05 Nov 2007
I’ve already pumped a ton of time into The Orange Box and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I started out with Portal, which is a little slice of gaming perfection. I then moved on to play Half-Life 2 for my third time (yes, it’s that good), but for my first time on a console and my first time with achievements (Ravenholm with only the gravity gun = good times). I’ve only cracked open Team Fortress 2 for one round but it was a total blast. I’m big supporter of renting these days, but really no one with a 360 should be without The Orange Box.
More of a good thing is still a good thing, and with Guitar Hero all I really need are more songs. Thankfully Guitar Hero III delivers a quality set list. Sure they’ve added multiplayer and that crazy battle thing, but that’s not really what’ll sustain me. I’m looking to Rock Band to evolve the experience, but in the meantime I’m content with more of the same from GH3.
Really, who hasn’t been playing Halo 3? As awesome as Halo’s multiplayer is, I’m a member of the “singleplayer first” crowd, so right out of the gate I holed to play through the Chief’s latest rumble in the jungle. I was not disappointed, as that Halo’s level design seems to have caught up with the excellent gameplay. I’ve been squeezing in some multiplayer as well whenever I’ve had the opportunity, but there are so many games on my plate right now that it’s hard to justify prioritizing another round of Slayer over other games. There’s no rush, because we all know that Halo 3 multiplayer will be rocking until the End of Time.
I spoke awhile ago about potentially putting down WoW and trying out LotRO. But I never proceeded to mention that I actually followed through. You heard me - I successfully broke free of WoW. You could say that I didn’t quit, I just changed cigarette brands; but I haven’t really been playing LotRO much at all, so it’s more like switching to a nicotine patch instead. Don’t get me wrong - LotRO is a very capable MMO and has a leg up on WoW in some ways. I like that they planned for varying group sizes (and even have solo instances). I like the ongoing epic quests. I love those moments when you connect to the book (like getting lost in the Old Forest, or climbing Weathertop). I love the deed system (i.e. MMO achievements). But although the game is technically more powerful it ends up feeling rough around the edges. The UI is unintuitive and clunky in a lot of places, and the art direction overall just isn’t as good. It’s still fun, but I have a hard time deciding if I’m not playing much because of some flaw or if I’m just burned out on MMOs in general.
I’d probably be raving about Metroid all over the place right now if there weren’t so many other great games also keeping me busy. Halo and the Orange Box came along and totally derailed my ongoing Metroid campaign. I’m hoping to get back to it now that I have some more free time, because what I’ve played so far has been great. The control scheme works really well, the action is great, and the environments are gorgeous. What more can you ask for from a Metroid title?
I think this one’s destined to gather some dust for awhile given that GH3 is commanding my attention right now. But as a rental or a budget title Rocks the 80’s is better than the bad press it got. There are some fun songs in there, just don’t pay full price for this one.
Puzzle Quest
I heard that the DS version of this game wasn’t quite as good as the widescreen version on the PSP, so I decided to wait until it hit Xbox Live Arcade so I could try the trial for free. Little did I know what I was missing all these months. Puzzle Quest is freaking brilliant. It takes the short term game from a puzzle game like Bejeweled and combines it with the long term structure of your average RPG. The result is an RPG that is fun all of the time, not just in the abstract. RPG elements have been tacked onto many other genres before in order to give them longer appeal, but this particular blend comes off really well.
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Taking a little vacation a couple of weeks ago gave me enough plane time to sit down with the latest Castlevania. I’ve had a hard time getting into it because it is so similar to its predecessor. More of the same gameplay wise isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but recycled art sure is. You don’t want people to feel like they’re playing the exact same game. And that’s what it feels like, except the characters and script are even more obnoxious. But hey, you gotta pass time on the bus somehow.
Final Fantasy VI
I’ve had some frustration with the modern RPG lately, so I just had to go back and play one of the classics to cleanse my palate. I’m still a little burned out after WoW, and I’ve had to whore out my bus time to work for the past couple months, so I’ve been proceeding slowly. But FF6 really is as charming as ever.
02 Nov 2007
A healthy, balanced life is within reach - I can almost see it. I haven’t had much energy to post here, but thankfully I haven’t been completely absorbed in work during all this time. I figure the best way to get back into the swing of things is to recap what I’ve been playing over the last couple months during my radio silence. I’ve got a big fat pile of games that I’ve finished and should really give a proper review, but I don’t know if I’ll ever own up to the backlog. So I’ll just run down the list and keep it short:
An enjoyable but forgettable third person shooter. I enjoyed the dynamic of having your life constantly tick down as you freeze to death (I’m a run and gun player anyway) but spending so much time shooting storage tanks and trudging slowly through the snow to go fetch orange goop took out some of the bite. Shooting big bugs was fun, but oddly enough shooting snow pirates was not. But you can do a lot worse as a rental.
I’m not sure why this game got so much controversy, because the content is no more racy than Revenge of the Nerds. The game really feels like living out one of those high school or college “coming of age” flicks with their cliques and quirky authority figures. The lead character may be a brat, but he actually grows as a character. The script is good, the cast is good… there’s actually decent storytelling in there (in a video game of all places…). You can see the GTA roots in the gameplay structure, but this time around the violence is mostly cartoony (with noogies and stink bombs instead of AK-47s) and the topics aren’t as blatantly offensive (sketchy lunchroom fare instead of coked-out hookers).
