Got to be a part of a roundtable Q/A with Bioware’s Casey Hudson, the project director of Mass Effect 2. Most of the information had already made its way around the web, but much of it’s now clarified. A few new tidbits as well, and it’s not lacking on reflections on the original Mass Effect, either. Transcribing it took forever, check it out at Digital Chumps:
Just got done with the mission “Loose Ends” and rarely have I been so upset with a game’s design. Call of Duty, a series which prides itself on realism, is falling victim to AI bullshit that we’ve been trying to leave in the garbage for the last ten years. I constantly have no idea where to go or what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing, which is mostly my fault, but a greater annoyance is the unrealistic perfection of each and every member of the opposition. Shotgun blasts hit me from a considerable distance, grenades are thrown with pin point accuracy, guys always know exactly where I am, and every single one of them seems to have perfect aim. If you can’t make a game difficult through any sort of detectable or contextually appropriate means, then maybe it’s time to go back to the fucking drawing board, guys. “Harder, better, faster, stronger” is game design 101, and I thought the development community was trying to move past needlessly archaic elements interactive entertainment. I understand that getting hit a million times and killing a zillion guys isn’t realistic, and I’ll take those concessions as intrinsic to game design, but jesus fuck if I die, make me feel like it’s my fault.
I had another 500-600 words which I conveniently forgot to email to myself, so I’ll just get to the gist of my feelings on Modern Warfare 2’s single player campaign; pretentious garbage. Feelings of empowerment were gratuitously replaced with contrived nonsense that seemed to exist only to serve bro culture and/or high fiving morons. “Whoooaaa duuuuude, do you remember the part where you had to pull the knife out of yourself?” The narrative was so completely batshit fucking crazy that, by the end, I literally had no idea who or what the hell I was fighting for. I appreciate the lack of cut scenes as a means to convey plot, but when it’s reduced to two guys against the entire planet with no clear victor, (except maybe the guy who shot up the airport?), what the hell is the point?
Call of Duty 4 had one legitimate masterstroke of narrative conveyance, but the sequel takes that one brilliant instance and does the exact same thing almost three times. Your main character actually dies twice, and comes damn close a second time. That was cool the first time guys and i actually expected it once, but burning a guy alive after you kick him in a hole? Really? That’s not intuitive or genre advancing in anyway, its completely stupid and faux drama for people without a legitimate grasp on reality. Watching DC burning was haunting and, generally, I applaud videogames going off the deep end with their story (it’s an escape from reality, why else would we play them?), but Modern Warfare 2 manages to accomplish this in ways that I found little other than offensive (and I’m totally glossing over the airport level, which was the lamest attempt at making a statement I have ever seen).
As one could probably infer, I’m not too high on the game. I really think the success went to Infinity Wards head, and instead of making something fresh they simply went for something cool. I’m a sucker for artistic vision, and this one comes of has pandering to its audience – with little inspiration to be found.
Really digging multiplayer, though. More on that some day.
In an effort to get a better perspective on LittleBigPlanet PSP’s create mode, I sought the opinion of the creator of one of the LittleBigPlanet community’s most adored levels.
Read it over at Digital Chumps!
LittleBigPlanet’s trip to the PSP was a faithful transition. While the entire project isn’t as smooth or as fresh as Media Molecule’s PS3 offering, Cambridge made the absolute best of it on less powerful hardware. Load times are a bummer (especially hampering the create mode) and the community levels are an unknown quantity, but the nearly 40 included level are solid and, with the exception of big brother, unlike much else the portable side of 2D platforming. Omissions aside, it still looks, feels, and plays like LittleBigPlanet – and now it’s in your pocket, which is hardly something to complain about.
Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!
Nostalgia for Resident Evils past will power you through the overwhelming feelings of repetition, and the mechanics are solid, but Darkside Chronicles is still B Team material. Darkside Chronicles isn’t a bad game; it’s just a lazy one.
Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!
