphics and sound can’t even offer the saving grace of online multiplayer.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are heavily cartoonish and stylized, sapping any sense of dread posed by the zombies and fitting with the goofy b-movie theme. The graphics are sadly very dated. Had this been an XBLA launch game, people would have scratched their heads, but in 2011, it just doesn’t fly. Animations are stiff, uninspired, and like the rest of the game repetitively limited.
SOUND
The rock music is generic, repetitive (big shock), but still manages to convey the theme.
Sound effects are barely passable and instantly forgotten. The narrator is initially a welcome source of smiles but quickly lays it on too thick, prompting players forcing themselves through the game to skip the brief into FMVs.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
At $10 “Dead Block” isn’t waste a moment of your time, especially in a world where adequate, full disc based games wait at a local gaming store for roughly the same price, offering more developed game play. Even at $5, “Dead Block” is a questionable purchase as there’s just not enough fully fleshed out game design to raise the game above mediocrity at best. Poor graphics, poor sound, and half-hearted game design makes this a tragic clunker. Skip It.
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GAME PLAY
“Dead Block” truly redefines shallow game play; too make a long story short if you play one level of "Dead Block," you've played practically every level of "Dead Block" and only one or two additions await. The basic premise persists throughout the game’s meager selection of levels with an increasingly grating attempt at b-movie humor. You play as one of three characters: Jack Foster a construction worker who excels at destroying furniture for barricade parts, Mike Bacon a portly Boy Scout, whose skill lies in searching items for parts to devise various traps, and lastly Foxy Jones a traffic cop with a penchant for combat. Each level is little more than a somewhat fresh coat of paint on a basic fetch quest: find your guitar, amp, and speaker, make it to the designated meeting area and harness the power of rock (through a mediocre button pressing, Guitar Hero minigame) and proceed to the next level.
The variety comes in how you choose to deal with zombies. If barricades are your forte, you can block up doors and windows slowing the zombies down while you search for musical glory, or you can choose to employ traps that range from freezers letting your character shatter zombies in one hit or sprays of toxic goo that spreads like a virus as the zombies bump into each other. If you’re truly a brave soul, you can meet the horde head on and duke it out in combat. While the attempt at variety is welcome, “Dead Block” just falls short in depth. Construction of traps and barricades are sped up through a “time your button press” minigame, and scavenging for spare parts goes as quick as you can mash “B” or rhythmically tap the “L” and “R” triggers. Combat is the most laughable with one single attack and one single attack animation per characters with the only strategy coming from how you move back and forth or strafe incoming attacks.
“Dead Block’s” idea of difficulty is throwing more waves of zombies and allowing them to do greater damage. Some levels try to spice things up by letting you control multiple characters on the fly, picking the one that best suits your style of game play. However, once the short single player campaign is finished, there’s nothing to do except wrap up the various achievements, should that strike your fancy or play the co-op multiplayer campaign. The snag here, and it’s a big one, multiplayer is offline. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in 2011, a shallow zombie defense game asking you to plunk down $10 for sub par graphics and sound can’t even offer the saving grace of online multiplayer.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are heavily cartoonish and stylized, sapping any sense of dread posed by the zombies and fitting with the goofy b-movie theme. The graphics are sadly very dated. Had this been an XBLA launch game, people would have scratched their heads, but in 2011, it just doesn’t fly. Animations are stiff, uninspired, and like the rest of the game repetitively limited.
SOUND
The rock music is generic, repetitive (big shock), but still manages to convey the theme.
Sound effects are barely passable and instantly forgotten. The narrator is initially a welcome source of smiles but quickly lays it on too thick, prompting players forcing themselves through the game to skip the brief into FMVs.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
At $10 “Dead Block” isn’t waste a moment of your time, especially in a world where adequate, full disc based games wait at a local gaming store for roughly the same price, offering more developed game play. Even at $5, “Dead Block” is a questionable purchase as there’s just not enough fully fleshed out game design to raise the game above mediocrity at best. Poor graphics, poor sound, and half-hearted game design makes this a tragic clunker. Skip It.
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Monday, July 18, 2011
Section 8: Prejudice
2009's "Section 8" seemed to rack up generally middle of the road reviews and silently fade into obscurity, never really making a name for itself. Jump ahead two years and TimeGate Studios has decided to release the sequel "Section 8: Prejudice" as a downloadable title. While I have never played its original full retail predecessor, the time I’ve spent with "Prejudice" has redefined how I look at downloadable titles.
When it comes to quality, NEW, first-person shooters on the Live Arcade platform, only two titles jump out: "Battlefield 1943," which was a limited, but engrossing multiplayer only experience and "Breach," an initially promising offering that was plagued with problems once it went live for the general public and was seemingly unceremoniously abandoned by developers. "Section 8: Prejudice" is hands-down the new king of XBLA shooters, offering both a consistently enjoyable single player experience as well as a multiplayer experience that is lean, mean, and fine tuned. This game doesn’t just take the FPS crown, it makes a legitimate grab for the crown of best XBLA game; only time will tell how that battle plays out.
"Section 8: Prejudice" opens with little fanfare throwing players in the role of the previous game's rookie, Alex Corde. Now a veteran of the 8th Armored Infantry, your initial task is to show a new batch of rookies the ropes of using the powered suit of armor both you and they sport. It’s a not so cleverly disguised tutorial mode, but it's par for the course as the story of "Prejudice’s" campaign is painted in cliché, shallow in depth, but heavy on action. It's not long before, just conveniently after you finish the training course, a group of similarly armored foes attacks your base and your thrust into a quest spanning two planets and a multitude of both small scale and large-scale skirmishes.
The slick game play is what keeps "Prejudice" chugging, even when the story languishes between missions consisting of "go here and kill these guys" or "go here and defend this point." Despite the repetitive nature of the missions, the designers are always pushing to make the terrain or locale seem fresh, forcing you to continually change how you engage the enemy. For the most part you’ll engage in standard FPS combat against AI infantry, but there are a couple of little boss fights that pit you on the ground against a shuttle, your squad against some heavily armored engineer class foes as well as pilot driven mechs, and one final mano-a-mano stand against the game’s big villain.
Your arsenal slowly unlocks as you progress through the eight missions of the campaign and range from assault rifles, machine guns, and pistols, to heavier duty fair such as a missile launcher and energy driven weapon. All the weapons from single player make it into multiplayer and both modes allow players to customize what their weapons do with selectable mods. So you may have one player using a shotgun that does major damage to armor (i.e. health) and little to shields, while another does moderate damage to both but with the added boon of having incendiary rounds that continue to do damage after the trigger’s been pulled. It takes a little longer to unlock all of these weapons in multiplayer than it does in single player, but that ensures everyone isn’t a walking tank from the get go.
Additional customization options come in the form of stat points for your armor. Players have 10 points total to work with and can apply them to a variety of categories (for a maximum of four points per category). This leads to players whose overdrive (the game’s speed boost) and jetpack last longer and recharge quickly, making them cheetahs on the battlefield, while those wanting to be juggernauts can boost their armor and shield ratings and give a bet of a boost to their weapon damage. Towards the upper limit of the multiplayer rankings, the opportunity to earn a few more skill points unlocks and those in the game for the long haul will have their dedication rewarded with the slight advantage. Rounding out your in-game kit are two inventory slots that can be filled with a handy knife, repair tool (more on that in a second), or any number of explosive aids (grenades, remote mines, targeted air strikes).
All these little components are not just necessary to complete the single player campaign, but more importantly find success in the game’s, as of now, two multiplayer modes: Conquest and Swarm. Both are designed around team game play; with the latter putting 4 players holding their position against three separate waves of enemy bots. I do applaud TimeGate for their inclusion of bots in multiplayer, as not only does it provide a way to play offline, but should players not be able to fill out their squad in Swarm or Conquest, bots can fill the ranks until human players drop in (if a player drops out, a bot takes their place as well). As fun a mode as Swarm is, Conquest is easily the best part of the whole gaming experience.
Like Swarm, Conquest is team-based allowing for 8 vs. 8 or 16 vs. 16 matches, depending on what map you pick (the game has 4 epic-sized distinct maps, each of which are available in sections for smaller scale combat). The team that scores 1000 points first wins and points are awarded by capturing control points (there are 3 on each main map), getting kills and completing Dynamic Combat Missions or DCMs. DCMs spring up and provide mini objectives for both teams. Many are based around one team protecting a piece of equipment for a set amount of time, while another tries to destroy it. The DCMs are a wonderful addition allowing for multiple approaches to success and a strong encouragement to work as a team.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn't mention that once you spawn, or in "Prejudice's" case, orbital drop (a feature I’ve never encountered in a game and can often make dying more bearable, especially when you land on an enemy) onto the battlefield, it isn't just you, your wits, and arsenal of weapons; as you personally perform actions on the battlefield you earn money, which can be spent on deployable including combat drops, auto turrets, anti-air guns (for taking out orbital dropping foes), as well as three unique vehicles: a jump jet equipped hoverbike, a slow but tough mech suit, and a tank that allows three other teammates to man the various weapon stations. These deployable elements are the final pieces of the puzzle to success and all have their advantages and disadvantages. As mentioned above one piece of equipment you can equip is a repair tool and should you keep it handy, you can make quick repairs to any of these deployables as well as speed the recharge and repair of your suit or that of your allies.
"Section 8: Prejudice" is just a great game, there’s no other way to put it. It’s its own beast, not the "Halo" knockoff that some naysayers attached to the original title. For the value and glitch-free game play TimeGate has packed into a $15 title, it’s nearly criminal this wasn’t a disc-based title for double the price. The menu shows promises of future multiplayer modes to come, but so far, there’s more than enough to do in Conquest and Swarm. These two offerings are the meat of “Prejudice” and should TimeGate support the game after release, people will be talking about this one for a long time to come. Add unto all that, a decent single player campaign that will take around 5-6 hours of your time, and there’s no reason “Section 8: Prejudice” shouldn’t be in your FPS library.
Graphics
For a downloadable title, "Section8: Prejudice" sports some impressive graphics. It can’t really compete with a full fledged retail game that has 3x the storage space for high-res graphics, but it’s no slouch either, blowing "Battlefield 1943" out of the water. Slowdown is little to non-existent, even when action gets hectic, with only slight texture pop in on weapons upon switch being the most noticeable flaw. The environments look good, and although many elements are repeated, the landscape design makes up for any repetition.
