The Racing Game

Early last year, despite disliking most racing games, I found Burnout Paradise to be incredibly enjoyable. It’s arcade style and forgiving controls made flying through the streets of Paradise City exhilarating.

Just recently I got to try GRID and Project Gotham Racing 4 at my friends house. I also bought WipEout HD off of PSN. After playing PGR4 for a while I ended up frustrated and kind of bored. Something about it failed to engage me. Even after plowing through levels on a motorcycle weaving in between cars the game seemed to lack something.


After switching to GRID I was immediately impressed by the games look and couldn’t help but burst out laughing after making my first turn at 200 mph only to slam into a wall and explode. I was also very pleasantly surprised to then learn about the games rewind feature, just like in Prince of Persia or Braid, you can rewind your car to a safe spot before your crash. However, after an hour or so with GRID I had become increasingly irritated with trying to take turns at high speeds. If I tried to slow down, I’d make the turn at a crawl. If I tried to maintain some speed and slide through it, I’d end up in the dirt or slammed up against the wall. Any time I found the perfect medium for a turn I found I couldn’t replicate it. Every turn required a similar trial and error process that was no less easy than the last. I simply could not get a feeling for the game.

That or I just suck at it and didn’t want to spend the time getting good. Shut up Aaron, I know you’re reading this. ;)


Later that week I decided to pick up WipEout for the PS3. It is only 20 bucks, and GameFly was taking forever to ship me my next game. Also, it looked startlingly like F-Zero GX for the GameCube and I loved that game. Right away I started having fun, the game looked great, had tight controls and where and how to make a turn was instantly intuitive. My only complaint was the game didn’t seem fast enough, but after a quick bout online in the fastest speed class I changed my mind.

I knew why I preferred Burnout and WipEout to GRID and PGR4. I’ve always preferred the more arcade style racing games to the realistic ones. This led me to wonder if this applied to other genres.

As far as shooters go, two good games to compare are Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas. I love both those games, but the over the top violence in Gears is satisfying and hilarious. It’s also cartoony enough to not be vomit inducing. Rainbow Six on the other hand required a bit more thought before even firing your gun. You have to balance your gear between protection and mobility, pick your gun from many options, decide which two additional items you want to bring along, and finally what upgrades you want to put onto everything. RSV is very satisfying once you get your character tailored the way you like, but it is an inherently different experience than Gears.


Another comparison is Oblivion versus Fable 2. Oblivion is a great immersive game that, while I did enjoy, was a bit overwhelming. The sheer amount of things you were responsible for in that game was a bit too much, not to mention the leveling system felt more detrimental each time you “dinged” than helpful. Fable 2 on the other hand was much more cutesy. The world was big and fun to explore like Oblivion, but the barriers to entry were much lower. The game also had a great sense of humor.

One last genre I thought about is the sandbox genre. One of my favorite games of 2007 was Crackdown. The entire world felt like a playground for you to romp around in. The story in it was basically an excuse to give you people to mow down. The world was huge and colorful and housed some of the coolest looking explosions I’ve ever seen. Compare this to GTA4 and you’ll quickly see a huge difference. The world of Liberty City is dark and brown, the story is depressing, and even though you have a huge sandbox to mess around in, the character development doesn’t lend itself so nicely to murderous rampages.


After thinking about other genres it seems being realistic only seems to deter me from racing games. Despite what I said about Rainbow Six Vegas, Oblivion, and GTA4, I still loved all three of those games. GRID and PGR4 I couldn’t even play after an hour with each. I think the main difference is while the stylized games are more fun for me; I look for more than just fun out of most genres I play. GTA4 has an excellent story and Oblivion has one of the most immersive worlds I’ve ever played in. Racing games on the other hand rarely even try to offer anything else than a good time.

So what do you guys prefer, stylized arcade like games or a more realistic game? Or is it not that simple for you like this post has illustrated for me?

Are Walkthroughs All Bad?

While playing Eternal Darkness over the holiday break I quite quickly got to a point where I couldn’t stand the games series of logicless puzzles. I felt like if I didn’t know how to proceed then I just had to press B as I passed by everything and hope I inspected the right thing. By about the halfway point I couldn’t take it anymore, but the vignette storyline among other things still had me very much intrigued. I decided to use a guide to deal with the trial and error style puzzles to minimize my frustrations while still being able to enjoy the more interesting aspects of the game.