(again, flat out copying Kotaku’s review style)
Loved
The second (and third) time around. Sequences that previously required a couple stabs, like sniper bait, the showdown with the shotgun guys in the snow, truck hopping, or the train boss, I blew through on my first try. Anything that required pattern recognition to undertake no longer became an obstacle, and why should it? I was good enough if i had done it before, so it shouldn’t be challenge if I have to do it again (puzzles notwithstanding, I thought there should be a skip option, ala ratchet and clank). What I got hung up on, even a second and now third time through, were the pure combat sequences. Dolling out blind fire, ammo management, and grenade awareness (for lack of a better word), were facets I never had to consider playing through on normal, but find absolutely essential on crushing. Naughty Dog didn’t just make the enemy’s bullet sponges; they ramped up the intangibles as well.
Enemy AI. Enemy movement is a bit more tolerable than it was in Drake’s Fortune. With the original I would get frustrated when I would have a clean shot and then, a millisecond later, the guy would do some alien dodge sequence that would render my headshot useless. The bad guys had a greater tendency to slide around this time out, but their behavior is much more manageable. I’m also glad they brought back the anti-camp shit, where the AI usually won’t pop back up into an area where you’re waiting with the reticule. It keeps me on my toes, and even when I try, is quick to punish me with a grenade or something. Among Thieves always keeps you moving and always looking for another way around or an extra piece of cover to stick to and it rewards you by disallowing the AI to know your exact location at all times – if you managed to sneak around, they would keep firing at where they thought you were.
Level Design. I like the “arenas” much more this time out. The cathedral, the underground lab (with the mutants), and that shipping crate area toward the end of Drake Fortune had red herrings and sections that came off feeling cheap, or as if I was getting funneled into an area where I was probably going to get fucked up. Among Thieves treats their combat arenas more like a playground. The ice train yard versus the shotgun trio was perfect for running around, climbing over shit, and sneaking up behind them and the two leveled sniper/shotgun base in the monster was wonderfully balanced and, if you played your cards right, full of fun little places to unload on unsuspecting foes.
Art Direction – Touched on this a bit last time, but most, if not all, of the game boasted jaw dropping visuals. Play was critical of this, accepting that it was indisputably gorgeous but weary of Among Thieves choice of locations; did we need more urban warfare or another shootout through a train ride? I think yes, absolutely. Why not? The ruined parade in the streets of Nepal, despite the awkwardness of its location and the obvious allusions to Guns of the Patriots, proved an intriguing location. The crumbled urban warzone was tired, but draping it with vibrant colors and maintaining and unreal attention to detail at every possible instance made it extraordinary. Same goes for the train sequences; I was killed more times than I can count because I would lose myself staring at the scenery. Hoping from car to car was something that I think we’ve been doing since Bad Dudes, but Among Thieves made me feel like it was the first time I had ever done it (a helicopter implausibly, but awesomely, keeping Drake on his toes tends to do that).
Not So Much
AI friends – I liked the characters of Elena, Chloe, and Flynn, but their actual presence in the game was occasionally a source of pointless frustration. For example, if I got ahead of them when climbing somewhere, they would still engage their routine and, in effect, take priority over Drake and inadvertently push me off ledges and into oblivion. Chloe and Elena also had a penchant for taking up valuable cover real estate. They would either be positioned by an edge I wanted, or they would wander over to one, nudge me, and totally fuck up my shot. The villagers in Siege, with their tendency to knock me around or be standing exactly where I needed to be, didn’t help much either. That, and the games reliance to make their primary function to boost Drake up to ladders was a little weak, but they couldn’t get themselves killed, so it was hardly something to complain about.
Rube Goldberg Puzzles – I get why these were there, Drake needs to solve some puzzles god dammit, but when you sit back and examine the ridiculous crap you just did, and it all seems a bit silly. I had to arrange mirrors to bounce light into the forehead of two six foot faces, which allowed me to climb giant isosceles triangles, which, when done correctly, fell upon a giant face in the floor, which opened the mouth that also happened to be an underground passage. I got there, by the way, from moving the hands of a giant Indian statue, which drained a pool of water that lead to a secret passage. And I’m totally glossing over the ridiculous lengths required to access Shambhala. Again, it’s not bad, per say, just a little, “hey guys, what the hell was that?”
