Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

I recently finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and must admit that I was very pleased. As I mentioned in my impressions post, I had started playing Arkham Asylum with relatively low expectations. I had heard that the game was good, but I've never been a huge Batman fan. Arkham Asylum was so good, however, that it made me want to be one.

Loved

• Combat. Combat should not have worked in Batman. It really is little more than pushing the analog stick in the correct direction and mashing the attack button. As you progress, the game provides you with a take down, a throwing move, a Batarang move, a grappling move, and the ability to jump up and over the thugs. If you were to see the combat or even to play it for a short period of time, you would assume (as I did) that it'd get boring really fast. Some how though, it just doesn't. The game does a fantastic job of providing different arenas, thug types, combo moves, and other such things to mix the game up. I found myself enjoying combat even in the final boss fight.
  
  
• Stealth. The other main gameplay mechanic in Arkham Asylum is stealth. Every once in a while you find a room full armed thugs that requires you to take them out one by one as quietly as possible. Once again, the game provides you with a plethora of ways to take them out. You can sneak up behind them, string them up on gargoyles, pull them off walkways with your grapple gun, jump down on top of them, and on and on. I was impressed by the many different ways I could deal with these thugs. Towards the end, it became a personal challenge to take them down in the most unique ways possible.
  
  
• Challenges. Even after you finish the game, there are 16 (I think) challenges for you to complete. They alternate between combat challenges and stealth challenges. In the combat challenges, you are tasked with attaining a high score by stringing together really long combos and not getting hit. In the stealth challenges, you have to take out enemies in specific ways, such as exploding three different walls to take out three different enemies. There are a handful of these I haven't even finished, but I can guarantee you that I'll be doing so.
  
  
• Riddler Challenges. In addition to the story, the combat, and the challenges, the Riddler has strewn trophies, chattering teeth, "patient" interview, and even hidden puzzles to solve. Not only do they provide some experience that help you level up and unlock new moves and tools, but they also provide insight into the Arkham Asylum villians and even into other Batman characters. I really enjoyed this part of the game and actually worked hard to find each and every trophy and solve every puzzle.

Hated

• Install/Steam. Because I feel like I have to put something down here, I'll mention the install process. Steam did not setup the game properly, and I was forced to manually install some PhysX drivers and a .NET redistributable. I also had the game crash about 3 times. It really wasn't that big of a deal, but it definitely provided some annoyance and could have been a complete game stopper to somebody who isn't computer savvy.
  
  
• Repetitive Boss Fights. There is a particular boss fight that you repeat multiple times in various forms. While they try to make it different each time, it definitely stood out as being annoying in an otherwise amazing game.
  

I picked this game up for $25 during Steam's Black Friday deals, but I would have paid full price for this game and been happy the whole way through. While I've heard that it plays well with a mouse and a keyboard, I used a gamepad and would definitely recommend that anybody who plays it does the same. I don't think I can emphasize this enough, but outside of that one boss fight, I pretty much liked everything about this game. The combat was fun, the stealth was varied, and the length was perfect. If you are a Batman fan, you need to play this game. If you aren't a Batman fan, you need to play this game.

If I can pull myself away from Modern Warfare 2, I'll start into Dead Space. Expect that soon.

Batman: Arkham Asylum or Why is this game so good?

In the excitement of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, I walked away with 4 new games, one of which was Batman: Arkham Asylum. I'd heard universally good things about it, both from friends and from game journalists. Despite the positive reviews, I was definitely skeptical, especially since I'm not a huge Batman fan. I mean, I like it as much as the next guy, but I was both tired and bored by the time Dark Knight was over. Regardless, I'm happy to admit now that I was wrong. Really, really wrong.

Arkham Asylum is AMAZING. Draenoth calls it the best licensed game he has ever played and I think it's hard to disagree with that point. They took everything that is great about Batman and put it into this game. They took everything that makes games like this boring and some how took it out. Case in point: combat.

The game routinely throws groups of unarmed goons at you to fight. Despite a couple of unlockable special moves and Bat gadgets, combat is pretty much a one button affair. You push the attack button, then push it again in the direction of a different guy and repeat. By any measure of game design, this seems like it would a recipe for tedium, but it just isn't... and I don't know why. Maybe it's the cinematic nature of the combat or the slow motion power swings, but every time I land a debilitating blow on the final thug, I both make a smashing noise and jump up in my chair a bit. Sometimes I giggle. It's just wildly fun in a way that few games have ever been.

Outside of combat, there are tons of collectibles that unlock Batman back story, Riddler riddles that you have solve, and lots of little puzzles that require you to use your Bat tools to the best of their abilities. When you play this game, you feel like a bad ass, which is pretty much all I could ever ask of a game.

The only hiccups I've had at all with the game so far was the install process: it seems to require some Visual Studio redistributable, .Net and PhysX drivers that it didn't install on it's own, even through Steam. All of the installers came with the game though, so after finding and running them, it seems to work fine. Also, the game pretty much requires a gamepad, so don't pick it up for PC without one (if you don't have an XBox 360 gamepad for your PC, just go get one).

I'm super excited to finish this game; as far as pure fun goes, I honestly haven't played ANY other game this year that compares.

Modern Warefare 2 Multiplayer

It's time to discuss the multiplayer in MW2. I am, of course, discussing the PC version here, as I refuse to play first person shooters on a console, so take that into consideration.

Loved

• More and better. If you played the first Modern Warfare to any degree, you'll be right at home in the second. It has levels, experience, challenges, and even a lot of the same weapons. That's a good thing. The first game was a blast. In the second though, they've really ratcheted everything up a notch. There are now a LOT more weapon attachments: heartbeat sensors, holographic sights, extended magazines, full metal jacket ammunition, akimbo pistols/smgs (dual wielding) as well as just more options per gun. On top of that, they seem to have done a pretty decent job of getting rid of perks from the first game that were worthless (Eavesdrop anyone?). While not all perks in the second game are created equal (I still don't see the value in SitRep), generally speaking they all have their points. Finally, there are now a ton more death streak options (and kill streaks!) that you can even customize to your liking. It's literally like they took the first game and tried to improve upon it in every way.
  
  
• Steam/Partying. I really like Steam for grouping with my friends. It works in game, I can chat with them, and pretty much everyone uses it. Since MW2 just uses Steam for grouping, it makes life really easy. I start up a MP game, invite my friends, then select the game mode we want to play. We all end up on the same team and get to play together. While this mode does not work perfectly by any stretch of the imagination (some of us connect and others don't some times), it really is a great idea and works better than it would if we all tried to get on the same team in on a dedicated server.
  
  
• Maps. Despite what Draenoth may tell you about Wasteland or Estate, there really aren't any duds in the map rotation here. I think each of them has something to offer and they are all remarkably well balanced. It is very common in domination games to control one side of the map for the half the game and then control the other side for the second half. I do find myself wishing for more at times, but the ones that exist are actually quite good.

Hated

• No dedicated servers. This has to be said in any PC review. While the match making system works okay, it just isn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination. We've had countless times where it chooses hosts in what seems like a completely arbitrary fashion (Draenoth makes a terrible host apparently, but it seems to love him for some reason). The host migration sucks (your host quits and it has to select a new one). The lack of mode types is annoying (why can't I play Hardcore Free For All?). We can't even all play Free For All on the same server. My final complaint is that they even locked down private matches which means that we can't even play our 1v1v1 games that we used to love in the first game and still get experience. While any of you fools playing on the console are used to all of these things, they each represent a significant step backwards in the world of PC gaming.
  
  
• Only 5 characters slots. This is definitely a minor quibble, but due to the ridiculously high number of weapon/attachment/perk attachments that this game sports, only have 5 slots is completely unacceptable. It's my understanding that each level of prestige unlocks another one, but to have to spend 50-100 hours to unlock a single character slot (not to mention the other annoyances of starting over), is just unacceptable.
  

I'm not going to belabor this point too much: this game is absolutely brilliant. Despite my complaints about dedicated servers (which would make the game even better than it is), it is still just an absolute blast to play. Infinity Ward really outdid themselves here. While I couldn't recommend buying the game at full price for the single player campaign alone, I could do that for the multiplayer. There are dozens to hundreds of hours worth of play time here and they are nearly all guaranteed to be a blast.

Modern Warfare 2 Single Player Review

I've been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 pretty solidly for the last week and a half and have pretty much experienced everything the game has to offer at this point. Let me spoil the whole review for you right now: this game is good. Really good. If you played MW1 and liked it, buy this game. That's all you need to know.

As the game has 3 pretty distinct pieces (single player, special ops (co-op), and multi-player), I'll be reviewing them separately. Today: single player (expect some minor spoilers below).

Loved

• Familiar Yet Different. I was quite pleased to see some of my favorite characters return in this game: Soap, Ghost and even Price. They all have unique, interesting personalities and it was great to have them along for the ride again. MW2 definitely feels like a sequel to the first (something new for the CoD franchise), which is a good thing. I very immediately felt at home with the characters and weapons while at the same time was quite pleased with what was new.
  