Generally using guides is frowned upon as it defeats the purpose of actually playing the game. However, using a walkthrough can actually enhance some games by removing the parts that the player feels aren’t done well or detract from the game. Like I said above, by reading that I needed to grab some stick from somewhere that was indistinguishable as a usable object from everything else. Then stick it in some other thing that I happened to miss inspecting after searching an area for 45 minutes allowed me to move onto the other parts of the game more quickly.

I started thinking about other games I’ve used walkthroughs on. One series in particular that comes to mind is Metroid. My first foray into the series was with Metroid Fusion on the GBA and Metroid Prime on the GameCube. I got them both right after their release in November 2003 and got about a third into each before shelfing them. My problem was I never took the time to find any powerups because I just didn’t care. For whatever reason I found the exploration and solitary atmosphere to be excellent, but couldn’t be bothered to shoot every surface or in Primes’ case scan every surface.


A year or two later I ended up going back to Metroid Prime with a guide. I only used the guide to find items, not to solve puzzles or boss strategies. Once I got back to the boss I was stuck on I had acquired around 40% more health and more than three times the amount of missiles I could previously hold. I beat the boss on my first try with very minimal problems. As you can see, powerups play a huge role in Metroid, I just didn’t enjoy finding them all. My experience with Metroid Fusion is almost identical. I now consider Metroid Prime to be one of my favorite GameCube games, but without a guide I just couldn’t get into it.

So does anyone else feel the same way about certain games? If so, which ones?

Wait, there's no blood?

Casual games. Love 'em or hate 'em, they are everywhere now. Gamers far and wide bemoan their rise as the end of gaming as we know it. An easy target for this hate would be the Nintendo Wii and its endless supply of 'non-game' compilations, as the message boards have labeled them. I'm not going to address those grievences here - my question is this: Is it so wrong to enjoy a casual game now and again, between all the shooting, fighting, and racing games?

I think not.

Cute and non-threatening Scene It! for Xbox 360

For Christmas I got Scene It! Box Office Smash for Xbox 360. My sister wanted to buy it after playing the demo. When she found out it came with four big button controllers she wanted it even more (I assume the simple nature of the controller appealed to her). We played a few matches together and it was fun, but I knew with a full group it would be even better. I wanted to put Scene It! in front of some hardcore gamer friends of mine and see what they thought.

Right after Christmas, I took Scene It! over to my friend's house where about six people, including myself, regularly play sports/fighting/FPS games against each other. When they spotted Scene It! and the giant button controllers, all they could do was laugh. They didn't take me seriously when I suggested we play it first. Everyone laughed at the controllers and questioned my sanity, all the way through selecting avatars and beginning the first set of questions.

Two hours and several highly competitive rounds later, my friends were geniuenly shocked they had that much fun with a simple trivia game using a giant, goofy controller trying to be the first one to buzz in. Lots of laughs and taunting took place that night and no one ever fired a gun or threw a fireball. At the end of the night, my friends were actually glad I had made them play Scene It!, as it really changed the mood and was a big change from just playing fighting and shooting games.

My most played game of '08 - Rock Band 2

During Christmas week, I took the opportunity to pick up the Guitar Hero 3 Les Paul for $20 at now liquidated Circuit City to fill out my equipment needs in Rock Band 2. I only owned the Rock Band set of instruments, which meant one mic, one guitar and a set of drums. Unless someone brought their own guitar, we'd always have to take turns which often left someone getting bored before the rest of the group. I decided to reintroduce my friends to Rock Band and play with a full band. To quote Borat,"Great success!".

With no one left out, we ended up playing for around three hours, much longer than previous times when someone had to sit-out. Getting everyone in on the action at the same time proved to make it much more enjoyable for all of us. A couple friends that absolutely suck at guitar and drums were assigned singing duties, which led to many animal noises being used to activate overdrive. It's safe to say a good time was had by all.

When you're able to get all of your friends involved and playing at the same time, casual games can quickly earn a spot in the rotation. I've found that my hardcore gamer friends, who can be highly skeptical of anything cute and colorful with no blood or guns, discover that they can have fun playing an E-rated game and still hold onto their masculinity.

You Should Buy World of Goo!

I really don’t have much to say about World of Goo aside from glowing praise. For those unaware, it is a simple puzzle game about building structures of goo to get from one area to another. The idea is to do it using the least amount of goo possible. It is a simple idea, but lends itself nicely to replay value, especially considering you get to use that extra goo in another mode. Almost all of the challenges are immediately obvious, but the fun comes from your own unique goo structure solution rather than figuring out what it is you have to do.

