Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology
23 May 2012 Leave a Comment
(Lev Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. Subscribe to his RSS feed.)
This post is by way of a reply to Arthur Krystal’s “Easy Writers,” a thoroughly thought-provoking piece about the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction that ran in the New Yorker this week. I was happy to see the New Yorker weighing in on this, because I think it’s an important part of what’s going on in fiction right now.
Should I Buy? – Final Fantasy XIII
20 May 2012 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Game, Review, Sony, Playstation, Final Fantasy, RPG, XBOX, Microsoft, Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII, XBOX 360
Oh dear. Final Fantasy XIII isn’t very good. Not that it’s a *bad* game by any measure, well OK by a fair few measures, but I don’t hate it and I kind of admire how it tries to do things differently. Some of them even work.
To give a quick over-view of the plot with a few spoilers, there’s this giant floating world called Cocoon in which people live. And then there are these weird angel-like things called fal’Cie that provide power, food etc. Outside of Cocoon is the mysterious “Pulse”, which has its own fal’Cie that want to destroy Cocoon. The player characters are made into l’Cie (super-powered slaves) of a Pulse fal’Cie and tasked to destroy Cocoon because…pancakes and along the way must question…oh, many things.
I don’t cherry pick the most prominent ones because the damn game can’t ever seem to decide. This is where most of my complaints come from. The game suffered from a pretty far-reaching array of internal problems. The English script was rewritten so often that the dialogue had to be re-written five times.
The narrative holds most of the flaws. The dialogue has that slightly clunky feel that most Japanese games do, but it’s in the broad strokes. Characters will shift motivations on a dime, not address fundamental differences of opinion in the group, make senseless decisions, have strange outbursts that they never address again, the villains are poorly characterised and almost entirely absent, plot holes you could drive an airship through…It’s all kind of a mess. Not that I blame the English translators entirely, it’s clear there was only so much they could do with the original story.
To be fair, everything connected to Snow that doesn’t involve the words “hero” or “Serah” really does work, not just in the character himself but also in how others react to him. In fact if it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d be able to discern any character from Lightning other than “she seems like a bit of a bitch” and Hope would have literally no arc or reason being tagging along.
Let’s talk about the actual game itself. After all, we went decades where stories were an excuse to play a good game so let’s not pin a game down because it fails there.
The basic idea in combat is that your three characters can have one “paradigms” which basically amount to jobs like warrior, black mage, white mage etc. active at a time, and you can set up different combinations of roles and switch between them on the fly to adjust to the flow of battle.
And that’s about it. You only control one character at a time, and even then it’s only this weird quasi-control. You have an Auto-Battle option that queues up the most useful actions based on your paradigm and the battle situation, and there’s few times you’ll want to choose a different set or do something different. Items are almost non-existent and the only other option is to Summon your Eidolon or use one of half a dozen or so Techniques, most of which aren’t that useful.
It works well enough. It’s not exciting, but once you gain the ability to set your own paradigms and switch between them on the fly there’s a kind of “yay I used tactics kind of” feel to proceedings. Which is way too late in the game, but ah well.
Levelling up is done by earning points at the end of a battle and then using them to unlock a new Node in the Crystarium to get the next bonus, whether it’s stats or ability. You might be wondering how this is any different from the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. Well, each character has their own version of the Crystarium that ensures they’ll perform differently in a paradigm somebody else has because they’ll learn different abilities.
For example, as a Ravager Hope is all about powerful spells because of his sky high magic stat, but Lightning mixes it up with special “-strike” abilities that rely partially on her strength to do damage cause she’s not so hot a spellcaster.
In an effort to prevent power levelling, only so much of the Crystarium is available to you at one time, the rest being locked off until the plot says so. For the first two thirds of the game, this keeps pace pretty well with the plot, so that you can max it out with just a little grinding.
But then the final third hits and all of a sudden there are huge bonuses real close together. Except they now cost thousands of points instead of hundreds for each of them. Dick move. Literally days of grinding are necessary to be able to progress beyond this section of the game.
Finally, weapons. You can, every once in a while buy a new one from a shop or find one in a chest. But there’s not really much point. The point is to upgrade your weapons with items you find to increase their stats but these stat increases are pretty minimal and the added bonuses some weapons have aren’t really worth it.
Not that finding materials is hard, oh no, after a certain point you can just buy them (which you can do easily because after the first few hours Phoenix Downs are the only items you’ll ever need) but this just makes it a hassle to buy new items and then go through the process of upgr-ahhh no pointless mechanic go away.
That’s…pretty much it. For a Final Fantasy game there’s really very little to it. It looks pretty enough, I guess, the character designs are fairly under control and the music’s decent if not anything especially memorable or beautiful.
I don’t hate it. I don’t regret having paid £10 for it. But I really don’t know if I’ll ever replay it. I know it sold well, but I can’t really find anything from a narrative or mechanical standpoint to justify giving it more than a 6.5 out of 10.
Inoffensive, playable but also repetitive with head-scratchingly bad plot.
Stuff You Should Really Be Into 2 – The Revengening of Blood Death
19 Apr 2012 5 Comments
in Opinion
So over the past couple of months I’ve been enjoying a site called thatguywiththeglasses.com, a collaborative site where many, many video reviewers review stuff and I thought I’d share it with you all so in no particular here’s my top 5 That Guy With The Glasses reviewers.
1. Doug “The Nostalgia Critic” Walker
That guy with the glasses himself, Doug’s Nostalgia Critic character reviews nostalgic film and TV shows. Well, ones that are from roughly the 80′s to the 2000. They’re comedy skits in which his larger than life character makes jokes about the bad characters, writers, acting, effects, plotholes etc.
It’s a bit MST2Kish, but the videos usually don’ t run any longer than 15 minutes, so it’s really him just picking the highlights to make fun of. He’s got a huge backlog of stuff and it’s well worth checking out.
2. Lindsay “The Nostalgia Chick” Ellis
Like The Nostalgia Critic, the Chick is a comedic persona that reviews nostalgic films and TV shows. Although she was hired to be the female Critic, reviewing the girly stuff Doug couldn’t, she’s evolved into a more analytical reviewer and because of that is my favourite on the site. Sure you get to see somebody making fun of bad films and it’s still funny, but I often feel like I’ve learnt something from watching her videos. Also, her friends Nella and Elisa who appear in her videos are hilarious.
Also also check out Elisa’s Vampire Reviews too.
3. Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug
The site’s comic book guy, the Linkara persona is an angry man dedicated to reviewing bad comics. He’s pretty forgiving to them though, and a lot of what he points out are from what he’s learnt from decades of reading comics. It gets a little continuity nitpicky at times, but he’s still funny and well worth a look for comic fans.
Oh, and he’s also got a series dedicated to breaking down each series of the Power Rangers and reviewing them. Fuck yeah.
4. Todd “Todd in the Shadows” Nathanson
Why do I like this guy? He reviews pop music, which I’m really not into, has terrible production values and never reveals his face. But he’s hilarious. His persona is that of a pitiable, angry young man and a lot of the humour comes from his over-analysing the lyrics and thematic content of the songs, exposing their bad writing. He does also cover the music and technical side of things, but it’s not the focus.
I haven’t even heard of most of the songs he’s reviewed, but I watch these videos just for his spin on things.
5. Hope “JesuOtaku” Chapman
JesuOtaku is the anime reviewer for the site. I’m not much into anime, but I still enjoy her serious breakdowns of the technical and story/character focused breakdowns of the shows she reviews. She hasn’t really got a comedic persona like the other reviewers, but does have comedy skits related to the show she’s looking at at the beginning of her videos that’re always worth checking out.
She’s also part of the Desu Des Brigade of anime reviewers, creating a Digimon retrospective like Linkara’s Power Rangers one and a lot more besides.
Honourable Mentions
I like both The Spoony One and the Blockbuster Buster as well, but I haven’t looked at as much of their stuff and they don’t quite break into my top five. Check them out too.
And there it is gang! I really urge you to explore the site, there’s a lot of great stuff there.
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Mass Effect 3 Fans Just Can’t Be Pleased – SPOILERS – ALSO KINDA RANTY
15 Apr 2012 7 Comments
Look, I was there with you all when we got pissed off about the ending. I called for DLC from Bioware. I even defended the idea of an author compromising their work to please their audience. But I kept some perspective. Bioware have promised to give us the closure we were all saying we wanted. I respect that they don’t want to change or rewrite the endings they have or add a new one, and I don’t think they should.
This is Shepard’s story, and you may want your to raise little blue babies with Liara, but to me a story this big about someone this important can only end with that person dying. We can respectfully disagree on that.
But according to a poll of nearly 3,000 players on Bioware’s forum had 84% of participants say that the new ending DLC isn’t enough. Apparently, getting what we asked for isn’t good enough. We need the same “epic battles” and cookie-cutter happy endings everybody else needs.
But about that battle…were you not there? Maruaders and Brutes and Banshees spawning from four different locations, completely encircling you in a place with no adequate cover as you fought desperately for the future of all sentient life against impossible odds? Did I just dream that? Is that part of the Indoctrination Theory too now?
I didn’t really mind that the endings were more Arthur C. Clarke than Star Wars. It was their lack of integration and explanation that irked me. That looks to be what they’re fixing. And I can work with that. In fact, I’ve gotten over the ending completely now. By the time they’d announced the new DLC, I’d stopped caring.
Because it’s just a video game.
Like Star Wars is just a bunch of films, Transformers is just an old (and kinda bad) cartoon. These are huge, formative parts of various eras of our lives but that doesn’t mean we have to hold them to these unreachable standards. And we shouldn’t be so damn bitchy when we don’t like what we get.
Video games and films and cartoons and comics and all that stuff are important. I get it. Really, I do. I’m right there arguing that pop culture is more vital and culturally truthful than any amount of “High Art”. But at the end of the day, politics, the environment, charitable works, scientific advancement, your job/grades/social life/love life/whatever are more important things to spend your time on.
Mass Effect was a trilogy that tried to give a rich, original universe and compelling, transmutable story on a scope that just seems to be too big for them to really pull off. Bioware really don’t deserve this level of hate. They gave us Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, Dragon Age, KOTOR, The Old Republic. Remember all that stuff? Yeah. Good stuff.
In fact, Bioware’s one of the most consistently good studios out there. Who else really matches up to them? Valve sure, but who else can you name that’s been delivering such consistently good games for so long?
And considering the wealth of wonders the Mass Effect trilogy has given me, let alone their other works, I can forgive them a shitty ending.