  
• No Russian. I'm pretty sure everyone on the internet has commented on this controversial level by now, quite honestly I'm tired of it. This level worked for me. It made me angry. It made me hate terrorism and Mahkarov in particular. It evoked emotions and was "good" the same way Schindler's List did those things. I still don't understand quite why people are so upset about it; it's like it fully incenses some people. Here are two links to articles that I felt did a great job of expressing my point of view.
  
• http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/covah/why-no-russian-was-necessary-in-mw2-spoilers--154852.phtml
• http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/31/10007201/First-person-shooter-Video-game-blog-Over-the-line.html
  
  
• Interesting Locales. I was a little surprised by all the places I ended up in this game: an airport, an Afghan desert, some time in the frozen wilderness, Brazil, American suberbia, even The Mall/The Whitehouse. They did a great job in each of the various locations; the "set pieces" were truly great. There were few if any levels that felt like duds to me. All of them had superb art and solid level design. Kudos to Infinity Ward on that one.
  
  
• Weapons. This is probably more true about the multi-player, but the single player campaign has some new and interesting weapons. The stealthy snow levels in particular had some of my favorites: a silenced sniper rifle and a gun with a heart beat sensor on it. While lots of the guns aren't all that new, the game does a great job of giving the player a pretty wide variety of great weapons. It definitely adds to the fun of the game.
  

Hated

• What the hell is going on? When I finished the single player, I had absolutely no idea what or why various things had happened. The story is WAY too disjointed and convoluted. I literally had to go read the plot review on the Wikipedia page for the game to get an satisfactory insight into the story. I heard somebody else comment that it was like they came up with all these interesting places to have you fight in then spent the rest of their time trying to bend the story into those locations... quite honestly it felt a little true. The story was Mission Impossible ridiculous; it made no sense at all.

Other than the crazy story, there is very little to say wrong about the single player. It's fun, it's action packed, and it's solidly better than the first game. It was definitely short (<6 hours on Hardened), but if it had gone on any longer, it probably would have been too long. While I'm not sure I could recommend the $60 sticker price for the single player only, it is without a doubt a solid experience. Luckily, the single player is the weakest part of this brilliant game. Expect my other two reviews to follow soon.

Spikey's Bounce Around Review

I've been promising to start doing iPhone game reviews for a while now, and while it's possible that there is only a single person who reads my blog an iPhone, I'm still doing it.

Spikey's Bounce Around is a relatively simple little causal game made by Donut Games. Donut Games has been running a promotion offering three of the titles from their catalog for free. I've always been a sucker for a cheap/free game, so I picked up all three. While I haven't spent as much time in the other two as I have in Spikey, they all seem to be pretty decent with high production values.

The object of Spikey's Bounce Around is to shoot your little spiked ball around the stage to free butterflies. If your ball passes through a leaf/flower/stick cluster, it will disappear. If you remove all the plants from underneath one of the butterfly jars, the jar breaks and the butterfly is free. Free all the butterflies and you pass the stage. Spikey will stick to walls and other similar things but bounce off of the yellow and blue "bouncy" platforms. There are also other spikes and jarred wasps that cause you to instantly fail. Finally, you only have a finite number of times you can throw Spikey around, and in some stages, you are forced to make a single, perfect throw. There are 50 stages in all, and I can guarantee you that some of the later stages are really difficult; the difference between passing the stage and not is often the difference in a few pixels of aiming.

The controls are simple, but effective: merely tap where you want him to go. You can also hold down and adjust the directional arrow to get precisely the right shot. All shots have the same power, and the power is not enough to negate gravity entirely, so lots of shots involve lobbing Spikey just right across the screen. All in all, the mechanic works quite well and the levels are unique and varied.

Without a doubt, this is the game I have sunk the most time into on the iPhone. I've found myself sitting on the couch with the TV on trying to get a specific shot just right over and over again. Even after you beat all the stages, you can try to get the 3 star challenges on each which involve getting high scores, usually by using a fewer number of shots. I've three starred most of the stages, but am still working on the rest.

While Spikey's Bounce Around does not revolutionize anything, and the game play is not in any way deep, for a casual little iPhone game, it works AMAZINGLY well. I would easily recommend the game to anybody, especially while it's free, but I would have paid $2-$3 for it and come away happy. Pick it up; it's fun.

Borderlands Review

Draenoth graciously bought me a copy of Borderlands for my birthday (thanks man!) and we've been playing it pretty solidly since it unlocked on Steam last week on Monday. While we have yet to finish a full play through of the game, I definitely think we're close enough that I can make a final judgment call on it. In short, Borderlands is Diablo 2 if it had been a shooter with a comic book vibe. It's got shooting, crazy loot drops, and a brilliant comic book art style. There is a definitely a lot to love here.

Love

• Shooting. At its heart, Borderlands is just an open world shooter. If it failed to do that well, the whole game would fail. Luckily, it does a very admirable job of providing an entertaining shooting experience. I was a little concerned that the stats in the game would get in the way of my ability to shoot things in the head, but the only thing that stops me from doing that effectively is my own skill. Whether I'm sniping, shooting rockets, or just spraying and praying, the gun play is continuously fun and exactly what it should be.
  
• Loot. There are rocket launchers, shotguns, various forms of machine guns and pistols, and my long time favorite: sniper rifles. Each performs as you'd expect and there is actually a lot of variety even between guns of the same type. Also, you can pick up stuff that modifies your class, your grenades, and even get different shields. This game spews loot at a rate so continuous, it's absolutely crazy. Additionally, the game does a really good job at providing you both with things that are obvious upgrades as well as upgrades that are trade offs. As an example, my Hunter is currently equipped with a sniper rifle that does absolutely amazing damage (with fire!). While I would normally have only this one sniper rifle, I've found myself also carrying around a less damaging corrosive gun that has a bigger zoom. I keep finding myself switching back and forth between the two depending on the situation. While I'm used to switching between gun types (sniper rifle vs. close range guns, etc), switching between two different guns of the same type is definitely new. There's something about this game that makes nearly every loot drop exciting in a way that was never captured by Diablo or other MMOs.
• Co-op. If you know me at all, you know that I enjoy shooting it up with my friends (hmm... not sure that came out right), so the co-op mode in Borderlands is definitely a welcome setup. While the game is quite playable (and fun) single player, the game doesn't truly start shining until you get a couple of your friends in. Even with one other person, the fun value really hops up a notch, but with 2 or 3 friends, the game is a blast. If any of you all want to play with me/us, just let me know. I'm Morindil on Game Spy.
  
• Art. I'm a big fan of the art style of this game. I think the comic book/cell shaded art style is under utilized in games, so I'm glad to see a game that not only does it, but does it well. The game not only looks great, but actually runs quite well too. If they had taken a more realistic gritty approach to the art (like say Fallout 3), I think the game would lose a pretty big portion of it's appeal.

Hate

• Consolification. The PC version of Borderlands is a console port of the PS3 and 360 versions. A BAD port of them. It's missing all kinds of obvious features: in game microphone controls, anti-aliasing, a proper FOV, text fields that the mouse wheel can scroll, mouse friendly tools for inventory management and item comparisons, and so on. I quite honestly haven't seen a game that was such an obvious and sloppy console port since Deus Ex: Invisible War. With some proper PC fixes, they could REALLY turn the game into something amazing.
• Co-op setup. I am absolutely flabbergasted that a game that marketed itself so heavily as a co-op shooter could fail at co-op so epically. First off, the game uses Game Spy for match making, which in and of itself is sort of a joke. Furthermore, you need to forward half a dozen ports just to allow people to connect to you. I REALLY wish people would realize that the average PC gamer doesn't know how (or want to!) forward ports to setup a match. There are so many games that seem to manage this kind of thing fine (see Left 4 Dead), that when one doesn't, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Draenoth and I spent almost 2 hours the first night just trying to connect to each other and find ourselves praying to the connectivity gods every night hoping that it'll work. (For the record, we've had the best success when we both go into single player games and I invite him into mine).
  
• Skill Trees. This is probably my most minor gripe, but I found the skill trees to just not be all that interesting in general. Most skills just increase damage or clipsize or reduce a cool down of some kind. While it is possible to make some reasonably diverse characters, most characters of the same class really come out to be mostly the same. It's possible I'm missing something here (perhaps the diversity comes in late, late game), but so far, I've been unimpressed.

Despite the sloppy/lazy console port involved here, Borderlands is a great game. It's not perfect, it's not flawless, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. I fully plan to play at least my Hunter main to level cap (takes 2+ play throughs) and possibly others. It definitely scratches an RPG/FPS itch I didn't even know I had. I often find it hard to recommend games at full price, but if you drop $50/$60 on this game, I promise that you won't be disappointed.

Aion Initial Impressions

I must admit that playing large quantities of MMOs has really messed up my regular blog writing. I start playing one, then play it for 2-3 weeks during which I seldom have anything more interesting to write than "we killed 10 turtles, then gathered 8 shells, then..." Furthermore, the "end" is usually so far off that I feel ridiculous trying to write anything resembling a review. So, 3 weeks into Aion, I'm going to drop down some of my initial impressions as that's about the only thing that feels "right."