World of Goo Trailer 2 Director's Cut
by 2dboy

What really ties the game together is it’s incredible art style, interesting music, and hilarious writing (see above trailer). I laughed out loud at the reference they made to this terrible commercial from a few years back. The art style is reminiscent of a Tim Burton film and the music sets the mood nicely. It’s hard to believe only one person was supposedly responsible for both the audio and visuals.

The game is a blast to play and constantly throws new goo types and level designs into the equation to mix up the gameplay. Once you get used to the regular type, they’ll throw in balloons or explosives or weird digital projectiles, all the while keeping the simple intuitive point and click controls.

What’s more is the game could probably use your help. As you probably know it was created by a small independent dev team. They went out on a limb in light of all the DRM controversy and released the game on their website DRM free. This of course resulted in something like a 90% piracy rate. It is supposedly not as bad as it seems thanks to the WiiWare and Steam releases of the game, but still we didn’t do a great job of making our point to EA about not needing a DRM now did we?

Anyway, consider this a ringing endorsement for one of the most clever and original games of 2008. It’s only 20 bucks and well worth it, now if only anyone read this blog. ;)

Gears loves me, Gears loves me not

Gears of War 2 is a lot like a relationship. One moment everything is going fine. The next you’re shooting them four times point blank with a shotgun just to be chainsawed in half when they should have been dead three times over…. Well okay, maybe it isn’t like relationships.

But I just shot you four times! I can see your blood on your screen!

What I’m getting at is ever since I completed the co-op campaign and horde mode in Gears 2, I had been struggling with the multiplayer in an attempt to re-experience the magic I felt with the original. After about five attempts playing primarily wingman with Slevin over the course of about a month we were just about ready to call it quits and move onto some other game to get our multiplayer fix. Suddenly, one night, after four entire games where I did not get a single kill everything came together. People took damage when I shot at them! It was magical. After playing the rest of the night with several good matches I was hooked again.

I have no idea what happened, I certainly didn’t get better, the game just sort of started working. This persisted through the week, the game was working well enough that we could actually improve. We learned the maps, started winning more and more games, and by a weeks time we seemed to be able to win half of all our matches. That may sound pretty terrible, but Wingman has five teams of two, so winning means besting four teams, not just the other one. Sometimes you can lose without even dying just because you didn’t get enough of the kills.

Now I know there are still several know bugs in the game, the most annoying of which makes the shotgun shoot directly at the floor while blind firing. But we managed to succeed in spite of all these. Then a week after all our success I got back from a trip and the game felt almost as broken as before. Enough is enough, I had to shelf the game and move on.

Of course, the next day Epic announced this patch and said it’s coming within the month. I still haven’t played in over a week, but I cannot wait until I hear the patch goes live. What is it about a good multiplayer game that gets me addicted like a single player game never can? Don’t get me wrong, I love single player games, probably even more than multiplayer, but I never find myself constantly thinking and obsessing over a single player game while I’m away from it.

This game isn’t even good! It’s riddled with bugs and plays like a mess, but that week of somewhat playability mixed with the promise of more in the future is all I need to keep craving shotgunning locust into pieces. Just the promise that this game could work is intended is enough to keep my interest piqued. Epic has its chainsaw bayonets sunk in me and they aren’t letting go.

Far Cry 2 as told by Jebus

As Slevin mentioned, we are playing Far Cry 2 in conjunction with each other. Our original idea was to play the game and after each night or two compare our experience. We got this idea after I found this interview (which is totally worth reading) about how Far Cry 2 will have some bold new fully interactive narrative. According to the interview, the story is told in a series of vignettes (missions) that can be done in more or less any order because they are designed to not have a chronology. We thought this would lead to two very different experiences of the same game. Sadly after playing for about 7 or 8 hours and getting through what I think is the first third of the game, this does not appear to be the case.

After I typed up a brief synopsis of my first session, then read Slevins’ and then played another 4 or 5 hours it became quite apparent that the story in this game unfolds similarly for everyone. There is some, but not much choice as far as the main story is concerned, and there are a 3 or 4 different side quests lines you can do at any given time. So I’ve decided not to bother boring you with my journal entry style post because if you already read Slevins’ you probably won’t want to read mine.