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Should I Buy? – Mass Effect 3
19 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Bioware, Mass Effect, PC, pc gaming, playstation. xbox, video g
Yeah. Review’s over, roll credits.
OK OK, here’s the real review.
So it’s about a year after Mass Effect 2 and Shepard’s effectively been put under house arrest by the Alliance and the old gang have once again parted ways. So when we rejoin Shep, it’s about five minutes before the Reapers attack Earth. Ah. That could be problematic.
Anyway, you escape Earth with Joker, new squadmate James Vega and whichever person survived on Virmire. For me, that was Kaidan Alenko (former runner up to Jacob Taylor for the prestigious most Bland Mass Effect Character Award). You leave Earth in order to try and unite the fleets of the galaxy to rescue Earth destroy the Reapers once and for all.
A strength of the Mass Effect games has always been in their atmosphere. Not so much in scene-to-scene but in the overall feeling of each game. 1 was a Space Opera with a very positive, Star Trek-esque outlook on things, 2 was the dirty underbelly of the galaxy and 3 does a good job of infusing the game with a sense of foreboding and a general sense that everything is going to hell.
It’s all in the little touches like how Batarians, Vorcha, Volus and even Aria are willingly to straight up help with no strings attached, or the little conversations between various NPCs that evolve over several visits and tell their own stories.
Things are, like they promised, faster, tougher and more shooter-y this time round. The addition of combat rolls, a better cover layout, easier ways of moving between them and decent melee attacks make it a lot easier to be more active in combat. And you’ll need to be because not only are the enemies smarter, but they specialise and work together. Vipers will rush you down in melee combat while a Nemesis tries to pick you off with his sniper rifle when you pop out of cover etc. etc. etc.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to move out of cover when you don’t mean to, and even though sprinting is now unlimited you can’t move the camera while you’re doing it which can be a real nightmare at times. And your team mates aren’t as smart as the AI a lot of the time.
In terms of squadmates, fan favourites Tali and Garrus return, as well as Liara and the Virmire survivor, with Mr Vega and a surprise character. They seem to be trying to do the Mass Effect 1 thing where each of the six squad members represents a different player class, but having both Vega and Ashley Williams will mean you have two Soldiers and no Sentinel, and you have two Engineers but there’s no Vanguard type unless you get the From Ashes DLC and even then he’s a ranged fighter, rather than a destructive close range bruiser.
This is only really a problem if you have a particular tactic that doesn’t gel with the available squadmates, and they’re as well written as ever. Well, most of them. I’ve never seen the big deal about Liara and I can’t get a proper bead on her in this game. She keeps that weird new voice from 2, but seems to oscillate between her differing personalities from the two games without ever settling down.
Garrus is probably the best written character after the DLC squadmate because he’s the Goddamn Space Batman. Although basically all he does this time around is bromance with people.
Vega is a character I thought I was going to hate, he looks like a meathead and was designed to be a soldier with little knowledge of galactic politics. And yeah, though he can be pretty ignorant of basic stuff at times, he’s not an uber-macho jock. In fact, he’s pretty serious and well adjusted. He’s clearly a highly competent soldier and if you don’t mind a bit of bluster, he’s a pretty cool character.
I’d also like to give special mention to Kelly Chamber’s replacement, Specialist Samantha Traynor. She’s a civilian who was on the Normandy when it fled Earth and she has her own little arc about adjusting to military life on ship and she ends up being one of the two lesbian options a FemShep can explore.
Oh yeah, only Kaidan can be romanced into a homosexual relationship out of the squadmates, lesbian Shepards have to make do with Samantha or the aggressively bland new reported Diana Allers. Kind of a cop out in my opinion, Dragon Age never had a problem with characters engaging in homosexual relationships. But at least it’s there.
And if you don’t romance either Garrus or Tali, they end up in a relationship together. BEST. PAIRING. EVER.
The bulk of the game is trying to secure the support of the major players in the galaxy through a series of missions. This gives the effect of the game having several self-contained arcs that you move between.
And while I can’t speak for all the romances you could carry over from the first two games, I can tell you that great as it was to see Jack again and see how she’s grown, her ‘romance’ wask rather underdeveloped. Although the fact that the culmination is something as simple as dancing in a club with her, rather than a sex scene is a nice thematic continuation of her character.
Ultimately, I’d say that with Mass Effect 3 having much more bromance than romance that the universe has effectively turned gay for MaleShep. At the very least, Kaidan has. That’s canon.
All of the Mass Effect 2 squadmates that you’ve still got alive return in some fashion and play into the plot. Although this does bring up another problem I have. While I’m glad that you don’t lose access to content through not having characters alive, it does feel like a bit of a copout to have every single dead character be replaced in some way by an NPC. True, not having the original character alive often means things turn out worse but the Rachni show up regardless of what you did, there’ll be another NPC to fill the dead character’s role, the Council now includes a turian, salarian and asari regardless of your choice etc.
Although this, in turn, leads to a strength. You often can’t get the “best” outcome to a situation by not having the original character in that slot and a lot of the “failure” scenes turn out more dramatic and tragic than the good variations. This game can get surprisingly dark, and sometimes seemingly innocuous choices that you didn’t expect to have any effect can be the difference between success and failure.
And in the true spirit of the game’s “death is everywhere” theme, sometimes a loss in inevitable. Even in a “perfect” playthrough, you WILL lose certain beloved characters and you WILL mourn them. This just makes the darker, more death-laden “imperfect” playthroughs that much tougher to play. I was playing a game with a brand new character and had the conversations set to full auto and found myself forced to use Renegade interrupts to kill two of my most personal favourites. Yeah. I had to pull the trigger on my own favourite characters.
Not just any two characters, my actual, honest to Shepard, one and two slots on my favourite character list. But let’s move on from all that now.
So, that horrible planet scanning from Mass Effect 2 is all but gone. Instead, you now press a shoulder button to activate a radial scan while moving through a system and any trinkets to collect are highlighted on your map. But too many scans, and the Reapers will find you and swarm the system, forcing you to flee. They leave once you finish a mission, so it can be pretty hilarious to deliberately provoke them into chasing you, only to hop planetside and leave half a dozen Reapers to scratch their heads and wander off.
This does help add a sense of danger and urgency to a typically boring part of the Mass Effect games, meaning that now it’s only the Normandy and the Citadel that get tedious. Though the odd lull between combat and fighting Reapers is nice, a lot of the cutscenes fill that role, so it’s a lot of walking around to see if your squadmates want to develop their character in front of you or talk to another person to update a sidequest.
Basically the Citadel is now the only place where you can wander around and buy stuff, and it like the Normandy has had a redesign. Half the sidequests are “overhear somebody needing something and scan a planet for it to give to them” and the other half are “talk to/use panels in the correct sequence, with the odd choice hear or there”.
Although it is nice when you come across two people arguing about something and you can side with one or another. Not only because one sentence from Shepard can seemingly defuse any situation, but because even these do have an effect, namely in usually making a change in your War Assets.
War Assets and their collection are basically the point of the sidequests, and serve as a tangible abstraction for the effect of your choices in the game. Getting a civilian militia set up on the Citadel may only contribute 5 points, but recruiting the krogan fleet will net you ridiculous amounts like 700 points. And getting to read all the little updates like “because you gave that schematic to a guy on the Citadel, these soldiers have better Medi-gel” is a nice touch.
Getting full War Assets is necessary to being able to get all the endings, and while it’s certainly possible to get enough without playing the multiplayer, it’s certainly a lot harder. See, each area of space has a “Galactic Readiness” rating that starts at 50% raises by completing missions in that area in multiplayer. This means all the points you collect only count for half if you don’t use the multiplayer, making doing all the sidequests that much more important.
I haven’t played the multiplayer because I never do, but apparently it’s pretty damn good. It uses the premise that you’re a Spec Ops member taking on high-risk missions for the war effort and you get to choose a race and class to play as in 4 player missions against NPC opponents. It’s actually pretty tempting for me to try, and that’s saying a huge deal for me.
Now, if you’ve been on the internet once since the game came out, you’ll know that people really didn’t like the ending. I won’t touch on the specifics hear, you can read my thoughts in this article (warning, MAJOR spoilers), but I will say that they don’t ruin the game.
Mass Effect 3 is the epic final trilogy of a serious that’s always had it’s troubles. But for me, this game was its zenith. Although it’s way out of the price range I usually write for, this is a game that deserves that full price investment. It’s fun, it’s emotional, it’s replayable and apparently the multiplayer is good so there’s plenty to be gotten out of it. But if you’re picking up this series for the first time you may not see what all the fuss is about. My, and I have a feeling most people’s real connection to this story was because of the time and emotion we’d invested in the first two. And although I too have been moddy and criticised the ending, I really do want to say thank you Bioware. Thank you for Mass Effect.
UPDATED – The Mass Effect 3 Ending Scandal – SPOILERS
15 Mar 2012 4 Comments
in Opinion
Now, to be clear, this is not a case of me straight up ranting over which particular camp is correct. I will voice my opinions on the ending, but I’ll also provide an overview of the various reactions to the ending of Mass Effect 3.
By the way, when I say ending, I’m talking about the very last conversation and choice you get to make, which is about 5-10 minutes. The rest of it is pretty damn awesome.
So, from here on out I have to throw up a spoiler warning.
SERIOUSLY OH GOD THE MASSIVE, MASSIVE SPOILERS! TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE GAME. PLEASE!
*ahem*
So, at the end of Mass Effect 3 you’re trying to fire the Crucible, a superweapon of ancient design that will hopefully stop the Reapers once and for all. Every damn fleet you’ve assembled is there to try to take back Earth and get this damn weapon fired. But the key to firing the Crucible is, in fact, the Citadel, which the Reapers have parked over London. Shepard and Anderson lead a last ditch ground assault to secure it, and on the way Shepard takes a direct hit from a Reaper cannon & survives, and the Illusive Man turns out to have been indoctrinated by the Reapers.
And so it seems Shepard’s journey is over. He sits with Anderson to watch the end of it all. But it doesn’t fire. Shepard tries to reach the console again and collapses. When he wakes, an ancient VI tells him the purpose of the Reapers. Organic life always create synthetic life that then tries to destroy organic like. And so, the Reapers exist to “save” sentient life by turning them into Reapers, destroying synthetic life and allowing new life to grow.
Shepard is now told that this system has failed because Shepard made it so far. He can choose to destroy all synthetic life, including the Geth and EDI, take control of the Reapers and force them to leave, or sacrifice himself to cause a fusion of organic and synthetic life. But whichever way, all the Mass Relays will be destroyed. So no interstellar travel.