How would I describe Aion? It is definitely a game that seems to borrow a little bit from lots of various MMOs. Its general feel has a lot of WoW in it, the grindy nature of combat and crafting reminds me of FFXI, the PvP is reminiscent of Dark Ag of Camelot (or so I'm told), and the whole wings/ability to fly seems most like Champions Online (probably only because I had a winged flier there). As seems to be the case with most MMOs that come out these days, it does a pretty good handful of things right and some things wrong. I'm going to analyze various things one at a time:

Combat. I really have no complaints with the combat. It's very WoW-like with the addition of some skill chains and the addition of movement based bonuses/penalties, e.g. if you move forward while swinging you gain offense and lose defense, if you move backwards the reverse is true. The game has a very standard array of taunts for the tank, heals for the healer, and damage dealing moves for everyone else. In general I would say that combat is more interesting that most other MMOs I've played, but that's probably like saying that Return of the Jedi was more interesting than Empire Strikes back. It's still basically the same despite the differences.

Crafting. Crafting is a place where I think they got it half right and half wrong. The part I really like is that you generally level your crafting skill exclusively from doing work orders. You pickup a work order, buy whatever mats you may need from the nearby vendor and start crafting. Doing a work order requires creating a certain number of items (6 in the lower tiers) and usually grants you a single skill up point (a 1 to 450 scale) and a random item (more mats, designs, etc). The advantage of this model is that people are not creating armor/swords/necklaces to level up and thus completely devaluing the market for said items. Furthermore, those items are not worthless and easy to make (pointing finger squarely at WoW). That means that the items you craft are not only semi-decent (you'd actually use them), but there is actually a market for making and selling them. For that to happen with the lowest tier of items is quite remarkable in my opinion. The problem with this model is that doing work orders is spectacularly boring. You can only get a single work order at a time, which means you need to: get your work order, buy mats for 10ish work orders (this saves time), move 5 feet to the crafting table, craft your six items (while waiting/doing something else), move the 5 feet back to the work order NPC, turn the quest in, get another quest, and then repeat your crafting/turn in motions 9 more times. Once you do this (assuming you actually got your 10 points from the 10 work orders), you get the next tier of work order and start over. Even doing 10 work orders feels really boring. I kept feeling like I should have been able to just pay for my mats and have it give me the points automatically. You would literally spend dozens of hours doing nothing but what I just said to raise a crafting skill to max.

Quests. The quests are very much like the combat here. It's okay, but nothing really sticks out. At any time, you have a set of "Campaign" quests to do and regular side quests. The campaign quests generally have more steps required, or even a group, but the item and XP rewards are often phenomenal. While there are some small cut scenes that take place in the campaign quests, the majority of the quests are presented in the time honored MMO fashion of dense blocks of rather pointless text. I actually made a sporting effort to read a lot of the quest dialog, but there just really wasn't much point. I could see someone really getting into the lore here, but there really isn't enough here to get me overly excited.

Grinding. Aion is a grindy MMO. That's pretty much all there is to it. The XP and item rewards from grinding are nearly always better than doing quests. In fact, some of the quests are even grindy, like the group quest we did where each person had to collect 50 "Krall Marks." (Luckily, each mob dropped one for each of us, so we only had to kill 50 mobs, rather than 300). While that may very well be a deal breaker for some (go play Champions Online; that game has NO grinding), I actually think it's part of the game's charm. Of course, in all fairness, I spent around 5 hours hunting a rare mob that dropped a shield I really wanted (I got it!). I personally don't think it's a very big deal, but may be to other people.

PvP. PvP in Aion doesn't really start until level 25. After 3 weeks of not very heavy play, I'm barely level 20. I've heard that the PvP reminds people of DAoC, and supposedly it's quite decent, but I can't speak to it at this time.

Wings. If I had a disappointment in Aion, it's the wings. First off, you don't even get them until level 10. That wouldn't really be a problem, however, if they were more interesting. You can only fly in a very small number of areas. In the level 10-20 zone that I've mostly been in, there are only two relatively small flying areas that surround quest hubs/cities. The game gives some sort of random excuse for why you can't fly everywhere, but it felt pretty flimsy to me. The border between the flight and the non-flight areas is often just this invisible wall in which the game informs you that you can't fly there. When you are outside of a fly area, you can still pull your wings and glide downhill/across flat areas, but it's really not much of a mechanic. I could probably overlook these problems, if flight time was infinite, however, it is not. At level 10, you get 1 minute of flight time that takes 2 minutes to recharge. At higher levels (30, 40, 50) you get new wings with longer flight times (I think up to 2 minutes) while the 2 minute recharge remains. There are also items/potions/food that increase your flight time, but nothing very significant. I generally found flight to be little more than a gimmick or something that I had to sit around waiting for so I could gather more Aether (a resource that you gather out of the air). In all fairness, flight apparently plays a lot bigger role in the Abyss (level 25+), where there are even rings in the sky that increase your flight time, but as a whole, I am very unimpressed with flight.

I'm not quite sure how I would sum up my overall feelings. So far, I'm liking it well enough. Draenoth expressed his concerns (and he'll probably quit over them), mostly the fact that the story/lore is not at all interesting. I'd really like to get another ten levels or so in at least and see some of the instances/abyss content... just to give it a fair shake. Aion is definitely not a game for everyone, and certainly not a game for the average WoW player, but I think there are plenty of people out there who will really find something to enjoy.

Champions Online Review

Draenoth and I officially played Champions for the last time last week. We logged out having just completed the last level 29 mission we could find; we were only 3 bars into level 28. Not anxious too do any +2 missions (with no hope of ever catching up again), we decided to log out for the last time. My final review follows below, please see my initial impressions too, as not much changed since then.

Loved

• Powers. Generally speaking, nearly all the power sets had something going for them. There were relatively few really bad powers (although definitely some where better than others). Additionally, the ability that the game gives you to choose powers from any power set really adds to the diversity of your characters. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how different powers would go together thematically and even changed the core concept of my main character twice.
• Missions. While there certainly aren't enough of them (see below), the ones there are are actually pretty decent. While the majority of them are definitely standard MMO fare (kill x, collect x, take this to him, etc), they are decently varied and provide a pretty good amount of entertainment. Also, the drop quests are generally smart enough to give the drop to all party members. The only glaring oversight is when you need to pick up an item off the ground... this had us running around finding twice as many as we EACH had to collect the items.
• Solo Friendly. You can do pretty much everything in this game by yourself. While there are a few quests in the game that recommend groups, most of them become very solo-able after you pass the recommended level by 2 or 3. The game really does allow you to roll just about any character and run out and be a hero all on your own.
  

Hated

• Content. I have definitely touched on this before, but it bears reiteration here, this game does not have any where even close to enough content in it. Period. When you do EVERY mission in the entire game and you still don't have have enough content to stay the appropriate level as your missions, there is definitely a problem. That doesn't even bring up the fact that the game offers zero re-playability in its current form. If I could say one thing to the devs of the game it would be: ADD MORE CONTENT! Perhaps they'll get there in another year or two.
  
• Zones. For the first 30 levels of the game (and there are only 40 total), you spend ALL of your time in only 3 different zones. You travel between these zones multiple times and visit multiple areas, but it doesn't change the fact that by the time I was in the late 20's, I was desperately bored with the frozen landscape of Canada and the barren wasteland of the Desert. City of Heroes definitely did this better, as even though you were in Paragon City the entire time, each of the various zones of the city had a unique feel. I honestly don't know what they were thinking in having such few zones... it felt like they merely did it to meet a deadline.
• Respecs. I brought this up in my initial impressions post as the reason I would probably quit the game. While it was definitely atrocious in its original incarnation, they did make it better over time. As of this writing, you can respec all the way to your first power and you can even afford to do more than 2 of them at a time. Regardless, it is still a pretty dismal system and serves to curtail one of the best features of the game: the customization of your characters. It is far too easy to mess up a character in Champions and not realize it until many levels later. Since you need to undo all choices to get back to the one mistake, it essentially becomes impossible to undo a single bad choice you made early on. All they need to do is provide a way to undo single purchases and I think most of the respec complaints would go away real fast.
• Public Quests. I think the idea of public quests is a great one. Lots of people team up to do something epic. However, the implementation in Champions definitely left something to be desired. The rewards (both in items and experience) just weren't significant enough to warrant doing them... really at all. There was one we tried to do where a cosmic boss shows up at the end. There ended up being about 6 of us fighting him (only because we were yelling across the zone for help) and we ended up killing him only by employing "zerg" tactics (dying then running back to the fight). At the end, I received a single healing patch (like a health pot) as my "contribution" was the least, since I didn't actually damage the boss at all (I was healing). Even the person who does the most damage merely receives a dime a dozen item upgrade which is quickly sold. If they would make these quests rewarding enough that people were actually excited about doing them, then they'd definitely have something amazing on their hands.
• Too Solo Friendly. Perhaps this changes in the very last levels of the game, but there is essentially no reason to ever group up. Other than the few group quests (which are TRIVIAL even with just 2 people), there just isn't any reason to be in a group at all. In fact, it was often detrimental to our questing to be grouped when we each had to pick up 6 of something off the ground. Furthermore, the group mechanics don't feel very fleshed out to me. As a healer, I spent most of my time in a Sentinel role which sped up my energy recovery at a cost of damage output. This allowed me to heal ridiculous amounts. However, Draenoth took a crippling health hit when he switched into a dps role or a crippling dps hit when he switched to a tanking role. Also, I pretty much just pulled aggro ALL THE TIME as a healer, even though my highest stat was Presence, which is supposed to lower your threat generation. We never did any full group stuff (as there was NO reason to up the point we were), but I've read that threat generation and full group mechanics in general just don't work very well even later on.
  