Even though I adored The Thousand Year Door, I was excited at the idea of changing it around to add more of a platforming focus to Super Paper Mario (there’s always room for more classic Mario gameplay, right?). But, well… meh. I think this game went wrong in two key ways. First: Although it discarded the majority of the RPG genre’s gameplay mechanics, it kept the whole “story” thing. The script wasn’t poorly written, and actually has its cute moments (although not as many as Thousand Year Door), but from a pacing perspective it’s really jarring to go back and forth from platforming to reading pages of text. Second: The mesh of the classic paper style and the retro 8-bit vibe wasn’t very successful. Either would have been okay on their own, but together they created a visual style that felt disconnected and cheap. And although I don’t think the 2D/3D gimmick ruined the game, it didn’t help either. Super Paper Mario isn’t a complete waste of time by any means, but you’re better off going for The Thousand Year Door.
It’s a bit hard going back to C&C after experiencing the fine tuned excellence of games like Starcraft and Warcraft. But C&C always holds a warm place in my heart for nostalgic reasons. Sure, every game basically boils down to the same race to build super units and then stream roll over the enemy, but at least the game keeps that satisfying. This latest iteration takes the great graphical detail of Generals and applies it to this classic franchise. Good times, but not especially deep.
Although Rabbids is really just a minigame collection, it’s got enough really good games in it to make for a pretty engaging experience. In particular, each stage ends with a great “on rails” shooter game. With the Wiimote this is the first time I’ve really ever had the feeling of playing something like Area 51 from the arcade in my living room. It’s a fun and accessible gametype and I can’t wait to see more games that focus on that. The rest of the minigames are generally pretty fun, so if you’re looking for a way to swing that Wiimote like a crazy person, this is a good choice.
Well, that list of games that I’ve completed over the last few months. Of course I’ve got more that I’m currently working through, but I’ll write up details on them later:
28 Aug 2007
For someone who’s such a Metroid fanboy, I’m actually not much of a fan of the original. I’ve been spending a decent amount of time on the Virtual Console lately, and the original Metroid hasn’t aged nearly as well other big franchises (like Mario and Zelda). Even when I know where I’m going I invariably get lost in the repetitive environments. And entirely too much effort is spent farming energy to fill up your tanks. In Zelda you may have more heart containers (energy tanks), but each heart drop gives you back a full one (not 5/100) and there are both fairies and potions to give you big refills in times of need. I’ve never actually had the stomach to finish the original Metroid, although I try every now and then if only to experience it’s historical significance.
Super Metroid, however, is one of the greatest games of all time. It is a timeless classic - the pinnacle of 2D action gaming. It may be 13 years old, but it still can r0x0r your b0x0rz.
I was aware that these classic Metroid games were coming to the Virtual Console, but it was seeing the speed runs at PAX that really motivated me to try a run of Super Metroid after all these years. Back in 1994 I worked my butt off to get the best ending (which requires beating the game in less than 3 hours). But do I still have what it takes?
Turns out, yes. Stuffed away in the recesses of my brain is all the information I need to blaze through Super Metroid (no GameFaqs crutch here). I can barely remember a movie I saw last week, but I know exactly what section of wall to shoot to reveal another coveted super missile tank. My run clocked in at 2:00 even (which was 50% items). There’s a lot of time I could shave off there for sure: I stopped for way too many items, made and extra trip to Brinstar, and I got totally lost in Maridia. I just might try for another run to see how low I can go, but I’m totally proud of the fact that I can still rock it after all these years.
Now, by today’s standards beating a game in 2 hours sounds crazy. We expect a bare minimum of 10-20 hours even from our action games. But I like the fact that Super Metroid can be done in 2 hours. Instead of being a game padded with filler, this is pure gaming goodness that you don’t mind playing again and again. But don’t go thinking that my 2 hours is any sort of achievement. The Speed Demos Archive clocks the record at 0:32. The skill involved in a run like that is crazy impressive, (on par from the jaw dropping Quake Done Quick runs). Super Metroid is a natural fit for speed running, as that the very nature of the gameplay impedes progress gated on movement enhancing upgrades (high jump, dash, grapple, etc.). Very clever and dexterous people can overcome those obstacles through other means, bypassing or at least speeding up large sections of the natural progression.
Of course there’s a reason that these titles are hitting the Virtual Console now, and that’s the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption this week for the Wii. From the reviews it sounds just as awesome as I’d expect from its pedigree, and to get you up to speed GameTrailers has done an excellent retrospective on the entire Metroid series (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
In the meantime, if you’ve got a Wii and some spare cycles, I highly recommend you go download Super Metroid. It won’t disappoint.
25 Aug 2007
If you couldn’t tell from my lack of posting, life has been rough lately. But not yesterday. Yesterday was a good day.
