Video-drome
Hey,
So this Fall has seen a bumper crop of video games and I've been playing them. Here's what I've been playing and what I thought of them:
Gears of War 3 -- I bought this mostly because I bought the first two. Marcus Fenix still gargles with ground glass. The back-story continues to get more and more convoluted. Near the end of the game, they raise obvious questions that the game promptly never answers (and not loose-end kind of stuff either). With each installment of the game, it's like a different writing staff takes over in an elaborate game of Eat Poop You Cat.
But the writing isn't really why I'm here now, is it? Nope, I want comically beefy guys with big guns shooting up everything that moves and you get plenty of that here. Lots of great set-pieces so the battles happen in the air, under the sea, and in a variety of interesting locales. It's a solid shooter.
In the multi-player arena you've got a horde mode where you fend off wave after wave of attackers and spend between-round periods upgrading your defenses. This is a lot of fun because a full game runs to 50 waves and takes well over an hour and a half to play through. There's a real sense of accomplishment when you're done. On the flip side, there's a Locust Assault mode where you play the waves of alien monsters who try and wipe out the human defenders. This only goes 12 rounds and is much shorter. Once you've squished enough guys, you can come in as the Berserker and really mess up the human's day.
So it's a fun game, but it was one that went back for trade-in fairly quickly for me, because next up was...
Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to last year's excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum continues to fulfill the promise of letting you be Batman and just clobber gangs of thugs with your Bat-Fists, Bat-arangs, and a whole array of Bat-gadgets. The story is a bit questionable, even for a comic book story. Hugo Strange convinces Gotham's mayor to turn a section of downtown Gotham into a walled-off demilitarized zone where every crook in Gotham gets dumped. If this seems like a mind-bogglingly bad idea...congratulations, you're as smart as Batman.
So you get dumped into this urban prison and start grapple-hooking around to confront various Batman villains, solve various Riddler puzzles and just be Batman stopping all the crime everywhere all at once. There's nothing dramatically new from the previous game, just some tweaks here and there and a much larger world to go roaming around in. Oh, you also get to play as Catwoman for some of the missions.
You've probably heard about the "bitch" controversy. It's true. Pretty much any bad guy referring to women uses the term. So clearly lazy/bad writing on their part. If it helps. you can imagine that part of Batman's beat-downs involve a lecture on gender portrayals in media, with punching to underscore various points. And I do wish the various gangs working for the main bad guys had a bit more variation in style/gender than they do -- right now, they're all male street gangs with slightly different liveries depending on who they serve. Certainly the Penguin would have more dapper, gangster-in-suits kind of thugs while Two-Face would have to embrace a gender-balanced crew.
But honestly? I had a blast playing through the game. I've already gone back a second time on a harder difficulty level to pick up some more achievements and get some other special bonuses. And the ending comes with some very interesting surprises (and a special bonus in the credits that's worth sticking around for). Highly recommended if you want to feel like a super-hero.
After that, I finished up the main story line in Saint's Row: The Third. The Saint's Row franchise is basically Grand Theft Auto with the insanity turned up to 12. In your first mission you get access to a Reaper Drone Console that let's you call in air strikes on targets. Oh and you also gain a nuke. You don't use it, it's a plot point for later, but you do, in fact, get a nuke.
Not insane enough? OK, in one mission you have to rescue a guy from a BDSM nightclub called "Safeword". There's a surprisingly mature (if oblique) discussion as to why you'd call a BDSM nightclub "Safeword" and then it's off to rescue your captive. It turns out he's in the pony play stables. So you go down there and find the guy all rigged up for pony play and hitched to a rickshaw. Just as you find him, the bad guys burst in and, with no time to spare, you hop into the rickshaw and have your rescue-target pull you away from the nightclub. The badguys hop into conveniently parked rickshaws pulled by other pony play people and now you're in a "high-speed" pony play rickshaw cart shootout.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2011 Game of the Year.
Yeah, but there's lots of different types of missions to do and a range of side activities and the city itself is fun to just wander around. There's the usual, develop properties to earn money kind of deal. You can buy all kinds of upgrades for your weapons and outfits for your guy.
