Trite end-of-year thing #6: Halo 3

31 December 07 | 18:27 | Posted by:

Oh, right, hey. Countdown thing.

I'm back in California but my body's still on Eastern time, and I've found myself awake at 6 a.m. for the past two days and glued to BioShock for practically every waking moment, at least until I came to work this morning. I woulda finished it last night, actually, but I stepped out for sushi and the waitress decided it would be a friendly New Year's treat to offer me a second box of sake, gratis. Which is very generous, but as a lightweight drinker I quickly found myself needing to use intense concentration when simply manipulating my chopsticks, and once I made my way home I figured that this was probably not the ideal condition in which to take down the final boss.

And now, as Kasey says, on with the countdown. Ah, if only I could get someone to sing "Number six" for me here.



Halo 3
Bungie/Microsoft | Xbox 360 | First-person shooter

The music analogy I made for Odin Sphere worked pretty well, so let us continue using this theme until it is irredeemably tired and annoying. If Halo 3 were a band, it would be a supergroup whose name and reputation have taken on a life of their own -- a group like U2 or the Rolling Stones, whose fame and ubiquity sometimes obscure their music. A band that feels a little predictable and mundane now, but with good reason: they set a standard that everyone else imitates.

Not unlike what the kids were discussing the other day, at this point people seem less likely to opine on Halo 3 itself than on others' opinions of the game, and on the series' omnipresence, and on the enormity of its popularity, and on the desperate extravagance of Microsoft's marketing of the game, and on the media's apparent eagerness to cover every minor nuance of the game. Et cetera. The merits and failings of the game itself tend to be overshadowed by the meta-discussion, or else are so utterly blown out of proportion as to turn most conversations about the game into dogmatic chest-thumping. Anything you say about it is going to piss off someone. My EGM review -- a 9.0, essentially a five-star rating with some reservations -- annoyed the fans (because I was clearly lowballing it from some sort of bias) and the haters (because I was too blinded by moneyhats to give it the 6.0 it so richly deserved) alike. It's one of those games. Maybe the definitive example.

See, now I'm reacting to the reactions to the reactions, and so on, recursively, ad nauseum. Shameful.

Strip all of that away, though, and what you have is a very good, very polished, very accessible first-person shooter, with some definite flaws. Whether you adore Halo or despise it, the simple fact is that the series represents a landmark in shooter design. These days it's rare to find an FPS that doesn't limit you to two weapons (gather as you go), or that doesn't feature Halo's set of online play options (refined over the years from their Marathon debut), or that doesn't give you auto-regenerating shields, or that doesn't include a persistent voice in your ear to serve as combination storyteller/guide. The Halo design has become a formula for the genre, for better or for worse. Personally, I think it works fine here -- Halo 3 is more or less exactly what I expected to see in the trilogy's finale -- but I could live without some of the more blatant (and less polished) knock-offs. Just as no one has ever quite done Bionic Commando's grappling mechanic as well as Bionic Commando, Halo-alikes tend not to be as enjoyable as the original.



Whether or not Halo 3 deserves to be treated as the most apocalyptically huge game in the history of the human species is debatable, though I'm not even going to get involved in that conversation. I've personally written way too much about the game, but for a reason: it's what people want to read. Regardless of what you may think of the game, plenty of others (millions, I'd wager) think it's the bee's knees and even now will eagerly click on any link that says "Halo." It's quite the phenomenon, though hardly unique. Halo 3 just happens to occupy the same niche as Super Mario Bros. or Street Fighter II did in years gone by: it's a crowd-pleaser, a game that hits the sweet spot between polish, playability and accessibility.

I sometimes get the impression that Bungie isn't quite sure how to handle this mass-market Middle America fanbase it's managed to tap; their games up to (and, I guess, mostly including) Oni were generally pretty cerebral, and Halo 3 bobs turbulently at the confluence of two very different streams of conscious. Its greatest failing, I think, is that it compromises itself trying to appeal to both and doesn't really work perfectly for either. The story, for instance, is a pretty decent sci-fi tale that longs to be great. Unfortunately, it's painted in broad strokes with Hollywood-style "snappy" patter atop patriotic snare drums to catch the attention of gamers who usually snooze during cutscenes; yet it assumes its audience has been paying very close attention to minor story details and rarely (if ever) stops to explain the rapid-fire sequence of plot elements thrown out in each and every cutscene. This results in dialogue a bit too juvenile to cater to the people who are going to take notes on the finer points, and in details presented so briskly that the casual player literally needs a flowchart to keep track of who's doing what, and why.



So, no, Halo 3 wasn't exactly the narrative triumph of 2007, although the terminals went a long way toward proving that Bungie still remembers how to weave an interesting, enigmatic tale. But holy crap if it didn't play beautifully.

Even that's not without a caveat, unfortunately. Play the game on its default difficulty -- a logical decision, given that "normal" suggests "this is the way the game is intended to be experienced" -- and Halo 3 is a perfectly competent shooter with very pretty environments, acceptable enemies and entertaining weapons. But the word "normal" is a lie. Bump the challenge level up a notch, and suddenly the experience changes. Enemies become much cannier, much better shots, much stronger, and much more strategic. Suddenly you appreciate the environments as more than just pretty sun-dappled forests; they become vital shelter, each bit of scenery a potential safe haven from unseen snipers or that Brute captain who has a bandolier of concussion grenades with your name printed on them. The enemies become devious foes rather than mere fodder. And you find yourself choosing your two weapons very, very carefully to match each new situation.

So regardless of the game's narrative shortcomings, irrespective of its less-inspiring-than-hoped multiplayer, all hype aside, Halo 3's single-player campaign on heroic is one of the most challenging and rewarding game experiences I've ever had. It was hard -- it was damn hard. But it never felt unfair; I never felt overwhelmed. Rather, the entire experience felt perfectly tuned and balanced, except for the fact that the first two levels are the toughest in the game, and the last two are the easiest. (What's that about, guys?) It was the perfect length, too -- long enough to feel complete, but brief enough that it didn't feel padded.

No, it was just short enough to leave me hungry for a little more... which is inevitable, of course, given that the coda basically says "BUY HALO 4, COMING SOON." But next time, someone else can write all those friggin' articles. Turns out I enjoy Halo most from the outside.

category: games | forums | eleven comments | §

Trite end-of-year thing #7: Odin Sphere

28 December 07 | 07:02 | Posted by:

And my uninspiring, unimaginative filler content continues apace with my seventh favorite game of the year.