Yesterday was the first day of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). I’ve never been before, but this year I’ve been plugged into more gaming blogs and the more I learned about PAX the more interested I became. What totally sealed the deal for me was this adorable story about Gabe attending a Pokemon tournament (and the warm fuzzy follow-up). These guys and their web comic are hardcore yet laid back gamers - people like me. PAX is basically a party by gamers for gamers. And I am so into that.
I’m fortunate enough to live in Seattle, so getting to PAX is cake for me. I distinguished the usually common walk downtown by grooving to some 8-bit remixes on my Zune. Upon arriving at the convention center I was immediately struck by how the place was swarming with my ilk. My heart swelled to see so many good people (albeit a bit pale) coming together to geek out over something they love so much. I guess it’s a sign of how stressed I’ve been to say that I wanted to get all teary at the sight of a whole bunch of gaming geeks milling around.
I wasn’t at the convention for more than ten minutes before I got to play Rock Band (priorities are priorities, after all). I was there early before the line got totally ridiculous plus I got bumped up to fill out a group of three that needed one more. They were sitting there, ready to go, but looking so sad because they had no lead guitarist. And I, like a true guitar hero, raised my hand as if to say “I will save you!” The song was Learning to Fly by the Foo Fighters, the difficulty was Hard (I didn’t have the balls to try out Expert on a new song in front of a crowd that large), our drummer kinda sucked (props to him for trying ), but it was totally awesome.
The Rock Band guitar feels a less solid in heft than the Guitar Hero one, although it looks way cooler. The strum has a lip to it, giving it more grip than the Guitar Hero triangle of slipperiness. The fret buttons don’t stick out, making them feel a little more like piano keys than buttons (which I think made them feel more substantial and a bit easier to slide over). I didn’t get a chance to try out the mysterious high frets. The whammy bar feels like a real whammy bar, and the guitar has an actual effects switch. If you ignore the fact that it’s way too light and seems to be made of too many pieces, it totally feels like a Fender Strat.
As that I was playing lead guitar, I didn’t really get much of a chance to feel out the drums or vocals. But the guitar portion was more or less exactly what you get from Guitar Hero. It might have just been due to my virgin run on the song, but it felt like the timing was a little more critical than what I’ve grown used to. The fret UI indicators also don’t seem to stand out as well (either in size or color) compared to Guitar Hero, but again that could just be me resisting change. All in all it felt like a solid round of Guitar Hero but with a whole band behind me.
Totally aglow from my rock experience, I wandered the show floor a bit longer until I found the Wii section… complete with playable Metroid Prime 3. I had to wait in line a bit for this one, which was made extra painful by how bad the guy was in front of me. I don’t mean to be too critical, but we weren’t resetting the demo after each player so I had to start off wherever he stopped - totally lost, 5 minutes in the opposite direction from where the action was. So I didn’t get to sample a great deal of the combat. But I can say that the controls are really smooth. This was my first real Wii shooter, so I can’t say how it compares to other games, but I can say that I never felt like I was fighting the controls. The pan regions on the edge felt a little sticky, but by the end of my run I was already compensating for that and moving around like a champ. I did spend a large time staring at a grapple point, frantically trying to figure out what button to press… until I realized that you grapple with a totally hot nunchuck gesture. Apparently I was making it waaay too complicated by thinking in terms of “buttons.”
I wandered the floor for a bit longer, and on my way out I just happened to catch the keynote. I hadn’t planned on attending, after all what does Wil Wheaton have to say that I need to hear? But I’m totally glad I went, because the speech was awesome. He basically just talked about his life of being a gamer, from dumping his allowance into the arcades to playing Guitar Hero with his kids. He was witty, funny, and completely relatable. And again I was strong by a great sense of camaraderie for all my fellow gamers filling out that theater.
I finished off my evening with wine, steak, and DotA. Unfortunately those people online didn’t seem to have heard Wil’s “Don’t be a dick” message, but it was still a pleasant way to end a pretty awesome day.
04 Jul 2007
We love thieves. Not some dude who breaks into your car or pulls a gun on you in a dark alley. Those guys suck. No, we love heist-pulling, safe cracking, masterminding, acrobatically flipping, car chasing thieves. You know, the kind that only exist in movies. They act a whole lot like Bond, all classy, sneaky, and above the law. But instead of saving the world they’re sticking it to the man whilst serving themselves.
Ocean’s Eleven was a great heist film. A big fancy pants cast with a nice elaborate heist and just the right amount of twists, all set to great music… what’s there not to like?
Ocean’s Twelve I didn’t care for as much. It was fine, but it got a little too elaborate and twisty for my tastes. Plus it lost the unifying goal of nailing the casinos - a villain that we can all easily unite against.
Ocean’s Thirteen is a return to the first movie. We’re back in Vegas, although this time we’re sticking it to Al Pacino instead of Andy Garcia. There are still twists, but not to the extent of “everything you saw in the last 30 minutes was a lie.” The scale is much more reasonable… well except that whole business with the Chunnel drill. The result is that the film doesn’t have a mega climax with everything is being turned on its head left and right. But I really don’t have a problem with that, I love it when a plan comes together. Instead of being on the edge of your seat, Ocean’s Thirteen is more like a laid back music video. Pleasant sights and sounds, not too much thinking, but satisfying.