Seasons Gamings

Since this will probably be my last post of the year, figure I'll run down everything that's up in my gaming world in one super post.

Castlevania SOTN - There's nothing I can't say here that isn't already known, so this is more of a declaration of love than anything else. Is there a scale with which this games awesome can be measured? More than a decade later this is still one of the best and most rewarding experiences a gamer can have. It doesn't require any concessions about difficulty, or plot, or gameplay, or community, or anything. SOTN stands on its own as a masterpiece of both tech and design and the entire Castlevania series and staff should be damned thankful they have its haughty coat tails to cling to. Hats off, Konami. Now do it again on a non-portable console (I'm looking at you, Dawn of Sorrows!)

Enslaved - Cut from the same "Journey to the West" fable that gave rise to Dragon Ball, Enslaved follows one man's harrowed journey across a post apocalyptic wasteland. The catch is that he'll do so leashed to a helpless and often irritating female companion. Enslaved embodies everything that is wrong with escort missions in general, but unlike most games that incidently fall in those trappings, Enslaved lavishes in them. Practically highlighting them as bullet points on the back of the box.
Outside of that, the game is basically Prince of Persia, which ain't a bad thing. Running, jumping and combating in linear episodes that appear open ended but really aren't. You get a few needless upgrades, and there's some a few ranged combat scenarios that feel almost like mini-games, but by and large its just a question of reflexes and intuition, figuring out what the devs want you to do, and do it fast.
The best part is that it actually feels kind of epic. There's the knowing comfort in the back of your mind that obviously the story doesn't conclude with you falling off a tree and plummeting to your death, but many times it seems like that's within the realm of possibility. The exhiliration of scampering about is often on par with the joy of scaling giants in Shadow of the Colossus. Too bad they went with The Matrix ending tho.

Fallout New V. . . nah I'm just kidding, if I haven't sold you yet, "what should I do?". Instead,
Final Fantasy XIII - I know, this again, right? Its weird, the same thought goes through my head every time I turn it on. Every time. Yet, I keep doing it. Even the wife is questioning it, now. Is it the endless promises that somewhere beneath all the stupid decisions and incomprehensible "game" design is a solid rpg experience? Does my fanboy blood still run final fantasy crystal blue after all these disappointments? Am I just bored? I can't say for sure. I promised myself I would never make the Rumble Roses mistake again, but it really feels like I'm getting there with this.
So what have you missed? Another 10 hours of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Every single thing I ranted about in that last post about FFXIII is still true. The character stupidity, the needless filler flashbacks, the single serving gameplay portions. Led around this great big world by a linear leash, then tied to a game play stop sign while my master goes off to do something that looks really fun. Why won't they just let me cut loose? Would it be so bad for a player to excel and see what this Crystarium really has to offer? And what the devil is an Eidolon anyway?! I swear, there are so many seat belts in this game, its practically impossible to drive the car.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 - My disdain for all things MvC2 is well known, but that obviously hasn't tarnished my love for the series as a whole. An high tech orgy involving my youthful nostalgia and marvel's marketing machine? Sign me up. I am absolutely unabashedly hype for this release and it can't get here soon enough. Now if only they would get rid of Crimson Viper.

Minecraft - Somebody bought it for me, so yes I'm playing it. I still don't "get" it, but that may be the hater in me keeping it away from my hype center. I don't know. There is an allure to building and just seeing what will or won't happen, for sure, I just wish there was a reason besides don't get murdered at night. Time will tell.

Mortal Kombat - Rivaled only by Batman Arkham City in terms of inciting raw fanboy excitement within me is MKs return to glory next spring. It's uncertain if the loss of Midway's incompetence or just the need for a "break in the norm" game like MKvDC is to blame for Netherrealm studios sudden interest in magnificence, but not one iota of information regarding MK gives me bad feelings, which is both bad and good because there's a criminal shortage of it. DO YOU WANT ME TO BEG LIKE A DOG FOR A SCRAP OF YOUR HYPER VIOLENT MASTERPIECE?