Audio
Weapon sounds are distinct, but just a tad underwhelming, however amidst the chaos of battle you won’t notice it. Other ambient effects do add to the immersion in game play. Voice acting is average to above average, but there’s no attempt to make the campaign some epic original tale; just enough dialogue to get you from point A to point B.
Conclusion
"Section 8: Prejudice" is a must-own XBLA title. It’s what developers should be striving to do, instead of rehashing the same tired, tame ideas or sprucing up the graphics of a vintage game selling it at an over inflated price. Like "Shadow Complex" before it, "Prejudice" is going to make gamers reevaluate what a $15 game is and just how much other titles don’t hold up. A decent single player experience will get you ready for a great multiplayer experience that will hopefully establish a steady core of players.
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When it comes to quality, NEW, first-person shooters on the Live Arcade platform, only two titles jump out: "Battlefield 1943," which was a limited, but engrossing multiplayer only experience and "Breach," an initially promising offering that was plagued with problems once it went live for the general public and was seemingly unceremoniously abandoned by developers. "Section 8: Prejudice" is hands-down the new king of XBLA shooters, offering both a consistently enjoyable single player experience as well as a multiplayer experience that is lean, mean, and fine tuned. This game doesn’t just take the FPS crown, it makes a legitimate grab for the crown of best XBLA game; only time will tell how that battle plays out.
"Section 8: Prejudice" opens with little fanfare throwing players in the role of the previous game's rookie, Alex Corde. Now a veteran of the 8th Armored Infantry, your initial task is to show a new batch of rookies the ropes of using the powered suit of armor both you and they sport. It’s a not so cleverly disguised tutorial mode, but it's par for the course as the story of "Prejudice’s" campaign is painted in cliché, shallow in depth, but heavy on action. It's not long before, just conveniently after you finish the training course, a group of similarly armored foes attacks your base and your thrust into a quest spanning two planets and a multitude of both small scale and large-scale skirmishes.
The slick game play is what keeps "Prejudice" chugging, even when the story languishes between missions consisting of "go here and kill these guys" or "go here and defend this point." Despite the repetitive nature of the missions, the designers are always pushing to make the terrain or locale seem fresh, forcing you to continually change how you engage the enemy. For the most part you’ll engage in standard FPS combat against AI infantry, but there are a couple of little boss fights that pit you on the ground against a shuttle, your squad against some heavily armored engineer class foes as well as pilot driven mechs, and one final mano-a-mano stand against the game’s big villain.
Your arsenal slowly unlocks as you progress through the eight missions of the campaign and range from assault rifles, machine guns, and pistols, to heavier duty fair such as a missile launcher and energy driven weapon. All the weapons from single player make it into multiplayer and both modes allow players to customize what their weapons do with selectable mods. So you may have one player using a shotgun that does major damage to armor (i.e. health) and little to shields, while another does moderate damage to both but with the added boon of having incendiary rounds that continue to do damage after the trigger’s been pulled. It takes a little longer to unlock all of these weapons in multiplayer than it does in single player, but that ensures everyone isn’t a walking tank from the get go.
Additional customization options come in the form of stat points for your armor. Players have 10 points total to work with and can apply them to a variety of categories (for a maximum of four points per category). This leads to players whose overdrive (the game’s speed boost) and jetpack last longer and recharge quickly, making them cheetahs on the battlefield, while those wanting to be juggernauts can boost their armor and shield ratings and give a bet of a boost to their weapon damage. Towards the upper limit of the multiplayer rankings, the opportunity to earn a few more skill points unlocks and those in the game for the long haul will have their dedication rewarded with the slight advantage. Rounding out your in-game kit are two inventory slots that can be filled with a handy knife, repair tool (more on that in a second), or any number of explosive aids (grenades, remote mines, targeted air strikes).
All these little components are not just necessary to complete the single player campaign, but more importantly find success in the game’s, as of now, two multiplayer modes: Conquest and Swarm. Both are designed around team game play; with the latter putting 4 players holding their position against three separate waves of enemy bots. I do applaud TimeGate for their inclusion of bots in multiplayer, as not only does it provide a way to play offline, but should players not be able to fill out their squad in Swarm or Conquest, bots can fill the ranks until human players drop in (if a player drops out, a bot takes their place as well). As fun a mode as Swarm is, Conquest is easily the best part of the whole gaming experience.
Like Swarm, Conquest is team-based allowing for 8 vs. 8 or 16 vs. 16 matches, depending on what map you pick (the game has 4 epic-sized distinct maps, each of which are available in sections for smaller scale combat). The team that scores 1000 points first wins and points are awarded by capturing control points (there are 3 on each main map), getting kills and completing Dynamic Combat Missions or DCMs. DCMs spring up and provide mini objectives for both teams. Many are based around one team protecting a piece of equipment for a set amount of time, while another tries to destroy it. The DCMs are a wonderful addition allowing for multiple approaches to success and a strong encouragement to work as a team.
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn't mention that once you spawn, or in "Prejudice's" case, orbital drop (a feature I’ve never encountered in a game and can often make dying more bearable, especially when you land on an enemy) onto the battlefield, it isn't just you, your wits, and arsenal of weapons; as you personally perform actions on the battlefield you earn money, which can be spent on deployable including combat drops, auto turrets, anti-air guns (for taking out orbital dropping foes), as well as three unique vehicles: a jump jet equipped hoverbike, a slow but tough mech suit, and a tank that allows three other teammates to man the various weapon stations. These deployable elements are the final pieces of the puzzle to success and all have their advantages and disadvantages. As mentioned above one piece of equipment you can equip is a repair tool and should you keep it handy, you can make quick repairs to any of these deployables as well as speed the recharge and repair of your suit or that of your allies.
"Section 8: Prejudice" is just a great game, there’s no other way to put it. It’s its own beast, not the "Halo" knockoff that some naysayers attached to the original title. For the value and glitch-free game play TimeGate has packed into a $15 title, it’s nearly criminal this wasn’t a disc-based title for double the price. The menu shows promises of future multiplayer modes to come, but so far, there’s more than enough to do in Conquest and Swarm. These two offerings are the meat of “Prejudice” and should TimeGate support the game after release, people will be talking about this one for a long time to come. Add unto all that, a decent single player campaign that will take around 5-6 hours of your time, and there’s no reason “Section 8: Prejudice” shouldn’t be in your FPS library.
Graphics
For a downloadable title, "Section8: Prejudice" sports some impressive graphics. It can’t really compete with a full fledged retail game that has 3x the storage space for high-res graphics, but it’s no slouch either, blowing "Battlefield 1943" out of the water. Slowdown is little to non-existent, even when action gets hectic, with only slight texture pop in on weapons upon switch being the most noticeable flaw. The environments look good, and although many elements are repeated, the landscape design makes up for any repetition.
Audio
Weapon sounds are distinct, but just a tad underwhelming, however amidst the chaos of battle you won’t notice it. Other ambient effects do add to the immersion in game play. Voice acting is average to above average, but there’s no attempt to make the campaign some epic original tale; just enough dialogue to get you from point A to point B.
Conclusion
"Section 8: Prejudice" is a must-own XBLA title. It’s what developers should be striving to do, instead of rehashing the same tired, tame ideas or sprucing up the graphics of a vintage game selling it at an over inflated price. Like "Shadow Complex" before it, "Prejudice" is going to make gamers reevaluate what a $15 game is and just how much other titles don’t hold up. A decent single player experience will get you ready for a great multiplayer experience that will hopefully establish a steady core of players.
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Sunday, July 17, 2011
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
After taking more than few gamers by surprise last year with the wildly successful, reasonably priced and essentially (major) complaint free, “Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers,” Wizards and Stainless games are back with the newest installment aptly titled “Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012.” Now if you’re like me, you’re asking, “but I just paid $10 for the game last year and anywhere between zero and $15 for the expansions. I know there’s no way such an iconic game could have changed that much.” To you, I say, “I agree.” The core game play of the actual card game is identical to last year’s edition, however, as any gamer knows, especially one hooked by the siren song of the collectible < insert genre > game, it’s all about the newest release. So if you’re perfectly happy with last year’s entry, I say, “keep playing, I know I will, but ‘Magic 2012’ still has some tricks up its sleeve that may interest you.”
GAME PLAY
For a basic rundown of how the main game play works, I’ll refer you to my review of last year’s edition, which is found here. Magic is a time tested game and no one at Wizards or Stainless have done anything to radically alter the way the game plays. However, taking the natural step in evolution as well as listening to fan complaints, they have fixed a few things, added a few interesting new features, and sadly, still have a few glaring kinks to work out.
The biggest alteration to game play that was a deal breaker for many last year comes in the form of deck customization. Initially you were only able to add or subtract the bonus cards that you would unlock for each deck. This time, deck building is almost 100% user controlled. The caveat comes in terms of lands and that you can only customize cards specific to the theme deck, so no bringing in a red creature from your red deck into your multicolored deck or vice-versa. As long as a player has 60 cards in their deck, they can pick and choose what they want, save for basic land cards. Those are fixed for everyone and frankly, it’s an ok decision. There’s so much room for custom deck building that leaving out the hassle of balancing your mana pool is actually a relief.
Another big change is allowing players full control of assigning creatures in combat. Before it was all auto-selected for you and if you weren’t careful about how you initially chose your attackers or defenders, things might turn out how you intended. No when multiple defenders pop up, before combat is resolved at that juncture, the game ensures you get to pick the order things go down. On the flipside though and I come very close to calling it a game breaking issue (for the hardcore it will be), mana is auto selected for you. Not an issue in single color decks, but “Magic 2012” is heavily focused around multicolored decks and when a card asks for say two uncolored mana, you have a card you need to play later in the turn for one blue mana, and the game chooses to use your last two blue mana instead of your four-plus reserve of white mana, you get screwed, to put it bluntly. In my time playing both against the AI and other human players, I can recall one instance where this very likely cost me my game. It was an understandable, somewhat forgivable omission last year, but for it to fall on deaf ears and not be remedied this go around is inexcusable and the game takes a huge hit for it.