Having said all that, I still think this game is fantastic. Like I said, I’m not entirely convinced they accomplished their new story telling structure as I had imagined it in the interview, but there are some exciting things all the same. For one, the buddies allow for you to make a choice of how you want to accomplish every mission, but most of the time it seems to get you the same end result. This isn't the case every time because after my last big mission Slevin ended up with nothing but the payment, and I ended up with a pimped out Jeep and a full fledged med pack at all my safe houses. I might also be on very very bad terms with the UFLL when I get back, we’ll see. Also your buddies can die permanently (one of mine already has) so I imagine if a crucial one bites the dust that could lead to no alternate choices on missions. All these are differences you control, but none seem terribly narrative altering in a significant way.

I think the real unique player experience they were going for really shines through in the way you play the game, and not necessarily the missions you take. For instance you can stealthily sneak up on a base with a sniper rifle and a camo suit on and snipe everyone before they can do anything about it. Alternately, you could do it my standard way and plow through the entrance in your jeep, running over as many people as you can in the process, then blowing up said jeep with a grenade on your way out possibly killing more people and starting a huge brush fire. Then simply picking off the rest amidst the chaos. My way tends to lend itself nicely to a lot of those “Holy shit, that was awesome” type moments.

Though even with all that choice, I don’t feel like the game has really done that much new. You could take on missions in various ways and orders in GTA4, and you can focus your play style into sneaky, or Rambo or whatever in games like Oblivion. The entire game feels like a really polished Ubisoft take on GTA if it was set in Africa during a guerrilla war. I said it was fantastic because that is hardly a bad thing.

Far Cry 2

I just started playing Far Cry 2 this week. The open-world nature of the game allows it to be approached differently by each player. I'm going to keep a log of some of my time with Far Cry 2 and see how my experience differs from Jebus'.

This should (hopefully) be interesting.

Entry #1

The sun is going down, dancing its way through the tree tops to the jungle floor. I'm headed to the northwest to destroy a weapon cache of 'shit AKs' for a weapons dealer. He'll provide me with a few new guns for my trouble.

Leaving my safehouse in my dune buggy I stole from a guard outpost, I run into a guard checkpoint. I end up losing my ride after the rebels race toward me in their truck, which I blow up with my rocket launcher, causing my dune buggy and their truck to both explode. I steel another truck from the checkpoint.

On my way to the northwest, I notice an opportunity for a mission from a satellite tower. A man in a Saw like voice gives me a target to assassinate. I need the diamonds, so I head off.

I run into a problem trying to pass through Mokuba. I narrowly miss being killed when my car is hit with an RPG. I am overwhelmed by rebels here and go down. Thankfully, my buddy Marty shows up to save me, and we clear out the camp. It begins to rain as I head through the brush and follow a river towards my target.

My GPS is going crazy while I'm trying to get back to a road. Scouting ahead, I see it's at the top of a hill, which happens to be a safehouse currently guarded. I sneak up the road with my knife ready and stab the first guard before he knows what hit him. He rolls down the hill a bit and in a last ditch effort to stop me, draws a pistol from his holster. Before he can fire I stab him in the chest one last time. I kill the other guard, unlocking my new safehouse. I find the diamond behind the house. It's dark out and raining, so I decide to head out in the morning.

I wake up to my buddy Marty. He's dropped by to remind me of the close call we had in Mokuba. I thank him and head towards my target.

My assignment is circling an airfield. A river runs along it, so instead of confronting the rebel checkpoint, I steal a boat from the dock and head towards the airfield.

The mark is traveling in an SUV protected by two trucks. Using my monocular, I plan an ambush as they drive closer to me. The lead truck is well ahead; as he passes the ridge I'm on, I take out the gunner. The rest of the convoy is on to me. I use the newly freed machine gun on the other truck. The SUV empties and two guards begin firing on me while my target flees. I kill them with my shotgun and grenades and chase down my payday. I almost feel bad for killing an unarmed man. Almost.

----------------------------

Needless to say, my initial impressions are favorable to Far Cry 2 right now. I've spent a little over three hours with it and I only have a couple complaints - respawning checkpoints and AI that can be a little too good at finding where I am. Otherwise, I'm impressed.

The world Ubisoft has created feels alive and open to me. Maybe it's just seeing my hand reach out to open doors, or healing myself with pliers, or having a friend help me during a fight and tell me to watch out for myself, pulling up my map while driving; it feels like I'm in a living, breathing world and not just a floating gun pressing a button to open doors and shoot everyone to get to the next room. I have a choice in how the action plays out, where I'm going and what missions I'm going to take. The dynamic weather, lush environments, fire propagation and graphics also help me feel immersed in this world.

After I finish the game I will post my final impressions of Far Cry 2.

