A Solid Step Sideways

Every once in a while there is a game that comes along that is so close to greatness that all you can think about it is what it could have been. Mass Effect 2 is one of those games.

Mass Effect 2 picks up more or less right where the first game leaves off; you've saved the Citadel from the Reapers (for now) and, if you import your character from the first game, you find that the universe is right where you left it. Within the first few minutes of the game, the Normandy is destroyed and your Shepard is killed (then quickly resurrected by the aptly named Lazarus project) acting as an oh so convenient excuse for why your character loses all his/her skills. As an added bonus, you can use this opportunity to change your appearance or even your class. I chose to change from Infiltrator to Vanguard (although I wish I hadn't) just to try a class with more biotic powers.

Immediately after gaining control of Shepard, I noticed the streamlining that BioWare had done with the UI... and by streamlining I mean going at it with a butcher knife. Instead of fixing the clunky inventory in the first game they removed it. Hot swapping ammo and armor was a bit annoying and slow (I guess), so it was cut. It was also apparently a little too immersion breaking to see the life/shield bars of you and you party so that's now gone too. Essentially, they boiled the core interactions down to those of a 3rd person shooter. You can move, shoot, and interact. That's it. Furthermore, in an absolutely asinine decision, they made it so weapons now use a form of ammo (cooling clips) rather than the very unique cool down mechanic that the first game had. By BioWare's own admission, they were trying to appeal more to the shooter crowd, but they plain and simply went too far.

The other huge change in Mass Effect 2 relates to exploring the galaxy in general. Instead of merely clicking a planet and going directly to it, you are now forced to actually pilot the Normandy around the galaxy. I felt like this was a good change. It made it feel like you were actually exploring the universe. However, instead of going down and driving the Mako or similar vehicle around planets exploring, BioWare put in a "fun the first three times only" mini-game. In this mini-game, you probe a planet for minerals. To get the best ending, you are required to mine dozens of these planets. I was pretty tempted to stop after doing it twice. Additionally, with the exploration of the Mako gone, moving from area to area on foot felt VERY artificial. I would be in one place, talk to a person, tell them I was "ready," then one loading screen later I was in another area. Instead of feeling like I was moving around a huge world, it made everything feel small.

In addition to being "teleported" from place to place, the game introduced the concept of missions. Essentially, a mission is a delineated set of content. The first game had such an idea, but didn't go so far as to make them so obvious. Here, when you finish a mission (which can be by talking to somebody, interacting with an object, killing someone, etc), a mission completed summary screen instantly appears and you are "teleported" back to where you started the mission. I found it VERY immersion breaking. It was as if they didn't think that the first one felt enough like a "game" so they made it feel more that way. All in all, the universe of Mass Effect 2 felt small and limited, rather than expansive like it should have.

Combat is something that BioWare did manage to do a good job with. The shooting felt good and the cover system worked really well. I am sort of getting tired of games that make combat "arenas" so obvious (walking into a room that is full of waist high barriers), but it wasn't quite as annoying here as it was in other games. The abilities also felt more interesting and useful, and even epic in some cases, but I was a little put off by the fact that most of them shared a global cool down. The fact that I couldn't use my Charge skill then immediately use another ability was lame. It also made the game as a whole much less strategic. In the first game, I would carefully manage my companions to make sure that they used the correct abilities at the correct time, one after another. In this game, however, since all abilities are on the same cool down, it was almost impossible to ever tell them to use anything as they would do SOMETHING every time they could and would be on cool down most of the rest of the time. Essentially, the combat was more action oriented and less strategic. Whether that is good or bad is something you will have to decide.

Weapons and armor was another thing I didn't like. Instead of having an inventory system (albeit a clunky one), you would select weapons and ammo pre-mission. However, the number of weapons and armor pieces is quite small and none of the weapons had any sort of stats at all, merely stating that they were upgrades to some other weapon. Basically you just always use your most recently obtained weapon and call it good. It definitely felt like they had taken away most of the choices; I enjoyed deciding if it was worth trading damage for a cool down. There were VERY few choices in regards to weapons and armor in Mass Effect 2.

Finally, the story itself was a bit lacking. You start the game with a huge Reaper threat and you end the game with a huge Reaper threat. In the middle is 80%+ that is nothing more than recruiting your team and making sure they are not "distracted" by completing their loyalty missions. Don't get me wrong, the loyalty missions were nearly always fantastic, but it felt like a game made up completely of side quests. The writing and voice acting maintain the very high level of quality that BioWare puts into all their games, but the overall story left something to be desired.

While it may sound like I didn't like this game at all, that's really only true in comparison to the first game. They tried to "fix" a few too many things from there. Some of them weren't broken and other they "fixed" by removing them wholesale. If I had played this game on it's own, I think I would have felt very different about it. Something that seems to be increasingly common. Mass Effect 2 is NOT a step forward in the series, but it isn't really a step backward... it's a solid step to the side. Hopefully BioWare will be able to to take all the best things from the first two games and put it into the third (Hammerhead hover tank please). In the meantime, I whole heartedly recommend you play this if you've played the first and enjoyed it. It's a fun game and a decent trip back into BioWare's most compelling universe.

Empire Avenue Verification Code: EAVB_EGACGLFMGJ

Brilliant But Unnecessary

When BioShock was released back in 2007, it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. A delicious mix of shooting, horror, and light role-playing elements, it was essentially a treat made from my favorite genre cookie cutter. With System Shock 2 being one of my previous favorites, I was excited to see how Irrational (er, I mean 2K... no, wait, I mean Irrational) would do with this "spiritual" successor. While some would argue that it wasn't as strong as System Shock 2, it is without a doubt a brilliant game and a wonderful piece of narrative.

When BioShock 2 was announced, I must admit that I wasn't all that excited. While normally I would be thrilled that one my favorite games was getting a sequel, BioShock not only didn't need a sequel, I couldn't even think of a way that one would make sense. It told its story; it didn't need anything else. I was further concerned when I heard that the sequel would have multiplayer; since BioShock was all about story and setting, multiplayer not only didn't make sense, it was unnecessary.

Despite all of my concerns, a week or so ago I found myself in Best Buy paying full price for BioShock 2. Despite some quibbles with the game, I feel that I got my money's worth.

While it is probably most fair to review BioShock 2 on its own merits, I find it impossible to not compare it to the first game. For comparison, I reinstalled BioShock and played the first 2-3 hours. BioShock starts in a way that introduces you to Rapture, plasmids, and even Andrew Ryan in a heavy and even spooky way. The game even features some amazing System Shock 2-style flashbacks showing what had befallen some of Rapture's deceased inhabitants. BioShock 2 has... none of that. It starts by informing you that you were a Big Daddy, you died, then you were alive again. There just isn't feeling behind your character or you being where you are. Where Rapture was an integral part of the story in the first game, it's merely the setting of the second.

Perhaps the biggest change between the two games is what I just mentioned: you play as a Big Daddy. This affects your game play in a number of different ways. First and perhaps foremost, your suit allows you to wield a plasmid in your left hand and a weapon in your right instead of being forced to swap back and forth between them. The ability to have both a weapon and a plasmid out was definitely a welcome change, but after going back into the first game, I must admit that it really didn't make all that much difference. In all honesty, a good portion of the time it merely served to make the battles much more frantic. While I've heard that swapping weapons and plasmids would briefly pause the game on the console, it gave no such respite in the PC version. Having to worry about having the correct weapon and plasmid out in the heat of the battle seemed to get really complicated at times.

The second big change that your Big Daddy suit effects is that in addition to merely harvesting or saving Little Sisters, you now have the option to adopt them. After adoption, they ride around on your back guiding you towards "angels." After you place them down gather, all the nearby splicers descend upon your location looking to sate their ADAM appetite. While this mechanic definitely felt like something that was supposed to be the most unique and new in the sequel, it was hands down my least favorite part of the entire game. I was provided with some interesting new pieces of equipment (deployable turrets, etc), but these sections simply weren't fun. Even though they were technically optional, they provided me with some additional ADAM making them full much more compulsory. In all fairness, the first couple of times I did one of these segments I thought they were interesting; they just weren't fun any time after that.

Other than that, being a Big Daddy doesn't really affect you at all. In fact, I didn't FEEL like a Big Daddy. I moved and otherwise did pretty much everything else the same way I did them in the first game. I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing, but my Big Daddy-ness just didn't really affect my game at all.

My next major complaint with the game is the default control scheme. It just doesn't make any sense at all. Besides having your mouse buttons mapped to opposite hands on screen, they moved around a lot of the actions from where they were in the first game. I remapped quite a few keys to something that made more sense, but was further annoyed when the on-screen prompts didn't update with my key changes, something that actually caused me to harvest a Little Sister I was trying to save. After firing up the first game, I found that the default mapping was different than what I had changed my keys to in BioShock 2, but in pretty much every case they actually made more sense than what I had changed them to. I have no idea why they decided to change the defaults so heavily from the first game, but it was definitely to the detriment of the game.