Super / Street Fighter 4 - My whole life is governed by competition. Every motivation from going to work to carrying out the garbage is based on the notion that I am better / getting better at something than somebody else. So there was only so long I could watch the entire fighting game community polish this knob before I'd give it another go, and so I did. First, I popped my SF4 disc back in and instantly remembered everything I hate about it. The only thing thats changed is me, now instead of wallowing or raging at the gameplay, online community, storyline, achievements, everything, I view it as a unique opportunity to make sport with Dan Hibiki, the best character Capcom ever ripped off.
But then Gamefly sent me SSF4, and while I won't say I've completely changed my spots, I can say I've actually had some fun with it. A lot more (on my own) than I did with "vanilla" sf4, thats for sure. Naturally, it's to be expected that after you release a game, make a ton of money, then retool it and rerelease a year later (at full price, mind you!) you're going to make some improvements. Simply put, SSF4 is the best SF4 could hope to get. The cast is diverse enough, the gameplay is facilitative enough, and the music is nostalgic (once you unlock the character theme option) enough that I can actually get into it.
Now that said, its still full of crap designs, crap decisions, and if you ever hear the words "I love / like / don't entirely despite ultra combos" come out of my mouth, you'll know I've been murdered and replaced with a cylon. But, I spent a few hours on saturday and a lot of hours on sunday making people respect Dan's mediocrity (say it like Cartman's authoritah for maximum effect), and slamming people face first into the floor with T. Hawk and I feel better for the experience. Will I be able to do this every day? Is it worth the 20 bucks gamefly is willing to let me keep it for? Probably not, but at least it has a shot. . . until MvC3 gets here.

-F.

Viva Las Wasteland

It would seem my time in the wasteland is winding down. Like every preceding Fallout, I hit level cap long before I ran out of side crap to do (and boy is there a lot of side crap to do), and that really takes the wind out of my fucking sails. So much so that I found myself sleepwalking through the climactic last few missions where you decide who lives and who dies a horrible death by slideshow and narration.
Yes, the sad part is NV continues the trend of declining ending quality in a series that is otherwise still unpeaked. Even top notch voice work (Cyclops, Whistler, Machete, even Codex to name a few) can't take away the fact that Fallout 1 has a better understanding of the phrase "ending cinematic". I suppose the payoff was supposed to be the gigantic battle in which you not only participate, but decide which side comes out on top (something that was missing in Fallout 3), but all the explosions, gun shots, and dialogue trees in the world can't hold a candle to Liberty Prime bringing justice and hyperbole to the Capital Wasteland in F3.
Still, I hold no grudge against New Vegas (save the bugs). The gameplay is tight, the story is well knit, and the characters are very relevant. Sadly, the best complaint I can make is that there is simply too much to do in the game. Too many avenues to take through every scenario, and just too much content to squeeze into 30 experience levels. I guess this is a marvelous selling point for younger players with more time on their hands, but I've got this big dumb game guide staring me in the face, reminding me at all times just how much game I missed out on while I was enjoying all the other shit I did. There is definately at least one more playthrough in me, but I'll be using it to mop up achievements and exploit the game design not explore and be enthralled.

That said my next conquest will be Enslaved, which I played only for a moment before the guilt of having friends further than me in Fallout drew me back. It'll be interesting to see if it can maintain its momentum, or if I'll just have to restart the 10-15% of the game I started to get back into it.

In other news, those new characters FINALLY got released for Castlevania HoD, the better part of 4 months later. Seriously. 3 months after everybody lost faith, and 2 months after everybody stopped caring, Konami drops content that should've been ready at launch. Let this be a lesson. If you are going to promise dlc, fucking deliver it. And if you need more time, take the goddamned "download content" button of your main menu. Now, this isn't a shot at HoD for being shortsighted, or DLC for being (or not being) a rip off, its a shot at Konami for getting us salivating, and then keeping us waiting until we literally died of starvation. The only people enjoying Julius and Yoko are people who just bought the game last week.

Dont Hate Black Ops because Treyarch made it

Hate TreyArch for making BlackOps. I haven't even finished the campaign , mostly because the camera shakes like you're playing the role of Michael J Fox and the story couldn't be less interesting. I actually cared about Soap, Ghost, and Roach and what happened to them.... it shows because I can remember their names and I haven't played MW2 since January of this year and I finished the story mode in December of last year. I played CoD:BO last night and cant remember my guy's name. MW1 and MW2 both had a really nice flow to the story, Black Ops is just a series of flashbacks and a buncha flashing numbers on the screen.

Enough harping on the campaign mode, COD is supposed to be all about the online. The only thing worse then the campaign IS the multiplayer. Now I'm not going to pretend that I'm the best or even really good at FPS games, because I'm not. As bad/good as I am I actually had FUN playing MW2 online. Again, I'm not gonna gush on MW2's multiplayer, it was not without its faults but I never had worry about turning the corner and getting killed by a damn remote controlled car! How bad is it? This game is single handedly ruining my childhood memories of playing RC Pro-Am on my NES. I'd rather be tactically nuked.

