1. In 2009, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS and proved that by adjusting perspective, you could successfully bring your open world sandbox game onto a lower powered handed and still provide the player w/ a compelling experience. W/ Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins, TT Fusion proved this approach still worked in 2013.
2. Just kidding. This game is terrible.
3. Most reviews focus on the game's technical issues--notably the chugging frame rates and extreme sprite pop-in--but I think this overlooks a greater problem: The Chase Begins is unceasingly boring from start to finish.
4. This said, its technical issues do merit some further mention. In addition to the performance issues, nearly all the voiced dialogue that made the Wii U and other versions of this seems so lively was removed and cut scenes are compressed to a messy blur along the lines of 2006 YouTube. It's also the only game on 3DS that crashed so hard on me that I had to restart the entire console.
5. My favorite overall glitch though is one where some particular sound gets stuck in an infinite loop, turning the cheerful Lego setting into a sonic hellscape where the wails of a long grieving man can be heard in every corner of the city.
6. I would like for someone other than me to do some serious journalistic research into how exactly things went wrong on the development of this game. The Chase Begins is so half-baked you just have to wonder if maybe they originally intended to port the entire Wii U release of Lego City Undercover to 3DS then realized at the eleventh hour that they couldn't and so had to slap something together for whatever release date.
7. I think this uses the same exact map as the home console releases at least but I quite frankly don't care because every square inch of this map is unceasingly boring.
8. Following the main quest, you essentially just walk from one boring map marker to the next occasionally doing some boring driving, some boring fighting or solving a boring puzzle. This is all in between boring cut scenes.
9. You can die, crash your car or otherwise fail in many ways but there is never any setback for doing this at all. You literally re-appear in the exact spot you died completely healthy and with a brand new car. Real life should be like this!
10. The only real challenge is the platforming. It's not actually hard but the crappy camera makes it a challenge not to chuck your 3DS through a window. During some of the few moments in this where I was not bored, I was frustrated because I had to re-climb the same wall for the fifth time and try a slightly different angle on the joystick to make a particular jump.
11. The combat in The Chase Begins is even more remarkably boring
than anything else. You can stand there idly pressing
a singular button and you win automatically because you are literally invincible. Throwing someone
off a ledge significantly reduces the
amount of time you spend doing this and it's pretty hard to get these
tosses lined up just right so, ultimately, I found this very slightly satisfying to do correctly.
12. This has the exact same soundtrack as the Wii U, which is awesome. They
seem to use oddly little of the music though. As the songs played during
the end credits, I kept wondering why they use more of these songs more often. In game, you hear basically the combat music and the loading screen music.
13. A lot of the problems w/ this are a problem w/ all Lego games. It is designed as if in order to appeal to kids, it has to be devoid of challenge. I think this is a
wrong-headed approach to making a game for a general audience but most
Lego games get away w/ it because the moment-to-moment presentation is
so charming. You reduce that quality and polish and you are left w/ a
real dud. This is what Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins is: everything bad about Lego games w/o most of what makes them good.
Showing posts with label open world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open world. Show all posts
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
13 Points on Just Cause 3 - Avalanche Studios - 2015
1. You know how in a lot of big action games, when it gets to the point things are really gonna pop off, you just get pushed into a quick time event and have to sit there like a dumbass and periodically press a button while you watch the fireworks? Just Cause 3 doesn't make you do that. In Just Cause 3, you not only set off the fireworks yourself, you get to pick which fireworks go off and what you use to light them.
2. Just to be clear what this means: you will regularly grapple onto a helicopter that is shooting you, chuck the pilot out the window, take control of the helicopter and send it careening into an enemy fuel tank while simultaneously parachuting out and latching onto another helicopter to repeat the process. This is just a normal thing you will do. It is basic gameplay in Just Cause 3.
3. Structurally, this is pretty much climb-a-tower-to-reveal-map-icons type open world game. You don't actually climb towers but defeating enemy bases gives you similar icon action.
4. The open world is huge and I am normally indifferent to world size but it is just so much fun to get around, it helps to have a long way to go between objectives sometimes. You have a grappling hook arm band thing that whips you along fast as a dandy and then a quickly deployable parachute and wingsuit when you go airborne. Physics are just realistic enough to have some drama to them but still allow you to fling yourself about in ways that would certainly destroy a human being in short order.
5. Gunplay is pretty tame. It is all run and gun w/ some aim assist. There's ironsights eventually but only as an unlockable. The magic in combat is in the little grappling hook arm band thing which you can use for a high variety of violent purposes. You can use it to throw an explosive barrel into a gas tank. You can latch it onto a man's chest and throw yourself at him. You can tie a jet airplane to the ground. You get the idea.
6. Though Just Cause 3 is pretty much a textbook male power fantasy, I have to give it credit for having a broad group of female characters that don't exist just to get rescued. The leader of an idealistic rebellion, its highest ranked scientist and the head of a scrappy group of mercenaries are all women. This is pretty much any person that's in charge of anything aside from the villains. Not bad.
7. This said, plotwise we are strongly in "Who even cares?" territory. You are on some kind Italian archipelago run by an obviously evil dictator and your goal is to overthrow him through the unorthodox use of his own helicopters.
8. You have regenerating health and this combined w/ the fact that you can use your little grappling hook thing to zing out of any situation at a moment's notice makes you practically invincible if you chose to be. You chose to stick around more often than not but you probably will cheese your way through some tricky situations from time to time by firing a few shots and zooming away to safety over and over.
9. Similarly, the punishment for death is rather minor. Everything you've destroyed up until your death stays destroyed so you can just keep taking things out few at a time between deaths rather than come up w/ a better approach or strategy.
10. You gain all of your major abilities w/in a few hours of gameplay, which is a good thing. It always drives me nuts when the most fun elements of combat aren't available for the full game. There are a lot of bonus items and skills you can earn through about a million various challenges that you unlock as the game progresses. Some of these are powerful enough as to make some difficult tasks trivially easy but, honestly, I didn't really find the challenges enjoyable enough to play most of them so I guess that kinda solves that problem.
11. An open world this big and this open-ended as far as gameplay is bound to have some rough points. I accept a bit of weirdness as the price of admission in a game w/ such potential for edge cases but, esp. toward the end, I found it a bit galling that what I'd done had very little effect on the world itself. It'd be cool if, for example, as you started taking out enemy oil rigs, you'd see enemy tanks out of gas on the side of the road or something. The way it is, the missions are exactly the same whether you've left the enemy's network of bases relatively in tact or destroyed almost all of them. It makes the world feel a bit shallow in spite of its massive size.
12. The story missions are also just kinda crappy. Let's just say there's lots of escort missions and the grand scale battles that end each chapter only partly make up for this.
13. If you want a game where you can attach an exploding barrel to a moving vehicle and watch the combined mess crash spectacularly into a satellite dish, Just Cause 3 is your game. If you want a game where you can wing walk on a fighter jet and bazooka other fighter jets, Just Cause 3 is your game. Lots of games do this kind of thing but this series is pretty unique in letting you do it whenever you want. It makes some compromises in other areas but in terms of gameplay spectacle, it is second to none. I can't say it's a perfect game but I will say I am very excited for Just Cause 4.
2. Just to be clear what this means: you will regularly grapple onto a helicopter that is shooting you, chuck the pilot out the window, take control of the helicopter and send it careening into an enemy fuel tank while simultaneously parachuting out and latching onto another helicopter to repeat the process. This is just a normal thing you will do. It is basic gameplay in Just Cause 3.
3. Structurally, this is pretty much climb-a-tower-to-reveal-map-icons type open world game. You don't actually climb towers but defeating enemy bases gives you similar icon action.
4. The open world is huge and I am normally indifferent to world size but it is just so much fun to get around, it helps to have a long way to go between objectives sometimes. You have a grappling hook arm band thing that whips you along fast as a dandy and then a quickly deployable parachute and wingsuit when you go airborne. Physics are just realistic enough to have some drama to them but still allow you to fling yourself about in ways that would certainly destroy a human being in short order.
5. Gunplay is pretty tame. It is all run and gun w/ some aim assist. There's ironsights eventually but only as an unlockable. The magic in combat is in the little grappling hook arm band thing which you can use for a high variety of violent purposes. You can use it to throw an explosive barrel into a gas tank. You can latch it onto a man's chest and throw yourself at him. You can tie a jet airplane to the ground. You get the idea.
6. Though Just Cause 3 is pretty much a textbook male power fantasy, I have to give it credit for having a broad group of female characters that don't exist just to get rescued. The leader of an idealistic rebellion, its highest ranked scientist and the head of a scrappy group of mercenaries are all women. This is pretty much any person that's in charge of anything aside from the villains. Not bad.
7. This said, plotwise we are strongly in "Who even cares?" territory. You are on some kind Italian archipelago run by an obviously evil dictator and your goal is to overthrow him through the unorthodox use of his own helicopters.
8. You have regenerating health and this combined w/ the fact that you can use your little grappling hook thing to zing out of any situation at a moment's notice makes you practically invincible if you chose to be. You chose to stick around more often than not but you probably will cheese your way through some tricky situations from time to time by firing a few shots and zooming away to safety over and over.