What’s wrong with this conceptually? Nothing. Conceptually. But this isn’t just one game. It’s a trilogy we’ve been playing over 5 years. A trilogy where we’ve not only chosen, but worked to make our choices to come to fruition. Ultimately, what does it matter if the krogan would start a galactic war with the Genophage cured? The Mass Relays are destroyed. They can’t travel anywhere outside of the Sol System.
What do all those fleets do now they’re stranded on a ruined Earth? Who knows! We never get any explanation about how everything plays out in the end. I have all these problems and more with the ending. But, at the same time I can see what they’re doing. They’re trying to remind us that this conflict is bigger than just the cycle we’re experiencing. They’re trying to show we can’t always have that “golden ending”. Also, the ending was meant to be memorable and divisive, something we could discuss for years.
And I recognise as the creators and owners of the Mass Effect franchise, it’s their right to end the story the way they want to. But I also think that after five years of investment in this universe, and the choices we’ve made and resolutions we’ve worked at, we deserve more closure. Not to necessarily change the endings, but at least something that says “and then everyone made FTL drives and went home and all the races lived happily ever after and were all very sad that Shepard was dead.”
Hell, I still *want* that Golden Ending. I want to destroy the Reapers without destroying all synthetic life and blowing up the Mass Relays. I want to see everything go back to the way it was, with the changes I’d brought about taking shape. The Quarians reclaiming Rannoch, the Krogan becoming more peaceful, Earth being rebuilt.
But there we have it. That’s the ending and how I feel about it. As for how other people feel about it, I can discern four major opinions that seem to be cropping up.
1) Authorial Control
It’s Bioware’s story. Accept it. You may not like it, I may not like it, but to demand a new one is to be entitled and immature.
2) Death of the Author
It’s not just Bioware’s story though. It’s our’s. Each of us has our own Commander Shepard through whom we’ve experienced and invested in this story.
(I’d like to add an addendum that I feel there’s validity to this, not just entitlement. As an interactive medium where we’ve been given agency to affect the world, denying us the ultimate conclusion of our choices is a choice I think it’s right for fans to take umbridge with.)
3) Defenders
They liked the ending. Mostly it seems by looking past the surface to the themes and recognising the levels of metaphor and philosophy the choices play off of.
4) Fakeout
Aside from those who just write off the last ten minutes as a dying dream before someone gets the Crucible to actually fire, there’s a group that has, with alarming speed, created a rather solid seeming theory that Shepard didn’t really experience those past ten minutes.
Basically, some people think that his exposure to Reapers, Reaper tech and other indoctrinated creatures has been slowly and insidiously poisoning Shepard’s mind, and they force him to hallucinate either everything beginning with the charge to board the Citadel or from the meeting with the Catalyst VI onwards.
It talks then of the choices all being different ways for the Reapers to “win”, by tricking him into one of these things. I can see how “Control” would be a trap and that he couldn’t actually do it, and how “Synthesis” requiring him to jump to his death would be them saying “jump off a cliff!” but I don’t really see how this explains the “Destroy” ending.
Supporting this are various pieces of circumstantial evidence, like Shepard’s frequent contact with Reaper tech, some audio/visual strangeness in the game’s ending sections as well as an app and some digging into the game’s code.
The last two haven’t been verified, and the circumstantial evidence looks solid but has nothing conclusive. The audio/visual strangeness, however, is either a series of art mistakes and thematic choices, or a big pile of hints.
Anyways, the app in an non-Bioware piece that, among other things, sends messages from your squadmates as you reach certain parts of the game. Once you complete it, it apparently sends a message from the Virmire survivor, suggesting that you’re in a hospital. This could be because one of the endings implies Shepard is still alive, but I’ve seen a Bioware member declare the app non-canon in the forums. Then again, it’s also been promoted by Bioware themselves. So, that’s up in the air.
As for the code, apparently the game tags the ending with one of three titles, including “did not finish” as one of them. This would seem to correspond to one for each of the three endings. Bioware has hinted we should keep our ME3 files, and that some “great new single player content is on its way” before, but it’s all speculation right now.
If we take that they knew the ending would be a huge, divisive shock and accept the code & audio/visual evidence, it looks like they were playing us all along and planned the ending to be a fakeout.
And I hope so. Not just because I’m displeased with the ending, but I want to see what they’d do if there are indeed plans to expand upon it.
UPDATE: Bioware have since announced that there will be some kind of “story extending single player content” coming out in response to all the backlash. This has, in itself, caused a backlash.
Some game developers, of Bioware or otherwise, have responded to the controversy with sorrow, saying that these are the works of the creator and that fans should accept them and not insist on having things their way.
Also, a lot of professional commentators have responded negatively, seeing this as an act of immature fan entitlement winning out of artistic integrity. I won’t name names because I respect those people and their opinions, but I do have to disagree.
Many of them are acting like this WILL set a terrible precedent, this WILL change the industry, this WILL set the medium back, this WILL damage its artistic integrity. I really don’t think so. Fallout 3‘s ending was changed due to fan complaints about how contrived and illogical it was with the DLC Broken Steel. And editors, producers, writers, actors, directors, studio executives, publishers, test audiences, these have all caused endings or parts of works in pretty much every medium to be changed before or after its release.
Overall, I’ve found the backlash against the backlash to be more annoying than the original backlash, which I personally think has gone way too far. Metabombing was stupid and wasteful, but understandable. The charity drive was nice, but also kinda dopey. The “Retake Mass Effect” campaign and the fan suing Bioware for false advertising is also ridiculous but the point is the people who were angry do have legitimate reasons, and changes are made all the time based on fan feedback. That’s why there’s no Mako after Mass Effect 1. Really, I don’t see this as inherently different from that.
Also, there is a literary theory commonly known as “Death of the Author” that basically states that the creator of a work isn’t a Godlike entity with supreme control of it any more. The fans, the investors, anybody who’s got any kind of stake in it has a role to play in the creation of the work. Not just the actual process of creation, but also in how it’s remembered and interpreted. And I support it. It’s like an academic theory that lets you say “that really stupid episode in that show never happened” or “I choose to believe Snape was never actually evil”, even if a work suggests or outright states otherwise.
To me, I’d say that game developers also need to grow up a little and accept that fans have a real voice, and that taking criticism on board for a sequel isn’t always enough and that there will be times when they have to bend over for their fans to do things they don’t want to, like compromising on their idea of an ending because it won’t be one that satisfies fans. Like fans need to be a lot less rude and learn to properly show the appropriate level of disappointment, and publishers need to grow up and adapt to the rapidly changing game market instead of trying to swindle fans at every turn.
Should I Buy? – Mass Effect 3 DLC From Ashes
12 Mar 2012 3 Comments
in Review
OK, so, I got Mass Effect 3. It’s great, buy it. But, I need some time before I can properly review it. There are also other things I want to write about the game, and possibly the trilogy as a whole, so welcome to “Mass Effect time of as of yet undetermined length”!
So. Day one DLC. Surely it must be horrendously evil right? No. It’s basically a pre-order bonus you can buy. At least in this case. See, it’s included as standard in N7 Collector’s Edition but available for everybody else to download for $10USD/£8.50/800 Microsoft Points. And is it worth that much? Well, yeah.
I get that it was probably planned to be full content, but the were told that they had to make something day one DLC, and having played the whole damn game, I can tell you it’s in no way needed to make the game “complete”. It’s a nice addition that nets you an awesome and interesting squadmate and a stupidly powerful gun.
Anyways, seeing as the main feature of this DLC is a new squadmate, it’s best to buy it either when you get the game or when you’re about to start a new playthrough. And when you have it, try to make the recruitment mission on Eden Prime be the first one you play, when given the chance.
So. The DLC itself. It gives you a mission to recruit a new squadmate whom I must now talk about so SPOILERS. As you’ll see from even just looking at the promotional images, it gives you a Prothean squadmate called Javik.
And he’s awesome. He’s got a great look, a great voice and as a character he has a complete range of conversations with you and other squad members. His presence does go largely un-addressed in the game proper by people who don’t even question what he is.
That said, the character as a whole works. He provides a good look into the Prothean culture that we’ve had almost zero information on. Also, his accent is awesome.
Recruiting him will bump your total squad member count up to seven. In combat, he’s a combat/biotic mix who can equip pistols and assault rifles. So he’s kinda filling the same role Samara filled in ME2, and I used him in pretty much all of my missions as my biotic support. But seeing as how this game has a reduced cast list, the only other Biotic characters are Liara and Kaidan, if you saved him so having a good Biotic alternative is also a good thing to have from a mechanical standpoint. Now, I was on Easy mode, but he did a bangup job.
Recruiting him gives you the Prothean Particle Rifle, an assault rifle that has infinite ammo in the always-recharge sense. And it’s a constant beam that can strip down health, shield, armour and barriers pretty damn easily. And it has awesome range. And enough concentrated fire from these guns can slow down even the OHMYGODITWILLKILLUSALL enemies while they die. And all your rifle-bearing squadmates can equip it.
Seriously, that’s a fucking awesome gun.
Oh, and all the squad members get a second alternate outfit. Aside from being cool, each different outfit gives the squad member a different bonus like extra weapon damage or increased power cooldown. Which is nice.
I do feel that this DLC really adds to the experience of the game, and I’m damn glad that I bought it. And I almost never buy DLC. Now that I’ve played a game with it, it’s kinda hard to imagine a playthrough without it. But then that’s just a sign that it works and is integrated well.
Yes, you’re losing out on a great experience by not buying it. But your Mass Effect 3 core experience will not be compromised by not buying this. It’s not necessary. But it’s cool as all hell.
Buy it. Buy it now.
Should I Buy? – Captain America: Super Soldier
01 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Action, Avengers, Captain America, Comics, Marvel, Review, video games
I’ve been on a bit of a Marvel binge recently, what with all the excitement the Avengers film is kicking up in me. In the past month, I’ve started reading Marvel Ultimates, watched Captain America: The First Avenger and yes, played Captain America: Super Soldier, the tie-in game to the film.
I’m aware this review isn’t exactly timely.
Marvel’s recent glut of great films (and the awesome X-Men: First Class by a different studio) have found their success with lesser known characters by focusing on what really makes that character who they are, building up believable character relationships and finding a comfortable compromise between accessibility and fidelity.
Can Super Soldier do the same? Not really. The problem is that it’s too indecisive. Oh, by the way, while this game is a tie-in to the film and its design and characters are that of the film, I wouldn’t call it official Avengers film continuity. It seems like it should slot in between the first time Zola & Red Skull encounter Captain America, in that whole montage-y bit of Cap and the Invaders fighting HYDRA.