Odin Sphere
Vanillaware/Atlus | PlayStation 2 | RPG-ish thing

There is a secret to getting the most out of Odin Sphere: do not play it all in one go.

Part RPG, part action brawler, part storybook puppet show, Odin Sphere is a sixty-hour game divided into twelve-hour chunks which, in the aggregate, can become crushingly repetitive. The long-awaited (by a few dozen people) follow-up to Princess Crown is a minor masterpiece, but it also demonstrates the failings of the industry that birthed the game -- or at the very least, it arrived about a year too soon, on the wrong platform. Had each of its five chapters arrived two months apart from one another as $10 chunks of episodic content on Xbox 360, it would probably be hailed far and wide as a work of genius. Instead, it can feel like a little too much repackaging of too little content.

That is a shame, because Odin Sphere offers more than just its obvious strengths (namely, those amazing graphics and a typically delicate Hitoshi Sakimoto score). It's a beautiful game, pushing 2D visuals that absolutely work the PS2 to its limits (witness some of the sloggier boss battle for slow-riffic examples) -- and, perhaps more importantly, 2D visuals that seem to be a forgotten art in an era of five-pass textures and HDR lighting. Not that there's anything wrong with looking as beautiful as BioShock or Halo 3... but seeing that old techniques and styles haven't been forgotten is, well, heartening. In a world of corporate radio-friendly rock anthems, Odin Sphere is a quiet folk tune; a little rough, a little simplistic, but heartfelt.

And charmingly quirky, if you're willing to get into the creator's head. Otherwise, it's just plan quirky.



Odin Sphere is a game that's very much about cycles and repetition -- every stage is circular, menus are presented as rings, and each of the five playable characters cover much of the same ground as the others. Taken in a single dose, it can feel almost oppressive, especially given the fairly limited nature of combat. You attack, you block, you do a jumping attack, you cast limited magic spells.

Yet that's really sort of the point, and whether you see this circularity as a strength or a weakness is what determines your like or dislike of the game. For me, Odin Sphere's gameplay is almost rhythmic -- a sensation enhanced by its unconventional item "crafting" system, which sees you planting and harvesting seeds that are almost literally watered with the blood of your fallen foes. Generally, each level consists of a few minutes of manic intensity followed by a few moments of quiet in which I took time to collect the various fruits, roots and, uh, sheep summoned forth by my combat horticulture.



And in these steady rhythms, the whole of game takes shape. Turns out that this shape is fractal. The cycles of battle and the circular battlefields are reflected by the consistent progressions of each different world, which in turn give form to the Roshomon-style narrative. Admittedly, the story would be stronger if it came clean and used actual Norse mythological figures rather than thinly-veiled analogues. Yet even this failing isn't particularly painful, since the watered-down Valkyries and gods and mortals are still written as sympathetic characters with sufficient pathos and personality to drive the story.

Certainly it's not the sort of game that plays to everyone's preferences -- taken as a whole, it threatens to be grindingly dull. Taken chapter-by-chapter, though, Odin Sphere is an intriguing, involving and idiosyncratic experience.

category: games | forums | 21 comments | §

Trite end-of-year thing, part 0.1: Dishonorable mentions

26 December 07 | 06:47 | Posted by:

You know, it's always the little gifts that resonate the most. This year, my sister followed up on the Katamari magnets from two Christmases ago with a Cactaur button. It is, as they say, rad. I keep telling her she should make a business out of making these completely great character pins, but she has too much integrity to sell out like that. How indie!



I like how my phone's camera managed to capture everything with crystal clarity except the subject of the image. But speaking of Cactuar....

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Dishonorable Mentions: Best games I played this year that weren't from this year

Despite the glut of brilliant games released this year, some of my best experiences came from games developed quite some time ago. And not just my usual predilection for dabbling in all things retro -- these games sucked me in for far too many hours. Because they're good! So they deserve a mention, even if they're not really 2007 titles.



Final Fantasy VI Advance | 1994
I'm not one of those people who worships at the altar of FFVI, because Square (Enix) is still perfectly capable of churning out quality Final Fantasy games, even after betraying Nintendo and upgrading Tetsuya Nomura from art monkey to grand design silverback (and all those other things that FFVI fanboys whine about). Still, the last "classic" Final Fantasy probably struck the single best balance the series ever saw between style and content, between freedom and linearity, between challenge and complete brokenness. It was the most open entry of the series until XII came along. And it's all 2D, which means it moves at a quick pace without infuriating load times or needlessly flashy battle animation. The new GBA translation was solid, too, managing to bring the script and naming conventions to current standards without crapping all over the perfectly excellent (albeit edited for space constraints) original script. Best Final Fantasy ever? No, but pretty gol-dang great regardless.



Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions | 1998
The new translation for FF Tactics was even more welcome, since it finally allowed the intricate plot to be coherent for an English-speaking audience. Sure, you have to read all the Zodiac Brave bonus info to keep up with the machinations of pivotal characters who never actually appear in the game, but that's no burden, really -- Matsuno and crew sunk a ton of effort into the supplement content, with character bios that change over the course of the game to reflect their current status. That is precisely the kind of detail that makes the Ivalice games so good. Well, the real Ivalice games. The other new additions (characters and jobs) weren't really necessary -- they just make the game even easier to beat once you get over those initial sticking spots -- but the move to a portable system was all it took to get me to play all the way through the game in Japanese and most of the way again in English.



Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence | 2004
The first couple of hours of this game kind of... suck. But once you get past that hump and into the real meat of the mission, MGS3 is the most substantial and engrossing game ever to bear the Metal Gear name. I'd have bought it just for the showdown with The End, really. But the rest of the game is exceptional, too, so it all works out. Well, except that beginning portion. And the finale drags a bit. OK, so it's as rocky and uneven as anything else Hideo Kojima has ever created -- but while his shortcomings and excesses are on full display here, so are his brilliant flourishes and visionary ideas. It is a victory, on the balance; roll on Guns of the Patriots.