9. Similarly, the punishment for death is rather minor. Everything you've destroyed up until your death stays destroyed so you can just keep taking things out few at a time between deaths rather than come up w/ a better approach or strategy.
10. You gain all of your major abilities w/in a few hours of gameplay, which is a good thing. It always drives me nuts when the most fun elements of combat aren't available for the full game. There are a lot of bonus items and skills you can earn through about a million various challenges that you unlock as the game progresses. Some of these are powerful enough as to make some difficult tasks trivially easy but, honestly, I didn't really find the challenges enjoyable enough to play most of them so I guess that kinda solves that problem.
11. An open world this big and this open-ended as far as gameplay is bound to have some rough points. I accept a bit of weirdness as the price of admission in a game w/ such potential for edge cases but, esp. toward the end, I found it a bit galling that what I'd done had very little effect on the world itself. It'd be cool if, for example, as you started taking out enemy oil rigs, you'd see enemy tanks out of gas on the side of the road or something. The way it is, the missions are exactly the same whether you've left the enemy's network of bases relatively in tact or destroyed almost all of them. It makes the world feel a bit shallow in spite of its massive size.
12. The story missions are also just kinda crappy. Let's just say there's lots of escort missions and the grand scale battles that end each chapter only partly make up for this.
13. If you want a game where you can attach an exploding barrel to a moving vehicle and watch the combined mess crash spectacularly into a satellite dish, Just Cause 3 is your game. If you want a game where you can wing walk on a fighter jet and bazooka other fighter jets, Just Cause 3 is your game. Lots of games do this kind of thing but this series is pretty unique in letting you do it whenever you want. It makes some compromises in other areas but in terms of gameplay spectacle, it is second to none. I can't say it's a perfect game but I will say I am very excited for Just Cause 4.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
13 Points on Fallout: New Vegas - Obsidian Entertainment - 2010 [PC]
1. If you like Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 but got the
sneaking suspicion that despite the open world nature of those games,
their stories were on rails and no choice you made really mattered,
congratulations, you're right! You win Fallout: New Vegas which is a completely identical game except almost everything you do matters.
2. Your first dozen or so hours in Windows 10 will be fraught w/ peril w/ untimely crashes abound. Google yourself up some New Vegas Scrip Extender and New Vegas Anti-Crash (in that order) to get things up and running smoothly. I had to do this on all three PCs I ran this on.
3. You play as an unnamed courier who gets shot in the head in the course of a delivery and then revived by a plucky town doctor. One of few choices you don't get to make is to just up and leave town, which is probably what would make the most sense in that situation. I guess maybe you are worried you'll never find another doctor good enough to cure bullet wounds to the head w/o any special equipment. This much is not covered in game. Use your imagination.
4. There is a brief tutorial section you can do but by and large this is not very helpful.
5. The graphics used to be pretty good but now they're just graphics. If you've played Fallout 3, it looks exactly like that but where that game is blueish, this game is orangeish.
6. The musical theme here is the same basic theme as the other games in the series but there's variations in terms of orchestration. As is always the case, it's one of the best parts of the game.
7. There are four major pathways to the end game which are spelled out for you pretty early on. You can decide right away which one you wish to take or try to hedge your bets and see what's going on before choosing. Delaying your choice actually makes a difference in how the game plays out in the end.
8. Many of the NPC enemies which were just called raiders in other Fallout games are actually from built-out factions complete w/ backstories and leadership. You don't actually have to be enemies w/ everyone just because they are ruthless killers that nobody in their right mind would align themselves w/.
9. Gunplay in this game is kind of balls, no way around it. That is until you bring in the existence of VATS which is sort of a realtime/turn based hybrid system that you can use to aim at specific body parts, esp. heads, which then have a chance to explode fantastically if your shot lands. Not gonna lie: exploding enemies heads is so much fun I'd probably have put ten hours into this game if it was literally just that.
10. There is a crafting system which is pretty well built out but I was too busy blowing up heads to use it. Sue me.
11. The worst thing about this game is the inventory system. There is no way to sort by anything but alphabetical. I was forever just carrying about a hundred pounds of crap I didn't need for no reason just because I didn't want to deal w/ sorting through that garbage.
12. For some reason, I drank out of toilets a lot less than I generally do when playing Fallout games.
13. End of the day, of the 3D Fallout games, this is best RPG in the series. All of them have similar appeal in the just go around and do whatever vein but this has the most adaptive world where it feels like your actions as the randomly most important person in the world have an effect. It might lose some of its sheer openness and scope in being like this but it is worth the trade-off to not just feel like you are going through the motions at the endgame.
2. Your first dozen or so hours in Windows 10 will be fraught w/ peril w/ untimely crashes abound. Google yourself up some New Vegas Scrip Extender and New Vegas Anti-Crash (in that order) to get things up and running smoothly. I had to do this on all three PCs I ran this on.
3. You play as an unnamed courier who gets shot in the head in the course of a delivery and then revived by a plucky town doctor. One of few choices you don't get to make is to just up and leave town, which is probably what would make the most sense in that situation. I guess maybe you are worried you'll never find another doctor good enough to cure bullet wounds to the head w/o any special equipment. This much is not covered in game. Use your imagination.
4. There is a brief tutorial section you can do but by and large this is not very helpful.
5. The graphics used to be pretty good but now they're just graphics. If you've played Fallout 3, it looks exactly like that but where that game is blueish, this game is orangeish.
6. The musical theme here is the same basic theme as the other games in the series but there's variations in terms of orchestration. As is always the case, it's one of the best parts of the game.
7. There are four major pathways to the end game which are spelled out for you pretty early on. You can decide right away which one you wish to take or try to hedge your bets and see what's going on before choosing. Delaying your choice actually makes a difference in how the game plays out in the end.
8. Many of the NPC enemies which were just called raiders in other Fallout games are actually from built-out factions complete w/ backstories and leadership. You don't actually have to be enemies w/ everyone just because they are ruthless killers that nobody in their right mind would align themselves w/.
9. Gunplay in this game is kind of balls, no way around it. That is until you bring in the existence of VATS which is sort of a realtime/turn based hybrid system that you can use to aim at specific body parts, esp. heads, which then have a chance to explode fantastically if your shot lands. Not gonna lie: exploding enemies heads is so much fun I'd probably have put ten hours into this game if it was literally just that.
10. There is a crafting system which is pretty well built out but I was too busy blowing up heads to use it. Sue me.
11. The worst thing about this game is the inventory system. There is no way to sort by anything but alphabetical. I was forever just carrying about a hundred pounds of crap I didn't need for no reason just because I didn't want to deal w/ sorting through that garbage.
12. For some reason, I drank out of toilets a lot less than I generally do when playing Fallout games.
13. End of the day, of the 3D Fallout games, this is best RPG in the series. All of them have similar appeal in the just go around and do whatever vein but this has the most adaptive world where it feels like your actions as the randomly most important person in the world have an effect. It might lose some of its sheer openness and scope in being like this but it is worth the trade-off to not just feel like you are going through the motions at the endgame.
Monday, July 30, 2018
13 Points on Copoka - Inaccurate Interactive - 2016 [PC]
1. Glazing over the description of Copoka, I thought it was going to be a relaxing, walking sim type game where you just fly around and look at pretty things. It definitely is this sort of game but, more so than that, it uses its gameplay as means to build build a world and unroll a narrative w/in that world.
2. I figured Copoka was named after the bird you play as but it's actually named after the city you are in. Copoka will be well explored w/in the odd hour or so you will spend playing w/ this. Gameplay consists of flying around to pick up things to make your nest w/ but that is really just an excuse to put you w/in earshot of various conversations happening around the city. Building a nest is not some sort of challenge meant to tax you as a gamer.
3. The stage is set initially by announcements you hear on a loudspeaker about the Great Leader and and grand stocks of food, the powerful military and so forth. Conversations overheard reveal that things are not so wonderful as the city sponsored propaganda would make you think.
4. It took me a while to notice Copoka is actually populated by bird people. This seems to have no bearing on anything.
5. Flying around feels pretty good. The default control scheme is a bit gusty and imprecise but it's clearly meant to be that way. Birds can't just stop on a dime mid-air. If this game offers thrills, it's from flying way up in the air and swooping down near a target w/o having to overshoot and come back around.
6. It helps that Copoka is gorgeous. Flying high, when you can see the greys and blues of the city feather out into the brighter greens of the country side, there is just nothing prettier. It's got a low poly style but it doesn't really revel in it. The style is in the service of the use of colors and the colors serve the purpose of creating a mood.
7. The orchestral score fits in w/ this perfectly. It's lush and full sounding but still understated and airy w/ just enough drama to keep it interesting. It reinforces the feeling created by the story and visuals w/o becoming overbearing or getting in the way.
8. Basically, every story element of Copoka is optional. You are free to fly off and not listen to the dialog if you want but this would be something like going to a bar for the experience of sitting on a stool.