A Prince for Everyone

Recently Michael Abbott over at the wonderful Brainy Gamer organized a symposium for discussing the new Prince of Persia. I was pretty stoked when I discovered this because first of all I love his site and all of his friends game discussions, but more importantly the Sands of Time trilogy ranks very high among my favorite games ever. Yes, even Warrior Within, though it is without a doubt the weakest in the series. This obviously leaves me fairly biased towards the discussion of the new game, but luckily I’m not writing this to discuss how much I liked the game.

The Brainy Gamer posted this article back when Braid came out this summer. He was commenting on how all his non-gamer friends loved the opening of Braid and wanted to experience all it had to offer. They couldn’t of course because Braid requires a previous knowledge of video games that can only be acquired from the years we all spent playing games. Certain unspoken rules are there that us as gamers don’t have to think twice about, but would never cross a non-gamers mind. From what I understand several incredibly avid gamers even had problems beating all the puzzles in there. Not me of course, but my skills needn’t be discussed. ;)

Braid would have been a great game to show the world what games are capable of, if only the world was capable of playing it. That’s where Prince of Persia comes in. PoP has the beautiful graphics, the awesome atmosphere and excellent score that Braid has. It also has the narrative and ending to inspire a huge dialogue, regardless of if you liked the story. Most importantly it has what Braid never even wanted to have, accessibility. Several gamers cite this as a negative, but this is the game we should be showing all our non-gamer friends in an attempt to get them to experience what we do. Interestingly, Mr. Abbott’s friends ended up choosing PoP as their universal favorite after his holiday get together. I assume at least some of them are the same friends that couldn’t break into Braid.

Prince of Persia is a great step in the right direction for expanding the gaming audience in a way the Wii hasn’t really provided. If that requires the sacrifice of displeasing a few hardcore gamers, I’m sorry to say I think that’s a fair trade. Besides, it sounds like several of the hardcore were happy to jump aboard. I certainly was.

Game of the Year... a day late

Well seeing as it’s the first of the year I probably shouldn’t wait any longer to do my game of the year post. That’s game of last year technically, but I imagine you all figured that out. When deciding my game this year I thought about what I most appreciated in a game. As I said in my first post, I realized this year just how much a strong narrative meant to me. In retrospect this makes sense when I think of my top games of all time. Not many games from the pre-32 bit era make my list. Games that do make the list are games like Shadow of the Colossus, Shenmue 2, and the Prince of Persia trilogy of last generation. As you can see, these games simply weren’t possible until later in the 32 bit era.

I know there were some games with intelligent and interesting stories before the big 3D boom, but these were almost exclusively RPGs. I never played RPGs when I was younger do to the turn based combat. I found it boring or something and I generally kept away from them aside from the few real time combat gems until a couple of years ago (I can’t wait to try out the Chrono Trigger remake because of this).
Anyways, before I go on I should note that I have not yet played Mirror’s Edge, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Dead Space, or Little Big Planet. I was out of the country from early October until late November so I’ve been trying to catch up as best I can. Picked a terrible time to leave the country, huh? Ah well, at least I got to go to TGS. ;) I did manage to play 63 major games this year and of those I finished 52 or so. 5 I deemed unfinishable because of how they work. Geometry Wars 2 for example is one of those 5. However, of those 52 games only about half came out this year.


While thinking of contenders for game of the year I considered two main things. First was time spent playing a game, several journalists and bloggers I respect seem to go with how addicted to a game they were as their measuring stick. The other was how emotionally moved I was by a game. This led to two very different games. Super Smash Brothers Brawl because I played this game with my roommates and friends for upwards of 5 hours a night for a good two months before we got sick of it. That may have been a slight exaggeration, but just about every night from when Brawl came out until sometime after finals week we were on there. The other game I chose was Metal Gear Solid 4. After getting about 4 hours into it I basically could not stop playing until I saw the conclusion. After every cut scene, boss fight, or weird transitionary tool used to merge the two I was just left impressed. I didn’t fully agree with all the ending cut scene choices, but I was overall floored by this game.


So now since I have to pick one of these two for game for the year. Based on what I said in the first paragraph the choice was obvious. Despite all the fun I had bashing my friends into oblivion in SSBB, the thing that draws me into games the most isn’t just the pure fun they bring me. Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have brought me as many hours of joy as Smash did, but during those fifteen somewhat hours I could not have been more attached to everything the game presented. MGS4 was hands down my game of the year.

Strange that my two favorite games last year were on the two consoles who combined still only get a fraction of the time from me that my 360 does.