While I'd love to be able to produce game reviews at least once every two days I gotta admit that at the moment I'm just swamped with "work". This Playstation 3 I just got is killing me. Actually strike that it's not so much the console as it is Disgaea 3. I got this game knowing exactly what to expect and yet it has still managed to take over. It's hardly anything more than a cutesy front-end for bar-filling and stat-raising and yet I'm addicted to it. Hopefully I'll be able to right this ship eventually and get back to writing about real games but ehhhh I dunno.
Then again I guess it doesn't matter much because I signed up for Google analytics and boy is that a depressing read. My visitor count is the saddest thing since Terms of Endearment. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about that as well so factor in everything else that is important to life and yeah that leaves no time for updates.
Still I imagine there are other things I could be talking about. That whole thing with Bungie and Activision is pretty crazy right? I mean wow who would have thought? Okay yeah I'm no good at this.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
X360 Look - Assassin's Creed 2
Back then there was only one thing to do when playing a game and that was to have fun. If you sat down with a game like Pitfall, Asteroids, or practically anything else from that time period there wasn't much else to do aside from going for the high score. These days it's a lot different because while some games still offer scores they also offer storylines, endings, unlockables, achievements(or trophies), and all kinds of other secrets and extras that were designed to keep gamers playing. One of the trials that I go through constantly is being able to see past all of that and determine if a game is worthwhile solely due to the most important facets like game design and playability.
Assassin's Creed 2 features one of the more ambitious stories I've seen in a videogame. It effectively manages multiple layers that offer bits and pieces of what's actually going on over different time periods. The bulk of the game will be spent in Ezio's memory. Ezio was just another young man living during the Renaissance period until betrayal led him to becoming an Assassin. With the help of some friends many people in power will be murdered. The more important story concerns the present day fate of Desmond and the Assassin group. Desmond is being trained to become an assassin via Ezio's memories as he just might be the one man that'll save the day from the Templars. The thing about the Templars is that they've had their hands in just about every incident in history. They're poised to take control of the entirety of the world. There's also the mysteries surrounding the Assassins, Altair from the first game, and well it's probably best I don't go any further for fear of spoilers.
The storyline is our first major carrot. The player is enticed by this major carrot and they will be rewarded with minor carrots as they progress. Many of the secrets of Assasin's Creed 2 are littered throughout the game world. They're hidden in guarded treasure chests, the walls, and sometimes behind a layer of interpretation. The storyline relies quite a bit on conspiracy theories and "facts" hidden out of the public eye. What the player decides to make of it is their call but it does give them something to think about while playing the game.
The game itself is open-world and broken up into various sections like Florence, Venice, and so on. Ezio has supernatural abilities in climbing and jumping and this will help him traverse roof-tops, climb massive towers, and delicately run across narrow rails and boards. Controls are very intuitive as the player merely needs to hold down a couple of buttons to break into a free-run where as long as they can make their next jump they'll be fine. Thanks to the training of others this Assassin also becomes an adept of Stealth. Rather than hide behind walls Ezio prefers to hide in crowds. Somehow a hooded man dressed in a distinct cloak can blend into any gathering of people. While not entirely sensible it is an effective tool for tailing foes while preparing for that perfect moment to strike.
In this world there are hundreds of very minor carrots. These take the form of pick-ups like treasure-chests filled with money, feathers that unlock a couple items, lookout points at the top of tall structures that open up more of the map, and a handful of other carrots. There's always something to pick up in the player's immediate vicinity and there's also no shortage of filler missions they can involve time trials, delivering messages, or killing. There's always something to do even if it hardly seems necessary.
As with exploration the combat in this game isn't difficult to understand. The most important weapon is the hand-blade. It's a simple device as all the player must do is get close enough to the unaware to quickly end their life. Personally I favor going for the air kill. This is done by jumping to an enemy from a higher ground. Accuracy really isn't a factor since as long as the button prompt comes up and there's no obstacle in my way the victim is killed. Assassination is key to resolving most of the missions in this game but when surrounded or the scenario calls for it there's melee combat. Here a number of foes will surround Ezio and politely strike at him one at a time. This proves to be their downfall as our Assassin is more than enough to take them down. Pressing the attack button leads to repeated strikes but these can be parried and possibly countered so the best bet is to evade and counter. The timing for this is exceptionally gracious so all that matters is waiting for the enemy to strike and then doing something that'll destroy them.
There's an unfortunate lack of carrots for fighting effectively in this game. Aside from an achievement or two there are no rewards for being a great fighter and no bonuses for getting through encounters without a scratch. With all of the missions in this game it would have been great to have some sort of leaderboard to track players with the lowest times or highest ranks. The game is also so generous with health-restoring items that it is left up to the player if they really want to challenge themselves by sticking to the weakest armor so that almost any encounter could be fatal with the slightest mistake. Still it makes for a game anyone can get into and it's hard for me to fault it for that.