As for the overall story telling, it was a mixed bag. BioShock had some brilliant narration and an amazing twist... before trailing off pretty heavily in the latter part of the game. The first game also did an amazing job of using the game itself to tell the story via dynamic lighting, flashbacks, in-game movies, and other similar devices. BioShock 2's story was merely presented via radio communiqué and cutscenes. Even though it didn't tell the story as well as the first game, nor was it even close to as compelling, the story was still quite good in its own right and managed to stay strong (even pick up) in the final stages of the game. If I was evaluating the story of BioShock 2 on its own, I think I would be very pleased with it. In comparison to the first game, it fails in most areas, but succeeds in others.

At this point, you've probably noticed that I haven't talked about the actual gameplay much. Why? It is more or less EXACTLY the same as the first game. The enemies are almost exactly the same, the weapons are almost exactly the same, and the plasmids are almost exactly the same. While they did mix a couple of things up, for the most part the game plays more like an expansion pack than a sequel. I wouldn't necessarily call that a bad thing as the first game was a lot of fun to play, but I would have liked to see more improvements. They did add a couple of new enemy types (and removed at least one), which were pretty solid additions for the most part. They also switched up the weapons a little bit and adding some additional hacking options, such as remote hacking, but again, it was still remarkably similar to the first game. That reminds me of another pretty big change: hacking.

In the first game, hacking was a Pipe Dream-style mini-game that paused the game and required 10-30 or more seconds to complete depending on the difficulty and your skill level. While I didn't really have a big problem with it initially, after playing the second game and then going back to the first, I can see why they changed it. In the second game, entering the hacking mini-game does NOT pause the game. However, hacking itself goes a lot more quickly merely tasking you with stopping a moving needle inside of a correct zone, computer golf style. Depending on the difficulty of the hack, you have to stop it more times and in smaller zones. Even though I don't think this method of hacking is perfect either (failure was much more likely, later in the game it became wildly impossible), I do think it helped the flow of the game as hacking felt much more integrated into the overall world.

I think at this point, about the only thing I haven't mentioned is the ending. I went the "good" route, saving all the Little Sisters and the plot NPCs I came across. I was pretty impressed as this not only had a significant impact on my ending, but also on some things in the final portion of the game. If there is one thing that BioShock 2 does better than its predecessor, its the final portion of the game. While it fails to have anything resembling a significant twist, the story stays strong all the way through the end, reveals some interesting new insights into the minds of Little Sisters, and even provides you with a relatively fulfilling ending.

There IS one more thing I haven't discussed: the multiplayer component. I won't spend too much time on it, but it is so atrociously bad, I could hardly believe it. In nearly every way, it feels like a mode that was meant to go with the first game; the hud, weapons, play style, and even the maps are lifted almost wholesale from the original game. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it just isn't fun. There is less reason to have multiplayer in a BioShock game than there was to have a sequel. I desperately wish that they had skipped the mode in favor of spending more time with the single player experience. As it is, it is a mode a handful of people will play for a couple of weeks then will go largely forgotten by the gaming community at large.

So what's the final verdict? It's a brilliant, well made, satisfying and entertaining game. The game only fails to be amazing when sitting in the shadow of its brilliant predecessor. It is a must play by anybody who is a fan of the series or the genre. The only real, catastrophic problem with it is that is was an absolutely unnecessary game. While it would be fun to play more games in the universe, the universe just doesn't lend itself to more games (it didn't even really lend itself to a second one!). Pick up the game, play it, enjoy it, then pray that we don't get a third game.

There Is No Truth

Sometime in either late 2008/early 2009, I picked up the first Assassin's Creed on Steam for $5. I then pulled out my trusty Xbox 360 gamepad and proceeded to have 15 hours of delight with the game. When Assassin's Creed II (AC2) was announced to come out this last fall, I was excited, but also a bit disappointed that it wasn't going to come out for the PC right away. In October of last year, however, I picked up my first "next-gen" console: a PS3.

Back when I was playing Prince of Persia, I had a terrible graphics issue that basically made me stop playing. I realized at that time that unless the PC version of a game really adds something new or benefits from the mouse/keyboard controls (or is super cheap), it just isn't worth it to pick up a PC version over a console version. With that knowledge in hand, getting AC2 for my PS3 instead of waiting for the PC was a no brainer.

Due to a brother who is VERY good at taking hints, (It's on sale for $40! Get it for me for Christmas!) I received it as a Christmas present. You don't have to be a calendar wizard to see that it's taken me two full months now to finish it. It my defense, I had a LOT of PC games I had purchases during the Steam sales and only got around to really sitting down to play it recently. I was very glad I did.

AC2 picks up, for better or worse, exactly where the first game left off. You once again take the role of Desmond Miles, a reborn assassin who can revisit the memories of his ancestors. With the help of a friend, you escape from Abstergo, the evil corporation that was taking advantage of you in the first game. Before too long, you are back in the Animus reliving the experiences of another of your assassin ancestors, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. This is the beginning of my first real annoyance with this game: it starts too slowly.

Between escaping from Abstergo and reliving Ezio's early life (including his birth!), you spend multiple hours in the game before you ever even get your assassin weapons. I started and stopped playing this early section twice because it just didn't suck me in at all.

I also didn't enjoy the fact that this game didn't explain the Creed at all. The beginning of the first game did a much better job explaining what assassins are, what they stand for, and why you should care. Even after you obtain your assassin gear here, you are basically just sent off in the world on a crazy mission of revenge. I was quite a ways into the game before I really started to feel like a proper hardcore assassin instead of a cocky, spoiled brat who was good at fighting and climbing buildings. I will admit that while I initially found Ezio to be remarkably unlikable at first, his character grows immensely as the game progresses and ultimately becomes much deeper and interesting than Altair ever was.

While the beginning of the game may start slowly, it picks up shortly afterward and then rushes forward at a ridiculous pace. In fact, while I thought the story in the first was a little more interesting, the story in AC2 was much more substantial. The overall pace was quite good and each memory sequence was well contained. Even the end of the game was more or less satisfying. The second game definitely has a stronger story overall, despite the fact that the Creed plays a much smaller (almost non-existent) role. I did miss the more planned-out assassinations that the first game had, but the second game was much more varied and dynamic throughout.

Perhaps the place where the second game most excels over the first is in the game mechanics themselves. The developers really just took everything that was fun about the first game and made it better. The 1-2 button platforming was brought forward along with some additions such as being able to leap up to higher ledges while climbing. The mechanics felt very familiar, but somehow better. Additionally, the combat in the game was worked on a bit too. First of all, the developers added a pretty big handful of new weapons. In addition to the sword, knife, throwing knives, hidden blade (you get double blades in AC2) and fists, you also get: medicine, a wrist pistol, a poisoned blade, smoke bombs, and the ability to throw money on the ground to distract guards. While they weren't all great additions (the poisoned blade was pretty worthless), it was just really nice to have more variety in combat.

In one particularly fun moment, I was fighting two heavily armored, long sword wielding guards. After performing the dance with them for a bit, I was getting frustrated with my inability to damage them much. I then remembered my pistols, switched weapons, and shot them both in the face. The Indiana Jones scene flashed in my mind and I ran about my business.

Finally, in addition to the weapons you can carry, you can also pickup two handed axes, polearms, spears, and even things like brooms and fishing poles. You can also train additional skills in your special weapons, like sweeping people off their feet with spears and throwing sand in the face of your enemy while unarmed. If you wished, you could fight every battle a little bit differently, and I thought that was great.

Despite the combat improvements, combat was also one of the areas where this game really faltered compared to the first. Mostly in the fact that this game was WAY too easy. Basically, the developers gave us a plethora of new tools to use that make us more effective, but they neglected to make the enemies we face any more challenging. In the first game, to even assassinate an enemy you had to sneak up behind them otherwise they'd merely throw you off and attack. In AC2, you can walk right up to a group of guys and simultaneously stab two of them in the face with your hidden blades. You can then throw a smoke bomb on the ground (which stuns everyone who runs into it except for you) and stab the the rest of them two at a time. Get hit a few times? Not a problem! Merely use one of the 15 medicine vials you are carrying and go about your business. If you ever die in combat while playing this game, it'll be within the first few hours, because you are drunk, or because you are so mind numbingly terrible at games that you should be instantly euthanized. You'll definitely jump off a building a little bit a wrong a few times and die that way, but when it comes to the enemies you face, Ezio is borderline invincible.

In addition deeper story and more involved combat, they also added something pretty significant to this game: money. You collect money by looting people you kill (so little as to not be worth it), from chests strewn about the world (again, not significant enough to be worthwhile), from completing missions, and finally from your villa. Pretty early on, you take control of your family's villa in the country side. Your villa generates money every 20 minutes of in game time. It generates more money the more you put into it, i.e. spend money to improve your blacksmith, bank, and fix your mine (as examples) and it'll generate more for you later. You also get discounts at the vendors in your villa if you upgrade them. I figured out pretty quickly that it was smart to upgrade as much as possible early on, so sunk most of my money into getting everything fixed up. I was glad as I did, as I had plenty of money to buy all the new weapons (22 in all), armor upgrades (4 different, 4 piece armor sets to buy), and was evening able to buy paintings to further my villa's value. You also use money to get healed, refill your ammo (smoke bombs, bullets, and throwing knives), and to top off your medicine and poison pouches. While I thought that money was a great improvement to the series overall, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of endgame money sinks. In my current playthrough, I literally have 10 times as much as the single most expensive item ever cost. It would have been nice to have had something to drop money on even late in the game.