The core game modes, both single and multiplayer are back, plus one big addition, Archenemy mode. Here three players work together to fight an AI opponent with 60 life and the unique ability to play a “scheme” card each turn. The “scheme” is a helpful effect for him or her, a nightmare at times for the players. For instance, one effect that popped up instantly was the “archenemy” drained three life from each living player and added it to his own total. Some of the effects are more benign, but it does keep players on their toes. Archenemy is best played with human opponents as the AI is frankly, a joke, but ultimately, the mode is more of a casual diversion rather than a mode worthy of lasting appeal. Two-Headed Giant returns and players will rejoice as you can now play with an online ally, instead of the useless local-ally only option from last year. Of course, standard Free-For-All multiplayer is back with options for two, three, or four player, this time a game lobby can open up additional slots on the fly making matchmaking a much easier, streamlined process. Free-For-All is what makes “Magic 2012” worth the $10 (1600 point price tag) and aside from the possibility of the mana pool issue, it’s still a blast and the one true reason the game series manages to sell as many copies as it does and keep gamers coming back for more.
Lastly, I’ll mention the single-player campaign since it’s a necessary evil if you want to unlock the additional decks and, for free (for $1 per deck, you can instantly unlock all decks and all unlockable cards). There’s a very thinly sketched premise behind your battles this time, revealed in a wasteful FMV sequence at the beginning of the game. The overall campaign map may look fancy, but in reality it’s the same as the bland list of foes in last year’s edition. Challenges have been sprinkled throughout, with harder ones opening up for play as you get to the game’s new boss, Karn. The challenges eventually devolve into less real strategy and more an exercise in frustration, presenting players with absurd situations and far too many wrong ways to solve them. Most criminal though is the actual AI of the campaign. It’s bad, bad, bad. On the easiest setting it walks the line of stupid and a competent novice. At the hardest setting the programming leads me to believe the deck order is “known” to the AI, because far too many times, two or three rounds of odd, almost masochistic moves by the AI end up broken by out of nowhere plays that spell certain doom for the player. My advice, go through on easy, or if you still feel guilty, medium; get your decks and get out into multiplayer. There’s also an Archenemy campaign and a Revenge mode campaign unlocked along the way. The AI sucks as bad in those too.
All in all, “Magic 2012” is a worthy purchase for a fan of the physical and/or previous digital edition. The new 2012 card set is a nice mix of enhanced/remixed versions of last year’s stuff that balances familiarity with the need to develop new strategies. There is the impression that the designers built decks around big battles rather than small, needling skirmishes and the eyebrow raising new abilities will have you grinning when benefiting you and cursing the skies when you fall on the receiving end. Gamers who make the plunge should be satisfied with their purchase and if the support given in the form of affordably priced, genuinely valued DLC is maintained, a good year of steady gaming awaits.
GRAPHICS
As expected the artwork on the cards is beautiful. The artistry employed is top notch as expected and the various themes represented feel properly connected. The FMV sequence that opens the game is rather rough looking with a few framerate drops and some very noticeable screen tearing issues. The virtual tables are pretty much the same as last year, a little cosmetically different but in the end you don’t really notice them.
SOUND
As dull as before: sound effects are stock and uninspired. The more you play; the more it becomes a cluster of noise.
The musical score is a little more memorable but slightly. I find the menu music to be ethereally calming, unlike the subtle “pump you up” music in last year’s edition.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you’re one of last year’s players who has come this far and what you’ve read hasn’t swayed you, stick with last year’s edition. It’s not obsolete; the decks are different enough that you’ll still have fun playing them. If you are intrigued, I say drop the $10 and get going. Understand the “mana pool” issue and be prepared to rarely be screwed by it, but don’t let that totally destroy what is still a very fun game that has a lot of new strategies to learn and countless hours of fun to offer. Highly Recommended.
runescape gold
rs gold
runescape money
runescape items
runescape accounts
GAME PLAY
For a basic rundown of how the main game play works, I’ll refer you to my review of last year’s edition, which is found here. Magic is a time tested game and no one at Wizards or Stainless have done anything to radically alter the way the game plays. However, taking the natural step in evolution as well as listening to fan complaints, they have fixed a few things, added a few interesting new features, and sadly, still have a few glaring kinks to work out.
The biggest alteration to game play that was a deal breaker for many last year comes in the form of deck customization. Initially you were only able to add or subtract the bonus cards that you would unlock for each deck. This time, deck building is almost 100% user controlled. The caveat comes in terms of lands and that you can only customize cards specific to the theme deck, so no bringing in a red creature from your red deck into your multicolored deck or vice-versa. As long as a player has 60 cards in their deck, they can pick and choose what they want, save for basic land cards. Those are fixed for everyone and frankly, it’s an ok decision. There’s so much room for custom deck building that leaving out the hassle of balancing your mana pool is actually a relief.
Another big change is allowing players full control of assigning creatures in combat. Before it was all auto-selected for you and if you weren’t careful about how you initially chose your attackers or defenders, things might turn out how you intended. No when multiple defenders pop up, before combat is resolved at that juncture, the game ensures you get to pick the order things go down. On the flipside though and I come very close to calling it a game breaking issue (for the hardcore it will be), mana is auto selected for you. Not an issue in single color decks, but “Magic 2012” is heavily focused around multicolored decks and when a card asks for say two uncolored mana, you have a card you need to play later in the turn for one blue mana, and the game chooses to use your last two blue mana instead of your four-plus reserve of white mana, you get screwed, to put it bluntly. In my time playing both against the AI and other human players, I can recall one instance where this very likely cost me my game. It was an understandable, somewhat forgivable omission last year, but for it to fall on deaf ears and not be remedied this go around is inexcusable and the game takes a huge hit for it.
The core game modes, both single and multiplayer are back, plus one big addition, Archenemy mode. Here three players work together to fight an AI opponent with 60 life and the unique ability to play a “scheme” card each turn. The “scheme” is a helpful effect for him or her, a nightmare at times for the players. For instance, one effect that popped up instantly was the “archenemy” drained three life from each living player and added it to his own total. Some of the effects are more benign, but it does keep players on their toes. Archenemy is best played with human opponents as the AI is frankly, a joke, but ultimately, the mode is more of a casual diversion rather than a mode worthy of lasting appeal. Two-Headed Giant returns and players will rejoice as you can now play with an online ally, instead of the useless local-ally only option from last year. Of course, standard Free-For-All multiplayer is back with options for two, three, or four player, this time a game lobby can open up additional slots on the fly making matchmaking a much easier, streamlined process. Free-For-All is what makes “Magic 2012” worth the $10 (1600 point price tag) and aside from the possibility of the mana pool issue, it’s still a blast and the one true reason the game series manages to sell as many copies as it does and keep gamers coming back for more.
Lastly, I’ll mention the single-player campaign since it’s a necessary evil if you want to unlock the additional decks and, for free (for $1 per deck, you can instantly unlock all decks and all unlockable cards). There’s a very thinly sketched premise behind your battles this time, revealed in a wasteful FMV sequence at the beginning of the game. The overall campaign map may look fancy, but in reality it’s the same as the bland list of foes in last year’s edition. Challenges have been sprinkled throughout, with harder ones opening up for play as you get to the game’s new boss, Karn. The challenges eventually devolve into less real strategy and more an exercise in frustration, presenting players with absurd situations and far too many wrong ways to solve them. Most criminal though is the actual AI of the campaign. It’s bad, bad, bad. On the easiest setting it walks the line of stupid and a competent novice. At the hardest setting the programming leads me to believe the deck order is “known” to the AI, because far too many times, two or three rounds of odd, almost masochistic moves by the AI end up broken by out of nowhere plays that spell certain doom for the player. My advice, go through on easy, or if you still feel guilty, medium; get your decks and get out into multiplayer. There’s also an Archenemy campaign and a Revenge mode campaign unlocked along the way. The AI sucks as bad in those too.
All in all, “Magic 2012” is a worthy purchase for a fan of the physical and/or previous digital edition. The new 2012 card set is a nice mix of enhanced/remixed versions of last year’s stuff that balances familiarity with the need to develop new strategies. There is the impression that the designers built decks around big battles rather than small, needling skirmishes and the eyebrow raising new abilities will have you grinning when benefiting you and cursing the skies when you fall on the receiving end. Gamers who make the plunge should be satisfied with their purchase and if the support given in the form of affordably priced, genuinely valued DLC is maintained, a good year of steady gaming awaits.
GRAPHICS
As expected the artwork on the cards is beautiful. The artistry employed is top notch as expected and the various themes represented feel properly connected. The FMV sequence that opens the game is rather rough looking with a few framerate drops and some very noticeable screen tearing issues. The virtual tables are pretty much the same as last year, a little cosmetically different but in the end you don’t really notice them.
SOUND
As dull as before: sound effects are stock and uninspired. The more you play; the more it becomes a cluster of noise.
The musical score is a little more memorable but slightly. I find the menu music to be ethereally calming, unlike the subtle “pump you up” music in last year’s edition.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you’re one of last year’s players who has come this far and what you’ve read hasn’t swayed you, stick with last year’s edition. It’s not obsolete; the decks are different enough that you’ll still have fun playing them. If you are intrigued, I say drop the $10 and get going. Understand the “mana pool” issue and be prepared to rarely be screwed by it, but don’t let that totally destroy what is still a very fun game that has a lot of new strategies to learn and countless hours of fun to offer. Highly Recommended.
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rs gold
runescape money
runescape items
runescape accounts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
After taking more than few gamers by surprise last year with the wildly successful, reasonably priced and essentially (major) complaint free, “Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers,” Wizards and Stainless games are back with the newest installment aptly titled “Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012.” Now if you’re like me, you’re asking, “but I just paid $10 for the game last year and anywhere between zero and $15 for the expansions. I know there’s no way such an iconic game could have changed that much.” To you, I say, “I agree.” The core game play of the actual card game is identical to last year’s edition, however, as any gamer knows, especially one hooked by the siren song of the collectible < insert genre > game, it’s all about the newest release. So if you’re perfectly happy with last year’s entry, I say, “keep playing, I know I will, but ‘Magic 2012’ still has some tricks up its sleeve that may interest you.”
GAME PLAY
For a basic rundown of how the main game play works, I’ll refer you to my review of last year’s edition, which is found here. Magic is a time tested game and no one at Wizards or Stainless have done anything to radically alter the way the game plays. However, taking the natural step in evolution as well as listening to fan complaints, they have fixed a few things, added a few interesting new features, and sadly, still have a few glaring kinks to work out.