The extent of this game is down to exploring and killing, and through a combination of the two the storyline can be furthered. Where it all begins to crumble is in the world itself. There's simply no good reason for it to be so large and so repetitive. Many areas of the game are mere copy-pastes of other areas and quite a few of the missions are nothing more than time-wasters. For example in one part of the game Ezio must get a mask so that he can enter a party held by a target. Rather than simply steal the mask he participates in a series of games for one. Worst part is due to corrupt judges Ezio doesn't win the mask so he has to steal it anyway. The villains also show a lack of creativity as almost all of them can't hold their own in a fight. That's to be expected I guess but they also can't manage to think of some way of defending themselves from Ezio aside from surrounding themselves with easily-dispatched guards.
Simply taking away a number of these filler missions would have certainly made the experience a bit better. At the very least they could have just been made optional and rewarded the player with money or better yet exclusive items and weapons that would have been more than enough incentive to take these quests on. Besides it'd give an out for players who just want to see the story to its end. Instead it seems like before any real mission can be accomplished three or four others must be finished first.
So despite all of the carrots I never got around to completing this game. Thanks to the Internet I can circumvent all of the nonsense and grab that major carrot that is the ending. As a bonus I got to read a very handy guide that interprets and explains a lot of the mysteries in the game. In about fifteen minutes I got everything I wanted out of a thirty to forty hour game. I wouldn't call it cheating because really this is such an easy game that it's almost impossible to lose at. In fact almost all of my deaths were due to a vehicle section(yep one of those again). I simply got bored with the game and since I don't particularly care for achievements and I've collected most of the carrots tied to unlockables and secrets I had enough of a reason to spare myself of more pointless murder just to get that last carrot.
All told Assassin's Creed 2 is a fine game for what it is but it definitely could have been about half its length and possibly a quarter of its actual size. Course then there'd be people complaining that the game is too short. I guess the best solution would have been to create more original content rather than just repeating everything over and over but that kind of ambitious thinking won't land me a job anywhere in videogame development. Undoubtedly a third and possibly final Assassin's Creed is in the works but I think this time I'll pass up on all of the carrots cause I've seen enough.
Assassin's Creed 2 features one of the more ambitious stories I've seen in a videogame. It effectively manages multiple layers that offer bits and pieces of what's actually going on over different time periods. The bulk of the game will be spent in Ezio's memory. Ezio was just another young man living during the Renaissance period until betrayal led him to becoming an Assassin. With the help of some friends many people in power will be murdered. The more important story concerns the present day fate of Desmond and the Assassin group. Desmond is being trained to become an assassin via Ezio's memories as he just might be the one man that'll save the day from the Templars. The thing about the Templars is that they've had their hands in just about every incident in history. They're poised to take control of the entirety of the world. There's also the mysteries surrounding the Assassins, Altair from the first game, and well it's probably best I don't go any further for fear of spoilers.
The storyline is our first major carrot. The player is enticed by this major carrot and they will be rewarded with minor carrots as they progress. Many of the secrets of Assasin's Creed 2 are littered throughout the game world. They're hidden in guarded treasure chests, the walls, and sometimes behind a layer of interpretation. The storyline relies quite a bit on conspiracy theories and "facts" hidden out of the public eye. What the player decides to make of it is their call but it does give them something to think about while playing the game.
The game itself is open-world and broken up into various sections like Florence, Venice, and so on. Ezio has supernatural abilities in climbing and jumping and this will help him traverse roof-tops, climb massive towers, and delicately run across narrow rails and boards. Controls are very intuitive as the player merely needs to hold down a couple of buttons to break into a free-run where as long as they can make their next jump they'll be fine. Thanks to the training of others this Assassin also becomes an adept of Stealth. Rather than hide behind walls Ezio prefers to hide in crowds. Somehow a hooded man dressed in a distinct cloak can blend into any gathering of people. While not entirely sensible it is an effective tool for tailing foes while preparing for that perfect moment to strike.
In this world there are hundreds of very minor carrots. These take the form of pick-ups like treasure-chests filled with money, feathers that unlock a couple items, lookout points at the top of tall structures that open up more of the map, and a handful of other carrots. There's always something to pick up in the player's immediate vicinity and there's also no shortage of filler missions they can involve time trials, delivering messages, or killing. There's always something to do even if it hardly seems necessary.
As with exploration the combat in this game isn't difficult to understand. The most important weapon is the hand-blade. It's a simple device as all the player must do is get close enough to the unaware to quickly end their life. Personally I favor going for the air kill. This is done by jumping to an enemy from a higher ground. Accuracy really isn't a factor since as long as the button prompt comes up and there's no obstacle in my way the victim is killed. Assassination is key to resolving most of the missions in this game but when surrounded or the scenario calls for it there's melee combat. Here a number of foes will surround Ezio and politely strike at him one at a time. This proves to be their downfall as our Assassin is more than enough to take them down. Pressing the attack button leads to repeated strikes but these can be parried and possibly countered so the best bet is to evade and counter. The timing for this is exceptionally gracious so all that matters is waiting for the enemy to strike and then doing something that'll destroy them.