As you probably could tell so far, I basically spent the entire game comparing it to the first. While I felt like this game was stronger of the two, I kept thinking that the first game had done a bunch of things better. To see if I was right or not, I decided to fire up the first game. I didn't even spend 15 minutes there. Despite my complaints, the second game truly is a full improvement over the first. That's not to say the first game is bad or even that the second game is better in every way, but as a complete product AC2 was a very solid upgrade. I'm very anxious to see where they take the series next (throwing my vote in for 1700's England or France).

Finally, I'd like to discuss the downloadable content. I picked up both pieces of DLC, Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities for $4 each. I also bought the additional three tombs that come with Bonfire for an extra $3. All told, I thought that both pieces of DLC were solid additions. Battle of Forli adds some great open combat sections while the Bonfire of the Vanities adds the best assassination missions in the entire game. I thought both of them were easily worth $4, even if neither of them were very long. I was, however, disappointed by the fact that they each felt like they were pieces of missing content from the main game. Instead of feeling like something new, that would add to the game, I felt like I paid $8 to fill in a gap in the story. While that did annoy me, I really thought they were both worthwhile. Even the additional tombs that I paid a $1 each for were fun. If you are considering the DLC and haven't played the game yet, I would recommend buying them before you finish the game, however, as they fill in memory sequences 12 and 13 (14 is the last one), so if you buy them before then, they'll nicely fill in a missing piece of the story.

Let me sum it up for you: Assassin's Creed II is an absolutely brilliant game. It's a worthy addition to an exceptionally solid franchise and a very fascinating universe. If you enjoyed the first game, you absolutely have to play this one. If you haven't played the first game, you absolutely have to play them both. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.

Machinarium

Machinarium is a quaint little indie game that came out last year to relatively high praise. The folks over at Game-Central.org were huge fans, even going so far as to make it a top contender for Game of the Year for 2009. Because of all the good things I had heard about the game, I was pretty excited play it and also had relatively high expectations for it. I picked up as part of a six-game indie bundle for a mere $20. While the game is undoubtedly brilliant, it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

For any of you not familiar, the game is a classic point-and-click style adventure game featuring inventory (with item combinations) and other similar adventure game trappings. The main character is a spunky little robot who has the ability to make himself taller and shorter and store items... by eating them.

Loved

• Music. The music in Machinarium is absolutely amazing. If you are into video game music at all (I'm really not, but still enjoyed it), you will be blown away by the music here. I absolutely can't think of any game that had better music. It's so good, I know of people who paid pretty high fees to buy vinyl soundtracks from overseas. It really is that good.
  
  
• Art. Everything in Machinarium was hand-drawn and then rendered frame by frame in Photoshop. The game is just beautiful to look at and all the animations are beautiful. It's the kind of game where you could take a screen shot at pretty much any time and set it as your wallpaper.
  
  
• Puzzles. I loved the puzzle variety in this game. There were mini-game style puzzles (even a full Space Invaders game!), as well as more traditional adventure game style puzzles like listening to a radio and then playing the same tune back into a miniature piano like device. None of the puzzles in this game felt awkward or contrived to me; I never once had to use a rubber chicken as a pulley (Fate of Atlantis I'm looking at you) or anything like that.
  
  
• Narrative style. I was a little torn by this, but in the end I really liked it. Instead of using either written or spoken dialog, all the robots communicate in the game using pictures. In one area, I saw a sad wrench shaped robot. I "told" him that I wanted to use him to unscrew a large cap and he "told" me about how his record player was stolen and that he was sad. I was able to figure out exactly what he wanted me to do without the use of any words whatsoever. It worked surprisingly well and by the end of the game it had really grown on me.
  
  
• Hint system. The way they implemented their hint and walkthrough system felt so brilliant to me, I want other people to steal it. For every screen, you can press the hint button and your little protagonist robot will "think" of what the overall goal of the area is. His thought bubble gives you a valuable clue in what you are trying to accomplish without really spoiling anything for you. I thought that it worked so well, I found myself using it on pretty much every screen just to see what it would show. In addition, the game features a full walkthrough built into the game. To access the walkthrough, however, you are forced to play through another mini game in which you guide a bullet shooting key to a lock. Once the walkthrough book is open, it uses beautiful images to show you what you should be doing. (Just as a side note: I was able to quite easily finish the game without using the walkthrough, but I did use the hint system quite liberally.)
  

Hated

• It's a Flash game. Machinarium was made in Flash and plays in a wrapped Flash viewer. There is no reason that this game couldn't have been a web game. While some would think this a minor complaint, it bothered me more than I thought it would. One of the big problems with Flash is that the right mouse button doesn't do anything but bring up a right click menu to tell me about Flash. Also, when the game was in full screen mode, it was surrounded by blackness (admittedly not necessarily a Flash issue), however it was very annoying as lots of the areas were very dark and it made it almost impossible to see where the "screen" ended and the blackness began. That wouldn't have been much of an issue, but the only way to access the inventory was to mouse over the hotspot at the top of the "screen," click the item, try to use it, then drag it back to the hotspot and click to put it back. I would have loved to be able to put items back by pressing escape or right mouse clicking (I tried it do it throughout the entire game), but alas, the limitations of their development environment didn't allow it.
  
  
• Length. I absolutely don't feel like all games need to be really long; in fact, I've found myself enjoying shorter games more and more. However, Machinarium felt too short too me. The game doesn't take more than a few hours tops (unless you you fail at puzzles) and left me wanting more, but not in a good way. For how sprawling the city looking to be, it felt downright microscopic. Additionally, the game featured almost no back tracking, which could be good depending on how you look at it, but for the most part just made the game feel smaller and shorter.
  

Machinarium really is a good game. I would easily recommend it to anybody who loves adventure games and even to people who don't normally games. It has a charm that few games have. While I definitely had some complaints with a couple of things, I liked what I played. Hopefully this just means we'll see more similar games from this team.

Should have been Fahrenheit in the US too

Last week, I managed to finish Indigo Prophecy while waiting to get some time on my PS3 to play Assassin's Creed II. In short: it wasn't what I was expecting. Not quite a game and not quite a movie, Indigo Prophecy occupies an area somewhere in between. I think the interactive experience they were shooting for is a very novel and interesting idea, but I'm not sure they quite captured it here.

Warning for anybody who hasn't played the game yet: I'm going to talk HEAVY spoilers in here, especially considering the ending. If you haven't played and don't want it spoiled, stop reading now.

Loved

• Interactive movie. I really liked the idea of "playing" an interactive movie. It was a unique experience that I don't think I have ever had before. Instead of merely taking control of a single protagonist and working to "win" the game, you actually take control of both a murderer and the detectives tasked with catching him. I found myself very torn at times and not quite sure who to root for. The separate story lines did fully converge late in the game and it became clear who the villain was. The narrative was strong and interesting, and it made for a great experience.
  
  
• Game-like sections. Indigo Prophecy has two main gameplay areas: one plays more like a game with you controlling the character directly and one that is more of a cutscene with limited interaction. I very much enjoyed the areas focused on gameplay. For example, the start of the game is amazing. You witness one of the main characters murdering somebody in a public restroom and then are given control of him during which you frantically try to figure out how to clean up, hide the evidence, and get out of the restaurant. Soon after, you take control of the detectives and are tasked with investigating the murder scene your other character just left. Oddly enough, I even found myself enjoying the more mundane actions like taking a shower and getting dressed.
  

Hated

• The ending. The story in Indigo Prophecy is good up until a particular turning point (finding out the truth about Agatha). After that, the story takes a very strong turn directly into Crazytown. Everything after that feels rushed and most of it makes almost no sense at all. Furthermore, all three of the games various endings are wildly unfulfilling and left me filling pretty empty even when I got the "good" ending. It felt to me like they condensed what should have been three or so more hours of game into the last one. It just wasn't good. While reading a FAQ after I finished the game to learn about the endings/choices I didn't get/take, I found these glorious quotes very accurately describing how I felt about the latter part of the game.
  
  Concerning Jade/Agatha:
  
  

  Another major turning point! Give the child to Agatha if you want, it's your choice. Now for a friendly warning...If you enjoyed the plot up to this point, turn the game off after giving the kid to Agatha or keeping it to yourself. Quit the game, deinstall it, forget about it... You're still here? Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you... *spoilers* What. The. FUCK. is an Artificial FUCKING Intelligence doing in a game about the OCCULT and about MAYAN RELIGION?! Seriously, fuck you David Cage. Fuck you.

  Concerning the Carla/Lucas Relationship:
  
  

  Right, you thought that, at this point, you had seen all stupid plot twists, right? Well, guess what buddy, you're wrong. One kiss and...Aaahhhh, my eyes! Let's take two second to mourn the death of a potentially good story-line before we move on. See? Told ya you should have uninstalled the game while you could...

