John's Random Review

Alan Wake was one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time.  The story was an actual story.  Well, it was really a story about a story, in the form of a game about a story.

A lot of companies have tried to do some kind of “episodic” game, and of any, I think this game could have actually pulled it off if it had been released that way.

The game was set up as several distinct “episodes”, that had a setup of “Previously, on Alan Wake…” and then re-told important parts of the previous chapters.  It was a fantastic way to get you back into the game when you start a new chapter.

As the game went on, the episodes got longer and longer, so it wasn’t as episodic as the first few.  Every time I thought “this is going to be the end of this episode,” it just kept going.  And partway through, I thought I had part of the story figured out based on something a character said, but the story totally went another way.  I really enjoyed finding pages of the manuscript, which explained little things in the story that were happening or were “shadows” (pun intended!) of things to come.

Gameplay wise, it was different than almost anything I’ve ever played.  For most of the game, you have 2 weapons: a flashlight, and a gun of some kind.  And yes, the flashlight is a weapon!  This might also be the first time that a game had a flare gun that was truly truly useful.  It was like the game’s equivalent of a rocket launcher, and it was fun to use!

The story completely set up DLC and a sequel, so this is another sequel I’ll be excited for!

The game begins in disappointment: you’re forced to install a console game.  So before I can even do anything, I’m forced to wait 8 minutes.  Great initial experience there.

During the install I’m forced to watch a dude on screen chain smoke the whole time.  Some of the “hints” it gave during this install (emphasis/commentary added):

• konami is not responsible for any damage resulting from misuse (misuse of what?)
• this game is intended for use exclusively with the PLAYSTATION3 system. (no crap, really? is that why its only available on the PS3? where else would I play it?)
• cigarette smoke has detrimental effects to you and those around you, particularly infants and children.
• put litter in its place.  dispose of ashes in ashtrays.
• ensure that you play in a brightly lit room and sit as far away from the screen as possible (except sony makes this impossible, as I need to charge my ps3 controller, and the cord they give you for that is like 3’ long, and apparently the controller only charges if the PS3 is on!)
• avoid playing when you are tired
• be sure to take a 15-minute break every half hour
• if you begin to feel ill, stop playing immediately

THANKS MOM, for the life coaching while waiting for your game to install.

I’m really hoping that smoking is an integral part of the game now.

[72 hours later, waiting for install #2 to complete…so I’ll post more. Yes, this makes 11 minutes of install time now.]

The second install also features the life coaching that the first install did. Nice.

I wouldn’t call smoking an integral part of the game, I’d almost call it a character. Mr. Cigarette appears all over the place, as a usable item, as a major plot point in most cut-scenes. There’s even a cigarette smoking monkey. That’s just awesome.

Another very strange thing is that whenever you start the game, before anything else you get an empty black screen with the standard console “this game uses autosave, so don’t unplug your console while its saving” message.  You have to press X before you even get to  the title screen.  This occurs every time you start the game.  Lame.

The game is also more like a soap opera with an interactive video game between scenes.  Every time you move into a new area, you get a phone call from someone.  A general, your psychologist, your friend’s former fiancé.  There’s a drama about how the colonel is the father of one of the female protagonists, but she grew up thinking he was her uncle, and now he’s married to your shrink, who calls you when you’re stressed out on the battlefield…

[And another hour or so in, I gave up on it.  There are just too many other good games to play, and MGS4:GotP just isn’t my style right now.]

While Torchlight has been available for the PC for a long (long!) time, it just came out last week on Xbox 360 as an arcade game.  And it is a great game!  It’s probably the best value for an Xbox live arcade game so far.  I can’t believe how much stuff they fit into that ~400 meg download!

It wasn’t the best story ever, but I thought the story made more sense than Borderlands!  The side quests were ok, but I think I “broke” some by going through the area and doing something before I got the quest for it.  There were other things where I swear I scoured the whole level, and the thing that was supposed to be there wasn’t there.  And I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time looking when there was so much other stuff to do.