There's an unfortunate lack of carrots for fighting effectively in this game. Aside from an achievement or two there are no rewards for being a great fighter and no bonuses for getting through encounters without a scratch. With all of the missions in this game it would have been great to have some sort of leaderboard to track players with the lowest times or highest ranks. The game is also so generous with health-restoring items that it is left up to the player if they really want to challenge themselves by sticking to the weakest armor so that almost any encounter could be fatal with the slightest mistake. Still it makes for a game anyone can get into and it's hard for me to fault it for that.
The extent of this game is down to exploring and killing, and through a combination of the two the storyline can be furthered. Where it all begins to crumble is in the world itself. There's simply no good reason for it to be so large and so repetitive. Many areas of the game are mere copy-pastes of other areas and quite a few of the missions are nothing more than time-wasters. For example in one part of the game Ezio must get a mask so that he can enter a party held by a target. Rather than simply steal the mask he participates in a series of games for one. Worst part is due to corrupt judges Ezio doesn't win the mask so he has to steal it anyway. The villains also show a lack of creativity as almost all of them can't hold their own in a fight. That's to be expected I guess but they also can't manage to think of some way of defending themselves from Ezio aside from surrounding themselves with easily-dispatched guards.
Simply taking away a number of these filler missions would have certainly made the experience a bit better. At the very least they could have just been made optional and rewarded the player with money or better yet exclusive items and weapons that would have been more than enough incentive to take these quests on. Besides it'd give an out for players who just want to see the story to its end. Instead it seems like before any real mission can be accomplished three or four others must be finished first.
So despite all of the carrots I never got around to completing this game. Thanks to the Internet I can circumvent all of the nonsense and grab that major carrot that is the ending. As a bonus I got to read a very handy guide that interprets and explains a lot of the mysteries in the game. In about fifteen minutes I got everything I wanted out of a thirty to forty hour game. I wouldn't call it cheating because really this is such an easy game that it's almost impossible to lose at. In fact almost all of my deaths were due to a vehicle section(yep one of those again). I simply got bored with the game and since I don't particularly care for achievements and I've collected most of the carrots tied to unlockables and secrets I had enough of a reason to spare myself of more pointless murder just to get that last carrot.
All told Assassin's Creed 2 is a fine game for what it is but it definitely could have been about half its length and possibly a quarter of its actual size. Course then there'd be people complaining that the game is too short. I guess the best solution would have been to create more original content rather than just repeating everything over and over but that kind of ambitious thinking won't land me a job anywhere in videogame development. Undoubtedly a third and possibly final Assassin's Creed is in the works but I think this time I'll pass up on all of the carrots cause I've seen enough.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
AA Look - Afterburner Climax
Is there something I'm supposed to say here? Hop in a jet, take to the skies, and destroy hundreds of enemy ships in a ten minute romp that assaults all of your senses at once. Afterburner Climax is definitely a Sega game and AM2 put together a helluva port.
The main game is 13 stages and they run the gamut of open skies, canyons, enemy fortifications, city skylines, and well hardly any of that actually matters. Your only concerns are going to be everything trying to blow you up. Missiles are the biggest threat since they key in on wherever you are. If you stop for a second you'll get blown up, head in one direction for too long and you'll get blown up, just coming out of a barrel roll is a good time to get blown up as well. The first priority in surviving is avoiding those missiles and it's part reflexes and part knowing what's coming. There's other things to avoid as well like walls and enemy machineguns.
You gotta fight back eventually and this game makes it simple. There's the machinegun which is always handy since for the most part you can just hold the button down and forget about it. There's also a stock of rapidly replenishing missiles and you'll go through hundreds of those in the 10 minutes it takes to get through this game. These are of the "fire and forget" variety so just put your cursor on something, hit the fire button, and then get out of the way because you won't get the chance to admire your kill.
Frankly I don't even know why I bother explaining all this. Climax is a ten-minute game and you'll learn everything there is to know in the first thirty seconds. The real question is how can one justify paying $10 for a ten-minute game? Well the easy answer is that most players won't spend just ten minutes on the game. Though I bet in the arcades people ended up spending more than $10 just to reach the end of it. It's an arcade title first and fore-most so there's the whole scoring dealie. Some people aren't into high-scores and that's alright there are other games to play.
Yeah I said it. If you're not interested in playing again and again for a higher score don't bother with this game. There's a handful of optional paths and secret stages to access if you're good enough but they don't provide any insight into the army of "Z" or why there's a nuclear threat. Jaguar Leader and Jaguar 2 aren't going to explain their romantic relationship either no matter what ending you manage to get. Dump the better graphics and the "Climax mode" and you have something straight out of 1987 or in other words you have Afterburner 2.