The biggest alteration to game play that was a deal breaker for many last year comes in the form of deck customization. Initially you were only able to add or subtract the bonus cards that you would unlock for each deck. This time, deck building is almost 100% user controlled. The caveat comes in terms of lands and that you can only customize cards specific to the theme deck, so no bringing in a red creature from your red deck into your multicolored deck or vice-versa. As long as a player has 60 cards in their deck, they can pick and choose what they want, save for basic land cards. Those are fixed for everyone and frankly, it’s an ok decision. There’s so much room for custom deck building that leaving out the hassle of balancing your mana pool is actually a relief.
Another big change is allowing players full control of assigning creatures in combat. Before it was all auto-selected for you and if you weren’t careful about how you initially chose your attackers or defenders, things might turn out how you intended. No when multiple defenders pop up, before combat is resolved at that juncture, the game ensures you get to pick the order things go down. On the flipside though and I come very close to calling it a game breaking issue (for the hardcore it will be), mana is auto selected for you. Not an issue in single color decks, but “Magic 2012” is heavily focused around multicolored decks and when a card asks for say two uncolored mana, you have a card you need to play later in the turn for one blue mana, and the game chooses to use your last two blue mana instead of your four-plus reserve of white mana, you get screwed, to put it bluntly. In my time playing both against the AI and other human players, I can recall one instance where this very likely cost me my game. It was an understandable, somewhat forgivable omission last year, but for it to fall on deaf ears and not be remedied this go around is inexcusable and the game takes a huge hit for it.
The core game modes, both single and multiplayer are back, plus one big addition, Archenemy mode. Here three players work together to fight an AI opponent with 60 life and the unique ability to play a “scheme” card each turn. The “scheme” is a helpful effect for him or her, a nightmare at times for the players. For instance, one effect that popped up instantly was the “archenemy” drained three life from each living player and added it to his own total. Some of the effects are more benign, but it does keep players on their toes. Archenemy is best played with human opponents as the AI is frankly, a joke, but ultimately, the mode is more of a casual diversion rather than a mode worthy of lasting appeal. Two-Headed Giant returns and players will rejoice as you can now play with an online ally, instead of the useless local-ally only option from last year. Of course, standard Free-For-All multiplayer is back with options for two, three, or four player, this time a game lobby can open up additional slots on the fly making matchmaking a much easier, streamlined process. Free-For-All is what makes “Magic 2012” worth the $10 (1600 point price tag) and aside from the possibility of the mana pool issue, it’s still a blast and the one true reason the game series manages to sell as many copies as it does and keep gamers coming back for more.
Lastly, I’ll mention the single-player campaign since it’s a necessary evil if you want to unlock the additional decks and, for free (for $1 per deck, you can instantly unlock all decks and all unlockable cards). There’s a very thinly sketched premise behind your battles this time, revealed in a wasteful FMV sequence at the beginning of the game. The overall campaign map may look fancy, but in reality it’s the same as the bland list of foes in last year’s edition. Challenges have been sprinkled throughout, with harder ones opening up for play as you get to the game’s new boss, Karn. The challenges eventually devolve into less real strategy and more an exercise in frustration, presenting players with absurd situations and far too many wrong ways to solve them. Most criminal though is the actual AI of the campaign. It’s bad, bad, bad. On the easiest setting it walks the line of stupid and a competent novice. At the hardest setting the programming leads me to believe the deck order is “known” to the AI, because far too many times, two or three rounds of odd, almost masochistic moves by the AI end up broken by out of nowhere plays that spell certain doom for the player. My advice, go through on easy, or if you still feel guilty, medium; get your decks and get out into multiplayer. There’s also an Archenemy campaign and a Revenge mode campaign unlocked along the way. The AI sucks as bad in those too.
All in all, “Magic 2012” is a worthy purchase for a fan of the physical and/or previous digital edition. The new 2012 card set is a nice mix of enhanced/remixed versions of last year’s stuff that balances familiarity with the need to develop new strategies. There is the impression that the designers built decks around big battles rather than small, needling skirmishes and the eyebrow raising new abilities will have you grinning when benefiting you and cursing the skies when you fall on the receiving end. Gamers who make the plunge should be satisfied with their purchase and if the support given in the form of affordably priced, genuinely valued DLC is maintained, a good year of steady gaming awaits.
GRAPHICS
As expected the artwork on the cards is beautiful. The artistry employed is top notch as expected and the various themes represented feel properly connected.
The FMV sequence that opens the game is rather rough looking with a few framerate drops and some very noticeable screen tearing issues.
The virtual tables are pretty much the same as last year, a little cosmetically different but in the end you don’t really notice them.
SOUND
As dull as before: sound effects are stock and uninspired. The more you play; the more it becomes a cluster of noise.
The musical score is a little more memorable but slightly. I find the menu music to be ethereally calming, unlike the subtle “pump you up” music in last year’s edition.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you’re one of last year’s players who has come this far and what you’ve read hasn’t swayed you, stick with last year’s edition. It’s not obsolete; the decks are different enough that you’ll still have fun playing them. If you are intrigued, I say drop the $10 and get going. Understand the “mana pool” issue and be prepared to rarely be screwed by it, but don’t let that totally destroy what is still a very fun game that has a lot of new strategies to learn and countless hours of fun to offer. Highly Recommended.
runescape gold
rs gold
runescape money
runescape items
runescape accounts
GAME PLAY
For a basic rundown of how the main game play works, I’ll refer you to my review of last year’s edition, which is found here. Magic is a time tested game and no one at Wizards or Stainless have done anything to radically alter the way the game plays. However, taking the natural step in evolution as well as listening to fan complaints, they have fixed a few things, added a few interesting new features, and sadly, still have a few glaring kinks to work out.
The biggest alteration to game play that was a deal breaker for many last year comes in the form of deck customization. Initially you were only able to add or subtract the bonus cards that you would unlock for each deck. This time, deck building is almost 100% user controlled. The caveat comes in terms of lands and that you can only customize cards specific to the theme deck, so no bringing in a red creature from your red deck into your multicolored deck or vice-versa. As long as a player has 60 cards in their deck, they can pick and choose what they want, save for basic land cards. Those are fixed for everyone and frankly, it’s an ok decision. There’s so much room for custom deck building that leaving out the hassle of balancing your mana pool is actually a relief.
Another big change is allowing players full control of assigning creatures in combat. Before it was all auto-selected for you and if you weren’t careful about how you initially chose your attackers or defenders, things might turn out how you intended. No when multiple defenders pop up, before combat is resolved at that juncture, the game ensures you get to pick the order things go down. On the flipside though and I come very close to calling it a game breaking issue (for the hardcore it will be), mana is auto selected for you. Not an issue in single color decks, but “Magic 2012” is heavily focused around multicolored decks and when a card asks for say two uncolored mana, you have a card you need to play later in the turn for one blue mana, and the game chooses to use your last two blue mana instead of your four-plus reserve of white mana, you get screwed, to put it bluntly. In my time playing both against the AI and other human players, I can recall one instance where this very likely cost me my game. It was an understandable, somewhat forgivable omission last year, but for it to fall on deaf ears and not be remedied this go around is inexcusable and the game takes a huge hit for it.
The core game modes, both single and multiplayer are back, plus one big addition, Archenemy mode. Here three players work together to fight an AI opponent with 60 life and the unique ability to play a “scheme” card each turn. The “scheme” is a helpful effect for him or her, a nightmare at times for the players. For instance, one effect that popped up instantly was the “archenemy” drained three life from each living player and added it to his own total. Some of the effects are more benign, but it does keep players on their toes. Archenemy is best played with human opponents as the AI is frankly, a joke, but ultimately, the mode is more of a casual diversion rather than a mode worthy of lasting appeal. Two-Headed Giant returns and players will rejoice as you can now play with an online ally, instead of the useless local-ally only option from last year. Of course, standard Free-For-All multiplayer is back with options for two, three, or four player, this time a game lobby can open up additional slots on the fly making matchmaking a much easier, streamlined process. Free-For-All is what makes “Magic 2012” worth the $10 (1600 point price tag) and aside from the possibility of the mana pool issue, it’s still a blast and the one true reason the game series manages to sell as many copies as it does and keep gamers coming back for more.
Lastly, I’ll mention the single-player campaign since it’s a necessary evil if you want to unlock the additional decks and, for free (for $1 per deck, you can instantly unlock all decks and all unlockable cards). There’s a very thinly sketched premise behind your battles this time, revealed in a wasteful FMV sequence at the beginning of the game. The overall campaign map may look fancy, but in reality it’s the same as the bland list of foes in last year’s edition. Challenges have been sprinkled throughout, with harder ones opening up for play as you get to the game’s new boss, Karn. The challenges eventually devolve into less real strategy and more an exercise in frustration, presenting players with absurd situations and far too many wrong ways to solve them. Most criminal though is the actual AI of the campaign. It’s bad, bad, bad. On the easiest setting it walks the line of stupid and a competent novice. At the hardest setting the programming leads me to believe the deck order is “known” to the AI, because far too many times, two or three rounds of odd, almost masochistic moves by the AI end up broken by out of nowhere plays that spell certain doom for the player. My advice, go through on easy, or if you still feel guilty, medium; get your decks and get out into multiplayer. There’s also an Archenemy campaign and a Revenge mode campaign unlocked along the way. The AI sucks as bad in those too.
All in all, “Magic 2012” is a worthy purchase for a fan of the physical and/or previous digital edition. The new 2012 card set is a nice mix of enhanced/remixed versions of last year’s stuff that balances familiarity with the need to develop new strategies. There is the impression that the designers built decks around big battles rather than small, needling skirmishes and the eyebrow raising new abilities will have you grinning when benefiting you and cursing the skies when you fall on the receiving end. Gamers who make the plunge should be satisfied with their purchase and if the support given in the form of affordably priced, genuinely valued DLC is maintained, a good year of steady gaming awaits.
GRAPHICS
As expected the artwork on the cards is beautiful. The artistry employed is top notch as expected and the various themes represented feel properly connected.
The FMV sequence that opens the game is rather rough looking with a few framerate drops and some very noticeable screen tearing issues.
The virtual tables are pretty much the same as last year, a little cosmetically different but in the end you don’t really notice them.
SOUND
As dull as before: sound effects are stock and uninspired. The more you play; the more it becomes a cluster of noise.