The controls were pretty good for a PC to Xbox port, although I think some things, like inventory management, could have been simplified.  I accidentally sold or equipped things lots of times because the selection outline and the equipped outline were very similar at first glance.  The text in some areas still seemed to be set up for a PC as well, with a really small font that only used up a small area at the bottom of the screen, with the torchlight logo covering the other 70%. 

But I can easily overlook any of those nitpicks for this one.  About 3/4 of the way through, I felt like I was cheating.  Once I started getting really good equipment and skills, I was just destroying things.  In most games, as you get stronger, so do the bad guys, so even though you’re now doing 10x the damage at level 10, the bad guys are 10x stronger, so there’s not a lot of difference from level 1.  While that was somewhat true in Torchlight, I felt like my character really was a hero.  Hacking and slashing and fireballing zombies and dragons and such was awesome fun.  I didn’t die until the very last boss monster, as health potions were pretty easy to come by.

The verdict on this one is 100% clear.  Spend the points and buy Torchlight.  The only thing that would be better would be co-op multiplayer, so here’s hoping for that in Torchlight 2. And here’s to double hoping the Xbox port comes sooner for the sequel, with how well it has done in sales!

This is one of the few sequels that doesn’t have a number or subtitle.  It should be something like “Medal of Honor: Tier 1” or something, as the game was mostly following some Tier 1 special forces operators through the storyline.

Like the Call of Duty series, I played through MoH on the hardest difficulty (until I saw the “Tier 1 mode” or whatever that I didn’t go back through and play).  But unlike recent CoD games on hard, I didn’t see any real “bugs” with the “good guy” AI.  And the special forces guys in this game could shoot.  While you, as the player, still have to do the majority of the work, the computer controlled players could at least draw fire and provide cover so that you could flank the bad guys.  So for this game, I don’t have to write a version of my “letter to my idiot squadmates” posts.  The effectiveness of my squad did make the game feel a little easier than CoD, but it did make me feel like a good player on a great team, instead of the great player on a crappy team.   However, the game not being as hard didn’t make the game any less enjoyable.

The scenarios and script of the single player campaign seemed very realistic. In fact, some of it seems to be loosely based on the real life situation that was documented by Marcus Lattrell in his fantastic book Lone Survivor. Some other parts of the game were so engrossing that as things started to unfold, I actually was getting worried.  In one section, you’re fighting your way down an Afghan mountain with a small squad of soldiers, vastly outnumbered by the Taliban.  You’re trying to call in close air support, but things just aren’t working out.  You’re hiding in buildings that are slowly getting destroyed by small arms fire and RPGs, and you continue to fall back.  All the while, your squad-mates are counting down ammo.  Soon, they start firing kill shots only.   Then you start hearing “last mag!” and other not good commentary.  When the radio guy tells command to use the air support to help another group because we’re about to be overrun and it would just be a waste of time… At this point, like my squadmates, I’m also getting very low on ammo, and I’m starting to freak out…back in the real world, on my couch, my heart is racing!

There was also a section where you get to be the gunner in an Apache (my favorite helicopter of all time).  Surprisingly, on the hardest difficulty, I got through it pretty quick, and I was only using the main gun.  When playing through again later on easy to pick up some achievements I missed, I realized that the apache also had rockets, and I never used them on hard!  I died a lot more on that section on easy than I did on hard.  But it sure was fun!  Now someone needs to make a game featuring my favorite airplane of all time, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, aka “The Warthog”, but that’s a discussion for another day!

The multi-player was Ok.  I liked some of the progression aspects, but I think the Call of Duty franchise has a better overall system for that.  As a new player unfamiliar with the maps, I was getting sniped far too much for it to be a lot of fun though.  In the Call of Duty games, after you get killed by another player, you see an instant replay from that player’s point of view, so you can at least see where the person is camping as they kill you over and over…

There was a lot of hub-ub when the game was coming out that in multi-player, one side was good guys, and the other side was the Taliban.  There was a huge negative press that you get to be the Taliban.  After EA changed the name to the more generic “OpFor” (opposing force) that is used by militaries around the world in war games (and used in the Call of Duty series of games set in modern day), the rhetoric didn’t seem to calm down much, and Exchanges on military bases still refused to sell the game.  I wonder if they ever sold “Counterstrike”, or the Call of Duty games.  In counterstrike, one side was always the “Terrorists”, and the other was trying to rescue hostages or defuse a bomb planted by the terrorists.  The Call of Duty games always had one set of players being the Axis and the other side the Allies.  Personally, I don’t see the big deal, particularly since the game is rated Mature.