Even for a ten-minute game Sega puts forth the effort to keep gamers playing for hours. There's the regular arcade mode which is fine and all but players would do well to stick with Score-Attack. The thing about arcade mode is that's the mode for people who like to unlock stuff, not for people who want to get better at the game. Through the arcade mode you'll eventually unlock most of the achievements and a ton of EX options. These allow various changes to arcade mode that well...okay they're all cheats. Extra lives and continues are obvious but they also go as far as to include the ability to enlarge the cursor size so that everything in the general area can be hit by a missile. By the time you finish unlocking all of these options you can play a game of Climax that's impossible to do badly in let alone lose. You stick with that mode and before you know it your ten minute game has turned into a few hours game.
So my advice is if you want to love this game you gotta stick with score-attack. Some purists out there will cry and start blubbering about "oh but that mode gives infinite lives how can I work on my survival skills?" Again there's an easy answer to this because survival ties directly to your score. Afterburner Climax is always moving whether your ship is in one piece or several. Enemies fly in, unleash their payload, and fly off in seconds. Any second where you aren't there to shoot them down is wasted and with about 50 to 100 targets per stage you can easily miss a third of them every time you die. Okay you'll likely miss half of them anyway due to how fast everything is moving but hey you'll get them next time right? That's what replay value is all about. Dying also has the nasty habit of killing whatever combo you've managed to build up and obviously we don't want to die and not losing combos just happens to be a bonus. So all I can say is that maybe the survival-purists should just shut up and stick to score-attack. Oh and I nearly forgot score-attack offers unlockables in the form of medals. Alright maybe they won't give you achievements and they certainly won't make your ship near invincible but if you manage to get them all maybe you yourself will feel a little bit invincible.
Cause to me at least arcade games are about pushing beyond limits. Far too often when I sit down with a console game I find that odds are not impossible and that every situation as a solution that is handed to the player like a glowing lever or a shiny weapon that screams "use me and you win!" As far as those games are concerned since you bought it it's yours and hardly anything is going to keep you from seeing the ending because it's your right as a consumer. With that idea one might as well buy a toaster, it takes about the same effort but at least its more rewarding cause toast is good any time of the day. I don't know about you but if played these console games all the time I'd wake up one morning with the reflexes of a corpse and the brain activity to match. I wouldn't be lacking for stuff to talk about on message-boards at least.
When I manage to beat an arcade game -- that is completing the game without continuing -- I feel that I've actually accomplished something. I managed to beat a game that was designed to be up-front about taking as much money as possible from a player. Maybe my experience wasn't as rich and there's no memorable characters but there's not enough time for that. Improving at an arcade game is one of the few real thrills I get out of videogames. This is something that is unmatched as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel anything from fumbling through checkpoint-fest modern games where the only reason I managed to get to the next stage is because I knew where to move and where to shoot. I certainly don't feel anything (or at least not any longer) from multiplayer games where I spend the majority of my time waiting to respawn because I didn't put forth the three to five hours a day necessary to compete. It's different strokes and all but considering the time investment if I want to get better at games I usually stick with the arcades and sleepwalk through everything else.
So in the end Climax is an arcade game for arcade gamers. If you don't care for unlockables or arcade games don't even consider this game for a second. You'll hate the game, call it "shallow" or something and annoy the piss out of whatever "defense force" in whatever forum you post at. If you like unlockables but hate arcade games well I guess this isn't a bad deal. Heck there's even a couple items to "pimp out your avatar" and last I checked those usually go for like $1 to $4 a pop. You'll at least get a few hours out of this one. For fans of arcade games I think this is a definite recommendation. It's an arcade game by Sega after all and when they put forth the effort they can deliver something quite excellent. Those ten minutes could stretch into however many hours as fans will be trying and trying again to achieve some high-score that'll fill them with pride.
Then again it's all very possible that you might just not like the game. I can understand why and there's nothing I can say to convince anyone otherwise. On the bright side there's always the demo and considering the length of the game it's a very safe bet that if you didn't care for the demo the full game will not change your opinion in the slightest. While I can recognize quality when I see it I don't see myself as a big fan of this game. It is Afterburner 2 in the end and I was never really fond of that game. This one is a bit more approachable and quite a bit more fun but I may as well say that I feel like I bought this more out of support for Sega's arcade ports than for the actual game. I was always a bit more of a Space Harrier fan but Sega has yet to do a good update to that one. Yeah there was Planet Harriers but it's not really the same thing and well it's pretty damn terrible to boot.
The main game is 13 stages and they run the gamut of open skies, canyons, enemy fortifications, city skylines, and well hardly any of that actually matters. Your only concerns are going to be everything trying to blow you up. Missiles are the biggest threat since they key in on wherever you are. If you stop for a second you'll get blown up, head in one direction for too long and you'll get blown up, just coming out of a barrel roll is a good time to get blown up as well. The first priority in surviving is avoiding those missiles and it's part reflexes and part knowing what's coming. There's other things to avoid as well like walls and enemy machineguns.