Oh, the game allows for a pretty wide range of customization for your character. You can create pretty much any type of person you can think of (and several who couldn't be found in nature). One of the stores you can operate is a plastic surgery shop so if you're not happy with the precise depth of your cheekbones, you can tweak it there or just make a wholesale change. One of the missions depends on that and there's a special 20-point achievement for playing the game at least 2 hours as either gender. So if you start off a guy, go in for a sex change, play for 2 hours and just get easy points. Fun stuff.
It's mindless fun that doesn't take itself too seriously and invites you to behave badly. Good times.
Battlefield 3 -- I pick up this game for the intense multi-player options and the game still rocks on this front. I'd been putting it off to work through Saint's Row but last week, I've been sucked back in. I've forgotten just how good this game can be (even though I do appear to be fighting against teams of guys who have played non-stop for three weeks and are all level 900 by now). The graphics are possibly too good this time around. People in cammo really do blend into the background and you can find yourself pinned down by fire coming from somewhere you can't determine. Everything is destructible and by the end of a match, you're mostly fighting in rubble. Just a good time all around.
The single player mode though...the single player mode may be the single most frustrating thing I've played in years. I have enjoyed the single-player offerings in past Battlefield games, but this one sucks like an air leak in space.
Let's see: on "Normal" difficulty one or two hits and you're dead. Yes, I know, I know, in real life, one hit you're dead, but video games have different expectations and the lethality is just brutal. I've had to play the same 50 feet of game space three or four times before figuring out where to stand. There are a number of "instant-fail" events that you're not warned about nor given any indication of what the correct (and there's only one correct) solution is. The game allows for going prone but not for taking cover. So if I kneel behind a wall, I can't shoot over it, but if I stand up, I'm a bullet magnet The levels are extremely linear and make heavy use of Quicktime Events. It's just a wretched experience to play through.
Again, the multiplayer is sublime and that's really why you buy this game, but the single player mode is "I want my money back" bad.
So that's what I've been playing lately. You'll notice that Skyrim isn't on the list. Not my cup of tea, although I see it's been consuming the souls of a lot of you out there.
later
Tom
So this Fall has seen a bumper crop of video games and I've been playing them. Here's what I've been playing and what I thought of them:
Gears of War 3 -- I bought this mostly because I bought the first two. Marcus Fenix still gargles with ground glass. The back-story continues to get more and more convoluted. Near the end of the game, they raise obvious questions that the game promptly never answers (and not loose-end kind of stuff either). With each installment of the game, it's like a different writing staff takes over in an elaborate game of Eat Poop You Cat.
But the writing isn't really why I'm here now, is it? Nope, I want comically beefy guys with big guns shooting up everything that moves and you get plenty of that here. Lots of great set-pieces so the battles happen in the air, under the sea, and in a variety of interesting locales. It's a solid shooter.
In the multi-player arena you've got a horde mode where you fend off wave after wave of attackers and spend between-round periods upgrading your defenses. This is a lot of fun because a full game runs to 50 waves and takes well over an hour and a half to play through. There's a real sense of accomplishment when you're done. On the flip side, there's a Locust Assault mode where you play the waves of alien monsters who try and wipe out the human defenders. This only goes 12 rounds and is much shorter. Once you've squished enough guys, you can come in as the Berserker and really mess up the human's day.
So it's a fun game, but it was one that went back for trade-in fairly quickly for me, because next up was...
Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to last year's excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum continues to fulfill the promise of letting you be Batman and just clobber gangs of thugs with your Bat-Fists, Bat-arangs, and a whole array of Bat-gadgets. The story is a bit questionable, even for a comic book story. Hugo Strange convinces Gotham's mayor to turn a section of downtown Gotham into a walled-off demilitarized zone where every crook in Gotham gets dumped. If this seems like a mind-bogglingly bad idea...congratulations, you're as smart as Batman.
So you get dumped into this urban prison and start grapple-hooking around to confront various Batman villains, solve various Riddler puzzles and just be Batman stopping all the crime everywhere all at once. There's nothing dramatically new from the previous game, just some tweaks here and there and a much larger world to go roaming around in. Oh, you also get to play as Catwoman for some of the missions.