Cave Story | 2003
My addiction to Avernum V can be chalked up to two things: Mass Effect rousing my interest in western RPG design, and Cave Story serving as an inspiring example of the sheer potential inherent in independent games. I never quite took to the floaty jump physics, but everything about this game is difficult not to love: simple graphics packed with personality, an interesting story, a well-structured adventure that slowly becomes less linear and more open as you advance. Not bad for the work of a single person, really.

category: games | forums | 19 comments | §

The spirit of the season

25 December 07 | 19:25 | Posted by:

This about sums it up:



Lazing about in happy, suffocating warmth, stuffed with tryptophan and the satisfaction of having made good gift selections for my loved ones. And my mother's most bizarre Christmas invention yet looming in the background: a tree lit entirely with purple glow bracelets. I am sad to say it doesn't have a single pacifier hanging from the branches.

Note the lack of allegedly humorous text overlaid atop the kitten, there. That is my Christmas gift to you. No, wait, actually -- I just found half a dozen sets of ToastyFrog and Rorita buttons that I will mail to the first six people who give me their mailing address. That is my Christmas gift to you. Well, six of you.

Edit: Aaaaand they're gone. Next time, chumps! Er, I mean, chums.

category: blog | forums | ten comments | §

Another trite year-end "best of" countdown, part 0

24 December 07 | 18:10 | Posted by:

Creative thinking is such hard work. So, I figured I'd wind down the year with the tritest thing imaginable, short of maybe a feature on gaming's hottest imaginary women or something. Yes, it's a "my favorite games of the year" series. Wow. Yeah, this one took me a while to come up with.

I wouldn't do anything so pretentious as actually call these the definitive best games, though. Just my favorites. This is partly because I didn't have time to play some of the potential game-of-the-year candidates, but mostly because my enjoyment was often not strictly commensurate with the scores I doled out. Besides, scores are stupid and turn everyone into complete drooling idiots. Can't we all just get along?

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Part 0: The Runners-Up | Avernum V (Spiderweb) | BioShock (Irrational)

I rather liked these games, but alas, I'm not done with either and hesitate to judge their replay value when I'm not even entirely sure they'll hold up to a single playthrough. This is known as "being prudent." Or... wishy-washy.

Avernum V is currently reminding me why I used to enjoy indie games, back in the ancient days when they were simply called "shareware." Specifically, the latest Avernum descends from the elderly Exile series, which I played a bit of back in the dim and distant days when games were distributed on these things called diskettes. You younger types probably don't remember them, but they were kind of like CDs, except flimsy, slow, low in capacity and incredibly unreliable. And really, Avernum V doesn't seem to be wildly different from its ancient predecessors -- its visuals are nicer, although hardly cutting edge. (I'd say they smack of a distinctly 1998 vintage.)



Yeah, not exactly cutting edge, but this is one of those games where the visuals don't really matter so much. In fact, the minimalistic look lets the game get away with lots of visual shortcuts that speed up the gameplay; the characters don't animate as they move about the world. They just sort of... snap to the next grid square. I can't even imagine playing this game in a 3D engine -- well, no, I can. It would move at about a third of the speed and be filled with ugly, ugly characters. Sometimes less is... well, if not more, then certainly not less.

Its story is rather more interesting than I expected, since it actually stars a party of adventurers in the employ of an evil empire but doesn't seem likely to drift into the usual territory of "Uh oh, we'd better make a stand against our corrupt masters!" Rather, you're hunting down a traitor who wants to overthrow the current reform-minded empress. But it's presented in such a way that you can be a nice imperial minion and work for the benefit of the occupied lands you're traveling through, or you can play to the people's prejudices and be a ruthless bastard. It also allows for a few different mutually-exclusive story paths without being completely obvious about it. It is, in a nutshell, pretty good.



And, of course, BioShock. Do I have anything new and unique to add to the din of praise about this game? I rather suspect not. It is a bit slow to start, but once you begin tapping into the various available skills and customizing your character it really takes off. I do think the mutant enemies are a bit of a cheat to justify the fact that the character models are so much more awkward than the gorgeous art-deco world. But the important thing is that the story represents a sledgehammer-subtle critique of Objectivism, and is there anything more entertaining than dismantling the mad dream of a gender-swapped Ayn Rand?

I say there is not.

category: games | forums | three comments | §

It doesn't feel like vacation unless I'm home

23 December 07 | 13:48 | Posted by:

Take that, American Airlines: I made it to Michigan despite your best efforts to stop me. And just in time, too.


How thoughtful of the weather -- our white Christmas didn't hit until after I landed.

I don't think I've seen snow since I moved to San Francisco, so I am quite alright with this -- I'm comfortably ensconced in a reclining chair by a window, watching the snow fall from the safety of toasty warmth. My parents have massively renovated their home since I was last here, adding a new living room above the garage which, I think, has more square footage than the two-bedroom apartment I rent. They've also finished their walk-out basement; it's now opulent, furnished and spacious enough to make being a basement dweller sound almost sort of appealing.

Of course, the downside is that they live out in the middle of nowhere, so I'm not too jealous of their posh digs. But it's nice to be here for now -- like all extremes (see also: Japan), this sort of wintry isolation is quite enjoyable in moderate doses.

category: blog | forums | thirteen comments | §

Cross Poster II: EX Alpha Plus Gold ~ Dash Turbo ~

21 December 07 | 16:15 | Posted by:

You didn't know it at the time -- neither did I! -- but the week of December 14, 1987 was quite possibly the single greatest display of creativity the industry has ever witnessed. Not one but three franchises launched that week in Japan, three franchises that would endure two decades and go on to be some of the most beloved series ever made.

In the space of three days, Japanese gamers were introduced to Rockman (aka Mega Man), Final Fantasy and finally Phantasy Star. Sure, we saw some colossal release dates this past autumn, but most of those were sequels (even BioShock, really). But that fateful week 20 years ago was packed with completely new ideas -- one a platform/shooter hybrid with an innovative power-up system and a clever chain of enemy weaknesses, one a Japanese take on RPGs offering a more western approach to design than Dragon Quest (thanks in large part to its heavy lifting of elements from CRPGs and Dungeons & Dragons), one a more narrative take on role-playing with a strong female lead.


So this week, we've been focusing on the history of... Street Fighter? Yeah, well, we're awesome like that. Besides, we've already done the whole Mega Man thing. And the Final Fantasy thing. And our Phantasy Star retrospective is written, but we're holding it back a few weeks to help keep you warm in the bitter cold of early January.