While I definitely had a lot of hates in this game, it is still a fun game. My main concern can be wrapped up in a single phrase: "This game is not done yet." While you can probably say that about most MMOs, it definitely holds true here. Perhaps in another year of tweaks and content patches, there will be a complete game here, and even one that provides an actual reason to keep playing, but that game does not exist in its current form. At best, the game has 1-2 months of play time on nothing more than 1-2 different characters. It was definitely an enjoyable month, and if that is all you want out of it, you honestly can't go wrong, but if you want a "real" MMO that you'll be playing for months to come, this game is definitely not it.

Escape from Butcher Bay Review

Last night, I finished my play through of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. All in all, it wasn't a bad game at all.

Loved

• Price. It was $5 and included not only Escape from Butcher Bay, but also Dark Athena. That is an absolutely steal no matter how you look at it.
• Side Quests. While the game was more or less strictly linear, there were at least two times in the game when a section of the prison was fully open to me. I could chat with various inmates/guards, take quests, and do other similar things. It definitely added something to the game that I'm not sure would have been there otherwise. Unfortunately, the majority of these side quests were largely forgettable or uninteresting with poor rewards. The fact that they existed at all though, definitely added something to the game.
• Setting. The gritty, futuristic setting was done very well. It's also a setting that doesn't make it into games quite as often as I would like.
• Vehicles. For two different sections of the game, you have the ability to pilot vehicles that are essentially mechs (think Mechwarrior or the awesome suit Wikus puts on in District 9). Both have unlimited ammo and unlimited ass kicking abilities. These sections of the game were definitely a blast, although in general they were quite easy.
• Riddick. Riddick was voiced by Vin Diesel (as he was portrayed in the movies) and in fact looked just like him. In short, Riddick is a card carrying badass. As one dimensional the character is, I definitely enjoyed his attitude and mannierism, so much in fact, that playing this game actually gave me a desire to watch the movie(s) upon which it was based.
  

Hated

• Cyclical Story. I'm going to drop two Butcher Bay spoilers on you right here: first, you eventually escape from Butcher Bay. Second, it takes multiple tries. Without spoiling too much, the game consists of you trying to escape, getting caught at the last minute, trying to escape from a more secure area, getting caught at the last minute, trying to escape from a more secure area, getting caught at the last minute, then trying to escape from a most secure area and actually escaping. When I got caught that last time I was actually yelling at the computer, "BUT I WAS ON THE SHIP!" It was annoying the way the story flowed and it was easily my least favorite part of the game.
• Inconsistent Difficulty. When melee fighting with another melee character, the combat is so easy it fails to be challenging at all. When fighting melee with a range character (something that happens ALL THE TIME, due to the fact you keep getting recaptured and losing your weapons), the combat is almost impossibly hard. The enemies have immaculate aim and even the most basic assault rifle wielding trooper can mow you down in no time. While this mechanic is almost certainly in place to force you to use stealth (something you HAVE to do on occasion), in some places you are given no choice. Two instances in particular come to mind:
• At one point in the game, I found myself with a single path that led me straight through a riot guard (small mech) with nothing more than a club and a tranq gun. I eventually just ran like hell past him while tranq-ing his two solider friends. I lost most of my energy in the process, but was alive on the other side.
  
• Another time, late in the game, I was without any weapon whatsoever and forced to get past a gun toting solider at the end of a hall way. After 2 or 3 attempts of trying to run him down while he reloaded, I exploited some sort of weird path finding bug and managed to get him to run down the hall towards me and perform a quick kill.
  

Escape from Butcher Bay is definitely not a perfect game, but it is without a doubt a very solid shooter experience. I could easily recommend it to anybody, and even at it's current $20 price tag, it would be well worth the cost.

Why I quit playing Champions Online

The title is perhaps a bit inaccurate, because as of right now, I am technically still playing it. However, I have already canceled my subscription, and I'm fairly certain I won't be changing my mind. So the lingering question: why have I done this? The answer: lack of content.

My main character in Champions Online is Scry of Newt, a healer/dps hybrid character that combines darkness/force/sorcery/telepathy powers to heal and buff and provide some minor dps required. He is just a couple bars short of level 28 right now (40 is the level cap), and has been played nearly exclusively as a duo with Draenoth's Dual Blade martial artist of death.

At this point, we have done EVERY quest in the game up to where we are (as far as we know anyway). Take a moment for that to sink in. We've gone out our way to look for drop quests, out of the way quest givers (which there are definitely WAY too many), and we've even completed all the group content up to where we are. So at level 27, we've completed all the quests the game has to offer, and all the rest of the quests in our list are level 29 (other than 2 level 28, 5 man group quests). If that seems a little broken to you, that's because it is. If you to start a character in WoW, you'd have a choice of as many as 4 different areas to level up in (per side!), although admittedly that number drops a bit as you progress. However, even in Northrend, an average character could get to level cap and have two full zones left to quest in. I should also point out, that this is not the first time while playing Champions that this has happened to us. At level 23, we were doing nothing but level 25 quests. I've also read that this problem actually gets WORSE in the early 30's.

In short, Champions has between 1/3 and 1/4 of the content that it should have launched with. While it is still new, and it'll *probably* get more content over time, all it will ever really do is get up to the amount that it should have had initially.

While the costly respecs are definitely something that still annoys me, they are pretty easy to get over in comparison to this. Not only do I not have content to do with my main, but I have no desire to roll an alt, as I'll have to do all the exact same quests over again that I already did.

Perhaps it'll eventually get to a point where there is enough content to not have leveling gaps and map alts viable, but by the time that happens, I'll have been long gone for quite some time.

Despite my quibbles, I've enjoyed the last few weeks I've spent playing Champions. Expect a full review in the next week or so.

Chronicles of Riddick Initial Impressions

Never one to pass up a good deal, I recently picked up the Chronicles of Riddick from Direct2Drive for $5 as part of their five-year anniversary sale. While my previous experience with Direct2Drive wasn't great, it really wasn't that bad this time. Turns out they use the Fileplanet download manager which I had installed to obtain the Fallen Earth and Champions Online betas. With that installed properly, I must admit the experience was much smoother. However, given equal pricing, it offers me NOTHING that Steam doesn't already provide, with a loss of a friends list. In fact, I enjoy the friends chat there so much, that I actually added Riddick into Steam so I could still use the overlay.

As for the game itself, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. Movie-licensed games are often notoriously bad (as my own game, The Tale of Despereaux, can attest); however, I'd heard good things about Riddick. I was not disappointed.

The version I purchased came with the original game, Escape from Butcher Bay, as well as the sequel, Dark Athena. Escape from Butcher Bay is a five-year-old game at this point, nevertheless, the graphics have held up surprisingly well. I instantly turned the settings most of the way up and found the game to not only look quite nice, but also run smoothly. Furthermore, the game doesn't even have any annoying graphic glitches on my ATI card... something that has become increasingly common lately.

The basic premise in Escape From Butcher Bay is that you have been captured by a bounty hunter and are dropped off at the high security prison, Butcher Bay. The game plays from a first person perspective, with all the typical trappings you'd expect from a shooter. There is a decent variety of ranged weapons (shotguns, assault rifles, etc), as well as melee weapons (shivs, clubs, screwdrivers, knuckledusters, etc). Additional, there are some basic stealth elements in which you can sneak around and perform some "stealth" kills. I've been quite pleased with the combat variety so far, and the overall difficulty also seems pretty good.

The place the game really shines though, is in its "adventure" features. Besides being able to fight, you also get opportunities to talk to other inmates and guards, taking quests for them or just being snarky. You can collect cigarette cartons to unlock extra features, collect money from hidden caches, and even gamble in a simple craps game. My favorite thing so far is when one drug addicted inmate asked me to gather some moths for him that were flying around the yard. When I got back to him, he was VERY happy; I must admit I chuckled a bit. While it's certainly no Fallout 3, it does provide quite a few interesting diversions and even some alternate solutions at times.

I honestly can't think of any real complaints I have with the game so far, but will definitely point them out in my final review.

Scared to Choose

Another week has passed since I started playing Champions Online and while I'm still enjoying myself and think they did quite a few things right, there are still some lingering issues that are seriously detracting from my enjoyment of the game.

Without a doubt, the biggest issue in the game is the retcon system.

Champions Online offers the player a LOT of choices. In all honesty, it probably offers too many choices. If you had no idea what you were doing and didn't research your character at all, you could VERY easily make a character that would be completely unplayable. While this isn't inherently bad in and of itself, the fact that there is no way to undo these choices, is where the game is broken.