The musical score is a little more memorable but slightly. I find the menu music to be ethereally calming, unlike the subtle “pump you up” music in last year’s edition.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
If you’re one of last year’s players who has come this far and what you’ve read hasn’t swayed you, stick with last year’s edition. It’s not obsolete; the decks are different enough that you’ll still have fun playing them. If you are intrigued, I say drop the $10 and get going. Understand the “mana pool” issue and be prepared to rarely be screwed by it, but don’t let that totally destroy what is still a very fun game that has a lot of new strategies to learn and countless hours of fun to offer. Highly Recommended.
runescape gold
rs gold
runescape money
runescape items
runescape accounts
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Storm: Frontline Nation Review
Storm: Frontline Nation is smack-dab in the middle. Colossai Studios' turn-based strategy game occupies the neutral zone between encyclopedic franchises such as Hearts of Iron and mainstream fare such as the Civilization series. But this captivating saga about an all-out global war in the near future is anything but a middling effort. A tremendous amount of depth and replay value are the big positives here, along with aggressive enemy artificial intelligence that turns every campaign into a war for survival.
Anyone who has experience with voluminous games of grand historical strategy, such as Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Victoria, will immediately know what Storm has in store for you. The main difference here is the time frame. Where those games deal with history, Storm: Frontline Nation deals with the very near future. It is January of 2012, immediately following a war that has caused oil exports from the Middle East to be virtually shut down. As a result, economies have collapsed, and big players in the USA, UK, France, Russia, and Germany are fighting over the scraps, namely oil resources in places like the North Sea and North Africa. The story campaign takes place in Europe and North Africa, where you take control of one of the big five nations noted above and deal with hundreds of conquerable provinces and cities. Victory conditions involve everything from building up an army, to sending a spy to steal research from an enemy capital, to simply building facilities like naval bases.
You can also forgo the story and go for the open campaign. This option features some 45 nations, including all of the smaller nations in the region, such as Spain, Egypt, Greece, Austria, Slovenia, and so forth. You get a ton of replay value, because every country comes with a unique range of pluses and minuses. Running Greece, for instance, is a whole lot different from running the US, so moving down requires big changes in how you conduct yourself with neighbors. Situations where you might want to throw your weight around tend not to work out so well if you have only a tiny military and not a whole lot of cash at your disposal. Some of the playable countries seem ridiculous, though. Taking over countries like Montenegro, Morocco, and Estonia is nearly pointless, because they just don't have enough power or territory (although having just two territories to look after sure does cut down on the management duties) to provide an interesting game. Choose one of them, and you're generally stuck either trying to survive onslaughts from bigger enemies or staving off boredom while watching the big guys go at it for black gold.
In campaigns, you play as the leader of an entire nation in a far-reaching game of geopolitical conquest. On the main map screen, you guide the fortunes of your country through turns that last a month of real time. This is where everything begins. Here you declare war on the Swedes, produce conventional units like tanks and planes, sneakily order up weapons of mass destruction like nukes and biological weapons, stage covert ops like assassinations, ink treaties with those nice guys in Russia, advance research levels to gain nifty new weapons, and so forth. While the sheer number of things to do is impressive, most of the options are somewhat scaled back from those in other grand strategy games. There is no massive, varied cultural tech tree as in the Civilization games, for instance. All of the tech levels earned generally just open up bigger and better ways to kill enemies, like suitcase nukes and bioweapons such as anthrax and smallpox.
The options stop well short of kitchen-sink territory. At the same time, this doesn't quite make Storm more manageable than many of its genre predecessors, largely due to a terrible tutorial system of blurry videos that walk you through the interface and some strategic and tactical features. Fully interactive tutorials would have made a big difference. Visual quality is dark and murky as well, making it hard to tell units apart at times. Audio is equally unhelpful, including a musical score that sounds like something heard over the closing credits of a straight-to-DVD action flick, and repetitive unit acknowledgements that consist of nothing but the unit name, often mispronounced. Still, at least the interface is intuitive for the most part. You have to fiddle around at times (uh, how do you build a nuclear research facility again?), although generally you can work things out in no more than a few minutes of experimentation. Story mode also provides many missions that serve as guideposts pushing you in the right direction when it comes to building your navy for eventual North Sea attacks or getting a spy over to the UK to see what it's up to, for example.
There isn't a whole lot of time to hang out micromanaging anyhow, so it's a good thing you can find your way around in short order. Nations are extremely aggressive. Multiple wars seem to always kick off by February 2012, the second turn of the game. This keeps you on your toes and lets you know that you can't sit back and play statesman. It gives the game sort of a Risk vibe. But at the same time, it's hard to make sense of what's happening. There are a lot of head-scratchers here. Slovenia annihilates Hungary for reasons unknown. Ukraine declares war on the Slovak Republic. Greece attacks everybody. The US invades Tunisia. Lithuania signs a biological nonproliferation treaty. Campaigns seem to always turn into massive free-for-all brawls where you never know who is going to align with whom. There are always a good dozen or two treaties on the go, featuring defensive alliances between odd bedfellows like the US and Montenegro or Egypt and Russia. It's all cool and chaotic, in that you never know what's going to happen next. It's also pretty much senseless. So if you're looking for a game to mirror what you read in Foreign Affairs every month, keep looking.
When the bullets start flying, the action shifts to a turn-based combat screen where nations handle diplomacy the old-fashioned way. You guide units into battle on hex-based grids overlaying photo-realistic maps with enough details regarding terrain, weather, supply lines, and the like to satiate all but the most demanding wargamer. Battles are fairly small-scale, with just a handful of units per side in the field at any given moment. Turns take place simultaneously, not consecutively. So lining up enemy infantry for a bombing run might be foiled by the bad guys simply moving out of the way. Enemy AI is quite astute, with your opposition knowing how to defend the three control points per map that you need to seize to declare victory. They often grab high ground, for instance. You can skip battles and have the computer resolve them automatically, but it's not a good idea since the scraps generally turn out poorly for you.
In addition to the campaigns, you can fire up one-off customizable skirmishes. These scraps aren't as interesting on their lonesome without the arching national plots linking everything together, although the tactical depth can carry you through battles for a time. The one-offs can offer a lot if you fancy yourself more of a general than a prime minister. Multiplayer options are available for both game types, as well. All of the multiplayer is handled through direct IP links and local LANs, however, which makes it awfully tough to line up opponents.
Although Storm: Frontline Nation does not fit into an easily defined category for those looking to classify the game as either a hardcore geopolitical sim or a lightweight, board-game-style effort, this is still a good game. The solid design, smart AI, and frenetic combat can keep you fighting and refighting World War III for many hours. The audio and visual presentation is dated, and the lack of a good hands-on tutorial that steps you through the many intricacies of the interface and rules is unfortunate. But even with these drawbacks, this is a game that tests your tactical abilities and has so many options when it comes to choosing nations to play that the replay value is nearly limitless.
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rs gold
runescape money
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Anyone who has experience with voluminous games of grand historical strategy, such as Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Victoria, will immediately know what Storm has in store for you. The main difference here is the time frame. Where those games deal with history, Storm: Frontline Nation deals with the very near future. It is January of 2012, immediately following a war that has caused oil exports from the Middle East to be virtually shut down. As a result, economies have collapsed, and big players in the USA, UK, France, Russia, and Germany are fighting over the scraps, namely oil resources in places like the North Sea and North Africa. The story campaign takes place in Europe and North Africa, where you take control of one of the big five nations noted above and deal with hundreds of conquerable provinces and cities. Victory conditions involve everything from building up an army, to sending a spy to steal research from an enemy capital, to simply building facilities like naval bases.
You can also forgo the story and go for the open campaign. This option features some 45 nations, including all of the smaller nations in the region, such as Spain, Egypt, Greece, Austria, Slovenia, and so forth. You get a ton of replay value, because every country comes with a unique range of pluses and minuses. Running Greece, for instance, is a whole lot different from running the US, so moving down requires big changes in how you conduct yourself with neighbors. Situations where you might want to throw your weight around tend not to work out so well if you have only a tiny military and not a whole lot of cash at your disposal. Some of the playable countries seem ridiculous, though. Taking over countries like Montenegro, Morocco, and Estonia is nearly pointless, because they just don't have enough power or territory (although having just two territories to look after sure does cut down on the management duties) to provide an interesting game. Choose one of them, and you're generally stuck either trying to survive onslaughts from bigger enemies or staving off boredom while watching the big guys go at it for black gold.
In campaigns, you play as the leader of an entire nation in a far-reaching game of geopolitical conquest. On the main map screen, you guide the fortunes of your country through turns that last a month of real time. This is where everything begins. Here you declare war on the Swedes, produce conventional units like tanks and planes, sneakily order up weapons of mass destruction like nukes and biological weapons, stage covert ops like assassinations, ink treaties with those nice guys in Russia, advance research levels to gain nifty new weapons, and so forth. While the sheer number of things to do is impressive, most of the options are somewhat scaled back from those in other grand strategy games. There is no massive, varied cultural tech tree as in the Civilization games, for instance. All of the tech levels earned generally just open up bigger and better ways to kill enemies, like suitcase nukes and bioweapons such as anthrax and smallpox.
The options stop well short of kitchen-sink territory. At the same time, this doesn't quite make Storm more manageable than many of its genre predecessors, largely due to a terrible tutorial system of blurry videos that walk you through the interface and some strategic and tactical features. Fully interactive tutorials would have made a big difference. Visual quality is dark and murky as well, making it hard to tell units apart at times. Audio is equally unhelpful, including a musical score that sounds like something heard over the closing credits of a straight-to-DVD action flick, and repetitive unit acknowledgements that consist of nothing but the unit name, often mispronounced. Still, at least the interface is intuitive for the most part. You have to fiddle around at times (uh, how do you build a nuclear research facility again?), although generally you can work things out in no more than a few minutes of experimentation. Story mode also provides many missions that serve as guideposts pushing you in the right direction when it comes to building your navy for eventual North Sea attacks or getting a spy over to the UK to see what it's up to, for example.