And anyway, Street Fighter is timely, what with the whole Street Fighter IV dust-up currently dividing the Internet. Nadia's done a fine job with parts one and two of her series retrospective, and an amusing look at the best and worst (mostly worst) of the licensed goods the franchise has inspired. I pooled together the bulk of the office's serious fighting game talent for a very good episode of Retronauts (featuring the best closing theme ever). And then there's the WTFiction!? article in which I try, perhaps with some degree of futility, to dissect and distill the series' plotline. I actually did more research for this one than I did for the Resident Evil WTFiction!? -- and I've never played more than an hour or two of Resident Evil, so I had to work from scratch for that one. But no, I pored over the obvious sources (GameFAQs guides and Wikipedia), studied every last character ending from every game at VG Museum, and then spent a ton of time digging up conversations at places like Shoryuken, MM Cafe and other forums. I figure this article is about as precise as it gets with Capcom explicitly laying out the facts. And concise, too -- I left out most of the characters who have no real impact on the story... no slight to the vast-but-irrelevant cast of 3rd Strike intended.

Epic thanks to Gary Lu for making it all Flash-y. I normally hate Flash, but with something like this it's pretty necessary.


For me, Street Fighter is very specifically Street Fighter II. Yeah, I've played them all, but only SF2 was a genuine phenomenon -- and its timing coincided perfectly with my high school career. My friends and I spent ridiculous amounts of time hanging out at arcades and pizza parlors refining our fighting techniques; our high school let seniors leave at noon for the final week or two of the school year, and every single day a bunch of us would end up at the Copper Caboose (a local sports bar that doubled as a kid-friendly no-booze arcade during the day) hanging around the Street Fighter cabinets. And, of course, we had the inevitable debates about whether or not Mortal Kombat was superior to SF2; opinions varied, but of course the correct answer was "Ha, not even!"

As the only one in my peer group nerdy enough to have actually paid for a Super NES at launch -- my friends didn't want to shell out, but they were happy to freeload -- I officially became the hero of the city in the summer of 1992 when SF2's home version arrived. This was back in the days of cartridge shortages (it used to be Nintendo games that were impossible to find, not the systems), and SF2 was a bear to track down. And when I did find it, Toys 'R Us wanted an unbelievable $75 for it. In 2007 money, that is $110. I was lucky enough to have a job that paid $8/hour, twice the minimum wage, but that was still more than a day's wage.

But I paid it, and definitely got more than my money's worth if you want to consider how many quarters I would have dropped for the equivalent amount of arcade time. Simply beating the game with Zangief on maximum difficulty (with all the Bison cheesiness that implies) was probably $75 of continues. And if you want to count all the times my freeloading friends would come over to my house to play while I was at work, why, it was a tremendous value! Jerks.


Considering how much the Super NES version cost, though, I felt pretty burned by all the incremental not-quite-a-sequel releases that followed. In fact, by the time the Genesis version arrived I felt I had sort of played the game to death as it was. When Capcom churned out Super Street Fighter II -- effectively the same exact game with a handful of new characters -- I gave Fei Long and Cammy a try, found them lacking, and called it a day.

Although the legendary Fight of the Fei Longs that I mentioned in the podcast almost made me reconsider my interest in the game.


But no, it wasn't until the Super NES was on its last legs that Street Fighter rekindled my interest. I had blown off Street Fighter Alpha because at first glance all I saw was Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Sagat and a dude who was basically Guile in orange. The sheer variety of the Alpha 2 roster drew me in, however, and for the last month of my first senior semester in college my roommates and I would spend hours trying to defeat one another with unfamiliar characters. It was right around this time of year, too, so the lull before Christmas often reminds me of those good times. (As good as times can be when you're renting a crappy house in a Texas winter cold enough that you could walk into the unheated, uninsulated living room in the morning and see your breath in a massive puff of vapor, anyway.)

We never got the hang of Rose or Gen, but I found Sakura startlingly effective -- her incorrect mimickry of Ryu's ansatsuken style made for a fairly unpredictable fighter, since her attacks constantly subverted all your expectations from years of beating up Ken and Ryu. And one my roommates was a deft hand with Adon. In retrospect, sure, the Super NES version dropped frames of animation and suffered, bizarrely, from loading times (presumably because the data had to be crammed onto the cartridge and decompressed before each match). But we didn't care! We'd ignored the arcade version, we didn't own a next-gen machine, so it was good enough. We had a crazy good time.

Then my roommate bought Donkey Kong Country 3 and I never spoke to him again.

Naw, just kidding, but his obsession with what looked like the most boring platformer imaginable effectively killed our Street Fighter sessions.


Unfortunately, I never really caught the Street Fighter bug again -- I tried getting into Alpha 3 (to the point where I bought all sorts of bizarre controller attachments to turn the D-pad into a hadouken-friendly thumbstick), but my roommates had moved along. And without anyone to compete again, Street Fighter just isn't as fun. My last girlfriend (hi, Pamela) was ferocious with Chun-Li to the point where I never had a chance of winning... which isn't much fun for entirely different reasons. Besides, it was always much more entertaining to step back and watch her tear up the Capcom Vs. SNK machine, especially when some cocky college kid would drop in a quarter confident in his ability to beat some stupid girl -- only to have his character's teeth handed to him in a little baggie after two quick rounds.

Once I discovered 3rd Strike, I really started to regret letting my fighting skills lapse -- it's a beautifully animated game with great characters. But then I watched that video of the dude parrying Chun-Li's blazzilion-kick combo and realized that I will never ever have the dedication necessary to be a competitive fighting game player. Or any game, really. I want a breadth of gaming experiences, not focused mastery of a single title. That jack of all trades thing really crimps my chances of being a tournament contender.

Still, I hope that SF4 works for people like me -- casual fans with fond nostalgia for hanging out in arcades 15 years gone by -- as well as for the more dedicated players like Richard and Greg. If any fighting game can get me to dust off that arcade stick, it'll be this one. We'll see, I suppose. But at least I'll always have my memories, right? (Until I go senile, anyway.)

category: games | forums | nine comments | §

So squint

20 December 07 | 21:02 | Posted by:

After yesterday's minor tirade -- a squall in an Internet teacup, really -- I've decided that the ultimate fault for all of these non-functioning Mac games ultimately rests with MacPlay, a publisher with a terrible track record of keeping its releases current compared to other Mac publishers such as, say, Aspyr or Blizzard. So screw 'em -- I'd rather deal with more reliable publishers. At the moment, I'm getting my old-school CRPG mojo on with the surprisingly engrossing Avernum 5.



