This piece was originally posted on Lalawag here
Yesterday, Nintendo announced that their latest handheld console, the 3DS, will be available on March 27th for $249.99. We’ve got the quick and dirty rundown of what you need to know about the system and also our take on whether you need to buy one.
When I think of my experience with Fable 3, there’s one description that keeps coming to mind: My First RPG.
Everything from the combat to the storyline to the character advancement system just screams out n00b. It’s not necessarily a bad thing depending on your level of RPG game experience, but as someone expecting a game with a decent amount of substance, I came out of Fable 3 feeling a bit hollow.
The game’s story has an epic foundation with a tale of tyranny and revolution, but felt rushed and predictable enough that I never had the opportunity to feel any sort of connection with any of the characters or situations. At least in Fable 2, I actually cared enough about my dog companion throughout the ordeal that when some tough decisions had to be made, I at least was given pause. Not so in Tres.
It’s a shame, because the entire last act of the game actually hinges on you making some “tough” decisions. If the developers had gotten me more invested into the citizens and characters of Albion, the game would have been drastically changed. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the maestros at Betheseda or Bioware, having played all of the Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, and KOTOR games.
Combat is enjoyable enough by virtue of being laughably easy and simplistic. You have the customary Fable arsenal of melee, ranged, and magical attacks that correspond to each of the face buttons on the controller. It’s fitting that the only attacks you can do are with the buttons on top of the controller because you could just as well put your face on it and roll from side to side and still come out victorious. Enemies die in a couple of hits and rarely require anything but mashing the button harder to kill. I ended up finishing the game without dying a single time and it wasn’t for lack of trying.
All of the battle situations in the game feel artificial and shallow. There’s no memorable encounters or boss battles to speak of. The game doesn’t even mix up enemy types for you! I could count on one and half hands the number of different enemy types in the game. If the criteria was different enemy behavior, well lets just say that might just be counted on three fingers. It’s like the game designers went “Ok, here’s the skeletons encounter! Let’s just spawn 20 skeletons and have them go at it. Now over here is the mercenary fight. What makes mercenaries different from the skeleton warriors? Well they have skin and hair on them, DUH.”
Many of the quests in Fable 3 feel like they were designed in 2004. There’s way too many generic “FedEx this package to another villager,” “kill x number of bats,” and “escort this dude to here” quests. Again, these are the basic foundations for RPG questing, but after playing through three of these games I was hoping for more. That being said, there were a couple of interesting situations in the game. One involved a deranged talking treasure chest wanting to play chess with you in a haunted house. Another was an almost meta-game take on playing a traditional board game RPG in a medieval setting.
It took me almost two months after Fable 3‘s release to play through it. Why? Because that’s how long it took Lionhead/Microsoft to release a patch for the game fixing critical issues like freezing and crashing. To their credit, I didn’t come across any show-stopping issues during my playthrough. Still, it’s really appalling that broken games are rushed to stores just to make a holiday shopping deadline.
Would I recommend Fable 3? If you’re a veteran of the RPG genre with games like Fallout 3 or Oblivion or even World of Warcraft under your belt, I’d skip this. Even if you’re a fan of the Fable series, there’s really not much fulfillment in terms of story or gameplay to be had here. Your time would be better spent elsewhere. However, if you’ve never played a “serious” RPG video game before or want to introduce someone to the genre, Fable 3 would act as a good set of training wheels. It’s still a solidly executed title at it’s core.
I’m just going to go ahead and say it:
Infinity Blade is the best gaming experience I’ve had on the iPhone.
Seriously. You can take your Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and all of your lame tower defense game clones and shove them in your favorite orifice because this game makes those look like amateur hour. From the time I downloaded Infinity Blade on my phone last Thursday, all I’ve wanted to do is play it nonstop.
To put this in perspective, you’re talking a guy who has all of the video game consoles, a gaming-ready PC, a Kindle, a Blu-Ray player, Netflix, a backlogged DVR of TV shows, and a sports fan. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of entertainment that I could/should have been plowing through instead.
Nope, I had to max out my Infinity Blade character first.
Ever wonder what kind of game Gears of War would have turned out as if the Japanese developed it? Welp, Vanquish is pretty much that game. Instead of the bad guys sinking cities with giant worms, they sink them with giant mech robots that transform from crab-form to bi-pedal form.