There isn't a whole lot of time to hang out micromanaging anyhow, so it's a good thing you can find your way around in short order. Nations are extremely aggressive. Multiple wars seem to always kick off by February 2012, the second turn of the game. This keeps you on your toes and lets you know that you can't sit back and play statesman. It gives the game sort of a Risk vibe. But at the same time, it's hard to make sense of what's happening. There are a lot of head-scratchers here. Slovenia annihilates Hungary for reasons unknown. Ukraine declares war on the Slovak Republic. Greece attacks everybody. The US invades Tunisia. Lithuania signs a biological nonproliferation treaty. Campaigns seem to always turn into massive free-for-all brawls where you never know who is going to align with whom. There are always a good dozen or two treaties on the go, featuring defensive alliances between odd bedfellows like the US and Montenegro or Egypt and Russia. It's all cool and chaotic, in that you never know what's going to happen next. It's also pretty much senseless. So if you're looking for a game to mirror what you read in Foreign Affairs every month, keep looking.
When the bullets start flying, the action shifts to a turn-based combat screen where nations handle diplomacy the old-fashioned way. You guide units into battle on hex-based grids overlaying photo-realistic maps with enough details regarding terrain, weather, supply lines, and the like to satiate all but the most demanding wargamer. Battles are fairly small-scale, with just a handful of units per side in the field at any given moment. Turns take place simultaneously, not consecutively. So lining up enemy infantry for a bombing run might be foiled by the bad guys simply moving out of the way. Enemy AI is quite astute, with your opposition knowing how to defend the three control points per map that you need to seize to declare victory. They often grab high ground, for instance. You can skip battles and have the computer resolve them automatically, but it's not a good idea since the scraps generally turn out poorly for you.
In addition to the campaigns, you can fire up one-off customizable skirmishes. These scraps aren't as interesting on their lonesome without the arching national plots linking everything together, although the tactical depth can carry you through battles for a time. The one-offs can offer a lot if you fancy yourself more of a general than a prime minister. Multiplayer options are available for both game types, as well. All of the multiplayer is handled through direct IP links and local LANs, however, which makes it awfully tough to line up opponents.
Although Storm: Frontline Nation does not fit into an easily defined category for those looking to classify the game as either a hardcore geopolitical sim or a lightweight, board-game-style effort, this is still a good game. The solid design, smart AI, and frenetic combat can keep you fighting and refighting World War III for many hours. The audio and visual presentation is dated, and the lack of a good hands-on tutorial that steps you through the many intricacies of the interface and rules is unfortunate. But even with these drawbacks, this is a game that tests your tactical abilities and has so many options when it comes to choosing nations to play that the replay value is nearly limitless.
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
Slam Bolt Scrappers
If you’ve ever wondered what a Tetris-style block puzzle game would be like if it had physical combat, demons and towers that fight each other, then you’re reading the right review. Released as a PlayStation Network game for the PS3, Slam Bolt Scrappers is the inaugural release from a new independent developer known as Fire Hose Games. The best way to describe it in genre terms is a mixture of a puzzle game and a side-scrolling brawler, with added combat between your tower and your opponent’s. It’s an odd, but very original and creative mixture to say the least. I’ve never heard of another game like it, so Fire Hose Games definitely deserve commendation for thinking outside of the box.
As one of several different caricatured characters (including an angel, a construction worker, a young woman and a demon,) your goal is to destroy your opponent’s tower before he (or she) annihilates yours. Players get to control their chosen character as they fly around the environment, above the towers. Everything is completed through the control of this avatar, as they are your fighter, architect and carpenter all in one. It adds a new and unique dimension to the core puzzle game experience, but it can become overly chaotic at times, which is a major drawback.
Towers are designed by the use of carefully placed (and rotated) blocks that are almost identical to those found in Tetris. When you create a square of blocks of a specific colour, a weapon or shield takes form. For example, red blocks turn into lasers, blue blocks turn into shields (which protect any other blocks it’s touching) and green blocks turn into little drill minions that can be shot at your opponent’s tower. In addition, there are three other types of blocks with different attack qualities. As you drop similarly coloured blocks around weapons you’ve created, they will grow to potentially enormous sizes, increasing their ability to withstand and dole out damage. One addition that impressed me a lot was the 'block rearranger,' which allows you to change the position of blocks that you've dropped. Its helping hand takes you out of the combat experience for a minute or so, so there's a pro and a con to using it, which makes perfect sense.
Unlike in Tetris, blocks aren’t just given to you continuously throughout each battle. You have to earn them by defeating tons of airborne enemies who randomly appear at the top of the screen through hand-to-hand combat combos. The basic minion enemies vary in colour, representing each type of coloured block or potential weapon. Their demise results in a new block for you to use to build your towering war machine. On top of the basic minions, there are larger (and more powerful) enemies who will come to visit you, including gargoyles and ninjas. Gargoyles pack a much more powerful punch with their heavy hammers, whereas ninjas represent the game’s special enemy, giving the player who beats them a special power-up. These power-ups range from a powerful comet attack to the ability to steal an opponent’s weapon and a gigantic wrench that will repair your towers. Power-ups become very handy and can turn the tide of a battle, but they only last for a short period of time, provided that you keep your character alive.
Both your chosen character and your opponent(s) (1 vs. 2 or 3 and team battles are available,) have a limited amount of health. If this bar of life is drained, then you have to wait a certain amount of time to respawn, thus giving your opponent(s) a chance to take the blocks that you were holding and to defeat all of the enemies that have shown up. Timed button presses are required for faster respawns. This creates an interesting dynamic, as it sometimes becomes a tactic to take the other avatar out in order to steal their stuff or just have a break. Luckily, the developers added a block button, which protects you from pretty much anything, by placing a bubble around your avatar. This is very helpful when an opponent is attacking you because, if you block long enough, they’ll sometimes forget about you.
Upon selecting the campaign option at the main menu, you are greeted with a rotating map, showing different types of areas such as a volcano, city and icy mountains. Each location contains one or two levels or challenges, which unlock as you progress. This campaign allows for local multiplayer and primarily consists of battles against one opponent, though there are three decent boss battles as well. There are also special one-off levels with unique objectives such as having to defeat your opponent while you have two towers hanging over a volcano’s core on a weighted scale. In this mode, you have to make sure to add even amounts of blocks to each scale and are also forced to continually clear ember that will harden around your blocks when the volcano occasionally erupts around you. It’s an interesting twist to the game, albeit a bit too chaotic at times. This level is a perfect example of the grand amount of creativity Fire Hose implemented into the experience, but is also a good example of one of the game's major drawbacks: its chaos. On just about any difficulty, some portions of the game are just too busy for their own good, forcing players to worry about too much at once. It's more stressful than fun. Luckily, these sections are few and far between.
Unfortunately, the campaign doesn’t last a long period of time. You could beat it within a couple of hours, especially if you choose the casual difficulty option. There are four difficulties, which potentially add length for players who like to 100% games, but most people will only play through it once or twice. The variety in game modes was impressive and I liked that hidden levels presented themselves occasionally (such as a mega blocks level where you can create gigantic weapons,) but there just wasn’t enough content overall. As you complete levels and defeat bosses, you unlock new things such as battle mode maps and hats (to customize characters with.) The unlockables you earn depend on how well you do on a specific stage, so some people will find fun in trying to unlock everything by completing all of the challenges for unlockables. That’s not something that interested me much, though.
The game’s two tutorial missions do a pretty good job of setting you up for what the campaign will throw at you. However, I was disappointed by the lack of descriptions for each mode. Instead of being able to read what you have to do in each new game type, you are forced to try to figure it out on your own, which can be a bit annoying at times, resulting in the need to restart a level or two. It’s something so basic that you’d expect it to be included, so I found it odd that they overlooked it. Luckily, the game is easy to understand for the most part.
In addition to the game’s brief campaign, you can select a secondary mode known as battle mode. This is where you can set up personalized skirmishes, by selecting teams (or 1 vs. 2,) your favourite map and the type of weapons you’d like to use. It’s nice that they allowed you to set up your own games. Multiplayer is also available through this section of the game, though there is no online multiplayer, which is a huge drawback. It’s too bad, because it really could have improved the game and would’ve turned a ho-hum battle mode into a fun online experience. At least four player (competitive and cooperative) multiplayer was included, which allows couch combatants to battle each other. It's just too bad that such a great seliing feature as online multiplayer was omitted.
Graphics:
Slam Bolt Scrappers features a cartoony visual style, which employs some cell shading. It’s a very colourful design that lends itself well to the style of gameplay it presents, and adds some character to the experience. I liked the use of colour in relation to the different types of weapons you could create, as well as the variety within each level’s backdrops. It was also nice to have creative types of avatars to use, with basic customization, though these options were very limited. Though the visual style looks decent, it’s missing a wow factor and is not something that will leave a memorable impression on you. Still, for an independently developed game, it looks quite good.
Audio:
The audio within this downloadable title is quite basic. In addition to a very basic and forgettable original score, the game features several different sound effects. Each of these sound effects represents a different type of weapon, melee combat move or environmental catastrophe. I liked the variety in the sound effects, but found that they were also quite basic. The experience would have benefitted if the developers would’ve infused the audio with a lot more character, to try to tie in with the cartoony and colourful experience that they created. That would have made the game much more immersive, interesting and entertaining.
Conclusion:
Though it’s quite unique and does a good job of mixing different genres together into one game, Slam Bolt Scrappers is a ho-hum experience. There are some really strong elements and good ideas implemented, but its campaign is very brief with little replay value. The inclusion of online multiplayer battles would have made the game a much more robust and engaging experience, adding length and interest. It’s too bad that the developers omitted this capability because the game screams for the opportunity to battle against your PlayStation Network friends. If you’re looking for an interesting new puzzle game, then there is definitely some fun to be had, though it’s a frustrating and lacking experience overall.
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As one of several different caricatured characters (including an angel, a construction worker, a young woman and a demon,) your goal is to destroy your opponent’s tower before he (or she) annihilates yours. Players get to control their chosen character as they fly around the environment, above the towers. Everything is completed through the control of this avatar, as they are your fighter, architect and carpenter all in one. It adds a new and unique dimension to the core puzzle game experience, but it can become overly chaotic at times, which is a major drawback.