You've probably heard about the "bitch" controversy. It's true. Pretty much any bad guy referring to women uses the term. So clearly lazy/bad writing on their part. If it helps. you can imagine that part of Batman's beat-downs involve a lecture on gender portrayals in media, with punching to underscore various points. And I do wish the various gangs working for the main bad guys had a bit more variation in style/gender than they do -- right now, they're all male street gangs with slightly different liveries depending on who they serve. Certainly the Penguin would have more dapper, gangster-in-suits kind of thugs while Two-Face would have to embrace a gender-balanced crew.
But honestly? I had a blast playing through the game. I've already gone back a second time on a harder difficulty level to pick up some more achievements and get some other special bonuses. And the ending comes with some very interesting surprises (and a special bonus in the credits that's worth sticking around for). Highly recommended if you want to feel like a super-hero.
After that, I finished up the main story line in Saint's Row: The Third. The Saint's Row franchise is basically Grand Theft Auto with the insanity turned up to 12. In your first mission you get access to a Reaper Drone Console that let's you call in air strikes on targets. Oh and you also gain a nuke. You don't use it, it's a plot point for later, but you do, in fact, get a nuke.
Not insane enough? OK, in one mission you have to rescue a guy from a BDSM nightclub called "Safeword". There's a surprisingly mature (if oblique) discussion as to why you'd call a BDSM nightclub "Safeword" and then it's off to rescue your captive. It turns out he's in the pony play stables. So you go down there and find the guy all rigged up for pony play and hitched to a rickshaw. Just as you find him, the bad guys burst in and, with no time to spare, you hop into the rickshaw and have your rescue-target pull you away from the nightclub. The badguys hop into conveniently parked rickshaws pulled by other pony play people and now you're in a "high-speed" pony play rickshaw cart shootout.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2011 Game of the Year.
Yeah, but there's lots of different types of missions to do and a range of side activities and the city itself is fun to just wander around. There's the usual, develop properties to earn money kind of deal. You can buy all kinds of upgrades for your weapons and outfits for your guy.
Oh, the game allows for a pretty wide range of customization for your character. You can create pretty much any type of person you can think of (and several who couldn't be found in nature). One of the stores you can operate is a plastic surgery shop so if you're not happy with the precise depth of your cheekbones, you can tweak it there or just make a wholesale change. One of the missions depends on that and there's a special 20-point achievement for playing the game at least 2 hours as either gender. So if you start off a guy, go in for a sex change, play for 2 hours and just get easy points. Fun stuff.
It's mindless fun that doesn't take itself too seriously and invites you to behave badly. Good times.
Battlefield 3 -- I pick up this game for the intense multi-player options and the game still rocks on this front. I'd been putting it off to work through Saint's Row but last week, I've been sucked back in. I've forgotten just how good this game can be (even though I do appear to be fighting against teams of guys who have played non-stop for three weeks and are all level 900 by now). The graphics are possibly too good this time around. People in cammo really do blend into the background and you can find yourself pinned down by fire coming from somewhere you can't determine. Everything is destructible and by the end of a match, you're mostly fighting in rubble. Just a good time all around.
The single player mode though...the single player mode may be the single most frustrating thing I've played in years. I have enjoyed the single-player offerings in past Battlefield games, but this one sucks like an air leak in space.
Let's see: on "Normal" difficulty one or two hits and you're dead. Yes, I know, I know, in real life, one hit you're dead, but video games have different expectations and the lethality is just brutal. I've had to play the same 50 feet of game space three or four times before figuring out where to stand. There are a number of "instant-fail" events that you're not warned about nor given any indication of what the correct (and there's only one correct) solution is. The game allows for going prone but not for taking cover. So if I kneel behind a wall, I can't shoot over it, but if I stand up, I'm a bullet magnet The levels are extremely linear and make heavy use of Quicktime Events. It's just a wretched experience to play through.
Again, the multiplayer is sublime and that's really why you buy this game, but the single player mode is "I want my money back" bad.
So that's what I've been playing lately. You'll notice that Skyrim isn't on the list. Not my cup of tea, although I see it's been consuming the souls of a lot of you out there.
later
Tom