• Quick time events. While the half of the game that was more "game-like" was enjoyable, the other half wasn't. This section was basically nothing but cutscenes in which you much press keys at defined times following a Simon Says sort of pattern. The first 3 times I did these events I found them interesting, but they got very, very old long before the game was done. There were also plenty of them that were relatively unnecessary to the story such as the boxing match and the basketball game. While they were interesting in a way, at the end I think they were a failed game mechanic. There should have been variety and even times where they just didn't exist at all.
  
  

I liked Indigo Prophecy, even with the ridiculousness that was the last hour or so of the game. I think the interactive movie idea is one that is relatively unique in the saturated game market and playing this game made me want to play Quantic Dream's new game, Heavy Rain. I think there is plenty that could be improved upon here, but for the most part Indigo Prophecy accomplished what it was trying to.

Pick it up for cheap if you missed it, otherwise start getting excited for Heavy Rain like I am.

Army of Two

Other than perhaps GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, I've never been a big fan of console shooters. With few exceptions, I find myself wishing that I had a keyboard and mouse in just about every situation. I've recently come to understand that when the game goes third person, I don't hate the gamepad quite as much. Although as I can be attested to in my recent Uncharted review, it can still be enough to ruin a game for me.

Despite all of that, I recently picked up Army of Two for my PS3. While normally I wouldn't even considering purchasing such a game, my wife was out for the evening, my cousin's wife was watching my daughter, and my cousin wanted to play something with me. Since we were craving something we could do from the couch and the game was only $20 new, I decided to give it a try. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

In Army of Two, you and a friend play as two mercenaries working for a privatized military group. Salem and Rios are forced to work together doing things like helping each other up ledges or taking turns holding a shield/shooting. The story is pretty standard fare: the guy who starts out good but is obviously evil turns out to actually be evil. The game plays in third person (as you probably guessed) and is top/bottom split screen.

Loved

• Co-op play. Army of Two is completely saved by its co-op play. Playing with a friend is an absolute blast. The game does a great job of making you work together, such as one person drawing fire so the other person can sneak around and shoot people in the back. The game is also very well balanced for two people. While there is a single player mode (I suppose your partner would be AI controlled?), I can't imagine wasting any time on it. Seems like it just wouldn't be fun at all.
  
  
• Gun upgrades. The game features a money/upgrade system where you get cash for completing primary and secondary objectives that you can use to purchase both new guns and upgrades for those guns. Most upgrades are practical things: clip increases, damage upgrades, accuracy boosts, and so forth. However, each gun also has the absolutely ludicrous "bling" upgrade. It does exactly what you (and Fitty) would expect it to: it covers your weapon with gold and diamonds. While the option is undoubtedly ridiculous, I found it to be very fitting with the overall tone of the game and was a fun thing to do with all of my favorite guns.
  

Hated

• It's a console shooter. At the end of the day, this still annoys me. While I specifically purchased this game to play with my cousin while sitting on the couch, if it had been a PC game with us either playing in the same room or chatting via Skype, it would have been a better game. That's really all there is to it. The mouse/keyboard control scheme is better for shooters than a gamepad and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.
  
  
• Cliche and predictable story. I could see the entire story from the very beginning of the game. In fact, the plot twists were so unbelievably obvious, I thought that they couldn't possibly be true. No writer would be that obvious would he? Well, he was. The game was oozing with "bro-ness" and the story itself wasn't interesting in the slightest. The story did little more than provide a reason for doing what you were doing. (To its credit, it made more sense than the story of Modern Warfare 2. I suppose that's something.)
  
  
• No same machine versus mode. Unless I wasn't understanding the menu system properly, I couldn't play versus mode with my cousin. It appeared I could only play versus against people on line and then only in groups of 4. It seemed quite ridiculous to me that after playing through the campaign with my buddy, I couldn't then play against him.
  
  

This game is what I would call a "popcorn movie" game. It's not deep, it's not special, but at the end you find yourself thoroughly entertained. I would never recommend it to somebody who only intended to play it single player or even in online versus, but for $20, you and a buddy will find an entertaining afternoon/evening here.

I Don't Let People Rent Space In My Head

I like to consider myself a hardcore gamer. As such, I make a sporting attempt to play each and every game that other serious gamers consider to be really good. I have a level 80 character in WoW in part because I felt like I needed that experience on my gaming resume, and I still believe that you aren't a hardcore PC gamer unless you've given WoW a serious chance... but I digress.

One of the games I've heard about for a long time, but haven't ever gotten around to playing was Psychonauts. When Steam had it on sale for $2 a couple weeks ago, I knew that I officially no longer had an excuse.

Whenever I start into such a highly lauded game, I find that I look at the game with an overly critical eye. I seem to take some sort of sadistic delight in disagreeing with the masses; however, as was the case with WoW (it really is the best MMO out there), I turned out to be a huge fan of Psychonauts.

If, like I was, you are unfamiliar with the game, I'll describe it briefly. You play as a ten-year-old boy who has run away from home to attend the Psychonauts summer training camp. The game is a console-style platformer in the vein of a Mario 64 or similar. While I've heard plenty of people say that the game plays just fine with a mouse and keyboard, within one minute of starting the game I was grabbing for my gamepad. I played the rest of the game with it and couldn't imagine doing it any other way.

Loved

• Uniqueness. I have never played anything like Psychonauts before. The game really is in a league all its own. While the actual game mechanics are nothing too original, the story/setting itself is totally unique. The thing about this game that really sets it apart is the excursions you make into the psyches of those you come in contact with. Each person is haunted by some sort of a demon: sorrow over the death of a loved one, anguish due to a failed relationship, and so forth. These demons all manifest themselves in very interesting ways. In one mind you find yourself squaring off with Napoleon Bonaparte in a "strategy" game. It's up to you to recruit the villagers you need for your militia and find the weapons and food they require. In yet another, you find yourself in a sort of neon, Mexican wrestling, bullfighting inspired world. Each mind was completely different from the previous and I found them all very entertaining.
  
  
• Powers. The other thing I was really impressed with is that they managed to come up with as many psychic powers as they did. While some of them had very little usefulness (Pyrokinesis), others (Levitation) were insanely useful. There was an even a power to see through the eyes of another (Clairvoyance), which, despite the fact that it was only really necessary in a single mind/world was constantly entertaining to use on people and see what they thought of you. My only complaint here is that I wish that they had found ways to make all the powers more continually useful, but it's a minor gripe at best.
  
  
• Humor. The spunky protagonist, Raz, was the source of never ending entertainment for me. Despite the fact that a large portion of the main characters were children, the game was definitely written for adults as the humor was quite mature. Some of the conversations in this game literally made me laugh out loud. One of the real highlights for me was when I fought Kochamara. The boss calls out each move right before he does it, and the first times he called out "Overly Intricate Combination" and "Hard to Avoid Area Attack" I ended up getting smacked around as my reflexes plummeted due to my laughter. The writing, story, and setting here are absolutely top notch and are definitely the reason the game is regarded as highly as it is.
  
  

Hated

• Bugginess. This was one of the buggiest games I've played in recent memory. On top of a single Blue Screen I got while playing, sound choppiness issues, and some very serious framerate issues, the game manifested an absolutely crippling graphics bug. It happened 3 or 4 times during the course of my playthrough. While playing, the graphics would suddenly alter. Raz would become completely silver and many of the textures in the world would fail to render, including the 2D graphics of the interface. That meant that I couldn't even save the game and restart. I did discover that if I changed "zones" even though the graphics were still messed up, I could see the menu and save. The challenge of trying to either navigate back to a zone change or find the bacon/salts in my invisible inventory to leave the mind I was in was very frustrating. I did manage to play through all of my annoyances though, but they were definitely there.
  
  
• Last gen. While this game was probably a lot better back when if first came out now, I found the graphics to be notably last gen. Even with all settings maxed, there were plenty of low quality textures and jagged edges. It wasn't enough to detract from enjoying the game, but it was enough to be noticeable. Along the same lines, the game didn't have any support for my Xbox 360 gamepad's trigger buttons which were required to have enough buttons to properly control the game. I ended up using a third party app to map the trigger buttons to keyboard keys. Again, this wasn't a huge issue, but definitely a mark against the game.
  
  

Psychonauts is a fun, thoroughly entertaining game. There really just isn't any game out there that's like it. Despite rather commonplace platforming mechanics, it manages to deliver something amazing. It really is a shame that the game sold so poorly; a proper "next gen" sequel would be excellent. It's also very unfortunate that the game falls into the "it was a great game, but..." category due to the crippling bugs that are still around.

My recommendation here is definitely to play it if you haven't. It's a very unique game and should be something every gamer should experience. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd recommend the PC version here (due to the bugs) unless you can get it for really cheap. If you've still got a PS2 or an Xbox lying around, you'd probably be better served to play it there.

Psychonauts truly is one of a kind.

GTA Mars

I'm still trying to burn down the pile of Steam games that the amazing Holiday Sale provided for me. This last week, I managed to finish off Red Faction: Guerrilla.

On paper, Red Faction seems like the perfect game for me. I mean, it's GTA on Mars! With destructible buildings! I like the GTA style of gameplay and I've always been a nut for good physics in games, so I was fully convinced that Red Faction was going to be fully amazing.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.