Of course, I'd rather be playing BioShock, since I'm already deeply engrossed in its wonders; I reached Fort Frolic last night. I wasn't so keen on the first few hours of the adventure, but somewhere in middle of Neptune's Bounty the game totally clicked for me. Alas, I'm leaving town for a week and don't feel like dragging my 360 along with me (as I'm almost certain that subjecting it to TSA's gentle ministrations is a quick ticket to a Red Ring of Death), so I've decided to hold off on advancing into the second half of the game until I'm back from vacation. With my luck I'd have to call it quits five minutes from the end of the game. So! Avernum 5 it is.

I am a little sad that my growing interest in CRPGs coincides with my becoming old and fat. I swear, what a cliché. Next stop: beard, then suspenders.

Other items of note: I managed to mail off the last of the spring cleaning packages today, or at least the ones that were paid for via PayPal. So you should see those by Monday. Exception: if you live in Mexico, I have not sent your stuff yet, because I dread dealing with the holiday season line at the post office desk. It's madness. But I guess I will suck it up and deal with it tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Secondly, we recorded a new Retronauts this week due to our shockingly efficient ad sales team. I did not even realize that it was possible to convince an advertiser to buy time in a classic gaming podcast, but here we are, so bully for the ad doods. (Amusingly, we had a to do a second take on the ad, since Adam read "Atari 2600" as "Atari Two thousand six hundred.") Personally, I was sort of hoping to hold off on recording a Retronauts episode for a few more weeks and get a fresh start on the show once our new podcasting arrangements are in place (early in January), but this worked out pretty well anyway, what with all the crazy Street Fighter IV info and series retrospective we've been publishing. I hand-picked a team of the four people at Ziff who are most into Street Fighter, and it's the first episode ever in which my editing consisted of nothing more than inserting music -- a really excellent conversation by people who know the games well but aren't freakishly obsessive about them.

If nothing else, the podcast is worth listening to for the outro music. I've been sitting on that for ages, waiting for a moment to share it with the world. Seriously: best song in the history of forever.

category: games | forums | 17 comments | §

It just doesn't work so well

19 December 07 | 10:33 | Posted by:

Dear Apple, please consider changing your "It just works" tagline. I spent my entire day yesterday attempting to get any game working on my MacBook Pro, and not only did they not "just" work, they didn't work at all. And also, the entire process made me realize that the Mac is the single worst game platform on the planet.



To everyone whose kneejerk reaction is "Well duh, Mac doesn't even have games!": shut up. You're dumb and you're wrong, and we'd all be better off if you were to crawl back into 1996 where ill-informed platform wars actually had a point. Just about any game worth playing makes it Mac, eventually, except of course Valve's games, because Gabe Newell hates Macs. (But maybe that's not so bad -- we've seen what happens when Valve games end up on platforms Gabe Newell hates.) Sure, the first big Mac games of 2008 are Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fable -- that's the first Fable, not Fable 2 -- but at least they're on their way. Duke Nukem Forever, should it end up being more than yet another trailer, will be "Duke Nukem Forever Plus Two Years" on Mac. But still. The problem isn't game availability but rather game compatibility.

Anyway, I put most of this behind a jump link to spare you my frothing irritation.

Post continued after link >>

category: games | forums | 30 comments | §

Molasses in December

17 December 07 | 18:46 | Posted by:

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Mega Man series. That makes me feel pretty old! But not as old as the fact that today also marks ten years since I graduated from college. Do you hear that? It's the sound of Death, creeping up behind me.

New Game +: Weekly Game Column
Like kitty litter, video game releases clump. Apparently there's some sort of scientific metric everyone subscribes to, and this guideline tells them the six or seven optimal release dates for a given year. And then everyone releases their games on those days. This is not an optimal week, so instead of a big ol' kitty litter clump we just have a proverbial thin streak, so to speak.

Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Column
Movies aren't quite as susceptible to clumpage as games, so let's just assume that nothing good comes out this week because the entire industry is living, rightfully, in fear of the Blade Runner onslaught. Also, we've consolidated the DVD and anime releases to save Mightyblue the hassle of writing "Oh man this isn't very good" in half a dozen different ways each week. Also, winter hits this week. We gotta huddle for warmth.

category: film, games, media | forums | 18 comments | §

Suffering from piles

16 December 07 | 13:00 | Posted by:

Well, one pile: the Pile of Shame. I decided to make a stack of the games I've let slip past in the past few years but really need to catch up on. And it's big! Actually, it's bigger than this, because I've added the other PS2 Megaten games and a bunch of titles from older disc-based consoles as well (Saturn, PlayStation, Turbo Duo). Also those PC RPGs I posted about last week. Looks like my 2008 is set.


So that's... BioShock, Ico, KOTOR, GTA:LCS, Orange Box, Shadow of the Colossus, Persona 3, Psychonauts, GTA:VCS, Call of Duty 4, Super Paper Mario, Tomb Raider Anniversary, KOTOR 2, Dragon Quarter, Gears of War, Yakuza, Resident Evil 4, finishing up FFXII, Oblivion aaaaand finally Dragon Quest VIII. Do you like the way I put the slow-paced RPGs slogs at the bottom?

This could also be used to deduce the general shape of Fun Clubs to come, maybe. But for now, I must brace myself for the onslaught of "oh, game x isn't worth playing" and "omg I can't believe you haven't played y you scumbag" comments that inevitably follow such posts, obvious to the fact that (1) these are the things I want to play and (2) lol free time.

category: games | forums | 55 comments | §

GameSpite: Issue 3

14 December 07 | 15:49 | Posted by:

The third rollicking installment of the GameSpite too-digital-to-be-a-fanzine concern is now online. Unlike last time, where we crammed Final Fantasy down your throat until Moogles were spilling out of your ears, this update has only the general concept of "video games" as its connective ligament. Mmm, stringy.