All in all, I thought it was a really good game, and can’t wait for the sequel (bring on lucky number 13 in the franchise!)

This is the (by my count) 7th game in the Call of Duty series. Of the recent ones (since CoD:Modern Warfare), this one had the best story.

It had a very interesting psycho-drama going on, with the main character being captured and interrogated by someone, causing flashbacks. The missions occurred in the flashbacks, not entirely in order, and interestingly, sometimes without clear beginning or end. I liked that. Several times you’d be what you’d assume 3/4 of the way through something, and then you’d see something that didn’t make sense, and you’d get shocked back to the interrogation. I thought I had figured out what was going on, but I hadn’t. I like it when a game keeps me guessing.

But, like all of the recent call of duty games, i have to complain about the computer controlled characters. There were many many cases where a bad guy would “rush” wherever the good guys were, and would either kill me, or all the good guys in that vicinity, without the other good guys ever firing a single shot. It was if the good guys never saw the bad guy at all. I always play through the CoD games on the hardest possible difficulty, and maybe that’s what exposes me to the worst flaws. I assume as the difficulty goes up, the good guys in your squad become less effective, requiring you to do more, and makes the bad guys more effective. I get that, that’s fine. But its inexcusable to let a bad guy run across 50 yards of open ground uncontested into the middle of a group of what is supposed to be highly trained special forces soldiers. At least in the previous games, most of the time the offending soldiers were just regular soldiers. In this game, they’re supposed to be operators! The elite! If you’re so elite, do something, other than stand there and die!

Red Dead Redemption was one of the best games I played in 2010.  Well, I’m finished playing it in 2011, so it might be the best game I played in 2011 too .  If you haven’t played it, its Grand Theft Horse, basically.  Same developers, same engine.  But the story in RDR was a lot more interesting to me than GTA was.  I think when you set a game in modern day, you really have to get every little detail right, because people’s brains are so used to seeing that stuff, that you will notice if the cars are too shiny, or the windows don’t reflect right, and all kinds of other things just won’t look quite right.  But when you set a game in the wild wild west, not a lot of people are used to riding horses, or herding cattle so you aren’t going to notice little things that are incorrect. 

Even so, I can say that I hated herding cattle.  Seriously.  One time is enough to show me the hardships of the old west, but one time is more than enough herding cattle for me . 

The interesting (no spoilers!) thing about the story is that while it might have been a little predictable, I think part of that predictability came from really understanding the main character and his predicament, and the helplessness of the whole situation.  There were certainly things that I personally wouldn’t have done in that situation, but I know that John Marston would have.  I saw most of what I’d call “Act III” coming, and yet when things started unfolding I was not disappointed at all.  It was somehow…fitting.

The dead-eye system worked really well for shooting, especially from the back of a moving horse.  The duel thing was ok, but I didn’t realize until real late in the game that there was a rhythm factor to the shooting that I didn’t notice (or missed in the first tutorial), so a couple of the story related duels I failed and had to do over and over and I never noticed that there was a specific indicator to watch for while aiming.

My only other real complaint (aside from the frigging cattle rustling!) was some of the voice acting.  It seems like a ton of the dialog was just yelling.  Yelling for no reason.  Yes, people are riding horses so you might need to increase the volume of the dialog, but that doesn’t mean the actors should just be yelling all the time.  That just decreases its impact when people really should be yelling.