I previewed the game from E3 earlier in the year, and it pretty much turned out how I expected. It’s a third-person cover-based shooter with a ridiculous action movie plot and awkwardly bad dialogue that’s made even more awkward by the Japanese to English translation process. It’s also pretty damn fun, albeit a bit short.
I initially started off on the “Hard” difficulty level because a) I’m an achievement whore and b) I figure it couldn’t be that difficult for a seasoned action game pro like myself.
It was the wrong move.
I was making progress and got through the first Act of the game, but it was quickly becoming a joyless slog. Having to retry sections 10-15 times in a row has the tendency to ruin game flow. If you get this game, do yourself a favor and play it on Normal or even Casual. Though Vanquish has a cover system, it’s at its most fun when you’re zipping along from place to place at superspeed using your suit’s sliding ability. You will feel like a total badass sliding around like a cybernetically enhanced Steven Seagal and gunning robotic Russians down in the face.
There’s a couple of weird game design quirks that I didn’t really understand. For example, you’re penalized for using a melee attack. Hit someone once with it and it immediately depletes your shields. Not only are you extremely vulnerable, you can’t melee again until it recharges. Why anyone would use the melee attack other than to get the achievement is beyond me.
The weapon upgrade system also makes for weird gameplay motivations. Picking up a gun from the ground first replenishes your ammo for that gun to full. Any further weapons of the same type that you pick up will count as an upgrade as long as that gun has full ammo. What this does is make you want to hoard certain guns or else you’ll never get to upgrade them. Fire one shot off and you can kiss that upgrade goodbye unless you somehow find two of the same gun. Believe me, it’s a pretty crappy feeling to have that happen to you.
Other than that, the pace of the game is very fast. You won’t find many stealth sequences or “downtime” at all. There’s always Russian robots to blow up and large fights going on. The story’s nothing to write home about, but let’s not kid ourselves here. If you’re playing this game for exceptional storytelling, you’re playing it for the wrong reasons. The right reasons are if you want to blow the shit out of some shit.
Vanquish is a video gamer player’s video game. By that, I mean it’s under no pretense to appeal to a broad audience or people who aren’t “gamers.” It’s got everything you would expect to see in the 40 Year Old Virgin’s room – robots, guns, lasers, cute CGI chicks – you name it. If you liked any of those things growing up and don’t care about being judged for it, you’ll have a fun time playing Vanquish.
**Updated 11/11 with fix for the mirrored video from the previous embed. Plus a neat little title!
So you may or may not have heard that Microsoft is putting out a new controller for the Xbox 360 on November 9th. It’s got a nice silver finish and has newly contoured joysticks and a magical transforming d-pad that will help you pull of shourykens a lot better.
I got my hands on one last week and have put together a mini-review video below.
TL;DW – It’s a nice improvement and worth the money if you were planning on getting a new controller or need one with a good d-pad. It’s not a ZOMG BUY THIS NOW purchase, but you won’t want to go back to the old one once you’ve gotten it.
A hallmark of a good movie is that feeling of wanting to go home and googling everything you can about it because it was that riveting that you want to learn more stuff about it. The Social Network is definitely one of those films. Before we get into some informative articles for you to read, though, humor me for a quick review on the movie.
I went into the movie expecting it to be a dramatized film with a loose basis on actual events. In other words, I expected to see more untruths than truths. You know what? I’m glad I wasn’t an expert historian on Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg because I might have had fits trying to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. Don’t go in trying to be that guy. Aaron Sorkin’s script flows naturally and is entirely believable within the context of the film.
Sorkin does a great job of making the viewer feel smart and involved with the events leading up to the creation of Facebook. You could know nothing about technology and still feel like you have an insider’s view in Silicon Valley. I’m no accomplished server administrator or web developer, but even I know what Emacs or Apache servers are used for. You won’t see any techno-babble in this film that’s on the level of 24‘s “Chloe! Open up a socket!”