I was in mid post with this when Tru Fenix and I were discussing, and Im not entirely sure I could have stated what I think about the game any better then this (and he didnt even have to play it!)

"no see, thats all activisions genius plan idiots will buy it as long as it sas CoD on it

so while they wait for IW to make a good game, they have treyarch fill in the blanks with whatever bullshit they can so now we have JFK and Castro killing zombies playing L4D in the whitehouse despite the fact it has dick to do with anything else at all....and dont forget the fact they pretty much fired IW"
~TruFenix

I personally am hoping to rush through the campaign so I can trade it back in for $20 and get a good game, like Fall Out: New Vegas. I can only hope that when I pick up Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood tomorrow it'll help me wash the taste of BO out of my mouth /pun

PS:Also, you're an idiot with too much money if you bothered spending the extra $90 for the hardened Edition

Random gaming thoughts (11910)

New Vegas - Continues to impress. Stumbled upon a tangentical link to Fallout 2 last night that gave me warm fuzzy feelings inside.

Minecraft - I'd like to know what the fuss is all about, I really would. But paying 10 dollars for an alpha product with no release date and no clear direction can go to hell. Seriously. If an indy wants to put up a donation box for me to slip'm a few dollars after their half baked cookies impress me, fine. But don't charge me an entry fee to enter an amusement park thats just blue prints and steel girders.

Darksiders 2 - Just read this; http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/08/darksiders-2-will-star-new-character-take-place-alongside-event/ which goes a long way towards reminding me THQ has never had a clear idea what they are doing. Could it be an awesome game? Sure, but wasting the opportunity to bring the four horsemen of the apocalypse together for an action adventure orgy in favor of squeezing a few more dollars out of the same engine is just a traveshamockery.

Oh Raziel and Kain, where are you when we need you?

Welcome to 9 months ago.

Its it still February? No? Well it will be in 3 months! Where was I going with this? I don't know either. Oh yeah, that's right, I finally picked up Dante's Inferno.

I finally broke down and went into my local Gamestop and picked it up. I can admit its totally created in the vein of God Of War. Rip off? No, not really. Noting to do with Greeks, doesn't use swords on chains, heck the main guy isnt even bald or painted up. Kratos would be more bad ass if he stitched that red area into his skin with a needle in thread though. The gameplay is very similar and there's quick time events, thankfully not as many and they aren't as long. I started to hate the "demondoors" about an hour in, and 5 hours later I despise them.

Honestly, I'm kinda flying through it on normal and odds are I'm going to take it back before the weeks up and get my money back. Its not that the game isn't worth $25, its that its not worth keeping if I can get 750(ish) gamer score out of it and put $25 more onto Assassins Creed Brotherhood.

In other "Old News" I finally broke down and finished off Red Dead Redemption. The ending of the narrative was a bit of a let down and while others said it was a surprise, I sorta saw it coming from the start. My only major gripe with the game, despite the ending, is that there is simply too much to do. Odd complaint huh? I had planned on finishing all the side stuff before completing the story but I just couldn't, even though I'm a self confessed achievement whore. I got up to level 6 or 7 on all the 4 "bonus" things to do but I just dont feel like going and killing 2 more bears with 1 shot, or picking 10 more plants where the cougars and bears roam. I didn't even realize how close I was to finishing the game until I ran the last 5 missions in 35 minutes, and most of that was riding my horse from one end of the map to the other.

One more thing about Red Dead before I go....I see they have an undead zombie expansion, and I hear its amazing. Maybe I'll find out next august (that's my running 9 months ago joke)

Waking up in Vegas

It's kind of shocking how much better Obsidian's Fallout 3 is than Bethesda's. Which is additionally shocking because Bethesda's F3 was one of the best games I've ever played. There's a line in there about Obsidian having an extra 2 years and all the successes / mistakes of F3 to build upon, but its not just the raw execution, its the actual design. New Vegas is not just Fallout 3 redux, its Fallout 3 revised. With all the Fallout 3 faults turned into something you can excuse or outright enjoy.

The catch, of course, is that Fallout: New Vegas is riddled with bugs, glitches, and other dumb nuances that serve no purpose but to remind you it's never safe to go more than 5 - 10 minutes without saving. Regardless, the pure character driven RPG genre is pretty starved these days, unless you're looking for something overly pretentious, overly complicated, or overly simplistic. F:NV's narrative and gameplay seem to land that sweet spot where despite the obvious room for improvement, you're perfectly happy with what you got.

I am, anyway.