9. The story is presented in a few discreet moments in the city's timeline, each in a successive season. The change of season--and consequent change of color scheme and mood--is tied in well w/ the phase the story of revolution and intrigue is in as it slowly unravels.
10. Since the story is all told through overheard conversations, you get many varied perspectives on it, esp. if you go off to explore the more optional content. Some people are completely on board w/ the current government, some people are ready to personally assassinate the Great Leader and, naturally, many people fall somewhat in between.
11. One esp. important angle that Copoka does not shy away from is that revolution--even one that overthrows totalitarian rule--does have downsides.
12. The city of Copoka is pretty small ultimately as is the surrounding countryside. If you are looking for an open world to spend endless hours in, this is really not for you. The whole world is open from the outset and there's not really much in the way of secrets or discoveries to be unveiled through diligent search. This is more a game you wander through, taking detours as you see fit, than one where you pour over every nook and cranny.
13. What Copoka does is use its brief time w/ you exceedingly effectively. A full world is built and a narrative is established and completed. It is a curious new way to tell a story and its simple, pretty presentation works very well. I could possibly damn this w/ a "not for everyone" label due to it's general lack of challenge but I think most folks are going to rather enjoy what time they do put into this game.
2. I figured Copoka was named after the bird you play as but it's actually named after the city you are in. Copoka will be well explored w/in the odd hour or so you will spend playing w/ this. Gameplay consists of flying around to pick up things to make your nest w/ but that is really just an excuse to put you w/in earshot of various conversations happening around the city. Building a nest is not some sort of challenge meant to tax you as a gamer.
3. The stage is set initially by announcements you hear on a loudspeaker about the Great Leader and and grand stocks of food, the powerful military and so forth. Conversations overheard reveal that things are not so wonderful as the city sponsored propaganda would make you think.
4. It took me a while to notice Copoka is actually populated by bird people. This seems to have no bearing on anything.
5. Flying around feels pretty good. The default control scheme is a bit gusty and imprecise but it's clearly meant to be that way. Birds can't just stop on a dime mid-air. If this game offers thrills, it's from flying way up in the air and swooping down near a target w/o having to overshoot and come back around.
6. It helps that Copoka is gorgeous. Flying high, when you can see the greys and blues of the city feather out into the brighter greens of the country side, there is just nothing prettier. It's got a low poly style but it doesn't really revel in it. The style is in the service of the use of colors and the colors serve the purpose of creating a mood.
7. The orchestral score fits in w/ this perfectly. It's lush and full sounding but still understated and airy w/ just enough drama to keep it interesting. It reinforces the feeling created by the story and visuals w/o becoming overbearing or getting in the way.
8. Basically, every story element of Copoka is optional. You are free to fly off and not listen to the dialog if you want but this would be something like going to a bar for the experience of sitting on a stool.
9. The story is presented in a few discreet moments in the city's timeline, each in a successive season. The change of season--and consequent change of color scheme and mood--is tied in well w/ the phase the story of revolution and intrigue is in as it slowly unravels.
10. Since the story is all told through overheard conversations, you get many varied perspectives on it, esp. if you go off to explore the more optional content. Some people are completely on board w/ the current government, some people are ready to personally assassinate the Great Leader and, naturally, many people fall somewhat in between.
11. One esp. important angle that Copoka does not shy away from is that revolution--even one that overthrows totalitarian rule--does have downsides.
12. The city of Copoka is pretty small ultimately as is the surrounding countryside. If you are looking for an open world to spend endless hours in, this is really not for you. The whole world is open from the outset and there's not really much in the way of secrets or discoveries to be unveiled through diligent search. This is more a game you wander through, taking detours as you see fit, than one where you pour over every nook and cranny.
13. What Copoka does is use its brief time w/ you exceedingly effectively. A full world is built and a narrative is established and completed. It is a curious new way to tell a story and its simple, pretty presentation works very well. I could possibly damn this w/ a "not for everyone" label due to it's general lack of challenge but I think most folks are going to rather enjoy what time they do put into this game.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
13 Points on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars - Rockstar Games - 2009 [Sony PSP]
1. Chinatown Wars borrows the top-down perspective from the first two GTA games but its closest cousin is GTA III and you get all the freedom and mayhem you could ask for from the series.
2. This was not some handheld cash grab either. Lots of big developers farm out their handheld versions of big franchises to third parties and the end result is frequently half-ass. Rockstar put considerable effort into making this a complete GTA game. Case in point: the theme song is a full-on banger featuring Ghostface Killah and MF DOOM. This shit is real.
3. While Chinatown Wars is top-down, it really feels more like the 3D GTA games than the first few. The camera twists and turns to stay behind you so it's really more of a long-distance third person camera than truly overhead view. From a technical standpoint, I think this is used to deal w/ what would be the lack of draw-distance had the camera been over-the-shoulder. It's a compromise but a good one and it's pretty rare that the camera causes issues where you can't tell what's going on.
4. You play as Huang Lee who just arrived Liberty City, which is the series's take on NYC, from some unspecified location in China. Huang's father was recently murdered and Huang's out for revenge even though he doesn't really much seem to care about his family or family business.
5. Your strategy is essentially to play both sides against he middle until you find the perpetrator of your father's killing--only there's like five sides to the complex organized crime rivalries in Liberty City. Throughout all this nobody seems to know or care too much that you do outside of your immediate relationship to them. You can show up to their hideout w/ a police tail immediately after assisting their rivals and nobody much cares if you do what they ask.
7. This is all fairly improbable but it actually works w/ the wacky logic that pervades the GTA universe. This is a series of games where you can often get away w/ gunning down civilians in a public park but police will engage you in a high speed chase if you fail to pay a toll. It wears its lack of realism on its sleeve.
7. The story is presented through stylish comic book panels and dialog is delivered via text w/o any voice acting, which is fine by me. Though Chinatown Wars's cast of ethnic crime bosses, corrupt cops and assorted crime drama standbys generally play it straight, you always get the sense that Huang is completely aware of the absurdity of the situation and his wry sense of humor gives you the impression he is in on the joke w/ you.
8. The main game menu, where you access the map and get incoming missions, is on a PDA rather than a smartphone. I'd say this is a funny quirk of the times but Chinatown Wars was released two years after the first iPhone and a decade after the first BlackBerry so using a PDA was a bit anachronistic even then.
9. The missions don't have checkpoints. Most missions ramp up in difficulty as they go along so this means you'll likely spend an awful lot of time replaying the least interesting parts of the game over and over. You do get to skip the occasional driving section and every now and again some trivial part of the mission gets left out on replays but having to repeatedly redo boring shit remains an problem from the beginning of Chinatown Wars until the end.
10. The theme song never reappears after the intro but Chinatown Wars's soundtrack stays solid throughout. It provides a fairly diverse array of contemporary music styles, often licensed from popular artists. (The PSP version has more licensed music than the DS one if you are concerned w/ such things.) You can switch the radio station using the main game menu but music seems to be custom picked for your current mission so I generally chose to just let whatever the game chooses for me rip.
11. In addition to your standard mucking about w/ firearms and stolen vehicles, there are a bunch of mini-games you have to do when you do things like hot wire a car or plant explosives. I say "have to do" because they are no fun at all. They are also clearly designed for the DS touchscreen so they really feel forced into the PSP version as well.
12. GTA has always been central to the controversy surrounding violence in video games. This time round a drug dealing mini-game was the subject of public ire, dealing drugs being such a great crime compared to killing hundreds of human beings. What a country!
13. Whether you actually play through the story or just like to get in a vehicle and mow down pedestrians, Chinatown Wars will give you what you want out of a GTA game. It actually replicates the full-blown versions to a fault including the fact that the missions get all samey halfway through and the mid-game really drags. I have to give Rockstar credit for this one.They changed how their 3D games looked but not really how they played. This is a really well-done handheld adaptation of a big series and a good game in general.
2. This was not some handheld cash grab either. Lots of big developers farm out their handheld versions of big franchises to third parties and the end result is frequently half-ass. Rockstar put considerable effort into making this a complete GTA game. Case in point: the theme song is a full-on banger featuring Ghostface Killah and MF DOOM. This shit is real.
3. While Chinatown Wars is top-down, it really feels more like the 3D GTA games than the first few. The camera twists and turns to stay behind you so it's really more of a long-distance third person camera than truly overhead view. From a technical standpoint, I think this is used to deal w/ what would be the lack of draw-distance had the camera been over-the-shoulder. It's a compromise but a good one and it's pretty rare that the camera causes issues where you can't tell what's going on.
4. You play as Huang Lee who just arrived Liberty City, which is the series's take on NYC, from some unspecified location in China. Huang's father was recently murdered and Huang's out for revenge even though he doesn't really much seem to care about his family or family business.
5. Your strategy is essentially to play both sides against he middle until you find the perpetrator of your father's killing--only there's like five sides to the complex organized crime rivalries in Liberty City. Throughout all this nobody seems to know or care too much that you do outside of your immediate relationship to them. You can show up to their hideout w/ a police tail immediately after assisting their rivals and nobody much cares if you do what they ask.