As mentioned previously, the respec system (retcon) in Champions is unbelievably expensive. While their last patch did make a change to allow people to respec more than their last ten powers, the price of doing so is so exuberant, that it's pretty much impossible to respec all but the last 3 at most. Furthermore, since the price to respec previous powers is a linear-ish increase, the cost of undoing a mistake made relatively early in the character build is astronomical. I wish I could throw some hard numbers around it, but it easily turns into 10-20x the amount of money a character at your level would expect to have. Also, the price of respeccing increases as you level and the respec costs are based on possible powers (meaning ones if you have an unused power point it still affects the price of respecs) rather than actual powers. The combination of these two things basically means that respeccing is just plain and simply impossible. Even if you spent all your time just grinding for resources (something I would NOT recommend) you would essentially be fighting an uphill battle as you would level up (thus increasing the respec costs) faster than you would be making money. The system is absolutely and completely broken.

The side effect of having a broken respec system is that I find myself terrified to buy any new powers. How do I know it won't suck in 2-3 levels? I literally spent over an hour in the power house last night trying to decide which power to take and eventually logged off not having purchased anything. At the end of the day, they have made the game less fun for me because of this limitation. That is honestly all there is to it.

I think the smart thing to do would be to price respecs based on overall number of powers respecced, rather than per respec. Let me see if I can explain:

The first time I respec any power (and I can undo ANY choice I made, even an early one) it would cost me say 1000 resources. Then, the next time I respec any power, it would cost me 2000 resources; similar to the way respecs in WoW cost 1g, then 2g, etc. The beauty of this system is that it allows a person to relatively easily undo a single bad choice. If I made a bad decisions 14 decisions ago, I don't want to undo the past 14, just that one. They could also implement a cool down on this so if I don't do any respecs for say a month or so, the price of respeccing halves. While I can't vouch for everyone, I don't think the general populace really wants to be able to afford to undo EVERY choice made; that would be analogous to being able to respec in WoW from a Rogue to a Warlock. That would be silly. However, if I took a Rogue skill at level 10 that I don't like, I shouldn't be forced to pay to undo 70 levels of good choices just to fix that one.

In its current form, the retcon system is enough to make me want to stop playing the game. Unless it changes, I will NOT be paying for a second month and that is the reason I will mark in the cancellation form.

Expect more of my thoughts on the game in the next few days.

Champions Online Initial Impressions

Draenoth and I preordered Champions Online last week and started playing last Friday as part of their head start weekend. I've now put in 4 evenings of play time and have leveled 3 characters all the way through the tutorial zones (takes a couple of hours).

While this isn't a review per se, I'm going to structure it similar to my reviews as it seems to make the most sense.

Love

• Being a hero. The game does a remarkable job at making you actually feel heroic... at least in certain builds. City of Heroes never really seemed to grasp this for me; I'm not quite sure why. I always just sort of felt like I was playing an MMO with super heroes as the characters rather than actually being a super hero. Champions definitely steps it up a notch and has some really heroic powers (the AoE force blast is definitely one of my favorites).
• Character creation. Champions is made by Cryptic, which is same studio (new name) that made City of Heroes. And it shows. They basically pulled every good feature from City of Heroes, especially the character creator. It is ridiculously rich in features and allows you to create all kinds of different looking heroes. Of the three I've made so far, one is a skeleton with wings (that actually flap when he flies!), the other is a very traditional looking hero with a cape, and the third is some sort of amphibian looking character than actually moves on all fours. I'm blown away by the number of different options there are (this coming from somebody who played CoH), however I will say that same categories are really limited, such as cowls and neck pieces. Generally speaking though, you can make a hero who looks like just about anything or anyone.
• Power house. The power house is one of those things that once you understand it, it makes so much sense that you wonder why nobody has ever had something like it before. Basically, when you need to level up, you go there and purchase your powers/advantages/stat boosts, etc. Then, you can test out your powers on various levels of dummys, lasers, obstacle courses, etc and decide if you like them. If you don't, you can undo the purchases and try something else out. Once you find something you like, you leave the power house and lock in your purchases. I can almost guarantee that this is a feature most future MMOs will borrow (if they're smart). It is amazingly good at helping you find things that work and are fun.
• Travel powers. The travel powers in Champions are excellent. There are also quite a few more than in City of Heroes. They range from various types of flight (normal, fire, hover discs/earth/ice) to tunneling and even include things like teleportation (my personal favorite) and swinging Spider Man style. Also, they give them to you at level 5, which means you only play the game for about an hour before getting them. I've never understand why games make you play for so long before giving you traveling powers/mounts. This is something that Champions definitely did right.
  

Hate

• Retcon (respecs). I have NO idea what they are thinking here. The respec system in its current form is completely broken. First of all, there are no full respecs. You can only undo the last 10 choices you have made. These include not only powers, but all stat and advantage choices. You can VERY easily mess up your build and not realize until it is too late. If that was the only problem, however, it wouldn't be that big of a deal though. The absolutely game breaking issue here is the cost. In my opinion, respec costs are about 10x what they should be. For example, you get new powers every 3 levels. I went to the power house at level 8 and checked the respec costs. Respeccing just one skill was 500+ resources. Then they increased backwards from there. At this time my total net worth was right around... 500 resources. Basically, in all the time I've been playing, I've never had a character that could afford to respec more than 1 to 2 powers. While I would hold out hope that I could do it later, the respec costs increase as you level, and you still can only go back 10 actions. Cryptic promised to drop the prices of respeccing when the game officially launched (yesterday), however the changes were so minuscule, most people couldn't even tell the different. The respeccing system is so bad, it makes every choice you make a time of actual stress and has actually caused people to call customer support and cancel their lifetime subscriptions. (NOTE: Looks like they patched this again just today. I'll write another post tomorrow with my new impressions on it).
• Tutorial zones. Every character you start plays through about 6 levels in the first tutorial zone, then the next 3 or so levels in one of two "Crisis" zones. While it is nice to have some option between the crisis zones, that very first zone gets old VERY fast. I've only taken 3 characters through it so far, but I'm already absolutely bored by it. When you compare this to a game like WoW that has so many different starting areas, it really doesn't stand up well. Also, Champions is a game that sort of begs you to make alts. The power sets are so different and the character creator is so fun, that I think everyone will have at least 3-4+ characters, even people who are generally anti-alt like me. They desperately need to give you some other tutorial zone options or at least let you skip that first zone altogether and spit you out in a Crisis zone at level 5.
• Where are my villains? It took a standalone expansion to get villains in the City of Heroes universe, and it was something I REALLY thought they should have done at launch here. It would have provided some more starting zone options, helped out the overly simplistic PvP quite a bit, and even just allowed for some variety in general. I've got a horrible feeling that they will add villains in an expansion, but quite honestly, I don't think I'll still be around when that happens.

Just some other things to note: there are a LOT of power sets. I'm actually kind of surprised by how many there are. Furthermore, Champions has a "classless" system which means that you don't create a tank, you just create a hero and then switch him to "sentinel" role. While some heroes would obviously be better suited to tanking than others, it is definitely an interesting idea. I've yet to see quite how it plays out, so won't comment on it much more.

So far, I'm definitely having a pretty good pile of fun with the game. Other than the retconning issue (which it sounds like they are working on), I don't have any big beefs with the game. I'm really curious to see how it progresses as I level up and will definitely be back here filling you all in.

Killing Floor

Sometime last week, my friend (Draenoth) and I, picked up Killing Floor on Steam. Killing Floor is a co-op zombie survival game that was originally a mod for UT2004. It's now a standalone game still using the UT2004 engine. As you'd expect for a mod turning full game, it isn't the most amazing piece of software. However, for what it is, it's surprisingly enjoyable.

The game play quite strongly reminds me of Nazi Zombies from World at War. Basically, you play through a set number of waves where each wave has a set number of zombies. Unlike Nazi Zombies, there are a variety of zombies in Killing Floor -- some of which are absolutely brutal. In the early waves, you see nothing but Clots (your basic plodding, melee zombie), Bloats (VERY similar to Boomer's from L4D in that they spray you with bile), and Goreclaws (zombies that plod along, get close, then rush at you with some nasty blades). As the levels progress, you eventually encounter Crawlers (spider looking zombies who jump on you), Sirens (slow moving but have a stunning "scream" ability), Stalkers (mostly invisible right up until they start swiping at you), Scrakes (similar to Goreclaws but instead of blades, they wield very mean chainsaws), and finally Gorepounds (very tough zombies who chase you down and have the ability to kill you VERY fast). The variety of zombies makes for some ridiculously fast paced matches that are often quite frantic.

Also different from Nazi Zombies is the fact that there are a set number of waves. Survive them all and you enter a final wave where you must take down a Patriarch (big, tough and has a chaingun, rocket launcher, and a serious melee attack). He's definitely nasty and requires some actual strategy to defeat. The patriarch battle is a good capstone to the rounds and has satisfying feel to it that Nazi Zombies lacks, even when you go through 20+ rounds.

As far as weapons go, Killing Floor has a pretty decent variety. There are a handful of melee weapons including an axe, a katana, and chainsaw. The guns include dual wielded Desert Eagles Hand Cannons, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and even a crossbow, rocket launcher, flame thrower. Additionally, you have the ability to pull out a syringe and heal yourself (or teammates) and even a welder to seal doors to slow the flow of zombies. I'm pretty pleased with the gun selection in Killing Floor and find it to be substantially better than either Left 4 Dead or the Nazi Zombie mode.