Shortly after E3, the hype for Scribblenauts shot somewhere into the stratosphere. I didn’t even hear about the game until the last day of the show. I finally found a no-wait kiosk for Arkham Asylum and, as I left, I noticed a decent crowd huddled around a DS game. I thought Batman was an anomaly and that there was no way Warner Brothers was putting out anything else that was reasonably interesting, so I chalked the crowd up as a fluke or one of those miserable booth tours. I took note of the game’s name and then left in search of something else (which I think wound up being Sin and Punishment 2).
Back in the hotel room, when I was supposed to be writing articles, I was checking gaf and saw the fuck-all amazing post that kick started the hype for Scribblenauts. Apparently, you could write anything, provided it was a noun and non copyrighted, and it would appear, with complete functionality, in the game. The premise of using those items to solve puzzles was secondary; the limitless potential of the five figure word list represented a step not yet taken in sandbox design. Hell, before that I considered sandbox to go hand in hand with open world, and I never considered giving the player near-unlimited choice in a mechanical context.
Hype went through the roof, but, upon release and reviews fell back down to manageable levels. Allegedly the control was completely fucked, a sad fact that I’m starting to come to terms with. I’ve only played through the first twenty levels, but I can already feel frustration building, and I’m weary of what more complex goals might require. I get why you’re not supposed to have direction control over Maxwell–you’re not controlling him, you’re just a God to his world–but contextual sense shouldn’t over ride basic accessibility. It would have been a sacrifice and, yeah, you would have had to simultaneously hold the stylus in an awkward manner, but it would have made the game so much better. Almost every issue I have with Scribblenauts, on some level, boils down to the frustrating controls.
But I suppose those flaws arrive when you shoot for the stars with a bottle rocket. I don’t know much about 5th Cell, but I can’t imagine the DS’s technical capabilities matching up with the incredible potential of a game like Scribblenauts. Sure, certain items, like jetpack and rocket pack, were bound to overlap, but I’ll forever wonder what a more seasoned team at a big name developer could have done with the concept. Maybe shit didn’t have to overlap, or maybe the control could have been arranged in a more manageable way. We’ll never know, at least not directly.
Maybe that’s the way it had to be, maybe Scribblenauts had to happen the way it did. Someone else could use it as a template, learn from its mistakes, and reimagine a new way to implement the do-anything mechanic. Scribblenauts probably won’t win any high score Metacritic awards, but it should absolutely without question be experienced by anyone who is vague familiar with interactive entertainment. Like Wii Sports, you show it to people, regardless of their interest in gaming, and it blows their fucking minds. The concept alone is awesome, and for that it will forever be essential to the gaming lexicon. “Like Scribblenauts” will be a comparison thrown around much like GTA (or Mario 64, Doom, etc); its contribution is far more valuable than the failure of its execution. Like the original top-down Grand Theft Auto, the original got the ball rolling, but the inevitable refinement is what’s going to set the world on fire.
The Lost and the Damned drags you down to Liberty City’s seedy underbelly and then The Ballad of Gay Tony recolors the world with flash and style. It’s a great compilation, and the additions to both the narrative and the mechanics do well to compliment the aging Grand Theft Auto IV. The gameplay may not be as fresh as it was in 2008 and most of GTA IV’s love it or hate it quirks are still firmly in place, but if you love the series (as many of you do), it’s hard to be dissatisfied with this package.
Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!
Critics of GTA IV argued that it was too firmly grounded in reality, a label which came at the cost of less outrageous missions. Gay Tony opts out of that restriction, featuring a wealth of insane stuff for you to do. Helicopters, parachutes, bodies falling out of the sky, whatever; Gay Tony throws GTA into overdrive and is perfectly comfortable with leaving it there for the whole ride. Unsurprisingly, the story does well to deliver outrageous personalities that never fail to entertain and, for once, presents a gay character who’s more complex than his latent sexual preference. In the end, The Ballad of Gay Tony serves as a cork popping celebration for Grand Theft Auto IV, and I couldn’t think of a better send off.
Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!
Fighting games may have diminished in popularity since their heyday, but Tekken still hits with the force of an Electric Wind God Fist. Excess takes priority over innovation, but when you pile a massive amount of content on top of the existing top notch Tekken framework, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The lack of competent online play and the unusually long load times are disappointing for hardcore enthusiasts, but Tekken’s heart and soul, the fighting engine and the joy of skill based competition against your friends, is delightfully intact.
Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!