7. This is all fairly improbable but it actually works w/ the wacky logic that pervades the GTA universe. This is a series of games where you can often get away w/ gunning down civilians in a public park but police will engage you in a high speed chase if you fail to pay a toll. It wears its lack of realism on its sleeve.
7. The story is presented through stylish comic book panels and dialog is delivered via text w/o any voice acting, which is fine by me. Though Chinatown Wars's cast of ethnic crime bosses, corrupt cops and assorted crime drama standbys generally play it straight, you always get the sense that Huang is completely aware of the absurdity of the situation and his wry sense of humor gives you the impression he is in on the joke w/ you.
8. The main game menu, where you access the map and get incoming missions, is on a PDA rather than a smartphone. I'd say this is a funny quirk of the times but Chinatown Wars was released two years after the first iPhone and a decade after the first BlackBerry so using a PDA was a bit anachronistic even then.
9. The missions don't have checkpoints. Most missions ramp up in difficulty as they go along so this means you'll likely spend an awful lot of time replaying the least interesting parts of the game over and over. You do get to skip the occasional driving section and every now and again some trivial part of the mission gets left out on replays but having to repeatedly redo boring shit remains an problem from the beginning of Chinatown Wars until the end.
10. The theme song never reappears after the intro but Chinatown Wars's soundtrack stays solid throughout. It provides a fairly diverse array of contemporary music styles, often licensed from popular artists. (The PSP version has more licensed music than the DS one if you are concerned w/ such things.) You can switch the radio station using the main game menu but music seems to be custom picked for your current mission so I generally chose to just let whatever the game chooses for me rip.
11. In addition to your standard mucking about w/ firearms and stolen vehicles, there are a bunch of mini-games you have to do when you do things like hot wire a car or plant explosives. I say "have to do" because they are no fun at all. They are also clearly designed for the DS touchscreen so they really feel forced into the PSP version as well.
12. GTA has always been central to the controversy surrounding violence in video games. This time round a drug dealing mini-game was the subject of public ire, dealing drugs being such a great crime compared to killing hundreds of human beings. What a country!
13. Whether you actually play through the story or just like to get in a vehicle and mow down pedestrians, Chinatown Wars will give you what you want out of a GTA game. It actually replicates the full-blown versions to a fault including the fact that the missions get all samey halfway through and the mid-game really drags. I have to give Rockstar credit for this one.They changed how their 3D games looked but not really how they played. This is a really well-done handheld adaptation of a big series and a good game in general.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
13 Points on L.A. Noire - Team Bondi - 2011 [PC]
1. L.A. Noire is a landmark, a game that pushed not only technical boundaries but the way games were be used as a storytelling and world building medium. It is a decent experience overall but it is starting to feel like the kind of thing that's worth playing because it is historically important rather than because it is genuinely enjoyable to play right now. This isn't a such a terrible thing. I'd put L.A. Noire in the same category as the first Resident Evil games. It's great, maybe a masterpiece, but as it ages and it can't rely so much on its unique presentation, you start to notice more and more problems w/ gameplay.
2. It takes place in a realistic but still stylish take on post-war Los Angeles. You get a real sense of its size w/o actually having to and see all of it--though you can go see all of it if you want. It does not quite give you the sense of a bustling city w/ a million things going on but, I dunno, if you want that, you have to have in-game traffic jams so a little poetic license in that regard isn't a bad thing.
3. The real news when this came out back in 2011 was its facial animation. Aaron Staton who you most likely know as Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men plays lead character, Cole Phelps, and there is not a moment that goes by where you are not like, yeah, that character model looks and acts exactly like the dude who plays Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men. The other character models are a little inconsistent--women esp. seem to look a bit funny for some reason--but the fact remains that the facial animations in this are so good they make everything else about the graphical presentation, which was still excellent for the time, look just a little bit clunky.
4. The acting across the board is compelling, which is necessary because L.A. Noire leans really heavily on its cinematic sequences. In addition to Aaron Staton, it borrows what must be over half the cast of Mad Men for various roles so that is the kind talent you an expect to see.
5. The sound design is right up there too. Voices sound like they are in realistic spaces, guns pop-off w/ convincing immediacy, radios blare period music, engines rev and roar and the whole thing is polished off by a memorable score that emphasizes the moment to moment impact of each scene perfectly.
6. I like what it attempts w/ its gameplay too. It is essentially an adventure game in the form of police procedural. In theory, I really like the idea of investigating physical evidence which you then use to tease the truth out of the suspects you question. In reality, investigating physical evidence is walking around and clicking on every little thing and interrogating subjects consists of asking suspects a limiting set of questions and trying to guess weather they are telling the truth or lying. The whole thing feels like you are stuck on rails rather that unraveling each case on your own.
7. This lack of control is really felt when you start seeing how little your performance affects actual outcomes. At one point, I really dropped a ball on one case. The police chief really let me have it but, in the very next scene, he says the DA is really happy w/ my work and drops a promotion in my lap. I did literally nothing in between.
8. There are also action sequences and these are outright miserable. I constantly found myself losing suspects I was chasing because I ran into something accidentally or got stuck halfway climbing up a fire escape. Aiming guns is a pain and the fighting system is just plain odd. The game basically admits to the player how bad these sequences are by just allowing them to just be skipped after a few tries. Thankfully.
9. The story is cut up into five sections, each of which has a few cases for you to solve w/ story-relevant cut scenes in between them. The first section is basically an introduction, the second is an extended introduction and the third is an in-depth introduction. Only once we get to section four is the overarching plot of the game revealed w/ any thoroughness. It is then wrapped up in section five. Needless to say, I found the pacing of the game to be a bit slow through some of the middle sections.
10. Women in L.A. Noire exist for the exclusive purpose of being victims--generally the victims of murder. The one female character that is given any sort of agency uses it to go ask for help from a man. She does this upon instruction from a different man.Similarly, black people play no other role in society than that of junkies, jazz musicians and small time criminals. Or, I should say black men. There is not a single black woman w/ a meaningful line of dialog in the whole game.
11. Some would be willing to write these issues off as either being a product of the 1940s setting or simply to genre tropes. I'm not. Fictional late forties L.A. presumably has a similar population as real late forties L.A. and real late forties L.A. County had a population approaching four million. If you cannot imagine, of these four million fictional people, a few that have control of their circumstances and who are not white men, you are just not trying. It is simple as that.
12. L.A. Noire is an open world game but doesn't really feel like it because you are pretty much stuck on a single path as far as the main story line goes. It does offer you some incentive to explore but the opportunities it gives you are lackluster at best. You can indulge in the horrible action mechanics and solve street crimes or go poking about looking for various hidden extras. Really, the best way to enjoy the scope of the game's take on Los Angles is just to go for a ride and see what you can see.
13. For all my complaining, most of what drives me nuts about this game was all done in service of what it does really well. You are stuck on rails because it has a story to tell. The mechanics are bad because the focus is on police procedure, not gun slinging. Women and minorities are portrayed poorly because... well, there's no excuse for that. Ultimately, L.A. Noire is nothing if not ambitious. In some regards, it bites off more than it can chew but it succeeds incredibly at building a believable world and spinning its twisted tale. I did not love every moment I spent playing it but it is a game that will undoubtedly remain bouncing through my thoughts for a long time to come.
2. It takes place in a realistic but still stylish take on post-war Los Angeles. You get a real sense of its size w/o actually having to and see all of it--though you can go see all of it if you want. It does not quite give you the sense of a bustling city w/ a million things going on but, I dunno, if you want that, you have to have in-game traffic jams so a little poetic license in that regard isn't a bad thing.
3. The real news when this came out back in 2011 was its facial animation. Aaron Staton who you most likely know as Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men plays lead character, Cole Phelps, and there is not a moment that goes by where you are not like, yeah, that character model looks and acts exactly like the dude who plays Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men. The other character models are a little inconsistent--women esp. seem to look a bit funny for some reason--but the fact remains that the facial animations in this are so good they make everything else about the graphical presentation, which was still excellent for the time, look just a little bit clunky.
4. The acting across the board is compelling, which is necessary because L.A. Noire leans really heavily on its cinematic sequences. In addition to Aaron Staton, it borrows what must be over half the cast of Mad Men for various roles so that is the kind talent you an expect to see.
5. The sound design is right up there too. Voices sound like they are in realistic spaces, guns pop-off w/ convincing immediacy, radios blare period music, engines rev and roar and the whole thing is polished off by a memorable score that emphasizes the moment to moment impact of each scene perfectly.
6. I like what it attempts w/ its gameplay too. It is essentially an adventure game in the form of police procedural. In theory, I really like the idea of investigating physical evidence which you then use to tease the truth out of the suspects you question. In reality, investigating physical evidence is walking around and clicking on every little thing and interrogating subjects consists of asking suspects a limiting set of questions and trying to guess weather they are telling the truth or lying. The whole thing feels like you are stuck on rails rather that unraveling each case on your own.