For any of you not familiar with the game, the basic idea is that you come to Mars to do some legit mining work, but immediately become embroiled in the cause of the Faction after your brother is killed by the evil corporation that is controlling the planet. The game plays very much like a Grand Theft Auto game; you run around on foot with a variety of weapons, can get into vehicles of various kinds, and you complete both main mission and side objectives. You are tasked with liberating each of the various sectors of Mars and eventually driving the overlords from the planet.

Loved

• Destruction. This game is all about pure, wanton destruction. With few exceptions, every building in the game is destructible. You can drive cars through buildings, blow up their supports with sticky bombs, and even just take them down with your trusty sledge hammer. The destructible environment is definitely the big selling point of this game and I must admit that it delivers. I had a blast (pun intended) blowing stuff up and driving large trucks directly into turret filled buildings. It truly is a very well implemented game mechanic.
  
  
• Mission variety. There are quite a few different side quest types and even though I didn't enjoy some of them (see below), there were a lot of choices here. My favorite one was the demolitions master. In each of these, you are given a target to destroy (a building, some pipes, etc) and a very specific set of equipment. Sometimes it's just your sledge and other times you get thermabaric rockets. Each of these has a very generous completion time and stingy pro time. There were some of these missions I literally attempted dozens of times trying to hit the pro time. I had a ton of fun with these. Lots of the time I was reminded of bowling: you throw your ball (or set off your explosives) then just as you often see bowlers leaning left or right to "steer" the ball or get that last pin to fall down, I was finding myself doing something similar trying to will the building to topple. Besides the demolition missions, other favorites included Heavy Metal (get inside a Mech Warrior style walker and kill a set number of enemies) and some that had you riding on a the back of a vehicle shooting a turret.
  

Hated

• Am I there yet? Red Faction seems to delight in making you drive all over the planet. Besides the missions that are nothing more than driving a car halfway (or all the way!) across Mars, it felt like every mission would have me drive to the starting spot then drive somewhere else to actually do the mission. It got REALLY old to always need to drive somewhere else. While the game does offer some quick travel options, in at least 2 of the zones, the safe house (where you quick travel to) is at one side of a really long zone. In all seriousness, when I was done playing this game, my middle finger hurt from holding down the "W" key to move forward. In fact, it still aches a bit, and I finished playing this game last Thursday! And yes, I played the GTA games with the keyboard, and no, they didn't make my finger hurt the same way.
  
  
• Inconsistent Difficulty. Most of the Red Faction missions seemed to either be trivially easy or insanely difficult. The last mission in particular took me at least a dozen attempts (with each attempt being 5+ minutes). In addition, the save points in many of the missions were very unforgiving requiring me to repeat large sections of the game. Meanwhile, some of the other missions boiled down to little more than driving my car somewhere and shooting a couple of guys. Side missions in particular suffered from this bipolar difficulty scale, which I'll discuss below.
  
  
• Terrible side missions. While I appreciated the variety, some of the side missions were just terrible, mostly because they were just way too hard. A particular class of mission had you infiltrate a building of some kind, liberate some hostages and drive back to base. These hostages were all guarded quite heavily. You basically have two choices: perpetually kill guards (as you kill more, your wanted level goes up and more come) or kill very few and merely make a break for it with your comrades. Unfortunately, all the comrades seem to have large targets painted on their backs as they are gunned down insanely fast. I only did a handful of these (as they annoyed the hell out of me) and I nearly always lost all but one of the hostages. The other truly bad side mission were the ones that had you get in a random car parked somewhere (often somewhere VERY remote) then drive it to a safe house. Not the nearest safe house, mind you, but a specific one. The one that was nearly always the absolute farthest away from your current. I won't even mention the fact that the time requirements were often very unforgiving and you could easily drive for 4-5 minutes and still fail the mission.

I've already perfectly summed up Red Faction: it's GTA on Mars... with destructible buildings. If you are a big fan of the genre, you'll probably find something to enjoy here. If you aren't, it really just isn't worth your time. Red Faction: Guerrilla is an absolutely brilliant game mechanic stuffed into a very mediocre game. There were plenty of other minor annoyances here, such as the absolute astronomical number of "collectibles" this game has which have little purpose other than to provide something to wrap achievements around. The game also has a third faction (the marauders) who could have been a great addition to the game, but are barely used at all. It physically pains me when developers come up with such amazing ideas but fail to provide us with a complete package.

I suppose it comes down a single question: was it fun? I'd have to say that it was despite the problems here. Whether or not it's enjoyable enough to overcome its shortcomings is an exercise I'm going to leave up to the reader.

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts

Ever since I finished Dragon Age, I've been clearing out my backlog at a startling rate. My most recent conquest was the delightful new Ghostbusters game. I don't think I'll spend too much more time describing the game; it's Ghostbusters. That's pretty much all you need to know. Some basic facts though: you play as an unnamed rookie trying out for a spot on the team and the game plays from a 3rd person perspective.

I've been waffling about whether my final thoughts posts should be in the Loved/Hated format or in a more article based format, but for Ghostbusters I'll use Love/Hate as I think it makes more sense. If you are one of the 5 people who read my blog and have an opinion one way or the other, please be sure to let me know.

Loved

• Writing. Ghostbusters was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis... and it shows. The writing is absolutely top notch. The story was engaging, interesting, and in perfect harmony with the Ghostbusters movies. They could have EASILY made some minor modifications to the script and turned this game into a movie. In addition to the story itself, the game is full of witty banter between the various cast members that feels 100% Ghostbusters authentic. I was completely blown away by who engaging this game was.
  
  
• Voice Acting. Not only was the game written by original cast members, but they managed to pull together practically the entire cast to reprise their roles as well. Having the original actors lend their voices was amazing. I'm positive that the game would have been quite lacking with sound-alikes. As it was, they all delivered great performances and felt totally in character. You can tell that they all have a soft spot for Ghostbusters; not a single one of provided a "phoned in" performance.
  
  
• Weapons. If I were to ask you to name Ghostbusters weapons you would probably come up with the two I would have come up with: the Proton pack and the ghost trap. Bonus points if you also named the PKE meter. While these are without a doubt the quintessential Ghostbusters weapons, if they were the only weapons in a game of this magnitude, I think it's safe to say we would all be disappointed. I was definitely a little bit concerned by the additional weapons; I really wanted to them feel like they belong to the universe. I'm happy to say that my fears were unfounded. In addition to the weapons previously mentioned, you also have a Proton ball you can launch from your Proton pack. From there, you can switch your pack to Dark Matter mode (a shotgun like weapon and a stasis slowing beam), Slime Mode (slime spray for Black Slime enemies and a slime tether for physics puzzles), and finally Meson mode (a high damage blast/marker and a high speed marker seeking mode). Everyone of the weapons had a use and all were perfectly suited for a Ghostbusters game.
  
  
• I'm a Ghostbuster! This game just did a remarkable job at making you feel like a part of the Ghostbusters team. They compliment you when you do well, they give you grief when you fail, and they pick you up when you get injured. In addition to that, you spend the whole game wrangling ghosts into traps, watching Venkman get slimed, and you even get to fight iconic ghosts like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. It really was just a lot of fun to get to rub shoulders with the Ghostbusters for a handful of missions.
  
  

Try as I might, I can't seem to come up with anything about this game that I hated. While I don't want that to be a sign that I thought this game was perfect, there just wasn't anything that was obviously bad. Even though the game wasn't very long (10 hours or less) it was solid all the way through. The controls game was definitely put together with a console in mind (even with the sensitivity turned all the way up it was still too slow for me), but it really wasn't that bad. Quite honestly, this game was not only a very enjoyable game but a solid addition to the Ghostbusters universe.

If you have even a passing interest in the Ghostbusters franchise, you owe it to yourself to play this game. If, like me, you have fond memories of playing some of the original games (NES version FTW), this will be a very delightful return to ghost ridden New York. Let me put it this way: playing this game so strongly got me in a Ghostbusters mood, I added both movies to the top of my Netflix queue. I seriously hope we see more movies and/or games soon before those involved get too old to participate.

Zombie Driver

During the delicious Steam sales that occurred at Thanksgiving and Christmas, I snagged Zombie Driver for a paltry $2.50. As it turns out, that was about how much this short but simple game was worth.

Zombie Driver is a mix between Crazy Taxi, Left 4 Dead, and GTA 2. The game is viewed in the top down style of GTA 2 and has you control your car with either the keyboard or a gamepad (I tried both and they each worked fine). With your mouse, you can control the camera and shoot your weapon.

The gameplay is relatively basic, you are tasked with driving to a handful of locations, clearing the zombies out that have taken up residence, and then transporting the survivors inside back to the base. Along the way, expect to run into piles upon piles of zombies. Most merely swarm your car, some throw toxic barrels at you, and the nastiest explode when you get close causing massive damage to your car.

To kill (re-kill?) said zombies, you can either shoot them with one of the various weapons you can obtain or you can merely run them over. The weapons themselves were definitely my least favorite part of the entire game. While the weapon variety was actually pretty decent (machine gun, rocket launcher, flamethrower, and rail gun), just about everything else about the weapons was not.