Breath of Fire III
Mightyblue returns to the Breath of Fire series to look at its third installment. His perspective is quite a bit more positive than mine; BoF3 was the first blow in the three-punch knockout that made me realize that I don't actually have to finish a boring game, because the payoff for 70 hours of tedium can never outweigh said 70 hours.

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Breath of Fire IV
And also, a look at the fourth Breath of Fire as well. I learned my lesson from the third game and skipped over this one, but Mightyblue makes it sound... not so bad, if not necessarily great. Oh well. The good news is that this means he has saved the best (Dragon Quarter) for last.

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CryptoSafari Snap! The Skyfish
Brandon provides a second installment in his fever dream-like CryptoSafari Snap! series. Last time he hunted down a killed a Tsuchinoko; today, he goes all stabby style on the Skyfish. No, this has nothing to do with bizarre meteorological conditions caused by fish eggs being drawn into the sky through evaporation.

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Gunstar Heroes
LeGeek makes his GameSpite debut with a look at an intricate, hardcore exercise in pushing the Genesis to its limits. (No, not Shaq-Fu.) Fun fact: I have been branded a Treasure hater because I don't love their games without reservation. This is because nerds don't deal well with contrary opinions.

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Ico
For Ico, LumberBaron provides us with a suitably high-falutin' retrospective. At this point it probably would have been edgier and more unpredictable to have reviewed the game in a dry, formal, standard review template. A missed opportunity! I guess I have to turn in my Meta badge, now.

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Kid Icarus
Contributor Red Hedgehog examines the terrible dichotomy of Nintendo's Kid Icarus: why do some revile it, while others regard it as the bee's ever-lovin' knees? The answer lies within.

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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
And bobservo offers up Majora's Mask as an already-existing cure for the sensation of "been-there-done-that" which seems to have seized the Zelda series in its soporific clutches. Seriously, if the next Zelda doesn't do something new I'm not even going to bother playing it.

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MacVenture on NES: Uninvited
Meanwhile, Red Hedgehog's retrospective on Kemco-Seika's NES MacVenture trilogy comes to its conclusion with an analysis of the third entry in this loosely-affiliated series, Uninvited. That's "Uninvited," mind you, not The Uninvited. The box art scared away the article.

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U.N. Squadron
Finally, a retrospective on Super NES shooter U.N. Squadron. I had forgotten all the changes made to the home version -- it might well be the last vestige of Capcom's 8-bit-era compulsion to add depth to its arcade conversions by introducing new gameplay mechanics. (Giving Guy his own version of Final Fight does not count.)


Disappointingly, I didn't have time to write up the Mass Effect review I had hoped to include in this issue. But you're probably sick of me talking about it anyway.

category: games | forums | 21 comments | §

My heart grew three sizes that day

14 December 07 | 11:19 | Posted by:

Yeah, yeah. It's just a port of the PS1 game... but I will be quite put out if someone does not bring this to America. 'Course, PSP games are region-free, so screw 'em if they don't. Umihara Kawase for PSP: guaranteed to be the one game in 2008 that feels the most like the original Bionic Commando. Yes, that includes Capcom's new Bionic Commando.

category: games | forums | ten comments | §

This is not a joke

13 December 07 | 11:42 | Posted by:

Unfortunately.



The prevailing sentiment to this announcement seems to be, "It's on mobile phones!? What a terrible idea." That is a correct response, but an even more correct response would be, "They're making a slapdash sequel to a classic whose story was satisfyingly resolved and has no room for expansion!? What a terrible idea." Luckily, bad ideas tend to negate one another, so in a few years you'll have forgotten this ever existed. Just like Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals. Even Shane "I am the biggest (Final Fantasy) fan in the universe" Bettenhausen didn't remember what Legend of the Crystals was.

So, once again, Internet: refrain from your usual hysterics. Think of it this way: if you never play the game, you never have to worry about your fond memories of Final Fantasy IV being marred and mauled by crass franchising.

Also, to everyone who snapped up my extraneous possessions -- I'm having trouble finding boxes for all of this stuff, so I may not be mailing some of these packages until early next week. Drop me an email if this means I should be sending it to a different address (what with the holiday looming and all).

category: games | forums | 21 comments | §

Takin' it to the Street (Fighter)

12 December 07 | 12:15 | Posted by:

The first part of Nadia's three-part Street Fighter retrospective is up over at that one site I work for. I'm sure it is woefully inadequate in the eyes of people whose only joy in life is memorizing fighting game combos, but I think it's a nice little read. And in any case, I'm pretty sure it will make fewer people angry than my Final Fantasy roundup (which turned out to net way more heated, angry retorts than I intended).



I remember the last time I played Street Fighter II in an arcade. It was ages ago -- I still lived in Texas, and I was at a movie theatre waiting for some friends to show up. SFII seemed a better way to kill some time than, say, Revolution-X. Some little kid wandered over and his dad dropping in a quarter, disrupting my solo playthrough. Which is fine -- I wasn't playing seriously or anything. In point of fact, I decided to stop playing Street Fighter to win after bludgeoning my way through the maximum difficulty setting for all eight characters in the original Super NES release, ruining both a controller and a desk in the process. (Sorry about that, Mom.)

The kid had no idea how to play, and I didn't want to be a jerk by completely demolishing him, so I gave him a few love taps with Chun-Li and then spent the rest of the match using her eleet jumping skills to run down the timer and win on a technicality. This infuriated his father, who angrily criticized me for not letting the kid win. And that was when I decided I hate all humans.

Just kidding. I'd come to that conclusion long before.

Except Terry Pratchett. I definitely don't hate him, and news of his condition is slightly heartbreaking. For someone who makes his living with his imagination and his facility with words to live with the knowledge that he'll inevitably lose those facilities is one of the worst fates I can imagine. Celebrity news is something I don't keep up with, but Pratchett is one of those rare famous people I actually respect (if only for his ability to take a critical look at religion without seeming as puffed up with imaginary self-righteousness as, say, Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman), so yeah. Awful.

category: games | forums | sixteen comments | §

Clearance time

11 December 07 | 18:54 | Posted by:

Item the First: My office's coffee area can never seem to keep up with the demand for the lousy, fake green tea that is provided for us. But the powers-that-be decided to make up for it today by offering us seasonal blends. I would like to confirm that "Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride" tea is indeed every bit as terrible an idea as it sounds.