The hunting/gathering/treasure quests were ok, but what made me stop completely stop dong them was the last gathering one.  Get 15 of x, fine, I’ve been doing that the whole game.  But “get 15 of plant x, and 2 more of every other plant?”  Screw that.  Get your own plants you jerks!

AC2 was probably one of the best games I’ve played this year.  Most of the time sequels aren’t as good as the original, but this one was as good, if not better than the original.  Yes, it was a little formulaic,  and there was a fair amount of repetition, but I really liked the story.  It had one laaaaaaame moment, but I’ll let it go and see if AC3 cleans it up.  I thought the addition of the interaction with Leonardo Da Vinci was pretty clever.   There’s also a part now where you kindof run a city in a very minimal way, so that was an interesting way to make money.  Towards the end I had so  money I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I wish there would have been something else to do with it

Assassin’s Creed:Brotherhood just came out, too, so I’ll have to add that to the top of my gamefly list.  I know the new one has some multiplayer, so I’m not sure how much the story continues, as it doesn’t have “3” in its title anywhere…but I’m definitely going to find out!

Now that Kinect for XBox360 has officially released, i’m allowed to say that we participated in the beta program for Kinect, and that we’ve been playing it now for a few months. (i even got a avatar t-shirt and a 0 point achievement, yay!)

There’s a very simple reason that i’m buying it: Easton can play it. He’s only 2, and doesn’t have the dexterity to do anything with a wii-mote or an xbox360 controller, but he can run in place, and he loves to play Kinect. Supposedly, the recommended minimum height for players is 3 feet, but for the most part he can play some stuff.

In our part of the beta, we only got to keep the kinect sensor for a week, then had to return it, and check it out again later, library style. The first week we had it, we played a little bit of everything: Adventures and sports, mostly. We played it for the week, and i returned it. A couple days later, Easy is just standing in the living room, pointing to the TV and saying “Boat? Boat?” We had no idea what he was talking about. We asked him all kinds of questions, and you could tell that he was frustrated because he couldn’t explain what he wanted and we obviously didn’t understand. The next day, he did it again. Only this time, after we didn’t understand what “Boat?” meant, he pointed at the TV, said “Run? Run?”, and then ran in place. Eureka! “Boat” was the rafting game in Kinect Adventures, and “Run” was the 100 meter dash in Kinect sports. A couple weeks later after we’d had kinect for another week, he was doing it again, so i got it on “tape”:

Towards the end of the beta, there were enough Kinects available that the “library” would let you have them longer than a week, so we had it for a while. Easton figured out that in Joyride, he could put his arms out to start driving in a stunt mode game, and then just lean back against the couch and do absolutely nothing and he would just rack up the points. He’d end up with like 300k points, to me getting 60k working my butt off. He figured out that you generally control Kinect by waving to start, so he’d stand next to you and wave to try to steal control. He figured out that you have to put your arms up to signal that you’re “ready” to run in the running game. He hasn’t figured out that you have to keep running, though. he’ll run in place for about half the race, then he sees that you’re done running, so he stops running too. So even though you’ve long since finished the race, you have to keep running so he keeps running.

We were pleasantly surprised when we realized that Kinect can track you pretty well while holding a toddler. As long as you’re not playing the wierd bubble game where you have to use both of your arms, you can play most of the Adventures games while holding him, although 20,000 leaks is hard to get some of the leaks. A lot of the games work just fine with him on your shoulders too!

Is the Kinect aimed at more “hardcore” gamers like me? probably not. Is it aimed at more “casual” wii-like gamers? definitely. And if there’s one thing that Nintendo has shown with the wii is that there are a ton of casual gamers out there. We’ve had a 360 for 4 1/2 years. how many times has laura turned it on? Until we got the kinect, she’d turned it on twice to play tetris. Since we’ve had the Kinect beta, she and Easton have played a bunch of times without me. She even invited the neighbor kids over a couple times to play. In fact, she posted about kinect on facebook tonight before i even posted this.

stuff we played and our notes:

