Thursday, April 29, 2010

The Upcoming Spread - Pre E3

We're at a time in the year when the games from last year have all come out and been finished, and we eagerly await what will be announced at E3 2010. Here's a list of the games that I'm personally keeping an eye on that will be released (hopefully) in the near future.

3D Dot Game Heroes - PS3 5/11/10


3D Dot Game Heroes is a homage to the top down RPG adventure games of the 80's like Zelda and Dragon's Quest. The Graphics are a 3D 8-bit style that keeps the nostalgia alive. Don't expect this game to be a total cake walk, though. This is from the same people who brought us Demon's Souls.


Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands - (Multi) 5/18/10


This marks the first "next-gen" release of Prince of Persia (at least from a Sands of Time perspective), a series that started off strong and became slightly ridiculous. Keep an eye on this one to see how it turns out, especially with Disney putting the movie out this summer.


Alan Wake - Xbox 360 - 5/18/10


Alan Wake has been talked about and previewed for years. So far I'm not impressed by what I've seen, but it still is worth taking a look at, if not just to see it attain the glory that has been thrown at it for 5 years, or the crushing mediocrity that comes from a game that's taken so long to develop.


Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Wii 5/23/10

This follow up to the hit Wii game has some gamers chomping at the bit to play. As somebody who really enjoyed the first one, but was hoping for more, this will be our chance to go back and enjoy the game all over again.


Metal Gear Solid - Peace Walker - PSP 6/8/10


Hideo Kojima brings back Big Boss in this Metal Gear Solid game set in 70's. This one is trying to stand out from other MGS games on the PSP by being labeled as an official part of the story and MGS lore. Look for weird twists and barely comprehensible (but truly enjoyable) story in June.


That will take us through May and starting into June and hitting all of the major consoles, wait, there's nothing there for the DS? Alright, let's go a little bit more forward in time for the DS fans.


Puzzle Quest 2 - DS - 6/22/10


If you didn't try out Puzzle Quest on either the DS, Xbox Live Arcade, PSP, OR PC, then shame on you. Puzzle Quest 2 is the sequel to the surprise hit mash of RPG and Puzzle game and comes highly recommended. Cancel your summer starting June 22nd.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Heavy Rain Review

Heavy Rain is one of those games that is going to be very hard to review without spoiling things, but I'm going to take a crack at it here.

I like suspense / drama in movies, but it hasn't ever really translated across into a game for me before. At least, not like it did in Heavy Rain. The game sets you up to care about the characters, and I did. The game places the characters into impossibly bad situations, and I watched and helped them make choices. I always wanted to know what was going to happen next, and I kept playing until it was over and I got my ending.

My ending? Yes, it was the ending that I deserved, and feel very satisfied in earning. After beating the game, I went online to visit forums to see what other people had happen to them. Some people had very similar endings to mine, but some key parts were different. They had made different choices and decisions about how they played the game that put them up to that point. Some people had lost characters through their action or inaction. Some people had people live that I did not. Some people posted about experiences that I could relate to, and some people posted about experiences that I had no idea that could happen.

I very much admire the work that went into this game. That's not to say that it doesn't have its flaws. There's a couple of plot holes that don't make a bit of sense in the scheme of things, and one giant one that they never explain and seems that they hope you just forget about. Moving around was a bit awkward, and I found trouble with figuring out when I needed to hold a button or press a button, or tap a button repeatedly in stressful conditions. This probably needs an example for people who haven't played it, when your character is faced with a stressful condition, their actions appear onscreen shaking and jumping around. It's hard to tell when the X button appears shaking if you need to press it repeatedly (which would appear as a pulsing button) or if you need to hold it down (which appears as a button with a small arrow like pointer in it.

Game play itself plays like a quick time event movie. It flows extremely well from success to failure, and it allows you failures, or to try again, up to a point where you either run out of time, or have made too many failures. At that point, depending on what's going on, you may be in danger of losing your character. There is no save and reload from right before and let you take another crack at it (although I will admit to being guilty of shutting off the system at one of these points that I could just not figure out). Once the game saves (which it does often) you are stuck with whatever happened. If you lose a character, the other three will carry on the story without them.