You gotta fight back eventually and this game makes it simple. There's the machinegun which is always handy since for the most part you can just hold the button down and forget about it. There's also a stock of rapidly replenishing missiles and you'll go through hundreds of those in the 10 minutes it takes to get through this game. These are of the "fire and forget" variety so just put your cursor on something, hit the fire button, and then get out of the way because you won't get the chance to admire your kill.
Frankly I don't even know why I bother explaining all this. Climax is a ten-minute game and you'll learn everything there is to know in the first thirty seconds. The real question is how can one justify paying $10 for a ten-minute game? Well the easy answer is that most players won't spend just ten minutes on the game. Though I bet in the arcades people ended up spending more than $10 just to reach the end of it. It's an arcade title first and fore-most so there's the whole scoring dealie. Some people aren't into high-scores and that's alright there are other games to play.
Yeah I said it. If you're not interested in playing again and again for a higher score don't bother with this game. There's a handful of optional paths and secret stages to access if you're good enough but they don't provide any insight into the army of "Z" or why there's a nuclear threat. Jaguar Leader and Jaguar 2 aren't going to explain their romantic relationship either no matter what ending you manage to get. Dump the better graphics and the "Climax mode" and you have something straight out of 1987 or in other words you have Afterburner 2.
Even for a ten-minute game Sega puts forth the effort to keep gamers playing for hours. There's the regular arcade mode which is fine and all but players would do well to stick with Score-Attack. The thing about arcade mode is that's the mode for people who like to unlock stuff, not for people who want to get better at the game. Through the arcade mode you'll eventually unlock most of the achievements and a ton of EX options. These allow various changes to arcade mode that well...okay they're all cheats. Extra lives and continues are obvious but they also go as far as to include the ability to enlarge the cursor size so that everything in the general area can be hit by a missile. By the time you finish unlocking all of these options you can play a game of Climax that's impossible to do badly in let alone lose. You stick with that mode and before you know it your ten minute game has turned into a few hours game.
So my advice is if you want to love this game you gotta stick with score-attack. Some purists out there will cry and start blubbering about "oh but that mode gives infinite lives how can I work on my survival skills?" Again there's an easy answer to this because survival ties directly to your score. Afterburner Climax is always moving whether your ship is in one piece or several. Enemies fly in, unleash their payload, and fly off in seconds. Any second where you aren't there to shoot them down is wasted and with about 50 to 100 targets per stage you can easily miss a third of them every time you die. Okay you'll likely miss half of them anyway due to how fast everything is moving but hey you'll get them next time right? That's what replay value is all about. Dying also has the nasty habit of killing whatever combo you've managed to build up and obviously we don't want to die and not losing combos just happens to be a bonus. So all I can say is that maybe the survival-purists should just shut up and stick to score-attack. Oh and I nearly forgot score-attack offers unlockables in the form of medals. Alright maybe they won't give you achievements and they certainly won't make your ship near invincible but if you manage to get them all maybe you yourself will feel a little bit invincible.
Cause to me at least arcade games are about pushing beyond limits. Far too often when I sit down with a console game I find that odds are not impossible and that every situation as a solution that is handed to the player like a glowing lever or a shiny weapon that screams "use me and you win!" As far as those games are concerned since you bought it it's yours and hardly anything is going to keep you from seeing the ending because it's your right as a consumer. With that idea one might as well buy a toaster, it takes about the same effort but at least its more rewarding cause toast is good any time of the day. I don't know about you but if played these console games all the time I'd wake up one morning with the reflexes of a corpse and the brain activity to match. I wouldn't be lacking for stuff to talk about on message-boards at least.
When I manage to beat an arcade game -- that is completing the game without continuing -- I feel that I've actually accomplished something. I managed to beat a game that was designed to be up-front about taking as much money as possible from a player. Maybe my experience wasn't as rich and there's no memorable characters but there's not enough time for that. Improving at an arcade game is one of the few real thrills I get out of videogames. This is something that is unmatched as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel anything from fumbling through checkpoint-fest modern games where the only reason I managed to get to the next stage is because I knew where to move and where to shoot. I certainly don't feel anything (or at least not any longer) from multiplayer games where I spend the majority of my time waiting to respawn because I didn't put forth the three to five hours a day necessary to compete. It's different strokes and all but considering the time investment if I want to get better at games I usually stick with the arcades and sleepwalk through everything else.