The thing I most like about Killing Floor, however, is its perk system. You can choose from one of 6 (I think) different perks. Each of these boosts a specific weapon class. There is one for healing, one for the shotgun, one for melee, one for pistols/rifles, one for machine guns, and one for the flamethrower. They provide a boost to your damage, your reload speed, and even provide weapon discounts (you buy weapons from a trader between waves). Each perk levels from 0 to 5. To level them up, you merely use the related skill/weapon. The best part is that you don't need to be that class to level up the perk, e.g. if you are a Firebug, you still level up your medic perk by healing your teammates. The perks level up in a matter resembling a quadratic curve, i.e. they level a LOT slower after the first few levels. So far, they've started to get really amazing at just level 2, so we're pretty anxious to see how they end up.

My biggest beef with the game so far is definitely how buggy the graphics are. While Draenoth reports that things seem okay for him, I have some really annoying problems with textures that seem to disappear. I even filed a bug on the official forums (it's still in moderation, I'll link it when it's up).

The final, most interesting thing we noticed about the game is just how challenging it is. We started playing on Normal (2 difficulties above it, 1 below) and found ourselves dying quite consistently in only the second round. After spending some time in Beginner, with a mutator turned on that only spawns Clots, we managed to level up our perks enough so that we were able to finally get through a game on Normal. I think it's actually pretty cool that the game has such a wide range of difficulty options.

I'm going to wait until we play the game more to write up final thoughts, but so far I'm relatively pleased. It's not amazing, it probably won't be something I'll play for a really long time, but it was easily worth the $20 I paid for it. Oh, and if any of you pick it up, let me know as it supports up to 6 people.

The Path Review

The other game I played through this last weekend was The Path. It's a creepy adventure game based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Basically, you select from one of 6 different "Red" sisters. Each of them sport a unique personality: little Robin is young and naive, Scarlet is the responsible "mom" type, Ruby is the rebellious goth, etc. Regardless of your choice, you are dumped at the start of the path with two instructions:

1. Go to Grandmother's house
2. Don't stray from the path

Like any good little gamer, I walked straight down the path, entered Grandmother's house, navigated to her room (you just press a button and watch the girl automatically move through the house), and was promptly informed that I had failed.

I immediately started again and decided to carefully make my way off of the path. At first I was hesitant and kept the path in sight, fearing that I would be attacked by a wolf if I strayed too far. After I continued to encounter nothing, I decided I would just run directly away and see what I could find.

Before long, I came to a graveyard. I looked around and saw some objects I could "interact" with: a skull, a dead bird, and even a mysterious girl in white. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I spent the next hour or so wandering aimlessly through the forest. I found various things strewn about, some of which I could "collect" and some I could not -- there was an obvious indicator on some that I would need to visit it with another girl. Eventually, I had an encounter with the "wolf," who was some sort of water entity or something. When I awoke, I was lying on the ground just outside of Grandmother's house. I limped inside and quickly discovered that the interior was quite different. Instead of walking peacefully to Grandmother's room, I went from room to room, each of which was like some sort of personal Hell for my "sister." Instead of arriving safely at the end, I eventually encountered a final room and I think I was killed somehow. I don't really know.

That's pretty much the whole game. I played through with each of the other 5 girls for good measure, each of which had a different feel and experiences, but were all pretty similar.

Okay, my final thoughts:

Loved

• Creepy. The game had great music and a great visual style. I also really enjoyed how the comments of the girls were written to the screen. In general, there always seemed to be some sort of danger lurking, even though there wasn't. I also thought the scenes in Grandma's house were both creepy and disturbing.

Hated

• WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?! I basically spent the whole game asking that question. I figured it would become more clear when I starting playing with other girls. Nope. Then I figured it would become more clear when I played the Epilogue. Nope. Finally, I went and read a walkthough of the game hoping that would make it more obvious. Nope. I get that the game is dripping with symbolism (the wolves represent things like rape/approval/etc.), but it was WAY too abstract for me. There was just lots of stuff (read: pretty much everything) that there was no explanation for.
• Wandering in the forest. The game expects you to find various objects throughout the forest. Each girl has a subset of the overall group of items that she can find/interact with. These subsets overlap between the various girls. Each girl also has 2-3 "special" items that she finds that unlock extra rooms at Grandma's. Finally, each girl needs to find her "wolf." The forest is a ridiculously annoying place with visibility at only a couple hundred feet, sides that wrap (think Zelda Lost Forest style), and very few landmarks of any distinction. The only map you initially get (until you finish the game once) is a 2D overlay that shows up every so often on its own, indicating the path you have taken. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the forest was different (at least slightly) for every girl. All of these things combined meant that I spent the VAST majority of my time just sort of wandering aimlessly, looking for things I could interact with. It was quite tedious and definitely sucked away from my overall enjoyment.

The Path is definitely in the "art as games" category. I'll be honest: I didn't "get it." That's not to say that somebody else wouldn't, but I'd have a really hard time recommending it. If you like weird, artsy adventure games, give it a try.

And make sure to come back and explain it to me when you're done.

Braid Review

I'm still playing through the games in that big indie games pack, and actually got through two of them this last weekend. First up: Braid.

Braid is a very interesting puzzle game, the likes of which I don't believe I've ever seen. At its core, it is little more than a simple platformer with puzzle elements. You move, jump, stomp enemies, and use keys to open doors while trying to collect puzzle pieces. In fact, the first set of stages are little more than that. However, the game has a hook that really changes its dynamic: time manipulation.

If you die somehow, instead of presenting you with a game over screen or similar, the game just shows you the rewind time button. As you hold that button down, time rewinds until you let go -- even all the way back to when you started the level. You can use the trigger buttons to speed up/slow down time, even reversing its direction and playing it forward again. While this does have a Sands of Time style usage as mentioned previously, it is a LOT more involved than that. For example, any item that has green sparkles around it is unaffected by time manipulation. You can jump down a pit, grab a "green" key, and then rewind time and watch the key come right out of the pit with you. It makes for some REALLY interesting mechanics. Furthermore, each level has a unique time related mechanic you use throughout its stages. I'll discuss those more below.

Intro done; here's the review:

Loved

• Time manipulation. I really enjoyed the time manipulation mechanic. It was very interesting and allows you to do all kinds of things you wouldn't even initially realize. The game also has some great graphical changes when you were manipulating time, with the screen becoming gray scale when reversing and oversaturated when going forward.
• Unique level mechanics. As I mentioned above, each level had a unique mechanic. There were 5 level in all (although for some reason the first one is level 2), and each played VERY different. Level 2 was merely a set of jumping puzzles. Level 3 introduces you to time manipulation and "green" items. Level 4 was probably the most unique in that as you move right on the screen time flows forward and as you move left, it flows backwards. It made for some super interesting solutions. In Level 5 you have a shadow that appears after you rewind time and carries out all the actions you yourself just did. Solutions here require you to actual work together with yourself. Finally, in level 6, you can erect a time-slowing bubble. Every level had a very different feel and it kept the game quite fresh.
• Logical solutions. With one relatively glaring exception (remember that enemies bounce up when they land on your head), all of the solutions actually made sense. There were not really any times where the solutions were ridiculous and they all generally just required some thought and a little trial and error.
  

Hated

• No "capstone" level. The game length really wasn't bad, but I felt like it could have used another level at the end that required you to use all or some of the mechanics together. Stages where you have to run your shadow through a time-slow bubble or something similar REALLY would have been cool. The final stage was actually relatively disappointing and required very little thought.

My quibbles with the game are definitely minor and I would recommend it to anybody. Even at the $10-$15 price point, I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you have even a passing interest in puzzle games, pick it up.

Like Geometry Wars… with LSD

In the last few days, I’ve been playing through more of the games in my big Indie Game pack. Most recently, I’ve spent some time with Everyday Shooter. While I haven’t quite finished the game (it’s HARD), I feel like I’ve played enough of it throw out a decent review.

Before I get to likes and dislikes, let me describe the game briefly. In a nutshell, the game is Geometry Wars. Like Geometry Wars, it’s best played with a gamepad; the left control stick moves you around and the right one shoots. That’s pretty much it.

Unlike Geometry Wars, this game is psychedelic. In a good way. Each level different… in pretty much everyway. The game only has 8 levels – although reaching the last one requires crazy skill. Let’s get on with it now.

Loved

• Unique Levels. Not only does the background and music change each level as you’d expect, but the enemies change too. The enemy changes are not superficial; the mechanics they use change radically from level to level. In one, you are shooting an eyeball with robots coming out of it; in another you're shooting little plane looking things trying to avoid something that I can only classify as the “red baron.” I’ve made it through 6 of the levels, and each of them is COMPLETELY different. It really is a nice touch, especially compared to Geometry Wars where the game remains largely the same.
• Music. The music in the game is decent enough for what it is, but what really makes it shine is how it integrates with the game play. Blowing up large enemies triggers a crescendo-like effect that perfectly fits with the music. The audio in general is very well done and just very enjoyable. The music is SO tied to the game that the levels actually last for the length of a single song.

Hated

• Repetitiveness. When you start playing the game, you have access to a single mode: playing the game through from start to finish. You have a set number of lives and no continues. If you die, you start back over at level 1. While you can eventually unlock the ability to play individual levels or get more lives, you still just find yourself playing over and over again from the first level. I really wish I had the ability to “continue” when I died, or even to start the “adventure” mode from a specific level. I have this feeling that it will be quite awhile before I see the last level, merely because I just can’t take that much of the game in a single sitting.

