Impressions: Scribblenauts

November 4, 2009 by Eric Layman

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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.

Review: GTA: Episodes from Liberty City

November 3, 2009 by Eric Layman

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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!

Review: GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

November 3, 2009 by Eric Layman

11-03-09

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!

Review: Tekken 6

October 31, 2009 by Eric Layman

10-30-09

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!

Review: Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

October 28, 2009 by Eric Layman

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Though far from a departure, A Crack in Time throws plenty of new stuff your way. Everything you love about Ratchet and Clank is still there (and in great quantity – most of your hours logged will be after you beat the game) and Ratchet’s segments, despite their familiarity, are absolutely outstanding, but the sequences you’ll remember all belong to Clank. It’s fair to say A Crack in Time is still cranking out the same formula, but with Insomniac’s amazing attention to detail and refusal to keep the pace at anything other than a neck-breaking speed, is that really a bad thing? For Ratchet, if “the usual” if going to go hand in hand with “stellar,” I’ll take it.

Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!

Review: Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble

October 27, 2009 by Eric Layman

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It’s something of a miracle that Kenka Bancho is even coming out on this side of the planet. It’s not unwieldy or inaccessible, it’s just that particular flavor of crazy that you’d catch at the Tokyo Game Show and never, ever expect to see cross the ocean. It was supposed to be an import legend, but, like all cult hits, the fiction is often more intriguing than the myth. Kenka Bancho is a weird, good game for a few hours, but as it stretches on it’s undone by its flaws. It’s a respectable game, and, by all means, it should be experienced in some capacity, but unfortunately little of it is memorable outside of the wild premise.

Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!

Review: Half-Minute Hero

October 24, 2009 by Eric Layman

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Half-Minute Hero is a stunning example of why all games don’t have to follow the same rules, but, even with as much as I loved playing it, I’m well aware of its limited appeal. I could drone on and on about how the game flushes the rules of classic RPG’s down the toilet and emerges better for it, but that won’t stop some people from playing it for a few minutes and demanding I take Half-Minute Hero out of their sight. It’s an experiment, sure, but like other recent leaps in interactive entertainment (Noby Noby Boy, Scribblenauts, and Flower, to name a few), it should be experienced regardless of which side of the love/hate line you eventually happen to fall on.

Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!

Review: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

October 22, 2009 by Eric Layman

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Only a handful of fleeting instances make Chinatown Wars feel like a compromise. Yes, its aesthetic and gameplay are a bit different from the series’ recent norm, but Chinatown Wars allows you to thrive on its deviation, rather than suffer through it. The PSP incarnation is fantastic translation; it retains all of the originals strengths, augments the entire package with its added technical muscle, and compromises only with a negligible handful of minor squabbles. The shower of critical praise this game received last March is completely valid – don’t miss it on its second time around.

Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!

Second Impression: Uncharted 2: Among Theives

October 18, 2009 by Eric Layman

10-19-09

I’ve always admired Kotaku’s love/hate reviews, so in a similar vein…

Loved

Chase Sequences. While Drake isn’t quite as light on his feet as Crash, every single moment of those scenes remind me of running away from boulders in the first two Crash games. I always love seeing the lineage of a developer’s past modernized and woven into their current work, and nowhere is this more evident than when Drake is running from a truck, helicopter, or whatever.

Dramatic Tension. Carrying Elena’s friend off to his inevitable doom was predictable. Watching Flynn shoot Drake, and then seeing the look of horror on Drake’s face after Flynn asks something like, “what, no clever line?!” added a unexpected sense of mortality to the character I previously associated with humor and merry violence. I can’t recall a previous situation where Drake was completely fucked with no hope, but it certainly felt that way on the train.

The Surprises. Whether it’s car exploding in my face, a truck bursting through a barricade, or a piece of shit Drake’s climbing snapping off, Among Thieves never lets you get comfortable. And it’s not doing it with bullshit instant-quick time events or cheap deaths, opting instead inconsequential environmental instances. It adds a much needed and often ignored sense of character to your surroundings.

