04 Aug 2008
Played on Xbox360
I’ve been doing the GameFly thing for quite some time now, and I’ve noticed that my play style has changed somewhat. Gone are the days of playing only a handful of games, but playing them so deeply that I know every last inch. I don’t think it’s correct to say my taste has changed, but I do think it has expanded. I now seek out games where the reviews criticize it for being “too short.” I often would rather have short but memorable experiences with multiple games than a long deep relationship with one epic game. I’ve shifted to be a gaming polygamist. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy deep, long-term gameplay (just look at how much MMO blogging I do), but I’ve now got a soft spot for the short but sweet weekend rental.
Conan is just that sort of game. Not to be confused with Age of Conan, the MMO, the Conan for the Xbox 360 is a simple third-person action slash-fest. You are Conan, and you kill stuff. And being the barbarian badass that you are, you vanquish your foes with gratuitous force. It’s quite satisfying.
There’s nothing terribly complicated about the core gameplay. There are three primary attack buttons and different combos for various sequences of these attacks. For the most part you can mash buttons and watch the carnage unfold. Later in the game you’ll encounter foes that require you pull off specific combos to get passed their defenses, but it never gets too intricate. All told the combat feels pretty solid.
The boss battles in Conan are appropriately grand. You fight everything from a sand dragon to a kraken to an undead elephant. Seriously, the game gets major points for memorable boss creatures. Defeating the bosses involves a mix of standard combat and Quick Time Events. Thankfully the QTEs are lenient and never immediately fatal, so defeating a boss is never a matter of repetition until you achieve perfection.
You may be reading all of this and thing to yourself, “But I’ve played this game before.” Yes, Conan is the posterchild for derivative game design. There is absolutely nothing here that hasn’t already been done in dozens of other action games. But it’s done well. Combat feels good, the animation is great, the bosses are memorable, and the whole experience only takes up about five hours of your time. This is the video game equivalent of the popcorn action flick. It won’t give you any deep and meaningful revelations, but it sure is fun.
That’s not to say that the game is lacking character. Conan may be a man of few words, but those few words are delivered well and are absolutely hilarious. The game has a charm to it. It’s a chauvinistic and violent charm, but for some reason in the world of Conan the Barbarian that’s totally endearing. For example, instead of collecting hidden packages, flags, or agility orbs, Conan seeks out topless women chained to poles. They strip off their shackles and thank Conan suggestively… achievement unlocked. It all sounds really offensive, but it fits thematically, and for some reason that makes it okay. Don’t get me wrong, this game is not for the feint of heart. But for a five hour romp of decapitations and one liners, it’s excellent.
29 Jul 2008
I’ve been having a good time with Last Night on Earth, but poking around on BoardGameGeek I’ve always been a little jealous of those swank miniatures that some people have painted. I’ve also noticed that it’s very possible to confuse the heroes while playing, so the painted figured do serve some functional value. So I decided to take up an arts and crafts project to paint the pieces from my game.
I’ve never painted anything like these soft plastic miniatures before, so I posted a query to the BGG crowd for tips. And I’m so glad I did, because those people were ridiculously helpful. Armed with pages of discussion on optimal painting techniques I headed to Michael’s to get my materials.
Supply list:
- Apple Barrel 24 color acrylic paint set - $4.99
- Apple Barrel white, 2oz - $0.79
- Apple Barrel black, 20z - $0.79
- Delta Ceramcoat matte interior varnish - $2.29
- Loew-Cornell set of four sable brushes - $6.99
- Elmer’s adhesive putty - $1.99
- Solo bathroom cups (package of 80) - $2.39
Total: $21.88 (including tax)
The first step was to wash the minis. Apparently they have some residual stuff on them from the mold, and if you don’t wash them the paint will have problems sticking. So I washed all the minis and left them to dry for a couple hours.
The next step was to prime them. I started with the zombies, because you’ve gotta screw up pretty fierce to make zombies look bad. Two coats of black paint later, my zombies were looking like freaky little tar monsters.
Someone from the boards had the excellent suggestion of using sticky tack to affix the figures to something so I didn’t have to actually touch the figure while painting. Thus the plastic cups. There are two colors of zombies, green and brown, and since I needed to preserve that in my final output I marked the cups with either a “G” or “B”.
With all the prep complete it was time to break out the color. I wanted to preserve the original skin tone difference between the two sets of zombies, so I mixed two not-quite-human skin colors. After the skin was painted on zombies I was able to go nuts applying various clothing colors to them, making full use of the 24 colors in my palette. Lastly I finished off the bases, starting with a dark-green base (to match the game board) and then accenting them with either a light green or brown to bring back the two zombie team colors.
The final step was to apply a coat of matte varnish to make sure that the paint won’t wear down as the figures get handled during gameplay.
You can see more photos of the final result here. Personally, I’m extremely happy with how they turned out. Now that I’ve cut my teeth on the zombies, the next step is to tackle the heroes. There’s more detail to worry about with the heroes, but the core steps should be the same. I’ll post photos when I’m done.
29 Jul 2008
I worry sometimes that I’m too negative. If I scan back through what I’ve written on this blog, I see more negative statements than positive statements. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with criticism, but when that’s all you’ve got to say it’s pretty darn depressing. Saying the glass is half empty is fine, but focusing on the fact that it’s one eighth empty is taking it a bit far. I don’t want to be that person.
Sometimes the most succinct way to describe something is in the ways that it differs from something similar. If you had to illustrate everything from scratch every time, building up from the base to the small details, it would take forever. It’s far easier to talk about things in relation to other things. This is a fundamental optimization of communication. But hidden in these comparisons are value statements. You say what something is, and you say what it is not. And in saying what it is not, you are often describing what it should be. And in pondering too often what things are not, it is too easy to lose sight of what they are.
This is a common problem. No one really talks about the ways in which the world’s religions and denominations are similar; we focus on (and wage wars over) the miniscule ways that they are different. We don’t talk about similarity because similarity is understood. There’s nothing more to say. Everybody likes ice cream; everybody likes bacon. It’s far more interesting to talk about ways in which we are different. But there’s a difference between knowing how you are different from something and defining yourself by how you are different.
I don’t think of myself as a negative person, and I don’t think that I’m overly negative in my interactions with other people. I enjoy a good argument, but that’s not the basis for how I relate to others. So is this disproportionate negativity just an anomaly of my writing?
I definitely know that I struggle with it constantly in blogging. Far more topics flit through my head than I have the time to put to words. So there’s an ongoing selection process for deciding what topics to write about. The topics I write about are the ones that I have the most to say about. I’ve talked before about how this leads to me writing about games. But it turns out it’s also a factor in contributing to an overall negative tone.
Concrete example: You’ll notice I never wrote about Iron Man. Why? Iron Man was freaking awesome. Thoroughly enjoyable. I’d recommend it to almost anyone. But everyone knows that Iron Man was awesome. I didn’t feel the need to tell anyone. It was just understood.
I also haven’t written anything about The Orange Box, which was one of my favorite games from last year. Portal is gaming perfection, Team Fortress is refinement of a classic, and Episode Two ends with one of the most epic gaming sequences I’ve experienced in a long time. It’s not like I decided to not write about it. It’s still totally on my list. But I’ve subconsciously preferred so many topics over it. What’s wrong with me?
I think it’s a natural tendency, and one I’ll probably always struggle with. Constant Vigilance, I guess. But at least I’m aware of it. I began this blog as an effort to help my memory, and in respect of that I think it’s important to keep my personal time capsule from becoming a depressing log of spiraling negativity.