So in the end Climax is an arcade game for arcade gamers. If you don't care for unlockables or arcade games don't even consider this game for a second. You'll hate the game, call it "shallow" or something and annoy the piss out of whatever "defense force" in whatever forum you post at. If you like unlockables but hate arcade games well I guess this isn't a bad deal. Heck there's even a couple items to "pimp out your avatar" and last I checked those usually go for like $1 to $4 a pop. You'll at least get a few hours out of this one. For fans of arcade games I think this is a definite recommendation. It's an arcade game by Sega after all and when they put forth the effort they can deliver something quite excellent. Those ten minutes could stretch into however many hours as fans will be trying and trying again to achieve some high-score that'll fill them with pride.
Then again it's all very possible that you might just not like the game. I can understand why and there's nothing I can say to convince anyone otherwise. On the bright side there's always the demo and considering the length of the game it's a very safe bet that if you didn't care for the demo the full game will not change your opinion in the slightest. While I can recognize quality when I see it I don't see myself as a big fan of this game. It is Afterburner 2 in the end and I was never really fond of that game. This one is a bit more approachable and quite a bit more fun but I may as well say that I feel like I bought this more out of support for Sega's arcade ports than for the actual game. I was always a bit more of a Space Harrier fan but Sega has yet to do a good update to that one. Yeah there was Planet Harriers but it's not really the same thing and well it's pretty damn terrible to boot.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Hate to say it but uh...Assassin's Creed 2 is eating up all my gaming time.
For all the hype I did about Arcade Appreciation April I gotta say I haven't been following up on it nearly as well as I should have. Rather than spending my free time playing and reviewing these games I've been spending it all with Assassin's Creed 2.
One of the reasons I started this blog is to seek out an explanation as to why I play and enjoy videogames. Somewhere in between all of the bad jokes and ending every other sentence with "whatever" I'm trying to discover something significant about myself. This may sound weird but my very first memory was of a videogame that I played when I was three or four. In fact it seems like a lot of my memories are tied to videogames in some form or another.
Cause really I can't say that I'm enjoying Assassin's Creed 2 because it's a great game. I think I'm most of the way through it and have already noticed enough flaws to keep it from approaching greatness. All of that is irrelevant however because in the end I'm still enjoying myself and at the moment I'd rather play this than some classic Arcade game. I guess I've always had a soft spot for conspiracy theories and mysteries. There's nothing like this in the average arcade game. There's nothing that isn't already known and there's hardly any time to think about the events that transpire. While AC2 is very repetitive it offers enough of the unknown to keep me interested, which I guess says more about having the proper formula than inspired game design.
Could be that the only reason I continue to work on this blog is because it serves as a meta-game. While some gamers have their achievements, their trophies, collections, and what we used to call "playing for a high-score", I play games so that I can write about them. It's kind of funny because this is where the separation between games I enjoy and games I think are great comes in. The games I think are great get recommended on this blog while the games I enjoy are the ones I continue to play. When I stop enjoying a game that's usually when I post a write-up and more than likely indefinitely shelve or sell off said game.
What I probably should be doing is writing about why I no longer enjoy to play these games. If they're so great why do I quit them? Okay yeah it's hard to believe anyone could continue to enjoy a game for such a long period of time but with a number of games even today I still play them. Take Super Mario Brothers 3 for example. I've been playing that game off and on for close to twenty years. I still don't have a write-up posted for it. I'm so familiar with the game that certainly I could come up with something to say about it. If I write something about this game maybe it would compel me to never play it again. On that same note take something like Diablo 2. I'm both disgusted and horrified by the amount of hours I've put into that game and if I ever got around to it I'd say nothing but nasty things about it. By not completing a piece it's possible I'm leaving myself open so that one day I'll get sucked in again and lose another couple hundred hours.
I know that eventually I will stop enjoying Assassin's Creed 2 because after I complete I will have an understanding of many of its mysteries though I'm well aware that more questions will pop up to be answered by the inevitable sequel. Still when this time comes I will say my piece and give the game to my brother or whatever, and that'll be the end of that. Tomorrow Afterburner Climax will hit XBLA and before long I'll have played through it, written about it, and then left it to gather virtual cobwebs while I move on to the next game.
At this point I'm not looking for justification for all the time I've spent with videogames. Any regrets I've had are all in the past now so at this point I'm just looking to do a little self-discovery. I'm pushing 30 now and I really have no idea what causes me to enjoy games. By doing this I can move forward and hopefully produce something worth writing about. No worries though I'm not going to turn this blog into some pretentious fifth-wall nonsense. I'll still play games, give my honest thoughts about them, and that's the end of that. There will be those times where there's a certain title that goes just a bit deeper than "hey this game is good, play it". We'll just see how that goes.
One of the reasons I started this blog is to seek out an explanation as to why I play and enjoy videogames. Somewhere in between all of the bad jokes and ending every other sentence with "whatever" I'm trying to discover something significant about myself. This may sound weird but my very first memory was of a videogame that I played when I was three or four. In fact it seems like a lot of my memories are tied to videogames in some form or another.