This system makes for some truly stressful moments in the game. When a gun is pointed at you, and you know that if you make the wrong decision, it could be your last, you really feel it. This is exceptionally well done. At one point after having talked down a crazy man with a gun, the character on screen and I both were rubbing our foreheads being glad to have just gotten through that alive.

I can't recommend giving this game a try enough. I really hope to see more out of this studio like this (and not like Indigo Prophecy, from what I hear). I truly believe this game is the next step in interactive story telling, and while it may not be for everyone, those that like that sort of thing, will love this game.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

God of War 3 Review

After I finished Final Fantasy, I set out to play God of War 3. I finished it after a week of play, and overall I think it was an awesome game that they didn't know how to end.

The game is gorgeous and very detailed. There's cut scenes, but its all done with the in game engine and graphics. Despite having such a high amount of detail on individual characters, most of the time it didn't matter because the camera is so far pulled away. It doesn't matter if Kratos has a muscle structure if he's just a dot on the screen. So I felt that a lot of the detail got lost in the overall presentation.

If this shot was closer, you could see some nice detail on his armor

GoW3 starts off very strong. That's no surprise considering that the studio revealed in GoW2 that they create the first level last so they can bring an intensity and get everything that you can do in the game all in the first level. Once you're past that and dumped into the second level, it feels cheap by comparison.

The boss fights and sequences are the hallmark for GoW, and this one did not disappoint in any way. All of the fights were well done and interesting and felt unique from each other. When asked which one was my favorite, I would probably lean towards the Poseidon fight, because it was the one with the most interesting phases of the fight, making you switch how you were fighting the boss.

The weapons were mostly useful this time, instead of being the same tool swinging a different way that we ran into in the previous installments. I was a bit disappointed with the way that the Claws of Hades and the Nemesis whip behaved, as they acted like the Blades of Exile with different spells attached to them, but the bow, head, boots, sword, and cestus were able to be employed in so many different ways, it was fun switching between them (and I especially liked the cestus).

My only real gripe is going to be the ending. Without spoiling what happens, it feels like they didn't know how to wrap everything up, and the first two phases of the final boss were let downs compared to how the rest of the bosses were. The third phase was largely cosmetic (although a lot of fun), but it doesn't have the grandness that I felt it deserved. Then at the end, it doesn't explain what Athena was doing, or how she was even in existence other than she had become something more. Why not build on that? What had she become? Instead, we get the ending of self sacrifice that ends up meaning nothing after the end credits roll.

Overall, awesome game that didn't know how to tie up the story at the end. Oh, and Kratos, when you go off to kill the gods of Olympus, it doesn't look good when you make exceptions just because one's good in the sack. Stick to your goals, man!

That is some amazing detail on Kratos in this shot.



Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Rise of the Eldrazi Pre-Release - Top 5 Cards to bring it home

This weekend is the Magic: The Gathering pre-release for their next set, Rise of the Eldrazi. I've been watching the previews of the cards come up and really trying to figure out what I'm going to be playing. This will be my third pre-release, and I'm certainly not the greatest sealed player, so I was trying to follow the basic rules of drafting removal and avoidance, but there's not a whole lot of removal here when you factor in that everybody will be able to run a big creature.

So here's the top 5 cards that I'm looking for in my packs this weekend, sorted by rarity

#5 The Common - Soul's Attendant



There's nothing quite as good as a 1 drop that potentially helps you through the entire game. My thoughts are that this card is going to be ignored by an opponent with removal because they know they have a big baddie, and they know you have a big baddie, so they're not going to waste removal on something like a few life a turn. Hopefully combined with those Eldrazi tokens, it'll be more than just a few life.

#4 The Uncommon - Joraga Treespeaker


It was a tough decision between this one and the Pelakka Wurm, but in a race for mana, this one is going to win by a long shot. Turn one you drop a forest and this, turn two you drop a second land, and level it up. If you have a land to drop on turn three, you have 5 mana to do whatever you want with which is going to be enough to put things into your favor.

#3 The Rare - Mul Daya Channelers


For the cost of 1GG and letting your opponent know what your next card is, you either get mana ramp, or a 5/5 creature. I honestly think this is one of the best cards in the set, period.