1. Kinect Adventures: we played this one a lot. Easy likes the rafting game (boats) and 20,000 leaks (fish), and sometimes likes rallyball (ball). Leaks is fun, and i like the rail game (can never remember what its called!). having to jump to go faster takes a lot of energy.
2. Kinect sports: the beta rotated the games available, so i don’t think we even played them all. soccer was surprisingly fun, for how simple it was. i really like the volleyball. pingpong was ok, never got javelin. easy loves 100 meter dash. bowling was pretty good.
3. Joyride: i really like the “stunt” game. It seems to have some kind of “autopilot” mode for kids or something, as it seems that easton can get really high scores by just standing there with his hands behind his back!
4. Dance Central: i think i was the only person to play it, and i thought it was pretty good. definitely a party game.
5. Fitness Evolved: the demo was pretty short, but i think i might try the full game out.
6. ESPN “The Ocho”: this one is all about content.
7. Voice Control: i didn’t use it a lot, but it did work. i mostly used it to start games before i picked up the controller
8. Video Kinect: i think this one is going to be pretty big. It could be huge if they would/could integrate it with the FaceTime video chat stuff on iphones/pods, and/or Skype. We video chat with laura’s mom sometimes, but doing it on the big TV instead of a laptop you have to keep open and pointed.

Hey, that rhymed!  The story in Bioshock 2 wasn’t as quite as good as the original, but was still very good.  Helping the little sisters harvest was pretty cool.  The big sisters were a clever idea.  the most interesting part was the part where you see what the world looks like through a little sister’s eyes.  That was pretty cool.   Like the first game, the art direction and theme were magnificently done.

The creepiest part wasn’t actually in game, though.  We went to a birthday party during the time when I was playing through the game, and at the party there was a bouncy house.  So easton and I are bouncing in the bouncy house, and one of the little girls comes in.  And she wanted her dad to come into the bouncy house.   The little girl’s voice and what she was saying were right out of the game.  “Over here daddy!”  Every time she talked I just got chills!

Now I see that there’s a “Bioshock: Infinite” coming out.  Instead of being underwater, this one takes place in the clouds!  That should be fun!

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the best RPG I’ve played since Lunar on Sega CD.  Or maybe the Might and Magic series on PC.  Or maaaaaaaaaaybe the original Final Fantasy on the NES.

None of those had the kind of character development that Origins had though.  It was simply amazing to me how many conversations a pair of characters would have in the background.  I’d be walking around town or the woods or whatever, and two of the characters in the party would start bickering.  so I’d have to stop and turn around so I could watch the full conversation.  Some of the characters did not get along at all!

And during conversations with other characters in the story, the decisions you made in conversation, and even the way you said things affected how the other characters looked at you.  In some games, like Knights of the Old Republic (also a bioware game), your decisions shaped the whole party, if you were evil, they were all evil, or if you were good they were all good.   In origins, everyone had their feelings and their goals and history, so if you were too good, they’d get pissed off and not be as effective as they could be.  If you were bad enough to them, they’d up and split on you.  You could even become romantically involved with characters, and others would become jealous, or extremely disapproving.

Each of the possible party characters also had their own personal quest line, where you had to help them do something, or fix their past, or their future.  The sad thing is that I didn’t realize that, so I only stumbled into a couple of them by mistake.  I did a couple more in a second play-through, but I really wish there had been something in the game itself to indicate that the person had a quest, like other quest givers do.

It was also interesting how every main quest line had at least 2 possible endings.  In one of them, (the dwarves one), I ended up getting “used” by the dude that I ended up getting installed as king.  By the time I realized what was going on, It was too late.  I had to follow through with the chain of events I had set in motion.  In all my years of playing RPGs, this is one of the few times I’ve felt real remorse for doing something in a game.

I started a second play-through to try some of the other options and quests, but gave up about a third of the way.  The game is just so huge, I didn’t have another 50 hours to play it again when there are so many other good games to play!  There has been a fair amount of DLC released for Dragon Age already, so it may be one that I pick up a used copy of the game later on in the year during a dry spell to continue on in my second quest to see if I can get through the game with the other choices… but we’ll see.