Better Pacing. I never want to quit playing this game. Whereas the last Uncharted felt a bit combat heavy, the second often opts for different styles of play. Entire chapters are comprised of nothing but platforming, and, when there are battles, they don’t feel as endless or as hopeless. Guys still seem to run in out of nowhere, but they’re finite and I always feel like the end isn’t too far away

Guns Everywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever been close to running out of shit to shoot guys with. It works to my advantage because I have a trophy obsessed, use-all-the-guns mind, but it also alleviates one of my biggest fears in shooting games; running out of ammo. Sure, it may be on the other side of the area and you might have to take some heat to go get it, but it’s never out of reach. Naughty Dog did the right thing in making ammo acquisition challenging, instead of helpless.

Inspired Platforming. Admittedly Drake doesn’t have the best platforming chops. He animates well and always looks natural, but he moves a little stiff and there seems to be no “almost;” he either makes it or he doesn’t. Rather than just make all the jumps simple, as the entire first game did, Naughty Dog has opted to use the environment as the challenge, rather than Drake’s mechanics. The gear room in the ice temple felt a bit videogamey, but having the time the platforms and run up the gears exploited Drake’s features to the fullest and, yet again, it reminded me of playing Jak and Daxter.

Drake isn’t an Asshole. Along with most everyone else, I’m tired of the jaded, affected adolescent male youth that so often populates the personalities of videogame characters. Again, Drake wanting to help his friends and not leave them behind is a bit cliché, but walking through an Indian(?) village and using the action button to shake hands? Are you fucking kidding me?! It sounds simple and I’m sure it may come off as stupid, but that’s an amazing leap forward for character design. He even greets the cow (“Hello…uh, I mean Moo”)!

Best looking console game I’ve ever seen. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stopped in my tracks just to look around my environment (actually, looking at my stats, it says I’ve stood still for an impressively lethargic 32 minutes). Uncharted looks phenomenal and, unlike Killzone 2, uses its technical prowess to paint with every color of the visible spectrum. Even the typically static buildings in the far reaching background look fully rendered and easily exportable, and the illusion is only broken when I realize I can’t hop down and look at them. Uncharted is a world I wanted to explore, and I can’t wait until open world games feature a similar level of talented art direction and technical muscle.

Not so much…

Cut scenes. They’re all magnificently well done, but I figured Naughty Dog, for all of Drake’s advancements, might find another way to convey narrative without putting a hold on interactivity. Honestly, the stories managed to get its hooks in deeper than I’d care to admit, but I’m disappointed with their reliance on tired method of storytelling.

The Disconnect.This was called to my attention on a GAF thread, but Drake’s personality (especially with the antiviolence sentiment in the stealth mission) conflicts with his insatiable bloodlust. Drake slaughters through 500 or so people. Given they’re carbon copy bad guys and not random innocents, but he feels like a regular dude – not Dutch from Commando. I don’t actually care because I love the combat, and I don’t think there is any acceptable work-around to the problem, but it’s something that digs at me.

Not knowing where to go. I understand that stopping to pause and let the player know where to go breaks the illusion of making your way through the game, but Among Thieves relative lack of direction occasionally leaves me without any clue as to where the fuck I’m supposed to be going. Once I figured it out it’s obvious (and typically a street sign), but making Drake jump off cliffs or aimlessly run up endless walls, all in search of the correct area, is kind of a drag.

Review: Axel & Pixel

October 15, 2009 by Eric Layman

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While Axel & Pixel might be designed for younger players, it’s not hard to like if you happen to escape said demographic. The point and click elements are arbitrary and easy, but the setting is endearing, and the whole thing charming enough to pull off clever nostalgic vibe. Axel & Pixel may be short, but it grants a feeling not often found in Live Arcade titles; when was the last time you pressed all way through a game because of its charm?

Read my full review over at Digital Chumps!