#2 The Mythic - Linvala, Keeper of Silence


I had a bit of a tough time narrowing this one down. Seeing how many creatures have activated abilities (like leveling), and her relative inexpensive cost, plus flying, this sounds like the one to pick.

#1 Any Eldrazi that you can find


This release is going to be about who can get their bomb out first. Grab the mana ramp cards, find some removal, maybe some totem armor for protection, and plop down the biggest fastest thing you can afford and just keep attacking.

My plan is to do green and whatever else I have that's good and try to hold cards to remove threats, ramp up mana, and then drop a bomb. This can all change, of course, depending on what's in my packs, and I'm sure with what's in yours. Good luck to everybody this weekend in getting what you're looking for, and mostly in having a good time with your friends.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Ending Final Fantasy 13 - Final Review

I don't really know where to start with this one. I finished Final Fantasy 13 tonight after 46 hours of play, but it doesn't feel like I actually finished it. It feels like I made it up to the last boss that you think is the last boss, but ends up revealing themselves to be a puppet of another. And even then, that kind of happened, I think... I'm a bit confused by the whole thing.

Many of the things that I was hoping would pan out never did. The weapon upgrades never mattered. The leveling system was a grind. The entire game was essentially a straight line, with the exception of a large expanse of land on Gran Pulse that I asusme I'm meant to go back to now that I've finished the game. And why would I go back? Well, there's a good chunk of achievements that you seemingly can only get after you beat the game. You don't even get your full crystal expanses until right before the end credits.

I used to say that for a game to be a Final Fantasy game, it needs to have airships, chocobos, moogles, summons, and a guy named Cid. While each one of those things were in this game, they felt like they were added on so that they could call this a Final Fantasy. The summons in particular felt pretty worthless the entire game, and you could only summon your leader's summon. That felt pretty silly to me.

So this doesn't sound all negative, there's a lot of things that they did right. Not having to heal up between battles was more than welcome, as was there not being any need to watch magic points or running out of spells at crucial moments. The combat felt great, and I enjoyed the paradigm system, though again, I wish I could have swapped to other characters if even only for a moment to make sure something went off the way I wanted it to.

It was an okay story on top of a great combat system, with a forgettable "world". That part right there is probably my biggest complaint. Give me a world to go explore, not just fragments of it. I really missed the towns and shops you could go to, and not one person that I found told me that they were a dancer.

In the end, I would probably recommend this game to my friends. It kept me interested and just as one thing was getting repetitive, in comes a new area with new enemies and new challenges. I look forward to seeing what comes next from this franchise, and hope that they take the plan that they set up here and expand it to a more global scale.

And let me fly the god damned air ship. Seriously.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Single player or Divorce Mode?

I have a gamer for a wife. She's not a hardcore gamer by any means, but she supports me when I want a new console, she plays whatever my latest tabletop obsession is with me, she loves games like Geeks: The Convention, Uno, or King's Blood, and can be left alone for hours playing Sims 3.

This past weekend I had a strong desire to play some Super Mario Bros Wii, and when I couldn't get four people together to play it, I opted for playing some Co-op with the Mrs. We charged up our Wiimotes, and sat down to pick up a game that we had already started a few weeks back. About 30 minutes later I turned off the system, knowing that I was not going to be able to do that again. Ever.

You see, family oriented Co-Op games like this have two modes. There's the single player, where you run and jump and item collect and explore exactly how you want to play the game, and there's a second mode cleverly masked as "2 Player Mode", hereafter referred to as its true name, "Divorce Mode".

I am treading carefully here, as my lovely wife reads this blog, and trying to say that two people who love each other just cannot cooperate to overcome game obstacles. Oh sure, you can get through the first few levels, usually the first full area with somebody who rarely picks up a controller. But past that, these games become infested with small platforms, timed jumps, and precision moving that create perfect fight conditions.

It's not that either of us are bad at the game, we just have different priorities. She gets killed by a stray hammer while I'm trying to get into a pipe on top of the level. I learn to adjust a tilt beam, but send her vaulting down a hole because I made her miss the jump. We die four times to poor jumping and instead of avoiding the area, she wants to keep doing it because she's a completionist whereas I would rather move on to the next section. She won't understand why we're repeating the same castle area over again, and when I die trying to show her what we need to do, I become a back-seat gamer (and nobody likes a back seat gamer).