There’s definitely a lot to like here. If the game made it easier to see/experience all the levels, it would be hard to fault it on much of anything. While I definitely wouldn’t recommend anybody pay very much for it (there really isn’t much game here), anything in the sub $10 range would be well worth the investment. The game is definitely a bit more art that actual game, but it really is a decent way to spend some 10-15 minute blocks.

Crayon Physics Deluxe Review

I finished Crayon Physics Deluxe a while ago, but due to a weekend in Las Vegas sans internet, I’m only writing up my final thoughts now.

Loved

• Draw Anything. My favorite thing about this game is how you can draw anything you want and have it instantly come to life. Some of the solutions I came up with involved me drawing absolutely ridiculous shapes and devices. To get all the stars, you have to solve the levels with a single shape. Most of the time, these shapes are absolutely crazy. It was just a lot of fun.
• Physics. Make a game with a strong physics influence and I’ll get it. CPD not only has physics, but it has good physics. Perhaps it’s my physics fetish, but good game physics instantly raise a game’s quality in my eyes.
• Multiple Solutions. There are just a ridiculously large number of ways to solve each level. On a lot of them, I would build a contraption to hold my ball, tether it to a cord, wrap the cord over another object, tether the other end to a large block and then let the block fall. My ball would then be whipped at rapid speed toward the star. It was VERY effective. In others, I basically found myself slowly moving my ball up by drawing blocks underneath it. There are just tons of options.

Hated

• Length. I understand the difficulty of making content for a game like this, but the game just wasn’t very long at all. I played through it in like 4 hours. I definitely got to the end of the game and wanted more. I will give bonus points for the availability of user content, but the core game could have used a bit more.
• Disparity between Levels. Some levels in this game were REALLY fun (see: any level with a rocket in it). Others just weren’t at all. I also felt that the game didn’t progress very well. After the island with the rockets, they barely appeared. It didn’t seem to build upon itself like it should.
• Forced Thinking. To obtain the bonus star on each level, the game forces you to solve the level without using pins (for ropes, etc.) and only using one object. Although I had fun figuring out some of the single object solutions (see: any level with a rocket in it), most of the others were pretty dull. Also, pins and ropes were hands down my favorite part of the game, so being forced to not use them was disappointing.

Let me sum it up for you: this game is a BLAST.

To prove my point, here is a video I recorded of myself while playing the game. I SWEAR that it is my actual reaction. And as you could probably guess, this level had a rocket in it.

If you can find it cheap, pick it up. You won’t regret it.

Nazi Zombies Review

I've put in quite a bit of time in the Nazi Zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War over the last week or so and have decided to write up a full, proper review. So without further ado, here it is.

Loved

• Co-op. I have a complete love affair with anything and everything co-op. Not only should all games have it, but in today's age of behind-router internet connections, they need something that allows to people to directly connect to each other without jumping through hoops. I know I already mentioned this, but the co-op in this game is fun. I also think they did the friends list/invite to game feature quite well. It just "works" and doesn't require any port forwarding or Hamachi hijinks.
  
• Mystery Box. I'm definitely a gambler at heart and really like any opportunity I have to gamble for weapons. 1200 points for the Thompson or 950 for the mystery box? It was quite honestly never even a question. Five bolt action rifles later always seems to find me buying the Thompson anyway. It's probably because I got the ray gun the first time I ever opened the box.
• Fun. This mode is just a blast anyway you look at it. I definitely have a soft spot for zombies, and this mode doesn't disappoint. The maps have basically gotten progressively better as they've come out (can't wait for the 4th one to hit the PC) while the first is still quite a bit of fun. It's just a blast to spend time trying to figure out the perfect combination of doors to open and the best choke points.

Hated

• Worthless Melee. Your knife is useful for anywhere between 1 and 2 rounds. After that, it is more of a liability than an asset. In my mind, if a zombie is in my face and I stab him in the head, it should do SOMETHING. Half a dozen rounds in and the thing it does is make you ridiculously vulnerable. If you are going to give me a knife, make it worth my time.
• Worthless Traps. Perhaps I haven't seen the vision behind these, but I've yet to find any situations where they are really useful. I can see that they added them in the later maps for more diversity, but in my experience, if you are to the point where you are activating traps, it's probably because you bit off more than you can chew and are going to die anyway.
• Inability to Manually Start Rounds. At the end of each wave, you have perhaps 30 seconds before the next wave comes. In later rounds, especially when the maps are really opened up, those 30 seconds just aren't enough to allow you to prepare for the next round. As a result, many people try to grenade one of the last zombies in the round, blow its legs off and then take care of business while it pathetically scoots around. I don't think you should have to rely on a workaround when they very easily could have just provided a feature to manually start the next round. Perhaps that would have made things too easy, but I really think there could have been a better solution.
• Weapons. This whole game suffers from a lack of excellent weapons. Just like in single and multiplayer, automatic weapons dominate and rifles are basically worthless in everything but the earliest levels. Unless you can pull some serious machine guns out of the mystery box (hopefully something with the word "deployable" in the title) things are just a lot harder. Don't even get me started on how pathetic the flame thrower is. Just hope you pull the ray gun out of the mystery box. There is NOTHING bad about that thing.
  

Didn't Mind

• Maps. The maps are just okay. There aren't any of them that I'm amazingly impressed with. I've heard good things about the newest one, so hopefully it's a solid step up from Shi No Numa.
• Colas. The second and third maps provide colas that you can purchase that will provide you with a perk. Unfortunately, the way the difficulty ramps up, it basically requires you buy them. Also, you lose them if you die, and the revive perk is relatively worthless. Although I must admit that I never drank a Speed Cola and wasn't immediately happy afterward. I'm just going to throw the whole lot of them into a category I call "a mixed bag."
• Dialog. Every 3rd or 4th thing that the survivors say is clever and/or funny (I like the comment the Russian makes about capitalism when picking up the 2x point boost), while all the rest of them sound like something that was thought up by 4 guys sitting around at 2am with 3 beers in each of them. The American after hitting a bomb: "Ka-fucking boom!" Really?
  

Without a doubt, the Nazi Zombie mode is a very solid addition to World at War. Is it worth buying the game for? No. Is it a good piece of a fun and a solid add-on? Without a doubt.

Press A to not die

I've been a little lazy in writing blog posts lately, and as such, I have a backlog of three different things I need to write about. Hopefully I can put them all together and then actually get ahead a few days.

Over the weekend, I started playing Prince of Persia. This new one is sort of a series "reboot." The prince is less gritty, the art style is more cartoony, and the gameplay is more... easy.

The game starts off with the prince running into Elika, this game's princess/damsel. While running after her, you get a basic tutorial in moving and combat. The first thing I noticed is how dumbed down the the climbing/moving is. In previous Prince of Persia games, you would run towards a wall and hold down a trigger button on the gamepad to wall run. Here you simply jump into the wall. To run up a wall: jump into it. To climb a wall: jump into it. I'm semi-convinced you could play through most of the game by just pushing the gamepad forward and pressing the jump button at the appropriate time (the game even swings you around poles automatically). While it does provide some variety (sometimes you have to press B, and every once in a while, Y), the game is just really simplified. A friend of mine said that they "Assassin's Creed-ed it." That felt like a fitting description to me. It actually seems to be a growing trend in games, i.e., making the player feel more awesome while requiring them to do less. While I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of it, I can at least understand it.

Combat in this game is pretty standard fare for Prince of Persia games. There do seem to be fewer combos, although perhaps that's just my imagination. Also, Elika is always right behind you, and by pressing the Y button, she'll perform a magic attack on whatever you are targeting. Perhaps I'm missing something awesome, but stringing acrobatic magic combos together seems to be the easiest and fastest way of killing pretty much everything. You basically just mash the Y button, then push the A button once, then mash the Y button some more. In Warrior Within, the combat felt really satisfying. If I vaulted over an enemies head and stabbed them in the back, I felt like I had earned it. Here, I mostly feel like I'm just mashing buttons and watching enemies die.

As far as difficulty goes, this game isn't. Difficult, that is. If you fall, Elika will fly down and save you. If you get knocked down in battle, Elika blasts the enemy away so you can get up. While the game mechanic is at least partially fitting, it is in no way fulfilling. If I fell in Sands of Time, I rewound time. I was still safe on the ledge before my jump, but I actually had to expend some energy/effort to save myself. This game has no such satisfaction. While I don't think the game designers need to be our enemies like they were in the old NES games, I'm not retarded and I don't need to be coddled ALL the time.

My final big beef with the game so far is the collecting that is required. The game sends you to a specific area, where you kill a boss and then "cleanse" the region. Afterward, Seeds of Light appear that you must collect. You need to collect enough of them so that you can unlock powers which enable you to get to new areas. The mechanic feels really artificial to me, something the designers sort of tacked on to force you to play through the areas more or even something they could tie Achievements/Trophies too. Needless to say, I will be collecting the absolute minimum number of seeds required to finish the game.

The one good thing about the game so far is the art style. The game has a delightful cel-shaded 3D style, something I haven't seen since the game XIII. I'm definitely a fan of it.