First of all, the game is VERY stingy with ammo. After picking up a weapon, it's possible to burn through all of the ammo just clearing out the first group of zombies you run across. I'm not kidding; you get 5-7 rockets/rail slugs and perhaps 5-10 seconds worth of continuous machine gun/flamethrower fire per pickup. What that means is that I spent at least half if not three fourths of my time without ammo just ramming zombies.

I think I could have been more forgiving of the low ammo counts if I could have picked up all the guns at once, however the game limits you to carrying a single gun at a time. If I could have waded into each battle with a full stockpile of all the ammo types, I think the game would have been MUCH more enjoyable.

The game provides 5 or so different cars (although the bus pretty much makes all the other ones pointless) along with three different car upgrades (speed, armor, and ramming). You can also upgrade each of your weapons three times. Money for upgrading is obtained by completing both primary and secondary objectives in missions. The game just barely unlocks the ability to upgrade ahead of your cash flow, meaning that unless you try to upgrade most of your cars you can pretty much always afford to buy the best of everything. I thought the upgrades added a bit of flavor to the game despite being relatively uninspired.

The weakest thing in the whole game is definitely the story. The beginning and ending cutscenes have no voice over and the briefings that occur between missions are nothing more than easily skippable walls of flavor text. Basically, there was a zombie outbreak and you are slowly trying to rescue people that will supposedly help. At least I *think* that's what it was about.

At the end of the day, Zombie Driver provided me with 3 or so hours of pure enjoyment. The game is fun for what it is and really doesn't try to be anything it's not. I would easily recommend it to anybody who could pick it up cheaply via Steam. I certainly wouldn't pay more than $10 for it and even that feels like a stretch due to the lack of content. It's definitely an enjoyable romp and can make for an excellent homework/work/life diversion.

Charted

For any of you who may not know me in a real life, I'm a bit of an anal-retentive completionist. While it's not as bad as it could be in the era of achievements and trophies, I have this powerful need to finish every game I start. The only exceptions are usually games that I deem to be so terrible as to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever or games in which the genre in question bores me to tears. Of the top of my head, I can only think of one game in recent memory that fit ones of those categories: Heroes of Might and Magic V. Of the two, it falls into the latter category, although it definitely had some redeeming qualities; I may revisit it some day.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, shortly before buying my PS3, my good friend TheShums let me borrow a handful of his games. Among those was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This was around the same time that the second game came out and everyone was falling over themselves saying how good it was. It was supposed to be similar to the the first game but better. I decided that I would play the first one in preparation for eventually playing the second one.

The game started out well enough. Right off the bat, I was blown away by how good the voice acting was and just the sound in general; it sounded like I was getting surround sound from my stereo TV! For the first handful of chapters, I was quite pleased, the game was basically Tomb Raider-like with a relatively likable male character. Soon though, I got my first real taste of combat.

Combat in Uncharted is often compared to Gears of War. Having never played Gears, I have absolutely no idea how apt the comparison is. All I will say is that if that's what Gears of War plays like, I'm NEVER going to play it.

The combat is laughable in its ridiculousness. With few exceptions, the enemies appear in what I've heard referred to as "arenas." Basically, they are areas that have obvious cover points (pillars, waist high walls, etc) with enemies at the far side. You enter the arena, find cover, and pop up and slowly shoot each and every enemy. Most areas have 1-3 respawn triggers too, meaning that after you kill the initial batch of enemies, more of them appear. Kill that batch, you get a third batch. The combat felt like I was entering a shooting gallery. I just waited for the man looking thing to pop up or out from behind its obstacle and then proceed to shoot it.

The painfulness of these encounters was further exacerbated by the console controls. If I had been playing this with a mouse and keyboard, I'm quite certain that although it still would have been terrible, it wouldn't have been quite as bad.

Let me just step back for a moment. You may be thinking that I just don't enjoy console shooter and/or platformers. I may have thought you were right, but I was a huge fan of the most recent Tomb Raider games (played them both with a gamepad) and I also sunk quite a few hours this weekend into Army of Two on the PS3 which I enjoyed quite a bit. While I'd like to say that I'm merely opposed to this type of game, I don't think that's it. I'm opposed to the type of gameplay that is contained inside of Uncharted. While the cover/pop/shoot system is perhaps a matter of taste, I don't like it, I don't think it's fun, and it absolutely ruined this game for me.

So what about everything else? Uncharted is surprisingly well written. The story makes sense for the most part, has a mild twist or two, and allows you to visit a pretty big handful of interesting locations. Platforming is serviceable at best and maddening at worst. The save points were nearly always way too sparse, forcing me to replay large platforming sections or spend multiple attempts in the most recent enemy arena.

I really, really wanted to like Uncharted. In fact, I disliked it so much, I felt like I was playing it wrong. After I initially started the game, I stopped playing completely about 5 chapters in as I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. I didn't touch the game for a month or more, then the completionist in my kicked in again and I decided to power through and finish it. After spending the better part of a morning with it, I learned I was still nowhere near the end and quit again. I probably would have never touched it again, but TheShums and I started talking about it, and I actually found myself feeling guilty for not finishing it. One more weekend later and I managed to get all the way through the game.

I'm unsure why I kept coming back to it; I just didn't enjoy the core gameplay. I don't know if it's because I'm a glutton for punishment, a gaming connoisseur, or just a little stupid. Probably all three.

I suppose I can see why people like the game. It tells a great story and is very well put together. I don't think I'd ever recommend it to anybody though, because unless you enjoy the combat (and I suppose some people do), the game falls flat. The best voice acting and story in the world can't save a game that just isn't fun to play.

Power Calc Version 1

When I switched from Windows XP to Windows Vista, the only thing I found that I missed that I couldn't bring forward was the brilliant Power Calculator contained in the PowerToys bundle. The calculator was easy to use, loaded fast, and was just a huge improvement over the built in Windows calculator. I took it upon myself to write a replacement calculator for a couple of reasons:

1. I had been looking for a C# project for a while
2. I wanted something super light weight and fast
3. I wanted it to do EXACTLY what I wanted it to do

Power Calc was born a while later. I've made a few tweaks to it over the last handful of months and I'm pretty happy with the current version.

Features:

• It stores every result in a variable ($1, $2, etc), you can use that variable in future calculation, e.g. $1 + $2 + 3838.
  
  
• You can use the up and down arrows to pull in previously entered equations.
  
  
• If you start an expression with a standard operation (+,-,/,* currently), it will automatically pull in the last result.
  
  
• You can store values in variables and use them later. Type in "x=3", press enter, then do "9*x" and you'll get the result you expect.
  

Caveats:

• The software requires the .NET framework (unsure which version exactly), but most people have that these days, so go download it if you don't.
  
  
• The licenses involved (both mine and for the features I used) can be found in the included README.txt file.

Installation Instructions:

• Download the file from FileDen.com here: http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/2/6/2752189/PowerCalc.zip
  
  
• Extract the zip file and run the setup.exe file.
  
  
• Ignore the certificate warning; I couldn't be bothered trying to get that straightened out.
  
  
• The application should now be searchable in your Start Menu if you just type in "Power Calc." (Unsure where it installs it quite honestly; let me know if you figure it out).
  
  
• To uninstall, merely visit Programs and Features in the Control Panel and remove it there.

I'd love to get any and all feedback that people would have. I'd also be very receptive to any feature requests. You'll quickly notice that I didn't implement the unit conversions or the graphing features from the PowerToy version, don't bother asking for them as they just aren't features I would ever use or care about.

Drake Era: Beginnings

If it seems like it's been a while since I wrote anything, it's merely because I've been playing nothing but Dragon Age: Origins for the last couple of weeks. Dragon Age is one of those games that you would find a picture of if you looked up "epic RPG" on Wikipedia. It is epic in pretty much every sense of the word.

Dragon Age follows what has become a pretty standard format for BioWare RPGs; you create a single character of a class of some kind, recruit party members that you can interact with (and romance), and work your way through both story and side quests. While it shares a lot of similarities with Mass Effect it's also VERY different in a lot of ways. Having played Mass Effect and Dragon Age back-to-back, comparing the two games is inevitable, so expect me to do so quite liberally as I discuss the strengths and weaknesses.

Loved

• BioWare at its best. Lots of people have said that this is one of the best RPGs of the last few years and even BioWare's best RPG ever. While I don't necessarily agree with a statement that strong, Dragon Age is without a doubt BioWare doing what BioWare does best: epic RPGs. I found the game very familiar and easy to pick up having played previous game. In lots of ways, it's a super charged version of Neverwinter Nights and that is a good thing.
  
  
• Origins. One of the big selling points in Dragon Age are the various origin stories. There are 6 in all (dwarf noble, dwarf commoner, human noble, mage, Dalish elf, and city elf), each of which provide a unique starting experience depending on the character you create. While I haven't had a chance to play through them all (all the way through 1 and part of the way through 2 others), I'm very impressed with the uniqueness each provide. All of them present you with some great history for the race in question and set you up for the rest of the game. I'd even dare say that the best and most interesting writing in the whole game occurs in those first few hours.
  