Oh yeah, so the game has Cap fighting HYDRA in Castle Zemo with the Invaders squad pitching in offscreen. Because the Red Skull is the villain of the film, he’s just a side villain making a cameo while the primary antagonist is Dr Zola. You know, the put-upon, slightly pitiable research guy the Red Skull bossed around.
Obviously, that Zola wouldn’t work, so here he’s much more arrogant and psychotic and has Ubermensch dreams of his own. Normally, this would just make him a fairly generic villain, but it’s at odds with his on-screen persona which I really don’t feel would be that hard to translate.
HYDRA’s forces don’t just use guns now, oh no. They come with stun batons and shields and a few variety of beefy dudes, each with their own counter measures while Cap gets by with a non-lethal projectile and a hit-dodge-counter setup.
So yes, the combat’s ripping off Arkham Asylum. But Batman was almost magnetically drawn to his foes. So long as you pressed attack while being near a guy and pushing the analog stick in vaguely the right direction, he’d strike with bone-crunching accuracy. But Cap’s a bit slippery when moving about, and his shield will NOT auto target people unless they’re pretty much straight in front of you.
Also, the button combinations used for the different counter techniques are often in the fashion of “hold down one button and press another” and more than once I took hits because when I saw a counter icon I got flustered over which move that particular icon meant I should use. Especially when some of the big beasty baddies have follow up button mashing Quick Time Events ad which button it is changes every time and some attacks let you get away with pressing the wrong one first and some don’t…
What I’m trying to say is that in trying to mix up the core gameplay mechanic, it deviated too far from its simple basis and ended up floundering. Really, I could have forgiven the slightly sloppy controls and glut of counters and such if the game had done a better job of teaching me.
It’s too concerned with trying to compete with the First Avenger and Uncharted/Prince of Persia style cinematic acrobatics and Arkham Asylum combat/doodad collection time to slow the hell down. Remember how in Arkham Asylum the Joker trapped you in a room and poured in waves of thugs so you could practice the attack/dodge/counter options before it even told you you had Batarangs? That’s the kind of thing Super Soldier is lacking. The appropriate button presses and what they do flash up at the top of the screen from time to time, but it’s not enough.
Especially seeing as the on screen text is clearly not optimised for a small, non-HD TV like, I dunno, a significant portion 14-20 year olds have. And it’s not like 14-20 is THE single biggest gaming demographic or anything…
Now, while Asylum mixed up its battles with the visceral and enjoyable stealth sequences, Super Soldier only has these limited acrobatics. It’s really just a case of pressing A at the glowy objects until you reach your destination. These have that basically satisfying cool look to them like similar sequences in Uncharted or Prince of Persia, but the only “skill” is in pressing A just as you land so you move faster. This is supposed to be how to avoid snipers, but they so rarely show up when you’re doing it, it’s redundant.
Really, systems only seeming half implemented because there’s such a limited amount of content (seriously, about a 6-8 hour campaign) is a recurring trend. There’s an upgrade system that gives new moves that vary from fairly useful to completely obsolete. And even though there’s only nine, the game’s so short I don’t think I actually bought anything from the third tier.
It can’t even fall back on the gadget-y puzzle thing Arkham Asylum did, because Cap only has access to his shield. Well, there’s two very simple “puzzles” that you use to open doors/blow things up. Now, this shield does work well as a weapon, the CLANG as you whack people is particularly satisfying.
But all there really is is the good-but-not-great combat and style-over-substance acrobatics. The collectable doodads also fall short of the mark, leaving aside the fact that you can find top secret dossiers in the sewers, of Zemo family heirlooms in the mess hall and at one point, a giant ceramic rooster behind the most securely locked door in the game, isn’t what bothers me. What bothers me is that they’re set out really weirdly. You may go several chapters without finding a single heirloom, but then find two or three in five minutes of each other.
Also, if this is Baron Zemo’s castle, and we can collect his family heirlooms to find out his involvement with Hydra, why doesn’t he appear? We get a smattering of what I assume to be other Captain America villains like Madame HYDRA, Iron Cross and Baron von Schrofen, but not Zemo?
Also, the villains fall flat. None of them do anything as memorable as Joker’s speeches or Scarecrow’s nightmare sequences, and if you don’t know who they are, you’ll only get a few brief references to who and what and why they are.
The reason I’m being so hard on this game is because it really did have a solid foundation and could have truly rivalled the Goddamn Batman. But in the end, I imagine the strict time limit imposed on the studio to get it released to capitalise on the film meant they couldn’t make this big, epic game they seem to have planned.
So that’s Super Soldier. It’s short, it’s a bit sloppy, but it has a rough charm and is a fun game. Now that’s it’s a damn sight cheaper than its original full price makes it worth a look, but you’re not missing anything spectacular if you pass on it and if you’re looking for a great superhero game, just play Arkham Asylum or Arkham City instead.
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We Need To Talk About Final Fantasy VII
23 Feb 2012 7 Comments
in Opinion Tags: Final Fantasy, Square Enix, video games
Yesterday, I flooded the page with my ramblings on how we kinda need to just get over Sephiroth. Today, I’m going to splurge about some of the things that bug me about other characters from Final Fantasy VII, or their popular perception, to be precise.
Again, spoiler warning.
Cloud Strife
Cloud’s not emo, he’s just misunderstood. No, really, he is.
In the original game Cloud is a stoic mercenary, serving as your basic aloof badass for hire. But as he interacts with Tifa and Aerith, he shows a subtle emotional side, and a more traditionally heroic devotion.
As the game progresses, Sephiroth’s torture reveals more of Cloud’s true self, and his journeying loosens his tight-lipped persona. He becomes a forthright, angry, driven hero.
He’s not emo. Oh sure, he mopes. But considering he never achieved his dream, saw his hometown burned to cinders by his childhood hero, lost his mum in that blaze, almost lost his childhood crush, was captured by an evil scientist, brutally experimented on for five years, then broke out and was powerless to stop his best friend from being gunned down in front of him and all this trauma pushed him so far into despair his mind broke and had to create a false persona just to get by, I think he’s allowed the odd sad time.
I don’t mind that they undid a lot of his development for Advent Children. The idea that without Sephiroth to motivate him and his contraction of Geostigma he would regress into a more misanthropic thing makes sense for his character, even if it was a deliberate choice to make him more marketable.
But it did probably start the “Cloud is an emo” thing as a majority ruling on him. It doesn’t help that he’s fairly mopey in Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia too.
The point stands! Cloud: not emo. Cloud: severely emotionally damaged guy. Difference. There is one.
Tifa Lockhart
Stupid Tifa. She can’t cope without Cloud. Her entire character is based around her relationship to him.
Except it’s he who can’t cope without her, and Tifa had a definite, distinct character. The task she chose to devote herself too was helping Cloud when his mind started to fall apart at the seems.
See, the Nibelheim incident in which CLoud lost his mother and hometown, Tifa lost her hometown, parents and friends too. Plus she nearly died at the hands of Sephiroth. She lost more in Nibelheim than Cloud did, and where did she end up? Running a bar in the slums, part of an eco-terrorist organisation. Helping to facilitate the deaths of hundreds of people due to her undying hatred of ShinRa.
When Cloud comes along, she suspects something’s up. Seeing as he’s one of the few surviving pieces of her past, she naturally tries to keep him around. Tifa gradually realises that Cloud is conflating his history with Zack’s, and when that’s revealed to Cloud one of her last remaining links to her childhood and one of her friends she’s made while travelling completely breaks down.
If you wouldn’t stop to help Cloud in the same situation, you are a heartless bastard.
It’s pretty trendy, particularly on the internet, to bash any female character who admits to any emotion or commits a “girly” action as being a weak, whiny princess in need of rescue.
And that’s really gotta stop. The Final Fantasy heroines since number IV have had strength. But it’s an inner strength. The ability to take all the hit that’s slung at them, which is often just as bad or worst as the protagonist, and still be on the front lines, acting as emotional support for the men.
That’s what Tifa’s got. Maybe we expect more from her because she’s an Amazonian style barefist fighter. But that’s unreasonable. Tifa’s strength isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. Without her to help him, Cloud would never have got his shit together.
Aerith Gainsborough
Like Sephiroth, every time Aerith appears outside of the original, she’s got a completely different personality from the original game. She was a flighty, flirty pixie always willing to put herself in danger and trying to get Cloud to open up by being really forward.
She’s not a saintly, quiet girl always praying for happiness and peace and puppy dogs and rainbows.
I get why she’s portrayed like that. They’re trying to make her be more of an Ideal. She’s the mystical force that opposes the evil of Sephiroth and Jenova. True, once she’s in the Lifestream she is hinted to have called the Lifestream forward to protect the planet, but that’s doesn’t mean her personality has to change.
Especially seeing as none of the spinoffs have her in a position to really be a messiah. It’s worst in Kingdom Hearts, and it shows up in Crisis Core (which I can kinda forgive because she was just 14/15 at the time, and presumably exposure to Zack opened her up a bit).
Although actually Advent Children might have made the best choice by having her as a “presence” rather than having her showing up to psychically converse with Cloud in a way closer to her original form.
Vincent Valentine
Shut up about this guy. Seriously. I get it. He’s pretty, he’s tragic and he looks badass. But he was the weakest character in VII and dramatically, he’s Cloud with the names in his backstory changed.
His game sucked, and while he’s still cool, he’s overplayed. Not because he’s ever really been written badly or overused, the fans have just built him up too much. He’s Final Fantasy‘s Boba Fett.
Cid Highwind
Seriously, this guy’s thrice as awesome as you remember him.
Ace Attorney Twitter Battle
18 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Ace Attorne, Capcom, Humour, Twitter, video games
OK, there was a hashtag battle between me, a Miles Edgeworth RPer (@High_Prosecutor) and a Phoenix Wright RPer (@ObjectionLawyer) on Twitter the other day I thought I’d share with you all.
By the way, not only does it spoil pretty much all of the games, there’s a good chance you won’t get what’s going on unless you already know the Ace Attorney continuity. So, Ace Attorney fans, here you are. Enjoy.
Jam and Gangsters Part 2
09 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in Stories Tags: Serial Writing, Short Story, writing
Here we are folks with the second instalment of my experiment in episodic short storytelling. I apologise for…well, it, but I’ve not written traditional prose for a long time so I’m getting back into the groove of things as well as largely making it all up as I go along.
Also, here’s a link to Part 1.