As for the directing and acting? Well, I’m pretty sure David Fincher has reached Christopher Nolan status for me in that I will see any of his films no questions asked. Did you remember that the dude directed not only Fight Club and Se7en, but also The Game, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Zodiac? Not a stinker among them. Jesse Eisenberg establishes that he possesses far more acting range than Michael Cera. Justin Timberlake did his job in his portrayal of a fairly one-dimesional Sean Parker. Andrew Garfield did his part in incepting us with feelings of sympathy for his role as betrayed partner, Eduardo Saverin. I imagine we won’t have trouble getting along with his Peter Parker role in the upcoming Spider-Man franchise reboot.
I’m sure many of you have seen The Social Network by now, but if you haven’t, I heartily recommend you do so. It’s a great film, fun yet intellectually engaging as well. Your post-movie dinner conversation will be fun, I guarantee it.
Now, let’s say you’ve just seen the movie and you want to know more about everything that went down. Here’s some extracurricular reading material to satisfy your cravings:
Even though I’ve yet to visit Shibuya, its name will always have a positive mental association in my head with visions of bright neon colors, modern architecture, large crowds of fashionably modern people, and upbeat music. Yes, my mental picture of Shibuya is comprised entirely of the arcade/karaoke scenes from the movie Lost In Translation and the general eccentric awesomeness of the Nintendo DS game, The World Ends With You, but so what? It works for me.
Nevertheless, that positive vibe got me interested in a recently released iPhone game unsurprisingly titled Shibuya. It’s a puzzle game inspired by the aesthetics of the real-life place in Tokyo. Think Tetris meets your favorite color matching game with some delicious special sauce that you haven’t quite tasted before. Oh, and it was also named a finalist of Penny Arcade’s PAX 10 indie games.
It’s got the “easy to learn; hard to master” learning curve going for it. Plus, developer Never Center has structured game progression utilizing achievements in a manner I can get behind. You can ignore the achievements completely if you just want a quick game. But if you’re a goal-oriented person like me, you’ll appreciate the bite-sized checklists of achievements to accomplish. Basically, there are 11 “levels” in the game broken up into groups of 4 achievements. Complete the current 4 achievements and you’ll get the next set of achievements. These can range from surviving Endless mode for a certain amount of time or for completing a 2 minute Quickplay game on a certain difficulty level. It’s simple, but effective way to motivate players to play an otherwise endless puzzle game.
“How do I play this wonderful game?” you may ask. Well, you know what they say about pictures and videos and words.
Here’s the president of Never Center explaining how the game is played:
Shibuya is currently available on the iTunes App Store for $1.99 and it’s totally worth it if you like puzzle games. An Android version is supposedly in the works.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first. The worst Metroid game is better than 90% of all the single player action-adventure games out there. The sense of discovery, progress, and frenetic action that you get from playing a Metroid game offers a feeling of fulfillment that few other gaming franchises can.
That being said, Metroid: Other M is definitely one of the weaker entries in the series. (Metroid Prime Pinball nonwithstanding)
It’s a little odd because Other M looks and smells like a Metroid game, but somethings a bit off with it. Perhaps part of it is the game’s focus on “storytelling and character development.” It’s the first Metroid game to utilize CGI cutscenes and voice acting heavily. And I do mean heavily. Some of these scenes clock in upwards of ten minutes.
Now, the length of the cutscenes isn’t so much the problem as the content. As the story was unfolding, I couldn’t help but feel like it was as awkwardly written and campy as Resident Evil. For example, one of the introductory movies explained at length why everyone in Samus’s old military unit gave the “thumbs up” sign after hearing mission orders. Then, in an incredibly melodramatic fashion, we got a very solemn monologue voiced by Samus as to why she gave the “thumbs down” sign instead as a symbol of independence.
At least, that’s the gist of what I remembered. Frankly, the entire thing played out to me as “blah blah thumbs up blah blah thumbs down.” I welcome engaging storylines and characters in my games, but Other M just reeked of B-Movie quality/self-aggrandizing-Japanese-Video-Game-Director-aspires-to-write-best-space-epic-ever. As I played through the game, I found myself pitying the poor localization dude who had to translate pages and pages of melodrama into English without making it into a complete joke. He tried his best, but putting frosting over poop is still poop.
