How I Spent My Summer Vacation, pt. 1
So summer was fun. In amidst the rather extreme life changes, super busy work schedules (how was your June? Mine was a whirlwind of milestones, client meetings, script writing, no days off, and a trip to Canada to sit in a dark room and watch little girls play my game through a two-way mirror), moving from Brooklyn back to Manhattan and the resulting moderate homelessness, there was also somehow time for games. I would have talked about them here, but, y’know, see above. But now, as things are sort of calming down (fingers crossed to have an actual apartment to call my own next week), I feel that it’s lost past due for a look at the games that managed to squeeze themselves in around the edges. Apologies for the long time in I left you - here, now, is your dope beat to step to.
Grand Theft Auto 4 (360)
Because I’m not sure I could describe it better, and because I am lazy, I’m just going to lift a bit I wrote about the little murder simulator that could from an email to Jones:
Grand Theft Auto IV is good, but not the game it could be. The first chunk of it is excellent, taking time to introduce you to the world, characters, and how you interact with them. The social aspects are well implemented and rewarding. Sometime after you’re able to access Manhattan, though, the game remembers it’s a GTA title, drops the more meaningful bits of the story and a large portion of the character work it had taken so many pains to establish, and decides it’s more fun to get involved with would-be Sopranos types in New Jersey, of all places. It recovers somewhat at the end, but by then you’re not really interested in the character of Niko Bellic any more, so the last few emotional punches feel pulled, just one more thing to get through before the end.
The best part of the game is easily the time you spend with the Irish family and their storylines, to the point that they should have made up the main plot of the game with all the rest serving as dressing. That their story ends abruptly and with no real consequence is just another reminder that, for all the Houser bros. strengths at world building, their real knack seems to be in missing the point. Still, it fixed many of my problems with GTA series, and I’m glad to have played it. Whether I come back for any of the downloadable content supposedly due out before the end of the year remains to be seen.
Viking (360)
While there’s a longer piece to be written on the harm done to games with no greater purpose in life than to be fun by the game industry/press/fandom and their seemingly constant demand that each new title be innovative or life changing in some way, it’s worth dipping in to long enough to talk about its poster child for ‘08, Viking. A big, dumb brutalize-em-up of not quite epic proportions, Viking mixes elements of up close and personal melee combat (complete with flying orc limbs), stealth gameplay, and massive bouts of army vs. army with you stuck in the middle to often very satisfying effect. While it’s jack of all trades, master of none approach to gameplay keeps it a solid 7/10 and probably confused more potential players than it enticed, the twin stumbling blocks of overblown expectations for anything arriving on a next-gen system and a $60 price tag right out the gate (I picked up mine for $30, thankyewverymuch) guaranteed it was pretty much dead on arrival. Viking is by no means a $60 game, but it is a rather pretty game that’s consistently fun, and offers some of the better (not to mention subtle and easy to use) sneaking around gameplay I’ve seen in a good long while.
Fable (Xbox)
Years after the hype (and disappointment) have faded, I finally get around to Molyneaux’s darling. There’s another post in the works about Fable that I need to get back to, so in the meantime let’s just say that if this is the result of reaching beyond your grasp, then more power to Lionhead and their wild promises of grass blades staying cut and other opportunities to leave your fingerprints all over the game world. Frustrating when it fumbles (the lack of explanation on how to use expressions, the targeting system failing to differentiate between friend or foe during escort missions for the sake of preserving every possible player choice) and almost invisibly elegant when it succeeds (the wonderful combat system, the beautiful environments, my frankly incredible wardrobe), this is the title that washed the bad taste of RPGs left by one too many Final Fantasy games and reminded me what it can mean to role play. Now roll on Fable 2 next month.
The World Ends With You (DS)
Speaking of Final Fantasy, an interesting change has taken place over the last year since series creator left Square-Enix to make the exact same games under different names for the 360: they’ve started trying new things. Possibly the greatest break from the tried-and-true formulas that turned them into the Japan-owning powerhouse of today is The World Ends With You, a bizarre RPG for the DS that refuses to settle down long enough to be sorted in to a particular genre. Set in Tokyo’s uber-trendy Shibuya district, you take control of Neku, the typical mopey boy with a grudge against happy people, sad people, and people in general that has pouted his way through countless JRPG games before learning a very important lesson about friendship, love, believing in yourself, or some other Hallmark sentiment in the end. This is where the comparisons stop, thankfully, as you’re thrown in to a game of life and death (or rather, death and life) in a dark, mirror version of the city full of roaming misery-causing monsters and their masters, the Reapers. With the mandate to keep yourself and your partner alive for seven days, your time is spent criscrossing the city to complete tasks assigned by the malevolent gamemaster and taking in the latest fashion trends in the form of clothes, badges, CDs, and food.
I’ve already gone on longer than intended, and there’s still so much to talk about: the way badges work as the source of your powers, and grow stronger when you aren’t playing, the incredibly innovative combat system, where you can fight on both screens at once or let the computer handle your partner, the difficulty level you set on your own, with more rewards earned as you make things harder for yourself… it’s a triumph of design and innovation, bringing together so many new ideas and somehow, some way making them all fit together. To then take it all and have it fit in my pocket to play on the train is just mind-boggling.
Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.