This is the first game I've played this far into in a while where I wasn't really looking forward to finishing it. The game isn't THAT bad, so I probably will finish, but there just isn't anything about the game that I'm excited about. I'm pretty sure it'll just be more of the same. I only wish this game's designers had been as creatively awesome as its artists.

Indie Games Smorgasbord

As has been a recurring trend lately, I picked up some new games in the Steam weekend deal. This one is particularly good, containing 10 top quality indie games for a measly $30. Since most of them run $10-$20 EACH, the value is phenomenal. After a bit of deliberation, I decided to start with Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is based on (surprise!) Crayon Physics, which was a five-day rapid prototyping project released back in 2007. More a tech demo than a game, I could see that it definitely had potential; however, the drawing wasn't very good, as all shapes were translated into primitives (rectangles, etc). When I heard that the creator was creating a "Deluxe" version with proper physics and collision detection, I was definitely excited. I've been meaning to pick it up since the beginning of the year, but just never got around to it. As part of this super deal, I couldn't resist.

The game is pretty simple: push/guide a ball around various stages while trying to get it to collide with one or more stars. You accomplish this by using your mouse (this game would ROCK on a tablet PC) to draw various shapes. You can make simple platforms, ropes, pulleys, and all kinds of other shapes. Setup a path for your ball to follow and then either drop something on it to get it moving, push it by clicking on it, or use some sort of basket to catapult it to victory.

As you collect stars, you unlock additional islands and stages to play in. I haven’t even played half the stages, but so far I am very impressed. The level design is interesting and forces you to use a variety of tactics.

After you manage to collect the stars, you can go back and try to get both the “elegant” and the “old school” solutions. These involve using either a specific number of objects (elegant) or doing it without using strings and pulleys (old school). It adds even more variety to an already stellar game.

While playing this, I couldn’t help but compare it to World of Goo – especially as both are puzzle games where physics play a big role. While I LOVED the setting, art style, music, and even the gameplay of World of Goo, Crayon Physics has a charm and inventiveness to it that just isn’t matched. I’m definitely looking forward to playing the tail half. I’ll be sure to post any interesting stages or solutions I come upon.

Call of Duty: World at War Co-op Review

While it is perhaps a little early to be writing a review of World at War, especially as I haven't played the multiplayer much yet, I'm going to do so anyway. So far, my experience has mostly been in the competitive co-op mode, which is essentially the single player campaigned played with 1-3 other people. I've played through the all the co-op missions with a friend and also played a bit of the Nazi zombie mode.

Without further ado, I present to you my thoughts:

Loved

• Co-op Mode. I like co-op mode in games. A lot. I don't know how many times I've sat down with a friend, or even my brother, and tried to find a game that supported some sort of co-op play so that we could play together. While it is fun to play against your friends, I really enjoy the camaraderie that comes from playing and fighting together. While co-op is often something hastily tacked on late in a dev cycle, in World at War, it actually feels like thought was put into it. Additionally, co-op has its own set of challenges that you can play through to improve your multiplayer profile. I especially like the competitiveness of it as I fight to get more head shots, more kills, and more points than my teammate. All in all, it's a good feature and done well.
• Zombies. It's hard not to love a good zombie mode, and the one in World at War is good. The game play is pretty basic: you get points for killing zombies that you can use to buy new weapons and even unlock new places of the map. The zombies start out really slow and sparse, but very soon become quite fast and dense. We only did a couple of rounds, but I definitely found myself wanting more when I was done. While it's certainly no Left 4 Dead, as far as added content goes, it's great.
• Cheat "Cards." In both the single and co-op campaigns, there are "cards" you can find that are used to unlock cheats in co-op play. Instead of regular cheats (unlimited health/ammo, etc), these don't generally give you an edge. Some are purely cosmetic, like one that makes enemies explode when you score a head shot on them (my favorite), while others actually make the game harder, like the one that limits you to a knife and rocks. I really enjoy unlockable cheats in games (I earned EVERY cheat in GoldenEye on the N64), and these are just a lot of fun as they add a little bit more replayability to the game.

Hated

• Lack of polish. World at War was created with the same engine that was used by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4... and it shows. However, it was NOT made by Infinity Ward (it was made by Treyarch)... and it shows. It really just seems to be missing something when it comes to polish. Despite 2 gigs of patches, the game still feels slightly unfinished. Since I have started playing, I've seen: a black screen upon starting the game that doesn't go away, constant timeouts when trying to start/join a co-op game, my friends list mysteriously clear itself, and some in-game fonts (like the player names above heads) that are completely unreadable at my settings. While none of these things have been full game stoppers, they have definitely been annoying and have tarnished what would have otherwise been a great experience.
• Weapons/setting. While this isn't really a critique against World at War, the weapons just aren't all that interesting compared to Call of Duty 4. I suppose that is more to blame on the fact that World War II was 60 years ago than anything. Which brings me to another point: I think we should be done with WWII games about now.
  
• Story. I should probably do a full single player play through before dogging on this too much, but the story was just really blah. It split between an American fighting in the Pacific and a Russian trying to repel the Germans and eventually take the Reichstag (didn't they already do that in the first CoD?). I also didn't really like the way it jumped back and forth between the Russian and American campaigns. I think it was better in the first game where you played all of one campaign before moving on to another. The story in general just seemed to lack cohesion to me.

I'll probably write up a proper multiplayer review after I spend some more time in it.

As a final note, I must say that it really is a very respectable game and a must have for any Call of Duty fan. Probably a must have for any shooter fan. Even after you finish all the single player and co-op content, there are still dozens/hundreds of hours of multiplayer modes to play and enjoy. I know I'll be enjoying regular play sessions for quite a while.

Call of Duty: World at War First Impressions

Last Tuesday, I was sitting at work watching the tweets pop up like always, when I saw that Direct2Drive was about to have a trivia contest. The first five people to answer correctly would get a free game of their choice from the D2D catalog. I decided to go to the Twitter website directly to get a better chance. As soon as I got there, I saw the question... it had been posted only 10 seconds previous. A quick Google search allowed me to reply with an answer not 30 seconds after the question had been posted. I was so convinced I was going to win, I actually started looking through their catalog. Well, 10-15 minutes later, I got a message congratulating me and asking me what game I wanted. I decided on Call of Duty: World at War for a couple of reasons:

• I didn't care if I had a boxed copy or not
• It was still $50 in store and was unlikely to drop in price soon
• I knew it had some really good co-op play

At this point, let me provide a mini-review of the Direct 2 Drive experience.

The short version: it sucked.

I've purchased a handful of games on Steam, mostly when they were cheap and on sale, and each time the experience was exceptionally painless. I start it downloading, can pause it, and just wait for it to finish. When it gets done, it's ready to play and fully patched.

But with D2D, you have to go to their website, login, then find the my account link (it was a bit hidden in my opinion). After that, you can download your game. While they seem to have a download manager that may ease the process (I generally HATE 3rd party download managers), it didn't just "work" in Firefox for some reason and I found myself downloading the game manually. 15+ hours later, I had all 7 GBs downloaded. The file I downloaded was a .zip file, which I then tried to extract. Just using the Windows 7 zip tools, I was absolutely unable to extract the zip file; the last file in the pack just wouldn't extract properly. If I was an "average" computer user, I would have given up right then and there. I, however, quickly pulled up 7-zip and was able to extract the last file. The install process was simple enough, but I was absolutely shocked when I discovered I was installing what was basically version 1.0 of the game. In a digital format like that, I saw no reason I couldn't have just downloaded a complete and final version. I quickly discovered that it would take 3 patches and 2 MORE GBs of downloading to get up to date. One more day elapsed, and I finally had the game downloaded and up to date. While I didn't mind jumping through hoops for a free game, it didn't exactly make me want to go buy a bunch more from their store.

With the game finally working, my friend and I started up a co-op game. The game actually does this pretty well as it has an integrated friends list and you can use that to invite each other to games. We didn't have to monkey with port forwarding or Hamachi or anything crazy like that. In today's age of NATs and shared internet connections, it's good to see somebody get something like that right.

In co-op play, both you and your friends play the role of the same character (even sharing the same viewpoint during cutscenes). In combat, the game plays basically exactly as it would in single player, but with two (or more of you). In short, it works really well. In addition, the game has a unique set of challenges for the co-op mode. This means that you can actually level up your multiplayer profile in co-op play, something I think is a REALLY nice touch. At the end of each chapter, we were able to compare kill counts, headshots, deaths, etc. This was fun as it allowed us to play and work together, while still maintaining a bit of competitiveness to the game. At the end of our three-hour play session, I knew one thing: ALL GAMES NEED CO-OP.

As for the actual game play, it was familiar and more or less exactly what I was expecting. For better or worse (in my opinion: for better), the game is basically Call of Duty 4 (same engine, etc) set during World War II. While the WWII market is already pretty saturated, they manage to make it fresh, mostly by focusing on some less played scenarios like the Americans fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. The game hasn't had many surprises so far, playing more or less exactly as I'd expect. All told, it's been a lot of fun, and I can't wait to finish the rest of the missions in co-op mode.

In conclusion: Direct 2 Drive = not great. World at War = a blast in co-op. Free games = AWESOME.