Part 2
And bugger him life would. The email contained information on just the sort of ironically hip, trendy-because-it-was-untrendy clothing store that he frequented; operating under the assumption that things were only pretentious if he wasn’t doing them. If he was, they were edgy and cool and everybody was stupid for not doing them but spoiled it when they finally did do it.
And so he rushed off home as fast as the Tube would carry him and set about printing off a map to the place. The shop was apparently one of those awkward places in a back alley of a back alley of a sub-street that doesn’t show up on maps unless you get the really big A-Z guides.
This is where his problems began. A constant problem for all Gods is pride. They were forbade from making themselves figures of worship because most religions have fairly off-base ideas about what Gods are, what they do and they do it and the higher-ups didn’t want to deal with the hassle the truth would cause. But they’re Gods, damn it! They shouldn’t sully their hands with the work of mortal folk!
A lot of the older ones just lounge around in Heavens, idly abusing their powers for shits and giggles while young Gods of important things like the Internet, Environmental Awareness and Rickrolling get heavily involved in their field, trying to steer it whichever way they fancied.
Simon, on the other hand, decided to take the best of both worlds. He got all the fun of being in the real world without having any of the bother of actually paying his way. Which he did by, of course, abusing his powers. Specifically, he sold jam online.
I didn’t say it was a cool abuse of power.
The first problem arose when he tried to print the map. His printer was this ancient, primordial machine that sat in its own corner of his bedroom. Sometimes at night it burbled and beeped. No machine should ever burble.
It didn’t actually connect to the computer as printers are expected to. Instead, you had to insert a floppy disk with that and only that file on it, and it would, probably, print what you said with only minimal amounts of checking the ink cartridges, scratching your head and exasperatedly shouting “Why won’t you bloody work?”
After shouting this for the fourth time the burbling turned into a kind of grinding, screeching cacophony. Half an hour later, Simon was trying to pull the splotchy paper out of the tray by lifting up a sharp metal thing that held it down as it was printing before it could take its payment in blood.
Eventually, a rough approximation of the map was in hand. He tossed the pen he’d been using to keep the sharp thing up on top of the notepad he’d been doodling on and decided he had just enough time to hoof it over there to scope it out.
This lead quite neatly into his second mistake.
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Ace Attorney News Roundup
04 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in News Tags: Ace Attorney, Capcom, films, foreign language films, Gyakuten Saiban, Marvel, Megaman, video games
Yay for Ace Attorney! There’s been a few tantalising bits of news recently (no, not loacalisation plans for AAI2 or Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney) and I’ve rounded them up here, hence the name, for y’all to look at.
First of all, the film, Gyakuten Saiban is it’s currently known. Probably more due to the film studio than Capcom, who’ve recently crossed the line into complete trolls, the film will be getting international release (probably DVD only, don’t get too excited), with subs and dubs available for the language of your choice.
As another nice bonus, the characters will be known by their translated names in the language in question. So you won’t have to hear about the trials of Ryuichi Naruhodo, you’ll be hearing about Phoenix Wright blasting through the cases and noting down names to pursue further litigation.
Next, we have the announcement of Ace Attorney 5. Technically, this means the two Investigations games are officially Gaiden games and not mainstream entries. I mention this because that’s all the information we have about this. Seriously, that, and the logo below are all we know. To go really out there, I did note that the logo number is red, the colour of Apollo Justice, whereas the colours of the logo for the “Phoenix Arc” were all blue. I wouldn’t read too much into this, but it looks like Mr Justice might be the new protagonist.
This makes sense, Justice was meant to be the new hero and various plot details from games 3 & 4 would make a new Phoenix game feel contrived. I won’t mention what for those that’ve yet to finish the games involved.
Finally, the original trilogy, those being Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright, Justice For All & Trials and Tribulations are going to be released on iOS devices. Whether or not they’ll be iPhone compatible is unknown, the recent iOS port of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was iPod Touch and iPad only and it may be the same for this rerelease.
Oh yeah, dudes, they totally released Ghost Trick on iOS devices! I know right?! That game was amazing! It’s by Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney franchise and is easily the best detective-cum-poltergeist game ever. OK, that’s kinda damning with faint praise, but seriously, it’s a great game that never got great sales anywhere in the world and really deserves more attention. The first two chapters are free, the rest of the game is £7/$10.
Now, to talk a bit more about Capcom. One thing is that they clearly aren’t ready to abandon their international market for Ace Attorney. The film news above, Phoenix Wright getting in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and the original trilogy ports to both Wii and iOS devices all show that they’re “testing the water”, not just teasing their fanbase. On the other hand, they really *are* trolling Megaman fans.
They cancelled Mega Man Galaxy 3, he didn’t get into Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3‘s expanded roster despite being their classic flagship version, and thought to be pretty much a shoe in. After then using a freakin’ background stage in UMvC3 to suggest he might be DLC, and then gave Zero and Frank West Megaman outfits.
And now, the *new* fighting game crossover they’re doing, Street Fighter X Tekken, recently released a trailer that included footage for new, PS Vita exclusive characters including Pac-Man and the Megaman from the original Megaman‘s North American box art, the one that everyone thinks is just hideous.
Capcom is confusing.
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Should I Buy? – Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
28 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Broken Sword, Game, Good Old Games, Review, Steam
Oh dear. By the third installment the series was quite clearly in the middle of doing what I call “doing a Matrix”. That is, getting less enjoyable with each subsequent installment.
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon was an attempt to update the series for a more modern audience. Not by turning it into an action game or a shooter or anything like that, instead it transitioned into full 3D and introduced stealth, sliding blocks puzzles and a strange attempt at platforming to keep things fresh.
Basically, George and Nico and are off doing their thing (Nico trying to interview a guy with an apparent secret about a potentially world ending discovery, which just seems to be how these games start now and George off trying to find a mad scientist in the Congo so he can patent an invention that’ll apparently revolutionise a lot of stuff) but end up investigating different threads of the same mystery.
Said mystery revolves around the Voynich Manuscript, the remnants of the Templars and the supposed powers of ley lines, all tied into the enigmatic Susarro. As usual, it covers quite a wide variety of global locations though the use of the 3D RareWare Engine over the old Virtual Theatre means that nothing really looks special. The game doesn’t look bad, but it’s all kind of uninspiring, which shouldn’t be my reaction to climbing up a waterfall in the Congo.
On the gameplay side, it’s not exclusively using the old adventure game methods found in point-n-clicks and when it does, it’s all in a going through the motions kinda way. The new elements I mentioned above also fail to really work. Sloppy movement controls make stealth harder than it should be, even though it’s basically a game of grandmother’s footsteps. The sliding block puzzles are…well, sliding block puzzles. Nothing special is done with them. they’re just kind of there. And the platforming is just going up to an interactive background element and pressing the appropriate context sensitive button. There’s no skill in making the jump or swinging on the rope.
And the plot? Eh. The characters? A few stand out. The humour? There’s some. It’s not great or widespread. It’s also a rather short game. I can’t really think of a reason to recommend it unless you *really* want more Broken Sword or you buy it as part of a bundle of the series.
Aside from less than stellar writing, pretty much all the problems with this game can be attributed to the game trying to be modernised and innovating on its formula. But the formula wasn’t broken. A bit dusty and battered yes, but still perfectly serviceable with a bit of spit and polish. But it doesn’t seem to be a genre anybody can quite get the hang of these days.
My Best of 2011
04 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Opinion
I considered doing a 2011 videogame awards thing, but I didn’t actually get to play that many 2011 releases. Instead, here I want to just give a shout out to some of stuff from 2011 I did really enjoy.
Favourite Game of 2011 – Bastion
As I mentioned above, I didn’t get to play a lot of the year’s big releases, Skyrim, Dragon Age 2, Uncharted 3 et al. But, the year’s most impressive indie title was one of the titles I got my hands on. Its beautiful to look at, has a fantastic dynamic narrator with a sexuality-confusingly sexy voice, the year’s flat out best score by composer Darren Korb and tight, fun Action-RPG gameplay. It’s the first showing from Supergiant Games, themselves former developers on mainstream titles and Bastion probably made the biggest impact of any indie title since Angry Birds. Seriously. Buy that game.
Best Example of a Sequel – Batman: Arkham City
I’m not choosing this because I got to play a lot of other sequels this year and compare, but because I’m really struggling to think of a game I’ve played that’s done such a good job of going “big” for the sequel but still holding onto what made the first game great. It’s not flawless, there’s too many new tricks that you’ll pretty much never use and the design is now uniformly “Really Rather Good” instead of “Sodding Excellent”. Also, City shows that developers Rocksteady really do know their Goddamn Bat-Stuff.
Not only that, but they refuse to parrot it ad verbatim or go for the easy portrayals. Remember how Mister Freeze is meant to be an antihero only acting out of concern for his dying wife? So does Rocksteady! Ever wondered how the Penguin and Riddler could be portrayed as interesting villains? Rocksteady know. FYI, the answer is a blend of unrepentant psychopathy, a shit ton of money and not acting like a 2D comic book villian for once. The plot also takes inspiration from a myriad of different stories and adaptations to deliver a unique spin on the Bat-mythos you won’t get anywhere else.
Best way of letting somebody into a genre – Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
The expanded re-release of MvC3 and the original are both serious, deep beat ‘em ups. What makes them so great for getting into the newbie-unfriendly world of fighting games is the Simple Mode. With this, you can play as most of the characters effectively with just a few buttons. And when you’re not worrying about how to pull off your fancy moves and just able to do them, you can instead learn skills like blocking, team combos, assists, tagging, X Factor and the like and get a proper grasp on how the game works, before you (if ever, cause the game is stupid amounts of fun even just on Simple Mode) decide to move up to Normal Mode. I’ll admit to only buying this game because of PHOENIX GODDAMN WRIGHT but I’m glad I did, because the “must play this game all day every day” work off way after the novelty of OBJECTION!-ing Galactus to death did.
Super Hero Movies – Thor & X-Men First Class
I love me some superheroes. And what I really loved this year was Kenneth Brannagh being unafraid to make Thor be big and grandiose. He also made the brilliant performances by Tom Hiddleston & Chris Hemsworth really work, although the script certainly gave them plenty to work from. Of particular note for me was how Loki, a campy comic book villain, came off as a believable and relatable character. Even moreso than his big, lovable brother Thor.
And X-Men First Class? Not afraid to put its heroes on yellow spandex, which earns it points in my book. Also, it took characters like Magneto, Beast, Mystique & Xavier (who I’ve never formed a connection to in anything) and made me like and care about them. Xavier in particular is charming as all hell. If he were telling me to go save the world from Shaw, I’m pretty sure he could convince me to overcome my innate cowardice easily without using his telepathy.