Towers are designed by the use of carefully placed (and rotated) blocks that are almost identical to those found in Tetris. When you create a square of blocks of a specific colour, a weapon or shield takes form. For example, red blocks turn into lasers, blue blocks turn into shields (which protect any other blocks it’s touching) and green blocks turn into little drill minions that can be shot at your opponent’s tower. In addition, there are three other types of blocks with different attack qualities. As you drop similarly coloured blocks around weapons you’ve created, they will grow to potentially enormous sizes, increasing their ability to withstand and dole out damage. One addition that impressed me a lot was the 'block rearranger,' which allows you to change the position of blocks that you've dropped. Its helping hand takes you out of the combat experience for a minute or so, so there's a pro and a con to using it, which makes perfect sense.
Unlike in Tetris, blocks aren’t just given to you continuously throughout each battle. You have to earn them by defeating tons of airborne enemies who randomly appear at the top of the screen through hand-to-hand combat combos. The basic minion enemies vary in colour, representing each type of coloured block or potential weapon. Their demise results in a new block for you to use to build your towering war machine. On top of the basic minions, there are larger (and more powerful) enemies who will come to visit you, including gargoyles and ninjas. Gargoyles pack a much more powerful punch with their heavy hammers, whereas ninjas represent the game’s special enemy, giving the player who beats them a special power-up. These power-ups range from a powerful comet attack to the ability to steal an opponent’s weapon and a gigantic wrench that will repair your towers. Power-ups become very handy and can turn the tide of a battle, but they only last for a short period of time, provided that you keep your character alive.
Both your chosen character and your opponent(s) (1 vs. 2 or 3 and team battles are available,) have a limited amount of health. If this bar of life is drained, then you have to wait a certain amount of time to respawn, thus giving your opponent(s) a chance to take the blocks that you were holding and to defeat all of the enemies that have shown up. Timed button presses are required for faster respawns. This creates an interesting dynamic, as it sometimes becomes a tactic to take the other avatar out in order to steal their stuff or just have a break. Luckily, the developers added a block button, which protects you from pretty much anything, by placing a bubble around your avatar. This is very helpful when an opponent is attacking you because, if you block long enough, they’ll sometimes forget about you.
Upon selecting the campaign option at the main menu, you are greeted with a rotating map, showing different types of areas such as a volcano, city and icy mountains. Each location contains one or two levels or challenges, which unlock as you progress. This campaign allows for local multiplayer and primarily consists of battles against one opponent, though there are three decent boss battles as well. There are also special one-off levels with unique objectives such as having to defeat your opponent while you have two towers hanging over a volcano’s core on a weighted scale. In this mode, you have to make sure to add even amounts of blocks to each scale and are also forced to continually clear ember that will harden around your blocks when the volcano occasionally erupts around you. It’s an interesting twist to the game, albeit a bit too chaotic at times. This level is a perfect example of the grand amount of creativity Fire Hose implemented into the experience, but is also a good example of one of the game's major drawbacks: its chaos. On just about any difficulty, some portions of the game are just too busy for their own good, forcing players to worry about too much at once. It's more stressful than fun. Luckily, these sections are few and far between.
Unfortunately, the campaign doesn’t last a long period of time. You could beat it within a couple of hours, especially if you choose the casual difficulty option. There are four difficulties, which potentially add length for players who like to 100% games, but most people will only play through it once or twice. The variety in game modes was impressive and I liked that hidden levels presented themselves occasionally (such as a mega blocks level where you can create gigantic weapons,) but there just wasn’t enough content overall. As you complete levels and defeat bosses, you unlock new things such as battle mode maps and hats (to customize characters with.) The unlockables you earn depend on how well you do on a specific stage, so some people will find fun in trying to unlock everything by completing all of the challenges for unlockables. That’s not something that interested me much, though.
The game’s two tutorial missions do a pretty good job of setting you up for what the campaign will throw at you. However, I was disappointed by the lack of descriptions for each mode. Instead of being able to read what you have to do in each new game type, you are forced to try to figure it out on your own, which can be a bit annoying at times, resulting in the need to restart a level or two. It’s something so basic that you’d expect it to be included, so I found it odd that they overlooked it. Luckily, the game is easy to understand for the most part.
In addition to the game’s brief campaign, you can select a secondary mode known as battle mode. This is where you can set up personalized skirmishes, by selecting teams (or 1 vs. 2,) your favourite map and the type of weapons you’d like to use. It’s nice that they allowed you to set up your own games. Multiplayer is also available through this section of the game, though there is no online multiplayer, which is a huge drawback. It’s too bad, because it really could have improved the game and would’ve turned a ho-hum battle mode into a fun online experience. At least four player (competitive and cooperative) multiplayer was included, which allows couch combatants to battle each other. It's just too bad that such a great seliing feature as online multiplayer was omitted.
Graphics:
Slam Bolt Scrappers features a cartoony visual style, which employs some cell shading. It’s a very colourful design that lends itself well to the style of gameplay it presents, and adds some character to the experience. I liked the use of colour in relation to the different types of weapons you could create, as well as the variety within each level’s backdrops. It was also nice to have creative types of avatars to use, with basic customization, though these options were very limited. Though the visual style looks decent, it’s missing a wow factor and is not something that will leave a memorable impression on you. Still, for an independently developed game, it looks quite good.
Audio:
The audio within this downloadable title is quite basic. In addition to a very basic and forgettable original score, the game features several different sound effects. Each of these sound effects represents a different type of weapon, melee combat move or environmental catastrophe. I liked the variety in the sound effects, but found that they were also quite basic. The experience would have benefitted if the developers would’ve infused the audio with a lot more character, to try to tie in with the cartoony and colourful experience that they created. That would have made the game much more immersive, interesting and entertaining.
Conclusion:
Though it’s quite unique and does a good job of mixing different genres together into one game, Slam Bolt Scrappers is a ho-hum experience. There are some really strong elements and good ideas implemented, but its campaign is very brief with little replay value. The inclusion of online multiplayer battles would have made the game a much more robust and engaging experience, adding length and interest. It’s too bad that the developers omitted this capability because the game screams for the opportunity to battle against your PlayStation Network friends. If you’re looking for an interesting new puzzle game, then there is definitely some fun to be had, though it’s a frustrating and lacking experience overall.
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Friday, July 8, 2011
Free online games and computer games
I am somewhat of an professional on obtaining free on the web games and no cost laptop or computer games online. I, myself, have been dabbling with computer systems and laptop or computer games because I was twelve years old. These days, aside from playing totally free on the web games and pc games I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), twice more than. I am also certified by Cisco twice more than as a Cisco Certified Network Administrator (or CCNA.) I have enjoyed playing totally free on the web games and personal computer games ever given that I could keep in mind seeing computer games. In my time, you could not find free on the web games, but you could buy personal computer games – you generally visited an arcade to play pinball, or play some of the video games of the time. Read ON…I AM GOING TO Show YOU HOW TO Uncover, DOWNLOAD, AND PLAY No cost On the web GAMES AND Personal computer GAMES – MOST ANY GAME THAT YOU WANT TO!!!
Though no cost on-line games came later, I 1st played computer games when I was introduced to the Atari 400 and the Atari 800 Systems, and the Commodore 64 personal computer. I was playing pc games like “Archon”, “Dungeons and Dragons”, “Abuse”, “Pooyan”, and a handful of other people of which I cannot don’t forget! Apple Computers also had a small computer that played computer games manufactured for the Apple Pc method, but I did not delve as well far into the Apple globe of personal computer games.
When I was introduced to Individual Computers (PC’s) I quickly saw the prospective of wherever computer systems could take video and pc games. Again, this was before free of charge online games. I was enjoying games like “Doom”, “Diablo”, “Tomb Raider”, “Myst”, “Mech Warrior”, and even “Leisure Suit Larry”. (Actually, free of charge on-line games and computer games have been then just becoming accessible on the web.)
Add to that the incredible current technological explosions in the globe of computer systems, and the Web, and free on the web games and personal computer games become even a lot more sophisticated and awesome!!! For free on the web games and pc games, with a lot more potent computers, and the Net, plus newer and much better computer game controls and monitors, you can get pleasure from no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games across high bandwidth connections no cost on the internet games and laptop or computer games such as “Counter Strike”, and so numerous other people. (I have not personally kept up with the most recent and greatest free online games and laptop or computer games, for all platforms, but I am stocking the GPFT Free of charge Area with free on-line games and personal computer games continuously!)
I sooner or later learned how to uncover and download free online games and laptop or computer games, practically any no cost on the internet game and personal computer game that you can feel of, all for Totally free. You can locate both the newest and classic no cost online games, pc games, Computer computer games, XBox, WII, Playstation, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo games, all on the internet. Considerably of what you can uncover on the Internet in terms of free on-line games and personal computer games is either “freeware”, or “shareware” but, some of what you can find are legitimate copies of complete version personal computer games. Downloading, installing, and playing no cost online games and personal computer games and computer software that you did not buy is occasionally illegal!
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Computer systems and personal computer computer software have each evolved, and continue to evolve, and no cost on-line games and personal computer games are broadly offered on the World wide web. There are two well-known approaches to receive totally free on the web games and pc games: through a peer-to-peer file sharing plan like Morpheus and Limewire. You can download Morpheus, Limewire, and a quantity of other peer-to-peer file sharing applications Totally free, and either upload and/or download no cost on the web games and pc games for almost all of the platforms out there.
A Better way to download and play free on-line games and computer games, and even console games, is to download what is known as a “torrent client program”. The moment you have a torrent client set up, you can check out any quantity of “torrent net sites” – web internet sites that mostly home no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games as torrent files. Just do a search on the Internet for totally free on-line games and pc games, and add the word “torrents” and download no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games.
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Though no cost on-line games came later, I 1st played computer games when I was introduced to the Atari 400 and the Atari 800 Systems, and the Commodore 64 personal computer. I was playing pc games like “Archon”, “Dungeons and Dragons”, “Abuse”, “Pooyan”, and a handful of other people of which I cannot don’t forget! Apple Computers also had a small computer that played computer games manufactured for the Apple Pc method, but I did not delve as well far into the Apple globe of personal computer games.
When I was introduced to Individual Computers (PC’s) I quickly saw the prospective of wherever computer systems could take video and pc games. Again, this was before free of charge online games. I was enjoying games like “Doom”, “Diablo”, “Tomb Raider”, “Myst”, “Mech Warrior”, and even “Leisure Suit Larry”. (Actually, free of charge on-line games and computer games have been then just becoming accessible on the web.)