7. This lack of control is really felt when you start seeing how little your performance affects actual outcomes. At one point, I really dropped a ball on one case. The police chief really let me have it but, in the very next scene, he says the DA is really happy w/ my work and drops a promotion in my lap. I did literally nothing in between.
8. There are also action sequences and these are outright miserable. I constantly found myself losing suspects I was chasing because I ran into something accidentally or got stuck halfway climbing up a fire escape. Aiming guns is a pain and the fighting system is just plain odd. The game basically admits to the player how bad these sequences are by just allowing them to just be skipped after a few tries. Thankfully.
9. The story is cut up into five sections, each of which has a few cases for you to solve w/ story-relevant cut scenes in between them. The first section is basically an introduction, the second is an extended introduction and the third is an in-depth introduction. Only once we get to section four is the overarching plot of the game revealed w/ any thoroughness. It is then wrapped up in section five. Needless to say, I found the pacing of the game to be a bit slow through some of the middle sections.
10. Women in L.A. Noire exist for the exclusive purpose of being victims--generally the victims of murder. The one female character that is given any sort of agency uses it to go ask for help from a man. She does this upon instruction from a different man.Similarly, black people play no other role in society than that of junkies, jazz musicians and small time criminals. Or, I should say black men. There is not a single black woman w/ a meaningful line of dialog in the whole game.
11. Some would be willing to write these issues off as either being a product of the 1940s setting or simply to genre tropes. I'm not. Fictional late forties L.A. presumably has a similar population as real late forties L.A. and real late forties L.A. County had a population approaching four million. If you cannot imagine, of these four million fictional people, a few that have control of their circumstances and who are not white men, you are just not trying. It is simple as that.
12. L.A. Noire is an open world game but doesn't really feel like it because you are pretty much stuck on a single path as far as the main story line goes. It does offer you some incentive to explore but the opportunities it gives you are lackluster at best. You can indulge in the horrible action mechanics and solve street crimes or go poking about looking for various hidden extras. Really, the best way to enjoy the scope of the game's take on Los Angles is just to go for a ride and see what you can see.
13. For all my complaining, most of what drives me nuts about this game was all done in service of what it does really well. You are stuck on rails because it has a story to tell. The mechanics are bad because the focus is on police procedure, not gun slinging. Women and minorities are portrayed poorly because... well, there's no excuse for that. Ultimately, L.A. Noire is nothing if not ambitious. In some regards, it bites off more than it can chew but it succeeds incredibly at building a believable world and spinning its twisted tale. I did not love every moment I spent playing it but it is a game that will undoubtedly remain bouncing through my thoughts for a long time to come.
Monday, November 20, 2017
13 Points on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Monolith Productions - 2014 [PC]
1. If you like games where you climb towers to reveal icons on a map, you will like this Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
2. You had better believe this is a AAA game, folks. There's like ten million logos when you start up; the voice actors have all had voice acting jobs before; and the sound effects have the basso profundo thunk of a high-budget Hollywood production. Huzzah!
3. This has the entire lore of Lord of the Rings available to it but the main character, Talion, is just Geralt from The Witcher, at least from a functional standpoint. They gave him a different back story to explain his abilities--he's dead, he's got a companion elf spirit, blah, blah, blah--but he's a dude that goes into super power mode to track creatures via little colored trails and caries two swords on his back for some reason. I feel that the influence here is unambiguous.
4. The eschews the standard tower-and-icons open world game type behavior where clearing icons gradually makes the areas of the world you've cleared them from safer to you. No matter what you do, the world remains crawling w/ Uruks, which are identical in all ways to orcs but apparently tougher according to some off-handed remark made in the game.
5. The effect of number 4 is a mixed bag. It makes the entire world seem dangerous and exciting to traverse for the whole game but since the world doesn't improve over the course of the game, the only thing that gives you a sense of progress is the fact that icons disappear from the map as you complete objectives.
6. *sigh*
7. Yeah, fine, there is also an RPG-like character system to give you a sense of progress--and it's a real doozy too. There are three kinds of experience points, skill trees w/o number and several essential combat moves aren't unlocked until a half dozen hours into the game. Nobody is going to accuse these AAA developers of skimping on the character progression, no way.
8. Mercifully, there is no crafting system. Instead, they have both hunt and gather requests which are less annoying but ultimately still just a stupid thing they tacked on that nobody asked for or cares about.
9. There are two open world areas. Neither of them are huge feeling but this actually works in Shadow of Mordor's favor. I found myself eschewing fast travel because it didn't take long to cross the map and I was sure to run into a couple entertaining encounters w/ Uruk that I could tackle in a variety of different ways, spending as much or as little effort as I felt either dispatching them or avoiding them.
10. The combat--esp. once you've unlocked all the various moves in the skill tree--is excellent. It has a similar button mashing flow as an old school beat-em-up. Attack, block and build combos to build up additional combos so you can keep building combos. It also adds a bullet-time type mechanic that you use w/ a bow and arrow, which functions as a sort of get-out-of-jail free card when things get too hairy. It never felt quite right to me to whip out a bow in the midst of a hectic melee fight but, as a game mechanic, it worked. Once you get the swing of things and a few upgrades, taking care of even large groups of enemies is not too much of a challenge but it's all done so stylishly that hacking through enemy waves never feels like a chore.
11. I could not give a hoot or a holler about the story in this game. Some Lord of the Rings stuff goes down and you crush some skulls. The rest felt superfluous, which is honestly fine by me. Gaming is a great storytelling medium but it doesn't have to be.
12. What it does do well is world building. W/ the big budget production and the ability to really lean into some well-known lore, this is a game that really puts you right there. You are in Middle-earth. You are riding on the backs of beasts and slaying evil in slow-mo w/ magic super arrows. Going back to the comparison to The Witcher, this provides the same kind of sense of adventure as those games but does it through gameplay rather than story. In some regards, this actually works better, esp. if you are a bourgeois wage-earner w/ limited free time.
13. The final boss battle is a quick-time event so I am going to half-ass the end of this review too.
2. You had better believe this is a AAA game, folks. There's like ten million logos when you start up; the voice actors have all had voice acting jobs before; and the sound effects have the basso profundo thunk of a high-budget Hollywood production. Huzzah!
3. This has the entire lore of Lord of the Rings available to it but the main character, Talion, is just Geralt from The Witcher, at least from a functional standpoint. They gave him a different back story to explain his abilities--he's dead, he's got a companion elf spirit, blah, blah, blah--but he's a dude that goes into super power mode to track creatures via little colored trails and caries two swords on his back for some reason. I feel that the influence here is unambiguous.
4. The eschews the standard tower-and-icons open world game type behavior where clearing icons gradually makes the areas of the world you've cleared them from safer to you. No matter what you do, the world remains crawling w/ Uruks, which are identical in all ways to orcs but apparently tougher according to some off-handed remark made in the game.
5. The effect of number 4 is a mixed bag. It makes the entire world seem dangerous and exciting to traverse for the whole game but since the world doesn't improve over the course of the game, the only thing that gives you a sense of progress is the fact that icons disappear from the map as you complete objectives.
6. *sigh*
7. Yeah, fine, there is also an RPG-like character system to give you a sense of progress--and it's a real doozy too. There are three kinds of experience points, skill trees w/o number and several essential combat moves aren't unlocked until a half dozen hours into the game. Nobody is going to accuse these AAA developers of skimping on the character progression, no way.
8. Mercifully, there is no crafting system. Instead, they have both hunt and gather requests which are less annoying but ultimately still just a stupid thing they tacked on that nobody asked for or cares about.
9. There are two open world areas. Neither of them are huge feeling but this actually works in Shadow of Mordor's favor. I found myself eschewing fast travel because it didn't take long to cross the map and I was sure to run into a couple entertaining encounters w/ Uruk that I could tackle in a variety of different ways, spending as much or as little effort as I felt either dispatching them or avoiding them.
10. The combat--esp. once you've unlocked all the various moves in the skill tree--is excellent. It has a similar button mashing flow as an old school beat-em-up. Attack, block and build combos to build up additional combos so you can keep building combos. It also adds a bullet-time type mechanic that you use w/ a bow and arrow, which functions as a sort of get-out-of-jail free card when things get too hairy. It never felt quite right to me to whip out a bow in the midst of a hectic melee fight but, as a game mechanic, it worked. Once you get the swing of things and a few upgrades, taking care of even large groups of enemies is not too much of a challenge but it's all done so stylishly that hacking through enemy waves never feels like a chore.
11. I could not give a hoot or a holler about the story in this game. Some Lord of the Rings stuff goes down and you crush some skulls. The rest felt superfluous, which is honestly fine by me. Gaming is a great storytelling medium but it doesn't have to be.
12. What it does do well is world building. W/ the big budget production and the ability to really lean into some well-known lore, this is a game that really puts you right there. You are in Middle-earth. You are riding on the backs of beasts and slaying evil in slow-mo w/ magic super arrows. Going back to the comparison to The Witcher, this provides the same kind of sense of adventure as those games but does it through gameplay rather than story. In some regards, this actually works better, esp. if you are a bourgeois wage-earner w/ limited free time.