Other Movies – Sucker Punch, Hanna and In Time
Other than cementing my love for Amanda Seyfried and making me fall in love with Saoirse Ronan and Emily Browning, these three films were to me really, really fun, slick action films with interesting ideas going on behind the main story.
Sucker Punch barely broke even at the Box Office and was despised by most critics. It was Zack Sneider’s first film that wasn’t an adaptation, and at least 937, if not all kinds of awesome. Using multiple layers of dream narrative, we see the lead character Baby Doll fight with a group of similarly hot, badass girls against Steampunk zombie soldiers, orcs, robots, a dragon and gigantic demon samurai statues. Some critics thought the use of attractive women in tight clothing fighting through hordes of battles seemingly torn out of nerd fantasies that were also being exploited as sex workers in another dream layer was misogynistic, but I think they were missing the point. See, the fighting of these dehumanised, vaguely evil, masculine enemies took place when the girls were doing something to strike back against the male dominated environments they were trapped in.
Specifically, they’re using a combination of intelligence, deception and their femininity to get one over on the guys in one layer (and probably the real world) and also destroying the evil, subhuman symbolic males in another, while acting against some kind of time limit. As such, the action is a way of an idealised version of the girls processing their rebellion against the guys. You might think I’m reading too much into it, but Sucker Punch is a film built around symbolism, much like Black Swan was. I think that the symbolism it chooses to use is what got it ignored, which is unfair if true.
Hanna is a generic story of a super-secret super soldier program survivor being hunted down by the US government. Except the hero is a young girl. When she escapes into the world at large, she travels a good stretch of Europe where she essentially has a coming-of-age story, aided by a dysfunctional English family on holiday. It’s a film about Hanna becoming an adult, essentially. Most of the conspiracy plot is even handed off to her father, while Hanna gets to explore the world and find her place in it.
In Time is prove positive, if it were needed, that proper speculative fiction of the type Asimov, Clarke and Heimlein wrote can translate to Hollywood without compromising on the messages and philosophies it delivered in print. It has its problems, and for a film in which the ticking of seconds can be a literal matter of life and death there are a lot of sequences that seem to take improbably long or short times. Its message about unrestrained Capitalism versus Socialism (not Communism) is very topical and well worth hearing. Also, one scene has Amanda Seyfried in her underwear.
My Favourite Trailer/Most Anticipated Film – Ace Attorney
Nope, not The Hobbit, Dark Knight Rises or The Avengers. I’m looking forward to a videogame movie most of all. It’s a Japanese production, known there by the series’ original title Gyakuten Saiban and is being directed by one of the most versatile, prolific and well known Japanese directors, Takashi Miike. Miike hasn’t shied from making this film actually look like Ace Attorney at all, and I have real faith that it’ll be the first truly great videogame movie.
Best Thing on TV – Doctor Who “The Doctor’s Wife”
Neil Freakin’ Gaiman himself wrote an episode of Doctor Who for series six. Less of a typical adventure and more a meditative love letter to the oldest relationship on the show, Gaiman delivered what I firmly believe to be the best thing in Who canon. At least of the new series, I can’t vouch for the old one.
Best Book – The Night Circus
OK, so it’s the only new book I read this year, but it’s still damn good. A period romance set in and around the titular magical circus, Emily Morgenstern’s debut novel might not appeal to those of you who detest a romance story, but she’s clearly got some good stories in her and a talent for telling them. Hey, the guys over at FailBetterGames liked it enough to make a promotional game for it, The Guardian have nominated for a best newcomer award and the BBC have already done a radio adaptation of it. She’s got something going for her. Don’t be surprised if this is the summer hit that explodes into cinema when the Twilight films are gone.
Well folks, that was my highlights of 2011. What were yours? More to the point, how many of them involved penguins?
Should I Buy? – Batman: Arkham City
30 Dec 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Batman, DC, DC Comics, Game, PC, Playstation, Review, Sony, Steam, XBOX
Unless you’re some kind of DC hating Marvel fanboy that gets violent every time they hear the word “Kryptonite”, then yes. Arkham City is the sequel to Rocksteady’s surprise critical and commercial stunner Arkham Asylum from a few years back, and is a good example of a sequel done right. Instead of coasting by and making no real attempt to improve on things, City is bigger and better, with more stuff to do and more ways to do it.
Basically, Quincy Sharp, head of Arkham Asylum in the last game, took credit for your work stopping Joker and got himself elected Mayor of Gotham. Then he walled off an entire district of Gotham, dumped all criminals (insane or otherwise) inside, hired heavily armed mercenaries to police it and put relatively unknown psychiatrist Hugo Strange in charge. A bit suspicious, no? Well, Batman thinks so. Unable to do anything as the Dark Knight, he tries to campaign against it as Bruce Wayne, which results in his incarceration as a political prisoner.
Inside the city, Joker, Two-Face and Penguin have carved out their own criminal empires and there’s a host of other villains running about like Zsasz and Mister Freeze. And you’ll track them down through both the wide open cityscapes and the more familiar claustrophobic building interiors. The cityscape adds a whole new dimension to the game, and I must say is very well designed. See, in the last game you basically guided Bats from one challenge room to another. There were no alternate routes. Even when outside, the enemies were in scripted locations and the spaces too small for more than a handful of viable approaches.
But with the city full of randomly spawning enemies and with no set paths to traverse, the precision artifice of the encounters from the original isn’t present. Not that traversing the cities is a chore, the layout has obviously been carefully designed for both getting around and for you to do your Goddamn Bat-thing when push comes to punch. There’s also a host of new techniques Bats has for getting around in the big wide open, though on foot travel is pretty much irrelevant in the streets.
The interior sections aren’t as tight as the original, nor as long or prominent. With so many new additions to Batman’s arsenal, it’d be difficult to design encounters to compliment this. For example, much is made of the fact that enemies start laying mines. There’s even a short sidequest that gives you a gadget to counter them. But I can only recall one encounter where enemies will actually use them, and even then the explosions are so small and undamaging that *if* you do run over one the most it’ll do is alert the baddies and make you drop a smoke pellet.
Speaking of which! That’s a major change. Now when gun toting enemies see you, you can drop a smoke pellet to instantly become lost and untargetable. Then, you can safely grapple away or use that Bat-Grapple disarm move on all of them and be in a better position than you started in. Relying on it will make most encounters with gun thugs laughably easy.
Of course, you can choose whether or not to use these balance…unbalancers and it’s handy to have them when things turn Bat-shaped. The only real problem with Bat’s expanded arsenal of tricks and little things that go buzz and hurt bad men is that there’s so many you’ll often forget you have them. When you’re up on that ledge, do you do an inverted takedown, Sonic Shock Batarang, sneak up on them, rig some explosive gel, attack through a crumbling wall, shock him by charging the surprisingly prevalent electromagnets, glide kick him, Batarang him, Remote Batarang him, Reverse Remote Batarang him, use a cryo grenade, use a cluster cryo grenade, disable his gun, remote detonate his mine, remote electric shock him, use a Sonic Shockwave, Glide Boost or throw a smoke grenade at him? Your choice. Yeah.
The main story is longer, and doesn’t get tired. It won’t (and indeed, hasn’t) win any awards but it’s solid fare for a Batman tale. It mostly takes leads from Knightfall and No Man’s Land, though isn’t afraid to mix up established continuity points when it wants to. The villains are integrated well, and the attention to detail with the Batman mythos is fantastic. The boss battles are particularly intense, especially given how lacklustre they were in the last game. Mister Freeze might qualify for both cleverest and most frustrating for years. In the best possible way.
Riddler’s challenges are back. There’s obviously a lot more of them, and now getting a lot of the trophies is a matter of solving a small puzzle. These also tie into a bigger sidequest that involves saving people from Saw-style rooms and tracking down Riddler’s goons to interrogate. It’d take ages to track it all down and complete. Even longer if for some weird reason you don’t Google the solutions.
Adding into ways to extend your playtime are New Game Plus, the additional Challenge Maps & campaigns, not to mention there’s DLC that makes Catwoman, Robin and Nightwing. I haven’t played any of it, so I can’t vouch for it.
But yes, this game is bigger and, in most ways, better than the original. Go buy it. Get hunting for those tantalising hints for a sequel.
The Dr Who MMO Preview is live!
22 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in News Tags: Doctor Who, free to play, Game, MMO, Preview
Hello Whovians! The guys who made the free to play Puzzle Pirates have just launched the playable preview for the new Dr Who MMO, Worlds in Time! I’ve been playing it the two days since it’s launch, and you’re all free to do likewise. Find it here at http://www.doctorwhowit.com
It’s pretty fun, and looks great. Basically, the Doctor recruits a whole bunch of people to help him repair time. Somebody broke it. To do so, you have to run around a lot and sonic things. Each different type of action has a different minigame attached that you have to complete to progress. To make them easier, you craft upgrades for your screwdriver.
Unfortunately, doing missions, unlocking the shards for rewards, crafting advanced upgrades and even buying expensive clothes requires energy costs. Currently you get 50 a day for free, that recover at a rate of about one every half hour. Getting more costs money. The lowest bundle is 600 of such Chronons for $3, so it’s value for money at least. Still, 600 energy would last about a week I reckon, so if you really get into playing it, it’ll be a regular purchase.
Much as I like the game, I’m not entirely happy with this method of making their money. I don’t begrudge them for making it, I just know I’ll be regularly paying these small amounts for a long time.
But seriously, try it out anyway. And if you see a Silurian who looks like a space cowboy called Nemo, say hi, he’s one of the devs. And if you see a Catman called Pho, say hi cause that’s me!
Super Special Awesome Retro Review! – Vandal Hearts
21 Dec 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Game, Playstation, Review, RPG
Alright, this is the one I really wanted to write. It’s possibly the game from my childhood that means more to me than any other. Even Final Fantasy VII, a game which started a lifelong love tale between me and that series.
Vandal Hearts is a PS1 Turn Based Strategy game from the Before Times. It was a barren, mostly internet-less time. I hadn’t even heard of it when I played this with my dad. Well, I say with my dad. It was more me watching over his shoulder and offering up suggestions.
It tells the story of Ash Lambert, a policeman in the capital of a corrupted democracy that was built on the back of a meaningful revolution to depose the corrupt Empire that used to exist. Yeah, basically governments are shit in this game. Through a series of events, Ash and co. end up in a half political, half magical battle to help determine the fate of the land. Along the way you’ll conveniently recruit four swordsmen, four archers, two black mages and two white mages from whom to build your party.