That’s not to say the cinematics were shoddily presented; they actually look quite amazing for a 480p Wii title. The voice acting is also well done, with Samus sounding exactly like how I had imagined her. However, this leads to another problem, which is her characterization.
Other than some hints dropped here and there (she’s a girl!), the character of Samus has largely been left up to the imagination for the last 24 years. I’d wager that many people would consider her a badass no-nonsense bounty hunter who leans towards the side of angels, if anything. Making Samus’s past the focus of Other M‘s story ends up weakens the character because it pulls back the curtain to reveal one person’s interpretation of her (the director who thinks he’s a better storyteller than he actually is). She comes off as petulant, juvenile, needy, and emotionally inferior to her male counterparts. Instead of feeling like I was playing as an unfathomably hot Boba Fett, I began to feel like I was babysitting a needy girl who’s in way over her head. Not cool.
As for the actual game itself, the best thing I can say about it is that it kept my full attention (well, other than the cutscenes) throughout the 8 or so hours it took to complete. It’s a Metroid game so there’s thrilling shoot outs, timed escapes, tricky platforming, and creepy atmospheres. While some purists may cry foul at the forcefed waypoint directions, I did appreciate their purpose in keeping the game moving along at a nice pace. Rare was the case in which I was genuinely stuck.
However, the most egregious offense on Nintendo/Team Ninja’s part was shoehorning in a hybrid 1st person mode into the game. I’m talking about the gameplay mechanic where you have to constantly flip the Wiimote from a horizontal position in your hands to a position where you’re pointing and aiming at the screen.
In three words: It. Doesn’t. Work.
Not only is this motion awkward, it must be done in the middle of frenetic action moments! So you’re not only performing a complicated motion with your hands, you have to shift from a 3rd person view to a first person view on screen where you’re completely rooted! I don’t know about you, but this took a heavy cognitive toll on my brain. It wasn’t so much the concept of swapping back and forth, but the frustration I felt in having to run around an enemy, stop, flip the controller, get the aiming reticles right, and press the right button. More often than not, by the time I got the complex series of motions done, I had lost my opportunity to damage the boss’s weak point or had to reposition because enemies had caught up to my rooted position. It may have sounded like a good idea in the brainstorming session, but I can’t believe that this got through any sort of hands on testing.
It may sound like I’ve spent the last 900 or so words just blasting Metroid: Other M on its faults, but understand that it comes from the viewpoint of a series fan. The game is still worth playing if you’re into the series; just dont expect something on par with Super Metroid or Metroid Prime. If you’re a newcomer to the franchise, you could do a lot worse than Other M, but I strongly recommend you play the aforementioned first as a better showcase of what a Metroid game is really capable of in both 2d and 3d. Playing through either one of those games should leave you with the feeling that you’ve experienced some of the best titles the medium has ever produced.
If there had to be one title to act as the envoy for the video games industry in 2010 it would have to be Starcraft 2.
You’d be hard pressed to find any other game appeals to everyone from the 30 minutes a day casual player all the way up to the professional Korean player making seven figures with an entourage of bodyguards and female groupies.
Yes, you read correctly. Seven figures. Groupies. Entering live tournaments on rock stages on a speedboat.
There’s three audiences that I think should run out and give this game a shot:
Starcraft 2 is an interesting game because it’s one that’s physically impossible to play on any current console. It doesn’t mean that the game is that complex, it just means that it’s a genre that’s best controlled with a mouse and keyboard due to the nature of the tasks needed to be done. The game will run on almost any modern computer, Mac or PC alike, so chances are if you own a computer made within the last few years, you can play it.
Multiplayer-focused games are a tough animal to “review” since the experiences are so intertwined with the playerbases. At the same time, you can usually tell within the first 30 minutes or so if a game is going to be fun for you or not.
I had a chance to spend a couple of hours with Monday Night Combat today and I’m here to tell you it’s something worth looking into.
In a nutshell, Monday Night Combat is a 3rd person class-based multiplayer action game. You can choose to be one of various classes (such as a sniper, support, assassin etc.), each of which has its own unique powers, weapons, and playstyle. Additionally, anyone can build or upgrade turrets around the map. Think Team Fortress 2 meets <insert your favorite tower defense game here>. There’s two modes of play: Blitz and Crossfire.