Add to that the incredible current technological explosions in the globe of computer systems, and the Web, and free on the web games and personal computer games become even a lot more sophisticated and awesome!!! For free on the web games and pc games, with a lot more potent computers, and the Net, plus newer and much better computer game controls and monitors, you can get pleasure from no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games across high bandwidth connections no cost on the internet games and laptop or computer games such as “Counter Strike”, and so numerous other people. (I have not personally kept up with the most recent and greatest free online games and laptop or computer games, for all platforms, but I am stocking the GPFT Free of charge Area with free on-line games and personal computer games continuously!)
I sooner or later learned how to uncover and download free online games and laptop or computer games, practically any no cost on the internet game and personal computer game that you can feel of, all for Totally free. You can locate both the newest and classic no cost online games, pc games, Computer computer games, XBox, WII, Playstation, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo games, all on the internet. Considerably of what you can uncover on the Internet in terms of free on-line games and personal computer games is either “freeware”, or “shareware” but, some of what you can find are legitimate copies of complete version personal computer games. Downloading, installing, and playing no cost online games and personal computer games and computer software that you did not buy is occasionally illegal!
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So, how do you locate and download no cost online games and personal computer games? It utilized to be that you could attend user groups and exchange totally free on-line games and personal computer games. This was a great way to beef up your personal computer games collection. You could also often find free online games and computer games on BBS’s (Electronic Bulletin Board systems). These were a couple of approaches you could get laptop or computer games devoid of getting to buy them!
Computer systems and personal computer computer software have each evolved, and continue to evolve, and no cost on-line games and personal computer games are broadly offered on the World wide web. There are two well-known approaches to receive totally free on the web games and pc games: through a peer-to-peer file sharing plan like Morpheus and Limewire. You can download Morpheus, Limewire, and a quantity of other peer-to-peer file sharing applications Totally free, and either upload and/or download no cost on the web games and pc games for almost all of the platforms out there.
A Better way to download and play free on-line games and computer games, and even console games, is to download what is known as a “torrent client program”. The moment you have a torrent client set up, you can check out any quantity of “torrent net sites” – web internet sites that mostly home no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games as torrent files. Just do a search on the Internet for totally free on-line games and pc games, and add the word “torrents” and download no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games.
This net internet site, Green Planet Fantasy Theater, maintains an ever-expanding collection of no cost on-line games and laptop or computer games. Click Right here and Examine Out Our Free Area Where You Can Download Totally free On the internet Games and Computer Games Today!!!
For far more on this article plus other excellent “how to” articles, pay a visit to Totally free online games, or, PSP and XBox 360 games. Also download DVD Films, Music Collections, Games, Books, Computer software, and Adult XXX Movies, Videos, and Pc Games Free.
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Thursday, July 7, 2011
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon review
It's not that it's a failure. I can see what Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon wants to be: A mindless, explosive shooting gallery. I can also see that it does a pretty good job of meeting that goal. It's mindless, stuff explodes, there's shooting. Top marks all around.
But no matter how I tried to see the brighter side of this basically good-hearted game, I couldn't shake an inescapable truth: This is dumb, and you deserve better.Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (E3 2011)You're a member of Strike Force Lightning (yes, it's called that) and you have to kill a lot of giant bugs and alien spaceships that are wreaking havoc in Neo New York New Detroit. Every level is in an expansive, almost completely destructible cityscape, but your goals won't vary too much throughout the game. "Walk over here", "kill these bugs" and "blow up this bug hole" is pretty much the extent of this third-person shooter's gameplay vocabulary.
That said, "kill these bugs" is a shockingly large umbrella. You can kill the bugs with four different types of soldiers, ranging in mobility, attack strength and abilities. You kill them with a wide array of weapons, from assault rifles to grenade launchers -- an array that will get even wider as you gain experience, improving your abilities and arsenal. You can even bring a couple of online or couch co-op buddies into the fight with you, playing through the campaign or a Horde-like survival mode.
And none of it means a god-damned thing. Because no matter what you're firing and who you're firing with, you're still just leaning on the right trigger until the voice in your head tells you you don't have to any more. Maybe the bugs explode in a gooey mess a little earlier or later than they otherwise would have, and maybe you have some people to talk to while you do it. But as long as you keep on that trigger and don't let up until the giant bugs die, you'll eventually prevail. Or not. It doesn't matter.
I had to make my peace with this pretty early on. Losing all your health means having to wait on a revival from a teammate. Whether or not they had the health to get to me and revive me depended on how long it'd been since they themselves had been revived, which I had no control over. In essence, whether or not we lost the mission was random. This wouldn't be so troubling if there were any checkpoints whatsoever in the often 20-minute-long levels.
The first few times I had to re-experience 20 minutes of drudgery, I was infuriated, until I realized that I was caring about it far more than the game was. As far as Insect Armageddon was concerned, I had been shooting bugs before I died and I was shooting bugs after, so what was the problem? This ambivalence to all things not directly related to bug murder is carried through right to the finale, when there's no climax, no denouement, not even any frigging credits. The bug killing just stops, and then you're kicked back to level select so you can kill some more stuff.
The only times my pulse even approached pounding was when I killed particularly large bug aliens or their ships, and even that excitement was generated by the sheer scale of my opponent. To put it another way, the height of Insect Armageddon's sophistication is when it prods whatever ancient holdover in my brain kept my caveman ancestors away from dinosaurs. What's that? Cavemen never co-existed with dinosaurs? Sorry, I don't know that because this dumb game has turned me into a big dumb idiot.
Even that thrill of fighting a giant creature had plenty of time to wear off as every large enemy has a comically large amount of health, turning set piece battles into cramp-inducing slogs.
There is a place for action games that aren't particularly cerebral (what's up, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand?) but they do still have to have some semblance of game design. Earth Defense Force 2017 is no master class in game theory, but there's a genuine B-movie charm buoying the proceedings. Here, that's replaced with calculated, charmless badness. ("I'm liveblogging this whole thing, and my hits are through the roof!" exclaims one soldier, as I frantically search the classifieds section of my local paper for any career other than my own.)
If a dramatic film took the Insect Armageddon approach, it would feature only two hours of a woman crying next to a hospital bed as violins played. Sports movies would basically just be Kevin Costner catching baseballs and repeatedly shouting "Baseball!" Porn would be ... well, porn would be pretty much the same.
It's an apt comparison. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is extermination porn, free of narrative, compelling gameplay or anything other than highly murderable bugs, aliens and alien bugs.
This is normally the part of the review where I'd say "But if you just want to shut your brain off and shoot some bugs, then -- blah, blah, blah" but it would just be too insulting in this case. Even the most brainless of braindead fare can aim higher than this rat-hitting-the-feeder-bar inanity. You deserve better.
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But no matter how I tried to see the brighter side of this basically good-hearted game, I couldn't shake an inescapable truth: This is dumb, and you deserve better.Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (E3 2011)You're a member of Strike Force Lightning (yes, it's called that) and you have to kill a lot of giant bugs and alien spaceships that are wreaking havoc in Neo New York New Detroit. Every level is in an expansive, almost completely destructible cityscape, but your goals won't vary too much throughout the game. "Walk over here", "kill these bugs" and "blow up this bug hole" is pretty much the extent of this third-person shooter's gameplay vocabulary.
That said, "kill these bugs" is a shockingly large umbrella. You can kill the bugs with four different types of soldiers, ranging in mobility, attack strength and abilities. You kill them with a wide array of weapons, from assault rifles to grenade launchers -- an array that will get even wider as you gain experience, improving your abilities and arsenal. You can even bring a couple of online or couch co-op buddies into the fight with you, playing through the campaign or a Horde-like survival mode.
And none of it means a god-damned thing. Because no matter what you're firing and who you're firing with, you're still just leaning on the right trigger until the voice in your head tells you you don't have to any more. Maybe the bugs explode in a gooey mess a little earlier or later than they otherwise would have, and maybe you have some people to talk to while you do it. But as long as you keep on that trigger and don't let up until the giant bugs die, you'll eventually prevail. Or not. It doesn't matter.
I had to make my peace with this pretty early on. Losing all your health means having to wait on a revival from a teammate. Whether or not they had the health to get to me and revive me depended on how long it'd been since they themselves had been revived, which I had no control over. In essence, whether or not we lost the mission was random. This wouldn't be so troubling if there were any checkpoints whatsoever in the often 20-minute-long levels.
The first few times I had to re-experience 20 minutes of drudgery, I was infuriated, until I realized that I was caring about it far more than the game was. As far as Insect Armageddon was concerned, I had been shooting bugs before I died and I was shooting bugs after, so what was the problem? This ambivalence to all things not directly related to bug murder is carried through right to the finale, when there's no climax, no denouement, not even any frigging credits. The bug killing just stops, and then you're kicked back to level select so you can kill some more stuff.
The only times my pulse even approached pounding was when I killed particularly large bug aliens or their ships, and even that excitement was generated by the sheer scale of my opponent. To put it another way, the height of Insect Armageddon's sophistication is when it prods whatever ancient holdover in my brain kept my caveman ancestors away from dinosaurs. What's that? Cavemen never co-existed with dinosaurs? Sorry, I don't know that because this dumb game has turned me into a big dumb idiot.
Even that thrill of fighting a giant creature had plenty of time to wear off as every large enemy has a comically large amount of health, turning set piece battles into cramp-inducing slogs.
There is a place for action games that aren't particularly cerebral (what's up, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand?) but they do still have to have some semblance of game design. Earth Defense Force 2017 is no master class in game theory, but there's a genuine B-movie charm buoying the proceedings. Here, that's replaced with calculated, charmless badness. ("I'm liveblogging this whole thing, and my hits are through the roof!" exclaims one soldier, as I frantically search the classifieds section of my local paper for any career other than my own.)
If a dramatic film took the Insect Armageddon approach, it would feature only two hours of a woman crying next to a hospital bed as violins played. Sports movies would basically just be Kevin Costner catching baseballs and repeatedly shouting "Baseball!" Porn would be ... well, porn would be pretty much the same.
It's an apt comparison. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is extermination porn, free of narrative, compelling gameplay or anything other than highly murderable bugs, aliens and alien bugs.
This is normally the part of the review where I'd say "But if you just want to shut your brain off and shoot some bugs, then -- blah, blah, blah" but it would just be too insulting in this case. Even the most brainless of braindead fare can aim higher than this rat-hitting-the-feeder-bar inanity. You deserve better.
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