Item the Second: As part of my effort to own no more worldly possessions than will fit within the space of three bookshelves and a small closet, I am clearing out a wide swath of the things that keep accumulating in my home. This includes about 90% of my NES, Famicom and Super Famicom games. Please have a look and spare me the hassle of having to put this stuff on eBay, please.

Item the Third: toastyfrog.com finally works properly again. That doesn't mean I advocate its use, however.

Item the Fourth: This week's Fun Club selection (Final Fantasy Legend) and alternate (Passage) are active. Please go forth, play and discuss.

category: blog | forums | seven comments | §

The hard stuff rules

10 December 07 | 20:26 | Posted by:

Anime Blues: Weekly Anime Column
As the year winds down, so do interesting new releases. At least, that's how it goes in the game and movie worlds; I guess the same is true of anime, too. Since my sense of "new and significant" with regard to this particular niche ossified somewhere around the third straight-up Evangelion clone, though, I can't really say. So, let the column contributor be your guide. Yes.

New Game +: Weekly Game Column
Thanks, games industry. If it weren't for the slumber you drop into around this time every year, I'd never have a chance to play anything new. This is the one time of the year where I can actually spend time with all the games I wasn't assigned to review over the course of the fall season. If it weren't for this week's crappy release schedule, I'd never have played Mass Effect.

Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Column
This is another of those occasions where I hiss in anger at the stupid "next-gen format war" that Hollywood has decided to subject us to. Shamefully, the clarity of Blu-ray has seduced me. And as The Bourne Ultimatum was one of the few movies I've enjoyed this year, I'd like to own it. But, ha ha, it's on the wrong format for me. Dear Hollywood: I hope the writers' strike crushes you. Like a grape.

category: blog | forums | nine comments | §

Mass impact

09 December 07 | 19:56 | Posted by:

I wrapped up Mass Effect tonight. Or rather to say, I wrapped up the Paragon edition of Mass Effect and rolled myself a Renegade for another go. I was going to try a playthrough with a male Shepard, but honestly the guy they hired to perform the male-version voice sounds like a complete dweeb after 42 hours of Jennifer Hale. So! Now Shepard is a ruthless Earth-born woman with a Mediterranean appearance and a decidedly goth sense of fashion. Because nothing says "Renegade" like expressing your individuality by conforming to a "non-conformist" standard.

But before I sit through a few dozen hours of faintly familiar dialogue trees and sit through detailed lectures on the nature of Spectres again, I think I should have a go at BioShock. I hear it's actually widescreen now.

Also, the last post's discussion thread was quite valuable. Now I have about a dozen massive PC RPGs to grind through, so thanks for that. I actually already own Mac versions of Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Fallout 2 that I've never done anything with... and, annoyingly, I can't really do anything with the first two since they predate OS X by a few years and thus won't run on current Mac hardware. Le sigh.

Someone helpfully pointed out something called "Tutu," a fan app that lets you convert (OS 9-based) Baldur's Gate to the (OS X-based) Baldur's Gate 2 engine. Alas, you need to have a functioning install of the first game to get it started, and that is in fact impossible to create on an Intel Mac. Progress is awesome.

As for the games that never made it to Mac, like Planescape: Torment, those'll have to wait until I buy my next MacBook, which will likely be next summer. I don't have space on my current system for a full XP Boot Camp install, you see, and I don't think I'd have much luck with Parallels.

Say... I just remembered why I gave up on Mac/PC gaming about a decade ago.

category: games | forums | fourteen comments | §

Let's role-play

07 December 07 | 19:29 | Posted by:

My preview of Dragon Quest IV went up yesterday. I'm not sure what it says about gaming as a medium that seemingly half the "previews" I write are for games that are fifteen, even twenty years old.



Anyway. It occurs to me, as I juggle DQ4 and Mass Effect, that in the past year I've played a surprisingly wide array of games calling themselves "RPGs." The former title, here, is the very definition of bog-standard Japanese RPG -- which isn't a criticism, really, as I'm enjoying it, but Dragon Quest is the foundation upon which most Japanese RPGs are built. (Except Final Fantasy and its ilk, as those always struck me as having come from a place that was more about dressing up the old Ultimas in Dungeons & Dragons' clothing. Or should that be "the old Ultimae"? Whatever.) Dragon Quest is RPG comfort food, and even if Square Enix wanted to innovate with it they couldn't; witness the outcry provoked by the initial news of their intent to make Dragon Quest IX's combat action-driven and multiplayer. Japan screamed in anger, so they settled just for "multiplayer."

Meanwhile, the latter -- by which I mean Mass Effect, in case you find yourself confused by that last paragraph's admittedly needless digressions -- is very much a PC RPG trying to fit into the world of consoles. And not quite succeeding, I'm afraid. The shooty action bits aren't as smooth as console gamers expect, while the dialogue has netted considerable criticism from PC-era BioWare fans who prefer the comparative richness of their older games. Something about it feels vaguely compromised -- and for what benefit, I wonder? To judge by message board comments, a sizable number of console kids don't "get" the game, not realizing that the meat of the game isn't in the exploding of stuff but rather in the conversing with people. They're the ones who are tossing around words like "overrated," because they beat the game in 20 hours and didn't bother with all the plot wrinkles as they were focused wholly on the shuddery, difficult-to-manage combat.

And being an adamant console kid myself, I feel well within my rights to regard them as dopes. Because here I've been dabbling more and more outside the narrow confines of Japanese console RPG design, and I've been loving it.

The most surprisingly excellent game of the year has turned out to be Etrian Odyssey -- a Japanese-made console (well, portable) RPG, sure, but one unabashed in its emulation of old PC RPGs like Wizardry. (Old PC RPGs.) And it's fantastic. The entire game has less plot than a single Mass Effect conversation, but the story that develops is the tale of the player's team of warriors. (Various jackasses who name their party members after those characters' primary action verbs notwithstanding.) Every narrow escape, every desperate dash through corridors crammed with high-level monsters, every square of virtual graph paper you mark off further endears your speechless combatants to you.