  
• Game play. If there is one thing that Dragon Age has really going for it, it's the core game play. Dragon Age is just a fun game to play. There is lots of world to explore, the combat is nearly always satisfying, and there are plenty of loot drops. While the game definitely leans toward the too difficult side, all in all the challenge for most of the game was about right.

Hated

• Loading. I can't remember a single game I've ever played where the loading times were so long and painful as they are in Dragon Age. Just walking into a house could take 15-30 seconds. I had times where a random encounter would happen while traveling and it would take the game almost a full minute to display the crossed swords signifying the random encounter, i.e. I would just stop moving across the map and the game would flash loading. If I hadn't known what was going on, I would have thought the game had crashed. The game also seemed to take longer to load the longer you played it consecutively; it got to a point where I would keep my iPhone next to my computer so I had something to do while waiting through the screens.
  
  
• Silent protagonist. After playing Mass Effect and falling in love with the very vocal Shepherd, not hearing anything come out of my characters mouth was almost unforgivable. The dialog system in Dragon Age feels like a huge step backwards in comparison to Mass Effect, I literally just don't know what they were thinking. While the dialog choices were quite varied and interesting, I REALLY missed not hearing my character speak. Others I talked to didn't seem to notice it as much, but it was actually distracting for me and was a huge break in the immersion.
  
  
• Generic setting. Where Mass Effect felt really interesting and unique, Dragon Age does not. At all. The setting is Tolkienesque at its best: the elves have pointy ears and shoot bows; the dwarves are short, have axes, and live in caves; and the humans think they are better than everyone and are slowly taking over. Additionally, the writers took normal English words and changed them in minor ways; e.g., Earl becomes Arl and Sir becomes Ser. What was supposed to be interesting and give the world depth just came off as feeling super cheesy to me. As usual, the game is absolutely brimming with codex entries that provide back story and interesting information about the world, but for the life of me I just couldn't make myself care. The world just wasn't interesting enough.
  
  
• Pointless loot. I had the collectors edition of Dragon Age which meant that I started the game with both the Warden's Keep and the Stone Prisoner DLC. At the advice of a friend, I did these two pieces of content first. While I'm glad I did, they sort of trivialized the entire game; the loot that they contained (and companion) were leagues better than just about anything else I ever found. That in general was a problem in and of itself, while the game throws a lot of loot at you, the VAST majority of it is completely worthless. In all fairness, the first Mass Effect definitely had this problem too, but for some reason it felt a lot more in my face here. I guess I just wished that I would have seen my gear upgrade more frequently; if your game takes over 56 hours to complete, don't make me use the same staff for 30 of them.
  
  
• Length. Dragon Age is too long. WAY too long. Games like this that so strongly encourage multiple playthroughs via choice decisions, origins, etc really need to be short enough to make a second playthrough feasible. By the time I finished my massive 56ish hour playthrough, I was just completely done with the game. The game should have been at least half as long if not more. If this game would have been 20-25 hours, I'm almost positive I would have done two back-to-back playthroughs (if not three). As it is, I'm unsure if I'll ever play the game all the way through again.
  
  

While I would definitely say that I enjoyed Dragon Age, and I'd probably even recommend it to RPG fans, I don't think it's as good as so many other people seem to think it is. It just isn't better than Mass Effect. At all. It also shouldn't be anywhere even close to contention for game of the year for 2009. While it has a lot of good things going for it, there were just way too many details that seemed to push my buttons the wrong way. Play it if you are a fan of the genre, a fan of BioWare, or really like fantasy games. Skip it if you are anybody else... you probably won't finish it anyway.

Weight Repercussion

Proving that I'm once again perpetually late to the party, I only just barely finished playing through the first Mass Effect. The timing seems meaningful as the second game came out today, yet I probably won't be playing the second for a while due to the fact I'm currently slogging through Dragon Age.

Mass Effect is a classic style Bioware RPG similar to games like Knights of the Old Republic or even Neverwinter Nights. Like those previous games, you control a single character through an adventure filled with skill trees, dialog, adventure and combat. You pick up compatriots along the way that you schmooze or piss off to your heart's content. While I was basically expecting it to be nothing more that KotOR in a slightly different universe, I'm quite pleased to say that it isn't.

I think it's very accurate to say that at the time of it's launch, it was easily the best Bioware RPG. Here's what I thought:

Loved

• Vocal Protagonist. This is without a doubt my favorite feature in the entire game. It's also the thing I'm most missing while playing through Dragon Age. Mass Effect has what I consider to be the best dialog system in an RPG. Instead of a choosing from a list of predefined lines to say, you select a general idea, such as "Personal question." Your character, Shepherd, then proceeds to ask the NPC a personal question of some kind. It works really well because it makes for conversations that are actually two sided. Instead of feeling like people are talking at you, you actually talk to them. It's also constantly entertaining to see just exactly how Shepherd will interpret the conversation direction you give him. This was a huge step forward as far as Bioware RPGs (or RPGs in general) go, and it was disappointing to see the feature non-existent in Dragon Age.
  
  
• Streamlined Combat. My least favorite feature in other, similar games is the overly tactical combat. While there are probably plenty of people who disagree with me, I'm the kind of person who likes to roleplay a single character and give my companions nothing more than basic directions. Mass Effect excels here. The combat is fun and fast paced, often resembling a shooter more than a traditional RPG. Giving your friends orders is as simple as holding the spacebar and making a few clicks to tell them what to do next. It never interrupts the combat and it works very well.
  
  
• Universe. The Mass Effect universe is amazing. It somehow manages to feel completely original, rather than derivative. While it would be impossible to argue that it wasn't influenced by Star Wars/Trek, Bioware did an amazing job of making a plausible, not too distant space travelling future. The alien races are unique, easily recognizable, and full of history and back story. It's all too common to play a large RPG and get lost in the history of the individual peoples (or just not care), but that wasn't the case for me here. Each group has their own unique struggles, personalities, and even racial quirks. I'm happy to hear that there is plenty planned for the Mass Effect universe in the future.
  
  

Hated

• Haven't I Been Here Before? In typical RPG fashion, Mass Effect contains a decent length amount of "main story" content and a similarly decent amount of "side quest" content. While nearly everything you see and experience in the main story line is unique and interesting, the side quests get repetitive really, really fast. If you ever need proof that there is a God, merely look at the planets in the Mass Effect universe. Apparently, when he was creating the universe, he took some spheres, punched them a couple of times each to make some bumps, then painted them a color representing their climate: green for temperate, white/blue for cold, black/red for hot, etc. Additionally, there are apparently a couple of very wealthy building companies out there, as they have prefabricated 3 different under and above ground installations and then managed to put them everywhere. In all seriousness, the sameness of the side quest worlds, locations, and even the quests was VERY disappointing and a large blemish on this otherwise amazing game.

I could spent a lot more time discussing other various aspects of the game that were great (weapon variety, companion interactions, the dual renegade/paragon "alignment" bars, etc), but suffice it to say that I personally believe that Bioware did nearly everything right here. Even one of the biggest complaints people had with the first game, driving the the MAKO vehicle, I didn't think was all that bad.

Mass Effect is just an amazing game. I'll probably compare it to Dragon Age more when I review it, but so far, I believe Mass Effect to be the superior game. If you haven't played it yet, what are you waiting for? You can probably find it for almost nothing (I've seen it on sale for $5 from at least 3 different vendors).

Now: Coming to Your Ears

Just in you are one of the 2 people who read my blog but don't see my updates on Twitter or Facebook, I have an announcement: I was on a podcast!

The kind folks at Game-central.org graciously allowed me to share a few thoughts. You can check it out over on their site:

http://game-central.org/2010/podcasts/gcp-episode-74/

What to expect:

On this week’s GCP: essential features in PC game ports, the “Rockstar Wives” and the ethical issues behind working in the game industry, the games we bought over the holidays, and which game companies we’d work for.

Hope it's at least half as enjoyable to listen to as it was to record.

Disclaimer: while my language is tame, I can't say as much for the others. They are all amazing guys and we had a great discussion, but you may want to skip if you are easily offended.

Three for the Price of One

After dropping large amounts of time into inFamous and Dead Space I was ready to play something that was a bit more bite sized. Thanks, once again, to the miracle of the Steam holiday sale, I picked up Trine for little more than a song and a dance.

The premise of the game is simple yet unique. A warrior, a mage, and a thief become magically fused into a single being. As the player, you are able to swap between any of the three characters at any time. Each has unique abilities: the warrior is a combat juggernaut, the thief can swing with a grappling hook and shoot arrows, and the mage can conjure platforms and boxes and even levitate and move some objects. The game plays like a mix of an old school 2D combat/platformer and a modern puzzle game.

Loved

• Premise. The idea of swapping between three different characters on the fly is a very unique idea. Lots of people compare it to the old Blizzard game, The Lost Vikings, and while the comparison is apt, Trine is definitely an evolution on the idea. The three characters are constantly working in harmony with each other. It was not uncommon to see a swarm of skeletons and switch to the warrior. As the last one would fall, I would switch to the mage and pick up a nearby box and raise it up until it stuck into some spikes sticking down from the ceiling. Finally, I would swap out to the thief and grapping on to the now hanging box and continue on with the level.
  