13. The final boss battle is a quick-time event so I am going to half-ass the end of this review too.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
13 Points on Far Cry 3 - Ubisoft Montreal - 2012 [PC]
1. Ubisoft gave this and a bunch of other older titles away last year in an attempt to get people to use Uplay, proving people still don't want to use Uplay even when it's free.
2. This was released in 2012 but still has graphical settings such that you can see the individual hairs on a tiger from 500 meters away allowing you and your friends can have conversations that are like, "GTX, Ultra, Ultra, 60 FPS." (Your friends are boring, by the way.)
3. The setup here is you and some chill, white bros are partying with your chill, white girlfriends on an island paradise. Because something bad needs to happen, you skydive into a nest of brown-skinned, red shirt wearing pirates that speak only in heavily accented English even to each other. You and your chill, white bro attempt to escape but your bro gets shot by the mohawked, brown-skinned, red-shirt pirate captain right as you are about to get away. Fortunately for you, said red-shirt pirate captain gives you a running start because he's unaware that he's the villain in a video game in which you are the protagonist. Naturally, from here you run into a group of islanders who were apparently just waiting for a chill, white bro protagonist to lead the way and you all begin to diligently work together to save your friends and kill everyone else. You go from being squeamish about your bro's violent and decidedly un-chill methods during your escape attempt to killing human beings with a machete in less than ten minutes real time. Also *spoilers* as you play through, you find out all the people really pulling this strings on this island are white bros (but not chill).
4. Honestly, all this terrible shit just becomes background when it comes time to sharpen the old explosive arrows and murder everyone in a red shirt.
5. There are a lot of extras thrown on but this is a tactical shooter at heart. The series started on PC but is now fully console-ized w/ fully console-ized controller support. Playing feels really good w/ either controller or mouse and keyboard--though some of the button combos on controller get confusing in heated firefights--so use what you like.
6. This is a game set in an open world sandbox. It is not really an open world game. The story missions are completely on rails and nothing different happens based on how you go about things. This is fine. The story is really secondary anyway. Sure you are off trying to save your friends or whatever but you don't go about that in any way that makes even remote sense. You are never given the option to even try to go radio for help--and repairing radio towers is a major gameplay mechanic. You never get to try to steal a boat to get away and come back for them--and you do steal boats. You can't try to just keep your head down and sneak them out or raise the money to ransom them.You face the villains head-on and try to overthrow their massive slavery and smuggling ring. This is your only option to save your friends in Far Cry 3. It all kind of works out in the end. While I guess it is always cool to have the option to do a pacifist run, I will not fault a developer for focusing on what is, realistically speaking, the way most people are going to play.
7. The most interesting thing about the story is that your friends as you rescue them--not to mention you, yourself--notice that you are going through some pretty drastic personal changes. This would actually put it above your standard action movie as far as that goes so, you know. huzzah for games! It is a bit disappointing the developers never really move try to push this into a meta-narrative about the player and why a person might wish to spend their limited free time pretending to kill hundreds of red shirted brown people but I'll take what I can get.
8. In the end, the game is more about general mayhem than story anyway. You can churn your way through the story in a dozen hours or less but you are kinda missing the point if that's what you do. The most fun to be had in this game is in taking down enemy encampments, running supply missions on various vehicles, murdering specific people, revealing the map by climbing radio towers or searching the island for relics.
9. Taking down the enemy encampments provides the most variety of these things. It rarely works just to charge right in like an idiot but there's a variety of things that do work and things don't necessarily work out just how you planned them. The enemy AI is sort of gloriously stupid and trigger-happy so you might try to distract one by throwing a rock so you can sneak up behind him for a stealth kill as he yells something about getting venereal disease from a hooker only to have the dumb bastard fire his machine gun in the general direction of a caged tiger which then manages to escape and maul everyone in camp (and sometimes you too). When things do go as planned, it is deeply satisfying but it's almost better when things go awry and you can scrap by by the skin of your teeth.
10. The crafting system in this is an outright horrorshow of dreariness and busywork. You collect random animal skins for random upgrades and you never know what you will need in the future so consequently half your inventory is full of skins because you don't want to go shark hunting again. You wonder if Ubisoft just failed to playtest this element or if it was added under duress from the marketing department.
11.The skill trees are kinda cheesy too and, again, just feel like something tacked on because it's something games are supposed to have. You can can chose what you upgrade but many upgrades are locked based on your progress in the story of just your character level so it's impossible to focus on making a build based on stealth or a sniper build because you can basically just take every upgrade available to you at any given time. So why not just give people these skills from the outset and let them decide how to play based on how they want to play? I dunno. Skill trees are the shit I guess.
12. After getting on my high-horse about the treatment of brown-skinned people in this earlier, I feel like I should squeeze in a bit on the treatment of women. There are three main women characters in this game. Two of them exist only to be rescued. The third is thankfully more difficult to pin down and is actually the only native islander who is really in charge of anything. I suppose we live in a world where one out of three ain't bad but that is still not exactly ideal.
13. I can't help but feel like I've really overthought this one. It is really a super fun game. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to have super fun. I genuinely looked forward to pouring a beer and grabbing the controller every evening when I got home from work while I was playing Far Cry 3. I think what it does right, it does so right that it draws you into the game. That's a good thing but it does make you care all the more about its flaws. The RPG elements and the compelling but set-in-stone story telling don't feel like an extra bonus you get but missed potential at a bigger, much more engaging experience.
2. This was released in 2012 but still has graphical settings such that you can see the individual hairs on a tiger from 500 meters away allowing you and your friends can have conversations that are like, "GTX, Ultra, Ultra, 60 FPS." (Your friends are boring, by the way.)
3. The setup here is you and some chill, white bros are partying with your chill, white girlfriends on an island paradise. Because something bad needs to happen, you skydive into a nest of brown-skinned, red shirt wearing pirates that speak only in heavily accented English even to each other. You and your chill, white bro attempt to escape but your bro gets shot by the mohawked, brown-skinned, red-shirt pirate captain right as you are about to get away. Fortunately for you, said red-shirt pirate captain gives you a running start because he's unaware that he's the villain in a video game in which you are the protagonist. Naturally, from here you run into a group of islanders who were apparently just waiting for a chill, white bro protagonist to lead the way and you all begin to diligently work together to save your friends and kill everyone else. You go from being squeamish about your bro's violent and decidedly un-chill methods during your escape attempt to killing human beings with a machete in less than ten minutes real time. Also *spoilers* as you play through, you find out all the people really pulling this strings on this island are white bros (but not chill).
4. Honestly, all this terrible shit just becomes background when it comes time to sharpen the old explosive arrows and murder everyone in a red shirt.
5. There are a lot of extras thrown on but this is a tactical shooter at heart. The series started on PC but is now fully console-ized w/ fully console-ized controller support. Playing feels really good w/ either controller or mouse and keyboard--though some of the button combos on controller get confusing in heated firefights--so use what you like.
6. This is a game set in an open world sandbox. It is not really an open world game. The story missions are completely on rails and nothing different happens based on how you go about things. This is fine. The story is really secondary anyway. Sure you are off trying to save your friends or whatever but you don't go about that in any way that makes even remote sense. You are never given the option to even try to go radio for help--and repairing radio towers is a major gameplay mechanic. You never get to try to steal a boat to get away and come back for them--and you do steal boats. You can't try to just keep your head down and sneak them out or raise the money to ransom them.You face the villains head-on and try to overthrow their massive slavery and smuggling ring. This is your only option to save your friends in Far Cry 3. It all kind of works out in the end. While I guess it is always cool to have the option to do a pacifist run, I will not fault a developer for focusing on what is, realistically speaking, the way most people are going to play.
7. The most interesting thing about the story is that your friends as you rescue them--not to mention you, yourself--notice that you are going through some pretty drastic personal changes. This would actually put it above your standard action movie as far as that goes so, you know. huzzah for games! It is a bit disappointing the developers never really move try to push this into a meta-narrative about the player and why a person might wish to spend their limited free time pretending to kill hundreds of red shirted brown people but I'll take what I can get.
8. In the end, the game is more about general mayhem than story anyway. You can churn your way through the story in a dozen hours or less but you are kinda missing the point if that's what you do. The most fun to be had in this game is in taking down enemy encampments, running supply missions on various vehicles, murdering specific people, revealing the map by climbing radio towers or searching the island for relics.
9. Taking down the enemy encampments provides the most variety of these things. It rarely works just to charge right in like an idiot but there's a variety of things that do work and things don't necessarily work out just how you planned them. The enemy AI is sort of gloriously stupid and trigger-happy so you might try to distract one by throwing a rock so you can sneak up behind him for a stealth kill as he yells something about getting venereal disease from a hooker only to have the dumb bastard fire his machine gun in the general direction of a caged tiger which then manages to escape and maul everyone in camp (and sometimes you too). When things do go as planned, it is deeply satisfying but it's almost better when things go awry and you can scrap by by the skin of your teeth.