You maniacs, you blew it up! (Crackdown 2)

If nothing else, Crackdown 2 speaks to the strength of the original Crackdown formula. Collecting orbs, Hulk-jumping rooftops, firing absurd ordinance, and generally acting like a wreckless super freak has never been funner. The problem is, every new decision Ruffian Games has made is shortsighted, ineffectual and in many cases outright dumb. You could probably say this is our fault for putting Crackdown 1's pedigree on such a shameless pedestal, but that'd be like blaming the weather man for predicting lightning would strike twice.

The open world formula has never been facilitative to a scripted narrative, and the original Crackdown took a beating for having almost none whatsoever. CD2 takes that failure to the next level by not only sidestepping narrative, but concealing what little back-story it has into 40 or so audio logs randomly strewn about the map. The only story you'll be spoon fed is the incessant orders from The Agency about murdering everything in sight and not asking questions. Near the end some rogue transmissions make it seem like maybe there's some sort of good / bad ending choice coming up, but it never pans out and the game always ends the same way. They did have the decency to tack on an ending cinematic, but its just a needless and unsatisfactory lead in to an unlikely sequel. And we all know, seeding your next effort is the best way to reward people for supporting your current effort.

Unfortunately, progressing through said non-existent narrative is an equally uninspired affair. Your virtually directionless objective is to eradicate the mindless zombie menace that plagues the city, and stop the terrorists who are getting in your way. It seems the only way Ruffian could come up with to present this act is with two of the industries worst gameplay mechanics; mob hunts and escort missions. Every one of the games "missions" involves running, climbing or falling into a static area of the city and then hunting down every enemy in the immediate area, protecting a target from every enemy in the immediate area, or worse, both. No real targets, no story, no planning, no stealth, no strategy. You do have a variety of guns, explosives and even melee options at your disposal, but you're not going to need any of it. Even at game start you're leagues ahead of your opposition in capability and long after you've come up with every way to abuse your enemies, the game will continue to throw them at you over and over again. As though that somehow justifies the general lack of content.

As an additional middle finger to people who bought the first game, the games map is virtually the same as before. Some buildings have been slightly changed in the ten years since the last game, none of it makes a huge amount of difference in play. No effort has been made to make the tedious process of window scaling skyscrapers any easier, and you will still frequently find yourself surrounded by concealed targets with crack shot rocket launcher aim. You may occasionally get a kick out of seeing a classic location slightly changed (the old car sales place is particularly amusing), but whether you've if you've already taken the super human tour in CD1 or not, there's really nothing interesting going on in Pacific City.

Now the tricky part here is that the entire experience, limited and shortsighted though it may be is not entirely unfun. Frequently, its exceedingly fun. Using your super cop powers to establish dominance is awesome, even moreso when accompanied by 2 or 3 other super cops via co-op. But its an awesome every Crackdown 1 player has already experienced, and this time there's no point or payoff to any of it. Without a story, bosses, or even creative locations to explore, there's no motivation to actually participate in the boring activities that make up the games "core" except to perform the extras along the way. Sure, you'll be powering up your agent the entire time, but not because you need them to beat the game, only because it will make life easier when you decide to hunt down all of the games extras.

Extras are of course are the main replay value in any sandbox game, but with Ruffian's poor understanding of what is actually fun it feels like this sandbox has no real toys in it just more chores. Remember those 800 orbs you had to collect in the last game? Now there's even more (the number of collectibles is up over 1000 all said and done), including some that run away from you when you get close to them, and some that are only available within close proximity to other online players. And that's on top of the timed races, the stunt markers, the car collecting, and everything else we already did in Crackdown 1 or Grand Theft Auto or Spider-Man or every other sandbox game. Its not that any of these activities are inherently bad, but there's just way too many of them and way too little motivation unless you have absolutely got to have that 1K on your gamercard.

Sadly, the whole game stinks of some "if it ain't broke don't fix it" logic, but its not like Crackdown 1 was perfect to begin with. Instead of fixing the first games issues and expanding on the gameplay, Ruffian has chosen to simply flip the record over and play it again, twice. Now I like B-sides just as much as the next guy, but mixing comfortable awesome with questionable decisions does very little but tarnish the integrity of the original especially when its so needlessly padded out to fill an entire game. There's no reason the content presented here couldn't have been done as an expansion pack or at least some sort of re-release that includes the original content. Crackdown 2 isn't so much bad as it is unneccessary and kind of insulting to the people whose wallets made it possible by supporting the first. In contrast to the original, CD2 is worthy of a rental at best.

-F.