See, unlike games of this ilk where you’re able to rotate your characters through a bunch of classes or equip them with a bunch of different things to give them different skills and such each of your characters has a class that they can start in, and then choose one of two wildly different classes to change into once they reach Level 10. The interplay of these different classes forms the strategic depth of the game. To quoth the game itself:
“Sword defeats Bow,
Bow defeats Air,
And Air defeats Sword.
Armour is strong but slow,
Mages are weak but wise,
And Monks use word and claw.”
Thus, you have to choose which balance of classes to make a team that can handle all situations. At least, that’s the theory. See, as hefty as punch as the Armour Class packs, it’s way too slow to serve on the front lines, can’t scale high jumps and gets torn apart by mages, which are a huge late game threat. And while monks have no weaknesses, they’re also not good at anything either. Weaker than Swordsmen, who’re the average fighters, and worse mages than the mages, they’re completely pointless.
No, there’s really only one or two combos that “work”, but applying the rock-paper-scissors while also keeping note of other, standard tactical challenges of this type of game makes for an enjoyable experience. It’s also a lot better balanced, as the limited combinations for both you and the enemy, plus the narrative driven nature meaning you can never play the same map twice means that everything from the terrain to the enemy variety can be much better designed to offer up an interesting challenge.
The downside? There’s exactly one sidequest. The half a dozen challenge maps it opens up are the only battles available outside of the main story. The structure of the game means that all your characters should always be at just the right level, so nobody’s in danger of getting left behind. And the six fairly meaty chapters should keep you interested in the challenge if not the story (which is pretty damn decent for what it is). Then again, when you do finish it Ash becomes a unique class that may as well be known as the “You Win” class, though you’ll only be able to use it in the final few battles.
One thing I love about the story is you know how the political intrigue in a Japanese strategy and/or role-playing game inevitably gives way to world ending eldritch horrors? Not here. Though magic certainly has a role to play in the story, and some of the political stuff breaks down towards the end, they actually form quite a good interplay with magic being subservient.
So yeah, that’s Vandal Hearts. A fun little rare strategy title that’s still my favourite of the genre. What it lacks in quantity of content is makes up for in quality. It seems others agree, because it’s like £100 on eBay.
Of course, I do have a copy. Two, actually. My dad keeps the original (still kinda working) disc we played together safe at his (the original case and booklet long since lost and broken) while I have a working copy that I just can’t resist replaying from time to time.
This holds a honoured in both my memories and on my shelf. It’s an experience I’d love to share with more people. Someday maybe.
Super Special Awesome Retro Review! – Mystic Quest
19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Final Fantasy, Game, Nintendo, Retro Gaming, Review, RPG, Square Enix
Time for part two. Another review of something I love but you haven’t got any reasonable chance of ever buying!
Mystic Quest is technically part of the venerable Final Fantasy series. An entry for the SNES, it was meant as a kind of “baby’s first JRPG” and you know what, it was my very first JRPG. Not that I knew that’s what it was at the time. It was a game I played through with my dad when I was a wee babe of about five.
It’s a very simple story, the Dark King wants to conquer the world by sending a different monster to each of the four elemental Crystals that keep the land running and draining their power dry. So yeah, it stole the plot of Final Fantasy I. You play as Benjamin (renameable), a boy who’s village doesn’t even hang around for a cameo in the intro before getting destroyed so he can have his origin story before a mysterious old man tells you to go sort shit out. Things never get complicated, and it never takes itself seriously.
Along the way, you travel four different areas, one for each of the Crystals, and meet a new companion for each area. Then there’s a mini dungeon and a proper one to wade through, as well as a companion to journey with and some equipment to find.
Instead of having huge equipment lists or spells, everything’s simplified down into a few groups and almost all your new gear is found. Spells are White, Black or Wizard magic, and weapons are Ranged, Sword, Bomb, Claw or Axe type (though you can’t get ranged weapons). Each enemy is weak to at least one of these, so battles are mostly about finding the right tool to take out the enemies before you. It’s not a challenging game, it was meant for stupid Americans (no, literally).
That’s not to say it’s not fun. The game goes with an exploration route. Each of your weapon types has a special ability outside of battle. Swords can hit switches in statues, axes chop down trees, bombs blow things up and claws climb and grab things. This lets dungeons be more than just walking through corridors and breaks things up a lot more than you’d think it would.
There’s not much to hold the interest of an adult that’s got any kind of experience with games, except for nostalgia. Well, if it were released as an iOS App, I reckon it’d do pretty well. It had some great music, and it’s light enough to be enjoyable on the go, especially if they added a quicksave system. Hm. Or maybe as a downloadable game for the 3DS. Yeah. Nintendo, Square Enix, bring back Mystic Quest!
And you see my blogroll over there, click on Type A Little Faster. It’s a weekly writing/fantasy/sci-fi/film/videogame/whatever nerdy stuff the author has in mind blog. Do it. Do it now. This I command!
Super Special Awesome Retro Review! – Guardian’s Crusade
17 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in Review Tags: Game, Playstation, Review, RPG
Hi there all you wonderful, wonderful people and Geoff Albertson. I’ve decided that as something a bit special for Christmas, I’m going to write three reviews for games I loved as a kid that you pretty much can’t get these days. What does this do for you guys? Absolutely nothing! Unless you like the sound of them so much you buy them for ridiculous amounts of money online, I suppose.
The first of them is an old child’s JRPG I had back when I were a lad in ye olden days o’ the original Playstation. Guardian’s Crusade, known as Knight & Baby in Japan is about a knight and a pink baby monster. Maybe the Japanese has a more helpful name. Basically, you’re a young man in your home village who finds a baby pink monster and what is supposed to be some kind of God, but looks more like a rabbit-man decrees that YOU, young Knight, must take the creature to the Tower of the Gods.
To be honest, it’s never really more complex than that. When the plot proper kicks in, it does have some fun subverting what a kid might expect. But this is on the level of having the guy with opposite armour colours, a sword slung upside down, and a giant monster that you have to duel be called Darkbeat and actually be another hero you just had the misfortune to meet on the battlefield first. Not that he ever joins you, you only get Knight and Baby on your team (though your fairy friend Nehani occasionally pitches in and there are the Living Toys), and you only get direct control of Knight.
The battling is turn based JRPG stuff. Baby acts based on how much it likes you and a few vague commands you can give him. The only thing you can do other than attacking and using items is deploying your Living Toys. These little clockwork critters have different effects, like attacks, healing buffs and a few special ones like one that serves as a world map, a thief and even one that only exists to give a running commentary of the match when summoned. Collecting these forms one of the game’s few sidequests, which is actually a pretty fun one, one that spans the whole game and has a super special awesome secret toy hidden away, but the lack of endgame side content’s pretty noticeable.
This thing looked dated even back when I was playing it, but it’s serviceable. You can at least tell what things are. What it may lack in graphical fidelity it makes up for in a nice variety of locations. From tiny towns and bustling ports to underground caves and spooky swamps, Dwarven cities and abandoned castle, ridiculously stereotyped “primitive islanders” to an arctic town of talking penguins living in igloos. Yeah. That’s a thing. Talking penguins. Sounds cooler now, doesn’t it?
The game isn’t really challenging. At all. Well, the final boss is a three parter that might trip you up a bit. Maybe. First time through.
Overall, Crusade is a pretty fun, if shallow JRPG with a sense of humour. There’s not really too much to say about it, though I do remember there being an otherwise useless item called the Crucifix that you could use on the tomb of a legendary hero, only to cause the game to freeze. It always fascinated me, and I do wonder what that cut content was.
The next review will probably go up tomorrow, next time for a SNES game.
Oooh…Ebay says the game’s pretty readily available for under £20….hmm…
Should I Buy? – Shadow Hearts Covenant
04 Dec 2011 2 Comments
in Review Tags: Game, Playstation, Review, RPG, Sony
Er, pft. Maybe? Alright, settle in folks.
Actually, before we get started there are some insights that the guys over to Penny Arcade have on this game: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/04
Covenant is the sequel to the PS2 JRPG Shadow Hearts. It’s not a direct continuation of the original game’s story, thankfully, because that was a rather neat little narrative with no need for expansion.
It does take some of the mythology and concepts from the original game, as well as lead hero Yuri, to create a new tale all of its own. And yeah, it’s longer, there’s more characters, the combat’s expanded and better refined, there’s a decent amount of content outside of the main plot, but it’s a bit too sequel-y.
So the new tale sees German military officer Karen called on by Nicolai of the Catholic Church to help defeat a “demon” that’s been defending a town the German Army’s trying to capture. Turns out, said demon is actually Yuri. Nicolai curses him with the Holy Mistletoe, which seals his godly powers and will slowly kill him. Karen decides Nicolai’s not very nice and abandons her position, family and country to help out Yuri. Who has also made friends with an aging puppeteer with a living doll and an intelligent white wolf who also travel with him. No, they never explain how or why.
Probably my biggest disagreement with this game is its shift in tone. By the time you were half an hour into the first game, you were trapped in a village of demon cats, trying to find items for a magical rituals amongst human remains and it set a pretty consistent thematic through-line for the game. This one abandons a lot of the Cthuloid horror for a mix of kitsch comedy and more traditional world domination plots.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the superhero/overmuscled wrestling vampire guy and the hard gay shopkeeper/tailor twins that follow you everywhere, but the game never has great atmosphere. Which is weird, considering that the first half of the game consists of Grigori Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin) leading an ancient cult and seeking Godly power. This would have been perfect for the old Shadow Hearts aesthetic.
And I say first half, because the second disc basically starts up a whole new plot in Japan that spends a lot of time having a much vaguer connection to the first half than when the original game pulled off the continent switching thing.
Alright, on to gameplay. The Judgement Ring is back, now much more easy to customise and it even comes with a variety of modes to suit beginners or more confident players. Instead of only some guys learning preset spells, now there’s a bunch of Materia-like Crests. These also link into a side challenge where you try to arrange them in a grid based on passages from The Book of Solomon for reduced casting costs which is a neat idea if a lot of trial and consulting GameFAQS.
Each character’s unique skills are now gained through character specific sidequests. It’s a nice mix up, but it’s never made clear when or where the item you need is or when the challenge for it is open. Several times, the thing you need to do appears in a dungeon you’ve just cleared out with no clues. It can be a real Guide Dang It to be looking up a puzzle solution on GameFAQS only to realise you’ve now got to load up a save from two hours ago because you’ve missed out on a Wolf Bout for Blanca.
There’s a new combo system in place, where you make several characters act one after the other to rack up bonus damage. Though this is always the best way to handle a tough enemy, I could only ever be bothered to use it to take down bosses (where the added damage can be really substantial). Unfortunately, enemies can do it too, to devastating effect.