10. The crafting system in this is an outright horrorshow of dreariness and busywork. You collect random animal skins for random upgrades and you never know what you will need in the future so consequently half your inventory is full of skins because you don't want to go shark hunting again. You wonder if Ubisoft just failed to playtest this element or if it was added under duress from the marketing department.
11.The skill trees are kinda cheesy too and, again, just feel like something tacked on because it's something games are supposed to have. You can can chose what you upgrade but many upgrades are locked based on your progress in the story of just your character level so it's impossible to focus on making a build based on stealth or a sniper build because you can basically just take every upgrade available to you at any given time. So why not just give people these skills from the outset and let them decide how to play based on how they want to play? I dunno. Skill trees are the shit I guess.
12. After getting on my high-horse about the treatment of brown-skinned people in this earlier, I feel like I should squeeze in a bit on the treatment of women. There are three main women characters in this game. Two of them exist only to be rescued. The third is thankfully more difficult to pin down and is actually the only native islander who is really in charge of anything. I suppose we live in a world where one out of three ain't bad but that is still not exactly ideal.
13. I can't help but feel like I've really overthought this one. It is really a super fun game. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to have super fun. I genuinely looked forward to pouring a beer and grabbing the controller every evening when I got home from work while I was playing Far Cry 3. I think what it does right, it does so right that it draws you into the game. That's a good thing but it does make you care all the more about its flaws. The RPG elements and the compelling but set-in-stone story telling don't feel like an extra bonus you get but missed potential at a bigger, much more engaging experience.
Monday, August 14, 2017
13 Points on Lego City Undercover - TT Fusion - 2013 [Nintendo Wii U]
1. This game was originally a Wii U exclusive because someone at Nintendo got the inkling that it could potentially be a system seller. Unfortunately, nothing on earth could sell the Wii U. Whoops!
2. Lego City Undercover is Grand Theft Auto made of Lego bricks. This is awesome.
3. I'd call this an all-ages game rather than a kids game but it is made so that kids can play it, which does inform some major design decisions. You can't kill Lego people and the game is easy as balls.
4. While this is dripping w/ the same kind of satire common to Lego games, it is one of very few that is not based on some other popular franchise. If you are like me and sick of Star Wars being shoved up your bum ten times a year, this is ideal.
5. The setup here is really just an excuse to tool around Lego City and do Lego things w/ Lego people. You are a cop. There is a bad guy. You've got to get him.
6. The game runs and looks great and the cut scenes could easily be cartoons on TV--not that that bar is particularly high but I do think this shows an attention to detail which becomes a big part of why Lego City Undercover is so much fun to play.
7. It is also worth noting that the music is excellent. It could easily be used as a score for a cop drama on TV. It's bombastic, moody, funky or rocking depending on what the situation requires.
8. A particular favorite was the loading screen music, which is good because you will be looking at loading screens for quite a while, esp. on the Wii U.
9. The driving mechanics are pretty typical for a game that is not a dedicated driving game. Hit the gas and don't let go. There's a good variety of cars and bikes to drive as well as a helicopter and some off the wall stuff that is all pretty fun to tear around on. I mean, if you don't want to drive a Lego T-rex, I don't want to know you.
10. This isn't exactly the most cerebral of games.There is some mild puzzle solving and a lot of just smashing the crap out of everything and seeing what happens.
11. Ground combat gets old fast. There are some cool moves to pull off but if you think it's more than button mashing, you are kidding yourself. You can't really die so you don't have much skin in it either. I found when being approached by a group of henchmen, I frequently just sighed and tuned out while I mashed the attack button.
12. For whatever reason, I found myself sticking to main plot almost exclusively to begin w/ in this, which is quite the opposite of how I normally play such a game. Part of that is the majority of stuff to do outside the main quest is to just search high and low for various items but it is definitely partly a testament to how well the main quest is designed. Playing through, you get a strong feeling it's a really good assortment of everything the game has to offer.
13. I usually find games that actually bill themselves as being relaxing to be frustratingly slow and annoying. Something like this w/ its all-ages accessibility and loads of action packed fun fits the relaxing bill much better for me. This is not a game that is going to stagger you w/ its heart-wrenching genius but it's not trying to be. It does what it tries to do really well and you have to respect that.
2. Lego City Undercover is Grand Theft Auto made of Lego bricks. This is awesome.
3. I'd call this an all-ages game rather than a kids game but it is made so that kids can play it, which does inform some major design decisions. You can't kill Lego people and the game is easy as balls.
4. While this is dripping w/ the same kind of satire common to Lego games, it is one of very few that is not based on some other popular franchise. If you are like me and sick of Star Wars being shoved up your bum ten times a year, this is ideal.
5. The setup here is really just an excuse to tool around Lego City and do Lego things w/ Lego people. You are a cop. There is a bad guy. You've got to get him.
6. The game runs and looks great and the cut scenes could easily be cartoons on TV--not that that bar is particularly high but I do think this shows an attention to detail which becomes a big part of why Lego City Undercover is so much fun to play.
7. It is also worth noting that the music is excellent. It could easily be used as a score for a cop drama on TV. It's bombastic, moody, funky or rocking depending on what the situation requires.
8. A particular favorite was the loading screen music, which is good because you will be looking at loading screens for quite a while, esp. on the Wii U.
9. The driving mechanics are pretty typical for a game that is not a dedicated driving game. Hit the gas and don't let go. There's a good variety of cars and bikes to drive as well as a helicopter and some off the wall stuff that is all pretty fun to tear around on. I mean, if you don't want to drive a Lego T-rex, I don't want to know you.
10. This isn't exactly the most cerebral of games.There is some mild puzzle solving and a lot of just smashing the crap out of everything and seeing what happens.
11. Ground combat gets old fast. There are some cool moves to pull off but if you think it's more than button mashing, you are kidding yourself. You can't really die so you don't have much skin in it either. I found when being approached by a group of henchmen, I frequently just sighed and tuned out while I mashed the attack button.
12. For whatever reason, I found myself sticking to main plot almost exclusively to begin w/ in this, which is quite the opposite of how I normally play such a game. Part of that is the majority of stuff to do outside the main quest is to just search high and low for various items but it is definitely partly a testament to how well the main quest is designed. Playing through, you get a strong feeling it's a really good assortment of everything the game has to offer.
13. I usually find games that actually bill themselves as being relaxing to be frustratingly slow and annoying. Something like this w/ its all-ages accessibility and loads of action packed fun fits the relaxing bill much better for me. This is not a game that is going to stagger you w/ its heart-wrenching genius but it's not trying to be. It does what it tries to do really well and you have to respect that.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
13 Points on Mad Max - Avalanche Games - 2015 [PC]
1. The marketing materials for this have such a focus on vehicular customization that it had me believing it was going to be Skyrim w/ a bitchen hot rod. Really, it is an action game set in an open world sandbox--which is fine too, I guess.
2. Honestly--and just to get it out of the way--the main reason this game is worth playing is because tearing down a sandy highway after an enemy vehicle, harpooning the driver and ripping his flailing body from the soon to be wreckage of his car just never gets old.
3. Obviously, this is set in the Mad Max universe, which has some qualities which are advantageous for a game world. Specifically, it is populated by a breed of murderous subhumans that can be beaten to death by the titular protagonist w/o regard to troublesome and tedious thoughts of morality and necessity. You will invade the shelter of six dudes and kill them all so that you can steal a small amount of scrap metal and dog food that are the sum total of their material possessions. In the world of Mad Max, you look at the gray vs. gray morality of this situation, shrug you shoulders and shoot these guys' brothers w/ a harpoon when they come after you.
4. As far as doing the actual killing, combat is solid, esp. when you are in your car. Driving has a pretty standard arcade feel to it, along the lines of GTA games or similar. You have a host of weapons you can use while driving and when you go to aim, time slows which enables you to both aim and drive reasonably well at the same time. You can also just quickfire at whatever the game guesses you want to shoot, which is often good enough. These sequences seem so cool that I found myself wishing I could go back and replay them in real time just to see what a hardcore badass I am behind the wheel.
5. Combat on foot is mashing one button to attack and occasionally dodging, parrying or hitting another button for a finisher. The combat looks awesome on screen but I found myself dying because I was trying to rush through the boring fights more than I did because they were actually difficult.
6. Every boss fight in Mad Max is dodging the well telegraphed attack and coming back and beat on them for a minute. Sometimes they throw enemy mobs at you as a distraction.
7. The setup for the story here is Mad Max shows up in a particular section of wasteland, well on his way to reaching some probably imaginary paradise, and he is in search of gasoline. This dude, Scrotus, who has a very bad temper due to being picked on because of his name, runs this little section of wasteland takes issue w/ Max. An altercation ensues leaving Scrotus almost dead and Max w/o his beloved automobile. They become mortal enemies at this point because why not. Max runs into a helpful hunchback named Chumbucket--because people are always named after fishing terms in the endless desert--and together they seek to build Max a new automobile. Along the way, Max runs into the one other person in this vast stretch of desert who is not a degenerate mutant or otherwise horribly decrepit and it just so happens she's an attractive woman who just so happens to have a daughter who just so happens to get kidnapped. *Spoilers* This whole business plays out about how you expect for the most part.