Cause really I can't say that I'm enjoying Assassin's Creed 2 because it's a great game. I think I'm most of the way through it and have already noticed enough flaws to keep it from approaching greatness. All of that is irrelevant however because in the end I'm still enjoying myself and at the moment I'd rather play this than some classic Arcade game. I guess I've always had a soft spot for conspiracy theories and mysteries. There's nothing like this in the average arcade game. There's nothing that isn't already known and there's hardly any time to think about the events that transpire. While AC2 is very repetitive it offers enough of the unknown to keep me interested, which I guess says more about having the proper formula than inspired game design.
Could be that the only reason I continue to work on this blog is because it serves as a meta-game. While some gamers have their achievements, their trophies, collections, and what we used to call "playing for a high-score", I play games so that I can write about them. It's kind of funny because this is where the separation between games I enjoy and games I think are great comes in. The games I think are great get recommended on this blog while the games I enjoy are the ones I continue to play. When I stop enjoying a game that's usually when I post a write-up and more than likely indefinitely shelve or sell off said game.
What I probably should be doing is writing about why I no longer enjoy to play these games. If they're so great why do I quit them? Okay yeah it's hard to believe anyone could continue to enjoy a game for such a long period of time but with a number of games even today I still play them. Take Super Mario Brothers 3 for example. I've been playing that game off and on for close to twenty years. I still don't have a write-up posted for it. I'm so familiar with the game that certainly I could come up with something to say about it. If I write something about this game maybe it would compel me to never play it again. On that same note take something like Diablo 2. I'm both disgusted and horrified by the amount of hours I've put into that game and if I ever got around to it I'd say nothing but nasty things about it. By not completing a piece it's possible I'm leaving myself open so that one day I'll get sucked in again and lose another couple hundred hours.
I know that eventually I will stop enjoying Assassin's Creed 2 because after I complete I will have an understanding of many of its mysteries though I'm well aware that more questions will pop up to be answered by the inevitable sequel. Still when this time comes I will say my piece and give the game to my brother or whatever, and that'll be the end of that. Tomorrow Afterburner Climax will hit XBLA and before long I'll have played through it, written about it, and then left it to gather virtual cobwebs while I move on to the next game.
At this point I'm not looking for justification for all the time I've spent with videogames. Any regrets I've had are all in the past now so at this point I'm just looking to do a little self-discovery. I'm pushing 30 now and I really have no idea what causes me to enjoy games. By doing this I can move forward and hopefully produce something worth writing about. No worries though I'm not going to turn this blog into some pretentious fifth-wall nonsense. I'll still play games, give my honest thoughts about them, and that's the end of that. There will be those times where there's a certain title that goes just a bit deeper than "hey this game is good, play it". We'll just see how that goes.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Yep bought some mo' games
I can't help it. It's like I always say: Money not spent is money...well okay just fill in the rest with whatever you want. The important thing is that I'm doing my best to feign relevancy by buying all of the newest and hottest games.
Assassin's Creed 2 - See here's one. This is a record for me because I believe this game isn't even a year old. Between this and Mass Effect 2 I might have what it takes to become a legitimate game reviewer. Now if I could just figure out how to add scores to everything.
A Playstation 3 - Just in case a few of you guys were thinking I was only buying PS3 games because I thought the cases were sexy. Gotta admit though they are pretty nice.
Resistance 1 - Heck they're so nice I decided to buy another PS3 game. It was either this or the sequel and since this was cheaper and a number of people weren't too fond of the other game I figure I'll play it safe for the moment. I needed at least one PS3 launch game to play though I'm still looking for Ridge Racer 7 and possibly Genji 2 as well.
Assassin's Creed 2 - See here's one. This is a record for me because I believe this game isn't even a year old. Between this and Mass Effect 2 I might have what it takes to become a legitimate game reviewer. Now if I could just figure out how to add scores to everything.
A Playstation 3 - Just in case a few of you guys were thinking I was only buying PS3 games because I thought the cases were sexy. Gotta admit though they are pretty nice.
Resistance 1 - Heck they're so nice I decided to buy another PS3 game. It was either this or the sequel and since this was cheaper and a number of people weren't too fond of the other game I figure I'll play it safe for the moment. I needed at least one PS3 launch game to play though I'm still looking for Ridge Racer 7 and possibly Genji 2 as well.
AA - Gunblade NY and LA Machineguns Wii-bound
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/04/15/gunblade-ny-la-machineguns-arcade-hits-pack-leaked/
With the Wii and rail-shooters going together like peanut butter and whatever goes good with that it's only a matter of time until companies get around to porting more of their stuff to the console.
I played Gunblade NY a long time ago and the only thing I remember about it is that the massive gun it used made my arms numb after awhile. For some reason I can't imagine the Wii remote having quite the same effect. Still it's always nice to have ports especially when it comes to games I honestly never expected to see again.
Still wish I could get one of those actual guns from the game though. It's bad enough I couldn't get my very own special ops gun for the Ghost Squad home port, that thing was amazing in the arcades.