  
• Variety. I read one review were the author was convinced that the mage was amazing and you would use him all the time. Another reviewer said almost the exact same thing about the thief. The fact that two different people could approach the game so differently really says something about the level and puzzle design in Trine. Each puzzle, obstacle, and enemy can be tackled in a plethora of ways. Whether you drop objects on the enemies, shoot them with a bow, or hit them with your sword, is a decision totally left up to you.
  
  
• Art. The art is Trine is absolutely beautiful. The game sits very comfortably in what has come to be known as 2.5D space, i.e.
  everything is rendered in 3D, but all of the action takes place on a single 2D plane. As a result, the creators were able to put a ridiculous amount of polish in all the things that the player does see. The backgrounds are gorgeous and the characters are easily recognizable and very iconic. The game is not just beautiful on the eyes, but also manages to put together a very decent soundtrack and a surprisingly cohesive and narrative.
  
  

I know I usually put a "Hated" section down here, but try as I might I can't think of a single thing I really hated about this game. It wasn't a very long game (around 3-4 hours), but I don't think it should have been any longer. The game was perhaps a bit too easy at times, but there were two difficulties past the one I was playing one. The biggest gripe I've heard with the game is that people say the last level is substantially harder than the rest of the game. While I will admit that it was harder (it took me 2 tries instead of 1), it really wasn't a big enough jump to be noticeable to me, and I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it if I hadn't heard it mentioned.

While Trine is certainly not a perfect game (and I'm not trying to imply that it is), it is a really good game. It takes a simple concept and a simple set of gameplay mechanics and polishes the hell out of them. The game even features a 2-3 player co-op mode I didn't even get a chance to play. Trine is just a brilliantly polished little game that I think just about anybody would really enjoy.

An Infamous Hero

Despite the fact that I consider myself a hardcore PC gamer, back in October (November?) I picked up a PS3 with money I obtained by selling a Wii I had won in an office EA Playground Dodgeball tournament. Even though I didn't shell out for any games right away, my friend (theshums) let me borrow a bunch of his. I spent some time with a handful of them, but only one of them really grabbed my interest: inFamous.

The game is a relatively basic third person platforming shooter. At the beginning of the game you obtain electricity based powers that expand as you continue through the game. You have the ability to do things like shoot electricity from your hands, use electrical boosters to slow fall/glide, and even slide on power lines. I didn't have high hopes for this game, but I've really had a blast with it. I just finished my second playthrough and even obtained the Platinum trophy (my first!).

Loved

• Powers. I was a little bit surprised by how many different powers they came up with with electricity. They are: lightning bolt (like a gun), electric grenades, the megawatt hammer (like a rocket launcher), a force blast (like you'd see in Star Wars), static thrusters, an electric shield, and the ability to call down lightning itself. In addition, most of those powers are upgradable and even have different abilities depending on your moral alignment. My favorite was the upgrade for the megawatt hammer. Basically, you shoot a handful of them into the air, then shoot something with your default electricity attack. The next thing you see is all of your hammers swing back around and smash into your target. It's one of those powers that makes you giggle the first time you use it. The variety was just a lot more varied and interesting than I thought it would be.
  
  
• Story. Games like this seldomly grip you with their story, but the story here was actually quite decent. There were a handful of main characters that you came to have an interest in and the game even had a pretty satisfying end game twist. I also really like the dead drops scattered throughout the city that added some great backstory to the narrative.
  
  
• Replayability. While the moral choices in inFamous are certainly nothing to write home about (usually killing somebody or not killing them, etc), the fact that the powers are so different for the two alignments is quite laudable. I've finished both a good an evil playthrough, and I've really enjoyed the differences in powers between the two. Both of them have things that are a lot of fun and really effective. While the story of the game itself isn't that much different between the two, just the power differences alone give you a reason to play through the game a second time.

Hated

• Similarity. My one biggest gripe with inFamous is that while it does pretty much everything right, there really isn't a whole lot of innovation here. It sort of felt like it took all the best pieces of all of the best games and tossed them in together. While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I will definitely give them props for the electrical powers idea, in general the game seemed pretty common place. I also think that is probably why I didn't play it right away; it looked like it would be like every other similar third person shooter.
  
  
• Morality. The moral choices presented in inFamous are not at all impressive. As I previously mentioned, they generally boiled down to helping somebody or not, killing somebody or not, and other similar things. I'd let that slide if it wasn't for the fact that your choices just don't have any affect on the game itself. The story is almost perfectly identical whether you make good choices or evil. Additionally, the game actually penalizes you for mixing good and evil, so don't even consider making a character that is neutral.

inFamous may not be the most original or innovative game of 2009, but it really is a lot of fun. I don't enjoy console shooters at all (I was unable to finish the first Uncharted), but I had a lot of fun with this one. It really is the sort of game that I think anybody with a gaming interest can just pick up and play and have fun with. If you have a PS3, it should be in your collection. That's really all there is to it.

Did They Hear Me Scream?

After a bit of a blogging hiatus from the holidays and a period of time where I was pretty convinced that I wasn't going to write any more new entries, I've decided to recant and start posting again. Looking back through some of my old posts, I realized how much I enjoy logging this stuff and think it's interesting. Even if nobody ever reads this or comments, I'm going to keep writing.

Today's post: Dead Space.

Dead Space was one of the games I picked up as part of the Black Friday Steam deal and I finished it back before Christmas. It was either $10 or $15, either way it was an absolute steal. The premise of the game is pretty straight forward, you arrive as part of a rescue operation for the Ishimura, a mining/salvage ship orbiting an out of the way planet. You quickly discover that the ships inhabitants are no longer in top notch condition and work to fix the ship and eventually to just escape. This game was really good and would have been a contender for my game of year for 2009 if not for the fact that it came out in 2008. The highlights:

Loved

• Setting. The space setting was absolutely superb. The ship felt gritty and real, the weapons made sense, and the enemies (necromorphs) were gruesome and frightening. This was the kind of game where you find yourself looking over your should then realizing that the monitor is in front of you. They did an outstanding job at making that ship "come alive," if you will, despite the fact that most of it's inhabitants were dead. In the horror game genre, the environment/atmosphere are everything most of the time, and the developers absolutely nailed it here.
  
  
• Weapons. Dead Space had some of my best weapons found in any third/first person shooter. On the low end, you have the simple plasma cutter. A pistol like weapon that shoots three bullets in a line, either horizontally or vertically. While it seems simple and weak, it was easily one of (if not the best) weapons in the game. Versatile and quick, the plasma cutter killed everything. On the high end, you have the contact beam. The contact beam is this game's answer to a rocket launcher. It has a bit of a charge up time, but when unleashed, it knocks just about anything back and onto the ground. My personal favorite, however, was the ripper. This weapon shoots out a saw blade that levitates in front of you for a while. It's then your job to guide it to the correct spots to inflict maximum destruction on your enemies. It was wildly fulfilling when done properly. The weapons in general were all quite good (except perhaps the flamethrower), and the ability to upgrade them made them all that much more interesting. I did a second play through of the game just to spend more time with the weapons I hadn't used.
  
  
• Enemies. Horror games also can fail if the enemies don't work. Too often, designers go over the top when designing them, too bloody or just cheesy. I loved the necromorphs in Dead Space. They were creepy and had a lot of presence. I can't count the number of times I jumped when I turned a corner or opened a door and had an undead mutant staring back at me. The other thing I really liked about the enemies was their weaknesses. Instead of merely shooting them, all of them were weak on their limbs. You couldn't just headshot someone and move on, you had to carefully shoot off their arms and/or legs. It was a very unique idea that made a lot of sense in the context of the game. Using the previously mentioned ripper to saw off both legs then both arms of some of the nastier baddies was awesome.
  
  
• Hud. I'm a huge fan of games that make the in game hud more interesting or try to incorporate it into the game some how. It was one of the things I liked about Far Cry 2, if you wanted to see a map, your character held up a map in front of you. Dead Space took that idea to all new levels. Every hud element presented in the game was tied to the environment or your character's suit. If you wanted a map, he'd project a map. If you needed to save, you interfaced with a save station. Even things like gun ammo and health were handled elegantly; gun ammo would show as a read out on your gun when aiming and health was an obvious bar that showed on the back of your suit. It was a great mechanic and really helped the immersion of the game.

Hated

• Mouse Lag. I always feel like I have to put something down here, so this is a minor nitpick at best. When I first started the game, I had vertical sync on. Apparently, this causes your mouse to have a lot of lag in the game. It was terrible; I considered swapping out to a gamepad. I Googled the problem, found the obvious solution, and played the rest of the game very happily.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I liked this game. A LOT. Quite honestly, I can't think of anything I would really change in the game. It was just a lot of fun with a great, creepy atmosphere. I'm now REALLY looking forward to Dead Space 2. With how cheaply you can find this game now (even regular prices are in the $20 range) there is no excuse to have not played Dead Space. It is definitely one of the best games of the last few of years.