Curiously, I've found this sort of role-playing every bit as compelling as Mass Effect's -- those little cartoon people are my loyal acolytes. Except maybe the Dark Hunter, he's sort of unsettling. And unlike most story-heavy games, ME does let you define your character through her (or his) background, and through his (or her) responses and decisions. I was looking at pictures of other players' custom made Shepards today and found it rather off-putting -- none of those were the real Shepard, because Shepard is an angular-looking career warrior named Yukiko, a first-rate sniper whose moral fiber is outstanding. Well, as outstanding as a sniper's moral fiber can be when their life is built on shooting people. I don't know who those other Shepards are, but they're filthy imposters.



(OK, so my Shepard was admittedly just an attempt to create a grown-up version of Rorita. She's a galactic hero now, folks.)

And then there was Izuna (a lightweight roguelike); Pokémon Mystery Dungeon (an even lighter-weight roguelike), Pokémon (a collection-driven battling RPG), Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (Pokémon meets Dragon Quest); Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea and Jeanne D'Arc (fond remembrances of Tactics Ogre), Revenant Wings (almost, but not quite, an RTS), and about half a dozen remakes of old Final Fantasy games (uh, Final Fantasy games). Oh, and Chrono Trigger (pretty much perfection). And I still have yet to touch what is supposedly the best RPG of the year, Persona 3, which is somewhere between Pokémon, an old-school PC RPG, Final Fantasy and, uh, Bully.

So, the point of all of this is... that I still like RPGs after all, I guess. I had my doubts for a few years, there. But I suppose I was actually sick of formulaic J-RPGs, which is why I happily passed on Eternal Sonata and <>Blue Odyssey and regard Lost Odyssey with regretful trepidation. (I want it to be good, but....) I suppose ultimately I've been waiting for people to start taking more open PC-style experiences into the console world where I can enjoy them without having to prop open a keymap cheat card in front of my computer. And now they are! I'm thinking I might have to dabble in Windows a little to catch up on some of the classics, though -- Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape....

But let's not do anything rash, here.

category: games | forums | 38 comments | §

Mass affection

05 December 07 | 20:58 | Posted by:

I'm sad to say that the combination of an interesting game and Xbox Achievements is leading me to compromise my better judgment. Yes, I'm going for Mass Effect's sapphic romance subplot, despite the fact that I want to kick the Internet in the teeth when it collectively drools about it. But I want those romance Achievement points, consarnit, and since I rolled a female Shepard my only other option is the stupid Biotic dude. Who's, like, the most boring character in the history of everything.

Bah, speciesism. Where's the Wrex romance subplot, I wanna know?

Meanwhile, I'm balancing my Mass Effect time with Dragon Quest IV. It's... quite the contrast, these two very different representatives of the same genre.

category: games | forums | 34 comments | §

Weekness

03 December 07 | 19:36 | Posted by:

Look, I'm running out of clever ways to introduce these columns, OK? So you'll have to settle for dull, nonsensical puns. Suck it up, trooper.

Add to Queue: Weekly DVD Column
VsRobot's weekly DVD release column has transcended the shackles of mere mortality and now has its own podcast, with its very own website. You should check it out! After you've read the column, of course. Come on, kids, that's what tabbed browsing was created for. Meanwhile, I still haven't had a chance to watch Bender's Big Score. I fail as a nerd.

New Game +: Weekly Game Column
Uh, so, yeah. Games this week. Once again, a dud of a week. I don't know about you, but it's driving me to desperation. I need to look forward to something every week. Absent that, I'm prone to do things I'll later regret. Like buy a copy of Unlimited Saga. Save me from myself, games industry: step it up.

Anime Blues: Weekly Anime Column
And finally, anime. The second volume of Welcome to the N.H.K. arrives this week... but the anime is kind of boring, like most novel-to-manga-to-anime adaptations. Happily, volume five of the manga also hits this week, so get that instead. Oh, and there's some other anime. Don't ask me, I swore off the stuff two volumes into Outlaw Star. That's why someone else writes these, see.

category: film, games | forums | five comments | §

Meanwhile, in the world of GOOD games

02 December 07 | 19:28 | Posted by:

I'm about 14 hours into Mass Effect, which according to people I've asked at work would suggest I'm nearly three-quarters of the way through the game. "It's about, oh, 20 hours long," they told me. In point of fact, I haven't even finished the first of the three story missions that open up after taking care of business at the Citadel. Come to that, I had seven hours on my clock before I even left the Citadel.

The trick, of course, is that they were playing to beat the game (and no, I'm not talking about the reviewers, so please put away your Penny Arcade links). This is not a game to be beaten -- it is a game to be played. I can only imagine that people who approach Mass Effect as a fairly straightforward action game probably hate it, because the "action" portions are... well, let's be charitable. They're pretty damn awful. It kind of tries to be a shooter but feels like Gears of War as programmed by a first year comp-sci student; it's rooted in the RPG genre but lacks the input and feedback necessary to work effectively as one of those, too. When the bullets start flying, Mass Effect turns into an infuriating mess. Especially in tight corridors.



Fortunately, that is a very tiny portion of the game, and it seems to be pretty easy to level up a bit with skirmishes that make better use of the battle system -- all those extra planets to explore usually have a few encounters in wide open areas, and my Infiltrator-class Shepard is a pretty good shot with a sniper rifle, neatly letting me take potshots from cover. So that's good. It helps me appreciate what works about the game -- namely, everything else, and most of all the actual role-playing part.

So many sidequests, and so many possible outcomes -- it's really quite impressive, especially the fluidity of the conversation system. I've seen more than a few movies that feel more stilted and unnatural than the branching dialogue in Mass Effect. Like I said a few days ago on 1UP Yours, it has some of the best writing I've seen in a game, and the spoken delivery sells it. I've essentially been playing my own personality (i.e. avoiding Renegade options whenever possible), but I have explored a few different outcomes to various situations and can't help but be impressed by how differently they work out. Pick the Paragon option when a smuggler asks you to help him curtail the law and Shepard speaks with sharp indignation; break the law and she (or he, if you prefer) behaves furtively, eyes shifting left and right. (Or you could rip off the smuggler and sell his contraband directly to its intended buyer for even more cash.)

It's a huge, involving game -- not the best game I've played all year, since the combat feels so poorly conceived. But it's certainly the most ambitious, and it's a must-play for anyone who enjoys good, thoughtful writing. Like Final Fantasy XII, this is another of those games that makes it impossible to go back to the middling console RPG experience Japan's been feeding us for the past decade or so.

category: games | forums | 18 comments | §