8. The desert setting here is really remarkably good looking. Plains spread endlessly in all directions at the start but you eventually run into plateaus and more mountainous regions which provide a decent diversity of terrain--you know, for a desert. Structures are unfortunately not as diverse. These are all from the same school of architecture used in every post-apocalyptic game world, which is to say they are either half fallen old buildings or randomly thrown together circles of shipping containers, broken down school buses and sheet metal. Either way, the floorplans were made after careful, post-apocalyptic study of Doom 2 WADs and the resulting structures resemble neither functional abodes nor practical defensive works in the least.
9. The various friendly encampments, called strongholds, are inhabited by nameless and long suffering humans who never move anywhere at all. In one, there is a woman vomiting against the wall in a hallway. If you come back at night time, she is still there vomiting in the hallway. After you've helped the stronghold and improved their access to resources, she eventually gets better and thanks you the next time you pass her in the hallway... Just kidding! She will vomit against the wall for all time and nothing you do matters. I presume this is because Mad Max is meant to be allegorical to a real-life existential crisis but maybe the developers, Avalanche Studios, overshot their budget on high-paced harpoon gun action before they got to making realistic NPCs. Who knows for sure.
10. The various characters you run into are all visually alluring and then more or less completely flat. Everyone is either sociopathically self interested or some hot woman who had her daughter kidnapped. It bears pointing out that Max is not in the latter category. The voice acting for these unfortunate folks seems pretty uneven to put it mildly but I really blame the script and the characters themselves over the actors for this.
11. There is a lot to do in Mad Max and the world is pretty expansive. Fast travel isn't enabled until later in the game (and not necessarily at all) and you will spend a good chunk of time just driving from one end of the map to the other, which isn't really a bad thing. Any trip will inevitably be punctuated by a few violent run-ins w/ enemy vehicles and, at least when you are new to an area, diversions to take down enemy defensive structures w/ your handy harpoon gun. This is incredibly fun at first but wears thin as the endless repetitive combat and detours to search for small amounts of resources for upgrades grows tiresome. Most of the sidequesting you do is simply traveling to a particular location, killing everyone and maybe picking up a needed item. It doesn't really add any depth to overall gameplay.
12. The customization much lauded by the marketing materials is the main reason you travel around this endless expanse of samey enemy camps and encounters and it's fairly well done. Many new vehicle components are strictly upgrades from previous versions but there are a good deal of choices that improve one stat while harming another. You can build up a tank that can batter its way through large caravans of enemies or put together an agile car to leave them in the dust. Ultimately, some stats become obviously more important than others and I have a feeling most players w/ similar resources collected will end up w/ similar vehicles. In some places, the game actually forces you to build a particular car and use it, which I feel is basically an admission by the developers that some builds are worthless and you'd never use them if left to your druthers.
13. Despite how my previous twelve points have read, I can honestly whole-heartedly recommend Mad Max to anyone who wants a fun and bombastic game to screw around w/ for a dozen or so hours. I said car combat is awesome and I'm not kidding. Check it out. My advice for the best experience is just resolve to build up a car, whoop some ass and put the game down when that gets boring. Finishing out story mode ultimately proves unsatisfying and is deeply frustrating due to a few racing sections toward that just feel tacked on. This is a 100% completionist's nightmare but a weekend (road) warrior can sure have a good time.
2. Honestly--and just to get it out of the way--the main reason this game is worth playing is because tearing down a sandy highway after an enemy vehicle, harpooning the driver and ripping his flailing body from the soon to be wreckage of his car just never gets old.
3. Obviously, this is set in the Mad Max universe, which has some qualities which are advantageous for a game world. Specifically, it is populated by a breed of murderous subhumans that can be beaten to death by the titular protagonist w/o regard to troublesome and tedious thoughts of morality and necessity. You will invade the shelter of six dudes and kill them all so that you can steal a small amount of scrap metal and dog food that are the sum total of their material possessions. In the world of Mad Max, you look at the gray vs. gray morality of this situation, shrug you shoulders and shoot these guys' brothers w/ a harpoon when they come after you.
4. As far as doing the actual killing, combat is solid, esp. when you are in your car. Driving has a pretty standard arcade feel to it, along the lines of GTA games or similar. You have a host of weapons you can use while driving and when you go to aim, time slows which enables you to both aim and drive reasonably well at the same time. You can also just quickfire at whatever the game guesses you want to shoot, which is often good enough. These sequences seem so cool that I found myself wishing I could go back and replay them in real time just to see what a hardcore badass I am behind the wheel.
5. Combat on foot is mashing one button to attack and occasionally dodging, parrying or hitting another button for a finisher. The combat looks awesome on screen but I found myself dying because I was trying to rush through the boring fights more than I did because they were actually difficult.
6. Every boss fight in Mad Max is dodging the well telegraphed attack and coming back and beat on them for a minute. Sometimes they throw enemy mobs at you as a distraction.
7. The setup for the story here is Mad Max shows up in a particular section of wasteland, well on his way to reaching some probably imaginary paradise, and he is in search of gasoline. This dude, Scrotus, who has a very bad temper due to being picked on because of his name, runs this little section of wasteland takes issue w/ Max. An altercation ensues leaving Scrotus almost dead and Max w/o his beloved automobile. They become mortal enemies at this point because why not. Max runs into a helpful hunchback named Chumbucket--because people are always named after fishing terms in the endless desert--and together they seek to build Max a new automobile. Along the way, Max runs into the one other person in this vast stretch of desert who is not a degenerate mutant or otherwise horribly decrepit and it just so happens she's an attractive woman who just so happens to have a daughter who just so happens to get kidnapped. *Spoilers* This whole business plays out about how you expect for the most part.
8. The desert setting here is really remarkably good looking. Plains spread endlessly in all directions at the start but you eventually run into plateaus and more mountainous regions which provide a decent diversity of terrain--you know, for a desert. Structures are unfortunately not as diverse. These are all from the same school of architecture used in every post-apocalyptic game world, which is to say they are either half fallen old buildings or randomly thrown together circles of shipping containers, broken down school buses and sheet metal. Either way, the floorplans were made after careful, post-apocalyptic study of Doom 2 WADs and the resulting structures resemble neither functional abodes nor practical defensive works in the least.
9. The various friendly encampments, called strongholds, are inhabited by nameless and long suffering humans who never move anywhere at all. In one, there is a woman vomiting against the wall in a hallway. If you come back at night time, she is still there vomiting in the hallway. After you've helped the stronghold and improved their access to resources, she eventually gets better and thanks you the next time you pass her in the hallway... Just kidding! She will vomit against the wall for all time and nothing you do matters. I presume this is because Mad Max is meant to be allegorical to a real-life existential crisis but maybe the developers, Avalanche Studios, overshot their budget on high-paced harpoon gun action before they got to making realistic NPCs. Who knows for sure.
10. The various characters you run into are all visually alluring and then more or less completely flat. Everyone is either sociopathically self interested or some hot woman who had her daughter kidnapped. It bears pointing out that Max is not in the latter category. The voice acting for these unfortunate folks seems pretty uneven to put it mildly but I really blame the script and the characters themselves over the actors for this.
11. There is a lot to do in Mad Max and the world is pretty expansive. Fast travel isn't enabled until later in the game (and not necessarily at all) and you will spend a good chunk of time just driving from one end of the map to the other, which isn't really a bad thing. Any trip will inevitably be punctuated by a few violent run-ins w/ enemy vehicles and, at least when you are new to an area, diversions to take down enemy defensive structures w/ your handy harpoon gun. This is incredibly fun at first but wears thin as the endless repetitive combat and detours to search for small amounts of resources for upgrades grows tiresome. Most of the sidequesting you do is simply traveling to a particular location, killing everyone and maybe picking up a needed item. It doesn't really add any depth to overall gameplay.
12. The customization much lauded by the marketing materials is the main reason you travel around this endless expanse of samey enemy camps and encounters and it's fairly well done. Many new vehicle components are strictly upgrades from previous versions but there are a good deal of choices that improve one stat while harming another. You can build up a tank that can batter its way through large caravans of enemies or put together an agile car to leave them in the dust. Ultimately, some stats become obviously more important than others and I have a feeling most players w/ similar resources collected will end up w/ similar vehicles. In some places, the game actually forces you to build a particular car and use it, which I feel is basically an admission by the developers that some builds are worthless and you'd never use them if left to your druthers.
13. Despite how my previous twelve points have read, I can honestly whole-heartedly recommend Mad Max to anyone who wants a fun and bombastic game to screw around w/ for a dozen or so hours. I said car combat is awesome and I'm not kidding. Check it out. My advice for the best experience is just resolve to build up a car, whoop some ass and put the game down when that gets boring. Finishing out story mode ultimately proves unsatisfying and is deeply frustrating due to a few racing sections toward that just feel tacked on. This is a 100% completionist's nightmare but a weekend (road) warrior can sure have a good time.
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