The characters are pretty cool, though it’s almost a shame you can only have four in combat. Do you want another reliable physical fighter that can take another few hits? Well then watch Gepetto try to be your primary healer, buffer and black mage! See how your party disintegrates when the boss takes him out!
That said, it’s not too big a complaint and nowhere near as limiting as the three character parties from the original.
The graphics are better and voice acted cutscenes are now standard, though the acting leaves a fair bit to be desired. Also, Yuri was much more interesting when he was a pervy, apathetic bruiser that only cared about fighting that was evolving into a dim but well meaning hero. Here, he doesn’t have a real character arc.
I don’t really think of this game as negatively as I’ve made it sound. It’s still fun, it’s just a different kind of fun. This is ‘solidly made but unspectacular’ rather than ‘flawed gem’. It’s Aliens to Alien. Same universe, different approach, bigger in scope, but somehow loses something in the transition. Not enough to break the deal, but enough to make you pine the simpler days when the attack animations were ridiculously stilted and there were creepy orphanages involved in unholy experimentations.
A simpler time, yes. A better time? Perhaps. Time for tea? Always. And a toast sandwich too? Oh, you’ve twisted my arm.
Should I Buy? – Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
27 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
Alright, finally a new videogame review! This one’s a little different. It’s for a new, AAA title. It it a cut-price title, however. So, a full decade after MvC2 Capcom got back together with Marvel to make MvC3. They planned to release a whole host of content as DLC, but the tsunami and earthquake that hit Japan in 2011 forced them to rethink their plans. Instead, they created a new version, with twelve new playable characters, eight new stages, two new online modes, the ability to play as Galactus and rebalanced gameplay. All for less than the price of the original game.
And it’s awesome. See, me and fighting games fell out sometime around Tekken 4, when actual skill became a necessity, rather than being able to have fun with plain ol’ button mashing. Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, all of them were suddenly not catering to guys like me. But MvC3‘s bright, fun gameplay intrigued me and the inclusion of PHOENIX GODDAMM WRIGHT made me put my fears to one side and buy the new version.
While straight up button bashing still doesn’t work, at least it’s discovered a way to let casual fighting fans like me still have fun with the game and pull off awesome moves. When choosing your characters, you can choose between Normal or Simple modes. In Simple, the controls are a lot easier, with one button for combos, one for specials and one for hyper combos. This makes the fighting closer to Super Smash Bros than Street Fighter, and means even the most inexperienced gamer can pick up a controller and have fun. Though this does mean not having access to a bunch of the characters moves, it does help you learn the basics of the game and how to use a character before trying Normal mode.
But if what you want is an in-depth, complex fighting game then UMvC3 will really deliver. Capcom has made a very fast and fun game where you have to consider all kinds of factors beyond the two guys on screen. There’s X Factor, Hyper Combos, Assists and tagging out amongst your group of three. This isn’t a side I’ve been able to get into yet, I’m still just having fun on Simple mode, but it is pretty much unique in making me want to learn the game better so I can use a character’s full range of tricks.
The cast is now a full 48 excluding the two DLC characters. They all have their own style and are very characterful. The little snippets of dialogue between the different characters where’ll they’ll talk smack to each other is great. Ghost Rider even makes an evil lawyer joke to Phoenix Wright.
Although talking of the world’s most badass lawyer, he and several other characters lose their access to the abilities and gimmicks that make them truly useful in battle. To be fair, they are too complex for the Simple mode control scheme to translate, but it can be frustrating if you find yourself using a highly limited version of your favourite characters.
The character choices are deliberately strange in some places, and it’s good to see a game that’ll use characters like Rocket Raccoon and Arthur rather than just loading the roster down with more famous characters that’d play a lot like some existing cast member. And like I already mentioned, PHOENIX GODDAMM WRIGHT. There’s a member of the cast for every play style.
The game has a mission mode that asks you to pull of different types of combos and special moves which I imagine is designed to help you learn the game, but it’s pretty limited. It doesn’t teach you basic combos, when it’s a good idea to use what kind of moves or let you test these skills in a combat situation. It seems to assume you’ll learn all these things yourself. And well, it’s hard to. Those button combinations and combo streams can be hard to remember and pull off.
There is a much more pressing criticism than anything I’ve said above. All sorts of little design choices make me feel like this game is really intended for online gamers. Everything, from little phrasing choices to larger things. It’s a game that you’re clearly expected to play on Normal Mode online, and is just placating others. Only having an arcade and training mode for single player. It’s like I’m being locked into a playpen at an amusement park while everybody else goes to ride the rollercoasters. It’s still fun as hell and I really love it, but it feels like it’s not really *for* me in some ways.
If you’re a really big fan of the original, this is a no-brainer. If you never played 3 and are just interested, then yeah, give it a try. But if you had three and just liked rather than loved it, you may be a little disappointed to pay as much as they’re asking for it.
Should I Buy? – The Night Circus
25 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: Book, Books, FailBetterGames, Review, The Night Circus
I know it may seem like I’ve forgotten this site, but I really haven’t. I’ve got no computer of my own right now and I’ve been swamped with work. But now, here it is. A new review. For a book. Alright, so it’s only almost service as usual.
Erin Morgenstein’s The Night Circus is a recent romantic fantasy novel, in which the titular Night Circus is a magical, traveling circus of dazzling sights and experiences. Against this backdrop two rival magicians are pitted against each other in a mysterious game their masters force them to play. The easiest way to find if this is for you is to ask yourself one simple question: do you like romance stories? If so, then this is the book for you. A pair of star crossed lovers in immaculate and beautiful setting with immaculate and beautiful clothes get all gooey eyed over each other.
Alright, so that’s overly simplistic and a little unfair. The characters are deeper than that, although of course the romance does eventually consume the plot at the expense of all the interesting secondary characters, mind bending circus acts and subplots. I can’t really call this a criticism, because it’s kind of the point of romantic fiction. And despite how I’d have preferred the plot to go in a different direction given its internal mythology, I was still interested enough to read until the end.
Looking over what I’ve done on this site, it may seem strange that I picked this book up, but I was hooked by the failbettergames online game version which I believe is still open. It’s a great supplemental experience to the novel. Go check it out.
Morgenstein’s certainly got a knack for description. She makes everything seem beautiful and enchanting without it ever descending into over flowery purple prose. The characters never really sold themselves to me, but the rotating cast don’t contain a single grating member. The pace is kept up nicely with the short chapters, though the book will quite happily jump around between 1901 and 1902 at times, meaning that it can be a little difficult to keep the internal timeline in your head.
My verdict? A-. Really good, could have been great if it’d expanded on its own world and characters a bit more. However, it is a well paced, well written fantasy novel that’ll hook you in for the ride given half a chance.
A Very Special Episode – Movember and Men’s Health
04 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Charity, Men's Health, Movember
This is a bit of a break from the norm. I generally try to keep personal issues like politics and stuff out of this site, but this is a special case for an unambiguously good cause. My friend and occasional buythatgame writer Neil is taking part in Movember, a special event to raise awareness (and some cash) for men’s health.
Here’s the link to his donation page. Even if you can’t afford to give anything, at least click the share buttons to let others know who might be willing to help.
Should I Buy? – Professor Layton And Pandora’s Box
04 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Review Tags: DS, Game, Nintendo, Profe, Review
Also known as Professor Layton and the Diabolic Box because apparently Americans will buy games based around logic and puzzles but Pandora’s Box is too obscure a reference. Then again, the box in the title is never called the Diabolical Box and very rarely as Pandora’s Box. I can understand how the Elysian Box (as in the Elysian Fields of the Greek Paganist afterlife) would be a tad too obscure though.
I really do admire Layton's hat
Mythology aside, this is the sequel to Professor Layton and the Curious Village. The differences between this game and the last are mostly in the areas of plot as you’re still wandering around solving puzzles on the slightest justification.
How British is Professor Layton (despite being a Japanese game)? Brewing tea is a gameplay mechanic. Yeah.
The plot this time around concerns Luke and Layton investigating the mystery surrounding the titular box, which leads them onto a train with a destination not marked on any map. The art and music haven’t undergone any significant upgrade, everything’s just a vehicle for the puzzles. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still fantastic, just nothing has changed significantly between the first game and this.
The puzzles are all fine and rely less on tricky wordplay, but the story doesn’t pan out as well as the first one. It has the same big ending twist, but its fraught with logical problems and doesn’t have the same kind of foreshadowing that the first one did.
If you want puzzles wrapped in a charming package any entry in the series would do, personally I’d say start with the first game. Not as a matter of continuity, I’d just say it worked better.
Give this one a try
Ace Attorney Movie Trailer
29 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in News, Opinion Tags: Ace Attorney, cinema, DS, Film, Game, Japan, movies, Nintendo
The actual video itself was given to me by a friend and is apparently an ‘unlisted’ video on Youtube. I guess this means I shouldn’t go handing the link out, but once it’s made official I’ll embed it here.
There’s more than a few things that caught my eye about it. The first and most obvious is that director Takeshi Miike has embraced the animesque visuals of Ace Attorney just like Kenneth Brannagh embraced Thor‘s camp elements. This really looks like Ace Attorney blown up onto the big screen.
Remember Lotta Hart’s ridiculous hair? It’s bigger than it was in the game. The costumes of characters like Edgeworth and Maya Fey? Even Phoenix’s spiky hair. They are all here. And it is glorious.
Not that it all looks like some campy parody. In its own way, it also looks like a slick courtroom drama. Sure, a hugely dramatic and stylised one, but that’s an integral part of the series and it looks like it’s being treated that way.
Another thing is the characters. Sure, Phoenix, Maya, von Karma and Edgeworth were prominent. I also caught glimpses of Larry Butz, Dee Vaquez, Gumshoe, Mia and the aformentioned Lotta Hart. I was really surprised by Vasquez’s appearance. She’s from the third case of the original game, the one that doesn’t actually fit into the overarching plot.
Presumably then, the film will cover the four cases that comprise the first ‘arc’. That seems like too much for one film. It would seem logical that some of the cases are only dealt with in cutaway, montage-esque sections or that the film will be in two parts.
Hopefully the film will get an international release (DVD only, I’m not deluded enough to think it’s get a theatrical run in Europe or the US). However, I am completely behind this project and I have a lot of faith in Miike’s vision.
Perhaps, and now this is heavily deluding myself, perhaps if this film and Wright’s appearance in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 are popular enough outside of Japan, we’ll see international releases for Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney and Ace Attorney Investigations II: Miles Edgeworth!