With the Wii and rail-shooters going together like peanut butter and whatever goes good with that it's only a matter of time until companies get around to porting more of their stuff to the console.
I played Gunblade NY a long time ago and the only thing I remember about it is that the massive gun it used made my arms numb after awhile. For some reason I can't imagine the Wii remote having quite the same effect. Still it's always nice to have ports especially when it comes to games I honestly never expected to see again.
Still wish I could get one of those actual guns from the game though. It's bad enough I couldn't get my very own special ops gun for the Ghost Squad home port, that thing was amazing in the arcades.
Friday, April 16, 2010
The Lady Sword Translation is almost complete
This time I'm going to talk about something a little different.
Way way back there was a Japan-only game for the PC-Engine, a system we in other parts of the world know as the Turbografx-16. Lady Sword was its name and it was developed by a company known as Games Express. Never heard of them? They're behind the fighting game known as Strip Fighter 2. Yes that's right Strip Fighter 2. As you can imagine these guys weren't exactly known for their quality games.
To put it bluntly they developed games where you were rewarded with soft-core porn as you progressed. Strip Fighter 2 was nothing more than a shameless piece of garbage that was awful to the point of hilarity. Lady Sword on the other hand...well it's about the same thing. Still it offered some uh... interesting content that was more than just badly rendered 8-bit naked pictures.
The deal with Lady Sword is that it is a first-person dungeon crawler. It's very basic as there's only one party member and battle strategies are limited to fight, defend, do some move that has a 1% chance of success, or run. The goal is to navigate a series of mazes to further the storyline, kill the final boss, and immerse yourself in the bizarre happenings.
The strangest thing about this game is a disembodied female head that appears every now and again to offer advice, chat about the weather, and well honestly I have no idea. At first it's seems like a normal enough thing with all the magic floating heads we're used to in fictional media but after the first stage things change. This floating head starts changing into more grotesque forms, bits of skin fall off, sometimes she's wrapped in bandages, maybe her brain is exposed for no particular reason, oh and she gets new hairstyles. It's quite disturbing and guess what? A couple guys are actually putting forth the effort to translate this insanity and yours truly is going to be one of the first beta-testers who will finally discover just what that bleeding floating head was babbling about.
Chances are good that you don't care about any of this and I don't blame you. I did a google search recently and turned up a couple pages worth of actual content about the game.
The translation page itself.
An angelfire site documenting my playthrough of the game(warning contains language and idiocy)
There's also a couple videos floating around on youtube I think but otherwise that's about the extent of people actually talking about the game. Maybe there's some thread in an obscure forum I missed somewhere but otherwise this is all I could find.
Regardless I'm looking forward to giving this game another run through and hopefully more people will take an interest in it because while it isn't a good game by any stretch of the imagination it is certainly something else.
Way way back there was a Japan-only game for the PC-Engine, a system we in other parts of the world know as the Turbografx-16. Lady Sword was its name and it was developed by a company known as Games Express. Never heard of them? They're behind the fighting game known as Strip Fighter 2. Yes that's right Strip Fighter 2. As you can imagine these guys weren't exactly known for their quality games.
To put it bluntly they developed games where you were rewarded with soft-core porn as you progressed. Strip Fighter 2 was nothing more than a shameless piece of garbage that was awful to the point of hilarity. Lady Sword on the other hand...well it's about the same thing. Still it offered some uh... interesting content that was more than just badly rendered 8-bit naked pictures.
The deal with Lady Sword is that it is a first-person dungeon crawler. It's very basic as there's only one party member and battle strategies are limited to fight, defend, do some move that has a 1% chance of success, or run. The goal is to navigate a series of mazes to further the storyline, kill the final boss, and immerse yourself in the bizarre happenings.
The strangest thing about this game is a disembodied female head that appears every now and again to offer advice, chat about the weather, and well honestly I have no idea. At first it's seems like a normal enough thing with all the magic floating heads we're used to in fictional media but after the first stage things change. This floating head starts changing into more grotesque forms, bits of skin fall off, sometimes she's wrapped in bandages, maybe her brain is exposed for no particular reason, oh and she gets new hairstyles. It's quite disturbing and guess what? A couple guys are actually putting forth the effort to translate this insanity and yours truly is going to be one of the first beta-testers who will finally discover just what that bleeding floating head was babbling about.
Chances are good that you don't care about any of this and I don't blame you. I did a google search recently and turned up a couple pages worth of actual content about the game.
The translation page itself.
An angelfire site documenting my playthrough of the game(warning contains language and idiocy)
There's also a couple videos floating around on youtube I think but otherwise that's about the extent of people actually talking about the game. Maybe there's some thread in an obscure forum I missed somewhere but otherwise this is all I could find.
Regardless I'm looking forward to giving this game another run through and hopefully more people will take an interest in it because while it isn't a good game by any stretch of the imagination it is certainly something else.
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