We had the same kind of issue when we played Little Big Planet together. We both want to find stickers and are forced to work together to get some of them, but if she wants to go left and I want to go right, a misplaced jump can kill either or both of us. And as the levels grew more difficult, the frustration of having to keep together in sync became impossible to keep up with. And if there's a timer involved? Forget it.

I blame the developers on this one, creating cute fun worlds that appeal to everyone without thinking about our marriages. I think before anybody puts out a co-op game, they should take it home and play with their spouse, or mom, or little sister, or something besides somebody else who understands the game concept. Do they get it? Can they keep up with you? Are you being a back seat gamer? Did you end up sleeping on the couch?

On the other hand, maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe I need to use these cute worlds and talk of co-op play in order to be able to buy a game I want. After you sit down and beat the first level together, the wife is happy that you've spent some time together, and goes off to do more important things, like watch the latest episode of Lost, while you can get into the real meat of the game... hmm, I take it all back, that's pretty genius of them.

Friday, April 2, 2010

My MTG life / Impressions of Rise of the Eldrazi

About a 15 years ago I picked up my first Magic starter. It was a pack of revised, and my first rare was an Island Fish Jaconius.

Pretty crappy, even in its day, but I didn't know that. All I knew was it was rare, and it was 6/8, and it was awesome because of that. I played Magic with friends in high school, and quit the day a chunk of my collection (including my newly aquired Gauntlet of Might) was stolen. I sold off most of my cards, those that I couldn't sell then, I hung onto until my early 20's when I found a shop who bought the rest of my collection.

I moved on to other table top games, but as I got older and got more responsibilities thrust upon me, I found that I didn't really have the time to play these games that take hours and hours to play a single round. That's when I saw that Wizards was putting a version of Magic on the Xbox. In a bit of nostalgia, I downloaded it and learned how to play Magic again.

Other friends had fallen under the same allure. Similar stories, played for awhile back in high school or college, but quit when the game lost its community, or a collection vanished. We enjoyed playing online enough that we asked "When does the next set come out?". That's how we started playing M2010.

Fast forward to today. We've been playing every set as it hits, and suffering to the old Jund and Bant style of decks (which I just recently learned only meant what colors were being played, not what was necessarily in the deck, though every Jund deck looks the same to me). We kept up, and while we didn't always win, we would provide some competition (maybe sometime next week I'll post my current favorite deck). And now we have the newest set coming out in just a few weeks, Rise of the Eldrazi.

I've been keeping a close eye on my favorite blog for Magic, Gathering Magic, who has spoiled about 1/4 of the set. The key things that I'm seeing are the giant Eldrazi creatures, ways to bring those Eldrazi out easier (sacrificing a creature for mana for example) and leveling type path.

I've never been a big fan of "big creature", but I've got to admit, these Eldrazi are cool. The cards look great, the flavor feels awesome, and they're going to smash up whatever they come up against. My biggest concern with them is that they're almost exclusively going to be brought out with gimicks, and while I don't have any problem with that and am actually planning a few of my own, I'm worried that gimicks won't be able to hold up to the very aggressive style decks that we're seeing right now. I see that the Eldrazi have the capability to do well against some decks (mine, for example), but I just don't think they're going to have the speed necessary to compete, at least until the alara blocks leave tournament play.

The other option to bringing these massive creatures out are with hardcasting them using different tricks to build up a large mana pool. We've seen some of these in the Eye of Ugin, and the new Eldrazi tokens, but I think we're going to need to see some other ways to play with these cards or at least survive in the early game, or the whole thing will have trouble standing on its feet.

The last bit that we've seen of the RoE set is the leveling system. So far, I'm very unimpressed by it. Sure, there's some neat cards that can fit into any archetype deck (Joraga Treespeaker, I'm looking at you), but where's all this mana coming from? Games end in 6 - 7 turns, and most of these cards will never make it past level 1 with all of the removal in the game.

So what I'm really hoping for the set is that we haven't seen everything it has to offer yet. I'm really hoping we're going to see more ways to bring more mana to the pool, and be able to bring out these larger creatures that look like a lot of fun to play with. C'mon Wizards, wow me.